Foreword

WITH ITS PARADOXICAL TITLE, Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde’s most
influential book of prose, is ever more trenchant twenty-three years
after its first printing—surpassing even the reputation of her poetry,
which is no minor feat. Were she here among us in the funky U.S.
instead of floating somewhere over the Guinea Coast, Lorde would
still want and have to claim that “outsider” stance. These prose
works, much like her poetry, position her (and us), as Akasha Gloria
Hull said many years ago, “on the line,” refusing the safety of that
inside perimeter. I return to these texts again and always—in these
times of imperial and unnatural acts, like the war in Iraq and the
federal abandonment of the Gulf Coast survivors in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina. Sister is my sister no matter how I may reject her
counsel: “As Black people … we must move against not only those
forces which dehumanize us from the outside, but also against those
oppressive values which we have been forced to take into
ourselves.”1 No matter how angry Sister makes me with her
seemingly easy aphorisms: “For the master’s tools will never dismantle
the master’s house.”2 No matter how much Sister still asks the hard
questions: “Why do Black women reserve a particular voice of fury
and disappointment for each other? Who is it we must destroy when
we attack each other with that tone of predetermined and correct
annihilation?”3
On the shelf with or at the bottom of that stack of other wellmined tomes—The Black Woman: An Anthology; Conditions: Five, The
Black Women’s Issue; Lesbian Fiction; Top Ranking—Sister is never far
from me. I retain several dog-eared, underlined, coffee-splotched
copies of her—at home, at work, on my nightstand—as necessary as
my eyeglasses, my second sight.
A fall semester of teaching my women’s studies seminar never
passes without deploying one of the following texts in theorizing

feminist activism: “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining
Difference,” “An Open Letter to Mary Daly,” or “The Uses of Anger:
Women Responding to Racism.” In one paragraph, Lorde can
simultaneously blow away the entire Enlightenment project and use
its tools, too.
In 1990 I quoted myself in “Knowing the Danger and Going There
Anyway,” an article I wrote on Lorde for the Boston feminist
newspaper, Sojourner; I’ll change the sister trope and quote myself
again: “I said that Audre Lorde’s work is ’a neighbor I’ve grown up
with, who can always be counted on for honest talk, to rescue me
when I’ve forgotten the key to my own house, to go with me to a
tenants’ or town meeting, a community festival’.”4 In 1990, Lorde
was still walking among us. Sister Outsider has taken its creator’s
place as that good neighbor. And with this new edition, we will
have our good neighbor and sister for another generation. May
those of us who are Sister Outsider’s old neighbors continue to be
inspired by her luminous writing and may those new neighbors be
newly inspired.
—CHERYL CLARKE
2007

Introduction

WHEN WE BEGAN EDITING Sister Outsider—long after the book had been
conceptualized, a contract signed, and new material written—Audre
Lorde informed me, as we were working one afternoon, that she
doesn’t write theory. “I am a poet,” she said.
Lorde’s stature as a poet is undeniable. And yet there can be no
doubt that Sister Outsider, a collection of essays and speeches drawn
from the past eight years of this Black lesbian feminist’s nonfiction
prose, makes absolutely clear to many what some already knew:
Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary
feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness.
The fifteen selections included here, several of them published for
the first time, are essential reading. Whether it is the by now
familiar “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” opening us up to
the potential power in all aspects of our lives implicit in the erotic,
When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion
of the life-force of women; of that creative energy
empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now
reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our
loving, our work, our lives.1
or the recently authored “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and
Anger,” probing the white racist roots of hostility between Black
women,
We are Black women born into a society of entrenched
loathing and contempt for whatever is Black and female. We
are strong and enduring. We are also deeply scarred.2

Lorde’s work expands, deepens, and enriches all of our
understandings of what feminism can be.
But what about the “conflict” between poetry and theory,
between their separate and seemingly incompatible spheres? We
have been told that poetry expresses what we feel, and theory states
what we know; that the poet creates out of the heat of the moment,
while the theorist’s mode is, of necessity, cool and reasoned; that
one is art and therefore experienced “subjectively,” and the other is
scholarship, held accountable in the “objective” world of ideas. We
have been told that poetry has a soul and theory has a mind and
that we have to choose between them.
The white western patriarchal ordering of things requires that we
believe there is an inherent conflict between what we feel and what
we think—between poetry and theory. We are easier to control
when one part of our selves is split from another, fragmented, off
balance. There are other configurations, however, other ways of
experiencing the world, though they are often difficult to name. We
can sense them and seek their articulation. Because it is the work of
feminism to make connections, to heal unnecessary divisions, Sister
Outsider is a reason for hope.
Audre Lorde’s writing is an impulse toward wholeness. What she
says and how she says it engages us both emotionally and
intellectually. She writes from the particulars of who she is: Black
woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter of
Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. She
creates material from the dailiness of her life that we can use to help
shape ours. Out of her desire for wholeness, her need to encompass
and address all the parts of herself, she teaches us about the
significance of difference—“that raw and powerful connection from
which our personal power is forged.”3
A white Jewish lesbian mother, I first read “Man Child: A Black
Lesbian Feminist’s Response” several years ago as I was struggling
to accept the inevitability of my prepubescent son’s eventual
manhood. Not only would this boy of mine become a man
physically, but he might act like one. This awareness turned into a

major crisis for me at a time and place when virtually all the lesbian
mothers I knew (who I realized, with hindsight, were also white)
either insisted that their “androgynous” male children would stay
that way, would not grow up to be sexist/misogynist men, or were
pressured to choose between a separatist vision of community and
their sons. I felt trapped by a narrow range of options.
Lorde, however, had wider vision. She started with the reality of
her child’s approaching manhood (“Our sons will not grown into
women”4) and then asked what kind of man he would become. She
saw clearly that she could both love her son fiercely and let him go.
In fact, for their mutual survival, she had no choice but to let him
go, to teach him that she “did not exist to do his feeling for him.”5
Lorde and I are both lesbian mothers who have had to teach our
boys to do their own emotional work. But her son Jonathan is Black
and my son Joshua is white and that is not a trivial difference in a
racist society, despite their common manhood. As Lorde has written
elsewhere:
Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You
fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and
testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged
from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn
your backs upon the reasons they are dying.6
I read “Man Child,” and it was one of those occasions when I can
remember something major shifting inside me.
I came to understand it was not merely that Lorde knew more
about raising sons than I did, although I had been given expert
advice. I realized how directly Lorde’s knowledge was tied to her
difference—those realities of Blackness and lesbianism that placed
her outside the dominant society. She had information that I, a
white woman who had lived most of my life in a middle-class
heterosexual world, did not have, information I could use,
information I needed.

For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is
as american as apple pie have always had to be watchers …7
I was ashamed by my arrogance, frightened that my ignorance
would be exposed, and ultimately excited by the possibilities
becoming available to me. I made a promise to my future to try and
listen to those voices, in others and in myself, that knew what they
knew precisely because they were different. I wanted to hear what
they had to tell me.
Of course, the reverberations continue.
When I read “Man Child” again several years later, having done a
lot of work reclaiming my Jewish identity in the interim, I thought
about the complexities of my son being a white Jewish man in a
white Christian society. I had not seen this as an issue the first time
around; it is hard now to reconstruct my shortsightedness.
When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place
in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like
you, I’m not excluding you from the joining—I’m
broadening the joining.8
There is a further reduction of the distance between feeling and
thinking as we become aware of Lorde’s internal process. We watch
her move from “the chaos of knowledge … that dark and true depth
within each of us that nurtures vision”9 to “the heretical actions that
our dreams imply.”10 Understanding—the figuring out and piecing
together, the moving from one place to the next, provides the
connections.
What understanding begins to do is to make knowledge
available for use, and that’s the urgency, that’s the push,
that’s the drive.11
Movement is intentional and life-sustaining.
Nowhere is this intentionality more evident than in “The
Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” Here Lorde

grapples with a possible diagnosis of cancer. “I had the feeling,
probably a body sense, that life was never going to be the
same….”12 She deals in public, at an academic gathering, in front of
700 women. She tells us that she is afraid but that silence is not a
protection.
And it [speaking] is never without fear; of visibility, of the
harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of
death. But we have lived through all of those already, in
silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now,
that if I were to have been born mute, and had maintained
an oath of silence my whole life for safety, I would still have
suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for
establishing perspective.13
Lorde’s commitment to confront the worst so that she is freed to
experience the best is unshakeable. Although Sister Outsider spans
almost a decade of her work, nine of the fifteen pieces in this book
were written in the two years following Lorde’s discovery that she
might have/did have cancer. In the process of her growth, her
coming to terms and using what she has learned, she shows us
things we can take with us in our struggles for survival, no matter
what our particular “worst” may be.
What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we
have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it?
Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who
can ever have power over me again?14
Audre Lorde asks no more of us than she does of herself: that we
pay attention to those voices we have been taught to distrust, that
we articulate what they teach us, that we act upon what we know.
Just as she develops themes, reworking and building on them over
time to create theory, so, too, can we integrate the material of our
lives.

Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter
of Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. The
essays and speeches in Sister Outsider give new resonance to that
fundamental but much abused feminist revelation that the personal
is political. We are all amplified by Audre Lorde’s work.
I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you
like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I
discover you in myself.15
—NANCY K. BEREANO
December 1983

Notes from a Trip to Russia*
SINCE I’VE RETURNED from Russia a few weeks ago, I’ve been dreaming
a lot. At first I dreamt about Moscow every night. Sometimes my
lover and I had returned there; sometimes I would be in warmer,
familiar places I had visited; sometimes in different, unfamiliar
cities, cold, white, strange. In one dream, I was making love to a
woman behind a stack of clothing in Gumm’s Department Store in
Moscow. She was ill, and we went upstairs, where I said to a
matron, “We have to get her to the hospital.” The matron said, “All
right, you take her over there and tell them that she needs a kidney
scan and a brain scan …” And I said, “No, they’re not going to do
that for me.” And she looked at me very strangely and she said, “Of
course they will.” And I realized I was in Russia, and medicine and
doctor bills and all the rest of that are free.
My dreams don’t come every night anymore, but it seems as if
they’ve gotten deeper and deeper so that I awake not really
knowing any of the content of them but only knowing that I’ve just
dreamt about Russia again. For a while, in my dreams, Russia
became a mythic representation of that socialism which does not yet
exist anywhere I have been. The possibilities of living in Russia
seem very different in some respects, yet the people feel so Western
European (so American, really) outside of Tashkent. And the
afternoons in Moscow are so dark and gloomy.

I
The flight to Moscow was nine hours long, and from my
observations on the plane, Russians are generally as unfriendly to
each other as Americans are and just about as unhelpful.
There was a marvelously craggy-faced old blue-eyed woman in
her seventies wearing a babushka, with a huge coat roll. On the
plane everyone had one kind of huge coat roll or another except me.
When I stepped out into the Moscow weather I realized why. But
this woman was sitting in the seat right in front of me. She was
traveling alone and was too short to wield her roll easily. She tried
once, and she tried twice, and finally I got up and helped her. The
plane was packed: I’d never seen a plane quite so crowded before.
The old woman turned around and looked at me. It was obvious she
did not speak English because I had muttered something to her with
no reply. There was in her eyes a look of absolutely no rancor. I
thought with a quick shock how a certain tension in glances
between American Black and white people is taken for granted.
There was no thank you either, but there was a kind of simple
human response to who I was. And then as she turned to sit back
down, under her very dowdy cardigan I saw on her undersweater at
least three military-type medals, complete with chevrons. Hero of
the Republic medals, I learned later. Earned for hard work.
This is something that I noticed all over: the very old people in
Russia have a stamp upon them that I hope I can learn and never
lose, a matter-of-fact resilience and sense of their place upon the
earth that is very sturdy and reassuring.
I landed on September 10th about 3:30 P.M. Moscow time and
stepped out into a very raw, familiar greyness. There was a winter
smell to the air; almost nostalgic. The trees were Thanksgivingturned and the sky had that turkey-laden grey-pumpkin color. I saw
three large, square-faced women arm-in-arm, marching across the
airfield laughing and joking as they came. They were evidently
workers just going off shift — they had grey coveralls and jackets

with engineer caps and carried lunch buckets. They stopped beside a
truck that had paused and started beating against the closed
window, drawing the attention of the other woman inside with
some half-hello/half-joke at the driver, who was obviously their
buddy, because they all pointed fingers at each other laughing
uproariously together there on the Moscow airstrip in the grim light,
swinging their lunch pails and cutting up.
My Intourist guided name was Helen, a very pleasant and
attractive large-boned young woman in her thirties. She was born in
the East, near Japan, and her father, who’d been a military man,
was dead. She lived with her mother now, and she said that she and
her mother had to learn to do a lot of things for themselves since
there are so few men around these days and service is so hard to
get.
In Russia you carry your own bags in airports and hotels. This, at
first, struck me as oppressive because, of course, carrying a laden
bag up seven flights of stairs when the elevator isn’t working is not
fun. But the longer I stayed there the fairer it seemed, because in
this country it appears that everything is seen in terms of food. That
is, the labor of one’s hands is measured by how much food you can
produce, and then you take that and compare its importance to the
worth of the other work that you do. Some men and women spend
their whole lives, for instance, learning and doing the infinitely slow
and patient handwork of retouching Persian Blue tiles down in
Samarkand to restore the ancient mausoleums. It is considered very
precious work. But antiquities have a particular value, whereas
carrying someone else’s bag does not have a very high priority
because it is not very productive either of beauty or worth. If you
can’t manage it, then that’s another story. I find it a very interesting
concept.
It’s about thirty miles from the airport to the city of Moscow, and
the road and the trees and the drivers could have been people from
Northern Westchester in late winter, except I couldn’t read any of
the signs. We would pass from time to time incredibly beautiful, old,
uncared for Russian-Orthodox-style houses, with gorgeous painted
wooden colors and outlined ornate windows. Some of them were

almost falling down. But there was a large ornate richness about the
landscape and architecture on the outskirts of Moscow, even in its
grey winter, that seemed to tell me immediately that I was not at
home.
I stayed at the Hotel Younnost, which is one of the international
hotels in Moscow. The room was a square studio affair with
Hollywood bed couches, and a huge picture window looking
towards the National Stadium, over a railroad bridge, with a very
imposing view of the University buildings against the skyline. But
everything was so reminiscent of New York in winter that even as I
sat at 9:30 P.M. after dinner, writing, looking through the blinds,
there was the sound of a train and light on the skyline, and every
now and then the tail lights of an auto curving around between the
railroad bridge and the hotel. And it felt like a hundred nights that I
remembered along Riverside Drive, except that just on the edge of
the picture was the golden onion-shaped dome of a Russian
Orthodox church.
Before dinner I took a short walk. It was already growing dark,
but down the street from the hotel was the Stadium stop on the
Metro, which is a subway. I walked down there and into the Metro
station and I stood in front of the escalators for awhile just watching
the faces of the people coming and going. It felt like instant 14th
Street of my childhood, before Blacks and Latins colored New York,
except everyone was much more orderly and the whole place
seemed much less crowded. The thing that was really strangest of all
for the ten minutes that I stood there was that there were no Black
people. And the token collector and the station manager were
women. The station was very large and very beautiful and very
clean — shockingly, strikingly, enjoyably clean. The whole station
looked like a theater lobby — bright brass and mosaics and shining
chandeliers. Even when they were rushing, and in Moscow there’s
always a kind of rush, people lack the desperation of New York. One
thing that characterized all of these people was a pleasantness in
their faces, a willingness to smile, at least at me, a stranger. It was a
strange contrast to the grimness of the weather.

There are some Black people around the hotel and I inquired of
Helen about the Patrice Lumumba University. This is a university
located in Moscow for students from African countries. There were
many Africans in and around the hotel when I got back from the
Metro station and I think many of them were here for the
Conference. Interestingly enough, most of them speak Russian and I
don’t. When I went downstairs to dinner, I almost quailed in front of
the linguistic task because I could not even find out where I was
supposed to sit, or whether I should wait to be seated. Whenever the
alphabet is unfamiliar, there are absolutely no cues to a foreign
language. A young Black man swaggered across my eyesight with
that particular swagger of fine, young Black men wanting to be
noticed and I said, “Do you speak English?” “Yes,” he said and
started walking very rapidly away from me. So I walked back to him
and when I tried to ask him whether I should sit down or wait to be
seated, I realized the poor boy did not understand a word that I
said. At that point I pulled out my two trusty phrase books and
proceeded to order myself a very delicious dinner of white wine,
boiled fish soup that was lemon piquant, olive rich, and fresh
mackerel, delicate, grilled sturgeon with pickled sauce, bread, and
even a glass of tea. All of this was made possible by great tenacity
and daring on my part, and the smiling forebearance of a very
helpful waiter who brought out one of the cooks from the kitchen to
help with the task of deciphering my desires.

II
It’s very cold in Moscow. The day I arrived it snowed in the
morning and it snowed again today, and this is September 16th. My
guide, Helen, put her finger on it very accurately. She said that life
in Moscow is a constant fight against the cold weather, and that
living is only a triumph against death by freezing. Maybe because of
the cold, or maybe because of the shortage of food in the war years,
but everyone eats an enormous amount here. Tonight, because of a
slight error on the part of the waitress, Helen had two dinners and
thought very little about eating them both. And no one is terribly
fat, but I think that has a good deal to do with the weather. We had
wine at dinner tonight, and wine seems to be used a lot to loosen up
one’s tongue. It almost seems a prescription. At every dinner meal
there are always three glasses: one for water, one for wine, and one
for vodka, which flows like water, and with apparently as little
effect upon Russians.
A group from the conference with our Intourist guides went
sightseeing today. It’s hard to believe that today’s Sunday because
the whole city seems so full of weekday life, so intent on its own
purposes, that it makes the week seem extended by an extra day.
We saw the Novagrodsky Convent Museum and the brilliant, saucy
golden onion steeples that shock me back from the feeling this is
Manhattan. We went to see the University and of course many
plaques for many heroes, but I never saw one that moved me as
much as the tough old lady coming in on Aeroflot. And the Bolshoi
Ballet Theatre. It was rainy and grey and overcast — a New York
December day — and very imposing in the way the Grand
Concourse at 161st Street in the Bronx can be imposing in the
middle of December, or Columbus Circle. The golden onion steeples
on some older buildings are beautiful and they glisten all the time,
even in this weather, which makes them look like joyful promises on
the landscape, or fairy palaces, and the lovely colors of greens,
whites, yellows and oranges decorating and outlining windows

make a wonderfully colorful accent in the greyness. I hope that I get
a chance to see the Pushkin Museum.
I was interviewed by a sweetly astute, motherly woman who was
one of the members of the Union of Soviet Writers. She was doing a
study of “Negro policy,” as she said, and of course she was very
interested in women in the States. We talked for a good two hours
and one of the things I told her was about the old woman on the
plane with the medals, and I asked her if she had any idea what
they were. She said the woman was probably an older farm worker
who had been awarded and named a “Hero of the Republic.” Those
were mostly given to people who worked very hard, she said. It was
interesting because earlier, at lunch, I had seen a side of Helen, my
interpreter, that surprised me. She was quite out of sorts with one of
the waitresses who did not wait on her quickly enough, and it does
take a long time to get waited on. Helen made a remark that the
workers rule the country, and her manner and response to that
seemed to be one of disgust, or at least rather put-off. I think Helen
felt that she was being discriminated against, or that she was at a
disadvantage, because she was an “intellectual,” a translator as well
as an interpreter. Which struck me as an odd kind of snobbishness
because Helen worked at least as hard, if not harder, than any
waitress, running after me and living my life as well as hers.
Because always, she stuck to me like white on rice.
We were at the University and our guide was talking to us, in
English, about the buildings, which had been built during Stalin’s
time. Material had been brought down from the Ukraine to sink into
the earth to build such buildings because Moscow, unlike New York,
is not built upon bedrock. This strikes me as strange, that this city of
oversize, imposing stone buildings should not be grounded on
bedrock. It’s like it remains standing on human will. While we were
standing in front of the reflecting pool having this discussion, a little
tow-headed boy sidled up to me with a completely international air,
all of ten years old, stood in front of me and with a furtive sideways
gesture, flipped his hand open. In the center of his little palm was a
button-pin of a red star with a soldier in the middle of it. I was
completely taken aback because I did not know what the kid wanted

and I asked Helen who brushed the child off and shooed him away
so quickly I didn’t have a chance to stop her. Then she told me that
he wanted to trade for American buttons. That little kid had stood
off to the side and watched all of these strange Black people, and he
had managed to peg me as an American because, of course,
Americans are the only ones who go around wearing lots and lots of
buttons, and he had wanted to trade his red star button. I was
touched by the child, and also because I couldn’t help but think that
it was Sunday and he was probably hitting all the tourist spots. I’m
sure his parents did not know where he was, and I really wondered
what his mother would do if she knew.
The woman from the Writers’ Union who was doing her book on
Negro policy was, I’d say, a little older than I was, probably in her
early fifties, and her husband had been killed in the war. She had no
children. She offered these facts about herself as soon as we sat
down, talking openly about her life, as everybody seemingly does
here. I say seemingly because it only goes so far. And she, like my
guide and most women here, both young and old, seem to mourn
the lack of men. At the same time they appear to have shaken off
many of the traditional role-playing devices vis-a-vis men. Almost
everyone I’ve met has lost someone in what they call the “Great
Patriotic War,” which is our Second World War.
I was interviewed by Oleg this evening, one of the officials of the
Union of Soviet Writers, the people who had invited me to Russia
and who were footing the bill. In my interview with him I learned
the hotel that we’re staying in was originally a youth hostel and
Oleg apologized because it was not as “civilized,” so he said, as
other Moscow hotels. I came across this term civilized before, and I
wondered whether it was a term used around Americans or whether
it meant up to American standards. Increasingly I get a feeling that
American standards are sort of an unspoken norm, and that whether
one resists them, or whether one adopts them, they are there to be
reckoned with. This is rather disappointing. But coming back to the
hotel, I notice that the fixtures here are a little shabby, but they do
work, and the studio beds are a bit adolescent in size, but they are
comfortable. For a youth hostel it’s better than I would ever hope

for. Of course, I can’t help but wonder why the African-Asian
Conference people should be housed in a youth hostel, particularly
an “uncivilized” one, but I don’t imagine that I’ll ever get an answer
to that. All hotel rooms cost the same in the Soviet Union. Utilities,
from my conversation with Helen while we were riding the Metro
down to send a cable, utilities are very inexpensive. The gas to cook
with costs sixteen kopecs a month which is less than one ruble
(about $3.00) and the most electricity Helen says that she uses,
when she’s translating all day long in winter, costs three rubles a
month. That is very expensive, she says. The two-room apartment
which she and her mother share costs eight rubles a month.
Oleg does not speak English, or does not converse in English. Like
many other people I was to meet during my stay in Russia, he
understands English although he does not let on. Oleg said through
Helen that he wants me to know it was very important for us to
meet other writers and that the point of the Conference was for us
to get together. I thanked him for the twenty-five rubles I had been
given as soon as I arrived here in Moscow, which I have been told
was a gift from the Union of Soviet Writers for pocket money. I
spoke of the oppressed people all over the world, meeting to touch
and to share, I spoke of South Africa and their struggle. Oleg said
something very curious. “Yes, South Africa is really very bad. It is
like a sore upon the body that will not heal.” This sounded to me
both removed and proprietary. Unclear. Willy, my South African
poet friend, lives in Tanzania now and he may be here, which I am
very excited about.

III
We traveled south to Uzbekistan for the Conference, a five-hour
journey that became seven because of delays. We arrived in
Tashkent after dark following a long, exhausting plane ride. As I
have said, Russian planes are incredibly packed, every single inch
being taken up in seats. They absolutely utilize their air space. Even
coming from New York to Moscow it was like air mass transit.
Certainly from Moscow to Tashkent this was true since there were
150 delegates to the African-Asian Writers Conference, myself, one
observer, interpreters, and press personnel. All together, a traveling
group of about 250 people, which is a large group to move around a
country at least four or five times the size of the United States (and
in a standard, not wide-bodied, plane).
As we descended the plane in Tashkent, it was deliciously hot and
smelled like Accra, Ghana. At least it seemed to me that it did, from
the short ride from the airport to the hotel. The road to the city had
lots of wood and white marble all around broad avenues, and bright
street lights. The whole town of Tashkent had been rebuilt after the
1966 earthquake. We arrived tired and hot, to a welcome that
would make your heart grow still, then sing. Can you imagine 250
of us, weary, cramped, hungry, disoriented, overtalked, underfed? It
is after dark. We step out of the plane and there before us are over a
hundred people and TV cameras, and lights, and two or three
hundred little children dressed in costumes with bunches of flowers
that they thrust upon each of us as we walked down the ramp from
the plane. “Surprise!” Well, you know, it was a surprise. Pure and
simple, and I was pretty damn well surprised. I was surprised at the
gesture, hokey or not, at the mass participation in it. Most of all, I
was surprised at my response to it; I felt genuinely welcomed.
So off to the hotel we went and I had the distinct feeling here, for
the first time in Russia, that I was meeting warm-blooded people; in
the sense of contact unavoided, desires and emotions possible, the
sense that there was something hauntingly, personally familiar —

not in the way the town looks because it looked like nothing I’d
ever seen before, night and the minarets — but the tempo of life felt
hotter, quicker than in Moscow; and in place of Moscow’s
determined pleasantness, the people displayed a kind of warmth
that was very engaging. They are an Asian people in Tashkent.
Uzbeki. They look like the descendants of Ghengis Khan, some of
whom I’m sure they are. They are Asian and they are Russian. They
think and speak and consider themselves Russian, for all intents and
purposes so far as I can see, and I really wonder how they manage
that. On the other hand, the longer I stayed the more I realized
some of the personal tensions between North Russian and Uzbek are
national and some racial.
There are only four sisters in this whole conference. In the plane
coming to Tashkent, I sat with the three other African women and
we exchanged chitchat for 5½ hours about our respective children,
about our ex-old men, all very, very heterocetera.

IV
Tashkent is divided into two parts. There’s the old part that
survived the huge earthquake of 1966, and there’s the newer part
which is on the outskirts of old Tashkent. It’s very new and very
modern, rebuilt in a very short time after the earthquake that
practically totaled the area. It was rebuilt by labor from all over the
Soviet Union. People came from the Ukraine, from Byelo-Russia,
from all over, and they rebuilt the city. And there are many
different styles of architecture in the new part of town because
every group who came built their own type of building. It’s almost a
memorial to what can be done when a large group of people work
together. It was one of the things that impressed me greatly during
my stay in Tashkent. The old part, which is really the center of
Tashkent, looks very, very much like a town in Ghana or Dahomey,
say Kumasi or Cotonou. In the daylight it looks so much like some
parts of West Africa that I could scarcely believe it. In fact, if
Moscow is New York in another space, in another color — because
both New York and Moscow have a little over eight million
population and should apparently have many of the same problems,
but Moscow seems to have handled them very differently — if
Moscow is New York, Tashkent is Accra. It is African in so many
ways — the stalls, the mix of the old and the new, the corrugated
tin roofs on top of adobe houses. The corn smell in the plaza,
although the plazas were more modern than in West Africa. Even
some flowers and trees, Calla lilies. But the red laterite smell of the
earth was different.
The people here in Tashkent, which is quite close to the Iranian
border, are very diverse, and I am impressed by their apparent
unity, by the ways in which the Russian and the Asian people seem
to be able to function in a multinational atmosphere that requires of
them that they get along, whether or not they are each other’s
favorite people. And it’s not that there are no individuals who are
nationalists, or racists, but that the taking of a state position against

nationalism, against racism is what makes it possible for a society
like this to function. And of course the next step in that process
must be the personal element. I don’t see anyone attempting or even
suggesting this phase, however, and that is troublesome, for without
this step socialism remains at the mercy of an incomplete vision,
imposed from the outside. We have internal desires but outside
controls. But at least there is a climate here that seems to encourage
those questions. I asked Helen about the Jews, and she was rather
evasive, I think, saying only that there were Jews in government.
The basic position seems to be one of a presumption of equality,
even though there is sometimes a large gap between the expectation
and the reality.
We visited a film studio and saw several children’s cartoons
which handled their themes beautifully, deeply, with great humor,
and most notably, without the kind of violence that we have come
to associate with cartoons. They were truly delightful.
After two very busy days of meetings in Tashkent, we started out
at about 7:30 one morning by bus for Samarkand, the fabulous city
of Tamerlane the Great. After a short snooze on the bus I began to
feel a little more human, to look about me and the countryside.
We’re heading southeast from Tashkent, and Tashkent was
southeast of Moscow. The countryside is very beautiful. It feels
strange and familiar at the same time. This is cotton country. Miles
and miles of it, and trainloads of students were coming south from
Moscow on a two-week vacation to party and pick cotton. There was
a holiday atmosphere all around. We passed through small villages
where I could see little markets with women sitting cross-ankled on
the bare earth selling a few cabbages or a small tray of fruit. And
walls, behind which you could see adobe houses. Even the walls
themselves reminded me very much of West Africa, made of a clay
mud that cracks in the same old familiar patterns that we saw over
and over again in Kumasi and south of Accra. Only here the clay is
not red, but a light beige, and that is to remind me that this is the
USSR and not Ghana or Dahomey. Of course, the faces are white.
There are other differences that creep through also. The towns and
the villages are really in very good repair and there is a powerful

railroad running parallel to our road. Long, efficient looking trains
and tanker cars and ten-car passenger trains pass by us, going
through switch houses with blue and white ceramic tiles and
painted roofs, all managed by women. Everything looks massive,
bigger, in Russia. The roads are wider, the trains longer, the
buildings bigger. The ceilings are higher. Everything seems to be on
a larger scale.
We stopped for a harvest festival lunch at a collective farm,
complete with the prerequisite but very engaging cultural
presentation, while vodka flowed. Then we all danced and sang
together with the busloads of students who had come to help pick
cotton. Later on along the roads there were literally hills of cotton
being loaded onto trains.
Each town that we pass through has a cafe, where the villagers
can come and spend an evening or chat or talk or watch TV or listen
to propaganda, who knows, but where they can meet. And all over,
in between very old looking villages, there are also new four story
buildings in progress, factories, new apartment houses. Trains full of
building slabs and other kinds of materials, coal and rock and
tractors pass by, even one with row after row after row of small
automobiles. There are three different Russian automobiles. This is
the cheapest, and most popular — hundreds and hundreds of cars
stacked, all the same lemon color. Obviously, that month the factory
was producing yellow.
I watched all of this industry pass and it came through to me on
that bus ride down to Samarkand that this land was not industrial so
much as it was industrious. There was a flavor of people working
hard and doing things and it was very attractive. On top of that, I
learned that this area between Tashkent and Samarkand was once
known as the “Hungry Desert” because although it was fertile, no
rain ever fell and it was covered with a coat of salt. Through
technology devised to lift the salt, and a great deal of human hands
and engineering, this whole area has been made to bloom, and it
really does bloom. It is being farmed, mostly with cotton. People
live here and there are massive irrigation ditches and pipes that
maintain trees where there are towns and collective farms. All

through Uzbekistan the feeling of a desert having been reclaimed
and bearing huge fruit is very constant. Later on, as we headed on
south after the great feast, we stopped at an oasis, and I picked
some desert flowers that were growing — small little scrub flowers
that were growing in the sand. And just for so, I tasted one of them
and as honeysuckle is sweet, so is this flower salt. It was as if the
earth itself was still producing salt or still pouring salt into its
products.
There’s very beautiful marble throughout Uzbekistan. The stairs
of the hotels and sometimes the streets have a beautiful pink and
green marble. That was in Tashkent, which means “Stone City.” But
on this ride from Tashkent to Samarkand I saw no stones or rocks of
any kind near the road. I don’t know why, except that it is a
reclaimed desert. The roads felt very good, and they were very
broad because of course there was always heavy machinery and
trucking traveling back and forth.
We had another glowing welcome in Gulstan, which means the
“Hungry Desert.” This is now the village of roses. We visited a
collective farm, went into a house, saw the kindergarten. The
woman’s house into which we went was very impressive, as I said to
someone later at lunch who asked me what I thought. I said, “She
lives better than I do,” and in some ways she did. The collective
farm in Gulstan, called the Leningrad Collective, is one of the
wealthiest collectives in the area. I will never know the name of the
very kind young woman who opened her home to me, but I also will
not forget her. She offered me the hospitality of her house, and even
though we did not speak the same language, I felt that she was a
woman like myself, wishing that all of our children could live in
peace upon their own earth, somehow make fruitful the power of
their own hands. Through Helen, she spoke about her three
children, one of whom was only a nursing infant, and I spoke of my
two. I spoke in English and she spoke in Russian, but I felt very
strongly that our hearts spoke the same tongue.
I was reminded of her a few days later in Samarkand when Fikre,
an Ethiopian student at Patrice Lumumba University, and I went
shopping in the market. I remember the Moslem woman who came

up to me in the marketplace, and she brought her little boy up to
me asking Fikre if I had a little boy also. She said that she had never
seen a Black woman before, that she had seen Black men, but she
had never seen a Black woman, and that she so much liked the way
I looked that she just wanted to bring her little boy and find out if I
had a little boy, too. Then we blessed each other and spoke good
words and then she passed on.
There was the accomplished and very eloquent young Asian
woman, an anthropology student, she said, who acted as our
museum guide in Samarkand and shared her great store of historical
knowledge with us. The night that we arrived in Samarkand and
again the next day in looking through the museums, I felt that there
were many things we were not seeing. For instance, we passed a
case where there are a number of coins which I recognized as
ancient Chinese coins because I’d used them for casting the I Ching.
I asked our guide if these were from China. She acted as if I’d said a
dirty word. And she said, “No, these were from right here in
Samarkand.” Now obviously they had been traded, and that was the
whole point, but of course I couldn’t read the Russian explanation
under it, and she evidently took great offense at my use of the word
China. In all of the women I’ve met here I feel an air of security and
awareness of their own powers as women, as producers, and as
human beings that is very affirming. But I also feel a stony rigidity,
a resistance to questioning that frightens me, saddens me, because it
feels destructive of progress as process.
We arrived in Samarkand about 9:30 P.M., quite wearied by a very
full day. We got into the main square just in time to catch the last
light-show at Tamerlane’s tomb. The less said about that the better.
But the following day, Helen, Fikre, and I played hooky from one
mausoleum and ran across the street and went to a market. It is very
reassuring and good as always. People in markets find a way of
getting down to the essentials of I have, you want; you have, I want.
The tile tombs and the midrasas (ancient schools) of Samarkand
are truly beautiful, intricate, and still. Incredibly painstaking work is
being done to restore them. I could feel stillness in my bones,

walking through these places, knowing that so much history had
been buried there. I found two feathers in the Tomb of Bebe,
Timor’s favorite wife, and I felt almost as if I had come there to find
them. The Tomb of Bebe has beautiful minarets, but the Tomb itself
was never used. The mosque was never used. There is a story that
Bebe was Tamerlane’s favorite wife and he “loved her with all of his
heart.” However, he had many, many journeys to go upon and he
left her so often that he broke her heart and she died. When he
returned and found she was dead, he was very upset because he had
loved her so much, and he vowed that he would build the biggest
mausoleum in the world, the most ornate mosque for her, and that
is what he did. But then, just before it was completed, it collapsed.
They say it was due to an error of the architect, but it was never
used. One up for the lady shades.
The tile tombs and the midrasas are engrossing, but it’s the
market that caught my heart. We went later in that afternoon to
another meeting of solidarity for the oppressed people of
Somewhere. The only thing that I was quite sure of was that it was
not for the oppressed Black people of America, which point, of
course, I had questioned a number of days before and was still
awaiting a reply. So we stood in the hot sun at the porcelain factory
and it almost baked my brains, and I thought about a lot of things.
The peoples of the Soviet Union, in many respects, impress me as
people who can not yet afford to be honest. When they can be they
will either blossom into a marvel or sink into decay. What gets me
about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore
has so little room to move toward hope. I think that in America
there are certain kinds of problems and in Russia there are certain
kinds of problems, but basically, when you find people who start
from a position where human beings are at the core, as opposed to a
position where profit is at the core, the solutions can be very
different. I wonder how similar human problems will be solved. But
I am not always convinced that human beings are at the core here,
either, although there is more lip service done to that idea than in
the U.S.

I had a meeting the following day with a Madam Izbalkhan, who
was the head of the Uzbekistan Society of Friendship. This meeting
came about as a result of my request for clarification of my status
here at the Conference. When all was said and done, why was there
no meeting for oppressed peoples of Black America? Enough said.
Madam Izbalkhan talked two hours and she essentially said, well,
here’s what our revolution has done for us. And I felt she was
implying that any time you want to get yours going, you know, be
our guest, just don’t expect us to be involved.
But she talked most movingly of the history of the women of
Uzbekistan, a history which deserves more writing about than I can
give it here. The ways in which the women of this area, from 1924
on, fought to come out from behind complete veiling, from Moslem
cloister to the twentieth century. How they gave their lives to go
bare-faced, to be able to read. Many of them fought and many of
them died very terrible deaths in this battle, killed by their own
fathers and brothers. It is a story of genuine female heroism and
persistence. I thought of the South African women in 1956 who
demonstrated and died rather than carry passbooks. For the Uzbeki
women, revolution meant being able to show their faces and go to
school, and they died for it. A bronze statue stands in a square of
Samarkand, monument to the fallen women and their bravery.
Madam went on to discuss the women of modern Uzbekistan and
how there was now full equality between the sexes. How many
women now headed collective farms, how many women Ministers.
She said there were a great many ways in which women governed;
there was no difference between men and women now in the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics. I was touched by these statistics, of
course, but I also felt that there was a little more to it than met the
eye. It sounded too easy, too pat. Madam spoke of the daycare
centers, of kindergartens where children could be cared for on
collective farms. The kindergartens are free in large cities like
Moscow and Tashkent. But in Samarkand, there’s a nominal fee of
about two rubles a month, which is very little, she said. I asked her
one question, whether “men are encouraged to work in the
kindergartens to give the children a gentle male figure at an early

age.” Madam Izbalkhan hesitated for a moment. “No,” she said. “We
like to believe that when the children come to the kindergarten they
acquire a second mother.”
Madam Izbalkhan was a very strong and beautiful and forthright
woman, excellently in charge of her facts, with a great deal of
presence, and I returned from my meeting with her almost
overwhelmed and over-graped.
The grapes in Uzbekistan are incredible fruit. They seem to have a
life of their own. They’re called “the bridesmaid’s little finger,” and
that’s about the size of them. They’re very long, and green, and
they’re absolutely the most delicious.
I came away with revolutionary women in my head. But I feel
very much now still that we, Black Americans, exist alone in the
mouth of the dragon. As I’ve always suspected, outside of rhetoric
and proclamations of solidarity, there is no help, except ourselves.
When I asked directly about the USSR’s attitude toward American
racism, Madam said reproachfully that of course the USSR cannot
interfere in the internal affairs of any other nation. I wish now I had
asked her about Russian Jews.
In Samarkand, Helen and I went looking for a fruit market. She
inquired directions from a man who had passed by with either his
little girl or his granddaughter, but I tend to think his little girl
because so many of the adults here in Uzbekistan look much older
than they are. It must be a quality of the dry air. Anyway, Helen
stopped to inquire directions to the market and this gave him an
opening, as frequently happens in Russia, to discuss anything. He
wanted to know from Helen whether I was from Africa, and when
he heard I was from America, then he really wanted to discuss
American Black people. There seems to be quite an interest in Black
Americans among the peoples of Russia, but it’s an interest that is
played down somewhat. Fikre, my Ethiopian companion who
studied at the university, was often questioned about me in Russian.
I had developed enough of an ear for the language to be able to
notice that. Fikre frequently did not say I was from America. Most
people in Tashkent and Samarkand who I met thought I was African
or from Cuba, and everyone is also very interested in Cuba. This

fascination with all things American is something that keeps coming
up over and over again.
This man wanted to know from me whether American Black
people were allowed to go to school. I said yes, and Helen said yes
to him, and then he wanted to know if we were allowed to teach,
and I said yes, I was a professor at the University of the City of New
York. And he was surprised at that. He said that he had seen a
television program one time about the Black people of America.
That we had no jobs. So Helen started to answer him and he stopped
her. Then she angrily said he wanted me to speak because he
wanted to look at my face so he could see how I answered. I told
Helen to tell him that the question was not that we could never go
to college, but that frequently even when Black people went to
college, we had no jobs when we came out. That it was more
difficult for Black people to find work and make any kind of living,
and that the percentage of unemployment among American Black
people was far higher than that of American white people.
He pondered that a little while and then he asked, do Black
people have to pay for their doctors, too? Because that’s what TV
programs had said. I smiled a little at this and told him it’s not only
Black people who have to pay for doctors and medical care; all
people in America have to. Ah, he said. And suppose you don’t have
the money to pay? Well, I said, if you don’t have the money to pay,
sometimes you died. And there was no mistaking my gesture, even
though he had to wait for the translator to translate it. We left him
looking absolutely nonplussed, standing in the middle of the square
with his mouth open and his hand under his chin staring after me,
as in utter amazement that human beings could die from lack of
medical care. It’s things like that that keep me dreaming about
Russia long after I’ve returned.
There’s much that I think that Russian people now take for
granted. I think they take for granted free hospitalization and
medical care. They take for granted free universities and free
schooling as well as the presumption of universal bread, even with a
rose or two, although no meat. We are all more blind to what we
have than to what we have not.

One night after midnight, Fikre and I were walking through a
park in Tashkent and we were approached by a Russian man with
whom Fikre had a short, sharp conversation, after which the man
bowed and walked away. Fikre would not tell me what they’d said,
but I had the strong feeling he had tried to pick one of us up, either
Fikre or me. Tashkent is, in some respects, a Russian playground. I
asked Fikre what the Soviet position was on homosexuality, and
Fikre answered that there was no public position because it wasn’t a
public matter. Of course, I know better than that, but I have very
few inroads into finding out the truth, and Helen is much too proper
to discuss anything sexual.

V
The last few days after we returned to Moscow I got to meet one
woman I had noticed all through the Conference. She was an
Eskimo woman. Her name was Toni and she’s Chukwo. They are
from the part of Russia closest to Alaska, the part that wasn’t sold
by the Russians, across the Bering Straits. Toni did not speak English
and I didn’t speak Russian, but I felt as if we were making love that
last night through our interpreters. I still don’t know if she knew
what was going on or not, but I suspect that she did.
I had been extremely moved by her presentation earlier in the
day. We sat down to dinner, about ten of us, and Toni started
speaking to me through our interpreters. She said that she had been
searching for my eyes in the crowd all through her speech because
she felt as if she were talking to my heart. And that when she sang
the little song that she did, she sang it for a beginning that she
hoped for all of our people. And this lady cast, let me tell you, a
very powerful spell. There are only fourteen thousand Chukwo
people left. In her speech at one point she said, “It is a very sad
thing when a whole people ceases to exist.” And then she sang a
little song which she said her people sing whenever something new
happens. Her dark round eyes and seal-heavy hair flashed and
swung in time to her music. It sent a chill down my spine at the
time, because although there are 21 million Black Americans, I feel
like we’re an endangered species too, and how sad for our cultures
to die. I felt as if we alone, of all the people at the Conference,
shared that knowledge and that threat, Toni and I. At dinner Toni
kept telling me how beautiful I was, and how it was not only my
beauty that she would carry with her always but my words, and that
we should share our joys as well as our sorrows, and someday our
children would be able to speak freely with each other. She made
toast after toast to women and to their strength. All of this was
through our interpreters. I was trying to decide what to make of all
this when Toni got up, moved over, and sat down beside me. She

touched my knee and kissed me, and so we sat all through dinner.
We held hands and we kissed, but any time we spoke to each other,
it was done through our interpreters, blond Russian girls who
smirked as they translated our words. I suppose Toni and I
connected somewhere in the middle of the Aleutians.
She kissed my picture on my book before she got up, thanked us
for dinner, and went off with the male Latvian delegate from Riga.

VI
Now it is back to Moscow again, which is still cold and rainy.
Moscow across rainy rooftops looks about as dreary as New York
does, except the skyline is broken up by huge building cranes. There
is an incredible amount of building, it appears, going on all the time
in Moscow. There is in New York also, but it’s not so obvious on the
skyline. The buildings are not built in solid blocks the way they are
in New York. You’ll have perhaps two large apartment houses to a
block, set at different angles, with a lot of greenery and perhaps
some parks in between. In other words, it appears that quite a bit of
thought has been given to urban planning and how people like or
need to move about where they are. Both New York and Moscow
have a population of about eight million and in Moscow it is
possible and pleasant to walk out after dark without fear. Crime on
the streets seems not at all a problem in Moscow. The official reason
why and the actual reason why may be very different, but it is a
fact. I was struck by the sight of many people, even children,
walking through the parks after sundown.
Earlier, when I had first come to Moscow from the airport, I had
noticed quite heavy steady traffic, but there did not appear to be a
traffic jam or great delay although this was the time when most
people were coming home from work. It seemed quite an
achievement in a city of eight million people, and I thought Moscow
must be handling her problems of urban transportation in a new and
creative way. Of course, when I saw the Metro, I realized why. Not
only are the stations spotlessly clean, but the trains are quick and
comfortable, and I’d never really thought that it could be an actual
joy to ride on the subways.

VII
It will take a while and a lot of dreams to metabolize all I’ve seen
and felt in these hectic two weeks. I haven’t even discussed the
close bonding I felt with some of the African writers and how
difficult it was to get to know others. I have no reason to believe
Russia is a free society. I have no reason to believe Russia is a
classless society. Russia does not even appear to be a strictly
egalitarian society. But bread does cost a few kopecs a loaf and
everybody I saw seemed to have enough of it. Of course, I did not
see Siberia, nor a prison camp, nor a mental hospital. But that fact,
in a world where most people — certainly most Black people — are
on a breadconcern level, seems to me to be quite a lot. If you
conquer the bread problem, that gives you at least a chance to look
around at the others.
So, for all of the double messages I received (and there were
many — because of the places in which I stayed, because of a kind
of both deference and unpleasantness that I received as an
American, and because no matter how much is said and done,
America still appears to have some kind of magic over many
countries), no matter what the shortcomings were, there is
enthusiasm about the people that I met in Russia, particularly the
people I met in Uzbekhistan. And I recognize some of the
contradictions and problems that they have. I am deeply suspicious
of the double messages that kept coming and of the fact that when
they are finished with you (and by they, I mean the government),
when they are finished with you, they drop you and you can fall
very far. So what’s new? I also am intrigued by the idea that there
are writers who are paid to be writers and that they survive and
they wield considerable power. I am also very well aware that if
what they write is not acceptable, then it never gets read or it never
gets printed. So what’s new?
But you do have a country there that has the largest reading
population in the world, that prints books of poetry in editions of

250,000 copies and those copies sell out in three months.
Everywhere you go, even among those miles of cotton being
harvested in the Uzbekhi sun, people are reading, and no matter
what you may say about censorship, they are still reading, and
they’re reading an awful lot. Some books are pirated from the West
because Russia does not observe International Copyright. In
Samarkhand, Ernest Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
was the latest best seller. Now, how many Russian novels in
translation have you read this past year?
* These are edited journal entries from a two-week trip to Russia that I made in 1976 as

the invited American observer to the African-Asian Writers Conference sponsored by the
Union of Soviet Writers.

Poetry Is Not a Luxury*
THE QUALITY OF LIGHT by which we scrutinize our lives has direct
bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes
which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this
light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and
make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through
poetry that we give name to those ideas which are — until the poem
— nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt. That
distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births
thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as
knowledge births (precedes) understanding.
As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within
it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within
our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences
begin to lose their control over us.
For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where
hidden and growing our true spirit rises, “beautiful/and tough as
chestnut/stanchions against (y)our nightmare of weakness/”** and
of impotence.
These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they
are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong
through that darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us
holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined
and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power
within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is
ancient, and it is deep.
When we view living in the european mode only as a problem to
be solved, we rely solely upon our ideas to make us free, for these
were what the white fathers told us were precious.
But as we come more into touch with our own ancient, noneuropean consciousness of living as a situation to be experienced

and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our
feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from
where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action comes.
At this point in time, I believe that women carry within ourselves
the possibility for fusion of these two approaches so necessary for
survival, and we come closest to this combination in our poetry. I
speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not
the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the
word poetry to mean — in order to cover a desperate wish for
imagination without insight.
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of
our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we
predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first
made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.
Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be
thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by
our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and
the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning
grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a
safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the
conceptualization of any meaningful action. Right now, I could
name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or
incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams
and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the
true meaning of “it feels right to me.” We can train ourselves to
respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they
can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our
poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and
vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the
foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what
has never been before.
Possibility is neither forever nor instant. It is not easy to sustain
belief in its efficacy. We can sometimes work long and hard to
establish one beachhead of real resistance to the deaths we are
expected to live, only to have that beachhead assaulted or

threatened by those canards we have been socialized to fear, or by
the withdrawal of those approvals that we have been warned to seek
for safety. Women see ourselves diminished or softened by the
falsely benign accusations of childishness, of nonuniversality, of
changeability, of sensuality. And who asks the question: Am I
altering your aura, your ideas, your dreams, or am I merely moving
you to temporary and reactive action? And even though the latter is
no mean task, it is one that must be seen within the context of a
need for true alteration of the very foundations of our lives.
The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black
mother within each of us — the poet — whispers in our dreams: I
feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express
and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that
freedom.
However, experience has taught us that action in the now is also
necessary, always. Our children cannot dream unless they live, they
cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them
the real food without which their dreams will be no different from
ours? “If you want us to change the world someday, we at least have
to live long enough to grow up!” shouts the child.
Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head
will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new
ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human.
There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations,
extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves — along with
the renewed courage to try them out. And we must constantly
encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions
that our dreams imply, and so many of our old ideas disparage. In
the forefront of our move toward change, there is only poetry to
hint at possibility made real. Our poems formulate the implications
of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real (or bring
action into accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most
cherished terrors.
For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by
institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to
survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes,

feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected
to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets. And there are
no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that
fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They
surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to
freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that
give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to
dare.
If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and
directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then
we give up the core — the fountain — of our power, our
womanness; we give up the future of our worlds.
For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making
them felt — of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on
Sunday morning at 7 A.M., after brunch, during wild love, making
war, giving birth, mourning our dead — while we suffer the old
longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and
impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths.
* First published in Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture, no. 3 (1977).
** From “Black Mother Woman,” first published in From A Land Where Other People Live

(Broadside Press, Detroit, 1973), and collected in Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton
and Company, New York, 1982) p. 53.

The Transformation of Silence into Language and
Action*
I HAVE COME to believe over and over again that what is most
important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at
the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking
profits me, beyond any other effect. I am standing here as a Black
lesbian poet, and the meaning of all that waits upon the fact that I
am still alive, and might not have been. Less than two months ago I
was told by two doctors, one female and one male, that I would
have to have breast surgery, and that there was a 60 to 80 percent
chance that the tumor was malignant. Between that telling and the
actual surgery, there was a three-week period of the agony of an
involuntary reorganization of my entire life. The surgery was
completed, and the growth was benign.
But within those three weeks, I was forced to look upon myself
and my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still
shaken but much stronger. This is a situation faced by many women,
by some of you here today. Some of what I experienced during that
time has helped elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the
transformation of silence into language and action.
In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and
of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be,
priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light,
and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever
been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant
pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the
time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand,
is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly, now, without
regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had
only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to
speak, or waited for someone else’s words. And I began to recognize

a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge
that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear
into a perspective gave me great strength.
I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had
ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence
will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every
attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still
seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined
the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our
differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women
which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials
of my living.
The women who sustained me through that period were Black
and white, old and young, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual, and
we all shared a war against the tyrannies of silence. They all gave
me a strength and concern without which I could not have survived
intact. Within those weeks of acute fear came the knowledge —
within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle
and otherwise, conscious or not — I am not only a casualty, I am
also a warrior.
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to
say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to
make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in
silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of
your fears. Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am
lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing
my work — come to ask you, are you doing yours?
And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into
language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always
seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our
topic and my difficulty with it, said, “Tell them about how you’re
never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s
always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out,
and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter

and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and
punch you in the mouth from the inside.”
In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear
— fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition,
of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the
visibility without which we cannot truly live. Within this country
where racial difference creates a constant, if unspoken, distortion of
vision, Black women have on one hand always been highly visible,
and so, on the other hand, have been rendered invisible through the
depersonalization of racism. Even within the women’s movement,
we have had to fight, and still do, for that very visibility which also
renders us most vulnerable, our Blackness. For to survive in the
mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first
and most vital lesson — that we were never meant to survive. Not
as human beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or
not. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that
which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the
machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we
speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and
our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and
destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners
mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.
In my house this year we are celebrating the feast of Kwanza, the
African-american festival of harvest which begins the day after
Christmas and lasts for seven days. There are seven principles of
Kwanza, one for each day. The first principle is Umoja, which means
unity, the decision to strive for and maintain unity in self and
community. The principle for yesterday, the second day, was
Kujichagulia — self-determination — the decision to define
ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves, instead of being
defined and spoken for by others. Today is the third day of Kwanza,
and the principle for today is Ujima — collective work and
responsibility — the decision to build and maintain ourselves and
our communities together and to recognize and solve our problems
together.

Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share a
commitment to language and to the power of language, and to the
reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against
us. In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is
vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her
function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital
within that transformation.
For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the
truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we
speak it. For others, it is to share and spread also those words that
are meaningful to us. But primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach
by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know
beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive, by
taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is
growth.
And it is never without fear — of visibility, of the harsh light of
scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived
through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind
myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or
had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I
would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for
establishing perspective.
And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must
each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to
read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to
our lives. That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that
have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our
own. For instance, “I can’t possibly teach Black women’s writing —
their experience is so different from mine.” Yet how many years
have you spent teaching Plato and Shakespeare and Proust? Or
another, “She’s a white woman and what could she possibly have to
say to me?” Or, “She’s a lesbian, what would my husband say, or
my chairman?” Or again, “This woman writes of her sons and I have
no children.” And all the other endless ways in which we rob
ourselves of ourselves and each other.

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same
way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we
have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for
language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final
luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an
attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences
between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but
silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
* Paper delivered at the Modern Language Association’s “Lesbian and Literature Panel,”

Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977. First published in Sinister Wisdom 6 (1978) and The
Cancer Journals (Spinsters, Ink, San Francisco, 1980).

Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to
Women and Loving*
Racism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over
all others and thereby the right to dominance.
Sexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one sex and
thereby the right to dominance.
Heterosexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one
pattern of loving and thereby its right to dominance.
Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one’s
own sex and therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.
THE ABOVE FORMS of human blindness stem from the same root — an
inability to recognize the notion of difference as a dynamic human
force, one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined
self, when there are shared goals.
To a large degree, at least verbally, the Black community has
moved beyond the “two steps behind her man” concept of sexual
relations sometimes mouthed as desirable during the sixties. This
was a time when the myth of the Black matriarchy as a social
disease was being presented by racist forces to redirect our
attentions away from the real sources of Black oppression.
For Black women as well as Black men, it is axiomatic that if we
do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others
— for their use and to our detriment. The development of selfdefined Black women, ready to explore and pursue our power and
interests within our communities, is a vital component in the war
for Black liberation. The image of the Angolan woman with a baby
on one arm and a gun in the other is neither romantic nor fanciful.
When Black women in this country come together to examine our

sources of strength and support, and to recognize our common
social, cultural, emotional, and political interests, it is a
development which can only contribute to the power of the Black
community as a whole. It can certainly never diminish it. For it is
through the coming together of self-actualized individuals, female
and male, that any real advances can be made. The old sexual
power relationships based on a dominant/subordinate model
between unequals have not served us as a people, nor as individuals.
Black women who define ourselves and our goals beyond the
sphere of a sexual relationship can bring to any endeavor the
realized focus of completed and therefore empowered individuals.
Black women and Black men who recognize that the development of
their particular strengths and interests does not diminish the other
do not need to diffuse their energies fighting for control over each
other. We can focus our attentions against the real economic,
political, and social forces at the heart of this society which are
ripping us and our children and our worlds apart.
Increasingly, despite opposition, Black women are coming
together to explore and to alter those manifestations of our society
which oppress us in different ways from those that oppress Black
men. This is no threat to Black men. It is only seen as one by those
Black men who choose to embody within themselves those same
manifestations of female oppression. For instance, no Black man has
ever been forced to bear a child he did not want or could not
support. Enforced sterilization and unavailable abortions are tools of
oppression against Black women, as is rape. Only to those Black
men who are unclear about the pathways of their own definition
can the self-actualization and self-protective bonding of Black
women be seen as a threatening development.
Today, the red herring of lesbian-baiting is being used in the Black
community to obscure the true face of racism/sexism. Black women
sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not
the enemies of Black men. Too frequently, however, some Black
men attempt to rule by fear those Black women who are more ally
than enemy. These tactics are expressed as threats of emotional
rejection: “Their poetry wasn’t too bad but I couldn’t take all those

lezzies.” The Black man saying this is code-warning every Black
woman present interested in a relationship with a man — and most
Black women are — that (1) if she wishes to have her work
considered by him she must eschew any other allegiance except to
him and (2) any woman who wishes to retain his friendship and/or
support had better not be “tainted” by woman-identified interests.
If such threats of labelling, vilification and/or emotional isolation
are not enough to bring Black women docilely into camp as
followers, or persuade us to avoid each other politically and
emotionally, then the rule by terror can be expressed physically, as
on the campus of a New York State college in the late 1970s, where
Black women sought to come together around women’s concerns.
Phone calls threatening violence were made to those Black women
who dared to explore the possibilities of a feminist connection with
non-Black women. Some of these women, intimidated by threats
and the withdrawal of Black male approval, did turn against their
sisters. When threats did not prevent the attempted coalition of
feminists, the resulting campus-wide hysteria left some Black
women beaten and raped. Whether the threats by Black men
actually led to these assaults, or merely encouraged the climate of
hostility within which they could occur, the results upon the women
attacked were the same.
War, imprisonment, and “the street” have decimated the ranks of
Black males of marriageable age. The fury of many Black
heterosexual women against white women who date Black men is
rooted in this unequal sexual equation within the Black community,
since whatever threatens to widen that equation is deeply and
articulately resented. But this is essentially unconstructive
resentment because it extends sideways only. It can never result in
true progress on the issue because it does not question the vertical
lines of power or authority, nor the sexist assumptions which dictate
the terms of that competition. And the racism of white women
might be better addressed where it is less complicated by their own
sexual oppression. In this situation it is not the non-Black woman
who calls the tune, but rather the Black man who turns away from

himself in his sisters or who, through a fear borrowed from white
men, reads her strength not as a resource but as a challenge.
All too often the message comes loud and clear to Black women
from Black men: “I am the only prize worth having and there are
not too many of me, and remember, I can always go elsewhere. So if
you want me, you’d better stay in your place which is away from
one another, or I will call you ‘lesbian’ and wipe you out.” Black
women are programmed to define ourselves within this male
attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to
recognize and move upon our common interests.
The tactic of encouraging horizontal hostility to becloud more
pressing issues of oppression is by no means new, nor limited to
relations between women. The same tactic is used to encourage
separation between Black women and Black men. In discussions
around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the
charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired
than are Black men. For this reason, Black women’s problems of
promotion and tenure are not to be considered important since they
are only “taking jobs away from Black men.” Here again, energy is
being wasted on fighting each other over the pitifully few crumbs
allowed us rather than being used, in a joining of forces, to fight for
a more realistic ratio of Black faculty. The latter would be a vertical
battle against racist policies of the academic structure itself, one
which could result in real power and change. It is the structure at
the top which desires changelessness and which profits from these
apparently endless kitchen wars.
Instead of keeping our attentions focused upon our real needs,
enormous energy is being wasted in the Black community today in
antilesbian hysteria. Yet women-identified women — those who
sought their own destinies and attempted to execute them in the
absence of male support — have been around in all of our
communities for a long time. As Yvonne Flowers of York College
pointed out in a recent discussion, the unmarried aunt, childless or
otherwise, whose home and resources were often a welcome haven
for different members of the family, was a familiar figure in many of

our childhoods. And within the homes of our Black communities
today, it is not the Black lesbian who is battering and raping our
underage girl-children out of displaced and sickening frustration.
The Black lesbian has come under increasing attack from both
Black men and heterosexual Black women. In the same way that the
existence of the self-defined Black woman is no threat to the selfdefined Black man, the Black lesbian is an emotional threat only to
those Black women whose feelings of kinship and love for other
Black women are problematic in some way. For so long, we have
been encouraged to view each other with suspicion, as eternal
competitors, or as the visible face of our own self-rejection.
Yet traditionally, Black women have always bonded together in
support of each other, however uneasily and in the face of whatever
other allegiances which militated against that bonding. We have
banded together with each other for wisdom and strength and
support, even when it was only in relationship to one man. We need
only look at the close, although highly complex and involved,
relationships between African co-wives, or at the Amazon warriors
of ancient Dahomey who fought together as the King’s main and
most ferocious bodyguard. We need only look at the more promising
power wielded by the West African Market Women Associations of
today, and those governments which have risen and fallen at their
pleasure.
In a retelling of her life, a ninety-two-year-old Efik-Ibibio woman
of Nigeria recalls her love for another woman:
I had a woman friend to whom I revealed my secrets. She
was very fond of keeping secrets to herself. We acted as
husband and wife. We always moved hand in glove and my
husband and hers knew about our relationship. The villagers
nicknamed us twin sisters. When I was out of gear with my
husband, she would be the one to restore peace. I often sent
my children to go and work for her in return for her
kindnesses to me. My husband being more fortunate to get
more pieces of land than her husband, allowed some to her,
even though she was not my co-wife.*

On the West Coast of Africa, the Fon of Dahomey still have twelve
different kinds of marriage. One of them is known as “giving the
goat to the buck,” where a woman of independent means marries
another woman who then may or may not bear children, all of
whom will belong to the blood line of the first woman. Some
marriages of this kind are arranged to provide heirs for women of
means who wish to remain “free,” and some are lesbian
relationships. Marriages like these occur throughout Africa, in
several different places among different peoples.** Routinely, the
women involved are accepted members of their communities,
evaluated not by their sexuality but by their respective places within
the community.
While a piece of each Black woman remembers the old ways of
another place — when we enjoyed each other in a sisterhood of
work and play and power — other pieces of us, less functional, eye
one another with suspicion. In the interests of separation, Black
women have been taught to view each other as always suspect,
heartless competitors for the scarce male, the all-important prize
that could legitimize our existence. This dehumanizing denial of self
is no less lethal than the dehumanization of racism to which it is so
closely allied.
If the recent attack upon lesbians in the Black community is based
solely upon an aversion to the idea of sexual contact between
members of the same sex (a contact which has existed for ages in
most of the female compounds across the African continent), why
then is the idea of sexual contact between Black men so much more
easily accepted, or unremarked? Is the imagined threat simply the
existence of a self-motivated, self-defined Black woman who will not
fear nor suffer terrible retribution from the gods because she does
not necessarily seek her face in a man’s eyes, even if he has fathered
her children? Female-headed households in the Black community
are not always situations by default.
The distortion of relationship which says “I disagree with you, so I
must destroy you” leaves us as Black people with basically
uncreative victories, defeated in any common struggle. This jugular
vein psychology is based on the fallacy that your assertion or

affirmation of self is an attack upon my self — or that my defining
myself will somehow prevent or retard your self-definition. The
supposition that one sex needs the other’s acquiescence in order to
exist prevents both from moving together as self-defined persons
toward a common goal.
This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It
is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and
particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us,
with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the
victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for
more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie.
Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing
and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black
women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a
right to freedom, instead of seeing each other’s struggles as part of
our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women
fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of
seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this
last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white
women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.)
At a recent Black literary conference, a heterosexual Black woman
stated that to endorse lesbianism was to endorse the death of our
race. This position reflects acute fright or a faulty reasoning, for
once again it ascribes false power to difference. To the racist, Black
people are so powerful that the presence of one can contaminate a
whole lineage; to the heterosexist, lesbians are so powerful that the
presence of one can contaminate the whole sex. This position
supposes that if we do not eradicate lesbianism in the Black
community, all Black women will become lesbians. It also supposes
that lesbians do not have children. Both suppositions are patently
false.
As Black women, we must deal with all the realities of our lives
which place us at risk as Black women — homosexual or
heterosexual. In 1977 in Detroit, a young Black actress, Patricia
Cowan, was invited to audition for a play called Hammer and was

then hammered to death by the young Black male playwright.
Patricia Cowan was not killed because she was Black. She was killed
because she was a Black woman, and her cause belongs to us all.
History does not record whether or not she was a lesbian, but only
that she had a four-year-old child.
Of the four groups, Black and white women, Black and white
men, Black women have the lowest average wage. This is a vital
concern for us all, no matter with whom we sleep.
As Black women we have the right and responsibility to define
ourselves and to seek our allies in common cause: with Black men
against racism, and with each other and white women against
sexism. But most of all, as Black women we have the right and
responsibility to recognize each other without fear and to love
where we choose. Both lesbian and heterosexual Black women today
share a history of bonding and strength to which our sexual
identities and our other differences must not blind us.
* First published in The Black Scholar, vol. 9, no. 7 (1978).
* Iris Andreski, Old Wives Tales: Life-Stories of African Women (Schocken Books, New

York, 1970), p. 131.

** Melville Herskovits, Dahomey, 2 vols. (Northwestern University Press, Evanston,

Illinois, 1967), 1:320–322.

Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power*
THERE ARE MANY kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or
otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a
deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our
unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself,
every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of
power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy
for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as
a considered source of power and information within our lives.
We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused,
and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the
superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female
inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and
to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.
It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the
suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can
women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is
fashioned within the context of male models of power.
As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from
our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned
against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of
feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the
service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to
examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are
maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked,
much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a
life-giving substance for their masters.
But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force
to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the
belief that sensation is enough.

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against
women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the
psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often
turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as
a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite,
the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of
the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling.
Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of
self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of
satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can
aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling
and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require
no less of ourselves.
It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our
lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the
encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But
giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury
only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those
who do not wish to guide their own destinies.
This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from
the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible
from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates
everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only of what
we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the
doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling
that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe
which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.
The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and the
lives of our children richer and more possible. Within the
celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a
conscious decision — a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and
from which I rise up empowered.
Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to
separate the erotic demand from most vital areas of our lives other

than sex. And the lack of concern for the erotic root and
satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of
what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even
at its most difficult?
The principal horror of any system which defines the good in
terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines
human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional
components of that need — the principal horror of such a system is
that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life
appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of
necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves
and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and
then telling her to improve her work, and to enjoy the act of
painting. It is not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel.
As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can
be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing
the quality of all the aspects of our lives and of our work, and of
how we move toward and through them.
The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the
personification of love in all its aspects — born of Chaos, and
personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the
erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women;
of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which
we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing,
our loving, our work, our lives.
There are frequent attempts to equate pornography and eroticism,
two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual. Because of these
attempts, it has become fashionable to separate the spiritual
(psychic and emotional) from the political, to see them as
contradictory or antithetical. “What do you mean, a poetic
revolutionary, a meditating gunrunner?” In the same way, we have
attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing
the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic
who aspires to feel nothing. But nothing is farther from the truth.
For the ascetic position is one of the highest fear, the gravest

immobility. The severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling
obsession. And it is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation.
The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is also false,
resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For
the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic — the
sensual — those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of
what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being
shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.
Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, “It feels right to
me,” acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge,
for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light
toward any understanding. And understanding is a hand-maiden
which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born.
The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest
knowledge.
The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in
providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit
with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical,
emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the
sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is
not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.
Another important way in which the erotic connection functions
is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the
way my body stretches to music and opens into response,
hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense
also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is
dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea.
That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know
myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for
feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity
for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within
the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have
to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.
This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often
relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For

once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to
demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in
accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of.
Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which
we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate
those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our
lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each
of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the
conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.
During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white,
uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring
perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would
leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would
pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich
yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. Then taking it
carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and
forth, over and over, until the color had spread throughout the
whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it.
I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from
its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life
with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens
all my experience.
We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest
cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our
future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires
keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress
any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we
cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within
ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined,
and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.
When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external
directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs,
when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves,
then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we
conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human

need, let alone an individual’s. But when we begin to live from
within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within
ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our
actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible
to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our
deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied
with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so
often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts
against oppression become integral with self, motivated and
empowered from within.
In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept
powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not
native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement,
depression, self-denial.
And yes, there is a hierarchy. There is a difference between
painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity.
And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem
and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.
This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. To share the
power of each other’s feelings is different from using another’s
feelings as we would use a kleenex. When we look the other way
from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share
the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with
us. And use without consent of the used is abuse.
In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The
need for sharing deep feeling is a human need. But within the
european-american tradition, this need is satisfied by certain
proscribed erotic comings-together. These occasions are almost
always characterized by a simultaneous looking away, a pretense of
calling them something else, whether a religion, a fit, mob violence,
or even playing doctor. And this misnaming of the need and the
deed give rise to that distortion which results in pornography and
obscenity — the abuse of feeling.
When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the
development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away
from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others,

we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy
in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities
and our differences. To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling
at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a
large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to
the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd.
The erotic cannot be felt secondhand. As a Black lesbian feminist,
I have a particular feeling, knowledge, and understanding for those
sisters with whom I have danced hard, played, or even fought. This
deep participation has often been the forerunner for joint concerted
actions not possible before.
But this erotic charge is not easily shared by women who continue
to operate under an exclusively european-american male tradition. I
know it was not available to me when I was trying to adapt my
consciousness to this mode of living and sensation.
Only now, I find more and more women-identified women brave
enough to risk sharing the erotic’s electrical charge without having
to look away, and without distorting the enormously powerful and
creative nature of that exchange. Recognizing the power of the
erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine
change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of
characters in the same weary drama.
For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source,
but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a
racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.
* Paper delivered at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mount

Holyoke College, August 25, 1978. First published as a pamphlet by Out & Out Books. Now
published as a pamphlet by Kore Press.

Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface*
BLACK FEMINISM is not white feminism in blackface. Black women
have particular and legitimate issues which affect our lives as Black
women, and addressing those issues does not make us any less
Black. To attempt to open dialogue between Black women and Black
men by attacking Black feminists seems shortsighted and selfdefeating. Yet this is what Robert Staples, Black sociologist, has
done in The Black Scholar.
Despite our recent economic gains, Black women are still the
lowest paid group in the nation by sex and race. This gives some
idea of the inequity from which we started. In Staples’ own words,
Black women in 1979 only “threaten to overtake black men” [italics
mine] by the “next century” in education, occupation, and income.
In other words, the inequity is self-evident; but how is it justifiable?
Black feminists speak as women because we are women and do
not need others to speak for us. It is for Black men to speak up and
tell us why and how their manhood is so threatened that Black
women should be the prime targets of their justifiable rage. What
correct analysis of this capitalist dragon within which we live can
legitimize the rape of Black women by Black men?
At least Black feminists and other Black women have begun this
much-needed dialogue, however bitter our words. At least we are
not mowing down our brothers in the street, or bludgeoning them to
death with hammers. Yet. We recognize the fallacies of separatist
solutions.
Staples pleads his cause by saying capitalism has left the Black
man only his penis for fulfillment, and a “curious rage.” Is this rage
any more legitimate than the rage of Black women? And why are
Black women supposed to absorb that male rage in silence? Why
isn’t that male rage turned upon those forces which limit his
fulfillment, namely capitalism? Staples sees in Ntozake Shange’s

play For Colored Girls “a collective appetite for black male blood.”
Yet it is my female children and my Black sisters who lie bleeding
all around me, victims of the appetites of our brothers.
Into what theoretical analysis would Staples fit Patricia Cowan?
She answered an ad in Detroit for a Black actress to audition in a
play called Hammer. As she acted out an argument scene, watched
by the playwright’s brother and her four-year-old son, the Black
male playwright picked up a sledgehammer and bludgeoned her to
death. Will Staples’ “compassion for misguided black men” bring
this young mother back, or make her senseless death more
acceptable?
Black men’s feelings of cancellation, their grievances, and their
fear of vulnerability must be talked about, but not by Black women
when it is at the expense of our own “curious rage.”
If this society ascribes roles to Black men which they are not
allowed to fulfill, is it Black women who must bend and alter our
lives to compensate, or is it society that needs changing? And why
should Black men accept these roles as correct ones, or anything
other than a narcotic promise encouraging acceptance of other
facets of their own oppression?
One tool of the Great-American-Double-Think is to blame the
victim for victimization: Black people are said to invite lynching by
not knowing our place; Black women are said to invite rape and
murder and abuse by not being submissive enough, or by being too
seductive, or too …
Staples’ “fact” that Black women get their sense of fulfillment
from having children is only a fact when stated out of the mouths of
Black men, and any Black person in this country, even a “happily
married” woman who has “no pent-up frustrations that need
release” (!) is either a fool or insane. This smacks of the oldest sexist
canard of all time, that all a woman needs to “keep her quiet” is a
“good man.” File that one alongside “Some of my best friends
are …”
Instead of beginning the much-needed dialogue between Black
men and Black women, Staples retreats to a defensive stance
reminiscent of white liberals of the 60s, many of whom saw any

statement of Black pride and self-assertion as an automatic threat to
their own identity and an attempt to wipe them out. Here we have
an intelligent Black man believing — or at least saying — that any
call to Black women to love ourselves (and no one said only) is a
denial of, or threat to, his Black male identity!
In this country, Black women traditionally have had compassion
for everybody else except ourselves. We have cared for whites
because we had to for pay or survival; we have cared for our
children and our fathers and our brothers and our lovers. History
and popular culture, as well as our personal lives, are full of tales of
Black women who had “compassion for misguided black men.” Our
scarred, broken, battered and dead daughters and sisters are a mute
testament to that reality. We need to learn to have care and
compassion for ourselves, also.
In the light of what Black women often willingly sacrifice for our
children and our men, this is a much needed exhortation, no matter
what illegitimate use the white media makes of it. This call for selfvalue and self-love is quite different from narcissism, as Staples
must certainly realize. Narcissism comes not out of self-love but out
of self-hatred.
The lack of a reasonable and articulate Black male viewpoint on
these questions is not the responsibility of Black women. We have
too often been expected to be all things to all people and speak
everyone else’s position but our very own. Black men are not so
passive that they must have Black women speak for them. Even my
fourteen-year-old son knows that. Black men themselves must
examine and articulate their own desires and positions and stand by
the conclusions thereof. No point is served by a Black male
professional who merely whines at the absence of his viewpoint in
Black women’s work. Oppressors always expect the oppressed to
extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.
For Staples to suggest, for instance, that Black men leave their
families as a form of male protest against female decision making in
the home is in direct contradiction to his own observations in “The
Myth of the Black Matriarchy.”*

Now I am sure there are still some Black men who marry white
women because they feel a white woman can better fit the model of
“femininity” set forth in this country. But for Staples to justify that
act using the reason it occurs, and take Black women to task for it,
is not only another error in reasoning; it is like justifying the actions
of a lemming who follows its companions over the cliff to sure
death. Because it happens does not mean it should happen, nor that
it is functional for the well-being of the individual nor the group.
It is not the destiny of Black america to repeat white america’s
mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a
sick society for the signs of a meaningful life. If Black men continue
to define “femininity” instead of their own desires, and to do it in
archaic european terms, they restrict our access to each other’s
energies. Freedom and future for Blacks does not mean absorbing
the dominant white male disease of sexism.
As Black women and men, we cannot hope to begin dialogue by
denying the oppressive nature of male privilege. And if Black males
choose to assume that privilege for whatever reason — raping,
brutalizing, and killing Black women — then ignoring these acts of
Black male oppression within our communities can only serve our
destroyers. One oppression does not justify another.
It has been said that Black men cannot be denied their personal
choice of the woman who meets their need to dominate. In that
case, Black women also cannot be denied our personal choices, and
those choices are becomingly increasingly self-assertive and femaleoriented.
As a people, we most certainly must work together. It would be
shortsighted to believe that Black men alone are to blame for the
above situations in a society dominated by white male privilege. But
the Black male consciousness must be raised to the realization that
sexism and woman-hating are critically dysfunctional to his
liberation as a Black man because they arise out of the same
constellation that engenders racism and homophobia. Until that
consciousness is developed, Black men will view sexism and the
destruction of Black women as tangential to Black liberation rather
than as central to that struggle. So long as this occurs, we will never

be able to embark upon that dialogue between Black women and
Black men that is so essential to our survival as a people. This
continued blindness between us can only serve the oppressive
system within which we live.
Men avoid women’s observations by accusing us of being too
“visceral.” But no amount of understanding the roots of Black
woman-hating will bring back Patricia Cowan, nor mute her
family’s loss. Pain is very visceral, particularly to the people who
are hurting. As the poet Mary McAnally said, “Pain teaches us to
take our fingers OUT the fucking fire.”*
If the problems of Black women are only derivatives of a larger
contradiction between capital and labor, then so is racism, and both
must be fought by all of us. The capitalist structure is a manyheaded monster. I might add here that in no socialist country that I
have visited have I found an absence of racism or of sexism, so the
eradication of both of these diseases seems to involve more than the
abolition of capitalism as an institution.
No reasonable Black man can possibly condone the rape and
slaughter of Black women by Black men as a fitting response to
capitalist oppression. And destruction of Black women by Black men
clearly cuts across all class lines.
Whatever the “structural underpinnings” (Staples) for sexism in
the Black community may be, it is obviously Black women who are
bearing the brunt of that sexism, and so it is in our best interest to
abolish it. We invite our Black brothers to join us, since ultimately
that abolition is in their best interests also. For Black men are also
diminished by a sexism which robs them of meaningful connections
to Black women and our struggles. Since it is Black women who are
being abused, however, and since it is our female blood that is being
shed, it is for Black women to decide whether or not sexism in the
Black community is pathological. And we do not approach that
discussion theoretically. Those “creative relationships” which
Staples speaks about within the Black community are almost
invariably those which operate to the benefit of Black males, given
the Black male/female ratio and the implied power balance within a
supply and demand situation. Polygamy is seen as “creative,” but a

lesbian relationship is not. This is much the same as how the
“creative relationships” between master and slave were always those
benefiting the master.
The results of woman-hating in the Black community are
tragedies which diminish all Black people. These acts must be seen
in the context of a systematic devaluation of Black women within
this society. It is within this context that we become approved and
acceptable targets for Black male rage, so acceptable that even a
Black male social scientist condones and excuses this
depersonalizing abuse.
This abuse is no longer acceptable to Black women in the name of
solidarity, nor of Black liberation. Any dialogue between Black
women and Black men must begin there, no matter where it ends.
* First published as “The Great American Disease” in The Black Scholar, vol. 10, no. 9

(May-June 1979) in response to “The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black
Feminists” by Robert Staples in The Black Scholar, vol. 10, no. 8 (March-April 1979).

* “The Myth of the Black Matriarchy” by Robert Staples in The Black Scholar, vol. 1, no.

3–4 (January-February 1970).

* From We Will Make A River, poems by Mary McAnnally (West End Press, Cambridge,

Massachusetts, 1979), p. 27.

An Open Letter to Mary Daly
The following letter was written to Mary Daly, author of
Gyn/Ecology,* on May 6, 1979. Four months later, having
received no reply, I open it to the community of women.
DEAR MARY,
With a moment of space in this wild and bloody spring,** I want
to speak the words I have had in mind for you. I had hoped that our
paths might cross and we could sit down together and talk, but this
has not happened.
I wish you strength and satisfaction in your eventual victory over
the repressive forces of the University in Boston. I am glad so many
women attended the speak-out, and hope that this show of joined
power will make more space for you to grow and be within.
Thank you for having Gyn/Ecology sent to me. So much of it is full
of import, useful, generative, and provoking. As in Beyond God The
Father, many of your analyses are strengthening and helpful to me.
Therefore, it is because of what you have given to me in the past
work that I write this letter to you now, hoping to share with you
the benefits of my insights as you have shared the benefits of yours
with me.
This letter has been delayed because of my grave reluctance to
reach out to you, for what I want us to chew upon here is neither
easy nor simple. The history of white women who are unable to
hear Black women’s words, or to maintain dialogue with us, is long
and discouraging. But for me to assume that you will not hear me
represents not only history, perhaps, but an old pattern of relating,
sometimes protective and sometimes dysfunctional, which we, as
women shaping our future, are in the process of shattering and
passing beyond, I hope.
I believe in your good faith toward all women, in your vision of a
future within which we can all flourish, and in your commitment to

the hard and often painful work necessary to effect change. In this
spirit I invite you to a joint clarification of some of the differences
which lie between us as a Black and a white woman.
When I started reading Gyn/Ecology, I was truly excited by the
vision behind your words and nodded my head as you spoke in your
First Passage of myth and mystification. Your words on the nature
and function of the Goddess, as well as the ways in which her face
has been obscured, agreed with what I myself have discovered in
my searches through African myth/legend/religion for the true
nature of old female power.
So I wondered, why doesn’t Mary deal with Afrekete as an
example? Why are her goddess images only white, western
european, judeo-christian? Where was Afrekete, Yemanje, Oyo, and
Mawulisa? Where were the warrior goddesses of the Vodun, the
Dahomeian Amazons and the warrior-women of Dan? Well, I
thought, Mary has made a conscious decision to narrow her scope
and to deal only with the ecology of western european women.
Then I came to the first three chapters of your Second Passage,
and it was obvious that you were dealing with noneuropean women,
but only as victims and preyers-upon each other. I began to feel my
history and my mythic background distorted by the absence of any
images of my foremothers in power. Your inclusion of African
genital mutilation was an important and necessary piece in any
consideration of female ecology, and too little has been written
about it. To imply, however, that all women suffer the same
oppression simply because we are women is to lose sight of the
many varied tools of patriarchy. It is to ignore how those tools are
used by women without awareness against each other.
To dismiss our Black foremothers may well be to dismiss where
european women learned to love. As an African-american woman in
white patriarchy, I am used to having my archetypal experience
distorted and trivialized, but it is terribly painful to feel it being
done by a woman whose knowledge so much touches my own.
When I speak of knowledge, as you know, I am speaking of that
dark and true depth which understanding serves, waits upon, and

makes accessible through language to ourselves and others. It is this
depth within each of us that nurtures vision.
What you excluded from Gyn/Ecology dismissed my heritage and
the heritage of all other noneuropean women, and denied the real
connections that exist between all of us.
It is obvious that you have done a tremendous amount of work for
this book. But simply because so little material on non-white female
power and symbol exists in white women’s words from a radical
feminist perspective, to exclude this aspect of connection from even
comment in your work is to deny the fountain of noneuropean
female strength and power that nurtures each of our visions. It is to
make a point by choice.
Then, to realize that the only quotations from Black women’s
words were the ones you used to introduce your chapter on African
genital mutilation made me question why you needed to use them at
all. For my part, I felt that you had in fact misused my words,
utilized them only to testify against myself as a woman of Color. For
my words which you used were no more, nor less, illustrative of this
chapter than “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” or any number of my other
poems might have been of many other parts of Gyn/Ecology.
So the question arises in my mind, Mary, do you ever really read
the work of Black women? Did you ever read my words, or did you
merely finger through them for quotations which you thought might
valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old
and distorted connection between us? This is not a rhetorical
question.
To me, this feels like another instance of the knowledge, croneology and work of women of Color being ghettoized by a white
woman dealing only out of a patriarchal western european frame of
reference. Even your words on page 49 of Gyn/Ecology, “The
strength which Self-centering women find, in finding our
Background, is our own strength, which we give back to our Selves,”
have a different ring as we remember the old traditions of power
and strength and nurturance found in the female bonding of African
women. It is there to be tapped by all women who do not fear the
revelation of connection to themselves.

Have you read my work, and the work of other Black women, for
what it could give you? Or did you hunt through only to find words
that would legitimize your chapter on African genital mutilation in
the eyes of other Black women? And if so, then why not use our
words to legitimize or illustrate the other places where we connect
in our being and becoming? If, on the other hand, it was not Black
women you were attempting to reach, in what way did our words
illustrate your point for white women?
Mary, I ask that you be aware of how this serves the destructive
forces of racism and separation between women — the assumption
that the herstory and myth of white women is the legitimate and
sole herstory and myth of all women to call upon for power and
background, and that nonwhite women and our herstories are
noteworthy only as decorations, or examples of female
victimization. I ask that you be aware of the effect that this
dismissal has upon the community of Black women and other
women of Color, and how it devalues your own words. This
dismissal does not essentially differ from the specialized
devaluations that make Black women prey, for instance, to the
murders even now happening in your own city. When patriarchy
dismisses us, it encourages our murderers. When radical lesbian
feminist theory dismisses us, it encourages its own demise.
This dismissal stands as a real block to communication between
us. This block makes it far easier to turn away from you completely
than to attempt to understand the thinking behind your choices.
Should the next step be war between us, or separation? Assimilation
within a solely western european herstory is not acceptable.
Mary, I ask that you re-member what is dark and ancient and
divine within yourself that aids your speaking. As outsiders, we
need each other for support and connection and all the other
necessities of living on the borders. But in order to come together
we must recognize each other. Yet I feel that since you have so
completely un-recognized me, perhaps I have been in error
concerning you and no longer recognize you.
I feel you do celebrate differences between white women as a
creative force toward change, rather than a reason for

misunderstanding and separation. But you fail to recognize that, as
women, those differences expose all women to various forms and
degrees of patriarchal oppression, some of which we share and some
of which we do not. For instance, surely you know that for nonwhite
women in this country, there is an 80 percent fatality rate from
breast cancer; three times the number of unnecessary eventrations,
hysterectomies and sterilizations as for white women; three times as
many chances of being raped, murdered, or assaulted as exist for
white women. These are statistical facts, not coincidences nor
paranoid fantasies.
Within the community of women, racism is a reality force in my
life as it is not in yours. The white women with hoods on in Ohio
handing out KKK literature on the street may not like what you have
to say, but they will shoot me on sight. (If you and I were to walk
into a classroom of women in Dismal Gulch, Alabama, where the
only thing they knew about each of us was that we were both
Lesbian/Radical/Feminist, you would see exactly what I mean.)
The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries,
true, but that does not mean it is identical within those differences.
Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries.
To deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our
commonality as well as our difference.
For then beyond sisterhood is still racism.
We first met at the MLA panel, “The Transformation of Silence
Into Language and Action.” This letter attempts to break a silence
which I had imposed upon myself shortly before that date. I had
decided never again to speak to white women about racism. I felt it
was wasted energy because of destructive guilt and defensiveness,
and because whatever I had to say might better be said by white
women to one another at far less emotional cost to the speaker, and
probably with a better hearing. But I would like not to destroy you
in my consciousness, not to have to. So as a sister Hag, I ask you to
speak to my perceptions.
Whether or not you do, Mary, again I thank you for what I have
learned from you.
This letter is in repayment.

In the hands of Afrekete,
Audre Lorde
* Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Beacon Press, Boston, 1978).
** In the spring of 1979, twelve Black women were murdered in the Boston area.

Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response*
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT a theoretical discussion of Lesbian Mothers and
their Sons, nor a how-to article. It is an attempt to scrutinize and
share some pieces of that common history belonging to my son and
to me. I have two children: a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old daughter
Beth, and a fourteen-year-old son Jonathan. This is the way it
was/is with me and Jonathan, and I leave the theory to another
time and person. This is one woman’s telling.
I have no golden message about the raising of sons for other
lesbian mothers, no secret to transpose your questions into certain
light. I have my own ways of rewording those same questions,
hoping we will all come to speak those questions and pieces of our
lives we need to share. We are women making contact within
ourselves and with each other across the restrictions of a printed
page, bent upon the use of our own/one another’s knowledges.
The truest direction comes from inside. I give the most strength to
my children by being willing to look within myself, and by being
honest with them about what I find there, without expecting a
response beyond their years. In this way they begin to learn to look
beyond their own fears.
All our children are outriders for a queendom not yet assured.
My adolescent son’s growing sexuality is a conscious dynamic
between Jonathan and me. It would be presumptuous of me to
discuss Jonathan’s sexuality here, except to state my belief that
whomever he chooses to explore this area with, his choices will be
nonoppressive, joyful, and deeply felt from within, places of growth.
One of the difficulties in writing this piece has been temporal; this
is the summer when Jonathan is becoming a man, physically. And
our sons must become men — such men as we hope our daughters,
born and unborn, will be pleased to live among. Our sons will not
grow into women. Their way is more difficult than that of our

daughters, for they must move away from us, without us. Hopefully,
our sons have what they have learned from us, and a howness to
forge it into their own image.
Our daughters have us, for measure or rebellion or outline or
dream; but the sons of lesbians have to make their own definitions
of self as men. This is both power and vulnerability. The sons of
lesbians have the advantage of our blueprints for survival, but they
must take what we know and transpose it into their own maleness.
May the goddess be kind to my son, Jonathan.
Recently I have met young Black men about whom I am pleased
to say that their future and their visions, as well as their concerns
within the present, intersect more closely with Jonathan’s than do
my own. I have shared vision with these men as well as temporal
strategies for our survivals and I appreciate the spaces in which we
could sit down together. Some of these men I met at the First
Annual Conference of Third World Lesbians and Gays held in
Washington D.C. in October, 1979. I have met others in different
places and do not know how they identify themselves sexually.
Some of these men are raising families alone. Some have adopted
sons. They are Black men who dream and who act and who own
their feelings, questioning. It is heartening to know our sons do not
step out alone.
When Jonathan makes me angriest, I always say he is bringing
out the testosterone in me. What I mean is that he is representing
some piece of myself as a woman that I am reluctant to
acknowledge or explore. For instance, what does “acting like a man”
mean? For me, what I reject? For Jonathan, what he is trying to
redefine?
Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a
racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot
love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And
in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach —
love, survival — that is, self-definition and letting go. For each of
these, the ability to feel strongly and to recognize those feelings is
central: how to feel love, how to neither discount fear nor be
overwhelmed by it, how to enjoy feeling deeply.

I wish to raise a Black man who will not be destroyed by, nor
settle for, those corruptions called power by the white fathers who
mean his destruction as surely as they mean mine. I wish to raise a
Black man who will recognize that the legitimate objects of his
hostility are not women, but the particulars of a structure that
programs him to fear and despise women as well as his own Black
self.
For me, this task begins with teaching my son that I do not exist
to do his feeling for him.
Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their
feeling for them while dismissing us for the same supposedly
“inferior” capacity to feel deeply. But in this way also, men deny
themselves their own essential humanity, becoming trapped in
dependency and fear.
As a Black woman committed to a liveable future, and as a
mother loving and raising a boy who will become a man, I must
examine all my possibilities of being within such a destructive
system.
Jonathan was three-and-one-half when Frances, my lover, and I
met; he was seven when we all began to live together permanently.
From the start, Frances’ and my insistence that there be no secrets
in our household about the fact that we were lesbians has been the
source of problems and strengths for both children. In the
beginning, this insistence grew out of the knowledge, on both our
parts, that whatever was hidden out of fear could always be used
either against the children or ourselves — one imperfect but useful
argument for honesty. The knowledge of fear can help make us free.
for the embattled
there is no place
that cannot be
home
nor is.*

For survival, Black children in america must be raised to be
warriors. For survival, they must also be raised to recognize the
enemy’s many faces. Black children of lesbian couples have an
advantage because they learn, very early, that oppression comes in
many different forms, none of which have anything to do with their
own worth.
To help give me perspective, I remember that for years, in the
namecalling at school, boys shouted at Jonathan not — “your
mother’s a lesbian” — but rather — “your mother’s a nigger.”
When Jonathan was eight years old and in the third grade we
moved, and he went to a new school where his life was hellish as a
new boy on the block. He did not like to play rough games. He did
not like to fight. He did not like to stone dogs. And all this marked
him early on as an easy target.
When he came in crying one afternoon, I heard from Beth how
the corner bullies were making Johathan wipe their shoes on the
way home whenever Beth wasn’t there to fight them off. And when
I heard that the ringleader was a little boy in Jonathan’s class his
own size, an interesting and very disturbing thing happened to me.
My fury at my own long-ago impotence, and my present pain at
his suffering, made me start to forget all that I knew about violence
and fear, and blaming the victim, I started to hiss at the weeping
child. “The next time you come in here crying …,” and I suddenly
caught myself in horror.
This is the way we allow the destruction of our sons to begin — in
the name of protection and to ease our own pain. My son get beaten
up? I was about to demand that he buy that first lesson in the
corruption of power, that might makes right. I could hear myself
beginning to perpetuate the age-old distortions about what strength
and bravery really are.
And no, Jonathan didn’t have to fight if he didn’t want to, but
somehow he did have to feel better about not fighting. An old
horror rolled over me of being the fat kid who ran away, terrified of
getting her glasses broken.
About that time a very wise woman said to me, “Have you ever
told Jonathan that once you used to be afraid, too?”

The idea seemed far-out to me at the time, but the next time he
came in crying and sweaty from having run away again, I could see
that he felt shamed at having failed me, or some image he and I had
created in his head of mother/woman. This image of woman being
able to handle it all was bolstered by the fact that he lived in a
household with three strong women, his lesbian parents and his
forthright older sister. At home, for Jonathan, power was clearly
female.
And because our society teaches us to think in an either/or mode
— kill or be killed, dominate or be dominated — this meant that he
must either surpass or be lacking. I could see the implications of this
line of thought. Consider the two western classic myth/models of
mother/son relationships: Jocasta/Oedipus, the son who fucks his
mother, and Clytemnestra/Orestes, the son who kills his mother.
It all felt connected to me.
I sat down on the hallway steps and took Jonathan on my lap and
wiped his tears. “Did I ever tell you about how I used to be afraid
when I was your age?”
I will never forget the look on that little boy’s face as I told him
the tale of my glasses and my after-school fights. It was a look of
relief and total disbelief, all rolled into one.
It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not
omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as parents. But that knowledge
is necessary as the first step in the reassessment of power as
something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of fear. It is
an important step for a boy, whose societal destruction begins when
he is forced to believe that he can only be strong if he doesn’t feel,
or if he wins.
I thought about all this one year later when Beth and Jonathan,
ten and nine, were asked by an interviewer how they thought they
had been affected by being children of a feminist.
Jonathan said that he didn’t think there was too much in
feminism for boys, although it certainly was good to be able to cry if
he felt like it and not to have to play football if he didn’t want to. I
think of this sometimes now when I see him practising for his Brown
Belt in Tae Kwon Do.

The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach
my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself. And the
best way I can do this is to be who I am and hope that he will learn
from this not how to be me, which is not possible, but how to be
himself. And this means how to move to that voice from within
himself, rather than to those raucous, persuasive, or threatening
voices from outside, pressuring him to be what the world wants him
to be.
And that is hard enough.
Jonathan is learning to find within himself some of the different
faces of courage and strength, whatever he chooses to call them.
Two years ago, when Jonathan was twelve and in the seventh grade,
one of his friends at school who had been to the house persisted in
calling Frances “the maid.” When Jonathan corrected him, the boy
then referred to her as “the cleaning woman.” Finally Jonathan said,
simply, “Frances is not the cleaning woman, she’s my mother’s
lover.” Interestingly enough, it is the teachers at this school who
still have not recovered from his openness.
Frances and I were considering attending a Lesbian/Feminist
conference this summer, when we were notified that no boys over
ten were allowed. This presented logistic as well as philosophical
problems for us, and we sent the following letter:
Sisters:
Ten years as an interracial lesbian couple has taught us
both the dangers of an oversimplified approach to the
nature and solutions of any oppression, as well as the danger
inherent in an incomplete vision.
Our thirteen-year-old son represents as much hope for our
future world as does our fifteen-year-old daughter, and we
are not willing to abandon him to the killing streets of New
York City while we journey west to help form a LesbianFeminist vision of the future world in which we can all
survive and flourish. I hope we can continue this dialogue in

the near future, as I feel it is important to our vision and our
survival.
The question of separatism is by no means simple. I am thankful
that one of my children is male, since that helps to keep me honest.
Every line I write shrieks there are no easy solutions.
I grew up in largely female environments, and I know how crucial
that has been to my own development. I feel the want and need
often for the society of women, exclusively. I recognize that our own
spaces are essential for developing and recharging.
As a Black woman, I find it necessary to withdraw into all-Black
groups at times for exactly the same reasons — differences in stages
of development and differences in levels of interaction. Frequently,
when speaking with men and white women, I am reminded of how
difficult and time-consuming it is to have to reinvent the pencil
every time you want to send a message.
But this does not mean that my responsibility for my son’s
education stops at age ten, any more than it does for my daughter’s.
However, for each of them, that responsibility does grow less and
less as they become more woman and man.
Both Beth and Jonathan need to know what they can share and
what they cannot, how they are joined and how they are not. And
Frances and I, as grown women and lesbians coming more and more
into our power, need to relearn the experience that difference does
not have to be threatening.
When I envision the future, I think of the world I crave for my
daughters and my sons. It is thinking for survival of the species —
thinking for life.
Most likely there will always be women who move with women,
women who live with men, men who choose men. I work for a time
when women with women, women with men, men with men, all
share the work of a world that does not barter bread or self for
obedience, nor beauty, nor love. And in that world we will raise our
children free to choose how best to fulfill themselves. For we are
jointly responsible for the care and raising of the young, since that
they be raised is a function, ultimately, of the species.

Within that tripartite pattern of relating/existence, the raising of
the young will be the joint responsibility of all adults who choose to
be associated with children. Obviously, the children raised within
each of these three relationships will be different, lending a special
savor to that eternal inquiry into how best can we live our lives.
Jonathan was three-and-a-half when Frances and I met. He is now
fourteen years old. I feel the living perspective that having lesbian
parents has brought to Jonathan is a valuable addition to his human
sensitivity.
Jonathan has had the advantage of growing up within a nonsexist
relationship, one in which this society’s pseudo-natural assumptions
of ruler/ruled are being challenged. And this is not only because
Frances and I are lesbians, for unfortunately there are some lesbians
who are still locked into patriarchal patterns of unequal power
relationships.
These assumptions of power relationships are being questioned
because Frances and I, often painfully and with varying degrees of
success, attempt to evaluate and measure over and over again our
feelings concerning power, our own and others’. And we explore
with care those areas concerning how it is used and expressed
between us and between us and the children, openly and otherwise.
A good part of our biweekly family meetings are devoted to this
exploration.
As parents, Frances and I have given Jonathan our love, our
openness, and our dreams to help form his visions. Most
importantly, as the son of lesbians, he has had an invaluable model
— not only of a relationship — but of relating.
Jonathan is fourteen now. In talking over this paper with him and
asking his permission to share some pieces of his life, I asked
Jonathan what he felt were the strongest negative and the strongest
positive aspects for him in having grown up with lesbian parents.
He said the strongest benefit he felt he had gained was that he
knew a lot more about people than most other kids his age that he
knew, and that he did not have a lot of the hang-ups that some
other boys did about men and women.

And the most negative aspect he felt, Jonathan said, was the
ridicule he got from some kids with straight parents.
“You mean, from your peers?” I said.
“Oh no,” he answered promptly. “My peers know better. I mean
other kids.”
* First published in Conditions: Four (1979).
* From “School Note” in The Black Unicom (W.W. Norton and Company, New York,

1978), p. 55.

An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich*
Adrienne: What do you mean when you say that two essays,
“Poetry Is Not a Luxury” and “Uses of the Erotic” are really
progressions?
Andre: They’re part of something that’s not finished yet. I don’t
know what the rest of it is, but they’re clear progressions in feeling
out something connected with the first piece of prose I ever wrote.
One thread in my life is the battle to preserve my perceptions —
pleasant or unpleasant, painful or whatever …
Adrienne: And however much they were denied.
Audre: And however painful some of them were. When I think of
the way in which I courted punishment, just swam into it: “If this is
the only way you’re going to deal with me, you’re gonna have to
deal with me this way.”
Adrienne: You’re talking about as a young child?
Audre: I’m talking about throughout my life. I kept myself
through feeling. I lived through it. And at such a subterranean level
that I didn’t know how to talk. I was busy feeling out other ways of
getting and giving information and whatever else I could because
talking wasn’t where it was at. People were talking all around me
all the time — and not either getting or giving much that was useful
to them or to me.
Adrienne: And not listening to what you tried to say, if you did
speak.
Audre: When you asked how I began writing, I told you how
poetry functioned specifically for me from the time I was very
young. When someone said to me, “How do you feel?” or “What do
you think?” or asked another direct question, I would recite a poem,
and somewhere in that poem would be the feeling, the vital piece of
information. It might be a line. It might be an image. The poem was
my response.

Adrienne; Like a translation into this poem that already existed of
something you knew in a preverbal way. So the poem became your
language?
Audre: Yes. I remember reading in the children’s room of the
library, I couldn’t have been past the second or third grade, but I
remember the book. It was illustrated by Arthur Rackham, a book of
poems. These were old books; the library in Harlem used to get the
oldest books, in the worst condition. Walter de la Mare’s “The
Listeners” — I will never forget that poem.
Adrienne: Where the traveler rides up to the door of the empty
house?
Audre: That’s right. He knocks at the door and nobody answers.
“ ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.” That poem imprinted itself on
me. And finally, he’s beating down the door and nobody answers,
and he has a feeling that there really is somebody in there. Then he
turns his horse and says, “ ‘Tell them I came, and nobody answered.
That I kept my word.’ ” I used to recite that poem to myself all the
time. It was one of my favorites. And if you’d asked me, “What is it
about?” I don’t think I could have told you. But this was the first
reason for my own writing, my need to say things I couldn’t say
otherwise when I couldn’t find other poems to serve.
Adrienne: You had to make your own.
Audre: There were so many complex emotions for which poems
did not exist. I had to find a secret way to express my feelings. I
used to memorize my poems. I would say them out; I didn’t use to
write them down. I had this long fund of poetry in my head. And I
remember trying when I was in high school not to think in poems. I
saw the way other people thought, and it was an amazement to me
— step by step, not in bubbles up from chaos that you had to anchor
with words … I really do believe I learned this from my mother.
Adrienne: Learned what from your mother?
Andre: The important value of nonverbal communication, beneath
language. My life depended on it. At the same time, living in the
world, I didn’t want to have anything to do with the way she was
using language. My mother had a strange way with words: if one
didn’t serve her or wasn’t strong enough, she’d just make up

another word, and then that would enter our family language
forever, and woe betide any of us who forgot it. But I think I got
another message from her … that there was a whole powerful world
of nonverbal communication and contact between people that was
absolutely essential and that was what you had to learn to decipher
and use. One of the reasons I had so much trouble growing up was
that my parents, my mother in particular, always expected me to
know what she was feeling and what she expected me to do without
telling me. And I thought this was natural. My mother would expect
me to know things, whether or not she spoke them …
Adrienne: Ignorance of the law was no excuse.
Audre: That’s right. It’s very confusing. But eventually I learned
how to acquire vital and protective information without words. My
mother used to say to me, “Don’t just listen like a ninny to what
people say in their mouth.” But then she’d proceed to say something
that didn’t feel right to me. You always learned from observing. You
have to pick things up nonverbally because people will never tell
you what you’re supposed to know. You have to get it for yourself,
whatever it is that you need in order to survive. And if you make a
mistake you get punished for it, but that’s no big thing. You become
strong by doing the things you need to be strong for. This is the way
genuine learning takes place. That’s a very difficult way to live, but
it also has served me. It’s been an asset as well as a liability. When I
went to high school, I found out that people really thought in
different ways — perceived, puzzled out, acquired information
verbally. I had such a hard time. I never studied; I literally intuited
all my teachers. That’s why it was so important to get a teacher who
I liked because I never studied, I never read my assignment, and I
would get all this stuff — what they felt, what they knew — but I
missed a lot of other stuff, a lot of my own original workings.
Adrienne: When you said you never read, you meant you never
read the assignments, but you were reading?
Audre: If I read things that were assigned, I didn’t read them the
way we were supposed to. Everything was like a poem, with
different curves, different levels. So I always felt that the ways I

took things in were different from the ways other people took them
in. I used to practice trying to think.
Adrienne: That thing those other people presumably did. Do you
remember what that was like?
Andre: Yes. I had an image of trying to reach something around a
corner, that it was just eluding me. The image was constantly
vanishing. There was an experience I had in Mexico, when I moved
to Cuernavaca …
Adrienne: This was when you were about how old?
Andre: I was nineteen. I was commuting to Mexico City for
classes. In order to get to my early class I would catch a six o’clock
turismo in the village plaza. I would come out of my house before
dawn. You know, there are two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and
Ixtacuhuatl. I thought they were clouds the first time I saw them
through my windows. It would be dark, and I would see the snow
on top of the mountains and the sun coming up. And when the sun
crested, at a certain point, the birds would start. But because we
were in the valley it would still look like night. But there would be
the light of the snow. And then this incredible crescendo of birds.
One morning I came over the hill and the green, wet smells came
up. And then the birds, the sound of them I’d never really noticed,
never heard birds before. I was walking down the hill and I was
transfixed. It was very beautiful. I hadn’t been writing all the time I
was in Mexico. And poetry was the thing I had with words, that was
so important … And on that hill, I had the first intimation that I
could bring those two together. I could infuse words directly with
what I was feeling. I didn’t have to create the world I wrote about. I
realized that words could tell. That there was such a thing as an
emotional sentence. Until then, I would make these constructs and
somewhere in there would be a nugget, like a Chinese bun, a piece
of nourishment, the thing I really needed, which I had to create.
There on that hill, I was filled with the smell and feeling and the
way it looked, filled with such beauty that I could not believe … I
had always fantasized it before. I used to fantasize trees and dream
forest. Until I got spectacles when I was four I thought trees were
green clouds. When I read Shakespeare in high school, I would get

off on his gardens and Spanish moss and roses and trellises with
beautiful women at rest and sun on red brick. When I was in Mexico
I found out this could be a reality. And I learned that day on the
mountain that words can match that, re-create it.
Adrienne: Do you think that in Mexico you were seeing a reality as
extraordinary and vivid and sensual as you had been fantasizing it
could be?
Audre: I think so. I had always thought I had to do it in my head,
make it up. I learned in Mexico that you can’t even make it up
unless it happens, or can happen. Where it happened first for me I
don’t know; I do remember stories my mother would tell us about
Grenada in the West Indies, where she was born … But that
morning in Mexico I realized I did not have to make beauty up for
the rest of my life. I remember trying to tell Eudora about this
epiphany, and I didn’t have the words for it. And I remember her
saying, “Write a poem.” When I tried to write a poem about the way
I felt that morning, I could not do it, and all I had was the memory
that there must be a way. That was incredibly important. I know
that I came back from Mexico very, very different, and much of it
had to do with what I learned from Eudora. But more than that, it
was a kind of releasing of my work, a releasing of myself.
Adrienne: Then you went back to the Lower East Side, right?
Audre: Yes, I went back to living with my friend Ruth, and I began
trying to get a job. I had had a year of college, but I could not
function in those people’s world. So I thought I could be a nurse.
And I was having such a hard time getting any kind of work. I felt,
well, a Practical Nursing license, and then I’ll go back to Mexico …
Adrienne: With my trade.
Audre: But that wasn’t possible either. I didn’t have any money,
and Black women were not given Practical Nursing fellowships. I
didn’t realize it at the time because what they said was that my eyes
were too bad. But the first thing I did when I came back was to
write a piece of prose about Mexico, called “La Llorona.” La Llorona
is a legend in that part of Mexico, around Cuernavaca. You know
Cuernavaca? You know the big barrancas? When the rains come to
the mountains, the boulders rush through the big ravines. The

sound, the first rush, would start one or two days before the rains
came. All the rocks tumbling down from the mountains made a
voice, and the echoes would resound and it would be a sound of
weeping, with the waters behind it. Modesta, a woman who lived in
the house, told me the legend of La Llorona. A woman had three
sons and found her husband lying in another woman’s bed — it’s
the Medea story — and drowned her sons in the barrancas, drowned
her children. And every year around this time she comes back to
mourn the deaths. I took this story and out of a combination of ways
I was feeling I wrote a story called “La Llorona.” It’s a story
essentially of my mother and me. It was as if I had picked my
mother up and put her in that place: here is this woman who kills,
who wants something, the woman who consumes her children, who
wants too much, but wants not because she’s evil but because she
wants her own life, but by now it is so distorted.… It was a very
strange unfinished story, but the dynamic …
Adrienne: It sounds like you were trying to pull those two pieces
of your life together, your mother and what you’d learned in
Mexico.
Audre: Yes. You see, I didn’t deal at all with how strong my
mother was inside of me, but she was, nor with how involved I was.
But this story is beautiful. Pieces of it are in my head where the
poetry pool is, phrases and so on. I had never written prose before
and I’ve never written any since until just now. I published it under
the name Rey Domini in a magazine …
Adrienne: Why did you use a pseudonym?
Audre: Because … I don’t write stories. I write poetry. So I had to
put it under another name.
Adrienne: Because it was a different piece of you?
Audre: That’s right. I only write poetry and here is this story. But I
used the name Rey Domini, which is Audre Lorde in Latin.
Adrienne: Did you really not write prose from the time of that
story until a couple of years ago, when you wrote “Poetry Is Not a
Luxury”?
Audre: I couldn’t. For some reason, the more poetry I wrote, the
less I felt I could write prose. Someone would ask for a book review,

or, when I worked at the library, for a precis about books — it
wasn’t that I didn’t have the skills. I knew about sentences by that
time. I knew how to construct a paragraph. But communicating
deep feeling in linear, solid blocks of print felt arcane, a method
beyond me.
Adrienne: But you’d been writing letters like wildfire, hadn’t you?
Audre: Well, I didn’t write letters as such. I wrote stream of
consciousness, and for people who were close enough to me this
would serve. My friends gave me back the letters I wrote them from
Mexico — strange, those are the most formed. I remember feeling I
could not focus on a thought long enough to have it from start to
finish, but I could ponder a poem for days, camp out in its world.
Adrienne: Do you think that was because you still had this idea
that thinking was a mysterious process that other people did and
that you had to sort of practice? That it wasn’t something you just
did?
Audre: It was a very mysterious process for me. And it was one I
had come to suspect because I had seen so many errors committed
in its name, and I had come not to respect it. On the other hand, I
was also afraid of it because there were inescapable conclusions or
convictions I had come to about my own life, my own feelings, that
defied thought. And I wasn’t going to let them go. I wasn’t going to
give them up. They were too precious to me. They were life to me.
But I couldn’t analyze or understand them because they didn’t make
the kind of sense I had been taught to expect through
understanding. There were things I knew and couldn’t say. And I
couldn’t understand them.
Adrienne: In the sense of being able to take them out, analyze
them, defend them?
Audre: … write prose about them. Right. I wrote a lot of those
poems you first knew me by, those poems in The First Cities,* way
back in high school. If you had asked me to talk about one of those
poems, I’d have talked in the most banal way. All I had was the
sense that I had to hold on to these feelings and that I had to air
them in some way.
Adrienne: But they were also being transformed into language.

Audre: That’s right. When I wrote something that finally had it, I
would say it aloud and it would come alive, become real. It would
start repeating itself and I’d know, that’s struck, that’s true. Like a
bell. Something struck true. And there the words would be.
Adrienne: How do you feel writing connected for you with
teaching?
Audre: I know teaching is a survival technique. It is for me and I
think it is in general; the only way real learning happens. Because I
myself was learning something I needed to continue living. And I
was examining it and teaching it at the same time I was learning it. I
was teaching it to myself aloud. And it started out at Tougaloo in a
poetry workshop.
Adrienne: You were ill when you were called to go down to
Tougaloo?
Audre: Yes, I felt … I had almost died.
Adrienne: What was going on?
Audre: Diane di Prima — that was 1967 — had started the Poets
Press. And she said, “You know, it’s time you had a book.” And I
said, “Well, who’s going to print it?” I was going to put those poems
away because I found I was revising too much instead of writing
new poems, and that’s how I found out, again through experience,
that poetry is not Play-Doh. You can’t take a poem and keep reforming it. It is itself, and you have to know how to cut it, and if
there’s something else you want to say, that’s fine. But I was
repolishing and repolishing, and Diane said, “You have to print
these. Put ’em out.” And the Poets Press published The First Cities.
Well, I worked on that book, getting it together, and it was going
into press … I had gotten the proofs back and I started repolishing
again and realized, “This is going to be a book!” Putting myself on
the line. People I don’t even know are going to read these poems.
What’s going to happen?
It felt very critical, and I was in an absolute blaze of activity
because things were so bad at home financially. I went out and got a
job; I was with the two kids in the daytime and worked at the
library at night. Jonathan used to cry every night when I left, and I

would hear his shrieks going down this long hall to the elevator. I
was working nights, and I’d apprenticed myself to a stained-glass
window-maker, and I was working in my mother’s office, and
making Christmas for my friends, and I became very ill — I had
overdone it. I was too sick to get up, and Ed answered the phone. It
was Galen Williams from the Poetry Center asking if I’d like to go as
poet-in-residence to Tougaloo, a Black college in Mississippi. I’d
been recommended for a grant. It was Ed who said, “You have to do
this.” My energy was at such a low ebb that I couldn’t see how. It
was very frightening to me, the idea of someone responding to me
as a poet. This book, by the way, hadn’t even come out yet, you
understand?
Adrienne: And suddenly you were already being taken seriously by
unseen people out there.
Andre: That’s right. In particular, I was asked to be public; to
speak as, rather than to. But I felt as if I’d come back from the dead
at that point, and so everything was up for grabs. I thought, hey,
very good, let’s see — not because I felt I could do it, I just knew it
was new and different. I was terrified to go south. Then there were
echoes of an old dream: I had wanted to go to Tougaloo years
before. My friend Elaine and I were going to join the Freedom
Riders in Jackson when we left California in 1961 to return to New
York, and Elaine’s mother got down on her knees in San Francisco
and begged us please not to do this, that they would kill us, and we
didn’t do it. So going to Tougaloo in Jackson was part of the
mythic …
Adrienne: But it sounds as if earlier you had been more romantic
about what going south would mean, and six years later, with two
kids and everything that had happened in between in the south …
Audre: I was scared. I thought: “I’m going.” Really, it was the first
thing that countered the fury and pain I felt at leaving that little boy
screaming every night. It was like — all right, if I can walk out and
hear that child screaming in order to go down to the library and
work every night, then I’m gonna be able at least to do something
that I want to find out about. So I went.

Adrienne: Were you scared at Tougaloo, in terms of teaching,
meeting your first workshop?
Audre: Yes, but it was a nurturing atmosphere. I lived there for
two weeks before I went around really gathering people, and there
were eight students who were already writing poetry. The ways in
which I was on the line in Tougaloo … I began to learn about
courage, I began to learn to talk. This was a small group and we
became very close. I learned so much from listening to people. The
only thing I had was honesty and openness. And it was absolutely
necessary for me to declare, as terrified as I was, as we were
opening to each other, “The father of my children is white.” And
what that meant in Tougaloo to those young Black people then, to
talk about myself openly and deal with their hostility, their sense of
disillusionment, to come past that, was very hard.
Adrienne: It must have been particularly hard since you knew by
then that the marriage was going nowhere. It’s like having to defend
something that was not in itself defensible.
Audre: What I was defending was something that needed defense.
And this moved it out of “I’m defending Ed because I want to live
with him.” It was, “I’m defending this relationship because we have
a right to examine it and try it.” So there’s the northern Black poet
making contact with these young southern Black people who are not
saying, “This is what we need you for,” but were telling me by who
they were what they needed from me. In the poem “Black Studies”*
a lot of that starts coming through. Tougaloo laid the foundation for
that poem, that knowledge born five years later. My students
needed my perception, yet my perception of their need was different
from what they were saying. What they were saying aloud was, “We
need strong Black people,” but what they were also saying was that
their ideas of what strong was had come from our oppressors and
didn’t jibe with their feelings at all.
It was through poetry that we began to deal with these things —
formally. I knew nothing. Adrienne, I had never read a book about
poetry! I picked up one day a book by Karl Shapiro, a little thin
white book. I opened it and something he said made sense. “Poetry
doesn’t sell Cadillacs.” It was the first time I’d ever talked about

writing; always before I’d listened — part of my being inarticulate,
inscrutable; I didn’t understand in terms of verbalization, and if I
did I was too terrified to speak anyway. But at Tougaloo we talked
about poetry. And I got the first copies of my book there at
Tougaloo.
I had never been in this relationship with Black people before.
Never. There had been a very uneasy dialogue between me and the
Harlem Writers’ Guild where I felt I was tolerated but never really
accepted — that I was both crazy and queer but would grow out of
it all. Johnny Clarke adopted me because he really loved me, and
he’s a kind man. And he taught me wonderful things about Africa.
And he said to me, “You are a poet. You are a poet. I don’t
understand your poetry but you are a poet, you are.” So I would get
this underlining of me. “You’re not doing what you’re supposed to
do, but, yes, you can do it and we totally expect you to. You are a
bright and shining light. You’re off on a lot of wrong turns —
women, the Village, white people, all of this, but you’re young yet.
You’ll find your way.” So I would get these double messages, this
kind of underlining and rejection at the same time. It reduplicated
my family, you see. In my family it was: “You’re a Lorde, so that
makes you special and particular above anybody else in the world.
But you’re not our kind of Lorde, so when are you going to
straighten out and act right?”
Adrienne: And did you feel, there in the Harlem Writers’ Guild,
the same kind of unwritten laws that you had to figure out in order
to do right?
Audre: Yes, I would bring poems to read at the meetings. And
hoping, well, they’re gonna tell me actually what it is they want,
but they never could, never did.
Adrienne: Were there women in that group, older women?
Audre: Rosa Guy was older than I, but she was still very young. I
remember only one other woman, Gertrude McBride. But she came
in and out of the workshop so quickly I never knew her. For the
most part, the men were the core. My friend Jeannie and I were
members but in a slightly different position; we were in high school.

Adrienne: And so Tougaloo was an entirely different experience of
working with other Black writers.
Audre: When I went to Tougaloo, I didn’t know what to give or
where it was going to come from. I knew I couldn’t give what
regular teachers of poetry give, nor did I want to, because they’d
never served me. I couldn’t give what English teachers give. The
only thing I had to give was me. And I was so involved with these
young people — I really loved them. I knew the emotional life of
each of those students because we would have conferences, and that
became inseparable from their poetry. I would talk to them in the
group about their poetry in terms of what I knew about their lives,
and that there was a real connection between the two that was
inseparable no matter what they’d been taught to the contrary.
I knew by the time I left Tougaloo that teaching was the work I
needed to be doing, that library work — by this time I was head
librarian at the Town School — was not enough. It had been very
satisfying to me. And I had a kind of stature I hadn’t had before in
terms of working. But from the time I went to Tougaloo and did that
workshop, I knew: not only, yes, I am a poet, but also, this is the
kind of work I’m going to do.
Practically all the poems in Cables to Rage* I wrote in Tougaloo. I
was there for six weeks. I came back knowing that my relationship
with Ed was not enough: either we were going to change it or end
it. I didn’t know how to end it because there had never been any
endings for me. But I had met Frances at Tougaloo, and I knew she
was going to be a permanent person in my life. However, I didn’t
know how we were going to work it out. I’d left a piece of my heart
in Tougaloo not just because of Frances but because of what my
students there had taught me.
And I came back, and my students called me and told me — they
were all of them also in the Tougaloo choir — they were coming to
New York to sing in Carnegie Hall with Duke Ellington on April 4,
and I covered it for the Clarion-Ledger, in Jackson, so I was there,
and while we were there Martin Luther King was killed.
Adrienne: On that night?

Audre: I was with the Tougaloo choir at Carnegie Hall when he
was killed. They were singing “What the World Needs Now Is Love.”
And they interrupted it to tell us that Martin Luther King had been
killed.
Adrienne: What did people do?
Audre: Duke Ellington started to cry. Honeywell, the head of the
choir, said, “The only thing we can do here is finish this as a
memorial.” And they sang again, “What the World Needs Now is
Love.” The kids were crying. The audience was crying. And then the
choir stopped. They cut the rest of it short. But they sang that song
and it kept reverberating. It was more than pain. The horror, the
enormity of what was happening. Not just the death of King, but
what it meant. I have always had the sense of Armageddon and it
was much stronger in those days, the sense of living on the edge of
chaos. Not just personally, but on the world level. That we were
dying, that we were killing our world — that sense had always been
with me. That whatever I was doing, whatever we were doing that
was creative and right, functioned to hold us from going over the
edge. That this was the most we could do while we constructed
some saner future. But that we were in that kind of peril. And here
it was reality, in fact. Some of the poems — “Equinox”* is one of
them — come from then. I knew then that I had to leave the library.
And it was just about this time that Yolanda took my book, The First
Cities, to Mina Shaughnessy* who had been her teacher, and I think
she said to Mina, “Why don’t you have her teach?” — because that’s
the way, you know, Yolanda is.
Adrienne: But also, Mina would have listened to that.
Audre: So Yolanda came home and said, “Hey, the head of the
SEEK** English program wants to meet you. Maybe you can get a
job there.” And I thought, I have to lay myself on the line. It’s not
going back south and being shot at, but when Mina said to me,
“Teach,” it was as threatening as that was. I felt at the time, I don’t
know how I’m gonna do it, but that’s the front line for me. And I
talked to Frances about this, because we’d had the Tougaloo
experience, and I said, “If I could go to war, if I could pick up a gun
to defend the things I believe, yes — but what am I gonna do in a

classroom?” And Frances said, “You’ll do just what you did at
Tougaloo.” And the first thing that I said to my SEEK students was,
“I’m scared too.”
Adrienne: I know I went in there in terror. But I went in white
terror; you know, now you’re on the line, all your racism is going to
show …
Audre: I went in in Audre terror, Black terror. I thought, I have
responsibility to these students. How am I going to speak to them?
How am I going to tell them what I want from them — literally —
that kind of terror. I did not know how to open my mouth and be
understood. And my commadre, Yolanda, who was also a student in
the SEEK program, said, “I guess you’re just going to have to talk to
them the same way you talk to me because I’m one of them and
you’ve gotten across to me.” I learned every single thing in every
classroom. Every single class I ever walked into was like doing it
anew. Every day, every week. But that was the exciting thing.
Adrienne: Did you teach English 1 — that back-to-back course
where you could be a poet, a writing teacher, and not teach
grammar, and they had an English instructor to teach the grammar?
That was the only way I could have started doing it either.
Audre: I learned to teach grammar. And then I realized that we
can’t separate these two things. We have to do them together
because they’re integral. That’s when I learned how important
grammar is, that part of the understanding process is grammatical.
That’s how I taught myself to write prose. I kept learning and
learning. I’d come into my class and say, “Guess what I found out
last night. Tenses are a way of ordering the chaos around time.” I
learned that grammar was not arbitrary, that it served a purpose,
that it helped to form the ways we thought, that it could be freeing
as well as restrictive. And I sensed again how as children we learn
this, and why. It’s like driving a car: once we know it we can choose
to discard it or use it, but you can’t know if it has useful or
destructive power until you have a handle on it. It’s like fear: once
you put your hand on it, you can use it or push it away. I was saying
these things in class and dealing with what was happening with
Frances and me, what was going on with this insane man I lived

with who wanted to continue pretending life could be looked at one
way and lived another. All this, every bit of it funneling into that
class. My children were just learning to read in school, and that was
important too because I could watch their processes. Then it got
even heavier when I went up to Lehmann College and was teaching
a class on racism in education, teaching these white students how it
was, the connections between their lives and the fury …
Adrienne: You taught a course on racism for white students at
Lehmann?
Audre: They were inaugurating a program in the Education
Department for these white kids going into teaching in the New
York City schools. Lehmann used to be 99 percent white, and it was
these students coming out of the Education Department who were
going to teach Black children in the city schools. So the course was
called “Race and the Urban Situation.” I had all these white students
wanting to know, “What are we doing? Why are our kids hating us
in the classroom?” I could not believe that they did not know the
most elementary level of interactions. I would say, “When a white
kid says 2 + 2 = 4, you say ‘right.’ In the same class, when a Black
kid stands up and says 2 + 2 = 4, you pat him on the back, you
say, ‘Hey, that’s wonderful.’ But what message are you really
giving? Or what happens when you walk down the street on your
way to teach? When you walk into class? Let’s play act a little.” And
all the fear and loathing of these young white college students
would come pouring out; it had never been addressed.
Adrienne: They must have been mostly women, weren’t they? In
the Education Department?
Audre: Yes, mostly women, and they felt like unwilling sacrifices.
But I began to feel by the end of two terms that there ought to be
somebody white doing this. It was terribly costly emotionally. I
didn’t have more than one or two Black students in my class. One of
them dropped out saying this wasn’t right for him, and I thought,
wait a minute, racism doesn’t just distort white people — what
about us? What about the effects of white racism upon the ways
Black people view each other? Racism internalized? What about
Black teachers going into ghetto schools? And I saw there were

different problems, that were just as severe, for a Black teacher
going into New York City schools after a racist, sexist education.
Adrienne: You mean in terms of expectations?
Audre: Not just in terms of expectations, but of self-image, in
terms of confusion about loyalties. In terms of identifying with the
oppressor. And I thought, who is going to start to deal with that?
What do you do about it? This was where I wanted to use my
energies. Meanwhile, this is 1969, and I’m thinking, what is my
place in all this? There were two Black women in the class, and I
tried to talk to them about us, as Black women, having to get
together. The Black organizations on the campuses were revving up
for the spring actions. And the women said, “You are insane, our
men need us.” It was a total rejection. “No, we can’t come together
as women. We’re Black.” But I had to keep trying to straighten out
the threads because I knew the minute I stopped trying to straighten
this shit out, it was going to engulf me. So the only hope I had was
to work at it, work on all the threads. My love with Frances, Ed, the
children, teaching Black students, the women.
And in ’69 came the Black and Puerto Rican occupation at City
College. Black students outside of class on the barricades. Yolanda
and I would bring over soup and blankets and see Black women
being fucked on tables and under desks. And while we’d be trying to
speak to them as women, all we’d hear is, “The revolution is here,
right?” Seeing how Black women were being used and abused was
painful — putting those things together. I said, “I want to teach
Black students again.” I went to John Jay College and discussed a
course with the dean on racism and the urban situation, and he said,
“Come teach it.” I taught two courses, that one and another new
course I introduced to the English Department, which approached
remedial writing through creative writing. It was confrontation
teaching.
Adrienne: John Jay was largely a police college, right?
Audre: It had been a police college, but I began in 1970 after open
admissions started, and John Jay was now a four-year senior college
with a regular enrollment as well as an enrollment of City
uniformed personnel. There were no Black teachers in English or

history. Most of our incoming freshmen were Black or Puerto Rican.
And my demeanor was very unthreatening.
Adrienne: I’ve seen your demeanor at John Jay and it was not
unthreatening, but that was a bit later …
Audre: … and also, I was a Black woman. So then I came in and
started this course and really meant business. And it was very
heavily attended. A lot of Black and white policemen registered for
it. And literally, I used to be terrified about the guns.
Adrienne: They were wearing guns?
Audre: Yes. And since open admissions made college accessible to
all high school graduates, we had cops and kids off the block in the
same class. In 1970, the Black Panthers were being murdered in
Chicago. Here we had Black and white cops, and Black and white
kids off the block. Most of the women were young, Black, together
women who had come to college now because they’d not been able
to get in before. Some of them were SEEK students, but not all, and
this was the one chance for them. A lot of them were older. They
were very streetwise, but they had done very little work with
themselves as Black women. They had done it only in relation to,
against, whitey. The enemy was always outside. I did that course in
the same way I did all the others, which was learning as I went
along, asking the hard questions, not knowing what was coming
next. I wish I had recorded some of it. Like the young white cop in
the class saying, “Yeah, but everybody needs someone to look down
on, don’t they?” By then I’d learned how to talk. Things weren’t all
concise or refined, but enough of it got through to them; their own
processes would start. I came to realize that in one term that is the
most you can do. There are people who can give chunks of
information, perhaps, but that was not what I was about. The
learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a
riot. And then, just possibly, hopefully, it goes home, or on.
By that time the battle over the Black Studies Department had
started at John Jay. And again I saw the use and abuse of women, of
Black people, saw how Black studies was being used by the
university in a really cynical fashion. A year later, I returned to the
English Department. I had made a number of enemies. One of the

attempts to discredit me among Black students was to say I was a
lesbian. Now by this time I would have considered myself
uncloseted, but I had never discussed my own poetry at John Jay,
nor my sexuality. I knew, as I had always known, that the only way
you can head people off from using who you are against you is to be
honest and open first, to talk about yourself before they talk about
you. It wasn’t even courage. Speaking up was a protective
mechanism for myself — like publishing “Love Poem” in Ms.
magazine in 1971 and bringing it in and putting it up on the wall of
the English Department.
Adrienne: I remember hearing you read “Love Poem” on the Upper
West Side, a coffeehouse at 72nd Street. It was the first time I’d
heard you read it. And I think it was about that time, the early
seventies. You read it. It was incredible. Like defiance. It was
glorious.
Audre: That’s how I was feeling, back against the wall, because as
bad as it is now, the idea of open lesbianism in the Black
community was — I mean, we’ve moved miles in a very short time
— totally horrible. My publisher called and literally said he didn’t
understand the words of “Love Poem.” He said, “Now what is this
all about? Are you supposed to be a man?” And he was a poet! And
I said, “No, I’m a loving woman.”
Adrienne: Well, don’t tell me that your publisher had never heard
of lesbians.
Audre: I’m sure he had, but the idea that I’d write a poem …
Adrienne: … That one of his poets in the Broadside Series …
Audre: That’s right. And he was a sensitive man. He was a poet.
Adrienne: But he did print your work.
Audre: Yes, he did. But he didn’t print that poem, the first time
around. “Love Poem” was supposed to have been in From a Land
Where Other People Live.
Adrienne: And it wasn’t published in that book? You took it out?
Audre: Yes. But when you heard me read “Love Poem,” I had
already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be worrying any
more over who knows and who doesn’t know that I have always
loved women. One thing has always kept me going — and it’s not

really courage or bravery, unless that’s what courage or bravery is
made of — is a sense that there are so many ways in which I’m
vulnerable and cannot help but be vulnerable, I’m not going to be
more vulnerable by putting weapons of silence in my enemies’
hands. Being an open lesbian in the Black community is not easy,
although being closeted is even harder.
When a people share a common oppression, certain kinds of skills
and joint defenses are developed. And if you survive you survive
because those skills and defenses have worked. When you come into
conflict over other existing differences, there is a vulnerability to
each other which is desperate and very deep. And that is what
happens between Black men and women because we have certain
weapons we have perfected together that white women and men
have not shared. I said this to someone, and she said, very rightly,
the same thing exists within the Jewish community between Jewish
men and Jewish women. I think the oppression is different, but the
same mechanism of vulnerability exists. When you share a common
oppression you have certain additional weapons against each other
because you’ve forged them in secret together against a common
enemy. It’s a fear that I’m still not free of and that I remember all
the time when I deal with other Black women: the fear of the excomrade.
Adrienne: In “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” you wrote: “The white
fathers told us, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ and the Black mother
within each of us — the poet — whispers in our dreams, ‘I feel,
therefore I can be free.’ ” I’ve heard it remarked that here you are
simply restating the old stereotype of the rational white male and
the emotional dark female. I believe you were saying something
very different, but could you talk a little about that?
Audre: I have heard that accusation, that I’m contributing to the
stereotype, that I’m saying the province of intelligence and
rationality belongs to the white male. But if you’re traveling a road
that begins nowhere and ends nowhere, the ownership of that road
is meaningless. If you have no land out of which the road comes, no
place that road goes to, geographically, no goal, then the existence

of that road is totally meaningless. Leaving rationality to the white
man is like leaving him a piece of that road that begins nowhere
and ends nowhere. When I talk about the Black mother in each of
us, the poet, I don’t mean the Black mothers in each of us who are
called poets, I mean the Black mother …
Adrienne: Who is the poet?
Audre: The Black mother who is the poet exists in every one of us.
Now when males or patriarchal thinkers (whether male or female)
reject that combination, then we’re truncated. Rationality is not
unnecessary. It serves the chaos of knowledge. It serves feeling. It
serves to get from this place to that place. But if you don’t honor
those places, then the road is meaningless. Too often, that’s what
happens with the worship of rationality and that circular, academic,
analytic thinking. But ultimately, I don’t see feel/think as a
dichotomy. I see them as a choice of ways and combinations.
Adrienne: Which we are constantly making. We don’t make it once
and for all. We constantly have to be making it, depending on where
we are, over and over.
Audre: But I do think that we have been taught to think, to codify
information in certain old ways, to learn, to understand in certain
ways. The possible shapes of what has not been before exist only in
that back place, where we keep those unnamed, untamed longings
for something different and beyond what is now called possible, and
to which our understanding can only build roads, But we have been
taught to deny those fruitful areas of ourselves. I personally believe
that the Black mother exists more in women; yet she is the name for
a humanity that men are not without. But they have taken a
position against that piece of themselves, and it is a world position,
a position throughout time. And I’ve said this to you before,
Adrienne, I feel that we’re evolving. In terms of a species …
Adrienne: That women are evolving …
Audre: That the human race is evolving through women. That it’s
not by accident that there are more and more women — this sounds
crazy, doesn’t it — women being born, women surviving … and
we’ve got to take that promise of new power seriously, or we’ll
make the same mistakes all over again. Unless we learn the lessons

of the Black mother in each of us, whether we are Black or not … I
believe this power exists in men also but they choose not to deal
with it; which is, as I learned, their right. Hopefully this choice can
be affected, but I don’t know. I don’t believe this shift from
conquering problems to experiencing life is a one-generational shot
or a single investment. I believe it’s a whole signature which you try
to set in motion and have some input into. But I’m not saying that
women don’t think or analyze. Or that white does not feel. I’m
saying that we must never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos
which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark
which is rejected which is messy which is …
Adrienne: Sinister …
Audre: Sinister, smelly, erotic, confused, upsetting …
Adrienne: I think we have to keep using and affirming a
vocabulary that has been used negatively and perjoratively. And I
assume that’s the statement you’re making in that sentence, that
you make over and over in your poetry. And it’s nothing as
simplistic as saying “Black is beautiful,” either.
Audre: There’s nothing beautiful about a black machine. You
know, Adrienne, when I was in high school, the editor of the school
magazine said to me, softening her rejection of a poem, “After all,
Audre, you don’t want to be a sensualist poet.”
Adrienne: I was told, as a poet, you’re not supposed to be angry,
you’re not supposed to be personal.
Audre: After I published “Uses of the Erotic,” a number of women
who read it said that this is antifeminist, that the use of the erotic as
a guide is …
Adrienne: Antifeminist?
Audre: Is reducing us once again to the unseen, the unusable. That
in writing it I am returning us to a place of total intuition without
insight.
Adrienne: And yet, in that essay you’re talking about work and
power, about two of the most political things that exist.
Audre: Yes, but what they see is … and I address this at the very
beginning: I try to say that the erotic has been used against us, even
the word itself, so often, that we have been taught to suspect what is

deepest in ourselves, and that is the way we learn to testify against
ourselves, against our feelings. When we talk in terms of our lives
and our survival as women, we can use our knowledge of the erotic
creatively. The way you get people to testify against themselves is
not to have police tactics and oppressive techniques. What you do is
to build it in so people learn to distrust everything in themselves
that has not been sanctioned, to reject what is most creative in
themselves to begin with, so you don’t even need to stamp it out. A
Black woman devaluating another Black woman’s work. The Black
women buying that hot comb and putting it in my locker at the
library. It wasn’t even Black men; it was Black women testifying
against ourselves. This turning away from the erotic on the part of
some of our best minds, our most creative and analytic women, is
disturbing and destructive. Because we cannot fight old power in
old power terms only. The only way we can do it is by creating
another whole structure that touches every aspect of our existence,
at the same time as we are resisting.
Adrienne: And as you were saying about courses, Black studies,
women’s studies: this is not just a question of being “allowed” to
have our history or literature or theory in the old power framework.
It is every minute of our lives, from our dreams to getting up and
brushing our teeth to when we go to teach …
Audre: There are different choices facing Black and white women
in life, certain specifically different pitfalls surrounding us because
of our experiences, our color. Not only are some of the problems
that face us dissimilar, but some of the entrapments and the
weapons used to neutralize us are not the same.
Adrienne: I wish we could explore this more, about you and me,
but also in general. I think it needs to be talked about, written
about: the differences in alternatives or choices we are offered as
Black and white women. There is a danger of seeing it in an all-ornothing way. I think it is a very complex thing. White women are
constantly offered choices or the appearance of choices. But also
real choices that are undeniable. We don’t always perceive the
difference between the two.

Audre: Adrienne, in my journals I have a lot of pieces of
conversations that I’m having with you in my head. I’ll be having a
conversation with you and I’ll put it in my journal because
stereotypically or symbolically these conversations occur in a space
of Black woman/white woman where it’s beyond Adrienne and
Audre, almost as if we’re two voices.
Adrienne: You mean the conversations you have in your head and
your journal, or the conversations we’re having on this earth?
Audre: The conversations that exist in my head that I put in the
journal. This piece, I think, is one of them — about the different
pitfalls. I’ve never forgotten the impatience in your voice that time
on the telephone, when you said, “It’s not enough to say to me that
you intuit it.” Do you remember? I will never forget that. Even at
the same time that I understood what you meant, I felt a total
wipeout of my modus, my way of perceiving and formulating.
Adrienne: Yes, but it’s not a wipeout of your modus. Because I
don’t think my modus in unintuitive, right? And one of the crosses
I’ve borne all my life is being told that I’m rational, logical, cool — I
am not cool, and I’m not rational and logical in that icy sense. But
there’s a way in which, trying to translate from your experience to
mine, I do need to hear chapter and verse from time to time. I’m
afraid of it all slipping away into: “Ah, yes, I understand you.” You
remember, that telephone conversation was in connection with the
essay I was writing on feminism and racism. I was trying to say to
you, don’t let’s let this evolve into “You don’t understand me” or “I
can’t understand you” or “Yes, of course we understand each other
because we love each other.” That’s bullshit. So if I ask for
documentation, it’s because I take seriously the spaces between us
that difference has created, that racism has created. There are times
when I simply cannot assume that I know what you know, unless
you show me what you mean.
Audre: But I’m used to associating a request for documentation as
a questioning of my perceptions, an attempt to devalue what I’m in
the process of discovering.
Adrienne: It’s not. Help me to perceive what you perceive. That’s
what I’m trying to say to you.

Audre: But documentation does not help one perceive. At best it
only analyzes the perception. At worst, it provides a screen by
which to avoid concentrating on the core revelation, following it
down to how it feels. Again, knowledge and understanding. They
can function in concert, but they don’t replace each other. But I’m
not rejecting your need for documentation.
Adrienne: And in fact, I feel you’ve been giving it to me, in your
poems always, and most recently in the long prose piece you’ve
been writing,* and in talks we’ve been having. I don’t feel the
absence of it now.
Audre: Don’t forget I’m a librarian. I became a librarian because I
really believed I would gain tools for ordering and analyzing
information. I couldn’t know everything in the world, but I would
gain tools for learning it. But that was of limited value. I can
document the road to Abomey for you, and true, you might not get
there without that information. I can respect what you’re saying.
But once you get there, only you know why, what you came for, as
you search for it and perhaps find it.
So at certain stages that request for documentation is a blinder, a
questioning of my perceptions. Someone once said to me that I
hadn’t documented the goddess in Africa, the woman bond that
moves throughout The Black Unicorn.* I had to laugh. I’m a poet, not
a historian. I’ve shared my knowledge, I hope. Now you go
document it, if you wish.
I don’t know about you, Adrienne, but I have a difficult enough
time making my perceptions verbal, tapping that deep place,
forming that handle, and documentation at that point is often
useless. Perceptions precede analysis just as visions precede action
or accomplishments. It’s like getting a poem …
That’s the only thing I’ve had to fight with, my whole life,
preserving my perceptions of how things are, and later, learning
how to accept and correct at the same time. Doing this in the face of
tremendous opposition and cruel judgment. And I spent a long time
questioning my perceptions and my interior knowledge, not dealing
with them, being tripped by them.

Adrienne: Well, I think that there’s another element in all this
between us. Certainly in that particular conversation on the
telephone where I said you have to tell me chapter and verse. I’ve
had great resistance to some of your perceptions. They can be very
painful to me. Perceptions about what goes on between us, what
goes on between Black and white people, what goes on between
Black and white women. So, it’s not that I can just accept your
perceptions unblinkingly. Some of them are very hard for me. But I
don’t want to deny them. I know I can’t afford to. I may have to
take a long hard look and say, “Is this something I can use? What do
I do with this?” I have to try to stand back and not become
immersed in what you so forcefully are pronouncing. So there’s a
piece of me that wants to resist wholly, and a piece that wants to
accept wholly, and there’s some place in between where I have to
find my own ground. What I can’t afford is either to wipe out your
perceptions or to pretend I understand you when I don’t. And then,
if it’s a question of racism — and I don’t mean just the overt
violence out there but also all the differences in our ways of seeing
— there’s always the question: “How do I use this? What do I do
about it?”
Audre: “How much of this truth can I bear to see/ and still live/
unblinded?/ How much of this pain/ can I use?”* What holds us all
back is being unable to ask that crucial question, that essential step
deflected. You know the piece I wrote for The Black Scholar?** The
piece was useful, but limited, because I didn’t ask some essential
question. And not having asked myself that question, not having
realized that it was a question, I was deflecting a lot of energy in
that piece. I kept reading it over, thinking, this isn’t quite what it
should be. I thought at the time I was holding back because it would
be totally unacceptable in The Black Scholar. That wasn’t it, really. I
was holding back because I had not asked myself the question:
“Why is women loving women so threatening to Black men unless
they want to assume the white male position?” It was a question of
how much I could bear, and of not realizing I could bear more than
I thought I could at the time. It was also a question of how could I
use that perception other than just in rage or destruction.

Adrienne: Speaking of rage and destruction, what do you really
mean by the first five lines of “Power”?***
Audre: “The difference between poetry/ and rhetoric/ is being/
ready to kill yourself/ instead of your children.” What was I feeling?
I was very involved in a case …
Adrienne: The white policeman who shot the Black child and was
acquitted. We had lunch around the time you were writing that
poem and you were full of it.
Audre: I was driving in the car and heard the news on the radio
that the cop had been acquitted. I was really sickened with fury, and
I decided to pull over and just jot some things down in my notebook
to enable me to cross town without an accident because I felt so sick
and so enraged. And I wrote those lines down — I was just writing,
and that poem came out without craft. That’s probably why I was
talking to you about it because I didn’t feel it was really a poem. I
was thinking that the killer had been a student at John Jay and that
I might have seen him in the hall, that I might see him again. What
was retribution? What could have been done? There was one Black
woman on the jury. It could have been me. Now I am here teaching
in John Jay College. Do I kill him? What is my effective role? Would
I kill her in the same way — the Black woman on the jury. What
kind of strength did she, would I, have at the point of deciding to
take a position …
Adrienne: Against eleven white men …
Audre: … that atavistic fear of an articulated power that is not on
your terms. There is the jury — white male power, white male
structures — how do you take a position against them? How do you
reach down into threatening difference without being killed or
killing? How do you deal with things you believe, live them not as
theory, not even as emotion, but right on the line of action and
effect and change? All of those things were riding in on that poem.
But I had no sense, no understanding at the time, of the connections,
just that I was that woman. And that to put myself on the line to do
what had to be done at any place and time was so difficult, yet
absolutely crucial, and not to do so was the most awful death. And
putting yourself on the line is like killing a piece of yourself, in the

sense that you have to kill, end, destroy something familiar and
dependable, so that something new can come, in ourselves, in our
world. And that sense of writing at the edge, out of urgency, not
because you choose it but because you have to, that sense of
survival — that’s what the poem is out of, as well as the pain of my
spiritual son’s death over and over. Once you live any piece of your
vision it opens you to a constant onslaught. Of necessities, of
horrors, but of wonders too, of possibilities.
Adrienne: I was going to say, tell it on the other side.
Audre: Of wonders, absolute wonders, possibilities, like meteor
showers all the time, bombardment, constant connections. And then,
trying to separate what is useful for survival from what is distorted,
destructive to self.
Adrienne: There’s so much with which that has to be done —
rejecting the distortions, keeping what we can use. Even in work
created by people we admire intensely.
Audre: Yes, a commitment to being selectively open. I had to do
that with my physical survival. How am I going to live with cancer
and not succumb to it in the many ways that I could? What do I
have to do? And coming up against, there’s no one to tell you even
possibilities. In the hospital I kept thinking, let’s see, there’s got to
be someone somewhere, a Black lesbian feminist with cancer, how’d
she handle it? Then I realized, hey, honey, you are it, for now. I
read all of those books and then I realized, no one can tell me how
to do it. I have to pick and choose, see what feels right.
Determination, poetry — well that’s all in the work.
Adrienne: I’m thinking about when you had just had the first
biopsy, in 1977, and we were both supposed to speak on a panel in
Chicago. On “The Transformation of Silence into Language and
Action.” And you said there was no way you were going to the MLA
— remember? That you couldn’t do it, you didn’t need to do it, that
doing it could not mean anything important to you. But in fact you
went out there and said what you said, and it was for yourself but
not only for yourself.
Audre: You said, “Why don’t you tell them about what you’ve just
been through?” And I started saying, “Now that doesn’t have

anything to do with the panel.” And as I said that, I felt the words
“Silence,” “Transformation.” I hadn’t spoken about this
experience.… This is silence.… Can I transform this? Is there any
connection? Most of all, how do I share it? And that’s how a setting
down became clear on paper, as if the connections became clear in
the setting down. That paper* and “A Litany for Survival”** came
about at the same time. I had the feeling, probably a body sense,
that life was never going to be the same. If not now, eventually, this
was something I would have to face. If not cancer, then somehow, I
would have to examine the terms and means as well as the whys of
my survival — and in the face of alteration. So much of the work I
did, I did before I knew consciously that I had cancer. Questions of
death and dying, dealing with power and strength, the sense of
“What am I paying for?” that I wrote about in that paper, were
crucial to me a year later. “Uses of the Erotic” was written four
weeks before I found out I had breast cancer, in 1978.
Adrienne: Again, it’s like what you were saying before, about
making the poems that didn’t exist, that you needed to have exist.
Audre: The existence of that paper enabled me to pick up and go
to Houston and California; it enabled me to start working again. I
don’t know when I’d have been able to write again, if I hadn’t had
those words. Do you realize, we’ve come full circle, because that is
where knowing and understanding mesh. What understanding
begins to do is to make knowledge available for use, and that’s the
urgency, that’s the push, that’s the drive. I don’t know how I wrote
the long prose piece I have just finished, but I just knew that I had
to do it.
Adrienne: That you had to understand what you knew and also
make it available to others.
Audre: That’s right. Inseparable process now. But for me, I had to
know I knew it first — I had to feel.
* This interview, held on August 30, 1979 in Montague, Massachusetts, was edited from

three hours of tapes we made together. It was commissioned by Marilyn Hacker, the guest

editor of Woman Poet: The East (Women-In-Literature, Reno, Nevada, 1981), where a

portion of it appears. The interview was first published in Signs, vol. 6, no. 4 (Summer
1981).

* The First Cities (Poets Press, New York, 1968).
* New York Head Shop and Museum (Broadside Press, Detroit, 1974), pp. 52–56.
* Cables to Rage (Paul Breman, Heritage Series, London, 1970).
* First published in From a Land Where Other People Live (Broadside Press, Detroit, 1973),

and collected in Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1982),
pp. 39–40.

* Mina Shaughnessy (1924–78), then director of the SEEK Writing Program at the City

College, City University of New York.

** “Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge”: A pre-baccalaureate program in

compensatory education in the City University of New York in which a number of writerteachers participated in the 1960s and early 1970s.

* Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, originally published by Persephone Press in 1982 and

reissued by Crossing Press in 1983.

* The Black Unicorn (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1978).
* From “Need: A Choral of Black Women’s Voices” in Chosen Poems, p. 115.
** “Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving,” see p. 45.
*** The Black Unicorn, pp. 108–110.
* See “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” see p. 40.
** The Black Unicorn, p. 31.

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s
House*
I AGREED TO TAKE PART in a New York University Institute for the
Humanities conference a year ago, with the understanding that I
would be commenting upon papers dealing with the role of
difference within the lives of american women: difference of race,
sexuality, class, and age. The absence of these considerations
weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political.
It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of
feminist theory without examining our many differences, and
without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third
World women, and lesbians. And yet, I stand here as a Black lesbian
feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at
this conference where the input of Black feminists and lesbians is
represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is
sad, in a country where racism, sexism, and homophobia are
inseparable. To read this program is to assume that lesbian and
Black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic,
women’s culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or
heterosexuality and power. And what does it mean in personal and
political terms when even the two Black women who did present
here were literally found at the last hour? What does it mean when
the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that
same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perimeters of
change are possible and allowable.
The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the
consciousness of Third World women leaves a serious gap within
this conference and within the papers presented here. For example,
in a paper on material relationships between women, I was
conscious of an either/or model of nurturing which totally dismissed
my knowledge as a Black lesbian. In this paper there was no

examination of mutuality between women, no systems of shared
support, no interdependence as exists between lesbians and womenidentified women. Yet it is only in the patriarchal model of
nurturance that women “who attempt to emancipate themselves pay
perhaps too high a price for the results,” as this paper states.
For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not
pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that
our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection which is so
feared by a patriarchal world. Only within a patriarchal structure is
maternity the only social power open to women.
Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which
allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be
creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active
being.
Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is
the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of
difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but
seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity
can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for
interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that
interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal,
can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as
well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no
charters.
Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences
lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of
knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the
concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that
future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection
from which our personal power is forged.
As women, we have been taught either to ignore our differences,
or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than
as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only
the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual
and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of

our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do
not exist.
Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s
definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged
in the crucibles of difference — those of us who are poor, who are
lesbians, who are Black, who are older — know that survival is not
an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and
sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those
others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek
a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our
differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never
dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat
him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about
genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women
who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.
Poor women and women of Color know there is a difference
between the daily manifestations of marital slavery and prostitution
because it is our daughters who line 42nd Street. If white american
feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and
the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal
with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your
children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for
the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory
behind racist feminism?
In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay
the groundwork for political action. The failure of academic
feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to
reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and
conquer must become define and empower.
Why weren’t other women of Color found to participate in this
conference? Why were two phone calls to me considered a
consultation? Am I the only possible source of names of Black
feminists? And although the Black panelist’s paper ends on an
important and powerful connection of love between women, what
about interracial cooperation between feminists who don’t love each
other?

In academic feminist circles, the answer to these questions is
often, “We did not know who to ask.” But that is the same evasion
of responsibility, the same cop-out, that keeps Black women’s art
out of women’s exhibitions, Black women’s work out of most
feminist publications except for the occasional “Special Third World
Women’s Issue,” and Black women’s texts off your reading lists. But
as Adrienne Rich pointed out in a recent talk, white feminists have
educated themselves about such an enormous amount over the past
ten years, how come you haven’t also educated yourselves about
Black women and the differences between us — white and Black —
when it is key to our survival as a movement?
Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the
gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and
our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep
the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear
that it is the task of women of Color to educate white women — in
the face of tremendous resistance — as to our existence, our
differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a
diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal
thought.
Simone de Beauvoir once said: “It is in the knowledge of the
genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to
live and our reasons for acting.”
Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this
place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep
place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of
any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the
personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.
* Comments at “The Personal and the Political Panel,” Second Sex Conference, New

York, September 29, 1979.

Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining
Difference*
MUCH OF WESTERN EUROPEAN history conditions us to see human
differences
in
simplistic
opposition
to
each
other:
dominant/subordinate, good/bad, up/down, superior/inferior. In a
society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in
terms of human need, there must always be some group of people
who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus,
to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior. Within this society,
that group is made up of Black and Third World people, workingclass people, older people, and women.
As a forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of
two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple, I
usually find myself a part of some group defined as other, deviant,
inferior, or just plain wrong. Traditionally, in american society, it is
the members of oppressed, objectified groups who are expected to
stretch out and bridge the gap between the actualities of our lives
and the consciousness of our oppressor. For in order to survive,
those of us for whom oppression is as american as apple pie have
always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language
and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for
some illusion of protection. Whenever the need for some pretense of
communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call
upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it is the
responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their
mistakes. I am responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my
children’s culture in school. Black and Third World people are
expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are
expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to
educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their
position and evade responsibility for their own actions. There is a

constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining
ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present
and constructing the future.
Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in
a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As
members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to
respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing
and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if
that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if
we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating
across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences
have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and
confusion.
Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age,
and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are
separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences,
and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming
them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.
Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others
and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent
superiority of one sex over the other and thereby the right to dominance.
Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism.
It is a lifetime pursuit for each one of us to extract these
distortions from our living at the same time as we recognize,
reclaim, and define those differences upon which they are imposed.
For we have all been raised in a society where those distortions
were endemic within our living. Too often, we pour the energy
needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending
those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not
exist at all. This results in a voluntary isolation, or false and
treacherous connections. Either way, we do not develop tools for
using human difference as a springboard for creative change within
our lives. We speak not of human difference, but of human
deviance.
Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a
mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows “that

is not me.” In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin,
male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is
with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within
this society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify
one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the
primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around
difference, some of which we ourselves may be practising. By and
large within the women’s movement today, white women focus
upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race,
sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretense to a
homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does
not in fact exist.
Unacknowledged class differences rob women of each others’
energy and creative insight. Recently a women’s magazine collective
made the decision for one issue to print only prose, saying poetry
was a less “rigorous” or “serious” art form. Yet even the form our
creativity takes is often a class issue. Of all the art forms, poetry is
the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which
requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one
which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the
subway, and on scraps of surplus paper. Over the last few years,
writing a novel on tight finances, I came to appreciate the enormous
differences in the material demands between poetry and prose. As
we reclaim our literature, poetry has been the major voice of poor,
working class, and Colored women. A room of one’s own may be a
necessity for writing prose, but so are reams of paper, a typewriter,
and plenty of time. The actual requirements to produce the visual
arts also help determine, along class lines, whose art is whose. In
this day of inflated prices for material, who are our sculptors, our
painters, our photographers? When we speak of a broadly based
women’s culture, we need to be aware of the effect of class and
economic differences on the supplies available for producing art.
As we move toward creating a society within which we can each
flourish, ageism is another distortion of relationship which
interferes without vision. By ignoring the past, we are encouraged to
repeat its mistakes. The “generation gap” is an important social tool

for any repressive society. If the younger members of a community
view the older members as contemptible or suspect or excess, they
will never be able to join hands and examine the living memories of
the community, nor ask the all important question, “Why?” This
gives rise to a historical amnesia that keeps us working to invent the
wheel every time we have to go to the store for bread.
We find ourselves having to repeat and relearn the same old
lessons over and over that our mothers did because we do not pass
on what we have learned, or because we are unable to listen. For
instance, how many times has this all been said before? For another,
who would have believed that once again our daughters are
allowing their bodies to be hampered and purgatoried by girdles
and high heels and hobble skirts?
Ignoring the differences of race between women and the
implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to
the mobilization of women’s joint power.
As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and
define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women
of Color become “other,” the outsider whose experience and
tradition is too “alien” to comprehend. An example of this is the
signal absence of the experience of women of Color as a resource for
women’s studies courses. The literature of women of Color is seldom
included in women’s literature courses and almost never in other
literature courses, nor in women’s studies as a whole. All too often,
the excuse given is that the literatures of women of Color can only
be taught by Colored women, or that they are too difficult to
understand, or that classes cannot “get into” them because they
come out of experiences that are “too different.” I have heard this
argument presented by white women of otherwise quite clear
intelligence, women who seem to have no trouble at all teaching
and reviewing work that comes out of the vastly different
experiences of Shakespeare, Molière, Dostoyefsky, and Aristophanes.
Surely there must be some other explanation.
This is a very complex question, but I believe one of the reasons
white women have such difficulty reading Black women’s work is
because of their reluctance to see Black women as women and

different from themselves. To examine Black women’s literature
effectively requires that we be seen as whole people in our actual
complexities — as individuals, as women, as human — rather than
as one of those problematic but familiar stereotypes provided in this
society in place of genunine images of Black women. And I believe
this holds true for the literatures of other women of Color who are
not Black.
The literatures of all women of Color recreate the textures of our
lives, and many white women are heavily invested in ignoring the
real differences. For as long as any difference between us means one
of us must be inferior, then the recognition of any difference must
be fraught with guilt. To allow women of Color to step out of
stereotypes is too guilt provoking, for it threatens the complacency
of those women who view oppression only in terms of sex.
Refusing to recognize difference makes it impossible to see the
different problems and pitfalls facing us as women.
Thus, in a patriarchal power system where whiteskin privilege is a
major prop, the entrapments used to neutralize Black women and
white women are not the same. For example, it is easy for Black
women to be used by the power structure against Black men, not
because they are men, but because they are Black. Therefore, for
Black women, it is necessary at all times to separate the needs of the
oppressor from our own legitimate conflicts within our
communities. This same problem does not exist for white women.
Black women and men have shared racist oppression and still share
it, although in different ways. Out of that shared oppression we
have developed joint defenses and joint vulnerabilities to each other
that are not duplicated in the white community, with the exception
of the relationship between Jewish women and Jewish men.
On the other hand, white women face the pitfall of being seduced
into joining the oppressor under the pretense of sharing power. This
possibility does not exist in the same way for women of Color. The
tokenism that is sometimes extended to us is not an invitation to
join power; our racial “otherness” is a visible reality that makes that
quite clear. For white women there is a wider range of pretended

choices and rewards for identifying with patriarchal power and its
tools.
Today, with the defeat of ERA, the tightening economy, and
increased conservatism, it is easier once again for white women to
believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty
enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave,
hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be
allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace, at least until a
man needs your job or the neighborhood rapist happens along. And
true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to
remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
But Black women and our children know the fabric of our lives is
stitched with violence and with hatred, that there is no rest. We do
not deal with it only on the picket lines, or in dark midnight alleys,
or in the places where we dare to verbalize our resistance. For us,
increasingly, violence weaves through the daily tissues of our living
— in the supermarket, in the classroom, in the elevator, in the clinic
and the schoolyard, from the plumber, the baker, the saleswoman,
the bus driver, the bank teller, the waitress who does not serve us.
Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear
your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against
you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down
in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are
dying.
The threat of difference has been no less blinding to people of
Color. Those of us who are Black must see that the reality of our
lives and our struggle does not make us immune to the errors of
ignoring and misnaming difference. Within Black communities
where racism is a living reality, differences among us often seem
dangerous and suspect. The need for unity is often misnamed as a
need for homogeneity, and a Black feminist vision mistaken for
betrayal of our common interests as a people. Because of the
continuous battle against racial erasure that Black women and Black
men share, some Black women still refuse to recognize that we are
also oppressed as women, and that sexual hostility against Black
women is practiced not only by the white racist society, but

implemented within our Black communities as well. It is a disease
striking the heart of Black nationhood, and silence will not make it
disappear. Exacerbated by racism and the pressures of
powerlessness, violence against Black women and children often
becomes a standard within our communities, one by which
manliness can be measured. But these woman-hating acts are rarely
discussed as crimes against Black women.
As a group, women of Color are the lowest paid wage earners in
america. We are the primary targets of abortion and sterilization
abuse, here and abroad. In certain parts of Africa, small girls are still
being sewed shut between their legs to keep them docile and for
men’s pleasure. This is known as female circumcision, and it is not a
cultural affair as the late Jomo Kenyatta insisted, it is a crime
against Black women.
Black women’s literature is full of the pain of frequent assault, not
only by a racist patriarchy, but also by Black men. Yet the necessity
for and history of shared battle have made us, Black women,
particularly vulnerable to the false accusation that anti-sexist is antiBlack. Meanwhile, womanhating as a recourse of the powerless is
sapping strength from Black communities, and our very lives. Rape
is on the increase, reported and unreported, and rape is not
aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression. As Kalamu ya
Salaam, a Black male writer points out, “As long as male domination
exists, rape will exist. Only women revolting and men made
conscious of their responsibility to fight sexism can collectively stop
rape.”*
Differences between ourselves as Black women are also being
misnamed and used to separate us from one another. As a Black
lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of
my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom
from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck
out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful
whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a
destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of
energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I
am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to

flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without
the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I
bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those
struggles which I embrace as part of my living.
A fear of lesbians, or of being accused of being a lesbian, has led
many Black women into testifying against themselves. It has led
some of us into destructive alliances, and others into despair and
isolation. In the white women’s communities, heterosexism is
sometimes a result of identifying with the white patriarchy, a
rejection of that interdependence between women-identified women
which allows the self to be, rather than to be used in the service of
men. Sometimes it reflects a die-hard belief in the protective
coloration of heterosexual relationships, sometimes a self-hate
which all women have to fight against, taught us from birth.
Although elements of these attitudes exist for all women, there
are particular resonances of heterosexism and homophobia among
Black women. Despite the fact that woman-bonding has a long and
honorable history in the African and African-american communities,
and despite the knowledge and accomplishments of many strong
and creative women-identified Black women in the political, social
and cultural fields, heterosexual Black women often tend to ignore
or discount the existence and work of Black lesbians. Part of this
attitude has come from an understandable terror of Black male
attack within the close confines of Black society, where the
punishment for any female self-assertion is still to be accused of
being a lesbian and therefore unworthy of the attention or support
of the scarce Black male. But part of this need to misname and
ignore Black lesbians comes from a very real fear that openly
women-identified Black women who are no longer dependent upon
men for their self-definition may well reorder our whole concept of
social relationships.
Black women who once insisted that lesbianism was a white
woman’s problem now insist that Black lesbians are a threat to
Black nationhood, are consorting with the enemy, are basically unBlack. These accusations, coming from the very women to whom we
look for deep and real understanding, have served to keep many

Black lesbians in hiding, caught between the racism of white women
and the homophobia of their sisters. Often, their work has been
ignored, trivialized, or misnamed, as with the work of Angelina
Grimke, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Lorraine Hansberry. Yet womenbonded women have always been some part of the power of Black
communities, from our unmarried aunts to the amazons of
Dahomey.
And it is certainly not Black lesbians who are assaulting women
and raping children and grandmothers on the streets of our
communities.
Across this country, as in Boston during the spring of 1979
following the unsolved murders of twelve Black women, Black
lesbians are spearheading movements against violence against Black
women.
What are the particular details within each of our lives that can
be scrutinized and altered to help bring about change? How do we
redefine difference for all women? It is not our differences which
separate women, but our reluctance to recognize those differences
and to deal effectively with the distortions which have resulted from
the ignoring and misnaming of those differences.
As a tool of social control, women have been encouraged to
recognize only one area of human difference as legitimate, those
differences which exist between women and men. And we have
learned to deal across those differences with the urgency of all
oppressed subordinates. All of us have had to learn to live or work
or coexist with men, from our fathers on. We have recognized and
negotiated these differences, even when this recognition only
continued the old dominant/subordinate mode of human
relationship, where the oppressed must recognize the masters’
difference in order to survive.
But our future survival is predicated upon our ability to relate
within equality. As women, we must root out internalized patterns
of oppression within ourselves if we are to move beyond the most
superficial aspects of social change. Now we must recognize
differences among women who are our equals, neither inferior nor

superior, and devise ways to use each others’ difference to enrich
our visions and our joint struggles.
The future of our earth may depend upon the ability of all women
to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns
of relating across difference. The old definitions have not served us,
nor the earth that supports us. The old patterns, no matter how
cleverly rearranged to imitate progress, still condemn us to
cosmetically altered repetitions of the same old exchanges, the same
old guilt, hatred, recrimination, lamentation, and suspicion.
For we have, built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and
response, old structures of oppression, and these must be altered at
the same time as we alter the living conditions which are a result of
those structures. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the
master’s house.
As Paulo Freire shows so well in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,*
the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the
oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the
oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows
only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships.
Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we
sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle
together with those whom we define as different from ourselves,
although sharing the same goals. For Black and white, old and
young, lesbian and heterosexual women alike, this can mean new
paths to our survival.
We have chosen each other
and the edge of each others battles
the war is the same
if we lose
someday women’s blood will congeal
upon a dead planet
if we win
there is no telling

we seek beyond history
for a new and more possible meeting.**
* Paper delivered at the Copeland Colloquium, Amherst College, April 1980.
* From “Rape: A Radical Analysis, An African-American Perspective” by Kalamu ya

Salaam in Black Books Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 4 (1980).
* Seabury Press, New York, 1970.
** From “Outlines,” unpublished poem.

The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism*
Racism. The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all
others and thereby the right to dominance, manifest and implied.
Women respond to racism. My response to racism is anger. I have
lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it
before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it
in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing.
Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.
Women responding to racism means women responding to anger;
the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial
distortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness,
misnaming, betrayal, and co-optation.
My anger is a response to racist attitudes and to the actions and
presumptions that arise out of those attitudes. If your dealings with
other women reflect those attitudes, then my anger and your
attendant fears are spotlights that can be used for growth in the
same way I have used learning to express anger for my growth. But
for corrective surgery, not guilt. Guilt and defensiveness are bricks
in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our
futures.
Because I do not want this to become a theoretical discussion, I
am going to give a few examples of interchanges between women
that illustrate these points. In the interest of time, I am going to cut
them short. I want you to know there were many more.
For example:
• I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic
conference, and a white woman says, “Tell me how you feel but
don’t say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.” But is it my manner
that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life
may change?
• The Women’s Studies Program of a southern university invites a
Black woman to read following a week-long forum on Black and

white women. “What has this week given to you?” I ask. The most
vocal white woman says, “I think I’ve gotten a lot. I feel Black
women really understand me a lot better now; they have a better
idea of where I’m coming from.” As if understanding her lay at the
core of the racist problem.
• After fifteen years of a women’s movement which professes to
address the life concerns and possible futures of all women, I still
hear, on campus after campus, “How can we address the issues of
racism? No women of Color attended.” Or, the other side of that
statement, “We have no one in our department equipped to teach
their work.” In other words, racism is a Black women’s problem, a
problem of women of Color, and only we can discuss it.
• After I read from my work entitled “Poems for Women in
Rage,”* a white woman asks me: “Are you going to do anything with
how we can deal directly with our anger? I feel it’s so important.” I
ask, “How do you use your rage?” And then I have to turn away
from the blank look in her eyes, before she can invite me to
participate in her own annihilation. I do not exist to feel her anger
for her.
• White women are beginning to examine their relationships to
Black women, yet often I hear them wanting only to deal with little
colored children across the roads of childhood, the beloved
nursemaid, the occasional second-grade classmate — those tender
memories of what was once mysterious and intriguing or neutral.
You avoid the childhood assumptions formed by the raucous
laughter at Rastus and Alfalfa, the acute message of your mommy’s
handerkerchief spread upon the park bench because I had just been
sitting there, the indelible and dehumanizing portraits of Amos ’n
Andy and your daddy’s humorous bedtime stories.
• I wheel my two-year-old daughter in a shopping cart through a
supermarket in Eastchester in 1967, and a little white girl riding
past in her mother’s cart calls out excitedly, “Oh look, Mommy, a
baby maid!” And your mother shushes you, but she does not correct
you. And so fifteen years later, at a conference on racism, you can
still find that story humorous. But I hear your laughter is full of
terror and dis-ease.

• A white academic welcomes the appearance of a collection by
non-Black women of Color.* “It allows me to deal with racism
without dealing with the harshness of Black women,” she says to
me.
• At an international cultural gathering of women, a well-known
white american woman poet interrupts the reading of the work of
women of Color to read her own poem, and then dashes off to an
“important panel.”
If women in the academy truly want a dialogue about racism, it
will require recognizing the needs and the living contexts of other
women. When an academic woman says, “I can’t afford it,” she may
mean she is making a choice about how to spend her available
money. But when a woman on welfare says, “I can’t afford it,” she
means she is surviving on an amount of money that was barely
subsistence in 1972, and she often does not have enough to eat. Yet
the National Women’s Studies Association here in 1981 holds a
conference in which it commits itself to responding to racism, yet
refuses to waive the registration fee for poor women and women of
Color who wished to present and conduct workshops. This has made
it impossible for many women of Color — for instance, Wilmette
Brown, of Black Women for Wages for Housework — to participate
in this conference. Is this to be merely another case of the academy
discussing life within the closed circuits of the academy?
To the white women present who recognize these attitudes as
familiar, but most of all, to all my sisters of Color who live and
survive thousands of such encounters — to my sisters of Color who
like me still tremble their rage under harness, or who sometimes
question the expression of our rage as useless and disruptive (the
two most popular accusations) — I want to speak about anger, my
anger, and what I have learned from my travels through its
dominions.
Everything can be used / except what is wasteful / (you will need / to
remember this when you are accused of destruction.)*
Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially
useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which
brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become

a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when
I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a
temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel
good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those
assumptions underlining our lives.
I have seen situations where white women hear a racist remark,
resent what has been said, become filled with fury, and remain
silent because they are afraid. That unexpressed anger lies within
them like an undetonated device, usually to be hurled at the first
woman of Color who talks about racism.
But anger expressed and translated into action in the service of
our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of
clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that
we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave
differences, and who are our genuine enemies.
Anger is loaded with information and energy. When I speak of
women of Color, I do not only mean Black women. The woman of
Color who is not Black and who charges me with rendering her
invisible by assuming that her struggles with racism are identical
with my own has something to tell me that I had better learn from,
lest we both waste ourselves fighting the truths between us. If I
participate, knowingly or otherwise, in my sister’s oppression and
she calls me on it, to answer her anger with my own only blankets
the substance of our exchange with reaction. It wastes energy. And
yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman’s
voice delineate an agony I do not share, or one to which I myself
have contributed.
In this place we speak removed from the more blatant reminders
of our embattlement as women. This need not blind us to the size
and complexities of the forces mounting against us and all that is
most human within our environment. We are not here as women
examining racism in a political and social vacuum. We operate in
the teeth of a system for which racism and sexism are primary,
established, and necessary props of profit. Women responding to
racism is a topic so dangerous that when the local media attempt to
discredit this conference they choose to focus upon the provision of

lesbian housing as a diversionary device — as if the Hartford
Courant dare not mention the topic chosen for discussion here,
racism, lest it become apparent that women are in fact attempting to
examine and to alter all the repressive conditions of our lives.
Mainstream communication does not want women, particularly
white women, responding to racism. It wants racism to be accepted
as an immutable given in the fabric of your existence, like
eveningtime or the common cold.
So we are working in a context of opposition and threat, the cause
of which is certainly not the angers which lie between us, but rather
that virulent hatred leveled against all women, people of Color,
lesbians and gay men, poor people — against all of us who are
seeking to examine the particulars of our lives as we resist our
oppressions, moving toward coalition and effective action.
Any discussion among women about racism must include the
recognition and the use of anger. This discussion must be direct and
creative because it is crucial. We cannot allow our fear of anger to
deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard
work of excavating honesty; we must be quite serious about the
choice of this topic and the angers entwined within it because, rest
assured, our opponents are quite serious about their hatred of us
and of what we are trying to do here.
And while we scrutinize the often painful face of each other’s
anger, please remember that it is not our anger which makes me
caution you to lock your doors at night and not to wander the
streets of Hartford alone. It is the hatred which lurks in those
streets, that urge to destroy us all if we truly work for change rather
than merely indulge in academic rhetoric.
This hatred and our anger are very different. Hatred is the fury of
those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and
destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its
object is change. But our time is getting shorter. We have been
raised to view any difference other than sex as a reason for
destruction, and for Black women and white women to face each
other’s angers without denial or immobility or silence or guilt is in
itself a heretical and generative idea. It implies peers meeting upon

a common basis to examine difference, and to alter those distortions
which history has created around our difference. For it is those
distortions which separate us. And we must ask ourselves: Who
profits from all this?
Women of Color in america have grown up within a symphony of
anger, at being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when
we survive, it is in spite of a world that takes for granted our lack of
humanness, and which hates our very existence outside of its
service. And I say symphony rather than cacophony because we have
had to learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do not tear us
apart. We have had to learn to move through them and use them for
strength and force and insight within our daily lives. Those of us
who did not learn this difficult lesson did not survive. And part of
my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters.
Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury
when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change. To
those women here who fear the anger of women of Color more than
their own unscrutinized racist attitudes, I ask: Is the anger of women
of Color more threatening than the woman-hatred that tinges all
aspects of our lives?
It is not the anger of other women that will destroy us but our
refusals to stand still, to listen to its rhythms, to learn within it, to
move beyond the manner of presentation to the substance, to tap
that anger as an important source of empowerment.
I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor
answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts.
Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions
or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it
is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too
often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness
destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect
ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the
ultimate protection for changelessness.
Most women have not developed tools for facing anger
constructively. CR groups in the past, largely white, dealt with how
to express anger, usually at the world of men. And these groups

were made up of white women who shared the terms of their
oppressions. There was usually little attempt to articulate the
genuine differences between women, such as those of race, color,
age, class, and sexual identity. There was no apparent need at that
time to examine the contradictions of self, woman as oppressor.
There was work on expressing anger, but very little on anger
directed against each other. No tools were developed to deal with
other women’s anger except to avoid it, deflect it, or flee from it
under a blanket of guilt.
I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only
another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the
pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm
that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in
anger, at least I have spoken to you: I have not put a gun to your
head and shot you down in the street; I have not looked at your
bleeding sister’s body and asked, “What did she do to deserve it?”
This was the reaction of two white women to Mary Church Terrell’s
telling of the lynching of a pregnant Black woman whose baby was
then torn from her body. That was in 1921, and Alice Paul had just
refused to publicly endorse the enforcement of the Nineteenth
Amendment for all women — by refusing to endorse the inclusion of
women of Color, although we had worked to help bring about that
amendment.
The angers between women will not kill us if we can articulate
them with precision, if we listen to the content of what is said with
at least as much intensity as we defend ourselves against the manner
of saying. When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we
will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely
familiar. I have tried to learn my anger’s usefulness to me, as well as
its limitations.
For women raised to fear, too often anger threatens annihilation.
In the male construct of brute force, we were taught that our lives
depended upon the good will of patriarchal power. The anger of
others was to be avoided at all costs because there was nothing to
be learned from it but pain, a judgment that we had been bad girls,

come up lacking, not done what we were supposed to do. And if we
accept our powerlessness, then of course any anger can destroy us.
But the strength of women lies in recognizing differences between
us as creative, and in standing to those distortions which we
inherited without blame, but which are now ours to alter. The
angers of women can transform difference through insight into
power. For anger between peers births change, not destruction, and
the discomfort and sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a
sign of growth.
My response to racism is anger. That anger has eaten clefts into
my living only when it remained unspoken, useless to anyone. It has
also served me in classrooms without light or learning, where the
work and history of Black women was less than a vapor. It has
served me as fire in the ice zone of uncomprehending eyes of white
women who see in my experience and the experience of my people
only new reasons for fear or guilt. And my anger is no excuse for not
dealing with your blindness, no reason to withdraw from the results
of your own actions.
When women of Color speak out of the anger that laces so many
of our contacts with white women, we are often told that we are
“creating a mood of hopelessness,” “preventing white women from
getting past guilt,” or “standing in the way of trusting
communication and action.” All these quotes come directly from
letters to me from members of this organization within the last two
years. One woman wrote, “Because you are Black and Lesbian, you
seem to speak with the moral authority of suffering.” Yes, I am
Black and Lesbian, and what you hear in my voice is fury, not
suffering. Anger, not moral authority. There is a difference.
To turn aside from the anger of Black women with excuses or the
pretexts of intimidation is to award no one power — it is merely
another way of preserving racial blindness, the power of
unaddressed privilege, unbreached, intact. Guilt is only another
form of objectification. Oppressed peoples are always being asked to
stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and
humanity. Black women are expected to use our anger only in the
service of other people’s salvation or learning. But that time is over.

My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant survival, and
before I give it up I’m going to be sure that there is something at
least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity.
What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that
she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman’s face? What
woman’s terms of oppression have become precious and necessary
to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold
winds of self-scrutiny?
I am a lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly
because I work in a university. If their full bellies make me fail to
recognize my commonality with a woman of Color whose children
do not eat because she cannot find work, or who has no children
because her insides are rotted from home abortions and
sterilization; if I fail to recognize the lesbian who chooses not to
have children, the woman who remains closeted because her
homophobic community is her only life support, the woman who
chooses silence instead of another death, the woman who is terrified
lest my anger trigger the explosion of hers; if I fail to recognize
them as other faces of myself, then I am contributing not only to
each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the anger which
stands between us then must be used for clarity and mutual
empowerment, not for evasion by guilt or for further separation. I
am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are
very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person
of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you.
I speak here as a woman of Color who is not bent upon
destruction, but upon survival. No woman is responsible for altering
the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in
another woman. I have suckled the wolf’s lip of anger and I have
used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where
there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter. We are not
goddesses or matriarchs or edifices of divine forgiveness; we are not
fiery fingers of judgment or instruments of flagellation; we are
women forced back always upon our woman’s power. We have
learned to use anger as we have learned to use the dead flesh of
animals, and bruised, battered, and changing, we have survived and

grown and, in Angela Wilson’s words, we are moving on. With or
without uncolored women. We use whatever strengths we have
fought for, including anger, to help define and fashion a world
where all our sisters can grow, where our children can love, and
where the power of touching and meeting another woman’s
difference and wonder will eventually transcend the need for
destruction.
For it is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down
over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that
launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on
missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in
cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomizes our
daughters and our earth. It is not the anger of Black women which
corrodes into blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the
annihilation of us all unless we meet it with what we have, our
power to examine and to redefine the terms upon which we will live
and work; our power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by
painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future of pollinating
difference and the earth to support our choices.
We welcome all women who can meet us, face to face, beyond
objectification and beyond guilt.
* Keynote presentation at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, Storrs,

Connecticut, June 1981.

* One poem from this series is included in Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton and

Company, New York, 1978), pp. 105–108.

* This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe

Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, New York, 1984), first
published in 1981.

* From “For Each of You,” first published in From A Land Where Other People Live

(Broadside Press, Detroit, 1973), and collected in Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton
and Company, New York, 1982), p. 42.

Learning from the 60s*
MALCOLM X IS a distinct shape in a very pivotal period of my life. I
stand here now — Black, Lesbian, Feminist — an inheritor of
Malcolm and in his tradition, doing my work, and the ghost of his
voice through my mouth asks each one of you here tonight: Are you
doing yours?
There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we
cherish breath and power in our own living. I’m not going to
pretend that the moment I first saw or heard Malcolm X he became
my shining prince, because it wouldn’t be true. In February 1965 I
was raising two children and a husband in a three-room flat on
149th Street in Harlem. I had read about Malcolm X and the Black
Muslims. I became more interested in Malcolm X after he left the
Nation of Islam, when he was silenced by Elijah Muhammad for his
comment, after Kennedy’s assassination, to the effect that the
chickens had come home to roost. Before this I had not given much
thought to the Nation of Islam because of their attitude toward
women as well as because of their nonactivist stance. I’d read
Malcolm’s autobiography, and I liked his style, and I thought he
looked a lot like my father’s people, but I was one of the ones who
didn’t really hear Malcolm’s voice until it was amplified by death.
I had been guilty of what many of us are still guilty of — letting
the media, and I don’t mean only the white media — define the
bearers of those messages most important to our lives.
When I read Malcolm X with careful attention, I found a man
much closer to the complexities of real change than anything I had
read before. Much of what I say here tonight was born from his
words.
In the last year of his life, Malcolm X added a breadth to his
essential vision that would have brought him, had he lived, into
inevitable confrontation with the question of difference as a creative

and necessary force for change. For as Malcolm X progressed from a
position of resistance to, and analysis of, the racial status quo, to
more active considerations of organizing for change, he began to
reassess some of his earlier positions. One of the most basic Black
survival skills is the ability to change, to metabolize experience,
good or ill, into something that is useful, lasting, effective. Four
hundred years of survival as an endangered species has taught most
of us that if we intend to live, we had better become fast learners.
Malcolm knew this. We do not have to live the same mistakes over
again if we can look at them, learn from them, and build upon
them.
Before he was killed, Malcolm had altered and broadened his
opinions concerning the role of women in society and the
revolution. He was beginning to speak with increasing respect of the
connection between himself and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose
policies of nonviolence appeared to be so opposite to his own. And
he began to examine the societal conditions under which alliances
and coalitions must indeed occur.
He had also begun to discuss those scars of oppression which lead
us to war against ourselves in each other rather than against our
enemies.
As Black people, if there is one thing we can learn from the 60s, it
is how infinitely complex any move for liberation must be. For we
must move against not only those forces which dehumanize us from
the outside, but also against those oppressive values which we have
been forced to take into ourselves. Through examining the
combination of our triumphs and errors, we can examine the
dangers of an incomplete vision. Not to condemn that vision but to
alter it, construct templates for possible futures, and focus our rage
for change upon our enemies rather than upon each other. In the
1960s, the awakened anger of the Black community was often
expressed, not vertically against the corruption of power and true
sources of control over our lives, but horizontally toward those
closest to us who mirrored our own impotence.
We were poised for attack, not always in the most effective
places. When we disagreed with one another about the solution to a

particular problem, we were often far more vicious to each other
than to the originators of our common problem. Historically,
difference had been used so cruelly against us that as a people we
were reluctant to tolerate any diversion from what was externally
defined as Blackness. In the 60s, political correctness became not a
guideline for living, but a new set of shackles. A small and vocal
part of the Black community lost sight of the fact that unity does not
mean unanimity — Black people are not some standardly digestible
quantity. In order to work together we do not have to become a mix
of indistinguishable particles resembling a vat of homogenized
chocolate milk. Unity implies the coming together of elements
which are, to begin with, varied and diverse in their particular
natures. Our persistence in examining the tensions within diversity
encourages growth toward our common goal. So often we either
ignore the past or romanticize it, render the reason for unity useless
or mythic. We forget that the necessary ingredient needed to make
the past work for the future is our energy in the present,
metabolizing one into the other. Continuity does not happen
automatically, nor is it a passive process.
The 60s were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous
solutions. They were vital years of awakening, of pride, and of error.
The civil rights and Black power movements rekindled possibilities
for disenfranchised groups within this nation. Even though we
fought common enemies, at times the lure of individual solutions
made us careless of each other. Sometimes we could not bear the
face of each other’s differences because of what we feared those
differences might say about ourselves. As if everybody can’t
eventually be too Black, too white, too man, too woman. But any
future vision which can encompass all of us, by definition, must be
complex and expanding, not easy to achieve. The answer to cold is
heat, the answer to hunger is food. But there is no simple monolithic
solution to racism, to sexism, to homophobia. There is only the
conscious focusing within each of my days to move against them,
wherever I come up against these particular manifestations of the
same disease. By seeing who the we is, we learn to use our energies

with greater precision against our enemies rather than against
ourselves.
In the 60s, white america — racist and liberal alike — was more
than pleased to sit back as spectator while Black militant fought
Black Muslim, Black Nationalist badmouthed the non-violent, and
Black women were told that our only useful position in the Black
Power movement was prone. The existence of Black lesbian and gay
people was not even allowed to cross the public consciousness of
Black america. We know in the 1980s, from documents gained
through the Freedom of Information Act, that the FBI and CIA used
our intolerance of difference to foment confusion and tragedy in
segment after segment of Black communities of the 60s. Black was
beautiful, but still suspect, and too often our forums for debate
became stages for playing who’s-Blacker-than-who or who’s-poorerthan-who games, ones in which there can be no winners.
The 60s for me was a time of promise and excitement, but the 60s
was also a time of isolation and frustration from within. It often felt
like I was working and raising my children in a vacuum, and that it
was my own fault — if I was only Blacker, things would be fine. It
was a time of much wasted energy, and I was often in a lot of pain.
Either I denied or chose between various aspects of my identity, or
my work and my Blackness would be unacceptable. As a Black
lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some
part of me guaranteed to offend everybody’s comfortable prejudices
of who I should be. That is how I learned that if I didn’t define
myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies
for me and eaten alive. My poetry, my life, my work, my energies
for struggle were not acceptable unless I pretended to match
somebody else’s norm. I learned that not only couldn’t I succeed at
that game, but the energy needed for that masquerade would be lost
to my work. And there were babies to raise, students to teach. The
Vietnam War was escalating, our cities were burning, more and
more of our school kids were nodding out in the halls, junk was
overtaking our streets. We needed articulate power, not conformity.
There were other strong Black workers whose visions were racked
and silenced upon some imagined grid of narrow Blackness. Nor

were Black women immune. At a national meeting of Black women
for political action, a young civil rights activist who had been
beaten and imprisoned in Mississippi only a few years before, was
trashed and silenced as suspect because of her white husband. Some
of us made it and some of us were lost to the struggle. It was a time
of great hope and great expectation; it was also a time of great
waste. That is history. We do not need to repeat these mistakes in
the 80s.
The raw energy of Black determination released in the 60s
powered changes in Black awareness and self-concepts and
expectations. This energy is still being felt in movements for change
among women, other peoples of Color, gays, the handicapped —
among all the disenfranchised peoples of this society. That is a
legacy of the 60s to ourselves and to others. But we must recognize
that many of our high expectations of rapid revolutionary change
did not in fact occur. And many of the gains that did are even now
being dismantled. This is not a reason for despair, nor for rejection
of the importance of those years. But we must face with clarity and
insight the lessons to be learned from the oversimplification of any
struggle for self-awareness and liberation, or we will not rally the
force we need to face the multidimensional threats to our survival in
the 80s.
There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not
live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr.
knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are
not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our
errors. Black people have been here before us and survived. We can
read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice
Reagon says so poignantly, that each one of us is here because
somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn
from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor to the hard
work of becoming ourselves, and effective.
We lose our history so easily, what is not predigested for us by the
New York Times, or the Amsterdam News, or Time magazine. Maybe
because we do not listen to our poets or to our fools, maybe because
we do not listen to our mamas in ourselves. When I hear the deepest

truths I speak coming out of my mouth sounding like my mother’s,
even remembering how I fought against her, I have to reassess both
our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing. Which is not
to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate
what she gave me — Woman, Black. We do not have to romanticize
our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not
have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of
the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as
deep understanding.
We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is
not to lie to ourselves.
We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is
all about — survival and growth.
Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that
knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates
crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are
to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from
establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school
ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack
against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our
interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one
of us here is a link in the connection between antipoor legislation,
gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks
against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. I ask
myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the
particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for?
Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the
subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight
must illuminate the particulars of our lives: who labors to make the
bread we waste, or the energy it takes to make nuclear poisons
which will not biodegrade for one thousand years; or who goes
blind assembling the microtransistors in our inexpensive
calculators?
We are women trying to knit a future in a country where an Equal
Rights Amendment was defeated as subversive legislation. We are
Lesbians and gay men who, as the most obvious target of the New

Right, are threatened with castration, imprisonment, and death in
the streets. And we know that our erasure only paves the way for
erasure of other people of Color, of the old, of the poor, of all of
those who do not fit that mythic dehumanizing norm.
Can we really still afford to be fighting each other?
We are Black people living in a time when the consciousness of
our intended slaughter is all around us. People of Color are
increasingly expendable, our government’s policy both here and
abroad. We are functioning under a government ready to repeat in
El Salvador and Nicaragua the tragedy of Vietnam, a government
which stands on the wrong side of every single battle for liberation
taking place upon this globe; a government which has invaded and
conquered (as I edit this piece) the fifty-three square mile sovereign
state of Grenada, under the pretext that her 110,000 people pose a
threat to the U.S. Our papers are filled with supposed concern for
human rights in white communist Poland while we sanction by
acceptance and military supply the systematic genocide of apartheid
in South Africa, of murder and torture in Haiti and El Salvador.
American advisory teams bolster repressive governments across
Central and South America, and in Haiti, while advisory is only a
code name preceding military aid.
Decisions to cut aid for the terminally ill, for the elderly, for
dependent children, for food stamps, even school lunches, are being
made by men with full stomachs who live in comfortable houses
with two cars and umpteen tax shelters. None of them go hungry to
bed at night. Recently, it was suggested that senior citizens be hired
to work in atomic plants because they are close to the end of their
lives anyway.
Can any one of us here still afford to believe that efforts to
reclaim the future can be private or individual? Can any one here
still afford to believe that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole
and particular province of any one particular race, or sex, or age, or
religion, or sexuality, or class?
Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant
for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in

established, outgrown responses; for instance, it is learning to
address each other’s difference with respect.
We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in
isolation from others simply because their differences make us
uncomfortable. We know what it is to be lied to. The 60s should
teach us how important it is not to lie to ourselves. Not to believe
that revolution is a one-time event, or something that happens
around us rather than inside of us. Not to believe that freedom can
belong to any one group of us without the others also being free.
How important it is not to allow even our leaders to define us to
ourselves, or to define our sources of power to us.
There is no Black person here who can afford to wait to be led
into positive action for survival. Each one of us must look clearly
and closely at the genuine particulars (conditions) of his or her life
and decide where action and energy is needed and where it can be
effective. Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us,
wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we
choose. For while we wait for another Malcolm, another Martin,
another charismatic Black leader to validate our struggles, old Black
people are freezing to death in tenements, Black children are being
brutalized and slaughtered in the streets, or lobotomized by
television, and the percentage of Black families living below the
poverty line is higher today than in 1963.
And if we wait to put our future into the hands of some new
messiah, what will happen when those leaders are shot, or
discredited, or tried for murder, or called homosexual, or otherwise
disempowered? Do we put our future on hold? What is that
internalized and self-destructive barrier that keeps us from moving,
that keeps us from coming together?
We who are Black are at an extraordinary point of choice within
our lives. To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to
give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security
(they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do).
Each of us must find our work and do it. Militancy no longer means
guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for
change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is

coming. It means doing the unromantic and tedious work necessary
to forge meaningful coalitions, and it means recognizing which
coalitions are possible and which coalitions are not. It means
knowing that coalition, like unity, means the coming together of
whole, self-actualized human beings, focused and believing, not
fragmented automatons marching to a prescribed step. It means
fighting despair.
And in the university, that is certainly no easy task, for each one
of you by virtue of your being here will be deluged by opportunities
to misname yourselves, to forget who you are, to forget where your
real interests lie. Make no mistake, you will be courted; and nothing
neutralizes creativity quicker than tokenism, that false sense of
security fed by a myth of individual solutions. To paraphrase
Malcolm — a Black woman attorney driving a Mercedes through
Avenue Z in Brooklyn is still a “nigger bitch,” two words which
never seem to go out of style.
You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each
other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the
same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can
include each other and to work toward that future with the
particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do
this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as
we recognize our sameness.
If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change
directed only against the external conditions of our oppressions is
not enough. In order to be whole, we must recognize the despair
oppression plants within each of us — that thin persistent voice that
says our efforts are useless, it will never change, so why bother,
accept it. And we must fight that inserted piece of self-destruction
that lives and flourishes like a poison inside of us, unexamined until
it makes us turn upon ourselves in each other. But we can put our
finger down upon that loathing buried deep within each one of us
and see who it encourages us to despise, and we can lessen its
potency by the knowledge of our real connectedness, arcing across
our differences.

Hopefully, we can learn from the 60s that we cannot afford to do
our enemies’ work by destroying each other.
What does it mean when an angry Black ballplayer — this
happened in Illinois — curses a white heckler but pulls a knife on a
Black one? What better way is there to police the streets of a
minority community than to turn one generation against the other?
Referring to Black lesbians and gay men, the student president at
Howard University says, on the occasion of a Gay Student Charter
on campus, “The Black community has nothing to do with such filth
— we will have to abandon these people.” [italics mine] Abandon?
Often without noticing, we absorb the racist belief that Black people
are fitting targets for everybody’s anger. We are closest to each
other, and it is easier to vent fury upon each other than upon our
enemies.
Of course, the young man at Howard was historically incorrect. As
part of the Black community, he has a lot to do with “us.” Some of
our finest writers, organizers, artists and scholars in the 60s as well
as today, have been lesbian and gay, and history will bear me out.
Over and over again in the 60s I was asked to justify my existence
and my work, because I was a woman, because I was a Lesbian,
because I was not a separatist, because some piece of me was not
acceptable. Not because of my work but because of my identity. I
had to learn to hold on to all the parts of me that served me, in spite
of the pressure to express only one to the exclusion of all others.
And I don’t know what I’d say face to face with that young man at
Howard University who says I’m filth because I identify women as
my primary source of energy and support, except to say that it is my
energy and the energy of other women very much like me which has
contributed to his being where he is at this point. But I think he
would not say it to my face because name-calling is always easiest
when it is removed, academic. The move to render the presence of
lesbians and gay men invisible in the intricate fabric of Black
existence and survival is a move which contributes to fragmentation
and weakness in the Black community.
In academic circles, as elsewhere, there is a kind of name-calling
increasingly being used to keep young Black women in line. Often as

soon as any young Black woman begins to recognize that she is
oppressed as a woman as well as a Black, she is called a lesbian no
matter how she identifies herself sexually. “What do you mean you
don’t want to make coffee take notes wash dishes go to bed with
me, you a lesbian or something?” And at the threat of such a
dreaded taint, all too often she falls meekly into line, however
covertly. But the word lesbian is only threatening to those Black
women who are intimidated by their sexuality, or who allow
themselves to be defined by it and from outside themselves. Black
women in struggle from our own perspective, speaking up for
ourselves, sharing close ties with one another politically and
emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men. We are Black women
who seek our own definitions, recognizing diversity among
ourselves with respect. We have been around within our
communities for a very long time, and we have played pivotal parts
in the survival of those communities: from Hat Shep Sut through
Harriet Tubman to Daisy Bates and Fannie Lou Hamer to Lorraine
Hansberry to your Aunt Maydine to some of you who sit before me
now.
In the 60s Black people wasted a lot of our substance fighting
each other. We cannot afford to do that in the 80s, when
Washington, D.C. has the highest infant mortality rate of any U.S.
city, 60 percent of the Black community under twenty is
unemployed and more are becoming unemployable, lynchings are
on the increase, and less than half the registered Black voters voted
in the last election.
How are you practicing what you preach — whatever you preach,
and who exactly is listening? As Malcolm stressed, we are not
responsible for our oppression, but we must be responsible for our
own liberation. It is not going to be easy, but we have what we have
learned and what we have been given that is useful. We have the
power those who came before us have given us, to move beyond the
place where they were standing. We have the trees, and water, and
sun, and our children. Malcolm X does not live in the dry texts of his
words as we read them; he lives in the energy we generate and use
to move along the visions we share with him. We are making the

future as well as bonding to survive the enormous pressures of the
present, and that is what it means to be a part of history.
* Talk delivered at the Malcolm X Weekend, Harvard University, February 1982.

Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger*
Where does the pain go when it goes away?**
EVERY BLACK WOMAN in America lives her life somewhere along a
wide curve of ancient and unexpressed angers.
My Black woman’s anger is a molten pond at the core of me, my
most fiercely guarded secret. I know how much of my life as a
powerful feeling woman is laced through with this net of rage. It is
an electric thread woven into every emotional tapestry upon which I
set the essentials of my life — a boiling hot spring likely to erupt at
any point, leaping out of my consciousness like a fire on the
landscape. How to train that anger with accuracy rather than deny
it has been one of the major tasks of my life.
Other Black women are not the root cause nor the source of that
pool of anger. I know this, no matter what the particular situation
may be between me and another Black woman at the moment. Then
why does that anger unleash itself most tellingly against another
Black woman at the least excuse? Why do I judge her in a more
critical light than any other, becoming enraged when she does not
measure up?
And if behind the object of my attack should lie the face of my
own self, unaccepted, then what could possibly quench a fire fueled
by such reciprocating passions?
When I started to write about the intensity of the angers between
Black women, I found I had only begun to touch one tip of a threepronged iceberg, the deepest understructure of which was Hatred,
that societal deathwish directed against us from the moment we
were born Black and female in America. From that moment on we
have been steeped in hatred — for our color, for our sex, for our
effrontery in daring to presume we had any right to live. As children
we absorbed that hatred, passed it through ourselves, and for the

most part, we still live our lives outside of the recognition of what
that hatred really is and how it functions. Echoes of it return as
cruelty and anger in our dealings with each other. For each of us
bears the face that hatred seeks, and we have each learned to be at
home with cruelty because we have survived so much of it within
our own lives.
Before I can write about Black women’s anger, I must write about
the poisonous seepage of hatred that fuels that anger, and of the
cruelty that is spawned when they meet.
I have found this out by scrutinizing my own expectations of
other Black women, by following the threads of my own rage at
Blackwomanness back into the hatred and despisal that embroidered
my life with fire long before I knew where that hatred came from,
or why it was being heaped upon me. Children know only
themselves as reasons for the happenings in their lives. So of course
as a child I decided there must be something terribly wrong with me
that inspired such contempt. The bus driver didn’t look at other
people like that. All the things my mother had warned me not to do
and be that I had gone right ahead and done and been must be to
blame.
To search for power within myself means I must be willing to
move through being afraid to whatever lies beyond. If I look at my
most vulnerable places and acknowledge the pain I have felt, I can
remove the source of that pain from my enemies’ arsenals. My
history cannot be used to feather my enemies’ arrows then, and that
lessens their power over me. Nothing I accept about myself can be
used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came
to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your
me-ness, as I discover you in myself.
America’s measurement of me has lain like a barrier across the
realization of my own powers. It was a barrier which I had to
examine and dismantle, piece by painful piece, in order to use my
energies fully and creatively. It is easier to deal with the external
manifestations of racism and sexism than it is to deal with the
results of those distortions internalized within our consciousness of
ourselves and one another.

But what is the nature of that reluctance to connect with each
other on any but the most superficial levels? What is the source of
that mistrust and distance maintained between Black women?
I don’t like to talk about hate. I don’t like to remember the
cancellation and hatred, heavy as my wished-for death, seen in the
eyes of so many white people from the time I could see. It was
echoed in newspapers and movies and holy pictures and comic
books and Amos ’n Andy radio programs. I had no tools to dissect it,
no language to name it.
The AA subway train to Harlem. I clutch my mother’s sleeve, her
arms full of shopping bags, christmas-heavy. The wet smell of
winter clothes, the train’s lurching. My mother spots an almost seat,
pushes my little snowsuited body down. On one side of me a man
reading a paper. On the other, a woman in a fur hat staring at me.
Her mouth twitches as she stares and then her gaze drops down,
pulling mine with it. Her leather-gloved hand plucks at the line
where my new blue snowpants and her sleek fur coat meet. She
jerks her coat closer to her. I look. I do not see whatever terrible
thing she is seeing on the seat between us — probably a roach. But
she has communicated her horror to me. It must be something very
bad from the way she’s looking, so I pull my snowsuit closer to me
away from it, too. When I look up the woman is still staring at me,
her nose holes and eyes huge. And suddenly I realize there is
nothing crawling up the seat between us; it is me she doesn’t want
her coat to touch. The fur brushes past my face as she stands with a
shudder and holds on to a strap in the speeding train. Born and bred
a New York City child, I quickly slide over to make room for my
mother to sit down. No word has been spoken. I’m afraid to say
anything to my mother because I don’t know what I’ve done. I look
at the sides of my snowpants, secretly. Is there something on them?
Something’s going on here I do not understand, but I will never
forget it. Her eyes. The flared nostrils. The hate.
My three-year-old eyes ache from the machinery used to test
them. My forehead is sore. I have been poked and prodded in the
eyes and stared into all morning. I huddle into the tall metal and

leather chair, frightened and miserable and wanting my mother. On
the other side of the eye clinic’s examining room, a group of young
white men in white coats discuss my peculiar eyes. Only one voice
remains in my memory. “From the looks of her she’s probably
simple, too.” They all laugh. One of them comes over to me,
enunciating slowly and carefully, “OK, girlie, go wait outside now.”
He pats me on the cheek. I am grateful for the absence of harshness.
The Story Hour librarian reading Little Black Sambo. Her white
fingers hold up the little book about a shoebutton-faced little boy
with big red lips and many pigtails and a hatful of butter. I
remember the pictures hurting me and my thinking again there
must be something wrong with me because everybody else is
laughing and besides the library downtown has given this little book
a special prize, the library lady tells us.
SO WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU, ANYWAY? DON’T BE SO
SENSITIVE!
Sixth grade in a new catholic school and I am the first Black
student. The white girls laugh at my braided hair. The nun sends a
note home to my mother saying that “pigtails are not appropriate
attire for school,” and that I should learn to comb my hair in “a
more becoming style.”
Lexie Goldman and I on Lexington Avenue, our adolescent faces
flushed from springtime and our dash out of high school. We stop at
a luncheonette, ask for water. The woman behind the counter smiles
at Lexie. Gives us water. Lexie’s in a glass. Mine in a paper cup.
Afterward we joke about mine being portable. Too loudly.
My first interview for a part-time job after school. An optical
company on Nassau Street has called my school and asked for one of
its students. The man behind the counter reads my application and
then looks up at me, surprised by my Black face. His eyes remind
me of the woman on the train when I was five. Then something else
is added, as he looks me up and down, pausing at my breasts.
My light-skinned mother kept me alive within an environment
where my life was not a high priority. She used whatever methods
she had at hand, few as they were. She never talked about color. My

mother was a very brave woman, born in the West Indies,
unprepared for america. And she disarmed me with her silences.
Somewhere I knew it was a lie that nobody else noticed color. Me,
darker than my two sisters. My father, darkest of all. I was always
jealous of my sisters because my mother thought they were such
good girls, whereas I was bad, always in trouble. “Full of the devil,”
she used to say. They were neat, I was untidy. They were quiet, I
was noisy. They were well-behaved, I was rowdy. They took piano
lessons and won prizes in deportment. I stole money from my
father’s pockets and broke my ankle sledding downhill. They were
good-looking, I was dark. Bad, mischievous, a born troublemaker if
ever there was one.
Did bad mean Black? The endless scrubbing with lemon juice in
the cracks and crevices of my ripening, darkening, body. And oh,
the sins of my dark elbows and knees, my gums and nipples, the
folds of my neck and the cave of my armpits!
The hands that grab at me from behind the stairwell are Black
hands. Boys’ hands, punching, rubbing, pinching, pulling at my
dress. I hurl the garbage bag I’m carrying into the ashcan and jerk
away, fleeing back upstairs. Hoots follow me. “That’s right, you
better run, you ugly yaller bitch, just wait!” Obviously, color was
relative.
My mother taught me to survive from a very early age by her own
example. Her silences also taught me isolation, fury, mistrust, selfrejection, and sadness. My survival lay in learning how to use the
weapons she gave me, also, to fight against those things within
myself, unnamed.
And survival is the greatest gift of love. Sometimes, for Black
mothers, it is the only gift possible, and tenderness gets lost. My
mother bore me into life as if etching an angry message into marble.
Yet I survived the hatred around me because my mother made me
know, by oblique reference, that no matter what went on at home,
outside shouldn’t oughta be the way it was. But since it was that
way outside, I moved in a fen of unexplained anger that encircled
me and spilled out against whomever was closest that shared those
hated selves. Of course I did not realize it at the time. That anger lay

like a pool of acid deep inside me, and whenever I felt deeply, I felt
it, attaching itself in the strangest places. Upon those as powerless
as I. My first friend asking, “Why do you go around hitting all the
time? Is that the only way you know how to be friends?
What other creature in the world besides the Black woman has had
to build the knowledge of so much hatred into her survival and keep
going?
It is shortly after the Civil War. In a grey stone hospital on 110th
Street in New York City a woman is screaming. She is Black, and
healthy, and has been brought here from the South. I do not know
her name. Her baby is ready to be born. But her legs have been tied
together out of a curiosity masquerading as science. Her baby births
itself to death against her bone.
Where are you seven-year-old Elizabeth Eckford of Little Rock,
Arkansas? It is a bright Monday morning and you are on your way
to your first day of school, draped in spittle, white hatred running
down your pink sweater and a white mother’s twisted mouth
working — savage, inhuman — wide over your jaunty braids held
high by their pink ribbons.
Numvulo has walked five days from the bleak place where the
lorry deposited her. She stands in the Capetown, South Africa rain,
her bare feet in the bulldozer tracks where her house once was. She
picks up a piece of soaked cardboard that once covered her table
and holds it over the head of her baby strapped to her back. Soon
she will be arrested and taken back to the reserve, where she does
not even speak the language. She will never get permission to live
near her husband.
The bicentennial, in Washington, D.C. Two ample Black women
stand guard over household belonging piled haphazardly onto a
sidewalk in front of a house. Furniture, toys, bundles of clothes. One
woman absently rocks a toy horse with the toe of her shoe, back and
forth. Across the street on the side of a building opposite is a sign
painted in story-high black letters, GOD HATES YOU.

Addie Mae Collins, Carol Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Denise
McNair. Four little Black girls, none more than ten years of age,
singing their last autumn song in a Sunday church school in
Birmingham, Alabama. After the explosion clears it is not possible to
tell which patent leather Sunday shoe belongs to which found leg.
What other human being absorbs so much virulent hostility and still
functions?
Black women have a history of the use and sharing of power, from
the Amazon legions of Dahomey through the Ashanti warrior queen
Yaa Asantewaa and the freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, to the
economically powerful market-women guilds of present West Africa.
We have a tradition of closeness and mutual care and support, from
the all-woman courts of the Queen Mothers of Benin to the presentday Sisterhood of the Good Death, a community of old women in
Brazil who, as escaped slaves, provided escape and refuge for other
enslaved women, and who now care for each other.*
We are Black women born into a society of entrenched loathing
and contempt for whatever is Black and female. We are strong and
enduring. We are also deeply scarred. As African women together,
we once made the earth fertile with our fingers. We can make the
earth bear as well as mount the first line of fire in defense of the
King. And having killed, in his name and in our own (Harriet’s rifle
speaks, shouldered in the grim marsh), we still know that the power
to kill is less than the power to create, for it produces an ending
rather than the beginning of something new.
Anger — a passion of displeasure that may be excessive or
misplaced but not necessarily harmful. Hatred — an emotional habit
or attitude of mind in which aversion is coupled with ill will. Anger,
used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
Racism and sexism are grown-up words. Black children in america
cannot avoid these distortions in their living and, too often, do not
have the words for naming them. But both are correctly perceived
as hatred.

Growing up, metabolizing hatred like a daily bread. Because I am
Black, because I am woman, because I am not Black enough,
because I am not some particular fantasy of a woman, because I AM.
On such a consistent diet, one can eventually come to value the
hatred of one’s enemies more than one values the love of friends,
for that hatred becomes the source of anger, and anger is a powerful
fuel.
And true, sometimes it seems that anger alone keeps me alive; it
burns with a bright and undiminished flame. Yet anger, like guilt, is
an incomplete form of human knowledge. More useful than hatred,
but still limited. Anger is useful to help clarify our differences, but
in the long run, strength that is bred by anger alone is a blind force
which cannot create the future. It can only demolish the past. Such
strength does not focus upon what lies ahead, but upon what lies
behind, upon what created it — hatred. And hatred is a deathwish
for the hated, not a lifewish for anything else.
To grow up metabolizing hatred like daily bread means that
eventually every human interaction becomes tainted with the
negative passion and intensity of its by-products — anger and
cruelty.
We are African women and we know, in our blood’s telling, the
tenderness with which our foremothers held each other. It is that
connection which we are seeking. We have the stories of Black
women who healed each other’s wounds, raised each other’s
children, fought each other’s battles, tilled each other’s earth, and
eased each other’s passages into life and into death. We know the
possibilities of support and connection for which we all yearn, and
about which we dream so often. We have a growing Black women’s
literature which is richly evocative of these possibilities and
connections. But connections between Black women are not
automatic by virtue of our similarities, and the possibilities of
genuine communication between us are not easily achieved.
Often we give lip service to the idea of mutual support and
connection between Black women because we have not yet crossed
the barriers to these possibilities, nor fully explored the angers and
fears that keep us from realizing the power of a real Black

sisterhood. And to acknowledge our dreams is to sometimes
acknowledge the distance between those dreams and our present
situation. Acknowledged, our dreams can shape the realities of our
future, if we arm them with the hard work and scrutiny of now. We
cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for parodies of selflove. We cannot continue to evade each other on the deepest levels
because we fear each other’s angers, nor continue to believe that
respect means never looking directly nor with openness into another
Black woman’s eyes.
I was not meant to be alone and without you who understand.*

I.
I know the anger that lies inside of me like I know the beat of my
heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be angry than to hurt.
Anger is what I do best. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning.
Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening
universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each
other.
As Black women, we have shared so many similar experiences.
Why doesn’t this commonality bring us closer together instead of
setting us at each other’s throats with weapons well-honed by
familiarity?
The anger with which I meet another Black woman’s slightest
deviation from my immediate need or desire or concept of a proper
response is a deep and hurtful anger, chosen only in the sense of a
choice of desperation — reckless through despair. That anger which
masks my pain that we are so separate who should most be together
— my pain — that she could perhaps not need me as much as I need
her, or see me through the blunted eye of the haters, that eye I
know so well from my own distorted images of her. Erase or be
erased!
I stand in the Public Library waiting to be recognized by the Black
woman library clerk seated a few feet behind the desk. She seems
engrossed in a book, beautiful in her youth and self-assuredness. I
straighten my glasses, giving a tiny shake to my bangles in the
process just in case she has not seen me, but I somehow know she
has. Otherwise motionless, she slowly turns her head and looks up.
Her eyes cross mine with a look of such incidental hostility that I
feel pilloried to the wall. Two male patrons enter behind me. At
that, she rises and moves toward me. “Yes,” she says, with no
inflection at all, her eyes carefully elsewhere. I’ve never seen this
young woman before in my life. I think to myself, “now that’s what
you call an attitude,” recognizing the rising tension inside of me.

The art, beyond insolence, of the Black girl’s face as she cuts her
elegant sidelong glance at me. What makes her eyes slide off of
mine? What does she see that angers her so, or infuriates her, or
disgusts her? Why do I want to break her face off when her eyes do
not meet mine? Why does she wear my sister’s face? My daughter’s
mouth turned down about to suck itself in? The eyes of a furious
and rejected lover? Why do I dream I cradle you at night? Divide
your limbs between the food bowls of my least favorite animals?
Keep vigil for you night after terrible night, wondering? Oh sister,
where is that dark rich land we wanted to wander through together?
Hate said the voice wired in 3/4 time printed in dirty type all the
views fit to kill, me and you, me or you. And whose future image have
we destroyed — your face or mine — without either how shall I look
again at both — lacking either is lacking myself.
And if I trust you what pale dragon will you feed our brown flesh to
from fear, self-preservation, or to what brothered altar all innocent of
loving that has no place to go and so becomes another face of terror or
of hate?
A dumb beast endlessly recording inside the poisonous attacks of
silence — meat gone wrong — what could ever grow in that dim lair and
how does the child convert from sacrifice to liar?
My blood sister, across her living room from me. Sitting back in her
chair while I talk earnestly, trying to reach her, trying to alter the
perceptions of me that cause her so much pain. Slowly, carefully,
and coldly, so I will not miss one single scathing word, she says, “I
am not interested in understanding whatever you’re trying to say —
I don’t care to hear it.”
I have never gotten over the anger that you did not want me as a
sister, nor an ally, nor even a diversion one cut above the cat. You
have never gotten over the anger that I appeared at all. And that I
am different, but not different enough. One woman has eyes like my
sister who never forgave me for appearing before she had a chance
to win her mother’s love, as if anybody ever could. Another woman
wears the high cheekbones of my other sister who wanted to lead

but had only been taught to obey, so now she is dedicated to ruling
by obedience, a passive vision.
Who did we expect the other to be who is not yet at peace with
our own selves? I cannot shut you out the way I shut the others out
so maybe I can destroy you. Must destroy you?
We do not love ourselves, therefore we cannot love each other.
Because we see in each other’s face our own face, the face we never
stopped wanting. Because we survived and survival breeds desire for
more self. A face we never stopped wanting at the same time as we
try to obliterate it.
Why don’t we meet each other’s eyes? Do we expect betrayal in
each other’s gaze, or recognition?
If just once we were to feel the pain of all Black women’s blood
flooding up to drown us! I stayed afloat buoyed by an anger so deep
at my loneliness that I could only move toward further survival.
When one cannot influence a situation it is an act of wisdom to
withdraw.*
Every Black woman in america has survived several lifetimes of
hatred, where even in the candy store cases of our childhood, little
brown niggerbaby candies testified against us. We survived the
wind-driven spittle on our child’s shoe and pink flesh-colored
bandaids, attempted rapes on rooftops and the prodding fingers of
the super’s boy, seeing our girlfriends blown to bits in Sunday
School, and we absorbed that loathing as a natural state. We had to
metabolize such hatred that our cells have learned to live upon it
because we had to, or die of it. Old King Mithridates learned to eat
arsenic bit by bit and so outwitted his poisoners, but I’d have hated
to kiss him upon his lips! Now we deny such hatred ever existed
because we have learned to neutralize it through ourselves, and the
catabolic process throws off waste products of fury even when we
love.
I see hatred
I am bathed in it, drowning in it
since almost the beginning of my life

it has been the air I breathe
the food I eat, the content of my perceptions;
the single most constant fact of my existence
is their hatred …
I am too young for my history**
It is not that Black women shed each other’s psychic blood so
easily, but that we have ourselves bled so often, the pain of
bloodshed becomes almost commonplace. If I have learned to eat
my own flesh in the forest — starving, keening, learning the lesson
of the she-wolf who chews off her own paw to leave the trap behind
— if I must drink my own blood, thirsting, why should I stop at
yours until your dear dead arms hang like withered garlands upon
my breast and I weep for your going, oh my sister, I grieve for our
gone.
When an error of oversight allows one of us to escape without the
full protective dose of fury and air of contemptuous disdain, when
she approaches us without a measure of distrust and reserve flowing
from her pores, or without her eyes coloring each appraisal of us
with that unrelenting sharpness and suspicion reserved only for each
other, when she approaches without sufficient caution, then she is
cursed by the first accusation of derision — naive — meaning not
programmed for defensive attack before inquiry. Even more than
confused, naive is the ultimate wipeout between us.
Black women eating our own hearts out for nourishment in an
empty house empty compound empty city in an empty season, and
for each of us one year the spring will not return — we learned to
savor the taste of our own flesh before any other because that was
all that was allowed us. And we have become to each other
unmentionably dear and immeasurably dangerous. I am writing
about an anger so huge and implacable, so corrosive, it must destroy
what it most needs for its own solution, dissolution, resolution. Here
we are attempting to address each others’ eyes directly. Even if our
words taste sharp as the edge of a lost woman’s voice, we are
speaking.

II
A Black woman, working her years, committed to life as she lives it,
the children fed and clothed and loved as she can into some strength
that does not allow them to encyst like horse chestnuts, knowing all
the time from the start that she must either kill them or eventually
send them into the deathlands, the white labyrinth.
I sat at our Thanksgiving Day table listening to my daughter talk
about the university and the horrors of determined invisibility. Over
the years I have recorded her dreams of death at their hands,
sometimes glorious, sometimes cheap. She tells me of the teachers
who refuse to understand simple questions, who look at her as if she
were a benign — meaning powerless — but unsightly tumor. She
weeps. I hold her. I tell her to remember the university doesn’t own
her, that she has a home. But I have let her go into that jungle of
ghosts, having taught her only how to be fleet of foot, how to
whistle, how to love, and how not to run. Unless she has to. It is
never enough.
Black women give our children forth into a hatred that seared our
own young days with bewilderment, hoping we have taught them
something they can use to fashion their own new and less costly
pathways to survival. Knowing I did not slit their throats at birth
tear out the tiny beating heart with my own despairing teeth the
way some sisters did in the slaveships chained to corpses and
therefore was I committed to this very moment.
The price of increasing power is increasing opposition.*
I sat listening to my girl talk about the bent world she was
determined to reenter in spite of all she was saying, because she
views a knowledge of that world as part of an arsenal which she can
use to change it all. I listened, hiding my pained need to snatch her
back into the web of my smaller protections. I sat watching while
she worked it out bit by hurtful bit — what she really wanted —
feeling her rage wax and wane, feeling her anger building against

me because I could not help her do it nor do it for her, nor would
she allow that.
All mothers see their daughters leaving. Black mothers see it
happening as a sacrifice through the veil of hatred hung like sheets
of lava in the pathway before their daughters. All daughters see
their mothers leaving. Black girls see it happening through a veil of
threatened isolation no fire of trusting pierces.
Last month I held another Black woman in my arms as she sobbed
out the grief and deprivation of her mother’s death. Her
inconsolable loss — the emptiness of the emotional landscape she
was seeing in front of her — spoke out of her mouth from a place of
untouchable aloneness that could never admit another Black woman
close enough again to matter. “The world is divided into two kinds
of people,” she said, “those who have mothers and those who don’t.
And I don’t have a mother anymore.” What I heard her saying was
that no other Black woman would ever see who she was, ever trust
or be trusted by her again. I heard in her cry of loneliness the source
of the romance between Black women and our mommas.
Little Black girls, tutored by hate into wanting to become
anything else. We cut our eyes at sister because she can only reflect
what everybody else except momma seemed to know — that we
were hateful, or ugly, or worthless, but certainly unblessed. We
were not boys and we were not white, so we counted for less than
nothing, except to our mommas.
If we can learn to give ourselves the recognition and acceptance
that we have come to expect only from our mommas, Black women
will be able to see each other much more clearly and deal with each
other much more directly.
I think about the harshness that exists so often within the least
encounter between Black women, the judgment and the sizing up,
that cruel refusal to connect. I know sometimes I feel like it is worth
my life to disagree with another Black woman. Better to ignore her,
withdraw from her, go around her, just don’t deal with her. Not just
because she irritates me, but because she might destroy me with the
cruel force of her response to what must feel like an affront, namely

me. Or I might destroy her with the force of mine, for the very same
reason. The fears are equal.
Once I can absorb the particulars of my life as a Black woman,
and multiply them by my two children and all the days of our
collective Black lives, and I do not falter beneath the weight — what
Black woman is not a celebration, like water, like sunlight, like rock
— is it any wonder that my voice is harsh? Now to require of myself
the effort of awareness, so that harshness will not function in the
places it is least deserved — toward my sisters.
Why do Black women reserve a particular voice of fury and
disappointment for each other? Who is it we must destroy when we
attack each other with that tone of predetermined and correct
annihilation? We reduce one another to our own lowest common
denominator, and then we proceed to try and obliterate what we
most desire to love and touch, the problematic self, unclaimed but
fiercely guarded from the other.
This cruelty between us, this harshness, is a piece of the legacy of
hate with which we were inoculated from the time we were born by
those who intended it to be an injection of death. But we adapted,
learned to take it in and use it, unscrutinized. Yet at what cost! In
order to withstand the weather, we had to become stone, and now
we bruise ourselves upon the other who is closest.
How do I alter course so each Black woman’s face I meet is not
the face of my mother or my killer?
I loved you. I dreamed about you. I talked to you for hours in my sleep
sitting under a silk-cotton tree our arms around each other or braiding
each other’s hair or oiling each other’s backs, and every time I run into
you on the street or at the post office or behind the Medicaid desk I want
to wring your neck.
There are so many occasions in each of our lives for righteous fury,
multiplied and dividing.
• Black women being told that we can be somehow better, and are
worse, but never equal. To Black men. To other women. To human
beings.

• The white academic feminist who tells me she is so glad This
Bridge Called My Back* exists, because now it gives her a chance to
deal with racism without having to face the harshness of Black
undiluted by other colors. What she means is she does not have to
examine her own specific terror and loathing of Blackness, nor deal
with the angers of Black women. So get away with your dirty ugly
mean faces, all screwed up all the time!
• The racist filmstrip artist who I thought I had handled so
patiently and well. I didn’t blow up his damned machine. I
explained how his racial blindness made me feel and how his film
could be altered to have some meaning. He probably learned
something about showing Black images. Then I came home and
almost tore up my house and my lover because some invitations
happened to be misprinted. Not seeing where the charge of rage was
born.
• A convicted Black man, a torturer of women and children, armytrained to be a killer, writes in his journal in his death cell:
“I am the type of person you are most likely to find driving a
Mercedes and sitting in the executive offices of 100 big
corporations.” And he’s right. Except he’s Black.
How do we keep from releasing our angers at them upon
ourselves and each other? How do I free myself from this poison I
was force-fed like a Strasburg goose until I vomited anger at the
least scent of anything nourishing, oh my sister the belligerent lift of
your shoulder the breath of your hair.… We each learned the craft of
destruction. It is all they knew to allow us, yet look how our words
are finding each other again.
It is difficult to construct a wholesomeness model when we are
surrounded with synonyms for filth. But not impossible. We have,
after all, survived for a reason. (How do I define my impact upon
this earth?) I begin by searching for the right questions.
Dear Leora,
For two Black women to enter an analytic or therapeutic
relationship means beginning an essentially uncharted and

insecure journey. There are no prototypes, no models, no
objectively accessible body of experience other than
ourselves by which to examine the specific dynamics of our
interactions as Black women. Yet this interaction can affect
all the other psychic matter attended profoundly. It is to
scrutinize that very interaction that I sought you out
professionally, and I have come to see that it means picking
my way through our similarities and our differences, as well
as through our histories of calculated mistrust and desire.
Because it has not been done before or at least not been
noted, this particular scrutiny is painful and fraught with
the vulnerability of all psychic scrutinies plus all of the
pitfalls created by our being Black women in a white male
world, and Black women who have survived. This is a
scrutiny often sidestepped or considered unimportant or
beside the point. EXAMPLE: I can’t tell you how many good
white psychwomen have said to me, “Why should it matter
if I am Black or white?” who would never think of saying,
“Why does it matter if I am female or male?” EXAMPLE: I
don’t know who you are in supervision with, but I can bet
it’s not with another Black woman.
So this territory between us feels new and frightening as
well as urgent, rigged with detonating pieces of our own
individual racial histories which neither of us chose but
which each of us bears the scars from. And those are
particular to each of us. But there is a history which we
share because we are Black women in a racist sexist
cauldron, and that means some part of this journey is yours,
also.
I have many troubled areas of self that will be neither new
nor problematic to you as a trained and capable
psychperson. I think you are a brave woman and I respect
that, yet I doubt that your training can have prepared you to
explore the tangle of need, fear, distrust, despair, and hope
which operates between us, and certainly not to the depth

necessary. Because neither of us is male nor white, we
belong to a group of human beings that has not been
thought worthy of that kind of study. So we have only who
we are, with or without the courage to use those selves for
further exploration and clarification of how what lies
between us as Black women affects us and the work we do
together.
Yet if we do not do it here between us, each one of us will
have to do it somewhere else, sometime.
I know these things: I do not yet know what to do about
them. But I do want to make them fit together to serve my
life and my work, and I don’t mean merely in a way that
feels safe. I don’t know how they can further and illuminate
your life and work, but I know they can. It is sometimes
both the curse and the blessing of the poet to perceive
without yet being able to order those perceptions, and that
is another name for Chaos.
But of course it is out of Chaos that new worlds are born.
I look forward to our meeting eye to eye.
Audre

III
There has been so much death and loss around me recently, without
metaphor or redeeming symbol, that sometimes I feel trapped into
one idiom only — that one of suffering and its codicil, to bear. The
same problem exists with anger. I have processed too much of it
recently, or else the machinery is slowing down or becoming less
efficient, and it creeps into my most crucial interchanges.
Perhaps this is why it is often easier for Black women to interact
with white women, even though those interactions are often a dead
end emotionally. For with white women there is a middle depth of
interaction possible and sustainable, an emotional limit to
relationships of self upon self acknowledged.
Now why is this not so with Frances, who is white, and whom I
meet at a depth beyond anyone? When I speak of Frances and me I
am talking about a relationship not only of great depth but one of
great breadth also, a totaling of differences without merging. I am
also speaking of a love shaped by our mutual commitment to hard
work and confrontation over many years, each of us refusing to
settle for what was easy, or simple, or acceptably convenient.
That middle depth of relationship more usually possible between
Black and white women, however, is less threatening than the
tangle of unexplored needs and furies that face any two Black
women who seek to engage each other directly, emotionally, no
matter what the context of their relationship may be. This holds true
for office workers and political activists as well as lovers. But it is
through threading this tangle that new visions of self and possibility
between Black women emerge. Again, I am speaking here of social
relationships, for it is crucial that we examine dynamics between
women who are not lovers as well as between women who are.
I ask myself, do I ever use my war against racism to avoid other
even more unanswerable pain? And if so, doesn’t that make the
energy behind my battles against racism sometimes more tenuous,
or less clearheaded, or subject to unexpected stresses and

disappointments? White people can never truly validate us. For
example: At this point in time, were racism to be totally eradicated
from those middle range relationships between Black women and
white women, those relationships might become deeper, but they
would still never satisfy our particular Black woman’s need for one
another, given our shared knowledge and traditions and history.
There are two very different struggles involved here. One is the war
against racism in white people, and the other is the need for Black
women to confront and wade through the racist constructs
underlying our deprivation of each other. And these battles are not
at all the same.
But sometimes it feels like better a righteous fury than the dull
ache of loss, loss, loss. My daughter leaving her time of
daughterhood. Friends going away in one way or another.
… as those seemingly alike mature, nature emphasizes their
uniqueness and the differences become more obvious.*
How often have I demanded from another Black woman what I
had not dared to give myself — acceptance, faith, enough space to
consider change? How often have I asked her to leap across
difference, suspicion, distrust, old pain? How many times have I
expected her to jump the hideous gaps of our learned despisals
alone, like an animal trained through blindness to ignore the
precipice? How many times have I forgotten to ask this question?
Am I not reaching out for you in the only language I know? Are
you reaching for me in your only salvaged tongue? If I try to hear
yours across our differences does/will that mean you can hear
mine?
Do we explore these questions or do we settle for that secret
isolation which is the learned tolerance of deprivation of each other
— that longing for each other’s laughter, dark ease, sharing, and
permission to be ourselves that we do not admit to feeling, usually,
because then we would have to admit the lack; and the pain of that
lacking, persistent as a low-grade fever and as debilitating?
Do we reenact these crucifixions upon each other, the avoidance,
the cruelty, the judgments, because we have not been allowed Black
goddesses, Black heroines; because we have not been allowed to see

our mothers and our selves in their/our own magnificence until that
magnificence became part of our blood and bone? One of the
functions of hatred is certainly to mask and distort the beauty which
is power in ourselves.
I am hungry for Black women who will not turn from me in anger
and contempt even before they know me or hear what I have to say.
I am hungry for Black women who will not turn away from me even
if they do not agree with what I say. We are, after all, talking about
different combinations of the same borrowed sounds.
Sometimes exploring our differences feels like marching out to
war. I hurl myself with trepidation into the orbit of every Black
woman I want to reach, advancing with the best of what I have to
offer held out at arms length before me — myself. Does it feel
different to her? At the same time as I am terrified, expecting
betrayal, rejection, the condemnations of laughter, is she feeling
judged by me?
Most of the Black women I know think I cry too much, or that I’m
too public about it. I’ve been told that crying makes me seem soft
and therefore of little consequence. As if our softness has to be the
price we pay out for power, rather than simply the one that’s paid
most easily and most often.
I fight nightmare images inside my own self, see them, own them,
know they did not destroy me before and will not destroy me now if
I speak them out, admit how they have scarred me, that my mother
taught me to survive at the same time as she taught me to fear my
own Blackness. “Don’t trust white people because they mean us no
good and don’t trust anyone darker than you because their hearts
are as Black as their faces.” (And where did that leave me, the
darkest one?) It is painful even now to write it down. How many
messages like that come down to all of us, and in how many
different voices, how many different ways? And how can we
expunge these messages from our consciousness without first
recognizing what it was they were saying, and how destructive they
were?

IV
What does it take to be tough? Learned cruelty?
Now there is bound to be a voice saying that Black women have
always helped one another, haven’t we? And that is the paradox of
our inner conflict. We have a strong and ancient tradition of
bonding and mutual support, and the memorized threads of that
tradition exist within each of us, in opposition to the anger and
suspicion engendered by self-hate.
When the world moved against me with a disapproving frown / It was
sister put the ground back under my feet.*
Hearing those words sung has always provoked the most profound
and poignant sense of loss within me for something I wanted to feel
and could not because it had never happened for me. There are
some Black women for whom it has. For others of us, that sense of
being able to depend upon rock bottom support from our sisters is
something we dream about and work toward, knowing it is possible,
but also very problematic across the realities of fear and suspicion
lying between us.
Our anger, tempered over survival fires, shuttered behind
downcast eyelids, or else blazing out of our eyes at the oddest times.
Looking up from between the legs of a lover, over a notebook in the
middle of a lecture and I almost lost my train of thought, ringing up
groceries in the supermarket, filling out the form behind the
unemployment office window, stepping out of a, cab in the middle
of Broadway on the arm of a businessman from Lagos, sweeping
ahead of me into a shop as I open the door, looking into each others
eyes for a split second only — furious, cutting, sisters. My daughter
asking me all the time when she was a little girl, “Are you angry
about something, Mommy?”
As Black women, we have wasted our angers too often, buried
them, called them someone else’s, cast them wildly into oceans of
racism and sexism from which no vibration resounded, hurled them
into each other’s teeth and then ducked to avoid the impact. But by

and large, we avoid open expression of them, or cordon them off in
a rigid and unapproachable politeness. The rage that feels illicit or
unjustified is kept secret, unnamed, and preserved forever. We are
stuffed with furies, against ourselves, against each other, terrified to
examine them lest we find ourselves in bold print fingered and
named what we have always felt and even sometimes preferred
ourselves to be — alone. And certainly, there are enough occasions
in all our lives where we can use our anger righteously, enough for
many lifetimes. We can avoid confrontation with each other very
readily. It is so much easier to examine our anger within situations
that are (relatively) clearcut and emotionally unloaded. It is so
much easier to express our anger in those middle depth
relationships that do not threaten genuine self-exposure. And yet
always that hunger for the substance known, a hunger for the real
shared, for the sister who shares.
It is hard to stand up in the teeth of white dismissal and
aggression, of gender hatred and attack. It is so much harder to
tackle face-on the rejection of Black women who may be seeing in
my face some face they have not discarded in their own mirror, who
see in my eyes the shape they have come to fear may be their own.
So often this fear is stoked between Black women by the feared loss
of a male companion, present or sought after. For we have also been
taught that a man acquired was the sole measure of success, and yet
they almost never stay.
One Black woman sits and silently judges another, how she looks,
how she acts, how she impresses others. The first woman’s scales
are weighted against herself. She is measuring the impossible. She is
measuring the self she does not fully want to be. She does not want
to accept the contradictions, nor the beauty. She wishes the other
woman would go away. She wishes the other woman would become
someone else, anyone other than another Black woman. She has
enough trouble dealing with being herself. “Why don’t you learn to
fly straight,” she says to the other woman. “Don’t you understand
what your poor showing says about us all? If I could fly I’d certainly
do a better job than that. Can’t you put on a more together show?

The white girls do it. Maybe we could get one to show you how.”
The other woman cannot speak. She is too busy keeping herself
from crashing upon the ground. She will not cry the tears which are
hardening into little sharp stones that spit from her eyes and
implant themselves in the first woman’s heart, who quickly heals
over them and identifies them as the source of her pain.

V
There are myths of self-protection that hold us separate from each
other and breed harshness and cruelty where we most need softness
and understanding.
1. That courtesy or politeness require our not noticing each other
directly, only with the most covert of evaluating glances. At all
costs, we must avoid the image of our fear. “How beautiful your
mouth is” might well be heard as “Look at those big lips.” We
maintain a discreet distance between each other also because that
distance between us makes me less you, makes you less me.
When there is no connection at all between people, then anger is
a way of bringing them closer together, of making contact. But
when there is a great deal of connectedness that is problematic or
threatening or unacknowledged, then anger is a way of keeping
people separate, of putting distance between us.
2. That because we sometimes rise to each other’s defense against
outsiders, we do not need to look at devaluation and dismissal
among ourselves. Support against outsiders is very different from
cherishing each other. Often it is a case of “like needs like.” It
doesn’t mean we have to appreciate that like or our need of it, even
when that like is the only thin line between dying and living.
For if I take the white world’s estimation of me as Black-womansynonymous-with-garbage to heart, then deep down inside myself I
will always believe that I am truly good for nothing. But it is very
hard to look absorbed hatred in the face. It is easier to see you as
good for nothing because you are like me. So when you support me
because you are like me, that merely confirms that you are nothing
too, just like me. It’s a no-win position, a case of nothing supporting
nothing and someone’s gonna have to pay for that one, and it sure
ain’t gonna be me! When I can recognize my worth, I can recognize
yours.
3. That perfection is possible, a correct expectation from ourselves
and each other, and the only terms of acceptance, humanness. (Note

how very useful that makes us to the external institutions!) If you
are like me, then you will have to be a lot better than I am in order
to even be good enough. And you can’t be because no matter how
good you are you’re still a Black woman, just like me. (Who does
she think she is?) So any act or idea that I could accept or at least
examine from anyone else is not even tolerable if it comes from you,
my mirror image. If you are not THEIR image of perfection, and you
can’t ever be because you are a Black woman, then you are a
reflection upon me. We are never good enough for each other. All
your faults become magnified reflections of my own threatening
inadequacies. I must attack you first before our enemies confuse us
with each other. But they will anyway.
Oh mother, why were we armed to fight with cloud-wreathed swords
and javelins of dust? “Just who do you think you are, anyway?” Who
I am most afraid of (never) meeting.

VI
The language by which we have been taught to dismiss ourselves
and our feelings as suspect is the same language we use to dismiss
and suspect each other. Too pretty — too ugly. Too Black — too
white. Wrong. I already know that. Who says so. You’re too
questionable for me to hear you. You speak THEIR language. You
don’t speak THEIR language. Who do you think you are? You think
you’re better than anybody else? Get out of my face.
We refuse to give up the artificial distances between us, or to
examine our real differences for creative exchange. I’m too different
for us to communicate. Meaning, I must establish myself as not-you.
And the road to anger is paved with our unexpressed fear of each
other’s judgment. We have not been allowed to experience each
other freely as Black women in america; we come to each other
coated in myths, stereotypes, and expectations from the outside,
definitions not our own. “You are my reference group, but I have
never worked with you.” How are you judging me? As Black as you?
Blacker than you? Not Black enough? Whichever, I am going to be
found wanting in some way …
We are Black women, defined as never-good-enough. I must
overcome that by becoming better than you. If I expect enough from
myself, then maybe I can become different from what they say we
are, different from you. If I become different enough, then maybe I
won’t be a “nigger bitch” anymore. If I make you different enough
from me, then I won’t need you so much. I will become strong, the
best, excel in everything, become the very best because I don’t dare
to be anything else. It is my only chance to become good enough to
become human.
If I am myself, then you cannot accept me. But if you can accept
me, that means I am what you would like to be, and then I’m not
“the real thing.” But then neither are you. WILL THE REAL BLACK
WOMAN PLEASE STAND UP?

We cherish our guilty secret, buried under exquisite clothing and
expensive makeup and bleaching creams (yes, still!) and hair
straighteners masquerading as permanent waves. The killer instinct
toward any one of us who deviates from the proscribed cover is
precise and deadly.
Acting like an insider and feeling like the outsider, preserving our
self-rejection as Black women at the same time as we’re getting over
— we think. And political work will not save our souls, no matter
how correct and necessary that work is. Yet it is true that without
political work we cannot hope to survive long enough to effect any
change. And self-empowerment is the most deeply political work
there is, and the most difficult.
When we do not attempt to name the confusion of feelings which
exist between sisters, we act them out in hundreds of hurtful and
unproductive ways. Never speaking from the old pain, to beyond. As
if we have made a secret pact between ourselves not to speak, for
the expression of that unexamined pain might be accompanied by
other ancient and unexpressed hurtings embedded in the stored-up
anger we have not expressed. And that anger, as we know from our
flayed egos of childhood, is armed with a powerful cruelty learned
in the bleakness of too-early battles for survival. “You can’t take it,
huh!” The Dozens. A Black game of supposedly friendly rivalry and
name-calling; in reality, a crucial exercise in learning how to absorb
verbal abuse without faltering.
A piece of the price we paid for learning survival was our
childhood. We were never allowed to be children. It is the right of
children to be able to play at living for a little while, but for a Black
child, every act can have deadly serious consequences, and for a
Black girl child, even more so. Ask the ghosts of the four little Black
girls blown up in Birmingham. Ask Angel Lenair, or Latonya Wilson,
or Cynthia Montgomery, the three girl victims in the infamous
Atlanta murders, none of whose deaths have ever been solved.
Sometimes it feels as if I were to experience all the collective
hatred that I have had directed at me as a Black woman, admit its
implications into my consciousness, I might die of the bleak and

horrible weight. Is that why a sister once said to me, “white people
feel, Black people do”?
It is true that in america white people, by and large, have more
time and space to afford the luxury of scrutinizing their emotions.
Black people in this country have always had to attend closely to the
hard and continuous work of survival in the most material and
immediate planes. But it is a temptation to move from this fact to
the belief that Black people do not need to examine our feelings; or
that they are unimportant, since they have so often been used to
stereotype and infantalize us; or that these feelings are not vital to
our survival; or, worse, that there is some acquired virtue in not
feeling them deeply. That is carrying a timebomb wired to our
emotions.
There is a distinction I am beginning to make in my living
between pain and suffering. Pain is an event, an experience that must
be recognized, named, and then used in some way in order for the
experience to change, to be transformed into something else,
strength or knowledge or action.
Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of
unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain. When I live through pain
without recognizing it, self-consciously, I rob myself of the power
that can come from using that pain, the power to fuel some
movement beyond it. I condemn myself to reliving that pain over
and over and over whenever something close triggers it. And that is
suffering, a seemingly inescapable cycle.
And true, experiencing old pain sometimes feels like hurling
myself full force against a concrete wall. But I remind myself that I
HAVE LIVED THROUGH IT ALL ALREADY, AND SURVIVED.
Sometimes the anger that lies between Black women is not
examined because we spend so much of our substance having to
examine others constantly in the name of self-protection and
survival, and we cannot reserve enough energy to scrutinize
ourselves. Sometimes we don’t do it because the anger’s been there
so long we don’t know what it is, or we think it’s natural to suffer
rather than to experience pain. Sometimes, because we are afraid of
what we will find. Sometimes, because we don’t think we deserve it.

The revulsion on the woman’s face in the subway as she moves
her coat away and I think she is seeing a roach. But I see the hatred
in her eyes because she wants me to see the hatred in her eyes,
because she wants me to know in only the way a child can know
that I don’t belong alive in her world. If I’d been grown, I’d
probably have laughed or snarled or been hurt, seen it for what it
was. But I am five years old. I see it, I record it, I do not name it, so
the experience is incomplete. It is not pain; it becomes suffering.
And how can I tell you I don’t like the way you cut your eyes at
me if I know that I am going to release all the unnamed angers
within you spawned by the hatred you have suffered and never felt?
So we are drawn to each other but wary, demanding the instant
perfection we would never expect from our enemies. But it is
possible to break through this inherited agony, to refuse
acquiescence in this bitter charade of isolation and anger and pain.
I read this question many times in the letters of Black women,
“Why do I feel myself to be such an anathema, so isolated?” I hear it
spoken over and over again, in endless covert ways. But we can
change that scenario. We can learn to mother ourselves.
What does that mean for Black women? It means we must
establish authority over our own definition, provide an attentive
concern and expectation of growth which is the beginning of that
acceptance we came to expect only from our mothers. It means that
I affirm my own worth by committing myself to my own survival, in
my own self and in the self of other Black women. On the other
hand, it means that as I learn my worth and genuine possibility, I
refuse to settle for anything less than a rigorous pursuit of the
possible in myself, at the same time making a distinction between
what is possible and what the outside world drives me to do in
order to prove I am human. It means being able to recognize my
successes, and to be tender with myself, even when I fail.
We will begin to see each other as we dare to begin to see
ourselves; we will begin to see ourselves as we begin to see each
other, without aggrandizement or dismissal or recriminations, but
with patience and understanding for when we do not quite make it,
and recognition and appreciation for when we do. Mothering

ourselves means learning to love what we have given birth to by
giving definition to, learning how to be both kind and demanding in
the teeth of failure as well as in the face of success, and not
misnaming either.
When you come to respect the character of the time you will not have
to cover emptyness with pretense.*
We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other
without always understanding what will be created.
As we fear each other less and value each other more, we will
come to value recognition within each other’s eyes as well as within
our own, and seek a balance between these visions. Mothering.
Claiming some power over who we choose to be, and knowing that
such power is relative within the realities of our lives. Yet knowing
that only through the use of that power can we effectively change
those realities. Mothering means the laying to rest of what is weak,
timid, and damaged — without despisal — the protection and
support of what is useful for survival and change, and our joint
explorations of the difference.
I recall a beautiful and intricate sculpture from the court of the
Queen Mother of Benin, entitled “The Power Of The Hand.” It
depicts the Queen Mother, her court women, and her warriors in a
circular celebration of the human power to achieve success in
practical and material ventures, the ability to make something out
of anything. In Dahomey, that power is female.

VIII
Theorizing about self-worth is ineffective. So is pretending. Women
can die in agony who have lived with blank and beautiful faces. I
can afford to look at myself directly, risk the pain of experiencing
who I am not, and learn to savor the sweetness of who I am. I can
make friends with all the different pieces of me, liked and disliked.
Admit that I am kinder to my neighbor’s silly husband most days
than I am to myself. I can look into the mirror and learn to love the
stormy little Black girl who once longed to be white or anything
other than who she was, since all she was ever allowed to be was
the sum of the color of her skin and the textures of her hair, the
shade of her knees and elbows, and those things were clearly not
acceptable as human.
Learning to love ourselves as Black women goes beyond a
simplistic insistence that “Black is beautiful.” It goes beyond and
deeper than a surface appreciation of Black beauty, although that is
certainly a good beginning. But if the quest to reclaim ourselves and
each other remains there, then we risk another superficial
measurement of self, one superimposed upon the old one and almost
as damaging, since it pauses at the superficial. Certainly it is no
more empowering. And it is empowerment — our strengthening in
the service of ourselves and each other, in the service of our work
and future — that will be the result of this pursuit.
I have to learn to love myself before I can love you or accept your
loving. You have to learn to love yourself before you can love me or
accept my loving. Know we are worthy of touch before we can reach
out for each other. Not cover that sense of worthlessness with “I
don’t want you” or “it doesn’t matter” or “white folks feel, Black
folks DO.” And these are enormously difficult to accomplish in an
environment that consistently encourages nonlove and cover-up, an
environment that warns us to be quiet about our need of each other,
by defining our dissatisfactions as unanswerable and our necessities
as unobtainable.

Until now, there has been little that taught us how to be kind to
each other. To the rest of the world, yes, but not to ourselves. There
have been few external examples of how to treat another Black
woman with kindness, deference, tenderness or an appreciative
smile in passing, just because she IS; an understanding of each
other’s shortcomings because we have been somewhere close to
that, ourselves. When last did you compliment another sister, give
recognition to her specialness? We have to consciously study how to
be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was
native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each
other. But we can practice being gentle with ourselves by being
gentle with each other. We can practice being gentle with each
other by being gentle with that piece of ourselves that is hardest to
hold, by giving more to the brave bruised girlchild within each of
us, by expecting a little less from her gargantuan efforts to excel. We
can love her in the light as well as in the darkness, quiet her frenzy
toward perfection and encourage her attentions toward fulfillment.
Maybe then we will come to appreciate more how much she has
taught us, and how much she is doing to keep this world revolving
toward some livable future.
It would be ridiculous to believe that this process is not lengthy
and difficult. It is suicidal to believe it is not possible. As we arm
ourselves with ourselves and each other, we can stand toe to toe
inside that rigorous loving and begin to speak the impossible — or
what has always seemed like the impossible — to one another. The
first step toward genuine change. Eventually, if we speak the truth
to each other, it will become unavoidable to ourselves.
* An abbreviated version of this essay was published in Essence, vol. 14, no. 6 (October

1983). I wish to thank the following women without whose insights and support I could

not have completed this paper: Andrea Canaan, Frances Clayton, Michelle Cliff, Blanche

Wiesen Cook, Clare Coss, Yvonne Flowers, Gloria Joseph, Adrienne Rich, Charlotte Sheedy,
Judy Simmons and Barbara Smith. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Sheila
Blackwell Pinckney, 1953–1983.

** From a poem by Dr. Gloria Joseph.

Grenada Revisited: An Interim Report*
THE FIRST TIME I came to Grenada I came seeking “home,” for this was
my mother’s birthplace and she had always defined it so for me.
Vivid images remained of what I saw there and of what I knew it
could become.
• Grand Anse Beach was a busy thoroughfare in the early, direct
morning. Children in proper school uniforms carrying shoes, trying
to decide between the lure of a coco palm adventure to one side and
the delicious morning sea on the other, while they are bound
straightforward to well-worn chalky desks.
• The mended hem of the print dress the skinny old woman wore,
swinging along down the beach, cutlass in hand. Oversized, high
rubber boots never once interfering with her determined step. Her
soft shapeless hat. Underneath, sharp, unhurried eyes snapped out
from chocolate skin dusted grey with age.
• Another woman, younger, switch held between elbow and waist,
driving seven sheep that look like goats except goats carry their tails
up and sheep down.
• The Fat-Woman-Who-Fries-Fish-In-The-Market actually did, and
it was delicious, served on the counterboards with her fragrant
chocolate-tea in mugs fashioned from Campbell’s Pork ’n Beans cans
with metal handles attached.
• The full moon turning the night beach flash green.
I came to Grenada for the first time eleven months before the
March 13, 1979 bloodless coup of the New Jewel Movement which
ushered in the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) of
Grenada under Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. This brought an end
to twenty-nine years of Sir Eric Gairy’s regime — wasteful, corrupt,
and United States sanctioned.
The road from tiny Pearl’s Airport in Grenville, up over Grand
Etang mountain through Beauregard and Birch Grove, a rainbow of

children calling after us down the one narrow road through these
hamlets cut into the hills. Tree ferns straight up like shingles along
the mountainside. In 1978 there was only one paved road in
Grenada. During the People’s Revolutionary Government, all roads
were widened and reworked, and a functioning bus service was
established that did more than ferry tourists back and forth to the
cruise ships lying at anchor in the careenage. Wild banana fronds,
baligey, in clumps below the road’s slope. Stands of particular trees
within the bush — red cocoa fruit, golden apple, mango, breadfruit,
peach-ripe nutmeg, banana. Girls on the road to Annandale, baskets
of laundry balanced on their heads, hands on hips, swaying,
reminiscent of 100 roads through Africa.
Grenada, tiny spice island, is the second largest producer of
nutmeg in the world. Its cocoa has a 45 percent fat content and sells
for premium prices on the world market. But Grenadians pay eight
times more than that price if they wish to drink processed hot
chocolate, all of which is imported.
The second time I came to Grenada I came in mourning and fear
that this land which I was learning had been savaged, invaded, its
people maneuvered into saying thank you to their invaders. I knew
the lies and distortions of secrecy surrounding the invasion of
Grenada by the United States on October 25, 1983; the
rationalizations which collapse under the weight of facts; the facts
that are readily available, even now, from the back pages of the New
York Times.
1. That the St. Georges Medical School students were in danger.
Officials of the school deny this.1 Students deny this.2 The U.S.
government had received assurances from General Hudson Austin of
the Revolutionary Military Council guaranteeing the students’
safety. These assurances were ignored.3
2. That the U.S. was invited to intervene by the signers of an
Organization of Eastern Caribbean States Treaty. This would only have
been internationally legal had Grenada invaded another island.4 The
decision to invade was made by four of the seven signatories. The
invitation itself was actually drafted by the U.S. State Department
and sent down to the Eastern Caribbean nations.5

3. That Grenada threatened U.S. security because of the construction
of a military airport and the stockpiling of an arsenal of modern
weapons. Grenada’s new airport is a civilian airport built to
accommodate tourists. It has been in planning for over twenty-five
years, half financed by several western european countries and
Canada. According to Plessey, the British firm who underwrote the
project, the airport was being built to civil, not military, standards.6
All U.S. reports on Grenada now stress the necessity of this airport
for a Grenadian tourist industry.7 The “stockpile” of weapons was
less than two warehouses. Of 6,300 rifles, about 400 were fairly
modern; the rest were very old, and some antique.8
As even Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. observed, “Now we launch a sneak
attack on a pathetic island of 110,000 people with no army, no navy
or air force, and claim a glorious victory.”9
A group of men and women mend the road ahead of us with hoes
and rock hammers, wheelbarrows, and other hand tools. They step
to one side as we pass by. One woman wipes her face with the end
of her headcloth, leaning upon the handle of her scythe. Another
woman is barefooted, young, but when she smiles I see all of her
front teeth are missing. The PRG brought free medical care to
Grenada, and no more school fees. Most estate workers and peasants
in the small villages saw a dentist for the first time in their lives.
Literacy was raised by teacher education and a planned each-oneteach-one program through the countryside.
Revolution. A nation decides for itself what it needs. How best to
get it. Food. Dentists. Doctors. Roads. When I first visited Grenada
in 1978, one-third of the farmable land in the country lay idle,
owned by absentee landlords who did not work it. The PRG required
that plans be filed either for farming that land, turning it over to
those who would, or deeding it to the state. Small banana
collectives started. Fishing cooperatives. Beginning agro-industry.
The World Bank notes the health of the Grenadian economy,
surpassing all other Caribbean economies in the rate of its growth
and stability despite the opposition of the U.S. Unemployment dips
from 40 percent to 14 percent. Now there is no work again.

Four years ago, the U.S. acted through the International Monetary
Fund to assure that there would be no western money available for
the Grenadian economy, much less for protecting her shores from an
invasion threatened by Gairy operating out of San Diego, California,
where he had sought asylum. When the PRG sought economic aid
from the U.S. in 1979 to help rebuild the infrastructure of a country
fallen into despair during the twenty-nine years of Gairy’s regime,
the U.S. response was to offer the insult of $5000 from an
ambassador’s discretionary fund! Now it is 1983, post-invasion, and
the conquerors are promising Grenadians welfare, their second main
exportable drug. Three million dollars thus far, administered under
U.S. guns, so long as the heads that take it are bowed.
Had the amount this invasion cost each one of us in taxes been
lent to the PRG when it requested economic aid from the U.S. five
years ago, the gratitude of Grenadians would have been real, and
hundreds of lives could have been saved. But then Grenada would
have been self-defined, independent; and, of course, that could not
be allowed. What a bad example, a dangerous precedent, an
independent Grenada would be for the peoples of Color in the
Caribbean, in Central America, for those of us here in the United
States.
The ready acceptance by the majority of americans of the
Grenadian invasion and of the shady U.S. involvement in the events
leading up to the assassination of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop
both happen in an america whose moral and ethical fiber is
weakened by racism as thoroughly as wood is weakened by dry rot.
White america has been well-schooled in the dehumanization of
Black people. A Black island nation? Why, don’t be ridiculous! If
they weren’t all so uppity, we’d have enough jobs and no recession.
The lynching of Black youth and shooting down of Black women, 60
percent of Black teenagers unemployed and rapidly becoming
unemployable, the presidential dismantling of the Civil Rights
Commission, and more Black families below the poverty line than
twenty years ago — if these facts of american life and racism can be
passed over as unremarkable, then why not the rape and annexation
of tiny Black Grenada?

The Pentagon has been spoiling for a fight it could win for a long
time; the last one was the battle for Inchon in the 1950s. How better
to wipe out the bitter memories of Vietnam defeats by Yellow
people than with a restoration of power in the eyes of the american
public — the image of american marines splashing through a little
Black blood? “… to keep our honor clean” the marine anthem says.
So the american public was diverted from recession, unemployment,
the debacle in Beirut, from nuclear madness and dying oceans and a
growing national depression and despair, by the bombing of a
mental hospital where fifty people were killed. Even that piece of
proud news was withheld for over a week while various cosmetic
stories were constructed. Bread and circuses.
If the United States is even remotely interested in seeing
democracy flourish in the Caribbean, why does it continue to
support Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two of the most corrupt
and repressive governments in the Americas? The racism that coats
the U.S. government lies about Grenada is the same racism that
blinded american eyes to the Black faces of 131 Haitians washed up
on shore in Miami, drowned fleeing the Duvalier regime. It is the
same racism that keeps american eyes turned aside from the
corrosive apartheid eating like acid into the face of White South
Africa and the Reagan government which shares her bed under the
guise of “constructive engagement.” White South Africa has the
highest standard of living of any nation in the world, and 50 percent
of Black South Africa’s children die before they are five. A statistic.
The infant mortality rate for Black americans is almost twice that of
white americans — in the most highly industrialized country in the
world. White america has been well-schooled in the acceptance of
Black destruction. So what is Black Grenada and its 110,000 Black
lives?
Unemployment in Grenada dropped 26 percent in four years.10
On October 25, 1983 american Corsair missiles and naval shells and
mortars pounded into the hills behind Grenville, St. Georges,
Gouyave. American marines tore through homes and hotels
searching for “Cubans.” Now the Ministries are silent. The state
farms are at a standstill. The cooperatives are suspended. The

cannery plant in True Blue is a shambles, shelled to silence. On the
day after the invasion, unemployment was back up to 35 percent. A
cheap, acquiescent labor pool is the delight of supply side
economics. One month later, the U.S. Agency for International
Development visits Grenada. They report upon the role of the
private sector in Grenada’s future, recommending the revision of tax
codes to favor private enterprise (usually foreign), the development
of a labor code that will ensure a compliant labor movement, and
the selling off of public sector enterprises to private interests.11 How
soon will it be Grenadian women who are going blind from
assembling microcomputer chips at $.80 an hour for international
industrial corporations? “I used to work at the radio station,” says a
young woman on the beach, shrugging. “But that ended in the war.”
This short, undeclared, and cynical war against Grenada is not a
new direction for american foreign policy. It is merely a blatant
example of a 160-year-old course of action called the Monroe
Doctrine. In its name america has invaded small Caribbean and
Central American countries over and over again since 1823,
cloaking these invasions under a variety of names. Thirty-eight such
invasions occurred prior to 1917 before the Soviet Union even
existed. For example, in 1897, U.S. marines landed in Puerto Rico to
fight the Spanish-American War. They never left.
Beginning in 1981, the United States rehearsed the invasion of
Grenada openly. It practiced the war game Ocean Venture in which it
bombed the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, calling it “Amber of the
Amberdines” (Grenada of the Grenadines). In this grisly makebelieve, a situation is supposed to occur where americans are held
hostage. As we know, this was the first excuse used to justify the
invasion of Grenada. As for americans really being in danger, there
were still over 500 resident american citizens who chose to remain
in Grenada during and after the invasion. But since Ocean Venture
appears to be the script, we must remember that it also calls for the
assassination of the Prime Minister of Amber. Are we now to believe
that the U.S./CIA was not involved directly or indirectly with Prime
Minister Maurice Bishop’s death? Was the coup which served as the
opening for Ocean Venture to become a reality merely an unhappy

coincidence of personal intrigue, or was it an event lengthily
orchestrated by clever manipulators?
The Pentagon has admitted in secret Congressional briefings that
it knew of the coup against Bishop two weeks before it happened.12
The Ranger unit participating in the invasion had spent six days
between September 23 and October 2, 1983 practicing the takeover
of an airport and the liberation of hostages, a maneuver about
which the Pentagon had requested no publicity.13 One Senator
disclosed that there were CIA agents accompanying the seventy
students flown out of Grenada on October 26, the day after the
invasion.14
There will be a long and painstaking search for answers to these
questions.
P.S.Y.O.P.S., the psychological operations unit of the U.S.
occupation forces — a new development heard from in combat here
for the first time — was quick to plaster St. Georges and the rest of
Grenada with posters of Bernard Coard and General Hudson Austin,
stripped naked and blindfolded, holding them up to ridicule and
scorn as the slayers of the Grenadian people’s beloved Maurice
Bishop. It is well known that had Bishop lived, Grenada would have
fought any invasion down to the last child. So scapegoats for his
death were essential. The details of the power struggles which
occurred within the New Jewel Movement Party — if such they
were — are yet to be known and assuredly complex. Yet months
later, these men are still being held incommunicado in Richmond
Hill prison, St. Georges, by “security forces,” non-Grenadian. They
have not been charged nor brought to trial as of this writing, nor
have the forty-odd other Grenadians still detained with them.
Nothing is now heard of the two americans known to have been
involved in the last days of the Bishop regime, one of whom was
wanted on a weapons charge here in the U.S., and one of whom
holds passports in two countries.15 Who were they working for and
on what side? Their identities have never been divulged — a
favorite tactic to cover destabilization operatives — and their
existence attested to only by one line in the back pages of the New
York Times. So, too, was the assertion by Ambassador to France

Evan Galbraith on public TV that the U.S. was involved in Grenada
“weeks before Bishop’s death.”16
A West German nurse working in Grenada, Regina Fuchs, reports
she was jailed and relentlessly interrogated after being falsely
accused of harboring fugitives by two americans, one of whom,
Frank Gonzales, identified himself to her as CIA.17
The action in Grenada served many purposes for the United
States, provided the grounds for many tests. A major one was
addressed to the concern long expressed by the Pentagon as to
whether or not Black american soldiers could be gotten to fire upon
other Black people. This becomes a vital question as the U.S.
military-industrial complex executes increasingly military solutions
to this country’s precarious position in the Third World, where the
U.S. either ignores or stands upon the wrong side of virtually every
single struggle for liberation by oppressed peoples. Of course, there
were also lesser tests. In addition to trying out new armaments,
there was the question of whether the marines liked their new Nazistyle helmets. They did not because they couldn’t shave in them.
And whether the new army uniforms were too heavy to be worn
comfortably in the tropics. They were.18
Listen to the language that came from the Pentagon, orchestrated
by the psychological warfare experts operating in Grenada.
• We got there just in time.
• Not an invasion, a rescue mission.
• Mopping up.
• It was our turf. We had every right.
• Armed thugs (the Grenadian militia).
• An Idi Amin-type character, capable of taking hostages (General
Austin.)
• Imprisoned for spreading ill will among the people.
This language is calculated to reduce a Black nation’s aspirations
in the eyes and ears of white americans already secretly terrified by
the Black Menace, enraged by myths of Black Progress, at the same

time encouraged by government action never to take the life of a
Black person seriously.
Even many Black americans, threatened by some spectre of a
socialism that is mythic and undefined at best, have bought the
government line of “them” against “us.” But which one of us as a
Black american has ever taken the time to examine this threat of
socialism for any reality nearly as destructive as racism is within all
of our lives? With the constant manipulation of the media, many
Black americans are honestly confused, defending “our” invasion of
Black Grenada under a mistaken mirage of patriotism.
Nineteen eighty-four is upon us, and doublethink has come home
to scramble our brains and blanket our protest.
In addition to being a demonstration to the Caribbean community
of what will happen to any country that dares to assume
responsibility for its own destiny, the invasion of Grenada also
serves as a naked warning to thirty million African-americans.
Watch your step. We did it to them down there and we will not
hesitate to do it to you. Internment camps. Interrogation booths.
Isolation cells hastily built by U.S. occupation forces. Blindfolded
stripped prisoners. House-to-house searches for phantom Cubans.
Neighbors pressured to inform against each other. No strange gods
before us. U.S. soldiers at roadblocks and airports, assisted by
former members of Gairy’s infamous Mongoose Gang, carrying
notebooks with lists of Bishop and PRG sympathizers.19 The tactics
for quelling a conquered people. No courts, no charges, no legal
process. Welfare, but no reparation for damaged businesses,
destroyed homes and lives. Street passes. Imprisonment of “troublemakers.” The new radio station blaring The Beach Boys rock group
music hour after hour.
Whose country was Grenada?
Hundreds of Grenadian bodies are buried in unmarked graves,
relatives missing and unaccounted for, survivors stunned and
frightened into silence by fear of being jailed and accused of
“spreading unrest among the people.” No recognition and therefore
no aid for the sisters, mothers, wives, children of the dead, families
disrupted and lives vandalized by the conscious brutality of a

planned, undeclared war. No attention given to the Grenadian
bodies shipped back and forth across the sea in plastic bodybags
from Barbados to Grenada to Cuba and back again to Grenada. After
all, they all look alike, and besides, maybe if they are flown around
the world long enough they will simply disappear, or become
invisible, or some other peoples’ sacrifice.
“My brother died in Calliste when they shot up the house,” Isme
said, “because they thought Cubans were living there. My father lost
his arm and a leg. They took him to hospital in Barbados but he
passed away there. His body was brought back to Pearl’s Airport but
I’ve got to borrow some money now to bring him home for his
funeral.”
Weeks after the invasion, Grenadians were still smelling out and
burying bodies which lay all over the island. The true casualty
figures will never be known. No civilian body count is available.
Even the bodies of Maurice Bishop and his slain ministers are never
positively identified, no doubt to forestall any possible enshrinement
by the people who loved him, no doubt to make the task of
smearing his popular memory more easily accomplished. It has
already begun.
For the first time in an american war, the american press was kept
out until the stage could be set. This extends by precedent the
meaning of military censorship in this country. At the time, it also
deflected attention from the invasion itself. Mission accomplished
with “surgical precision” meant attempting to conceal the bombing
and destruction of civilian homes, the destruction of a hospital and
a radio station and police headquarters; attempting to conceal the
american heavy transports left mangled on the side of the road by
soldiers not trained to drive to the left, and the civilian cars those
army vehicles collided with. It meant the appropriation, use, and
destruction of homes and stores and other businesses with no
compensation. When the american press was finally admitted after
the cosmetic cleanup, we were treated to photographs of smiling
Grenadians welcoming their conquerors (look what your tax dollars
have bought). But no photos of the signs calling for information

about neighbors. No photos of the signs throughout the countryside
calling for an end to yankee imperialism. NO BISHOP NO REVO.
So what did Revolution in Grenada mean? It meant the
inauguration of an agro-industry which for the first time in the
island’s history processed the island’s own fruit, its own coffee,
under its own brand, Spice Isle Foods. Canned products from their
own soil available in stores. The beginning of a fishing and fishprocessing industry. In a country rich with tropical fruit, whose
waters abound with fish, why should the most common fruit juice
be Florida orange juice, the most commonly used fish, imported
saltfish from Canada?
It meant almost doubling the number of doctors on the island
from twenty-three to forty, a health center set up in every parish for
the first time, a dental clinic. It meant a public health anti-mosquito
cleanup campaign implemented by the National Youth Organization
that successfully protected Grenada from the wave of Dengue Fever
sweeping through the rest of the Caribbean in the summer of
1981.20
It meant twelve-year-old Lyndon Adams of L’Esterre, Carriacou,
teaching a seventy-three-year-old woman how to read and write as
part of the each-one-teach-one program against functional illiteracy
conducted by the Center for Popular Education. This highly
successful program enlisted the aid of one of the most brilliant
educators of all time, Paulo Friere, head of the World Council of
Churches’ literacy program. When the echos of Ocean Venture
drifted across the Caribbean from Vieques in 1981, and the stench
of the threat of U.S. invasion hung over the hills from Grand Etang
to Harvey Vale, Lyndon, one of the youngest teachers in the CPE
program, was quoted as saying: “Before the revolution we were not
in the light. I will never give up. I rather they kill me dead than I go
work for them if they come to take over we land and try to oppress
we again.” His seventy-three-year old neighbor and student says: “In
L’Esterre now, I find things is plenty better and getting better still.
And look how the children developing and doing good! For that
boy’s age I find he was doing all right!”21

The american medical student who witnessed the shooting of the
first american marine killed landing on Grenada resists the
prompting of her TV interviewer. Pockets of foreign resistance. Cubans
hiding in the hills. “Oh no, he wasn’t shot by Cubans. It was an old
man and his son, firing from their house.” Lyndon Adams and his
neighbor are not Cuban. The old man and his son defending their
home were not Cubans. They were Grenadians who dared to believe
that they could have a right to define themselves and the future of
their nation independent of the United States.
Grenada is a highly stratified society made up of a large,
extremely poor mass of estate workers and small land-holding
peasants, a small but growing group of urban service workers, and a
tiny well-to-do middle class, civil servants and landed, who
traditionally have involved themselves with the economics of
import-export rather than the economics of national production. The
Bishop government was becoming a successful bridge between these
different groups. Problems of color ism and classism are deep, farreaching, and very complex legacies left from successive
colonialisms. Grenadians, rightly so, are highly resistant to any
external suggestions of a superficial solution. By bringing the goals
of these diverse groups together, the Revolution became even more
threatening to the U.S.
To the average Grenadian, the United States is a large but dim
presence where some dear relative now lives. Until the information
campaigns of the PRG, the lack of international news coverage and
commentary kept Grenadians largely unaware of the U.S. position in
world politics and its history of institutionalized racism and
classism. Ronald Reagan was seen as a fatherly movie star
unconnected to policies of systematic economic and military
oppression of people of Color throughout the developing countries
of the world.
But the average Grenadian is also extremely involved with the
political affairs of his and her own country, wherever there is room
beyond survival concerns for such involvement. Facets of the
October events surface in every conversation, guarded or
unguarded, casual or otherwise.

The conflicts in the New Jewel Movement, Bishop’s house arrest,
the subsequent demonstration of ten thousand Grenadians, the
second smaller march which resulted in Bishop’s liberation and
murder along with other Ministers and hundreds of Grenadians on
Richmond Hill, and the four-day military curfew that followed these
events left terror in the hearts of all Grenadians. Any ending seemed
preferable at the time.
The U.S.-operated Spice Island Radio went into operation the
afternoon of the invasion, and most Grenadians obtained whatever
information they got about events from posters and handbills put up
around the countryside by P.S.Y.O.P.S. Rumors have been rife
among the people, attempting to explain the inexplicable. One
shopgirl in St. Georges told me she had heard the reason why the
army fired upon the people at Fort Rupert was because “the
Russians had put tablets into their milk that would make them shoot
anybody on sight.”
It remains to be seen if the future plans of the U.S. for Grenada
will justify the vision of many Grenadians of the United States as
savior. Even now this view is not nearly as widespread as the
american media would have us believe. Says a newly unemployed
nineteen-year-old laborer in St. Georges, “They can call it a rescue
mission all they want, but I haven’t been rescued yet.” There is
much pain beneath the veneer of gratitude: too many fathers and
uncles and brothers and daughters injured and killed because “the
americans thought there were Cubans living in there.” All over
Grenada I felt the deadening effect of horror and disbelief in every
conversation about the war, often beneath a surface animation.
I came to Grenada my second time six weeks after the invasion,
wanting to know she was still alive, wanting to examine what my
legitimate position as a concerned Grenadian-american was toward
the military invasion of this tiny Black nation by the mighty U.S. I
looked around me, talked with Grenadians on the street, the shops,
the beaches, on porches in the solstice twilight. Grenada is their
country. I am only a relative. I must listen long and hard and ponder
the implications of what I have heard, or be guilty of the same quick

arrogance of the U.S. government in believing there are external
solutions to Grenada’s future.
I also came for reassurance, to see if Grenada had survived the
onslaught of the most powerful nation on earth. She has. Grenada is
bruised but very much alive. Grenadians are a warm and resilient
people (I hear my mother’s voice: “Island women make good wives.
Whatever happens, they’ve seen worse”), and they have survived
colonizations before. I am proud to be of stock from the country that
mounted the first Black english-speaking People’s Revolution in this
hemisphere. Much has been terribly lost in Grenada, but not all —
not the spirit of the people. Forward Ever, Backward Never22 is more
than a mere whistle in the present dark.

Preface

This book is the product of a deep sense that we cannot
and do not want to make sense of the world alone. In
our individual academic projects, we consider state
racism from the perspectives of the disciplines we work
in: law, anthropology, geography, international relations,
sociology, cultural studies and literature. In our political
organising, we try to push back against the state, to
imagine new horizons of possibility outside of its logic,
and to form bonds of solidarity capable of challenging its
power. In collaborating on this book, we sought to create
a space apart from the pressures of academic research and
without the urgency of activism; a space to think, together,
about the changing face of racism in Britain.
As we were working on the book, friends and colleagues
often asked how, as a group of eight, we were writing
together. More than once we were asked what we were up to.
Was this some strange new cult? Who was ventriloquising
who? The actuality was less dramatic. Rather than divide
into smaller groups which would each produce a chapter,
we opted for an anarchic mix of collective thinking, noisy
and very funny discussion, silent writing and remote
editing. We usually met for a few hours in one of our offices
(or via video link during the Covid-19 lockdown), with
some questions in mind, usually generated from an initial
exchange of gossip or fury. As our discussions evolved,
someone would map the conversation on a whiteboard or

PREFACE

◆

ix

flipchart paper, tracing the connections and keeping track
of key points. Realising we were running out of time, we
would wind down the discussion to write, separately, in
silence (exam conditions!) for an hour or so. We would
then collate the pages and read through each other’s work.
The more we worked like this, the more synergy our
writing took on.
Our aim was that when we read the final product, we
would no longer be able to recall who had written what. In
a landscape of personal brands and an academic culture
that values celebrity over collaboration, working against
the imperative to be a distinct, singular voice offered us a
different approach to the challenge of writing. Collaboration also helped us to cope with the dizzying instability of
life in contemporary Britain. We wrote the book between
March 2019 and July 2020, during which time the mood
music of authoritarian nationalism grew louder and
louder. Meeting in person was a way to listen more closely
to that music, to try to distil the relationship between what
was being said and what was being done by the state, and
to examine the cacophony of timeline media by placing it
at a remove, if only for a few hours. Critical inquiry was a
kind of group therapy, as the final throes of Theresa May’s
short, disastrous premiership gave way to Johnsonism.
The book’s title, Empire’s Endgame, reflects our starting
point. This project began life as an homage to an earlier
collectively authored book, The Empire Strikes Back,
published in 1982 by a group at Birmingham’s Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies. We wanted to explore
what a collective project to analyse and dismantle state
racism might look like in our differently troubled and

x

◆

EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

troublesome time. One parallel has been the dominance
of the fantasy blockbuster in our collective cinematic
imagination, something Greta Thunberg has decried,
with some accuracy, by saying:
How can we tackle climate change if the adults are
obsessed over a children’s movie series based on Legos?1
And so the ‘Endgame’ in our title is less a clever reference
to the Samuel Beckett play and more a reference to the
Avengers film. Avengers: Endgame is, infamously, the
much marketed crescendo of a series of films depicting
the Marvel universe. Through the second decade of
the twenty-first century, an extensive series of Marvel
superhero movies – plus a smaller parallel DC universe
and a resurrection of the Star Wars series – dominated
English-language cinema culture. As the world became
increasingly chaotic, with an end to any pretence that there
existed a political class fit to address the urgent and deadly
challenges of forced migration, internal war and climate
catastrophe, the displacement and spectacularisation of
collective fears into a neo-mythic world of superheroes felt
both symptomatic and all too understandable. Yet, despite
the will to distraction, the endgame analysis of Marvel also
echoed our own. In both of our accounts, and in the face
of violence and climate disaster, something cataclysmic
seemed to be on its way. Underneath all the bravado and
show of the immensely powerful, there was weakness and
the threat of imminent obsolescence. For all the fanfares
of a remade authoritarian nationalism, all the buffoonish

PREFACE

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xi

showing off and refashioned fantasies of omniscience, the
period we examine is one of imperial decline.
The ascendancy of authoritarian nationalism that
we trace here – however triumphant the national mood
music – only makes sense through the lens of decline. We
are familiar with the many premature announcements
of end-times, and laughed about this often in our time
together, but remain convinced that we are witnessing,
at last and with so many casualties, the endgame of one
imperial phase. Of course, and again learning from
Marvel, we are also aware that the endgame itself can take
a long time to play out.
Nevertheless, and in the spirit of trying to think
historically about an all too troubling present, what we
present here is a peculiarly British experience of endings.
There are, no doubt, global parallels. Clearly there are
other buffoons, although refracted through the class
performances of other cultures. There are other places
where the state remakes itself by rendering populations
unintelligible or disentitled. Other forms of almost similar
(but not quite) collapse of our planet on fire. At the same
time, what we describe in the following chapters should
be understood as the last gasp of one imperial formation,
with all the excess, irrationality and clapped-out posturing
of a former power’s demise. We started out hoping that
this endgame might, eventually, open the possibility of
something better. Now, as we complete our work, it looks
as if a lot more of us might have to die first.
Another impetus for this work was our collective desire
to extricate ourselves from the relentless immediacy of
the internet, with far too much political energy taken

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

up in digesting, decrying and responding to non-debate
via social media. Working together was also a way of
quietening that noise and pausing to reassess what we felt
the noise could tell us about the larger political landscape,
with all of its dangers and possibilities.
We’re not immune to the confected dramas of social
and timeline media; indeed, many of our conversations
began with one of us enraged at the latest scandal dividing
anti-racist Twitter. But gathering together in person to
think, write and plot together offered some respite from
the atomising effects of digital life. Taking time to write
sometimes felt like an indulgence, given the scale of our
political and ecological crises. But while none of us believe
writing or thinking is any substitute for political action,
this project has offered us some sustenance for the messy
work of organising. We hope something here sustains you
in taking action too.

Introduction: Racialised
Mythologies in Times of Neglect,
Cruelty and Expulsion

Living in a world long disfigured by the violent,
world-making force of racism, we have no choice but to be
anti-racist. However, to act effectively against racism, we
need to be able to describe it, to keep up with its shifting
forms. As Cedric Robinson puts it: ‘Race presents all the
appearance of stability. History, however, compromises
this fixity. Race is mercurial – deadly and slick.’1 Cultures
and practices of racism are rooted (and routed) in empire
and yet they are constantly shifting in form and function.
Racism is historically specific. We therefore need to ask
how racial meanings and hierarchies are made and remade
in our times. This book is our attempt to describe how
racism has been working its deadly magic in contemporary
Britain over the last few years. Because we view racism as
historically specific and messy, we have found it necessary
to map some of the complex relations between empire,
racist culture, state practices and political economy. This
means connecting the most overt manifestations of racist
culture – the name calling, the racist street violence, the
zealous anti-immigrant politics – to the shifting practices
of a security-oriented state seeking legitimacy in times of
unbearable economic uncertainty.

2

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

Britain is not a happy place. The market-oriented
prosperity promised by Thatcherism and New Labour
has proved for many to be hollow. While some aspects of
the post-war consensus remain influential and continue
to be circulated as the underlying common sense of UK
political life, in reality the NHS and council homes that
defined the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s are being
privatised and stripped to the bone, accelerating the crises
in housing, health and social care. The austerity imposed
on other parts of the welfare state which followed the 2008
financial crisis has brought increased hardship and frustration, through both a lack of services and cuts to public
sector jobs. On top of this, a deregulated labour market,
zero-hour contracts and the gig economy mean that work,
if you can get it, is precarious and low paid. In this context,
reactionary nationalism is mobilised for political gain, and
migrants, whether constructed as workers or scroungers,
documented or illegal, have shouldered much of the blame
for finance capitalism’s fiscal calamities. A nostalgia for
empire and the euphoria of world war victory has displaced
demands for a return to post-war welfarism.2 The crisis of
legitimacy for governments that cannot provide the jobs
and prosperity promised by market-led growth has been
partially reconciled by new covenants, promises to protect
the nation from violent crime, terrorism and immigrants.
In the following chapters we trace how shifting ideological repertoires of race and nation legitimate new
forms of state power and practice in the context of this
‘organised abandonment’.3 Many of the questions which
frame this book take the earlier work of cultural studies
as their prompt and guide – particularly that of Stuart

INTRODUCTION

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3

Hall, Paul Gilroy and others working at the Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham.4 We are
interested in how crises of political legitimacy are articulated in relation to themes of race, cultural difference,
law and order, militarism, nationalism, gender, sexuality
and the family – often expressed in profoundly visceral
and violent registers. We recognise that shifts in economic
relations fundamentally shape political, ideological and
cultural formations, and that crises of capital accumulation and profitability organise the more immediate terrain
of political struggle. However we refuse the class reductionism which imagines that political interventions need
focus only on the ‘economic base’, and all else will follow,
and we reject the view that racism is a straightforward
effect of economic crisis.5
We are interested in the political practices and logics
that work through race, that signal race explicitly or
implicitly, and that make and remake race in the present.
This is why we ask throughout the book: what kind of
state do we have now, and how is its programme of cruelty,
neglect and expulsion justified ideologically? When
trying to understand race and racism in Britain today, we
need to analyse how racist state practices – immigration
controls, counter-terror measures and criminal justice
policies – seem to address people’s real problems and
lived experiences. In other words, we need to think about
the relationship between state racism and the making
of political subjectivities. This project of making and
remaking political subjectivities cannot be understood
without attention to the place of (post)imperial racial

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

anxieties and the sense of pervasive loss that animates
political imaginations.
Our argument is not simply that racism tricks people into
blaming their economic hardship on racialised outsiders.
This is true but it is too flat. Beyond ‘false consciousness’
arguments, we are interested in the kinds of affects and
political subjectivities that are brought into being through
practices and representations of state neglect, cruelty and
racialised expulsion. These practices do not only make
racists, they also produce political subjects who long for
authority, closure and certainty in ways which exceed the
racial and implicate all of us. In our view, these desires and
frustrations are inevitably shaped by the digital character
of so much political and social life today, and thus our
analysis of racism is also about how people communicate
and imagine collectively on social media.
Mapping this terrain is far from straightforward.
Racialised crises reveal the fault lines of a wider destabilisation, and thus the difficulty of even describing racism is
a measure of our collective confusion in these unsettling
times. That said, there is value in describing and drawing
connections, even as the ground moves beneath our feet.
For us, the return (if it ever went away) of race as an
organising term in a time of crisis is the opening question
not the closing answer. In part, this stems from a shared
belief that defeating the dehumanising violence of racism
requires an agility and openness to surprise, because
the one thing our enemies do well, do better than us, is
to retain the element of surprise. The weary cynicism of
anti-racists who proclaim that they have seen it all before,
that racism is endless, timeless and monolithic, prevents

INTRODUCTION

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5

us from seeing how things change. The point is not to say
how things are always the same but to understand how we
and ours continue to be shafted in spite of other changes.
Things might still be awful but they are not awful in the
same way.
This, then, is where we begin – with the shared belief
that it is not so easy to understand the times we are in. In
particular, strange and multiple remakings of racism have
taken on a heightened significance, but connecting these
eruptions to economic and national crisis is no simple
task. From this difficult starting point, this book seeks to
deepen our understanding of racism in Britain, beyond
Tory-bashing and outside the restrictive tempos set by
public scandal and parliamentary squabbling.
Hopefully this book also offers some tools for moving
beyond accounts of racism that become stuck documenting structural inequalities or interpersonal humiliations,
realities which should not be taken lightly, but which
cannot, on their own, offer us a way out analytically. We
hope the book provides some useful tools for thinking
the problem differently, for understanding the present
moment in new ways and, ultimately and most importantly, for building analytical connections that can inform
political struggle. Before we begin our analysis of racialised
folk devils in contemporary Britain, we thought it would
be useful to explain what we mean by the neglectful state,
which frames our argument in the subsequent chapters. In
the next section, we offer a brief account of how neglect,
cruelty and expulsion have defined British state practices
over the past ten years of austerity.

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

*

*

*

‘You cut, we bleed’ was the cri de cœur popularised by the
feminist direct action group Sisters Uncut in the second
decade of the twenty-first century, highlighting the relationship between austerity and gender-based violence.
While it can be read as a direct demand to re-invest in
services for survivors of domestic violence, this powerful
assertion also speaks to the wider context of state abandonment and violence. It challenges a post-financial crisis
common sense, in which those most in need of welfare
support now face scrutiny, neglect and criminalisation
– or a combination of all three. In more ways than one,
cuts lead to bloodshed, and while these new cruelties
disproportionately impact racialised people, the resulting
poverty, despair, violence and death are by no means
confined to them.
Unlike some of its European neighbours, Britain did
not experience austerity as an external imposition. There
were no European Bank bailout conditions to meet, no
fraught negotiations with the Troika. Instead, Britain’s
twenty-first-century austerity has been coded in terms of
regaining control after the alleged profligacy of an earlier
New Labour administration. As a result, British austerity
has been narrated as an expression of sovereignty – ‘we are
all in it together’ – as opposed to an external imposition
undermining sovereignty, as in Greece and Italy. Despite
this, the punishing features of twenty-first-century
austerity in Britain are similar to those of other austeritystricken European economies.
What is distinctive is the folding of ‘austerity’ (always
presented as a necessity, an emergency response that is

INTRODUCTION

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7

beyond political challenge) into a longer-standing British
political narrative and a decades-long attack on any vestige
of the state as a redistributive actor. Britain had deregulated
its labour market under the Blair government, proclaiming the benefits of ‘flexibility’ at work. The UK economy
fell into its dangerous reliance on financial services in this
period, a factor that impacted heavily following the 2008
crash, when income inequality increased further, making
Britain one of the most unequal societies in Europe –
establishing what Danny Dorling calls ‘peak inequality’.6
All of this began long before the arrival of post-crash
austerity. Indeed, the demonisation of welfare recipients
similarly predates austerity, and it is these economic and
social policies that together set the stage for the breaking
apart of cultures of mutuality.
In an echo of the enforced austerity imposed in parts of
southern Europe, Britain has seen a massive rolling back of
state spending more broadly. In particular, services administered through local government have been slashed, with
an extreme impact on libraries, children’s centres, youth
services and support for the vulnerable, including notable
cuts to services relating to domestic violence, mental
health and disability support. Alongside this squeeze on
services and public spaces, the terms of state support
have changed. Conditionality has become central to the
benefits system – claimants must fulfil various demands
in order to receive assistance, with requirements ranging
from evidencing an active pursuit of employment and
attending assessment meetings, to undertaking unpaid
work placements. This has been pursued independently of
the pressures of austerity. Taken together, the long-stand-

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

ing political campaign to delegitimise claiming welfare
benefits, even for the most vulnerable and including those
in very low-paid work, and the stripping back of state
spending, have worked together to create levels of poverty
and hardship unseen for many decades. When we refer
to the neglectful, as opposed to the welfarist, state, this is
what we mean.
We have lived through several decades of the state in
retreat, except in its punitive functions. Healthcare and
state schools remain national structures of provision,
but even here the segmentation through restructuring
(health trusts) and creeping privatisation (academies)
reframes our contact with these services. We might think
of ourselves as becoming accustomed to the radically
transformed landscape of a post-crash global economy.
This means that some devastating practices of dividing,
rationing and excluding have become pretty much
institutionalised across the board. Think here of welfare
sanctioning, societal tolerance for street homelessness and
food insecurity, the assorted practices of bordering, and
perhaps the end of demands for a ‘good job’ by mainstream
political parties. Taken together these represent a lessening
of expectations and so a grudging acceptance that life’s
hardships will not, and perhaps cannot, be ameliorated by
state intervention. Meanwhile, we can observe a greater
tolerance for state-administered punishment for those
deemed lesser or alien – the criminal, the migrant, the
benefits ‘cheat’. Assessments and algorithms connect the
police and border officials who lurk in what remains of
the welfare state, while hospitals, schools and community

INTRODUCTION

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9

centres become sites where ‘terrorists’, ‘gangsters’ and
‘illegals’ can be best rooted out.
At least two generations have been disciplined to
expect (and receive) little or nothing from the state except
punishment or the threat of punishment. While claiming
subsistence benefits, such as the dole or housing benefit,
always included humiliation before bureaucratic power,
the process of claiming the means of survival today has
been made increasingly onerous, requiring repeated
evidence, and exposing the claimant to the risk of further
punishment if the demands of the claims process are
mis-performed. Of the 130,000 preventable deaths arising
from austerity,7 the most tragically sickening stories
recount the impact of benefit sanctions as a form of social
murder: the cutting off of all means of sustenance, systemic
‘failures’ leading to emaciated bodies, empty fridges and
signs of self-harm. The suicides.
These are tragedies coming not from direct cuts,
although the squeezing of resources shapes the practices.
Instead, suffering is inflicted as punishment for failure to
adhere to the terms of conditionality. We are interested
in how this threat of punishment for expressing need
reshapes popular consciousness. Previously, studies of
British racism would interpret the punishment of some as
a form of reassurance to others. It was thought that those
who ‘belonged’ were those who were not being punished,
and who were therefore invited to identify with the state
that acted to exclude Others in their name. But are there
any constituencies at present who feel embraced by a sense
of belonging that is staged by affirmative state practices? It
seems hard to imagine.

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

In an earlier moment of cultural studies there is the sense
that in the 1960s and 1970s (perhaps even into the 1980s)
the response to tense ‘race relations’ vacillated between
more policing and carceral punishment, on the one hand,
and various kinds of social reform on the other. Scholars
associated with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies described the former as repressive and the latter
as preventive. Now we have entered a period where social
reform is off the table altogether. There is much less talk
about lack of investment in communities, or deprivation
as a cause of crime or unrest. Instead the approach to
prevention simply involves more social control. This
approach is based on containment and partial or complete
exclusion via prevention orders, ASBOs, omnipresent
surveillance, digital technologies of control and, as we
will explore shortly, pre-criminal forms of punishment.
In effect, there is no such thing as inclusion or belonging
in positive terms, only in negative terms. And there is no
social reform option. Only the promise of security for
some (rarely fulfilled), and more coercion, prevention and
repression for others.
The neglectful and/or punitive state employs long-standing practices of racialised exclusion, punishment and
scapegoating, but the terms of secure belonging are much
more unstable than they were before. There remains a
spectacular element to state racism, a familiar theatrics in
which some are monstered as an example to and entertainment for others. Yet the harshness of the times also
rebalances this process away from the pleasures of racist
spectacle (‘these abject people are nothing like us and this
is what they deserve’) and towards the increasingly explicit

INTRODUCTION

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11

threat of racist example (‘there is little that distinguishes
me and mine from these abject people; what is done to
them could be done to us and this realisation further fuels
my rage’).
In recent memory, and in particular in the first ten to
15 years of the twenty-first century, we observed manifold
attacks on allegedly unproductive groups, particularly
welfare claimants defined as ‘scroungers’. These attacks
appeared to be central to the justification for the further
retrenchment of the welfare state, austerity and increasingly conditional access to public goods. But after over a
decade of austerity the terms of exclusion and belonging
have changed. The British public is well aware that the
majority of the poor and the majority of those dependent
on food banks are actually working but in menial, low-paid
jobs. If not in the grind of poverty pay, the burgeoning
poor are the recipients of the innovative punishments of
the welfare state, a fall into abjection which increasing
numbers must fear.
In this shift from an external social enemy to internalised fear of abjection, some of these arguments about
‘idle benefit scroungers’ have lost their popular appeal.
The spectacle of the ‘scrounger’ seems of another time,
occasionally resurrected by one or other new right-winger
eager for clicks, but no longer a reliable hook for popular
rage. In their place, ever-present racialised threats have to
come to carry even more of the ideological load. In other
words, we are suggesting that after ten years of brutal
austerity, the welfare-bashing of ‘idle whites’ has lost
much of its resonance and ideological efficacy. As a result,
racism and nativism are being enlisted to do more work as

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

the rightward political forces seek to capture the loyalties
of dispossessed white Britons by emphasising their
‘nativeness’ and besiegement by the nation’s enemies. And
all of this despite an ongoing confusion, demonstrated by
Brexit, about what the terms of nativeness and nationalism
might be in this time.
In this strange moment when political parties of the
right seem to offer few or no concrete promises, and the
Conservative Party can win a general election with the
slimmest pretence of a manifesto, we might surmise that
the privations of austerity and a socio-economic system
structured to maintain extreme inequality have become
recoded as a loss of racialised power and prestige. Material
hardship and the humiliations associated with showing
need threaten to unravel the ‘wages of whiteness’. We
borrow this term from W.E.B. Du Bois, who posited that
racial identification offered working-class whites a sense
of racial superiority to ‘compensate’ for their exploitation
and prevent them from finding common cause with black
workers.8 The racialised nationalism of this moment,
then, is one that redirects the very real disappointment
and dispossession arising from economic crisis, the fragmentation of the welfare state and the doubling down of
punitive state practices. Multiple privation is re-articulated
as a fall from grace. And grace is misremembered as a state
of happy racialised prestige.
The strong sense that we might not all make it and,
perhaps, that we are not supposed to, seems to range
across the fears articulated by racists about territory
and culture, by schoolchildren about the planet, by the
government about global pandemics, and by everyone in

INTRODUCTION

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13

the struggle to make ends meet. Our fear is an outcome
of state practices of engineered neglect, so that we learn
to fight and fear each other in the contest for the means
of life. Something here is also aligned to the emergence of
a global economy which seems to render ever increasing
numbers of people disposable. It feels different from the
disposability of people during violent periods of colonialism and global war in previous centuries. There is an
‘end-of-the-worldism’ that seems to characterise our dark
times.
As should be evident from this brief discussion, our view
is that there is no simple causal relationship between the
economic and the cultural. It is not simply that economic
realities determine racist culture – there is always struggle,
negotiation, setbacks, contradictions and unpredictability.
The mood of our times, structured by the economic, is
one of atomisation, anxiety and unsteadiness. The lived
experience of crisis makes the racist politics of fear and
expulsion resonate in new ways. In the chapter which
follows this introduction, we apply some of these points to
help explain the racialised mythologies and most salient
‘folk devils’ that have taken hold in British politics over the
last few years. In the context of inequality and precarity,
austerity without end, and when the state has nothing to
offer except the impossible promise of security, the figures
of the ‘gangster’, the ‘immigrant’ and the ‘terrorist’ work
their perverse magic, distorting democratic possibilities
and licensing the worst kinds of authoritarianism.
The book is split into five parts. The first four parts are
composed of three short chapters and the final part of two
concluding chapters. In Part 1, ‘Racialising the Crisis’, we set

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

the scene in contemporary Britain, drawing connections
between different racialised ‘folk devils’ who have been
conscripted to help explain and resolve Britain’s multiple
crises. Racialised ‘folk devils’ have long been enlisted to
justify relations of domination and obscure the real causes
of people’s insecurity. But our intention in Part 1 is to say
something more precise about how racism is working in
this moment. As such, we are interested in who becomes
a racialised ‘folk devil’, and how they are constructed, and
then with what kinds of state practices they help legitimate.
In Chapter 1 we ask who is to be punished, and who might
be contingently exempt, by critically examining the 2018
‘Windrush scandal’. In Chapter 2 we discuss the so-called
‘knife-crime epidemic’ and the use of pre-criminal forms
of control and prevention in response to it. Finally, in
Chapter 3 we discuss the myriad ‘gangs’ of Britain, whose
apparent ubiquity licenses new forms of control, criminalisation and expulsion.
In Part 2, we examine ‘The Persistence of Nationalism’.
In Chapter 4 we discuss the colonial amnesia, nostalgia
and melancholia that fuel Britain’s confused nationalist convulsions. We think it necessary here to discuss
Powellism in some detail, and to outline the characters
from the racial drama who still populate public discourse.
In Chapter 5 we develop a critique of leftist nationalisms,
so-called ‘progressive patriotisms’. We argue that demands
for a welfare state which ignores or plays down the
question of borders and citizenship plagued the Corbyn
project and remains unresolved by the British left. In
Chapter 6 we tackle the limits of representation, those
entrepreneurial and state-friendly anti-racisms that have

INTRODUCTION

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15

been developed with gusto in recent years, energised by
the Twitter timelines which favour hot takes, call-outs and
easily quantifiable measures of influence, legitimacy and
fame. We dwell on the power of social media to undo the
historically informed, internationally contextualised and
carefully thought-out analyses of racism so desperately
needed in these times of multiple crises.
In Part 3, ‘State Patriarch’, we analyse state racism and
nationalism through gender. In Chapter 7 we discuss the
relationship between gender, sexuality and the nation
state in historical perspective. We trace the changing
nature of the state patriarch in the move from welfarism
to neoliberal authoritarianism and ask: what kind of state
patriarch do we have today? In Chapter 8 we engage with
the political scandals that emerged when large numbers
of girls were sexually exploited in post-industrial towns
in northern England. During the time of the abuse, local
institutions largely ignored the young victims (white
and Asian), who were tainted by their class position and
proximity to Asian men. Yet when these cases became a
national scandal, these white girls were transformed into
symbols of national purity who had been violated by
racial Others (Muslim men in particular). Rather than
addressing the sexism, misogyny and institutional neglect
which leaves vulnerable girls exposed to predatory men
and sexual violence, the demand for ‘justice’ became part
of a racist campaign that reaffirmed the nation’s role as
patriarchal protector. Finally, in Chapter 9 we consider the
increased salience of the buffoon in the theatre of British
politics, most obviously in the figure of Boris Johnson. We
ask how and why are buffoonish strongmen at the helm

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

of so much nationalist resurgence, and why is their antielitist posturing somehow seductive?
In Part 4, ‘Send in the Army’, we explore the centrality
of militarism and marshal metaphors to British racism.
In Chapter 10 we discuss the longing for authority that
underwrites authoritarianism in contemporary Britain,
made plain in the repeated calls to ‘send in the army’ to
deal with ‘social problems’. In Chapter 11 we route the
militarisation of everyday life, and policing in particular,
through a colonial history of counterinsurgency and
conflict. Finally, in Chapter 12, we engage in a short
discussion of the wider logics of zero-sum-game politics.
We observe that this logic underwrites not only debates
about race and migration, but also men’s rights activism
and trans exclusionary feminisms.
In Part 5 we conclude by first reflecting on the Covid-19
pandemic – which emerged as we were trying to tie this
book project up. In Chapter 13 we discuss the ways in which
our analysis in the book proved depressingly prescient
when it came to the political (mis)management of the
coronavirus crisis. In response to the pandemic, the UK
government turned to nativist posturing, war analogies,
strongman buffoonery and new policing powers. The
neglectful-cum-authoritarian state was in full display and
tens of thousands died needlessly as a result. In Chapter 14
we offer some final reflections on languages and practices
of collective grief, hope and survival.

PART 1

Racialising the Crisis

C HAPTE R O NE

Windrush

‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’, it
began. This wartime quote by Winston Churchill … is
to me the most apt way of expressing the gratitude of
the Caribbean high commissioners and the West Indian
diaspora for the incredible work by Amelia Gentleman.
– The High Commissioner for Barbados,
quoted in the Foreword by Katherine Viner to
Amelia Gentleman’s The Windrush Betrayal (2019)1

It wasn’t Labour who cut the Border Force. It was the
Tories. Labour’s last manifesto committed to adding
five hundred extra border guards, over and above the
level we will inherit from this Government. They are
vital in the fight against people-traffickers, and the
drug and gun smugglers, as well as preventing illegal
immigration.
– Diane Abbott’s speech on Labour’s plans for a simpler,
fairer immigration system, September 20182

In spring 2018, British politics was dominated by what
came to be known as the ‘Windrush scandal’. The scandal
concerned older Caribbean migrants who had moved to
the UK before 1973, and who therefore should have had
a ‘right of abode’ (permanent and unconditional right of
residence and re-entry), but who instead had been treated

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

as ‘illegal immigrants’ and denied access to healthcare,
welfare benefits and housing. In some cases, ‘Windrush
migrants’ were deported. In one case, a man who had lived
in the UK since 1969 lost his job at a local council because
new immigration rules stipulated he had to have a passport
to work. Having never left the country since his arrival in
Britain, he could not produce the necessary documentation and so was left with no job and no recourse to claim
out-of-work benefits. Another member of the ‘Windrush
generation’ had lived in the UK since he was five months
old. After travelling to the Caribbean to visit his sick
mother he was denied re-entry at the UK border. Another
man of Caribbean heritage who had lived in the UK for
40 years was given a £5,000 hospital bill after his immigration status was checked. Finding he had no residency
status, the council evicted him from his home, and he was
discharged from hospital onto the streets, ineligible for a
state-funded hostel as an ‘illegal immigrant’.
There were over 50,000 people of Caribbean heritage
who potentially faced similar problems, as the border
moved from the airports and docks to housing offices, job
centres, hospitals, schools, workplaces and streets. This
expansion and internalisation of the border was part of
the Conservative Party’s policy to make the UK a ‘hostile
environment’ for undocumented migrants (although these
policies were very much a continuation/extension of New
Labour immigration policy). In responding to moral panic
about immigrants stealing jobs, welfare benefits, or both,
the government made proof of legal status mandatory
for access to the basic means of existence: employment,
housing, healthcare, education, a bank account, a driving

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21

licence. This is the hostile environment: the system of
immigration checks and data-sharing which saw the
expansion of everyday, everywhere bordering.
Over a number of months in 2018, left and liberal media
outlets began to collect the stories of these long-settled
British Caribbeans who had been illegalised, made destitute and banished. Soon, other sections of the press,
including those on the right, began to cover the ‘Windrush
scandal’. One Daily Mail editorial summed up the paper’s
position: ‘The Windrush scandal is yet another example
of how poorly Britain treats those to whom it owes a
great debt and how twisted our bureaucratic morals are.’3
Meanwhile, Brexit campaigner and far-right Conservative
MP Jacob Rees-Mogg described the ‘hostile environment’
as ‘fundamentally un-British’.4 Both the Mail and ReesMogg used the scandal in an attempt to revalorise people
from the Commonwealth as ‘deserving migrants’, while
petitioning for a ‘hard Brexit’ that would extricate Britain
from the EU’s ‘twisted’, ‘un-British’ bureaucracy, and make
the lives of many EU nationals in Britain increasingly
difficult and insecure.
In other words, outrage was not directed at the ‘hostile
environment’ per se, which the government had created
to root out ‘illegal immigrants’. Rather, the scandal was
seen by the Mail and others as an example of ‘how it is
those who play by the rules and do the right thing who get
punished – while those who act on the sly seem only to
get rewarded for it’. The ‘Windrush scandal’ demonstrated
the lack of respect for good old British ‘common sense’:
the ‘bad migrants’ flood in, stealing jobs and benefits,
while the good ones get punished. The story was thereby

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made familiar in a very particular way: the point was that
the Home Office was totally dysfunctional, rather than
immigration controls being inherently punitive, violent
and racist.
Across the political spectrum, ‘Windrush migrants’
were celebrated for their contributions to the nation. The
fact that the treatment of this particular group of ‘migrants’
became a national scandal, with a consensus across the
political spectrum that the Home Office had acted not
only unlawfully but also immorally, was surprising for a
number of reasons. First, it was surprising because the
tabloids are always talking about Britain as ‘a soft touch
for migrants’. Normally we are told that migrants are
bad and controls are too weak, so it was disorienting to
have a public scandal where the migrants were good and
the controls were too harsh. But the consensus on the
treatment of Windrush victims was even more surprising
given that all of the Windrush generation were black
and many of them worked in lower-income jobs or were
welfare claimants. This is the same economic demographic
– ‘benefit scroungers’ and ‘job stealers’ – who are the target
of popular outrage in debates about immigration.
However, unlike in most of the hateful political and
media discourse on migrants, victims of the Windrush
scandal were portrayed as elderly, respectable and
law-abiding, and the well-rehearsed yarn about them
having been invited over to help with the post-war effort
prevailed. The ‘Windrush generation’ did not summon
images of ‘illegal border crossings’, ‘breaking point’, or
threats of crime and terrorism. They were not dangerously
mobile, but settled, orderly and respectable. Thus, the

WINDRUSH

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23

‘Windrush generation’ were folded into the national ‘we’,
reclaimed as our war veterans, our bus conductors and our
caring nurses. The Windrush scandal clearly played on
the politics of respectability, economic contribution (even
if historical) and good citizenship. As ever, the incorporation of black people into the national fold was partial,
conditional and retractable.
Importantly, the opportunity to connect the Windrush
scandal to the decimation of the welfare state and the
wider demonisation of ‘illegal immigrants’ was missed by
the left. The scandal became ultimately about immigration
policies being applied to the wrong migrants, or applied in
the wrong way. We should pause at this point to reiterate
that ‘hostile environment’ policies involve denying ‘illegal
immigrants’ the right to healthcare, housing, employment
and education, as well as a driving licence and the ability
to open a bank account – effectively denying people access
to the means of life on the basis of immigration status.
Many people incensed by the ‘Windrush scandal’ were
against these immigration policies in general, but the
overall tenor of the public debate involved special pleading
for one particular group of ‘citizens’, rather than a wider
interrogation of the exclusionary and expulsive logics of
the immigration regime as a whole.
With some political imagination, the Windrush scandal
should have allowed us to challenge received understandings of ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘foreign criminals’ and ‘welfare
claimants’. After all, it should be easy enough to recognise
that ‘illegal immigrants’ are simply those non-citizens who
have been categorised as ‘illegal’ by law, a juridical group
rather than a social one. ‘Illegal immigrants’, who share

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

their lives with other migrants and citizens, are illegal only
insofar as they have been subjected to an arbitrary legal
process. Furthermore, the racist treatment experienced
by the Windrush generation in the 1950s and ’60s, widely
acknowledged across the political spectrum, should not
be disconnected from the disproportionate enforcement
of immigration controls against black and brown people
today. Not all migrants are policed equally, and thus some
are more likely to be made foreign through subjection to
coercive state power. However, politicians, journalists and
activists from across the left emphasised that Windrush
migrants were distinct from ‘illegal immigrants’. David
Lammy MP, in a rare and rousing speech in the Commons,
suitably timed for maximum social media shares, reminded
us that victims of the scandal included ‘a British citizen
who paid taxes for 40 years’. Lammy’s steadfast separation
of Windrush migrants, who were to be understood as
citizens, from the real ‘illegal immigrants’, was repeated
across the Labour Party.
These repeated references to tax records and national
insurance contributions were more than proof of longterm residency. They served to construct the ‘Windrush
generation’ as respectable, industrious people who ‘play
by the rules’. Referring to Windrush scandal victims as
‘citizens’ (which in law was not quite true) worked to
separate their treatment from the violence enacted against
other non-citizens – the violence of immigration raids,
indefinite detention and mass deportation flights, to
destinations which include the Caribbean. While some
commentators reminded us that post-war migrants were
hardly welcomed by white Britons or the British state

WINDRUSH

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25

when they arrived, and others sought to historicise British
citizenship as an imperial form of political membership
later restricted to exclude ‘coloured’ migrants, there was
a strong tendency, even among the left and anti-racists,
to separate the violation of ‘Windrush migrants’ from
the wider treatment of ‘migrants’. Indeed, Diane Abbott
appeared on BBC’s Question Time to explain that the issue
of ‘illegal immigration’ must not be confused with the
ill-treatment of ‘Windrush migrants’, before promising
that the Labour Party would ‘bear down on the numbers
of illegal immigrants’ once in power. Evidently, immigration enforcement becomes visible as violence only when it
affects certain groups – in this case ‘Windrush migrants’
who migrated, legally and respectfully, way back when.
*

*

*

Perhaps the clearest indication of the limits of this
newfound hospitality came when Sajid Javid, as Home
Secretary, explained that members of the ‘Windrush
generation’ with criminal records would be fully excluded
from compensation and legal recourse. Having a criminal
record, however minor or from however long ago, was
enough to erase over 45 years of residence. Even in that
rarest of moments in British politics when there was widespread sympathy for one particular group of ‘migrants’,
the spectre of ‘criminal history’ was enough to brand some
‘Windrush migrants’ as unwanted guests who had abused
our hospitality. Exile remained perfectly proportionate in
these cases, never mind what people were returned to. The

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

mere mention of criminality was enough to set the nation
into default mode: ‘send them back’.
Clearly, if the ‘Windrush migrants’ were to be considered
British, and welcomed into the national fold, they were
incorporated because they were law-abiding. They had
proved, over time, that they were not ‘lesser breeds without
the law’. Indeed, the Windrush migrants were contrasted
explicitly and implicitly with younger, law-breaking black
Britons during this period. Newspapers which sympathetically covered the Caribbean grandparents you might help
cross the road, or allow in front of you in the queue at
the post office, presented at the same time a very different
image of ‘Black Britain’ in their inner pages. The national
outrage over the ‘Windrush scandal’ was matched by a
much more hostile collective outrage over youth violence,
because the other big news story of spring 2018 was the
so-called ‘knife-crime epidemic’.
Commentators made a point of emphasising statistics
from particular cities (mainly London), in which the
majority of ‘knife crime’ victims and perpetrators were
black men and boys – and often the focus was specifically
on ‘black Caribbean’ teenagers. ‘Black youth’ were once
again vilified as sources of danger, violence and moral
decline, and violence was linked to the family (read ‘absent
fathers’) and the nihilism of contemporary urban life (read
‘black culture’). While wayward black youth symbolised a
national crime crisis, their soft, neglectful or inept parents
were also held responsible. As such, these later generations were separated from the sympathetic protection and
welfare afforded to the ‘Windrush generation’ who came
before them. Echoing repeated moral panics directed at

WINDRUSH

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27

black Britons over the last seven decades, ‘knife crime’
called for a law-and-order response. It was time for the
police and the state to reassert control in the context of
spiralling lawlessness, urban decline and a nation lacking
discipline and confidence.
While the state tends to have a clear line when it comes
to dealing with crime, the British left have struggled with
how to respond to problems of violence in oppressed,
lower-income communities. At best, the left is able to
identify the social harms caused by a lack of social provision (housing, education, healthcare), and to recognise
how this can lead young people in particular to be more
likely to be affected by and implicated in violence. But
the British left mostly seem unable to say that while one
individual harming another is morally wrong, so is having
uniformed agents force human beings into cages. Without
a compelling critique of police and prisons, much of the
left falls back on the carceral logic which divides society
into victims and perpetrators. It then becomes possible
to argue for the effectiveness of ‘evidence-led’, ‘targeted’
policing – perhaps with a sprinkling of unconscious-bias
training for good measure.
Arguments are made for policing to be carried out
by officers who are ‘part of the community’, which in
addition to black and brown officers also sees police
occupying schools, youth clubs and places of worship.
Without a critical language, the left implicitly consents
to these police powers which are then challenged only for
being used ‘at random’ (as if those subjected to stop and
search are ever identified randomly), or for being used in
a discriminatory manner (as if there were any other way

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in which such powers could be used). This poverty of
understanding, and lack of effective articulation, results
in the left focusing on a defence of the welfare state, which
includes the call for more police. Indeed, more bobbies
on the beat has a homely leftish resonance as well as an
authoritarian rightish one. Constrained by this logic, the
police and the prison system are perceived as flawed,
but still fundamentally necessary. Such constraints limit
demands to diversity drives, community consultations,
equality impact assessments, increased funding and, in
extreme cases, public inquiries.
What should have been learnt from the ‘Windrush
scandal’ – from the illegalisation and expulsion of
long-settled Commonwealth citizens – was that racist discrimination persists across a range of state institutions
and practices, and that this takes new forms as punitive,
everyday borders proliferate. The exclusionary logic of
immigration controls – according to which ‘migrants’
take jobs, resources and public goods and therefore need
to be excluded – operates to justify and obscure the wider
disentitlement and abandonment of citizens. Conditionality and punitiveness in the benefits system can then
be reframed as protecting citizens from queue-jumping
immigrants. Moreover, the total surveillance and exclusion of ‘illegal immigrants’, managed via comprehensive
data-sharing initiatives, allows the government to trial
new forms of conditionality and punitiveness that can
then be rolled out more widely – just as charging migrants
to use the NHS provides an ominous trial run for further
privatisation. Defining ‘Windrush migrants’ as wronged

WINDRUSH

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29

citizens, and contrasting them with ‘illegal immigrants’,
does little to illuminate these connections.
All this is to say that the ‘Windrush scandal’ was not
some un-British aberration, but an inevitable outcome
of aggressive immigration policies enforced by racist
institutions as part of a larger bid to further delegitimise
any remaining investment in the caring, welfarist state. In
short, ‘hostile environment’ immigration policies work in
combination with the politics of austerity. And policies
surrounding immigration, welfare and crime can only
be understood when considered in their relation.5 We
have observed that the sympathy for Windrush migrants
was highly conditional and had no effect on the ongoing
demonisation of over-policed and criminalised young
black people. Indeed, declarations of the Windrush
migrants’ worthiness may have even been nourished and
vindicated by their being placed in opposition to young
people accused of ‘knife crime’. In the next chapter we
examine the ‘knife-crime epidemic’ in more detail, considering the state practices which are trialled and licensed
through this racist politics of law and order.

CH APT E R T WO

‘Knife Crime’:
Prevention and Order

[There are] definitely more younger people involved …
more knives involved with the serious violence on the
streets … This, for my officers, in 2016/17/18, felt like
the extra use of extraordinary force by groups on other
young people to be a new phenomenon.
– Cressida Dick, Met Police Commissioner, 20191

I want criminals to feel terror.
– Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel, 20192

Debates about crime in the second decade of the twentyfirst century have been dominated by moral panic about
‘knife crime’. This panic has been based partly on a real
problem of violence in lower-income communities.
Figures released in 2019 indicated that police-recorded
violent crime had risen by almost a fifth in England and
Wales. In the same year, crimes involving blades rose by
12 per cent and almost 40,000 such offences were reported
to police (although the 2019 figures fell short of the 2006
peak for injures involving knives).3
However, crime statistics are always slippery, reflecting
policing practices and the uneven enforcement of the law
as much as some discrete and measurable thing called

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31

‘crime’. ‘Knife crime’ is not a criminal offence in itself, but
an amalgam of already existing offences (carrying a bladed
article, robbery, burglary, grievous bodily harm, murder,
etc.). By grouping together a number of existing offences,
the police, politicians and the press can convey the idea
that ‘knife crime’ is new, or is at least worse than anything
Britain has seen before. This begs the question of why the
category of ‘knife crime’ has risen to such prominence in
national politics. Like new categories of crime from earlier
periods, such as ‘mugging’, the problem of ‘knife crime’
is seen to have been introduced to Britain by racialised
outsiders, therefore requiring new forms of policing and
penalisation. Such moral panics are effective because they
promise that the expansion of violent policing will be
reserved for racialised outsiders, from whom the nation
needs protecting.
The racism that associates violent crime with black youth
in Britain has been well-documented.4 For example, Tony
Blair declared in 2007 that the problem of violent crime
would not be solved ‘by pretending it isn’t young black kids
doing it’,5 paving the way for the racialised policing of the
‘gang’ which we unpack in the next chapter. More recently,
the Metropolitan Police’s response to the evidence of
racial disproportionality in stop and searches has been to
suggest that young people of ‘African-Caribbean heritage’
are more likely than white people to be perpetrators and
victims of ‘knife crime’.6 Quite how police officers are
able to distinguish people of ‘African-Caribbean heritage’
from other people racialised as black is unclear, but the
police assure us that stop and search offers a crucial way to
apprehend criminals and keep young people safe.

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Similarly, in March 2019, in a TV debate on ‘knife crime’
with the rapper and writer Akala, Piers Morgan stated:
‘statistically, it looks like in London, right now … the
perpetrators and the victims appear to be almost exclusively young black men’. Morgan went on to ask Akala,
‘do you think there is a racial element to that in terms of
any cultural issues, racial issues?’ The statistic, it turned
out, was a fabrication, but Akala’s response to Morgan was
instructive. He said, ‘clearly throughout human history,
black people have not remotely had anything resembling
a monopoly on violence. Over the last few years [in] some
of the most horrendous knife attacks, both the victims and
the perpetrators have been white and they’ve not been
from London.’
The local geographies of violence and policing are
therefore worth remarking on here. In areas coded as
‘black’ – like Brixton, Tottenham and Ladbroke Grove in
London, Moss Side in Manchester, Chapeltown in Leeds,
and Handsworth in Birmingham – stabbing incidents are
less newsworthy, unless the victim is especially young.
‘Knife crime’ in these areas is considered notable in news
and political discourse less because the victims deserve
our sympathies but more as a quantitative confirmation
of the association between race and criminality (‘black on
black crime’). Not coincidentally, these are the areas that
are most heavily policed and in which there have been
historic confrontations between the police and young
black people.
On the other hand, when stabbing victims are seen to
be innocent – which often means white and from less
urban areas – offences tend to be especially newsworthy.

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33

When 17-year-old Jodie Chesney was murdered in a park
in Romford, a part of London that is almost in Essex, the
story was on the front pages for some time. The suspected
attackers were reported to be black males. Two young
men, aged 17 and 19, were later convicted after admitting
to killing Jodie in a case of mistaken identity. Peter
Chesney, Jodie’s father, featured regularly in London and
national newspapers, in the aftermath of the murder and
during the trial, invited to offer his opinion on how the
government should better tackle ‘knife crime’ – the
­­ moral
authority and demands of the victim have long been at
the centre of Britain’s carceral culture. Peter Chesney went
on to found the Jodie Chesney Foundation, which ‘aims
to set up a hotline, staffed by youth workers and ex-gang
members, that parents, siblings and friends of at-risk
children can call with their concerns about knives and
county lines drug gangs’.
The inclusion of county lines drug gangs is telling,
referring to concerns about urban gangs expanding their
supply chains into towns and rural areas. This is about
familiar crimes (read: urban, black) occurring in new
places (read: non-urban, white). Despite the language
of ‘protecting young people from grooming’ within
government talk on county lines, the real fear is that
black criminality is migrating out of black urban enclaves
and spreading, virus-like, into unsuspecting parts of the
country. In short, where crime happens matters, and
contested geographies of policing, racism and belonging
get mobilised in debates about the ‘knife-crime epidemic’
and ‘county lines drug gangs’. Part of the fear is that the

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

police will lose the ability to contain if not to control such
instances of (black) violence and criminality.
The circulation of a discourse around the so-called
‘knife-crime epidemic’ is therefore significant not simply
for the ideological association of race and crime. Just as
with the ‘mugging crisis’ of the early 1970s, today’s moral
panic has also led, unsurprisingly, to calls for an increase in
police powers, particularly stop and search. The Conservative Party manifesto of November 2019 confirmed their
core commitment to tougher policing of ‘knife crime’:
Police will be empowered by a new court order to target
known knife carriers, making it easier for officers to
stop and search those convicted of knife crime. Anyone
charged with knife possession will appear before magistrates within days not weeks. Those who use a knife as a
weapon should go to prison.7
The police, politicians and much of the press have
repeatedly ignored research indicating the failure of
stop and search to yield crime prevention and detection
outcomes. Available statistics suggest that disproportionality in the use of stop-and-search powers has increased
in the context of the ‘knife-crime epidemic’, with black
people being 4.3 times more likely to be stopped than
white people in 2018, compared with 2.6 times in 2014.8
However, in our view the variable scale factor here only
tells us so much. Whether black people are two times, five
times, eight times, or 26 times more likely to be stopped
by the police, the number is always too high, and the

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35

number itself feels unreal. What actually changes in our
understanding when we modify the multiplier?
What is clear is that young black boys and men in
particular neighbourhoods are intensely over-policed,
repeatedly stopped and searched, often humiliated and
treated with disrespect by the police. During most searches,
the police do not find anything, and when they do it tends
to be small amounts of cannabis.9 In this context, the
discourse surrounding ‘knife crime’ seems only to fuel the
disproportionate and racist policing practices that already
deny working-class young black men rights to freedom
of association, free movement in public space and the
presumption of innocence.
And yet, documenting the racial disproportionality and
ineffectiveness of policing practices risks taking the police
at their word, assuming that there could be a rational and
proportionate way of enforcing racially conceived laws.
The racism surrounding ‘knife crime’ is about more than
the uneven implementation of the law, it is about the very
conception and formulation of ‘crime’. If racism forms
the definition of criminal problems from the outset,
then ‘fact-checking’ the police only gets us so far. When
a particular ‘criminal problem’ (i.e. knife crime) is fixed
onto a particular ‘criminal population’ (i.e. young black
men), policing is racial and racist by definition. In this
instance, aggressive stop-and-search policies, apparently
targeting ‘knife crime’, but in practice primarily identifying ‘drugs offences’, are enforced against young people
long familiar with heavy-handed, racist policing. None
of this is likely to have any positive impact in reducing
youth violence. But if the primary motivation for heavier

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

policing is not preventing harm, but the symbolic demonstration of authority, order and discipline, then this is
hardly surprising.
*

*

*

The response to ‘knife crime’ has not only been to conduct
more stop and searches, but also to criminalise young
people who are suspected of carrying knives. During the
time we were writing this book, the government was legislating ‘knife-crime prevention orders’ (via the Offensive
Weapons Act 2019), which like ASBOs before them
operate without the due process protections of criminal
law. Under these prevention orders, the police need only
to convince a magistrate that an individual is ‘more likely
than not’ to have carried a blade on at least two occasions.
That is, the individual subject to a knife-crime prevention
order does not need to have been convicted of carrying
a knife, caught by police while carrying a knife, or even
seen by a member of the public carrying a knife. Thus,
the offences do not have to have been proven beyond
reasonable doubt, only evidenced on a ‘balance of probabilities’, as more likely than not to have been committed, a
much lower standard of proof.
These prevention orders can be used against individuals as young as twelve – enforcing curfews and placing
restrictions on where they can go, who they can associate
with, and even imposing limitations on social media
use, apparently to stop gang rivalries escalating online.10
Young people merely suspected of knife carrying will thus
be subject to limitations on their movements and associ-

‘KNIFE CRIME’: PREVENTION AND ORDER

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37

ations, and any breach of the order is a criminal offence
that can result in up to two years in prison. A twelve year
old might be accused of knife carrying based on police
intelligence, receive a knife crime prevention order, and
then risk incarceration if they travel to a certain area, meet
with a particular friend or relative, or access Instagram or
Snapchat. A moral panic centred on ‘knife crime’, a new
category of crime, creates a new problem that is then
subject to prevention and order.
However, referring to these processes as criminalisation largely misses the point. These forms of control are
pre-criminal, post-criminal or extra-criminal. Indeed,
knife-crime prevention orders present obvious links with
counter-terror policing (which involves intense online
surveillance and the criminalisation of associations and
sympathies) and immigration policy (which sees people
deported because their removal is deemed ‘conducive to
the public good’, or denied citizenship because they are
deemed ‘more likely than not’ to be of ‘bad character’).
The connection here between knife-crime prevention
orders, counter-terror policing and immigration policy is
that they all rely on expelling racialised people from the
albeit limited protections of criminal law. Processes of
racialisation are both cause and effect of this pre-criminalisation.
In relation to ‘knife crime’, police and politicians have
also turned, again, to the problem of ‘black culture’ – and
this time the culprit is drill music (a subgenre of rap). The
police have defined drill music as an apparent driver of the
purported increase in ‘knife crime’, and then, borrowing
from anti-gang initiatives used by the LAPD, have

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EMPIRE’S ENDGAME

convinced judges to pass injunctions that prevent artists
from referring to specific names, places or events in their
lyrics, arguing that their mere mention would constitute
an incitement of violence. Suspended sentences have been
handed out to musicians with no criminal record, while
the media have stoked moral panic around the genre,
reproducing similar panics to those around rock and roll,
reggae and grime music.11
For example, Valentini, a rapper from Thurrock in
Essex, had an injunction imposed that prevented him
from wearing hoodies or face coverings and stipulated
that he could not produce ‘any audio or video online that is
threatening, abusive, insulting, incites violence, promotes
criminal activity, shows weapons or makes reference to
gang affiliations’.12 In late 2019, using a ‘rap translator’
(a native informer perhaps?), the police were able to
convince a court that Valentini had rapped about weapons
in a newly released song. Valentini was then jailed for 19
weeks as a result. What is important here is that the police
were not able to present evidence of Valentini committing
violent crime or selling drugs, but successfully argued that
his music depicting these themes constituted guilt and
demonstrated his involvement in ‘gang crime’. In another
example, two drill rappers from Brixton, Skengdo and
AM, were targeted by police and sections of the media.
Following violence in south London, the rappers were
banned from referring to any specific people, places or
events. Detective Inspector Luke Williams of the Lambeth
and Southwark Gang’s Unit confirmed: ‘The court found
that violence in drill music can, and did in this case,
amount to gang-related violence.’13 Some months later,

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39

after performing their song, ‘Attempted 1.0’, at a London
concert in December 2018, the Metropolitan Police
handed both rappers a two-year suspended sentence
(meaning that if they were to offend during those two
years, they would be incarcerated for nine months).
In the policing of drill, we see again the evasion of due
process protections and the extension of police powers
through injunctions and pre-criminal modes of social
control. The policing of sympathies and incitements,
involving online surveillance and data capture, echoes
the policing and (pre-)criminalisation of ‘terror suspects’.
Indeed, the police reached for new powers precisely by
labelling drill artists as terrorists.14 Like the anti-terror
powers used in the UK’s anti-radicalisation policy, Prevent,
these restrictions did not target violence or unlawful
behaviour itself, but the alleged ‘promotion’ of such
behaviour, in this case through artistic expression. Most
pressingly for our argument, these authoritarian moves to
control and police racialised threats, whether of the ‘black
gang’ or the ‘Muslim terrorist’, are not distinct phenomena,
but implicate and refer to one another. Counter-terror
powers can be employed against drill artists, just as ideas
about dangerous ‘gangs’ prove mutable in the context of
widespread racial threat. We develop these points in the
next chapter.
By constructing ‘knife crime’ as both new and ‘on the
rise’, the problem becomes something alien, something
which descends on the respectable and law-abiding people
of Britain from outside. And yet, these offences occur in
British cities, committed by young men raised in Britain.
In this way, ‘knife crime’ is both alien – unlike other kinds

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of street crime and violence – and yet cultivated in those
uncontrolled spaces in the heart of the national territory,
in urban centres, housing estates and black families. In
this way ‘knife crime’ induces panic because it reminds
‘decent’ and ‘hard-working’ Britons that their country is
not their own and is not safe for their children. Criminal
youth subcultures offer a dystopian vision of where the
nation is headed. These fears invariably play on wider
concerns about immigration – past and future – and
fuel alarm surrounding demographic shifts and moral
decline. These feelings of existential threat explain why
‘knife crime’ becomes the main news story at a particular
moment: not because of concern about young black
men at risk of violence, but because the spectacle of that
uncontrolled violence mobilises widespread anxieties
over national identity, cultural difference and insecurity
in ways that prove politically useful.

CH APT E R T HR E E

Gang Land

Commander Jim Stokley, Scotland Yard’s most senior
officer responding to gang crime, told The Times ‘there
isn’t specific legislation’ for gangs, adding: ‘Clearly we
can’t use terrorism legislation [but] in consultation with
the CPS, we have found some existing legislation which
we are going to use.’
– ‘Police to treat gangs like terror suspects with
tough new laws’, Telegraph, 30 May 20181

As a cop I always used to stop and search, but now
police live in fear of being called racist.
– Andrew O’Hagan, Telegraph, 13 November 20182

The spectre of the ‘gang’ has a long history in Britain.
While it was long used to denote groups of outlaws in
various forms, in the twentieth century the term became
racialised through a number of interconnected problems,
including Irish migration to the British mainland early in
the century and later the policing of ‘gangs’ of dissidents in
British colonies including Kenya and Malaya.3 In post-war
Britain, the influence of American frames on race and
racism bolstered concerns about ‘gangs’ of ‘coloured’
criminals. By the twenty-first century, dispersal orders
introduced by New Labour gave the police the power to

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break up gatherings larger than two, as both black and
Asian youths came to symbolise Britain’s ‘gang’ problem.
As the first decade of the twenty-first century drew to
a close, the media became fixated on ‘gangs’. London’s
Evening Standard published investigative reports into
the ‘Gangs of London’, while other regional newspapers
decried the gangsters of ‘Gunchester’ and ‘Shottingham’
(Manchester and Nottingham).4 These ‘gangs’ were represented by images of young black men, hooded, masked
or in mugshots. None of this felt new necessarily, except
perhaps in its intensity. For over a decade the police had
lobbied for more power and weapons, implementing
targeted programmes, such as Operation Trident, with
the explicit aim of policing ‘gangs’ in black communities. These were accompanied by calls for longer prison
sentences, massive increases in stop-and-search powers,
and public hand-wringing about the breakdown of the
nuclear family, the lack of suitable role models, and a justice
system weakened by political correctness and concerns
about human rights. We can trace these discourses on
race, crime and disorder through Enoch Powell, Margaret
Thatcher, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Theresa May, and
now Boris Johnson.
However, it is worth pausing to question the specific
work performed by the image of ‘the gang’. Crucially, ‘the
gang’ mediates between the individual offender and the
wider group from which they hail, with its alien culture,
propensity to violence and incorrigible cultural difference.
The inherently racial character of ‘the gang’ explains the
flurry of policies and laws designed to identify, contain
and criminalise ‘gangs’.

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Since 2012, the Metropolitan Police have been using
a database called the Gangs Violence Matrix to identify,
assess and measure potential harm and risk emanating
from particular young people. This risk-assessment tool
is designed to give the police a means of defining and
ranking people described as ‘gang-associated’. However, it
is not clear how someone gets on the Matrix, or how they
get off it. What is clear is that the vast majority of those on
the Gangs Matrix are black, which does not correspond to
rates of ‘serious youth violence’.
Researchers Patrick Williams and Becky Clarke analysed
gangs policing in London, Nottingham and Greater
Manchester. They found that 72 per cent of people on the
London Gangs Matrix were black, while only 27 per cent of
serious youth violence was committed by black people in
London (the figures in Greater Manchester were starker:
81 per cent of ‘gang members’ were black while only 6 per
cent of serious youth violence was committed by black
people).5 Amnesty International found that ‘40 per cent of
people listed on the Matrix have no record of involvement
in any violent offence in the past two years and 35 per cent
have never committed any “serious offence”’.6
As the same Amnesty report explains, the policing of
gangs relies on online surveillance:
The type of data collection that underpins the Gangs
Matrix focuses law enforcement efforts disproportionately on black boys and young men. It erodes their
right to privacy based on what may be nothing more
than their associates in the area they grow up and how
they express their subculture in music videos and social

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media posts. Officials in borough Gangs Units monitor
the social media pages and online interactions of people
they consider to be ‘at risk’ of gang involvement, interfering with the privacy of a much larger group of people
than those involved in any kind of wrongdoing.
Here we see the use of social media analysis and online
surveillance within contemporary policing practices. The
use of big data reflects the wider turn towards predictive
policing technologies. As others have noted, the opacity of
policing combined with the opacity of machine-learning
algorithms portends troubling times ahead for those
concerned with limiting the reach of the state.7
Being gang-identified, despite the absence of substantive
evidence, can have significant implications beyond the
criminal justice system. Information on ‘gang associations’
is regularly shared between government agencies, which
can impact the ability of an individual, and their family,
to access social housing, education and welfare benefits.
Increasingly, for those who lack British citizenship, police
intelligence on ‘suspected gang involvement’ is used to
build deportation cases, often against individuals who
moved to the UK as infants, and who have no criminal
record, but who it is decided on a ‘balance of probabilities’
are more likely than not to have committed crimes. Under
a policy called Operation Nexus, many people have been
deported on the basis of such ‘non-convictions’.8
While the ‘gang’ is used to construct racialised forms of
suspect criminality, it also makes possible certain forms
of collective punishment, especially in criminal cases
involving ‘Joint Enterprise’. Joint Enterprise is ‘a doctrine

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of common law which has been developed by the courts
in cases where more than one person is to be prosecuted
for the same offence’, the logic being that if a group of
people were ‘in it together’, and had ‘common purpose’ in
conspiring to commit crime together, they should be held
collectively responsible. This means that people can be
held liable for crimes committed by other people, even if
they were not present when the crime was committed. This
has particular implications for young black men identified
as belonging to ‘a gang’, and many Joint Enterprise cases
rely on invoking ‘the gang’ as the narrative thread for
such ‘common purpose’. This is worrying when the very
definition of ‘gangs’ through police intelligence is both
empirically flimsy and heavily racialised.9
To give one example, in Manchester in 2016 a teenager
was stabbed to death in Moss Side. Thirteen young men
and boys were charged with his killing; eleven were sent
to prison, with seven sentenced to life for murder (one
of them had remained in his car during the fight, and
another was twenty metres away when the stabbing took
place), and four convicted of manslaughter. In this case,
like many others, it was the image of ‘the gang’ that held
the prosecution’s argument together, weaving together a
case from patchy evidence, but successfully persuading
the judge to ignore the simple claim made by all the
defendants: that they were not part of a gang and thus
there was no ‘common purpose’.
Unsurprisingly, the number of black people serving
custodial sentences for Joint Enterprise convictions –
mostly for murder with sentences of over 15 years – is
highly disproportionate. While the incarceration of black

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people in Britain is already more disproportionate than
in the US, the rate for Joint Enterprise cases is even more
striking. For those convicted under Joint Enterprise at
the time of writing, 57.4 per cent are black and minority
ethnic (37.7 per cent black/black British, 4.7 per cent
Asian and 15.5 per cent mixed race). Non-white people
also serve longer sentences under Joint Enterprise than
white groups, and ‘the gang’ is invoked much more often
to justify their ‘common purpose’. According to Patrick
Williams and Becky Clarke, who surveyed 241 prisoners
convicted under Joint Enterprise laws, over three quarters
of the black and brown interviewees (78.9 per cent)
reported that references to ‘gangs’ featured in their cases
in court, whereas only 38.5 per cent of white interviewees
had ‘the gang’ mentioned in their cases. Moreover, 97 per
cent of those who reported that ‘gangs’ were introduced in
court disputed the ‘gang’ label and ‘dismissed it as untrue,
a “made up” feature of the prosecution’s argument’.10
Because ‘gangs’, like other fears around crime and
disorder, concern ‘black youth’, a set of seasoned arguments about black cultural pathology find renewed
articulation. The racialisation of ‘black Britons’, especially
African-Caribbeans, has long operated through ideas
about ‘cultural deprivation’. Perhaps more urgently, these
cultures of criminality and outlawry are seen to be contagious, as sometimes appealing to white Britons, visible
in the fact that multi-racial urban cultures seem particularly shaped by black cultural forms. In short, ‘black
criminality’ is a reflection of cultures which themselves
might poison other young people living in urban Britain,
and this is another factor motivating heavy-handed

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punishment. Ideas about black culture as contagion have
a long history, as does the appeal of black cultural forms
within youth culture. Perhaps black cultural forms do have
greater appeal to wider British society – not as poison but
as inspiration – following the retreat of the welfare state
and the concomitant waning of political legitimacy. As
Stormzy’s intervention in electoral politics in November
2019 reminds us, there is good reason for the Conservative
Party and its backers to be concerned that these energies
might one day be organised into more effective support
for social democracy.
*

*

*

The Conservative Party Manifesto of November 2019
should be read with these cases in mind. Where it
promises to provide 10,000 more prison places, and to
ensure that serious criminals receive tougher punishments – ending automatic release at the halfway point for
example – we can predict where the heavy punishment
will fall. It was Boris Johnson as Mayor of London who
announced plans to punish gangs collectively for the acts
of individual members, even when Joint Enterprise was
not being pursued by prosecutors.11 This racist collective
punishment gets justified through the discursive and
cultural work performed by ‘the gang’. As we have argued,
‘the gang’ works incredibly well to justify the most severe
punishments available to the British state: the curtailment
of civil liberties (such as freedom of movement and
self-expression), life imprisonment and, in the case of
non-citizens, permanent exile.

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However, while there is a particular history to its racialisation as black, ‘the gang’ is a highly mobile and protean
signifier of racial otherness which can be qualified in
other ways. There are Albanian, Somali and Asian gangs,
and ‘illegal immigration’ is blamed on ‘trafficking gangs’
and ‘gang-masters’. Perhaps most visibly, child sexual
exploitation has been blamed on ‘Pakistani grooming
gangs’, which have become the most visceral marker of
anti-Muslim sentiment in British politics. We discuss
‘Pakistani grooming gangs’ at length in Part 3 of the book,
but it is important to note here that this concern about
‘grooming gangs’ reveals a wider set of crises and contestations over gender, sexuality and culture.
The ‘Pakistani grooming gang’ has been mobilised as
a unique and existential threat to white girls, rehashing
familiar fears of miscegenation, paedophilia and the
civilisationist rhetoric of the ‘War on Terror’. The far-right
has made political capital out of the organised abuse of
young women and girls by claiming that white men need
to protect their women from this alien threat, further
arguing that the state has been weakened by political correctness. Alongside this reading of ‘grooming gangs’, there
has been a more liberal concern over the anti-feminist
and anti-LGBT positions of Britain’s Muslim communities
themselves. The ‘grooming gang’ encapsulates here the
depraved sexualities of Muslim men, whose male pathology
is seen to be nurtured by ethnic segregation, patriarchal
family structures and by Islam itself. Meanwhile, the
‘black gang’ is also seen to be an effect of deficient masculinities, particularly with reference to ‘absent fathers’
and a ‘lack of good role models’, which then produce the

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violent and nihilistic expressions of masculinity exhibited
by those wayward and rootless teenagers carrying knives
and producing drill music.
It is hardly surprising that the racialisation of particular
‘folk devils’ works through gender and sexuality, and that
figurations of ‘the gang’ seem well placed to capture the
group threat. However, what is particularly threatening
about ‘the gang’ is that it represents an alternative form
of social organisation. Part of this racial threat presented
by black people, Muslims and various racial Others
relies, therefore, not only on individual wrongdoing but
on what that wrongdoing supposedly tells us about the
group. These collective threats to the nation are imagined
to play by their own, different, rules, and therefore to be
acculturated within some other moral order and system
of authority, embedded in an alternative and unknowable
form of social organisation – both dangerous and
seductive. As well as the ‘grooming gangs’ themselves,
gangs involved in ‘knife crime’, county lines drug dealing,
or terrorist cells each do their own kinds of ‘grooming’
– with their own lexicon, imagery and sinister system of
values. This produces the conviction that this alternative
system should at the very least be visible to the state and
the nation, giving birth to an industry of interpreters,
investigators, rehabilitators and enforcers, in a typically
colonial/anthropological mode.
Importantly, these alternative forms of social organisation become particularly threatening at a time of
waning political legitimacy and nationalist resurgence.
And so Muslims must condemn terrorism and confirm
their commitment to tolerance, democracy and the rule

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of law. Black people must ‘disprove stereotypes’, while
stressing their claim to the Commonwealth and therefore
to British citizenship and belonging. Immigrants must
speak English, learn ‘British values’, and pass the Life in
the UK test. This compulsory demand to perform loyalty
to the nation symbolically guards against ‘home-grown
terrorism’, ‘grooming gangs’ and ‘knife crime’ among
other things, but it is clearly connected to the broader
realisation that many people in Britain are finding sources
of authority and belonging elsewhere. People are not
comporting themselves in accordance with the ideals of
nationalist respectability, which is why David Cameron’s
‘muscular liberalism’ professed that it was not enough
merely to abide by the law – citizens must actively invest
in Britishness itself. The British state demands a monopoly
on the legitimate use of grooming.
There is a recognisable colonial lineage to these dynamics. Alternative currents of power have, from colonial
contexts to modern multicultural Britain, been tolerated
by the state if they organised people into productive work
relations and respectable family structures. Indirect rule
and multiculturalism both rely on respecting cultural
leaders and customary law so long as this does not challenge the ultimate authority of the British government.
This managerial calibration of difference is what the
‘British value’ of tolerance amounts to. When racialised
groups present more substantive challenges to state
authority, however – when they protest, riot and resist –
they can then be suppressed legitimately, and the British
state can remain virtuous in the face of ungrateful and
uncivilised groups. Equally, it was colonialism which used

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race to determine who was worthy of the law – and who
was subject to civil law and who to martial law. Colonial
regimes also produced propertied white men as the individual bearers of rights, while racially inferior groups
could be subject to collective punishment without any
concern for due process rights.
‘Gang crime’, ‘knife crime’ and ‘radicalisation’ are not, it
is worth restating, criminal offences in themselves. They
are categories of crime, produced by melding together a
collection of already existing offences, popular fears and
racist images. The definitions of ‘the gang’ or of ‘extremism’
remain so fluid and ambiguous that they allow for the
production of suspect communities, rather than individual
suspects. Black working-class boys – in both urban areas
where policing is most prevalent and in more rural areas
(particularly since the rise in ‘county lines’ policing) – are
all potential gang members. Muslims from a range of
ethnic backgrounds, of all age groups from primary school
upwards, are assumed to be potentially ‘radicalised’ and
susceptible to ‘extremism’. Non-citizens, and indeed all of
us, must prove our right to reside before renting a house,
taking up employment or visiting the doctor – we are all
perpetually demonstrating our ‘legality’. Surveillance and
data-gathering technologies enacted through the Gangs
Matrix, Prevent and the immigration system advance
the pre-emptive policing of racialised populations. The
Muslim, the immigrant and the black become subject
to collective punishment precisely because their criminality and deviance represent an existential threat, and
narratives on ‘the gang’ are fundamental to the production
of this feeling of siege. Muslims want to overthrow liberal

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democracy and impose an alternative religious order,
while young black people threaten our safety and civility
while seducing urban white working-class youth to their
ways.
Politicians are right when they observe that the nation is
losing its lustre for many young people, but most often it
is not displaced by any coherent alternative form. Instead,
we have individualised media environments, in which
social and timeline media determine cultural value(s).
Relatedly, public institutions and public spaces have been
decimated, and it is corporations that increasingly define
where we go, what we see and how we feel, organising
social and cultural life in ways beyond the reach of the
hollowed-out state. In this context, the reaction of the state
to the ‘gang’, in its many incarnations, illustrates that its
authority is threatened. In responding to various pressures
on its legitimacy, law-and-order policing is used both to
repress alternative currents of power and to replace the
state influence formerly occupied by the welfare system.
In this way, the policing of gangs is a kind of displacement
from the wider concerns about waning state authority and
governmental legitimacy. As a result, it is hard to imagine
how the state would define itself, in terms of a necessary
defence of the nation, without ‘knife crime’, ‘terrorism’
and ‘mass migration’ – especially when war has become so
unpopular in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq. With the
abandonment of welfarism, the state’s main purpose and
promise is to keep us safe. This promise of security underwrites the authoritarianism and militarism of political
culture at this moment of crisis, as we discuss in Part 4.

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Importantly, it seems to us that ‘gangs’ are central to
several different configurations of racial threat. The
construction of migrants, criminals, terrorists and sex
offenders as members of ‘gangs’ works to racialise the
source of danger, emphasising that alternative modes of
social organisation fuel violence and criminality. This
then licenses the exclusion of particular populations
from legal protections and due process rights (through,
e.g., knife-crime prevention orders, control orders, deprivation of citizenship and deportation). Law has always
operated to segment the population into those who can be
saved, rehabilitated, protected or included, and those who
cannot. Those excluded from legal protection become
the defining boundary of ‘state responsibility’. Today, the
racialisation of national insecurity licenses wider moves to
expand executive power and circumvent the meagre protections afforded by the independent judiciary, thereby
transforming the state and the fundamental practices
through which it gets defined. It is worth keeping in mind
that by highlighting the authoritarian nature of the state,
we are not valorising the liberal state’s laws and practices
of previous decades. Rather, we are seeking to trace transformations in how the political is delineated and therefore
what new forms of authoritarian power become possible in
their wake. It is in this vein that the chapters which follow
in Part 2 seek to trace the form and content of nationalist
appeal in Britain today.

PART 2

The Persistence of Nationalism

C HAPTE R F O UR

Nationalist Convulsions

[T]he word we used to use was sovereignty. It’s about
self-government. It’s about identity. It’s about whether
we are a proper nation or not. This is about us governing
our country, it’s about us controlling our borders ... We
need to be saying ‘we want our country back’. And we’re
going to get it. And June 23 is going to be Independence
Day.
– Nigel Farage, April 2016

If politics in the West is ever to return to normal
rather than becoming even more polarized, white
interests will need to be discussed. I realize this is very
controversial for left-modernists. Yet not only is white
group self-interest legitimate, but I maintain that in an
era of unprecedented white demographic decline it is
absolutely vital for it to have a democratic outlet.
– Professor Eric Kaufmann, author of Whiteshift1

As we were completing this work, the dangerous forces
of nationalism were all too apparent. The heart-breaking
2019 general election saw the resurrection of an overtly
nationalistic and racist government led by Boris Johnson.
The right was consolidated as the Tory Party swept up the
votes of erstwhile UKIP and Brexit Party voters. Johnson’s

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government took victory with the enthusiastic endorsement of Trump, following a political playbook influenced,
if not scripted, by Steve Bannon. More broadly, as the
troubled decade of the twenty-teens has ended, the full
violence of exclusionary nationalisms has been unleashed
across the globe – with re-education camps for Uighur
Muslims in China, and the spectre of mass internment
and statelessness targeting Muslims in India. Meanwhile,
in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi defended the genocidal
violence against the Rohingya as a matter of national
security, and in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s
popular campaign to harden the eastern flank of Fortress
Europe has trapped people on the border, starving in
camps. The richest nation on earth continues to cage
children at its border, and while the infrastructure for this
violence was developed during the ‘liberal years’ of Clinton
and Obama (as well as Bush), the aggressive and spectacular violation of racialised Others is absolutely central to
Trump’s mode of governance in the USA. Comparable
regimes in Brazil under Bolsonaro, and Turkey under
Erdogan, point to the wider set of alliances and confluences being forged between authoritarian strongmen and
their ultra-nationalist mandates.
In this chapter we focus on the British story, considering the stubborn allure of nationalism in British political
culture. Importantly, appeals to the nation transcend neat
political divisions of left and right. Although as a group
we do not subscribe to a singular ‘line’, we all approach the
pull of nationalism with scepticism, even in its welfarist
incarnations. Historically, the British nation has only
ever existed with colonies and has therefore constructed

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a national identity through a triumphalist sense of its own
imperial greatness, in which the British national character
is defined in opposition to the uncivilised nature of
colonial subjects. British nationalism necessarily relies on
the structured and purposeful forgetting of the violence
and domination that characterised empire, while simultaneously lamenting the loss of global power and prestige
when Britannia ruled the waves. Perversely, in the context
of Brexit, the Leave side were able to narrate the UK’s
membership in the European Union as one of colonial
subjugation: Boris Johnson claimed the EU ‘relegated
Britain to the status of a colony’, and Nigel Farage hailed
the referendum result as Britain’s ‘Independence Day’.
This distinctly British, or more accurately English, mix of
colonial amnesia, nostalgia and melancholia underwrites
the persistence of racism in British political and cultural
life and explains the profound longing for authority,
repression and the expulsion of racialised outsiders that
this book charts. Put most simply, the history of this
political and social formation means that British nationalism is unavoidably racial and racist, and any attempts to
repurpose it for progressive or leftist ends are myopic and
dangerous (see Chapter 5).
Others have gone into far greater detail demonstrating
how British nationalism and racism are co-constitutive,
with Paul Gilroy remarking that ‘British nationalism
cannot be purged of its racialized contents any more easily
than a body can be purged of the skeleton that supports
it.’2 More recently, social theorist Sivamohan Valluvan has
argued that European colonial legacies mean ‘Western
nation-making projects render race an inevitable and

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indispensable presence that is continually remade.’3 As he
argues, the nation’s content, its inside, only gains meaning
and substance through what it excludes, the outside. The
challenge for us, then, is to theorise racism in relation
to the shifting work performed by nationalism, which
remains dangerous and persistent precisely because it
successfully appeals to various political constituencies
and imaginaries – including sadly on the left. There is
no salvation in left nationalisms. However, in our view,
sometimes the desire to name and centre race can obscure
the centrality of nationalism to contemporary racisms. In
other words, a willingness to talk about race sometimes
forecloses a more careful analysis of the politics of nation.
In some cases this encourages a politics of representation
and inclusion that, as we argue, bolsters rather than
challenges nationalist rhetorics.
Unlike some other states, Britain struggles to pin
down its definitive nation-building moment. As a result,
nationalistic nostalgia may be referencing quite different
incarnations of the nation (although this is true for most
nationalisms). Sometimes it is the apparently austere
Victorian values championed at the height of imperial
power, but more often it is the euphoria of victory in the
Second World War and the boom years that followed. The
post-war establishment of the NHS and Britain’s welfare
state can therefore associate the nationalism of war with
the humanity underpinned by the social democratic
reforms that followed it, not to mention the defeat of
Nazism. This nostalgia, then, is not only for an imagined
national greatness, but also for a time when the state could
really do something, really police behaviour, really embody

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patriarchal authority, and really act on the world stage.
For this reason, the remaking of state practices – which
have become increasingly defined by cruelty, neglect and
austerity – is experienced, culturally, as a diminution of
national status. In other words, the moment of English
nationalism that finds form through Brexit takes the
disruption and disappointment of state neglect and
rearticulates it as an outcome of national decline. In an
echo of other English and British nationalisms, this
iteration of nationalism includes a strange amalgamation
of anti-elitism with a longing for authoritarianism.
In this nostalgia, there is a desire for the state to
demonstrate its power in a manner that we, the citizenaudience, can understand. This power is not necessarily
coercive, but it is always firm. There remains a collective
memory of a state – the welfare state – whose interventions
demonstrated understanding and care, a state that sought
to provide the healthcare, housing and education we
all wanted. But this power was also authoritative. It
instilled values and, when necessary, imposed law and
order, meting out the justice we deserved. Some of the
eruptions of racialised panic we describe in this book
circle back to this nostalgia for an imagined powerful,
competent state. The repetitive quest for a ‘progressive’
nationalism is therefore perhaps best understood as a
response to the widely circulated view that something has
been lost. This view of the nation, which frames it as an
almost empty vessel into which progressive, rather than
reactionary, policies can be poured, means that demands
to provide more funding for police officers on our streets
are considered a simple defence of essential, benevolent,

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public services, rather than calls bound up in the violent
project of nation-building.
While it remains clear that the gains of the welfare
system – council housing, free education and universal
healthcare – are being eroded, these material losses are
often combined with other narratives of cultural loss and
national decline. This register of loss attaches most strongly
to the mythic ‘white working class’, who are understood to
have been ‘left behind’ by globalisation. The formulation
of the ‘left behind’ is framed as a loss not simply to the
gain of elites, but also to the gain of ethnic outsiders who
have been favoured by political correctness and reverse
discrimination. The suggestion that ‘multiculturalism’ has
been imposed on a native population by the elite, without
discussion or consent, echoes long-standing far-right
narratives which present ‘the elite’ as predominantly
Jewish, conspiring to dilute or eradicate the apparent
whiteness of the indigenous working class by encouraging
immigration and multiculturalism.
While ‘the great replacement’ theory is a far-right
ideological repertoire, similar arguments find voice
through political demography, the most respectable form
of scientific racism in our times. Respected professors
with prominent media profiles publish popular books
on the ‘legitimate concerns’ of white majorities faced
with demographic decline.4 In order to understand the
stubborn persistence of these nativist currents – whether
conservative and traditionalist, or liberal and even leftist
– it is necessary to introduce the cast of characters British
nationalism seeks to organise. To do so, we should return

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to the paradigmatic expression of this drama: Enoch
Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.
*

*

*

In a Birmingham speech calling for an end to ‘coloured’
immigration, forewarning the scourge of black criminality
and announcing the moral decline of the nation, Powell
helped to reinvigorate English racism and fascism. He
claimed that ‘the decent, ordinary Englishman’, the rightful
protagonist of the national drama, faced an existential
threat, as a deluge of immigrants, enabled by a mischievous Labour government, threatened his livelihood, his
culture and his autonomy. The element of Powell’s speech
that continues to resonate is the story he tells of Britain
as a nation under threat, and the dichotomy he sets up
between the ‘ordinary working man’ – white and a citizen
– and the migrant worker. The migrant always remains
both racialised and outside of Britain’s national story,
regardless of the rights granted to Commonwealth and
colony subjects by the 1948 British Nationality Act, and
the centuries of military, economic, social and political
connections forged by empire. Indeed, for Powell, black
and brown Britons born in the UK would remain migrants
(and so we remain: second and third generation migrants
still). Though Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was viewed
by many of his contemporaries as a blatant and embarrassing expression of racism, in its long afterlife it has been
transformed into an apocryphal story of globalisation.5
Powell’s famous anecdote has become an enduring story
that goes something like this:

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The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain a
full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination
between one citizen and another, and he was granted
the same rights as every other citizen, from the right to
vote to the right to free treatment under the National
Health Service. But while for the immigrant entry to this
country was an admission to privileges and opportunities,
the implications for the existing population were not so
rosy. For reasons they could not comprehend, ‘ordinary
Englishmen’ found themselves made ‘strangers in their
own country’. They found their wives unable to obtain
hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain
school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed
beyond recognition and their plans and prospects for
the future thwarted. At work they found that employers
hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards
of discipline and competence required of the native-born
worker. These ordinary Englishmen began to hear, as time
went by, more and more voices which told them they were
now unwanted.
The story has three main characters. The first is
the migrant – who may not technically be any more
of a ‘migrant’ than someone moving from Cardiff to
Canterbury, but is a migrant in the sense of being a
racialised outsider. The migrant has been gifted the opportunity to escape the inevitable destitution of the kind that
befalls his countrymen ‘back home’, and he now hopes to
enjoy the comforts of Western life – which he did not build
and to which he is not inherently entitled. The second
character is the ‘global/metropolitan elite’ – the bosses,
the government, the PC brigade – whose unexplained

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affinity for immigrants, whether it be metropolitan ‘virtue
signalling’ or employer demand for cheap and exploitable
labour, has led to Britain’s undoing. The final character is
the white native: Powell compellingly centred ‘the decent,
ordinary fellow Englishman’, what some among the contemporary right, as well as the centre and left, now call
the traditional working class or, better yet, the ‘left behind’.
It is at the expense of these respectable and indigenous
Englishmen that the processes of post-war migration and
multiculturalism have wrought their disruption.
In order to make way for these racial aliens, the white
citizen had to lose out – losing their industrialised jobs
to outsourcing and undercutting foreign workers, their
high streets to foreign shops and foreign crowds, and
their safety and security to ‘black crime’. The majority
lost control of how their country looks and feels – and,
fast-forwarding to 2016, it was the language of sovereignty which fuelled the campaign of those who wanted
their country back. In this story, Powellism is reheated to
suggest that immigrant workers are the nefarious winners
of neoliberal globalisation; their coalition with the global
and political elite has left the white citizen-worker behind.
Perhaps it is this last part of the story that resonates most
sharply with sections of the left – where the exclusion of
immigrants is enlisted primarily to defend and revalorise
the native worker.
Central to the Powellist narrative is the claim that
‘races’, or civilisations, exist in irreconcilable silos. Fixed
in their immutable difference, they must compete with
one another for scarce resources. This zero-sum-game
logic has infused racism since Powell’s fateful interven-

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tion. During the apparently ‘liberal’ years of Blair and
Cameron, Britain went about this management of difference more politely: through the language of integration,
British values, security and fiscal responsibility. Britain’s
political establishment became slick advocates of a putatively modern, liberal nationalism, attempting to weave
seamlessly between multicultural inclusivity and the muscular exclusivity of nationalism. Powellism remained an
implicit anchor, but one which could remain submerged
except at crisis points, such as the 7/7 bombings or the
2011 riots, where the ungrateful children of Commonwealth migrants were once again in the spotlight as an
existential danger to the nation. Cameron, nonetheless,
tried to maintain a crisper, more corporate vision of the
nation, setting his own party up as an antidote to the
bigoted ramblings of the tabloid press and the ‘fruitcakes,
loonies and closet racists’ of UKIP, as he described them.
It was, perhaps, his underestimation of the potency rather
than the absurdity of Powellite nationalism that precipitated Cameron calling a referendum on Britain’s EU
membership, a vote which he and his allies in New Labour
were confident they would win.
As blind to the power of British nationalism as some
of their adversaries on the progressive left, the Remain
establishment (in its Tory, Labour and other incarnations)
was as surprised by the resurgence of a presumed-dead
Powellism as they were by the Leave victory in the EU
referendum. For New Labour, neoliberal multiculturalism
– the promotion of a colour-blind take on Thatcherism’s
meritocratic promise – was generally seen as an effective
antidote to Powellite racism, which was framed primarily

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as narrow-minded ‘intolerance’ of other cultures which
could be educated or legislated away. Even after Cameron
declared multiculturalism a failure,6 the Remain alliance
still presumed the political project of a monocultural
nation to be a thing of the past. How wrong they were. The
rest, as we know, is history. After the EU referendum, and
the elections which followed, naked nationalism moved
from supporting actor to leading role. As a result, many
liberal and even left-wing actors now set their sights on
reforming rather than defeating nationalism – a point we
discuss in the next chapter.
Falling back on the familiarity of nationalism, then, is
not confined to party politics. The longing for the anchor
of nationalism, with its heady mythologies and promise
of a shared emotional world, extends notably to socialists and anti-racists. As we warn, however, the attempt to
reform nationalism, or to develop a ‘progressive patriotism’ that can render progressive policies more appealing
to ‘traditional voters’, is a dangerous strategy. There is no
nationalist appeal without nostalgia and loss, and as Owen
Hatherley rightly reminds us: ‘whenever the left thinks it
can turn the past to its own advantage, it is outplayed by
the right’.7 In the next chapter, we develop this critique of
‘progressive patriotism’.

C HAPTE R F I VE

Progressive Patriotism

To win back the ex-industrial towns where people have
turned out in large numbers for Farage, Labour needs
to talk about more than economics. It needs to fight
personal insecurity, crime, drugs, antisocial behaviour
and organised crime as enthusiastically as it fights
racism. It needs to sideline all voices who believe having
a strong national security policy is somehow ‘imperialist’. It needs to forget scrapping Trident. The reluctance
to speak this language this is, I believe, what left Labour
over-reliant on triangulating to accommodate the proBrexit views of some voters in these towns.
– Paul Mason1

Nationalism is never simply a means to other political
ends, not least left collectivism. Nationalism is always,
in the final instance, about its own exclusionary racisms
– anything else is a convenient bedfellow rallied to make
its appeal more likely.
– Sivamohan Valluvan2

In this chapter, we consider the puzzling and yet continuing appeal of nationalism for the progressive and
anti-racist left, despite the many horrors unleashed by
nationalist forces in our time. Most of all, we try to unpack

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what is at stake in the various calls for a ‘progressive
nationalism/patriotism’. Such calls have been particularly
insistent in the United Kingdom, despite, or perhaps due
to, the uneasy binding of nations that are ‘united’ in this
overarching ‘nation’. Yet the explicitly stated goal of the
Scottish Nationalist Party – to hold another referendum
on Scottish independence and secede from the United
Kingdom – is only intermittently included in musings on
the progressive potential of a differently imagined nationalism. Similarly, the political aspirations of Northern
Ireland seem far away from the attempts to remake Britishness in a manner that can encompass the multicultural.
Given these peculiar silences, we can presume that when
British commentators propose a progressive nationalism,
they mean a nationalism that can include and perhaps
even embrace black and brown people, rather than a
nationalism that addresses and resolves the challenges of
the union. So, if talk of progressive nationalism must be
understood as talk about race, ironically, it is also simultaneously a refusal to acknowledge the unresolved and
volatile issues which continue to unsettle this nation of
nations.
In the previous chapter we emphasised the importance
of Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech for setting the terms
of debate on issues surrounding race and immigration
in British politics. It is on the discursive terrain shaped
by Powellism that attempts at liberal and left nationalisms compete with their authoritarian counterparts.
While New Labour’s use of focus groups and the processes
of population segmentation perfected by corporate
marketing teams might look rather quaint against our

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new algorithmic horizons, the habit of viewing the electorate as divided into tidy sociological categories has come
with disastrous effects, not least in shoring up the view
that people’s beliefs and desires are inherent rather than
shaped by political processes. For New Labour, this view
birthed the myth of triangulation: the idea that one simply
had to promise policies that would mediate between
two data points, a third way, thereby appealing to a large
enough cross-section of the electorate to win an election.
It is in this attempt to find a third way between nationalism and anti-racist socialism that the left too often paints
itself into a corner.
*

*

*

The basic premise of the progressive nationalist argument is
that patriotism is at once desirable and a basic, immovable
fact of the British national psyche. The problem for progressive nationalists is that the right (and worse, the
far-right) have obtained a political monopoly on its use
and thus fill it with regressive or conservative content.
Race and racism play a key role in the construction of
this argument. The right’s nationalism is problematic for
the progressive nationalist because it is used to articulate
nativism, racism, jingoism, xenophobia, etc.
Rather than interrogating how the nation has become
the primary mechanism through which racism is articulated in Britain, progressive nationalists instead tell us
we simply need to fill this signifier with new, progressive,
maybe even anti-racist content. In fact, they argue that not
doing so is precisely the reason why right-wing nation-

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alism is winning this particular ideological battle. In The
Progressive Patriot, Billy Bragg put it thus: ‘Reluctant to
make any concessions to reactionary nationalism, we
have, by default, created a vacuum, leaving it to the likes of
the BNP and the Daily Mail to decide who does and who
doesn’t belong here.’3 More recently Zoe Williams wrote:
‘bad nationalism’, the suspicious and anti-immigrant
kind, the ‘hostile environment’ kind, the static kind,
the kind that, out of nowhere, thinks sovereignty is the
burning issue of the day and that building a wall will
solve anything, thrives not because the majority secretly
thought this all along, but because there is no countervailing narrative of ‘good nationalism’.4
A key part of the progressive nationalist argument is
therefore about changing the national story Britain tells
of itself. This, we are told, will allow for a patriotism no
longer grounded in the love of British (white) supremacy
but instead found in histories of working-class solidarity
and social justice. Williams described this as ‘Danny Boyle
Nationalism’ in reference to the ‘radical’ and ‘inclusive’
story told by Boyle in the opening ceremony of the 2012
London Olympics. Here, the ‘Greatness’ of Britain was
retold through the abolition of slavery, the Suffragettes,
the making of the NHS, the arrival of SS Empire Windrush,
and J.K. Rowling.
However, such ‘radical’ re-imaginations of British
history have produced an uneasy consensus across the
political spectrum. In the aftermath of the 2019 general
election, Labour MP Liam Byrne diagnosed Labour’s

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electoral defeat as rooted in its inability to contend with
‘the allure of patriotism’ and emphasised its importance
in reviving support for the Labour Party. Curiously, a few
weeks later, Daniel Hannan, a Conservative MEP, also
suggested Labour’s electoral defeat could be explained
by Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of patriotism. In their interventions, both Byrne and Hannan expressed a pride in the
Levellers, Chartists and the Suffragettes.5 The invocation
of radical history in the service of patriotism is clearly not
restricted to the left, then. Indeed, in 2014, on winning
the parliamentary seat for Rochdale for the right-wing UK
Independence Party (UKIP), MP Mark Reckless declared
that his party stood in the tradition of the Levellers and
Chartists, adding, ‘The radical tradition, which has stood
and spoken for the working class, has found a new home
in UKIP.’
That explicitly racist and xenophobic political forces
have been able to cash-in on ‘progressive’ articulations of
nationalism should perhaps give left-wing advocates pause
for thought. Indeed, this cross-party consensus betrays
the racial work performed by nationalist discourses. Each
offer selective readings of British history where the nation’s
constitutive imperial violences are suppressed precisely
to enable feelings of pride and love. Whereas right-wing
nationalism practices an imperial nostalgia, progressive
nationalism appears to depend on imperial aphasia – a
deliberate forgetting of a colonial past. At the same time,
the histories that make the cut of progressive nationalist narratives tend to erase ostensibly ‘working-class’ or
‘radical’ movements that placed the imperial-national
formation of Britain itself into question.6 We are encour-

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aged to remember the Chartists but not the Mau Mau; the
Suffragettes but not the British Black Panther Party.
The allure of progressive patriotism therefore relies on a
set of assumptions about the value of differently racialised
people; foreigners are placed outside of progressive narratives of a nation supposedly grounded in working-class
solidarity. These foreigners might be included as desirable
and redeemable, but only when placed in the service of
the nation. When they do not perform this function, they
remain undesirable or unseen. In turn, the existence of
the nation and its reproduction is placed beyond question
or challenge, especially when that challenge is expressed
by Britain’s Others. Progressive nationalism, in spite of
its disavowals of xenophobia and its celebration of multi­
culturalism, reproduces an imperial ordering of British
politics.
The ideological contortions of progressive nationalism
are most clearly visible in contemporary debates around
immigration. Indeed, the ‘progressive’ often comes to
a battle over nationalism armed with little more than a
paternalistic notion of immigration as the source of some
welcome ‘cultural diversity’ and, more importantly, a
seemingly bottomless ‘migrant work ethic’ that runs our
economy. In this fashion, the left finds itself using the
same playbook as the so-called centre. As a ‘Remainer’ on
the BBC’s Question Time asked, ‘If we stop migration, who
will serve us our coffees in Pret?’ While ostensibly offering
a sensible pro-migrant position, such interventions articulate colonial logics of value extraction, whereby racialised
Others are allowed to survive on the condition that they

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service our consumption requirements, or clean up our
(sometimes literal) shit.
The left’s focus on migrants as workers – even if it is
emphasised that they pay in more than they take out
– merely sharpens the tensions that right-wing nationalism claims to reconcile. The migrant worker, with his
robot-like body and his ability to work for hours and
hours without toilet breaks, a living wage, or complaint,
does indeed appear as a threat to your job and your livelihood. The progressive nationalist logic accepts that
because racialised minorities are undervalued, it is inevitable that their labour will be sold on the market for less.
The poor conditions for migrant workers are presented
as a rational outcome of market forces – a constructed
social inferiority coupled with an imposed ‘migrant work
ethic’ which undermines the collective bargaining power
of native workers. While Powell’s infamous speech focuses
on culture rather than economics, it nonetheless supplies
a highly compelling emotional repertoire for progressive nationalism; we have to keep them and their robotic
bodies out, so we aren’t forced to compete unfairly with
them in the labour market.
The Powellite instincts of progressive nationalists thus
preclude alternative political possibilities: what if we were
to challenge the movement of capital rather than labour?
What if we were to prioritise improving the working conditions and collective bargaining of migrant workers?
What if migrants who did not work at all were still ‘valued’?
Such responses would require progressive nationalists to
question the borders which separate workers into citizens
and migrants, and thus the very boundaries of the nation

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that they seem at such pains to protect and reproduce.
In contrast, an understanding of race as a construction undermines bordering as a solution. If we see race
as something put on us, rather than coming from us, it is
clear that the state doesn’t respond to race but endlessly
remakes it – borders are the mechanism that categorises
and racialises us, making some of us cheaper, less entitled
to welfare, care and safety than others, and positioning
migrant workers in a perpetual state of violence, neglect
and intraclass conflict.
*

*

*

When Jeremy Corbyn’s first engagement after his surprise
election as leader of the Labour Party in 2015 was to speak
at the Refugees Welcome rally, we saw a glimpse of possibility that a left-wing electoral project might resist the
urge to compete on the dangerous terrain of nationalism.
Indeed, the energy and optimism of the Corbyn project
suggested a decisive break with the technocratic politics
championed by Labour since Blairism. The emergence of
the Corbyn project showed that this technocratic approach
was one that could potentially be discarded. In the explicitly socialist rhetoric of ‘the many not the few’ there was
the potential to revive an understanding of social divisions
as political and, as a result, subject to change.
Further, there was an implicit understanding of a multiracial working class as the constituency whose needs and
desires the Labour Party ought to represent. Unfortunately, many associated with the Corbyn project happily
swallowed the myth of the ‘white working class’ as a

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discrete social group and regurgitated the New Labourite
project of triangulation as the means to win their support.
Their indulgence of this myth, though indefensible, is not
difficult to understand. Following the success of the Leave
campaign and Trump’s victory in the USA soon after, the
media coalesced around the Powellist idea that the ‘white
working class’ had been ‘left behind’ by globalisation. The
Brexit vote was viewed, then, as the ‘white working class’
in revolt.
Commentators attached to the Corbyn project, but
sceptical about its ability to win an election without
appealing to the ‘white working class’, sought a return to
triangulation, in the form of a Labour immigration policy
that would offer the necessary racist sop. Pundits closely
aligned with the Corbyn project, such as Paul Mason, have
been disturbingly quick to adopt this approach.7
In 2017, Mason stated: ‘Free movement does not just
suppress wage growth at the low end. It says to people
with strong cultural traditions, a strong sense of place and
community (sometimes all they have left from the industrial era) that “your past does not matter”.’8 The claim here
is that ‘mass migration’ negatively impacts wage growth –
although it is not made clear how migration is to blame
for precarity and poor labour market regulation – while
also having negative ‘cultural impacts’. These negative
‘cultural impacts’ are presented as primarily felt in crestfallen postindustrial towns, those forgotten places always
contrasted with apparently thriving metropolitan cities.
This distinction between the ‘metropolitan multicultural
bubble’, and the ‘left-behind post-industrial town’ is a
trope that captivates pundits across the political spectrum

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despite the fact that age, profession and home ownership
work as much better predictors for voting patterns.
Depressingly, these lazy binaries between city and town,
multicultural and white, thriving and forgotten, have been
echoed increasingly by people associated with the Labour
Party in the wake of the 2019 December election. To the
extent that such distinctions between city and town hold,
they are an effect of the UK’s constituency-based, firstpast-the-post electoral system, wherein voters in marginal
seats hold all the electoral sway. Rather than critiquing
this system, and the limitations it sets on the formation
of left-wing constituencies, these commentators have
decided to reinvigorate tropes about the ‘left behind’ and
their ‘legitimate concerns’, joining the chorus of politicians
floundering to resolve the issues in ‘towns’ and ‘heartlands’.
Even the Corbyn continuity candidate, Rebecca LongBailey, made a play for ‘progressive patriotism’ in her bid
for leadership, while in April 2020 the party’s new leader,
the apparently ‘forensic’ Sir Keir Starmer, entertained
some erstwhile Labour voters in Bury, Greater Manchester,
over a Zoom call, reassuring them that he did not think
their vote for Brexit, love of the monarchy, or flag-waving,
represented anything like racism. He later confirmed, ‘I
wouldn’t be leader of the Labour Party if I wasn’t patriotic’,
to preface his pro-police, pro-armed forces positions.9
One might argue that there is no purity in party politics,
and winning elections takes strategy and compromise. For
some this might indicate a limit point for any electoral
project, for others a question over what constitutes an
acceptable ‘compromise’. For many left nativists, however,
the desire to exclude ‘immigrants’ is not only about

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winning over voters or even protecting workers. Many
on the left imagine politics in decidedly national terms;
questions of liberty, equality and justice become questions
about British people and the relations between them.
This means not only abandoning internationalism but
also, often, blaming immigrants. In this view, immigrants
not only undercut wages, they also bring disintegration
and unwanted social change: terrorism, crime and alien
cultures – too many, too quickly. And this concerns more
than the numbers; immigrants represent the disruption of
an imagined working-class community, established across
generations and firmly rooted in place, at home.
This, the story goes, has been the basis of labour
movement strength in this country: industries located
in communities where traditions of work, of mobilisation and of resistance all flow down through generations
and beyond the workplace into the community. This is a
model of labour organisation that relies not only on people
knowing each other, but also on knowing each other’s
people – a familial saga where class identity and political
education are remade as part of the experience of being
together in a place. The incursion of ‘newcomers’ brings
new challenges and, in the most frenzied of left nationalisms, is regarded as an attack on the working class.
Versions of this nostalgia for a different moment of
class experience can be seen in Gordon Brown’s uncomfortable call for ‘British jobs for British workers’ in 2007,
and its anticipation of Brexit’s reheated Powellism. The
pop-sociological arm of this nostalgic nativism can be
found in David Goodhart’s warped claims for rootedness as a defence against the metropolitan elite (‘Is your

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tribe the “Somewheres” or the “Anywheres”’?).10 Finally,
as discussed above, in the flurry of post-voting punditry
(following both the Brexit referendum and the 2019
general election), we saw the entire left commentariat
offer their strategy for how to capture the hearts, minds
and votes of the ‘left behind’, those town-dwellers in
former heartlands.
Our point is that many who are broadly aligned to the
left also desire nationalist certainty and patriotic homeliness, and there is a troubling convergence between left
and right on issues relating to race and nation. The ‘progressive’ in ‘progressive nationalism’ might translate as
‘we will exclude immigrants for the sake of workers and
equality’, but the forms of statecraft and the racist logics
licensed by these arguments are much the same. This is
why the Corbyn project was so hopeful, such a sharp turn
from the ‘controls on immigration’ mugs of Ed Miliband’s 2015 campaign. Corybn’s political programme and
his base was much less easily seduced by the politics of
nativism, and much more unwilling to concede ground in
the race-to-the-bottom politics of excluding immigrants.
This was not because the movement was especially ethnically diverse, or always avowedly anti-racist (although
both of these things may have played some part in some
places), but because Corbynism mobilised more substantively ‘progressive’ forces, people on the left who had
otherwise engaged in social movements rather than parliamentary politics.
The danger in the wake of the 2019 election result – and
the mass desertion of the party by radical, socialist and
anti-racist younger members – is that Labour’s misguided

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attempts to ‘win back voters’ will now fall back on the
lowest common denominator: the popular, violent and
wholly negative desire to punish, exclude and expel ‘foreigners’, ‘criminals’ and racialised outsiders of various
stripes. Early signs from Keir Starmer suggest that this
looks likely.
*

*

*

The electoral left’s attempts to capture the pull of
nationalism have been predictable and dispiriting, as was
the failure of the Corbyn project to cultivate a politics of
pro-migrant internationalism that could challenge nativist
racism. Yet it is worth remembering that in the 1960s,
Powell was an outlier, not just from polite society but
also from his own party. The first to call for privatisation,
Powell upturned assumptions by revealing that a host of
working-class Tories could be won by nationalist appeal,
anti-immigrant politics and the aspirational possibilities
that would later define Thatcherism. Powell’s movement
previewed the break up of the post-war social-democratic
consensus, but sixties Britain was the wrong moment,
and this kooky imperial throwback the wrong man.
After ‘Rivers of Blood’, Powell left the political main stage
humiliated, but, unbeknown at the time, Powellism laid
the foundations for the remaking of Britain. The thinktanks that had championed Powell, such as the Institute
of Economic Affairs, had the ear of the Conservative
Party, and the anti-immigration army Powell inspired
were waiting for another leader to speak to their fears.
Following a few false starts, ten years after ‘Rivers of

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Blood’, the new right found their messiah. Thatcher rode
to power on a path cleared by Powellism, privatising
industries and passing the British Nationality Act 1981,
making real things that seemed impossible in the 1960s.
There is now the idea being advanced across the left
that, following the rejection of Corbynism at the 2019
general election, the only path to victory for Labour in
the future is to triangulate towards nationalism.11 We are
being told that we must accept that Powellism has so fundamentally transformed the British electorate that the left
can only hope to win voters back by embracing ‘legitimate’ fears around identity, immigration and culture. This
is the wrong lesson to learn from Powellism. It may have
been a joke at the time, but Britain has now sold almost
every state industry, almost every newspaper spews daily
anti-immigrant bile, and Nigel Farage was, for a time, the
country’s kingmaker.
The failure of Corbynism as an electoral project in
2015–19 is absolute. Corbyn was toxic to a Brexit-hungry
Britain. But the idea that this era can be dismissed as a cult
of personality, or student politics writ large, or a throwback
to the 1970s, is misplaced. Though Jeremy Corbyn is no
longer the leader of the Labour Party, ideas like the Green
New Deal or Universal Basic Income are not going away
(even more so following the state responses to Covid-19),
and neither are the constituencies that formed around the
Corbyn project likely to disappear completely (we must
hope that we will assemble in new and imaginative ways).
The networks of new media and intellectual hubs are
here to stay. The 18–30 year olds, with their precarity and
uncertain futures, are highly politicised and remarkably

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quick to mobilise, their younger comrades even quicker.
More importantly, the issues that pushed Corbyn into his
unlikely leadership will remain with us – in fact, they will
likely get worse with income inequality, precarious jobs
and housing crises, the threat of climate change and automation all gathering speed. In another historical moment,
with another leader and with the lessons of this failure
having been learnt, the historical forces and ideas that
drove ‘Corbynism’ may yet still remake British politics.
Let us conclude by re-emphasising the key problem
faced by left nationalisms: they must, from their very
inception, draw boundaries between what or whom is
inside the nation, and what or whom remains outside its
borders. This necessity does not simply disrupt solidarity, it is necessarily anti-solidarity. Describing ‘progressive
patriotisms’ as nativist is not simply name-calling. Nativism literally means the politics of ‘natives first’, and while
people might pursue a ‘left nativism’ in a desperate bid
for electoral gain, this hand is always played better by
the right. The deck has been rigged in their favour, and
the characters positioned by the Powellist narrative make
much more sense on their terms. Importantly, once mobilised, the forces of nativism cannot be contained, especially
in times of uncertainty, abandonment and neglect. Yet the
progressive nationalists still imagine that there is some
middle ground up for grabs where they can win votes and
stem the forces of racist nationalism.
In our critique of progressive nationalists, we often
accuse them of ‘throwing migrants under the bus’, but
perhaps this is the wrong metaphor. Progressive nationalism means letting ‘them’ drown and watching ‘them’ fall

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from the undercarriages of planes. In times of deepening
global crises and ecological catastrophe, any arguments for
controlling immigration converge with lifeboat ethics, in
which some must die so others can live – ‘they’ must die so
that ‘we’ can live. In this context, ‘internationalism’ is not
only a well-worn socialist slogan, but a strategy for survival
on a drastically changed planet, and one that is much
harder to dispense with for the migrants and ‘minorities’
already here, whose familial, cultural and affective worlds
do not end at the white cliffs of Dover. Considered this way,
the apparently ‘progressive’ character of patriotism reveals
itself, like the cliffs, as necessarily white, even if it likes
to accommodate some colour for marketing purposes.

CH APT E R SI X

The Limits of Representation

Our head of state [the Queen] represents the nation and
its people, and symbolises our values and culture. In a
diverse multicultural society, surely it is wrong to automatically, a priori deny this honoured, revered role to
our non-white citizens?
– Peter Tatchell1

Together, we stand in solidarity with the Black
community – our employees, customers, and partners –
in the fight against systemic racism and injustice.
– Amazon2

As we have shown, the electoral and trade union-affiliated British left continues to flirt with nationalism, law
and order, and other elements of Powellist politics, in an
attempt to win over the mythic ‘white working class’. To
challenge and dismantle this dangerous configuration, we
need to nurture vibrant anti-racist political cultures and
institutions. However, anti-racists of several generations
have often been ensnared by the politics of representation.
This can be seen in calls to bring diversity to the police
force, to the boardrooms of the FTSE 100, and to any
and every institutional space we inhabit. The implication
underlying such calls is that changing the faces of those ‘in

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power’ will, in itself, change the outcomes of institutional
power, where anti-racism becomes little more than representation, inclusion and diversity. This is a non-solution
to the problem of racism.
The call for representation promises to combat the
exclusion of racialised minorities from spaces of prestige
and influence (often articulated through the language of
‘erasure’ or ‘taking up space’), while offering a point of identification and affirmation for other people of colour. The
politics of representation feels as if it should work because
it can be a relief to finally see someone who looks like
you in your place of work making institutional decisions.
Representation is not empty – it means something when
people who are not white, not middle class, and not men
take up roles from which they were formerly excluded.
And of course it matters how people feel, and what reaches
their hearts; the emotional register of being is an essential
element of any effective political project. However, we
want to argue that more is at stake when we are persuaded
to scale back our political imaginations in this way. In this
sense, the politics of representation limits claims; it says
‘no more than representative participation and no more
transformation than having enough of each constituency’.
It also leads us into a very particular conceptualisation of
the space of politics and the workings of racism.
Importantly, representation serves to anchor anti-racist
mobilising back within the tight confines of the nation.
The normative logic of representative democracy, in
which your MP represents your views, filters through the
omnipresent discourse of racial essentialism to suggest
that someone who looks like you will represent your views

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better. This plays out in miniature elsewhere, but the idea
remains tied to the notion that anti-racism is essentially a
demographic question in which the only way to offset the
(inevitable) marginalisation of being a ‘minority’ is to be
better represented among the powerful.
Let us begin this critique of representational politics,
somewhat unimaginatively, with the university. In the
last decade, student campaigns have appeared at multiple
universities, often under the heading of ‘decolonising the university’ but comprising various demands and
approaches. The most cited demands in the mainstream
media have been for universities to diversify both teaching
staff and the curriculum. However, there have been many
more demands, some of which take more symbolic forms
(removing statues, changing decor), or take student
welfare and belonging as their central concern (better
well-being services for students of colour). In these
demands, many of which might improve university life on
some level, the university itself – its formal structures, its
purpose, its organisation – remains intact. Other demands
are more structural – calling for universities to divest from
research linked to military funding, to lower or abolish
tuition fees, to cut the rate of rent in student halls – and
would involve a more radical reorganisation of the institution. Yet these too presuppose the desirability of the
university and often take place at relatively elite, Russell
Group or University of London universities. Part of the
reason it matters that these conversations take place in
elite spaces is because of the ways in which they tend to
focus on the experience of students of colour in a predominantly white environment – which is not the case at many

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lower-ranked universities. As such, many of the demands
(both the more symbolic forms, as well as those relating to
curriculum and academic staff) aim to change the experience of isolation for students of colour.
The point here is that representational politics, in the
first instance, tends to begin from those who already have
some kind of institutional affiliation: university students,
professionalised employees, British citizens. Part of the
reason for its seductive power then is the practical ease
with which it can be incorporated into institutional structures. Though demands for diversity are still sometimes
met with hostility (both from within the institution in
question, and beyond it), we nonetheless underscore the
ways in which representational politics often sideline the
question of what is being diversified. To give a historical
example, Cambridge University was more diverse in the
early twentieth century than it is now, as it was a key site
for the education of native elites, who were instrumental
to indirect rule in the British Empire. We can see, then,
the central function of class in questions of representation. Though articulated across the political spectrum,
including by many working-class people, representation
is largely an elite discourse. The question of who would
clean the ‘decolonised’ university is rarely asked.
These days, it seems as though every institution is ripe
for a conversation about diversity. When Meghan Markle
officially joined the royal family, the press searched for
responses from liberal anti-racists. Many lined up to offer
their celebratory assessments, claiming that the inclusion
of a black (or ‘mixed race’, depending on the pundit)
woman into the monarchy was evidence that Britain had

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progressed far beyond its racist past (or in a less enthusiastic register, that if we want evidence of Britain’s ongoing
problem with race and racism, then we need look no
further than the media’s negative coverage of Markle).
While commentators rejoiced or cautioned, more critical
observers noted that late capitalism loves multiculturalism, so there is little reason why late feudalism shouldn’t
also be giving it a go – such institutions of power need to
reform in order to conserve and reproduce their power.
Anti-racist thinkers, from Sivanandan to Gilroy, have
remarked on the cynical opportunism of individuals from
racialised minorities in Britain, who have stepped forward
to be representatives of both black politics and the British
state or big business. All that is required of these liberal
anti-racists, therefore, is for them to shout loud enough for
capital and/or the state to hear them – with social media
providing a useful platform for their worthy bellows. The
number of supposedly radical or anti-racist figures who
happily take up their place on the honours list – in which
recognition is explicitly tied to the celebration of empire –
offers a biannual example of how an anti-racism focused
on representation treats the nation as the sole receptacle of
politics. Within this logic, the nation state’s symbolic head,
the monarch, appearing more diverse is a common-sense
victory for anti-racism. By positing racism as a process
of exclusion from sites of power and of public visibility,
we imagine politics as a bounded community where to be
included is to overcome racism. The validity of the British
nation is consequently treated as beyond question, now
naturalised and legitimated through the politics of representation.

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Representative anti-racism also offers its own distinctive
form of anti-racist nationalism through a set of assumptions about precisely who or what is represented. Usually
this ‘who’ or ‘what’ is understood as a coherent and discrete
‘community’ defined by some homogeneous and absolute
racial, ethnic or cultural lineage. While this might furnish
the representational authority of ‘community leaders’, it
is also the same assumption that informs racist demands
for racialised communities to speak out against so-called
‘atrocities’ or ‘crimes’ carried out by their members. It is
now a common part of Britain’s racist repertoire to demand
‘the Muslim community’ denounce acts of ‘terror’, or for
‘the black community’ to distance itself from ‘gang crime’.
A common and quite legitimate anti-racist response to
such racism is to question why a shared ethnicity should
imply shared responsibility or accountability, especially
when this demand is never directed at white people.
However, this anti-racist criticism is often forgotten –
even by its own proponents – when applied to the wider
politics of anti-racist representation and identification.
In fact, the notion of homogeneous and coherent ‘communities’ is conjured afresh when individual experience
and identity is centred as a source of authority on ‘black’
or ‘brown’ issues (or even, indeed, ‘white’ guilt). Discrete,
homogeneous and coherent ‘communities’ reappear when
anti-racists encourage individuals to root out specific
forms of racism or other oppressions in ‘their own communities’. Equally, when inclusion, diversity or representation
is advocated, one underlying assumption is that representatives – community leaders, CEOs, MPs, etc. – will
either better support the interests of their ‘communities’

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or enable some sort of anti-racist trickle-down that will be
to the benefit of the whole ‘community’.
The assumption here – that a sociological category of
people share a discrete and homogeneous set of beliefs or
interests – flattens significant political, class, gendered and
other differences between people who ostensibly share the
same ‘community’. While disavowing the possibility of
political difference, this anti-racist nationalism rests on
(and actively reproduces) an ethnic or racial absolutism
whereby distinct and hermetic communities exhaust the
identities and politics of individuals within them. Here,
race is seen less as a construction, even less so as a historically specific power relation, and more as some fixed
and pre-social essence that determines social being. A
politics of representation thus reproduces not only the
nation but also the same understandings of race, ethnicity
and nation that underpin racist thinking. In its most
grotesque forms, representational anti-racism finds itself
policing community boundaries and judging the validity
of anti-racist politics on the basis of pseudo-biological categorisations and ethnic lineage.
*

*

*

While, at best, demands for representation by anti-racists
in previous generations, both in Britain and its colonies,
were accompanied by more radical critiques of the state,
representation for the sake of inclusion and not transformation is the norm today. Such liberal anti-racisms have
built transnational links across Europe, with ‘People of
Colour’ networks across the continent being developed,

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unseen in previous generations. These networks can be
partly attributed to emergent communities of colour across
Europe establishing themselves following migration from
the continent’s various colonies. But rather than these
networks – convened mostly online and at conferences
– providing a gateway for black and brown Brits to build
transnational links with non-Anglophone peoples and
struggles in the Global South, the conversations remain
Euro-parochial. Questions of where in Europe representation is better or worse dominate debates, with the renewed
language of ‘coloniality’ emptied out of its anti-colonial
content and used to refer to a simple lack of institutional
representation.
This politics of representation can often rely on a
reading of anti-racist histories which both begins with
post-war migration and remains focused on the confines
of European nation states. Its narrative in which hopeful
‘economic migrants’ from the colonies arrived in Europe,
looking for a new life in the mother country, but were
shocked to experience racism, presents the history of
anti-racism as a campaign to be represented. This is flawed
for two broad reasons. First, the diversity quotas, affirmative action policies and representation drives demanded
by liberal anti-racists are not new to European governance.
The colonial project required very similar initiatives. For
indirect colonialisation, the training of civil servants led to
huge numbers of ‘natives’ becoming state representatives.
As noted above, senior colonial state agents were trained
at Oxford and Cambridge. French overseas departments
such as Martinique in the Caribbean required similar
processes of black representation. Furthermore, decolo-

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nisation in colonies with settlers, such as Kenya, led to a
second wave of diversity initiatives as ‘natives’ were incorporated into the highest seats of state power in an attempt
to ensure their allegiance to the old colonial power.
The second problem with this ahistorical and parochial
reading of the genealogy of anti-racism is that it separates
anti-racism from anti-imperialism. Rather than simply a
series of nation-building projects, seeking national sovereignty for each colonised nation (perhaps the preeminent
form of representation), anti-imperialism understood its
goal as breaking the global colourline. This meant dismantling the world system in which states compete for
power and building a new world system based on solidarity and co-operation. This fundamentally anti-state
and anti-capitalist component of anti-racism’s genealogy
remains, at best, a legacy to which lip service is paid
by liberal anti-racists demanding representation. For
example, a short film circulated widely on social media,
putatively aimed at celebrating the lives of Olive Morris
and Claudia Jones, was brought to the viewer in partnership with Uber. The grotesque contradiction of this
corporate tie-in was obscured by the film’s presentation of
these women as examples of the power of black feminism,
actively obscuring the anti-imperialist, socialist politics
for which they fought.
Previous generations of anti-racists looked to the
Global South for transnational links, and we can partially
attribute this to the polarised political landscape of the
1960s and ’70s, in which decolonisation and struggles
against apartheid provided clear goodies and baddies, as
well as winners and losers. Palestine remains the most

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committed site of anti-imperial solidarity today, precisely
for this reason (although the repeated claim that criticism
of the Israeli state is motivated by anti-Semitism has
rendered this conversation more messy and difficult).3
With the rise of the far-right in states such as India, Turkey
and Brazil, there is a renewed urgency to connect anti-racism with radical change in the Global South. While we
do not wish to romanticise the anti-racist movements of
previous decades, there can be little doubt that connections to the Global South, socialism and anti-imperialism
were stronger (although such interconnecting solidarities are becoming more amplified again as we write). The
question therefore is how can the visible injustices often
most easily illustrated by a lack of representation be used
as an avenue for a more material anti-imperialist and
anti-racist political praxis, in a world which is no longer
decolonising, and in which new internationalist possibilities need desperately to be affirmed? This is a question
which becomes all the more difficult as anti-racist debate
and discourse becomes not only limited by the succour of
inclusion, representation and celebrity, but must also be
performed and broadcast within the confines of 280 characters.
*

*

*

Digital media does not act as a neutral medium for the
transmission of political ideas but actively shapes contemporary politics. The politics of representation are no
exception. Arguably, the liberal politics of representation
have been uniquely transformed by social media, which

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has reshaped our sense of the individual, community
and society. It is on social media that ostensibly radical
demands for representation are pursued with the most
vigour and volume. Twitter threads, YouTube vlogs and
Tumblr pages have been effective ways for individuals and
groups to harness digital technology and reach large audiences. While some of these uses of social media platforms
provide an alternative and radical criticism of state and
corporate media outlets, others demand inclusion, representation and often, most importantly, payment.
Pay and conditions for workers are some of the oldest
demands of leftist politics, but today’s timeline demands
remain rooted in individual, neoliberal logics. Ensuring
an institution pays an anti-racist organiser or educator for
their labour is of course not a bad thing in and of itself. The
problem is when demands for payment sit within the logic
of market competition rather than collective bargaining.
While these market logics are structurally reproduced by
the atomised nature of work, they lead to zero-sum games,
where cultural producers, educators and journalists are
compelled to compete with each other over limited spaces
online, in exhibitions and on other platforms. Who, or
what, takes up space in these areas of social, cultural and
political life becomes about who is doing the work rather
than what work is actually being done.
This environment compels people gendered or racialised into different categories or identities to compete with
each other, to be the most underrepresented, the most
oppressed, and therefore most worthy of platform, space
and payment. Rather than seeing connections between
different forms of oppression, a hierarchy is constructed,

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in which one oppressed category, identity or group is
implicated in the oppression of another, based on where
they sit in this hierarchy. In its crudest form, this can
look like a mathematical appraisal, in which some social
privileges put people lower down the hierarchy of oppression. Recounting your list of identities by beginning a
political statement with those two all-important words
‘as a…’ demonstrates the degree of validity, authenticity, accurateness and radicalism of the observation or
analysis which follows. Declaring the oppressive attitudes
you have expressed in the past, or that exist within ‘your’
community, is one of the ways people pre-empt being
‘called out’ or ‘cancelled’. Anti-racism becomes a challenge
for activists to ‘talk to your racist uncle’, as if intercommunal bigotry were the source, rather than the symptom, of
racism. Similarly, a political criticism can be easily rejected
if it is posed by someone from a privileged identity, even
when the identity in question is unrelated to the criticism
in question.
Much of the language of this form of liberal online
anti-racism is wrapped up in the language of radical
politics. Its advocates demand representation and rehearse
individualising analyses of privilege, but they also cite revolutionary activists and thinkers, asserting that racism
is ‘systemic’ and considering their politics to be ‘decolonial’. Yet, unlike earlier anti-colonial traditions which
articulated a separatist nationalism – the creation of a
black nation with its own institutions and power structures, for example – more recent articulations appear
more ambiguous as to their end goal. Their criticisms of
the system are structural and revolutionary, but the tactics

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proposed are generally individualistic and demands are
limited to reforming institutions to better pay, include and
represent individuals from specific identity groups.
This process is best illustrated through the ways in
which campaigners like Olive Morris or Claudia Jones
are presented through the prism of identity, as described
above. What is important is that they are working class, not
communists or socialists. The focus is on the fact that they
are black women, not black feminists. Thus, the identities
of these organic intellectuals and activists are not a starting
point for their political campaigns and ideas. Rather, their
identities are their politics. Crucially, lionising a member
of the working class, a black person, or a woman is compatible with state and profit-making institutions. The
problems arise only when a political position which seeks
to dismantle the state or capitalist social relations is taken
into account, and therefore ideas, or better yet quotations
from such individuals, are carefully selected and curated
to mystify radical politics, or reduce them to the status
of footnote. The winner, here, is the social industry – the
tech platforms making money from Angela Davis memes
and images of Jayaben Desai on the picket line in a sari
– while anti-racist movements are reduced to a dazzling
digital spectacle.
We observe on social media a particular tendency
towards what Paul Gilroy variously terms ethnic absolutism, purity-seeking and the longing for racial fixity,
certainty and closure.4 These anti-humanist tendencies have been fashionable for a long time, well before
the introduction of timeline media, but they are perhaps
taking new form, or new salience, in the context of Twitter

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politics. While Twitter can be a medium for expressions of solidarity and care, it is scandal that tends to
prove most generative of likes, retweets and replies, and
therefore proves most valuable to Twitter’s (algorithmic)
business model. This inbuilt tendency to scandal fuels a
culture of outrage and malice in which individuals and
their character are subject to often brutal assaults – in
particular when they are determined to have been inauthentic and deceitful, and especially when this relates to
their racialisation. Conflicts over who speaks about what
seem particularly heated online, and in ways which are
often disconnected from a wider critique of power. This
is a reflection of the zero-sum game politics we discuss in
Chapter 12, but it also rewards forms of ethnic and racial
authenticity which we view as profoundly troubling.
Conversations about political blackness – as well as the
erasures inherent in the government-speak, ‘Black and
Minority Ethnic’ (BAME) – are especially tense sites of
conflict in this context. While we recognise that there is
an important conversation to be had about relations of
power and voice within anti-racist organisations, debate
online often seems totally disconnected from political
action and strategy – and from a wider critique of the state
and big business. To give one example, when the British
army posted a tweet as part of its #blackhistorymonth
campaign, the tweet was widely condemned not because
it came from the army, which saw fit to use black history
month as a marketing opportunity, but because the tweet
wrongly included Asians. The moral of the story is that
Asians are not black, and the army showed its disdain for
black people through its lazy disregard for racial specificity,

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rather than in their attempt to recruit them to contemporary imperialist wars via the opportunistic white-washing
of colonial history.
Social and timeline media fuel the prevalence of forms
of race-talk which hinge on privilege and cultural appropriation, where racism becomes what Fanon calls a
‘mental quirk … a psychological flaw’.5 It is in the realm of
sovereign experience that the ultimate truths of racial difference and hierarchy can be gleaned, and these can then
be shared through online testimony. Of course, people are
not wrong to be outraged by interpersonal, racist humiliation, but in our view the affective registers of social
media tend to reward expressions of outrage and distrust,
leading us all to the inevitable conclusion that multi-racial
coalition is impossible because we can never understand
the experiences of someone with a different identity.
The purity of experience finds a particular affective
charge on the timeline, and this explains why we saw young
white people joining the 2020 BLM protests holding signs
that read: ‘I will never understand, but I stand.’ Why does
not understanding constitute a necessary and primary
qualification in the context of a street mobilisation against
racist police violence? Another sign read, ‘I am racist
because the system is racist.’ White guilt and self-flagellation have become the order of the day, and this is clearly
connected to the centring of experience and testimony
online. When experience is centred in this way, authenticity and purity hold sway, and this often proves toxic when
political movements and organisations seek to build coalitions and develop their strategies. Scandals concerning
impurity and inauthenticity abound. Sadly, in-fighting

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has always been characteristic of progressive movements,
because we really care about what we are fighting for. But
online it is not even clear that there is any, even vague,
shared project.
Our interest here is not with fixing social media as one
thing; all darkness and doom. Our own friendships and
collaborations were mediated by social media, as we too
vied for attention, offered our own ‘hot takes’, and ended up
incredibly anxious after public Twitter spats with the politically adjacent. We inhabit the same fraught terrain (even
if some of us have deleted our accounts). It is important
to remember, then, that the highly addictive attention
economy trades on our outrage and on scandal, but we also
know that alongside the compulsive consumer hits there is
the emergence of something like a political education based
on sharing and non-deference, where there is little distinction between serious analysis and comedy. The timeline
can be a component of a dispersed and uncontainable
alternative political culture, memefied but not hopeless.

PART 3

State Patriarch

C HAPTE R SE VE N

Our Heart Belongs to Daddy

The expansion of Europe was not just a matter of ‘Christianity and commerce’, it was also a matter of copulation
and concubinage.
– Ronald Hyam1

Families matter. I don’t doubt that many of the rioters
out last week have no father at home. Perhaps they
come from one of the neighbourhoods where it’s
standard for children to have a mum and not a dad …
where it’s normal for young men to grow up without a
male role model, looking to the streets for their father
figures, filled up with rage and anger. So if we want to
have any hope of mending our broken society, family
and parenting is where we’ve got to start.
– David Cameron’s speech on the fightback
after the riots, August 2011

Our moment, in which capitalist production is increasingly digitised, has enabled a hitherto unknown
proliferation of sexual representation. In fact, the not-soslow creep of social media into all aspects of everyday life
leads to an increasingly blurry line between sexual act and
sexual representation. Alongside its other functions, the
internet continues to serve as an enormous global porn

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machine. Sex is present everywhere, spoken covertly and
overtly, but the fiction of its separateness from geopolitics, nation-building and state power must be continually
maintained. We are encouraged to view sex through the
prism of private, individual choice, reducing ‘sexual politics’ to a question of removing any barriers to individual
sexual freedom. This limited and neoliberal conception of
sexual politics emerges from a racialised social formation
in which sex has long been a barometer of ‘civilisation’, and
discourses of respectability have proven both flexible and
durable.
As we know from the contribution of post/anti-colonial
feminist theory, sexuality and gender have always been
central to the constitution of race. Alongside skulls and
jawbones, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century anatomy
and anthropology textbooks displayed diagrams of the
genitals of colonised, and specifically enslaved, peoples.2
The perceived ‘overdevelopment’ of sexual organs such as
the penis, clitoris and labia was read as empirical evidence
of a biologically determined, dysfunctional, sexual excess.
This is extrapolated to mean an animalistic and morally
deficient or unevolved character. Sex is therefore part
of the process of racialisation that has persisted across
colonial and postcolonial settings.
Imperial discourses in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Europe constructed national cultures around
ideals of respectability, rationality and honour.3 The prescribed order of the nuclear, heteronormative family
represented the appropriate form of socialisation for
national citizens of European states. The poor of the British
mainland, but more acutely the ‘savage’ cultures found

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in the colonies, became the antithesis of the respectable
British family. The absence of respectable family structures was enlisted to explain the inability of both groups
to comply with social and legal norms. For colonised
subjects, only civilising missions, colonial penal justice,
or the whip gave any hope of reform. The legacies of this
family-nation nexus continue to play out in the spectacles surrounding migrant Others in Britain, with their
purportedly alien cultures, steadfastly unwilling or unable
to commit themselves to the familial norms of European
civilisation. In the European imagination, sexual deviance
is a vital signifier for identifying how and why racialised
Others come to embody moral degeneracy. By unpacking
this process, we point to the manner in which the patriarchal nation/state remakes itself in our time, with the moral
panic surrounding ‘grooming gangs’ explored in the next
chapter as a central case study.
As we know, sexuality and gender have been central to
justifications for twenty-first-century imperialism. This
logic is epitomised in Spivak’s famous idiom, ‘white men
saving brown women from brown men’, which neatly
summarises gendered colonial logics, from the British
Raj to the occupation of Afghanistan.4 Spivak’s formulation focuses on the position of the racialised woman who
must be ‘saved’ from her backward culture and barbaric
menfolk. More recent work such as Jasbir Puar’s conceptualisation of ‘homonationalism’5 and Sara Farris’s
‘femonationalism’6 extend this principle in order to
theorise how contemporary formations of Euro-American imperialism are justified as a means of defending
the rights of women and/or LGBT+ communities, most

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often from ‘Islam’. In the mid-2000s, new migrants to the
Netherlands were shown a video of two men kissing and a
woman sunbathing topless and asked to give their opinion
as a test of their suitability for Dutch society’s ‘liberal’
mores. More recently, a test administered as part of the
Prevent regime in the UK asked children for their opinion
on homosexuality. By baking a particular brand of liberal
gay rights into state practices, the state confirms itself as
the arbiter of sexual norms. Those who fall outside of these
norms – or, indeed, are perceived to do so – are viewed as
threats to the nation. We also know that sexuality plays
an integral role in the constitution of the state. Jyoti Puri’s
seminal work on the sexual state outlines how, particularly in times of crisis or weakness, the state turns to the
government of sexuality in order to (re)produce itself as
cohesive and in control.7
With this in mind, we want to think about the state in
terms of the figure of the patriarch. If the state can usefully
be described as a patriarch, then what kind of a patriarch
is it? In the post-war years, the welfarist state sought to
organise populations through the management of gender
roles and family units, rewarding some normative behaviours and penalising the deviant through the allocation
of welfare. This involved creating systems of discipline
designed to corral the wayward back into socially acceptable and economically productive lifestyles. This previous
moment referenced the role of the patriarch explicitly,
positioning the state as a substitute for inadequate, absent
or improper fathers. The fantasy of happy (white) nuclear
families is there in Beveridge’s original vision of the welfare
state, with the family allowance and national insurance

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designed to supplement and bolster the fragile nuclear
household. For the citizens who received the benefits of
universal provision, there was an attendant obligation to
demonstrate worthiness; if not respectability, at least the
ability to be made respectable. After so many years of austerity, we are in danger of forgetting the humiliations of
the previous era of welfarism. Even when the payment was
there to be made, performing abasement, gratitude and
forbearance was all part of demonstrating deservingness.
Since then state policies have been remade and state
bureaucracies transformed. The state no longer enters
everyday life as the audience for our respectable conduct.
The safeguards put in place to ensure poor and low-income
individuals weren’t ‘cheating’ the system have shifted.
This was illustrated by New Labour’s ‘No Ifs, No Buts’
campaign against benefit fraud, and the Conservative’s
image of benefit claimants ‘with the blinds down’ while the
rest of us go to work. These moral panics conjured images
of the hypervisible claimant taking home two salaries, or
the invisible claimant hiding from respectable society –
markers of which had to be avoided by those attempting
to navigate the welfare system.
More recently, screen cultures have depersonalised
encounters with state power, stripping away the opportunity to explain personal circumstances and impending
catastrophe, and displacing respectability as a useful
element in dealing with bureaucracies. The online portal
does not care about your manners, or the cleanliness of
your children, or whether you are signalling an aspirant
attitude. It is open only to hear if there is any reason to
bar you from access or to delay your punishment – upload

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documents here (‘Computer says No’). The increased
punitiveness and conditionality at the heart of the benefit
system has seen hundreds of thousands of people sanctioned and their benefits removed each year, while the
number of rough sleepers has doubled. It bears repeating
that such policies of cruelty and neglect led to an estimated
130,000 excess deaths in the years 2010–17.8
Yet, despite this decimation of the welfare state, the
nation remains a family matter. We are schooled to
consider ourselves as (largely undeserving) members
of a national family, albeit a family in crisis and decline.
It is this long shadow of familial thinking in the name
of nation that returns us to considerations of the state
and state power as the actions of a patriarch. Again, our
question is: what kind of state patriarch emerges in a time
of post-welfare securitisation?
*

*

*

We started this book by describing the last ten years of
state practice in terms of cruelty and neglect, and these
are surely terms – ‘cruelty’ and ‘neglect’ – that summon
gendered images of power and protection (or lack thereof).
Like an unloving and angry father, the state patriarch
is cold and often brutal. Increasingly, he abandons and
expels those within the family, kicking us out of the house,
renouncing his role as protector of our welfare, even as
he puffs up his chest at any mention of possible foreign
invasion. Most of the time he ignores us, no matter what
we do to get his attention, until there is some wider gain
to be made from him playing saviour. Perhaps it is too

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easy to imagine the state as a man in this way (when in
fact the state is never just one thing). Yet it is important
to remember that the very languages of power as well as
the terms we use to critique them have gendered associations and implications. When Britain is described as a
‘soft touch’ for migrants, for example, it is clear that the
feminisation is inseparable from the complaint; these are
institutions that should be tough and firm, not soft. In our
view, by sharpening our appreciation for the work done by
gender, and thus by characterising the state as a patriarch,
we might be able to describe contemporary statecraft in
useful ways.
The mantra of the state patriarch is that its citizens and
those within its jurisdiction live by the grace of the state.
What they get is neither a question of what they deserve
nor of what they are entitled to. Rather, what they get they
should be grateful for and they should not depend upon
its continued provision. The welfare state, rather than
ensuring that basic needs are met within a system based
on solidarity, is now a bureaucratised torture chamber,
symptomatic of the state patriarch’s contempt for its
‘unproductive population’. The neglectful state prioritises
punishment above redistribution. In fact, this shift in style
arises from a concerted attack on the attempts to institute
a redistributive state. The transformation of welfare (and
of all state services) is the culmination of a long-standing campaign to discredit state-managed endeavours in
general. We have been trained to regard the state as a
poor manager, an inefficient distributor of resources and
an inhibitor of human innovation.9 Only by protecting
our individual freedom, defending borders, neutralis-

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ing foreign threats and maintaining law and order, can
the state be trusted. In other words, the state patriarch
is neglectful, inefficient and abusive, and we cannot rely
on him to support us – but he is good in a fight, or so he
says.
The job of the state patriarch today is to convince
the national population that his role is and should be
limited to securing the nation from war and terrorism.
The state patriarch’s focus on national security and law
and order as its primary motivation means the national
project remains a racial project, one in which a besieged
whiteness continues to connote innocence and (partial)
entitlement, in a context in which people racialised as
black or Muslim, in particular, are constructed as violent
and threatening.
While the threat of death from a terrorist attack is seen
as violence from which the state is obligated to protect
its citizens, premature death as a result of not having the
means to keep oneself and one’s family alive is, most often,
considered the failing of an individual and their family.
Keeping citizens alive is only necessary when the threat
is posed by deviant Others, not by the slower, but more
pervasive, more deadly, violence of post-welfare capitalism. Again, the patriarch will not have anyone else coming
into his home and harming his children, but if they die or
are killed on his watch then that is nobody else’s business.
When large numbers of people die suddenly due to structural violence, such as was the case in the Grenfell Tower
fire, the coronial and legal process is only interested in the
immediate causes of death. Once this is determined, the
matter of premature death is laid to rest. Whilst the law has

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never been concerned with the individual as embedded
in a social reality, its depoliticising role is amplified in a
context in which the state has increasingly withdrawn
from providing for its citizens’ basic needs. The law plays
an important role in legitimising the state patriarch’s
organised neglect and cruelty towards its citizens and
those within its jurisdiction.
What in fact keeps citizens and those within Britain’s
jurisdiction alive in these crises are the responses of civil
society, religious organisations, charities and philanthropists. Whereas once upon a time those of us on the left
might have criticised or warned against these interventions for fear that they replace the state, or send a signal
that the state need not fund particular initiatives, now we
are forced into a position of both accepting and building
such community responses – now we know that the alternative is that people are left to die, as many have been as a
result of austerity policies.
As we have argued, the techniques of dispossession and
disrespect have already been trialled on black and brown
populations, both through the previous incarnations of
institutional racisms and in the long-standing violence of
immigration control. We might add that a segment of the
‘white working class’ – the roughs, those who would not
or could not become respectable – has shared this long
history of understandable distrust of the state patriarch.
Yet the palpable disappointment in the face of such rapid
national decline has been experienced by many as a loss
of racialised privilege and status. The problem is less that
foreigners have arrived to take over public services than
the sense that the loss of access to public goods is a loss

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of the wages of whiteness. This story of loss at the hands
of racial Others takes on a violently misogynistic cast in
relation to ‘grooming gangs’, our focus in the next chapter,
in which the bodies of white girls are implicitly viewed as
the threatened property of white men.

C HAPTE R E I GH T

‘Pakistani Grooming Gangs’

Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping
and exploiting white girls. There. I said it. Does that
make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this
horrifying problem for what it is?
– Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham, 2017

British citizenship is a privilege that confers particular
entitlements and benefits, including the right to a British
passport and the right to vote in general elections. It is
not in the public interest that individuals who engage
in serious and/or organised crime, which constitutes
a flagrant abuse of British values, enjoy those entitlements and benefits.
– Home Office in notice of decision
to deprive three members of the
‘Rochdale grooming gang’ of their citizenship

The term ‘child sexual exploitation’ was used officially
in the UK for the first time in 2009 in a Department of
Education document. Since then, Britain has seen a
series of high-profile convictions of groups of men found
guilty of child sexual exploitation. The vast majority of
publicised convictions have been of British Asian men,
which was quickly translated into the media-speak of the

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‘Pakistani Grooming Gang’. This moral panic replayed
familiar mythologies of the ‘gang’ – characterised by alien
cultural practices, operating under a racialised honour
code, and demonstrating an uncontainable deviant masculinity – and yet the spectre of the Pakistani grooming
gang also added something new to the repertoire of
both official and popular racisms. The far-right English
Defence League rebuilt its crumbling organisation on the
basis of revulsion to what they termed ‘rape jihad gangs’.
Sarah Champion, then Labour MP for Rotherham, was
forced to resign from the Shadow Cabinet after authoring
an article in The Sun titled ‘British Pakistanis ARE raping
white girls … and we must face up to it’ – an article quoted
approvingly by (even) more explicitly racist columnists,
and criticised by both the Muslim Council of Britain and
the Board of Deputies of British Jews. For our project,
these troubling events exemplify a particular moment in
the reshaping of state racism.
The ‘grooming gangs’ story has been a key site of
contestation in recent years – always with a racial
modifier, whether ‘Asian’, ‘Pakistani’ or ‘Muslim’. The
interchangeability or collapsing of the racialising term
here is important but not our main focus; we will refer to
‘Pakistani grooming gangs’ for the rest of this chapter, not
least because the old slur ‘Paki’ sits within the discourse
as a silent but animating term. The term ‘gang’ is heavily
freighted and operates to connect this moral panic to others
that have emerged during moments of crisis (see Chapter
3). Claire Alexander’s work on ‘the Asian Gang’, which
emerged as a folk devil in the late 1990s, is helpful here.
She suggests that ‘The Asian Gang carries with its more

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embracing generic counterpart the assertion of threat, of
anger, of alienation, of violence, but it also carries its own
culturally specific twists – of culture conflict, religious
antipathy, of alienness and unknowability, of introspective,
intra-ethnic hatred.’1 The return of this idea of ‘the Asian
Gang’ in a new, highly sexualised register builds on this
older discourse. Further, and as argued in Chapter 3, ‘the
gang’ in general is a racialised signifier that is in a constant
state of renewal in Britain, but which always refers back to
black youth coded as criminal, feckless, hyper-masculine
and dangerous; a reboot of the ‘mugger’ folk devil of the
1970s. In the coinage of the ‘Pakistani grooming gang’
the various associations act upon each other, allowing for
multiple and overlapping racial registers to interact and
become strengthened in their connections.
The ‘Pakistani grooming gangs’ have been leveraged
for Islamophobic purposes by both state and non-state
actors with remarkable success. ‘On street CSE’ (Child
Sexual Exploitation) is viewed as the result of a degenerate, uniquely Muslim, culture of sexual deviancy. The
narrative goes that white girls are chosen precisely for
their whiteness, as Pakistani men have a unique disdain
for white women, viewing them as ‘easy targets’ while
apparently respecting girls in their own community whose
‘honour’ must be protected. ‘Culture’ and ‘honour’ here
are the operative racialising terms, signalling an incorrigible otherness defined by atavistic and insular gender
roles, and a violent, excessive masculinity that is, in the
end, an overcompensation for an inherent lack of genuine
manliness, which is coded as respectable, bourgeois and

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civilised. In this discourse, real men are restrained but not
too restrained, and kept in check by the nuclear family.
The idea of degraded white femininity plays an important
role here too. The statutory bodies charged with protecting young people (social services, children services, the
police, the CPS, and so on) knew that many teenagers were
being systematically abused but viewed this as a result of
a set of poor lifestyle choices made by feckless, underclass
girls with chaotic lives who were beyond the help of the
state. Essentially, these institutions viewed white girls as
choosing to engage in voluntary sexual relationships with
much older men, in voluntary group sex, in voluntary
prostitution. The ethnicity of the perpetrators becomes
evidence of a sexual deviancy in the victims too, confirming them as beyond the help of the state because they have
betrayed the codes of whiteness-as-respectability, both in
the ways that poor women, across race, are always coded
as sexually excessive, and more specifically because of
their association with Pakistani men. Take, for example, a
case in Rochdale which the CPS didn’t prosecute because
they thought there was no chance of a conviction, despite
physical, DNA evidence. Essentially, it did not think a jury
would believe the victims. The disbelief and disregard
shown by state services is projected onto the public.
As well as breathing new life into age-old discourses
surrounding the sexual excess and dysfunction of
‘dangerous brown men’,2 the grooming gangs framework
consolidated key far-right talking points about the state
that have now found their way into the mainstream. The
far-right argued not only that brown men were more likely
to commit sexual violence – and that the sexual violence

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of brown men was more savage and degrading than that
of white men – but that the inaction of the authorities
was a consequence of the state being too soft on immigrants and minorities. It became the ‘gotcha’ question
levelled at anyone mildly progressive, positioned as irrefutable evidence that this whole anti-racism business
(understood through the prism of ‘political correctness’)
had gone too far – that police and local government did
not take action because they were afraid of being seen as
racists. A spectre filled the British public’s imagination, of
towns like Rochdale and Rotherham being run by ‘Asian
gangs’, who were so locally powerful they were above the
law and local politics; whole towns were ‘no-go-zones’ for
whites. It was a manifestation of Enoch Powell’s dystopic
premonition (see Chapter 4), that ‘one day, the black man
will have the whip hand over the white man’.
The state was portrayed as ‘soft’ on migrants and
‘minorities’, even afraid of them, and in turn as betraying
the nation, which had been mapped onto the bodies of
young white girls. The possibility of there being grooming
victims of colour was not only ignored, but actively
refuted. The moral panic relied on the idea that ‘Pakistani
grooming gangs’ targeted white women because they were
white. As a result, there has been very little press attention
when girls of colour have come forward regarding the
same men, as in the case of Shabir Ahmed, whose identity
was concealed from the press during the first trial as a
second was pending. That the second trial involved an
Asian victim had no discernible impact on the narrative
that white women were targeted for their whiteness.
Indeed, the vulnerability and naivety of the young white

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women came to represent the weakness of the liberal state,
besieged by multiculturalism.
The nation, made vulnerable by unfettered immigration
is, like these young girls, in need of protective intervention from the sensible, firm authority of the nationalist
state. The idea of state and financial elites (what Steve
Bannon calls ‘globalists’) as allies of immigrants and
people of colour against the ‘white working class’ was
strongly consolidated in this story. This framing achieved
several things: it created political space for excessive performances of state force to compensate for this appearance
of weakness; it consolidated and reinforced racialised
notions of belonging and ‘invasion’; it gave the far-right
an opportunity to position itself as the only voice willing
to ‘speak the truth’ on behalf of the victims, providing the
space for legitimisation and support; and it enabled the
far-right to position itself as the primary anti-state/antielite force, creating a sense of ‘emergency’ and need for
‘intervention’ at the state level. Importantly, this racialising set of processes also meant that the interaction
between patriarchal violence and state neglect, which led
to so many young people being harmed, was minimised
and obscured.
*

*

*

Despite our concerns about the racist forces mobilised
around so-called ‘Pakistani grooming gangs’, we are also
cautious about enlisting ‘grooming’ primarily as a hook on
which to hang an analysis of resurgent racisms or reconfigurations of the state. It is also important to sit with

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the scale of this organised sexual exploitation and abuse
of young women and girls in Rotherham, Rochdale and
elsewhere, even while dissecting the racism which frames
how it became a public scandal. That said, we resist the
idea that any attempt to historicise and understand can
be seen as an expression of sympathy, a tendency that
has been amplified through online culture. None of what
we identify constitutes ‘an excuse’. Instead, our concern
is to comprehend how and why certain issues became
speakable, and how this speakability was framed as a reassertion of white nationalism.
In 2014, Operation Stovewood was created as the
largest law enforcement investigation into non-familial
child sexual abuse in the UK. This occurred in response
to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation led by Alexis Jay, which estimated that 1,400 children
in Rotherham had been subjected to sexual exploitation between 1997 and 2013. The scandal of Rotherham
contributed to a greatly increased public awareness and
understanding of child sexual exploitation. The early
coverage focused almost exclusively on the allegation that
Pakistani men were predisposed to acts of paedophilia
against white girls. Meanwhile, the parallel scandals of
large-scale abuse by the celebrity Jimmy Savile, plus the
long-running cases against the Catholic Church brought
by victims of child abuse, were treated as matters of
criminal justice and individual pathology, not national
security or societal breakdown. The institutional culture
of the BBC or the religious teachings of Catholicism were
not enlisted to explain widespread abuse and subsequent
cover-ups. More broadly, while the sexual exploitation of

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children by Muslim men became speakable, it was not
connected to the more widespread issue of abuse within
families and households. The nuclear family, the most
consistent and prevalent site for sexual abuse, continues
to be flagged as a bulwark against sexual violence, rather
than as an incubator of it.
Of course, it is unsurprising that the revelations in
Rotherham and other northern towns were immediately explained through Pakistani and/or Muslim cultural
practices. The ‘grooming gangs’ story had especially
visceral political effects because of the wider force of
anti-Muslim racism. Muslims have been constructed as
‘enemies within’, the foremost racialised outsiders of the
twenty-first century, a century thus far disfigured by the
unending violence of the ‘War on Terror’. Therefore, the
sexual violence of particular Muslim men against particular white girls readily came to symbolise a wider existential
threat. Without attenuating the scale of the violence in
places like Rotherham and Rochdale, the most important
factor in the making of a public scandal and national crisis
was the fact that the perpetrators were Muslim. This much
should be obvious. However, we also want to extend this
account to consider, albeit briefly, some less discussed
factors that shaped the grooming scandal.
We suggest two important and under-remarked frames
to the belated recognition of large-scale abuse. Firstly, the
impact of feminist-informed practice among key workers
in local government and social services. The transformation in public understanding of child sexual exploitation
and the sexual abuse of children more generally has arisen
through the concerted efforts of activists and profession-

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als, influenced by the availability of feminist approaches
to practice.3 Certainly, it has been a struggle to persuade
a range of authorities that sexually active teenagers could
be ‘victims’, but in the belated recognition of this fact by
some practitioners, it was possible to push back against
the misogynistic dismissal of these young women.
Secondly, we are particularly interested in how the
processes of institutional retreat in deindustrialised landscapes frame this story. Rotherham, along with other
increasingly mythologised ‘northern towns’, exemplifies
one aspect of changing urban geographies. The landscape
of smaller cities and towns in England, particularly in the
Midlands and the North, reflects a longer history of deindustrialisation, the death of local high streets, and a crisis
of local services and institutions exacerbated by austerity.
We might note that this remaking of public space without
amenities, either public or retail, and the attendant retreat
from occupying public space in day-to-day life, is experienced across many locations. For our purposes, what is
of interest is the manner in which the remaking of public
space, the retreat of official institutions and the decline
of the formal economy come to be narrated together as a
racialised story.
There are some points to note: the so-called ‘night-time
economy’ outside larger conurbations revolves disproportionately around take-aways and taxi ranks.4 For most
of Britain, this is what the 24-hour economy looks like –
low-cost take-aways and transport alongside old and new
forms of low-paid work such as cleaning, call centres,
security and logistics. Whereas larger cities have sought
to regenerate their local economies through enhancing

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hospitality industries (as can be seen in Newcastle and
Birmingham for example), smaller towns have had little
access to the new economies of conferences, hotels, bars
and restaurants. Instead, segments of economic activity
which were already highly racialised come to make up
the landscape of local ‘night life’ – small-scale take-aways
often associated with particular minority communities,
and taxi and chauffeur work undertaken disproportionately by British Pakistani men. For young people who
cannot or do not want to go home, these are the only
places to go.
The combined impact of cumulative deindustrialisation, uneven state presence and the increasing visibility
of alternative networks of economic activity coincided
with another set of racialised anxieties. As local political
landscapes became less predictable – a trajectory that
anticipated the outcome of the EU referendum – the accusation that some racialised communities had infiltrated
mainstream politics and official institutions through the
use of illegitimate networks of kinship and alliance came
into play. After scandals around the alleged misuse of
postal votes among South Asian communities in Britain,
the idea of the ‘kinship network’ that evades and overrides
official structures in order to grab political power has
become associated with Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in particular.5 The heightened inspection of
Pakistani and Bangladeshi political participation arose
also as a result of surprise and suspicion at the relatively
rapid ascendance of these communities in the tightly gated
world of UK party politics. Particularly at a local level,
the ‘clan’, a group bonded by kinship and able to bypass

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the niceties of formal politics or business, was regarded
as the secret source of community power.6 When the
long-running horror of street grooming and child sexual
exploitation became associated with Pakistani men, the
implication that secret clans had colonised previously
respectable places, replacing or overriding or corrupting
reliable systems of authority, hovered in the background.
*

*

*

The significance of the ‘Pakistani grooming gangs’ as a
symptom of our current crisis is, we think, the way that
the state’s systematic marginalisation and neglect of vulnerable people is then mobilised to justify a rapidly
expanding authoritarianism. Sexual moral panics offer an
effective way to do this as sex is always viewed through the
ahistorical prism of morality – sex is assumed to be totally
private, yet sexual deviance quickly becomes the subject
of public scrutiny. This moral panic is particularly durable
because it seems to threaten the stability of white gender
roles and, crucially, the white family. National sovereignty
becomes a way to rescue a beleaguered white masculinity
which has the capacity to defend its women. However, the
nation state has no monopoly on the exploitation of this
moral panic – the far-right have made more effective and
triumphalist use of it.
That said, in taking an extraordinary approach to
sentencing, the state has sought to keep pace with the
far-right. Abdul Aziz, Adil Khan and Qari Abdul Rauf,
who were convicted alongside six others in Rochdale,
have been stripped of their citizenship and are due to be

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deported to Pakistan at the end of their prison terms. The
idea of citizenship as a ‘privilege’, something which can be
taken away, is an ascendent and aggressive trend in British
politics. Its presence here is notable, we think, for what it
shows us about the tremendous animating force of race
within the state’s authoritarian arsenal.
Traditionally this power has been used as part of
Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy, with ‘suspected terrorists’ stripped of their British citizenship, usually while
abroad, and sometimes to allow for their extrajudicial
execution via drone strike. Though there was some initial
controversy regarding this policy of denationalisation, it
was easily folded into the authoritarian logics of the War
on Terror. But the case of Aziz, Khan and Rauf is the first
instance of citizenship stripping following serious criminality without a national security component. It represents
an important case in the expansion of powers to denationalise and therefore to banish.
Another deprivation of citizenship case which made the
headlines – causing controversy and stimulating public
debate – was that of Shamima Begum, who in 2019 had
her citizenship stripped for travelling to Syria to ‘join
the Islamic State’.7 This decision was made surprisingly
quickly given that she was born in the UK and had only
ever lived in Britain until her departure in 2015. In this
case, the government suggested that Shamima Begum and
her child (implicitly guilty by dint of parentage) should
apply for Bangladeshi citizenship, which she, and her
child, would be able to claim through their parents or
grandparents. Not only does this enable the British government to circumvent legal protections against making

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its citizens stateless, but it also speaks to the relationship
between race and national citizenship. The framing of
Begum as a ‘jihadi bride’ speaks to the fantasy of Muslims
as hyper-fertile, a claim Samuel Huntington maintains
in his meticulous cataloguing of birth rates in majority
Muslim countries in The Clash of Civilisations.8 Despite
Begum having been a minor when she left Britain, she
is not framed as a misguided victim like the British girls
targeted by ‘grooming gangs’, but as an enthusiastic participant in archaic, repressive and authoritarian Islamic
family relations. These differently sexualised teenagers
became contrasting representations of the nation’s moral
decline.
While the white girls of Rochdale and Rotherham
symbolised the (threatened) purity of the nation, the
treacherous Begum became its antithesis. Begum became
not-British, only British-born. In her legal expulsion
from the nation, we see in starkly material terms how
black and brown Britons are made foreign, demonstrating with particular clarity the link between racist culture
and legal process, which operate together to ensure that
minoritised British citizens can be sent ‘back’ to where
they are ‘really from’. For both ‘groomers’ and ‘ISIS brides’,
citizenship stripping is made both possible and acceptable by their racialisation as Muslim, which implicitly
connects these acts of sexual violence and abuse to issues
of national security. Defending the respectable national
family becomes the primary job of the state patriarch, to
be achieved by whatever means necessary, international
and human rights laws be damned.

C HAPTE R NI NE

(Powerful) Men Behaving Badly

If parliament were a reality TV show the whole lot of us
would have been voted out of the jungle by now. But at
least we could have watched the speaker being forced to
eat a kangaroo testicle.
– Boris Johnson, first speech to
Conservative Party conference as leader

Yet the factor that more often than not the fascist leader
appears as a ‘ham actor’ and ‘asocial psychopath’ is a
clue to the fact that rather than sovereign sublimity,
he has to convey some of the sense of inferiority of the
follower, he has to be a ‘great little man’.
– Alberto Toscano, ‘Notes on Late Fascism’, 20171

The state patriarch is a figure through which we imagine
the changing incarnations of state practice and power. Of
course, he is a character – a way of thinking of the state
as embodied. This embodiment is a kind of domestication, maybe even an eroticisation; it’s a way of thinking
of the state as a man. In this chapter we ask, what kind
of a man is he? And although we are poking fun a little,
we also adopt this approach as a continuation of far more
orthodox accounts of statecraft. While we reject the naturalisation of the nation state as a family, we take seriously

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the impact of this common-sense conception. If the
nation state is a family, the public behaviour of its patriarchal head is a sign. In a time of insistently mediatised
sociality, the performances of masculinity by government
are part of how the state’s patriarchal imperatives – the
processes of neglect and expulsion we have described –
are enacted and justified. So, we see a kind of old-style
‘being a man’ become, once again, central to the theatre of
UK politics. As always, phallic women can ascend in the
ranks, though never in the role of buffoon, which has now
eclipsed that of the statesman in this drama. Meanwhile,
the performance of a gentle or ambiguous masculinity
retains its stigma.
When we say this, it can seem too obvious and too
familiar. Of course, we know already that the state engages
in displays of hegemonic masculinity, and puts forward the
body of the leader as a point of identification. If anything,
we learn our languages of political performance through
these histories of display; the monarch enacts the power
of the office, but also embodies that power with reference
to the hand of God; the elected leader presents himself as
the essence of the nation, whether as an everyman or as
an emblematic fragment of the national whole. However,
in the rise and convergence of authoritarian leaders we
see the displacement of a familiar slick, managerial masculinity with something more aggressive. As others have
noted, we appear to be living in the age of the buffoon. Not
only Boris Johnson, all mumbles and blond dishevelment,
but also Trump’s violently assertive stupidity, Bolsonaro’s
inexplicable denial of coronavirus, and Modi’s claim that
drinking cow urine could guard against Covid-19. We

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are witnessing the emergence of the elite buffoon as the
incarnation of state power in our time of democratically
enabled authoritarianism.
The buffoon appears as an apparent response to the disappointments of formal politics. A significant component
of the performance of political buffoonery revolves around
purporting to understand and share popular dissatisfaction and distrust of the political class. Buffoonery is a
method of disassociating from the political class, which
is viewed as inauthentic because it is controlled, managed
and overly concerned with its image and the need to triangulate every issue. The buffoon bypasses these niceties
of political propriety. Instead, we are led to believe, he is
just like us – undisciplined, authentic, out of patience with
politics as usual.
Wilful idiocy becomes, then, a seemingly fitting
response to the limits and disappointments of politics as
we have known it. It would be a foolish person indeed who
underestimates the attraction of the clown in such circumstances. The buffoon’s power is that he offers an alternative
to the carefully calibrated messages of the managed politician. This is not a polished deception. The clown wrecks
the place and looks to us – the audience, taught for so long
to know our place and be grateful – for approval. Don’t we
all want to wreck things, break the rules, tear it all apart?
The buffoon plays out our fantasies of destructive power;
he acts as our undisciplined avatar, reaches into our unruly
hearts and says, forget about civility and obedience, this is
what power really looks like.
The buffoon is a version of the familiar irreverent
man-child, remade for our anti-political times. Physi-

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cally undisciplined, sexually questionable, clownish in his
disregard for the niceties of self-presentation and personal
grooming, these are men who seek to embody power in
a way that asserts they are beyond ridicule. Laugh as you
wish – it doesn’t change who is in charge here. Say they are
inappropriate or uncouth and you reveal only the limits of
your own understanding. The point is that the whole repertoire of the inappropriate – the employment of improper
speech, the call to the profane as a gesture of populism – is
central to this particular project to personify power. There
is, perhaps, a harking back to an anti-clerical mode of
politics, where disruption is performed as a release from
authority. But in this carnival, it is the already powerful
who adopt the costume and mannerisms of the irreverent
fool. This is the king playing court jester, rather than the
jester mocking the king.
Of course, the buffoon is never really one of us. Far
from demonstrating a disruption of politics, his antics
act to consolidate unaccountable power. Perhaps you
still believed in some outdated fictions of democracy?
Perhaps you thought that power should be accountable?
The buffoon is here to let you know that power is immune
from reason and there is no evidence, no argument, that
can sway the actions of the state patriarch gone rogue. If
anything, the wilful performance of idiocy itself becomes
a demonstration of power. If the buffoon pretends to be
beyond reason or argument, then reason and argument
become irrelevant as checks on the exercise of power.
This process should be understood as another aspect of
the refiguring of the state patriarch. It works to dismantle
expectations of state accountability because how can a

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fool be accountable to anyone? This wilful embrace of
irrationality, which produces a dangerously unpredictable political terrain, has become part of the new legend
of power. We all search for the meaning behind and the
reason for the decisions of the government, only to find
that power has no need to make itself legible to us. In Westminster’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, we
saw this play out with fatal consequences as numbers were
fudged, deaths were dismissed and scientific evidence was
discarded daily. The neglectful state presents the buffoon
as the best we can hope for, as the father-figure for whom
we long but who can only let us down. He is the embodiment of the state patriarch for our times of tactical neglect;
the veering between know-nothingness and aggression
confirms how little we can expect from this particular
mode of the daddy-state.
The theatre of politics constructs a façade that persistently and aggressively distracts from rather than blocks
out the processes of neglect, expulsion and hostility that
characterise the neglectful state. This theatrical rendering
of political manoeuvres is purposefully hapless, though
we all know that the bumbling is a front. Indeed, we’re
supposed to know that it’s a front; like the lies, the silliness
is a demonstration of power. The disintegration of the
already bankrupt political system into a series of personality contests, set pieces, Twitter spats and petty scandals
ensures that the workings of government feel foolish and
distant, emphasising the huge gulf between the political
elite and the rest of the population. This gap serves to
underscore a sense of powerlessness, much like the
workings of austerity. Everyone knows that the system

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by which your benefits are sanctioned is immoral and
illogical, but it cannot be challenged. Just as everyone
knows the government is not fit for purpose and suspects
that the mechanisms of representative democracy are
incapable of holding the buffoons to account.
This age of the buffoon feeds on the popular resonance
of elite masculine misbehaviour. We know that rich men
behave badly – we are inured to this ‘fact’. Knowing it is
part of joining the world of the citizen-observer. So we
witness one scandal after another, each seemingly more
unlikely and ridiculous, and with a particular focus on
sexual scandals. But this all passes as little more than
entertainment. Admittedly, there is something pleasurably anti-establishment in poking fun at the powerful, but it
is a distraction nevertheless. At the same time, the famous
buffoons of our age are revealed to be sexually ill-disciplined and also (probably) guilty of sexual assault, yet the
repetition of such revelations ensures that such candidates
build a following and public presence where such matters
are already accounted for. Their misogyny is a ballast
against the #MeToo movement rather than something
that can be held to account by it.
In the process, it is confirmed again in the minds of the
public that political leaders are, necessarily, buffoonish.
Perhaps our ability to recognise and laugh at their buffoonery works to reassure us that politics is not so serious, that
the collapse of effective political institutions is unimportant. We have not been fooled this time, we congratulate
ourselves, we understand that politics is the arena of fools.
But while the public is persuaded increasingly of the
worthless and laughable character of leading members of

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the political class, in the process accepting that democracy
is broken and we should now just enjoy the spectacle of
scandals, the resources of the state are redeployed for
other ends. There are, after all, still publicly owned assets
to be diverted into cronyish hands. Networks of the global
right to be squeezed into new arenas of public life. Private
providers to be introduced to the opportunities arising
from state retreat. Speculators interested to benefit from
the turbulence unleashed by politically powerful buffoons.
Dispossession is experienced and narrated as racialised rage – because what was once (imagined to be) given
as an unquestionable right of citizenship, with citizenship here unquestioned for white populations, must now
either be earned or cannot be accessed at all. There is little
sign of this rage turning against the political class. Instead,
there is widespread disinterest and disillusionment with
political institutions. How can we be angry at such fools?
Their wilful triviality seems to devalue our anger – eager to
turn any disagreement into another trivialised moment of
entertainment, with no arena for serious politics. Politics
seems unable to be serious now, despite the hardship and
the deaths. Why waste our breath trying to engage with
those unable to do anything at all except pursue their
own individualistic careerism? The neglectful state has
trained us to lower our expectations of both institutions
and political process. Even if we get his attention, this state
patriarch can do nothing but terrorise.

PART 4

Send in the Army

C HAPTE R T E N

Longing for Authority

If these thugs want war, let’s give it to them. Either send
in the Army to sort them out, or better still, put them in
the Army and arrange for them to be sent to Afghanistan and bring our brave troops home.
– P. Adams, Bexhill, East Sussex,
letter to the Daily Mail following the 2011 riots

Ministers have drawn up plans to send in the army to
deliver food, medicines and fuel in the event of shortages
if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal.
– Sunday Times, 29 July 2018

The UK armed forces ‘stand ready’ to intervene in the
knife-crime epidemic, the defence secretary has said.
Gavin Williamson said military personnel ‘would
always be ready to respond’ to calls for help, while the
Ministry of Defence ‘always stands ready to help any
government department’.
– Independent, 6 March 2019

Up to 20,000 military personnel are being put on standby
in a new Covid Support Force and could ‘backfill’ police
counter terrorism roles, act as prison guards or help
with Border Force checks.
– Daily Express, 20 March 2020

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The military will support the Home Office in their work
to combat Channel crossings.
– Ministry of Defence source, BBC News, 10 August 2020

In the last few years, calls to ‘send in the army’ have
become recurrent and increasingly insistent. This
reveals something important about our present crisis.
The demand to ‘send in the army’ points to a popular
desire for authority and order – a desire that blurs into
the enraged will to contain, constrain and ‘order’ those
untidy Others who seem to threaten the nation. In other
words, calls to ‘send in the army’ reflect the intensity of the
anger reserved for racialised ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘terrorists’ and ‘gangsters’, those internal enemies we discussed
in the first part of the book. At the same time, calls for
paramilitary intervention to deal with social problems, or
perceived social problems, are reinforced by a widespread,
social obligation to honour the armed forces and official
versions of their history. What, then, might we learn about
racism in Britain through reflecting on these intensifying
calls to ‘send in the army’?
If ‘criminals’, especially racialised figures such as ‘terrorists’ and ‘gangsters’, are defined as failed and unwanted
citizens, who deserve nothing from state and society, and
who should be excluded and expelled, then soldiers are
their polar opposite. Soldiers – our boys (and for progressive nationalists, our girls) – put their lives on the line for
queen and country, and by extension for us, the people.
British people, therefore, owe them a debt which is to be
paid in unlimited, unwavering support. Soldiers, we are
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importance of the nation, its security and its interests.
The compulsory requirement that we honour, respect and
remember ‘our boys’ constructs the soldier as the model
British citizen, which is a central tenet of militarisation.
In this way, the soldier-citizen could not be further from
the ‘terrorist’ or the ‘gangster’, even as both groups are
imagined as working-class young men engaged in collective violence. The British citizen who chooses to join
the armed forces, and so to serve queen and country,
thus reminds us that the ‘terrorist’ and the ‘gangster’ also
choose not to serve but to defile this great nation.
But why do people long for the intervention of the
military, rather than the police or non-coercive forms of
state intervention? In part, it is because the basic requirements of life are not in place for many and are only
uncertainly accessible for others. The army stands in
here as an effective authority, unlike the failing and ineffectual post-welfare state. The longing for authoritarian
intervention belongs to this sense of disempowerment:
things have always been like this and there is nothing we
can do – but there is someone stronger than us, if only they
can be called upon. The call for the army is also a refusal
of the niceties of human rights and the assorted procedural conventions of civil society. So, despite the worrying
acceptance of violence and violation, the call of popular
militarism is a call to be saved from the disorder and overindulgence of modern life; a call for protection from the
enemies that exist in foreign lands, at our borders and
on our streets. Alongside these appeals to patriarchal
authority, summoning the army is also an admission of
weakness and frailty. It concedes to our desperate and

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lonely existence, recognising that promises of fulfilment
and autonomy, to be achieved through the (technologised
and hyper-mediatised) market, are ringing hollow. For all
the rhetoric of choice, the call to send in the army reveals
the fear that there are no meaningful or effective social
agents in sight. Not me, with my personal brand and my
atomised existence, nor anyone else. For all the talk about
doing for oneself, there is a pervasive uncertainty about
how the world might be shaped and a doubt about our
ability to make any mark on it.
This is also a time in which the state, if acknowledged, is
regarded as weak or failing or corrupt. ‘The people’ cannot
rely on this broken machinery. Instead, we are encouraged
to imagine another non-democratic state that can really
meet our needs, unencumbered by the procedural politics
of quangos, red tape and ‘experts’. Into this terrain, the
army enters as a forgotten agent from an earlier time. This
is the agency of the state, but instructed by emergency and
therefore regarded as above the corruptions of political
life. The army wields state power, but deals in matters of
life and death, emerging to defend the nation in times of
existential crisis. Importantly, it is regarded as above and
apart from the political class. When it acts, it is not based
on self-interest, but on the national interest. The army
becomes the vernacular term for ‘the law’, the real law
beyond the ugly skirmishes between competing groups,
the law writ large that cannot be escaped. The deployment
of the law may be violent, even to the point of death, but it
is not unfair. Consequently, embodying both the law and
the nation provides the army with impunity and protection from government, courts and national culture.

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There are, unsurprisingly, a number of racialised
elements to this formation. The army suggests an underlying ability to distinguish between full citizens and hidden
enemies. If the structures of entitlement are in disarray,
the army promises to be among the last institutions to
‘know’ who is the us that deserves protection, and who
requires exclusion, expulsion or incarceration. Inevitably, militarism is a reassertion of the nation. The army is
the martial expression of the nation and the ability of the
army to act, as the last standing effective political agent,
rehabilitates the nation. The rush to militarise everyday
life through incursions into schools, television and high
streets, as well as celebrations of military endeavour
and guilt-trips about what the government is and is not
doing for ‘our heroes’, are all attempts to resurrect a kind
of national backbone.1 These martial overtures allay the
deep-seated fears that we are alone, weak and unable to do
anything to defend ourselves against the multiple threats
we face. The enactment of state violence upon the bodies
of variously racialised groups serves as a kind of distraction from the extent of political decline. This is everyday
militarism as spectacle, at once designed to reassure and
threaten, doling out punishments to those who do not
quite belong as a counter-intuitive method of quieting the
fears of others.
However, this longing for the intervention of the armed
forces cannot be explained without a close interrogation
of the policies designed to inculcate this very longing.
In other words, it is not simply that the British people
currently long for military authority because of state
failure and economic woe, but also because lots of money

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and resources have been committed to positioning the
armed forces in particular ways over recent years. Military
values are not organic and bottom-up, and policies surrounding the armed forces also reflect the specific actions
of military leaders and elites who have lobbied successive
governments into taking particular positions. There is a
complicated story to be told here about the relationship
between military leaders, the government, and different
sections of the public.
In more general terms, we may consider war and
army-worship to be central to all processes of nation-building, but in the UK we can observe since the 2003 invasion
of Iraq a very concerted effort to ensure the armed
forces are honoured, memorialised and made visible.
For example, in 2007 Gordon Brown ordered a review of
the armed forces which made tens of recommendations
that were subsequently implemented. These included
recommendations for: the wider wearing of uniforms, a
British Armed Forces Day, improving contact between the
military and civilians, and encouraging support for servicemen and women through military and veterans’ cards
and military discounts. The review also suggested efforts
to increase engagement with the armed forces among
young people, for instance via the expansion of Combined
Cadet Forces in state schools, putting military topics into
the national curriculum and bringing soldiers into schools
(for example, in 2012 the government introduced the
‘troops to teachers’ scheme, designed to support people
leaving the armed forces and to promote military values in
schools). Furthermore, the centenary anniversaries of the
Great War, celebrated in 2014 and 2018, carefully curated

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the memorials so as to edit out the anti-war sentiment
that ran through so many of the cultural offerings of those
who lived through the conflict. Instead, the centenary
exhibitions romanticised the sacrifice of the soldiers of
yesteryear through over 2,500 memorials across Britain
(there are now so many that Historic England is unable to
keep count) as well as temporary installations such as a sea
of poppies covering the grounds of the Tower of London.
These efforts to consolidate the standing of the armed
forces must be situated in the context of the long and
difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in Iraq was
unpopular from the beginning, while the war in Afghanistan became increasingly so as the number of troops dying
in Helmand increased markedly from 2006 onwards.
Indeed, while the armed forces are overwhelmingly
venerated in public opinion, war is often not. However,
as these wars became less popular, soldier worship only
intensified (at least as a policy, if not necessarily in the
public imaginary). It is in this context that we might
interpret the calls to ‘send in the army’ at home. The army
should be sent in not only because it is above and outside
both politics and political correctness, but also because
soldiers themselves will be much safer when deployed at
home. A win-win scenario emerges in which the absolute
authority and overwhelming force of the army can be
channelled to restore order and neutralise the nation’s
outlaws, while ‘our boys’ will be invulnerable to death and
maiming. Expensive and pointless wars abroad should be
aborted and the armed forces should be redeployed here,
as and when necessary. We see similar arguments made
in relation to ‘aid’: why are we spending all our money

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abroad when we can’t look after our own? This extends
the meaning of those calls to ‘bring our troops home’. The
troops, once home, might remain troops, fighting in wars
they cannot lose against the nation’s internal enemies.
*

*

*

In the context of fears surrounding the UK crashing out of
the European Union without a trade deal, the armed forces
were again called upon to deliver food and medicine,
to assist with traffic problems at ports and to deal with
shortages of fuel and other essentials in the event of Britain
withdrawing without a deal. It was notable that some supporters of the UK’s departure from the EU turned to the
(fabricated) memory of rationing to argue that the British
people could easily weather any shortages inflicted by a
no-deal Brexit:
I was born before the start of World War Two and
brought up during the war … we all suffered from
extreme food rationing, fuel shortages, cold houses,
clothes rationing, walking everywhere, and the rest.
Folks moaned a bit but, generally speaking, we got on
with it. We kept our freedom from foreign domination,
and that’s all we want now. (Letter to Derby Telegraph,
21 December 2018)
The latest absurdity from the renewed Project Fear
is that a no-deal Brexit would lead to serious food
shortages. Quite apart from the fact that we managed
perfectly well before we joined the European project,

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I remember that, in my early childhood, we lived with
food rationing, and did not suffer unduly. We did so
because we valued our democracy more than we feared
any temporary inconvenience. This is true today, as
we struggle to regain our freedom to control our own
affairs. (Letter to Daily Telegraph, 8 August 2019)
The EU referendum created the conditions for a resurfacing of an all-too-familiar British imperial nostalgia,
although one that works most often without any explicit
reference to empire. The narratives on what a vote to exit
the European Union could offer Britain were expressed in
terms of ‘taking back control’ over our laws and borders.
Clearly, discussions of reclaiming sovereignty and putting
the ‘Great’ back into Great Britain invoke the history and
loss of imperial greatness, even if this cannot be spoken.
This is why the Second World War is made to carry the
apparently great and noble history of this white island
nation. As Valluvan argues, the ‘pivot towards the Second
World War circumvents the ghosts of colonial brutality
that otherwise threaten to haunt Britain’s past’.2 In this
way, invocations of Second World War triumph – with
their Keep Calm and Carry On spirit, all rationing and the
Blitz – hark back to a time when the nation knew itself,
before mass migration, ‘Islamic terrorism’ and ‘black
street crime’, a time when Britannia ruled the waves, not
in the name of naked imperialism but in the service of civilisation, liberty and development.
In comparison to the romanticised tragic glory of the
world wars, the era of imperial Britain’s global supremacy
is remembered in far less detail. Culturally, the world

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wars have been immortalised as the essential moments of
Britain’s self-image. From the cinema of The Dam Busters
and Dunkirk, to the literature of The Railway Children
and Birdsong, the experience of enduring the world wars
is so seared into the national consciousness that Winston
Churchill was voted the greatest ever Briton in a 2002 BBC
poll for his inspiration as a wartime leader. By contrast,
the key figures and details of the British Empire are hazy
within our collective memory. The East India Company or
Royal Niger Company attract nowhere near the same level
of memorialisation, and once famous imperial folk heroes
like the missionary David Livingstone or Charles Gordon
(the martyr of British Sudan) have largely disappeared
from the British public consciousness. Even Churchill’s
own history as an imperialist was hardly mentioned in his
celebration as the greatest Briton.
Furthermore, what is notable about all of the books
and films that have built up Britain’s ongoing fascination
with the world wars is that they reimagine both wars as
a primarily domestic story, making Britain the site of the
conflict. Britain never endured an invasion during either
war but this doesn’t stop them operating as popular touchstones for imagining the consequences of not aggressively
policing Britain’s borders. The popular memory of the
Second World War goes straight from Dunkirk, the Battle
of Britain and the Blitz in 1940 to the D-Day landings in
1944. Major British operations in the intervening years
– such as the Battle of Cape Matapan fought off the Mediterranean coast in 1941, or Operation Torch in North
Africa from 1942 – barely get a mention in these cultural
representations of the Second World War, perhaps because

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they would underline the global scale of both the war and
the British Empire. They might also disrupt the self-image
of Britain by showing how it spent the majority of the war
years defending the empire as opposed to saving Europe
from the Nazis. The (warped) memory of the war does
a great deal to reinforce the feeling that Britain – the
country that has invaded the most nations on earth – is a
land haunted by an ever-present threat of invasion. Those
who promise to prevent such invasions, the brave British
armed forces, remain peerless national heroes.
This psychic structure reveals a deeply set imperial
amnesia which allows Britain to be constructed in political
discourse as an isolated island-nation, standing small
and alone in the face of threats to its sovereignty from
the imperial EU.3 Britain’s perceived loss of sovereignty
to the EU is symptomatic of a politics that is articulated
and enacted as a zero-sum game, wherein one individual or group’s political gain is necessarily understood as
another’s loss. Such thinking seems to resonate because
of its alignment with a well-worn common sense in the
practice of international relations and diplomacy: that
the conditions of security for one nation are by necessity
the conditions of insecurity for other nations; that the
national interest, understood as security and survival, is
never the same as that of other nations; and that authority
can only be legitimately practised within the boundaries
of the nation.
That this ‘realism’ has re-emerged in the last few years
with exceptional popular vigour is telling. It articulates a
distrust of a ‘globalist’ political class that has supposedly
prioritised liberal cosmopolitanism over the nation (for

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example through the EU, market integration, standardisation of laws and norms, and freedom of movement).
Against these ‘globalists’, our new realists insist on preserving the priority and sanctity of the nation as the
most desirable, indeed the only possible, form of political
community and authority. This produces an ideological
alignment between demands for sovereignty and a politics
of racism articulated through various perceived threats to
the nation: the loss of authority to the EU and ‘globalism’,
but also the migrants the EU brings, the terrorists whose
travel the EU facilitates, the human rights legislators of the
European courts that protect various ‘gangs’ from punishment or expulsion. Appeals to sovereignty animate British
racism with renewed legitimacy while appearing to offer
the solution to various racialised ‘problems’, namely the
authority to put up borders against external threats and
punish or expel internal ones.
This is perhaps why for Britain the unforeseen cataclysm of Brexit funnels pre-existing tendencies – colonial
nostalgia, distrust of the political class, disengagement
from democratic processes and mainstream media, loss
of employment stability and the ability to plan one’s lifecourse, and the all-round decline of some regions – into a
political rhetoric that appears to centre almost exclusively
around the question of sovereignty. Our view is that sovereignty here functions as a kind of fetish-object, collapsing
a range of desires and anxieties, but is never itself the thing
at issue. Instead, it might be more helpful to think of this
as a moment of longing for someone else to take power.
Despite the calls to take back control, what is being enacted
is a deep desire to be controlled, to be under control, for

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someone to make the situation controlled. It should come
as no surprise that the military (sexy uniforms, a flair for
violence) repeatedly appear as one possible candidate for
this job.
As the state retreats from much of its former biopolitical role, and the landscapes of everyday life are remade
as dangerous spaces of contest between increasingly
desperate populations, the call for violent state intervention enters the repertoire of populism. It infects the
discourse of both left and right as well as an everyday
populism with no established political home. Anti-politics might be a global phenomenon, but in contemporary
Britain it is racialised in a manner which reflects both a
colonial past and a declining imperial present. This is why
calls to send in the army resonate most clearly when the
sources of disorder are marked by ‘race’, alien religion and
a stubborn foreignness.
The call to enable the military to act with impunity –
articulated as a response to human rights gone too far,
particularly in relation to attempts to hold British military
personnel to account for war crimes against civilians –
signals a wider wish to institute an authority beyond any
accountability. Such fantasies of authoritarianism are only
a hair’s breadth away from other dangerous fantasies of
the supremacist nation. Even when ideas of nation and
race are not referenced explicitly, the desire to replace
inadequate, corrupt civilian institutions with efficient,
honourable military ones becomes tied to other illiberal
tendencies that enable a revamped state racism. This
includes the view that political institutions do not ‘work’,
that is, do not deliver the basics of life or security. Instead,

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we are persuaded that forces unconstrained by the niceties
of political accountability are more effective and, because
of this, more able to give us what we want and need. In
this context, state racisms against recognisable racialised
folk devils serve to answer the popular call for an effective
authoritarianism, demonstrating the coercive power of
the state and repositioning the population as grateful
recipients of unquestionable authority.

CH APT E R E LE VE N

Militarisation on the Mainland
The answer lies not in pouring more troops into the
jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people. The
shooting side of this business is only 25% of the trouble
and the other 75% lies in getting the people of this
country behind us.
– Sir Gerald Templer, 19521

‘You are not a criminal, but you are on the wrong side.
You must be restrained until this trouble is over.’ It was
of course contrary to the principles of British justice but
it was merciful.
– Sir Frank Kitson, Gangs and Counter-Gangs
[in British Kenya], 1960

We’re in a far more dangerous society than we have
ever been and so we have to have the correct equipment
to deal with that … We’re not asking for mandatory
arming of all officers, but what they are asking for is for
more specially-trained officers. We have to stick to the
stringent criteria, and the criteria for handling a firearm
in the UK is still the toughest in the world … If you look
at the last two to three years, the number of assaults
on police are going up unrecognisably. The average
constable doesn’t hold the same authority. When I was a
child, you didn’t dare blink at a police officer.
Ken Marsh, Chairman of the Metropolitan
Police Federation, 20172

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Honour, self-restraint and efficiency were the selfdeclared defining features of UK militarism in the twentieth
century. Respect for civilians, commitment to the rules of
engagement and the pursuit of ‘just wars’ against tyranny
are fundamental to Britain’s national self-image in the
history of European power politics. Nineteenth-century
Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz provided
the canonical account of international conflict between
European states with his famed treatise, On War. Warfare
between recognised states came to be determined by a set
of traditional markers: uniformed combatants, clear and
measurable military objectives, an idea of a point of conclusion and a distinction from the operations of everyday,
peaceful life. However, conflicts within the colonial sphere
did not take the form of Clausewitzian warfare; they
blurred the lines between war and policing. Colonial and
imperial wars differed from inter-state conflicts among
European nations, and this was particularly pronounced
in the twentieth century, as European powers sought to
hold onto crumbling empires in a changing global order.
The British state has prided itself on its ‘hearts and
minds’ military tactics in the colonies, and its approach
to ‘policing by consent’ on the mainland – apparently
only using violence as a last resort in both instances.
However, Britain’s approach to countering ‘terrorism’ has
seen military occupations, spectacular violence, and in
some instances resettlements and expulsions on a scale
approaching ethnic cleansing. Indeed, both direct and
indirect colonial rule worked partly because the threat
of direct domination was always apparent. India in the
1850s, Morant Bay in Jamaica in the 1860s, Malaysia in

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the 1940s and Kenya in the 1950s are just some examples
of when the British army rounded up suspects in their tens
of thousands, incarcerating, interrogating and massacring
‘terrorists’, ‘insurgents’ and ‘rebels’ in an effort to maintain
colonial order. Mass arrest, indefinite detention and violent
paramilitary policing were key policies in these ‘Emergencies’, and went on to stain Britain’s enduring legacy in the
north of Ireland. Across the British Empire, on the front
lines of colonial occupation, policing and militarism were
often indistinguishable. State violence was designed not to
detect or prevent crime but to maintain order.
In colonial conflicts, little distinction is made between
armed combatants and everyday civilians. This kind of
conflict does not have a fixed point which allows one to say,
‘the war is won’. Rather, militaristic violence becomes part
of the fabric of everyday life under occupation. Despite
these realities, Britain’s reputation as a civil, respectable and
law-abiding military force remains essential to the nation’s
image of itself, and cultivating the myth of a peaceful end
to empire, and an orderly transition into the British Commonwealth, is as important as Churchillian myths about
Britain’s brave and solitary resistance to fascism in the
Second World War. This moralism at the heart of British
militarism underwrites the popular campaigns which
have railed against the application of human rights law
in cases against ‘our boys’ for their actions in Afghanistan or Iraq (after all, murder is not murder in the ‘fog
of war’).3 Soliciting equal fury among these same patriots
and armed forces enthusiasts are the calls for apologies, or
even reparations, for colonial crimes. Pundits and politicians are aghast at this dredging up of alleged crimes from

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a different time, for which they claim there is little substantial evidence (perhaps it was lost with the burning of
colonial records?),4 and which they say were far too long
ago to render a trial fair or appropriate now anyway.
Several scholars have argued that a reckoning with
colonial histories can help us understand the character
of war and militarism today.5 Of course, many people
thinking and writing about war have observed the decline
in traditional warfare since the end of the Second World
War – the increasing proportion of civilian casualties in
conflicts and wars against counterinsurgents rather than
other states – but this becomes less novel when considered in light of colonial conflict. The distinction between
military and civilian, war and peace, battleground and
safe zone has been further eroded in the twenty-first
century, not least because of developments in total surveillance and precision drone strikes. Nightmarishly, the
zone of conflict can now be totalled in on an individual
– within a room, within their house.6 The global War on
Terror is everywhere and without end. Importantly for our
purposes, these logics of contemporary militarism inflect
how racism functions in contemporary Britain. Of course,
the British nation is produced through its exclusions, and
the language of war remains pivotal: the War on Terror,
the war on county lines, the ‘all-out war on gangs and
gang culture’.7 Dominant ideas about enmity, counter-terrorism and security, with their colonial lineages, today
frame the militarisation of British political culture, and
this helps explain how militarised policing practices are
justified with regard to familiar racial foes: the Muslim,
the immigrant and the black criminal.

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*

The militarisation of everyday life in contemporary
Britain may appear to be a new phenomenon, but, like so
many innovations, it is a colonial aftershock, making its
belated appearance on the shores of the mother country.
The British state ‘sending in the army’ to deal with a civil
crisis is often considered an historical exception, confined
to events like the Peterloo Massacre or the Troubles in
Northern Ireland (the military occupation of Ireland is,
of course, only exceptional in as far as it is a colony which
became part of the United Kingdom). However, Britain’s
more distant colonies were, and in some cases continue
to be, subject to paramilitary force when the natives
were considered threatening or unruly. It should come as
little surprise, therefore, that today people from formerly
colonised populations living in Britain are not only
framed as exceptionally threatening or unruly, but are also
subjected to militarised forms of governance. As we have
argued throughout this book, the racialised folk devils of
the terrorist, gangster and immigrant are all subjected to
policies and practices which, in one way or another, legitimate ‘sending in the army’.
The creeping militarisation of the police in contemporary Britain follows the emergence of non-white
Commonwealth migrants moving to and settling in the
mother country. The Troubles in Ireland provided the
material infrastructure for militarised policing on the
British mainland, while the ever increasing presence of
racialised immigration provided the discursive justification. From the 1980s onwards, in response to the urban

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revolts which began in St Paul’s, Bristol in 1980, and Brixton, south London, before spreading across England in
1981, paramilitary policing techniques were transplanted
from the colonial context. Armoured police were trained
to use rubber bullets and CS spray: the latter of which was
used for the first time in Toxteth, Liverpool, in 1981, while
police armed with rubber bullets were deployed to contain
the Broadwater Farm uprisings in 1985. While officers
were not ordered to fire in the latter case, Sir Kenneth
Newman of the Met Police warned that such tactics were
now necessary for dealing with urban disorder (rubber
bullets have been fired in Northern Ireland but never on
the British mainland).
We should here reflect on the civil unrest in August
2011, sparked by the police killing of an unarmed black
man, Mark Duggan, who was shot dead in a manner reminiscent of the shoot-to-kill policies of the paramilitary
forces in Northern Ireland. Duggan was being pursued by
the police as part of the decade-long Operation Trident,
established to focus specifically on serious violence within
the black population; referred to as ‘black on black’ crime
in the early 2000s, but now more frequently referred to
as ‘gang crime’. The police killing of Duggan followed a
three-year spike in police use of stop-and-search powers
designed to combat so-called ‘gang violence’. In August
2011, David Cameron, speaking from a professionally
graffitied youth centre in his Oxfordshire constituency,
announced his ‘all-out war on gangs and gang culture’.
He described gangs as a ‘major criminal disease’ that had
‘infected our streets’.

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As noted in Part 1, the policing of ‘gangs’ involves ‘intelligence gathering’ using (native) informants, cultural
analysts surveying social media, and the broader criminalisation of those who simply live, study or socialise
together. This rounding up of suspects is not dissimilar
to counterinsurgency policing in Britain’s colonies, and
the militarisation of policing provided additional weight
to Cameron’s declaration of war, accompanied by the
increased use of tasers, the purchase of water cannons and
the expansion of the number of armed officers. A decade
before, Tony Blair had launched his own war at home with
the domestic ‘War on Terror’, proudly proclaiming, ‘the
police tell me what power they need and I give it to them’.
Part of these new police powers allowed officers ‘to take
account of a person’s ethnic origin in selecting persons to
be stopped in response to a specific terrorist threat’.8 This
power was eventually repealed following a ruling of the
European Court of Human Rights. Despite such successful legal challenges, the War on Terror continues: teachers,
doctors, academics and social workers are all incorporated
into Britain’s counterinsurgency programme through the
Prevent policy, enlisted to identify signs of ‘radicalisation’
and ‘extremism’ among ‘service-users’.
This policing of sympathies – the desire to identify and
record ‘radicalisation’ and support for ‘terrorism’, and
to chart the interiority of the nation’s potential ‘internal
enemies’, which of course ends up capturing much broader
anti-imperialist impulses – has been accompanied by more
overt forms of militarism. One year on from the ‘2011 riots’
following the police murder of Mark Duggan, thousands
of uniformed soldiers were deployed to provide security

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for the 2012 London Olympics, the biggest deployment
of troops on the mainland since the Second World War
(13,500 troops in total). London was ‘wired up with a
new range of scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate
and facial-recognition CCTV systems, disease tracking
systems, new police control centres and checkpoints’,
while surface-to-air missile systems scanned the skies
and unmanned drones surveilled the stadiums.9 We now
expect to see police officers armed with machine-guns at
major travel terminals, and armed operatives trained by
Northern Ireland paramilitary forces exercising shootto-kill operations in civilian areas, such as that which led
to the police killing Brazilian plumber Jean Charles de
Menezes in 2005.
The firearms unit that killed Menezes were part of
Britain’s domestic counter-terror police, but received their
training from the SAS. The shoot-to-kill policy which saw
Menezes executed as he walked through Stockwell underground station mirrored the tactics of British Special
Forces. Through a global circulation of counter-terror
military strategists, practices and consultants, paramilitary policing in Palestine, Northern Ireland and Britain
now all share the hallmarks of lethal force as first resort.
Here, the British military mythology of minimum force,
due process and ‘hearts and minds’ becomes exposed
for its frank absurdity. The racial nature of paramilitary
policing is hard to miss here; a Catholic Brazilian plumber
is mistaken for a Muslim Arab due to them both ‘having
Mongolian eyes’, according to the officers responsible for
the killing, which illustrates the slippery character of ‘the

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Muslim’ as a racial category and the persistence of the
racial taxonomies of colonial science.
Perhaps the most consistent racialised folk devil, for
which the armed forces must be called into action, has
been the spectre of the recently arrived, or imminently
arriving, migrant. Migrants are often constructed as potential ‘terrorists’, ‘criminals’ and ‘sex offenders’, but they are
more widely demonised for taking jobs, claiming out-ofwork benefits and putting a strain on public services. ‘The
migrant’ is effectively an empty vessel into which myriad
anxieties can be poured. This has found renewed urgency
in the last few years, as increasing numbers attempt to
enter Britain on small boats travelling from France. This
requires we ‘send forth the navy’. Right-wing commentators have recently declared the need for gunboats to
patrol Britain’s maritime borders, while politicians claim
sea-crossing migrants must be turned away as a matter
of deterrence.10 In summer 2020, we saw the Home
Office request that the Ministry of Defence deploy navy
vessels in the Dover Straits, while Home Secretary Priti
Patel appointed a former Royal Marine to the new role
of ‘Clandestine Channel Threat Commander’. While this
reassertion of naval power silently reaffirms the hope that
Britain might once again ‘rule the waves’, it also reflects
the paranoiac convulsions of a political culture obsessed
with scanning the border for signs of danger and restlessly
pursuing the expulsion of all foreign pollutants. These
anti-immigrant anxieties and revulsions inevitably culminate in militarised calls for further securitisation, closure
and expulsion.

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It seems worth reflecting for a moment on the case of
the Stansted 15, a group of radical environmental-migrant
activists who successfully grounded a mass deportation
charter flight in March 2017. After their action prevented
the deportation of roughly 60 migrants to Ghana,
Nigeria and Sierra Leone, the Home Office changed
tactics. Rather than fly from commercial airports, some
mass deportation charter flights now fly from Royal Air
Force bases, such as Brize Norton. Of course, charter
flights were already a form of militarised border control;
they emerged largely because of difficulties entailed in
deporting people on commercial flights, especially in the
wake of some passengers and pilots refusing to fly with
people resisting deportation. Charter flights – usually
leaving from Stansted airport, even if by cover of darkness
in the early hours – were therefore a means of undercutting the possibility of resistance and solidarity, especially
in its spontaneous forms. The use of military bases for
charter flights marks another escalation, crystallising the
sense that migrants, by virtue of not being citizens, are
not civilians either. Their expulsion, like that of ‘terrorists’,
occurs in a murky extra-legal space created by an excess of
state sovereignty and a disregard for human rights.
Having watched the prosecution and sentencing of
those undertaking similar actions before them, the
Stansted 15 protestors expected to be charged with aggravated trespass. They were, at first, only to then have the
charges upped to ‘intentional disruption of services at
an aerodrome’, a terrorist offence introduced under the
1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act, a law passed
in response to the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. The 15

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activists were convicted of these offences in Chelmsford
Crown Court in December 2018, and potentially faced
sentences of up to life imprisonment for endangering the
safety of the airport. Fortunately, none of them were incarcerated. They were given fines and community service.
But their treatment – particularly as a mostly white, university-educated group with an excellent legal team – is
indicative of some important shifts. They were treated
not as civilian protestors, acting on conscience, defending
human rights and exercising their right to free speech
within a liberal democracy, but as enemies of the state –
not only criminals but terrorists.
In their treatment we see the ways in which dissent is
increasingly viewed as treachery and sedition. The observation that they would have received prison terms had
they been black or Muslim – which became one of the hot
takes on Twitter around the time of the trial – was not
only obvious and patronising (clearly this was something
the groups had considered and strategised around), it also
missed the most disconcerting aspect of this case for all
of us who might want to engage in acts of dissent and
resistance. If middle-class presenting and mostly white
activists can be convicted of terrorism offences for non-violent political actions, then the goalposts have shifted. The
terrorism net has been cast even wider, and this limits all
of our political horizons.
As David Gee explains:
a culture of militarism is part of our way of life as a
society. A militarist outlook is embedded in certain
perceptions of British nationhood and its security, in

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political orientations and the policies that come from
them, in our fears and hopes for the future, in the
language we use and the stories we tell about the way
the world works, and in our entertainment, arts, and
media productions.11
Another important way in which the army is being
called in is through the interpellation of people as surveilled and securitising subjects, willing to report and
always reminded that the threat of terror is everywhere
(‘see it, say it, sorted’). If militarisation can be defined as
‘the contradictory and tense social process in which civil
society organizes itself for the production of violence’,12
then contemporary processes of militarisation rely on the
persistent production of banal yet ubiquitous threats. In
daily life, a whole range of people are encouraged, and
sometimes instructed, to participate in the practices of
everyday security (this is true with the Prevent duty for
example). These instructions and encouragements are not
designed to ‘change our minds’. These are not practices
based in conceptions of consciousness. You do not have to
believe in the War on Terror, for example. What you must
do is be edged into co-operation through actions, so that
the bureaucratic organisation of public life or working life
or educational life places you in a position of participation
and complicity. There is something in this that prefigures
a deeper authoritarianism. Once participating, you are no
longer the suspect. When they come for the suspect, you
are just another bystander.

CH APT E R T WE LVE

Zero-sum Game

All I ever wanted was to love women, and in turn to
be loved by them back. Their behavior towards me has
only earned my hatred, and rightfully so! I am the true
victim in all of this. I am the good guy. Humanity struck
at me first by condemning me to experience so much
suffering. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t
start this war … I wasn’t the one who struck first … But
I will finish it by striking back. I will punish everyone.
And it will be beautiful. Finally, at long last, I can show
the world my true worth.
– Elliot Rodger manifesto (killed six and
injured 14 in Isla Vista, California)

Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage, you
PC-ravaged clowns.
– Piers Morgan, 2019

Following the Conservative victory in the 2019 general
election, news surfaced on social media of an upswing in
racist abuse. Incidents of people of colour being goaded,
mocked and jeered at in public spaces were undergirded
by more intimate kinds of aggression, including black
and brown families being informed by their neighbours
that the Tory victory meant they ought to pack their bags;
repatriation was nigh. In many ways, this was a rerun of

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the days following the Brexit referendum result in 2016.
Then, much of the tone was elated, triumphant – we won!
Following the Tory landslide in 2019, the triumphalism
took a new form. Instead of merely cawing over their
victory, the right seemed to be most virulent when celebrating our defeat. Even as the final results were trickling
in on December 13th, a jubilant white man took to the
streets of Brixton, shouting ‘you lose! you lose!’ at black
and brown commuters entering the tube station. Our
loss was their gain, but it was our loss that tasted sweetest
to them. More importantly, this man and many others
viewed this zero-sum game through the prism of race; it
was a triumph not only against the Remoaners, and not
only against the racialised folk devils we have been discussing, but against all immigrants, their children and
their children’s children.
It was also seen as a victory against constraint of all kinds,
against the idea that one must keep one’s bigotry behind
closed doors. That said, bigotry has been out in the open
– selling newspapers, winning election campaigns and
greasing the wheels of nationalism’s constitutive exclusions – for decades. But the myth that people are policed
by the diktats of ‘political correctness’ or ‘woke culture’
nonetheless holds firm. As a result, Johnson’s record of
calling gay men ‘tanktop-wearing bumboys’, saying that
women who wear the burkha look like ‘letterboxes’, and
having an altercation with his girlfriend that sounded so
aggressive the neighbours called the police was, for many,
an attractive, perhaps even a reassuring, prospect rather
than a sign of being unfit for office. In Johnson, many saw
their own bigotry, albeit with the money, position and

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power necessary to cast those views as common sense (see
Chapter 9).
As such, it should be no surprise that it was not just
racist attacks that rose following Johnson’s victory, but
also an onslaught of homophobia and transphobia.1 The
gender politics of the authoritarian turn bear some consideration here. We are witnessing the rapid development
of ‘culture wars’ that thrive off a zero-sum thesis on all
resources, material or otherwise: one person’s gain is
another’s loss. If basic respect is shown to black and brown
people, it must come at the cost of white people’s access to
dignity. The culture wars can thus frame the increase in
relative power and dignity of women or trans people as a
threat to men or cisgender people, laying the foundation
for men’s rights campaigners and TERFs (‘trans exclusionary radical feminists’). The zero-sum thesis is the key
driver of the culture wars; it offers some rationale for why
highly insignificant phenomena (a vegan sausage roll, a
stranger’s gender) can become charged sites of conflict.
If you believe the fulfilment of another’s desire is always
at the expense of your own, then someone else’s gain,
however minor, will always be your loss.
The logic of a zero-sum game underpins the network of
interconnected moral panics, some of which we map out
in this book, around which political discourse converges
and congeals. Social life is understood in increasingly
Darwinian terms; the survival of the fittest has been
reimagined as a shoot-em-up platform game – singular,
disembodied, territorial, violent, masculine, exhilarating,
yet simultaneously scared, defensive, nativist in the most
privatised of conceptions with lesser and/or dangerous

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others representing a threat that must be quashed if the
embattled family is to survive. We see this in TERFism,
which claims that trans women are in fact devious men
threatening and usurping the place of ‘real’ women, as well
as their sexual dignity. There are only enough resources
(emotional and moral as well as material) either for trans
women or for cis women, but not both – it’s them or us.
We might note the prominence of an organisation called
Woman’s Place UK2 in the TERF landscape as an interesting example of the retrograde politics produced by
this logic – the name at once spoofing a previous patriarchal framing of the world yet also seeking to reclaim
an imagined territory of women’s rights, a place where
the sovereign claims of cis-women are beyond question
or disruption. TERF logic relies on strict hierarchies and
schematic divisions – women have a particular place,
violated by men, they must also guard it against trans
interlopers.
An event held by an anti-trans organisation called ‘We
Need to Talk UK’, entitled ‘“Transgenderism” and the War
on Women’, offers an instructive example. The name of the
organisation echoes a key tenet of the culture war, which
is that opinions that diverge from or contest a set of liberal
orthodoxies are being silenced. Further, the event was
originally to be held at Millwall football club but had to be
moved after the venue received complaints. As a result, the
group collaborated with Conservative MP David Davies
to hold the event in the House of Commons – the same
David Davies who voted against gay marriage, is sceptical
about climate change and is a staunch critic of the Human

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Rights Act. Trans exclusionary radical feminists find
themselves making strange bedfellows indeed.
The expanding terrain of digital subcultures organised
around renewing the primacy of masculinity operates
through a similar premise. The gains made by feminism
over the second half of the twentieth century are viewed
as having displaced men from their rightful place of
dominance. Crucially, the story goes that feminism has not
brought us closer to equality but has created a situation of
female supremacy: a feminisation of society that puts men
at a disadvantage, a disadvantage imagined as the coming
together of a loss of ‘jobs for men’, a loss of the unquestioned
social status of manhood apparently enjoyed by previous
generations, and a loss of sexual access to women’s bodies.
Though this backlash against the successes of the women’s
liberation movement has been a staple of public discourse
for decades, the early 2000s saw a new iteration in the form
of the claim, stridently expressed, that men were, in fact,
the victims of a society run by and for women. Fathers4Justice were the most prominent exponents of this idea;
they sought to redress what they viewed as institutionalised discrimination against fathers, particularly in family
courts. While the case for co-parenting after divorce, and
the expectation that men share equally in the labour of
childcare, are prominent feminist concerns, Fathers4Justice viewed feminism as the source of their suffering. This
position chimed with the ‘postfeminist’ rhetoric of New
Labour, which viewed equality as a question of legislation
and common sense and attempted to sever the residual
connections between the Labour Party and the feminist,
anti-racist and anti-war movements that had come out of

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the New Left. As a result, while the stunts Fathers4Justice
pulled were viewed as unnecessary or hysterical, the
underlying premise that feminism needed to be kept under
control and equality managed by the state remained, and
has helped to usher in these digital subcultures.
Within this new global ‘mens’ rights’ network, disproportionate rates of male suicide3 and homelessness,4
as well as poor provision for male victims of domestic
violence, are taken to be the outcome of feminism.5
Further, the fact that men are, globally, more likely to be
conscripted as soldiers becomes similarly implicated in
female supremacy. The fact that Men’s Rights Activists
(MRAs) focus on these gendered discrepancies – rather
than aligning themselves with anti-war activists, housing
campaigners or organisations for survivors of domestic
violence – helps to illuminate the porous membrane
between MRAs and the wider alt-right political movement.
Incels (short for involuntary celibates), on the other hand,
turn their attention to the iniquities of the sexual marketplace. Incels view the world according to strict sexual
hierarchies, with ‘Chads’ and ‘Staceys’ (conventionally
attractive men and women) at the top. This rather adolescent understanding of sexual life takes a more sinister turn
in its detour through evolutionary psychology, through
which incels assert that even women on the lower end of
the sexual hierarchy are ‘programmed’ to be demanding,
high maintenance and committed to dating men who
are at the top of the scale, leaving ordinary men, such as
themselves, at a disadvantage. It is worth noting here that
this elaboration of the old adage that ‘nice guys finish last’
evidences forms of loneliness, alienation and resentment

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that could be taken as paradigmatic of the current conjuncture. Yet it is their organisation along the lines of the
zero-sum game that connects this emotional terrain to the
militarisation of social life and the turn to authoritarian
nationalism. However, across all of these domains, men
understand themselves to be under threat – whether physically, socially or psychologically – from powerful and
malicious women protected by the conspiracy of ‘political
correctness’ or ‘woke culture’. Taken together, we can see
TERFS, incels and Men’s Rights Activists as key players
in the ‘culture wars’ that now dominate the political
landscape, and which both feed off and intersect with the
more explicitly racial dynamics.
However, as indicated, the zero-sum game is at its most
visible when it concerns race. The language of ‘white genocide’, perhaps the most explicit rendering of this idea, has
gained significant purchase in the mainstream, including in universities. As mentioned previously, Professor of
Politics Eric Kaufmann asserts that people have ‘natural’
racial affinities and that ‘racial self-interest’ is an intelligible sentiment, distinct from racism. In his book Whiteshift,
Kaufmann develops his particular brand of demographic
racism, arguing that as ‘white people’ become a smaller
global plurality, Western nations ought to orient their
immigration policies around the ‘cultural comfort’ of
these white national majorities. To promote his book,
Kaufmann appeared at an event hosted by the libertarian (perhaps, more accurately, contrarian) website Spiked,
whose panellists were asked to respond to the question:
‘Is rising ethnic diversity a threat to the West?’ The fact
that these moral panics regarding shifting demograph-

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ics, gender norms and sexual practices express themselves
in the language of ‘debate’ is notable for retaining a rhetorical connection to the old forms of democracy (and
to their theatrical forms) which are, increasingly, viewed
as anachronistic, idealistic and failed. Yet the notion of
rational debate serves to rehabilitate these ideals, and
recast the left, feminists and anti-racists as the enemies of
free speech – the real agents of repression.
These ‘debates’ are highly visible as televised spectacles, but they begin on social media, which functions as
a kind of anti-democracy, like looking at democracy in
a funhouse mirror. The appearance of being able to say
whatever you want to the whole world is a powerful and
seductive illusion. In fact, utterances on social media
are highly ritualised within a dense set of formal codes.
In many ways, the world of social media is the perfect
microcosm in which to view the internal workings of
ideology; the sheer volume of material and relative ease
of identifying trends and tropes allows us to watch ideas
form, fracture and renew. But the chaotic, cacophonous
chamber of social media hides the direction of power.
Consider the way in which social media backlash offers
the illusion of collective power; a celebrity or brand will say
something racist or sexist, tweets and Instagram posts will
accrue, critiquing their mistake and demanding redress,
and the company or celebrity will issue an apology. This
process is often swift and exhilarating – it can feel highly
compelling, like watching a sport – and gives the sense
that powerful figures are accountable to ordinary people.
In fact, these processes strengthen our affective ties to

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celebrities or brands, while also making profit for social
media platforms.
The sense of democratic potential operates through a
binary functionality; like/don’t like, retweet/ignore. This
binary functionality precludes most forms of uncertainty
or nuance but, perhaps most importantly, interpellates us all to have an opinion. It demands engagement
and encourages us to view that engagement as a social
necessity. This binary functionality has an educative
function for the new authoritarianism. We become accustomed to polarised, violent, divisive, individualistic and
mob-like discourse, centred around moral purity and
evacuated of political content. These technologies are also
highly anxiety-inducing, which further encourages the
desire for forms of collectivity, calm and certainty.
The falling standards of living induced by neoliberal
capitalism and an aggressive programme of austerity,
alongside increasingly violent forms of detention, incarceration and social death for the poorest and the racialised in
Britain, must be taken as primary. Nonetheless, the modes
of mediation and consumption that structure everyday
life are indivisible from the operations of the authoritarian state. What we can begin to see is the way in which
these binary discursive regularities encourage a desire for
older forms of political collectivity centred on the nation.
Portions of the left (and some liberals) who desire this
kind of collectivity (or, interestingly, assume others do) are
trying to harness these desires through the non sequitur of
progressive nationalism, while most others have dropped
the progressive part altogether, and are advocating for variations on the theme of militarised nationalism. This has

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become audible in the refrain – sung by MPs from across
the political spectrum, as well as their compadres in the
media with whom they share the hymn sheet – to ‘send
in the army’. This desire for a military presence is more
than a capitulation to the sense of eternal and omnipresent threat orchestrated by the everyday theatrics of the
War on Terror; rather, it is a kind of forward-looking
nostalgia. It is both the desire for the Blitz-spirit version
of national collectivity (hence all the elated talk of postBrexit rationing) and the yearning for the certainties of
collective national stability post-democracy, overseen by a
militaristic state patriarch.

PART 5

What Now?

C HAPTE R T HI RTE E N

Covid-19: A Real Crisis

We go out and we clap. We clap awkwardly. We clap reluctantly because healthcare workers should not be troopified,
because they are not our blood sacrifice, because they should
not have to go to work and put themselves and their families
at risk. We clap reluctantly because Boris and Matt Hancock
are clapping too, the very people who are responsible for the
social murder of hundreds of thousands of people, by refusing
to act against the spread of the virus, but also by presiding
over a decade of austerity. We clap because our neighbours
are clapping, even the ones who irritate us, the ones who
closed the door in the face of canvassers, telling them they
don’t vote. If they’re clapping, this has to mean something.
We don’t want to clap. We want to rage, but we clap anyway.
Why? Because this is as close to anything in-person and collective as we have encountered in this crisis. We are tempted
to give in to the cynicism which would see us retreat inside,
but we don’t. We continue to clap awkwardly. We want
to shout, ‘don’t fucking vote Tory next time’, but we don’t,
because we don’t want to break this. Not yet.
We are already grieving. We can’t sit still. Our hands shake
and we need to keep them busy. We can’t think about what
we thought about before. We feel guilty eating nice things,
guilty when the postman comes to the door. Yesterday a
13-year-old child died alone. His parents and sisters can’t

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go to his funeral because they are all in isolation. There are
people on ventilators, there are people choking on their own
phlegm, there are people who can’t breathe, there are people,
so many people, dying alone.
*

*

*

We have been writing about ‘crisis’ throughout – that has
very much been the point – and yet to call the coronavirus pandemic ‘another crisis’ obviously underplays the
epochal transformations now underway. In short, this
is what a real crisis looks like. Millions abruptly unemployed; the prime minister telling people to ‘stay at home’;
police given powers to disperse any individual from public
space; and the skies empty of planes and full of police helicopters, while the ambulance sirens reverberate, so often,
too loud, on otherwise quiet roads. We do not yet know
what will come in its wake, but a deep global economic
recession seems unavoidable. The crisis will also shift
state practices and political subjectivities in ways that
we cannot yet predict. However, before looking, despairingly or otherwise, to what lies in store, we first reflect
on how the arguments presented so far can help explain
the UK government’s woeful response to the coronavirus
pandemic. If any doubted the extent to which state neglect
has become normalised in Britain, the Covid-19 crisis has
confirmed the ascendancy of that neglect as an active,
wilful, targeted technique of state power. Under Boris
Johnson, the UK has lurched from one half-articulated
non-policy to another – in the process, seemingly referencing many of the recurring symbols of British popular

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nationalism in a manner that goes beyond farce to all-out
horror-show.
Throughout this book we have tried to describe the
neglectful state from several angles and with different
lighting. Much of what we have discussed belongs to the
aftermath of the 2008 financial crash: austerity amalgamated with the securitisation practices honed through
the War on Terror, and the bordering machinery that has
become so central to disciplinary techniques across the
world. However, this moment might just be passing, and
this book has been our attempt to understand the world
moving beneath our feet. We have suggested that the will
to balance targeted neglect at racial others with some
meaningful appeal to belonging or entitlement for a significant section of the population seems almost gone. The
ability of the state to administer a totalised machinery at
all, even if only to administer differential neglect, is now
in question. If anything, we are entering a new phase of
rapid realignment in state practices and an active disruption of what has gone before. And yet, just as we were
working on concluding this book and trying to reflect on
the new Boris Johnson-led government, with its particular brand of authoritarianism, the Covid-19 pandemic hit
and with it the contours of our political, economic and
cultural conjuncture twisted and warped.
The deadly costs of the neglectful British state have
been made tragically clear over even the first stages of the
Covid-19 crisis, which seems likely to haunt the political
and economic structure of the globe for the foreseeable
future. At the time of writing, a combination of incompetence, malice and an investment in the economy above

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people have led to the UK suffering the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe. However, we can already see that
those in power are appealing to the nation’s patriotism
and nativism to distract from their murderous mismanagement which has caused Britain’s death toll to be so
much worse than comparable European neighbours. It is
this dynamic – of fatal neglect cross-cut with exuberant
jingoism, of corporate state capture behind a flimsy screen
of strongman theatrics – that we have explored through
this book and which has intensified during the present
crisis. The actions – and more importantly the inactions
– of the British state in the face of the global pandemic
appear to confirm our earlier analysis of the emergence
of a neglectful state that works through the militarised
figure of the patriarch. We have been alarmed to see how
prescient our terms for the embodiment of parallel state
practices have been.
Unsurprisingly, the language of war has been mobilised.
We were called to enter into battle. We were asked to
protect NHS workers on the frontline by staying at home.
We would summon our Blitz spirit to get through this as
a great nation. We were now in a war with an invisible
but deadly enemy. We were told to pull together to ensure
victory. As a result, the government press releases and the
mostly unhelpful journalistic commentary (a poor substitute for investigation and proper reportage) amounted
to little more than health and martial metaphors falling
in on one another, or tying one another in knots, without
actually telling us very much. But the martial metaphors
were not only that. In fact, the state’s most decisive and
immediate action was to introduce emergency measures

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through the Coronavirus Act. The Act introduced
‘certainly the most severe restrictions ever imposed, going
further than the regulations made under, respectively,
the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and the Emergency
Powers (Defence) Act 1939] during the two world wars’.1
This was not just a metaphorical war, but a war made real
by emergency laws and state practices. The Coronavirus
Bill breezed through Parliament with literally no opposition from the Labour Party or the Lords, despite it quite
evidently being extreme, authoritarian, lacking proper
oversight and with an expansive time limit. That the
emergency might become the norm was already predictable at this early stage of legislating, while the government
still floundered on public health policy and responsible
action to save lives.
The celebration of the 75th anniversary of VE day in
the midst of the lockdown allowed for the romanticisation of the Blitz, Dunkirk and all things Second World
War that we have argued creates an image of Britain as
the heroic underdog, rather than an oppressive imperial
overlord. As people up and down the country broke
lockdown to celebrate the myth of an innate, British
spirit of sacrifice, the line between historical re-enactment and history repeating itself became eerily blurred.
Comparisons between the coronavirus lockdown and the
Blitz emerged almost immediately, despite the deaths this
time being caused by state mismanagement rather than
Luftwaffe bombs. Nativism has also served as an answer to
this existential crisis of the British state, with echoes of the
anti-Chinese rhetoric that was common in Britain at the
end of the nineteenth century following the aftermath of

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the opium wars. Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage claimed
that coronavirus shows us that ‘it is time we all challenged
China’, and blamed the initial location of the virus as the
cause of the problem, despite that reasoning’s inability to
explain the striking difference in the death toll between
Britain and, say, Germany. Any mention of the disproportionate number of deaths suffered by Britain’s black and
Asian communities during this crisis has been dismissed
as ‘divisive’, or, perhaps more perniciously, as attributable
to genetic difference. As ever, biological ‘race’ retains its
allure, especially in matters of health and medicine, as the
certainties of absolute genetic difference safely cloud the
ongoing force of structural racism as social fact.
In the days following UK lockdown, online cultures
began to comment on the (perhaps uniquely British, in its
popular articulation) love of boot-licking. To lick the boots
of the strict and unresponsive authority figure is a jokey
recurrent theme in the British pornographic imagination
– arising, no doubt, from the disproportionate cultural
influence of militarised forms of upper-class schooling
and the ritualised sexualised punishment within these
spaces. This image is an apt index of and uncomfortable
commentary on Britain’s oddly unresolved class politics.
Despite histories and presents of militant working-class
resistance, the idea that many of us bow to our masters,
and, more than this, love the process of prostration,
registers something peculiar but undeniably persistent
about British political culture. In both his militarised and
neglectful incarnations, the state patriarch can be positioned as the recipient of boot-licking abjection – and he
is suitably unresponsive to such gestures. However, what,

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Covid has painfully revealed is the absence of any effective
authority figure wearing the boots. The British state has
been floundering, talking tough or talking us down, but
revealed every day as unable to exercise the titillatingly
militarised authority promised before Covid. Instead, we,
the population, look to our habits of boot-licking only to
find the emptiness and the terror of longing for authority
when that authority reveals its inadequacy.
*

*

*

The myth that drove Conservative austerity policies in the
aftermath of the last economic crisis – the myth that ‘we
are all in it together’ – appears to have been jettisoned by
the new leadership of Boris Johnson and his chief strategist Dominic Cummings, seemingly the only person
to whom Johnson feels an undying loyalty. Johnson and
Cummings make little pretence that their policies are for
the greater good. They represent and defend ‘their people’
and feed off the politics of division. Both built their careers
through the Brexit referendum by tying Britain’s relationship with the European Union to a culture war about
British identity, and calling on their supporters to relive
the imagined glories of yesteryear. Specifically linking
Brexit to the most romantic moments in British military
history, Johnson argued that Remainers had forgotten that
‘Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out ... The EU
is an attempt to do this by different methods.’ After that
approach proved successful in the referendum, Johnson
and Cummings have continued to repeat a similar refrain
as they have gained greater and greater state power.

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The entry of Boris Johnson to the elected office of prime
minister with a large majority (previously his ascent had
bypassed the electorate) has empowered, apparently,
the still shadowy figure of Cummings. Cummings’s
own understanding of British history is one in which,
following the Shangri-la of the Victorian Empire, Britain
spends the twentieth century making ‘colossal error after
error’;2 now that he has his hands on the instruments of
state, Cummings appears determined to use them to once
again provide the British ruling class with the power it
had enjoyed in the past. Under his direction, we have seen
displays of carelessness towards previously settled niceties
of political life. Despite the highly questionable partisanship (in favour of the Conservative Party) of much of
the news media, key journalists were asked to leave an
early Johnson press briefing in an orchestrated display
of overturning public accountability. Any dissent within
the cabinet, however weedy, has been shut down, most
notably with the theatrical expulsion of Sajid Javid. Judges
have been put on notice – with government plans to limit
access to judicial review, a particularly chilling threat after
the battle between Johnson’s previous government and
the judiciary on the issue of proroguing Parliament. A
few months later, in August 2020, Home Secretary Priti
Patel attacked ‘activist lawyers’ and promised that her new
immigration laws would ‘send the left into meltdown’.
What we are being promised, it seems, is not a better
functioning state (the axing of Public Health England in
August 2020 is telling here), but rather the fulfilment of
the electoral promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’, and to ‘crush
the saboteurs’.3

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We seem set for another strange experiment, the imposition of the shock doctrine on a domestic population. If
this is the endgame of empire, then it really is a nasty case
of the colonial subject coming home. In this openly celebrated coming disruption, breaking apart institutions
is always considered a good thing. Such a gambit can be
popular, for a while, because institutions of state have failed
so miserably to meet the needs of much of the population.
However, despite its claims to be decentring a political
elite, this is no democratising project. Instead we see a still
undecided process of realignment within the ruling class.
The British state has been captured by a far-right cabal and,
despite the forwarding of imperial nostalgia, is subject to
the whims and interests of a transnational capitalist class,
even as this class is undergoing transformation. Already
in its first months, the Johnson government announced
legislation that disregards and bullies ‘business interests’,
who are told to give up their reliance on migrant labour,
learn to retain staff, automate or die. It is hard to shake the
sense that this is a planned chaos, which includes actively
shrinking the economy (for a time at least), perhaps introducing even more punitive policies, including varieties
of workfare and fast-tracking automation with all of the
resulting political disruption. While some voters might
have been attracted by the implicit promise that whiteness
would count for something again, what comes next might
be shocking and painful for us all.
Without wishing to be over-dramatic (and in the full
awareness that the left frames every defeat as an opening
for fascism), the odd standoff between the new government and ‘business interests’ reveals something new

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at play. On the one hand, the expulsion of dissent from
cabinet also enabled the inclusion of another well-connected member of the transnational billionaire class
(Rishi Sunak, unexpected and unlikely heart-throb of
middle England). On the other, British business is being
ordered to withdraw from practices established through a
relative ease in hiring migrant workers and an expectation
of relative ease when trading across borders. The changing
set of class alliances, brokered by a state machinery willing
to abandon recent practices of elite alliance-building, is
something to which we must be alert. In 2019 the Home
Office announced that it was moving forward with the
government’s promise to introduce ‘a points-based immigration system’, dropping the previously oft-repeated
rhetorical descriptor, ‘Australian-style’. In vox pop Twitter
videos, Priti Patel, surrounded by scientists in white coats,
repeated the mantra that Britain is ‘taking back control of
its immigration system’. What this means in reality is far
from what the Australian system actually entails. The UK’s
proposals make for a far more restrictive immigration
system which significantly limits permanent settlement
prospects for skilled and qualified migrants. Those who
come must fulfil the English-speaking requirement, and
the proposals make no allowance for visas for ‘low-skilled’
migrants. The government’s rationale is that
UK businesses will need to adapt and adjust to the end
of free movement, and we will not seek to recreate the
outcomes from free movement within the points-based
system. As such, it is important that employers move
away from a reliance on the UK’s immigration system

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as an alternative to investment in staff retention, productivity, and wider investment in technology and
automation.4
Essentially this is a reiteration of the British jobs for
British workers slogan, but one which envisions British
workers properly as being machines. Meanwhile, there is
some allowance made for ‘seasonal workers’, who will be
able to come to perform particular agricultural tasks for a
maximum period of six months, ensuring that settlement
is not an option for so-called low/unskilled migrants. The
‘seasonal workers pilot’ increased the number of seasonal
workers the agricultural sector is permitted to employ
from outside the EU from 2,500 to 10,000 in time for the
2020 harvest. This scheme is described as a response ‘to
the specific temporary requirements’ of the sector. The
government is taking its cue from the right-wing, nationalist political moment, stating in its press release that it has
‘listened to the clear message from the 2016 referendum
and the 2019 general election and will end the reliance on
cheap, low-skilled labour coming into the country’. It is
clear that the government considers itself to be delivering
on Brexit’s promise to ‘take back control’. It proclaims it is
‘ending free movement, taking back control of our borders’.
It is well aware that its new immigration policies will create
a gap in terms of labour market needs, stating that: ‘It is
estimated 70% of the existing EU workforce would not
meet the requirements of the skilled worker route, which
will help to bring overall numbers down in future.’5
How quickly the tables have turned, then, as Britain
struggles to come to terms with the woeful unprepared-

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ness of its health service in the midst of a global pandemic.
The NHS in particular is ill-equipped and unprepared for
coping in a pandemic after more than a decade of underfunding and privatisation. During lockdown, migrant
NHS staff whose visas were about to expire were told that
they would be automatically renewed so that they could
focus on fighting Covid-19. Having faced daily abuse
from patients, asking if they can see a white doctor – and
harangued by a media unquestioningly rehearsing the line
that there are too many migrants in Britain, taking jobs
not for them, not paying taxes and draining the welfare
state – NHS staff are now being told they are needed.
They were applauded weekly by the public, as though they
were soldiers marching into war. ‘Key-worker’ migrants,
working in the NHS, in transport, as refuse collectors,
were told they were needed more than ever and must put
themselves and their families at risk to save a people who
so recently elected a government on the promise that it
would rid the country of people like them.
After the War on Terror, the 2008 financial crash
and Brexit, the Covid-19 crisis appears to be the fourth
horseman heralding a dramatic redeployment of state
violence in the twenty-first century to redraw the contours
of British society. Johnson announced a ‘New Deal’,
drawing on the language of American social reform, to
convince his new supporters in the former Labour heartlands of his commitment to investing in the ‘left behind’
areas. Of course, Johnson will offer some rewards to those
who catapulted him to electoral victory in December
2019. However, the cabal of transnational capitalists associated with the Johnson and Cummings project – both

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those within government, such as Somerset Capital Management partner, Jacob Rees-Mogg, or those outside of
government, like James Dyson – will act as a counterbalance to even the most limited form of nationalist social
welfare. The ultimate aim of the Johnson government
until the next election is to use this moment to open up
new opportunities for British capital, both at home and
overseas, whilst also depriving cultural institutions that
have been set up as ‘enemies of the people’ – the BBC, universities, artistic institutions, an independent judiciary
– of the ability to challenge the narrative set by the state.

CHAPTE R F O URTE E N

Shared Grief,
Hope and Resistance

We began this book by observing that Britain is not a happy
place, not least for those of us committed to challenging racism. However, throughout the process of writing
the book, events plunged us into new depths of despair.
For those who had campaigned for the Labour Party in
the 2019 election – including us – the days following the
decisive defeat were marked by painful, thwarted and
largely unsuccessful attempts to grieve the lost opportunity. Even before the votes were counted, think-pieces
amassed trying to explain why the mythic ‘Red Wall’ had
crumbled, and each factor (Corbyn, anti-Semitism, the
media, Brexit, deindustrialisation) was seized upon and
discarded in turn. Solutions were offered (community
organising, protest, Keir Starmer), in an attempt to stave
off the depression. These proclamations, refutations and
solutions were marked by a kind of desperation; the turn
to authoritarianism was undeniable, irresistible. Though
the Tories had fought the election on a manifesto so thin
and sloganeering that it was difficult to determine the
precise outlines of the Cummings–Johnson agenda, it was
clear that it would be contoured by an intensified nativist
racism. And then 2020 hit, with a global pandemic that
only sharpened the dividing line between those who get to

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live and those who are left to die. And yet, even as we tried
to close out this book with some final words on Covid-19,
the country was rocked by the largest anti-racist street
mobilisation in British history following the brutal police
murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. How to make
sense of it all, again?
Our sense is that while the apocalypse looms globally,
the end-times take on a particular flavour in the UK.
The core argument framing this book is that we cannot
describe this moment in Britain solely in terms of the rise
of something, of nativist authoritarianism perhaps, but
must also pay attention to the overbearing sense of decline
– the decline of Britain’s greatness, the end of empire. This
acute awareness of being at the end of one thing, and the
beginning of something else, whose form is unstable and
unclear, is a condition that inspires both hope and dread.
In the few months since lockdown, we have watched
with horror as fascists effectively mobilised in ‘defence’
of everything – from Brexit, to Tommy Robinson, to the
statue of Winston Churchill. But the lows of witnessing
Nazi salutes in Parliament Square were matched by the
highs of watching a multi-racial crowd pull down a statue
of the slave trader Edward Colston, before throwing him
into the Bristol harbour where his ships used to dock.
The cacophonous moment we are in suggests multiple,
contingent openings through which the languages and
grammars of a new world might emerge. Looking at the
form and reception of the UK Black Lives Matter (BLM)
movement in 2020, it is clear that something significant
has shifted since the first iteration of BLM four years
ago. As in 2016, the protests against racist state violence

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emerged hand in hand with demands for the toppling
of statues of colonisers and slave traders (in 2016, it was
Rhodes Must Fall). Activists, again, made connections
between histories of colonial violence and contemporary
forms of state racism. But the scale and context of the 2020
movement has revealed new outcomes and opportunities.
Protestors in 2016 were denounced as fringe, far too
radical to be entertained. The removal of statues was
rejected outright – with Oxford chancellor and former
colonial governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten calling
on protesting students to ‘think about being educated
elsewhere’, proposing China as a potential destination.1
By 2020, institutions from the Metropolitan Police to the
Conservative Party clamoured to express sympathy for
the movement – especially while it still remained largely
a conversation about the US. The hundreds of thousands
who took to the streets condemning systemic, institutional racism shook the British establishment. Suddenly,
the removal of statues appeared an easy compromise, in
the face of the largest anti-racist protest movement in
British history. Removals of statues which uncritically
commemorate colonialism from museums, universities
and town squares proliferated in 2020. Concurrently, such
a concession has enabled the more radical demands of
BLM, such as defunding the police, to enter mainstream
political debate.
Before Covid, we had already observed the resurgence
of a more expansive street politics, more multiple, more
promiscuous, something beyond the usual deference and
good manners of British political life. This re-awakening
of the street is, in part, what powered the Corbyn moment;

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the coming together of an assorted multitude, spanning
street and community organisers, new or reinvigorated
party members, Momentum, trade unionists and all sorts
of people who didn’t really believe in a parliamentary road
to socialism but could not pass on the possibility this particular Labour leadership might open. All of this chimed
with the re-emergence of a street politics that seemed
to confirm a general understanding of politics moving
beyond formal institutional practices and out into the
spaces of everyday life.
Even before the Corbyn moment, the twenty-first
century was already a time of renewed street politics,
including in Britain. While the heady hopes of Occupy or
of the revolutions of the squares remained distant for most
of the country, the habit of protest has extended. Now,
Britain too has an established culture of street protest,
perhaps characterised by dressing up, face-painting and
twee and/or scatological placards. The energies unleashed
in the protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq laid a
foundation here. The coming together of very diverse
segments of the population, including notably the whiter
middle classes with Muslim and migrant working-class
communities, combined with memorable home-made
protest accessories, signalled an opening to previously
rare forms of political communication and conversation.
Fast forward to Remain – a movement unable to shake
its middle-class cultural references, despite a wider base
among supporters. Once again, tweeness stands in for a
particular political sensibility – respectable outrage, performance of a shared consciousness; jokes and costumes
abounded. The reported good humour of Remain events

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became part of the political message, insinuating that
Leavers were angry, violent, lacking in such genteel
good manners. Some anti-racists whispered quietly their
uncomfortable suspicion that Remainers had never had
their sense of entitlement questioned before. Worse still,
it was difficult to avoid the more cosmopolitan nationalist undertones of the EU flag-waving. In its own way, this
performance subtly (and not so subtly) excluded racialised Others seen as not belonging within the borders of
the European project. But still, at least people were out on
the street.
When Extinction Rebellion came on the scene, the
critique of hidden and not-so-hidden racism and nationalism was less whispered. XR presented a particularly
and peculiarly British incarnation of the authority-loving
rebel. Despite the rhetoric of rebellion, the overly friendly
relationship with the police revealed the imagined membership of such actions. Groups involved in legal observing
at protests and support for those suffering police violence
warned against the XR approach, with its failure to understand the persistence of state violence and police racism.
Yet, in the context of many years of wilful state neglect and
a takeover of formal political spaces by the performance of
buffoonery, we might understand the plaintive tweeness
of both Remain and Extinction Rebellion as a kind of call
for an effective state patriarch.
Despite the costume of protest, often quite literally the
most costumed of protests, these are movements that long
for authority to take control and to make things work again.
Remainers were openly nostalgic for a time they characterised as a European idyll of tolerance, free movement

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and excellent cheese and wine, handily skipping over the
violences of Fortress Europe and the archipelago of camps
and detention centres making up the other landscape
underlying ‘free movement’. If only we could return to a
grown-up politics where a sensible authority figure could
put their foot down, overturn the silly tantrum of the referendum vote to leave the European Union, and make
things go back to normal. XR, despite a more astute reading
of the enormity of the climate crisis, also revealed a deep
love of authority, garlanding the police force in the hope
that a renewed authoritarianism could be repurposed to
save a humanity who really don’t know what is good for
them or for the planet. This critique is not an attempt to
write off the movement altogether, and certainly not the
many thousands of people who took to the streets in both
XR and anti-Brexit protests. We recognise that the specific
motivations and prescriptions of participants in these
mass protests are not homogeneous.
That said, we think the whole idea of mass protest to
force governments to take action on climate crisis often
represents a form of longing for an effective and more
authoritarian state. For some of the younger climate protesters on the other hand – especially the school strikers
– there was no longing for the caring state that came before
the neglectful one, and no cuddly deference to the police.
This generational shift is also racially contoured, and it
should therefore be unsurprising that these young activists
held placards that read ‘Fuck the Home Office’, intuitively
connecting climate breakdown to global migration flows
and the dehumanisation of people moving across and into
Europe. This was in stark contrast to XR’s comms strategy,

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which emphasised the ‘destruction of all we hold dear’
precisely by invoking our nation, our people, our ecosystems and our future generations to come. XR deferred
to the nation, even if strategically, in ways that the
school strikers found uninspiring and irrelevant. Related
questions of generational change and difference were also
manifest in the BLM mobilisations.
Again, it is worth remarking on the sheer scale of the
BLM mobilisation in May and June. Following the police
murder of George Floyd, protests against police brutality
and anti-black racism spread across the globe. In Britain,
we witnessed several weeks of repeated protests, sometimes every day, and not only in multicultural cities but in
towns and villages with seemingly no memory of anti-racist street mobilisation. Indeed, the protests were recurrent
and country-wide. It is particularly significant that the
issues Corbyn’s Labour conceded on most – the case
against police, prisons and violent borders – became the
very issues around which one of the most geographically
and racially diverse street mobilisations in generations
galvanised. Indeed, from 2017–19, Corbynism moved
from its more grassroots and explicitly anti-racist political
positions towards its own particular brand of law-andorder posturing. Apparently as part of its anti-austerity
programme, Labour promised to invest in border guards,
prisons and police, offering citizens the personal and
national security that Tory cutbacks failed to deliver. The
failure of this manoeuvre undoubtedly contributed to the
shift from the ballot box back to the street as the focus of
collective anti-racist energy. The youthfulness of the protestors was especially notable on the streets, in London at

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least (which is not unrelated to the dangers of Covid-19
infection for older people). The people organising the
protests were also young, often engaging in radical politics
for the first time, learning as they went.
The protests in smaller towns, sometimes in very white
places, were especially interesting, and reflect not only
a sense of disgust at violent police murder, but a wider
rejection of the Johnson–Cummings project, a rejection
of the ways in which people are being interpellated as
white natives by the authoritarian government. In other
words, it was not only about the video of George Floyd
– although we should not underestimate the power of
repeatedly watching and sharing the footage of a person
being brutally murdered – it was also a wider chorus of
people saying: if this is the project of whiteness, we do not
want it, not in our names, we want other cultural coordinates, not this absurd closure to the world, not this inflated
sense of national significance and superiority. It matters,
then, that the protests emerge as the far-right consolidates global power. People on the streets were screaming
their fury at Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Brexit.
Put simply, far-right nationalism has bolstered people’s
energies for anti-racist solidarity. But it is also hard to
imagine these protests emerging in the same way without
the pandemic and the lockdown.
With Covid-19 and lockdown, everything was blown
open. People were spat out of their normal, routine,
regulated ways of being, and suddenly lots of things were
up for grabs. We were told to stay at home, millions of
people were paid not to go to work, schools were closed,
cities went quiet and we grew bored, frustrated, fearful

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and appreciative. Despite the suffering, there was a sense
of renewed possibility. Business as usual went on pause
and it became clear that things could be radically remade,
in terms of how or if we worked, how we related to each
other, how we spent time and money. We discovered that
our jobs are fake or bullshit, and that our employers and
governments put profit before our welfare. We came to
appreciate that we were really living through history, and
there was a new world being reborn.
In the UK (and in the US), the pandemic revealed the
neglect and withdrawal of the state in all other functions
but the punitive. The state could not distribute basic masks
for nurses, but retained an incredibly well-resourced, militarised, police force. They now patrolled the parks, asking
people to sit further from one another, or to keep moving,
or to go home, sometimes fining people, especially black
people, for breaking the new Covid-19 rules. Meanwhile,
the extent to which employers were willing to exploit
and disregard the safety of workers became more clearly
exposed. Covid confirmed that we are living in a failed state
(or what Pankaj Mishra usefully termed a ‘flailing state’),2
and the bobbies on the beat seemed to offer scant protection from a deadly virus. In this context, the widespread
protests against police racism were about several things: a
reflection of various forms of frustration combined with a
new sense of opened possibility; a rejection of the Johnson
government and its nativist appeals; and a feeling for some
that when society is remade after Covid-19, these are the
kinds of political projects we want to align ourselves with.
That said, there are more guarded and cautious ways to
interpret the ubiquity of support for the BLM cause. We

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195

shared our collective annoyance at overbearing displays
of white guilt and self-flagellation, along with empty
celebrity and corporate promises to ‘take responsibility’. As white individuals asked, often very publicly: how
can I abdicate from my privilege? The answer was often,
by ‘doing work on yourself ’, or, perhaps more usefully,
by shedding money. This was a kind of (neo)liberal reparation. In this version, structural racism is hardly the
product of state power or capitalist exploitation, but a collective lack of privilege-checking on the part of a white
majority. Moreover, the immediacy of George Floyd’s
death in the UK clearly reflects the dominance of events
and frames from the US. Police racism in the US is often
afforded more press attention, and reported on more critically than similar instances in the UK. Consequently, this
can further embolden arguments which acknowledge the
need for radical change in America, but reduce racism to
individual bias in ‘far less racist’ Britain. Yet at many of
the protests, people held posters and chanted the names
of some of the many people who have been killed by the
police, or in state custody, in the UK – Mark Duggan, Joy
Gardner, Sean Rigg, Kingsley Burrell, Sarah Reed – and
it was clear that a certain kind of historical and political
education was happening as the mobilisations developed
and endured.
The United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC), a
coalition of families from across the country campaigning for justice for loved ones killed in state custody, was
an important presence at the BLM protests, and a key
site of political education. UFFC, which holds a protest
march on the last Saturday of October every year, is not

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a campaign that anyone chooses to join, but one that
families and friends are forced to join when their loved
ones are killed at the hands of the state. As a result, UFFC
is not a campaign made up solely of black people, because
those who are killed by state agents are not divided neatly
along racial lines, even as black people are disproportionately impacted. Neither state violence nor anti-racist
organising are neatly configured along racial lines, and in
Britain our families – the ones we choose and those we
do not – are often not set up that way. There are always
other people in the room. And so any sense of static racial
hierarchies, with those always at the bottom and those
always at the top, comes into conflict with what happens
on the ground. UFFC reflects this. It remains a campaign
for which the most visible leadership and spokespeople
are black women, but it is still necessarily a multi-ethnic
group. Importantly, radical black politics is a vital part of
the campaign, defined by a version of anti-racism which
draws links between colonialism, class struggle and police
racism. We make this point because during the BLM mobilisation, and attendant debates online, we witnessed the
co-articulation of some very radical and some very essentialist ideas. Arguments that separated racism from class
struggle were most commonly conveyed through the idea
that white people should be individual ‘allies’. This call for
individual self-reflection and change, though important,
came to replace a tradition of collective struggles (in solidarity) with people of colour. UFFC is one example of how
resistance to state violence exceeds neat divisions of fixed
racial categories or racialised experiences. This complicates the individualising categories of victim and ally by

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demonstrating how struggles for collective liberation are
shared and the possibility of solidarity is explored (and
perhaps tentatively realised) not through abstract debate
but through collective struggle.
The connections made between the Grenfell campaign
and BLM were especially heartening in this regard. Until
now it has been difficult for the Grenfell Tower victims’
families to politically organise around questions of racism
as a causal factor in the fire. This is partly due to their
racialisation as Muslim and/or migrants, unable to articulate their subjection to racism in the context of the
War on Terror and a hostile environment that excludes
migrants from housing and social rights. Indeed, the
Grenfell Tower inquiry excluded the question of racism
from its terms of investigation. But in the context of the
BLM uprisings, Grenfell survivors responded by making
the crucial connection between the fire and racist police
killings, asserting that their loved ones couldn’t breathe
either. Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in
the fire, drew parallels between the killing of George Floyd
and the fire. He said, ‘When my sister rang the fire brigade
she said, “We cannot breathe.” This is a similar phrase
used in America at the moment.’3 On Monday, 6 July 2020,
the words ‘We can’t breathe’ were projected onto Grenfell
Tower. This powerful action pronounced that the Grenfell
disaster was also an effect of racist state violence. Leslie
Thomas QC, who is representing a group of bereaved
families at the inquiry, stated:
The Grenfell fire did not happen in a vacuum … A
majority of the Grenfell residents who died were people

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of colour. Grenfell is inextricably linked with race. It is
the elephant in the room. This disaster happened in a
pocket of one of the smallest yet richest boroughs in
London. Yet the community affected was predominantly working class. That is the stark reality that cannot
be ignored.4
This development marks a powerful and necessary
embrace of a coalitional anti-racist politics and an acknowledgement of the limitations and depoliticising
effect of formal channels such as that of the inquiry. It is
through interventions like those made by Grenfell United and UFFC that the connections between anti-racism
and class struggle are forged, articulated and emboldened.
Despite the essentialising tendencies of some of its supporters, then, the BLM protests have been the largest
anti-racist street mobilisation against state violence we
have seen, ever, with tens of thousands of mostly young
people out in the streets, collectively registering their rage,
grief and determination to build another world. Amid
these mobilisations, lively conversations on (prison and
police) abolition offered an exciting frame through which
to forge radical new multi-racial constituencies. Importantly for us, theories and principles emerging out of
prison abolition avoid the traps we have delineated in this
book. Abolition centres state violence, and focuses on how
punitive, surveilling and carceral state practices make and
remake racial division and hierarchy. For the new generation of abolitionists, racism is never reduced to the
interpersonal. There is a rejection of both the authoritarian state practices and the political subjectivities we have

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199

charted in this book – a rejection of punishment and retribution – and instead a gesturing towards a politics of care,
openness to the Other, and love. These radical critiques
of state racism also orient themselves to the future, and
therefore snub any nostalgia for the homey nation that
orients so many on the ‘white left’. Central to conversations about abolition is also a gendered analysis of the
state, and a commitment to supporting survivors of sexual
and gender-based violence. If this book has looked at
neglect and authoritarianism – as well as the subjectivisation of people as longing for authority, racist closure,
the past and daddy – then the abolition frame rejects this
offering, and moves us towards that socialist anti-racist
future that we stubbornly keep dreaming up, imagining
and sometimes tasting.
That abolition politics is now speakable in Britain
suggests something other than the familiar longing for
post-war welfarism; don’t let us mourn for a time before
the neglectful state, and don’t promise you’ll send a good
cop, instead let us clear out the space for something new and
different. If we are to survive these particular end-times,
and build liveable futures on a warming planet, we cannot
stay oriented to that less bad past. The abolition frame is
deceptively simple perhaps because it remains so oriented
by something like love; abolish prisons, abolish police,
abolish capitalism, but also let us learn to see and care
about one another here and now. Empire’s endgame, on
the other hand, offers smaller and smaller constituencies
less and less. The fear and fantasises of disaster nationalism demonstrate that capitalism really seems not to be
working for many of us. As crises multiply, the weaknesses,

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contradictions and empty promises are further exposed,
and opportunities for radical new visions emerge. It is
impossible to predict the course of this new set of abolitionist energies. The only certainty is that every end is
also a beginning. Britain’s decline is an invitation to build
futures in which more of us, all of us, can breathe.

INTRODUCTION

THE RISE AND FALL OF TOMORROW

The child, the future of nations, must be tended to with all the elements necessary
to the production of civilization, progress and social perfection.
—Ramón Rosa, Primer Congreso Pedagógico Centro Americano 1893

The military raped them [women]. It didn’t even respect the right to live of those
not yet born. The Army [soldiers] grabbed pregnant women, they cut them, they
opened their stomachs, they took out their babies. They also murdered the newly
born, they took babies from their mothers’ breasts and one-­year-­olds and threw
them into the river and they drowned. One of the soldiers who threw a child into
the river called out, “Adiós, niño.”
—Massacre at Río Pixcayá, Aldea Estancia de la Virgen, San Martín Jilotepeque,
March 18, 1982, Caso Ilustrativo numero 50, Memoria del Silencio

When the woman entered the small apartment [in Guatemala City’s Zone 3] that
she shared with her nephew [a member of the gang Mara Salvatrucha], she saw a
blurred rush of movement and heard her nephew yell, “Get out of here!” She stood
for an instant, shocked to realize that her nephew and several boys hovered over
two girls whom they had tightly tied up. The woman turned and ran for help. A few
hours later, the dead bodies of these two girls, marked by rape, were found in the
street a few blocks away.
—Personal communication, Guatemala City, November 2003

I

n the 1800s and most of the 1900s, first the Guatemalan Liberal Party and
later reformists and revolutionaries envisioned “La Juventud” (Youth) to be
in the vanguard of a modernity that would arise from within a city conceived
as a beacon in a rural and savage wilderness.1 Following the defeat of the
popular and revolutionary organizations and years of neoliberal policies, by

2000 Guatemala City was among the poorest and most dangerous cities on
the continent, and La Juventud had gone down the drain with it.2 Catapulted
from the category of “heroic” into that of “criminal,” urban youth replaced
los subversivos as the enemies of society. For two hundred years a symbol of
beautiful tomorrows, La Juventud has been turned upside down to signify
the radically dangerous present, chaos and death, an obstacle to the future
instead of its herald.
The experiences of urban youth at the outset of the twenty-­first century
are haunted by the last century’s catastrophic failure to win the struggle that
shaped it: the fight for a different Guatemala, one with a dignified life for
all, one beyond mere survival.3 The terrifying boys and the murdered girls in
the third epigraph live and die within the legacy of devastation shown in the
second one. The ideological use of the child in the first represents the salvation fantasy of liberalism: the continual displacement of the inequalities of
capitalism to a more just future that has never arrived and that now seems
to have vanished from the horizon. Today the big question for many youth is
how to cross borders to find work.
When I first arrived in Guatemala in 1978, the now-infamous gangs
called Maras had no discursive or literal presence. Instead, the vitality of the
popular movement permeated everywhere I went, from aldeas in Huehuetenango to Guatemala City. The year before, over 100,000 Guatemala City residents had turned out to greet 80 Maya Mam miners who had walked from
the Cuchumatanes Mountains to the capital to publicize their struggle to
win a union in a tungsten mine, and all along the way, down the 370 kilometers of the winding Pan-­American Highway, villagers and townspeople
had prepared food, fiestas, and sleeping space for them. In 1978, shantytown dwellers, bus drivers, factory and state workers, students, and almost
everyone else in Guatemala City brought it to a halt to raise wages and stop
an increase in bus fares. In mid-­1979 the call for a democratic and revolutionary Guatemala was pervasive, and many people sat by their radios listening to the Sandinistas take Managua. In early 1980, the entire workforce of
the plantations and mills of the Southern Coast struck, arming themselves
with machetes and with the esprit of their slogan “Cabeza Clara, Corazón
Solidario, Puño en Alto” (Clear Head, Strong Heart, Fist Raised). It did not
seem unrealistic to think revolution was on the horizon. Not only did tens of
thousands join the revolutionary fronts in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in
some areas of Guatemala these new recruits pushed the guerrilla leadership
to take stronger military initiatives.
Urban youth have a long history within this landscape of social protest.
Even though they were a numerical minority in the midst of their peers, the
2

Introduction

primary, secondary, and university students who joined political movements
were a dominant presence in the public school system from the 1950s (if
not earlier) until the early 1980s. They were among the first to openly challenge the post-­1954 military regimes, when a handful of secondary students
from the Escuela Normal and the Instituto Rafael Aqueche organized the
dynamic and militant Frente Unido del Estudiantado Guatemalteco Organi­
zado (United Front of Guatemalan Students, fuego) in 1958 and configured a new generation of radical militants, even before the Cuban Revolution.4 Thousands of city students became activists over the coming decades.
Urban students joined rail and other workers in April–May 1962, Guatemala
City’s “May 1968,” six years early. They enthusiastically—even euphorically—­
supported peasant and worker groups throughout the 1960s and 1970s. They
went into the countryside to learn from the rural poor; they secretly joined
the guerrilla groups; and, despite increased disappearances of students,
they marched against the state in Guatemala City in the tens of thousands
after the Panzós Massacre in 1978. On May 1, 1980, they marched in greater
numbers, this time with their faces covered, under banners reading “For a
Revolutionary and Democratic Guatemala,” and “Nicaragua Today, Guatemala Tomorrow,” in the last truly massive demonstration of the century.
The uproar about the Maras came on the heels of the military’s breakneck
defeat of that possible future of popular revolution that was achieved by
the scorched-­earth genocidal campaigns of the early 1980s. The Maras made
their first public appearance in 1985, when they joined students from the
Instituto Rafael Aqueche to protest a bus fare increase. The subsequent massive publicity generated by the media, politicians, and the National Police
about the presumed dangers of these new gangs contrasted sharply with
the absence of news about the army campaigns in the countryside. This new
discourse concerning unruly urban youth not only furthered the silence surrounding state violence in the 1980s, it put into motion an astonishing reversal of truth, a lie that was part of the war: youngsters were the source of
violence and other dangers from which the state would protect its good citizens in order to create a new social reality. A study done in these same years,
however, refuted the propaganda that the Maras were a threat: it showed
that the mareros offered clues, but not danger, to the world around them.
Although anxious about life, they celebrated it, and they concerned themselves with the communities that surrounded them. Their “us” included the
poor, and the burgueses and the “asshole wealthy” constituted their “them.”5
But the Maras changed. By the time of the 1996 Peace Accords the gangs
had become morbid, and that has only increased with time. Worlds unto
themselves, the gangs have come to form a subjective “us,” and everyone
The Rise and Fall of Tomorrow

3

else, including the poor, constitutes “them.” Too many gang members in
Guatemala City have become the victimizers that they were once falsely accused of being (see figure intro.1). Although without a doubt still accused of
far more crimes than they commit, as the Mexican scholar Rossana Reguillo
Cruz points out, the Maras also “unfortunately actively participate in the
propagation of their own legend.”6 Invented and real, they huddle together
around violent identities and practices that make them more than “a series
of photos and video clips” to turn the public toward mano dura (iron fist)
politics.7 Within them has settled, to quote the Guatemalan epidemiologist
Dr. José García Noval, “a violence that . . . concretizes itself in actions of extreme cruelty.”8
Cut Out of History
The youth in Maras have become increasingly involved not only in violence, a
term that describes many modalities, but in violent deaths. I argue that their
turn from life toward death is related to larger transformations that have
taken place in a short period of time in Guatemala. I suggest that the way the
gangs changed, and not just how they are in a frozen snapshot in time, needs
to be understood within a historical context of several overlapping dynamics. One is the defeat of a decades-­old urban subculture in working-­class
barrios that emanated from the popular movements of 1954–80. Another
is the inextricably related means and effects of that defeat, which include a
military victory through genocidal war, neoliberal policies that have diminished social services for the urban poor, unemployment in a city where employment refers to a physically exhausting job at not even survival wages, and
a legal system that is currently in complete collapse. In addition, and most
emphasized by journalists and many researchers, in the mid-­1990s members of two gangs from Los Angeles, Mara-­18 (m-­18) and Mara Salvatrucha
(ms-­13), arrived, and they had ties to the sale of drugs. The growth of the
drug trade, and of drug use in urban neighborhoods, has been rapid. By
one estimate, by 2000 almost 80 percent of the cocaine shipped from South
America to the United States flowed through Guatemala. The appearance of
skilled entrepreneurs who use violence as a marketing strategy in a country in permanent economic crisis is an element in the history of the gangs.
One thing facilitates another: a weak economy and an inoperative legal system allow global organized crime to flourish and to incorporate mareros as
cheap labor within a system of networks that employs down-­and-­out youth
everywhere in the world, and keeps them that way by making sure they have
little cash.
4

Introduction

FIGURE INTRO.1 Mareros in El Hoyón Prison, Escuintla, 2005. However
real, this photograph of threatening and tattooed mareros exemplifies
the clichéd image that has been used with success everywhere in Guatemala to incite fear, to garner support for politicians from the extreme
Right, and to justify increased military ­involvement in civilian life.
Credit: Victor J. Blue.

I underline historical specificity and politics to argue that in many ways
these young people’s coexistence with violent death, including with their
own murders, is intimately related to what can be framed as the Guatemalan
state’s successful use of spectacular and reverberating necropolitics.9 Starting roughly in 1980 and into the 1990s, sovereignty rested on the absolute
negation of life in order to put an end to over fifty years of unfinished history
in which radical political movements had polarized Guatemala in a battle
for its destiny. The cohabitation with death that has come to inform Maras
is tied to the success of a violence that was, in the words of the Guatemalan writer Juan Carlos Mazariegos, “an excess of reality.”10 It is the product
of what this military victory and its consequences have spawned in subjectivities and everyday life: a Guatemala wherein practices and mentalities of
solidarity, trust, and mutual concern have been ripped apart to strain and
erode, in the words of the late Jesuit psychologist Ignacio Martín-­Baró, assassinated by the Salvadoran Army in 1989, the “collective capacity to work
and love.”11
An extreme and a minority among youth in Guatemala City, a small painful intrusion that hurts and impairs, the splinter in the eye that is the “best
magnifying glass,” the apolitical Maras have crystallized necropolitics into
what I call necroliving.12 In the city, the postwar mareros control life through
their power to take it away. For many youth in the Maras, threatening to kill
and killing have become practices about the scarce daily options for earning
a living, and about maintaining order, teaching lessons, and achieving identity and respect, especially for young men for whom the values tied to other
male identities—such as the gallant breadwinner—and the possibilities of
achieving alternate masculinities have diminished. This does not mean that
every marero kills. Rather, I am suggesting that within the mareros’ social
imaginary, in Charles Taylor’s sense of that “common understanding which
makes possible common practices,” violent death controls the management of life, short as that may be.13 The average marero is murdered by the
time he or she is twenty-­two. Perhaps even worse: one’s own early demise is
part of the marero imaginary, and the average gang member expects to die by
that age.14
Hardly any members of the violent Maras of the 1990s and onward directly experienced war, although a few did or thought they did. Most were
born in the 1980s or later, and they came of age in a Guatemala City largely
remade and reassembled by violence. They remember the stories of cadavers
and not of the struggles for social justice. In her commentary on the juvenile
mareros in a reform center who danced after tearing out the heart and other
internal organs of a teacher named Jorge Emilio Winter Viaurre on March 3,
6

Introduction

2009, a Guatemalan journalist wrote that Guatemalan children live in “a society in which problems are generally resolved by death.”15 Immersed in the
legacy of political sovereignty through the manufacture of horrific deaths
and surrounded by violent deaths, by murdering or by imagining death in
their magical religious rites, gang members struggle to control death as well
as life. Necroliving deracinates death. The Guatemalan psychiatrist Rodolfo
Kepfer points out that mareros’ preoccupation with death is part of a prevalent thanatophobia. He thinks, “In Guatemala death is perceived as a traumatic event that depends on others, it is not seen as a natural part of life.
This creates the phobia that death is everywhere, lurking in other people and
‘I too’ [referring to youth] can arrest it with violence.”16 Murder becomes
“natural death,” the normal way to die. Making the living dead starts to seem
to be what humans do to one another, by their very nature. This materializes
what the Chilean psychologist Elizabeth Lira calls the “devaluation of life,”
hatred or the dehumanization of self and others, that has its grand finale in
the morgue.17
A Planet of Gangs
Guatemala City’s Maras are not the only gangs or the only very violent ones
currently in cities on our “planet of slums,” and the literature devoted to
them is vast.18 A variety of approaches are evident in sociology, psychology,
criminal justice, communications, and several other disciplines, with no
single definition of “gang” emerging. However, some strong common core
arguments are apparent. Most studies of urban gangs in Central America
and the rest of the Americas see them as consequences of an array of “multiple marginalities”—a key phrase in the literature—that includes urban decay and unemployment; social abandonment and domestic abuse; school
absenteeism; and the lack of mobility, community, social recognition, and
identity.19 In addition, many authors emphasize that for males gaining masculine identity can be particularly important aspect of gang life, and they
underscore how lethal “performing male” can be when violence, masculinity, and gaining respect bleed into one another.20 However, neither the
pursuit of masculinity nor multiple marginalities explain change or differences, describe subjectivities, or suggest how cruel or kindly a turn masculinity can take.21
From those outlaw bands of Robin Hoods and the gangs that fortify urban
political machinery, to the Almighty Latin King/Queen Nation (alkqn), a
gang that developed a male identity based on respect for women, different
gangs have varied worldviews, principles, and social relationships, and they
The Rise and Fall of Tomorrow

7

change over time. Within their short lifetime, Guatemala City’s Maras have
gone, as Adiós Niño discusses, from protecting neighbors to abusing them.
All that is encompassed by history—whether unemployment, racism, military recruitment, or the criminalization of immigration—counts. This point
is elucidated in many studies, such as those by José Miguel Cruz about Maras
in El Salvador, and the works of David Brotherton and Luis Barrios on the
alkqn, of Tom Hayden on gangs in Los Angeles, and of John Hagedorn,
whose book about global gangs makes arguments similar to mine about
the connections between gangs, the fall of social movements, and the rise
of neoliberal polices.22 The Mexican writer Marco Lara Klahr wryly underscores that gangs evolve out of contemporary histories in his book Hoy te
toca la muerte: El imperio de las Maras visto desde dentro, when he quotes the distinguished Honduran dramatist Tito Estrada: “Look, after all is said and done,
what we should ask about the Maras is what happened to the Latin American
working class.”23
Adiós Niño focuses on the connections among transformations in the
Maras, Guatemala, and Guatemala City. It is situated within an emergent literature about youth gangs in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, where the misleadingly dubbed “Central American gangs” exist.24
Generally these studies are based on respect for what gang members say,
as well as on surveys and official data, and on considerations of the tattoos, language, music, graffiti, and clothes that distinguish them. No one
doubts that graffiti stake a gang’s urban space or that clothes mark a collective ­identity. Most writers approach gangs as emotional communities, and
try, to quote Rossana Reguillo Cruz, to “develop a vision that doesn’t lose
youth as subject but instead understands their multiple ‘roles’ and social
interactions.”25
Adiós Niño addresses several questions that hover over this growing literature. One concerns the notion that the gangs and their violence are apolitical. I argue that this is a misleading conceptualization. While it is descriptively accurate that neither the Maras nor their violence fall within the realm
of what one sociologist defines as political violence, a “politico-­ideological
conflict between authoritarian states and more or less well defined armed
or unarmed opponents,” the Maras have come out of a political crucible,
and politicians have found political uses for them that range from no doubt
paying them to disrupt rallies for rival candidates to using images of them
to garner support for right-­wing candidates.26 The politically generated depoliticization of youth is in itself a historical watershed that has changed
Guatemalan urban politics. That Maras are not “political” is politics.
A tendency to depoliticize the discussion about the gangs is inherent in
8

Introduction

studies that downplay the importance of state violence in favor of an analysis
that invokes a more general barrio violence that has origins in, and is intertwined with, social exclusion.27 This is a second knotty theme within discussions about gangs in the Central American region. Using declared war as
the marker, a deductive argument gets made that because Honduras had no
such war, the wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua could not have
much explanatory power in relationship to the Maras and, by extension, if
these are “LA gangs,” war has no significance whatsoever because Los Angeles has not been the site of declared war since 1846. Yet Honduras has had
extraordinary state terror, as the Honduran sociologist Leticia Salomón discusses in her work. Official wars are not all that is at stake in terms of histories of political violence. Nicaragua, which had a war, has far less violent
pandillas. The war was different: the 1980s Contra War was not about Nicaraguan state terror against its own population, and the destruction of political
groups in Managua did not take place on the scale of that in Guatemala City.
No doubt many distinctions could be added. In emphasizing the influence
that the means and results of state terrorism have had on the history of the
Maras in Guatemala City, I keep company with the political scientist José
Miguel Cruz, who urges researchers to complicate their analysis of gang life
in San Salvador and go beyond focusing on the “back and forth” between
San Salvador and Los Angeles by giving greater consideration to the impact
El Salvador’s long war has had.28
The related question in the literature is, simply put, whether or not the
gangs are “LA gangs.” The relationship between Maras in Los Angeles and
those in Central America is a subject that has attracted scholars, particularly
given the interest in global and transnational studies, as well as journalists
and agencies such as Homeland Security. The dynamics of the cross-­border
movements of youth and organizations between Los Angeles and San Salvador, and the effects of these on urban geography that Elana Zilberg and
Juan Carlos Narváez Gutierrez analyze, seem more intense than do those
between Los Angeles and cities in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala,
where a murder in Pico-­Union at dawn does not spell a killing in Guatemala
City at dusk, to use Narváez Gutiérrez’s example.29 But even in the case of
San Salvador, what does it mean, as José Miguel Cruz asks, that most youth
in San Salvador’s gangs have never been outside of El Salvador?
The topic of the consequences of peoples, institutions, and cultures moving across borders is a vast one. At least since the heyday of the Mexican
Pedro Infante movies and on through Mexican rock ’n’ roll, Pink Floyd,
heavy metal, and so on, Guatemalan youth have felt the effect of “world”
youth cultures. Because of immigration and new forms of communication,
The Rise and Fall of Tomorrow

9

they do now at an amazing rate. There is a difference between living in Guatemala City and listening to the Beatles and living in Guatemala City and being
on Facebook with kin, even with their U.S. friends, in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Yet either way, the manner in which youth interpret and use received culture is not determined by that culture, and questions concerning how it is
understood and how it changes remain. Discussions about the global processes acknowledge the fundamental importance of “local actors” and conditions.30 The young man in cholo-­style pants who related to me the ms-­13
“born in Ramparts” story and used codified hand gestures from LA street
gangs is part of an “imaginary community” whose members may never cross
borders.31 As we talked, we stood in front of his mother’s barely roofed-­over
two-­room home in Tierra Nueva II, a shantytown partly inhabited by war
refugees and their children, and one with a turbulent history of political mobilization and demobilization. He has no work, and he left school because,
as he puts it, it was “a waste of my time.” His gang world in Guatemala City
is as much if not more about the close-­ups of political, economic, cultural,
and social geography as it is about the Los Angeles that he and others evoke.
Although Adiós Niño looks at the Maras at three levels of analysis—the transregional, the national, and the city—it privileges the last two.
To situate the young men and women in these gangs in Guatemala City’s
barrios and in Guatemalan history does not mean that the Maras are not informed by events, cultures, people, and commerce beyond national borders,
as I make clear. Likewise, to argue in favor of the Maras’ historical specificity does not imply that the Guatemalan gangs do not share similarities
with gangs elsewhere in the world where cities have high rates of unemployment, drugs, violent officials, and a population in which almost 50 percent is under twenty-­five years. No doubt for youth everywhere, there exist
versions of the banners on the border between Guatemala and Mexico that
advertise the wages, three meals a day, and “security” offered by Zeta, the
Mexican drug mafia.
Unfortunately Guatemala is not the only country in the world in which
anxious elites try to handle the growing numbers of those excluded from
the labor market through forms of terror, and convert those without steady
work into a central piece of their politics of “citizen security.”32 In addition,
it is hardly the only country where state terror has a home. The manufacture
of slow and horrific deaths by sovereign power is not so uncommon, and
“the state of exception” is less exceptional than suggested by much scholarship about modern political power that has concentrated heavily on political
control through the smooth operations of social engineering. Guatemalan
military and civilian professionals learned terrorism from their counterparts
10

Introduction

from, among other places, Algeria, Argentina, France, Israel, the United
States, and South Africa because, from Europe to Africa and other parts of
the world, the modern condition has included acts of genocide and political control through psychologically and physically crude and sophisticated
methods of inflicting pain. Moreover, ritual mutilations and the savor with
which they have been carried out belong to a few centuries’ worth of modern cross-­cultural, racist, and political atrocities that include the lynching of
African Americans and grotesque massacres of Native Americans enjoyed by
victimizers and onlookers. Whether public or private, state terror has been
a part of a modern global times in every continent, and so have the consequential troubled individual and collective subjectivities.
Especially within the last few decades of the twentieth century and the
first of the twenty-­first, violent urban gangs have multiplied within what
Robert Desjarlais and Arthur Kleinman title “violence and demoralization
in the new world order.” It is not inspiring to younger generations that the
increase of poverty in countries that have immense wealth continues, and
that the world’s greatest material production is of the means to destroy life.
That this is accompanied by the ever-­creative market-­bound manufacture
of complex cultural arrangements consisting of images, sounds, and narratives that display varieties of violent deaths and make clear the adrenal
thrills and existential highs of killing, and sometimes of being killed, in
countless movies and other increasingly intimate forms of media hardly encourages what can be called “respect” for human beings among our world’s
youth or adults. Still, to talk of a “new world order” does not mean that the
world has become one place.
Childhood, Adolescence, and Violence in Guatemala’s Dumpy Modernity
Informed by Philippe Ariès’s much criticized yet indelibly influential book
Centuries of Childhood, the framework often used for studies of the history of
childhood and youth in Europe and the United States would by implication
allot the lives of many Guatemalan children and youth to the categories premodern or traditional or, most arrogantly, “underdeveloped.”33 Instead of
cataloging Guatemala as a “not-­yet” or a developing country, we need to
recognize it as a modern country, and its modernity is just what it is. The
juxtaposition of old and new, the so-­called traditional with the latest now
“modern,” the computers in homes without running water, the huipil-­clad
Maya girl who sells used clothes from the United States (that might have
been originally hecho en Guatemala) in front of a shelter for street children
sponsored by a Catholic center located in New York City; the sickly shoe-­
The Rise and Fall of Tomorrow

11

shine boy with his fashionable sunglasses; the rip-­off fashion jeans; and the
Che T-­shirts that fill the street markets to the fascination of foreigners and
nationals alike—all speak not only of poverty and creativity but also of a historically specific modern condition.
What might appear oppositional has been allied or unified into its own
field of the modern. By the year 2010, this capitalist modernity could not
provide Guatemala City with a safe walk or a regular—clean or dirty—water
supply in its mundanely named Zones 1–8, 11, 12, 17–21, and others not in
the confined wealthy areas, much less develop national wealth and distribute it to an increasingly poor population. More frustrating is the reality that
gains fought for and won at some point in the twentieth century—such as
the right to unionize, social security, land reform, a legal system, a living
wage, the extension of public education and medical care, paved roads, and
adequate bus service—have either been destroyed (unions, a living wage,
land reform), stand in permanent disrepair (roads, bus service, railroads,
public education), are continually falling apart (medical care, social security), or exist in name only (the legal system). As presented in James Ferguson’s Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian
Copperbelt, the resourceful and modern Zambian former copper miner named
George Kabamba, who is holding on to life despite being “destitute, sick,
living in rags in a leaky tent in a malaria-­ridden swamp,” would find kindred
lives in Guatemala.34
The Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel wrote that in Latin America,
modernity was born with the Conquest for both the conquered and the conquerors, as well as those imported from Africa as slaves. As many have argued, the brutalities of colonialism, slavery and forced labor, racism, spiritual suppression, and the robbery of common resources in the hundreds of
years since 1492 have been historically inherent to, and not an aberration or
disfiguration of, modern capitalist times. Exploitation and the superexploitation of the socially constituted “darker races”—whether through the postcolonial forced labor systems, child labor, sweat shops, or maquiladoras—
are not some gray transition toward the modern or the developed any more
than these are on the periphery of capitalism.35 Being situated on this violent
“underside” that is at once an ignored center has been the complex condition of Latin American and Caribbean modernity and capitalism, not a sign
that these are not there.
The construction of La Juventud played an especially important part in
this trajectory of modernity in Guatemala, where capitalist modernization
has meant keeping part of the population excluded from liberal rights. In
the 1860s, Enrique Palacios, a member of La Sociedad Económica de Amigos
12

Introduction

del País (Economic Society of the Friends of the Nation) who worked to
develop Guatemalan export agriculture and trade relations with England,
wrote clearly about the relationship between modern times and a Maya
population that he did not want to disappear in the blaring light of the new:
“The majority of the population will not be an active element of progress,
but rather an instrument [of it].”36 This instrumental majority was the Maya
labor force of children, youth, and adults on coffee plantations, one guaranteed through forced labor laws and other legal and extralegal mechanisms
of control. The sophisticated delegates to the Guatemala City 1893 Conferencia Pedagógica, who planned to implement innovative pedagogy nationally, equivocated when it came to the Maya, who composed most of the
population within the national territory. They concluded that the children
of los indios were to be given kindergarten education within plantations, one
adapted to their special condition as agricultural workers. For this reason,
it was decreed that “school hours be reduced to the minimum . . . without
exceeding three hours a day, finding in each area the time most adequate
with regards to the climate, the seasons, cultivation and other specific circumstances.”37 “Progress” depended on these “qualifications” within liberalism. Throughout the first part of the twentieth century and until 1944,
Liberal Party dictators obstructed the development of an all-encompassing
national citizenry; it was a privilege conferred on very few.
The social construction of La Juventud as non-Maya, urban middle- and
upper-class students became vital to the new nation. In the course of the
nineteenth century, La Juventud was projected repeatedly not only as a vanguard of modernity, but also as a solution to the so-­called Indian Problem,
the dilemma of how to build a “civilized nation” in a territory where the
majority were uncivilized “indios.” Initially drawn to John Locke’s notion of
a child’s mind as a blank slate, intellectuals concerned with the question of
building a modern nation and a citizenship saw public education as salvation. If children’s minds were blank, an ideal and monocultural education
could rescue children from the complexities of their family origins. At first
rejecting or ignoring social Darwinist ideas as these appeared in Guatemala,
they focused their attention on new pedagogies coming from Europe, and
thus their attraction for the German Friedrich Froebel’s kindergartens, especially (theoretically speaking) for Maya toddlers.38 But Guatemala could not
get away from keeping “indios” as noncitizens, who composed an exceptionally cheap labor force for its modernization through export agriculture.
That plans for a territorial-wide public education ran afoul again and again
did not stop the ideological uses of La Juventud, which grew to be an inflated
and racialized symbol. Children of los “indios” and of all rural people, fell
The Rise and Fall of Tomorrow

13

out of the category of La Juventud soon enough, leaving it non-­Maya and
urban.
In the late nineteenth century, Guatemalan elites and intellectuals marked
off infancy, childhood, and youth as stages in “the perfection of civilization”
and mankind.39 A veritable cult of La Juventud developed around annual
Festivales de Minerva of the Liberal Party dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera,
in which costumed schoolchildren and youth paraded around cardboard
floats representing “La Ciencia” in celebration of “El Progreso.”40 By the
1920s, adolescence had become a keyword in national discourse. At midcentury, President Dr. Juan José Arévalo, one of Guatemala’s premier statesmen, an educator, and author of La adolescencia como evasión y retorno, saw the
cultivation of adolescents as the nation’s most urgent task to prevent what
he described as the psychological disease of fascist and feminine submissiveness that threatened human history. He urged creating strong masculine leaders through his innovative Escuelas Tipo Federación (Federation
Schools) school system.41 After the 1954 coup, it was above all the political
Left that kept alive a mythology around La Juventud to the effect that it had a
revolutionary essence and a responsibility toward the nation, now redefined
in terms of “el pueblo.”
Although infancy, childhood, and adolescence have been constructs used
by Guatemalan professionals to describe so-­called universal truths, these
“stages” have not been widespread experiences. For the well-­to-­do minority,
childhood and adolescence have long pointed to times and spaces of private schooling; art and sports lessons; university education; foreign travel;
long engagements; clubs and parties; and, for fifteen-­year-­old girls, elaborate quinceañeras, which are not, as they are among the urban poor, followed
by a life of paid or unpaid labor. For decades, having or not having this adolescence has been inside the consciousness of all city youth, whether they
are poor or wealthy. It has become a “norm” in which the majority of youth
do not participate. The notion of teenager, with its connotations of volatility,
rebellion and fun, was not employed until the second half of the twentieth
century, when it became an aspiration of many.42
In contrast to representations of urban youth as either a heroic vanguard
of modernity or a decadent plague, at no point has there been a homogeneous “Youth.” Embedded in distinct kin life and history—and growing
up within particular class, gender, cultural, and community constructions,
experiences, and relationships—children and young people are heterogeneous, and they have varied relationships to power. Looking at specific
young lives yields the complexity of the general issue of being “young” and
the limitations of framing childhood and adolescence as “modern” or “tra14

Introduction

ditional” or of defining a society or culture as “child centered” or “adult
centered.” This is a city where, at the beginning of the twenty-­first century,
child labor is significant within the family wage economy, and so is the all-­
important modern education that families see as a solution to their economic woes. Walter, a friend of mine who is adored by his parents, attends a
public secondary school and works at night in his father’s tailor shop stitching imitation Levi’s jeans to sell in the informal economy to style-­conscious
youth at colegios (private schools) in order to buy food in the open market for
his extended family.
Whether rural or urban, Maya or Ladino, prepuberty or postpuberty, most
youth in Guatemala have had little time or space for themselves, and the borders between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood have long been blurry
in the eyes of the beholders. A nine-­year-­old who looks after his relatives,
works, or both might be considered and treated as a young man, not a niño; a
fifteen-­year-­old soldier is a man; and a fifteen-­year-­old mother from las clases
populares is a woman. A pregnant fifteen-­year-­old from the upper classes who
can have an abortion in Miami is just a “niñita tontita” (silly young girl).
Street children are called children, no matter their age; gang members are
youth criminals, not children, no matter their age; and the elite have applied
the term niños to Mayas of all ages since the 1500s.
The institutions of public education and the law make distinctions between age groups, even if the wider community and the work world do not,
and the state violates its own codes. Legal minors end up, illegally, in adult
prisons. Children can legally work at age fourteen, yet children under fourteen have been and continue to be agricultural, construction, transport,
domestic, and sex workers; vendors of goods and services; and laborers in
high-­risk jobs in the production of limestone, coffee, and fireworks, as well
as in high-­risk situations along the border with Mexico.43 In the new times
of the 2000s, the large Legumex factory, part of the “modern” as opposed
to “traditional” sector of the economy, employs children under fourteen
from 7 am until 7 pm to cut hundreds of pounds of vegetables and fruits
daily for export. They stand in cold water, receive one half the Guatemalan
minimum wage, and get no benefits.44 These children are having their childhoods; they are not short adults in an old-­fashioned society. Disappointing
adults, exploitation, abuse, and violent everyday upheavals have made small
delights too scarce and dependency on adults too fragile. For decades there
have been children and youth who have figured that they might be better off
on their own.
In Minor Omissions, one of the few volumes concerning the history of Latin
American children, Tobias Hecht suggests that the study of children is indisThe Rise and Fall of Tomorrow

15

pensable to the understanding of the larger society and ought not be subsumed within the history of women and families.45 I add that it is especially the marginal minorities among the young—such as war orphans, gang
members, and youth who make homes in the streets—who reflect and address central problems and not subcultural or subsidiary ones. Sitting at the
intersection of the personal, subjective, social, and familial on the one hand,
and larger categories such as modernity and capitalism on the other, young
people are uniquely located, and through them our historical lens widens.
We can see the mareros of today that way: a warning about all the points of
that complex crossroads.
“The Law of the Conservation of Violence”
The state terror that went on before the war escalated in the 1980s was horrific enough, but opposition to it and an explanatory discourse about it
prevented it from being absolute. Children who grew up in the late 1970s
formed the Maras from within a broad social imaginary of class solidarity
that still persisted in the early 1980s. But state violence escalated rapidly, intensifying in ways that were clearly traumatic.46 In response to a first draft
of this manuscript in which I described several massacres, an anonymous
reader for Duke University Press who was astutely cautioning against substituting shocking description for analysis wrote: “[A] concern I have . . .
[is] the explicit representations of army violence. . . . I understand why it is
important, [but] I found the chapter deeply traumatizing—arbitrary details
haunted me for several days after reading it. I wonder whether it is necessary to traumatize the reader.” The violence in Guatemala cannot be communicated adequately, as is suggested by the many discussions concerning
the crisis of representing the reality of the unimaginable. That is part of the
power of an “excess of reality,” of something that cannot be real and is real.
Yet depictions and approximations must be made in order to avoid furthering the silence surrounding it, leaving it as if incomprehensible and isolating those who experience it.47 Trying to place the reader closer to these
experiences is an attempt to communicate reality. The manuscript reviewer
was right on the mark to find the material traumatizing. Trauma is exactly
what readers need to know.
In his book How Societies Remember, the sociologist Paul Connerton argues
that the body “re-­enacts the past” of social history by “conveying and sustaining memories” through inscription and incorporation.48 I am not suggesting that killing people is a “cultural posture” in Guatemala, although a
few cynics might. The insight that bodies reenact society’s past at least sug16

Introduction

gests the possibility that the extreme violence of the mareros in the postwar period is a mimetic way of having or storing the war, especially because
it is neither completely remembered nor completely forgotten. Someone is
“acting out,” to use Dominick La Capra’s formulation, what went on without a clear idea of it.49 Pierre Bourdieu puts a similar thought in motion in
other terms when he writes about the assault on the welfare state in Europe:
“You cannot cheat with the law of the conservation of violence: all violence is paid
for. . . . The structural violence exerted by the financial markets, in the form
of layoffs, loss of security, etc., is matched sooner or later in the form of suicides, crime and delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, a whole host of
minor and major everyday acts of violence.”50 In Guatemala, this “law of the
conservation of violence” is complicated by war, trauma, and the silences
about both, which is not to say that Guatemalans are all suicidal and criminal, but the “whole host” is everywhere evident.
Despite the lack of immediate and satisfying answers, the question of the
relationship between history, violence, and trauma must be kept in mind.
There is too much extreme violence and trauma in the world to risk leaving
aside the historical weight of these realities on the grounds that we do not
fully understand them. Cathy Caruth has suggested that being traumatized
by what breaches “the mind’s experience of time, self and the world” is necessary for surviving the unimaginable. To be traumatized is constructive in
the face of destruction.51 This paradox, in which the displacing of what cannot be “placed” due to the inability to absorb the unimaginable—this distancing from experience even as it happens, as well as afterward, as protection—has a terrible catch to it. The experience, in one way or another,
returns “uncontrolled and repetitive” to have a strong continued life “because violence inhabits, incomprehensibly, the very survival of those who
have lived beyond it that it may be witnessed best in the future generations
to whom this survival is passed on.”52
This study does not prove a relationship between trauma, the “law of the
conservation of violence,” and escalating postwar violence of the Maras in
Guatemala City. However, it is a plea to pay heed to the historical agency of
horror and trauma, an entreaty that adds fuel to the argument that should
need none concerning the urgency of breaking public silences and ending
impunity. If the law of the return is valid, and if Guatemala does not end impunity, “claim” its experience, and know its history, then it might drown in
another sea of blood in the name of nothing. Ordinary Guatemalans need
be the protagonists of their history and bring the entire miserable crew that
has engineered this apparatus of political violence to justice, and then some.
Healing is an elusive concept, and if healing means the restoration of mind,
The Rise and Fall of Tomorrow

17

heart, body, and soul, it may never happen. Truth telling and trials cannot
change what Martín-­Baró calls the “underlying problem of the traumatogenic social relations that are part of an oppressive system that led to war.”53
Over and above telling the truth and bringing the guilty to justice, the whole
social, political, and economic structure needs transformations based on
human solidarity and our revolutionized imaginations.
Part of the problem concerning the evolution of these gangs is that the
revolutionary groups did not think much about the gangs at all. In the
1980s, representatives of revolutionary groups called mareros lumpen or—
worse—spies, and turned their backs on them. This helped leave youth open
to recruitment by professionals, including those in army intelligence, for
whom violence is the means of business. Why turn our backs on gangs?
There is nothing at all wrong with a gang as a type of social organization.
Youth form groups as spaces in which to speak emotional truths, refashion
identities, and cultivate their own opinions and voice. The strong points of
the powerful relationships among young people who have been marginalized can be intense trust, loyalty, friendship, and love, as Aragon’s beautiful
cover photograph of two boys living out on the streets suggests. Perhaps
the life expressed in their faces and in the gentle gesture of one boy’s hand
on his companion’s arm can avert the death foretold in the fumes the other
sniffs from the glue bottle he clutches.
The Structure and Genesis of This Book
Adiós Niño is a history of the present dedicated to not saying good-­bye to
children. This introductory chapter has placed my basic argument within
discussions about the gangs, and in the framework of the larger history of a
modernity that has its constructions of young people and its uses for them.
Chapter 1, “Death and Politics,” describes in broad terms the two historical periods—the 1950s to the 1980s, and the 1980s to the early 2000s—that
formed the universe in which Maras evolved. It gives the background, and
sometimes the foreground, for the material presented in chapters 2 and 3,
in which many of the events, people, and places first presented in chapter 1
reappear as the camera focuses in, so to speak, on the Maras and specific
aspects of city and national life. Chapter 2, “1980s: The Gangs to Live For,”
takes the reader back to the times in which the Maras first appeared, and
chapter 3, “1990s and Beyond: The Gangs to Die For,” follows them forward
into the 2000s. Titled “Democracy and Lock-­Up,” chapter 4 continues by
discussing the discourse around delincuencia and citizenship, and the rise of
a prison system that revives violence to presumably ensure democracy and
18

Introduction

citizen security. The concluding chapter, “Open Ending,” concerns the alternatives that young men and women who leave the gangs face.
I am an oral historian, which in this particular case involved doing fieldwork and writing down my observations as well as conducting interviews.
The research for this book took place over more than a decade in different
parts of the city, including some in which I lived, and in different settings,
ranging from homes to shelters for the homeless. I spoke and spent time
with youth in and out of the Maras, social workers, psychologists, neighbors, parents, and others, some of whom I came to know personally. Those
whom I quote are cited, and dozens more are not, even though in one way
or another they are all present. Conversations varied: some went on intermediately for long periods of time, and others were short; some were structured or semi-­structured interviews and others were informal. In addition
to fieldwork and interviews, I have also drawn on newspaper articles by investigative journalists, essays and reports by professionals, and other published material, including surveys and data on gangs gathered by a variety of
organizations that each have had their own researchers and perspectives.54
No one book can do everything. With luck, this study about what Saskia
Sassen calls “concrete localities” can serve others in the community of
people studying gangs in Guatemala and elsewhere in Central America to
deepen knowledge through comparison and contrast.55 I hope this book will
also help the English-­language reader to comprehend Guatemala and empathize with its people, who constantly revitalize their lives.
In the final months of my writing and cutting and more writing and
more cutting of this manuscript, the still-­life paintings of the Italian painter
Giorgio Morandi repeatedly came to mind. Over and over again, he painted
similar objects, which entranced him and whose integrity he wished to respect. This book feels “over and over again.” It has been a long time in the
making. I first studied the gangs before my first child, Ana, was born in 1987
in Guatemala City. After my second child, Jasmin, was born in 1990 in New
York City, I returned to Guatemala to look at the general question of urban
youth. After taking up residence in New York City and then in Boston, I kept
coming back to Guatemala City to see my friends, do research, and finish
Hacer la juventud: Jóvenes de tres generaciones de una familia trabajadora en la Ciudad de
Guatemala, which was published in 2005. Mareros kept coming my way, especially while, accompanied by my daughters, I kept meeting street children.
The last time I talked with a young person in a Mara was in 2008; I was
alone, an older woman from the United States. Have I been the adequate
or appropriate person to write about youth gangs? Can we “fit” in some
psychological, sociological, or historical sense with what we study? It has
The Rise and Fall of Tomorrow

19

become customary for scholars to make arguments about why they are
suited to their particular topics and themes. I cannot make any claims that I
am a good match: I did not grow up in Guatemala City, much less in a gang
there or anywhere; I have never spent more than a night in jail, and not in
Guatemala, and so forth. It is simply that one thing led to another.
Because I wanted to understand how ordinary people make exceptional
history, in the early 1980s I researched and wrote Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954–1985, a book about urban labor activists who fought
for life against all odds and who ultimately turned state murder around into
an inspirational tool and thus kept their dead compañeros present, and life
meaningful. Still living in Guatemala City in the mid-­1980s and working
with a new research institute, I and others researched mareros for a political reason: we needed to understand these new gangs because the publicity about them that was creating new fears in a wartime city was based on
absolutely no information. Subsequently it became hard for me to let go of
this thread, especially after it was clear that the opposite of what had protected the sanity of the labor movement was under way: murder was and is
being utilized to indeed kill life. I spoke with street children who were joining ms-­13 and m-­18 in the late 1990s, and most of those youth are dead.
One young man, Estuardo, an m-­18 member murdered in 1998 by ms-­13,
was dedicated heart and soul to historical memory, and his most important
memories were of his mother’s memories. Because I knew Estuardo and
other youth, it fell to me to write this book.
Morandi kept painting those bowls, bottles, and other containers over
and over, a bit differently each time. Writing this book, I kept drawing and
redrawing the same terrain over and over, reframing the material from the
same interviews again and again. Looking at his paintings and my manuscript, I worry that the gang members are too shoved against one another,
that they do not have space to breathe, and don’t quite emerge, that the table
or surface upon which they rest is not wide enough. Hopefully this book
gives enough so that readers can pick them up and look at them again with
the consideration and compassion they all deserve.

20

Introduction

DEATH AND POLITICS, 1950s–2000s

I feel terrible when I talk about all this. I don’t want to upset [anyone].
—Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Rodrigo Sic Ixpancoc, ex-­soldier
of the Guatemalan Army, El Periódico, November 4, 2010

“To Remember Is to Feel a Knife Tear into You”

S

itting on a chair in small apartment in Guatemala City’s Zone 3, Victor
recounted that in 1985, when he was fifteen, he and his friends founded
Mara Plaza Vivar Capitol with companionship and competing in an upcoming break dance competition in mind. But a few months later, he explained, Army Intelligence (g-­2) stopped him and a few others who were
hanging out in a semi-occupied shopping center on the main strip of the
shabby downtown Sexta Avenida in Zone 1, shoved them in a van, and took
them to a military base, where they received a few days of training. Then,
in his words, “They took us up to the mountain in a truck with some nicas
[Nicaraguans] to some village . . . and we had on rubber boots and pretended to be egyptos [members of the guerrilla group Ejército Guerrillero
de los Pobres (Guerrilla Army of the Poor, egp)], the nicas called a meeting
and people [the villagers] came and the soldiers came down all of a sudden
and killed everyone . . . [it was] a massacre.” He went on to say that he was
soon dumped back on to Sexta Avenida, and within days he had taken off
to Mexico in fear of g-­2 because, he said, “the others [the mareros with him]
were killed.” In Mexico, he worked with the Mexican drug ring La Eme for
many years. At age twenty-­eight, a full thirteen years later, he said, he returned in 1998 to a changed Guatemala City and joined Mara Salvatrucha
(ms-­13), which had arrived in the 1990s.
The abrupt and murderous military intervention that changed Victor’s life
almost beyond recognition in 1985 is a small version of the experiences of

1

millions from 1980 to 1996, when over 100,000 primarily unarmed people
died violently in massacres that came at dawn like thunderbolts, and millions fled without destination. Marked by this history, Victor mentioned only
fragments of it to me. We spoke in 2002, six years after the Peace Accords
officially ended the war. Victor told me that he has no idea what the war was
about. He said, “It just was.”1
The 1996 Peace Accords that formally stopped the thirty-­six-­year war between the Guatemalan military and revolutionary groups over Guatemala’s
destiny brought tremendous relief because, at last, the war had ended.
Among other important agreements, the Accords mandated constitutional
amendments to redefine Guatemala as a multicultural nation, limit the
army’s mission, resettle displaced peoples, allow civil society groups, and
reform the judicial system. However, virtually none of its provisions were
or have been implemented because, basically, the war concluded with a victory for the Guatemalan military, the state, and the economic status quo,
and with the demise of a long revolutionary era.2 To begin to understand
how deeply this defeat cut into and transformed Guatemala City in the last
decades of the twentieth century, when the Maras evolved, it is necessary
to appreciate that since the 1954 coup that overthrew a democratic government, the very existence of strong resistance to oppression and repression
was as important as the oppression and repression. In the decades following the 1954 coup, many Guatemalans understood and portrayed the power
of the state and of wealthy elites as temporal and historical, not absolute.
Even with its ups and downs, the popular movement made exploitation and
state violence in some way or another provisional because these could be assaulted by demonstrations, strikes, occupations, and citywide uprisings, as
well as by a social imaginary that made challenging domination possible.
The movement generated the knowledge that violence is the political tool of
the state and of elites. From that perspective, Victor’s 2002 understanding
of the war indicates a loss of ideological mooring; the war was not something that “just was.”
In other words, what ended with the Peace Accords was more than the
civil war. A way of knowing the world and acting within it had been shattered. The dynamism of an urban subculture of class solidarity wherein
jokes get made, songs created and heard, leaflets written, small newspapers
mimeographed, banners painted and seen, and political conversations held,
was no longer there. To put this into the subjective and emotional framework in which life is lived: the ability to give voice, the “euphoria of ethical
activism,” the existence of a sense of historical purpose on a grand scale,
and the vivacity and hope that animated the popular movement had pre22

Chapter 1

vented people from succumbing to fear for generations; then, abruptly, all
that life was lost and death emerged exultant.3 After decades of struggle
against what was widely perceived as an immoral political economy, the
chance for an immediate alternative was vanquished. Grinding into dust the
project of progressive social change cut down collective understandings of
life as humanly malleable for humanistic aims. By the twenty-­first century
these visions seem to have become charred remains of plans for a future
that required a revolutionary human praxis. What could have been memories
of deaths that served to secure revolutionary victory now elicit despair and
anger because so many died in vain. In 2010 an artist from the generation
of the 1970s said with infinite sadness: “To remember is to feel a knife tear
into you.”4
Political violence in the second half of twentieth-­century Guatemala
was spectacular. It exceeded that of other countries in the Americas: Guatemala had the highest per capita number of “disappeared,” it was one of two
countries where acts of genocide took place, and it was there that the worst
military massacres on the continent happened.5 Guatemala was also distinguished in this period by the force of its popular and revolutionary movements. The depth of the state violence that did not stop them is one measure
of their profundity, and so are the even greater horrors that it took to finally
destroy them.
Violence takes many forms, has varied consequences, and conjures up
different images.6 The extreme forms of political violence that overtook
Guatemalan history and came to have a cultural weight and political role
in it, held together and overlapped with structural, symbolic, and everyday
forms of violence.7 Yet these are not all equivalent. Given that violence is
varied and embedded in daily life, we need to distinguish a limited sense of
this term and concept to capture the violence that “consciously or purposely
breaks into the inner existential shell of a person i.e. into that room in which
there is no other hiding place. A room from which there is no escape, the
body of the human being.”8 To make explicit the varied worlds of power,
hope, pain, and conflict in which the youth who joined gangs grew up, this
chapter continues by contrasting two periods, 1954–80 and 1980–2000s, decades during which the kind of violence that converted life into a “space of
death” emerged as a historical protagonist, as if on its own.9
Normal Guatemalan State Violence: 1954–1980
Guatemala was politically globalized on a grand scale in June 1954, when, in
full anticommunist armor, the United States allied with Guatemalan elites
Death and Politics, 1950s–2000s

23

to violently end the country’s singular attempt at a democratic reformist government, one based on electoral politics, civil liberties, and national capitalism. In the years that followed the famous 1954 coup, a symbol of Cold War
politics everywhere, the United States and the Guatemalan military and political and economic elite developed a system of rule consisting of electoral
politics supported by a liberal constitution that guaranteed civil liberties and
of constant state terrorism. These forms of sovereignty went hand in hand.
The United States showcased Guatemala as a model of its foreign policy of
promoting democracy, poured in investments that furthered manufacturing
and large-­scale capitalist agriculture, and collaborated with the Guatemalan state to build an extensive system of terror based on thousands of informants and on death squads that brought so-­called subversives into secret
centers and slowly tortured them to death in the tens of thousands.10 During
the apogee of electoral democracy, modernization, and economic growth
under the reformist government of Julio César Méndez Montenegro (1966–
70), death squads disappeared an average of forty-­three persons every five
days.11 This durable arrangement lasting decades distinguishes the Guatemalan experience from those of countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and
Chile, where the suspension of constitutional rule signaled comparatively
shorter periods of outright military rule and terror.
This mix of terror and constitutional rule started in the wake of the 1954
coup. In the months following it, many 1944–54 government officials and
supporters were charged and often shot or imprisoned for “subversion”
under anticommunist legislation. But soon thereafter and especially after
armed opposition emerged in 1960, activists and their friends and families rarely went to jail. For the most part, punishment meant death, and it
happened without accusations, trials, bullets, electric chairs, firing squads,
or gallows and trap doors. Death arrived slowly via ropes, bites, sticks,
matches, knives, machetes, fingernails, rocks, and blowtorches, by means
that were, to quote Michel Foucault on the ancien régime, “inexplicable phenomena that the extension of man’s imagination creates out of the barbarous and the cruel.”12
Foucault’s discussion of the creation and reproduction of the body politic
through mechanisms of discipline and punishment offers insight into modern Guatemala, although with a twist. The types of violence and physical torture of bodies that Foucault argued were foundational to an archetypal ancien régime underwrote capitalist modernization and constitutional rule in
Guatemala. In the case of Guatemala, in Foucault’s formulation of the biopolitics that manufacture the life of members of modern nations as “a power
bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather
24

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than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit or destroying
them,” the words “in addition to” need to replace “rather than.”13 Foucault
recognized the rule over life through death.14 He conceptualized sovereignty
as the ultimate power over life and death, but he wrote that a shift occurred
in the modern age: “One might say that the ancient right to take life or let
live was replaced by a power to foster life. . . . Now [in the modern period] it
is over life, through its unfolding, that power establishes its domain; death
is power’s limit, the moment that escapes it; death becomes the most secret
aspect of existence, the most ‘private.’”15 In post-­1954 Guatemala, death
was not “power’s limit.” The death-­squad tortures produced death that was
not “simply the withdrawal of the right to live.” These tortures rested on the
“whole quantitative art of pain,” calculated to “carry pain almost to infinity.”
The death squads’ vocation was that “art of maintaining life in pain” in ways
not unlike those that Foucault describes in great detail as “the spectacular
of torture.”16
One difference is that these slow tortures were not part of the sort of
public spectacular to which Foucault refers. Instead, a phenomenon perhaps more insidious and even more terrifying replaced this or added a new
dimension to it. Within the death-­squad system, grotesque torture to create
the most painful death occurred in secret, but the catch is that almost everyone in the city knew about it. It was on view within the imagination because
the bodies turned up, and their gashes and mutilations told stories. Foucault wrote that in ceremonies of public execution, “the main character was
the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance.” He thought that if execution took place in secret, it “would scarcely
have any meaning.”17
But what if “real and immediate presence” is in the imagination, a sort
of modern individual private theater that everyone had? The scarred bodies
provided the public performances in which the mind’s eye had to do a horrible double work of staging the scene and being its impotent spectator at
the same time. Where does the mind go when the newspapers report in detail about a man who turns up dead in a ravine, burned with a blowtorch
on the stomach and elsewhere, his tongue cut out and his face beaten in so
severely that his lips were swollen and his teeth broken, or about a woman
and her baby found tortured and murdered? Her breasts had bite marks and
her underclothing was bloody. Her two-­year-­old son had had his fingernails
pulled out. What the bodies told of their deaths became the public spectacle. That bodies appeared with their proverbial “signs of torture” “reactivated” state power because the agony of an excruciating death was on full
display, a spectacle of what happens and can happen to anyone, one that
Death and Politics, 1950s–2000s

25

takes place first somewhere unknown, and a second time in the imagination.18 This death-­in-­life state barbarism was already part of politics before
the massacres of the 1980s, the period many call “the war.”19
What the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben delineates as the “camp,”
in reference to concentration camps established at various points in modern
history and most notoriously by the Nazi Party, in which “the most absolute
condition inhumana ever to appear on Earth was realized,” belonged to Guatemalan death-­squad victims over and over for decades in concealed locations and to the imagination of those who were not there, except that they
arrived in their mind’s eye, without presence or power, again and again.20
Tortures seemingly beyond the power of conceptualization, much less execution, went on, conceived and executed. This was national political rule,
not a concentration camp, not a strategy to exterminate a group from the
body politic, but a strategy to control the entire body politic. Those who were
not tortured—the witnesses who had no access to the event that they had
to actualize in their heads—were not called upon to coproduce this system
of terror, as Germans were in their acquisition of and complicity with anti-­
Semitism in what the historian Claudia Koonz calls a “Nazi conscience.”21
Racism against Mayas saturated and saturates national life, but the Guatemalan state organized fear and sadism, not Ladinos (the common term for
non-­Maya), against an urban popular political movement that included both
city Ladinos and Mayas.
In the late 1970s, Gabriel Aguilera Peralta, Jorge Romero Imery, Enrique
Torres-­Lezama, and Ricardo Galindo Gallardo did quantitative research on
Guatemalan state violence in the post-­1954 period. Their findings were published in Costa Rica in 1981 under the title Dialéctica del terror en Guatemala.
Many have repeated and none have improved on the book’s principal argument for the years 1963–79. Dialéctica del terror details how the counterrevolutionary state renewed its power through waves of terror.22 When popular
discontent and mass struggle advanced, so did state brutality, which in turn
caused social conflict to decrease, and with that so did state violence. Made
even more determined by the repression, the popular organizations then
took advantage of the diminished repression to emerge with even greater
force and so forth until, so the authors optimistically believed, the movement would inevitably triumph. Tragically, even before the book’s publication, Romero Imery and Galindo Gallardo were kidnapped. Imery’s mangled
body turned up months afterward, and Galindo Gallardo was never seen
again. By then the state had started to turn its “normal” terrorism into a
massive terrorist onslaught that upended predictions about an ultimate
backfiring of violence.
26

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Years later, to clarify the base level of “normal” state violence before
1980, the archdiocese report on human rights violations, the Recuperación de
la Memoria Histórica (Recovery of Historical Memory, remhi), memorably
noted: “For decades—and not including the war—the appearance of tortured corpses was part of waking up every morning, whether reading the
newspaper or traveling footpaths and roadways.”23 Footpaths and newspapers: this violence was rural and urban; it has always been and remains
today much worse against the Maya population in the countryside. At the
same time, in this period state terror had a specific visibility in the city. The
several daily newspapers covered demonstrations and assassinations and
carried photos of the disappeared and of severely disfigured bodies. And
because Guatemala City was at once the country’s political, administrative,
financial, and industrial capital, it was central to protest and repression. It
concentrated spaces of power that ranged from the national public university, with its radical schools of law, engineering, journalism, and medicine;
to the land government agency to which peasants brought their disputes; to
the offices of the labor union headquarters and the rooms where clandestine revolutionary cadre met; and to the “Telecommunications Center” that
housed state intelligence and loomed tall behind the National Palace for all
to see. Terror and state violence permeated everything from jokes to literature. There was hardly a poet, essayist, or novelist of the period who did not
write about it; a journalist who did not report almost daily on it; a visual artist who did not represent it; or a city resident who did not know of someone
“disappeared.”
The Power of Life
The Lazarus-­like urban popular movements that these 1954–80 levels of
state sadism failed to destroy had strong wellsprings. One was the indelible
legacy of the 1944–54 years, which was sustained by the quick underground
regrouping of Guatemalan communists after the coup and by the overwhelming popularity of that brief era.24 Although the ten years of reform
government were not utopian ones, they represented a new Guatemala. For
government to have even contemplated, much less realized, a land reform,
improved working conditions, housing, day care, and medical attention,
constituted a historical miracle in a country with a centuries-­long history
of the vast majority’s subjugation. A new Guatemala was not a dream: it had
happened once, it was taken away; and it could happen again.
The 1944–54 nationalist discourse rooted in the concept of self-­
determination of nations became markedly anti-­imperialist after the coup.
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27

This radical nationalism was reinforced by the 1959 Cuban Revolution, an
event with specific resonance in Guatemala because it validated armed revolution in contrast to the decision made by President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 to
not take up arms against U.S. military intervention. Radical nationalism resulted in a serious challenge to the Guatemalan state, when anti-­imperialist
military officers in Guatemala City tried to stage a coup in 1960 and, in the
wake of their failure, started the country’s first armed guerrilla movement,
one that was soon informed by Marxism and strengthened by students who
entered its ranks following a citywide insurrection in 1962.
Anti-­imperialism, versions of Marxism, and radical nationalism were
powerful ideologies among many, including professors, workers, lawyers,
and schoolteachers—the latter being a group vital to the 1944–54 leadership and one whose influential union stayed on the Left. Intertwined with
these views was the unfolding of remarkable changes in the church that reverberated throughout Guatemala. Clergy and lay religious workers who
were revolutionized from being supporters of the status quo to instigators
against it, made the Gospel an argument for class militancy, and configured
Jesus as a militant who blessed the struggle of the poor against the rich.25
The effects of this potent combination of perspectives included the growth
of the labor movement and the disruption of many disciplinary institutions,
including the urban public school system.
The Normal Schools, the teacher-­training institutes that presumably
“normalized” youth to “normalize” other youth, are one instance of a breakdown and an inversion of the machinery of sovereignty. Opened in the 1880s
to regulate youth by ingraining the small and large features of discourses
and bodily social behavior that would perpetuate the national status quo
as it shifted in the late nineteenth century, the Normal Schools were basically militarized until the 1944 Revolution. In accord with its social aims,
the generation of 1944 revolutionaries intentionally reshaped the Normal
Schools into progressive and internally democratic institutions that defined
nationalism in terms of specific programs for the popular social good, for
instance, land reform and labor laws, and that trained free-­thinking leaders
destined for national prominence.26 After 1954 and for decades thereafter,
the students, teachers, and even administrators of Normal Schools held on
to those ideals, and graduates were more likely to join radical groups or turn
into leftist professionals than become stolid and conformist cogs within the
disciplinary machinery (see figures 1.1 and 1.2). Hardly a school term passed
without a major protest in Guatemala City’s Instituto Normal Central para
Varones or the Instituto para Señoritas Belén, to name the two most prestigious public teacher-­training schools for boys and girls, respectively.
28

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FIGURE 1.1 Student review parade at the Instituto de Varones, a ­Normal
School, Guatemala City, 1914. The Liberal Party dictator Manuel
­Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920) mandated that military studies be added
to the positivist curriculum. These students were emblematic of the
­educated youth who, if obedient, symbolized “Progress and Order.”
­Photographed by José García Sánchez. Credit: José García Sánchez. Desfile del
Instituto de Varones. Ciudad de Guatemala, 1914. Colección de José García Sánchez.
Fototeca Guatemala, CIRMA.

FIGURE 1.2 Student demonstration against the militarization of government, Guatemala City, 1960. Soon after the 1954 coup against the reformist government of Jacobo Árbenz (1951–54), girls, boys, and young
women and men organized FUEGO in schools such as the Normal
Schools and boldly took to the streets to demand rights. Many of these
students joined the armed struggle in the countryside that started in
1961. The prominent sign to the left reads “FIRE, NOT ASHES.” Anonymous photographer. Credit: Anónimo. Pancartas y carteles de la manifestación en
contra del Gobierno de Ydígoras Fuentes. Ciudad de Guatemala, Julio de 1960. Archivo de
fotografías de El Imparcial. Fototeca Guatemala, CIRMA.

The shallow discourse of anticommunism and developmentalism could
not fend off the associative enthusiasm that resounded in the city. The
regime’s political economy brought little or no hope to Guatemala City’s
emerging working classes during a period in which manufacturing, transport, and the service sectors grew.27 Developmentalism permitted urban social programs to flounder and brought new industries that hired mean managers, paid miserable wages for long hours of hard work, neglected safety,
and had no respect for employees or labor laws that permitted unions and
guaranteed conditions. The post-­1954 coup Constitution’s guarantee of liberties such as the right to organize and to form electoral parties encouraged
labor unions and other urban groups to try to use it in their favor, with few
successes. Again and again state brutality threw off track trade union and
grassroots legal struggles as well as campaigns for structural change by reformist politicians.28 With the failures of progressive electoral parties and
the chronic inability of the Ministry of Labor to address labor disputes in the
background, by the second half of the 1970s many people had grown weary
of legal means and were attuned to ideas about armed revolutionary change.
This was especially the case after the state responded inadequately to a 1976
earthquake, as well as following an October 1978 uprising in Guatemala City
that united workers of the state and private sectors, students, and neighborhood youth and other pobladores, who went on strike, barricaded streets, took
over barrios, and fought security forces to bring the city to a complete halt.
They successfully prevented a ten-centavo bus fare increase and raised the
minimum wage. It took this urban rebellion to make these hardly revolutionary changes, and victory was short lived, because a flood of kidnappings
by state agents and the refusal of authorities to actually grant a new wage
minimum quickly followed. It is impossible to think that the youth who
grew up in Guatemala City and joined Maras in the early 1980s missed this
weeks-­long episode of the urban population in open revolt.
Between the 1954 coup and the 1980s war, urban children and youth and
the adults surrounding them lived in many milieus, and not just one of terror, that both directly contested terrorism or “simply” kept sensibilities of
humanism and solidarity vibrant. The public face of what could be called a
plebeian culture of people united by social class and a tumultuous history
that had an unfinished air because the 1954 coup had derailed a new Guatemala was constantly visible. It was evident in so small a detail as the pleasure taken by most residents in the annual Huelga de Dolores (Strike of Sorrows), in which masked students disrupted the city with their satiric floats
and placards making fun of the country’s dominant institutions. It was
even more apparent in the May 1 marches, which did not primarily honor a
Death and Politics, 1950s–2000s

31

distant past of repression and worker unrest. Every year Guatemala City’s
International Workers’ Day march and rally revitalized itself by directing
attention to that year’s ups and downs, and by the flow of old and young eloquent speakers who called for immediate changes and kept alive notions of
alternate possibilities. All this had the effect of restraining despair and unfocused angers. During all these years and right into the 1980s, there were
no especially violent youth gangs in the city. Going at least back to the 1940s,
boys and young men sometimes joined minor street gangs called pandillas
that engaged in petty crime and brawled against one another without dominating or tormenting neighborhood life or killing one another.29
For decades the social life of many boys and girls and young men and
women in the popular urban areas had more or less centered, for better or
worse, on romance, tedious low or unpaid work, family, school, sports, and
even church activities. Within the context of everyday life the discussion
groups and the social improvement agenda of the Young Catholic Worker
movement attracted youth in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, when more
radical priests and other religious figures drawn to liberation theology had
influence and support in the barrios.30 Although young people knew about
state terrorism, its tactics belonged to an “other side” that had not yet overtaken the city, and not to their side of the proverbial tracks. In the 1970s
young people were often students in the politicized public school system
and/or workers who sometimes joined labor unions (or at the very least
knew about them), neighborhood betterment associations, street protests,
or, hand in hand with their families, the land invasions that followed the
1976 earthquake. They lived near older militants and others in neighborhoods that were milieus of active class solidarity. A trade unionist characterized his neighborhood in La Parroquia, Zone 6, in the late 1970s with the
words “when it came to demonstrations everyone went.”31 At least they did
up to a point.
The War in the 1980–1990s
The military made a qualitative leap in its methods in the 1980s that had
continuities and ruptures with the state violence that preceded it. Of course
it continued to be extremely cruel. Among other changes, an official suspension of the Constitution legalized state barbarism; it became massive
and aboveground; uniformed soldiers and members of official Civil Patrols
rather than death squads committed it; and it came very fast to quickly reach
unparalleled levels of sadism, even for Guatemala. This upsurge in terror
affected the city drastically, and it had far worse results in rural Maya com32

Chapter 1

munities, where the military committed acts of genocide premised on its
racism and its historic fear of Maya rebellion. In the Maya highlands, the
military had a strategy that was, to quote one army official’s unknowingly
perfect formulation of necropolitics, “planned down to the last detail to destroy every sign of life.”32 This intensified war’s aim was, for once and for all,
absolute annihilation of, rather than containment of, popular movements in
both city and countryside.
Writing about the countryside, the historian Greg Grandin places the
start of this escalation in March 1978 in the town of Panzós, Alta Verapaz,
when army soldiers fired an unarmed crowd and killed over thirty Q’eqchi’
Maya women and men who had gathered to discuss threats to their lands.
In the city, where tens of thousands of urbanites protested what they immediately named “The Panzós Massacre,” there was in 1978–79 a sharp increase in kidnappings in Guatemala City. It could be argued that the police
firebombing that killed over thirty people who had peacefully occupied the
Spanish embassy in January 1980 to protest and publicize the war in rural
areas made the war “official” in the city. What followed left no doubt that
the state had declared all-­out war there. Uniformed police kidnapped students from the funeral march for those killed at the Spanish embassy a few
days after the assault on it. Thirty-­one secondary and university students
and factory workers were kidnapped in one day during the May 1 protest
that year. On June 21, the narcotics squad division of the National Police
“disappeared” twenty-­seven trade unionists in broad daylight out of a labor
central’s office a few blocks from the National Palace. On July 14, uniformed
police shot and killed nine students and injured forty more on the University of San Carlos campus. On August 24, seventeen trade unionists were
kidnapped from a presumably secret meeting. By September 1980, the open
popular movement had shut down, and the revolutionary groups endeavored to stage hit-­and-­run propaganda actions in the city.
In the first few months of 1981, the Guatemalan Army formally stepped
in. Soldiers, tanks, and helicopters launched a full-­fledged urban counterinsurgency, destroyed the safehouses of the revolutionary groups, and killed or
captured dozens of cadre, while others fled to the mountains.33 Even though
the city seemed a graveyard, some thought the coordinated revolutionary
fronts would respond to this urban counterinsurgency with an urban offensive, as had recently happened in Nicaragua. These supporters felt part of
a national guerrilla military campaign because at the time the Guatemalan
Army started its scorched-­earth campaigns in 1981, the population of entire
parts of the largely Maya departments of El Quiché, Huehuetenango, the
Verapaces, and Chimaltenango were supporting and joining revolutionary
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33

fronts.34 Residents—especially those in the poorer areas of the city, where
the distinction between city and countryside is blurred by the steady movement of people between them—heard bits and pieces about both advances
of the guerrillas and the army’s massacres in rural areas during the early
1980s, but it took time for city people to realize how weak the revolutionary
fronts were. Left-­wing discourse still remained relevant in Guatemala City
despite the army’s advances. When the Maras first formed in the early 1980s,
the military’s use of violent death was already proving to be a definitive way
to control life in rural areas, but the gangs did not utilize death in that way,
or at all.
One Becomes, and Is Not Born, a Killer
According to the United Nations Report of the Commission for Historical
Clarification (ceh), in the first years of the 1980s, the army and other state
forces committed 91 percent of the human rights crimes carried out between 1962 and the 1996 Peace Accords.35 These crimes consisted of 626
massacres that left more than 100,000 people dead, more than 55,000 children orphaned, and well over 1.5 million internal and external refugees.36
Of the 626 massacres between 1960 and 1996, 554 took place between 1981
and 1982. By the close of those two years, the number of dead later counted
as victims of acts of genocide was complete. The Guatemalan Army was unconstrained, the guerrillas could mount no large military offensive, and the
international community remained silent. Massacres that the Guatemalan
anthropologist Ricardo Falla has described as “collective torture,” rather
than battles, constituted these campaigns, according to the thousands of
testimonies collected by the un ceh and the Guatemalan Archdiocese.37
When the military escalated the war, it obliged a large percentage of the
Guatemalan male population to participate in turning the death-squad system of sadism into public spectacles in hundreds of “red” and “pink” zones
in the countryside.38 The army involved hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly Maya, in causing “pain almost to infinity” to hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, who were in their majority Maya, in a short period
of time. As a case in point, in a twenty-­four-­day period the Maya municipality of Rabinal in Alta Verapaz alone experienced twenty-­eight massacres
in which around five thousand people were killed, representing almost 20
percent of the population in that area.39
Part of the manufacture of death was the production of those who killed,
as in any war, but in this case that did not include relying on or constructing
patriotism and an image of an ideal nation for which war must be waged,
34

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except in the most superficial sense. Manolo Vela Castañeda’s research on
the military shows that the regime did not build an army in order to pursue
“war in the name of life,” to use Foucault’s description of twentieth-­century
war and genocide.40 Bereft of the support of the urban majority in the early
1980s, frightened to wade into the waters of openly recruiting from among a
concentrated population that had as recently as May 1, 1980, marched under
banners of “democracy and socialism” in numbers of over fifty thousand,
the military made little attempt at propaganda designed to win the city over
to, much less explain, the war. For a few months in the early 1980s, General
Efraín Ríos Montt, Pentecostal and chief of staff, gave Sunday “sermons”
on television to explain the “crisis” as a moral one that could be answered
only by “cleaning house.”41 In kind with other urban war propaganda, his
talks aimed to frighten and not to convince. In this period, the army television channel showed the Guatemalan Army’s pride, its elite force of killers
called the kaibiles, “cleaning house.” They grabbed hens, pulled the feathers
out, and ate them live with the animal blood splattering all over their contorted faces.42 On other channels, these scenes of kaibiles interrupted soap
operas.
The principal mechanism for constituting a fighting force to massacre in
the countryside took place in the countryside, where military commanders
forced Maya males into the army. For the most part they were rounded up
in village markets, then hauled away on trucks to military bases, where they
were barbarized through three months of abuses to turn them into cruel
soldiers who lacked any trace of idealism.43 In his unpublished manuscript,
Rodrigo Sic Ixpancoc, from Rabinal Baja Verapaz, describes what happened
to him: A local military commissioner arrived at his home to inform him
he had to “ir a comer arroz [literally, to go eat rice]” and serve in the army.
During his three-­month training, he was beaten repeatedly, stripped naked,
not allowed to eat or sleep for long periods, screamed at—“Chicken,” “Indio
shit,” “Guerrillero”—tortured, taught to torture, and told that “if his mother
was a guerrillera, an india shit, he had to kill her.” His manuscript describes
details that repeatedly emerge in the un ceh’s Memoria del Silencio report of
training that included the promotion of Maya self-­hatred, beatings, rape,
and even debt peonage among its forced recruits. This was a war devoid of
love between officers and soldiers or among soldiers or of nation.
Recruits spent twenty-­seven weeks receiving instruction in absolute obedience and “contempt for life and the savoring of violence.”44 The recruits
repeatedly recounted the presentation of pointless murder as if it were an
exhilarating event. As one reported, a training instructor “yelled to me,
‘Hurry, you are missing something good.’ And when I got there they only
Death and Politics, 1950s–2000s

35

had one of the boys [referring to three either recruits or civilians brought
into the base] left, and they were cutting off his head. That is what I was
missing.”45 Recruits were exhorted to take the so-­called step of death: killing someone as a proof of competence. Instructors encouraged recruits to
compete with one another in designing ways to torture the communist guerrillas. One recounted: “The instructors gave lessons and awoke the creativity
and the imagination so that each one would think of a torture even more refined than the last. One said he would take off the guerrillas’ shoes, make
a wound and put salt and lime in it. The next invented something else. He
would poke out eyes with needles and on it went.”46 At the end of 1981, military commissioners organized the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (Civil Self-­
Defense Patrols, pacs). The pacs incorporated all male villagers between
fifteen and sixty, armed them with sticks and machetes, and ordered them to
rape, steal, murder, and massacre in their neighboring and sometimes their
own communities, or be killed (see figure 1.3).47 At the height of the war,
the pacs included almost one million Guatemalans in a country of eight
million; over 40 percent of the entire male population was forced or socialized into fratricide. A former pac member stated that these groups were not
created to protect villagers, as the military had claimed; instead it was, he
said, to “kill our own brothers. . . . We are all are sick with what they made us
do.”48 The pacs carried out almost one-­half of the massacres in some areas
under the orders of military commanders.49
The murder of children is perhaps the strongest example of the design to
inflict “infinite pain.” In massacre after massacre, soldiers drew and quartered or decapitated children with dull machetes, raped them, and ripped
the unborn out of pregnant women in front of relatives and other community members.50 In one massacre, an entire village had to listen to the gang
rape of one small girl for hours before she and the others were killed. In a
variation of this, soldiers raped mothers in front of their children.51 People
remember the massacre at Cuarto Pueblo in 1982, and they told how soldiers put “wires, red, red hot from the fire into them [the villagers], stuck
them into their mouths, and all the way down to their stomachs . . . not
caring if the person was a little child.”52 In the case of the community of Río
Negro, on March 13, 1982, soldiers and Civil Patrollers entered the village,
pulled people out of their homes, ate breakfast, played marimba music,
made women and girls dance with them, and raped the youngest ones. A
survivor testified that the soldiers then killed 70 women and 107 children; in
the words of one witness, “they hung some from the trees, they killed others
with machetes and they fired at others. They took the little children and
threw them against the stones.”53 In another massacre, soldiers went into a
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FIGURE 1.3 The uses of youth: this photograph of Civil Patrollers in the
countryside, July 1985, suggests the ages at which almost one million males, for the most part Mayas, were obliged to join the Civil SelfDefense Patrols. Behind them, children watch. Credit: Anónimo. “Patrulla de
Autodefensa Civil” organizada durante el conflicto armado interno. Guatemala, 28 de Julio de
1985. Archivo de fotografías de El Gráfico. Fototeca Guatemala, CIRMA.

hamlet and seized twelve men and boys and twelve women and girls. After
directing the women and girls to get twelve hens and pots, they ordered the
sons to kill their fathers. A witness stated, “If the son was the one not complying, then the father had to stain his hands by killing his son.” After that
the clay pots with the twelve hens inside were put on fire, and the women
began to cook. A survivor testified: “The army screamed at them to make
sure the food was well-­prepared. . . . While the food cooked, the men died
and the soldiers burnt them. . . . When they were all burned up, they [the
soldiers] applauded and started eating.”54
The above descriptions come from survivors in answer to set questions
asked by human rights researchers in the late 1990s. Despite the problems
involved in taking testimonies, witnesses of massacres detailed how in community after community, large numbers of soldiers arrived before dawn and
quickly set up what can only be called death spaces in which they “destroyed
every sign of life.” The military did not miss much in its calculations. Soldiers burned the houses and fields, ate the animals, arrived on religious
days, made sure the children and the unborn died first and in the most horrible ways, poisoned wells with dead bodies, and killed the esteemed elderly
with old work tools.55
Perhaps the words beyond words of a survivor of the massacre of 350 of
his fellow villagers at the Finca San Francisco in 1982, words that he used to
describe his state of mind when he arrived in a Mexican town after fleeing
across the border, break though the numbing literal descriptive style of the
accounts given to human rights workers, and open onto the sheer incomprehensibility of existence and knowledge in the aftermath of an episode that
obliterates the known world: “Is it 11 in the morning? I arrive in Santa Maria.
Like a drunk I cannot see if it is daylight. I come without sadness. I think
nothing. Without food, without food, without a jacket. Without clothes. I
am nobody. Without a hat. Completely nobody.”56 Another villager who had
fled that massacre testified that a soldier had taken out a child’s heart and
put it to his mouth.57
After the 1980–83 massacres, the army expanded its control over territory and local structures and placed survivors in resettlement camps that
provided food, work, and Pentecostal services, and thus it could be said
that it started cranking up the machinery of life, such as it was. By the early
1990s, the majority within the military high command felt secure enough to
start a years-­long period of negotiating to reach a final accord. As victor, the
military could began to advertise the new discursive reality of “peace” and
“democracy.” The guerrilla fronts still existed, and they engaged the army in

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skirmishes, but the fronts had lost popular support definitively by the late
1980s, and the 1996 Peace Accords ended an armed struggle that was already
over.58
How could this war, terrible in the city and much worse in the countryside, not have an effect on the evolution of urban gangs? However formulated or expressed—whether in ways very fragmented, hardly unrecognizable, or more colored in—all this history and all those who lived through it,
got around. Millions of people suddenly left one place and went to another,
and sometimes on to others. Thousands fled into the mountains, where
some joined hidden settlements called Comunidades de Pueblos en Resistencia (Communities of People in Resistance) to live off the land, and thousands crossed the border into Mexico, where many went into refugee camps.
Others became undocumented immigrants who either stayed in Mexico or
traveled to the United States, where they disappeared in large cities, especially in the Los Angeles area in the 1980s and 1990s. It is estimated that
between 50,000 and 200,000 left the country, yet 1.3 million fled the four
hardest-­
hit highland departments.59 Uncounted numbers of displaced
moved about within Guatemala.
At least fifty-­five thousand war refugees came into Guatemala City and
quietly moved into the poorest areas of the city, where, if they were Maya,
they often shed their clothes and languages for fear of being pursued. The
mother of Estuardo, an ms-­1 3 member killed by Mara-­18 (m-­1 8) in 1998,
escaped into an area of Guatemala City called Tierra Nueva I after a massacre killed the other members of her family in the early 1980s. In 1984, at
fourteen, Edgar Guarchaj came from the Department of El Quiché to live
in the streets of Guatemala City to make money to send back home so that
his father could pay another man to serve his shift in the pac in order to
have the time he needed to work his land to keep the family alive.60 Edgar
remained tied to his family and stayed with relatives in the city, but thousands of orphaned children turned up on Guatemala City streets. Soldiers
even brought orphans to a group home for children. In the words of a social
worker there: “The same army [that massacred] would bring these children
and say that so and so ‘was the only survivor of a battle’; to us this meant of
a destroyed hamlet. This was very hard. . . . These children did not talk, at
first we social workers thought that they were deaf mute, but little by little
we discovered it was from the trauma of being present at the assassination
of their parents and of their community. . . . We did not dare keep records
for fear of reprisals, and we became human archives.”61

Death and Politics, 1950s–2000s

39

Human Archives in Los Angeles
Escaping war and seeking opportunities, tens of thousands of Guatemalans and Salvadorans went to California in the 1980s and 1990s, where they
were pulled toward the long-­standing Spanish-­speaking neighborhoods of
Los Angeles. Norma Stoltz Chinchilla and Nora Hamilton discuss how large
numbers of these immigrants settled in Pico-­Union, a part of Westlake,
located within the Ramparts division of the Los Angeles Police Department
in the southern central part of Los Angeles, an area relatively cut off from
others by freeways and other obstacles. They brought a new presence to this
small dense world, one of the poorest areas of the city and 80 percent Hispanic by the 1980s. Life there was as difficult as in the worst of urban areas in
the United States: the average income was $15,000; it had an 85 percent high
school dropout rate; and it was plagued by crowded schools, overcrowded
housing, inadequate services, and a dearth of recreational facilities, conditions that would deteriorate with the recession of the early 1990s.62 This
was a period of urban deindustrialization and the deregulation of government programs such as drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers and English
as a Second Language classes. As in other cities in the United States facing
similar problems in these especially hard times, gangs and drugs dealers increased in Pico-Union and neighboring areas.63
Los Angeles, including Pico-Union, has a long history of gangs, written
about by James Diego Vigil and others.64 Gangs and youth clubs probably
date from the White Fence in 1929, which was started to protect Mexicans
and Mexican Americans from racism. The story of gangs in Los Angeles history includes the heyday of zoot suit cultures of African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Mexicans in the 1940s, and the more recent Crips and
Bloods. According to Vigil, none of this was characterized by excessive brutality toward others or themselves. What Vigil calls “escalating violence”
in the 1950s and 1960s was “self-­contained” and involved “set battles.” He
writes, “The modern notion of the ultraviolent street gang or predator did
not prevail.” Major transformations came with crack and guns in the 1970s
and 1980s, and sharpened in the 1990s, with the incorporation of gang members into the Mexican drug ring La Eme, and the arrival of Central American
youth marked by war.65
Numerous writers have emphasized that ms-­1 3 and m-­18 in Guatemala
City are Los Angeles gangs because they started there; nonetheless, they
also started as specifically Guatemalan and Salvadoran gangs in Los Angeles.66 Boys and young men who came from Guatemala and from El Salvador, where twelve years of civil war ended in 1992, brought memories of
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war-­related experiences that had to be recontextualized in the midst of new
difficulties of racism, rejection, and unemployment in an unfamiliar city.67
Especially given the push within academia to go beyond the boundaries of
nation, it has been tempting to treat these gangs as a “global” phenomenon
because of this Los Angeles nexus, as well as the Mexican one. Then again,
even though these youth move across borders and experience the transcultured worlds of Los Angeles and of Mexican towns and cities, and they
pick up meaningful slogans, names, institutional frameworks, and tactics—
for example, the Southern United Raza (the nonaggression pact between
gangs)—they are still what cultural historian Peter Fritzsche calls “bounded
subjects” whose subjectivities had been shaped by the “national experience”
and whose bodies are sometimes literally scarred by the nation-­state.68 In
their studies, James Diego Vigil and Tom Hayden both connect the violence
of the Central Americans gangs in Pico-­Union to state barbarism in Central
America.69
From my perspective ms-­13 and m-­18 could well be placed inside an as
yet unwritten history of ex-­soldiers from Central America that someone
should research. An ex-­soldier from either the Salvador Army or the rebel
army nicknamed Flaco Stoner founded Wonder-­13 in the 1980s to defend
his compatriots from Mexican Americans gangs. It soon became known as
Mara Salvatrucha, to honor its Salvadoran members, although it welcomed
Guatemalans and Hondurans excluded from other Latino gangs.70 In addition, with the numbers of Central Americans coming into the area, youth
from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras took over an older, once Mexican American, 1950s gang known as 18th Street and later called m-­18, Mara­18, or Barrio-­18.71 The impact of both military training and the more general
war experience was evident to them and to others. The Los Angeles Police
Department heard that ms-­13 gang members were “outstanding” in their
cruelty because they had been trained by no less a talent than that of the
U.S. Special Forces in El Salvador.72 Neighbor youth noted that these gangs
of Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Honduran youth brought a new level of
violence to the area, which soon provoked escalations of violence in other
gangs. One young man in Pico-­Union described the change in m-­18 after Salvadorans took over: “[Before] they [m-­18 members] were junior high school
guys . . . like punks in the way they dressed, T-­shirts with skulls and long
hair. . . . The truth is later [m-­18] became so large and so different from the
cholo gangs, this stuff of just looking for violence and no more than that . . .
they [the Salvadorans] just kill [because] some bato [dude] gives them an
ugly look. . . . They always shot to kill.”73
Ernesto Miranda, another founding ms-­13 member and ex–Salvadoran
Death and Politics, 1950s–2000s

41

military solider explained the intensity of ms-­13 brutality: “[In Salvador]
we were taught to kill our own people, no matter if they were from your
own blood. If your father was the enemy, you had to kill him, so the training during the war in our country served to make us one of the most violent
gangs of the United States.”74 In the following description, a perceptive and
astute young man in ms-­13 captures this connection between the heightened cruelty of Salvadoran and Guatemalan gang members in Los Angeles,
and the state terror in their home countries:
The difference between the Mexicans and Salvadorans or Central Americans in general is this: Mexicans usually come from states like Michoacán. They live in a small town and are mainly agricultural. They do have
violence from feuds, drug war, or now LA barrio violence. Generally
speaking, they are not initially violent when they come to the US. El Salvador and Guatemala are another story. It was common to walk out of a
tienda and see a street splattered with brain particles and blood. People
in Guatemala were getting kidnapped and tortured to the point of insanity. In the main university in Guatemala City, students were forced
to give classes due to the fact that all the professors had gotten smoked,
one by one. . . . If you reach the age of 15 in Guatemala without having to
identify [the body of ] a relative you were blessed. These people [Guatemalans] saw carnage that even the Faces of Death [snuff videos] chose
not to use.75
In his view, the pornography of snuff films, with their raw footage of—
among much else—real life in real-­time rapes, massacres, train crashes,
murders, and bodies flying out of exploded buildings, cannot hold a candle
to the experience of violence inside the social wreckage of a collapsed moral
universe in which you leave your everyday corner store to find brain particles
all over the street outside.
With the many sweeps that the Los Angeles police made in the Ramparts
District, members of m-­18 and ms-­13, including Flaco Stoner, ended up in
the California prison system, where (accounts claim) they made tight connections with La Eme. When and why a deadly rivalry between ms-­13 and
m-­18 started is not clear, but it predates the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (ins) massive deportation of Central Americans back to
their countries of origin. What started as a trickle of ins deportations in
the early 1990s turned into a flood that included incarcerated gang members by 1996. Taken from prisons and flown home in shackles, these deportees brought with them ms-­13 and m-­18, as well as whatever slogans, clothing styles, hand signals, and vocabulary had not already traveled to Central
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America through the media and immigration. ms-­13 and m-­18 absorbed
and reorganized local Maras in Guatemala City into clikas with names such
as “Los Locos,” which then formed the base of the ms-­13 or m-­18 pyramids.
Each clika was under the supervision of a veterano; veteranos designated palabras (words) who communicated between the clikas. Members of m-­18 and
ms-­13 with whom I spoke in Guatemala City in the late 1990s told me that
the youth of each clika had their identities affirmed by going through initiation rituals—for instance, receiving the ms-­13 baptism of thirteen blows
to the body and the cult knowledge of the changing meanings of the gang
symbols that came from Los Angeles.
“Shadows of War” in Guatemala City
The war and its aftermath combined with changing demographics and an
economic crisis to alter Guatemala City. Neoliberal restructuring programs
affected Guatemala City, as they did Los Angeles and other cities around
the world. Perhaps no more social services, for instance public clinics, got
eliminated in Guatemala City than in Pico-­Union, but residents had even
fewer resources at the outset. The substantial industrial development that
took place in the 1950s and 1960s under the Central American Common
Market had already started to unravel by the late 1970s as a consequence
of the 1973 oil crisis. The cutbacks in production in workplaces such as the
large unionized cavisa glass and acricasa thread companies turned into
shutdowns in the last two decades of the twentieth century, making worse
already drastic problems of gainful employment in a city that was booming
demographically. Low-­wage maquiladoras, the sole growth industry in the
1980s and 1990s, did not offer enough jobs to compensate for those lost in
the 1980s, much less create new ones in a city with one of the world’s highest growth rates. The population had gone from less than a million in 1975
to almost three million by 1996, with those under twenty-­five constituting
over one-­half the urban population.76 The áreas marginales, exceptionally poor
areas (see figures 1.4 and 1.5), grew as they never had before: of 161 identified in 1998, a full 111 formed after 1991. A 1996 survey of áreas marginales
found that 34 percent of the households earned less than a “survival” income.77 Most analysts argue that war refugees, whom the sociologists Santiago Bastos and Manuela Camus evocatively name “shadows of war” in a
study of urban settlements, account for their rapid growth.
Even though the displaced in the city rarely spoke directly about the massacres in fear of the consequences, which included reprisals, new designations and much else signaled the war.78 Where once rural-­to-­urban migrants
Death and Politics, 1950s–2000s

43

FIGURE 1.4 Two boys standing around on a stretch of the Avenida Bolívar
in Zone 8, Guatemala City, a city with little to offer youth, 2000. Credit:
Andrea Aragón.

FIGURE 1.5 A mother, Guatemala City, 2002. The city streets hold out
even less for young people with children. From the series Inhalando
muerte. Credit: Andrea Aragón.

had identities that reflected their work and place of origin—the tailor from
Todos Santos or the saleswoman from Totonicapán—now there were refugees, victims, ex-­soldiers, ex-­p acs, survivors, widows, and orphans. Like
those who went across borders, war refugees in the city carried terrible
memories into a situation where they were often alone, with few to console
or understand them. Despite their silence about the war, in one way or another they communicated their feelings as well as some version of their experiences to their children and others. Because human rights workers generally did not gather testimonies in the áreas marginales, the memories of
these refugees in the city were not reconstituted and affirmed as part of a
“collective war memory,” however complex that notion, its production, and
its uses may be.79 Without some community in which to develop a collective understanding of how mistrust, uncertainties, anger, hopelessness, and
fear are grounded in specific events and people, all these sensations became
unspecific and even more overwhelming because they seem to have no roots
outside of a blur called “the situation” that was out of their control.80
The growing number of poor areas and the presence of a war-­related migrant population constituted one shift in urban life. Another was that the
more established city neighborhoods changed radically in the late 1980s and
1990s because they all but lost their politics to the state terror.81 Neighborhood involvement became tied to the infrastructure of global nongovernmental organizations (ngos) by the early 1990s. In many areas, vertically
structured civic life replaced the horizontal political life of the earlier period.
The number of ngos increased dramatically, and institutions representing
city and state departments, such as the medical clinics and pharmacies run
by the municipality with funds from the Ministry of Health, diminished. In
contrast to the 1970s, grassroots groups became few in number and only
local in perspective. This meant that grassroots agency and everything that
went with that—from starting from scratch in someone’s front room and
getting up the nerve to go door to door, to developing analysis, strategy,
and tactics in relation to the Guatemalan state and its agencies—had all
but died off. By the 1990s, community improvement committees generally
sought financing and advice from hierarchical agencies with international
ties. Outspoken residents became entangled in trying to win changes “from
above” rather than in mobilizing “from below.” With many ngos working
in barrios, competition about funding from these agencies often divided
community leaders. Communities tended to become further depoliticized
because the ngos encouraged residents to resolve their problems through
the medium of the ngos, instead of bringing them to the attention of the
broader public and the state, as had grassroots organizations in the 1970s,
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when neighborhood residents boldly inserted themselves into national politics (see figure 1.6).82 To confound this new absence of horizontal solidarities, the barrios had lost to state violence the left-­wing religious workers
who had envisioned creating “God’s kingdom on Earth.” Tierra Nueva, later
called Tierra Nueva I, started by a liberation theology priest in 1976 and
where the Mara Las Cobras was born in the early 1980s, is an example of a
community built with a new world in mind.
The history of its offspring, Tierra Nueva II, illustrates the deep political
change in barrios. In 1985, the teenage son of a religious left-­wing organizer
of the original Tierra Nueva I launched Tierra Nueva II with his friends. A
Mara called Mara Nene were born with the invasion; it was part of its “heat,”
as one described the marero support for the new community.83 But within
a few years, the combination of well-­funded ngos and selective state violence undermined the power of the original organizers and of their visions
for a community-­run Tierra Nueva II. Death threats forced one organizer
into exile and others out of activism. What was once a rivalry about break
dance contests between the Maras Nene in Tierra Nueva II and Las Cobras
in Tierra Nueva I became a violent one over territorio that included neighborhood streets, stores, and women’s bodies. Las Cobras destroyed Mara Nene
at the end of the decade and went on to become violent within the gang and
neighborhood.
Much had changed in these milieus. By the late 1980s and increasingly as
time passed, dozens of Pentecostal sects dominated Tierra Nueva I and II
and other areas. Trucks mounted with sound systems blasted taped messages of sin and salvation incessantly to summon residents to services that
went on during the day and evening for hours. Unlike liberation theology
adherents, most pastors believed, in the words of one, that “the poor will
always be with us. The poor choose to be poor.”84 Pentecostal pastors emphasized that nothing could be done about the fact that life was hell, and
this portrayal of earthly impotence and hopelessness resonated in the wake
of the defeat of projects for social change.85 The Pentecostal message emphasized the constancy of crisis and the absence of human control outside of individual willpower about the individual self. Nothing could have
seemed truer. These churches grew like wildfire. For young people, this city
life in the 1990s bore few traces of the experiences and ideas of the popular and revolutionary movements of the 1970s. The majority in Guatemala
City was under eighteen, and what were startling transformations for older
generations made up normal life for young people. This was a city that was
losing its cultural texture, one in which people continually experienced the
instability of the nation’s relationship to its past.
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47

FIGURE 1.6 The neighborhood of Esperanza in Mezquital, Guatemala
City, 2005. Fifteen hundred families led a land invasion in 1984 to
establish the urban settlement of Mezquital in Zone 12. War refugees
were among the tens of thousands who came to live here. Over the
years, Mezquital has been the scene of the twists and turns of grassroots organizations, nongovernmental organizations, state repression,
Pentecostal churches, Maras, community initiatives against Maras, and
“social cleansing” campaigns. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

The growth of violence following the war is notorious, and it happened
in this urban crucible stripped of its political and ethical past. Today, Guatemala City is one of the most dangerous places in the world, with an average
of a murder by gunfire “for every hour of the day,” as one newspaper journalist phrased it.86 The Guatemalan human rights ombudsman Sergio Morales stated that in 2008 there was more violence each day than there had
been daily during the war.87 Most deaths are by gunfire. Most of those who
die are youth. By one count, 80 percent of gun-­related deaths are of youth
between fifteen and seventeen.88 This violence is generally not related to
the political views of those killed, but that too continues. Women and men
who have opposed mining companies and hydroelectric projects, occupied
unused lands to prevent starvation, and sought to protect the environment
have been killed, and so have workers trying to unionize.
There is complete impunity. In the wake of the war, the state has shown
itself either unwilling or incapable of preventing crime. The new National
Civil Police, the presumably reformed police mandated by the Peace Accords,
simply does not pursue criminal investigations. A 2002 study revealed that
for every hundred cases reported to the judicial system, only ten received
any response at all, and in 2005, only 1 percent of those accused of “crimes
against life” were ever brought to a hearing.89 Mental health professionals—
who seem the chroniclers of the period—report that this impunity causes
despair, fear, paranoia, physical illness, and rage ignited over and over by
helplessness. Impunity has led to the formation of barrio vigilante groups
that beat up and even kill real or supposed young criminals. Impunity means
that there exists absolutely no buffer between the community and crime except community action, which can take many forms. Impunity functions as
a model whereby transgression of the law is seen as the normal way and the
only way.90
Violence has taken a long journey. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, notions
of violence were qualified and analytical. Violence was not perceived, understood, discussed, measured, or judged outside of a particular context. Although in countries such as Colombia, the term “La violencia” was a familiar one, it was uncommon in Guatemala. Whether in social science and
humanities publications, banners, or the bulletins of campesino leagues,
Maya cultural organizations, urban trade unions, and university and secondary student groups, violence was represented as state terrorism, structural
and everyday oppression, and armed self-­defense. Not only the revolutionary movement but also the popular movement and many religious figures
defended armed violence as necessary and just. It was not until the 1990s
that the defense of revolutionary violence and people’s war became increasDeath and Politics, 1950s–2000s

49

ingly subdued in the face of military successes. The military has never muted
its defense of its actions, which it defines as “restoring order,” the opposite of the chaos of violence. It justified its own behavior, which it never
called violent, in terms of “social cleansing,” or it used the language of the
Cold War National Security Doctrine to argue that the cancer of subversion
needed to be cut out, a medical rather than a military phrasing.
Now ubiquitous, the unqualified term “La violencia” started to be used
after the decisive massacres of the early 1980s, and it has held different
meanings depending on who uses it, where, and when. It became a code
for state violence for survivors who lived under military rule. For some, “La
violencia” was and has remained a euphemism for state violence, a way for
survivors to speak about the past in seemingly apolitical, and thus protected,
language. It also became a way for the army, Pentecostals, and others to describe “El conflicto.” For many, especially younger generations, “La violencia” (and not the history of popular movements, guerrillas, state power and
military strategy, struggles for land and higher wages, ideas, and ideals)
tells the story of Guatemala’s past. Within this vision, a faceless “La violencia” consumed the past, and the present must be protected from it. The
historically focused Memoria del silencio report, which analyzes causes and assigns blame, has been poorly circulated in Guatemala. For those who attend
school, most curricula deal superficially with “El conflicto” and “La violencia” as the past from which Guatemala has evolved into a “post-­conflict”
democratic society.91 This new public sphere rhetoric of “conflict” and
“post-­conflict” suggests that conflict—surely a necessary condition of a
healthy society—is negative. Whether the issue is land invasions or protests
against mining, anything that questions the status quo is viewed as negative
because it reintroduces conflict and drags to the foreground the muck of “La
violencia.” Progressive groups have had a hard time reclaiming a language of
resistance. Everyone must be nonviolent; otherwise they are part of “it.”92
In everyday talk now in Guatemala City, “La violencia comes,” “La violencia
arrives,” “La violencia prevents us,” “La violencia surrounds us,” “La violencia forces us,” “La violencia frightens us,” and so on. And “it” does all these
things.
Of 170 children under the age of eleven, questioned in 2010 in what the
National Civil Police call a “red” (high-­crime) neighborhood in Guatemala
City, 135 said that they had witnessed murders, and they could often describe in detail where the bullets went and the way the blood squirted out to
quickly turn clothing red. Given an average of eighteen violent deaths daily
in the first months of 2010, no doubt most of these children actually did see
murders, and not on television (see figure 1.7).
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FIGURE 1.7 Neighborhood residents watch the scene of a murder in
Zone 5, Guatemala City, 2005. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

Marco Garavito, head of La Liga de Higiene Mental, a mental health collective, describes how the police typically put up a yellow cordon around
the crime scene, but they place it right next to the body. “Why not at thirty
meters?” he asks with the enormous frustration because so simple a change
would help keep these deaths at least at a spatial distance. Children slip
under the ropes to look closely at the bodies, which are often of youth from
the neighborhood. If not literally known, the dead are familiar types, the
people the children might be a few years later. A reporter asks Garavito,
“What will happen to these children? What psychological damage will they
suffer, what will happen to them in the future?” Garavito replies, “It takes
no investigation to see that violence affects them . . . to the degree they become accustomed[,] they reproduce it. They see it as normal, natural.”93
To challenge this, La Liga runs a program that takes as its point of departure and arrival the notion that violence is a “decision, not an obligation.” If
young people have internalized violence as the natural means of living, they
assume life demands it, or in the words of the Liga, “obliges” it. To invert
this and say, “violence is a decision” denaturalizes it, makes it someone’s
responsibility, and brings youth back inside the “old” social imaginary of
cause and effect and human agency and away from the passivity of Victor’s
“it just was” discourse.
To return to Victor, introduced at the start of this chapter: In what massacre did Victor take part? Was he trying to impress or frighten with a tall
story? He gave slight information, but what he said could certainly be true.
The “high-­intensity” massacres were over by the time the army picked him
up, but “low-­intensity” ones continued. If he did make it up, he did not invent the material. Clearly he knew things about these massacres, and this
knowledge was part of his archive. His description was flat, without remorse
or horror. If the military did not seize and train him, and then take him to
the highlands to play a part in a massacre, perhaps he told this personal
narrative in order to belong somewhere in the larger Guatemalan story of
war, about which he had no shame or pride because he was part of what
“just was.”

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1980s: THE GANGS TO LIVE FOR

I joined because there was emptiness inside me, a little loneliness, a bit of sadness. Maybe we are all alike in this. I joined through a bunch of girlfriends with
whom I was very heavy. We’ve shared sorrows and joys. I think the Mara is a group
of people who need affection. Some of us want to escape the mess in our homes.
Sometimes we think we can create a new world.
—Researchers’ interview with Maritza, Mara de la 4, March 1987

W

hen he was nine years old, Aníbal López told his parents that he had had
a vision of an earthquake. A few days later, in the early morning of February 1976, a 7.5-­magnitude earthquake with an epicenter close to Guatemala City struck. More than twenty-­three thousand persons, most of whom
lived in conditions of poverty, died as a result of this tremor and a strong
aftershock, and tens of thousands more were injured and left homeless. The
López family’s rented apartment in Barrio La Florida, Zone 19, was badly
damaged, as were most of the over ninety thousand casas precarias (precarious homes) in the city.1 In late March, the López family was one of many who
joined a well-­organized land invasion led by a revolutionary Catholic priest
onto a defunct coffee plantation on the outskirts of Zone 7, not far from La
Florida. This response to disaster was the result of theological reflections
into the meaning of the earthquake between the priest and a small group of
residents in the old barrio El Gallito in Zone 3, a neighborhood so poor that
families lived in one room that served as all rooms. The group decided, in the
words of one member, “the earthquake had been a warning from el Señor to
leave El Gallito shantytowns” and develop “a communitarian identity.” They
christened their settlement Tierra Nueva.2
For a few years, a neighborhood committee that was inspired by liberation theology’s emphasis on building a here-­and-­now Reign of God on Earth
ran Tierra Nueva with “the notion of a little socialism in terms of solidarity”

2

and “without bars or houses of prostitution.”3 The settlement grew, and over
time residents mobilized to obtain water, electricity, paved streets, garbage
collection, and a sewage system. They provided themselves with a medical clinic and started discussion groups as well as a daycare center in part
financed by workers from the radical Coca-­Cola Workers’ Union. Years later
state violence, corruption, and the imperatives and finances of the state and
ngos undermined Tierra Nueva’s politics, but for a period of time, this attempt at an alternate everyday modernity emerged in both the imagination
and practice.4 Problems such as alcoholism or unemployment were framed
in social terms and widely discussed in community circles. This was a loose
form of a “creative imaginary,” wherein individuals and collectives attempt
to define themselves, in contrast to the ontology of “being determined.”5
The radical politics of Tierra Nueva belonged to the milieu of solidarity
and social justice that prevailed in neighborhoods, factories, and schools.
With fewer than one million residents in the 1970s, Guatemala City was the
country’s commercial and political center, and it had recently become the
site of Guatemala’s singular industrial development. Stretched out over a
high plateau cut through with deep ravines and edged by mountains, the city
was divided into twenty-­one zones. The zones were packed with people and
housing, but green areas still dotted neighborhoods, many of which were
the consequence of unplanned urban spread. Except in the wealthy sections
of the city, social life took place in empty lots, green areas, and designated
soccer fields; at church and home and in streets, bars, houses of prostitution, the city’s central plaza, and its downtown in Zone 1. At midcentury, the
urban population consisted of skilled artisans; a small middle class; an elite
class; and a lower-­class majority that labored in service, transport, construction and other sectors, was poor and primarily Ladino or mestizo, with a far
smaller number of Mayas. In the 1970s, these social classes remained; the
city, however, was also becoming a proletarian one and rural migrants were
adding to its numbers and ethnic texture. Factories gave many zones a new
profile, and some of these factories even seemed a centerpiece for their size
and bustle. The hard work, general mistreatment, low wages, and managerial violence against women and men in these new factories were challenged
by workers.6 Unions were big news: factory sit-­ins and strikes were on the
radio and in the press, with workers taking their grievances to the public.
A major event in the city, International Workers’ Day on May 1, drew tens
of thousands to the city’s central plaza with prounion and antigovernment
banners. As was discussed in the last chapter, city residents mobilized again
and again. Aníbal’s generation was perhaps too young to enter the ranks of
revolutionary organizations or the other groups that students and young
54

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workers joined, but it came of age within the ethos or the habitus, in Pierre
Bourdieu’s sense, of the decades-­long fight between the state and the popular movement.7
Because Aníbal had predicted one of the worst earthquakes in Central American history, as he grew up in Tierra Nueva, his extended family
brought their worries to him, placed a lit candle in front of him, and asked
him questions such as “where is so and so?” or “is so and so hurt?” His successes—for example, correctly envisioning an uncle delayed on the highway
but not injured, dead, or missing—won him a reputation as a seer, and he
was treated with special respect. Encouraged by his older brother, in the
early 1980s he joined a new Tierra Nueva gang called Brek Las Cobras—brek
as in break dancing—and later named Mara Las Cobras, which consisted
of neighborhood boys and girls in their teens. His art career began in those
years.8
For Aníbal, being in Las Cobras enhanced his sense of himself among
peers who appreciated his talents.9 He designed the graphics on Las Cobras’
signature black T-­shirts. He loved the group favorites, Jethro Tull and Led
Zeppelin, enjoyed dancing, and was proud to win the title “Rey del Brek” in
an annual dance contest in which gang members competed in 1985. That
same year, another new gang, Mara Nene, took part in a land invasion led
by the seventeen-­year-­old left-­wing son of a founder of Tierra Nueva and
established the settlement of Tierra Nueva II right above what then became
renamed as Tierra Nueva I, discussed in chapter 1.
The mid-­1980s was the period when, without ending the war, the Guatemalan military returned the country to constitutional rule after evaluating the success of its counterinsurgency scorched-­earth campaigns in rural
areas. Even if what became known as a “transition to democracy” was a tactic designed by the military to garner respectability while it continued the
war, it provided at least enough space in the city for small mobilizations that
remained informed by progressive ideals. In 1984, over four hundred Coca-­
Cola workers occupied the Coca-­Cola facilities for an entire year to protect
their union. An attempt was made to start a radical labor confederation to
replace the one destroyed in 1980, and a new organization, Grupo de Apoyo
Mutuo (Group of Mutual Support, gam), which united relatives of the disappeared to demand their loved ones safe and sound, held its first public
march in 1984.10 Urban land invasions, such as the one that created Tierra
Nueva II, grew, and in September 1985, just before president-elect Vinicio
Cerezo of the centrist Partido Demócrata Cristiano (Christian Democratic
Party, pdc) took office with his promise of a “government for and by the
people,” secondary students from the Rafael Aqueche Institute in downtown
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55

Guatemala City took to the streets to stop an increase in bus fares, with the
support of the bus drivers and the participation of youth from the neighborhood breks. In retrospect, these urban demonstrations in the mid-­1980s
were the last in the twentieth-­century city with those kinds of 1970s left-­
wing politics. The point here is that gang members were part of this brief
reappearance of protest.
The mid-­1980s also saw the first massive advertising campaigns aimed
at the urban youth market. Brightly colored ads portraying happy youth
wearing Levi’s jeans, Reebok or Nike footwear, and expensive accessories
appeared on television, which was becoming ubiquitous in barrios for the
first time, and on billboards. This relentless multinational crusade to get
youth from all social classes and ethnic backgrounds to desire goods that
formed part of a fantasy “world youth culture” had effects. It was impossible to live in the city and miss this loud second coming of capitalism, in
which messages about the benefits of consuming what were virtually lavish
goods replaced the discredited promises of the post-­1954 economic development. This consumerism intensified life for working-­class youth, who already faced many demands and dilemmas. Desires to have a youth style that
required its own expensive international accoutrements had the potential
to push to calamity already-­untenable emotional, cultural, and economic
situations wherein youth from poor homes were expected to work, to study,
and to be a stable part of the time-­honored family wage economy. It is in
this context of a fading Left presence, a return to civilian government, and a
marked growth of advertising that the Maras emerged.
Real Maras Become Imaginary Ones
By 1987, boys and girls from age six to late teens had created over sixty
gangs, which were sometimes dubbed breks but more often Maras. They
gave them names that suggested mischief, rebellion, fun, trouble, a place,
gringo-­isms, masculinity, or some combination of these traits. Maras named
Los Guerreros, Las Pirañas, El Ruso, Los Pulpos, Los Garañones, Tigresa,
Ángeles Infernales, Las Brujas, Los Angelitos, Nais, Relax, Vacas, Botudos,
Sexta Calle, Los Motines Paraíso, adi, Los Títeres, Guevudos, Zope, Callejeros, Mara 33, Apache, Miau Miau, 3 de Julio, Las Llantas, Motley Crew, El
Ceviche, La Isla, and Mara five came to include as many as one thousand
children and teenagers who joined together to socialize; listen to the music
of Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, the Grateful Dead, Queen, and other groups
from the United States and Great Britain; and live with group and individual
style, attitude, and personality. They earned reputations for their own strik56

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ing character. Their lower-class “strutting” drew fire from better-­off students at private colegios, who even started gangs called Bourgeois and AntiBrek, which declared “war” on the Maras for being “vulgar” and “uppity.”
Decrying the appropriation of break dancing, a member of Bourgeois and
Anti-Brek explained: “I fight with the breks because they are servants, vulgar
types, because they rob, because of the way they dress. When brek dancing
was in style, the bourgeois started to dance brek until it went out of style,
but the poor kept dancing.”11 Victor, a founder of Mara Plaza Vivar Capitol,
and Carlos Rafael Soto, head of Public Relations of the National Police, told
me the same story about the origin of the widespread use of the term Mara
for these gangs. They both separately said that the National Police spread the
use of the term Mara in September 1985 during the protest against the bus
fare. Soto remembered, “The September protesters used no organizational
form or name so we called them ‘Maras’ from that Brazilian movie.” Victor
recalled, “The guys from the press and the cops said ‘here comes the Marabunta!’ and that’s how it came to us and we started to be the Mara Plaza
Vivar Capitol.”12
A year later, these Maras were front-­page news. Under the headline “Grenade Exploded in Discothèque,” the daily El Gráfico reported that a youth in a
“yellow bus with a black strip” threw a hand grenade at a crowd of teenagers
in front of a discothèque named La Montaña Púrpura. One of the wounded, a
ten-­year-­old on his way to Zone 1 to get a pair of sneakers, recounted to the
journalist from El Gráfico that Mara youths in a school bus descended upon
him and his friends, snatched gold chains, and fled.13 Within a day, the National Police spokesperson Soto explained to the media that the grenade had
exploded in front of this discothèque at which loitered drugged youth who
belonged to Mara 33, a criminal band from Zone 6 that had its origins in
television programs from the United States and in misguided parenting. In
his words, “This evil affecting our youth is the fault of irresponsible parents
who have permitted their children to live in complete freedom.”14 Common
images of delinquent life—such as the abuse of school property, weapons,
gold chains, free-wheeling minors, Zone 1, and discos—­materialized in the
story, and Soto used many of the loaded words—drugs, foreign, bad parents, drugs, freedom—of the ensuing anti-­Mara narrative.
Without evidence, the National Police, press, and politicians quickly
linked these Maras to urban problems such as street crime, prostitution, and
the sale and use of drugs. The magistrate for minors, who directed the frail
juvenile court system, pointed to the “disintegration of the family.”15 Social
workers, even female ones with children, cited “women working outside the
home” as the “fundamental cause” of juvenile delinquency.16 Catchphrases
1980s: The Gangs to Live For

57

about “imitating foreigners,” “foreign movies,” “lack of nationalism,” and
“imitating Negros” occurred again and again. The head of the juvenile delinquency bureau of the National Police told me: “Rock music incites youth to
fight. We copy a lot . . . we don’t appreciate our own culture. Guatemalan
citizens who work abroad bring records, this infiltrates our culture, there is
also the effect of the Negroes in the U.S., the Maras are like Negro gangs, or
like Stallone’s Cobras.” Speaking without irony, in the midst of civil war, he
added, “Or look at that movie Warriors, now that had ­impact!”17
Members of the Pentecostal movement were emerging in the mid-­1980s
as the city’s new professionals in the wake of the military’s destruction of
the intellectual community in fields such as psychology and sociology, and
they incorporated this mix of nationalist, racist, and pro-­family rhetoric into
a religious discourse of Satanism that surpassed that of criminalization.
Pentecostal fanaticism had echoes of what the historian Virginia Garrard-­
Burnett suggests was Guatemala’s religious language of war, one best exemplified by nationally televised speeches of the early 1980s that proselytized about the urgency of the covenant between God and man to cleanse
society of evil, and were given by Pentecostal general Efraín Ríos Montt, who
directed acts of genocide.18
With unchallenged authority, Pentecostals became in the 1980s the most
organized and outspoken experts on gangs in the city, and they drew on
the international fame of born-­again Christianity successes with gangs
such as New York City’s famous Mau Maus. Pentecostal members, as chapter 4 elaborates, became important officials in government agencies who
did not hesitate to be outspoken about their conservative religious vision of
the roots of social problems. A Pentecostal counselor working in the Welfare Secretariat insisted to me that “the term Mara is Hindu for ‘death to
the soul.’ . . . They are Satanic, they use the anti-­Christ number 767 and
their music encourages incest and necrophilia.”19 A widely circulated Pentecostal pamphlet titled La música roc y sus peligros warns that the Maras played
rock music incessantly to promote “Satanic themes, pornography, materialism and chaos. . . . The popular singer Michael Jackson casts spells of terror in his music and video ‘Thriller.’ ac-­d c has songs like ‘Injected Poison’
and the Evil Way on their album ‘Highway to Hell.’ The group ‘Queen’ has
been popular. . . . Many think that ‘Queen’ means “queen’ but aside from
that, ‘queen’ is an expression used in the street for homosexual transvestite.
Theirs is a Satanic philosophy of homosexuality and the number one danger
to which we must be alert.”20 A respected Pentecostal psychologist, Roberto
Morales del Pinar, who directed a home for runaway girls and young women
and wrote a regular newspaper column, described in horror to me how, in
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one U.S. rock video, teenagers throw their father out the window. According
to him, “In the Mara Satan appears to them [mareros], blood flows, wounds
open, hate grows. . . . Satan conducts their death cults.” Morales del Pinar
thought it took fire to fight such fire, as it had, he pointed out to me, against
the communists.21
The newly elected ruling pdc did not use this particular language.
It made the “crisis of youth” a central issue and set up an underfinanced
agency called National Plan for Youth to provide alternatives to gang life. It
sponsored conferences, and even gave a few Mara youth office space in the
National Youth Institute, an older establishment that trained future leaders.
The pdc directed the new Ministries of Culture, Education, Labor, and
Health—not the National Police or religious group—to confront the challenge of the Maras. However, the pdc did not confront the Pentecostal view,
though party officials knew that the gangs represented no danger because
the pdc had commissioned a study that showed the Maras to be composed
of fairly average urban youth who at the worst broke minor laws. That these
findings were not publicized and circulated facilitated confusion and fear,
allowing the pdc to maintain favorable ties with the burgeoning and well-­
financed Pentecostal movement.
Research about Mareros
Young social scientists within the National Plan for Youth, who were genuinely concerned that their work would contribute to making party policy,
directed the pdc’s study. They conducted two straightforward surveys that
consisted of asking young women and men in the gangs multiple-­choice
questions. Forty filled out a questionnaire in 1987, and a year later, five Mara
leaders who worked with the National Plan asked 290 gang members the
same questions. The two surveys coincided on all but matters of age and gender. In the smaller study, 20 percent were female, and in the second, larger
study in 1988, 44 percent were female. In the first survey, 80 percent of the
youth were ages fifteen to nineteen, and in the second, 73 percent were ages
twelve to fifteen. The sheer percentages of females and children who belonged to the Maras undercut the images that the media, the police, and the
Pentecostal descriptions evoked, as did all the results.
According to both surveys, of the religious majority in the Maras, 24 percent belonged to Pentecostal churches and the rest were Catholic; 27 percent checked “no religion.” Eighty percent lived at the birth family’s home.
Ninety percent were born and bred in cities; 86 percent were single. Most
spent their free time “hanging out” with Mara friends with whom they had
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59

“very tight” relationships, and few regularly watched television. All were literate, 61 percent attended elementary or secondary school, and the rest had
dropped out of school. Eighty-­three percent did not work either because
they studied or because they could find no work; 21 percent occasionally
stole items. Most who worked in the formal economy earned little. When
the questionnaire asked about aspirations for the future, 55 percent stated
they wanted to study, 19 percent wanted to work, 2 percent wanted to form
a family, 1 percent wanted to immigrate to the United States, 19 percent had
“no aspirations,” and the rest had no reply.
Queried about what might improve their future prospects, 64 percent replied “nothing,” 24 percent “study,” 9 percent “work,” and 3 percent “rob.”
Over half had taken illegal drugs, usually marijuana. Over 80 percent felt
“happy” in their Maras, and 85 percent were “in agreement with the rules
guiding the Maras because they were not imposed norms, but arrived at
through consensus.” Almost 100 percent had a positive view of their Mara
as “angry, but with internal solidarity and respect” and declared that they
had entered because of the “necessity of youth to unite.” Only 8 of the 290
youths in the second survey said that they wished to leave the Maras in order
to become “good citizens.”
Whatever their shortcomings, the surveys at least revealed that Maras
were composed of young people who seemed to be more or less “normal,”
except that they were better educated than most city youth, they stole goods,
and they moved within milieus of their own creation. Probably a citywide
survey of adults would have found comparable replies about religion and
wages but not about literacy, immigration, stealing, drugs, and, most important, belonging to a space perceived as one of solidarity, respect, happiness, and democracy. The pdc researchers, themselves products of the
1960–70s, realized that the Maras had a relationship with that immediate
political legacy. They concluded their report by defining the Maras as “a phenomenon of organized protest,” which was not a negative description in
their eyes.22
That same year, wishing to analyze the abrupt, shrill emphasis on juvenile
crime in a nation racked by extraordinary state violence and shaken by the
loss of dynamic popular politics, the social worker Nora Marina Figueroa,
the psychologist Marta Yolanda Maldonado Castillo, and I did a qualitative
study of the Maras under the auspices of the independent research institution the Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala (Association for the Advancement of Social Sciences in Guatemala,
avancso). I wrote up the results in a monograph titled Por sí mismos: Un estudio preliminar de las “Maras” en la Ciudad de Guatemala, published by avancso
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in 1988.23 We had decided to study these gangs of children and youth because publicity about them had become alarmingly predominant at a time of
complete silence surrounding the murders of the tens of thousands of children and youth in the highlands. The dangers these gangs posed might well
be fantasy, we thought, and meant to distract attention from military massacres, yet the anxieties being created were real. Giving answers to simple
questions concerning who these youth were, what they were doing, and
what they thought they were doing aimed to clarify the public discussion.
We interviewed dozens of members about family, work, school, violence,
their gangs, their social lives, and their general views of life. And, after we
spent several months passing time and talking with mareros from ten different Maras, we made the general observation that most of them were calm,
well spoken, and thoughtful, not mindlessly imitative, obsessive, or hostile.
Concerned about love and acceptance, they did not want to be misunderstood by us or the media, and they were usually eager to talk (see figure 2.1).
The young people and children with whom we spoke came from poor,
working-­class, and lower middle-­class families. Their parents labored in
the informal and formal economies, most commonly as vendors, artisans,
construction workers, day laborers, and domestic servants. They often described home life to be tense because of financial and emotional strains.
Silvio, an eighteen-­year-­old member of Mara five, depicted his family: “My
whole life has been a Calvary because my father is an alcoholic. There is no
way to stop him! But my mother is the best in the world, everyone says so.
I have a sister and the two of us suffer. . . . He doesn’t have any money, not
even so we can eat. Today he came home drunk at 5 pm. But I have a grandmother who lives in the USA . . . she loves us, she helps us, thanks to her I
study.”24 As this predicament of alcoholism in Silvio’s “whole” family illustrates, troubles were not confined to the single-­parent households. Speaking of her emotional ties to her hard-­working nuclear family, Lupe explained
in a disheartened tone and without cynicism, “I have almost no relationship
with them. . . . I don’t know what to talk to them about.”25
The gang members’ views about the family, which they clearly perceived
as the basic social unit of life, revealed deep feelings about what constituted
a problem and what a solution. In all but ten of the descriptions of family
life that we heard, fathers and other men such as stepfathers and boyfriends
were irresponsible, alcoholic, and violent. Yolanda, age fourteen and a member of Mara Belén, explained that her mother, whom Yolanda adored, was a
prostitute in a nightclub in Zone 1. Yolanda was furious at her mother: “I’m
mad at her because she wants to marry some guy and I don’t want him to
live in the house. I haven’t talked to her for two months. My little brother
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61

FIGURE 2.1 Snapshot of Miguel, a member of Mara five, taken in
­ uatemala City in 1987 by the author. Despite the publicity about the
G
Maras’ Satanic criminality, in the 1980s no professional photographers
were taking pictures of Mara members, who were hardly menacing in
appearance. Credit: Deborah T. Levenson.

doesn’t like him either. This guy is rotten. He beats my mother.”26 Rafael,
a seventeen-­year-­old from Mara 33, said of his family, “The truth is that I
don’t even know my father. I live with my stepfather, but he fights with me
and I have to confront him all the time. My mother sells food, she makes
stuffed chilies, tostados, atoles. . . . One day I’ll invite you. My stepfather is a
drunk who likes to fight, he’s always loaded and my old lady and my brothers
and sisters and I have to put up with this because there is no other way.”27 A
sixteen-­year-­old Mara 33 member, Hernán, lived with his mother and father,
but his relationship with his father was “terrible, a mess, because he is hotheaded.”28 Sixteen-­year-­old Marvin from Mara Garañones did not know
what happened to his father: “I lived with my grandmother until I was fifteen, when she died, and so I had to go live with my mother and stepfather.
I don’t get along with him. Every so often he beats me and kicks me out.”29
Even worse than this general violence that many recounted to us were accounts of sexual abuse. Girls and young women told us of fathers, uncles,
or stepfathers who had raped them in their households, in familial beds or
patios, on floors or tables. Angeles, a fourteen-­year-­old former member of
a Mara, recounted that she and other young girls wrote a play that represented the girls’ tribulations for a project named Chicas de Hoy (The Girls of
Today), run by a private organization. The plot was one of adult male against
young female, and it told the tragic “every young woman’s” story of a girl
first deserted by her father and then raped repeatedly by her stepfather.
These descriptions were about men, and not all family members. Out of
all the mareros with whom we spoke, just one thought that his household
was an unconditionally good place and a “real home.” Berlin, an eighteen-­
year-­old from Mara 33, an orphan who lived alone with his grandmother,
commented that he and his grandmother got along “super bien, we have
good vibrations.”30 Even through the praise Berlin gave his family of two
was unique, grandmothers always, and mothers sometimes, emerged in
the family stories as good people and as saviors, in contrast to adult males.
Silvio’s brief portrait of his family was common: his father wasted family
income on alcohol, and, as he put it, his mother was the “best,” and “everyone says so.” The working maternal grandmother in the United States who
paid for the children’s expenses out of her wages was a common figure
in these families. Lucia, a thirteen-­year-­old from Mara de la 4, lived with
younger siblings, a father who drank and, in her words, “yells at everyone in
the house,” and a disabled mother who depended on her mother’s monthly
Western Union money wires from New York City. Lucia pointedly credited
her grandmother for paying her mother’s medical expenses, which included
an expensive wheelchair.31
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Social workers used the vague concept of the “disintegrated family” in
order to explain youth delinquency and as a synonym for “familial crisis,”
yet conversations with these professionals made it clear that they knew that
male alcoholism and domestic violence created crises in many two-­parent
households, and that they saw wife beating and machismo as widespread
problems that “everyone knows about.”32 That awareness of “what everyone
knows” did not become operable knowledge. The aim of the social work with
youth was to unite children with their families and reinforce child–­parent
relationships, and not to honor and support youth, especially females, who
had the sense to detest the men in their households. In addition and no doubt
related to the wish to repair “broken” families, social workers looked at us
in despair when we suggested that legal steps be taken against these men.
In contrast to the social workers, these youths did not seem to want to
mend their birth families, nor to hold as dear a vague ideal of the nuclear
family. Their knowledge of what the general concept of “familial crisis”
meant came from their emotional experiences, and they had their own solution: a redefined family, the Mara. They consistently used the term family to
refer to their Maras. Without deserting their birth kin, the young women
and men with whom we spoke wanted better families, not the status quo
“traditional” ones. These young people slept at their birth family’s home
most of the time, and at the same time they created new families inside their
Maras. They often ate together, a traditional family activity, in fast-­food restaurants, and they kept track of one another’s whereabouts. Yolanda, who
lived with her mother, said, “Like the others say, for me the Mara is my
family, the best one in the world. There you have someone who loves you
and tells you so.” Sitting next to Yolanda in a Wendy’s restaurant, where our
conversation took place, sixteen-­year-­old Tono added that their Mara was
“like family, but nicer, because no one bawls you out. Instead each person
is like who they are, and that’s all there is to it.”33 Here was the new family,
simply enough, warm and accepting. Hernán evaluated family in relation
to his views on freedom and acceptance: “I think that family puts a lot of
pressure on you, and because of that you seek your own group, a new family,
so you can be free to be what you want to be and not how others want you
to be.” For Calixto, at twenty-­four the oldest Mara member we met and the
only one who had immigrated to Mexico and the United States to work, Mara
adi was his Guatemalan anchor. He said, “The Mara is all I have . . . it’s
my only family. There are friends, girls, and a lot of things that I cannot explain. When I am far away, there’s someone here for me, someone to write
to, someone you want to see.”34 Silvio said that he “joined the Mara through
friends. You talk, and go along getting to know each other, until it’s like a
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really good family.” Maritza, whose Mara de la 4 was at one point an all-­girl
gang, explained: “I joined because there was emptiness inside me, a little
loneliness, a bit of sadness. Maybe we are all alike in this. I joined through a
bunch of girlfriends with whom I was very heavy. We’ve shared sorrows and
joys. I think the Mara is a group of people who need affection. Some of us
want to escape the mess in our homes. Sometimes we think we can create
a new world.”35 Being encircled by affectionate and empathetic peers made
up Maritza’s new world, and that interrupted, and thankfully so, a life spent
being constantly at pains with a “mess.”
Articulate in the conversations that we initiated, the youths had never
sought out a priest or a nun, a friendly schoolteacher, or any other adult for
guidance or solace. Their space belonged to them, and in their space they did
what they enjoyed, at a distance from adults. Sexuality was central to this
distance because the new family of the Mara did not disapprove of sex for
young people. It did not necessarily introduce sex, but the gang members
admitted to it. Inside the Maras, sex flourished as exploration and as an item
of conversation. What was a silent truth elsewhere—that many girls willfully had sex with boys before marriage—was not hidden, which is not to
say that there existed sexual equality or that abuse did not go on during this
early phrase of the Maras, as it would constantly in the 1990s. Notwithstanding serious problems, in the mid-­1980s arguably the only space where youth
heterosexuality and homosexuality were undisguised and unashamed realities was within some of the Maras. Hernán cheerfully described his Mara in
the working-­class neighborhood where he had lived all his life, as consisting
of “twenty eight guys and two dykes.” His own lover was male. He explained,
“The heavy thing is that in the Mara you learn to be freer in every sense. So, if
a guy has sexual relations with a guy, no big deal. Same thing with the girls.”
Maritza, who had had an amorous relationship with another girl, said that
her greatest wish was to “find a girl or boy who in all honesty loves me and
loves that I love her or him.”
However, in drawing a closed circle around their Maras, the gang members did not leave their birth kin emotionally. They were loyal and proud
members of the family wage economy as well; they never complained about
this fact or rebelled against it. Everyone in their households worked, and—
this was the only departure from the cdp report in our findings—so did
the mareros. Lupe, the fifteen-­year-­old member of Mara Pirañas, hawked
clothes in the large El Guarda market, her mother sold fruits juices in a
smaller one, and her father worked in construction. Another fifteen-­year-­
old, Joel, from Mara Belén, had a part-­time job in a shoe factory. He explained to us, “My father leaves at six in the morning and comes home at
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eight at night. . . . My mother works in a store. My brothers and sister each
work on their own, and I’m almost never at home.”36 Rocío, a twelve-­year-­
old girl, who had just joined Mara 33, worked alongside her mother sewing
fashionable clothes that her older sister then sold to shops in Zone 1.37 Maritza picked coffee alongside her mother when she was small, then washed
clothes, and more recently worked in sales earning Q150 a month. Earning
Q160 a month, América worked sixty hours weekly in an upscale bakery in
Zone 1, and gave part of her earnings to her mother.38 Isabel, a seventeen-­
year-­old in the Mara Plaza Vivar Capitol, made thirty quetzals a week babysitting to help pay her younger brother’s school expenses, such as a uniform,
a notebook, and a pencil.39 Rafael explained, “I have worked in everything,
like the rest of us [in the family]! Can you believe that when I was a little
kid, I collected plastic bags in the garbage dump? After that I gathered old
newspapers and sold them in the market. After that I worked as a mechanic,
which is very tiring work, and after that in a supermarket. There are eight
of us plus my mother—it is a lot [to support].” Hernán worked in the informal economy, selling nail clippers, scissors, sunglasses, key chains, and
change purses out of his school knapsack; he averaged Q150 a month. He
said, “With that I can help my mother and buy my own things, because my
father does not even have money to buy his own cigarettes.” Marvin earned
one hundred quetzals a month as a carpenter’s helper and gave most of it to
his mother. He hated her husband, who hit him and sometimes threw him
out, but by giving her money, Marvin remained an indispensable son inside
the circle of kin. Having money was obviously a form of power. The mareros’
ability to get money, and not necessarily their ability to hold down a job, gave
them a positive sense of themselves and allowed them to help kin.
Within the context of the Mara as a means to empowerment and self-­
esteem, robbery noticeably widened the horizons of many mareros. As
workers, these youths were poorly paid for what was generally unskilled
labor. As thieves, they made more money, a point many learned while working, and they also had the opportunity to develop interesting skills. When
the Pepsi-­Cola Company employed Alejandro, a sixteen-­year-­old Mara five
member, at fifteen quetzals a week as an auxiliary on a delivery truck, he discovered he and others could make fifteen quetzals a day stealing and selling crates. In 1987, as a full-­time thief who stole from tourists traveling to
the colonial town of Antigua, Alejandro was king: he earned eight hundred
quetzals during Holy Week that year. He was proud of his abilities, and he
explained at length his exploits riding back and forth on a bus between Antigua and Guatemala City, happy to allow gringas to “practice their Spanish on
me,” while he cut their backpacks and slipped out whatever his fingers could
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manage to mine. That was his specialty. He said that mareros usually had
one, whether it was opening car locks, stripping cars, cutting glass, slitting
pocketbooks and pockets, or fencing goods. Like others, Alejandro stressed
that this sort of activity meant “nothing really serious” to those robbed, and
that he took “nothing of importance,” such as a passport.
By working or more productively by stealing, the mareros could award
their new selves new necessities, provide old necessities for their families,
and maintain their accustomed selves. Hernán explained, “I have money for
my father’s cigarettes, and I get what I want to,” as he waved a handsome
gold wristband around. Lupe pickpocketed to provide cash for “my mother
and sunglasses for me.” Robbery could yield the new material culture of
youth without hurting one’s family. Berlin, for example, looking great in
a brand-­name wool sweater, fashion jeans, and new clean white Nikes, explained to us how he had acquired his stylish apparel: “I stole the sneakers
from a burgués [a bourgeois], these pants from another, and that’s how I get
along, getting what I need to live.”
As Berlin said, he and other youth in the Maras stole from burgueses,
snobs, and those who had money, or had the nerve to appear as if they did.
They positioned their victims as the class enemy, and their crimes class justified. Calixto, who helped support his mother and siblings, explained, “I’ve
robbed everything from a piece of bread to a car, and with that I am saying
everything! I am a professional thief, which is a bit more elegant then ‘delinquent,’ but I’ve always robbed from people who have money, robbing from
the poor is evil.” Silvio said, “Look, the only people I steal from are people
with money, because robbing from an equal would not be right. I grabbed
chains from the chicks at Monte María, Belga, and other private schools.”
Rafael, the seventeen-­year-­old from Mara 33, said, “I’ve taken what I need,
and I have robbed from the rich. Taking from the burgueses is like taking a
strand of hair from a cat, and you have to survive one way or another.” Lupe
explained, “I slit the pocket books of two burgueses. . . . I took stuff from
some others as well. . . . Last year I bought my mother a pair of shoes for
Christmas so she doesn’t have to use sandals anymore. You want to know
what else? I bought a Christmas tree. It was the first time we had a Christmas tree. We in the Mara, we have to steal from the burgueses because they
have things we don’t have, and it doesn’t affect them.” Even if they sometimes stole from the lower middle class, even if they categorized potential
victims as bourgeois in a purely visual and unreliable way, mareros were self-­
conscious about presenting their actions as belonging to the class world of
the deserving poor. If robbing helped their own, it was morally correct. Their
language and recognition of their social location reflected a class and moral
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awareness that came from the recent urban movements. They never robbed
within their own neighborhoods, and this represented a significant and a,
sadly, short-­lived consciousness, a choosing of sides that came from a critical awareness, a framing of their situation, and not from a “primitive” or
subconscious “speaking” that the oppressed “have” by virtue of oppression.
A few of them had been at the margins of activism. Maritza was involved
in a movement to fire a reactionary school principal. Silvio had been in a
secretive political association in public school. His social commentary on
his school days was meant to educate us, the researchers. He explained that
he was expelled because of his membership in the student group, but he was
more interested in pointing out the following: “I want a different education,
something that is really helpful and not a lot of crap that what the hell do
you want to waste your time with it anyway? It would be great if the teachers
taught in an interesting way and not just by dictation after dictation. You get
tired and then you lose interest in your studies because you are treated as an
object that should not talk, move or think, basically [someone] who should
not really exist.” Silvio called Mara five a weapon of social justice. He said
he initially joined it “because I have a strong desire to fight for my rights,
which society has denied me.”
In addition, their cultural taste exemplified their proximity to the popular
movement and their alertness to the dilemmas of youth, war, and unhappy
families. La historia oficial (The Official Story), an intensely emotional Argentine film that condemns dictatorship and advocates in no uncertain terms
for victims of the Dirty War, was one favorite. The other was Pink Floyd’s The
Wall, a music-­driven movie depicting the construction and the possible demotion of a young man’s separation (the wall) of self from self and from the
world; this young man came from a family damaged by war. It would be hard
to think of two movies from that era that spoke, and spoke in generationally
distinct artistic styles, so deeply to the Guatemalan realities of parents and
youth struggling inconclusively to get loose from webs made tight by violence.
Their other opinions reflected their political and social sensibilities.
They unanimously described Ronald Reagan and President Vinicio Cerezo,
a member of the pdc, in negative terms—Cerezo as “a greedy asshole”—
and they painted Archbishop Próspero Penados del Barrio, a campaigner for
social justice, in positive terms. They dismissed Madonna as empty headed
and Michael Jackson as a “sell-­out” because they thought he rejected his
own roots. They overwhelmingly selected Rigoberta Menchú, whose autobiographical narrative was published in Spanish in 1983, and Che Guevara
as the “people I most admire.” One young man had an artistically arranged
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scrapbook, which he regularly updated, of clippings about the Nicaraguan
Sandinistas that went back to 1979. In reply to the question “What would
you do if you were president?” came answers such as “Fight so that all can
live equally,” and “I’d bring down the rich and give it all to the poor.” Most
identified the worst problem in the city as the cost of living.
In 1987, a handful of trade unionists in the city, including some from the
Coca-­Cola union, decided to hold a May 1 demonstration, the first public
one since 1980. With the media image of the mareros in mind, and in order
to forestall any problems, the labor activists approached Mara Plaza Vivar
Capitol about the march because this Mara was close to its route and final
rallying point. Mara Plaza Vivar Capitol told them that “we mareros are from
the working class and we would never harm the working class.”40 And after a
right-­wing attempted coup against the civilian government on May 11, 1988,
Mara five (Silvio’s Mara) ran a classified ad in the newspaper Prensa Libre
that read, “This business of wanting to put an end to government is no good.
Youth wants peace, not violence. When will we be heard? Mara five.”
These young people defended themselves against class wounds, including
the modern urban one of being excluded from style. In the 1980s, when advertising introduced Reebok, Adidas, and Nike, the power footwear priced
at the equivalent of a worker’s monthly wage and that only upper-­class youth
could afford, it turned into a class problem. Berlin’s narrative of the origins of Mara 33—with over one hundred members, it was one of the largest
gangs in the city at that time—illustrates how close the gangs stood to class
organizing, and how, instead, they took the road of class stealing. For decades and through the 1970s, boys played sports in nationally produced
­i ncatecu sneakers. He said,
It all started when we played soccer on the Barrio San Antonio team [in
1985]. We qualified for the juvenile championship, and we were supposed
to play in the final, but some burgueses had up to a couple of pair [of
Nikes] each. We watched them, and then we jumped them, and we took
their shoes and some other stuff. . . . You begin to realize that even soccer is only for the burgueses. We started going to parties. We got to know
other guys, and we started to get together to talk about the problems
each one had. Then we realized the desire to stick together. When one of
the guys was really down, we helped out, but all of a sudden, we realized
that we could have everything that was in style by ripping it off, or as they
say, “borrowing.”
Berlin brought together many elements of lower-­class life in the city in
the 1980s. It was virtually impossible to carry out the daily activities of life
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69

(e.g., the simple leisure activity of soccer) without struggle. With no movements for higher wages, stealing became one of the few avenues through
which working-­class youth could obtain material improvement. In the case
of soccer, they thought that if they had Nike footwear they might win the
game, and all the esteem that accompanied victory. In any case, why should
Berlin and his friends not have those same high-­quality goods? At points
in his description, Berlin could have been talking about the formation of
a trade union or grassroots neighborhood group. After all, his Mara was a
local organization devoted to getting the needs of working-­class met, except
that some of these needs were defined by a global generational code; they
were outside of the accustomed social essentials, and the means to their satisfaction was robbery.
One of the most pensive teenagers with whom we spoke, Maritza, explained her crime in terms of power relations and injustice, and expressed
ambivalence about the consumerism that flooded the city:
Yes, I have robbed. You, what do you know? Maybe it never hurt you not
to have what others had. I don’t know the explanation, the why of social
classes, why some have and others don’t. Lady, this pain I carry inside
me drowns me, and I don’t know how to stop it. The first time I stole
was from a teacher who asked me to help her carry some oranges to her
house. I waited. It was very hot. I thought she would give me one. But
she didn’t. I took one and also an ornament. I was scared. I thought she
would find out but she didn’t. . . .
You want to hear something? I love perfume. But it would be a sin to
ask my mother for it, because she has nothing. So once I was on a bus and
I took some [a perfume flask] from a snobby-­t ype girl. I was frightened
and I felt guilty but there was no other way. . . . Here in school they ask
you to buy materials—they told us to buy special paper once and I didn’t
have a penny, so I stole some from a companion. I wish someone, maybe
you, would explain to me why one has to have objects and things one cannot buy. A while back, I stole a Parker pen from a girl. The saddest part
was that when I had it, I didn’t feel what I thought I would feel.
Maritza wove a world of class injury and class defense into her account of
robbery. Hurt by elitism and abuse of a child’s obedience to a teacher, she
expressed anger and humiliation. Wanting to have the perfume yet sensitive to her mother’s poverty, she protected her mother and her own desire
by robbing someone she imagined would not be adversely affected. Needing items required by her school (an important arena for Maritza), she stole

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from companions. But she recognized that she was talking about robbing
peers, not the wealthy. She stopped her narrative at precisely that moment to
interrogate her petty thievery. Maritza was a thoughtful young woman, and
she questioned her pursuit. What was so good about these commodities if
obtaining them in this way risked friendship and brought nothing but anxiety? It was impossible not to be on her side.
Several youth in the Maras, including Maritza, cautioned us about the
Maras. She told us that in some Maras, boys gang-­raped girls. Rafael made
the haunting comment that his Mara was “very tight—it follows you everywhere because it is inside of you. Sometimes you feel good with the group
but sometimes there’s a prison inside you that you can’t escape.” As much as
these young people were not mindless imitators of television, dulled by bad
habits, or cowed by the dominant ideas in Guatemalan society, and as much
as the Maras could provide a better family and at least some space to act and
think creatively, the danger of authoritarianism existed. Rafael went on to
say, “The only thing I don’t like inside the Mara is that one is apparently free,
but inside one’s head one is afraid to do things for fear of being rejected.”
Maritza commented: “You can say the Mara doesn’t influence you, but the
moment comes when you realize that to have their support, you have to be
and do what others want. And that’s where you get confused. I try to be myself, but I have trouble, so the result is that sometimes I end up being what
others want me to be. . . . Well, here’s another angle which is a consolation:
it [the Mara] is not so great, but it would be worse without it.”
As appealing as the young people we spoke with were, we concluded our
study without too much optimism. Despite the powerful critiques and commentaries of society that these young women and men made, they were not
trying to alter the already rapidly changing world of Guatemala City. They
spent time together smoking marijuana and hanging out, not organizing.
The moral affirmation of stealing from the “burgueses” and giving to themselves and other poor people was an important part of the mareros’ identity, but we knew that they knew they were not always stealing from the rich
to give to the poor and when they talked about having stolen particular car
parts from a particular model car, they had no idea whom they defrauded.
Some of the robbery went beyond gold chains, sneakers, and perfumes.
The market dictated much of their robbery, and the more money they
wanted, the more the market controlled them. Consequently, they ended
up “expropriating” from the not-­so-­well-­off. In 1987, the high demand on
car parts for Toyota sedans and pickups made these makes prime targets.
These were two models often used by lower middle-­class and working-­class

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people who had saved long and hard to purchase vehicles in order to start a
small business, such as one hauling sand to construction sites. Moreover,
the more a particular Mara became involved in theft as a primary activity,
the more hierarchical and secretive the gang became. In one Mara gang,
all the goods went “up” to a leader who fenced them, and then some money
came “down, to be divided equally.” According to two irritated members of
that Mara, the price the goods brought remained a mystery. In that particular gang, a gendered division of labor meant that pickpocketing belonged
to females because of their small quick fingers—the same reason used for
employing women in textiles—while boys stole and sold “heavy goods.” As
a consequence, girls earned less.
An original and daring sexual frankness and openness to love characterized some Maras. However, the gendered life within them was sometimes
no worse or better than that in Guatemalan society in general, and there also
existed an exaggerated masculinity, a hypermasculinity. Mara youth, male
and female, tended to appear to be very tough, a trait commonly gendered as
male. A macho style among homosexuals and heterosexuals was apparent in
the Maras, even though it did not dominate all the members. There seemed
to be little prejudice against male homosexuality and “masculine” lesbians,
the “dykes” that Hernán mentioned, but “feminine” girls did not stand out,
and few wanted to converse with us. Timid, they would become the target of
abuse, as the next chapter discusses.
We concluded our 1987 study thinking that the Maras and their members
were diverse and complex, and that these youth and their gangs were challenged and framed by the deep and fast-­paced changes going around them
in the city. Life in the gangs offered friendship, love, music, dance, sex,
money, and excitement. Above all, Maras gave a sense of a life-­affirming
identity and community in the face of social decomposition and the transformation of old communities, yet without disconnecting them from their
families and their old communities and without destroying their identities as sons and daughters, friends, and neighbors. These gangs etched a
new geography: they had constructed a place called mibarrio in which a new
family of generational peers could flourish, and at the same time this space
for discovery did not replace or irrevocably divide them from el barrio. Some
violence went on, but it was neither an imperative nor as dangerous and
hateful as the violence in their households, their city, or their nation. Mareros spoke about what they construed as critical matters, such as love, sexuality, money, family, identity, and leisure, without violent tropes and metaphors. Juan Carlos Núñez, a Jesuit anthropologist doing fieldwork in Barrio

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San Antonio in Zone 6 in the 1980s, described the local Mara as being vital
and having solidarity: “To live in the Mara is to live in a network. It is about
creating a soccer or basketball team, it’s about creating community organization.”41
These Maras came out of the generative environment of the revolutionary
and popular urban movement, a milieu that included an anticapitalist discourse that emphasized the morality of class solidarity and social equality,
precisely when those political groups were being destroyed. Because the
Maras were gangs of young thieves disarticulated from radical political
organizing, they combined two legacies, one of pandillas and the other of
left-­wing student and worker movements, into something new: affectionate
groups that had a measure of critical consciousness about relationships and
a sense of solidarity with the poor that did not become involved in politics.
Based on friendships that often preceded their existence, the Maras of
the 1980s seemed to have faded, at least from public view, by the end of
the 1980s. By their late teens or twenties, most Mara members we had met
had left the gangs to enter the ordinary, everyday life of the urban poor in
the 1990s, which often entailed work at low pay in the formal sector, and
sometimes immigration. Although an unusual story in many respects, the
trajectory of Aníbal López, the artist who was once a Las Cobras member,
is suggestive of the creativity of the mareros and of the power of the subjective world in which they grew up. Like many other youth in and out of
gangs, he emigrated in the late 1980s. He went through Mexico without
documents. He made his way by drawing pictures of Christ in exchange for
food and lodging in small towns along the route to the U.S. border, which
he crossed to continue on to visit his brother, a Mormon in Utah, before
making the return trip, again without papers. Back in Guatemala, he became a well-­known artist. His art is marked by the sharp awareness of social
realities that we found in our interviews with mareros in the 1980s. In one
early piece, he printed typical surnames of Maya, working-class mestizo,
and wealthy and well-­known families on separate cardboard boxes that the
viewer could then move around, to reorder the ethnic and class structure of
Guatemala, with perhaps the Maya on top (see figure 2.2). He made images
that addressed historical puzzles of national identity: in pen and ink he drew
a Guatemalan male without skin and labeled him “Ladino” (the term used
for mestizo that has the implication of non-­Maya), under which he placed
“50% + 50% = 100%” plus a stamp that read “sale” (in English). To further capture the ethnic ambiguity and working-­class quality of Ladinos, he
penned common-­use and imaginative definitions of Ladino on the reverse

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FIGURE 2.2 Untitled, by Aníbal López (A-­1 53167), Guatemala City, 1998.
These cardboard boxes represent a partial reorganization of Guatemalan hierarchy with Maya surnames spread around, including near
the top, slightly lower than “1492,” a date that marks the birth of the
“Ladino.” On the bottom sits Bauer, a family name connected to the
ownership of the Palo Gordo sugar plantation, one known for its repressive labor practices. The viewer can rearrange the boxes. Credit:
Deborah T. Levenson.

side of the picture. Engaging the historical construction of a Guatemalan,
he dates his work using the Conquest of the Americas as the baseline, and
he initials his pieces with his resident card number.
As are others who joined these gangs in the mid-­1980s, Aníbal is part of
a generation almost suspended in historical time between what now seems
the shutter-­shot moment of an urban popular movement’s peak and its
quick bloody demise. Because the mareros carried within them memories
of a breathtaking historical period in city life, and at the same time because
their gangs originated on this cusp of a sharp change that would demolish the world in which they grew up, their Maras—five, de la 4, 33, and
Las Cobras, to name a few—were rich in life, ambiguities, creativities, and
contradictions and they had the possibility of developing in different directions, for better or worse.

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1990s AND BEYOND: THE GANGS TO DIE FOR

If you talk, you are dead.
—Author interview with Short, a member of ms-­13, Guatemala City, 2005

[The worst effect of war is] the undermining of our social relations because our
social relations are the scaffolding we rely on to construct ourselves historically,
both as individuals and as a human community. Whether or not it manifests itself
in individual disorders, the deterioration of social interaction is itself a serious
social disturbance. . . . A society that becomes accustomed to using violence to
solve its problems big and small is a society in which the roots of human relations
are diseased.
—Ignacio Martín-­Baró, sj, Writings for a Liberation Psychology, 115

The mareros’ thinking is military thinking that is always reproducing war, they
live in war with the logic of war, thinking of the enemy’s attack. [They live within]
a militarized culture of obedience, discipline and the fulfillment of orders and
­missions.
—Interview with Rodolfo Kepfer, psychiatrist, El Centro Correccional de
Menores Etapa 2, San José Pinula, Guatemala

A

founding member of Mara Plaza Vivar Capitol back in 1985, Victor returned to Guatemala in 1998. He was twenty-­eight years old, and the war
had only recently ended. He sought out his old gang because, he explained,
the only family he wanted now in the city was his Mara. It was “all over” with
his mother: “She does not like me.” After thirteen years of living in Mexico
and working with gangs there, he found that the mareros in Guatemala
City had become “more sophisticated,” “Mara five is with 18 [Mara-­18, or
m-­1 8], and mibarrio Plaza Vivar Capitol is with ms [Mara Salvatrucha, or

3

ms-­13].” Identifying himself as a veterano, a name he said referred to someone who had killed, he joined ms-­13 to assume a “leadership role” and dedicate himself to gang rivalry. Speaking in military terms, he told me that
“everyone sees themselves as soldiers serving mibarrio [my gang / my place]
in a war without any Geneva Code.” His response to my query about his reference to the Geneva Code was “war without rules.” When I asked him to
explain what that gang war was about, he gave the same explanation as he
did for the civil war: “Who knows, it’s the way it is.”1
Guatemala City had changed dramatically since Victor’s teen years. Consumption of hard drugs, especially crack, had become pandemic. Video
shops now dotted neighborhood blocks. Small weapons were everywhere,
and private security was one of the few growing urban enterprises. Military
and ex-­military men had created an expanding industry of over two hundred
companies that employed thirty-­five thousand people by 2002, more than
twice the nation’s fifteen thousand policemen. Private security companies
hired out men and women to protect individuals, hotels, restaurants, malls,
small stores, private homes, and gated communities, the last of which were
increasing in number in response to the rising common violence against
people and property.2 It was difficult to not spot guns bulging out of shirts,
pants, and jackets on any routine walk through the center of the city.
It was no longer possible, as it had been in 1987, to walk down Sexta
Avenida in Zona 1, change dollars on the black market in the empty lot behind Plaza Vivar Capitol, and strike up a friendly conversation with young
people who called themselves breks and mareros and who sported brand-­
name clothes. By 2000, youth in and around Maras had become secretive.
At the same time, photographs of them as muscular tattooed young men
stripped to the waist or behind prison fences had become ubiquitous in the
media. Tall tales proliferated. By the early 2000s, mythological numbers had
appeared: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi) claimed that 200,000
mareros, an army, “operated” in Guatemala. The National Civil Police, reorganized from the ill-­reputed National Police, gave wildly divergent numbers without explanation: a 2002 figure of 50,000 was reduced to 10,833 in
2003.3 Another source, the Association for the Prevention of Crime, stated
in 2006 that 165,000 youth belonged to Maras nationally.4 These fluctuating
numbers, tattoos that were said to be Satanic symbols, and the constant
evocation of the Maras’ “international links,” one that for some had echoes
of the old “international communist plots,” spread panic. Without proof or
hesitation, the influential U.S. Army War College scholar Max G. Manwaring cited the Maras as the major reason for the dramatically increasing crime
rates in Guatemala and elsewhere in the region.5 In the brilliant noir police
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novel of the late Mexican novelist Rafael Ramírez Heredia, La Mara, set in
the diseased and rotting no-­exit southern border town Ciudad Hidalgo, the
Mara represent barbarism in all its diabolical colors.6
Studies by many ngos and the United States Agency for International
Development (usaid) have not dispelled or confirmed the criminal image,
which in effect adds to the sense of mystery. Their findings offer little or
nothing in relation to literal transgressions and offenses. These reports concur on major points: gangs are hierarchical, and most members have little
status or power. The youth in Maras are primarily male, 75 percent by one
count. With some exceptions, they come from poor and lower middle-­class
backgrounds. Most have basic schooling. The age span is broad, ranging
from six to the late twenties. A report done by the Demoscopía research
group under the auspices of a Swedish International Development Agency
(Asdi) found that a number of youth in Maras are parents, and that the majority of mareros work at odd jobs in the formal, informal, and illicit economies.7 With its focus on combating criminal rings, usaid investigated the
Maras’ organizational structure. Its report presents the Maras’ tight organization pyramid with “organized crime” on top, followed by, and in descending order, “transnational gang leadership,” “gang cell [clika] members,”
“neighborhood gang members,” and finally “children at risk.” Having said
this, the usaid report concludes with the statement “no one Mara fits all,”
one that leaves much up in the air.8
Researching in the postwar city, I found that some youth made comments such as “I am a marero,” because they smoked marijuana or crack
with members of one or another clika of ms-­13 or m-­18, were involved in
fights, attended the burials, or some combination of these activities. Alberto
presents an example of how different the various senses of belonging can
be. He said he was “with ms-­13.” Since childhood, he had known an ms-­13
leader nicknamed Maté who had been a barrio character infamous for habitual bullying. Maté was the offspring of a middle-­class family well known
because it ran the local pharmacy, and his murder caused consternation in
the area, even though most people there did not like him. Mourning death,
including that of Maté, was a neighborhood question. “We showed up [at
the burial]. We are with ms-­13,” Alberto told me. He also said that he had
never been “baptized” (inducted). I asked if his mother had gone as well to
the burial, and he said yes, “of course the whole family, we all went . . . they
[Maté’s family] are neighbors.” It is hard to put Alberto in the same category
with youth who are violently baptized into groups, obey codes, and take actions that divorce themselves from neighborhood loyalties and the “we” of
family.9
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Perspectives and Perceptions of City Residents
Urban residents have sometimes referred to a whole range of youth when
they have spoken of mareros. However, their larger, more general discussions about “Las Maras” refer to those feared by residents. Poll after poll
in this postwar period has established that Guatemalans see the Maras as
one of the nation’s greatest threats. This belief persists even though sections of the city without Maras are plagued by crime, and no proof actually
demonstrates that major crimes such as femicide are linked to them. That
being stated, there can be absolutely no question about the gangs’ extremely
negative impact on the city’s neighborhoods.10 In contrast to El Salvador and
Nicaragua, polls have showed that city communities never feel protected
by the presence of Maras, who form their own rivaling “pockets” of territorio that break the larger community.11 According to residents in barrios and
colonias, social workers, and street educators, gang violence shot up in the
1990s, and it has become increasingly ugly and constant as the years pass.12
In a 1998 study on a colonia in Zone 6, residents described acute changes in
daily life that made mistrust, fear, and the acquisition of weapons realistic
reactions to the gangs. There, gangs broke up community events such as
dances or meetings, their presence divided people along the lines of their
offspring’s affiliation in rival Maras, and their constant warring with one another made walking around nerve racking and sleeping difficult. One woman
said, “Ten years ago you could come in [to the area] at nine at night.” By 1997
that was impossible, and in addition, between 8 pm and 4 am, “gunfire and
screaming [went] on.”13 In 2003, residents in that same area reported that
gang members beat children to force them to join and sometimes killed
them if they refused.14
Within many neighborhoods, mareros have used public spaces without
reserve, whether school grounds, plazas, soccer fields, or even churches,
and these have become dangerous spaces that parents caution children to
avoid (see figures 3.1 and 3.2).15 Afraid of what can happen once children
leave the home, parents sometimes stop sending them to school, and even
more dramatically, afraid that their children will be forced to join the Maras
to gain “protection” from the consequences of not joining, they sometimes
send them out of the country. In U.S. immigration courts, undocumented
Guatemalans increasingly cite threats from mareros, as well as accounts of
persecution, including rape and murder by mareros, to argue against their
deportations.16 Fears of persecution by mareros show up in explanations
about immigration among Guatemala City residents living on Mexico’s
southern border.17
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FIGURE 3.1 Life in Ciudad de Sol, a populous working-­class neighborhood in the metropolitan area, 2005. Mara Salvatrucha (MS-­13) dominates Ciudad de Sol. The dramatic wall mural on the left shows a cemetery with a gravestone marked RIP, the English-language initials of
rest in peace. Graffiti art has become an important part of the Maras’
aesthetic, élan, and territorial mapping. No renter, property owner, or
storekeeper requests these murals, which represent danger to residents.
Credit: Victor J. Blue.

FIGURE 3.2 A girl walks by a towering MS-­13 graffiti in Ciudad de Sol,
2005. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

The effect of the Maras over parts of Guatemala City has been made worse
by the fact that no dust seems to settle between the rival gangs. Residents
say that the spaces mareros occupy are always contested ones, and the fights
between gangs are constant. Gun fights between clikas of ms-­13 and m-­18
have led to fires, especially in the poorer settlements that firemen refuse to
enter because police do not have substations in them. This seemingly uncontrollable violence and the subsequent rapid decline of property values
have forced many residents to flee middle-­class, working-­class, and completely poverty-­stricken areas.18 The rivalry has been apparently even worse
in several towns that border the city, such as Villa Nueva and Mixco, as well
as Palín and Amatitlán to the south, where ms-­13 and m-­18 have had a competing presence for years.
This combination of (1) Mara violence, as well as adult crime unrelated to
Maras, and (2) the lack of any meaningful official crime prevention or arrests
has left barrio residents in an impossible situation. The National Civil Police
has at times come into neighborhoods to “clean out” gangs, but this has led
to more confusion and insecurity. Police pick up youth who are never seen
again (see figures 3.3 and 3.4). In addition, street workers and others have
implicated police in extortion rackets and murder. A bus driver who refused
to pay “war” taxes fled the country with his family after his daughter was
shot and killed by a bullet fired from an apartment belonging to a policeman.19 One gang minister told me that the police threaten to kill the mareros unless they bring in a certain amount of money and that the police raise
the sum at will, which keeps the gang members in a state of panic.20 In this
ongoing madness, nothing buffers community residents from criminal violence; even the street lights do not function. Violent civilian action in the
countryside against presumed mareros has been widely reported. However,
there have also been cases in the city, as the anthropologist Manuela Camus
points out, of shopkeepers and barrio residents beating up or killing suspected criminals.21 It is the logic of violence. A woman in the Colonia Primero de Julio told Camus that she would not “have someone locked up [in
prison]. What for? So that in three days when that person is free they come
looking for payback?”22
Two examples illustrate how impunity and changes in the Maras have
shifted life and subjectivities on the broad citywide scale. The first involves
workers at the Coca-­Cola Bottling Plant in Guatemala City. This workers’
union is historically famous for its heroic persistence in the face of multiple
assassinations of its leaders and members by state agents, for its radical
political stances, and for withstanding an attempted plant shutdown when
four hundred workers occupied the premises for one year (1984–85). Two
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FIGURE 3.3 A member of MS-­1 3 watches out of a door as police patrol
Ciudad de Sol, 2005. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

FIGURE 3.4 In an abandoned church in Mezquital, Guatemala City, a
father speaks about his missing son to the photographer Victor J.
Blue. On July 18, 2005, policemen picked up his son off a street in
broad daylight. His family has looked everywhere without finding any
trace of him. The ruined church was his son’s M-­1 8 hangout. The wall
graffiti reads “Only for Locos.” Locos is the name of his son’s clika.
Whether or not mareros choose to discuss their birth families in their
self-­presentations, their worried families are part of their lives. Credit:
Victor J. Blue.

years later the union, one of the few that survived heightened repression,
sponsored the first public May 1 demonstration since 1980. As the last chapter describes, Coca-­Cola union leaders were among those who approached
Mara Plaza Vivar Capitol, Victor’s old Mara, whose members hung out along
the march’s planned route, and were relieved—given the negative press the
Maras got—to receive the gang’s enthusiastic support. At that time, Coca-­
Cola workers carried weapons to defend against themselves against political
assassination.
In contrast, by the early 2000s the union had pragmatically backed away
from radical politics. Coca-­Cola deliverymen had taken to paying war taxes
to those mareros who controlled the territorios through which the Coke
trucks passed to supply retailers, and the union had petitioned the company
for compensation for war taxes and for armed protection.23 In 2008, a Coca-­
Cola deliveryman recounted his experiences. His route covered a neighborhood in Zone 7, where he regularly paid taxes to the clika of a Mara. Over
time, he sensed growing tensions and to offset more troubles, he befriended
a gang leader he then hired to further protect the truck for the hours that he
spent in the area; thus he paid a “tax” and a “wage.” Even with all that “protection,” his regular assistant who hauled the crates was almost “gunned
down without any motive by a kid in a gang.” Reflecting on the militant history of the union, he commented, “It is one thing to die for something,” and
another to be killed for nothing by “some sick crazy kid.”24
A far worse situation has developed for transportation workers. Bus
drivers unionized under radical leadership in the 1944–54 period, and their
union was one of the first to regroup following the 1954 coup. By the 1970s,
the bus workers’ union had succeeded in organizing drivers across the
dozens of small and large companies that ran Guatemala City’s poorly organized transportation system. In October 1978, the union allied with urban
residents, students, and workers in what turned into an urban insurrection
sparked by an increase in bus fares. The union struck in support of city residents, and it maintained a high profile in subsequent political demonstrations against state terror and for popular revolution. Unlike the Coca-­Cola
workers’ union, the bus drivers’ union did not survive the early 1980s waves
of state assassinations. But even without a union, the drivers went out on
strike in September 1985 in solidarity with young people, including gang
members, who took to the streets to protest an increase in fares.
After the 1996 Peace Accords, a new and apolitical union started up, one
that lacked historic ties with the old bus drivers’ unions. Few drivers joined
it until robberies of riders and drivers became dramatic, and the union developed its profile by petitioning for police protection, a request that was
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not granted. Robbing bus passengers and drivers became routine, but after
the Maras initiated impuestos de circulación (circulation taxes), and demanded
a Christmas holiday bonus, the drivers went on strike demanding police protection in 2002, and again in 2003, when the circulation tax increased from
twenty to forty dollars a week.25 Following these unsuccessful strikes, the
murders of drivers and their helpers started and spiraled upward. Between
2006 and 2008, 512 city bus drivers and sixty of their assistants were assassinated. In 2008, almost two hundred were killed. They were usually shot
while they drove, and presumably by the gangs who collected these taxes,
although no one has been ever been brought to trial for these killings or for
subsequent ones. In the month of February 2008 a dozen drivers were shot
dead in two days. During one day in March 2009, two drivers were murdered
in three hours; in 2009, 146 drivers and their assistants were murdered, and
so it has continued.26 One driver, companion of several drivers who had
been shot dead on the job, explained to a journalist that he took home $150
a week after paying out $90 in circulation taxes, and he added that he could
not afford to quit. He said, “It [the money] is not enough to live, and I might
die, but I can’t find another job.”27 With support from the municipal government, the bus companies have established a fund for widows and orphans of
drivers who, like widows of the war, have organized.
A new crime-­induced “dividing practice” seems to ally the majority of
city residents, who are poor people, on the same side of the barricades with
the state and the right-­wing politicians against whom residents have historically fought. Yet however much anger at, and fear of, youth gangs exists,
Coca-­Cola workers, bus drivers, and many city people are not so naive as to
think that these robberies and murders start and stop with young people or
that old enemies are suddenly friends. Mareros from ms-­13 and m-­18 extort
from delivery truck drivers and stores, and from bus drivers and neighborhood merchants, but everyone wonders what adult syndicate collects the
money. Speaking generally of both the plausibility and purposes of skilled
and professional manipulation of the mareros, Rodolfo Kepfer, a Guatemala
City psychiatrist who worked for many years at a youth detention center, said
in an interview: “The Mara is not autonomous. There are powers behind it.
There is a system here, a logic, and a well-­established hierarchy. There are
periods when only members of a certain gang and not another get sent to
jail, or periods when they are only involved in one specific sort of crime and
not another. . . . All of which makes one think there are master plans that are
not elaborated by these children who form the Maras. Who gives them arms?
Who teaches them military tactics?”28 Given the impunity and the obvious
political and economic clout of the drug trade kings, it has been impossible
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to delve into this far-­reaching question of the uses of mareros as cheap labor
for well-­structured maneuvers that land youth in jail, instead of those who
pull the strings.
What can seem to be contradictory views in the neighborhoods reflect
other types of awareness of the Maras’ complexities as victims. Those residents who tell of terrible assaults by gang members, call for mano dura, and
do not necessarily oppose lynching suspected delinquents on the spot do not
necessarily see the Maras as monolithic or evil. Their efforts to protect their
own lives do not mean they have lost sight of the larger picture. They will
often bracket their horror stories with remarks such as “they are not all like
that” or “that bunch just gets high and listens to music. They don’t do anything.”29 They point out that mareros belong to a shared and difficult world
of the barrios and that they sometimes suffer domestic abuse. It was with
grief, despair, and worry for both victim and victimizer that a schoolteacher
told a reporter how she saw a young gang member shoot his girlfriend in
the face at close range.30 In a lunchtime discussion among a group of professionals in a youth shelter in 1997 regarding the deterioration of city life
and the problem of gangs, a social worker offered what sounded like a line
from a Bertolt Brecht play: “If only we got mad at the system again.”31
Mental health experts and religious figures situate the mareros at that
same threshold between life and death at which the gang members place
themselves and their victims. The most well-­known figure in the world of
gang ministry is the Jesuit priest Padre Manolo Maquieira, who died in 2006
at age sixty of a heart attack. In 1996, Padre Manolo started pastoral work
with gang members in three poor Zone 6 colonias in which ms-­13 was
powerful. By 2001, he had created a youth club that provided children and
teenagers with art classes, sports groups, and discussion circles, only to later
realize that the rival gang m-­18 was using the club as a recruiting ground to
develop its capacity to wage war against ms-­13 for control of the area. Disillusioned, eight years after he arrived in Zone 6, he judged the gang members to be beyond repair and shifted his attention, as did others, to “children
at risk,” a term for those who were in danger of joining the gangs or being
killed by them, as several he knew had been.32 He thought the gang members were self-­hating and in no way rebels against society. He wrote that they
were “rebels against life and against themselves,” their violence was a “form
of suicide, of self-­punishment.”33 Working with former gang members in a
reform center just outside the city, the social worker Herbert Sánchez told
me that, like alcoholics who every day must choose not to drink, the youth
with whom he works must “choose life over death every day.”34 Interviewed
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teacher, Jorge Emilio Winter Vidaurre, with the proclamation “he lived long
enough,” the psychologist and youth worker Marco Garavito stated that “a
sense of life no longer exists among mareros.”35
The Mareros’ Sense: “Why Should I Talk?”
When I resumed research in the late 1990s, the first time I met mareros was
when two members of ms-­13 entered a leaky makeshift black plastic encampment full of street children in Zone 6, where I sat with a street educator who was doing medical checkups. Straight out of a photograph, with
dark-­colored tattoos on their arms and dressed in black, the two looked
muscular and healthy, even jaunty, and they contrasted with the malnourished, drugged, and sick street children who huddled on filthy mattresses
and looked up attentively at these two larger-­than-­life figures. After directing the street educator to look over a wound one had, the mareros retreated.
The street educator said that they would return to shake down the children
after we had departed.
To my surprise, a week later I saw one of the two ms-­13 youth I had seen
in Zone 6 sitting by himself in a common space inside an ngo crisis shelter
for street children. We recognized one another and introduced ourselves. He
said that his name was Luis Arturo, he was seventeen years old, and he was
leaving ms-­13. Because the penalty for that would be, he explained, death
without trial, he had entered the shelter, where he bided time to “consider
the options.” He described himself as a “professional” drug salesman because he did not take drugs and insisted on immediate cash payment and not
goods. The Mara seemed a business association, and not his friendship cohort. A muscular body builder who regularly worked out in a gym in Zone 1
in Guatemala City, Luis Arturo spoke about “mibarrio” as a sales region, one
he had to fight over with other clikas. He normally lived alone in a “so-­so”
pension, but he now stayed in the shelter. The “involvement of the National
Police in the trade” had become a “permanent threat” to his life in ms-­13, so
it was best to leave it all. Having listened to him, I asked him if we could take
the time to talk more about his life, and he replied, “Why should I talk about
my life?”36 He shrugged, and we both drifted off. It was impossible for me
to conceptualize how to “interview” anyone who did not want to talk.37 Possibly I was the problem, for many reasons. Nonetheless, as I proceeded with
my work of finding and talking to youth, the difficulties of having conversations started to become its own topic. When I later asked Short, a young man
in the Maras I did befriend, about this, he shot off the statement “To talk is
to die.” To make the point, he refused to respond to my further queries about
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what that meant.38 Perhaps if I were male, and better yet if I had lived for an
extended period of time in a particular barrio full of gang members, things
might have been different. Nonetheless, a sharp contrast existed between
the youth in gangs I had met in the 1980s and those I was encountering in
the late 1990s and 2000s.
The young women and men in gangs in the mid-­1980s enjoyed conversing and turning over ideas. No one asked us, “Why should I talk about my
life?” Eager to talk about almost anything in open-­ended discussions, they
often took the conversational initiative and hoped to present themselves as
“good” within the framework of a class struggle between rich and poor.
To have the myths surrounding them exploded seemed just, and to be just
was part of their narrative of themselves. Why not talk? The assumption of
communication was in place. But with the striking exception of those who
left the Mara and a very few others, the youth with whom I spoke in the late
1990s and 2000s did not look to talk, much less interpret. It would be an
understatement to say that the language of class had disappeared among
the postwar mareros. Talk of “the poor” and “the rich,” much less the poor
against the rich, had diminished.
As time went on, I discovered that I was not alone with this predicament
of finding it difficult to have lengthy conversations with mareros. Foreign
journalists and sociologists have sometimes paid mareros in cash, goods,
or favors for interviews. In the early 2000s, the Guatemalan sociologist
Anneliza Tobar Estrada, who did none of that, developed a project in a high-­
security prison that concerned the mareros’ “perception and criticism of
Guatemalan society and their proposals about what should be done,” research that would involve the mareros and that explicitly honored them.
After conferring with their clika higher-­ups via cell phone from the jail, the
mareros refused to participate. “Why should we?” they said, and she shifted
her research toward a few ex-­mareros and the professionals who worked
with gangs.39
Not talking, as in “to talk is to die,” could be read as a pact that creates
a potent sense of belonging. It is no doubt related to ms-­13’s and m-­18’s
multifarious relationships with adult criminal rings that manipulate youth
inside a dangerous world in which fortunes are made and talk is dangerous.
But it also reflects a larger political and social landscape that does not encourage young people from the popular barrios to speak, much less to analyze. Little was brought forth by my mention of subjects that mareros “ran
with” on their own in the 1980s, such as work, family matters, school life,
presidents, and movies. But the deeper issue concerns what they did choose
to focus on in conversations.
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What mareros most wanted to pencil in was their inclusion in a tightly
knitted group that aimed to fight to the death. Many youth said that friendship was what initially attracted them to the clikas of ms-­13 and m-­18, but in
what did friendship consist? The internal life of the Maras had shifted away
from dancing or the possession of expensive consumer goods to a focus on
drugs, painful rites of loyalty, and annihilating the other gang. A seventeen-­
year-­old ms-­13 member named Carrito explained, “We dedicate ourselves to
killing gang members who aren’t from mibarrio and that’s it—day after day,
someone dies every day—every day our life is the same except it’s a different
person who dies . . . one day one of theirs, one day one of ours.”40 Thirteen-­
year-­old m-­1 8 member CC described to me how one day he would die in a
gang fight because his life consisted of “matando a ellos, matado por ellos”
(killing them and being killed by them). A boy named Gato told me, “We
die one day to the next.” Phrases appeared and reappeared in conversations
such as “we only think about killing,” “nothing matters to us.”41 Fifteen-­
year-­old Junior said, “In the group we learn to be bad. We like to kill. We
only think about killing, about revenge, about violence. Other people’s lives
don’t matter to us.” Using the beautiful name Orquídia, one youth, who was
covered with what he counted to be fifty-­five tattoos, insisted that to enter
his clika of ms-­13, one had to kill members of rival clikas. He said, “Definitely the more people you smoke, the more respect, the faster you move up
in the gang,” and added, “We only kill other gang members . . . my turn [to
be killed by the enemy gang] will come.”42
An amiable fifteen-­year-­old named Abel, a member of ms-­13, explained
to me that after he had been kicked out of his home, he went directly to the
National Airport because he thought he could sneak on an airplane. Instead
he met a kindly cleaning woman who paid him to help her and took him
home. She tried but could not maintain him, so she brought him to a crisis
shelter that, because Abel was stable and did not take drugs, placed him in
a group home for teenage boys. It was there that he discovered drugs and
ms-­13. He explained: “They [ms-­13] offered me a barrio. I wanted one, and
they had asked me, so I joined. To join I had a baptism. They took turns hitting me, hard, thirteen times, thirteen seconds each blow. . . . You need the
Mara to defend you . . . you need friends for fights. As they say, ‘If someone
touches you, they are touching everyone.’ There isn’t a night without a fight.
The firemen don’t come. Nobody comes. I fight. I am prepared. I don’t have
any obligations. If I die, so what?”43 Later killed in a gang fight, a street child
recounted his experiences in ms-­13: “A bunch of us little kids entered the
ms-­13 together. One of us was five years old. The majority of us are dead now.
They [m-­18 leaders] killed them. . . . Five people died at my hands. The last
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time I killed was last year. I gave a tiro de gracias [coup de grâce] in the forehead, right here.”44
Tattoos gave great poignancy to this constant rehearsal of killing, killed,
shooting, shot, dying, dead. Although many of the youth I met did not have
the facial tattoos that have attracted photographers, and many had desisted
from using tattoos because these made them a target, the corporal aesthetic
of tattooing had replaced the designer clothes of the 1980s. Large and small
tattoos announced and named like no fashion sunglasses or brand-­name
jeans could. At first glance, the specifics of any one person seemed to vanish into a meta-­identity signaled by tattoos of Satan, the sad and the happy
clown, Christ, “forgive me mama for this crazy life,” unicorns, tigers, the
Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, numbers, gang names in block letters, crowns
of thorns, and wrist tattoos of thorns and chains. But what was being announced was personal identity. Tattoos were autobiographies. Carrito said
that tattoos “cuenta la historia” (tell the story). Lounging on an old car seat
outside of his mother’s small place, two rooms of a long row of rooms in El
Gallito, Zone 3, Short read out his tattoos to me: “2” represented the number of his children, “3” referred to his zone, “rest in Peace, Julio” was a reference to a friend who died, “March 3” was the day of Julio’s death, “Shirley”
referred to an ex-­lover, “Chiki” was the name of his girlfriend, and “Los
Locos” was his clika. Sitting next to Short and with Short’s encouragement,
Jonny read his tattoos aloud to me: “16” was the number of the months he
spent in the Centro Preventivo in Zone 18, one tear drop represented the
number of people he had killed, a heart represented “what I left behind, “la
Chaka” was an ex-­lover, and a sad clown face was a “picture of me.”45
Short and Jonny lived in the same poor neighborhood where they had
grown up, as did most of the youth I met. None of the youth with whom I
spoke had been to Los Angeles, and a few had never been to areas of Guatemala City that might count as urban highlights, such as the fancy Avenida
de la Reforma or the city zoo. All these youth read and wrote, but did so
only minimally, except for one young man who claimed that he kept all the
account books for ms-­13 in Zone 18. None found school interesting. Several had common Maya surnames and were stereotypically indigenous in appearance, but no one replied to any query about ethnicity or to specific questions about the world outside of the hyperpresent gang life. They each had a
nickname, and they called themselves mareros, and not indigenas, Mayas,
Ladinos, mestizos, or chumos (a term for poor Ladinos or mestizos).46 They
knew that they amounted to being big, bad kids with tattoos (even if they
do not have tattoos), the type who kill (even if they did not). They knew that
they would all burn in hell, and they all loved their mothers, but they were
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loyal to their gang above all else, and for that they killed and were killed.
They presented a repetitive script. They may have been making stories up
or exaggerating, but violence and death were at the tips of their tongues.
Sometimes tattooed and other times clean of tattoos, they spoke about the
“rules,” about being beaten and beating others. Killing and being killed construct life and destiny, which consists of their death. This story of and belief
in the “fight to the death” for mibarrio seems to answer the puzzle of life for
these youth in a world that is, to borrow a phrase, “ontologically insecure
and existentially uncertain” (see figure 3.5).47
The question I repeatedly asked about why m-­18 and ms-­13 clikas fight
to the death got similar responses: “Así es” (It just is like that) or “saber”
(who knows). “Being malo [bad] is the only way to live, because life is bad,”
said one youth. The one specific explanation for the intergang killings concerned revenge. After Short’s close friend Julio was killed, he told me, “After
my tears dried, I did what I had to.” He and other gang members caught
someone in the rival gang and got even. He concluded: “It was ‘an eye for
an eye.’” Carrito, who describes himself as a “professional car thief,” said
that “life demands malo . . . it’s part of life” and that is “how it is,” “la violencia” is life. “It” (death/violence) happens, and the mareros have found
a way around it because they are inside of “it,” and not waiting for “it” to
arrive. This suicidal fatalism is described by the Guatemalan psychologist
Mariano Gonzáles as the mental condition of “accepting hopelessness”
in which there is no “human project.”48 In a horrid reverse of modernity’s
theme of making one’s way in life, these youth control their destiny of death
by “making” their own deaths in the fight against an “enemy” who is themselves in the mirror of the rival gang.

That young men and boys from similar backgrounds and with similar
troubles compose one another’s enemies is paralleled by negative feelings
about self. Writing about mareros he had known for years, Padre Manolo
noted, “They have low self-­esteem, continually they repeat . . . ‘we are
bad.’”49 I heard the same over and over: “Soy malo” (I am bad/evil); “Somos
malos” (We are bad/evil). When these youth say “malo,” they refer to evil,
bad, and badly behaved, and not “bad” as in a positive reversal. One youth
told me that he wished he could change, and his family wished he could
as well, but “that’s life—it’s evil, so it’s necessary to be evil.”50 Simultaneously, mareros defend themselves against society’s relentless negativity
toward them. One said, “Society hates us. They hate us, and they look at us,
they see a tattoo, and they judge us. We aren’t perfect, you know. But all they
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FIGURE 3.5 Members of MS-­13, 2005. Not all mareros have tattoos,
a­ lthough in images of them they almost invariably do. This photograph
is an exception. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

think is that we are bad people. They are just assholes.”51 Former marero
William told the researcher Anneliza Tobar, “Society isn’t ours, it belongs
to others,” and “when we join the gang, we look with indifference at the rest
of the world.”52 Society is an enemy, the rival gang is an enemy, and each
gang is entrenched in its mibarrio, a remarkable movable space given materiality by the presence of mareros who can show up in places from prisons
and buses to el barrio.
Tragically, the el barrio of neighborhoods, streets, and markets where
these youth have grown up and usually live appears to be configured in their
geographical imagining as prey. Padre Manolo observed this to be true especially if they lived in their old neighborhoods: “Their aspiration is not to be a
youth from Barrio X. It is to be a youth from outside Barrio X who owns Barrio X.”53 The “outside” from which they descend might be the Los Angeles of
their desires where they may have never been, and they return to beat up on
the actual location of their own history of families, schools, and the dramas
of their own lives. The youth I spoke with had relatives who most likely worried night and day about them, but what the mareros wanted to highlight
was that they had broken with their families, even if they still slept at home.
Victor articulated this in stark terms: when I asked him where he was born,
he replied, “I was born with the Mara, without it I am nothing.”54 The common tattoo “forgive me mother for my crazy life” both retains the sanctity of
mother love and distances oneself from it. The tattooed youth is not leaving
his vida loca; he is requesting forgiveness for not leaving it. When I asked
Short about his kin, he replied that his mother thought that he was “malo,”
and he added that she was not part of “mi vida.” Yet, we were sitting outside
of her house, where he lived. These youth may well support families, but that
was not part of their self-­presentation, as it was in the 1980s. Surrounded
by a seemingly endless parade of lives of poverty and failure, in their minds
the mareros have severed themselves from “esa vida”—“that life.” They break
with it, and even literally break it.
Rosa ended up murdering an elderly woman. Here is her account to a
social worker:
We all lived in the same house. It’s a really big house, and everyone went
there every day. There was a kind of temple. I was supposed to cut my
veins and let drops of my blood fall into a big well. Everyone in the Mara
had put their blood into that well. . . . During some rituals, some people
fall down, others see eyes in the flames, some see someone being killed,
or the things they do to you if you leave the gang. After joining the Mara,
I killed an old woman because they told me I had to kill somebody, and
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to sacrifice their blood. . . . I pushed her, and when I touched her afterward, she wasn’t breathing any more. She was an [old] woman who lived
with her grandchildren. They were from a rival gang. I had killed their
grandma. I felt so bad, like I had killed my own grandma. . . . I don’t remember exactly what happened. The Mara has also tried to kill me—once
with a gun, once with a knife, and another time with a car.55
It is hard to imagine a more radical rupture from “esa vida,” or a more forced
hell-­fire bonding than these theatrics of death and Rosa’s real-­life execution
of an elderly woman. Rosa said that though she thought of killing herself,
she fled instead, as the final chapter discusses, and went into hiding for
months.
For males, admissions of shame or fear would ruin their mystique of male
power through physical talent and the ability to endure to the end without
emotions. Violence was gendered as male. Padre Manolo pointed out, and
I observed, that some young women in the Maras identify themselves with
masculinity. Eighteen-­year-­old Carmen told me said that she joined a clika
because she wanted to be “like a man, to be ready, to fight, to jump someone . . . to go to blows.” In Carolina’s opinion, “women can’t get things
done and machos can and that’s what I need to be.” I asked Carolina to what
things she referred when she said “get things done,” and I added that in her
barrio in Zone 6, women held households together emotionally and economically. She knew that, “but you know,” she replied, “when it’s necessary
to . . . handle a bad situation . . . all the things the clika needs to take care
of, to protect, to be protected.” Her reply to the question “From what?” was
“la violencia.”56 According to her, females are ranked. Those who are tough
enough to endure beatings as an initiation ritual rather than rape—the “acceptance” of rape signals weakness—have a higher status in the Mara and a
chance at being a clika leader.
Folding violence, masculinity, and Mara into one another has left girls
and young women who identify as feminine without a Mara identity, and,
in conversations, they positioned themselves on the sidelines. Many said
that they had joined the Maras because their boyfriends were mareros.
Sixteen-­year-­old Chata’s comments were similar to those of the other girls.
Chata declared her membership in ms-­13, but she spoke of “doing things
for them,” or “with them.” She had no identity as one of “them.” “They”
were “los muchachos,” the boys with whom one gets, in her words, “used to
having sex. . . . At first you don’t want to and feel terrible.” Feminine females
provide sexual “favors” and run gang errands—especially in the back and
forth between prisons—clean, cook, and look after children and often asso96

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ciate themselves with their boyfriends’ otherwise neglected birth families.
Their status reflects that of females in the larger society, yet worse.
Foot Soldiers
The marero has turned into a gendered killer/killed persona, a male warrior, the winner of the contest to decide Guatemalan history who is also a
loser, the dead warrior. Gang members routinely call themselves “soldiers”
who “fight and die for mibarrio.” The many meanings that masculinity has
had have narrowed to one, and all others have atrophied. Masculinity has
come to hinge on the capacity to give violence and take it, without limits, including the cap of mortality. This warriors’ work is what the really powerful
men, whether generals or members of the economic elite, have had in their
back pockets for generations, and they can pull it out and put it back in as
need be. In the marero’s life there is only this violent masculinity, without
the degrees, titles, money, prestige, social networks, mobility, and other
resources that the Guatemalan elites and military men have had in plentitude and that allow for many masculine identities, whether of padre, patrón,
or patria.
For mareros necroliving has presumably kept their lives under their control by giving them space, identity, unconditional friendship, and a way to
earn a living. They can use it to wreak havoc with a world that has failed them
by messing up public transportation, redesigning neighborhood life, driving
down real estate values, causing decreases in school attendance, and even
provoking flight across borders. Finally, it can protect them, through death,
from their own futures. Boys turn into young men and then into adults in
their twenties without leaving the gangs until they die from life in the gang.
Padre Manolo thought the presence of adults in their early twenties in the
Maras indicated a fear of entering an adulthood that would be similar to
that of their fathers, uncles, and other men in their neighborhoods, many of
whom have not succeeded in life. He placed both extended memberships in
the Mara and the early deaths of mareros in that context: they had lived and
died as “youths and thus did not fail as men.”57 Over one-­half of the mareros
that Padre Manolo had known over a ten-­year period died in fights. They beat
adulthood to the punch and did not become, as the song “Hombres Fracasados” (Failed men) puts it, “failed men who could not be what they could
have been.”
Often surprisingly humble, sometimes domestically abused, and increasingly disconnected and alienated, urban young men and women and boys
and girls for whom Ladinismo, Maya ethnicity, and Guatemalan citizenship
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continually depreciate into a cultural nothingness are drawn or forced into
the imaginary of necroliving. In the gangs’ understanding of the world, the
once clearly drawn lines between victim and victimizer, between ruler and
ruled, have been blurred. It appears that only violent death can sort out who
is which in a contest that is never settled for long and in which positions
constantly flip as today’s victor is tomorrow’s victim. The lifeblood of the
mareros’ efficacy flows from their promise to kill and to be killed. In the late
1990s, one simple tattoo signaled Mara membership in Guatemala City. It
consisted of three small dots between the thumb and the index finger that
stood for hospital, prison, and morgue.
The feisty 1980s mareros are one unusual reminder of an era of social
struggle. Those of the postwar period are part of the heritage of war, and
they portend the permanency of the war in everyday life. Neither rebels nor
conformists, they are orphans of the world, not only of Guatemala. They have
been criminalized by adults and even criminalized by the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security for all manner of evils. These young people bring to mind
those Hannah Arendt once called in another context “the most symptomatic group,” those “forced to live outside the common world,”58 in this case,
mareros who reproduce the traumas that cast them outside that “common
world,” to end these traumas in death.
The Maras’ Smallest Veins
Mareros are part of the fraught and narrow universe of destitute children
and teenagers living in the city’s streets (see figures 3.6–3.7).59 Generally
ignored or brutalized and despised by adults, these youth are often addicted
to glue and without the means of making a living. Their ages vary (although
they are called street children), their numbers grew in the last decades of
the twentieth century as a direct or indirect result of the war, and by the
early 2000s their offspring formed a second generation. In a complex relationship involving protection and exploitation, these street children inhabit the margins of the gangs, and they sometimes drift into them to run
errands or become more full-­fledged participants. The Maras are the only
social grouping that they can actually join and still be street children. Unlike
humanitarian workers, the Maras do not try to tug these children away from
the street living to which they are habituated, with which they identify and
where their close friends are found.60 The gangs can even hold out a pathway. Guillermo, a twelve-­year-­old Honduran who ended up in the streets in
Zone 1 by hitching rides to Guatemala City after Hurricane Mitch destroyed
his home in 1998, told me that his friends in ms-­13 would help him go to
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FIGURE 3.6 Young people living out on the street, Séptima Avenida,
Zone 1, Guatemala City, 2002. Credit: Andrea Aragón.

FIGURE 3.7 Neighborhood kids in their hangout, Guatemala City, 1999.
Credit: Jonny Raxón/Fotokids, 1999.

Houston, where he had relatives who worked in car wash. Here were real
possibilities: connections with risk takers, undocumented immigration, a
job in a car wash in the United States.61
For some, the mareros are heroes who have mastered what it takes. I met
children in a shelter in the late 1990s who proudly showed off their magic
marker tattoos “ms” or “18.” One boy, Carlos, looked forward to being in a
Mara clika when he was “stronger.” The clika seemed to be that inevitable
violent defense against a painful world. A teenager named Rubén filled out
the following questionnaire during one of his brief stays in a shelter:
What is your family like?
My family is my parents and my brothers and sisters. My older sister is
named Ana. She is studying to be a schoolteacher. My little sister, Claudia,
doesn’t go to school yet. My brother is named Oscar and everyone calls
him “coco.” He has a bicycle and my family is lucky. We live very happily.
My mother is very scared, and my father likes to fight.
What are you like?
I am cheerful. My character is rebellious and people provoke me a lot. I
am respectful and responsible.
Write what you would like your family to be like:
I wish that they were very cheerful and that all my brothers and sisters
were tough like me. I wish Rony and the others would study a lot and enjoy life. I wish my older brother were head of Mara-­18 so that my mother
would be happier, less sad.62
Anxious about a family that he conjured up as happy, Rubén imagined that
the power of the Maras—if only his brother were “head”—might make his
family truly happy. A social worker told me that Rubén joined a Mara, or at
least hung out with one and “got into trouble.” His file shows that he died in
1998 for “reasons unknown.”
Estuardo Edwin Mendoza is another youth from the streets who joined
a Mara. I met him in a shelter in 1997 when he was fourteen years old, tall
for his age, pale, and sad. The first time we talked, we sat together watching
the rain pour into the patio. He said that he had been sick for a “lifetime”
because he had caught susto during the war, and it “just never went away.”63
He told me about the massacre in his family’s hamlet and the dead bodies
he had seen, “many many dead, some hung, some burnt.” “The army killed
people because the people hid the guerrillas, the army killed babies. The
people did not say where the guerrillas had gone. I touched dead bodies after
the soldiers had cut them up with machetes. I went running into the night.
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The soldiers were painted with charcoal and they had knives. . . . The army
killed four of my brothers even before I was born. I saw the soldiers throw
fuel over the houses and burn them.” His mother, he went on to say, escaped
from the hamlet after a massacre, which probably took place between 1981
and 1982, and found her way down the mountains and into Guatemala City.
Estuardo thought this was the second time war had destroyed her family and
left her displaced. She told him she had left El Salvador “after her parents
were killed by soldiers” and she had “walked on a highway with bombs falling all around her.” He remembered that she always said, “Why did I leave
one war for another?”
According to a social worker report, Estuardo had never been outside of
the capital. He was born in a public hospital in Guatemala City in 1983 and
lived with his mother for years in the settlement of Tierra Nueva II, one that
absorbed war refugees in the 1980s and 1990s.64 According to Estuardo, he
left home at age ten because “my mother said she could not support me. My
mother doesn’t like me. . . . This is sad, I love my mother so much. When
my mother hit me, she said it was because the blood of Salvadorans made
her cruel.” After making a home visit, the social worker added to her report
that Estuardo had three siblings, and his mother earned Q350 monthly and
paid Q350 to rent a “small, dark room without much furniture.” The equation of rent and salary could have been an error. However, it is not surprising
that she earned only enough to pay the rent. Even if she earned a bit more,
how much could have been left for food or clothes, much less school fees or
bus fares? Not atypically, the social worker faulted the mother for not being
the mother she could not possibly have been. She wrote in her report, “The
mother has been irresponsible with her children. There is no communication between them, she is dedicated only to her work [outside the house].”65
Estuardo stayed in Guatemala City’s streets for the rest of his life, and
sometimes he stopped by his mother’s place. Beaten by policemen in two
incidents, he survived for a while. Out of exhaustion, he occasionally entered
this shelter near the busy downtown area in Zone 1. Here he and other boys
could sleep, eat, get medical attention, and attend classes on topics such as
“what must be done to improve oneself,” “how to take advantage of life’s
opportunities,” “aids and its consequences,” and “the family and the child’s
role in the family,” provided that they did not use drugs. He would stay in
this large converted mansion with its showers and friendly staff, food, and
bunk beds until he was kicked out for breaking that cardinal rule, just to
return a few months later and repeat this pattern. His thin file dates back
to his first arrival there 1995. It gives his vital statistics, notes that he came
from a family of “refugees from the countryside,” and describes his behavior
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during his stays—“difficult,” “incommunicative,” and “complains of stomach pains.” A volunteer music teacher had penciled into the margins, “Estuardo loves to play guitar and drums . . . although at first he didn’t like the
guitar, he has the possibility to express himself musically. He is helpful and
cooperative, and sometimes he has his difficult moments.”66 Small wonder,
in every sense.
Not yet born at the time of the massacre in his family’s hamlet, he nevertheless described it as if he had been there, even actively: “I touched dead
bodies. . . . I went running into the woods.” Recovering a sense of himself
and his mother from these images, his experiences of other people’s memories at least kept him allied with a part of his family he had never directly
known yet so affected him, and these memories gave him a history that explained the situation of his difficult existence, including his mother’s anger
at him.67 Feeling ill could represent a “cultural document” that kept him
close to his own truths and to the larger emotional and historic “we” within
his trajectory.68
He explained to me that he joined m-­1 8 because he wanted to “estar en
algo” (be in something); here was the jagged edge of some “we.” Yet, at the
bottom rung of the intense m-­18 hierarchy, he referred to the gang members as “them” and admired “them because they are loyal, they know how to
handle stuff, they are malo, and that is what you need because life is malo.”
In the gang, he felt “protected.”69 This indicates the extremity of his situation; a year later he was dead because of his membership. In revenge for a
presumably m-­18 killing of an ms-­13 member, someone in ms-­13 shot him
with an m16 assault rifle in early 1998. His murder was impersonal. He could
have been anyone in the gang.
The war and its aftermath run through all of this. Violent death marked
both ends of his life, which spanned the Guatemalan state’s production of
violent death as a means of political power, to Estuardo’s demise within a
world of youth who can produce death as a means of getting by for a while.
The war formed what Pierre Bourdieu called a system of dispositions, “a past
which survives in the present and tends to perpetuate itself into the future by
making itself present in practices structured according to its principles.”70
The war put his life in place, organized it, and made violent death his most
familiar terrain and his destiny.
Estuardo’s insistent preservation of the memory of the massacre rang
heroic and moral in light of the silence surrounding the war in 1997. He
talked. Even though many children were in the streets because of the war,
social workers rarely alluded to it in reports and conversations in order to
protect their work and the children, and there existed no public discussion of
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it. The transparency of Estuardo’s absorption in and memory of a massacre
that he knew through others was uncommon among the street children I
met in the late 1990s, even though many were war orphans.71 Recalling conversations with Estuardo, I am struck by his recollection of the massacre,
especially because his memories defied the “amnesia of genesis” that overtook Guatemala in reference to military violence. It is difficult to reconcile
the chronology he presents—he was not born until after his mother left the
massacred village—except to say that the way he put it all together underscores his subjective sense of war’s presence and power.
What chances did Estuardo have, living within the effective power of violent death because it was the greatest historical force within his life, a life
spent growing up in the streets and in a “small dark” space with a hardworking and underpaid woman in an urban neighborhood pockmarked at a distance by the war? Outside of the Mara—and the crisis shelter, which never
worked out for him, because he could not meet the difficult requirement of
kicking his addiction—there were no open doors in his life and no way to
understand more deeply his most foundational and entrenched memories.
To quote Cathy Caruth in her discussion of the relationship between history
and trauma, his history is precisely the way in which he was “implicated
in other peoples’ traumas.”72 And we (myself and other adults who passed
through his life) are implicated in the tragedy of not having been able to
protect this child from becoming a victim of a system of dispositions that
reproduced war without the war, and a target of the many in which he took
part, and from which he died.73

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DEMOCRACY AND LOCK-­U P

I too have known Satan, I can bring them [mareros] to Christ.
—Panamá, Pentecostal street worker, interviewed by the author, Guatemala City,
March 1987

The devil is my jefe.
—Words said to have been mumbled by m-­18 member Áxel Danilo Ramírez
Espinoza (alias Smiley), “public enemy number one,” El Periódico, April 17, 2009

Who are we? We are the majority, worker, business executive, housewife, athlete,
chewing gum vendor, we are those who drive in the latest model Mercedes Benz
and those who take the bus or walk in the street. We are the people who do something constructive and positive for our country and our families and who every day
confront the chaos and violence caused by “mareros,” those juvenile gangs. We are
humble people, normal people who work to reach what is difficult but not impossible to achieve: peace.
—National Civil Police of Guatemala, teléfono 110, “Unidos Contra Las Maras,”
public relations advertisement

T

he National Civil Police’s “United against the Maras” poster advertises an
alignment of Guatemalans who run the gamut, absurdly and obscenely,
from a chewing gum vendor to the owner of a new Mercedes-Benz. No matter who they are, the argument goes, all share a normality that is threatened by the noncitizen others: the “mareros.” Nothing could more invert
the 1954–80 progressive social imaginary, or more confuse our understandings than the portrayal by the National Civil Police. Policemen sometimes
dip into and even control the earnings from the “war taxes” mareros collect;
it is likely that the gum vendor has been harassed by a policeman at some
point in her or his life; the owner of that new Mercedes-Benz might well

4

have bought it with drug money; and the business executive is not part of a
“humble” majority that includes workers and housewives.
However preposterous, the poster is hardly surprising. From the moment
the Maras appeared on the streets of Guatemala City in 1985, mareros have
been represented as threats to democracy, peace, toil, and the everyday life.
Over decades of ever-­increasing clamor about youth delinquency, neither
political parties nor state agencies—be these mano dura or reformist—have
seriously studied the gangs in a sustained manner, or developed noteworthy
programs to face up to the problems that gangs pose or that youth encounter. Attention has focused on the imaginary marero, and the real ones
face a world of police, media people, and others who insist on that diabolical
image and push the marero to fit what sometimes starts to stick.
This chapter deals with the complexities and the consequences of varied
responses to the mareros. It first discusses how expert demonologists in the
Pentecostal movement staked out the terrain of handling the Maras during
the war. It then recounts what has happened to the whole configuration of
Mara power and powerlessness, discussed in the previous chapter, after the
postwar state laid claim to a role as engineer of a new Guatemala based on
law, and moved gang members into the institutional setting of the penitentiary system. Finally, it addresses the reality that going to jail has become a
new—by now routine—stage in the lives of mareros, and that controlling
jails in the name of National Citizen Security has enhanced the power of
military and ex-military men. Prisons today reproduce the Maras, and they
fuel the success of conservative political movements led by men who present
themselves as necessary specialists in the management of violence.
Neoliberalism and Pentecostals in the 1980s
Structural adjustment programs imposed in the 1980s resulted in substantial cutbacks in funds to the state’s Welfare Secretariat, which since 1961
has had jurisdiction over needy and troubled youth. By its own account it
could only look after 4.69 percent of its potential clientele by 1987.1 By that
year, the Tratamiento y Orientación de Menores (Treatment and Orientation for Minors, tom), the branch of the secretariat charged with rehabilitating or protecting juveniles, housed and serviced a mere 250 children and
teenagers in its five centers, and even these group homes were barely supplied.2 In addition, the leadership of tom had no vision of its work. Social
workers—who had to scurry about after working hours to solicit money for
notebooks and pencils as well as supplies such as bandages, soap, toilet

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paper, soft drinks, and plastic utensils from companies such as Johnson &
Johnson and Coca-­Cola—drew up a long list of criticisms of tom that included “programs that do not represent the needs of the majority, inappropriate solutions, lack of rational and scientific planning, lack of evaluation
and supervision.”3 Psychologists at tom appraised it in these words: “The
achievements have been minimal, especially regarding reeducation, the raison d’être of the institution.”4 One professional evaluator summed up his
1987 report by saying that the leadership of tom was “in another world.”5
As a consequence of incompetence, financial crisis, and the ruling Christian Democratic Party’s inability to rise to the occasion, the care of needy
and troubled youth was turned over to Pentecostals. Given their widespread
influence, Pentecostals confronted no opposition when they assumed a role
as social engineer, and their religiosity blurred the designation of privatization. As chapter 2 discussed, the Pentecostals in Guatemala had been involved in governance since the war escalated in 1980. For a period they ran a
leadership training program for state functionaries and figures such as the
born-­again Christian General Efraín Ríos Montt, an architect of massacres
who justified his actions in the language of fire and brimstone.6 In this conjunction of a presumably reformist civilian government without funds, and
the growing ubiquity of well-­funded Pentecostalism, there seemed nothing
unusual about tom inviting Pentecostals into its centers. Members from
the largest of these churches in Guatemala City, the Iglesia de Cristo Elim
(Church of Christ, elim), regularly went to tom centers to sing, talk, and
give counsel. With the approval of tom officials, they brought with them
easy-­to-­read pamphlets on important topics such as drugs and alcohol.
With the aim of orienting youth to better guide other youth away from the
world of Maras, Pentecostals opened a ministry named Juventud para Cristo
(Youth for Christ), which regularly sent volunteers into public schools such
as the important teacher training school Instituto Normal de Señoritas
Belén, and the large vocational high schools. Such was the situation of Pentecostal ascendancy that in 1987 the Judicial Magistrate for Youth joined
with the unicef program to create an alliance, the Comisión Nacional
Acción por los Niños (National Commission of Action for Children, conani), in which Pentecostals had an important part.7 Its vice-­president was
a Pentecostal street worker, and the Pentecostal ex-­director of the Treasury
Police, who was later dismissed because of his relationship to death squads,
ran the conani-­supported groups such as one named Hombrecito. With
conani’s support, numerous Pentecostal reform centers came into being.
In the 1980s the most vocal and authoritative Pentecostals advocated

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mental discipline and physical punishments for wayward youth. The Pentecostal psychologist Roberto Morales del Pinar, who directed a home for
female ex–gang members and homeless girls in Zone 11, spoke in a professional capacity when he said he believed in corporal punishment and in the
importance of his close authoritarian relationships with the girls, who had
to call him “Papi.” His associate, a Nicaraguan nicknamed Panamá, went
into the streets “where Satan works,” to save young people. Panamá had
been in the Contra forces in Nicaragua, where he developed a drug habit,
but he had a revelation in which Christ walked toward him, and he gave up
his addiction. He was a strong and politically shrewd young adult and a self-­
confessed killer. After he and I had conversed and toured Pentecostal centers together over a period of months, it occurred to me that Panamá could
easily have had ties with the Guatemalan military, and with pride.
One place Panamá took me to was a group home in Zone 1 named Casa Mi
Hogar, a one-­story 1930s building. Inside Casa Mi Hogar was a small, dirty,
foul-­smelling patio, off of which were four dormitories, an office, and a
kitchen. It housed more youngsters than the state-­run reform center Gaviotas did at that time. The patio was the central space, and every time I visited,
the more than 138 young men and boys and some 20 girls who resided there
were standing up in this cramped, sun-­filled or rain-­soaked space, and they
invariably looked distressed. According to the Casa Mi Hogar’s director, the
youth stood for hours “to achieve discipline and formation.” What sort of
“home” was this? It was one to which the National Police directly brought
kids, straight from the street, and to which judges sent young people for rehabilitation. The state remunerated Casa Mi Hogar for services. In his early
sixties, the director described himself to me as a former drug addict who had
once been part of Centuriones, a 1960s shock brigade of a right-­wing political party, and later met Jesus Christ and converted to Pentecostalism inside
the elim church. He explained to me that he was a sinner who had been
saved in order to save others. Without any prompting on my part, he further
explicated that his work inside the strategic hamlets into which the military
had herded villagers after massacres illustrated his dedication to the salvation of souls. Punishment such as war cleansed sinners, and once cleansed
they could “love themselves and develop themselves.”8
Pentecostalism as a neoliberal solution to youth reform became institutionalized in 1992 when the born-­again Christian conservative president
Jorge Serrano Elías took office, while the civil war continued. He brought
the Pentecostal organization Rehabilitación de los Marginados (Rehabilitation of the Marginalized, remar) from Spain, and his government paid it
to officially manage Gaviotas. In charge of the daily schedule and discipline,
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remar staff regularly beat the interned boys with baseball bats, brooms,
and firewood in special isolation rooms; held mandatory Bible classes; and
ripped crosses off the boys’ necks. remar expanded its services to other
state institutions and established its own private centers, where adults hurt
and humiliated young people, and to which courts dispatched them.9 Despite international attention to these abuses, remar continued to work in
the prisons after Pentecostals temporarily left important administrative and
advisory positions at the time of the 1996 Peace Accords. The born-­again
Ríos Montt entered the political arena after 1996, but his religious language
met a provisional riposte in politicians such as Ramiro de León Carpio and
Álvaro Arzú who, however religious, claimed modern expertise based on
education and political experience, and not on a relationship with God.
The Postwar Crossover
Whether of a new generation or survivors of older generations struggling for
identity and place, urban middle-­class professionals and others came to believe that any hope for creating a democratic and constitutional Guatemala
rested on laws and their implementation, and not on revolution. In this
context, there appeared a veritable renaissance of interest in legal means
of social reform and control, and criminal justice was central to this.10 The
Supreme Court judge and prison reform advocate José Francisco de Mata
Vela hailed a new 1990s Penal Code that included the replacement of the inquisitorial model with the accusatory system, “the most important moment
in Guatemalan legal history.” He located this event within a new dawn of
“political and economical facts that have changed the sequence of human
history, as have disappearance of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War,
the democratization of all countries . . . [and in Guatemala] the construction
of a democratic country, in the constitutional state of law.”11 Now liberal
democracy could flourish unencumbered by the exigencies of the Cold War
and the communist threats that had so twisted it out of shape.
With optimism about the promise of an era during which nonmilitary
laws and civilian structures would secure democracy, prestigious institutions in the country such as the Office of the Human Rights of the Archbishop of Guatemala, the University of Rafael Landívar, and the new Institute
of Comparative Penal Science Studies of Guatemala sponsored a landmark
2000 conference titled “Prisiones: El Desafío del Nuevo Milenio” (Prisons:
Challenge of the new millennium). This meeting brought specialists from
Latin American and European countries to Guatemala, and it placed Guatemalan professionals inside the ongoing global discussion about the worldDemocracy and Lock-­Up

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wide prison crisis, one that has given new life to ideals of reform and rehabilitation programs and the protection of prisoners’ rights. In this postwar
period, papers, conferences, university theses, and organizations concerned
with prison reform have proliferated in Guatemala, and they all urge sweeping legislation on prisons and their administration.12 Even if all this has resulted in little change, the penitentiary system entered into the play of national history for the first time in Guatemala after the Peace Accords.
Some context is necessary. It would be hard to argue that the claim made
for many Latin American countries concerning the centrality of the penitentiary system to “strategies of control and discipline and the construction of
hegemonic visions of society,” or to “the construction of a national state,”
has been the case in Guatemalan history.13 According to the first large-­scale
study of the system, done in 2000, “there has never existed the minimum
criteria for prison administration” in Guatemalan history.14 The novel ideas
about the penal system that developed in Europe in the 1800s circulated in
Guatemala, made a small mark, and never went further than the construction of architectural performance pieces that simulated modernity.15 The
Liberal Party built the first national prisons at the end of the nineteenth century. Established in 1877 and based on the European model of reeducation
through moral uplift and workshops for “the women’s arts,” the women’s
prison Santa Teresa rapidly deteriorated into no more than a filthy lock-­up.
The larger Central Penitentiary for Men was carefully laid out according to
the “plans of the best European penitentiaries.” Furnished with a library, a
school with twelve classrooms, and a small soccer field, it opened in 1881
to house 500 prisoners, and soon thereafter held 1,500 men in chaotic conditions of “vice, misery, horror and death.”16 This was the central national
prison for men until the end of the 1960s.17 The Central’s population remained at a steady 1,500 until the 1954 coup, when it jumped to 2,500 due
to the jailing of political prisoners under anticommunist laws, then dropped
back to 1,500, probably because death squads took over punishment.18
In the early 1960s, the physical structure of the Central Penitentiary collapsed. To replace it, three new national farm prisons were built, the most
important one being El Pavón, located in Fraijanes, a town near the capital.
Again, modern ideas dominated planning, and the prison grounds were landscaped to include agricultural and manufacturing centers to rehabilitate and
train the incarcerated through useful labor and reeducation, but, as in the
past, few programs got implemented. Soon after El Pavón opened, prisoners
massively revolted in direct response to the terrible conditions that prevailed
from the outset and to the fatal beating of two inmates by guards in 1968,
during a national state of siege directed at the urban popular movement in
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Guatemala City and the guerrilla movement in the east of the country. As
prisoners started to tear El Pavón apart, the army sent tanks and soldiers into
the sprawling complex, and gunmen sprayed machine gun rounds of bullets on the prisoners from a hovering helicopter. An unknown number were
killed, and order was restored.19 As this chapter suggests, nothing of this
nature has since taken place, though conditions have, if anything, worsened
within Guatemala’s growing number of adult jails and juvenile reformatories.
The adult penitentiary system now includes thirty-­five prisons administered by either the Dirección General del Sistema Penitenciario (General
Administration of the Penitentiary System, dgsp) or regional authorities.
Among these are El Pavón, El Pavoncito, and Fraijanes 2 in Fraijanes in the
department of Guatemala; El Centro Preventivo in Zone 18 at the edge of
Guatemala City; El Boquerón in Cuilapa, Santa Rosa; and El Hoyón in Escuintla. The Welfare Secretariat currently manages several reformatories for
minors that are in and around Guatemala City and house 430 boys and a
smaller number of girls. These include Gaviotas for boys and Gorriones for
girls, both of which are located in Guatemala City, and El Centro Preventivo
Etapa 2 for boys, which is located in San José Pinula, a small town forty-­five
minutes by car from the capital.
Whether for minors or adults, these centers and jails have been incoherently organized and managed for decades. In juvenile reformatories, youths
are not separated by “crime,” an imprecise term in this context. According
to a study done in the 1990s, over 80 percent of the girls in Gorriones were
there because they were at “social risk.”20 In all these detention centers those
judged to have committed deeds of “little social impact” are mixed with
youth accused of homicide and kidnapping.21 Moreover, those convicted of
these acts and sentenced for longer periods are often not transferred to adult
prisons when they reach eighteen. All these youth, and especially those in
centers that still have staff from remar , face beatings, have no recourse
or legal counsel, and are often there “until rehabilitated,” a status that remains undefined. Few teachers, social workers, psychologists, or medical
professionals are available to these young people. One study describes the
youth detention center Etapa 2 as “in chaos” and the Welfare Secretariat “incapable of providing security of inmates, as recent mutinies have shown, in
which adolescents have been killed and wounded.”22
For many years, the adult prisons throughout Guatemala have housed a
steady population of approximately 8,500 inmates. Of these, over 90 percent
are male, the majority are from lower-­class backgrounds, 40 percent are between eighteen and twenty-­two years of age, and well over three-­quarters
are awaiting trial. Those who are convicted are incarcerated together no matDemocracy and Lock-­Up

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ter whether they have been found guilty of petty theft or multiple homicides.
Prison conditions are notoriously terrible for most inmates. They live in overcrowded cells without light, air, mattresses, or sanitary facilities. Worse,
water is scarce. As one example, a single faucet from which water trickles
for at most three hours a day serves 330 inmates in El Hoyón, located in the
hottest part of the country. Because prisoners need cash to survive and few
prisons have work programs, inmates sell drugs and their bodies, and they
wash clothes or clean for the wealthy inmate minority that lives in special
quarters.23 To add to this, corruption and violent humiliation of prisoners
have been the operational principles of guards. An observer noted that in
one center, guards “force inmates to clean toilets with their hands, floors on
their bare knees, sleep standing up and other degradations.”24 Guards have
accepted money for everything from renting out mattresses to facilitating
escapes and opening doors to allow in extralegal executioners.25
It was at the end of the twentieth century that this corrupt and decrepit
prison system slowly started to replace barrios and factories to become the
new publicized site of urban struggles—or rather of disputes about the management of power—that would become increasingly central in the popular
imagination. The stage for this was set by groups of inmates who took over
the internal functioning of some prisons in the 1990s in response to the
disastrous state of affairs inside them. They organized Comités de Orden y
Disciplina (Committees of Order and Discipline, cods) that made prisons
safer for visitors and inmates, implemented strict disciplinary codes, and demanded fees from prisoners to provide for cleaning equipment, prison security against internal theft, and the salaries of cod staff. The most famous
cod was at El Pavón, one that inmates started to stop the constant robbery
and rape of visitors. Over the years, it created what journalists described
as “a country within a country,” or “a small town run by inmates.”26 The
cod operated all the criminal rackets inside El Pavón smoothly, and it controlled internal strife in favor of the cod’s board members. The cod supplied goods, liquor, drugs, and prostitutes; collected fees from the inmates
who ran the prison’s lively commercial center, which included a pizzeria, a
pool hall, a call center, a butcher shop, a tortillería, various repair stalls, and
a hardware store; charged rent for structures, land, and land use; and helped
arrange the sale of homes built by departing inmates. The cod brought a
sort of peace to El Pavón, which boasted of having the best housing for the
wealthy minority in the nation’s prison system. Although the majority of inmates were poor and lived inside old cells with or without mattresses, the
rich had well-­built homes with gardens (and gardeners), refrigerators, and
gym equipment.27 For years, reformers, human rights advocates, and mano
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dura politicians all argued emphatically that the central problem in the penitentiary system was, in the words of one, that “the state has given control to
the prisoners.”28 In reality, this “prisoner power” consolidated the control
of a small minority of inmates that threw crumbs to lower-­class ones, had
ties with external elites, and tried to use the growing inmate population of
mareros as foils within their behind-­the-­walls maneuvers.
A Place in This World
A group of researchers who minister to incarcerated gang members has
suggested that by 2002, by which time the gang presence had become concentrated within the system, prison life represented a new stage of Mara
history.29 The significance of jails is one result of the policy adopted by authorities of grouping gang members together in the same prisons, and even
in the same cell-­blocks. With some fifteen hundred inmates, the largest
penal complex in the country, El Pavón holds some three dozen mareros.
This contrasts sharply with the smaller El Hoyón, which has approximately
300 mareros out of almost the same total of inmates; the Centro Preventivo
in Zone 18, which has had over 250 members of Mara-18 (m-­18) jammed into
one small section known as the “11”; and the high-­security jail El Boquerón,
where some 100 mareros represent over half of those incarcerated there.30
The same pattern of keeping large numbers of gang members together has
existed in the juvenile reformatories (see figure 4.1).
Increased incarcerations and the tight grouping of mareros have had
many consequences. One of these is simply that the penitentiary system has
become the single most important place for mareros in Guatemalan society.
It is their center of sociability par excellence, one where they continue to reference and elaborate on gang identity, maintain contact with gang members
and leaders through their cell phones, and meet each other’s wives and children and other relatives on visiting days, and one where one marero’s visiting sister might become another marero’s lover. Locked in together, they
are locked into each other: already intense gang loyalties become even more
high pitched; in prisons, mareros are only that, and in those closed shared
spaces they can recuperate their fantasies. They use gang language and signals, get new tattoos and shave their hair off over and over; their main sights
are each other’s bodies, and they are together day and night, eating, sleeping, cleaning, and sitting around. Vital to their need to be physically strong,
they do strenuous exercise routines as a group. According to one report,
“There exists no specified area for exercise [in the jail], they [gang members]
play soccer in the patios, they do exercises endlessly—sit-­ups, push-­ups—
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FIGURE 4.1 Members of M-­18 sitting together in El Hoyón Prison,
­Escuintla, 2005. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

wherever they can to stay in shape.”31 The many photographs of mareros behind prison fences attest to the fact that these youth maintain their bodies
and their style. Categorized as mareros, they also call upon themselves to act
as mareros, and they continue the war between Mara Salvatrucha (ms-­1 3)
and m-­1 8 behind bars.32 The mareros have marked out territories, and they
fight for them.
When the mareros have opposed prison authorities, it has been to retain and expand their space within the penal system, rather than oppose
their incarceration in it. The several uprisings of gang members in prisons
and youth centers have involved taking guards hostage as leverage to win
demands that will improve prison life for them as mareros. They have consistently sought increased visitation privileges and the right to carry cell
phones at all times. However, the sharpest disputes have concerned transfers, which are matters of mibarrio solidarity, protection, and survival. The
policy of putting mareros together in jails does not mean that mareros from
the same gangs are necessarily together in the same centers. Mareros have
rioted repeatedly to stop the reassignment of members of their mibarrio to
jails that are rival strongholds, and to bring members of the same gang into
the same prison. Examples of this are the taking of hostages around those
paired demands at El Boquerón and the Centro Preventivo in Zone 18 in
2005; the Centro Preventivo and El Pavoncito in 2006; El Hoyón, Etapa 2 in
San José de Pinula and El Pavoncito in 2007; and Etapa 2 in 2009. These disputes have usually left prisoners and hostages wounded or dead.
Taking Fire
Despite their concentrated numbers and gang adherence, mareros’ power
in prisons is limited. Outside of El Hoyón in Escuintla and juvenile centers such as Etapa 2, mareros have not become the authoritative group of
inmates within the system because they have faced stiff competition from
incarcerated state agents and members of the Colombian and Guatemalan mafias, as well as from important outside groups. Vulnerable as lower-­
class youth without lawyers or wealthy relatives, mareros have been targets
for powerful prisoners and, above all, for politicians and military men who
entrap gang members and use them, as well as the all-­important uproar
around them, in dangerous dramas that go beyond jails.
The first publicized case of this nature took place in the Centro Preventivo, Zone 18, where the ex-­colonel Bryan Lima Oliva and a former member of the presidential guard, José Obdulia Villanueva (both incarcerated
for the murder of the human rights advocate Bishop Juan Gerardi), joined
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together with other ex-­military men who awaited trial there. Under Lima
Oliva’s leadership, this cohort of inmates took control of the prison through
the cod and, according to testimony later taken from prisoners by human
rights organizations, “demanded monthly payments from inmates in return for security, cable television, food, water, light, cigarettes and maintenance.”33 At the lower end of the prison hierarchy, mareros complained of
physical abuse at the hands of Lima Oliva and his friends, and this exploded
on February 12, 2003, into a fight that left over fifteen mareros dead. It also
left Obdulia Villanueva beheaded. In a show of power, Lima Oliva announced
from prison over national radio that his bodyguards had immediately killed
Villanueva’s killers in their cells. Lima Oliva explained that mareros had decapitated Villanueva because “they respond to their instincts and are hostile
to military men” and that he and his “thousands [milles] of fellow inmates
would begin daily executions of gang members if these were not removed.”
Prison administrators complied and transferred two hundred inmates, including mareros.34 Years later, the discovery of Lima Oliva’s prison account
books revealed thousands of dollars in loans that were paid back in gems,
cars, and furniture; the cell phone numbers of Mexican Zeta leaders and ex-­
kaibiles; and notes on what homes to rent for purposes of drug distribution
and how to stock them—“washer, drier, television, 5 laptops, 200 hand grenades”—as well as on rental fees for chairs and tables within the prison for
inmates’ visitors.35 The mareros had lost out to a trans-­regional military-­run
capitalist company that operated on every profitable level possible, had its
headquarters in the maximum-­security section of a large prison, and might
have had its own reasons for getting rid of Villanueva.
The vulnerability of the mareros and the imperative of unity were apparent to at least some gang members. At the time of the 2003 transfers, leaders
in ms-­1 3 and m-­1 8 signed a nonaggression pact that went into effect in
prisons and reform centers throughout the country. Based on a Los Angles
model and known as Southern United Raza, or Sur, in Guatemala it stipulated that ms-­13 and m-­18 would continue to fight outside, but not inside,
the penitentiary system (see figure 4.2). During the two years Sur lasted,
the intense fighting between ms-­13 and m-­18 inmates ceased. However, the
pact suddenly and brutally broke down. It is unclear how hand grenades
and others arms got inside El Hoyón in Escuintla, the most overcrowded
and run-­down prison, or by what means the news of the collapse of Sur so
quickly spread throughout the country. According to reports, at 8:30 am on
August 16, 2005, young men in ms-­13 threw grenades into a cell of members of m-­18 and continued their assault with firearms.36 Over the next three

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FIGURE 4.2 Gang members from M-­18 in El Hoyón Prison, Escuintla,
walk by a wall inscribed with the words “Southern United Raza,” in
reference to the nonaggression pact between MS-­13 and M-­18 that prohibited rival clikas from fighting within penitentiary walls. It remained
in effect from 2003 to 2005. Escuintla, 2005. Credit: Victor Blue.

hours, ms-­13 attacked m-­18 members with weapons that included knives,
9 mm pistols, revolvers, and Uzis at prisons at some distance from Escuintla,
such as El Pavón; a prison in Quetzaltenango in the western highlands; one
in Mazaltenango on the piedmont; and the male juvenile detention center
Gaviotas in Guatemala City. Thirty youth between ages eighteen and twenty
died, most of these inside El Hoyón, where sixty more were hospitalized
with cuts and gunshot wounds.37 Every news outlet covered the aftermath
of this bloody national battle in detail. Images of the shirtless, tattooed
wounded young men and the tattooed dead lying on floors patently slippery
with blood, of bereft families, and of panicked neighbors in areas near the
prisons circulated for weeks (see figures 4.3–4.5). President Óscar Berger,
of the center-­right Gran Alianza Nacional (Grand National Alliance, gana),
stated that he was relieved no one had escaped and called for a rapid completion of forty-­nine cells that would expand Fraijanes 2, the high-­security
prison next to El Pavón.38 His minister of the Interior, Carlos Vielmann, declared that this was not a “mutiny but a breakdown in the internal order of
the penitentiary system.”39 There was no investigation of any aspect of this
tragedy.40
Whoever propelled it, this war continued. On September 4, the National
Police reported that ms-­13 members managed to “force” their way into a detention center, open fire, blow off the heads of two members of m-­18, and
go on to kill ten more. Two weeks later this scenario repeated itself almost
down to the last detail. On September 19, according to National Police, three
ms-­13 mareros between the ages of fourteen and seventeen walked into the
juvenile reform center Etapa 2 in San José Pinula with an ak-­47 and several
pistols. They killed several members of m-­18, two of whom they beheaded.
The severed heads were placed in the outdoor space. Policemen and soldiers
subsequently arrived, and the three were taken to Gaviotas. Later, however,
one of the boys reported he had been picked up by the police and taken to
the site of the crime; the second stated he had just been visiting; and the
third, after declaring he knew his rights, remained silent. They were never
charged. In a scenario that is hauntingly reminiscent of the war, and one in
which the military was praised for its actions, all that clearly emerged about
the events of the day was a televised video that showed two severed heads
and the arrival of the armed forces, whose commander announced that the
army had been called there in response to an “assault by a commando.”41 In
this case, the criminals who were the “other” necessary to the definition of
the good citizen that Michel Foucault describes in his classic work Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, might well have been invented, and the way

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FIGURE 4.3 A mother waits for news of her incarcerated son in the aftermath of the August 2005 riots in El Hoyón Prison, Escuintla, that broke
the nonaggression pact. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

FIGURE 4.4 Family members arrive at the morgue in Escuintla to look for
their loved ones, 2005. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

FIGURE 4.5 Neighborhood boys search through the mess of discarded
and ripped remains of the fighting, Escuintla, 2005. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

in which the prison system has become central to the national history is by
facilitating the postwar reemergence of the Guatemalan military as a social
force for the good of the good citizenry against, in this case, a few teenagers.
Yet more is going on than the creation of the “other.” A year later, the
state assaulted El Pavón. On September 25, 2006, Interior Minister Carlos
Vielmann, National Police head Erwin Sperisen, and Alejandro Giammattei, the director of the national penitentiary system, personally led an attack force on the prison that consisted of three thousand members of the
army and the National Civil Police, four tanks, and three helicopters, which
flew over the heads of the fifteen hundred inmates. According to the official version, the troops marched forward against gunfire coming from the
prison for thirty minutes, after which they entered, secured the prison in
fifty minutes, and in the process killed seven “armed and combative prisoners.” Vielmann, Giammattei, and Sperisen accompanied President Berger
on an immediate tour of the captured grounds. The Berger government
quickly produced a video titled take control of a Territory Controlled by Criminals and subtitled take control of a Paradise for Juvenile Delinquents. The film
follows the soldiers as they occupied the prison premises, walked through
the wreckage of shops and buildings, and peeked into elite inmate homes
replete with Jacuzzis, refrigerators, and televisions. The assault was a public spectacle, had a name—Operación Pavo Real (Operation Peacock)—and
made it into both national and international news.
What did not make the news was that a criminal ring controlled El Pavón.
At the time of the assault the head of the cod was a drug lord named Luis
Alfonso Zepeda, who had been sentenced in the early 1990s to twenty-­six
years for having committed multiple assassinations. Zepeda and his business partners administered an El Pavón prison town complex that included
a school called Escuela de Arte Senderos de Libertad (The Paths of Liberty School of Arts); a cocaine-­processing laboratory run by a well-­known
Colombian mafia inmate, Jorge “El Loco” Batres Pinto; and an auto repair
shop where numbers were erased off the chassis of robbed cars before these
vehicles were sent back to the street for sale.42 Operación Pavo Real succeeded in destroying the cod. No gunfire was exchanged between prisoners
and soldiers. A group of hooded men who entered with the soldiers and
policemen went down a lineup of the fifteen hundred men with photos in
their hands and pulled out Zepeda and five prisoners who were associates
of El Loco. El Loco escaped the lineup and took refuge in his luxurious El
Pavón residence, where he was soon discovered in his garden. The bodies of
all seven turned up with signs of torture.43 Four years later, Vielmann, Giammattei, and Sperisen would flee Guatemala when the un Comisión Inter122

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nacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (International Commission
against Impunity in Guatemala, cicig) revealed that this offensive against
El Pavón settled a struggle about who controlled a large sector of the drug
and stolen goods market.
In the twenty-­first century the Guatemalan penitentiary system has become “a country within a country.” It is one of no doubt several control centers of the growing illegal economy. The description here of the configuration of prison conflicts from 2003 to 2005 illustrates that these fights are
between important business and political figures who operate across walls
and use both the mareros and invisibility of what goes on inside prisons to
their advantage. Though the conflict at El Pavón did not involve mareros,
officials who were culprits in this drama had presented the pre-­assault state
of affairs in the prison as a “paradise for juvenile delinquents,”
despite this being a prison for adults, not minors. Even in their absence, the
mareros have been dodging bullets.
In a subsequent fight between powerful adult criminals that again
brought world attention to Guatemala’s prison system, mareros tried to
avoid the trap that they saw coming. This time, they demanded that legal authorities protect them. On February 19, 2007, three Salvadoran congressmen
widely known to be connected to the drug trade were ambushed and murdered on their way to Guatemala City, along with their driver. Four members
of the criminal investigation unit of the Guatemalan National Civil Police
subsequently confessed to these murders, and they were confined in the
maximum-­security prison in El Boquerón, an ms-­13 stronghold. A few days
later, the four policemen were shot to death in their cells at close range. A
riot immediately broke out in the prison. Aware that they might be blamed,
members of ms-­13 took a guard hostage and threatened to kill him unless authorities declared them innocent. They held their hostage at the very
moment that the same officials involved at El Pavón—Vielmann, Sperisen,
and Giammattei—were accusing the mareros of having slit the throats of
the policemen—apparently they had not heard that the latter were gunned
down—because, in their words, “mareros hate police.” Alert to the utility
of human rights discourse, the mareros insisted that the human rights ombudsman and television crews be brought inside the prisons to, as they put
it, “protect their human rights.” The ombudsman came, and the mareros released their hostage. Nonetheless, thirteen mareros were charged with the
murder of the four policemen. Months later, the charges were dropped for
lack of evidence, and the thirteen stayed in El Boquerón to complete their
original sentences. The following month, “Small,” one of the thirteen, was
decapitated and his body burned in his cell.44
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Making Youth Crazy
Who orchestrates this madness? Because a video from a closed-­circuit
camera fell into the hands of the human rights ombudsman in 2006, it is
possible to see the degree to which authorities brutally manipulate youth.
In June 2006, m-­18 youth attacked ms-­13 members in the juvenile center
Etapa 2 in San José Pinula, murdered them, and mutilated their bodies.
What the video picked up is that at 5 pm that day, the prison wardens threw
blankets over the entrance to the section where m-­18 youth were detained,
and thus blocked the view of the camera and of a guard in a turret overlooking the wing. Over the next forty minutes, wardens went into the area
under the blanket with objects not identifiable on the film. Ten minutes before the trouble started, the guard in the turret went on a dinner break, without being replaced. At 6:30 pm, three members of m-­18 emerged from behind the blanket and entered the area where ms-­13 youth lived, one that was
presumably shut off by a locked door. During the next forty minutes, gang
members attacked with sharp instruments, severed body limbs, and crushed
skulls. A few minutes after the fight had started, someone had called the
National Civil Police, which entered and left after two minutes. The policemen returned thirty-­eight minutes later, the three boys from m-­18 were back
behind their blanket, and the policemen found three boys dead, with their
limbs scattered, and six badly wounded boys, from whom no statements
were taken. The human rights ombudsman presented the video to the un
special rapporteur, who brought accusations against Giammattei that have
yet to be resolved.45
A contrast to the resulting chorus of “out of control” is at once obvious
and startling: this was a tightly controlled sequence of events, right down
to a stage manager who stopped the policemen from bungling the timing
of their entrance and to the erasure of media publicity concerning the video.
The venue for this manipulation was not an adult jail such as El Boquerón,
where mareros have demonstrated some ability to hold their own, but a reform center for minors in an isolated setting in the countryside. This was the
second terrifying and eerie news-­making disaster at Etapa 2. It occurred a
year following the incident, cited earlier, in which three boys were arrested
for beheadings in which they probably had no involvement. It has been difficult to investigate what was at issue in these two episodes that resulted in
the deaths of young mareros; however, the leadership given by police and
prison personnel in the 2006 murders is evident.
It was in the same Etapa 2 in San José Pinula that youth murdered a
schoolteacher three years later. On March 3, 2009, a few days following a
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search by authorities in which cell phones were seized from the resident
youth and visitation rights taken away as a punishment, several boys took
hostage two custodians, a cook, and two teachers, including forty-­five-­year-­
old Jorge Emilio Winter Vidaurre, who worked in one of the few programs at
Etapa 2. The boys demanded that the cell phones be returned, that visiting
privileges be restored, and that two youths recently transferred to another
juvenile center be brought back. With the words “we aren’t kidding,” they
shut the hostages in a room and waited to start negotiations; taking hostages had become the leverage common throughout the penal system. The
Etapa 2 administrator did not negotiate. She called the National Civil Police,
whose elite special forces encircled the prison. The boys responded by crushing Winter Vidaurre’s skull and cutting out his heart. In view of the police
and residents of San José de Pinula who by then surrounded Etapa 2, the
boys came out into the central patio, danced, and yelled that Winter Vidaurre
“had lived long enough.” The police seized the youths, who held their fingers
high in a gang sign, and took them out of the building to await trial in the
adult Centro Preventivo, Zone 18, where they keep company with hundreds
of mareros who were crammed into Section 11 of that prison.46 The psychiatrist Rodolfo Kepfer, who worked at Etapa 2 at the time, said that when
“the boys are upset, they get violent, obsessed, single-­minded like addicts,
almost glazed over. After something happens, you stay away until they are
calmed down.” Following the initial riot over the cell phones, Kepfer had unsuccessfully warned Winter Vidaurre and others to absent themselves for a
few days after the youth rioted over their cell phones.
Winter Vidaurre’s grotesque murder and the boys’ disdainful boasting
caused widespread horror and panic. State authorities had to act forcefully
to project a vision of tenacious pursuit of mareros. Close on the heels of
Winter Vidaurre’s death, President Álvaro Colom, of the social democratic
party Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (National Unity of Hope, une), announced that “careful police intelligence and the cooperation of citizens
over time” had led to the discovery of the identity of no less a persona than
the shadowy figure behind the bus extortion rackets that have left hundreds
of bus drivers and assistants dead in recent years and months. Colom’s attorney general, Salvador Gándara, proclaimed Áxel Danilo Rodríguez, alias
Smiley, a twenty-­two-­year-­old leader of m-­18, mastermind of these crimes
and, in addition, the culprit in the recent murder of a well-­to-­do Korean
couple.47 Only weeks later, police captured this “public enemy number one”
following a gun fight in Zone 10 of Mixco.
Smiley was already an urban legend, an example of what Foucault cited as
the historic failure of the modern penal system to rehabilitate the criminal
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and its success “in producing delinquency, a specific type.” A child of that
system, Smiley was born in Colonia Primero de Julio in Zone 9, joined m-­18
when he was ten, and soon thereafter was arrested for extortion and sent to
the juvenile center Gaviotas, where he killed two young members of ms-­13
during the large-­scale multiprison battle between ms-­13 and m-­18 in August
2005. For that, the judge sentenced him to five additional years and moved
him into the adult prison, even though he was a minor, from which he was
released for “good behavior” shortly thereafter. He returned to the streets to
become “public enemy number one.”
His 2009 capture received wide publicity and high praise from and for
President Colom. Upon his arrest, Smiley denied the charges. He stated that
he was responsible for killing ms-­13 rivals in August 2005 but not the bus
drivers or the Korean couple. He called Gándara a “thief just like me, except
he doesn’t have tattoos.” At an unusual press conference held in the police
precinct following his arrest, Smiley spoke and looked like the marero who
had been fantasized about for decades. Covered with tattoos, low voiced,
and short on words, in answer to reporters’ provocative and aggressive questions, he said that killing people satisfied him and that he was a thief. He
was heard to have muttered, “The devil is my jefe.” A few months later, the
judge dropped the charges concerning the bus drivers and the Korean couple
for lack of evidence and instead charged Smiley with “bearing weapons” to
keep him in preventive custody in Zone 18’s Centro Pre­ventivo.48
Keeping up his momentum, Smiley held up his end as the perfect delinquent. One year later, he was part of an m-­18 uprising coordinated by cell
phone calls from the newly reinforced high-­security cells at jail Fraijanes
2 and from the Centro Preventivo, Zone 18, at precisely noon on April 23,
2010. The mareros in both prisons took hostages and demanded the transfer of dozens of m-­18 members from Fraijanes 2 to the Centro Preventivo in
Zone 18. After days of a standoff, the human rights ombudsman negotiated
a settlement to “protect the lives of the hostages.” The hostages were released, and the m-­18 members taken in heavily guarded trucks in middle of
the night to the Centro Preventivo, Zone 18, where their presence increased
the number of m-­18 members from (according to the press) 272 to 366.49
On and on it goes. The “transition to democracy” cannot succeed without citizen security, which, because of these tattooed young gangsters, cannot happen without ironclad prisons. Yet the deep social changes that might
root out the causes of misery and crime cannot happen because of well-­
dressed criminals in power who, as Smiley observed, do not have tattoos.
These youth seem shackled into this sequence. Foucault frames the mas-

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FIGURE 4.6 A member of MS-­1 3 cries out as Guatemalan soldiers in
downtown Guatemala City haul him and a woman away, to where
is not known, 2005. The fate of both youth remains unclear. Credit:
Victor J. Blue.

sive prison uprisings of the 1970s that inspired his thinking as “revolts, at
the level of the body, against the very body of the prison.” He writes that “at
issue was not whether the prison environment was too harsh or too aseptic,
too primitive or too efficient but its very materiality as an instrument and
vector of power.”50 In sharp contrast to the revolts referred to by Foucault,
such as the uprising in the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York
in 1971, the conflicts in Guatemala’s prisons and juvenile centers in the early
2000s have been the consequence of mareros and others fighting to buttress
their places within the prison system. The prisons have sustained the delinquents and created the disorders that, however disruptive, also do not challenge the “vector of power” (see figure 4.6).
Clean and Dirty Bodies
Fighting crime has been central to political campaigns for decades.51 Elected
to the presidency in 2011, the ex-­general and kaibil Otto Pérez Molina, member of the Partido Patriota (Patriotic Party, pp), has long fashioned himself as the tough guy, a man who once directed battles and now can stop
“narcotraficantes, Maras and others.”52 His unsuccessful 2007 bid as well as
the successful 2011 campaign focused on youth in televised advertisements
in which every type of youth, and dozens of them—Maya, Ladino, male,
female, clean shaven, neatly bearded, arty, middle class, worker, and student—cheerfully advocate and repeat over and over “mano dura,” including in Maya languages. No matter whether hip or church-­bound in their
look, they contrast with those looming figures: the nonnational (LA), menacing, almost faceless because of tattoos, hypervisible, blue with ink mareros whose bodies call so much attention to themselves. The public cannot
read the stories that the marking on the mareros’ bodies tell. All the public
seems to see is what is said about symbols of Satan. The clean bodies of the
Guatemalan youth in the television videos represent a new Guatemala, one
disassociated from the tattooed body’s presumed representational schema
of violence and chaos. Perhaps the images of the mareros’ bodies are meant
to replace or confuse memories of the kaibiles’ blood-­smeared faces.

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OPEN ENDING

If something does not go well, you have to cover up the holes, like on the stage
set. When an actor makes a mistake he goes on, like nothing happened. The public
doesn’t know the script. You don’t have to go into all the mistakes.
—Fu (Juan Manuel Orozco Ambrosio), ex-­marero, educator, and theater
performer and producer, killed April 5, 2009; El Periódico, November 30, 2008

I want to say that I knew Fu and Chuky [a second assassinated actor and ex–gang
member], and they were great people and their death hurts me and because of this
same violence I had to leave and live outside in a foreign country, but I will never
forget my brave friends. I send my condolences to the family of Fu and Chuky from
North Carolina.
—Flakita de la Frutal, El Periódico, May 3, 2009

T

he political violence of the Guatemalan ruling elite is the result of calculated decisions about wealth and power, but mareros have no political
power or wealth. Their violence is part of the unspoken story of subjectivities that have been created by the absence of positive means of power over
life and by fear, terror, and the difficult material conditions that have been
part of Guatemalan history. A tragic legacy of Guatemala’s late twentieth-­
century history, the mareros of the twenty-­first century are not rebels: sadly,
they adhere to the standards set by Guatemala’s ruling elites, drug lords,
military leaders, and too many other influential people.
The backbone of this book has been the backstory of the current gangs.
In the course of the decades since the 1980s, they have been vilified and victimized, and some of their members have responded in kind. Today clikas
of the Maras with names such as Rokers, Los Locos, and Los Metalles, and
young people who hang out and call themselves mareros are in the city and

5

in most of the country’s twenty-­two departments. They have become central figures in the minds of many, and a political windfall for authoritarian
political parties. As I have stressed, some of these youth may not be violent, but their preoccupation with violence and with death and their crimes
against ordinary people alert us to a world in deep trouble. Young people
who were once imagined as leading humanity into the great mythical future
of the metanarrative of modernity, where “things are getting better, better
all the time,” are now shoved into corners by the past. This book has argued
that capitalist modernity’s promises have not borne fruit for youth, and it
has traced the discourses and identities available to youth and the deeply violent and changing Guatemala in which these have arisen. “Youth” was once
a temporal fix on capitalist development’s failure to deliver in present time;
it was the quintessential symbol of a bright national future on an always-­
distant and luminous horizon. “Youth” now seems to signal a marketing
niche, the biggest in the world, and a horrific social problem.
Fortunately, girls and boys and young women and men are more than
metaphors, symbols, objects, or images. They are subjects who transcend
the frozen singular categories of identity such as delinquent and street child
that obscure our vision (see figure 5.1). Young killers and thieves might also
be overworked day laborers, artists on the side, and anxious parents; they
are not simply wind-­up toy soldiers without emotions. Many experience repulsion, yet feel immobilized inside of a persona named marero who must
follow the lethal orders of others.
That youth abandon gangs gives hope, and so does the harrowing reality
that they do so despite incalculable difficulties. The Maras ms-­13 and m-­18
“green-­light” (give the death warrant to) youth who leave except, it has been
claimed, in cases of conversion to Pentecostalism or of special permissions
for “good behavior,” which means that those who are requesting a “leave”
have complied with orders and accomplished tasks that include homicide. It
has been argued that youth who quit do so only in obedience to these Mara
guidelines, and therefore only within the gang’s regime of law.1 But youth
in fact do quit otherwise. Ex-­mareros turn up in all kinds of places through
the help of adults who have made no pacts with Mara leaders, or even without any adult support. Ex–gang members can be found working in jobs in
the informal and formal economies; they can show up as artists such as
Carlos Pérez (see figure 5.2), and as street educators and youth advocates.
That they desert the Maras even at the risk of green-­lighting brings to mind
political activists of the early period who chose lives that they deemed meaningful despite knowing that they might die as a consequence.2 Drawn into
macabre gangs to which they can become faithful unto death, these children
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FIGURE 5.1 A young man in the bustle of Guatemala City’s Central Park,
Zone 1, 1999. Youth are more complex than identifications such as
“­marero,” “student,” and “worker,” or “Ladino,” “mestizo,” and “Maya”
suggest. Credit: Andrea Aragón.

FIGURE 5.2 Artist Carlos Pérez, ex-­marero, Guatemala, 2010. Credit:
­Copyright © Donna DeCesare, 2010.

and young women and men also can “decide for life”—certainly a kind of
politics—though they might die for that.
Exiting through Pentecostalism
The Pentecostal ministry has had successes, and this is a topic on its own
that is beyond the scope of this book. Based on interviews with ex–gang
members, Robert Brenneman’s Homies and Hermanos: God and Gangs in Central
America offers a fine study of conversion. My own experiences in the early
2000s made clear to me that the Pentecostals’ methods and rhetoric have
changed over time, and these now vary from approaches centered on the
hell-­and-­brimstone punishments such as those meted out in the reform
centers by the brutal staff of remar, to the patience and kindliness given
by individual pastors and particular ministries. In the best of the Pentecostal
centers, youth join gentle communities, take the enormous step of entering
detoxification programs, and do not necessarily have a relationship to the
political affiliations of some of the megachurches, such as the ultraconservative El Shaddai Ministries.3 Pentecostals have ministered to ex-­mareros
over the years through clubs such as Rescate Maras Para Cristo and encouraged them to open small cooperative businesses such as bakeries. Often
with the assistance of the Guatemalan government, international groups
and Guatemalan companies, these non-­Catholic Christian groups have been
involved in attempts to reform mareros since the 1980s, as chapter 4 notes.
Moreover, because of the stated agreement between Pentecostals and some
Mara leaders affirming that members who leave to convert will not be killed,
in the minds of many young people the Pentecostals offer what seems to
amount to a lifeboat. Youth sometimes join Pentecostal groups out of fear of
the consequences of not joining (see figure 5.3). Ghastly public executions
of mareros have added urgency to a safe passage out of the gangs. In 2005,
a Pentecostal pastor recruited an entire clika of over thirty boys in the town
of Palín, near the capital, after several men burned three mareros alive in a
public “social cleansing.”4
Conversion stories are profound and speak to the real agency of those
who, in their words, “encounter Christ.” Once saved, young people give
emotional accounts of parental and other adult mistreatment, public testimonies that help them become more sympathetic to themselves and others.
Many become activists for the ministries that guide them. Yet the notion that
youth abandon the Maras only through Pentecostal conversion suggests that
youth will not leave without the assurance that they will not be killed, and
without strong religious persuasion and adult control over their every step.
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133

FIGURE 5.3 Ex-­members of MS-­1 3 attending a Pentecostal service in
Palín, a town not far from Guatemala City, 2005. They renounced the
gang and joined the church after being frightened by the lynching of
three of their members. Credit: Victor J. Blue.

This account of “departure only through Pentecostal groups” is deceptive
because gangs have sometimes green-­lighted ex-­members who converted.
It is also misleading because it suggests that fear always paralyzes youth, or
that they lack the internal and moral conviction necessary to make a radical
break on their own without a group that gives them narratives, standards,
and regulations to which they need to conform, and which are conformist.5
These assumptions are belied by the fact that some youth just take a chance
and desert, sometimes following the birth of their children, or in simple
­disgust.6
Just Quitting
The Guatemalan therapist Herbert Sánchez spent years working with young
men who had abandoned the Maras. In his conversations with me in the late
1990s, he emphasized that youth he counseled had lived in conditions where
“death and hatred” determine everyday life. In line with this, he sought out
the writings of the Viennese psychotherapist Viktor E. Frankl, a survivor of
the Nazi concentration camps, because Sánchez believed that these youth
had to “survive the death camps.” He drew on Frankl’s argument that one
can endure in situations that are constantly life threatening and soul deadening, as long as one gives life meaning, and that otherwise one cannot
live.7 He labored hard to create a therapeutic community where youth had
to live at a “high level of consciousness” as he phrased it, and struggle to
give meaning to their shattered lives through physical exertion, discussion,
love, and positive deeds toward others. The meaning of meaning, he said in
response to my asking, is catching a passion about and for life (see figure
5.4).8 In his view this represents a conversion to one’s own life.
Using a different vocabulary, ex-­mareros expressed this resolution to
make lives that made sense to them in defiance of death’s apparent omnipotence. Alfredo got out after police killed his two brothers in a “social
cleansing” operation in La Limonada. Still in La Limonada, Alfredo now
works with an agency that involves neighborhood youth in sports and
other recreational activities. Sitting inside a storefront drinking a beer, his
eighteen-­year-­old friend and coworker José told me he left because he “got
fed up. . . . The leaders thought they were tough but they got too tough, they
would just say ‘liquidate Fulano’ [so-­and-­so]” and he simply did not want
to murder people. In a different ambience, Luis, a young man in a Catholic
group home, said with a smile that he quit because he “fell in love.” Another,
Rolando, explains his quitting as “I just decided to”; “I became a parent,”
he said, and did not “want my kid to have my life.” When I asked Rolando
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FIGURE 5.4 Street educators found these children living in the central
bus terminal in Guatemala City and brought them to live in this group
home, 1998. A number of former street children have developed organizations to alleviate the problems of homeless youth. Credit: Deborah T.
Levenson.

whether he feared being killed by his old gang, he made the important observation that the probability of being killed while in the gang was higher:
he said he would be “dead already anyway, in the clika, because of someone
who would have jumped me.”9
Rosa (see chapter 3) was suicidal because she took the life of an elderly
woman—“I was ready to, I don’t know, ready to kill myself. My heart ached,
I went to live with an aunt.” Rosa stayed out of sight for a while and then
found a job. She put her reason for leaving as “I killed. . . . I really needed to
get out of the Maras. . . . I didn’t have friends. I hardly ever saw my sister,
because she found out I’ve been in a Mara. She beat me. I didn’t think much
when I was younger, but now I know what is right and what is wrong. . . .
When I grow up, I want to be a doctor. I want to have children, and I am
going to give them lots of advice and all the love that I wasn’t given.” Rosa
left without the protection of the Pentecostals to pursue her goals of being
a loving parent and becoming a doctor who could help people who had been
in her situation.
Not all youth who leave make it. Notwithstanding that some who abandon the Maras without playing by gang rules escape green-­lighting, many
others do not. Evidence indicates that getting away from gang life by leaving
the country is particularly offensive to gang leaders, perhaps because in
doing so youth remove themselves from the total control of “territory.”
One tragic example concerns Edgar Chocoy, who joined ms-­13 at twelve in
Guatemala City and left it two years later because, in his words, he “was not
cut out for it” and he did not like the violence.
Years afterward, Edgar recounted to the U.S. immigration lawyer Kimberly Baker Medina that when he dropped out of ms-­13 in 2002 at fourteen,
the gang demanded that he pay three thousand quetzals a week to not be
killed—a particularly horrific example of necroliving. He would have had
to engage in continual big-­time robbery to come up with such a large sum.
Instead he hid in Guatemala City for a short period of time before he decided to leave the country and reunite with his mother, who had emigrated
to Los Angeles almost a decade before, while he was still a toddler. Upon
receiving news of his situation and his planned journey, she sent money to
pay a coyote (the person paid to guide those without papers across borders).
In kind with the hundreds of children who go north from Central America
to search for or otherwise reunite with their mothers, he went through an
uncertain and terrifying journey that involved crossing rivers; concealing
himself; pretending to be Mexican; getting on buses in foreign lands; and
defending himself from thieves, hunger, sickness, officials, and despair.10
After he arrived in Los Angeles, life was hard. He had troubles with schoolOpen Ending

137

mates because of gang rivalries there and his presumed inclusion in one of
them. First his school kicked him out, and after a spell, so did his mother,
who hardly knew him and did not want “problems” because she had other
children (siblings Edgar barely knew) in her house. Afraid to stay homeless
in the street, alone without real friends, Edgar went to the apartment of an
older Spanish-­speaking schoolmate, a gang member who proceeded to use
Edgar as an armed drug runner. While he was there, and even while working
for the gang—his resource for food and shelter—he found out about Homeboy Industries, a program founded by Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, which opens
its arms to gang members. He went there for help, and there he decided to
start the painful process of getting rid of his tattoos, tattoos that he saw as
a major source of trouble because they identified him with gangs.
Then in 2003, the Los Angeles police arrested him for possession of
cocaine base. The charge was adjudicated because of Edgar’s age. However,
because he had no papers, he was sent to an internment camp in Colorado
to await deportation. In the camp he entered the loose weave of solidarity
among detainees, and he learned about the possibility of applying for asylum, which he did through contacts he pursued while in detention. He met
Kimberly Baker Medina, and together they built his case against deportation
around the argument that he would be green-­lighted by ms-­13 if he returned
to Guatemala, one the judge rejected despite letters and testimony from experts in Guatemala and in the United States who supported his claim, and
in spite of an offer from an aunt in Virginia to care for him. In early 2004,
two-­and-­one-­half weeks following his deportation back to Guatemala City,
he was shot the first time he dared leave what was essentially a hiding place
in a relative’s house in Villa Nueva, on the city’s edge. He had stepped out
into the doorway to watch a religious procession pass, and a few moments
later, he was dead. He was sixteen (see figure 5.5).11
Edgar left Guatemala to save his life from the Mara, but U.S. laws and Los
Angeles life made that impossible, and then a U.S. judge returned him to
Guatemala marked to die because the judge ruled that Edgar did not “belong
to a social group” that suffers persecution.12 It is a tragedy that illustrates
that the gangs do carry out their own laws when they want to. It also shows
that U.S. judges are capable of ignoring facts put right in front of their eyes:
ex-­mareros are a persecuted group. But all that killed Edgar did not define
him. He defined his own life by trying to find a way into a better one. His life
is marked by his triumphs. Here is a youth of startling valor, one we must
assume had a sense of self-­worth. He abandoned ms-­13 on his own and on
his own tried to figure out a life for himself, a task that included crossing
two borders, the entire length of Mexico and the Sonora Desert, and jour138

Chapter 5

FIGURE 5.5 Edgar Chocoy, an ex-­member of MS-­13 who fled to the United
States to escape gang life, Colorado, 2003. Edgar was deported by a U.S.
judge who rejected Edgar’s plea that he would be killed if returned to
Guatemala. He was shot to death by MS-­13 shortly after arriving back in
Guatemala. Credit: Kimberly Baker Medina.

neying into a huge strange city, without papers, to a mother he hardly knew.
In a new country, without speaking English, and through people he barely
knew, he found resources in his Herculean effort to establish traction in his
constantly falling-­apart world. What more can we ask of a young person,
stigmatized at every turn, alone, and without the named identities, signposts, and spaces given by citizenship, work, school, or family?
Disidentifying: “The Public Doesn’t Know the Script”
Eight years before he died, Juan Manuel Orozco Ambrosio, known as Fu,
got out of m-­18 when he joined a theater group that had arrived in the barrio where he lived. “At first,” Fu told a friend, “I led a double life. During the
day I would be at rehearsals and at night in the rollo [the gang activities].”
Subsequently, at nineteen, he left m-­18 for good because he had found a real
passion, what Herbert Sánchez would call a meaning. Fu explained, “With
theater I could leave who I was for a while and put myself in someone else’s
life. It was therapy. In these journeys I found myself.” He pursued a career in
performing arts through the organization Caja Lúdica, an artistic collective
devoted to, in its own words, “promoting a culture of peace among people
and demanding an end to violence and impunity.”13 Another ex-­marero in
Caja Lúdica described its work in an interview with a journalist in 2009. “We
want to touch the human fiber in each person, to awaken that side that has
been lost in the system. We have to look at ourselves, to recognize ourselves
and see the power we have.”14
Started in 2000 by theater people who had done similar work in Colombia, Caja Lúdica encourages youth to think about the history that generates
the violent crucible of their “coming of age” so that they can emerge from
subjugation (see figure 5.6). There exist other drama troupes in Guatemala
City that also seek out gang members and other barrio youth to fashion true
stories on a stage, whether that be a field or a street. These groups have
helped generate skits based on the most gruesome truths about the war. In
these, children reenact what happened to their parents and grandparents,
and to that degree these young performers reclaim the “unclaimed experience” at the heart of trauma.15
A young woman in her teens in the Zone 12 settlement of Mezquital,
which started in 1985, the same year the Maras came out in public, Estela
is a street performer. She reminds one of Maritza (a member of the Maras
in the 1980s; see chapter 3). She can tell it like it is: “We have the ability to
change this country, and stop all this aggression that we’re living through.
The future is in our hands.” “Mezquital” she explains to visitors,
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Chapter 5

was created by people invading the land when they came here as refugees
during the war. People fled here and raised their children here. The violence stems from that. . . . After the war there were a lot of traumatized
young people with lots of violence in their heads and they kill each other.
So it is dangerous.
It’s important for everyone [to have the chance to express themselves],
but we live in a culture that says we can’t do anything. Through [theater]
you find out that everyone has the same value. When you see others on
stilts or juggling, you feel better straightaway because you see that it’s
possible.16
For Fu and other ex-­mareros, the world of playing has offered a sensibility
and mechanisms to develop themselves through the re-­creation of life
itself—settings, characters, scripts, plots, surprise endings, varied clothing, and new faces through makeup, dance, music, and—on stilts—a new
height, literally. Fu flourished in it. He even traveled to Germany as part of
a performing arts troupe, and m-­18 had accepted this new life and ceased
to brand him a traitor. But the old endless rivalry between m-­18 with ms-­13
gave him problems. In 2008, Fu was left paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after an ms-­13 member, who had participated in a workshop Fu ran,
shot him. His response was to continue his theater work—“no reason to remain seated,” he joked from his wheelchair—as a script writer and director
of educational comedies, and he opened a business that ran parties for children to support himself and his family (see figure 5.7).17
Fu was shot to death as he sat in his wheelchair playing cards with a
group of children outside his house on April 5, 2009, and a few weeks later,
on May 23, two other members of Caja Lúdica were killed. These were ex-­
mareros Saulo Fernando Gómez Estrada, known as both “el Chuky” and
Solo Estilos, who break danced and designed a line of clothes that he was
about to trademark; and Nexus Pineda, an ex-­marero nicknamed El Gordo
who had established a community youth center in the Mario Alioto, a neighborhood in Guatemala City named after a student leader and political activist
in the 1980s who was bludgeoned to death by police. Ten days later, shortly
after a memorial for Fu, El Gordo, and Chuky, Caja Lúdica break dancers,
actors, stilt walkers, and musicians Osmar Fernando Leiva Mejía, René Alexander Pérez Cruz, José Omar Pérez Cruz, Nelson Leonel Aguirre Tobar, and
Juan María López were gunned down.18
Why? Although it is possible that mareros killed them because they had
left their Maras, all these youth had been out of the gangs for years. What coincided with their deaths was the growing success of theatrical groups such
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FIGURE 5.6 A parade performance presented by one of the several youth
theater groups in downtown Guatemala City, 2007. Credit: Copyright ©
Donna DeCesare, 2007.

FIGURE 5.7 Ex-marero Juan Manuel Orozco Ambrosio, known as “Fu,”
photographed playing his part in an evening street performance by the
theatre group Caja Lúdica. Courageous and determined, Fu helped create
critical spaces and autonomous voices for youth. Credit: Copyright © Donna
DeCesare, 2007.

as Caja Lúdica in barrios. Some see these killings in the light of that. Following a third memorial service, one young person in the theater group said that
the dead youth “represented a threat to those who had economic interests in
their neighborhoods, who exploit youth. Their murders were also a way to
frighten others who might want to make change in these zones.”19
According to the local official in the area, “various men who traveled in a
vehicle and jumped out and opened fire” carried out the murders in May and
April.20 Youth who write their own scripts—young women such as Estela
and young men turning into adults such as Fu—who leave the Mara and
know that they can rewrite the play, and that they are authors behind the
scenes, are politically dangerous. By animating life so, they pose a threat to
the micropower of death used to run neighborhoods.
This short final chapter concludes the book but not the history. Movements against domination and injustice always appear at one point or another, and so will the counterparts of Edgar, Fu, Estela, and other young
people who have their own thoughts and their own moments in time.
These youths, and not the celebrated and the fictional obedient La Juventud of nineteenth- and twentieth-century national fantasies, need to be our
heroes. However inconspicuous they are in the grand scale of things, they
push against the grain of despondency and they delineate the possibility,
once again, of a different Guatemala, with new lines.

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AUTH O R'S N OT E

A s a student o f history, having completed a master's degree and PhD
in the discipline, I am grateful for all I learned from my professors
and from the thousands of texts I studied. But I did not gain the
perspective presented in this book from those professors or studies.
This came from outside the academy.
My mother was part Indian, most likely Cherokee, born in Jop­
lin, Missouri. Unenrolled and orphaned, having lost her mother to
tuberculosis at age four and with an Irish father who was itinerant
and alcoholic, she grew up neglected and often homeless along with
a younger brother. Picked up by authorities on the streets of Harrah,
Oklahoma, the town to which their father had relocated the family,
she was placed in foster homes where she was abused, expected to be
a servant, and would run away. When she was sixteen, she met and
married my father, of Scots-Irish settler heritage, eighteen, and a
high school dropout who worked as a cowboy on a sprawling cattle
ranch in the Osage Nation. I was the last of their four children. As
a sharecropper family in Canadian County, Oklahoma, we moved
from one cabin to another. I grew up in the midst of rural Native
communities in the former treaty territory of the Southern Cheyenne
and Arapaho Nations that had been allotted and opened to settlers
in the late nineteenth century. Nearby was the federal Indian board­
ing school at Concho. Strict segregation ruled a mong the Black,
white, and Indian towns, churches, and schools in Oklahoma, and I
had little interchange with Native people. My mother was ashamed
of being part Indian. She died of alcoholism.
In California during the r9 6os, I was active in the civil rights,
anti-apartheid, anti-Vietnam War, and women's liberation move­
ments, and ultimately, the pan-Indian movement that some labeled

xi

xii

Author's Note

Red Power. I was recruited to work on Native issues in 1970 by the
remarkable Tuscarora traditionalist organizer Mad Bear Anderson,
who insisted that I must embrace my Native heritage, however frag­
ile it might be. Although hesitant at first, following the Wounded
Knee siege of 1973 I began to work-locally, around the country,
and internationally-with the American Indian Movement and the
International Indian Treaty Council. I also began serving as an ex­
pert witness in court cases, including that of the Wounded Knee de­
fendants, bringing me into discussions with Lakota Sioux elders and
activists. Based in San Francisco during that volatile and historic
period, I completed my doctorate in history in 1974 and then took
a position teaching in a new Native American studies program. My
dissertation was on the history of land tenure in New Mexico, and
during 1978-198 1 I was visiting director of Native American stud­
ies at the University of New Mexico. There I worked collaboratively
with the All Indian Pueblo Council, Mescalero Apache Nation, Na­
vajo Nation, and the Dinebe'iina Nahiilna be Agha'diit'ahii (DNA)
People's Legal Services, as well as with Native students, faculty, and
communities, in developing a research institute and a seminar train­
ing program in economic development.
I have lived with this book for six years, starting over a dozen
times before I settled on a narrative thread. Invited to write this
ReVisioning American History series title, I was given parameters:
it was to be intellectually rigorous but relatively brief and written
accessibly so it would engage multiple audiences. I had grave misgiv­
ings after having agreed to this ambitious project. Although it was
to be a history of the United States as experienced by the Indigenous
inhabitants, how could I possibly do justice to that varied experience
over a span of two centuries? How could I make it comprehensible
to the general reader who would likely have little knowledge of Na­
tive American history on the one hand, but might consciously or
unconsciously have a set narrative of US history on the other? Since
I was convinced of the inherent importance of the project, I per­
sisted, reading or rereading books and articles by North American
Indigenous scholars, novelists, and poets, as well as unpublished dis­
sertations, speeches, and testimonies, truly an extraordinary body
of work.

Author's Note

I 've come to realize that a new periodization of US history is
needed that traces the Indigenous experience as opposed to the fol­
lowing standard division: Colonial, Revolutionary, Jacksonian, Civil
War and Reconstruction, Industrial Revolution and Gilded Age,
Overseas Imperialism, Progressivism, World War I , Depression,
New Deal, World War II, Cold War, and Vietnam War, followed by
contemporary decades. I altered this periodization to better reflect
Indigenous experience but not as radically as needs to be done. This
is an issue much discussed in current Native American scholarship.
I also wanted to set aside the rhetoric of race, not because race
and racism are unimportant but to emphasize that Native peoples
were colonized and deposed of their territories as distinct peoples­
hundreds of nations-not as a racial or ethnic group. "Coloniza­
tion," "dispossession," "settler colonialism," "genocide"-these are
the terms that drill to the core of US history, to the very source of the
country's existence.
The charge of genocide, once unacceptable by establishment aca­
demic and political classes when applied to the United States, has
gained currency as evidence of it has mounted, but it is too often ac­
companied by an assumption of disappearance. So I realized it was
crucial to make the reality and significance of Indigenous peoples'
survival clear throughout the book. Indigenous survival as peoples
is due to centuries of resistance and storytelling passed through the
generations, and I sought to demonstrate that this survival is dy­
namic, not passive. Surviving genocide, by whatever means, is re­
sistance: non-Indians must know this in order to more accurately
understand the history of the United States.
My hope is that this book will be a springboard to dialogue about
history, the present reality of Indigenous peoples' experience, and
the meaning and future of the United States itself.
A note on terminology: I use " Indigenous," " Indian," and "Native"
interchangeably in the text. Indigenous individuals and peoples in
North America on the whole do not consider "Indian" a slur. Of
course, all citizens of Native nations much prefer that their nations'
names in their own language be used, such as Dine ( Navajo), Haude­
nosaunee ( Iroquois), Tsalagi (Cherokee), and Anishinaabe (Ojibway,

xiii

xiv

Author's Note

Chippewa). I have used some of the correct names combined with
more familiar usages, such as " Sioux" and " Navajo." Except in ma­
terial that is quoted, I don't use the term "tribe." " Community,"
"people," and " nation" are used instead and interchangeably. I also
refrain from using "America" and "American" when referring only
to the United States and its citizens. Those blatantly imperialistic
terms annoy people in the rest of the Western Hemisphere, who are,
after all, also Americans. I use "United States" as a noun and "US"
as an adjective to refer to the country and "US Americans" for its
citizens.

I NT R ODU CTI O N

TH I S L A N D

We are here to educate, not forgive.
We are here to enlighten, not accuse.
-Willie Johns, Brighton Seminole Reservation, Florida

Under the crust of that portion of Earth called the United States of
America-"from California . . . to the Gulf Stream waters"-are
interred the bones, villages, fields, and sacred objects of American
Indians. 1 They cry out for their stories to be heard through their de­
scendants who carry the memories of how the country was founded
and how it came to be as it is today.
It should not have happened that the great civilizations of the
Western Hemisphere, the very evidence of the Western Hemisphere,
were wantonly destroyed, the gradual progress of humanity inter­
rupted and set upon a path of greed and destruction. 2 Choices were
made that forged that path toward destruction of life itself-the
moment in which we now live and die as our planet shrivels, over­
heated. To learn and know this history is both a necessity and a
responsibility to the ancestors and descendants of all parties.
What historian D avid Chang has written about the land that
became Oklahoma applies to the whole United States: "Nation, race,
and class converged in land."3 Everything in US history is about the
land-who oversaw and cultivated it, fished its waters, maintained
its wildlife; who invaded and stole it; how it became a commod­
ity ( "real estate" ) broken into pieces to be bought and sold on the
market.
US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples, though

·

2

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

often termed "racist" or "discriminatory," are rarely depicted as
what they are: classic cases of imperialism and a particular form of
colonialism-settler colonialism. As anthropologist Patrick Wolfe
writes, "The question of genocide is never far from discussions of set­
tler colonialism. Land is life-or, at least, land is necessary for life."4
The history of the United States is a history of settler colonial­
ism-the founding of a state based on the ideology of white su­
premacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy
of genocide and land theft. Those who seek history with an upbeat
ending, a history of redemption and reconciliation, may look around
and observe that such a conclusion is not visible, not even in utopian
dreams of a better society.
Writing US history from an Indigenous peoples' perspective re­
quires rethinking the consensual national narrative. That narrative
is wrong or deficient, not in its facts, dates, or details but rather in
its essence. Inherent in the myth we've been taught is an embrace of
settler colonialism and genocide. The myth persists, not for a lack
of free speech or poverty of information but rather for an absence
of motivation to ask questions that challenge the core of the scripted
narrative of the origin story. How might acknowledging the reality
of US history work to transform society? That is the central question
this book pursues.
Teaching Native American studies, I always begin with a sim­
ple exercise. I ask students to quickly draw a rough outline of the
United States at the time it gained independence from Britain. In­
variably most draw the approximate present shape of the United
States from the Atlantic to the Pacific-the continental territory not
fully appropriated until a century after independence. What became
independent in 1 78 3 were the thirteen British colonies hugging the
Atlantic shore. When called on this, students are embarrassed be­
cause they know better. I assure them that they are not alone. I call
this a Rorschach test of unconscious "manifest destiny," embedded
in the minds of nearly everyone in the United States and around the
world. This test reflects the seeming inevitability of US extent and
power, its destiny, with an implication that the continent had previ­
ously been terra nullius, a land without people.
Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" celebrates that the

Introduction: This Land

land belongs to everyone, reflecting the unconscious manifest des­
tiny we live with. But the extension of the United States from sea to
shining sea was the intention and design of the country's founders.
" Free" land was the magnet that attracted European settlers. Many
were slave owners who desired limitless land for lucrative cash crops.
After the war for independence but preceding the writing of the US
Constitution, the Continental Congress produced the Northwest
Ordinance. This was the first law of the incipient republic, revealing
the motive for those desiring independence. It was the blueprint for
gobbling up the British-protected Indian Territory ( " Ohio Coun­
try" ) on the other side of the Appalachians and Alleghenies. Britain
had made settlement there illegal with the Proclamation of 1 76 3.
In 1801, President Jefferson aptly described the new settler-state's
intentions for horizontal and vertical continental expansion, stating:
" However our present interests may restrain us within our own lim­
its, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our
rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits and cover
the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people
speaking the same language, governed in similar form by similar
laws." This vision of manifest destiny found form a few years later in
the Monroe Doctrine, signaling the intention of annexing or domi­
nating former Spanish colonial territories in the Americas and the Pa­
cific, which would be put into practice during the rest of the century.
Origin narratives form the vital core of a people's unifying iden­
tity and of the values that guide them. In the United States, the
founding and development of the Anglo-American settler-state in­
volves a narrative about Puritan settlers who had a covenant with
God to take the land. That part of the origin story is supported and
reinforced by the Columbus myth and the " Doctrine of Discovery."
According to a series of late-fifteenth-century papal bulls, European
nations acquired title to the lands they "discovered" and the Indig­
enous inhabitants lost their natural right to that land after Europe­
ans arrived and claimed it. 5 As law professor Robert A. Williams
observes about the Doctrine of Discovery:
Responding to the requirements of a paradoxical age of Re­
naissance and Inquisition, the West's first modern discourses

3

4

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

of conquest articulated a vision of all humankind united
under a rule of law discoverable solely by human reason. Un­
fortunately for the American Indian, the West's first tentative
steps towards this noble vision of a Law of Nations contained
a mandate for Europe's subjugation of all peoples whose radi­
cal divergence from European-derived norms of right conduct
signified their need for conquest and remediation. 6
The Columbus myth suggests that from US independence on­
ward, colonial settlers saw themselves as part of a world system of
colonization. " Columbia," the poetic, Latinate name used in refer­
ence to the United States from its founding throughout the nine­
teenth century, was based on the name of Christopher Columbus.
The " Land of Columbus" was-and still is-represented by the im­
age of a woman in sculptures and paintings, by institutions such as
Columbia University, and by countless place names, including that
of the national capital, the District of Columbia. 7 The 1798 hymn
" Hail, Columbia" was the early national anthem and is now used
whenever the vice president of the United States makes a public ap­
pearance, and Columbus Day is still a federal holiday despite Co­
lumbus never having set foot on the continent claimed by the United
States.
Traditionally, historians of the United States hoping to have suc­
cessful careers in academia and to author lucrative school textbooks
became protectors of this origin myth. With the cultural upheavals
in the academic world during the 19 60s, engendered by the civil
rights movement and student activism, historians came to call for
objectivity and fairness in revising interpretations of US history.
They warned against moralizing, urging instead a dispassionate
and culturally relative approach. Historian Bernard Sheehan, in an
influential essay, called for a "cultural conflict" understanding of
Native-Euro-American relations in the early United States, writing
that this approach "diffuses the locus of guilt."8 In striving for " bal­
ance," however, historians spouted platitudes: "There were good
and bad people on both sides." "American culture is an amalgama­
tion of all its ethnic groups." "A frontier is a zone of interaction be­
tween cultures, not merely advancing European settlements."

Introduction: This Land

L ater, trendy postmodernist studies insisted on Indigenous
"agency" under the guise of individual and collective empowerment,
making the casualties of colonialism responsible for their own de­
mise. Perhaps worst of all, some claimed (and still claim) that the
colonizer and colonized experienced an "encounter" and engaged
in "dialogue," thereby masking reality with justifications and ratio­
nalizations-in short, apologies for one-sided robbery and murder.
In focusing on "cultural change" and "conflict between cultures,"
these studies avoid fundamental questions about the formation of
the United States and its implications for the present and future.
This approach to history allows one to safely put aside present re­
sponsibility for continued harm done by that past and the questions
of reparations, restitution, and reordering society. 9
Multiculturalism became the cutting edge of post-civil-rights­
movement US history revisionism. For this scheme to work-and
affirm US historical progress-Indigenous nations and communities
had to be left out of the picture. As territorially and treaty-based
peoples in North America, they did not fit the grid of multicultur­
alism but were included by transforming them into an inchoate
oppressed racial group, while colonized Mexican Americans and
Puerto Ricans were dissolved into another such group, variously
called "Hispanic" or " Latino." The multicultural approach empha­
sized the "contributions" of individuals from oppressed groups to
the country's assumed greatness. Indigenous peoples were thus cred­
ited with corn, beans, buckskin, log cabins, parkas, maple syrup,
canoes, hundreds of place names, Thanksgiving, and even the con­
cepts of democracy and federalism. But this idea of the gift-giving
Indian helping to establish and enrich the development of the United
States is an insidious smoke screen meant to obscure the fact that the
very existence of the country is a result of the looting of an entire
continent and its resources. The fundamental unresolved issues of
Indigenous lands, treaties, and sovereignty could not but scuttle the
premises of multiculturalism.
With multiculturalism, manifest destiny won the day. As an
example, in 1994 , Prentice Hall (part of Pearson Education) pub­
lished a new college-level US history textbook, authored by four
members of a new generation of revisionist historians. These radical

5

6

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

social historians are all brilliant scholars with posts in prestigious
universities. The book's title reflects the intent of its authors and
publisher: Out of Many: A History of the American People. The ori­
gin story of a supposedly unitary nation, albeit now multicultural,
remained intact. The original cover design featured a multicolored
woven fabric-this image meant to stand in place of the discredited
"melting pot." Inside, facing the title page, was a photograph of a
Navajo woman, dressed formally in velvet and adorned with heavy
sterling silver and turquoise j ewelry. With a traditional Navaj o
dwelling, a hogan, in the background, the woman was shown kneel­
ing in front of a traditional loom, weaving a nearly finished rug.
The design? The Stars and Stripes! The authors, upon hearing my
objection and explanation that Navajo weavers make their livings
off commissioned work that includes the desired design, responded:
" But it's a real photograph." To the authors' credit, in the second
edition they replaced the cover photograph and removed the Navajo
picture inside, although the narrative text remains unchanged.
Awareness of the settler-colonialist context of US history writ­
ing is essential if one is to avoid the laziness of the default position
and the trap of a mythological unconscious belief in manifest des­
tiny. The form of colonialism that the Indigenous peoples of North
America have experienced was modern from the beginning: the ex­
pansion of European corporations, backed by government armies,
into foreign areas, with subsequent expropriation of lands and re­
sources. Settler colonialism is a genocidal policy. Native nations and
communities, while struggling to maintain fundamental values and
collectivity, have from the beginning resisted modern colonialism
using both defensive and offensive techniques, including the mod­
ern forms of armed resistance of national liberation movements and
what now is called terrorism. In every instance they have fought for
survival as peoples. The objective of US colonialist authorities was
to terminate their existence as peoples-not as random individuals.
This is the very definition of modern genocide as contrasted with
premodern instances of extreme violence that did not have the goal
of extinction. The United States as a socioeconomic and political
entity is a result of this centuries-long and ongoing colonial process.

Introduction: This Land

Modern Indigenous nations and communities are societies formed
by their resistance to colonialism, through which they have carried
their practices and histories. It is breathtaking, but no miracle, that
they have survived as peoples .
To say that the United States i s a colonialist settler-state is not
to make an accusation but rather to face historical reality, without
which consideration not much in US history makes sense, unless
Indigenous peoples are erased. But Indigenous nations, through re­
sistance, have survived and bear witness to this history. In the era
of worldwide decolonization in the second half of the twentieth cen­
tury, the former colonial powers and their intellectual apologists
mounted a counterforce, often called neocolonialism, from which
multiculturalism and postmodernism emerged. Although much
revisionist US history reflects neocolonialist strategy-an attempt
to accommodate new realities in order to retain the dominance­
neocolonialist methods signal victory for the colonized. Such ap­
proaches pry off a lid long kept tightly fastened . One result has been
the presence of significant numbers of Indigenous scholars in US
universities who are changing the terms of analysis. The main chal­
lenge for scholars in revising US history in the context of colonialism
is not lack of information, nor is it one of methodology. Certainly
difficulties with documentation are no more problematic than they
are in any other area of research. Rather, the source of the problems
has been the refusal or inability of US historians to comprehend the
nature of their own history, US history. The fundamental problem is
the absence of the colonial framework.
Through economic penetration of Indigenous societies, the Eu­
ropean and Euro-American colonial powers created economic de­
pendency and imbalance of trade, then incorporated the Indigenous
nations into spheres of influence and controlled them indirectly or
as protectorates, with indispensable use of Christian missionaries
and alcohol. In the case of US settler colonialism, land was the pri­
mary commodity. With such obvious indicators of colonialism at
work, why should so many interpretations of US political-economic
development be convoluted and obscure, avoiding the obvious? To
some extent, the twentieth-century emergence of the field of "US

7

8

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

West" or " Borderlands" history has been forced into an incomplete
and flawed settler-colonialist framework. The father of that field of
history, Frederick Jackson Turner, confessed as much in 1 9 0 1 : " Our
colonial system did not start with the Spanish War [1 8 9 8 ] ; the U. S .
had had a colonial history and policy from the beginning o f the
Republic; but they have been hidden under the phraseology of 'inter­
state migration' and 'territorial organization."' 1 0
Settler colonialism, as an institution or system, requires violence
or the threat of violence to attain its goals. People do not hand over
their land, resources, children, and futures without a fight, and that
fight is met with violence. In employing the force necessary to ac­
complish its expansionist goals, a colonizing regime institutionalizes
violence. The notion that settler-indigenous conflict is an inevitable
product of cultural differences and misunderstandings, or that vio­
lence was committed equally by the colonized and the colonizer,
blurs the nature of the historical processes. Euro-American colonial­
ism, an aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its
beginnings a genocidal tendency.
The term "genocide" was coined following the Shoah, or Ho­
locaust, and its prohibition was enshrined in the United Nations
convention adopted in 194 8 : the UN Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention is not
retroactive but is applicable to US-Indigenous relations since 19 8 8 ,
when the U S Senate ratified it. The terms of the genocide convention
are also useful tools for historical analysis of the effects of colonial­
ism in any era. In the convention, any one of five acts is considered
genocide if "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group":
killing members of the group;
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole
or in part;
imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group;
forcibly transferring children of the group to another group . 1 1

Introduction: This Land

9

In the 1990s, the term "ethnic cleansing" became a useful descrip­
tive term for genocide.
US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be
understood without dealing with the genocide that the United
States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial pe­
riod through the founding of the United States and continuing in
the twenty-first century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual
abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of In­
digenous peoples from their ancestral territories, and removals of
Indigenous children to military-like boarding schools. The absence
of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebra­
tion of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in the con­
sciousness of US Americans.
Settler colonialism is inherently genocidal in terms of the geno­
cide convention. In the case of the British North American colo­
nies and the United States, not only extermination and removal
were practiced but also the disappearing of the prior existence of
Indigenous peoples-and this continues to be perpetuated in local
histories. Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) historian Jean O'Brien names this
practice of writing Indians out of existence "firsting and lasting."
All over the continent, local histories, monuments, and signage nar­
rate the story of first settlement: the founder(s), the first school, first
dwelling, first everything, as if there had never been occupants who
thrived in those places before Euro-Americans. On the other hand,
the national narrative tells of "last" Indians or last tribes, such as
"the last of the Mohicans," " Ishi, the last Indian," and End of the
Trail, as a famous sculpture by James Earle Fraser is titled.12
Documented policies of genocide on the part of US administra­
tions can be identified in at least four distinct periods: the Jackso­
nian era of forced removal; the California gold rush in Northern
California; the post-Civil War era of the so-called Indian wars in
the Great Plains; and the 1950s termination period, all of which are
discussed in the following chapters . Cases of genocide carried out
as policy may be found in historical documents as well as in the
oral histories of Indigenous communities. An example from 1 8 7 3
is typical, with General William T. Sherman writing, " We must
act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their

10

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

extermination, men, women and children . . . during an assault,
the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female,
or even discriminate as to age." 13 As Patrick Wolfe has noted, the
peculiarity of settler colonialism is that the goal is elimination of
Indigenous populations in order to make land available to settlers.
That project is not limited to government policy, but rather involves
all kinds of agencies, voluntary militias, and the settlers themselves
acting on their own . 14
In the wake of the US 1950s termination and relocation poli­
cies, a pan-Indigenous movement arose in tandem with the power­
ful African American civil rights movement and the broad-based
social justice and antiwar movements of the 19 60s. The Indigenous
rights movement succeeded in reversing the US termination pol­
icy. However, repression, armed attacks, and legislative attempts
to undo treaty rights began again in the late 1970s, giving rise to
the international Indigenous movement, which greatly broadened
the support for Indigenous sovereignty and territorial rights in the
United States.
The early twenty-first century has seen increased exploitation
of energy resources begetting new pressures on Indigenous lands.
Exploitation by the largest corporations, often in collusion with
politicians at local, state, and federal levels, and even within some
Indigenous governments, could spell a final demise for Indigenous
land bases and resources. Strengthening Indigenous sovereignty and
self-determination to prevent that result will take general public
outrage and demand, which in turn will require that the general
population, those descended from settlers and immigrants, know
their history and assume responsibility. Resistance to these power­
ful corporate forces continues to have profound implications for US
socioeconomic and political development and the future.
There are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous
communities and nations, comprising nearly three million people
in the United States. These are the descendants of the fifteen mil­
lion original inhabitants of the land, the majority of whom were
farmers who lived in towns. The US establishment of a system of

Introduction: This Land

Indian reservations stemmed from a long British colonial practice
in the Americas. In the era of US treaty-making from independence
to 1 8 7 1 , the concept of the reservation was one of the Indigenous
nation reserving a narrowed land base from a much larger one in ex­
change for US government protection from settlers and the provision
of social services. In the late nineteenth century, as Indigenous resis­
tance was weakened, the concept of the reservation changed to one
of land being carved out of the public domain of the United States
as a benevolent gesture, a "gift" to the Indigenous peoples. Rheto­
ric changed so that reservations were said to have been "given" or
"created" for Indians. With this shift, Indian reservations came to
be seen as enclaves within state' boundaries. Despite the political
and economic reality, the impression to many was that Indigenous
people were taking a free ride on public domain.
Beyond the land bases within the limits of the 3 10 federally rec­
ognized reservations-among 554 Indigenous groups-Indigenous
land, water, and resource rights extend to all federally acknowl­
edged Indigenous communities within the borders of the United
States. This is the case whether "within the original or subsequently
acquired territory thereof, and whether within or without the limits
of a state," and includes all allotments as well as rights-of-way run­
ning to and from them. 1 5 Not all the federally recognized Indigenous
nations have land bases beyond government buildings, and the lands
of some Native nations, including those of the Sioux in the Dakotas
and Minnesota and the Ojibwes in Minnesota, have been parceled
into multiple reservations, while some fifty Indigenous nations that
had been removed to Oklahoma were entirely allotted-divided by
the federal government into individual Native-owned parcels. Attor­
ney Walter R. Echo-Hawk writes:
In 1 8 8 1 , Indian landholdings in the United States had plum­
meted to 156 million acres. By 1 9 3 4 , only about 50 million
acres remained (an area the size of Idaho and Washington)
as a result of the General Allotment Act of 1 8 87. During
World War II, the government took 500,000 more acres for
military use. Over one hundred tribes, bands, and Rancherias

11

12

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

relinquished their lands under various acts of Congress during
the termination era of the 1950s. By 1 9 5 5 , the indigenous land
base had shrunk to just 2. 3 percent of its original size. 16
As a result of federal land sales, seizures, and allotments, most
reservations are severely fragmented. Each parcel of tribal, trust,
and privately held land is a separate enclave under multiple laws
and jurisdictions. The Dine (Navajo) Nation has the largest con­
temporary contiguous land base among Native nations: nearly six­
teen million acres, or nearly twenty-five thousand square miles, the
size of West Virginia. Each of twelve other reservations is larger
than Rhode Island, which comprises nearly eight hundred thou­
sand acres, or twelve hundred square miles, and each of nine other
reservations is larger than Delaware, which covers nearly a million
and a half acres, or two thousand square miles. Other reservations
have land bases of fewer than thirty-two thousand acres, or fifty
square miles. 17 A number of independent nation-states with seats in
the United Nations have less territory and smaller populations than
some Indigenous nations of North America.
Following World War II, the United States was at war with much of
the world, just as it was at war with the Indigenous peoples of North
America in the nineteenth century. This was total war, demand­
ing that the enemy surrender unconditionally or face annihilation.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the earlier wars against Indigenous
peoples, if not acknowledged and repudiated, ultimately would in­
clude the world. According to the origin narrative, the United States
was born of rebellion against oppression-against empire-and
thus is the product of the first anticolonial revolution for national
liberation. The narrative flows from that fallacy: the broadening
and deepening of democracy; the Civil War and the ensuing "second
revolution," which ended slavery; the twentieth-century mission to
save Europe from itself-twice; and the ultimately triumphant fight
against the scourge of communism, with the United States inheriting
the difficult and burdensome task of keeping order in the world. It's
a narrative of progress. The 19 60s social revolutions, ignited by the
African American liberation movement, complicated the origin nar-

Introduction: This Land

13

rative, but its structure and periodization have been left intact. After
the 19 60s, historians incorporated women, African Americans, and
immigrants as contributors to the commonweal. Indeed, the revised
narrative produced the "nation of immigrants" framework, which
obscures the US practice of colonization, merging settler colonial­
ism with immigration to metropolitan centers during and after the
industrial revolution. Native peoples, to the extent that they were in­
cluded at all, were renamed " First Americans" and thus themselves
cast as distant immigrants.
The provincialism and national chauvinism of US history produc­
tion make it difficult for effective revisions to gain authority. Schol­
ars, both Indigenous and a few non-Indigenous, who attempt to
rectify the distortions, are labeled advocates, and their findings are
rejected for publication on that basis. Indigenous scholars look to
research and thinking that has emerged in the rest of the European­
colonized world. To understand the historical and current experi­
ences of Indigenous peoples in the United States, these thinkers and
writers draw upon and creatively apply the historical materialism of
Marxism, the liberation theology of Latin America, Frantz Fanon's
psychosocial analyses of the effects of colonialism on the colonizer
and the colonized, and other approaches, including development
theory and postmodern theory. While not abandoning insights
gained from those sources, due to the "exceptional" nature of US
colonialism among nineteenth-century colonial powers, Indigenous
scholars and activists are engaged in exploring new approaches.
This book claims to be a history of the United States f� om an
Indigenous peoples' perspective but there is no such thing as a col­
lective Indigenous peoples' perspective, j ust as there is no mono­
lithic Asian or European or African peoples' perspective. This is
not a history of the vast civilizations and communities that thrived
and survived between the Gulf of Mexico and Canada and between
the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific. Such histories have been writ­
ten, and are being written by historians of Dine, Lakota, Mohawk,
Tlingit, Muskogee, Anishinaabe, Lumbee, Inuit, Kiowa, Cherokee,
Hopi, and other Indigenous communities and nations that have
survived colonial genocide. This book attempts to tell the story of

14

An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

the United States as a colonialist settler-state, one that, like colonial­
ist European states, crushed and subjugated the original civilizations
in the territories it now rules. Indigenous peoples, now in a colonial
relationship with the United States, inhabited and thrived for mil­
lennia before they were displaced to fragmented reservations and
economically decimated.
This is a history of the United States.

ON E

F O L L O W THE C O R N

Carrying their flints and torches, Native Americans
were living in balance with Naturebut they had their thumbs on the scale.
-Charles C. Mann, I49I

Humanoids existed on Earth for around four million years as hunt­
ers and gatherers living in small communal groups that through
their movements found and populated every continent. Some two
hundred thousand years ago, human societies, having originated in
Sub-Saharan Africa, began migrating in all directions, and their de­
scendants eventually populated the globe. Around twelve thousand
years ago, some of these people began staying put and developed ag­
riculture-mainly women who domesticated wild plants and began
cultivating others.
As a birthplace of agriculture and the towns and cities that fol­
lowed, America is ancient, not a "new world ." Domestication of
plants took place around the globe in seven locales during approxi­
mately the same period, around 8500 BC. Three of the seven were in
the Americas, all based on corn: the Valley of Mexico and Central
America (Mesoamerica); the South- Central Andes in South Amer­
ica; and eastern North America. The other early agricultural cen­
ters were the Tigris-Euphrates and Nile River systems, Sub-Saharan
Africa, the Yellow River of northern China, and the Yangtze River
of southern China. During this time, many of the same human so­
cieties began domesticating animals. Only in the American conti­
nents was the parallel domestication of animals eschewed in favor
of game management, a kind of animal husbandry different from

15

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

that developed in Africa and Asia. In these seven areas, agriculture­
based "civilized" societies developed in symbiosis with hunting,
fishing, and gathering peoples on their peripheries, gradually envel­
oping many of the latter into the realms of their civilizations, except
for those in regions inhospitable to agriculture.

T H E SAC R E D CO R N F O O D

Indigenous American agriculture was based o n corn. Traces o f cul­
tivated corn have been identified in central Mexico dating back ten
thousand years . Twelve to fourteen centuries later, corn production
had spread throughout the temperate and tropical Americas from
the southern tip of South America to the subarctic of North Amer­
ica, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean on both continents.
The wild grain from which corn was cultivated has never been iden­
tified with certainty, but the Indigenous peoples for whom corn was
and is their sustenance believe it was a sacred gift from their gods.
Since there is no evidence of corn on any other continent prior to
its post- Columbus dispersal, its development is a unique invention
of the original American agriculturalists. Unlike most grains, corn
cannot grow wild and cannot exist without attentive human care.
Along with multiple varieties and colors of corn, Mesoamericans
cultivated squash and beans, which were extended throughout the
hemisphere, as were the many varieties and colors of potato cul­
tivated by Andean farmers beginning more than seven thousand
years ago. Corn, being a summer crop, can tolerate no more than
twenty to thirty days without water and even less time in high tem­
peratures. Many of the areas where corn was the staple were arid or
semiarid, so its cultivation required the design and construction of
complex irrigation systems-in place at least two thousand years be­
fore Europeans knew the Americas existed. The proliferation of ag­
riculture and cultigens could not have occurred without centuries of
cultural and commercial interchange among the peoples of North,
Central, and South America, whose traders carried seeds as well as
other goods and cultural practices.
The vast reach and capacity of Indigenous grain production im-

Follow the Corn

pressed colonialist Europeans . A traveler in French-occupied North
America related in 1 669 that six square miles of cornfields sur­
rounded each Iroquois village. The governor of New France, follow­
ing a military raid in the r 6 8 os, reported that he had destroyed more
than a million bushels (forty-two thousand tons) of corn belonging
to four Iroquois villages.1 Thanks to the nutritious triad of corn,
beans, and squash-which provide a complete protein-the Ameri­
cas were densely populated when the European monarchies began
sponsoring colonization projects there.
The total population of the hemisphere was about one hundred
million at the end of the fifteenth century, with about two-fifths in
North America, including Mexico. Central Mexico alone supported
some thirty million people . At the same time, the population of Eu­
rope as far east as the Ural Mountains was around fifty million.
Experts have observed that such population densities in precolo­
nial America were supportable because the peoples had created a
relatively disease-free paradise. 2 There certainly were diseases and
health problems, but the practice of herbal medicine and even sur­
gery and dentistry, and most importantly both hygienic and ritual
bathing, kept diseases at bay. Settler observers in all parts of the
Americas marveled at the frequent bathing even in winter in cold
climates. One commented that the Native people "go to the river
and plunge in and wash themselves before they dress daily." Another
wrote: "Men, women, and children, from early infancy, are in the
habit of bathing." Ritual sweat baths were common to all Native
North Americans, having originated in Mexico.3 Above all, the ma­
jority of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas had healthy, mostly
vegetarian diets based on the staple of corn and supplemented by
wild fish, fowl, and four-legged animals. People lived long and well
with abundant ceremonial and recreational periods.

U P F R O M M E X I CO

As on the two other major continental landmasses-Eurasia and
Africa-civilization in the Americas emerged from certain popu­
lation centers, with periods of vigorous growth and integration

17

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

interspersed with periods of decline and disintegration. At least a
dozen such centers were functioning in the Americas when Euro­
peans intervened. Although this is a history of the part of North
America that is today the United States, it is important to follow
the corn to its origins and briefly consider the peoples' history of the
Valley of Mexico and Central America, often called Mesoamerica.
Influences from the south powerfully shaped the Indigenous peoples
to the north (in what is now the United States) and Mexicans con­
tinue to migrate as they have for millennia but now across the arbi­
trary border that was established in the US war against Mexico in
1 846-4 8 .
The first great cultivators of corn were the Mayans, initially cen­
tered in present-day northern Guatemala and the Mexican state of
Tabasco. Extending to the Yucatan peninsula, the Mayans of the
tenth century built city-states- Chichen-Itza, Mayapan, Uxmal,
and many others-as far south as Belize and Honduras. Mayan
villages, farms, and cities extended from tropical forests to alpine
areas to coastal and interior plains. During the five-century apex
of Mayan civilization, a combined priesthood and nobility gov­
erned. There was also a distinct commercial class, and the cities
were densely populated, not simply bureaucratic or religious centers.
Ordinary Mayan villages in the far-flung region retained fundamen­
tal features of clan structures and communal social relations. They
worked the nobles' fields, paid rent for use of land, and contributed
labor and taxes to the building of roads, temples, nobles' houses,
and other structures. It is not clear whether these relations were
exploitative or cooperatively developed. However, the nobility drew
servants from groups such as war prisoners, accused criminals, debt­
ors, and even orphans. Although servile status was not hereditary,
this was forced labor. Increasingly burdensome exploitation of labor
and higher taxes and tribute produced dissension and uprisings, re­
sulting in the collapse of the Mayan state, from which decentralized
polities emerged.
Mayan culture astonishes all who study it, and it is often com­
pared to Greek (Athenian) culture. At its core was the cultivation
of corn; religion was constructed around this vital food. The Ma­
yan people developed art, architecture, sculpture, and painting, em-

Follow the Corn

ploying a variety o f materials, including gold and silver, which they
mined and used for jewelry and sculpture, not for use as currency.
Surrounded by rubber trees, they invented the rubber ball and court
ball games similar to modern soccer. Their achievements in math­
ematics and astronomy are the most impressive. By 3 6 BC they had
developed the concept of zero. They worked with numbers in the
hundreds of millions and used extensive dating systems, making pos­
sible both their observations of the cosmos and their unique calendar
that marked the passage of time into the future. Modern astrono­
mers have marveled at the accuracy of Mayan charts of the move­
ments of the moon and planets, which were used to predict eclipses
and other events. Mayan culture and science, as well as governmen­
tal and economic practices, were influential throughout the region.
During the same period of Mayan devel opment, the Olmec civi­
lization reigned in the Valley of Mexico and built the grand me­
tropolis of Teotihuacan. Beginning in AD 7 5 0 , Toltec civilization
dominated the region for four centuries, absorbing the Olmecs. Co­
lossal buildings, sculptures, and markets made up the Toltec cit­
ies, which housed extensive libraries and universities. They created
multiple cities, the largest being Tula. The Toltecs' written language
was based on the Mayan form, as was the calendar they used in
scientific research, particularly in astronomy and medicine. Another
nation in the Valley of Mexico, the Culhua, built the city-state of
Culhuacan on the southern shore of Lake Texcoco, as well as the
city-state of Texcoco on the eastern shore of the lake. In the late
fourteenth century, the Tepanec people rose in an expansionist drive
and subjugated Culhuacan, Texcoco, and all their subject peoples
in the Valley of Mexico. They proceeded to conquer Tenochtitlan,
which was located on an island in the middle of the immense Lake
Texcoco and had been built around 1 3 25 by the Nahuatl-speaking
Aztecs who had migrated from northern Mexico (today's Utah). The
Aztecs had entered the valley in the twelfth century and been in­
volved in toppling the Toltecs.4
In 1 4 26, the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan formed an alliance with the
Texcoco and Tlacopan peoples and overthrew Tepanec rule. The
allies proceeded to wage war against neighboring peoples and even­
tually succeeded in gaining control over the Valley of Mexico. The

19

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

Aztecs emerged as dominant in the Triple Alliance and moved to
bring all the peoples of Mexico under their tributary authority.
These events paralleled ones in Europe and Asia during the same
period, when Rome and other city-states were demolished and occu­
pied by invading Germanic peoples, while the Mongols of the Eur­
asian steppe overran much of Russia and China. As in Europe and
Asia, the invading peoples assimilated and reproduced civilization.
The economic basis for the powerful Aztec state was hydraulic
agriculture, with corn as the central crop. Beans, pumpkins, toma­
toes, cocoa, and many other food crops flourished and supported a
dense population, much of it concentrated in large urban centers.
The Aztecs also grew tobacco and cotton, the latter providing the
fiber for all cloth and clothing. Weaving and metalwork flourished,
providing useful commodities as well as works of art. Building tech­
niques enabled construction of enormous stone dams and canals,
as well as fortress-like castles made of brick or stone. There were
elaborate markets in each city and a far-flung trade network that
used routes established by the Toltecs.
Aztec merchants acquired turquoise from Pueblos who mined
it in what is now the US Southwest to sell in central Mexico where
it had become the most valued of all material possessions and
was used as a means of exchange or a form of money. 5 Sixty-five
thousand turquoise artifacts in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, are
evidence of the importance of turquoise as a major precolonial com­
modity. Other items were also valuable marketable commodities in
the area, salt being close to turquoise in value. Ceramic trade goods
involved interconnected markets from Mexico City to Mesa Verde,
Colorado. Shells from the Gulf of California, tropical bird feath­
ers from the Gulf Coast area of Mexico, obsidian from Durango,
Mexico, and flint from Texas were all found in the ruins of Casa
Grande (Arizona), the commercial center of the northern frontier.
Turquoise functioning as money was traded to acquire macaw and
parrot feathers from tropical areas for religious rituals, seashells
from coastal peoples, and hides and meat from the northern plains.
The stone has been found in precolonial sites in Texas, Kansas, and
Nebraska, where the Wichitas served as intermediaries, carrying
turquoise and other goods farther east and north. Crees in the Lake

Follow the Corn

Superior region and communities in what is today Ontario, Canada,
and in today's Wisconsin acquired turquoise through trade. 6
Traders from Mexico were also transmitters of culture and fea­
tures such as the Sun Dance religion in the Great Plains, and the cul­
tivation of corn by the Algonquin, Cherokee, and Muskogee (Creek)
peoples of the eastern half of North America were transmitted from
Central America. The oral and written histories of the Aztecs, Cher­
okees, and Choctaws record these relations. Cherokee oral history
tells of their ancestors' migrations from the south and through Mex­
ico, as does Muskogee history.7
Although Aztecs were apparently flourishing culturally and eco­
nomically, as well as being militarily and politically strong, their
dominance was declining on the eve of Spanish intrusion. Being
pressed for tribute through violent attacks, peasants rebelled and
there were uprisings all over Mexico. Montezuma II, who came to
power in 1 5 0 3 , might have succeeded in his attempt to reform the
regime, but the Spanish overthrew him before he had the opportu­
nity. The Mexican state was crushed and its cities leveled in Cortes's
three-year genocidal war. Cortes's recruitment of resistant commu­
nities all over Mexico as allies aided in toppling the central regime.
Cortes and his two hundred European mercenaries could never have
overthrown the Mexican state without the Indigenous insurgency he
co-opted. The resistant peoples who allied with Cortes to overthrow
the oppressive Aztec regime could not yet have known the goals of
the gold-obsessed Spanish colonizers or the European institutions
that backed them.

T H E N O RTH

What i s n ow the US Southwest once formed, with today's Mexican
states of Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua, the northern periphery of
the Aztec regime in the Valley of Mexico. Mostly an alpine, arid, and
semiarid region cut with rivers, it is a fragile land base with rainfall
a scarce commodity and drought endemic. Yet, in the Sonora Desert
of present-day southern Arizona, communities were practicing agri­
culture by 2100 BC and began digging irrigation canals as early as

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

1 25 0 BC. The earliest evidence of corn in the area dates from 2000

BC, introduced by trade and migration between north and south.
Farther north, people began cultivating corn, beans, squash, and
cotton around 1 5 0 0 BC. Their descendants, the Akimel O'odham
people (Pimas), call their ancestors the Huhugam (meaning "those
who have gone " ) , which English speakers have rendered as "Ho­
hokam." The Hohokam people left behind ball courts similar to
those of the Mayans, multistory buildings, and agricultural fields.
Their most striking imprint on the land is one of the most extensive
networks of irrigation canals in the world at that time. From AD
9 0 0 to 1 4 5 0 , the Hohokams built a canal system of more than eight

hundred miles of trunk lines and hundreds more miles of branches
serving local sites. The longest known canal extended twenty miles.
The largest were seventy-five to eighty-five feet across and twenty
feet deep, and many were leak-proof, lined with clay. One canal
system carried enough water to irrigate an estimated ten thousand
acres. 8 Hohokam farmers grew surplus crops for export and their
community became a crossroads in a trade network reaching from
Mexico to Utah and from the Pacific Coast to New Mexico and
irito the Great Plains. By the fourteenth c entury, Hohokams had
dispersed, living in smaller communities.
The famed Anasazi people of Chaco Canyon on the Colorado
Plateau-in the present-day Four Corners region of Arizona, New
Mexico, Colorado, and Utah-thrived from AD 850 to 1 25 0 . An­
cestors of the Pueblos of New Mexico, the Anasazi constructed
more than four hundred miles of roads radiating out from Chaco.
Averaging thirty feet wide, these roads followed straight courses,
even through difficult terrain such as hills and rock formations.
The highways connected some seventy-five communities. Around
the thirteenth century, the Anasazi people abandoned the Chaco
area and migrated, building nearly a hundred smaller agricultural
city-states along the northern Rio Grande valley and its tributaries.
Northernmost Taos Pueblo was an important trade center, handling
buffalo products from the plains, tropical bird products, copper
and shells from Mexico, and turquoise from New Mexican mines.
Pueblo trade extended as far west as the Pacific Ocean, as far east as
the Great Plains, and as far south as Central America.

Follow the Corn

Other major peoples in the region, the Navaj os ( Dine) and
Apaches, are of Athabascan heritage, having migrated to the region
from the subarctic several centuries before Columbus. The majority
of the Dine people did not migrate and remain in the original home­
land in Alaska and northwestern Canada. Originally a hunting and
trading people, they interacted and intermarried with the Pueblos
and became involved in conflicts between villages engendered by
disputes over water usage, with Dine and Apache groups allied with
one or another of the riverine city-states.9
The island peoples of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Ba­
sin were an integral part of the cultural, religious, and economic
exchanges with the peoples from today's Guyana, Venezuela, Co­
lombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala,
Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Wa­
ter, far from presenting a barrier to trade and cultural relations,
served as a means of connecting the region's peoples. Precolonial
Caribbean cultures and cultural connections have been very little
studied, since many of these peoples, the first victims of Columbus's
colonizing missions, were annihilated, enslaved and deported, or
later assimilated enslaved African populations with the advent of
the Atlantic slave trade. The best known are the Caribs, Arawaks,
Tainos, and the Chibchan-speaking peoples. Throughout the Ca­
ribbean islands and rim are also descendants of Maroons-mixed
Indigenous and African communities-who successfully liberated
themselves from slavery, such as the Garifuna people ( " Black Car­
ibs " ) along the coast of the western Caribbean.1 0
From the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and south to
the Gulf of Mexico lay one of the most fertile agricultural belts in
the world, crisscrossed with great rivers. Naturally watered, teem­
ing with plant and animal life, temperate in climate, the region was
home to multiple agricultural nations. In the twelfth century, the
Mississippi Valley region was marked by one enormous city-state,
Cahokia, and several large ones built of earthen, stepped pyramids,
much like those in Mexico. Cahokia supported a population of tens
of thousands, larger than that of London during the same period.
Other architectural monuments were sculpted in the shape of gi­
gantic birds, lizards, bears, alligators, and even a r , 3 3 0 -foot-long

23

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

serpent. These feats of monumental construction testify to the levels
of civic and social organization. Called "mound builders" by Euro­
pean settlers, the people of this civilization had dispersed before the
European invasion, but their influence had spread throughout the
eastern half of the North American continent through cultural influ­
ence and trade. 1 1 What European colonizers found in the southeast­
ern region of the continent were nations of villages with economies
based on agriculture and corn the mainstay. This was the territory
of the nations of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw and the
Muskogee Creek and Seminole, along with the Natchez Nation in
the western part, the Mississippi Valley region.
To the north, a remarkable federal state structure, the Haude­
nosaunee confederacy-often referred to as the Six Nations of the
Iroquois Confederacy-was made up of the Seneca, Cayuga, On­
ondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk Nations and, from early in the nine­
teenth century, the Tuscaroras. This system incorporated six widely
dispersed and unique nations of thousands of agricultural villages
and hunting grounds from the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence
River to the Atlantic, and as far south as the Carolinas and inland
to Pennsylvania. The Haudenosaunee peoples avoided centralized
power by means of a clan-village system of democracy based on
collective stewardship of the land. Corn, the staple crop, was stored
in granaries and distributed equitably in this matrilineal society by
the clan mothers, the oldest women from every extended family.
Many other nations flourished in the Great Lakes region where now
the US- Canada border cuts through their realms. Among them, the
Anishinaabe Nation (called by others Ojibwe and Chippewa) was
the largest.
The peoples of the prairies of central North America spanned an
expanse of space from West Texas to the subarctic between the Mis­
sissippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Several centers of develop­
ment in that vast region of farming and bison-dependent peoples
may be identified: in the prairies of Canada, the Crees; in the Da­
kotas, the Lakota and Dakota Sioux; and to their west and south,
the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples. Farther south were the Ponca,
Pawnee, Osage, Kiowa, and many other nations, with buffalo num­
bering sixty million. Territorial disputes inevitably occurred, and

Follow the Corn

25

diplomatic skills as well as trade were highly developed for conflict
resolution.
In the Pacific Northwest, from present-day Alaska to San Fran­
cisco, and along the vast inland waterways to the mountain barriers,
great seafaring and fishing peoples flourished, linked by culture,
common ceremonies, and extensive trade. These were wealthy peo­
ples living in a comparative paradise of natural resources, including
the sacred salmon. They invented the potlatch, the ceremonial dis­
tribution or destruction of accumulated goods, creating a culture of
reciprocity. They crafted gigantic wooden totems, masks, and lodges
carved from giant sequoias and redwoods. Among these communi­
ties speaking many languages were the Tlingit people in Alaska and
the salmon-fishing Salish, Makah, Hoopa, Pomo, Karok, and Yurok
people.
The territory between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains
in the West, now called the Great Basin, was a harsh environment
that supported small populations before European colonization, as
it does today. Yet the Shoshone, Bannock, Paiute, and Ute peoples
there managed the environment and built permanent villages.

G OV E R N A N C E

Each Indigenous nation or city-state or town comprised a n indepen­
dent, self-governing people that held supreme authority over internal
affairs and dealt with other peoples on equal footing. Among the
factors that integrated each nation, in addition to language, were
shared belief systems and rituals and clans of extended families that
spanned more than one town. The system of decision making was
based on consensus, not majority rule. This form of decision making
later baffled colonial agents who could not find Indigenous officials
to bribe or manipulate. In terms of international diplomacy, each of
the Indigenous peoples of western North America was a sovereign
nation. First the Spanish, French, and British colonizers, and then
the US colonizers, made treaties with these Indigenous governments.
Indigenous governance varied widely in form. 12 East of the Mis­
sissippi River, towns and federations of towns were governed by

26

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

family lineages. The male elder of the most powerful clan was the
executive. His accession to that position and all his decisions were
subject to the approval of a council of elders of the clans that were
represented in the town. In this manner, the town had sovereign
authority over its internal affairs. In each sovereign town burned a
sacred fire symbolizing its relationship with the spirit beings. A town
could join other towns under the leadership of a single leader. Eng­
lish colonists termed such groupings of towns "confederacies" or
"federations." The Haudenosaunee people today retain a fully func­
tioning government of this type. It was the Haudenosaunee constitu­
tion, called the Great Law of Peace, that inspired essential elements
of the US Constitution. 13 Oren Lyons, who holds the title of Faith­
keeper of the Turtle Clan and is a member of the Onondaga Council
of Chiefs, explains the essence of that constitution: "The first princi­
ple is peace. The second principle, equity, justice for the people . And
third, the power of the good minds, of the collective powers to be of
one mind: unity. And health. All of these were involved in the basic
principles. And the process of discussion, putting aside warfare as a
method of reaching decisions, and now using intellect." 14
The Muskogees ( Creeks), Seminoles, and other peoples in the
Southeast had three branches of government: a civil administra­
tion, a military, and a branch that dealt with the sacred. The lead­
ers of each branch were drawn from the elite, and other officials
were drawn from prominent clans. Over the centuries preceding
European colonialism, ancient traditions of diplomacy had devel­
oped among the Indigenous nations. Societies in the eastern part of
the continent had an elaborate ceremonial structure for diplomatic
meetings among representatives of disparate governments . In the
federations of sovereign towns, the leading town's fire represented
the entire group, and each member town sent a representative or two
to the federation's council. Thus everyone in the federation was rep­
resented in the government's decision making. Agreements reached
in such meetings were considered sacred pledges that the representa­
tives made not only to one another but also to the powerful spirit
looking on. The nations tended to hold firm to such treaties out of
respect for the sacred power that was party to the agreements. Rela­
tions with the spirit world were thus a major factor in government. 15

Follow the Corn

The roles of women varied among the societies of eastern North
America. Among the Muskogees and other southern nations, women
hardly participated in governmental affairs. Haudenosaunee and
Cherokee women, on the other hand, held more political authority.
Among the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and
Tuscaroras, certain female lineages controlled the choice of male
representatives for their clans in their governing councils. Men were
the representatives, but the women who chose them had the right to
speak in the council, and when the chosen representative was too
young or inexperienced to be effective , one of the women might
participate in council on his behalf. Haudenosaunee clan mothers
held the power to recall unsatisfactory representatives. Charles C .
Mann, author o f I49 I : New Revelations of the Americas before
Columbus, calls it "a feminist dream." 1 6
According to the value system that drove consensus building and
decision making in these societies, the community's interest over­
rode individual interests. After every member of a council had had
his or her say, any member who still considered a decision incorrect
might nevertheless agree to abide by it for the sake of the commu­
nity's cohesion. In the rare cases in which consensus could not be
reached, the segment of the community represented by dissenters
might withdraw from the community and move away to found a
new community. This was similar to the practice of the nearly one
hundred autonomous towns of northern New Mexico.

S T E WA R D S O F T H E L A N D

By the time of European invasions, Indigenous peoples had occupied
and shaped every part of the Americas, established extensive trade
networks and roads, and were sustaining their populations by adapt­
ing to specific natural environments, but they also adapted nature to
suit human ends. Mann relates how Indigenous peoples used fire to
shape and tame the precolonial North American landscape. In the
Northeast, Indigenous farmers always carried flints . One English
observer in 1 63 7 noted that they used the flints "to set fire of the
country in all places where they come."17 They also used torches for

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

night hunting and rings of flame to encircle animals to kill. Rather
than domesticating animals for hides and meat, Indigenous com­
munities created havens to attract elk, deer, bear, and other game.
They burned the undergrowth in forests so that the young grasses
and other ground cover that sprouted the following spring would
entice greater numbers of herbivores and the predators that fed on
them, which would sustain the people who ate them both. Mann
describes these forests in r49 r : " Rather than the thick, unbroken,
monumental snarl of trees imagined by Thoreau, the great eastern
forest was an ecological kaleidoscope of garden plots, blackberry
rambles , pine barrens , and spacious groves of chestnut, hickory, and
oak." Inland a few miles from the shore of present-day Rhode Is­
land, an early European explorer marveled at the trees that were
spaced so that the forest "could be penetrated even by a large army."
English mercenary John Smith wrote that he had ridden a galloping
horse through the Virginia forest. In Ohio, the first English squat­
ters on Indigenous lands in the mid-eighteenth century encountered
forested areas that resembled English parks, as they could drive car­
riages through the trees.
Bison herds roamed the East from New York to Georgia (it's no
accident that a settler city in western New York was named Buffalo).
The American bison was indigenous to the northern and southern
plains of North America, not the East, yet Native peoples imported
them east along a path of fire, as they transformed forest into fal­
lows for the bison to survive upon far from their original habitat.
Historian William Cronon has written that when the Haudeno­
saunee hunted buffalo, they were "harvesting a foodstuff which they
had consciously been instrumental in creating." As for the " Great
American Desert," as Anglo -Americans called the Great Plains, the
occupants transformed that too into game farms . Using fire, they
extended the giant grasslands and maintained them. When Lewis
and Clark began their trek up the Missouri River in 1 8 04 , ethnolo­
gist Dale Lott has observed, they beheld "not a wilderness but a
vast pasture managed by and for Native Americans." Native Ameri­
cans created the world's largest gardens and grazing lands-and
thrived.18
Native peoples left an indelible imprint on the land with systems

Follow the Corn

of roads that tied nations and communities together across the entire
landmass of the Americas. Scholar David Wade Chambers writes:
The first thing to note about early Native American trails and
roads is that they were not just paths in the woods following
along animal tracks used mainly for hunting. Neither can they
be characterized simply as the routes that nomadic peoples
followed during seasonal migrations. Rather they constituted
an extensive system of roadways that spanned the Americas,
making possible short, medium and long distance travel . That
is to say, the Pre - C olumbian Americas were laced together
with a complex system of roads and paths which became the
roadways adopted by the early settlers and indeed were ulti­
mately transformed into major highways . 1 9
Roads were developed along rivers, a n d many Indigenous roads
in North America tracked the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Colum­
bia, and Colorado Rivers, the Rio Grande, and other major streams.
Roads also followed seacoasts. A major road ran along the Pacific
coast from northern Alaska (where travelers could continue by boat
to Siberia) south to an urban area in western Mexico. A branch of
that road ran through the Sonora Desert and up onto the Colorado
Plateau, serving ancient towns and later communities such as those
of the Hopis and Pueblos on the northern Rio Grande.
From the Pueblo communities, roads eastward carried travelers
onto the semiarid plains along tributaries of the Pecos River and up
to the communities in what is now eastern New Mexico, the Texas
Panhandle, and West Texas. There were also roads from the north­
ern Rio Grande to the southern plains of western Oklahoma by
way of the Canadian and Cimarron Rivers. The roads along those
rivers and their tributaries led to a system of roads that followed riv­
ers from the Southeast. They also connected with ones that turned
southwestward toward the Valley of Mexico.
The eastern roads connected Muskogee (Creek) towns in present­
day Georgia and Alabama. From the' Muskogee towns, a major
route led north through Cherokee lands, the Cumberland Gap, and
the Shenandoah Valley region to the confluence of the Ohio and

29

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Scioto Rivers . From that northeastern part of the continent, a trav­
eler could reach the West Coast by following roads along the Ohio
River to the Mississippi, up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Mis­
souri, and along the Missouri westward to its headwaters . From
there, a road crossed the Rocky Mountains through South Pass in
present- day Wyoming and led to the Columbia River. The Columbia
River road led to the large population center at the river's mouth on
the Pacific Ocean and connected with the Pacific Coast road .

CO R N

North America i n 1 49 2 was not a virgin wilderness but a network
of Indigenous nations, peoples of the corn. The link between peoples
of the North and the South can be seen in the diffusion of corn
from Mesoamerica. Both Muskogees and Cherokees, whose original
homelands in North America are located in the Southeast, trace
their lineage to migration from or through Mexico. Cherokee histo ­
rian Emmet Starr wrote:
The Cherokees most probably preceded by several hundred
years the Muskogees in their exodus from Mexico and swung
in a wider circle, crossing the Mississippi River many miles
north of the mouth of the Missouri River as indicated by the
mounds . . . . The Muskogees were probably driven out of
Mexico by the Aztecs, Toltecs or some other of the northwest­
ern tribal invasions of the ninth or preceding centuries. This is
evidenced by the customs and devices that were long retained
by the Creeks. 2 0
Another Cherokee writer, Robert Conley, tells about the oral
tradition that claims Cherokee origins in South America and sub­
sequent migration through Mexico. Later, with US military inva­
sions and relocations of the Muskogee and Cherokee peoples, many
groups split off and sought refuge in Mexico, as did others under
pressure, such as the Kickapoos. 2 1
Although practiced traditionally throughout the Indigenous ag-

Follow the Corn

31

ricultural areas of North America, the Green Corn Dance remains
strongest among the Muskogee people. The elements of the ritual
dance are similar to those of the Valley of Mexico. Although the
dance takes various forms among different communities, the core of
it is the same, a commemoration of the gift of corn by an ancestral
corn woman. The peoples of the corn retain great affinities under
the crust of colonialism.
This brief overview of precolonial North America suggests the
magnitude of what was lost to all humanity and counteracts the
settler-colonial myth of the wandering Neolithic hunter. These were
civilizations based on advanced agriculture and featuring polities .
I t is essential t o understand the migrations a n d Indigenous peoples'
relationships prior to invasion, North and South, and how colonial­
ism cut them off, but, as we will see, the relationships are being
reestablished.

TWO

C U LT U RE O F C O N Q U E S T

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation,
enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal
population, the beginning of the conquest and looting
of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren
for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the
rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic
proceedings are the chief moments of prior accumulation.
-Karl Marx, from "Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist," Capital

H O W I T BEGAN

The late anthropologist Edward H . Spicer wrote that the initial Eu­
ropeans who participated in colonization of the Americas were heirs
to rich and ancient cultures, social relations, and customs in their
lands of origin, whether Spain, France, Holland, or England. In the
passage to the Americas and encountering the Indigenous inhabi­
tants, they largely abandoned the webs of European social relations.
What each actually participated in was a culture of conquest-vio­
lence, expropriation, destruction, and dehumanization. 1
Spicer's observation is true, but the culture of conquest didn't
start with Europeans crossing the Atlantic. European institutions
and the worldview of conquest and colonialism had formed several
centuries before that. From the eleventh through the thirteenth cen­
turies, Europeans conducted the Crusades to conquer North Africa
and the Middle East, leading to unprecedented wealth in the hands
of a few. This profit-based religion was the deadly element that Eu­
ropean merchants and settlers brought to the Americas. In addi-

32

Culture of Conquest

tion to seeking personal wealth, colonizers expressed a Christian
zeal that j ustified colonialism. Along with that came the militaristic
tradition that had also developed in western Europe during the Cru­
sades (literally, "carrying of the cross " ) . Although the popes, begin­
ning with Urban II, called for most of the ventures, the crusading
armies were mercenary outfits that promised the soldiers the right to
sack and loot Muslim towns and cities, feats that would gain them
wealth and prestige back home. Toward the end of the thirteenth
century, · the papacy began directing such mercenaries to crush do­
mestic "enemies" in their midst, as well-pagans and commoners
in general, especially women (as ostensible witches) and heretics . In
this way, knights and noblemen could seize land and force the com­
moners living on it into servitude . Historian Peter Linebaugh notes
that whereas the anti-Muslim Crusades were attempts to control
the lucrative Muslim trade routes to the Far East, the domestic cru­
sades against heretics and commoners were carried out to terrorize
poor people and at the same time to enlist them in the lucrative and
adventurous yet holy venture: " Crusading was thus a murderous
device to resolve a contradiction by bringing baron and commoner
together in the cauldron of religious war." 2
The first population forcibly organized under the profit motive­
whose labor was exploited well before overseas exploitation was
possible-was the European peasantry. Once forced off their land,
they had nothing to eat and nothing to sell but their labor. In addi­
tion, entire nations, such as Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Bohemia, the
Basque Country, and Catalonia, were colonized and forced under
the rule of various monarchies. The Moorish Nation and the Sep­
hardic Jewish minority were conquered and physically deported by
the Castilian/Aragon monarchy from the Iberian Peninsula-a long­
term project culminating in group expulsions beginning in 1492, the
year Columbus sailed to America.
The institutions of colonialism and methods for relocation, de­
portation, and expropriation of land had already been practiced,
if not perfected, by the end of the fifteenth century. 3 The rise of the
modern state in western Europe was based on the accumulation of
wealth by means of exploiting human labor and displacing millions
of subsistence producers from their lands. The armies that did this

33

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

work benefited from technological innovations that allowed the de­
velopment of more effective weapons of death and destruction. When
these states expanded overseas to obtain even more resources, land,
and labor, they were not starting anew. The peoples of the Caribbean,
Central America, Mexico, and the Andes were the first overseas vic­
tims . West and South Africa, North America, and the rest of South
America followed. Then came all of Africa, the Pacific, and Asia .
The sea voyages of European explorers and merchants in the late
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were not the first of their kind.
These voyagers borrowed the techniques for long- distance sea travel
from the Arab world. Before the Arabs ventured into the Indian
Ocean, Inuits ( Eskimos) plied the Arctic Circle in their kayaks for
centuries and made contacts with many peoples, as did Norse, South
Asian, Chinese, Japanese, Peruvian, and Melanesian and Polynesian
fishing peoples of the Pacific . Egyptian and Greek knowledge of the
seas most likely extended beyond the Mediterranean, into the At­
lantic and Indian Oceans. Western European seagoing merchants
and the monarchies that backed them would differ only in that they
had developed the bases for colonial domination and exploitation
of labor in those colonies that led to the capture and enslavement of
millions of Africans to transport to their American colonies .

L A N D A S P R I VAT E P R O P E R T Y

Along with the cargo o f European ships, especially o f the later Brit­
ish colonizing ventures, came the emerging concept of land as pri­
vate property. Esther Kingston-Mann, a specialist in Russian land
tenure history, has reconstructed the elevation of land as private
property to "sacred status" in sixteenth-century England. 4 The En­
glish used the term "enclosure " to denote the privatization of the
commons. During this time, peasants, who constituted a large ma­
jority of the population, were evicted from their ancient common
lands. For centuries the commons had been their pasture for milk
cows and for running sheep and their source for water, wood for
fuel and construction, and edible and medicinal wild plants . With­
out these resources they could not have survived as farmers , and

Culture of Conquest

35

they did not survive as farmers after they lost access to the com­
mons. Not only were the commons privatized during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, they were also transformed into grazing
lands for commercial sheep production, wool being the main do­
mestic and export commodity, creating wealth for a few and im­
poverishment for the many. Denied access to the former commons,
rural subsistence farmers and even their children had no choice but
to work in the new woolen textile factories under miserable condi­
tions-that is, when they could find such work for unemployment
was high. Employed or not, this displaced population was available
to serve as settlers in the North American British colonies, many of
them as indentured servants, with the promise of land. After serving
their terms of indenture, they were free to squat on Indigenous land
and become farmers again. In this way, surplus labor created not
only low labor costs and great profits for the woolens manufacturers
but also a supply of settlers for the colonies, which was an "escape
valve " in the home country, where impoverishment could lead to
uprisings of the exploited. The sacred status of property in the forms
of land taken from Indigenous farmers and of Africans as chattel
was seeded into the drive for Anglo-American independence from
Britain and the founding of the United States.
Privatization of land was accompanied by an ideological drive
to paint the commoners who resisted as violent, stupid, and lazy.
The English Parliament, under the guise of fighting backwardness,
criminalized former rights to the commons. Accompanying and fa­
cilitating the privatization of the commons was the suppression of
women, as feminist theorist Silvia Federici has argued, by conj uring
witchcraft. Those accused of witchcraft were poor peasant women,
often widows, while the accusers tended to be wealthier, either their
landlords or employers, individuals who controlled local institutions
or had ties to the national government. Neighbors were encouraged
to accuse one another. 5 Witchcraft was considered mainly a female
crime, especially at the peak of the witch hunts between 1 5 5 0 and

1 650, when more than 80 percent of those who were charged with
witchcraft, tried, convicted, and executed were women. In England,
those accused of witchcraft were mostly elderly women, often beg­
gars, sometimes the wives of living laborers but usually widows .

36

An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

Actions and local occurrences said to indicate witchcraft included
nonpayment of rent, demand for public assistance, giving the "evil­
eye," local die-offs of horses or other stock, and mysterious deaths
of children. Also among the telltale actions were practices related to
midwifery and any kind of contraception . The service that women
provided among the poor as healers was one of a number of vestiges
from pre- Christian, matrilineal institutions that once predominated
in Europe. It is no surprise that those who had held on to and per­
petuated these communal practices were those most resistant to the
enclosure of the commons, the economic base of the peasantry, as
well as women's autonomy. 6
The traumatized souls thrown off the land, as well as their de­
scendants, became the land-hungry settlers enticed to cross a vast
ocean with the promise of land and attaining the status of gentry.
English settlers brought witch hunting with them to Jamestown,
Virginia, and to Salem, Massachusetts. In language reminiscent of
that used to condemn witches, they quickly identified the Indigenous
populations as inherently children of Satan and " servants of the
devil " who deserved to be killed. 7 Later the Salem authorities would
justify witch trials by claiming that the English settlers were inhabit­
ing land controlled by the devil.

W H I T E S U P R E M ACY A N D C L A S S

Also part o f the Christian colonizers' outlook was a belief i n white
supremacy. As an 1 8 7 8 US Protestant evangelical hymn suggests­
"Are your garments spotless? I Are they white as snow? I Are they
washed in the blood of the lamb? "-whiteness as an ideology in­
volves much more than skin color, although skin color has been
and continues to be a key component of racism in the United States.
White supremacy can be traced to the colonizing ventures of the
Christian Crusades in Muslim-controlled territories and to the Prot­
estant colonization of Ireland. As dress rehearsals for the coloniza­
tion of the Americas, these proj ects form the two strands that merge
in the geopolitical and sociocultural makeup of US society.
The Crusades in the Iberian Peninsula ( Spain and Portugal today)

Culture of Conquest

and expulsion of Jews and Muslims were part of a process that cre­
ated the core ideology for modern colonialism-white supremacy­
and its justification for genocide . The Crusades gave birth to the
papal law of limpieza de sangre -cleanliness of blood-for which
the Inquisition was established by the Church to investigate and
determine. Before this time the concept of biological race based on
" blood" is not known to have existed as law or taboo in Christian
Europe or anywhere else in the world. 8 As scapegoating and sus­
picion of Conversos (Jews who had converted to Christianity) and
Moriscos (Muslims who had converted to Christianity) intensified
over several centuries in Christian-controlled Spain, the doctrine
of limpieza de sangre was popularized. It had the effect of granting
psychological and increasingly legal privileges to " Old Christians,"
both rich and poor, thus obscuring the class differences between the
landed aristocracy and land-poor peasants and shepherds . Whatever
their economic station, the " Old Christian" Spanish were enabled
to identify with the nobility. As one Spanish historian puts it, "The
common people looked upwards, wishing and hoping to climb, and
let themselves be seduced by chivalric ideals: honour, dignity, glory,
and the noble life."9 Lope de Vega, a sixteenth-century contempo­
rary of Cervantes, wrote : " Soy un hombre , I aunque de villana casta,

I limpio de sangre y jamas I de hebrea o mora manchada" ( I am a
man, although of lowly status, yet clean of blood and with no mix­
ture of Jewish or Moorish blood).
This cross-class mind-set can be found as well in the stance of
descendants of the old settlers of British colonization in North
America. This then is the first instance of class leveling based on
imagined racial sameness-the origin of white supremacy, the es­
sential ideology of colonial projects in America and Africa. As
Elie Wiesel famously observed, the road to Auschwitz was paved
in the earliest days of Christendom . Historian David Stannard, in

American Holocaust, adds the caveat that the same road led straight
through the heart of America . 1 0 The ideology of white supremacy
was paramount in neutralizing the class antagonisms of the landless
against the landed and distributing confiscated lands and properties
of Moors and Jews in Iberia, of the Irish in Ulster, and of Native
American and African peoples.

37

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Great Britain, emerging as an overseas colonial power a century
after Spain did, absorbed aspects of the Spanish racial caste system
into its colonialist rationalizations, particularly regarding African
slavery, but it did so within the context of Protestantism, which
imagined a chosen people founding and raising a New Jerusalem.
The English did not j ust adapt the habits and experiences of Spanish
colonization; they had their own prior experience, which actually
constituted overseas imperialism. During the early seventeenth cen­
tury the English conquered Ireland and declared a half-million acres
of land in the north open to settlement. The settlers who served early
settler colonialism came mostly from western Scotland. England
had previously conquered Wales and Scotland, but it had never be­
fore attempted to remove so large an Indigenous population and
plant settlers in their place as in Ireland. The ancient Irish social
system was systematically attacked, traditional songs and music
forbidden, whole clans exterminated, and the remainder brutal­
ized. A "wild Irish" reservation was even attempted. The "planta­
tion" of Ulster was as much a culmination of, as it was a departure
from, centuries of intermittent warfare in Ireland. In the sixteenth
century, the official in charge of the Irish province of Munster, Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, ordered that
the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which
were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies
and brought to the place where he [Gilbert] incamped at night,
and should there bee laied on the ground by eche side of the
waie ledying into his owne tente so that none could come into
his tente for any cause but commonly he muste passe through
a lane of heddes which he used ad terrorem . . . . [It brought]
greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their
dedde fathers, brothers, children, kindsfolke, and friends . 1 1
The English government paid bounties for the Irish heads. Later
only the scalp or ears were required. A century later in North Amer­
ica, Indian heads and scalps were brought in for bounty in the same
manner. Although the Irish were as " white" as the English, trans-

Culture of Conquest

forming them into alien others to be exterminated previewed what
came to be perceived as racialist when applied to Indigenous peoples
of North America and to Africans.
At that conj uncture, both in the Christian Crusades against
Muslims and England's invasion of Ireland, the transition from re­
ligious wars to the genocidal mode of colonialism is apparent. The
Irish under British colonial rule, well into the twentieth century,
continued to be regarded as biologically inferior. During the mid­
nineteenth century, influenced by social Darwinism, some English
scientists peddled the theory that the Irish (and all people of color)
had descended from apes, while the English were descendants of
"man," who had been created by God "in his own image ." Thus the
English were "angels" and the Irish (and other colonized peoples)
were a lower species, which today US " Christian Identity " white
supremacists call "mud people," inferior products of the process of
evolution . 1 2 The same Sir Humphrey Gilbert who had been in charge
of the colonization of Ulster planted the first English colonial settle ­
ment in North America in Newfoundland in the summer of 1 5 8 3 .
In the lead-up to the formation of the United States, Protestantism
uniquely refined white supremacy as part of a politico-religious
ideology.

T E R M I N A L N A R R AT I V E S

According to the current consensus among historians, the wholesale
transfer of land from Indigenous to Euro-American hands that oc­
curred in the Americas after 1492 is due less to European invasion,
warfare, and material acquisitiveness than to the bacteria that the
invaders unwittingly brought with them. Historian Colin Calloway
is among the proponents of this theory, and he writes that "epidemic
diseases would have caused massive depopulation in the Americas
whether brought by European invaders or brought home by Na­
tive American traders."13 Such an absolutist assertion renders any
other fate for the Indigenous peoples improbable. Professor Callo­
way is a careful and widely respected historian of Indigenous North

39

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

America, but his conclusion articulates a default assumption. The
thinking behind the assumption is both ahistorical and illogical in
that Europe itself lost a third to one-half of its population to infec­
tious disease during medieval pandemics. The principal reason the
consensus view is wrong and ahistorical is that it erases the effects of
settler colonialism with its antecedents in the Spanish " Reconquest"
and the English conquest of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. By the
time Spain, Portugal, and Britain arrived to colonize the Americas,
their methods of eradicating peoples or forcing them into depen­
dency and servitude were ingrai �ed, streamlined, and effective. If
disease could have done the job, it is not clear why the European
colonizers in America found it necessary to carry out unrelenting
wars against Indigenous communities in order to gain every inch of
land they took from them-nearly three hundred years of colonial
warfare, followed by continued wars waged by the independent re­
publics of the hemisphere.
Whatever disagreement may exist about the size of precolonial
Indigenous populations, no one doubts that a rapid demographic de­
cline occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its timing
from region to region depending on when conquest and colonization
began. Nearly all the population areas of the Americas were reduced
by 90 percent following the onset of colonizing projects, decreasing
the targeted Indigenous populations of the Americas from one hun­
dred million to ten million. Commonly referred to as the most ex­
treme demographic disaster-framed as natural-in human history,
it was rarely called genocide until the rise of Indigenous movements
in the mid-twentieth century forged questions .
US scholar Benjamin Keen acknowledges that historians "accept
uncritically a fatalistic 'epidemic plus lack of acquired immunity' ex­
planation for the shrinkage of Indian populations, without sufficient
attention to the socioeconomic factors . . . which predisposed the
natives to succumb to even slight infections . " 14 Other scholars agree .
Geographer William M. Denevan, while not ignoring the existence
of widespread epidemic diseases, has emphasized the role of warfare,
which reinforced the lethal impact of disease. There were military
engagements directly between European and Indigenous nations,
but many more saw European powers pitting one Indigenous na-

Culture of Conquest

tion against another or factions within nations, with European allies
aiding one or both sides, as was the case in the colonization of the
peoples of Ireland, Africa , and Asia . Other killers cited by Denevan
are overwork in mines, frequent outright butchery, malnutrition and
starvation resulting from the breakdown of Indigenous trade net­
works, subsistence food production and loss of land, loss of will to
live or reproduce (and thus suicide, abortion, and infanticide) , and
deportation and enslavement. 1 5 Anthropologist Henry Dobyns has
pointed to the interruption of Indigenous peoples' trade networks .
When colonizing powers seized Indigenous trade routes, the ensu­
ing acute shortages, including food products, weakened populations
and forced them into dependency on the colonizers, with European
manufactured goods replacing Indigenous ones. D obyns has esti­
mated that all Indigenous groups suffered serious food shortages
one year in four. In these circumstances, the introduction and pro­
motion of alcohol proved addictive and deadly, adding to the break­
down of social order and responsibility. 16 These realities render the
myth of "lack of immunity," including to alcohol, pernicious.
Historian Woodrow Wilson Borah focused on the broader arena
of European colonization, which also brought depopulation in the
Pacific Islands, Australia, western Central America, and West Af­
rica . 17 Sherburne Cook-a ssociated with Borah in the revisionist
Berkeley School, as it was called-studied the attempted destruc­
tion of the California Indians. Cook estimated 2 , 245 deaths among
peoples in Northern California-the Wintu, Maidu, Miwak, Omo,
Wappo, and Yokuts Nations-in late- eighteenth-century armed
conflicts with the Spanish, while some 5 ,ooo died from disease and
another 4 ,000 were relocated to missions. Among the same people
in the second half of the nineteenth century, US armed forces killed

4 ,000, and disease killed another 6,ooo. Between 1 8 5 2 and 1 8 67,
US citizens kidnapped 4 ,000 Indian children from these groups in
California. Disruption of Indigenous social structures under these
conditions and dire economic necessity forced many of the women
into prostitution in goldfield camps, further wrecking what vestiges
of family life remained in these matriarchal societies . 1 8
Proponents o f the default position emphasize attrition b y disease
despite other causes equally deadly, if not more so. In doing so they

41

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

refuse to accept that the colonization of America was genocidal by
plan, not simply the tragic fate of populations lacking immunity to
disease. In the case of the Jewish Holocaust, no one denies that more
Jews died of starvation, overwork, and disease under Nazi incarcer­
ation than died in gas ovens, yet the acts of creating and maintaining
the conditions that led to those deaths clearly constitute genocide.
A nthropologist Michael V. Wilcox asks, " What if archaeologists
were asked to explain the continued presence of descendant com­
munities five hundred years after Columbus instead of their disap ­
pearance or marginality ? " Cox calls for the active dismantling of
what he terms "terminal narratives"-"accounts of Indian histories
which explain the absence, cultural death, or disappearance of In­
digenous people s . " 1 9

GOLD FEVER

Searching f� r gold, Columbus reached many o f the islands of the Ca­
ribbean and mapped them. Soon, a dozen other soldier-merchants
mapped the Atlantic coast from the northern Maritimes to the tip of
South America. From the Iberian Peninsula came merchants, mer­
cenaries, criminals, and peasants. They seized the land and prop­
erty of Indigenous populations and declared the territories to be
extensions of the Spanish and Portuguese states. These acts were
confirmed by the monarchies and endorsed by the papal authority
of the Roman Catholic Church. The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1 494
divided the " New World " between Spain and Portugal with a line
drawn from Greenland south through what is now Brazil. Called the
D octrine of Discovery, it claimed that possession of the entire world
west of that line would be open to Spanish conquest and all east of it
to Portuguese conquest.
The story is well known. In 1492, Columbus sailed with three
ships on his first voyage at the behest of Ferdinand, King of Ara­
gon, and Isabella, Queen of Castille. The marriage of Ferdinand and
Isabella in 1 4 69 had led to the merger of their kingdoms into what
would become the core of the Spanish state . Columbus planted a
colony of forty of his men on "Espanola" (now the Dominican Re-

Culture of Conquest

public and Haiti) and returned to Spain with Indigenous slaves and
gold . In 1 493 , Columbus returned to the Caribbean with seventeen
ships, more than a thousand men, and supplies. He found that the
men he had left on the first trip had subsequently been killed by
the Indigenous inhabitants . After planting another settlement, Co­
lumbus returned to Spain with four hundred Arawak slaves. With
seven ships, Columbus returned to the Caribbean in 1 4 9 8 , reaching
what is now Venezuela, and he made a fourth and final voyage in

1 5 0 2 , this time touching the Caribbean coast of Central America.
In 1 5 1 3 , Vasco Nuiiez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama
and charted the Pacific coast of the Americas. Juan Ponce de Leon
claimed the Florida peninsula for Spain in l s r 3 . In l 5 21, following
a three-year bloodbath and overthrow of the Aztec state, Hernando
Cortes proclaimed Mexico as New Spain. Parallel with the cr_u shing
of Mexican resistance were Ferdinand Magellan's explorations and
charting of the Atlantic coast of the South American continent, fol­
lowed by Spanish wars against the Inca Nation of the Andes. In both
Mexico and Peru, the conquistadors confiscated elaborate artwork
and statuary made of gold and silver to be melted down for use as
money. During the same period, the Portuguese laid waste to what is
today Brazil and began a thriving slave trade that would funnel mil­
lions of enslaved Africans to South America, beginning the lucrative
Atlantic slave trade.
The consequences of this amassing of fortunes were first felt in the
catastrophe experienced by small farmers in Europe and England.
The peasants became impoverished, dependent workers crowded
into city slums . For the first time in human history, the maj ority of
Europeans depended for their livelihood on a small wealthy minor­
ity, a phenomenon that capitalist-based colonialism would spread
worldwide. The symbol of this new development, indeed its cur­
rency, was gold . Gold fever drove colonizing ventures, organized
at first in pursuit of the metal in its raw form. Later the pursuit
of gold became more sophisticated, with planters and merchants
establishing whatever conditions were necessary to hoard as much
gold as possible . Thus was born an ideology: the belief in the inher­
ent value of gold despite its relative uselessness in reality. Investors,
monarchies , and parliamentarians devised methods to control the

43

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

processes of wealth accumulation and the power that came with
it, but the ideology behind gold fever mobilized settlers to cross the
Atlantic to an unknown fate. Subj ugating entire societies and civili­
zations, enslaving whole countries, and slaughtering people village
by village did not seem too high a price to pay, nor did it appear
inhumane. The systems of colonization were modern and rational,
but its ideological basis was madness.

THREE

C U LT O F THE C O VE N A N T

For all the land which thou seest,
to thee will I give it and to thy seed forever.
-

Genes i s 1 3 : 1 5

And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and
thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting
covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
-Genesis 1 7 : 7

M Y T H OF T H E P R I S T I N E W I L D E R N E S S

With the onset o f colonialism i n North America, control of the land
was wrenched away from the Indigenous peoples, and the forests grew
dense, so that later European settlers were unaware of the former cul­
tivation and sculpting and manicuring of the landscape. Abandoned
fields of corn turned to weeds and bushes. Settlers chopped down
trees in New England until the landscape was nearly bare.1 One ge­
ographer notes, "Paradoxical as it may seem, there was undoubtedly
much more 'forest primeval' in 1 8 5 0 than in 1650."2 Anglo-Ameri­
cans who did observe Native habitat management in action misun­
derstood what they saw. Captain John Palliser, traveling through
the prairies in the 1 8 50s, complained about the Indians' "disastrous
habit of setting the prairie on fire for the most trivial and worse than
useless reasons." In 1937, Harvard naturalist Hugh Raup claimed
that the "open, park-like woods" written about in earlier times had
been, "from time immemorial, characteristic of vast areas in North
America" and could not have been the result of human management. 3

45

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

In the founding myth of the United States, the colonists acquired
a vast expanse of land from a scattering of benighted peoples who
were hardly using it-an unforgivable offense to the Puritan work
ethic. The historical record is clear, however, that European colo­
nists shoved aside a large network of small and large nations whose
governments, commerce, arts and sciences, agriculture, technolo­
gies, theologies, philosophies, and institutions were intricately de­
veloped, nations that maintained sophisticated relations with one
another and with the environments that supported them. By the
early seventeenth century, when British colonists from Europe be­
gan to settle in North America, a large Indigenous population had
long before created "a humanized landscape almost everywhere,"
as William Denevan puts it. 4 Native peoples had created town sites,
farms, monumental earthworks, and networks of roads, and they
had devised a wide variety of governments, some as complex as
any in the world. They had developed sophisticated philosophies of
government, traditions of diplomacy, and policies of international
relations. They conducted trade along roads that crisscrossed the
landmasses and waterways of the American continents. Before the
arrival of Europeans, North America was indeed a "continent of
villages," but also a continent of nations and federations of nations. 5
Many have noted that had North America been a wilderness,
undeveloped, without roads, and uncultivated, it might still be so,
for the European colonists could not have survived. They appro­
priated what had already been created by Indigenous civilizations.
They stole already cultivated farmland and the corn, vegetables, to­
bacco, and other crops domesticated over centuries, took control of
the deer parks that had been cleared and maintained by Indigenous
communities, used existing roads and water routes in order to move
armies to conquer, and relied on captured Indigenous people to iden­
tify the locations of water, oyster beds, and medicinal herbs. His­
torian Francis Jennings was emphatic in addressing what he called
the myth that "America was virgin land, or wilderness, inhabited by
nonpeople called savages":
European explorers and invaders discovered an inhabited
land. Had it been pristine wilderness then, it would possibly

Cult of the Covenant

be so still today, for neither the technology nor the social orga­
nization of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
had the capacity to maintain, of its own resources, outpost
colonies thousands of miles from home. Incapable of conquer­
ing true wilderness, the Europeans were highly competent in
the skill of conquering other people,' and that is what they did.
They did not settle a virgin land. They invaded and displaced
a resident population.
This is so simple a fact that it seems self-evident. 6

T H E C A LV I N I S T O R I G I N S T O R Y

All modern nation-states claim a kind of rationalized origin story
upon which they fashion patriotism or loyalty to the state. When
citizens of modern states and their anthropologists and historians
look at what they consider "primitive" societies, they identify their
"origin myths," quaint and endearing stories, but fantastic ones,
not grounded in "reality." Yet many US scholars seem unable (or
unwilling) to subject their own nation-state's founding story to the
same objective examination. The United States is not unique among
nations in forging an origin myth, but most of its citizens believe it
to be exceptional among nation-states, and this exceptionalist ide­
ology has been used to justify appropriation of the continent and
then domination of the rest of the world. It is one of the few states
founded on the covenant of the Hebrew Torah, or the Christian bor­
rowing of it in the Old Testament of the Bible. Other covenant states
are Israel and the now-defunct apartheid state of South Africa, both
of which were founded in 194 8 .7 Although the origin stories of these
three covenant states were based on Judea- Christian scripture, they
were not founded as theocracies. According to the myths, the faith­
ful citizens come together of their own free will and pledge to each
other and to their god to form and support a godly society, and their
god in turn vouchsafes them prosperity in a promised land.
The influence of the scriptures was pervasive among many of the
Western social and political thinkers whose ideas the founders of
the first British colonies in North America drew upon. Historian

47

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

Donald Harman Akenson points to the way that "certain societies,
in certain eras of their development," have } ooked to the scriptures
for guidance, and likens it to the way "the human genetic code oper­
ates physiologically. That is, this great code has, in some degree, di­
rectly determined what people would believe and when they would
think and what they would do."8 Dan Jacobson, a citizen of Boer­
ruled South Africa, whose parents were immigrants, observes that,
like the Israelites, and their fellow Calvinists in New England,
[the Boers] believed that they had been called by their God to
wander through the wilderness, to meet and defeat the hea­
then, and to occupy a promised land on his behalf . . . . A sense
of their having been summoned by divine decree to perform
an ineluctable historical duty has never left the Boers, and has
contributed to both their strength and their weakness.9
Founders of the first North American colonies and later of the
United States had a similar sense of a providential opportunity to
make history. Indeed, as Akenson reminds us, "it is from [the] scrip­
tures that western society learned how to think historically." The
key moment in history according to covenant ideology "involves the
winning of 'the Land' from alien, and indeed evil, forces."1 0
The principal conduit of the Hebrew scriptures and covenant ide­
ology to European Christians was John Calvin, the French religious
reformer whose teachings coincided with the advent of the European
invasion and colonization of the Americas. The Puritans drew upon
Calvinist ideology in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as did
the Dutch Calvinist settlers of the Cape of Good Hope in founding
their South African colony during the same period. Calvinism was
a Protestant Christian movement with a strong separatist political
component. In accord with the doctrine of predestination, Calvin
taught that human free will did not exist. Certain individuals are
"called" by God and are among the "elect." Salvation therefore has
nothing to do with one's actions; one is born as part of the elect or
not, according to God's will. Although individuals could not know
for certain if they were among the elect, outward good fortune, es­
pecially material wealth, was taken to be a manifestation of elec­
tion; conversely, bad fortune and poverty, not to speak of dark skin,

Cult of the Covenant

49

were taken as evidence of damnation. "The attractiveness of such
a doctrine to a group of invading colonists . . . is obvious," Aken­
son observes, "for one could easily define the natives as immuta­
bly profane, and damned, and oneself as predestined to virtue." 1 1
Since another sign o f justification was a person's ability to abide
by the laws of a well-ordered society, Calvin preached the obliga­
tion of citizens to obey lawful authority. In fact, they should do so
even when that authority was lodged in poor leaders (one of the
seeds for "my country right or wrong"). Calvin led his Huguenot
followers across the border into Geneva, took political control of
the city-state, and established it as a republic in l 54 I . The Calvin­
ist state enacted detailed statutes governing every aspect of life and
appointed functionaries to enforce them. The laws reflected Calvin's
interpretation of the Old Testament; dissenters were forced to leave
the republic, and some were even tortured and executed.
Although the US Constitution represents for many US citizens a
covenant with God, the US origin story goes back to the Mayflower
Compact, the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony,
named for the ship that carried the hundred or so passengers to what
is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in November 1 620. Forty-one of
the "Pilgrims," all men, wrote and signed the compact. Invoking
God's name and declaring themselves loyal subjects of the king, the
signatories announced that they had journeyed to northern "Vir­
ginia," as the eastern seaboard of North America was called by the
English, "to plant the First Colony " and did therefore "Covenant
and Combine ourselves together in a Civil Body Politic" to be gov­
erned by "just and equal Laws" enacted "for the general good of the
Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience."
The original settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in 1 630,
adopted an official seal designed in England before their journey.
The central image depicts a near-naked native holding a harmless,
flimsy-looking bow and arrow and inscribed with the plea, " Come
over and help us." 12 Nearly three hundred years later, the official
seal of the US military veterans of the "Spanish-American War" (the
invasio!1 and occupation of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines)
showed a naked woman kneeling before an armed US soldier and a
sailor, with a US battleship in the background. One may trace this

50

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

recurrent altruistic theme into the early twenty-first century, when
the United States still invades countries under the guise of rescue.
In other modern constitutional states, constitutions come and
go, and they are never considered sacred in the manner patriotic
US citizens venerate theirs. Great Britain has no written constitu­
tion. The Magna Carta arguably comes close, but it does not reflect
a covenant. US citizens did not inherit their cult-like adherence to
their constitution from the English. From the Pilgrims to the found­
ers of the United States and continuing to the present, the cultural
persistence of the covenant idea, and thus the bedrock of US patrio­
tism, represents a deviation from the main course in the develop­
ment of national identities . Arguably, both the 1948 birth of the
state of Israel and advent of Nationalist Party rule of South Africa
were emulations of the US founding; certainly many US Americans
closely identify with the state of Israel, as they did with Afrikaner­
ruled South Africa. Patriotic US politicians and citizens take pride
in "exceptionalism." Historians and legal theorists characterize US
statecraft and empire as those of a "nation of laws," rather than one
dominated by a particular class or group of interests, suggesting a
kind of holiness.
The US Constitution, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration
of Independence, the writings of the " Founding Fathers," Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address, the Pledge of Allegiance, and even Martin
Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech are ·all bundled into
the covenant as sacred documents that express the US state reli­
gion. An aspect of this most visible in the early twenty-first century
is the burgeoning "gun lobby," based on the sanctity of the Sec­
ond Amendment to the C onstitution. In the forefront of these
Second Amendment adherents are the descendants of the old settlers
who say that they represent "the people " and have the right to bear
arms in order to overthrow any government that does not in their
view adhere to the God-given covenant.
Parallel to the idea of the US Constitution as covenant, politi­
cians, journali�ts, teachers, and even professional historians chant
like a mantra that the United States is a "nation of immigrants.''
From its beginning, the United States has welcomed-indeed, often
solicited, even bribed-immigrants to repopulate conquered terri-

Cult of the Covenant

tories "cleansed" of their Indigenous inhabitants . From the mid­
nineteenth century, immigrants were recruited to work mines, raze
forests, construct canals and railroads, and labor in sweatshops,
p

factories, and commercial farm fields. In the late twentieth century,
technical and medical workers were recruited. The requirements for
their formal citizenship were simple: adhere to the sacred covenant
through taking the Citizenship Oath, pledging loyalty to the flag,
and regarding those outside the covenant as enemies or potential
enemies of the exceptional country that has adopted them, often
after they escaped hunger, war, or repression, which in turn were
often caused by US militarism or economic sanctions. Yet no mat­
ter how much immigrants might strive to prove themselves to be as
hardworking and patriotic as descendants of the original settlers,
and despite the rhetoric of E pluribus unum, they are suspect. The
old stock against which they are judged inferior includes not only
those who fought in the fifteen-year war for independence from Brit­
ain but also, and perhaps more important, those who fought and
shed (Indian) blood, before and after independence, in order to ac­
quire the land. These are the descendants of English Pilgrims, Scots,
Scots-Irish, and Huguenot French-Calvinists all-who took the
land bequeathed to them in the sacred covenant that predated the
creation of the independent United States. These were the settlers
who fought their way over the Appalachians into the fertile Ohio
Valley region, and it is they who claimed blood sacrifice for their
country. Immigrants, to be accepted, must prove their fidelity to the
covenant and what it stands for.

S E T T L E R C O LO N I A L I S M A N D T H E U L S T E R - S C O T S

The core group o f frontier settlers were the Ulster-Scots-the Scots­
Irish, or "Scotch-Irish," as they called themselves.13 Usually the de­
scendants of these Scots-Irish say their ancestors came to the British
colonies from Ireland, but their journey was more circuitous than
that. The Scots-Irish were Protestants from Scotland who were re­
cruited by the British as settlers in the six counties of the province of
Ulster in northern Ireland. The British had seized these half-million

51

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

acres from Ireland in the early seventeenth century, driven the in­
digenous Irish farmers from it, and opened it to settlement under
English protection. This coincided with the English plantation of
two colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America and the begin­
ning of settler colonialism there. These early settlers came mostly
from the Scottish lowlands. Scotland itself, along with Wales, had
preceded Ireland as colonial notches in the belt of English expan­
sion. Britain's colonization of Indigenous lands in North America
was foreshadowed by its colonization of northern Ireland. By 1 6 3 0
the new settlers i n Ulster-21,000 Britons, including some Welsh,
and 1 5 0 ,000 Lowland Scots-were more numerous than British set­
tlers in all of North America at the time. In 1 64 1 , the indigenous
Irish rebelled and killed ten thousand of the settlers, yet Protestant
Scots settlers continued to pour in. In some formerly Irish areas,
they formed a majority of the population. They brought with them
the covenant ideology of Calvinism that had been the work of the
Scotsman John Knox. Later John Locke, also a Scot, would secular­
ize the covenant idea into a "contract," the social contract, whereby
individuals sacrifice their liberty only through consent. An insid­
iously effective example, the US economic system, was based on
Locke's theories. 14
So it was that the Ulster-Scots were already seasoned settler co­
lonialists before they began to fill the ranks of settlers streaming
toward the North American British colonies in the early eighteenth
century, many of them as indentured servants. Before ever meeting
Indigenous Americans, the Ulster settlers had perfected scalping for
bounty, using the indigenous Irish as their victims. As this chapter
and the following one show, the Scots-Irish were the foot soldiers of
British empire building, and they and their descendants formed the
shock troops of the "westward movement" in North America, the
expansion of the US continental empire and the colonization of its
inhabitants. As Calvinists (mostly Presbyterian), they added to and
transformed the Calvinism of the earlier Puritan settlers into the
unique ideology of the US settler class. 1 5
In one o f history's great migrations, nearly a quarter-million
Scots-Irish left Ulster for British North America between 1 7 1 7 and
1 7 75 . Although a number left for religious reasons, the maj ority

Cult of the Covenant

were losers in the struggle over Britain's Irish policies, which brought
economic ruin to Ireland's wool and linen industries. Hard times
were magnified by prolonged drought, and so the settlers pulled up
stakes and moved across the Atlantic. This is a story that would re­
peat itself time and time again in settler treks across North America,
the majority of migrants ending up landless losers in the Monopoly
game of European settler colonialism.
The majority of Ulster-Scot settlers were cash-poor and had to
indenture themselves to pay for their passage to North America.
Once settled, they came to predominate as soldier-settlers. Most
initially landed in Pennsylvania, but large numbers soon migrated to
the southern colonies and to the backcountry, the British colonies'
western borders, where they squatted on unceded Indigenous lands.
Among frontier settlers, Scots-Irish predominated among settlers
of English and German descent. Although the majority remained
landless and poor, some became merchants and owners of planta­
tions worked by slaves, as well as politically powerful. Seventeen
presidents of the United States have been of Ulster-Scots lineage,
from Andrew Jackson, founder of the Democratic Party, to Ronald
Reagan, the Bushes, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama on his moth­
er's side. Theodore Roosevelt characterized his Scots-Irish ancestors
as "a stern, virile, bold and hardy people who formed the kernel
of that American stock who were the pioneers of our people in the
march westwards."1 6 Perhaps as influential as their being presidents,
educators, and businessmen, the Scots-Irish engendered a strong set
of individualist values that included the sanctity of glory in war­
fare. They made up the officer corps and were soldiers of the regu­
lar army, as well as the frontier-ranging militias that cleared areas
for settlement by exterminating Indigenous farmers and destroying
their towns.
The Seven Years' War between the British and the French ( 1 75463) was fought both in Europe and in North America, where the
British colonists called it the French and Indian War because it was
mainly a British war against the Indigenous peoples, some of whom
formed alliances with the French. The British colonial militias con­
sisted largely of frontier Scots-Irish settlers who wanted access to
Indigenous farmland in the Ohio Valley region. By the time of OS

53

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

independence, Ulster-Scots made up 1 5 percent of the population
of the thirteen colonies, and most were clustered in majority num­
bers in the backcountry. During the war for settler independence
from Britain, most settlers who had emigrated directly from Scot­
land remained loyal to the British Crown and fought on that side. In
contrast, the Scots-Irish were in the forefront of the struggle for inde­
pendence and formed the backbone of Washington's fighting forces.
Most of the names of soldiers at Valley Forge were Scots-Irish. They
saw themselves, and their descendants see themselves, as the true
and authentic patriots, the ones who spilled rivers of blood to secure
independence and to acquire Indigenous lands-gaining blood rights
to the latter as they left bloody footprints across the continent.17
During the last two decades of the eighteenth century, first- and
second-generation Scots-Irish continued to pour westward into the
Ohio Valley region, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They
were the largest ethnic group in the westward migration, and they
maintained many of their Scots-Irish ways. They tended to move
three or four times, acquiring and losing land before settling at least
somewhat permanently. Scots-Irish settlers were overwhelmingly
farmers rather than explorers or fur traders. They cleared forests,
built log cabins, and killed Indians, forming a human wall of colo­
nization for the new United States and, in wartime, employing their
fighting skills effectively. Historian Carl Degler writes that "these
hardy, God-fearing Calvinists made themselves into a veritable hu­
man shield of colonial civilization." 18 The next chapter explores the
kind of counterinsurgent warfare they perfected, which formed the
basis of US militarism into the twenty-first century.
The Calvinist religion of the Scots-Irish, Presbyterianism, was
in numbers of faithful soon second only to those of New England's
Congregationalist Church. But on the frontier, Scots-Irish devotion
to the formal Presbyterian Church waned. New evangelical off­
shoots refashioned Calvinist doctrines to decentralize and do away
with the Presbyterian hierarchy. Although they continued to regard
themselves as chosen people of the covenant, commanded by God
to go into the wilderness to build the new Israel, the Scots-Irish also
saw themselves, as their descendants see themselves, as the true and
authentic patriots, entitled to the land through their blood sacrifice.

Cult of the Covenant

S A C R E D L A N D B E C O M E S R E A L E S TAT E

The land won through North American bloodshed was not necessar­
ily conceived in terms of particular parcels for a farm that would be
passed down through generations. Most of the settlers who fought
for it kept moving on nearly every generation. In the South many lost
their holdings to land companies that then sold it to planters seeking
to increase the size of their slave-worked plantations. Without the
unpaid forced labor of enslaved Africans, a farmer growing cash
crops could not compete on the market. Once in the hands of set­
tlers, the land itself was no longer sacred, as it had been for the Indig­
enous. Rather, it was private property, a commodity to be acquired
and sold-every man a possible king, or at least wealthy. Later,
when Anglo-Americans had occupied the continent and urbanized
much of it, this quest for land and the sanctity of private property
were reduced to a lot with a house on it, and "the land" came to
mean the country, the flag, the military, as in "the land of the free"
of the national anthem, or Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your
Land." Those who died fighting in foreign wars were said to have
sacrificed their lives to protect "this land" that the old settlers had
spilled blood to acquire. The blood spilled was largely Indigenous.
These then were the settlers upon which the national myths are
based, the ultimately dispensable cannon fodder for the taking of
the land and the continent, the foot soldiers of empire, the "yeoman
farmers" romanticized by Thomas Jefferson. They were not of the
ruling class, although a few slipped through and later were drawn in
by the ruling class as elected officials and military officers, thereby
maintaining the facade of a classless society and a democratic em­
pire. The founders were English patricians, slave owners, large land
barons, or otherwise successful businessmen dependent on the slave
trade and exports produced by enslaved Africans and on property
sales. When descendants of the settler class, overwhelmingly Pres­
byterian or otherwise Calvinist Protestant, were accepted into the
ruling class, they usually became Episcopalians, members of an elite
church linked to the state Church of England. As we look at the
bloody deeds of the settlers in acquiring and maintaining land, the
social class context is an essential element.

55

FOU R

B L O O DY F O O TP R I N TS

For the "first 2 0 0 years of our military heritage, then, Americans
depended on arts of war that contemporary professional soldiers
supposedly abhorred: razing and destroying enemy villages and
"fields; killing enemy women and children; raiding settlements for
captives; intimidating and brutalizing enemy noncombatants;
and assassinating enemy leaders. . . . In the frontier wars between
1 6 0 7 and 1 8 1 4 , Americans forged two elements- unlimited
war and irregular war- into their "first way of war.
-John Grenier, The First Way of War

Within days of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, on May 2 ,
201 1 , i t was revealed that the Navy SEAL team executing the mis­
sion had used the code name Geronimo for its target. 1 A May 4
report in the New York Daily News commented, "Along with the
unseen pictures of Osama Bin Laden's corpse and questions about
what Pakistan knew, intelligence officials' reasons for dubbing the
Al Qaeda boss 'Geronimo' remain one of the biggest mysteries of
the Black Ops mission." The choice of that code name was not a
mystery to the military, which also uses the term "Indian Coun­
try" to designate enemy territory and identifies its killing machines
and operations with such names as UH-1 B/C Iroquois, OH- 5 8 0
Kiowa, OV-1 Mohawk, OH- 6 Cayuse, AH-64 Apache, S - 5 8/H- 3 4
Choctaw, UH-60 Black Hawk, Thunderbird, and Rolling Thunder.
The last of these is the military name given to the relentless carpet­
bombing of Vietnam peasants in the mid- 19 6os. There are many
other current and recent examples of the persistence of the colonial­
ist and imperialist sensibilities at the core of a military grounded

56

Bloody Footprints

in wars against the Indigenous nations and communities of North
America.
On February 19, 199 1 , Brigadier General Richard Neal, brief­
ing reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, stated that the US military
wanted to be certain of speedy victory once it committed land forces
to "Indian Country." The following day, in a little-publicized state­
ment of protest, the National Congress of American Indians pointed
out that fifteen thousand Native Americans were serving as combat
troops in the Persian Gulf. Neither Neal nor any other military au­
thority apologized for the statement. The term "Indian Country" in
cases such as this is not merely an insensitive racial slur, tastelessly
but offhandedly employed to refer to the enemy. It is, rather, a tech­
nical military term, like "collateral damage" or "ordnance," that
appears in military training manuals and is regularly used to mean
" behind enemy lines." It is often shortened to "In Country." This us­
age recalls the origins and development of the US military, as well as
the nature of US political and social history as a colonialist project.
Furthermore, "Indian Country " is a legal term that identifies Native
jurisdiction under US colonial laws but is also an important tool
for Native nations to use in maintaining and expanding their land
bases in the process of decolonization. "Indian Country," the legal
term, includes not only federally recognized reservation territories,
but also informal reservations, dependent Native communities and
allotments, and specially designated lands. 2

R O OT S O F G E N O C I D E

I n The First Way of War: American War Making o n the Frontier,
1 6 0 7-1814 , military historian John Grenier offers an indispensable

analysis of the colonialist warfare against the Indigenous peoples of
the North American territories claimed by Great Britain. The way of
war largely devised and enacted by settlers formed the basis for the
founding ideology and colonialist military strategy of the indepen­
dent United States, and this approach to war is still in force in the
twenty-first century. 3 Grenier writes that he began his study with
the goal of tracing the historical roots of the use of unlimited war

57

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

by the United States, war whose purpose is to destroy the will of
the enemy people or their capacity to resist, employing any means
necessary but mainly by attacking civilians and their support sys­
tems, such as food supply. Today called " special operations" or
"low-intensity conflict," that kind of warfare was first used against
Indigenous communities by colonial militias in Virginia and Mas­
sachusetts. These irregular forces, made up of settlers, sought to
disrupt every aspect of resistance as well as to obtain intelligence
through scouting and taking prisoners. They did so by destroying
Indigenous villages and fields and intimidating and slaughtering en­
emy noncombatant populations. 4
Grenier analyzes the development of the US way of war from
1 607-1 8 1 4 , during which the US military was forged, leading to
its reproduction and development into the present. US historian
Bernard Bailyn calls the period " barbarous" and a "conflict of
civilizations," but Bailyn represents the Indigenous civilization as
"marauders" that the European settlers needed to get rid of. 5 From
this formative period, Grenier argues, emerged problematic charac­
teristics of the US way of war and thereby the characteristics of its
civilization, which few historians have come to terms with.
In the beginning, Anglo settlers organized irregular units to bru­
tally attack and destroy unarmed Indigenous women, children, and
old people using unlimited violence in unrelenting attacks. During
nearly two centuries of British colonization, generations of settlers,
mostly farmers, gained experience as "Indian fighters" outside any
organized military institution. Anglo-French conflict may appear to
have been the dominant factor of European colonization in North
America during the eighteenth century, but while large regular
armies fought over geopolitical goals in Europe, Anglo settlers in
North America waged deadly irregular warfare against the Indig­
enous communities . Much of the fighting during the fifteen-year
settlers' war for independence, especially in the Ohio Valley region
and western New York, was directed against Indigenous resisters
who realized it was not in their interest to have a close enemy of
settlers with an independent government, as opposed to a remote
one in Great Britain. Nor did the fledgling US military in the 1 790s
carry out operations typical of the state-centered wars occurring in

Bloody Footprints

Europe at the time. Even following the founding of the professional
US Army in the r 8 ros, irregular warfare was the method of the US
conquest of the Ohio Valley and Mississippi Valley regions. Since
that time, Grenier notes, irregular methods have been used in tan­
dem with operations of regular armed forces.
The chief characteristic of irregular warfare is that of the extreme
violence against civilians, in this case the tendency to seek the utter
annihilation of the Indigenous population. "In cases where a rough
balance of power existed," Grenier observes, "and the Indians even
appeared dominant-as was the situation in virtually every frontier
war until the first decade of the 19th century- [settler] Americans
were quick to turn to extravagant violence."6
Many historians who acknowledge the exceptional one-sided co­
lonial violence attribute it to racism. Grenier argues that rather than
racism leading to violence, the reverse occurred: the out-of-control
momentum of extreme violence of unlimited warfare fueled race
hatred. " Successive generations of Americans, both soldiers and ci­
vilians, made the killing of Indian men, women, and children a de­
fining element of their first military tradition and thereby part of a
shared American identity. Indeed, only after seventeenth- and early­
eighteenth-century Americans made the first way of war a key to be­
ing a white American could later generations of 'Indian haters,' men
like Andrew Jackson, turn the Indian wars into race wars." By then,
the Indigenous peoples' villages, farmlands, towns, and entire na­
tions formed the only barrier to the settlers' total freedom to acquire
land and wealth. Settler colonialists again chose their own means of
conquest. Such fighters are often viewed as courageous heroes, but
killing the unarmed women, children, and old people and burning
homes and fields involved neither courage nor sacrifice.
So it was from the planting of the first British colonies in North
America. Among the initial leaders of those ventures were military
men-mercenaries-who brought with them their previous war ex­
periences in Britain's imperialist, anti-Muslim Crusades. Those who
put together and led the first colonial armies, such as John Smith in
Virginia, Myles Standish at Plymouth, John Mason in Connecticut,
and John Underhill in Massachusetts, had fought in the bitter, bru­
tal, and bloody religious wars ongoing in Europe at the time of the

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first settlements . They had long practiced burning towns and fields
and killing the unarmed and vulnerable. "Tragically for the Indian
peoples of the Eastern Seaboard," Grenier observes, "the merce­
naries unleashed a similar way of war in early Virginia and New
England."7

S E T T L E R - PA R A S I T E S C R E AT E T H E V I R G I N I A C O L O N Y

The first Jamestown settlers lacked a supply line and proved unable
or unwilling to grow crops or hunt for their own sustenance. They
decided that they would force the farmers of the Powhatan Confed­
eracy-some thirty polities-to provide them with food. Jamestown
military leader John Smith threatened to kill all the women and
children if the Powhatan leaders would not feed and clothe the set­
tlers as well as provide them with land and labor. The leader of the
confederacy, Wahunsonacock, entreated the invaders:
Why should you take by force that from us which you can
have by love ? Why should you destroy us, who have provided
you with food? What can you get by war? . . . What is the
cause of your jealousy? You see us unarmed, and willing to
supply your wants, if you will come in a friendly manner, and
not with swords and guns, as to invade an enemy. 8
Smith's threat was carried out: war against the Powhatans started
in August 1 609 and the destruction of the Powhatans became the
order of the day. The war dragged on for a year until the English
governor, Thomas Gage, ordered forces mobilized by George Percy,
a mercenary who had fought in the Netherlands, "to take revenge "
and destroy the Indigenous population. In his report following the
assault, Percy gloated over the gruesome details of killing all the
children. Despite the terrorizing tactics of the settlers, the Powhat­
ans were able to protect their grain storage buildings and force the
Jamestown settlers to shelter within their colonial fortress.9 Mean­
while the Powhatans organized a stronger confederacy. In 1 62 2 ,
they attacked a l l the English settlements along the James River, kill-

Bloody Footprints

ing 3 5 0-a third of the settler population. Unable to eliminate the
Indigenous population by force of arms, the colonists resorted to a
" feedfight," as Grenier identifies it-systematic destruction of all
the Indigenous agricultural resources.1 0 A dozen years later an even
greater conflict broke out, the Tidewater War ( 1 644-46). Hardly a
war, it consisted rather of settlers continuously raiding Indigenous
villages and fields with the goal of starving the people out of the
area. There followed three decades of peace, from which the set­
tlers inferred that total war and expulsion of the Indigenous people
worked. The few Indigenous families that remained in eastern Vir­
ginia were under the absolute dominance of the English. It was clear,
Grenier points out, that "the English would tolerate Indians within
and near their settlements provided they essentially neither saw nor
heard them."11 In the absence of Indigenous sources of food and
labor, the colonists brought in enslaved Africans and indentured
European servants to do the work.
By 1 676, the settler population of Virginia had mushroomed
and English tobacco farmers were encroaching on the lands of the
Susquehannock people. When the Susquehannocks resisted, a war
broke out that went badly for the English. In 1676, the Virginia
House of Burgesses formed a mounted force of 1 25 men to range
through a particular cluster of Indigenous villages and thereby over­
come Susquehannock resistance. 1 2 This was the immediate back­
ground of Bacon's Rebellion, so beloved by populist US historians
and those who search for the onset of racialized servitude in the
British colonies. The rebellion occurred when Anglo settler-farmers
along with landless indentured servants-both Anglo and African
-took into their own hands the slaughter of Indigenous farmers
with the aim of taking their land. The plantation owners who ruled
the colony were troubled, to be sure, by the interracial aspect of
the uprising. Soon after, Virginia law made greater distinction be­
tween indentured servants and slaves and codified the permanent
status of slavery for Africans.13 The point is an important one, but
there is a larger issue. Bacon's Rebellion affected the development
of genocidal policies aimed at the Indigenous peoples-namely, the
creation of wealth in the colonies based on landholding and the use
of landless or land-poor settler-farmers as foot soldiers for moving

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

the settlement frontier deeper into Indigenous territories. 14 That the
rebellion's leader, Nathaniel Bacon, was a wealthy planter reveals
the relationship between the wealthy landed settlers and the poorer,
often landless, settlers . Historian Eric Foner rightly concludes that
the rebellion was a power play by Bacon against the Virginia gov­
ernor William Berkeley and his planter allies, as Bacon's financial
backers included other wealthy planters opposed to Berkeley. 15

I N T H E N A M E OF G O D

What transpired up the coast i n the founding and growth of the
New England colony was different, at least at first. Just before the
1 620 landing of the Mayflower, smallpox had spread from English
trading ships off the coast to the Pequot fishing and farming com­
munities on land, greatly reducing the population of the area the
Plymouth Colony would occupy. King James attributed the epidemic
to God's "great goodness and bounty toward us." 1 6 Consequently,
those who survived in the Indigenous communities had little means
to immediately resist the settlers' expropriation of their lands and
resources. Sixteen years later, however, the Indigenous villages had
recovered and were considered a barrier to the settlers moving into
Pequot territory in Connecticut. A single violent incident triggered
a devastating Puritan war against the Pequots in what the colony's
annals and subsequent history texts call the Pequot War.
The Puritan settlers, as if by instinct, jumped immediately into a
hideous war of annihilation, entering Indigenous villages and kill­
ing women and children or taking them hostage . The Pequots re­
sponded by attacking English settlements, including Fort Saybrook
in Connecticut. Connecticut authorities commissioned mercenary
John Mason to lead a force of soldiers from that colony and Mas­
sachusetts to one of the two Pequot strongholds on the Mystic River.
Pequot fighters occupied one of the forts, while the other one con­
tained only women, children, and old men. The latter was the one
John Mason targeted. Slaughter ensued. After killing most of the
Pequot defenders, the soldiers set fire to the structures and burned
the remaining inhabitants alive . 17

Bloody Footprints

This kind of war was alien to the Indigenous peoples.18 Accord­
ing to their ways of war, when relations between groups broke down
and conflict came, warfare was highly ritualized, with quests for
individual glory, resulting in few deaths . Colonial wars inevitably
drew other Indigenous communities in on one side or the other. Dur­
ing the Pequot War, neighboring Narragansett villages allied with
the Puritans in hopes of reaping a large harvest of captives, booty,
and glory. But after the carnage was done, the Narragansetts left the
Puritan side in disgust, saying that the English were "too furious"
and "slay[ed] too many men." After having made the Pequots the en­
emy, the settlers set out to complete the destruction. Fewer than two
hundred half-starved Pequots remained of the two thousand at the
beginning of the war. Although they had ceased fighting and were
without any means of defense, the settlers started a new attack on
the Pequots. The colony commissioned the mercenary Mason and
his murderous crew of forty men to burn the few remaining homes
and fields. 1 9 Puritan William Bradford wrote at the time in his His­

tory of Plymouth Plantation:
Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some
hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as
they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was
conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a
fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams
of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and
sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and
they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so
wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their
hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and
insulting an enimie. 20
The other Indigenous nations of the region assessed what was in
store for them and accepted tributary status under the colonial au­
thority.
During the late seventeenth century, Anglo settlers in New En­
gland began the routine practice of scalp hunting and what Gre­
nier identifies as "ranging"-the use of settler-ranger forces . By

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

that time, the non-Indigenous population of the English colony in
North America had increased sixfold, to more than 1 5 0,000, which
meant that settlers were intruding on more of the Indigenous home­
lands. Indigenous resistance followed in what the settlers called
King Philip's War. 21 Wampanoag people and their Indigenous al­
lies attacked the settlers' isolated farms, using a method of guerrilla
warfare that relied on speed and caution in striking and retreating.
The settlers scorned this kind of resistance as "skulking," and re­
sponded by destroying Indigenous villages-again extirpation. But
Indigenous guerrilla attacks continued, and so the commander of
the Plymouth militia, Benjamin Church, studied Indigenous tactics
in order to develop a more effective kind of preemption. He peti­
tioned the colony's governor for permission to choose sixty to sev­
enty settlers to serve as scouts, as he called them, for what he termed
"wilderness warfare." In July 1 676, the first settler-organized ranger
force was the result. The rangers-60 settlers and 140 colonized In­
digenous men-were to "discover, pursue, fight, surprise, destroy, or
subdue" the enemy, in Church's words. The inclusion of Indigenous
fighters on the colonists' side has marked settler colonialism and for­
eign occupations ever since. 22 The settler-rangers could learn from
their Native aides, then discard them. In the following two decades,
Church perfected his evolving method of annihilation.

"REDSKINS"

Indigenous people continued to resist by burning settlements and
killing and capturing settlers. As an incentive to recruit fighters,
colonial authorities introduced a program of scalp hunting that
became a permanent and long-lasting element of settler warfare
against Indigenous nations. 23 During the Pequot War, Connecticut
and Massachusetts colonial officials had offered bounties initially
for the heads of murdered Indigenous people and later for only their
scalps, which were more portable in large numbers. But scalp hunt­
ing became routine only in the mid- 1 67os, following an incident
on the northern frontier of the Massachusetts colony. The practice
began in earnest in 1 69 7 when settler Hannah Dustin, having mur-

Bloody Footprints

dered ten of her Abenaki captors in a nighttime escape, presented
their ten scalps to the Massachusetts General Assembly and was re­
warded with bounties for two men, two women, and six children. 24
D ustin soon became a folk hero among New England settlers.
Scalp hunting became a lucrative commercial practice. The settler
authorities had hit upon a way to encourage settlers to take off on
their own or with a few others to gather scalps, at random, for the
reward money. "In the process," John Grenier points out, "they
established the large-scale privatization of war within American
frontier communities."25 Although the colonial government in time
raised the bounty for adult male scalps, lowered that for adult fe­
males, and eliminated that for Indigenous children under ten, the
age and gender of victims were not easily distinguished by their
scalps nor checked carefully. What is more, the scalp hunter could
take the children captive and sell them into slavery. These practices
erased any remaining distinction between Indigenous combatants
and noncombatants and introduced a market for Indigenous slaves.
Bounties for Indigenous scalps were honored even in absence of war.
Scalps and Indigenous children became means of exchange, cur­
rency, and this development may even have created a black market.
Scalp huntin g was not only a profitable privatized enterprise but
also a means to eradicate or subj ugate the Indigenous population of
the Anglo-American Atlantic seaboard. 26 The settlers gave a name
to the mutilated and bloody corpses they left in the wake of scalp­
hunts: redskins.
This way of war, forged in the first century of colonization­
destroying Indigenous villages and fields, killing civilians, ranging,
and scalp hunting-became the basis for the wars against the Indig­
enous across the continent into the late nineteenth century. 27

C O L O N I A L E X PA N S I O N

Having cleared the Indigenous populations from much of the coastal
region from New England to the Carolinas, another wave of settlers
employed the same kind of warfare in establishing the colony of
Georgia beginning in 1 73 2 . Technically, it was the part of Spanish-

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

occupied Florida called Guale. From the time the first settlers squat­
ted on Indigenous land in Georgia, rangers were in the forefront of
ethnic cleansing, clearing the region for British settlement. Briga­
dier General James Oglethorpe, commander in chief of the Georgia
colony, tried but failed to turn his own small regular army into rang­
ers, so he commissioned Hugh Mackay Jr. to organize the regulars
into a Highland ranger force. A settler agent for the Georgia colony,
Mackay was a former British army officer and a Scots Highlander.
The Highlanders were reputed to be tough, fearless fighters-in
other words, brutal killers. h was unusual at the time to put a local
militia officer in command of army regulars.28
The Indigenous population of Georgia consisted primarily of the
Cherokee Nation. The colonizers realized it would be impossible to
persuade the Cherokees to accept or defend Georgia settlers if war
broke out between Britain and Spain over British encroachment into
Spanish Guale. Traders from Carolina had already brought small­
pox and rum to the Cherokees, which had killed many in their vil­
lages and made them suspicious of all English people. Oglethorpe
himself visited Cherokee towns but was rebuffed. Meanwhile Span­
ish agents were also trying to win over the Cherokees to fight on
their side against the British. In the fall of 1 7 3 9 , on the verge of
war, Oglethorpe won commitment from some Cherokee villages in
exchange for corn, but he was aware that, like other Indigenous na­
tions, the Cherokees would likely play one colonial power against
the other for their own interests and could change sides at any mo­
ment. In December, English invasion farther into Spanish territory
began. Anglo and Scots rangers and their Indigenous allies destroyed
Spanish plantations and intimidated the Maroon communities in
northern Florida composed of local Indigenous families and escaped
African slaves from the British colonies. The rangers sacked and
looted, burned and pillaged, while hunting scalps of Spanish-allied
Indigenous people and runaway slaves. Lasting nearly a month, the
operations ravaged Florida, in part because the Spanish put up little
fight. During the 1 740s, the British War Office and Parliament com­
missioned two companies of colonial rangers and authorized more
than a hundred men for full-time duty in the Highland Rangers in
Georgia. 29 Ranging, looting, and scalp hunting continued.

Bloody Footprints

WA R T H AT T U R N S T H E T I D E

The decade leading up to the outbreak of the French and Indian
War ( 1 754-63), known in Europe as the Seven Years" War, saw con­
flict on the British-French frontiers in New England, New York,
and Nova Scotia, all of which were well populated with Indigenous
villages of various nations as well as French settlers called Acadi­
ans. 30 A clash of interests among British settlers, Indigenous com­
munities, and Acadians in the region of the present-day Canadian
Maritime Provinces led to a four-year conflict that the British called
King George's War. Although Britain had gained nominal posses­
sion of Nova Scotia, it could not control the population of Acadians
and the mixed communities of intermarried Acadians and Mi'kmaq
and Malisset people. The Acadian-Indigenous villages insisted
on neutrality in the British and French disputes, and the power­
ful Haudenosaunee confederacy supported them in that stance. But
British imperialists wanted the land, and they permitted Anglo­
American settlers to play a prominent role in the fighting, which
included ranging and scalp hunting. By the end of the war, settler­
rangers dominated the British military presence in Nova Scotia ,
setting off sustained Acadian-Indigenous resistance against British
rule. 31
At the outbreak of the French and Indian War, while the Brit­
ish regular army and navy focused on French imperial positions in
the Maritimes, the settler militia forces continued ranging against
the Acadian-Indigenous villages, which led to an expulsion of the
Acadians, sometimes known today as the Great Upheaval. In a pe­
riod of weeks, British army forces and colonial militias forced four
thousand noncombatants out of Nova Scotia, and at least half that
number died in the Acadian diaspora . Some eight thousand escaped
deportation by fleeing into the woods. The Acadians thus became
the largest population of European settlers in North American
history to be forcibly dispersed. This feat was accomplished with
slaughter, intimidation, and plunder. By this time, there was no hesi­
tation on the part of Anglo settlers to consider unarmed civilians of
all ages as appropriate targets of violence.
Major General Jeffery Amherst-after whom Amherst, Mas-

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

sachusetts is named-commanded the British army in the North
American theater of the Seven Years' War. In 1 75 9 , Amherst ap­
pointed Major Robert Rogers, the seasoned leader of New England's
Rogers's Rangers and perhaps the most famous and admired ranger
in frontier lore, to lead a force of settler-rangers, British volunteers,
and allied Stockbridge Indigenous scouts-all to be handpicked by
Rogers. Amherst ordered them to attack a resistant Abenaki village
in the St. Lawrence River Valley. Although Amherst ordered Rogers
not to allow torture or killing of women or children, the commander
would have known about these rangers' reputation of sparing no
one in their blood-drenched raids on Indigenous villages. In com­
missioning Rogers, Amherst effectively sanctioned settler-ranger
counterinsurgent warfare. In general, the British military not only
tolerated but made use of the settlers' dirty war, in the Cherokee
war, the subsequent French and Indian War, and in the effort to
crush Pontiac's Rebellion of 1 763 , in which Amherst is best known
for his support of using germ warfare against Indigenous people. 32
" Could it not be contrived," Amherst wrote to a subordinate officer,
"to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians ?
We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to
Reduce them." The colonel promised to do his best. 33 Amherst then
gave orders "to bring them [Pontiac's forces and allies] to a proper
Subjection" until "there was not an Indian Settlement within a thou­
sand Miles of our Country."34
In the southern part of the French and Indian War, the British in
1 760 found their war-making capacity overwhelmed by the Chero­
kee Nation. So here too they turned to rangers. In the spring, when
the Cherokee Nation challenged British authority, Amherst rushed
regular regiments to Charleston under the command of Colonel Ar­
chibald Montgomery with orders to punish the Cherokees as quickly
as possible so the soldiers could return north and j oin in the im­
minent attack on Montreal. In previous wars against Indigenous
nations, British commanders had assigned ranger groups specific
missions, but in the Cherokee war, the British military forces, in­
cluding regulars, would target noncombatants. A few months ear­
lier, the North Carolina governor had conjured the strategy that
would be used:

Bloody Footprints

69

In Case a War must be proclaimed, the three Southern Prov­
inces of Virginia and the Carolinas should exert their whole
force, enter into and destroy all the [Cherokee] Towns of those
at War with us, and make as many of them as we should take
their Wives and Children Slaves, by sending them to the Islands
[West Indies] if above I O years old . . . and to allow IO lbs ster­
ling for every prisoner taken and delivered in each Province. 35
This was the plan adopted. Commander Montgomery was well
aware that even with irregular warfare the military could not defeat
the Cherokees in their own country and that he would need set­
tlers and Indigenous allies serving as scouts and guides. He added to
his troop strength three hundred settler-rangers, forty local militia
members, and fifty Catawba allies. The Cherokee Nation had not
succeeded in forming a confederation with the Muskogees or Chick­
asaws, so their villages were vulnerable. The first target was the au­
tonomous Cherokee town of Estatoe, comprising some two hundred
homes and two thousand people. Montgomery's forces set all the
homes and buildings afire, picking off individuals who tried to flee,
while others who hid inside were burned alive. One after another,
towns were set ablaze until the Cherokees organized a resistance
strong enough to drive out the attackers. The British claimed to have
crushed Cherokee resistance, but they had not, and the Cherokees
laid siege to British forts . A year later, British forces struck again, this
time even harder, and overwhelmed the Cherokees in their capital of
Etchoe and destroyed it. The British then moved on to the other Cher­
okee towns, burning them too. D uring the month-long, one-sided
battle of annihilation, the British razed fifteen towns and burned
fourteen hundred acres of corn. Five thousand Cherokees were made
homeless refugees, and the number of deaths remained uncounted. 36
Another weapon of war was alcohol, accelerating in the eigh­
teenth century. In 1754, a Catawba leader known as King Hagler by
English colonists petitioned the North Carolina authorities:
Brothers, here is one thing you yourselves are to blame very
much in; that is you rot your grain in tubs, out of which you
take and make strong spirits.

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

You sell it to our young men and give it [to] them, many
times; they get very drunk with it [and] this is the very cause
that they oftentimes commit those crimes that is offensive to
you and us and all through the effect of that drink. It is also
very bad for our people, for it rots their guts and causes our
men to get very sick and many of our people has lately died by
the effects of that strong drink, and I heartily wish you would
do something to prevent your people from daring to sell or
give them any of that strong drink, upon any consideration
whatever, for that will be a great means of our being free from
being accused of those crimes that is committed by our young
men and will prevent many of the abuses that is done by them
through the effect of that strong drink. 37
King Hagler continued to petition for years for an embargo on liquor
without succeeding.
Britain's victory at the end of the French and Indian War in 1 763
led to English domination of world trade, sea power, and colonial
holdings for a century and a half.38 In the Treaty of Paris ( 1 763)
France ceded Canada and all claims east of the Mississippi to Brit­
ain. In the course of the war, Anglo settlers had gained strength in
numbers and security in relation to Indigenous peoples just outside
the British-occupied colonies. Even there, significant numbers of set­
tlers had squatted on Indigenous lands beyond the colonies' putative
boundaries, reaching into the Ohio Valley region. To the settlers'
dismay, soon after the Treaty of Paris was signed, King George III
issued a proclamation that prohibited British settlement west of the
Allegheny-Appalachian mountain ? arrier, ordering those who had
settled there to relinquish their claims and move back east of the
line. However, British authorities did not commit enough troops to
the frontier to enforce the edict effectively. As a result, thousands
more settlers poured over the mountains and squatted on Indig­
enous lands.
By the early 1 770s, terror against Indigenous people on the part
of Anglo settlers increased in all the colonies, and speculation in
western lands was rampant. In the southern colonies especially,
farmers who had lost their land in competition with larger, more

Bloody Footprints

efficient, slave-worked plantations rushed for western land. These
settler-farmers thus set, as Grenier writes, "a prefigurative pattern
of U. S . annexation and colonization of Indigenous nations across
the continent for the following century: a vanguard of farmer­
settlers led by seasoned 'Indian fighters,' calling on authorities/
militias of the British colonies, first, and the U.S. government/army
later, to defend their settlements, forming the core dynamic of U. S .
'democracy."'39
The French and Indian War would later be seen as the trigger
for independence of the settler population, in which the distinctly
"American" nation was born. This mythology was expressed in the
1 8 2 6 novel The Last of the Mahicans: A Narrative of 1 75 7, in which
the author-land speculator James Fenimore Cooper-created a us­
able settler-colonial history. Blockbuster Hollywood adaptations of
the book in 193 2 and 1992 reinforced the mythology. But the 1940
film, based on the best-selling novel Northwest Passage, which is
considered a classic and remains popular due to repeated television
showings, goes even further in portraying the bloodthirsty merce­
naries, Rogers's Rangers, as heroes for their annihilation of a village
of Abenakis. 40

T H E O H I O CO U N T RY

The settlers' war for independence from Britain paralleled a decade
of " Indian wars" ( 1 774-83), all with settler-rangers using extreme
violence against Indigenous noncombatants with the goals of total
subjugation or expulsion. The British governor of Virginia, John
Murray, the Fourth Earl of Dunmore, sided with British settlers who
wanted land in the Ohio Country (in part because he was himself a
land speculator) . In his view, no royal policy could prevent settlers'
seizure of Indigenous land. In early 1 774 , the Shawnee Nation in the
Ohio Valley region responded to settler encroachment on its farm­
lands and hunting grounds by raiding illicit settlements and chasing
out land surveyors. The settlers seem to have been waiting for just
such an excuse to retaliate viciously. Dunmore commissioned 1 5 0
Virginia settler-rangers t o destroy Shawnee towns, and h e mobilized

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

the Virginia militia to invade the Ohio Valley and to "proceed di­
rectly to their Towns, and if possible destroy their Towns and maga­
zines and distress them in every other way that is possible."41
During "Lord Dunmore's War," Shawnees and other Indigenous
peoples in what the Anglo separatists would soon call the Northwest
Territory realized that they were in a life-or-death struggle with these
murdering bands of settlers who were led by a wealthy land specula­
tor, intent on destroying their nation and wiping them from the face
of the earth. This realization led to another recurrent factor in the
onslaught of European colonial ventures: the appearance of an ac­
commodationist faction within the Shawnee Nation that accepted a
humiliating peace agreement. Dunmore demanded all the Shawnee
hunting grounds in what would later become, following US indepen­
dence, the state of Kentucky.42 Although Virginia did not get all the
land Dunmore demanded, Dunmore's War was only the beginning
of a three-decade war against the Shawnee Nation and its allies.
That alliance was led militarily in its resistance by the great Tecum­
seh, born in 1 76 8 , who had grown up in the midst of unrelenting
warfare against his people, along with his brother, Tenskwatawa,
also known as the Prophet and the movement's spiritual leader.43
Dunmore's War pushed the Shawnees into an alliance with the
British against the separatists in 1777· Indigenous warriors struck
scattered squatter settlements throughout the Upper Ohio Valley
region, driving hundreds of settlers from Shawnee territory. But the
tide of war between the British and the separatists turned, allow­
ing the Continental Congress to focus on the Ohio Country and
organize an offensive to annihilate the Shawnee Nation. Five hun­
dred separatist fighters, composed of both militiamen and regu­
lars, waged a genocidal war. Rampaging against combatants and
noncombatants alike, the ranger force fell on the staunchly neu­
tral towns of the Delaware Nation, torturing and killing women
and children. In one particularly twisted incident, the settler troops
slaughtered a Delaware boy who had been bird hunting alone. A
near-riot ensued among the troops over who had the right to claim
the "honor" of the kill. The Continental Congress sent a thousand
more fighters with orders to "proceed, without delay, to destroy such
towns of hostile tribes of Indians as he [Brigadier General Lachlan

Bloody Footprints

Mcintosh] in his discretion shall think will most effectually chastise
and terrify the savages, and check their ravages on the frontiers ."
The Shawnees moved out of the way of the raiders to avoid the at­
tacks, but the killing went on unabated. 44
The settlers' escalation of extreme violence in the Ohio Country
led to perhaps the most outrageous war crime, which showed that
Indigenous conversion to Christianity and pacifism was no protec­
tion from genocide. Moravian missionizing among the ravaged Del­
aware communities in Pennsylvania had produced three Moravian
Indian villages in the decades before the war for independence had
begun. Residents of one of the settlements, named Gnadenhutten, in
eastern Ohio, were displaced by British troops during fighting in the
area, but were able to return to harvest their corn. Soon afterward,
in March 1 7 8 2 , a settler militia from Pennsylvania under the com­
mand of David Williamson appeared and rounded up the Delawares,
telling them they had to evacuate for their own safety. There were
forty-two men, twenty women, and thirty-four children in the group
of Delawares. The militiamen searched their belongings to confis­
cate anything that could be used as a weapon, then announced that
they were all to be killed, accusing them of having given refuge to
Delawares who had killed white people. They were also accused of
stealing the household items and tools they possessed, because such
items should only belong to white people. Condemned to death, the
Delawares spent the night praying and singing hymns. In the morn­
ing, Williamson's men marched over ninety people in pairs into two
houses and methodically slaughtered them. One killer bragged that
he personally had bludgeoned fourteen victims with a cooper's mal­
let, which he had then handed to an accomplice. "My arm fails me,"
he was said to have announced. " Go on with the work."45 This ac­
tion set a new bar for violence, and atrocities that followed routinely
surpassed even that atrocity.4 6
A year earlier, the Delaware leader Buckongeahelas had addressed
a group of Christianized Delawares, saying that he had known some
good white men, but that the good ones were a small number:
They do what they please. They enslave those who are not of
their color, although created by the same Great Spirit who

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

created us. They would make slaves of us if they could, but as
they cannot do it, they kill us. There is no faith to be placed
in their words. They are not like the Indians, who are only en­
emies while at war, and are friends in peace. They will say to
an Indian: "My friend, my brother." They will take him by the
hand, and at the same moment destroy him. And so you will
also be treated by them before long. Remember that this day
I have warned you to beware of such friends as these. I know
the long knives; they are not to be trusted.47

H OW T H E S E TT L E R S W O N I N D E P E N D E N C E

Both the British and their settler separatist opponents realized that
the key to victory on the southern frontier of the thirteen colonies
was an alliance with the Cherokee Nation. Despite constant attacks
on its villages and crops, and with refugees and disease, the enor­
mous Cherokee Nation remained intact with a well-functioning
government. To win the Cherokees to their side, British authorities
provided weaponry and money to Cherokee towns while separat­
ist representatives tried to persuade the towns to remain neutral by
threatening their complete destruction. Neutrality was the most the
settlers could hope for. The settlers' viciousness toward Indigenous
people caused them to be despised and spurred some Cherokees to
take sides against them. A few Cherokee towns that had been hit
hardest by settler-rangers responded by attacking squatter settle­
ments, destroying several in the Carolinas in 1776. Following such
attacks, separatists quickly announced their determination to de­
stroy the Cherokee Nation. The North Carolina delegation to the
Continental Congress declared, "The gross infernal breach of faith
which they [the Cherokees] have been guilty of shuts them out from
every pretension to mercy, and it is surely the policy of the Southern
Colonies to carry fire and Sword into the very bowels of their coun­
try and sink them so low that they may never be able again to rise
and disturb the peace of their Neighbors."48
In the summer and fall of 1776, more than five thousand set­
tler-rangers from Virginia, Georgia, and North and South Carolina

Bloody Footprints

stormed through Cherokee territory.49 William Henry Drayton, a
leader of the Anglo separatists from Charleston, had met with the
Cherokees in 1 775 . After the Cherokee attack that prompted the
separatists' 1776 scorched-earth campaign, he recommended that
"the nation be extirpated, and the lands become the property of the
public. For my part, I shall never give my voice for a peace with the
Cherokee Nation upon any other terms than their removal beyond
the mountains."5 0 As Cherokees fled, abandoning their towns and
fields, the soldiers seized, killed, and scalped women and children,
taking no prisoners. 51
In mid-1780, eighty Virginia separatist settler-rangers attacked
the Shawnees in southern Ohio and spent a month destroying and
looting their towns and fields. At the same time, the Cherokee Nation
regained momentum in its resistance, raiding squatters' settlements
within its territory. In retaliation, North Carolina sent five hundred
mounted rangers to burn Cherokee towns, with orders to "chas­
tise that nation and reduce them to obedience." During the win­
ter of 1 7 8 0 - 8 1 , the separatist seven-hundred-man Virginia militia
wreaked destruction again in the Cherokee Nation. On Christmas
Day, the militia commander wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then a Vir­
ginia delegate to the Continental Congress, that a detachment had
"surprised a party of Indians, [and taken] one scalp, and Seventeen
Horses loaded with clothing and skins and House furnishings"-a
clear sign that these were noncombatant refugees trying to flee. The
commander also reported that his forces had thus far destroyed the
principal Cherokee towns of Chote, Scittigo, Chilhowee Togue, Mi­
cliqua, Kai-a-tee, Sattoogo, Telico, Hiwassee, and Chistowee, along
with several smaller villages.
All told, more than a thousand homes had been laid waste, and
some fifty thousand bushels of corn and other provisions either
burned or looted.52 At this point, the Virginia and North Carolina
separatist authorities pooled their manpower and materiel and orga­
nized a force that effected a broad sweep of annihilation through the
Cherokee towns, driving residents out into present-day middle Ten­
nessee and northern Alabama, where they exterminated Indigenous
families and burned down the towns in that area too.
Throughout the war between separatist settlers and the forces of

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

the monarchy, armed settlers waged total war against Indigenous
people, largely realizing their objectives. The Cherokees were forced
to accept tributary status, yet the attacks continued. It would take
nearly a half century after US independence was won to forcibly
remove the Cherokee Nation from the South, but the effort was un­
relenting. For the settlers squatting on Indigenous lands across the
1 763 Proclamation Line of King George III, the wars waged by set­
tlers during the war of independence were a continuation of those
their ancestors and other predecessors had waged since the early
seventeenth century. Some historians portray the British as the or­
ganizers of Indigenous resistance during this period. The separatist
colonial oligarchy that drew up the Declaration of Independence
in 1 776 certainly took that view. Yet, as Grenier points out, the
Indigenous people were well aware that negotiating with a faraway
empire would yield much better outcomes than would dealing with
the government of extermination-minded settlers. 53

T H E H AU D E N OSAU N E E

O n the western edge of the colony of New York, a s i n the southern
colonies, settlers were invading and squatting on the territory of the
Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois) by the mid- 1 77os. As with
the Cherokee Nation, the British and the separatists knew that the
Haudenosaunee would be an important factor in their war, and, as
with the Cherokee Nation, both parties sent representatives to the
Haudenosaunee councils to appeal for their support. Each member
nation of the confederacy had its own specific interests because each
had had different experiences in the previous century and a half of
British and French intrusion. Much of the French and Indian War
had been fought in their territories, with Indigenous people doing
most of the actual fighting on both sides. In 1 775 , the Mohawk Na­
tion allied with the British against the separatist settlers . The Sen­
eca Nation had early on considered the British to be an intractable
enemy but with the separatist war looming was more afraid of the
settlers, and so the Senecas followed the Mohawks' lead into a Brit­
ish alliance. The Cayuga, Tuscarora, and Onondaga Nations did not

Bloody Footprints

choose sides. Only the Christianized Oneidas conceded support for
the separatist settlers.
In response to the decisions by five of the Iroquois Nations, Gen­
eral George Washington wrote instructions to Major General John
Sullivan to take peremptory action against the Haudenosaunee, "to
lay waste all the settlements around . . . that the country may not be
merely overrun but destroyed . . . . [Y]ou will not by any means, lis­
ten to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements
is effected . . . . Our future security will be in their inability to injure
us . . . and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement
they receive will inspire them." Sullivan replied, "The Indians shall
see t h at there is malice enough in our hearts to destroy everything
that contributes to their support."54
By 1 779 , the Continental Congress had decided to start with the
Senecas. Three armies were mustered to scorch the earth across New
York and converge at Tioga, the principal Seneca town, in what
is now northern Pennsylvania. Their orders were to wipe out the
Senecas and any other Indigenous nation that opposed their sepa­
ratist project, burning and looting all the villages, destroying the
food supply, and turning the inhabitants into homeless refugees. The
separatist governments of the New York and Pennsylvania colonies
offered rangers for the project, and, as an incentive for enlistment,
the Pennsylvania assembly authorized a bounty on Seneca scalps,
without regard to sex or age. This combination of Continental Army
regulars, settler-rangers, and commercial scalp hunters ravaged
most of Seneca territory.
With the Iroquois Confederacy disunited regarding the war, the
Continental Army forces were practically unimpeded in their tri­
umphal and deadly march. In another scenario typically resulting
from European and Anglo-American colonialism and neocolonial­
ism, civil war erupted within the Iroquois Confederacy itself, with
Mohawks destroying Oneida villages. The Oneidas could no longer
give their separatist allies intelligence. "By 1 7 8 1 ," Grenier observes,
"after three seasons of the Indian war, New York's frontier had be­
come a no-man's-land."55

77

FIVE

THE B I R TH O F A N AT I O N

Our nation was born in genocide . . . . We are perhaps
the only nation which tried as a matter of national
policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover,
we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade.
Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves
to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode.
-Martin Luther King Jr.

The British withdrew from the fight to maintain their thirteen
colonies in 1 7 8 3 , in order to redirect their resources to the conquest
of South Asia. The British East India Company had been operat­
ing in the subcontinent since 1600 in a project parallel to Britain's
colonization of the North American Atlantic Coast. Britain's trans­
fer to the United States of its claim to the Ohio Country spelled
a nightmarish disaster for all Indigenous peoples east of the Mis­
sissippi. Britain's withdrawal in 1 7 8 3 did not end military actions
against Indigenous peoples but rather was a prelude to unrestrained
violent colonization of the continent. In negotiations to end the
war, Britain did not insist on consideration for the Indigenous na­
tions that resisted the settlers' war of secession. In the resulting 1 7 8 3
Treaty o f Paris, the Crown transferred t o the United States owner­
ship of all its territory south of the Great Lakes, from the Mississippi
to the Atlantic, and north of Spanish-occupied Florida. Muskogee
Creek leader Alexander McGillivray expressed the general Indig­
enous view: "To find ourselves and country betrayed to our enemies
and divided between the Spaniards and Americans is cruel and un­
generous."1

78

The Birth of a Nation

T H E N EW O R D E R

Wars continued for another century, unrelentingly and without
pause, and the march across the continent used the same strategy
and tactics of scorched earth and annihilation with increasingly
deadly firepower. Somehow, even "genocide" seems an inadequate
description for what happened, yet rather than viewing it with hor­
ror, most Americans have conceived of it as their country's manifest
destiny.
With the consolidation of the new state, the United States of
America, by 1 790, the opportunity for Indigenous nations to negoti­
ate alliances with competing European empires against the despised
settlers who intended to destroy them was greatly narrowed. Nev­
ertheless, Indigenous nations had defied the founding of the inde­
pendent United States in a manner that allowed for their survival
and created a legacy-a culture of resistance-that has persisted. By
the time of the birth of the US republic, Indigenous peoples in what
is now the continental United States had been resisting European
colonization for two centuries. They had no choice given the aspira­
tions of the colonizers: total elimination of Native nations or sur­
vival. Precolonial Indigenous societies were dynamic social systems
with adaptation built into them. Fighting for survival did not require
cultural abandonment. On the contrary, the cultures used already
existing strengths, such as diplomacy and mobility, to develop new
mechanisms required to live in nearly constant crisis. There is always
a hard core of resistance in that process, but the culture of resistance
also includes accommodations to the colonizing social order, includ­
ing absorbing Christianity into already existing religious practices,
using the colonizer's language, and intermarrying with settlers and,
more importantly, with other oppressed groups, such as escaped Af­
rican slaves. Without the culture of resistance, surviving Indigenous
peoples under US colonization would have been eliminated through
individual assimilation.
A new element was added in the independent Anglo-American le­
gal regime: treaty making. The US Constitution specifically refers to
Indigenous nations only once, but significantly, in Article r, Section

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

8 : " [Congress shall have Power] to regulate Commerce with foreign
Nations and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
In the federal system in which all powers not specifically reserved for
the federal government go to the states, relations with Indigenous
nations are unequivocally a federal matter.
Although not mentioned as such, Native peoples are implied in
the Second Amendment. Male settlers had been required in the
colonies to serve in militias during their lifetimes for the purpose
of raiding and razing Indigenous communities, the southern colo­
nies included, and later states' militias were used as "slave patrols."
The Second Amendment, ratified in 1 79 1 , enshrined these irregular
forces into law: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the se­
curity of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed." The continuing significance of that "free­
dom" specified in the Bill of Rights reveals the settler-colonialist
cultural roots of the United States that appear even in the present as
a sacred right. 2
US genocidal wars against Indigenous nations continued un­
abated in the 1 790s and were woven into the very fabric of the new
nation-state. The fears, aspirations, and greed of Anglo-American
settlers on the borders of Indigenous territories perpetuated this
warfare and influenced the formation of the US Army, much as the
demands and actions of backcountry settlers had shaped the co­
lonial militias in North America. Owners of large, slave-worked
plantations sought to expand their landholdings while small farm
owners who were unable to compete with the planters and were
pushea off their land now desperately sought cheap land to support
their families. The interests of both settler groups were in tension
with those of state and military authorities who sought to build a
new professional military based on Washington's army. Just as the
US government and its army were taking form, a number of settle­
ments on the peripheries of Indigenous nations threatened to secede,
prompting the army to make rapid expansion into Indigenous terri­
tories a top priority. Brutal counterinsurgency warfare would be the
key to the army's destruction of the Indigenous peoples' civilization
in the Ohio Country and the rest of what was then called the North­
west over the first quarter-century of US independence. 3

The Birth of a Nation

T O TA L WA R I N O H I O S E T S T H E S TA G E

The first Washington administration was consumed by the crisis
engendered by its inability to quickly conquer and colonize the Ohio
Country over which it claimed sovereignty.4 D uring the Confedera­
tion period, before the US Constitution was written and ratified, the
Indigenous nations in that region had access to a constant supply
of British arms and had formed effective political and military al­
liances, the first of them forged by Mohawk leader Joseph Brant
during the 1 7 8 0s . Washington's administration determined that
only war, not diplomacy, would break up the Indigenous alliances .
Secretary of War Henry Knox told the army commander of Fort
Washington (where Cincinnati is today) that "to extend a defensive
and efficient protection to so extensive a frontier, against solitary,
or small parties of enterprising savages, seems altogether impos­
sible. No other remedy remains, but to extirpate, utterly, if possible,
the said Banditti."5 These orders could not be implemented with a
conventional army engaged in regular warfare. Although federal of­
ficers commanded the army, the fighters were nearly all drawn from
militias made up primarily of squatter settlers from Kentucky. They
were unaccustomed to army discipline but fearless and willing to
kill to get a piece of land to grab or some scalps for bounty.
The army found the Miami vil lages they planned to attack
already deserted, so they set up a base in one of the villages and
waited for a Miami assault. But the assault was not forthcoming.
When the commander sent out small units to find the Miamis,
these search-and- destroy missions were ambushed and sent flee­
ing by allied Miamis and Shawnees under the leadership of Little
Turtle (Meshekinnoqquah) and Blue Jacket (Weyapiersenwah). The
deserted towns had been bait to lure the invaders into ambushes.
The commander reported to the War Department that his forces
had burned three hundred buildings and destroyed twenty thousand
bushels of corn . Those were likely facts, but his claim to have bro ­
ken up the Indigenous political and military organization was not
accurate. Knox apparently knew that more than food and property
destruction would be needed to quell resistance. He ordered the
commanders to recruit five hundred weathered Kentucky mounted

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

rangers to burn and loot Miami towns and fields along the Wabash
River. They were to capture women and children as hostages to use
as terms of surrender.
In carrying out these orders, the marauding rangers demonstrated
what they could accomplish with unmitigated violence and a total
lack of scruples and respect for noncombatants. They destroyed the
Miamis' two largest towns and took forty-one women and children
captive, then sent warnings to the other towns that the same would
be their lot unless they surrendered unconditionally: " Your war­
riors will be slaughtered, your towns and villages ransacked and de­
stroyed, your wives and children carried into captivity, and you may
be assured that those who escape the fury of our mighty chiefs shall
find no resting place on this side of the great lakes." Yet the Indians
of the Ohio Country continued to fight, well aware of the likely
consequences. The Seneca leader Cornplanter called the colonizers
the "town destroyers." He described how, during the destruction
and suffering that troops wreaked on the western Iroquois, Seneca
"women look behind them and turn pale, and our children cling
close to the necks of their mothers."6
Despite the primary use of settler militias, President Washington
insisted that the new government had to develop a professional army
that would enhance US prestige in the eyes of European countries .
He also thought that the cost of using mercenaries, at four times
that of regular troops, was too high. But whenever regular troops
were sent into the Ohio Country, the Indigenous resisters drove
them out. Reluctantly, Washington resigned himself to the neces­
sity of using what were essentially vicious killers to terrorize the
region, thereby annexing land that could be sold to settlers . The
sale of confiscated land was the primary revenue source for the new
government.
In late 1 79 1 , the War Department notified Ohio squatters to call
out their rangers for an offensive. Major General "Mad" Anthony
Wayne was charged with restructuring the units of the army under
his command to function as irregular forces. Washington and other
officials were aware that Wayne was unreliable and an alcoholic, but
it appeared that such characteristics might be useful for the dirty

The Birth of a Nation

war ahead. Between 1 79 2 and 1 794 , Wayne put together a com­
bined force of regulars with a large contingent of experienced rang­
ers. He enthusiastically embraced such counterinsurgent tactics as
destroying food supplies and murdering civilians.
Among the fifteen hundred mounted rangers in the first mission
was the talented William Wells with his group of rangers. When he
was thirteen, Wells had been captured by the Miamis and then had
lived with them for nine years, marrying Little Turtle's daughter.
Under his father-in-law's command, Wells had fought the invading
settlers and the US Army. In 1 792, Wells was chosen to represent the
Miami Nation in a negotiation with the United States, but on arrival
for talks he encountered a brother from the family he had been sepa­
rated from for a decade. He was persuaded to return to Kentucky
and served as a ranger for the US Army. 7
Wayne's troops and rangers managed to enter the Ohio Coun­
try and establish a base they called Fort Defiance (in northwestern
Ohio), in what had been the heart of the Indigenous alliance led by
Little Turtle. 8 Wayne then made an ultimatum to the Shawnees: "In
pity to your innocent women and children, come and prevent the
further effusion of your blood." The Shawnee leader Blue Jacket
refused submission, and the US forces began destroying Shawnee
villages and fields and murdering women, children, and old men.
On August 20, 1 794 , at Fallen Timbers, the main Shawnee fighting
force was overpowered. Even after this US victory, the rangers con­
tinued for three days laying waste to Shawnee houses and cornfields.
After creating a fifty-mile swath of devastation, the invading forces
returned to Fort Defiance. The defeat at Fallen Timbers was a severe
blow to the Indigenous nations of the Ohio Country, but they would
reorganize their resistance during the following decade.
The US conquest of southern Ohio was formalized in the 1795
Treaty of Greenville, a victory based on vicious irregular warfare.
The nations of the region no longer had the British and the French
and the settlers to play against one another, but rather were now
faced with the determined imperialist thrust of an independent re­
public that had to coddle settlers if they were to recruit any into their
service.9

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

TECUMSEH

Over the following decade, more settlers poured over the Appala­
chians, squatting on Indigenous lands, and even building towns,
anticipating that the US military, land speculators, and civilian insti­
tutions would follow.
In the Ohio Country, the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Ten­
skwatawa began building a concerted Indigenous resistance in the
early nineteenth century. From their organizing center, Prophet's
Town, founded in 1 8 07, Tenskwatawa and his fellow organizers
traveled throughout Shawnee towns calling for a return to their cul­
tural roots, which had been eroded by the assimilation of Anglo­
American practices and trade goods, especially alcohol. 1 0 Abuse of
alcohol (and drugs) is epidemic like diseases in communities sub­
jected to colonization or other forms of domination, particularly
in crowded and miserable refugee situations. This is the case in all
parts of the world, not only among Native peoples of North Amer­
ica. Alcohol was an item in the tool kit of colonialists who made
it readily and cheaply available. Christian missionaries often took
advantage of these dysfunctional conditions to convert, offering not
only food and housing but also discipline to avoid alcohol. But this
was itself a form of colonial submission.
Significantly, Tecumseh did not limit his vision to the Ohio
Country but also envisaged organizing all the peoples west to the
Mississippi, north into the Great Lakes region, and south to the Gulf
of Mexico. He visited other Indigenous nations, calling for unity in
defiance of the squatters' presence on their lands. He presented a
program that would end all sales of Indigenous land to settlers . Only
then would settlers' migrations in search of cheap land cease and the
establishment of the United States in the West be prevented. An alli­
ance of all Indigenous nations could then manage Indigenous lands
as a federation. His program, strategy, and philosophy mark the
beginning of pan-Indigenous movements in Anglo-colonized North
America that established a model for future resistance. Joseph Brant
and Pontiac had originated the strategy in the 1 7 8 0s, but Tecumseh
and Tenskwatawa forged a pan-Indigenous framework made all the

The Birth of a Nation

85

more potent by combining Indigenous spirituality and politics while
respecting the particular religions and languages of each nation. 1 1
The evolving Indigenous alliance posed a serious barrier t o con­
tinued Anglo-American squatting and land speculation and acquisi­
tions in the trans-Appalachian region. With previous Indigenous
resistance movements, such as those led by Little Turtle and Blue
Jacket, during peace negotiations in the wake of ruinous US wars of
annihilation, leaders of factions had become "agency chiefs" who
agreed to land sales without the consent of those they purported
to represent. The colonized communities had fallen into economic
dependency on trade goods and federal annuities, incurring debts
that led to the forfeiture of what land remained in their hands. The
emerging younger generation was contemptuous of such chiefs,
whom they perceived as selling out their people. Anglo-American
settlers and speculators exerted increased pressure and issued new
threats of annihilation, provoking anger and calls for retaliation but
also a renewed spirit of resistance.
By l 8 ro, new Indigenous alliances challenged squatter settlers
in the Indiana and Illinois Territories at a time when war between
the United States and Great Britain was looming. Fearing that the
British would unite with the Indigenous alliances to prevent the US
imperialist goal to dominate the continent, these settlers drafted
a petition to President James Madison, demanding that the gov­
ernment act preemptively: "The safety of the persons and property
of this frontier can never be effectually secured, but by the break­
ing up of the combination formed by the Shawnee Prophet on the
Wabash." 12
In 1 8 09 , Indiana's territorial governor, William Henry Harri­
son, badgered and bribed a few destitute Delaware, Miami, and
Potawatomi individuals to sign the Treaty of Fort Wayne, accord­
ing to which these nations would hand over their land in what is
now southern Indiana for an annual annuity. Tecumseh promptly
condemned the treaty and those who signed it without the approval
of the peoples they represented . Harrison met with Tecumseh at
Vincennes in 1 8 10, along with other delegates of the allied Shawnee,
Kickapoo, Wyandot, Peoria, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Winnebago

86

An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

Nations. The Shawnee leader informed Harrison that he was leaving
for the South to bring the Muskogees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws
into the alliance.
Harrison, now convinced that Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa,
the Prophet, was the source of the renewed Indigenous militancy,
reasoned that destroying Prophet's Town would crush the resistance.
It would present a clear choice to the many Indigenous people who
supported the militant leaders: cede more land to the United States
and take the money and trade goods, or suffer further annihilation.
He decided to strike in Tecumseh's absence. Having served as Gen­
eral Wayne's aide-de-camp in the Fallen Timbers attacks, Harrison
knew how to keep his regular army forces from being ambushed. He
assembled Indiana and Kentucky rangers-seasoned Indian killers
-and some US Army regulars. At the site of what is today Terre
Haute, Indiana, the soldiers constructed Fort Harrison on Shaw­
nee land-a symbol of their intention to remain permanently. The
people in Prophet's Town were aware of the military advance, but
Tecumseh had warned them not to be drawn into a fight, because
the alliance was not yet ready for war. Tenskwatawa sent scouts to
observe the enemy's movements. The US forces arrived on the edge
of Prophet's Town at dawn on November 6, r 8 u . Seeing no alter­
native to overriding his brother's instructions, Tenskwatawa led an
assault before dawn the following morning. Only after some two
hundred of the Indigenous residents had fallen did the troops over­
power them, burning the town, destroying the granary, and looting,
even digging up graves and mutilating the corpses. This was the fa­
mous " battle" of Tippecanoe that made Harrison a frontier hero to
the settlers and later helped elect him president.13
The US Army's destruction of the capital of the alliance outraged
Indigenous peoples all over the Old Northwest, prompting fight­
ers of the Kickapoos, Winnebagos, Potawatamis, and even Creeks
from the South to converge on a British garrison at Fort Malden in
Canada to obtain supplies with which to fight. Contrary to the false
US assumption that Tecumseh was a mere tool of the British, he had
been unwilling to enter into a British alliance because Europeans
had proved so unreliable in the past. But now he spoke for unified
and coordinated Indigenous-led war on the United States that the

The Birth of a Nation

British could support if they wished but not control. President Madi­
son, speaking to Congress in seeking a declaration of war against
Great Britain, argued: "In reviewing the conduct of Great Britain
toward the United States our attention is necessarily drawn to the
warfare j ust renewed by the savages on one of our extensive fron­
tiers-a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex and
to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity."14
During the summer of 1 8 1 2 , the Indigenous alliance struck US
installations and squatter settlements with little help from the Brit­
ish. The US forts at present-day Detroit and D earborn fell. Among
the inhabitants of Fort Dearborn, Kentucky ranger William Wells
was killed and his body mutilated as that of a despised turncoat. In
the fall, Indigenous forces attacked Anglo-American squatter settle­
ments all over Illinois and Indiana Territories. The US rangers at­
tempting to track and kill the Indigenous fighters found destroyed
and abandoned Anglo-American settlements, with thousands of set­
tlers driven from their homes. In response, Harrison turned the mi­
litias loose on Indigenous fields and villages with no restrictions on
their behavior. The head of the Kentucky militia mustered two thou­
sand armed and mounted volunteers to destroy Indigenous towns
near today's Peoria, Illinois, but without success. A reversal came
in the fall of 1 8 1 3 , when Tecumseh was killed in the Battle of the
Thames and the Indigenous army was destroyed. Throughout the
eighteen-month war, militias and rangers attacked Indigenous civil­
ians and agricultural resources, leaving behind starving refugees.15

A S S A U LT O N T H E C H E R O K E E N AT I O N

In the unconquered Indigenous region of the Old Southwest, parallel
resistance took place during the two decades following US inde­
pendence, with similar tragic results, thanks to extirpative settler
warfare. Tennessee (formerly claimed, but not settled, by the British
colony of North Carolina) was carved out of the larger Cherokee
Nation and became a state in 1796. Its eastern part, particularly the
area around today's Knoxville, was a war zone. The mostly Scots­
Irish squatters, attempting to secure and expand their settlements,

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were at war with the resistant Cherokees called " Chickamaugas."
The settlers hated both the Indigenous people whom they were at­
tempting to displace as well as the newly formed federal government.
In 1 7 8 4 , a group of North Carolina settlers, led by settler-ranger
John Sevier, had seceded from western Carolina and established the
independent country of Franklin with Sevier as president. Neither
North Carolina nor the federal government had exerted any con­
trol over the settlements in the eastern Tennessee Valley region. In
the summer of 1 7 8 8 , Sevier ordered an unprovoked, preemptive at­
tack on the Chickamauga towns, killing thirty villagers and forcing
the survivors to flee south. Sevier's actions formed a template for
settler-federal relations, with the settlers implementing the federal
government's final solution, while the federal government feigned an
appearance of limiting settler invasions of Indigenous lands. 16
Facing the fierce resistance of Indigenous nations in the Ohio
Country and the fighting between the Muskogee Nati on and the
state of Georgia, Washington's administration sought to contain
Indigenous resistance in the South. Yet now the settlers were pro­
voking the Cherokees in what would soon be the state of Tennes­
see. Secretary of War Knox claimed to believe that the thickness of
settlers' development, converting Indigenous hunting grounds into
farms, would slowly overwhelm the Indigenous nations and drive
them out. He advised the squatters' leaders to continue building,
which would attract more illegal settlers. This disingenuous view
ignored the fact that the Indigenous farmers were well aware of the
intentions of the settlers to destroy them and seize their territories.
In the 1 7 8 5 Treaty of Hopewell between the federal government
and the Cherokee Nation, the United States had agreed to restrict
settlement to the east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The several
thousand squatter families who claimed nearly a million acres of
land in precisely that zone were not about to abide by the treaty.
Knox saw the situation as a showdown with the settlers and a test
of federal authority west of the mountain chains, from Canada to
Spanish Florida. The settlers did not believe that the federal gov­
ernment meant to protect their interests, which encouraged them
to go it alone. In the face of constant attacks, the Cherokees were
desperate to halt the destruction of their towns and fields. Many

The Birth of a Nation

were starving, more without shelter, on the move as refugees, with
only the Chickamauga fighters as a protective force fighting off the
seasoned ranger-settler Indian killers. In July 1 79 1 , the Cherokees
reluctantly signed the Treaty of Holston, agreeing to abandon any
claims to land on which the Franklin settlements sat in return for an
annual annuity of $100,000 from the federal government.17
The United States did nothing to halt the flow of squatters into
Cherokee territory as the boundary was drawn in the treaty. A year
after the treaty was signed, war broke out, and the Chickamau­
gas, under the leadership of Dragging Canoe, attacked squatters,
even laying siege to Nashville.18 The war continued for two years,
with five hundred Chickamauga fighters joined by Muskogees and
a contingent of Shawnees from Ohio, led by Cheeseekau, one of Te­
cumseh's brothers, who was later killed in the fighting. The settlers
organized an offensive against the Chickamaugas. The federal In­
dian agent attempted to persuade the Chickamaugas to stop fighting,
warning that the frontier settlers were "always dreadful, not only to
the warriors, but to the innocent and helpless women and children,
and old men." The agent also warned the settlers against attacking
Indigenous towns, but he had to order the militia to disperse a mob
of three hundred settlers, who, as he wrote, out of "a mistaken zeal
to serve their country" had gathered to destroy "as many as they
could of the Cherokee towns."19 Sevier and his rangers invaded the
Chickamaugas' towns in September 1 79 3 , with a stated mission of
total destruction. Although forbidden by the federal agent to attack
the villages, Sevier gave orders for a scorched-earth offensive.
By choosing to attack at harvesttime, Sevier intended to starve
out the residents . The strategy worked. Soon after, the federal agent
reported to the secretary of war that the region was pacified, with
no Indigenous actions since "the visit General Sevier paid the [Cher­
okee] nation." A year later, Sevier demanded absolute submission
from the Chickamauga villages lest they be wiped out completely.
Receiving no response, a month later 1 ,750 Franklin rangers at­
tacked two villages, burning all the buildings and fields-again near
the harvest-and shooting those who tried to flee. Sevier then re­
peated his demand for submission, requiring the Chickamaugas to
abandon their towns for the woods, taking only what they could

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transport. He wrote: "War will cost the United States much money,
and some lives, but it will destroy the existence of your people, as a
nation, forever." The remaining Chickamauga villages agreed to al­
low the settlers to remain in Cherokee country.
In squatter settlements, ruthless leaders like Sevier were not the
exception but the rule. Once they had full control and got what they
wanted, they made their peace with the federal government, which
in turn depended on their actions to expand the republic's territory.
Sevier went on to serve as a US representative from North Carolina
and as governor of Tennessee. To this day, such men are idolized
as great heroes, embodying the essence of the "American spirit." A
bronze statue of John Sevier in his ranger uniform stands today in
the National Statuary Hall of the US Capitol. 2 0

M U S KO G E E R E S I S TA N C E

The Muskogee Nation officially had remained neutral i n the war be­
tween the Anglo-American settlers and the British monarchy. None­
theless, many individual Muskogees had taken the opportunity to
raid and harass squatters within their national territories in Georgia,
Tennessee, and South Carolina. When the United States was formed,
the Muskogee Nation turned to Spanish Florida for an alliance in
trying to stop the flow of squatters into their territory. Spain had an
interest in the alliance as a buffer to its holdings, which at the time in­
cluded the lower Mississippi and the city of New Orleans. The squat­
ters believed that the Muskogees and the Spanish officials, as well as
the British, were in cahoots to keep them out of western Georgia and
present-day Alabama and considered the Muskogee Nation to be the
main barrier to their permanent settlement in the region, particu­
larly Georgia. The Muskogees called the squatters ecunnaunuxulgee
-"people greedily grasping after the lands of the red people ."
The federal government negotiated with the Muskogee Nation
for a new boundary and for more settlements and trade, in ex­
change for $60,000 a year in goods. The squatters did everything
they could to provoke the Muskogees to war, while ignoring the
treaty's provisions. They slaughtered hundreds of deer in the Mus-

The Birth of a Nation

kogee deer parks, with the intention of wiping out the livelihood of
Muskogee hunters, who also made up the resistance forces. But the
War Department was complicit, using money due to the Muskogees
under the treaty to divide them by bribing leaders (miccos) and thus
isolating the insurgents from their communities. Eighty Muskogee
fighters j oined the Chickamaugas when they were still fighting, and
together they attacked the Cumberland district of Tennessee in early

1792, while others struck Georgia squatters in Muskogee territory.
It was then that Shawnee delegates, sent by Tecumseh, visited from
the Ohio Country to encourage the Muskogees to drive the squatters
from their lands, as the Shawnees h � d done successfully up to that
time. Secretary of War Knox wrote to the federal agent in Georgia
that he knew the Muskogee militants were "a Banditti, and do not
implicate the whole nor any considerable part of that Nation. The
hostilities of the Individuals arise from their own disposition, and
are not probably dictated, either by the Chiefs, or by any Towns or
other respectable classes of the Indians."21
By this time, in the process of the preceding British coloniza­
tion and continuing with US colonization of the Muskogee Nation
and other southeastern Indigenous nations, an Indigenous client
class-called "compradors" by Africans, "caciques" in Spanish­
colonized America-essential to colonialist projects, was firmly in
place. This privileged class was dependent on their colonial masters
for their personal wealth. This class division wracked the traditional
relatively egalitarian and democratic Indigenous societies inter­
nally. This small elite in the Southeast embraced the enslavement
of Africans, and a few even became affluent planters in the style
of southern planters, mainly through intermarriage with Anglos.
The trading posts established by US merchants further divided Mus­
kogee society, pulling many deeply into the US economy through
dependency and debt, and away from the Spanish and British trad­
ing firms, which had previously left their lands undisturbed. This
method of colonization by co-optation and debt proved effective
wherever employed by colonial powers in the world, but only when
it was accompanied by extreme violence at any sign of indigenous
insurgency. The United States moved across North America in this
manner. While most Muskogees continued to follow their traditional

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democratic ways in their villages, the elite Muskogees were making
decisions and compromises on their behalf that would bear tragic
consequences for them all.
Federal authorities in 1 79 3 identified five hundred Muskogee
towns where they believed the majority of insurgents resided. Secre­
tary of War Knox called on the Georgia militia for federal service.
The federal Indian agent notified the War Department that the set­
tlers were set on assaulting the Muskogees and asked that a thou­
sand. federal troops be deployed to occupy the insurgent Muskogee
towns. Although the War Department rejected that idea and war
was postponed, the restless Georgian militiamen deserted after hav­
ing rushed to the Muskogee territory to loot, burn, and kill, only to
be forced to wait. Persistent squatter attacks on Muskogee farmers,
traders, and towns continued.
During the winter of 1 793-94, Georgia border squatters formed
an armed group of landless settlers. The leader, Elijah Clarke, was
a veteran Indian killer and had been a major general in the Georgia
militia during the war of independence, in which he commanded
rangers to destroy Indigenous towns and fields. As a US patriot hero,
Clarke was certain that his former troops would never take up arms
against him. Clarke and his rangers declared the independence of
their own republic, but Georgia state authorities captured him and
destroyed the rebel stronghold. Still, Clarke's action sent a strong
message to state and federal authorities that landless squatters were
determined to take Indigenous lands. They would get the leader they
needed for that purpose a decade later. Meanwhile, the elite of the
Muskogee towns were successful in marginalizing the insurgents,
while the federal government increased grants, and the wealthy class
of Muskogees established trading posts, making whiskey cheaply
available to impoverished Muskogees. 22

T H E D I E I S CAST

The successful settler intrusion into western Georgia made Ala­
bama and Mississippi the next objectives for the rapidly expand­
ing slave-worked plantation economy, which, along with land sales

The Birth of a Nation

of occupied Indigenous lands by private speculators, was essential
to the US economy as a whole. The plantation economy required
vast swaths of land for cash crops, even before cotton was king,
leaving in its wake destroyed Indigenous national territories and
Anglo settlers who would fight and die driving out the Indigenous
communities yet remain landless themselves, moving on to the next
frontier to try again. US colonization produced the subsequent
hideous slavery-based rule of the Old Southwest, which would flour­
ish for seven more decades. Unlike in the Ohio Country, the Wash­
ington administration avoided force and in doing so alienated settlers
in the region. By preventing them from wiping out the Muskogees,
the federal government was seen as the enemy, just as the British au­
thority had been for an earlier generation of determined settlers. But
that would soon change with the Muskogee War of 1 8 1 3 - 1 4 , nar­
rated in the following chapter, in which, as Robert V. Remini puts it
in Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars, "Tennessee frontiersman
Andrew Jackson, commanding both regular Army troops and fron­
tiersmen, personally guaranteed that the Creeks would feel the full
brunt of total war."23
During 1 8 rn-1 5 , then, two parallel wars were ongoing, one in
the Ohio Country-the Old Northwest-which ended with the de­
feat of the Tecumseh-led alliance, and the other the war against
the Muskogee Nation in 1 8 1 3 -1 4 . Unlike the 1 8 1 2-15 war between
Britain and the United States, with which these wars overlapped,
the situation did not return to things being as they had been before,
but rather culminated in the elimination of Indigenous power east
of the Mississippi. US conquest was not determined by the defeat of
the British in battle in 1 8 1 5 , but rather by genocidal war and forced
removal.24
US leaders brought counterinsurgency out of the pre-indepen­
dence period into the new republic, imprinting on the fledgling
federal army a way of war with formidable consequences for the
continent and the world. Counterinsurgent warfare and ethnic
cleansing targeting Indigenous civilians continued to define US war
making throughout the nineteenth century, with markers such as
the three US counterinsurgent wars against the Seminoles through
the Sand Creek Massacre of 1 8 64 to Wounded Knee in 1 8 9 0 . Early

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on, regular armies had incorporated these strategies and tactics as a
way of war to which it often turned, although frequently the regular
army simply stood by while local militias and settlers acting on their
own used terror against Indigenous noncombatants.
Irregular warfare would be waged west of the Mississippi as it
had been earlier against the Abenakis, Cherokees, Shawnees, Mus­
kogees, and even Christian Indians. In the Civil War, these methods
played a prominent role on both sides. Confederate regular forces,
Confederate guerrillas such as William Quantrill, and General Sher­
man for the Union all engaged in waging total war against civilians.
The pattern would continue in US military interventions overseas,
from the Philippines and Cuba to Central America, Korea, Vietnam,
Iraq, and Afghanistan. The cumulative effect goes beyond simply
the habitual use of military means and becomes the very basis for US
American identity. The Indian-fighting frontiersmen and the "val­
iant" settlers in their circled covered wagons are the iconic images
of that identity. The continued popularity of, and respect for, the
genocidal sociopath Andrew Jackson is another indicator. Actual
men such as Robert Rogers, Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and David
Crockett, as well as fictitious ones created by James Fenimore Coo­
per and other best-selling writers, call to mind D. H . Lawrence's
"myth of the essential white American" -that the "essential Ameri­
can soul" is a killer. 25

SIX

TH E L A S T O F THE M O H I C A N S
A N D A N D R E W J AC K S O N ' S
WH I TE R E P U B L I C

The settler's work is to make even dreams of liberty
impossible for the native. The native's work is to imagine
all possible methods for destroying the settler.
-Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

In 1 8 03 , the Jefferson administration, without consulting any af­
fected Indigenous nation, purchased the Louisiana Territory from
Napoleon Bonaparte. Louisiana comprised 8 2 8 ,000 square miles,
and its addition doubled the size of the United States. The territory
encompassed all or part of multiple Indigenous nations, including
the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Pawnee, Osage, and Coman­
che, among other peoples of the bison. It also included the area that
would soon be designated Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the site of
relocation of Indigenous peoples from west of the Mississippi. Fif­
teen future states would emerge from the taking: all of present-day
Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; Min­
nesota west of the Mississippi; most of North and South Dakota;
northeastern New Mexico and North Texas; the portions of Mon­
tana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; and
Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Or­
leans. The territory pressed against lands occupied by Spain, includ­
ing Texas and all the territory west of the Continental Divide to the
Pacific Ocean. These would soon be next on the US annexation list. 1
At the time, many US Americans saw the purchase as a strate­
gic means of averting war with France while securing commerce

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

on the Mississippi. But it was not long before some began eyeing it
for settlement and others proposing an "exchange" of Indigenous
lands in the Old Northwest and Old Southwest for lands west of
the Mississippi. 2 Before turning to conquest and . colonization west
of the Mississippi, the slavery-based rule of the Southeast would be
ethnically cleansed of Indigenous peoples. The man for the job was
Andrew Jackson.

CA R E E R B U I L D I N G T H R O U G H G E N O C I D E

Neither superior technology nor a n overwhelming number of set­
tlers made up the mainspring of the birth of the United States or the
spread of its power over the entire world. Rather, the chief cause was
the colonialist settler-state's willingness to eliminate whole civiliza­
tions of people in order to possess their land. This trend of exter­
mination became common in the twentieth century as the United
States seized military and economic control of the world, capping
five hundred years of European colonialism and imperialism. 3 The
canny Prussian Otto von Bismarck, founder and first chancellor
( 1 8 7 1-90) of the German empire, was prescient in observing, "The
colonization of North America has been the decisive fact of the
modern world. "4 Jefferson was its architect. Andrew Jackson was
the implementer of the final solution for the Indigenous peoples east
of the Mississippi.
Andrew Jackson was an influential Tennessee land speculator,
politician, and wealthy owner of a slave-worked plantation, the
Hermitage. He was also a veteran Indian killer. Jackson's family
personified the Protestant Scots-Irish migration to the borderlands
of empires. Jackson's Scots-Irish parents and two older brothers ar­
rived in Pennsylvania from County Antrim in Northern Ireland in
1 7 6 5 . The Jacksons soon moved to a Scots-Irish community on the
North Carolina border with South Carolina. Jackson's father died
after a logging accident a few weeks before Andrew's birth in 1 767.
Life was hard for a single mother and three children on the frontier.
At age thirteen, with little education, Jackson became a courier for
the local regiment of the frontier secessionists in their war of in-

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

dependence from Britain. Jackson's mother and his brothers died
during the war, leaving him an orphan. He worked at various j obs,
then studied law and was admitted to the bar in the Western Dis­
trict of North Carolina, which would later become the state of Ten­
nessee. Through his legal work, most of which related to disputed
land claims, he acquired a plantation near Nashville worked by 150
slaves. He helped usher in Tennessee as a state in 1 79 6, then was
elected as its US senator, an office he quit after a year to become a
judge in the Tennessee Supreme Court for six years.
As the most notorious land speculator in western Tennessee,
Jackson enriched himself by acquiring a portion of the Chickasaw
Nation's land. It was in 1 8 0 1 that Jackson first took command of the
Tennessee militia as a colonel and began his Indian-killing military
career. After his brutal war of annihilation against the Muskogee
Nation, Jackson continued building his national military and po­
litical career by tackling the resistant Seminoles in what are known
as the Seminole Wars. In 1 8 3 6, during the second of these wars,
US Army general Thomas S . Jesup captured the popular Anglo at­
titude toward the Seminoles: "The country can be rid of them only
by exterminating them." By then Jackson was finishing his second
term as the most popular president in US history to that date, and
the policy of genocide was embedded in the highest office of the US
government. 5
In the Southeast, the Choctaws and Chickasaws turned exclu­
sively to US traders once the new US republic effectively cut off ac­
cess to the Spanish in Florida. Soon they were trapped in the US
trading world, in which they would run up debts and then have
no way to pay other than by ceding land to creditors who were of­
ten acting as agents of the federal government. This was no acci­
dental outcome but was foreseen and encouraged by Jefferson. In
1 8 0 5 , the Choctaws ceded most of their lands to the United States
for $50,000, and the Chickasaws relinquished all their lands north
of the Tennessee River for $20,000. Many Choctaws and Chicka­
saws thus became landless participants in the expanding plantation
economy, burdened by debts and poverty. 6
The division of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation and the rise of
Andrew Jackson as a result led to his eventual elevation to the

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presidency and carrying out of the final solution-elimination of all
the Indigenous communities east of the Mississippi through forced
removal. After the Choctaws and Chickasaws lost most of their ter­
ritories, only the Muskogees continued to resist the United States.
The Muskogee Nation was a federation of autonomous towns
located in the valleys of the many rivers that crisscross what are now
the states of Alabama, Tennessee, and parts of Georgia and Florida.
The Lower Creeks inhabited and farmed in the eastern part of this
region watered by the Chattahoochee, Flint, and Apalachicola Riv­
ers, while the Upper Creeks lived west of them, in the valleys of
the Coosa, Tallapoosa and Alabama Rivers. Following US indepen­
dence, the Muskogees were divided by settler colonialism. Lower
Creek villages became economically dependent on settlers and emu­
lated settlers' values, including ownership of African slaves. This
was largely due to two decades of diligent work on the part of US
Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins. He was in charge of the US gov­
ernment's "civilization" project, lending the settler moniker " Five
Civilized Tribes" to describe the great agricultural nations of the
Southeast. Hawkins's mission was to instill Euro-American values
and practices in Indigenous peoples-including the profit motive,
privatization of property, debt, accumulation of wealth by a few,
and slavery-allowing settlers to gain the land and assimilate the
Muskogees. At the time of independence, hundreds of settlers were
squatting illegally on lands of Muskogees of the Lower Creek towns,
and that is where Hawkins concentrated, leaving the Muskogees up­
river alone. However, traditionalists among the Upper Creeks, who
had allied with Tecumseh and the Shawnee confederation, under­
stood that they would be next, as they saw the twenty-year Hawkins
project transforming some citizens of the Lower Creek towns into
wealthy plantation and slave owners, while the majority became
landless and poor.
Traditionalist fighters, called Red Sticks due to the color of
their wooden spears, began an offensive against collaborating Up­
per Creeks and settlers that ended in civil war during 1 8 1 3 . The
Red Sticks created chaos that affected Hawkins's scheme, as they
attacked anyone associated with his program. Their effectiveness,
however, provoked a genocidal counteroffensive not officially autho-

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

rized by the federal government, led by Andrew Jackson who was
then head of the Tennessee militias. Jackson threatened to form his
own mercenary army to drive the Muskogees " into the ocean" if the
government failed to eradicate the insurgents.7 Although Jackson
and his fellow Tennesseans made it clear that their goal was extermi­
nation of the Muskogee Nation, their rhetoric claimed self-defense.
In a serie s of search-and-destroy missions over three months prior to
.
the final assault on the Red Sticks, Jackson's mercenaries killed hun­
dreds of Muskogee civilians, pursuing without mercy even homeless
and starved refugees seeking shelter and safety. By this point, the
Red Sticks had killed most of the Muskogee Nation livestock both
to deprive US soldiers of food and to rid Muskogee culture of the
colonizers' influence. 8
Both Shawnee fighters and Africans who had freed themselves
from slavery allied with the Red Sticks. With all their families they
set up a fortified encampment at Tohopeka at the Horseshoe Bend
on the Tallapoosa River in present-day Alabama. Jackson proceeded
to mobilize Lower Creek fighters and some Cherokee allies against
the Red Sticks. In March 1 8 1 4 , with seven hundred mounted mili­
tiamen and six hundred Cherokee and Lower Creek fighters, Jack­
son's armies attacked the Red Stick stronghold. The mercenaries
captured three hundred Red Stick wives and children and held them
as hostages to induce Muskogee surrender. Of a thousand Red Stick
and allied insurgents, eight hundred were killed. Jackson lost forty­
nme men.
In the aftermath of "the Battle of Horseshoe Bend," as it is
known in US military annals, Jackson's troops fashioned reins for
their horses' bridles from skin stripped from the Muskogee bodies,
and they saw to it that souvenirs from the corpses were given "to the
ladies of Tennessee."9 Following the slaughter, Jackson justified his
troops' actions: "The fiends of the Tallapoosa will no longer murder
our women and children, or disturb the quiet of our borders . . . .
They have disappeared from the face of the Earth . . . . How lamen­
table it is that the path to peace should lead through blood, and over
the carcasses of the slain! But it is in the dispensation of that provi­
dence, which inflicts partial evil to produce general good." 10
Horseshoe Bend marked the end of the Muskogees' resistance in

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

their original homeland. As historian Alan Brinkley has observed,
Jackson's political fortunes depended on the fate of the Indians­
that is, their eradication. 1 1
The surrender document the Muskogee Nation was forced t o sign
in 1 8 1 4 , the Treaty of Fort Jackson, asserted that they had lost under
"principles of national justice and honorable war." Andrew Jackson,
the only US negotiator of the treaty, insisted on nothing less than
the total destruction of the Muskogee Nation, which the Muskogees
had no power to refuse or negotiate. These terms of total surrender
shocked the small group of Muskogee plantation and slave own­
ers, who thought that they had been thoroughly accepted by the US
Americans. They had fought alongside the Anglo militias against
the majority Red Sticks in the war just concluded, yet all Muskogees
were now to be punished equally. To no avail did the "friendlies"
prostrate themselves before Jackson at the treaty meeting, begging
that they and their holdings be spared. Jackson told them that the
extreme punishment exacted upon them should teach all those who
would try to oppose US domination. "We bleed our enemies in such
cases," he explained, "to give them their senses."12 Military histo­
rian Grenier observes that "Jackson's 'bleeding' of the Muskogees
marks a culminating point in American military history as the end
of the Transappalachian East's Indian wars . . . . The conquest of
the West was not guaranteed by defeating the British Army in battle
in 1 8 1 5 , but by defeating and driving the Indians from their home­
lands." 13
The treaty obliged surviving Muskogees to move onto western
remnants of their homelands, and Jackson, far from being repri­
manded for his genocidal methods, won a commission from Presi­
dent James Madison as major general in the US Army. The territory
that would become Alabama and Mississippi now lay open to An­
glo-American settlement, an ominous green light to the expansion
of plantation slavery. The Muskogee War thus inscribed a US policy
of ethnic cleansing onto an entire Indigenous population. The policy
originated by Andrew Jackson in that war would be reconfirmed
politically when he became president in 1 8 2 8 . 14
The Upper Creek Muskogees who remained in Alabama surren-

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

dered to Jackson and ceded twenty-three million acres of their ances­
tral lands to the United States in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. The Red
Sticks, however, j oined the resistant Seminole Nation in the Florida
Everglades and three more decades of Muskogee resistance ensued.
During this period, Anglo-American slave owners, and Andrew
Jackson in particular, were determined to destroy the safe havens
that Seminole towns offered to Africans who escaped from slav­
ery. 1 5 The Seminole Nation had not existed under that name prior
to European colonization. The ancestral towns of the Indigenous
people who became known as Seminoles were located along rivers
in a large area of what is today Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina,
and the Florida Panhandle. In the mid-eighteenth century, Waka­
puchasee (Cowkeeper) and his people separated from the Coweta
Muskogees and moved south into what was then Spanish-occupied
Florida. As Spain, Britain, and later the United States decimated
Indigenous towns throughout the Southeast, survivors, including
self-emancipated Africans, established a refuge in Seminole territory
in Spanish Florida in the Everglades. European incursions came in
the form of military attacks, disease, and disruption of trade routes,
causing collapse and realignments within and between the towns. 1 6
The Seminole Nation was born of resistance and included the
vestiges of dozens of Indigenous communities as well as escaped
Africans, as the Seminole towns served as refuge. In the Caribbean
and Brazil, people in such escapee communities were called Ma­
roons, but in the United States the liberated Africans were absorbed
into Seminole Nation culture. Then, as now, Seminoles spoke the
Muskogee language, and much later (in 1957) the US government
designated them an "Indian tribe." The Seminoles were one of the
" Five Civilized Tribes" ordered from their national homelands in
the 1 8 3 0s to Indian Territory (later made part of the state of Okla­
homa).
The United States waged three wars against the Seminole Na­
tion between 1 8 1 7 and 1 8 5 8 . The prolonged and fierce Second
Seminole War ( 1 8 3 5-4 2) was the longest foreign war waged by the
United States up to the Vietnam War. The US military further de­
veloped its army, naval, and marine capabilities in again adopting a

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counterinsurgency strategy, in this case against the Seminole towns
in the Everglades. Once again US forces targeted civilians, destroyed
food supplies, and sought to destroy every last insurgent. What US
military annals call the First Seminole War ( 1 8 1 7-19) began when
US authorities entered Spanish Florida illegally in an attempt to re­
cover US plantation owners' "property": former African slaves. The
Seminoles repelled the invasion. In 1 8 1 8 , President James Monroe
ordered Andrew Jackson, then a major general in the US Army, to
lead three thousand soldiers into Florida to crush the Seminoles and
retrieve the Africans among them. The expedition destroyed a num­
ber of Seminole settlements and then captured the Spanish fort at
Pensacola, bringing down the Spanish government, but it failed in
destroying Seminole guerrilla resistance and the Seminoles did not
agree to hand over any former slaves. "Armed occupation was the
true way of settling a conquered country," Senator Thomas Hart
Benton of Missouri said at the time, reflecting a popular blend of
militarism and white-supremacist Christian identity. "The children
of Israel entered the promised land, with implements of husbandry
in one hand, and the weapons of war in the other."17 The United
States annexed Florida as a territory in 1 8 19 , opening it to Anglo­
American settlement. In l 8 2 I Jackson was appointed military com­
mander of Florida Territory. The Seminoles never sued for peace,
were never conquered, and never signed a treaty with the United
States, and although some were rounded up and sent in 1 8 3 2 to
Oklahoma, where they were given a land base, the Seminole Nation
has never ceased to exist in the Everglades.

T H E M Y T H I C A L F O U N D AT I O N O F S E T T L E R PAT R I OT I S M

Between 1 8 1 4 and 1 8 2 4 , three-fourths of present-day Alabama and
Florida, a third of Tennessee, a fifth of Georgia and Mississippi, and
parts of Kentucky and North Carolina became the private property
of white settlers-all of the land seized from Indigenous farmers. In
1 8 2 4 , the first permanent US colonial institution was established.
First named the Office of Indian Affairs and placed tellingly within
the Department of War, the agency was transferred to the Depart-

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

103

ment of Interior twenty-five years later following the annexation
of half of Mexico. In making this transfer, the federal government
showed overconfidence in assuming that armed Indigenous resis­
tance to US aggression and colonization had ended. Such resistance
would continue for another half century.
Whereas white supremacy had been the working rationalization
for British theft of Indigenous lands and for European enslavement
of Africans, the bid for independence by what became the United
States of America was more problematic. Democracy, equality, and
equal rights do not fit well with dominance of one race by another,
much less with genocide, settler colonialism, and empire. It was
during the l 8 2os-the beginning of the era of Jacksonian settler
democracy-that the unique US origin myth evolved reconciling
rhetoric with reality. Novelist James Fenimore Cooper was among
its initial scribes.
Cooper's reinvention of the birth of the United States in his novel

The Last of the Mahicans has become the official US origin story.
Herman Melville called Cooper "our national novelist."18 Cooper
was the wealthy son of a US congressman, a land speculator who
built Cooperstown, named after himself, in upstate New York
where he grew up. His hometown was christened all-American with
the establishment of the National Baseball Hall of Fame there in
19 3 6, during the Depression. Expelled from Yale, Cooper joined the
navy, then married and began writing. In 1 8 2 3 , he published The

Pioneers, the first book in his Leatherstocking Tales series, the other
four being The Last of the Mahicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder,
and The Deers/ayer (the last published in 1 8 4 1 ) . Each featured the
character Natty Bumppo, also called variously, depending on his
age, Leatherstocking, Pathfinder, or Deerslayer. Bumppo is a Brit­
ish settler on land appropriated from the Delaware Nation and is
buddies with its fictional Delaware leader Chingachgook (the "last
Mohican" in the myth). Together the Leatherstocking Tales narrate
the mythical forging of the new country from the 1 75 4-63 French
and Indian War in The Last of the Mahicans to the settlement of the
plains by migrants traveling by wagon train from Tennessee. At
the end of the saga Bumppo dies a very old man on the edge of the
Rocky Mountains, as he gazes east. 1 9

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

The Last of the Mahicans, published in 1 8 26, was a best seller
throughout the nineteenth century and has been in print continu­
ously since, with two Hollywood movies based on the story, the
most recent made in 199 2 , the Columbus Quincentennial.2° Cooper
devised a fictional counterpoint of celebration to the dark under­
belly of the new American nation-the birth of something new and
wondrous, literally, the US American race, a new people born of
the merger of the best of both worlds, the Native and the European,
not biological merger but something more ephemeral, involving
the dissolving of the Indian. In the novel, Cooper has the last of the
"noble" and "pure" Natives die off as nature would have it, with
the " last Mohican" handing the continent over to Hawkeye, the
nativized settler, his adopted son. This convenient fantasy could be
seen as quaint at best if it were not for its deadly staying power.
Cooper had much to do with creating the US origin myth to which
generations of historians have dedicated themselves, fortifying what
historian Francis Jennings has described as "exclusion from the pro­
cess of formation of American society and culture":
In the first place they [US historians] exclude Amerindians (as
also Afro-Americans) from participation, except as foils for
Europeans, and thus assume that American civilization was
formed by Europeans in a struggle against the savagery or
barbarism of the nonwhite races. This first conception implies
the second-that the civilization so formed is unique. In the
second conception uniqueness is thought to have been created
through the forms and processes of civilization's struggle on a
specifically American frontier. Alternatively, civilization was
able to triumph because the people who bore it were unique
from the beginning-a Chosen People or a super race. Either
way American culture is seen as not only unique but better
than all other cultures, precisely because of its differences
from them.21

US exceptionalism weaves through much of the literature produced
in the United States, not only the writing of historians. Although

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

Wallace Stegner decried the devastation wrought by imperialism
on Indigenous peoples and the land, he reinforced the idea of US
uniqueness by reducing colonization to a twist of fate that produced
some charming characteristics:
Ever since Daniel Boone took his first excursion over Cumber­
land Gap, Americans have been wanderers . . . . With a conti­
nent to take over and Manifest Destiny to goad us, we could
not have avoided being footloose. The initial act of emigration
from Europe, an act of extreme, deliberate disaffiliation, was
the beginning of a national habit.
It should not be denied, either, that being footloose has al­
ways exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape
from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations,
with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west. Our
folk heroes and our archetypal literary figures accurately re­
flect that side of us. Leatherstocking, Huckleberry Finn, the
narrator of Moby Dick, all are orphans and wanderers; any of
them could say, "Call me Ishmael." The Lone Ranger has no
dwelling place except the saddle. 22
The British novelist and critic D. H. Lawrence, who lived in
northern New Mexico for two years, conceptualized the US origin
myth, invoking Cooper's frontiersman character Deerslayer: "You
have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other
stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of
by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a
killer. It has never yet melted."23
Historian Wai-chee Dimock points out that nonfiction sources of
the time reflected the same view:
The United States Magazine and Democratic Review summed
it up by arguing that whereas European powers "conquer only
to enslave," America, being "a free nation," "conquers only
to bestow freedom." . . . Far from being antagonistic, "em­
pire" and "liberty" are instrumentally conjoined. If the for­
mer stands to safeguard the latter, the latter, in turn, serves
to justify the former. Indeed, the conjunction of the two,

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

of freedom and dominion, gives America its sovereign place
in history-its Manifest Destiny, as its advocates so aptly
called it. 24
Reconciling empire and liberty-based on the violent taking of
Indigenous lands-into a usable myth allowed for the emergence
of an enduring populist imperialism. Wars of conquest and ethnic
cleansing could be sold to "the people"-indeed could be fought for
by the young men of those very people-by promising to expand
economic opportunity, democracy, and freedom for all.
The publication arc of the Leatherstocking Tales parallels the
Jackson presidency. For those who consumed the books in that pe­
riod and throughout the nineteenth century-generations of young
white men-the novels became perceived fact, not fiction, and the
basis for the coalescence of US American nationalism. Behind the
legend was a looming real-life figure, the archetype that inspired
the stories, namely, Daniel Boone, an icon of US settler colonialism.
Boone's life spanned from 1 7 3 4 to 1 8 20, precisely the period cov­
ered in the Leatherstocking series. Boone was born in Berks County,
Pennsylvania, on the edge of British settlement. He is an avatar of
the moving colonial-Indigenous frontier. To the west lay "Indian
Country," claimed through the Doctrine of Discovery by both Brit­
ain and France but free of European settlers save for a few traders,
trappers, and soldiers manning colonial outposts.
Daniel Boone died in 1 8 2 0 in Missouri, a part of the vast ter­
ritory acquired in the 1 8 03 Louisiana Purchase. When Missouri
opened for settlement, the Boone family led the initial settlers there.
His body was taken for burial in Frankfort, Kentucky, the covenant
heart of the Ohio Country, Indian Country, for which the revolution
had been fought and in which he had been the trekker superhero,
almost a deity. Daniel Boone became a celebrity at age fifty in 1784,
a year after the end of the war of independence. Real estate entre­
preneur John Filson, seeking settlers to buy property in the Ohio
Country, wrote and self-published The Discovery, Settlement and

Present State of Kentucke, along with a map to guide illegal squat­
ters . The book contained an appendix about Daniel Boone, purport­
edly written by Boone himself. That part of the book on Boone's

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

107

"adventures" subsequently was published as "The Adventures of
Col. Daniel Boone" in the American Magazine in 1 7 8 7, then as a
book. Thereby a superstar was born-the mythical hero, the hunter,
the "Man Who Knows Indians,'' as Richard Slotkin has described
this US American archetype:
The myth of the hunter that had grown up about the figure
of Filson's Daniel Boone provided a framework within which
Americans attempted to define their cultural identity, social
and political values, historical experience, and literary aspira­
tions . . . . Daniel Boone, Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson
were heroes to the whole nation because their experiences had
reference to many or all of these common experiences. "The
Hunters of Kentucky,'' a popular song that swept the nation
in 1 8 22-2 8 , helped elect Andrew Jackson as President by as­
sociating him with Boone, the hero of the West. 25
Yet the Leatherstocking's positive twist on genocidal colonialism
was based on the reality of invasion, squatting, attacking, and colo­
nizing of the Indigenous nations. Neither Filson nor Cooper created
that reality. Rather, they created the narratives that captured the
experience and imagination of the Anglo-American settler, stories
that were surely instrumental in nullifying guilt related to genocide
and set the pattern of narrative for future US writers, poets, and
historians.

COM M A N D E R AND C H I E F

Andrew Jackson is enshrined in most US history texts in a chapter
titled "The Age of Jackson," "The Age of Democracy," "The Birth
of Democracy," or some variation thereon. 26 The Democratic Party
claims Jackson and Jefferson as its founders. Every year, state and
national Democratic organizations hold fund-raising events they call
Jefferson-Jackson Dinners. They understand that Thomas Jefferson
was the thinker and Jackson the doer in forging populist democracy
for full participation in the fruits of colonialism based on the oppor­
tunity available to Anglo settlers.

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

Jackson carried out the original plan envisioned by the found­
ers-particularly Jefferson-initially as a Georgia militia leader,
then as an army general who led four wars of aggression against the
Muskogees in Georgia and Florida, and finally as a president who
engineered the expulsion of all Native peoples east of the Mississippi
to the designated "Indian Territory." As the late Cherokee principal
chief Wilma Mankiller wrote in her autobiography:
The fledgling United States government's method of dealing
with native people-a process which then included systematic
genocide, property theft, and total subjugation-reached its
nadir in 1 8 3 0 under the federal policy of President Andrew
Jackson. More than any other president, he used forcible re­
moval to expel the eastern tribes from their land. From the
very birth of the nation, the United States government truly
had carried out a vigorous operation of extermination and
removal. Decades before Jackson took office, during the ad­
ministration of Thomas Jefferson, it was already cruelly ap­
parent to many Native American leaders that any hope for
tribal autonomy was cursed. So were any thoughts of peaceful
coexistence with white citizens .27
It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rational­
ize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was
the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonial­
ist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to
constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents­
Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman,
Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama-have each advanced populist
imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups
beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythol­
ogy. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Con­
sciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how
to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom
for the people.
Jackson was a national military hero, but he was rooted in the
Scots-Irish frontier communities, most of whose people, unlike

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

him, remained impoverished. Their small farms were hard-pressed
to compete with large plantations with thousands of acres of cot­
ton planted and each tended by hundreds of enslaved Africans.
Land-poor white rural people saw Jackson as the man who would
save them, making land available to them by ridding it of Indians,
thereby setting the pattern of the dance between poor and rich US
Americans ever since under the guise of equality of opportunity.
When Jackson was inaugurated in 1 8 29 , he opened the White House
to the public, the majority in attendance being humble poor whites.
Jackson was easily reelected in 1 8 3 2 , although landless settlers had
acquired very little land, and what little they seized was soon lost
to speculators, transformed into ever larger plantations worked by
slave labor.
The late Jackson biographer Michael Paul Ragin observed:
Indian removal was Andrew Jackson's major policy aim in
the quarter-century before he became President. His Indian
wars and treaties were principally responsible for dispossess­
ing the southern Indians during those years. His presidential
Indian removal finished the job . . . . During the years of Jack­
sonian Democracy, 1 8 24-5 2 , five of the ten major candidates
for President had either won reputations as generals in Indian
wars or served as Secretary of War, whose major responsibil­
ity in this period was relations with the Indians. Historians,
however, have failed to place Indians at the center of Jackson's
life. They have interpreted the Age of Jackson from every per­
spective but Indian destruction, the one from which it actually

developed historically. 28

Once elected president, Jackson lost no time in initiating the
removal of all the Indigenous farmers and the destruction of all
their towns in the South. In his first annual message to Congress,
he wrote: "The emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as
cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of
their fathers and seek a home in a distant land. But they should be
distinctly informed that if they remain within the limits of the States
they must be subject to their laws. In return for their obedience as
individuals they will without doubt be protected in the enjoyment

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of those possessions which they have improved by their industry."29
This political code language barely veils the intention to forcibly
remove the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee, and Semi­
nole Nations, followed by all other Indigenous communities from
east of the Mississippi River, except for the many who could not be
rounded up and remained, without land, without acknowledgment,
until the successful struggles of some of them for recognition in the
late twentieth century.
The state of Georgia saw Jackson's election as a green light and
claimed most of the Cherokee Nation's territory as public land.
The Georgia legislature resolved that the Cherokee constitution
and laws were null and void and that Cherokees were subject to
Georgia law. The Cherokee Nation took a case against Georgia
to the US Supreme Court. With Chief Justice John Marshall writ­
ing for the maj ority, the Court ruled in favor of the Cherokees.
Jackson ignored the Supreme Court, however, in effect saying that
John Marshall had made his decision and Marshall would have to
enforce it if he could, although he, Jackson, had an army while
Marshall did not.
While the case was working its way through the courts , gold
was discovered in Georgia in 1 8 29 , which quickly brought some
forty thousand eager gold seekers to run roughshod over Cherokee
lands, squatting, looting, killing, and destroying fields and game
parks. Under authority granted by the Indian Removal Act, passed
by Congress in 1 8 3 0 , the United States drew up a treaty that would
cede all Cherokee lands to the government in exchange for land in
" Indian Territory." The US government held Cherokee leaders in
jail and closed their printing press during negotiations with a few
handpicked Cherokees, who provided the bogus signatures Jackson
needed as a cover for forced removal. 30

TRA I LS O F TEARS

Not only the great southern nations were driven into exile, but also
nearly all the Native nations east of the Mississippi were forced off
their lands and relocated to Indian Territory, seventy thousand peo-

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

111

pie in all. During the Jacksonian period, the United States made
eighty-six treaties with twenty-six Indigenous nations between New
York and the Mississippi, all of them forcing land sessions, includ­
ing removals. Some communities fled to Canada and Mexico rather
than going to Indian Territory. 31 When Sauk leader Black Hawk
led his people back from a winter stay in Iowa to their homeland
in Illinois in 1 8 3 2 to plant corn, the squatter settlers there claimed
they were being invaded, bringing in both Illinois militia and federal
troops. The " Black Hawk War" that is narrated in history texts was
no more than a slaughter of Sauk farmers. The Sauks tried to defend
themselves but were starving when Black Hawk surrendered under
a white flag. Still the soldiers fired, resulting in a bloodbath. In his
surrender speech, Black Hawk spoke bitterly of the enemy:
You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all
white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. Indians are not
deceitful. The white men speak bad of the Indian and look
at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies. Indians do
not steal. An Indian who is as bad as the white men could
not live in our nation; he would be put to death and eaten up
by the wolves . . . . We told them to leave us alone, and keep
away from us; they followed on, and beset our paths, and they
coiled themselves among us, like the snake. They poisoned us
by their touch. We were not safe. We lived in danger. 32
The Sauks were rounded up and driven onto a reservation called Sac
and Fox.
Most Cherokees had held out in remaining in their homeland
despite pressure from federal administrations from Jefferson on to
migrate voluntarily to the Arkansas- Oklahoma-Missouri area of
the Louisiana Purchase territory. The Cherokee Nation addressed
removal:
We are aware that some persons suppose it will be for our
advantage to remove beyond the Mississippi. We think other­
wise. Our people universally think otherwise . . . . We wish to
remain on the land of our fathers. We have a perfect and origi­
nal right to remain without interruption or molestation. The

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

treaties with us, and laws of the United States made in pursu­
ance of treaties, guarantee our residence and our privileges,
and secure us against intruders. Our only request is, that these
treaties may be fulfilled, and these laws executed. 33
A few contingents of Cherokees settled in Arkansas and what
became Indian Territory as early as 1 8 1 7. There was a larger migra­
tion in 1 8 3 2 , which came after the Indian Removal Act. The 1 8 3 8
forced march o f the Cherokee Nation, now known a s the Trail of
Tears, was an arduous journey from remaining Cherokee homelands
in Georgia and Alabama to what would later become northeast­
ern Oklahoma. After the Civil War, journalist James Mooney inter­
viewed people who had been involved in the forced removal. Based
on these firsthand accounts, he described the scene in 1 8 3 8 , when
the US Army removed the last of the Cherokees by force:
Under [General Winfield] Scott's orders the troops were dis­
posed at various points throughout the Cherokee country,
where stockade forts were erected for gathering in and hold­
ing the Indians preparatory to removal. From these, squads
of troops were sent to search out with rifle and bayonet every
small cabin hidden away in the coves or by sides of mountain
streams, to seize and bring in as prisoners all the occupants,
however or wherever they might be found. Families at dinner
were startled by the sudden gleam of bayonets in the doorway
and rose up to be driven with blows and oaths along the weary
miles of trail that led to the stockade. Men were seized in their
fields or going along the road, women were taken from their
wheels and children from their play. In many cases, on turn­
ing for one last look as they crossed the ridge, they saw their
homes in flames, fired by the lawless rabble that followed on
the heels of the soldiers to loot and pillage . So keen were these
outlaws on the scene that in some instances they were driv­
ing off the cattle and other stock of the Indians almost before
the soldiers had fairly started their owners in the other direc­
tion. Systematic hunts were made by the same men for Indian
graves, to rob them of the silver pendants and other valuables

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

deposited with the dead. A Georgia volunteer, afterward a
colonel in the Confederate service, said: "I fought through the
civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by
thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I
ever knew."34
Half of the sixteen thousand Cherokee men, women, and chil­
dren who were rounded up and force-marched in the dead of winter
out of their country perished on the journey.
The Muskogees and Seminoles suffered similar death rates in
their forced transfer, while the Chickasaws and Choctaws lost
around 15 percent of their people en route. An eyewitness account
by Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer of the day, captures
one of thousands of similar scenes in the forced deportation of the
Indigenous peoples from the Southeast:
I saw with my own eyes several of the cases of misery which
I have been describing; and I was the witness of sufferings
which I have not the power to portray.
At the end of the year 1 8 3 1 , whilst I was on the left bank
of the Mississippi at a place named by Europeans Memphis,
there arrived a numerous band of Choctaws (or Chactas, as
they are called by the French in Louisiana). These savages had
left their country, and were endeavoring to gain the right bank
of the Mississippi, where they hoped to find an asylum which
had been promised them by the American government. It was
then the middle of winter, and the cold was unusually severe;
the snow had frozen hard upon the ground, and the river was
drifting huge masses of ice. The Indians had their families
with them; and they brought in their train the wounded and
sick, with children newly born, and old men upon the verge
of death. They possessed neither tents nor wagons, but only
their arms and some provisions. I saw them embark to pass
the mighty river, and never will that solemn spectacle fade
from my remembrance. No cry, no sob was heard amongst
the assembled crowd; all were silent. Their calamities were
of ancient date, and they knew them to be irremediable. The

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Indians had all stepped into the bark which was to carry them
across, but their dogs remained upon the bank. As soon as
these animals perceived that their masters were finally leav­
ing the shore, they set up a dismal howl, and, plunging all
together into the icy waters of the Mississippi, they swam after
the boat.35
In his biography of Jackson, Rogin points out that this was no
endgame: "The dispossession of the Indians . . . did not happen once
and for all in the beginning. America was continually beginning
again on the frontier, and as it expanded across the continent, it
killed, removed, and drove into extinction one tribe after another."3 6
Against all odds, some Indigenous peoples refused to be removed
and stayed in their traditional homelands east of the Mississippi.
In the South, the communities that did not leave lost their tradi­
tional land titles and status as Indians in the eyes of the government,
but many survived as peoples, some fighting successfully in the late
twentieth century for federal acknowledgment and official Indig­
enous status. In the north, especially in New England, some states
had illegally taken land and created guardian systems and small
reservations, such as those of the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies
in Maine, both of which won lawsuits against the states and at­
tained federal acknowledgment during the militant movements of
the 19 70s. Many other Native nations have been able to increase
their land bases.

T H E P E R S I STENCE O F D E N IAL

Andrew Jackson was born to squatters under British rule on Indig­
enous land. His life followed the trajectory of continental imperial­
ism as he made his career of taking Indigenous land, from the time
of Jefferson's presidency to the elimination of Indigenous nations
east of the Mississippi. This process was the central fact of US poli­
tics and the basis for the US economy. Two-thirds of the US popula­
tion of nearly four million at the time of independence lived within
fifty miles of the Atlantic Ocean. During the following half century,
more than four million settlers crossed the Appalachians, one of the

The Last of the Mahicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic

largest and most rapid migrations in world history. Jackson was an
actor who made possible the implementation of the imperialist proj ­
ect of the independent United States, but he was also an exponent
of the Euro-American popular will that favored imperialism and the
virtually free land it provided them.
D uring the period of Jackson's military and executive power, a
mythology emerged that defined the contours and substance of the
US origin narrative, which has weathered nearly two centuries and
remains intact in the early twenty-first century as patriotic cant, a
civic religion invoked in Barack Obama's presidential inaugural ad­
dress in January 2009 :
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that
greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has
never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.
It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who
prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches
and fame.
Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of
things-some celebrated, but more often men and women ob­
scure in their labor-who have carried us up the long, rugged
path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and
traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they
toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of
the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died in places like Concord and
Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sac­
rificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might
live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of
our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of
birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. 37
Spoken like a true descendant of old settlers. President Obama raised
another key element of the national myth in an interview a few days

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later with Al Arabiya television in Dubai. Affirming that the United
States could be an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
he said: "We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.
But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born
as a colonial power."
The affirmation of democracy requires the denial of colonialism,
but denying it does not make it go away.

SEVEN

SE A TO S H I N I N G S E A

These Spaniards [Mexicans] are the meanest looking
race of people I ever saw, don't appear more civilized
than our Indians generally. Dirty, "filthy looking creatures.
-

Capta i n Lemuel Ford, 1835

That the Indian race of Mexico must recede before us, is quite as
certain as that that is the destiny of our own Indians.
-Waddy Thompson Jr., 183 6

Captain Lemuel Ford of the First Dragoons, United States Army,
made the above observation in his diary, referring to Comanche­
ros, Mexican traders in northern Mexico who traded and intermar­
ried primarily with Comanches on the plains. Waddy Thompson Jr.
served as a US diplomat to Mexico from 1842 to 1 84 4 . 1 Army offi­
cers like Ford and diplomats like Thompson were not exceptional in
their racist views. Indian hating and white supremacy were part and
parcel of "democracy" and "freedom."
The populist poet of Jacksonian democracy, Walt Whitman, sang
the song of manhood and the Anglo-American super race that had
been steeled through empire. As an enthusiastic supporter of the US
war against Mexico in 1846, Whitman proposed the stationing of
sixty thousand US troops in Mexico in order to establish a regime
change there "whose efficiency and permanency shall be guaranteed
by the United States. This will bring out enterprise, open the way for
manufacturers and commerce, into which the immense dead capi­
tal of the country [Mexico] will find its way."2 Whitman explicitly
grounded this prescription in racism: "The nigger, like the lnjun,
will be eliminated; it is the law of the races, history. . . . A superior

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grade of rats come and then all the minor rats are cleared out." The
whole world would benefit from US expansion: "We pant to see our
country and its rule far-reaching. What has miserable, inefficient
Mexico . . . to do with the great mission of peopling the New World
with a noble race ? "3 In September 1 846, when General Zachary
Taylor's troops captured Monterrey, Whitman hailed it as " ''another
clinching proof of the indomitable energy of the Anglo-Saxon char­
acter."4 Whitman's sentiments reflected the established US origin
myth that had the frontier settlers replacing the Native peoples as
historical destiny, adding his own theoretical twist of what would
later be called social Darwinism.

US O V E R S E A S I M P E R I A L I S M

Traversing the continent "from sea to shining sea" was hardly a natu­
ral westward procession of covered wagons as portrayed in Western
movies . The US invasion of Mexico was carried out by US marines,
by sea, through Veracruz, and the early colonization of California
initially progressed from the Pacific coast, reached from the Atlantic
coast by way of Tierra del Fuego. Between the Mississippi River
and the Rockies lay a vast region controlled by Indigenous nations
that were neither conquered nor colonized by any European power,
and although the United States managed to annex northern Mexico,
large numbers of settlers could not reach the Northern California
goldfields or the fertile Willamette Valley region of the Pacific North­
west without army regiments accompanying them. Why then does
the popular US historical narrative of a "natural" westward move­
ment persist? The answer is that those who still hold to the narrative
remain captives of the ideology of "manifest destiny," according
to which the United States expanded across the continent to assume
its preordained size and shape. This ideology normalizes the succes­
sive invasions and occupations of Indigenous nations and Mexico
as not being colonialist or imperialist, rather simply ordained prog­
ress. In this view, Mexico was j ust another Indian nation to be
crushed.

Sea to Shining Sea

The US invasion of Mexico has also been characterized as the
first US "foreign" war, but it was not. By 1 846, the United States
had invaded, occupied, and ethnically cleansed dozens of foreign
nations east of the Mississippi. Then there were the Barbary Wars.
The opening lyric of the official hymn of the US Marine Corps,
composed and adopted soon after the invasion of Mexico, " From
the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," refers in part to
1 8 01-5 , when the marines were dispatched by President Thomas
Jefferson to invade the Berber Nation of North Africa. This was the
"First Barbary War," the ostensible goal of which was to persuade
Tripoli to release US sailors it held hostage and to end "pirate " attacks
on US merchant ships.5 The " Second Barbary War," in 1 8 15-16,
ended when pasha Yusuf Karamanli, ruler of Tripoli, agreed not to
exact fees from US ships entering their territorial waters.
By this time, throughout Spain's American colonies, wars of in­
dependence flamed, the leaders of these revolutions inspired by the
French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution. A successful inde­
pendence movement arose in France's Caribbean plantation slave
colony of Haiti in 1 8 0 1 , when the majority enslaved African popu­
lation overthrew the French planters and declared an independent
nation-state. This was the first permanently successful national lib­
eration movement against European colonialism in the world. The
prevailing myth claims that the colonized peoples fighting for inde­
pendence from Spain were inspired by successful US secession from
Britain but this is a dubious claim.
Simon Bolivar was a major leader of the independence move­
ments in South America. He visited liberated Haiti in 1 8 1 5 , a trip
that sharpened his hatred for slavery and led to its abolishment in
the independent nations that formed in South America. Bolivar and
liberator Jose de San Martin were founders of the unitary republic
they named Gran Colombia, which survived from 1 8 19 to 1 8 3 0 with
Bolivar as president. Subsequently, Gran Colombia splintered into
the nation-states of Venezuela, Colombia (which then included Pan­
ama), Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. A similar unitary nation formed
in Central America called the United Provinces of Central America,
with its capital in Guatemala City, which existed from l 8 2 I to 1 8 4 1 ,

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thereafter splitting into the present separate small states. In both
cases the larger and stronger unitary federations were subject to eco­
nomic intervention and domination by the British and US empires.
Father Miguel Hidalgo, a priest who was instrumental in the
Mexican independence movement, was deeply assimilated into In­
digenous society in Mexico, and the maj ority of the movement's
insurgent fighters were drawn from Indigenous nations. Most of the
actual fighters in the independence movements led by San Martin
and Bolf var in South America were also Indigenous, representing
their communities and nations, fighting for their own liberation as
peoples. In striking contrast, the US war of independence targeted
the Indigenous nations as enemies. The Indigenous communities in
the new South American republics were soon dominated economi­
cally and politically by national landed elites that consolidated their
power following the wars of independence. However, Indigenous
peoples whose ancestors fought for liberation from Spanish colo ­
nialism have never forgotten their important role in those revolu­
tionary movements and realize that the liberation process continues.
The Indigenous peoples of Latin America feel they own those revo­
lutions, whereas the US secession from Great Britain was the inten­
tional founding of a white republic that planned elimination of the
Indigenous peoples as territorial-based, collective societies.
The period of US intervention to annex and dominate former
Spanish territories in the Americas began not in 1 8 9 8 with the
Spanish-American War, as most history texts claim, but rather nearly
a century before, during Jefferson's presidency, with the Zebulon M.
Pike expedition of 1 8 0 6-7. Those historians who track "continental
expansion" separately from clear actions of US imperialism rarely
note the juxtaposition in time and presidential administration of the
interventions in North Africa and Mexico on the eve of its liberation
from Spain. Like the Lewis and Clark expedition, completed the
same year that Pike set off, the Pike expedition was a military proj ­
ect ordered by President Jefferson. Lewis and Clark had headed into
the far reaches of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory to gather
intelligence on the Mandan, Hidatsa, Paiute, Shoshone, Ute, and
many other nations in the huge swath of territory between the Rock-

Sea to Shining Sea

ies and the Pacific, bordered by Spanish-occupied territory on the
west and south and British Canada on the north. 6 Pike and his small
force of soldiers and Osage hostages had orders to illegally enter
Spanish territory to gather information that would later be used for
military invasion. Under the guise of having gone astray, Pike and
his contingent found themselves inside Spanish-occupied northern
New Mexico (today's southern Colorado), where they "discovered"
Pikes Peak and built a fort. Ultimately, as they had undoubtedly
planned, they were taken into custody by Spanish authorities who
transported them to Chihuahua, Mexico, allowing Pike and his men
to observe and make notes about northern Mexico on the way. More
important, they collected information on Spanish military resources
and behavior and the location of and relations among civilian popu­
lations . Pike was released, and in l 8 r o published his findings. Later
titled The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, the book was
a best seller.7

U S C O L O N I Z AT I O N O F N O R T H E R N M E X I C O

The instability of the impoverished new republic of Mexico, as it
emerged in 1 8 2 1 from more than three centuries of Spanish colonial­
ism and an exhausting war of national liberation, put it in a weak
position to defend its territory against US aggression . With Spain
out of the way, the United States could pursue its own policy of im­
perialism without risking a difficult war with European imperialist
powers-what George Washington had referred to in his farewell
address when he warned against "foreign entanglements ." Once
Mexico was independent, its newly formed government immediately
opened its borders to trade, something Spanish authorities had never
allowed. US trader William Becknell arrived at Taos in the Mexican
province of Nuevo Mexico from St. Louis in 1 8 2 1 , and a US trading
party led by Sylvester Pattie arrived in 1 8 2 4 . 8 Traders based in St.
Louis, at the time the effective western frontier outpost of the United
States, began extending their business to New Mexico. Until the
publication of Pike's book in l 8 ro, US merchants had shown little

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

interest in trading in Mexico. Pike's account of the potential profits
to be made inspired them to set out to capture that trade. 9
US traders would help pave the way t o US political control of
northern Mexico through what came to be known as the "Ameri­
can party of Taos." Christopher Houston " Kit" Carson would play
a major role in the success of the US invasion of northern Mex­
ico as he continued work as a colonial mercenary. Born in 1 8 09 in
Kentucky, Carson was a fur trapper and entrepreneur, as well as a
noted Indian hater and killer, who had left his family's homestead
in Missouri for New Mexico at age sixteen. Most of the US citizens
who made up the American party, including Carson, married into
wealthy Spanish-identified families in New Mexico who had not
favored independence from Spain, creating a strong Anglo affinity
within the local ruling class. The goal of this clique was to attract,
and thus monopolize, the trade in furs with Indigenous and other
trappers, with the ultimate goal of US annexation. As a magnet, the
traders would offer low-priced manufactured goods, from clothing
to kitchenware, tools, and furniture. St. Louis was connected to
transatlantic trading houses in cities on the East Coast, so it had the
advantage of better variety and quality of goods than those of Chi­
huahua traders, who relied on the declining port of Veracruz. Bent's
Fort (near present-day La Junta, Colorado) became the economic
center for the fur trade in northern New Mexico, rivaling only John
Jacob Astor's American Fur Company in North America. Missouri
merchants circumvented the Mexican prohibition against exports
of silver and gold (lifted briefly for silver between 1 8 2 8 and 1 8 3 5 )
through smuggling and bribery. 1 0
St. Louis soon replaced Chihuahua as the entrepot for the north­
ern Mexico trade, and the elite of Mexico's northern provinces be­
came parties to the US objective of incorporating the territory into
the United States. As early as 1 8 24 , Missouri senator Thomas Hart
Benton introduced a bill in the US Senate on behalf of citizens of
Missouri for a US government survey of the Santa Fe Trail to the
Mexican border. In 1 8 3 2 , President Andrew Jackson began using
US troops to protect caravans of merchandise on the Santa Fe Trail
going to northern Mexico from possible interference by Indigenous
peoples whose territories they crossed without permission.

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123

In addition to New Mexico, US citizen residents laid groundwork
for the annexation of Mexico in Texas and California as well. The
Spanish Cortes (parliament) had enacted a law in 1'8 13 that autho­
rized provincial authorities to make private property land grants,
and this practice of granting land to individuals, including foreign­
ers, was continued under the independent Mexican government
until 1 8 2 8 . In 1 8 23 , Mexico's despotic ruler Agustin de Iturbide
enacted a colonization law authorizing the national government to
enter into a contract granting land to an empresario, or promoter,
who was required to recruit a minimum of two hundred families to
settle the grant. Only applied in the province of Texas, many such
grants were sought by and granted to slave-owning Anglo-American
entrepreneurs, despite slavery being illegal in Mexico, making pos­
sible their dominance in the province and leading to Mexico's loss of
Texas in 1 8 3 6 . 1 1
Senator Benton, h i s son-in-law Captain John C . Fremont, and
Kit Carson also helped pave the way for the invasion of Northern
California. In the early 1 840s, Benton and his daughter, Jessie-Fre­
mont's wife-built a booster press to entice settlers to the Oregon
Territory as well as to settle in the Mexican province of California.
At the same time, Fremont and his guide Carson mounted five ex­
peditions to gather information, laying the groundwork for military
conquest. The third expedition illegally entered the Sacramento Val­
ley region from the north in early 1 846, just before the United States
declared war against Mexico. Fremont encouraged Anglo settlers in
the Central Valley to side with the United States, promising military
protection if war broke out. Once a US warship was positioned for
war, Fremont was appointed lieutenant colonel of the California
Battalion, as if it had all been planned in advance. 12
Exploration and intelligence gathered by Pike, followed by infil­
tration and settlement of northern Mexican provinces preceded by
US entrepreneurs, finally culminated in military invasion and war. US
forces fought their way from Mexico's main commercial port of
Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico to the capital, Mexico City, nearly
three hundred miles away. The US Army occupied the capital until
the Mexican government agreed to cede,its northern territories, cod­
ified in the 1 848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Texas had become a

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US state at the end of 1 845 . California quickly acquired statehood
in 1 8 50, followed by Nevada in 1 8 64 , Colorado in 1 876, Wyoming
in 1 89 0 , Utah in 1 8 9 6, but the more densely populated Arizona and
New Mexico not until 19 1 2 .
The Land Ordinance o f I ] 8 5 had established a national system
for surveying and distributing land, and as one historian has noted,
" Under the May 1785 ordinance, Indian land would be auctioned off
to the highest bidder."13 The Northwest Ordinance of 1 7 8 7, albeit
guaranteeing Indigenous occupancy and title, set forth an evolution­
ary colonization procedure for annexation via military occupation,
territorial status, and finally statehood. Conditions for statehood
would be achieved when the settlers outnumbered the Indigenous
population, which in the cases of both the Mexican cession area and
the Louisiana Purchase territory required decimation or forced re­
moval of Indigenous populations. In this US system, unique among
colonial powers, land became the most important exchange com­
modity for the accumulation of capital and building of the national
treasury. To understand the genocidal policy of the US government,
the centrality of land sales in building the economic base of the US
wealth and power must be seen. Apologists for US expansionism see
the 1 7 8 7 ordinance not as a reflection of colonialism, but rather as
a means of "reconciling the problem of liberty with the problem of
empire," in historian Howard Lamar's words. 14
Following the Mexican War, the United States faced problems
more pressing than that of reconciling conflicting ideologies . For
one thing, the vast majority in the annexed territory were Indigenous
peoples or Mexican farmers and ranchers, landed communities. As
for the Navajos, Apaches, and Utes who had resisted for centuries all
colonization efforts by the Spanish and then the Mexican authori­
ties, they continued to resist the new colonial regime. To understand
how the peoples of these regions responded to the US invasion and
conquest, and to understand their particular relationship with the
United States today, it is essential to understand their history under
Spanish colonization.

Sea to Shining Sea

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF
OCCU P I E D N O RT H E R N M E X I CO

Although the Spanish Crown had dispatched explorers such as
Coronado, Cabeza de Baca, and others, and had established trading
and military posts and towns along the North American Atlantic
Coast and in Florida and along the Gulf Coast as far as the Missis­
sippi, Spanish settler-colonialist rule did not begin north of the Rio
Grande until 159 8 . The soldier-settler colonizing mission launched
a brutal military assault on the Pueblo towns in New Mexico and
imposed state and church institutions. The colonizers found a thriv­
ing irrigation-based agriculture supporting a population living in
ninety-eight interrelated city-states (pueblos, the Spanish called
them), and within two decades they reduced the towns to twenty­
one. 15 Perhaps most provocative, given the Pueblos' extensive rituals
and numerous religious feast days, the Franciscan missionaries for­
bade Pueblo religious practices and forced Christianity upon them.
As Spanish repression and labor exploitation intensified, the Pueblos
organized a revolution that also was supported by the unconquered
Navaj os, Apaches, and Utes, and the Hopi towns to the west in
what is now Arizona . They were joined by the servant and laboring
class of captive Indigenous and Mestizos in the Spanish capital at
Santa Fe. In 1680, they drove the Spanish out of New Mexico, leav­
ing the Pueblos free for twelve years before a new and permanent
colonizing mission arrived. 1 6 During another l 3 o years of Spanish
rule before Mexico's independence, the Pueblos were strictly con­
trolled and forced to provide foot soldiers for Spanish forays against
the Navaj os, Apaches, and Utes who were never colonized by the
Spanish. Mexico ousted the Franciscans and left the Pueblos to their
own lives, although much of their territory had been lost to perma nent settlers.
The two largest Mexican provinces annexed by the United States,
Coahuila y Tejas (Texas) and California, were more sparsely popu­
lated and not as tightly centralized and organized as New Mex­
ico. After 1692, as the Spanish Crown sent an army to invade and
reoccupy the Rio Grande Pueblos, it also sought effective control
and settlement of California and Texas, in part to create a large

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buffer with competing French, British, and Russian imperialism.
After two centuries of dominance in the Americas, the Spanish state
was crumbling politically and economically. Having experienced a
depression in silver production in their American colonies and grow­
ing competition from other European powers, the Spanish settled
on maintaining and expanding its northern holdings to hold back
French and British encroachment into the mining areas of the inte­
rior of New Spain (Mexico).
In what is now the state of Texas, Spain built forts and expropri­
ated land from the local Indigenous people, granting it to Spanish
settlers to farm and ranch. The first Spanish town in Texas, San An­
tonio, was established in 1 7 1 8 , and Franciscan missionaries founded
the Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) . Spanish forts, mis­
sions, and settlements dotted the territory, especially along the Rio
Grande from Matamoras to Laredo. The Indigenous peoples of
Texas included the Lupin Apaches, Jumanos, Coahuiltecans, Tonka­
was, Karankawas, and Caddos, all of whom were more vulnerable
to colonization than the more mobile Comanches and Wichitas in
West Texas. By the time of Mexican independence, the Indigenous
population of the province was around fifty thousand, while Span­
ish settlers numbered around thirty thousand.
During the first decade of Mexican independence, some ten thou­
sand Cherokees, Seminoles, Shawnees, and many other Indigenous
communities east of the Mississippi avoided forced removal to In­
dian Territory and escaped the iron heel of the United States, tak­
ing refuge in Mexico. One such community was the people of the
Coahuila Kikapu (Kickapoo) Nation, forced out of its homeland
when Wisconsin was opened for settlement. The Tohono O'odam
Nation did not move anywhere, but the redrawn 1 8 4 8 border split
their homeland. The independent Republic of Mexico provided land
grants for their various communities. With Texas's independence
from Mexico, then US annexation, many moved south of the im­
posed new border. 17
The Republic of Mexico opened a door to US domination by
granting land to Anglo immigrants. During the first decade of Mexi­
can independence, some thirty thousand Anglo-American farmers
and plantation owners, along with their slaves, poured into Texas,

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127

receiving development land grants. By the time Texas became a US
state in 1 845 , Anglo settlers numbered 1 60 , 0 0 0 . 1 8 Mexico abol­
ished slavery in 1 8 29 , which affected the Anglo-American settlers'
quest for wealth in building plantations worked by enslaved Afri­
cans. They lobbied the Mexican government for a reversal of the ban
and gained only a one-year extension to settle their affairs and free
their bonded workers-the government refused to legalize slavery.
The settlers decided to secede from Mexico, initiating the famous
and mythologized 1 8 3 6 Battle of the Alamo, where the mercenaries
James Bowie and Davy Crockett and slave owner William Travis
were killed. Although technically an Anglo-American loss, the siege
of the Alamo served to stir Anglo patriotic passions, and within a
month at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto, Mexico handed over the
province. This was a great victory for the Andrew Jackson admin­
istration, for Jackson's brother, Mason, who was one of the Texas
planters, and especially for the alcoholic settler-warrior hero Sam
Houston: The former governor of Tennessee, Houston was made
commander in chief of the Texas army and president of the new
"Texas republic," which he helped guide to US statehood in 1 8 4 5 .
O n e o f the first acts o f the pro-slavery independent government was
to establish a counterinsurgency force that-as its name, the Texas
Rangers, suggests-followed the "American way of war" in destroy­
ing Indigenous towns, eliminating Native nations in Texas, pursu­
ing ethnic cleansing, and suppressing protest from Tejanos, former
Mexican citizens. 19
Mission San Francisco de Asis, also called Mission Dolores, was
a Spanish Franciscan mission established on the Pacific Coast at the
same time as the Presidio (military base) at San Francisco-1 776,
the year that Anglo-Americans declared independence from Brit­
ain. The purpose of the garrison was twofold: to protect the mis­
sion from Indigenous inhabitants whose territory the Spanish were
usurping and to round up those same people and force them to live
and work for the Franciscan friars at the mission. Mission Dolores
was the sixth of the twenty-one Franciscan missions established be­
tween 1 769 and 1 8 2 3 , when Mexico disbanded the missions. The
establishment of the missions and presidios from San Diego and
Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to Carmel, San Francisco, and So-

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

noma, traces the colonization of California's Indigenous nations.
The five-hundred-mile road that connected the missions was called
El Camino Real, the Royal Highway.
The Spanish military in California was divided into four districts,
each with Franciscan missions and strategically located presidios.
The 1 769 establishment of the first presidia in San Diego coincided
with establishment of the first Franciscan mission in California. The
second presidia was based in Monterey in 1 770, to defend the six
missions in the area as well as the mercury mines in the Santa Cruz
Mountains. Monterey became the capital and the only port of entry
for shipments to and from Spanish California, and it remained so
until 1 846, when the United States seized California.
These California Franciscan missions and their founder, Junipero
Serra, are extravagantly romanticized by modern California resi­
dents and remain popular tourist sites. Very few visitors notice,
however, that in the middle of the plaza of each mission is a whip ­
ping post. The history symbolized by that artifact is not dead and
buried with the generations of Indigenous bodies buried under the
California crust. The scars and trauma have been passed on from
generation to generation. Putting salt in the wound, as it were, Pope
John Paul II in 19 8 8 beatified Junipero Serra, the first step toward
sainthood. California Indigenous peoples were insulted by this act
and organized to prevent the sanctification of a person they consider
to have been an exponent of rape, torture, death, starvation, and
humiliation of their ancestors and the attempted destruction of their
cultures. Serra would take soldiers with him, randomly kidnapping
Indigenous individuals and families, recording these captures in his
diaries, as in this instance: " [When] one fled from between their [the
soldiers'] hands, they caught the other. They tied him, and it was all
necessary, for, even bound, he defended himself that they should not
bring him, and flung himself on the ground with such violence that
he scraped and bruised his thighs and knees. But at last they brought
him . . . . He was most frightened and very disturbed." 20 In 1 8 7 8 , a
old Kamia man named Janitin told an interviewer of his experience
as a child: "When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a
room for a week . . . . Every day they lashed me unjustly because I
did not finish what I did not know how to do, and thus I existed for

Sea to Shining Sea

many days until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they
caught me like a fox." He was fastened to the stage and beaten to
unconsciousness.
California Indigenous peoples resisted this totalitarian order.
These insurgent actions are also recorded in official records and
diaries, but they seem to have interested few historians until the
civil rights era of the 1950s and 19 60s, when California Indigenous
peoples began to do their own research. They found that no mission
escaped uprising from within or attacks from outside by communi­
ties of the imprisoned along with escapees. Guerrilla forces of up to
two thousand formed. Without this resistance, there would be no
descendants of the California Native peoples of the area colonized
by the Spanish. 21
Under the protection of the US Army, beginning in 1 8 4 8 , gold
seekers from all over the world brought death, torture, rape, star­
vation, and disease to the Indigenous peoples whose ancestral ter­
ritories included the sought-after goldfields north and east of San
Francisco . As Alejandro Murguia describes it, unlike the Native
peoples for whom gold was irrelevant, the forty-niners "hungered
for gold with a sickness":
They would do anything for it. They left families, homes, ev­
erything behind; they sailed for eight months aboard leaky,
smelly ships to reach California; others, captains and sailors,
jumped ship at San Francisco, leaving a fleet of abandoned
brigs, barks, and schooners to rot by the piers. They slaugh­
tered all the game they could find and so muddied the rivers
and creeks with silt that the once plentiful salmon couldn't
survive. The herds of elk and deer, the food source for Native
Americans, were practically wiped out in one summer. The
miners cheated and killed each other in the gold fields. 22
In a true reign of terror, US occupation and settlement extermi­
nated more than one hundred thousand California Native people
in twenty-five years, reducing the population to thirty thousand by
1 8 70-quite possibly the most extreme demographic disaster of all
time. 23 Here too, against impossible odds, the Indigenous resisted

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

and survived to tell the story. Had they not done so, there would be
no Indigenous peoples remaining in Northern California, because
the objective was to eradicate them. From the onset of the California
gold rush, crazed "gold bugs" invade� Indigenous territories, terror­
izing and brutally killing those who were in their path. These settlers
seemed to require no military assistance in running roughshod over
unarmed Indigenous residents of fishing communities in a bountiful
paradise of woods, rivers, and mountains. The role left for the US
Army was to round up the starving Indigenous refugees to transport
them to established reservations in Oregon and Oklahoma.

THE WH ITE MAN'S BURDEN

The two-year invasion and occupation of Mexico was a joyful ex­
perience for most US citizens , as evidenced by Walt Whitman's
populist poetry. Its popularity was possible because of buoyant na­
tionalism, and the war itself accelerated the spirit of nationalism
and confirmed the manifest destiny of the United States. Besides
new weapons of war and productive capacity brought about by the
emerging industrial revolution, there was also an advance in print­
ing and publishing techniques, which increased the book publishing
market from $2.5 million in 1 8 3 0 to $ 1 2 .5 million in 1 8 5 0 . Most
of the books published during the five-year period leading up to,
during, and after the invasion were war-mongering tracts . Euro­
American settlers were nearly all literate, and this was the period
of the foundational "American literature," with writers James Fen­
imore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf
Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Haw­
thorne, and Herman Melville all active-each of whom remains
read, revered, and studied in the twenty-first century, as national
and nationalist writers, not as colonialists.
Although some of the writers, like Melville and Longfellow, paid
little attention to the war, most of the others either fiercely sup­
ported it or opposed it. Whitman, a supporter, was also enamored
of the violent Indian- and Mexican-killing Texas Rangers. Whit-

Sea to Shining Sea

man saw the war as bolstering US self-respect and believed that a
"true American" would be unable to resist "this pride in our vic­
torious armies." Emerson opposed the war as he did all wars. His
opposition to the Mexican War was based, however, not just on his
pacifism but also on his belief that the Mexican "race" would poison
Anglo-Americans through contact, the " heart of darkness" fear.
Emerson supported territorial expansion at any cost but would have
preferred it take place without war.
Most of the writers of the era were obsessed with heroism. Oppo­
sition to the Mexican War came from writers who were active abo­
litionists such as Thoreau, Whittier, and Lowell. They believed the
war was a plot of southern slave owners to extend slavery, punishing
Mexico for having outlawed slavery when it became independent
from Spain. However, even the abolitionists believed in the "mani­
fest destiny of the English race," as Lowell put it in 1 8 59, "to occupy
this whole continent and to display there that practical understand­
ing in matters of government and colonization which no other race
has given such proof of possessing since the Romans." 24
President James K. Polk, who presided over the war, saw its sig­
nificance as an example of how a democracy could carry on and win
a foreign war with as much "vigor" as authoritarian governments
were able to do. He believed that an elected civilian government with
its volunteer people's army was even more effective than European
monarchies in the quest for empire. The victory over Mexico proved
to the European powers, he felt, that the United States was their
equal. Standing tall through military victory over a weak country:
it was not Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush who thought up that
idea. The tradition is as old as the United States itself.
The US war against Mexico did more than annex half of Mexico.
A debate that turned deadly ensued over whether the acquired terri­
tory would allow slavery and it brought on a civil war that produced
a million casualties. The US Civil War allowed for the reorganiza­
tion and modernization of the military and streamlined counterin­
surgency operations-that is, ones targeting civilians. A rehearsal
for this streamlining is found in the aftermath of the Mexican War
in the US Army counterinsurgency against the fierce resistance of
the Apaches in the portions of the territory annexed from Mexico

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

in 1 8 4 8 that later became the states of New Mexico and Arizona, as
well as across the new border into what remained Mexico. The First
and Second US Army Dragoons (cavalry troops) were employed for
this purpose, elite mounted troops well equipped and trained for
the desert terrain. During the period between the Mexican War and
the Civil War, Indigenous resistance was led by Gila Apache leader
Mangas Coloradas to maintain the Apaches' traditional lands and
way of life. The dragoons employed the "first way of war," total
war, encouraging field units to attack Apache villages and destroy
crops and kill livestock, slaughtering women and children and old
men left in the villages while the young men were engaged elsewhere
fighting the dragoons. 25 This kind of warfare against Indigenous
peoples continued throughout the Civil War and ratcheted up in the
northern plains and Southwest afterward, producing the term that
the US military use to this day all over the world when referring to
enemy territory: "Indian Country."

E I G HT

" I N D I A N CO U N TRY"

Buffalo were dark rich clouds moving upon the rolling hills
and plains of America. And then the 'flashing steel came
upon bone and -flesh.
-Simon J. Ortiz, from Sand Creek

The US Army on the eve of the Civil War was divided into seven
departments-a structure designed by John C. Calhoun during the
Monroe administration . By 1 8 60 , six of the seven departments,
comprising 1 8 3 companies, were stationed west of the Mississippi,
a colonial army fighting the Indigenous occupants of the land. In
much of the western lands, the army was the primary US govern­
ment institution; the military roots to institutional development
run deep.
President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1 8 61, two
months after the South had seceded from the union. In April, the
Confederate States of America (CSA) seized the army base at Fort
Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina. Of more than a thousand
US Army officers, 2 8 6 left to serve the CSA, half of them being West
Point graduates, most of them Indian fighters, including Robert E .
Lee. Three o f the seven army department commanders took leader­
ship of the Confederate Army. Based on demographics alone, the
South had little chance of winning, so it is all the more remarkable
that it persisted against the Union for more than four years. The
1 8 60 population of the United States was nearly thirty-two mil­
lion, with twenty-three million in the twenty-two northern states,
and about nine million in the eleven southern states. More than a
third of the nine million Southerners were enslaved people of Af­
rican heritage. Within the CSA, 76 percent of settlers owned no

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

slaves. Roughly 60-70 percent of those without slaves owned fewer
than a hundred acres of land. Less than 1 percent owned more than
a hundred slaves. Seventeen percent of settlers in the South owned
one to nine slaves, and only 6.5 percent owned more than ten. Ten
percent of the settlers who owned no slaves were also landless, while
that many more managed to barely survive on small dirt farms. The
Confederate Army reflected the same kind of percentages.1 Those
who, even today, claim that "states' rights" caused Southern seces­
sion and the Civil War use these statistics to argue that slavery was
not the cause of the Civil War, but that is false. Every settler in the
Southern states aspired to own land and slaves or to own more land
and more slaves, as both social status and wealth depended on the
extent of property owned. Even small and landless farmers relied
on slavery-based rule: the local slave plantation was the market for
what small farmers produced, and planters hired landless settlers as
overseers and sharecroppers. Most non-slave-owning settlers sup­
ported and fought for the Confederacy.

L I N CO L N ' S " F R E E S O I L" F O R S E T T L E R S

Abraham Lincoln's campaign for the presidency appealed to the vote
of land-poor settlers who demanded that the government "open"
Indigenous lands west of the Mississippi. They were called "free­
soilers," in reference to cheap land free of slavery. New gold rushes
and other incentives brought new waves of settlers to squat on In­
digenous land. For this reason, some Indigenous people preferred
a Confederate victory, which might divide and weaken the United
States, which had grown ever more powerful. Indigenous nations in
Indian Territory were more directly affected by the Civil War than
anywhere else. As discussed in chapter 6, the southeastern nations­
the Cherokees, Muskogees, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws
( " Five Civilized Tribes")-were forcibly removed from their home­
lands during the Jackson administration, but in the Indian Terri­
tory they rebuilt their townships, farms, ranches, and institutions,
including newspapers, schools, and orphanages. Although a tiny
elite of each nation was wealthy and owned enslaved Africans and

"Indian Country "

135

private estates, the majority of the people continued their collective
agrarian practices. All five nations signed treaties with the Confed­
eracy, each for similar reasons. Within each nation, however, there
was a clear division based on class, often misleadingly expressed as
a conflict between "mixed-bloods" and "full-bloods." That is, the
wealthy, assimilated, slave-owning minority that dominated politics
favored the Confederacy, and the non-slave-owning poor and tradi­
tional majority wanted to stay out of the Anglo-American civil war.
Historian David Chang found that Muskogee nationalism and well­
founded distrust of federal power played a major role in bringing
about that nation's strategic alliance with the Confederacy. Chang
writes: "Was the Creek council's alliance with the South a racist de­
fense of slavery and its class privileges, or was it a nationalist defense
of Creek lands and sovereignty? The answer has to be 'both."'2
John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, at first called
for neutrality, but changed his mind for reasons similar to the Mus­
kogees and asked the Cherokee council for authority to negotiate
a treaty with the CSA. Nearly seven thousand men of the five na­
tions went into battle for the Confederacy. Stand Watie, a Chero­
kee, held the post of brigadier general in the Confederate Army.
His First Indian Brigade of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi ,was

among the last units in the field to surrender to the Union Army on
June 23 , 1 8 6 5 , more than two months after Lee's surrender of the
Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse in April
1 8 6 5 . During the war, however, many Indigenous soldiers became
disillusioned and went over to the Union forces, along with enslaved
African Americans who fled to freedom. 3
Another story is equally important, though less often told. A
few months after the war broke out, some ten thousand men in
Indian Territory, made up of Ind igenous volunteers, along with
African Americans who had freed themselves and even some Anglo­
Americans, engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Confederate
Army. They fought from Oklahoma into Kansas, where many of
them joined unofficial Union units that had been organized by abo­
litionists who had trained with John Brown years earlier. This was
not likely the kind of war the Lincoln administration had desired-a
multiethnic volunteer Union contingent fighting pro-slavery forces

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History o f the United States

in Missouri, where enslaved Africans escaped to j oin the Union
side.4 The self-liberation by African Americans, occurring all over
the South, led to Lincoln's 1 8 63 Emancipation Proclamation, which
allowed freed Africans to serve in combat.
In Minnesota, which had become a non-slavery state in 1 8 5 9 , the
Dakota Sioux were on the verge of starvation by 1 8 62. When they
mounted an uprising to drive out the mostly German and Scandi­
navian settlers, Union Army troops crushed the revolt, slaughtering
Dakota civilians and rounding up several hundred men. Three hun­
dred prisoners were sentenced to death, but upon Lincoln's orders
to reduce the numbers, thirty-eight were selected at random to die
in the largest mass hanging in US history. The revered leader Little
Crow was not among those hanged, but was assassinated the follow­
ing summer while out picking raspberries with his son; the assassin,
a settler-farmer, collected a $ 500 bounty. 5
One of the young Dakota survivors asked his uncle about the
mysterious white people who would commit such crimes. The uncle
replied:
Certainly they are a heartless nation. They have made some
of their people servants-yes, slaves . . . . The greatest object of
their lives seems to be to acquire possessions-to be rich. They
desire to possess the whole world. For thirty years they were
trying to entice us to sell them our land. Finally the outbreak
gave them all, and we have been driven away from our beauti­
ful country. 6

T H E G E N O C I DA L A R M Y O F T H E W E ST

To free the professional soldiers posted in the West to fight against
the Confederate Army in the East, Lincoln called for volunteers
in the West, and settlers responded, coming from Texas, Kansas,
California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, and
Nevada. Having few Confederates to fight, they attacked people
closer to hand, Indigenous people. Land speculators in the trans­
Mississippi West sought statehood for the occupied former Mexican
territories in order to attract settlers and investors . Their eagerness to

"Indian Country "

137

undertake the ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous residents to achieve
the necessary population balance to attain statehood generated
strong anti-Indian hysteria and violent actions. Preoccupied with
the Civil War in the East, the Lincoln administration did little to
prevent vicious and even genocidal actions on the part of territorial
authorities consisting of volunteer Indian haters such as Kit Carson.
The mode of maintaining settler "law and order" set the pattern
for postwar genocide. In the most infamous incident involving mi­
litias, the First and Third Colorado Volunteers carried out the Sand
Creek Massacre. Although assigned to guard the road to Santa Fe,
the units mainly engaged in raiding and looting Indigenous com­
munities. John Chivington, an ambitious politician known as the
" Fighting Parson," led the Third Colorado.7
By 1 8 61, displaced and captive Cheyennes and Arapahos, under
the leadership of the great peace seeker Black Kettle, were incar­
cerated in a US military reservation called Sand Creek, near Fort
Lyon in southeastern Colorado. They camped under a white flag
of truce and had federal permission to hunt buffalo to feed them­
selves. In early 1 8 64 , the Colorado territorial governor informed
them that they could no longer leave the reservation to hunt. Despite
their compliance with the order, on November 29 , 1 8 64 , Chiving­
ton took seven hundred Colorado Volunteers to the reservation .
Without provocation or warning, they attacked, leaving dead 105
women and children and 2 8 men. Even the federal commissioner
of Indian affairs denounced the action, saying that the people had
been "butchered in cold blood by troops in the service of the United
States." In its 1 8 65 investigation, the Congress Joint Committee on
the Conduct of the War recorded testimonies and published a report
that documented the aftermath of the killings, when Chivington
and his volunteers burned tepees and stole horses. Worse, after the
smoke had cleared, they had returned and finished off the few sur­
vivors while scalping and mutilating the corpses-women and men,
young and old, children, babies. Then they decorated their weapons
and caps with body parts-fetuses, penises, breasts, and vulvas­
and, in the words of Acoma poet Simon Ortiz, " Stuck them I on
their hats to dry I Their fingers greasy I and slick."8 Once back in
Denver, they displayed the trophies to the adoring public in Denver's

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

Apollo Theater and in saloons. Yet, despite the detailed report of the
deeds, neither Chivington nor any of his men were reprimanded or
prosecuted, signaling a free field for killing. 9
US Army colonel James Carleton formed the Volunteer Army of
the Pacific in 1 8 6 1 , based in California. In Nevada and Utah, a Cali­
fornia businessman, Colonel Patrick Connor, commanded a militia
of a thousand California volunteers that spent the war years mas­
sacring hundreds of unarmed Shoshone, Bannock, and Ute people
in their encampments. Carleton led another contingent of militias
to Arizona to suppress the Apaches, who were resisting colonization
under the great leader Cochise. At the time, Cochise observed:
When I was young I walked all over this country, east and
west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many
summers I walked again and found another race of people had
come to take it. How is it? Why is it that the Apaches wait to
die-that they carry their lives on their finger nails? . . . The
Apaches were once a great nation; they are now but few. . . .
Many have been killed in battle. 10
Following a scorched-earth campaign against the Apaches,
Carleton was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and placed
in command of the Department of New Mexico. He brought in the
now-seasoned killing machine of Colorado Volunteers to attack
the Navajos, on whom he declared total war. He enlisted as his
principal commander in the field the ubiquitous Indian killer Kit
Carson . 1 1 With unlimited authority and answering to no one, Car­
leton spent the entire Civil War in the Southwest engaged in a series
of search-and-destroy missions against the Navajos. The campaign
culminated in March 1 8 64 in a three-hundred-mile forced march of
eight thousand Navajo civilians to a military concentration camp
at Bosque Redondo in the southeastern New Mexico desert, at the
army base at Fort Sumner, an ordeal recalled in Navajo oral history
as the " Long Walk." One Navajo named Herrero said,
Some of the soldiers do not treat us well. When at work, if we
stop a little they kick us or do something else . . . . We do not
mind if an officer punishes us, but do not like to be treated

"Indian Country "

139

badly by the soldiers. Our women sometimes come to the tents
outside the fort and make contracts with the soldiers to stay
with them for a night, and give them five dollars or something
else. But in the morning they take away what they gave them
and kick them off. This happens most every day. 12
At least a fourth of the incarcerated died of starvation. Not until
1 8 68 were the Navajos released and allowed to return to their home­
land in what is today the Four Corners area. This permission to re­
turn was not based on the deadly conditions of the camp, rather that
Congress determined that the incarceration was too expensive to
maintain.13 For these noble deeds, Carleton was appointed a major
general in the US Army in 1 8 6 5 . Now he led the Fourth Cavalry in
scorched-earth forays against Plains Indians.
These military campaigns against Indigenous nations constituted
foreign wars fought during the US Civil War, but the end of the
Civil War did not end them. They carried on unabated to the end of
the century, with added killing technology and more seasoned kill­
ers, including African American cavalry units. Demobilized officers
and soldiers often could not find jobs, and along with a new gen­
eration of young settlers-otherwise unemployed and often seeking
violent adventure-they joined the army of the West, some of the of­
ficers accepting lower ranks in order to get career army assignments.
Given that war was centered in the West and that military achieve­
ment had come to foster prestige, wealth, and political power, every
West Point graduate sought to further his career by volunteering
in the army. Some of their diaries echo those of combat troops in
Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, who later were troubled by the
atrocities they witnessed or committed. But most soldiers persevered
in their ambition to succeed.
Prominent Civil War generals led the army of the West, among
them Generals William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan (to
whom is ascribed the statement "The only good Indian is a dead
Indian" ), George Armstrong Custer, and Nelson A. Miles. The army
would make effective use after 1 8 65 of innovations made during the
Civil War. The rapid-fire Gatling gun, first used in battle in 1 8 62 ,
would be employed during the rest o f the century against Indigenous

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

civilians. Non-technological innovations were perhaps even more
important, the Civil War having fostered an extreme patriotic ideol­
ogy in the Union Army that carried over into the Indian wars. Now
more centralized under presidential command, US forces relied less
on state contributions and were thus less subject to their control.
The prestige of the Department of War rose within the federal gov­
ernment, so that it had far more leeway to send troops to steamroll
over Indigenous peoples who challenged US dominion.
The Union Army victory over the Confederate Army transformed
the South into a quasi-captive nation, a region that remains the
poorest of the United States well over a century later. The situa­
tion was similar to that in South Africa two decades later when the
British defeated the Boers (descendants of the original seventeenth­
century Dutch settlers) . As the British would later do with the Boers,
the US government eventually allowed the defeated southern elite
to return to their locally powerful positions, and both US southern­
ers and Boers soon gained national political power. The powerful
white supremacist southern ruling class helped further militarize
the United States, the army practically becoming a southern institu­
tion. Following the effective Reconstruction experiment to empower
former slaves, the US occupying army was withdrawn, and African
Americans were returned to quasi-bondage and disenfranchisement
through Jim Crow laws, forming a colonized population in the South.

C O LO N I A L P O L I CY P R E C E D E S
M I L I TA R Y I M P L E M E N TAT I O N

I n the midst of war, Lincoln did not forget his free-soiler settler
constituency that had raised him to the presidency. During the Civil
War, with the southern states unrepresented, Congress at Lincoln's
behest passed the Homestead Act in 1 8 62 , as well as the Morrill Act,
the latter transferring large tracts of Indigenous land to the states
to establish land grant universities. The Pacific Railroad Act pro­
vided private companies with nearly two hundred million acres of
Indigenous land. 14 With these land grabs, the US government broke
multiple treaties with Indigenous nations. Most of the western ter-

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141

ritories, including Colorado, North and South Dakota, Montana,
Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona,
were delayed in achieving statehood, because Indigenous nations re­
sisted appropriation of their lands and outnumbered settlers. So the
colonization plan for the West established during the Civil War was
carried out over the following three decades of war and land grabs.
Under the Homestead Act, i .5 million homesteads were granted to
settlers west of the Mississippi, comprising ne·arly three hundred
million acres (a half-million square miles) taken from the Indigenous
collective estates and privatized for the market. 1 5 This dispersal of
landless settler populations from east of the Mississippi served as
an "escape valve," lessening the likelihood of class conflict as the
industrial revolution accelerated the use of cheap immigrant labor.
Little of the land appropriated under the Homestead Acts was
distributed to actual single-family homesteaders. It was passed in­
stead to large operators or land speculators. The land laws appeared
to have been created for that result. An individual could acquire
1 , 1 20 or even more acres of land, even though homestead and pre­
emption (legalized squatting) claims were limited to 1 60 acres.1 6 A
claimant could obtain a homestead and secure title after five years
or pay cash within six months. Then he could acquire another 160
acres under preemption by living on another piece of land for six
months and paying $ i . 2 5 per acre. While acquiring these titles, he
could also be fulfilling requirements for a timber culture claim of
1 60 acres and a desert land claim of 640 acres, neither of which re­
quired occupancy for title. Other men within a family or other part­
ners in an enterprise could take out additional desert land claims to
increase their holdings even more. As industrialization quickened,
land as a commodity, "real estate," remained the basis of the US
economy and capital accumulation.17 The federal land grants to the
railroad barons, carved out of Indigenous territories, were not lim­
ited to the width of the railroad tracks, but rather formed a check­
erboard of square-mile sections stretching for dozens of miles on
both sides of the right of way. This was land the railroads were free
to sell in parcels for their own profit. The 1 8 63-64 federal banking
acts mandated a national currency, chartered banks, and permitted
the government to guarantee bonds. As war profiteers, financiers,

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

and industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie,
and J. P. Morgan used these laws to amass wealth in the East, Le­
land Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles
Crocker in the West grew rich from building railroads with eastern
capital on land granted by the US government.18
Indigenous nations, as well as Hispanos, resisted the arrival of
railroads crisscrossing their farms, hunting grounds, and homelands,
bringing settlers, cattle, barbed wire fencing, and mercenary buffalo
hunters in their wake. In what proved a prelude to the genocidal
decades to follow, the Andrew Johnson administration in 1 8 67-68
sent army and diplomatic representatives to negotiate peace treaties
with dozens of Indigenous nations. The 3 7 1 treaties between Indig­
enous nations and the United States were all promulgated during the
first century of US existence. 1 9 Congress halted formal treaty mak­
ing in 1 8 7 1 , attaching a rider to the Indian Appropriation Act of that
year stipulating "that hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the
territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized
as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United
States may contract by treaty. Provided, further, that nothing herein
contained shall be construed to invalidate or impair the obligation
of any treaty heretofore lawfully made and ratified with any such
Indian nation or tribe."2 0 This measure meant that Congress and
the president could now make laws affecting an Indigenous nation
with or without negotiations or consent. Nevertheless, the provision
reaffirmed the sovereign legal status of those Indigenous nations
that had treaties. During the period of US-Indigenous treaty mak­
ing, approximately two million square miles of land passed from
Indigenous nations to the United States, some of it through treaty
agreements and some through breach of standing treaties.
In an effort to create Indigenous economic dependency and com­
pliance in land transfers, the US policy directed the army to destroy
the basic economic base of the Plains Nations-the buffalo. The
buffalo were killed to near extinction, tens of millions dead within a
few decades and only a few hundred left by the 'r 8 8 os. Commercial
hunters wanted only the skins, so left the rest of the animal to rot.
Bones would be gathered and shipped to the East for various uses.
Mainly it was the army that helped realize slaughter of the herds. 21

"Indian Country "

Old Lady Horse of the Kiowa Nation could have been speaking for
all the buffalo nations in her lament of the loss:
Everything the Kiowas had came from the buffalo . . . . Most
of all, the buffalo was part of the Kiowa religion. A white buf­
falo calf must be sacrificed in the Sun Dance. The priests used
parts of the buffalo to make their prayers when they healed
people or when they sang to the powers above.
So, when the white men wanted to build railroads, or when
they wanted to farm or raise cattle, the buffalo still protected
the Kiowas. They tore up the railroad tracks and the gardens.
They chased the cattle off the ranges. The buffalo loved their
people as much as the Kiowas loved them.
There was war between the buffalo and the white men. The
white men built forts in the Kiowa country, and the woolly­
headed buffalo soldiers shot the buffalo as fast as they could,
but the buffalo kept coming on, coming on, even into the post
cemetery at Fort Sill. Soldiers were not enough to hold them
back.
Then the white men hired hunters to do nothing but kill the
buffalo. Up and down the plains those men ranged, shooting
sometimes as many as a hundred buffalo a day. Behind them
came the skinners with their wagons. They piled the hides and
bones into the wagons until they were full, and then took their
loads to the new railroad stations that were being built, to be
shipped east to the market. Sometimes there would be a pile
of bones as high as a man, stretching a mile along the railroad
track.
The buffalo saw that their day was over. They could pro­

tect their people no longer. 22

Another aspect of US economic development that affected the
Indigenous nations of the West was merchant domination. All over
the world, in European colonies distant from their ruling centers,
mercantile capitalists flourished alongside industrial capitalists and
militaries, and together they determined the mode of colonization.
Mercantile houses, usually family-owned, were organized to carry

143

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

goods over long stretches of water or sparsely populated lands to
their destinations. The merchants' sources of commodities in re­
mote regions were the nearby small farmers, loggers, trappers, and
specialists such as woodworkers and metalsmiths. The commodities
were then sent to industrial centers for credit against which money
could be drawn. Thus, in the absence of a system of indirect credit,
merchants could acquire scarce currency for the purchase of for­
eign goods. The merchant, thereby, became the dominant source of
credit for the small operator as well as for the local capitalist. Mer­
cantile capitalism thrived in colonial areas, with many of the first
merchant houses originating in the Levant among Syrians ( Leba­
nese) and Jews. Even as mercantile capitalism waned in the twenti­
eth century, it left its mark on Native reservations where the people
relied on trading posts for credit, a market for their products, and
commodities of all kinds-an opportunity for super-exploitation.
Merchants and traders, often by intermarrying Indigenous women,
also came to dominate Native governance on some reservations.23
As noted above, at the end of the Civil War the US Army hardly
missed a beat before the war "to win the West" began in full force.
As a far more advanced killing machine and with seasoned troops,
the army began the slaughter of people, buffalo, and the land itself,
destroying the natural tall grasses of the plains and planting short
grasses for cattle, eventually leading to the loss of the topsoil four
decades later. William Tecumseh Sherman came out of the Civil War
a major general and soon commanded the US Army, replacing war
hero Ulysses S. Grant when Grant became president in 1 8 69 . As
commanding general through 1 8 8 3 , Sherman was responsible for the
genocidal wars against the resistant Indigenous nations of the West.
Sherman's family was among the first generation of settlers who
rushed to the Ohio Valley region after the total war that drove the
people of the Shawnee Nation out of their homes, towns, and farms.
Sherman's father gave his son the trophy name Tecumseh after the
Shawnee leader who was killed by the US Army. The general had
been a successful lawyer and banker in San Francisco and New York
before he turned to a military career. During the Civil War, most fa­
mously in the siege of Atlanta, he made his mark as a proponent and
practitioner of total war, scorched-earth campaigns against civil-

"Indian Country "

145

ians, particularly targeting their food supplies . This had long been
the colonial and US American way of war against the Indigenous
peoples east of the Mississippi. Sherman sent an army commission
to England to study English colonial campaigns worldwide, looking
to employ successful English tactics for the US wars against Indig­
enous peoples. In Washington, Sherman had to contend with the
upper echelons of the military that were under the sway of Carl von
Clausewitz's book On War, which dealt with conflict between Euro­
pean nation-states with standing armies. This dichotomy of training
the US military for standard European warfare but also training it
in colonial counterinsurgency methods continues in the twenty-first
century. Although a man of war, Sherman, like most in the US rul­
ing class, was an entrepreneur at heart, and his mandate as head of
the army and his passion were to protect the Anglo conquest of the
West. Sherman regarded railroads a top priority. In a letter to Grant
in 1 8 67 he wrote, "We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged
Indians stop the progress of [the railroads] ."24
An alliance of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Nations was
blocking the "Bozeman Trail," over which thousands of crazed gold
seekers crashed through Indigenous territories in the Dakotas and
Wyoming in. 1 8 66 to reach newly discovered goldfields in Montana.
The army arrived to protect them, and in preparation for construct­
ing Fort Phil Kearny, Lieutenant Colonel William Fetterman led
eighty soldiers out to clear the trail in December 1 8 66 . The Indig­
enous alliance defeated them in battle. Strangely, this being war,
the defeat of the US Army in the battle has come down in historical
annals as "the Fetterman Massacre." Following this event, General
Sherman wrote to Grant, who was still army commander: "We must
act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their exter­
mination, men, women, and children." Sherman made it clear that
"during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between
male and female, or even discriminate as to age."25
In adopting total war in the West, Sherman brought in its most
notorious avatar, George Armstrong Custer, who proved his met­
tle right away by leading an attack on unarmed civilians on No­
vember 27, 1 8 68 , at the Southern Cheyenne reservation at Washita
Creek in Indian Territory. Earlier, at the Colorado Volunteers' 1 8 64

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Sand Creek Massacre, the Cheyenne leader Black Kettle had es­
caped death. He and other Cheyenne survivors were then forced to
leave Colorado Territory for a reservation in Indian Territory. Some
young Cheyenne men, determined to resist reservation confinement
and hunger, decided to hunt and to fight back with guerrilla tac­
tics. Since the army was rarely able to capture them, Custer resorted
to total war, murdering the incarcerated mothers, wives, children,
and elders. When Black Kettle received word from Indigenous spies
within the army ranks that the mounted troops of the Seventh Cav­
alry were leaving their fort and headed for the Washita reservation,
he and his wife rode out at dawn in a snowstorm, unarmed, to at­
tempt to talk with Custer and assure him that no resisters were pres­
ent on the reservation. Upon Black Kettle's approaching the troops
with a hoisted white flag, Custer ordered the soldiers to fire, and a
moment later Black Kettle and his wife lay dead. All told, the Sev­
enth Cavalry murdered over a hundred Cheyenne women and chil­
dren that day, taking ghoulish trophies afterward. 26

C O LO N I A L S O L D I E R S

Many of the intensive genocidal campaigns against Indigenous ci­
vilians took place during the administration of President Grant,
1 8 69 -77. In 1 8 66, two years before Grant's election, Congress had
created two all-African American cavalry regiments that came to
be called the buffalo soldiers . Some four million formerly enslaved
A fricans were free citizens in 1 8 6 5 , thanks to the Emancipation
Proclamation, which took effect in January 1 8 63 . The legislation
was intended to have a demoralizing effect on the CSA, but it gave
belated official recognition to what was already fact: many African
Americans, especially young men, had freed themselves by fleeing
servitude and joining Union forces .27 Up to 1 8 6 2 , Africans had been
barred from serving in their own capacity in the army. Now the
Union Army incorporated them but at lower pay and in segregated
units under white officers. The War Department created the federal
Bureau of Colored Troops, and one hundred thousand armed Afri­
cans served in the unit. Their courage and commitment made them

"Indian Country "

the best and most effective fighters, although they had the highest
mortality rate. At the end of the Civil War, 1 8 6,ooo Black soldiers
had fought and 3 8 ,000 had died (in combat and from disease), a
higher death toll than that of any individual state. The state with
the highest casualty count was New York, with troops comprising
mostly poor white immigrant soldiers, largely Irish. After the war
many Black soldiers, like their poor white counterparts, remained
in the army and were assigned to segregated regiments sent west to
crush Indigenous resistance.
This reality strikes many as tragic, as if oppressed former slaves
and Indigenous peoples being subjected to genocidal warfare should
magically be unified against their common enemy, "the white man."
In fact, this is precisely how colonialism in general and colonial war­
fare in particular work. It is not unique to the United States, but
rather a part of the tradition of European colonialism since the Ro ­
man legions . The British organized whole armies of ethnic troops
in South and Southwestern Asia, the most famous being the Gur­
khas from Nepal, who fought as recently as Margaret Thatcher's
war against Argentina in 1983 .28 The buffalo soldiers were such a
specially organized colonial military unit. As Stanford L . Davis,
a descendant of a buffalo soldier, writes:
Slaves and the black soldiers, who couldn't read or write, had
no idea of the historical deprivations and the frequent geno­
cidal intent of the U . S . government toward Native Americans.
Free blacks, whether they could read and write, generally had
no access to first-hand or second-hand unbiased informa­
tion on the relationship. Most whites who had access often
didn't really care about the situation. It was business as usual
in the name of "Manifest Destiny." Most Americans viewed
the Indians as incorrigible and non-reformable savages. Those
closest to the warring factions or who were threatened by it,
naturally wanted government protection at any cost. 29
Many Black men opted for army service for survival reasons, as it
gave them food and shelter, pay and a pension, and even some glory.
The United States had its own motives for assigning Black troops to

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

the West. Southerners and the eastern population did not want thou­
sands of armed Black soldiers in their communities. There was also
fear that if they demobilized, the labor market would be flooded.
For US authorities, it was a good way of getting rid of the Black sol­
diers and the Indians.
The Civil War also set the template for the rapid "Americaniza­
tion" of immigrants. Jewish immigrants fought on both sides in the
war, and as individuals they earned a level of freedom from US big­
otry they had never experienced before.
Indian scouts and soldiers were essential to the army as well,
both as individuals and as nations making war on other Indigenous
nations. Many decades later, Native Americans have continued to
volunteer in US wars in percentages far beyond their populations.
Wichita Nation citizen Stan Holder appeared in a 1974 documentary
film on the Vietnam War, Hearts and Minds, in which he explained
his volunteering for service. While growing up he had heard the
older people's stories about Wichita warriors, and, looking around,
the only warriors he could identify were marines, so he enlisted in
what he considered a warrior society. It is no accident that the US
Marine Corps evokes that image in angry young men. As with Black
men who volunteered in the Indian wars and enlisted and served in
other wars, Native men seized the security and potential glory of the
colonialist army.
The explicit purpose of the buffalo soldiers and the army of the
West as a whole was to invade Indigenous lands and ethnically
cleanse them for Anglo settlement and commerce. As Native his­
torian Jace Weaver has written: "The Indian Wars were not fought
by the blindingly white American cavalry of John Ford westerns but
by African Americans and Irish and German immigrants."30 The
haunting Bob Marley song " Buffalo Soldier" captures the colonial
experience in the United States: " Said he was a buffalo soldier I Win
the war for America."31
The army of the West was a colonial army with all the problems
of colonial armies and foreign occupation, principally being hated
by the people living under occupation. It's no surprise that the US
military uses the term "Indian Country" to refer to what it considers
enemy territory. Much as in the Vietnam War, the 1 9 8 0s covert wars

"Indian Country "

in Central America, and the wars of the early twenty-first century
in Muslim countries, counterinsurgent army volunteers in the late­
nineteenth-century US West had to rely heavily on intelligence from
those native to the land, informers and scouts. Many of these were
double agents, reporting back to their own people, having j oined
the US Army for that purpose. Failing to find guerrilla fighters, the
army resorted to scorched-earth campaigns, starvation, attacks on
and removals of civilian populations-the weapons of counterinsur­
gency warfare. During the Soviet counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
in the 19 8 0s, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees called the
effect "migratory genocide"-an apt term to apply retrospectively
to the nineteenth-century US counterinsurgency against Indigenous
peoples.32

A N N I H I L AT I O N U N TO TOTA L S U R R E N D E R

The US Army's search-and-destroy missions and forced relocations
(ethnic cleansing) in the West are well documented but perhaps not
normally considered in the light of counterinsurgency.
Mari Sandoz recorded one such story in her 1 9 5 3 best-selling
work of nonfiction Cheyenne Autumn, on which John Ford based
a 1 9 64 film.33 In 1 8 7 8 , the great Cheyenne resistance leaders Little
Wolf and Dull Knife led more than three hundred Cheyenne civil­
ians from a military reservation in Indian Territory, where they had
been forcibly confined, to their original homeland in what is today
Wyoming and Montana. They were eventually intercepted by the
military, but only following a dramatic chase covered by newspa­
per reporters. So much sympathy was aroused in eastern cities that
the Cheyennes were provided a reservation in a part of their origi­
nal homeland. A similar feat was that of the Nimi'ipuu (Nez Perce)
under Chief Joseph, who tried to lead his people out of military
incarceration in Idaho to exile in Canada. In 1 877, pursued by two
thousand soldiers of the US cavalry led by Nelson Miles, Nimi'ipuu
led eight hundred civilians toward the Canadian border. They held
out for nearly four months, evading the soldiers as well as fighting
hit-and-run battles, while covering seventeen hundred miles. Some

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were rounded up and placed in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, but they
soon left on their own and returned to their Idaho homeland, even­
tually securing a small reservation there.
The longest military counterinsurgency in US history was the war
on the Apache Nation, 1 8 5 0 - 8 6 . Goyathlay, known as Geronimo,
famously led the final decade of Apache resistance. The Apaches
and their Dine relatives, the Navajos, did not miss a beat in continu­
ing resistance to colonial domination when the United States an­
nexed their territory as a part of the half of Mexico taken in 1 8 4 8 .
The Treaty o f Guadalupe Hidalgo between the United States and
Mexico, which sealed the transfer of territory, even stipulated that
both parties were required to fight the "savage" Apaches. By 1 877
the army had forced most Apaches into inhospitable desert reserva­
tions. Led by Geronimo, Chiricahua Apaches resisted incarceration
in the San Carlos reservation designated for them in Arizona. When
Geronimo finally surrendered-he was never captured-the group
numbered only thirty-eight, most of those women and children,
with five thousand soldiers in pursuit, which meant that the insur­
gents had wide support both north and south of the recently drawn
US-Mexico border. Guerrilla warfare persists only if it has deep
roots in the people being represented, the reason it is sometimes
called "people's war." Obviously, the Apache resistance was not a
military threat to the United States but rather a symbol of resistance
and freedom. Herein lies the essence of counterinsurgent colonialist
warfare: no resistance can be tolerated. Historian William Apple­
man Williams aptly described the US imperative as "annihilation
unto total surrender."34
Geronimo and three hundred other Chiricahuas who were not
even part of the fighting force were rounded up and transported by
train under military guard to Fort Marion, in St. Augustine, Florida,
to j oin hundreds of other Plains Indian fighters already incarcer­
ated there. Remarkably, Geronimo negotiated an agreement with
the United States so that he and his band would surrender as prison­
ers of war, rather than as common criminals as the Texas Rangers
desired, which would have meant executions by civil authorities.
The POW status validated Apache sovereignty and made the cap­
tives eligible for treatment according to the international laws of

"Indian Country "

151

war. Geronimo and his people were transferred again, to the army
base at Fort Sill in Indian Territory, and lived out their lives there .
The US government had not yet created the term "unlawful combat­
ant," which it would do in the early twenty-first century, depriving
legitimate prisoners of war fair treatment under international law.
During the Grant administration, the United States began ex­
perimenting with new colonial institutions, the most pernicious of
which were the boarding schools, modeled on Fort Marion prison.
In 1 8 75 , Captain Richard Henry Pratt was in charge of transporting
seventy-two captive Cheyenne and other Plains Indian warriors from
the West to Fort Marion, an old Spanish fortress, dark and dank.
After the captives were left shackled for a period in a dungeon, Pratt
took their clothes away, had their hair cut, dressed them in army
uniforms, and drilled them like soldiers. " Kill the Indian and save
the man" was Pratt's motto. This "successful" experiment led Pratt
to establish the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania
in 1 8 79 , the prototype for the many militaristic federal boarding
schools set up across the continent soon after, augmented by dozens
of Christian missionary boarding schools. The decision to establish
Carlisle and other off-reservation boarding schools was made by
the US Office of Indian Affairs, later renamed the Bureau of Indian
Affairs ( BIA). The stated goal of the project was assimilation. Indig­
enous children were prohibited from speaking their mother tongues
or practicing their religions, while being indoctrinated in Christian­
ity. As in the Spanish missions in California, in the US boarding
schools the children were beaten for speaking their own languages,
among other infractions that expressed their humanity. Although
stripped of the languages and skills of their communities, what they
learned in boarding school was useless for the purposes of effective
assimilation, creating multiple lost generations of traumatized indi­
viduals.35
Just before the centennial of US independence, in late June 1 8 76,
then-Lieutenant Colonel Custer, commanding 225 soldiers of the
Seventh Cavalry, prepared to launch a military assault on the civil­
ians living in a cluster of Sioux and Cheyenne villages that lay along
the Little Bighorn River. Led by Crazy Horse and Sitti �g Bull, the
Sioux and Cheyenne warriors were ready for the assault and wiped

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

out the assailants, including Custer, who after death was promoted
to general. The proud author of multiple massacres of Indigenous
civilians, starting during the Civil War with his assault on unarmed
and reservation-incarcerated Cheyennes on the Washita in Indian
Territory, Custer "died for your [colonialist] sins," in the words of
Vine Deloria Jr. 3 6 A year later, Crazy Horse was captured and im­
prisoned, then killed trying to escape. He was thirty-five years old.
Crazy Horse was a new kind of leader to emerge after the Civil
War, at the beginning of the army's wars of annihilation in the
northern plains and the Southwest. Born in 1 8 4 2 in the shadow of
the sacred Paha Sapa (Black Hills) , he was considered special, a quiet
and brooding child. Already the effects of colonialism were present
among his people, particularly alcoholism and missionary influence.
Crazy Horse became a part of the Akicita, a traditional Sioux so­
ciety that kept order in villages and during migrations. It also had
authority to make certain that the hereditary chiefs were doing their
duty and dealt harshly with those who did not. Increasingly dur­
ing Crazy Horse's youth, the primary concern was the immigrant
defilement of the Sioux territory. A steady stream of Euro-American
migrants clotted the trail to Oregon Territory. Young militant Sioux
wished to drive them away, but the Sioux were now dependent on
the trail for supplies. In 1 849, the army arrived and planted a base,
Fort Laramie, in Sioux territory. Sporadic fighting broke out, leading
to treaty meetings and agreements, most of which were bogus army
documents signed by unauthorized individuals. Crazy Horse was a
natural in guerrilla warfare, becoming legendary among his people.
Although Crazy Horse and other militants did not approve of the
1 8 68 US treaty with the Sioux, some stability held until Custer's
soldiers found gold in the Black Hills. Then a gold rush was on, with
hordes of prospectors from all over converging and running ram­
pant over the Sioux. The treaty had ostensibly been a guarantee that
such would not occur. Soon after, the Battle of the Little Bighorn put
an end to Custer but not to the invasion.
Indigenous peoples in the West continued to resist, and the sol­
diers kept hunting them down, incarcerating them, massacring ci­
vilians, removing them, and stealing their children to haul off to
faraway boarding schools. The Apache, Kiowa, Sioux, Ute, Kick-

"Indian Country "

apoo, Comanche, Cheyenne, and other nations were attacked, leav­
ing community after community decimated. By the 1 890s, although
some military assaults on Indigenous communities and valiant In­
digenous armed resistance continued, most of the surviving Indig­
enous refugees were confined to federal reservations, their children
transported to distant boarding schools to unlearn their Indigenous­
ness.

G H O S T DA N C I N G

Disarmed, held in concentration camps, their children taken away,
half starved, the Indigenous peoples of the West found a form of
resistance that spread like wildfire in all directions from its source,
thanks to a Paiute holy man, Wovoka, in Nevada. Pilgrims journeyed
to hear his message and to receive directions on how to perform the
Ghost Dance, which promised to restore the Indigenous world as it
was before colonialism, making the invaders disappear and the buf­
falo return. It was a simple dance performed by everyone, requiring
only a specific kind of shirt that was to protect the dancers from
gunfire. In the twentieth century Sioux anthropologist Ella Deloria
interviewed a sixty-year-old Sioux man who remembered the Ghost
Dance he had witnessed fifty years before as a boy:
Some fifty of us, little boys about eight to ten, started out
across country over hills and valleys, running all night. I know
now that we ran almost thirty miles. There on the Porcupine
Creek thousands of Dakota people were in camp; all hurrying
about very purposefully. In a long sweat lodge with openings
at both ends, people were being purified in great companies
for the holy dance, men by themselves and women by them­
selves, of course . . . .
The people, wearing the sacred shirts and feathers, now
formed a ring. We were in it. All joined hands. Everyone was
respectful and quiet, expecting something wonderful to hap­
pen. It was not a glad time, though. All wailed cautiously and
in awe, feeling their dead were close at hand.

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

The leaders beat time and sang as the people danced, going
round to the left in a sidewise step. They danced without rest,
on and on, and they got out of breath but still they kept go­
ing as long as possible. Occasionally someone thoroughly
exhausted and dizzy fell unconscious into the center and lay
there "dead." Quickly those on each side of him closed the gap
and went right on. After a while, many lay about in that con­
dition. They were now "dead" and seeing their dear ones. As
each one came to, she, or he, slowing sat up and looked about,
bewildered, and then began wailing inconsolably. . . .
Waking to the drab and wretched present after such a
glowing vision, it was little wonder that they wailed as if their
poor hearts would break in two with disillusionment. But at
least they had seen! The people went on and on and could not
stop, day or night, hoping perhaps to get a vision of their own
dead, or at least to hear the visions of others . They preferred
that to rest or food or sleep. And so I suppose the authorities
did think they were crazy-but they weren't. They were only
terribly unhappy. 37
When the dancing began among the Sioux in 1 89 0 , reservation
officials reported it as disturbing and unstoppable. They believed
that it had been instigated by Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader Tatanka
Yotanka (Sitting Bull), who had returned with his people in 1 8 8 1
from exile i n Canada. H e was put under arrest and imprisoned in
his home, closely guarded by Indian police. Sitting Bull was killed by
one of his captors on December 1 5 , 1 8 9 0 .
A l l Indigenous individuals and groups living outside designated
federal reservations were considered "fomenters of disturbance," as
the War Department put it. Following Sitting Bull's death, military
warrants of arrest were issued for leaders such as Big Foot, who
was responsible for several hundred civilian refugees who had not
yet turned themselves in to the designated Pine Ridge Reservation.
When Big Foot heard of Sitting Bull's death and that the army was
looking for him and his people-350 Lakotas, 230 of them women
and children-he decided to lead them through the subzero weather
to Pine Ridge to surrender. En route on foot, they encountered US

"Indian Country "

troops. The commander ordered that they be taken to the a rmy
camp at Wounded Knee Creek, where armed soldiers surrounded
them. Two Hotchkiss machine guns were mounted on the hillside,
enough firepower to wipe out the whole group. During the night,
Colonel James Forsyth and the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's old regi­
ment, arrived and took charge. These soldiers had not forgotten
that Lakota relatives of these starving, unarmed refugees had killed
Custer and decimated his troops at the Little Bighorn fourteen years
earlier. With orders to transport the refugees to a military stockade
in Omaha, Forsyth added two more Hotchkiss guns trained on the
camp, then issued whiskey to his officers . The following morning,
December 29 , 1 8 9 0 , the soldiers brought the captive men out from
their campsites and called for all weapons to be turned in. Search­
ing tents, soldiers confiscated tools, such as axes and knives. Still
not satisfied, the officers ordered skin searches. A Winchester rifle
turned up. Its young owner did not want to part with his beloved ri­
fle, and, when the soldiers grabbed him, the rifle fired a shot into the
air. The killing began immediately. The Hotchkiss guns began fir­
ing a shell a second, mowing down everyone except a few who were
able to run fast enough . Three hundred Sioux lay dead. Twenty­
five soldiers were killed in "friendly fire."38 Bleeding survivors were
dragged into a nearby church. Being Christmastime, the sanctuary
was candlelit and decked with greenery. In the front, a banner read:
PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL TO MEN.

The Seventh Cavalry attack on a group of unarmed and starving
Lakota refugees attempting to reach Pine Ridge to accept reserva­
tion incarceration in the frozen days of December 1 8 9 0 symbol­
izes the end of Indigenous armed resistance in the United States.
The slaughter is ca lled a battle in US military annals. Congres­
sional Medals of Honor were bestowed on twenty of the soldiers
involved. A monument was built at Fort Riley, Kansas, to honor
the soldiers killed by friendly fire. A battle streamer was created to
honor the event and added to other streamers that are displayed at
the Pentagon, West Point, and army bases throughout the world. L.
Frank Baum, a Dakota Territory settler later famous for writing The

Wonderful Wizard of Oz, edited the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer at
the time. Five days after the sickening event at Wounded Knee, on

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

January 3 , 1 89 1 , he wrote, "The Pioneer [sic] has before declared
that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the
Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order
to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe
these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. " 39
Three weeks before the massacre, General Sherman had made
clear that he regretted nothing of his three decades of carrying out
genocide. In a press conference he held in New York City, he said,
"Injins must either work or starve. They never have worked; they
won't work now, and they will never work." A reporter asked, " But
should not the government supply them with enough to keep them
from starvation? " " Why," Sherman asked in reply, "should the gov­
ernment support 260,000 able-bodied campers ? No government
that the world has ever seen has done such a thing."4 0
The reaction of one young man to Wounded Knee is represen­
tative but also extraordinary. Plenty Horses attended the Carlisle
school from 1 8 8 3 to 1 8 8 8 , returning home stripped of his language,
facing the dire reality of the genocide of his people, with no tradi­
tional or modern means to make a living. He said, "There was no
chance to get employment, nothing for me to do whereby I could
earn my board and clothes, no opportunity to learn more and re­
main with the whites. It disheartened me and I went back to live as
I had before going to school."41 Historian Philip Deloria notes: "The
greatest threat to the reservation program . . . was the disciplined In­
dian who refused the gift of civilization and went 'back to the blan­
ket,' as Plenty Horses tried."42 But it wasn't simple for Plenty Horses
to find his place. As Deloria points out, he had missed the essential
period of Lakota education, which takes place between the ages of
fourteen and nineteen. Due to his absence a nd Euro-American influ­
ence, he was suspect among his own people, and even that world
was disrupted by colonialist chaos and violence. Still, Plenty Horses
returned to traditional dress, grew his hair long, and participated
in the Ghost Dance. He also j oined a band of armed resisters, and
they were present at Pine Ridge on December 29, 1 8 9 0 , when the
bloody bodies were brought in from the Wounded Knee Massacre.
A week later, he went out with forty other mounted warriors who
accompanied Sioux leaders to meet Lieutenant Edward Casey for

"Indian Country "

possible negotiations. The young warriors were angry, none more
than Plenty Horses, who pulled out from the group and got behind
Casey and shot him in the back of his head.
Army officials had to think twice about charging Plenty Horses
with murder. They were faced with the corollary of the recent army
massacre at Wounded Knee, in which the soldiers received Congres­
sional Medals of Honor for their deeds. At trial, Plenty Horses was
acquitted due to the state of war that existed. Acknowledging a state
of war was essential in order to give legal cover to the massacre.
As a late manifestation of military action against Indigenous
peoples, Wounded Knee stands out. Deloria notes that in the preced­
ing years, the Indian warrior imagery so prevalent in US American
society was being replaced with "docile, pacified Indians started out
on the road to civilization."
Luther Standing Bear, for example, recounts numerous occa­
sions on which the Carlisle Indian Industrial School students
were displayed as docile and educable Indians. The Carlisle
band played at the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1 8 8 3
and then toured several churches. Students were carted around
East Coast cities. Standing Bear himself was placed on display
in Wanamaker's Philadelphia department store, locked in a
glass cell in the center of the store and set to sorting and pric­
ing jewelry.43

GREED IS GOOD

During the final phase of military conquest of the continent, surviv­
ing Indigenous refugees were deposited in Indian Territory, piled on
top of each other in smaller and smaller reservations. In 1 8 8 3 , the
first of several conferences were held in Mohonk, New York, of a
group of influential and wealthy advocates of the "manifest destiny"
policy. These self-styled "friends of the Indians" developed a policy
of assimilation soon formulated into an act of Congress written by
one of their members, Senator Henry Dawes: the General Allotment
Act of 1 8 87. Arguing for allotment of collectively held Indigenous

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

lands, Dawes said: "The defect of the [reservation] system was ap­
parent. It is [socialist] Henry George's system and under that there is
no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neigh­
bors. There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization.
Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide among
their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates they will
not make much more progress." Although allotment did not cre­
ate the desired selfishness, it did reduce the overall Indigenous land
base by half and furthered both Indigenous impoverishment and US
control. In 1 8 8 9 , a part of Indian Territory the federal government
called the Unassigned Lands, left over after allotment, was opened
to settler homesteading, triggering the " Oklahoma Run."
Oil had been discovered in Indian Territory, but the Dawes Allot­
ment Act could not be applied to the five Indigenous nations removed
from the South, because their territories were not technically reser­
vations, rather sovereign nations. In contradiction to the terms of
the removal treaties, Congress passed the Curtis Act in r 8 9 8 , which
unilaterally deposed the sovereignty of those nations and mandated
allotment of their lands. Indigenous territories were larger than the
sum of r 6o -acre allotments, so the remaining land after distribution
was declared surplus and opened to homesteading.
Allotment did not proceed in Indian Territory without fierce re­
sistance. Cherokee traditionalist Redbird Smith rallied his brethren
to revive the Keetoowah secret society. Besides direct action, they
also sent lawyers to argue before Congress. When they were over­
ridden, they formed a community in the Cookson Hills, refusing to
participate in privatization. Similarly, the Muskogee Creeks resisted,
led by Chitto Harjo, who was lovingly nicknamed Crazy Snake.
He led in the founding of an alternate government, with its capital
a settlement they called Hickory Ground. More than five thousand
Muskogees were involved. Captured and j ailed, when freed Harjo
led his people into the woods and carried on the fight for another
decade. He was shot by federal troops in r9 r 2 , but the legacy of the
Crazy Snake resistance remains a strong force in eastern Oklahoma.
Muskogee historian Donald Fixico describes a contemporary en­
clave: "There is a small Creek town in Oklahoma which lies within
the Creek Nation. The name of this town is Thlopthlocco. Thlopth-

"Indian Country "

159

locco is a small independent community which operates almost
independently. They are not very much dependent on the federal
government, nor are they dependent on the Creek Nation. So they're
kind of a renegade group."44
In 19 07, Indian Territory was dissolved and the state of Okla­
homa entered the Union. Under the Dawes and Curtis Acts, priva­
tization of Indigenous territories was imposed on half of all federal
reservations, with a loss of three-fourths of the Indigenous land base
that still existed after decades of army attacks and wanton land
grabs. Allotment continued until 19 3 4 , when it was halted by the In­
dian Reorganization Act, but the land taken was never restored and
its former owners were never compensated for their losses, leaving
all the Indigenous people of Oklahoma (except the Osage Nation)
without effective collective territories and many families with no
land at all.45
The Hopi Nation resisted allotment with partial success. In 1 8 9 4 ,
they petitioned the federal government with a letter signed b y every
leader and chief of the Hopi villages:
To the Washington Chiefs:
During the last two years strangers have looked over our
land with spy-glasses and made marks upon it, a:nd we know
but little of what it means. As we believe that you have no
wish to disturb our Possessions we want to tell you some­
thing about this Hopi land.
None of us were asked that it should be measured into
separate lots, and given to individuals for they would cause
confusion.
The family, the dwelling house and the field are insepa­
rable, because the woman is the heart of these, and they rest
with her. Among us the family traces its kin from the mother,
hence all its possessions are hers . The man builds the house
but the woman is the owner, because she repairs and pre­
serves it; the man cultivates the field, but he renders its har­
vest into the woman's keeping, because upon her it rests to
prepare the food, and the surplus of stores for barter depends
upon her thrift.

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

A man plants the fields of his wife, and the fields assigned
to the children she bears, and informally he calls them his,
although in fact they are not. Even of the field which he
inherits from his mother, its harvests he may dispose of at
will, but the field itself he may not. 4 6
The petition continues, explaining the matriarchal communal
society and why dividing it up for private ownership would be un­
thinkable. Washington authorities never replied and the government
continued to carve up the lands, finally giving up because of Hopi
resistance. In the heart of New Mexico, the nineteen Indigenous
city-states of the Pueblo Indians organized resistance under US oc­
cupation using the legal system as a means of survival, as they had
under Spanish colonialism and in their relationship with the republic
of Mexico. In the decades after they had lost their autonomous po­
litical status under Mexico and were counted as former Mexican cit­
izens under US law, both Hispanos and Anglo squatters encroached
upon the Pueblos' ancestral lands. The only avenue for the Pueblos
was to use the US court of private land claims . The following report
reflects their status in the eyes of the Anglo-American j udiciary:
Occasionally the court room at Santa Fe would be enlivened
by a squad of Indians who· had j ourneyed thither from their
distant Pueblos as witnesses for their grant. These delegations
were usually headed by the governor of their tribe, who ex­
hibited great pride in striding up to the witness stand and be­
ing sworn on the holy cross; wearing a badge on his breast, a
broad red sash round his waist, and clad in a white shirt, the
full tail of which hung about his Antarctic zone like the skirt
of a ballet dancer, and underneath which depended his baggy
white muslin trousers, a la Chinese washee-washee. The grave
and imperturbable bow which the governor gave to the judges
on the bench, in recognition of their equa lity with himself
as official dignitaries, arrayed in that grotesque fashion, was
enough to evoke a hilarious bray from a dead burro.47

"Indian Country "

161

Without redress for their collective land rights under the claims
court, the Pueblos had no choice but to seek federal Indian trust
status. After they lost in their first attempt, finally in r9r3 the US Su­
preme Court reversed the earlier decision and declared the Pueblos
wards of the federal government with protected trust status, stating:
"They are essentially a simple, uninformed, inferior people."48
At the beginning of the twentieth century, sculptor James Earle
Fraser unveiled the monumental and iconic sculpture The End of

the Trail, which he had created exclusively for the triumphal r9r5
Panama-Pacific International Exposition in S a n Francisco, Califor­
nia. The image of the near naked, exhausted, dying Indian mounted
on his equally exhausted horse proclaimed the final solution, the
elimination of the Indigenous peoples of the continent. The follow­
ing year, Ishi, the California Yani who had been held captive for five
years by anthropologists who studied him, died and was proclaimed
"the last Indian." Dozens of other popular images of "the vanishing
Indian" were displayed during this period. The film industry soon
kicked in, and Indians were killed over and over on screens viewed
by millions of children, including Indian girls and boys.
With utter military triumph on the continent, the United States
then set out to dominate the world, but the Indigenous peoples re­
mained and persisted as the "American Century" proceeded.

NINE

U S T R I U M PHA L I S M
A N D PE ACE TI M E C O L O N I A L I S M

There is one feature in the expansion of the peoples of white, or
European, blood during the past four centuries which should never
be lost sight of, especially by those who denounce such expansion
on moral grounds. On the whole, the movement has been fraught
with lasting benefit to most of the peoples already dwelling in the
lands over which the expansion took place.
-Theodore Roosevelt, " T he Expansion of the White Races," 1909

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back
now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered
women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the
crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.
And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud,
and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was
a beautiful dream . . . the nation's hoop is broken and scattered.
There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
-Black Elk, 1 9 3 0 , on the massacre at Wounded Knee

Although US imperialism abroad might seem at first to fall outside
the scope of this book, it's important to recognize that the same
methods and strategies that were employed with the Indigenous peo­
ples on the continent were mirrored abroad. While the Indigenous
Americans were being brutally colonized, eliminated, relocated, and
killed, the United States from its beginning was also pursuing over­
seas dominance. Between 1798 and 1 8 27, the United States inter­
vened militarily twenty-three times from Cuba to Tripoli ( Libya)
to Greece. There were seventy-one overseas interventions between

162

US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism

l 8 3 J and 1 896, on all continents, and the United States dominated
most of Latin America economically, some countries militarily. The
forty interventions and occupations between 1 8 9 8 and 1919 were
conducted with even more military heft but using the same methods
and sometimes the same personnel.

CO N N E CT I O N S

U S colonies established during 189 8-1919 include Hawai'i (formerly
called the Sandwich Islands), Alaska, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Is­
lands, Guam, American Samoa, the Marshall Islands, and Northern
Mariana. Most of these, and dozens more islands depopulated in the
Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Caribbean for military bases and
bomb testing, remain colonies (called "territories" and "common­
wealths" ) in the twenty-first century. 1
One of the first outspoken proponents of transoceanic imperial­
ism was former abolitionist William H . Seward who was Lincoln's
secretary of state and who considered it the destiny of the United
States to dominate the Pacific Ocean. Seward did everything possi­
ble to fulfill that perceived destiny, including arranging the purchase
of Alaska in 1 8 67. In early 1 874 , the United States began military
control of Hawai'i, and in 1 8 9 8 it annexed the islands after over­
throwing the Hawai'ian queen, Liliuokalani. Following post-World
War II ascendancy to statehood, Indigenous Hawai'ians and Alas­
kan Natives were brought under similar US colonial rule as Native
Americans.2
Overseas ventures gained increasingly exuberant public support
in the late nineteenth century. In the best-selling book Our Country

( 1 8 8 5) the Reverend Josiah Strong of the American Home Mission­
ary Society argued that the United States had inherited the mantle of
Anglo-Saxonism and, as a superior race, had a divine responsibility
to control the world. By 1914 there were six thousand US Protestant
missionaries in China and thousands of others in every other part
of the non-European world, and they remained, as from the early
seventeenth century, ensconced in Native American communities.
The United States built the naval " Great White Fleet" and ex-

163

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

panded the army from twenty-five thousand to nearly three hundred
thousand men by the time it invaded and occupied Cuba, undermin­
ing the ongoing independence movement against Spain there. While
US troops were headed to Havana Harbor in 1 8 9 8 , Admiral George
Dewey led the US Navy to intervene in the Philippines-purport­
edly to assist a force of thirty thousand indigenous Filipino rebels
who had won and declared their independence from Spain. Dewey
referred to the Filipinos as "the Indians" and vowed to "enter the
city [Manila] and keep the Indians out."3 It took the United States
three more years to crush the Filipino " lhdian" resistance to US oc­
cupation, the army using counterinsurgency techniques practiced
against the Indigenous nations of the North American continent,
including new forms of torture such as water-boarding, and under
many of the same army commanders. Twenty-six of the thirty US
generals in the Philippines had been officers in the " Indian wars."4
Major General Nelson A. Miles, who had commanded the army in
campaigns against Indigenous peoples, was put in general command
of the army in the Philippines war.
The continuity between invading and occupying sovereign In­
digenous nations in order to achieve continental control in North
America and employing the same tactics overseas to achieve global
control is key to understanding the future of the United States in
the world. The military provided that continuity. As a colonel in
the 1 8 70s, Nelson Miles had been in charge of pursuing every last
Sioux and herding them onto reservations guarded by troops or re­
cently trained Indian police. The reservations were not safe havens
for the incarcerated . Struck By the Ree told of multiple horrors of
daily life on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, which was not out
of the ordinary:
Another time when General Sully came up he passed through
the middle of our field, turned all his cattle and stock into our
corn and destroyed the whole of it . . . . The soldiers set fire to
the prairie and burnt up four of our lodges and all there was
in them . . . . The soldiers are very drunken and come to our
place-they have arms and guns; they run after our women
and fire into our houses and lodges; one soldier came along

US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism

165

and wanted one of our young men to drink, but he would
not, and turned to go away, and the soldier shot at him. Be­
fore the soldiers came along we had good health; but once the
soldiers come along they go to my squaws and want to sleep
with them, and the squaws being hungry will sleep with them
in order to get something to eat, and will get a bad disease,
and then the squaws turn to their husbands and give them the
bad disease. 5
As related in chapter 8 , Miles had also led the army's pursuit of
Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce as they sought to escape to Canada,
and in 1 8 8 6 Miles took charge of the War Department's efforts to
capture Geronimo, commanding five thousand soldiers, a third of the
army's combat force, along with five hundred Apache scouts forced
into service and thousands of volunteer settler militiamen. In 1 8 9 8 ,
now general i n chief o f the army, Miles personally commanded the
army forces that seized Puerto Rico. Miles's second in command,
General Wesley E. Merritt, was assigned to head the military inva­
sion of the Philippines. He had served under Custer, fighting Sioux
and Cheyenne resistance. Commanding the army occupation of the
Philippines was General Henry W. Lawton, to whom Geronimo had
turned himself in, making Lawton an instant hero for "capturing"
Geronimo. Lawton had led troops in Cuba before going to the Phil­
ippines. Ironically, Filipino insurgents under the leadership of a man
named Geronimo killed Lawton in an attack. What these US officers
had learned in counterinsurgency warfare in North America they
applied against the Filipinos. Younger officers would apply lessons
learned in the Philippines to future imperial ventures, or in at least
one case, pass them to a son. General Arthur MacArthur, father of
World War II general Douglas MacArthur, chased Filipino guerrilla
leader Emilio Aguinaldo, finally capturing him. 6
By this time, Theodore Roosevelt was president. His corporate­
friendly militarism, particularly his rapid development of the navy
and his carefully staged performance as leader of the Rough Riders
militia in Cuba, brought him to the presidency. He was popular with
both settlers and big business. Roosevelt referred to Aguinaldo as
a "renegade Pawnee" and observed that Filipinos did not have the

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

right to govern their country just because they happened to occupy
it. Two hundred thousand US soldiers fought in the Philippines, suf­
fering seven thousand casualties ( 3 .5 percent). Twenty percent of the
Philippine population died, mostly civilians, as a result of the US Ar­
my's scorched-earth strategy (food deprivation, targeting civilians
for killing, and so on) and displacement.7 In 1904 Roosevelt pro­
nounced what has come to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine. It mandated that any nation engaged in "chronic
wrong-doing" -that is, did anything to threaten perceived US eco­
nomic or political interests-would be disciplined militarily by the
United States, which was to serve as an "international police power."8
As the US economy rapidly industrialized, the army also inter­
vened frequently on the side of big business in domestic conflicts be­
tween corporations and workers. Troops were used for this purpose
in the Great Railroad Strike of 1 8 77-the first nationwide work
stoppage-begun by railroad workers protesting wage cuts. Begun
in West Virginia, the strike soon spread along rail lines from ocean
to ocean and from north to south. General Philip Sheridan and his
troops were called in from the Great Plains, where they had been
campaigning against the Sioux, to halt the strike in Chicago.
Industrialization affected farming as machinery replaced farm­
ers' hands and cash crops came to prevail. Large operators moved in
and banks foreclosed on small farmers, leaving them landless. Farm­
ers' movements, most of them socialist-leaning and anti-imperialist,
opposed military conscription and US entry into World War I-the
"rich man's war," as they called it. Tens of thousands protested and
carried out acts of civil disobedience. In August 1 9 1 7, white, Black,
and Muskogee tenant farmers and sharecroppers in several eastern
and southern Oklahoma counties took up arms to stop conscrip­
tion, with a larger stated goal of overthrowing the US government
to establish a socialist commonwealth. These more radically minded
grassroots socialists had organized their own Working Class Union
(WCU), with Anglo-American, African American, and Indigenous
Muskogee farmers forming a kind of rainbow alliance. Their plan
was to march to Washington, DC, motivating millions of working
people to arm themselves and to j oin them along the way. After a
day of dynamiting oil pipelines and bridges in southeastern Okla-

US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism

167

homa, the men and their families created a liberated zone where they
ate, sang hymns, and rested. By the following day, heavily armed
posses supported by police and militias stopped the revolt, which
became known as the Green Corn Rebellion. Those who didn't get
away were arrested and received prison sentences. The rebellion is
today considered as the waning voice of the people pushed off the
land, but it also reflects the crisis induced by the forced allotment
of Indigenous territories and the reality of a multiethnic resistance
movement, a rare occurrence in US colonialist history. 9
At the same time, landless Indigenous farmers were launching a
revolution in Mexico. Before President Wilson put General John J.
Pershing at the head of the American Expeditionary Forces in Eu­
rope in 1917, the president had sent him to lead troops, mainly buf­
falo soldiers, inside Mexico for nearly a year to stop the revolution
in the north led by Francisco "Pancho" Villa. The military interven­
tion did not go well . Even the Mexican federal troops fighting Villa
resented the presence of US soldiers. About the only notable success
for the US military expedition was the killing of Villa's second-in­
command by a young lieutenant named George Patton. 10

M A R KETS K I L L

The extension of US military power into the Pacific and Caribbean
was not militarism for its own sake. Rather, it was all about secur­
ing markets and natural resources, developing imperialist power
to protect and extend corporate wealth. Indigenous peoples in the
United States were severely affected by US industrialization and the
development of corporations. In a study of corporations in Indian
Territory, historian H . Craig Miner defines the corporation as "an
organization legally authorized by charter to act as a single indi­
vidual, characterized by the issuance of stock and the limitation of
liability of its stockholders to the amount of their respective invest­
ment . . . an artificial person that could not be held accountable in a
manner familiar to the American Indian way of thinking. Individual
responsibility could be masked in corporate personality . . . a legal
abstraction."11

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

The burgeoning of the corporation brought about a new era of
attacks on Indigenous governments, lands, and resources. After the
military power and resistance of Indigenous nations and communi­
ties were stifled by the growing US military machine following the
Civil War, compliance on the part of Indigenous leaders became
necessary for survival. Miner argues that "industrial civilization"
diminishes the relevance of persons or communities in its way and
also notes that industrial civilization is not exactly the same as "in­
dustrialization," that it is something quite different and more per­
vasive. Industrial civilization justified exploitation and destruction
of whole societies and expansion without regard for the sovereignty
of peoples; it promoted individualism, competition, and selfishness
as righteous character traits. 12 The means by which the US govern­
ment assured corporate freedom to intrude in Indigenous territories
was federal trusteeship, the very instrument that was mandated to
protect them.
Beginning at the end of the Civil War, government funds from
Indigenous land sales or royalties were not distributed to reservation
citizens or held by their governments; rather they were held in trust
and managed in Washington. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, without
Indigenous peoples' consent, invested Indigenous funds in railroad
companies and various municipal and state bonds. For instance,
the Cherokee national fund and the Muskogee Creek Orphan Fund
were so invested. Indigenous leaders were well aware of these prac­
tices but were powerless to stop them. They certainly did protest, as
evidenced by a petition filed by the Chickasaw Nation: "The Indians
did not lend this money; the United States lent it, to increase the
value of its multiple states . . . . But now the attempt is made to force
the Indian to contribute his pittance to the growth of all this pros­
perity and power; and this, too, when the United States, triumphant
over the perils that once surrounded it, is more than ever able to be
liberal, although nothing more is asked of it than to be just." 13
Cherokee official Lewis D owning, writing in 1 8 69 that rules
would have to be agreed on and adhered to, noted the differences
between Indigenous values and those of American businessmen, "in
that industry, habit, and energy of character which is the result of the
development of the idea of accumulation." Free development with-

US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism

169

out restraint of consensual policy would not do, Downing declared:
"To us, it appears that once cut loose from our treaty moorings,
we will roll and tumble upon the tempestuous ocean of American
politics and congressional legislation, and shipwreck [will] be our
inevitable destination."14
Entering the 1920s, Indigenous peoples were at their lowest
point-both in population and possibility for survival after decades
of violent military operations during and following the Civil War,
along with federal theft of Indigenous treaty-guaranteed funds and
then two decades of allotment of Indigenous lands. Then the US
government imposed unsolicited citizenship on American Indians
with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, gesturing toward assimila­
tion and dissolving the nations. It was a boom time for the national
economy, but life threatening for Native Americans everywhere .
Robert Spott of the Yurok Nation in Northern California, also an
army veteran of World War I, described his community's situation,
which could have been applied to every Native community. Speak­
ing before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in 1926, he
said:
There are many Indian women that are almost blind, and they
only have one meal a day, because there is no one to look after
them. Most of these people used to live on fish, which they
cannot get, and on acorns, and they are starving. They hardly
have any clothing to cover them. Many children up along the
Klamath River have passed away with disease. Most of them
from tuberculosis. There is no road into there where the In­
dians are. The only road they have got is the Klamath River.
To reach doctors they have to take their children down the
Klamath River to the mouth of the Klamath. It is 24 miles
to Crescent City, where we have to go for doctors. It costs us
$25 . o o . Where are the poor Indians to get this money from to
get a doctor for their children ? They go from place to place
to borrow money. If they cannot get it, the poor child dies
without aid. Inside of four or five years more there will be
hardly any Indians left upon the Klamath River.
I came here to notify you that something has to be done.

1 70

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

We must have a doctor, and we must have a school to educate
our children, and we must have a road upon the Klamath
River besides the bank of the river . . . .
My father was an Indian chief, and we used to own every­
thing there. When the land was allotted they allotted him only
ten acres, a little farm of land which is mostly gravel and rock,
with little scrubby trees and redwood . . . .
Often we see a car go past. It is the Indian Service. Do you
suppose the man driving that car would stop ? Always he has
no time for the Indians, and the car with some one from the
U . S . A . Indian Service goes past just like a tourist.15
Natives j oined African Americans, Mexican Americans, and
Chinese immigrants as targets of individual racial discrimination
between the end of Reconstruction in the South in the l 8 8os to the
mid-twentieth century. Jim Crow segregation reigned in the South,
where more than five thousand African Americans were lynched. 1 6
As Black people fled terror and impoverishment in the South, their
populations grew in northern and midwestern cities where they still
faced discrimination and violence. Chicago, Tulsa, and dozens of
other cities were marred by deadly "race riots" against African Amer­
icans.17 The virulent and organized racism of the 1920s spilled over
to other peoples of darker hue. The pseudoscience of eugenics and
racial purity was more robust in the United States than in Europe,
further solidifying the ideology of white supremacy. For Indigenous
peoples, this was manifest in development of US government policy
measuring "blood quantum" in order to qualify for Indigenousness,
replacing culture (especially language) and self-identification. While
African Americans were classified as such by the measure of "one
drop of blood," Indigenous people were increasingly called to prove
their degree of ancestry as a significant fraction.

N E W D E A L T O T E R M I N AT I O N

Some relief for Indigenous nations came with the 1930s New Deal.
The Roosevelt administration's programs to combat economic col­
lapse included an acknowledgment of Indigenous self-determina-

US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism

171

tion. Roosevelt appointed anthropologist and self-identified socialist
John Collier as US commissioner of Indian affairs in 193 3 . 18 As a
young activist scholar in 1922, Collier had been hired by the Gen­
eral Federation of Women's Clubs to assist the Pueblo Indians of
New Mexico in their land-claims struggle, a proj ect that culmi­
nated in success when Congress passed the 1924 Pueblo Lands Act.
Having lived at Taos Pueblo, whose residents practiced traditional
lifeways, Collier had developed respect for the communal social re­
lations he observed in Indigenous communities and had confidence
that these peoples could govern themselves successfully and even in­
fluence a move toward socialism in the United States. He understood
and agreed with Indigenous opposition to assimilation as individu­
als into the general society-what the ongoing allotment in severalty
of Native collective estates and the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
sought to institutionalize.
As commissioner for Indian affairs, in consultation with Native
communities, Collier drafted and successfully lobbied for passage
of the Wheeler-Howard bill, which became the Indian Reorganiza­
tion Act (IRA) of 1 9 3 4 · One of its provisions was to end further
allotment of Indigenous territories, which was immediately imple­
mented, although already allotted land was not restored. Another
provision committed the federal government to purchase available
land contiguous to reservations in order to restore lands to relevant
Native nations. The IRA's main provision was more controversial
with Indigenous peoples, calling for the formation of "tribal gov­
ernments." In a gesture toward self-determination, the IRA did not
require any Indigenous nation to accept the law's terms, and several,
including the Navajo Nation, declined. The IRA was limited in that
it did not apply to the relocated Native nations in Oklahoma; sepa­
rate legislation was later drawn up for their unique circumstances. 1 9
The Navajo Nation, with the largest land base and population
among Indigenous peoples in the United States, soundly rejected
signing off on the IRA. The Great Depression of the 1930s was, in
the words of postwar Navajo chairman Sam Ankeah, "the most
devastating experience in [Navajo] history since the imprisonment
at Fort Sumner from 1 8 64-1 8 6 8 ."20 When Collier became commis­
sioner in 1933 , he pushed for reduction of Navajo sheep and goats

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

as part of a larger New Deal conservation scheme to stem stock
overgrazing. He badgered the twelve Navajo Council members into
accepting the reduction, promising unlikely new jobs under the Ci­
vilian Conservation Corps to replace lost income. Collier suggested,
without basis, that soil erosion in the Navajo Reservation was re­
sponsible for the silting up of the Boulder Dam site. His action likely
was influenced by agribusinesses that wanted to get rid of all small
producers in order to create an advantage to Anglo settler ranchers
in New Mexico and Arizona. 2 1 The process is still bitterly remem­
bered by Navajos. With traumatized Navajos watching, government
agents shot sheep and goats and left them to rot or cremated them
after dousing them with gasoline. At one site alone, thirty-five goats
were shot and left to rot. One hundred fifty thousand goats and fifty
thousand sheep were killed in this manner. Oral history interviews
tell of the pressure tactics on the Navajos, including arrests of those
who resisted, and express bitterness over the destruction of their
livestock. As Navajo Council member Howard Gorman said:
All of these incidents broke a lot of hearts of the Navajo people
and left them mourning for years. They didn't like it that the
sheep were killed; it was a total waste. That is what the people
said. To many of them livestock was a necessity and meant
survival . Some people consider livestock as sacred because
it is life's necessity. They think of livestock as their mother.
The cruel way our stock was handled is something that should
never have happened. 22
In addition to the trauma experienced by the Navajos, the effect of
the reductions was to impoverish the owners of small herds.
For those Native nations, the majority, that did accept the In­
dian Reorganization Act, a negative consequence was that English­
speaking Native elites, often aligned with Christian denominations,
signed on to the law and formed authoritarian governments that
enriched a few families and undermined communal traditions and
traditional forms of governance, a problem that persists. However,
the IRA did end allotment and set a precedent for acknowledg­
ing Indigenous self-determination and recognizing collective and

US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism

1 73

cultural rights, a legal reality that made it difficult for those who
sought to undo the incipient empowerment of Indigenous peoples
in the 19 50s.
The Truman administration pushed out John Collier, among
many other progressive Roosevelt appointees. Following the end of
World War II, attitudes among the ruling class and Congress regard­
ing Indigenous nations turned from supporting autonomy to their
elimination as peoples with a new regimen of individual assimila­
tion. In 1946 Congress established the Indian Claims Commission
and the Indian Claims Court to legitimize the prior illegal federal
taking of Indigenous treaty lands. Between 1946 and 1 9 5 2-the
cutoff date for filing claims-370 petitions representing 8 5 0 claims
were filed on behalf of Indigenous nations. Although the govern­
ment's stated purpose was to clear title for lands illegally taken,
the claims mechanism barred restitution of lands taken illegally or
acquiring new ones to replace the loss. Settlement was limited to
monetary compensation based on the property's value at the time
of the taking, and without interest. Adding insult to injury, any ex­
penditure made by the federal government on behalf of the Indige­
nous nations making claims was subtracted from the overall award,
thereby penalizing the Indigenous people for services they had not
requested. The average interval between filing a claim and receiving
an award was fifteen years.
In creating the Indian Claims Commission, Congress was ac­
knowledging the fact that the federal government had illegally seized
Indigenous lands guaranteed by treaties. That validation became
useful in Indigenous strategies for strengthening sovereignty and
pursuing restitution of the land rather than monetary compensa­
tion. On the other hand, the process became a stepping-stone to
ending federal acknowledgment of Indigenous nations altogether.
The Eisenhower administration lost no time in collaborating with
Congress to weaken federal trust responsibility, transferring Indian
education to the states and moving Indian health care from the Bu­
reau of Indian Affairs to the Department of Health.
This policy trend toward assimilation culminated in the Ter­
mination Act (House Concurrent Resolution r o 8 ) in 195 3 , which
provided-in Orwellian language-that Congress should, "as

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

quickly as possible, move to free those tribes listed from Federal
supervision and control and from all disabilities and limitations spe­
cially applicable to Indians." Under termination, the federal trust
protection and transfer payments guaranteed by treaties and agree­
ments would end. Dillon S. Myer, who had headed the War Re­
location Authority that administered the concentration camps for
US citizens of Japanese descent, was, significantly, the Eisenhower
administration's commissioner of Indian affairs to implement ter­
mination. 23 Commissioner Myer noted that Indigenous consent was
immaterial, saying, " We must proceed even though Indian coopera­
tion may be lacking in certain cases."24 In the same year, Congress
imposed Public Law 2 8 0 that transferred police power on reserva­
tions from the federal government to the states.
Despite the piecemeal eating away of Indigenous landholdings
and sovereignty and federal trust responsibility based on treaties,
the US government had no constitutional or other legal authority
to deprive federally recognized Native nations of their inherent
sovereignty or territorial boundaries. It could only make it nearly
impossible for them to exercise that sovereignty, or, alternatively,
eliminate Indigenous identity entirely through assimilation, a form
of genocide. The latter was the goal of the 1 9 5 6 Indian Relocation
Act ( Public Law 949 ) . With BIA funding, any Indigenous individual
or family could relocate to designated urban industrial areas-the
San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, Denver,
Cleveland-where BIA offices were established to make housing and
job training and placement available. This project gave rise to large
Native urban populations scattered among already poor and strug­
gling minority working-class communities, holding low-skilled jobs
or dealing with long-term unemployment. Yet many of these mostly
young migrants were influenced by the civil rights movement emerg­
ing in cities in the 1950s and 19 60s and began their own distinct
intertribal movements organized around the urban American Indian
centers they established. In one of the largest of the relocation des­
tinations, the San Francisco Bay Area, this would culminate in the
eighteen-month occupation of Alcatraz in the late 19 60s.

US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism

1 75

C I V I L R I G HTS ERA B EG I N S

The founding of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)
in 1944 had marked a surge of Indigenous resistance. An extraordi­
nary group of Native leaders emerged in the 1950s, including D'Arcy
McNickle (Flathead), Edward Dozier (Santa Clara Pueblo), Helen
Peterson (Northern Cheyenne/Lakota), and dozens of others from
diverse nations . Without their efforts, the termination period would
have been more damaging than it was, possibly ending Indigenous
status altogether. As a result of their organizing, the government
ceased enforcing termination in 1 9 6 1 , though the legislation (e­
mained on the books until its repeal in 19 8 8 . 25 However, by 1960,
more than a hundred Indigenous nations had been terminated . A
few were later able to regain federal trusteeship through protracted
court battles and demonstrations, which took decades and financial
hardship. Indigenous leaders such as Ada Deer and James White of
the terminated Menominee Nation played key roles in the struggle
to have Indigenous cases heard by Congress and by the Supreme
Court in suits and appeals. The restitution movement attracted pub­
licity through community organizing and direct action. 26 Postwar
Indigenous resistance operated in relation to a United States far
wealthier and more powerful than before, but also within the era
of decolonization and human rights inaugurated with establishment
of the United Nations and adoption of its Universal Declaration of
Human Rights as well as the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 194 8 . Native leaders paid
attention and were inspired.
Native organizing, like the organization of the African American
desegregation and voting rights movement, developed within the
context of a nationalistic anticommunist ideology that intensified
with the Cold War and nuclear arms race in the 19 50s. This second
great Red Scare (the first had been in the wake of World War I) tar­
geted the labor movement under the guise of combating the "com­
munist threat" from the Soviet Union. 27 It also attacked the civil
rights and self-determination movements of the period, and racism
broadened and flourished. The wars against Japan and then Korea,

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

along with the successful Chinese communist revolution, revived
the early-twentieth-century racist fear of a " yellow peril." Mexi­
can migrant workers largely replaced the Asian agricultural work­
ers displaced by the Japanese American internment, but in 1 9 5 3
" Operation Wetback," as the federal program was called, forced the
deportation of more than a million Mexican workers, in the pro­
cess subjecting millions of US citizens of Mexican heritage to illegal
search and arrest. Native Americans continued to experience brutal­
ity, including rape and detention in the border towns on the edges
of reservation lands, at the hands of citizens as well as law enforce­
ment officials. The situation of African Americans was one of con­
tinued legalized segregation in the South, and extralegal but open
discrimination elsewhere. Then, thanks to the long and hard work
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) in 1954, the US Supreme Court ordered desegregation of
public schools. Years of persistent and little-publicized civil rights
organizing, particularly in the South, burst into public view with
the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, the following year. The
white response was murderous: a well-funded campaign by White
Citizens' Councils that formed all over the country, accusing civil
rights activists of communist influence and infiltration. When white
vigilantes bombed and burned Black churches, it was said that "the
communists" were doing it to gain sympathy for integration.
As national liberation movements surged in European colonies
in Africa and Asia, the United States responded with counterin­
surgency. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was formed in

1947 and expanded in size and global reach during the Eisenhower
administration under director Allen Dulles, brother of Eisenhower's
secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. The CIA instrumentalized the
overthrow of the democratically elected governments of Iran in 1953

a n d Guatemala in 1954. 28 Guatemala had been the leading light i n
developing the Inter-American Indian Institute, a 1940 treaty-based
initiative that Dave Warren and D'Arcy McNickle were involved
with. Following the coup, the institute headquarters relocated from
Guatemala City to Mexico City, but there it no longer had the same
clout. Covert action came to be the primary means of counterinsur­
gency, while military invasion remained an option as in Vietnam fol-

US Triumphalism and Peacetime Colonialism

lowing a decade of covert counterinsurgency there. In the buildup to
the US war in Vietnam, the CIA set the stage with its "secret war" in
Laos, organizing the indigenous Hmong as a CIA-sponsored army.
After Iran and Guatemala, the CIA engineered coups in Indonesia,
the Congo, Greece, and Chile, while attempting assassinations or
coups that failed in Cuba, Iraq, Laos, and other countries.
Two years before John F. Kennedy took office as president of the
United States, the Cuban people, after decades of struggle and years
of urban and rural organizing and guerrilla war, deposed the cor­
rupt and despised dictator Batista, who had been financed and sup­
ported by the United States to the bitter end. The CIA spent the next
several years trying to assassinate revolutionary leader Fidel Castro
and made many attempts to invade, the most infamous of which
was the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. Many Cubans who left Cuba for
the United States after the revolution were recruited as CIA opera­
tives. The revolution in Cuba, just ninety miles off the Florida coast,
would be a touchstone for increasingly radicalized young people
in the United States, but even more so for the Indigenous peoples
of Latin America, which resonated with Native American activists
seeking self-determination to their north.

177

TEN

G HO S T DA N CE P R O P HE C Y
A N AT I O N I S C O M I N G

The whole world is coming,
A nation is coming, a nation is coming,
The Eagle has brought the message to the tribe.
-from the Lakota Ghost Dance song, "Maka' Sito'maniyafi"

Little Wounded Knee is turned into a giant world.
-Wallace Black Elk, 1973

T H E N EW FRONTI E R

Seventy years after the Wounded Knee Massacre, when the con­
quest of the continent was said to have been complete, and with
Hawai'i and Alaska made into states, rounding out the fifty stars
on today's flag, the myth of an exceptional US American people
destined to bring order out of chaos, to stimulate economic growth,
and to replace savagery with civilization-not just in North America
but throughout the world-proved to have enormous staying power.
A key to John F. Kennedy's political success was that he revived
the " frontier" as a trope of populist imperialism openly based on the
drama and popular myth of "settling" the continent, of "taming"
a different sort of " wilderness." In Kennedy's acceptance speech at
the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, historian
Richard Slotkin writes, the presidential nominee "asked his audi­
ence to see him as a new kind of frontiersman confronting a differ­
ent sort of wilderness: 'I stand tonight facing west on what was once

178

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1 79

the last frontier. From the lands that stretch 3 0 0 0 miles behind me,
the pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes
their lives to build a new world here in the West . . . . We stand today
on the edge of a new frontier . . . a frontier of unknown opportuni­
ties and paths, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.'" 1
Kennedy's use of " new frontier" to encapsulate his campaign
echoed debates about US history that had begun more than six de­
cades earlier. In 1894, historian Frederick Jackson Turner had pre­
sented his history-making " frontier thesis," claiming that the crisis
of that era was the result of the closing of the frontier and that a new
frontier was nee.ded to fill the ideological and spiritual vacuum cre­
ated by the completion of settler colonialism. The "Turner Thesis"
served as a dominant school of the history of the US West through
most of the twentieth century. The frontier metaphor described Ken­
nedy's plan for employing political power to make the world the new
frontier of the United States. Central to this vision was the Cold War,
what Slotkin calls "a heroic engagement in the 'long twilight strug­
gle"' against communism, to which the nation was summoned, as
Kennedy characterized it in his inaugural address. Soon after he took
office, that struggle took the form of a counterinsurgency program
in Vietnam. "Seven years after Kennedy's nomination," Slotkin re­
minds us, "American troops would be describing Vietnam as 'Indian
Country' and search-and-destroy missions as a game of 'Cowboys
and Indians'; and Kennedy's ambassador to Vietnam would justify a
massive military escalation by citing the necessity of moving the 'In­
dians' away from the 'fort' so that the 'settlers' could plant 'corn.'"2
The movement of Indigenous peoples to undo what generations
of "frontier" expansionists had wrought continued during the Viet­
nam War era and won some major victories but more importantly
a shift in consensus, will, and vision toward self-determination and
land restitution, which prevails today. Activists' efforts to end ter­
mination and secure restoration of land, particularly sacred sites,
included Taos Pueblo's sixty-four-year struggle with the US gov­
ernment to reclaim their sacred Blue Lake in the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains of New Mexico. In the first land restitution to any Indig­
enous nation, President Richard M. Nixon signed into effect Public

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Law 9 1 - 5 5 0 on December 1 5 , 1970, which had been approved with
bipartisan majorities in Congress. President Nixon stated, "This is a
bill that represents j ustice, because in 1906 an injustice was done in
which land involved in this bill-4 8 ,000 acres-was taken from the
Taos Pueblo Indians. The Congress of the United States now returns
that land to whom it belongs."3
In hearings held in the preceding years by the Senate Subcom­
mittee on Indian Affairs, members expressed fear of establishing a
precedent in awarding land-based on ancient use, treaties, or ab­
original ownership-rather than monetary payment. As one witness
testifying in opposition to the return of Taos lands said, "The his­
tory of the land squabbles in New Mexico among various groups of
people, including Indian-Americans and Spanish Americans, is well
known. Substantially every acre of our public domain, be it national
forest, state parks, or wilderness areas is threatened by claims from
various groups who say they have some ancestral right to the land to
the exclusion of all other persons . . . which can only be fostered and
encouraged by the present legislation if passed."4
Although the Senate subcommittee members finally agreed to
the Taos claim by satisfying themselves that it was unique, it did
in fact set a precedent. 5 The return of Blue Lake as a sacred site
begs the question of whether other Indigenous sacred sites remain­
ing as national or state parks or as US Forest Service or Bureau of
Land Management lands and waterways should also be returned.
Administration of the Grand Canyon National Park has been par­
tially restored to its ancestral caretakers, the Havasupai Nation,
but other federal lands have not. A few sites, such as the volcanic El
Malpais, a sacred site for the Pueblo Indians, have been designated
as national monuments by executive order rather than restored as
Indigenous territory. The most prominent struggle has been the La­
kota Sioux's attempt to restore the Paha Sapa, or Black Hills, where
the odious Mount Rushmore carvings have scarred the sacred site .
Called the " Shrine of Democracy" by the federal government, it is
anything but that; rather it is a shrine of in-your-face illegal occupa­
tion and colonialism.

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181

RESURGENCE

The return of Taos Blue Lake was not a gift from above. I n addition
to the six-decade struggle of Taos Pueblo, the restitution took place
in the midst of a renewed powerful and growing Native American
struggle for self-determination. The movement's energy was evident
when twenty-six young Native activists and students founded the
National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) in 1961, based in Albuquer­
que, New Mexico. From twenty-one different Native nations, some
from reservations or small towns and others from relocated families
far from home, the founders included Gloria Emerson and Herb
Blatchford ( both Navajo), Clyde Warrior ( Ponca from Oklahoma),
Mel Thom (Paiute from Nevada), and Shirley Hill Witt (Mohawk).
Cherokee anthropologist Robert K. Thomas mentored the militant
young activists. Although primarily committed to local struggles,
their vision was international. As Shirley Hill Witt put it: "At a time
when new nations all over the globe are emerging from colonial con­
trol, their right to choose their own course places a vast burden of
responsibility upon the most powerful nations to honor and protect
those rights . . . . The Indians of the United States may well present
the test case of American liberalism."6
In 1964, the NIYC organized support for the ongoing Indigenous
struggle to protect treaty-guaranteed fishing rights in Washington
State. Actor Marlon Brando took an interest and provided finan­
cial support and publicity. The "fish-in" movement soon put the
tiny community at Frank's Landing in the headlines. Sid Mills was
arrested there on October 1 3 , 19 68 . Eloquently, he explained his
actions:
I am a Yakima and Cherokee Indian, and a man. For two years
and four months, I've been a soldier in the United States Army.
I served in combat in Vietnam-until critically wounded . . . .
I hereby renounce further obligation in service or duty to the
United States Army.
My first obligation now lies with the Indian People fight­
ing for the lawful Treaty to fish in usual and accustomed wa­
ter of the Nisqually, Columbia and other rivers of the Pacific

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Northwest, and in serving them in this fight in any way pos­
sible . . . .
Just three years ago today, on October 1 3 , 1 9 6 5 , 19 women
and children were brutalized by more than 45 armed agents of
the State of Washington at Frank's Landing on the Nisqually
river in a vicious, unwarranted attack . . . .
Interestingly, the oldest human skeletal remains ever found
in the Western Hemisphere were recently uncovered on the
banks of the Columbia River-the remains of Indian fisher­
men. What kind of government or society would spend mil­
lions of dollars to pick upon our bones, restore our ancestral
life patterns, and protect our ancient remains from damage­
while at the same time eating upon the flesh of our living Peo­
ple?
We will fight for our rights.7
Hank Adams with other local leaders founded the Survival of
American Indians Association, which was composed of the Swin­
omish, Nisqually, Yakama, Puyallup, Stilaguamish, and other Indig­
enous peoples of the Pacific Northwest to carry on the fishing-rights
struggle. 8 The backlash from Anglo sport fishers was swift and vio­
lent, but in 1973 fourteen of the fishing nations sued Washington
State, and, in a reflection of changed times, the following year US
District Court Judge George Boldt found in their favor. He validated
their right to 50 percent of fish taken "in the usual and accustomed
places" that were designated in the 1 8 50s treaties, even where those
places were not under tribal control. This was a landmark decision
for historical Indigenous sovereignty over territories outside desig­
nated reservation boundaries.
The NIYC saw itself as an engine for igniting local organizing,
a
m rshaling community organizing proj ects with access to funds
from the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty," the mandate
of which was to implement the principles of economic and social
equality intended by authors of the Civil Rights Act of 19 64 . In­
terethnic alliances, including a significant representation of Native
peoples, developed during the mid-19 6os. These culminated in the
19 68 Poor People's Campaign spearheaded by the Reverend Mar-

Ghost Dance Prophecy

183

tin Luther King Jr. , which consisted of community organizing and
leading marches across the country. In the final month of campaign
planning, Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 19 6 8 . Thousands of
marchers arrived in Washington, DC, in the next month and gath­
ered in a tent city, then remained there for six weeks.9
While local actions multiplied in Native communities and na­
tions, the spectacular November 19 69 seizure and eighteen-month
occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay grabbed wide
media attention. An alliance known as Indians of All Tribes was ini­
tiated by Native American students and community members living
in the Bay Area. They built a thriving village on the island that drew
Native pilgrimages from all over the continent, radicalizing thou­
sands, especially Native youth. Indigenous women leaders were par­
ticularly impressive, among them Madonna Thunderhawk, LaNada
Means War Jack, Rayna Ramirez, and many others who continued
organizing into the twenty-first century. The Proclamation of the In­
dians of All Tribes expressed the level of Indigenous solidarity that
was attained and the j oyful good humor that ruled:
We, the Native Americans, reclaim the land known as Alca­
traz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of
discovery.
We wish to be fair and honorable in our dealings with the
Caucasian inhabitants of this land, and hereby offer the fol­
lowing treaty:
We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty-four dol­
lars (24) in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the
white man's purchase of a similar island about 3 0 0 years ago.
We will give to the inhabitants of this island a portion of the
land for their own to be held in trust by the American Indians
Government and by the bureau of Caucasian Affairs to hold in
perpetuity-for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers go
down to the sea. We will further guide the inhabitants in the
proper way of living. We will offer them our religion, our edu­
cation, our life-ways, in order to help them achieve our level of
civilization and thus raise them and all their white brothers up
from their savage and unhappy state . . . .

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Further, it would be fitting and symbolic that ships from
all over the world, entering the Golden Gate, would first see
Indian land, and thus be reminded of the true history of this
nation. This tiny island would be a symbol of the great lands
once ruled by free and noble Indians. 10
Despite the satirical riff on the history of US colonialism, the
group made serious demands for five institutions to be established
on Alcatraz: a Center for Native American Studies; an American
Indian Spiritual Center; an Indian Center of Ecology that would do
scientific research on reversing pollution of water and air; a Great
Indian Training School that would run a restaurant, provide job
training, market Indigenous arts, and teach "the noble and tragic
events of Indian history, including the Trail of Tears, and the Mas­
sacre of Wounded Knee"; and a memorial, a reminder that the island
had been established as a prison initially to incarcerate and execute
California Indian resisters to US assault on their nations. 1 1
Under orders from the Nixon White House, the Indigenous resi­
dents remaining on Alcatraz were forced to evacuate in June r97 r .
Indigenous professors Jack Forbes and David Risling, who were
in the process of establishing a Native American studies program
at the University of California, Davis, negotiated a grant from the
federal government of unused land near Davis, where the institu­
tions demanded by Alcatraz occupants could be established. A two­
year Native-American- Chicano college and movement center, D - Q
(Deganawidah- Quetzalcoatl) University, was founded, while U C
Davis became the first US university t o offer a doctorate in Native
American studies.
During this period of intense protest and activism, alliances
among Indigenous governments-including the National Congress
of American Indians (NCAI) led by young Sioux attorney Vine De­
loria Jr.-turned militant demands into legislation. A year before
the seizure of Alcatraz, Ojibwe activists Dennis Banks and Clyde
Bellecourt founded the American Indian Movement (AIM), which
initially patrolled the streets around Indigenous housing projects in
Minneapolis . 12 Going national, AIM became involved at Alcatraz.
With the rather bitter end of the island occupation, as Paul Smith and

Ghost Dance Prophecy

185

Robert Warrior write: "The future of Indian activism would belong
to people far angrier than the student brigades of Alcatraz. Urban
Indians who managed a life beyond the bottles of cheap wine cruelly
named Thunderbird would continue down the protest road." 13
With the Vietnam War still raging and the reelection of Richard
Nixon in November 1972 imminent, a coalition of eight Indigenous
organizations-AIM, the National Indian Brotherhood of Canada
(later renamed Assembly of First Nations), the Native American
Rights Fund, the National Indian Youth Council, the National
American Indian Council, the National Council on Indian Work,
National Indian Leadership Training, and the American Indian
Committee on Alcohol and Drug Abuse-organized "The Trail of
Broken Treaties." Armed with a "20 -Point Position Paper" that fo­
cused on the federal government's responsibility to implement Indig­
enous treaties and sovereignty, caravans set out in the fall of 1972.
The vehicles and numbers of participants multiplied at each stop,
converging in Washington, D C , one week before the presidential
election. Hanging a banner from the front of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs building that proclaimed it to be the " Native American Em­
bassy," hundreds of protesters hailing from seventy-five Indigenous
nations entered the building to sit in. BIA personnel, at the time
largely non-Indigenous, fled, and the capitol police chain-locked the
doors announcing that the Indigenous protesters were illegally occu­
pying the building. The protesters stayed for six days, enough time
for them to read damning federal documents that revealed gross
mismanagement of the federal trust responsibility, which they boxed
up and took with them. The Trail of Broken Treaties solidified In­
digenous alliances, and the "20 -Point Position Paper," 14 the work
mainly of Hank Adams, provided a template for the affinity of hun­
dreds of Native organizations. Five years later, in 1977, the docu­
ment would be presented to the United Nations, forming the basis
for the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Three months after the BIA building takeover, Oglala Lakota
traditional people at the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Da­
kota invited the American Indian Movement to assist them in halt­
ing collusion between their tribal government, formed under the
terms of the Indian Reorganization Act, and the federal government

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

that had crushed the people and further impoverished them. The
people opposed the increasingly authoritarian reign of the elected
tribal chairman, Richard Wilson. They invited AIM to send a del­
egation to support them. On February 27, 1973 , long deliberations
took place in the Pine Ridge Calico Hall between the local people
and AIM leaders, led by Russell Means, a citizen of Pine Ridge. The
AIM activists were well known following the Trail of Broken Trea­
ties Caravan, and upon AIM's arrival, the FBI, tribal police, and the
chairman's armed special unit, the Guardians of the Oglala Nation
(they called themselves "the GOON squad"), mobilized. The meet­
ing ended with a consensus decision to go to Wounded Knee in a
caravan to protest the chairman's misdeeds and the violence of his
GOONs. The law enforcement contingent followed and circled the
protesters. Over the following days, hundreds of more armed men
surrounded Wounded Knee, and so began a two-and-a-half-month
siege of protesters at the 1 8 9 0 massacre site. The late-twentieth­
century hamlet of Wounded Knee was made up of little more than a
trading post, a Catholic church, and the mass grave of the hundreds
of Lakotas slaughtered in 1 8 9 0 . Now armed personnel carriers,
Huey helicopters, and military snipers surrounded the site, while
supply teams of mostly Lakota women made their way through the
military lines and back out again through dark of night.

WO U N D E D K N E E 1 8 9 0 A N D 1 973

The period between the "closing of the frontier," marked by the

1 8 9 0 Wounded Knee Massacre, and the 1973 siege of Wounded
Knee, which marks the beginning of Indigenous decolonization in
North America, is illuminated by following the historical experience
of the Sioux. The first international relationship between the Sioux
Nation and the US government was established in 1 8 0 5 with a treaty
of peace and friendship two years after the United States acquired
the Louisiana Territory, which included the Sioux Nation among
many other Indigenous nations. Other such treaties followed in 1 8 1 5
and 1 8 2 5 . These peace treaties had n o immediate effect o n Sioux po­
litical autonomy or territory. By 1 8 3 4 , competition in the fur trade,

Ghost Dance Prophecy

with the market dominated by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company,
led the Oglala Sioux to move away from the Upper Missouri to the
Upper Platte near Fort Laramie. By 1 846, seven thousand Sioux had
moved south. Thomas Fitzpatrick, the Indian agent in 1 846, rec­
ommended that the United States purchase land to establish a fort,
which became Fort Laramie. "My opinion," Fitzpatrick wrote, "is
that a post at, or in the vicinity of Laramie is much wanted, it would
be nearly in the center of the buffalo range, where all the formidable
Indian tribes are fast approaching, and near where there will eventu­
ally be a struggle for the ascendancy [in the fur trade] ."15 Fitzpatrick
believed that a garrison of at least three hundred soldiers would be
necessary to keep the Indians under control.
Although the Sioux and the United States redefined their rela­
tionship in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1 8 5 1 , this was followed by
a decade of war between the two parties, ending with the Peace
Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1 8 6 8 . Both of these treaties, though not
reducing Sioux political sovereignty, ceded large parts of Sioux terri­
tory by establishing mutually recognized boundaries, and the Sioux
granted concessions to the United States that gave legal color to the
Sioux's increasing economic dependency on the United States and
its economy. During the half century before the 1 8 5 1 treaty, the
Sioux had been gradually enveloped in the fur trade and had become
dependent on horses and European-manufactured guns, ammuni­
tion, iron cookware, tools, textiles, and other items of trade that
replaced their traditional crafts. On the plains the Sioux gradually
abandoned farming and turned entirely to bison hunting for their
subsistence and for trade. This increased dependency on the buf­
falo in turn brought deeper dependency on guns and ammunition
that had to be purchased with more hides, creating the vicious circle
that characterized modern colonialism. With the balance of power
tipped by mid-century, US traders and the military exerted pressure
on the Sioux for land cessions and rights of way as the buffalo popu­
lation decreased. The hardships for the Sioux caused by constant
attacks on their villages, forced movement, and resultant disease
and starvation took a toll on their strength to resist domination.
They entered into the 1 8 68 treaty with the United States on strong
terms from a military standpoint-the Sioux remained an effective

187

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

guerrilla fighting force through the 1 8 8 0s, never defeated by the US
army-but their dependency on buffalo and on trade allowed for
escalated federal control when buffalo were purposely exterminated
by the army between 1 870 and 1 876. After that the Sioux were fight­
ing for survival.
Economic dependency on buffalo and trade was replaced with
survival dependency on the US government for rations and com­
modities guaranteed in the 1 8 68 treaty. The agreement stipulated
that "no treaty for the cession of any portion or part of the reser­
vation herein described which may be held in common shall be of
any validation or force against the said Indians, unless executed
and signed by at least three fourths of all the adult male Indians."
Nevertheless, in 1 876, with no such validation, and with the discov­
ery of gold by Custer's Seventh Cavalry, the US government seized
the Black Hills-Paha Sapa-a large, resource-rich portion of the
treaty-guaranteed Sioux territory, the center of the great Sioux Na­
tion, a religious shrine and sanctuary. When the Sioux surrendered
after the wars of 1 8 7 6-77, they lost not only the Black Hills but
also the Powder River country. The next US move was to change the
western boundary of the Sioux Nation, whose territory, though at­
rophied from its original, was a contiguous block. By 1 8 7 7, after the
army drove the Sioux out of Nebraska, all that was left was a block
between the rn3rd meridian and the Missouri, thirty-five thousand
square miles of land the United States had designated as Dakota
Territory (the next step toward statehood, in this case the states
of North and South Dakota). The first of several waves of north­
ern European immigrants now poured into eastern Dakota Terri­
tory, pressing against the Missouri River boundary of the Sioux. At
the Anglo-American settlement of Bismarck on the Missouri, the
westward-pushing Northern Pacific Railroad was blocked by the
reservation. Settlers bound for Montana and the Pacific Northwest
called for trails to be blazed and defended across the reservation.
Promoters who wanted cheap land to sell at high prices to immi­
grants schemed to break up the reservation. Except for the Sioux
units that continued to fight, the majority of the Sioux people were
unarmed, had no horses, and were unable even to feed and clothe
themselves, dependent upon government rations.

Ghost Dance Prophecy

189

Next came allotment. Before the Dawes Act was even imple­
mented, a government commission arrived in Sioux territory from
Washington, DC, in 1 8 8 8 with a proposal to reduce the Sioux Na­
tion to six small reservations, a scheme that would leave nine million
acres open for Euro-American settlement. The commission found
it impossible to obtain signatures of the required three-fourths of
the nation as required under the 1 8 68 treaty, and so returned to
Washington with a recommendation that the government ignore the
treaty and take the land without Sioux consent. The only means to
accomplish that goal was legislation, Congress having relieved the
government of the obligation to negotiate a treaty. Congress com­
missioned General George Crook to head a delegation to try again,
this time with an offer of $ r . 5 0 per acre. In a series of manipula­
tions and dealings with leaders whose people were now starving, the
commission garnered the needed signatures. The great Sioux Nation
was broken into small islands soon surrounded on all sides by Euro­
pean immigrants, with much of the reservation land a checkerboard
with settlers on allotments or leased land. 1 6 Creating these isolated
reservations broke the historical relationships between clans and
communities of the Sioux Nation and opened areas where Euro ­
peans settled. It also allowed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to ex­
ercise tighter control, buttressed by the bureau's boarding school
system. The Sun Dance, the annual ceremony that had brought
Sioux together and reinforced national unity, was outlawed, along
with other religious ceremonies. Despite the Sioux people's weak
position under late-nineteenth-century colonial domination, they
managed to begin building a modest cattle-ranching business to
replace their former bison-hunting economy. In 1903 , the US Su­
preme Court ruled, in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, that a March 3 ,
1 8 7 1 , appropriations rider was constitutional and that Congress had
"plenary" power to manage Indian property. The Office of Indian
Affairs could thus dispose of Indian lands and resources regardless
of the terms of previous treaty provisions. Legislation followed that
opened the reservations to settlement through leasing and even sale
of allotments taken out of trust. Nearly all prime grazing lands came
to be occupied by non-Indian ranchers by the 1920s.
By the time of the New Deal-Collier era and nullification of

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

Indian land allotment under the Indian Reorganization Act, non­
Indians outnumbered Indians on the Sioux reservations three to one.
However, the drought of the mid- to late-19 3 o s drove many settler
ranchers off Sioux land, and the Sioux purchased some of that land,
which had been theirs. However, "tribal governments" imposed
in the wake of the Indian Reorganization Act proved particularly
harmful and divisive for the Sioux.17 Concerning this measure, the
late Mathew King, elder traditional historian of the Oglala Sioux
(Pine Ridge), observed: "The Bureau of Indian Affairs drew up the
constitution and by-laws of this organization with the Indian Reor­
ganization Act of 1 9 3 4 · This was the introduction of home rule . . . .
The traditional people still hang on to their Treaty, for we are a
sovereign nation. We have our own government." 18 " Home rule," or
neocolonialism, proved a short-lived policy, however, for in the early
1950s the United States developed its termination policy, with leg­
islation ordering gradual eradication of every reservation and even
the tribal governments. 1 9 At the time of termination and relocation,
per capita annual income on the Sioux reservations stood at $ 3 5 5 ,
while that i n nearby South Dakota towns was $ 2 , 5 0 0 . Despite these
circumstances, in pursuing its termination policy, the Bureau of In­
dian Affairs advocated the reduction of services and introduced its
program to relocate Indians to urban industrial centers, with a high
percentage of Sioux moving to San Francisco and Denver in search
of j obs. 2 0
Mathew King has described the United States throughout its his­
tory as alternating between a "peace" policy and a "war" policy
in its relations with Indigenous nations and communities, saying
that these pendulum swings coincided with the strength and weak­
ness of Native resistance. Between the alternatives of extermina­
tion and termination (war policies) and preservation (peace policy),
King argued, were interim periods characterized by benign neglect
and assimilation. With organized Indigenous resistance to war pro­
grams and policies, concessions are granted. When pressure light­
ens, new schemes are developed to separate Indians from their land,
resources, and cultures. Scholars, politicians, policymakers, and the
media rarely term US policy toward Indigenous peoples as colonial-

Ghost Dance Prophecy

ism. King, however, believed that his people's country had been a
colony of the United States since 1 8 9 0 .
The logical progression o f modern colonialism begins with eco­
nomic penetration and graduates to a sphere of influence, then to
protectorate status or indirect control, military occupation, and fi­
nally annexation. This corresponds to the process experienced by
the Sioux people in relation to the United States. The economic pen­
etration of fur traders brought the Sioux within the US sphere of in­
fluence. The transformation of Fort Laramie from a trading post, the
center of Sioux trade, to a US Army outpost in the mid-nineteenth
century indicates the integral relationship between trade and colonial
control. Growing protectorate status established through treaties
culminated in the 1 8 6 8 Sioux treaty, followed by military occupa­
tion achieved by extreme exemplary violence, such as at Wounded
Knee in 1 8 9 0 , and finally dependency. Annexation by the United
States is marked symbolically by the imposition of US citizenship on
the Sioux (and most other Indians) in 1924 . Mathew King and other
traditional Sioux saw the siege of Wounded Knee in 1973 as a turn­
ing point, although the violent backlash that followed was harsh.
Two decades of collective Indigenous resistance culminating at
Wounded Knee in 1973 defeated the 1950s federal termination pol­
icy. Yet proponents of the disappearance of Indigenous nations seem
never to tire of trying. Another move toward termination developed
in 1977 with dozens of congressional bills to abrogate all Indian
treaties and terminate all Indian governments and trust territories.
Indigenous resistance defeated those initiatives as well, with another
caravan across the country. Like colonized peoples elsewhere in
the world, the Sioux have been involved in decolonization efforts
since the mid-twentieth century. Wounded Knee in 1973 was part
of this struggle, as was their involvement in UN committees and
international forums. 2 1 However, in the early twenty-first century,
free-market fundamentalist economists and politicians identified the
communally owned Indigenous reservation lands as an asset to be
exploited and, under the guise of helping to end Indigenous poverty
on those reservations, call for doing away with them-a new exter­
mination and termination initiative.

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" I N D I A N WA R S " AS A T E M P L AT E F O R
T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S I N T H E W O R L D

The integral link between Wounded Knee i n 1 8 9 0 and Wounded
Knee in 1973 suggests a long-overdue reinterpretation of Indigenous­
US relations as a template for US imperialism and counterinsurgency
wars. As Vietnam veteran and author Michael Herr observed, we
"might as well say that Vietnam was where the Trail of Tears was
headed all along, the turnaround point where it would touch and
come back to form a containing perimeter."22 Seminole Nation Viet­
nam War veteran Evan Haney made the comparison in testifying at
the Winter Soldier Investigations: "The same massacres happened to
the Indians . . . . I got to know the Vietnamese people and I learned
they were just like us . . . . I have grown up with racism all my life.
When I was a child, watching cowboys and Indians on TV, I would
root for the cavalry, not the Indians. It was that bad. I was that far
toward my own destruction."23
As it happened, the fifth anniversary of the My Lai massacre in
Vietnam occurred at the time of the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee.
It was difficult to miss the analogy between the 1 8 9 0 Wounded
Knee massacre and My Lai, 1968. Alongside the front-page news
and photographs of the Wounded Knee siege that was taking place
in real time were features with photos of the scene of mutilation
and death at My Lai. Lieutenant William "Rusty" Calley was then
serving his twenty-year sentence under house arrest in luxurious of­
ficers' quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia, near his hometown. Yet he
remained a national hero who received hundreds of support letters
weekly, who was lauded by some as a POW being held by the US
military. One of Calley's most ardent defenders was Jimmy Carter,
then governor of Georgia. In 1974 , President Richard Nixon would
pardon Calley. One of the documented acts, among many, that
Calley committed and ordered others to carry out at My Lai took
place when he saw a baby crawling from a ditch filled with mu­
tilated, bloody bodies. He picked the baby up by a leg, threw the
infant back into the pit, and then shot the baby point-blank. My
Lai was one of thousands of such slaughters led by officers just like
Calley, who a few weeks before My Lai had been observed throwing

Ghost Dance Prophecy

193

a stooped old man down a well and firing his automatic rifle down
the shaft.
The ongoing siege at Wounded Knee in 1973 elicited some rare
journalistic probing into the 1 8 9 0 army massacre. In 1970, univer­
sity librarian Dee Brown had written the book Bury My Heart at

Wounded Knee, which documented a n d told the 1 8 9 0 Wounded
Knee story, among many other such nineteenth-century anti-Indian
crimes and tragedies . The book was a surprise best seller, so the
name Wounded Knee resonated with a broad public by 1973 . On the
front page of one newspaper, editors placed two photographs side by
side, each of a pile of bloody, mutilated bodies in a ditch. One was
from My Lai in 1968, the other from the Wounded Knee army mas­
sacre of the Lakota in 1 89 0 . Had they not been captioned, it would
have been impossible to tell the difference in time and place.
During the first US military invasion of Iraq, a gesture intended
to obliterate the "Vietnam Syndrome," on February 19, 199 1 , Briga­
dier General Richard Neal, briefing reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Ara­
bia, stated that the US military wanted to ensure a speedy victory
once it committed land forces to "Indian Country." The following
day, in a little-publicized statement of protest, the National Con­
gress of American Indians pointed out that fifteen thousand Native
Americans were serving as combat troops in the Persian Gulf. As we
have seen, the term " Indian Country" is not merely an insensitive
racial slur to indicate the enemy, tastelessly employed by accident.
Neither Neal nor any other military authority apologized for the
statement, and it continues to be used by the military and the media,
usually in its shortened form, "In Country," which originated in the
Vietnam War. "Indian Country" and "In Country" are military
terms of trade, like other euphemisms such as "collateral damage"
(killing civilians) and "ordnance" (bombs) that appear in military
training manuals and are used regularly. "Indian Country" and "In
Country" mean "behind enemy lines." Its current use should serve
to remind us of the origins and development of the US military, as
well as the nature of our political and social history: annihilation
unto unconditional surrender.
When the redundant "ground war," more appropriately tagged
a "turkey shoot," was launched, at the front of the miles of killing

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

machines were armored scouting vehicles of the Second Armored
Calvary Regiment (ACR), a self-contained elite unit that won fame
during World War II when it headed General Patton's Third Army
crossing Europe. In the Gulf War, the Second ACR played the role
of chief scouts for the US Seventh Corps. A retired ACR commander
proudly told a television interviewer that the Second ACR had been
formed in the 1 8 3 0s to fight the Seminoles, and that it had its first
great victory when it finally defeated those Indians in the Florida
Everglades in 1 8 3 6 . The Second ACR in the vanguard of the ground
assault on Iraq thus symbolized the continuity of US war victories
and the source of the nation's militarism: the Iraq War was just
another Indian war in the US military tradition. After weeks of
high-tech bombing in Iraq followed by a caravan of armored tanks
shooting everything that moved, the US Special Forces entered Iraqi
officers' quarters in Kuwait City. There they found carrier pigeons
in cages and notes in Arabic strewn over a desk, which they inter­
preted to mean that the Iraqi commanders were communicating
with their troops, and even with Baghdad, using the carrier pigeons.
High-tech soldiers had been fighting an army that communicated
by carrier pigeon-as Shawnees and Muskogees had done two cen­
turies earlier.
Twelve years after the Gulf War, a US military force of three
hundred thousand invaded Iraq again. A little-read report from As­
sociated Press correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer illustrates the sym­
bolic power of Indian wars as a source of US military memory and
practice. Once again we find the armored scouting vehicles and their
troops retracing historical bloody footprints as they perform their
" Seminole Indian war dance":
Capt. Phillip Walford's men leaped into the air and waved
empty rifles in an impromptu desert war dance . . . .
With thousands of M 1 A 1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting
vehicles, Humvees and trucks, the mechanized infantry unit
known as the " Iron Fist" would be the only U . S . armored
division in the fight, and would likely meet any Iraqi defenses
head on.
" We will be entering Iraq as an army of liberation, not

Ghost Dance Prophecy

195

domination," said Wolford, of Marysville, Ohio, directing the
men of his 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment to take down
the U.S. flags fluttering from their sand-colored tanks.
After a brief prayer, Wolford leaped into an impromptu
desert war dance. Camouflaged soldiers j oined him, j ump ­
ing up and down in the sand, chanting and brandishing rifles
carefully emptied of their rounds. 24

H I S T O RY N OT PA S T

In April 2007, a l l the news seemed t o be coming from Virginia and
was about murder-the murder of Indigenous farmers that com­
menced four hundred years before with the founding of Jamestown
and the rampage at nearby Virginia Tech University on April 1 6 ,

2007. Yet n o one commented i n the media o n the juxtaposition of
these bookends of colonialism. Jamestown was famously the first
permanent settlement that gave birth to the Commonwealth of Vir­
ginia, the colonial epicenter of what became the United States of
America nearly two centuries later, the colony out of which was
carved the US capital, Washington, on the river whose mouth lay up
the coast. A few years after Jamestown was established, the more
familiar and revered colony of Plymouth was planted by English
religious dissidents, under the auspices of private investors with
royal approval, as with Jamestown, and the same mercenary activi­
ties personified by Captain John Smith. This was the beginning of
British overseas colonialism, after the conquest and colonization of
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland turned England into Great Britain. The
Virginia Tech killings were described in 2007 as the worst "mass
killing," the "worst massacre," in US history. Descendants of massa­
cred Indigenous ancestors took exception to that designation . It was
curious with the media circus surrounding the Jamestown celebra­
tion, and with Queen Elizabeth and President Bush presiding, that
journalists failed to compare the colonial massacres of Powhatans
four centuries earlier and the single, disturbed individual's shootings
of his classmates. The shooter himself was a child of colonial war,
the US war in Korea.

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Meditating on the five major US wars since World War II-in
Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (1991), Afghanistan, and Iraq (2003 )-with
flashes of historical memory of Jamestown, the Ohio Valley, and
Wounded Knee, brings us to the essence of US history. A red thread
of blood connects the first white settlement in North America with
today and the future. As military historian John Grenier puts it:
U. S . people are taught that their military culture does not
approve of or encourage targeting and killing civilians and
know little or nothing about the nearly three centuries of war­
fare-before and after the founding of the U. S .-that reduced
the Indigenous peoples of the continent to a few reservations
by burning their towns and fields and killing civilians, driv­
ing the refugees out-step by step-across the continent . . . .
[V] iolence directed systematically against noncombatants
through irregular means, from the start, has been a central
part of Americans' way of war. 25

ELEVEN

THE D O C T R I N E O F D I S C OVE RY

The whip covers the fault.
-D'Arcy McNickle, The Surrounded

Native liberty, natural reason, and survivance
are concepts that originate in narratives,
not in the mandates of monarchies, papacies,
severe traditions, or federal policies.
-Gerald Vizenor, The White Earth Nation

In 1 9 8 2 , the government of Spain and the Holy See (the Vatican,
which is a nonvoting state member of the United Nations) proposed
to the UN General Assembly that the year 1992 be celebrated in the
United Nations as an "encounter" between Europe and the peoples
of the Americas, with Europeans bearing the gifts of civilization
and Christianity to the Indigenous peoples. To the shock of the
North Atlantic states that supported Spain's resolution (including
the United States and Canada), the entire African delegation walked
out of the meeting and returned with an impassioned statement con­
demning a proposal to celebrate colonialism in the United Nations,
which was established for the purpose of ending colonialism. 1
The " Doctrine o f Discovery " had reared its head i n the wrong
place. The resolution was dead, but it was not the end of efforts by
Spain, the Vatican, and others in the West to make the Quincenten­
nial a cause for celebration.
Only five years before the debacle in the UN General Assembly,
the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas conference at the UN's Ge­
neva headquarters had proposed that 1992 be made the UN "year

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

of mourning" for the onset of colonialism, African slavery, and
genocide against the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and that
October l 2 be designated as the UN International Day of the World's
Indigenous Peoples. As the time drew near to the Quincentennial,
Spain took the lead in fighting the Indigenous proposals. Spain and
the Vatican also spent years and huge sums of money preparing for
their own celebration of Columbus, enlisting the help of all of the
countries of Latin America except Cuba, which refused (and paid
for this in withdrawn Spanish financial investments). In the United
States, the George H. W. Bush administration cooperated with the
project and produced its own series of events. In the end, compro­
mise won at the United Nations: Indigenous peoples garnered a De­
cade for the World's Indigenous Peoples, which officially began in

1994 but was inaugurated at UN headquarters in New York in De­
cember 1992. August 9, not October 1 2 , was designated as the an­
nual UN International Day for the World's Indigenous Peoples, and
the Nobel Peace Prize went to Guatemalan Mayan leader Rigoberta
Menchu, announced in Oslo on October 1 2 , 199 2 , a decision that
infuriated the Spanish government and the Vatican. The organized
celebrations of Columbus flopped, thanks to multiple, highly visible
protests by Indigenous peoples and their allies. Particularly, support
grew for the work of Indigenous peoples at the United Nations to
develop new international law standards.
According to the centuries-old Doctrine of Discovery, European
nations acquired title to the lands they "discovered," and Indigenous
inhabitants lost their natural right to that land after Europeans had
arrived and claimed it.2 Under this legal cover for theft, Euro-Amer­
ican wars of conquest and settler colonialism devastated Indigenous
nations and communities, ripping their territories away from them
and transforming the land into private property, real estate. Most of
that land ended up in the hands of land speculators and agribusiness
operators, many of which, up to the mid-nineteenth century, were
plantations worked by another form of private property, enslaved
Africans. Arcane as it may seem, the doctrine remains the basis for
federal laws still in effect that control Indigenous peoples' lives and
destinies, even their histories by distorting them.

The Doctrine of Discovery

199

T H E W H I P O F C O LO N I A L I S M

From the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, most
of the non-European world was colonized under the Doctrine of
Discovery, one of the first principles of international law Christian
European monarchies promulgated to legitimize investigating, map­
ping, and claiming lands belonging to peoples outside Europe. It
originated in a papal bull issued in 1 4 5 5 that permitted the Portu­
guese monarchy to seize West Africa. Following Columbus's infa­
mous exploratory voyage in 1492, sponsored by the king and queen
of the infant Spanish state, another papal bull extended similar
permission to Spain. Disputes between the Portuguese and Spanish
monarchies led to the papal-initiated Treaty of Tordesillas ( 1 494),
which, besides dividing the globe equally between the two Iberian
empires, clarified that only non- Christian lands fell under the dis­
covery doctrine. 3 This doctrine on which all European states relied
thus originated with the arbitrary and unilateral establishment of
the Iberian monarchies' exclusive rights under Christian canon law
to colonize foreign peoples, and this right was later seized by other
European monarchical colonizing proj ects . The French Republic
used this legalistic instrument for its nineteenth- and twentieth­
century settler colonialist projects, as did the newly independent
United States when it continued the colonization of North America
begun by the British.
In 1 79 2 , not long after the US founding, Secretary of State
Thomas Jefferson claimed that the Doctrine of Discovery developed
by European states was international law applicable to the new US
government as well. In 1 8 23 the US Supreme Court issued its deci­
sion in Johnson v. Mcintosh. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice
John Marshall held that the Doctrine of Discovery had been an es­
tablished principle of European law and of English law in effect
in Britain's North American colonies and was also the law of the
United States. The Court defined the exclusive property rights that
a European country acquired by dint of discovery: "Discovery gave
title to the government, by whose subjects, or by whose authority,
it was made, against all other European governments, which title

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

might be consummated by possession." Therefore, European and
Euro-American "discoverers" had gained real-property rights in the
lands of Indigenous peoples by merely planting a flag. Indigenous
rights were, in the Court's words, "in no instance, entirely disre­
garded; but were necessarily, to a considerable extent, impaired."
The Court further held that Indigenous "rights to complete sover­
eignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished." Indig­
enous people could continue to live on the land, but title resided with
the discovering power, the United States. A later decision concluded
that Native nations were "domestic, dependent nations ."
The Doctrine of Discovery is so taken for granted that it is rarely
mentioned in historical or legal texts published in the Americas. The
UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, which meets annually
for two weeks, devoted its entire 201 2 session to the doctrine.4 Three
decades earlier, as Indigenous peoples of the Americas began assert­
ing their presence in the UN human rights system, they had pro­
posed such a conference and study. The World Council of Churches,
the Unitarian Universalist Church, the Episcopal Church, and other
Protestant religious institutions, responding to demands from Indig­
enous peoples, have made statements disassociating themselves from
the Doctrine of Discovery. The New York Society of Friends (Quak­
ers), in denying the legitimacy of the doctrine, asserted in 201 2 that
it clearly "still has the force of law today" and is not simply a medi­
eval relic. The Quakers pointed out that the United States rational­
izes its claims to sovereignty over Native nations, for instance in the
2005 US Supreme Court case, City of Sherrill v. Oneida Nation of

Indians. The statement asserts: " We cannot accept that the Doctrine
of Discovery was ever a true authority for the forced takings of lands
and the enslavement or extermination of peoples."5 The Unitarian
Universalist Association (UUA) resolution regarding this is particu­
larly powerful and an excellent model. The UUA "repudiate(s) the
D octrine of Discovery as a relic of colonialism, feudalism, and reli­
gious, cultural, and racial biases having no place in the modern day
treatment of indigenous peoples." The Unitarians resolved to "ex­
pose the historical reality and impact of the Doctrine of Discovery
and eliminate its presence in the contemporary policies, programs,
theologies, and structures of Unitarian Universalism; and . . . in-

The Doctrine of Discovery

vite indigenous partners to a process of Honor and Healing (often
called Truth and Reconciliation)." They additionally encouraged
"other religious bodies to reject the use of the Doctrine of Discovery
to dominate indigenous peoples" and resolved to collaborate with
groups "to propose a specific Congressional Resolution to repudiate
this doctrine . . . and call upon the United States to fully implement
the standards of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples in the U. S . law and policy without qualifications."6

TA N G L E D C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

US officials get tangled in the contradictions inherent in the attempt
to legitimize empire building through the Doctrine of Discovery and
the origin story of making a clear break from the British empire. The
rhetoric is often baffling, particularly when it references US Ameri­
can cultural memory of the wars against Native nations, as it did
following the declaration of the "War on Terror" after the terrorist
attacks of September n, 2oo r .
In early 2 o n , a Yemeni citizen, Ali Hamza a l Bahlul, was serving
a life sentence at Guantanamo as an "enemy combatant," a military
tribunal having convicted him of crimes associated with his service
to al- Qaeda as Osama bin Laden's media secretary. The Center for
Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued a statement prior to the hearing
in the appeal of Bahlul's conviction. In arguing that Bahlul's convic­
tion be upheld, a Pentagon lawyer, navy captain Edward S. White,
relied on a precedent from an 1 8 1 8 tribunal. In his thirty-seven-page
military commissions brief, Captain White wrote: "Not only was
the Seminole belligerency unlawful, but, much like modern-day al
Qaeda, the very way in which the Seminoles waged war against U. S.
targets itself violate the customs and usages of war." The CCR ob­
jected to this passage in the government's brief. "The court should
. . . reject the government's notable reliance on the 'Seminole Wars'
of the l 8 oos, a genocide that led to the Trail of Tears," the CCR
declared. "The government's characterization of Native American
resistance to the United States as 'much like modern-day al Qaeda'
is not only factually wrong but overtly racist, and cannot present

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any legitimate legal basis to uphold Mr. Bahlul's conviction."7 In
response, the Pentagon's general counsel issued a letter stating that
the US government stood by its precedent.

" W E W I S H T O C O N T I N U E T O E X I S T"

The question of self-determination of peoples is a recent historical
phenomenon integral both to the formation of modern European
nation-states and to the gradual formation of an imperialist world
system eventually led by the United States. National integration and
state formation occurred first in western Europe as its states estab­
lished colonies and colonial regimes in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the
Americas, and the Caribbean, and as the United States established
itself as an independent state. These conquests afforded European
states and the United States access to vast resources and labor that
in turn allowed them to industrialize and to create efficient bu­
reaucratic structures and political republicanism. At the end of this
process, with decolonization of European holdings in the twenti­
eth century, self-determination became a major global issue eventu­
ally incorporating all human beings as citizens of nation-states. The
creation of nation-states and the redrawing of national boundaries
that this often entailed inevitably raised the questions of which na­
tional, ethnic, religious, and linguistic communities were included
and whether their consent or participation would be required. There
are peoples and nations without their own states, locked under a
state authority that may or may not be willing to respond to their de­
mands for autonomy within the existing state. If the state is not will­
ing, the peoples or nations may choose to insist on independence.
That is the work of self-determination.
In the United States, Indigenous nations that seek political auton­
omy or even independence engage in nation building-that is, devel­
oping Indigenous governance and an economic base. For decades,
Native activists and organizers in North America have worked tire­
lessly to establish the validity of treaties and to foster and protect
the self-determination and sovereignty of Indigenous nations. The
nations seek control of their social and political institutions without

The Doctrine of Discovery

compromising what they consider unique and essential cultural val­
ues. The central concern for Indigenous peoples in the United States
is prevailing upon the federal government to honor hundreds of trea­
ties and other agreements concluded between the United States and
Indigenous nations as between two sovereign states. Demands to
have treaties and agreements upheld have never abated, and they
have accelerated since the end of the termination era. However, the
Indigenous concept of nation and sovereignty is quite distinct from
the Western model of the state as the final arbiter of decision mak­
ing, based on police enforcement. Rather, as Indigenous lawyer and
activist Sharon Venne has put it, "We know the laws given to us by
the Creator. It is an obligation. It is a duty. It is the future of our
[children's] children. We cannot like the non-indigenous people who
make rules and regulations and change them when they don't like
the rule or regulation. We were given the laws by the Creator. We
have to live the laws. This is sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples."8
Following the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, the American
Indian Movement brought together more than five thousand Indig­
enous representatives, including ones from Latin America and the
Pacific, in a ten-day gathering that founded the International In­
dian Treaty Council (HTC), which then applied for and received UN
nongovernmental consultative status in 1975 . The HTC proceeded
to organize the first conference to be held at the United Nations
on Indigenous Peoples of the Americas in 1977· At this conference,
Northern Cheyenne tribal judge Marie Sanchez opened the proceed­
mgs:
Members of this conference, delegates, and my brothers and
sisters who are present here today.
We are the target for the total final extermination of us as
people.
The question I would like to bring forth to this conference,
to the delegates from other countries here present, is why have
you not recognized us as sovereign people before ? Why did
we have to travel this distance to come to you? Had you not
thought that the United States Government in its deliberate
and systematic attempt to suppress us, had you not thought

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

that that was the reason they did not want to recognize us as
sovereign people ? The only positive thing that I feel should
come out of this conference, if you are going to include us as
part of the international family is for you to recognize us, for
you to give us this recognition. Only with that can we con­
tinue to live as completely sovereign people.
And you also, because you are part of the family of this
world, you should also be very concerned, because the com­
mon enemy is your enemy too, and that enemy dictates policy
to your governments also. I warn you not to be so dependent
on the country that we are under, on the government that we
are under. We have demonstrated to you how many hundreds
of years we have survived.
We wish to continue to exist.9
This international work at the United Nations grew slowly at first,
but by the mid-198os it was attracting grassroots Indigenous rep­
resentatives from around the world and constructing important
initiatives.
The global Indigenous cause reached a major milestone in 2007
when the UN General Assembly passed the Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Only four members of the assembly
voted in opposition, all of them Anglo settler-states-the United
States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. All four, with some
embarrassment, later changed their votes to approval.1 0 Leo Kills­
back reflects the perceptions of most Native people that the declara­
tion might " bring western cultures out of their old world of savagery
and closer to humanity," noting the example of the end of World
War II:
After the fall of Nazi Germany, its leaders were publicly os­
tracized, tried, convicted, and executed for war crimes at the
Nuremburg trials. This led to the Genocide Convention and
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Nazi society
members affirmed that the Holocaust occurred and some were
forced to visit concentration camps only feet from their place
of residence. Under truth and reconciliation German society

The Doctrine of Discovery

205

began to rebuild itself, and with the end of their savage world,
they and numerous other countries adopted Holocaust-denial
laws. This is exactly how a society moved from one reality to
another. 1 1
For Indigenous peoples in North America an important action
within the UN human rights framework was the 1 9 8 7 mandate
given to a UN special rapporteur, Miguel Alfonso Martinez, to in­
vestigate the status of treaties and agreements between Indigenous
nations and the original colonial powers and the national govern­
ments that now claim authority over Indigenous nations by virtue
of those treaties. The UN Study on Treaties, completed in 1999,
is a useful tool for Indigenous peoples in the United States in their
continuing struggles for land restoration and sovereignty. The in­
vestigation concluded that Indigenous treaty rights in the United
States have contemporary effective status. The special rapporteur
based this finding largely on the US Constitution, which in Article
VI provides that "all treaties made, or which shall be made, under
the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the
Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any
Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary not­
withstanding." Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution explicitly
includes relations with Indigenous nations as among the powers of
Congress: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among
the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."12

LAN D C LA I M S

With a large part of Indigenous nations' territories and resources in
what is now the United States taken through aggressive war, outright
theft, and legislative appropriations, Native peoples have vast claims
to reparations and restitution. Indigenous nations negotiated numer­
ous treaties with the United States that included land transfers and
monetary compensation, but the remaining Indigenous territories
have steadily shrunk due to direct federal appropriation by various
means as well as through government failure to meet its obligation to

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

protect Indigenous landholdings as required under treaties. The US
government has acknowledged some of these claims and has offered
monetary compensation. However, since the upsurge of Indian rights
movements in the 19 60s, Indigenous nations have demanded restora­
tion of treaty-guaranteed land rather than monetary compensation.
Native Americans, including those who are legal scholars, ordi­
narily do not use the term "reparations" in reference to their land
c �aims and treaty rights. Rather, they demand restoration, restitu­
tion, or repatriation of lands acquired by the United States outside
valid treaties . These demands for return of lands and water and
other resource rights illegally taken certainly could be termed "rep­
arations," but they have no parallel in the monetary reparations
owed, for example, to Japanese Americans for forced incarceration
or to descendants of enslaved Africa.n Americans. No monetary
amount can compensate for lands illegally seized, particularly those
sacred lands necessary for Indigenous peoples to regain social coher­
ence. One form of Native claim does seek monetary compensation
and might provide a template for other classes. Of the hundreds of
lawsuits for federal trust mismanagement that Indigenous groups
have filed, most since the 19 60s, the largest and best known is the

Cobell v. Salazar class-action suit, initially filed in 1 9 9 6 and settled
in 201 i . The individual Indigenous litigants, from many Native na­
tions, claimed that the US Department of the Interior, as trustee
of Indigenous assets, had lost, squandered, stolen, and otherwise
wasted hundreds of millions of dollars dating back to the forced
land allotment beginning in the late l 8 8os. By the end of 2009, it
was clear that the case was headed for a decision favoring the Indig­
enous groups when the lead plaintiffs, representing nearly a half­
million Indigenous individuals, accepted a $3 . 4-billion settlement
proposed by the Obama administration. The amount of the settle­
ment was greater than the half-billion dollars that the court would
likely have awarded. However, what was sacrificed in the settlement
was a detailed accounting of the federal government's misfeasance.
As one reporter lamented: "The result will see some involved with
the case, especially lawyers, become quite rich, while many Indi­
ans-the majority, in all likelihood-will receive about a third of
what it takes to feed a family of four for just one year."13

The Doctrifle of Discovery

207

Another important form of reparations is the repatriation of re­
mains of dead ancestors and burial items. After considerable struggle
on the part of Indigenous religious practitioners, Congress enacted
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of

1990 (NAGPRA), which requires that museums return human re­
mains and burial items to the appropriate Indigenous communities.
It is fitting that Congress used the term "repatriation" in the act.
Before NAGPRA, the federal government had used "repatriation"
to describe the return of remains of prisoners of war to foreign na­
tions. Native American nations are sovereign as well, and Congress
correctly characterized the returns as repatriations. 14
Although compensation for federal trust mismanagement and
repatriation of ancestral remains represent important victories, land
claims and treaty rights are most central to Indigenous peoples' fight
for reparations in the United States. The case of the great Sioux
Nation exemplifies the persistence among Indigenous nations and
communities to protect their sovereignty and cultures. The Sioux
have never accepted the validity of the US confiscation of Paha Sapa,
the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore is controversial among Native
Americans because it is located in the Black Hills. Members of the
American Indian Movement led occupations of the monument be­
ginning in 197 ! . Return of the Black Hills was the major Sioux
demand in the 19 73 occupation of Wounded Knee. 1 5 Due to a de­

_

cade of intense protests and occupations by the Sioux, on July 23 ,

1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the US Supreme
Court ruled that the Black Hills had been taken illegally and that
remuneration equal to the initial offering price plus interest-nearly

$106 million-be paid. The Sioux refused the award and continued
to demand return of the Black Hills. The money remained in an
interest-bearing account, which by 2010, amounted to more than

$757 million. The Sioux believe that accepting the money would
validate the US theft of their most sacred land. The Sioux Nation's
determination to repatriate the Black Hills attracted renewed me­
dia attention in 201 r . A segment of the PBS NewsHour titled " For
Great Sioux Nation, Black Hills Can't Be Bought for $ r . 3 Billion"
aired on August 24 . The reporter described a Sioux reservation as
one of the most difficult places in which to live in the United States:

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Few people in the Western Hemisphere have shorter life ex­
pectancies. Males, on average, live to j ust 48 years old, fe­
males to 5 2 . Almost half of all people above the age of 40 have
diabetes.
And the economic realities are even worse. Unemployment
rates are consistently above 80 percent. In Shannon County,
inside the Pine Ridge Reservation, half the children live in
poverty, and the average income is $ 8 ,ooo a year.
But there are funds available, a federal pot now worth more
than a billion dollars. That sits here in the U . S . Treasury De­
partment waiting to be collected by nine Sioux tribes. The
money stems from a 1 9 8 0 Supreme Court ruling that set aside

$105 million to compensate the Sioux for the taking of the
Black Hills in 1 877, an isolated mountain range rich in miner­
als that stretched from South Dakota to Wyoming. The only
problem: The Sioux never wanted the money because the land
was never for sale.1 6
That one of the most impoverished communities in the Americas
would refuse a billion dollars demonstrates the relevance and signifi­
cance of the land to the Sioux, not as an economic resource but as
a relationship between people and place, a profound feature of the
resilience . of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

E C O N O M I C S E L F - D E T E R M I N AT I O N

The relationship of economic development and Indigenous peoples
in the United States is not a twentieth-century phenomenon. The
collusion of business and government in the theft and exploitation
of Indigenous lands and resources is the core element of coloniza­
tion and forms the basis of US wealth and power. By the end of the
nineteenth century, Indigenous communities had little control over
their resources or their economic situations, receiving only royalties
for mining and leasing, funds held in trust in Washington. Dur­
ing the Johnson administration's War on Poverty, most reservation
economic development was spurred by funding and grants from the

The Doctrine of Discovery

209

Economic Development Administration, the Office of Economic
Opportunity, and other government agencies. The Bureau of Indian
Affairs began a program to woo industrial plants to reservations,
promising cheap labor and infrastructure investment. The largest
such experiment was that of the giant electronics company Fair­
child's assembly plant in the Navajo Nation.
Established at the town of Shiprock (in the northeastern part of
the reservation, in New Mexico) in 1969, the plant became the sin­
gle largest industrial employer in New Mexico by 1975 · Twelve hun­
dred Navajos made up the initial workforce. By 1974 , the numbers
had lessened to a thousand, but still Navajos were 95 percent of the
workforce. Then, during 1974-75, the Navajo workforce shrunk to
six hundred. Fairchild's Mountain View, California, headquarters
claimed that Navajos were quitting, something very common in the
electronics assembly industry. Non-Indians were being hired to re­
place Navajos. What actually had been happening were layoffs, not
resignations. The federal government subsidized the wages for the
six-month training period on the job, for which little training is re­
quired, and Fairchild was laying off those workers whom they would
have to pay and hiring new trainees at no cost. Local Navaj o activ­
ists and former Fairchild employees, along with help from American
Indian Movement leaders, organized a protest at the plant, which
led to the workers occupying it. Fairchild decommissioned the plant
and moved it overseas. Documents recovered by protesters revealed
that Fairchild was seeking a pretext to break its lease. The Navajo
Nation had built the plant to Fairchild's specifications at a cost of
three and a half million dollars . 17
The Indian Self-D etermination Act of 1975 validated Indig­
enous control over their own social and economic development
with continuation of federal financial obligations under treaties
and agreements . Acting upon the new mandate, a number of In­
digenous nations with mineral resources formed the Council of
Energy Resource Tribes (CERT). Patterned after the federation of
oil-producing states, OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Export­
ing Countries), CERT sought to renegotiate mineral leases that the
BIA had practically given away to energy companies. Native lands
west of the Mississippi held considerable resources: 30 percent of the

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

low-sulfur coal in the United States, 5 percent of the oil, 10 percent
of the natural gas, and 80 percent of the uranium. CERT was able
to establish a center of information and action in Denver to serve its
members with technical and legal assistance. The Jicarilla Apache
Nation slapped a severance tax on the oil and gas taken from their
lands . A corporate legal challenge to this wound up in the Supreme
Court, which found that Native nations had the right to tax corpo­
rations that operated in their boundaries.
Navaj o chairman Peter MacDonald was the force behind the
founding of CERT and was its first director. But he quickly found
his scheme of mining as the basis for economic development chal­
lenged by young Navajos who perceived the downside of ecological
destruction. Strip-mining of coal and uranium in the Navajo Na­
tion was bad enough, but then a coal-gasification plant was estab­
lished to feed into the Navajo electricity-generating plant that sent
power to Phoenix and Los Angeles but provided Navajos with little
or none. Navajo activist John Redhouse, who became director of
the National Indian Youth Council, led decades of struggle against
unrestricted mining, with new generations continuing the fight. 18
Like many de-industrializing US cities and states in the 1 9 8 0s,
some Native nations turned to gaming for revenue. In 1986, they
formed the National Indian Gaming Association for the purpose of
lobbying state and federal governments and to represent the interests
of its members. But in 19 8 8 Congress passed the Indian Gaming
Regulatory Act, which gave the states some control over gaming, a
dangerous surrender of sovereignty for those Native nations operat­
ing casinos. Indigenous gaming operations now constitute a $26 bil­
lion industry annually that employs three hundred thousand people,
with about half the 5 64 federally recogn ized nations operating ca­
sinos of various sizes. Profits have been used in myriad ways, some
for per capita payments, others earmarked for educational and lin­
guistic development, housing, hospitals, and even investing in larger
projects such as the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of
the American Indian. A good portion of profits go to lobbying politi­
cians of state and federal governments. The Indian gaming lobby in
California, for instance, is second only to the prison guards union
in the state.19

The Doctrine of Discovery

211

T H E N A R R AT I V E O F DYS F U N C T I O N

The mainstream media and books regularly expose and denounce
the poverty and social dysfunction found in Indigenous communi­
ties. Rates of alcoholism and suicide are far higher than national av­
erages, and higher even than in other communities living in poverty.
In a book of case studies of poverty and neglected sites of deteriora­
tion in the United States, j ournalist Chris Hedges offered an impas­
sioned account of the Pine Ridge Reservation. 20
As well-meaning and accurate as such portrayals are, however,
they miss the specific circumstances that reproduce Indigenous pov­
erty and social scarring-namely, the colonial condition. As Vine
Deloria Jr. and other Native American activists and scholars have
emphasized, there is a direct link between the suppression of Indige­
nous sovereignty and the powerlessness manifest in depressed social
conditions. Deloria Jr. explained that for the Sioux, everyone has
responsibility and rituals to perform that involve a particular ge­
ography. In their case, this means sites in the Black Hills: " Some of
the holy men up there will say that a lot of the social problems with
the Sioux are the result of losing the Black Hills, so you couldn't
perform your duties and become a contributor to the ongoing cre­
ation. And consequently, people began to fall away and they started
to suffer and they started to fight among themselves."21 In continu­
ing to disregard treaty rights and deny restitution of sacred lands
such as the Black Hills, the federal government prevents Indigenous
communities from performing their most elemental responsibilities
as inscribed in their cultural and religious teachings. In other words,
sovereignty equates to survival-nationhood instead of genocide.
Ethnographer Nancy O estreich Lurie provocatively described
Indian drinking as "the world's oldest on-going protest demon­
stration."22 The effects of continued colonization form similar pat­
terns among Indigenous communities throughout the Americas,
as well as among the Maori of New Zealand and the Australian
Aborigines. 23
The experience of generations of Native Americans in on- and
off-reservation boarding schools, run by the federal government or
Christian missions, contributed significantly to the family and so-

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

cial dysfunction still found in Native communities. Generations of
child abuse, including sexual abuse-from the founding of the first
schools by missionaries in the 1 8 3 0s and the federal government in
1 8 75 until most were closed and the remaining ones reformed in
the l97os-traumatized survivors and their progeny.24 In 2002, a
coalition of Indigenous groups started the Boarding School Healing
Project, which documented through research and oral history the
extensive abuses that go beyond individual casualties to disruption
of Indigenous life at every level. Sun Elk was the first child from the
very traditional Taos Pueblo to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial
School, spending seven years there beginning in 1 8 8 3 . After a harsh
reentry into Taos society, he told his story:
They told us that Indian ways were bad. They said we must
get civilized. I remember that word too. It means " be like
the white man." I am willing to be like the white man, but I
did not believe Indians' ways were wrong. But they kept teach­
ing us for seven years. And the books told how bad the In­
dians had been to the white men-burning their towns
and killing their women and children. But I had seen white
men do that to Indians. We all wore white man's clothes
and ate white man's food and went to white man's churches
and spoke white man's talk. And so after a while we also be­
gan to say Indians were bad. We laughed at our own people
and their blankets and cooking pots and sacred societies and
dances. 25
Corporal punishment was unknown in Indigenous families but
was routine in the boarding schools. Often punishment was inflicted
for being "too Indian" -the darker the child, the more often and
severe the beatings. The children were made to feel that it was crimi­
nal to be Indian. 2 6 A woman whose mother experienced boarding
school related the results:
Probably my mother and . . . her brothers and sisters were the
first in our family to go to boarding school. . . . And the sto­
ries she told . . . were horrendous. There were beatings . There

The Doctrine of Discovery

[was] a very young classmate-I don't know how old they
were, probably preschool or grade school-who lost a hand
in having to clean this machine that baked bread or cut dough
or something, and having to kneel for hours on cold basement
floors as punishment . . . . My mother lived with a rage all her
life, and I think the fact that they were taken away so young
was part of this rage and how it-the fallout-was on us as a
family.27
Ponca historian Roger Buffalohead verifies that testimony:
The idea of corporal punishment, so foreign to traditional In­
dian cultures, became a way of life for those students return­
ing from their educational experience.
Yet you find by the thirties and forties in most Native
communities, where large numbers of young people had, in
the previous years, attended boarding schools, an increasing
number of parents who utilized corporal punishment in the
raising of their children, so that although you can't prove a
direct connection, I think you can certainly see that boarding
school experiences, where corporal punishment was the name
of the game, had [their] impact on the next generations of na­
tive people. 28
Sexual abuse of both girls and boys was also rampant. One
woman remembers: "We had many different teachers during those
years; some got the girls pregnant and had to leave . . . . [One teacher]
would put his arms around and fondle this girl, sometimes taking
her on his lap . . . . When I got there, Mr. M put his arm around me
and rubbed my arm all the way down. He rubbed his face against
mine." At one mission school, a priest was known for his sexual ad­
vances. "Anyway, I ended up beside him [the priest] . . . and all of a
sudden he started to feel my legs . . . . I was getting really uncomfort­
able and he started trying to put his hands in my pants ."29 Nuns also
participated in sexual abuse: "A nun was sponge bathing me and
proceeded to go a little too far with her sponge bathing. So I pushed
her hand away. She held my legs apart while she strapped the insides
of my thighs. I never stopped her again."3 0

213

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Much documentation and testimony attest to the never-ending
resistance by children in boarding schools. Running away was the
most common way to resist, but there were also acts of nonparticipa­
tion and sabotage, secretly speaking their languages and practicing
ceremonies. This surely accounts for their survival, but the damage
is nearly incomprehensible. Mohawk historian Taiaiake Alfred asks,
" What is the legacy of colonialism ? Dispossession, disempower­
ment, and disease inflicted by the white man, to be sure . . . . Yet the
enemy is in plain view: residential schools, racism, expropriation,
extinguishment, warship, welfare."31
Indigenous women, in particular, have continued to bear the
brunt of sexual violence, both within families and by settler preda­
tors. Incidence of rape on reservations has long been astronomical.
The colonialist restrictions on Indigenous policing authority on
reservations-yet another legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery and
the impairment of Indigenous sovereignty-opened the door to
perpetrators of sexual violence who knew there would be no con­
sequences for their actions. 32 Under the US colonial system, jurisdic­
tion for crimes committed on Native lands falls to federal and state
authorities because Native justice can be applied only to reserva­
tion residents, and then only for misdemeanors. One in three Native
American women has been raped or experienced attempted rape,
and the rate of sexual assault on Native American women is more
than twice the national average. For five years after publication of
a scathing 2007 report by Amnesty International, Native American
and women's organizations, including the National Organization
for Women (NOW), lobbied Congress to add a new section to the

1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) addressing the special
situation of Native American women living on reservations. 33 The
added provision would allow Native nations' courts jurisdiction to
arrest and prosecute non-Native men who enter reservations and
commit rape. At the end of 201 2 , the Republican-dominated US
Congress denied reauthorization of the VAWA, because it included
the provision. In March 2013 , however, that opposition was over­
come, and President Barack Obama signed the amended act back
into law-a small step forward for Native sovereignty.

The Doctrine of Discovery

215

I N D I G E N O U S G OV E R N A N C E

For generations, Native nations, occasionally with the help of fed­
eral or state government, treated the symptoms of colonialism. But
with the powerful Indigenous self-determination movements of the
second half of the twentieth century, those nations participated in
drafting and instituting new international law that supports their
aspirations, and they began working on shoring up their sovereignty
through governance . Through this work, US Indigenous peoples
have reconceptualized their current forms of government based on
new constitutions that reflect their specific cultures. Navajo think­
ing on a future constitution expresses that desire. Like some other
Native nations, the Navajo, the most populous and the one holding
the largest land base in the United States, has never had a constitu­
tion. But others do have constitutions similar to that of the United
States. Nearly sixty Native nations adopted constitutions before

193 4 · Following the Indian Reorganization Act of that year, another
1 3 0 nations wrote constitutions according to federal guidelines but
without significant participation of their citizenry. 34 The movement
to create, revise, or rewrite constitutions has seen notable success
in two instances during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
From 2004 to 2006 the Osage Nation, located in northeastern
Oklahoma, engaged in a contentious process of reform that pro­
duced a new constitution. The preamble reflects the extraordinary
context and content of the new law:
We the Wah-zha-zhe, known as the Osage People, having
formed as Clans in the far distant past, have been a People and
as a People have walked this earth and enjoyed the blessing of
Wah-kon-tah for more centuries than we truly know.
Having resolved to live in harmony, we now come together
so that we may once more unite as a Nation and as a Peo­
ple, calling upon the fundamental values that we hold sacred:
Justice, Fairness, Compassion, Respect for and Protection of
Child, Elder, All Fellow Beings, and Self.
Paying homage to generations of Osage leaders of the past

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An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

and present, we give thanks for their wisdom and courage.
Acknowledging our ancient tribal order as the foundation of
our present government, first reformed in the r 8 8 r Constitu­
tion of the Osage Nation, we continue our legacy by again
reorganizing our government.
This Constitution, created by the Osage People, hereby
grants to every Osage citizen a vote that is equal to all others
and form a government that is accountable to the citizens pf
the Osage Nation.
We, the Osage People, based on centuries of being a People,
now strengthen our government in order to preserve and per­
petuate a full and abundant Osage way of life that benefits all
Osages, living and as yet unborn. 35
Similarly, in 2009 , the White Earth Nation of the Anishinaabeg
(Ojibwe people) adopted a new constitution. White Earth is located
in central Minnesota and is one of a number of Anishinaabe reserva­
tions in Minnesota, with others in Wisconsin, South Dakota, and
Canada. The preamble to the White Earth constitution is revealing:
The Anishinaabeg of the White Earth Nation are the ances­
tors of a great tradition of continental liberty, a native con­
stitution of families, totemic associations. The Anishinaabeg
create stories of natural reason, of courage, loyalty, humor,
spiritual inspiration, survivance, reciprocal altruism, and na­
tive cultural sovereignty.
We the Anishinaabeg of the White Earth Nation in order
to secure an inherent and essential sovereignty, to promote
traditions of liberty, justice, and peace, and reserve common
resources, and to ensure the inalienable rights of native gov­
ernance for our posterity, do constitute, ordain, and establish
this Constitution of the White Earth Nation. 36
Gerald Vizenor, a citizen of the White Earth Nation, best-sell­
ing author, and leading intellectual, participated in the writing of
this constitution. Explaining the concept of "survivance," a term he
coined, he stresses that it originates in Indigenous narratives: "The

The Doctrine of Discovery

conventions of survivance create a sense of Native presence over
nihility and victory. Survivance is an active presence: it is not ab­
sence, deracination, or ethnographic oblivion, and survivance is the
continuance of narratives, not a mere reaction, however pertinent.
Survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, the unbearable
sentiments of tragedy, and the legacy of victimry."37
The Doctrine of Discovery is dissolving in light of these profound
acts of sovereignty. But neither arcane colonial laws nor the his­
torical trauma of genocide simply disappear with time, certainly
not when conditions of life and consciousness perpetuate them. The
Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty movement is not only
transforming the continent's Indigenous communities and nations
but also, inevitably, the United States. The ways it is doing that are
explored in the concluding chapter.

21 7

C O N C LU S I O N

THE F U T U RE O F THE U N I TE D S TATE S

That the continued colonization of American Indian nations,
peoples, and lands provides the United States the economic
and material resources needed to cast its imperialist gaze
globally is a fact that is simultaneously obvious within and yet continually obscured by- what is essentially a settler
colony's national construction of itself as an ever more perfect
multicultural, multiracial democracy. . . . [T]he status of
American Indians as sovereign nations colonized by the
United States continues to haunt and inflect its raison d'etre.
-Jodi Byrd

The conventional narrative of US history routinely segregates the
" Indian wars" as a subspecialization within the dubious category
"the West." Then there are the westerns, those cheap novels, movies,
and television shows that nearly every US American imbibed with
mother's milk and that by the mid-twentieth century were popular
in every corner of the world. 1 The architecture of US world domi­
nance was designed and tested by this period of continental US mili­
tarism, which built on the previous hundred years and generated its
own innovations in total war. The opening of the twenty-first cen­
tury saw a new, even more brazen form of US militarism and impe­
rialism explode on the world scene when the election of George W.
Bush turned over control of US foreign policy to a long-gestating
neoconservative and warmongering faction of the Pentagon and its
civilian hawks. Their subsequent eight years of political control in­
cluded two major military invasions and hundreds of small wars em­
ploying US Special Forces around the globe, establishing a template
that continued after their political power waned.

218

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

" I N J U N CO U N T RY"

One highly regarded military analyst stepped forward to make the
connections between the " Indian wars " and what he considered
the country's bright imperialist past and future. Robert D. Kaplan,
in his 2005 book Imperial Grunts, presented several case studies
that he considered highly successful operations: Yemen, Colom­
bia, Mongolia, and the Philippines, in addition to ongoing complex
projects in the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan , and Iraq.2 While
US citizens and many of their elected representatives called for end­
ing the US military interventions they knew about-including Iraq
and Afghanistan-Kaplan hailed protracted counterinsurgencies in
Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Pacific. He
presented a guide for the US controlling those areas of the world
based on its having achieved continental dominance in North Amer­
ica by means of counterinsurgency and employing total and unlim­
ited war.
Kaplan, a meticulous researcher and influential writer born in
1 9 5 2 in New York City, wrote for major newspapers and magazines

before serving as "chief geopolitical strategist" for the private se­
curity think tank Stratfor. Among other prestigious posts, he has
been a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security
in Washington, D C , and a member of the Defense Policy Board, a
federal advisory committee to the US Department of Defense. In
2 o r r , Foreign Policy magazine named Kaplan as one of the world's

"top r o o global thinkers." Author of numerous best-selling books,
including Balkan Ghosts and Surrender or Starve, Kaplan became
one of the principal intellectual boosters for US power in the world
through the tried-and-true "American way of war." This is the way
of war dating to the British-colonial period that military historian
John Grenier called a combination of "unlimited war and irregular
war," a military tradition "that accepted, legitimized, and encour­
aged attacks upon and the destruction of noncombatants, villages
and agricultural resources . . . in shockingly violent campaigns to
achieve their goals of conquest."3
Kaplan sums up his thesis in the prologue to Imperial Grunts,
which he subtitles "Injun Country":

219

220

An Indigenous Peoples ' History of the United States

By the turn of the twenty-first century the United States mili­
tary had already appropriated the entire earth, and was ready
to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment's
notice.
The Pentagon divided the planet into five area commands­
similar to the way that the Indian Country of the American
West had been divided in the mid-nineteenth century by the
U. S . Army. . . . [A]ccording to the soldiers and marines I met
on the ground in far-flung corners of the earth, the compari­
son with the nineteenth century was . . . apt. "Welcome to
lnjun Country" was the refrain I heard from troops from Co­
lombia to the Philippines, including Afghanistan and Iraq. To
be sure, the problem for the American military was less [Is­
lamic] fundamentalism than anarchy. The War on Terrorism
was really about taming the frontier. 4
Kaplan goes on to ridicule "elites in New York and Washington"
who debate imperialism in "grand, historical terms," while indi­
viduals from all the armed services interpret policy according to the
particular circumstances they face and are indifferent to or unaware
of the fact that they are part of an imperialist project. This book
shows how colonialism and imperialism work.
Kaplan challenges the concept of manifest destiny, arguing that
" it was not inevitable that the United States should have an empire
in the western part of the continent." Rather, he argues, western
empire was brought about by "small groups of frontiersmen, sepa­
rated from each other by great distances ." Here Kaplan refers to
what Grenier calls settler "rangers," destroying Indigenous towns
and fields and food supplies. Although Kaplan downplays the role of
the US Army compared to the settler vigilantes, which he equates to
the modern Special Forces, he acknowledges that the regular army
provided lethal backup for settler counterinsurgency in slaughtering
the buffalo, the food supply of Plains peoples, as well as making
continuous raids on settlements to kill or confine the families of the
Indigenous fighters.5 Kaplan summarizes the genealogy of US mili­
tarism today:

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

Whereas the average American at the dawn of the new mil­
lennium found patriotic inspiration in the legacies of the Civil
War and World War II, when the evils of slavery and fascism
were confronted and vanquished, for many commissioned and
noncommissioned officers the U. S . Army's defining moment
was fighting the " Indians."
The legacy of the Indian wars was palpable in the numer­
ous military bases spread across the South, the Middle West,
and particularly the Great Plains: that vast desert and steppe
comprising the Army's historical "heartland," punctuated by
such storied outposts as Forts Hays, Kearney, Leavenworth,
Riley, and Sill. Leavenworth, where the Oregon and Santa Fe
trails separated, was now the home of the Army's Command
and General Staff College; Riley, the base of George Arm­
strong Custer's 7th Cavalry, now that of the l St Infantry Divi­
sion; and Sill, where Geronimo lived out the last years of his
life, the headquarters of the U.S. Artillery. . . .
While microscopic in size, it was the fast and irregular
military actions against the Indians, memorialized in bronze
and oil by Remington, that shaped the nature of American
nationalism. 6
Although Kaplan relies principally on the late-nineteenth-century
source of US counterinsurgency, in a footnote he reports what he
learned at the Airborne Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville,
North Carolina: " It is a small but interesting fact that members
of the 101st Airborne Division, in preparation for their parachute
drop on D -Day, shaved themselves in Mohawk style and applied war
paint on their faces."7 This takes us back to the pre-independence
colonial wars and then through US independence and the myth pop­
ularized by The Last of the' Mahicans.
Kaplan debunks the argument that the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon on September n, 2001, brought the
United States into a new era of warfare and prompted it to estab­
lish military bases around the world. Prior to 2001, Kaplan rightly
observes, the US Army's Special Operations Command had been

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

carrying out maneuvers since the 1980s in " 1 70 countries per year,
with an average of nine 'quiet professionals' on each mission. Amer­
ica's reach was long; its involvement in the obscurest states protean.
Rather than the conscript army of citizen soldiers that fought World
War II, there was now a professional military that, true to other
imperial forces throughout history, enjoyed the soldiering life for its
own sake."8
On October 13, 20I I , testifying before the Armed Services Com­
mittee of the US House of Representatives, General Martin Dempsey
stated: "I didn't become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to oversee
the decline of the Armed Forces of the United States, and an end
state that would have this nation and its military not be a global
power. . . . That is not who we are as a nation."

T H E R E T U R N OF L E G A L I Z E D TO R T U R E

Bodies-tortured bodies, sexually violated bodies, imprisoned bod­
ies, dead bodies-arose as a primary topic in the first years of the
George W. Bush administration following the September 2001 at­
tacks with a war of revenge against Afghanistan and the overthrow
of the government of Iraq. Afghans resisting US forces and others
who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time were
taken into custody, and most of them were sent to a hastily con­
structed prison facility on the US military base at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, on land the United States appropriated in its 1 8 9 8 war against
Cuba. Rather than bestowing the status of prisoner of war on the
detainees, which would have given them certain rights under the Ge­
neva Conventions, they were designated as "unlawful combatants,"
a status previdusly unknown in the annals of Western warfare. As
such, the detainees were subjected to torture by US interrogators
and shamelessly monitored by civilian psychologists and medical
personnel.
In response to questions and condemnations from around the
globe, a University of California international law professor, John
C. Yoo, on leave to serve as assistant US attorney general in the Jus-

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

tice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, penned in March 2003
what became the infamous "Torture Memo." Not much was made
at the time of one of the precedents Yoo used to defend the designa­
tion "unlawful combatant," the US Supreme Court's 1873 opinion
in Modoc Indian Prisoners.
In 1872, a group of Modoc men led by Kintpuash, also known as
Captain Jack, attempted to return to their own country in Northern
California after the US Army had rounded them up and forced them
to share a reservation in Oregon. The insurgent group of fifty-three
was surrounded by US troops and Oregon militiamen and forced
to take refuge in the barren and rugged lava beds around Lassen
Peak, a dormant volcano, a part of their ancestral homeland that
they knew every inch of. More than a thousand troops commanded
by General Edward R. S. Canby, a former Civil War general, at­
tempted to capture the resisters, but had no success as the Modocs
engaged in effective guerrilla warfare. Before the Civil War, Canby
had built his military career fighting in the Second Seminole War
and later in the invasion of Mexico. Posted to Utah on the eve of
the Civil War, he had led attacks against the Navaj os, and then be­
gan his Civil War service in New Mexico. Therefore, Canby was a
seasoned Indian killer. In a negotiating meeting between the general
and Kintpuash, the Modoc leader killed the general and the other
commissioners when they would allow only for surrender. In re­
sponse, the United States sent another former Civil War general in
with more than a thousand additional soldiers as reinforcements,
and in April 1 8 73 these troops attacked the Modoc stronghold,
this time forcing the Indigenous fighters to flee. After four months
of fighting that cost the United States almost $soo,ooo-equal to
nearly $ 1 0 million currently-and the lives of more than four hun­
dred of its soldiers and a general, the nationwide backlash against
the Modocs was vengeful.9 Kintpuash and several other captured
Modocs were imprisoned and then hanged at Alcatraz, and the Mo ­
doc families were scattered and incarcerated on reservations. Kint­
puash's corpse was embalmed and exhibited at circuses around the
country. The commander of the army's Pacific Military Division at
the time, Lieutenant General John M. Schofield, wrote of the Modoc

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

War in his memoir, Forty-Six Years in the Army: "If the innocent
could be separated from the guilty, plague, pestilence, and famine
would not be an unjust punishment for the crimes committed in this
country against the original occupants of the soil." 1 0
Drawing a legal analogy between the Modoc prisoners and the
Guantanamo detainees, Assistant US Attorney General Yoo em­
ployed the legal category of homo sacer: in Roman law, a person
banned from society, excluded from its legal protections but still
subject to the sovereign's power. 1 1 Anyone may kill a homo sacer
without it being considered murder. As Jodi Byrd notes, " One begins
to understand why John C. Yoo's infamous March 1 4 , 2003 , torture
memos cited the 1 8 6 5 Military Commissions and the 1 873 The Mo­

doc Indian Prisoners legal opinions in order to articulate executive
power in declaring the state of exception, particularly when The
Modoc Indian Prisoners opinion explicitly marks the Indian com­
batant as homo sacer to the United States."12 To buttress his claim,
Yoo quoted from the 1873 Modoc Indian Prisoners opinion:
It cannot be pretended that a United States soldier is guilty
of murder if he kills a public enemy in battle, which would be
the case if the municipal law were in force and applicable to
an act committed under such circumstances . All the laws
and customs of civilized warfare may not be applicable to an
armed conflict with the Indian tribes upon our western fron­
tier; but the circumstances attending the assassination of
Canby [Army general] and Thomas [U. S . peace commissioner]
are such as to make their murder as much a violation of the
laws of savage as of civilized warfare, and the Indians con­
cerned in it fully understood the baseness and treachery of
their act.13
Byrd points out that, according to this line of thinking, any­
one who could be defined as " Indian" could thus be killed legally,
and they also could be held responsible for crimes they committed
,
against any US soldier. "As a result, citizens of American Indian
nations become in this moment the origin of the stateless terrorist
combatant within U . S . enunciations of sovereignty." 14

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

225

R A M P E D - U P M I L I TA R I Z AT I O N

The Chagos Archipelago comprises more than sixty small coral
islands isolated in the Indian Ocean halfway between Africa and
Indonesia, a thousand miles south of the nearest continent, India.
Between 1968 and 1973 , the United States and Britain, the latter
the colonial administrator, forcibly removed the indigenous inhab ­
itants of the islands , the Chagossians . Most of the two thousand
deportees ended up more than a thousand miles away in Mauritius
and the Seychelles, where they were thrown into lives of poverty and
forgotten. The purpose of this expulsion was to create a major US
military base on one of the Chagossian islands, Diego Garcia. As if
being rounded up and removed from their homelands in the name
of global security were not cruel enough, before being deported the
Chagossians had to watch as British agents and US troops herded
their pet dogs into sealed sheds where they were gassed and burned.
As David Vine writes in his chronicle of this tragedy:
The base on Diego Garcia has become one of the most se­
cretive and powerful US military facilities in the world, help ­
ing to launch the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (twice),
threatening Iran, China, Russia, and nations from southern
Africa to southeast Asia, host to a secret CIA detention cen­
ter for high-profile terrorist suspects, and home to thousands
of U. S . military personnel and billions of dollars in deadly
weaponry. 15
The Chagossians are not the only indigenous people around the
world that the US military has displaced . The military established
a pattern during and after the Vietnam War of forcibly removing
indigenous peoples from sites deemed strategic for the placement of
military bases. The peoples of the Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific
and Puerto Rico's Vieques Island are perhaps the best-known ex­
amples, but there were also the lnughuit of Thule, Greenland, and
the thousands of Okinawans and Indigenous peoples of Microne­
sia. During the harsh deportation of the Micronesians in the 1970s,
the press took some notice. In response to one reporter's question,

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said of the Micronesians: "There
are only ninety thousand people out there. Who gives a damn ? " 16
This is a statement of permissive genocide .
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States
operated more than 900 military bases around the world, including

287 in Germany, 1 3 0 in Japan, 106 in South Korea, 89 in Italy, 5 7
i n the British Isles, 21 i n Portugal, and 1 9 i n Turkey. The number
also comprised additional bases or installations located in Aruba,
Australia, Djibouti, Egypt, Israel, Singapore, Thailand, Kyrgyzstan ,
Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Crete, Sicily, Ice­
land, Romania, Bulgaria, Honduras, Colombia, and Cuba (Guan­
tanamo Bay), among many other. locations in some 150 countries,
along with those recently added in Iraq and Afghanistan. 17
In her book The Militarization of Indian Country, Anishinaabe
activist and writer Winona LaDuke analyzes the continuing nega­
tive effects of the military on Native Americans, considering the
consequences wrought on Native economy, land, future, and people,
especially Native combat veterans and their families. Indigenous ter­
ritories in New Mexico bristle with nuclear weapons storage, and
Shoshone and Paiute territories in Nevada are scarred by decades of
aboveground and underground nuclear weapons testing. The Navajo
Nation and some New Mexico Pueblos have experienced decades of
uranium strip mining, the pollution of water, and subsequent deadly
health effects. "I am awed by the impact of the military on the world
and on Native America," LaDuke writes. " It is pervasive. " 18
Political scientist Cynthia Enloe, who specializes in US foreign
policy and the military, observes that US culture has become even
more militarized since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. Her analysis of this trend draws on a feminist perspective:
Militarization . . . [is] happening at the individual level, when
a woman who has a son is persuaded that the best way she can
be a good mother is to allow the military recruiter to recruit
her son so her son will get off the couch. When she is persuaded
to let him go, even if reluctantly, she's being militarized. She's
not as militarized as somebody who is a Special Forces soldier,
but she's being militarized all the same. Somebody who gets

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

excited because a jet bomber flies over the football stadium to
open the football season and is glad that he or she is in the sta­
dium to see it, is being militarized. So militarization is not just
about the question "do you think the military is the most im­
portant part of the state ? " (although obviously that matters).
It's not just "do you think that the use of collective violence is
the most effective way to solve social problems ? "-which is
also a part of militarization. But it's also about ordinary, daily
culture, certainly in the United States . 1 9
As John Grenier notes, however, the cultural aspects o f militari­
zation are not new; they have deep historical roots, reaching into the
nation's British-colonial past and continuing through unrelenting
wars of conquest and ethnic cleansing over three centuries.
Beyond its sheer military utility, Americans also found a use
for the first way of war in the construction of an "American
identity." . . . [T]he enduring appeal of the romanticized myth
of the "settlement" (not the conquest) of the frontier, either
by "actual" men such as Robert Rogers or Daniel Boone or
fictitious ones like Nathaniel Bumppo of James Fenimore
Cooper's creation, poiQts to what D. H. Lawrence called the
"myth of the essential white American."2 0
The astronomical number of firearms owned by US civilians,
with the Second Amendment as a sacred mandate, is also intricately
related to militaristic culture. Everyday life and the culture in gen­
eral are damaged by ramped-up militarization, and this includes
academia, particularly the social sciences, with psychologists and
anthropologists being recruited as advisors to the military. Anthro ­
pologist David H. Price, in his indispensable book Weaponizing An­
thropology, remarks that "anthropology has always fed between
the lines of war." Anthropology was born of European and US co­
lonial wars. Price, like Enloe, sees an accelerated pace of militariza­
tion in the early twenty-first century: "Today's weaponization of
anthropology and other social sciences has been a long time coming,
and post-9/r r America's climate of fear coupled with reductions in

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

traditional academic funding provided the conditions of a sort of
perfect storm for the militarization of the discipline and the acad­
emy as a whole."21
In their ten-part cable television documentary series and seven­
hundred-page companion book The Untold History of the United

States, filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick ask:
" Why does our country have military bases in every region of the
globe, totaling more than a thousand by some counts ? Why does
the United States spend as much money on its military as the rest
of the world combined ? Why does it still possess thousands of nu­
clear weapons, many on hair-trigger alert, even though no nation
poses an imminent threat? "22 These are key questions. Stone and
Kuznick condemn the situation but do not answer the questions.
The authors see the post-World War II development of the United
States into the world's sole superpower as a sharp divergence from
the founders' original intent and historical development prior to the
mid-twentieth century. They quote an Independence Day speech by
President John Quincy Adams in which he condemned British co­
lonialism and claimed that the United States "goes not abroad, in
search of monsters to destroy." Stone and Kuznick fail to mention
that the United States at the time was invading, subjecting, coloniz­
ing, and removing the Indigenous farmers from their land, as it had
since its founding and as it would through the nineteenth century.
In ignoring that fundamental basis for US development as an impe­
rialist power, they do not see that overseas empire was the logical
outcome of the course the United States chose at its founding.

N O RT H A M E R I CA I S A C R I M E S C E N E

Jodi Byrd writes: "The story of the new world is horror, the story
of America a crime." It is necessary, she argues, to start with the
origin of the United States as a settler-state and its explicit intention
to occupy the continent. These origins contain the historical seeds of
genocide. Any true history of the United States must focus on what
has happened to (and with) Indigenous peoples-and what still hap­
pens. 23 It's not just past colonialist actio n s but also "the continued

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

229

colonization of American Indian nations, peoples, and lands" that
allows the United States "to cast its imperialist gaze globally" with
"what is essentially a settler colony's national construction of itself
as an ever more perfect multicultural, multiracial democracy," while
"the status of American Indians as sovereign nations colonized by
the United States continues to haunt and inflect its raison d'etre."
Here Byrd quotes Lakota scholar Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, who spells
out the connection between the " Indian wars" and the Iraq War:
The current mission of the United States to become the center
of political enlightenment to be taught to the rest of the world
began with the Indian wars and has become the dangerous
provocation of this nation's historical intent. The historical con­
nection between the Little Big Horn event and the " uprising" in
Baghdad must become part of the political dialogue of Amer­
ica if the fiction of decolonization is to happen and the hoped­
for deconstruction of the colonial story is to come about. 24
A "race to innocence" is what occurs when individuals assume
that they are innocent of complicity in structures of domination and
oppression.25 This concept captures the understandable assump­
tion made by new immigrants or children of recent immigrants to
any country. They cannot be responsible, they assume, for what
occurred in their adopted country's past. Neither are those who are
already citizens guilty, even if they are descendants of slave owners,
Indian killers, or Andrew Jackson himself. Yet, in a settler society
that has not come to terms with its past, whatever historical trauma
was entailed in settling the land affects the assumptions and behav­
ior of living generations at any given time, including immigrants and
the children of recent immigrants.
In the United States the legacy of settler colonialism can be seen
in the endless wars of aggression and occupations; the trillions spent
on war machinery, military bases, and personnel instead of social
services and quality public education; the gross profits of corpora­
tions, each of which has greater resources and funds than more than
half the countries in the world yet pay minimal taxes and provide
few jobs for US citizens; the repression of generation after generation

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

of activists who seek to change the system; the incarceration of the
poor, particularly descendants of enslaved Africans; the individual­
ism, carefully inculcated, that on the one hand produces self-blame
for personal failure and on the other exalts ruthless dog-eat-dog
competition for possible success, even though it rarely results; and
high rates of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual violence against
women and children, homelessness, dropping out of school, and gun
violence.
These are symptoms, and there are many more, of a deeply trou­
bled society, and they are not new. The large and influential civil
rights, student, labor, and women's movements of the 1950s through
the 1970s exposed the structural inequalities in the economy and
the historical effects of more than two centuries of slavery and bru­
tal genocidal wars waged against Indigenous peoples. For a time, US
society verged on a process of truth seeking regarding past atroci­
ties, making demands to end aggressive wars and to end poverty,
witnessed by the huge peace movement of the 1970s and the War on
Poverty, affirmative action, school busing, prison reform, women's
equity and reproductive rights, promotion of the arts and humani­
ties, public media, the Indian Self-Determination Act, and many
other initiatives. 26
A more sophisticated version of the race to innocence that helps
perpetuate settler colonialism began to develop in social movement
theory in the 1990s, popularized in the work of Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri. Commonwealth, the third volume in a trilogy, is
one of a number of books in an academic fad of the early twenty­
first century seeking to revive the Medieval European concept of the
commons as an aspiration for contemporary social movements. 27
Most writings about the commons barely mention the fate of Indig­
enous peoples in relation to the call for all land to be shared. Two
Canadian scholar-activists, Nandita Sharma and Cynthia Wright,
for example, do not mince words in rejecting Native land claims
and sovereignty, characterizing them as xenophobic elitism. They
see Indigenous claims as "regressive neo-racism in light of the global
diasporas arising from oppression around the world."28
Cree scholar Lorraine Le Camp calls this kind of erasure of Indig­
enous peoples in North America "terranullism," harking back to the

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

231

characterization, under the Doctrine of Discovery, of purportedly
vacant lands as terra nullis.19 This is a kind of no-fault history. From
the theory of a liberated future of no borders and nations, of a vague
commons for all, the theorists obliterate the present and presence
of Indigenous nations struggling for their liberation from states of
colonialism. Thereby, Indigenous rhetoric and programs for decolo­
nization, nationhood, and sovereignty are, according to this project,
rendered invalid and futile. 3° From the Indigenous perspective, as
Jodi Byrd writes, "any notion of the commons that speaks for and
as indigenous as it advocates transforming indigenous governance or
incorporating indigenous peoples into a multitude that might then
reside on those lands forcibly taken from indigenous peoples does
nothing to disrupt the genocidal and colonialist intent of the initial
and now repeated historical process."31

B O DY PA R T S

Another aspect o f the demand for US public dominion appears
under the guise of science. Despite the passage in 1990 of the Na­
tive American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA),
some researchers under the cloak of science have fought toot� and
nail not to release the remains and burial offerings of some two mil­
lion Indigenous people held in storage, much of it uncataloged, in
the Smithsonian Institution and other museums and by universities,
state historical societies, National Park Service offices, warehouses,
and curio shops. Until the r99os, archaeologists and physical an­
thropologists claimed to need the remains-which they labeled "re­
sources" or "data," but rarely as "human remains"-for "scientific"
experimentation, but most were randomly stored in boxes. 32
In doing so, they also challenge the definition of "Native Ameri­
can" and the claimants' right to sovereignty. They even accuse Na­
tive Americans of being anti-science for seeking to repatriate the
remains of their relatives. 33 However, since anthropologist Franz
Boas in r9 r r discredited the theories of racial superiority and in­
feriority upon which such research was premised, little actual ex­
amination of the Indigenous body parts has taken place. When

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Ishi-identified by Anglos in 19n as the last of the Yahi people
of Northern California-died in 1916, the University of California
at Berkeley anthropologist who had studied him and his culture,
Arthur Kroeber, insisted on an Indigenous traditional burial and
no autopsy, according to Ishi's wishes. When asked about the cause
of science, Kroeber said: "If there is any talk about the interest of
science, say for me that science can go to hell. . . . Besides I cannot
believe that any scientific value is materially involved. We have hun­
dreds of Indian skeletons that nobody ever comes to study."34
Despite Kroeber's stance, Ishi's brain was removed and preserved
and sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. As anthro­
pologist Erik Davis observes, the bodies have never had scientific
value. Rather, they have become a fetish, "a marker of value, the
power of which derives specifically from the obscuring of the refer­
ent to which it originally referred. It is my claim that Indian identity,
and its material form, the dead Native body, has functioned for a
very long time, and with increasing power, as a fetish marking the
possession of land by those who have conquered it already."35
The " Kennewick Man" phenomenon of the 1990s revealed much
about the pathology Davis references. In 1996, a nearly complete
skeleton and skull were found on a riverbank on traditional land
of the Umatilla Nation near Kennewick, Washington. The county
coroner determined that the bones were ancient-at least nine thou­
sand years old-and therefore Native American. Under NAGRA
they should be handed over to the Umatilla authorities. But a local
archaeologist, James C. Chatters, asked to examine the remains.
Several weeks later Chatters called a press conference at which he
proclaimed the remains to be "Caucasoid" and with a story to tell.
Up to that moment, little attention had been paid to the find, but
with Chatters's claims it became a public sensation fueled by head­
lines such as "Europeans Invade America: 20,000 BC" (Discover),
" Was So meone Here before the Native Americans ? " (New Yorker),
"America before the Indians" ( US News and World Report), and
" Hunt for the First Americans" (National Geographic). The archae­
ologist had made a series of logical conclusions from a bogus prem­
ise: the remains were ancient; the skeleton and skull were said not
to resemble those of living Natives, and might be more akin to those

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

233

of modern Europeans, therefore, Europeans were the "first Ameri­
cans." The Archaeological Institute of America dismissed such
claims, denouncing the already discredited "science" of determining
racial characteristics projected back in time. Yet the claims stuck in
the public mind and media bias.
Clearly the controversy was not about science, but rather about
Native claims of antiquity, sovereignty, and rights, and settler re­
sentment. Chatters made this clear when he was interviewed on the
CBS program 6 0 Minutes: "The tribe's fight against further testing
of Kennewick Man is based largely on fear, fear that if someone
was here before they were, their status as sovereign nations, and all
that goes with it-treaty rights, and lucrative casinos . . . could be
at risk." The white supremacist group Asutru Folk Assembly made a
similar assessment: " Kennewick Man is our kin . . . . Native Ameri­
can groups have strongly contested this idea, perceiving that they
have much to lose if their status as the 'First Americans' is over­
turned. We will not let our heritage be hidden by those who seek to
obscure it."3 6
Chatters claimed that Kennewick Man "has so many stories to
tell. . . . When you work with these individuals you develop an em­
pathy, it's like you know another individual intimately."37 Erik Da­
vis, calling this identification with the remains a scientist studies
"pathological ventriloquism," points out that even the judge who
sided with Chatters in the dispute with the Umatilla Nation got into
the act, saying that the remains were "a book that they can read,
a history written in bone instead of on paper, j ust as the history
of a region may be 'read' by observing layers of rock or ice, or the
rings of a tree."38 Forty-five years ago, archaeologist Robert Silver­
berg wrote about the appeal of "lost tribes" to Anglo-Americans:
"The dream of a lost prehistoric race in the American heartland was
profoundly satisfying, and if the vanished ones had been giants, or
white men, or Israelites, or Danes, or Toltecs, or great white Jewish
Toltec Vikings, so much the better."39 Anything but Indians, for that
would provide evidence reminding Anglo settlers' descendants that
the continent was stolen, genocide committed, and the land repopu­
lated by settlers who seek authenticity but never find it because of
the lie they live with, suspecting the truth and fearing it.

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

G H O S T S A N D D E M O N S TO H I D E F R O M

A living symbol of the genocidal history of the United States, as
well as a kind of general subconscious knowledge of it, is the "Win­
chester Mystery House," a tourist site in the Santa Clara (Silicon)
Valley of Northern California. Fifty miles south of San Francisco, it
is billed as a ghost house on billboards that start appearing in Or­
egon to the north and San Diego to the south. Sarah L. Winchester,
the wealthy widow of William Wirt Winchester, built the Victorian
mansion to avoid and elude ghosts, although there is no record of
any ghosts ever having found their way into her home. It could be
said, perhaps, that Mrs. Winchester's project from 1 8 84 to her death
in 1922 was a success. She likely was well aware of the widely pub­
licized Ghost Dance in 1890, which led to the killing of Sitting Bull
and the Wounded Knee massacre . The dancers believed that the
dance would bring back their dead warriors.
It makes sense that Mrs. Winchester felt the need to guard herself
from the ghosts of those killed by the Winchester repeating rifle,
which her late husband's father had invented and produced in 1 8 66,
with later models being even more lethal. Mrs. Winchester inherited
the fortune accumulated by her husband's family through sales of
the rifle. There was one major purchaser: the US Department of
War. The chief reason for the War Department's purchases of the
rifle in great quantities: to kill Indians. The rifle was a technological
innovation designed especially for the US Army's campaigns against
the Plail).s Indians following the Civil War.
The Winchester house amazes all who tour it. There are five
floors, more or less, since they are staggered. Each room in itself
appears normal, decorated in the late-nineteenth-century Victorian
mode. But there is more than meets the eye in getting from parlors
to bedrooms to kitchen to closets and from floor to floor. Numerous
stairways dead-end, and secret trapdoors hide the actual stairways .
Closet doors open to walls, and pieces of furniture are really doors
to closets. Huge bookcases serve as entrances to adjoining rooms.
Part of the house was unfinished when the widow died, as she had
construction workers building every day from dawn to dusk, adding
rooms and traps until her death. Visitors trekking through the wid-

Conclusion: The Future of the United States

235

ow's home are astounded, and perhaps saddened, by the evidence
all around them of the fears and anguish of an obviously mentally
disturbed person. Yet there is another possibility: a sense of the scaf­
folding that supports US society, a kind of hologram in the minds of
each and every person on the continent.
Mrs. Winchester might have been more aware of the truth than
most people and therefore fearful of its consequences. Regardless, in
continuing to find or invent enemies across the globe, expand what
is already the largest military force in the world, and add to an elab­
orate global network of military bases, all in the name of national
or global "security," does not the United States today resemble Mrs.
Winchester constantly trying to foil her ghosts ? The guilt harbored
by most is buried and expressed in other ways, on a larger scale, as
"regeneration through violence," in Richard Slotkin's phrasing.

THE FUTU RE

How then can US society come to terms with its past? How can it ac­
knowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes al­
ways stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what
their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in,
which is a product of that past. Assuming this responsibility pro­
vides a means of survival and liberation. Everyone and everything in
the world is affected, for the most part negatively, by US dominance
and intervention, often violently through direct military means or
through proxies. It is an urgent concern. Historian and teacher Juan
Gomez- Quinones writes, "American Indian ancestries and heritages
ought to be integral to K-1 2 curriculums and university explora­
tions and graduate expositions . . . [with] full integration of Na­
tive American histories and cultures into academic curriculums. "
Gomez- Quinones coins a measure o f intelligence in the United
States the "Indigenous Quotient."4 0
Indigenous peoples offer possibilities for life after empire, pos­
sibilities that neither erase the crimes of colonialism nor require the
disappearance of the original peoples colonized under the guise of
including them as individuals. That process rightfully starts by hon-

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

oring the treaties the United States made with Indigenous nations,
by restoring all sacred sites, starting with the Black Hills and includ­
ing most federally held parks and land and all stolen sacred items
and body parts, and by payment of sufficient reparations for the
reconstruction and expansion of Native nations. In the process, the
continent will be radically reconfigured, physically and psychologi­
cally. For the future to be realized, it will require extensive educa­
tional programs and the full support and active participation of the
descendants of settlers, enslaved Africans, and colonized Mexicans,
as well as immigrant populations.
In the words of Acoma poet Simon Ortiz:

The future will not be mad with loss and waste though the
memory will
Be there: eyes will become kind and deep, and the bones of
this nation
Will mend after the revolution. 41

Preface
I was not anxious to write this book. Writing an autobiography at my age
seemed presumptuous. Moreover, I felt that to write about my life, what I
did, what I thought and what happened to me would require a posture of
difference, an assumption that I was unlike other women — other Black
women — and therefore needed to explain myself. I felt that such a book
might end up obscuring the most essential fact: the forces that have made
my life what it is are the very same forces that have shaped and misshaped
the lives of millions of my people. Furthermore I am convinced that my
response to these forces has been unexceptional as well, that my political
involvement, ultimately as a member of the Communist Party, has been a
natural, logical way to defend our embattled humanity.
The one extraordinary event of my life had nothing to do with me as an
individual — with a little twist of history, another sister or brother could
have easily become the political prisoner whom millions of people from
throughout the world rescued from persecution and death. I was reluctant to
write this book because concentration on my personal history might detract
from the movement which brought my case to the people in the first place. I
was also unwilling to render my life as a personal "adventure" — as though
there were a "real" person separate and apart from the political person. My
life would not lend itself to this anyway, but even if it did, such a book
would be counterfeit, for it could not convey my overwhelming sense of
belonging to a community of humans — a community of struggle against
poverty and racism.
When I decided to write the book after all, it was because I had come to
envision it as a political autobiography that emphasized the people, the
events and the forces in my life that propelled me to my present
commitment. Such a book might serve a very important and practical
purpose. There was the possibility that, having read it, more people would
understand why so many of us have no alternative but to offer our lives —
our bodies, our knowledge, our will — to the cause of our oppressed

people. In this period when the covers camouflaging the corruption and
racism of the highest political offices are rapidly falling away, when the
bankruptcy of the global system of capitalism is becoming apparent, there
was the possibility that more people — Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and
white — might be inspired to join our growing community of struggle.
Only if this happens will I consider this project to have been worthwhile.

PART ONE: Nets
The net will be torn by the horn of a leaping calf. . .

I

AUGUST 9, 1970

believe I thanked her but I am not sure. Perhaps I simply watched her dig
into the shopping bag and accepted in silence the wig she held out to me.
It lay like a small frightened animal in my hand. I was alone with Helen
hiding from the police and grieving over the death of someone I loved. Two
days earlier, in her house perched on a hill in Los Angeles' Echo Park, I
learned of the Marin County Courthouse revolt and the death of my friend
Jonathan Jackson. Two days earlier I had never heard of Ruchell Magee,
James McClain or William Christmas — the three San Quentin prisoners
who, along with Jonathan, had been involved in the revolt which left him,
McClain and William Christmas dead. But on that evening, it seemed as
though I had known them for a very long time.
I walked toward the bathroom and stood before the mirror trying to fit the
ends of my hair under the tight elastic. Like broken wings my hands
floundered about my head, my thoughts completely dissociated from their
movement. When finally I glanced into the mirror to see whether there were
still bits of my own hair unconcealed by the wig, I saw a face so filled with
anguish, tension and uncertainty I did not recognize it as my own. With the
false black curls falling over a wrinkled forehead into red swollen eyes, I
looked absurd, grotesque. I snatched the wig off my head, threw it on the
floor and hit the sink with my fist. It remained cold, white and
impenetrable. I forced the wig back on my head. I had to look normal; I
could not arouse the suspicion of the attendant in the station where we
would have to gas up the car. I didn't want to attract the attention of
someone who might drive up alongside us and look in our direction while
we waited at an intersection for the light to turn green. I had to look as
commonplace as a piece of everyday Los Angeles scenery.

I told Helen that we would leave as soon as it got dark. But night would not
shake off the day that kept clinging to its edges. We waited. Silently.
Hidden behind drawn curtains, we listened to the street noises coming
through the slightly opened balcony window. Each time a car slowed down
or stopped, each time footsteps tapped the pavement outside, I held my
breath — wondering whether we might have waited too long.
Helen didn't talk very much. It was better that way. I was glad that she had
been with me during these last days. She was calm and did not try to bury
the gravity of the situation under a mound of aimless chatter.
I don't know how long we had been sitting in the dimly lit room when
Helen broke the silence to say that it was probably not going to get any
darker outside. It was time to leave. For the first time since we discovered
that the police were after me, I stepped outside. It was much darker than I
thought, but not dark enough to keep me from feeling vulnerable,
defenseless.
Outside in the open, entangled in my grief and anger was also fear. A plain
and simple fear so overwhelming, and so elemental that the only thing I
could compare it to was that sense of engulfment I used to feel as a child
when I was left alone in the dark. That indescribable, monstrous thing
would be at my back, never quite touching me, but always there ready to
attack. When my mother and father asked me what it was that made me so
afraid, the words I used to describe this thing sounded ridiculous and stupid.
Now with each step, I could feel a presence which I could describe easily.
Images of attack kept flashing into my mind, but they were not abstract —
they were clear pictures of machine guns breaking out of the darkness,
surrounding Helen and me, unleashing fire . . .

Jonathan's body had lain on the hot asphalt of the parking lot outside the
Marin County Civic Center. I saw them on the television screen dragging
him from a van, a rope tied around his waist . . .
In Jon's seventeen years he had seen more brutality than most people can
expect to see in a lifetime. From the time he was seven, he had been

separated from his older brother George by prison bars and hostile guards.
And I had once stupidly asked him why he smiled so seldom.

The route from Echo Park down to the Black neighborhood around West
Adams was very familiar to me. I had driven it many times. But tonight the
way seemed strange, full of the unknown perils of being a fugitive. And
there was no getting around it — my life was now that of a fugitive, and
fugitives are caressed every hour by paranoia. Every strange person I saw
might be an agent in disguise, with bloodhounds waiting in the shrubbery
for their master's command. Living as a fugitive means resisting hysteria,
distinguishing between the creations of a frightened imagination and the
real signs that the enemy is near. I had to learn how to elude him, outsmart
him. It would be difficult, but not impossible.
Thousands of my ancestors had waited, as I had done, for nightfall to cover
their steps, had leaned on one true friend to help them, had felt, as I did, the
very teeth of the dogs at their heels.
It was simple. I had to be worthy of them.
The circumstances that created my hunted state were perhaps a bit more
complicated, but not all that different. Two years before, SNCC had held a
fund-raising cocktail party. After the party, the police had raided the
Bronson Street apartment of Franklin and Kendra Alexander — who were
members of the Communist Party, and two of my closest friends — where a
few of the group had gathered. Money and guns were confiscated and
everyone there was arrested on charges of armed robbery. As soon as they
discovered that one of the weapons — a .380 automatic — was registered in
my name, they called me in for questioning. The charges did not stand up in
court and, after a few nights in jail, the sisters and brothers were released
and the guns returned to their owners.
The same .380 which the Los Angeles Police had reluctantly returned to me
then was now in the hands of the Marin County authorities, having been
used during the courthouse revolt. The judge presiding over James
McClain's trial had been killed and the district attorney prosecuting the case

had been wounded. Even before Franklin told me about the police lurking
around my house, I knew they would be after me. Over the last months I
had been spending practically all my time helping to build a mass
movement to free the Soledad Brothers — Jonathan's brother, George, John
Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo — who were facing a fraudulent murder
charge inside Soledad Prison. I had just been fired from my teaching
position at the University of California by Governor Ronald Reagan and the
Regents because I was a member of the Communist Party. No one needed
to tell me that they would exploit the fact that my guns had been used in
Marin in order to strike out at me once more.
By August 9, agents (Los Angeles police? FBI?) were swarming like angry
wasps around Kendra, Franklin and my roommate, Tamu. Other members
of the Che-Lumumba Club — our Party collective — and the Soledad
Brothers Defense Committee had told Franklin they were also under
surveillance. Coming up to Helen and Tim's apartment in Echo Park that
day, it had taken Franklin several hours to shake off the police tail —
several hours of dodging and hiding, of changing cars in vacant alleys and
of going in front doors and leaving by the back. He was afraid to risk
another trip to get in touch with me. It might not be as successful.
If a full-fledged search were initiated, Helen and Tim's place would not be
safe. I had known them for a number of years, and although they were not
members of any movement organization, they had a history of radical
political activity. Sooner or later, their names would appear in some
policeman's notebook. We had to make a quick, camouflaged move.
The address given to Helen and me was located on a quiet, well-kept street
in the West Adams area. The house was an older duplex encircled by nicely
shaped hedges and flowers in bloom. After saying an awkward good-bye to
Helen, I left the car and timidly rang the doorbell. What if we had
misunderstood the house number and this was the wrong place? Anxiously
waiting for the door to open, I wondered what the people were like, how
they looked, how they would react to me. All I knew was that the woman,
Hattie, and her husband, John, were Black people sympathetic to the
movement. They had no questions when I arrived, and they ignored the
usual formalities. They simply took me in, accepted me — totally and with

the affection and devotion ordinarily reserved for family. They allowed
their lives to be disrupted by my presence. For my protection, they
reorganized their routines in order that one of them would be in the house
all the time.
Excuses were made to their regular visiting friends so no one would know
that I was there.
After a few days, I began to feel as settled and comfortable as I could in
such circumstances. It seemed as though I might be able to learn how to
close my eyes for a few hours at night without falling into some terrifying
nightmare about what had happened in Marin. I was even beginning to get
used to the old iron bed which folded down out of the dining room wall. I
was almost able to concentrate on the anecdotes Hattie told me about her
career as an entertainer and how she had plowed her way through all the
discrimination to assert herself as the dancer she wanted to be.
I was ready to hole up there indefinitely; that is, until the times were more
auspicious. But the search for me had intensified (conservative newscaster
George Putnam had announced on his TV program in L.A. that it extended
even to Canada). Clearly it was best to get out of the state for a while.
I hated what I was doing: the nighttime moves, the veiling of eyes, the
whole atmosphere of stealth and secretness. Although it was true that, for a
long time, I had been convinced that the day would come when many of us
would have to go underground, the realization of my fears didn't stop me
from hating this furtive, clandestine existence.

A friend, David Poindexter, was in Chicago. I had not seen him for a long
while, but I was certain that he would drop everything to help. I was
prepared to make the trip alone and did not expect Hattie to insist on
staying with me until I found David. I wondered at the source of her
strength. It was as if she had to do this thing, regardless of the jeopardy to
her own life.

After the preparations were made, we drove all night to Las Vegas. My
friends had asked an older Black man — whom I met for the first time that
night — to accompany us on that leg of the journey.
All dressed up, Hattie looked very much like the dancer she had been in her
younger years. With the grace and dignity of a Josephine Baker, she turned
heads wherever she went. In the Vegas airport, for the first time since I had
gone underground, I was walking among people, and each time a white man
stared at us harder than I thought he should, my pounding heart identified
him as an agent.
Everyone knew that O'Hare Airport in Chicago was a center of intrigue and
heavy CIA-FBI surveillance. We slipped through the throngs of people,
frantically searching for David, who had not been there to meet us at the
gate. I was cursing him under my breath, although I knew he was probably
not to blame. It turned out that the message sent to him had been too cryptic
and he had thought I would come straight to his place. We ended up taking
a taxi there.
Hattie left after seeing me safely into David's apartment overlooking the
calm waters of Lake Michigan. Although I was glad to see him, I had
grown so close to Hattie that it hurt to see her leave. When we embraced, I
couldn't say thank you — those words were far too small for someone who
had risked her life to help save mine.
David was in the middle of a remodeling job on his apartment, and
practically everything was in disarray. Wallpaper half-pasted on the walls,
furniture piled up in the middle of the living room, paintings, little
sculptures and other objects spread randomly across the couch.
I had forgotten how much David liked to talk. Whether he was discussing a
problem of politics or telling you about a spot you had on your blouse, he
was always glib. In the first five minutes he hit me with so many things that
I had to ask him to slow down and backtrack a bit.
After I put down my things and splashed some cold water on my face, we
went into his study and sat down on the thick blue carpet amid the
deshelved books strewn across the room. There we talked about the

situation. He couldn't cancel his trip out West, which was scheduled for the
next day, he said, but he would shorten it in order to be back in a few days.
The prospect of spending the next days alone was appealing. I could use the
time to orient myself, to reflect on the coming weeks, to pull myself
together. The solitude would be good.
Later, David introduced me to Robert Lohman, who lived in the same
building. Robert Lohman was, at the moment of the introduction, David's
"very close friend." Someone who could be trusted, who, over the next
days, would be available any time I needed him to look in on me, see to it
that food was in the refrigerator and, if I felt like company, be happy to
come up.
It was afternoon when I met Robert. By evening, he and David had been
drawn into a ferocious argument about their jointly owned automobile.
(Suppose David were captured driving me in a car that was registered to
Robert . . .) When the hurling of words had subsided, their friendship was in
ruins and Robert was in our eyes a potential informer. This forced us to
rethink all of our plans.
David and I drove another car through the heavy night rain to the house
where he and his wife had lived before her death. He refused to listen when
I tried to apologize for driving this wedge into his life, for wrecking his
friendships, forcing him, ultimately, to cancel his important trip to the West.
All these things were trivial, he said.
Before David fell asleep (I sat up all night) we decided that it would be best
to leave the city the next day.
My disguise had been all right for the first leg of the trip. But it was not
good enough for a situation that would grow increasingly more dangerous.
The curly wig, too close to the shape of my natural, did not really change
the appearance of my face. Before we left Chicago, a young Black woman,
to whom I identified myself as David's cousin in trouble, gave me another
wig that was straight and stiff, with long bangs and elaborate spitcurls. She
pulled out half of my eyebrows, glued false eyelashes to my lids, covered
my face with all sorts of creams and powders and put a little black dot just

above the corner of my lip. I felt awkward and over-painted, but I doubted
my own mother could have recognized me.
We had decided to head for Miami. Since airports were more closely
watched than anyplace else, we plotted a ground route — by car to New
York and by train to Miami. After the car was rented and David had packed
his things, we set out on this wild odyssey, the details of which we had to
improvise as we went along.
In a turnpike motel on the outskirts of Detroit, I turned on the television to
watch the news. "Today, Angela Davis, wanted on charges of murder,
kidnapping and conspiracy in connection with the Marin County
Courthouse shootout, was seen leaving the home of her parents in
Birmingham, Alabama. She is known to have attended a meeting of the
local branch of the Black Panther Party. When Birmingham authorities
finally caught up with her, she managed to outrun them, driving her 1959
blue Rambler . . ."
Was it my sister they were talking about? But she was supposed to be in
Cuba. And the last time I had seen my car, it was parked outside Kendra
and Franklin's on 50th Street in L.A.
I was afraid for my parents. The FBI and the local police force must have
been hovering around the house like buzzards. Knowing that the lines were
tapped, I had not risked a phone call. All I could do was hope that Franklin
had found some way to tell them that I was safe.
In the city of Detroit, we lost ourselves in the crowds as we searched for an
optometrist who could quickly make me up a pair of glasses. I hadn't been
home since the news of the rebellion, and had no luggage. I had to buy
some clothes so I could get out of the things I had been wearing for the last
few days.
From Detroit, we drove on to New York, where we boarded a train that took
almost two days to arrive in Miami. There, under the blinding late summer
sun, I barricaded myself inside an unfurnished apartment David rented,
waiting for the times to change. I felt almost as much a prisoner as if I had
been locked up in a jail and often felt jealous because David could go out

when he wished — he even traveled back to Chicago. I stayed in, read and
watched television news: draconic repression of the Palestinian movement
by King Hussein of Jordan; the first of the major prison rebellions at the
Tombs in New York.
There was never any news of George. Of George, John, Fleeta, Ruchell,
San Quentin . . .

***

Toward the end of September, signs pointed to a hot and deadly pursuit.
David's mother, who lived near Miami, told him that two men had come to
her house inquiring as to his whereabouts. The old fears erupted again, and
I began to seriously doubt that it would be possible to elude the police
without leaving the country altogether. But each time I considered going
abroad, the thought of being indefinitely exiled in some other country was
even more horrible than the idea of being locked up in jail. At least in jail I
would be closer to my people, closer to the movement.
No. I would not leave the country, but I thought that I could lead the FBI to
believe that I had managed to get out. The last thing I did in that bare
Miami apartment was to draw up a statement to be delivered to someone
who could release it to the press. I wrote about Jonathan's youthful, even
romantic, determination to challenge the injustices of the prison system and
about the tremendous loss we had experienced when he was killed on
August 7 in Marin County. I affirmed my innocence and, implying that I
was already out of the country, promised that when the political climate in
California became less hysterical, I would return to clear myself through the
courts. Meanwhile, I wrote, the struggle would go on.

OCTOBER 13, 1970

We were back in New York. I had been underground about two months.
With the familiar tightness in my stomach, the now habitual knot in my
throat, I woke up, got dressed, and struggled with my disguise. Another
tedious twenty minutes trying to get the eye make-up to look presentable.
More impatient pulls at the wig, trying to lessen the discomfort of the tightfitting elastic. I tried to forget that today, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps any of
a long string of days to come, might be the day of my capture.
When David Poindexter and I left the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge late
that morning in October, the situation had become desperate. We were
rapidly running out of money and everyone we knew was under
surveillance. Wandering through the surrounding Manhattan neighborhood,
we thought about our next move. Strolling down Eighth Avenue, lost in
crowds of New Yorkers oblivious to everything going on around them, I felt
better than I had in the motel. Hoping to calm our nerves, we decided to
spend the afternoon at the movies. To this day I do not remember what
movie we saw. I was hopelessly preoccupied with problems of eluding the
police, wondering how much longer I could tolerate isolation, knowing that
to contact anyone would be suicide.
The movie was over shortly before six. David and I talked very little as we
headed in the direction of the motel. We passed the broken-down shops on
Eighth Avenue and were crossing over to the motel side of the street when
suddenly I seemed to see police agents all around me. Surely this was just
another one of my recurring fits of paranoia. Yet as we walked through the
glass doors of the motel, I had a sudden impulse to turn around and race
back into the anonymous crowds I had just left. But if my instincts were
correct, if all these nondescript white men were in fact policemen
surrounding us, then the slightest abrupt move on my part would give them
the excuse they needed to shoot us down on the spot. I remembered how
they had murdered li'l Bobby Hutton, how they shot him in the back after
telling him to run. If, on the other hand, my instincts were groundless, my
running would only arouse suspicion. I had no choice but to keep on
walking. Inside the lobby, my fears seemed to be confirmed in every
straight-looking white man standing around. I was positive that all these
men were agents standing in a formation previously agreed upon, preparing
themselves for attack. But nothing happened. As nothing had happened in

the motel in Detroit, when I had also been certain that we were about to be
captured. As nothing had happened on the countless other occasions when
my unnaturally high level of tension had transformed perfectly ordinary
events into scenes of impending capture.
I wondered what David was thinking. It seemed like a long time since we
had said anything to each other. He could conceal his nervousness in tight
situations and, besides, we rarely talked about those moments when we
must both have suspected that the police were about to pounce upon us.
When we made it past the front desk, I breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing
had broken. This was probably just another normal day in the life of this
typical New York motel.
I was just beginning to recuperate when a plump, redfaced white man,
wearing what could have been the short, regulation haircut of a policeman,
got into the elevator with us. My fears were rekindled. I again held my
ritual soliloquy: He was probably an executive; after all, if you're being
pursued, all white men with short hair and plain suits look like police
agents. Besides, if they had really caught up with us, wouldn't it have been
more logical for them to make the arrest downstairs?
During the interminable elevator ride to the seventh floor, I convinced
myself that my overactive imagination had created this aura of danger, and
that we would probably make it safely through that day. One more day.
Out of the habit of living in clandestinity, I lingered behind several yards
while David went ahead to check out the room. While he was turning the
key in the lock, which appeared to present more difficulties than usual,
someone opened a door on the other side of the corridor. A frail figure
peered through and, although he didn't look like a policeman, his sudden
appearance sent me tumbling back into my terrifying fantasies. Of course,
this pale little man could have simply been a motel guest on his way to
dinner. But something told me that the scenario of the arrest had begun and
that this man was number one in the cast. I thought I felt someone behind
me. The man in the elevator. Now there was not the slightest trace of
uncertainty in my mind. This was the real thing.

Precisely at the moment when all panic should have broken loose inside me,
I felt calmer and more composed than I had in a long time. I lifted my head
higher and began to stride confidently toward my room. As I passed the
open door facing my room, the frail man reached out and grabbed my arm.
He said nothing. More agents were pouring out behind him and others were
streaming out of a room across the hall. "Angela Davis?" "Are you Angela
Davis?" The questions were coming from all directions. I glared at them.
During the ten or twelve seconds between the elevator and the point of
confrontation, all kinds of thoughts tore through my mind. I remembered
the television program I had watched in the Miami apartment: The FBI — a
typical, inane TV melodrama of agents pursuing fugitives, complete with
the final violent encounter which left the pursued with bullets in their skulls
and the FBI agents shown as heroes. Just as I moved to turn off the set, a
photograph of me flashed on the screen as if it were a part of the
fictionalized FBI pursuit. "Angela Davis," a deep voice said, "is one of the
FBI's ten most wanted criminals. She is wanted for the crimes of murder,
kidnapping and conspiracy. She is very likely armed, so if you see her, do
not try to do anything. Contact your local FBI immediately." In other words,
let your "very likely armed" FBI have the honor of shooting her down.
David and I were unarmed. If they pulled out their weapons we wouldn't
have a chance. As the frail man reached for me, I saw the guns coming out.
I imagined the deafening noise of gunshots and our bodies lying in pools of
blood in the corridor of the Howard Johnson motel.
They forced David into a room on the right side of the corridor and shoved
me into one on the left. There they ripped the wig off my head, cuffed my
hands behind me and fingerprinted me on the spot. All the while pelting me
with the same question: "Are you Angela Davis?" "Angela Davis?" "Angela
Davis?" I said nothing. Obviously they had gone through similar scenes
many times before. They had rehearsed this moment with the false arrests
of scores, perhaps hundreds of tall, light-skinned Black women with large
naturals. Only the fingerprints would tell them whether they had caught the
real one this time. The prints were compared. The panic on the chief's face
was replaced by relief. His underlings were ransacking my purse like
bandits. As I stood there, determined to preserve my dignity, elaborate

preparations were being made to get me out. I could hear them alerting
other agents who must have been stationed at various points in and outside
of the motel. All these "precautions," all these dozens of agents fit in
perfectly with the image they had constructed of me as one of the country's
ten most wanted criminals: the big bad Black Communist enemy.
About ten agents shoved me through the crowd that had already gathered in
the downstairs lobby and on the sidewalk. A long caravan of unmarked cars
was waiting. Speeding through the streets, I caught a glimpse of another
caravan taking David to some unknown destination.
My hands were so tightly cuffed behind me that if I had not balanced my
body on the very edge of the back seat, the circulation in my arms would
have stopped. The agent in the front seat turned around and, smiling, said,
"Miss Davis, would you like a cigarette?"
I spoke for the first time since the capture. "Not from you."
Inside the FBI headquarters, where the caravan came to a halt, I was met by
a woman with bleached-out hair who looked more like a truck-stop waitress
than the police matron she was. She searched me in a little room that looked
like a gynecologist's office, although my short knit skirt and thin cotton
blouse couldn't have concealed a weapon of any description.
Later, in a room with fluorescent lights flooding bright red vinyl couches,
some agents strode in with stacks of papers in their hands. They took seats
directly opposite me and spread out their papers, confident that they were
about to get into a long, involved interrogation. Before they formulated
their first question, I told them I had nothing to say to the FBI.
I knew that they could not legally hold me for any period of time without
allowing me to contact a lawyer. Nevertheless, each time I demanded access
to a telephone, they ignored me.
Finally, they said that an attorney, Gerald Lefcourt, was on the telephone
and that I could speak to him. I had never met Lefcourt before, but his name
was familiar to me in connection with his work for the twenty-one members
of the Black Panther Party on trial in New York.

In a gigantic room, a telephone with its receiver off the hook sat on one of
the scores of desks. But Lefcourt was not on the other end, only silence.
Looking around the room, I noticed my belongings spread out on some of
the desks a few yards away from where I was sitting. David's possessions
were scattered on another series of desks. Agents were hovering over our
things, going through them meticulously.
The bearers of the handcuffs, who had removed them for the search and the
mug shots and fingerprints, reappeared to fasten them on my wrists once
more. I wondered why they cuffed my hands in front this time.
Going down in the elevator, my thoughts were far away. I was trying to
figure out how to reach a comrade or a friend. When the doors slid open,
furious flashes of light jolted me out of my reflections. That's why they had
cuffed my hands in front. As far as I could see, reporters and photographers
were crowded into the lobby.
Trying hard not to look surprised, I lifted my head, straightened my back
and, between the two agents, made the long walk through the light flashes
and staccato questions toward the caravan waiting outside.
When the wailing of the sirens tapered off and the caravan began to slow
down, I realized that I was somewhere in Greenwich Village. As the car
turned into a dark driveway, a corrugated aluminum door began to rise and
once again, crowds of photographers with flashing lights jumped out of the
shadows. The red brick wall surrounding this tall archaic structure looked
very familiar, but it took me a few moments to locate it in my memory. Of
course; it was the mysterious place I had seen so often during the years I
attended Elisabeth Irwin High School, not too far from there. It was the
New York Women's House of Detention, which stood there at the main
intersection in the Village, at Greenwich and Sixth avenues.
While the car was rolling into the prisoners' entrance, a flock of memories
fought for my attention. Walking to the subway station after school, I used
to look up at this building almost every day, trying not to listen to the
terrible noises spilling from the windows. They were coming from the
women locked behind bars, looking down on the people passing in the
streets, and screaming incomprehensible words.

At age fifteen I accepted some of the myths surrounding prisoners. I did not
see them as quite the criminals society said they were, but they did seem
aliens in the world I inhabited. I never knew what to do when I saw the
outlines of women's heads through the almost opaque windows of the jail. I
could never understand what they were saying — whether they were crying
out for help, whether they were calling for someone in particular, or
whether they simply wanted to talk to anyone who was "free." My mind
was now filled with the specters of those faceless women whom I had not
answered. Would I scream out at the people passing in the streets, only to
have them pretend not to hear me as I once pretended not to hear those
women?
The inside of this jail stood in stark contrast to the building I had just left.
The FBI headquarters was modern, antiseptically clean, its plastic texture
illuminated by fluorescent lights. The Women's House of Detention was
old, musty, dreary and dim. The floor of the receiving room was unpainted
cement, dirt from the shoes of thousands of prisoners, policemen and
matrons etched into its surface. There was a single desk where all the
paperwork seemed to be done, and rows of long benches which looked as
though they had once been pews in a storefront church.
I was told to sit on the front bench in the right-hand row. A few other
women were scattered unsystematically throughout the benches. Some, I
learned, had just been booked; others had come in from a day in court. Food
was brought in to us, but I had no appetite for the wrinkled hot dogs and
cold potatoes.
Suddenly there was a loud rumble outside the gate. Scores of women were
walking up to the entrance, waiting for the iron gate to be opened. I
wondered what could have led to such a massive bust, but one of the sisters
inside told me that these were the women returning from court on the last
bus.
All the women I could see were either Black or Puerto Rican. There were
no white prisoners in the group. One of the Puerto Rican sisters called out,
"Are you Spanish?" At first I didn't think she could mean me, but then I
remembered how I must have looked with my hair straight and flat after the
agents had snatched the wig away. I said "no" with as warm a tone as I

could manage, trying to convey that it did not really matter: the same jailers
would be holding the same hammer over our heads. While the women who
had returned from court were still standing outside the iron gates, I was led
out of the room. I thought that I was on my way to the cells, but instead I
found myself in a large windowless room, a dim light bulb barely
illuminating the center of the ceiling. There were the same filthy cement
floors, drab yellow tile walls and two very old office desks.
A robust white matron was in charge. When I discovered, amid the papers
taped to the wall, my picture and description on an FBI Wanted poster, she
snatched it down. My eyes shifted to the next poster. To my surprise it bore
the photograph and description of a woman whom I had known in high
school. Kathy Boudin had been in my eleventh and twelfth grade classes at
Elisabeth Irwin High School. Now she was on the FBI's Wanted list.
When the work shift changed, I was still waiting in that dingy room. A new
officer was sent to guard me. She was black, she was young — younger
than I — she wore a natural, and as she approached, she showed none of the
belligerence and arrogance I had learned to associate with jail matrons.
It was a disarming experience. Yet it was not the fact that she was Black
that threw me. I had encountered Black matrons before — in jails in San
Diego and Los Angeles — but it was her manner: unaggressive and
apparently sympathetic.
At first she was taciturn. But after a few minutes, in a quiet voice, she told
me, "A lot of officers here — the Black officers — have been pulling for
you. We've been hoping all along that you would get to someplace that was
safe."
I wanted to talk to her, but I felt it was best to be wary of any involved
conversation. For all I knew, she might have been instructed to assume this
sympathetic posture. If I appeared to be deluded by her sympathy, if I
appeared to become familiar with her, it would lend credibility should she
decide to lie about the content of our conversations. I would be safer if I
maintained the distance, the formality.

Thinking that I might be able to pry some information out of her about my
predicament, I asked her why the delay was so long. She didn't know all the
details, she said, but she thought that they were trying to decide how they
could keep me away from the main jail population. The problem was the
lack of facilities for isolation. It was her feeling that they would put me in
4b, the area of the jail reserved for women with psychological problems.
I looked at her in disbelief. If they locked me up in a tank for mental
patients, their next step might be to declare me insane. Perhaps they would
try to say that communism is a psychological illness — something akin to
masochism, exhibitionism or sadism.
Surprised at my reaction, she tried to console me by saying that I'd probably
be happier there — sometimes the women would ask to be moved to the
"mental" cellblock because they couldn't tolerate the noise in the main
population. But to me, jail was jail — there were no degrees of better or
worse. And nothing could detract from the thought that they wanted to
isolate me because they feared the impact the mere presence of a political
prisoner would have on the other women.
I reminded the officer that I had not yet made the two telephone calls due
me. I needed a lawyer, and I knew I had the right to contact one.
"A lawyer by the name of John Abt has been trying to get in to see you,"
she said. "But visiting hours for attorneys are over at five o'clock. I'm sorry
I can't do anything."
"If I can't see him, at least I ought to be able to call him."
"These people," she said, "haven't decided how to deal with you. They say
you're a federal prisoner, under the jurisdiction of the federal marshals. We
have federal prisoners all the time. The marshals are the ones who should
have let you make the two phone calls. At least, that's what the captain
said."
"For five hours," I insisted, "I have been trying to make a phone call, and
everybody I ask gives me the run-around."

"You know, no prisoners here are actually allowed to use the phone. You
have to write out your number and your message on a form and a special
officer does the calling."
I started to protest, but soon realized that nothing I said would make them
give me access to a telephone that evening. The only thing they
relinquished was a card John Abt had left at the front gate.
The crowd of women just back from court had apparently been "processed,"
and I could now return to the receiving room to await my turn for this
mysterious "process." As I entered the room, I saw a figure lying on a
hospital cart, almost completely covered with a sheet. I didn't know whether
it was living or dead. It was simply there, unattended, in the least
conspicuous corner of the receiving room. When I tried to inspect it as
carefully as I could from a distance, I noticed an elevation in the middle that
seemed to be moving. It was a pregnant prisoner about to deliver — and
soon. Wasn't anybody going to do anything? Were they going to let her have
the baby right here in this dump? Even if they did take her to a halfway
decent hospital, what would happen to the infant once it was born? Would it
be placed in an orphanage while she did her time? I felt angry but helpless
as I watched the sister go further and further into labor. Soon the iron gates
opened, and the attendants of a police ambulance came to take her away. I
watched them carry the stretcher into the night.
At last it was my turn. The print of my forefinger was stamped on an orange
card, which, they informed me, was the jail identification that every
prisoner had to keep with her at all times. Then came another body search. I
vigorously protested this second search — the FBI had already done it once.
The officer assigned to search me was ambivalent about the procedure.
While I undressed in the shower room, she discreetly pretended to be
looking for something. She gave me a hospital dressing gown and directed
me to sit on a bench outside a closed door. From the women already waiting
there, I learned that we were about to be searched internally. Each time
prisoners left the jail for a court appearance, and upon their return, they had
to submit to a vaginal and rectal examination.
It was one A.M. before they actually booked me into the jail. There were
only three women left in the receiving room. One of them stared at me for a

long time and finally asked whether I was Angela Davis. When I smiled
and nodded, she said that coming in from court she had seen crowds outside
demonstrating for me. All kinds of people — young, old, Black, white.
"What? Where?" I was tremendously excited by the possibility that people
in the movement were near.
The sister told us to be quiet for a moment. If we listened especially hard,
we might be able to hear some of the chants. Sure enough, muffled rhythms
were penetrating these massive walls. Just outside the building, the sister
said, they were chanting, "Free Angela Davis." The sister describing the
scene was in jail for possession of heroin. (The first thing she was going to
do when she got out, she said, was to look up her connection.) With an
expression of triumph on her face, she assured me that I was going to win.
She said this knowing that according to jail standards, I was facing very
heavy charges.
The entire jail was shrouded in darkness when I finally reached the cell in
4b. It was no more than four and a half feet wide. The only furnishings were
an iron cot bolted to the floor and a seatless toilet at the foot of the bed.
Some minutes after they had locked me in, the officer in charge of that unit
— another young Black woman — came to the iron door. She whispered
through the grating that she was shoving a piece of candy under the door.
She sounded sincere enough, but I couldn't take any chances. I didn't want
to be paranoid, but it was better to be too distrustful than not cautious
enough. I was familiar with jailhouse "suicides" in California. For all I
knew, there might be poison in the candy.
The first night in jail, I had no desire to sleep. I thought about George and
his brothers in San Quentin. I thought about Jonathan. I thought about my
mother and father and hoped that they would make it through this ordeal.
And then I thought about the demonstration outside, about all the people
who had dropped everything to fight for my freedom.
I had just been captured; a trial awaited me in California on the charges of
murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. A conviction on any one of these
charges could mean death in the gas chamber. One would have thought that
this was an enormous defeat. Yet, at that moment, I was feeling better than I

had felt in a long time. The struggle would be difficult, but there was
already a hint of victory. In the heavy silence of the jail, I discovered that if
I concentrated hard enough, I could hear echoes of slogans being chanted
on the other side of the walls. "Free Angela Davis." "Free All Political
Prisoners."

The key rattling in the cell-gate lock startled me. A guard was opening the
gate for a plump young Black woman wearing a faded blue prisoner's
uniform and holding a big tray in her hands.
Smiling, she said in a very soft voice, "Here's your breakfast. Do you want
some coffee?"
Her gentle manner was comforting and made me feel like I was among
human beings again. I sat up on the cot, thanked her and told her that I
would very much like a cup of coffee.
Looking around, I realized that there was no place to put the food — the
bed and the toilet were the only furnishings in the tiny cell. But the sister,
obviously having gone through this many times before, had already stooped
down to a squatting position and was placing the food on the floor: a small
box of cornflakes, a paper cup filled with watery milk, two pieces of plain
white bread and a paper cup into which she began to pour the coffee.
"Is there any black coffee?" I asked her, partly because I didn't drink coffee
with milk and partly because I wanted an excuse to exchange a few more
words with her.
"When they give it to us, it's already like this," she answered, "but I'll see
what I can do about getting you some black coffee tomorrow."
The guard told me I had to get ready for my court appearance. Then she
slammed the gate on the young woman's exit. While she was unlocking the
next cell, the sister whispered through the bars, "Don't worry about a thing.
We're all on your side." And she disappeared down the corridor.

I looked down at my breakfast, and saw that a roach had already discovered
it. I left it all spread out on the bare floor untouched.
After I had gone through the elaborate steps involved in getting dressed for
court, a matron led me downstairs. A crowd of white men was milling
around the receiving room. Seeing me, they swept toward me like vultures
and clamped handcuffs around my wrists, which still ached from the
previous day. Outside, shiny tan cars crowded into the cobblestone
courtyard. It was still dark when the caravan reached the federal courthouse.
A glimpse of the morning paper's boldlettered headlines, peeping out from
under some man's arm, stunned me: ANGELA DAVIS CAPTURED IN
NEW YORK. It suddenly struck me that the huge crowd of press people
summoned by the FBI the evening before had probably written similar
headline stories throughout the country. Knowing that my name was now
familiar to millions of people, I felt overwhelmed. Yet I knew that all this
publicity was not really aimed at me as an individual. Using me as an
example, they wanted to discredit the Black Liberation Movement, the Left
in general and obviously also the Communist Party. I was only the occasion
for their manipulations.
The holding cell where I spent the next several hours was cleaner than the
jail cell I had just left and looked like a giant, unfinished bathroom. It had
sparkling white tile walls and a light-colored linoleum floor. A seatless
toilet stood in one of the corners. Long metal benches lined the three walls.
One of the federal bureaucrats came into the cell.
"I have nothing to say," I told him, "until I see my lawyer."
"Your father's lawyer is waiting outside," he said.
My father's lawyer? Perhaps it was a friend posing as my "father's lawyer"
in order to get permission to see me.
In a large hall filled with rows of desks, John Abt was waiting to see me.
Although I had never met him before I knew about the trials in which he
had successfully defended members of our Party. With a great feeling of
relief, I sat down to talk with him.

"I waited for hours last night at the jail, but they refused to let me in," John
said. "I had to get your father to call them before they would let me see you
this morning."
He went on to explain that I was about to be arraigned on the federal
charges — interstate flight to avoid prosecution. Before he had gotten very
far in his discussion of the legal proceedings before us, a group of people
pressed through a door at the other end of the room. Without my glasses,
which the FBI had not bothered to return, the people's faces were blurred.
Noticing a young Black woman involved in a heated exchange with the
marshals, I squinted in order to see her more clearly.
"That's Margaret!" I shouted.
Margaret Burnham was a very old friend of mine. During my youngest
years, her family and mine had lived in the same housing project in
Birmingham. When the Burnhams moved to New York, we visited them
every summer for four years, then we alternated the visits — sometimes
they would come to Birmingham and we would go to New York. Our
families had been so close that I had always considered Margaret, her
sisters Claudia and Linda, and her brother Charles more family than friends.
I had not seen her for several years.
She had been in Mississippi, gotten married and given birth to a child. I
knew that she had recently graduated from law school and I assumed she
was now practicing in New York.
"Margaret," I called, as loudly as I could, "come on over." Apparently this
was enough to settle the argument she was having with the marshal, for he
did nothing to prevent her from walking over to the desk where John and I
were. It felt so good to embrace her.
"Margaret," I said to her, "I'm so glad you came. You don't know how glad I
am to see you." As we started talking about personal things, I almost forgot
that there was business to be taken care of.
"Can you work on the case?" I asked her finally, disperately hoping she
would say yes.

"You know I will, Angela," she answered, "If that's what you think I should
do."
It was as if half the battle had already been won.
John Abt went on to explain the legal situation.
Back in August, Marin County had charged me with murder, kidnapping
and conspiracy to commit murder and rescue prisoners. On the basis of an
FBI agent's affidavit declaring that I had been seen by "reliable sources" in
Birmingham, a federal judge had issued a warrant charging me with
"interstate flight to avoid prosecution."
It was possible, John said, that I might be "removed" to California, which
meant that without further litigation I would simply be transferred from the
New York Federal District to the California Federal District. But more than
likely, he surmised, I would be "turned over" to the State of New York for
extradition to California, and we would be able to challenge California in
the New York courts.
As we were winding up this conference, David walked into the room,
encircled by guards. I hadn't seen him since our arrest. He looked as if he
hadn't slept either.
In a cool, crisp tone, he called out to me, "Remember now, no matter what,
we're going to beat this thing."
"No talking between the prisoners," a voice announced. It could have come
from any one of the marshals standing around.
"O.K., David," I said, ignoring the command. "You be sure to keep strong
yourself."
I had never seen a courtroom so small. With its marred walls of blond
wood, it had the worn-out elegance of an old mansion. There was just
enough room for the bench and a single row of chairs lining the back wall.
The smallness of the courtroom exaggerated the height of the judge's bench.
The judge himself was little, like his courtroom. He was wearing old-

fashioned plastic-rimmed glasses, and his white hair was spread sparsely
over his head. I thought about Soledad guard O. G. Miller perched in his
gun tower, aiming his carbine at the three brothers he killed in the yard in
January.
There were no spectators. The only non-official people were reporters —
and there were not very many of them. As I entered, a sister sitting in the
seat closest to the door held up a copy of the hardcover edition of George's
Soledad Brother. This was the first time I had seen the book, which I had
read in manuscript.
The arraignment on the federal charges was short and to the point. All the
prosecutor was required to do was to prove, for the record, that I was the
Angela Davis named in the warrant. The bail figure was a farce. Who could
even contemplate raising $250,000 to get me out of jail?
It was still early — late morning or early afternoon — when I returned to
the holding cell. The last time I had been in the cell, my thoughts had been
monopolized by the problem of finding a lawyer. Now that I had two fine
lawyers whom I trusted and loved, I could no longer ward off thoughts of
my imprisonment. I was alone with the shiny tile walls and the gray steel
bars. Walls and bars, nothing more. I wished I had a book or, if not
something to read, at least a pencil and a sheet of paper.
I fought the tendency to individualize my predicament. Pacing from one
end of this cell to the other, from a bench along one wall to a bench along
the other, I kept telling myself that I didn't have the right to get upset about
a few hours of being alone in a holding cell. What about the brother —
Charles Jordon was his name — who had spent, not hours, but days and
weeks in a pitch-dark strip cell in Soledad Prison, hardly large enough for
him to stretch out on the cold cement, reeking of urine and human
excrement because the only available toilet was a hole in the floor which
could hardly be seen in the dark.
I thought about the scene George had described in the manuscript of his
book — the brother who had painted a night sky on the ceiling of his cell,
because it had been years since he had seen the moon and stars. (When it
was discovered, the guards painted over it in gray.) And there was Ericka

Huggins at Niantic State Farm for Women in Connecticut. Ericka, Bobby,
the Soledad Brothers, the Soledad 7, the Tombs Rebels and all the countless
others whose identities were hidden behind so much concrete and steel, so
many locks and chains. How could I indulge even the faintest inclination
toward selfpity? Yet I paced faster across the holding cell. I walked with the
determination of someone who has someplace very important to go. At the
same time, I was trying not to let the jailers see my agitation.
When someone finally opened the gate, it was late in the evening. Margaret
and John were waiting to accompany me to a court appearance in the same
courtroom we had appeared in that morning. Aside from us, there were not
"civilians" in the courtroom, not even the reporters from the morning
session. I wondered what kind of secret appearance this was going to be.
The elderly judge announced that he was rescinding the bail and releasing
me on my own recognizance. I was sure I had misheard his words. But
already, the Feds were approaching me to unlock the handcuffs. The judge
said something else, which I hardly heard, and then suddenly several New
York policemen moved in to replace the federal handcuffs with their own
manacles.
With the New York handcuffs binding my wrists, there was a trip to a musty
police precinct office, where I was officially booked as a prisoner of the
State of New York. Forms, fingerprints, mug shots — the same routine. The
New York police seemed to be as confused as their surroundings. Amid all
the papers haphazardly strewn on desks and counters, they were running
around like novices. Their incompetence calmed me. It must have been
around ten in the evening when one of them announced that there would be
yet another court appearance. (Did Margaret and John know about this third
court session?)
The courtroom in the New York County Courthouse was larger than any I
had ever seen. Its high ceilings and interminable rows of benches made it
look like a church from another era. Most courtrooms are windowless, but
this one seemed especially isolated from the outside world. It was so dimly
lit, with hardly anyone but policemen sitting randomly on the benches, that
I had the impression that what was about to happen was supposed to be
hidden from the people outside.

Neither Margaret nor John was there. When they told me that I had to be
arraigned before a New York judge, I said that I wasn't budging from my
seat until they contacted my lawyers. I was prepared to wait the whole
night.
When John finally arrived, he said that the police had directed him to the
wrong courtroom. He had been running all over New York trying to find
me. After hours of waiting, the court appearance lasted all of two minutes.
Back at the jail, I was so physically and emotionally exhausted that I only
wanted to sleep. Even the hard cell cot in the "mental" ward felt
comfortable. But as soon as I closed my eyes, I was jolted out of my
exhaustion by piercing screams in a language which sounded Slavic. They
came from a cell at the other end of the corridor. Footsteps approached the
cell in the darkness. Voices tried to calm the woman in English but could
not assuage her terror. I listened to her all night — until they took her away
in the morning.

The same unpalatable breakfast — cornflakes, powdered milk and stale
white bread — was placed on the unswept floor of my cell the next
morning. As she had promised, Shirley, who had brought my breakfast the
morning before, had found me a cup of black coffee. Accompanying her
this time was a tall, slim Puerto Rican woman wearing a very short natural.
She introduced herself as "just Tex" and went on to say that when the sisters
in her corridor learned that I was in 4b, they wanted me to know that they
were convinced we would win.
After Shirley and Tex had gone, I called through the bars, telling the officer
to bring me my cigarettes — they had kept them when I came from court
the night before.
"You can't have a cigarette now," she called from the day room. "You'll
have to wait till cigarette time, like the rest of the inmates." She spoke as if
it were against the regulations not to understand that smoking took place
only at "cigarette time." When she came around a half-hour later, she gave

me a single cigarette and insisted on lighting it herself through the grating
of the cell door. "Sorry, these are the rules. We have to follow the rules."
The corridor was quiet that morning. When I had finished my cigarette, I
called to the guard once more.
"I'm ready to take my shower and get dressed."
She came back to my cell. "I can't let you out right now."
"I want to brush my teeth, take a shower and put on something other than
this gown."
"I can't let you out. Hasn't anyone explained the rules of 4b? The ‘girls' can
only come out of their cells when two officers are on duty." (All prisoners
— whether they were sixteen or sixty-were referred to as "girls.")
Nothing, I later discovered, absolutely nothing was allowed inside the cells
— not only were cigarettes and matches banned, but also books, writing
materials, toothbrushes, soap, washcloths, clothes and shoes. Before being
locked into her cell, each prisoner was always checked to make sure she
had removed her underwear and was wearing nothing except the flimsy,
light-green nightgown she was given. A book or a magazine? How could
they be used to inflict injury on oneself? And toilet paper? We could not
even keep a roll of toilet paper in the cell. Like dependent infants, each time
we wanted to use the toilet, we had to call the officer to bring us paper.
Shortly before lunch, the second officer arrived and the cell doors were
unlocked. A strange melange of women emerged from the cells: one very
young Black woman, short and heavyset, with her natural thinning out on
one side. Something seemed to be churning her up inside. Another Black
woman with straight hair, and an incredibly serene expression. She was far
away from this jail in her thoughts. A white woman with dyed red hair,
looking young one moment and very old the next, who began to pace
frantically around the day room, mumbling incomprehensibly under her
breath. And a young white woman, small, frail, with short blond hair, who
seemed on the verge of panic, but didn't know how to express it.

The women did not even notice that a new prisoner had been thrown in with
them. Except for the woman who continued to pace, they each found places
at the table in the day room and sat separate from one another, as if there
were a mutual agreement that they would all refrain from invading the
others' turf. After they took their seats, they became completely absorbed in
themselves, blank stares telling me that no matter how much I wanted to
talk, it would be futile to approach any of them.
Later I learned that these women received Thorazine with their meals each
day and, even if they were completely sane, the tranquilizers would always
make them uncommunicative and detached from their surroundings. After a
few hours of watching them gaze silently into space, I felt as though I had
been thrown into a nightmare.
Even there in the day room where the eyes of the officers were constantly
following our most subtle gestures, we were not allowed to hold a pack of
cigarettes or matches. If you wanted a cigarette, you approached the officer
sitting at the desk, and she handed you one from your pack and lit it for
you. If you were a chain smoker, as I was at the time, and especially if you
had kept your sanity and your sobriety, this little ceremony was itself
maddening.
I had loudly protested being kept in 4b from the very first day. I didn't
belong there — or had I been judged a mental case? The officer said I had
been placed in 4b not because I was psychologically unsound, but for my
own safety and to keep me from disrupting the life of the jail. I was not
persuaded.
I began to make as many requests as I could think of. I knew that there must
be some kind of library in the building, so I asked to visit it, certain that
if I read only the piles of Reader's Digests lying around, I too would be a
candidate for Thorazine. The message which came back was that I could
order books from the library, and they would be brought up to me. The
same rule applied to the commissary — I could order whatever I needed,
and it would be delivered to me. I had never seen the library or the
commissary, but when virtually nothing came back in response to my lists, I
realized that I had terribly overestimated both of these jail institutions. Even

items like a ball-point pen or a natural comb were not sold in commissary
and were therefore considered "contraband."
The day was dragging, and I was beginning to wonder whether they were
planning to deny me contact with my attorneys. Either Margaret or John
should have certainly come to see me by now. When I made inquiries about
my attorneys' visits, the officer said that they had received instructions that
although I was allowed to have counsel visits, I was to go nowhere without
an "escort." (The jail euphemism for a guard.) Normally all a prisoner
needed was a pass. At last the call came announcing the arrival of the
lawyers. Going to meet them was my first opportunity to walk through any
part of the jail at a normal hour — when the prisoners were not locked in or
sleeping.
Women awaiting trial were always allowed to wear their own clothes. The
women in 4b, however, the "mental cases," wore the uniforms of sentenced
women, so I had to go down to the ground floor for my first visit in a dungcolored, unhemmed cotton dress, at least two sizes too large and about five
inches above my ankles. I had washed my hair that morning and had my
natural back for the first time in almost two months — but since we weren't
allowed to use natural combs, my hair was in hopeless disarray. Yet
excitement about my trip to the main floor totally annihilated any worry
about my appearance.
When the iron door was opened, sounds peculiar to jails and prisons poured
into my ears — the screams, the metallic clanging, officers' keys clinking.
Some of the woman noticed me and smiled warmly or threw up their fists in
gestures of solidarity. The elevator stopped on the third floor, where the
commissary was located. The women who were waiting for the elevator
recognized me and told me in a cordial, sisterly way, their words sometimes
reinforced with their fists, that they were on my side. These were the
"dangerous women" who might attack me because they didn't like
"Communists," had I not been hidden away in 4b. This and subsequent trips
to the main floor were further evidence of what I already knew: that the
administration's allegations that the prison population might harm me were
nonsense.

On the first floor I was directed to a booth which became a regular hangout
over the next weeks. The first problem I discussed with Margaret and John
was what we could do to get me out of 4b and into the main population. As
we talked we noticed that the guard stationed at the table outside the booths
was trying her best to listen to our conversation.
In the days that followed, familiarity with the routine in 4b did not diminish
the horror of living behind bars. I not only pressed harder for my own
release, but I was becoming increasingly persuaded that something had to
be done about this maximum security arrangement camouflaged as a
therapeutic cellblock. Regardless of why the women in 4b had been placed
there, they were all being horribly damaged. Whatever problems they had
had initially were not solved, but rather systematically aggravated. I could
see the erosion of their will taking place even during the short time I spent
there.
In the cell next to me lived a white woman somewhere between thirty and
forty-five years old who had lost all contact with reality. Each night before
she fell asleep the cellblock shook with her screams. Sometimes her
rantings and ravings filled the air long after midnight. Her vile language,
her weird imagery bespeckled with the most vulgar kind of racial epithets
made me so angry that it was all I could do to prevent myself from trying to
break through the steel and concrete that separated her cell from mine. I
was convinced that she had been placed there intentionally as a part of the
jailers' efforts to break me.
When I saw this pitiful figure the next morning, it was clear that her
sickness was so far advanced — some stage of schizophrenia — that she
was beyond the reach of argument. Her illness had become a convenient
vehicle for the expression of the racism which had grown like maggots in
her unconscious. Each night, and every morning before breakfast came, she
went through a prolonged ritual which took the form of a violent argument
with some invisible figure in her cell. More often than not, this figure would
be a Black man, and he would be attacking her with a kind of sexual
perversity which would have been inconceivable had not her own verbal
imagery been so vivid. She would purge this figure from her cell with a

series of incantations. When her imagined attacker assumed some other
position, it brought about a corresponding change in her incantations.
One morning in the day room, Barbara, the young Black woman from the
cell directly across from mine, broke her habitual silence to tell me she had
refused her daily dose of Thorazine. It was very simple: she was tired of
feeling like a vegetable all the time. She was going to resist the Thorazine
and was going to get out of 4b. She knew about my own attempts to get out,
and if we were both transferred she said she would like very much to be my
"cellie" in the main population.
In the cell next to Barbara's was a very young white woman who appeared
to receive larger doses of Thorazine than any of the others. One day when
she was not so spaced out, she wanted to know if I could help her with her
case. (She was back from court and evidently had not been drugged so she
would look more or less normal for the judge.) When I asked her about her
charges, tears streamed down her face as she said repeatedly, "I could never
do anything like that. I couldn't kill my own baby."
She didn't understand where she was and had no comprehension whatever
of the judicial system. Who were her friends, she wanted me to tell her, and
who were the ones who wanted to put her away? She had been afraid to talk
to her lawyer, for fear he would tell the judge. Now she was thoroughly
crushed because a doctor who had sworn himself to secrecy had just taken
the stand and divulged everything she had told him. All she wanted now
was just a little Thorazine. She wanted to get away, forget, get high.
Perhaps the most tragic of them all was Sandra — the teenager charged
with arson. She was one of the women who had been in the receiving room
the night I was arrested. I had noticed then that her hair was coming out in
patches and had assumed that she had ringworm. My first day in 4b, she
came out of the cell for meals. The second day, she ignored the key
unlocking her cell gate at mealtimes. She silently and systematically pulled
her hair out by the roots. From that day on, whenever I saw her, she was
sitting quietly on her bed, yanking out hair by the handful. By the time I
left, she was as thin as a wishbone, and all that was left of her natural was a
few clumps of hair on one side of her pitiful hairless head.

Of all the officers who were sent to do duty in 4b — and there were
different ones almost every day — no one cared about this young woman,
no one except a sweet, motherly Black woman officer, who seemed quite
out of character in her guard's uniform. The few times she was on duty, she
would tenderly coax the poor girl out of her depression, draw words from
her tortured soul, bring her out of her cell into the day room and persuade
her to eat a little. But this officer was rarely there, and she was only one
person poised against an entire system in which there was nothing to
encourage concern for a prisoner who was being slowly, hopelessly
engulfed by her desperation.
The week I spent in 4b was far worse than my worst fantasies of solitary
confinement. It was torture to be surrounded by these women who urgently
needed professional help. It was all the more torturous because each time I
tried to help one of them out of her misery, I would discover that a wall —
far more impervious than the walls of our cells — stood between us. I could
not keep from becoming depressed myself when their "doctor" came to
examine them — he simply prescribed larger doses of Thorazine, chloral
hydrate, or other tranquilizers.
Even if prisoners with severe psychological problems were given more
attention, I wonder whether the approach would be fundamentally different
from what I witnessed in 4b. Psychology as it is generally practiced is not
geared to cure. Often it does not reach the root of the problem because it
does not recognize the social origin of many forms of mental illness.
How could the woman next door to me even begin to be cured if the
psychologist treating her was not aware of the way in which racism, like an
ancient plague, infects every joint, muscle and tissue of social life in this
country? This woman was rotting in a snake pit of racism, flagellating
herself daily with her obscene and graphic imagination. In order to
understand her illness, it would be necessary to start with the illness of the
society — for it was from the society that she had so perfectly learned how
to hate Black people.
Trapped in this wasteland inhabited by the sick, the drugged, and their
indifferent keepers, my life revolved around Margaret's daily visits. They
were oases, refreshing reentries into humanity. Our conversations — about

the little world of our childhood, our families, and the larger world of global
politics, the movement, the case — sustained me more than anything else
during this period. She brought messages from my parents, and continually
assured my mother that my health was good and my spirits were high.
Margaret was my only link to my comrades, my friends, and she kept me
from being totally swallowed up by the madness of that dungeon.
She had grown very strong. Coupled with the responsibilities of her fulltime job at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and her total devotion to her
six-year-old son, she was doing a full-time job on the case. And knowing
how much I looked forward to her visits, she rarely missed a day.
She came into the case fighting and kept it up for the entire twenty months.
That first morning in the Federal Building she had reached me only after
fighting her way through an assemblage of marshals. When she came to
visit me in jail, the jailers said she didn't look like a lawyer: she seemed too
young to have passed the bar in New York. And besides, she was Black and,
to complete the unpopular combination, she was a woman. When she had
established her right to visit me as my lawyer, she launched into an
interminable battle with the jail administration over my rights.
The first skirmish was fought in order to get me out of 4b. Margaret
submitted request upon request to the administration, demanding that I be
placed in some more normal section of the jail. She went from one officer
to another, up the hierarchy from lieutenant to captain to deputy
superintendent to the superintendent herself. Margaret insisted that she
could not carry on a sensible conversation with this warden. (My own
encounters with the woman confirmed everything I had heard about her
from lawyers and prisoners alike. Unfortunately, she was Black. She was
probably chosen for that reason — she had proved to be a convenient tool
for the higher-ups in the New York Department of Corrections.)
Nowhere along the hierarchy could any reason for my incarceration in 4b
be given, aside from the ridiculous notion that the other women might
attack me if I were not kept in a safely guarded place. By now we had
accumulated enough evidence through my trips from the cellblock to the
main floor for lawyers' visits to demonstrate the affection which the vast
majority of the women felt for me.

A little more than a week had passed when the warden informed Margaret
that I was to be moved to the main population. I was extremely excited, but
did not want to make it appear to the officers that this move was anything
more than what I was due and had expected all along. Shortly before dinner,
a young, emaciated-looking Puerto Rican officer came to fetch me from 4b.
I gathered up my belongings — jail-issued dresses and underwear and the
magazines I had managed to have brought in, said my good-byes to the
women (even though most were irretrievably spaced out on drugs), and
followed the officer through the iron door. I called to the women who were
in the dining room across from the elevator and asked them to say good-bye
to Shirley and Tex, who had brought our meals in 4b. When they heard I
was leaving they both came running out, asking me to try to get back down
that way to see them if I could.
The bed assigned me in the tenth-floor dormitory, where at least a hundred
women were sleeping, was in the very front of the hall, only a few yards
away from the officer's desk. After a tasteless dinner in the diningrecreation room next door, I struck up conversations with a number of
women. Many of the women were recuperating and were assigned to the
dormitory because they needed to be near the hospital across the hall in case
some problem arose. Some had just had babies.
Others were elderly women who might not have survived the regular jail
routine.
One woman looked familiar. I soon realized that she was the pregnant
woman I had seen the night I was arrested. When I asked her how her baby
was, she was surprised that I knew about it. After I explained, she said that
she had been in so much pain then that she had no memory of what had
happened. We had a lively conversation about the jail, her case, her
personal problems. Finally she got up enough nerve to ask me to explain
what communism was. Some of the other women began to listen. We were
in the back of the hall; there were no officers around, yet I knew they would
find out that we were holding political talks. Most of the women seemed
honestly interested and I snatched the opportunity to tell them that most of
what they had heard about communism was a carefully woven network of
lies.

While I was arranging my personal effects in the small cabinet at the side of
my bed, a young white woman came up to me and in an almost inaudible
voice whispered, "I am a political prisoner also." She explained that a friend
of her husband's had been arrested for possession of explosives in Oakland.
They had apparently been tied into this affair by the police and were later
arrested in New York. Their case was still in the extradition stages. She had
given birth to a baby and was waiting here in almost total ignorance of
developments in the lawsuit against them. (Later I learned that the officers
had given her the name "Weatherman" although she didn't seem to have
anything to do with that organization.)
That evening I received my introduction to a wellknown institution in any
prison — the grapevine. Several of the women told me that they had just
heard "through the grapevine" that I had been transferred from 4b to the
tenth floor for security reasons. The administration was afraid, so they said,
that with the help of outside friends, I might attempt to escape from the
fourth floor. Apparently it had been done before. There were even rumors
that they had already uncovered some plot to rescue me. I don't know
whether these were fantasies of the prisoners or of the jailers; in any event, I
didn't completely dismiss the possibility that the administration was
impelled by fear to transfer me to the tenth floor. It was amusing but also
frightening, for if they had already acted on such irrational grounds, there
was no telling what else they might try.
Sure enough, the very next day I was told that I was about to be transferred
to another part of the jail. I protested being bounced back and forth like a
Ping-Pong ball, but actually I didn't mind the move, thinking that I was
going into the regular population. I hated the lack of privacy in the
dormitory. If I decided to do some reading or writing, it was impossible to
retreat, except perhaps into a bathroom stall. At least in the cellblocks, the
cell would provide a hint of privacy. I had no idea that my longing for some
degree of seclusion was about to be overfulfilled. The main population I
thought I was about to enter turned out to be a hurriedly improvised special
isolation room separated from all of the corridors on the sixth floor.
Outraged, I demanded to know what was going on, but of course there was
no explanation from the officer who had silently led me away. After all, she

said, she was only following the instructions of her supervisor. It was not
hard to see the probable connection between the harmless discussion with
the sisters upstairs about communism and this abrupt and unexplained move
into solitary confinement.
I looked around the cell in angry disbelief. It seemed especially illogical
that after they had transferred me from the psychiatric cellblock to the
dormitory, they would now isolate me altogether. Even as these thoughts
sifted through my head, I realized that it was futile to try to understand the
perverted logic of jailers.
I learned later that this room was ordinarily used by the doctor, ostensibly
for medical examinations. The isolation units which had existed in the past
had been dismantled years ago, in an effort to remove from view the most
blatant instances of inhumanity. Needless to say, they had not succeeded;
inhumanity seethed from all the cracks and crevices of that place.
As the work shifts changed — first at midnight, then early the next
morning, there was a noticeable changing of the guard in front of the door. I
began to realize that they had assigned someone to watch me twenty-four
hours a day. Not only had they isolated me, they had placed me under
maximum security.
Later that night I looked out the window at the "free" people passing down
Greenwich Avenue. I listened to the night sounds of the Village and paced
back and forth in the room. When I finally got into bed, I kept my eyes
open: I didn't want to be caught off guard in the middle of the night.
The next morning it struck me that there was no shower in this cell. I began
to wonder quite seriously whether they would construct a "special facility"
for me. When I announced to the officer outside the door that I was ready
for my daily shower, she said I would have to wait. It took over an hour to
arrange for my shower because all the women had to be cleared from the
corridor and locked into their cells before I was let out of mine. The officer
unlocked the door and directed me through an iron gate into a long corridor
of cells.

This was the first time I had a chance to get a closer look at a corridor in the
main jail population. When they weren't locked in their cells, I later
discovered, the prisoners spent most of their time in corridors like these,
sitting on cold, filthy cement floors. Apparently none of the cells had waste
baskets, because paper and dirt were strewn along the entire length of the
corridor — as if it had been casually thrown through the bars.
The shower was no more sanitary — a dead mouse huddled under the bench
as if to be a little less obtrusive. When I emerged, I did not feel any cleaner
than before, but I had gained a little satisfaction from the fact that my
demand for this shower had forced the jailers to submit in a small way.
When Margaret and John came in, I gave them a detailed account of the
most recent offensive launched by the jail administration. We began to map
out plans for our counteroffensive. Our response had to be both political
and legal. There would be a federal lawsuit filed on the grounds that I was
the victim of undue discrimination. The political campaign would have to
reveal the precedent the jail administration and government were trying to
set in the treatment of political prisoners.
At that time, the Department of Corrections must have felt it was extremely
important to establish methods of quarantining resistance and radicalism in
order to prevent their large-scale diffusion. In September, a month before,
the Tombs had erupted in massive collective protests. Obviously, every
prison in New York was searching for new ways of preventing these
explosions. If we did not publicly contest the efforts to segregate me from
the rest of the women, this apparatus would be ready and waiting for
anyone deemed a political threat.
I decided to dramatize the situation by declaring myself on a hunger strike
for as long as I was kept in isolation — I would hold my own on this side of
the walls while things got rolling on the other side. It was not difficult to go
on a hunger strike. If the food had looked palatable, it would have been
hard; but the unsavory dishes they placed before me actually facilitated the
strike. After taking a look at the food, I felt more like vomiting than eating.
Of the many officers assigned to guard me during those weeks, there were a
few who were unmistakably sympathetic. I learned from them that the
warden had instructed them to prevent any exchange of words between me

and the other women — not even a greeting was allowed. The friendly
officers ignored this order, in spite of the fact that if their superiors had
become aware of the understanding they had reached with me, they could
have been brought up on charges of insubordination.
I also learned from one of these officers that when they came on duty, they
took charge of a log entitled "Angela Davis' Daily Activities." Every hour
on the hour, they were supposed to make an entry describing my activities
of the previous hour — whether I had been reading (if so, what), writing,
exercising — that exhausted the extent of the activities I could pursue in
such confined quarters.
Some of them also told me that they had been instructed to conduct a
thorough search of my quarters each time there was a changing of the
guard. The friendlier ones didn't bother with the search. But those who took
this duty seriously announced their presence at the post by entering the cell,
intently looking around at the barren walls as if they might conceal a
weapon, and finally by going through the drawers of the bed table. One eye
always following my movements.
Unfortunately, I cannot describe the sympathetic officers or refer to them by
name. My words might mean the loss of their jobs. They were an interesting
conglomeration of Black women, both young and old, whose political
sentiments ranged from "liberal" to straight-out sympathy with the most
militant wings of the Black Liberation Movement.
They all explained that they had been driven by necessity to apply for this
kind of job. Apparently it was one of the highest-paying jobs in New York
that did not require a college education. In a way, these officers were
prisoners themselves, and some of them were keenly aware that they were
treading ambiguous waters. Like their predecessors, the Black overseers,
they were guarding their sisters in exchange for a few bits of bread. And
like the overseers, they too would discover that part of the payment for their
work was their own oppression. For example, overtime was compulsory.
And because of the military discipline to which they were forced to submit,
failure to work overtime was punishable as insubordination. Sixteen-hour
workdays, a few times a week, were never out of the ordinary for the young

officers who held no seniority, and for the older ones who weren't wellliked in the top echelons of the jail hierarchy.
Still, even though their own grievances were reason enough to become
involved in protest, whatever positive role they could play inside the jail
was limited — they certainly could not revolutionize the penal system. But
within these limitations there were a number of important things they did
do. For instance, they communicated messages from prisoners to the
outside, when it was not possible to send them through normal channels.
They brought in "contraband" articles, such as natural combs. They got
literature to the prisoners — particularly political literature that was banned
from the library. If serious study groups were formed by women who
wanted to learn more about the Black or Puerto Rican Liberation
movements, sometimes these officers served as a shield between them and
the administration.
All these things imply risks. These officers repeatedly pointed out that when
two of their colleagues had been discovered to have ties with the Black
Panther Party, they were swiftly discharged. While they were willing to risk
losing their jobs, they thought it was more beneficial to the prisoners to do
whatever they could manage within the jail system itself, than to become
martyrs without reason. Yet a few of them said that if things reached a
crisis, they would shed the uniform and join the army of the prisoners.
Of course, it was difficult to judge the seriousness and depth of their
commitment, but it cheered me to see one of them coming to assume the
guard post. Then I could talk with some of the sisters from the floor. One
afternoon, the sisters from the two corridors nearest my cell marched
single-file past my door chanting, "Free Angela. Free our sister."
Through the grapevine I learned that there were women all over the jail who
were carrying out a hunger strike in sympathy with mine. I was especially
moved when I heard that Shirley was organizing a hunger strike on the
fourth floor. Since she worked in the kitchen, it must have required an
unusually big effort on her part. As for myself, I had a glass of juice three
times a day at meal times, lots of water and exercise. That, along with the
New York Times, which now came daily, the one or two books I had, and the
visits from Margaret and John, were enough to keep me going.

While I was in solitary, I finally began to receive regular evening visits
from several friends. An officer would stand just close enough to hear my
side of the conversation. (I assumed that they summarized it in the log
book.) I was not a stranger to visiting arrangements in jails, for I had visited
friends and comrades in prison on many occasions. But this visiting room
was by far the worst I had seen. It is not unusual to have to speak to a
visitor through a glass pane, but the panes in the House of Detention were
less than a square foot in size, and the rust-colored dirt that covered them
made it impossible to get a clear look at the person who had come to see
you. The prisoners had to stand up during these twenty-minute visits and
shout into telephones which inevitably seemed to stop functioning just
when the most important part of the conversation had gotten under way.
One evening while I was still in solitary, I received a visit from Kendra
Alexander, who had been subpoenaed to New York along with her husband
Franklin to testify before the Grand Jury in the case against David
Poindexter. She informed me that the demonstration protesting my solitary
confinement was about to begin. They knew more or less where my room
was located — I had carefully detailed the areas of Greenwich Avenue I
could see from my window. The demonstrators were to gather on the corner
of Greenwich and West Tenth.
I ran back upstairs. The officer guarding me was one of the friendlier ones,
and turned her head and closed her ears while I spread the news. On five or
six floors, the women who lived in the corridors with windows looking out
on Greenwich Avenue would be able to see and hear the demonstration.
It was an enthusiastic crowd. Their shouts "Free Angela! Free all our
sisters!" rang through the night. Looking down from my cell window, I
became altogether engrossed in the speeches, sometimes losing the
sensation of captivity, feeling myself down there on the street with them.
My mind flashed back to past demonstrations — "Free the Soledad
Brothers," "Free Bobby and Ericka," "Free Huey," "End the war in
Vietnam," "Stop police killings in our community now . . ."

Jose Stevens, a Communist leader from Harlem, had wound up his speech.
Franklin was addressing his words, full of passion, to all the prisoners
locked up in the Women's House of Detention. Then my sister, Fania, took
the megaphone. The sound of her voice shocked me back into the reality of
my situation, for I momentarily had forgotten that this demonstration was
centered around me. I had been so absorbed in the rally that I had actually
felt as if I were down there in the streets with them. Reflecting upon the
impenetrability of this fortress, on all the things that kept me separated from
my comrades barely a few hundred yards away, and reflecting on my
solitary confinement — this prison within a prison that kept me separated
from my sisters in captivity — I felt the weight of imprisonment perhaps
more at that moment than at any time before.
My frustration was immense. But before my thoughts led me further in the
direction of self-pity, I brought them to a halt, reminding myself that this
was precisely what solitary confinement was supposed to evoke. In such a
state the keepers could control their victim. I would not let them conquer
me. I transformed my frustration into raging energy for the fight.
Against the background of the chants ringing up from the demonstration
below, I took myself to task for having indulged in self-pity. What about
George, John and Fleeta, and my codefendant, Ruchell Magee, who had
endured far worse than I could ever expect to grapple with? What about
Charles Jordan and his bout with that medieval strip-cell in Soledad Prison?
What about those who had given their lives — Jonathan, McClain and
Christmas?
The experience of the demonstration had worked up so much tension in me
that I felt none of the debilitating effects of the fast. I did an extra heavy set
of exercises to sufficiently lower my energy level so I could lie in bed in
relative calm. There was no question of getting a full night's sleep. On this
evening, I had to be especially vigilant. All was quiet in the jail, but I was
convinced that the demonstration had aroused the jailers, and I had to hold
myself in readiness in case they decided to strike sometime during the
night.
On the tenth day of the hunger strike, at a time when I had persuaded
myself that I could continue indefinitely without eating, the Federal Court

handed down a ruling enjoining the jail administration from holding me any
longer in isolation and under maximum security conditions. They had
decided — under pressure, of course — that this unwarranted punishment
was meted out to me because of my political beliefs and affiliation. The
court was all but saying that Commissioner of Corrections George McGrath
and Jessie Behagan, the superintendent of the Women's House of D., were
so fearful of letting the women in the jail discover what communism was
that they preferred to violate my most basic constitutional rights.
This ruling came as a surprise. I hadn't expected it to be so swift and to the
point. It was an important victory, for we had firmly established that those
in the Department of Corrections in New York would not have a clear
course before them when they attempted to persecute the next political
prisoner delivered into their hands. At the same time, however, I did not put
it past the jail administration to concoct another situation which might not
be solitary confinement, but which would give me an equally bad time. This
thought subdued my delight at the news of the injunction.
Next destination: seventh floor, C corridor. When I arrived, there was a big
shake-up going on. Women were being moved out, others were coming in.
For a moment the thought struck me that they were preparing a special
corridor for informers, jailer's confidantes — and me. But as it turned out,
the lawsuit had forced the administration to get on its toes — so-called
"first offenders" were supposed to be jailed separately from those who had
already spent time in the House of Detention. Apparently the necessary
shifts were being made.
There was little time to learn my way about before all the cell gates were
locked, but some of my neighbors gave me a guided tour of my 8' x 5' cell.
Because mine was the corner cell — the one which could be easily spied on
from the officer's desk in the main hallway — it was also the smallest one
on the corridor; the double bunk made it appear even smaller. The fixtures
— the bed, the tiny sink, the toilet — were all arranged in a straight line,
leaving no more than a width of two feet of floor at any point in the cell.
The sisters helped me improvise a curtain in front of the toilet and sink so
they could not be seen from the corridor. They showed me how to use
newspaper wrapped in scrap cloth to make a seat cover so the toilet could

be turned into a chair to be used at the iron table that folded down from the
wall in front of it. I laughed out loud at the thought of doing all my writing
while sitting on the toilet stool.
Lock-in time was approaching; a sister remembered that she had forgotten
to warn me about one of the dangers of night life in the House of D.
"'Mickey' will be trying to get into your cell tonight," she said, and I would
have to take precautionary steps to "keep him out."
"Mickey?" Was there some maniac the jailers let loose at night to pester the
women?
The sister laughingly told me she was referring to the mice which
scampered about in the darkness of the corridors looking for cell doors not
securely stuffed with newspapers.
It became a nightly ritual: placing meticulously folded newspapers in the
little space between the gate and the floor and halfway up the gate along the
wall.
Despite the preventive measures we took, Mickey could always chew
through the barricade in at least one cell, and we were often awakened by
the shouts of a woman calling the officer to get the mouse out. One night
Mickey joined me in the top bunk. When I felt him crawling around my
neck, I brushed him away thinking that it was roaches. When I finally
realized what it was, I called for the broom — our only weapon against
him. Apparently mousetraps were too expensive, and they were not going to
exterminate.
There was one good thing about Mickey. His presence reassured us that
there were no rats in the vicinity. The two never share the same turf.
In a sense our daily struggles with Mickey — with all the various makeshift
means devised to get the better of him — were symbolic of a larger struggle
with the system. Indulging in a flight of fancy, I would sometimes imagine
that all the preparations that were made at night to ward off those creatures
were the barricades being erected against that larger enemy. That hundreds
of women, all over the jail, politically conscious, politically committed,

were acting in revolutionary unison. That first evening, shortly after the
sister had helped me stuff the gate with newspapers, an officer called out,
"Lock-in time, girls. Into your cells." As the women slid their heavy iron
gates closed, loud metallic crashing noises thundered from all four corridors
of the seventh floor. I could hear the same sounds at a distance echoing
from throughout the jail. (In 4b, I had never been able to figure out what all
this commotion was about. The first time I heard it, I thought a rebellion
had been unleashed.)
The officer came around to count each prisoner, and at 9 P.M. all lights in
the corridor and cells were turned off by a master switch. In the darkness, a
good night ritual was acted out. One sister shouted good night to another,
calling her by name. The latter, catching the identity of the voice, would
shout good night, also calling the first sister by name. Early on, someone
from my corridor called out warmly, "Good night, Angela!" But having
learned hardly anyone's name, much less to recognize their voices, I was an
outsider to this ritual and could only respond with a lonesome, unsupported,
though no less vigorous, "good night." My call sparked off good night
shouts to me, which came not only from my own corridor but from the
others as well. I am sure that there had never been such a prolonged "saying
of good nights." The officers did not interrupt, though silence should have
prevailed long before.

Life in jail was arranged and controlled from above in accordance with
pragmatic principles of the worst order. Just enough activities were
provided to distract the prisoners from any prolonged reflection upon their
wretched condition. The point was to fill up the day with meaningless
activities, empty diversions.
As a result, a whole network of institutions was there to absorb the energies
of the prisoners. Commissary, needless to say, was an important aspect of
survival in captivity. Three days out of the week women awaiting trial
visited this small store to purchase the little things that made life slightly
less intolerable. Mondays and Wednesdays, there was a three-dollar limit on
what we could buy; on Fridays we could spend one dollar more. The
coveted articles on sale were such things as cigarettes, cosmetics, primitive

writing materials — pencils (but no pens) and lined pads, and stamps;
knitting and crocheting paraphernalia; and foodstuffs such as cookies,
candies, sugar, instant coffee and hot chocolate. Unless you were pregnant,
the only available source of real milk was the commissary.
The centrality of commissary emerges from the deprivation which is such
an important element of official control and authority. In jail, you learn that
nothing can be taken for granted; the normal need-fulfillment process is
shattered. You cannot assume that even your most basic needs will be
satisfied. There are always strings attached. If you conduct yourself in such
a way as to provoke an officer to place you in lockup, you lose your
commissary privileges. If you happen not to have cigarettes, you must
simply do without. The threat of withdrawing commissary privileges is a
powerful negative stimulus.
Another method used to fill time was the church services each Sunday
morning. Out of curiosity, I went down to the chapel on the first Sunday I
spent in the main population. I was surprised at the number of prisoners in
attendance. But soon I realized that many of the women had ulterior
motives unrelated to any serious religious feelings. It was one of the two
consistent meeting places where women from one part of the jail could see
and converse with their friends from other floors.
The other weekly meeting place was the movies — that is, if the projector
was not broken. Not even the curiosity that attracted me to the church
services could make me attend one of these insipid Hollywood movies.
Needless to say, it was a favorite trysting place of homosexual couples.
For those who enjoyed reading, the library would have been a saving grace
had it not been for the fact that the vast majority of the books were
mysteries, romances and just plain bad literature whose sole function was to
create emotional paths of escape. During my days of solitary confinement,
after Margaret had persuaded the warden that I should have access to
reading material, I spent a few sessions alone in the library. Within a short
time I had combed the entire place, turning up only a few books which held
the slightest interest: A book on the Chinese Revolution by Edgar Snow, the
autobiography of W. E. B. DuBois and a book on communism written by an
astonishingly objective little-known author.

After my discovery of these books, my thoughts kept wandering back to
their enigmatic presence. And suddenly it hit me: they had probably been
read by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Claudia Jones or one of the other
Communist leaders who had been persecuted under the Smith Act during
the McCarthy era. I myself had been told that if I received any books during
my time there, I would have to donate them to the library — which was a
pleasure, considering the state of that so-called place of learning. As I
turned the pages of those books, I felt honored to be following in the
tradition of some of this country's most outstanding heroines: Communist
women leaders, especially the Black Communist Claudia Jones.
If you wanted books which were not in the library, they had to be mailed
directly from the publisher. I decided to have as many books sent to me as
possible, so as to provide, for succeeding prisoners, literature that was more
interesting, more relevant, more serious than the trash on the shelves of the
library. Apparently, the jailers saw through my scheme, especially when ten
copies of George Jackson's Soledad Brother came in, for they harshly
informed me that none of my books were to leave my hands. They would
follow me to whichever jail I went.
The few remaining jail institutions were even more limited. There were
short exercise periods on the roof of the building. This, I admit, was my
favorite activity, and as long as the weather permitted, I looked forward
with great pleasure to our volleyball games atop the jail. On the roof, in
enclosed rooms, there were also arts and crafts, dancing, and games such as
cards and Scrabble. With this, the range of activities behind the walls was
practically complete. It was amazing, however, how much time could be
consumed in these things, most of which contributed not in the least to the
educational, cultural or social development of the prisoners. The main
purpose of these pastimes was to encourage, in a subtle way, obedience and
submissiveness.
Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the
population into specimens in a zoo — obedient to our keepers, but
dangerous to each other. In response, imprisoned men and women will
invent and continually invoke various and sundry defenses. Consequently,
two layers of existence can be encountered within almost every jail or

prison. The first layer consists of the routines and behavior prescribed by
the governing penal hierarchy. The second layer is the prisoner culture
itself: the rules and standards of behavior that come from and are defined by
the captives in order to shield themselves from the open or covert terror
designed to break their spirits.
In an elemental way, this culture is one of resistance, but a resistance of
desperation. It is, therefore, incapable of striking a significant blow against
the system. All its elements are based on an assumption that the prison
system will continue to survive. Precisely for this reason, the system does
not move to crush it. (In fact, it sometimes happens that there is an underthe-table encouragement of the prisoners' subculture.) I was continually
astonished by the infinite details of the social regions which the women in
the House of Detention considered their exclusive domain. This culture was
contemptuously closed to the keepers. I sometimes wandered innocently
through the doors and found myself thoroughly disoriented. A telling
example happened on my second day in population. A sister asked me,
"What did you think of my grandfather? He said he saw you this morning."
I was sure I had misheard her question, but when she repeated it, I told her
she must be mistaken, because I had no idea who her grandfather was.
Besides, I hadn't had any visitors that day. But the joke was on me. I was in
a foreign country and hadn't learned the language. I discovered from her
that a woman prisoner who had come by my cell earlier in the day was the
"grandfather" to whom she was referring. Because she didn't seem eager to
answer any questions, I contained my curiosity until I found someone who
could explain to me what the hell was going on.
A woman a few cells down gave me a fascinating description of a whole
system through which the women could adopt their jail friends as relatives.
I was bewildered and awed by the way in which the vast majority of the jail
population had neatly organized itself into generations of families: mothers/
wives, fathers/husbands, sons and daughters, even aunts, uncles,
grandmothers and grandfathers. The family system served as a defense
against the fact of being no more than a number. It humanized the
environment and allowed an identification with others within a familiar
framework.

In spite of its strong element of escapism and fantasy, the family system
could solve certain immediate problems. Family duties and responsibilities
were a way in which sharing was institutionalized. Parents were expected to
provide for their children, particularly the young ones, if they could not
afford "luxury items" from commissary.
Like filial relationships outside, some sons and daughters had, or
developed, ulterior motives. Quite a few of them joined certain families
because the material benefits were greater there.
What struck me most about this family system was the homosexuality at its
core. But while there was certainly an overabundance of homosexual
relationships within this improvised kinship structure, it was nevertheless
not closed to "straight" women. There were straight daughters and
husbandless, i.e., straight, mothers.
I recall with fondness a young woman of sixteen, with a very intense
beauty, who told me plainly and simply one day that she was going to
consider me her mother. Although I shared my commissary with her (and
others as well) when she didn't have enough money in her account, she
never once asked me for anything. She was quiet, serious and very curious
about the Black Liberation movement. My obligations to her seemed to
consist primarily of carrying on discussions with her about the movement.
Housed with the "adolescents" in another corridor on my floor, she always
managed with a calm firmness to persuade the officers to let her into my
corridor.
Since the majority of the prisoners seemed to be at least casually involved
in the family structure, there had to be a great number of lesbians
throughout the jail. Homosexuality is bound to occur on a relatively large
scale in any place of sexually segregated confinement. I knew this before I
was arrested. I was not prepared, however, for the shock of seeing it so
thoroughly entrenched in jail life. There were the masculine and feminine
role-playing women; the former, the butches, were called "he." During the
entire six weeks I spent on the seventh floor, I could not bring myself to
refer to any woman with a masculine pronoun, although some of them, if
they hadn't been wearing the mandatory dresses, would never have been
taken for women.

Many of them — both the butches and the femmes — had obviously
decided to take up homosexuality during their jail terms in order to make
that time a little more exciting, in order to forget the squalor and
degradation around them. When they returned to the streets they would
rejoin their men and quickly forget their jail husbands and wives.
An important part of the family system was the marriages. Some of them
were extremely elaborate — with invitations, a formal ceremony, and some
third person acting as the "minister." The "bride" would prepare for the
occasion as if for a real wedding.
With all the marriages, the seeking of trysting places, the scheming which
went on by one woman to catch another, the conflicts and jealousies — with
all this — homosexuality emerged as one of the centers around which life in
the House of Detention revolved. Certainly, it was a way to counteract some
of the pain of jail life; but objectively, it served to perpetuate all the bad
things about the House of Detention. "The Gay Life" was all-consuming; it
prevented many of the women from developing their personal
dissatisfaction with the conditions around them into a political
dissatisfaction, because the homosexual fantasy life provided an easy and
attractive channel for escape.
One of the corridors on the fourth floor, where the psychiatric bloc was
located, was reserved for women with heavy heroin habits. When I caught
glimpses of them during my trips to the elevator, I was struck by their
physical deterioration. Their bodies were marred with leprous-like sores.
These were the abscesses caused by dirty needles. Others had needle tracks
all over their legs and arms and, because these veins had collapsed, they had
begun to inject the drug into the veins in their necks.
The most tragic sight of all was the very young addicts, many of whom
could have been no more than fourteen, despite the age they had given the
police. Most of them had absolutely no intention of staying off the drug
once they returned to the streets. To me, it was beyond comprehension that
they could witness the most sordid effects of heroin while they were in jail
and not be provoked to reconsider their own flirtations with the drug —
flirtations that frequently became full-scale addiction.

Sometimes women with very heavy habits were brought in and left to kick
alone in their cells. They would scream in agony all night long and not a
single officer would help them. One evening an emaciated young woman
was placed in the cell across from mine. By the time we were supposed to
lock in for the night, she was doubled over, her whole face distorted in
anguish. She needed medical help fast, but no doctor was forthcoming.
Sisters in my corridor began to tell stories of women who had been in
similar conditions and, left alone in their cells to kick, had died during the
night. We decided that we would refuse to lock in unless she received
medical attention immediately. Only after we took this stand did a doctor
come to examine her and take her to the hospital.
There were many other occasions when we were forced to intervene in
order to ensure medical help for one of our ill sisters. The most horrifying
case of all was that of a woman on our corridor who began to complain one
weekend about severe pains in her chest. On Monday morning at sick call,
she saw one of the elderly white doctors, who told her that her problem was
psychosomatic — the result of sitting around all day doing nothing. The
doctor's advice to her was to "get a job." (If you were awaiting trial, as this
sister was, you didn't even get the five or ten cents an hour that the
sentenced prisoners received.)
The sister's pains grew worse over the next days, and finally we decided
that we would have to issue a collective threat in order to force the jailers to
get her the medical attention she needed. We refused to lock in until a
competent doctor examined her. That day she didn't return to the cell; we
later discovered that they had found tumors in her breasts and had rushed
her to a hospital for tests and a possible mastectomy, if the tumors were
found to be malignant.
The negligence toward the prisoners' health was also reflected in the daily
routine of the jail. If pregnant women could not afford to buy a carton of
milk on the three days we went to commissary, the only way they could
supplement the three skimpy glasses of milk they received at mealtimes
would be through our scheming. After I began to have problems with my
eyes (a court injunction had allowed an outside doctor to examine me), a

special diet, including milk, was prescribed for me. On numerous
occasions, I smuggled my milk to a pregnant sister.
The first two weeks went by torturously slowly. I had the feeling that I had
been in jail for a very long time. However, as soon as the jail routine began
to inexorably impose itself, the days flowed imperceptibly into one another,
and there seemed to be little difference between three days and three weeks.
At six o'clock each morning, the dim lights went on and the gates were
unlocked for breakfast. Eight o'clock was the first lock-in of the day, and it
lasted as long as it took to count prisoners and silverware to make sure a
person or a spoon was not missing. Cleaning, doctor's rounds, mail time and
commissary on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then lunch and silver
count, followed by the 3 P.M. lock-in and count. Depending on the day of
the week, afternoons were for roof exercises, the library or, once in a while,
a movie. Dinner, silver count, visits, 8 P.M. lock-in and count and all lights
out at nine.
I was fortunate to have Margaret's almost daily visits. John came as often as
he could, and I received frequent visits from the lawyers working with
Margaret on the suits around the jail conditions. They were Haywood
Burns, the Director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and two
members of the organization, Harold Washington and Napoleon Williams.
We discussed the progress of the jail suit and the legal fight to prevent my
extradition. John and Margaret were prepared to appeal the New York
decision to return me to California all the way up through the appellate
courts to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Those who had family or friends eagerly awaited the moment, after dinner,
when the officer distributed the visit slips to the small crowd gathered
behind the bars at the end of each corridor. Evening visits never lasted
longer than twenty minutes; nevertheless they broke up the monotony of the
days.
Once my lawyers had pressured the jail bureaucracy to let me have the
regular evening visits — shortly after I was released from solitary — I had
visitors practically every night. Whenever my sister Fania, Franklin and
Kendra Alexander, Bettina Aptheker and other friends and comrades were

in town, they came in to see me. Exactly twenty minutes after the beginning
of a visit, I could expect to hear the loud announcement that time was up; it
usually took just about that long to get into a serious conversation.
I always looked forward to Charlene Mitchell's visits. She was a close
friend and member of the Political Committee (the leadership body) of the
Communist Party. In the 1968 Presidential elections, she was our Party's
candidate for President. Charlene had had a lot to do with my decision to
join the Party, and over the last years my friendship with her had taught me
a great deal about what it means to be a Communist. When the FBI pursuit
began, without a hint of hesitation, she had placed herself in jeopardy in
order to save my life. It was always frustrating to talk to her through the
faulty telephones, and I was always painfully aware of the glass and wall
which separated us. It would have meant so much to have simply been able
to embrace her — or even to squeeze her hand. One evening, I had an
exciting visit with Henry Winston, the chairman of the Communist Party.
Winnie, as our comrades affectionately called him, was born in Mississippi
and, being both Black and a Communist, he had been an important target of
the raging anti-communism of the forties and fifties. Close to ten years of
prison, during which a brain tumor remained untreated, had left him almost
totally blind. I had never seen him in person before his visit to the House of
D. From the other side of the clouded pane, he greeted me with a very
gentle voice, and I felt he could see me with far greater perceptiveness than
someone with perfect eyesight. He wanted to know about my health, the jail
food, and how I was being treated by the officers. He assured me that the
Party was totally committed to the fight for my freedom and that he,
personally, would do whatever was necessary to ensure victory.
I thought about my family all the time. Not a day passed when I did not
worry about how my mother, who was still in Birmingham, was standing up
to the whole ordeal. Despite my desire to see her, I told Margaret not to
encourage her to make the trip to New York. She is such a sensitive person
that I was afraid that she might not be able to bear the strain of seeing her
daughter behind bars in a filthy, mouse-ridden jail. I was very reluctant to
subject her to the frustration of a twenty-minute visit through telephones,
concrete and the tiny, dirty window.

Mother was determined to see me, regardless of the conditions. When she
told us she was coming to New York, Margaret worked for days to arrange
for a "special visit" — in the social worker's office. Finally, when Margaret
told the jailers that my mother had broken her foot and would find it
difficult to stand during the visit, they agreed to the special visit.
Experience had taught me to be skeptical about everything. I didn't really
believe that Mother would be allowed in the interior of the jail until the
moment she actually arrived. She came walking in on crutches that
morning, her foot still in a cast. When she put her arms around me, I could
feel the tension throughout her body. For her benefit, I tried to appear
especially cheerful. In an effort to conceal my thinness, I had worn the
largest of the four jail-issued dresses. Even under normal circumstances, she
gets upset when I lose a couple of pounds; during my fast I had lost fifteen
pounds. Though she tried to appear in high spirits, I could tell from the deep
furrows in her forehead that she was deeply disturbed. We talked about the
family — Daddy, who was still at home; Benny, whose wife, Sylvia, and
child I had not yet seen, and Fania, who was now a few months pregnant.
Although she did not say it, I felt that my father was taking the whole thing
rather hard, and I told her to tell him there was nothing to worry about — it
was just a matter of time. Whenever I said something as optimistic as this, I
am sure she must have been thinking about the gas chamber in California.
So I kept telling her that there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I would soon
be free — out there with her.
It was good that the New York Committee to Free Angela Davis had
organized several events in which they invited Mother to participate. I knew
it would hearten her to see that there were many people concerned about my
fate. Several of the sympathetic officers attended a reception in her honor.
This was particularly important, for she could see that even among those
who were supposed to be my jailers there were women who wanted to join
the mass movement against repression.
In addition to these officially sanctioned visits, I received numerous "street
visits." Though illegal, this was a well established custom among the
prisoners. Friends would simply shout up to the jail windows from the street
below. One evening after lock-in, several women from the Harlem Black

Women to Free Angela Davis gathered on Greenwich Avenue to inform me
about the activities they had planned on my behalf. I saw a policeman walk
over to one of them and obviously issue a warning; when she continued to
call up to me, he grabbed her and dragged her away.

Once I felt settled in the main population, my thoughts naturally turned
toward the possibility of collective political activity in jail. Many people are
unaware of the fact that jail and prison are two entirely different
institutions. People in prison have already been convicted. Jails are
primarily for pertrial confinement, holding places until prisoners are either
convicted or found innocent. More than half of the jail population have
never been convicted of anything, yet they languish in these cells. Because
the bail system is inherently biased in the favor of the relatively well-off,
jails are disproportionately inhabited by the poor, who cannot afford the fee.
The O.R. program — which allows one to be released without posting
bond, on one's own recognizance — is heavily tainted with racism. At least
ninety-five percent of the women in the House of D. were either Black or
Puerto Rican.
The biggest problem jail prisoners face is how to get out on bail. The
political issue, therefore, is how accused men and women can benefit
equally from the so-called presumption of innocence by being free until
proven guilty. I assumed that this was the issue around which we could
most effectively organize sisters in the House of D. — and, in fact, this is
what we later did.
Originally the jailers had insisted that I had been placed in solitary
confinement for my own protection — the women on the corridor would be
hostile toward me, they said, because of my Communist politics. It was all a
lie. The women were hospitable from the first moment, and they were
loving and protective. Nothing illustrated this more clearly than the
demonstration staged by the sixth-floor women in front of my solitary cell
and the hunger strike which began to spread throughout the jail in solidarity
with my action. Throughout my stay I received numerous written messages
of support from the sisters. (Any written communication between prisoners

is illegal; these notes are called "kites" because of the shape they are folded
in for easy concealment.)
On the seventh floor, only a few days had gone by when the sisters wanted
to talk about the movement — and this was on their own initiative, without
the least prodding from me. We talked about racism and how it is not just
the attitude that Black people are inferior. Racism, in the first place, is a
weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in — by
paying Black workers less for their work. We talked about the way racism
confuses white workers, who often forget that they are being exploited by a
boss and instead vent their frustrations on people of color. On the corridor
and in the recreation room, we had numerous discussions on the meaning of
communism; the sisters were especially interested in hearing about my
experiences in Cuba in 1969 — a trip which had proved to me what
socialism can do to eradicate racism.
One evening, after lock-up, a loud question broke the silence. It came from
a sister who was reading a book I had lent her.
"Angela, what does 'imperialism' mean?"
I called out, "The ruling class of one country conquers the people of another
in order to rob them of their land, their resources, and to exploit their labor."
Another voice shouted, "You mean treating people in other countries the
way Black people are treated here?"
This prompted an intense discussion that bounced through the cells, from
my corridor to the one across the hall and back again.
Although I had ten copies of Soledad Brother, George's letters from prison,
in my box in the library, not a single one was allowed on the
corridor. Some of the friendly officers, however, smuggled a number of
copies in from the outside. These became the most valuable pieces of
contraband in the jail. They were always in demand and were widely read.
When I wrote George of the enthusiastic reception of his book among the
sisters there, it gave him pleasure to know that they were learning to relate
to the movement through studying his individual political evolution. But

there was one question that disturbed him: how were the sisters responding
to the attitude toward Black women manifested in some of his early letters?
In the past he had seen Black women as often acting as a deterrent to the
involvement of Black men in the struggle. He had since discovered that this
generalization was wrong, and was deeply concerned that the other women
in the jail be informed of this.
Needless to say, there were reprisals for our activities. One sister was
especially hard hit. Harriet had been in the House of D. many times before
and knew her way through the crevices of this jail far better than many of
the officers. I had first met her during my stint in solitary. Her job in the
laundry room allowed her to travel throughout the jail, and she was the only
prisoner permitted to enter my cell. When she came, she always brought
something with her — when I told her my pencil would not stay sharp, she
brought me a contraband ballpoint pen.
Harriet had known Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur of the New York Panther 21
while they were in the House of D. She was intensely interested in
becoming a part of the movement for the liberation of her people. Later,
when I was moved to the seventh floor, she came each day on her laundry
missions and brought "kites" and news from the other floors.
As the weeks passed, the jailers began to grow wary of the solidarity
welding us all together, and security became visibly tighter. Harriet was
ordered to keep away from my cell and from the other women in that
corridor. They assigned another woman to bring the laundry to the floor.
Until this moment, Harriet had had relatively decent relationships with the
officers, even with the higher-ups. She had one of the most enviable jobs,
for it meant she could go anywhere in the eleven-floor jail without explicit
permission. After she was prohibited from being on our floor, she proudly
threw this "privilege" right back into the jailers' faces. She quit her job and
refused to talk, except with hostility, to the officers who were responsible
for the order. Many did not understand why Harriet took such a drastic way
out — and, considering the structures of imprisonment, this was
unequivocally drastic. She got the word to me that this incident involved
fundamental and principled issues, on which she would never accept a
compromise.

A real togetherness was developing. I was anxious to strengthen this sense
of community, and I knew it needed more than books and discussions to
thrive. In order to keep it alive, I invited the sisters to join me in exercising
in the corridors. Exercising was an indispensable requirement for my own
survival in jail. Often I could not fall asleep unless I exercised to the point
of exhaustion.
After a few days of doing calisthenics together, we added some simple
karate movements. One of the women who also knew a little karate helped
out with the instruction. It was not long before rumors were flying through
official jail circles that I was teaching karate to the women in preparation
for a confrontation with the jailers. They ordered it stopped, but we found a
way to do it anyhow. Once the calisthenic phase of the exercises was over, a
woman kept watch at the gate while we punched and kicked our way down
the length of the corridor.
As my stay in the House of Detention was drawing to a close, a number of
women's groups in New York began to organize a bail fund for the women
inside the House of Detention. There were women who spent months in jail
simply because they didn't have fifty dollars to make their bail. As this
work was being accomplished outside, there was organizing going on
within. The problem was to prevent the bail fund from becoming just
another service organization to provide bail for women inside, much the
same way as lawyers are provided by Legal Aid. We came up with an ideal
solution: the women who would receive funds from the organization outside
were to be elected collectively by the women in each corridor. When a
woman was elected to be a beneficiary, she would not only have her bail
paid, but would have responsibilities to the bail fund as well. Once out on
the streets, she would have to work with the fund, helping to raise money;
making whatever political contributions she could to the development of the
organization.

DECEMBER 21, 1970
On a cold Sunday afternoon a massive demonstration took place down on
Greenwich Avenue. It was spearheaded by the bail fund coalition and the

New York Committee to Free Angela Davis. So enthusiastic was the crowd
that we felt compelled to organize some kind of reciprocal display of
strength. We got together in our corridor, deciding on the slogans we would
shout and how to make them come out in unison — even though we were
going to be spread down the corridor in different cells, screaming from
different windows. I had never dreamed that such powerful feelings of pride
and confidence could develop among the sisters in this jail.
Chants thundered on the outside: "One, two, three, four, the House of D. has
got to go!" "Free our Sisters, Free Ourselves," and other political chants that
were popular at the time. After a while, we decided to try out our chants. It
was far easier for us to be heard through the windows by the people outside
than it was for us to be heard by ourselves, separated as we were by the
thick concrete walls dividing the cells. Although our slogans may not have
been transmitted in the most harmonious style, we managed to get our
message across: "Free the Soledad Brothers," "Free Erika," "Free Bobby,"
"Long Live Jonathan Jackson."
While the chants of "Free Angela" filled me with excitement, I was
concerned that an overabundance of such chants might set me apart from
the rest of my sisters. I shouted one by one the names of all the sisters on
the floor participating in the demonstration. "Free Vernell! Free Helen! Free
Amy! Free Joann! Free Laura! Free Minnie!" I was hoarse for the next
week.
As the demonstration moved into full swing, an officer unlocked the gate to
our corridor and shouted to us to stop all the noise. We refused. They sent a
captain to try to halt the demonstration. She approached me in my cell to
say there would be sanctions for all of us if we did not calm down. Our
exchange was heated. Within a matter of minutes, a confrontation had
brewed. Shouts began to come from across the hall — the sisters in the next
corridor had decided to join. There was nothing this captain could do to
make us acquiesce; every word she uttered kindled our combativeness. The
more militant we became, the less confident she became, and finally she left
the corridor in defeat.
As long as there were demonstrators outside, we continued our chants. Even
after they left, the floor was throbbing with excitement. We were proud of

the staunch position we had taken vis-a-vis the bureaucracy. In this
atmosphere of triumph, it was a cruel letdown for us to discover that the
Supreme Court in Washington had just denied our appeal, and that I would
soon be extradited to California. It was a Sunday; I assumed I would be
taken back to the West Coast on Monday or Tuesday.
That night, still hot with the ardor of the demonstration, locked up in the
darkness of their cells, the women staged a spontaneous demonstration of
support. "One, two, three, four. We won't let Angela go!" "Five, six, seven,
eight. We won't let them through the gate!" Shoes were banging on the cell
bars; chants grew louder. An officer tried meekly to calm them down but
had no success. A very vocal sister who was in one of the adolescent
corridors was told to keep it quiet, but when she refused and all the sisters
came vociferously to her aid, the officers hit her, knowing that all we could
do was scream. They dragged her away to 4a — the punitive isolation unit.
Frustrated by our inability to help her, we called out threats and beat even
more loudly on the bars of our cells.
Someone noticed a sympathetic-looking white couple on Greenwich
Avenue staring up in wonderment at the building, which was shaking with
the clamor of protests from our floor. We called down to them that a sister
had just been beaten and was probably being put through the third degree
down in the hole. We were bold that evening. We shouted out loud and clear
the names and ranks of the officers who had pulled her from her cell. We
asked the couple to call the underground press and as many Left
organizations as they could to let them know that we were expecting an
even more severe crackdown. (I later discovered that they had spent the
evening contacting everyone they felt could help us.)
A few hours passed and nothing unusual happened. The pace of our activity
gradually eased off until the floor was silent. As I was dozing off to sleep, I
was jolted into wakefulness by a bright light shining in my face. One of the
"friendly" officers was aiming a flashlight at me. My lawyer was
downstairs, she said. They were going to permit me to have a special visit
with him so that he could inform me about my rights with respect to the
forthcoming extradition. It was indeed strange to have an attorney's visit at
three in the morning, but on the other hand, John had been in Washington

all day for the Supreme Court extradition hearing. He had probably returned
late and now expected me to be extradited before the night was over.
As soon as the elevator came to a stop on the main floor, I realized that they
had just successfully played a confidence game on me. There were white
police-types in civilian clothes casually standing around in the area outside
the receiving room. The white assistant warden, dressed in her Sunday best,
was conferring with some of them. A deputy warden, who at times had tried
to wear a human mask, had been waiting for the elevator doors to open. She
appeared to be in charge of the operation.
She bluntly informed me that I should prepare for a strip search. I angrily
refused. Sarcastically, reminding them that they had told me that my lawyer
was waiting for me, I walked over to the bench where prisoners waited to
be called for visits and took a seat.
All around me was an acceleration of activity, which I pretended not to
notice. The deputy warden approached me once more, this time
accompanied by the woman second in command only to the warden. Again
she told me to prepare for the strip search. Again I refused. Whether I
agreed or not, she said, the search would take place, implying that if
necessary they would use force. The two then left the area, apparently to
confer about the situation with the police-types. They returned several
times, sometimes bringing an officer who had hitherto been relatively nice
to me. While they played the role of the stick, they wanted her to be the
carrot.
As this confrontation was growing more heated, two familiar officers
dressed in civilian clothes quietly crept into the room. When I saw them I
was puzzled. Of all the officers in the House of Detention, they had been
among the few for whom I had had a certain amount of respect. One was
the librarian; the other worked at the front desk, checking in the attorneys
when they came for visits.
For the moment, they were totally passive, bystanders as it were. Just as I
was about to ask them what they were doing in the jail at that time of night,
out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of two men in guard's
uniforms approaching me from behind. This was the first time I had seen

male guards in the House of D. My mind flashed back to what the sisters
had said about these "last resort" guards — the jail's riot squad — who were
always on call for situations where force was deemed necessary. Realizing
why they were there, I jumped up, took a battle stance and prepared to
defend myself. One of them grabbed my arm. I kicked him. When the other
man came to his aid, they both knocked me to the floor. By the time I could
get up, the deputy warden and some of her female helpers were in on the
action — as if two male prison guards weren't capable of subduing me.
At this moment, the two officers standing on the sidelines could no longer
bear their position of neutrality. They both threw themselves into the fight.
Their entrance into the battle was a shock — were they too willing to go to
bat for the enemy? But it was even more of a shock to discover that they
were not trying to subdue me but rather were beating the men who, by now,
were really roughing me up.
The fight turned into a free-for-all. No one really knew who was on who's
side. In all the confusion, both men managed to grab me, each one seizing
an arm. They bent each arm upward behind my back in a hold that was
impossible to break.
Bruised and breathless, there was nothing I could do to prevent them from
locking the handcuffs. I knew that my rights had been violated; they were
abducting me before I had even had the opportunity to learn the results of
the Supreme Court decision from my lawyer. But for the time being, there
was little I could do, except wait until I reestablished contact with my
comrades outside.
My hands bound behind me, I was shoved, protesting, into a side room.
Seeing that I was wearing the sleeveless cotton jail dress and canvas
sneakers without socks, the librarian warned me it was very cold outside. I
told her that my "court clothes" were at the booking desk.
The receptionist got my two civilian outfits: the navy-blue skirt and the
blouse I had been wearing the day of my arrest, and a pair of wool pants
and lightweight suede jacket. But I could not put them on because my hands
were locked behind my back. The two women helped me slide my legs into

the pants, which I wore under the dress, and wrapped the jacket around my
shoulders.
I tried to concentrate on the concrete. Was I heading for the airport or would
the extradition be carried out by train — or by car, as had been the case with
Bobby Seale some months ago? The uncertainty was nerve-rending.
With the receptionist on one side and the librarian on the other, I walked
slowly through the prisoners' gate onto the cold cobblestones of the
courtyard. My anger gave way to pangs of regret at having to leave behind
all my friends locked up in that filth. Vernell . . . Would they drop that
phony murder charge? Helen . . . Would she go home? Amy . . . so old, so
warm . . . What would happen to her? Pat . . . Would she write her book
exposing the House of D.? And the organizing for the bail fund . . . Would it
continue? Harriet . . . So committed to the struggle — would they continue
to try to break her will?
The police van was waiting in the courtyard, the same van they had used to
take me to court. Through the heavy grill on the windows, I could see
nothing in the darkness. But suddenly, as the van rolled through the
courtyard gates, I heard a thunderous burst of shouts of support. I could not
figure out how so many people had learned I was being taken away that
night. Later I found out they had come in response to the calls made by the
white couple on Greenwich Avenue.

Not a single light illuminated the gigantic courtyard of the Tombs. All I
could see was the outline of a collection of cars parked in the center, and the
shadows of human figures moving back and forth between the vehicles. The
atmosphere was reminiscent of postwar spy movies. A dozen white men
swarming around their unmarked police cars, nervously awaiting the end of
this transaction, this histrionic ceremony of repression unfolding under the
dim glow of flashlights.
New York removed its handcuffs. California produced theirs and locked
them around my wrists.

New York turned over documents. California aimed its flashlights on the
papers before accepting them with approval.
New York handed over my clothes and a gray denim bag of shoes.
California received them, as if by accepting my possessions, it was
asserting control over my life.
The librarian and the receptionist, who had accompanied me this far, stood
silently by. It was as if their individual identities were fading away. They
appeared disturbed by their powerlessness. "I hope things turn out all right,"
one of them said. In spite of herself, she sounded like someone who must
say something cheerful to a terminally ill patient.
The scene had a choreographed air about it. In the same silent rhythm, New
York moved toward the van and California trudged toward the extradition
vehicle. Something about the undisturbed perfection of this operation was
far more terrifying than the extradition itself. I had to do something,
anything, to disrupt their performance. Impulsively, I stopped short. Hands
automatically tightened around weapons in answer to my little gesture of
refusal.
"These handcuffs are too tight — and there's no reason why my hands need
to be locked behind my back. If you're thinking about getting me into this
car, you can think about changing these handcuffs."
At least I had smashed their rhythm of inevitability. At least I had taken
them by surprise, and with no one to give them cues, they were
momentarily at a loss.
Still startled, and as if he were following the orders of a superior, the cop in
charge instructed one of the others to unlock the cuffs and redo them with
my hands in front.
This caravan without beginning and without end was the epitome of the
insane violence of the state. It would speed through the city, then abruptly
stop. Anonymous policemen would jump out of cars, whisper to one
another, then some of the cars would head in one direction and others would

go in the opposite direction. When we reached a tunnel, the cars came to a
halt while the roadblock they were setting up for us was secured.
I had not realized how cold it was until I felt my body shivering and heard
my teeth chattering. The man to my right was holding my wool skirt and
blouse. Perhaps if I wrapped the skirt around my feet and used the blouse to
cover my hands, I might be warmer.
At first he didn't object to my request for the skirt, but while I was
awkwardly trying to wrap it around my feet with my manacled hands, he
lunged toward me as if he expected me to aim a gun at him. For a moment I
thought he had gone berserk. Only a madman could think that I might have
concealed a weapon in those flimsy clothes, which moreover had already
been searched by the FBI and the jailers at the House of D. Then it occurred
to me that anyone in his place would have done the same thing — it was the
madness of the institution he served that was driving him to hysterically
search the hem of my skirt and the seams of my blouse.
We had been driving so long I was beginning to wonder whether they were
planning to go the whole stretch across country this way. But when I
ventured a question about our destination, the man to my right, after a bit of
hesitation, said that it was McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. So in
addition to armed agents, police, the attorney general's offices of two states,
even the military had been brought in.
We drove onto the base and then shot diagonally across an airfield
submerged in the darkness of the early winter morning. The plane was not
yet visible, only the light shining through its windows. Did they expect an
airborne battle? Is that why they called on the Air Force? It would hardly
have surprised me if someone told me fighter planes were going to escort
me to California.
As we got closer to the aircraft, I saw little clusters of people lined up in a
U-formation around the stairway descending from the tail of the old freight
plane. Agents with weapons in their hands. Shot guns. Rifles. Machine
guns.

What if I tripped while I was walking toward the plane? Their attack
reflexes would be set off. And my body would be riddled with bullets.
Since this operation was being conducted in secrecy, away from the eyes of
the press, there would be no one to contradict them if they said I was trying
to escape.
With slow determination, despite my locked wrists, I managed a smooth
descent from the automobile. Moving toward the plane, each step was full
of effort. The gun barrels were tracing my path.
Flanked by plainclothes and uniformed men, two women were stationed at
the top of the movable stairs. One was short and thin, with drab brown hair.
Her keen-featured pale face betrayed the uncertainty of the novice. The
older woman was tall and heavy-featured. Her hair had the look of a recent
trip to the beauty parlor. I could tell immediately that she was strongly
committed to her job; a policewoman par excellence. She seemed to enjoy
being in charge of me, surrounded by those armed men who, in the event of
an incident, would have to take instructions from her.
Throughout the trip, she was the one who most conspicuously imposed
herself on me. Each time I shifted position, even slightly, she got up from
her seat to inspect the small area surrounding me. And when I had to use
the toilet, she insisted on stuffing herself inside the tiny booth. As she
intently watched me urinate, I couldn't resist asking, "Do you think I'm
going to flush myself down the toilet?"
She seemed a fitting representative of the government of California. That
state held the dubious distinction of being one of the most advanced in the
country when it came to quelling resistance. California could already claim
more than its share of victims. I could trace the history of my political
involvement there by the number of funerals I had attended.
During this interminable flight I wondered whether I too would become one
of its victims. My confidence in the movement was invaded by the terrible
specter of San Quentin, that fortress of horrors hanging over the San
Francisco Bay as though it were clinging to the fringes of civilization. I
thought about Aaron Henry, the last victim to be strangled by gas in San
Quentin's death chamber. On the date of his execution, his mother begged

for an audience with the governor. Ronald Reagan felt no compassion for
her. He never even bothered to acknowledge her presence. Sitting on that
plane, I thought of her and every Black mother like her. It took twelve hours
to fly from one end of the country to the other. Twelve hours for my
thoughts to roam from one end of my life to the other. I thought of my
family. What would happen to my mother, my father, Reggie, Benny,
Fania? It had been so long since the days when we were all together — at
home, secure, sheltered.
But had there ever really been such a time? Hadn't the people on that
airplane always been there, holding us with hatred in their eyes, preying
upon our lives?

PART TWO: Rocks
I have a home in that rock, don't you see? . . .

T

he big white house on top of the hill was not far from our old
neighborhood, but the distance could not be measured in blocks. The
government housing project on Eighth Avenue where we lived before was a
crowded street of little red brick structures — no one of which was different
from the other. Only rarely did the cement surrounding these brick huts
break open and show patches of green. Without space or earth, nothing
could be planted to bear fruit or blossoms. But friends were there — and
friendliness.
In 1948 we moved out of the projects in Birmingham, Alabama, to the large
wooden house on Center Street. My parents still live there. Because of its
steeples and gables and peeling paint, the house was said to be haunted.
There were wild woods in back with fig trees, blackberry patches and great
wild cherry trees.
On one side of the house was a huge Cigar tree. There was space here and
no cement. The street itself was a strip of orange-red Alabama clay. It was
the most conspicuous house in the neighborhood — not only because of its
curious architecture but because, for blocks around, it was the only house
not teeming inside with white hostility. We were the first black family to
move into that area, and the white people believed that we were in the
vanguard of a mass invasion.
At the age of four I was aware that the people across the street were
different — without yet being able to trace their alien nature to the color of
their skin. What made them different from our neighbors in the projects was
the frown on their faces, the way they stood a hundred feet away and glared
at us, their refusal to speak when we said "Good afternoon." An elderly
couple across the street, the Montees, sat on their porch all the time, their
eyes heavy with belligerence. Almost immediately after we moved there the

white people got together and decided on a border line between them and
us. Center Street became the line of demarcation. Provided that we stayed
on "our" side of the line (the east side) they let it be known we would be left
in peace. If we ever crossed over to their side, war would be declared. Guns
were hidden in our house and vigilance was constant.
Fifty or so yards from this hatred, we went about our daily lives. My
mother, on leave from her teaching job, took care of my younger brother
Benny, while waiting to give birth to another child, my sister Fania. My
father drove his old orange van to the service station each morning after
dropping me off at nursery school. It was next door to the Children's Home
Hospital — an old wooden building where I was born and where, at two, I
had my tonsils removed. I was fascinated by the people dressed in white
and tried to spend more time at the hospital than at the nursery. I had made
up my mind that I was going to be a doctor — a children's doctor.
Shortly after we moved to the hill, white people began moving out of the
neighborhood and Black families were moving in, buying old houses and
building new ones. A Black minister and his wife, the Deyaberts, crossed
into white territory, buying the house right next to the Montees, the people
with the hateful eyes.
It was evening in the spring of 1949. I was in the bathroom washing my
white shoelaces for Sunday School the next morning when an explosion a
hundred times louder than the loudest, most frightening thunderclap I had
ever heard shook our house. Medicine bottles fell off the shelves, shattering
all around me. The floor seemed to slip away from my feet as I raced into
the kitchen and my frightened mother's arms.
Crowds of angry Black people came up the hill and stood on "our" side,
staring at the bombed-out ruins of the Deyaberts' house. Far into the night
they spoke of death, of white hatred, death, white people, and more death.
But of their own fear they said nothing. Apparently it did not exist, for
Black families continued to move in. The bombings were such a constant
response that soon our neighborhood became known as Dynamite Hill.
The more steeped in violence our environment became, the more
determined my father and mother were that I, the first-born, learn that the

battle of white against Black was not written into the nature of things. On
the contrary, my mother always said, love had been ordained by God. White
people's hatred of us was neither natural nor eternal. She knew that
whenever I answered the telephone and called to her, "Mommy, a white
lady wants to talk to you," I was doing more than describing the curious
drawl. Every time I said "white lady" or "white man" anger clung to my
words. My mother tried to erase the anger with reasonableness. Her
experiences had included contacts with white people seriously committed to
improving race relations. Though she had grown up in rural Alabama, she
had become involved, as a college student, in anti-racist movements. She
had worked to free the Scottsboro Boys and there had been whites — some
of them Communists — in that struggle. Through her own political work,
she had learned that it was possible for white people to walk out of their
skin and respond with the integrity of human beings. She tried hard to make
her little girl — so full of hatred and confusion — see white people not so
much as what they were as in terms of their potential. She did not want me
to think of the guns hidden in drawers or the weeping black woman who
had come screaming to our door for help, but of a future world of harmony
and equality. I didn't know what she was talking about.
When Black families had moved up on the hill in sufficient numbers for me
to have a group of friends, we developed our own means of defending our
egos. Our weapon was the word. We would gather on my front lawn, wait
for a car of white people to pass by and shout the worst epithets for white
people we knew: Cracker. Redneck. Then we would laugh hysterically at
the startled expressions on their faces. I hid this pastime from my parents.
They could not know how important it was for me, and for all of us who
had just discovered racism, to find ways of maintaining our dignity.

From the time we were young, we children would go to the old family farm
in Marengo County. Our paternal grandmother and my Uncle Henry's
family lived on the same land and in an ancient, unpainted weatherbeaten
cabin similar to the one in which my father and all his sisters and brothers
had been born. A visit to the country was like a journey backward into
history; it was a return to our origins.

If there had been a mansion nearby, their cabin could have easily been the
slave quarters of a century ago. The little house had two small bedrooms, a
kitchen in the back and a common room where we children slept on pallets
spread out on the floor. Instead of electricity, there were kerosene lanterns
for the few hours of darkness before we went to bed. Instead of plumbing,
there was a well outside where we drew water to drink and to heat over an
open fire in the yard for our weekly baths in huge metal tubs. The outhouse
frightened me when I was very young, so I urinated in a white enamel pot
and would go into the brush to have a bowel movement rather than enter the
putrid-smelling little house with the hole in the wooden plank where you
could look down and see all the excrement floating around.
The family ate well; I did not realize then that this was probably one of the
few pleasures that was available in a life which was work from sunup to
sundown, when you were so exhausted that you could only think about
recuperating for the next day's work. As a child on the farm, I did not
distinguish work from play because the work there was novel to me and
because I was not forced to do it all the time. When I fed the chickens, I
would laugh at the way they all raced for the feed and gulped it down.
When I gathered the eggs and fed the slop to the hogs, milked the cows and
led the workhorses to the watering trough, I was enjoying myself.
Going to the country, to the green open spaces of the cotton and tobacco
fields, was going to my own vision of paradise. I loved to chase the
chickens barefoot, ride the work horses bareback, help take the few cows to
pasture in the early hours of the morning. The only amusement available
that was totally unrelated to the work of the farm was the refreshing swims
in the nearby creek — "the crick," we called it — and the exciting trips into
the swamps to explore this wonderful world inhabited by bizarre, crawling,
slimy creatures.
Every Sunday after returning from the little wooden church a few miles
down the road, there would be fried chicken and biscuits baked in the wood
stove and spread with home-churned butter, greens and sweet potatoes from
the fields, and fresh sweet milk from the cows in the barn.
Around the time I was twelve years old, my grandmother died. She had
stayed with us in Birmingham for a while but had since moved to California

to take turns living with my father's sisters and brothers who had trekked
out to the West Coast in search of the mythical opportunities open to Black
people there. Her body was brought back to Marengo County, Alabama, to
be consecrated and buried in her little hometown of Linden. It was a
tremendous blow to me, for she had always been a symbol of strength, of
age, wisdom and suffering.
We had learned from her what slavery had been like. She was born only a
few years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and her parents had been
slaves themselves. She did not want us to forget that. When we were taught
about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad in school, it was my
grandmother's image that always came to mind.
Not yet having accepted the finality of death, I still had a nebulous notion of
an afterlife. Therefore amid all the desperate crying and shouting at the
funeral, there were visions in my head of my grandmother going to join
Harriet Tubman, where she would look down peacefully upon the
happenings in this world. Wasn't she being lowered into the same soil where
our ancestors had fought so passionately for freedom?
After her burial the old country lands took on for me an ineffable, aweinspiring dimension: they became the stage on which the history of my
people had been acted out. And my grandmother, in death, became more
heroic. I felt a strange kind of unbreakable bond, vaguely religious, with her
in that new world she had entered.

The summer before I went to school, I spent several months with Margaret
Burnham's family in New York. Compared to Birmingham, New York was
Camelot. I spent a rapt summer visiting zoos, parks, beaches, playing with
Margaret, her older sister Claudia, and their friends, who were Black,
Puerto Rican and white. With my Aunt Elizabeth, I rode buses and sat in the
seat right behind the driver.
That summer in New York made me more more keenly sensitive to the
segregation I had to face at home. Back home in Birmingham, on my first
bus ride with my teen-aged cousin Snookie, I broke away from her and

raced for my favorite place, directly behind the driver. At first, she tried to
coax me out of the seat by cheerfully urging me to come with her to a seat
in the back. But I knew where I wanted to sit. When she insisted I had to get
up, I wanted to know why. She didn't know how to explain it. I imagine the
whites were amused at her dilemma, and the Black people were perhaps just
a little embarrassed about their own acquiescence. My cousin was
distraught; she was the center of attention and had no notion of what to do.
In desperation she whispered in my ear that there was a toilet in the back
and if we didn't hurry she might have an accident. When we reached the
back and I saw there was no toilet, I was angry not only because I had been
tricked and lost my seat, but because I didn't know who or what to blame.
Near my father's service station downtown was a movie house called The
Alabama. It reminded me of the ones in New York. Day and night the front
of the building glittered with bright neon lights. A luxurious red carpet
extended all the way to the sidewalk. On Saturdays and Sundays, the
marquee always bore the titles of the latest children's movies. When we
passed, blond-haired children with their mean-looking mothers were always
crowded around the ticket booth. We weren't allowed in The Alabama —
our theaters were the Carver and the Eighth Avenue, and the best we could
expect in their roach-infested auditoriums was reruns of Tarzan. "If only we
lived in New York . . ." I constantly thought. When we drove by the
amusement park at the Birmingham Fairgrounds, where only white children
were allowed, I thought about the fun we had at Coney Island in New York.
Downtown at home, if we were hungry, we had to wait until we retreated
back into a Black neighborhood, because the restaurants and food stands
were reserved for whites only. In New York, we could buy a hot dog
anywhere. In Birmingham, if we needed to go to the toilet or wanted a drink
of water, we had to seek out a sign bearing the inscription "Colored." Most
Southern Black children of my generation learned how to read the words
"Colored" and "White" long before they learned "Look, Dick, look."
I had come to look upon New York as a fusion of the two universes, a place
where Black people were relatively free of the restraints of Southern
racism. Yet during subsequent visits, several incidents sullied this image of
racial harmony. Between the ages of six and ten, I spent a part of most
summers in the city. My mother was working toward her master's degree in

education, attending New York University during the summers. She always
took her children along. In my mother's circle of friends, there was a couple
whose futile efforts to find a place to live had brought them and their
friends to despair. After listening to vague conversations on the subject, I
managed to pry out of the adults the reason for their difficulty: she was
Black and he was white.
Another situation in New York was in even sharper contradiction to the
myth of Northern social harmony and justice. When I was around eight, the
McCarthy period had reached a peak. Among the Communists forced
underground was James Jackson, whom my parents knew from the time he
and his family had lived in Birmingham. I did not really understand what
was going on at the time; I only knew that the police were looking for my
friend Harriet's father. Whenever I was with the Jackson children, they
would point out the men following them who were always no more than
half a block away. They were stern-looking white men dressed in suits, no
matter how hot the weather got. They even started following our family,
afterward questioning whomever we had visited during the day.
Why were they looking for my friend's father? He had done nothing wrong;
he had committed no crime — but he was Black, and he was a Communist.
Because I was too young to know what a Communist was, the meaning of
the McCarthy witch hunts escaped me. As a result, I understood only what
my eyes saw: evil white men out to get an innocent Black man. And this
was happening not in the South, but in New York, the paragon of racial
concord.
Like New York, California was thought to be far more advanced than the
South. During my childhood, I heard numerous stories about the golden
opportunities available to Black people on the West Coast. Great westward
pilgrimages were still being made by the poor and the jobless. One of my
father's brothers and two of his sisters had joined the Black emigration to
the West. We occasionally visited them in Los Angeles.
Some of the relatives had created comfortable circumstances for themselves
— one of my aunts who had gone into real estate was even buying property
in the hills of Hollywood. But another side of the family was in such
difficult straits they were living off welfare. It depressed me to visit my

cousins and discover that they did not have enough food in the house for a
single decent meal — and that six or seven of them were living in a onebedroom apartment. I recall their asking my father repeatedly if he would
not give them some money so they could at least put some food in the
refrigerator.

My childhood friends and I were bound to develop ambivalent attitudes
toward the white world. On the one hand there was our instinctive aversion
toward those who prevented us from realizing our grandest as well as our
most trivial wishes. On the other, there was the equally instinctive jealousy
which came from knowing that they had access to all the pleasurable things
we wanted. Growing up, I could not help feeling a certain envy. And yet I
have a very vivid recollection of deciding, very early, that I would never —
and I was categorical about this — never harbor or express the desire to be
white. This promise that I made to myself did nothing, however, to drive
away the wishdreams that filled my head whenever my desires collided
with a taboo. So, in order that my daydreams not contradict my principles, I
constructed a fantasy in which I would slip on a white face and go
unceremoniously into the theater or amusement park or wherever I wanted
to go. After thoroughly enjoying the activity, I would make a dramatic,
grandstand appearance before the white racists and with a sweeping gesture,
rip off the white face, laugh wildly and call them all fools.
Years later, when I was in my teens, I recalled this childish daydream and
decided, in a way, to act it out. My sister Fania and I were walking
downtown in Birmingham when I spontaneously proposed a plan to her: We
would pretend to be foreigners and, speaking French to each other, we
would walk into the shoe store on 19th Street and ask, with a thick accent,
to see a pair of shoes. At the sight of two young Black women speaking a
foreign language, the clerks in the store raced to help us. Their delight with
the exotic was enough to completely, if temporarily, dispel their normal
disdain for Black people.
Therefore, Fania and I were not led to the back of the store where the one
Black clerk would normally have waited on us out of the field of vision of
the "respectable" white customers. We were invited to take seats in the very

front of this Jim Crow shop. I pretended to know no English at all and
Fania's broken English was extremely difficult to make out. The clerks
strained to understand which shoes we wanted to try on.
Enthralled by the idea of talking to foreigners — even if they did happen to
be Black — but frustrated about the communication failure, the clerks sent
for the manager. The manager's posture was identical. With a giant smile he
came in from his behind-the-scenes office saying, "Now, what can I do for
you pretty young ladies?" But before he let my sister describe the shoes we
were looking for, he asked us about our background — where were we
from, what were we doing in the States and what on earth had brought us to
a place like Birmingham, Alabama? "It's very seldom that we get to meet
people like you, you know." With my sister's less than elementary
knowledge of English, it required a great effort for her to relate our
improvised story. After repeated attempts, however, the manager finally
understood that we came from Martinique and were in Birmingham as part
of a tour of the United States.
Each time this man finally understood something, his eyes lit up, his mouth
opened in a broad "Oh!" He was utterly fascinated when she turned to me
and translated his words. The white people in the store were at first
confused when they saw two Black people sitting in the "whites only"
section, but when they heard our accents and conversations in French, they
too seemed to be pleased and excited by seeing Black people from so far
away they could not possibly be a threat.
Eventually I signaled to Fania that it was time to wind up the game. We
looked at him: his foolish face and obsequious grin one eye-blink away
from the scorn he would have registered as automatically as a trained
hamster had he known we were local residents. We burst out laughing. He
started to laugh with us, hesitantly, the way people laugh when they suspect
themselves to be the butt of the joke.
"Is something funny?" he whispered.
Suddenly I knew English, and told him that he was what was so funny. "All
Black people have to do is pretend they come from another country, and

you treat us like dignitaries." My sister and I got up, still laughing, and left
the store.
I had followed almost to the t the scenario of my childhood daydream.

In September 1949, Fania had just turned one, and my brother Benny was
about to turn four. Having spent three years playing the same games in
nursery school and visiting the hospital next door, I was ready for
something different and had pleaded to go early to elementary school. On
the Monday after Labor Day, wearing my stiff new red plaid dress, I
jumped into my father's truck, eager to begin my first day at "big" school.
The road to school took us down Eleventh Court across the overpass above
the railroad tracks, through the street dividing the Jewish Cemetery in half
and three blocks up the last hill. Carrie A. Tuggle School was a cluster of
old wooden frame houses, so dilapidated that they would have been
instantly condemned had they not been located in a Black neighborhood.
One would have thought that this was merely a shoddy collection of houses
built on the side of a grassless hill if it had not been for the children milling
around or the fenced-in grave out front, bearing a sign indicating that Carrie
A. Tuggle, founder of the school, was buried there.
Some of the houses were a motley whitewashed color. Others were covered
with ugly brownish-black asphalt siding. That they were spread throughout
an area of about three square blocks seemed to be proof of the way the
white bureaucracy had gone about establishing a "school" for Black
children. Evidently, they had selected a group of rundown houses and, after
evicting the inhabitants, had declared them to be the school. These houses
stood all along a steep incline; at the bottom of the hill, there was a large
bowl-shaped formation in the earth, covered with the red clay that is
peculiar to Alabama. This empty bowl had been designated the playground. Houses similar to the school buildings were located around the
other sides of the bowl, houses whose outsides and insides were falling to
pieces.

My mother, a primary school teacher herself, had already taught me how to
read, write and do simple arithmetic. The things I learned in the first grade
were far more fundamental than school learning. I learned that just because
one is hungry, one does not have the right to a good meal; or when one is
cold, to warm clothing, or when one is sick, to medical care. Many of the
children could not even afford to buy a bag of potato chips for lunch. It was
agonizing for me to see some of my closest friends waiting outside the
lunchroom silently watching the other children eating.
For a long time, I thought about those who ate and those who watched.
Finally I decided to do something about it. Knowing that my father returned
from his service station each evening with a bag of coins, which he left
overnight in a kitchen cabinet, one night I stayed awake until the whole
house was sleeping.
Then, trying to overcome my deep fear of the dark, I slipped into the
kitchen and stole some of the coins. The next day I gave the money to my
hungry friends. Their hunger pangs were more compelling than my pangs
of conscience. I would just have to suffer the knowledge that I had stolen
my father's money. My feelings of guilt were further appeased by reminding
myself that my mother was always taking things to children in her class.
She took our clothes and shoes — sometimes even before we had outgrown
them — and gave them to those who needed them. Like my mother, what I
did, I did quietly, without any fanfare. It seemed to me that if there were
hungry children, something was wrong and if I did nothing about it, I would
be wrong too.
This was my first introduction to class differences among my own people.
We were the not-so-poor. Until my experiences at school, I believed that
everyone else lived the way we did. We always had three good meals a day.
I had summer clothes and winter clothes, everyday dresses and a few
"Sunday" dresses. When holes began to wear through the soles of my shoes,
although I may have worn them with pasteboard for a short time, we
eventually went downtown to select a new pair.
The family income was earned by both my mother and father. Before I was
born, my father had taken advantage of his hard-earned college degree,
from St. Augustine's in Raleigh, North Carolina, to secure a position

teaching history at Parker High School. But life was especially difficult
during those years; his salary was as close to nothing as money could be. So
with his meager savings he began to buy a service station in the Black
section of downtown Birmingham.
My mother who, like my father, came from a very humble background, also
worked her way through college and got a job teaching in the Birmingham
elementary school system. The combined salaries were nothing to boast
about, yet enough to survive on, and much more than was earned by the
typical Southern Black family. They had managed to save enough to buy
the old house on the hill, but they had to rent out the upstairs for years to
make the mortgage payments. Until I went to school I did not know that this
was a stunning accomplishment.
The prevailing myth then as now is that poverty is a punishment for
idleness and indolence. If you had nothing to show for yourself, it meant
that you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew that my mother and father had
worked hard — my father told us stories of walking ten miles to school
each day, and my mother had her collection of anecdotes about the difficult
life she had led as a child in the little town of Sylacauga. But I also knew
that they had had breaks.
My preoccupation with the poverty and wretchedness I saw around me
would not have been so deep if I had not been able to contrast it with the
relative affluence of the white world. Tuggle was all the shabbier when we
compared it to the white school nearby. From the top of the hill we could
see an elementary school for white children. Solidly built of red brick, the
building was surrounded by a deep-green lawn. In our school, we depended
on potbellied coal stoves in winter, and when it rained outside, it rained
inside. By the time a new building was constructed to replace the brokendown old one, I was too old to spend more than a year or so in its
classrooms, which were reserved for the lower grades.
There were never enough textbooks to go around, and the ones that were
available were old and torn, often with the most important pages missing.
There was no gym for sports periods — only the "bowl." On rainy days
when the bowl's red clay was a muddy mess, we were cooped up
somewhere in one of the shacks. Tuggle was administered and controlled as

a section of the "Birmingham Negro Schools" by an all-white Board of
Education. Only on special occasions did we see their representatives face
to face — during inspections or when they were showing off their "Negro
schools" to some visitor from out of town. Insofar as the day-to-day
activities were concerned, it was Black people who ran the school.
Perhaps it was precisely these conditions that gave us a strong positive
identification with our people and our history. We learned from some of our
teachers all the traditional ingredients of "Negro History." From the first
grade on, we all sang the "Negro National Anthem" by James Weldon
Johnson when assemblies were convened — either along with or sometimes
instead of "The Star Spangled Banner" or "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." I
recall being very impressed with the difference between the official
anthems, which insisted that freedom was a fact for everybody in the
country, and the "Negro National Anthem," whose words were of
resistance. And although my singing voice was nothing I wanted to call
attention to, I always sang the last phrases full blast: "Facing the rising sun,
till a new day is born, let us march on till victory is won!"
As we learned about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham
Lincoln, we also became acquainted with Black historical figures. Granted,
the Board of Education would not permit the teachers to reveal to us the
exploits of Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey. But we were introduced to
Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman.
One of the most important events each year at Tuggle was Negro History
Week. Special events were planned for assembly, and in all grades each
child would be responsible for a project about a Black historical or
contemporary figure. Throughout those years, I learned something about
every Black person "respectable" enough to be allotted a place in the history
books — or, as far as contemporary people were concerned, who made their
way into "Who's Who in Negro America" or Ebony magazine. The
weekend before Negro History Week each year, I was always hard at work
— creating my poster, calling on the assistance of my parents, clipping
pictures, writing captions and descriptions.
Without a doubt, the children who attended the de jure segregated schools
of the South had an advantage over those who attended the de facto

segregated schools of the North. During my summer trips to New York, I
found that many of the Black children there had never heard of Frederick
Douglass or Harriet Tubman. At Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary School,
Black identity was thrust upon us by the circumstances of oppression. We
had been pushed into a totally Black universe; we were compelled to look
to ourselves for spiritual nourishment. Yet while there were those clearly
supportive aspects of the Black Southern school, it should not be idealized.
As I look back, I recall the pervasive ambivalence at school, an
ambivalence which I confronted in virtually every classroom, and every
school-related event. On the one hand, there was a strong tendency
affirming our identity as Black people that ran through all the school
activities. But on the other hand, many teachers tended to inculcate in us the
official, racist explanation for our misery. And they encouraged an
individualistic, competitive way out of this torment. We were told that the
ultimate purpose of our education was to provide us with the skills and
knowledge to lift ourselves singly and separately out of the muck and slime
of poverty by "our own bootstraps." This child would become a doctor, this
one a lawyer; there would be the teachers, the engineers, the contractors, the
accountants, the businessmen — and if you struggled extraordinarily hard,
you might be able to approach the achievements of A. G. Gaston, our local
Black millionaire.
This Booker T. Washington syndrome permeated every aspect of the
education I received in Birmingham. Work hard and you will be rewarded.
A corollary of this principle was that the road would be harder and rockier
for Black people than for their white counterparts. Our teachers warned us
that we would have to steel ourselves for hard labor and more hard labor,
sacrifices and more sacrifices. Only this would prove that we were serious
about overcoming all the obstacles before us. It often struck me they were
speaking of these obstacles as if they would always be there, part of the
natural order of things, rather than the product of a system of racism, which
we could eventually overturn.
I continued to have my doubts about this "work and ye shall be rewarded"
notion. But, I admit, my reaction was not exactly straightforward. On the
one hand, I did not entirely believe it. It didn't make sense to me that all
those who had not "made it" were suffering for their lack of desire and the

defectiveness of their will to achieve a better life for themselves. If this
were true, then, great numbers of our people — perhaps the majority — had
really been lazy and shiftless, as white people were always saying.
But on the other hand, it seemed that I was modeling my own aspirations
after precisely that "work and be rewarded" principle. I had made up my
mind that I was going to prove to the world that I was just as good, just as
intelligent, just as capable of achieving as any white person. At that time —
and until my high school years in New York — I wanted to become a
pediatrician. Never once did I doubt that I would be able to execute my
plans — after elementary school, high school, then college and medical
school. But I had a definite advantage: my parents would see to it that I
attended college, and would help me survive until I could make it on my
own. This was not something that could be said for the vast majority of my
schoolmates.
The work-and-be-rewarded syndrome was not the only thing which seemed
to fly in the face of the positive sense of ourselves. We knew, for example,
that whenever the white folks visited the school we were expected to "be on
our P's and Q's," as our teachers put it. I could not understand why we had
to behave better for them than we behaved for ourselves, unless we really
did think they were superior. The visitors from the Board of Education
always came in groups — groups of three or four white men who acted like
they owned the place. Overseers. Sometimes if the leader of the group
wanted to flaunt his authority he looked us over like a herd of cattle and
said to the teacher, "Susie, this is a nice class you have here." We all knew
that when a white person called a Black adult by his or her first name it was
a euphemism for "Nigger, stay in your place." When this white assault was
staged, I tried to decipher the emotions on the teacher's face: acquiesence,
obsequiousness, defiance, or the pain of realizing that if she did fight back,
she would surely lose her job.
Once a Black teacher did fight back. When the white men called him
"Jesse" in front of his class, he replied in a deep but cold voice, "In case you
have forgotten, my name is Mr. Champion." He knew, as the words left his
lips, that he had just given up his job. Jesse Champion was a personal friend
of my parents, and I was appalled by the silence that reigned among the

Black community following his act. It probably stemmed from a collective
sense of guilt that his defiance was the exception and not the norm.
Nothing in the world made me angrier than inaction, than silence. The
refusal or inability to do something, say something when a thing needed
doing or saying, was unbearable. The watchers, the head shakers, the back
turners made my skin prickle. I remember once when I was seven or eight, I
went along with my friend Annie Laurie and her family on a trip to the
country. At the house we visited, a dog was running around in the yard.
Soon another dog appeared. Without any warning the two animals were
tearing at each other's throats. Saliva was flying and blood gushed from the
wounds. Everyone was just standing, looking, doing nothing. It seemed we
would stand there all day watching the hot Alabama sun beat down on the
stupid, pointless fight of two dogs gnawing out each other's guts and eyes. I
couldn't stand it any longer; I rushed in and tried to pull the dogs apart. It
wasn't until after the screaming adults had dragged me away that I thought
about the danger. But then it didn't matter; the fight had been stopped.
The impulse I felt then was with me at other fights. Fights not between
animals but between people, but equally futile and meaningless. All through
school there were absurd battles — some brief, but many sustained and
deadly. I frequently could not keep from stepping in.
The children fought over nothing — over being bumped, over having toes
stepped on, over being called a name, over being the target of real or
imagined gossip. They fought over everything — split shoes, and cement
yards, thin coats and mealless days. They fought the meanness of
Birmingham while they sliced the air with knives and punched Black faces
because they could not reach white ones.
It hurt me. The fight in which my girl friend Olivia got stabbed with a knife.
It hurt to see another friend, Chaney — furious when a teacher criticized
her in front of the class — stand up, grab the nearest chair and fly into the
teacher with it. The whole class turned into one great melee, some assisting
Chaney, others trying to rescue the teacher, and the rest of us trying to break
up the skirmish.

It hurt to see us folding in on ourselves, using ourselves as whipping posts
because we did not yet know how to struggle against the real cause of our
misery.

Time did not cool the anger of the white people who still lived on the hill.
They refused to adapt their lives to our presence. Every so often a
courageous Black family moved or built on the white side of Center Street,
and the simmering resentment erupted in explosions and fires. On a few
such occasions, Police Chief Bull Conner would announce on the radio that
a "nigger family" had moved in on the white side of the street. His
prediction "There will be bloodshed tonight" would be followed by a
bombing. So common were the bombings on Dynamite Hill that the horror
of them diminished.
On our side, old houses abandoned by their white inhabitants were
gradually bought up, and the woods where we picked blackberries were
giving way to new brick houses. By the time I was eight or nine, we had a
whole neighborhood of Black people. When the weather was warm, all the
children came out after dark to play hide and go seek. There were many
hiding places within our boundaries, which were not less than one or two
square blocks. The night made the game more exciting, and we could
pretend we were outsmarting the white folks.
Sometimes we actually dared to penetrate their turf. "I dare you to go up on
the Montees' porch," one of us would say. Whoever took him up would
leave us on our side of the street as he hesitantly crossed over into enemy
territory, tiptoed up the Montees' cement steps, touched the wooden porch
with one shoe as if he were testing a hot stove, then raced back to us. When
it was my turn, I could virtually hear the bombs going off as I ran up the
steps and touched the Montee porch for the first time in my life. When this
game began to lose its aura of danger, we made it more challenging. Instead
of just touching the porch, we had to run to the door, ring the bell and hide
in the bushes around their house, while the old woman or old man came
out, trying to figure out what was going on. When they finally caught on to
our game, even though they could seldom find us, they stood on the porch
screaming, "You little niggers better leave us alone!"

In the meantime my playmates and school friends were learning how to call
each other "nigger," or what, unfortunately, was just as bad in those days,
"black" or "African," both of which were considered synonymous with
"savage." My mother never allowed anyone to say the word "nigger" in the
house. (For that matter, no "bad words" — "shit," "damn," not even "hell"
could be uttered in her presence.) If we wanted to describe an argument we
had had with someone, we had to say, "Bill called me that bad word that
starts with an n." Eventually, my mouth simply refused to pronounce those
words for me, regardless of how hard I might want to say them.
If, in the course of an argument with one of my friends, I was called
"nigger" or "black," it didn't bother me nearly so much as when somebody
said, "Just because you're bright and got good hair, you think you can act
like you're white." It was a typical charge laid against light-skinned
children.
Sometimes I used to secretly resent my parents for giving me light skin
instead of dark, and wavy instead of kinky hair. I pleaded with my mother
to let me get it straightened, like my friends. But she continued to brush it
with water and rub vaseline in it to make it lie down so she could fix the
two big wavy plaits which always hung down my back. On special
occasions, she rolled it up in curlers made out of brown paper to make my
Shirley Temple Curls.
One summer when our Brownie troop was at Camp Blossom Hill, it started
to rain as we were walking from the mess hall to our cabins, and the girls'
hands immediately went for their heads. The water was no threat to my
unstraightened hair, so I paid no attention to the rain. One of the girls
switched out and said, "Angela's got good hair. She can stroll in the rain
from now to doomsday." I know she wasn't intentionally trying to hurt me,
but I felt crushed. I ran back to my cabin, threw myself on the bunk
sobbing.
My cousins Snookie, Betty Jean and their mother, Doll, lived in Ketona,
Alabama. I always loved to spend the weekend with them, because I knew
they would put the hot comb over the wood fire and run it through my hair
until it was straight as a pin. If I begged my mother long enough, she would
let me wear it to school for a few days before she made me wash it out.

Downtown near the post office was the Birmingham Public Library. It was
open only to white people, but in a hidden room in the building, accessible
only through a secret back entrance, a Black librarian had her headquarters.
Black people could pass lists of books to her, which she would try to secure
from the library.
As a result of my mother's encouragement and prodding, books became a
gratifying diversion for me. Mother taught me how to read when I had
hardly reached my fourth year and eventually, when I was a little older, we
both established a quota system for the number of books I should be reading
per week. My mother or father picked up my books downtown, or else the
Black librarian, Miss Bell, would bring them by the house.
Later a new Black library was built down the hill, on the corner of Center
Street and Eighth Avenue. The new red brick library, with its shiny
linoleum floors and varnished tables, became one of my favorite hangouts.
For hours at a time, I read avidly there — everything from Heidi to Victor
Hugo's Les Miserables, from Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery to
Frank Yerby's lurid novels.
Reading was far more satisfying than my weekly piano lessons and
Saturday morning dance classes. For my fifth Christmas, my mother and
father had gotten enough money together to buy me a full-sized piano. Once
a week I trudged over to Mrs. Chambliss' house, dutifully played my scales
and compositions, suffering the humiliation of being screamed at if I made
a mistake. When the lesson was over, I paid her seventy-five cents and, if it
was dark, waited for Mother or Daddy to pick me up so I wouldn't have to
walk by the cemetery alone. On the other six days, I had to practice before I
went out in the neighborhood with my friends. Around the end of May each
year, Mrs. Chambliss' recital took place either at St. Paul's Methodist
Church or the 16th Street Baptist Church two blocks away from my father's
service station. With my hair in curls, wearing a ruffled organdy dress, rigid
with nervousness, I tapped out the piece I had been practicing for months.
The reward for the ordeal was three whole months without the pressure of
piano lessons.
Saturday mornings I joined scores of leotard-clad girls at the Smithfield
Community Center in the projects where we used to live. There Mrs. Woods

and her helpers made sure we did our plies and arabesques. Ballet during
the first part of the class, then tap, soft shoe. My natural clumsiness defied
the delicate ballet steps, so I always tried to find a place to hide in one of
the back rows. For a while, my little brother, Benny, was coming along, so I
had the added responsibility of taking care of him. One morning as we were
walking down Center Street, he ran out in front of me — straight across
Ninth Avenue. A bus came screeching to a stop, practically knocking him
down. Trembling violently, I ran to rescue him. He was totally oblivious to
the fact that he had almost been killed. During the warm-up exercises, I was
still shaking. Suddenly I felt something warm streaming down my legs. I
dropped to the floor, into the puddle of my urine, so humiliated I couldn't
bear to look up at the staring faces of the other pupils. A girl named Emma
came over and put her arms around my shoulder. Saying, "Angela, don't
worry. Let's go outside," she led me away. She never knew how much her
gesture meant to me. Still, having to face this same crowd every Saturday
filled me with shame.

Some years back, Black visitors to Birmingham had all of three post cards
from which to choose if they wanted a souvenir of the Black section of the
city. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Parker High School. A. G. Gaston's
Funeral Home. Perhaps the white people who made the photographs and
retouched them in bright reds and yellows had decided that our lives could
be summarized by church, school and funerals. Once we were born, we got
religion and a sprinkling of learning; then there was nothing left to do but
die.
They tried to make this sprinkling of learning appear to come from the most
impressive institution of education around. On the picture post card, Parker
looked brand new, whiter than if it had been whitewashed the day before,
and had bright-green grass painted in front, where the dry dust refused to
yield even a weed. Above the picture, stamped in bold black print, were the
words: "A. H. Parker High School, Largest in the World for Colored Pupils"
— as if there should have been tourists from every region of the globe
coming to get a glimpse of this wonder.

Perhaps, on its face, the statement was true — I don't think anyone ever did
the research to confirm or contradict it. But whatever truth it contained
rested squarely on the miserable conditions of Black people. If Parker was
the "largest high school for colored pupils," it was for the same reason that
there was not a single public high school in Harlem and the same reason
that the education of Black youth in South Africa doesn't merit a grain of
consideration. When my mother was high school age, the "world's largest"
had been called Industrial High School, and it was the only Black high
school for hundreds of miles around. She lived in the small town of
Sylacauga, at least seventy-five miles from the city. The only way she could
hope to get an education beyond the eighth grade was to leave her family
and move to Birmingham.
My friends and I were not overly eager to enter high school. When we
graduated from Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary School, we had to enter
Parker Annex, several blocks away from the main building. This was a
cluster of beaten-up wooden huts not much different from what we had just
left.
When we arrived on the first day we discovered that the inside of these
structures was even more dilapidated than the outside. Unpainted wooden
floors, ancient walls covered with graffiti no one ever bothered to remove.
We realized that when the season began to turn, we would have to depend
on the archaic potbellied stove in the corner of each house — we called
them Shack I, Shack II, etc.
Very few of my classes were stimulating — biology, chemistry,
mathematics were the subjects that interested me most. My history classes
were a farce.
Farcical not so much because of the teachers' deficiency as the deficiency of
the textbooks assigned by the Board of Education. In our American History
book I discovered that the Civil War was the "War for Southern
Independence" and that Black people much preferred to be slaves than to be
free. After all, the books pointed out, the evidence of our ancestors' cheerful
acceptance of their plight was the weekly Saturday night singing and
dancing sessions. In elementary school, we had already been taught that
many of the songs by slaves had a meaning understood only by them.

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" for instance also referred to the journey
toward freedom in this life. But there was nothing about this in our high
school textbooks. The teachers either had too much on their hands keeping
the classes orderly or else they were not as concerned as our elementaryschool teachers were about presenting us with an accurate picture of Black
history.
The inner-directed violence which was so much a part of our school lives at
Tuggle accelerated at Parker to the point where it verged on fratricide.
Hardly a day would pass without a fight — in class or outside. And on one
warm and windswept day — right there in the schoolyard — one of my
schoolmates actually succeeded in knifing all life from another.
We seemed to be caught in a whirlpool of violence and blood from which
none of us could swim away.
About the time I entered high school, the civil rights movement was
beginning to awaken some Black Alabamians from their deep but fretful
sleep. But judging from the general inactivity at Parker High School, you
never would have known that Rosa Parks had refused to move to the back
of the bus in Montgomery on December 4, 1955, or that Martin Luther King
was leading a full-scale bus boycott there, just a hundred miles away, or
that, in fact, there was supposed to be a budding bus movement in
Birmingham.
Some of us were affected by the boycott, however. On a few occasions, a
small group of my schoolmates and I spontaneously decided to sit in the
front of the bus to show our support of our sisters and brothers. Inevitably, a
shouting match ensued between us and the bus driver. The Black people on
the bus were forced to take sides. Because there was no extensive organized
movement at that time in Birmingham, some of them were afraid of our
audacity and implored us to do what the white man said.
Around this time, the NAACP was declared illegal in Alabama, and its
members were threatened with imprisonment. My parents were both
members and determined not to allow Bull Conner and company to scare
them into submission. Like others who related to the movement, my parents
received bomb threats, but they continued to pay their dues until the

NAACP was officially dissolved and replaced by the Alabama Christian
Movement for Human Rights, headed by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.
On the day after Christmas in 1956, the bus protest in Birmingham was
scheduled to be launched by the ACMHR. Having decided to crush it
before it had a chance to gather momentum, the racists, encouraged by Bull
Conner, pulled out of the closet their old trusty weapons: the sticks of
dynamite we had come to know so well. Christmas night, a roaring
explosion ripped through the home of Reverend Shuttlesworth. They had
planted the bomb beneath the house, directly under the bed where the
minister was sleeping. People said that it was a miracle of God that
everything around him was blown to pieces, yet the minister escaped
without a scratch. We learned the next day that he had taken a neighbor who
had been hurt during the explosion to the hospital and had returned home by
bus, riding in the front. Later that day quite a number of people followed
Reverend Shuttlesworth's example and were subsequently arrested.
I was very agitated during those days. Something was happening which
could change our lives. But I was too young, so I was told (I was twelve),
and a girl at that, to be exposed to the billy clubs and violence of the police.
As the years passed, however, and the needs of the movement increased, it
became necessary to incorporate every man, woman and child who was
willing into all levels of protest activity. In fact, shortly thereafter, the
Shuttlesworth children began to play leading roles in ACMHR's work.
While these upheavals were exploding in the streets of Birmingham, little
of it penetrated Parker's campus. Over the next three years, the movement
reached high points and then lulled. The daily schedule of classes,
complemented by football and basketball games went on. The off-campus
social life of the Black middle class continued undisturbed — except for the
usual, routine racist incidents.
For instance, one Sunday some friends and I were driving home from the
movies. Among those in the car was Peggy, a girl who lived down the
street. She was very light-skinned, with blond hair and green eyes. Her
presence usually provoked puzzled and hostile stares because white people
were always misidentifying her as white. This time it was a policeman who
mistook her for a white person surrounded by Black people. And just as my

friends were about to drop me off in front of the house, he forced us over to
the side, demanding to know what we niggers were doing with a white girl.
He ordered us out of the car and searched all of us, except Peggy, whom he
separated from the group. In Alabama at that time, there was a state statute
which prohibited all except economic intercourse between Blacks and
whites. The cop threatened to throw all of us in jail, including Peggy, whom
he called a "nigger lover."
When Peggy angrily explained that she was Black like all the rest of us, the
cop was obviously embarrassed. He worked off his embarrassment by
harassing us with foul language, hitting some of the boys and searching
every inch of the car for some excuse to take us to jail. This was a routine
incident, perhaps even milder than most, but no less enraging because it
was typical.
At fourteen, in my junior year, I felt restless and exceedingly limited. The
provincialism of Birmingham bothered me, and I had not yet been swept up
into the Civil Rights Movement to the extent that it could forge for me a
solid raison d'etre. I could not define or articulate the dissatisfaction I felt. I
simply had the sensation of things closing in on me — and I wanted to get
out. The time was fast approaching when, in order not to be outcasts, girls
my age in middle-class circles had to play an active role in the established
social life of the Black community. I hated the big formal dances and felt
very awkward and out of place at the one or two such events I attended. I
had to get away. One way or another, I was going to leave Birmingham.
I discovered two avenues of escape: the early entrance program at Fisk
University in Nashville and an experimental program developed by the
American Friends Service Committee, through which Black students from
the South could attend integrated high schools in the North. I applied for
both and, after some months, learned that I had been accepted by both.
With medical school in mind, at first I had a strong inclination toward the
Fisk alternative. Fisk would not only be an escape from the provincialism I
detested, it would also mean that I could more easily pursue my plans to
become a pediatrician; Meharry Medical School was right on its campus.
And Fisk was among the most academically prestigious Black universities
in the country. It was the Fisk of W. E. B. DuBois. But it was also the

University of the Black Bourgeoisie par excellence, and I could predict that
my disinclination to become involved in purely social affairs would create
enormous personal problems. Probably if I did not pledge a sorority, I
would remain an outsider.
As far as the American Friends' program was concerned, I had been able to
gather only the most rudimentary information. I knew that the school I
would attend, Elisabeth Irwin High School, was in New York and that I
would live with a white family in Brooklyn. Though I knew nothing about
the school, New York still fascinated me. I thought of all the things I had
not been able to do for the first fifteen years of my life. I could do them in
New York. I had a very undeveloped appreciation of music or the theater; I
could look forward to exploring a whole new cultural universe.
Ready and willing to accept the challenge of the unknown, I was only a
little frightened. My mother thought more about the dangers I might
confront, and though she wanted me to receive a fuller education, she was
distressed about my having to leave home. I was only fifteen and she feared
that a year on a university campus, surrounded by men and women much
older than I, would rob me of the rest of my childhood and make me mature
before my time. I don't think she quite realized that any Black child
growing up in the South is forced to mature "before her time" anyway. But
when she considered New York, all she could see was a gigantic house of
horrors. Elisabeth Irwin was located in Greenwich Village, which, to her,
was the haven of weird beatniks.
My own preference was Elisabeth Irwin High School, New York City,
where I would live in the home of W. H. Melish. But because of Mother's
misgivings, I was willing to content myself with Fisk. We telephoned the
Melishes in New York and informed them with regret of our decision. I
tried to think about the positive side of Fisk: In four years, I would be
nineteen and could attend Meharry Medical School; a few years later I
would be curing children.
With my suitcases packed and my mind snapped shut, I was ready to go
(even if I had not bought all the suggested clothes on the list, such as
formals for various occasions). One or two days before I was to leave, my
father, my dear father, broke out of his normal reticence and asked me to

tell him frankly what I wished to do. But before I could answer, he said he
wanted to tell me about some of his own experiences during his brief stay at
Fisk. (He had graduated from St. Augustine College in Raleigh, North
Carolina, but had done some graduate work at Fisk.) It was a very good
school, he said. But to accomplish anything there you had to enter the place
with an unwavering conception of what you were going to do. I had to see
both sides of Fisk, he said, its historical significance to Black people — and
its problems as well.
By the time we wound up the conversation, I knew that I would not be
attending Fisk University, at least not that year. I would just have to
persuade my mother that I was capable of defending myself against
whatever dangers might be lurking in the streets of New York.

For better or for worse, I boarded the train for New York. The trip itself was
symbolic. Getting on in the Black section of the train, I was surrounded by
friends and acquaintances from Birmingham who were on their way to
schools located along the route to New York. As the Jim Crow train moved
through Alabama, Georgia, and up through Washington, my friends left the
train in small groups. Some were going to Morehouse, Spellman, or Clark,
in Atlanta, and the final group got off in Washington to attend Howard
University. At each major train stop, the familiarity of the surroundings
eroded a little more. By the time the train slid out of Washington, I had been
abandoned to the company of strangers and to the strangeness of white
people entering the car and taking seats which had been "For Colored"
throughout the Southern states.
The prospects both excited and worried me. I had already assumed an
obligation to live and study with white people over the next two years, but
could I accustom myself to being around them all the time? In spite of the
fact that, theoretically at least, the white people I was going to relate to at
home and at school were committed, on some level, to fight for the equality
of my people, the impact of racism upon me had been so tremendous that I
knew I would have to exercise great effort to fit into a predominantly white
world. I would have to be open and guarded at the same time. I would be
watchful — prepared for any early sign of slight or hostility. (I did not yet

know that what I would also encounter was white liberals' tendency to be
oversolicitous of their few Black acquaintances.) But I would try hard to be
at ease, to be accessible to whatever humaneness and kindness they might
show me. I felt an almost unbearable tension — it was as if I were two
persons, two faces of a Janus head. One profile stared disconsolately into
the past — the fretful, violent, confining past broken only by occasional
splotches of meaning, and by the love I had for my family. The other gazed
with longing and apprehension into the future — a future glowing with
challenge, but also harboring the possibility of defeat.
Reverend and Mrs. Melish were waiting for me in Pennsylvania Station
when the train arrived. From the first moment I had heard about them, and
the sacrifices they had made for the progressive movement, I had a great
respect for both of them. At the height of the McCarthy period, Reverend
Melish (who, together with his father, was the pastor of the largest
Episcopal church in Brooklyn) had used his pulpit to defend the victims of
McCarthy's witch-hunting insanity. He had preached about the need for true
Christians to fight all forms of injustice and repression. Moreover, he was at
that time a member of the Soviet-American Friendship Organization, and in
those days, McCarthy and company didn't distinguish between defending
the right of a people to be Communist and being a Communist oneself.
The Melishes had gone through a period of fierce and turbulent struggle
with the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church; there had been the calumny of
the public media, the ecclesiastical trial and finally the loss of the church.
But their suffering had simply made them stronger and more determined.
There were three sons in the Melish family: two older and one younger than
me. One was in the twelfth grade and another in the seventh grade at
Elisabeth Irwin. I felt a little more comfortable knowing that someone
would be helping me orient myself in this school which was, from all
accounts, unlike any I had ever heard of.
I got settled at the house, and tried to explore the neighborhood. It was a
relief to learn that the house was located in the heart of the Black
community — in Bedford Stuyvesant on the corner of Kingston and St.
Marks. It took me a while to realize that Black people too were affected by
the character of New York. You did not go out on the street — especially if

you were a woman — and strike up a conversation with a passing brother.
In Birmingham, it would be considered the height of arrogance to pass one
of your people on the street without a greeting like "Good evening." But
here, they looked at you as though you were deranged if you spoke to a
stranger on the street.
Before the official opening of the semester, I went with Mrs. Melish to visit
the school and meet some of the teachers. Elisabeth Irwin High School, on
the edge of Greenwich Village, was such a small brick building in the
middle of a block of two-story apartment buildings, that you would have
never noticed that it was a school unless you happened to pass by in the
morning when school was about to begin or in the evening when it was
letting out.
The history of the school impressed me. It had been conceived some
decades before as an experiment within the public education system in
progressive education. When the New York Board of Education decided to
drop the experiment, the teachers themselves resolved to take over the
school and guarantee its continued existence. They transformed it into a
private school, asking tuition fees of those who attended, and made
themselves collective owners of the institution.
Aside from the high school there was an elementary school and
kindergarten as well, located in a red brick building on Bleecker Street,
appropriately called The Little Red School House. In each grade, from four
years old through the twelfth grade, there was a single class, consisting of
from twenty-five to thirty students. The preview trip to the school
completely shattered my ideas of what schools were supposed to be like.
All the teachers I had ever known had been conservative in appearance: the
men had worn suits and ties, the women simple but dressy clothes. One of
the first teachers I was introduced to was wearing a pair of beat-up jeans, a
wild-colored short-sleeved shirt, and tennis shoes, and much of his face was
hidden by a beard. I was further stunned by the fact that I was introduced to
them by their first names. Even the director of the school, a sympathetic,
white-haired, dignified New England gentleman — even he was presented
by his first name.

Because it was a small school and because a sizeable number of students
had entered it at age four and stayed until they graduated from high school,
there was an inevitable tendency toward clannishness. I sensed this familylike atmosphere immediately and was not completely sure whether I was
going to be capable of integrating myself into it.
In trying to get a more complete picture of this school, talking to the
Melishes and others who knew something about it, I learned that many of
the present teachers had been placed on the blacklist (whitelist?) by the
Board of Education and were therefore not permitted to teach in any public
school. Their politics ranged from liberal to radical, including leanings
toward communism, or so I thought.
Trying to put all this together, I felt as if I were swimming alone in
unexplored waters. I did not know the undercurrents, I could never tell
whether I was in deep or shallow waters or maybe a swamp or quicksand.
And I had no guide who understood my strengths, my weaknesses — the
strengths and handicaps of a young Black woman from the racist South.
As I leaped over the hurdles presented by my new environment, I began to
feel more comfortable at home and at school. When I learned about
socialism in my history classes, a whole new world opened up before my
eyes. For the first time, I became acquainted with the notion that there could
be an ideal socioeconomic arrangement; that every person could give to the
society according to his ability and his talents, and that in turn he could
receive material and spiritual aid in accordance with his needs.
I did not yet understand scientific socialism, but I tried to comprehend the
utopian socialist experiments we discussed in our history classes. I was
fascinated by these groups of people who resolved to isolate themselves
entirely in order to build a new miniature socialist, human society. I did not
stop with the material we read about in our history books. I went to the
library and read whatever I could find about Robert Owens and the other
leaders of that movement.
Perhaps it was the romantic strain in me which attracted me to the Utopian
socialists. Because when I began to consider the real possibility of solving
the problems of my people, and the problems of exploited white people as

well, I could not find the transition from the real world of oppression and
racism and injustice and the ideal world of communism. Perhaps a few
people here and there might save their souls from the corruption of
capitalism, but small collective, communist agricultural societies were
definitely no way to liberate millions and millions of people.
The Communist Manifesto hit me like a bolt of lightning. I read it avidly,
finding in it answers to many of the seemingly unanswerable dilemmas
which had plagued me. I read it over and over again, not completely
understanding every passage or every idea, but enthralled nevertheless by
the possibility of a communist revolution here. I began to see the problems
of Black people within the context of a large working-class movement. My
ideas about Black liberation were imprecise, and I could not find the right
concepts to articulate them; still, I was acquiring some understanding about
how capitalism could be abolished.
I was particularly impressed by a passage in the Manifesto which portrayed
the proletariat as the savior of all oppressed people: "All previous historical
movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities.
The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of
the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The
proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot
raise itself up, without the whole super-incumbent strata of official society
being sprung into the air."
What struck me so emphatically was the idea that once the emancipation of
the proletariat became a reality, the foundation was laid for the
emancipation of all oppressed groups in the society. Images surged up in
my mind of Black workers in Birmingham trekking every morning to the
steel mills or descending into the mines. Like an expert surgeon, this
document cut away cataracts from my eyes. The eyes heavy with hatred on
Dynamite Hill; the roar of explosives, the fear, the hidden guns, the
weeping Black woman at our door, the children without lunches, the
schoolyard bloodshed, the social games of the Black middle class, Shack
I/Shack II, the back of the bus, police searches — it all fell into place. What
had seemed a personal hatred of me, an inexplicable refusal of Southern
whites to confront their own emotions, and a stubborn willingness of Blacks

to acquiesce, became the inevitable consequence of a ruthless system which
kept itself alive and well by encouraging spite, competition and the
oppression of one group by another. Profit was the word: the cold and
constant motive for the behavior, the contempt and the despair I had seen.
Now I sensed a need to change some of my ideas about liberation. I realized
then that despite my superficial aversion for some of the social activities of
the Black middle class, I had been depending on it to guide the workers, the
jobless and the poor among us to freedom.
Of course, the most powerful impact the Manifesto had on me — what
moved me most — was the vision of a new society, without exploiters and
exploited, a society without classes, a society where no one would be
permitted to own so much that he could use his possessions to exploit other
human beings. After the communist revolution "we shall have an
association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the
free development of all."
The final words of the Manifesto moved me to an overwhelming desire to
throw myself into the communist movement:
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly
declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow
of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. They have a world to win.
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
Quite coincidentally, around the same time that I read the Communist
Manifesto, I was invited by a friend to attend meetings of a youth
organization called Advance. She was a daughter of a member of the
Communist Party, and Advance was a Marxist-Leninist youth organization
with fraternal ties with the Party. Many of the meetings were held in the
house of Herbert Aptheker — the much-respected Communist historian —
with his daughter Bettina Aptheker playing a major leadership role in the
organization.

Eugene Dennis, the son of the Communist leader of the same name, was
also a part of the group, as was Mary Lou Patterson, the daughter of the
formidable Black Communist lawyer William Patterson. It was Patterson
who carried the petition protesting the genocide of Black people to the
United Nations in 1954. James Jackson's daughter Harriet, Mary Lou, and
Margaret and Claudia Burnham, were already close friends of mine; now
through our activities in Advance we became truly "comrades in arms."
Herbert Aptheker was teaching a course on the fundamentals of Marxism at
the American Institute for Marxist Studies. Along with other members of
Advance, I attended his lectures, which helped me to penetrate the
mysteries in the Manifesto.
Advance participated in all the peace demonstrations that were being
organized at the time by SANE (the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy)
and the civil rights demonstrations in solidarity with the movement in the
South. The first sit-ins had been launched on February 1, 1960, in
Greensboro, North Carolina, and had spread throughout the South. After the
demand for employment of Black clerks in F. W. Woolworth variety store
was introduced, every Saturday morning we lugged our picket signs and
literature down to the Woolworth's on Forty-Second Street, set up the line
and tried to persuade New Yorkers not to patronize the store until it agreed
to hire black clerks in the South.
Although I was involved in the movement in that way I felt cheated:
precisely at the moment I had decided to leave the South a movement was
mushrooming at home. In 1961, when the bus carrying the freedom riders
arrived at the Greyhound Depot in Birmingham, I called my parents to tell
them that I wanted to come home — and to please send me the money for
the trip. When they told me it was best that I stay in New York and finish
out my last year of studies there, I was too distressed and frustrated to keep
my mind on my schoolwork. Each time I saw photographs or television
coverage of the police aiming high-power hoses at demonstrators, sicking
dogs on little children, I closed the door to my room so the Melishes would
not see me cry.
They were exciting years — and I have never regretted my decision to
spend them in New York. But they were years of tension. The Janus head

was still fixed — one eye full of longing to be in the fray in Birmingham,
the other contemplating my own future. It would be a long time before the
two profiles came together and I would know the direction to both the past
and the future.

PART THREE: Waters
I go into genesis' landscape
of rumblings, collisions, and waters . . .
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

P

SEPTEMBER 1961

erched on an enormous boulder protruding from a grassy knoll on the
outskirts of Waltham, Massachusetts, is a brass sculpture of Justice
Louis Brandeis, his arms outstretched, winglike, as if he were about to take
flight — as if there were nowhere else to go.

I had come to assume that in order to safeguard its unorthodoxy, Elisabeth
Irwin had spun a cocoon around itself. During those two years in New York
I never quite overcame the sense of being out of place, of being an outsider
who had penetrated that cocoon by accident. Nevertheless, I confronted it
head on. And when the atmosphere became too close, too oppressive, I
could always tear away a piece of the wall and slip out to other worlds —
my childhood friends, Margaret and Claudia, Mary Lou Patterson, Phyllis
Strong; political work in Advance; my Black and Puerto Rican friends at
the Youth Center run by Mrs. Melish in Brooklyn.
Brandeis University was different. There were no roads leading outside.
Its physical and spiritual isolation were mutually reinforcing. There was
nothing in Waltham but a clock factory, and Cambridge and Boston were
unreachable for those of us who couldn't afford a car.
I searched the crowds of freshmen for others who were Black. Just knowing
they were there would have made me feel a little more comfortable. But the
full scholarship Brandeis had bestowed upon me was apparently a guilt-

motivated attempt to increase their Black freshman population of two. We
three were all female. I was glad that one of them, Alice, lived on the same
floor as I.
Although Alice and I struck up a friendship immediately, it did not
essentially alter my attitude toward the college. I felt alienated, angry, alone
and would have left the campus if I had had the courage and had known
where to go. Since I was there — to stay, it seemed — I lived with this
alienation and began to cultivate it in a romantic sort of way. If I felt alone,
I refused to feel sorry for myself and refused to fight it by actively seeking
friends; I would be alone, aloof, and would appear to enjoy it. It didn't help
the situation that I had gotten very much involved in the writings of the socalled Existentialists. Camus. Sartre. I retreated into myself and rejected
practically everything outside.
Only in the artificial surroundings of an isolated, virtually all-white college
campus could I have allowed myself to cultivate this nihilistic attitude. It
was as if in order to fight off the unreal quality of my environment, I leaped
desperately into another equally unreal mode of living.
During that first semester, I didn't study very much. I told myself that the
courses I was compelled to take were irrelevant anyway. I stayed out of the
social life of the school, or would wander into a formal dance in the blue
jeans I wore all the time — just for the sake of making a point. I called
myself a communist, but refused to be drawn into the small campus
movement because I felt that the politicos had approached me in an
obviously patronizing manner. It seemed as if they were determined to help
the "poor, wretched Negroes" become equal to them, and I simply didn't
think they were worth becoming equal to.
The one thing that did excite me during that freshman year was the news
that James Baldwin was scheduled to deliver a series of lectures on
literature. Since I had first discovered Go Tell It on the Mountain, I read all
of Baldwin's writings I could find. When he came to Brandeis, I made sure I
captured a front seat. But he had hardly gotten into his lecturing when the
news broke that the world was teetering on the edge of the abyss of World
War III. The Cuban Missile Crisis had erupted.

James Baldwin announced that he could not continue his lectures without
contradicting his moral conscience and abdicating his political
responsibilities. In the meantime, a campus-wide rally was being pulled
together, while students roamed the campus, either in a silent daze or else
screaming out their fear that the world was about to be consumed in a
nuclear holocaust.
Some of them got into cars and took off in a panic, saying they were on
their way to Canada. What was so striking about the students' response to
the crisis was its strongly selfish quality. They were not interested in the
fact that the people of Cuba were in terrible jeopardy — or even that
millions of innocent people elsewhere might be destroyed if a nuclear
conflict broke out. They were interested in themselves, in saving their own
lives. Girlfriends and boyfriends went off together to get in their last little
bit of love.
By the time the rally took place, large numbers of students had gone off by
themselves and they were not able to hear the powerful speeches given by
James Baldwin, Herbert Marcuse (this was the first time I heard him) and
several other professors and graduate students. The point of their speeches
was not to be frightened, not to despair, but to put pressure on the
government to withdraw its threat.
It was good to feel part of a movement and once again be participating in
rallies, teach-ins, demonstrations. But when the crisis was over, things
settled back into their old grooves. During the brief period of protest, I was
drawn toward the people with whom I felt I had most in common — the
foreign students. I became friends with an Indian man, who was very gentle
and had a keen sense of what was happening around us. It was my
friendship with Lalit more than anything else, I suppose, that helped me
understand concretely the interconnectedness of the freedom struggles of
peoples throughout the world. I was profoundly moved when he talked
about the incredible misery of his people in India. As he spoke I found
myself constantly thinking about my people in Birmingham, my people in
Harlem.
I also became friends with Melanie, a young woman from the Philippines,
and Mac, a South Vietnamese woman about to be deported because she was

opposed to Diem. Around the same time, I entered into a close friendship
with Lani, probably because we both felt so outside things at Brandeis.
Flo Mason, one of my friends from Elisabeth Irwin, and I corresponded
regularly. I don't remember who initially conceived the idea, but we both
decided to attend the Eighth World Festival for Youth and Students in
Helsinki, Finland, the following summer. I was eager to meet revolutionary
youth from other parts of the world, but my decision to make this trip was
also motivated by a simple desire to leave the country in order to get a
better perspective on things. It seemed that the farther I became removed
from my home, my roots, the more restricted I felt and the farther I wanted
to go.
The rest of the year I worked to earn money for the trip. I refiled books in
the library stacks, filed cards in the Biology Department, and worked in
Chomondeleys, the campus coffee shop. And I found a job in a two-bit soda
parlor in Waltham. Having gotten back into the habit of studying, between
my jobs and my books I didn't have very much time to do anything else.
Even my social life — I was seeing a German student, Manfred Clemenz,
around this time — consisted mostly of coffee in the cafeteria after an
evening of studying.
Then it was June. My festival scholarship called for doing some volunteer
work at the Festival Committee Headquarters in New York: typing,
mimeographing, mailings. The Brandeis charter plane took us to London,
where I wandered alone about the city for a day or two before my train left
for Paris. My friend Harriet Jackson was going to meet me at the Gare du
Nord, but a strike threw all the schedules awry, and there I was in Paris
alone, knowing no one and without the slightest idea of how to find Harriet.
After a few days in a dirty hotel in the Latin Quarter exploring the city, and
reading with horror the racist slogans scratched on walls throughout the city
threatening death to the Algerians, I finally made contact with my friend.
She had left a note at American Express in hopes that I would think of
going there. By the time Flo arrived, we had moved into a tiny room on the
top floor of an apartment building in the Sixteenth Arrondissement so close
to the Eiffel Tower that from the one-foot-square window pane, you could
see the elevator rising and falling. The chambre de bonne had been rented

by one of Harriet's friends who was studying in Paris and had agreed to let
us use it while she was away.
One of ten such rooms, it could only be reached by climbing six flights of a
rusty fire-escape type stairway. Like all the others, it had no plumbing, only
a filthy toilet bowl and a cold-water hydrant at the end of the corridor.
There was just enough space for a bed, a small closet, a table, and floor
room for an air mattress and a pallet. Flo, Harriet and I took turns sleeping
on the bed, the air mattress and the floor. We thought it was crowded in our
room until we became acquainted with the people across the hall — a frail
woman from Martinique trying to live in the same amount of space with her
four robust daughters, ranging in age from about fourteen to twenty. Having
just arrived from the Caribbean, they all left each day in search of work.
Each evening they returned with nothing to show for their day but tired
bodies, a little less money and, frequently, horror stories of being mistaken
for Algerian women.
The three of us rushed around Paris being tourists, doing the things that cost
the least and gave discounts to students: the Louvre, the Rodin Museum,
Moliere at La Comedie Française (which cost one franc for students).
Hanging around the crowded cafes along the Boulevard St. Michel, we met
people with interesting and exciting stories to tell — especially when it
came to their distaste for the French. They were Africans, Haitians, other
Antillais and Algerians. We were introduced to working-class Algerian
eating places, hidden in the network of back streets in the Latin Quarter.
To be an Algerian living in Paris in 1962 was to be a hunted human being.
While the Algerians were fighting the French army in their mountains and
in the Europeanized cities of Algiers and Oran, paramilitary terrorist groups
were falling indiscriminately upon men and women in the colonialist capital
because they were, or looked like, Algerians.
In Paris, bombs were exploding in cafes frequented by North Africans,
bloody bodies were discovered in dark side streets and anti-Algerian graffiti
marred the sides of buildings and the walls of metro stations. One afternoon
I attended a demonstration for the Algerian people in the square in front of
the Sorbonne. When the flics broke it up with their high-power water hoses,

they were as vicious as the redneck cops in Birmingham who met the
Freedom Riders with their dogs and hoses.
The new places, the new experiences I had expected to discover through
travel turned out to be the same old places, the same old experiences with a
common message of struggle.
After Harriet left for the Soviet Union, Flo and I decided spontaneously to
board a train for Geneva, but ended up trying to hitch-hike with a Swiss
student just back from the University of Wisconsin. It was typical of our
luck that it happened to be July 14 — anniversary of the storming of the
Bastille — and thus virtually impossible to catch a ride. We got as far as
Orly Airport, just on the outskirts of the city, pitched the Swiss student's
tent in a field, ate dinner at the airport and bedded down for the night, with
him outside guarding the tent. Not doing very much better the next
morning, we caught buses and trains till we reached Lausanne, where the
student's mother put us up for a few days.
With its quaint little houses built on ascending levels on the slopes of hills,
Lausanne was the cleanest, most beautiful city I had seen. Now I
understood why the wealthy sent their children to Switzerland.
From Lausanne, it was Geneva, back to Paris and on to Finland for the
festival. The drab, monotonous postwar architecture of Helsinki concealed
the tremendous vibrancy of the youth who were gathering there from all
over the world.
In the brief two weeks of the festival, there were spectacular cultural
programs, mass political rallies and countless seminars on the struggle in
Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East. The most exciting dimension
of the festival, in my own opinion, came from the bilateral delegation
meetings, because they were occasions for more intimate contact with the
youth of other lands.
The cultural presentation given by the Cuban delegation was the most
impressive event of the festival. Not that they performed in the most
polished, sophisticated manner, but because their performance conveyed a
fiercely compelling spirit of revolution. They were the youth of a revolution

that was not yet three years old. With the U.S. delegation as audience, the
Cubans satirized the way wealthy American capitalists had invaded their
country and robbed them of all traces of sovereignty. They presented their
attack on the invaders in plays, songs and dances. During those days, long
before women's liberation had been placed on the agenda, we watched the
Cuban militia women zealously defending their people's victory.
It is not easy to describe the strength and enthusiasm of the Cubans. One
event however illustrates their infectious dynamism and the impact they had
on us all. At the end of their show, the Cubans did not simply let the curtain
fall. Their "performance," after all, had been much more than a mere show.
It had been life and reality. Had they drawn the curtain and bowed to
applause, it would have been as if their commitment was simply "art." The
Cubans continued their dancing, doing a spirited conga right off the stage
and into the audience. Those of us openly enthralled by the Cubans, their
revolution and the triumphant beat of the drums rose spontaneously to join
their conga line. And the rest — the timid ones, perhaps even the agents —
were pulled bodily by the Cubans into the dance. Before we knew it we
were doing this dance — a dance brought into Cuban culture by slaves
dancing in a line of chains — all through the building and on into the
streets. Puzzled Finns looked on in disbelief at hundreds of young people of
all colors, oblivious to traffic, flowing down the streets of Helsinki.
Though it was the dominant theme, camaraderie was not the whole story of
the festival. In keeping with the dictates of the Cold War, the CIA had
planted its agents and informers in all the strategic areas of the festival,
including the delegation from the United States. (A fact later admitted by
the Agency). Provocations were frequent and assumed varied forms.
Members of the delegation from the German Democratic Republic were
kidnapped, for example, tear-gas bombs were set off in crowds during mass
events and Hell's-Angels types picked fistfights with delegates in the streets
of downtown Helsinki.
After saying good-bye to my new friends, and spending some time visiting
my German friend, Manfred, I returned to the States to find an FBI
investigator awaiting me.

"What were you doing at that Communist Youth Festival this summer?" the
agent wanted to know. "Don't you know how we feel about Communists?
Don't you know what we do to Communists?"

***

The experiences of the summer still very much alive, I felt older and more
confident as I entered my second year at Brandeis. Meeting people from all
over the world had taught me how important it was to be able to tear down
the superficial barriers which separated us. Language was one of those
barriers which could be removed easily. I decided to major in French. That
year I immersed myself totally in my work: Flaubert, Balzac, Baudelaire,
Rimbaud and the thousands of pages of Proust's A La Recherche du Temps
Perdu. My interest in Sartre was still quite keen — every spare moment I
could find, I worked my way through his writings: La Nausee, Les Mains
Sales, Les Sequestres d'Altona, and the rest of the earlier and later plays,
and the novels comprising the sequence Les Chemins de la Liberté. I read
some of his philosophical and political essays and even tried my hand at
L'Etre et le Néant. Since I had to contend with the isolation of the campus
in one way or another, I decided to make constructive use of it by spending
most of my waking hours in the library or in some hidden place with my
books.
At first I roomed with Lani, but since we both preferred to live alone, she
moved into a single when one became available. Tina, a Swedish friend,
who wanted to live off-campus with a friend, pretended to move into my
room, thus leaving me with the privacy I desired.
Gwen and Woody, graduate students at the university, were in charge of the
Ridgewood men's dormitories. The fact that we were Black and had
common friends in Birmingham made us feel close even before we got to
know each other. If they wanted to go out on evenings and weekends, they
could always count on me to stay with their baby boy while I studied. And
whenever I felt like talking, they were ready to listen and give advice.

It was a quiet, subdued year on the campus — until the smug sense of
comfort which reigned over this white liberal college was abruptly shattered
by the appearance of Malcolm X. In the largest auditorium on campus,
Gwen, Woody and I sat one-third of the way back, engulfed, it seemed, by
the white crowd waiting breathlessly to hear this man who was the
spokesman for the prophet Elijah Mohammed. Elijah Mohammed called
himself the messenger of the Islamic God, Allah, chosen to reveal Allah's
message to Black people in the United States.
Years before, at Parker High School, one of our classmates had been
arrested for selling a "Black Muslim' newspaper. He was a gentle-looking,
soft-spoken boy who kept to himself. Several times I had tried
unsuccessfully to talk to him. On the day following his arrest, I learned for
the first time that there was a nationwide organization of "Black Muslims"
and, not questioning the prevailing propaganda, I thought they were a
strange sect of people ranting and raving about Allah's future destruction of
all white people — a group essentially unable to help solve the problem of
racism. For a long time it bothered me that this classmate of mine was a
member of the Muslims. I could not reconcile my own stereotyped notion
of the Muslims with his sensitivity. I waited for him to get out of jail and
return to school so I could ask him who the Muslims really were. But I
never saw him again.
Finally Malcolm strode in, immaculately dressed, encircled by
conservatively dressed, clean-shaven men, and women in long flowing
robes. From their manner of carrying themselves I could feel the pride
emanating from them. Quietly they took their seats in the first three rows.
Malcolm, accompanied by several of the men, walked onstage.
Malcolm X began his speech with a subdued eloquence, telling about the
religion of Islam and its relevance to Black people in the United States. I
was fascinated by his description of the way Black people had internalized
the racial inferiority thrust upon us by a white supremacist society.
Mesmerized by his words, I was shocked to hear him say, speaking directly
to his audience, "I'm talking about you! You!! You and your ancestors, for
centuries, have raped and murdered my people!" He was addressing himself
to an all-white crowd and I wondered whether Gwen, Woody and the four

or five other Black people in the audience felt, from that moment on, as
outrageously misplaced as I did. Malcolm was addressing himself to white
people, chastising them, informing them of their sins, warning them of the
Armageddon to come, in which they would all be destroyed. Although I
experienced a kind of morbid satisfaction listening to Malcolm reduce
white people to virtually nothing, not being a Muslim, it was impossible for
me to identify with his religious perspective. I kept thinking that it must be
a tremendous experience to hear him speaking to a Black audience. For the
white people, listening to Malcolm had been disorienting and disturbing. It
was interesting that most of them were so bent on defending themselves and
on distinguishing themselves from the slave master and the Southern
segregationist it never struck them that they themselves could begin to do
something concrete to fight racism.
Earlier in the year I had applied for a place in the Hamilton College Junior
Year in France Program. After receiving the news of my acceptance, I
fought hard with the Brandeis scholarship office, until they finally agreed to
do the unprecedented by extending my regular scholarship to cover my
third-year studies in France.

By the time the two busloads of us arrived from Paris, the resort of Biarritz,
on the Bay of Biscay, near the border of Spain, had already been abandoned
by the wealthy tourists. This was where we were to have our preparatory
language courses. Deserted, the gaudy beach-side casinos seemed even
more decadent than if they had been teeming with voracious vacationing
gamblers. The countless trinket shops lining the arcade-covered streets had
a ravaged appearance that was exaggerated by the absence of customers.
The shopkeepers looked desperate, as if they were wondering how to
survive the next months without the tourists' money, and at the same time
relieved that they had managed to survive the summer onslaught.
Walking through the streets of Biarritz, I felt like someone wandering into a
place where a long drunken party had just broken up. The last staggering
guests had already gone home, but no one had gotten around to cleaning up
the mess. The traces of the summer orgy were embarrassing — like dirty
underwear inadvertently left behind — and at the same time infuriating. I

could see them squandering enormous wealth without the vaguest feeling of
compassion for those whose slavery had created that wealth.
Not long after our arrival, a curious thing happened in the abandoned city:
there was a sudden, massive flea invasion, the likes of which the working
people of Biarritz had never seen before. For days, it was impossible to find
a single patch of land or air uninfested by fleas. In our classrooms, the
teacher could hardly be heard over the constant scratching. People scratched
in cafes, movie theaters, bookstores, and they scratched just walking down
the street. People with sensitive skin were beginning to look like lepers,
their arms and legs covered with infected bites. Like everyone else's, my
sheet was covered with little spots of blood.
If Ingmar Bergman had done a movie on the oppressive, parasitical tourists
who come to Biarritz, and had included the flea invasion in his script, critics
would have written that his symbolism was too blatant. In this city in its
odd position of trying to recuperate from tourists and fleas — in this group
of typically American students which without my presence would have
been lily-white — my old familiar feelings of disorientation were rekindled.

SEPTEMBER 16, 1963
After class I asked the three or four students with whom I was walking to
wait a moment while I bought a Herald Tribune. My attention divided
between walking and listening to the conversation, just skimming the paper,
I saw a headline about four girls and a church bombing. At first I was only
vaguely aware of the words. Then it hit me! It came crashing down all
around me. Birmingham. 16th Street Baptist Church. The names. I closed
my eyes, squeezing my lids into wrinkles as if I could squeeze what I had
just read out of my head. When I opened my eyes again, the words were
still there, the names traced out in stark black print.
"Carole," I said, "Cynthia. They killed them."
My companions were looking at me with puzzled expressions. Unable to
say anything more, I pointed to the article and gave the newspaper to an

outstretched hand.
"I know them. They're my friends . . ." I was spluttering.
As if she were repeating lines she had rehearsed, one of them said, "I'm
sorry. It's too bad that it had to happen."
Before she spoke I was on the verge of pouring out all the feelings that had
been unleashed in me by the news of the bomb which had ripped through
four young Black girls in my hometown. But the faces around me were
closed. They knew nothing of racism and the only way they knew how to
relate to me at that moment was to console me as if friends had just been
killed in a plane crash.
"What a terrible thing," one of them said. I left them abruptly, unwilling to
let them have anything to do with my grief.
I kept staring at the names. Carole Robertson. Cynthia Wesley. Addie Mae
Collins. Denise McNair. Carole — her family and my family had been close
as long as I could remember. Carole, plump, with long wavy braids and a
sweet face, was one of my sister's best friends. She and Fania were about
the same age. They had played together, gone to dancing lessons together,
attended little parties together. Carole's older sister and I had constantly had
to deal with our younger sisters' wanting to tag along when we went places
with our friends. Mother told me later that when Mrs. Robertson heard that
the church had been bombed, she called to ask Mother to drive her
downtown to pick up Carole. She didn't find out, Mother said, until they
saw pieces of her body scattered about.
The Wesleys had been among the Black people to move to the west side of
Center Street. Our house was on Eleventh Court; theirs was on Eleventh
Avenue. From our back door to their back door was just a few hundred feet
across a gravel driveway that cut the block in two. The Wesleys were
childless, and from the way they played with us it was obvious that they
loved children. I remembered when Cynthia, just a few years old, first came
to stay with the Wesleys. Cynthia's own family was large and suffered from
the worst poverty. Cynthia would stay with the Wesleys for a while, then
return to her family — this went on until the stretches of time she spent

with the Wesleys grew longer and her stays at home grew shorter. Finally,
with the approval of her family, the Wesleys officially adopted her. She was
always immaculate, her face had a freshly scrubbed look about it, her
dresses were always starched and her little pocketbook always matched her
newly shined shoes. When my sister Fania came into the house looking
grubby and bedraggled, my mother would often ask her why she couldn't
keep herself clean like Cynthia. She was a thin, very sensitive child and
even though I was five years older, I thought she had an understanding of
things that was far more mature than mine. When she came to the house,
she seemed to enjoy talking to my mother more than playing with Fania.
Denise McNair. Addie Mae Collins. My mother had taught Denise when
she was in first grade and Addie Mae, although we didn't know her
personally, could have been any Black child in my neighborhood.
When the lives of these four girls were so ruthlessly wiped out, my pain
was deeply personal. But when the initial hurt and rage had subsided
enough for me to think a little more clearly, I was struck by the objective
significance of these murders.
This act was not an aberration. It was not something sparked by a few
extremists gone mad. On the contrary, it was logical, inevitable. The people
who planted the bomb in the girls' restroom in the basement of 16th Street
Baptist Church were not pathological, but rather the normal products of
their surroundings. And it was this spectacular, violent event, the savage
dismembering of four little girls, which had burst out of the daily,
sometimes even dull, routine of racist oppression.
No matter how much I talked, the people around me were simply incapable
of grasping it. They could not understand why the whole society was guilty
of this murder — why their beloved Kennedy was also to blame, why the
whole ruling stratum in their country, by being guilty of racism, was also
guilty of this murder. Those bomb-wielding racists, of course, did not plan
specifically the deaths of Carole, Cynthia, Addie Mae and Denise. They
may not have even consciously taken into account the possibility of
someone's death. They wanted to terrorize Birmingham's Black population,
which had been stirred out of its slumber into active involvement in the
struggle for Black liberation. They wanted to destroy this movement before

it became too deeply rooted in our minds and our lives. This is what they
wanted to do and they didn't care if someone happened to get killed. It
didn't matter to them one way or the other. The broken bodies of Cynthia,
Carole, Addie Mae and Denise were incidental to the main thing — which
was precisely why the murders were even more abominable than if they had
been deliberately planned.

In November our group moved to Paris. I was assigned to the Lamotte
family at 13 bis rue Duret, a little ways from the Arc de Triomphe. Two
other women from the Hamilton program lived there too. Jane was on the
third floor with M. and Mme. Lamotte and their three children. Christie and
I shared one of the two bedrooms in the smaller second-floor apartment of
M. Lamotte's mother. Each morning she brought us a big wooden tray with
two large bowls of cafe au lait, pieces of a freshly baked baguette, and two
hunks of butter. In the evening we had dinner with the family upstairs. We
walked through the old cobblestone courtyard to the metro station around
the corner, and traveled underground on the old red trains to the Latin
Quarter to attend our classes. Most of mine were at the section of the
Sorbonne called the Institut de Preparation et de Perfectionnement de
Professeurs de Français a L'Etranger.
In the Sorbonne, I always felt as if I were in church — it was centuries old,
with tremendous pillars holding up uncommonly high ceilings which
displayed faded old paintings. The sacredness exuded by the place forced
thousands of students inside to observe the silence. My business there
seemed incongruous with the surroundings. My studies were devoted
almost entirely to contemporary literature — one course on contemporary
French novels, another on plays, one on poetry and one on Ideas. The only
other course I took was organized by the Hamilton program itself and
required attending the theater each week and discussing and writing about
the plays we had seen. By the time the year was up, I had the feeling I had
seen most of what was interesting on the stage in Paris — including the
Peking Opera and the Ballet Africaine from Guinea.
When the news broke in Paris that Kennedy had been shot, everyone rushed
down to the U.S. Embassy. Kennedy's assassination was certainly no source

of joy to me. Though his hands were far from clean (I kept remembering the
Bay of Pigs), killing him was not going to solve any problems. Besides, the
Vice President from Texas and his cronies in the oil monopolies would
probably only make things worse for my people. Nevertheless, I felt out of
place at the Embassy, surrounded by crowds of "Americans in Paris" and it
was difficult to identify with their weeping. I wondered how many of them
had shed tears — or had truly felt saddened — when they read the Herald
Tribune story about the murders of Carole, Cynthia, Addie Mae and Denise.
Later on in the year, I accompanied a friend who had been invited to attend
the Vietnamese Tet celebration. That night, two New Year's programs were
taking place — one organized and attended by the South Vietnamese who
remained loyal to Diem and the other organized and attended by the North
Vietnamese, together with the socialist and other opposition forces in the
South. We attended the North Vietnamese celebration. Held in a gigantic
stadium in a working-class district of Paris, it was a grand seven-hour
spectacle consisting of songs, comedy acts, acrobatic numbers and skits, all
full of the vigor of their struggle and conveying a message that did not
require an understanding of Vietnamese. Like the thousands of Vietnamese
sitting around the stadium, I was enchanted. But I was shocked back to the
brutal realities of their experiences by the recurring satires directed against
the U.S. government and its military. The longest and most vehement
applause and laughter were always at the appearance of an actor dressed up
like a U.S. GI, who was the butt of jokes or, in more serious episodes, fell
in defeat.

Although I was on the verge of receiving a degree in French Literature,
what I really wanted to study was philosophy. I was interested in Marx, his
predecessors and his successors. Over the last years, whenever I could find
the time, I read philosophy on the side. I didn't really know what I was
doing, except that it gave me a feeling of security and comfort to read what
people had to say about such formidable things as the universe, history,
human beings, knowledge.
During my second year at Brandeis, I had picked up Eros and Civilization
by Herbert Marcuse and had struggled with it from beginning to end. That

year he was teaching at the Sorbonne. When I arrived in Paris the following
year, he was already back at Brandeis, but people were still raving about his
fantastic courses. When I returned to Brandeis, the first semester of my
senior year was so crowded with required French courses that I could not
officially enroll in Marcuse's lecture series on European political thought
since the French Revolution. Nevertheless, I attended each session, rushing
in to capture a seat in the front of the hall. Arranged around the room on
progressively higher levels, the desks were in the style of the UN General
Assembly room. When Marcuse walked onto the platform, situated at the
lowest level of the hall, his presence dominated everything. There was
something imposing about him which evoked total silence and attention
when he appeared, without his having to pronounce a single word. The
students had a rare respect for him. Their concentration was not only total
during the entire hour as he paced back and forth while he lectured, but if at
the sound of the bell Marcuse had not finished, the rattling of papers would
not begin until he had formally closed the lecture.
One day, shortly after the semester began, I mustered up enough courage to
put in a request for an interview with Marcuse. I had decided to ask him to
help me draw up a bibliography on basic works in philosophy. Having
assumed I would have to wait for weeks to see him, I was surprised when I
was told he would be free that very afternoon.
From afar, Marcuse seemed unapproachable. I imagine the combination of
his stature, his white hair, the heavy accent, his extraordinary air of
confidence, and his wealth of knowledge made him seem ageless and the
epitome of a philosopher. Up close, he was a man with inquisitive sparkling
eyes and a fresh, very down-to-earth smile.
Trying to explain my reasons for the appointment, I told him that I intended
to study philosophy in graduate school, perhaps at the university in
Frankfurt, but that my independent reading in philosophy had been
unsystematic — without regard for any national or historical relations.
What I wanted from him — if it was not too much of an imposition — was
a list of works in the sequence in which I ought to read them. And if he
gave me permission, I wanted to enroll in his graduate seminar on Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason.

"Do you really want to study philosophy?" Professor Marcuse asked, slowly
and placing emphasis on each word. He made it sound so serious and so
profound — like an initiation into some secret society which, once you join,
you can never leave. I was afraid that a mere "yes" would ring hollow and
inane.
"At least, I want to see if I am able," was about the only thing I could think
of to answer.
"Then you should begin with the Pre-Socratics, then Plato and Aristotle.
Come back again next week and we will discuss the Pre-Socratics."
I had no idea that my little request would develop into stimulating weekly
discussions on the philosophers he suggested, discussions which gave me a
far more exciting and vivid picture of the history of philosophy than would
have emerged from a dry introduction-to-philosophy course.
Shortly after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, Marcuse had emigrated
to the United States, along with a group of intellectuals who had established
the Institut fur Sozialforschung. Among them were Theodor Adorno and
Max Horkheimer. They had continued their work for a number of years in
this country, but after the defeat of the fascists, they reestablished the
Institute as a part of the regular university in Frankfurt. I had first become
acquainted with the work of the Institute through Manfred Clemenz, the
German student I had met my first year at Brandeis. During the summer
after my studies in France, I had spent several weeks in Frankfurt attending
a few of Adorno's lectures, and getting to know some of the students there.
At that time, my knowledge of German was minimal, but the people around
me translated the essential points of the lectures into English or French.
Later I read all of Adorno's and Horkheimets works that had been translated
into English or French, in addition to Marcuse's writings. In this way I had
acquainted myself with their thought, which was collectively known as
Critical Theory.
During that last year at Brandeis, I made up my mind to apply for a
scholarship to study philosophy at the university in Frankfurt. Marcuse
confirmed my conviction that this was the best place to study, given my
interest in Kant, Hegel and Marx. The remaining months of the school year

were consumed by intensive preparation in philosophy, German language
and the final requirements for my B.A. degree, including a year-long honors
project on the Phenomenological Attitude, which I thought I had discovered
in the works of the contemporary French novelist Robbe-Grillet. The most
challenging and fulfilling course was the graduate seminar that Marcuse
conducted on the Critique of Pure Reason. Poring over a seemingly
incomprehensible passage for hours, then suddenly grasping its meaning
gave me a sense of satisfaction I had never experienced before.
My parents were not overjoyed at the idea of my leaving the country again,
particularly since I had not yet decided how long I wanted to remain in
Germany. Nevertheless, they were extremely proud to attend the graduation
ceremony, where they heard my name called among the Phi Beta Kappas
and magna cum laudes. I gave my mother the diplomas, certificates and
medals and we packed up the things I had accumulated over the last four
years, dropped off my friend Celeste in Providence and headed down the
highway for Birmingham.
Along the way, we stopped at a liquor store where my father bought several
bottles of bourbon to take home with him — in Alabama's state-controlled
liquor stores, the only brands available were the ones approved by the
government. (We always thought that one of Wallace's relatives must be the
owner of the factory producing all the off-the-wall brands of alcohol, which
you never saw anyplace except in Alabama.) We crossed over into
Tennessee very late that night, and because we knew that we'd never find a
motel run by Black people where we could spend the night, we decided to
drive straight through to Birmingham.
In one of those towns along the highway in Tennessee, around two in the
morning, we heard a siren screaming behind us. The fat, tobacco-chewing
cop, letting his white Tennessee drawl tumble out of a grotesque smile, said
to my father, "Y'all know y'alls driving too fast. Git out of the car." All the
time he was fingering the holster strapped to his waist. I thought about the
stories I had heard about Black people or Northern whites disappearing for
weeks, sometimes forever, in these small-town jails. The cop searched the
front of the car and told my father to open the trunk. When he saw all the
suitcases, he seemed startled and immediately asked where we were coming

from. After my father said that he had just attended his daughter's college
graduation, the cop assumed a less slovenly posture and became more
official. But when he saw the bourbon, his eyes lit up.
"This is a dry county, y'all know. No liquor allowed nowhere in the
jurisdiction."
"The bottles are unopened and we're only passing through," my father
insisted.
"Don't make no difference. The county is dry and ain't no liquor allowed no
kind of way. Y'all can do thirty days in jail for this. And the judge ain't even
in town — won't be back till next week. Look like y'all gone have to stay in
jail till he get back."
When my father talked about getting in touch with his lawyer, the cop said,
"I tell you what. I'm gon do you a favor. Treat ya like I treat my boys
around here. Git back in the car and follow me into town." He took the
whiskey to the patrol car.
Thinking we were headed for the police station, and knowing that it would
be fatal to try to get away, we followed the police car through the dark
streets. When it came to a halt, there was nothing around which bore the
faintest resemblance to a police station. We were in an unpaved alley and
the cop was opening a garage door. Although this wasn't the first time we
had been trapped into a situation like this, we were all silently nervous.
"Davis," my mother said, "I don't think you should go in there. There's no
telling what he might try to do." But there wasn't the slightest trace of fear
in my father — in fact, I have never seen him afraid of anything. He went
on in while we waited on tenterhooks in the car. After what seemed like
hours he came out with a wry smile on his face. Starting up the car, he told
us, chuckling, "All the man wanted was the liquor and twenty dollars." It
was a small-time racket which he probably pulled whenever he caught up
with Black people driving through the town. The alternative to giving him
the twenty dollars would probably have been much more terrible than the
thirty days in jail.

When I boarded the boat sailing for Germany, Watts was burning. I felt
again the tension of the Janus head — leaving the country at that time was
hard for me. But in a little more than a week, I was on the other side of the
ocean.
My stipend consisted of the boat fare and a hundred dollars a month — for
rent, food, tram fare to and from the university, books, and whatever else I
needed.
As I searched the city for a room, the agencies kept telling me, "Es tut uns
leid, aber wir haben keine Zimmer fur Auslander." "Sorry but we don't have
rooms for foreigners," their attitude clearly implying, "Our rooms are only
for good Aryans."
In historical time, twenty years is not very long — half the people I saw on
the streets, and practically all the adults, had gone through the experience of
Hitler. And in West Germany, unlike the German Democratic Republic,
there had been no determined campaign to attack the fascist and racist
attitudes which had become so deeply embedded.
Eventually, after days of reading the fine print of the Frankfurter
Allgemeiner, I found a little room near the zoo, on the top floor of a postwar
apartment building — like the chambre de bonne I had lived in in Paris.
The family to whose apartment the room was attached seemed to be
exceptional, as far as the masses of West Germans were concerned. They
were curious and concerned about the condition of Black people in the
United States and they never failed to draw the appropriate parallels
between the Nazi oppression of the Jews in their country and the repression
of my people in the United States. They repeatedly invited me to their
apartment for dinner and discussions. In the beginning when my German
was not very polished, these discussions helped me orient myself to the
language.
During the first few weeks, I didn't understand a word of what Adorno was
saying. Not only were the concepts difficult to grasp, but he spoke his own
special aphoristic variety of German. It was a consolation to discover that

most German students attending his lectures for the first time were having
almost as much trouble understanding Adorno as I.
I saw old friends from previous trips to Europe, and entered into new
friendships as well. It was a great relief to find that not too far from me
lived a young Black man from Indiana who had been stationed in Frankfurt
as a GI and had decided to stay on to pursue his studies in literature at the
university. We were good friends throughout my stay in Germany. I was
friendly with a group of Haitian students, a Black South African and two
couples who, like myself, had come from the United States to study with
Adorno.
I was paying eighty marks a month for my room — practically a quarter of
the hundred dollars I had to live on. Almost inevitably, when the end of the
month approached, I was eating nothing but Quark (something between
yogurt and cottage cheese), and writing my parents for a few dollars to tide
me over until the next check came in. I was very relieved to find a room on
Adalbertstrasse, near the university, which cost only a few marks a month.
It was in a massive old building of crumbling red brick, an abandoned
factory which the owner rented out I imagine in order to avoid paying a
watchman.
The three floors of one side were occupied by a sculptor who fashioned
huge abstract metal forms which he kept in the courtyard. The side I moved
into had been taken over by a group of students, all as poor as I. The entire
place cost us seventy-five marks (less than twenty dollars) a month, and it
could comfortably accommodate up to five people in the little nooks that
had served as offices when the factory was in operation.
It was a dilapidated old abandoned building with dirty cement floors, no
showers — not even hot water — and no central heating, only potbellied
coal stoves. But paying only about five dollars a month for rent and a few
more dollars for coal during the winter months, I could afford to eat a little
better — even buying meat a couple of days a week — and was able to buy
more books and a new blouse once in a while. As throughout Europe,
cultural events could always be attended by students at a great discount, so
for about fifty cents, I could see a movie or go to the theater, the opera, the
ballet or a museum.

During the spring of my first year there, all the students who had received
scholarships from the exchange program were given a trip to Berlin from
whatever section of Germany they happened to be living in. Anxious to see
Socialist Germany, I spent most of the time in Berlin, the capital of the
German Democratic Republic. Each day, I walked across at Checkpoint
Charlie — the border point for people with passports from capitalist
countries. Crowds of white tourists from the United States would be
standing in line, probably waiting to cross the border in order to tell people
they had seen the other side of the "wall" — so they could say, in Kennedy's
war-filled words, "Ich bin ein Berliner," that is, I am ready to fight
communism. The tourists were always complaining about the wait. But I
never had any trouble — each time I went across, I would receive the signal
to go on only a few moments after I had shown my passport. This was their
way of showing their solidarity with Black people.
Claudia and Margaret Burnham's stepbrother Bob had recently come
through Frankfurt, stayed a while at the "factory" and then gone on to study
at the Brecht Theater in Berlin. Through him, I was introduced to several
people in the GDR who showed me around the city. Living in Bob's
apartment building was a group of Cubans — the national director of the
ballet and several of his assistants. I was amazed at their youth — the
director was in his early twenties and the rest around the same age. They
talked about their efforts to more fully integrate the African element of
Cuban culture into their classical dances and described the way in which
they were developing the old Yoruba dances which, before the revolution,
had been restricted to the remote areas of the country where Black people
still retained African customs.
Esther and James Jackson, old friends of my parents from Birmingham,
were in Berlin at the time. Jim, the International Affairs Director of the
Communist Party, U.S.A., was representing the party at the May Day
celebration. I spent an evening with them. We talked about the old days
when Jim had been underground, and how puzzled I had been as a child,
seeing those sinister white men following us all over New York looking for
him; Jim was one of the lucky ones whom the FBI never succeeded in
tracking down. We discussed the socialist transformation of the GDR and
its active campaign against the remnants of fascism in the mentality of the

people. The next day I watched the parade, participated in the May Day
Festivities and then went on back through Checkpoint Charlie to catch my
plane for Frankfurt.
When the West German police said they were going to detain me at the
airport, I was certain they were going to accuse me of being too friendly
with the people in the GDR — and, of course, they would have been
correct. But, according to them, the reason they wouldn't let me board the
plane had to do with my failure to check out with the Frankfurt police when
I had moved, some months before, out of the room near the zoo, and had
not registered with the police station near the factory. I could never get used
to the incredible bureaucracy in which one must become embroiled merely
as a prerequisite for living an ordinary life. Everyone, citizen or foreigner,
not registered at the nearest police station — and there was no lack of them
— was technically liable to arrest, including those visiting with friends for
only a few days. Although I had registered when I moved into the first place
(the process is called Anmeldung — announcing one's arrival), it had not
crossed my mind to tell them I was leaving (called Ausmeldung) and to go
through the Anmeldung at the Adalbertstrasse police station. The West
Berlin police were serious: they were talking about deporting me. It took
several hours before I could persuade them that my failure to register had
been an innocent omission. After it was all over and they had left the threat
of deportation hanging over me unless I cleared myself the next day with
the Frankfurt police, I was still positive that the harassment was a little
retaliatory action for my trip to the GDR.

Frankfurt was a very intensive learning experience. Stimulating lectures and
seminars conducted by Theodor Adorno, Jurgen Habermass, Professor
Haag, Alfred Schmidt, Oscar Negt. Tackling formidable works, such as all
three of Kant's Critiques and the works of Hegel and Marx as well (in one
seminar, we spent an entire semester analyzing about twenty pages of
Hegel's Logic).
Most of the students living in the factory studied either philosophy or
sociology. Many were members of S.D.S. — Sozialistischer Deutscher
Studentenbund, the German Socialist Student League. And they were very

seriously striving to arrive at some form of practical resistance capable of
ultimately overturning the enemy system. Aside from the concern with the
social contradictions inside their own country, they consistently tried to
force an internationist awareness among their members. I participated in
rallies and demonstrations directed against U.S. aggression in Vietnam.
Those of us who were not citizens had to be especially careful because an
arrest would mean a sure deportation. One demonstration, which took place
outside the U.S. Embassy, was particularly dangerous. Chanting "U.S. raus,
U.S. raus, U.S. raus aus Vietnam!" and "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!" the crowds
of demonstrators were attacked almost immediately by mounted police.
One young woman was trampled under the hooves of the horses. Since it
had been decided beforehand that we would resist this expected attack, the
agreed upon hit-and-run, disruptive tactics were put into operation. The idea
was to move along the main street leading to the center of the city,
disrupting the functioning of the tramway. As the crowds of demonstrators
marched down the main street on the sidewalks on both sides of the street,
some would periodically separate from the group and sit down on the
tramway tracks. Watching the approach of the police, they waited until the
very last moment to run into the refuge of the crowd. Not all of us made it.
When it was my turn to do the sitting and running, I had to make sure I was
fast enough to reach the safety of the crowd, not wanting to have a case
foisted upon me by the West German courts. After several hours of sitting
and running, and a sizeable number of arrests, we made it to the
Hauptwache, the center of the city, and listened to an arousing speech by
Rudi Dutsche, the Chairman of S.D.S., who was later shot in the head by a
would-be assassin who said he was inspired by the assassination of Martin
Luther King.
Toward the end of my second year, a mass student demonstration, organized
by S.D.S. in Berlin protesting the visit by the Shah of Iran, was attacked by
the Shah's security, aided by the West Berlin police, with such terrible force
that it ended in the death of a student — Ben Ohnesorge, who was attending
his first political protest. The response throughout West Germany was swift
and intense. In Frankfurt, there were mass gatherings, demonstrations and
teach-ins.

I was most impressed by the consciousness of the student movement when I
heard about the Berlin campaign led by S.D.S. against the movie Africa
Adio, directed by two Roman playboy-types, dealing with the ousting of the
colonialists from Africa. Not only was this movie thoroughly racist in that it
depicted the African Liberation Fighters as aggressors against the pure,
educated, civilized whites, but the directors went so far as to stage actual
killings in order to do on-the-spot documentary coverage of Africa. S.D.S.
members in Berlin tore up a theater which refused to boycott the film.
Students and workers were being drawn en masse into the arena of political
protest in Germany. At the same time, great upheavals were taking place in
the States.
My decision to study in Frankfurt had been made in 1964, against the
backdrop of relative political tranquility. But by the time I left in the
summer of 1965, thousands of sisters and brothers were screaming in the
streets of Los Angeles that they had observed the rules of the game long
enough, too long.
Watts was exploding; furiously burning. And out of the ashes of Watts,
Phoenix-like, a new Black militancy was being born.
While I was hidden away in West Germany the Black Liberation Movement
was undergoing decisive metamorphoses. The slogan "Black Power" sprang
out of a march in Mississippi. Organizations were being transfigured — The
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a leading civil rights
organization, was becoming the foremost advocate of "Black Power." The
Congress on Racial Equality was undergoing similar transformations. In
Newark, a national Black Power Conference had been organized. In
political groups, labor unions, churches and other organizations, Black
caucuses were being formed to defend the special interests of Black people.
Everywhere there were upheavals.
While I was reading philosophy in Frankfurt, and participating in the
rearguard of S.D.S., there were young Black men in Oakland, California,
who had decided that they had to wield arms in order to protect the
residents of Oakland's Black community from the indiscriminate police
brutality ravaging the area. Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, li'l Bobby Hutton

— those were some of the names that reached me. One day in Frankfurt I
read about their entrance into the California Legislature in Sacramento with
their weapons in order to safeguard their right (a right given to all whites) to
carry them as instruments of self-defense. The name of this organization
was the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
The more the struggles at home accelerated, the more frustrated I felt at
being forced to experience it all vicariously. I was advancing my studies,
deepening my understanding of philosophy, but I felt more and more
isolated. I was so far away from the terrain of the fight that I could not even
analyze the episodes of the struggle. I did not even have the knowledge or
understanding to judge which currents of the movement were progressive
and genuine and which were not. It was a difficult balance I was trying to
maintain, and it was increasingly hard to feel a part of the collective coming
to consciousness of my people.
I am certain that what I was feeling was a variation and reflection of the
same feelings that were overwhelming larger and larger numbers of Black
people abroad. Many others of us must have felt pained, when reading
about some new crisis in the struggle at home, to be hearing about it
secondhand.
I had thought mine was the perfect dilemma: the struggle at home versus
the need to remain in Frankfurt until the completion of my doctorate, for I
was certain that Frankfurt was far more conducive to philosophical studies
than any other place. But each day it was becoming clearer to me that my
ability to accomplish anything was directly dependent on my ability to
contribute something concrete to the struggle.
Adorno had readily agreed to direct my work on a doctoral dissertation. But
now I felt it would be impossible for me to stay in Germany any longer.
Two years was enough. I arranged for an appointment with Adorno at the
Institute and explained to him that I had to go home. In my correspondence
with Marcuse, he had already agreed to work with me at the University of
California in San Diego, where he had accepted a position after having been
practically pushed out of Brandeis for political reasons. I wanted to
continue my academic work, but I knew I could not do it unless I was

politically involved. The struggle was a life-nerve; our only hope for
survival. I made up my mind. The journey was on.

PART FOUR: Flames
fire eaters from the sun
we shall lay the high white dome to siege
cover screams with holy wings, in those days
we shall be terrible
HENRY DUMAS

I

t was the summer of 1967. On the way home I stopped off in London to
attend a conference where Herbert Marcuse and Stokely Carmichael
were among the main speakers. It was good to talk to Herbert and his wife
Inge, whom I had not seen for quite some time, and I was looking forward
to hearing Stokely's presentation. Convened around the theme "The
Dialectics of Liberation," the conference was headquartered in a huge
railroad turntable called the Roundhouse. The gathering was an unlikely
conglomeration of Marxist theoreticians, philosophers, sociologists and
psychologists, radical political activists, hippies and Black Power
advocates. In the enormous barn-like structure, its floor covered with
sawdust, the air reeked heavily of marijuana, and there were rumors that
one speaker, a psychologist, was high on acid. Stokely Carmichael and
Michael X, the militant West Indian leader of community struggles in
London, were the two central figures of the small Black contingent in
attendance.
My natural hair style, in those days still a rarity, identified me as a
sympathizer with the Black Power Movement. Immediately I was
approached by the group around Michael and Stokely.
Between conference sessions I spent my time with Stokely and Michael X's
group, accompanied them to meetings in London ghettos, helping on
occasion to pull the gatherings together. I was struck by the degree to which
West Indian communities in London were mirror images of Black
communities at home. These warm, receptive, fiery, enthusiastic people

were also searching for some way to avenge themselves. As in the United
States, there was a natural inclination to identify the enemy as the white
man. Natural because the great majority of white people, both in the United
States and England, have been carriers of the racism which, in reality,
benefits only a small number of them — the capitalists. Because the masses
of white people harbor racist attitudes, our people tended to see them as the
villains and not the institutionalized forms of racism, which, though
definitely reinforced by prejudiced attitudes, serve, fundamentally, only the
interests of the rulers. When white people are indiscriminantly viewed as
the enemy, it is virtually impossible to develop a political solution. Such
were my thoughts as I moved through the conference. I learned more about
the new movement there in London than from all the reading I had done. I
was learning that as long as the Black response to racism remained purely
emotional, we would go nowhere. Like the playground fights at Parker
High, like the sporadic headless anger of those who fell under police clubs
in Alabama — it would solve nothing in the long run.
As I listened to Stokely's words, cutting like a switchblade, accusing the
enemy as I had never heard him accused before, I admit I felt the cathartic
power of his speech. But I also wanted to know where to go from there. I
was distressed to discover that among some of the Black leaders there was
the tendency to completely dismiss Marxism as "the white man's thing." It
had been clear to me for a long time that in order to achieve its ultimate
goals, the Black Liberation struggle would have to become a part of a
revolutionary movement, embracing all working people. It was also clear to
me that this movement must push in the direction of socialism. And I knew
that Black people — Black workers — had an important leadership role to
play in the overall fight. Therefore I found it disappointing that the
nationalist posture of the Black leaders in London involved a strong
resistance to socialism. I was encouraged, however, to learn that Stokely
was about to make a trip to Cuba. Once he saw Black, Brown, and white
people constructing together their socialist society, he would be compelled,
so I thought, to reexamine his own position. When I asked Stokely about
movement contacts in Southern California, he told me about Tommy J., a
community leader in Los Angeles. The address he gave me was in Watts.

When I arrived in Southern California a few weeks later, one of the first
things I did was look up the address Stokely had given me. There was no
such number. After desperately knocking on door after door, it was clear
that no one in the neighborhood had ever heard of Tommy J. Because I was
straining toward a permanent involvement, not being able to find this
brother depressed me enormously. Reluctantly, I left for San Diego without
any contacts in or concrete information about the movement in Southern
California.
In San Diego, the only people I knew were graduate students in the
philosophy department, primarily students who were there because of
Marcuse. Ricky Sherover and Bill Leiss, for example, had been graduate
students at Brandeis during my senior year and had accompanied Marcuse
to UCSD. Nevertheless, I did manage to get the telephone numbers of two
Black community leaders: the director of a youth organization in San
Diego, and a man who I later discovered was a member of the Communist
Party.
I telephoned the first brother.
"Hello, this is Angela Davis. I've just arrived in San Diego to study
philosophy at the university. I've been abroad for the last two years, and I
want to try to contribute whatever I can to the Black movement here.
Someone gave me your name and number . . ."
At the end of my little speech there was only silence. I did not realize then
how I must have sounded — like an effervescent adolescent, or like an
agent trying to worm her way to the inside. The silence continued for a
while, then he finally promised to call me soon and tell me about a meeting
I could attend. I didn't detect very much enthusiasm in his voice and I didn't
really expect to hear from him after I hung up. I was right.
The days clumped by, the chances of a speedy acceptance into the San
Diego community becoming more and more remote. Sometimes I would get
into my car and, out of sheer frustration, drive into San Diego and head
toward Logan Heights, where the largest concentration of Black people
lived, and drive around aimlessly, daydreaming, trying to devise some way
of escaping this terrible isolation.

There was little more to do than wait for classes at the university to begin.
And so I studied, socialized with the philosophy students and professors,
and waited, waited. At last the dormitories came alive with students
returning to campus. As the resident student body grew, so did my
disappointment. Not everyone had arrived, but I was hard at work searching
every corner and crevice for sisters and brothers. Each day brought on a
more profound dejection, for there were still no Black people on campus.
I was like an explorer who returns to his homeland after many years, with
precious bounty and no one to give it to. I believed my energy, my
commitment, my convictions were the treasure I had accumulated, and I
looked high and low for a way to spend it. I roamed the campus, examined
the bulletin boards, read the newspapers, talked to everyone who might
know: Where are my people? It was as if I would be churned up and
destroyed inside by these irrepressible desires to become a part of a
liberation movement if I did not soon discover an outlet for them.
Therefore, I turned to the radical students' organization on campus, and
participated in the planning of an action against the war in Vietnam.
In 1967 masses of people had not yet arrived at the conclusion that the war
ought to come to an immediate halt. Consequently many of our efforts to
talk to the people in the streets of San Diego were immediately and abruptly
rebuffed. Many refused to even take our literature. But since this was my
first demonstration in the United States, for a number of years, I was
enthusiastic and excited. The hostile attitudes of the people in the streets
gave me all the more reason to talk harder, longer and more persuasively.
As zealous as I felt, as clearly as I understood the political necessity for this
demonstration, I still experienced a sense of alienation among these
students. Emotionally I was a stranger — in a way that I had never been a
stranger among white people before. It was not the feeling of my childhood
in the South. It was not the alienation I experienced in New York upon
realizing that many of the whites around me were going out of their way to
make me feel that they were not racist. It was a new strangeness that I felt.
But one I would have to deal with later.
Meanwhile, the contingent of police overseeing our demonstration grew
larger. A police car was stationed on every corner now. Uniformed and

plainclothes agents were all around. San Diego was not used to such
demonstrations. That its defenses would be extreme could have been
predicted beforehand.
When the atmosphere seemed to be reaching a boiling point, the decision
was made to return to the campus and pick up reinforcements. Since my '58
Buick was one of the largest cars we had, I accepted the assignment of
making the fifteen mile trip back to La Jolla. But by the time we reached
the university, a call had come in telling us that arrests had already been
made.
The next step was to retrieve the prisoners. We mustered up enough for the
bond. Three of us, a man, another woman and I, went down to the jail,
posted the money and awaited the release of our companions. The charges
that had been lodged against them were still an enigma to us. We inquired
about the precise circumstances surrounding the arrest. Previously we had
been told that the charge was "obstructing pedestrian traffic."
Since no one in the front office could satisfy us, we were directed to the
chambers of the patrol captain. We entered into a dark room musty with the
odor of San Diego justice. Again, we posed the question. Why the arrests?
Again the answer was mechanically spouted out to us: "obstructing
pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk." We were persistent. What does that
mean? We ourselves were passing out literature as well; we knew we did
not prevent anyone from passing. "Well," said the patrol captain, "as long as
you are standing on the sidewalk, you may be considered to be obstructing
pedestrian traffic."
"Then how many times have you arrested Jehovah's Witnesses distributing
their religious literature?"
Silence.
"Sir, could you be a little more explicit and a little clearer in your
explanation of the reasons for the arrests of our friends?"
The captain began to say something, but became so completely tongue-tied
he was not able to get the words out. Finally, out of sheer frustration and

evidently disturbed by our logic, he blurted out — "It is not the police's job
to understand the law; that is the job of the district attorney. If you want to
understand the meaning of this law, go to the D.A.!"
Although we realized that we were in the chambers of our enemy, this
remark was so stupid and so funny that all three of us roared with laughter.
"Get out of this place! Get out!" the captain, now out of control, screamed.
We were trying to regain our composure when we noticed him dialing a
number on his telephone. In less than a minute, his office was full of
policemen who came for a single purpose: to throw us into jail.
Our male companion was carted off; Anna and I were handcuffed and
pushed into the back seat of a patrol car parked in the steaming hot
courtyard of the city jail complex. The windows were closed, and we saw
that police cars have no door handles on the inside. The police officer
slammed the doors and walked away. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty.
The heat had become absolutely intolerable. Sweat was pouring down our
faces and our clothes were drenched. We banged on the windows and
screamed. No one came.
Just as our fear began to approach panic, the officer walked toward the car,
got in and started up the motor.
"What do you girls do for a living?" he asked.
"We don't have jobs," we answered.
"If you don't have a job, then we can pin vagrancy on you."
"We have money in our purses; that proves we aren't vagrants."
"That's even better," he said. "If you have money, but no job, we can charge
you with robbery — or better than that, armed robbery."
On the way to the jail, we looked at San Diego through the windows of the
police car. The screeching of the siren attracted stares from the crowds of
people in the downtown area. What were they thinking? Were we

prostitutes, drug users, robbers, or had we gotten caught in a confidence
game? I doubt if the idea crossed any of their minds that we might be
revolutionaries.
In the woman's section of the county jail, we were directed to a room and
instructed to remove all of our clothes in the presence of a matron. Anna
and I protested this degradation long and hard before we were forced to
acquiesce. The next stage was a hot shower in a room where a heavy iron
door was locked behind us. After being left for an hour in the shower room,
we were placed in separate silvery-colored, padded cells, where we had to
suffer through another waiting period. Thinking I could use some of this
time constructively, I scratched political slogans on the walls with a burnt
match for the benefit of the sisters who would occupy this cell next.
Many hours passed before the mug shots and fingerprints were finally
taken, our booking sheet written up. We made the telephone calls due us
and, dressed in prisoner's uniforms, were taken to the jail population
upstairs.
They put us in a large tank separated from the outside corridor by a double
gate of electrically operated bars. The first gate slid open at the push of a
button. Anna and I stepped inside between the two gates. It slid closed.
Only when it was securely locked did the second gate leading into the tank
open.
The tank itself was as depressingly sterile as jail tanks are meant to be. It
was divided into two sections — one with the bunks for sleeping and the
other for eating and game-playing. We explained to each sister who
inquired what we had done to be arrested. Our explanation singled us out, in
1967, as curiosities. Many of the sisters, in jail on such charges as
possession of drugs and prostitution, tried to comfort us. They felt that the
charges against us were silly and would be dropped.
They were right. At long last we were released.
In the meantime other demonstrators had informed the news media that
three people in San Diego had been arrested when they tried to inquire
about the nature of a law. A rock station based in Los Angeles was running

a spot every hour: "Have you heard about the people down south who got
arrested because they wanted to know about the law?"
The university agreed to lodge an official protest, and within two days, the
district attorney of San Diego dropped the charges and made a formal
apology.
A few days later, during a meeting of the group that had organized the
demonstration, I was excited to see a young Black couple sitting on the
other side of the room. They were the first Black students I had seen on the
campus — and their presence at the meeting meant they were interested in
the movement. After the meeting, we introduced ourselves, and within a
short time Liz and Ed and I decided to try to organize a Black Student
Union. We began by systematically investigating the dormitories, asking
whether there were any Black students on the floor. After we combed all the
halls, we attacked the graduate departments, going into the main office of
each one with pen and paper, requesting the names of all Black students and
employees. We also involved Black workers; if we hadn't we would have
been too small to get the attention we needed to function.
We made contact with some fifteen to twenty Black students and workers.
About ten of them showed up at our meeting, leaving us quite proud of our
first efforts at independent political organizing. One Black professor
attended the meeting and agreed to act as the group's sponsor. Soon another
professor, from Jamaica, became heavily involved in the work of the
organization.
We realized that to be successful we would have to establish ties with
similar groups. Otherwise, when making demands, it would be hard to
convince the university administration of our strength. We decided therefore
to affiliate, in a loose way, with the Black Students' Council at San Diego
State College, and to seek community ties as well.
It struck me, about this time, that I was being looked upon as somewhat of a
leader of the Black movement at the university. It was not that I had sought
out this position; it simply emerged that, despite my two-year absence, I
was one of the most experienced organizers on campus.

We discovered that the San Diego Black Conference — a coalition of
community organizations spearheaded by Ron Karenga's US-Organization
— was trying to build support for a Black seaman, Ed Lynn, who was
challenging racial discrimination at Balboa Naval Base. Liz, Ed and I
decided to attend the Thursday night meeting of the conference. The facts
surrounding Ed Lynn's case were classic. It had created a huge stir at the
base when Ed circulated a petition protesting race prejudice, asking both
Black and white seamen to sign. In the course of this petition drive, Ed had
charged that President Johnson condoned racism in the military. Within a
short time he was told that he faced court-martial for having made
"offensive" statements about the President of the United States.
The small meeting was being held at a community center in Logan Heights.
The participants stared at the three strangers who said they were
representing Black students at the University of San Diego — no one had
ever heard of our group. Some probably thought we were agents. We
worked hard to persuade them that we were genuinely interested in the case
of Ed Lynn. Ed himself was quite willing to let us help him in his defense.
He readily accepted our invitation to speak about his case at the university
and enthusiastically greeted our idea of setting up a permanent table on the
campus plaza with literature on him and the battle at Balboa Naval Base. In
this way, the Black Student Council entered into a close working
relationship with Ed Lynn. In the course of these activities, Ed and I became
good friends.

The Second Baptist Church in Watts glowed with colorful African patterns
and fabrics — the women wore "traditional" long dresses of red, purple,
orange and yellow; the men wore bubas that rivaled in every way the fiery
beauty of the women's clothes. The walls of the registration room were
alive with poster art that hailed Blackness as an ancient and peerless beauty.
It was November of 1967, and my exhilaration was as bright and intense as
the colors that dappled the room. I was a stranger to this kind of gathering
and found literally staggering the energy and resolve of the people attending
the Black Youth Conference. London and San Diego had been sad

miniatures compared to this massive display of strength. I walked around
calling everyone sister and brother; smiling, elated, high on love.
I came down. Slowly, at first, but then with a jolt.
A gun battle broke out during the first hours between two organizations —
The United Front and Ron Karenga's US-Organization. Beneath the façade
of unity, under the wonderful colors of the bubas, lay strong ideological
differences and explosive political conflicts, and perhaps even agents
provocateurs. I knew it was as important to understand this side of the
movement as the nicer side — but my idealism had received a strong, and
probably necessary, kick in the teeth. I was expecting too much, needing too
much, and my eagerness to learn and submerge myself in this movement
made me giddy with excitement.
In the midst of the chaos which followed the shooting, I read the literature,
sat in on some of the workshops, and discovered that about the only thing
we really had in common was skin color. No wonder unity was fragile.
There were the cultural nationalist organizations, talking about a new
culture, a new value system, a new life-style among Black people. There
were the severely anti-white factions who felt that only the most drastic
measure — elimination of all white people — would give Black people the
opportunity to live unhampered by racism. Others simply wanted to
separate and build a distinct Black nation within the United States. And
some wanted to return to Africa, the land of our ancestors.
There were those who felt the most urgent task of the movement was to
refine the spirit of confrontation among Black people. They wanted to spark
mass uprisings, such as the Watts and Detroit rebellions. Related to them
were those who called upon us all to "pick up the gun" as the major weapon
of liberation and transformation — although they seldom seemed to know
exactly what it was they wanted to usher in with the gun.
There were the pseudo-militant groups that insisted that the racist
establishment should be challenged — but only in order to pressure the big
foundations to finance service programs which they themselves would
develop and, probably, profit from. Indicative of the confusion was the fact

that one workshop went so far as to propose before the plenary session the
use of drums as a new means of communication among Black people in the
cities.
It seemed to me that two steady rays of lucidity shone through the
confusion — James Forman of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee) and Franklin Alexander of the Communist Party. Forman spoke
to the plenum of the conference and emphatically defended the proposition
that we could not afford to make a skin analysis alone; we also needed a
class analysis. I watched Franklin as he co-chaired a workshop on the
subject of Black Politics and Economics. His presentation was clear and
incisive: power relationships which placed Black people at the bottom
stemmed from the use of racism as a tool of the economically ascendant
class — the capitalists. Racism meant more profits and, insofar as white
workers are concerned, division and confusion.
After the conference adjourned, I was invited, quite by happenstance, to
attend a small house meeting where James Forman and Ralph Featherstone
talked about their recent trip to Africa. They gave a fascinating, detailed
account of what they had seen in Tanzania, and discussed plans to establish
within SNCC a "skill bank" through which Black people here with special
scientific and technical skills could commit themselves to spending certain
periods of time in Africa. Besides Franklin and Kendra Alexander, at this
meeting there were representatives of an organization called the Black
Panther Party. It was a small cadre group which felt its role was to develop
theoretical analyses of the Black movement, as well as to build structures
within the existing movement. It bore no relationship to Huey Newton and
Bobby Seale's Black Panther Party for Self Defense, except that both had
taken their names from the Lowndes County Black Panther Party in
Alabama. In fact, to distinguish it from Huey and Bobby's party, it was
called the Black Panther Political Party.
This meeting was the beginning of my long and deep relationship with
many of the members of the BPPP. Their understanding of the Black
Liberation Movement was far more sophisticated and more satisfying than
what I had discovered in San Diego. Though I continued my commitment to

both the university and the community in San Diego, I found real strength
and vision in L.A.
One of my missions during this trip to Los Angeles was to contact speakers
for a San Diego rally we were planning in support of Ed Lynn. Leaders of
several groups agreed to come: John Floyd, the chairman of the Black
Panther Political Party; Brother Crook, a leader of the Community Alert
Patrol; Ron Karenga, whose US-Organization was popular in San Diego;
and Walter Bremond, the chairman of the Black Congress, a working
coalition of Black organizations in the area of Los Angeles.
In organizing for this rally back in San Diego, I ran headlong into a
situation which was to become a constant problem in my political life. I was
criticized very heavily, especially by male members of Karenga's
organization, for doing "a man's job." Women should not play leadership
roles, they insisted. A woman was supposed to "inspire" her man and
educate his children. The irony of their complaint was that much of what I
was doing had fallen to me by default. The arrangements for the publicity
of the rally, for instance, had been in a man's hands, but because his work
left much to be desired, I began to do it simply to make sure that it got
done. It was also ironical that precisely those who criticized me most did
the least to ensure the success of the rally.
I became acquainted very early with the widespread presence of an
unfortunate syndrome among some Black male activists — namely to
confuse their political activity with an assertion of their maleness. They saw
— and some continue to see — Black manhood as something separate from
Black womanhood. These men view Black women as a threat to their
attainment of manhood — especially those Black women who take
initiative and work to become leaders in their own right. The constant
harangue by the US men was that I needed to redirect my energies and use
them to give my man strength and inspiration so that he might more
effectively contribute his talents to the struggle for Black liberation.

***

For me revolution was never an interim "thing-to-do" before settling down;
it was no fashionable club with newly minted jargon, or new kind of social
life — made thrilling by risk and confrontation, made glamorous by
costume. Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a
revolutionary's life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be
for a lifetime.
As 1968 got under way I realized how much I needed to find a collective.
Floating from activity to activity was no revolutionary anything. Individual
activity — sporadic and disconnected — is not revolutionary work. Serious
revolutionary work consists of persistent and methodical efforts through a
collective of other revolutionaries to organize the masses for action. Since I
had long considered myself a Marxist, the alternatives open to me were
very limited.
I had already begun to consider the possibility of joining the Communist
Party, and had been involved in numerous discussions about this with
Kendra and Franklin Alexander. In January I was among those invited to
attend an open meeting of the Che-Lumumba Club at Charlene Mitchell's
house; she was the founding chairwoman of this Black collective of the
Party. Charlene made a presentation on the relationship between reform and
revolution. Her paper was brilliant. It was the most lucid analysis I had
encountered of the way to organize people around their own daily problems
and, through this, propel them in the direction of the revolutionary
overthrow of the capitalist system.
But because there were too many unanswered questions in my own mind, I
did not join the Party at that time. Since my high school days in New York,
and since the summer of 1962 when I had attended the Eighth World Youth
Festival in Helsinki, I had been more or less out of touch with members of
the Communist Party. Instead, I had been relating to Marxist groups and
theoreticians and activists who were often strongly critical of members of
the traditional Communist parties. Later, looking back upon my European
days, I realized how deeply I had been influenced by the anti-communism
which permeated the European Left movement. I saw the Communist
parties as being too conservative and behind the times in their uncritical

attitude toward the working class. In this respect, I thought that there was
no hope for white workers in the United States — they had been irreparably
corrupted by racism on the one hand and concessions by the ruling class on
the other.
Yet, even if these particular problems had not bothered me, I was illprepared to join the Party right then. Still, to become a Communist is to
make a lifetime commitment that requires a great deal of serious thinking
about whether one has the knowledge, the strength, the stamina and the
discipline that a Communist must have. During the first months of 1968 I
let joining the Party remain an open question.
The Black Panther Party, however, appeared flexible enough to accept
Marxist ideas. It was a small collective of young Black people, the majority
of whom came from the Black intelligentsia — students, teachers, and a
professor or two.
I had become acquainted with some of the members of the BPPP after the
Youth Conference in November, and had started to develop some
friendships with a few of them. When they decided, early in January, to
broaden their membership by three, they issued one invitation to a brother
at California State who had a reputation as a very good writer. The second
was extended to Franklin Alexander, and the third to myself. I accepted the
invitation. Inviting Franklin was, I thought, a sign of their willingness to
open up to Marxist ideas. I saw them as an interim political base from
which I could think over and decide upon the ultimate political direction I
was going to take. They, in turn, saw me as their representative down south
in San Diego. The BPPP was a member organization of the Los Angeles
Black Congress — a broad coalition of community groups in the area.
Around this time the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, whose highest
leader, Minister of Defense Huey Newton, was in prison, decided to build a
chapter in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately some of their new recruits moved into that territory with
belligerent claims of the exclusivity of the name "Black Panther Party." One
afternoon, when I was in the Black Congress Building, I caught the eye of a
brother drinking a bottle of wine — something prohibited, as I recall, in the

Congress building. I turned my eyes from him and began to walk down the
corridor toward an office. As I passed him, he pulled a gun out of his pocket
and, with lightning speed, grabbed me by the shoulder, pointed the piece
toward my temple and pulled me into the nearest office.
He wanted to talk, he said. His words were slurred and his breath clotted
with wine. He wanted to talk about the Black Panther Party and his Black
Panther Party for Self Defense. The wine bottle, the slurred words, the fact
that he had a gun and I had nothing told me that if I didn't want my head
blown off, I had better remain as tight-lipped as possible. So I listened.
"The Black Panther Party for Self Defense," he screamed, "demands that
your motherfuckin' party get rid of the name the Black Panther Party. In
fact, you better change it to the motherfuckin' Pink Pussycat Party. And if
you haven't changed your name by next Friday, we are going to off you all."
To make sure I knew that he was dead serious, he told me that he had found
out that I lived in San Diego; that he had my address and that I could expect
someone to knock on my door if we didn't do what they were demanding.
(In all fairness to Huey's Black Panther Party, it is important to say that this
screaming drunk with a gun was later expelled from the Panthers for being
an agent provocateur.)
A crisis situation had erupted. Other members of our group were similarly
threatened. Guns were the common persuaders; death was the consequence
of disobedience. I could do one of two things — obey him or get my own
protection. I chose the latter and, for a while, was fully armed at all times. I
knew that if I were ever stopped by the police and searched, I could end up
in jail, yet if I did not take that risk, I could very easily end up dumped in an
alley somewhere with a bullet in my brain.
We held emergency meeting after emergency meeting, but during that brief
period, were unable to resolve this crisis. Some members wanted an open
confrontation with the Panthers for Self Defense, even if it meant coming to
blows. Others simply wanted to ignore the threats, insisting that the
Panthers were bluffing. And there were one or two who were willing to
quit, bend under the Panthers' threats and disband the organization.

The final solution came about as a result of a fortuitous trip of James
Forman to Los Angeles. He came to town to speak at a rally organized by
the New Politics Convention. We seized the occasion to acquaint him with
the strife between the two organizations and to get his ideas on how to
prevent this conflict from erupting into open warfare. After giving our
predicament some thought, he said he had a proposal.
He prefaced his proposal by telling us of recent efforts to strengthen
relations between SNCC and the Panthers for Self Defense. They had both
agreed to move toward a merger between the two organizations. Stokely
Carmichael had already been appointed Prime Minister of the BPP, Rap
Brown became Minister of Justice, and Forman himself became Minister of
International Affairs.
One of the obstacles to the consolidation of the merger was the
geographical separation of the headquarters of the organizations: SNCC
was in New York; the BPP was in the San Francisco Bay area. Forman felt
it was essential to build a strong SNCC chapter on the West Coast. If we
would consider transforming ourselves into Los Angeles SNCC, Forman
said, our problems as well as SNCC's might be solved. First of all, our
name would no longer be an issue. We would also acquire new national
dimensions for our own collective and overcome, thereby, some of the
provincialism that plagued us. From Forman's standpoint we would be
assisting SNCC — which then was considered by many to be the leading
force in the Black Liberation Movement — to build a base on the West
Coast. Finally we would be able to cement the relationship between the
BPP and SNCC. If a lasting coalition were to develop, it would be a
tremendous advance.
At first there was opposition. Some called Forman's recommendation too
superficial to provide a lasting solution to our problems. They said we
would have to deal with the brothers like the one who put the gun to my
head whether we remained in our old clothes or whether we put on the new
clothes of SNCC.
I was in favor of joining SNCC — not because I thought that the merger
was going to dispel the discord between us and the new L.A. Panthers, but
rather because I respected the historical contributions SNCC had made to

the movement. The peace talk, however, in no way encouraged me to relax
my own vigilance. The trusty weapon was still within reach at all times.
Most of the sisters and brothers on our side were equally wary and did not
immediately disarm themselves.
With everyone still on pins and needles, a peace-making meeting was
called. It was an impressive gathering. With the exception of two or three of
our members who had dropped out, all of us were present. On the Panthers'
side, the line-up was all the major leaders (except Huey, of course, who had
been arrested in October). Eldridge Cleaver was present. Until that meeting,
most of us knew very little about him except that he was the "Minister of
Information" who was "underground," according to the designation that
followed the title each week in their newspaper. Bobby Seale was there,
Emory Douglas and li'l Bobby Hutton, as well as seven or eight others.
I was most impressed by li'l Bobby. He was human, natural, and so clearly
unconcerned about fitting the image of a cold, calculating revolutionary. Li'l
Bobby initiated a friendly conversation with me by asking some everyday,
down-home questions: where I was from, what I did. He had a beautiful
smile and an uncorrupted, youthful enthusiasm. After talking to him for a
few mintues, I knew that he was serious about the struggle and that there
was little, if any, egoism in his motives.
The light conversation with li'l Bobby was the only relief for me in a
meeting that was otherwise shrouded in tension.
When, a few months later, I heard that li'l Bobby had been shot, I felt as if it
were a brother of mine who had been murdered by the Oakland police.
For better or worse, it was decided by both groups that our first common
effort would be the issuing of a call to the entire Black Liberation
Movement on the West Coast for two mass meetings — one in Northern
California, and the other in Southern California — to demand Huey
Newton's freedom on the occasion of his birthday.
The most widely known political prisoner, Huey Newton was an important
symbol of Black militancy. At a time when it was perfectly legal to carry
unconcealed weapons in California, he and his comrades had armed

themselves in order to protect the Black community in Oakland from the
arbitrary brutality of the Oakland Police Department. Because he had posed
a serious threat to their authority, they had cornered him in a situation
which left him with a bullet in his stomach and one policeman dead. Huey
was awaiting trial for murder. We turned our energies full force to
organizing this rally and to making it a major event.
We enlisted the support of the Black Congress and, after a series of hassles,
we secured the Sports Arena for the meeting. It was the largest indoor
meeting place in Los Angeles at the time. We printed thousands of leaflets,
bought advertisements or asked for free time on radio and television
stations.
It was an exciting evening. Although the turnout was not what we had
expected, practically the entire main floor of the arena was full. The list of
speakers was impressive: Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, Bobby Seale,
James Forman, Reis Tijerina, Ron Karenga.
The importance of the rally was obvious. I was, therefore, especially
disturbed by the content of some of the speeches. Stokely, for example,
spoke of socialism as "the white man's thing." Marx, he said, was a white
man and therefore irrelevant to Black Liberation. "As Black people,"
Stokely shouted, "we have to forget about socialism, which is a European
creation, and have to start thinking about African communalism."
His speech was all the more disturbing because I knew that he had been in
Cuba the preceding summer and had been warmly received wherever he
went. He had officially congratulated the Cuban people — Black, Brown
and white — for their superb achievements in building socialism.
Moreover, I knew for a fact that he had publicly stated that his trip to Cuba
had unequivocally demonstrated to him that socialism alone could liberate
Black people. In a socialist country, to people whose sisters and brothers,
and mothers and fathers had given their lives in the defense of their socialist
revolution, Stokely had said that he was convinced that socialism was the
answer for his people as well. Now that he was back in the United States,
where the official propaganda made socialism less popular, he was
opportunistically reversing his position. Because he knew how to turn a
phrase, he had the audience applauding, not so much what he said as his

way of saying it. I was glad he was no longer the chairman of SNCC,
because after hearing such a speech, I would have left the organization on
the spot.
The speech of Rap Brown, who had replaced Stokely in the chairmanship of
SNCC, was one of the best of the evening.
A serious problem permeated the entire rally. We were supposed to be
calling for mass support for Huey Newton. However, no strategy followed,
graced or even decorated this demand. There were no specific, concrete
proposals placed before the people in attendance. In response to the appeal,
the applause was ample enough, but where were we to go from there? The
only answer to this question was the slogan "The sky is the limit." That is to
say, if Huey Newton was convicted and sentenced to death, the ruling class
could expect a hundred police stations to be attacked, fifty power plants to
be bombed, etc., etc., etc. It wasn't even clear whether the speakers were
saying that they themselves would carry out these demolitions, or whether
they were appealing to the people in attendance to go out and respond in
this way if Huey was convicted. The gaping void was a clear-cut line of
action spelling out the way to organize masses of people in struggle in order
to guarantee that Huey Newton would be set free.
At this time, Rap Brown faced several very serious charges — clearly
fraudulent — stemming from his speeches and political activity. He had
been released on bail with the proviso that he remain within the boundaries
of Manhattan, New York, except for trips to confer with his attorney. He
was on just such a trip then to meet with William Kuntsler — a convenient
trip for us because he had been able to speak at the rallies celebrating
Huey's birthday.
We did not know — Rap did not know — that he would not get very far
when he left California. He was to be seized by the FBI, reimprisoned, this
time with a bail of $100,000, plus an extra $25,000 for allegedly insulting
the arresting officer.
Our first grass-roots organizing effort was, therefore, a bail campaign for
the national chairman of our organization. We decided to circulate a petition
demanding that the exorbitant sum be lowered. At the same time, we began

to organize a door-to-door drive to raise money for Rap's bond. Sisters and
brothers were recruited to go out on weekends, into the community — in
houses, churches, community centers, shopping centers, we asked people to
put their donations into our coin cans and sign the petition.
The modesty of this approach was surpassed only by its success. As a result
of the all-day expeditions with the cans labeled "Let Rap rap," we attracted
a sizeable number of sisters and brothers to our organization. Increasing
SNCC's membership on the Coast was an important gain, over and above
the money that was collected and the message that reached large numbers of
Black people in Los Angeles.
Shortly after our campaign to support Rap had gotten off the ground, we
opened up a headquarters on Jefferson Avenue near Arlington. When my
university responsibilities for the week were fulfilled, I would jump into my
beat-up 1958 Buick and race up the highway from La Jolla to Los Angeles,
heading straight to SNCC headquarters to join the others in getting down to
the real business of struggle.
We felt we had the energy of stallions and the confidence of eagles as we
rushed into the neighborhoods of L.A. — on the streets, in houses,
campuses, offices — driving, walking, meeting, greeting. We experienced
the heights of brotherhood and sisterhood doing something openly, freely
and above ground about our own people. This was no sly manipulation of
the establishment, marked by compromise and gradualism. Nor was it the
individual heroism of some one person whose outrage had reached the point
of no return. Our stance was public and our commitment was to our people
— and for some of us, to the class. The time was indeed ours to seize. In
spite of the absence of a homogeneous ideology, in spite of the disparate
ways in which problems were approached, we knew we could not retire to
reflect, could not halt the tide until every detail was worked out to
everyone's satisfaction. Like new alchemists we lit the fire and trusted the
heat to refine our recipe for victory.
Those were exciting times. The potential we had for building a mass
movement among Black people in L.A. was staggering, and we went to
work straightaway, pounding out a more comprehensive program for our
organizers to follow. We were on our own. Because of the origins of our

membership, we were not under the direct authority of the national
organization of SNCC. Moreover, the merger with the Panthers had all but
dissolved. After a minor run-in with Eldridge and company over the money
raised during the February 18 rally, whatever superficial agreement had
initially prevailed withered away for want of a mutual desire to sustain it.
Fortunately, overt hostilities had also withered.
Although we tried to learn from the organizing experiences of SNCC —
particularly during the year of its greatest influence in the South — we did
not feel committed to follow rigidly the same line or program which had
been developed by SNCC. For all intents and purposes, we were an
autonomous organization.
With all the gusto of the novice, I accepted the responsibility for drawing up
plans for a "Liberation School" and for being its director once it was
established.
It was during this period of work on the bail campaign for Rap that we
learned about a brutal police murder committed on the very day of the
February 18 rally. One evening while we were in the office — and, if I
recall correctly, Franklin, Bobbie Hodges, John Floyd, myself and others
were deeply embroiled in a fiery discussion about the significance of
Marxism for the Black Liberation struggle — two brothers came in (one of
whom was the author Earl Ofari). They gave us the gory details of the
police slaying of eighteen-year-old Gregory Clark not too far from our
office. The brothers appealed to us to immediately organize a movement of
resistance.
The next day some of us went out to investigate the facts of the killing and
to explore the sentiment of the community. According to Gregory's family
and friends and witnesses to the act, these were the facts: On a warm
afternoon in February, Gregory Clark and a friend were cruising down
Washington Boulevard in a late-model Mustang. They were drinking soda
pop, the cans covered by brown paper bags. When they reached Vineyard,
they were motioned over to the curb by an LAPD cop who, according to the
brother who survived, told them that they didn't look like they "fit" the car
they were driving. Then, seeing the brown bags and without a shred of
proof, he accused them of drinking beer while driving.

The two brothers protested, the witnesses said. They had the registration to
prove that they hadn't stolen the car and the cans themselves were proof of
what they had been drinking. But the cop, Warren B. Carleson, refused to
hear their explanation. All he heard was niggers talking back to a white man
in uniform. Ordering them out of their car, he prepared to handcuff them.
Perhaps Gregory began to raise his voice in protest. Perhaps he snatched his
hands away to prevent the cop from clamping on the handcuffs. Perhaps he
did nothing. In any case, there was a brief scuffle before Carleson locked
the manacles around his wrists. The victim was caught, but Carleson did not
stop there. According to those watching the encounter, he knocked Gregory
Clark to the sidewalk, and while he lay face down, his hands cuffed behind
him, Carleson shot Gregory in the back of the head with a .38 revolver.
As I stood there on the corner of Washington and Vineyard, staring at the
two-week-old bloodstains on the sidewalk, this scene unfolded before me in
all its original horror. But the hurt and the rage meant nothing by
themselves. What was needed was an organized struggle.
Over a hundred people showed up at the community meeting we called.
They listened avidly as witnesses to the murder told what they had seen.
The community people eagerly accepted our suggestion that we should
mobilize people to attend the coroner's inquest which would determine, for
the benefit of officialdom, whether charges should be pressed against the
cop or whether the act was a legitimate expression of his duty as a "peace
officer."
We did not feel that we were strong enough at that point to influence the
outcome of the inquest simply by our presence. More than likely they
would declare that the killing of Gregory Clark was a "justifiable
homicide." But large numbers of people there would certainly alert the
ruling cliques that we were preparing ourselves for battle.
The scenario unfolded as we knew it would: the panel accepted Carleson's
version of the story: He had been frightened; thinking that Gregory Clark
might be armed (prostrate with his hands cuffed behind him?), he shot him
in self defense. The verdict: justifiable homicide.

Still, there was partial victory: the leaflets we had sent out into the
community; the vigilance at the inquest. Our promises to expose the
Gregory Clark case put the LAPD on the spot. We had sent people to track
Carleson down on his beat and photograph him for our literature, but the
LAPD had secreted him somewhere. That evening Carleson was
interviewed by a major television station and forced to justify his act before
the eyes of thousands of people, and our photographer snapped a
photograph of him which we used to announce a People's Tribunal.
Carleson was going to be tried by the people he had offended. The sisters
and brothers who had been attracted to SNCC by the protests we were
spearheading constituted themselves into a People's Tribunal Committee. A
date was set for the trial to be held in South Park. While some were
selecting the "lawyers," "judges," those who would play significant roles in
the trial, other SNCC and People's Tribunal Committee members composed
and printed the literature. I was in the propaganda department. Of all the
material we produced, I was most proud of the poster which carried the
photograph of Carleson which had been shot from the television set. If we
had been consciously seeking a picture of a typical "racist pig," we couldn't
have made a better choice. Carleson's soul was fully revealed in his face.
Printed across the poster in large, broad letters was the word "Wanted."
Under the photograph was the description: "LAPD Cop for the Murder of
Brother Gregory Clark."
These posters were put up all over the Black community — the area where
the brother was killed was saturated with them. Fact sheets about the case
and leaflets announcing the trial were distributed door-to-door, after work at
factories, in churches, and wherever Black people were.
The fruits of our labors were a tremendous awareness in the community of
the case of Gregory Clark and a very large turnout at the people's trial.
The prosecuting attorney was Ben Wyatt, a Black lawyer and community
activist. No one wanted to accept the position of defense attorney, but
finally Deacon Alexander — Franklin's brother — accepted this unenviable
role. The panel of judges consisted of a variety of persons active in the
Black community, all representative of organizations which counted
themselves among the advocates of Black Liberation.

If someone accused us of being one-sided, we made no claims to
impartiality. We were not trying to duplicate the bourgeois judicial system
which tries to conceal its class and race bias behind meaningless procedures
and empty platitudes about democracy. We were demanding justice —
about which Black people needed to be defiant and passionate. After
hundreds of years of suffering the most persistently one-sided bestiality and
violence, how could we seriously assume a posture of unbiased observers?
The witnesses were called; they gave their testimony of events leading up to
and following Gregory's death. Other witnesses were called to give "expert
testimony" on the unchecked racism in the LAPD. Past police murders in
the Black community were documented, stitch by stitch, and a tapestry of
racist horrors was woven. At the center of this tapestry was Gregory Clark,
whose killer was arrogantly screaming "self-defense." We tried and
convicted Carleson — not for being the originator and sole perpetrator of
the crime, but because he had been an all-too-willing accomplice in the
routine business of a racist system. Warren B. Carleson had not acted alone;
he had helped the system to add one more victim to its rolls. And it was for
this that he deserved the maximum penalty.
"You have heard the evidence against the defendant and you have also
heard his defense. Are the people ready to pronounce their verdict?"
"Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" roared the audience, and their unanimous
thunderous verdict tore through the park air like bullets.
It would have been anticlimactic for the process to end with the mere
rendering of the verdict. Yet we could not carry out a penalty unless it
involved the continuation of our collective struggle. Our proposal to the
Tribunal was therefore that we pressure the city councilmen, particularly
the Black representatives, to call for Carleson to be tried for murder. As a
dramatization of the seriousness of our proposal, we wanted to bring
hundreds of people, thousands if possible, to City Hall; people who would
demand that the popular verdict of guilty be given its due consideration.
It was too little. Following all the excitement, the sensations of strength, the
will to resist that had been aroused during the course of the trial itself, the
proposal seemed too conservative.

"Death! Death!" screamed a group of people. Others voiced their
agreement. "Death to the pig," brothers continued to shout. Appoint a
commission to execute the sentence, they said. They were volunteering.
Rage had transported these brothers into a desperate fantasy world. I
understood how they felt. When I saw Gregory Clark's blood on the
sidewalk, rage had pulled my instincts in the very same direction. But
understanding the real value of mass action, I therefore had something else
to lean on, something which could absorb my anger and set it on the right
track.
Chaos reigned in the crowd. The reactions were partly the product of pentup frustrations which were seeking the easiest way out. They were partly
the result of conscious encouragement of the "pick up the gun" movement,
perhaps aided by agents provocateurs sent into our midst to disrupt.
It was Franklin who pulled things back together. He had done an
irreproachable job of presiding over the tribunal and the confusion
presented a supreme test of his ability to lead masses of people. It was
awesome to see him almost effortlessly gather up all the pieces of the
meeting and mold them back into something whole. He moved with the
people, identified with their desire to see the swift execution of the justice
they demanded. He explained the fact that though we were growing
stronger, the balance of power was still overwhelmingly on the side of the
enemy. It would not begin to shift until we could bring increasingly greater
numbers of people into our movement. That was what would have the
greatest impact upon those who pretended to rule us. Our strategy therefore
had to be that of reaching out to more and more of our people, bringing
them over to our side.
By the time Franklin was ready to close the Tribunal, people were eagerly
agreeing with and applauding the proposal that we make a journey to City
Hall to lodge our demands. His phenomenal capacity to reach out to people
made a deep impression on me, not only as an individual, but also — even
more so — as a Communist. The respect he had commanded, the clarity of
his explanation and the forcefulness of his method of presenting it were
rooted in years of experience he had accumulated as a member of the
Communist Party.

APRIL 4, 1968
I spent the morning at the SNCC office. In the afternoon, I went down to
the Los Angeles Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights to see about some
material I wanted to have printed.
The normal course of that Thursday was shattered by a scream "Martin
Luther King has been shot!" A stonelike incredulity locked my face. The
wound was in the head, put there by a white assassin, and there was little
hope that he would survive.
My disbelief gave way to a sadness which made me feel, for the time being,
very helpless, like I was sinking. An amorphous sense of guilt fell upon me.
We had severely criticized Martin Luther King for his rigid stance on
nonviolence. Some of us, unfortunately, had assumed that his religion, his
philosophical nonviolence and his concentration on "civil rights," as
opposed to the larger liberation struggle, had rendered him an essentially
harmless leader. Never would any of us have predicted that he would be
struck down by an assassin's bullet. Never would any of us have predicted
that he would have needed our protection. I don't think we had realized that
his new notion of struggle — involving poor people of all colors, involving
oppressed people throughout the world — could potentially present a great
threat to our enemy. It was not coincidental, I thought, that on that day he
had been marching in the streets with sanitation workers on strike.
Back at the SNCC office, my anger and sorrow over the death of Dr. King
could find its proper expression — its collective expression. Together with
my SNCC comrades, I discussed the way we were going to fight back.
Many people in the community would be looking to us, L.A. SNCC, for
leadership. We were going to need all the mind and muscle we could find.
The crisis of King's assassination had erupted at the precise moment when
we were having some serious problems among our own cadre, some of
whom preferred to be TV revolutionaries and to excite crowds with militant
rhetoric — but they didn't like the unromantic day-to-day work of building
an enduring organization. Since the People's Tribunal, Franklin had

emerged as the most capable leader of all our cadres. His competence and
magnetism provoked envy among the Hollywood revolutionaries and
stimulated undercurrents of anti-communism which had further complicated
our internal situation. Yet, if we did not act immediately, we would be
abdicating our responsibility to the Black community. Franklin was not in
town. He had taken advantage of the relative quiet around L.A. to visit
Kendra, who was attending an Ideological School for Communist Party
cadres in New York. At the time of the assassination, he was driving across
country — he called us from Chicago to ask what we thought he should do.
We wanted him to turn around and head back to L.A.
That night in New York, the streets of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant were
teeming with angry Black youth attacking white businesses with stones and
bottles — and the police sent to repress them. Raleigh, North Carolina, was
in rebellion and Jackson, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee, were on the
verge of exploding.
Ghettos all over Los Angeles could easily reach the boiling point and
reenact August 1965 once more. We knew that some elements would
encourage spontaneous outbursts of a collective frustration and desperation,
playing right into the hands of the police, for we were certain that the
LAPD would be only too happy to have the opportunity to test all their new
"riot-equipment." Every Black person who appeared to be disturbed about
the assassination of Martin Luther King would be a potential target of
attack. Many of its members having been recruited from the Deep South,
the LAPD was perhaps the most vicious in the country — and more
important than its viciousness, it was also the best equipped.
A physical confrontation had to be avoided, for in it the Black community
would be doomed. Nevertheless, the eagerness to fight back could not be
permitted to wither away — it had to be channeled into a political direction.
We needed a mass political event to put forth a call for a renewed, intensive
struggle against racism: Racism was Martin Luther King's assassin, and it
was racism that had to be attacked.
The Black Congress ratified that position. All the member organizations
agreed to work toward a mass rally call for an escalation of the battle
against racism. Meanwhile, we had to develop a crescendo of mass

activities which would climax with the rally. The community had to be kept
in movement without being pushed to the point of explosion. The day after
the assassination, we asked high school students to participate in a
campaign to explain the assassination to the community and to distribute
literature asking our people to attend a meeting at the Second Baptist
Church. Our three mimeograph machines were rolling twenty-four hours a
day, printing the leaflets to be distributed by hundreds of high school
students who waited in and outside the office at every moment of the day.
Some people accused us of trying to "calm down" the community and of
assuming a conservative stance before the fact of the assassination. These
accusations came from those who advocated immediate rebellion. Our
strategy, however, was proven correct, for the day after the murder, the
police were themselves ready to provoke a rebellion. The scouts we sent out
to investigate the mood of the community returned with reports of police
provocations all over the city. Machine guns had been mounted atop the
major police stations in the ghetto; the operators were at their posts at all
times. That evening, a younger brother, with blood streaming down his face,
walked into the office and told us that he had been beaten up by the police
on the other side of town and was dropped off in front of our office. We
took care of his wounds and saw to it that he got home.
Tension was mounting; we felt as if we were on top of a simmering volcano
which could explode at any moment. On April 5, the day following the
assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson had issued orders to the Secretary of
Defense to utilize all the force that was necessary to safeguard "law and
order." By April 6, there were twenty people dead throughout the country:
nine in Chicago, five in Washington, two in Detroit and one each in New
York, Tallahassee, Minneapolis and Memphis, the place of the
assassination. A thousand had been wounded and two thousand had been
arrested. Twenty-three cities were in rebellion.
The night of the meeting at the Second Baptist Church, we left three
brothers from our security force to keep watch over the office. The situation
was very tense; anything might happen. The brothers stayed there as a
safeguard against police frenzy.

The first sign of trouble was that no one answered our knocks when we
returned to the office after the church meeting. Bobbie and I were about to
get angry at the brothers for leaving their posts at such a critical moment.
But we knew they were extremely trustworthy — it didn't seem likely that
they would have left the office unguarded.
The front door was unlocked — something was wrong. Inside, chairs were
turned over, literature had been snatched from the shelves and scattered all
over the floor and our Rap Brown poster had been ripped to pieces. In the
mimeograph room, the drums of our machines had been slashed with
broken glass. Mimeo ink had been randomly squirted on the floor and the
walls.
Within a few minutes the two women who ran the restaurant next door
came rushing into the office. They told us that approximately ten to fifteen
black-and-white police cars had pulled up in front of the office. Some
police had gone around to the back door. We saw that it had been chopped
down with an ax. According to the two sisters, about ten minutes later, the
police had led our three security brothers out the front door, their wrists
cuffed together. They had shoved them into a patrol car and sped away.
It was not coincidental that they had attacked our printing machines. The
work of our organization was, in the first place, educational. We had just
produced hundreds of thousands of leaflets protesting Dr. King's murder,
explaining the racist forces behind his assassination and suggesting how we
should manifest our resistance. Although they did not often admit it, the
ruling circles feared this educational approach far more than they feared the
rhetorical threats to "off the pigs." They knew that our strategy was to
organize the masses and that increasing numbers of people were looking to
us for knowledge and leadership.
We recuperated from the initial shock and set aside our rage long enough to
inspect the mess more closely and to start the wheels moving to post bail
for the brothers. Someone suggested we eat, and turned the fire on under the
big pot of spaghetti which had been cooked earlier in the day. Bowls were
passed out, and we were starting to eat, when someone shouted, "Hey,
there's a nail in this spaghetti." It was true. Tacks were in his food and in the

other bowls as well — they had been stirred into the pot by the police who
had broken into our office.
We decided to leave the office as it was, including the pot of spaghetti on
the stove and to call a press conference for the following morning. So that
the press could see with their own eyes the malicious work of the "brave"
police.

By the end of April 1968, L.A. SNCC was barely two months old. But it
had developed into one of the most important organizations in the L.A.
Black community. Our People's Tribunal Committee, still active around
Gregory Clark's case, dealt with police brutality and repression. We had
built a youth organization — SNCC Youth Corps — which had attracted
over fifty active members, and the Liberation School, which was under my
charge, drew scores of people each time it convened.
Our telephone rang constantly; people were continually reporting acts of
discrimination and repression to us, asking for our leadership on how to
counter them. The office was hardly ever empty: it was a place where
people came to find out about the struggle, how they could participate in it.
As the organization grew stronger, the truly committed cadres were being
separated from the staff members who wanted the credit but not the
responsibility for building SNCC. On the original central staff there had
been six men and three women. The three women on the staff — Bobbie,
Rene and myself — always had a disproportionate share of the duties of
keeping the office and the organization running. Now only two of the men
were doing anything significant in the organization — Franklin, of course,
and a brother by the name of Frank, who headed the security and SNCC
Youth Corps. Bobbie, Rene and I worked full time. Some of the brothers
came around only for staff meetings (sometimes), and whenever we women
were involved in something important, they began to talk about "women
taking over the organization" — calling it a matriarchal coup d'etat. All the
myths about Black women surfaced. Bobbie, Rene and I were too
domineering; we were trying to control everything, including the men —
which meant by extension that we wanted to rob them of their manhood. By

playing such a leading role in the organization, some of them insisted, we
were aiding and abetting the enemy, who wanted to see Black men weak
and unable to hold their own. This condemnation was especially bitter
because we were one of the few organizations on the Black Liberation Front
in Los Angeles, and probably in the country, where women did play a
leading role. It was a period in which one of the unfortunate hallmarks of
some nationalist groups was their determination to push women into the
background. The brothers opposing us leaned heavily on the male
supremacist trends which were winding their way through the movement,
although I am sure that some of them were politically mature enough to
understand the reactionary nature of these trends. After all, it had been a
voice of the Johnson administration, Daniel Moynihan, who in 1966 had
rekindled the theory of the slavery-induced Black matriarchate, maintaining
that the dominant role of Black women within the family and, by extension,
within the community was one of the central causes of the depressed state
of the Black community.
The brothers knew this; they also knew that Bobbie, Rene and I, together
with Franklin and Frank, had moved into leadership of SNCC because of
their own defective commitments. Still, they were determined to have a
fight. I knew things were bad; that we were on the verge of something
serious, perhaps devastating. But I did not know that this skirmish was
going to mushroom into open warfare.
Franklin and Frank, naturally, fought on our side. When the work of the
organization slowed down, adversely affected by this internal struggle, we
decided to call New York SNCC headquarters for help. Forman was out of
the country; some other national staff person said he would come out. But
when he arrived, he was not so much interested in the specific difficulties
we had called him about as in the general quality of the work we were
doing in L.A. He summarily dismissed our problem of male-female
political relationships, saying that it was not important enough to merit a
special discussion. They would be solved, he said, in the course of dealing
with other problems. What this brother wanted to discuss was the great
dissimilarity between our organization and the other SNCC chapters across
the country, especially the national operation in New York. He was right, of
course. We had formulated our own strategy and program without regard to

the policies of New York SNCC. In fact, we received hardly any input from
national SNCC, except permission to use the name and the initial advice we
got from Forman.
The brother from New York complained that the office was not
"businesslike"; there were too many people "hanging around" who "were
not sitting behind desks." We weren't fulfilling what should have been one
of our major duties, i.e., fund-raising for the national organization. He
admonished us for not arranging enough cocktail parties up in the hills
where the more affluent of our people could be persuaded to share their
prosperity with SNCC.
I was personally criticized for the courses I had included in the curriculum
for the Liberation School. Whereas I saw the school as being a
consciousness-raising vehicle, as imparting political education to the
community, the brother from New York thought it should be geared
fundamentally toward teaching skills to the community — skills such as
radio and TV repair and computer programming. The school, he said,
should become an instrument of survival; it should teach people the
knowledge they required in order to get a job. While the need for jobs and
job skills was at a crisis level in Black communities, it was not the role of
the SNCC Liberation School to be a job-training center. My overall vision
of the school I directed was of a place where political understanding was
forged and sharpened, where consciousness became explicit and was urged
in a revolutionary direction. This is why I taught and found others to teach
courses on such topics as Current Developments in the Black Movement,
Liberation Movements in the Third World, and Community Organizing
Skills.
The national representative also criticized my inclusion of courses
involving Marxist ideas. After all, Black people were afraid of communism,
he said; they would be alienated from the organization if they thought
communists were around. This was the first signal that an all-out attack on
Franklin was brewing.
After a fund-raising event during the brother's stay in L.A. (we did have
fund-raising events in order to cover our own local expenses), Franklin
invited some of the brothers on security to his apartment. They had the

money which had been collected as well as the weapons to protect it. Using
the pretext that there was noise coming from the apartment, the police broke
in, arrested all the brothers, confiscated the money and the weapons (all of
which were legally owned) and charged them with armed robbery.
It was not difficult to discern the motive of this seemingly arbitrary attack.
A rally was scheduled for the next morning in front of City Hall to climax
the series of confrontations with the City Council on the Gregory Clark
case. Franklin was the central figure of the rally. A large mobilization was
expected, and the police hoped to cut the sting out of the rally by
imprisoning Franklin. The arraignment was set at the same time as the rally,
and there was no chance of getting him released on bail before the court
appearance that Monday morning.
The police doubtless expected us to cancel the mobilization — or even if
we didn't, they probably thought it would be a defeat for the People's
Tribunal Committee to try to pull it off in the absence of their leader. That
morning in front of City Hall, the people attending the mobilization
decided, almost spontaneously, to take the demonstration to the courthouse
across the street and demand Franklin's immediate release. The eager crowd
streamed into the halls of the courthouse and filled to capacity the
courtroom where the arraignment was taking place. Without an explanation,
the judge suddenly announced that he was dropping all charges against
Franklin and the other brothers.
Franklin was unwashed and unshaven, and it was easy to see that he had not
slept that night in jail. Nevertheless, he led the rally with his usual vigor,
and it seemed that the people were even more militant than if the police had
not tried to intervene. Having witnessed the evidence of their collective
power — the release of Franklin in response to their demands — they were
raring to fight for more such victories.
The next day, the L.A. Times published an extensive article on the rally and
the way Franklin's release was achieved. In the article, Franklin was called
a "Maoist Communist." As a member of the Communist Party, U.S.A.,
Franklin was not, of course, a Maoist. Yet the brother from the New York
office was mesmerized by this phrase, even though he knew it to be false. I
imagine he didn't care what kind of communist Franklin was. It was the fact

that he was a communist at all and that the news media had seized upon this
that worried him so much.
The Times article prompted him to call a meeting of the staff and other
SNCC workers. I discovered later that certain select staff members had been
informed that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the advisability of
having a Communist play a leading role in the organization. I had not been
informed, for they knew where my politics and my loyalties were.
The SNCC representative's presentation before the gathering was as simple
as it was opportunistic. SNCC simply could not afford to be associated with
Communists. It had been incorrect to permit Franklin to play such a
"visible" role in the organization, particularly without consulting the New
York office first. He was expelling Franklin, so he insisted, in line with the
policy of the national organization, and was further decreeing that the office
and the operation should be purged of all traces of communism and
Marxism. Silence. Was this going to be a reenactment of the McCarthy
purges? Franklin's brother Deacon and I were the only ones who resisted
this move at all. And we were a tiny fraction of those present. Obviously,
we had left a fatal defect in the organization we had built if a man from the
New York office could come in and expel the leading figure from our midst
without even a feeble effort at resistance. Or was it that the fear of
communism was so powerful that it could engender compromises of
principle and concessions of all the things we had fought so hard to attain?
It was a depressing time. I felt alienated from sisters and brothers whom I
had not only considered my comrades in arms, but whom I had come to
regard as close friends as well. Franklin had been unilaterally kicked out of
the organization without having been given the opportunity to defend
himself before the people who had looked upon him as their comrade and
their leader. Franklin, Deacon and I caucused about our next moves. My
first instinct was to resign. But after the discussion, we decided that Deacon
and I should stick it out a while longer; perhaps we could help the others
back to political sanity.
But it was too late. The first concession, the first endorsement of an
irrational, anti-Communist policy, the first act of tolerance toward an
autocratic, apolitical businessman-type who called himself a revolutionary

was the beginning of the end of our organization. The national
representative appointed a chairman who assumed the same dictatorial
stance. And one by one, this chairman effectively isolated all the good
people in SNCC. I was relieved of my position as director of the Liberation
School, at which point I submitted my resignation and from the sidelines
watched the rest first pushed around and then pushed out of the
organization. Within a matter of weeks, only the shell of what we had
created was left. Whereas we had had over two hundred workers whom we
could count on and hundreds more who could be mobilized, by the
beginning of the summer there were no more than ten people left.
L.A. SNCC was dead. The office closed down and people wondered what
had happened to all of us. This was a victory for reactionary forces. The
downfall of SNCC could not have been better planned if it had been the
work of an agent of the government.
Hours, days were consumed by exhausting discussions about the
destruction of L.A. SNCC. Could the final downfall have been avoided?
What had we done wrong? Could we have brought the majority of the staff
over to our side? Could we have convinced them to withdraw from the
national organization? After all, we had built everything without assistance
from New York.
Kendra, who had been attending a Party School during the crucial period,
criticized Franklin, as well as Deacon and myself, for not having waged a
more determined battle from the outset against the little signs of anticommunism. There had been signs — passive acquiescence in anticommunism as well as active encouragement of it — but these signs had
been either subtle or sporadic and disconnected. I had not realized that they
could be the germs of a collective attitude which could erupt so abruptly
into a witch hunt.
I felt that I was not entirely without blame, for on occasion I had agreed to
certain anti-Communist notions prevalent on the Left. I had not done this in
any official capacity or in circumstances involving formal meetings. Yet, in
casual conversations around the office, I had sometimes joined the others in
putting Franklin on the spot. We had accused the Communist Party of not
paying sufficient attention to the national and racial dimensions of the

oppression of Black people, and therefore submerging the special
characteristics of our oppression under the general exploitation of the
working class. I had gone along with others in criticizing, from an ultra-left
standpoint, the general "conservatism" of the Party.
It was not that I shouldn't have criticized the Communist Party at all. The
point was that I had made these charges without having carefully
investigated the Party's positions. Given the circumstances, my statements
— especially coming, as they did, from someone who called herself a
Marxist — may have encouraged in some way the widespread no-struggle
attitude toward the anti-communism.
From this point forward I tried to acquire the information I needed in order
to decide whether I wanted to become a member of the Communist Party.
At this stage in my life and my political evolution — even more than during
the San Diego days — I needed to become a part of a serious revolutionary
party. I wanted an anchor, a base, a mooring. I needed comrades with whom
I could share a common ideology. I was tired of ephemeral ad-hoc groups
that fell apart when faced with the slightest difficulty; tired of men who
measured their sexual height by women's intellectual genuflection. It wasn't
that I was fearless, but I knew that to win, we had to fight and the fight that
would win was the one collectively waged by the masses of our people and
working people in general. I knew that this fight had to be led by a group, a
party with more permanence in its membership and structure and more
substance in its ideology. Confrontations were opportunities to be met;
problems were entanglements to be sorted out with the right approach, the
correct ideas. And I needed to know and respect what I was doing. Until
now all our actions seemed to end, finally, in an ellipsis — three dots of
irresolution, inconsistency and ineffectiveness.
During that depressing time, I reread Lenin's What Is To Be Done, and it
helped me to clarify my own predicament. I read Du Bois again,
particularly his statements around the time he decided to join the
Communist Party.
Since Frankfurt, since London, since San Diego, I had been wanting to join
a revolutionary party. Of all the parties that called themselves revolutionary
or Marxist-Leninist, the Communist Party, in my opinion, alone did not

overstate itself. Despite my criticisms of some aspects of the Party's
policies, I had already reached the conclusion that it would be the
Communist Party or, for the time being, nothing at all.
But before I could make my decision I had to examine it, study it. The CheLumumba Club, the Black cell of the Party in Los Angeles, was the section
of the Party which interested me. I wanted to know what its role and
responsibilities were within the Party and how it maintained its identity and
consistency as its cadres involved themselves in the Black Liberation
Movement. As with all the other Communist parties, the basic unit of the
CPUSA was and remains the "club" (or cell, as it is called in other
countries). In general, the club is composed of from five to twenty
members. There are sections, districts, states, regions, and finally the
national leadership, which carries out policy which is made by periodic
national conventions. Insofar as the democratic centralist structure of the
Party was concerned, the Che-Lumumba Club was just like any other club.
Yet it did have a special role, originating from the fact that Black
Communists in Los Angeles had fought within the Party for a club that
would be all Black and whose primary responsibility would be to carry
Marxist-Leninist ideas to the Black Liberation struggle in L.A. and to
provide leadership for the larger Party as far as the Black movement was
concerned.
The club had been established in 1967 — at a time when the Black
movement was approaching its zenith. The Communist Party was bound to
be affected by the stirrings in the ghettos from Harlem to Watts. Because
L.A. was the scene of one of the first recent, full-scale Black uprisings, it
seemed inevitable that the Che-Lumumba Club would come into existence
in that city.
The knowledge I gained about the Che-Lumumba Club did not satisfy me
completely, because I had little firsthand knowledge of the larger Party.
Kendra and Franklin, therefore, introduced me to some of the white
comrades. I began to pay visits to Dorothy Healey, who was then the
District Organizer of Southern California. We had long, involved
discussions — sometimes arguments — about the Party, its role within the
movement, its potential as the vanguard party of the working class; its

potential as the party that would lead the United States from its present,
backward, historically exploitative stage to a new epoch of socialism. I
immensely enjoyed these discussions with Dorothy and felt that I was
learning a great deal from them, regardless of whether I ultimately decided
to become a Communist myself.

In July 1968, I turned over my fifty-cents — the initial membership dues —
to the chairman of the Che-Lumumba Club, and became a full-fledged
member of the Communist Party, U.S.A. Shortly thereafter I had to retreat
to La Jolla in order to do the last intensive preparations for my Ph.D.
qualifier examinations. For weeks and weeks I only studied. Days, I studied
in my office at the university. Evenings, I worked — often well into the
night — in the isolated house in Del Mar which friends lent me for the last
part of the summer. My thoughts became so thoroughly wedded to
philosophical things that I even found myself dreaming sometimes about
the ideas of Spinoza, Kant, Hegel. I had wanted to pass the exams at this
time and not wait until after my second year of classes, as was the normal
procedure. This meant that I had to study on my own works that I would
have ordinarily read in connection with courses. I had to work, work and
work — until the point of absolute saturation.
As exam week approached, the simmering desperation among graduate
students preparing to take the test exploded into open panic. In the middle
of a discussion, for example, someone might break into tears for no
apparent reason. The fear of not passing was omnipresent. And there was
something that was feared even more than flunking the exams: passing
them with a terminal master's degree and thus being shut out of the Ph.D.
program entirely. If one simply flunked the exams, one could always take
them again in the spring. But a terminal master's was the end.
It was a great relief to learn that I had done quite well on the examinations.
Having passed them, I began to work on the prospectus for my dissertation,
and became a teaching assistant in the Philosophy Department, a further
requirement for the Ph.D. About half of each week I spent researching and
teaching in La Jolla and the other half I devoted to my political work in Los
Angeles.

I was glad to be in a position to resume attending the weekly CheLumumba meetings. It was an extremely important period for us. In June,
Charlene Mitchell, our founding chairperson, had been selected by the
national convention to be our Party's candidate for President, thus becoming
the first Black woman ever to run for that office. We were immensely proud
that the first Black woman presidential candidate was also a Communist.
Because it had been twenty-eight years since the Communist Party had
participated in the presidential elections, her candidacy marked the
beginning of a new era for the Party. The vestiges of McCarthyism were
being repudiated, and more and more people were realizing that they had to
be defeated once and for all.
During September and October, Charlene was constantly on the road,
speaking in some twenty-one states and Puerto Rico as well. (No other
candidate even bothered to go to Puerto Rico.) In Southern California, we
campaigned for Charlene outside factory gates, at union meetings, in
churches, on campuses, in the streets and everywhere else our message
might fall on a receptive ear. Naturally we harbored no illusions about the
outcome of the elections. Therefore we weren't so much interested in the
number of votes she would pull, as in her ability to reach people who
otherwise would never have been inspired to consider political alternatives
outside the Republican and Democratic parties, and economic alternatives
outside monopoly capitalism. Charlene's candidacy gave us the opportunity
to speak about socialism as a real solution to the problems confronting the
working class, and especially Black and Brown people.
Around this time Charlene's brother, Deacon, and I entered into discussions
with leaders of the L. A. Black Panther Party, who had approached us about
working with their Party. They were considering opening an office on the
West Side of the city and wanted Deacon to lead that section. I was asked to
participate in the political education program. In view of the fact that all the
other members of the club were already deeply involved in mass
movements of one kind or another, we both gave serious thought to this
idea. Some of our comrades were active in the antiwar movement, pushing
for an approach among antiwar activists which recognized the relation
between aggression in Vietnam and racism and repression at home. Others,
including Kendra and Franklin, were working with students, primarily at

Southwest Junior College. I felt that it would be important for some of us to
assist in the work of the Black Panther Party which, at that time, was like a
magnet drawing large numbers of young Black people, all over the country,
into its ranks.
After a series of meetings with the Panthers to air problems and explain and
set aside past hostilities, and following discussion of the proposal in the
Che-Lumumba Club, Deacon and I both agreed to go into the Panther Party.
We found a building for the West Side office on Seventh Avenue and
Venice Boulevard, and within a few days young sisters and brothers from
the surrounding community began to stream in. No sooner were programs
organized than they were bulging with eager young people. From threethirty in the afternoon, when the junior high school students came in, until
ten at night, the office was the scene of meetings, classes and discussions on
such topics as the Black Liberation Struggle in the United States, the
Movement in the Los Angeles Area, Strategy and Tactics in Community
Organizing, and Marxist-Leninist Theory of Revolution.
If I still retained any of the elitism which almost inevitably insinuates itself
into the minds of college students, I lost it all in the course of the Panther
political education sessions. When we read Lenin's State and Revolution,
there were sisters and brothers in the class whose public school education
had not even allowed them to learn how to read. Some of them told me how
they had stayed with the book for many painful hours, often using the
dictionary to discover the meaning of scores of words on one page, until
finally they could grasp the significance of what Lenin was saying. When
they explained, for the benefit of the other members of the class, what they
had gotten out of their reading, it was clear that they knew it all — they had
understood Lenin on a far more elemental level than any professor of social
science.
Not long after the office opened, we learned about a brutal killing which
had occurred in the neighborhood. This was the account given us: One
evening when a young brother had tried to buy some beer in a liquor store
nearby, the owner refused to accept his money in the absence of
identification proving him to be of age. Angry about not being able to get
his beer, he said a few strong words to the owner and stormed out of the

store. Apparently for no other reason than sheer frustration, the brother
kicked over a garbage can standing on the corner. The owner grabbed his
weapon, hidden under the counter, and fired through the glass door,
instantly killing this brother who had done nothing more than vent his anger
on a garbage can outside. When later questioned about the incident, the
owner claimed he had a right to protect his property. The irony of this
tragedy was that we had just been reading about the function of the state as
providing protection for the propertied classes. It was clear that if people
did not make their protests heard, this shell of an excuse would be accepted
without question by the courts. That is to say, they would accept the owner's
claim that the life of this young Black man was worth less than a five-dollar
garbage can.
We assumed responsibility for organizing the community to see to it that
this man was brought to justice. This meant marches through the streets of
the surrounding neighborhood, door-to-door leafletting, street rallies,
particularly on the parking lot of the store, and a constant picket line urging
people to withdraw their patronage from this man we considered a
murderer. As a result, the store's business dwindled down to a mere fraction
of what it had been, and criminal charges of manslaughter were filed
against the owner. As usual, however, he did not even spend a night in jail,
since his bail was so low that it was tantamount to no bail at all. Still, we
were determined that he be prosecuted for — and convicted of — murder.
This movement gathered momentum. Classes and meetings at the office had
reached a total attendance of over two hundred. We were having to deal
with much more concentrated police harassment. Suddenly, in the midst of
all this, crisis struck at the Black Panther Party. Nationally, numbers of
police agents had been discovered to be infiltrators inside the Party. A purge
began. Once it was initiated, it began to engulf many sisters and brothers
who were as innocent as any of those advocating the purge. It was my
opinion that some of the enemy sympathizers who themselves should have
been purged had made their way into the decision-making process, where it
was determined who would be expelled and who would remain in the Party.
The West Side office was practically decimated. Deacon was called up on
the question of his membership in the Communist Party — in very much
the same way he might have been called before the Subversive Activities

Control Board. Obviously, there was something more behind this than
simply the fact that he was a Communist — this had certainly been known
by all at the time he was approached to join the intermediate leadership of
the Black Panther Party. Moreover, they did not even confront me with the
ultimatum given Deacon — namely, to choose one of the two parties —
Black Panther or Communist. (This had been discussed before we entered
the Panther Party, and it had been agreed on both sides that the two parties
were not in competition with each other and that thus there existed no
problem of conflict of loyalties.)
Needless to say, this was the perfect moment for the enemy to move in and
take advantage of the disarray and confusion. Sure enough, around this
time, a leading member of the BPP — one who had helped a great deal with
the building of the West Side section — was found one morning in an alley
with a bullet through his brain. Shortly thereafter, around the middle of
January, before we had had a chance to recuperate from the shock of
Franco's death, Deacon and I heard a flash on the radio: two leaders of the
BPP, Bunchy Carter and Jon Huggins, had been shot to death during a
meeting of the Black Student Union on the campus of UCLA. That very
day I had planned to visit Jon and his wife Ericka to continue the dialogue
about the problems within the Party. With a few sisters and brothers from
the West Side office, we rushed over to the apartment to make sure nothing
had happened to Ericka and her newborn child. By the time we arrived, the
police were just completing their raid. Justifying their arrests of the sisters
and brothers in the apartment, including Ericka and the baby, they said they
had word that the Panthers might try to retaliate for the killings of their
people. This was absurd, because at that point, no one was fully aware of
the circumstances surrounding the murders. It was only later that we
learned that two members of Ron Karenga's US-Organization were the ones
who actually pulled the trigger.
Many times before, movement leaders and activists had been felled by the
bullets of police, conscious agents or crazy, confused brothers who let
themselves be used. We had cried before, we had attended funerals before,
and we had felt and expressed rage at seeing the life of a brother, a
comrade, so cruelly blown out of him. We knew that for the moment our
commitment meant that we were chained to a vicious circle of violence —

in this way our enemies were trying to force us to retreat in fear. In a sense,
therefore, we always expected the violence, we knew it was coming, though
we could never predict the next target. Yet each time it struck, it was
equally devastating to us. No matter how many times it was repeated, there
was no getting used to it.
For me personally, the death of Jon Huggins was especially painful — of all
the Panther leaders, he and Ericka were among the ones to whom I felt
closest. Despite all the problems which had recently arisen, I had an
enormous respect and admiration for him and felt he was in good faith in
his determination to find a solution to the crisis within the Party. I was
convinced then, as I remain today, the police were involved in some way in
his murder because they feared his strength and his will to always do what
was best for his people.
Ericka and the other sisters and brothers were released late that night. When
she walked through the gates of Sybil Brand Institute for Women into the
hard rain cutting through the night outside, she seemed as strong as ever.
Seeing our sadness, our empathy with the pain she was surely suffering, she
said, "What's wrong with you all? We can't stop now. We've got to keep on
struggling." That was a moment I shall never forget. The sisters who had
been with her inside the jail said that she was the one who had kept
everyone's spirits high. She was the one who had most resolutely continued
to carry the banner of struggle.
Amid all the speculation about the motives behind the killing and the verbal
attacks on US-Organization, we attended Bunchy's funeral, and Ericka left
for Connecticut to bury her husband and to find a safe place for her young
daughter Maya. We learned that she had immediately begun to organize a
chapter of the Black Panther Party in New Haven where, a few months
later, police arrested her on a charge of conspiracy to murder.
Meanwhile, things quieted down around the BPP in Los Angeles, and
because the problems surrounding Deacon's membership in the CP were
never resolved, I felt it would be unprincipled of me to continue to work
with the Panthers. I decided to spend the rest of the school year on the
campus in La Jolla, where I worked again on a day-to-day basis with the
Black Student Council. At the beginning of the second quarter, the sisters

and brothers in the leadership of the organization all agreed that something
was needed to set our membership in motion once more. We needed an
issue around which to struggle. But what was the right issue? What was the
most magnetic and most dramatic issue? Each of us thought seriously and
intensely; our individual proposals were argued out in meetings that seemed
never to end.
Finally, we reached unanimous agreement. Since the San Diego Campus of
the university was to consist, ultimately, of a series of separate colleges, we
decided that it would be just and appropriate to demand that the next
college — the third college — be expressly devoted to the needs of students
from oppressed social groups. Specifically, it should serve the needs of
Black students, Chicano students and white students of working-class
origin. While tightening our already close relationship with the Chicano
students in the Mexican-American Youth Association, we drew up plans for
our college. In order to project the radical character of our demands, we
decided to call it Lumumba-Zapata College — after the assassinated
Congolese revolutionary leader, Patrice Lumumba, and the Mexican
revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata. We wanted our goals to be transparent:
Lumumba-Zapata College, in our theoretical formulation, was to be a place
where our peoples could acquire the knowledge and skills we needed in
order to more effectively wage our liberation struggles.
After a brief period of strategy planning sessions, we decided that the time
was right to confront the university administration. One afternoon the
members of our two organizations streamed into the chancellor's office,
insisting that he listen to our demands. I had been designated by the sisters
and brothers to read the statement collectively drawn up by the BSC and
MAYA. Along with our demands for Lumumba-Zapata College, we issued
a very serious warning: in the event that the chancellor refused to negotiate,
we would not guarantee that the university would continue to function
undisturbed.
As could have been predicted, the chancellor did indeed refuse. His refusal
was our signal for an all-out offensive: more rallies, demonstrations and
confrontations. We knew that in order to be effective we needed the support
of a significant number of students and faculty. Our actions, therefore, were

designed to attract as many of the white students and professors as possible.
Some white students were involved from the outset, since one very
important aspect of our demands was the integration into the college of
white students from working-class backgrounds. But we needed many
more; we aimed to draw hundreds into the movement for Lumumba-Zapata
and hoped to eventually bring the majority of the students over to our side.
Only in this way could we isolate the administration, and thus force it to
accept our demands.
Our actions were climaxed first by an appearance of our organizations in an
Academic Senate meeting. With the aid of sympathetic professors —
including Herbert Marcuse and others in the Philosophy Department — we
began to win over a sizeable number of faculty members to our position.
The next dramatic demonstration of our demands was a takeover of the
registrar's office. As a result of our occupation of one of the central nerves
of the university, the administration and those professors who were not
already convinced were made to understand the seriousness of our position.
We had put up a fierce struggle. Large numbers of UCSD students had
experienced the radicalization that was occurring on campuses throughout
the country. The university hierarchy decided, apparently, that it was best to
make the concessions we were demanding, rather than risk a prolonged
disruption of campus activities. To tell the truth, we had not really expected
them to agree so readily to our notion of the third college. And when they
did, those of us leading the movement knew that despite our victory — of
which all of us were proud — Lumumba-Zapata College would never
become the revolutionary institution we had originally projected.
Concessions were going to be inevitable, however the creation of the
college would bring large numbers of Black, Brown and working-class
white students into the university. And it would be a real breakthrough to
have a college in which students would exercise more control over the
education they received.
At the end of the school year, as I prepared to leave for a conference in
Oakland, and go from there to Cuba, students selected by our organizations
were settling down to a summer of drawing up concrete curriculum, faculty
and administrative proposals for the college. The fight was not over. On the

contrary, it had just begun. The most important responsibility resting with
us was to ensure that whoever became involved in the college — students
and faculty alike, carried on the legacy of struggle out of which the idea of
Lumumba-Zapata was born.

The era of massive national conferences was still in full force. In July 1969,
movement activists, Black, Brown and white, from throughout the country,
converged in Oakland, California, to attend a conference called by the
Black Panther Party to found a United Front Against Fascism.
The organizational theory behind the conference was excellent: people with
various ideologies — the broadest possible representation of people —
joined together to forge a United Front to combat the increasingly ferocious
repression. But there were problems with the conference, and I was perhaps
overly sensitive, since I had just recently been forced to break my relatively
close ties with the Panthers. The basic difficulty, I thought, was that we
were being asked to believe that the monster of fascism had already broken
loose and that we were living in a country not essentially different from
Nazi Germany. Certainly, we had to fight the mounting threat of fascism,
but it was incorrect and misleading to inform people that we were already
living under fascism. Moreover, the resistance dictated by such an analysis
would surely lead us in the wrong direction. First, in seeking to include
absolutely everyone who had an interest in overthrowing that fascism, we
might be pushed into the arms of the liberals. Our revolutionary thrust
would thus be blunted. And if we were not led in that direction, we would
be pressed toward the opposite end of the political spectrum. For, if we
believed we were living under genuine fascism, it would mean that virtually
all democratic channels of struggle were closed and we should immediately
and desperately rush into the armed struggle.
In many of the speeches, the word "fascism" was used interchangeably with
the word "racism." Certainly, there was a definite relationship between
racism and fascism. If a full-blown fascism ever erupted in the United
States, it would certainly ride on the back of racism in much the same way
that anti-Semitism provided the handle for German fascism in the thirties.
But to think that racism was fascism and fascism was racism was to cloud

the vision of those who were attracted to the struggle. It was to hamper their
own political development and to impede the organized mass fight against
racism, against political repression — and especially in defense of the
embattled Panthers.
In the midst of the confusion, Herbert Aptheker, the Communist historian,
made an excellent presentation, laying out the relationship between racism
today and the potential of fascism tomorrow. For me, it confirmed the
correctness of my decision to join the Communist Party almost a year ago
to that date.
With all its obvious flaws, the conference was nevertheless one of the most
important political events of the season. It established the basis for breaking
out of the narrow nationalism so prevalent in the Black Liberation
Movement and pointed the way for alliances between people of color and
white people around issues which involved us all.
As soon as the conference had adjourned, Kendra and I boarded a plane for
Mexico City, where we joined the remaining members of a delegation of
Communists invited by the Cubans to spend a month in the "first free
territory of America." I was nervous and depressed during the flight to
Mexico: my purse had been stolen while I slept in a Haight-Ashbury park,
and I had no money and no passport. Kendra had lent me enough for the
ticket to Mexico City, but I was less than certain of being able to secure a
passport before the others took off for Cuba. My only hope was that the
Cubans would let me enter the country without my traveling papers.
Not only did the passport present problems insofar as the trip was
concerned, we all had to worry about concealing our intentions from the
Mexicans, who, on several occasions, have deported activists from the
United States trying to get to Cuba. During the student demonstrations of
1968, when the police had massacred crowds of people, a group of activists,
among whom were Bobbie Hodges and Babu (with whom I had worked in
SNCC) were in Mexico City attempting to get a plane for Cuba. They had
all been detained by the police, interrogated about the purpose of their trip
(were they going to receive guerrilla training?) and asked about their
participation in the student rebellion in Mexico City. The outcome of the
whole affair was deportation for them all. They had been randomly and

separately placed on planes leaving Mexico — Bobbie, for instance, had
ended up in Paris.
We devised a plan to elude the Mexican police. As soon as we landed, we
would look up the address of the Cuban Embassy, where our visas were
supposed to be waiting, and check into a hotel somewhere in the vicinity.
After we had deposited our luggage, we would go out on foot to locate the
Embassy. The next morning, we would make a dash for it. We knew that if
the police discovered us before we got inside the Embassy, we might be
detained before we could even obtain our visas. After receiving the visas,
we would remain in the Embassy and at the last moment we would rush for
the airport, stopping off for our luggage on the way.
That night we walked for hours, but in vain, for we could not find the
Cuban Embassy anywhere in the neighborhood. Only after much wandering
the next day did we discover on the other side of town another street with
exactly the same name. The Cuban Embassy was located there. Reaching
the Embassy finally without incident (although we noticed men outside who
appeared to be U.S. agents), we were told that our visas had not yet arrived
and that unfortunately it would not be possible for us to leave for Havana
that evening. It was Monday and if everything could be arranged in time,
we could take the Friday plane to Cuba.
And then came the coup de grace. Explaining that my passport had been
stolen two days before, I asked whether I could board the plane without it.
Trying to console me, the Cuban comrade told me that they were not the
ones who required the passports; it was the Mexican immigration
department. No one could leave Mexico for Cuba without first presenting
their papers to the Mexican authorities. The comrade suggested that I go to
the U.S. Embassy there in Mexico City and attempt to get a new passport as
quickly as possible.
I was not at all optimistic about being able to get my passport replaced. The
State Department still kept lists of Communists and often refused to deliver
passports to our comrades until a lawyer challenged them in the courts.
Kendra, for instance, thinking she had lost her passport, had put in an
application some six weeks before the trip. Normally a passport is ready
within a week after one applies, but each time Kendra inquired, they told

her that there was no information concerning the date her passport would be
ready. Luckily she found her misplaced passport before we left the country,
because the new one had still not arrived. Another member of our
delegation had also waited for weeks for his passport and at that moment in
Mexico City was awaiting word from his lawyer, who was dealing with the
State Department. I was still willing to try any scheme we could concoct in
order to acquire a passport by Friday. I returned to the hotel, picked out the
nicest clothes I had — the ones which would identify me as an innocuous
tourist whose passport and money had just been stolen. At the U.S.
Embassy, I tearfully explained that I had been planning this trip through
Mexico, Central America and South America for over a year, and my
vacation plans had been ruined by some thief. A friend was waiting for me
in Nicaragua and I had no way of reaching her. Wasn't it possible to get a
passport on some kind of emergency basis? The Embassy official took pity
on me and by the next afternoon, there was a new passport waiting for me.
The ploy had been pulled off; I had obviously aroused no suspicions, so
they had issued the passport without first checking with the State
Department in Washington.
We had almost given up when the visas finally came through. With the
exception of Jim — whose passport was still in the hands of some
bureaucrat in the State Department — we all prepared to take the Friday
flight to Havana. Whoever was about to board the Cuban plane had to agree
to be photographed by the Mexican immigration officials. No one, not even
the nun on her way to Cuba, doubted that these photos would soon end up
in the files of the CIA. We were not completely cured of our paranoia until
we had actually lifted off the ground.
As we were flying over the lush Havana Green Belt, studded with tall,
graceful palm trees, the pilot announced over the loudspeaker, "You are
about to land on the first free territory of America." Several minutes later,
when the plane touched the runway, everyone on the plane spontaneously
burst into applause.
It was the day before Cuba's most important national holiday — the 26th of
July. On this date in 1953, Fidel led an assault on the Moncada Garrison, a
central base for the dictator Batista's army and a well-known symbol of his

power. Though Fidel and his comrades were all either killed or arrested,
people viewed their courageous act as the first great challenge to Batista's
dictatorship. After the ultimate triumph of the revolution, July 26th, the Day
of the National Rebellion, continued to be celebrated as the anniversary of
the first armed attack of the revolution.
Ordinarily there would have been a mass rally at the Plaza de la Revolucion
at which Fidel and other leaders would have spoken to the hundreds of
thousands in attendance. This year July 26 would mark the beginning of an
agricultural campaign to process more sugar cane than ever before in the
history of their economy. To be exact, they wanted to produce ten million
tons of sugar. Instead of going to the Plaza on July 26, everyone was going
to the fields to work. While it would be an honor to participate in the
Campaign of the Ten Millions, I must confess that I was disappointed that
there would be no rally at the Plaza. This was the first time since the
triumph of the revolution that the traditional celebration would not take
place.
Colorful billboard posters lined the road from the airport to the hotel:
posters about the Campana de los Diez Milliones; posters of El Che; posters
praising the people of Vietnam. Many of these billboards had been used in
the past to advertise U.S. products, bearing slogans such as "Drink CocaCola," and "The Pause that Refreshes." I felt a great satisfaction knowing
that the Cubans had ripped down these trademarks of global exploitation
and had replaced them with warm and stirring symbols that had real
meaning for the people. The sense of human dignity was palpable.
Our bus carried us across the grounds of the Havana University, reserved
for two hundred years for the sons and daughters of the wealthy. Now the
students were the children of workers and peasants — Black and Brown as
well as white.
The bus stopped in front of the Havana Libre, formerly the Havana Hilton,
now freed from the veined fingers of decadent old capitalists. This was the
first time I had stayed in such a fancy hotel. Its elaborateness, however, was
quieted by the guests: workers on vacation, young couples on their
honeymoons and by the compañeros who staffed the hotel — men and
women with none of the servility usually associated with bellboys,

chambermaids and waiters, people who would never accept the tip that
natives of capitalist countries are accustomed to giving.
In the early morning hours of July 26, we drove to the fields. Buses, vans,
trucks and automobiles were packed with young and old, proudly dressed in
work clothes, singing as they made their way to the country. It seemed as if
every able-bodied resident of Havana was rushing to the fields as though to
a joyous carnival. On these faces reigned the serenity of meaningful work
— the passion of commitment. They were finished with the politics of class
and race, done with the acid bile of outdoing one's neighbor for the sake of
materially rising above him.
The sugar cane campaign was closely connected with work in other realms
of agriculture. The higher the rate of productivity in preparing and
harvesting tobacco, citrus fruit, coffee, etc., the more the workers would be
able to devote their energies to cane-cutting. Our first trip to the countryside
was to the coffee fields in the Havana Green Belt. On July 26 we spent the
day hoeing away the weeds and breaking up the soil around the coffee
plants to permit them to grow unhindered.
It was a hard day. In the white-hot sunlight sweat drenched my clothes
before I had hardly gotten started. I was in fairly good condition but the
hoeing was difficult work for me. The Cubans, on the other hand, did it
with ease. I was determined to ignore the sun and to keep the same pace as
the hundreds of compañeros around me. Even when a spell of vertigo
threatened to overcome me, I said nothing and refused to stop.
Being North Americans, we all felt we had to constantly demonstrate our
worth. At the precise moment when I was certain I was going to faint,
Kendra chopped her foot with the hoe and I had to accompany her to the
first aid station. It was a convenient "out," but I returned to the fields still
determined to survive the day. Besides, I had to build up my endurance for
the coming week, which we were going to spend cutting cane in the
province of Oriente on the eastern end of the island.
After a shower, a change of clothes and a few moments' rest in the airconditioned comfort of the Havana Libre, I left the hotel with one of the
comrades from our delegation to explore the streets of Havana. The old

Spanish architecture in some parts of the center made me think back to the
War of Independence, the Black General Antonio Maceo, wounded some
eighty times before he finally fell. Down on the Malecon, we saw the statue
erected by the United States. The eagle at its tip was missing. The
revolutionaries tore it down after their march on Havana.
We saw a young militia woman wielding a machine gun on guard duty in
front of her work center. Wearing the light blue shirt with epaulets, olivegreen pants, military boots, she defended her assigned territory. With the
archenemy so near — Florida was a mere ninety miles away — one of the
most noticeable aspects of everyday life in Cuba was bound to be defense.
People were still talking about the Bay of Pigs invasion as if it had
happened only yesterday. Eight years had passed since the burial ceremony
for the seven who were killed when airplanes from the United States and its
bases in Guatemala and Nicaragua had bombed the airports in three Cuban
cities. On April 16, 1961, Fidel had proclaimed the socialist character of the
Cuban Revolution and called upon his people to mobilize themselves lest
the "puppets of imperialism expand their acts of aggression." Sure enough,
the very next day, Cuban exiles — trained by the CIA with participation by
the Kennedy administration — landed with U.S. ships and planes on Playa
Giron.
Eight years was indeed a short span of time, considering that the Cubans
were trying to build a new world and would fight to the death for their right
to build it. U.S. aggression had expressed itself in other ways as well. Using
the presence of Soviet missiles on Cuban soil as an excuse, the Kennedy
administration openly declared its intention to annihilate the Cuban
Revolution even if it meant a thermonuclear catastrophe. And during the
days of the October crisis, the world tottered above the abyss. Moreover,
there was the U.S.-imposed economic blockade; there were U.S. troops on
Guantanamo Base in Oriente, and news had leaked out that Kennedy had
actually discussed the issue of whether to assassinate the Prime Minister,
Fidel Castro.
One of the mass organizations very much in evidence from one end of the
island to the other was the Committee to Defend the Revolution. During our
first walk through the streets of Havana, we had noticed that on at least one

house door in every block there was a poster in red, white and blue, with the
words "Comite de Defensa de la Revolucion."
The origin of this organization had been spontaneous. On September 28,
1960, during a rally at which Fidel was reporting on his trip to the United
Nations, two bombs were set off by someone in the crowd. Fidel's response
was swift:
We are going to establish a system of collective vigilance and then
we're going to see if the lackeys of Imperialism will be able to operate,
because we live all over the city; there is not a single apartment
building in this city, nor is there any block, any square block, that is
not widely represented here. . . . We are going to establish a
Committee of Revolutionary Vigilance in every square block, so that
the people stand vigilance, so that the people see everything, so that
the enemy understands that when the masses of people are organized,
there is no imperialist nor lackey of the imperialists, nor sell-out to the
imperialists, nor instruments of the imperialists that will be able to
operate again.1
By 1969, there were CDR's in literally every block on the island. It was
amusing to recall some of the propaganda which was floating around in the
United States about the Cuban Revolution — particularly the lies about the
Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. According to the government
propagandists, this was a spy organization, something like the FBI, that
snooped around gathering intelligence on the people and communicating it
to the government. This was obviously absurd, since the majority of the
Cuban population belonged to the CDR's; they had joined because they
wanted to help root out the saboteurs and enemy agents who were trying to
subvert the Cuban Revolution. Another widely accepted falsehood about
Cuba had to do with the role of Fidel Castro. According to the propaganda,
he was not only a "tyrannical dictator," imposing an iron will upon his
people; he was projected as an infallible charismatic figure, whom the
people were expected to worship. After seeing all the spectacular posters of
Che Guevara and other leaders of the revolution, I looked hard for pictures
and posters of Fidel. The only ones I could find were historical in character
— in which he was shown with guerrillas in a typical scene of battle. But

there were no portraits of the Prime Minister anywhere to be seen. When I
asked some of the compañeros why there were many portraits of Che to be
seen but absolutely none of Fidel, they told me that he himself had
prohibited people from mounting pictures of him in their offices or work
centers. This upset people sometimes, I learned, for they thought he was
more self-effacing than was necessary.
Talking to almost any Cuban about Fidel, it soon became clear that they did
not see him as being anything more than extraordinarily intelligent,
exceptionally committed, and an extremely warm human being endowed
with great leadership talents. He made mistakes, human errors, and people
loved him in large part because of his honesty with them. Fidel was their
leader, but most important he was also their brother, in the largest sense of
the word.
We spent a week in the small village of Santa Maria II, located in the sugar
center, Antonio Guiterras, living in log cabins with cement floors in an
encampment which normally served as a Party retreat camp for political
education. Our eating place was an open area with a roof to shade it from
the sometimes unbearably hot Oriente sun. The toilet was a regular
outhouse, until plumbing was installed toward the end of our stay. The
shower was a cement stall into which we took large buckets of cold water
fetched from the one faucet on the grounds.
We were roughing it, even by Cuban standards. We followed the regular
routine: up at five, breakfast and out to the fields with our machetes. Back
in the camp by eleven; lunch and rest during the noon hours when the
sweltering tropical heat would be dangerous even for those accustomed to
it. Back in the fields by three, and by six it was time to lay down the
machetes for the day.
Cane-cutting was far more difficult and fatiguing than the work in the
coffee fields. But again, I was determined to do at least my share, and I
meticulously followed the system: A powerful stroke at the root of the
plant; careful strokes down the side of the stalk to shave off the leaves; then
the last motion of slicing the stalks into pieces the right size for processing.
It was hard, and the heat was even more intolerable because our clothes
were blue jeans, heavy long-sleeved work shirts, high-top boots, and

gloves. All this was for protection from the liquid that seeped out of the
cane leaves and could cause a severe skin rash. It didn't take me long to
accept the fact that during the working hours of each day I was going to be
soaking wet with sweat. In two days I was able to get into the swing of it; I
had recovered my energy, it seemed, and could work alongside a Cuban
compañero — though I did suspect that he was slowing his pace to remain
with me.
One day I remarked to a Cuban how I admired his skill in cutting cane — it
was almost like an art, the way he did it. He thanked me for the
compliment, but quickly added that his skill was a skill that needed to
become obsolete. Cane-cutting was inhuman toil, he said. Before the
revolution thousands had had to depend for their survival on working like
animals during the cane season. Many of them would end up having to cut
off a finger with the machete for a little insurance money to make ends meet
a little while longer.
The job of cutting cane had become qualitatively different since the
revolution. No one was a cane-cutter by trade any longer; during the cane
season everyone pitched in. Also profits for others were not being squeezed
from their sweat and toil. They knew that the returns from sugar sales
abroad would be used to raise the living standards of the Cuban people as a
whole — new schools would be built, more hospitals constructed; child
care centers would multiply, better housing would be available to those who
had the greatest need.
Even so, this Cuban said, the business of cutting cane was work not fit for
human beings; it made you old before your time. He continued to do it
because he knew that he was working for the day when his sons and their
children would not have to toil under the sweltering sun. Mechanization of
the entire industry was on the agenda, but the rapidity with which it could
be put into operation depended on the sacrifices they were all willing to
make.
In this way he subtly criticized me for having romanticized something
which was really nothing more than terribly hard work. It was then that I
began to realize the true meaning of underdevelopment: it is nothing to be

utopianized. Romanticizing the plight of oppressed people is dangerous and
misleading.
As the time went by, Kendra and I and the rest of us began to feel as if we
had taken root in this small village in Oriente. We had met almost every
resident; we knew the Communist Party headquarters well and we knew all
the children in the barrio. Despite the language barrier, the children
accepted us as members of the family. They helped me with my Spanish
lessons each day. I was extremely embarrassed that I had not learned a little
Spanish before the trip, for it is an affront to a people to visit them before
having attempted to learn their language. Because I spoke Spanish so
poorly, never having studied it, I felt less inhibited with the children. They
were patient, corrected me and helped me find words when no dictionary
was available.
It was a sad day indeed when we had to pack up our things and board the
bus, ready to move on to the next stage of our journey. All of us cried —
men and women alike, in our delegation as well as on the Cuban side. The
hardest part for me was saying good-bye to the children. A young boy of
about nine or ten, who had always been the toughest one of his group,
seemed reluctant to come up and say good-bye. I thought that it was his
natural shyness. Just before I got into the bus, I went over to him and gave
him a kiss on the cheek. He tore away from me and ran as fast as he could.
But once in the bus, I saw him standing behind a tree, trying to conceal
himself as his body shook with sobs. The tears that had been flooding my
own eyes slid down my face.
We had an unusually rugged schedule over the next weeks: schools,
hospitals, child care centers, historical spots, a workers' resort center, the
University of Santiago, a dam, a rice-producing center.
Wherever we went, we were immensely impressed by the results of the
fierce struggle that had been waged against racism after the triumph of the
revolution. The first executive decrees of the new government had been to
abolish segregation in the cities, brought to Cuba by corrupt capitalists from
the United States. Now it was simply a crime to discriminate against Black
people in any way, including the use of racist language. What was more
important, of course, was the destruction of the material base of racism —

weeding it out of the economy. During our trip, we saw Black people in
leadership in factories, schools, hospitals and wherever else we went. It was
clear to us — and Kendra, Carlos and I, the three Black members,
incessantly discussed it — that only under socialism could this fight against
racism have been so successfully executed.
Around the end of August, our delegation, together with a larger Puerto
Rican delegation, boarded a Cuban freighter which would take us on the
first leg of our trip back home as it transported cement to the French
Antilles. The freighter steered out of the Santiago Bay that evening. By the
time we had cleared the island, the moonless night made it impossible to
see land or sea. We were settling down, finding our way around the ship,
and along with the large Puerto Rican delegation returning via this route,
we were trying to get acquainted with the crew. The captain was a twentysix-year-old ex-philosophy student, with whom I was eager to discuss
philosophy. This was his first voyage manning this ship and, like us, he was
having to familiarize himself with the ship and the crew as well.
As we sailed farther into the darkness, a plane suddenly flew low over the
ship at lightning speed. Before I could collect my thoughts, it crossed above
us once more. As Kendra and I rushed toward the captain's bridge to find
out what was going on, one of the crew members told us calmly that this
was an exhibition of aggression by a U.S. aircraft carrier enforcing the
economic blockade.
By means of lights, the U.S. carrier began signaling to our ship to identify
itself and its mission. Of course, they could see the Cuban flag; this whole
episode was the routine harassment which Cuban ships confronted
whenever they sailed out of their own waters. We signaled back that before
we identified ourselves, we wanted the name and mission of the party
desiring the information.
Amusement mingled with tension during these moments of our encounter
with the U.S. aircraft carrier. Suddenly in the near distance, a bizarre,
soundless explosion-effect lit up the darkness. At first, it looked like a
miniature mushroom cloud. A second later, it seemed to be heading directly
toward us. I was too frightened to ask what was going on; if this was lethal
gas, there was no way for us to escape. Finally, it engulfed the ship with its

bright light, illuminating the whole area as if it were high noon. A crew
member then remarked that it must be a new flare, and that the United
States was using the blockade to test it.
We finally shook off the North American military men and enjoyed for a
few days the legendary beauty of the Caribbean. We passed the politically
not so beautiful countries of Haiti and Santo Domingo, and at last received
instructions that the ship was to dock in Guadeloupe.
I did not like the idea of being responsible for communications with the
Guadeloupeans, but I was the only one on board who knew French, so I had
no other choice.
Our delegation had very little luggage. But the Puerto Rican delegation had
boxes of books which the Cubans had given them for their bookstore in San
Juan. I was careful to ask the customs people whether or not they wanted to
inspect all the packages. We wished to avoid any kind of incident on the
island, and the Puerto Ricans wanted to make sure they would be able to
mail the packages to San Juan from Basse-Terre, the port where we had
docked. The Frenchman told me not to worry about a thing; all they wanted
to see was our passports. After they were stamped, we would be completely
clear.
The Cuban captain had the name of a women who would allow us to eat at
her restaurant-hotel and would let us leave our belongings there while we
made arrangements for a flight to Puerto Rico. After depositing our things, I
went to an agency to buy plane tickets for the twenty-five of us. Some of
the Puerto Rican brothers began to cart their packages to the post office.
I was negotiating with the travel agent when one of the Puerto Rican
comrades broke into the office, frantically explaining that all the packages
had been confiscated. The police had confiscated the passports of several
members of their delegation, and it seemed that they had been charged with
a crime. Because of the language barrier, they did not fully understand what
was happening. They needed me as an interpreter.
As I walked through the streets of Basse-Terre, I was certain that this was a
minor misunderstanding which could be instantly cleared up. The passports

would be returned and we would be on our way to Puerto Rico later that
night. The comrades led me down a broken-down street, through a dark
driveway into a dingy garage which was being used as a storage area,
apparently by the French Customs Department. In the dim light of this
cellar, about ten members of the Puerto Rican Delegation were standing in a
circle around an old French colonialist who was waving their passports in
the air while he ranted about communism infiltrating the "free French
world" of Guadeloupe. The faces of the Puerto Rican brothers were
distorted in incomprehension.
Calmly, but quite firmly, I asked him what it was that disturbed him so
much. My cool-headed posture did not sober him, as I had hoped, but rather
set him off on a tirade that was even more vitriolic than the first. He was
accusing us all of being agents of Cuban communism, bringing communist
propaganda to foment revolution on this tranquil island where the "natives"
loved their French governors and had peacefully coexisted with them for so
many decades. I thought to myself that it would have indeed been a good
thing if in such a short time we could have fomented an insurrection there.
Unfortunately, our presence on the island had nothing to do with
revolutionary activity.
When he quieted down, I began to tell him the simple truth: Some of us
were Communists — I, for example — and some of us were not. We were
returning from a trip to Cuba and hoped to leave Guadeloupe on the next
plane to Puerto Rico. As for the books and literature, we had no intention of
leaving a single one of them in Guadeloupe. Their destination was a
bookstore in Puerto Rico. Besides, they were written in Spanish and as far
as I knew, French, not Spanish, was the language spoken in Guadeloupe.
Moreover, the majority of the books were not political in character, but
rather were classical and contemporary Spanish-language literature of all
sorts.
When I tried to catch my breath to move on to the next part of my speech in
French, the man made a wild sweeping gesture, moved from one side of the
room to the other and pointed an accusing finger at me: "Mademoiselle,
vous êtes communiste!" he screamed, a horrified look crumpling his face.

My casual reference to myself as a Communist had apparently confirmed
his worst suspicions.
I knew that I was carrying on a dialogue with a raving lunatic. But despite
the bizarre circumstances, in this dingy cellar on the terrain of French
Imperialism, I felt called upon to defend my Party, Cuba, the Socialist
Countries, the World Communist Movement and the cause of oppressed
people across the globe. "Oui, Monsieur, je suis communiste et je le
considere un des plus grands honneurs humains, parce que nous luttons
pour la liberation totale de la race humaine." Yes, I am a Communist and I
consider it one of the greatest honors, because we are struggling for the
total liberation of the human race.
In the heat of this quarrel, I had not bothered to ask the comrades standing
around what kind of approach they wanted to take to the situation. With my
speech I had gotten them even more deeply involved. The Frenchman's face
had turned bright-red, and he furiously threatened to lock us all up for five
years and throw the books into the sea. Obviously it was time to bring this
dialogue to a different level. After all, they were in power on this island and
if we didn't watch out, we could really find ourselves locked away in a
dungeon with no one knowing our whereabouts.
I repeated my original statement: we had not come to Guadeloupe on any
political mission. We simply found this to be the most convenient way of
returning to our own countries. But the man wouldn't be appeased. He
began to tear open some of the boxes which were piled up on the floor.
When he discovered a box of Tri-Continentals, a revolutionary periodical
published in Cuba, he asked me where all that classical Spanish literature
was supposed to be. He ripped open another box, discovering this time
something that sent him soaring to new heights of rage: posters depicting
Jesus Christ, with haloed head, wielding a carbine on his shoulder. For him,
this was the straw that broke the camel's back. He completely lost control,
and literally fell on the floor waving his arms and legs, bellowing
inarticulate sounds. I stared incredulously at this desperate creature and
decided to wait quietly until his fit had subsided.
Uniformed men entered the room, as though they were going to arrest us.
As it turned out, they wanted all the passports that they had not yet

confiscated. I told them that they had no right to seize our passports — we
weren't even formally charged with a crime. One of the colonialists
announced that we were to appear before a judge the following morning for
the reading of the charges and the trial. If we did not want to give up our
passports, then detention in jail was the alternative. Imagining what the
dungeons must have been like, and realizing that we would be without any
kind of movement to back us, hidden away on this island in the Caribbean,
we all decided that we would turn over our passports and take advantage of
our freedom to make some plans for escape.
Using some of the captain's connections with sympathetic Cubans living on
the island, we made contact with a Black woman, a respected lawyer and a
leading member of the Communist Party of Guadeloupe.
Mattre Archimede was a big woman with very dark skin, penetrating eyes,
and unassailable confidence. I will never forget the first meeting we had
with her. I felt as if I were in the presence of a very great woman. As for our
predicament, there was never any doubt in my mind that she would rescue
us. But I was so impressed by her personality, by the respect that she clearly
commanded as a Communist, even from the colonialists, that for a while
our problem became a secondary concern for me. If I had surrendered to my
desires, I would have remained on the island to learn from this woman.
Over the next days, she worked tenaciously at negotiating with the customs
officials, the police, the judges. We learned that there was indeed a law
which could be legitimately invoked — insofar as colonial laws could be
legitimate — to put us behind bars for a substantial period of time. The only
way out was a compromise: the colonialists would let us leave the island
only under the condition that the Puerto Ricans leave the literature behind.
We fought this, of course, but at least we had won the first stage of our
battle. Our final decision was to take our passports, leave Guadeloupe and
leave the question of the books in the hands of Mattre Archimede, who
promised to do everything possible to retrieve them.
In an informal ceremony, we thanked Mattre Archimede for her invaluable
assistance. With affection, we took leave of her, the woman who had
allowed us to stay at her hotel, the Cuban captain and the ship crew. Then
we headed for the other side of the island, Point-à-Pitre, where we caught a

plane the next morning for Puerto Rico. From there, we North Americans
took off for New York.

The Cuban trip had been a great climax in my life. Politically I felt
infinitely more mature, and it seemed that the Cubans' limitless
revolutionary enthusiasm had left a permanent mark on my existence. I had
expected to spend a few days in New York, then go directly to my place in
Cardiff-by-the-Sea, where I could quietly reflect on my Cuban experiences
before I began the year teaching at UCLA.
I did not discover until I returned to the coast that an FBI agent had
published an article in the campus newspaper about a Communist who had
recently been hired by the Philosophy Department. William Divale revealed
in his article that he had been instructed by the FBI to infiltrate the
Communist Party. Undoubtedly he had also been instructed to publish the
article about my membership in the Party.
Another article had appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, under the byline of Ed Montgomery, one of the most reactionary reporters in the state.
According to him, I was not only a member of the Communist Party,
U.S.A., but (despite the contradiction) I was a Maoist as well. The article
alleged that I also belonged to the Students for a Democratic Society and
the Black Panther Party. Moreover, he said he had information that I was a
gun runner for the Black Panther Party, and that he knew for a fact that I
had been under surveillance for some time by the San Diego Police
Department.
When I read this nonsense, I laughed. But at the same time, I sensed that I
was in the midst of a serious situation. My suspicions were confirmed when
I learned that the governing body of the university — under the leadership
of Governor Ronald Reagan — had instructed the chancellor of the Los
Angeles campus to formally ask me whether I was a member of the
Communist Party.
I was somewhat shocked, I admit, by this march of events. Not that I had
expected the issue of my membership in the Communist Party to be totally

ignored. What shocked me was the ceremonious character of the
confrontation and what seemed the beginning of an inquisition a la
McCarthy.
When I accepted the job at UCLA, I was unaware of the regulation in the
Regents' handbook — dating back to 1949 — prohibiting the hiring of
Communists. This clearly unconstitutional statute was pulled out of the
closet, and invoked by Ronald Reagan and company in order to prevent me
from teaching at UCLA.
As this whole affair was brewing, I realized that the personal goals I had set
for myself were about to collide head-on with the political requirements of
my life. Originally I had not intended to begin working that year. I had not
yet completed my Ph.D. dissertation and wanted to get that out of the way
before I went out job-seeking. Later I had decided to accept the position at
UCLA because its light teaching load would leave me the time and
flexibility I needed to finish writing the thesis. I wanted desperately to get
that part of my academic life behind me. But now, I had been challenged.
To accept the challenge meant that I would have to abandon the idea of
receiving my degree before the end of that school year.
My comrades in the Che-Lumumba Club immediately committed
themselves to building a campaign within the Black community in Los
Angeles around my right to teach at UCLA. White comrades were active as
well. On the campus, the Black Student Union and the Black Professors'
organization took up the banner. Large numbers of students and professors
began to understand the need to fight the Regents' political encroachments
on the autonomy of the university.
The unanimous position of the Philosophy Department was to condemn the
Regents for interrogating me about my political beliefs and affiliations.
None of them had been asked, as a condition of their employment, whether
they were members of the Democratic, Republican, or any other party. The
chairman of the Philosophy Department, Donald Kalish, had assumed a
principled, unyielding position from the outset. It was largely because of his
work, and the efforts of the few Black professors, that the movement to
support my right to teach expanded throughout the faculty.

The stage was set for the battle. The first step was to answer the chancellor's
letter asking me whether I was a member of the Communist Party. Only my
lawyer — John McTernan — and a few close friends and comrades were
aware of the way I was going to reply to the question. Most people assumed
that I would invoke the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, declining to
answer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself. During the
McCarthy era, this had been the strategy of most Communists, for at that
time, if it could be established that a person was a Communist, he or she
could be sentenced, under the Smith Act, to many years in prison. Gus Hall
and Henry Winston, the General Secretary and the Chairman of our Party,
had spent almost ten years of their lives behind walls. Since there was going
to be a fight in any event, I preferred to pick the combat area, and to
determine myself the terms of the struggle. The Regents had moved in with
an attack on me. Now I would assume the offensive and would move in
with an attack on them.
I answered the chancellor's letter with an unequivocal affirmation of my
membership in the Communist Party. I strongly protested the posing of the
question in the first place, but made it clear to them that I was prepared to
fight openly, as a communist.
My reply caught the Regents unawares, and some of them considered my
announcement of my membership in the Communist Party a personal
affront. I am sure that they had taken for granted that I would call upon the
Fifth Amendment. Their strategy, in turn, would have been to publicly
ransack my immediate past in order to prove that I was in fact a
Communist.
They countered my move with an impetuous, angry response: they
announced their intention to fire me.
The racists and anti-Communists throughout the state responded with furor.
Threatening calls and letters poured into the Philosophy Department and
into the offices of the Communist Party. A man broke into the Philosophy
Department offices and physically attacked Don Kalish. A special telephone
line had to be installed in my office, so that all my calls could be screened
before they reached me. The campus police had to be placed on alert at all

times. Several times they had to check out my car because of bomb threats I
had received.
For security purposes, a brother was assigned by my comrades in CheLumumba to stay with me at all times, and I had to change many of my
personal habits and remold them for the requirements of security. Things
which I had taken for granted for so long were now completely out of the
question. If, for instance, I got bogged down on some work I was doing, I
could no longer go out alone for a walk or a drive at two o'clock in the
morning. If I needed cigarettes at an hour when most people were sleeping,
I would have to wake Josef and ask him to go with me.
It was difficult for me to accept the necessity of someone's being with me
practically all the time, and I was constantly criticized by members of the
Che-Lumumba Club for taking security so lightly. Kendra and Franklin
Alexander kept reminding me that if anything ever happened to me they
would be the ones to be blamed. Whenever I made light of the need for
security, they reminded me of all the incidents that had already occurred.
There had been the time when I was pursued by the police while driving
home alone at night. They had followed me for some distance and as I
slowed down to turn into my driveway, the cops aimed their spotlight into
the car and kept it trained on me until I reached the door. I had assumed that
this was just one more of their attempts to harass me, so I ignored them. But
afterward, a comrade remarked I underestimated them — they could have
been setting me up for an assassination.
It wasn't just a question of police either. The comrades would often remind
me that out of the thousands of threats that had been made on my life, there
might be one person crazy enough to actually try to kill me. Just one
person, one crazy person.
After our first victory in court — an injunction prohibiting the Regents
from firing me for political reasons — the hate letters and threats multiplied
in number and ferocity. Bomb threats were so frequent that after a while the
campus police stopped checking under the hood of my car for explosives.
Of necessity, I had to learn the procedure myself. One afternoon, a Black
plainclothesman interrupted my class to tell me that serious threats had been
received and that the campus police had instructed him to guard me until I

was ready to go home. That day several calls had been received at various
points on the campus warning that I would not get off the grounds alive.
Apparently the same person had made calls all over Los Angeles, to friends
and acquaintances of mine and people involved in the movement. When I
walked out of the classroom, Franklin, Gregory and several other comrades
from Che-Lumumba were waiting to take me home, their long coats not
quite concealing the shotguns and rifles they had brought along. We all
remembered that barely a year ago John Huggins and Bunchy Carter, two
members of the Black Panther Party, had been shot to death on that campus
— not far from where I was holding my class.
If the need for constant security made life unwieldy for me, it was only one
facet of the larger problem of getting used to the fact that I had been
transformed into a public figure overnight. I hated being the center of such
excessive attention. The snooping, often parasitic news reporters jarred my
nerves. And I loathed being stared at like a curiosity object. I had never
aspired to be a "public revolutionary"; my concept of my revolutionary
vocation had been vastly different. Still, I had accepted the challenge which
the state initiated and if that meant I had to become a public personality,
then I would have to be that personality — despite my own discomfort.
But there were the enormously moving moments which more than
compensated for the unpleasant aspects of my public life. Once I was
grocery shopping in the supermarket near my house. I could tell that the
middle-aged Black woman behind a nearby cart thought she recognized me.
When our eyes met, hers lit up. She rushed over and asked, "Are you
Angela Davis?" When I smiled and said yes, tears came into her eyes. I
wanted to hug her, but she was faster than I. With a firm, warm embrace,
she told me in a motherly way, "Don't worry, child. We're behind you. We're
not going to let them take your job. Just keep on fighting."
If this one moment had been the only fruit of the many seasons I had
devoted to the movement, it would have made all the sacrifices worthwhile.
There was never a doubt in my mind that my mother and father, in their
own gentle way, would stand with me. I knew they would not bend under
the terrible pressures to denounce their "Communist daughter." At the same

time I realized that the more strongly they defended me, the more their own
safety would be placed in jeopardy; I worried a great deal about them.
As I thought of their being exposed to the most virulent Southern racism
and anti-communism, my apprehension mingled with fears I had
experienced during my childhood in Birmingham. I remembered how
terrified I had felt when I heard the bombs explode, ripping to pieces the
houses across the street. I remembered how my father's weapons had
always been waiting in his top drawer in anticipation of an attack. I thought
about the time when the slightest sound was enough to send my father or
my brothers searching for a hidden explosive device outside. One night
after the publicity broke, I spoke to my youngest brother, Reginald, who
was attending college in Ohio. He, too, was very much afraid that our
parents might come under attack and he wanted to go back to Birmingham
to protect them.
Whenever I talked to our mother and father, they assured me that things
were going well. Perhaps there had been no physical assault, but I could
detect in their voices that they were being hurt in other ways. Maybe
someone who was supposed to be a friend had been frightened away
because he did not want to be associated with the parents of a Communist.
The psychological impact of anti-communism on ordinary people in this
country runs very deep. There is something about the word "communism"
that, for the unenlightened, evokes not only the enemy, but also something
immoral, something dirty.
Among the many reasons for my decision to publicly talk about my
membership in the Communist Party, was my belief that I could help
explode some of the myths on which anti-communism thrives. If only
oppressed people could see that Communists are profoundly concerned
about them, they would be forced to reevaluate their irrational fear of "the
Communist Conspiracy."
I soon discovered that in the ghetto, among poor and working-class Black
people, anti-Communist reactions were often not deeply ingrained. To relate
only one example: A brother who lived across the street from me came over
one day and asked me what communism was. "There must be something

good about it," he said, "because the man is always trying to convince us
that it's bad."
But in Birmingham, the image most people had of me was doubtlessly
abstract and irrational. Many people who had known me as a child, people
who still wanted to love me, probably assumed very simply that I had been
captured, led astray and brainwashed by the Communists. I could imagine
them using every euphemism they could think of in order to avoid calling
me such a dirty name as Communist.
While I was home during the Christmas break, my mother admitted that
people who had counted themselves among her friends had broken down
under the pressure. Some, she said, had abruptly stopped calling or coming
around to visit. Some of my father's customers at the service station had
suddenly disappeared.
Yet at the same time, she insisted, many of her friends had taken forthright
positions in my defense. If someone even implied that I had been innocently
lured into the Communist Party, they would firmly declare that I had made
up my own mind about my political affiliations.
My mother and father had always encouraged my sister, my brothers and
me to be independent. From the time we were very small, they repeatedly
counseled us to forget about what other people said and to do what we felt
was right. I was proud that both my parents were determined to defend my
right to seek an independent, revolutionary answer to the oppression of our
people.
I kept in close touch with my brother Ben, who is a football player with the
Cleveland Browns. If there were any repercussions on his job because I was
a Communist, I wanted to be prepared to defend him immediately.
Although nothing overt happened at that time — the problems were still to
come — he was very much conscious of the conspicuous silence which
surrounded him. No one had even asked him whether he was with me or
against me.
My sister, Fania, was living only a hundred miles away in the San Diego
area at the time. She and her husband, Sam, were attending the University

of California in San Diego. There was a greater than average concern about
the UCLA affair there because I had attended the university for two years
and was officially still a philosophy graduate student, studying for my
doctorate under Professor Herbert Marcuse.
I had kept my little apartment near the university in Cardiff-by-the-Sea,
thinking that it would be a perfect refuge when I wanted to get away from
the hectic pace of Los Angeles. Since the rent was forty dollars a month and
my place in Los Angeles was only eighty dollars, I had decided I could
afford to keep the two places. Fania and Sam had stayed there before they
moved into a place of their own. Afterward, they continued to use it
whenever they felt like it.
After the Regents fired me, and my membership in the Communist Party
was thoroughly publicized and attacked in the press throughout the state, I
could not help worrying about Fania and Sam. The San Diego area was
home territory for the Minutemen, Southern California's version of the Ku
Klux Klan. The police were not much better. With recent memories of being
followed by the police for being in the leadership of the Black Student
Council at UCSD, I warned them to be on their guard.
My fears were not unfounded. One morning in the fall the telephone beside
my bed rang so early that I knew something was wrong. My heart was
beating fast when I said hello.
"Angela," whispered a voice which I immediately recognized as my sister's,
"Sam's been shot." She sounded like she was talking in her sleep. Her words
were so unreal.
"What do you mean?" I asked unbelievingly.
"The pigs shot Sam," was all she said.
She didn't say whether he was still alive, and fearing the worst, I didn't want
to ask. Instead, trying to sound calm, I asked her to tell me exactly what had
happened.

Two sheriff's deputies had broken into their house and fired on Sam, hitting
him in the shoulder. He had grabbed the shotgun they kept in the house,
fired back and run them out of the house. When she said that he was in the
hospital, I felt tremendous relief; now I could ask her how he was doing.
The bullet had lodged a mere quarter of an inch from his spine. But it had
already been removed, and she thought he was going to be all right. The
biggest problem at that moment was that they had placed him under arrest.
As soon as he was released from the hospital, they were going to put him in
jail.
She said she was calling from Evelyn and Barry's — the upstairs section of
the house in Cardiff where my apartment was. I told her to hold on, and that
I'd drive down as soon as I could.
After I woke Josef and told him, I called Kendra and Franklin to have them
alert the other comrades. Kendra said she was going with me. Franklin
volunteered to go to Riverside, where I was scheduled to speak at the
university that day. After apologizing for my absence and delivering a
speech himself, he said he would head for San Diego.
When we arrived in Cardiff, we found Evelyn and Barry in a state of panic.
Shortly after Fania called me, several sheriff's cars had pulled up in front of
the house. With their weapons drawn, they had rushed in announcing that
they had a warrant for the arrest of Fania Davis Jordon. They had
handcuffed her and led her away to a patrol car. Some police had ransacked
both my apartment and Evelyn and Barry's place upstairs. Evelyn was in a
state of rage because one of the cops had aimed his rifle at her baby.
Hearing the infant squirming in his bed behind a closed door, the cop had
broken into the room, pointing his weapon at the bed.
Both Fania and Sam were subsequently charged with "attempted murder of
a peace officer." It took two days to raise the money for their bail — and it
would have taken much longer were it not for the fact that Herbert and Inge
Marcuse contributed a substantial sum.
The story of their arrest was splashed across newspapers up and down the
state. ANGELA DAVIS KIN ARRESTED FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER

was a typical headline. In all the papers I saw, with the exception of the
People's World and a few underground weeklies, the fact most emphasized
was that Fania and Sam Jordon were the sister and brother-in-law of the
"selfavowed Communist," Angela Davis.
Later Fania told us that the cops and matrons had continually called her
"Angela" and had tried to rile her with their vulgar, anti-Communist
remarks.
I publicly accused the San Diego Sheriff's Department of collaborating, in
the basest way, with the most reactionary forces of the state. In particular, I
charged them with carrying Ronald Reagan's racist, anti-Communist
policies to the extremes of premeditated murder. In the scuffle in their
house, Sam would certainly have been killed if Fania had not been as bold
as she was. After the cop had fired on Sam and hit him once, she grabbed
his gun arm, deflecting the rest of the bullets into a nearby wall.
Fania and Sam were indicted twice by the Grand Jury. Both times, the judge
assigned to the case realized how futile it was to try to prosecute them and
dropped the charges. But their case dragged on for well over a year.
At the turn of the year, with one academic quarter behind me, my job was
temporarily secure. The courts had declared unconstitutional the rule
prohibiting the hiring of Communists. Everyone knew that although the
Regents had been immobilized for the time being, they were seeking other
ways of eliminating me before the beginning of the next school year. They
had devised a system of provocation and espionage carried out by people
posing as students in my classes; I was struggling with them daily.
As time went by, it became clear that the assault on my job was only a tiny
part of a systematic plan to disarm and destroy the Black Liberation
struggle and the entire radical movement. The fight for my job had to be
interwoven with a larger fight for the survival of the movement.
Repression was on the rise throughout the country. The worst victims of
judicial frame-ups and police violence were members of the Black Panther
Party. Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins had been indicted in New Haven.
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered by Chicago policemen as

they slept in their beds. And in Los Angeles, the Black Panther Party
headquarters was raided by the Los Angeles Police Department and their
special tactical squad, with the National Guard and the Army on alert.
I witnessed this raid firsthand and, along with my comrades, helped to
organize resistance within the Black community. Our success in pulling
together a grass-roots challenge to this repression put the city and state
government on the defensive for a short time. It also doubtlessly increased
their desire to eliminate all of us.
Early one morning — toward five A.M. — I received a telephone call about
an emergency situation at the Panther headquarters on Central Avenue. The
police had tried to break into the office, but the sisters and brothers inside
had held them off and were still fighting back, guns in hand. I woke Josef
and told him to get dressed as quickly as he could — I would explain the
rest in the car.
The area surrounding the office had been cordoned off; each station of the
blockade was at least three blocks away from the shooting. Circling the
area, we caught sight of a figure spread out against a wall, being frisked by
a policeman. When I looked more closely I saw it was Franklin. Kendra and
a few other comrades were standing some twenty-five yards down the
street. We jumped out of the car to ask them what was going on.
They said they had been trying to get as close as possible to the scene of the
battle when a policeman had come up and aimed his shotgun at Franklin,
ordering him up against the wall. Kendra, Taboo and the others had been
told that if they didn't get out of the way their heads would be blown off. It
was Franklin who interested them. When they found a piece of Party
literature on him, they said something like "You dirty Communist" and led
him away to a patrol car.
All the while gunshots could be heard in the background. As we walked
down Central Avenue toward the police cordon, dawn was just beginning to
break. In the new day's light, armed figures, dressed in black jumpsuits,
were creeping snakelike along the ground or hiding behind telephone poles
and cars parked along the avenue. From time to time, they discharged their
weapons.

More black-clad figures were stationed on roofs along the entire block
where the office was located. A helicopter hovered overhead. A bomb had
just been dropped on the roof of the Panther office. Regular Los Angeles
patrolmen were swarming throughout the entire area.
None of these cops were talking to one another. Their concentration on the
attack had a hypnotic, even insane quality about it. They were like robots.
The assault was too efficient to have been spontaneous. It appeared to have
been planned well in advance, perhaps even down to the position of each
cop.
The silence was almost total, broken only by the sound of gunshots. If shots
were still being fired from the office, this was the only evidence that at least
some of the Panthers were still alive.
A few people were standing around in the area. One woman looked
extremely pained each time she heard a burst of shots. Her daughter, I
learned, was inside. From our observation point — through the binoculars
we had secured — the situation looked dismal. Between the guns and the
dynamite, the office had been practically destroyed. The woman said
nothing. No words could have expressed the terrible anguish that stood so
clearly in her eyes.
I walked over to her and, as gently as possible, told her not to worry. I told
her about the chains of telephone calls that had been started, carrying the
message to people throughout the city to rush down to the Panther office
immediately. There would soon be hundreds of people out in the streets.
Their presence alone would force the police to retreat. Her daughter
Tommie was going to be all right.
By seven A.M. people from the neighborhood and from throughout the city
had crowded into the area. But the cordon had been extended. Only those of
us who had come down early were close enough to see what was
happening. We found ourselves inside the cordon.
Kendra and I and the other members of our club were extremely worried
about Franklin. We were torn between the need to stand vigilance over the
battle and our desire to find out what the police had done with him. I

volunteered to try to get out of the cordon, survey the situation outside,
determine whether Franklin was around and try to return. Josef was going
with me.
We discovered an alley which we thought would take us safely through the
cordon, but just as we thought we were on the other side, we caught sight of
some policemen and had to turn around. Looking for another alley, we
noticed a group of children from the neighborhood. Realizing that they
probably knew the area better than anyone, we asked them whether they
could get us through the blockade. They eagerly agreed and proceeded to
lead us through labyrinthine walkways, backyards and alleys which could
not be seen from the streets. If someone sighted the police, a sign was
given, and we quickly retreated and tried another route.
Finally we made it to the other side. There were crowds of people with
anger written all over their faces. As we searched the area for Franklin, we
met scores of movement sisters and brothers we knew. We reached the
block where Jefferson High School is located. The police motorcycle corps
was parading in front of the school, trying to pull off a grand show of force.
Over a hundred cops, all trying to look tough, and managing only to look
racist, were speeding through the streets. They gunned the motors of their
cycles, thinking the roar was the sound of their own power. At that moment,
I saw in this scene historical traces of Hitler's troops trying to terrorize the
Jews into submission.
One young sister, moved by righteous indignation, picked up a bottle and
threw it into the procession. The motorcycle parade came to a halt. There
was an extraordinary moment of tension. Many of us were certain that a
full-scale confrontation was about to explode. But this peacock parade of
force was only for show. The cops had not been ordered to go into combat.
The procession started up again and the pigs continued to flaunt their
presence through the ghetto. Rumors were sprouting in the crowd and
spreading at full speed. Peaches was dead, someone said. Bunchy and
Yvonne Carter's baby was in the office, according to someone else, and had
been killed by the pigs. The crowd's anger was mounting. Its size was
greater than the visible police force. The students from Jefferson High
School were angry. People who lived in the community were angry.

One woman who had just gotten off work was telling a small group that she
couldn't even get to her own house because the police had blocked off that
area. "These pigs think they can come into our community and take over."
Some wanted to fight. Others counseled caution for the moment, because
those inside the Panther office were still in danger.
Josef and I continued to search for Franklin. Finally, we saw him walking in
our direction on the other side of the street. We were about to run over to
him when we noticed him subtly motioning us away. He returned shortly,
telling us that he had thought he was being followed and didn't want to
jeopardize us.
He had been working with the students at Jefferson High School, helping
them to prepare the conditions for a community rally inside the school.
Totally absorbed by the immediate problems of the rally, he had almost
forgotten the incident of earlier that morning. The police had locked him in
the patrol car and had parked it close to the Panther headquarters. He had
literally been able to see the bullets flying. After an hour or so, they had
driven him off and had pushed him out of the car some ten blocks away in a
typical act of police harassment.
The location of the LAPD Command Post had been discovered, so Franklin
told us. Someone returned to Central Avenue to get Kendra and the other
comrades while we headed for the house which the chief of police had
taken over as his headquarters. It was surrounded by cops, and reporters
were swarming all over the place. Some of them recognized me and
immediately wanted to know whether I had come to act as an
"intermediary" between the police and the Panthers. I told them in so many
words that I had nothing but contempt for the LAPD. My loyalties were
with the sisters and brothers under attack.
The woman who lived across from the house which had been
commandeered by the LAPD was indignant about the police invasion of the
community. She offered us — sisters and brothers from the Panthers, the
Black Student Alliance and Che-Lumumba — the use of her house as
headquarters for the resistance. A call went through to the Panther office.
The sisters and brothers inside were all still alive, although most of them
had been shot up and hurt in the explosion.

They said they were prepared to leave the building, but only if community
people and the press could observe them coming out. They realized that if
they had not defended themselves from the beginning, they might have all
been shot down in cold blood. They had tried to hold out until we could
gather enough people to witness the aggression, as well as to stand watch as
they lay down their weapons and left the building.
A piece of white fabric was thrown out of the window. Everyone was silent.
When the sisters and brothers walked out, eleven of them altogether, they
were all standing strong. They were bleeding, their clothes were torn, and
they were dirty from the debris of the explosion. But they were still
standing strong. I found out later that Peaches had been shot in both legs.
Yet she had marched proudly out of the building.
When the last of the eleven had come out, a huge roar of applause and
cheers surged up from the crowd. Slogans were triumphantly shouted:
"Power to the People." "No more pigs in our community." This was indeed
a victory. The police had crept into the community in the early hours of the
morning and launched a murderous attack on the Panthers. Without a doubt,
they had planned to kill as many as they could and capture the rest, thus
destroying the Panther chapter in Los Angeles. But with the support of the
people outside, the Panthers had emerged victorious.
With the sisters and brothers out of the building, the crowd grew bolder.
One sister actually jumped out and hit one of the cops from behind. Before
he realized what had hit him, she was back under the cover of the crowd.
The students Franklin had talked to earlier had made preparations for a
rally. They had informed their administration that they were going to use
the gym for a community meeting to protest the unwarranted police raid on
the Panther headquarters. The word was passed in the crowd to move over
to Jefferson for the rally.
Emotions were high. The speeches were passionate. All carried the theme
of the need to protect and defend the Panthers and the need to protect and
defend the community. Some of the students gave speeches, as did a brother
from the Black Student Alliance, Franklin and myself. By the time the rally
was over, the students had called for a walkout so that they could spread the

news of the attack throughout the Los Angeles Black community. They
committed themselves to help mobilize the community for the coming fight,
and we all walked out of the hall singing, "I want to be a Mau Mau. Just
like Malcolm X. I want to be a Mau Mau. Just like Martin Luther King."
In order to organize the resistance, a coalition was established between the
Black Panther Party, the Black Student Alliance and our Che-Lumumba
Club. On the basis of this coalition of the Black Left, we felt we could call
for a broad united resistance emanating from all sectors of the Black
community.
That night we sponsored a meeting, attended by delegates from Black
organizations throughout the city. This body approved a call for a general
strike two days later in the Black community. On that day, we would hold a
massive protest rally on the steps of City Hall. We had about thirty-six
hours to put the rally together. It was no time at all, but the quicker the
community reacted in an organized way, the more effective our protest
would be.
That very night, thousands of leaflets were printed. The next morning,
teams saturated the community with literature about the attack and the need
to resist. The local Black radio station and an underground FM station gave
us free time to issue the strike call and to publicize the rally. Others
announced the rally as a part of the news.
I personally recorded spot announcements and held press conferences, since
my name was known in the community. Yet I also felt the need to involve
myself on a grass-roots level. I needed to acquire a sense of the mood of the
community — and that could not be done from behind a microphone.
A team was on its way to Jordon Down Projects in Watts to distribute
leaflets. I decided to go along. In all my experience of door-to-door
community work, never had I seen such unanimous acceptance of our
appeal. Literally no one was abrupt, no one tried to shut us out, and all
agreed that we had to resist the attack on the Panthers. Many of the people
recognized me, and I was surprised that they also volunteered their support
for me in the fight for my job. Virtually every person with whom I spoke

made a firm promise to observe the general strike and to attend the rally the
next morning.
There were problems back at the Panther office. The woman who lived in
the house behind the office had reported that early in the morning the police
had returned and shot tear-gas cartridges into the office. The fumes were
stronger now than shortly after the attack had halted. It was impossible to
remain inside for any length of time without becoming sick.
It was decided, as a result, to hold a vigil in front of the office at all times.
Participants in the vigil would form themselves into shifts in order to clean
out all the debris. When the sun went down, there were still more than a
hundred people taking part in the vigil. The tear-gas fumes had not abated
and most of the group was clustered at the end of the block so no one would
be overcome by the gas. The plans were to keep the vigil going throughout
the night. Franklin led the group in freedom songs.
While the singers were warming up, I noticed some strange movements in
the area: police cars creeping by — unmarked, but unmistakably police cars
with agents peering out at us. I assumed that this was the normal
surveillance. It seemed unlikely that they would try anything on a group
which included not only the usual young movement people, but ministers,
professors, politicians as well.
The singing broke into full blast. Perhaps the police felt affronted by the
words of "Freedom Is a Constant Struggle" and "I Woke Up This Morning
with My Mind Staid On Freedom" because they abruptly interrupted with a
voice projected through a loudspeaker. "The Los Angeles Police
Department has declared this an illegal assembly. If you do not move out,
you will be subject to arrest. You have exactly three minutes to disperse."
Even if we had tried, we could not have dispersed in three minutes. We
decided immediately not to disperse, but rather to form ourselves into a
moving picket line. As long as we kept moving, we would not be an
"assembly" and would theoretically have the right to remain. Senator
Mervyn Dymally, a Black state senator, decided that he was going to speak
to the policeman in charge, thinking he could calm them down.

The line stretched from the corner where the group had been singing, well
past the office, which was near the next corner.
I moved toward the end nearest the Panther office. It was dark and difficult
to determine exactly what was happening at the other corner. Suddenly
there was a dash of the crowd. Thinking that this had been precipitated by
nothing more serious than a show of force at the other end, I turned to calm
everybody and tell them not to run. But at that moment, I saw a swarm of
the black-suited cops who had executed the attack on the office the day
before. They were already beating people further down, and some of them
were about to converge on us.
I had been facing the crowd. I turned quickly, but before I could break into
a run, I was knocked to the ground. I hit my head on the pavement and was
momentarily stunned. During those seconds of semi-consciousness, I felt
feet trampling on my head and body and it flashed through my mind that
this was a terrible way to die.
A brother screamed, "Hey, that's Angela down there." Immediately, hands
were pulling me up. I could see the billy clubs smashing into these brothers'
heads. Someone told me later that as soon as the police realized who I was,
they had come after me with their sticks.
Once on my feet, I ran as fast as I could.
This was insane. Clearly, the police had no intention of arresting us. They
only wanted to beat us. Even Senator Dymally hadn't been immune. After
his futile conversation with the chief of police, I learned later, he had been
the first to be hit.
We raced through the neighborhood, across lawns, through alleys, wherever
it seemed we could find temporary refuge. As I ran across a front yard with
some sisters and brothers I didn't even know, I heard a voice coming from
the dark porch, telling us to come in. We ran into the house, lay down on
the floor and tried to catch our breath. It was a middle-aged Black woman
who had opened her doors to us. When I tried to thank her, she said that
after what had happened the day before, this was the very least she could
do.

We were on a side street, off Central Avenue. I looked through the draperies
in the front room and could see nothing except a police car cruising by.
Then I noticed some of our people on a porch across the street and decided I
would try to get over to that house.
In all the excitement, I hadn't noticed how badly I had been bruised by the
fall. Blood was streaming down my leg and my knee was throbbing with
pain. But there was no time to think about that now. I thanked the woman,
said good-bye and ran toward the house across the street as fast as I could.
The family who lived there had allowed a comrade from our Party to
organize a first-aid station in the house. People with blood all over their
faces were already waiting to be tended, and a squad had gone out
searching for others who were wounded. Apparently, people throughout the
neighborhood had opened their doors. Their spontaneous show of solidarity
had saved us from a real massacre.
I was worried about Kendra, Franklin, Tamu, Taboo and the rest of my CheLumumba comrades whom I had not yet seen. The Panther leaders not
under arrest as a result of the original assault were also missing, as were key
members of the Black Student Alliance. A brother from the BSA said he
would accompany me around the neighborhood in order to determine what
had happened to our friends. People were crowded in the storefronts along
Central Avenue. By hiding in the shadows along the way, we were able to
reach one of the storefronts without incident. The people we were worried
about were among the crowds in the storefronts. One person had been
arrested.
On Central Avenue, a squadron of cops in black jumpsuits was marching in
formation. When they saw one of our people in the street, several of them
would jump out of line, swing at the person with their billy clubs and then
calmly fall back into the march. It appeared they were determined to hold
us prisoner indefinitely in these houses and storefronts.
Later, we learned that the police in the black jumpsuits were members of
the Los Angeles Police Department's counter-insurgency force — the
Special Weapons and Tactical Squad. Subsequent research determined that
the SWAT Squad was composed primarily of Vietnam veterans. For over a

year, they had been in training, learning how to wage counter-urban
guerrilla warfare, learning how to "quell" riots, and obviously also how to
provoke them. They had made their public debut with the attack on the
Panther office. Their offensive against our vigil was their second official
appearance.
The attack on us had begun around six o'clock in the evening. It wasn't until
ten-thirty or eleven that it appeared we might be able to leave the houses
and storefronts. Around that time, one of Senator Dymally's aides got word
to us that the police were prepared to retreat if we all left the area
immediately. Whether or not this guarantee was good was a matter for
speculation.
Even in this moment of crisis, our most important concern was making the
rally a success. Most of the organizers and speakers for the meeting were
down on Central Avenue. There was only one logical explanation for this
ruthless siege: the police were trying to sabotage our rally. We had to take
the chance of trying to get people out of the area so that we could go on
with preparations for the mass meeting.
The exit took place without incident. After almost everyone had left,
Kendra and I, together with other comrades, headed for a house to hold an
emergency Che-Lumumba meeting. Everyone was cautioned to shake off
all police tails before arriving.
There we discussed a proposal we were going to present to other members
of the coalition the next morning: a march, at the conclusion of the rally, to
the county jail where the Panthers were being held. The march would
culminate in a demonstration raising the demand for their immediate
freedom.
In the middle of our discussions, the brother on security out front rushed
into the room to tell us that the police were cruising by in unusual numbers.
They had discovered our meeting place, and we had no idea what they
would try to do. Our uncertainty, our firm belief based on previous
experience that the Los Angeles Police would stop at nothing to crush their
adversaries meant that we would have to prepare for the worst.

Weapons were checked out, loaded and distributed. In the formidable
silence, in the tension-laden room, we waited in readiness. Fortunately, the
attack did not materialize. Despite the excitement and the threat of an
assault looming over us, we managed to get through our meeting early
enough to catch a few hours' sleep before the rally. Everyone else was going
home. But it was too dangerous to go to my house on Raymond Street. I
had to resign myself to sleeping on Kendra and Franklin's floor.
I woke up the next morning with a terrible feeling of apprehension that only
a few hundred people might show up. If the rally were poorly attended, then
L.A. ruling circles, particularly the LAPD, might take it as a sign that the
Black community was accepting the repression without resisting it. The
police could therefore claim a mandate to escalate their aggression. They
would attempt to totally obliterate the Black Panther Party and would move
on to other militant Black organizations. The arbitrary police violence in the
ghetto would mount.
With these fears digging at my stomach, I drove down to City Hall with
Kendra, Franklin and other members of the club. It was about an hour and a
half before the meeting was scheduled to begin. We arrived early to see that
equipment was set up and raise the question of the march with the others.
What we saw when we arrived made us all feel euphoric. At least a
thousand people were already on the steps — and four-fifths of them were
Black. People were still steadily streaming into the area.
By the time the first speaker took the microphone, the crowd had swelled to
eight or ten thousand strong. It was a magnificent multitude, studded with
signs and banners demanding an end to police repression, demanding a halt
to the offensive against the Panthers, demanding immediate release of the
captured Panthers. The speeches were powerful. As we had previously
agreed, the theme of the rally — the theme of all the speeches — was
genocide. The aggression against the Panthers embodied the racist policy of
the U.S. government toward Black People. Carried to its logical conclusion,
this policy was a policy of genocide.
The Panthers had been charged with conspiracy to assault police officers. In
my speech, I turned the idea of conspiracy around and charged Ed Davis,

the Chief of Police, and Sam Yorty, the mayor of L.A., with conspiring with
U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell and J. Edgar Hoover to decimate and
destroy the Black Panther Party.
Months later, the existence of just such a plan was revealed to the public.
The government had decided to wipe out the BPP throughout the entire
country. J. Edgar Hoover had called the Panthers "the greatest threat to the
internal security of the country," and police forces in most of the major
cities had moved on local Panther chapters.
As I emphasized in my speech, our defense of the Panthers had to be a
defense of ourselves as well. If the government could carry out its racist
aggression against them without fearing resistance, then it would soon be
directed against other organizations and would finally engulf the entire
community.
We needed more than a one-day stand. Papers circulated in the crowd to be
signed by those who wanted to play an active role in organizing the mass
movement we needed. By the time the speeches were over, the people were
in a fighting mood. Franklin took the microphone and called for the march
and demonstration. It was instantly approved with unanimous and roaring
applause. We set out for the jail.
When we reached the County Courthouse where the jail was located, the
collective anger was so great that the people could not be contained. Defiant
throngs pressed forward through the doors of the building. So great was
their rage that they began to destroy everything in sight. As they attacked
the coin machines in the lobby, they were probably fantasizing about
ripping down the iron bars of the jail upstairs.
There were only two ways out of the lobby — one exit on each side. If the
police decided to attack, it would be a bloodbath, without a doubt. They
only had to lock off the exits and we would be bottled in the building, with
no place to run, no room for maneuvering.
But the crowd was ungovernable. I tried to get their attention. But my voice
does not carry well without the aid of a microphone and it was drowned out
in the clamor. It was Franklin who eventually assumed the role he always

seems to excel in: he stood at the top of the lobby steps and with his voice
blasting forth like a trumpet, he elicited complete silence from the raging
demonstrators. He explained our immediate tactical disadvantages. The
police had already sealed off one of the entrances. They were stationed
throughout the area and could fall upon us in just a matter of minutes.
It was not enough to explain the dangers of the moment. What had to be
emphasized was that the Panther prisoners would be freed by the actions of
a mass movement. The militant protests of a movement of masses, the
determined thrust of thousands of people, could force our enemy to release
the sisters and brothers upstairs. Rather than waste our energies giving vent
to our frustrations, we should be trying to organize ourselves into a
permanent movement to defend our fighters and to defend ourselves.
The people left the courthouse and the demonstration continued outside in
full force and with unabated enthusiasm. Thousands marched around the
jailhouse chanting slogans of resistance.
Later, the street in front of the Panther office was overflowing with people
who came down to assist in the ongoing work of this movement. In all
respects, this had been an extraordinarily triumphant day. The rally had
more than served its purpose. But in order to realize the potential of what
we had just witnessed, much day-to-day organizing was needed. Sisters and
brothers would have to commit themselves to work that might not be as
visible or dramatic as what we had just done, but which, in the final
analysis, would be infinitely more effective.
In the aftermath of the rally, its immediate effects could already be seen.
For a while, at least, there was a noticeable let-up of police violence in the
community.
If you were stopped, you could see that the L.A. police were not as selfconfident and certainly not as arrogant as they had been before. By the
same token, the collective confidence, pride and courage of the community
was definitely on the rise. I felt deeply gratified each time someone in the
community expressed his satisfaction to me that something was finally
being done about the brutality and insanity of the police.

Around the time of the attack on the Panther office, a strange series of
events drove me out of my apartment on Raymond Street. The day the
police besieged the Panthers, Che-Lumumba comrades and members of the
BSA had come over to the apartment to discuss strategy. The meeting had
hardly gotten started when the manager of the apartment house burst into
my living room frantically raving about my harboring Panthers. If we didn't
leave the premises immediately, he said, he would call the police.
Apparently, he was afraid that the cops were going to shoot up the house
just as they had shot up the office and homes of the Panthers.
At first, I argued with the man, telling him that he had allowed the police to
do exactly what they wanted to do to the Black community — namely to
inflict terror on everyone. But he could not be calmed down. So we finally
decided that since we already had enough trouble on our hands and didn't
want to land in jail because of the stupidity of a house manager, we would
leave for another comrade's house.
It was only the beginning. His conduct became increasingly eccentric.
Frequently, when he heard me descending the stairs (my apartment was just
over his), he would come out on the porch and, as I locked my door
downstairs, he silently stared at me with the most peculiar kind of hostility.
He would stand there, following me with his eyes until I had driven off in
my car. (This, incidentally, happened to be at a time when there was no
security person living at the house. Josef had to move out and we hadn't
found anyone to replace him. I was happy though at the thought of being
liberated from the stringent security precautions.)
I didn't let the man's odd behavior bother me — I figured that as long as I
paid the eighty dollars rent each month, he could hold nothing against me. I
did think that one of two things was wrong with him: either he was a little
psychotic or took drugs from time to time. The latter possibility was quite
realistic, because my neighborhood was saturated with drugs.
One day, I found the man again waiting for me on the front porch. As soon
as I appeared, he started to babble incoherently about my holding him
prisoner in his own house. He was saying something about hearing my

voice coming from upstairs, hypnotizing him and forcing him to stay in the
house the whole weekend. He kept asking me what I was doing to him. And
he mumbled something about communism — about Communists being able
to brainwash people.
I was in a hurry that day and could not be bothered with his madness, so I
told him that he was crazy or had been drinking too much or taking too
much dope and went on about my business. The next morning, on my way
to UCLA, I was stopped by the police, who told me they had received a
complaint about me from a man in the neighborhood. According to their
story, the man had told them that I was out to kill him and through hypnosis
had already forced him to put a gun to his head. The cop was arrogant as he
told me that unfortunately they couldn't take me in because the man had
refused to sign a complaint. I told the cop that he knew as well as I did that
the man was crazy and that there was no basis whatever for their leveling
any charges against me. Trying to conclude this little encounter on a note of
victory, the cop added that the man had officially informed the police that if
anything happened to him, they should come for me. His tone implied that
he almost hoped that something would happen to this man so that they
could arrest me for the crime.
By now, I was used to the police stopping me on the slightest pretext — or
for no reason at all — so this incident was quickly shoved to the back of my
mind. But later on that week, this whole insane sequence of events came to
a climax. It was on the day I finally got around to buying a decent
secondhand dining room table. One of the comrades from Che-Lumumba
helped me transport it from the store to the house. When we arrived, the
man came out on the porch and, as he had done many times before, stared at
us with antagonism written all over his face as we struggled to get the table
up the stairs. The job accomplished, we came downstairs and noticed with
some astonishment that the man was lying on the back seat of his car, which
was parked out in front of the house. As we got into my car, he raised
himself up to watch us driving off. I casually remarked to Gregory that my
manager had been behaving very strangely over the last weeks.
After I dropped Gregory off and ran some errands, I returned to the house
alone to do some work. It was dusk and when I drove up, I noticed a figure

rising up on the back seat of the man's car. I couldn't believe that he was
still there. He must have been sinking deeper and deeper into his psychosis,
I thought. Yet I didn't feel that his sickness was any great menace to me.
Pushing him out of my mind, I went on upstairs to get into my work.
When some time had passed and I noticed that it had gotten completely
dark, I got up from my desk to close the curtains in my front room. As I
closed the curtains and was looking at nothing in particular outside, my
eyes fell upon the house manager's car, which was now in the middle of the
street. He was at the steering wheel and was intently staring up at my
apartment. Noticing that I had discovered him, he drove off. For the first
time, I began to think that this man just might be crazy enough to try
something. The car drove up in front of the house again. Closing the curtain
and peering through a small opening so he would not see me, I stood there
for some fifteen minutes until I could determine that he was systematically
circling the block, stopping each time, apparently to make sure I was still
upstairs.
If it had been the cops or the FBI, I would not have been so worried — for
they did this all the time. Obviously my house manager was mad and it was
impossible to predict his next moves. Having decided that the most
reasonable thing was to go for help, I left the house, just as the man had
pulled off to circle the block once again. Or at least I thought he was going
to circle the block. I drove the half-block down Raymond to Jefferson and
as I turned, I realized that he had been waiting for me at the corner.
He fell right in behind me, tailing me with his front fender less than a foot
from my back fender. I accelerated, trying to shake him off and found
myself driving fifty miles an hour down Jefferson Boulevard. But his '69
model car was in far better shape than my '59 Rambler, so he had no trouble
staying right on my back fender.
On the corner of Jefferson and Western there was a newly opened
supermarket where I had just recently begun to shop. The manager of the
store, a Black man in his early forties, was always especially friendly to me
whenever I came in — surely he would help me shake off this madman.

I made a sharp right turn into the driveway of the market's parking lot —
and the man turned in right behind me. I pulled into the first parking space I
saw, rushed out of the car and was about to run into the store when I noticed
that the man had waited for me in the driveway. To get to the store, I had to
cross in front of his car. Taking a deep breath, I decided to run for it. But the
man was quick — almost quick enough to run me over. Fortunately I
jumped back in time to escape, and was only brushed by the car's fender. I
ran into the store.
What I hadn't wanted to admit to myself since I first sensed I was in a
potentially dangerous situation, I had to admit now: He was actually trying
to kill me. Although I hadn't the faintest idea what his motive might be,
there was no doubt in my mind about his intentions — he had tried to run
me down.
My friend the store manager was more than willing to help; he sent his
security personnel out to look for the man while I called Franklin and
Kendra to tell them what had happened. That evening after I had made it to
their house, the first thing on the agenda was criticism and self-criticism. It
had been foolish for me to move around without some kind of security.
After all, I might well become a target because this man had evidently been
severely influenced by all the propaganda about communism. Thinking that
Communists could "brainwash" people, and confusing brainwashing with
hypnosis, he had convinced himself that I was able to hypnotize him into
doing things against his own will.
The collective decision was that I should not stay at my Raymond Street
apartment alone again and that I should move as soon as possible. I hated to
give up my eighty-dollar-a-month six-room apartment. It had really grown
on me over the last seven months, and I was sure I wouldn't be able to find
such a good deal again. Nonetheless, I had to agree — the house manager
was a dangerous man and we knew for a fact that he had a weapon
downstairs.
The pieces of this fantastic story did not completely fall together until I was
in the process of moving out. In one of his moments of lucidity, the man
came upstairs and wanted to talk. After making sure that he didn't have a
weapon and confirming that my gun was within reach, my sister and I

decided to let him in. He began by apologizing profusely about what had
happened, explaining that he had heard voices that night instructing him to
kill me before I killed him. Fania began to put him through the third degree:
Did he realize what he was saying? Why had the voices told him to kill me?
All he knew was what had happened that weekend when I kept him locked
up in the house and made him do all kinds of things, including holding a
gun up to his own head before a mirror. Fania asked how he knew it was I
who was behind all that. The voice was coming from my apartment, he
replied — and besides, he could recognize my voice. The night he tried to
kill me, other voices had possessed him, convincing him that it was my life
or his. When he failed to run me down, he had gone to the house of an
acquaintance and had all but destroyed their garage — he had simply gone
wild.
The strangest thing about his whole confession was an account he gave of
what he had done that weekend when I was supposedly holding him
prisoner. He had written poems about himself and me. By this time, Fania
was thoroughly fascinated with his story, and persuaded, for the moment at
least, that he was harmless, she asked him to go and get the poems. He
returned with a huge sheaf of papers that looked like the manuscript for a
book. With great curiosity, Fania and I leafed through these papers with
dialogues carefully printed in pencil in a childlike writing. We both knew
that the man was semiliterate and could imagine the incredible effort that
must have gone into the creation of those poems. A constant theme broke
through the poems: the man felt some kind of attraction toward me. But it
was couched in the ambivalence that stemmed from his socially inflicted
fear of communism. I was a Communist, a monster, yet at the same time
educated and, in his eyes at least, somewhat physically attractive. The
poems brought into play a constant conflict between those two poles.
It was clear that this man's writings were the work of someone stumbling
into madness. I suggested very strongly that he see a doctor and explained
to him that I was preparing to move, since it was impossible to predict when
he might go into one of his trances again. He halfway agreed, but at the
same time was manifestly disturbed by the fact that I would no longer be
living above him.

I was angered by the fact that I had to move, but at the same time, felt sorry
for this man and wondered just how much of his illness was the product of
his being Black in a racist, anti-Communist world.
With these thoughts, I left the neighborhood, the man and his sickness, and
moved into an apartment on 45th Street with Tamu Ushindi and her baby.
Tamu had been a member of the club for some years; her husband, also a
comrade, was about to go to jail for a number of months in connection with
a high school demonstration in 1968. We had found a place large enough to
hold the three of us; it was conveniently located some five blocks from
Franklin and Kendra's, and we knew that the neighbors were friendly and
would shield us in the event of a police attack.

One afternoon as I sat working in my office at UCLA, I heard a knock at
the door. Without looking up, I said, "Come in." A moment later, a white
man in uniform, with guns swinging from his hips and a sheaf of papers in
his hand, was standing in front of my desk. The brother on security
immediately stood up beside him. Startled and expecting the worst, I asked
him who he was and what he wanted.
"County marshal," he said. "You have been subpoenaed to appear in court."
He dropped the papers on my desk.
I picked them up and asked what it was about. His job, he said, was only to
deliver the subpoena; he had no idea what was in it. The marshal turned and
walked out.
The papers did not reveal anything more than the date for the court
appearance, a courtroom number and a name which was entirely unfamiliar
to me. Someone who called himself Hekima had subpoenaed me to appear
as a witness on his behalf.
Confused and full of apprehension, I telephoned my attorney. John's advice
was to wait until the court date and try to determine at that time what the
story was. He said that a lawyer in his firm would accompany me.

On the date designated in the subpoena, Wendell Holmes — a young Black
attorney in the firm — went with me down to the County Courthouse.
Inside the courtroom, a trial was under way. A white man and a Black man
were arguing. The white man was the district attorney. The Black man,
articulately conducting the defense, seemed to be the defendant as well.
So this is the mysterious Hekima, I thought. When he saw me, he nodded
and smiled warmly. His face was just as unfamiliar as his name and I still
could not imagine why I had been called to testify on his behalf.
Wendell approached the dock and, explaining to the bailiff that I was a
witness in the case, asked him to arrange a conference with the defendant
during the next recess. At the break, I walked up to Hekima and extended
my hand. We went through the four movements of the solidarity handshake.
As I took a seat at the defense table, he told me that he was very happy that
I had responded. "You want me to testify in your defense?" I asked him. He
nodded his head and went on to explain why he had subpoenaed me.
Some years ago, Hekima had been convicted of murder. The charges
stemmed from an incident during which a white man had been robbed by
several Black men. In the course of the scuffle, the white man fell, hit his
head on the cement sidewalk and died shortly thereafter. Though it was an
open question whether Hekima had personally struck the man, it was clear
that he had been with the group. His conviction of first-degree murder had
been recently overturned by an appellate court. This time, he said, he was
conducting his own defense. This time he was going to present a "political
defense." He was going to try to demonstrate before the jury how racism
and poverty could drive Black men and women to desperate solutions.
He did not want to justify the killing of the white man — even though it had
been clearly accidental. Nor did he wish to say that it was all right to rob
people. What he wanted to do was to point the finger at the real criminal: a
society which keeps Black people imprisoned in such atrocious conditions
of oppression that too often it is a question of stealing or going under.
Having read about my fight for my job at UCLA, he felt that I could assist
him in constructing his defense. He wanted to call me to the stand as an
expert on the socioeconomic function of racism. I would testify about such

things as the incidence of unemployment in our communities; that most of
the time at least 30 percent of the young people in black ghettos across the
country are unable to find work. He wanted me to talk about the things that
white people generally try to ignore — about the starvation and severe
malnutrition which Black people still suffer.
"What is a Black man to do," he asked, "when he has applied for jobs day in
and day out, when his unemployment insurance is running out, when he
can't pay his exorbitant rent for his rundown apartment, when his wife is
desperate, when his children are hungry? What is he to do?" He spoke in a
voice haunted by personal tragedies.
The more Hekima talked, the more compelled I felt to do whatever I could
to help him.
I would not be called to the stand that day, he said. The prosecutor had not
yet rested his case. Moreover, it was going to require a struggle to convince
the judge to allow him to present a defense of that kind.
As the trial unfolded over the coming days, the judge openly displayed his
favoritism for the prosecutor and his disdain for Hekima. He had no
intention of allowing me to testify.
Eventually Hekima was denied the right to present the defense he had so
carefully worked out. The judge did not want the Black Liberation
Movement to be brought into his courtroom.
Since I was on Hekima's witness list, I could meet with him in the attorney's
visiting room at the county jail. There we would not be separated by a glass
wall and could talk directly to each other, rather than over the telephone as
in the regular visiting room.
During our visits, Hekima always spoke very softly — perhaps as a result
of his many years in confinement — but knowing that he had much more to
say than could be said during the short time we spent together, he also
spoke rapidly. He was incisive and intense. He never looked down while he
spoke. His eyes were always fixed on mine.

I was fascinated by the hours I spent with him, and began to learn, for the
first time, about the transformation prisoners were undergoing. A new
consciousness had taken root. It was not simply the consciousness of those
who were in prison for political reasons. This was a mass phenomenon.
Prisoners — particularly Black prisoners — were beginning to think about
how they got there — what forced them into prison. They were beginning
to understand the nature of racism and class bias. They were beginning to
recognize that regardless of the specific details of their individual cases,
most of them were in prison because they were Black, Brown and poor.
The jailers placed a limit on my visits: after two three-hour meetings in the
attorney's room, I had to see Hekima in the visiting room during regular
visiting hours. When he was convicted the second time, he did not allow
himself the luxury of depression. He immediately began to work feverishly
on his appeal. I agreed to become his legal runner, which meant that I
would deliver legal papers to and from the jail and run errands relating to
his case on the outside. With that relationship we could resume our
meetings in the attorney's room, which continued throughout the next
months — throughout the period of my involvement with the Soledad
Brothers Defense Committee. There, under the hostile glares of jail guards,
I became convinced that there were impending explosions behind the walls,
and that if we did not begin to build a support movement for our sisters and
brothers in prison, we were no revolutionaries at all.

Around the middle of February, I picked up the Los Angeles Times and
noticed on the front page a large photograph of three very striking Black
men. Their faces were serene and strong, but their waists were draped in
chains. Chains bound their arms to their sides and chains shackled their
legs. "They are still trying to impress upon us that we have not yet escaped
from bondage," I thought. Angry and frustrated, I began to read the story. It
was about Soledad Prison.
Soledad Prison was a household word in the Black community. During my
last two years in Los Angeles, I must have heard it a million times. There
was San Quentin, there was Folsom — and there was Soledad.

Soledad is the Spanish word for solitude. Solitude Prison — this name
seemed to expose what the prison was trying to hide. When Josef was living
in my apartment, he told me how they had kept him in solitary confinement
during most of his imprisonment. He still bore the stamp of Soledad. He
still preferred solitude. For hours and often days he would stay on the
sunporch which was his bedroom, reading, thinking, alone. And when he
talked, it was always in a soft whisper of a voice — as if not to disturb the
massive silence that had so long surrounded him.
The L.A. Times article reported the indictment of George Jackson, John
Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo for the murder of a guard at Soledad Prison.
An entire month had elapsed since the killing took place. Why had it taken
so long to return the indictments? I wondered why the author had not
commented on this time lag. The article reeked of deception and
evasiveness. It seemed that the Times was trying to turn public opinion
against the accused men even before the trial got started. If one accepted the
article on its face, one would have come away with the assumption that the
three men were guilty.
During the next days, I kept thinking of the faces of those brothers. Three
beautiful virile faces pulled out of the horrible anonymity of prison life.
A few weeks later, the Che-Lumumba Club was contacted about a meeting
on the Soledad situation. It was being arranged by the Los Angeles
"Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights," which wanted to discuss the
mounting of a mass campaign to free the three from Soledad.
I was drowning in work, but I simply couldn't stop thinking about those
three haunting faces in the newspaper. I had to attend the meeting; even if I
only became involved in a minimal way, at least I would be doing
something.
The night of the meeting, Tamu, Patrice Neal — another club member —
and I went down to the run-down old Victoria Hall. (It had been famous
once for its swinging Saturday night dances. Now, in this hall, people were
no longer having fun. They were talking about a very serious thing, about
liberation.)

About a hundred people answered the call. Though they were
predominantly Black, a sizeable number of white people had turned up as
well. There were young people, older people and people who were
obviously attending their first political meeting. There were those who had
come because they had sons, husbands and brothers in Soledad Prison.
Seated behind the long tables stretched across the front of the hall were Fay
Stender, lawyer for George Jackson, George's mother and sisters —
Georgia, Penny and Frances Jackson — Inez Williams, Fleeta's mother, and
Doris Maxwell, the mother of John Clutchette.
Speaking of Soledad, Fay Stender explained that from the warden down to
the guards, the prison hierarchy had a long history of promoting racial
enmity in the prison population. As long as the Black, Chicano and white
prisoners were at each other's necks, the prison administration knew they
would not have to worry about serious challenges to their authority.
As in an old Southern town, segregation in Soledad Prison was almost total.
All activities were arranged so that racial mingling would not occur — or so
that when it did occur, the prisoners would be in a posture of battle. With
the collaboration of some of the white prisoners, Soledad had developed its
own counterpart to the Ku Klux Klan — a group called the "Aryan
Brotherhood." Tension in the prison was so thick that even the most
innocuous meeting between the races was bound to set off an explosion.
Before January 13, 1970, exercise periods, like everything else, were
segregated. On that day, with no explanation, the guards sent Black,
Chicano and white prisoners to exercise together in the newly constructed
yard. Not a single guard was assigned to accompany them. The explosion
was inevitable. A fight erupted between a Black prisoner and a white
prisoner, and within a few minutes, there was havoc.
O. G. Miller had the reputation of being a hard-line racist, and was known
to be an expert marksman. He was stationed in the gun tower that day. He
carefully aimed his carbine and fired several times. Three men fell: W. L.
Nolen, Cleveland Edwards, Alvin Miller. They were all Black. A few days
later the Monterey County Grand Jury was convened to hear the case of O.
G. Miller. As could have been predicted, he was absolved of all

responsibility for the deaths of the three brothers. The Grand Jury ruled that
he had done nothing more serious than commit "justifiable homicide."
There was a brutal familiarity about this story. As I listened to Fay Stender's
narration, the specter of Leonard Deadwilder invaded my thoughts. As he
was rushing his pregnant wife to the hospital in Los Angeles, a white
handkerchief attached to the antenna to indicate an emergency, the cops
stopped him for speeding and without even seeking an explanation, they
shot him to death. It was called justifiable homicide by the courts. I
remembered Gregory Clark, the eighteen-year-old Black child who was
stopped by the police because "he didn't look like he fit the Mustang he was
driving." Though Gregory Clark was himself unarmed, the cop said he
moved in self-defense. As the brother lay defenseless, face down on a hot
ghetto sidewalk, his hands cuffed behind him, he was shot in the back of the
head. Later the courts ruled that the cop had committed "justifiable
homicide."
"Justifiable Homicide" — these innocuously official words conjured up the
untold numbers of unavenged murders of my people.
Fay Stender's story recaptured my attention. She was talking about the
Soledad prisoners' proud attempts to challenge this judicial endorsement of
a clearly racist assassination. Spontaneously and with the intense
desperation of men in chains, the Black prisoners had shouted unexecutable
threats meant for the assassin O. G. Miller, and banged angrily at the bars of
their cells. Soledad Prison pulsated with resistance. A guard inadvertently
stumbled into the brothers' fierce but chaotic rebellion and was engulfed by
their collective desire for revenge. No one knew who pushed the guard over
the railing.
This was the beginning of the story of George Jackson, John Clutchette and
Fleeta Drumgo. There was no evidence that they had killed the guard. But
there was evidence that George, John and Fleeta were "militants"; they had
been talking with their fellow captives about the theory and practice of
liberation. The prison bureaucracy was going to hold them symbolically
responsible for the spontaneous rebellion enacted by the prisoners. They
were charged with the murder of the guard. The prison hierarchy wanted to
throw them into San Quentin's death chamber and triumphantly parade their

gassed bodies before thousands of California prisoners, as examples of what
the prison and the State did to those who refused to observe the silence of
acceptance.
Fay Stender's legal analysis left us to suffer in the privacy of our individual
emotions. But when Georgia Jackson began to speak, her voice brought a
new dimension to our meeting, her words expressed her unashamed
maternal pain. Georgia Jackson, Black, woman, mother; her infinite
strength undergirded her plaintive words about her son. When she began to
talk about George, a throbbing silence came over the hall. "They took
George away from us when he was only eighteen. That was ten years ago."
In a voice trembling with emotion, she went on to describe the incident
which had robbed him of the little freedom he possessed as a young boy
struggling to become a man. He was in a car when its owner — a casual
acquaintance of his — had taken seventy dollars from a service station.
Mrs. Jackson insisted that he had been totally oblivious of his friend's
designs. Nevertheless, thanks to an inept, insensitive public defender,
thanks to a system which had long ago stacked the cards against young
Black defendants like George, he was pronounced guilty of robbery. The
matter of his sentencing was routinely handed over to the Youth Authority.
With angry astonishment I listened to Mrs. Jackson describe the sentence
her son had received: one year to life in prison. One to life. And George had
already done ten times the minimum. I was paralyzed by the thought of the
absolute irreversibility of his last decade. And I was afraid to let my
imagination trace out the formidable reality of those ten years in prison. A
determination began to swell in me to do everything within the limits of the
possible to save George from the gas chamber.
Fleeta Drumgo was his mother's only son. She spoke about her pain quietly
but intensely, and appealed to us to rescue her son from his enemies. The
mother of John Clutchette told us how she had received a note bearing the
single word "Help." This was the first sign that the three brothers were
being set up by the prison bureaucracy. Alone she could do nothing to help
John, Fleeta or George. Only we, the people, could hope to stop the legal
lynching which was planned for them.

By the time these women had finished, the prosecution appeared to have the
logic and coherence of a conspiracy against the brothers — against them,
their politics, their principles, their commitment. There was only one
question: What were we prepared to do to prevent the consummation of the
conspiracy? We addressed ourselves to the details of building a mass
movement to fight for our brothers' freedom. The chairperson asked for
volunteers to participate in the various subcommittees which needed to be
set up — fund-raising, publicity, research, etc.
Although I already felt totally committed to George, John and Fleeta, I
knew that I had too many responsibilities to assume a major role in the
defense committee. The fight for my job raged on and was sending me up
and down the California coast, exposing and challenging Ronald Reagan,
and seeking support for our side.
I was active in the Che-Lumumba Club, working in the area of political
education. And, of course, I had to prepare for the two sets of lectures I was
giving at UCLA. I was already killing myself trying to fulfill all these
responsibilities. How could I possibly find time to be active on a day-to-day
basis in the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee?
Even though these were my thoughts as the subcommittees were being
constituted, my arm shot up when they asked for volunteers for the
subcommittee on campus involvement. Something more elemental than
timetables and prior commitments had seized me and made me agree to
coordinate the committee's efforts in the local colleges and universities.
The decision had been made. How to find time was a secondary question. I
thought about my initial reluctance to take on a substantial role. How
presumptuous it had been to weigh the outcome of the fight for my job
against the outcome of the fight for the lives of these men. At UCLA I was
fighting for my right as a Black woman, as a Communist, as a
revolutionary, to hold on to my job. In Soledad Prison, George Jackson,
John Clutchette, Fleeta Drumgo were fighting for their rights as Black men,
as revolutionaries, to hold on to their lives. Same struggle. Same enemies.
The majority of the students and professors — except on the very
reactionary campuses — agreed at least in principle with my academic

freedom to teach, regardless of the fact that I was a Communist. I could
utilize the widespread interest in the struggle around my job and the natural
curiosity of people who wanted to see "a real, live, self-avowed
Communist" to get onto the campuses and to call for support of the Soledad
Brothers.
At the end of the meeting at Victoria Hall, the members of the campus
subcommittee got together and decided to hold the first meeting the
following week. I volunteered Kendra and Franklin's place on 50th Street.
In the meantime we would try to recruit sympathetic students and
professors from schools in the area to attend the meeting. We would try to
devise proposals for the organizing efforts we were going to carry out in the
Los Angeles academic community.
I left the meeting with a new sense of direction. I thought about George,
John and Fleeta. We had to find some way to let them know that they were
no longer alone. That soon there would be thousands of combative voices
shouting "Free the Soledad Brothers" and thousands willing to fight for
them.
I was still busy working out an agenda for the meeting when Kendra ran
into the bedroom, excitedly describing what was going on in the living
room. "You won't believe how many people are out there. It's not even eight
o'clock, and the place is already so crowded that they're sitting on the floor."
Kendra and Franklin's eighty-dollar-a-month duplex was located in an area
on the East Side which had seen a lot of action during the 1965 Watts
Rebellion.
Their place on 50th Street wasn't too far from the apartment on 45th which
Tamu and I had recently moved to. From their front porch you could see
South Park, which had a long history of militant mass rallies. Since the
Che-Lumumba Club hadn't yet acquired a headquarters, Kendra and
Franklin's one-bedroom place had become something of a center. We held
our meetings in their living room, and whenever a club member who
couldn't afford to rent an apartment needed a place to stay, the living room
floor was always available.

If we had wanted to hold a mass meeting, it would have been a simple
matter to do a door-to-door leafleting in the surrounding community. But
we had not distributed any literature about this meeting because it was only
to be a gathering of the subcommittee on campus activities. Consequently it
was with tremendous astonishment that I greeted the fifty-odd sisters and
brothers who had assembled in the living room. The word had gotten
around that a meeting about George, John and Fleeta was going to take
place. So they came — unaware that it was originally planned as a special
meeting to talk about building support on the campuses. In fact the majority
of the people who came were not even students or professors, but rather
workers or ex-prisoners or people who had experienced some personal
clash with the California prison system. Some of the brothers there had
even done time with George, John or Fleeta; others had known them when
they were on the streets in Los Angeles. Mrs. Jackson was there with her
daughter Frances. Inez Williams and Doris Maxwell were also present.
Those of us who had organized the meeting were extremely moved to see
how deeply these sisters and brothers had been affected when they heard the
news of the frame-up. We could feel the enthusiasm which agitated the
meeting. All these people — Black, some young, some old, workers,
students, ex-prisoners — all of them were ready to defend and liberate the
three brothers at Soledad.
With so many people at the meeting, we couldn't confine the discussion to
campus activities alone. We simply could not tell the people that they were
at the wrong meeting; this enormous excitement had to be seized at that
moment and channeled into active protest. People eagerly volunteered to
write and mimeograph literature about the case, and others volunteered to
organize community leafleting teams. We talked about a mass rally to be
held in a few weeks. The picnic which had been discussed in the Victoria
Hall meeting was brought up again and volunteers agreed to immediately
begin work on it.
Things were in motion. People were caught up in the immense and
passionate desire to get their teeth into something — something that would
shake the judges from their benches; that would tear down the indifference
of greedy public defenders and peel the cruelty from the eyes of prison

guards. They wanted for once to fight the machine that had ground them —
their fathers, their brothers, their sons — into the dirt. Many of them knew
George, John or Fleeta — but their anger, like mine, was for every Black
mother's son whose life had been frozen or destroyed in the Soledads of this
country. They didn't need to be educated or informed — they knew. The
gray walls, the sound of chains had touched not only their lives, but the
lives of all Black people in the country. Somewhere, at some time, they
knew or knew of someone who wore those chains. They had moved from
ancient and individual despair, resignation, and savage fury to a Hydraheaded unit that said with one voice: "No more. It stops here." It was
natural and right that this group become the nucleus toward which the
permanent Soledad Committee gravitated. And the position I had initially
accepted — coordinator of campus activities — was soon transformed into
the leadership position of the entire Los Angeles committee. Though I knew
that I would have to push myself to the very limits of my capabilities, it did
not even enter my mind to step down. The exhilaration I felt in
experiencing all this energy and enthusiasm could have persuaded me to
drop everything else.
Within a few short weeks, the campaign to free the Soledad Brothers was
being talked about all over the Black community, the college campuses and
Left political circles throughout the city. Our "Free the Soledad Brothers"
buttons were being worn by many people. A brother in the BSU at UCLA
had donated some silk-screen posters of the brothers, and a printing
operation had produced masses of them at no cost to the committee.
Wherever movement activities were going on — meetings, rallies,
conferences — and at concerts and other events in the Black community,
there were always committee activists, armed with literature, posters and
buttons, inviting people to attend our weekly meetings at the 50th Street
house.
At the rally downtown, Penny Jackson and I spoke on behalf of the brothers
and were joined by other Black community leaders: Masai, then Minister of
Education of the Black Panther Party, spoke about the frame-up of the
Soledad Brothers as part of the same trend of repression manifested in the
police attacks on his party.

At UCLA, we moved to build a Soledad Brothers — Bobby Seale-Ericka
Huggins Defense Committee, and organized a rally which attracted
thousands of students. The members of the committee who worked at the
L.A. County Hospital invited me to speak about the case at a meeting of
hospital workers. Frances Jackson and I accepted an invitation to speak at
San Diego State College. It was a good rally, but we had to make a quick
exit to make sure that the prominently and abundantly posted Minutemen
did not carry out the threats of violence they had made against us. After that
rally, I went over to the university in La Jolla to give another speech on the
Brothers, after which I helped to pull a committee together down there.
Even though Fania and Sam were still very much entangled in their own
case, they were eager to build the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee in
La Jolla.
Our work was gaining momentum, and its impact on the community was
growing stronger. The committee's numbers were increasing each week,
reflecting the growth in strength of the broader defense campaign. I stepped
up my own personal involvement. No requests for speaking engagements
were turned down — but I made it clear that any speech I gave would be on
the Soledad Brothers case, and whatever honorarium I received would be
donated to the Soledad Brothers Defense Fund. Loyola College in L.A.
Pasadena City College. University of San Francisco. University of the
Pacific. Monterey Junior College. University of California at Santa Cruz.
Palisades High School. There were also the churches and the social groups,
including sororities and fraternities that were being stimulated by the
growing political involvement of the sisters and brothers around them.
I had become so totally immersed in traveling and speaking engagements
that when a pretrial hearing took place in Monterey County on May 8, I
could not join the delegation from our committee. I had never seen the
Soledad Brothers and had been looking forward to attending the hearing, if
only to catch a glimpse of them. A few days earlier, I had received a
message from George, saying that they were all eager to see us.
Kendra, Tamu and a few committee members made the seven-hour drive to
Salinas, along with the families of the brothers. Having discovered that
John Clutchette was the same John she had known in high school, Kendra

was especially excited about seeing him after so many years. Reluctantly, I
stayed home and worked on my course lectures.
Everyone who had attended the hearing came back to L.A. recharged by
their contact with the Brothers and angered by what they had seen and
heard in the courtroom.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Frances, Penny and Mrs. Jackson had been
able to visit with George. He wanted me to know, they said, how grateful he
and the other Brothers were — but that they had all been disappointed that I
had not come.
The next hearing was a week off. I planned my schedule in order to take the
day off for the trip to Salinas. In addition to the families, three of us were
going up this time. Cheryl Dearmon, from UCLA, and Carl X, from the
Che-Lumumba Club, were going to ride with me. Dearmon, as her friends
called her, was active in the BSU at the university and had been one of the
first to join the campaign around my job. Because she was tall, lightskinned and wore a full natural, she was constantly being mistaken for me
— even, sometimes, by the police who were assigned to keep me under
surveillance.
I had planned to take my trusty old 1959 Rambler, but no one else shared
my confidence that the car would make it along the steep winding route
leading to Salinas. Overruled, I agreed to drive Kendra and Franklin's
station wagon.
When we left the highway on the Salinas turnoff, we still had a few minutes
to spare. As I drove through the streets of this city, my eyes instinctively
searched for Black faces in the cars and among the little groups of sidewalk
strollers. There was not one Black person in sight. There was a laziness
about Salinas and a small-town atmosphere which reminded me of the
South. The white people looked Southern. Their faces seemed to convey
that familiar combination of inanity and a desperate striving to feel superior
to something. I wondered whether the many Chicanos whom I saw walking
the streets had heard about the Soledad Brothers case. This was where
Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Union had been conducting an

organizing campaign. Perhaps, I thought, we could solicit support from
them, should the trial take place in Monterey County.
We had no trouble finding the courthouse. As in most small Southern
towns, it dominated the downtown area. White and massive, its architecture
in neoclassical design, the courthouse was surrounded by little parking lots
filled with sheriff's patrol cars and a whole array of official vehicles with
Monterey County stamped on their sides. This was the famous Monterey
County — scenic, luxurious — where thousands of people converged each
year to relax to the sound of their favorite jazz musicians. The Monterey
Jazz Festival, Big Sur, Carmel Valley — it all sounded so soothing and
idyllic. It was such a perfect cover for the Soledad persecution of prisoners,
the repression of Chicano farm workers, the Aryan Brotherhood, and Judge
Campbell, who had made no secret of his intention to deliver George, John
and Fleeta into the hands of their executioner. Being in Salinas was like
having ventured into enemy territory.
Trying to be inconspicuous as we looked for a parking space, we ran into
the Jackson family as they were arriving.
After following them to the lot behind the courthouse, we all walked into
the building. Like most courthouses I had seen, this one had a plastic, shiny
veneer. Its sparkling marble walls and antiseptically clean floor almost
seemed designed to hide the dirty racist business being conducted there. It
was as if the sheer weight of the marble, the inhuman tidiness of the halls
alone spelled justice. Could there be bribery behind pinkveined Vienna
marble? Could the sound of footsteps on those glistening floors be that of
any other than the most righteous? How could those massive doors open
onto any but the most fair and compassionate litigation?
Here as elsewhere Justice was an image — heavy, slick and wholly
deceptive.
The Bay Area Soledad Committee had done an excellent job of mobilizing
people to attend the hearing. The line outside Judge Campbell's courtroom
stretched down the other end of the corridor. While it was good to see so
many people already involved in the campaign, I was distressed by the fact
that so few Black people were there. (Later, I discovered that the problem

was the composition of the committee — it was active and had attracted
numbers of enthusiastic members, but the Black people on the committee
could be counted on one hand.)
When Georgia saw all the people, she told me that it didn't make sense for
us to stand in this long line; the courtroom couldn't even seat all those
already waiting. I had never felt so crushed. After all the shifting of
schedules to make time for the hearing; after all the feverish running around
to make sure we arrived on time; after all this, I wasn't going to get in. Full
of rage, I saw myself standing outside the doors while the hearing took
place, waiting breathlessly for some news of the proceedings.
Georgia tried to cheer me up by saying that there was still a chance that
something could be arranged. Dearmon and I took the hint, and when the
bailiffs opened the doors for the families, we both slipped inconspicuously
into the chambers.
Inside the crowded courtroom, the silence palpitated with the frustration of
people powerfully stimulated by the tangible presence of the enemy. The
red-faced bailiffs stationed along the walls stared at us with the hostility
they had learned for their role. We waited. I hoped that something would
soon happen to break this incredible tension before it exploded of its own
accord.
Despite, or because of, this intense waiting, the sudden appearance of a fat,
hard-looking uniformed white man startled us all. As he waddled through
the door behind the bench, he epitomized the fascist atmosphere of this
hearing. We knew already that Judge Campbell would try to tighten the
knots of the conspiracy.
He would try to lock the Brothers more securely into a fate leading
unwaveringly to the death chamber. The presence of this Soledad guard was
supposed to instill awe and fear in us. We were supposed to feel impotent
before the apparatus he represented. We were supposed to already smell the
odor of cyanide.
But we did not feel afraid, we did not feel impotent. And we vigorously
applauded the heroes of our struggle as they strode proudly, courageously,

powerfully into the courtroom. The chains draping their bodies did not
threaten us; they were there to be broken, destroyed, smashed. The sight of
those shackles designed to alarm us, to make the prisoners appear
"dangerous," "mad," only made us itch to tear the metal from their wrists,
their ankles. I knew that my own anger was shared by all. The bile rose in
my throat. But more powerful than the taste of outrage was the dominating
presence of the Brothers, for the Brothers were beautiful. Chained and
shackled, they were standing tall and they were beautiful.
George looked even more vibrant than I had imagined. I had thought that
the scars of the last decade would be immediately apparent. But there was
not a trace of resignation, not the least stamp of the bondage in which he
spent all the years of his adult life. He walked tall, with more confidence
than I had ever seen before. His shoulders were broad and muscular, his
tremendous arms sculptures of an ancient strength, and his face revealed the
depth of his understanding of our collective condition and his own refusal
to be overwhelmed by this oppression. I could hardly believe the refreshing
beauty of his smile.
John was the tallest of the three. Dark, with handsome, well-wrought
features, there was an appealing earthiness about the way he walked into the
courtroom. And Fleeta, so visibly full of hope. He greeted us with his
beautiful, unrestrained smile.
It was so wrong that they should be the ones to wear these clanging chains.
Whatever the time it took, whatever the energy, these chains would be
broken.
The hearing itself was a series of formal denials of every motion the
defense lawyers tried to argue. Predictably, it was punctuated with the little
racist quips for which Judge Campbell was already notorious — such as
telling the spectators to remember that they were not sitting at a barbeque
table. Amid all the screaming back and forth between prosecution lawyers,
defense lawyers and the bench, the Brothers were calm and self-contained.
During the proceedings, George read through a huge sheaf of papers.
Wearing his black-rimmed glasses and reading with intense concentration,
he looked very studious, like the teacher he had become for so many
brothers in prisons up and down the state.

At the end of the morning session, I approached the defense table, hoping to
exchange a few words with them. The guards said nothing when George
walked over to the rail to speak to me. There was no time for formal
introductions, and there was none of the stiffness that usually characterizes
first meetings. George spoke as if our friendship already had a long, full
history behind it.
"Angela, did you get my letter?" he asked.
"The note you sent to the house last week?" I referred to a short letter on
prison stationery mailed through official channels, in which he asked me to
apply for regular correspondence with him.
"No, I'm talking about a long letter on yellow legal paper. You didn't get it
yet?"
"No, I haven't seen it."
"Damn it. I wanted you to read it before you came in today."
Obviously, there was something quite important about the letter. I wondered
what it was.
"H. probably has the letter. Do you know her?" He spoke rapidly, now that
our time was running out.
I shook my head.
"She's around here somewhere. She shouldn't be too hard to find. But make
sure you get the letter before you leave."
"Don't worry, George," I assured him, "if it's around, I'll find it."
There was so much more I wanted to say. But from the beginning of the
conversation, the bailiffs had been screaming for the courtroom to be
cleared. The Soledad guards were growing restless and seemed to be
looking for a superior to order them to move in on the little crowd around
the Brothers. Reluctantly, we said our good-byes.

I didn't find the letter that day, but I did manage to find out who H. was. She
did have the letter, but not with her. We made arrangements for it to reach
me over the next days.

The first time I saw Jonathan Jackson, he reminded me of my youngest
brother, Reginald. Like Reggie, he was tall, light-skinned, with a full head
of sandy- colored hair. I had been invited to speak at the annual conference
of the L.A. Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights. The organizers of the
conference had selected the prison struggle as its major theme and had
asked the families of the three Soledad Brothers to attend. Mrs. Jackson,
Penny and Jonathan, together with Inez Williams and some of John
Clutchette's relatives, participated in the workshop on prisons and political
prisoners.
Sometime after the May 16 hearing, Georgia and Penny Jackson asked me
to attend a meeting of the Democratic Club in Pasadena, which was headed
by Don Wheeldin, a Black man who had a long history of involvement in
progressive causes. He wanted to raise the issue of the Soledad Brothers
case before this meeting in order to appeal to the membership for financial
and political support. A sister named Fannie, who was a student at UCLA
and one of the leading activists in the Soledad Committee, had driven us
there. Since we had to drop Georgia and Penny off when the meeting was
over, they invited us to stop by the house for coffee.
It was late when we arrived, and everyone in the Jackson home had already
gone to bed. The four of us were sitting around the dining-room table
discussing the meeting we had just left and waiting for the coffee to brew,
when Jonathan appeared in the doorway, in his bathrobe and rubbing the
sleep from his eyes. With a faint smile, he mumbled, "What's all the noise
about? Can't anyone get some sleep around here?" And he walked on in,
took a seat at the table and joined in the conversation.
This was the first time I had exchanged more than a few words of greeting
with Jonathan. George had mentioned him in the letter, praising him for his
intelligence and especially for his unshakable commitment to him. He had
said that Jon was somewhat withdrawn and had asked me to try to get him

interested in attending the Soledad meetings at Kendra and Franklin's. I
decided to talk to him about the committee right then.
Jonathan only wanted to talk about George. All of his interests, all of his
activities were bound up in some way with his brother in Soledad. At
sixteen, Jonathan was carrying a burden which most adults would refuse.
The last time he had seen George on the "free" side of the walls, he was a
seven-year-old. From that time to this, there had been the visits overseen by
armed guards in Chino, Folsom, San Quentin, Soledad. And the letters. The
letters in which they had developed the relationship which should have
unfolded at home, in the streets, in the gym, on the baseball field. But
because it had been cramped into prison visitors' cubicles, into two-page,
censored letters, the whole relationship revolved around a single aim —
how to get George out here, on this side of the walls.
Jonathan was extremely proud of the relationship he had with his brother,
proud of its maturity and of the trust George had in him. In the course of
our conversation, he brought out a thick sheaf of letters he had received
from the various prisons his brother had inhabited over the last ten years.
He wanted us to read George's descriptions of the brutal treatment he and
the other brothers had received at the hands of the prison guards.
Without ever having been involved in mass movements, he instinctively
understood the need to get large numbers of people pushing for the freedom
of his brother. As he talked about his experiences at Pasadena High School,
where he was finishing his third year, he bitterly complained about the
apathy of most of his classmates. They didn't know what struggle was all
about, he said — particularly the white students, who were in the majority
at the school. He showed Fannie and me an article which he had written in
the school newspaper, running down the facts of the Soledad Brothers case
and criticizing the students for not being involved in issues such as this.
The article was brilliantly written. Like George, he expressed himself in
powerful and compelling language. Recalling that George had said in his
letter that we should try to attract Jonathan to the work of the defense
committee, I told him that we were sorely in need of good writers to get the
literature of the committee together. As Fannie and I were leaving, I said we
were expecting to see him at the next meeting.

Jon was present at the next meeting on 50th Street and after that he rarely
missed a session. He never said much during the meetings, but when it
came to producing material and distributing it, he was a dedicated worker.
As the Soledad Committee gained in influence, and as its work became
more complicated and demanding, I began to spend a great deal of time
with the Jackson family. Frances, Penny or Georgia and I frequently had
joint speaking engagements in order to publicize the activities of the
committee. More often than not, Jonathan accompanied us. We grew closer,
and I came to look upon him not only as a brother in struggle, but as
something like a blood brother as well.
My communications with George became more regular. We too grew closer.
As we agreed and disagreed with each other on political questions, a
personal intimacy also began to develop between us. In his letters, which
dealt for the most part with subjects such as the need to popularize
communist ideas among the Black masses, the need to develop the prison
movement, the role of women in the movement, etc., George also talked
about himself, his past life, his own personal desires and aspirations, his
fantasies about women, his feelings about me. "I've been thinking about
women a lot lately," he once wrote. "Is there anything sentimental or
otherwise wrong with that? That couldn't be. It's never bothered me too
much before, the sex thing. I would do my exercise and the hundreds of
katas, stay busy with something . . ."
I came to know George not only through the letters we exchanged, but also
through the people who were close to him — through Jon and the rest of the
Jackson family, through John Thorne, who, as his lawyer, saw him
regularly. The closer I felt to George, the more I found myself revealing to
those who knew George a side of me I usually kept hidden except from the
most intimate of friends. In the letters I managed to get to him I responded
not only to the political questions he posed; I also told him that my feelings
for him had grown deeper than a political commitment to struggle for his
freedom; I felt a personal commitment as well. George knew about the tons
of hate mail which poured into my office at UCLA demanding that I be
expelled from the university. He knew about the many threats which had
been made on my life and was concerned for my safety. George was aware

that whenever I appeared in a public situation, sisters and brothers from the
Che-Lumumba Club did security duty. Yet, he didn't think this was enough.
From his own experience — behind walls — he was convinced one could
never be too vigilant. Besides, the sisters and brothers from Che-Lumumba
were necessarily abstract for him. He had never seen them and knew them
only through my letters. He knew and trusted Jonathan much more than
anyone else on this side of the walls. He wrote me that he wanted Jon to
stay with me as much as possible. Jon also received a message from his
brother asking him to make sure that I was secure from the racists and
reactionaries who might try to make me a martyr.
When George's book Soledad Brother was being prepared for publication,
he asked me to read over the manuscript and make suggestions for
improvements. The evening I received it, I thought I would skim through a
few of the letters, saving the bulk of the book for another time. But once I
got started, it was impossible to put the manuscript down until I had seen
every word — from the first letter to the last. I was astounded. The
formidable magnetism of the letters came not only from their content, not
only from the way they traced George's personal and political evolution
over the last five years — but even more from the way they articulated so
clearly, so vividly, the condition of our people inside prison walls and
outside. And in several passages George stated so precisely, so naturally, the
reasons our liberation could only be achieved through socialism.

On June 15, one of the most important of all the pretrial motions in the
Soledad case was scheduled to be heard in Salinas. The lawyers were going
to move for a change of venue. I drove up with Mrs. Jackson, Frances and
Jonathan. Two other carloads of our committee members had also been
mobilized to attend the hearing. Fannie Haughton, my sister Fania, Mitsuo
Takahashi, Jamala and several others were there to represent the L.A.
movement.
We had expected a fierce courtroom battle, but we had not expected the
judge to be so audacious as to ban the Brothers themselves from the scene
of the hearing. Apparently the Salinas officials had been frightened by the
sight of large numbers of people from all parts of the state who had come to

attend the hearing. The judge had issued an order prohibiting the Soledad
guards from bringing the Brothers to the courthouse.
When the lawyers and the spectators learned about this ploy, pandemonium
broke loose. The lawyers were screaming at the judge and the audience
joined in. In the midst of all this, Fay Stender shouted that we were all there
only to assure that the trial was moved to a place where the Brothers would
stand a better chance of being fairly judged. By now, the judge was in a
state of total confusion. He simply did not know how to cope with the
supporters in the courtroom. Answering Fay, he screamed something like
"All right, you can have your change of venue. Where do you want the trial
to take place?"
"San Francisco," she immediately responded, thinking, as she later told us,
that there was not the slightest possibility that he would accept her
suggestion.
"All right," the judge said now, almost in a state of panic, "I am ordering
that the trial be moved to San Francisco." With this, and without even
formally adjourning court, he left the bench and headed for his chambers.
We rejoiced over our victory. We had won the change of venue, which we
expected would be denied, as all the other motions had been. The victory
was important: a trial in San Francisco would be far more public, it would
require far less effort to fill the courtroom, and it would be far easier to
mobilize demonstrators to stand vigilance each day.
For the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee, the months of June and July
were filled with spirited activity. All of us worked assiduously to publicize
and expand the movement for the freedom of George, John and Fleeta.
On June 19, our L.A. group sponsored a demonstration and rally outside the
State Building, which houses the Department of Corrections and the Parole
Board. Quite coincidentally, this happened to be the day when the Regents
were meeting to deliberate on the question of my position at UCLA. This
was both a boon and a disadvantage.

On the one hand, it meant that we would receive far more publicity than we
had hoped for, since all the reporters seeking my response to the Regents'
decision would find their way to the demonstration. But on the other hand,
it could prove fatal to the goal of our demonstration if it overshadowed the
cause of the Soledad Brothers.
Before we went down to the State Building that morning, I decided that
whatever the decision of the Regents, and regardless of the number of
reporters around, I would forestall all comment on that situation until we
had completed our actions around the Soledad Brothers.
At the rally, Masai Hewitt, Minister of Education of the Black Panther
Party, spoke on behalf of his imprisoned comrades, Bobby and Ericka,
Huey and the scores of others so that the Soledad case would be seen as one
of the crests of a mounting wave of repression. Since Josef had done time in
Soledad, we asked him to describe his experiences behind the walls in order
to give people an understanding of the forces which had led to the frame-up
of the Soledad Brothers. Jane Fonda, who had eagerly agreed to participate
in the rally, was on hand to make the appeal for funds. I spoke of the work
of our committee in organizing for the freedom of the Brothers. I told how
we had come to the conclusion that it was not enough to fight around
individual cases. We had to do that and much more. A movement was
burgeoning behind the walls, and sisters and brothers needed our support
and solidarity. The demands we were going to present to the Adult
Authority reflected our resolve to expand our movement; they were
demands on behalf of all prisoners.
With my speech, the rally was over. We fell into formation and marched
across the street to the building housing the California Adult Authority —
the Prison Parole Board. There were hundreds in our ranks as we poured
into the building, into the elevators, and streamed several flights up the
stairs until we reached the offices of the Adult Authority. For the occasion
we had printed posters demanding the freedom of the Soledad Brothers,
Bobby and Ericka, and all political prisoners and listing our demands to the
Department of Corrections and the Adult Authority. All along our route, we
had pasted the posters on the walls.

The crowd was beautiful in its varied composition: Black, Chicano, Asian
and white. There were young people, many over thirty and some much
older. Workers, students, and professionals were in our ranks. A fairly good
representation from UCLA included the chairman of the Philosophy
Department, Donald Kalish, who could always be called upon to lend his
support to progressive causes. I was extremely happy to see that the two
young Black women who were clerical workers in the department —
Connie and Betty — had come out to participate. Some passers-by had also
joined in the demonstration.
A small-scale confrontation took place between us and the Adult Authority
people when we demanded a meeting with the members of the board.
Surrounded by hundreds of chanting demonstrators, they were searching for
some way out. They insisted that the board members were not in Los
Angeles, but rather were meeting in some other part of the state. When they
had learned of our intentions to stage this demonstration on the date of their
monthly meeting in L.A., they had probably moved the meeting elsewhere.
We were not so much interested in pushing the confrontation further. We
had served notice on them of our intentions.
Not long after the demonstration had come alive, several reporters informed
me that the Regents were done with their meeting and had already released
their decision: I was not going to be rehired for the coming year. Now that
our demonstration had been successfully concluded, we prepared to hold a
press conference on the sidewalk outside the State Building. It seemed that
the news media had been following a conscious policy of minimal or no
coverage of the Soledad Brothers movement. I was determined that they not
get away with it this time. Thus I made a point of phrasing all my responses
in such a way that each sentence said something about the relationship
between my firing and the repression of the Soledad Brothers and other
political prisoners. The Regents could no longer invoke the statute
prohibiting the employment of Communists at the university; the court
injunction against the Regents on this issue was still in effect. Moreover,
they had been unable to produce any evidence that I had been delinquent in
the performance of my academic duties. Not even the secret ad hoc
committee of professors appointed by the Regents to investigate my

classroom activity had come up with anything the Regents considered
useful.
Thus the Board of Regents was left only with the notion that my political
speeches outside the classroom were "unbefitting a university professor."
Interestingly, this decision was announced on the very day of one of these
speeches in which I had "unbefittingly" charged high government officials,
including Ronald Reagan himself, with participating in and condoning a
conspiracy to suppress all radical political activists, particularly those in
prison.
Members of our Defense Committee were all pleased to learn that the
photograph accompanying the story about my firing had been snapped
while we were walking the picket line. It carried the message of our fight
through the international wire services to people all over the world: I was
carrying a sign reading save the soledad brothers from legal lynching and
Jonathan, walking close behind me, carried a sign reading end political
repression in prisons.
A few days after our June 19 demonstration, a statewide meeting of the
Soledad Defense Committee took place in San Jose at the home of Joan and
Betsy Hammer. On the agenda was the question of strategy for the
upcoming San Francisco trial. The committee in San Francisco was not
nearly as strong as it should have been, especially in the Black community.
It was obvious that there had to be more grass-roots work in San Francisco
and Oakland in order to lay the groundwork for the large-scale participation
in the events around the trial. I was asked whether I would consider
spending some time in San Francisco during the summer to help with these
tasks. I said I had to think it over very carefully.
Back in Los Angeles, our committee held cocktail parties to raise funds. We
sponsored a showing of a film on Vietnam, The Year of the Pig; there was
quite a successful mass rally at the Unitarian Church on Eighth Street. One
of the Soledad Committee's most outstanding fund-raisers was the art
auction we pulled together. A number of artists, Black and white,
professional and amateur, agreed to donate their works. Two brothers who
operated an art gallery in the Crenshaw area of L.A. (and who, incidentally,
had attended nursery school with me in Birmingham) readily agreed to let

us use their place for the showing. We planned many more such events for
the remainder of the summer and the fall.
As all these activities unfolded, the academic part of my life was also
demanding attention. Knowing that under ordinary circumstances — that is,
if the UCLA affair had not exploded into an all-consuming aspect of my life
— the dissertation would have already been done, I now wanted to get it
behind me as quickly as possible. By the end of the summer, it absolutely
had to be finished. This was the goal I set for myself. My work was going
to be facilitated by the research grant I had received from the university for
the months of July, August and September.
While there was no question of my ceasing to be active in the Soledad
Committee, I did want to pare down my political involvements to a
minimum. I began to make certain practical changes. In the apartment, I
tried to reestablish my study, which had been taken over by the work of the
committee. I moved the mimeograph machine and the other materials being
used by the committee from my study into our adjacent dining room. I had
thought that I would then be able to develop a work routine involving at
least eight hours of study a day. But by the summer our apartment on 45th
had become a real center, an office and a "crash pad." People constantly
dropped by to inform themselves about the work of the committee — and
this was good, because it meant that we had created a movement which was
attracting many people in the community. Tamu's husband, Malcolm, had
been released from prison and was now living at the house, and a friend of
theirs from Canada was sleeping on the couch. Baby Kendra had reached
the age where she required a great deal of attention. Whenever she was
around, I simply could not resist the temptation to play with her. All this
added up to the fact that the only time I could accomplish serious work on
my dissertation was after everyone in the house was asleep. Sometimes I
worked from one or two A.M. until six or seven. But since I never slept
during the day, it became impossible for me to keep up this pace.
Feeling very frustrated about my work, I decided to look for a small,
inexpensive apartment where I could hide away during the hours I wanted
to work. The place I finally found was located on 35th Street, just ten
blocks away from the other apartment. The rent was only seventy-five

dollars, which meant I could still pay half the rent at the other place and
continue to stay there when I needed to. Remembering the experience of the
phone on 45th ringing at all hours of the day and night, I decided to keep
this apartment free of its incursions, receiving all my calls on 45th.
Since I couldn't move in until the first of July, Georgia Jackson invited me
to spend the intervening time out at their house in Pasadena so I'd have a
quiet place to work. On the first, I moved my books and papers, my desk
and typewriter and a bed into the new place. Over the next month, I allowed
nothing to interrupt my studying, with the one exception of the Soledad
Committee.
Around the middle of July, I made a short trip to the Bay Area to speak
about the Soledad Brothers at a meeting of activists from various
organizations in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. Since the venue of
the trial had been changed, the Brothers had been transferred from Soledad
to San Quentin. Jonathan and his father were driving up to see George
around the time of the meeting, so we all went up together.
The meeting was being held at the office of the National Lawyers Guild.
Together with Fay Stender and other members of the Bay Area Soledad
Committee, I spoke of the importance of broadening the movement around
the Brothers, especially in the months and weeks preceding the trial. The
Left throughout the Bay Area had to be mobilized, and there had to be a
concentrated organizing effort focused on the Black community. A brother
from the Black Panther Party assured us that they would assume a large part
of the responsibility of getting masses of Black people involved in the
attempt to save the Brothers' lives.
Present at the meeting were representatives of the Defense Committee,
which was doing a highly successful job developing support for a group of
Chicano activists on trial at that time — Los Siete de la Raza. We agreed
upon a loose coalition between our groups and decided that we would
launch the new era of our work to free political prisoners with a mass rally
in San Francisco on August 12. Charles Garry, attorney for Los Siete,
eagerly agreed to speak at the rally, and I said I would speak as well.

George's lawyer, John Thorne, had filed a motion with a San Francisco
judge requesting that I be recognized as George's legal investigator —
which was essentially the same thing I had done for Hekima. Since I was
there, we both went to the courthouse in order to argue the motion that day.
On the same floor where John was arguing the motion, the trial of Los Siete
was in session. I sat in for a while, made the sign of solidarity to the
brothers and talked for a few minutes with Charles Garry about the
coordination of the work of the committees around the two groups of
political prisoners.
While I was in the Bay Area, the Soledad Committee activists once again
raised the question of my spending a little time up there to help with the
organizing of the committee. Having just found the apartment where I could
devote most of my days to my dissertation, I was hesitant to seriously
entertain the possibility of dismantling everything again. But the Bay Area
Committee was not in the best of shape and could no doubt benefit from the
experiences we had accumulated in Los Angeles. I told them that I would
think about it, but in the event that I could not come, I would try to
persuade one of the more experienced Black members of our group to come
up instead.
I was thinking about my roommate Tamu.
Around the beginning of August, I had decided that it might be possible for
me to spend a few weeks in the Bay Area, particularly since the library on
the Berkeley campus was far more complete in works relating to the topic
of my thesis than the UCLA library, and I was going to have to do the last
part of my research there anyway. I thought it might be possible to spend
some time in the Bay Area, dividing my days between the University and
the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. Around the beginning of August
I went up to see about a place and check out the library.

AUGUST 7, 1970
Courtroom number one, presided over by Judge Harold Haley, was in
session. On trial was James McClain, a prisoner from San Quentin who had

been charged with assault in connection with a recent incident at the prison.
Acting as his own attorney, he had already begun to present his defense.
When Jonathan entered the courtroom and took a seat in the spectator
section, Ruchell Magee, another San Quentin prisoner and a witness for the
defense, was being examined by McClain. Jonathan sat there for a while.
Then he stood up, a carbine in his hand, and directed everyone in the
courtroom to freeze. McClain and Ruchell joined Jonathan, as did William
Christmas, who was waiting to testify in a nearby holding cell.
Some of the sheriff's people later testified that the brothers shouted out,
"Free the Soledad Brothers!" Others claimed they heard "Free Our brothers
at Folsom!" and yet others, "Free All Political Prisoners!" The prosecutor
maintained that the purpose of the revolt was to have the Soledad Brothers
released from prison.
The judge, a shotgun taped to his neck, the district attorney prosecuting the
case and several jurors were led by the brothers into a van parked in the lot
outside. A San Quentin guard fired on the van. Then a barrage of shots tore
into the van and when the smoke had cleared, all except one inside had
either been killed or wounded. Judge Haley was dead. D.A. Garry Thomas
was wounded. A woman juror was wounded. McClain and Christmas were
dead. Ruchell was wounded.
And Jon . . .
When I learned about the revolt later that evening, when I saw the Marin
County scene on television, I kept repeating out loud, "There must be some
mistake. That can't be Jonathan, not our Jon. It can't be. He was so alive, so
strong."
Jonathan had just turned seventeen. A few months earlier, George had
written me:
Jon is a young brother and he is just a little withdrawn, but he is
intelligent and loyal. . . . He is at that dangerous age where confusion
sets in and sends brothers either to the undertaker or to prison. He is a
little better off than I was and than most brothers his age. He learns
fast and can distinguish the real from the apparent, provided someone

takes the time to present it. Tell the brothers never to mention his green
eyes and his skin tone. He is very sensitive about it and he will either
fight or withdraw. Do you understand? You know that some of us don't
bother to be righteous with each other. He has had a great deal of
trouble these last few years behind that issue. It isn't right. He is a loyal
and beautiful black man-child. I love him.
And Jon's feelings for George had overshadowed everything else in his life.
Jon was still so young, yet I don't think he had ever really been a child. He
had been robbed of his childhood by a society that had kept his brother
behind bars for almost as long as he could remember.
Seven is the age when most boys play with bright-red plastic water guns.
But at seven, Jon knew that guns were big and gray and that when they
were drawn from a prison guard's holster and the trigger was pulled they did
not eject a fresh stream of water. They shot bullets that brought streams of
blood and death. Death. From the age of seven on, Jonathan saw George
only during prison visits. He saw his brother living with the reality of death,
every day, every hour, every moment.
During the few months of our friendship, I don't think I realized how
wracked he must have been by that decade of accumulated frustrations, by
that terrible sense of impotence before the walls, the bars, the guns, and
those tidy courtrooms presided over by fastidious white judges.
Now the enemy had closed in on Jon, who had tried to make some dent in
the formidable prison system which was turning his brother — all his
brothers and sisters — around and around, faster and faster in a vicious
orbit of misery and brutality, frame-ups and assassinations.
In those days following the revolt in the courthouse, I tried to dispel my
blind rage over Jonathan's death in order for my anger to become
constructive. I knew that there was only one way to avenge Jon's death —
through struggle, political struggle, through people in motion, fighting for
all those behind the walls.
Not to fight in this way was to leave Jonathan forever lying on the asphalt
— lying there in his own blood as though that was where he belonged. Not

to fight would be to forever deny him — all the young and unborn
Jonathans — the beauty of lush green mountains instead of cold gray bars,
the freshness of a trip to the seaside, instead of a dismal journey into a
Soledad Prison visiting room. A childhood full of smiles and nice toys and
older brothers who are beautiful, strong and free . . .

PART FIVE: Walls
The hand between the candle and the wall
Grows large on the wall. . . .
It must be that the hand
Has a will to grow larger on the wall,
To grow larger and heavier than
the wall. . .
WALLACE STEVENS

W

DECEMBER 22, 1970

hen the plane landed in California after the twelve-hour extradition
trip across country, there were as many armed men waiting outside
as there had been on the East Coast airfield to oversee my departure. The
sheriff's deputies and policemen seemed to be lost among the hundreds of
men wearing the uniforms of the United States Air Force. They were
stationed throughout the area and lined both sides of the route taken by the
caravan as it sped through the base.
The trip lasted ten or fifteen minutes. Then the caravan turned into the
Marin County Civic Center, which I recognized from newspaper
photographs taken since the August 7 revolt. The car in which I was riding
drove into a garage, and a steel gate immediately banged down. On the
other side of the gate, a crowd had gathered, and when I got out of the car,
they let out a clamorous "Free Angela Davis and all political prisoners!"
Still handcuffed, I made the sign of solidarity with a double fist.
Although I hadn't recognized any of the people, their presence rejuvenated
me, like the roars of support in New York on the day of my arrest. A few
seconds after I had raised my fists, I was pushed into an elevator that
opened into the booking area of the jail upstairs. And for the third time

since I was arrested, I went through the same ritual: the forms, mug shots
and fingerprints.
The difference between the Marin County Jail and the Women's House of
Detention in New York was stark. Seeing the House of D. for the first time,
I had been repelled by its consummate filth. The Marin County Jail, on the
other hand, was strikingly, antiseptically clean. There were no mice
scurrying about the shiny floors. There were no graffiti on the newly
painted walls. Whereas the House of D. had been dingy, dim and dungeonlike, this jail was painfully bright. I was used to the sixty-watt bulb in my
New York cell; my eyes burned from the bright fluorescent lights here.
During the booking I noticed a set system of small television screens behind
the desk. The entire jail was obviously subject to the surveillance of closedcircuit TV. I wondered whether I would find a camera in my cell.
Once the booking process was over, and I had made sure they gave me
receipts for everything I had brought from New York, the matron signaled
for the door at the end of the corridor to be opened. A button was pressed;
the metal door slid heavily into the wall. This mechanical perfection was
much more frightening than the archaic fixtures of the House of D.
With an entourage of female guards, I walked down a corridor lined with
iron doors, windowless except for small square peepholes. At the end of the
corridor we turned right and faced two single cells separated by a tiny
shower cubicle which opened directly onto the corridor. A TV camera,
mounted on the ceiling, pointed in the direction of the cells.
The head matron unlocked the last of the two cells. As I walked in, my
feelings were ambivalent: anger at being subjected to the will of racist
jailers again; slight relief at finally being alone with time to think.
Once the gates were locked behind me and the matrons had left me alone
(although they were probably watching me on TV), I examined my
surroundings. Larger than my cell in the House of D., this one was about
seven feet square. Extending from one wall was a metal slab with a threeinch mattress on top. On the opposite wall was a pale-gray combined toiletand-sink fixture — the water from the basin drained down into the toilet

bowl. To brush your teeth or wash your face, it was necessary to stand over
the open toilet bowl. The only other furnishings in the cell were a twelveinch shelf with two clothes hooks underneath and a small metal table
attached to a round wooden stool.
I stretched out on the little mattress and tried to imagine what was
happening on the other side of the walls. I hadn't had a chance to speak to
either Margaret or John after the Supreme Court ruled that I was to be
returned to California. I was certain that they would both come out
immediately, but as yet there was no word. No word from them or from
anyone else.
I was still lying there, staring at the ceiling, trying to sort out my thoughts,
when a matron came to say that a lawyer was waiting to see me. Expecting
to see Margaret or John, I followed the matron into the lawyers' visiting
booth. On the other side of the metal screen was Terrence Kayo Hallinan, a
Bay Area lawyer who had been involved in the defense committee, and
Carolyn Craven, whom I had known from Los Angeles, who was at that
time a reporter for the local educational television network. Carolyn had
been able to get in as Kayo's legal assistant. When the jailers learned
afterward that she was also a news reporter, they announced that only
"attorneys of record" would be allowed in the jail. That meant that until
Margaret or John arrived from New York, I would literally be held
incommunicado.
With nothing to keep me occupied but the thoughts racing through my head,
I wondered about my brothers in San Quentin. I knew that not far from this
jail was that medieval fortress, surrounded by water, where they were
holding George captive. Did he know that I was now in California? Perhaps
I would soon receive a message from him and the brothers with him in the
Adjustment Center, the very worst section of the prison. Thinking about
them, reflecting upon our common predicament, I was able to rise above the
depressing and threatening solitude
I did not sleep that night — and I did not even try to shut out the
speculations about my future, about George's, John's, Fleeta's, Ruchell's. I
knew the gas chamber was waiting for us all. Then, like an omen from hell
sent to verify my wildest fears, a woman's screams shattered the silence. I

could feel my heart beating like a frightened caged bird. In between her
bloodcurdling screams she seemed to be pleading: "Let me out of here! Let
me out of here!" Her shrieks were made more terrifying and disorienting
because I was unfamiliar with my surroundings. Except for my cell, the one
next door, and the visitor's booth down the hall, I had no idea of where
things were. The screaming continued. The cries were so close and I felt so
powerless. Darkness lay on me like a coffin lid, closing my first day at
Marin County Jail.
Early the next morning Margaret and John came in to see me. Shortly
afterward I was led down the maze of underground corridors through which
prisoners were taken from their cells to their court appearances. My
arraignment on the charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy was
scheduled for that morning. Margaret and John requested a continuance for
the arraignment, explaining that the legal team was just in the process of
being formed. After the presiding judge of Marin County granted our
request, he officially announced that he, as well as all the other judges in the
county, had disqualified himself because his relationship to Judge Haley
would probably prevent him from presiding fairly over the case. He then
handed down a gag order designed to prohibit me, the lawyers, and anyone
directly or tangentially connected with the case from making public
statements about evidence which might come up during the course of the
suit.
Everything was modern and spotless in this courtroom.
The lights, shining much brighter than daylight, accentuated the newness. In
this neat, pretty room, I thought, men and women are sent to dirty cells,
some to the death chamber just across the way at San Quentin. As I had
learned from press accounts, the courtrooms — and the entire Marin
County Civic Center — had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. For the
courtrooms, he had used a motif of circles. In the one where my first court
appearance took place, the ceiling had a large round panel with lights
encircling it. The fixtures of the room were arranged to correspond with the
circle above — the judge's bench, the jury box, and the tables for the
prosecution and defense — all were strategically placed to form a circle.

Later I discovered that in designing the courtrooms, Wright had had
something very definite in mind. He wanted to depict the nature of justice
in the United States. The participants in a trial, he believed, should not be
seen as struggling against one another. On the contrary, judge, jury,
prosecutor and defendant are holding hands around a circle in the common
pursuit of justice.
When I learned about Wright's hand-holding message, I thought about the
game we used to play as children — "Ring around the rosie, Pocket full of
posies . . . Ashes, Ashes . . ." — and the way the game itself picked certain
children to be "out." There was absolutely nothing I had in common with
the men sitting around the courtroom circle. My comrades, my friends and I
— we all saw these men as the manipulators of a judicial game that was
rigged against me. We therefore had to continually strengthen the people's
movement that was our only hope of beating the odds. Two days later, in
fact, the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis (NUCFAD), led
by my sister Fania and my comrade Franklin, held a Christmas day vigil
outside the Civic Center. The walls of my windowless cell were far too
thick for their chants to penetrate. But I could feel them and I felt happy and
strong because of them.

***

Now that I was in Marin County, I had to prepare to face my accusers on
their ground. A legal team had to be formed. John was planning to go back
to the East Coast once the question of the lawyers was squared away, but
Margaret was going to stay. I would have to have complete and total
confidence in my lawyers; in a very literal sense, I was entrusting my life to
them. Margaret and I already had established that deep trust, for we loved
each other as sisters.
There were many criteria which I hoped the other members of the legal
team would satisfy. Naturally I wanted lawyers who would be compatible
with me and with each other. We would be spending many months working

together. However, there was one criterion that outweighed all the others. I
had to have lawyers who agreed that the case was a political one. They had
to be sensitive to the fact that the trial would be political in every respect.
Moreover, the courtroom battle would be interwoven with a battle
conducted by a mass movement. The lawyers would have to understand
from the outset that what happened in the courtroom would of necessity be
related to and coordinated with the campaign in the streets.
Hayward Burns, the president of the National Conference of Black
Lawyers, had put me in touch with Howard Moore. On the day I was
extradited from New York, I had talked with Howard, who had flown in
from Atlanta at my request. It was clear during our first conversation in the
New York jail that in trying civil rights cases in the South, he saw his
lawyer role as part of a larger effort to defend oppressed people who were
fighting for their freedom. When Howard talked about the struggle, there
was an intensity about him that convinced me that the most important thing
in his life was the liberation of Black people. He understood immediately
why I thought it was important for me to participate directly in the defense.
The evidence being mounted against me was political evidence: my
speeches at rallies, my leadership in the mass movement to free the Soledad
Brothers, my membership in the Communist Party. My politics were at
stake and it was up to me to defend them. Howard had agreed that one of
the first motions we filed should call for my participation in the legal team.
Aside from Howard's strong political commitment and his expertise as a
lawyer, he was also a warm human being. I liked him. The decision was
made. Margaret called his office to ask whether he would be willing to take
on the major responsibility of the case. He agreed at once and Franklin left
for Atlanta to finalize the agreement. The first hurdle had been surmounted.
I felt tremendously relieved.
Although Howard had agreed to shoulder the main burden of the trial,
previous commitments in his Atlanta law practice prevented his coming to
California permanently before the beginning of April. During the three
intervening months, we needed lawyers to work on the pretrial motions.
And for the team that would eventually try the case, we needed one or two

lawyers who had been admitted to practice, on a regular basis, before the
California Bar.
We asked three lawyers to join the team for purposes of filing and arguing
the pretrial motions: Al Brotsky, who was a partner in Charles Garry's firm
and whose office he put at the disposal of the other lawyers; Michael Ugar,
whom I had known while he taught in the law school at UCLA; and Dennis
Roberts, a friend and colleague of Michael's. Later, Sheldon Otis, a wellknown trial lawyer from Detroit, also joined the team.
The physical arrangement of the jail seemed to be designed to utilize the
minimum amount of space for everything. The little lawyers' booth in the
women's section could accommodate one lawyer uncomfortably; two could
squeeze in if they weren't too large, one sitting and the other standing
behind the chair. My side of the metal screen was equally small —
whenever I was forced to sit in the booth for any length of time, it took me
some time to conquer the claustrophobia I had developed in jail.
At first I was thoroughly confused by the legal jargon with which the
lawyers discussed the case. When I was sealed in the tiny booth, these
mysterious terms would whirl around in my head. "One of our first motions
has to be the ‘Nine ninety-five,'" someone said. What did a "Nine ninetyfive" have to do with my life and the attempt to rescue it from the death
chamber? I hadn't the slightest idea what it meant.
The lack of space for lawyers' meetings was the cause of the first major
skirmish with the jailers. The issue was as clear as the legitimacy of our
complaint. If they did not furnish us with some opportunity to meet as a
group, they would be denying me a basic, constitutional right — the right to
counsel of my own choice. But the overseers of the jail made it clear that
they did not feel compelled to respect my rights, and they were not going to
yield an inch without a fierce struggle. Jails are thoughtless places.
Thoughtless in the sense that no thinking is done by their administrations;
no problem-solving or rational evaluation of any situation slightly different
from the norm. The void created by this absence of thought is filled by rules
and the fear of establishing a precedent (meaning a rule they had not yet
digested). Before we could even approach the major battle for my life — to
create weapons to slay the monster, as it were, we had to spend endless

energy fighting minnows. Because of the rules by which prisons survive,
the only wellspring of passion left to their administrators is the proximity of
pain and death. Those quickest to kill were always those most outraged by
the infraction of a rule.
After they agreed to provide us with a place for a lawyers' conference, they
made arrangements for a heavily "secured" meeting in what turned out to be
the sheriff's staff room. It was the captain who came to fetch me,
surrounded by uniformed and armed guards. Grim-faced guards were
stationed along the way. It seemed to me that they had mobilized half their
police force. Who could believe that they seriously regarded me as such an
enormous threat? It was much more likely that they were trying to make me
appear to be so dangerous that scores of guards were needed to hold me
down. It was part of the conspiracy to find me guilty before I even had a
chance to be tried. The closer we got to the staff room, where there were
windows and doors to the outside world, the greater the number of guards
and the smaller the space between them. Just before entering the meeting
room, I had to walk down a narrow aisle created by two shoulder-toshoulder rows of deputies. Did they think I was going to run for it? It was
McGuire Air Force Base all over again. But then it struck me that these men
were probably even more dangerous than the ones at the base in New
Jersey: they were the same men who had been disarmed and held at bay by
Jonathan — by a seventeen-year-old man-child. No doubt they were
thinking about the August 7 revolt. No doubt their behavior was motivated
by a combination of shame and embarrassment and an obsessive yearning
for vengeance.

JANUARY 5, 1971
At the push of a button, the iron door closing off the women's section slid
open. I was on my way to the courtroom where I would be formally charged
by the state of California with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. After the
long walk through the underground prisoners' corridors, I was directed into
a holding cell just outside the courtroom. A few minutes later, Captain
Teague, the chief of the detail, pulled out his keys from his gun belt, opened

the door with a commanding gesture and said, "Miss Davis, you may enter
now."
When I walked into the courtroom, there was thunderous applause and my
eyes were momentarily blinded by flash bulbs and bright lights. Looking
straight into the spectator section, straining to see familiar faces, I raised my
fist to acknowledge their reception.
Some days later, looking at a photograph of that moment, I was struck by
the glaring incongruity of the scene. There I was, my face adorned with a
glowing smile; my unencumbered arm raised high. At the table a few feet to
my right, there sat Ruchell Magee, whom I had not yet seen. He was
tangled up in a mess of chains, a trace of a grimace on his face, as if he
were trying to find a more comfortable way of coping with the chains.
Had I seen Ruchell sooner, my first gesture would have been to reach out to
him, to affirm the bond between us. Then I would have turned to show my
gratitude to the supporters. Ruchell and I should have been able to
acknowledge, together, their presence. Only when I sat down in the seat
which faced the door I had just entered, did I see the chained Black man
who was my co-defendant. When I did see him, I smiled as warmly as I
could, trying to tell him that I loved him and that we were together. Ruchell
smiled back.
The arrangement seemed all wrong. We were so far away from each other.
The judge's bench was closer to me than Ruchell's chair. So was the
prosecutor's. Ruchell was all the way on the other side of the courtroom.
This "justice in the round" seemed intent on breaking up the natural alliance
between my brother and me. I was furious and upset. It even looked as if I
were there on my side of the circle with five good movement lawyers, while
Ruchell sat with his court-appointed attorney, Leonard Bjorkland.
When I read the San Francisco Chronicle the following day, I could detect
the beginnings of a campaign to publicly pit me against Ruchell. The article
on the arraignment began: "Angela Davis, accused of murder and
kidnapping, strode confidently into a Marin County courtroom, raised a
clenched fist, and later told the judge, 'I am innocent of all charges.'" About
fifteen paragraphs into the article was the sentence: "There was a gasp from

courtroom spectators when Ruchell Magee, a San Quentin convict charged
as a co-conspirator with Miss Davis, was brought into the circular room
from an adjoining holding cell."
That was on January 6. On January 18, the same reporter wrote an article
which began: "They call Ruchell Magee ‘the other defendant' in the Angela
Davis case . . . overshadowed by the newly acclaimed heroine of black
revolutionaries." And then: "If Magee is a revolutionary it is the prison
environment — not a course of intellectual endeavor — that has made him
one."
That was the way the press tried to push Ruchell and me as far from each
other as possible in the eyes of the public. Even in the autobiographical
sketch of Ruchell, I was made the point of comparison: "Magee's prison life
began when he was 16, at about the same age Miss Davis, the daughter of a
middle class family, earned a scholarship to Brandeis University. . . . In the
years that Miss Davis followed a college career that took her through
Europe and finally to the University of California at San Diego to study for
her Ph.D. under Herbert Marcuse, Magee studied law books in his cell."
It seemed that the intent of the article was to burn away all semblance of
solidarity between us — to turn those who supported me against Ruchell
and to turn those who supported Ruchell against me. They wanted disunity
and division; for divided, we would both be most vulnerable. Unity was the
only sure way to carry us both to victory.
When the superficies of our two lives were set aside, what they had in
common could easily be seen. It all boiled down to the fact that we were
Black and in our own ways had tried to fight the forces that were strangling
our people.
I had always thought it was fortuitous that I was among those who had
escaped the worst. One small twist of fate and I might have drowned in the
muck of poverty and disease and illiteracy. That is why I never felt I had the
right to look upon myself as being any different from my sisters and
brothers who did all the suffering, for all of us. When I later learned how
Ruchell had spent his thirty-two years, it became so clear that he was
among them.

Born in Louisiana, he had been convicted as a boy of thirteen of the
"attempted rape" of a white girl and had been locked up in Angola State
Penitentiary. He grew to adulthood behind those walls, where just to live
out another day was a constant fight. Eight years later, the authorities told
him he could leave the prison — that is, if his mother agreed to take him to
another state. They left for California. Ruchell was on the streets for just a
little more than a year when the Los Angeles police picked him up for being
involved in a trivial fight with another brother. With such a heavy record
behind him, they did not bother to give him even the appearance of a fair
trial. The system was poised against him, even to the extent that his courtappointed lawyer entered, over Ruchell's objection, a plea of "not guilty for
reasons of insanity." When the trial was over, Ruchell had been sentenced to
life in prison, having been convicted of kidnapping. (The allegation had
simply been that he drove the brother in question a few blocks in a car.)
Ruchell was all of us, not only in the way he was made a scapegoat of
racism, but also in his resiliency, in his refusal to concede defeat. The
schools in Louisiana had not taught him to read and write. Behind walls in
California, by using the Constitution of the United States as his reader he
conquered his illiteracy. He read law books and became sufficiently
conversant with the law to write briefs on his own case, which he filed with
the appropriate courts. With nothing to fall back on but his own sheer
determination, he became such an efficient lawyer that an appellate court
reversed his conviction on the basis of an argument he had made.
But the second time around, his trial also led to a conviction, for they
refused to recognize his right to defend himself. Again, he was sold out by a
court- appointed lawyer. But even in face of this second conviction, Ruchell
did not give up. He continued to file briefs with the courts — and not only
for himself, but for other brothers as well. At the same time, he wrote to
everyone on the outside whom he felt could assist him in exposing the
injustice done to him.
Ironically, I did not realize that I, too, had received one of those letters from
Ruchell until it was presented in court, having been taken from my
apartment by the FBI. It was one of the hundreds of letters I received each
week during the affair at UCLA. Because I had no one to help me with my

mail, it had remained buried under all the other unanswered letters. If I had
only known then.

The Women's Section of the Marin County Jail was obviously designed
under the assumption that few female arrests would be made in this county,
which ranks among the wealthiest in the country. The very small percentage
of Black, Chicano and poor people bore a direct relationship to what the
authorities felt their female jail needs would be. Counting the sick bay, the
isolation cells and the juvenile tank, there were a mere seventeen beds on
the women's side.
One would have thought that this small-scale jail would produce matrons
with less impersonal, less brutal responses. And, in fact, my first impression
of the female jailers was that they were amateurs groping around for the
role they felt matrons should play. But precisely because they were
straining to be good jailers, they frequently chose to assume the most
extreme posture they could manage.
Shortly after I arrived, I had a run-in with one of the matrons, the first of an
unending series of such conflicts. It happened on a Sunday in January. I had
spent part of the morning reading the least boring sections of the San
Francisco Examiner. During the late morning, I was called out for a visit,
but I had hardly gotten past the formalities of the introduction when a
raving matron broke into the visiting cubicle.
"Where's the razor blade? Just give it up! If you don't hand over the razor
blade, you'll see what we can do . . ."
I didn't know what she was talking about. The last time I had even seen a
razor blade was before my arrest. I didn't respond.
She continued her cryptic demands. "Unless you produce the razor blade
immediately, you won't be able to finish this visit."
I stared her straight in the eye for a few seconds and finally asked her what
she was talking about.

"What happened to the razor blade in your newspaper?" she asked
frantically.
"What razor blade? What newspaper?" I asked.
I finally gathered from her sometimes incoherent remarks that the Sunday
paper had carried an advertisement for some brand of razor blades and that
a sample had been included.
"I don't read the advertisements," I said. "If there was a razor blade in the
paper, it must still be there."
I told her that if she'd stop being so hysterical, she could have the ridiculous
razor blade. And I walked down the corridor to my cell. The bulky paper
was stacked up on the bed. Not about to help her with her searching
business, I told her to get the razor blade herself. Still frantic, she tore
through the paper until she found the advertisement. When she pulled it out
and, with a vicious scowl on her face, showed me that the razor blade was
missing, I was certain that I was being set up by someone.
"Obviously," I said, "someone has removed the razor blade. But that's your
problem, not mine. I haven't the slightest idea what happened to it . . ."
As I expected, she spat loud, bold threats at me. "You won't have another
visit until you give up the razor blade. We're going to cut out your
commissary privileges. And if you think that you're going to call or see
your lawyers before you produce the razor blade, you're wrong. You're
wrong."
I tried to keep myself from blowing up. I had to show them that they
weren't going to provoke me with such pettiness. "I have said all I'm going
to say," I answered. "It's clear that I couldn't have a rational discussion with
you, even if I wanted to. One thing, though. I do know something about my
rights. I know full well that you cannot prevent me from seeing my
attorney. Just try — and you'll have a real fight on your hands."
I turned around abruptly and sat on my bed. "You may leave now," I said.
Still flustered, she whirled around and rushed out, almost forgetting to lock

the gate behind her.
Alone in my cell, I thought about the dilemma. If they dared, they could
hold me incommunicado indefinitely. But I kept reassuring myself that if
they really tried to prevent my lawyers from seeing me, the lawyers would
find some way to get in.
Late that afternoon, shortly before the matron's shift was up, she came back
to my cell looking embarrassed. "I guess I have to apologize to you, Miss
Davis," she said hesitatingly. "A deputy at the booking desk took the razor
blades out of all the papers before they were sent in."
"They aren't going to get off so easily," I thought to myself.
The next day I went into the matron's office to put through the daily
telephone call which all prisoners were allowed to make. In a loud and
disdainful voice, I related to Brotsky every detail of the razor-blade
incident. I wanted the matrons to know that whenever they challenged me, I
was ready for a fight.
The lawyers' protests, addressed to various levels of the jail hierarchy, put
them on the defensive. The National United Committee to Free Angela
Davis joined in. I could see that they were beginning to fear the rapidly
developing mass movement. They knew that any unjustified attack on me
could be exposed.
Very early in my stay at the Marin County Jail, I was introduced to the
jailers' racist bias. The same matron involved in the razor-blade incident
unlocked my cell one day and brusquely told me to come with her. Dressed
in full uniform and carrying a shoulder bag, she was apparently about to
leave the jail.
"I'm not going anywhere until I find out what's going on," I said.
"Just come on," she said.
When I refused, she conceded that there was an emergency in the building.
Still not satisfied, I demanded that she explain further and finally got her to

admit that a bomb threat had been called in, and the entire complex was
being evacuated. The women prisoners would be taken to a bomb shelter
downstairs.
I was accustomed to being handcuffed with my arms behind me — it had
become a part of the routine. When the three other women prisoners were
brought out into the corridor (and this was for months the only direct
contact I had with other prisoners), the manner in which we were
handcuffed revealed the blatant racism of the matrons. There was a Black
woman and a Chicana woman. They were cuffed to each other, the right
arm of one locked to the left arm of the other. The one remaining prisoner
was a white woman. The matrons had done nothing to restrain her
movements. So there we were, me with both arms manacled behind me, the
Black woman chained to the Chicana woman, and the white woman with
both hands free.

The Marin County jailers were determined to hold me in solitary
confinement, so we began to press for relief from the court. The pretense
was the same as in New York. That is to say, it wasn't that I was so
dangerous. On the contrary, it was my life they were trying to safeguard.
They were afraid, they said, that some fanatic anti-Communist or someone
who was excessively affected by the death of Judge Haley might try to do
me some harm. And how easy it was to get arrested in Marin County, they
said. Someone might actually commit a petty crime to get into the jail —
and get me. The jailers had to consider these things, they said.
The judge refused therefore to issue an order permitting me to go into the
main population — he wanted a detailed, documented motion from us,
specifying precisely the conditions of my incarceration and setting forth in
legal terms the reasons we felt I should not be kept in solitary. This was a
typical way of reversing the process of justice. Whenever my rights were
violated — it was up to us to show why they should not be violated.
Doubtlessly the judge knew what he was doing because he ultimately went
along with a compromise solution. He did not allow me to "mingle" with
the other women; instead he ordered the jailers to provide permanent

facilities for meetings with the team of lawyers, a request we had made in
the same motion.
These permanent meeting facilities were established "within the security
area," i.e., behind a series of electrically operated, heavy iron doors, and
within the range of the closed circuit TV monitor system. Inside one of
those rooms, behind the iron door with the little peephole window, was
what they called the juvenile cell. It was adjacent to the matron's office. All
they had to do was pull down a metal flap on their side and they could spy
on me through a porthole-type window. This cell was slightly larger than
mine. The walls were painted the same drab gray, the concrete floors the
same institutional rust-color. It contained bunk beds — i.e., metal slabs
extending from the wall, with a thin mattress like the one I slept on every
night. There were a few other superficial differences between it and my cell
— the toilet bowl was not attached to the sink, and there was a shower
inside. But the only difference that mattered to me was the skylight above.
By this time I was so starved for a bit of natural light that I rejoiced when I
discovered that on occasion I would be able to tell whether it was light or
dark outside. The skylight was translucent, rather than transparent, so I
could not really see the sky, but I could hear airplanes passing above and on
rainy days the monotony of my surroundings would be broken by the sound
of raindrops. In my nighttime dream fantasies, I climbed through this
skylight to freedom.
At first, when the attorneys came, I was escorted to and from my cell to the
meeting room. Later, though, we managed to convince the judge that if he
did not intend to relax the solitary conditions any time soon, I should have
access to this conference room even when the lawyers were not present.
Emphasizing for his benefit the fact that I had already announced my
intention to file a motion to act as one of the counsels in my case, we made
the point that it was the responsibility of the jail to furnish adequate access
to legal materials as well as facilities where they could be studied. He
agreed, then, that I could use the conference room — the juvenile cell — as
a work area between the hours of eight in the morning and ten in the
evening.

We had won a minor skirmish, which was the signal for the jailers to
retaliate. Since they knew that they couldn't violate the judge's order to
allow me access to the working quarters, they contrived as many annoying
trivial rules as their little minds could discover. First, they declared that it
was against the rules for me to take my meals in the work cell. The twosecond trip around the corner and a few yards down the corridor could only
take place after they had brought breakfast to my sleeping quarters. Come
lunchtime, they opened the door of the work cell and directed me back to
my sleeping cell. After lunch — the trip back; dinner, the same. The only
time this routine could be broken was if one of the lawyers happened to be
visiting me in the work area — then I could take my meals there.
The fact that this cell was to be the area where I worked on my case, they
pushed to absurdity: because I was supposed to be working there, I could
not also eat there; I could not do my daily exercises there. But they could do
nothing to prevent me from doing calisthenics, katas, or headstands when I
felt like it in the work cell. Often I exercised precisely at the moment when
I knew they were peeping in on me.
The work I managed to do in jail required far more than normal powers of
concentration. In that state of almost continuous solitude, getting totally
involved in my work was a fundamental condition of survival and sanity.
The jailers knew this and were willing to resort to the paltriest acts, hoping
to obstruct me in some small way. The head matron was especially good at
this.
I can't say I was able to dismiss everything they did. There were things
which I found merely exasperating, and there were other things which
really angered and frustrated me. Often lunch or dinner time would find me
deeply immersed in work — reading or writing a statement, letter or
something I simply wanted to write for my own benefit. A matron would
open the door for me to return to the sleeping/eating cell to take my meal.
During my unsavory, solitary meal — it hardly ever took me more than ten
minutes either to consume it or to decide that I wasn't going to eat it — I
continued to think about the work I had been doing. Naturally, as soon as I
was done with the food, I was eager to return to my work. A half-hour
would pass without my cell gate having been opened. Forty-five minutes,

an hour. At these times I simply could not contain my frustration and would
scream as loud as I could for them to come and unlock the gate. Inevitably
the more I screamed, the longer they would wait before they came with the
key. Sometimes they tried to justify the delay by saying, for example, that a
prisoner was being booked and fingerprinted in the corridor — no prisoner,
at that point, was allowed to lay eyes on me. Other times, they snidely said
that they were sorry that they could not eat as fast as I — and they weren't
going to let me disturb their leisurely meal. This situation became so
unbearable that rather than put up with it I decided to skip meals when my
work might be disrupted.
For months, this work cell was the center of a constantly raging battle
between the head matron and me. She noticed, for instance, through her spy
window that I would sometimes lie down on the bottom bunk in the work
cell and read in that position. Within a short time, the mattresses were
removed from the cell. Afterward, to show her that she had not disturbed
my routine, I would lie down on the metal slab — the thin mattresses hadn't
made the bed much more comfortable anyway. This matron and the others
were particularly incensed when we got the news that David Poindexter had
been acquitted on the federal charges of harboring a fugitive. (They could
not prove that David knew that the FBI, as well as the California Police,
was looking for me.)
I wondered, at times, just how much I was allowing myself to be diverted
by these inane episodes. Realizing how easy it is to lose perspective when
you are imprisoned — particularly if you cannot communicate with others
who share your condition — I wondered whether I was reacting to trivial
incidents as if they were a matter of survival. I feared becoming obsessively
wound up in these small things, because if I did, this in itself could be a
way for the jailers to control my mind. There was a pill-taking ritual, for
example, which seemed to hold a special importance for one particular
matron. Her obnoxious personality was surpassed only by her stupidity. She
actually believed that if she gave me an aspirin for a headache or for cramps
that I was going to follow her instructions and lift my tongue up so she
could see whether I had swallowed it or whether I was hiding it until she
left the cell. It was this same matron, in fact, who once tried to prohibit
Margaret from bringing books in to me. One Saturday morning Margaret

had brought me some hardcover books and one paperback anthology on
fascism. This matron believed all paperback books were novels. She
allowed Margaret to bring in the hardbacks, but not the "storybook," as she
called the book on fascism. According to this dull-witted woman, I was not
allowed to have "storybooks," that is, fiction, in my work cell — and The
Nature of Fascism was such a book.
The Marin County Jail doctor misdiagnosed a rash I had contracted, and
while he was treating me with antihistamines for what he said was an
allergy, the rash spread over my entire body. This gave us the leverage we
needed to demand that a doctor from the outside be able to visit me. Bert
Small, a young Black movement doctor who ran the Panthers' Free Health
Center, immediately recognized my rash as a jail fungus that had progressed
so far it was going to be difficult to cure. Bert began to come in at least
once a week to examine me. During his visits a matron always stood
outside the cell, peering at us through the bars. Once we discovered that a
second matron was hiding with a note pad in the shower adjacent to the cell
and was obviously taking down everything we said.
After a few weeks, Bert was told not to hug me (he always greeted me with
a big hug). Soon afterward, they told him that all non-medical conversation
was forbidden. Since the matrons were not very smart, we developed
without too much trouble a code language in which we could discuss just
about anything without their understanding.
Of all the matrons, there was only one who went out of her way to be kind.
Timid and soft-spoken, she was young and obviously inexperienced in
police work. I imagine she was one of the women they hired when they
used my presence in the jail as an excuse to increase the number of female
deputies. One night when this deputy was on duty alone, a sister in the main
tank screamed out, just before lights went out, "Good night, Angela." As
loudly as I could, I screamed back, "Good night." (The main tank was two
hundred feet down the corridor, around the corner and at the end of the next
corridor.)
For several months this deputy continued to be silent while I carried on
conversations and developed friendships with women prisoners whom I had
never seen and whom I could never hope to see. On the day Ericka Huggins

and Bobby Seale were acquitted of murder charges in New Haven, we held
a regular celebration. Once this matron handed me two bars of candy which
the sisters in the main tank had sent as presents. When I opened them, I
discovered long letters — kites — concealed under the wrappers.

Thursdays and Sundays were women's visiting days in Marin County Jail.
During the first six months, I received my visits only after all the other
women had finished, since no contact between us was allowed. As long as
the person had identification, anyone could come in to see me. NUCFAD
arranged visits, more often than not, with people I had not yet met. Often
the visits were strained, introductions rendered difficult by the glass and
telephones separating me from the visitor. And usually by the time we got
settled into a conversation, it was time for the visit to end.
After voluminous, well-documented motions were filed, the judge finally
issued an order that legal investigators of our designation be admitted into
the jail during certain hours of the day. I could visit them in the regular
lawyers' booth when they came alone; when an attorney of record was
present, they were let into the work cell. Legal investigators, at various
times during the year, were Franklin and Kendra, Fania, Charlene,
Cassandra Davis, and Bettina Aptheker.
I had first met Bettina in New York when we were both high school age.
She was among the friends introduced to me by Claudia and Margaret
Burnham. At that time, Bettina was in the leadership of Advance, the youth
organization I joined, which had fraternal ties with the Communist Party.
What subsequently remained most vividly in my mind about Bettina was
the way she had described a trip she made to the Soviet Union. I had been
enormously impressed by the egalitarianism she said she witnessed. She
had visited the apartment of a worker and the apartment of a doctor; the
doctor's she said, was no more luxurious than the worker's. Bettina's father,
Herbert Aptheker, was the director of the Institute for Marxist Studies, and I
felt excited and enlightened by the lectures I heard him deliver.
In 1964, some years later, Bettina emerged as one of the key leaders of the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement, which prepared the way for the campus

rebellion of the sixties. When she visited me in Los Angeles at the time of
the struggle around my job, it had been about ten years since I had seen her.
Writing for the World Magazine (the magazine section of our Party's daily
newspaper), she interviewed me about the fight to keep my position at
UCLA. When we saw each other after that, it was always only for a short
time and in the midst of some political urgency. I had felt frustrated that we
weren't able to find the time to sit down and talk in relaxed surroundings.
At the time I was extradited to California, she was living in San Jose with
her husband, Jack Kurzweil, who was a professor at California State
University in San Jose. Their child Joshua was around four years old.
Bettina was just finishing the manuscript of her book The Academic
Rebellion: A Marxist Critique. She had decided to devote a large part of her
time to working on the National United Committee. I was happy to learn
that she could also spare the time to act as one of the legal investigators on
the case, for this meant that she could visit me for longer periods and
outside the regular visiting hours.
During one of her earliest visits, Bettina mentioned that the Defense
Committee in England wanted to publish a book of writings by and about
me and the movement for my freedom. They asked us to put together a
packet of materials out of which they could select the literature for the
book.
After some discussion, Bettina and I decided that a more accurate and
complete representation of the movement could be included in the book if it
were compiled by the Committee here. Moreover, if it were done here, it
could also be used as an organizing tool for the campaign in this country.
Immediately after this discussion, Bettina and I began to work on the
project ourselves.
From the inception of the idea, we saw the book as an instrument through
which people could deepen their knowledge of repression, through which
people could become acquainted with cases of political prisoners, and could
learn what was really happening behind the walls in general. I insisted that
the content of the book should not only revolve around my case, but had to
relate to other political prisoners as well — George, John, Fleeta, Ruchell
and the many incarcerated sisters and brothers throughout the country. One

of the central theses of the book would be the need to reevaluate the
traditional definition of "political prisoner," as a result of the intensification
of racism. Aside from the scores of men and women in prison because of
their political beliefs and activities, there were many thousands more who
had been framed or had received disproportionately long sentences for the
sole reason that they were Black or Brown. The book had to provide a voice
not only for the political prisoners in the strict sense of the term, but also for
those who were victimized in one way or another by the racism of the
police-court-prison apparatus.
Bettina and I both wrote articles concerning prisons and political prisoners.
During long meetings in jail, rendered difficult by the glass and telephones
or the mesh of metal between us, we made our decisions about the other
materials to be included. The jailers would not allow the investigators to
bring anything into the jail except a pad of blank paper and a pencil.
Therefore all the materials had to be given to me by one of the attorneys.
And the things Bettina wanted to discuss, she had to try to memorize before
she came.
Finally, after several months of intensive work, the book was practically
done. George, Jon, Fleeta and Ruchell, as well as Bobby and Ericka had
contributed writings. Howard and Margaret had written about essential legal
aspects of the case, and Fania, Franklin and Kendra had written about the
mass movement. Out of the innumerable appeals which had been made on
my behalf, we selected a representative number both from the United States
and abroad. To begin the book, we used James Baldwin's moving letter to
me. "Some of us, white and black," he wrote, "know how great a price has
already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new
people, an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse
than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for
your life as though it were our own — which it is — and render impassable
with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the
morning, they will be coming for us that night." It struck us that the title of
the anthology should be If They Come in the Morning.
Originally, it had been our intention to have the book published by a
movement company. After all, we did not see it as destined for mass

commercial distribution — it was to be an organizing weapon. But it had to
come out immediately, if it was to have any impact on the campaign for my
freedom and the freedom of other political prisoners. At that time, no
movement publishing operation had the resources to bring it out so quickly.
As a result, we gave the book to a Black company, The Third Press.
Unfortunately we did not realize that the over-riding interest of this
company was to push the book commercially — even at the expense of
misrepresenting it as a book authored (rather than edited) by me.
But despite the problems, the publication of the book was an important
event for all of us behind walls. One of the most moving things Ruchell said
to me was that If They Come in the Morning, which contained a large
section on his life and his case, had done more to expose the state's
persecution of him than anything else.
At the same time arrangements had been made for legal investigators to
visit me, the judge had ordered the jailers to allow potential defense
witnesses to come back to the work cell in the presence of an attorney of
record. My parents and Benny and Reggie were able to see me in this way.
When my mother and father came out on March 16 for the opening of the
pretrial motions and the big rally outside the Civic Center, we had spoken to
each other in the booth, through glass, on telephones. It was good, finally,
to be able to embrace them. Herbert Marcuse and his wife Inge came up
several times. And our Party leaders, Henry Winston, Jim Jackson and
William Paterson, came in together from New York.
I anxiously awaited the visits of George's lawyer John Thorne because it
was one of the ways I kept up with what was happening with George and
the other brothers in San Quentin. Margaret, Howard and Sheldon visited
George, John, Fleeta and Ruchell as often as they could manage.
In the month of June, Howard argued the bail motion before the new judge
in the case, Richard Arnason, who had been brought in from Sonoma
County. Everyone's hopes were high — everyone's except mine, that is —
that Arnason would rule in our favor. The issue was simple; persons
accused of capital crimes were not to be released on bail when the "proof of
guilt is evident and the presumption thereof great." The corollary was that

the lack of sufficient evidence meant that the accused person should be let
out pending trial. Howard and Kendra were as certain that I would be
released as they were of their own lives and were both trying to cheer me up
with promises of freedom tomorrow. During the bail hearing, Albert Harris
felt so confident that Arnason would deny our motion that he said into the
record: "When she checks out of the Marin County Jail, if she is released on
bail, she might as well be given an air travel credit card along with her
belongings, because we will never see her again."
When Arnason said no, I felt the vise closing once more, but I did not feel
terribly shocked, having expected him to take the easiest way out anyway.
Kendra cried and Howard was more depressed than I had ever known him
to be.
It appeared that the motions the judge did grant were an attempt to
compensate for the terrible blow he had delivered in denying bail. Arnason
said yes to our contention that I should be allowed to act as co-counsel in
the case. And because bail had been denied, he agreed to order that more
favorable conditions (especially for the preparation of the case) be
established at once within my jail cell.
He ordered that I be given access to a typewriter and that, like the other
women, I be allowed to have a radio. He even ordered the matron to allow
me to spend brief periods of time with the women in the main section. I
discovered that things in the main tank in the corridor around the corner
were not very different from what I had seen in the House of Detention in
New York. I rediscovered how vitally important it was to resist every
destructive current of prison life . . .
For jails and prisons are deadly places. There was the mesmerizing inanity
of television; a few boring high school texts, some mysteries and a lot of
unbelievably bad fiction. The women could write if they wished, but the
small note-paper, which was seldom available, discouraged serious writing
in favor of casual notes which would be censored anyway before they were
mailed. Even getting hold of a pencil could be an extensive and complex
undertaking. There were the well-worn cards and games, indispensable
props for every jail — things to coat the fact of imprisonment with sugary
innocuousness, fostering an imperceptible regression back to childhood. As

I had noticed from the parlance at the House of D., in the jailers' eyes,
whether we are sixteen or seventy, we are "girls." They loved to watch over
their child-prisoners happily engrossed in harmless games. Any pastime
that was intellectually demanding seemed suspect. The jailers in Marin
County were extremely hostile to allowing a chess game in, and agreed to it
only if it fit silly specifications. The one finally admitted to the day room
was toy-like, a child's version of chess.
One other jail "outlet" was overwhelmingly sexist. It was the stubborn
presence of the washing machine, clothes dryer and ironing paraphernalia
which, discounting the metal tables and backless stools, were the sole
furnishings of the day room. The "reasoning" behind this was presumably
that women, because they are women, lack an essential part of their
existence if they are separated from their domestic chores. The men's linens
and jail clothes were sent elsewhere for laundering; the women were
expected to tend to their own. If they did not volunteer to do the washing
and ironing, a work schedule was imposed. This work system also proved
to be racist. When, out of boredom, many women volunteered to do the
washing, black women were consistently rejected. But when no one
volunteered, black women were ordered to do it.
In the midst of all this, sleep emerges as a kind of luxury. Just because it
involves unconsciousness, the complete negation of an already empty
existence, it becomes the least monotonous way to pass the time. The
matrons encouraged us to think of sleep as a privilege by making the
availability of a bed during the day a reward for "good conduct." If, for
instance, a woman was not up, fully dressed, with her blankets tidily tucked
under the mattress, when breakfast arrived at 6:30 A.M., then all the women
in that cell would lose their "bed privileges" for that day. They were all
locked in the adjacent day room, where the only resting places were stools.
They are serious people, jailers, thoroughly caught up in the glitter of their
badges. When challenged, this seriousness shows its true face. A young
Black woman prisoner was told that since she was occasionally let out of
the jail on a work-furlough program, she could not join the other prisoners
in the television day room. TV was not very important to her, but this
reprisal made her furious. She told the matron that her badge didn't give her

the right to punish her so. In response, the matron called upon a power
greater than her badge — her racism. She told the Black woman that she
had "overstepped her color." This incident stirred a terrific battle among the
women, and interestingly enough the battle lines defied racial demarcation:
though all of the Black women supported the sister, some white women did
too.
This badge-seriousness extends into areas that are truly deadly. Many times
when I rode in the elevator with armed guards on my way to a court
appearance, the men would unsnap their gun holsters — all a show for my
eyes alone.

JULY 8, 1971
Howard, John Thorne and I followed the jailers through the brightly lit
prisoners' corridors into a holding cell in the courtroom area. A seatless
toilet stood in the corner and two wooden benches lined opposite walls of
the narrow cell. The upper half of one of the walls was made of transparent
plexiglass. It was just a little smaller than the one where Ruchell and I
waited for our court appearances.
Although I should have known what to expect, the heavy metallic rattling
which precipitously dissipated our silence startled me. The chains, locks,
shackles, handcuffs, whose rumblings I had first heard in the courtroom in
Salinas, now sounded very familiar. On the other side of the glass wall,
George was descending the stairs for an all-day meeting between him and
his lawyers and me and my lawyers.
Since I was now officially recognized as co-counsel for myself, the judge
had agreed to issue an order for a meeting between me and each of the
Soledad Brothers and my codefendant, Ruchell. A few days later, I wrote
George about my impressions of that first moment.
"A scene frozen in my mind: I am standing in the little glass cubicle
downstairs, standing waiting, loving, desiring and then hot cold rage when
the chains begin to rattle as you slowly descend the stairs . . . I'm supposed

to rip off the chains. I'm supposed to fight your enemies with my body, but I
am helpless, powerless. I contain the rage inside, I do nothing. I stand there
watching, forced to assume the posture of a disinterested spectator, the
whole scene perceived through glass, laboratory-like, mad at them for
thrusting this upon me, mad at myself for doing nothing. Mad at myself too
because I could not fail to see how much counter force you were exerting
upon yourself, each step, long, hard, unwilling to be restrained by chains
and pigs, your entire body with each foot movement in a hard sway . . ."
As soon as he came into the cell and saw that we were there, the disdain on
his face immediately dissolved into the smile I remembered so well from
Salinas. Instinctively, his first gesture was to try to reach out. An embrace.
He had forgotten that his wrists were chained to his waist and that he could
only move them a few inches. With my free hands — they had not cuffed
me this time — I tried to make up for his chains.
Eight hours was not long enough. We talked about everything, but there was
not enough time. We discussed our strategy for the defense and talked about
the possibility of George's testifying during the trial. He was certain that we
would beat the case. I told him that our victory would have to be a victory
together. All of us.

Subsequently there was an all-day meeting with Ruchell. It came at a
critical time. Though we were both solidly united on our political approach
to the case, we did not entirely agree on the way it should be attacked from
a legal standpoint. Ruchell wanted the trial transferred from the jurisdiction
of the State of California to the federal court system. Based on his years of
experience with the California courts, he was convinced that they wanted
his life. He felt that the chances of minimizing the repressive and racist
treatment both of us were receiving would be greater if we could agree
upon this strategy of removal. I had studied this strategy, I had reflected
upon it, and had held long discussions with Margaret and Howard about the
viability of Ruchell's position. Finally, I had decided that it would be best
for us to fight it out on the state court level.

Among the many reasons for my decision, one pertained in a very practical
way to our ability to get the best possible jury. In federal court, it was the
judge who questioned potential jurors and made all decisions concerning
the presence or lack of biases in them. In state court, on the other hand, we,
the defense, could demand the right to conduct an extensive voir dire of
potential jurors, probing into areas such as racism and anti-communism.
Huey Newton's case had already established the precedent as the result of
Charles Garry's work in picking the jury. It would not be possible to
conduct this kind of courtroom investigation into the jurors' backgrounds if
we litigated the case in federal court.
During the many months of the pretrial period, Ruchell and I held brief
discussions about this in the holding cell where we waited in the mornings
for court to be convened and during recesses. We corresponded with each
other about our differences. Margaret, Sheldon and Howard visited Ruchell
in San Quentin, arguing out all the pros and cons of removal. It was
important to me that we reach agreement on this, because my position from
the very beginning had been that he and I should go to trial together. There
had been much pressure, from many quarters, including from the judge
himself, to sever the cases. But the position of our defense team had always
been that all such efforts to separate us had to be resisted.
So long as the situation regarding removal was in abeyance, we had not
been able to proceed with many of our pretrial motions. Proceedings at the
state court level might possibly jeopardize Ruchell's fight for removal. It
was a difficult predicament.
When the time came to throw aside all indecisiveness in order to begin
serious litigation of the case, Ruchell and I were still at odds on our
respective legal positions.
This is where we were, at the beginning of the eight-hour jail meeting.
Lawyers — mine and Ruchell's — were present, as were members of our
committees. At times, the arguments became rather heated. But even with
all this, there was no breach of the solidarity which bound us together.
Ruchell made a point of letting it be understood that this was a technical
disagreement on legal strategy and not a fundamental rupture between us.

When it appeared that this gap between our legal positions was not going to
close before the end of the meeting, I felt compelled, for the sake of unity,
to make a concession: I proposed that in conjunction with Ruchell's efforts,
I file a motion for removal, but only under the condition that if the motion
were denied in federal court, Ruchell would agree to jointly fight the case in
state court. He gave his approval to my proposal.
Later, I could see that our agreement was defective from the outset, more a
result of our desperation than a real attempt to solve our differences. For
Ruchell was certain beyond a doubt that the judge would grant the removal
motion, and didn't earnestly consider the possibility of a denial. I was
equally certain — beyond a doubt — that the motion would in fact be
denied, so I never earnestly considered the possibility of fighting the case in
federal court.
The motion was denied. Rather than begin litigation in state court, Ruchell
decided he wanted to pursue the removal strategy further. I knew how
passionately he was committed to his position, so I could not really blame
him for what he did. But, now, the impasse we had hoped we would elude
subbornly imposed itself. If we wanted to get on with our respective
defenses, there was only one way to confront the impasse — and both of us
understood this. Severance now was the only way out. Severance was a
word I hadn't wanted to hear, but since we were both wedded with equal
conviction to our own particular strategies, we had to move for the
separation. Immediately afterward, our Committee issued a statement to the
press:
On Monday, July 19, Judge Richard Arnason granted a motion to sever
the case brought against Angela Davis and Ruchell Magee by the State
of California. . . . From the inception of the frame-up the general mass
media, joined in by dubious "left friends" have attempted to drive a
wedge between Angela and Ruchell. The devices have ranged from
phoney and racist comparisons between Angela and Ruchell all the
way to the establishment of a hierarchy of political prisoners. Angela
and Ruchell have devoted many hours to the co-ordination of legal
strategies. During the first seven months of pretrial hearings they made
continuous attempts at developing complementary legal strategies.

However, unable to coordinate their strategies, the final result was a
severance motion agreed upon by both defendants.
. . . It should be clear that the decision to sever was not reflective of
political divergencies. Nor did it bear upon substantive issues of the
legal defense, Rather differences were procedural in nature . . .
Ruchell will attempt to take [the] battle to Federal court, and Angela
will attempt to fight the same battle in a state court. But both believe
that without a massive, Black-led movement which uses the courtroom
as only one forum of struggle, this battle will not be won. And we will
win.
For those of us around the country who are actually struggling to build
a mass movement capable of freeing all political prisoners, our
responsibilities are doubled. The cases of Ruchell Magee and Angela
Davis must be taken before the people with the idea of providing
masses of people with a close insight into the oppression of the penal
system . . .
The first anniversary of the insurrection which was seized upon to
frame Angela and Ruchell is soon approaching. Committees in
California and throughout the country are commemorating August 7
through various activities, ranging from rallies and teach-ins to
memorial services. In Pasadena, California, a park is being dedicated
to the memory of Jonathan Jackson. It is through these kinds of
activities that people will come to understand the conditions against
which Ruchell and our slain brothers were fighting on August 7, 1970.

AUGUST 21, 1971
In the little lawyers' booth in the visiting area, Bettina and I were trying
hard to finish the manuscript of If They Come in the Morning. When
Howard arrived, bringing Barbara Ratliff, who was doing the research for
one of our legal motions, all three of them were able to come back to the
work cell. We had hardly gotten settled when the big key turned in the lock,

the door swung open and, addressing Howard, the woman deputy
announced, "Mr. Moore, you'll have to leave.
There's an emergency in the building."
It had been months since the last bomb scare. Nevertheless, the procedure
was not unfamiliar to us.
"We'll be back when it's over," Howard said. And the three of them left the
cell. I assumed that the woman deputy would return shortly to direct me and
the other prisoners to the bomb shelter downstairs, as had been done the last
time, but a half-hour, then an hour, passed, and no one had appeared at the
door. She finally came back to the cell and told me she had instructions to
take me to the sleeping cell. When I asked what was going on, she refused
to say anything more than that she was simply following the orders she had
received.
I don't know how many hours I lay on my cot, staring at the ceiling, letting
my imagination run wild. I waited. I waited for some word from one of
them, from Howard, Margaret, someone. It was very late when the deputy
came back to my cell and told me, "Mr. Moore is waiting for you." She
unlocked the gate and I walked a few steps behind her. Turning the corridor
corner, I saw Margaret and Howard standing in front of the work-cell door.
Margaret's eyes were red and swollen, and the only time I had seen that
expression of utter desperation on her face before was the morning about
ten years ago when her mother came into the bedroom where we were
sleeping to tell her and the other children that their father had died of a heart
attack that night. Howard was sweating heavily, his forehead was all
wrinkled, his eyes were squinted, and he was breathing hard as if from
exhaustion.
I looked at them, feeling something giving way inside me. We were alone,
in the cell, the door closed behind us, and no one had yet broken the silence.
During the last interminable hours of waiting I had fought back broken
pictures of an explosion at San Quentin that kept trying to insinuate
themselves into my thoughts. How many times had George said that the war
declared on him by his jailers could break out into open combat at the

slightest provocation? I was screaming inside. "Don't let it be that
something has happened to George." But the louder I screamed, the more
their faces told me that something had happened — that the worst had
happened.
"George?" I asked, leaving his name hanging there. I didn't want to make
my question more concrete.
Howard nodded.
"He's not . . .?"
Howard bowed his head, and I was aching with hope that I had not really
heard that little, almost inaudible "yes."
I reached out to Margaret, who broke into huge sobs, and we stood there,
holding on to each other. I felt frozen, unable to move, unable to bring
words out of my mouth, unable to bring tears to my eyes. As if someone
had encased me in ice.
"The pigs killed him, Angela." Howard's voice penetrated my
consciousness from the distance. "They murdered him. Shot him in the
back."
Already the key was turning and the deputy was telling them they had to
leave.
Back in the cell, I woke up from the frozen nightmare to face the reality of
George's death. It was then, alone in the darkness, that I began to cry.
I thought about Georgia, Robert, Penny, Frances, Delora, and George's
nephews and nieces. It was in this way they had to observe the first
anniversary of Jonathan's death.
George was a symbol of the will of all of us behind bars, and of that
strength which oppressed people always seem to be able to pull together.
Even when we think the enemy has stripped us of everything, left us bereft
even of our souls. The strength that comes out of an almost biological need

to feel that we have something to say about the direction of our lives. That
need had gnawed at George, behind bars all of his adult life — and, what
was most important, he had known how to give the clearest, most universal
expression to that need, and his writings had aroused people all over the
world.
The sisters in the House of Detention in New York had learned something
important about themselves when they read Soledad Brother. When my
message reached George in San Quentin that the women were exhilarated
by the book, but disturbed by his earlier uncomplimentary remarks about
Black women, he apologized and wanted them all to understand his
misjudgment.
Tonight men and women in every prison in the country were probably
awake, like me, mourning and trying to channel their anger constructively.
People all over the world must be talking about vengeance — constructive
organized mass retaliation.
The next day it seemed as if the whole world were inside my cell. Every
seat around the work table was occupied. At first, it was difficult to get the
words moving in conversation — no one knew quite where to begin. When
I looked at Charlene, Kendra, Franklin, Margaret, Howard . . . I couldn't
keep back the tears. Then Franklin broke into sobs.
It was Charlene or Kendra who said that the Committee had begun to
organize a vigil outside San Quentin — the lives of the other brothers had to
be safeguarded, and the conditions of George's murder had to be
investigated immediately. They said that reports were seeping out of the
prison about brutal beatings and horrifying torture sessions. Already our
Committee had contacted Rep. Ron Dellums, Assemblyman Willie Brown,
Dr. Carleton Goodlett and many other concerned public people, asking
them to demand that they be allowed to tour San Quentin, interview the
prisoners about the events that had led to George's death, and examine the
wounds inflicted upon the brothers by guards.
After they had left, to rush back to the work of organizing the counterattack,
I tried to compose a statement to be released to the press.

"George knew," I wrote, "that the price of his intense revolutionary
commitment was having to live each day fighting off potential death blows.
"George's example of courage in the face of the spectre of summary
execution; his insights honed in the torment of seven years of solitary
confinement; his perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds will
continue to be a source of inspiration to all our sisters and brothers inside
prison walls and outside."
I wrote about the Jackson family: "Their grief is deep. In little more than a
year, two of their sons, George and Jonathan, were felled by fascist bullets.
I express my love to Georgia and Robert Jackson, Penny, Frances and
Delora.
"For me, George's death has meant the loss of a comrade and revolutionary
leader, but also the loss of an irretrievable love . . . I can only say that in
continuing to love him, I will try to express that love in the way he would
have wanted — by reaffirming my determination to fight for the cause
George died defending. With his example before me, my tears and grief are
rage at the system responsible for his murder. He wrote his epitaph when he
said:
‘Hurl me into the next existence, the descent into hell won't turn me. I'll
crawl back to dog his trail forever. They won't defeat my revenge, never,
never. I'm part of a righteous people who anger slowly but rage undamned.
We'll gather at his door in such a number that the rumbling of our feet will
make the earth tremble.'"
Then I was left with the radio.
All day long one station broadcast readings from George's book, and the allnews station began to develop the preposterous story that George had
smuggled a bulky pistol, hidden under a wig, from the visiting area to the
Adjustment Center, the most heavily guarded section of San Quentin. I
listened to the radio talk shows. The majority of the people who called in to
the shows suspected that something was very wrong inside San Quentin;
that whatever was askew was not the fault of the prisoners, but of the prison
hierarchy. The most consistent aspect of these responses was the belief that

the prison administration had taken them for fools. Over and over again,
people commented on the contempt the administration had shown by not
even constructing a sensible story. Who on earth would believe that the tale
about the wig justified all the violence unleashed on the prisoners?
George was dead, and the deeply personal pain I felt would have strangled
me had I not turned it into a proper and properly placed rage. I could not
dwell on my own loss. Any individual gnashing of teeth would bring me to
my knees. Personal sadness in that still gray cell under the hateful eyes of
my jailers might break the cords of will that held me together. George's
death would be like a lodestone, a disc of steel deep inside me, magnetically
drawing toward it the elements I needed to stay strong and fight all the
harder. It would refine my hatred of jailers, position my contempt for the
penal system, and cement my bonds with other prisoners. It would give me
the courage and energy I needed for a sustained war against the malevolent
racism that had killed him. He was gone, but I was here. His dreams were
mine now.

AUGUST 3, 1971
Judge Keating takes the stand. He looks pitifully thin, and the deep wrinkles
in his face make him look older than his years. Something about him
reminds me of the racists who peopled my childhood. I feel confident and
eager as I rise to question him about his judgment in selecting the Marin
County Grand Jury. This time I am launching the attack.
Our position was that the indictment against me had been returned by a
Grand Jury (that needed only eight minutes and no extended discussion to
indict me) that was racist and non-representative. A hearing was granted us
to determine whether the judges' selection of the Grand Jury was based on
their own race and class prejudices. We believed that the judges were
unacquainted with the black community, the working class community, and
the youth community, and therefore could not have picked representative
jurors.

We were well into the examination when I produced a photograph which
Margaret had given me. Approaching the witness stand, I handed him the
picture and asked him whether it was a true representation of his house (and
by implication of his wealth). Surprised and annoyed by the fact that we
had photographed his home, he mumbled, under his breath, but loud enough
for the court reporter to hear, "Judges don't have any civil rights or privacy,
huh? The people that enforce the civil rights don't have any. Yes, that's my
house. I might say it might be dangerous to do that again. . . . We don't take
kindly to burglars up there."
When I asked Keating whether he would consider recommending a member
of the Black Panther Party to serve on the Grand Jury, he said: "They are
the blatant racists outside Adolph Hitler." And he went on to insist that
"they are advocates of hatred, violence and murder. . . . They spew hatred
and violence and murder all over." He added that this also held true for the
Communist Party.
I was speechless, shocked not so much that these were his sentiments as by
the fact that a Superior Court judge had shouted these statements into a
permanent court record.
A survey we conducted confirmed the deep-seated racist and antiCommunist prejudices of the average resident of the county. Judge Keating
was a typical Marin County resident. How could my trial take place in the
Civic Center, next door to Judge Haley's courtroom? We prepared to argue
our motion for a change in the venue of the trial. For, a trial here would be a
ceremonial slaughter, a sure prelude to San Quentin's gas chamber. All the
Superior Court judges in the county had confessed that they could not fairly
preside over my trial. That grand gesture disengaging themselves was to me
another way of saying that they were hopelessly convinced of my guilt.
Our survey demonstrated that the majority of the people in Marin County,
who were both white and wealthy, believed me guilty of kidnapping,
murder and conspiracy. But even more telling, they believed that I was
guilty of something worse — of being a Communist, of being a Black
woman. Many of them felt outraged that I had been allowed to teach the
children of decent white Californians. If they could vote on the matter, they
would banish me forever from the universities in California.

Since that survey had been conducted George had been murdered by San
Quentin guards. The hysteria whipped up around these events — designed
to turn the victims into the criminals — was pervasive. Public opinion in
this wealthy white county considered anyone who spoke out on behalf of
San Quentin prisoners as guilty as they presumed the prisoners to be.
Our motion for a change of venue was thorough and well-documented.
Judge Arnason, the presiding judge called in from another county, had no
choice but to grant it. But we didn't want just any change of location for the
trial. Any Black person knows that there are only a few places in the state
of California where even the semblance of a fair trial could take place. If
there was to be a trial, we wanted it to take place in San Francisco, where
we could hope to pull some Black people from the jury panel. But those
who determined the locality of the trial didn't want to go to San Francisco,
sprawled on the other side of the bridge, with its multicolored people of
many social opinions and political persuasions. San Francisco was too
unpredictable; the potential of a large local movement rising up to be
vigilant over the trial was much too strong.
They wanted a more tranquil place, a place where controversies were
smothered by soft-spoken civilities. A place where Black people did not
live in large numbers, but where there were enough leading Black figures in
the community to veil the existence of racism. They wanted a place with
substantial geographical stature, but without political color, and especially
without a tradition of progressive political struggles.
That place, we discovered, was to be San Jose. Marin County jailers and
sheriffs accepted this change of venue as a personal defeat. Their faces
wore expressions of deep regret — regret that they could not preside over
the slaughter themselves. With undisguised pleasure, they refused to give us
the smallest hint about the date or hour of the move. Howard and Margaret
warned me that I should be prepared to leave at a moment's notice, and had
brought me cardboard boxes to pack my things: books, papers, letters that I
had accumulated over the last year in that jail.
Their warnings served me well. One morning around three or four A.M. the
chief matron woke me, screeching that I had better be ready in a few

minutes. I was prepared. There was nothing to do but wash and brush my
teeth.

DECEMBER 2, 1971
The trip to San Jose was much longer than I had expected. Even though I
didn't know much about the geography of Northern California, I could tell
that they were taking a roundabout route for what they called "security
reasons." I had been hoping to see San Francisco or Berkeley, or some place
with normal (but for me extraordinary) scenes of human activity. But when
I arrived at the jail in Palo Alto, I had no pleasant memories to bring in with
me. The trip had been freeway all the way, the caravan traveling far above
the speed limit. And until we began the approach to Palo Alto, it had been
pitch-dark.
A slight, pale man was riding in the car with me. At the time I didn't know
that he was the under-sheriff of Santa Clara County. He did not have the
usual manner of a law enforcement officer. He seemed unsure of himself.
He tried to console me, to assure me that the stint I was going to do in the
jail there would be much more tolerable than the year of horrors I had just
left in Marin County. But jail was jail. Unless you had resigned yourself to
the fact of being locked up, there were no degrees of better or worse.
As with the FBI, as with the New York House of D., as with the Marin
County Jail, now with the Santa Clara Jail, the ritual: Name . . . Address . . .
Age . . . Birthplace . . . Previous arrests . . . etc., etc., etc. Mug shots . . .
fingerprints . . . Would there ever come a time when I would finally be
booked out?
I had learned that each time a prisoner is booked she has a right to two
phone calls. I called my lawyers first so they would know I had arrived, and
then my parents. I hardly ever had the chance to talk to them on the phone
except when I was being booked into a new jail. They were overjoyed to
hear my voice, yet at the same time frustrated and tense about what this new
situation might bring. Mother said she was coming out before Christmas.
My younger brother, Reggie, on work leave from his college, was also

going to come to the West Coast. My mother was trying to concentrate on
things that would let her escape the reality of my predicament. Although
she remained strong until the end, I think the whole ordeal was harder on
her than on anyone. I asked whether she had started eating regularly again,
and whether she had managed to gain back some of the weight she had lost.
Each time we saw each other or talked, we ended up admonishing each
other for the same reasons. She reminded me this time to eat more and try
to gain my own weight back. I asked her not to worry so much and
reluctantly said good-bye.
As soon as I hung up the receiver, a shaded door to the left of the booking
area was unlocked. We walked into a short and narrow hall and as I glanced
to my right, I saw the most frightening jail cell I had yet seen. The area was
walled off in glass. On the other side of the glass was a twelve-by-two-foot
corridor, off of which were two cells. Each cell was about six feet by eight
feet. One contained the metal slab bed, a thin mattress, toilet and sink; the
other was a padded cell completely lined with a heavy tufted fabric painted
a silvery gray. The padding was broken by a single hole in the floor which
served as a toilet.
"You have to take off your clothes," the matron said.
She handed me a dress, some pajamas, a sweater, and a pair of underpants,
a bra, some socks and rubber thonged slippers. I told her I would put on the
clothes but not the underwear. She insisted that I had to give up my own
underwear and put on the county's. I was serious about not wearing jail
underwear. In New York, wearing unsterilized underwear, I had contracted
a terrible fungus which had spread all over my body and had taken months
to finally cure. I told the matron she could have my underwear but nothing
she said or did was going to make me put on those jail panties.
Female jailers must have something of the voyeuse in them — even those
who are not homosexual inevitably stand and watch you with deep interest
while you strip down to the nude. This matron must have been unconscious
of the intensity with which she was looking at me, because when I asked
her what she found so interesting, she looked terribly embarrassed, and left
abruptly.

The faded, smock-like dress was too tight and too short. The drab gray
sweater would not reach my waist, and its sleeves came halfway up my
arms. I could not pull the white children's socks over my heels nor fit into
the rubber slippers. I threw the slippers and socks through the open door
into the corridor.
Then I realized how cold it was in that cell. Not only was it cold, the toilet
was leaking and water was running all over the floor. I stepped out into the
cell corridor to shout a complaint, but no one was in sight, and the door to
the larger corridor was locked. I told myself that Margaret and Howard
would be there soon, and we could begin to fight these sub-human
conditions. In the tight childish smock, without underwear, and barefoot, I
was freezing, so I put the pajama bottoms on under the dress, the tiny
sweater over it, and the pajama top over the sweater. I imagine I looked
absurd.
Since there was no place to sit, I climbed up on the bunk, pulled the army
blanket over my shoulders and tried to concentrate on the book I had
brought along. I had hardly gotten through one page when a matron with
long, flaming-red hair came through the door into the corridor outside. She
unlocked the door and, sounding somewhat kindly, I thought, asked whether
I cared for breakfast. I said yes. Five minutes later she came back, saying
that I wasn't "eligible" for breakfast. She had checked with the Marin
County people and they had told her that I had had tea — tea! — before my
trip down. Since that was the case, I didn't have anything coming until
lunchtime.
"You people just don't know what it means to behave like humans, do you?"
I blurted out.
Quickly but silently she darted out of the cell. I scolded myself for having
said yes in the first place to her nice offer and tried to get back into my
book.
Later, when Margaret came, and saw me all huddled up in the blanket,
freezing above a water-logged floor, her mouth fell open. "They must be
kidding!" she said. "I've been inside a lot of jails, but this beats them all."

Her outrage made me feel a little better. For a while, I had been wondering
whether I was overreacting. And then I thought of the descriptions George
had given of the many dungeons they had thrown him into over the last
decade. This place couldn't be as bad as O Wing in Soledad or the
Adjustment Center in San Quentin or solitary in Folsom or any of the other
cells where they had tried to squeeze the will and determination out of
George.
"This place isn't even a jail," I told Margaret. "It's what they call a ‘holding
facility' — a place to keep prisoners for a few hours or maybe overnight.
But they want to keep me here for months. I can't believe it," I went on,
"there isn't enough room in here to do exercises, even the ones where you
stand in place."
We decided to draw a scale sketch of the cell, with an accompanying
description. We wanted the Committee to use it in their press release and
propaganda about the conditions of my confinement.
Margaret left to give the drawing to the Committee. "Hold on," she said,
"there will be some big changes around here very soon!"
I smiled at her. "Margaret, you know I'll be O.K."
A little later the matron led a young, very desolate-looking white woman
past my cell. I heard a gate being unlocked next door. She must be in on a
drug bust, I figured. Not feeling like talking to someone I couldn't see, I
said nothing to her but went back to the inner cell, got back on the top bunk
and continued to read The Female Eunuch until Margaret and Howard
came.
They brought news that the Committee was already putting wheels into
motion. All over the country and even in other countries people were
receiving communications about the conditions under which I was being
held. In a matter of hours telegrams and telephone calls began to pour into
the sheriff's office. Sheriff James Geary, who regarded himself as a man of
liberal persuasions, responded to this massive protest and ordered some
changes. In an interview that appeared in the San Jose Mercury, he
lamented the fact that people all over the country thought he had shoved me

into the most wretched of dungeons. One woman, he said, had protested my
being kept in a "heatless hole, barefoot, wading in water up to her ankles."
Not only were there physical changes such as heat, clothing, and shoes, but
the manner of the jailers changed. Some of them had become almost kind:
"Miss Davis, is there anything you need?" "Are you sure everything is all
right?" "How was your dinner?" "Do you have any complaints?" "Would
you like anything in particular tomorrow?"
Before the downpour of protests, meals were tasteless TV dinners, justified
by the jailers by the fact that prisoners were rarely there longer than a day
or so. After the protests, a cook was brought in and the jailers suggested to
the lawyers that I could have a television in my cell, and could keep the
radio and electric typewriter I had acquired in Marin.
With these innovations the cell became cluttered. Magnanimously the
jailers opened the door to the padded cell for my use. Thus I came to have
what, in the prosecutor's propaganda, became a "two-room suite." A tworoom suite consisting of a six-by-eight cell and an even smaller padded cell,
the toilet hole of which backed up one day and covered my books and the
floor with liquid excrement.
Just as the "two-room suite" was a farce, so was "my own private
television" of which the prosecutor constantly spoke. My television was
"private" only because they insisted on keeping me in solitary confinement.
The prosecutor never mentioned that in the regular women's jail a color
television was available for the prisoners. Nor that when I got mine I
insisted on one for the prisoner next door and that when the jailers refused,
the Committee purchased a TV for her as well. During those days, as the
conditions of my imprisonment improved, I felt a profound sadness welling
up within me. What had been done for me had, so far, been done only for
me. But I was haunted by the specters of all those sisters and brothers
whose lives were eroding in other jails. Ruchell, Fleeta, John, Luis, Johnnie
Spain, David Johnson, Hugo Pinell, Willie Tate, Earl Gibson, Larry Justice,
Lee Otis Johnson, Martin Sostre, Marie Hill, the Attica Brothers . . . The
names kept tolling in my ears. My head was bursting with jumbled images
of their dungeons, their keepers — terror-ridden images that made the
improvement of my own physical circumstances extremely painful for me.

The tremendous energy of the movement which had so swiftly transformed
my jail situation was energy my sisters and brothers had a more than equal
right to. I tried to assuage some of my pain by establishing contact with
sisters and brothers in prisons all over the country.
Compulsively almost, for hours at a time, I answered letter after letter from
prisoners — letters which had piled up over the months in Marin when the
jailers refused to give me all of my mail. More than ever before I felt a need
to cement my links to every other prisoner. My very existence, it seemed,
was dependent on my ability to reach out to them. I decided then and there
that if I was ever free, I would use my life to uphold the cause of my sisters
and brothers behind walls.

Shortly before the change of venue, Sheldon had had to leave the case for
personal reasons. And with the pretrial motions at an end, the original legal
team had been disbanded. Around this time, we asked Doris Walker, a
lawyer with a long history of involvement in progressive causes, to join the
team. We welcomed her participation not only because of her qualifications
as an attorney and her unquestionable commitment to the struggle, but also
because we felt it was politically important for women to assume visible
roles in the defense.
Once the transfer to Santa Clara County took place, we had to move quickly
to make the last addition to the legal team. There were Howard, Margaret
and Dobby. We wanted one additional lawyer. During the original
discussion about lawyers in the House of D. in New York, the name of Leo
Branton came up along with Howard's as one of the first lawyers we wanted
to speak to about taking the case. I was particularly interested in Leo
Branton because he had been one of the few lawyers courageous enough to
defend Communists during the Smith Act Trials. Recently, he had come out
of retirement to take the case of the L.A. Panthers which stemmed from the
January 1970 police attack on their office.
When we first approached him about the defense team, he was all tied up in
the Panther case and could not therefore assume another major
responsibility. As a result of a misunderstanding — our impression was that

he had left the country after his involvement in the Panther case terminated
— we had not contacted him since the fall of 1970. When Dobby told me
that he had appeared extremely receptive about the idea of joining the team
now, I was absolutely delighted. Shortly afterward, he made a trip from
L.A. to San Jose to discuss his entrance into the case.
I had seen Leo once before — very briefly during one of the pretrial
hearings of the L.A. Panthers. At that time he wore a mustache. Because
everyone was talking about this tremendous Black lawyer who felt so
strongly about the Panthers that he had come out of retirement to defend
them, I retained an impression that he was well up in the years. On the day
his visit was scheduled, I saw a young-looking man with a well-developed
physique, dressed very sharply. It did not enter my mind that this could be
the Leo Branton who had come out of retirement to take the Panther case —
but who was he?
I was so shocked that after Howard introduced him, one of the first things I
asked him was how old he was. As it turned out, he had retired at the age of
forty-five and had gone with his wife Geri to live in Mexico for a while.
Leo's background was fascinating. He had tried the Smith Act cases, had
gone to the South in the early sixties to defend Civil Rights workers and
eventually had become one of the few Black lawyers to represent people in
the entertainment field. He had been, for example, the attorney for Nat King
Cole, and at the time we asked him to come into the case, he was handling
the Jimi Hendrix's estate in England, on behalf of his family.
The outcome of our discussion was that Leo would become an attorney of
record as soon as he completed the litigation in England. His decision was a
source of pleasure and pride for us all. With Margaret, Howard, Dobby and
Leo, our legal team was now the best we could hope for. This was an
indisputable step in the direction of victory!
Soon after the move, I began to attend court regularly on pretrial matters.
The jailers insisted on making the ten-minute trip to downtown San Jose
some three hours before court was scheduled to begin. The caravan of
armed men would leave between five-thirty and five forty-five in the
morning. Some cars drove ahead of the unmarked car I rode in; some were
behind, and there was always a car moving alongside. If their intention was

to make the trip inconspicuously, they were hardly successful. Each
morning a whole series of machinations and manipulations was necessary
to keep this formation in shape as it sped at over seventy miles an hour to
San Jose. Early one morning, as I was dressing for one of these predawn
trips, I turned on the radio as I always did upon waking. There was a news
flash: "Yesterday evening the Supreme Court of the State of California
voted to abolish the death penalty on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual
and thus unconstitutional." I was convinced at first that I had misheard the
announcement. I had talked many times with Anthony Amsterdam, the
attorney who prepared the papers and argued the death penalty case before
the high court. He had visited me in jail while preparing our appeal of the
bail denial before the federal court. At no time did he seem optimistic about
the outcome of his case. But there it was. The death penalty annulled.
My thoughts at that moment flew to the brothers in San Quentin with
pending cases carrying the death penalty. No longer could Ruchell be
condemned to die in the gas chamber so near his cell. John Cluchette could
not now be killed by the state. Fleeta, my brother, as much like a blood
brother as Benny or Reggie; my dear Fleeta would not lose his life to the
cyanide tablets dropped in the acid beneath the death chair. Johnnie Spain,
Luis Talamante, Hugo Pinell, David Johnson, Willie Tate — the state could
not take any more of their lives than prison had done already. Earl Gibson
and Larry Justice would escape the official death that is often the lot of
those who refuse to be obsequious before their keepers.
I laughed out loud. If I had been anywhere else I would have shouted, but
there in the solitude of that jail I held my joy.
Margaret came in. I could tell that she had already heard the news: she was
almost dancing with excitement. We hugged each other. I told her that this
was one day I wouldn't mind being in San Quentin's Adjustment Center on
Death Row. "There must be a carnival going on now over there," I said.
Margaret was animatedly saying something about Howard preparing for a
bail hearing that morning.
"Bail hearing?" I asked. "What kind of bail hearing?"

Margaret looked at me as if I were a little crazy.
"Angela," she said, "the death penalty has been abolished. Don't you realize
that this undercuts the whole legal basis for Judge Arnason's denial of bail?
He has nowhere to turn now. He has to let you out!"
Of course! In his original decision denying me bail, Arnason had
emphatically stated that if not for the fact that I was accused of a capital
crime, he would be more than willing to set me free on bail. Now there
were no capital crimes. Arnason's words were on the record. The argument
he had invoked when he rejected our bail motion no longer held water.
According to the judge's own argument, I was now "legally" eligible for
bail.
In my joy that Fleeta, the other brothers, and I could not be condemned to
death, I had forgotten all about bail. We howled then. It was the first time I
had laughed freely and deeply in sixteen months.
"We called Judge Arnason early this morning," Margaret said, "and he's
already agreed to hold a bail hearing today. Howard and Dobby are trying to
get copies of the Supreme Court decision now. They should be here in a few
minutes. And Franklin, Kendra and the rest of the Committee are frantically
trying to raise the bail money."
I had been close to euphoria when Margaret said that I would certainly be
out on bail soon. But the more concrete she became, the more she began to
talk about the facts and specifics, the more my euphoria dwindled away into
an overwhelming pessimism.
"This judge isn't going to let me out on bail," I said, "not after all these
months, not now, right on the eve of the trial. Just wait. He'll find a loophole
somehow."
I didn't want to dampen Margaret's enthusiasm, but I remembered only too
vividly our experience when the bail motion had been argued the last time.
Virtually everyone in the Committee had been positive that we would win. I
think that I was the only one — the lawyers included — who had profound
reservations about the possibility of being released. So when Arnason

announced that he could not "legally" release me, it was such a terrible
letdown for everyone, creating such an all-pervasive climate of gloom that
it was hard to pick up the pieces and start the movement rolling again. I felt
that another enormous defeat would be disastrous for the movement. There
was also the psychological damage such a defeat would have on me; I had
to husband my strength in order to survive. I could not allow myself to
build up my hopes for release, which would only be shattered by the
arbitrary words of a white man in the black robes of the judiciary. Certainly,
there was a remote possibility that I might be released on bail, but in the
opinion I was forming now, it was precisely that, a remote possibility.
Moreover I was certain that Arnason would not make the decision alone.
The real decision, I thought, would be made on levels of government much
higher than that of a Superior Court judge.
We entered chambers for the preliminary bail hearing. I had already plotted
out the scenario in my mind. Arnason, in his efforts to be the fairest judge
possible, would agree to reconsider his ruling and, in fact, would hold a
new bail hearing. But between now and the time he held the substantive
hearing, he would have pried into each one of his law books, read the
Supreme Court decision a thousand times for a loophole, and would
announce on the day of the hearing that he was terribly distressed, but the
law prohibited him from releasing me on bail.
When the three lawyers and I moved into the judicial chambers, we came
face to face with a despondent-looking prosecutor, Albert Harris. Howard
presented our extremely simple argument for bail: 1) The previous denial of
bail was based entirely on the capital nature of the charges against me; 2)
Only hours ago, the Supreme Court had abolished the death penalty —
there was no such thing as a capital crime; 3) Ergo, I should be granted bail
immediately.
So convinced were Howard and Dobby of the infallibility of their argument
that they had a bondsman waiting at the back door of the court. But my
pessimistic appraisal was correct. The judge set a date for yet another
hearing. He said he needed time to review the Supreme Court decision, and
that the prosecutor needed time to prepare his answer to our argument.

FEBRUARY 23
The bail hearing was set for Wednesday — in chambers. The judge
responded to Howard's vigorous resistance to a closed hearing by saying
that if we wanted to have the proceedings in open court, he would be only
too happy to accommodate us — but he would have to postpone the date of
the hearing for quite a while. We well understood the significance of this. In
my state of mind I regarded it as a very broad hint that the motion would
once more be denied. If not, why would he shy away from holding the
hearing before the public?
Kendra, Franklin and Margaret kept trying to persuade me that this time the
judge had no way out. In Margaret's "professional opinion," she kept
reminding me, the law could not supply him with a loophole. Not this time.
All of us, however, understood Howard's reticence on the subject. The last
time he had been so sure — and had suffered so much for me when the
denial came down. Almost everyone else was telling me to pack everything,
to be on the alert so that when the decision was rendered, I could walk
through the gates without a second's delay.
But I refused to pack, to make any gesture that might lead someone —
particularly the jailers — to believe that I really thought I was going to get
out. I recalled only too vividly, and with a great deal of depression, the
arrogant deportment of the Marin County matrons and sheriff's deputies
after the judge had said "denied" to our bail motion in June the year before.
Finally, quivering with nervousness, I had to submit to the handcuffs and be
led through the steel doors for the court appearance. I was hyper-conscious
of every gesture I had to make: how to hold my manacled hands outward,
turn my back to the car, sit down on the edge of the seat and slide myself to
the middle. I never accepted the help of a jailer, no matter how difficult it
was to get into the car. So many times before, I had strained to absorb every
little detail along the route from the jail to the courthouse. On some of these
trips I had enjoyed the sight of children playing in the street; on others I
examined with sadness the faces of Black maids on their way to work for
the Palo Alto rich. But always there was the stark and obscene Moffett
Airfield, the coven from which planes were sent to kill Laotians,
Vietnamese and Cambodians.

Now I might be seeing these scenes through the window of a police car for
the last time — yet I could not persuade myself that there was even a
remote possibility that it might be true. I felt as though I were walking a
tightrope. If I continued to reject the possibility of receiving bail, my
pessimism could send me plummeting into an abyss of depression. But if,
on the other hand, I succeeded in convincing myself that today would be the
day, I ran the risk of the fall from euphoria into an even deeper abyss.
During the next few minutes, I tried desperately to maintain my balance. I
kept looking for that medium between total pessimism and unrestrained
optimism. Just to walk the rope a little longer.
There we were, arranging ourselves in the judge's chambers for the
pronouncement of the verdict: Margaret, Howard, Dobby and myself on one
side of the room; Albert Harris and Clifford Thompson on the other, and the
judge in his great throne-like chair in the center.
Arnason's nonchalance must have been deliberate. Because of the casual
way he announced his decision, we had no opportunity to let loose our
screams of triumph. Sixteen months of imprisonment were coming to a
close. Just like that.
The lawyers discussed conditions of bail with the judge. Without yet feeling
the impact of my impending freedom, I wondered why he had finally
decided to set me free. It was certainly not because he personally wanted to
release me before trial. If that had been the case, he could have let me out
months ago. He would not have had to wait for the abolition of the death
penalty. Neither was it only because of the new court decision that Arnason
had granted our motion. He could have very easily accepted the prosecutor's
proposition that the Supreme Court decision would not be final for ninety
days yet; therefore, he should wait out those three months and release me
then — assuming no revisions were made in the decision. (Later I
discovered that every judge in the state of California who had heard a bail
motion on the basis of the abolition of the death penalty had followed the
prosecutor's suggestion and waited out the ninety days.)
It was not the judge.
It was not the law.

Only one other explanation remained. That very morning, the judge himself
had given me a glimpse into what had motivated him to grant bail.
He spoke about ". . . the mail I've received in the last two days and the
telephone calls, none of which I have personally taken, but which my staff
has taken, from . . . a tremendous number of states and telegrams from
foreign countries. It is a case of amazing interest."
The real reason he felt compelled to hand down a decision in our favor had
to do with the mushrooming defense campaign. Arnason did not mean to
imply that he was "yielding to public pressure." Yet it was clear that the
tremendous agitation of millions of people had affected him.
This realization brought to mind the many heated arguments we had had
around the bail movement — arguments which usually found me alone on
one side and Fania, Kendra, Franklin and the other Committee leaders on
the other. It had been about a year since the bail campaign was launched. I
had profound reservations about devoting so much of the energy of the
campaign to the single question of bail. In the first place, I had been certain
that there would not be the flimsiest chance of victory. In the second place I
thought the political content of the bail issue too weak. It did not permit
people to express their resistance to the system of repression, which was not
only behind my own imprisonment but was why so many others were
languishing in prison.
Only after many months had passed did I begin to understand my own
misjudgment. True, the demand for bail was not a revolutionary demand.
True, it did not of itself expose the rotten core of the capitalist system. But
precisely because a bail demand was something which could appeal to
anyone who wanted to side with justice, it allowed the campaign to reach
out to many thousands of people who at that time could not have been
stimulated to call for my complete freedom. They would not go on record
demanding my freedom, but they would go on record demanding that I be
released pending the determination of my innocence — or guilt — by a
court of law.
The participation of so many people had been in itself phenomenal, but
what impressed me most and what convinced me of the correctness of the

bail fight was the way in which the people who waged the fight began to
evolve politically. Many of them began to involve themselves in other areas
of the campaign. Once they had been exposed to the realities of the prison
and judicial systems, they were forced to give serious consideration to the
political repression we spoke about. In learning about my case they learned
about the Soledad Brothers, about the subhuman conditions of the jails,
about the indeterminate-sentence law, under which George had been given a
term of from one year to life for something which, had he been white and
well-off, would have resulted in probation at worst. They learned about
racism and how it pervaded every corner of the prison system. And they
learned about the dynamic which makes racism an essential ingredient of
the political persecution of revolutionaries and progressives. Many who
began, reluctantly, demanding bail, ended up as strong and effective leaders
of the campaign.
Arnason told us that the defense and the prosecution had to agree on the
conditions of bail before he could formally set the bond, which he said
would be $102,500 — of which $2,500 had to be paid directly to the court
in cash. The prosecution, of course, tried to see that, once on the outside, I
would be imprisoned within so many restrictions that I might as well be in
jail.
The battle raged on. Harris used the opportunity to lash out against the
Committee (whose presence always seemed to offend him personally). He
insisted I was not to attend or participate in anything that was organized by
or had anything whatever to do with the National United Committee to Free
Angela Davis. If he had had his way, I would not have been able to
associate with my own sister, because she was one of the national
coordinators of the defense campaign. Harris seemed to see as his main
enemy not me, but rather this multitudinous movement which had risen up
to jam his apparatus of persecution.
It seemed as if many hours had gone by when we had finally reached the
point of agreement — or rather of truce. Outside, a large assembly of sisters
and brothers had gathered to wait out the hearing and receive news of the
decision firsthand. What we knew from the opening moments of the
hearing, they knew not at all. When Howard and Dobby had to get legal

papers from the office, the judge instructed them to keep silent about his
decision, to speak to no newsperson, to go directly to the office and come
directly back. Margaret and I went into the jury deliberation room to wait.
We hoped that Howard would ignore — just a little — the judge's
instructions.
Suddenly a huge roar was heard in the courthouse. Cheers, screams,
laughter. The message had gotten to the people. And it was their own
victory they were claiming. It was at that moment that the emotions I had
had to contain during that long hearing were suddenly unleashed. It was
right that it should be so; that my own happiness should emerge and merge
with the emotions of those who had created it.
Howard and Dobby returned shortly. I told Howard that I knew he would
not be able to keep the bail a secret when he went out.
"But I didn't say anything," Howard insisted. "I walked out with as straight
a face as possible. I could see how tense and upset Franklin and Kendra and
the others were. Still, I kept walking. Then Franklin ran up to me, and all I
did was smile. I was smiling all over — I couldn't help it. Franklin didn't
need anything else. He hugged me, Kendra, and then all pandemonium
broke loose."
Now we had to get down to the concrete. Where was the money and
property for the bond coming from? There were problems with the
bondsman, Howard said. The one they had expected to use (a so-called
"movement" bondsman) had apparently gotten cold feet at the last moment
and begun talking about the way Eldridge Cleaver had split the country.
This bondsman had proved himself such a racist, Howard said, that even if
he changed his mind, we couldn't use him on principle.
In situations where bad news had to be broken, Howard had a way of
assuming a fatherly air. There in the jury room, he told me very tenderly
that I should expect to have to hole up for a few days while the bond was
raised and a bondsman was found.
There had been Aretha Franklin's public promise some months before to put
up the money for the bond. Now she was out of the country, but when my

mother reached her, she said she was still willing to go bail for me. The
problem was that she had to remain abroad for a while longer, and the
money could not be released without her personal signature.
The Committee kept on looking. They quickly raised $2,500 to be handed
over to the court and $10,000 to be kept on hand for the 10 percent bail
bondsman's fee when the $100,000 in property was found. This time, when
I rode back to jail, my hands cuffed, in the caravan of armed men, I felt
strong. What had just unfolded was incontrovertible proof of the power of
the people.
Back in my cell, I lay down feeling a profound sadness. Why me and not
the others? I could not get rid of a sense of guilt. But I knew that my
freedom would be significant only if I used it to push on for the freedom of
those whose condition I had shared.
All of a sudden people were coming back to my cell. Franklin said that I
would be getting out right away. What did he mean? Stephanie came in
with this same cryptic news. Then Howard explained that they had found
someone who was willing to put up his property as bond. Someone who had
simply appeared, attracted to us by the magnetism of the movement. A
white farmer from Fresno County, who had inherited a large stretch of land
from his father, and who was a sympathizer with our movement. Soon there
was news of another possibility. The bondsman whose office was
downstairs from our legal offices in San Jose had decided to take over the
operation. Negotiations were being conducted right outside the jail. Finally
Howard came in with the joltingly exciting news: the bond had definitely
been raised; all that remained was the paper work! I wanted to scream with
joy. But the sluggish jail bureaucracy hindered the natural flow of my
emotions. Every second of waiting now was like the months and seasons I
had spent waiting behind bars. I could not shed the ugly jail clothes fast
enough and pull on the purple pants Kendra had brought — pants too small
for her and certainly too tight for me. My hands were trembling so I could
hardly dress. Yet, seconds later, I was out front at the booking desk waiting
for the jailers (who were silently burning with rage) to push the buttons
which would fling open the gates.

The first gate was sliding open at its own maddeningly slow pace. One step
and that threshold was crossed. My heart pounded as I waited for the gate
behind me to slam shut with the hateful banging sound that had seared my
nerves so many times before. This was the last time. I stepped through the
next gate that was opening before me and was greeted by a tumultuous roar.
I threw my arms around the first person I saw outside, Refu, a brother I had
known in L.A. I wanted to embrace every sister and brother in the crowd.
Jail, imprisonment, sheriffs, chains — all that was far behind. For security
reasons we had to leave the jail grounds quickly. Refu gently reminded me
that I would have time to see all the people in safer surroundings. Margaret
and I got into Victoria Mercado's yellow Mustang and plowed through the
supporters and reporters who had converged on the car. Speeding down the
freeway, we screamed, laughed and kissed each other. I was out there; no
guards, no police car, no handcuffs. "Everyone's meeting over at Bettina
and Jack's," someone said.
When we walked into the house, my face was hurting from smiling and
laughing so much. Margaret's six-year-old son, Hollis, and Bettina and
Jack's four-year-old, Joshua, were both there. With the special tenderness
that young children can show, Joshua asked me, "Angela, are you really
free?" And Hollis was so ecstatic he flung his arms around my neck.
There were the members of the national staff, the leaders and activists from
the San Jose Committee, and committees from throughout the Bay Area, all
gathered under one roof. I thought back on all the difficulties we had
confronted trying to organize the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. My
admiration for the leaders of my committee was limitless. I was meeting
many of them for the first time, all these beautiful sisters and brothers who
had snatched my life from the pale hands of racist persecution.
I met in a back room with the leaders of the Chicano Defense Organization.
El Comite Para la Defensa de los Presos Politicos had given special
attention to my case. Their support was critical in Santa Clara County,
where the Chicano population outnumbered the Blacks. Victoria Mercado, a
Chicana sister who had joined the national staff of the Committee very
early, had spent many months working in San Jose with El Comite.

Throughout the evening an unbroken stream of people came in. In the midst
of all that, I picked up the telephone and dialed Birmingham. Mother and
Daddy. Knowing the deep personal pain they had suffered, and their
complete devotion to the fight, I felt happier for their sake than I did for my
own. Our emotions were so high that the telephone seemed more a barrier
than a medium of communication. Then I had to call my brother Benny and
his wife Sylvia. Their commitment was both personal and political, and we
had come to love each other even more. Then the New York calls. I had to
reach Charlene, who had tackled the formidable job of handling the national
campaign. Afterward I called Winnie. Henry Winston, chairman of our
Party, and Gus Hall, our General Secretary, had together carried the
message of the campaign to the world.
Then a problem insinuated itself. Franklin ran it down. Hundreds had
assembled at Solidarity Center — the office of the San Jose Committee —
to celebrate.
They were waiting impatiently for me to drop by. Since the bail order
included a prohibition on my speaking to or being present at any large
gathering organized by the Committee, the suggestion was that I not go.
What should I do? The first violation of my bail condition could be seized
upon as a reason for putting me back in jail. Should I play it safe and follow
the judge's order to the t? For some selfish concern for this little bit of
freedom, should I ignore the sisters and brothers who had given so much?
Court order or no court order, I was accountable only to those who had
fought with and for me. If in fulfilling my obligations to them, I was risking
my freedom, then so be it. If I stayed with the people, I would never be
alone.
As we entered the Solidarity Center the crowd broke into a long, thunderous
ovation — an ovation that almost made up for my last eighteen months in
clandestinity and prison.

***

We had already decided that I would move in with Margaret. Bob and
Barbara Lindsay, friends of ours in San Jose, had lent her a house for the
duration of the case. For sixteen months Margaret had visited me in jails —
New York, Marin County, Santa Clara; now it was strange to know that we
could go to sleep and wake up under the same roof. Like many years ago,
when she spent the summer in our house in Birmingham, or when I stayed
with her family in New York.
It was futile to even try to fall asleep, so I spent these first hours of silence
and darkness in thought. It was frightening to think about the profound
impact jail had had on me. My responses were still geared to the sparseness
of jail surroundings, to the thick hostility pervading the whole environment.
Being accustomed to sleeping on a slab only slightly wider than my body, it
felt peculiar to be able to roll over in Margaret's big bed.
There was something else about this house that saddened me and broke the
spell of celebration. The house had belonged to Barbara Lindsay's mother, a
beautiful woman named Emma Stern. I had come to know her as the whitehaired old lady, lines deeply etched in her face, who had written the first
pamphlet on the Soledad Brothers. Over seventy years old, she had been
one of the most active leaders of the Soledad Defense Committee. In the
summer of 1971 she fell ill. For a while she was in and out of the hospital
and seemed to be recovering. When George was killed, the forces keeping
her alive must have been consumed by sorrow. Shortly after George's
funeral, Emma Stern died.

FEBRUARY 24
There was not enough time to savor the first morning of sun shining on the
lush backyard. I wanted to abandon myself to primitive sensations:
stretching out on the grass, soaking up the solar warmth and energy I had
missed so much in my succession of cells. But I had to restrain this
compulsion to touch trees, watch clouds and listen to the sound of children's
voices. In a little while I had to face the press and confront the media and
the millions they reach.

Just then the bell announced Fania's arrival. She had worked so hard on the
campaign, traveling throughout the world, that she was not even there when
I was released. She had had a speaking engagement that night in Idaho. We
embraced each other, full to bursting with the deferred joy of the last
eighteen months. Sisters, we had become comrades.
After the press conference, we made our way to Bettina and Jack's, where
Gus Hall was waiting to see me. Gus understood better than anyone what I
was feeling. He had spent some eight years in Leavenworth Federal
Penitentiary. He described the moment when they first learned that the
judge had granted him bail. The news arrived in the midst of a session of
the Party Congress. They were torn, he said, between the impulse to make
the announcement immediately and the knowledge that the news would
hopelessly disrupt the remainder of the meeting. They risked disruption,
and the rest of the day's business gave way. Accompanying Gus on this trip
was Luis Figueroa, a leader of the Communist Party and Senator from
Chile. Short, with a huge mustache falling over his lips, he was like a
benevolent uncle. In his warm, down-to-earth manner, Gus asked me
whether I'd like to have dinner with a few comrades from the area. I
accepted, and someone reminded me that we must hurry to meet my
mother's plane.
I had suffered through such painful prison visits with my mother. She was
such a sensitive person, especially about her children, I could only begin to
sense the anguish my imprisonment caused her. If there was a single
overriding personal reason why I wanted to be free, it was for my mother's
sake.
As she stepped off the jet that afternoon, there was a radiance about her
which I had never seen before. Eisa, my young niece, was in her arms. In an
instant, we were entangled in hugs. No jailers to sully the privacy of this
meeting.
After dinner, when I had finished one glass of champagne — all I dared to
drink — I toasted practically everyone who was present. Spontaneously we
began to sing "The Internationale": "Arise ye prisoners of starvation . . ."
and immediately afterward "The Negro National Anthem." My mother's

voice sang loud and clear: "Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven
ring . . ." Even the Black waiters joined in.

FEBRUARY 25
The burly white policeman in charge was evidently jarred by my
appearance. His voice quivered with rage as he told me to step behind the
white line over there. How many mug shots did this make?
Like the other cops lining the walls, he was wearing a dark-blue jumpsuit
with a matching baseball cap. One could have easily mistaken him for a
parking-lot attendant, a television repairman or an auto mechanic. But there
was that heavy pistol swinging from his waist, and the two-foot truncheon
his right hand was so tightly gripping.
When the photographer was done, the same fury-laden voice directed me to
another white line — this one reserved for the women. My steps heavy with
hesitation, I moved from the line to the other side of the screen. I held my
breath while they frisked my body, dug their fingers in my hair, and asked
me to lower my underpants.
Kendra, Victoria, Franklin and Rodney were already acquainted with the
special routine in the San Francisco County Courthouse for those attending
the Soledad Brothers' trial. But Mother, Sylvia and Benny were incredulous,
outraged and horrified by this degrading prelude to the court session.
It was frightening to realize the regular trial-goers had to submit themselves
to these humiliating searches day after day. Undoubtedly, the repetition
conferred a dangerous aura of normality on this manifestly fascist routine.
Undoubtedly, it had already created a dangerous precedent for political
trials in the future.
Names were recorded, special seats assigned, photos taken for the San
Francisco Police and the FBI. And inside, we in the spectator section were
separated from the scene of the trial by a bulletproof shield extending the
entire width of the courtroom.

Behind the plexiglass, things took on a staged appearance. Ritualistically, it
seemed, the figures marched in to assume their habitual places: defense,
prosecution, the twelve jurors and four alternates; finally, John and Fleeta,
whose strength and beauty seemed to split the bulletproof glass. We reached
out for one another.
It was difficult to concentrate on the facts at hand, so thoroughly was I
haunted by the thought that I was free and they were still in chains. The
circle had closed. As a free woman before, I had vowed to fight relentlessly
for their freedom. John, Fleeta and George . . . This new freedom must be
no different.
This is what I had planned to tell John during the meeting the lawyers had
arranged for the lunch break. But I should have realized that things were
moving along too smoothly. Upstairs in the holding area, the Chicano guard
gave us the news. Unfortunately, he said, Judge Vauvaris had changed his
mind. No meeting with John Clutchette.
My immense disappointment subsided slightly when I realized that John's
cell was visible from the counter where I stood. The guard did not object
when I called out to him, telling him to hold tight and keep strong; it was
only a matter of time.
Downstairs a huge throng of people had gathered, and the press had been
alerted to my presence. Conceivably, because of this the judge could
construe my attendance at the Soledad Brothers' trial as a violation of the
bail order. But at this point, that didn't matter very much. What mattered
was that I reaffirm my commitment to the fight to free all political prisoners
— first and foremost, the Soledad Brothers. It was important not only
because it put me where I wanted to be — back in the struggle — but also
because of the meaning it would have for all the sisters and brothers who
had fought for my freedom. If I could not be satisfied with my freedom
alone, they could not be satisfied either.

PART SIX: Bridges
Walls turned sideways are bridges

E

arly one Saturday morning during my first year at Brandeis, my friend
Lani and I decided to hitchhike up north to see the fishing boats in
Gloucester, Massachusetts. We had plans to stay the night. But since we
knew no "adults" in Gloucester, we had to engage in a small transgression
of the ridiculously puritanical rules governing the conduct of female
students. Signing out of our dormitory, we indicated that we had permission
from our parents to visit a family in New York, whose name and address we
gave. (They were people who would know how to act if any checking was
done.)
Gloucester was magnificent, with its multicolored autumnal trees, the
massive beauty of its seaside boulders, its throng of ships and fishermen.
For hours we walked along the coast, then we toured the little streets dating
from the eighteenth century. Though we were practically moneyless, a nice
man in a little restaurant gave us as much food as we could eat and wouldn't
hear of letting us work off our meal.
When the sun's warmth began to fade away, we had to reconsider our
original intention to sleep out on the beach. With no money, we could
hardly think about checking into a motel, so we said good-bye to the friends
we had made in the town and headed back down the highway with our
thumbs as our only means of transportation.
It was late by the time we reached the campus in Waltham, later than the
curfew hour for first-year female students. If we risked crossing the campus
to Hamilton quadrangle, where our dorm was situated, we would probably
be picked up by the security men and charged with curfew violation. Even
if we weren't picked up during the run for it, it was very probable that we'd
be caught as we tried to get into the dorm unnoticed.

Ridgewood — the men's dorms — were on the edge of the campus, right
off the highway where our ride had dropped us. There wouldn't be much
security around those dorms, so we decided to ask a friend to give up his
room for the night. When we woke him, he was quite willing to find
another bed and give us the two beds in his room for the night. The next
morning we got up early and made it back to our rooms without incident.
Somehow — we never found out exactly how — word got back to the Dean
of Women that we had "spent the night in the men's dorms." She called us
in to say that we were going to have to stand trial before the women's
tribunal. Lani and I were incredulous. This whole thing was absurd — stand
trial before a group of upper-class women brainwashed into believing that
because we were young women, what we had done was immoral. We had to
appear before this tribunal or be expelled from the university — because we
had simply wanted to enjoy the beauty of an autumn day, and had not
allowed the rules to inhibit us.
In the bare, windowless room, Lani and I sat on one side of the long table.
The members of the tribunal sat on the other side.
"Don't you know that you have marred the reputation of this university by
accepting rides from strangers?"
We both looked with disgust at the student who pronounced these words.
"Brandeis' reputation must really be marred," I retorted, "with all the
hitchhiking that's done around here."
"Decent students do their hitchhiking on the campus, and not on strange
roads."
A long contest followed, with the tribunal women hurling their invective at
us, and Lani and me treating their words with the derision they merited.
As we knew when we walked into the room, the verdict was guilty, and the
sentence was the maximum. For thirty days we were "dormed," meaning
that we had to be in our rooms every day after dinner and remain there or
give proof that we were studying in the library for the evening.

I never forgot the self-righteous condemnation of that tribunal. They were
convinced they had a right to play God, master and mother. Since we
refused to accept their way of life, we were "moral criminals" and they
wanted to see us punished.

FEBRUARY 28
As the first potential jurors were brought into the courtroom, I thought back
on that little mock trial which had unfolded more than a decade ago. I felt
the same sense of unreality, the feeling that the same sort of game was
being played, the contestants with the dangerously obsolete ideas having an
unfair advantage.
But this was another game — more deadly. And the risks were far higher
than thirty days in my bedroom.
On the desk directly in front of our table, a brown wooden raffle box is spun
around. When it comes to a stop, the clerk reaches inside and pulls out a
slip of paper. He reads the name carefully, pronouncing each syllable
distinctly. People upstairs are watching and listening on a television
monitor. Downstairs in the courtroom we are keenly conscious of the
cameras and microphones transmitting our actions to that roomful of
strange people corresponding to the names and numbers on our jury list.
Shortly after her name was called, Mrs. Marjorie Morgan appeared and took
her seat in the witness box. Mrs. Marjorie Morgan, who described herself as
the wife of a retired tractor shop owner. Mrs. Marjorie Morgan . . .
provincial and biased . . . Mrs. Marjorie Morgan, who didn't hesitate to tell
Leo, who was examining her, that she thought I was "probably guilty" of
murder, kidnapping and conspiracy, and that I never should have been
allowed to teach at UCLA. It was illegal and improper, she insisted, for
Communists to teach at a university. The only decent trait she exhibited was
her honesty about her inability to judge me fairly. The judge was thus
forced to eliminate her from the panel.

The questioning of potential jurors — the voir dire — was divided into two
parts. First the potential juror was asked about his or her exposure to
publicity about me and the case. If the judge was satisfied that pretrial
publicity had not created irreversible prejudice against me, then that person
was temporarily seated in one of the twelve jury seats. When the jury box
was full, the second stage of the voir dire began, during which we
intensively questioned the potential jurors on a whole range of subjects. We
attempted to draw out any hidden racist, pro-police or other biases which
might surface as a result of evidence produced during the trial.
The next day an even bolder anti-Communist was examined. William
Waugh, when asked about his attitude toward Communists, said that "if
anyone wants to be a Communist, it seems they could go back where they
come from." That, he admitted, included me as well — if I wanted to be a
Communist, I should go back to where Communists are in power. But
because he would not agree that this position would affect his ability to give
me a fair trial if I were tried for something unrelated to communism, he was
not unseated. For the time being, he remained on the panel.
But this was also the day when Mrs. Janie Hemphill was called in. Mrs.
Hemphill was the only Black woman in the entire pool of potential jurors.
A robust woman in her early forties, she pleasantly insisted that she could
give me a fair trial. But before she even uttered a word, we were certain that
Albert Harris, the prosecutor, would strike her from the panel at the earliest
possible moment.
A few days later, when she was voir dired in depth, she poignantly
described her background. I was so moved by what she said that I almost
forgot that this was a part of the process of selecting a jury that might send
me back to the other side of the walls. When Howard asked her about the
jobs she had held, she took us back to Arizona, where she had picked cotton
and cut onions at the age of twelve. "Later," she said, "I was a short-order
cook. I went to Los Angeles and I worked as a short-order cook . . . And I
also worked in a sandwich factory for those trucks that pass by . . . When I
first came to San Jose, I did domestic work and I worked at Spivey's as a
dish-washer."

As she spoke, she reminded me of my mother — her fight to get out of
Good Water, Alabama, to get herself through high school and college doing
all the odd jobs she could find. All this in order to finally get a job teaching
in a little school.
Mrs. Hemphill's story was the universal story of the Black woman in a
world that wants to see her crushed. Mrs. Hemphill had overcome. My
mother had overcome. But many others had not. The system was poised
against us. That was what had come through so powerfully in Mrs.
Hemphill's words. My own present predicament was, on a different level,
evidence of that same politically, economically, socially hostile world
which almost every Black woman must contend with every day of her life.
On March 13, fifteen days after the jury selection had opened, Mrs.
Hemphill was eliminated by one of the prosecution's peremptory
challenges. She was the only Black person to have been questioned in the
witness box. Court was adjourned.
The next day, March 14, we accepted the jury as constituted. It was not
because we were satisfied with the people who sat in the box. By no means
— after all, the only Black person had been eliminated by Harris. Yet, from
our cursory investigation of the remainder of the jury venire, we were
convinced that the combination of jurors we had on March 14 was probably
better than anything else we could hope for. If we had continued to
challenge those whom we felt were most prejudiced, then it was certain that
Harris would challenge those whom we felt had the greatest inclinations
toward fairness. They would be picked off one by one, as he had already
picked off Janie Hemphill and the few others who did not seem totally
prosecution-prone.
We were hoping that our instincts were correct about Mrs. Mary Timothy,
whose son had been a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war. During
the voir dire, she had come across as a fiercely independent person who, we
thought, would know how to hold her own. If only she, and the few others
we had been vaguely pleased with, would look at the evidence objectively
and with intelligence, and would refuse to be swayed by the demagogic
tricks of the prosecution, we could hope for a hung jury at least.

When the jury was sworn in on March 14, it included a woman whose
presence on the panel had worried us from the very beginning. When
Howard had examined her on the question of communism, she had said that
Communists seek to obtain their goals "kind of by force."
"And when you say ‘force,'" Howard asked, "what are you referring to?
What do you mean?"
"Subversive," the woman answered, ". . . this type of thing. I really don't
know . . ."
"Now, you say a ‘subversive' type of thing. Could you tell us what a
subversive type of thing is, in your opinion?"
"I can reduce it," she said, "to terms of my eleven-year-old, and that would
be 'sneaky.'"
When Howard asked her how she would define "sneaky," she tried to
explain her use of that word by saying, "I kind of reduced it to an
oversimplification. I am just not that well educated. You read and hear
about their activities, that they try to promote riots. I don't know this to be a
fact. This is what we read in the paper."
Howard was convinced that she was putting on a show every time she tried
to appear naively unaware of things and thus capable of being a fair juror.
After all, she was the daughter of a retired sheriff's captain — a man who
had spent over twenty-five years of his life in what Mrs. Titcomb termed
"police work."
During the voir dire, Howard had asked her whether she had Black friends.
She answered, "Oh, we had some very dear Black friends many years ago
that moved away from this area. There is a family behind us that we are
friends with."
Asked when she last had Blacks in her home as social guests, she
responded, "Blacks in my home as social guests . . . My children have them
in almost daily." On March 14, she was sworn in, along with eleven other
jurors. But, a few days after the swearing of the jury, she was relieved of her

responsibilities. The spectators and the press were told that she was leaving
because of "personal reasons." Few people ever heard the real story.
Perhaps if the transcript had not been kept sealed, the media would not have
been so quick to praise the U.S. court system for its guaranteed fairness to
everyone.
It all started when the sketch and description of the jury appeared in the
papers on the day following our acceptance of it. Judge Arnason's clerk said
that a call came into his office that day from a person who identified herself
as the juror's daughter. The clerk described her voice as hysterical — all she
could say was "If my mother remains on the jury, God help Angela Davis."
The defense team and the prosecution had been urgently called into the
judge's chambers to hear the account of this incident. What did we suggest
be done? We insisted that the daughter be brought into chambers so that she
could elaborate on her fears that her mother was out to get me.
She was pale, of slight build and appeared to be much younger than her
eighteen years. It was apparent that she was not accustomed to such official
surroundings. She seemed timid and a bit frightened. I wanted to ask her
what it was that impelled her to take this great risk. Had she been reached in
some way by the movement for my freedom? It could only have been this
movement that had compelled her to become aware of her own individual
political responsibility, even if it entailed an attack on her mother.
I could not help feeling sorry for her as she stared apprehensively at all the
strange people sitting around the walls of the judge's chambers. Even the
judge felt moved, and in a fatherly gesture, he walked over to her, placed
his arm around her shoulder and told her gently that there was nothing to be
frightened about. When some of the terrible tension subsided, we were able
to get down to the business of the session. Yes, she was certain that her
mother would vote for a conviction, regardless of the evidence that was
presented. Her mother had never liked Black people, and had told her
daughter not to make friends with Black children. The one Black girl friend
the daughter had had as a child could not visit her at her house — not only
because her mother would not allow it, but also because the girl's parents
would not let her be subjected to a woman who was known in the

community for her anti-Black feelings. The daughter had cried on one of
her birthdays because her friend could not attend.
After we had waded our way through the facts of this episode, the daughter
began to relate, with not a small amount of confusion, a story about a Black
boyfriend of hers, on whom her mother had spewed her vitriolic racism.
The second stage of this encounter involved a meeting with the juror where
we confronted her with the accusations her daughter had made. Of course,
she insisted that everything her daughter had said was a lie. She said that
she and the daughter had never been able to get along — of all her children,
this was the one she liked least.
What about the little Black girl friend her daughter had not been allowed to
bring home as a child? The story was a fabrication, she insisted. Then, what
about the Black boyfriend? Her daughter had told her she had been raped,
according to the woman.
No, she had not lied during the voir dire. No, she would not voluntarily step
down. She felt she had a right to serve on this jury, and she was determined
to carry out her civic responsibilities.
This woman seemed ready to risk almost anything to stay on that jury and
convict me. We threatened to bring her daughter back in to confront her
face to face with the charges of racism. But she was more than willing to
face up to her daughter. We had to go further. Was she prepared to listen to
her daughter and all the other witnesses we could uncover make these
accusations on the witness stand, before the court, the spectators, the press
and the world? She reflected for a moment, and then decided that she would
back out altogether. The world was a little more than she was willing to take
on.

MARCH 27
When court recessed for lunch, Kendra and I were the last to leave.
Suddenly Leo came rushing back into the courtroom shouting, "The

Soledad Brothers were acquitted." We screamed, we hugged each other, we
jumped up and down. "The Soledad Brothers are free." Our loud,
unrestrained, joyous cries pealed through the empty courtroom.
I was laughing and crying with joy, but thinking also, Why not George? If
only they had let him live a little while longer.
Relaxing in his chambers, Judge Arnason had heard our wild yells and had
come rushing to the door. Looking somewhat frightened and probably
fearing the worst, he asked in a soft voice whether something had
happened. The three of us could only repeat what we had been screaming:
"The Soledad Brothers were acquitted."
This was the opening day of the trial. Two autumns, two winters, two
springs had already been consumed by the preliminary skirmishes. Now, at
last, we had moved into the final, decisive contest. And the exoneration of
John and Fleeta was like an omen portending our future victory.
This victory would confirm one of the fundamental elements of my defense:
the political character of my involvement in the movement to defend the
Soledad Brothers and the strategy of developing mass protests and mass
resistance to the persecution of the Brothers.
Harris had attempted to work up the jury with an absurd theory of my
having been impelled to commit murder, kidnapping and conspiracy by my
"boundless and all-consuming passion" for George. By purging his case of
the original political accusations, the prosecutor thought he was being
shrewd. In the indictment, the first "overt act" of the "conspiracy" had been
my participation in a rally on June 19, 1970, for the immediate freedom of
the Soledad Brothers. Policemen had testified before the Grand Jury that I
had advocated the release of the Soledad Brothers, at this rally, as well as in
other meetings and assemblies. Now, because so many people accepted the
idea that I was a political prisoner, the prosecution was on the defensive.
Harris was undoubtedly afraid to use the key evidence he had initially relied
upon. This was the impact of the mass campaign, the central theme of
which was the repressive, political character of the prosecution.

"There will be no evidence offered by the prosecution over the next few
weeks," he insisted before the jury, "of the exercise by the defendant of her
right of free speech and assembly under the First Amendment, except for
certain letters that she wrote. You will be satisfied that the case of the
prosecution does not rest in any degree whatever upon the nature of the
political views of the defendant, whatever they may be.
"The evidence will show that the claim of political persecution, the claim
that the defendant is a political prisoner, the claim that the defendant is the
subject of prosecution because of her political beliefs — all of these claims
are false and without foundation."
But if he weeded out the "political evidence," the prosecutor had to build
another framework for the case. This new framework was based on the
motive of passion. I simply wanted to liberate, he said, a man whom I
loved.
Throughout his opening statement, although he was diligently trying to
make political considerations seem totally irrelevant to the case, politics
kept creeping back in. "This morning," he said, "you heard of evidence
through her books that this teacher of philosophy is a student of violence.
[He was referring to two books, The Politics of Violence and Violence and
Social Change.] Other evidence that we will present will show the
defendant does not live only in the world of books and ideas, but that she is
committed to action, that she is committed to violence."
But then, he tried to backtrack: "Her own words will reveal that beneath the
cool academic veneer is a woman fully capable of being moved to violence
by passion. The evidence will show that her basic motive was not to free
political prisoners, but to free the one prisoner that she loved. The basic
motive for the crime was the same motive underlying hundreds of criminal
cases across the United States every day. That motive was not abstract. It
was not founded basically on any need, real or imagined, for prison reform.
It was not founded on a desire for social justice. It was founded simply on
the passion that she felt for George Jackson. . . ."
On the second day of the trial we had our chance to attack the prosecution's
case. Since we had decided a few days before that I would deliver the

opening statement to the jury, I had spent every moment of the last days
discussing it with the lawyers and preparing my notes. Now I felt certain
that we could tear the prosecution's case to pieces.
Our weapons were together. Our legal team was in good shape — Howard,
Margaret, Leo, Dobby and myself. The mass movement had unprecedented
global strength. Fania, Franklin, Charlene, Kendra, Rob, Victoria, Phyllis,
Stephanie, Bettina and the others on the staff were accomplished organizers.
They were preparing to steer the movement across the finish line.
Besides, this new twist, this new theory of passion that Harris had
propounded, left the state's case even shoddier, if that were possible, than it
had been in the beginning. This was a last-ditch approach to the trial,
developed and elaborated when it became clear that the political case would
simply not be accepted.
On this second day of the trial, as Victoria and Rodney Barnett, who were
in charge of my personal security, drove with me through the unfamiliar
San Jose streets, my thoughts were totally absorbed by the task I thought I
would soon be carrying out.
As we neared the Santa Clara Civic Center, we noticed an unusually large
crowd milling around the building. Armed sheriff's deputies were running
around the yard. Others were posted atop the roofs of the Civic Center
buildings.
Ignorant of what the commotion was all about, I thought that whatever it
was that was going down, it must be a part of the larger conspiracy to send
me to prison for life. Every day, people entering the courtroom —
spectators, press people, we ourselves, and even the jurors — had to submit
to metal detectors, humiliating frisks, and for the audience and the press,
cameras which took mug shots of them. Now the whole area was occupied
by deputies toting shotguns, rifles and machine guns.
Looking around the yard, I saw some of the jurors sitting on the municipal
court steps, and others on the benches on the opposite side of the yard.
Someone said there was an escape attempt in progress, involving prisoners

in the men's county jail located in the same complex of buildings as the
courthouse.
The sheriff's deputy guarding the back entrance, where the lawyers entered
the courtroom, refused to let me through.
The building was under emergency security measures, he said, and no one
could leave or enter. We discovered later that the press people had been
locked in the pressroom, the spectators had been locked in the corridor
outside the courtroom, and a few jurors who had already entered the
building were locked up in the jury room.
When the judge rescinded the security measures for the participants in the
trial, and we all gathered in the courtroom, he announced that the trial
would be adjourned until the next morning and immediately dismissed the
jurors for the day.
Apparently three men being held in the county jail while they waited to be
transferred to various prison facilities had decided to make a run for
freedom. They had taken hostages and had attempted to negotiate their
release. But, as if they were following the example of the San Quentin
guards, the sheriff's deputies moved at the first clear moment to shoot their
way out of the negotiations. The person who had been considered the leader
of the effort was killed, and the other two were captured.
The evening papers carried headlines like JAIL ESCAPE TRY AT
ANGELA TRIAL SITE. And a number of articles contained lengthy
comparisons between this incident and the August 7 revolt. Whether it was
planned this way or not, the suggestion planted in the minds of many who
read the accounts was that we had something to do with the escape attempt.
This episode, which came before we had even had a chance to present our
case to the jury, raised some very difficult questions for us. On the one
hand, the only way to ensure that I would not be judged by a jury with
prejudices grown sharper from their experience of the escape attempt would
be to move at once for a mistrial. But on the other hand, if we did move for
and were granted a mistrial, then the jury selection process would start from

scratch again. Since we felt we had already picked the very best jury Santa
Clara could offer, a new jury could only be worse.
The defense team and the campaign organizers met throughout the evening
before we finally agreed upon a definitive position: a brief voir dire of the
jurors to determine whether they had become more biased against me as a
result of the escape attempt they had witnessed.
The next day, at the conclusion of the individual examinations of the jurors,
we decided that the damage was not irreparable. We would move on with
the trial.

The podium was behind the prosecutor's table and slightly to the left.
Arranging my notes, preparing to begin our statement, I could see Harris
squirming in his seat.
"The prosecutor," I said to them, "has introduced you to a very long and
complicated path down which he hopes his evidence will lead you in the
course of this trial. He says that this path will point squarely in the direction
of my guilt. He says that his evidence is so conclusive that it will eliminate
every doubt in your minds with respect to my guilt, and that you will have
no choice but to convict me of these very serious crimes of murder,
kidnapping and conspiracy.
"But we say to you, members of the jury, that the prosecutor's evidence
itself will demonstrate to you that this case is no case at all. The evidence
will show that I am totally innocent of all the charges against me. It will
reveal that the prosecutor's case is entirely without substance. It will reveal
that his case is based on conjecture, guesswork, speculation . . .
"The prosecutor began on Monday by telling you that this case against me,
basically, is a case involving the crime of passion. He said that my passion
for George Jackson was so great that it knew no bounds, that it had no
respect for human life.

"He went on to say later in the statement that I was not concerned with the
struggle to free political prisoners, that I was not concerned with the
movement to improve the character of prison life in this country. He told
you that he intends to prove that I was exclusively interested in the freedom
of one man, of George Jackson, and that that interest was motivated by pure
passion.
"Members of the jury . . . the evidence will show that when I was indicted,
the Grand Jury of Marin County considered evidence of my participation in
the movement to free the Soledad Brothers, not only George Jackson, but
also Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette.
"The evidence will show that the first overt act of the conspiracy count
consists of a description of a rally in which I participated, around the
freedom of the Soledad Brothers. On June 19, 1970, I was exercising
constitutionally guaranteed rights — rights guaranteed to me by the First
Amendment — when I participated in this rally which dealt with the
persecution of the Soledad Brothers, with other political prisoners, and
prison conditions in general. Yet, this was supposed to be the first overt act
of a conspiracy to free the Soledad Brothers, through the events of August
seventh.
"The evidence will show, members of the jury, that this indictment
provoked widespread concern, concern throughout the world, that I was a
victim of political repression. I ask you whether or not it would not be
reasonable to infer that the prosecutor is aware that no fair-minded juror
would convict me on the basis of such evidence. Therefore, he has said to
you that he will present no evidence of my participation in the struggle to
free the Soledad Brothers. What he has done is that he has transformed the
character of this case.
"Now he will have you believe that I am a person who would commit the
crimes of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy, having been motivated by
pure passion. He would have you believe that lurking behind my external
appearance are sinister and selfish emotions and passions which, in his
words, know no bounds. "Members of the jury, this is utterly fantastic. It is
utterly absurd. Yet it is understandable that Mr. Harris would like to take
advantage of the fact that I am a woman, for in this society women are

supposed to act only in accordance with the dictates of their emotions and
passions. I might say that this is clearly a symptom of the male chauvinism
which prevails in our society."
I had not realized that these remarks would strike such a responsive chord
in a number of the women jurors. I tried throughout my statement to watch
the jury closely for its responses. As I spoke about the male supremacist
character of Harris' case, heads nodded and receptive expressions broke out
on some of the female faces. They too had known the experience of being
accused because they were women of acting irrationally and according to
emotions rather than logic. "The evidence will show," I continued, "that my
involvement in the movement to free the Soledad Brothers began long
before I had any personal contact with George Jackson. You will learn that
shortly after Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette and George Jackson were
indicted by a Monterey County Grand Jury . . . I began to attend public
meetings designed to lay the basis for a movement to publicly defend them
from the unfounded charges that they had killed a guard behind the walls of
Soledad Prison . . .
"The evidence will show that my own efforts to free George Jackson always
expressed themselves within the context of a movement to free all the
Soledad Brothers and to free all men and women who are unjustly
imprisoned."
Describing the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee, I told the jury that ". .
. our meetings were open to anyone who wanted to participate in them . . .
We organized demonstrations, rallies, leafleting campaigns and various
other informational and educational activities. . . .
"Members of the jury, you will see when testimony is adduced to this effect,
that we sought out those kinds of activities which permitted us to involve
ever greater numbers of people in the public defense of the Soledad
Brothers."
And emphasizing what we felt would be the critical element of our defense,
I told them that "testimony will make it clear that we felt that the influence
of large numbers of people would help win them an acquittal and that they
would be freed in that way from an unjust prosecution.

"Members of the jury, we were correct in our understanding of the Soledad
Brothers' case, for Monday morning as you sat here listening to the
prosecution's opening statement, and as you heard that I was not interested
in furthering the movement to free the Soledad Brothers, the ultimate fruits
of our labor were attained. The twelve men and women who, for a period of
many, many months had listened to all the evidence that the prosecution
could muster against the Soledad Brothers, ended up, in the courtroom in
San Francisco, by pronouncing the two surviving Soledad Brothers not
guilty. And if George Jackson had not been struck down by a San Quentin
Prison guard in August of last year, he too would have been freed in that
way from that unjust prosecution."
I continued the statement by describing in detail the activities of the
Soledad Defense Committee, and placing them in the framework of my
experiences in the struggle for Black Liberation and for the rights of all
working people — Chicano, Puerto Rican, Indian, Asian and white. I spoke
about my experiences in the Black Student Council at the university in San
Diego, the Black Student Alliance, the Black Congress, SNCC, the
California Teachers Federation, the Black Panther Party, the Che-Lumumba
Club and the antiwar movement.
I tried to show the jury how my activities around the defense of the Soledad
Brothers were part of a history of involvement in the movement to defend
and free political prisoners such as Huey Newton, the New York Panther
21, Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, the Los Angeles Panther 18 and the
seven other brothers from Soledad Prison also charged with killing a guard.
"The evidence will show," I told them, "that I corresponded with the
Soledad 7, and that I expressed to them my love and my compassion and
my solidarity with their struggle. . . .
"The prosecutor has said that this trial has nothing to do with a political
frame-up, but, members of the jury, during the entire time I was involved in
the movement to free the Soledad Brothers, I was the object of an extensive
spy campaign. The prosecutor himself is in possession of numerous reports
made to various police agencies throughout the state of California about my
activities on behalf of the Soledad Brothers. He has police reports on rallies

where I spoke. He has films of demonstrations where I and others
proclaimed our support for the Soledad Brothers.
"The prosecutor contends that I was not interested in bringing about prison
reform, but he has in his possession police reports made specifically for the
administration at Soledad Prison concerning my activities.
"The prosecutor contends that, during the period prior to August 7, I was a
mere creature of passion, that I was not genuinely striving toward the
elimination of repression in the prisons, but he has evidence that will refute
his own contentions, evidence gathered by an entire network of police spies
and spies from the Department of Corrections on the content of my political
efforts to free George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette.
"But, members of the jury, he has told you that you will not see this
evidence. He will present no evidence of that sort. He will present no such
evidence because, if he did, it would show you the process whereby an
innocent person can be set up and accused of outrageous crimes. No, he will
not bring this evidence to you. He will continue to tell you that I am not the
person you see standing before you, but rather an evil, sinister creature
pushed to the brink of disaster by ungovernable emotions and passions."
When the time came to deal with my relationship with Jonathan, I placed it
within the context of the relationships I had developed with the families of
all three Brothers. Referring to the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee, I
told the jury that "Jonathan Jackson was a unique part of our group, for he
brought with him the angry frustrations and concerns of a young man who
had no memories of his older brother except those which had been obscured
by prison bars. Jonathan was a child of seven when his brother was first
taken to prison, and for ten long years he accompanied various members of
his family to various prisons throughout the state of California to visit with
his brother.
"These visits must have left an indelible impression on him about what a
prisoner's life was like, and I know, though he was only seventeen years
old, he must have been extremely and intimately sensitive to the plight, the
frustrations, the feelings of depression and futility that men like James
McClain, Ruchell Magee and William Christmas must have felt. And I

might say that now, in retrospect, I understand the frustration, the very deep
frustration and the very deep desperation that Jonathan must have been
experiencing."
Next I moved on to the question of the guns and the other physical evidence
which Harris was using to try to prove that I was guilty. I touched upon the
facts which we did not contest:
"This is a sick kind of game which the prosecutor has been playing. He has
invented a scheme, a diagram, a conspiracy, and then he fits his conspirator,
his criminal into that picture. There is a crime scene, a plan. And he seeks
ways of pulling me into it so that it still appears plausible. But since I
committed no crimes and since all my activities were open and above
board, the prosecutor is left with only one alternative. He must shape his
circumstantial case out of the ordinary circumstances of everyday life. And
he leaves it to you, members of the jury, to supply the missing link which
converts ordinary activity into criminal conduct." After two hours of
explaining the outlines of our defense to the jury, I felt confident enough to
tell them:
". . . We have reached the conclusion of our opening statement, and we ask
you to think toward the conclusion of this trial, when you will have sat
patiently, almost to the point of exhaustion, and will have heard all sides of
the heated contest which is to unfold in this courtroom, when you will have
sat in calm reflection and deliberation. We have the utmost confidence that
your verdict will be a just verdict. We have the utmost confidence that your
verdict will be the only verdict that the evidence and justice demand in this
case. We are confident that the case will terminate with your
pronouncement of two words —'Not Guilty'."
Of course, we were not nearly so certain as I had made it appear, for we
knew that some of the jurors were probably more prosecution-prone than
objective judges of fact. The legal team had observed them meticulously
during both the state's presentation and our own. A couple of them seemed
far more engrossed in the story the prosecution had concocted than in the
defense I had presented. Yet at the same time, we thought that a number of
them, such as Ralph Delange, the maintenance electrician, and Mary
Timothy, had listened very carefully to the analysis I had proposed.

At the end of my statement, I was exhausted and kept wondering whether I
had said the right things in the right way. The outline I had given them was
going to have to serve as the background against which they would judge
months of prosecution testimony. (Harris said, at first, that his case would
last six months.) Had I put it forcefully enough for them to retain our
analysis of the facts — or would they remember only the neat little scheme
the prosecutor had provided? There would be no more argument until the
very end of the trial and the conclusion was so far away.
Coolly and calmly, Judge Arnason assumed control over the courtroom.
"Thank you, Miss Davis. Before we proceed with the calling of the first
witness, we will take a recess at this time, and this will hopefully be the
regular recess of the afternoon, so we will give you a little break time.
Thank you."

Testimony began. The prosecution called to the stand several women who,
on August 7, 1970, had been listening to Ruchell Magee testify on behalf of
James McClain when Jonathan came into the courtroom. Harris was visibly
stunned when one of the women described McClain's manner as "almost
gentle."
Harris presented to the jury horrifying, bloody photographs, in poster-sized
enlargements. It was only because of Judge Arnason's sense of propriety
that the prosecutor did not succeed in entering into evidence the pictures of
Judge Haley with half his head blown off by a shotgun blast.
I had to close my eyes and keep my anguish and rage to myself when he
brought out the photographs of Jonathan lying dead inside the van, and on
the cement where he had been dragged with a rope.
During the first phase of the testimony, the prosecutor had strategically
decided to avoid all mention of my name. He simply wanted to establish
what had happened at each instant as the rebellion had unfolded.
We used our cross-examination to defend Jonathan, Ruchell, McClain and
Christmas, to refute Harris' allegations that they were brutal terrorists.

Already this early in the trial, his theories began to erode, both because of
their internal defectiveness and as a result of our attacks during crossexamination.
He could not prove, for example, definitively — "beyond a reasonable
doubt," in judicial parlance — that there had been a demand advanced to
"free the Soledad Brothers." We pursued this because Ruchell had written in
a publicized letter to me that the plan had been totally different — it had not
been to hold hostages until the Soledad Brothers, or any other prisoners,
were freed. It had not even been to guarantee their own escape. They
wanted simply to reach a radio station, Ruchell said, where they could
expose to the world the railroads so many of them had received instead of
trials, the incredibly wretched conditions of their existence behind walls
and, in particular, the recent murder by San Quentin guards of a prisoner
named Fred Billingslea.
Many of the witnesses who had been on the scene in the courtroom had not
heard "Free the Soledad Brothers." Others heard no demand at all. Some
had heard "Free the brothers at Folsom." Captain Teague — the same
Captain Teague who had overseen all the operations around me when I was
in the Marin jail — was certain he had heard "Free all political prioners,"
but he admitted that this was a slogan widely used at rallies and
demonstrations of the Left, and could have very well been an exclamation
as opposed to a ransom demand. Sheriff Montanas of Marin County,
according to the theory of the prosecution, had received a telephone call
from McClain from the courtroom. It was during this phone conversation
that McClain is supposed to have demanded the freedom of the Soledad
Brothers in exchange for the hostages. Naturally, everyone was expecting
the sheriff to relate this conversation to the jury from the witness stand. Yet
Montanas never testified for the prosecution.
This is not to say that plenty of his coworkers did not take the stand — and
not only sheriff's deputies from Marin County (many of whom had been
assigned to guard me in the Marin jail), but also cops from all the cities in
the area — San Rafael, Novota — not to mention the San Quentin guards.
Harris tried to recreate with mathematical precision every single instant of
the incident. He became so involved in minutiae — who was standing at

what point when, and for how many seconds — that he did not even realize
that his interminable procession of witnesses grew tedious and began
visibly to bore some of the jurors.
When Sergeant Murphy from San Quentin testified, Leo cross-examined
him on the policy of the prison regarding escapes.
"And to be certain I understand the significance of that policy, sir, does that
policy mean that if people are attempting to escape, and if they have
hostages, and if the guards are able to prevent that escape, that they are to
prevent that escape even if it means that every hostage is killed?"
Sergeant Murphy's emotionless answer: "That is correct."
"And that means, whether they are holding one judge or five judges, or one
woman or twenty women or one child or twenty children, that the policy of
the San Quentin guards is that, at all costs, they must prevent the escape. Is
that right?"
"That also includes the officers that work in the institution, sir."
"All right. Even if they are holding other officers who work at the
institution, that should not deter the San Quentin correctional officers from
preventing an escape at all costs. Is that right?"
"That is correct."
"In other words, it is more important to prevent the escape than to save
human life. Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir."

The courtroom was on tenterhooks. Jurors, press and spectators waited
anxiously, intensely, for the prosecutor to reach the critical passage in my
letter to George. But he went on and on, his monotonic words falling flatly
on the otherwise unbroken silence of the hall.

"‘To choose between various paths of survival means the objective
availability of alternatives. I hope you don't take this as an apologetic
stance. I'm only trying to understand the forces that have led us, Black
women, to where we are now. Why did your mother offer you reprimands
instead of the flaming sword? Which is equivalent to posing the same
question about every other Black woman — and not only with respect to the
sons, but the daughters, too (this is really crucial). In Cuba last summer I
saw some very beautiful Vietnamese warriors — all female. And we know
that the Algerian war for national liberation would have been doomed to
defeat from the very beginning without the active participation of Algerian
women. In Cuba, I saw women patrolling the streets with rifles on their
backs — defending the revolution. But also young compañeras educating
their husbands and lovers — demythologizing machismo. After all, if
women can fight, manage factories, then men ought to be able to help with
the house, children . . .
"But returning to the question: We have learned from our revolutionary
ancestors that no individual act or response can seize the scepter of the
enemy. The slave lashes out against his immediate master, subdues him,
escapes, but he has done nothing more than take the first step in the long
spiral upwards towards liberation.
I could see the beads of perspiration rolling down Albert Harris' face as he
struggled to read my letter to George before the jury. Often, his reading
reminded me of that of a child who knows how to pronounce the syllables,
but is unaware of the sense of what he is reading.
"And often that individual escape is an evasion of the real problem."
Harris read the last sentence as if he were noticing it for the first time. As if
he were realizing that my words offered no proof whatever of my
participation in the August 7 rebellion; that, on the contrary, they tended to
exonerate me from the crimes he had charged me with. Although it
appeared as if he wanted to be done with it and throw the whole bunch of
letters away, he could not stop. He continued, monotonously, falteringly.
"‘It is only when all the slaves are aroused from their slumber, articulate
their goals, choose their leaders, make an unwavering commitment to

destroy every single obstacle which might prevent them from transcribing
their visions of a new world onto the soil of the earth, into the flesh and
blood of men . . .
'A mother cannot help but cry out for the survival of her own flesh and
blood.'"
Harris read this as if he were a foreign student of English repeating a
sentence uttered by the teacher. I looked into the jury box. A few of the
women, particularly Mrs. Timothy, seemed to be straining to understand his
motive in reading these passages.
"We have been forbidden to reach out for the truth about survival — that it
is a collective enterprise and must be offensive, rather than defensive — for
us, the principle of survival dictates the annihilation of all that compels us
to order our lives around that principle."
He pronounced "annihilation" with extra emphasis, as was the case with
every word which he thought had something to do with violence.
"Anxieties, frustrations engendered by the specter of a child dead of
starvation focus our minds and bodies on the most immediate necessities of
life. The "job" harangue, the "make yourself something" harangue.
Exhortations grounded in fear, a fear brought into being and sustained by a
system which could not subsist without the poor, the reserve army of
unemployed, the scapegoat.
"Survival instincts perverted and misdirected by a structure which coerces
me to kick my jobless man out of the house so the social worker doesn't
stop those welfare checks which I need to feed my hungry child."
He rushed through this sentence in order to make it as unobtrusive as
possible.
"A labyrinthine network of murderous institutions in order to allow my man
no flexibility, no room, lets me receive the checks, lets me in the back door
to scrub floors (so the reserve labor force remains alive) and has the
audacity to consider that a favor in return for which I must submit to the

white rapist and/or subjugate my Black man. The principle of (un) Just
Exchange is omnipotent."
Harris pulled out his wrinkled white handkerchief and wiped the sweat from
his face. This pause was obviously deliberate. He was about to read the
section he felt was most incriminating of all. It was as if by setting this
passage off with a pause, he could make the jury forget all the other ideas
expressed in the letter and focus their attention and their memories
exclusively on these things.
"Frustrations, aggressions cannot be repressed indefinitely. Eventual
explosion must be expected. But if the revolutionary path is buried beneath
an avalanche of containment mechanisms, we, Black women, aim our
bullets in the wrong direction and moreover, we don't even understand the
weapon.
'For the Black female, the solution is not to become less aggressive, not to
lay down the gun, but to learn how to set the sights correctly, aim
accurately, squeeze rather than jerk and not be overcome by the damage.
We have to learn how to rejoice when pigs' blood is spilled.'"
Harris had spoken slowly, with all the determination and drama he could
muster.
I hoped that the jury was not as unintelligent as he counted on their being.
Some of them must have heard of metaphor.
Harris reverted to his previous monotone.
"But all this presupposes that the Black male will have purged himself of
the myth that his mother, his woman, must be subdued before he can wage
war on the enemy. Liberation is a dialectical movement — the Black man
cannot free himself as a Black man unless the Black woman can liberate
herself from all this muck — and it works the other way around. And this is
only the beginning.
'Is it coincidental that Leroi Jones and Ron Karenga and the whole lot of
cowardly cultural nationalists demand the total submission of the Black

female as rectification for the "century-long wrongs she has done the Black
Male." Like you said, George, there are certain obvious criteria for
measuring the extent to which counter-revolution is being nourished by
those who call themselves our companions in struggle. Their attitude
toward whites is one criterion. Their attitude toward women, another.'"
I thought that Harris wanted to steer the jury's attention away from my
criticism of the indiscriminately anti-white nationalists in the movement.
He was depending on them to instinctively associate me with the anti-white
wing of the Black Liberation Movement, and thus to be reinforced in their
already existing political biases.
"Women's liberation in the revolution is inseparable from the liberation of
the male."
He read this last sentence as if it had no apparent meaning."
"I have rambled. I hope I have not been talking in tautologies."
Here, he had recourse to the same intentional pause as before. The last part
of the letter was what he wanted to read most dramatically, most
emphatically. This is what he wanted them to retain.
"Jon and I have made a truce. As long as I try to combat my tendencies to
remind him of his youth, he will try to combat his male chauvinism. Don't
come down on me before you understand — I never said Jon was too young
for anything, I just mentioned how incredible it is that in spite of Catholic
school, etc., he refused to allow society to entrap him in adolescence. But
still, he doesn't dig any mention of age."
The words had rung out strangely when Harris had tried to project his
voice: "I never said Jon was too young for anything . . ." This phrase, which
I had casually scratched down on paper, this phrase, with which I meant to
tell George that I knew how much he loved and respected his brother, this
phrase, Harris wanted to utilize as a virtual confirmation of his conspiracy
theory. But he had just started; there was still more:

"The night after I saw you in court, for the first time in months, I dreamt (or
at least the dream was significant enough to work its way into my
consciousness) we were together, fighting pigs, winning. We were learning
to know each other."
It was as if Harris wanted the jury to think that I was so wrapped up in this
so-called conspiracy that I conspired even in my dreams.
"I love you. Revolutionary Greetings from Che-Lumumba and the Soledad
Brothers Defense Committee. Angela."
When Harris reached the end of the letter, he inhaled deeply and allowed a
tremendous sigh to escape. He did not display the confidence which one
would have expected from a prosecutor who has just presented critical
portions of his evidence. On the contrary, his demeanor seemed to bespeak
a profound sense of defeat. And his sigh was a sigh of relief — as if he
never thought he would reach the end of this letter he had been forced to
recite like a schoolboy.
The ambivalence I felt was disarming. On the one hand, seeing the letter as
evidence, I had the impulse to proclaim once more the utter bankruptcy of
the state's case — it was with this kind of evidence that they had kept me in
jail for those sixteen months. But on the other hand, I felt depressed at
having to see my most intimate feelings hurled out into the public like that
through the calculating and cold presentation of the prosecutor. And the
unmitigated grief was revived, the grief at Jon's death, the grief at George's
death, and the burning anger at their murderers. I couldn't cry, I couldn't
scream. I had to sit there at the counsel table, waiting for the next piece of
evidence which the prosecutor was going to use to try to convince the jury
of my guilt.
One of the next witnesses to take the stand was Mrs. Otelia Young. A Black
woman, about sixty years of age, she was rather short, and her back was
bent as if from decades of hard labor. But she approached the stand with
firm, determined steps. Her face, although not quite in a frown, revealed an
almost angry seriousness. I wondered whether people were interpreting this
determination, this seriousness, as being directed against me; the jurors
looked puzzled.

Mrs. Young had lived in the flat downstairs from me in the house on 35th
Place. We had exchanged greetings numerous times, and I had used the
telephone in her apartment on several occasions. I had liked her a lot —
there was a vitality about her that was obviously the secret of her survival.
The sparkle in her eyes and her pleasantly caustic sense of humor had made
me want to pursue a more than casual friendship with her. But there had
been no time.
She had seen Jonathan at the house a few times, and they had hit it off quite
well, both of them enjoying the subdued game of dozens they played. With
unmistakable affection, Jon would say, "How are you doing, you old hag?"
And before he had a chance to catch his breath, she would retaliate with
"What have you been up to, you crazy yellow-haired brat?" And they would
go on.
Now she was being asked by the state to testify against me.
Harris was trying to set the stage for his conspiracy theory. By his usual
method of trying to convert everything I had done in the period prior to the
Marin rebellion into conspiratorial activity, he was going to attempt to
prove — so he said in his opening remarks — that I had obtained the 35th
Place flat expressly for the purpose of conspiring with Jonathan, who, he
said, had also moved into the place. He was calling Mrs. Otelia Young to
prove his hypothesis.
Yes, she said, she had seen Jonathan Jackson at the house on 35th Place.
Had he been there often? No, not often, just a few times. Had she seen me
moving into the flat, bringing my things in a white station wagon? Yes, she
said, she had seen the station wagon. Was Jonathan with me when I moved
in — had he moved the things upstairs? No, the station wagon was full of
books, and I carried them all up alone.
Bewildered expressions were all over the courtroom. We could tell that the
jurors were wondering why Harris had bothered to call Mrs. Young to the
stand at all. We had already figured that he would call all the Black people
he could muster — almost regardless of what they would say. A racist ploy
— based on the idea that jurors would think twice about my innocence if

Black people were acting as state's witnesses. But obviously Mrs. Young's
testimony had backfired.
One thing that stood out particularly was her answer to Harris' question
regarding her employment status.
"Do you spend a good deal of time at work?"
"Yes, I work — I work from seven o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock,
eight-thirty at night." She spoke angrily and from deep down in her throat,
sending her words thundering across the courtroom. Everyone understood
immediately that she was a domestic worker in some white family's
household, doing its drudgery every day from breakfast time to dinner time.
I wondered whether some of the jurors thought back to what I had written
George about Black women. Did they realize that I had been writing about
Otelia Young and all her sisters in the struggle for survival?
It was apparent that Harris had interrupted the examination without having
brought it to a conclusion. He had been the aggressor in this duel, but he
could not summon up the courage to fight it out to the end.
There was no need for us to cross-examine, so Mrs. Young stepped down
from the stand as proudly as she had walked up to it. Her eyes were aimed
directly in front of her — toward the door in the back of the courtroom. It
was therefore startling to us all when she reached the railing and abruptly
turned in my direction to give me an immense, almost extravagant, smile.
With the old sparkle back in her eyes, she greeted me with an affectionate,
prolonged "Hi," and waved her hand the way one waves at little children.
March had been rapidly consumed by our efforts to pick a jury that would
penetrate the smoke screen of the scores of witnesses the state was calling.
(Their original list had included over four hundred.) Now there was nothing
left of April.
I had long since forgotten how to relax; though I could never become really
settled in the mode of existence imposed upon us, there was something very
frightening about the way the trial developed a life of its own — a life that
was devouring our lives. Monday through Thursday, Margaret and I would

rush out of the house for our nine-fifteen appointment with the judge, jury
and prosecutor, as if we were running off to a job or trying to make it to
classes. On Fridays, I had to report to the Santa Clara County Probation
Department so that they could be sure that I had not jumped bail.
Saturdays and Sundays were our meeting days — days on which we
evaluated our legal positions, days of criticism, self-criticism, arguments,
and finally collective agreement on what was to be our courtroom posture
for the coming week. Then there were meetings with the staff of the
Defense Committee, where ideas for mass dissemination of trial literature
were aired and formulated, where demonstrations and rallies were planned,
where the global defense effort was coordinated with the events unfolding
inside the courtroom.
But it was not only my life that had been appropriated by this case.
Margaret, Howard, Leo, Dobby — they worked incessantly. Charlene,
Kendra, Franklin, Fania, Bettina, Stephanie, Rob, Victoria, Rodney, and all
the other leaders of the mass campaign had ordered their lives entirely
around building the movement. Even on the day Fania's baby was born, she
had spent a few hours at the jail discussing the campaign with me. Several
months later, she asked Mother to keep Eisa with her in Birmingham so that
all her time could be devoted to organizing. When Mother traveled around
the country and through Canada, appealing to people to support me and all
political prisoners, she carried Eisa around with her in her arms.
On May 4, one of the prosecution's star witnesses told the story the
prosecution hoped would convince the jury, definitively, of my guilt. Alden
Flemming, a plump, pink-complexioned man whose clothes sort of hung off
him, was the owner of a service station situated at the foot of one of the
entrances to the Marin County Civic Center. He testified that he had seen
me with Jonathan at his service station on August 6, the day before the
revolt. Cross-examination revealed that he had originally identified me
from a group of photographs so carefully selected as to leave him no other
choice. The group included several mug shots of straight-haired Black
women with their names written across the photos. There was a picture each
of Fania, Penny Jackson, Georgia Jackson, and about six or seven shots of
me, all taken during the highly publicized June 19 Soledad rally, which was

also the day I was fired from my UCLA position. In some of the photos I
am speaking into a microphone, and one of them even showed Jonathan
walking at my side. No one could have failed to miss the point —
Flemming was being asked to identify Angela Davis.
In court, he not only identified all of my pictures in the group, he pointed to
my sister Fania as well and said he wasn't quite sure, but he thought that the
picture of Penny Jackson might also be me. When Leo asked him about his
experiences in relating to Black people, he hastily informed us that 20
percent of his customers were Black — which seemed incredible in a
county whose population was barely 3 percent Black.
"Do you have any experience in having seen Black women with Afro hair
styles?" Leo asked.
"Yes."
"Have you seen them many times in your life?"
"Since it has been popular."
"All right, and how long would you say that the Afro hair style has been a
popular hair style for Black women?"
"Oh, maybe seven years."
"And I take it that during that period of time you have seen many Black
women wearing Afro hair styles? Would that be a fair statement?"
"Twenty percent of the people that come into my station."
"You mean all of the people that come into your station wear Afro hair
styles?"
"I would say fifteen of the twenty percent."
"So you have seen an awful lot of Black women with Afro hair styles?"
"Right."

Then Leo pursued another line.
"How many light-complexioned Black people have you had the experience
of seeing in your lifetime?"
"As fair as this lady is, I would say not more than ten."
(Any Black person or anyone who has spent any time around Black people
would know that if 20 percent of his customers were really Black, he would
have seen a great number of people with skin as light as mine, and many
with much lighter skin.)
"Is that one of the things that helped you identify her?"
"Yes."
"Anything else?"
"Her features."
And when Leo asked him to be more specific in describing what it was that
was outstanding about my features, he said:
"Well, she has, I would say, large eyes. The cheek bones are higher. I
wouldn't say she has as strong a face, as heavy a face as what colored
people have."
Then Leo asked the inevitable question, mockingly, pronouncing "colored
people" with Flemming's own accent.
"Is there a certain kind of face that 'colored people,' in your opinion, usually
have?"
After stammering a bit, Flemming finally said, "Well, I would say the ones I
have dealt with, their faces are flatter,
"Faces are flatter?"
"Yes."

"And Miss Davis' face was not flat, and that made her unusual. Is that
right?"
"Well, I — I don't think she has a flat face."
Leo looked Flemming in the eye, allowed a noticeable pause to intervene,
then said, "Mr. Flemming, don't you think that all colored people look
alike?"
And, as if he were definitively proving his veracity before the jury, he
answered without hesitation, "Not in Miss Davis' case."
It was clear that this man's attitudes were so permeated with racism that he
would be unable to make an honest identification of a Black person even if
his life depended on it. The results of our cross-examination were never
published in the established press — what received all the publicity was the
direct examination by Harris, the scenario of which, we believed, had been
perfected and rehearsed beforehand.
The jury appeared to be impressed by a bit of Perry Mason dramatics that
Howard came up with. Unbeknownst to me, he had asked Kendra a week
before to drive him out to Marin, where they stopped in the Flemming
Service Station. As he was permitted to do with any of the prosecutor's
witnesses, he questioned Flemming about the content of the statement he
had given the attorney general. Before they left, however, Kendra got out of
the car, asked Flemming to check the oil, and, making herself as obvious as
she could, she engaged him in a bit of casual conversation.
It came as a surprise to me when Leo asked Flemming whether he had ever
seen the Black woman sitting next to me behind the counsel table. I
assumed he was merely trying to confuse the witness. Flemming answered
that although he had never seen her in person, he thought he remembered
seeing a news story in which her picture appeared. As it turned out,
although he had insisted that he had seen no more than ten Black women as
light-skinned as I, he had absolutely no recollection of having talked to
Kendra in his service station.

While the lawyers were hammering away at the most important evidence of
the prosecution, the sisters and brothers on the Committee stoked the fires
in the streets, among the people. The more the movement for my freedom
increased in numbers, strength and confidence, the more imperative it
became for everyone to see it not as something exceptional but as a small
part of a great fight against injustice, one bough in a solidly rooted tree of
resistance. It was not only political repression, but racism, poverty, police
brutality, drugs, and all the myriad ways Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and
white working people are kept chained to misery and despair. And it was
not only within the United States of America, but in countries like Vietnam,
with the bombs falling like rain from U.S. B52's, burning and
dismembering innocent children.
We wanted the culminating mass demonstration of the campaign to bring all
these struggles together in a single, unified dramatization of our power. All
our separate movements — political prisoners, welfare rights, national
liberation, labor, women, antiwar — might generate storms here and there.
But only a mighty union of them all could beget the great hurricane to
topple the whole edifice of injustice.
Many other organizations joined our Committee in issuing a call for a Rally
against Racism, Repression and the War, to be held at the site of my trial —
San Jose, California — on the twenty-sixth of May. The bail conditions
prohibited me from being present at the rally. However, I was fortunate that
the people who lived across the street from the park, directly behind the
podium, put their house fully at our disposal. I watched and listened to the
rally from a room in their attic.
The crowd was not only impressive in its numbers — thousands came from
throughout the state — but, more important, because of its composition,
which was evenly divided between Black, Chicano and white. And it wasn't
the usual crowd of demonstration-going politicos, particularly since so
many of them came from San Jose, which knew no long tradition of radical
political protest. One could sense the pulsating freshness and enthusiasm of
those who felt impelled, for the first time in their lives, to add their voices
to this united demand for justice.

The speakers included Richard Hatcher, the Black mayor of Gary, Indiana;
Sister Mary McAllister, one of the defendants in the Harrisburg 8 Trial;
Phillip de la Cruz from the United Farmworkers; Raul Ruiz representing La
Raza Unida Party; Pat Sumi, who spoke on the relation between the
women's movement and repression, and Franklin Alexander, speaking on
behalf of our Committee.
When the speeches were over and the multicolored crowd was hoarse from
screaming its approval, no one could deny that at least a spiritual victory
had been won. All that was necessary now was to carefully plot our next
moves and skillfully execute them, both inside the courtroom and out in the
streets.

Over the last months, the lawyers — particularly Dobby and Margaret —
had put together an impressive assembly of defense witnesses. We had
known from the outset that we had to worry not so much about contesting
the facts of the case — since there was no clear-cut factual case against me
— as about the politics implied in the prosecutor's presentation. Since the
prosecutor, in a last-ditch effort, had resorted to his passion theory, we were
going to have to present the true picture of my involvement with the
Soledad case, especially with George, and provide, for the jury, a panoramic
view of my previous political involvement, particularly as it concerned
political prisoners. We were in a dilemma because, while we wanted to
present our witnesses, the emptiness of the prosecutor's case was so obvious
that a defense was not really necessary to crack it. Harris had not proved me
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus we were under no obligation
whatever to prove that I was innocent.
We had several long, rather heated meetings on what the nature of the
defense should be. Among the legal team and campaign leaders close to the
legal situation, some felt that the prosecution was so flimsy that to present a
defense would be to confer upon it a legitimacy and credibility that it could
not claim on its own. I felt, at first, that we should go on with the full-blown
defense we had planned, not so much because a defense was legally
necessary to my particular case as because I saw it as a tremendously
effective way to expose the government's repressive methods of silencing

all its opponents. Perhaps the firmness with which I defended this position
also had something to do with my subjective unwillingness to throw months
of preparation out the window. Margaret, Dobby and I had been working
together for ages, it seemed, on my testimony and the political evidence
which would be presented through other witnesses.
The advocates of the "no defense" posture reminded us that throughout the
trial we had been exposing these methods of repression — and there was
yet the final argument in which it would all be summed up. And redirecting
our attention to the trial itself, they pointed out that we had told the jury
throughout that the burden of proof lay with the prosecutor — not with the
defense. If the prosecutor could not prove his case "beyond a reasonable
doubt," then we were not required to utter a word of defense. If we
presented a defense which spanned weeks and months, the jurors might
think we were afraid of something they themselves had missed during the
presentation of the state's case. But on the other hand, if there were no
defense at all, the jury might think we were silent because we had nothing
to say in response.
After the arguments were over and the tempers had subsided, in the end we
all agreed upon a third approach to the defense — a short line of witnesses
with testimony that was succinct both in the factual and the political points.
The end was near. After Leo had argued the motion for a directed verdict,
which Arnason predictably denied, we put on our two-and-a-half-day
defense. Several comrades, a friend and a lawyer whom I had seen in San
Francisco during the days prior to the Revolt, testified about my reasons for
being in the Bay Area at that time. We examined the friend whose house I
was visiting when I learned about the Revolt and the death of Jonathan. My
roommate Tamu took the stand to give evidence about the weapons. She
explained that the guns and ammunition were used by members of the CheLumumba Club for target practice and that the place where they were kept
— in the house on 45th — was easily accessible to a whole number of
sisters and brothers. Our final witness was Dr. Robert Buckout, an expert on
eyewitness testimony. He described experiments and showed slides which
demonstrated that people have a natural tendency to fill in details
themselves about individuals and events they cannot fully remember. One

experiment which seemed to impress the jury involved a white college
student who walked around on a campus with a black bag on his head. As it
turned out, large numbers of those who were later questioned about him
were certain they had seen a Black man.
We closed our defense, Harris put several rebuttal witnesses on the stand
and then made his closing argument before the jury. His confidence had
eroded considerably since the opening day of the trial, and I had the feeling
he just wanted to get the whole thing over with.
Leo presented the closing argument for the defense. There were moments
when I became so involved in his presentation — which was eloquent and
moving — that I found myself forgetting that it was my life at stake. He
closed the argument by referring to the defense lawyers:
"We have carried on our shoulders a great responsibility. We've tried to
carry that responsibility with truth and with dignity. With these last few
words of mine, we are now going to transfer that responsibility from our
shoulders to yours. We hope that in so doing that when you twelve people,
tried and true, write the final chapter in the case of the People vs. Angela
Davis, you will be able to say that you were chosen, you served, you
considered and you brought back the only verdict that could comport with
justice in this case. And that is a verdict of not guilty. I'm sure you will."
That Friday morning shortly before noon, the jury retired to the hidden
room upstairs. Courtroom spectators, movement activists, press people,
gathered on the grass in front of the courthouse to participate in or observe
the vigil organized by the Committee. The lawn outside the courthouse was
crowded with signs, children, food, dogs and games.
Horst, a journalist from the GDR who had been with the trial from the
beginning, had been asking us out to lunch for weeks. Always we had to
decline because we were meeting about something during lunch breaks.
With the jury out, there was nothing left to meet about, so I went along to
lunch with Horst, Margaret, Stephanie, Kendra, Franklin, Victoria, Rodney,
Benny and Sylvia. We were still in the bar waiting to be seated when one of
the waiters called me to the phone which the bartender pulled out from
behind the counter.

No one said a word as I picked up the receiver. It was Fania.
"Angela. Wait a minute. The judge wants to talk to you."
"What's going on?" I asked. "What does the judge want with me?"
"I don't know any more than you. He only asked me if I knew where you
were. I have to tell him you're on the line."
"It's the judge," I said in a loud whisper to the others, with my hand over the
mouthpiece. We all thought the inevitable:
"A verdict already!" The intervening silence was long and made me wonder
whether he was coming at all.
But he finally picked up the receiver and asked, "Miss Davis? Where are
you?"
Fania knew where we were. I had a funny feeling that there might have
been some reason for keeping this from Judge Arnason. But why would she
have called in the first place if she didn't want him to know where we were?
"We're at the Plateau Seven," I answered. "Why?"
Ignoring my question, and with a great urgency in his voice, he said, "Don't
leave. Stay there until I contact you again." He switched off the
conversation as abruptly as he had begun.
Before we had time to find words for our many speculations — a verdict?
jury tampering? threats? — men in plain clothes, obviously policemen,
slipped into the bar and planted themselves at various points in the room.
Someone tried to reduce the tension by suggesting that we order our meals.
The waiter led us through a corridor, where we noticed more
plainclothesmen apparently trying to be inconspicuous, into a private dining
area. The room was much too large for our small group and the table
appeared to have been set for a banquet — certainly not for us. Franklin,
Victoria, Rodney and Benny were quite worried about our security. What if
there had been a threat — and it was about to be carried out? Franklin was

going to check out the restaurant floor in order to see whether anything
unusual was going on, but he was stopped by a policeman who had posted
himself on the other side of the door to our room.
"I thought there was some reason for this room," Franklin said when he
returned to the table. "They've actually locked us up in here, and policemen
are guarding the doors."
A few minutes later Howard came in with Lieutenant Tamm, the public
relations man for the sheriff's department. Howard was out of breath.
"There's been a hijacking and they think the hijackers want you to come
with them."
We were all stunned. It didn't make any sense at all.
"The judge wants a meeting. Dobby and Leo are already there. You and
Margaret should come with me."
Lieutenant Tamm said nothing.
Outside the Plateau Seven, two police cars were waiting. The meeting in
court was brief and shed no further light on the situation. "I'm not taking
you into custody, Miss Davis," Arnason said in the presence of all the
attorneys, "but for your own safety, I'm asking you to stay here in the
courtroom until we get this problem solved."
It had not occurred to me before that moment that they might think that I
was involved in staging the hijacking. After all, if I had really wanted to
leave, there were less risky ways to do it and I needn't have waited until the
deliberations began.
Leo and Dobby had ascertained a few more details. According to the FBI
agent, who had stationed himself there in the courthouse, a plane had been
commandeered by four Black men after taking off in Seattle. Demands had
been transmitted over the plane's radio. The agent said that when they
landed at the San Francisco Airport, they wanted me to be at the end of the
runway with $500,000 and five parachutes. (There were supposed to be four
men.) I was to wear a white dress.

Fortunately, I was dressed in red. If I had happened to put on a white dress
that morning, some people undoubtedly would have been convinced that I
had a part in the hijacking.
Since there was no telling how long we were going to be closed up in the
courtroom, Howard arranged for the family to join us.
Lieutenant Tamm came in and announced that the hijackers had plastic
explosives on board and that they were threatening, if their demands were
not met, to blow up the plane with its nearly one hundred passengers.
While we sat around in the courtroom, Leo and Dobby were listening, in the
judge's chambers, for more developments in the hijacking. Leo came out
and informed us that under no conditions would Arnason allow me to be
taken to the airport. Later Dobby came over, shaking her head and smiling
wryly. "You won't believe what just happened. Apparently the plane just
landed at Oakland Airport. The FBI agent was on the phone, in a panic,
telling someone to get the plane back into the air — all their agents are in
San Francisco dressed up as airplane attendants; there's only one agent in
Oakland."
It was about seven o'clock when the real story of the hijacking finally came
to light. And it had absolutely nothing to do with me, white dresses or
parachutes. My name, in fact, had never once been mentioned by the
hijackers. There weren't even four hijackers. All these embellishments were
tacked onto the story while it moved from the radio control tower through
the FBI to us. We couldn't help speculating that the FBI had tried to draw
me into the hijacking in order to disrupt the jury deliberations.
The San Jose News was on street corners all over the city, carrying the
headline story HIJACKERS DEMAND ANGELA, based on the earlier
erroneous FBI reports. Although the judge had ordered all televisions
removed from the jurors' motel rooms, there was still no guarantee that one
of them might not catch a glimpse of a headline somewhere between the
courthouse and their motel rooms. If one of the jurors did see the newspaper
and was influenced by it, a mistrial could be declared. We could only hope
that they knew nothing.

Out of all the chaos of the first day of deliberations, there was one
undisputed cause for celebration. Ms. Mary Timothy was elected
forewoman of the jury. From the very beginning we had considered her as
among the most honest and most objective of the jurors. During the voir
dire we had been heartened to learn that her son had refused to be inducted
into the U.S. Army. During the period when the bombing of Vietnam was
particularly fierce, she had come to court wearing a button bearing the
three-pronged peace symbol. Throughout the trial we had directed the jury's
attention to the prosecutor's efforts to exploit the prevailing stereotypes
about women, persistently attacking his case for its attempt to portray me as
an irrational, emotion-driven female. That Ms. Timothy had been chosen to
preside over the discussions indicated that members of the jury were
thinking about the question of social discrimination against women. Their
first active gesture as a jury was a rejection of the notion that only men are
qualified to lead.
Howard had a theory about the deliberations, which we heard him expound
repeatedly during the last days of the trial. If they decided to acquit, it
would be a verdict which was unanimous from the start, they would stay
out not more than a few hours. If they stayed out longer than a day, they
would probably be out for a very long time and, in the end, would be unable
to reach a decision. Friday we were so concerned about that plane en route
from Seattle to San Francisco that we hardly had time to worry about the
verdict. Saturday morning, Howard was saying that they would be in before
lunch. So when the clerk called Moorpark Apartments to say that the judge
wanted to see one of the lawyers, we thought they might be nearing a
verdict. Anxious and silent, we all went down to the courthouse. But there
was no verdict at hand, only a request from the jury to have some of the
evidence delivered to them. However, our spirits were lifted somewhat
when we noticed that the note to the judge was signed "Mary Timothy,
foreMs." We took this little bit of humor as a sign that there was no outand-out battle in progress.
Outside on the grass, the vigil was in full force. After shooing away the
reporters, Victoria, Rodney and I walked through the crowd, eating
sandwiches from the big basket of food, playing with the babies and
thanking people for their encouragement.

Among the vigilants was Andy Montgomery, one of the San Jose Black
community's leading spokesmen and an active member of the San Jose
Defense Committee. It was he who had found an office and lodgings for the
members of the legal staff. He had spoken on my behalf at meetings of the
Black Caucus and had gotten members of the caucus involved in the
campaign. He had successfully appealed to the members of his church to
join the campaign and was generally responsible for much of the local
activity around the case. Friday we had promised that, in the event the jury
was still deliberating, we would have dinner at his house. As it turned out,
everyone who had any connection with the case at all was either inside
Andy's house or outside in the street — my family, the lawyers and their
families, Bettina, Kendra and Franklin, Rodney, Victoria, and members of
the San Jose Committee.
The dinner at Andy's was supposed to be a respite from our purgatory of
waiting. But tensions were too agonizing for quiet relaxation. When I
arrived at Andy's, a double rope was turning in the middle of the street, and
Margaret was jumping to screams of "Faster! Faster!" I joined her. After
getting entangled in the ropes a few times, I got it and didn't want to stop. It
was the way we jumped rope when as a child I spent the summer in New
York. Bettina jumped, Howard, Leo, Charlene — and we even managed to
persuade my father to join in. When he got started, he didn't want to stop
either. A little way down the street, Benny had gotten a football game
together and we shouted at the players for disrupting our rope-jumping with
misthrown passes.
When the chicken and ribs, potato salad, greens and cornbread were ready,
we ate as though we were celebrating the end of a long famine. No one
talked very much about the trial, but the word had begun to circulate in the
neighborhood that we were over at Andy's, and for the rest of the evening
there was an interminable stream of visitors.
In the end, we discovered that we had played a little too hard — Kendra
was the casualty of our premature celebration. During the football game she
had twisted her ankle, and Franklin had to take her to the hospital for xrays, an Ace bandage and crutches. Perhaps we had overdone it, but the

tightness in my chest had almost disappeared, and worrying about Kendra's
sprained ankle made us slightly less anxious about the jury's decision.

***

JUNE 4
It was Sunday morning. We assumed we were at the beginning of an all-day
wait, and hadn't yet bothered to check in with one another. I had spent the
night at Leo and Geri's Moorpark apartment. Leo and I had gotten absorbed
in our chronic debate about the weight of the mass movement in influencing
the direction of the case.
All of a sudden, Howard broke into the apartment, out of breath — he had
run all the way from his apartment on the other side of the complex. He
simply told us that it was time to go. For an instant, I didn't even understand
what "time to go" meant. The idea that the jury would reach a verdict on
Sunday morning was so unlikely that I had not even bothered to get
dressed. Without telling him, I had more or less accepted Howard's theory
of the deliberations.
The last moments were the most agonizing of all. We had been waiting for
two days while the jury deliberated, for three months while the trial
unfolded, for twenty-two months since the Marin County revolt, and now
we were told that we had to wait until the press assembled before we could
hear the pronouncement of the verdict. In that back room where we had
waited so many times for court to convene, my lawyers kept reassuring me
and themselves that there was no way the verdict could be anything but Not
Guilty. Besides, with the shabbiness of the case and the mass movement
pushing on, there was never any question of a guilty verdict. And, in fact,
we had never considered that as an alternative — it was either acquittal or
hung jury. Now a hung jury could be ruled out: they had already announced
that they had reached a verdict. There was, however, one possibility we
were all reluctant to discuss — a compromise verdict, which, though

theoretically illegal, happened all the time in jury trials where multiple
charges had been lodged against defendants. But no one had said, at least
not in my presence, "The only thing we really have to worry about is an
acquittal on the murder and kidnapping counts and a conviction on the
conspiracy."
Leo tried to cut away some of the tension by pointing out that we would
know the moment the jury entered the courtroom: the expressions on their
faces — especially Ms. Timothy's and Mr. Delange's — would betray the
decision they had reached. Of course, none of this helped very much. The
suspense, the anxiety — all this was beyond remedy. I couldn't sit down for
more than a minute without jumping up to pace off some of the strain. And
when I began to pace, I had to sit down again, for the room was far too
small to contain my energy. I could only clench my teeth and dig my
fingernails deep into my palms. Margaret kept telling me that all we had to
do was to keep cool for a few minutes more; everything would soon be
behind us. Kendra was fighting hard to keep herself together.
When we went into the courtroom area, people were crowded into the
corridor, but apparently members of the press still hadn't arrived; and we
had to wait some more. Out in the corridor Mother insisted that she wanted
to wait outside while the verdict was announced. As I tried to calm her and
reassure her that I would soon be free, my own strength and my own
confidence began to return.
Somewhere in the corridor crowd, a voice began to hum softly — a Negro
spiritual. Someone else picked up the tune, adding the words "Woke up this
morning with my mind staid on freedom." Before long everyone, including
my mother, had joined in. Captain Johnson, who had been the terror of both
the press and the people attending the trial, walked out, looked around, and
for the first time that anyone could remember, said nothing to object.
At last we took our places in the courtroom. Howard, Dobby and Leo sat at
the table, and I sat against the barrier with Margaret on one side and Kendra
on the other. The bailiff announced the entrance of the judge. Within
minutes the jury began to walk through the door. At the sight of the first
juror, Margaret, who had been the calmest of us all, let out a muffled "Oh

no," and slid down into her chair. I leaned over and gave her the same
words of comfort she had given me. She sobbed softly.
I looked at the jurors filing in, searching for reassuring signs in their faces.
But they were all expressionless, as if they had purged themselves of every
trace of emotion. I broke out in a sweat and felt my whole body go weak.
There was not a hint of the usual warmth in Ms. Timothy's face, which was
cold and marble-like, and the sparkle in Delange's eyes had turned into a
dull stare directed at no one in particular. Like a fragment from a broken
record, Leo's words roared through my brain. "We'll know immediately
what the verdict is, from the expressions on their faces."
During the judicial ritual preceding the reading of the verdict, I was
searching for some explanation of this sudden transformation of the jury's
posture. Their faces said "Conviction." "Guilty." But this was impossible,
illogical, absurd. Unless the whole thing had been a grand hoax. Unless
they had consciously tried to delude us these last months, and these glacial
stares were the reality behind the masks they had finally shedded. I wanted
to rush over and rescue my mother from the consequences. Born of
desperation and incomprehension, these disjointed thoughts shook me so
furiously that I had to strain to hear the clerk as he read the papers Ms.
Timothy had turned over to the court.
The first count was murder. There was a loud, clear "Not Guilty." Heavy
sobs fell into the moment of silence that followed. It was Franklin. It felt
like everyone was breathing deep and hard and with the rhythm of a single
being. The second count was kidnapping. "Not Guilty" rang out again.
Franklin was crying louder. I did not think I could hold on much longer. But
I had to hear the last verdict, the conspiracy count. My right hand tightened
around Kendra's, the other around Margaret's.
When the clerk read off "Not Guilty" for the third time, we screamed,
laughed, cried and embraced — completely oblivious to the banging of the
judge's gavel. He wanted to close the trial with the same decorum with
which he had presided. He read a rather long quote from Twelve Men by G.
K. Chesterton, congratulated defense, prosecution and jury, dismissed the
last from their duties and declared case number 52613, People of California
vs. Angela Y. Davis, closed.

In her joy, my mother looked so beautiful she reminded me of the
photographs of her when she was very young. I felt happier for her than for
anyone else, including myself.
The last thing I felt like was a press conference — I didn't feel like
structuring my thoughts and emotions in order to articulate them before
cameras and microphones — yet it was the only way I could speak to and
thank all the people. As we entered the pressroom, the members of the jury
were just concluding their conference. Never having exchanged a word with
any of them, I was not sure how to relate to them. I stood at the door. The
juror to leave the platform first was the one whom we had all thought was
most sympathetic to the prosecution. I wondered what her reaction would
be. When she approached, I extended one hand, but she reached out with
both her arms, hugged me and said, "I am so happy for you." All the other
jurors followed her example.
A crowd had assembled in front of the courthouse. As soon as they heard
the verdict, people had rushed down to the Civic Center. With the gag rule
and the bail restrictions behind us, I could speak before a crowd for the first
time in the twenty-two months since the revolt. I thanked them for coming,
for all their support, and said that it was time to deploy our forces for the
freedom of Ruchell, the San Quentin 6 and all other political prisoners.
From the courthouse we went over to Gloria and David's house, where my
parents had been staying. Family, lawyers, friends, comrades, Committee
workers, and most of the jurors — we all sat in the sun on the grass in the
backyard. I sank deep into the moment, husbanding this delight, hoarding it.
For I knew it would be short-lived. Work. Struggle. Confrontation lay
before us like a rock-strewn road. We would walk it . . .
But first the grass, the sun . . . and the people.

Epilogue
At the victory party the evening of the verdict, our joy knew no bounds and
our celebration no restraints. Yet in the echoes of our laughter and the
frenzy of our dancing there was also caution. If we saw this moment of
triumph as a conclusion and not as a point of departure, we would be
ignoring all the others who remained draped in chains. We knew that to
save their lives, we had to preserve and build upon the movement.
This was the concern of the NUCFAD staff meeting called by Charlene on
Monday evening, the very day after the acquittal. Fearing that some local
committees might consider their mission accomplished, we decided to send
out immediately a communique requesting that they all keep their
operations alive. To ensure that this message filtered down to the masses,
we decided that I would go on a speaking tour. While expressing our
gratitude to the people who had joined the movement which achieved my
freedom, I would appeal to them to stay with us as long as racism or
political repression kept Ruchell, Fleeta, the Attica brothers or any other
human being behind bars.
My freedom was not yet a week old when I left with Kendra, Franklin and
Rodney for Los Angeles. From there we went to Chicago and on to Detroit,
where close to 10,000 people attended the rally. In New York I spoke at the
fund-raising concert at Madison Square Garden, which had been organized
months earlier by our Legal Defense Fund.
An enormous political responsibility had been thrust upon me — and I was
more frightened than I had ever been in my life because I knew that human
lives were at stake. Our ability to keep the movement alive offered the only
hope to our sisters and brothers behind walls. In the mass meetings,
attended by predominantly Black people, I explained that my presence
before them signified nothing more and nothing less than the tremendous
power of united, organized people to transform their will into reality. Many
others also deserved to be the beneficiaries of their power.

I went on to Dallas and Atlanta and, after spending some time with my
family in Birmingham, prepared to make a month-long tour abroad. The
international campaign had not only exerted serious pressure on the
government, it had also stimulated the further growth of the mass
movement at home. At the center of the international movement was the
socialist community of nations. It was for this reason that we decided to
visit the USSR, including Central Asia, the German Democratic Republic,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Cuba. The last stop was to be Chile.
We saw the trip as a natural continuation of the tour through the United
States, its foremost purpose being to thank the people who had contributed
to the fight for my freedom and to turn their attention to other political
prisoners. In those countries rallies were attended by more people than I had
ever before seen assembled in one place — hundreds of thousands, for
example in the GDR, and close to three-quarters of a million in Cuba. In
Havana I mentioned the case of Billy Dean Smith in my speech, a Black
G.I. antiwar activist charged with the murder of two white U. S. officers in
Vietnam. When the Prime Minister, Fidel Castro, delivered his speech, he
vowed on behalf of the Cuban people that as they had fought for my
liberation, they would raise their voices now for the freedom of Billy Dean
Smith. By the next morning, as if by magic, the walls of Havana were
covered with posters demanding that Billy Dean Smith be set free. As we
traveled up and down the island, children who had painted pictures and
composed songs about Billy Dean wanted to be sure we were going to save
their hermano.
Here at home, work was already under way to strengthen the united front
which could save Billy Dean and eventually all political prisoners.
Immediately, I began another tour of campuses and communities to
publicize, raise funds for and gather information about political prisoners
for the organization we were building Today, a year and a half later, we
have consolidated the National Alliance Against Racist and Political
Repression, which has chapters in twenty-one states. Our membership
consists of Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Asian, Indian and white people.
We are proud that we have been able to forge unity among Communists,
Socialists, radical Democrats, and nationalists; between ministers and nonchurchgoers; between workers and students. All of us understand that unity

is the most potent weapon against racism and political persecution. As I
write this epilogue, we are preparing to take thousands of people to North
Carolina on July 4 for a national demonstration. For we must ensure that the
Black leader Reverend Ben Chavis is not sentenced to the 262 years in
prison on the charges which that state has leveled against him. We must
liberate Donald Smith, sentenced at age sixteen to forty years behind bars
because he participated in the movement at his high school. And we must
rescue our innocent sister Marie Hill, whose death sentence, pronounced
when she was sixteen, is now a sentence of living death — life without
possibility of parole.
Across this country, there are hundreds and thousands more like Reverend
Chavis, Donald Smith and Marie Hill. We — you and I — are their only
hope for life and freedom.
June 21, 1974

1
Introduction—Prison Reform or Prison
Abolition?
In most parts of the world, it is taken for granted that whoever is convicted
of a serious crime will be sent to prison. In some countries—including the
United States—where capital punishment has not yet been abolished, a
small but significant number of people are sentenced to death for what are
considered especially grave crimes. Many people are familiar with the
campaign to abolish the death penalty. In fact, it has already been abolished
in most countries. Even the staunchest advocates of capital punishment
acknowledge the fact that the death penalty faces serious challenges. Few
people find life without the death penalty difficult to imagine.
On the other hand, the prison is considered an inevitable and permanent
feature of our social lives. Most people are quite surprised to hear that the
prison abolition movement also has a long history—one that dates back to
the historical appearance of the prison as the main form of punishment. In
fact, the most natural reaction is to assume that prison activists—even those
who consciously refer to themselves as “antiprison activists”—are simply
trying to ameliorate prison conditions or perhaps to reform the prison in
more fundamental ways. In most circles prison abolition is simply
unthinkable and implausible. Prison abolitionists are dismissed as utopians
and idealists whose ideas are at best unrealistic and impracticable, and, at
worst, mystifying and foolish. This is a measure of how difficult it is to
envision a social order that does not rely on the threat of sequestering
people in dreadful places designed to separate them from their communities
and families. The prison is considered so “natural” that it is extremely hard
to imagine life without it.

It is my hope that this book will encourage readers to question their own
assumptions about the prison. Many people have already reached the
conclusion that the death penalty is an outmoded form of punishment that
violates basic principles of human rights. It is time, I believe, to encourage
similar conversations about the prison. During my own career as an
antiprison activist I have seen the population of U.S. prisons increase with
such rapidity that many people in black, Latino, and Native American
communities now have a far greater chance of going to prison than of
getting a decent education. When many young people decide to join the
military service in order to avoid the inevitability of a stint in prison, it
should cause us to wonder whether we should not try to introduce better
alternatives.
The question of whether the prison has become an obsolete institution
has become especially urgent in light of the fact that more than two million
people (out of a world total of nine million) now inhabit U.S. prisons, jails,
youth facilities, and immigrant detention centers. Are we willing to relegate
ever larger numbers of people from racially oppressed communities to an
isolated existence marked by authoritarian regimes, violence, disease, and
technologies of seclusion that produce severe mental instability? According
to a recent study, there may be twice as many people suffering from mental
illness who are in jails and prisons than there are in all psychiatric hospitals
in the United States combined.1
When I first became involved in antiprison activism during the late
1960s, I was astounded to learn that there were then close to two hundred
thousand people in prison. Had anyone told me that in three decades ten
times as many people would be locked away in cages, I would have been
absolutely incredulous. I imagine that I would have responded something
like this: “As racist and undemocratic as this country may be [remember,
during that period, the demands of the Civil Rights movement had not yet
been consolidated], I do not believe that the U.S. government will be able to
lock up so many people without producing powerful public resistance. No,
this will never happen, not unless this country plunges into fascism.” That
might have been my reaction thirty years ago. The reality is that we were
called upon to inaugurate the twenty-first century by accepting the fact that
two million people—a group larger than the population of many countries

—are living their lives in places like Sing Sing, Leavenworth, San Quentin,
and Alderson Federal Reformatory for Women. The gravity of these
numbers becomes even more apparent when we consider that the U.S.
population in general is less than five percent of the world’s total, whereas
more than twenty percent of the world’s combined prison population can be
claimed by the United States. In Elliott Currie’s words, “[t]he prison has
become a looming presence in our society to an extent unparalleled in our
history or that of any other industrial democracy. Short of major wars, mass
incarceration has been the most thoroughly implemented government social
program of our time.”2
In thinking about the possible obsolescence of the prison, we should ask
how it is that so many people could end up in prison without major debates
regarding the efficacy of incarceration. When the drive to produce more
prisons and incarcerate ever larger numbers of people occurred in the 1980s
during what is known as the Reagan era, politicians argued that “tough on
crime” stances—including certain imprisonment and longer sentences—
would keep communities free of crime. However, the practice of mass
incarceration during that period had little or no effect on official crime rates.
In fact, the most obvious pattern was that larger prison populations led not
to safer communities, but, rather, to even larger prison populations. Each
new prison spawned yet another new prison. And as the U.S. prison system
expanded, so did corporate involvement in construction, provision of goods
and services, and use of prison labor. Because of the extent to which prison
building and operation began to attract vast amounts of capital—from the
construction industry to food and health care provision—in a way that
recalled the emergence of the military industrial complex, we began to refer
to a “prison industrial complex.”3
Consider the case of California, whose landscape has been thoroughly
prisonized over the last twenty years. The first state prison in California was
San Quentin, which opened in 1852.4 Folsom, another well-known
institution, opened in 1880. Between 1880 and 1933, when a facility for
women was opened in Tehachapi, there was not a single new prison
constructed. In 1952, the California Institution for Women opened and
Tehachapi became a new prison for men. In all, between 1852 and 1955,

nine prisons were constructed in California. Between 1962 and 1965, two
camps were established, along with the California Rehabilitation Center.
Not a single prison opened during the second half of the sixties, nor during
the entire decade of the 1970s.
However, a massive project of prison construction was initiated during
the 1980s—that is, during the years of the Reagan presidency. Nine prisons,
including the Northern California Facility for Women, were opened
between 1984 and 1989. Recall that it had taken more than a hundred years
to build the first nine California prisons. In less than a single decade, the
number of California prisons doubled. And during the 1990s, twelve new
prisons were opened, including two more for women. In 1995 the Valley
State Prison for Women was opened. According to its mission statement, it
“provides 1,980 women’s beds for California’s overcrowded prison
system.” However, in 2002, there were 3,570 prisoners5 and the other two
women’s prisons were equally overcrowded.
There are now thirty-three prisons, thirty-eight camps, sixteen
community correctional facilities, and five tiny prisoner mother facilities in
California. In 2002 there were 157,979 people incarcerated in these
institutions, including approximately twenty thousand people whom the
state holds for immigration violations. The racial composition of this prison
population is revealing. Latinos, who are now in the majority, account for
35.2 percent; African-Americans 30 percent; and white prisoners 29.2
percent.6 There are now more women in prison in the state of California
than there were in the entire country in the early 1970s. In fact, California
can claim the largest women’s prison in the world, Valley State Prison for
Women, with its more than thirty-five hundred inhabitants. Located in the
same town as Valley State and literally across the street is the second-largest
women’s prison in the world—Central California Women’s Facility—whose
population in 2002 also hovered around thirty-five hundred.7
If you look at a map of California depicting the location of the thirtythree state prisons, you will see that the only area that is not heavily
populated by prisons is the area north of Sacramento. Still, there are two
prisons in the town of Susanville, and Pelican Bay, one of the state’s
notorious super-maximum security prisons, is near the Oregon border.

California artist Sandow Birk was inspired by the colonizing of the
landscape by prisons to produce a series of thirty-three landscape paintings
of these institutions and their surroundings. They are collected in his book
Incarcerated: Visions of California in the Twenty-first Century.8
I present this brief narrative of the prisonization of the California
landscape in order to allow readers to grasp how easy it was to produce a
massive system of incarceration with the implicit consent of the public.
Why were people so quick to assume that locking away an increasingly
large proportion of the U.S. population would help those who live in the
free world feel safer and more secure? This question can be formulated in
more general terms. Why do prisons tend to make people think that their
own rights and liberties are more secure than they would be if prisons did
not exist? What other reasons might there have been for the rapidity with
which prisons began to colonize the California landscape?
Geographer Ruth Gilmore describes the expansion of prisons in
California as “a geographical solution to socio-economic problems.”9 Her
analysis of the prison industrial complex in California describes these
developments as a response to surpluses of capital, land, labor, and state
capacity.
California’s new prisons are sited on devalued rural land, most, in
fact on formerly irrigated agricultural acres . . . The State bought
land sold by big landowners. And the State assured the small,
depressed towns now shadowed by prisons that the new, recessionproof,
non-polluting
industry
would
jump-start
local
10
redevelopment.
But, as Gilmore points out, neither the jobs nor the more general
economic revitalization promised by prisons has occurred. At the same
time, this promise of progress helps us to understand why the legislature
and California’s voters decided to approve the construction of all these new
prisons. People wanted to believe that prisons would not only reduce crime,
they would also provide jobs and stimulate economic development in outof-the-way places.

At bottom, there is one fundamental question: Why do we take prison for
granted? While a relatively small proportion of the population has ever
directly experienced life inside prison, this is not true in poor black and
Latino communities. Neither is it true for Native Americans or for certain
Asian-American communities. But even among those people who must
regrettably accept prison sentences—especially young people—as an
ordinary dimension of community life, it is hardly acceptable to engage in
serious public discussions about prison life or radical alternatives to prison.
It is as if prison were an inevitable fact of life, like birth and death.
On the whole, people tend to take prisons for granted. It is difficult to
imagine life without them. At the same time, there is reluctance to face the
realities hidden within them, a fear of thinking about what happens inside
them. Thus, the prison is present in our lives and, at the same time, it is
absent from our lives. To think about this simultaneous presence and
absence is to begin to acknowledge the part played by ideology in shaping
the way we interact with our social surroundings. We take prisons for
granted but are often afraid to face the realities they produce. After all, no
one wants to go to prison. Because it would be too agonizing to cope with
the possibility that anyone, including ourselves, could become a prisoner,
we tend to think of the prison as disconnected from our own lives. This is
even true for some of us, women as well as men, who have already
experienced imprisonment.
We thus think about imprisonment as a fate reserved for others, a fate
reserved for the “evildoers,” to use a term recently popularized by George
W. Bush. Because of the persistent power of racism, “criminals” and
“evildoers” are, in the collective imagination, fantasized as people of color.
The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which
undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking
about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are
drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that
the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously
engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by
racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.

What, for example, do we miss if we try to think about prison expansion
without addressing larger economic developments? We live in an era of
migrating corporations. In order to escape organized labor in this country—
and thus higher wages, benefits, and so on—corporations roam the world in
search of nations providing cheap labor pools. This corporate migration
thus leaves entire communities in shambles. Huge numbers of people lose
jobs and prospects for future jobs. Because the economic base of these
communities is destroyed, education and other surviving social services are
profoundly affected. This process turns the men, women, and children who
live in these damaged communities into perfect candidates for prison.
In the meantime, corporations associated with the punishment industry
reap profits from the system that manages prisoners and acquire a clear
stake in the continued growth of prison populations. Put simply, this is the
era of the prison industrial complex. The prison has become a black hole
into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass
imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends
to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. There are thus
real and often quite complicated connections between the
deindustrialization of the economy—a process that reached its peak during
the 1980s—and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral
during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was
represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed
because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that
by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics
were already falling. Moreover, draconian drug laws were being enacted,
and “three-strikes” provisions were on the agendas of many states.
In order to understand the proliferation of prisons and the rise of the
prison industrial complex, it might be helpful to think further about the
reasons we so easily take prisons for granted. In California, as we have
seen, almost two-thirds of existing prisons were opened during the eighties
and nineties. Why was there no great outcry? Why was there such an
obvious level of comfort with the prospect of many new prisons? A partial
answer to this question has to do with the way we consume media images of
the prison, even as the realities of imprisonment are hidden from almost all
who have not had the misfortune of doing time. Cultural critic Gina Dent

has pointed out that our sense of familiarity with the prison comes in part
from representations of prisons in film and other visual media.
The history of visuality linked to the prison is also a main
reinforcement of the institution of the prison as a naturalized part of
our social landscape. The history of film has always been wedded to
the representation of incarceration. Thomas Edison’s first films
(dating back to the 1901 reenactment presented as newsreel,
Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison) included
footage of the darkest recesses of the prison. Thus, the prison is
wedded to our experience of visuality, creating also a sense of its
permanence as an institution. We also have a constant flow of
Hollywood prison films, in fact a genre.11
Some of the most well known prison films are: I Want to Live, Papillon,
Cool Hand Luke, and Escape from Alcatraz. It also bears mentioning that
television programming has become increasingly saturated with images of
prisons. Some recent documentaries include the A&E series The Big House,
which consists of programs on San Quentin, Alcatraz, Leavenworth, and
Alderson Federal Reformatory for Women. The long-running HBO program
Oz has managed to persuade many viewers that they know exactly what
goes on in male maximum-security prisons.
But even those who do not consciously decide to watch a documentary or
dramatic program on the topic of prisons inevitably consume prison images,
whether they choose to or not, by the simple fact of watching movies or TV.
It is virtually impossible to avoid consuming images of prison. In 1997, I
was myself quite astonished to find, when I interviewed women in three
Cuban prisons, that most of them narrated their prior awareness of prisons
—that is, before they were actually incarcerated—as coming from the many
Hollywood films they had seen. The prison is one of the most important
features of our image environment. This has caused us to take the existence
of prisons for granted. The prison has become a key ingredient of our
common sense. It is there, all around us. We do not question whether it
should exist. It has become so much a part of our lives that it requires a
great feat of the imagination to envision life beyond the prison.

This is not to dismiss the profound changes that have occurred in the way
public conversations about the prison are conducted. Ten years ago, even as
the drive to expand the prison system reached its zenith, there were very
few critiques of this process available to the public. In fact, most people had
no idea about the immensity of this expansion. This was the period during
which internal changes—in part through the application of new
technologies—led the U.S. prison system in a much more repressive
direction. Whereas previous classifications had been confined to low,
medium, and maximum security, a new category was invented—that of the
super-maximum security prison, or the supermax. The turn toward
increased repression in a prison system, distinguished from the beginning of
its history by its repressive regimes, caused some journalists, public
intellectuals, and progressive agencies to oppose the growing reliance on
prisons to solve social problems that are actually exacerbated by mass
incarceration.
In 1990, the Washington-based Sentencing Project published a study of
U.S. populations in prison and jail, and on parole and probation, which
concluded that one in four black men between the ages of twenty and
twenty-nine were among these numbers.12 Five years later, a second study
revealed that this percentage had soared to almost one in three (32.2
percent). Moreover, more than one in ten Latino men in this same age range
were in jail or prison, or on probation or parole. The second study also
revealed that the group experiencing the greatest increase was black
women, whose imprisonment increased by seventy-eight percent.13
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, African-Americans as a whole
now represent the majority of state and federal prisoners, with a total of
803,400 black inmates—118,600 more than the total number of white
inmates.14 During the late 1990s major articles on prison expansion
appeared in Newsweek, Harper’s, Emerge, and Atlantic Monthly. Even
Colin Powell raised the question of the rising number of black men in
prison when he spoke at the 2000 Republican National Convention, which
declared George W. Bush its presidential candidate.
Over the last few years the previous absence of critical positions on
prison expansion in the political arena has given way to proposals for prison

reform. While public discourse has become more flexible, the emphasis is
almost inevitably on generating the changes that will produce a better
prison system. In other words, the increased flexibility that has allowed for
critical discussion of the problems associated with the expansion of prisons
also restricts this discussion to the question of prison reform.
As important as some reforms may be—the elimination of sexual abuse
and medical neglect in women’s prison, for example—frameworks that rely
exclusively on reforms help to produce the stultifying idea that nothing lies
beyond the prison. Debates about strategies of decarceration, which should
be the focal point of our conversations on the prison crisis, tend to be
marginalized when reform takes the center stage. The most immediate
question today is how to prevent the further expansion of prison populations
and how to bring as many imprisoned women and men as possible back into
what prisoners call “the free world.” How can we move to decriminalize
drug use and the trade in sexual services? How can we take seriously
strategies of restorative rather than exclusively punitive justice? Effective
alternatives involve both transformation of the techniques for addressing
“crime” and of the social and economic conditions that track so many
children from poor communities, and especially communities of color, into
the juvenile system and then on to prison. The most difficult and urgent
challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrains of justice, where
the prison no longer serves as our major anchor.

2
Slavery, Civil Rights, and Abolitionist
Perspectives Toward Prison
“Advocates of incarceration . . . hoped that the
penitentiary would rehabilitate its inmates.
Whereas philosophers perceived a ceaseless state
of war between chattel slaves and their masters,
criminologists hoped to negotiate a peace treaty of
sorts within the prison walls. Yet herein lurked a
paradox: if the penitentiary’s internal regime
resembled that of the plantation so closely that the
two were often loosely equated, how could the
prison possibly function to rehabilitate criminals?”
—Adam Jay Hirsch15

The prison is not the only institution that has posed complex challenges to
the people who have lived with it and have become so inured to its presence
that they could not conceive of society without it. Within the history of the
United States the system of slavery immediately comes to mind. Although
as early as the American Revolution antislavery advocates promoted the
elimination of African bondage, it took almost a century to achieve the
abolition of the “peculiar institution.” White antislavery abolitionists such
as John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison were represented in the
dominant media of the period as extremists and fanatics. When Frederick
Douglass embarked on his career as an antislavery orator, white people—
even those who were passionate abolitionists—refused to believe that a

black slave could display such intelligence. The belief in the permanence of
slavery was so widespread that even white abolitionists found it difficult to
imagine black people as equals.
It took a long and violent civil war in order to legally disestablish the
“peculiar institution.” Even though the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution outlawed involuntary servitude, white supremacy continued to
be embraced by vast numbers of people and became deeply inscribed in
new institutions. One of these post-slavery institutions was lynching, which
was widely accepted for many decades thereafter. Thanks to the work of
figures such as Ida B. Wells, an antilynching campaign was gradually
legitimized during the first half of the twentieth century. The NAACP, an
organization that continues to conduct legal challenges against
discrimination, evolved from these efforts to abolish lynching.
Segregation ruled the South until it was outlawed a century after the
abolition of slavery. Many people who lived under Jim Crow could not
envision a legal system defined by racial equality. When the governor of
Alabama personally attempted to prevent Arthurine Lucy from enrolling in
the University of Alabama, his stance represented the inability to imagine
black and white people ever peaceably living and studying together.
“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” are the
most well known words of this politician, who was forced to repudiate them
some years later when segregation had proved far more vulnerable than he
could have imagined.
Although government, corporations, and the dominant media try to
represent racism as an unfortunate aberration of the past that has been
relegated to the graveyard of U.S. history, it continues to profoundly
influence contemporary structures, attitudes, and behaviors. Nevertheless,
anyone who would dare to call for the reintroduction of slavery, the
organization of lynch mobs, or the reestablishment of legal segregation
would be summarily dismissed. But it should be remembered that the
ancestors of many of today’s most ardent liberals could not have imagined
life without slavery, life without lynching, or life without segregation. The
2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia, and Related Intolerances held in Durban, South Africa,

divulged the immensity of the global task of eliminating racism. There may
be many disagreements regarding what counts as racism and what are the
most effective strategies to eliminate it. However, especially with the
downfall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, there is a global
consensus that racism should not define the future of the planet.
I have referred to these historical examples of efforts to dismantle racist
institutions because they have considerable relevance to our discussion of
prisons and prison abolition. It is true that slavery, lynching, and
segregation acquired such a stalwart ideological quality that many, if not
most, could not foresee their decline and collapse. Slavery, lynching, and
segregation are certainly compelling examples of social institutions that,
like the prison, were once considered to be as everlasting as the sun. Yet, in
the case of all three examples, we can point to movements that assumed the
radical stance of announcing the obsolescence of these institutions. It may
help us gain perspective on the prison if we try to imagine how strange and
discomforting the debates about the obsolescence of slavery must have been
to those who took the “peculiar institution” for granted—and especially to
those who reaped direct benefits from this dreadful system of racist
exploitation. And even though there was widespread resistance among
black slaves, there were even some among them who assumed that they and
their progeny would be always subjected to the tyranny of slavery.
I have introduced three abolition campaigns that were eventually more or
less successful to make the point that social circumstances transform and
popular attitudes shift, in part in response to organized social movements.
But I have also evoked these historical campaigns because they all targeted
some expression of racism. U.S. chattel slavery was a system of forced
labor that relied on racist ideas and beliefs to justify the relegation of people
of African descent to the legal status of property. Lynching was an
extralegal institution that surrendered thousands of African-American lives
to the violence of ruthless racist mobs. Under segregation, black people
were legally declared second-class citizens, for whom voting, job,
education, and housing rights were drastically curtailed, if they were
available at all.

What is the relationship between these historical expressions of racism
and the role of the prison system today? Exploring such connections may
offer us a different perspective on the current state of the punishment
industry. If we are already persuaded that racism should not be allowed to
define the planet’s future and if we can successfully argue that prisons are
racist institutions, this may lead us to take seriously the prospect of
declaring prisons obsolete.
For the moment I am concentrating on the history of antiblack racism in
order to make the point that the prison reveals congealed forms of antiblack
racism that operate in clandestine ways. In other words, they are rarely
recognized as racist. But there are other racialized histories that have
affected the development of the U.S. punishment system as well—the
histories of Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian-Americans. These
racisms also congeal and combine in the prison. Because we are so
accustomed to talking about race in terms of black and white, we often fail
to recognize and contest expressions of racism that target people of color
who are not black. Consider the mass arrests and detention of people of
Middle Eastern, South Asian, or Muslim heritage in the aftermath of the
September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
This leads us to two important questions: Are prisons racist institutions?
Is racism so deeply entrenched in the institution of the prison that it is not
possible to eliminate one without eliminating the other? These are questions
that we should keep in mind as we examine the historical links between
U.S. slavery and the early penitentiary system. The penitentiary as an
institution that simultaneously punished and rehabilitated its inhabitants was
a new system of punishment that first made its appearance in the United
States around the time of the American Revolution. This new system was
based on the replacement of capital and corporal punishment by
incarceration.
Imprisonment itself was new neither to the United States nor to the
world, but until the creation of this new institution called the penitentiary, it
served as a prelude to punishment. People who were to be subjected to
some form of corporal punishment were detained in prison until the
execution of the punishment. With the penitentiary, incarceration became

the punishment itself. As is indicated in the designation “penitentiary,”
imprisonment was regarded as rehabilitative and the penitentiary prison was
devised to provide convicts with the conditions for reflecting on their
crimes and, through penitence, for reshaping their habits and even their
souls. Although some antislavery advocates spoke out against this new
system of punishment during the revolutionary period, the penitentiary was
generally viewed as a progressive reform, linked to the larger campaign for
the rights of citizens.
In many ways, the penitentiary was a vast improvement over the many
forms of capital and corporal punishment inherited from the English.
However, the contention that prisoners would refashion themselves if only
given the opportunity to reflect and labor in solitude and silence disregarded
the impact of authoritarian regimes of living and work. Indeed, there were
significant similarities between slavery and the penitentiary prison.
Historian Adam Jay Hirsch has pointed out:
One may perceive in the penitentiary many reflections of chattel slavery as
it was practiced in the South. Both institutions subordinated their subjects to
the will of others. Like Southern slaves, prison inmates followed a daily
routine specified by their superiors. Both institutions reduced their subjects
to dependence on others for the supply of basic human services such as
food and shelter. Both isolated their subjects from the general population by
confining them to a fixed habitat. And both frequently coerced their
subjects to work, often for longer hours and for less compensation than free
laborers.16
As Hirsch has observed, both institutions deployed similar forms of
punishment, and prison regulations were, in fact, very similar to the Slave
Codes—the laws that deprived enslaved human beings of virtually all
rights. Moreover, both prisoners and slaves were considered to have
pronounced proclivities to crime. People sentenced to the penitentiary in the
North, white and black alike, were popularly represented as having a strong
kinship to enslaved black people.17
The ideologies governing slavery and those governing punishment were
profoundly linked during the earliest period of U.S. history. While free
people could be legally sentenced to punishment by hard labor, such a

sentence would in no way change the conditions of existence already
experienced by slaves. Thus, as Hirsch further reveals, Thomas Jefferson,
who supported the sentencing of convicted people to hard labor on road and
water projects, also pointed out that he would exclude slaves from this sort
of punishment. Since slaves already performed hard labor, sentencing them
to penal labor would not mark a difference in their condition. Jefferson
suggested banishment to other countries instead.18
Particularly in the United States, race has always played a central role in
constructing presumptions of criminality. After the abolition of slavery,
former slave states passed new legislation revising the Slave Codes in order
to regulate the behavior of free blacks in ways similar to those that had
existed during slavery. The new Black Codes proscribed a range of actions
—such as vagrancy, absence from work, breach of job contracts, the
possession of firearms, and insulting gestures or acts—that were
criminalized only when the person charged was black. With the passage of
the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, slavery and involuntary
servitude were putatively abolished. However, there was a significant
exception. In the wording of the amendment, slavery and involuntary
servitude were abolished “except as a punishment for crime, whereof the
party shall have been duly convicted.” According to the Black Codes, there
were crimes defined by state law for which only black people could be
“duly convicted.” Thus, former slaves, who had recently been extricated
from a condition of hard labor for life, could be legally sentenced to penal
servitude.
In the immediate aftermath of slavery, the southern states hastened to
develop a criminal justice system that could legally restrict the possibilities
of freedom for newly released slaves. Black people became the prime
targets of a developing convict lease system, referred to by many as a
reincarnation of slavery. The Mississippi Black Codes, for example,
declared vagrant “anyone/who was guilty of theft, had run away [from a
job, apparently], was drunk, was wanton in conduct or speech, had
neglected job or family, handled money carelessly, and . . . all other idle and
disorderly persons.”19 Thus, vagrancy was coded as a black crime, one
punishable by incarceration and forced labor, sometimes on the very
plantations that previously had thrived on slave labor.

Mary Ellen Curtin’s study of Alabama prisoners during the decades
following emancipation discloses that before the four hundred thousand
black slaves in that state were set free, ninety-nine percent of prisoners in
Alabama’s penitentiaries were white. As a consequence of the shifts
provoked by the institution of the Black Codes, within a short period of
time, the overwhelming majority of Alabama’s convicts were black.20 She
further observes:
Although the vast majority of Alabama’s antebellum prisoners were white,
the popular perception was that the South’s true criminals were its black
slaves. During the 1870s the growing number of black prisoners in the
South further buttressed the belief that African Americans were inherently
criminal and, in particular, prone to larceny.21
In 1883, Frederick Douglass had already written about the South’s
tendency to “impute crime to color.”22 When a particularly egregious crime
was committed, he noted, not only was guilt frequently assigned to a black
person regardless of the perpetrator’s race, but white men sometimes sought
to escape punishment by disguising themselves as black. Douglass would
later recount one such incident that took place in Granger County,
Tennessee, in which a man who appeared to be black was shot while
committing a robbery. The wounded man, however, was discovered to be a
respectable white citizen who had colored his face black.
The above example from Douglass demonstrates how whiteness, in the
words of legal scholar Cheryl Harris, operates as property.23 According to
Harris, the fact that white identity was possessed as property meant that
rights, liberties, and self-identity were affirmed for white people, while
being denied to black people. The latter’s only access to whiteness was
through “passing.” Douglass’s comments indicate how this property interest
in whiteness was easily reversed in schemes to deny black people their
rights to due process. Interestingly, cases similar to the one Douglass
discusses above emerged in the United States during the 1990s: in Boston,
Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife and attempted to blame an
anonymous black man, and in Union, South Carolina, Susan Smith killed
her children and claimed they had been abducted by a black carjacker. The
racialization of crime—the tendency to “impute crime to color,” to use

Frederick Douglass’s words—did not wither away as the country became
increasingly removed from slavery. Proof that crime continues to be
imputed to color resides in the many evocations of “racial profiling” in our
time. That it is possible to be targeted by the police for no other reason than
the color of one’s skin is not mere speculation. Police departments in major
urban areas have admitted the existence of formal procedures designed to
maximize the numbers of African-Americans and Latinos arrested—even in
the absence of probable cause. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks,
vast numbers of people of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritage were
arrested and detained by the police agency known as Immigration and
Naturalization Services (INS). The INS is the federal agency that claims the
largest number of armed agents, even more than the FBI.24
During the post-slavery era, as black people were integrated into southern
penal systems—and as the penal system became a system of penal servitude
—the punishments associated with slavery became further incorporated into
the penal system. “Whipping,” as Matthew Mancini has observed, “was the
preeminent form of punishment under slavery; and the lash, along with the
chain, became the very emblem of servitude for slaves and prisoners.ʺ25 As
indicated above, black people were imprisoned under the laws assembled in
the various Black Codes of the southern states, which, because they were
rearticulations of the Slave Codes, tended to racialize penality and link it
closely with previous regimes of slavery. The expansion of the convict lease
system and the county chain gang meant that the antebellum criminal
justice system, which focused far more intensely on black people than on
whites, defined southern criminal justice largely as a means of controlling
black labor. According to Mancini:
Among the multifarious debilitating legacies of slavery was the conviction
that blacks could only labor in a certain way—the way experience had
shown them to have labored in the past: in gangs, subjected to constant
supervision, and under the discipline of the lash. Since these were the
requisites of slavery, and since slaves were blacks, Southern whites almost
universally concluded that blacks could not work unless subjected to such
intense surveillance and discipline.26

Scholars who have studied the convict lease system point out that in
many important respects, convict leasing was far worse than slavery, an
insight that can be gleaned from titles such as One Dies, Get Another (by
Mancini), Worse Than Slavery (David Oshinsky’s work on Parchman
Prison),27 and Twice the Work of Free Labor (Alex Lichtenstein’s
examination of the political economy of convict leasing).28 Slave owners
may have been concerned for the survival of individual slaves, who, after
all, represented significant investments. Convicts, on the other hand, were
leased not as individuals, but as a group, and they could be worked literally
to death without affecting the profitability of a convict crew.
According to descriptions by contemporaries, the conditions under which
leased convicts and county chain gangs lived were far worse than those
under which black people had lived as slaves. The records of Mississippi
plantations in the Yazoo Delta during the late 1880s indicate that
the prisoners ate and slept on bare ground, without blankets or mattresses,
and often without clothes. They were punished for “slow hoeing” (ten
lashes), “sorry planting” (five lashes), and “being light with cotton” (five
lashes). Some who attempted to escape were whipped “till the blood ran
down their legs”; others had a metal spur riveted to their feet. Convicts
dropped from exhaustion, pneumonia, malaria, frostbite, consumption,
sunstroke, dysentery, gunshot wounds, and “shackle poisoning” (the
constant rubbing of chains and leg irons against bare flesh).29
The appalling treatment to which convicts were subjected under the lease
system recapitulated and further extended the regimes of slavery. If, as
Adam Jay Hirsch contends, the early incarnations of the U.S. penitentiary in
the North tended to mirror the institution of slavery in many important
respects, the post-Civil War evolution of the punishment system was in very
literal ways the continuation of a slave system, which was no longer legal in
the “free” world. The population of convicts, whose racial composition was
dramatically transformed by the abolition of slavery, could be subjected to
such intense exploitation and to such horrendous modes of punishment
precisely because they continued to be perceived as slaves.
Historian Mary Ann Curtin has observed that many scholars who have
acknowledged the deeply entrenched racism of the post-Civil War structures

of punishment in the South have failed to identify the extent to which
racism colored common-sense understandings of the circumstances
surrounding the wholesale criminalization of black communities. Even
antiracist historians, she contends, do not go far enough in examining the
ways in which black people were made into criminals. They point out—and
this, she says, is indeed partially true—that in the aftermath of
emancipation, large numbers of black people were forced by their new
social situation to steal in order to survive. It was the transformation of
petty thievery into a felony that relegated substantial numbers of black
people to the “involuntary servitude” legalized by the Thirteenth
Amendment. What Curtin suggests is that these charges of theft were
frequently fabricated outright. They “also served as subterfuge for political
revenge. After emancipation the courtroom became an ideal place to exact
racial retribution.” 30 In this sense, the work of the criminal justice system
was intimately related to the extralegal work of lynching.
Alex Lichtenstein, whose study focuses on the role of the convict lease
system in forging a new labor force for the South, identifies the lease
system, along with the new Jim Crow laws, as the central institution in the
development of a racial state.
New South capitalists in Georgia and elsewhere were able to use the
state to recruit and discipline a convict labor force, and thus were
able to develop their states’ resources without creating a wage labor
force, and without undermining planters’ control of black labor. In
fact, quite the opposite: the penal system could be used as a
powerful sanction against rural blacks who challenged the racial
order upon which agricultural labor control relied.31
Lichtenstein discloses, for example, the extent to which the building of
Georgia railroads during the nineteenth century relied on black convict
labor. He further reminds us that as we drive down the most famous street
in Atlanta—Peachtree Street—we ride on the backs of convicts: “[T]he
renowned Peachtree Street and the rest of Atlanta’s well-paved roads and
modern transportation infrastructure, which helped cement its place as the
commercial hub of the modern South, were originally laid by convicts.”32

Lichtenstein’s major argument is that the convict lease was not an
irrational regression; it was not primarily a throwback to precapitalist
modes of production. Rather, it was a most efficient and most rational
deployment of racist strategies to swiftly achieve industrialization in the
South. In this sense, he argues, “convict labor was in many ways in the
vanguard of the region’s first tentative, ambivalent, steps toward
modernity.ʺ33
Those of us who have had the opportunity to visit nineteenth-century
mansions that were originally constructed on slave plantations are rarely
content with an aesthetic appraisal of these structures, no matter how
beautiful they may be. Sufficient visual imagery of toiling black slaves
circulate enough in our environment for us to imagine the brutality that
hides just beneath the surface of these wondrous mansions. We have learned
how to recognize the role of slave labor, as well as the racism it embodied.
But black convict labor remains a hidden dimension of our history. It is
extremely unsettling to think of modern, industrialized urban areas as
having been originally produced under the racist labor conditions of penal
servitude that are often described by historians as even worse than slavery.
I grew up in the city of Birmingham, Alabama. Because of its mines—
coal and iron ore—and its steel mills that remained active until the
deindustrialization process of the 1980s, it was widely known as “the
Pittsburgh of the South.” The fathers of many of my friends worked in these
mines and mills. It is only recently that I have learned that the black miners
and steelworkers I knew during my childhood inherited their place in
Birmingham’s industrial development from black convicts forced to do this
work under the lease system. As Curtin observes,
Many ex-prisoners became miners because Alabama used prison labor
extensively in its coalmines. By 1888 all of Alabama’s able male prisoners
were leased to two major mining companies: the Tennessee Coal and Iron
Company (TCI) and Sloss Iron and Steel Company. For a charge of up to
$18.50 per month per man, these corporations “leased,” or rented prison
laborers and worked them in coalmines.34
Learning about this little-acknowledged dimension of black and labor
history has caused me to reevaluate my own childhood experiences.

One of the many ruses racism achieves is the virtual erasure of historical
contributions by people of color. Here we have a penal system that was
racist in many respects—discriminatory arrests and sentences, conditions of
work, modes of punishment—together with the racist erasure of the
significant contributions made by black convicts as a result of racist
coercion. Just as it is difficult to imagine how much is owed to convicts
relegated to penal servitude during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
we find it difficult today to feel a connection with the prisoners who
produce a rising number of commodities that we take for granted in our
daily lives. In the state of California, public colleges and universities are
provided with furniture produced by prisoners, the vast majority of whom
are Latino and black.
There are aspects of our history that we need to interrogate and rethink,
the recognition of which may help us to adopt more complicated, critical
postures toward the present and the future. I have focused on the work of a
few scholars whose work urges us to raise questions about the past, present,
and future. Curtin, for example, is not simply content with offering us the
possibility of reexamining the place of mining and steelwork in the lives of
black people in Alabama. She also uses her research to urge us to think
about the uncanny parallels between the convict lease system in the
nineteenth century and prison privatization in the twenty-first.
In the late nineteenth century, coal companies wished to keep their
skilled prison laborers for as long as they could, leading to denials
of “short time.” Today, a slightly different economic incentive can
lead to similar consequences. CCA [Corrections Corporation of
America] is paid per prisoner. If the supply dries up, or too many are
released too early, their profits are affected . . . Longer prison terms
mean greater profits, but the larger point is that the profit motive
promotes the expansion of imprisonment.35
The persistence of the prison as the main form of punishment, with its
racist and sexist dimensions, has created this historical continuity between
the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century convict lease system and the
privatized prison business today. While the convict lease system was legally
abolished, its structures of exploitation have reemerged in the patterns of

privatization, and, more generally, in the wide-ranging corporatization of
punishment that has produced a prison industrial complex. If the prison
continues to dominate the landscape of punishment throughout this century
and into the next, what might await coming generations of impoverished
African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian-Americans?
Given the parallels between the prison and slavery, a productive exercise
might consist in speculating about what the present might look like if
slavery or its successor, the convict lease system, had not been abolished.
To be sure, I am not suggesting that the abolition of slavery and the lease
system has produced an era of equality and justice. On the contrary, racism
surreptitiously defines social and economic structures in ways that are
difficult to identify and thus are much more damaging. In some states, for
example, more than one-third of black men have been labeled felons. In
Alabama and Florida, once a felon, always a felon, which entails the loss of
status as a rights-bearing citizen. One of the grave consequences of the
powerful reach of the prison was the 2000 (s)election of George W. Bush as
president. If only the black men and women denied the right to vote because
of an actual or presumed felony record had been allowed to cast their
ballots, Bush would not be in the White House today. And perhaps we
would not be dealing with the awful costs of the War on Terrorism declared
during the first year of his administration. If not for his election, the people
of Iraq might not have suffered death, destruction, and environmental
poisoning by U.S. military forces.
As appalling as the current political situation may be, imagine what our
lives might have become if we were still grappling with the institution of
slavery—or the convict lease system or racial segregation. But we do not
have to speculate about living with the consequences of the prison. There is
more than enough evidence in the lives of men and women who have been
claimed by ever more repressive institutions and who are denied access to
their families, their communities, to educational opportunities, to productive
and creative work, to physical and mental recreation. And there is even
more compelling evidence about the damage wrought by the expansion of
the prison system in the schools located in poor communities of color that
replicate the structures and regimes of the prison. When children attend
schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on

knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for
prison. If this is the predicament we face today, what might the future hold
if the prison system acquires an even greater presence in our society? In the
nineteenth century, antislavery activists insisted that as long as slavery
continued, the future of democracy was bleak indeed. In the twenty-first
century, antiprison activists insist that a fundamental requirement for the
revitalization of democracy is the long-overdue abolition of the prison
system.

3
Imprisonment and Reform
“One should recall that the movement for
reforming the prisons, for controlling their
functioning is not a recent phenomenon. It does
not even seem to have originated in a recognition
of failure. Prison ‘reform’ is virtually
contemporary with the prison itself: it constitutes,
as it were, its programme.”
—Michel Foucault36

It is ironic that the prison itself was a product of concerted efforts by
reformers to create a better system of punishment. If the words “prison
reform” so easily slip from our lips, it is because “prison” and “reform”
have been inextricably linked since the beginning of the use of
imprisonment as the main means of punishing those who violate social
norms. As I have already indicated, the origins of the prison are associated
with the American Revolution and therefore with the resistance to the
colonial power of England. Today this seems ironic, but incarceration
within a penitentiary was assumed to be humane—at least far more humane
than the capital and corporal punishment inherited from England and other
European countries. Foucault opens his study, Discipline and Punish: The
Birth of the Prison, with a graphic description of a 1757 execution in Paris.
The man who was put to death was first forced to undergo a series of
formidable tortures ordered by the court. Red-hot pincers were used to burn
away the flesh from his limbs, and molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin,
and other substances were melted together and poured onto the wounds.

Finally, he was drawn and quartered, his body burned, and the ashes tossed
into the wind.37 Under English common law, a conviction for sodomy led to
the punishment of being buried alive, and convicted heretics also were
burned alive. “The crime of treason by a female was punished initially
under the common law by burning alive the defendant. However, in the year
1790 this method was halted and the punishment became strangulation and
burning of the corpse.ʺ38
European and American reformers set out to end macabre penalties such
as this, as well as other forms of corporal punishment such as the stocks and
pillories, whippings, brandings, and amputations. Prior to the appearance of
punitive incarceration, such punishment was designed to have its most
profound effect not so much on the person punished as on the crowd of
spectators. Punishment was, in essence, public spectacle. Reformers such as
John Howard in England and Benjamin Rush in Pennsylvania argued that
punishment—if carried out in isolation, behind the walls of the prison—
would cease to be revenge and would actually reform those who had broken
the law.
It should also be pointed out that punishment has not been without its
gendered dimensions. Women were often punished within the domestic
domain, and instruments of torture were sometimes imported by authorities
into the household. In seventeenth-century Britain, women whose husbands
identified them as quarrelsome and unaccepting of male dominance were
punished by means of a gossip’s bridle, or “branks,” a headpiece with a
chain attached and an iron bit that was introduced into the woman’s
mouth.39 Although the branking of women was often linked to a public
parade, this contraption was sometimes hooked to a wall of the house,
where the punished woman remained until her husband decided to release
her. I mention these forms of punishment inflicted on women because, like
the punishment inflicted on slaves, they were rarely taken up by prison
reformers.
Other modes of punishment that predated the rise of the prison include
banishment, forced labor in galleys, transportation, and appropriation of the
accused’s property. The punitive transportation of large numbers of people
from England, for example, facilitated the initial colonization of Australia.

Transported English convicts also settled the North American colony of
Georgia. During the early 1700s, one in eight transported convicts were
women, and the work they were forced to perform often consisted of
prostitution.40
Imprisonment was not employed as a principal mode of punishment until
the eighteenth century in Europe and the nineteenth century in the United
States. And European prison systems were instituted in Asia and Africa as
an important component of colonial rule. In India, for example, the English
prison system was introduced during the second half of the eighteenth
century, when jails were established in the regions of Calcutta and Madras.
In Europe, the penitentiary movement against capital and other corporal
punishments reflected new intellectual tendencies associated with the
Enlightenment, activist interventions by Protestant reformers, and structural
transformations associated with the rise of industrial capitalism. In Milan in
1764, Cesare Beccaria published his Essay on Crimes and Punishments,41
which was strongly influenced by notions of equality advanced by the
philosophes—especially Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. Beccaria
argued that punishment should never be a private matter, nor should it be
arbitrarily violent; rather, it should be public, swift, and as lenient as
possible. He revealed the contradiction of what was then a distinctive
feature of imprisonment—the fact that it was generally imposed prior to the
defendant’s guilt or innocence being decided.
However, incarceration itself eventually became the penalty, bringing
about a distinction between imprisonment as punishment and pretrial
detention or detention until the infliction of punishment. The process
through which imprisonment developed into the primary mode of stateinflicted punishment was very much related to the rise of capitalism and to
the appearance of a new set of ideological conditions. These new conditions
reflected the rise of the bourgeoisie as the social class whose interests and
aspirations furthered new scientific, philosophical, cultural, and popular
ideas. It is thus important to grasp the fact that the prison as we know it
today did not make its appearance on the historical stage as the superior
form of punishment for all times. It was simply—though we should not
underestimate the complexity of this process—what made most sense at a
particular moment in history. We should therefore question whether a

system that was intimately related to a particular set of historical
circumstances that prevailed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
can lay absolute claim on the twenty-first century.
It may be important at this point in our examination to acknowledge the
radical shift in the social perception of the individual that appeared in the
ideas of that era. With the rise of the bourgeoisie, the individual came to be
regarded as a bearer of formal rights and liberties. The notion of the
individual’s inalienable rights and liberties was eventually memorialized in
the French and American Revolution. “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” from
the French Revolution and “We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men
are created equal . . .” from the American Revolution were new and radical
ideas, even though they were not extended to women, workers, Africans,
and Indians. Before the acceptance of the sanctity of individual rights,
imprisonment could not have been understood as punishment. If the
individual was not perceived as possessing inalienable rights and liberties,
then the alienation of those rights and liberties by removal from society to a
space tyrannically governed by the state would not have made sense.
Banishment beyond the geographical limits of the town may have made
sense, but not the alteration of the individual’s legal status through
imposition of a prison sentence.
Moreover, the prison sentence, which is always computed in terms of
time, is related to abstract quantification, evoking the rise of science and
what is often referred to as the Age of Reason. We should keep in mind that
this was precisely the historical period when the value of labor began to be
calculated in terms of time and therefore compensated in another
quantifiable way, by money. The computability of state punishment in terms
of time—days, months, years—resonates with the role of labor-time as the
basis for computing the value of capitalist commodities. Marxist theorists of
punishment have noted that precisely the historical period during which the
commodity form arose is the era during which penitentiary sentences
emerged as the primary form of punishment.42
Today, the growing social movement contesting the supremacy of global
capital is a movement that directly challenges the rule of the planet—its
human, animal, and plant populations, as well as its natural resources—by

corporations that are primarily interested in the increased production and
circulation of ever more profitable commodities. This is a challenge to the
supremacy of the commodity form, a rising resistance to the contemporary
tendency to commodify every aspect of planetary existence. The question
we might consider is whether this new resistance to capitalist globalization
should also incorporate resistance to the prison.
Thus far I have largely used gender-neutral language to describe the
historical development of the prison and its reformers. But convicts
punished by imprisonment in emergent penitentiary systems were primarily
male. This reflected the deeply gender-biased structure of legal, political,
and economic rights. Since women were largely denied public status as
rights-bearing individuals, they could not be easily punished by the
deprivation of such rights through imprisonment. 43 This was especially true
of married women, who had no standing before the law. According to
English common law, marriage resulted in a state of “civil death,” as
symbolized by the wife’s assumption of the husband’s name. Consequently,
she tended to be punished for revolting against her domestic duties rather
than for failure in her meager public responsibilities. The relegation of
white women to domestic economies prevented them from playing a
significant role in the emergent commodity realm. This was especially true
since wage labor was typically gendered as male and racialized as white. It
is not fortuitous that domestic corporal punishment for women survived
long after these modes of punishment had become obsolete for (white) men.
The persistence of domestic violence painfully attests to these historical
modes of gendered punishment.
Some scholars have argued that the word “penitentiary” may have been
used first in connection with plans outlined in England in 1758 to house
“penitent prostitutes.” In 1777, John Howard, the leading Protestant
proponent of penal reform in England, published The State of the Prisons,44
in which he conceptualized imprisonment as an occasion for religious selfreflection and self-reform. Between 1787 and 1791, the utilitarian
philosopher Jeremy Bentham published his letters on a prison model he
called the panopticon.45 Bentham claimed that criminals could only
internalize productive labor habits if they were under constant surveillance.

According to his panopticon model, prisoners were to be housed in single
cells on circular tiers, all facing a multilevel guard tower. By means of
blinds and a complicated play of light and darkness, the prisoners—who
would not see each other at all—would be unable to see the warden. From
his vantage point, on the other hand, the warden would be able to see all of
the prisoners. However—and this was the most significant aspect of
Bentham’s mammoth panopticon—because each individual prisoner would
never be able to determine where the warden’s gaze was focused, each
prisoner would be compelled to act, that is, work, as if he were being
watched at all times.
If we combine Howard’s emphasis on disciplined self-reflection with
Bentham’s ideas regarding the technology of internalization designed to
make surveillance and discipline the purview of the individual prisoner, we
can begin to see how such a conception of the prison had far-reaching
implications. The conditions of possibility for this new form of punishment
were strongly anchored in a historical era during which the working class
needed to be constituted as an army of self-disciplined individuals capable
of performing the requisite industrial labor for a developing capitalist
system.
John Howard’s ideas were incorporated in the Penitentiary Act of 1799,
which opened the way for the modern prison. While Jeremy Bentham’s
ideas influenced the development of the first national English penitentiary,
located in Millbank and opened in 1816, the first full-fledged effort to
create a panopticon prison was in the United States. The Western State
Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, based on a revised architectural model of the
panopticon, opened in 1826. But the penitentiary had already made its
appearance in the United States. Pennsylvania’s Walnut Street Jail housed
the first state penitentiary in the United States, when a portion of the jail
was converted in 1790 from a detention facility to an institution housing
convicts whose prison sentences simultaneously became punishment and
occasions for penitence and reform.
Walnut Street’s austere regime—total isolation in single cells where
prisoners lived, ate, worked, read the Bible (if, indeed, they were literate),
and supposedly reflected and repented—came to be known as the

Pennsylvania system. This regime would constitute one of that era’s two
major models of imprisonment. Although the other model, developed in
Auburn, New York, was viewed as a rival to the Pennsylvania system, the
philosophical basis of the two models did not differ substantively. The
Pennsylvania model, which eventually crystallized in the Eastern State
Penitentiary in Cherry Hill—the plans for which were approved in 1821—
emphasized total isolation, silence, and solitude, whereas the Auburn model
called for solitary cells but labor in common. This mode of prison labor,
which was called congregate, was supposed to unfold in total silence.
Prisoners were allowed to be with each other as they worked, but only
under condition of silence. Because of its more efficient labor practices,
Auburn eventually became the dominant model, both for the United States
and Europe.
Why would eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reformers become so
invested in creating conditions of punishment based on solitary
confinement? Today, aside from death, solitary confinement—next to
torture, or as a form of torture—is considered the worst form of punishment
imaginable. Then, however, it was assumed to have an emancipatory effect.
The body was placed in conditions of segregation and solitude in order to
allow the soul to flourish. It is not accidental that most of the reformers of
that era were deeply religious and therefore saw the architecture and
regimes of the penitentiary as emulating the architecture and regimes of
monastic life. Still, observers of the new penitentiary saw, early on, the real
potential for insanity in solitary confinement. In an often-quoted passage of
his American Notes, Charles Dickens prefaced a description of his 1842
visit to Eastern Penitentiary with the observation that “the system here is
rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to
be cruel and wrong.”
In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and
meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who devised
this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen
who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are
doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the
immense amount of torture and agony that this dreadful punishment,
prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers . . . I am only the

more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it
which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no
man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold this slow
and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be
immeasurably worse than any torture of the body . . . because its
wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human
ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret
punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.46
Unlike other Europeans such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de
Beaumont, who believed that such punishment would result in moral
renewal and thus mold convicts into better citizens,47 Dickens was of the
opinion that “[t]hose who have undergone this punishment MUST pass into
society again morally unhealthy and diseased.”48 This early critique of the
penitentiary and its regime of solitary confinement troubles the notion that
imprisonment is the most suitable form of punishment for a democratic
society.
The current construction and expansion of state and federal supermaximum security prisons, whose putative purpose is to address
disciplinary problems within the penal system, draws upon the historical
conception of the penitentiary, then considered the most progressive form of
punishment. Today African-Americans and Latinos are vastly
overrepresented in these supermax prisons and control units, the first of
which emerged when federal correctional authorities began to send
prisoners housed throughout the system whom they deemed to be
“dangerous” to the federal prison in Marion, Illinois. In 1983, the entire
prison was “locked down,” which meant that prisoners were confined to
their cells twenty-three hours a day. This lockdown became permanent, thus
furnishing the general model for the control unit and supermax prison.49
Today, there are approximately sixty super-maximum security federal and
state prisons located in thirty-six states and many more supermax units in
virtually every state in the country.
A description of supermaxes in a 1997 Human Rights Watch report
sounds chillingly like Dickens’s description of Eastern State Penitentiary.

What is different, however, is that all references to individual rehabilitation
have disappeared.
Inmates in super-maximum security facilities are usually held in
single cell lock-down, commonly referred to as solitary confinement
. . . [C]ongregate activities with other prisoners are usually
prohibited; other prisoners cannot even be seen from an inmate’s
cell; communication with other prisoners is prohibited or difficult
(consisting, for example, of shouting from cell to cell); visiting and
telephone privileges are limited.50
The new generation of super-maximum security facilities also rely on
state-of-the-art technology for monitoring and controlling prisoner conduct
and movement, utilizing, for example, video monitors and remotecontrolled electronic doors.51 “These prisons represent the application of
sophisticated, modern technology dedicated entirely to the task of social
control, and they isolate, regulate and surveil more effectively than anything
that has preceded them.”52
I have highlighted the similarities between the early U.S. penitentiary—
with its aspirations toward individual rehabilitation—and the repressive
supermaxes of our era as a reminder of the mutability of history. What was
once regarded as progressive and even revolutionary represents today the
marriage of technological superiority and political backwardness. No one—
not even the most ardent defenders of the supermax—would try to argue
today that absolute segregation, including sensory deprivation, is restorative
and healing. The prevailing justification for the supermax is that the horrors
it creates are the perfect complement for the horrifying personalities
deemed the worst of the worst by the prison system. In other words, there is
no pretense that rights are respected, there is no concern for the individual,
there is no sense that men and women incarcerated in supermaxes deserve
anything approaching respect and comfort. According to a 1999 report
issued by the National Institute of Corrections,
Generally, the overall constitutionality of these [supermax] programs
remains unclear. As larger numbers of inmates with a greater diversity of
characteristics, backgrounds, and behaviors are incarcerated in these
facilities, the likelihood of legal challenge is increased.53

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, absolute solitude and
strict regimentation of the prisoner’s every action were viewed as strategies
for transforming habits and ethics. That is to say, the idea that imprisonment
should be the main form of punishment reflected a belief in the potential of
white mankind for progress, not only in science and industry, but at the
level of the individual member of society as well. Prison reformers mirrored
Enlightenment assumptions of progress in every aspect of human—or to be
more precise, white Western—society. In his 1987 study Imagining the
Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-Century
England, John Bender proposes the very intriguing argument that the
emergent literary genre of the novel furthered a discourse of progress and
individual transformation that encouraged attitudes toward punishment to
change.54 These attitudes, he suggests, heralded the conception and
construction of penitentiary prisons during the latter part of the eighteenth
century as a reform suited to the capacities of those who were deemed
human.
Reformers who called for the imposition of penitentiary architecture and
regimes on the then existing structure of the prison aimed their critiques at
the prisons that were primarily used for purposes of pretrial detention or as
an alternative punishment for those who were unable to pay fines exacted
by the courts. John Howard, the most well known of these reformers, was
what you might today call a prison activist. Beginning in 1773, at the age of
forty-seven, he initiated a series of visits that took him “to every institution
for the poor in Europe . . . [a campaign] which cost him his fortune and
finally his life in a typhus war of the Russian army at
Cherson in 1791.”55 At the conclusion of his first trip abroad, he
successfully ran for the office of sheriff in Bedfordshire. As sheriff he
investigated the prisons under his own jurisdiction and later “set out to visit
every prison in England and Wales to document the evils he had first
observed at Bedford.”56
Bender argues that the novel helped facilitate these campaigns to
transform the old prisons—which were filthy and in disarray, and which
thrived on the bribery of the wardens—into well-ordered rehabilitative
penitentiaries. He shows that novels such as Moll Flanders and Robinson

Crusoe emphasized “the power of confinement to reshape personalityʺ57
and popularized some of the ideas that moved reformers to action. As
Bender points out, the eighteenth-century reformers criticized the old
prisons for their chaos, their lack of organization and classification, for the
easy circulation of alcohol and prostitution they permitted, and for the
prevalence of contagion and disease.
The reformers, primarily Protestant, among whom Quakers were
especially dominant, couched their ideas in large part in religious
frameworks. Though John Howard was not himself a Quaker—he was an
independent Protestant—nevertheless
[h]e was drawn to Quaker asceticism and adopted the dress “of a plain
Friend.” His own brand of piety was strongly reminiscent of the Quaker
traditions of silent prayer, “suffering” introspection, and faith in the
illumining power of God’s light. Quakers, for their part, were bound to be
drawn to the idea of imprisonment as a purgatory, as a forced withdrawal
from the distractions of the senses into silent and solitary confrontation with
the self. Howard conceived of a convict’s process of reformation in terms
similar to the spiritual awakening of a believer at a Quaker meeting.58
However, according to Michael Ignatieff, Howard’s contributions did not
so much reside in the religiosity of his reform efforts.
The originality of Howard’s indictment lies in its “scientific,” not in
its moral character. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1756
and author of several scientific papers on climatic variations in
Bedfordshire, Howard was one of the first philanthropists to attempt
a systematic statistical description of a social problem.59
Likewise, Bender’s analysis of the relationship between the novel and the
penitentiary emphasizes the extent to which the philosophical
underpinnings of the prison reformer’s campaigns echoed the materialism
and utilitarianism of the English Enlightenment. The campaign to reform
the prisons was a project to impose order, classification, cleanliness, good
work habits, and self-consciousness. He argues that people detained within
the old prisons were not severely restricted—they sometimes even enjoyed
the freedom to move in and out of the prison. They were not compelled to

work and, depending on their own resources, could eat and drink as they
wished. Even sex was sometimes available, as prostitutes were sometimes
allowed temporary entrance into the prisons. Howard and other reformers
called for the imposition of rigid rules that would “enforce solitude and
penitence, cleanliness and work.”60
“The new penitentiaries,” according to Bender, “supplanting both the old
prisons and houses of correction, explicitly reached toward . . . three goals:
maintenance of order within a largely urban labor force, salvation of the
soul, and rationalization of personality.”61 He argues that this is precisely
what was narratively accomplished by the novel. It ordered and classified
social life, it represented individuals as conscious of their surroundings and
as self-aware and self-fashioning. Bender thus sees a kinship between two
major developments of the eighteenth century—the rise of the novel in the
cultural sphere and the rise of the penitentiary in the socio-legal sphere. If
the novel as a cultural form helped to produce the penitentiary, then prison
reformers must have been influenced by the ideas generated by and through
the eighteenth-century novel.
Literature has continued to play a role in campaigns around the prison.
During the twentieth century, prison writing, in particular, has periodically
experienced waves of popularity. The public recognition of prison writing
in the United States has historically coincided with the influence of social
movements calling for prison reform and/or abolition. Robert Burns’s I Am
a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang,62 and the 1932 Hollywood film
upon which it was based, played a central role in the campaign to abolish
the chain gang. During the 1970s, which were marked by intense organizing
within, outside, and across prison walls, numerous works authored by
prisoners followed the 1970 publication of George Jackson’s Soledad
Brother63 and the anthology I coedited with Bettina Aptheker, If They Come
in the Morning.64 While many prison writers during that era had discovered
the emancipatory potential of writing on their own, relying either on the
education they had received prior to their imprisonment or on their
tenacious efforts at self-education, others pursued their writing as a direct
result of the expansion of prison educational programs during that era.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has challenged the contemporary dismantling of
prison education programs, asks in Live from Death Row,
What societal interest is served by prisoners who remain illiterate? What
social benefit is there in ignorance? How are people corrected while
imprisoned if their education is outlawed? Who profits (other than the
prison establishment itself) from stupid prisoners?65
A practicing journalist before his arrest in 1982 on charges of killing
Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner, Abu-Jamal has regularly produced
articles on capital punishment, focusing especially on its racial and class
disproportions. His ideas have helped to link critiques of the death penalty
with the more general challenges to the expanding U.S. prison system and
are particularly helpful to activists who seek to associate death penalty
abolitionism with prison abolitionism. His prison writings have been
published in both popular and scholarly journals (such as The Nation and
Yale Law Journal) as well as in three collections, Live from Death Row,
Death Blossoms,66 and All Things Censored.67
Abu-Jamal and many other prison writers have strongly criticized the
prohibition of Pell Grants for prisoners, which was enacted in the 1994
crime bill,68 as indicative of the contemporary pattern of dismantling
educational programs behind bars. As creative writing courses for prisoners
were defunded, virtually every literary journal publishing prisoners’ writing
eventually collapsed. Of the scores of magazines and newspapers produced
behind walls, only the Angolite at Louisiana’s Angola Prison and Prison
Legal News at Washington State Prison remain. What this means is that
precisely at a time of consolidating a significant writing culture behind bars,
repressive strategies are being deployed to dissuade prisoners from
educating themselves.
If the publication of Malcolm X’s autobiography marks a pivotal moment
in the development of prison literature and a moment of vast promise for
prisoners who try to make education a major dimension of their time behind
bars,69 contemporary prison practices are systematically dashing those
hopes. In the 1950s, Malcolm’s prison education was a dramatic example of
prisoners’ ability to turn their incarceration into a transformative
experience. With no available means of organizing his quest for knowledge,

he proceeded to read a dictionary, copying each word in his own hand. By
the time he could immerse himself in reading, he noted, “months passed
without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I
never had been so truly free in my life.ʺ70 Then, according to Malcolm,
prisoners who demonstrated an unusual interest in reading were assumed to
have embarked upon a journey of self-rehabilitation and were frequently
allowed special privileges—such as checking out more than the maximum
number of books. Even so, in order to pursue this self-education, Malcolm
had to work against the prison regime—he often read on his cell floor, long
after lights-out, by the glow of the corridor light, taking care to return to bed
each hour for the two minutes during which the guard marched past his cell.
The contemporary disestablishment of writing and other prison
educational programs is indicative of the official disregard today for
rehabilitative strategies, particularly those that encourage individual
prisoners to acquire autonomy of the mind. The documentary film The Last
Graduation describes the role prisoners played in establishing a four-year
college program at New York’s Greenhaven Prison and, twenty-two years
later, the official decision to dismantle it. According to Eddie Ellis, who
spent twenty-five years in prison and is currently a well-known leader of the
antiprison movement, “As a result of Attica, college programs came into the
prisons.ʺ71
In the aftermath of the 1971 prisoner rebellion at Attica and the
government-sponsored massacre, public opinion began to favor prison
reform. Forty-three Attica prisoners and eleven guards and civilians were
killed by the National Guard, who had been ordered to retake the prison by
Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The leaders of the prison rebellion had been
very specific about their demands. In their “practical demands” they
expressed concerns about diet, improvement in the quality of guards, more
realistic rehabilitation programs, and better education programs. They also
wanted religious freedom, freedom to engage in political activity, and an
end to censorship—all of which they saw as indispensable to their
educational needs. As Eddie Ellis observes in The Last Graduation,
Prisoners very early recognized the fact that they needed to be better
educated, that the more education they had, the better they would be able to

deal with themselves and their problems, the problems of the prisons and
the problems of the communities from which most of them came.
Lateef Islam, another former prisoner featured in this documentary, said,
“We held classes before the college came. We taught each other, and
sometimes under penalty of a beat-up.”
After the Attica Rebellion, more than five hundred prisoners were
transferred to Greenhaven, including some of the leaders who continued to
press for educational programs. As a direct result of their demands, Marist
College, a New York state college near Greenhaven, began to offer collegelevel courses in 1973 and eventually established the infrastructure for an
on-site four-year college program. The program thrived for twenty-two
years. Some of the many prisoners who earned their degrees at Greenhaven
pursued postgraduate studies after their release. As the documentary
powerfully demonstrates, the program produced dedicated men who left
prison and offered their newly acquired knowledge and skills to their
communities on the outside.
In 1994, consistent with the general pattern of creating more prisons and
more repression within all prisons, Congress took up the question of
withdrawing college funding for inmates. The congressional debate
concluded with a decision to add an amendment to the 1994 crime bill that
eliminated all Pell Grants for prisoners, thus effectively defunding all higher
educational programs. After twenty-two years, Marist College was
compelled to terminate its program at Greenhaven Prison. Thus, the
documentary revolves around the very last graduation ceremony on July 15,
1995, and the poignant process of removing the books that, in many ways,
symbolized the possibilities of freedom. Or, as one of the Marist professors
said, “They see books as full of gold.” The prisoner who for many years had
served as a clerk for the college sadly reflected, as books were being
moved, that there was nothing left to do in prison—except perhaps
bodybuilding. “But,” he asked, “what’s the use of building your body if you
can’t build your mind?” Ironically, not long after educational programs
were disestablished, weights and bodybuilding equipment were also
removed from most U.S. prisons.

4
How Gender Structures the Prison System
“I have been told that I will never leave prison if I
continue to fight the system. My answer is that one must
be
alive in order to leave prison, and our current
standard of
medical care is tantamount to a death sentence.
Therefore, I have no choice but to continue . . .
Conditions
within the institution continually reinvoke
memories of
violence and oppression, often with devastating
results.
Unlike other incarcerated women who have come
forward
to reveal their impressions of prison, I do not feel
‘safer’
here because ‘the abuse has stopped.’ It has not
stopped. It
has shifted shape and paced itself differently, but it
is as
insidious and pervasive in prison as ever it was in
the
world I know outside these walls. What has ceased
is my
ignorance of the facts concerning abuse—and my

willingness to tolerate it in silence.”
—Marcia Bunny72

Over the last five years, the prison system has received far more attention
by the media than at any time since the period following the 1971 Attica
Rebellion. However, with a few important exceptions, women have been
left out of the public discussions about the expansion of the U.S. prison
system. I am not suggesting that simply bringing women into the existing
conversations on jails and prisons will deepen our analysis of state
punishment and further the project of prison abolition. Addressing issues
that are specific to women’s prisons is of vital importance, but it is equally
important to shift the way we think about the prison system as a whole.
Certainly women’s prison practices are gendered, but so, too, are men’s
prison practices. To assume that men’s institutions constitute the norm and
women’s institutions are marginal is, in a sense, to participate in the very
normalization of prisons that an abolitionist approach seeks to contest.
Thus, the title of this chapter is not “Women and the Prison System,” but
rather “How Gender Structures the Prison System.” Moreover, scholars and
activists who are involved in feminist projects should not consider the
structure of state punishment as marginal to their work. Forward-looking
research and organizing strategies should recognize that the deeply
gendered character of punishment both reflects and further entrenches the
gendered structure of the larger society.
Women prisoners have produced a small but impressive body of literature
that has illuminated significant aspects of the organization of punishment
that would have otherwise remained unacknowledged. Assata Shakur’s
memoirs,73 for example, reveal the dangerous intersections of racism, male
domination, and state strategies of political repression. In 1977 she was
convicted on charges of murder and assault in connection with a 1973
incident that left one New Jersey state trooper dead and another wounded.
She and her companion, Zayd Shakur, who was killed during the shootout,
were the targets of what we now name racial profiling and were stopped by

state troopers under the pretext of a broken taillight. At the time Assata
Shakur, known then as Joanne Chesimard, was underground and had been
anointed by the police and the media as the “Soul of the Black Liberation
Army.” By her 1977 conviction, she either had been acquitted or had
charges dismissed in six other cases—upon the basis of which she had been
declared a fugitive in the first place. Her attorney, Lennox Hinds, has
pointed out that since it was proven that Assata Shakur did not handle the
gun with which the state troopers were shot, her mere presence in the
automobile, against the backdrop of the media demonization to which she
was subjected, constituted the basis of her conviction. In the foreword to
Shakur’s autobiography Hinds writes:
In the history of New Jersey, no woman pretrial detainee or prisoner has
ever been treated as she was, continuously confined in a men’s prison,
under twenty-four-hour surveillance of her most intimate functions, without
intellectual sustenance, adequate medical attention, and exercise, and
without the company of other women for all the years she was in their
custody.74
There is no doubt that Assata Shakur’s status as a black political prisoner
accused of killing a state trooper caused her to be singled out by the
authorities for unusually cruel treatment. However, her own account
emphasizes the extent to which her individual experiences reflected those of
other imprisoned women, especially black and Puerto Rican women. Her
description of the strip search, which focuses on the internal examination of
body cavities, is especially revealing:
Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur [members of the Black Panther Party] had told
me about it after they had been bailed out in the Panther 21 trial. When they
had told me, I was horrified.
“You mean they really put their hands inside you, to search you?” I had
asked.
“Uh-huh,” they answered. Every woman who has ever been on the rock,
or in the old house of detention, can tell you about it. The women call it
“getting the finger” or, more vulgarly, “getting finger-fucked.”
“What happens if you refuse?” I had asked Afeni.

“They lock you in the hole and they don’t let you out until you consent to
be searched internally.”
I thought about refusing, but I sure as hell didn’t want to be in the hole. I
had had enough of solitary. The “internal search” was as humiliating and
disgusting as it sounded. You sit on the edge of this table and the nurse
holds your legs open and sticks a finger in your vagina and moves it around.
She has a plastic glove on. Some of them try to put one finger in your
vagina and another one up your rectum at the same time.75
I have quoted this passage so extensively because it exposes an everyday
routine in women’s prisons that verges on sexual assault as much as it is
taken for granted. Having been imprisoned in the Women’s House of
Detention to which Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur refer, I can personally
affirm the veracity of their claims. Over thirty years after Bird and Afeni
Shakur were released and after I myself spent several months in the
Women’s House of Detention, this issue of the strip search is still very
much on the front burner of women’s prison activism. In 2001 Sisters
Inside, an Australian support organization for women prisoners, launched a
national campaign against the strip search, the slogan of which was “Stop
State Sexual Assault.” Assata Shakur’s autobiography provides an
abundance of insights about the gendering of state punishment and reveals
the extent to which women’s prisons have held on to oppressive patriarchal
practices that are considered obsolete in the “free world.” She spent six
years in several jails and prisons before escaping in 1979 and receiving
political asylum by the Republic of Cuba in 1984, where she lives today.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn wrote an earlier account of life in a women’s
prison, The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner.76 At the height
of the McCarthy era, Flynn, a labor activist and Communist leader, was
convicted under the Smith Act and served two years in Alderson Federal
Reformatory for Women from 1955 to 1957. Following the dominant model
for women’s prisons during that period, Alderson’s regimes were based on
the assumption that “criminal” women could be rehabilitated by
assimilating correct womanly behaviors—that is, by becoming experts in
domesticity—especially cooking, cleaning, and sewing. Of course, training
designed to produce better wives and mothers among middle-class white

women effectively produced skilled domestic servants among black and
poor women. Flynn’s book provides vivid descriptions of these everyday
regimes. Her autobiography is located in a tradition of prison writing by
political prisoners that also includes women of this era. Contemporary
writings by women political prisoners today include poems and short stories
by Ericka Huggins and Susan Rosenberg, analyses of the prison industrial
complex by Linda Evans, and curricula for HIV/AIDS education in
women’s prisons by Kathy Boudin and the members of the Bedford Hills
ACE collective.77
Despite the availability of perceptive portrayals of life in women’s
prisons, it has been extremely difficult to persuade the public—and even, on
occasion, to persuade prison activists who are primarily concerned with the
plight of male prisoners—of the centrality of gender to an understanding of
state punishment. Although men constitute the vast majority of prisoners in
the world, important aspects of the operation of state punishment are missed
if it is assumed that women are marginal and thus undeserving of attention.
The most frequent justification for the inattention to women prisoners and
to the particular issues surrounding women’s imprisonment is the relatively
small proportion of women among incarcerated populations throughout the
world. In most countries, the percentage of women among prison
populations hovers around five percent.78 However, the economic and
political shifts of the 1980s—the globalization of economic markets, the
deindustrialization of the U.S. economy, the dismantling of such social
service programs as Aid to Families of Dependent Children, and, of course,
the prison construction boom—produced a significant acceleration in the
rate of women’s imprisonment both inside and outside the United States. In
fact, women remain today the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. prison
population. This recent rise in the rate of women’s imprisonment points
directly to the economic context that produced the prison industrial complex
and that has had a devastating impact on men and women alike.
It is from this perspective of the contemporary expansion of prisons, both
in the United States and throughout the world, that we should examine
some of the historical and ideological aspects of state punishment imposed
on women. Since the end of the eighteenth century, when, as we have seen,
imprisonment began to emerge as the dominant form of punishment,

convicted women have been represented as essentially different from their
male counterparts. It is true that men who commit the kinds of
transgressions that are regarded as punishable by the state are labeled as
social deviants. Nevertheless, masculine criminality has always been
deemed more “normal” than feminine criminality. There has always been a
tendency to regard those women who have been publicly punished by the
state for their misbehaviors as significantly more aberrant and far more
threatening to society than their numerous male counterparts.
In seeking to understand this gendered difference in the perception of
prisoners, it should be kept in mind that as the prison emerged and evolved
as the major form of public punishment, women continued to be routinely
subjected to forms of punishment that have not been acknowledged as such.
For example, women have been incarcerated in psychiatric institutions in
greater proportions than in prisons.79 Studies indicating that women have
been even more likely to end up in mental facilities than men suggest that
while jails and prisons have been dominant institutions for the control of
men, mental institutions have served a similar purpose for women. That is,
deviant men have been constructed as criminal, while deviant women have
been constructed as insane. Regimes that reflect this assumption continue to
inform the women’s prison. Psychiatric drugs continue to be distributed far
more extensively to imprisoned women than to their male counterparts. A
Native American woman incarcerated in the Women’s Correctional Center
in Montana related her experience with psychotropic drugs to sociologist
Luana Ross:
Haldol is a drug they give people who can’t cope with lockup. It makes you
feel dead, paralyzed. And then I started getting side effects from Haldol. I
wanted to fight anybody, any of the officers. I was screaming at them and
telling them to get out of my face, so the doctor said, “We can’t have that.”
And, they put me on Tranxene. I don’t take pills; I never had trouble
sleeping until I got here. Now I’m supposed to see [the counselor] again
because of my dreams. If you got a problem, they’re not going to take care
of it. They’re going to put you on drugs so they can control you.80
Prior to the emergence of the penitentiary and thus of the notion of
punishment as “doing time,” the use of confinement to control beggars,

thieves, and the insane did not necessarily distinguish among these
categories of deviancy. At this phase in the history of punishment—prior to
the American and French Revolutions—the classification process through
which criminality is differentiated from poverty and mental illness had not
yet developed. As the discourse on criminality and the corresponding
institutions to control it distinguished the “criminal” from the “insane,” the
gendered distinction took hold and continued to structure penal policies.
Gendered as female, this category of insanity was highly sexualized. When
we consider the impact of class and race here, we can say that for white and
affluent women, this equalization tends to serve as evidence for emotional
and mental disorders, but for black and poor women, it has pointed to
criminality.
It should also be kept in mind that until the abolition of slavery, the vast
majority of black women were subject to regimes of punishment that
differed significantly from those experienced by white women. As slaves,
they were directly and often brutally disciplined for conduct considered
perfectly normal in a context of freedom. Slave punishment was visibly
gendered—special penalties, were, for example, reserved for pregnant
women unable to reach the quotas that determined how long and how fast
they should work. In the slave narrative of Moses Grandy, an especially
brutal form of whipping is described in which the woman was required to
lie on the ground with her stomach positioned in a hole, whose purpose was
to safeguard the fetus (conceived as future slave labor). If we expand our
definition of punishment under slavery, we can say that the coerced sexual
relations between slave and master constituted a penalty exacted on women,
if only for the sole reason that they were slaves. In other words, the
deviance of the slave master was transferred to the slave woman, whom he
victimized. Likewise, sexual abuse by prison guards is translated into
hypersexuality of women prisoners. The notion that female “deviance”
always has a sexual dimension persists in the contemporary era, and this
intersection of criminality and sexuality continues to be racialized. Thus,
white women labeled as “criminals” are more closely associated with
blackness than their “normal” counterparts.
Prior to the emergence of the prison as the major form of public
punishment, it was taken for granted that violators of the law would be

subjected to corporal and frequently capital penalties. What is not generally
recognized is the connection between state-inflicted corporal punishment
and the physical assaults on women in domestic spaces. This form of bodily
discipline has continued to be routinely meted out to women in the context
of intimate relationships, but it is rarely understood to be related to state
punishment.
Quaker reformers in the United States—especially the Philadelphia
Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, founded in 1787—
played a pivotal role in campaigns to substitute imprisonment for corporal
punishment. Following in the tradition established by Elizabeth Fry in
England, Quakers were also responsible for extended crusades to institute
separate prisons for women. Given the practice of incarcerating
criminalized women in men’s prisons, the demand for separate women’s
prisons was viewed as quite radical during this period. Fry formulated
principles governing prison reform for women in her 1827 work,
Observations in Visiting, Superintendence and Government of Female
Prisoners, which were taken up in the United States by women such as
Josephine Shaw Lowell and Abby Hopper Gibbons. In the 1870s, Lowell
and Gibbons helped to lead the campaign in New York for separate prisons
for women.
Prevailing attitudes toward women convicts differed from those toward
men convicts, who were assumed to have forfeited rights and liberties that
women generally could not claim even in the “free world.” Although some
women were housed in penitentiaries, the institution itself was gendered as
male, for by and large no particular arrangements were made to
accommodate sentenced women.
The women who served in penal institutions between 1820 and 1870
were not subject to the prison reform experienced by male inmates.
Officials employed isolation, silence, and hard labor to rehabilitate
male prisoners. The lack of accommodations for female inmates
made isolation and silence impossible for them and productive labor
was not considered an important part of their routine. The neglect of
female prisoners, however, was rarely benevolent. Rather, a pattern

of overcrowding, harsh treatment, and sexual abuse recurred
throughout prison histories.81
Male punishment was linked ideologically to penitence and reform. The
very forfeiture of rights and liberties implied that with self-reflection,
religious study, and work, male convicts could achieve redemption and
could recover these rights and liberties. However, since women were not
acknowledged as securely in possession of these rights, they were not
eligible to participate in this process of redemption.
According to dominant views, women convicts were irrevocably fallen
women, with no possibility of salvation. If male criminals were considered
to be public individuals who had simply violated the social contract, female
criminals were seen as having transgressed fundamental moral principles of
womanhood. The reformers, who, following Elizabeth Fry, argued that
women were capable of redemption, did not really contest these ideological
assumptions about women’s place. In other words, they did not question the
very notion of “fallen women.” Rather, they simply opposed the idea that
“fallen women” could not be saved. They could be saved, the reformers
contended, and toward that end they advocated separate penal facilities and
a specifically female approach to punishment. Their approach called for
architectural models that replaced cells with cottages and “rooms” in a way
that was supposed to infuse domesticity into prison life. This model
facilitated a regime devised to reintegrate criminalized women into the
domestic life of wife and mother. They did not, however, acknowledge the
class and race underpinnings of this regime. Training that was, on the
surface, designed to produce good wives and mothers in effect steered poor
women (and especially black women) into “free world” jobs in domestic
service. Instead of stay-at-home skilled wives and mothers, many women
prisoners, upon release, would become maids, cooks, and washerwomen for
more affluent women. A female custodial staff, the reformers also argued,
would minimize the sexual temptations, which they believed were often at
the root of female criminality.
When the reform movement calling for separate prisons for women
emerged in England and the United States during the nineteenth century,
Elizabeth Fry, Josephine Shaw, and other advocates argued against the

established idea that criminal women were beyond the reach of moral
rehabilitation. Like male convicts, who presumably could be “corrected” by
rigorous prison regimes, female convicts, they suggested, could also be
molded into moral beings by differently gendered imprisonment regimes.
Architectural changes, domestic regimes, and an all-female custodial staff
were implemented in the reformatory program proposed by reformers,82
and eventually women’s prisons became as strongly anchored to the social
landscape as men’s prisons, but even more invisible. Their greater
invisibility was as much a reflection of the way women’s domestic duties
under patriarchy were assumed to be normal, natural, and consequently
invisible as it was of the relatively small numbers of women incarcerated in
these new institutions.
Twenty-one years after the first English reformatory for women was
established in London in 1853, the first U.S. reformatory for women was
opened in Indiana. The aim was to
train the prisoners in the “important” female role of domesticity. Thus an
important role of the reform movement in women’s prisons was to
encourage and ingrain “appropriate” gender roles, such as vocational
training in cooking, sewing and cleaning. To accommodate these goals, the
reformatory cottages were usually designed with kitchens, living rooms,
and even some nurseries for prisoners with infants.83
However, this feminized public punishment did not affect all women in
the same way. When black and Native American women were imprisoned
in reformatories, they often were segregated from white women. Moreover,
they tended to be disproportionately sentenced to men’s prisons. In the
southern states in the aftermath of the Civil War, black women endured the
cruelties of the convict lease system unmitigated by the feminization of
punishment; neither their sentences nor the labor they were compelled to do
were lessened by virtue of their gender. As the U.S. prison system evolved
during the twentieth century, feminized modes of punishment—the cottage
system, domestic training, and so on—were designed ideologically to
reform white women, relegating women of color in large part to realms of
public punishment that made no pretense of offering them femininity.

Moreover, as Lucia Zedner has pointed out, sentencing practices for
women within the reformatory system often required women of all racial
backgrounds to do more time than men for similar offenses. “This
differential was justified on the basis that women were sent to reformatories
not to be punished in proportion to the seriousness of their offense but to be
reformed and retrained, a process that, it was argued, required time.”84 At
the same time, Zedner points out, this tendency to send women to prison for
longer terms than men was accelerated by the eugenics movement, “which
sought to have ‘genetically inferior’ women removed from social
circulation for as many of their child-bearing years as possible.ʺ85
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, women’s prisons have begun
to look more like their male counterparts, particularly facilities constructed
in the contemporary era of the prison industrial complex. As corporate
involvement in punishment expands in ways that would have been
unimaginable just two decades ago, the prison’s presumed goal of
rehabilitation has been thoroughly displaced by incapacitation as the major
objective of imprisonment. As I have already pointed out, now that the
population of U.S. prisons and jails has surpassed two million people, the
rate of increase in the numbers of women prisoners has exceeded that of
men. As criminologist Elliot Currie has pointed out,
For most of the period after World War II, the female incarceration rate
hovered at around 8 per 100,000; it did not reach double digits until 1977.
Today it is 51 per 100,000 . . . At the current rates of increase, there will be
more women in American prisons in the year 2010 than there were inmates
of both sexes in 1970. When we combine the effects of race and gender, the
nature of these shifts in the prison population is even clearer. The prison
incarceration rate for black women today exceeds that for white men as
recently as 1980.86
Luana Ross’s study of Native American women incarcerated in the
Women’s Correctional Center in Montana argues that “prisons, as employed
by the Euro-American system, operate to keep Native Americans in a
colonial situation.”87 She points out that Native people are vastly
overrepresented in the country’s federal and state prisons. In Montana,
where she did her research, they constitute 6 percent of the general

population, but 17.3 percent of the imprisoned population. Native women
are even more disproportionately present in Montana’s prison system. They
constitute 25 percent of all women imprisoned by the state.88
Thirty years ago, around the time of the Attica uprising and the murder of
George Jackson at San Quentin, radical opposition to the prison system
identified it as a principal site of state violence and repression. In part as a
reaction to the invisibility of women prisoners in this movement and in part
as a consequence of the rising women’s liberation movement, specific
campaigns developed in defense of the rights of women prisoners. Many of
these campaigns put forth—and continue to advance—radical critiques of
state repression and violence. Within the correctional community, however,
feminism has been influenced largely by liberal constructions of gender
equality.
In contrast to the nineteenth-century reform movement, which was
grounded in an ideology of gender difference, late-twentieth-century
“reforms” have relied on a “separate but equal” model. This “separate but
equal” approach often has been applied uncritically, ironically resulting in
demands for more repressive conditions in order to render women’s
facilities “equal” to men’s. A clear example of this can be discovered in a
memoir, The Warden Wore Pink, written by a former warden of Huron
Valley Women’s Prison in Michigan. During the 1980s, the author, Tekla
Miller, advocated a change in policies within the Michigan correctional
system that would result in women prisoners being treated the same as men
prisoners. With no trace of irony, she characterizes as “feminist” her own
fight for “gender equality” between male and female prisoners and for
equality between male and female institutions of incarceration. One of these
campaigns focuses on the unequal allocation of weapons, which she sought
to remedy:
Arsenals in men’s prisons are large rooms with shelves of shotguns, rifles,
hand guns, ammunition, gas canisters, and riot equipment . . . Huron Valley
Women’s arsenal was a small, five feet by two feet closet that held two
rifles, eight shotguns, two bullhorns, five handguns, four gas canisters, and
twenty sets of restraints.89

It does not occur to her that a more productive version of feminism
would also question the organization of state punishment for men as well
and, in my opinion, would seriously consider the proposition that the
institution as a whole—gendered as it is—calls for the kind of critique that
might lead us to consider its abolition.
Miller also describes the case of an attempted escape by a woman
prisoner. The prisoner climbed over the razor ribbon but was captured after
she jumped to the ground on the other side. This escape attempt occasioned
a debate about the disparate treatment of men and women escapees. Miller’s
position was that guards should be instructed to shoot at women just as they
were instructed to shoot at men. She argued that parity for women and men
prisoners should consist in their equal right to be fired upon by guards. The
outcome of the debate, Miller observed, was that
escaping women prisoners in medium or higher [security] prisons are
treated the same way as men. A warning shot is fired. If the prisoner fails to
halt and is over the fence, an officer is allowed to shoot to injure. If the
officer’s life is in danger, the officer can shoot to kill.90
Paradoxically, demands for parity with men’s prisons, instead of creating
greater educational, vocational, and health opportunities for women
prisoners, often have led to more repressive conditions for women. This is
not only a consequence of deploying liberal—that is, formalistic— notions
of equality, but of, more dangerous, allowing male prisons to function as the
punishment norm. Miller points out that she attempted to prevent a female
prisoner, whom she characterizes as a “murderer” serving a long term, from
participating in graduation ceremonies at the University of Michigan
because male murderers were not given such privileges. (Of course, she
does not indicate the nature of the woman’s murder charges—whether, for
instance, she was convicted of killing an abusive partner, as is the case for a
substantial number of women convicted of murder.) Although Miller did
not succeed in preventing the inmate from participating in the
commencement, in addition to her cap and gown, the prisoner was made to
wear leg chains and handcuffs during the ceremony.91 This is indeed a
bizarre example of feminist demands for equality within the prison system.

A widely publicized example of the use of repressive paraphernalia
historically associated with the treatment of male prisoners to create
“equality” for female prisoners was the 1996 decision by Alabama’s prison
commissioner to establish women’s chain gangs. After Alabama became the
first state to reinstitute chain gangs in 1995, then State Corrections
Commissioner Ron Jones announced the following year that women would
be shackled while they cut grass, picked up trash, or worked a vegetable
garden at Julia Tutwiler State Prison for Women. This attempt to institute
chain gangs for women was in part a response to lawsuits by male
prisoners, who charged that male chain gains discriminated against men by
virtue of their gender.92 However, immediately after Jones’s announcement,
Governor Fob James, who obviously was pressured to prevent Alabama
from acquiring the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. state to have
equal- opportunity chain gangs, fired him.
Shortly after Alabama’s embarrassing flirtation with the possibility of
chain gangs for women, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopo County, Arizona—
represented in the media as “the toughest sheriff in America”—held a press
conference to announce that because he was “an equal opportunity
incarcerator,” he was establishing the country’s first female chain gang.93
When the plan was implemented, newspapers throughout the country
carried a photograph of chained women cleaning Phoenix’s streets. Even
though this may have been a publicity stunt designed to bolster the fame of
Sheriff Arpaio, the fact that this women’s chain gang emerged against the
backdrop of a generalized increase in the repression inflicted on women
prisoners is certainly cause for alarm. Women’s prisons throughout the
country increasingly include sections known as security housing units. The
regimes of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation in the security
housing unit (SHU) in these sections within women’s prisons are smaller
versions of the rapidly proliferating super-maximum security prisons. Since
the population of women in prison now consists of a majority of women of
color, the historical resonances of slavery, colonization, and genocide
should not be missed in these images of women in chains and shackles.
As the level of repression in women’s prisons increases, and,
paradoxically, as the influence of domestic prison regimes recedes, sexual
abuse—which, like domestic violence, is yet another dimension of the

privatized punishment of women—has become an institutionalized
component of punishment behind prison walls. Although guard-on-prisoner
sexual abuse is not sanctioned as such, the widespread leniency with which
offending officers are treated suggests that for women, prison is a space in
which the threat of sexualized violence that looms in the larger society is
effectively sanctioned as a routine aspect of the landscape of punishment
behind prison walls.
According to a 1996 Human Rights Watch report on the sexual abuse of
women in U.S. prisons:
Our findings indicate that being a woman prisoner in U.S. state prisons can
be a terrifying experience. If you are sexually abused, you cannot escape
from your abuser. Grievance or investigatory procedures, where they exist,
are often ineffectual, and correctional employees continue to engage in
abuse because they believe they will rarely be held accountable,
administratively or criminally. Few people outside the prison walls know
what is going on or care if they do know. Fewer still do anything to address
the problem.94
The following excerpt from the summary of this report, entitled All Too
Familiar: Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons, reveals the extent
to which women’s prison environments are violently sexualized, thus
recapitulating the familiar violence that characterizes many women’s
private lives:
We found that male correctional employees have vaginally, anally, and
orally raped female prisoners and sexually assaulted and abused them. We
found that in the course of committing such gross misconduct, male officers
have not only used actual or threatened physical force, but have also used
their near total authority to provide or deny goods and privileges to female
prisoners to compel them to have sex or, in other cases, to reward them for
having done so. In other cases, male officers have violated their most basic
professional duty and engaged in sexual contact with female prisoners
absent the use of threat of force or any material exchange. In addition to
engaging in sexual relations with prisoners, male officers have used
mandatory pat-frisks or room searches to grope women’s breasts, buttocks,
and vaginal areas and to view them inappropriately while in a state of

undress in the housing or bathroom areas. Male correctional officers and
staff have also engaged in regular verbal degradation and harassment of
female prisoners, thus contributing to a custodial environment in the state
prisons for women that is often highly sexualized and excessively hostile.95
The violent sexualization of prison life within women’s institutions raises
a number of issues that may help us develop further our critique of the
prison system. Ideologies of sexuality—and particularly the intersection of
race and sexuality—have had a profound effect on the representations of
and treatment received by women of color both within and outside prison.
Of course, black and Latino men experience a perilous continuity in the
way they are treated in school, where they are disciplined as potential
criminals; in the streets, where they are subjected to racial profiling by the
police; and in prison, where they are warehoused and deprived of virtually
all of their rights. For women, the continuity of treatment from the free
world to the universe of the prison is even more complicated, since they
also confront forms of violence in prison that they have confronted in their
homes and intimate relationships.
The criminalization of black and Latina women includes persisting
images of hypersexuality that serve to justify sexual assaults against them
both in and outside of prison. Such images were vividly rendered in a
Nightline television series filmed in November 1999 on location at
California’s Valley State Prison for Women. Many of the women
interviewed by Ted Koppel complained that they received frequent and
unnecessary pelvic examinations, including when they visited the doctor
with such routine illnesses as colds. In an attempt to justify these
examinations, the chief medical officer explained that women prisoners had
rare opportunities for “male contact,” and that they therefore welcomed
these superfluous gynecological exams. Although this officer was
eventually removed from his position as a result of these comments, his
reassignment did little to alter the pervasive vulnerability of imprisoned
women to sexual abuse.
Studies on female prisons throughout the world indicate that sexual abuse
is an abiding, though unacknowledged, form of punishment to which
women, who have the misfortune of being sent to prison, are subjected.

This is one aspect of life in prison that women can expect to encounter,
either directly or indirectly, regardless of the written policies that govern the
institution. In June 1998, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations
Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women, visited federal and state
prisons as well as Immigration and Naturalization detention facilities in
New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, Georgia, and California.
She was refused permission to visit women’s prisons in Michigan, where
serious allegations of sexual abuse were pending. In the aftermath of her
visits, Coomaraswamy announced that “sexual misconduct by prison staff is
widespread in American women’s prisons.”96
This clandestine institutionalization of sexual abuse violates one of the
guiding principles of the United Nations’ Standard Minimum Rules for the
Treatment of Prisoners, a UN instrument first adopted in 1955 and used as a
guideline by many governments to achieve what is known as “good prison
practice.” However, the U.S. government has done little to publicize these
rules and it is probably the case that most correctional personnel have never
heard of these UN standards. According to the Standard Minimum Rules,
Imprisonment and other measures which result in cutting off an offender
from the outside world are afflictive by the very fact of taking from the
person the right of self-determination by depriving him of his liberty.
Therefore the prison system shall not, except as incidental to justifiable
segregation or the maintenance of discipline, aggravate the suffering
inherent in such a situation.97
Sexual abuse is surreptitiously incorporated into one of the most habitual
aspects of women’s imprisonment, the strip search. As activists and
prisoners themselves have pointed out, the state itself is directly implicated
in this routinization of sexual abuse, both in permitting such conditions that
render women vulnerable to explicit sexual coercion carried out by guards
and other prison staff and by incorporating into routine policy such
practices as the strip search and body cavity search.
Australian lawyer/activist Amanda George has pointed out that
[t]he acknowledgement that sexual assault does occur in institutions for
people with intellectual disabilities, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, youth

training centres and police stations, usually centres around the criminal acts
of rape and sexual assault by individuals employed in those institutions.
These offences, though they are rarely reported, are clearly understood as
being ”crimes” for which the individual and not the state is responsible. At
the same time as the state deplores “unlawful” sexual assaults by its
employees, it actually uses sexual assault as a means of control.
In Victoria, prison and police officers are vested with the power and
responsibility to do acts which, if done outside of work hours, would be
crimes of sexual assault. If a person does not “consent” to being stripped
naked by these officers, force can lawfully be used to do it . . . These legal
strip searches are, in the author’s view, sexual assaults within the definition
of indecent assault in the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) as amended in section 39.98
At a November 2001 conference on women in prison held by the
Brisbane-based organization Sisters Inside, Amanda George described an
action performed before a national gathering of correctional personnel
working in women’s prisons. Several women seized control of the stage
and, some playing guards, others playing the roles of prisoners, dramatized
a strip search. According to George, the gathering was so repulsed by this
enactment of a practice that occurs routinely in women’s prisons
everywhere that many of the participants felt compelled to disassociate
themselves from such practices, insisting that this was not what they did.
Some of the guards, George said, simply cried upon watching
representations of their own actions outside the prison context. What they
must have realized is that “without the uniform, without the power of the
state, [the strip search] would be sexual assault.”99
But why is an understanding of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse in
women’s prisons an important element of a radical analysis of the prison
system, and especially of those forward-looking analyses that lead us in the
direction of abolition? Because the call to abolish the prison as the
dominant form of punishment cannot ignore the extent to which the
institution of the prison has stockpiled ideas and practices that are hopefully
approaching obsolescence in the larger society, but that retain all their
ghastly vitality behind prison walls. The destructive combination of racism
and misogyny, however much it has been challenged by social movements,

scholarship, and art over the last three decades, retains all its awful
consequences within women’s prisons. The relatively uncontested presence
of sexual abuse in women’s prisons is one of many such examples. The
increasing evidence of a U.S. prison industrial complex with global
resonances leads us to think about the extent to which the many
corporations that have acquired an investment in the expansion of the prison
system are, like the state, directly implicated in an institution that
perpetuates violence against women.

5
The Prison Industrial Complex
“For private business prison labor is like a pot of
gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No health
benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers’
compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in
foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being
built on thousands of eerie acres of factories inside
the walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron,
make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs,
shovel manure, and make circuit boards,
limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie for Victoria’s
Secret, all at a fraction of the cost of ‘free labor.’”
—Linda Evans and Eve Goldberg100

The exploitation of prison labor by private corporations is one aspect
among an array of relationships linking corporations, government,
correctional communities, and media. These relationships constitute what
we now call a prison industrial complex. The term “prison industrial
complex” was introduced by activists and scholars to contest prevailing
beliefs that increased levels of crime were the root cause of mounting prison
populations. Instead, they argued, prison construction and the attendant
drive to fill these new structures with human bodies have been driven by
ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit. Social historian Mike Davis
first used the term in relation to California’s penal system, which, he
observed, already had begun in the 1990s to rival agribusiness and land
development as a major economic and political force.101

To understand the social meaning of the prison today within the context
of a developing prison industrial complex means that punishment has to be
conceptually severed from its seemingly indissoluble link with crime. How
often do we encounter the phrase “crime and punishment”? To what extent
has the perpetual repetition of the phrase “crime and punishment” in
literature, as titles of television shows, both fictional and documentary, and
in everyday conversation made it extremely difficult to think about
punishment beyond this connection? How have these portrayals located the
prison in a causal relation to crime as a natural, necessary, and permanent
effect, thus inhibiting serious debates about the viability of the prison
today?
The notion of a prison industrial complex insists on understandings of the
punishment process that take into account economic and political structures
and ideologies, rather than focusing myopically on individual criminal
conduct and efforts to “curb crime.” The fact, for example, that many
corporations with global markets now rely on prisons as an important
source of profit helps us to understand the rapidity with which prisons
began to proliferate precisely at a time when official studies indicated that
the crime rate was falling. The notion of a prison industrial complex also
insists that the racialization of prison populations—and this is not only true
of the United States, but of Europe, South America, and Australia as well—
is not an incidental feature. Thus, critiques of the prison industrial complex
undertaken by abolitionist activists and scholars are very much linked to
critiques of the global persistence of racism. Antiracist and other social
justice movements are incomplete with attention to the politics of
imprisonment. At the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against
Racism held in Durban, South Africa, a few individuals active in
abolitionist campaigns in various countries attempted to bring this
connection to the attention of the international community. They pointed
out that the expanding system of prisons throughout the world both relies on
and further promotes structures of racism even though its proponents may
adamantly maintain that it is race-neutral.
Some critics of the prison system have employed the term “correctional
industrial complex” and others “penal industrial complex.” These and the
term I have chosen to underscore, “prison industrial complex,” all clearly

resonate with the historical concept of a “military industrial complex,”
whose usage dates back to the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. It may
seem ironic that a Republican president was the first to underscore a
growing and dangerous alliance between the military and corporate worlds,
but it clearly seemed right to antiwar activists and scholars during the era of
the Vietnam War. Today, some activists mistakenly argue that the prison
industrial complex is moving into the space vacated by the military
industrial complex. However, the so-called War on Terrorism initiated by
the Bush administration in the aftermath of the 2002 attacks on the World
Trade Center has made it very clear that the links between the military,
corporations, and government are growing stronger, not weaker.
A more cogent way to define the relationship between the military
industrial complex and the prison industrial complex would be to call it
symbiotic. These two complexes mutually support and promote each other
and, in fact, often share technologies. During the early nineties, when
defense production was temporarily on the decline, this connection between
the military industry and the criminal justice /punishment industry was
acknowledged in a 1994 Wall Street Journal article entitled “Making Crime
Pay: The Cold War of the ’90s”:
Parts of the defense establishment are cashing in, too, sensing a logical new
line of business to help them offset military cutbacks. Westinghouse
Electric Corp., Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co, GDE Systems (a
division of the old General Dynamics) and Alliant Techsystems Inc., for
instance, are pushing crime fighting equipment and have created special
divisions to retool their defense technology for America’s streets.102
The article describes a conference sponsored by the National Institute of
Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, entitled “Law
Enforcement Technology in the 21st Century.” The secretary of defense was
a major presenter at this conference, which explored topics such as, “The
role of the defense industry, particularly for dual use and conversion.”
Hot topics: defense-industry technology that could lower the level of
violence involved in crime fighting. Sandia National Laboratories,
for instance, is experimenting with a dense foam that can be sprayed
at suspects, temporarily blinding and deafening them under

breathable bubbles. Stinger Corporation is working on “smart guns,”
which will fire only for the owner, and retractable spiked barrier
strips to unfurl in front of fleeing vehicles. Westinghouse is
promoting the “smart car,” in which minicomputers could be linked
up with big mainframes at the police department, allowing for
speedy booking of prisoners, as well as quick exchanges of
information...103
But an analysis of the relationship between the military and prison
industrial complex is not only concerned with the transference of
technologies from the military to the law enforcement industry. What may
be even more important to our discussion is the extent to which both share
important structural features. Both systems generate huge profits from
processes of social destruction. Precisely that which is advantageous to
those corporations, elected officials, and government agents who have
obvious stakes in the expansion of these systems begets grief and
devastation for poor and racially dominated communities in the United
States and throughout the world. The transformation of imprisoned bodies
—and they are in their majority bodies of color—into sources of profit who
consume and also often produce all kinds of commodities, devours public
funds, which might otherwise be available for social programs such as
education, housing, childcare, recreation, and drug programs.
Punishment no longer constitutes a marginal area of the larger economy.
Corporations producing all kinds of goods—from buildings to electronic
devices and hygiene products—and providing all kinds of services—from
meals to therapy and healthcare—are now directly involved in the
punishment business. That is to say, companies that one would assume are
far removed from the work of state punishment have developed major
stakes in the perpetuation of a prison system whose historical obsolescence
is therefore that much more difficult to recognize. It was during the decade
of the 1980s that corporate ties to the punishment system became more
extensive and entrenched than ever before. But throughout the history of the
U.S. prison system, prisoners have always constituted a potential source of
profit. For example, they have served as valuable subjects in medical
research, thus positioning the prison as a major link between universities
and corporations.

During the post-World War II period, for example, medical
experimentation on captive populations helped to hasten the development of
the pharmaceutical industry. According to Allen Hornblum,
[T]he number of American medical research programs that relied on
prisoners as subjects rapidly expanded as zealous doctors and researchers,
grant-making universities, and a burgeoning pharmaceutical industry raced
for greater market share. Society’s marginal people were, as they had
always been, the grist for the medical-pharmaceutical mill, and prison
inmates in particular would become the raw materials for postwar profitmaking and academic advancement.104
Hornblum’s book, Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg
Prison, highlights the career of research dermatologist Albert Kligman, who
was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Kligman, the “Father of
RetinA,” 105 conducted hundreds of experiments on the men housed in
Holmesburg Prison and, in the process, trained many researchers to use
what were later recognized as unethical research methods.
When Dr. Kligman entered the aging prison he was awed by the
potential it held for his research. In 1966, he recalled in a newspaper
interview: “All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a
farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.” The hundreds of
inmates walking aimlessly before him represented a unique
opportunity for unlimited and undisturbed medical research. He
described it in this interview as “an anthropoid colony, mainly
healthy” under perfect control conditions.106
By the time the experimentation program was shut down in 1974 and
new federal regulations prohibited the use of prisoners as subjects for
academic and corporate research, numerous cosmetics and skin creams had
already been tested. Some of them had caused great harm to these subjects
and could not be marketed in their original form. Johnson and Johnson,
Ortho Pharmaceutical, and Dow Chemical are only a few of the
corporations that reaped great material benefits from these experiments.
The potential impact of corporate involvement in punishment could have
been glimpsed in the Kligman experiments at Holmesburg Prison as early as

the 1950s and 1960s. However, it was not until the 1980s and the increasing
globalization of capitalism that the massive surge of capital into the
punishment economy began. The deindustrialization processes that resulted
in plant shutdowns throughout the country created a huge pool of
vulnerable human beings, a pool of people for whom no further jobs were
available. This also brought more people into contact with social services,
such as AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and other
welfare agencies. It is not accidental that “welfare, as we have known it”—
to use former President Clinton’s words—came under severe attack and was
eventually disestablished. This was known as “welfare reform.” At the same
time, we experienced the privatization and corporatization of services that
were previously run by government. The most obvious example of this
privatization process was the transformation of government-run hospitals
and health services into a gigantic complex of what are euphemistically
called health maintenance organizations. In this sense we might also speak
of a “medical industrial complex.ʺ107 In fact, there is a connection between
one of the first private hospital companies, Hospital Corporation of
America—known today as HCA—and Corrections Corporation of America
(CCA). Board members of HCA, which today has two hundred hospitals
and seventy outpatient surgery centers in twenty-four states, England, and
Switzerland helped to start Correctional Corporations of America in 1983.
In the context of an economy that was driven by an unprecedented
pursuit of profit, no matter what the human cost, and the concomitant
dismantling of the welfare state, poor people’s abilities to survive became
increasingly constrained by the looming presence of the prison. The
massive prison-building project that began in the 1980s created the means
of concentrating and managing what the capitalist system had implicitly
declared to be a human surplus. In the meantime, elected officials and the
dominant media justified the new draconian sentencing practices, sending
more and more people to prison in the frenzied drive to build more and
more prisons by arguing that this was the only way to make our
communities safe from murderers, rapists, and robbers.
The media, especially television . . . have a vested interest in
perpetuating the notion that crime is out of control. With new
competition from cable networks and 24-hour news channels, TV

news and programs about crime . . . have proliferated madly.
According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, crime
coverage was the number-one topic on the nightly news over the
past decade. From 1990 to 1998, homicide rates dropped by half
nationwide, but homicide stories on the three major networks rose
almost fourfold.108
During the same period when crime rates were declining, prison
populations soared. According to a recent report by the U.S. Department of
Justice, at the end of the year 2001, there were 2,100,146 people
incarcerated in the United States.109 The terms and numbers as they appear
in this government report require some preliminary discussion. I hesitate to
make unmediated use of such statistical evidence because it can discourage
the very critical thinking that ought to be elicited by an understanding of the
prison industrial complex. It is precisely the abstraction of numbers that
plays such a central role in criminalizing those who experience the
misfortune of imprisonment. There are many different kinds of men and
women in the prisons, jails, and INS and military detention centers, whose
lives are erased by the Bureau of Justice Statistics figures. The numbers
recognize no distinction between the woman who is imprisoned on drug
conspiracy and the man who is in prison for killing his wife, a man who
might actually end up spending less time behind bars than the woman.
With this observation in mind, the statistical breakdown is as follows:
There were 1,324,465 people in “federal and state prisons,” 15,852 in
“territorial prisons,” 631,240 in “local jails,” 8,761 in “Immigration and
Naturalization Service detention facilities,” 2,436 in “military facilities,”
1,912 in “jails in Indian country,” and 108,965 in “juvenile facilities.” In the
ten years between 1990 and 2000, 351 new places of confinement were
opened by states and more than 528,000 beds were added, amounting to
1,320 state facilities, representing an eighty-one percent increase. Moreover,
there are currently 84 federal facilities and 264 private facilities.110
The government reports, from which these figures are taken, emphasize
the extent to which incarceration rates are slowing down. The Bureau of
Justice Statistics report entitled “Prisoners in 2001” introduces the study by
indicating that “the Nation’s prison population grew 1.1%, which was less

than the average annual growth of 3.8% since yearend 1995. During 2001
the prison population rose at the lowest rate since 1972 and had the smallest
absolute increase since 1979.”111 However small the increase, these
numbers themselves would defy the imagination were they not so neatly
classified and rationally organized. To place these figures in historical
perspective, try to imagine how people in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries—and indeed for most of the twentieth century—who welcomed
the new, and then quite extraordinary, system of punishment called the
prison might have responded had they known that such a colossal number
of lives would be eventually claimed permanently by this institution. I have
already shared my own memories of a time three decades ago when the
prison population was comprised of a tenth of the present numbers.
The prison industrial complex is fueled by privatization patterns that, it
will be recalled, have also drastically transformed health care, education,
and other areas of our lives. Moreover, the prison privatization trends—both
the increasing presence of corporations in the prison economy and the
establishment of private prisons—are reminiscent of the historical efforts to
create a profitable punishment industry based on the new supply of “free”
black male laborers in the aftermath of the Civil War. Steven Donziger,
drawing from the work of Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie, argues:
[C]ompanies that service the criminal justice system need sufficient
quantities of raw materials to guarantee long-term growth . . . In the
criminal justice field, the raw material is prisoners, and industry will do
what is necessary to guarantee a steady supply. For the supply of prisoners
to grow, criminal justice policies must ensure a sufficient number of
incarcerated Americans regardless of whether crime is rising or the
incarceration is necessary.112
In the post-Civil War era, emancipated black men and women comprised
an enormous reservoir of labor at a time when planters—and industrialists
—could no longer rely on slavery, as they had done in the past. This labor
became increasingly available for use by private agents precisely through
the convict lease system, discussed earlier, and related systems such as debt
peonage. Recall that in the aftermath of slavery, the penal population
drastically shifted, so that in the South it rapidly became disproportionately

black. This transition set the historical stage for the easy acceptance of
disproportionately black prison populations today. According to 2002
Bureau of Justice Statistics, African-Americans as a whole now represent
the majority of county, state, and federal prisoners, with a total of 803,400
black inmates—118, 600 more than the total number of white inmates. If
we include Latinos, we must add another 283,000 bodies of color.113
As the rate of increase in the incarceration of black prisoners continues to
rise, the racial composition of the incarcerated population is approaching
the proportion of black prisoners to white during the era of the southern
convict lease and county chain gang systems. Whether this human raw
material is used for purposes of labor or for the consumption of
commodities provided by a rising number of corporations directly
implicated in the prison industrial complex, it is clear that black bodies are
considered dispensable within the “free world” but as a major source of
profit in the prison world.
The privatization characteristic of convict leasing has its contemporary
parallels, as companies such as CCA and Wackenhut literally run prisons
for profit. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the numerous private
prison companies operating in the United States own and operate facilities
that hold 91,828 federal and state prisoners.114 Texas and Oklahoma can
claim the largest number of people in private prisons. But New Mexico
imprisons forty-four percent of its prison population in private facilities,
and states such as Montana, Alaska, and Wyoming turned over more than
twenty-five percent of their prison population to private companies.115 In
arrangements reminiscent of the convict lease system, federal, state, and
county governments pay private companies a fee for each inmate, which
means that private companies have a stake in retaining prisoners as long as
possible, and in keeping their facilities filled.
In the state of Texas, there are thirty-four government-owned, privately
run jails in which approximately 5,500 out-of-state prisoners are
incarcerated. These facilities generate about eighty million dollars annually
for Texas.116 One dramatic example involves Capital Corrections
Resources, Inc., which operates the Brazoria Detention Center, a
government-owned facility located forty miles outside of Houston, Texas.

Brazoria came to public attention in August 1997 when a videotape
broadcast on national television showed prisoners there being bitten by
police dogs and viciously kicked in the groin and stepped on by guards. The
inmates, forced to crawl on the floor, also were being shocked with stun
guns, while guards—who referred to one black prisoner as “boy”—shouted,
“Crawl faster!ʺ117 In the aftermath of the release of this tape, the state of
Missouri withdrew the 415 prisoners it housed in the Brazoria Detention
Center. Although few references were made in the accompanying news
reports to the indisputably racialized character of the guards’ outrageous
behavior, in the section of the Brazoria videotape that was shown on
national television, black male prisoners were seen to be the primary targets
of the guards’ attacks.
The thirty-two-minute Brazoria tape, represented by the jail authorities as
a training tape—allegedly showing corrections officers “what not to do”—
was made in September 1996, after a guard allegedly smelled marijuana in
the jail. Important evidence of the abuse that takes place behind the walls
and gates of private prisons, it came to light in connection with a law-suit
filed by one of the prisoners who was bitten by a dog; he was suing
Brazoria County for a hundred thousand dollars in damage. The Brazoria
jailors’ actions—which, according to prisoners there, were far worse than
depicted on the tape—are indicative not only of the ways in which many
prisoners throughout the country are treated, but of generalized attitudes
toward people locked up in jails and prisons.
According to an Associated Press news story, the Missouri inmates, once
they had been transferred back to their home state from Brazoria, told the
Kansas City Star:
[G]uards at the Brazoria County Detention Center used cattle prods
and other forms of intimidation to win respect and force prisoners to
say, “I love Texas.” “What you saw on tape wasn’t a fraction of
what happened that day,” said inmate Louis Watkins, referring to the
videotaped cellblock raid of September 18, 1996. “I’ve never seen
anything like that in the movies.”118
In 2000 there were twenty-six for-profit prison corporations in the United
States that operated approximately 150 facilities in twenty-eight states.119

The largest of these companies, CCA and Wackenhut, control 76.4 percent
of the private prison market globally. CCA is headquartered in Nashville,
Tennessee, and until 2001, its largest shareholder was the multinational
headquartered in Paris, Sodexho Alliance, which, through its U.S.
subsidiary, Sodexho Marriott, provides catering services at nine hundred
U.S. colleges and universities. The Prison Moratorium Project, an
organization promoting youth activism, led a protest campaign against
Sodexho Marriott on campuses throughout the country. Among the
campuses that dropped Sodexho were SUNY Albany, Goucher College, and
James Madison University. Students had staged sit-ins and organized rallies
on more than fifty campuses before Sodexho divested its holdings in CCA
in fall 2001.120
Though private prisons represent a fairly small proportion of prisons in
the United States, the privatization model is quickly becoming the primary
mode of organizing punishment in many other countries.121 These
companies have tried to take advantage of the expanding population of
women prisoners, both in the United States and globally. In 1996, the first
private women’s prison was established by CCA in Melbourne, Australia.
The government of Victoria “adopted the U.S. model of privatization in
which financing, design, construction, and ownership of the prison are
awarded to one contractor and the government pays them back for
construction over twenty years. This means that it is virtually impossible to
remove the contractor because that contractor owns the prison.ʺ122
As a direct consequence of the campaign organized by prison activist
groups in Melbourne, Victoria withdrew the contract from CCA in 2001.
However, a significant portion of Australia’s prison system remains
privatized. In the fall of 2002, the government of Queensland renewed
Wackenhut’s contract to run a 710-bed prison in Brisbane. The value of the
five-year contract is $66.5 million. In addition to the facility in Brisbane,
Wackenhut manages eleven other prisons in Australia and New Zealand and
furnishes health care services in eleven public prisons in the state of
Victoria.123 In the press release announcing this contract renewal,
Wackenhut describes its global business activities as follows:

WCC, a world leader in the privatized corrections industry, has
contracts/awards to manage 60 correctional /detention facilities in North
America, Europe, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand with a total of
approximately 43,000 beds. WCC also provides prisoner transportation
services, electronic monitoring for home detainees, correctional health care
and mental health services. WCC offers government agencies a turnkey
approach to the development of new correctional and mental health
institutions that includes design, construction, financing, and operations.124
But to understand the reach of the prison industrial complex, it is not
enough to evoke the looming power of the private prison business. By
definition, those companies court the state within and outside the United
States for the purpose of obtaining prison contracts, bringing punishment
and profit together in a menacing embrace. Still, this is only the most
visible dimension of the prison industrial complex, and it should not lead us
to ignore the more comprehensive corporatization that is a feature of
contemporary punishment. As compared to earlier historical eras, the prison
economy is no longer a small, identifiable, and containable set of markets.
Many corporations, whose names are highly recognizable by “free world”
consumers, have discovered new possibilities for expansion by selling their
products to correctional facilities.
In the 1990s, the variety of corporations making money from
prisons is truly dizzying, ranging from Dial Soap to Famous Amos
cookies, from AT&T to health-care providers . . . In 1995 Dial Soap
sold $100,000 worth of its product to the New York City jail system
alone . . . When VitaPro Foods of Montreal, Canada, contracted to
supply inmates in the state of Texas with its soy-based meat
substitute, the contract was worth $34 million a year.125
Among the many businesses that advertise in the yellow pages on the
corrections.com Web site are Archer Daniel Midlands, Nestle Food Service,
Ace Hardware, Polaroid, Hewlett-Packard, RJ Reynolds, and the
communications companies Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and Ameritech. One
conclusion to be drawn here is that even if private prison companies were
prohibited—an unlikely prospect, indeed—the prison industrial complex
and its many strategies for profit would remain relatively intact. Private

prisons are direct sources of profit for the companies that run them, but
public prisons have become so thoroughly saturated with the profitproducing products and services of private corporations that the distinction
is not as meaningful as one might suspect. Campaigns against privatization
that represent public prisons as an adequate alternative to private prisons
can be misleading. It is true that a major reason for the profitability of
private prisons consists in the nonunion labor they employ, and this
important distinction should be highlighted. Nevertheless, public prisons are
now equally tied to the corporate economy and constitute an ever-growing
source of capitalist profit.
Extensive corporate investment in prisons has significantly raised the
stakes for antiprison work. It means that serious antiprison activists must be
willing to look much further in their analyses and organizing strategies than
the actual institution of the prison. Prison reform rhetoric, which has always
undergirded dominant critiques of the prison system, will not work in this
new situation. If reform approaches have tended to bolster the permanence
of the prison in the past, they certainly will not suffice to challenge the
economic and political relationships that sustain the prison today. This
means that in the era of the prison industrial complex, activists must pose
hard questions about the relationship between global capitalism and the
spread of U.S.-style prisons throughout the world.
The global prison economy is indisputably dominated by the United
States. This economy not only consists of the products, services, and ideas
that are directly marketed to other governments, but it also exercises an
enormous influence over the development of the style of state punishment
throughout the world. One dramatic example can be seen in the opposition
to Turkey’s attempts to transform its prisons. In October 2000, prisoners in
Turkey, many of whom are associated with left political movements, began
a “death fast” as a way of dramatizing their opposition to the Turkish
government’s decision to introduce “F-Type,” or U.S.-style, prisons.
Compared to the traditional dormitory-style facilities, these new prisons
consist of one- to three-person cells, which are opposed by the prisoners
because of the regimes of isolation they facilitate and because mistreatment
and torture are far more likely in isolation. In December 2000, thirty
prisoners were killed in clashes with security forces in twenty prisons.126

As of September 2002, more than fifty prisoners have died of hunger,
including two women, Gulnihal Yilmaz and Birsen Hosver, who were
among the most recent prisoners to succumb to the death fast.
“F-Type” prisons in Turkey were inspired by the recent emergence of the
super-maximum security—or supermax—prison in the United States, which
presumes to control otherwise unmanageable prisoners by holding them in
permanent solitary confinement and by subjecting them to varying degrees
of sensory deprivation. In its 2002 World Report, Human Rights Watch paid
particular attention to the concerns raised by
the spread of ultra-modern “super-maximum” security prisons. Originally
prevalent in the United States . . . the supermax model was increasingly
followed in other countries. Prisoners confined in such facilities spent an
average of twenty-three hours a day in their cells, enduring extreme social
isolation, enforced idleness, and extraordinarily limited recreational and
educational opportunities. While prison authorities defended the use of
super-maximum security facilities by asserting that they held only the most
dangerous, disruptive, or escape-prone inmates, few safeguards existed to
prevent other prisoners from being arbitrarily or discriminatorily transferred
to such facilities. In Australia, the inspector of custodial services found that
some prisoners were being held indefinitely in special high security units
without knowing why or when their isolation would end.127
Among the many countries that have recently constructed supermaximum security prisons is South Africa. Construction was completed on
the supermax prison in Kokstad, KwaZulu-Natal in August 2000, but it was
not officially opened until May 2002. Ironically, the reason given for the
delay was the competition for water between the prison and a new low-cost
housing development.128 I am highlighting South Africa’s embrace of the
supermax because of the apparent ease with which this most repressive
version of the U.S. prison has established itself in a country that has just
recently initiated the project of building a democratic, non-racist, and
nonsexist society. South Africa was the first country in the world to create
constitutional assurances for gay rights, and it immediately abolished the
death penalty after the dismantling of apartheid. Nevertheless, following the
example of the United States, the South African prison system is expanding

and becoming more oppressive. The U.S. private prison company
Wackenhut has secured several contracts with the South African
government and by constructing private prisons further legitimizes the trend
toward privatization (which affects the availability of basic services from
utilities to education) in the economy as a whole.
South Africa’s participation in the prison industrial complex constitutes a
major impediment to the creation of a democratic society. In the United
States, we have already felt the insidious and socially damaging effects of
prison expansion. The dominant social expectation is that young black,
Latino, Native American, and Southeast Asian men—and increasingly
women as well—will move naturally from the free world into prison,
where, it is assumed, they belong. Despite the important gains of antiracist
social movements over the last half century, racism hides from view within
institutional structures, and its most reliable refuge is the prison system.
The racist arrests of vast numbers of immigrants from Middle Eastern
countries in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the
subsequent withholding of information about the names of numbers of
people held in INS detention centers, some of which are owned and
operated by private corporations, do not augur a democratic future. The
uncontested detention of increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants
from the global South has been aided considerably by the structures and
ideologies associated with the prison industrial complex. We can hardly
move in the direction of justice and equality in the twenty-first century if
we are unwilling to recognize the enormous role played by this system in
extending the power of racism and xenophobia.
Radical opposition to the global prison industrial complex sees the
antiprison movement as a vital means of expanding the terrain on which the
quest for democracy will unfold. This movement is thus antiracist,
anticapitalist, antisexist, and antihomophobic. It calls for the abolition of the
prison as the dominant mode of punishment but at the same time recognizes
the need for genuine solidarity with the millions of men, women, and
children who are behind bars. A major challenge of this movement is to do
the work that will create more humane, habitable environments for people
in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How,

then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the
needs of prisoners—calling for less violent conditions, an end to state
sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater access to
drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of
prison labor, more connections with families and communities, shorter or
alternative sentencing—and at the same time call for alternatives to
sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist
strategies that question the place of the prison in our future?

6
Abolitionist Alternatives
“Forget about reform; it’s time to talk about
abolishing jails and prisons in American society . .
. Still—abolition? Where do you put the prisoners?
The ‘criminals’? What’s the alternative? First,
having no alternative at all would create less crime
than the present criminal training centers do.
Second, the only full alternative is building the
kind of society that does not need prisons: A
decent redistribution of power and income so as to
put out the hidden fire of burning envy that now
flames up in crimes of property—both burglary by
the poor and embezzlement by the affluent. And a
decent sense of community that can support,
reintegrate and truly rehabilitate those who
suddenly become filled with fury or despair, and
that can face them not as objects—‘criminals’—
but as people who have committed illegal acts, as
have almost all of us.”
—Arthur Waskow, Institute for Policy Studies129

If jails and prisons are to be abolished, then what will replace them? This is
the puzzling question that often interrupts further consideration of the
prospects for abolition. Why should it be so difficult to imagine alternatives
to our current system of incarceration? There are a number of reasons why
we tend to balk at the idea that it may be possible to eventually create an

entirely different—and perhaps more egalitarian—system of justice. First of
all, we think of the current system, with its exaggerated dependence on
imprisonment, as an unconditional standard and thus have great difficulty
envisioning any other way of dealing with the more than two million people
who are currently being held in the country’s jails, prisons, youth facilities,
and immigration detention centers. Ironically, even the anti-death penalty
campaign tends to rely on the assumption that life imprisonment is the most
rational alternative to capital punishment. As important as it may be to
abolish the death penalty, we should be conscious of the way the
contemporary campaign against capital punishment has a propensity to
recapitulate the very historical patterns that led to the emergence of the
prison as the dominant form of punishment. The death penalty has coexisted
with the prison, though imprisonment was supposed to serve as an
alternative to corporal and capital punishment. This is a major dichotomy. A
critical engagement with this dichotomy would involve taking seriously the
possibility of linking the goal of death penalty abolitionism with strategies
for prison abolition.
It is true that if we focus myopically on the existing system—and perhaps
this is the problem that leads to the assumption that imprisonment is the
only alternative to death—it is very hard to imagine a structurally similar
system capable of handling such a vast population of lawbreakers. If,
however, we shift our attention from the prison, perceived as an isolated
institution, to the set of relationships that comprise the prison industrial
complex, it may be easier to think about alternatives. In other words, a more
complicated framework may yield more options than if we simply attempt
to discover a single substitute for the prison system. The first step, then,
would be to let go of the desire to discover one single alternative system of
punishment that would occupy the same footprint as the prison system.
Since the 1980s, the prison system has become increasingly ensconced in
the economic, political and ideological life of the United States and the
transnational trafficking in U.S. commodities, culture, and ideas. Thus, the
prison industrial complex is much more than the sum of all the jails and
prisons in this country. It is a set of symbiotic relationships among
correctional communities, transnational corporations, media conglomerates,
guards’ unions, and legislative and court agendas. If it is true that the

contemporary meaning of punishment is fashioned through these
relationships, then the most effective abolitionist strategies will contest
these relationships and propose alternatives that pull them apart. What,
then, would it mean to imagine a system in which punishment is not
allowed to become the source of corporate profit? How can we imagine a
society in which race and class are not primary determinants of
punishment? Or one in which punishment itself is no longer the central
concern in the making of justice?
An abolitionist approach that seeks to answer questions such as these
would require us to imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and
institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social
and ideological landscapes of our society. In other words, we would not be
looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest
safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing
decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a
continuum of alternatives to imprisonment—demilitarization of schools,
revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free
physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and
reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.
The creation of new institutions that lay claim to the space now occupied
by the prison can eventually start to crowd out the prison so that it would
inhabit increasingly smaller areas of our social and psychic landscape.
Schools can therefore be seen as the most powerful alternative to jails and
prisons. Unless the current structures of violence are eliminated from
schools in impoverished communities of color—including the presence of
armed security guards and police—and unless schools become places that
encourage the joy of learning, these schools will remain the major conduits
to prisons. The alternative would be to transform schools into vehicles for
decarceration. Within the health care system, it is important to emphasize
the current scarcity of institutions available to poor people who suffer
severe mental and emotional illnesses. There are currently more people with
mental and emotional disorders in jails and prisons than in mental
institutions. This call for new facilities designed to assist poor people
should not be taken as an appeal to reinstitute the old system of mental
institutions, which were—and in many cases still are—as repressive as the

prisons. It is simply to suggest that the racial and class disparities in care
available to the affluent and the deprived need to be eradicated, thus
creating another vehicle for decarceration.
To reiterate, rather than try to imagine one single alternative to the
existing system of incarceration, we might envision an array of alternatives
that will require radical transformations of many aspects of our society.
Alternatives that fail to address racism, male dominance, homophobia, class
bias, and other structures of domination will not, in the final analysis, lead
to decarceration and will not advance the goal of abolition.
It is within this context that it makes sense to consider the
decriminalization of drug use as a significant component of a larger strategy
to simultaneously oppose structures of racism within the criminal justice
system and further the abolitionist agenda of decarceration. Thus, with
respect to the project of challenging the role played by the so-called War on
Drugs in bringing huge numbers of people of color into the prison system,
proposals to decriminalize drug use should be linked to the development of
a constellation of free, community-based programs accessible to all people
who wish to tackle their drug problems. This is not to suggest that all
people who use drugs—or that only people who use illicit drugs—need
such help. However, anyone, regardless of economic status, who wishes to
conquer drug addiction should be able to enter treatment programs.
Such institutions are, indeed, available to affluent communities. The most
well known program is the Betty Ford Center, which, according to its Web
site, “accepts patients dependent on alcohol and other mood altering
chemicals. Treatment services are open to all men and women eighteen
years of age and older regardless of race, creed, sex, national origin,
religion or sources of payment for care.ʺ130 However, the cost for the first
six days is $1,175 per day, and after that $525 per day.131 If a person
requires thirty days of treatment, the cost would amount to $19,000, almost
twice the annual salary of a person working a minimum-wage job.
Poor people deserve to have access to effective, voluntary drug treatment
programs. Like the Betty Ford program, their operation should not be under
the auspices of the criminal justice system. As at the Ford Center, family
members also should be permitted to participate. But unlike the Betty Ford

program, they should be free of charge. For such programs to count as
“abolitionist alternatives,” they would not be linked—unlike existing
programs, to which individuals are “sentenced”—to imprisonment as a last
resort.
The campaign to decriminalize drug use—from marijuana to heroin—is
international in scope and has led countries such as the Netherlands to
revise their laws, legalizing personal use of such drugs as marijuana and
hashish. The Netherlands also has a history of legalized sex work, another
area in which there has been extensive campaigning for decriminalization.
In the cases of drugs and sex work, decriminalization would simply require
repeal of all those laws that penalize individuals who use drugs and who
work in the sex industry. The decriminalization of alcohol use serves as a
historical example. In both these cases, decriminalization would advance
the abolitionist strategy of decarceration—that is, the consistent reduction in
the numbers of people who are sent to prison—with the ultimate aim of
dismantling the prison system as the dominant mode of punishment. A
further challenge for abolitionists is to identify other behaviors that might
be appropriately decriminalized as preliminary steps toward abolition.
One obvious and very urgent aspect of the work of decriminalization is
associated with the defense of immigrants’ rights. The growing numbers of
immigrants—especially since the attacks on September 11, 2001—who are
incarcerated in immigrant detention centers, as well as in jails and prisons,
can be halted by dismantling the processes that punish people for their
failure to enter this country without documents. Current campaigns that call
for the decriminalization of undocumented immigrants are making
important contributions to the overall struggle against the prison industrial
complex and are challenging the expansive reach of racism and male
dominance. When women from countries in the southern region are
imprisoned because they have entered this country to escape sexual
violence, instead of being granted refugee status, this reinforces the
generalized tendency to punish people who are persecuted in their intimate
lives as a direct consequence of pandemics of violence that continue to be
legitimized by ideological and legal structures.

Within the United States, the “battered women’s syndrome” legal defense
reflects an attempt to argue that a woman who kills an abusive spouse
should not be convicted of murder. This defense has been abundantly
criticized, both by detractors and proponents of feminism; the former do not
want to recognize the pervasiveness and dangers of intimate violence
against women and the latter challenge the idea that the legitimacy of this
defense resides in the assertion that those who kill their batterers are not
responsible for their actions. The point feminist movements attempt to
make—regardless of their specific positions on battered women’s syndrome
—is that violence against women is a pervasive and complicated social
problem that cannot be solved by imprisoning women who fight back
against their abusers. Thus, a vast range of alternative strategies of
minimizing violence against women—within intimate relationships and
within relationships to the state—should be the focus of our concern.
The alternatives toward which I have gestured thus far—and this is only a
small selection of examples, which can also include job and living wage
programs, alternatives to the disestablished welfare program, communitybased recreation, and many more—are associated both directly and
indirectly with the existing system of criminal justice. But, however
mediated their relation might be to the current system of jails and prisons,
these alternatives are attempting to reverse the impact of the prison
industrial complex on our world. As they contest racism and other networks
of social domination, their implementation will certainly advance the
abolitionist agenda of decarceration.
Creating agendas of decarceration and broadly casting the net of
alternatives helps us to do the ideological work of pulling apart the
conceptual link between crime and punishment. This more nuanced
understanding of the social role of the punishment system requires us to
give up our usual way of thinking about punishment as an inevitable
consequence of crime. We would recognize that “punishment” does not
follow from “crime” in the neat and logical sequence offered by discourses
that insist on the justice of imprisonment, but rather punishment—primarily
through imprisonment (and sometimes death)—is linked to the agendas of
politicians, the profit drive of corporations, and media representations of
crime. Imprisonment is associated with the racialization of those most likely

to be punished. It is associated with their class and, as we have seen, gender
structures the punishment system as well. If we insist that abolitionist
alternatives trouble these relationships, that they strive to disarticulate crime
and punishment, race and punishment, class and punishment, and gender
and punishment, then our focus must not rest only on the prison system as
an isolated institution but must also be directed at all the social relations
that support the permanence of the prison.
An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives
to imprisonment involves the ideological work of questioning why
“criminals” have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human
beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others.
Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category
“lawbreakers” is far greater than the category of individuals who are
deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the
law at one time or another. Even President Bill Clinton admitted that he had
smoked marijuana at one time, insisting, though, that he did not inhale.
However, acknowledged disparities in the intensity of police surveillance—
as indicated by the present-day currency of the term “racial profiling”
which ought to cover far more territory than “driving while black or
brown”—account in part for racial and class-based disparities in arrest and
imprisonment rates. Thus, if we are willing to take seriously the
consequences of a racist and class-biased justice system, we will reach the
conclusion that enormous numbers of people are in prison simply because
they are, for example, black, Chicano, Vietnamese, Native American or
poor, regardless of their ethnic background. They are sent to prison, not so
much because of the crimes they may have indeed committed, but largely
because their communities have been criminalized. Thus, programs for
decriminalization will not only have to address specific activities that have
been criminalized—such as drug use and sex work—but also criminalized
populations and communities.
It is against the backdrop of these more broadly conceived abolitionist
alternatives that it makes sense to take up the question of radical
transformations within the existing justice system. Thus, aside from
minimizing, through various strategies, the kinds of behaviors that will
bring people into contact with the police and justice systems, there is the

question of how to treat those who assault the rights and bodies of others.
Many organizations and individuals both in the United States and other
countries offer alternative modes of making justice. In limited instances,
some governments have attempted to implement alternatives that range
from conflict resolution to restorative or reparative justice. Such scholars as
Herman Bianchi have suggested that crime needs to be defined in terms of
tort and, instead of criminal law, should be reparative law. In his words,
“[The lawbreaker] is thus no longer an evil-minded man or woman, but
simply a debtor, a liable person whose human duty is to take responsibility
for his or her acts, and to assume the duty of repair.”132
There is a growing body of literature on reshaping systems of justice
around strategies of reparation, rather than retribution, as well as a growing
body of experiential evidence of the advantages of these approaches to
justice and of the democratic possibilities they promise. Instead of
rehearsing the numerous debates that have emerged over the last decades—
including the most persistent question, “What will happen to the murderers
and rapists?”—I will conclude with a story of one of the most dramatic
successes of these experiments in reconciliation. I refer to the case of Amy
Biehl, the white Fulbright scholar from Newport Beach, California, who
was killed by young South African men in Guguletu, a black township in
Capetown, South Africa.
In 1993, when South Africa was on the cusp of its transition, Amy Biehl
was devoting a significant amount of her time as a foreign student to the
work of rebuilding South Africa. Nelson Mandela had been freed in 1990,
but had not yet been elected president. On August 25, Biehl was driving
several black friends to their home in Guguletu when a crowd shouting
antiwhite slogans confronted her, and some of them stoned and stabbed her
to death. Four of the men participating in the attack were convicted of her
murder and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. In 1997, Linda and Peter
Biehl—Amy’s mother and father—decided to support the amnesty petition
the men presented to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The four
apologized to the Biehls and were released in July 1998. Two of them—
Easy Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni—later met with the Biehls, who, despite
much pressure to the contrary, agreed to see them.133 According to
Nofemela, he wanted to say more about his own sorrow for killing their

daughter than what had been possible during Truth and Reconciliation
hearings. “I know you lost a person you love,” he says he told them during
that meeting. “I want you to forgive me and take me as your child.”134
The Biehls, who had established the Amy Biehl Foundation in the
aftermath of their daughter’s death, asked Nofemela and Peni to work at the
Guguletu branch of the foundation. Nofemela became an instructor in an
after-school sports program and Peni an administrator. In June 2002, they
accompanied Linda Biehl to New York, where they all spoke before the
American Family Therapy Academy on reconciliation and restorative
justice. In a Boston Globe interview, Linda Biehl, when asked how she now
feels about the men who killed her daughter, said, “I have a lot of love for
them.” After Peter Biehl died in 2002, she bought two plots of land for them
in memory of her husband so that Nofemela and Peni can build their own
homes.135 A few days after the September 11 attacks, the Biehls had been
asked to speak at a synagogue in their community. According to Peter
Biehl, “We tried to explain that sometimes it pays to shut up and listen to
what other people have to say, to ask: ‘Why do these terrible things happen?
’ instead of simply reacting.”136

AFFIRMATION
I believe in liv ing.
I believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
I believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs.
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
I believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
I believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.
I believe in life .
And i have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path.
I have seen the destruction of the daylight,
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted.
I have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
I have walked on cut glass.
I have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indi fference.
I have been locked by the lawless;
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know any thing at all,
it's that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.
I beli�e in liv ing.
I believe in birth.
I believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.
And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home
to port.

I

Chapter 1

here were lights and sirens. Zayd was dead.
My mind knew that Zayd was dead. The air was like
cold glass. Huge bubbles rose and burst. Each one felt
like an explosion in my chest. My mouth tasted like
blood and dirt. The car spun around me and then
something like sleep overtook me. In the background i
could hear what sounded like gunfire. But i was fading
and dreaming.
Suddenly, the door flew open and i felt mysel f
being dragged out onto the pavement. Pushed and
punched, a foot upside my head, a kick in the stom­
ach. Police were everywhere. One had a gun to my
head.
"Which way did they go?" he was shouting.
"Bitch, you'd better open your goddamn mouth or I'll
blow your goddamn head off!"
I nodded my head across the highway. I was sure
that nobody had gone that way. A few of the cops were
off and running.
One pig said, "We oughta finish her off." But the
others were all busy around the car, searching it. They
were pulling and prodding.
"Ya find the gun?" they kept asking each other.
Later, one of them asked another, "Should we put'er in
the car?"
"Naw. Let'er lay in the gutter where she belongs.
Just get'er out of the way."
I felt mysel f being dragged by the feet across the
pavement. My chest was on fire. My blouse was purple
with blood. I was convinced that my arm had been
shot off and was hanging inside my shirt by a few
strips of flesh. I could not feel it.
Finally the ambulance came and they moved me
into it. Being moved was agony, but the blankets were

3

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worth it. I was so cold. The medics examined me. I tried to talk,
but only bubbles came out. I was foaming at the mouth.
"Where's she hit?" they asked each other as if i wasn't there.
They concluded their examination. I was relieved.
"Let's move it," one of them said.
"O.K., but wait a minute," said the driver and he got out. "Hit
twice," i heard him say. "We gotta wait." The driver slammed the
door.
He said something else but i didn't understand it. Time
passed. I was floating off again. It felt so weird, like a dream, a
nightmare. More time passed. It seemed like forever. I was in and
out, in and out.
A rough voice asked, "Is she dead yet?" I floated off again. I
heard another voice. "Is she dead yet ?" I wondered how long the
ambulance had been sitting there. The attendants looked nervous.
The bubbles in my chest felt like they were growing bigger. When
they burst, my whole chest shattered. I faded again and it was down
South in the summertime. I thought about my grandmother. At last
the ambulance was moving. "If i live," i remember thinking, "i'll
only have one arm."
The hospital is glaring white. Everybody i see is white. Everyone
seems to be waiting. All at once they are in motion. Blood pressure,
pulse, needles, etc. Two detectives come in. I know they're detec­
tives because they look like detectives. One of them has a face like a
bulldog, with jowls hanging down the sides. They supervise the
nurse as she cuts off my clothes. After a while, one of them dabs my
fingertips with what look like Q-tips. Later i find out that this is the

neutron activation test to determine whether or not i have fired a
weapon. Another one then tries to fingerprint me, but he has
trouble because my hand is dead.
"Gimme the dead man's kit." He puts my fingers into spoon­
looking things used to fingerprint dead people. They begin to ask
me questions, but a bunch of doctors come in. One of them, who
appears to be the head doctor, examines me. He pokes and prods,
throwing me around like a rag doll. then, like he is going to kill me,
he jerks me around so that i'm on my stomach. The pain is like an
electric shock. I moan.
"Don't cry now, girlie," he says. "Why'd you shoot the
trooper? Why'd you shoot the trooper ?"
I want to kick him in his face. I know he would kill me if he
had the chance. I can see the scalpel slipping. One of the other
doctors says something about calling the operating room. "Hell
no!" is all i can think of. "Hell no !"

After a while, they all leave. Then a Black nurse comes into the
am glad as I could be to see her. She bends over me.
"What is your name?" she asks. "What is your name?"
I think about it and decide to say nothing. If i tell them my
name they will know who i am and they will kill me for sure.
"What is your name?" she keeps asking, enunciating each
syllable in the way that people talk to someone who has trouble
hearing or understanding. "What is your name? What is your
address ? Where do you live?" Her voice is getting louder. "We need
JOur signature, miss," she says, waving a piece of paper in front of
me. "We need your permission for treatment, in case we have to
operate." She repeats the same thing, over and over. "Who shall we
contact in case of emergency?" (I think that's kind of funny.) "What
is your name? Where do you live?" I close my eyes, wishing she
would go away. She keeps right on talking.
I drift off, thinking about my arm. It is still there.
"Nerve damage. Paralyzed," i heard them say. It has never
occurred to me. It isn't that bad, i remember thinking. I can live
with that if i have to.
More voices, other voices, grating my ears and my con­
SCIousness.
"She can talk," one is saying. "The doctor says she can talk.
Where were you going? What is your name? Where were you
coming from? Who was in the car with you ? How many of you were
there? I know she can hear me."
I keep my eyes closed. One of them leans down real close to
me. I feel his breath on my cheek. And smell it.
"I kno� you can hear me and I know you can talk, and if you
don't hurry up and start talking, I'm gonna bash your face in for
you."
My eyes fly open in spite of myself. Immediately they are all in
my face, throwing question after question at me. I say nothing.
After a while, i close my eyes again.
"Oh, she doesn't feel good," one of them says in a sweet,
mocking voice. "Where does it hurt? Here? Here ? HERE?"
With each here comes a crash. I look around wildly, but no
one is there. More thumps and punches, but none of them hurts as
bad as my chest is hurting. I try to scream but i know immediately
that that's a mistake. My chest erupts and i think i am gonna die.
They go on and on. Questions and bangs. I think they will never
stop.
A woman's voice. "Telephone."
"Thank you," one of them says, giving me an ugly grin. They
are gone.
room. I

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Another pig comes in. A Black pig. In uniform. He comes
closer and i see that he is not a cop but a hospital security guard.
He stands not too far from where i am lying and i can see he is not
at all hostile. His face breaks into a kind of reserved smile and, very
discreetly, he clenches his fist and gives me the power sign. That
man will never know how much better he made me feel at that
moment.
The detectives come back with a nurse. They begin to move the
stretcher. My mind races. Where are they taking me ? The only
place i can think of is the operating room. When we arrive at the x­
ray room, i'm thankful. Because i have to move around, the X-rays
are painful, but the technician is cool. X-rays are over and i am
rolled down the hallway, determined to keep my eyes closed. All of
a sudden, flashes of light. My eyes pop open. This time they are
taking my picture.
The police photographer asks, "Don't you wanna give us a
smile? Come on. Give us a smile."
I close my eyes again. We are moving. The stretcher stops. One
of the pigs tells the nurse he has a headache. She volunteers to get
him something.
The stretcher is moving again. Where the hell are they taking
me? Again the light is changing and, although my eyes are closed, i
can feel the difference. It feels like i'm in the dark. I can't take it
any longer and i look. The room is dark, but there is some light.
My eyes slowly adjust. There's something lying next to me. I can
see an outline. Something in plastic. Something-my mind slowly
realizes that it is a man in a plastic bag. And that the man is Zayd.
My body stiffens. My mind spins.
One of the troopers says, "That's what's gonna happen to you
before the night is over if you don't tell us what we want to know."
I say nothing, but inside i'm raging. "Dogs ! Swine! Filthy pigs !
Dirty slimy scum ! Bastards ! Sons of bitches !" I rage on and on. "I
wouldn't tell you the right time of day," i remember thinking. "I
wouldn't tell you that shit stinks !"
The night crawls along. Nurses, doctors, and troopers. I am
still scared, but i am just as angry and evil as i am scared. The
detectives are in and out and, when nobody is there except them,
they get in their digs and bangs. But after a while i don't think
about them too much. I am thinking about living, about surviving,
thinking about what is going to happen next. They are gonna do
what they are gonna do and there isn't much i can do about it. I
just have to be myself, stay as strong as i can, and do my best. That's
all. There is nowhere to run and i am in no shape to try. I realize

how isolated and vulnerable i am. What if i really do need an
operation ? I need help from the outside world. I have to try to get
word out to someone. The Black nurse has been back and forth,
asking me the same questions. Each time i have closed my eyes until
she goes away. I decide to ask her to get in touch with my people
the next time she comes by. Maybe she will be cool. She is my best
shot; the guard is long gone.
I doze off for a little while. When i wake up, a nurse and a
priest are standing over me. The priest is mumbling and seems to
be rubbing something on my forehead. At first i don't understand
what he is doing. Then it dawns on me. Last rites. Last rites are for
the dying.
"Go away," i say out loud. I don't have the strength to say
anything else. But i know i don't want anybody's last rites. I am not
going to die, and even if i do die, i'm not going to die nobody's
hypocrite.
The Black nurse comes back and starts her questions again.
Before she can get started good, i beckon her to come closer. There
is no one else around. I ask her to get in contact with my lawyer
(who is also my aunt). I give her my name and ask her to make the
call herself. She has a hard time understanding me and keeps
asking me to repeat my name. I can barely talk, and each time she
asks me to repeat myself, i feel like screaming. Then it occurs to me
that Assata is foreign to her ears. She has probably never heard the
name before. So i give her my slave name. Then i give her the
number and she is off and running.
Two minutes later the detectives are on me like white on rice.
They threaten and plead, reason and offer me the world. They hurl
question after question at me, acting crazier than before. One plays
the nice cop who is trying to save me from the bad cop, if only i will
cooperate. I am tired and their act is even tireder. I can see exhaus­
tion in their faces. The whole night is coming down on me. Their
voices begin to sound far away. I can't take it anymore. They can go
to hell. I am going to sleep. This time i am going out for real.
When i wake up the stretcher is moving. After a little while we
arrive at the intensive care part of the hospital. The place is packed
with nurses. I am elated. All i want to do is sleep. Soon i'm drifting
off again.
I wake up and it's the next day. The doctors are making their
rounds. One of them, an intern i think, is very kind to me. They
examine me and spend the rest of the morning doing blood tests,
X-rays, EKGs, etc., etc.
Soon i learn that they're going to move me again. I also find

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out that i'm in middlesex county hospital. I hear the nurses talking.
They are glad i am being moved because the police are driving them
crazy.
When they come to move me it looks like a police parade. The
rooms i am moved to are called the Johnson Suite. I can't believe it.
I have never imagined that hospitals have rooms like this. There is a
sitting room, a huge hospital-equipped room (where i am kept), a
den, a kitchen, a full bathroom and another little room whose
purpose i will never learn. They transfer me to the bed and hand­
cuff one of my legs to the side rail.
I keep looking around. It is elegant and clearly for rich people.
I am probably the first Black person who has ever been in this
room. And the only reason i am there is for security. They have
sealed off the doors and no one can enter except through the sitting
room next door where three state troopers are stationed. Two
regulars and one sergeant.
The police radio in the room cackles all day long. "A carload
of suspicious-looking coloreds in a white Ford coupe." "A sus­
picious-looking Negro walking near the hospital in a blue jacket
and sneakers." No suspicious-looking white people are reported.
From listening to the police talk next door, and to the radio, i learn
that the hospital is saturated with state troopers. They seem to be
under the impression that somebody is going to try and break me
out. I feel better. The Demerol has me flying a little and makes it
easier for me to lie in the contorted position i am forced into
because of the cuff on my leg.
Later that afternoon, it begins again. Detectives and more
detectives. Questions and more questions. This time the questions
are different. Now they want to know about the Black Liberation
Army: how big is it; what cities is it in; who is in it, etc., etc. But
the main focus of their questions centers around "the guy that got
away." I am delighted ! I figure that Sundiata is somewhere safe by
now, cooling out.
They are more careful where and how they hit me now. I guess
they don't want to leave any marks. One sticks his fingers in my
eyes. I don't know what he has on his fingertips, but whatever it is
burns like hell. I think I am gonna be blind forever. He says he will
keep doing it until i am completely blind. I close my eyes and hold
them as tight as i can. He strikes me a few more times. Some of the
stuff gets into my eyes anyway. Burning tears pour down my face
and my whole head is throbbing. I think he is going to keep on, but
he begins to curse me, calling me all kind of nigger bitches. Finally,
he and the others leave.

On one of those first days, a white doctor comes to examine
me. He acts very nice, sweet as pie. He examines me slowly, the
whole time making friendly conversation. I wonder what kind of
specialist he is since i haven't seen him before and i know he isn't
one of the regulars. He says he knows how terrible i must feel and
makes a big deal of protesting that i am chained to the bed. He
keeps on talking and, after a while, pulls a chair close to the bed.
Then he starts to ask friendly little questions. The conversation
goes something like this:
"Those guys on the turnpike are rough. They'll give you a
ticket for anything. I take the turnpike every day. You live in jersey?
I live in Newark. You ever been there? You must really be lonely up
here. I'll bet you really need someone to talk to. I went to medical
school in New York. You're from there, aren't you ?"
I get suspicious and say nothing to him. I tell him i want to go
to sleep and he leaves. I never saw him again, but to this day i'm
convinced he was some kind of police or FBI agent.
On the third or fourth day, most of my troubles came to an end.
Well, not really, but the punch, bang, poke, and prod part of my
troubles ended. A nurse with a German accent came to my aid. She
was one of the morning nurses, very professional and exacting, to
the point that she could be a pain in the neck. But she was a
lifesaver. It was she who had first protested the tightness of the
handcuff on my leg. My leg had begun to swell and she had
insisted they loosen it and that the cuff be covered with gauze. Of
course, as soon as she was gone they tightened it again, but the
gauze helped somewhat. I could tell by the little things she said and
did that she knew what was going on. One morning she came in as
usual and, after she had finished her normal routine, she reached
behind the bed, pulled at something, and then handed me an
electric call button on a cord.
"Anytime you need me or need anything from the nurses, just
press this button," she said. "Don't be afraid to use it," she added,
giving me a knowing look.
I could have kissed her. Later, when she returned to the room,
after the troopers realized i had the call button, one came in behind
her.
"Is there any way to disconnect that thing?" he asked. "She
might hurt someone with it or hurt herself."
"No," she said, "there is no way to remove it. If you pull it out,
it will just keep ringing in the nurses' station. She is having diffi­
culty breathing and she needs it."

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"Right on !" i thought. "Das ist richtig."
After that, whenever the police came within two feet of my
bed, i would push the button. Finally, they gave up the idea of
beating on me and contented themselves with threats and other
kinds of harassment. A favorite was to stand in the door and point
their guns at me. Each day was my last day on earth. Each night was
my last night. After a while, i became accustomed. Immune. Some­
times they would cock a gun i didn't know was empty, give a long,
impassioned speech, and then pull the trigger. Other times i was
invited to a game of Russian roulette. they all expressed a bitter
hatred for me. They were state troopers and i was accused of killing
one of them.
Every day there were three shifts of police. When they changed
shifts, the two troopers would salute the sergeant. Some saluted an
army salute, but others saluted like the nazis did in Germany. They
held their hands in front of them and clicked their heels. I couldn't
believe it. One day one of them came in and gave me a speech about
how he fought in World War II on the wrong side. He went on and
on and there was no question that he believed everything he said.
He talked about how messed up the world is. How decent people
couldn't walk the streets. He said that if Hitler had won, the world
wouldn't be in the mess it is in today, that niggers like me, no-good
niggers, wouldn't be going around shooting new jersey state troopers.
He went on to say that the white race had invented everything
because they were smart and worked hard, that other races wanted
to riot and use terrorism to take everything the white race had
worked so hard to get. I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut.
He talked about empires, the Roman, the Greek, the Spanish, the
British. He told me white people created empires because they were
more civilized than the rest of the world. White people created
ballet and opera and symphonies. "Did you ever hear of a nigger
writing a symphony?" he asked. Every day he gave me a speech
about nazism. Sometimes other nazis would join in. I asked him if
there were a lot of nazis in the state troopers, but he just laughed
and kept on talking.
When i was in the Black Panther Party, we used to call the
police "fascist pigs," but i had called them fascists not because i
believed they were nazis but because of the way they acted in our
communities. As many times as i had referred to police as fascists,
these shocked me by the truth of my own rhetoric. I later learned
that the state troopers in new jersey was started by a German, that
their uniforms were patterned after some type of German uniform

(very similar to the uniforms South African police wear), that they
are notorious for stopping Black, Hispanic, and long-haired people
on the turnpike and beating, harassing, and arresting them.
The nazis headed the harassment campaign against me. They
spit in my food and turned down the thermostat in the room until
it was freezing. For a while their campaign centered on keeping me
from sleeping. They stamped their feet on the floor, sang songs all
night, played with their guns, shouted, etc. I told the nurses about
it, but it was no use.
I could deal with whatever they were putting out, but how long
would this go on? I had heard nothing from the outside world, and
i didn't even know if anybody knew where i was or whether i was
dead or alive. My chest was feeling better, but i still could hardly
breathe: I thought i was past the point of needing an operation, but
i wasn't sure if it was because of the painkillers they had given me or
because i was really getting better.
Every day i asked them to contact my lawyer, and every day
they said they had tried but there was no answer. I knew that was a
lie because Evelyn had an answering service. Every day i asked them
to contact my family. The response to this was usually obscene.
"Oh, you got a family, do you ? Is your mother a nigger whore
like you ? We don't allow no pickaninnies at this hospital."
They went on and on about my family until they found some­
thing else to go on and on about. Whoever said that no news is
good news had to be out of his mind.
Well, there was news, but it wasn't good news. They told me
they had arrested Sundiata. At first i didn't believe them, but they
were too glib and arrogant. I knew something had happened.
"We got your friend," they said, "and he's singing like a bird.
Yeah, he's singing like a bird, and he's giving you all the weight. It's
a good thing for you he didn't know what color undies you had on
or he would have told us that. We know where you were coming
from. We know where you were going. We know that you stopped
at a Howard Johnson. He even told us what you ordered and that
you just love potato chips."
"What?" i thought. "How did they know that?" Then i re­
membered that we had bought potato chips at a Howard Johnson
on the turnpike. Maybe someone had seen me and remembered.
"Yes, Clark Squire tells us that you took the trooper's gun and
shot him in the head. Now, you wouldn't do a thing like that,
would you ? Well, JoAnne, you're in a hell of a fix. If I were you, I
wouldn't let him get away with it. It's a low-down thing to do,
giving all the weight to a woman. I'll make a deal with you. You tell

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us everything that happened and I promise we'll go light on you. I
just don't like to see you get a bad break, that's all. You know,
you're facing a lot of time in prison, the way things stand, if he
testifies against you. You could get life in prison or even the chair,
but all you have to do is tell us what happened and we'll see to it
that you do just a couple of years and go home. You're young. You
don't want to rot away your whole life in prison, do you ? Maybe
you think you owe something to the cause. You think he's thinking
about the cause now ? No, he's singing his head off, trying to give
you all the weight. They're all the same. They talk all this shit about
Black people, equal rights, civil rights, but when it comes down to
the wire, all they care about is their hide. He's thinking about his
hide and you better think about yours. You think the cause gives a
damn about you? Your own people don't give a damn about you.
To them you're just a common criminal. Now I'm giving you this
one chance to save yourself and come clean. If you don't take it,
you're a fool."
They really did think Black people were stupid. Their line had
to be the oldest in the book. He was sitting there like he just knew
his corny little speech had done the trick. I said nothing. If you
don't say anything to them, they have nothing to turn around and
use against you. "Divide and conquer" has always been their
motto.
When they realized i wasn't going to talk, they began to leave.
Then one came back. "Oh," he said, "I almost forgot to read you
your rights." He pulled out this little card and read from it. " 'You
have the right to remain silent. . . . You have the right to . . . etc. ' I
wouldn't want you to say that we didn't read you your rights."
Thursday afternoon. They're letting me make a phone call. I don't
believe it. I call my aunt. She's not in. The answering service
answers. I don't know who else to call. The only lawyers whose
names i know worked on the Panther 21 trial. I call them at
random. No one is in, but secretaries promise to give them mes­
sages. I'm disappointed but i feel a lot better. Things are looking
up.
It is Friday. From the activity in the room next door, i can tell
something is up. Voices and whispers. They are back and forth, in
and out, arranging this, moving that. The police radio is jumping.
What is happening? Whatever it is, it can't be too bad, i think. They
are leaving me alone. In a little while a policewoman comes in. She
is in a brown uniform and her insignia says "Sheriff's Depanment."

She's Black or Hispanic. I can't tell exactly, except that she isn't
white. Then some more police come in, dressed in uniforms similar
to hers. Then more police. They are state troopers. One of them
moves to the door and stands at attention. Then some men in suits
come in. Then a man comes in with a stenographic machine.
"The Honorable Joseph F. Bradshaw, State of New Jersey,
County of Middlesex. All rise."
Then this judge walks in with a black robe on. One of the men
in a suit reads the charges against me:
We are here today to serve complaints upon you for the matters
arising out of the shooting of May 2 of 1973. I will read you the
complaints, leave copies with you of the charges that will be pending
against you. The Judge will then advise you on the arraignment of
such rights you may have . . . .
. . . you are charged under Complaint Number 119977, by
Detective Taranto, New Jersey State Police, who says on the 2nd of
May, 1973, within the confines of the Township of East Brunswick,
County of Middlesex, that you unlawfully and illegally resisted a
lawful arrest being made by New Jersey State Trooper James Harper
by discharging a dangerous pistol and wounding the said James
Harper and fleeing the scene of the incident, all in violation of N.J.S.
2A:85-1. . . .
You are also charged, . . . under complaint Number S 119979,
by Detective Sergeant Taranto of the New Jersey State Police, who
says that on the 2nd of May, 1973, within the Township of East
Brunswick, County of Middlesex, that you did commit an Atrocious
Assault and Battery upon New Jersey State Trooper James Harper by
shooting, wounding and maiming the said James Harper with a
hand gun then and there discharged by the defendant, all in viola­
tion of N.J.S. 2A:90-1.
In the Second Count you are charged by the said officer who
says that defendant Joanne Deborah Chesimard did on the afore­
mentioned date and place unlawfully and illegally assault the said
James Harper with intent to kill, murder and slay him by use of a
hand gun then and there held by the defendant, all in violation of
N.J.S. 2A:9 0- 2.
It further charges in the Third Count that the aforementioned
defendant did at the above mentioned time and place commit an
unlawful and illegal assault and battery on a law enforcement officer,
to wit, one James Harper, a duly sworn Trooper of the New Jersey
State Police, by discharging a firearm and wounding the said James
Harper, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:90-4 . . . .
In S 119980 you are charged with illegally and unlawfully
committing the crime of murder by willfully and with malice

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aforethought shooting, killing and slaying New Jersey State Trooper
Werner Foerster, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:11 3-1 and N.J.S.
2A:85-14....
You are further being charged under S 119981 with one count,
wherein Detective Sergeant Taranto charges you on the 2nd day of
May, 197 3, within the Township of East Brunswick, County of
Middlesex, that you did unlawfully, illegally and with malice
aforethought cause or affect the murder of James Coston a/kla Zayd
Shakur, while resisting or avoiding a lawful arrest then and there
being affected by New Jersey State Trooper James Harper, all in
violation of N.J.S. 2A:11 3- 2....
You are charged with S 119982 by State Police Sergeant Louis
Taranto, that on the 2nd day of May, 197 3, in the Township of East
Brunswick, County of Middlesex, you unlawfully and illegally pos­
sessed on your person, under your custody and control, an illegal
weapon, to wit, one Browning 9 milimeter automatic pistol, one
Browning automatic .380 caliber, one .38 caliber Llama automatic
pistol, serial number 248 31, all without having obtained any neces­
sary permit for the carrying of same, in violation of N.J.S.
2A:151-41 (a)....
You are further charged in Complaint S 119983, wherein De­
tective Sergeant Taranto says on the 2nd day of May, 197 3, in the
Township of East Brunswick, County of Middlesex, that you did
unlawfully and illegally and forcibly take from the person of New
Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster a .38 caliber revolver by vio­
lence,to wit, by shooting, slaying and killing the same Werner
Foerster, all in violation of N.J.S. 2A:141-1.
The Second Count of that Complaint charges you with com­
mitting that act while being armed, in violation of N.J.S.
2A:151-5.. ..
...you are being charged by State Trooper Detective Sergeant
Taranto, Complaint S 119984, who says on the 2nd day of May,
197 3, in the Township of East Brunswick, County of Middlesex,
that you did illegally, unlawfully conspire with James Coston, a/k/a
Zayd Shakur and one John Doe to commit the crime of murder of
the said Trooper Werner Foerster, and in the affectuation of said
conspiracy did execute the following overt acts:
1.That the said defendant Joanne Deborah Chesimard did have
in her possession a pistol with which to affectuate the ends of the
conspiracy on the above-mentioned time and ... at the above­
mentioned place.
2. The above named defendant Joanne Deborah Chesimard in
concert with and by common scheme and plan did assault Trooper
James Harper and otherwise distharge her weapon at the said
Trooper James Harper with the intent to affect the ends of the

conspiracy by otherwise wounding, maiming or killing him, all in
violation of N.J.S. 2A:98-1 and N.J.S. 2A:113-1.
1 think he will never stop. Half of the charges i don't even
understand. 1 interrupt the proceedings. "I don't have a lawyer
here," i protest. "I would like to have a lawyer present." They ignore
me and keep on reading.
"How do you plead?" they ask me.
"I would like to have a lawyer present. Don't i have a right to a
lawyer?"
"That will not be necessary," the judge says coldly. "Enter a
plea of not guilty for the defendant."
And just as quickly as they entered, the procession departs.
Later the same policewoman comes back. She stands rigidly
against the wall. Her face is a mask. "Oh, no !" i think. "Court
again ? What are they gonna do, railroad me here and now?" 1
imagine myself being tried right there in the bed with no lawyer.
The door opens. It is Evelyn-my lawyer and aunt. She is the
most beautiful sight in the world. She embraces me and sits down
next to me. As usual, she is business first.
"I only have five minutes," she tells me. "They told me that 1
couldn't see you. 1 had to go to court and get a court order to see
you. The judge would give us only five minutes apiece. Your mother
and sister are outside. So talk fast."
We look up. The police are practically standing in our mouths.
"I would like to talk with my client in private," Evelyn says.
"Would you please move back. This is an outrage. This is an
attorney-client visit and we have a constitutional right to privacy."
The police move back one inch. 1 tell Evelyn about the kan­
garoo court in the morning. My mouth moves so fast it's like one of
those old-style movies, but a talkie. 1 can see from the expression
on her face that i must look horrible.
"How are they treating you?" she asks.
1 don't have time to tell her the whole story, but i have to let
her know what is going on. 1 don't know what they will do next. 1
have to try to get someone to put pressure on them to stop. 1 tell her
some of it, but i just can't tell her the worst things. Her face looks
so pitiful and every time i tell her something else, her hands shake.
"Try to do what you can," i say.
"Time's up. Time's up, miss !"
Evelyn makes her futile protests. "I need to talk with my
client. This is just not enough time."

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"Sorry, miss. Time's up !" They move toward her like they
are
.
going to beat her up.
Then she is gone. 1 brace myself for my mother and my sister.
It has been such a long time since i have seen them. 1 don't know
what to expect.
My mother comes in. She looks worried but strong. She kisses
me.
"I'm proud of you," she says.
The words spin around me, weaving a warm blanket of love. 1
am so happy. 1 can hardly contain myself. My mother is proud of
me. She loves me and she is proud of me.
Too soon the time with my mother is up. My sister comes in.
She has her hair wrapped in a turban and she looks so pale. As
soon as she sees me, she breaks out crying. Tears stream down her
already puffy face. 1 can tell she has been crying a lot.
"I love you," she says simply.
We don't do a lot of talking, but i feel so very close to her
during those few minutes.
"Time's up." Again. And then she is gone.
1 lie there full of emotion. All of this is so hard on my family.
They look vulnerable and shaken. This is maybe harder on them
than it is on me. 1 wish there was something i can do to make them
happy.
Two Black nurses were very kind to me. When they were on duty,
they would go out of their way to make sure i was all right. They
made frequent trips to my room, for which i was especially grateful
during those first days.
"If you need anything, just ring," they said knowingly.
One night one of the nurses came in and gave me three books.
I hadn't even thought about reading. The books were a godsend.
They had been carefully selected. One was a book of Black poetry,
one was a book called Black Women in White Amerika, and the
third was a novel, Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. Whenever i tired
of the verbal abuse of my captors, i would drown them out by
reading the poetry out loud. "Invictus" and "If We Must Die" were
the poems i usually read. 1 read them over and over, until i was sure
the guards had heard every word. The poems were my message to
them.
When i read the book about Black women, i felt the spirits of
those sisters feeding me, making me stronger. Black women have
been struggling and helping each other to survive the blows of life
since the beginning of time. And when i read Siddhartha, a peace

came over me. I felt a unity with all things living. The world, in
spite of oppression, is a beautiful place. I would say "Om" softly to
myself, letting my lips vibrate. I felt the birds, the sun, and the trees.
I was in communion with all the forces on the earth that truly love
people, in communion with all the revolutionary forces on the
earth.
I was definitely getting better. They were even unchaining me
so that i could hobble to the bathroom every now and then, with
the help of the nurse. I was still weak and, when i returned from the
bathroom, i would flop on the bed as if i had just accomplished a
great physical feat. But at least now i knew what was wrong with
me. During those first days i could barely ask, and when i did, they
acted as if my condition were some top secret information i was not
privy to. I had three bullet holes. There was a bullet in my chest (it's
still there); an injured lung with fluid in it, a broken clavicle, and a
paralyzed arm with undetermined damage to the nerves. I kept
asking if i would be able to use my hand again. One or two doctors
said, flatly, no. The others said, "Maybe yes, maybe no."
Anyway, i was gonna live.
STORY

You died.
I cried.
And kept on getting up.
A little slower.
And a lot more deadly.

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Chapter 2

IS

he FBI cannot find any evidence that i was
born. On my FBI Wanted poster, they list my birth
date as July 1 6, 1 947, and, in parentheses, "not sub­
stantiated by birth records."
Anyway, i was born. I am the older of two chil­
dren. My sister, Beverly, was born five years later. The
name my momma gave me was JoAnne Deborah By­
ron. I am told that i was a fat, happy baby and that i
was talking in complete sentences when i was about
nine months old. They say that i was lazy, though, that
i talked way before i learned to walk. Everybody says
that i had my days mixed up with my nights and kept
everybody up all night. (I'm still pretty much a night
owl.) The only other tale i remember hearing about
my babyhood was that i would scream at the top of
my lungs whenever anybody wearing furs or feathers
came near me. (I'm still not too fond of furs and
feathers.)
My mother and father were divorced shortly after
i was born. I lived with my mother, my aunt (now
Evelyn Williams), my grandmother (Lulu Hill), and
my grandfather (Frank Hill) in a house in the Brick­
town section of Jamaica, New York. The only thing i
remember about that house is the backyard, which i
loved, and the huge dog next door. I remember the
dog well because he terrified me. To my young eyes he
looked like a giant, a canine version of King Kong or
Mighty Joe Young. (I'm still not too wild about dogs.)
When i was three years old, my grandparents sold the
house and moved down South. I moved with them.
We moved into a big wooden house on Seventh
Street in Wilmington, North Carolina. It was the
house my grandfather had grown up in. It had a
wraparound porch with a big green swing and, of

course, rosebushes in the front yard and a pecan tree in the back.
My grandfather originally thought that the house had belonged to
my great-grandfather, Pappa Linc (short for Lincoln), but they
found out he had only been given the use of the house for his
lifetime. Pappa Linc had worked as a chauffeur for one of the most
prominent white families in Wilmington and, the story goes, had
been a prominent member of the Black community. He and my
great-grandmother, Momma Jessie, had worked hard all their lives,
had raised eleven children in that house, and had died under the
impression that the house was theirs. Fine print and white lawyers
have a way of robbing Black people of what is theirs. My grand­
parents were forced to buy the house again.
"Who's better than you?"
"Nobody."
"Who?"
"Nobody. "
"Get that head up."
"Yes."
"Yes, who?"
"Yes, Grandmommy."
"I want that head held up high, and i don't want you taking
no mess from anybody, you understand?"
"Yes, Grandmommy."
"Don't you let me hear about anybody walking over my
grandbaby. "
"No, Grandmommy."
"I don't want nobody taking advantage of you, you hear
me.2"
"Yes, i hear you."
"Yes, who?"
"Yes, Grandmommy."

All of my family tried to instill in me a sense of personal dignity, but
my grandmother and my grandfather were really fanatic about it.
Over and over they would tell me, "You're as good as anyone else.
Don't let anybody tell you that they're better than you." My
grandparents strictly forbade me to say "yes ma'am" and "yes sir"
or to look down at my shoes or to make subservient gestures when
talking to white people. "You look them in the eye when you talk
to them," i was told. "And speak up like you've got some sense." I
was told to speak in a loud, clear voice and to hold my head up
high, or risk having my grandparents knock it off my shoulders.

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My grandparents were big on respect. I was to be polite and
respectful to adults, to say "good morning" or "good evening" as i
passed the neighbors' houses. Any kind of back talk or sass was
simply out of the question. My grandparents didn't even permit me
to answer questions with a simple "yes" or "no." Instead I had to
say "yes, Grandmother" or "no, Grandfather." But when it came to
dealing with white people in the segregated South, my grand­
mother would tell me, menacingly, "Don't you respect nobody that
don't respect you, you hear me?" "Yes, Grandmother," i would
answer, my voice almost a whisper. "Speak up !" she would tell me
repeatedly, something she seemed hell-bent on making me do. She
would send me to the store with clear instructions on what to bring
back. I was, under no circumstances, to come home with inferior
goods, something which happened all too often to Black people in
the South. " You tell them that you don't want any garbage, and
you'd better not come back with any," she would warn me. If the
store owner sold me something that my grandmother didn't like, i
would have to return to the store and get the thing changed or get
my money back. "You speak up loud and clear. Don't let me have
to go down to that store." Scared to death of the fuss my grand­
mother would make if she had to go to the store herself, i would
hurry back to the store, prepared to raise almighty hell.
Whenever my grandmother heard about somebody being mis­
treated, especially if it was a man mistreating a woman, she would
glare at me and say, "Don't you let anybody mistreat you, you hear?
We're not raising you up to be mistreated, you hear? I don't want
you taking no mess off of nobody, you understand ?" "Yes, Grand­
mother," i would answer, for what seemed like the millionth time,
wondering why my grandmother liked to repeat herself so often.
The tactics that my grandparents used were crude, and i hated it
when they would repeat everything so often. But the lessons that
they taught me, more than anything else i learned in life, helped me
to deal with the things i would face growing up in amerika.
But a lot of times, for my grandparents, pride and dignity were
hooked up to things like position and money. For them, being "just
as good" as white people meant having what white people had.
They would tell me to go to school and study so that i could have a
nice house and nice clothes and a nice car. "White people don't
want to see us with nothing," they would tell me. "That's why
you've got to get your education so that you can be somebody and
have something in life." Becoming "somebody" in life just didn't
mean too much to me. I wanted to feel happy, to feel good. My
awareness of class differences in the Black community came at an

early age. Although my grandmother taught me more about being ASSATA
proud and strong than anyone i know, she had a lot of Booker T.
ZI
Washington, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, "talented tenth"
ideas. She had worked hard and had made a decent living as a
pieceworker in a factory, but she had other ideas for me. She was
determined that i would become part of Wilmington's talented
tenth-the privileged class-part of the so-called Black bour­
geOISIe.
One of her first steps was to sternly forbid me to play with
"alley rats." It was impossible for me to obey her orders since i had
absolutely no idea what an alley rat was. I often became the
unwitting object of my grandmother's fury, charged with the crime
of alley rat playing. My grandmother, writhing with annoyance,
would threaten me with untold punishments if i continued my evil
ways. I received strict orders to abandon my penchant for alley rats
and play with "decent children." But we could never agree on who
"decent children" were. Decent children, to my grandmother, were
a whole 'nother story.
"Decent children" came from "decent families". How did you
know what a decent family was ? A decent family lived in a decent
house. How did you know what a decent house was? A decent
house was fixed up nice and had a sidewalk in front of it. Decent
families didn't let their kids play in the street with no shoes on and
didn't let their kids say "ain't." Little did my grandmother know
that ain't was my favorite word once i got two feet out of her
hearing range. My grandmother had a little alley rat right under
her roof and she didn't even know it. Alley rats supposedly lived in
alleys, in run-down shacks, but my grandmother would often call
one of my friends an alley rat even if the kid didn't live in an alley.
Dutifully, to put some sense in my head, she would take me to
visit "decent children." These decent little souls were invariably the
offspring of Wilmington's Black doctors, lawyers, preachers, and
undertakers. Schoolteachers, barbershop owners, and the editor of
the "colored" newspaper were also decent. In most of these "de­
cent" little play sessions, the other kids and I would stand around
looking at each other awkwardly. Sometimes we would get it on
and have some fun. But more often than not, it would be glare-at­
each-other time or show-and-tell time (the kids showing me their
toys and such while the grownups oohed and aahed). The worst
times were eating at the preacher'S house, where they would take an
hour saying grace, or playing ball with the undertaker's daughter.
She always wanted to play ball and i was scared to death that the
ball was going to roll into the part where they kept the dead people

ASSATA and end up in the mouth of some corpse. My grandmother would
have caught a shitfit if she had known that one of her favorite little
22
decent kids' favorite game was playing show and tell with his ding­
a-ling and threatening to pee on everybody.
After these visits, my grandmother would chirp for a week
about how nice my little decent friends were and about how nicely
we had played together, while i would groan silently and keep the
expression on my face one shade away from insolence. My grand­
mother and i waged a standoff battle damn near until i was grown.
It wasn't that i wanted to defy her, it was that i just liked who i
liked. I didn't care what kind of house my friends had or whether
or not they lived in alleys. All that mattered was whether i liked
them. I was convinced then, and i'm still convinced, that in some
things kids have a lot more sense than adults.
But, to my young mind, life in Wilmington was exciting. There
were always new places to go and new cousins, aunts, and uncles to
meet. One of my favorite relatives was Aunt Lou. She was Momma
Jessie's sister and she lived across town. She was my grandfather's
only remaining relative in Wilmington, the rest having moved up
North or out West. Aunt Lou had a magic house, full of all kinds of
flavors, textures, smells, and things. There were whole worlds in her
house to explore. She would always feed me something good to eat
and then let me run wild.
I didn't know until i was grown that Aunt Lou had a son. His
name was Uncle Willie and he died before i was born. Uncle Willie
was something of a legend around Wilmington during the twenties,
thirties, and forties. Whenever he came to town, they say, Aunt Lou
would plead and moan and worry until he was in safer territory up
North. They say that he would tear down the "colored" and "white
only" signs and break the Jim Crow laws at whim. He would go
around demanding his rights and denouncing the oppression of
Black people, and it is logical that no one who loved him felt the
least bit comfortable until he was long gone. They called him "Wild
Willie" or "that crazy Indian" (he was supposedly Black and Cher­
okee), but people called him that because of his nature. They say he
had a lot of friends and that he died of natural causes.
The rest of the relatives i met came from my grandmother'S
side. My grandmother'S family lived in Seabreeze, outside of
Wilmington, close to Carolina Beach. Their last name was Free­
man, and they were famous for being high-strung, quick-tempered,
and emotional. They seldom worked for anybody, choosing instead
to live on the land their father had left them. They worked as
farmers and fishermen, and they owned small stores. I have also

heard that they were in the bootleg business. My grandmother's
father was a Cherokee Indian. He died when my grandmother was
very young. Nobody knows too much about him, except that,
somehow, he acquired a great deal of land and left it to his children.
The land was very valuable because much of it bordered either on
the river or on the ocean. Everybody had a different theory about
what my great-grandfather had done to acquire it. But it was
because of this land that my grandparents had moved down South.
In 1 950, the year we moved to Wilmington, the South was
completely segregated. Black people were forbidden to go many
places, and that included the beach. Sometimes they would travel
all the way to South Carolina just to see the ocean. My grand­
parents decided to open a business on their land. It consisted of a
restaurant, lockers where people could change their clothes, and an
area for dancing and hanging out.
The popular name for the beach was Bop City, although my
grandparents insisted on calling it Freeman's Beach. Throughout
my childhood, the name Freeman had no particular significance. It
was a name just like any other name. It wasn't until i was grown
and began to read Black history that i discovered the significance of
the name. After slavery, many Black people refused to use the last
names of their masters. They called themselves "Freeman" instead.
The name was also used by Africans who were freed before slavery
was "officially" abolished, but it was mainly after the abolition of
chattel slavery that many Black people changed their names to
Freeman. After learning this, i saw my ancestors in a new light.
For me, the beach was a wonderful place, and to this day there
is no place on this earth that i love more. I have never seen a beach
more beautiful than it was then, before they decided to build a
canal right through the property of my grandparents. It is now just
a pale shadow of what it used to be, most of it destroyed by erosion.
But back then there were majestic sand dunes covered with tall sea
grass where my cousins and i would build forts, houses, and,
sometimes, cities. When time permitted, we spent hours hiding and
making sneak attacks on one another. The sand was fine and clean
and, in the beginning of summer, we could find j ust about every
imaginable kind of sea shell. When the sun got too hot, we would
sit in the old blue jeep my grandfather drove and play with frilly
things like paper dolls and teacups. After i learned to read, i would
sit in the sun, under the huge hats my grandmother always made
me wear, and read one book after another.
Every other week my grandfather went to the "colored" library
on Red Cross Street and the librarian would send ten or so books

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for me to read. As soon as i finished reading them, my grandfather
would go and get another batch. My imagination was vivid. With
fragments of pirates and the Bobbsey Twins floating around, i
would sit looking out at the ocean and think about everything. I
imagined all the places i had read about on the other side of the
ocean and wondered if i would ever see them. And, of course, i
daydreamed about all kinds of stuff, most of it silly.
But my days were not spent simply daydreaming. My grand­
parents were firm believers in work. They had worked all of their
lives and there was no way they were gonna tolerate any "lazy­
good-for-nothin's" around them. Every day there were chores to do
and there was no playing until they were completed. I did things
like putting the potato chips on the racks, putting sodas in the
cooler, wiping the tables clean, etc. When customers were there, i
would sell small stuff like potato chips, Nabs, pickles, and pickled
pigs' feet. I would also set the tables and bring customers things
they needed. But my main job was collecting fifty cents for parking.
Because there was no road to our beach (the paved road ended with
the white section), my grandparents had to pay for a dirt road and
parking lot to be laid over the sand. Truckloads of dirt were
brought and a steamroller mashed it down so that it was hard
enough to drive on. This was an expensive process, so my grand­
parents decided to charge fifty cents for parking. I could count and
make change at a very early age, so it was my job to collect the fifty
cents. During the week it wasn't too time-consuming, but on the
weekends, if the weather was nice, it was an all-day job.
Cars and buses of people came from all over North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Virginia. There were church groups, school
groups, social clubs, women's clubs, boy scouts, and girl scouts. All
kinds of people would come to the beach, some with a little money
and some that you could tell were real poor. In all the years i spent
on that beach, only one or two people hassled me. Most of them
treated me very kindly, just like i was their kid.
The people who came to the beach fascinated me. I loved to see
them come and go. After a while, i would recognize the regulars
and it didn't take me too long to learn their names. Some of them
gave me tips, which i usually spent on the picolo (jukebox). There
were lots of lovers and i spent some of my time spying on them in
the parking lot, but they weren't too interesting. All they did was
squirm a lot. Checking license plates (i could recognize almost all
of the states' license plates on sight) and collecting bugs (i had a
huge collection) were much more interesting. But watching families
was better, on their picnics with their fried chicken, potato salads,

and watermelons. Some of them looked so happy you could tell
they didn't get a chance to go to many picnics. And i was always on
the watch for kids to play with when 1 wasn't busy.
Then there were the goodtimers. Their cars smelled like whis­
key. They would dance a lot, eat a lot, spend a lot on the picolo, and
many times i would wonder if they had made it home all right.
A lot of poor people came to the beach. Sometimes the floors
of their raggedy old cars or trucks were half rotted out. Usually a
lot of little children were with them and they wouldn't have bathing
suits. They went swimming in whatever clothes they had worn to
the beach, and half the time the little kids wore nothing. Then there
were those who came to put on airs, usually in the evening, all
dressed up, to eat dinner.
Many would say, "I can't stand the sun," "I'm too Black
already, 1 ain't goin' out in no sun." It was amazing the number of
people who said they were too Black already. We looked at them
like they were crazy because we loved the sun. But the umbrellas for
rent went like hotcakes. Some people draped clothes and blankets
around the umbrellas so that no light penetrated whatsoever. One
lady always put a paper bag on her head and poked holes in it for
her eyes. Some of the women refused to go near the water because
they were afraid their hair would "go bad."
One of the moving things for me was when someone saw the
ocean for the first time. It was amazing to watch. They would stand
there, in awe, overpowered and overwhelmed, as if they had come
face to face with God or with the vastness of the universe. 1
remember one time a preacher brought an old lady to the beach.
She was the oldest-looking person i had ever seen. She said that she
just wanted to see the ocean before she died. She stood there in one
spot for so long she looked like she was in a trance. Then, with the
help of the preacher, she hobbled around, picked up the mundane
shells, and put them into her handkerchief as if they were the most
precious things in the world.
1 loved to eat (still do) and the beach was right up my alley.
Right now, when i think of the fried chicken and fish dinners, my
mouth starts to water. But what really sends me off is remembering
those seafood platters with fish, shrimps, oysters, deviled crab,
clam fritters, and french fries with lettuce and tomatoes on the side.
If my memory is any good, i think they sold for $ 1 .50.
Next to food, music was my love. Fats Domino, Nat King
Cole, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Platters, Brook Benton,
Bobby "Blue" Bland, James Brown, Dinah Washington, Maxine
Brown, Big Maybelle were some of the people 1 listened to during

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those beach years. I loved to dance. They would play that music and
i would dance my natural heart out. That was another way i
collected tips. People would egg me on, "Go on, gal, go. Boy, looket
that little girl dance." But i loved to see people dance, too. Many a
time my grandmother or grandfather had to call me out of the
trance i was in watching somebody dance instead of doing my
chores.
At night, my cousins, who sometimes came over to work on
the beach, told ghost stories. They loved to tell them to me because
i would get scared out of my wits. They would tell me about people
who came back from the dead, about snakes that could crawl a
hundred miles an hour and beat you to death with their tails, and
about red phantoms and haints and all kinds of other horrible
things. My imagination was vivid, and before the night was over the
sea grass turned to monsters and the wind made ghost howls.
Sometimes even my grandmother and grandfather would get
into the ghost story sessions. My grandfather's favorite one goes
like this: He was driving home in a terrible storm one night. It was
lightning and thundering like crazy. He saw lightning hit a tree
ahead of him and saw the tree fall across the road. He tried to stop,
but it was too late. He braced himself to hit the tree, but nothing
happened. The car went smoothly through it as if it weren't there.
He turned around and, sure enough, the tree was still lying across
the road. He swears that the story is true and i'm convinced that he
thoroughly believes it is.
We were, however, visited by real, live ghosts. They were the
phantoms of the parking lot. It seems that the white citizens of
Wilmington and Carolina Beach were not at all happy that my
grandparents had dared to build on the land and to start a "col­
ored" business. We were too close for their comfort. So they would
visit us from time to time to express their disapproval. I don't know
for a fact that they were card-carrying members of the Klan, but,
judging from their behavior, i think they were. But then, of course,
they weren't wearing their sheets. They could've just been red­
blooded amerikan boys out for some good clean fun. The parking
lot was made of dirt, and cars spinning around on it at breakneck
speed would ruin it in no time. Two or three of them would ride
around the parking lot, spinning and skidding, while they shouted
curses and racist insults. One time they fired guns in the air. I
remember seeing them and hearing them out there and wondering
what they were gonna do next. More than once i saw my grand­
father go to where he kept his gun and carry it quietly to where he

had been sitting. Somehow this made me more afraid, because i
knew that he, too, thought they were scary.
Finally my grandfather put a big fat chain, almost as big as the
kind used to anchor ships, across the road at the entrance to the
parking lot. This soon eliminated our nightly visitors.
One night, as my grandmother and i were fastening the chain
in place and locking it, a white man drove up to the lot and, in an
arrogant tone of voice, ordered my grandmother to open the gate so
that he could turn his car around. My grandmother, looking very
dignified, said, "No, I can't let you do that." Then, in a nicer voice,
he asked my grandmother again to open the gate. "No," she said
again. "Come on now, auntie, I got a mammy in my house. Now
open the gate and lemme turn around." "Wha'd you say?" asked
my grandmother. "I said I got a mammy in my house, now come
on, open up. " My grandmother leaned over in the man's face.
"I don't care how many mammies you got in your house. I
don't care if you've got a hundred mammies in your house, you're
gonna back out of here tonight. And I want you off of my property
now! Right now!"
That man turned as red as a redneck can turn and started to
back his car up. The road was very narrow, barely wide enough for
one car, and there was no way he could turn around without
getting stuck in the sand. He backed up for more than a quarter of
a mile. As we looked at him backing up, my grandmother and i
laughed so hard the tears fell from our eyes.
Every day when we drove from the house on Seventh Street to
the beach, we passed a beautiful park with a zoo. And every day i
would beg, plead, whine, and nag my grandmother to take me to
the zoo. It was almost an obsession. She would always say that
"one day" she would take me, but "one day" never came. I would
sit in the car pouting, thinking how mean she was. I thought that
she had to be the meanest woman on the face of the earth. Finally,
with the strangest look on her face, she told me that we were not
allowed in the zoo. Because we were Black.
When we were on the beach we shopped at Carolina Beach. It
had an amusement park, but of course Black people were not
permitted to go in. Every time we passed it i looked at the merry-go­
round and the Ferris wheel and the little cars and airplanes and my
heart would just long to ride them. But my favorite forbidden ride
had little boats in a pool of water, and every time i passed them i felt
frustrated and deprived. Of course, peristent creature that i am, i
always asked to be taken on the rides, knowing full well what the

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answer would be. One summer my mother and sister and i were
walking down the boardwalk. My mother was spending part of her
summer helping my grandparents in the business. As soon as we
neared the rides, i went into my usual act. I continued, ad nauseam,
until my mother, grinning, said. "All right now, I'm gonna try to get
us in. "When we get over there, I don't want to hear one word out of
either of you. Just let me do the talking. And if they ask you
anything, don't answer. Okay? Okay!"
My mother went over to the ticket booth and began talking. I
didn't understand a word she was saying. The lady at the ticket
window kept telling my mother that she couldn't sell her any
tickets. My mother kept talking, very fast, and waving her hands.
The manager came over and told my mother she couldn't buy any
tickets and that we couldn't go into the park. My mother kept
talking and waving her hands and soon she was screaming this
foreign language. I didn't know if she was speaking a play language
or a real one. Several other men came over. They talked to my
mother. She continued. After the men went to one side and had a
conference, they returned and told the ticket seller to give my
mother the tickets.
I couldn't believe it. All at once we were laughing and giggling
and riding the rides. All the white people were staring at us, but we
didn't care. We were busy having a ball. "When i got into one of
those little boats, my mother practically had to drag me out. I was
in my glory. When we finished the rides we went to the Dairy
Queen for ice cream. We sang and laughed all the way home.
When we got home my mother explained that she had been
speaking Spanish and had told the managers that she was from a
Spanish country and that if he didn't let us in she would call the
embassy and the United Nations and i don't know who all else. We
laughed and talked about it for days. But it was a lesson i never
forgot. Anybody, no matter who they were, could come right off the
boat and get more rights and respect than amerikan-born Blacks.
My first school experience was Mrs. Perkins's school in
Wilmington. It was a little two-room school on Red Cross Street
where i learned the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arith­
metic. I was four years old. Mrs. Perkins's school was the closest
thing to nursery school that Black people in Wilmington had, but
she didn't play that baby play stuff. We were there to learn. I was
prone to colds, however, and i guess the potbellied stove in the
school didn't give off enough heat. I was out sick more than i was in

school. But i learned enough so that when i went to first grade,
aoerything was easy. I could already read.
I spent most of first grade in New York with my mother, the
rest of the first and all of the second down South with my grand­
parents. I went to Gregory Elementary School in Wilmington. My
reachers knew my grandparents well and gave them daily reports of
my progress. The teachers were strict and believed solemnJy in the
paddle, but we learned.
Of course, our school was segregated, but the teachers took
more of an interest in our lives because they lived in our world, in
the same neighborhoods. They knew what we were up against and
what we would be facing as adults, and they tried to protect us as
much as they could. More than once we were punished because
some children had made fun of a student who was poor and badly
dressed. I'm not saying that segregation was a good system. Our
schools were inferior. The books were used and torn, handed down
from white schools. We received only a fraction of the state money
allotted to white schools, and the conditions under which many
Black children received an education can only be described as
horrible. But Black children encountered suppport and understand­
ing and encouragement instead of the hostile indifference they often
met in the "integrated" schools.
There was a big dirt yard next to the school where we would
play and fight. We grew up fighting; it was really hard to get
through school without a few fights, just to survive. But i always
wondered what made people fight. Especially after we learned
about wars. I used to look out on the remains of the sunken ship
that tilted up in front of our beach and wonder how people had
died in it. It was covered with green moss and i imagined skeletons
floating around inside. The ship had been sunk during the Civil
War and i always wondered if it carried Northerners or South­
erners. Back in those days i used to think the Northerners were the
good guys.
But I never could make much sense out of war. I remember
being taught that World War I was the war to end all wars. Well, we
know that was a lie because there was World War II. I remember a
teacher telling us that World War I was started because Prince
Ferdinand, somewhere in Austria, got killed. (When we learned
history, we were never taught the real reasons for things. We were
just taught useless trivia, simplistic facts, key phrases, and mis­
cellaneous, meaningless dates.) I couldn't understand it. What were
people all the way in amerika doing in a war because some prince

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got killed in Austria ? I could just imagine going home and telling
my grandmother that i got in a fight because some dude in Europe
got killed.
They made war sound so glorious in school, so heroic. But the
wars we had on the way home from school and in the playground
were anything but glorious. Besides the cuts and scratches we
received on our battleground, we were likely to get spanked for
fighting or for getting our clothes dirty. I was pretty lucky in that
respect. When my grandmother would discover that i was all in one
piece she wouldn't make too much of a fuss. I guess i looked pretty
much the same after a fight as i did any other day when i came
home from school. I was a natural tomboy and a natural slob. My
blouse was always hanging out of my skin, one of my socks always
fell down in my shoe, and my hair always flew wild around my
head. I always managed to get something torn and dirty and,
because i was awkward and clumsy, i always looked like a victim of
about fifty wars.
Most of our fights started over petty disputes like stepped-on
shoes, flying spitballs, and the contested ownership of pens and
pencils. But behind our fights, self-hatred was clearly visible.
"Nappy head, nappy head, I catch your ass, you goin' be
dead. "
"You think you Black and ugly now; I'm gonna beat you till
you purple."
"You just another nigga to me. Ima show you what I do with
niggas like you."
"You better shut your big blubber lips."
We would call each other "jungle bunnies" and "bush
boogies." We would talk about each other's ugly, big lips and flat
noses. We would call each other pickaninnies and nappy-haired so­
and-so's.
"Act your age, not your color," we would tell each other.
"You gon thank me when I'm through with you, Ima beat you
so bad, I'm gon beat the black offa you."
Black made any insult worse. When you called somebody a
"bastard," that was bad. But when you called somebody a "Black
bastard," now that was terrible. In fact, when i was growing up,
being called "Black," period, was grounds for fighting.
"Who you callin' Black ?" we would say. We had never heard
the words "Black is beautiful" and the idea had never occurred to
most of us.
I hated for my grandmother to comb my hair. And she hated
to comb it. My hair has always been thick and long and nappy and

it would give my grandmother hell. She has straight hair, so she was
impatient with mine. When she combed my hair she always remem­
bered something i had done wrong the day before or earlier that
day and popped me in the head with the comb. She would always
tell me during these sessions, "Now, when you grow up, I want you
to marry some man with 'good hair' so your children will have
good hair. You hear me ?" "Yes, Grandmother." I used to wonder
why she hadn't followed her own advice since my grandfather's
hair is far from straight, but i never dared ask. My grandmother
just said what everybody knew was a common fact: good hair was
better than bad hair, meaning that straight hair was better than
nappy hair.
When my sister Beverly was little, i remember teasing her
about her lips. She has big, beautiful lips, but back then we looked
at them as something of a liability. I never thought of them as
ugly-my sister has always seemed very pretty to me-but her lips
were something good to tease her about. I once told her, "With
those big lips, the only thing you've got going for you is your long
hair; you better never cut it off." I will never know how much
damage all my "teasing" did to my sister. But i was only saying
what everybody knew: little, thin lips were better than big, thick
lips. Everybody knew that.
There was one girl in our school whose mother made her wear
a clothespin on her nose to make it thin. There were quite a few
girls who tried to bleach their skin white with bleaching cream and
who got pimples instead. And, of course, we went to the beauty
parlor and got our hair straightened. I couldn't wait to go to the
beauty parlor and get my hair all fried up. I wanted Shirley Temple
curls just like Shirley Temple. I hated the smell of fried hair and
having my ears burned, but we were taught that women had to
make great sacrifices to be beautiful. And everybody knew you had
to be crazy to walk the streets with nappy hair sticking out. And of
course long hair was better than short hair. We all knew that.
We had been completely brainwashed and we didn't even
know it. We accepted white value systems and white standards of
beauty and, at times, we accepted the white man's view of ourselves.
We had never been exposed to any other point of view or any other
standard of beauty. From when i was a tot, i can remember Black
people saying, "Niggas ain't shit." "You know how lazy niggas
are." "Give a nigga an inch and he'll take a mile." Everybody knew
what "niggas" like to do after they eat: sleep. Everybody knew that
"niggas" couldn't be on time; that's why there was c.p.t. (colored
people's time). "Niggas don't take care of nothin'." "Niggas don't

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stick together." The list could go on and on. To varying degrees we
accepted these statements as true. And, to varying degrees, we each
made them true within ourselves because we believed them.
I entered third grade in P.S. 154 in Queens. The school was almost
all white, and i was the only Black kid in my class. Everybody in my
family was glad i was going to school in New York. "The schools
are better," they said. "You'll get a better education up North than
in that segregated school down South."
School up North was much different for me than school down
South. For one thing, the teachers (they were all white-i don't
remember having any Black teachers until i was in high school)
were always grinning at me. And the older i got, the less i liked
those grins. I didn't have a name for them then, but now i call them
the "little nigga grins."
My third grade teacher was young, blond, very prissy, and
middle class. Whenever i came into the room she would show me
all thirty-two of her teeth, but there was nothing sincere about her
smile. It never made me feel good. There was always something
unnatural and exaggerated about her behavior with me. On my
first or second day in class she was teaching us penmanship. "Does
anyone know how to make a capital L in script?" she asked.
Nobody raised a hand. Timidly, i did. "You know how to do it?"
she asked incredulously. "Yes," i told her, "we had that last year
down South." "Well, come and write it on the blackboard, then,"
she told me. I wrote my pitiful little second grade L on the black­
board. After looking at me and nodding, she made a big, fancy L
next to mine.
"Is this what you're trying to make, JoAnne ?" Her expression
was smug. The whole class broke out laughing. I wanted to go
somewhere and hide. After that, it seemed that every time i men­
tioned something i learned down South she got mad. She never saw
my raised hand. When she couldn't ignore it, like when no one else
raised theirs, she would say something like "Oh, do you know the
answer, JoAnne ?"
Every holiday a class was assigned to put on a play. There were
plays for Columbus Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
Our class had George Washington's birthday, and our play was
about his cutting down this cherry tree when he was a little boy. I
was selected to be in the play. I was tickled pink and so proud. I was
cast as one of the cherry trees. The teacher put some green crepe
paper over my head and told me to stand at the back of the stage
where i was to stay until the end of the play. Then the cherry trees
were supposed to sway from side to side and sing: "George Wash-

ington never told a lie, never told a lie, he never told a lie. George
Washington never told a lie, and the truth goes marching on."
I didn't know what a fool they had made out of me until i grew
up and started to read real history. Not only was George Wash­
ington probably a big liar, but he had once sold a slave for a keg of
rum. Here they had this old craka slavemaster, who didn't give a
damn about Black people, and they had me, an unwitting little
Black child, doing a play in his honor. When George Washington
was fighting for freedom in the Revolutionary War, he was fighting
for the freedom of "whites only." Rich whites, at that. After the so­
called Revolution, you couldn't vote unless you were a white man
and you owned a plot of land. The Revolutionary War was led by
some rich white boys who got tired of paying heavy taxes to the
king. It didn't have anything at all to do with freedom, justice, and
equality for all.
Again, in the fourth grade, i was the only Black kid in my
class. My teacher, Mr. Trobawitz, was cool, though, and a very
good teacher. He had modern ideas about teaching, and instead of
making us read those old boring readers, he had us read real books
and write reports about them. His class was always interesting. He
told us all kinds of jokes and stories and he seemed to be sincerely
concerned about us. That year we were learning about the Civil
War and about Lincoln's freeing the slaves. Like all the other
teachers, Mr. Trobawitz taught us "fairy-tale history," but at least
he made it interesting. That year i was crazy about Lincoln. I
memorized the entire "0 Captain ! My Captain!" by Walt Whit­
man and recited it to the class.
Little did i know that Lincoln was an archracist who had
openly expressed his disdain for Black people. He was of the
opinion that Black people should be forcibly deported to Africa or
anywhere else. We had been taught that the Civil War was fought to
free the slaves, and it was not until i was in college that i learned
that the Civil War was fought for economic reasons. The fact that
"official" slavery was abolished was only incidental. Northern in­
dustrialists were fighting to control the economy. Before the Civil
War, the northern industrial economy was largely dependent on
southern cotton. The slave economy of the South was a threat to
northern capitalism. What if the slaveholders of the South decided
to set up factories and process the cotton themselves? Northern
capitalists could not possibly compete with slave labor, and their
capitalist economy would be destroyed. To ensure that this didn't
happen, the North went to war.
When i was still in the fourth grade, i fell off a swing and broke
my leg. Mr. Trobawitz came to my house and gave me lessons and

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34

assignments. When i returned to school, Mr. Trobawitz had left to
teach in college. Everybody in the class was sad. A bird-beaked,
stick-to-the-book, teach-by-rote teacher replaced him. She made us
go back to reading in the readers and changed the desks around so
that once again we were sitting in rows. I didn't like her and she
bored me to death.
One time our class had a dance. It was a big event for me since
i loved to dance. The white kids couldn't dance for nothing. They
looked like a bunch of drunken kangaroos, hopping all over the
place, out of time with the music. I sat there with my hand over my
mouth trying to suppress my laughter. I ached to get out there and
show them how to do it. But nobody asked me to dance. I don't
think it ever occurred to them, and, if it did, they knew better.
Dancing with a "nigger" was surely good for a week or so of
teasing. But these whites were not at all out in the open with their
racism. It was undercover, like their parents' racism. Anyhow, i just
sat there, looking at them flop around until this one kid (i'll never
forget his name: Richard Kennedy; he was a poor Irish kid with red
hair) came over to where i was sitting and said, "If you give me a
dime, i'll dance with you." The sad part of the story is that i almost
gave him the dime.
In the fifth grade, i was put into the class of the school's most
notorious battle-ax, Mrs. Hoffler. I knew from the first day it was
going to be a long, hot year. The only good thing was that there was
anoth er Black kid in the class. The teacher put us in the back, next
to each other. His name was David' something, but i called him
David Peacan. The teacher was one of those military types and her
classes resembled boot camp. We were told where to sit, how to sit,
and what kind of notebooks, pens, pencils, etc., to use. She permit­
ted no talking and gave tons of homework. Her punishment for
everything was extra homework. Whenever somebody got caught
talking or doing anything she disapproved of, she gave extra home­
work. When you didn't have your homework, she gave extra home­
work. And every time she gave you extra homework she wrote your
name on the blackboard and refused to remove it until you had
turned in the "punishment." By the time i left her class my name
covered practically the entire blackboard.
David and i were her favorite targets. The whole class would be
in an uproar, but we were the only ones she saw with our mouths
open. The more she rode our backs, the more rebellious i became. I
would sit in the back of the class and make jokes about her.
One day when we were talking and giggling, she came up and
pulled David out of his seat by the ear, twisting it until the whole

side of his face was red and contorted with pain. I made up my
mind right then and there that she wasn't going to do it to me. A
few days later, she came after me. When she put her hands on me, i
kicked her or hit her. I don't remember which. Anyway, the next
thing i knew i was in the principal's office being sent home with a
note. I was scared to death my mother would find out, so i signed
the note myself and brought it to school the next day. My signature
didn't fool anybody. To make a long story short, when my mother
found out i confessed everything and i told her about Mrs. Hoffler.
I think she had some idea about what was going on because she
had seen a change in me. I had always been very quiet and obedient
in school. My mother went to the school, talked to the teacher and
the principal, and demanded i be moved to another class. It's a
good thing she wasn't one of those parents who believe the teacher
is always right because i don't know what would have happened. I
guess the fact that she's a teacher and is acutely aware of the racism
and hostility that Black children are exposed to from the time they
enter school had something to do with it.
I don't remember the name of my other fifth grade teacher
except that it was a mile long and began with a Z, but she was very
nice and a very good teacher. She introduced us to art, literature,
and philosophy. I remember studying the French Revolution in her
class. She made names like Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday,
and Robespierre come alive. She talked about philosophers like
Rousseau who influenced the thinking of the period and about how
the French Revolution was influenced by the amerikan Revolution.
She even showed us pictures of the art and architecture of the
period. She was the first teacher (one of a very few) who taught
subjects as if they related to each other.
Before i was in her class, i would never have imagined that
history was connected to art, that philosophy was connected to
science, and so on. The usual way that people are taught to think in
amerika is that each subject is in a little compartment and has no
relation to any other subject. For the most part, we receive frag­
ments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no log­
ical format or pattern. It is exactly this kind of education that
produces people who don't have the ability to think for themselves
and who are easily manipulated.
As we grew older, the differences between the Black and white,
the poor and rich students grew bigger and bigger. Once a new
teacher told us to make mobiles as homework. Most of us brought
in cardboard, wood, or paper mobiles. One kid brought in a
mobile made out of metals-not just one kind of metal, but metals

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of different colors. I was in awe of this kid who had the resources to
cut all those different, perfectly formed geometric shapes. Calder
would have taken notice.
The school was in a largely Jewish, middle-class neigh­
borhood. There was a little island of Black people in the middle,
and that was where i lived. It was almost completely segregated
from the white section. The school was right in the middle. In most
of the Black families the mother and father both worked, and many
worked two or three jobs and weren't able to spend a lot of time in
the school. But some of the white parents were there for every little
thing from trips to cookie selling. And talk about pushy parents !
To this day, i believe that some of them did most of their kids'
homework. Black kids wrote a composition or a book report on
plain lined paper and handed it in. Some of the white kids pre­
sented their reports bound in expensive binders, some were typed,
and each page was covered with plastic. I could just imagine asking
my mother to type my homework for me or to give me money to
buy binders and plastic sheets. She would surely have thought i had
gone crazy. The white kids came to school with all kinds of junk:
expensive pen and pencil sets, compasses, and one kid even had a
slide rule, which i doubt he had the faintest idea how to use.
The older they grew, the more snobbish the white kids became.
They were always talking about what they had and what their
parents had bought them. One girl, Marsha, horribly ugly to me,
was always dressed like some kid in the movies or on TV. She was
one of the super-snobs in the class. One day she came to school
with weird-looking mittens on. She said they were made of
chinchilla and that it was the most expensive fur in the world. I
raced home to ask my mother. I just knew she had to be lying
because i had never even heard of chinchilla and everybody i knew
thought that mink was the most expensive fur on the market. I was
really shocked when my mother told me she was telling the truth.
Every year when we came back to school, we would inevitably
be told to write a composition entitled "My Summer Vacation."
Usually we stood in front of the room and read our compositions
aloud. I was always fascinated by some of the places these kids had
been to during the summer: places like Spain, England, Brazil, and
Bermuda. Some of them even brought slides and movies of their
trips. After they finished talking, i wouldn't even want to read my
compositon about being down South with my grandparents.
One of the things that had been drilled into my head since
birth was that we were just as good as white people. "You show
those white people that you are just as good as they are," i was told.

This meant that i was to get good marks in school, that i was to
always be neat and clean when i went to school, that i was to speak
as "properly" as they did, and that i would show them whenever i
could that Black people (we called ourselves Negroes then) could
do whatever white people could do and that we could appreciate
what white people appreciated.
I was supposed to be a child version of a goodwill ambassador,
out to prove that Black people were not stupid or dirty or smelly or
uncultured. I carried out this mission as best i could to show that i
was as good as they were. I never questioned the things they
thought were good. White people said classical music was the
highest form of music; white people said that ballet was the highest
form of dance; and i accepted those things as true. After all, wasn't i
as cultured as they were ? And everything that they wanted, i wanted.
If they wanted poodle jackets, i wanted a poodle jacket. If they
wanted a Star of David necklace, i wanted a Star of David necklace.
If they wanted a Revlon doll, i wanted a Revlon doll. If they could
act snobby, then i could act snobby. I saved my culture, my music,
my dancing, the richness of Black speech for the times when i was
with my own people. I remember how those kids would talk about
gefilte fish and matzos. It would never have occurred to me to talk
about black-eyed peas and rice or collard greens and ham hocks. I
would never have given them an opportunity to ridicule me. Any­
way, half the white people thought that all we ate was grits and
watermelon. In many ways i was living a double existence.
I became interested in television in the fifth or sixth grade. Or,
rather, i should say that that was about the time television started to
corrode my brain. You name any stupid show that existed back in
those days and it was probably one of my favorites. "Ozzie and
Harriet," "Leave It to Beaver," "Donna Reed," "Father Knows
Best," "Bachelor Father," "Lassie," etc. After a while i wanted to be
just like those people on television. After all, they were what
families were supposed to be like.
Why didn't my mother have freshly baked cookies ready when
i came home from school? Why didn't we live in a house with a
backyard and a front yard instead of an ole apartment? I remember
looking at my mother as she cleaned the house in her old raggedy
housecoat with her hair in curlers. "How disgusting," i would
think. Why didn't she clean the house in high heels and shirtwaist
dresses like they did on television? I began to resent my chores. The
kids on television never had any work to do. All they did was their
homework and then they went out to play. They never went to the
laundromat or did the shopping. They never had to do the dishes or

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scrub the floor or empty the garbage. They didn't even have to
make their own beds. And the kids on television got everything they
wanted. Their parents never said, "I don't have the money, I can't
afford it." I had very little sympathy for my mother. It never
occurred to me that she worked all day, went to school at night,
cooked, cleaned, washed and ironed, raised two children, and, in
her "spare" time, graded tests and papers and wrote her thesis. I
was furious with her because she wasn't like Donna Reed.
And, of course, the commericals took another toll. I wanted
everything i saw. My mother always bought Brand X. I would be so
exasperated when we went shopping. I wanted her to buy Hostess
Twinkies and Silvercup white bread. Instead, she bought whole
wheat bread and apples. She would never get good cereals like
Sugar Crunchies and Coco Puffs. She always bought some stuff
that was supposed to be good for us. I thought she was crazy. If
Hostess Twinkies were good enough for the kids on TV, then why
weren't they good enough for me ? But my mother remained un­
moved. And i remained disgusted. I was a puppet and i didn't even
know who was pulling the strings.
One year everybody was wearing buttons on their coats. Some
had writing on them and others had pictures of movie stars. I went
somewhere with my mother and my aunt, and they asked me if i
wanted a button. I picked out one with Elvis Presley on it. All the
kids at school thought Elvis Presley was cool. I wore that button
religiously, all winter, and that summer, when i went down South, i
went to see one of Elvis Presley's movies.
In Wilmington, at that time, there was only one movie theater
where Black people were allowed to go. It was called the Bailey
Theater. Once you bought your ticket, you went up a long staircase
on the side of the theater to the second balcony, the "colored"
section. Shame on you if you were nearsighted. The movie was like
all the rest of Elvis's movies-fQrgettable ! When it was over, i went
downstairs. All the white kids were leaving with pictures of Elvis
Presley that they had bought. I started to walk to my grandparents'
restaurant on Red Cross Street, but then i turned around and
walked back. If the white kids could have a picture of Elvis, then so
could i. At least i was gonna try. I knew it would be absolutely no
use to go to the ticket booth and ask the woman anything. She
would most assuredly say no. So i walked right on past her, straight
into the white section of the theater. What a surprise it was ! It was
j ust like the movies in New York. They had soda machines, a butter
popcorn machine, and all kinds of candy and potato chips and
things. Upstairs in the "colored" section, they had some old, stale
plain popcorn and a few candy bars and that was it.

The moment i walked in, all the action stopped. Everybody's
eyes were on me. 1 walked over to the counter where they were
selling the pictures. Before i could open my mouth, the salesgirl
told me, "You're in the wrong section; just go outside and go up
the stairs on the side."
"I want to buy a picture of Elvis Presley," i said.
"What'd you say, again ?" she drawled.
"I want to buy a picture of Elvis Presley," i repeated. "They
don't have any upstairs."
"Well, 1 don't know," she said. "I'll have to get the manager."
She said something to the other woman behind the counter and
then left. By this time a crowd had gathered around me.
"What's she doing in here?" they kept asking each other.
"Now, she knows better," somebody was saying. "Look, Ma, a
colored girl." "Ya get lost, honey?" "What's she want?" "Don't
they have no pictures in the colored section ? " "What's she need
with a picture anyway?"
The crowd was all around me, gawking. It seemed like the
manager would never come.
"Can't she read ? Don't she know that we don't allow no
colored in here?" "I don't know what it's about. Something about a
picture." "Came walking right in here bold as day."
Finally the salesgirl came back. A man was with her. All eyes
were fixed on the manager. He took one look at me and another at
the crowd forming around me.
"Give her the picture and get'er out of here," he told the
salesgirl. Hurriedly, she sold me the picture.
"All right, folks, it's all over now. Go on about your business."
1 took my picture and went prancing out into the daylight. 1
was feeling good. It seemed funny when i thought about it. The
looks on those crakas' faces, all puffed up like balloons. 1 had a
good time, laughing all the way to my grandparents' restaurant.
And of course the minute i got there, i told everybody what hap­
pened. 1 was just so proud. 1 took my picture and put it on the back
counter right next to the funeral parlor calendar. The picture
stayed there a few days until Johnnie from the cab stand across the
street came and told me that Elvis had said the only thing a Black
person could do for him was to buy his records and shine his shoes.
Quietly, i slid the picture into obscurity, then oblivion. (Later i read
that Elvis had given Spiro Agnew a gold-plated .357 Magnum and
had volunteered to work for the FBI.)
Evelyn, my aunt, was the heroine of my childhood. She was
always taking me places and "exposing me to things," as she called
it. She took me to museums-i think we visited just about every

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museum in the city of New York. She turned me into a real art
lover. Before i was ten, i could recognize a Van Gogh on sight, and i
knew what cubism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism were.
Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Modigliani were my favorite
artists. I didn't know the name of one Black artist in those days.
Very few, if any, museums exhibited the work of Black artists, so i
just assumed that Black people weren't too good at painting. But i
learned about African art from my mother. From the time i can
remember, my mother always had African sculpture in the house. It
was the only kind she had. I always loved those pieces and it really
annoyed me when i took art history in school and the teacher
referred to African art as primitive. In fact, if the art was by anyone
else but a white person, it was called primitive art.
In addition to museums, Evelyn would take me to see plays
and movies, and we would experiment with all kinds of restaurants.
We would go to parks, go bicycle riding, and it was Evelyn who
gave me my first rowboat lesson. She was very sophisticated and
knew all kinds of things. She was right up my alley because i was
forever asking all kinds of questions. I wanted to know everything.
She would give me a book and say, "Read this," and i would eat up
that book like it was ice cream.
It was Evelyn who took me to see my first show at the Apollo.
We saw Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. I was walking on
clouds. After that, as soon as i learned to ride the subway by myself,
i went to the daytime shows. If my mother and my aunt had
known, they would have had a fit. I guess people wondered what
this little girl was doing in the Apollo all by herself, but nobody
ever bothered me. I was always pretty lucky that way.
Barbara was a little girl who lived next door to us in Queens.
She was my main friend and foe for quite a while. One day i saw her
leaving her house wearing a white dress and a little white veil like a
bride wears. Everything she had on was white, all the way down to
her shoes. She even had a little white Bible in her hands. I thought
she was gonna be in a Tom Thumb wedding like they have down
South. So i went up to her and asked her who she was marrying.
She said she was making her first communion, that she was Catho­
lic.
Well, i became an instant convert. I wanted to wear a white
dress and dress up like a bride, too. And Catholics even got out
early from school on Wednesdays. I raced home to tell my mother.
My mother was very permissive where religion was concerned. She
gave us carte blanche to be Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, or
whatever. So i started going to mass and to catechism classes on
Wednesday.

The Catholic Church was like no other church i had ever been
to. Down South i always went to church. But those services were
rich with music and emotion. I would sit caught up in the music
and watch those people who had "got happy" or "got the spirit"
jumping around all over the place. I was never holy-holy, but i had
liked going to church. In the Black churches that i had been in, the
air was charged. The music rocked and the preacher preached and
sang at the same time. People felt free to do what they needed to do.
H they felt like dancing, they danced; if they felt like praying, they
prayed; if they felt like screaming, they screamed; and if they felt
like crying, they cried. The church was there to give them strength
and to get them through the long week ahead of them. Where we
lived in Queens, there was no Black church.
The Catholic Church was different. It was silent and cold. The
music was terrible and you couldn't understand nine-tenths of the
service. But what fascinated me was the spookiness of it. They had
so much weird stuff attached to their religion. When you walked in
the door, you had to cross yourself with holy water; then, before
you could sit down, you had to genuflect. And throughout the
mass, you were forever up and down, sitting, standing, and kneel­
ing. And there was so much stuff to learn. The stations of the cross,
rosary beads, lighting candles, going to confession. It was all so
spooky i just knew that this had to be the real god. The nuns really
tripped me out. They walked around with rings on their fingers
saying they were married to God. That was really weird. And they
could never have children or "do it," and people said they had bald
heads under their habits. I was simply overwhelmed.
The catechism class was nothing like Sunday school. They
never told good stories about Jesus and we never sang "Yes, Jesus
Loves Me. " In catechism class, we learned all about the saints-it
seemed like they had a million of them. And then there was the
Virgin Mary. They made a big deal out of her. They even had us
praying to her. I would do it, but that story was always kind of hard
for me to swallow. Nothing about the Catholics was simple; they
even had different kinds of hell. They had a special one for babies
and then they had one in between and then they had the sho nuff,
sho nuff hell.
They even had two kinds of sin. I can still hear that nun, as if it
were yesterday. Now, a venial sin is a sin that's not so bad; it's a
white sin. But a mortal sin is terrible; it is a black sin.
The night before i was to make my first communion, i had to
run to the church with my baptismal certificate. They needed it to
prove i had been baptized. My mother had had a hell of a time
finding it. I was tickled to be going because they told me to bring it

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to the convent where the nuns lived. 1 had been dying to see what it
looked like inside. It was just as cold and lifeless as the church.
When i gave the nun my baptismal certificate, she looked at it and
almost jumped out of her chair. "Oh, no, this won't do," she said.
"This is not a Catholic baptismal certificate. You weren't really
baptized."
"What?" i said. "I was too baptized. "
"No, you weren't," she said. "It's not a Catholic baptism, s o it
doesn't count. You'll have to be baptized tonight or you can't make
your first communion tomorrow."
1 was not ready for that one. 1 caught an instant attitude. She
was talking about my godparents like they were dirt under her feet.
They called my mother and told her she had to come to the church.
Then they got these total strangers from somewhere and told me
they were supposed to be my godparents and they baptized me. 1
never saw those people again, and if you ask me their names i
couldn't tell you. 1 had had a godmother all my life and here they
were telling me she wasn't my godmother because she wasn't
Catholic. They really made me mad that day, but i didn't say too
much about it. 1 really wanted to make my first communion. 1 did
and, later, my confirmation, but i never looked at them the same.
The sixth grade passed along rather uneventfully. There was
another Black in my class, Gail. We became friendly, but my
relationships with the white kids deteriorated even more. They
made it pretty evident that they didn't care too much for me, and i
made it clear right back that i didn't care for them. The thing i
disliked most about them was their assumptions about me. For one
thing, they automatically assumed that i was stupid, and they
would really act surprised when i showed i had some brains. One of
the biggest fights i had was when this kid in my class couldn't find
some pen that his father had given him and accused me of stealing
it. 1 waited for him outside the classroom and as soon as he came
out the door, i jumped on him like a crazy person. Some teachers
broke us up. "I'm surprised at you," they kept saying. "I never
thought you'd act that way." I was usually very quiet and well
behaved. They acted like i had jumped on that boy for nothing, and
they couldn't understand why i was so angry. As a matter of fact,
even i didn't understand. Then.
Outside of school was a whole 'nother matter. When i wasn't
doing homework or chores, i would go "exploring." My bicycle
was one of the great loves of my life. I would jump on it and ride all
over Queens. Sometimes on Saturdays or Sundays i would ride all
day long, leaving early in the morning and returning as late as i was

allowed to. And if i wasn't on my bicycle, i was somewhere playing
with my friends. We played everything from house to handball. I
played with the boys more than with the girls because the boys had
better games. I loved punch ball and handball, anything that in­
volved running. The playground was right across the street from my
house and i took full advantage of everything that was there. I
played hopscotch, marbles, and cowboys and Indians. I always
wanted to be an Indian and would hide over or under something
and leap out shrieking at the top of my lungs. I guess i was unusual
in that respect, because most of the kids wanted to be cowboys.
I was always rough and clumsy and i played everything as if my
life depended on it. Some of the girls didn't like to play with me
because they said i was too rough. And i was always excluded from
the rope-jumping sessions. I was too clumsy to jump double-Dutch
and they didn't even like me to turn because they said i was
"uneven-handed."
But i always had one best friend and she was always a girl. I
had other friends to play with and hang out with, but i always had
one special friend that i could really talk to. We would go to the
candy store and the movies and places like that and we would sit
and talk for hours about j ust anything. By the time i reached the
sixth grade, i began to idolize and imitate the big kids who went to
junior high school. I couldn't wait to grow up. The grownup world
was so exciting, and when you were grown up you could do
anything you wanted to. Besides, i was beginning to feel different. I
was beginning to be interested in boys.

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44

CRACKERJACKS

I coulda told you,
in the old days,
in the park,
or skating down some hill
what it was all about.
I coulda sat next to you
on some stairway
and gave you half my bubblegum,
and, in between the bubbles
and the giggles,
I coulda told you.
But we are grown up now.
And it is all so complicated
when you dig somebody.
Now, when i open up my crackerjacks,
I find no heart-shaped ring.
Only a puzzle
that i don't wanna solve.

Chapter 3

t seemed like the middle of the night. Some­
one was calling me. Waking me up. What did they
want? Suddenly i was aware of all kinds of activity.
Police, the crackling of walkie-talkies. The place was
buzzing.
"Here, put this on," one of them said, handing
me a bathrobe.
"What's going on ?" i asked.
"You're being moved."
"Where am i being moved to ?"
"You'll find out when you get there."
A wheelchair was waiting. I figured they were
taking me to jail. There was a caravan of police cars
outside the hospital. It looked like i was gonna be in a
parade again.
The ride was pleasant. Just looking at houses and
trees and people passing by in cars was good. We
arrived at the prison at sunrise, in the middle of no­
where. It was an ugly, two-story brick building. They
pushed me up the stairs to the second floor.
I was put in a cell with two doors. A door of bars
was on the inside, and directly outside of that was a
heavy metal door with a tiny peephole that i could
barely see through. The cell contained a cot with a
rough green blanket on it and a dirty white wooden
bench with a hundred names scratched on it. Adjacent
to the cell was the bathroom, with a sink, a toilet, and
a shower. Hanging above the sink was the bottom of a
pot or pan. It was supposed to serve as a mirror, but i
could barely see myself in it. There was one window
covered by three thick metal screens facing a parking
lot, a field, and, in the distance, a wooded area.
I walked around the cell, to the bath, to the

45

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window, to the door. Back and forth until i had tired myself out. I
was still pretty weak. Then i lay down on the cot and wondered
what this place was going to be like. Here i was, my first day in
pnson.
In about an hour, a guard unlocked the outside door and
asked me if i wanted breakfast. I said, "Yes," and in a few minutes
she came back with eggs and bread in a plastic bowl and a metal
cup containing something that was supposed to be coffee.
The eggs didn't taste too bad. "Maybe prison food isn't as bad
as they say it is," i remember thinking.
I heard voices and it was clear they weren't police voices. Then
the radio came on. Black music. It sounded so good. I looked
through the peephole and saw faces, weird and distorted because of
the concave glass, but Black faces to match the Black voices i had
heard.
"How y'all doin' ?" i asked.
No response. Then i realized how thick the metal door was, so
i shouted this time: "How y'all doin' ?" A chorus of muffled "Fine" s
came back. I was feeling good. Real people were just on the other
side of the wall.
The guard opened the metal door and handed me some uni­
forms, maid's uniforms-royal blue, white buttons, collars, and
cuffs.
I kept trying them on until two of them fit. Then she gave me a
huge cotton slip that looked like a tent dress and a nightgown that
looked exactly like the slip.
"You are entitled to a clean uniform once a week."
"Once a week?" i nearly screeched. They had to be crazy.
Behind the guard, through the open door, i could see some of the
women standing around. They were all, it seemed, Black. They
smiled and waved at me. It was so good to see them, it was like a
piece of home.
"When are you going to unlock me and let me go out there ?" i
asked, motioning to the other women. The guard looked surprised.
"I don't know. You'll have to ask the warden."
"Well, when can i see the warden ?" i pushed.
"I don't know."
"Well, why am i being locked in here? Why can't i go out there
with the other women ?"
"I don't know."
"Then why can't you let me out?"
"We were told you were to remain in your room."
"Well, how long am i supposed to stay in here locked up like
this?"
"

"I don't know."
1 saw it was useless. "Would you please tell the warden or the
sheriff that i would like to see him ?" i requested.
The guard locked the door and was gone.
The metal door was unlocked again. An ugly, shriveled white
woman stood in front of the bars. "My name is Mrs. Butterworth
and 1 am the warden of the women's section of the workhouse."
She reminded me of a dilapidated horse. "Well, JoAnne, is there
something 1 can do for you?"
1 didn't like her looks or her tone of voice, but i decided to
ignore that for the moment and get to the business at hand.
"When can i be unlocked from this cell and go outside in the
big room with the other women ?"
"Well, 1 don't know, JoAnne. Why do you want to go out
there?"
"Well, i don't want to stay in here all day, locked up by
myself."
"Why, JoAnne, don't you like your room? It's a very nice room.
We had it painted just for you."
"That's not the point," i said. "I would like to know when i
will be able to be with the other women."
"Well, JoAnne, 1 don't know when you'll be able to come out.
You see, we have to keep you in here for your own safety because
there are threats on your life. You know, JoAnne," she said, lower­
ing her voice like she was speaking confidentially, "cop killers are
not very popular in correctional institutions."
"Have any of the women here made threats against me?"
"Well, 1 don't know, but I'm sure they have."
"I'll bet," i said to myself. "Nobody has threatened my life.
They just don't want to let me outta here."
"Well, JoAnne, the important thing is for you to behave and to
cooperate with us so that we'll be able to send a good report to the
judge. It's important for our girls to behave like ladies."
This woman was making me sick. Did she think i was fool
enough to believe that either she or the judge was gonna help me in
any way ? But it was the superior-sounding tinge to her voice that
really ticked me off.
"Butterworth, is it?" i asked. "What's your first name ?"
"Why, 1 never tell my girls my first name."
"I'm not one of your girls. I'm a grown woman. Why don't you
tell people your first name ? Are you ashamed of it?"
"No, JoAnne, I'm not ashamed of my name. It's a matter of
respect. 1 am the warden here. My girls call me Mrs. Butterworth
and 1 call them by their first names."

ASSATA

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"Well, you haven't done anything for me to respect you for. I
give people respect only when they earn it. Since you won't tell me
your first name, then i want you to call me by my last name. You
can either call me Ms. Shakur or Ms. Chesimard. "
"I'm not going to call you by your last name. I'm going to
continue calling you JoAnne."
"Well, that's okay by me, if you can stand me calling you Miss
Bitch whenever i see you. I don't give anybody respect when they
don't respect me."
"Lock the door," she told the guard and walked away.
Days passed. Evelyn called the sheriff, the warden (there were
two wardens in that jail: Butterworth and a man named Cahill.
Cahill had all the power, though. Butterworth was only a fig­
urehead) and everybody else. Nothing more could be done outside
of going to kourt.
I had little or no feeling in my right arm. I knew i needed
physical therapy if i was ever to use it again. I had learned to write
with my left hand, but that was no substitute. I needed a more
specific diagnosis of exactly what had been damaged before i would
know whether or not i would ever use it again, even with physical
therapy.
Isolation was driving me up the walls. I needed materials to
write and to draw, paint, or sketch. All my requests went unheeded.
I was permitted nothing, including peanut oil and a small ball to
aid movement in my arm.
When the jail doctor examined me i asked him about my arm.
"Why, we doctors aren't gods, you know. There's nothing
anyone can do when someone is paralyzed."
"But they said i might get better," I protested. "Oh, yes, and
the physical therapist at Roosevelt Hospital said that some peanut
oil might help."
"Peanut oil ?" he asked, laughing. "That's a good one. I can't
write a prescription for that now, can I ? My advice to you is to
forget about all of that stuff. You don't need any of it. Sometimes in
life we just have to accept things that are unpleasant. You still have
one good arm."
I kept talking but i could see i was wasting my time. He had no
intention of even trying to help me. "Well, would you at least
prescribe some vitamin B?"
"All right, but you really don't need it."
Every time they called me to see the doctor after that, i went
reluctantly. He would take my arm out of the sling and move it
back and forth about two inches. "Oh, yes, you're getting better,"
he would say. I always asked about physical therapy and he always
said there was nothing he could do.

Finally, Evelyn went to court. Some of the items we petitioned
for were ridiculous. In addition to physical therapy and nerve tests,
we asked for peanut oil, a rubber ball, a rubber grip, books, and
stuff to draw or paint with. The kourt finally granted a physical
therapist if we would find one and pay the bill, but i never got one.
It seems that no physical therapist in Middlesex County was will­
ing to come to the prison to treat me, and only a physical therapist
from Middlesex County was permitted.
But i did get the peanut oil and the grip. And in a short time i
had a whole physical therapy program worked out.
I was receiving a lot of mail from all over the country. Most of
it came from people i didn't know, mostly militant Black people,
either in the streets or in prison. I got some hate mail, though, and
some letters from religious people who were trying to save my soul.
I wasn't able to answer all of those letters because the prison
permitted us to write only two letters a week, subject to inspection
and censorship by the prison authorities. It was hard for me to
write anyway. I was also very paranoid about letters. I could not
bear the thought of the police, FBI, guards, whoever, reading my
letters and getting daily insight on how i was feeling and thinking.
But i would like to offer my sincerest apology to those who were
kind enough to write to me over the years and who received no
answer.
I spent my first month at the middlesex county workhouse
writing. Evelyn had brought some newspaper clippings and it was
obvious the press was trying to railroad me, to make me seem like a
monster. According to them i was a common criminal, just going
around shooting down cops for the hell of it. I had to make a
statement. I had to talk to my people and let them know what i was
about, where i was really coming from. The statement seemed to
take forever to write. I wanted to make a tape of it and enlisted
Evelyn's help. As my lawyer, she was dead set against it and advised
me not to make the tape. But as a Black woman living in amerika,
Evelyn understood why it was important and necessary. When the
prosecutor found out about the tape he tried to get her thrown off
the case. She was ordered by the court never to bring a tape
recorder again when she visited me.
I made the tape of "To My People" on July 4, 1 973, and it was
broadcast on many radio stations. Here is what I said:

Black brothers, Black sisters, i want you to know that i love you
and i hope that somewhere in your hearts you have love for me. My
name is Assata Shakur (slave name joanne chesimard), and i am a
revolutionary. A Black revolutionary. By that i mean that i have

ASSATA
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50

declared war on all forces that have raped our women, castrated our
men, and kept our babies empty-bellied.
I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the
politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless,
heartless robots who protect them and their property.
I am a Black revolutionary, and, as such, i am a victim of all the
wrath, hatred, and slander that amerika is capable of. Like all other
Black revolutionaries, amerika is trying to lynch me.
I am a Black revolutionary woman, and because of this i have
been charged with and accused of every alleged crime in which a
woman was believed to have participated. The alleged crimes in
which only men were supposedly involved, i have been accused of
planning. They have plastered pictures alleged to be me in post
offices, airports, hotels, police cars, subways, banks, television, and
newspapers . They have offered over fifty thousand dollars in rewards
for my capture and they have issued orders to shoot on sight and
shoot to kill.
I am a Black revolutionary, and, by definition, that makes me a
part of the Black Liberation Army. The pigs have used their news­
papers and TVs to paint the Black Liberation Army as vicious,
brutal, mad-dog criminals. They have called us gangsters and gun
molls and have compared us to such characters as john dillinger and
ma barker. It should be clear, it must be clear to anyone who can
think, see, or hear, that we are the victims. The victims and not the
criminals.
It should also be clear to us by now who the real criminals are.
Nixon and his crime partners have murdered hundreds of Third
World brothers and sisters in Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique,
Angola, and South Africa. As was proved by Watergate, the top law
enforcement officials in this country are a lying bunch of criminals.
The president, two attorney generals, the head of the fbi, the head of
the cia, and half the white house staff have been implicated in the
Watergate crimes.
They call us murderers, but we did not murder over two hun­
dred fifty unarmed Black men, women, and children, or wound
thousands of others in the riots they provoked during the sixties. The
rulers of this country have always considered their property more
important than our lives. They call us murderers, but we were not
responsible for the twenty-eight brother inmates and nine hostages
murdered at attica. They call us murderers, but we did not murder
and wound over thirty unarmed Black students at Jackson State-or
Southern State, either.
They call us murderers, but we did not murder Martin Luther
King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, George Jackson,
Nat Turner, James Chaney, and countless others. We did not murder,
by shooting in the back, sixteen-year-old Rita Lloyd, eleven-year-old
Rickie Bodden, or ten-year-old Clifford Glover. They call us mur-

derers, but we do not control or enforce a system of racism and
oppression that systematically murders Black and Third World peo­
ple. Although Black people supposedly comprise about fifteen per­
cent of the total amerikkkan population, at least sixty percent of
murder victims are Black.For every pig that is killed in the so-called
line of duty, there are at least fifty Black people murdered by the
police.
Black life expectancy is much lower than white and they do
their best to kill us before we are even born. We are burned alive in
fire-trap tenements. Our brothers and sisters OD daily from heroin
and methadone. Our babies die from lead poisoning. Millions of
Black people have died as a result of indecent medical care. This is
murder.But they have got the gall to call us murderers.
They call us kidnappers, yet Brother Clark Squire (who is
accused, along with me, of murdering a new jersey state trooper) was
kidnapped on April 2, 1969, from our Black community and held
on one million dollars' ransom in the New York Panther 21 conspir­
acy case. He was acquitted on May 13, 1971, along with all the
others, of 156 counts of conspiracy by a jury that took less than two
hours to deliberate. Brother Squire was innocent. Yet he was kid­
napped from his community and family. Over two years of his life
was stolen, but they call us kidnappers. We did not kidnap the
thousands of Brothers and Sisters held captive in amerika's con­
centration camps. Ninety percent of the prison population in this
country are Black and Third World people who can afford neither
bail nor lawyers.
They call us thieves and bandits.They say we steal. But it was
not we who stole millions of Black people from the continent of
Africa. We were robbed of our language, of our Gods, of our culture,
of our human dignity, of our labor, and of our lives.They call us
thieves, yet it is not we who rip off billions of dollars every year
through tax evasions, illegal price fixing, embezzlement, consumer
fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and swindles. They call us bandits, yet
every time most Black people pick up our paychecks we are being
robbed. Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood we are
being held up.And every time we pay our rent the landlord sticks a
gun into our ribs.
They call us thieves, but we did not rob and murder millions of
Indians by ripping off their homeland, then call ourselves pioneers.
They call us bandits, but it is not we who are robbing Africa, Asia,
and Latin America of their natural resources and freedom while the
people who live there are sick and starving. The rulers of this
country and their flunkies have committed some of the most brutal,
vicious crimes in history. They are the bandits. They are the mur­
derers. And they should be treated as such.These maniacs are not fit
to judge me, Clark, or any other Black person on trial in amerika.
Black people should and, inevitably, must determine our destinies.

ASSATA
JI

ASSATP

52

Every revolution in history has been accomplished by actions,
although words are necessary. We must create shields that protect us
and spears that penetrate our enemies. Black people must learn how
to struggle by struggling. We must learn by our mistakes.
I want to apologize to you, my Black brothers and sisters, for
being on the new jersey turnpike. I should have known better. The
turnpike is a checkpoint where Black people are stopped, searched,
harassed, and assaulted. Revolutionaries must never be in too much
of a hurry or make careless decisions. He who runs when the sun is
sleeping will stumble many times.
Every time a Black Freedom Fighter is murdered or captured,
the pigs try to create the impression that they have quashed the
movement, destroyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution.
The pigs also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are
responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika.
That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionaries do not drop
from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our
oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto
streets, places like attica, san quentin, bedford hills, leavenworth,
and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us. Many jobless
Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers
and sisters from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively,
make up the BLA.
There is, and always will be, until every Black man, woman, and
child is free, a Black Liberation Army. The main function of the
Black Liberation Army at this time is to create good examples, to
struggle for Black freedom, and to prepare for the future. We must
defend ourselves and let no one disrespect us. We must gain our
liberation by any means necessary.
It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains:
In the spirit of:
Ronald Carter
William Christmas
Mark Clark
Mark Essex
Frank "Heavy" Fields
Woodie Changa Olugbala Green
Fred Hampton
Lil' Bobby Hutton
George Jackson
Jonathan Jackson

James McClain
Harold Russell
Zayd Malik Shakur
Anthony Kumu Olugbala White
We must fight on.

The workhouse had a whole heap of rules, most of them
stupid. No newspapers or magazines were permitted. When i asked
why we couldn't read newspapers, they told me that newspapers
were "inflammatory." Obviously, if a person read in the paper that
his or her sister had been raped, he would wait until the rapist
came to jail and then do him bodily harm.
"But," i protested, "the other inmates watch television and
listen to the radio (i wasn't allowed either). They could receive the
same information that way or from a visit from home."
"In that case," the warden told me, "we don't let you read
newspapers because they are a fire hazard."
One of the saddest rules prohibited children from visiting their
mothers in jail. I could see the children waiting outside, looking up
at that ugly old building with sad, frustrated faces. Their mothers
would run to the only window that faced the parking lot just to get
a glimpse of their children. Yelling out of the window was a no-no,
but once in a while somebody would get carried away. Sometimes
their frantic screams went unheard.
Gradually, i began to know the women. They were all very
kind to me and treated me like a sister. They laughed like hell when
i told them that i was supposedly being protected from them. Those
first days, before i had really learned to maneuver with one hand,
they did whatever they could to make things easier for me. They
volunteered to iron my uniforms and sneak them into the laundry
to be washed more than once a week. When they told me their
charges and the time they were doing, i couldn't believe it. Quite a
few of them were doing time for the numbers, either six months or
a year. In New York, doing time for number running was prac­
tically unheard of, and it certainly didn't get six months or a year.
Everybody in the world knows that the numbers business keeps the
cops fat. These women hadn't hurt anybody or stolen anything, yet
they were sitting in jail, probably busted by the same cops that they
paid off. Their only crime was competing with the state lottery.
Most of them had already been sentenced. If the sentence was less
than a year, time was served in the county jail rather than in the
state penitentiary.
If i had expected to find so-called hardened criminals or big-

ASSATA

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54

time female gangsters or gun molls in the workhouse, i would have
been sadly disappointed. The rest of the women who weren't doing
time for the numbers were in for some form of petty theft, like
shoplifting or passing bad checks. Most of those sisters were on
welfare and all of them had been barely able to make ends meet.
The courts had shown them no mercy. They brought in this sister
shortly after i arrived who was eight months pregnant and had been
sentenced to a month for shoplifting something that cost less than
twenty dollars.
Later a middle-aged sister began coming to the workhouse on
weekends. She worked during the week and served her six-month
sentence for drunken driving on weekends. Knowing that white
women with the same charges would never have received such a
sentence, i thought it was harsh. But i didn't realize how harsh until
she told me that she had been arrested for drunken driving in the
driveway of her own house. She hadn't even been on a public road.
She also told me that the cops had arrested her because they didn't
like the way she talked to them.
In that jail it was nothing to see a woman brought in all beat
up. In some cases, the only charge was "resisting arrest." A Puerto
Rican sister was brought in one night. She had been so badly beaten
by the police that the matron on duty didn't want to admit her. "I
don't want her dying on my shift," she kept saying. It was days
before this sister was able to get out of bed.
In spite of it all, those sisters kept the place jumping. They told
all kinds of funny stories about their lives, things they had seen and
experienced. Some had a natural knack for comedy. What amazed
me was the way they told the saddest stories in the world and made
everybody laugh about them.
Girl, that nigga was always in my pocketbook stealing my
money. And all he did with it was blow it at the racetracks. Girl,
that man spent so much money on the racetracks, he made me
wish i was a horse. One day i fixed his ass, though. I was sick and
tired of his mess. Betcha he won't go in nobody's pocketbook no
time soon. I put a mousetrap in that sucker. Girl, you should have
heard that nigga howl.
My husband and me, we used to fight like cats and dogs. And
he was jealous as the day is long. Chile, we went to the bar this
night and the nigga got all high, and started thinkin ' i was messing
around with some dude at the bar. As soon as we got outside, boy,

he jumped on me like a gorilla jumps on a banana. Don't you ASSATA
know that man hit me so hard he knocked my teeth straight out of
55
my mouth. "Now, hold on a minute!" i told that fool. "We can
fight later. I ain't got no 'nother four hundred dollars to spend on
no false teeth. " Chile, we was drunk as skunks, down on our knees
for 'bout an hour looking for those teeth. And when that fool
found them, he said the teeth jumped up and tried to bite him.
Lord, chile, that man is a fool.
1 could listen to these stories only when the outside door was
open. During the day they had a female "sheriff's officer" posted
outside my cell. When she was there, the door usually stayed open.
The whole time i was at that jail i saw very few white women.
The few who did come were there only a few hours or a day or so
before they were bailed out. There was one white woman who was
busted on the turnpike with fifty pounds of reefer. Everyone waited
to see what her bail would be. Then we found out she had been
released on her own recognizance (that is, without bond). To be
released on recognizance in the state of new jersey, one of the
requirements is jersey residence. The woman lived in Vermont. But
nobody was really shocked. She was white.
1 was going crazy in that little cell. The only time they let me
out was for visits and to see the so-called doctor. 1 have always been
an active and restless person, and being locked up in that little cage
all day drove me wild. 1 needed to stretch my legs. 1 started to run
around the cell. 1 would run in this tiny circle until i was exhausted.
Two or three days after i started, the warden, Miss Bitch, accom­
panied by some male guards, visited me.
"We hear that you are running around your cell," she said.
"You will have to stop this activity at once."
"What? Why ?"
"Because you are disturbing the people downstairs."
"What people ?"
"There is an office underneath you and you are disturbing the
workers."
"Are you crazy ? They'll just have to be disturbed. 1 don't run
for that long anyhow. If you let me go out into the yard to exercise
with the other women, i'll stop running around my cell."
"I order you to stop running around your room."
"I don't remember joining your army," i said. "When i join
your army, then you can order me around."
She left in a huff and i kept on running. That was the end of

ASSATA

that. I have to thank her, though. If she hadn't come and harassed
me, i would have probably given up running around that tiny space
in a few days.
The food in the workhouse was horrible. Actually, it was
disgusting. The food there is worse than the food in any jail that i
have been in since, and that is quite an accomplishment. I would sit
and wait for lunch or dinner, hungry as hell, and they would bring
me some greenish-brown iridescent chunks floating around in a
watery liquid (liver stew, they called it) or some lamb fat floating
around in some water which was supposed to be lamb stew. And
that nasty-looking, foul-smelling stuff tasted much worse than it
looked. The place was infested with flies and so was the food. The
only thing edible was eggs, when they had them, and mashed
potatoes. I lived off the nuts and candy i bought from the commiss­
ary and the fruit my family brought on visits.
Every single day for one whole week they brought us this nasty
stuff that was supposed to be ravioli. Well, that was the last straw.
We all decided to go on a food strike. I wrote a petition which
everybody signed and we sent it down to the warden's office. Later,
the warden agreed to discuss making the food more edible, but he
refused to talk to me. He said the fact that i had referred to the food
as "slop" showed i was unreasonable. The food was better for a few
days, and then it reverted to the same old nasty slop.
The woman sheriff's officer who guarded me had to be the
oldest "dumb" blonde alive. She played the part to a bust. She was
nosy and was the world's biggest gossip. Every time she saw me she
smiled and pretended to be oh so friendly. One day some workmen
were drilling a big hole in the wall to install new electrical circuits.
Of course, as soon as she came in, the nosy sheriff's officer began
her questions.
"What are they building?"
I said, "Haven't you heard? Well, you know, they passed a
special law and they're going to execute me. They're building the
gas chamber now."
"Well !" she said indignantly. "Well ! Nobody told me about
it." And she rushed off to find out why no one had informed her.
The lights were turned off every night at ten. I was lucky
because there was a night switch that i controlled in the bathroom
adjacent to my cell. I would move the cot so that i was in as much
light as possible and i would read way into the night. When i tired
of reading, i'd turn off the light and look out the window. Outside,
police patrolled the area. A lot of times there were two police on
foot who seemed to be standing around near the parking lot. They

carried rifles and shotguns. One night, in my usual condition of
boredom, while standing at the window and feeling mischievous, i
cried out a birdlike sound in the shrillest voice i could muster:
"Eeeeenk, eeeenk, eeeeenk, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenk." The pigs
started looking around like crazy. They jerked this way and that
way as if they thought someone was behind them. Again i cried,
"Eeeeeeenk, eeeeeeeeenk, eeeeeeeeewa, eeeeeeeeeeeewa." This time
they really jumped around. You would have thought it was World
War II and the Japanese were two feet away. I waited awhile. When
they calmed down, in a voice even shriller than before, i cried,
"Naaaaaaeeeeee, naaaaeeeeeee, naaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeee. " They
pointed their guns and actually walked backward, prepared to fire
at anything moving. Then, quite by accident, my metal cup fell to
the floor. Well, in a second they were down on the ground, crawl­
ing, holding their rifles. When i saw these fools crawling around on
the ground like that, i just couldn't take it anymore. I laughed until
i was sick. Great, big, bad police, crawling around scared of their
own shadows. Every once in a while i tried it again with different
police and usually the results were similar, but it was never as good
as that first night.
Because i had a broken clavicle, i had to wear a figure-eight
brace around my shoulders. It was made of foam and cotton with a
tiny belt buckle fastener in the back, about a half-inch wide. One
morning, as i was eating, the guard came in my cell and took it.
"You can't have this."
"Why ?"
"Because it contains metal," she replied. "You can't have
anything with metal on it. " Now, there i was, sitting on a metal cot,
drinking out of a <metal cup, eating out of a metal bowl, and this
policewoman was standing in my face telling me i couldn't have my
brace because of this tiny metal buckle. I raised all the hell i could,
but i saw that she was, like she said, like they all say, "only
following orders."
"If the prison doctor says you need it, you can have it back."
As soon as Dr. Miller came into the workhouse, i asked to see
him. Without the brace, my shoulder felt weak and fragile. I could
barely hold myself up straight.
"Don't worry about that old brace," Herr doctor told me.
"You don't need that thing anyway."
It was all i could do not to kick him in his groin. Luckily, later
that week, the bone specialist came out from the hospital to see me.
He was a very good doctor and a very kind man. He told the
warden in no uncertain terms that i needed my brace and without it

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i could be disfigured. He gave me a lot of encouragement for my
hand so that i could regain full use of it. Finally, they returned the
brace.
It was about that time that the miracles started. I was sure now
that my hand was coming back to life. I was beginning to be able to
tell it to do things and it would actually respond. Each little bit of
progress was a miracle. Being able to touch my pinky with my
thumb, to pick up a cup, to hold a pencil, to pinch myself were feats
that took days of practice and exercise to accomplish. And then the
day came when i knew i was almost there. After months of trying, i
could finally snap my fingers. Whenever anyone came to see me, i
would show them my new talents. I felt like a little kid saying,
"Look, Mommy, see what i can do."
Finally a joint conference was arranged between Sundiata and
me with Evelyn present. It took place at the workhouse. Sundiata
was brought from the new brunswick jail. I've never been happier
to see anyone in my life. It was difficult to talk because the guards
were practically sitting in our laps. I can't whisper for nothing and
Evelyn kept telling me to lower my voice. We talked about the case
and decided that it was politically correct to be tried together. Just
seeing Sundiata cooled me right out. I was feeling bad and i was
real self-conscious about how i looked. I had broken out in a
horrible rash from the prison soap and i looked like a lopsided
scarecrow with bumps. There is something about Sundiata that
exudes calm. From every part of his being you can sense the
presence of revolutionary spirit and fervor. And his love for Black
people is so intense that you can almost touch it and hold it in your
hand. There's nothing put on about him. He is a real folksy kind of
person. Every time i see him he looks like he belongs on a porch
somewhere down South, breathing in the summer air and bouncing
babies off his knee. The truth of the matter is that Sundiata is
country. He would deny it to the bitter end, but he is sho nuff
country. And when he laughs that giggle laugh of his, it's like a trip
to Texas in the backwoods. When the conference ended, i was a
different person. I felt much stronger and i didn't feel alone.
I don't know when, but somewhere along the way i started to
collect the metal cups we were given to drink from. At first i think it
was just my slow way of drinking that caused the cups to accumu­
late. I was none too popular with the guards, especially the men.
Most of them hadn't said boo to me and vice versa, but they hated
my guts. To them, i was a cop killer and they were cops. Something
told me to be real careful. They had given me a little table to eat
and write on, and at night, before i went to sleep, i pushed the table

up next to the bars and stacked the cups precariously on top of it.
The bars opened into the cell, and the slightest movement would
send the whole stack of cups clanging to the floor. I would push the
wooden bench behind the table. In that way, anyone who tried to
come in would have to apply some real pressure. I went through
this routine every night, feeling slightly foolish but compelled.
One night, in the middle of the night, the cups came crashing
down. I immediately awoke to find four or five male guards stand­
ing in the doorway of my cell.
I screamed, "What do you want? What are you doing in my
cell ?" loud enough for someone to hear me. The guards stood in
the doorway like they didn't know what to do. Finally one of them
locked the door and said, "We heard a noise and we came to
investigate. We were just checking it out." They weren't even sup­
posed to be in the women's section. The female guard on duty that
night, the slimiest one in the prison, was nowhere in sight. After
that, no matter what jail i was in, i always found some way to
barricade my cell. In prisons, it is not at all uncommon to find a
prisoner hanged or burned to death in his cell . . No matter how
suspicious the circumstances, these deaths are always ruled "sui­
cides." They are usually Black inmates, considered to be a "threat
to the orderly running of the prison." They are usually among the
most politically aware and socially conscious inmates in the prison.
When Eva came to the workhouse it was something of an
event. Usually she occupied the cell i was in. (The rest of the women
were housed in two open dormitories.) The guards didn't know
what to do with her. She had been in that jail many times before
and she was known as a hell raiser. Everybody said she was crazy.
My first encounter with Eva was when she came over to the
bars and sat down outside my cell and told me she could astro­
travel. She called it something like astro-space projection.
"I can go anywhere I want to, whenever I want to," she told
me. "I've just come from Jupiter."
"How was it?" i asked her.
"Oh, it was fine. They had these cute little people. They were
purple with crocodile skin and blue hair. You can go anywhere you
want to," she told me. "You just have to project yourself."
"Can you show me how to project myself the hell out of here?"
"Oh, that's easy," she said, "I do that all the time. As a matter
of fact, I'm not here now."
"No," i said, "that's not good enough. I want to project my
mind and my body out of here."
"You'll be in j ail wherever you go," Eva said.

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"You have a point there," i told her, 'but i'd rather be in a
minimum security prison or on the streets than in the maximum
security prison in here. The only difference between here and the
streets is that one is maximum security and the other is minimum
security. The police patrol our communities just like the guards
patrol here. I don't have the faintest idea how it feels to be free."
Eva told me that she knew how i felt. She had to know. Any
Black person in amerika, if they are honest with themselves, have
got to come to the conclusion that they don't know what it feels
like to be free. We aren't free politically, economically, or socially.
We have very little power over what happens in our lives. In fact, a
Black person in amerika isn't even free to walk down the street.
Walk down the wrong street, in the wrong neighborhood at night,
and you know what happens.
Eva and i got on famously. A lot of times i didn't understand
what in the world she was talking about. But at times she made so
much sense i wondered if it was really the world that was crazy. She
taught me a lot about prison, and she was forever telling some
funny story about her life.
Eva was a huge sister; she weighed about 300 pounds. She had
very dark skin and her hair was cut short next to her scalp. People
who have accepted white, European standards of beauty would find
her unattractive. But to me there was something beautiful about her
and i loved to look at her. She is one of the few people that i have
met in life who have the courage to be almost totally honest.
Altogether, Eva had spent about ten years in the clinton cor­
rectional facility for women in new jersey. She had been there in the
old days when the women worked out on the farm. She told me
how the women were treated, that state troopers would be called in
for the slightest disturbance. She was there during a riot at clinton
and had seen state troopers beat the women mercilessly; once they
had beaten a pregnant woman so badly she lost her baby.
Around this time i started taking my little walks. Staying
cooped up in that cage all day was driving me up the wall. So when
the guards brought my food, i would walk past them into what was
called the day room, where the women ate and watched TV. I would
walk first to one dorm, then to the other, and then return to my
cell. There was no place i could run to since there were two or three
locked doors between me and the outside. Most of the guards
would nag me to come back into my cell and, after a short time, i
would. But none of them got too crazy about it until one day a
guard yelled at me, "Get back here ! Did you hear me? Get back
here !"

If there's one thing i can't stand it's being ordered around, and
if there's another thing that makes me go wild it's for a white
person to talk to me in that tone of voice. "You make me come
here," i told her. "You so big and bad, i want to see you make me
come back in there." She made a move like she was going to grab
me. "You put your hands on me and it's gonna be you and me. You
lay a hand on me and i'm gonna splatter your brains all over these
walls." It's a good thing she didn't try me, though, because she
outweighed me by at least fifty pounds and i was still pretty much
the one-armed bandit. But i would have given her a hell of a fight. I
was mad and frustrated and i had already stored up about two or
three months of anger. Anyway, i finally went back into the cell,
when i was ready. But her attitude made me defiant. Whenever she
opened my cell for anything, i would push past her and walk
around for a minute. She would stand in the doorway like she was a
door or something and i would rear back and butt her out of the
way. She was as big as a house, but she didn't have one bit of
strength. Finally, she called the male guards. I was in one of the
dorms talking to the women, wondering why she wasn't bothering
me, when about ten male guards came into the room.
"Who is JoAnne Chesimard?" the head guard asked. Nobody
said anything. "Which one of you is JoAnne Chesimard?" They
looked like they were ready to leap on somebody. Again no one
responded. "All right, I'm gonna ask you again, which one of you is
JoAnne Chesimard?"
"I'm JoAnne Chesimard," Eva said. Well, when the guards
took one look at Eva and saw how big she was, their tone changed
immediately.
"Miss Chesimard, would you please return to your cell ?"
One of the guards came from the back and tapped the sergeant
on the shoulder.
"I know her," he said. "She's not Chesimard."
"I am who you are looking for, " i said. I didn't want Eva to
get too involved in my madness. "I'll see you sisters later. I've had
enough excitement for the moment." I walked past them and went
to my cell and opened a book.
The next day this same guard managed to tick me off again.
"I don't want anymore trouble out of you," she said. "I don't
want to have to call the men again."
"You can call the national guard, the militia, the FBI, and
anybody else for all i care. You can call your mother if you want
to," i told her. As soon as she opened the door for lunch, i pushed
right past her. I took my tray, sat down with the other women and

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started eating my lunch. 1 didn't know what was going to happen
but i wanted to see what they were gonna do. 1 had about three
mouthfuls of food left on my plate when the goon squad came in.
"All right, get up and get in your cell."
"As soon as i finish what i have on my plate."
"Now !" they ordered.
"I only have two spoonfuls left."
"Now!" They beckoned to the female guard. "Remove the
prisoner to her cell." She came near me with her hands stretched
out.
"Don't you put your hands on me," i told her. "I'll walk to my
cell."
"Remove the prisoner to her cell," they ordered. She went to
grab my arm and all at once the room was in motion. Chairs,
tables, cups, trays were flying in the air. Everybody was either
running to get out of the way or fighting. The female guard made a
wild dash for the door. The male guards jumped on me. 1 was
hitting, kicking, scratching, punching, biting, and i don't know
what all else. They finally managed to get me in my cell and the
other women locked in their dormitories. None of the women was
seriously injured. 1 had a few nicks and scratches, but otherwise i
was fine. And i felt fine. Some of that anger pent up inside me had
been released. One of the guards was wounded. Somehow his face
had got cut. He was the same little runt who had sat across from me
in the hospital, pointing a shotgun at me and switching the safety
on and off, talking about how he liked to kill animals. Nobody
knows how he was cut or who cut him. But everybody knows that
the hunter got hunted.
Later that day they brought a photographer to photograph the
evidence. The local newspaper later reported a "riot" at the work­
house. Some police and the sheriff came around and searched the
jail. They said they were looking for the weapon that had cut the
guard. They didn't find anything. That night they came and got
Eva. They took her to the Vroom Building, the new jersey "hospi­
tal" for the criminally insane. She spent about three weeks there
before she came back. The night she left i felt sad and guilty. Here i
had got her caught up in my madness. 1 was sitting and thinking
about her. So i sat down and wrote this poem:

Rhinocerous woman
Who nobody wants
and everybody used.

They say you're crazy
cause you not crazy enough
to kneel when told to kneel.
Hey, big womanwith scars on the head
and scars on the heart
that never seem to healI saw your light
And it was shining.
You gave them love.
They gave you shit.
You gave them you.
They gave you hollywood.
They purr at you
cause you know how to roar
and back it up with realness.
Rhinocerous woman.
Big momma in a little world.
You closed your eyes
and neon spun inside your head
cause it was dark outside.
You read your bible
but god never came.
Your daddy woulda loved you
but what would the neighbors say.
They hate you momma
cause you expose their madness.
And their cruelty.
They can see in your eyes
a thousand nightmares
that they have made come true.
Black woman. Baad woman.
Wear your bigness on your chest like a badge
cause you done earned it.
Strong woman. Amazon.
Wear your scars like jewelry
cause they were bought with blood.
They call you mad.
And almost had you
believing that shit.
They called you ugly.
And you hid yourself

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behind yourself
and wallowed in their shame.
Rhinocerous WomanThis world is blind
and slight of mind
and cannot see
How beautiful you are.
I saw your light.
And it was shining.

Most of the women benefited from the "riot," though. Over
the next few days almost everybody was released or sent to some
kind of program. The jail was practically empty. It's strange how
things work. When it suits the government's interest, they put
people in jail for rioting. And when it suits their interests, they let
them out of jail for the same thing. Afterward, the outer door to my
cage remained shut at all times. This was no great deprivation since
it had remained closed most of the time before anyway.
One day they brought me a big bushel of stringbeans. (They
grew a lot of their food at the workhouse. The men worked in the
field.) "Here, we want you to snap these stringbeans."
"How much are you gonna pay me?" i asked.
"We don't pay no inmate nothin', but if you snap these beans
we'll let your door stay open while you snap them."
"I don't work for nothing. 1 ain't gonna be no slave for
nobody. Don't you know that slavery was outlawed?"
"No," the guard said, "you're wrong. Slavery was outlawed
with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons."
1 looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution says:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punish­
ment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
j urisdiction.

Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails
and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black
and Third World people, why so many Black people can't find a
job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know
how. Once you're in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you
don't want to work, they beat you up and throw you in the hole. If

every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to
do, the salaries would amount to billions. License plates alone
would amount to millions. When Jimmy Carter was governor of
Georgia, he brought a Black woman from prison to clean the state
house and babysit for Amy. Prisons are a profitable business. They
are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and
more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing
board. Who are they for? They certainly aren't planning to put
white people in them. Prisons are part of this government's gen­
ocidal war against Black and Third World people.
On July 1 9, 1 973 , i was taken to New York to be arraigned on
a Queens bank robbery indictment in Brooklyn federal court. The
trip was like a surrealistic cartoon. There must have been at least
twelve cars in the procession, and a new jersey state trooper's car
was stationed at every exit on the turnpike. All the cars had lights
on and sirens going. A helicopter trailed us. And the pigs in the car
i was in were comical. At every point they said something like ''At
least we got to the turnpike." "At least we got to the bridge." "At
least we got to New York." "At least we made it to the court."
Whenever they passed a police car they waved and sometimes
raised their fists. When the jersey police were replaced by New York
police at the bridge to Staten Island, they shook hands and gave
each other the power sign. They even called each other "brother."
"This is my brother officer, so and so." They acted like they were on
some dangerous mission inside Russia. They were actually afraid.
White people's fear of Black people with guns will never cease to
amaze me. Probably it's because they think about what they would
do were they in our place. Especially the police, who have done so
much dirt to Black people-their guilty conscience tells them to be
afraid. When Black people seriously organize and take up arms to
fight for our liberation, there will be a lot of white people who will
drop dead from no other reason than their own guilt and fear.
In September, i was moved from the workhouse and entombed
in the basement of the middlesex county jail, allegedly because of
the jail's proximity to the middlesex county courthouse where the
new jersey trial was scheduled to begin on October 1 . I was the
first, and last, woman ever imprisoned there. It has always been a
men's jail.
When i arrived i was given a dirty, scratchy horse blanket and
one sheet. Thinking they had made a mistake, i asked for another
sheet. "That's all you get," they told me.
"I can't sleep with that filthy thing over me. I need another
sheet."

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66

"Sorry."
"Why am i allowed only one sheet?"
"That's all the men get. We only give one because they might
hang themselves."
"They can hang themselves as easily with one sheet as they can
with two," i reasoned.
"Sorry."
For me to sleep on that filthy thing with one sheet was out of
the question. I hooped, hollered, demanded they call my lawyer,
and told the guard that the next time she came into my cage i was
going to wrap the sheet around her neck. Finally, she gave me
another sheet.
If i wrote a hundred pages describing the basement of the
middlesex county jail, it would be impossible for you to visualize it.
It was a big, grayish, pukey-greenish cell. The ceiling was covered
with all kinds of pipes, some small, some huge, some dry, some
leaky. There was no natural light, and the jailers refused to open
the small windows located near the ceiling. The average tem­
perature was 95 degrees. It was infested with ants and centipedes. I
had never seen a centipede before and they scared me to death.
They were huge, albino monsters and they crawled all over me.
Female guards were stationed at the door of my cell twenty­
four hours a day. Their job was to sit there and look in the cell at
me. They could see every move i made. The first day i moved the bed
>I-

' On December 1 1 , 1 9 78, attorney Lennox Hinds, on behalf of the National Conference
of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racism, and the Commission for Racial
Justice of the United Church of Christ, sent a petition to the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights alleging a "consistent pattern of gross . . . violations of human rights and
fundamental freedoms of certain classes of prisoners in the United States because of their
race, economic status, and political beliefs." In response to the petition, seven international
jurists visited a number of prisoners on August 3-20, 1 9 79, and reported their findings.
They listed four categories of prisoners, the first of which were political prisoners, defined as
"a class of victims of FBI misconduct through the COINTELPRO strategy and other forms of
illegal governmental conduct who as political activists have been selectively targeted for
provocation, false arrests, entrapment, fabrication of evidence, and spurious criminal pros­
ecutions. This class is exemplified by at least: The Wilmington Ten, the Charlotte Three,
Assata Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Imari Obadele and other Republic of New Africa defendants,
David Rice, Ed Poindexter, Elmer 'Geronimo' Pratt, Richard Marshall, Russell Means, Ted
Means and other American Indian Movement defendants."
They considered my case in the section of their report dealing with solitary con­
finement: "One of the worst cases is that of ASSATA SHAKUR, who spent over rwenty
months in solitary confinement in rwo separate men's prisons subject to conditions totally
unbefitting any prisoner. Many more months were spent in solitary confinement in mixed or
all-women's prisons. Presently, after protracted litigation, she is confined at Clinton Correc­
tional Facility for Women in maximum security. She has never on any occasion been
punished for any infraction of prison rules which might in any way justify such cruel or
unusual treatment."

against the wall, away from the guard's surveillance so that i could
have a little privacy while i was sleeping. The guards ordered me to
move the bed into the middle of the floor. 1 refused. The next day
workmen nailed the bed to the floor in the center of the cell. They
even peeked through the window in the bathroom when i was on
the toilet or taking a shower. When i covered the peephole with a
towel or a uniform, they ordered me to remove it and threatened to
take away all towels and uniforms if i continued covering the
window. 1 didn't refuse, i simply ignored them. After a while they
gave up. A month later one of the sergeants told me that i was
permitted to cover the window when i used the bathroom. But only
for three minutes.
There were twelve four-foot-Iong fluorescent light bulbs in the
cage that were blinding. When i got ready to go to sleep the first
night, i asked the guard to turn off the lights. She refused. "I can't
see you if the light isn't on."
"How in the world can you miss me? You can see everything in
the cell."
"Sorry."
They kept me under those blinding lights for days. 1 felt like i
was going blind. 1 was seeing everything in doubles and triples.
When Evelyn, my lawyer, came to see me, i complained. Finally,
after Evelyn accused them of torture, they turned the lights off at
eleven. But every ten or fifteen minutes they would shine a huge
floodlight into the cell.
Then the trial started. First, motions were argued. Practically
all of our motions were denied. All the prosecution's were granted.
Then jury selection began before Judge John E. Bachman.
When they brought in the first jury panel i thought i was gonna
have a heart attack. There were only a few Blacks speckled here and
there, and the panel looked more like a lynch mob than a j ury.
Most of the jurors openly glared at us, as if they would kill us if
they could. Half said they thought we were guilty. The other half,
although they didn't say it right out, answered questions like they
believed more or less that we probably were guilty. 1 was convinced
some of them deliberately lied just to get on the jury and convict us.
Most of the few Black people excused themselves on the grounds of
hardship. They had children, families, jobs and simply could not
afford to be on a lengthy jury trial. If ever there was a case of the
blues, i had it.
"Do something," i kept telling the lawyers. "Do something!"
"What can we do?" the lawyers would answer. "We're doing
the best we can."

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It was true, but i just could not accept it. This was my life they
were talking about. I must have bugged the lawyers to death.
"Object to this, object to that," i would tell them.
"Our objection is already on the record."
"Well, object again anyway." I was outraged, trapped and
helpless. Whenever a juror said something that revealed out-and­
out prejudice, the judge would try to clean it up. Poor Ray Brown,
one of the defense lawyers, caught most of my fire.
"I want you to object. "
"On what basis ?" he would ask.
"Don't you see it? The judge is asking leading questions."
"But the judge is legally allowed to ask leading questions
during j ury selection."
"Well, object anyway." I knew nothing about law then. I had
never even seen a trial. I just couldn't understand how the j udge
could be so blatantly prejudiced in favor of the prosecution and
there was nothing we could do about it.
"Why can't y'all be like Perry Mason?" i asked the lawyers
jokingly.
"Did you ever see Perry Mason defend a Black defendant?"
Ray Brown answered.
Sundiata was a lifesaver. He would try to calm me down and
would explain what to expect. Logically, i accepted what he said,
but i was still frantic.
"We just can't let ourselves be railroaded," i'd say, coming up
with one wild idea after another. Sundiata would patiently explain
why none of my fantastic ideas would work. After a while of
participating in my own legal lynching, i became convinced that
Sundiata and i should fire the lawyers and defend ourselves. In that
way we wouldn't be tied to those stupid rules and we could say
anything we wanted to.
"That's not true," Sundiata told me. "Even if you defend
yourself, you're still bound by their rules."
"How am i supposed to know those rules ? I'm not a lawyer.
And i still have a constitutional right to defend myself. "
"True, but you still have to play according to their rules or they
can bind and gag you. Look at what they did to Bobby Seale."
Every time i looked up at the jury box, i'd argue the point
again. But i also knew that i didn't know one thing about the law,
and it was hard to picture myself actually defending myself. Evelyn
was always repeating the old cliche that a person who defends
himself has a fool for a lawyer.
As we came closer and closer to completing the selection of

the jury, i became more and more upset. Then, one day, a kid who
couldn't have been more than twenty was being examined as a
potential juror. He spilled the beans. The judge asked him if he had
an opinion of the case and he said, "They say she's guilty." The
judge questioned him further and he blurted it all out. The pro­
spective jurors in the jury room were talking about the case, al­
though they had been ordered not to discuss it. The judge asked
what they were saying.
"They say she's guilty."
"Only Mrs. Chesimard?" the judge asked.
"They're saying they're Black, they're guilty."
At that moment the lawyers were all on their feet, talking a
mile a minute. They demanded a complete investigation of what
was going on in the jury room. They wanted the juror asked more
questions. They wanted the jurors to whom he talked questioned.
The judge immediately realized the boy had opened a can of
worms. He did everything he could to avoid opening the can any
further, but it had gotten out of his control. He finally agreed to
conduct an impartial investigation. This time, when he questioned
the jurors, he was very careful to downplay the gravity of what was
going on in the jury room. But the other jurors substantiated what
the boy had said. Our lawyers filed a motion asking that the jury be
selected from another county because we couldn't get a fair trial in
Middlesex. The assignment judge, not Judge Bachman, was to
decide the motion. Meanwhile, the trial was stopped.
Evelyn told me the decision. The assignment judge had deter­
mined that it was in fact true that we couldn't get a fair trial in
Middlesex County. The jury was to be picked from Morris County.
"Where's that?" i asked Evelyn. She said she hadn't the faintest
idea. Then Ray Brown came in.
"Where in the world is Morris County?" i asked him.
"Well," he said, "I'll tell you." Morris County was almost
completely white with very few Black people and even fewer His­
panics and Asians.
"What does that mean ? Are there ten percent Black people?
Five percent? Or what?"
"A whole lot fewer."
"A jury of your peers," Evelyn said bitterly.
"What can we- do?" i asked.
"We'll just have to wait and see."
"Can't we get the trial moved somewhere else where there are
more Black people?"
"We can try, but don't get your hopes up too high."

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I was coming back to earth, and fast.
The trial had been postponed for about a month, until Janu­
ary, because they needed time to secure the jail in Morristown, in
Morris County.
"Maybe," i thought, "the lawyers will come up with some­
thing by then." I really didn't expect too much, but it seemed like
such an obvious trick, such an obvious ploy, to ensure that we
didn't receive a fair trial by a j ury of our peers that i thought maybe
something could be done about it. I was naive in those days. I knew
it in theory, but i had not seen enough to accept the fact that there
was absolutely no j ustice whatsoever for Black people in amerika. I
still had some hope left. But they had taken something that was
supposed to help us and turned it against us. They had used the law
to abuse the law.
"Now, all we have to do," i reasoned, "is get the facts and
figures and prove that they are trying to deny us a fair trial." How
little did i know!

Chapter 4

unior high school had its advantages and
its disadvantages. It was more impersonal and much
more confusing than elementary school, but it gave
me the chance to move around and change classes,
which i liked. Generally my subjects bored me, with
the exception of English, history, and a newfound love
of ceramics. Parsons Junior High School in Queens
was mostly white. A lot of the Black kids had been put
into remedial or what we called "dumb" classes. It
never ceased to amaze me that the kids who were so
smart in the street were always in the dumb classes.
In junior high everybody was going with some­
one. When girls got together to talk, the subject was
always boys: who was cute, who was going with
whom, who was fresh, etc., etc. A cute boy was tall,
slim but well built, and usually had light skin. A boy
was considered super-fine if, in addition to light skin,
he had funny-colored eyes. Hazel and green eyes were
the best. If a boy was popular or good at sports he
usually got a play, but in general the boys we talked
about were tall, not too dark, and handsome.
One of my earliest admirers was this boy named
Joe. He was new in our neighborhood, from down
South or somewhere, because everyone said he was
country. He was real dark and had a long body with
short little legs. He liked me, and, in the beginning, i
think i kinda liked him too. Then everyone started
teasing me, saying he was my boyfriend and saying he
looked like a black frog because his legs were so short.
At that age, i was worried to death about what every­
one thought of me. I wanted desperately to be one of
the pack and i didn't want anybody to make fun of
me. So whenever anybody said i liked Joe, i would

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deny it to the bitter end and talk about him worse than everybody
else. But Joe was very sweet to me. Every time he saw me he would
smile and say something nice. On Valentine's Day he gave me a
beautiful big valentine and some candy. One day, in the spring, i
heard somebody calling my name outside my bedroom window. It
was Joe. Quickly, he put a flower on the sill and ran away. Every day
after that he did the same thing. When i would see him on the
street, i would smile. I was really touched by the flowers. Then one
day my mother saw him at the window putting a flower on the sill.
"You tell that boy to stay away from that window," she said.
"Now he's putting flowers in the window, the next thing you know
he'll be trying to climb in." But she still thought it was kinda cute.
The next thing i knew she was telling all her friends about it. While
i was embarrassed, it also made me think i was cute. No boy had
every paid me that much attention before and i loved it.
One day i was coming from the store and i saw Joe. He started
walking beside me. He was kinda shy and he had never said
anything to me except "You look nice" or "You look pretty." This
day we tried to make conversation as we went along. Then, all of a
sudden, he said, "Will you go with me ? I want you to be my girl."
Somehow i was shocked. Did he really think i would go with him
and ruin my reputation forever?
"No," i answered.
"No," he repeated. "Why not?"
I didn't know what to say. My tongue became heavy and
twisted, I started to stutter. Nothing came out of my mouth. "Why
not?" he asked again. I stammered and stuttered and then, with icy
bluntness, i said, "Because you're too black and ugly." I will never
forget the look on his face. He looked at me with such cold hatred
that i was stunned. I was instantly sorry for what i had said, but
there was no taking it back. He looked at me as if he despised me
more than anyone else on the face of the earth. I felt so ugly and
dirty and depraved. I was shaken to the bone. For weeks, maybe
months, afterward, i was haunted by what happened that day, by
the snakes that had crawled out of my mouth. The sneering hatred
on his face every time i saw him after that made me know there was
nothing i could do to make it up to him. There was nothing i could
do but change myself. Not for him, but for me. And i did change.
After that i never said "Black" and "ugly" in the same sentence and
never thought it. Of course, i couldn't undo all the years of self­
hatred and brainwashing in that short time, but it was a beginning.
And although i still cared too much about what people thought
about me, i always tried hard after that to stand on my own two

feet, to stand by what i felt and thought and not just be a robot. I
didn't always succeed, but i always tried like hell.
Mostly, when i was young, the news didn't seem real. In fact,
my vision of the world was like a comic strip: In China they ate
fortune cookies and the men wore braids; in Africa they lived in
huts, wore bones in their noses, and were cannibals; in South
Amerika they wore big hats, slept in the middle of the day, drank a
lot of rum, and danced the cha-cha. The only place, besides the
United States, that i could talk about with anything resembling
realism was Europe. And my perception of Europe was almost as
unreal. The first president i remember was Eisenhower and even he
didn't seem real. My mother said that all he did was play golf.
When he gave a speech on TV, we turned the channel, and, if he
was on all the stations, we turned the TV off.
Only the news concerning Black people made any impact at all
on me. And it seemed that each year the news got worse. The first of
the really bad news that i remember was Montgomery, Alabama.
That was when i first heard of Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks had
been arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white woman. The
Black people boycotted the buses. It was a nasty struggle. Black
people were harassed and attacked and, if i remember correctly,
Martin Luther King's house was bombed. Then came Little Rock. I
can still remember those ugly, terrifying white mobs attacking those
little children who were close to my own age. When the news about
Little Rock came on, you could hear a pin drop at my house. We
would all sit there horrified. Sometimes, afterward, somebody
would say something, but usually we would just sit there lost in our
own thoughts. I guess there was nothing to say. And each year i
would sit in front of that box, watching my people being attacked
by white mobs, being bitten by dogs, beaten and water-hosed by
police, arrested and murdered. Then the news seemed too real.
The older i got, the more i seemed to grow into myself. My
mother and stepfather were having all kinds of problems. They were
fussing and fighting like cats and dogs. They were like a whole lot
of other Black people in that respect. They were catching hell every
day on their jobs, in society, and they took their frustrations out on
each other. To make matters worse, she was a teacher and he
worked in the post office: she had been to college and he hadn't. As
far as i'm concerned, if a Black man and woman make a marriage
work in amerika, they've accomplished a miracle. Because every­
thing is against them. Just being poor is one of their biggest
obstacles. Most of the arguments are about money. It's hard as hell
to be loving and caring when you can't pay the bills and you don't

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know where the next dollar is coming from. And the way that we're
brought up to think adds insult to injury. It's changing a little bit
now, but when i was growing up, every white man on television was
able to support his family with no particular strain. There was no
need for his wife to work. Her job was to stay home and take care
of the kids. Black people accepted those role models for themselves
even though they had very little to do with the reality of their own
existence and survival.
While my parents were going through their changes, i was
going through mine. I was at the age where i questioned everything.
The world was beginning to have more and more impact on me. I
was curious about, and wanted to experience, everything. On week­
ends, whenever i could, i would take off. I went to the movies or to
the library, but my favorite activity was riding subways and buses. I
would hop on any subway or bus, ride until i got tired, then get off
at any stop and walk around. Sometimes i talked to people or
played handball with kids my age. Other times i just walked and
looked. I went into all kinds of neighborhoods-white, Black,
Puerto Rican, Chinatown too. But Harlem was my favorite place. I
was fascinated by the street life. I was always trying to figure out
what was going on. Everything was so colorful and busy. Men
standing on the corner drinking, boys playing basketball, hustlers
buzzing up and down the streets huddling and making deals. It was
the land of dream books, kitchenettes, and Johnnie Walker Red. I
loved the stores. From the market on Park Avenue to the greasy fish
joints, to the candy stores that sold penny candy and penny ciga­
rettes and god knows what else. I would walk and look and think.
The world for me then was a big question mark, and the biggest
question of all was where i fit in.
I was always late getting home and in trouble. It was like i had
some kind of disease. I could never make it home on time. I would
leave with the best intentions, but as soon as i got out in the street,
it was as if i was in a trance. I would forget all about the time until
it was too late. And half the time when i realized that it was getting
dark, i didn't even know where i was, much less how to get home.
My mother would talk to me, slap me, shake me, punish me, but
nothing worked. I was a lost cause. I was running away from home
and i didn't even know it. And one thing always led to another. I
was turning into a fantastic liar. As soon as i got near home i began
making up lies. When i look back at it now, i know my mother must
have wanted to choke me when she heard those farfetched crea­
tions, but at the time i thought they were brilliant. As the problems

in my family intensified, i ran away consciously instead of uncon­
sciously.
The first time i ran away, i went to Evelyn's house. She wasn't
home so i fell asleep on the stairway. When she came home, she
thought i was some kind of drunken bum, so she walked by me and
went to her apartment. I came back the next day and she talked to
me, played shrink and family counselor, and sent me home. It
worked for a while, but things were a mess. My mother and i
couldn't see eye to eye about anything, and i was just as stubborn
and self-willed as she was. And even when i tried to do right, it just
seemed like i couldn't do anything that made her happy. And when
my mother and stepfather were at each other's throats, it drove me
wild. I would simply get my coat and walk out. Some days i just
didn't come back.
At times, running away was fun and exciting. At other times it
was miserable, cold, and lonely. The part i dug about it, though,
was surviving. Being out there, face to face with the raunchiest side
of life was like living on a roller-coaster, everything hurling itself at
you at breakneck speed. It was one hell of an education, and, when
i think about it, i was one lucky chile. So many things could have
happened to me, and almost did.
The first time i ran away i had just the clothes on my back and
very little money. I rode the subway and slept in hallways until i just
couldn't take it anymore. Then i started talking to people. One of
the first people i met was this boy named David. I told him that my
mother was in the hospital and that i didn't have any other family in
New York and i was scared to stay home alone. He took me home
to his mother's house and we told his mother the same story. She
said it would be okay for me to spend the night. They lived in the
Farragut Projects in Brooklyn. David took me out and introduced
me to all his friends. We got along fine until nighttime. Then it was
war-an all-night wrestling match. When he wasn't attacking me,
he was begging and pleading and thinking up a thousand argu­
ments why i should give him some. I told him i was afraid of getting
pregnant. He went and got this big jar of Vaseline and told me that,
if you used Vaseline, you couldn't get pregnant. I was dumb, but
not that dumb. I told him to go to hell, and the wrestling match
continued. After a day or two at David's, i was ready to move on.
Besides, his mother was getting suspicious.
My next new friend was a girl. I couldn't take any more
Davids. Tina lived in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn with her
mother and her brother in a brownstone house. It was a rickety old

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house and half of it looked like it was condemned. There was
nothing whatsoever in that house that was orderly. There were
rooms with all kinds of j unk in them, stacked almost to the ceiling:
tables, chairs, record players, old radios. I told the same old story
to Tina's mother and she was sweet as pie. I could stay there just as
long as i wanted, she said. In fact, she said, she "just loved to have
young people around her." And she wasn't lying either. All day
long there was a procession of people in and out of that house, and
most of them were young. When Tina's mother saw that i didn't
have any clothes, she said, "We'll j ust have to take you shopping." I
remember thinking how nice she was, to be willing to spend money
on me, a stranger. The next morning we went down to Fulton
Street.
"All right," she told me, "now I want you to go with Tina into
A&S and pick out what you want; I'll be here at the soda place.
Just remember where everything is."
Off we went, Tina and I. I was happy as a jaybird; my clothes
were kind of on the funky side. When we got inside the store, i
started to pick up things and got ready to try them on.
"Be cool," said Tina. "Don't you know what size you wear?"
"Yeah," i said. "Why?"
"Let's j ust get the stuff and get out of here. If you like some­
thing, just say so. Don't go picking it up and putting it on and
carrying on."
"O.K.," i said, thinking that she was strange. I liked a plaid
kilt with a big safety pin and a blouse and sweater to match.
"This will go with it, too," Tina said, pointing to a white
blouse. "Now you just do what i tell you. Step in this."
"Step in what?" i said, looking down.
"Be cool, fool!" Tina whispered. "Just keep looking ahead and
help me pull this thing up." She had already got half the skirt up
around my thighs. Finally we got the skirt up and fastened under
my own skirt. "O.K., let's get out of here," Tina said. "Wait a
minute. Roll that skirt up, it's hanging down, and don't look
down !" I was scared out of my wits, but i started to roll.
"Not your skirt, fool," Tina whispered, "the one underneath."
Well, i was walking and rolling and trying to look cool and, if
anyone had seen me, i know i musta looked like a slapstick
comedy. But somehow we made it out of there. I expected the police
to come swooping down on us at any moment. Tina's mother was
still sitting in the same place, sipping on a soda.
"How'd it go ?" she asked Tina.
"She's O.K.," Tina said. "She don't know nothin', but she was

cool." I felt like fainting. Everybody else's mother i knew would
knock you down if they even thought you were stealing. This was
surely something new. I just kept staring at Tina's mother. She
must've seen me staring at her, too, because she told me, "That's
right, i steal and my kids steal, too. They tryin' to take my house
from me. Tryin' to take everythin' i got. I got to survive by the best
way i know how. But it ain't really stealing; it's just a discount. You
need a discount, high as these stores is. We call it the 'five-finger
discount.' " She started laughing.
When we got to the house, she said, "All right, let's see all the
pretty clothes you got." Tina took the blouses and sweater from
somewhere and i took the skirt from under my skirt. "That's all you
got?"
"Yeah," said Tina. "She don't know how to do nothin', an' we
was takin' too long."
"Y'all didn't get no underwear?" Tina's mother asked.
"No."
"Well, here," she said, giving us some money. "Go to the five
and dime and buy some. And I don't want y'all taking nothin', ya
hear? I didn't raise no nickel-and-dime-store kids, understan' ?"
"Yes." And we were gone.
"We're gon teach you how to deal," Tina said on the way from
the store. I just looked at her. My mind was spinning. Then i
started to feel glad about it. We had gotten over. We had gotten over
tough. The idea of five-finger discounts was beginning to appeal to
me. And it was easy as hell.
That night i dressed up in my new clothes and went with Tina
and her brother to hang out. He was on the quiet side, and evil­
looking, but he turned out to be nice. We were going to a party at
the Fort Greene Projects. We stopped and bought some french fries
and Thunderbird. At the party, Tina introduced me to Tyrone. It
was love at first sight. I thought he was the cutest boy i'd ever seen.
Tyrone was the warlord of the Fort Greene Chaplins, and i thought
it was just so romantic, like West Side Story. We sat in the hallway,
drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. I had smoked before, but i
had never drunk any wine. The music was playing and the lights
were down low and i was feeling goooooooddd. They were playing
those old slow sides like "Wind," "Gloria," "In the Still of the
Night," "Sunday Kind of Love." We went inside and started to
dance. I was in love and dancing on clouds, whirling around the
dance floor. I was whirling and spinning, and all of a sudden i was
outside, holding onto some bench for dear life, drunk as a skunk
and sick as a dog. When i was finally able to stand, Tyrone walked

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me to Tina's house. We held hands all the way and he made a big
deal out of kissing me good night, although i'll never understand
how he could stand my vomit-tasting mouth.
1 woke up the next morning feeling like elephants had been
doing the Watusi on my forehead and like i was walking on my
eyelids. Tina's mother wanted me to go someplace with her. 1 got
up, washed, and got dressed. "What kind of jewelry do you like?"
she asked me.
"I don't know," i said. "I guess i like rubies because they are
my birthstone."
"Oh, no ! You look like a girl that's made strictly for dia­
monds."
"Really ?" i asked, flattered.
"Oh yeah, diamonds are a girl's best friend. And I'm gonna
show you how to get some." She spent the morning and most of the
afternoon showing me how to do just that. "You have nothin' to
worry about," she kept telling me. "Even if they catch you, they
can't do nothin' to you, you're a kid. " 1 was supposed to go in a
store and talk very proper. 1 was to ask the price of everything and
tell the clerk that my father gave me $80 to spend, but that i had
some money of my own. Tina and her brother would come in and
create a diversion and, while everyone was looking at them, i was to
put the biggest earrings i could get in my mouth under my tongue.
1 was to say something to the salesman and walk calmly out of the
store. There were a few more parts to the plan, but i don't re­
member them. She had me practice talking with things under my
tongue.
When we got to the store, i thought i was going to die of fright.
1 acted like i didn't know Tina and her brother and went in as
planned. The store was pretty crowded and i went into my act. 1 was
so scared, i felt like i was having hot flashes. At first the salesman
acted like he didn't want to show me anything, but when i told him
about the $80 and my extra money, he hurried up and pulled out
trays. 1 held them up, saying, "Do you think she'll like these ? Do
you think she'll like these better?" Then, all of a sudden, Tina and
her brother came running into the store. They were laughing real
loud and chasing and grabbing each other. 1 almost forgot what i
was supposed to be doing because 1 was so busy watching them.
Then i remembered and, when i saw that no one was watching, i
picked up the biggest earrings i saw and put them into my mouth.
"I don't see anything Mommy would really like," i said. "Maybe
i'll come back later." 1 started walking to the door. 1 just knew that
that man was going to call me back.

"Miss," someone called. I felt like dropping through the floor.
I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw that it was another
salesman calling someone else. I walked out of the store, turned a
corner, and ran. I was halfway to Tina's house before they caught
up with me. The earrings were still in my mouth.
"Did you get over?" Tina asked me. I looked at her almost as if
i didn't know her. "Did you cop or not?" she asked again, impa­
tiently. Finally, i spit the earrings out into my hand.
"Shit," said Tina's mother, "them's pretty numbers there, I like
them myself." As it turned out, the earrings were for pierced ears
and my ears weren't pierced. "Sell them to me," Tina's mother said.
"I'll give you $20 for them."
"It's a deal," i told her. I was glad as hell to get $20. I didn't
care about no diamond earrings and i needed some money to get
away and try to find a job. I was convinced that i wasn't cut out to
be no thief.
That night we went out to celebrate. Tina's mother had given
me $20 plus $2 extra for good work and she had also given me a
pretty, gold-colored dress and nice black shoes. I was dressed up
clean as the board of health and we all had some money in our
pockets and were ready to "do it." We looked for Tyrone but he
wasn't home. We walked all around the projects until we found
him. He was at the house of these twins Jessie and James, or
something like that. They all went downstairs for some kinda
meeting. Everybody said they were gonna fight. They were at war
with another gang, the Bishops, and one of their members had got
messed up by the Bishops. Finally, the meeting was over and Tyrone
came and hung out with us. But it wasn't the same. He spent the
whole night talking about what he was gonna do to the Bishops.
And if he wasn't talking about that, he was talking about the fights
he'd had before, gang fights, school fights, fight fights, etc. It
seemed like his whole life was fighting.
"Why?" i kept thinking. "Why was he so into fighting?" The
question was on the tip of my tongue, but i just couldn't bring
myself to ask it. I tried to imagine the future, Mrs. Tyrone
whateverhisnamewas, and the children. Me, packing his lunch as he
went off to fight the Bishops. Somehow, the picture didn't work. I
was tired of this adventure. I was ready to go home. Whatever the
consequences !

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Chapter 5

80

II right, Chesimard, pack
your things. You're being moved."
"Moved ? Where ?"
"You'll find out when you get there."
"Then i'd like to call my lawyer."
"You can call your lawyer when you get where
you're going."
1 kept trying to find out where they were taking
me. The continuation of the jersey trial, after the
change of venue to Morristown, was still a month
away. Maybe they were just moving me ahead of time.
Maybe they were taking me back to the workhouse. 1
wasn't too worried, though. Anywhere was better
than that basement in the middlesex county jail. The
sheriff came down with a piece of paper in his hand.
"Where am i going?" i asked him.
"I have a federal order to produce you," he said,
waving the paper around. "You are being turned over
to the custody of the federal goverment."
"What for ?"
"I don't know. You'll have to ask the feds."
My abrupt transfer from one jail to another,
without either notice to my lawyers or explanation to
me, was a scenario that would be repeated over and
over again during the next few years.
After our motion for a change of venue from
Middlesex County was granted in October 1 973, i was
returned to the basement of the middlesex county jail,
where i believed i would remain until the trial resumed
in Morris County on January 4, 1 974. Evelyn imme­
diately swung into action, contacting the national Jury
Project to explore the level of racism in Morris County
and preparing a number of motions she anticipated

would have to be made before the morris county kourt. In addition,
she was working on the continuous motion to remove me from
solitary confinement in the middlesex county jail that was then
before the new jersey federal district kourt. The underlying argument of the motion-that this kind of confinement destroyed my
ability to adequately participate in preparation for my trial-had to
be supported by psychological data and the opinions of experts.
Evelyn was trying to find psychologists and sociologists willing to
provide their professional assessments in support of the motion. She
was also trying to locate a forensic pathologist, a ballistics expert, a
forensic chemist, and other specialists we needed for the trial, and
trying to raise money to pay them.
I was aware that there were two indictments outstanding
against me for alleged bank robberies. Evelyn had been told that
trials for these charges would follow the trial in jersey. One of the
indictments was for a Bronx bank robbery that occurred in Septem­
ber 1 972. I had been indicted for this crime along with Kamau,
Avon White, and others in the federal kourt, southern district of
New York, located in Foley Square in lower Manhattan.
I knew that Evelyn had made a motion before the southern
district j udge, gagliardi, to have that trial postponed until after the
termination of the jersey trial. Having learned that the motion had
been granted, i didn't connect the move to New York with the bank
robbery trial. I was wrong.
The trip was the usual high-security endless procession of cars.
And, as usual, i enjoyed the ride. Just the walk from the door of the
jail to the car did me good-it had been so long since i had seen
daylight or breathed fresh air. I looked at the trees and the grass and
the sky as if i had never seen them before. It was a gloriously
beautiful day.
When the feds told me they were taking me to New York to go
to trial, i didn't know what in the world was going on, but i was
sure Evelyn would straighten things out. There was no way in hell i
could go to trial in federal kourt. Not unless they gave us time to
prepare for it and canceled the jersey trial. There was no way that
Evelyn could deal with both trials at the same time. She was
working so hard i couldn't keep track of all that she was doing.
I knew we had arrived somewhere in Queens, but i didn't
know where. There was no courthouse in the direction we had
gone. The car came to a bridge where pigs were stationed, pointing
rifles and shotguns. On the other side of the bridge were more
police.
"Where are we ? Where is this place?"

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"You are now on Rikers Island. This will be your new home
for a while," the marshal told me.
"It'll never be my home."
I looked around while they waited for clearance to pass
through the gate. There were huge, ugly buildings in front of us, not
old or dilapidated as i had imagined when i pictured Rikers Island,
but institutional-looking nevertheless.
"Are all these buildings jails ?" i asked.
"Yep," said the marshal. "They're all jails. There are a lot of
criminals in the world."
"Everybody in jail isn't a criminal," i told him. "And they've
got a lot of criminals locking people up. They've got a gang of
criminals in the White House. "
The marshal just grunted. The car turned into a modern brick
building. There were no old-fashioned bars, just jalousied window­
bar combinations. I was brought into a large receiving room and
locked into one of the small rooms that lined the sides, empty
except for some benches and a dirty bathroom. After a long wait, i
was taken out to be printed and photographed. I was returned to
the room, then called out again to fill out forms. I immediately got
into a hassle about the forms: i had left the line for "address"
blank.
"Where do you live?"
"I don't live anywhere. I'm in jail. And i've been in jail for six
months."
"Well, where did you live before that?"
"I don't remember." And it wasn't a lie. I remembered the
place, but i couldn't even begin to tell anyone the address. While i
was underground i made it a habit never to remember addresses. I
used landmarks to remember a place, and i never had trouble
locating any place i had been to once, but even if i visited it a
hundred times, i never looked at the address.
"Well, where does your mother live?"
"Why ?"
"We need an address."
"I haven't lived with my mother in years."
"Well, give me the address anyway."
"I don't know if my mother would want you to have her
address. I'll have to ask her."
The guard insisted, but that line was left blank. The guard was
a Black woman with an Afro. And there was another one, next to
her, with a lopsided wig on. She was Black, too. In fact, most of the
guards i had seen so far were Black. I was quickly to find out that

the overwhelming majority of guards in the female jail at Rikers are
Black. But when they opened their mouths and expressed their
opinions, you wondered. But that's another story.
After i had been waiting for what seemed like hours, they
brought in a whole bunch of women. It was wonderful. They were
real, live people, talking and laughing. It had been so long since i
had even heard a conversation. I just sat there staring at them. I
know i must have looked like i was crazy, staring like i was, but i
just couldn't help it. I was overwhelmed. I could barely talk,
though. When someone asked my name i stammered and stuttered.
My voice was so low everyone constantly asked me to repeat myself.
That was one of the things that always happened to me after long
periods of solitary confinement: i would forget how to talk.
The next phase was the strip and search. There were two
groups of women: those who were returning from kourt and those
who, like me, were new admissions. We were directed to stand in
little booths and take off all our clothes. Then we were told to turn
around, squat, run our fingers through our hair, lift up our feet and
open our mouths. This was for everybody. The next step was only
for the new admissions. They put us in shower stalls without
curtains, we were told to take a shower, and then were given this
stuff which they told us to put it in our hair and on our pubic hairs
and wash with it.
"What is this for ?" i asked.
"It's for lice and crabs," the guard said. It was humiliating.
The last stage was the "search." Every woman who came into the
building had to go through this process, even if she had been
nowhere but to kourt. Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur had told me
about it after they had been bailed out in the Panther 21 trial.
When they had told me, i was horrified.
"You mean they really put their hands inside you, to search
you ?" i had asked.
"Vh-huh," they had answered. Every woman who has ever
been on the rock, or in the old house of detention, can tell you
about it. The women call it "getting the finger" or, more vulgarly,
"getting finger-fucked."
"What happens if you refuse?" i had asked Afeni.
"They lock you in the hole and they don't let you out until you
consent to be searched internally."
I thought about refusing, but i sure as hell didn't want to be in
the hole. I had had enough of solitary. The "internal search" was as
humiliating and disgusting as it sounded. You sit on the edge of this
table and the nurse holds your legs open and sticks a finger in your

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vagina and moves it around. She has a plastic glove on. Some of
them try to put one finger in your vagina and another one up your
rectum at the same time. Anyway, i had an instant, mile-long
attitude. I wanted to punch that nurse clear to oblivion. Afterward,
the guards had the nerve to tell me that a mistake had been made
and a doctor would have to make a complete examination. I was
just too disgusted. He was a filthy-looking man who looked more
like a Bowery bum than a doctor. He coughed all over me without
even covering his mouth, and his fingernails looked like he had
spent the last five years in a coal mine. The only good thing about
him was that he was quick. He rattled diseases off like he was an
auctioneer and asked me if i had had them. Then he gave me a one­
minute examination, took my blood, and that was it.
I was kept in the receiving room until long after everyone had
left. Then a pleasant enough guard, with a scar on her nose and
mouth, took me to my cell. We went down a corridor that seemed
to be a mile long to a hallway where a guard sat inside a glass cage.
Buttons and knobs and lights decorated the cage. It looked like the
inside of some kind of spaceship.
"Open up five," the guard who had brought me said.
There was a thumping sound and then a humming sound and
then nothing.
"You can go to your room now."
"Go where ?" i asked.
"Just walk down the hall and the door will be open. You'll see
it. "
The hallway was long. When i got to the cell, the light came
on. When i went in, the door slid shut behind me. It was something
out of a science-fiction movie. The long halls, the sliding door, the
control panel. "Space jail," i said to myself. Inside, there was a cot,
a dirty sink, a seatless toilet, and a roll of toilet paper. I was tired
and wanted to go to sleep.
"I'm turning the light out now," a voice said over the microphone.
The light went out, but a yellow light stayed on.
"Turn the little light of� please," i called to the guard.
Again, a voice came on over a microphone. "The light must
stay on. It is there for your own protection."
The light stayed on and i went to sleep.
Morning! The doors slid open.
"Breakfast, ladies !" came over the microphone. It was early,
but i was anxious to get dressed and look around. The first thing
that hit me was the smell. I don't care what jail i've been in, they all

stink. They have a smell unlike any smell on earth. Like blood and
sweat and feet and open sores and, if misery has a smell, like misery.
The walls of the cell were covered with obscenities and love declarations. "Apache loves Carmen;" "Linda and Lil bit;" "India and
Rosa-true love, always." From the window i could see a small
paved yard with grass growing between the cracks in the pavement
and then another long building.
A few women were in the dayroom, but most stayed in their
cells, which were barren except for the toothpaste writing that
covered the walls. In prison, toothpaste serves many functions, one
of which is glue to hang up pictures. A few of the cells were "fixed
up" with pictures from magazines hung on the walls and a knitted
or crocheted afghan on the bed. Clothes, in cardboard boxes, were
on the floor. The women looked evil and ashen. They glanced at me
with only vague interest and went about their business. They were
all Black or Hispanic.
I took a shower and spent the rest of the morning walking
back and forth. Some of the women were bloated, with swollen
hands and feet. A few had a real strange look about them. One sat
in a chair, her eyes crusted with sleep, giggling quietly to herself. A
group of women sat at a table playing spades. They asked me if i
wanted to play, and since i had never heard of the game, volun­
teered to teach me. It turned out to be like whist, only spades are
always trumps. Then it was lock-in time again, the second one for
the day. The first had come after breakfast.
There were two women on either side of me who had been
locked in their cells all day. "Don't you want to come out?" i asked,
stupidly. They broke up laughing.
"No," one said, "I like it here." When she stopped laughing,
she told me she was "locked." That meant she was locked into her
cell until she was seen by the Board.
"What's the Board ?" i asked.
"It's the Disciplinary Board. When you get an infraction, they
lock you up until you see the Board."
"Then they let you out?"
"Sometimes, but we're going to PSA."
"What's that?"
"It's the hole, the bing. This is 2 Main, where you go before
they take you to the Board; then, after that, if they think you
haven't done enough time down here, they send you to PSA." (PSA
stands for punitive segregation area: solitary.)
"You mean you don't stay in this part all the time?"
"No. We're on the sentence side. We only had to come here

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because we stole the medication. We stole almost everything on the
medication truck and drank it. Coke almost OD'd. That's why
we're down here. This part is for people who have infractions or for
crazy people."
"Crazy people?"
"Yeah !" the one named Coke answered. "They've got some
real bugs down here. How come you here?"
"I don't know. 1 got here yesterday and this is where they put
me."
"You got a homicide? "
"A homicide?"
"Yeah, a homicide. You here for murder?"
"I have a homicide case in new jersey, but i'm here for a bank
robbery trial."
"That's probably why they got you down here," they specu­
lated. "They probably gonna move you soon." They asked a million
questions.
"Who did you kill ?"
"I didn't kill anybody."
"Well, who did they say you killed?"
"A cop, a new jersey state trooper."
"Oh, shit. You gon have a hard way to go. You didn't really do
it?"
"No."
"You got a bank robbery, too. Did you rob the bank ? How
much money did you get ?"
"I didn't get any money because i didn't rob the bank."
"Yeah ? Then your boyfriend did it and put the blame on you?"
"No, i don't have a boyfriend."
"Oh, so you like girls funny ?" They laughed. "You're kinda
cute. Ya wanna go with me ?" one of them joked. "You ever do time
before?"
"No, never."
"You got any other cases?"
"Yeah, i have another bank robbery."
"Did you do that one?"
"No !"
"Well, damn, they got you all hooked up !" the one called
Delores said. "How come they tryin' to frame you up like that?"
"Because i'm a revolutionary. They say that i'm in the Black
Liberation Army."
"Oh, oh, 1 know you. You that girl 1 read about in the papers.
Yeah, what's your name ?"

"Assata, Assata Shakur, but my slave name is JoAnne
Chesimard. "
"Yeah, you the one. I never thought I'd meet you. How you
doin' ?"
"Yeah," Coke said, "I saw your picture on TV, but you look
different now."
"How?" i asked.
"When I saw your picture I thought you was much bigger. And
much blacker, too."
"Really ?" I laughed. It was a statement i heard over and over.
Everybody told me they thought i was bigger, blacker, and uglier.
When i asked people what they thought i looked like, they would
describe someone about six feet tall, two hundred pounds, and very
dark and wild-looking.
"Bad as them papers said you was, I j ust knew you had to look
bad. And here you are, just a little ole thing."
I asked them what they were in prison for. In the course of
those next few days i was to learn a whole new vocabulary. Jostling
was pickpocketing; boosting was shoplifting; juggling paper was
writing bad checks and dragging or playing drag was conning.
Later that evening a woman who had j ust come from kourt
told me that Phyllis wanted me to come to the gym at 8 :30. I was
overjoyed. I had heard that Simba was on the rock, but i thought
they might move her to make sure we had no chance to be together.
The gym was large. Women were playing handball and basketball,
dancing, sitting on the bleachers, and talking. Finally, behind a
clump of women, i saw Simba. We embraced and both just sat
there, trying to get out all the words that were in our hearts. So
much had happened since we had seen each other. We had been
close when we were both members of the Black Panther Party. For a
while we had lived together. She was always a real earthy sister with
a heart of gold. She told me about her case, about the other
comrades she was in touch with, and, then, that she was pregnant.
Homey was her nickname for her lover, the baby's father, Kakuyan
Olugbala. He was a beautiful revolutionary brother, and he was
murdered by the New York police. Kakuyan and i had gotten to
know each other pretty well while we were both at the Harlem
branch of the Black Panther Party. He was one of the brothers who,
in the days of the Panther Party's lumpen ideology, would be called
lumpen. He was raised in Harlem around 1 1 6th Street and 8th
Avenue, a relaxed, easy kind of person, but a fighter to the heart.
He loved weapons and was a genius with them.
I was glad about her pregnancy and sad at the same time: she

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was facing twenty-five years. Although i tried to be cheerful, i guess
she could see the concerned expression on my face.
"Don't worry," she told me. "These people can lock us up, but
they can't stop life, just like they can't stop freedom. This baby was
meant to be born, to carry on. They murdered Homey, and so this
baby, like all our children, is going to be our hope for the future." I
would think about her words many times later.
It's early in the morning. It feels like a quarter to zero and i want to
sleep. I hear my name vaguely over the microphone. Something
about kourt. They are calling me for kourt. Hurriedly i roll out of
bed, shower, dress, comb my hair, and i'm ready to go. They bring
breakfast on the food truck. I can't even stand the look of food,
much less eat anything.
"All right, court ladies, time to go to the receiving room," the
microphone wails. It's too early in the morning for that thing. I
want to tear it out of the ceiling. I stumble down to the receiving
room, still not fully awake. It's 7:20 A.M. I sit in the receiving room
for three hours. Finally, the marshals come. Now they want me to
hurry. One of them chains me up. First he shackles my feet; then he
puts a chain around my waist, fastens the handcuffs to the chain,
and handcuffs on my hands. I can barely walk. Or shuffle.
Kourt, dull, gray, dull green. They are putting me into the bull
pen. I don't know why they call it a bull pen, though i have often
speculated.
"Attorney visit," one of the marshals calls as he opens the bars
to let me out.
We go to the end of the hall. Evelyn is puffing and huffing. She
always puffs and huffs when she's angry. In a few minutes, i know
that she will begin pacing and tapping her feet.
"They're trying to force us to go to trial right away," she tells
me. "You know I've been busy, drawing up motions for federal
court."
"What do you mean, federal kourt? Aren't we in federal
kourt?"
"Yes, but if the judge denies our motion for postponement, I
want to be ready to go straight into the circuit court."
"What's the circuit kourt?" It was all Greek to me.
"That's where we appeal if the judge issues an unfavorable
opinion."
We go on talking. Evelyn is trying to explain to me and i am
trying to explain to her that we can't possibly go to trial. "There's
no way in the world you can be ready to go to trial right now." I am
ranting.

"I know, 1 know," Evelyn replies.
1 rant and rave indignantly while Evelyn tries to explain the
law to me. They call us to court. The judge is gagliardi. He looks
just like what he is: a racist dog craka. Kamau comes into the
courtroom. 1 am delighted to see him. He has aged. He's grinning,
but under the grin his face is hungry. 1 wonder what he's thinking.
Bob Bloom, Kamau's lawyer, is up on his feet talking. He is asking
for a postponement. Everything he says is logical and makes sense.
Evelyn gets up and starts to rap. She is talking pure unmitigated
truth and logic. The judge looks at the ceiling. 1 predict the outcome of the hearing and keep turning around to look at the
audience. Friendly, familiar faces smiling at me. 1 don't want them
to ever stop. The judge denies our motion for a postponement. The
judge denies all our motions. 1 want to scream, "Dirty dog, slimy
pig, you're not a judge. You're just another prosecutor."
1 look at the prosecutor. He's smug. His face is unreal-like a
poster. He looks like a 1 940 war poster. John Q. Public. 1 keep
staring at him. Nobody could look that corny. He's like a ghost
from the past. I'm convinced he doesn't know it's 1973 . The
lawyers ask for a joint meeting and the judge says yes, but make it
short. The lawyers outline the strategy of the appeals.
"What are our chances on this appeal ?" i ask.
"There's a chance," Evelyn says. "Slim, maybe, but a chance. If
the courts are interested in justice, well, of course, they'll support
our position." We all know how big an "if" it is.
The next time we went to kourt five days later it had snowed. The
trees were bare and covered with ice and, though i don't like winter,
it was a beautiful sight. As soon as i arrived in the kourthouse,
Evelyn was there to tell me that the circuit court had denied all of
our appeals, and gagliardi was talking about going to trial that day.
"I just want you to understand that there is no way that 1 can
adequately defend you on this short notice. 1 haven't had time to
prepare pretrial motions, 1 have received no discovery material, and
1 haven't even had time to think about an appropriate defense
because 1 haven't been able to find out the basic facts of the case. 1
just want you to know that."
"I know," i told her, "and i know you're doing the best that
you can."
"At any rate," Evelyn said, "if worse comes to worst, you'll
have a solid issue for appeal."
It was a depressing picture. We clearly were being railroaded.
We went before the judge. Again, he was arrogant and belligerent,
determined to force us to go to trial right away. Again, she asked

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the judge for a postponement, but her arguments fell on deaf ears.
He ruled that we could have a joint conference later, but the trial
would begin immediately.
As we left the courtroom, Akilah was standing in the hallway
with Ksissay, Kamau's two-year-old daughter. As he walked near
her, she held out her arms to him. Kamau took about two steps
toward her and the marshals jumped him and began beating him. I
jumped on the marshals and tried to pull them off. In an instant
there was one hell of a fight in the hallway. Finally, the marshals
drew their guns and forced us to lie down on the floor with our
arms spread apart. We lay there while they stomped our backs and
kicked us as they handcuffed our hands behind our backs. Akilah
ran to tell everybody what was going on as Ksissay screamed
hysterically. I will never forget the haunting scream of that child as
she watched her father being brutally beaten.
After the fight, the marshals were vicious and vindictive. They
did everything they could to provoke and harass us. Newspapers
reported that we had attacked the marshals.
Kamau and i decided that we weren't just going to let ourselves
be railroaded quietly. This so-called trial was such a blatant miscar­
riage of justice that we weren't even going to participate in it. And
we didn't want Evelyn and Bob Bloom to participate in it either.
"Just sit there and don't say anything," we told them. "We'll
do the talking." And do the talking we did.
At the next kourt session, gagliardi asked the lawyers if they
were prepared to begin picking the jury. Both of them made state­
ments to the effect that since it was impossible for them to represent
us adequately, we had requested that they remain "mute."
"All right, then, we'll proceed with you or without you," the
judge roared. "Bring in the panel."
As soon as the jury panel entered the kourtroom, Kamau and i
began to tell them what was going on. We told the jury that he had
been appointed by Nixon and that he was persecuting us because of
our political beliefs, that he was the same judge who had just given
Mitchell and Stans, the Watergate defendants, who did not have
one fraction of the valid reasons for an adjournment that we had,
an extended postponement. After a while, the judge ordered us
removed from the courtroom. Jury selection continued with only
the judge and the prosecutor participating. Every so often the judge
would send the marshals back to ask us if we were going to
"behave."
"Of course," we would tell the marshals.
Once returned to the courtroom, we "behaved." Again we told

the jury what was happening and that the judge was trying to
railroad us. As soon as we began to talk, the judge ordered us from
the kourt. "Whenever we were about to be thrown out, the marshals
vied for positions closest to us and for the opportunity to grab us,
twist our hands behind our backs, and get their licks in. To avoid
being manhandled, as soon as the judge said, "Remove the defend­
ant from the courtroom," i would say, "The defendant will remove
herself. " Most of the time it worked, but one day the marshals were
so gung ho they jumped on me and started brutalizing me in open
kourt. Evelyn jumped up like she was ready to fight and stood
between me and them, holding them away with an outstretched
arm.
She complained to the judge. My arm and hand had not yet
fully recovered and i was still partially paralyzed. Evelyn's remarks
made the marshals more vicious. They became so brutal that all of
the spectators began to cry out. As the marshals carried me out of
the kourtroom, the spectators chanted, "Railroad, railroad." The
judge ordered them removed. As i was being taken downstairs, i
could hear the commotion. People were chanting and yelling and
screaming. The marshals, i later found out, had beaten some of
them. I sat in the bull pen, lost in my thoughts, when they brought
a white woman and man down the hallway and put the woman in
the cell with me. I looked at her without much interest.
"Assata," she said, "I'm go glad to have finally met you. But I
never thought it would be this way."
I looked at her blankly.
"My name is Natalie Rosenstein. I was upstairs. I was one of
the spectators in the courtroom when they started pushing and
shoving and beating people."
"What?" i said. "You're kidding!"
"No. We didn't move fast enough, so they arrested us," she
said, referring to herself and the white man.
""What did they charge you with ?"
"Obstructing justice. "
After that, Kamau and i were banned from the kourtroom. We
were put into a freezing room next to the kourtroom where a
loudspeaker had been installed so we could listen to the trial. In the
beginning, they slammed the door shut. At first, we wanted the
door open because it was so cold and the warmth from the rest of
the building helped. Then we began to enjoy the privacy. It was
good to be able to talk to each other without someone looking
down our throats. Because we knew that sooner or later they would
open the door and stare at us, we would open it.

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"Let some heat in. It's freezing in here."
"The door stays closed." After a while, they locked it.
One of the first things that Kamau and i had discussed was
Islam. He had been a Muslim for some time and was deep into it.
He was seriously trying to convince me to convert and become a
practicing, active Muslim. I had always said that if i had any
religion, it was Islam, but i had never practiced it. Because of Elijah
Muhammad and Malcolm X, the Muslim influence over our strug­
gle has been very strong, but it had always been difficult for me to
accept the idea of an all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing god.
And, i reasoned, how could i be expected to love and worship a god
whose "master plan" included the enslavement, torture, and
murder of Black people ?
Kamau argued that Islam was a just religion, opposed to
oppression. "Oppression is worse than slaughter," he quoted from
the Holy Koran. "A true Muslim is a true revolutionary. There is no
contradiction between being a Muslim and being a revolutionary."
I didn't know much about it, but i agreed to seriously check it out.
Muslim services were held regularly on Rikers Island, and Simba
and i began to attend.
Talking to Kamau was so good for me. Solitary had affected
me really badly. I had closed up inside myself and had forgotten
how to relate in an open way with people. We spent whole days
laughing and talking and listening to the kourtroom madness in
between. Each day we grew closer until, one day, it was clear to both
of us that our relationship was changing. It was growing physical.
We began to touch and to hold each other and each of us was like
an oasis to the other. For a few days the question of sex was there.
Then, one day, we talked about it. Surely, it was possible. But, i
thought, the consequences ! Pregnancy was certainly a possibility. I
was facing life in prison. Kamau would also be in prison for a long
time. The child would have no mother and no father.
Kamau said, "If you become pregnant and you have a child,
the child will be taken care of. Our people will not let the child
grow up like a weed." I thought about it. That was true, but the
child would suffer. "All our children suffer," Kamau said. "We
can't guarantee our children a future in a world like this. Struggling
is the only guarantee our children will ever have for a future. You
may never have another chance to have a child."
"I have to think," i told him. My mind was screaming. Who
would take care of my baby ? I thought about what Simba had said
about our children being our hope for the future. I had never
wanted a child. Since i was a teenager i had always said that the

world was too horrible to bring another human being into. And a
Black child. We see our children frustrated at best. Noses pressed
against windows, looking in. And, at worst, we see them die from
drugs or oppression, shot down by police, or wasted away in jail.
My head was swimming. What had my mother and grandmother
and great-grandmother thought when they brought their babies
into this world? What had my ancestors thought when they
brought their babies into this world, only to see them flogged and
raped, bought and sold. 1 thought and thought. How many Black
children are separated from their parents? How many grow up with
their grandmothers and grandfathers? Didn't i stay with my grand­
parents until my mother had finished school and was on her feet? 1
remembered all the discussions i had had. "I'm a revolutionary," i
had said. "I don't have time to sit at home and make no babies."
"Do you think that you're a machine?" a brother had asked
me. "Do you think you were put on this earth to fight and nothing
else?"
1 thought about what Zayd had always told me. "While you're
alive, girl, you betta live."
"I am about life," i said to myself. "I'm gonna live as hard as i
can and as full as i can until i die. And i'm not letting these
parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill
my children in my mind, before they are even born. I'm going to live
and i'm going to love Kamau, and, if a child comes from that
union, i'm going to rejoice. Because our children are our futures
and i believe in the future and in the strength and rightness of our
struggle." 1 was ready for whatever happened. 1 relaxed and let
nature take its course.
When something important was happening in the kourtroom,
we listened. But, usually, whatever was happening droned on in
boring chatter that amounted to nothing. Lawyers have the habit of
turning ten words into a hundred and saying nothing more in the
process. The trial was like something out of some playwright's
imagination. We called it the "vaudeville show." Evelyn and Bob,
after registering their daily protests, sat mute. The judge raved and
ranted. The pigs barked like vicious dogs. The "witnesses" lied like
crazy. The jurors (who had been picked solely by the prosecution)
looked and listened expressionlessly. There were a couple of Black
jurors, and although we held little hope we would be acquitted, we
placed the microscopic hope we did have in the Black jurors. Even
though we had presented no defense, had not participated in the
trial, we thought that there was a slim chance they might not go
along with the program. Black people are generally not as brain-

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washed as white people when it comes to the so-called system of
justice.
The whole kourt process began to take its toll on me. Half the
time i wasn't eating because they usually served pork for lunch and,
sometimes, they had pork for dinner. Breakfast was out of the
question. 1 could never figure out what they gave us. 1 called it
"monster stew." 1 was always freezing and i didn't have a coat. My
mother had brought me one, but i had given it to Simba. She was
pregnant and needed it more than i did. One night, when i returned
from kourt, i began to feel awful, like a knife was stabbing me in
my side. 1 could hardly breathe. 1 went to the prison doctor and the
diagnosis was plueurisy. When the judge learned i was sick and
unable to come to kourt, he had a fit. He acted like i had gotten
sick just to delay the trial. The next time i saw the prison doctor, he
was nervous and shook up.
"They keep calling me about you," he said. "They want you
back in court right away. They want to know how fast 1 can have
you back in the courtroom."
"Who keeps calling you?" i asked.
"Everybody. People. I've got to get you back in court as soon as
possible. "
And that's exactly what he did.
Every day they brought us into the kourtroom. And, every
day, as soon as the j ury came in, we began to tell them what was
happening, that we were being forced to trial without being given
time to prepare a defense. And every day, the judge ordered us
removed from the kourtroom and cited us for contempt. It was
comical.
"What are you going to do ?" i would ask him, after i had been
cited for contempt for the hundredth time. "Put me in jail? Lock me
up ?"
One day, when the j udge had been particularly crazy and the
marshals had been particularly brutal, Evelyn just couldn't take it
anymore.
"I'm not going to sit here and watch this spectacle," she said.
"If you won't permit me to defend my client, there is no purpose in
my being here." And with that, she got up and started to leave.
"Get back in here," the judge yelled. "I order you to get back
here and sit down."
Evelyn kept walking.
"If you don't come back and sit down, I'm citing you for
contempt."
Evelyn walked out of the kourtroom. The judge cited her for

contempt. (In 1 975, after all appeals, including the supreme kourt
of the united states, were denied, she served the ten-day sentence in
maximum security at the westchester county jail for women.)
The trial soon ended and we waited patiently for the verdict.
Evelyn and Bob gave us lectures. "Expect nothing but the worst.
There's a chance, but it's slim." Kamau and i waited for the convic­
tion. One day of jury deliberation passed. Two days passed. The
jury seemed to be taking forever. We wondered what was taking
them so long. It was an open-and-shut case. We had cross-exam­
ined no witnesses, presented no defense. Kamau and i spent the
time tenderly, savoring our last few moments together.
The next morning Evelyn and Bob came in, grinning. "It's a
hung jury," they giggled. "gagliardi is fit to be tied. They're going to
call us into court in a few minutes. We just thought we'd come in
and give you the good news." Ten minutes later we were in the
kourtroom. The judge was grimly thanking and dismissing the jury.
The marshals looked like they wanted to fight. The prosecutor
looked like he wanted to cry. We found out later that a lone Black
juror had refused to convict us. He had heard us. The look on
gagliardi's face gave me great pleasure. I looked at him and gave
him my most meaningful smile. His face turned red and he looked
away.
Afterward, we met with the lawyers. We were still giddy and in
a state of shock. "What does this mean? Are they going to try us
again?"
"They're going to try you again, and right away," Evelyn told
us. "The new trial will begin on Monday."
Kamau and i looked at each other. We were sick of this case
but were ecstatic that we were going to have more time together.
"Are we going to have the same judge?"
"No," Bob said. "They've got to assign a new judge."
Evelyn was caught up in our gleeful mood, but, as usual, she
was business first. "We've got to come up with a trial strategy."
Sitting in that courtroom day after day and watching that fiasco
enabled us to do one thing. We were able to see and analyze their
case. "I feel that now we are ready to go to trial."
"They don't have a case," Bob said. "I don't even know how
they got an indictment."
"We know," Kamau and i said.
"Their case is utterly absurd," Evelyn said.
"We know," Kamau and i droned again.
"Their witnesses are as phony as three-dollar bills," Evelyn
said.

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"We know."
"They don't have one piece of physical evidence," Evelyn
ranted. "No photographs, no fingerprints, no witnesses, no
nothing."
"We know," Kamau and i chanted in unison.
"They couldn't possibly have any evidence," i said. "We
weren't there."
"Well, 1 know that," Evelyn said indignantly. "That's not the
point."
Bob and Kamau looked perplexed. Evelyn and i just looked at
each other and smiled knowingly. We had found out in new jersey
how "evidence" could appear out of nowhere and other evidence
disappear.
Evelyn and i have a very close relationship. We love each other
intensely and we get along wonderfully. Usually ! But when we
argue or disagree, it's awful. We are both outraged that the other
one doesn't agree or see our point and we feel betrayed and furious.
And neither of us has the mildest temper in the world. Add to that
the tremendous pressure we were both under, and you have the
recipe for fireworks.
During one of our strategy meetings, Evelyn and i locked
horns. Try as we might, we couldn't reach any kind of agreement.
After a while, we weren't even communicating. It became a matter
of who had the last word and the final decision.
"I'm the lawyer," she yelled. "I know what I'm doing! If you
aren't going to listen to me, then what's the point of having me
defend you ?"
"I'm the client," i yelled back. "I'm the one who's gonna do
the twenty-five years in prison if you're wrong."
"What you're saying is that you don't trust me or my judg­
ment." Evelyn said. Our argument went from bad to worse. After a
while we were saying all kinds of things we didn't mean to each
other.
"I don't need this shit," Evelyn stormed. "What the hell do 1
need to defend you for? You haven't got an ounce of sense."
"You don't have to defend me if your don't want to," i re­
sponded. "Don't do me any favors."
"You need all the favors you can get," Evelyn countered.
"Well, i don't need them from you. 1 can defend my damn self
as well as you can."
"I'd like to see you try it. 1 don't need this mess."
"I will. I don't need you either."

"Well, go ahead and defend your stupid self then." Evelyn
screamed.
"I will."
After the argument i was tired and blank. All the tension had
been drained out of my body. I was still mad, but i was sorry, too.
Evelyn was probably right, and i was probably crazy. It's so hard
working with someone who is so close to you. It's like having your
mother or your wife or husband as your lawyer. It's real hard to be
objective. Personal stuff sometimes gets in the way. I didn't know
whether i was being a sane adult or a rebellious child.
The next time we came to kourt, i could see right away that
Evelyn was still angry with me. I fully intended to try and make up,
but her cold manner made me draw back and get mad all over
agam.
"Is your decision still the same?" she asked coldly.
"Yes," i responded icily.
"Judge," she told the new judge, "I wish to be relieved from
the case. Ms. Shakur wishes to retain another lawyer."
"Is this true?" the judge asked me.
"Yes. I want to defend myself." A little while later she was off
the case.
As i sat in the bull pen feeling stupid and stubborn, the guard
brought in a public defender. Gagliardi had assigned him because
he didn't like the way Evelyn was behaving. I told him i didn't want
him to represent me, that i was representing myself, the judge had
assigned him to my case.
"What did you do before you were a public defender?"
He told me that "once upon a time" he had been a prosecutor.
That was the end of the conversation. I would rather have had an
alligator for a lawyer. I don't even remember his name, but he sat
through both trials as my supposed lawyer, even though i refused to
even speak to him.
Since i was now defending myself, i was entitled to a lawyer as
an adviser. Everyone suggested lawyers, but most of them were
white leftists. I wanted, if at all possible, a Black woman. Not just
any Black woman lawyer, but someone who was in tune with the
politics of the Black Liberation struggle.
One of the names given me was Flo (Florence) Kennedy. She
was a Black lawyer who was very active in the women's movement,
well known on the speaking circuit from coast to coast and more
renowned as a feminist and political activist than as a lawyer. She fit
the bill perfectly. She was just what i wanted.

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Some argued against her.
"But, Assata," they said, "she's not a trial lawyer. Flo is not a
criminal lawyer. You need both, someone who can give you sound
advice." 1 was unmoved by their arguments. "She's wild; she's
flamboyant and eccentric; she might scare the jury."
"She can't be any wilder than this case is," i countered.
"Besides, i don't need a crimnal lawyer because this isn't a criminal
case. 1 need a political lawyer. "
1 was in a wild mood and i was determined to handle the case
the way i saw fit. 1 wasn't expecting any such thing as justice! This
case was like something out of The Twilight Zone and i was
convinced that it couldn't be treated like a normal, run-of-the-mill
criminal trial. 1 was determined to use this case to expose the deceit
and crookedness of the government. A meeting between Flo and me
was arranged. Flo warned me over and over about her lack of trial
experience.
"You know, darling, that 1 haven't been inside a courtroom to
try a case in years."
"I don't care," i said. "You've been out in the world; you know
what reality is and that's enough."
Flo agreed to be my legal adviser. And i was ready to go to
trial.

Chapter 6

y mother and stepfather
broke up and my mother, my sister, and i moved to a
new apartment in a housing complex in South Ja­
maica near New York Boulevard and Foch. One side
was the projects and the other side was the co-op
where we lived, but they looked about the same to me.
Compared to Jamaica, Parsons Gardens, where we
had lived, was a little black dot. South Jamaica, Ja­
maica, Hollis, Bricktown, St. Albans, Springfield Gar­
dens, South Ozone, etc., were all joined together to
make up a Black city. You could live your whole life in
Jamaica and the only time you'd see a white face was
when you shopped on Jamaica Avenue or when the
insurance man came around. At one time, Jamaica
was all white. Black people had moved out to the
Island to escape the ghettos of Harlem and Brooklyn.
They bought old houses at exorbitant prices, only to
find that, within a few years, their "nice" neigh­
borhoods had turned into the crime-ridden, drug­
ridden, poverty-stricken places they had run from.
I loved Jamaica, and i was just starting to get into
the beat of it and to know my way around when my
mother and i had one of our terrible arguments. I
don't even remember what the argument was about,
but i was hardheaded, stubborn, and under the im­
pression that a grave injustice had been done to me.
The next day i got up, packed my clothes, and headed
straight for the Village. Greenwich Village was where
artists and musicians and all kinds of weird people
were supposed to live. I was fascinated by the idea of
beatniks and bohemians, even though i had never met
any. I figured that if i belonged anyplace, it must be
the Village.

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1 walked around with my suitcase until i was exhausted. 1

remember thinking that people here didn't look that different from
anybody else. 1 found a place to check my suitcase and spent the
rest of the day going around door to door asking people if they had
any jobs available. Most didn't even look up at me, they just gave a
flat no. At the end of the day, i was tired, disgusted, and hungry. 1
had nowhere to live and not the slightest idea what i was going to
do next. 1 went back for my suitcase, but the place was closed. After
that, i just walked aimlessly until i reached a little park. 1 sat down
on a bench, tired as hell and unable to take another step. After a
while, a little white guy with bumps on his face sat down next to
me and started talking. 1 didn't understand half the things he said,
but he seemed nice enough. When he asked me if i wanted to go to
a restaurant across the street with him, i gladly accepted. 1 was
starving. It was an Italian restaurant and the scent in the air was
heavenly. 1 ordered enough to feed a mule. The guy talked about all
these people i didn't know and about his job. He kept saying
people on his job were conspiring to get him fired.
"I worked there for eight years and they didn't even give me
any notice." He told me over and over that the company he had
worked for had stolen two of his inventions and patented them and
that when he tried to get paid for them and to get credit for his
ideas, the company tried to get rid of him.
"What did they do?" i asked.
"They did everything. They stole my files and my papers and
then spread rumors about me." He said he was some kind of
engineer. "I should never have trusted them," he kept saying. "You
can't trust anybody."
When the food came i ate like i had spent a lifetime starving.
"Doesn't this food taste funny to you?" the guy asked. 1 tasted
some more and it was good.
"There's nothing wrong with mine," i told him.
"There's something wrong with this food," he said loudly.
"What did they do to my food?"
The waiter came and tried to calm the guy down. "I don't
understand," the waiter said, "but if you'd like, I'll bring you
another plate." Although the guy said it was better, he still thought
it tasted a little funny. To change the subject, i told him a sad story
about my mother being in the hospital and that i had nowhere to
stay.
"Oh, you can stay at my place," he said. Then, seeing how i
was looking at him, he added, "I have an extra bed."
"No funny business ?"

"No funny business," he promised. He paid the check and we
left.
His apartment was a tiny one-bedroom unit with a dirty
kitchen and a green moldy-looking rug. The living room was neat
and sterile. There was a plain brown couch that turned into a bed. 1
asked him for something to sleep in and plopped down into the
bed. He kept talking, but i closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.
After a while he went into his bedroom and shut off the light. 1
woke up during the night to go to the bathroom, stumbling around
disoriented until i finally found it. When i came out of the
bathroom, i went into the kitchen for some water. While i was there
the guy came in. His face was all puffed up and red.
"What are you looking for?"
"Some water."
"Oh, no, you're not," he screeched. "You've been creeping
around this house looking for something."
"What?" i asked. "You're crazy."
"Oh, no, my dear, that's what they want me to think. I'm not
crazy in the least. What were you looking for? Who sent you ? You
didn't find anything, did you ? Well, you can tell them, 1 haven't
invented anything else for them to steal."
"I don't know what you're talking about. Nobody sent me no
place and i wasn't looking for anything. "
"Oh, no ! You were just going for a little moonlight stroll. Do
you think I'm some kind of fool? 1 took you in off the street, out of
kindness, and here you try and deceive me. They really fooled me
this time. 1 never thought they'd send a nigger. A nigger spy."
"Your momma is a nigger," i told him, "and you're a crazy son
of a bitch." 1 threw on my clothes as i cursed him out.
"Spy. Spy," he kept saying.
"Your mother is a spy, and you can drop dead as far as i'm
concerned. "
1 slammed the door and walked out into the early morning.
The sun was beginning to come up. 1 walked until i found a
drugstore open and ordered tea and an English muffin. 1 bought a
toothbrush, toothpaste, and some makeup so that i would look
older. 1 was going to get a job if it killed me. 1 got my suitcase,
found a bathroom to wash up in, changed clothes, and checked the
suitcase again. 1 bought a couple of newspapers. This time i was
going to be systematic about it.
1 saw an ad for a waitress and counter girl. That was something
i knew i could do. The place was in downtown Brooklyn. 1 hopped
on the first train in that direction and got there about 8 : 30 in the

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morning. The cafeteria was in a factory building and was solely for
the factory workers. The manager had black and white hair and
was big, fat, and sloppy. He wasn't so anxious to hire me at first, so
i told him a sob story about coming from down South to help my
mother who was in the hospital and that i needed a job as soon as
possible. Finally, after looking me up and down, he hired me and
said i could start right then and there. 1 was grinning from ear to
ear.
1 was supposed to spend the morning making salads and
sandwiches and other things for lunchtime. But around ten o'clock,
all these men started coming for coffee break. The manager had me
running around like crazy, toasting bread, buttering buns, and
getting the men their orders.
"Move faster, move faster," he kept telling me. Every time he
told me to move faster i tried until it seemed that it wasn't humanly
possible for anyone to have moved faster. Then i noticed he was
always brushing against me. His hands were always "accidentally"
touching my behind. I'd move his hand away but that only seemed
to make him bolder. Every time i bent over to get something out of
the freezer or off the food shelves, he would try to slide his hands
up my dress. After a while, i began slapping his hands away. This,
too, seemed to make him bolder. Finally i told him, in a nice, quiet
voice, "Would you please keep your hands off me ? Would you keep
them to yourself?"
"Whattaya talkin' about?" he said, acting surprised. "I ain't
done nothin' to ya."
As the day wore on, he accelerated his shouting at me. "Can't
you move any faster ?" he would yell. "Get that lead outa your ass."
He stopped putting his hands on me for a while, but in about an
hour he was right back to his old tricks. He acted like it was some
kind of joke or something. I didn't think it was funny worth a
damn. Lunchtime was super-busy and i was moving super-fast.
After lunch, we started getting ready for afternoon coffee break and
after that we started getting ready for dinner. Dinner was from 4:30
to 6:30, and 7:00 was quitting time. When dinnertime came, i was
tired and miserable. I needed the job desperately, but the manager
was driving me wild putting his hands all over me. When i told him
to stop, he would grin, throw his hands in the air, and say, "What
am 1 doing? What am I doing?" Then he started a new trick. He'd
pull the elastic of my panties through the uniform and let it pop
like a rubber band.
"Stop it !" i yelled. "Just stop it!"
"Stop what? What am 1 doin'?"

By the time dinner was over i knew i couldn't take it anymore.
Bad as i needed the job, i couldn't take that big fat pig's hands all
over me. Just before i was ready to go home, i told him.
"Look, if you can't keep your hands to yourself, i'll quit. 1
can't take it anymore."
"Whattaya mean, you'll quit? You're fired. You got lead in your
ass and you don't know how to treat your boss. Now get the hell
outta here."
"Just give me my money and i will. "
"I ain't gonna give you shit," he said, " 'cause you ain't did
shit."
"Look, mister, you gonna pay me my money. 1 worked hard
and i want my money."
"Come back at the end of the week."
"No, i want my money now. 1 need it now."
"You ain't gettin' nothin' now, 1 told ya. Come back at the end
of the week."
"No, you're giving me my money now; i want my money !"
"Well, you ain't gettin' it."
"I'll call the cops on you," i bluffed.
"I'll call the cops on you," he said, "if you don't get your ass
outta here."
"You better give me my money," i repeated, looking wild and
about ready to jump out a real bag.
Some people from the factory came in and stood at the back of
the cafeteria looking.
"Keep your voice down," he said, acting like he was going to
be cooperative and pay me. "I'll tell you what. You come in the
back with me now and I'll pay you for an extra day. I'll even let you
keep your job, and, if you're good, I'll even give you a little extra
change."
"I'm not going any damn where with you. Just give me my
money !"
"Now, why do you want to be like that?" he asked, putting his
hands on my shoulder. 1 was hot and fit to be tied.
"Get your hands off me," i yelled. "You don't want nobody to
know what kind of a dog you are. Well, i'm gonna tell everybody. If
you don't give me my money, i'm gonna make you wish you had.
I'm gonna tell everybody what you are." 1 started to walk to where
people were working in the factory part.
"All right, all right," he said. "Here's your goddamn money.
Just get the hell outta here."
The people who had been standing in the back moved up

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closer to see what was going on. The man went to the register and
counted out my money. 1 was dead tired and felt like a fool, but at
the same time i felt kinda good inside. 1 was still in the same boat,
but i was thirteen dollars richer and i had enough self-respect not to
let any old lecherous white man feel up and down my body.
1 had enough money altogether to rent a cheap hotel room. 1
got my suitcase and checked into a hotel. 1 think it was the Hotel
Albert. After i had hung up my clothes and taken a shower, i
decided to get something to eat. Downstairs in the lobby, there was
this big, tall Black woman, dressed to kill. She had black hair with
silver streaks running through it, long false eyelashes and a lot of
makeup.
"Well, look at the baby !" she said, looking straight at me. "Pa­
lease tell me how you wound up in this joint? Are you straight from
Alabama, dar-ling? Where are you going, honey?"
1 j ust looked at her.
"Do you speak, dar-ling? Can you talk? Where are you going,
honey?"
"I'm going out to eat," i said, a little wary.
"Where are you going to eat, love?"
"I don't know."
"Well, come with me, honey. We can eat together. I'm having a
starvation attack."
1 j ust stood there looking at her.
"Well, come on, love. You don't want me to die of malnutri­
tion, now, do you ? Do you like Chinese food?"
"Yes," i told her, wondering why she was taking all of this
interest in me and wondering how she knew i was new at the hotel.
We walked around until we came to a Chinese restaurant. The
whole time she talked nonstop. Suddenly i remembered how little
money i had. 1 had intended to eat a hot dog or something.
"Look," i told her, "i don't have enough money to go in there.
This place looks expensive and i'm kinda on the broke side. Maybe
another time i'll come eat with you."
"Listen, love," she said, "I didn't drag you all this way to eat
alone. 1 hate to eat alone so you're just stuck with my company. It
looks like I'm gonna have to treat your broke ass to dinner."
1 was extremely grateful. Miss Shirley (that's what she called
herself) was one helluva talker. She sounded sophisticated and
country at the same time. She was from Georgia, but she had been
in New York for a long time. She had lived in the Village for a long
time, too, although she said she was a gypsy. 1 ordered something
like chop suey, the cheapest thing on the menu.

"What is you tryin' to do, honey?" she said. "Make me sick ?
Look, you sit there with your ears open and let me do the order­
ing." She ordered all this stuff and, when it came, we feasted. There
was so much we could barely finish it.
"That's better, honey. Now Mother can join the living."
The waiter came and asked if we wanted anything else.
"If I can't have you," Miss Shirley said with a wink, "I'd like
the check."
The waiter, a tall, thin Chinese man, blushed and hurried
away. This is one bold chick, i remember thinking.
"How long is your place rented for?" Miss Shirley asked.
"Until tomorrow."
"What are you going to do after that?"
"I'll find another job," i told her. Then i told her about my job
at the cafeteria. She laughed her head off.
"Well, honey," she asked me, "what in the hell are you running
from or what in the hell are you running to?"
I told her the sad tale about my mother in the hospital.
"Do you actually expect me to believe that mess ?"
I swore up and down that it was true.
"I ain't no fool, honey, and I been out in these streets long
enough to know that you running from something, and if you don't
want to tell me, that's your business. But I like you and I'll try to
help you if I can." I was grateful and i didn't know what to say so i
didn't say anything.
"Look, I've got this friend that works on Bleecker Street. He
wants to take some time off to hang out with his friend, but he
doesn't want to lose his job. You could work in his place until he
comes back."
"Fine," i said. I was down for anything-well, almost. We went
to the care and a skinny white dude came up to us.
"Sit down and rest yourselves. I'll be back in a minute."
We sat down at a little round table.
"You want some espresso ?" the guy asked.
"Sure," Miss Shirley said. He brought two little cups of black
stuff. I took one sip and thought i was gonna choke. Miss Shirley
cracked up. "Well, I can see that you're not initiated. I'm gonna
have to do something about your education."
I arranged to take the guy's job for four days and he showed
me what i had to do. "If you forget anything, or have any ques­
tions, ask the sailor," he said, pointing to a man with tattoos up
and down his arms. I was to begin work the next afternoon at four.
I still didn't know how i was going to pay my rent at the hotel for

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the next few days because i wouldn't be paid for my work at the
cafe until the guy came back from his vacation. I told Miss Shirley
what i was thinking.
"I'll talk to Freddie," she said, "and see if he'll let my good
friend have a little credit. If not, you can come up to my place and
sleep on the floor. We went back to the hotel and found Freddie. He
didn't want to give me any credit. Miss Shirley kept haggling.
"How much money do you have ?" she asked me.
"Fifteen dollars."
"Well, give me ten and I'll lend you the rest so you can rent a
room for a week."
I gave her the money and Freddie told me i had to move to
another room, which was fine with me. The room was tiny, but at
least it had a bathroom and i had somewhere to stay for the rest of
the week. I was grateful as hell for Miss Shirley.
"Well," she told me, "you get a good night's sleep. Mother has
to go to work."
"Where do you work ?"
"Anywhere I have to," she said. "Anywhere I can."
I was dog-tired and the bed was like an oasis. I woke up the
next afternoon. It was almost one o'clock. I took a shower, got
dressed, and went to find something to eat. Then i went back to the
hotel and knocked on Miss Shirley's door. She opened the door
with a razor in her hand. I almost fainted. She was shaving her face.
Miss Shirley was a man. When she saw my reaction, she fell out
laughing.
"You got a lot to learn, sugar. Ya got a lot to learn." We both
sat there laughing up a storm. Somehow, it was funny as hell.
I went to work early that afternoon. The job wasn't bad and i
could eat all i wanted, which meant i didn't have to buy dinner. The
tips weren't that much, but i'd be able to live on them until the guy
came back.
Any Black woman, practically anywhere in amerika, can tell
you about being approached, propositioned, and harassed by white
men. Many consider all Black women potential prostitutes. In the
Village, this phenomenon was ten times worse than elsewhere. It
was almost impossible to go from one corner to the next without
some white man hissing at you, following you, or jingling the
money in his pockets. One morning in the park, i met a couple,
about my age, from Harlem, who had run away from home and
were now living in a room in the Village. I told them that i had run
away, too, and we became instant comrades. We got into a discus­
sion about how white men are always approaching Black women.

"Yeah," they giggled, "but we got something for they ass."
"Yeah?" i asked.
"Yeah. We fix them right up."
"How?" i asked. Then they told me. The Murphy game was
their game. They told me how it worked and i fell out laughing. 1
thought it was a brilliant scheme.
"You want to try it? 1 know them ofays'll dig you."
1 was anxious to try this new scheme because it was "big"
money and i would be able to pay Miss Shirley back and get a real
place of my own. The first night, after my job was over, i met Pat
and Ronnie in the park. Pat and i were the bait and Ronnie was the
protection. We were all to walk separately on different sides of the
street so that we could see each other. 1 had dressed up and put on
makeup to look older. About five minutes after we started walking,
a white man came up to me. He said he liked the way i walked and
wanted to take me someplace.
"I'm on my way to a party," i told him. "It's going to be a real
hot party."
"Yeah ? What kind of party is it going to be ?"
"What kind of party would you like it to be ?"
"A party for two," he said.
"I know a place where they've got some very nice private rooms
and they're not too expensive. It's a private club. You've gotta join
first."
"How much does it cost?"
"Fifteen for the room, fifteen to join the club, and fifteen for
the babysitter."
"You don't look old enough to have a kid."
"The babysitter's for my little sister."
We argued about the price. He thought it was too high. I kept
telling him how he was getting a deal and that, once he joined, he
would be a member for a year and could go there anytime he
wanted and get some action. Finally he agreed to pay. When we got
to the building, i told him to give me the money so i could go
upstairs and pay the people.
"By the way," i said, "would you tell me what kind of work you
do ? These people are very particular about who joins their club."
"I work for a bank." 1 could see from his face he was lying.
"I'll be right back. Don't you go nowhere."
1 ran up the stairs and opened the door to the roof. Carefully, i
closed it behind me. Then i went over about ten roofs until i came
to the one i was supposed to come down from. 1 tried the door. It
wouldn't budge. Somebody had locked it. 1 went to the next roof.

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Luckily, the door opened. I ran down the stairs and came out
around the corner from where the man was standing. Hurriedly, i
walked to where i was supposed to meet Pat and Ronnie.
"How'd it go ?" they asked.
"Easy as pie," i answered.
"Okay, let's do another one." I was scared to try another one
because i was scared i would run into the man again.
"We can go up around 14th Street. We've got another building
staked out around there."
"Okay," i told them, "but let's check it out first." I explained
about the door that wouldn't open. We got to the new place,
checked it out, then went to 14th Street. In a matter of twenty
minutes Pat and i had each caught a fish. I was worried to death we
would bump into each other. I rushed my man to the building, got
the money, and hurried to the meeting place. I waited and waited. It
seemed like an eternity until they came. Pat had seen me with my
man and had the good sense to go to a different building than the
one I took my man to. We were all in high spirits.
"See how easy it is ?" Pat asked me.
"Yeah. It's a breeze."
We split up the money. We had each made $45. I rushed back
to the hotel. Miss Shirley was there and we went up to her room for
a drink. I felt like a millionaire. I had the money i had made
working in the cafe plus the $45 . I whipped out my bankroll and
paid Miss Shirley back.
"Now, girl, I know you ain't got no rich uncle. How'd you get
all that money?"
I told her everything. I thought i was so slick.
"Girl, is you crazy ? Do you know what one of these men will
do to you if they find you in the street? Girl, these people out in this
street don't give a damn about you. This street will eat your ass
alive. Honey, I know what I'm talking 'bout. You done run away,
ain't you?"
"Yeah," i told her. "I ran away."
"I knew it all the time. Well, honey, I can't make you go home.
If I tried, you'd only run away again, but you're wasting your time
and your life out here. These people don't care nothin' 'bout you.
All they want to do is suck your blood. You a smart girl. What you
need to do is go home and finish school."
"I'm never going home."
"Well, if you insist on staying out here in these streets, you
better start acting like you got some sense. Don't you never let
nobody use you and make a fool outta you. What if one of those

men had been a crazy man and followed you upstairs ? What if the ASSATA
other door had been locked and you hadn't been able to get out?
I09
Where was your so-called protection? You mean to tell me that you
gon risk your life for fifteen dollars ? Girl, this Village ain't nothin'
to play around with. They got some crazy mens around here that is
killing up young girls like you and one of 'em cuts their titties off.
Girl, as far as 1 can see, that young boy Ronnie don' wanna be
nothin' but a pimp. He ain't done one thing to earn that money.
You better start to use your head."
1 could see Miss Shirley knew what she was talkin' about. "But
what am i gonna do, Miss Shirley? You know how hard it is to find
a job."
"Don't worry, honey, I'll come up with something."
The next day when i went down to the lobby, Freddie was
behind the desk. "I hear you're lookin' for a job," he said.
"Uh-huh. "
"You know anything about bein' a barmaid?"
"No," i told him.
"Well, ya go over to this place, Tony'S, on 3rd Street and ask
for a guy named Chuck. Tell him i sent you."
"Thanks. Thanks a lot." 1 went over to Tony's and talked to
Chuck. "Do you have any openings?" i asked him.
"Sure, we always have openings for foxes like you." He
laughed. "Do you know the setup ?"
"No."
"Fifteen dollars a night and you get a quarter for each drink
and a dollar for each bottle of champagne."
1 looked at him blankly.
"Your job is to sit and look pretty and keep the customers
happy and buying. You work from eight in the evening to four in
the morning when the place closes. What you do after that is your
business. Just don't make any deals on the premises."
"Yes," i answered warily.
"Well, then, see you tonight."
When i got back to the hotel, i told Miss Shirley about my new
job. "All right, honey, but you be real careful. There are a whole lot
of crazy peoples 'round here. And you keep looking for a real job so
you can go to school at night. Now, come on upstairs and let me
show you how to put your face on. You look like a two-bit hoe."
At ten to eight i was at Tony's. Chuck was there and introduced
me to the barmaid. Her name was Joyce. "Come here for a minute,
honey," she told me and went to the end of the bar. 1 followed her.
"You like whiskey sours? "

ASSATA
I IO

"I guess so. I never had one. "
"Whatever you do, don't get drunk. I'm going to make your
drinks without the whiskey. If a customer come in and I know he's
the suspicious type, I'll make you a real one. If you want a drink
with the whiskey in it, just order with your hands folded. There's
not too much I can do about the champagne. I'll try to keep
pouring it into the man's glass. But it's not too bad and the bottles
are small. "
"Okay. Thanks."
I went to the bar and sat down. In a few minutes a couple of
white guys came in. They sat two seats down from me and kept
looking in my direction.
"Would you like a drink?" one said.
"Okay," i answered.
"What are you drinking?"
"A whiskey sour." And so began what seemed like a never­
ending parade of whiskey-less whiskey sours. It got so that even the
smell of the stuff made me sick. Once in a while i would ask the
barmaid to put some whiskey in one, but i have never been much of
a drinker.
Most of the customers were white men who were looking for
some action. I found most of them to be crude, boring, and creepy. I
would sit there, making up different stories to tell them just to keep
myself amused. Another object of these stories was to get them to
spend as much money as possible. If i thought that the man would
go for a sob story and hand over some money, i would tell him a
real tearjerker. Other times i pretended to be a college girl going to
NYU. This made them less likely to be bold. When i played a
college girl, i usually said i was a math major because people never
know the first thing about math. One night, though, after i told this
guy my math major story, he asked me some questions about
integrals and imaginary numbers. I didn't have the faintest idea
what the guy was talking about. It turned out he taught math at
NYU.
"I know you're lying," he told me.
"Of course, i am. Who in the hell is going to be interested in
the life of a waitress?"
The guy broke out laughing. "That deserves a drink," he said.
"Bring the lady another drink. " After that, the guy (i called him
Mr. Math) came by every so often to hang out. He would buy
drinks and we would sit there cracking jokes.
"How's your thesis going?" he would ask.

"Fine," i'd answer. "I'm doing a chronological study about the
social significance of two and two equaling four."
I had a few other regulars. Most of them came in to tell me
their troubles. They either had wife trouble or job trouble. Some
were drunks who just wanted somebody to drink with, and others
just liked the challenge of trying to seduce a young girl.
A lot of the other girls were prostitutes. The few who weren't
were either just out to make some extra money or they were
alcoholics. Most of the women were very nice and protective of me.
The prostitutes liked me because i was always sending them busi­
ness and was always discreet about it. Soon i made friends with the
guys in the jazz quartet that worked there regularly. I've always
loved jazz and i would clap and shout and let them know i enjoyed
the music. The piano player and i became especially tight. I called
him my big brother and he was very protective of me. When the
place closed, he and maybe one or two of the group would walk me
home. If it was raining, he would send me home in a cab. Closing
time was the roughest time of all. Some of the men thought that
buying drinks entitled them to more than conversation. But Chuck
was a good bouncer and could spot a problem before it became
serious. If a guy was getting out of hand, Chuck would approach
him, tell him that i was the sister of one of the guys in the band and
that if he didn't treat me with respect, he would let him have it.
At times some real freaks and weirdos hung out there. There
was one guy who had bought the panties of almost every woman
who worked at Tony's, paying them each $15. I asked him what he
did with them. He laughed and told me he hung them on the walls
of his apartment. When i told one of the other girls, she laughed.
"Girl, you believe that? That guy takes them home and holds
them over his nose. He's a sniff freak."
But any woman at Tony's had to be careful. Some of the men
who came around were real dangerous. On nights when things
were slow and there were no customers in the place, the women
would tell horror stories about all the crazy men they had run into.
I was big for my age and well built and, with all the makeup i
wore, i could usually pass for eighteen. I told everybody i was
nineteen. The white people never questioned my age, but the Black
people would, sooner or later, realize i was younger than i let on.
Some of them even guessed i had run away and would take me to
the side and encourage me to go home. After a while, all the
women who worked at the place teased me about not having a
boyfriend.

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ASSATA
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"This girl don't like men and she don't like women. Here's a
girl that let's her fingers do the walking!"
When they teased me i wanted to crawl into a crack somewhere
and hide. The more embarrassed i became, the more they laughed.
A new bass player came to work for the band and i developed an
instant crush on him. I was convinced i was in love. In a short time,
everybody knew about my crush. But the bass player paid me no
mind at all. I did everything i could think of to attract his attention,
but he just ignored me. Near closing time, his white girlfriend
would come and they would leave together. I hated her. She looked
so smug. One weekday night, it was pouring rain outside and the
place was empty. The bass player said to me, "I'm writing a song for
you. You want to hear it? " I could have fainted. I was grinning from
ear to ear.
"Yes, i'd like to hear it."
Da da da ta ta da da de de.
Da da da ta ta da da de de de Jailbait!
Da da da ta ta da da de de,
Da da da ta ta da da de de de Jailbait!"

The rest of the group chimed in, "Jailbait, jailbait," and the whole
place cracked up. I could have died right then and there. That was
the end of my crush. When i thought about it later, though, it was
funny.
A lot of the Black men that i met in the Village were hung up
on white women. Some of them would come right out and tell you,
"Man, i can't dig no spade chick. Gimme an ofay every day." When
i asked them why, they said white women are sweeter, Black women
are evil; white women are more understanding, Black women are
more demanding. One of the things that really infuriated me was
when they called Black women sapphire. "You know how you
nigga women are, sapphire, evil." A lot of these guys would have
trampled over my face just to get to a white woman.
At times, i really got sick of being around so many grown
people. I'd either sneak back into my oId neighborhood or hang
out with Pat and Ronnie. One night they were going to a party
uptown. I was dying to be with kids my own age, so i told Chuck i
was taking the night off. When we got to the party, it was dull and
tired, so Pat and Ronnie went off to find some reefer. They loved the
stuff, but i was scared of it. I waited and waited for them to get
back. I started to talk to a boy, who seemed really nice, about how
dull the party was. He said he knew of a boss party that was going

to be happening later. I waited for Pat and Ronnie to come back,
but they never did.
"Why don't you come to the party with me ?" the boy asked.
"It's at my house and I'm sure you'll have a good time."
Finally i said i would go. He seemed so nice. He lived in some
projects near Spanish Harlem. When we got to his house, no one
was there. I started to leave, but he said his friends were all at a ball
game and they would be there afterward. In a little while, the
doorbell rang and, sure enough, all these people came in. After a
minute i noticed they were all boys.
"Excuse me," the boy said. Then they all went into another
room for a minute. When they returned they were whispering and
talking .under their breaths and i could tell that they were up to
something.
"Where are the girls ?" i asked. "Oh, they're coming." One
came and sat next to me. He put his hand on my leg. I moved it
away.
"Come on, baby, why you wanna act like that?"
"Come here, man," one of them said. I could sense that
something was wrong. I didn't know what they were up to, but i
knew they were up to something. I picked up my pocketbook and
my sweater.
"I'll have to be going."
"No, baby, you ain't goin' nowhere."
"I've got to go." I started walking toward the door. One of
them grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the door.
"Sit your ass down, bitch. We've got plans for you."
I knew it now. They were going to rape me. I had heard people
talking about "trains," but i had never thought it would happen to
me. I sat still for a minute. Then i made a wild break for the door.
They tried to grab me and i fought like hell. The fight didn't last
too long, though, because in a minute they had me held down on
the floor. They were pulling up my skirt and taking my blouse off. I
cried and screamed.
"Shut up, bitch," one of them said, slapping my face. I begged
them for mercy. I told them i was a virgin.
"There's always a first time, baby," someone sneered. I begged
and pleaded. I cried and cried. I couldn't believe they could be so
heartless. But they were. The boy who brought me there was
arguing with another boy about who would be first. I couldn't
believe it. It was a nightmare. They were arguing and carrying on as
if i wasn't even human, as if i was some kind of thing. I felt so scared

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and betrayed. I had trusted this boy. The argument between them
was heated. I hoped they would fight and kill each other. I kept
begging for mercy, pleading with them. They paid me no attention.
One of them came over to me as if he felt sorry for me.
"Don't worry, baby, it won't hurt. You'll see. You'll like it."
"Okay," i heard the boy who had brought me there say, "you
can go first, man," and the other boy started toward me. I jumped
up and tried to run, but i was cornered. One tried to grab me and,
in the process, he knocked over an ashtray.
"Be careful, man," said the boy whose house it was. "My
mother will kill me if the house gets messed up."
That was my cue. I picked up a vase and threw it at the wall. I
picked up a lamp and something else, crying and screaming at the
same time.
"You might get me, but i'm gonna mess up your mother's
house before you do."
The boy who was supposed to go first made a leap for me and
missed. I kicked over the table and knocked over a plant that was
on the stand.
"Get back ! Get back !" i screamed.
The boy whose house it was grabbed the boy who was sup­
posed to go first.
"Come on, man, my mother will kill me."
"Get back! Get back!" i screamed. "I'm gonna throw this lamp
straight into that mirror." There was a big mirror hanging behind
the couch. "Get them out of here. Get them out of here or i'll fuck
this house up." I was shaking and crying, but i was serious as hell. I
was gonna mess that boy's house up so bad no one would recognize
it. "Get them out of here," i said, kicking the table over.
"Come on," the boy said. "Y'all got to get out of here. My
mother's gonna have a fit."
"You crazy bitch," one of them said to me. "Come on, let's
jump on her, man, she can't do that much damage."
"It's the man's house," one of the others said. "Come on, let's
go."
"Get 'em out of here," i screeched at the top of my lungs.
"That's okay," one of them said. "We'll wait for you outside,
baby."
Slowly, in what seemed forever, they left. Only the boy who
had brought me remained. I could see that he was trying to figure
out some way to j ump me.
"Don't come near me. You better stay back." I didn't know

what i was gonna do next. They were all waiting for me outside. 1
couldn't call the police because the police were looking for me.
"Get back," i told the boy who looked like he was trying to
ease up close to me. "All right, get away from the door." 1 still had
the lamp and something else in my hands. "Get back there," i told
him, indicating the back of the apartment, "or i'll smash your
house up." When he moved back i looked through the peephole.
There was nobody in the hallway. "They must be waiting down­
stairs," i thought. "All right," i yelled, "get over by the door." He
moved to the door. "Now get out in the hallway and knock on one
of your neighbor's doors and bring a grownup back here."
"What?"
"You heard me, sucker. Now move."
"It wasn't my idea. 1 didn't want to do it. 1 had to."
"I don't want to hear that shit. Just get your ass out in that hall
or i'll mess up your house so bad your mother won't even think it's
her house."
"Please," the boy said.
"Please, my ass," i screamed. "If you don't get out there and
knock on one of those doors, you can forget about your mother's
house."
He went outside into the hallway. 1 slammed the door after
him and watched through the peephole as he knocked on a door. A
lady answered, and i opened the door and started begging her to
help me.
"Please, miss, help me. They're trying to get me," i screamed,
crying all over again. 1 still had the lamp in my hand. "Please walk
me downstairs to the subway or to a cab."
"What happened, honey?" she asked.
"They tried to do it to me," i cried.
The woman looked at me and then at the boy. "You wait there
for a minute, honey," she said. Then she and her husband came
out. "Don't worry, nothin's going to happen to you now." They
brought me downstairs and put me into a cab.
1 thought a lot about those boys after that night. 1 hated them,
but what i couldn't understand is why they hated me so much.
Everybody was always saying what a dog-eat-dog world it was.
There were all kinds of people in the world and most of them
seemed unhappy. Everybody seemed to be in their own bag and few
seemed to care about anybody else. 1 had read this play by Sartre.
The play ended with the conclusion that hell is other people, and,
for a while, i agreed.

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I IS

ASSATA

II6

Back then, when i was growing up, boys gang-banging or
gang-raping a girl was a pretty common thing. They called it
pulling a train. It didn't happen to any particular kind of girl. It
happened to girls who were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The boys talked about it like it was a joke or a game, like they were
"only" out to have some "fun." If a girl was caught on the wrong
side of a park or in the wrong territory or on the wrong street, she
was a target. It was a common thing back then for boys to down­
grade girls and cuss at them in the street. It was common for them
to go to bed with girls and talk about them like dogs the next day.
It was common for boys to deny they were the fathers of their
babies. And it was common for boys to beat girls up and knock
them around. And then the girls would get hard too.
"If the nigga ain't got no money, 1 don't want to be bothered."
"If the nigga ain't got no car, then later for him."
The more i watched how boys and girls behaved, the more i
read and the more i thought about it, the more convinced i became
that this behavior could be traced directly back to the plantation,
when slaves were encouraged to take the misery of their lives out on
each other instead of on the master. The slavemasters taught us we
were ugly, less than human, unintelligent, and many of us believed
it. Black people became breeding animals: studs and mares. A
Black woman was fair game for anyone at any time: the master or a
visiting guest or any redneck who desired her. The slavemaster
would order her to have six with this stud, seven with that stud, for
the purpose of increasing his stock. She was considered less than a
woman. She was a cross between a whore and a workhorse. Black
men internalized the white man's opinion of Black women. And, if
you ask me, a lot of us still act like we're back on the plantation
with massa pulling the strings.
After my close call uptown, i became more skeptical of every­
body. 1 was much more careful about the situations that i let myself
fall into. 1 would talk to the men at Tony's but, more and more, i
became "strickly business." The more i saw of street life, the uglier
it was.
One day, as i was walking down 8th Street, i saw one of my
aunt's friends. Her name was Abbie or Addie or something like that
and she was as big as a truck. 1 turned my head hoping she
wouldn't recognize me.
"Joey, Joey !" i heard her cry out. 1 kept walking. She kept
calling. 1 kept walking. Then i felt her grab my arm.
"I know you," she said. "You're Joey. Your aunt and your
mother are worried to death about you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," i said. "My name is
Joyce and i don't know you or anyone else that you're talking
about."
"Come off it, Joey," she said. "You're not fooling me. Come
with me while I call your aunt." She had my arm in an iron grip. I
thought of making a run for it, but she was too big to play with.
She took me to some bar and told me to sit at the counter while she
made the call. As soon as she started dialing i made a beeline for
the door. She was right on top of me, grabbing me with that iron
grip. "You're not going anywhere until your aunt gets down here."
In half an hour, Evelyn was on the scene throwing questions at me
left and right.
"Where have you been ? What have you been doing? Where
have you been staying? What have you been doing for money? How
have you been eating?" she asked-and a million questions more.
When Evelyn questioned me, she sounded like a lawyer cross­
examining a witness. In about an hour i had broken down and told
her everything. She demanded that i take her to the hotel where i
was staying. After i had packed my things, she told the guy behind
the desk, "Do you know that you've had a thirteen-year-old girl
staying here? I could have you prosecuted for contributing to the
delinquency of a minor." The guy looked at me like he j ust
couldn't believe it. I could have crawled under the floor. Then she
called up Tony's and told him the same thing. I was dying of
embarrassment, but in a way i was glad it was over. I was getting
tired of the streets. I was tired of being grown and i wanted to be a
kid again.

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II7

Chapter 7

II8

amau and i were acquitted in the
bank robbery trial in the Southern District of New
York on January 28, 1 973, and on the following day i
was returned to new jersey. When i arrived at the
morristown jail, there was a clump of reporters and
photographers standing around. Morristown looked
just like smalltown, usa. The jail was an ugly building
attached to the kourthouse. There were a few other
women in the jail and i was kept away from them. The
only time i saw them was when i was being taken to or
from my cell. They all appeared to be white, although
i found out later that one was Black. The guards were
all women, as old as the hills, and they had been
working at the jail for an eternity.
There was a television and a radio in the cell, and
it had been so long since i had been able to watch the
news on television or listen to a static-free radio sta­
tion that i went crazy. And i had turned into a crochet
fiend. My poor mother was the unfortunate recipient
of my early "creations." Brave, devoted person that she
was, she thought they were pure genius.
We learned there were few, if any, Black jurors on
the panel for the new trial. The news was depressing.
The panel was selected from the voting rolls, and, since
candidates running for office seldom represent the in­
terests of Black and poor people, Blacks and the poor
don't vote. But failing to vote means they don't sit on
juries. Any chance that we would receive something
even remotely resembling a fair trial was slim. We
decided to try to have the trial removed to federal
court. The chance of the feds taking over was slim, but
it was worth the try. If the trial was held in the federal

kourt in Newark, at least we'd be assured of a few more Black jurors
on the jury panel.
There were countless joint legal meetings, countless strategy
sessions, and countless kourt appearances. My first look at the
Morris County jury panel flung me into a terrible depression. There
were only two or three Black jurors on each panel and they looked
like extras in a soap opera. As a matter of fact, the whole jury panel
looked like escapees from a soap opera. They dressed differently
and had a whole different air about them than New York people.
Morristown was supposed to be one of the ten richest counties in
the country, and, looking at these people, i believed it. 1 could just
see trying to explain to them what poor Black people in big cities
go through. How could they understand someone becoming a
Black revolutionary? They had so little to revolt against. They had
bought the amerikan dream lock, stock, and barrel and seemed
unaware that, for the majority of Black and Third World people,
the amerikan dream is the amerikan nightmare.
Evelyn and i had resolved our differences and she was back on
the case. She, Ray Brown, and Charles McKinney, Sundiata's law­
yer, worked hard on the motion to remove the trial to federal kourt.
But after a hearing, the federal judge remanded the case back to the
state kourt. He hadn't even listened to our arguments. So we were
right back where we had started: picking a jury in Morris County.
Jury selection droned on tediously. Sundiata and i kept our­
selves from falling asleep or from having nervous breakdowns by
laughing and talking. Just seeing Sundiata every day was such a
comfort to me. We made up all kinds of little games and jokes,
especially guessing the answers j urors would give to the trial
judge's questions. We got to be pretty good at it. We could look at a
person and pretty much know what he was going to say. Some
glared at us hatefully while they waited to be called, as if they
couldn't wait to give their opinion that we were guilty. They were so
sure of exactly what happened. They recited detail after detail from
newspapers and TV.
"Where were you hiding that night on the turnpike ?" i wanted
to scream at them. "I didn't see you!"
Others gave us crooked smiles in the hope that we would think
they sympathized with us and would leave them on the jury. But
there was not one bigot in the kourtroom. None of them said they
had any prejudice against Black people.
"Do you have any Black friends ?" the judge asked.
"Of course." But when asked if they had ever invited a Black
person to their homes or been to the home of a Black person, the

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answer was, invariably, no. On one panel, the judge asked every­
body if they had ever called a Black person a nigger. They all said
no, except for one woman, who said, "Well, when I was a child, we
used to say 'Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a nigger by the toe.' "
After that, a whole bunch of them said the same thing. Sometimes
their answers were so phony they were a joke. Except the joke was
on us.
One day, a man being questioned told the judge what he had
read about the case in newspapers and what he had heard on radio
and TV. He tried to make it seem that he had just incidentally
come across the news stories and that he had not really followed the
case or paid much attention to it. Further, he denied having been
affected by any of it.
"Have you ever read a book called Target Blue?"
Only a day or two before, the defense team had asked that that
question be included in the voir dire. Robert Daley, who at one time
was the public relations and publicity director for the New York
City Police Department, had written the book Target Blue. An
excerpt from the book was "coincidentally" printed in New York
magazine on almost the exact day our trial was to begin. One or
two chapters were about the Black Liberation Army. The book was
a collection of sensationalism, groundless accusations, and outright
lies. The few facts that were in those two chapters were distorted
beyond recognition. I was referred to by name. Daley implied that i
had been responsible for the deaths of numerous policemen. He
called me the "soul" of the Black Liberation Army, the "mother
hen" that "kept them fighting and kept them moving." According
to the book, i had also robbed numerous banks and blown up a
police car with a hand grenade during a police chase.
"Have you ever read Target Blue?" the judge asked.
"Er, er, yes."
Immediately the defense team submitted requests to the judge
that additional questions be asked.
"When did you read this book?"
"As a matter of fact, I'm reading it now." Not only had he been
reading the book, but he had it upstairs in the jury room. Although
the defense team asked for an investigation, the judge refused. It
was obvious the man had brought the book to court to show to the
other jurors and that they had discussed it. After a lot of arguments
made by our lawyers, the judge agreed to dismiss that juror and
others in the panel with whom he had been close.
One day i was informed that the nazi party was demonstrating
outside the court, marching up and down, complete with

swastikas, b rown uniforms, and helmets. They carried "White
power," "Save our police," and "Death penalty" placards. Other
signs were printed with racist statements. Rumor spread that a
cross had been burned in front of the home of one of our support­
ers. At the end of the day the nazis almost got into a fight with
some of the few Black residents in Morristown.
A lot of people don't know it, but they've got more nazis and
Ku Klux Klan in jersey than a little bit. Some of my friends call it
"up South." Lou Myers, who was later one of my lawyers on this
case, is from Mississippi. One day, in all earnestness, he told me he
would rather try a case in Mississippi any day than try one in jersey.
I couldn't understand it. I was growing weaker and weaker. My
energy seemed to have gone down the drain. All i wanted to do was
sleep. I chided myself for trying to escape from reality instead of
facing it. I had seen women in j ail sleep their whole time away. I was
afraid that was happening to me. I was so easily upset and reacted
to everything in an exaggerated manner. My nerves were terrible.
Every little thing affected me. All i did, all day, when there was no
kourt, was sleep, eat, watch television, and listen to the radio. I was
eating like food was going out of style. This also convinced me my
nerves were going bad. I have seen people in prison gain twenty,
thirty, forty, fifty pounds eating out of nerves and boredom. It gets
to the point when all you have to look forward to is the meals. And
that in itself is pitiful, because anyone who has ever been in prison
knows how terrible the food is. Yet i was gulping that stuff down
just like it was Mom's home cooking.
It wasn't until i sat down one day to do my exercises that i
really suspected what could be wrong. I could barely get through
ten sit-ups. Everything added up. I didn't dare hope, but, at the
same time, down deep inside, i knew. As sure as i knew my own
name, i knew that i was pregnant. But what was i to do next? I
knew i had to see the doctor, but what in the world was i going to
say? I had been in prison for eight months and it would really be
weird to say, " Hey, i think i'm pregnant." I wanted to know for sure
whether i was or not, but if i wasn't i didn't want the doctor to
know my business. Because if i was, it would be only a matter of
time before the whole world would know.
First thing the next morning, i saw the prison doctor. I told
him all my symptoms, dropping hint after hint. He told me there
was nothing to worry about, that i was j ust constipated.
As time wore on, it became harder and harder to wake up in
the morning. When the guards came to wake me for kourt, i would

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simply roll over and continue sleeping. They did everything to get
me out of bed. They called. They threatened. They banged on the
bars and anything else they could think of.
"Just don't come in this cell," i would tell them, feeling evil as
the day is long. "You come in here and you put your hands on me
and i'ma take your head right offa your shoulders." They must have
known i meant it because they kept their distance until i was awake.
I didn't care what they thought or said as long as they didn't put
their hands on me. I wanted them to leave me alone. All i wanted to
do was sleep.
I walked into kourt whenever i got up, no matter what time it
was. The judge would go on and on about my lateness and admon­
ish my lawyers for not having me in kourt on time, but it was
hopeless. I didn't care what the judge said, what the guards said, or
what anybody said. All i wanted to do was sleep.
I told Sundiata and one or two of the lawyers that i thought i
was pregnant. They looked at me blankly, puzzled, as if i had an
overactive imagination. Each day i felt more and more weird. I felt
fragile and sick. I went back to the prison doctor, dropping more
and more hints. I repeated my symptoms. Queasy stomach, stom­
ach getting bigger, sick in the mornings, sleep all the time, etc. But
he still didn't get the message and kept telling me this stuff about
an intestinal disorder. I didn't know what to do next.
One day i woke up and could hardly move. I was sick as a dog
and dizzy to boot. I got up for a minute, then sank back down on
the cot, holding onto it for dear life. They called the prison doctor.
I repeated the symptoms again, and this time he ordered some tests.
He asked for a urine specimen. I was sure he had sent for a
pregnancy test. I waited a few days and heard nothing. Then the
nurse came and asked me for more urine. I was certain this meant
the pregnancy test was positive and they were retesting just to be
sure. I gave her the urine sample and waited.
When the doctor called me to his office, i knew he was going
to tell me i was pregnant. Instead, he was smug and acted really on
the stupid side. He kept making snide little remarks and i could tell
he was trying to make fun of me. I asked him what was wrong with
me and he repeated the same old stuff about a bowel disorder.
Then he asked me some questions about my sex life.
"Ask your momma about her sex life," i said and went out of
his office, slamming the door. Later that day, Ray Brown and Evelyn
came to see me. Ray was in a jovial mood, laughing his head off.
"Well, you've really done it this time. I don't know what we're

going to do with you. His honor is going to give you a strong
reprimand for getting pregnant during his trial. "
"You mean i'm really pregnant?"
"It was in the doctor's report to the judge. Didn't you know ?"
"No," i told him. "I was j ust in that slimy bastard's office this
morning and he told me that i had something wrong with my
intestines.
"He's pulling your leg," Ray said. "They did two or three
pregnancy tests on you and they all came back positive. You're
pregnant, all right. I can't believe it."
Evelyn was in a state of shock. "It's something," she said. Then
she looked into space for a long time. "It's something. "
"Judge Bachman's having a fit," Ray said. "I hear the FBI is
going to conduct an investigation to determine how you got preg­
nant. "
"Well, they better not try to come 'round me asking no ques­
tions," i told them. "I'll tell them that this baby was sent by the
Black creator to liberate Black people. I'll tell 'em that this baby is
the new Black messiah, conceived in a holy way, come to lead our
people to freedom and justice and to create a new Black nation."
Sundiata and McKinney had joined us. Sundiata was elated.
He couldn't get over it. He sat there grinning and slapping his knee.
"I think it's beautiful," he kept saying. "I think it's absolutely
beautiful." Everyone was in a j ubilant mood. I was glad. I hadn't
known how they would react.
"It's amazing," Evelyn said. "Out of all this misery a new life is
conceived."
I was caught up in the mood, but i couldn't wait to get off
alone in my cell to think about this. What had seemed like a remote
dream was coming true. A baby. My mind was jumping and
dancing.
I spent the next few days in a virtual daze. A joyous daze. A
person was inside of me. Someone who was going to grow up to
walk and talk, to love and laugh. To me it was the miracle of all
miracles. And deeply spiritual. The odds against this baby being
conceived were so great it boggled my mind. And yet it was happen­
ing. It seemed so right, so beautiful, in surroundings that were so
ugly. I was filled with emotion. Already, i was deeply in love with
this child. Already, i talked to it and worried about it and wondered
how it was feeling and what it was thinking. I would lie in my cell
wondering about his or her life, wondering what kind of life it
would have. What kind of people it would love, what kind of values

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it would have, and what it would think of all the madness that
would surround it. Sometimes i felt so helplessly protective, won­
dering when my baby would be called nigger for the first time,
wondering when the full horror and degradation of being Black in
amerika would descend on my baby. How many wolves hid behind
the bushes to eat my child ?
But there were s o many happy things that i thought about,
too. I wondered when would be the first time my child would sit
down and seriously appreciate the glory of a sunset and marvel at
the wonders of nature. Or when he or she would smack lips and
lick fingers over a sweet potato pie, or kiss strawberries and drink
lemonade. It has always intrigued me how the world can be so
beautiful and so ugly at the same time. I wanted, with all my being,
for my baby to experience the many types and sides of love and
friendship and to know and understand selflessness and generosity,
struggle and sacrifice, honesty, courage, and so many of the senti­
ments that have given me strength and have made my life worth
living. In these days, i was in such a state of sensitivity and thought
that i barely noticed what was going on around me.
The next time my mother came to see me, my sister was with
her. I was so happy to see them both. When i say "see," it is
something of an overstatement, because in morristown j ail there are
little windows that you and your visitors peek through, and there
are little holes through which you are supposed to talk, but to
make yourself heard you are obliged to shout.
"Honey, you look pale," my mother shouted.
"Mommy, i 'm pregnant."
"What is it, honey?"
"I'm pregnant, Mommy."
My mother smiled blandly. I repeated myself and she began to
laugh. "How many months are you?"
"No, seriously, Mommy, i'm pregnant."
"Well, so am I," my mother said, this time laughing heartily. "I
think it was my hysterectomy that caused it."
"No, Mommy," i pleaded. "You don't understand. I'm preg­
nant. I'm not j oking."
"Who's joking, honey? Pregnancy is a serious matter," she
said, trying to keep a straight face, "especially when the baby is
born under immaculate conception and god is the father." She and
my sister were having a giggling fit. "What are you going to name
the baby?" my sister added. "Jesus?"
They just carried on. The more i insisted i was pregnant, the

more they laughed and cracked jokes. But, finally, my mother
stopped laughing.
"Are you really pregnant?"
I told her that it happened in the kourt and that Kamau was
the father.
"How do you feel ? "
"Actually, kind of funny," i told her. " I can barely move and
i'm just so tired. "
I n the visiting room on the prisoners' side, there were no
chairs, so you had to stand up and talk. I was so tired, i just
couldn't stand any longer. I sat down on the floor, leaning on the
wall behind me so that they could see me. I couldn't see them, but
we shouted to each other until the visit was over. I went up to my
cell after the visit ended and immediately fell out. My mother went
to the warden to complain about their refusal to provide chairs.
The next day Evelyn came to see me. "Your mother called me
last night all the way from Morristown, as soon as she left you. She
was worried to death that, with all you've been through, you'd
finally been driven crazy. I told her not to worry, that you are, in
fact, pregnant. I think she's in a state of shock. So's your sister. It's
all over the papers. I brought them for you."
I couldn't believe it. Sure enough, there were the articles. The
one in the New York Daily News, i remember, was especially
sordid. All of the papers speculated about who the father was and
how i had managed to become pregnant in jail. One of them hinted
that a prison guard was the father.
"I'm sick, Auntie, i feel awful."
"Well, that's what happens when you 're pregnant. You get
morning sickness and all sorts of other strange ailments. It's only
normal."
"Maybe you're right, but i'm having these pains down here," i
told her, pointing to where the pains were. "And i can barely stand
up."
She told me to go see the doctor and i told her how the doctor
had acted.
"Well, go see him anyway, and have him examine you thor­
oughly. Meanwhile, I'll try to have you seen by a private gynecolo­
gist as soon as possible. I'll probably have to go to court. "
She promised that she would do all that she could to get an
outside doctor, and i went upstairs to see the jail doctor.
"Why did you lie to me and tell me all that junk about a bowel
disorder?" was the first thing i asked him.

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"Well, you lied. I just figured I'd get back at you. Anyway, you
found out, like I knew you would."
I told him about my pains and he examined me.
"What's wrong?" i asked, anxiously.
"There's a chance you're threatening to abort."
"What? " i practically screamed.
"There's a chance that you're going to abort."
"I don't want no abortion," i cried out.
"It's probably the best course you could take now, and I'd
recommend it. But that's not what I was talking about. I said that
there was a chance you could spontaneously abort, have a miscar­
riage."
"Oh no ! " i moaned. "What are you going to do ?"
"Relax. It's probably nothing serious. It's nothing much to
worry about. "
"What do you mean, nothing much to worry about. I want this
baby. "
"Well, I can't force you to d o anything, but m y advice i s to
have an abortion. It will be better for you and for everyone else."
"I don't want nobody's abortion. But what are you going to do
about this miscarriage thing? Isn't there something you can give me
to keep me from having a miscarriage ? Isn't there something that i
can take to make sure i don't lose this baby?"
"No. There's nothing I can do now. We have to wait and see
what happens."
"What do you mean, wait and see what happens ? If i have a
miscarriage, then it will be too late. Can't you call a gynecologist ?"
"No. There's nothing I can do right now. "
"You mean there's nothing you will do right now, don't you ?"
"Take i t any way you want to."
"Won't you at least call a gynecologist in to see me? You're not
a specialist in this area."
"I don't need you to tell me what my specialties are," he said
angrily. "It would be best for everybody concerned if you have an
abortion, no matter which way you have it."
"Just who is everybody concerned ?"
"Don't you worry about it. My advice to you is that you
should go to your cell and lie down. Just lie down and rest your
mind. Just lie down and stay off your feet. And if you go to the
bathroom and see a lump in the toilet, don't flush it. It's your
baby. "
I raced out of his office and, when i got t o m y cell, i lay o n the
cot crying. I was worried to death. As far as i could see, they were

out to kill my baby. I couldn't lose this baby now, not now. It was
meant to be; this baby was our hope. Our hope for the future. I
tried to calm myself. I didn't want the baby to feel my anguish.
Finally, i fell asleep.
The next morning, i waited anxiously for Evelyn and Ray
Brown. Ray came first. I told him what had happened.
"Please," i begged, "get a doctor we can trust to see me today."
"I'll try to get one as soon as I can," Ray assured me. "I'll have
to make some phone calls and then I've got to talk to the j udge.
He's having a fit, you know. He wants to resume the trial today.
Don't worry, everything is going to be all right."
Ray and Evelyn came back in about an hour. "Don't worry,"
they told me, "the trial has been postponed until there is a report
from our doctor. The j udge has permitted you to be examined by
your own gynecologist, and he's coming this afternoon, so cheer
up." They did their best to take my mind off everything and to
make me feel better. That day i felt worse than ever before.
"Is the doctor Black ?"
"No, he's a Ku Klux Klan doctor," Ray Brown joked. I felt like
my insides were going to drop out on the floor at any minute. Ray
went outside to meet the doctor and came back followed by a tall,
brown-skinned man. The man sure as hell didn't look like no
doctor. He looked like Mr. Superfly himself. He had on a long fur
coat, a j umpsuit, and platform shoes. But when i looked into his
face, i was reassured. He was kind and very self-assured. He was
gentle when he examined me and i was truly grateful. He asked a
whole lot of questions in a careful, painstaking manner. I was really
impressed.
"Would you tell me your name again?" i asked him, ashamed
that i had forgotten it.
"Sure. That's an easy order. Ernest Wyman Garrett." He prac­
ticed in Newark and there was an air of Newark about him. I liked
him instantly. He was one of those rare breed of Black professionals
who haven't lost contact with the masses of Black people. He didn't
have one trace of the affected bourgie speech and mannerisms that
are so popular among the Black middle class.
I waited nervously for the verdict. "There's no doubt about it.
You're pregnant. But I found blood in the vaginal canal, which can
be a sign that something is wrong. There's a possibility that you are
threatening to abort. This doesn't mean that you are going to have a
miscarriage. The chances are good that you won't. The odds and
medical statistics are in your favor.
He explained the different possibilities and the treatment he

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was prescribing. I asked a million questions and, when he left, felt a
whole lot better, just knowing there was someone i could trust
taking care of me and the baby.
The days that followed are blurry in my mind. Most of the time
i slept. The warden and the sheriff and the powers that were didn't
like the idea of my having my own doctor, though. In their minds,
the butcher, jailhouse-quackhouse doctor was good enough for me.
And the fact that Dr. Garrett was Black infuriated them. They
refused to let him examine me unless a white doctor, hired by the
state, was present, and for the report to the judge, the white doctor
had to examine me. Fortunately, he agreed with my doctor's find­
ings. There was a lot of activity going on around me that I didn't
understand. I was too out of it to try. I could see, though, that
Evelyn and Ray were worried. I wanted to help them, to get to the
bottom of what was happening, but i just didn't have the energy.
About two days after his first visit, Dr. Garrett came to visit
me. When he finished examining me, he said, "Assata, I don't want
to worry you, but I think you should be hospitalized. It's nothing
serious, strictly a precautionary measure. You're in no condition to
proceed with a trial. You need a few weeks of complete bedrest.
There is a possibility the judge will try to push you into that trial
right away, without regard for your medical condition. Assata, there
is no way we are going to let that happen. I am prepared to fight all
the way for your right as a human being to receive decent medical
care and for your baby to be born healthy. I'm doing the same for
you as I would for any other patient. You should be hospitalized.
There isn't a responsible doctor in the world who wouldn't agree
with that opinion. And I'm prepared to testify in any court that to
deny you proper medical care would be tantamount to committing
murder. I will be going, in a very short time, to give a medical
report about your condition to the judge. I will do my best to
convince him of the seriousness of this matter. I think he'll listen to
reason. I'm sure the judge will go along with the findings of two
board-certified gynecologists. But if worse comes to worst, and the
judge denies our motion, I will see to it personally that this j ail and
the courtroom are surrounded by the right-to-life people by tomor­
row morning."
I was too shot out to say much more than thank you. I was
scared to death for my baby, but i knew that everything that could
be done was being done and that was a load off my mind. I got
dressed and waited for them to come and take me to kourt. I
wanted to hear what was going on. When they didn't come for me, i
became worried. What was going on ? Why weren't they bringing

me to kourt? Why were they taking so long? What were they going
to do ? Were they going to try to make me go to trial like this ? What
were they planning to do?
Evelyn and Ray came in strutting and beaming. I knew every­
thing was going to be all right. "What happened? Why didn't they
bring me to kourt?"
"You're too sick to go to court." Evelyn laughed. "Haven't you
heard that they don't let pregnant women into court? They figure
it's a disease and are afraid everybody will catch it. We felt it was
much better for you not to be moved. It went fine. They'll be taking
you to a hospital as soon as they can make the arrangements. Dr.
Garrett did a great job. After that speech, there was no way the
judge was gonna force you to go to trial in your condition. The trial
has been severed and Sundiata will go on with the trial alone."
"What?" i exclaimed. "But we had agreed that we would be
tried together. Why can't they wait until i'm better?"
"Now, Assata, you know they're not gonna wait for you to
have your baby to try Sundiata. They claim that being here in
Morristown is costing them a fortune."
"It will be cheaper to try us together," i said. "Well, can't i at
least see Sundiata and say good-bye to him?"
"We'll try," they said, "but we doubt if there will be time or if
the sheriff will consent to it."
"I'm going to miss Sundiata."
"Yes. We know. "
Later they put me on a stretcher and wheeled me into an
ambulance. "Don't worry," i told the baby, "you're gonna be all
right. "

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LOVE

Love is contraband in Hell,
cause love is an acid
that eats away bars.
But you, me, and tomorrow
hold hands and make vows
that struggle will multiply.
The hacksaw has two blades.
The shotgun has two barrels.
We are pregnant with freedom.
We are a conspiracy.

Chapter 8

fter the Village, i lived with
Evelyn on 80th Street between Amsterdam and Co­
lumbus in Manhattan. She had a garden apartment in
a brownstone. Nothing grew in the garden but weeds,
and it was where our neighbors threw their garbage.
The apartment was one big room that we used for
sleeping, eating, and living; it had a kitchen and a
bathroom with an old-fashioned toilet up on a plat­
form and an overhead tank so that you had to pull on
a little chain to flush it. Evelyn always referred to it as
the dump. She had it fixed up nicely, but it was just too
small for two people, especially if one of them was me.
I was a slob, and Evelyn went to great pains to train
me in neatness. In a small place like that, when just a
few things are out of place it looks like a hurricane
passed through. And many times after a long day's
work, poor Evelyn would be greeted with a hurricane,
a tornado, and an earthquake at the same time. Grad­
ually, i learned to keep things in something vaguely
resembling order.
The neighborhood, for me, was exciting, full of
character and different flavors. Central Park and
Riverside Park were nearby, and i immediately fell in
love with both of them. Then, also, there were plenty
of museums nearby; i spent hour upon hour in the
Museum of Natural History chld the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. They were free then, and full of fas­
cinating things. There were all kinds of stores for me
to explore and examine, even though most of the time
i didn't have any money. I was delighted with it all.
And it was my first clear glimpse of the hierarchy of
amerikan society.
Eightieth Street, like many of the nearby streets,

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was changing. Most of the changing, however, had taken place
before i got there. Most of the Germans had moved out and Blacks
and Puerto Ricans were moving in. Evelyn told me that when she
moved there it was so safe she had slept, in the summer, with the
back door open and just the screen door latched. On 80th Street
there might be three, four, five, or more people huddled into a one­
room apartment. Sometimes the apartments were rented furnished
with nothing but an old saggy bed, a chest of drawers, and a beat­
up refrigerator and stove. You could usually tell them from the
outside by the paper-thin plastic curtains shimmying in the wind.
Most of the people on 8 0th Street were poor, although here and
there were a few renovated apartments that catered to a clientele
that was a little richer, usually "night people."
Seventy-ninth Street was directly behind us, but there was a
world of difference between the two . It was an upper-middle-class
street. Doctors and lawyers and a lot of performers lived there.
Every day after school, i would hear an opera singer practicing.
Maybe that's why i developed a profound dislike for opera. The
people on 79th Street wouldn't dream of socializing with the
people on 80th Street. They recognized our existence with a mix­
ture of amusement, fear, and dislike. Eighty-first Street between
Central Park West and Columbus Avenue was even richer. The
lobbies were elegant and the doormen were splendidly attired. They
were, for the most part, all white and not even slightly aware of the
people who lived only a block away.
Farther over, toward the river, near West End Avenue or River­
side Drive, there was a middle-class neighborhood. The buildings
were usually old, grandiose, and well kept. The people who lived
there were mostly white, of course, with a few Blacks and mixed
couples thrown in. The Upper West Side, as the neighborhood was
called, was supposed to be a "liberal" stronghold. I have never
really understood exactly what a "liberal" is, though, since i have
heard "liberals" express every conceivable opinion on every conceiv­
able subject. As far as i can tell, you have the extreme right, who are
fascist, racist capitalist dogs like Ronald Reagan, who come right
out and let you know where they're coming from. And on the
opposite end, you have the left, who are supposed to be committed
to justice, equality, and human rights. And somewhere between
those two points is the liberal. As far as i'm concerned, "liberal" is
the most meaningless word in the dictionary. History has shown
me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on
the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private
schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privileges, then

'"

they are "liberals." But when times get hard and money gets tight,
they pull off that liberal mask and you think you're talking to Adolf
Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long
as they can maintain their own privileges.
Sometimes i walked over to the East Side, on the other side of
Central Park. If Riverside Drive was like another city, then the East
Side was like another world. English nannies pushed fancy baby
carriages (they called them trams) through the eastern side of
Central Park. The only Black people you saw were servants or, like
me, those just passing through. Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, chauf­
feur-driven cars, diamonds, and furs. The Upper East Side was for
the sho nuff rich. When i'd walk through those streets, some
looked at me as if i was an object from a museum or something.
Once or twice, a doorman actually stopped me and asked where i
was going. But i kept walking and looking. Sometimes, i'd have
some fun and walk into one of the stores. I couldn't believe there
were people who paid that kind of money for things. As soon as i'd
step in, the salespeople were right on me. Sometimes i said i was
just looking. Other times i would ask for outrageous things, like
pickled feet. Usually, they would say, "What? What? What?" and i
would burst out laughing. One time, i went into a grocery store and
was asked who my mistress was.
I was always crazy about art and made it a point to visit any
art gallery i discovered. Sometimes they acted snooty or disgusted.
At first, i felt uneasy and out of place. But after a while, whenever
they acted disgusted, i made a point of asking the price of each
piece. They would turn so red and swell up so much that it was
comical. I remember hating some of those people, but at the same
time i wanted to be rich like them. Back then, i thought being rich
was the solution to everything.
Four blocks from where we lived, there was still another world:
84th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus. Before it was torn
down, it was voted the worst block in the city. When i was a kid, i
never would have imagined that people could live so bad. Living in
some of those apartments was like living in a coffin. I swear, there
was one building that, when you walked past it in the summer, it
stunk so bad it made you want to drop to your knees. Usually, i'd
just sit on some stoop and watch the street. There was always
something going on. Men standing around with do-rags on their
"
heads, covering greasy process hairdos, making deals, laughing and
talking and looking at the women passing by. Drunks and fights
and drunken fights. The street was always alive and swarming with
people. Survival and life were hanging out in the open like laundry

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for everyone to see. Arguments, dirty deals, misery, and malice ran
out into the streets like pus from open sores. There was something
horrible and foreboding about the street, yet exciting at the same
time.
Lil-Bit, who went to my school, lived on 84th Street. Her
nickname was Lil-Bit, but i called her Fruit-fly because she was
crazy about fruit. I liked to hang out with her because she was a
good walker; we could walk for hours without getting tired. One
day she asked me to come with her to get something from her
house. When we got there i couldn't believe it. I thought i had seen
some messed-up cribs before, but hers took the cake. She lived in a
tiny little pea-green closet of a room, covered with wall-to-wall
roaches. I just kept staring at Lil-Bit. She walked around in that
horror house like it was normal. She didn't even try to kill the
roaches. She just brushed them aside if they got in her way. When i
left, i itched and scratched for hours.
When i met Lil-Bit's mother and started getting to know her
and some of her neighbors, i got my first lesson in hopelessness.
Lil-Bit's mother used to work in factories and laundries as a presser.
But she burned her hand real bad and was on some kind of
disability. She lived from day to day and from check to check. She
was always sick, and sometimes her cough was so bad i thought she
was going to die any minute. She acted like she was too tired or too
weak to do much of anything. They had a hot plate, but most of the
time they didn't even cook. They just ate sandwiches, usually lunch
meat on white bread. Lil-Bit's mother never went anywhere except
to the clinic or to the welfare office or to the bar on Amsterdam.
Sometimes she would get drunk and start crying about some man
she used to go with. She didn't know anything about what was
going on in the world and she didn't seem to care. Eighty-fourth
Street was her world and other worlds didn't really exist. When i
was with Lil-bit and her mother i felt all kinds of things. Sometimes
disgust and anger because they accepted anything and lived any old
kind of way. Other times i felt sorry for them, and, still other times,
i relaxed and enjoyed them because they were so easy and down to
earth. But whenever i hung out with them it was down on the
stoop. I would never go up into that house.
Evelyn kept my excursions at a bare minimum, though. She
was strict and didn't play around. Every day, after school, i had to
be in the house by four o'clock, and she would call home just to see
that i had arrived safely. Evelyn didn't want me in the street too
much because she said the neighborhood was bad and she didn't
want me to get in any trouble. And she also wanted me to stay at

home and do my homework. After homework, i read. I have never
been too fond of television and, besides, Evelyn had an excellent
library. Those books were like food to me. Fiction and poetry were
my favorites, although i liked history and psychology, too. I also
liked to read about other countries and about all the different
religions in the world. The only books i never touched were
Evelyn's law books. They were dry and boring and Greek to me.
Evelyn was a store of knowledge and she knew about a whole
range of subjects. We were always discussing or debating some­
thing. Hanging out with Evelyn, i started to think that i was cool
and sophisticated and grown up and that i knew it all. You couldn't
tell me nothing. I was just too cool. Evelyn and i went to museums
and art galleries and the theater. On Broadway, off Broadway, she
was turning me on to so many things. I started to view movies as an
art form instead of just entertainment. I was learning what and how
to order at restaurants. And my vocabulary and control of the
English language were expanding greatly.
But life with Evelyn definitely had its ups and downs. Some­
times we got along famously and other times it was terrible. Evelyn
was super-honest and she just could not tolerate my lying. I would
try to tell the truth and try to be honest, but sometimes, especially
if i was in a tight situation, i would lie. I had been in the habit of
lying and it was easy for me to fall back into the old pattern. But it
was futile to lie to Evelyn because she was a lawyer and would
cross-examine me until i would inevitably trip myself up. Little by
little, i got out of the habit, but it was a long and constant battle
between us.
Our financial situation also had its ups and downs. One week
we were "rich" and the next week we were "poor." Evelyn was
determined to be a trial lawyer and to be in private practice. Most
of her clients were Black and poor and most of the time they didn't
have money to pay her. But Evelyn would defend them anyway. She
was always up in arms about some injustice or other. I used to call
her the "last angry woman." But whenever somebody did pay her,
we were "rich." We would go out and celebrate. For a week or so
we ate steaks and lamb chops, went to restaurants, took taxis; the
next week we would be right back to riding subways and eating
hamburgers. Evelyn was generous and extravagant, and she had
absolutely no head for business. I usually did the shopping for us
since i was more tight-fisted and practical. Once in a whil;, i'd be
tempted to give myself a "five-finger discount," but Evelyn was so
honest that it rubbed off on me. I was becoming so goody-goody i
couldn't stand myself. I really underwent a great change.

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Evelyn had great plans for my future. I was going to Junior
High School 44, but Evelyn wasn't satisfied with the education i
was receiving. J. H. S. 44 wasn't a bad school, but we were learning
at a much slower pace than at my school in Queens. I don't
remember too much about the school except for the music classes.
Most of the class was Black or Puerto Rican and we all loved music.
But we hated music class with a passion. The teacher talked to us as
though we were inferior savages, incapable of appreciating the finer
things in life. She lectured about symphonies and concertos and
sonatas and the like in a snooty voice. A boy would mimic the
gestures and expressions of the teacher and the rest of us would
giggle and snicker as she played music. The teacher became more
and more exasperated, saying, "Listen ! Can't you listen ? Don't you
have ears? Can't you appreciate anything? I'm trying to get you to
appreciate music and you all act as though you're deaf. I want you
to stop talking! I want you to stop talking and listen ! Do you hear
me ? " We got louder and louder and the teacher became more and
more disgusted. She would scream at us and call us names like
hooligans and ignoramuses. And we returned her insults.
We hated her because she thought the music she liked was so
superior. She didn't recognize that we had our own music and that
we loved music. For her, there was no other music except Bach and
Beethoven and Mozart. To her, we were uncultured and uncouth.
For her, Latin music, jazz, rhythm and blues were trashy and we
were trash. She was a racist who would have denied it to the bitter
end. A lot of people don't know how many ways racism can
manifest itself and in how many ways people fight against it. When
i think of how racist, how Eurocentric our so-called education in
amerika is, it staggers my mind. And when i think back to some of
those kids who were labeled "troublemakers" and "problem stu­
dents," i realize that many of them were unsung heroes who fought
to maintain some sense of dignity and self-worth.
Evelyn strongly "suggested" that i enter Cathedral High
School in the ninth grade. I was not at all happy about the idea
since i hated wearing a uniform and Catholic schools had a reputa­
tion for being so strict. But Evelyn kept on strongly suggesting and
i got the message. I didn't mind the Catholic religious part of it,
though, since i was going to mass regularly and i was kind of holy,
holy that year. I took the test for Cathedral and passed, and it was
firm that i was going to enter Cathedral the next September. I even
started to feel happy about it. It was a change and i have always
been a person who likes a change of scenery.
I usually spent my weekends with one of my girlfriends or

with my mother as much as possible. Toni was cool to hang out
with and she knew where all the parties were. But we never had
deep conversations so we never got really close. Bonnie and i met
through Toni and began what was to be a best-friend relationship
with an argument about Abraham Lincoln. We argued for hours
until Bonnie's aunt told us to shut up and go to bed, since neither
of us knew what we were talking about. Bonnie lived in the same
building my mother lived in, and after that night we became close
friends and talked about every subject on earth. Bonnie knew more
than i did about what was happening in the world and we spent
hours talking about Medgar Evers, sit-ins, freedom riders, etc. We
began to write poetry about love and Black people, and sometimes
we wrote morbid poetry about hate and death. As soon as we
finished a poem we'd call each other and read it. After a while, we
read poetry together. Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay
were our idols. We read everything they wrote and even memorized
their poems. After that, we read all different kinds of poets. We
were "deep" and were forever in the library or a bookstore trying to
find another poet who was "deep," too. The more we read, the
more we wrote. And it came in handy in the street. If we didn't like
somebody, or if we had some dispute with someone, we wrote a
poem about them. We made up all kinds of "dozens" poems and
laughed our heads off. We were young and old, happy and sad at
the same time.
Usually, every summer, i went down South to visit my grand­
parents. When they had the business on the beach, i loved it. But
they had lost two different buildings on the beach, both destroyed
by hurricanes. After the last one was leveled, they operated a
restaurant on Red Cross Street. I liked working in the restaurant
sometimes, but it wasn't as much fun as working on the beach.
One of the last summers that i spent down South, the NAACP
rented a building a few doors from my grandparents' restaurant,
which was a great source of interest to me. I was forever walking by,
standing in the doorway, or sliding discreetly into the building to
see what was going on. I could hear them talk about integrating the
South by sitting in, praying in, singing in, and about nonviolence. I
was glad because i surely wanted segregation to end. I had grown
up exposed to the degrading, dehumanizing side of segregation. I
remember that when we traveled from North to South and vice
versa we really felt the sting of segregation more acutely than at
other times. We'd drive hours without being able to stop adywhere.
Sometimes we would pull into a filthy old gas station, buy gas, and
then be told that we were not permitted to use their filthy old

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bathroom because we were Black. 1 can remember clearly squatting
in the bushes with mosquitoes biting my bare buttocks, and my
grandmother handing me toilet paper, because we could not find a
place with a "colored" bathroom. Sometimes we were hungry, but
there was no place to eat. Other times we were sleepy and there was
no hotel or motel that would admit us. If i sit and add up all the
"colored" toilets and drinking fountains in my life and all of the
back-of-the-buses or the Jim Crow railway cars or the places i
couldn't go, it adds up to one great ball of anger.
And so, when i saw these NAACP people, i was ready to do
whatever it was that they were going to do. But they were very
confusing. One day i was hanging around in the office and two men
were talking about nonviolence and self-control. Then he walked
around the room asking everybody questions.
"What would you do if they pushed you ?"
"Nothing. I'd j ust keep on doing what i came to do."
"What would you d o if they kicked you?"
"I'd pray to the Lord to forgive them for their sins."
"What would you do if they spit on you?"
"I'd just go on singing."
Well , that was just too much for me. I could take someone
pushing me, hitting me, kicking me, but to sit there and let some
craka dog spit on me, well, just the idea of it made me want to
fight. To me, if someone spit on you, it was worse than hitting you,
especially if they spit in your face. I tried to tell myself that i would
just sit there and take it, but every muscle in my body, every instinct
i had, rebelled against it. The man continued around the room
asking everybody the same questions. When he came to me, 1
answered the same, too, except for the spitting question.
"I don't know," i told him.
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I just don't know."
"Well, little sister, we can see that you're just not ready. If you
want your freedom, there's no sacrifice that's too big to make."
Everybody looked at me as if i was some kind of stupid idiot. 1
felt bad, but i still couldn't get used to the idea of letting somebody
spit on me. The man said i wasn't ready, and i had to agree with
him.
When i think back to those days, i feel such admiration and
respect for the spirit of struggle and sacrifice that my people ex­
hibited. They went up against white mobs, water hoses, vicious
dogs, the Ku Klux Klan, trigger-happy nightstick-wielding police,
armed only with their belief in j ustice and their desire for freedom.

I remember how i felt in those days. I wanted to be an amer­
ikan j ust like any other amerikan. I wanted a piece of amerika's
apple pie. I believed we could get our freedom just by appealing to
the consciences of white people. I believed that the North was really
interested in integration and civil rights and equal rights. I used to
go around saying "our country," "our president," "our govern­
ment." When the national anthem was played or the pledge of
allegiance spoken, i stood at attention and felt proud. I don't know
what in the hell i was feeling proud about, but i felt the juice of
patriotism running through my blood.
I believed that if the South could only be like the North, then
everything would be all right. I believed that we Black people were
really making progress and that the government, the president, the
supreme kourt, and the congress were behind us, so we couldn't go
wrong. I believed that integration was really the solution to our
problems. I believed that if white people could go to school with us,
live next to us, work next to us, they would see that we were really
good people and would stop being prejudiced against us. I believed
that amerika was really a good country, like my teachers said in
school, "the greatest country on the face of the earth." I grew up
believing that stuff. Really believing it. And, now, twenty-odd years
later, it seems like a bad joke.
Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their
freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were
oppressing them. Once you study and really get a good under­
standing of the way the system in the United States works, then you
see, without a doubt, that the civil rights movement never had a
chance of succeeding. White people, whether they are from the
North or from the South, whether it was in 1960 or 1980, benefit
from the oppression of Black people. Those who believe that the
president or the vice-president and the congress and the supreme
kourt run this country are sadly mistaken. The almighty dollar is
king; those who have the most money control the country and,
through campaign contributions, buy and sell presidents, con­
gressmen, and judges, the ones who pass the laws and enforce the
laws that benefit their benefactors.
The rich have always used racism to maintain power. To hate
someone, to discriminate against them, and to attack them because
of their racial characteristics is one of the most primitive, reaction­
ary, ignorant ways of thinking that exists.
A war between the races would help nobody and free nobody
and should be avoided at all costs. But a one-sided race wa. with
Black people as the targets and white people shooting the guns is

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worse. We will be criminally negligent, however, if we do not deal
with racism and racist violence, and if we do not prepare to defend
ourselves against it.

STRANGER

Everything you love
is from a different world.
Hungry,
you turn your nose up
at my peas and rice.

Chapter 9

was taken to Roosevelt Hospital in
Metuchen, new jersey, and shackled to the bed by my
foot. Dr. Garrett had established that i was one month
pregnant. When he visited me he demanded that the
shackles be removed at once (based on the elementary
principle that proper treatment, both mental and
physical, of a woman threatening miscarriage would
not seem to include being chained to a bedpost). My
mental stability was also threatened by the round-the­
clock guards who sat outside my hospital room with
shotguns trained at my head.
After ten days, i was discharged from the hospital
over the objections of my doctor, brought to the mid­
dlesex county j ail for men, and kept in solitary con­
finement from February 1 974 until May 1 974.
At first, they wouldn't even give me milk. Since
pork was served as a staple meat almost daily, i began
to slowly starve. (In county jails it goes like this: one
sheet, one horse blanket, a metal cup ; your cell is
raided if you have luxuries, like salt.) They did every­
thing they could to thwart the care Dr. Garrett was
trying to give me. They hired their own doctor and
insisted that whenever my doctor saw me, their man
had to be present. This meant a severe limitation on
the number of visits Dr. Garrett could arrange because
their doctor happened often "not to make it" out to
the prison on the days examinations had been agreed
to and scheduled.
My lawyers had initiated a lawsuit against the
state of new jersey in federal court charging medical
maltreatment and dietary abuse. Before the date the
hearing was scheduled, i was extradited to the State of
New York, which made the federal court action moot.

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When i arrived at Rikers Island again, i was anemic and mal­
nourished, according to my entrance physical. New jersey had
been giving me iron pills, but i was anemic up to the last blood test
before giving birth.
The pregnancy, or "special," diet at Rikers, in addition to the
regular food, was powdered milk, juice, and a hard-boiled egg
daily. This was my diet until i gave birth, and things seemed to go
normally.
Meanwhile, the lawyers obtained another court order from the
New York court permitting Dr. Garrett to continue treating me.
When he first came to Rikers, i was in the infirmary. They told him
the court order was "no good" and that he couldn't see me. I was
left in a room for three days with a woman who turned out later to
have active tuberculosis. It was May and they had turned the heat
off. It got cold again and women who were having seizures, meth­
adone withdrawal, and one sister who they said had pneumonia all
piled blankets on their beds. The sister got worse and worse.
Finally, they brought her to Elmhurst Hospital where they dis­
covered she did have tuberculosis. I found this out later, when she
was returned to Rikers, kept in isolation, and the doctors wore
masks and gloves when they visited her.
I also had monilia, a vaginal discharge, which worsened be­
cause the Montefiore Hospital doctors assigned to Rikers could not
agree about how it should be treated. They refused to treat the
condition at all until my culture was returned from Elmhurst Hos­
pital. By the time they managed to get the culture back, the whole
inside of my thigh was chapped raw from the discharge, and i could
barely walk.
Montefiore Hospital and the Health and Hospital Corpora­
tion went to court to prevent Dr. Garrett from delivering my baby.
Their position was that since i was a prisoner it was not necessary
for me to have the doctor of my choice. They also said he was
"disruptive" because, when he did manage to see me, he "often
wrote in my chart," which they found very disturbing. The kourt
upheld them. I was only a prisoner!
I went into labor the morning of September 1 0, 1974, at 4
A.M. on 2 Main at Rikers, where i had been kept in the psycho
ward. I got out of bed, took a shower, braided my hair, and packed.
My labor was mild, a pinch every half hour, which rapidly became
a pinch every fifteen minutes. At 1 1 A.M. i was sure i was on my way,
but i had no doctor to confirm it, and i refused to go to the
infirmary. Around noon i asked to call Dr. Garrett and they some­
how got hold of him. (He was at Elmhurst Hospital trying to

persuade them to let him deliver my baby. ) At about 3 P.M., he
arrived at Rikers and i went up to the infirmary to meet him. He
told me that i was "effaced" and definitely in labor. I would not
allow the other doctors there to examine me.
I was taken to Elmhurst Hospital in a motorcade. It looked to
me like a million police cars buzzing around the vehicle in which i,
a woman in labor, was riding. And they all followed. Into Elmhurst
Hospital and up to the delivery room. They surrounded the hospi­
tal.
There was a demonstration outside of Elmhurst Hospital in
support of my right to choose the doctor who would deliver my
baby, and Evelyn and Dr. Garrett held a press conference at the
hospital to explain the situation. There were actually two po­
licewomen inside the labor room and several outside. I was having
contractions every five minutes. Finally, i let one of their doctors, a
resident, examine me to see how the labor was progressing-which
turned out to be a terrible mistake. When he finished, i was
bleeding. After that, there was no way I would let any of them touch
me again. I ordered them to bring me a stethoscope (to see if the
baby's heart was beating normally) and a few other instruments i
would need because, i said, "I am delivering the baby myself."
It was a standoff for a couple of hours. Then a nurse told me to
walk around to ease the pain and encourage labor. I got up, then
pretended to fall out (knowing how afraid they were of lawsuits),
and the doctors rushed over to pick me off the floor. I knew they
were worried. I stated again, "I am delivering the baby myself." I
checked the baby's heart with the stethoscope. It was beating
normally.
That, or the press conference, or the demonstration outside of
the building seemed to do it. They told me that if i signed a release
statement absolving them of all responsibility, they would let Dr.
Garrett deliver my baby. I signed, making certain that they had no
control over Dr. Garrett or over anything having to do with my
labor. And that was that.
He took over. He examined me, listened to the baby's heart,
and, at some point, broke my water. He explained carefully every­
thing that would happen and answered all my questions. He gave
me a local anesthetic in the cervix. I didn't want Demerol or a
saddle block, but the paracervical block seemed O.K. At this point
i was very tired.
After that i was still in labor but felt little pain. I went to sleep
for a while. I woke up about 3 :30 A.M. and i could feel the baby
lowering and thought i could feel the baby's head. I called the

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I44

nurse. She said, without looking, that i wasn't "ready" yet. When i
insisted, she looked and went running for Dr. Garrett. They
wheeled me into delivery, he gave me a local anesthetic, and did the
episiotomy. I pushed three times and she was here. At 4:00 A.M.,
Kakuya Amala Olugbala Shakur was born. I said, "Check that
baby out" (just to ensure her subsequent safety). The birth itself
was peaceful and beautiful-out of sight. It's very important for a
woman to go through the birth experience with people she trusts.
Later that day, September 1 1 , they still hadn't brought me the
baby. Dr. Garrett had gone home to sleep and, when he returned, at
6 P.M. that day, i still hadn't seen the baby. He reminded them that i
was supposed to breastfeed her. They told him he hadn't "written a
prescription" for breastfeeding. Finally, they brought me the baby
and i breastfed her every four hours-another incredibly beautiful
experience. The nurses from the nursery were very friendly and
kind and kept me informed about the baby's condition. But the
staff in D-l l , the psycho ward where i was kept in a tiny, guarded
room, were something else again.
They allowed me only one shower a day. No toothbrush or
toothpaste, only mouthwash. They don't furnish it, a friend can't
bring it, and the prison won't allow it. I had to beg them for a bra
while i was nursing. The prison refused to let me bring one. Many
strange doctors tried to examine me to hasten my discharge and
get rid of me. I came close to physically brawling with a couple of
them because i refused their examinations. Finally, they discharged
me anyway, without the consent of my doctor. The Commissioner
of Corrections, Benjamin Malcolm, had signed a paper taking all
responsibility for my discharge.
They put me in an ambulance, chained me to a stretcher, and
brought me back to the Women's House of Detention at Rikers
Island. They took me straight to the infirmary and said, "You will
have to stay here and be examined." I was really depressed, having
been separated so abruptly from my baby. I said, "I don't want to
be here. I won't be examined here. Send me to PSA [punitive
segregation area: solitary confinement], anywhere. I don't care. I
just have to be somewhere by myself. Just leave me alone."
That's not quite what they did. When i refused examination, i
walked out of the infirmary and they called the goon squad (several
large female officers). They all jumped on me and started beating
me. They had me on the floor--eventually my arms and legs were
chained. They dragged me by the chains to PSA and stopped only
when a nurse asked them to please stop. So they put me on a
mattress and dragged the mattress. They took me to the observa-

tion room and left me, hands and feet cuffed. I had no sanitary
napkins, no means to wash myself. The cuffs cut into my skin (the
scars are still visible), and my wrists were bleeding. Later i found
out that i had received an infraction for slapping an officer in the
face while they were beating me.
I still refused their medical examination. They finally brought
me napkins. I was left on a mattress, on the floor, no bed and no
shower. I was there for two weeks. I continued to refuse all their
medical attention, insisting that Dr. Garrett examine me. I refused
to eat, so eventually my breasts, which were full of milk, stopped
hurting. They offered doctors of all kinds and drugs (mainly tran­
quilizers). They sent the psychiatrist, who had the nerve to ask me
if i was depressed. The Disciplinary Board met in front of my cell
and gave me an additional sentence of fourteen days in PSA. All
other inmates were cleared out of PSA. During this time i was still
refusing most food. I was so weak i fainted a couple of times. At
that time it was also Ramadan, when it is forbidden to eat until
sundown for the whole two weeks. I j ust ate once a day, when the
food was edible, and for the first few days I ate nothing at all.
After two weeks, they said, "If you agree to be vaginally
searched, you can go to your floor." I did and went to my floor. The
next day the captain came down to my cell and informed me that
they had decided to lock me up again for refusing a complete
physical from the medical staff assigned to Rikers from Montefiore
Hospital. What had happened was that when i was returned to my
floor they told me that Dr. Garrett had been permitted to examine
me and that he was at Rikers Island, that my lawyer had gone to
court and the court had ruled that i could be examined by Dr.
Garrett. So i waited. A white doctor came in and said in order for
me to see my doctor, i must see him and be examined by him first. I
refused. Then they brought in a Black doctor, who greeted me with,
"Hey, soul sister. " He was really sneaky. I refused him, too. So Dr.
Garrett was forced to leave and I was put back in PSA. They
threatened me with administrative segregation, so i sat on the floor
and refused to move when my sentence in PSA was up. They gave
me an infraction and a verbal reprimand and said the vaginal
search would be sufficient. Then the next day they locked me up
agam.
This time, i was locked in my cell for a month. I continued to
refuse most food. They let me out to shower whenever they felt like
it. I began a hunger strike at one point, and after a few days in the
tiny cell i was sick. I wondered how long i would have to hold out.
Evelyn had filed a writ of habeas corpus before the brooklyn

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federal kourt against Commissioner Malcolm and Essie Murph,
superintendent of the Women's House of Detention on Rikers, to
force them to release me from punitive segregation. I was to appear
in kourt for the hearing, but I didn't know the date. Then a deputy
told me, "Your court date's been postponed. And your lawyer sends
her advice: see a doctor." It was a lie. But I believed it. I was
examined by the prison doctors under what I thought was Evelyn's
advice.
So i was no longer locked. Just in j ail. And separated from my
child.

LEFTOVERS-WHAT I S LEFT

After the bars and the gates
and the degradation,
What is left?
After the lock ins and the lock outs
and the lock ups,
What is left?
I mean, after the chains that get entangled

in the grey of one's matter,
After the bars that get stuck
in the hearts of men and women,
What is left?
After the tears and disappointments,
After the lonely isolation,
After the cut wrist and the heavy noose,
What is left?
I mean, like, after the commissary kisses

and the get-your-shit-off blues,
After the hustler has been hustled,
What is left?
After the murderburgers and the goon squads
and the tear gas,
After the bulls and the bull pens
and the bull shit,
What is left?
Like, after you know that god
can't be trusted,
After you know that the shrink
is a pusher,

that the word is a whip
and the badge is a bullet,
What is left?
After you know that the dead
are still walking,
After you realize that silence
is talking,
that outside and inside
are just an illusion,
What is left?
I mean, like, where is the sun?
Where are her arms and
where are her kisses ?
There are lip-prints on my pillow­
i am searching.
What is left?
I mean, like, nothing is standstill
and nothing is abstract.
The wing of a butterfly
can't take flight.
The foot on my neck is part
of a body.
The song that i sing is part
of an echo.
What is left?
I mean, like, love is specific.
Is my mind a machine gun?
Is my heart a hacksaw?
Can i make freedom real ? Yeah !
What is left?
I am at the top and bottom
of a lower-archy.
I am an earth lover
from way back.
I am in love with
losers and laughter.
I am in love with
freedom and children.
Love is my sword
and truth is my compass.
What is left?

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Chapter 1 0

I4 8

he next several years of high school passed
uneventfully. Because i was spending weekends with
my mother, we became closer. During my seventeenth
year, however, i decided to quit school, get a job, and
live on my own.
My entrance into the working world was a rude
awakening. I didn't even know what most of the want
ads meant. Auditor, copywriter, accounts receivable,
key punch operator were all foreign words to me.
Every day i hit the pavement with my best "office­
looking" clothes on and a pair of high-heel torture
shoes. Every day i came home more frustrated than the
day before. I didn't know how to do anything, had no
experience, and was Black to boot. Finally, i paid some
employment agency one or two weeks' salary for the
privilege of getting me one of those dingy, boring,
$95 -dollar-a-week jobs. I was one of those slaves
where you pay a fifth of your salary for taxes, some
more for social security, another $5 a month for union
dues, and the rest was not even enough to die on.
It seemed that the whole world was made up of
things i couldn't afford. After i paid the rent on my
furnished room, spent carfare, and bought food, i had
just enough money to buy an air sandwich. The only
saving grace was that i didn't have too much time to
hang out. I was going to night school, so i would leave
my boring job and go to boring night school to di­
agram sentences, memorize garbage, and prepare for a
high school diploma that meant nothing in the job
market. My life was being spent pushing around
meaningless papers that had nothing to do with liv­
ing. I wasn't doing anything positive. I wasn't making
anything, creating anything, or contributing to anything. After a while, i wanted to tell them to take their

papers and their job and shove it.
But at first i wasn't like that. After weeks of looking for a job, i
was grateful just to have one. I didn't think about low pay, indecent
working conditions, no medical benefits, only one week vacation. I
was just happy to be working. I identified with the job and talked
about "our" company and told people what "we" manufactured. I
wasn't making two cents over lunch money and talked like i owned
the place. I remember once i was working at some joint where they
made trailers. I had a job pushing papers. I told one of my aunt's
friends that she should buy one of those trailers if she ever wanted
one. She looked at me like i was crazy. "Why ?" she asked. "Are they
going to give me a discount?" I felt so stupid. It hit me. They
wouldn't even give me a discount and i was working there.
The longer i worked at those places, the shorter my patience
got. Half the time i didn't even want to hear that rinky-dink stuff
they talked about at the office. I got sick of listening to gossip about
the bosses and this and that and who was messing with who. After
a while, i stayed pretty much to myself, and when i wasn't busy i
would stick a book between some pages and read. That was back in
the mid-sixties and papers were filled with stories about riots.
At the time, i really didn't know what to think about the riots.
The only thing i can remember thinking was that i wanted to see
the rioters win. In the office there was a group of secretaries who
worked for the president or the vice-presidents. They looked down
on those of us who worked in the general office and treated us like
we were nothing. One day, i was in the bathroom and one secretary
came in. She was spraying hair spray on a puffed-up French roll that
was so hard it looked like it had been baked on. She began talking
about this and that. I was surprised because she never talked to me.
Then she started about the riots, "what a shame it was" that "those
people" were so stupid and dumb for rioting because they were just
tearing up their own neighborhoods and burning down their own
houses. I didn't say anything. She prodded: "I said, isn't it a
shame? Isn't it?" I didn't know what to say. It was true that Black
people were burning down Black neighborhoods, but i didn't know
how to deal with the question. She kept insisting. Finally, i said,
"Yes," and walked out.
I was disgusted with myself. I hadn't wanted to agree with her,
but i didn't know what else to say. I spent half the night thinking
until i felt i had the answer. A few days later, the subject came up
again. This time the whole bunch of front-office secretaries, who
were friendly with the office manager, came into the general office.
Before they had a chance to get any words out after "riot," i was on

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their case. "What do you mean, they're burning down their houses?
They don't own those houses. They don't own those stores. I'm
glad they burned down those stores because those stores were
robbing them in the first place !" They stood with their mouths
open.
After that, the office manager went out of her way to hassle
me. Miscellaneous whites began to ask my opinion about the riots,
and i made sure they weren't disappointed. I knew it wouldn't be
long before they fired me. The only reason i didn't quit was that i
had nowhere to go and nothing else lined up. When i was finally
fired, i was relieved.
Because my girlfriend Bonnie and i read a lot of fiction and poetry,
we thought we were intellectuals. Neither of us had finished high
school, but we used to go to this place on Broadway called the West
End, dressed in what we believed to be our scholastic finery. It was
one of those real college-type places, with pastrami sandwiches and
pitchers of dark beer. We sat around trying to look "deep" until
someone sat down and talked to us. After a while, we made friends
with some African students who were studying at Columbia.
I loved to listen to the Africans. They were intense, serious, and
had so much dignity. I was introduced to African customs, and they
spent hours explaining the various aspects of their cultures. Bonnie
asked about their marriage ceremonies because she was dying to
get married. I asked about the food because i loved it: curried
chicken, groundnut stew (chicken in peanut sauce), and corn bread
that you cook over the stove. You would break off a little piece, roll
it into a ball, dip your thumb in the middle and make a spoon that
you would fill with gravy and eat. It really made me think about
how bad they've done us. We know everything about spaghetti and
egg rolls and crepes suzette, but we don't know the first thing about
our own food. When i was a little kid, if you had asked me what
Africans ate, i would have answered, "People !"
One day, Vietnam came up. It was around 1 964 and the
movement against the war had not yet blown up in full force.
Someone asked me what i thought. I didn't have the faintest idea.
Back then, the only thing i read in the papers was the headlines,
crime stories, comics, or the horoscope. I said, "It's �ll right, i
guess." All of a sudden there was complete silence. "Would you
mind explaining, sister, what you mean by 'it's all right, i guess' ?"
The brother's voice was mocking. I said something like "You know,
the war we're fighting over there, you know, for democracy. " It was
clear, from the expressions around me, that i had said the wrong

thing. The brother i had come with looked like he wanted to crawl
under the floor. "Who's fighting for democracy?" somebody asked.
"We are. The United States." And then, as an afterthought, i added,
"You know, they're over there fighting communism. Fighting for
democracy." The brother held his head in his hands as if he had a
headache. I knew i had said something wrong, but i couldn't figure
out what. Thinking i had failed to state my case strongly enough, i
continued repeating everything i had heard on television. Babbling.
Which only made matters worse.
When i finished, the brother asked me if i knew anything
about the history of Vietnam. I didn't. He told me. He explained
French colonialization, exploitation, brutalization, the starvation
and illiteracy; the long fight waged and won in the North and the
u.s. involvement in propping up a phony government after the
French got their butts kicked.
The brother was talking about names, places, and events just
like he was from Vietnam or something. I sat there with my mouth
hanging open. He knew all this stuff and he wasn't even studying
history. I couldn't believe that this African, who didn't even live in
the u.s. or in Asia, could know more than me who had friends and
neighbors who were fighting over there.
Then he defined the u.s. government's role, that it was fighting
for money, to defend the interests of u.s. corporations and to
establish military bases. I didn't know whether to believe him or
not. I had never heard of such a thing. "What about democracy?" i
asked him. "Don't you believe in democracy ?" Yes, he said, but the
government the u.s. was supporting was not a democracy but a
bloodthirsty dictatorship. He started running all kinds of names
and dates on me and there was no way i could respond. There he
was, talking about the u.s. government just like somebody would
talk about a criminal. I just couldn't relate to it. But my mind was
blown.
Despite that, i continued saying the first thing that came into
my head: that the u.s. was fighting communists because they
wanted to take over everything. When someone asked me what
communism was, i opened my mouth to answer, then realized i
didn't have the faintest idea. My image of a communist came from
a cartoon. It was a spy with a black trench coat and a black hat
pulled down over his face, slinking around corners. In school, we
were taught that communists worked in salt mines, that they
weren't free, that everybody wore the same clothes, and that no one
owned anything. The Africans rolled with laughter.
I felt like a bona fide clown. One of them explained that

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communism was a political-economic system, but i wasn't listen­
ing. I was just digging on myself. I had been hooping and hollering
about something that i didn't even understand. I knew i didn't
know what the hell communism was, and yet i'd been dead set
against it. Just like when you're a little kid and they get you to
believe in the bogeyman. You don't know what the hell the
bogeyman is, but you hate him and you're scared of him.
I never forgot that day. We're taught at such an early age to be
against the communists, yet most of us don't have the faintest idea
what communism is. Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who
his enemy is. I started remembering all the stupid stuff people told
me when i was little. "Don't trust West Indians because they'll stab
you in the back." "Don't trust Africans because they think they are
better than we are." "Don't hang out with Puerto Ricans because
they all stick together and will gang up on you."
I had learned, through experience, that they were all lies told
by stupid people, but i never thought i could be so easily tricked
into being against something i didn't understand. It's got to be one
of the most basic principles of living: always decide who your
enemies are for yourself, and never let your enemies choose your
enemies for you.
After that, i began to read about what was happening in
Vietnam. What the Africans had said was true. There were also
articles about the u.s. army in Vietnam, their involvement in tor­
ture and forcing Vietnamese women to sell their bodies j ust to
survive.
I was so confused. It just didn't make any sense to me. "Our
government couldn't do anything that bad," i told Bonnie. There
had to be some other information. I couldn't even understand what
"we" were doing there in the first place. Some kind of treaty, they
said, but it didn't make any sense. I got so disgusted at one point
that i said i wasn't going to read the news anymore.
"Ignorance is bliss," Bonnie said.
"The hell it is," i answered. I damn sure didn't want to be as
ignorant as i had been. When you don't know what's going on in
the world you're at a definite disadvantage. I decided i 'd keep trying
to follow what was happening, but i still couldn't believe the u.s.
was doing all the foul things i was reading in the newspapers.
"What do you mean, you don't believe it?" Bonnie asked. "Just
take a look at what they're doing to you."
The difference between the Africans and the other friends i
hung out with that summer was startling. I remember one day at
the beach. Everybody is hee-hee happy. It's party time. A multi-

colored umbrella stands defiantly against the breeze. Blankets and
silly-looking beach towels color the beach, along with soda cans
and bottles of Bacardi and Johnnie Walker Black. Healthy-looking
Black men, wearing turned-down sailor hats and college sweat­
shirts with cutoff sleeves, lug ice chests and other stuff back and
forth. An improvised outdoor sound system has been hooked up
and Martha and the Vandellas are wailing in the background.
I am insisting on reading James Baldwin even though the wind
keeps flapping the pages. Anguished voices scream and moan from
the pages. Compressed ghettos threaten to explode. Poverty and fire
and brimstone boil over into a deadly stew, but the "beautiful"
people refuse to let me read in peace. My girlfriend has insisted on
"fixing me up" with "Mr. Wonderful," who turns out to be an
egomaniac decked out in monogrammed swimming trunks, a
matching terrycloth robe, and a monogrammed towel to boot. Mr.
Wonderful consents to grace me with his presence. His looks and
manner tell me that i should be grateful because he is definitely
what's happening. His ride is a red MG convertible, his crib is in
Esplanade Gardens, and his gig is an assistant manager for some
bank downtown. He is kool from his reel-to-reel tapedeck to his
color TV, right down to his shaggy "bachelor rug," which he
leeringly tells me about.
He drinks Remy Martin cognac and Harvey's Bristol Cream,
uses a cologne i can't pronounce, and i wait, expectantly, for him to
tell me his brand of toothpaste. He goes on and on about his
trinkets and status symbols. "Look at this monogrammed mother­
fucker," i think to myself. He is smug and insinuating. A Black
version of "Bachelor Knows Best," or some such thing. I want to go
back to James Baldwin, but i am surrounded by a group of people
that talk too loud, looking and thinking somewhat like Mr. Won­
derful. They are talking about Karmann Ghias, Porsches, Cor­
vettes, and other cars that are deemed "in."
The conversation drifts on to co-ops and high-rise apartment
complexes. A young man, who has mentioned more than once that
he is an accountant, tells us the benefits of buying "property" on
the Island. An insurance salesman says that he sells insurance out
on the Island and pulls some business cards out of a little silver­
colored case which he "just happens to have handy" in his beach
bag. A redheaded schoolteacher who has eyes for the accountant
says that she has always wanted a house on the Island with a big
kitchen. After talk about the Island has exhausted itself, the con­
versation turns to places to go. French and Mexican restaurants are
definitely "in," with a restaurant that sells fifty different kinds of

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crepes winning hands down. One of the men, who is a poverty
pimp, says that he has moved his offices to the Red Rooster bar and
restaurant. Somebody laughingly asks if he isn't afraid to go into
Harlem "with all them niggas." Everybody has some favorite res­
taurant on top of some building downtown. They don't talk about
the food, just the scenery. Mr. Wonderful says he has a Playboy key
and often eats at the Playboy Club.
I smile uneasily, feeling out of place. All this talk is giving me a
headache. Some fraternity brothers invite me to dance. One tells me
that i look like a Delta girl. "How does a Delta girl look ?" i ask.
"Just like you in a swimsuit." Mr. Wonderful glares at them. I am
picking up snatches of conversation from all around me. Talks of
grants, poverty programs, and democratic politics. Talk of the
NFL, and the football season. Talk of Bergdorf Goodman, Bloom­
ingdale'S, and Saks Fifth Avenue. About speedboats and cruisers
which nobody owns but everybody wants to.
Whiskey flows like water, and the speedboats turn into yachts.
Everybody is just crazy about the islands: Jamaica, Bermuda,
Nassau. Everybody is so chic. I'm so tired of hearing about it that I
want to send them somewhere by way of foot-mine ! It's a disgrace.
Social workers talking about their clients like dogs, teachers who
don't like to teach. A probation officer complaining about how
dangerous his job is. A bunch of money-worshipers putting on a
front for each other. Somebody asks me if i have my thing together.
"Which thing?" i want to know. I take a walk up to the house to get
away from it all. Some women are in the bathroom smoking reefer
and blowing their hair dry. I go fishing in my bag for some aspirin.
"Where'd you buy your suit?" one asks me. I don't want to say
Klein's, but i say it anyway. "They have some nice things, some­
times," she says without conviction, dismissing me as a bargain
basement case. They go back to talking about people and hair
going back. They are putting on makeup to look like Black Barbie
dolls on the beach.
I go back outside feeling like i'm from another planet. I feel
lonely and serious. Something has been happening to me, a change
that has been a long time coming. I want to be real. Am i the only
bad-doing, hand-to-mouth, barely-making-it Black woman there?
The struggle i 've been going through and the struggle i 've been
seeing is too hard to lie about and i don't even want to try. I want to
help free the ghetto, not run away from it, leaving my people
behind. I don't want to style and profile in front of nobody. I want
somebody i can relate to and talk about serious shit with.
This party is a lost cause. I get my beach towel and my book

and ease on down the beach a little piece. Looking out at the ocean,
i wonder how many of our people lie buried there, slaves of another
era. I'm not quite sure what freedom is, but i know damn well what
it ain't. How have we gotten so silly, i wonder. I get back off into
James Baldwin. I don't give a damn if Sag Harbor sags into
oblivion. Me and James Baldwin are communicating. His fiction is
more real than this reality.
My patience was zero. I didn't want to wait for something to
happen. I was into living and living for now. I was hungry, starving
for life, but at the same time i was growing more and more cynical
every day. I wanted to go everywhere, do everything, and be every­
thing, all at the same time. I wanted to experience everything, know
how everything felt. I had many zigzag conflicting ideas rolling
around in my head at the same time. One day i was happy just to be
alive and young and moving. The next day i felt like the world was
coming to an end. Everything in my life was jagged, sharp, un­
finished edges. Nothing happened calmly. Nothing was like i had
thought it would be when i was little.
My friends were dying from OD and going into the army. My
girlfriends had babies and were looking and sounding old. Nice old
men sitting in the park weren't nice old men at all but were busy
masturbating under their newspapers. I got so i didn't believe in
anything. It seemed that everybody was in some kind of bag, the
dope bag, the whiskey brown paper bag, the j esus bag, the love
bag, the sex bag, the make-it bag, and none of those bags were
doing anybody any good. I was looking for my own bag, but the
pickings were slim. I kept on looking nevertheless, running and
moving and hanging out until i was running myself ragged. One
day i'd be downtown hanging out with my hippy, blippy (Black
hippy) friends. The next night i'd be uptown hanging out with the
hustlers. But nothing seemed like it was for real, you know ? The
same dudes who would be talking slick and sniffing coke out of
$50 bills one day would be scrounging and begging for a loan the
next. Even the most successful hustlers seemed to be nothing but
flunkies and potential fall guys for the mafia. My friends from
downtown weren't much better. At best, most of them were profes­
sional escape artists, into escaping the problems of the Black com­
munity or those of the white community. Some of them tried to
escape through drugs, tripping over worlds that didn't exist on
some kind of inner-space odyssey. But in their case, the drugs were
usually not entirely self-destructive, although i know at least one
who zoomed dead out of this world and didn't come back.

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Through my hippy/blippy friends, i got turned on to a lot of things,
though. I got into poets like Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Fer­
linghetti, all kinds of novelists, music, food, etc. I didn't relate to
everything i checked out, but my horizons got a whole lot broader.
My growing impatience with petty bourgeois upward-bound
"Negroes" came to a head when i went to work with a Black
employment agency. Evelyn had gotten me a job there as a typist.
The agency was located in Rockafella Center in the same building
with Johnson Publications, the publishers of Ebony and Jet maga­
zines. I was happy as hell to get the job since i was tired of working
for white people. The people in the office were nice and the at­
mosphere was completely lacking in tension. The boss was decent
enough, and i had a pretty good relationship with him and his
secretary, under whom i worked. At first i was excited, glad to be
around so many Black people who seemed to be doing so good.
Everybody was into making it, moving up the ladder. Black men
and women with long lists of degrees, and briefcases, were in and
out of the place. They were sharp, dressed to a tee, and talking
about junior executive training programs, poverty programs, etc.
Some of them talked about those companies as if they were going
to be the president of the board of directors in five years.
Once in a while i went to lunch with a young man who
worked at Johnson Publications. But we always got into arguments.
Especially about Ebony magazine. Half the time, in the fashion
section they would have these elaborate evening gowns that cost
thousands of dollars. When i asked him what Black people could
afford to buy them and whether they were gonna wear them to the
corner bar, he got insulted. He was one of those Black people who
think that you are free if you can go in a store and buy expensive
things. I told him that the only Black woman who could afford
those dresses was johnson's wife, and he got even more insulted. He
told me that everything was changing, everything was so much
better. I said that if things were so much better, how come every
time a Black person got a good job or was a manager or something,
it was news and was printed in Ebony. Our relationship ended
abruptly when he accused me of always trying to bring Black
people down and make it seem like we don't have nothing. I ended
the matter by cursing him out and that was that.
These Black people went around acting as if there was no such
thing as prejudice and that all you had to do was study and you
could be president of the world. At the agency, we were working
hard for an equal opportunity conference. The idea was to have
Black college graduates from all over the country participate in

interviews with representatives from the major corporations in
amerika. Almost all of the big corporations were involved, and the
graduates paid a substantial fee, plus transportation and hotel fees,
to participate in the conference. It worked like this: students made
out resumes and the corporate personnel officers decided which
applicants they wanted to see. It was a big, plush affair in a major
New York hotel, with the penthouse suite and quite a few lower
floors rented out to the conferencp• 1 just knew that hundreds of
these young, "qualified" Black people were going to get jobs. 1 was
proud to have helped bring the conference about. It lasted a few
days, and by the time it was over, i was ready to go somewhere and
have a good cry.
Some of those Black graduates had spent hundreds of dollars
to come to the conference and didn't have one interview. The only
graduates the corporations even wanted to see were math, science,
engineering, and business majors. Some corporations only wanted
to interview graduates in very specialized categories, like petroleum
engineering or geological engineering. Since most had majored in
subjects like English, history, sociology, etc., they were out of the
running from the j ump.
1 was shocked and upset. After the conference, i went out with
one of the Black "executives" i had met in the agency. "I don't
understand it," i kept telling him. "Why would those companies
pay all that money to participate in the conference if they aren't
really interested in hiring anybody? It doesn't make any sense."
"It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it."
"Huh ? 1 don't understand."
"Listen," he went on, "the government says that in order for
those companies to keep their contracts, they have to at least make
an effort to look for 'qualified Black personnel.' The law doesn't
say they have to hire anybody. The law says they've only got to
look."
1 was furious. They had used poor dumb me just like they use
a drug dealer to conspire against his own people. 1 was part of the
plot and i didn't even know it. There were some Blacks who got
jobs, but mainly the thing was a sham, to make things look good
on paper. My friend and i got stupidly drunk, singing oldies by the
Sherrills on Lexington Avenue, he telling me about what bastards
the bosses were and about the trials and treacheries of the demo­
cratic party machine and telling me how i was gonna get another
job as a go-go dancer in the ladies' room.
About a week later, i made up a resume, described myself as a
college graduate, and was hired as a marketing assistant. 1 didn't

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believe in anything, and i wasn't gonna follow anyone's rules but
my own. I got fired from that job a couple of weeks later, got
another college job, and got fired from that too. I didn't care. I was
going to deal with them just like they dealt with us. One time i got
a job as a bookkeeper. I didn't know the first thing about it, but
after i got the job i bought a couple of "bookkeeping made easy"
books and when i didn't understand something I told them that we
used a different system at the last place i worked.
The job involved a lot of cash and i had to be bonded. When
you get bonded, they do a background check on you. The job
wasn't too bad, and the boss was cool. It was an excellent way to
learn bookkeeping and the insurance business. I knew they would
fire me as soon as the report came in, but i didn't care. One day, my
boss threw a detective's report on my desk. It had my name on it. I
swallowed hard, knowing it was my last day. The more i read it, the
more surprised i became. The report verified everything i had said:
"Subject attended such and such high school," subject . . . gradu­
ated from such and such college," "subject worked at such and
such places." They even reported that i lived on a quiet tree-lined
street and that they had talked to my neighbors and learned that i
was a nice person. I cracked up all the way home. Everything is a lie
in amerika, and the thing that keeps it going is that so many people
believe the lie.
But my patience was getting shorter and my temper was terri­
ble. I was quick to tell people what i thought of them, and even i
was surprised by my bluntness. Bonnie kept telling me, "Slow
down, you're speeding, somebody's gonna give you a ticket." She
was almost as restless and crazy as i was. We would check out
things happening and make a joke of them. The world seemed to
be so big and fixed and we couldn't think of anything to change it.
Bonnie encouraged me to stop lying about going to college and go
for real. "If you're smart enough to fool them, then you're smart
enough to play their game." I knew that what she said made sense,
but i had hated my last days in high school and had no desire to
study anything else.
The only other person who stayed on my case and prodded me
to go back to school was my friend from Kenya. We had grown to
be serious friends. And we dug each other much more as friends
than as lovers. He was studying economics out on Long Island, and
we didn't get a chance to see each other much. Sometimes on the
weekend we would hang out together. He was one of the few people
i knew who was serious about almost everything he did in life and
whose conversation was not just about his small world but about

the whole world. One weekend we had arranged to hang out. I
think we were supposed to go and hear somebody play at Count
Basie's club. My apartment looked like some kind of hurricane had
hit it, and i was trying to ease out the door without letting him in.
Somehow he managed to get a glimpse inside. "No, we aren't going
anywhere," he said. "How can you live like this? If your house
looks like this i can just imagine what your head looks like."
I was embarrassed, but i had to admit he was right. I had
everything thrown every which way, clothes flung all over the place.
It was a wreck. He suggested that instead of going out he would
help me clean up and get organized. "You'll be all right if you just
get yourself organized. You can do almost anything you want as
long as you organize yourself to do it. " I decided he was right. It
was time to get my life in some kind of order. It was time to take
control. Life was like a bus: you could either be a passenger and go
along for the ride, or you could be the driver. I didn't have the
foggiest idea where i wanted to go, but i knew that i wanted to
drive. I decided the first thing i would do was go back to school. I
returned home to live with my mother in her new apartment in
Flushing, Queens.

C U LTURE

i must confess that waltzes
do not move me.
i have no sympathy
for symphonies.
i guess i hummed the Blues
too early,
and spent too many midnights
out wailing to the rain.

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Chapter 1 1

n July 19, 1 973, while i was still
at the middlesex county workhouse, i was brought to
the u.s. district kourt for the eastern district of New
York in Brooklyn, which has jurisdiction over all
federal crimes committed in the counties of Brooklyn
and Queens. I was taken there by federal writ to be
arraigned on an indictment in which Andrew Jackson
and i were accused of having robbed a bank in the
county of Queens on August 23, 1971 . While there
were a lot of indictments against me all over New York
State i didn't even know about that summer, this is one
i surely could not have missed, because the bank sur­
veillance photo taken of the woman holding up the
bank with a gun was put on wanted posters that were
pasted up in every subway station, posted in every
bank and post office, and blown up in full-page news­
paper advertisements. They hit the streets on August
24, 1971, and remained even after my arrest on May

2, 1 973.

I 60

Under the photo was the name Joanne Deborah
Chesimard. Above the photo were the words
" WANTED FOR BANK ROBBERY : $ 1 0,000 re­
ward."
After the feds took a mug shot of me and fin­
gerprinted me, i was arraigned, pled not guilty, and
was returned to the workhouse on the same day. I
heard nothing further about this indictment until Jan­
uary 1 , 1 975, when the feds brought me back to the
eastern district kourt. Only this time it was to have me
photographed.
The prosecutor has made a motion to have me
photographed in the same angle, wearing the same
kind of glasses, wig, and dress as the woman who had

been photographed by the bank cameras during the robbery. The ASSATA
judge, a notorious, racist pig, is sure to grant the motion. I have
I 6I
decided to refuse. As far as i am concerned, the reasons are obvious. You put anybody in a monkey suit and they're gonna end up
looking like a monkey. Besides, someone had told me about some
trick the FBI uses. They take a photo of you in the same angle as the
bank photo and superimpose a transparency of the bank photo
over it. If you are unfortunate enough to have two eyes, a nose, and
lips, in more or less the same place, you end up looking like the
bank robber, no matter what you really look like. When i was
arraigned i had permitted them to take all the photographs of me
they wanted, and that, as far as i was concerned, was enough.
We enter the kourtroom. The judge is on the bench. The (.
kourtroom has been rearranged. FBI agents, with cameras, are
standing on top of tables. A group of federal marshals are buzzing
around nervously like flies that smell rot. They are waiting for
action. Evelyn gets up and says her piece. The judge ignores what
she is saying and orders me to be photographed. I refuse, stating
my objections as strongly as i can. In a hot second, the marshals
and the FBI agents are crawling all over me. They seem to be trying
to jerk my head off my shoulders. The judge has ordered that i am
to be photographed, today, now, and that all the force necessary to
take the pictures in the way the FBI wants to take them is to be
used.
The FBI, the marshals, and i end up on the kourtroom floor,
with me on the bottom. I hear Evelyn in the background. "Let the
record reflect that the marshals are twisting my client's arms behind
her back." "Let the record reflect that the marshals are choking my
client." "Let the record reflect that there are five marshals manhan­
dling my client." Evelyn goes on and on while the marshals twist
me, jerk me, strangle me, kick me, and literally try to beat me into
submission. The assault goes on and on with Evelyn putting it,
blow by blow, into the record. Finally, it is over. The marshals lead
me back into the holding pen. I lie on the bench like a rag doll with
the stuffing hanging out, feeling like i have just been stampeded by
a herd of buffalo.
Evelyn comes back for a lawyer's visit. She looks j ust as tired as
i feel.
"That was unbelievable," she exclaims. "How's your arm ? Are
you okay?"
More or less, i tell her. My body is aching and my bad arm's
numb. I sit back marveling at how cool Evelyn has been. It dawns
on me how hard it must have been for her to watch what was

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happening and then, calmly, put it into the record. I am amazed at
her control. She insists that a nurse be called to check me out.
"Did you hear that shit?" she asks me.
"Yeah, i heard it."
"I can't wait for the record to be transcribed. If they don't
erase it, i think we've got that dumb asshole right on the record. If
they don't erase it, then we can get the stupid moron off the case."
Evelyn is looking triumphant and defiant, like she has just put her
foot up somebody's butt.
"What the hell are you talking about?" i want to know.
"Didn't you hear him ? He said, right on the record, that he
thought you were guilty. He admitted he was prejudiced right on
the record. Didn't you hear him ?"
"I'm afraid i was otherwise occupied. What does it mean ?"
"It means we'll be able to get rid of his stupid ass. Anybody
else is bound to be better. This judge is out to hang you, and he'll
go to any limits to try and convict you. If we're forced to go to trial
in front of him, i'm afraid the only shot we'll have is in an appeals
court."
"I sure hope they don't erase the record."
Evelyn and i sit there speculating on the chances of the record
being changed. Evelyn thinks the judge is too dumb to even realize
what he said. I am afraid that the judge will review the transcript
and then have it changed. Evelyn thinks the judge is too racist and
too arrogant to be worried about the record. It turns out that she is
right. She files a motion, based on the transcript, to have the judge
relieved from the case. After what seems like forever, the judge is
removed and a new judge is assigned.
But before i went to trial on this case, the powers-that-be
decided that i must first be tried on a state kidnapping case in
brooklyn supreme kourt. I had been accused of kidnapping a drug
dealer for ransom on December 28, 1 972. Evelyn was my lawyer
and there were two codefendants. One was Rema Olugbala
(Melvin Kearney), a member of the Black Liberation Army and well
known to me. The other codefendant was a young brother by the
name of Ronald Myers. The pretrial motions were permeated by an
aura of paranoia. Mine. No one i knew had ever heard of Ronald
Myers, and no one understood why he had been targeted for this
particular frame-up. In fact, i wondered if he was some kind of
plant. It all seemed so strange.
Finally, we had a joint conference, which was arranged by a
court order. I asked Rema about Ronald Myers. Rema told me that
as far as he was concerned, Ron was just a brother who happened
to have the misfortune of being framed along with us: an un-

suspecting victim. But everything in this case was so strange that i
couldn't figure it out. A joint legal conference was arranged be­
tween Ronald Myers, his lawyer, a young Black lawyer by the name
of James Carroll, Evelyn, and me. Immediately upon seeing this
brother most of my suspicions disappeared.
He was nineteen but looked like he was about sixteen. He had
a quiet, soft, honest manner that i didn't think any police agent
could feign. He seemed to be just as perplexed and out of it as we
were. As i listened to him talk, i felt a kind of motherly protec­
tiveness toward him. We were revolutionaries, supposedly prepared
for such things. For years we had been preaching about and de­
nouncing pig conspiracies to kill and imprison Black political
activists. But looking at this soft-eyed young Black man, the thing
seemed that much more horrible. Those were very cynical days, and
we had developed very cynical attitudes to deal with it all. We had
become masters at telling bitter, angry jokes about justice and
equality and "democratic freedom." But s �ng this brother
awakened such a sense of righteous indignation in us so-called
veterans that we were all bitten by a sudden burst of energy. I pored
over the discovery material and the police records tirelessly. Rema
was tense, mysterious, and determined in his manner. We knew that
the state was out to get us and we were more determined than ever
not to let them.
The guards came and tore my cell apart. It was clear they were
looking for something, standing on chairs, kneeling on all fours;
they reminded me of bloodhound bitches. They seemed desperate. I
tried to speculate on what they were looking for. One of the Black
guards, who was halfway decent, was looking funny at me. Another
guard, who had always been hostile, looked smug. Shortly after
they left my cell, i tried to hook up with the wire to see what was
going on. Finally i got the news. Rema Olugbala was dead. He had
plunged to his death while trying to escape from the brooklyn
house of detention. The makeshift rope that he was using to lower
himself had broken. I felt too numb to do anything. Or say any­
thing. Some of the sisters helped me piece my cage together. There
was nothing to say. Another Black man had died trying to be free.
Everything was boiling up inside me. I had to do something, and
most of my options seemed absurd.
It wasn't what i would like to have done. It didn't say half of
what i wanted to say. But i guess it was the best thing i could have
done at the moment. I wrote a poem.
For Rema Olugbala-Youngblood
They think they killed you.

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But i saw you yesterday,
standing with your hands in your pockets
waiting for the real deal to go down.
I saw you smiling your "fuck it" smile, blood in your eyes,
your heart pumping freedom
Youngblood !
They think they killed you.
But i saw you yesterday
in the playground.
Black skin, sweaty, shiny,
hurling your ball bomb into the hoop
right on target.
Won't be no game next time
cause you ain't hardly playing.
They think they killed you.
But i saw you yesterday
with your back against the wall,
muscles bulging against the chains,
eyes absorbing truth.
Lips speaking it.
Heart learning how to love.
Head learning who to hate.
Blood ready to flow
towards freedom.
Youngblood !
Youngbloods ain't got no blood to waste
in no syringes, on no barroom floors,
in no strange lands
delaying other youngbloods' freedom.
We don't need no tired blood.
No anemic blood. No blood clots
in our new body.
They think they killed you.
But i saw you yesterday.
All them youngbloods
musta gave you a transfusion.
All that strong blood.
All that rich blood.
All that angry blood
flowing through your veins
toward tomorrow.

The next time we went to kourt, i winced when i saw the
empty chairs. Slouching listlessly, i thought about Rema, com-

pletely unaware of what was being said. There was talk about this
hearing and that hearing and this motion and another and none of
them made the slightest sense to me. But Evelyn was on the case,
letting nothing slide by, citing all of her objections "for the record."
I was bored to death, completely out of it, until the jury selection
process began.
There were two prosecutors: one exceedingly ugly lynch mob­
looking fat guy and another thin, bearded wolfman-looking dude,
rather on the young side. I don't even remember their names. The
judge's name was William Thompson, and he was a Black man,
which surprised me. I guess they assigned the case to him because
they were so sure we would be convicted and they figured a Black
judge would, at least, give the illusion of justice. Thompson was
somewhat of a character, who rarely sat up on the bench but
constantly walked around the kourtroom. While he clearly could
not, by any stretch of the imagination, be accused of ruling in our
favor, and his political career would certainly not have been helped
by our being acquitted, nevertheless the kourtroom did not have
that out-and-out lynch-mob atmosphere we usually encountered.
The jury selection process really stood out in my mind. If
anyone can write a book about how a Black lawyer can pick a j ury
and eliminate hostile, racist, prejudiced j urors from the panel, then
Evelyn is surely the one to write the book. I was fascinated as i
watched her. She was all honey and pie as she started to voir dire
the j urors. At first, almost all of the white jurors began by saying
they had no prejudices. By the time Evelyn finished asking them
questions, we learned they had no Black friends or neighbors,
would object to their children marrying a Black person, or had
referred to Black people as niggers or some other derogatory name.
After a while, many of the whites asked to be excused before Evelyn
even asked them any questions. Most of them preferred to be
excused rather than have their feelings toward Black people, Black
militants, and Black Panthers questioned and explored. When you
think about the fact that the average Black defendant on trial gets
to ask prospective j urors only a few perfunctory questions, you can
see why so many Black people end up in jail. Even with Evelyn
putting everything she had into picking the j ury, it was a long uphill
struggle. But at the end, we managed to get four or five Black
people on the j ury, a remarkable accomplishment anywhere in
amerika, except for D.C. The prosecutor even had the nerve to ask
for extra peremptory challenges so he could bump some of the
jurors off the panel.
The hardest thing in the world for me was to keep my mouth

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I 66

shut in the kourtroom, to sit quietly and suffer silently. Evelyn, well
aware of that fact, happily consented to my acting as co-counsel.
Although she remained skeptical about my ability to cross-examine
major witnesses, she agreed that it would be an excellent idea for
me to make the opening statement. Finally, after days of writing
under the dim nightlight in the cell, i delivered it. I was nervous as
hell, since i have never liked speaking in public, but i tried my best
to express to the jury some of what i was feeling:
Judge Thompson, Brothers and Sisters, men and women of the
jury.
I have decided to act as co-counsel, and to make this opening
statement, not because i have any illusions about my legal abilities,
but, rather, because there are things that i must say to you. I have
spent many days and nights behind bars thinking about this trial,
this outrage. And in my own mind, only someone who has been so
intimately a victim of this madness as i have can do justice to what i
have to say. And if you think that i am nervous, your senses do not
deceive you. It is only because i know that this moment can never
be lived again and that so much depends on it. I have to read»ns
opening statement to you because i am afraid that if i don't, i will
forget half of what i have to say. Please try to bear with me.
This will not be a conventional opening statement. First of all,
because i am not a lawyer, and what has happened to me, and what
has happened to Ronald Myers, does not exist in a vacuum. There
are a long series of events and attitudes that led up to us being here.
When we were sitting in this courtroom, during the jury selec­
tion process, i listened to Judge Thompson tell you about the
amerikan system of justice. He talked about the presumption of
innocence; he talked about equality and justice. His words were
like a beautiful dream in a beautiful world. But i have been await­
ing trial for two and one half years. And justice, in my eyesight, has
not been the amerikan dream. It has been the amerikan nightmare.
There was a time when i wanted to believe that there was justice in
this country. But reality crashed through and shattered all my
daydreams. While awaiting trial i have earned a Ph.D. in justice or,
rather, the lack of it.
I sat next to a pregnant woman who was doing ninety days for
taking a box of Pampers and watched on TV the pardoning of a
president who had stolen millions of dollars and who had been
responsible for the deaths of thousands of human beings. For what?
For peace with honor? Nixon was pardoned without ever standing
trial or being found guilty of a crime or spending one day in jail.
Who else could commit some of the most horrendous, destructive
crimes in history and get paid 200,000 tax dollars a year? Ford
stated that he pardoned Nixon because Nixon's family had suffered

enough. Well, what about thousands of families whose sons gave
their lives in Vietnam? And what about the millions of people who
have been sentenced at birth to poverty, to live like animals and
work like dogs. What about the families who have sons and daugh­
ters in prison, who cannot afford bail or even lawyers for their
children ? Where is justice for them?
What kind of justice is this?
Where the poor go to prison and the rich go free.
Where witnesses are rented, bought, or bribed.
Where evidence is made or manufactured.
Where people are tried not because of any criminal actions but
because of their political beliefs.
Where was the justice for men at Attica?
Where was the justice for Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton,
Clifford Glover?
Where was the justice for the Rosenbergs?
And where is the justice for the Native Amerkftns who we so
presumptuously call Indians ?
I am not on trial here because i am a criminal or because i have
committed a crime. I have never been convicted of a crime in my
life. Ronald Myers is not on trial because he has committed a crime.
He was nineteen years old when he turned himself in, after seeing
his picture in the newspapers. He thought that the police would
immediately see their mistake. I met Ronald Myers for the first time
about eight months ago in the lawyers' conference room. It was a
strange meeting, something i hope i'll never have to go through
again. I was shocked to see how young he was. And no matter what
the outcome of this trial, i will always feel a bitterness about what
has happened to Ronald Myers and what has happened to me.
I do not think that it's just an accident that we are on trial here.
This case is just another example of what has been going on in this
country. Throughout amerika 's history, people have been im­
prisoned because of their political beliefs and charged with criminal
acts in order to justify that imprisonment.
Those who dared to speak out against the injustices in this
country, both Black and white, have paid dearly for their courage,
sometimes with their lives. Marcus Garvey, Stokely Carmichael,
Angela Davis, the Rosenbergs, and Lolita Lebron were all charged
with crimes because of their political beliefs. Martin Luther King
went to jail countless times for leading nonviolent demonstrations.
Why, you are probably asking yourself, would this government
want to put me or Ronald Myers in jail? In my mind, the answer to
that is very simple: for the same reason that this government has
put everyone else in jail who spoke up for freedom, who said give
me liberty or give me death.
During the voir dire process, we asked you about the word
"militant. " There was a reason for that. In the late sixties and the

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I 68

early seventies, this country was in an upheaval. There was a strong
people's movement against the war, against racism, in the colleges,
on the streets, and in the Black and Puerto Rican communities. This
government, local police agencies, the FBI, and the CIA launched
an all-out war against people they considered militants. We are only
finding out now, because of investigations into the FBI and the
CIA, how extensive and how criminal their methods were and still
are. In the same way that witches were burned in Salem, this
government went on a witch-hunt for people they considered "mili­
tant. "
Countless numbers of people were either killed or imprisoned.
The Berrigans, the Chicago 7, the Panther 2 1 , Bobby Seale, and
thousands of antiwar demonstrators were all victims of this witch­
hunt justice. Maybe some of you are saying to yourselves, no
government would do that. Well, all you have to do is check out for
yourselves the history of this country and to look around and see
what is going on today. All you have to do is ask yourselves, who
controls the government? And who are the victims of that control?
Since you have been in this courtroom you have heard the
name Black Liberation Army mentioned over and over. Those of
you in the jury have been questioned as to what you havf read or
seen on television and what your opinions were about the BLA.
Most of you have stated that you thought the Black Liberation
Army was a militant organization. You have said that what you
have read or heard has come from the establishmentarian media.
The major TV and radio networks, the Times, the Post,and the
Daily News. I have read the same articles that you have read. I have
seen the same news programs that you have seen. When it comes to
the media, i have learned to believe none of what i hear and half of
what i see. But i can tell you, if i were just Jane Doe citizen and if i
did not know better, i would've read those articles and come to the
same conclusion: that JoAnne Chesimard, Ronald Myers, and all
other people called militants were a bunch of white-hating, cop­
hating, gun-toting, crazed, fanatical maniacs-fighting for some
abstract, misguided cause.
But one percent of the people in this country control seventy
percent of the wealth. And it is that one percent, the heads of large
corporations, who control the policies of the news media and
determine what you and i hear on radio, read in the newspapers, see
on television. It is more important for us to think abol:tt where the
media gets its information. From the police department qr from the
prosecutor. No major newspaper or television station has ever
asked my lawyers or myself one question concerning anything.
People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television
before they ever see a courtroom. A person who is accused of
stealing a car becomes an international car theft ring. A man is

accused of participating in a drunken brawl and the headlines read
"Crazed Maniac Goes Berserk. "
During the seventies, the media created a front-page headline,
guaranteed to sell newspapers: the Black Liberation Army. Accord­
ing to them, the BLA was everywhere. Almost every other thing
that happened was attributed to the Black Liberation Army. Head­
lines that are sensational sell newspapers. The media shape public
opinion and the results are often tragic.
Before you were sworn as jurors, you were asked about your
knowledge of what the Black Liberation Army is or what it stands
for. However, most of you did say you believed that the Black
Liberation A rmy was a "militant" organization. I would like to
talk about that for a moment. The Black Liberation Army is not an
organization: it goes beyond that. It is a concept, a people's move­
ment, an idea. Many different people have said and done many
different things in the name of the Black Liberation Army.
The idea of a Black Liberation Army emerged from conditions
in Black communities: conditions of poverty, indecent housing,
massive unemployment, poor medical care, and inferior education.
The idea came about because Black people are not free or equal in
this country. Because ninety percent of the men and women in this
country's prisons are Black and Third World. Because ten-year-old
children are shot down in our streets. Because dope has saturated
our communities, preying on the disillusionment and frustration of
our children. The concept of the BLA arose because of the political,
social, and economic oppression of Black people in this country.
And where there is oppression, there will be resistance. The BLA is
part of that resistance movement. The Black Liberation Army
stands for freedom and justice for all people.
While big corporations make huge, tax-free profits, taxes for
the everyday working person skyrocket. While politicians take free
trips around the world, those same politicians cut back food stamps
for the poor. While politicians increase their salaries, millions of
people are being laid off. This city is on the brink of bankruptcy,
and yet hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent on this
trial. I do not understand a govern"fent so willing to spend millions
of dollars on arms, to explore outer space, even the planet Jupiter,
and at the same time close down day care centers and fire stations.
I have read the Declaration of Independence, and i have great
admiration for this statement:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable R ights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes

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destructive of these ends, it is the R ight of the People to alter or
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "
These words are especially meaningful in the year of this
country's bicentennial. I would like to help make this a better world
for my daughter and for all the children of this world; for all the
men and women of this world.
But you understand that the BLA is not on trial here. I am on
trial here. Ronald Myers is on trial here. And the charge is kidnap­
ping and armed robbery, where the so-called victim is a drug
pusher, a seller of heroin, a man called James Freeman.
We live in New York, and it is impossible not to see the horror,
the degradation, and the pain associated with heroin addiction.
Most of you have seen the staggering numbers of young lives
sucked into oblivion, into walking deaths by the use of drugs. Many
of you have seen helpless mothers watch their children turn into
nodding skeletons, whom they can no longer trust. And seen the
dreams, the potential of a whole generation of youngsters drain
away, down into the bottomless pit of a needle. And these victims
also have their victims: the countless number of people who have
been mugged, burglarized, and robbed by drug-made vampires,
who care about nothing else but their poison.
We will show you that James Freeman is a liar. We will show
you that the other prosecution witnesses are all friends, relatives,
lovers, or employees ofJames Freeman and that they are liars. You
will see for yourself that they have conspired and that they have
been coached.
Men and women of the jury, human lives are serious matters. I
have already told you that i have no faith in this system of justice,
and, believe me, i don't. I have seen too much. If there was such a
thing as justice, i wouldn 't be here talking to you now. You have
been chosen to be the representatives ofjustice. You and you alone.
You have said that you could try this case on the basis of evidence.
What i am saying now is not evidence. What the prosecutor says is
not evidence. You may or may not agree with my political beliefs.
They are not on trial here. I have only brought them up to help you
understand the political and emotional context in which this case
comes before you.
Although this court considers us peers, many of you have had
different backgrounds and different learning and life experiences. It
is important that you understand some of those differences. I only
ask that you listen carefully. I only ask that you listen, not only to
what these witnesses say, but to how they say it.
Our lives are no more precious or no less precious than yours.
We ask only that you be as open and as fair as you would want us
to be, were we sitting in the jury box determining your guilt or

innocence. Our lives and the lives that surround us depend on your
fairness. Thank you.

As the prosecution began its case, one witness after the other
took the stand. I don't remember how many there were, but they
were a never-ending parade. The trial was a circus. The carefully
planned, carefully rehearsed case of the FBI and local New York
police began to fall apart from the moment the witnesses were
cross-examined. The prosecution was so desperate to get a convic­
tion in this case that they resorted to stupid, theatrical devices that
backfired. One witness, also a drug dealer, hobbled up to the
witness stand with the "aid" of a cane, looking like he was two
steps from the grave. When asked about the source of his "injuries,"
he stated that he had received them several years ago at the time of
the "kidnapping." Both he and the prosecutor must have forgotten
that just a few days ago he had bebopped into the kourtroom to
pick me out in an identification hearing, looking perfectly healthy.
Under cross-examination, he was forced to admit that he had
entered the kourtroom just a few days before without any visible
limp and without the "aid" of his cane. He was the only witness
who claimed he could positively identify me, because i "had spent
weekends at his house." But he didn't know the color of my eyes.
The so-called major witness, James Freeman, the supposed
"victim," told a real tearjerker about his kidnapping and the forced
ingestion of drugs during it. The prosecution had lightly glossed
over the fact that Freeman was a convicted drug dealer. We knew he
was connected with the FBI in some way, but it was not until he was
cross-examined by James Carroll, Ronald Myers' lawyer, that the
real picture of collusion between him and the FBI came out. Free­
man testified that he was a paid informant for the FBI. When asked
if he had been paid by the FBI to frame me, he said he "couldn't
talk about it."
At the end of the people's case, our motions for a verdict of
dismissal of the indictment were denied, and we put on our defense.
Evelyn and Martha Pitts, a good friend of mine, were working
around the clock. Since we could not afford to pay investigators,
they did all the leg work. Martha, a registered nurse, investigated
Freeman's claim of being drugged. Evelyn was running around like
crazy after kourt was over looking for witnesses to testify. Most of it
seemed futile to me, since i could not conceive of how one finds
defense witnesses in a frame-up. By the time we called our first
witness, Evelyn was looking smug and rubbing her hands together.

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"We've got their ass this time," she grinned. "They didn't use
enough dirt to cover their tracks. "
And they didn't. Records subpoenaed from the state Liquor
Authority proved that the bar was owned by someone else, not by
the witness who had testified to be the owner. The real owner
testified that he had closed the bar before the alleged kidnapping,
that he had visited it every day during the period of time it has
hosted the "kidnapping," and had locked the door as he left and
had given no one permission to use it. The bar had been closed for
one year before the alleged crime. The irrefutable and obvious
conclusion was that, in fact, there was no bar, no "scene" of the
alleged crime, and, therefore, no crime. Subpoenaed medical rec­
ords and expert medical testimony showed that Freeman's stomach
contained only a couple of aspirin, hardly supporting his testimony
that he had been drugged with some drugs he could not identify,
which he had been forced to swallow and which had left him
knocked out for several hours.
Sure enough, on December 8, 1 975 , after four months of trial,
the jury acquitted Ronald Myers and me.

Chapter 1 2

hen i entered Manhattan
Community College i fully intended to major in busi­
ness administration and then graduate into a job in
marketing or advertising. Instead, i took only one
business course. History, psychology, and sociology
interested me more than learning how to sell some­
body something.
I had truly lucked up. I had gone back to school
at a time when struggle and activity were growing,
when Black consciousness and nationalism were on
the upswing. I had also lucked up on the school.
Manhattan Community College had a very high
percentage of Black and Third World students, more
than fifty percent. The level of activity was high, both
on campus and off. The Golden Drums, the Black
organization on campus, whose president was a prin­
cipled, disciplined brother named Henry Jackson,
was pushing for more Black studies courses, Black
teachers, programs more responsive to the needs of
Black students, and cultural awareness. They gave all
kinds of programs on African dancing, drawing, and
more. By word of mouth or by the bulletin board, we
were turned on to concerts, plays, poetry readings, etc.
The Last Poets, a group of young Black poets, knocked
me out. I had always thought of poetry in a European
sense, but The Last Poets spoke in African rhythms,
chanted to the beat of African drums, and talked
about revolution. When we'd leave their place on
125th Street-i think it was called the Blue Guerrilla-we'd be so excited and fired up we didn't even
notice the long subway ride home.
If i was running myself ragged before i went back
to school, now i was flying. I was learning and chang-

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ing every day. Even my image of myself was changing, as well as my
concept of beauty. One day a friend asked me why i didn't wear my
hair in an Afro, natural. The thought had honestly never occurred
to me. In those days, there weren't too many Afros on the set. But
the more i thought about it, the better it sounded. I had always
hated frying my hair-burnt ears, a smokey straightening, and the
stink of your own hair burning. How many nights had i spent
trying to sleep on curlers, bound with scarves that cut into my head
like a tourniquet. Afraid to go to the beach, afraid to walk in the
rain, afraid to make passionate love on hot summer nights if i had
to get up and go to work in the morning. Afraid my hair would "go
back." Back to where? Back to the devil or Africa. The permanent
was even worse: trying to sit calmly while lye was eating its way into
my brain. Clumps of hair falling out. The hair on your head feeling
like someone else's.
And then i became aware of a whole new generation of Black
women hiding under wigs. Ashamed of their hair-if they had any
left. It was sad and disgusting. At the time, my hair was conked,
but the hairdresser said it was "relaxed." To make it natural, i
literally had to cut the conk off. I cut it myself and then stood
under the shower for hours melting the conk out. At last, my hair
was free. On the subway the next day, people stared at me, but my
friends at school were supportive and encouraging. People are right
when they say it's not what you have on your head but what you
have in it. You can be a revolutionary-thinking person and have
your hair fried up. And you can have an Afro and be a traitor to
Black people. But for me, how you dress and how you look have
always reflected what you have to say about yourself. When you
wear your hair a certain way or when you wear a certain type of
clothes, you are making a statement about yourself. When you go
through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will
look like the hair of another race of people, then you are making a
statement and the statement is clear. I don't care if it's the curly
conk, latex locks, or whatever, you're making a statement.
It was a matter of simple statement for me. This is who i am
and this is how i like to look. This is what i think is beautiful. You
can spend a lifetime discovering African-style hairdresses, there are
so many of them, and so many creative, natural styles yet to be
invented. For me, it was important not just because of how good it
made me feel but because of the world in which i lived. In a country
that is trying to completely negate the image of Black people, that
constantly tells us we are nothing, our culture is nothing, i felt and
still feel that we have got to constantly make positive statements

about ourselves. Our desire to be free has got to manitest itseit m
everything we are and do. We have accepted too much of a negative
lifestyle and a negative culture and have to consciously act to rid
ourselves of that negative influence. Maybe in another time, when
everybody is equal and free, it won't matter how anybody wears
their hair or dresses or looks. Then there won't be any oppressors
to mimic or avoid mimicking. But right now i think it's important
for us to look and feel like strong, proud Black men and women
who are looking toward Africa for guidance.
I wasn't in school but a hot minute when a brother in my math
class told me about the Golden Drums. After a couple of meetings i
was hooked. They addressed me as sister, were glad to see me at
meetings, worried about how I was making out in school, and were
really concerned about me as a person.
The subject of one of the many lectures scheduled by the
Drums was about a slave who had plotted and planned and fought
for his freedom. Right here in amerika. Until then my only knowl­
edge of the history of Africans in amerika was about George
Washington Carver making experiments with peanuts and about
the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman had always been my
heroine, and she had symbolized everything that was Black resist­
ance for me. But it had never occurred to me that hundreds of Black
people had got together to fight for their freedom. The day i found
out about Nat Turner I was affected so strongly it was physical. I
was so souped up on adrenalin i could barely contain myself. I
tore through every book my mother had. Nowhere could i find the
name Nat Turner.
I had grown up believing the slaves hadn't fought back. I
remember feeling ashamed when they talked about slavery in
school. The teachers made it seem that Black people had nothing to
do with the official "emancipation" from slavery. White people had
freed us.
You couldn't catch me without a book in my hand after that. I
read everything from J. A. Rogers to Julius Lester. From Sonia
Sanchez to Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee). I saw plays by Black
playwrights like Amiri Baraka and Ed Bullins. It was amazing. A
whole new world opened up to me. I was also meeting a lot of
sisters and brothers whose level of consciousness was much higher
than mine-Black people who had gained knowledge not only by
reading but by participating in the struggle, who talked about
Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Cinque, as well as Nat Turner,
because they had gone out of their way to learn about our history
and our struggle.

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Many of us have misconceptions about Black history in amerika.
What we are taught in the public school system is usually inaccu­
rate, distorted, and packed full of outright lies. Among the most
common lies are that Lincoln freed the slaves, that the Civil War
was fought to free the slaves, and that the history of Black people in
amerika has consisted of slow but steady progress, that things have
gotten better, bit by bit. Belief in these myths can cause us to make
serious mistakes in analyzing our current situation and in planning
future action.
Abraham Lincoln was in no way whatsoever a friend of Black
people. He had little concern for our plight. In his famous reply to
editor Horace Greeley in August, 1862, he openly stated:
My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is
not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it and if i could save it by freeing some
and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

Lincoln was elected president in 1 860. Immediately afterward,
South Carolina had a convention and unanimously voted to with­
draw from the Union. Before he had even been inaugurated, Flor­
ida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas followed
suit. In his inaugural speech on March 4, 1 86 1 , Lincoln said that
slavery was legal under the constitution and that he had no right
and no intention to abolish slavery. He further promised to enforce
the Fugitive Slave Act, which permitted Southern slave owners to
"reclaim" their escaped slaves in Northern states. What the law
actually did was give any white man with a "certificate of
ownership" the right to kidnap any "free" Black man, woman, or
child in the North and force them into slavery. Because of this
position, Lincoln received a great deal of criticism from Black
abolitionists. Ford Douglas, a runaway slave who accompanied
Frederick Douglass on his anti-slavery tours in the West, blasted
Lincoln's position, saying,
In regard to the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, Abraham Lincoln
occupies the same position that the old Whig Party occupied in
185 2 . . . . Here, then, is Abraham Lincoln in favor of carrying out
that infamous Fugitive Slave Law, that not only strikes down the
liberty of every black man in the United States, but virtually the
liberty of every white man as well, for, under that law, there is not a
man in this presence who might not be arrested today upon the
simple testimony of one man, and, after an ex-parte trial, hurried off
to slavery and to chains.

On April 12, 1 86 1 , Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter,
South Carolina, thus starting the Civil War. The response of the
Northerners was electrifying. Millions who had been indifferent or
lukewarm to the secession of the South jumped on the bandwagon
to defend the Union. But the enthusiasm was short-lived. They
already viewed Black workers in the North as competitors for their
jobs, and the white Northerners, for fear of losing even more jobs
to the Blacks, refused to enlist in sufficient numbers for the North
to win the war. When the draft law was enacted, tens of thousands
of white workers in New York City took to the streets and brutally
beat and murdered every Black person they could find. It has been
estimated that between four hundred and a thousand Blacks were
killed as a result of the so-called New York draft law riots. Draft
riots and the murder of Blacks also took place in other Northern
cities.
Lincoln had originally opposed Blacks fighting in the Civil
War, stating:
I admit that slavery is at the root of the rebellion, and at least its sine
qua non. . . . I will also concede that emancipation would help us in
Europe. . . . I grant, further, that it would help somewhat at the
North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent
imagine . . . . And then, unquestionably, it would weaken the Rebels
by drawing off their laborers, which is of great importance; but I am
not so sure we could do much with the Blacks. If we were to arm
them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hand of the
Rebels . (History of the Negro Race in America, Vol. II, p. 265.)

Northern whites were more than happy at the prospect of
Black people fighting in the war. A popular verse published in the
newspapers of the day reflected the sentiment of many North­
erners:
Some say it is a bumin' shame
To make the naygurs fight
An' that the trade 0 ' bein' kilt
Belongs but to the white;
But as for me upon me sowl,
So liberal are we here,
!'lI let Sambo be murthered in place 0 ' meself
On every day in the year.

It was not until 1 8 63 that Lincoln in fact issued the Emancipa­
tion Proclamation. But the document had very little immediate

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effect. It freed slaves only in the Confederate states; the slaves in
states loyal to the Union remained slaves. Lincoln clearly did not
believe Black people could live in the u.s. as equal citizens. In the
Lincoln-Douglas debates, he stated:
If all earthly power were given to me, I should not know what to do
as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all
the slaves and send them to Liberia-to their own native land. But a
moment's reflection would convince me that, whatever of high hope
. . . there may be in this, in the long run its sudden execution is
impossible . . . . What then ? Free them all and keep them among us
as underlings? It is quite certain that this betters their condition? I
think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not
clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free
them and make them politically and socially our equals? My own
feelings will not admit of this, and, if mine would, we well know that
those of the great mass of whites will not.

Lincoln was a firm believer in the massive exportation of Black
people anywhere. In 1 8 65, at the end of the war, he asked General
Butler to explore the possibility of using the navy to remove Black
people to Haiti or to other areas in the Caribbean and South
America.
It's also important to understand that the Civil War was not
fought to free the slaves. It was a war between two economic
systems, a war for power and control of the u.s. by two separate
factions of the ruling class: rich, white Southern slave owners and
rich, white Northern industrialists. The battle was between a plan­
tation slave economy and an industrial manufacturing economy.
An industrial revolution was taking place in the years before
the Civil War. Inventions such as the cotton gin, the telegraph,
steamships, and steam trains completely changed methods of man­
ufacturing, transportation, mining, communications, agriculture,
and trade. The amount of goods produced was no longer deter­
mined by the number of people working in the process but by the
capacity of the machines. Amerika was no longer a country that
produced raw materials for the manufacturing nations in Europe.
By 1 8 60, the census reports that 1,385,000 people were employed
in manufacturing and that one-sixth of the whole population was
directly supported by manufacturing. The number was much
higher when clerks, transportation workers, and merchants were
added.
As manufacturing centers began to grow, European immi­
grants were imported as a source of cheap labor. More than five

million entered the u.s. between 1 820 and 1 860. Although the
South had many cotton mills functioning, the factories were small
and their numbers grew slowly. In 1 850, the value of manufactured
goods produced in the Northern "free" states was four times the
output of the Southern "slave" states. And with the rise of industry
came the rise of economic crisis and the threat of industrial col­
lapse.
Even though there had been economic crises in the past,
people had generally lived on farms and the economic depressions
didn't create such a great hardship for the masses. But with many
people living in cities, economic crises meant unemployment and
no way to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. The first big crash
came in 1 825, followed by further depressions in 1 829, 1 837,
1 847, and a severe depression in 1 856. The recession in 1 857
almost completely destroyed the early labor movement. The poverty
in Northern and Southern cities was staggering. Rags, filth, squa­
lor, hunger, and misery were words used to describe the ghettos of
the 1 800s.
To solve the problems in industrial cities, many called for
reforms such as the abolition of debtors' prison, an end to the laws
that kept white men who did not own property from voting, free
education, the right to strike, an end to child labor, establishment
of a ten-hour workday, and granting of land in the West to poor
people in the cities. Big business proposed the expansion of cap­
italism and industry to other parts of the country. And this was
where Northern capitalists clashed with Southern slave owners.
Northern capitalists wanted new states to enter the Union as
"free" states. Slave owners wanted new states to enter as "slave"
states. To maintain a balance of power, the North and the South
had entered into several compromises. The main one was the
Missouri Compromise. Northern capitalists were afraid slave
owners would open factories and produce goods more cheaply
because they didn't have to pay for labor. White workers were afraid
of losing their jobs because of slavery. Southern plantation owners,
of course, wanted the system of slavery to expand across the coun­
try.
All the differences between the North and the South were
economic, not moral. For capitalists to control the economy and
the political system, the slave system had to be defeated.
In 1 85 6, the newborn republican party ran Abraham Lincoln,
a former whig, as their first presidential candidate. He lost. In
1 8 60, he ran again with a strong, three-point platform:

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1 . To shut slavery out of the territories.
2. To establish large protective tariffs.
3. To enact a homestead law giving a medium-size farm free to
anyone willing to till the land.

The platform was designed to appeal to rich Northern capitalists,
poor white laborers, farmers, and abolitionists. For only a tiny
portion of the population was the abolition of slavery a moral issue,
and the overwhelming majority of the white people who supported
the abolition of slavery or who fought in the Union's army did so
because they believed it was in their interests, not for love or
concern for Black people.
I was gradually becoming more active. I began to control my life.
Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellec­
tual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing
what the hell was going on in the streets. Theory without practice is
just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go
together. I was determined to do both.
The major way i got hip to things was by listening to people.
The Black students going to Manhattan Community College be­
longed to every type of organization. There were Black Muslims,
Garveyites, Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity
(OAAU), members of various community and cultural organiza­
tions, and a few who were young turks of the NAACP. We got
together and talked about everything under the sun. I did a whole
lot more listening than talking, but i asked questions about any­
thing i didn't understand. Sometimes the discussions and debates
got so heated that they lasted until eleven o'clock, when night
school ended and the building was being closed up.
One of the first organizations i checked out was a Garveyite
group that had a big hall on 125th Street. I had just read a book on
Marcus Garvey. In fact, i had only recently learned he existed. It
was a shame. Here he had headed up one of the strongest move­
ments of Black people in amerika and i hadn't heard about him
until i was grown. One of the brothers who was studying there
invited me to a meeting.
The meeting was upstairs. There seemed to be hundreds of
chairs in the room. I arrived a little early and hardly anyone was
there. I spotted the brother who had invited me, and he introduced
me to the ten or fifteen people already there. We sat around in a
little group talking and waiting for the others to arrive. They never
came. It was obvious that everyone knew each other and had been

coming to these meetings for a long time. After a while, a speaker
climbed the podium. He welcomed me to the meeting, then gave an
impassioned speech. One after another got up and gave speeches as
if they were talking to a roomful of people. The others applauded
loudly. I felt sad. They were such nice people, and so sincere, but
their circle had grown so small they were reduced to giving
speeches to each other.
No movement can survive unless it is constantly growing and
changing with the times. If it isn't growing, it's stagnant, and
without the support of the people, no movement for liberation can
exist, no matter how correct its analysis of the situation is. That's
why political work and organizing are so important. Unless you are
addressing the issues people are concerned about and contributing
positive direction, they'll never support you. The first thing the
enemy tries to do is isolate revolutionaries from the masses of
people, making us horrible and hideous monsters so that our
people will hate us.
All we usually hear about are the so-called responsible leaders,
the ones who are "responsible" to our oppressors. In the same way
that we don't hear about a fraction of the Black men and women
who have struggled hard and tirelessly throughout our history, we
don't hear about our heroes of today.
The schools we go to are reflections of the society that created
them. Nobody is going to give you the education you need to
overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history,
teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will
help set you free. Schools in amerika are interested in brainwashing
people with amerikanism, giving them a little bit of education, and
training them in skills needed to fill the positions the capitalist
system requires. As long as we expect amerika's schools to educate
us, we will remain ignorant.
The parents in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of
Brooklyn, like Black parents all around New York at that time,
were pushing for control of the schools in their communities. They
wanted a say in what their children were taught, in how their
schools were run, and in who was teaching their children. They
wanted the local school boards to have hiring-and-firing power over
teachers in their districts, but the city's board of education and the
American Federation of Teachers was against them.
A whole bunch of us from Manhattan Community College
loaded on the subway and took the train out to a demonstration
called by the Ocean Hill-Brownsville parents. As soon as we got off

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the train we ran into some students from CCNY. It seemed like the
whole train had been heading for the demonstration, and it was
just the kind of demonstration i like.
An energetic sea of Black faces. Proud, alive, angry, disciplined,
upbeat, and, most of all, with that sisterly, brotherly kinship i loved.
Several of the parents spoke to the crowd, along with the Black
principal the parents had insisted on hiring. A Black teacher, head
wrapped in a galee, talked about the importance of Black people
controlling our schools. She made sweeping gestures with her
bangled arms as she spoke. Everybody dug what she said. We were
all high on the atmosphere. It seemed like a kinetic dance was
boogying in the air.
When it was over, i hated to go home. There aren't too many
experiences that give you that good, satisfied feeling, that make you
feel so clean and refreshed, as when you are fighting for your
freedom.
Most of us felt that taking control of our neighborhoods was
the first step toward liberation. We sat in the subway station trip­
ping. When a train did come, we just let it pass. First we would take
control of the schools; then we would take control of the hospitals;
then we would take control of the colleges, the housing, etc., etc.
We would have community-controlled employment, welfare cen­
ters, and city, state, and federal agencies.
"Hold on for a minute," somebody said. "Where are ya'll
gonna get the money to run all that stuff?"
"We'll take community control of the banks," someone else
answered.
"You'd better take control of the army, too, because those
banks aren't gonna just let you take their money lying down."
"We'll take control of the political institutions in our com­
munity. Then we'll take control of the congressional seats, the
senate seats, the city council seats, the mayor's office, and every
other office that we can take control of. We'll take control of the
political offices so we can allocate money to the people who need
it. "
"Y'all just wishing and hoping," someone said. "You can
control the social institutions and the political institutions, but
unless you control the economic and military institutions, you can
only go but so far."
Everybody just sort of got quiet, thinking.
"Well, what are we supposed to do, then ? Just sit back and do
nothing?"

"Fighting for community control is just the first step. It can
only go so far. What you need is a revolution. "
Everybody started talking about what the brother had said.
We were all confused, but we were all enthused. That was the one
thing i dug about those days. We were alive and we were excited
and we believed that we were going to be free someday. For us, it
wasn't a matter of whether or not. It was a question of how.
We always started out talking about reform and ended up
talking about revolution. If you were talking about anything except
a few little jive crumbs here and there, reform was just not going to
get it. I was long past the day when i thought that reform could
possibly work, but revolution was a big question mark. I believed,
with all my heart, that it was possible. But the question was how.
I had heard a lot about the Republic of New Afrika and had
promised myself to check it out. The Provisional Government of the
Republic of New Afrika advocated the establishment of a separate
Black nation within the u.s., to be made up of what is now South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. At the
time, i thought the group was kind of wild and far out, but i got 0/
good feeling being around them and the idea of a Black nation
appealed to me.
The first time i attended a Republic of New Afrika event, i
drank in the atmosphere and enjoyed the easy audacity of it all. The
surroundings were gay and carnival-like. A group of brothers were
pounding out Watusi, Zulu, and Yoruba messages on the drums.
Groups of sisters and brothers danced to motherland rhythms until
their skins were glazed with sweat. Speeches were woven between
songs and poems. Vibrant sisters and brothers with big Afros and
flowing African garments strolled proudly up and down the aisles.
Bald-headed brothers, wearing combat boots and military uniforms
with leopard-skin epaulets, stood around with their arms folded,
looking dangerous. Little girls running and laughing, their heads
wrapped with galees, tiny little boys wearing tiny little dashikis.
People calling each other names like Jamal, Malik, Kisha, or
Aiesha. Sandlewood and coconut incense floated through the air.
Red, black, and green flags hung from the rafters alongside posters
of Malcolm and Marcus Garvey. Serious-looking young men, wear­
ing jeans and green army field jackets, passed out leaflets. Exotic­
looking sisters and brothers, decked out in red, black, and green,
sat behind felt-covered tables and sold incense, bead earrings, and
an assortment of other items.

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"Peace, sister/' a voice said. "Do you wanna be a citizen?"
"What?" i asked, without the slightest notion of what she was
talking about.
"A citizen," she repeated. "Do you want to be a citizen of the
Republic of New Afrika ?"
"How do i become a citizen?"
"Easy. Just sign your name in the citizens' book."
"That's all?"
"Yeah. You want a name?"
"A name?"
"Yeah, sista, a name. If you want an African name, just ask
that brother over there to give you one."
The brother she pointed out was wearing a long bubba with
matching pants and a matching fez-type hat. He was wearing
various necklaces made of beads, bones, shells, and pieces of wood.
His left ear was pierced and his face was strained in concentration,
the veins in his forehead throbbing.
Without giving it a second thought, i went over to have my
name changed. The brother looked at me, asked me a couple of
questions which i don't remember, and then began shaking a
container furiously. He hurled out the contents, which turned out
to be shells, onto a soft cloth. After a long, concentrated stare at the
shells and after glancing back and forth at me, the brother decided
that my name was Ybumi Oladele. He spelled the name out to me
as i wrote it down, then i hurried over to the sister's table and
became a citizen of the Republic of New Afrika. Ybumi Oladele. I
liked the way it sounded. Soft and musical, kinda happy-sounding.
I filed my new name away in my pocketbook and continued suck­
ing in the atmosphere, tripping out on the idea of a Black nation in
Babylon, a nation of Black people smack dab in the middle of the
belly of the beast. Imagining Black youth flourishing and being
nourished in Black schools, taught by teachers who loved them and
who taught them to love themselves. Controlling their lives, their
institutions, working together to build a humane society, ending
the long legacy of suffering Black people have endured at the hands
of amerika. My mind spaced out on the idea and in a minute i was
imagining red, black, and green buses, apartment buildings with
African motifs, Black television shows, and movies that reflected the
real quality of Black life rather than the real quality of white racism.
I imagined everything from cities called Malcolmville and New
Lumumba to a reception for revolutionary leaders around the
world at the Black House. Sure enough, i liked the idea of a Black
nation, but i didn't give it any serious consideration as a possible

solution. Back then, the idea just seemed too farfetched. I guess, at
the time, having an African name seemed a little farfetched, too. I
told my friends about the name, talked about it for a few days, and
then promptly forgot about it.
It wasn't until years later-after college and more revolutionary
activism and marriage-that i began to seriously think about
changing my name. The name JoAnne began to irk my nerves. I
had changed a lot and moved to a different beat, felt like a different
person. It sounded so strange when people called me JoAnne. It
really had nothing to do with me. I didn't feel like no JoAnne, or no
Negro, or no amerikan. I felt like an African woman. From the time
i picked my hair out in the morning to the time i slipped off to
sleep with Mingus in the background, i felt like an African woman
and rejoiced in it. My big, abstract black and white inkblot-looking
painting was replaced by paintings of Black people and revolution­
ary posters. My life became an African life, my surroundings took
on an African flavor, my spirit took on an African glow. From the
paintings on my walls to the big, fat pillows on my floor, from the
incense burning in the air to the music dancing through the rooms,
my whole life was moving to African rhythms. My mind, heart,
and soul had gone back to Africa, but my name was still stranded
in Europe somewhere. JoAnne was bad enough, but at least my
mother had given it to me. As for Chesimard, well, i could only
come to one conclusion. Somebody named Chesimard had been
the slavemaster of my ex-husband's ancestors. Chesimard, like
most other last names Black people use today, was derived from
massa. Black folks went from being Mr. johnson's Mary and Mr.
Jackson's Paul to being Mary Johnson and Paul Jackson. Some­
times, before dozing off to sleep, i would lie in bed and think about
it, wondering how many slaves Chesimard had owned in Martini­
que and how often he beat them. I would stare up at the ceiling
wondering how many Black women Chesimard had raped, how
many Black babies he had fathered, and how many Black people he
had been responsible for killing.
So the name finally had to go. I thought about Ybumi
Oladele, but there was one problem. I didn't know what the name
meant. My new name had to mean something really special to me.
At the time, there were little pamphlets being put out listing names
and their meanings, but i had a hard time finding one i liked. A lot
of the names had to do with flowers or songs or birds or other
things like that. Others meant born on Thursday, faithful, loyal, or
even things like tears, or little fool, or one who giggles. The

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women's names were nothing like the men's names, which meant
things like strong, warrior, man of iron, brave, etc. I wanted a name
that had something to do with struggle, something to do with the
liberation of our people. I decided on Assata Olugbala Shakur.
Assata means "She who struggles," Olugbala means "Love for the
people," and i took the name Shakur out of respect for Zayd and
Zayd's family. Shakur means "the thankful."
At first, the Golden Drums society concentrated its efforts on Black
culture and history. But after a while we started to examine our role
as students. We didn't want to be tape recorders, recording what­
ever information, facts, lies they gave us and then playing them all
back during examinations. We began to talk about an education
that was relevant to us as Black people, that we could take back to
our communities. We didn't want to learn Latin or classical Greek.
We wanted to learn things that we could use to help free our
people.
One of our first struggles centered on student government.
Most of us were from working-class or poor families and we
wanted a student government that was responsive to what we
needed. We didn't need a student government that was brownnos­
ing the administration in return for favors and good grades. We
wanted a student government that supported a Black studies pro­
gram, more Black faculty members, and other Black causes. As a
result, the Golden Drum Society and the Students for Democratic
Society (SDS) ran a joint ticket and won by a landslide.
It soon became evident that having control of the student
government wasn't enough. It had no real power. We would pass
resolutions and come up with proposals, which the administration
would promptly deny. The only power we had was over the student
government budget. Instead of inviting reactionary "scholars" or
politicians to speak, we invited the Young Lords or the Black
Panther Party or some other group who was saying something
relevant.
One of our proposals was for students to work during the
summer in remedial programs to improve the level of kids who had
trouble with reading and math. Our idea was to have a few kids
assigned to each student-teacher. In that way, each one would
receive the individual attention he or she needed. The academic
curriculum was to be supplemented with courses that would en­
hance the students' sense of self-worth and give them more of a
sense of their history. Student-teachers would work with parents,
visit the kids' homes, and create a kind of day camp by offering

sports, trips, crafts, etc. Several of the Black faculty members helped
us with the proposal. As soon as it was submitted it was rejected.
The administration claimed there was no money. A small
investigation into finances, aided by some concerned Black and
white faculty members, revealed that the president of the college
was living in a house rent-free, that taxpayers were also providing
him with chauffeur and maid services, and that student fees, which
had not been spent in previous years, were being invested on the
stock market. A rather strange financial picture was emerging.
After we made some of our investigation results known to the
administration, we were informed that the money for the project
had been found.
As a student-teacher i taught reading and math in the morning
and arts and crafts in the afternoon. The morning classes were tiny,
while the afternoon classes were larger, combining various morning
groups. The curriculum included Black history, dancing and drum­
ming, physical education, arts and crafts, in addition to reading
and math. There was an excursion every Friday afternoon.
My mother thought my teaching reading and writing was a
joke. My spelling is terrible, and my skills in mathematics are
limited to two and two equaling four. To prepare myself for the
day's lesson, i had to study just as hard as the kids. My students
shocked the hell out of me. Through conversation, it was obvious
just how bright they were, yet they scored way below their grade
levels in reading and math. There was such a big contradiction
between the intelligence they exhibited in class and their test scores
that i didn't know where to begin. The books we had to work with
were Reader's Digest-like textbooks that i couldn't even imagine
using. I didn't even want to read those things and i knew sure as
hell that my students wouldn't want to use them. So every day, i
took the vocabulary out of those books and wrote a little story,
something i thought the students would find interesting, typed it on
a stencil, and ran it off. I brought all kinds of books to school for
them to read, and as long as they found the books interesting, those
students would read until the cows came home. I was learning just
as much as the kids. I found it oppressive playing teacher all the
time, so every day i rotated the thing around. Everybody got to be
teacher for a while. It was also great for discipline, since if some­
body acted up in your class, you were free to act up in theirs.
Nobody wanted people to act up in their class so everyone was
more or less cool.
In order to teach, each one of us had to prepare our lesson and
know what we were talking about. One of the boys in the class

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worked so hard on his lessons that he would just lay me out. I don't
know where he is now or what he's doing, but if he isn't a teacher,
it's a damn shame, because he would have been a great one. He
would cut out pictures and even make up math games for us to play.
My class in the afternoon was usually exhausting. Clay, paint,
papier-mache over everything and everyone, especially me. The first
days of that class i wanted to do nothing but go somewhere and
have a good cry. On the first day of the arts and crafts class i had
nothing really prepared, so i asked everyone to draw themselves.
When i looked at the drawings i felt faint. All of the students were
Black, yet the drawings depicted a lot of blond-haired, blue-eyed
little white children. I was horrified. I went home and ransacked
every magazine i could find with pictures of Black people. I came in
early the next day and plastered the walls with pictures of Black
people. We talked about what was beautiful. We talked about all
the different kinds of beauty in the world and about all the different
kinds of flowers in the world. And then we talked about the
different kinds of beauty that people have and about the beauty of
Black people. We talked about our lips and our noses. We made
African masks out of clay and papier-mache, made African sculp­
tures, painted pictures of Black people, of Black neighborhoods.
Over the summer i felt the classroom changing. The kids were
changing and so was i. We were feeling good about ourselves and
feeling good about being with each other.
I was so involved in working at the school that i had time for
little else. If one of the students didn't come to school, i was at his
or her house that very day wanting to know why. I would go home
and spend hours rewriting some story or preparing for the next day.
Half the time my mother would find me asleep with a book in my
hands and all the lights on. I loved working with the kids, and i
loved teaching. My mother helped me quite a lot and we grew closer
than we had ever been before. I thought about becoming a teacher
but decided against it.
For the first time, i became aware of what my mother had been
going through all those years trying to teach in New York schools.
Most of these principals are caught up in bureaucracy and they
force the teachers to be caught up in it too. They care more about
what the teachers have written in their plan books than what they
are actually teaching in the class. My mother was working in an
environment where white teachers often showed a hostile, conde­
scending attitude toward Black children and where some teachers
thought of themselves as zookeepers rather than teachers.
As much as i loved working with kids, i knew that i could never

participate in the board-of-education kind of teaching. I wasn't
teaching no Black children to say the pledge of allegiance or to
think George Washington was great or any other such bullshit.
That fall, the level of activity on campus surpassed anything
that we had dreamed of. Large numbers of students became in­
volved in the antiwar movement. It seemed that there was no time
to catch up with all of the things that were happening. I would be at
the construction workers' demonstration one day and then march­
ing with the welfare mothers the next. We got down with every­
thing-rent strikes, sit-ins, the takeover of the Harlem state office
building, whatever it was. If we agreed with it, we would try to give
active support in some way. The more active i became the more i
liked it. It was like medicine, making me well, making me whole. I
was home. For the first time, my life felt like it had some real
meaning. Everywhere I turned, Black people were struggling,
Puerto Ricans were struggling. It was beautiful. I love Black people,
i don't care what they are doing, but when Black people are
struggling, that's when they are most beautiful to me.
As usual, i was speeding. My energy just couldn't stop danc­
ing. I was caught up in the music of struggle, and i wanted to
dance. I was never bored and never lonely, and the brothers and
sisters who became my friends were so beautiful to me. I would
mention their names, but the way things are today, i'd only be
sending the FBI or the CIA to their doors.
There were a lot of communist groups on campus. I had no
idea at the time that there were so many different kinds of commu­
nists and socialists. I had been so brainwashed i had thought that
all communists were the same, that there were Marxists, Leninists,
Maoists, Trotskyites, etc. Most of the so-called communists i met
weren't in any party at all, but just related to the philosophy of
communism. Most followed very different political lines and poli­
cies, and it was difficult for them to sit down and agree on the time
of day, much less hatch up some "communist plot."
I was surprised to learn that there were all different types of
capitalist countries and different types of communist countries. I
had heard "communist bloc" and "behind the iron curtain" so
much in the media, that i had naturally formed the impression that
these countries were all the same. Although they are all socialist,
East Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, and North Korea are as different as
night and day. All of them have different histories, different
cultures, and different ways of applying the socialist theory, al­
though they have the same economic and similar political systems.
It has never ceased to amaze me how so many people can be tricked

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into hating people who have never done them any harm. You
simply mention the word "communist" and a lot of these red,
white, and blue fools are ready to kill.
I wasn't against communism, but i can't say i was for it either.
At first, i viewed it suspiciously, as some kind of white man's
concoction, until i read works by African revolutionaries and stud­
ied the African liberation movements. Revolutionaries in Africa
understood that the question of African liberation was not just a
question of race, that even if they managed to get rid of the white
colonialists, if they didn't rid themselves of the capitalistic eco­
nomic structure, the white colonialists would simply be replaced by
Black neocolonialists. There was not a single liberation movement
in Africa that was not fighting for socialism. In fact, there was not a
single liberation movement in the whole world that was fighting for
capitalism. The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation:
anything that has any kind of value is made, mined, grown, pro­
duced, and processed by working people. So why shouldn't work­
ing people collectively own that wealth ? Why shouldn't working
people own and control their own resources? Capitalism meant
that rich businessmen owned the wealth, while socialism meant
that the people who made the wealth owned it.
I got into heated arguments with sisters or brothers who
claimed that the oppression of Black people was only a question of
race. I argued that there were Black oppressors as well as white
ones. That's why you've got Blacks who support Nixon or Reagan
or other conservatives. Black folks with money have always tended
to support candidates who they believed would protect their finan­
cial interests. As far as i was concerned, it didn't take too much
brains to figure out that Black people are oppressed because of class
as well as race, because we are poor and because we are Black. It
would burn me up every time somebody talked about Black people
climbing the ladder of success. Anytime you're talking about a
ladder, you're talking about a top and a bottom, an upper class and
a lower class, a rich class and a poor class. As long as you've got a
system with a top and a bottom, Black people are always going to
wind up at the bottom, because we're the easiest to discriminate
against. That's why i couldn't see fighting within the system. Both
the democratic party and the republican party are controlled by
millionaires. They are interested in holding on to their power, while
i was interested in taking it away. They were interested in supporting
fascist dictatorships in South and Central America, while i wanted
to see them overthrown. They were interested in supporting racist,
fascist regimes in Africa while i was interested in seeing them
overthrown. They were interested in defeating the Viet Cong and i

was interested in seeing them win their liberation. A poster of the
massacre at My Lai, picturing women and children lying clumped
together in a heap, their bodies riddled with bullets, hung on my
wall as a daily reminder of the brutality in the world.
Manhattan Community College had not one course on Puerto
Rican history. The Puerto Rican sisters and brothers who knew
what was happening became our teachers. I had hung out all my
life with Puerto Ricans, and i didn't even know Puerto Rico was a
colony. They told us of the long and valiant struggle against the
first Spanish colonizers and then, later, against the u.s. government
and about their revolutionary heroes, the Puerto Rican Five-Lolita
Lebron, Rafael Miranda, Andres Cordero, Irving Flores, and Oscar
Coll.azo, each of whom had spent more than a quarter of a century
behind bars fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico. Once you
understand something about the history of a people, their heroes,
their hardships and their sacrifices, it's easier to struggle with them,
to support their struggle. For a lot of people in this country, people
who live in other places have no faces. And this is the way the u.s.
government wants it to be. They figure that as long as the people
have no faces and the country has no form, amerikans will not
protest when they send in the marines to wipe them out.
I had begun to think of myself as a socialist, but i could not in
any way see myself joining any of the socialist groups i came in
contact with. I loved to listen to them, learn from them, and argue
with them, but there was no way in the world i could see myself
becoming a member. For one thing, i could not stand the conde­
scending, paternalistic attitudes of some of the white people in
those groups. Some of the older members thought that because
they had been in the struggle for socialism for a long time, they
knew all the answers to the problems of Black people and all the
aspects of the Black Liberation struggle. I couldn't relate to the idea
of the great white father on earth any more than i could relate to the
great white father up in the sky. I was willing and ready to learn
everything i could from them, but i damn sure was not ready to
accept them as leaders of the Black Liberation struggle. A few
thought that they had a monopoly on Marx and acted like the only
experts in the world on socialism came from Europe. In many
instances they downgraded the theoretical and practical contribu­
tions of Third World revolutionaries like Fidel Castro, Ho Chi
Minh, Augustino Neto, and other leaders of liberation movements
in the Third World.
Another thing that went against my grain was the arrogance
and dogmatism i encountered in some of these groups.
A member of one group told me that if i was really concerned

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about the liberation of Black people i should quit school and get a
job in a factory, that if i wanted to get rid of the system i would have
to work at a factory and organize the workers. When i asked him
why he wasn't working in a factory and organizing the workers, he
told me that he was staying in school in order to organize the
students. I told him i was working to organize the students too and
that i felt perfectly certain that the workers could organize them­
selves without any college students doing it for them. Some of these
groups would come up with abstract, intellectual theories, totally
devoid of practical application, and swear they had the answers to
the problems of the world. They attacked the Vietnamese for par­
ticipating in the Paris peace talks, claiming that by negotiating the
Viet Cong were selling out to the u.s. I think they got insulted when
i asked them how a group of flabby white boys who couldn't fight
their way out of a paper bag had the nerve to think they could tell
the Vietnamese people how to run their show.
Arrogance was one of the key factors that kept the white left so
factionalized. I felt that instead of fighting together against a com­
mon enemy, they wasted time quarreling with each other about
who had the right line.
Although i respected the work and political positions of many
groups on the left, i felt it was necessary for Black people to come
together to organize our own structures and our own revolutionary
political party. Friendship is based on respect. As long as much of
the white left saw their role as organizing, educating, recruiting,
and directing Black revolutionaries, i could not see how any real
friendship could occur. I felt, and still feel, that it is necessary for
Black revolutionaries to come together, analyze our history, our
present condition, and to define ourselves and our struggle. Black
self-determination is a basic right, and if we do not have the right to
determine our destinies, then who does ? I believe that to gain our
liberation, we must come from the position of power and unity and
that a Black revolutionary party, led by Black revolutionary leaders,
is essential. I believe in uniting with white revolutionaries to fight
against a common enemy, but i was convinced that it had to be on
the basis of power and unity rather than from weakness and unity at
any cost.

TO MY M O MMA

To my momma,
who has swallowed the amerikan dream
and choked on it.
To my momma,
whose dreams have fought each other­
and died.
Who sees,
but cannot bear to see.
A volcano eating its own lava.
To my momma, who couldn't turn
hell into paradise
and blamed herself.
Who has always seen
reflected in her mirror
an ugly duckling.
To my momma,
who makes no demands of anyone
cause she don't think she can afford to.
Who thinks her money talks
louder than her womanhood.
To my butchfem momma,
who has al ways
taken care of business.
Who has never drifted
hazily to sleep
thinking, "he will take care of it."
Who has schemed so much
she sometimes schemes against herself.
To my s weet, shy momma.
Who is uneasy with people
cause she don't know how
to be phony,
and is afraid to be real.
Who has longed for sculptured gardens.
Whose potted plant
dies slowly on the window sill.

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We have all been infected
with a sickness
that can be traced back
to the auction block.
You must not feel guilty
for what has been done to us.
Only the strong go crazy.
The weak just go along.
And what i thought was cruelty,
I understand was fear
that hands, stronger than yours,
and whiter than yours,
would strangle my young life
into oblivion.
Momma, i am proud of you.
I look at you
and see the strength of our people.
I have seen you struggle
in the dark;
the world beating on your back,
dragging your catch
back to our den.
Pulling your pots and pans out
to cook it.
A mop in one hand.
A pencil in the other,
marking up my homework
with your love.
The injured have no blame.
Let it fall on those who injure.
Leave the past behind
where it belongsand come with me
toward tomorrow.
I love you mommy
cause you are beautiful,
and i am life that springs from you:
part tree, part weed, part flower.
My roots run deep.
I have been nourished well.

Chapter 1 3

am at school when i hear about it. Electric
shocks are zooming down my back the way they do
when i am about to go temporarily insane. On the
train, headed uptown, i am ready to riot. I am having
daymares on the subway, imagining myself with a
long knife slashing slits in white sheets. Ku Klux Klan
blood is spilling. You wanna look like a ghost, you
wanna look like a ghost, my mind keeps chanting,
you wanna look like a ghost, well, i'll make you one.
Sitting on the subway, bloody fantasies. I look out of
my daymare. Nobody is moving. Everybody screams.
Everybody has a frozen face. The train is slowing
down. Everybody is tensely looking at the door.
125th Street. I am going to a riot. I want to kill
someone.
Martin Luther King has been murdered.
The street wakes me up. There is no blood yet.
Everybody is getting into position. The wind is blow­
ing rumors. The people are waiting. The streets are
rumbling. The tanks are coming. The natives are rest­
less. The tanks will quiet the natives. The tanks are
coming. I feel absurd and impotent.
Who am i going to attack ? Where is a George
Lincoln Rockwell? I am ready to kill him. He will get
a chance to utter exactly two syllables before i cut
him off. He isn't there. Only the rumors and the
rumble of the tanks and the waiting. The store win­
dows are filled with shit. You can't exchange Martin
Luther King for shit in the store window. Smashing
windows will do me no good. I am beyond that. I
want blood. The tanks are waiting to crush the resist­
ance, squelch the disturbance. It crosses my mind: i
want to win. I don't want to rebel, i want to win. The

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revolution will not be televised on the six o'clock news. I have to
get myself ready. Revolution. The word has me going.
I am back on the subway. Nobody is looking at anybody. I
think i have my period. Sweat is rolling down my legs. I go home.
My mother is glad to see me. She knows that i am half crazy. The
television is wet with crocodile tears. REBELLION, REBELLIO US
CHILDREN, TEMPER TANTR UMS, REBELLION, REVOL UTION. I like
the word.
The grim reapers are abuzz. Reports about the natives. They
are excited. This is the stuff that news is made of. We are looking
at each other. Impassioned speeches sizzle on their tongues, caus­
ing sour ashes to fall from our mouths. We are just sitting there. I
am thinking about revolution. The tonic. Abstract. Revolution. I
am tired of watching us lose. They kill our leaders, then they kill us
for protesting. Protest. Protest. Revolution. If it exists, i want to
find it. Bulletins. More bulletins. I'm tired of bulletins. I want
bullets.

While i was going to CCNY, after i graduated from Manhattan
Community College, i decided to get married. My husband was
politically conscious, intelligent, and decent, and our affair was
frantic, high-pitched, and charged with emotion. Somehow, i be­
lieved that our shared commitment to the Black Liberation struggle
would result in a "marriage made in heaven." I spent most of my
time at school, meetings, or demonstrations and whenever i was at
home my head was usually stuck in some book. It was unthinkable
to allow more than five minutes on mundane things like keeping
house or washing dishes. To complicate matters, my husband's
ideas about marriage stemmed mostly from his parents' life, where
his mother was the homemaker and his father was the breadwinner.
Spaghetti was about the only thing i could cook, and he was
profoundly shocked to learn i had none of his mother's domestic
skills. After a while, it became clear to me that i was about as ready
to be married as i was to grow wings and fly. So after a confused
and unhappy year, we decided we made much better friends than
marriage partners and called it quits.
I decided to go to California. It was becoming increasingly
clear to me that, although it was important for students to partici­
pate in the struggle, no revolution had ever been won by students
alone. Struggling around school issues had narrowed my perspec­
tive and i was getting bogged down. I wanted to expand that
struggle to the Black community. At that time California, especially
the Bay area, was where everything was happening. Some of my

favorite professors were going out West for the summer and they
offered to hook me up with a place to stay. As usual, i was flat
broke, but a good friend gave me the money to make the trip, with
a little spending change thrown in.
My friends found a place for me in Berkeley, the most radical,
progressive place i had ever been in. Revolutionary posters were
plastered all over the walls, along with "people's murals." The
fronts of banks and other official buildings were bricked up as a
result of the demonstrations and street fighting that followed the
People's Park struggles. Red stars and Mao's Red Book were sold
on street corners, and food cooperatives sold health food at cheap
prices. People's collectives were dedicated to surviving, struggling,
and teaching. I was impressed with the kinds of informal solutions
they had cooked up to deal with the problems they faced, and i
enrolled in the practical skills classes they gave (printing and layout,
first aid, etc.).
There were books and pamphlets in the San Francisco and
Berkeley bookstores i had never seen in New York, and for the first
time i read the theory of urban guerrilla warfare as outlined by Che
Guevara, Carlos Mariguella, and the Tupamaros. I had been more
aware of imperialism in Vietnam or Cambodia, and the extent of
u.s. imperialism in South and Central America surprised me. The
u.s. government had invaded more than fifteen countries there, not
once or twice but in some cases more than ten times, and the
guerrilla movements were waging armed struggle in most of them.
Reading about guerrilla warfare in South America and Vietnam
was one thing, but thinking in terms of guerrilla war inside the u.s.
was another.
Back then, people used the word "revolution" just because it
sounded hep. Half the time what they were really talking about was
change or some kind of vague progress. Some meant a separate
Black nation, and others dealt with Black revolution as part of an
overall revolution waged by whites, Hispanics, Orientals, Native
Americans, and Blacks. Malcolm said it meant bloodshed and
land. To me, the revolutionary struggle of Black people had to be
against racism, capitalism, imperialism, and sexism and for real
freedom under a socialist government. But the reality of achieving it
seemed a long way off.
In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem too
far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and
Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hardhats
and the rednecks and the bible belt and the so-called middle
amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine the "new

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left" talking to those people, much less orgamzmg them and
changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with
some answers was to keep on studying and struggling. I didn't
know how half of what i was studying would fit in, but i figured it
would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare
and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one
day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about
it, because reading all that stuff probably has saved my life a million
times.
As part of my first aid skills class, i worked as an assistant to a
doctor who volunteered once a week at Alcatraz. At the time,
Alcatraz had been taken over by Native Americans who were
protesting against a long series of broken treaties, genocidal poli­
cies, and racist exploitation. Alcatraz symbolized the strength and
dignity of Indian people as well as their resolve to fight to preserve
their cultural traditions. I enjoyed everything about going there
except the trip. The doctor was a motorcycle fanatic who insisted
on zooming across the Golden Gate Bridge on that thing, with me
hanging on for dear life. Once on the other side we would jump
into a rickety little boat with water in the bottom and limp across
the bay to the island. By the time we got there i felt as if i had done
a day's work.
The first thing that hit me was the spirit of the people. I felt the
tremendous pride, tremendous determination, and tremendous
calm from the time i landed on the island until the time i left. They
were Native Americans from all over North America, including
Canada, from different tribes and backgrounds. They were young
and old. Little babies wiggled in their mother's arms, and one old
man who had spent many years in Alcatraz prison said that when
he arrived on the island he had taken a sledgehammer and reduced
the cell he had once been locked in to rubble. The prison, one of
the most infamous and sadistic ever to exist, loomed in the back­
ground.
There were many different Indian nations, each with its own
rich culture, religious traditions, history, and folklore. Everybody
was into learning and teaching each other their own history and
culture. It was a surprise to find out how many Native Americans
had been raised in cities and knew nothing about who they were. In
that respect, they were very similar to Black people. Most of them
were from the West Coast, and so i told them about the Indian
Museum and the Museum of Natural History in New York. Sud­
denly, i stopped short. I wondered how i would feel going into some
museum and seeing the houses and stolen artifacts of my people

stuck away in some exhibition hall. As i spoke i realized that most
of the "history" i had been taught about the Indians was probably
lies invented by the white man.
It wasn't until later, for instance, that i learned that scalping
was an old European custom. In the 1 700s, the state of Mas­
sachusetts was paying the equivalent of $60 for a scalp and Pennsyl­
vania paid $ 1 34. It wasn't until more than a hundred years later, in
response to the massive genocide at the hands of whites, that the
Indians themselves started scalping. None of the little museum
exhibits featuring tepees and feather headdresses had ever men­
tioned how men, women, and children were mowed down at
Wounded Knee or how the u.s. army had purposely given the
Indians smallpox-infected blankets. As i listened to those sisters
and brothers at Alcatraz i realized that the true history of any
oppressed people is impossible to find in history books.
I will always be grateful for having had the opportunity to visit
Alcatraz. I will never forget the quiet confidence of the Indians as
they went about their lives calmly, even though they were under the
constant threat of invasion by the FBI and the u.s. military. They
didn't fit into any of my preconceived notions or the stereotyped
images shown on TV and in the movies. They were really open with
me and, after a while, we talked about the struggle in general. They
had many of the same problems we had: education, organizing the
people to struggle, and raising consciousness. They damn sure had
the same enemy, and they were doing as bad as we were, if not
worse. They told me to check out Akwasasne when i returned to
New York. It was a territory they had liberated on the border
between New York and Canada. I told them if they ever came to
New York they should visit me and check out Harlem. "Sure.
When are you going to liberate it?" they asked.
There were a million groups in the Bay area i wanted to check out.
There was so much activity i would have had to spend twenty-eight
hours a day just to keep up with it all. Someone i was studying with
arranged for me to hook up with the Brown Berets, a Chicano
group that had been started recently in California and Texas. It was
a brief meeting since the brother with whom i had the appointment
had to be on the move. He ran down to me some of the conditions
they were dealing with and some of the work they were doing. I had
always thought of the Chicano movement as a rural rather than an
urban one. Most of the information we had received was about the
Chicano farmworkers' struggle and people like Cesar Chavez fight­
ing to organize them and abolish the unbearable living conditions

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and slave wages they were forced to work for. I was not aware that
Chicanos in the city were fighting against unemployment, police
brutality, and inferior schools, just like Black people. In the same
way that the Black Panther Party was trying to organize and pol­
iticize street gangs in Chicago, the Brown Berets wanted to pol­
iticize Chicano street gangs in Los Angeles. The brother also told
me that they had been doing a lot of work around Los Siete de las
Razas, seven Chicano brothers who had been accused of killing a
San Francisco policeman. (They were later acquitted.) I wanted to
rap some more about this case because i was seeing the same
pattern everywhere-sisters and brothers being locked up all over
the country, accused of killing pigs or of conspiring to. The brother
had to run, though. We promised that we would hook up again,
but it never happened.
Next i wanted to check out the Red Guard, a group of young
revolutionary brothers and sisters who were struggling in
Chinatown, San Francisco. I was especially anxious to meet up
with them because it was so hard to get information about them
back East. The West Coast has the largest Asian population in the
country and i really wanted to get a good idea about what was
going on in the Asian communities. A lot of people think Asians do
not experience racism, that they are professionals and business
owners, unaware that many are poor and oppressed.
Finding the Red Guard was not at all easy. Half the people i
ran into had never heard of them, and the other half only had a
minimal knowledge of who they were and what they were all about.
Someone gave me an address and since i didn't have the faintest
idea where it was, i got a brother to drive me over to Chinatown to
look for their headquarters. We ended getting lost and never did
find the address. Instead, we ended up eating at a Chinese restau­
rant and getting into a big debate. He couldn't understand why a
Black woman wanted to hook up with Chinese revolutionaries in
the first place: "ain't nobody gonna free Black folks but Black
folks"; "those Chinese don't give a damn about you and me. All
they care about is their own people and what's going on in China."
I told him that i thought there were a whole lot of us in the same
predicament and that the only way we were going to get out of it
was to come together and break the chains. The brother looked at
me as if i was spouting empty rhetoric. Some of the laws of
revolution are so simple they seem impossible. People think that in
order for something to work, it has to be complicated, but a lot of
times the opposite is true. We usually reach success by putting the

simple truths that we know into practice. The basis of any struggle
is people coming together to fight against a common enemy.
When i finally did get around to meeting some brothers from
the Red Guard, it was quite by accident and somewhat embarrass­
ing. I was hanging out in the park with a sister and some brothers
from the Black Students Union. We were exchanging experiences,
talking politics, and smoking reefer. The day was blue and beau­
tiful and we just sat there lazing in the sun without a care in the
world, listening to some rock music that was playing in the back­
ground. I had brought a whole pile of leaflets and newspapers from
New York to give to them. Everybody was feeling laid-back and
mellow when all of a sudden a bunch of pigs descended on a group
of hippies and proceeded to beat them mercilessly, kicking them
and hitting them with clubs. We were all so high, we just sat there
watching, like it was a movie or something. By the time we got our
voices together to cry out in protest, the pigs were carrying the
hippies off.
Two Asian brothers came up to us and pointed to the news­
papers.
"You'd better get rid of those before the pigs see them," one
said. "More are on the way. If you've got any grass on you, you'd
better get out of here fast. "
We were a picture of confusion, stuffing sheets of paper under
shirts and into pocketbooks. The Asian brother led our half-dazed
procession out of the park.
"You need a lift?"
"Yeah, that's cool."
"To where?"
"Oh, anywhere. Anywhere from here," one of us answered. We
were too high to make any decisions. We piled into a rickety­
looking jeep. They told us they would drive us over to Shattuck
Street and drop us off. As we were driving, everybody started to talk
about the pigs beating up on the hippies. The image was burning in
everyone's mind.
"That was a trip," drawled one of the BSU brothers. "Did you
see those pigs? I thought they were gonna kill those dudes."
I was still high, feeling too stunned and eerie to talk.
"That's why we need a revolution," the sister was saying.
"They just think they can do anything they want to."
"What started the shit?" somebody asked the Asian brothers.
"It was some hassle about some ID or something. They just
wanted to hassle somebody. You're lucky they didn't see you first."

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We were all silent for a minute, imagining ourselves being
beaten and carted off to jail.
"It's a good thing they didn't see those leaflets," the other
Asian brother said. "They would have hassled you for sure."
The sister, who was obviously angry, got off into a political
rap. Everybody kind of jumped into the conversation, talking about
the situation in the Black community, the Black students' struggle,
and the overall piggishness of amerika. Everybody was into the rap,
all of us presenting ourselves as political activists and revolution­
anes.
"Are you guys in the movement?" one of the Asian brothers
asked us. Everybody jumped at the opportunity to say yes, giving
credentials and naming organizations.
"Right on," they said.
They told us they were Red Guard cadre and that they were
having some kind of forum on the revolution in China. In my
tongue-tied, confused state of marijuana intoxication, i tried to
communicate to them that i had been trying to get in touch with
their organization to check it out. The brother who had been doing
most of the talking reached down under the seat and handed me a
leaflet which had the date and time of the forum.
"Make sure you come and check us out," he said. "Put this
somewhere where you won't lose it," making direct reference to my
confused, disjointed state of consciousness. "You guys should
really be careful with that grass, especially when you've got leaflets
or newspapers on you. A lot of good comrades have been busted
like that."
"Yeah," said the other one. "You've got to be alert to deal with
this situation. You've got to be disciplined and ready to deal with
the enemy at all times."
The Red Guard brothers dropped us off and we thanked them
and said good-byes amid a hail of "Right ons" and "Power to the
people. " Carefully avoiding each other's eyes, we wandered
aimlessly, looking for someplace where we could plop down and
get our heads together. I was feeling guilty and stupid, silly and
politically backward. I was embarrassed to be bumbling down the
street in the middle of the day not in full control of my faculties, too
high to deal with reality, much less change it. I wondered what the
brothers from the Red Guard had thought of us, sitting there in a
stupor, having to be virtually led out of the park. It was obvious my
stuff was raggedy and that i needed to get my act together. If i
wanted to call myself a revolutionary i was going to have to earn the
title. I had heard somebody say that revolutionaries get high on

revolution and that it was the best high in the world. "I'm gonna
check out that high," i said aloud. "Huh ? What did you say?"
"Nothing," i answered. "I was just talking out loud." "Oh," some­
body said, "I can dig it."
We stopped off at a coffee shop and had some tea. Everybody
looked sheepish and lost in their own thoughts. Finally, we waved
our good-byes and made our separate ways. 1 walked back to where
i was staying, wondering what i was going to have to do to become
who i needed to become. Revolution is about change, and the first
place the change begins is in yourself.
The most important organization on my list to check out was the
Black Panther Party headquarters in Oakland. 1 had a whole lot of
respect for the Party and had been heavily influenced by it, as had
almost everyone around my age that i knew. Every time we heard
about Huey Newton and Bobby Seale standing up to the power
structure, we slapped five and said, "Yeah !" As far as i was con­
cerned, the Panthers were "baaaaaad." The Party was more than
bad, it was bodacious. The sheer audacity of walking onto the
California senate floor with rifles, demanding that Black people
have the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense, made me
sit back and take a long look at them. And the more political i
became, the more i appreciated them. Panthers didn't try to sound
all intellectual, talking about the national bourgeoisie, the military­
industrial complex, the reactionary ruling class. They simply called
a pig a pig. They didn't refer to the repressive domestic army or the
state repressive apparatus. They called the racist police pigs and
racist dogs.
One of the most important things the Party did was to make it
really clear who the enemy was: not the white people, but the
capitalistic, imperialistic oppressors. They took the Black libera­
tion struggle out of a national context and put it in an international
context. The Party supported revolutionary struggles and govern­
ments all over the world and insisted the u.s. get out of Africa, out
of Asia, out of Latin America, and out of the ghetto too. 1 had
gotten to know some of the Panthers in New York when they spoke
at the lectures we invited them to at Manhattan Community Col­
lege. 1 made it my business to drop by some of the New York Black
Panther Party offices and offered to help them with this or that,
whatever needed to be done. 1 was happy to do it. 1 barely opened
my mouth. 1 just looked, listened, and worked. Some of the com­
rades would ask why i didn't join. "I probably will, someday," i'd
always answer.

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When i heard on the radio that the New York Panthers had
been busted, i was furious. The so-called conspiracy charges were
so stupid that even a fool could see through them. The police
actually had the audacity to charge them with plotting to blow up
the flowers in the Botanical Garden. And the 2 1 were some of the
baddest, most politically educated sisters and brothers in the Party.
It was an insult. I thought about joining the Party right then, but i
had some other things i wanted to do and i needed a low profile in
order to do them.
As much as i dug the Party, i also had some real differences
with its style of work. As i opened the front gate of the Oakland
headquarters, i felt j ust as nervous about going inside as i did about
the Doberman pinschers running around the yard. A brother
opened the door and i nervously blurted out that i was from New
York and had come to check out the Party. He acted like he was
glad to see me and brought me into a room to meet some of the
other Panthers. A group of sisters and brothers were sitting around
the room, laughing and talking. They greeted me casually, passing
over a chair for me to sit in. Artie Seale was there and i had to
control myself to keep from gawking at her. I wondered how she
felt with her husband in jail, being railroaded and bound and
gagged in kourt. I recognized the names of others. It was strange to
be there in a room with those people. It was like sitting down on
the pages of a history book.
They asked me about New York, and i told them what was
happening with the Black students at Manhattan Community Col­
lege, CCNY, and the Black student movement in general, the
antiwar movement, Black construction workers, and whatever
other work i was involved in at the time. I told them i had done
some work for the New York Panthers and ran off a list of the ones
i knew. Somebody asked my why i had never joined the Party.
Half stammering, i told them i had thought about it but had
decided not to. "Why ?" everybody wanted to know. It was hard for
me to say it because i felt so much love and respect for the sisters
and brothers seated there, but i knew i'd hate myself if i didn't say
what was on my mind: that i had been turned off by the way
spokesmen for the Party talked to people, that their attitude had
often been arrogant, flippant, and disrespectful. I told them i pre­
ferred the polite and respectful manner in which civil rights work­
ers and Black Muslims talked to the people rather than the
arrogant, fuck-you style that used to be popular in New York. I
said they cursed too much and turned off a lot of Black people who
would otherwise be responsive to what the Party was saying.

When i had finished, i waited nervously, fully expecting them
to jump all over what i had said. To my profound surprise, nobody
did. Everybody agreed that if that was, in fact, how Party members
were relating to the people, they should change at once. One of the
sisters pointed out that there was a leadership crisis in the New
York chapter caused by the arrest and imprisonment of the Panther
2 1 . It was well known by everybody in the movement that the New
York police had kidnapped the most experienced, able, and intel­
ligent leaders of the New York branch and demanded $ 1 00,000
ransom for each one. One of the brothers explained that the Pan­
thers were facing the same problem all over the country because of
persecution by the pigs. We spent the rest of the afternoon rapping
about the Black struggle in New York and in the u.s. in general. I
was deep in a discussion about strategy and tactics when Emory
Douglas came in. I was as happy as a bee in a pollen factory to meet
him. I dug his artwork a lot and had even taped a piece he had
written on revolutionary art to my closet door. We hit it off at once
and, when everybody finished rapping, he took me up to see how
the Black Panther newspaper was put together.
I was truly impressed by the Panthers in Oakland. After my
first visit, i dropped in at their offices regularly. I visited some of the
other branches in the area, talking to the people and asking my
usual ton of questions. I spent a couple of nights working at the
distribution center for the Party paper, which was located in the
Fulton district in San Francisco. It was a trip! The papers wouldn't
get picked up from the printer until late in the evening, and people
would work until the wee hours sorting them out and preparing
them for distribution to the Panther offices all around the country.
Panthers worked there, but the majority seemed to be sisters and
brothers from the neighborhood who had just dropped in to give
the Panthers a hand. A lot of young people were there and some
elderly sisters and brothers. As we wrapped the papers in bundles,
printed addresses, and counted out papers, we sang Panther songs
and marching chants. Every now and then, a few stepped outside to
sip a little bitter dog. This was supposedly a Panther invention
made of red port and lemon juice. It wasn't too bad, once i got used
to it, and by the time 1 A.M. came around, i loved it. Working on
the paper distribution didn't even seem like work-it was more like
a party. Somebody always gave me a lift home and i would fall into
a happy sleep feeling refreshed and renewed.
It was splashed across the papers, blaring on the radio, and yet i
still couldn't believe it. The face of the serious young man with the

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gun refused to leave my thoughts. I must have picked up the same
newspaper and put it down a hundred times. This shit was serious !
Seventeen years old with a rifle under his raincoat. Seventeen years
old and taking freedom into his own hands. Seventeen years old
and defying the whole pig power structure in amerika. Seventeen
years old and dead. Tears i didn't even know i had poured out. I got
on the phone to find somebody who could explain it all. Who was
Jonathan Jackson? Who was the young man who came to free a
revolutionary Black prisoner, holding a district attorney and a pig
judge hostage, shouting, "We are the revolutionaries ! Free the
Soledad Brothers by 12:30"? Who was he?"
I had only vaguely heard of the Soledad Brothers. A brother
who knew all about the case broke it down to me. Three unarmed
Black prisoners were shot down in the yard by a white guard. A
grand jury ruled it "justifiable homicide." After the verdict, a white
guard was found dead. Three politically conscious Black prisoners
were charged with the murder and thrown into solitary. They all
faced the death penalty. John Clutchette, Fleeta Drumgo and
George Jackson were the brothers charged with the murder. George
Jackson, a brilliant revolutionary theorist and writer, was Jonathan
Jackson's brother.
I couldn't get the whole thing out of my head. Why were
grown men and women living while Jonathan Jackson lay dead ?
What kind of rage, what kind of oppression, and what kind of
country shaped that young man ? I felt guilt for being alive and well.
Where was my gun? And where was my courage?
I was dry-eyed when i attended the funeral. There were hun­
dreds of people. We could barely get into the church. They set up a
loudspeaker outside so that people could hear the sermon. Black
Panthers, solemn and determined, marched in military formation. I
was so, so glad they were there. Black people need someone to
stand up for us or we will always be victims. I held my arms real
close to me, feeling a bit unraveled. Life for us gets so ugly. If i stay
a victim it will kill me, I thought. It was time for me to get my shit
together. I wanted to be one of the people who stood up. These
were serious times.
Angela Davis was running for her life. They had hooked her
up with Jonathan Jackson, charged her with kidnapping and
murder at the kourthouse, even though she was nowhere on the set.
They charged her with murder because they claimed that some of
the guns used belonged to her. She was one of the most beautiful
women i had ever seen. Not physically, but spiritually. I knew who
she was, because i had been keeping clippings of her in my file. She

was the sister who got fired from her job teaching at a California
college because she told everybody she was a communist and if they
didn't like it, they could go to hell.
But i wasn't surprised. They will charge Black people with
anything, using any flimsy excuse. We were very glad they hadn't
caught her. I hoped they never would. The air was charged, every­
thing was happening so fast, and i wasn't blind anymore. I was
seeing things straight, seeing them more clearly than ever before. I
had so many things to do. If you are deaf, dumb, and blind to
what's happening in the world, you're under no obligation to do
anything. But if you know what's happening and you don't do
anything but sit on your ass, then you're nothing but a punk.
I tried to explain how i felt to some of the people i knew. I
wanted to struggle on a full-time basis. They urged me to join the
Panther Party. I went over in my mind all the criticisms i had of the
party. They had said, "You'll be good for the Party, and the Party
will be good for you. The Party is only as strong as its people." It
made a lot of sense to me. For the first time in months i felt calm
and sure of what i was going to do. I told them that the first thing i
was going to do when i returned to New York was join the Party.
I thought about it all the way home. Of all the things i had
wanted to be when i was a little girl, a revolutionary certainly
wasn't one of them. And now it was the only thing i wanted to do.
Everything else was secondary. It occurred to me that even though i
wanted to become a revolutionary more than anything else in the
world, i still didn't have the slightest idea what i would have to do
to become one.

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Chapter 1 4

208

ou're the property of the feds now," one of
the marshals told me like he really believed it. "We're
taking you to MCC [the federal prison, manhattan
correctional center] where you'll stay while you stand
trial for bank robbery." It was January 5, 1976, fifteen
days after i had been acquitted on the kidnapping
charge in Brooklyn supreme kourt; i was still on
Rikers Island. He busied himself tying me up with
what seemed an endless amount of chains and
shackles. Another stupid-looking marshal told me
how sorry he was to see me again. He said i'd given
him hell the last time. I didn't even recognize him. He
said he had worked on the last, other bank robbery
trial and had gotten "chewed out" because i got preg­
nant. "You were framed," i told him . He looked at me
all dumb, scratching his head. "Yeah, yeah. That's
right." I started to laugh. Even the other marhsals
started to crack up. "It's not so funny," he said. "I lost
my commendation that went down in my record." I
laughed even harder.
The only way i can describe MCC is modern gray,
with dabs of colored paint here and there. It's one of
those ugly inner-city fortress buildings, antinature,
antihuman, and cold to all the senses. There was no
fresh air because the entire building was air-con­
ditioned, and the only natural light came in from
narrow glass slits cut into the side of the building and
wired with alarms. The guards looked like space age
robotons, with blue blazers, gray pants, walkie-talk­
ies, and beepers. After i had been issued the standard
uniform for women (a yellow jumpsuit and tennis
shoes), i was led up to the women's section. To my
absolute surprise i was placed in "general popula-

tion," given a key to my cage, and told that there was no "lock-in"
time. We were supposed to stand by the cell doors at various times
of the day to be counted. The women's section was a relatively small
area, comprising a central area for eating and recreation, a TV
room, and three split-level tiers. There were a few offices, one or
two rooms that served as classrooms, and that was it. The only
other place the women could go, once in a while, was to recreation
on the roof, which was covered with huge metal antihelicopter bars.
After spending more than a month in that confining little
place, the women were climbing the walls, and i'm sure the men felt
the same way. A few of the federal prisoners were big time, with
money and connections; they'd been arrested for more "sophisti­
cated" crimes than the average state prisoner. But th� majority were
poor, Black, or Third World, just like in the state jails. But just like
in the street, money talks. A lot of the men on the honor floor,
which was on the same floor as the women, had money, and rumor
had it that they would send their favorite guards out to buy them
Chinese or Italian food or send them to the Jewish delicatessen,
depending on their mood. One drug dealer made frequent visits to
the women's section in the wee small hours for conjugal visits with
his wife. Since the men on the honor floor had contact with the
women, many tried to buy them by sending them huge quantities
of commissary items. Others tried to impress the women with tall
tales about how much they had ripped off or how big they were on
the street. 1 was sitting on the bench with this white guy, waiting for
them to take me to kourt one morning, and he was steady talking
one and two million dollar deals he had pulled off. He was some
kind of con artist, busted for stock fraud. "You shouldn't be here,"
i told him. "You should be in the White House with all the other
big-time con artists." "I was trying," he said, "I was trying like
hell.�'
There were two sisters who i knew from Rikers. 1 was really
happy to see them both. Skeets was a strong, stand-up sister who
kept her mouth shut, minded her business, and didn't take any shit
from anybody. She was a real warmhearted person, generous and
open, and maintained a whole lot of humanity, even though she was
facing a hunk of time on a bank robbery case. 1 was shocked when i
ran into Charlie, who i had known on Rikers as Charlene. She had
changed completely. She was no longer the thin, round-faced young
sister i had known on the rock. It was as if she had aged overnight.
She had written some dynamite poetry and had been part of our
drama group. But this time she had been arrested for parole viola­
tion on a technicality and just didn't give a damn about anything

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anymore. She was bitter and tired and her whole attitude can be
summed up in the two words that she frequently used: "Shove it."
She told me that her freedom depended on whether or not she
passed a high school equivalency test. Everybody encouraged her
to study, but she just didn't seem to care anymore. She said she was
tired of jumping through hoops and didn't give a damn what
happened. I understood how she felt, but i hated to see her so bitter
and so hurt and nowhere to go with it, nothing positive to apply it
to. I wanted to help her, but i didn't know how, and i was only
going to be there for a hot minute. The only thing that perked her
up was the struggle the women got into to improve medical care at
the jail.
At the time, the health situation was horrible. Women came in
off the street and were given no physical exam, no tests, no nothing.
They had trouble seeing gynecologists and having their most basic
needs met, medical or otherwise. Since we were a tiny minority of
the prison population, our needs were ignored. The women got
together and wrote complaints to the warden. Charlie was one of
the women who worked the hardest to get better medical condi­
tions. It's kind of ironic when i think about it now. A little more
than a year later, i heard over the prison grapevine that Charlene
had died from undiagnosed cancer of the uterus.
The Queens bank robbery trial, which I was here for, was one
of the wildest trials i ever went through. We had just finished with
the Brooklyn kidnapping case and i was not at all looking forward
to going to trial again so soon.
For almost three years, now, Evelyn had worked on my cases
continuously. She had quit her job as a professor at New York
University Law School on the day I was arrested on the turnpike to
become my lawyer. One of the few cases she had accepted since my
arrest-mostly to earn some money-was ready for trial, and she
couldn't postpone it any longer. So i had to get someone else for
my trial. Some of the brothers and sisters recommended Stanley
Cohen to me. They said he was a good lawyer and would do a good
job on this kind of case. I was hesitant because i had always had
Black lawyers representing me. I felt that they would probably be
more understanding and more sensitive to the situation i was
dealing with. I'm not talking about any old Black lawyer, because
some of them make a whole lot of money and think like Richard
Nixon. I'm talking about those who are concerned with the plight
of Black people.
I was especially sensitive to the issue after months of listening
to some of the sisters at Rikers. They were so brainwashed they

thought a white lawyer, any white lawyer, was better than a Black
lawyer. They also felt the same way about white doctors, white
dentists, white teachers, etc. "I ain't going to court with no Black
lawyer," they'd say. "I want me a white lawyer who is friendly with
the judge and ain't gonna make him mad." 1 tried to tell them that
it didn't matter what color their lawyer was, if the lawyer went
against the judge and really put up a fight for the client, the judge
was gonna get mad. Few, if any, Black defendants have ever been
freed because the judge liked their lawyer. If you had a dime for
every time a judge and a defense lawyer sat down to lunch and
discussed some Black client rotting away in jail, you'd be able to
stop working and live on the interest.
1 decided to talk with Cohen and see whether i thought he
would be good for the case. Stanley was a middle-aged, Jewish,
fiesty-Iooking man who somehow reminded me of W. C. Fields. He
had a dramatic streak in him and could change the tone and mood
of his voice from indignant to pleading in a matter of seconds. He
had a long list of acquittals in his record and told funny stories
about the strategies he used in this or that trial. He had once been a
member of the Communist party and continued to have progressive
politics. "Why do you like being a criminal lawyer?" i asked him.
"How can you stapd to fight in the kourt system, knowing how
much racism and injustice is involved ?" It was a loaded question,
put out there to see how he would answer it. 1 expected him to say
something like somebody had to do it, somebody had to make the
sacrifice. "I like to win," he said. "I do it because 1 like to win." 1
liked him and decided i wanted him to defend me on the bank
robbery case.
Evelyn gave Stanley the transcripts from the time i was beaten
up in kourt by the u.s. marshals trying to photograph me, together
with all of the other documents in her file, and worked with him on
the trial strategy. Andrew Jackson had pled guilty, so i was on trial
alone. Everything was rush, rush, rush. The railroad train was
whistling and it could hardly wait to take me up the river. The new
judge assigned to the case wanted the case over with and he wanted
it over with fast. We wanted to question the prospective j urors
about their opinions, what they had seen and heard in the media,
etc. The judge was determined not to have a long voir dire, and so
we compromised. A questionnaire was made up asking some of the
questions we submitted and others that the prosecutor submitted.
After we went through the answers we were to pick or eliminate
jurors, asking additional questions as needed. Some of the answers
were so contradictory and such a study on the level of racism in

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amerika that it would take a book just to report on them. In one
hundred percent of the cases we were able to tell whether the
prospective juror was Black, white, or "other," just by reading the
answers.
The trial had a lighthearted feel to it. Everyone had kind of
decided that we would enjoy the fight and fight as hard as we could,
without worrying about whether we were gonna win or lose. I
don't think that there was a single one of us, with the possible
exception of Afeni Shakur, who really thought we were going to
win. Afeni, who was working as a legal assistant, kept telling me,
"We're going to win this one, Assata." But i sure as hell didn't
believe it. They had taken a bank picture of a woman robbing a
bank, printed my name under it as being positively identified, and
then placed that picture in newspapers, subway stations, and, i
think, even on the sides of buses. They had this picture posted in
every bank in New York. There was not a person in New York who
went to the bank, rode the subway, or walked the streets who had
not seen that photograph with my name printed under it a thou­
sand times. There was no way of even counting how many times
that picture had been flashed on television, with the announcer
calling out my name. The public had been so saturated with that
image that i felt it was crazy to take this trial seriously. After
Stanley was familiar with some of the facts, i had asked him what
he thought my chances were. "I'd be lying if I told you that they
looked good. In reality, they look pretty lousy. But, I believe you,
and I'm going to fight for you. And, believe me, I like to fight." We
agreed that i would act as co-counsel on the case. "You're a lousy
lawyer," he would tell me every time we got into an argument over
some strategy, "but you're better than a lotta lawyers I know who
passed the bar."
The atmosphere was electric. The kourtroom was packed every
day with sisters and brothers who had come to watch the circus. I
couldn't stop staring. I have always said that the best thing about
being on trial is getting to see and smile at the spectators. Seeing so
many beautiful people in the kourtroom gave us the push . we
needed to get down and take care of business. I felt that way during
all of my trials, but this trial had an atmosphere that made it even
more special. People from all over the Black community dropped
by. The Muslim sisters and brothers brought their prayer rugs and
broke out into prayer in the hallway of the kourthouse. People
brought their children, explaining what was happening. One little
girl broke up the whole kourtroom when she asked out loud, "Is
that the fascist pig, Mommy?" pointing up at the judge. It was as if

Black folks had just taken over the kourtroom, letting everybody
know that they were watching what was going down.
The first thing we did was ask for a lineup. The way i had been
"identified" was from a photo. The FBI had selected my pho­
tograph from the "militant casebook." This book contained the
photographs of all the "militants" the FBI wanted to send to prison.
After they had gotten my photograph out of the "militant case­
book," they put it in with a few other photographs of women. Of
course, mine, a mug shot, was the only one with numbers across
the front of it. The rest were normal. The FBI then showed this
group of pictures to the robbery witnesses and asked them to
identify someone who "somewhat resembled" or "bore a likeness"
to the woman who robbed the bank. Two of the people who were
in the bank signed affidavits saying that the photograph with the
numbers across it, my mug shot, looked somewhat like the woman.
The rest who had been in the bank at the time of the robbery made
no such identification. We told the judge we wanted a lineup
because we thought the initial identification of me as the bank
robber was suggestive and tainted. But before the judge had ar­
ranged for the lineup, the prosecutor called one of the so-called
witnesses to testify. Since i was the only Black woman sitting in the
defendant's chair, of course he identified me. We protested the
procedure, but the judge admitted his testimony anyway. We finally
did arrange for a lineup, and, of course, the other so-called wit­
nesses picked out another woman.
Since the photo identification part of the case was based on
nothing more than "all niggers look alike," the FBI tried to use
"scientific" evidence to gain a conviction. Their plan to superim­
pose the bank surveillance photo over my photograph failed be­
cause they had only one photo of me that was taken at the same
angle as the bank robbery picture. It was one of the photographs
taken when they assaulted me in the kourtroom before the trial
began when I refused to let them take my picture. The FBI had
blocked out the faces and hands of the marshals and FBI agents
choking and assaulting me. They had cropped the picture so that
the only thing the jury could see was my face. But my facial
expression in the photograph was one of such agony that it was
hard for them to convince the jury of anything else.
So the FBI came up with a brilliant idea. They brought in
some dude from the FBI who said he was an expert on identifying
photographs by examining them under a microscope. He was a real
pro, slick as grease. He had charts and diagrams and whatnot, and i
was worried to death that the jury would go for that crap. He

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sounded real good, until it came time for cross-examination. It
turned out that he was a specialist in paleontology and had spent a
lot of time studying rocks. He tried to claim that his expertise at
examining rocks made him able to identify people. Under cross­
examination, all his carefully constructed "expertise" turned into a
pile of rocks, and this new technical breakthrough in crime fighting
proved to be nothing but a fraud. Because the prosecution had been
allowed to introduce this new, "scientific" evidence, the judge said
we had the right to find a photographic expert to rebut the testi­
mony. Since i didn't have a dime, the kourt agreed to pay for it. The
day our photograph expert testified i slumped down in the seat. He
was a real straight-looking white guy who looked like he sub­
scribed to Reader's Digest. But the guy had credentials in pho­
tography a mile long, and you could tell from the way he talked
that he loved photography and that he was incensed over what the
FBI was trying to do. He explained to the jury the chemical process
of photography and that what the FBI agent said was absolutely
impossible. He said that if you look at a photograph under a
microsocpe all you will see is little dots. His testimony was so
correct and his facts so together that the prosecutor barely bothered
to cross-examine him.
The capper came when the manager of the bank came forward
to testify in my behalf. He said that i was definitely not the woman
who robbed the bank and that the robber was a different height
and weight from mine. We could see the prosecutor quietly creep
under his table. His last hope was the summation.
In his closing statement, he tried to make up for everything he
had not proved with the evidence. He painted me as an evil,
conniving monster. He told the jury that i was hiding the fact that i
had big fat arms like the woman who was shown robbing the bank,
that i was concealing my arms because i had not worn a sleeveless
dress in kourt (the trial was held in the middle of January). As he
was talking, i politely rolled up my sleeves right there in the
kourtroom, exposing my very thin arms. When he got to the final
part of his closing, he grew strangely confident. "Ladies and gen­
tlemen of the jury, this woman is very clever, very conniving. She
has tried to deceive this jury in every way. But she made one
mistake, ladies and gentlemen, she made one fatal error." He then
held up a picture of the woman robbing the bank and, in the other
hand, he held up my mug shot picture. "She made one mistake," he
kept repeating. "She forgot to change her earrings. She has the
same earrings on."
The prosecutor was so dramatic. The scene was straight out of

the movies. You could tell he had been watching the late show. Both
the woman in the bank and i had on hoop earrings. When Stanley
summed up, he just said, "Will all the women in the courtroom
who have on hoop earrings, please stand up?" Half the women rose
to their feet.
While the jury was out deliberating i paced back and forth in
the holding pen. "They're gonna convict me anyway," i told Afeni.
"They probably weren't even listening. "That jury isn't going to
convict you, Assata," Afeni replied. "Didn't you see the faces of
those jurors, especially the Black ones ?" It was true, i had seen
them look at me differently after the truth started coming out. And
i knew that the Black jurors in the deliberating room would make
all the difference in the world. If nothing else, they remind some of
the more racist whites that Black people are human beings. It's a
shame that too many Black people try to avoid jury duty, instead of
trying to slow down the railroad. A lot of times it's a matter of
simple economics. Black people often feel they can't afford to sit on
a jury, that the money they would lose would mean a sacrifice for
their family. And they are probably right. But their sitting on a jury
might mean that their neighbor's son or daughter doesn't end up
frying in the electric chair or rotting away behind bars.
A verdict had been reached. I could tell what it was before we
even entered the kourtroom. The pigs were upset, to put it mildly.
The female guard who escorted me to kourt every day seemed glad.
The jury read the verdict. Acquittal. The kourtroom broke into a
loud cheer. The judge just gave up calling for order. He had to wait
for the shouting to die down. It was a long time coming. All the
spectators were jumping around hugging each other. The marshals
led me out of the courtroom and handcuffed me. They brought me
back to Rikers Island where i was put into solitary confinement.

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Chapter 1 5

2I6

bundle of energy walked
into the Black Panther Party office on Seventh Avenue.
If a light had been plugged into me, i'm sure i would
have lit up half of Harlem. I was fired up and raring to
go. When i joined the BPP, i was determined to give it
everything i had.
The officer of the day gave me a form to fill out.
He couldn't find the second sheet so i went back with
him to look for it. He was searching through a file
cabinet which was in a state of anti-order. It was a
complete mess. I offered to arrange it for him and the
brother consented. In a minute i was knee-deep in
paper, indexing and putting everything in alphabetical
order. After everybody's "security files" were filed, i cut
index markers out of a manila folder, thinking about
how lax security was. I had just walked in off the street
and they let me go through all the files. I explained the
new system to the brother, happy at least that the
experience gained from all those boring office jobs was
put to some revolutionary use.
That same evening i was on the bus to Phila­
delphia. The Party had called for a constitutional
convention to write a new constitution that would
guarantee the rights of the poor and oppressed and
would be antiracist and antifascist. We were attending
the plenary session for the convention to be held later
in D.C. This session was a definite up. Everybody's
spirits were soaring. It took my breath away to see all
those revolutionaries get up and tell it like it was. I was
happy as a dog in boneville. My "hotel room" was a
pool table in the basement of a church. I slept better
than a princess on twenty mattresses.
When i got back to New York, i was assigned to

the medical cadre. Joan Bird was my immediate supervisor. She had
been a nursing student and was one of the defendants in the New
York Panther 21 case. She was out on $100,000 bail and busy
working on the trial. She had been beaten, tortured, and hung
upside down out of a police station window. She had big, soft eyes,
nervous lips, and the face of someone who had been forced to grow
up too soon. She reminded me of someone who had led a very
sheltered life and then, all of a sudden, found herself in the cold,
cruel world. She was sort of shy, and i felt sorry for her because she
seemed to be under so much pressure. She took everything to heart;
nothing seemed to slide off her back. She worried about everything
and everyone. She was facing thirty years in prison, so i had to do
most of the medical cadre work, and she worried herself sick about
that.
The medical cadre was responsible for the health care of the
Panthers. We made medical and dental appointments for them and
taught them basic first aid so that they could help the people in
emergencies. Periodically, we set up a table on the street corner and
gave free TB tests or gave out information on sickle-cell anemia. It
was also my job to work with the Black medical students and
doctors who we were counting on to help us set up a free clinic in
Harlem. The Panther Party had bought a brownstone on 12 7th
Street, and as soon as it was renovated we planned to open a free
clinic there.
Every week all the medical cadre members from the Bronx,
Brooklyn, Harlem, Jamaica, and Corona branches met at the
Bronx Ministry of Information. On my first trip to the Ministry, i
carried a big stack of Panther newspapers. I was a lousy paper
seller, and most of the time i got some of my doing-good friends to
chip in and buy them. Then we'd give them away to the people.
The head of the medical cadre was Alaywa, and from the first
moment she gained my respect and admiration. She was serious
about everything that concerned Black people, but when it came to
their health she was a fanatic. She demanded that we take our jobs
seriously, and woe be to the medical cadre who showed up at the
weekly meeting with nothing on their progress reports. Alaywa had
a young daughter, but she nevertheless did the work of two people.
I got expelled from the Party, though, that first night after the
medical cadre meeting. When i came out of the meeting, my stack
of Panther papers was gone. I asked around, but no one had seen
them. Finally, Robert Bey, the head of the whole East Coast branch
of the Party, said that he had seen them.
"Where are they?" i asked.
"I threw them away."

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"What do you mean, you threw them away?" i asked, thinking
it was some kind of joke.
"I threw them away," he insisted. "Ya'll know that you're not
supposed to leave the papers out here on the desk. This will teach
you to put the papers up on the rack where they belong."
I explained that it was my first time coming up to the Ministry
and that i had no way of knowing the procedure.
"You should have asked," he replied arrogantly. "I threw them
away and that's that."
I was losing my patience. "Look, man, why don't you just give
me my papers so that i can get out of here. I don't have time to
stand here all night."
"I told you i threw the papers away, and that's that."
"Then you're either a liar or a fool," i shot back. He had made
me mad, gone and stepped on my last nerve. Then he tried to get all
bad, getting all up in my face, trying to defend his stupid arrogance.
I was in no mood for fooling around. I cursed him out royally and
walked out of the office.
The next day, when i walked into the Harlem office, Bashir, the
officer of the day, told me i would have to leave. "What do you
mean, leave ?" i asked. He said that he was sorry, but Robert Bey
had called and told him that i was no longer in the Party. I was
burnt. I got the Bronx Ministry and told them to put Bey on the
phone and proceeded to call him the unprincipled, arrogant idiot
he was. In addition to being cowardly, he hadn't even told me to my
face that i was expelled. I was so warm i wasn't even surprised when
he apologized and told me i was reinstated. I hate arrogance
whether it's white or purple or Black. Some people let power go to
their heads. They think that just because they have some kind of
title in front of their name you're supposed to bend over and kiss
them on the ass. The only great people i have met have been modest
and humble. You can't claim that you love people when you don't
respect them, and you can't call for political unity unless you
practice it in your relationships. And that doesn't happen out of
nowhere. That's something that has got to be put into practice every
day.
The first day i was assigned to the breakfast program i over­
slept. To get there on time i had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. I
was the picture of shame and remorse as i came plodding into the
office. "Fancy meeting you here," the sister who i was supposed to
be helping said. "So nice of you to come." Later on that evening i
criticized myself for being late. "That's all right, sister," the brother

who was leading the meeting said. "you can do penance by work­
ing on the breakfast program for life."
"For life?" i repeated.
"Yep, you can show your sincerity to the hungry children of
Harlem by working on the breakfast for as long as you're in the
Party."
1 have always hated to get up in the morning, and the sheer
idea of getting up every day at 4:30 made me groan. But i thought
about the children i'd let down. Getting up early should be an easy
thing for a revolutionary. 1 thought about those who had given their
lives for our struggle and decided it wasn't so hard after all. Later,
one of the sisters told me, "Don't worry. They'll just assign you to
the breakfast program every day until you're used to it and they can
count on you to be disciplined. The same thing happened to me."
1 was glad it had happened to others because i felt like such a
dumbbell. Got to try harder, i told myself.
Working on the breakfast program turned out to be an abso­
lute delight. The work was so fulfilling. The Harlem branch had
breakfast programs in three different churches, and i rotated among
all three. From the first day i saw those kids, my heart went out to
them. They were such bright, open little people, each with his or
her own personality. 1 spent the first two weeks or so just getting
my cooking act together. One little girl came over to me and tapped
me on the back.
"There's something wrong with your pancakes."
"What's wrong with them ?"
"They don't taste good."
Making breakfast for a whole bunch of hungry kids in the
morning is no easy task, especially when you don't know how
many are coming or how much they're going to eat. There was one
little boy who i was convinced had a tapeworm. He put away so
much food it was unbelievable. One day i saw him stuff some food
into his pockets.
"Would you like some paper to wrap that in?" i asked him,
tearing off a piece of foil.
"I wasn't stealing." Tears welled up in his eyes.
"Of course you weren't. Everything is free here and you can
take as much as you want. But don't you want to wrap it up so your
pockets don't get all greasy ?"
"It's for my mother. We don't have no food and the stove is
broke."
"You can tell your mother that she can come down if she wants

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to, and you can take as much food home as you want to." A few of
the other kids were looking at us. "That goes for everyone. If you
want to take a sandwich or something with you, just let me know
and i'll give you some wrapping paper for it." After that i would try
to remember to ask if anybody wanted anything to go. Most of the
kids were interested. "Give me an egg sandwich to go." "I want two
sausages to go." We rarely met the parents. When a new kid joined
the program, the parents might drop by to check it out, but in
general they would only come to leave the kids or pick them up.
The breakfast program in East Harlem was the poorest. In the
middle of winter some of the kids were without hats, gloves,
scarves, and boots and wore just some skimpy coats or jackets.
When it was possible, we tried to hook them up with something
from the free clothing drive. Only once in a while, when everything
went smoothly and we were through early, did we get a chance to
spend some time with the children. Usually we were in a rush
making sure they got out to school on time. Some of the Panthers
wanted them to learn the ten-point program and platform and
others wanted to teach them Panther songs. 1 preferred talking to
them, sitting down with them and exchanging ideas. So we just sort
of combined these approaches. We were all dead set against cram­
ming things in their heads or teaching them meaningless rote
phrases. The children were so naturally curious we had to take care
not to let the food burn while we answered their questions.
My closest friends in the Party were Dhoruba, Cetewayo, and
Jamal. They were all out on bail from the Panther 21 case. They
came over to my house and we sat for hours talking politics, the
Party, North Korea, and what was happening on 1 1 6th Street. 1
learned more in one night than i learned in City College in a
month. They had a hard time dealing with me, though. 1 can be
stubborn as six mules and will argue anyone down until i'm
convinced one way or the other. Although i no longer hated white
people and no longer saw all of them as the enemy, i was still not
too fond of them. As far as i was concerned, it was the duty of Black
people to work in the Black community and it was the job of white
people to go into the white community and organize white people.
The brothers were in one hundred percent agreement with that. We
also agreed that it was necessary for Black, white, Hispanic, Native
American, and Oriental people to come together to fight. We
disagreed on who and what i should study.
Usually, after a disagreement, they suggested i read this or that,
often Marx, Lenin, or Engels. 1 preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim II
Sung, Che, or Fidel, but i ended up having to get into Marx and

Lenin just to understand a lot of the speeches and stuff Huey
Newton was putting out. It wasn't easy reading, but i was glad i did
it. It opened up my horizons a hell of a lot. I didn't relate to them as
the great white fathers or like some kind of gods, like some of the
white revolutionaries did. As far as i was concerned, they were two
dudes who had made contributions to revolutionary struggle too
great to be ignored.
The more i studied, the more critical i became of the political
education (PE) program in the Party. There were three different
political education classes: community classes, classes for BPP ca­
dre, and PE classes for Panther leadership. In the community
classes, Panthers explained the ten-point program and the general
objectives and philosophy of the BPP as well as various articles that
appeared in the Black Panther newspaper. As far as i was con­
cerned, these were the best PE classes the party ever gave. If the
teachers were good, the classes were interesting and fun.
With a few exceptions, PE classes for Party members turned
out to be j ust the opposite. We reviewed articles in the BPP paper,
read passages from Mao's R ed Book, and discussed certain
speeches and articles by various Party members. Most of the time
whoever was giving the class discussed whatever we were studying
and explained it, but without giving the underlying issues or
putting it into any historical context. The basic problem was not
whether the teacher was good or bad. The basic problem stemmed
from the fact that the BPP had no systematic approach to political
education. They were reading the Red Book but didn't know who
Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey, and Nat Turner were. They
talked about intercommunalism but still really believed that the
Civil War was fought to free the slaves. A whole lot of them barely
understood any kind of history, Black, African or otherwise. Huey
Newton had written that politics was war without bloodshed and
that war was politics with bloodshed. To a lot of Panthers, however,
struggle consisted of only two aspects: picking up the gun and
serving the people.
That was the main reason many Party members, in my opin­
ion, underestimated the need to unite with other Black organiza­
tions and to struggle around various community issues. A lot of the
sisters and brothers had joined because they were sick and tired of
the oppression they had been suffering. Most of them had never
been in the struggle before. Quite a few joined thinking the Party
was going to issue them a gun and direct them to go out and shoot
pigs. Most of these brothers and sisters had attended inferior
schools which either taught them lies or nothing at all. Education

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of every kind was sorely needed. Without an adequate education
program, many Panthers fell into a roboton bag. They repeated
slogans and phrases without understanding their complete mean­
ing, often resulting in dogmatic and shortsighted practices. For
example, one day an African brother who was working with one of
the African liberation movements came into the office and gave us a
beautiful calendar put out by one of the African liberation groups.
It was baaad. It had beautiful pictures of African freedom fighters
and said something like "International support for African libera­
tion." The first thing i did was hang it up. When i came to the office
the next day the calendar was gone. When i asked what had
happened to it, they said, "The calendar said 'international' and
we're not internationalists, we're intercommunalists."
I am convinced that a systematic program for political educa­
tion, ranging from the simplest to the highest level, is imperative for
any successful organization or movement for Black liberation in
this country. The Party had some of the most politically conscious
sisters and brothers as members, but in some ways it failed to
spread that consciousness to the cadre in general. I also thought it
was a real shame the BPP didn't teach Panthers organizing and
mobilizing techniques. Some members were natural geniuses at
organizing people, but they were usually the busiest comrades with
the most responsibility. Part of the problem was that the Party had
grown so fast that there wasn't a lot of time to come up with step­
by-step approaches to things. The other part of the problem was
that almost from its inception, the BPP was under attack from the
u.s. government.
At first i didn't feel the repression too deeply. I knew the Party
was under attack, but it felt like it wasn't so near, like it was
lingering in the background. What made me maddest was the
media treatment of the BPP, which gave the impression that the
Party was racist and violent. And it worked. The pigs would burst
into a Panther office, shoot first, and ask questions later. The press
always reported that the police had "uncovered" a large arsenal of
weapons. Later, when the "arsenal" turned out to be a few legally
registered rifles and shotguns, the press never printed a word. The
same thing goes on today. Nobody gets upset about white people
having guns, but let a Black person have a gun and something
criminal is going on. The only time white amerika is in favor of
Black people having guns is when we are using them to do amer­
ika's dirty work. They've got a lot of Black people so scared they are
scared even to think about owning a gun. But the way the tide of
racism is rising in this country, Black people better be more scared

to not have a gun than to have one. With the Ku Klux Klan and all
these other racists running around, Black people have got to be
suicidal if they don't own and know how to operate a gun. If you
don't own a gun now, you'd better rush out and buy one because in
a few years, the way this country is moving, it might be against the
law for Blacks to buy guns.
One of the best things about struggling is the people you meet.
Before i became involved, i never dreamed such beautiful people
existed. Of course, there were some creeps, but i can say without
the slightest hesitation that i have been blessed with meeting some
of the kindest, most courageous, most principled, most informed
and intelligent people on the face of the earth. l owe a great deal to
those who have helped me, loved me, taught me, and pulled my
coat when i was moving in the wrong direction. If there is such a
thing as luck, i've had an abundance of it, and the ones who have
brought it to me are my friends and comrades. My wild, big­
hearted friends, with their pretty ways and pretty thoughts, have
given me more happiness that i will ever deserve. There was never a
time, no matter what horrible thing i was undergoing, when i felt
completely alone. Maybe it's ironic, i don't know, but the one thing
i do know is that the Black liberation movement has done more for
me than i will ever be able to do for it.
Becoming Zayd's friend was something really important. After i
joined the party he would drop by my house every so often. We
would listen to music and talk politics. I was forever teasing him
about being part of the leadership (he was Minister of Information)
since he was the only leader up at the Bronx Ministry, with the
exception of Afeni Shakur, i had any respect for. He would laugh at
my Robert Bey jokes, but he never once said a disparaging word
about any of the other comrades. I also respected him because he
refused to become part of the macho cult that was an official body
in the BPP. He never voted on issues or took a position just to be
one of the boys. When brothers made an unprincipled attack on
sisters, Zayd refused to participate. Whenever we hooked up for a
meeting at somebody's house, he was the first to volunteer to cook
dinner or, if dinner was already cooked, the first to roll up his
sleeves and wash the dishes. I knew this had to be especially hard
for him because he was small and his masculinity was always being
challenged in some way by the more backward, muscle-headed
men in the party.
Zayd always treated me and all the other sisters with respect. I
enjoyed his friendship because he was one of those rare men com-

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pletely capable of being friends with a woman without having
designs on her. We communicated on such an intense, honest level
that afterward i wondered if it had been real. And he was cultured.
When you say "cultured," most people think you're talking about
the opera and Amy Vanderbilt's etiquette book, but that's not what
i'm talking about. He was well versed and well educated about
every aspect of Black life. He could not only recite Langston Hughes
by heart and give a biographical rundown of Coltrane, Bessie
Smith, or James Cleveland, but he could also sit down and have an
intelligent conversation about dreambooks or Argo starch eaters.
After a while Zayd asked me to work with him on Party
projects. It was mostly dealing with white support groups who
were involved in raising bail for the Panther 21 members still in jail.
1 hated it. At the time, i felt that anything below 1 10th Street was
another country. All my activities were centered in Harlem and i
almost never left it. Doing defense committee work was definitely
not up my alley. 1 think that one of the reasons Zayd insisted on
bringing me to some of these events is that he knew how much i
hated them. 1 was the perfect angry Panther. 1 hated standing
around while all these white people asked me to explain myself, my
existence. 1 became a master of the one-line answer.
"What made you become a Panther?"
"Oppression. "
"What do you think about Huey Newton ?"
"He's a right-on Black revolutionary leader."
"What do you think white people should be doing?"
"Organizing other white people in their communities, supporting Black and Third World liberation struggles, and helping to
free the Panther 2 1 ."
Once a guy asked if i was really going to off the pigs.
"Not tonight."
1 couldn't get over how personal some of those people tried to
get even though i'd never seen them before. One came over to me
and asked if Zayd was my Panther husband. When i looked at her
as if she was crazy for asking me a question like that, she said,
giggling all over herself, "I mean, 1 mean, is he your cat?" Another
woman came over and stuck her hands all in my hair. "Oh, 1 just
had to touch your hair. It's so . . . kinky."
Zayd would be steady trying to convince the defense groups to
raise more money. He explained how important it was to have the
Panther 21 out on the street, organizing and educating people
about what was going on in amerika. Zayd was polite and under­
standing and patient. After he gave his little speech, he would turn

to me and ask, "What do you think about that, sister?" Rapping in
my best Panther cadence, i would say something like "Black people
have been oppressed for four hundred years. We are still being
oppressed. The Panther 21 don't need any moral support. They
need concrete support. They don't want to hear that you sym­
pathize with them, they want to hear that you are willing and ready
to help liberate them." When we were finished, a second donation
would be given.
Zayd was usually cool and poised at these functions, except
once. We were at a meeting with the Computer People for Peace, a
group that was helping to raise the money to bail out Sundiata
Acoli. Zayd said Sundiata should be the next Panther to be bailed
out because his leadership qualities were sorely needed in the Party.
One guy kept interrupting him, implying that Zayd was pushing for
Sundiata's release because they were friends, that he was being
subjective and dealing from an emotional rather than a scientific,
objective analysis. Zayd's face underwent a complete change. I
could see that he was trying to control himself to keep from going
off on this dude. "What do you mean, I'm being subjective? Don't
you ever open your mouth to me to tell me I'm subjective as long as
you live. My brother Lumumba, my own flesh and blood, has also
been locked up for more than a year, and I haven't asked you for a
dime to bail him out." Lumumba Shakur was one of the Panther
2 1 . A complete hush came over the room. The computer people
said they would do everything they could to raise money for Sun­
diata's bail, and that's' what they did. The only thing was that, once
the $ 1 00,000 cash bail was raised, pig judge Murtagh refused to
release him or any of the others. We were furious and helpless.
After a while, everything seemed strange to me. I was catching
all these weird vibrations and sensations. I couldn't quite put my
finger on it, but i could sense a whole lot of stuff going on. I felt like
i was standing on top of a river with currents swirling down
underneath the surface. All these strange things were starting to
happen. I would go to the laundromat and find a Black policeman
there who said he wanted to join the Party. Every once in a while i'd
turn around and see strange men following me. Even though i had
no money to pay my telephone bill and had long stopped paying it,
the telephone kept working and, after a while, i stopped receiving
any bills.
Politically, i was not at all happy with the direction of the Party.
Huey went on a nationwide tour advocating his new theory of
intercommunality. The essence of the theory was that imperialism
had reached such a degree that sovereign borders were no longer

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recognized and that oppressed nations no longer existed, only
oppressed communities, within and outside the u.s. The problem
was that somebody had forgotten to tell these oppressed commu­
nities that they were no longer nations. Even worse, almost no one
understood Huey's long speeches explaining intercommunalism.
Huey Newton was not what you would call a good speaker. In fact,
he had a kind of high-pitched monotonous voice and his rambling
for three hours about the negation of the negation was sheer
disaster. People walked out in droves. Instead of criticizing what
was happening, most of the Party members defended it. When i said
that Huey needed speaking lessons they jumped down my throat.
When Huey changed his title from defense minister to the
ridiculous-sounding "Supreme Commander" and then to the even
more ridiculous "Supreme Servant," damn near nobody said a
word. That was one of the big problems in the Party. Criticism and
self-criticism were not encouraged, and the little that was given
often was not taken seriously. Constructive criticism and self-crit­
icism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization.
Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, not learn
from them.
Because i was still a college student, i was often called on by
the BPP to do student work. I didn't mind working with students
to coordinate this or that, but i was deathly afraid of speaking in
public. But they insisted i had to learn in order to be effective on
campus. I had an old rickety tape recorder that was on its last legs. I
decided to use it to practice public speaking. On and on i went, bla,
bla, bla, into the microphone. The telephone rang. I put the mike
down, turned off the recorder, and rushed to the phone. "Hello,
JoAnne? Stop making tapes," the voice said. The phone clicked. I
stood there with the receiver in my hand. I had to get out of there. I
ran to get my coat. I needed some privacy to think.
Every day at the office, things were getting stranger and stran­
ger. Rumors that the pigs were going to attack the office were
rampant. Convinced of the invasion, the leadership decided to
"secure" the office. The big storefront window was removed and
replaced by a wooden partition. Windows without glass were cut
into the wood, covered by little wooden doors. "What are all those
little holes for?" i asked. "To shoot out of," they told me. Piles of
sandbags were brought into the office. I didn't believe that shit!
Everybody was talking about defending the office. "Why do we
have to defend the office ?" i asked. They told me something about
executive mandate number three. It said Panthers were supposed to
defend the office against pig attacks. I was all in favor of self-

defense, but i couldn't see giving my life up just to defend the office.
"It's the principle of the thing," they told me.
I didn't understand what principle they were talking about.
One of the basic laws of people's struggle was to retreat when the
enemy is strong and to attack when the enemy is weak. As far as i
was concerned, defending the office was suicidal. The pigs had
manpower, initiative, surprise, and gunpowder. We would just be
sitting ducks. I felt that the Party was dealing from an emotional
rather than a rational basis. Just because you believe in self-defense
doesn't mean you let yourself be sucked into defending yourself on
the enemy's terms. One of the Party's major weaknesses, i thought,
was the failure to clearly differentiate between aboveground politi­
cal struggle and underground, clandestine military struggle.
An aboveground political organization can't wage guerrilla
war anymore than an underground army can do aboveground
political work. Although the two must work together, they must
have completely separate structures, and any links between the two
must remain secret. Educating the people about the necessity for
self-defense and for armed struggle was one thing. But maintaining
a policy of defending Party offices against insurmountable odds was
another. Of course, if the police just came in and started shooting,
defending yourself made sense. But the point is to try and prevent
that from happening. One day, in the not too distant future, any
Black organization that is not based on bootlicking and tomming
will be forced underground. And as fast as this country is moving to
the fascist far right, Black revolutionary organizations should start
preparing for the inevitability. Fascist governments do not permit
revolutionary or progressive opposition groups to exist, no matter
how peaceful or nonviolent they are. It doesn't matter whether the
fascist government simply outlaws the groups like in Nazi Germany
or mounts a counterintelligence campaign to destroy opposition
groups, like in the u.s.
It was growing more and more impossible to get work done.
Everything seemed to be in a continuous state of chaos. The Party
decided at one point to open a Saturday Liberation School for
children, and i was assigned to the project. I was really ecstatic
about it because i love working with children and i was really tired
of adults at the time. Being my usual reserved self, i threw every bit
of energy i had into the project. I collected books, materials, paints,
photographs, children's Black history stories, children's records,
etc. Two other comrades were assigned to the project. Everybody
pitched in and after a few weeks we had a whole pile of children
attending. Just as we got the program on its feet, i was called aside

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and taken into confidence. The Party had information that the pigs
were going to raid the office in about two weeks. "If the pigs were
going to attack the office, why would they bother to tell us?" I
asked. "We have our sources, sister," i was told. "Just like the pigs
have their sources, we have ours." I was skeptical, but i figured they
knew more about it than i did. In preparation for the coming attack
i was asked to prepare a child care place, a safe house for Panther
children. It sounded kind of wild, but i agreed to do it. In the back
of my mind i half thought they were testing me to see how i would
respond in a crisis.
I put the child care thing together. Two weeks came and went,
but there was no invasion.
In addition, a lot of things were going on that i was not too
happy about. Plans, priorities, and procedures changed daily, and
most of the time the changes were ill-conceived. Everything had an
arbitrary air to it, and i certainly did not have the feeling that we
were waging a step-by-step analytical struggle. There was little
internal conflict in either the Harlem branch or the New York
Chapter. For the most part Panthers were a friendly, open group of
people who really went out of their way to be kind and helpful and,
in spite of all the pressure and hardships they had to deal with,
managed to be principled and to fight as hard as they ktiew how for
our people. We had a bit of a leadership problem with Robert Bey
and Jolly, who were both from the West Coast. Bey's problem was
that he was none too bright and that he had an aggressive, even
belligerent, way of talking and dealing with people. jolly's problem
was that he was Robert Bey's shadow. Bey later became Huey
Newton's bodyguard, a job for which he was much more suited.
Cotton had come to Harlem from California. Everybody loved
him. He was everybody's main man. He had known Bunchy Carter,
Lil Bobby Hutton, the chief (David Hilliard), and, of course, the
rage (Eldridge Cleaver). Cotton had been sent to New York and put
in charge of fixing up the brownstone the Party had bought on
127th Street. According to the grapevine, Huey wanted to move
BPP headquarters to New York and Cotton was to prepare the
security for the house. He used to mosey over to the Harlem office
with a bottle of cheap pluck in his back pocket and tell war stories.
He would sip his wine and talk about what had gone down on the
coast.
The first time i went over to inspect the 127th Street house,
Cotton gave me a guided tour. He explained the whole futuristic
security plan. He was going to hook up the security system so that
if so much as a foot was put on the front steps of the building an

alarm would alert the security officer inside. If it was the pigs, huge
floodlights would be turned on, blinding them. Thick metal doors
would glide into place and a lot of other fantastic things would
happen that i don't remember. I kept my mouth shut because i
knew absolutely nothing about security, but i silently wondered
why he didn't put in stuff that was more conventional, like a
closed-circuit TV. I had a special interest in the building since the
ground floor and the basement were designated to be the free health
clinic. At the time, the basement was a disaster, with no plumbing,
no heat, no electricity, and a mountain load of bricks, powder, and
debris. Cotton assured me that the basement would be fixed up
within six months.
Next he showed me Huey's room. It was the only room in the
house somewhat fixed up. He had put up wooden paneling. There
was a small table and a single bed which, he carefully explained to
me, was made up in military style, ready at all times for the
minister. I looked at him like he was crazy. Of all the things i could
imagine Huey doing, sleeping in that freezing house on that Spar­
tan bed was not one of them. Cotton talked about Huey with this
eerie reverence that made me sick. And it sounded sure enough
weird, how Cotton talked about the minister's bed.
I visited the house on 127th Street many times over the next
few months. Hard as i tried, i could not find one shred of progress. I
came to the conclusion that Cotton was a big mouth and a drunk.
But everybody kept telling me how hard he was working, so i
figured he was working on something secret they had obviously
decided not to tell me about.
During one of my trips to the house, Cotton's assistant told me
he didn't feel well. I made an appointment with the doctor and
called to tell him the time. A few days later, when i came into the
office, everyone looked at me like i had committed some crime
against the people.
"What's wrong?" i asked.
"Cotton says that the brother who works for him is sick and
that you refused to do anything for him."
"What?" I was completely surprised. "That's not true."
"Cotton says that's what happened."
Fired up mad, i tried to get Cotton on the phone, but it was
out of order. It took me several days to get the thing straight, but
finally the assistant confirmed that i had made the doctor's ap­
pointment for him but that he had neglected to keep it and had
gone home instead. I tried to figure out why Cotton had made such
a fuss. The only conclusion i could come to is that he was annoyed

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with me because i kept pushing him to get the clinic in order.
Several years later, after the Freedom of Information Act was passed,
it was revealed that Cotton had been working undercover for the
police.
Things seemed to be going from bad to worse. Although there
wasn't much dissension in the New York branch, there was beau­
coup dissension and disunity on the national level. Every other
weekend somebody was going out to the West Coast to deal with
"contradictions." Everybody was uptight and miserable. And then
everything started to happen at once. First there was an article
stating that Huey was living in a $650-a-month apartment in
Oakland. The Harlem branch was shocked because, in those days,
that was a whole lot of rent and it contrasted sharply with the living
conditions of the Panthers in New York. Panthers who owned little
more than the clothes on their backs were out in the street in the
freezing cold weather selling papers, with big pieces of cardboard
in their shoes and with flimsy jackets that did nothing to hold back
the hawk. The party issued a statement that Huey was living in the
apartment for "security purposes," but a lot of Panthers were not at
all convinced. I wanted to believe the security story, but it didn't fit
my sense of logic. Then came the long series of expulsions, which
proved to be the last straw.
Many long-standing, loyal Panthers were being expelled by
Huey. One of the first to go in Huey's private purge was Geronimo
Elmer Pratt. Geronimo was widely respected, somewhat of a Pan­
ther folk hero. When i heard about it, the first thing i did was go to
someone who would know and try to find out the real deal.
Although paranoid and upset, the person broke down the story to
me, just enough to let me know the expulsion was probably unjust.
I couldn't imagine Geronimo being an enemy of the people, any­
more than i could imagine myself being one. Then came the
expulsions of the Panther 2 1 , supposedly for writing an open letter
to the Weathermen that was somewhat critical of BPP policies. I
had read the letter and could find nothing in it to merit such
extreme action, especially since it might prove prejudicial to their
ongoing trial. I was becoming more and more critical of what was
going on in the Party, but i loved it nevertheless and wanted to see it
functioning on the right track.
For the first time i questioned whether i could continue within
the Party. Almost every project i was working on was frustrated and
barely able to get off the ground. The Saturday liberation school,
the free health clinic, and a lot of the student work were all on hold.
I felt frustrated and a bit demoralized. This Party was a lot different

from the Blank Panther Party i had fallen in love with. Gone were
the black berets and leather jackets (because of police harassment,
Panthers had been ordered not to wear the uniform, except for
special occasions). Gone were the Panther marches, the Panther
songs. Gone were the "Free Huey," "Free Bobby" songs sung to the
tune of "Wade in the Water." Gone were the big Panther buttons
and big Panther flags flapping in the wind. Everything felt different.
The easy, friendly openness had been replaced by fear and para­
noia. The beautiful revolutionary creativity i had loved so much was
gone. And replaced by dogmatic stagnation.
It was around this time that Zayd and i had our big falling out.
I had made a list of the criticisms of the Party, along with a list of
things i thought were positive and a lot of suggestions i thought
might correct some of the problems the Party was facing. I called
Zayd and told him i needed to talk to him. When he arrived, i
bared my heart and soul to him. I must have talked for a good two
or three hours, raising all of the political and tactical concerns i
had. Zayd listened to everything i said without taking any position
one way or the other. Then he told me he had to leave and would
talk to me another time. I was furious. I felt he was acting in his role
as "leadership" and using our friendship to gain information about
how i thought, to gauge the level of dissension within the ranks.
Throughout my days in the Party i've always been outspoken and
blunt. Zayd and i had always been frank with each other, and i
interpreted his silence as a declaration that he supported and de­
fended policies i considered unprincipled and politically incorrect.
After that, we didn't see or speak to each other for a long time. I
had no way of knowing the thin tightrope he was walking or the
pressure he was under.
Zayd was acting as peacemaker between Huey and the Panther
2 1 , furiously trying to get Huey to rescind his expulsion order.
Zayd felt that to take any position in reference to problems within
the Party might jeopardize his role and result in dire consequences
for the Panther 2 1 . Cetewayo and Dhoruba, who had not been
expelled because they were out on bail and had not signed the
letter, were also attempting to get the Panther 21 reinstated. They
were under a lot of pressure from both sides. Huey wanted them to
support the expulsion and the expelled Panthers wanted them to
criticize Huey's actions. Like Zayd, Cet and Dhoruba honestly
believed they could straighten out the madness. And were it not for
the FBI, they probably could have. Nobody back then had ever
heard of the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) set up
by the FBI. Nobody could possibly have known that the FBI had

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sent a phony letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, "signed" by the
Panther 2 1 , criticizing Huey Newton's leadership. No one could
have known that the FBI had sent a letter to Huey's brother saying
the New York Panthers were plotting to kill him. No one could
have known that the FBI's COINTELPRO was attempting to de­
stroy the Black Panther Party in particular and the Black Liberation
Movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics. The FBI's
COINTEL program consisted of turning members of organizations
against each other, pitting one Black organization against another.
Huey ended up suspending Cet and Dhoruba from the Party,
branded them as "enemies of the people," and caused them to go
into hiding, in fear for their very lives. No one had the slightest idea
that this whole scenario was carefully manipulated and orches­
trated by the FBI.
When they brought the Black Panther newspaper to the office,
the one that branded Dhoruba, Cet, and Cet's wife, Connie Matt­
thews Tabor, as enemies of the people, i refused to sell it and
attacked it as an outright lie. I had been so outspoken about my
criticisms that i knew it was just a matter of time before i, too,
would be expelled. Sick and disgusted, i decided it was time for me
to leave the Party.
Most of the Panthers understood why i left, and i stayed on
good terms with them. They would call me and ask if they could
drop by or sleep over at my crib. Almost daily i got a blow-by-blow
description of what was going on in the Party. The tension had
increased even more, the differences between the New York cadre
and the West Coast leadership growing even wider. I tried to stress
to the comrades what i saw to be the importance of everybody
sitting down and resolving their differences. No such thing oc­
curred. In fact, a group came to my house jumping for joy. They
had split from the West Coast leadership. It really saddened me that
they had not been able to sit down together and mend their
differences.
After i left the Party, my life became more and more impossi­
ble. Everywhere i went it seemed like i would turn around to find
two detectives following behind me. I would look out my window
and there, in the middle of Harlem, in front of my house, would be
two white men sitting and reading the newspaper. I was scared to
death to talk in my own house. When i wanted to say something
that was not public information i turned the record player up real
loud so that the buggers would have a hard time hearing. It was so
weird. I still hadn't received a telephone bill and months had gone
by since i'd paid the last one, yet the telephone was always working.

Strange people visited my neighbors, asking questions. I hated to
move from my apartment because the rent was so cheap. I was
paying something like $65 a month and, if you could get used to
the fifth-floor walkup, it wasn't at all bad. It was one of those rent­
controlled buildings right across the street from City College, where
i was enrolled. I had no choice but to leave. It was impossible to live
amid all those bugging devices. I decided to donate the apartment
to the Panthers and look for somewhere else to live, and to spend
time with some friends, passing a few days here and a few days
there, until i found another place.
One day, as i was zipping up the avenue, on my way home, a
friend called me over.
"What's up ?" i asked.
"Don't go home."
"What do you mean, don't go home ?"
"Your place is crawling with pigs. They're waiting for you."
I walked around for a while, trying to get my head together.
What could they do to me if i went home ? I hadn't done anything. I
thought about the Panther 2 1 . They hadn't done anything either.
Anyway, they can do anything they want. I thought about my crib.
Maybe they had been taping my voice and hooking up pieces of
conversation to make it seem like there was a conspiracy to do
something. Maybe they would charge me with harboring a fugitive
or with conspiracy to harbor a fugitive. Everybody said they were
tailing me so tough because they thought i would lead them to Cet,
Dhoruba, or some other comrade that had been forced into hiding.
Maybe they would try to interrogate me, beat and torture me until i
signed some phony confession or something. I decided one thing
right then and there. I definitely wasn't going home, and i definitely
wasn't answering anybody's questions about anything. I thought of
going to Evelyn's but i figured that as soon as i showed, the pigs
would be there waiting for me. I decided the best thing i could do
was lay low until i found out what was going on and could come to
some decision.

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Chapter 1 6

23 4

y initial image of the under­
ground was pure fantasy. When Zayd talked about the
underground i actually pictured people in some base­
ment, passing through some hidden bookcase door
and disappearing into thin air. I had pictured all kinds
of elaborate "I Spy" kinds of hookups, outrageous
disguises, false panels, stuff right out of "Mission:
Impossible." I was shocked when i ran into a brother i
knew in a supermarket. I knew the pigs were looking
for him. He had shaved all the hair off his face, but he
looked almost the same. I had to catch myself to keep
from calling out to him. I just kept walking, feeling
that, somehow, seeing me would make him nervous.
Even though i had always thought that someday i'd
probably be involved in clandestine struggle, i had
never given any serious thoughts to going under­
ground. I had, more or less, thought of a clandestine
struggle in terms of leading a double life. I thought the
ideal way to struggle was to have a regular job or
whatever as a front and then go out at night or when­
ever and do what needed to be done, careful to leave
no trails. I still think that is the best way, but you have
to anticipate being discovered and be prepared for
whatever might happen.
At the end of the sixties or the beginning of the
seventies, it seemed like people were going under­
ground left and right. Every other week i was hearing
about somebody disappearing. Police repression had
come down so hard on the Black movement that it
seemed as if the entire Black community was on the
FBI's Most Wanted list. The repression had come
down so fast that many people had no chance whatsoever to get organized. I was kind of in limbo, slipping

back and forth between above and below. As far as i could tell, i was
only wanted for questioning. I hadn't done anything and i didn't
feel that the situation was too grave. I had to be discreet and change
some of my habits, but i felt relatively free to move around
aboveground and underground without too much problem. I had
no intentions of answering anybody's questions, and so i figured i'd
j ust lay low until the heat was over.
There were so many things that needed to be done. Basically, i
was working with the railroad (support network) stations, trying to
find the basic necessities for people and trying to help them get to
where they wanted to go. It was a job that required real caution and
a lot of concentration on detail. Over a short period of time, i found
that my powers of observation had increased many times over. I had
to keep my eyes on everything that was going on, looking ahead
and, at the same time, glancing over my shoulder. The work was
interesting and well suited to my restless, active temperament. But i
found it kind of hard to change my way of relating to people. I had
always been open and trusting and i was finding it really hard to
change. It took my almost getting killed for me to develop a more
suspicious nature.
I was running into quite a few people, some of whom i knew
and others whom i didn't: different collectives, members of dif­
ferent organizations, from different parts of the country. I was
surprised at how disorganized many people were, and i was all for
seeing them organize themselves in a much more disciplined man­
ner. I was straining to understand some of the things i saw, but
people were moving so fast it was hard to keep track of what they
were dong. The whole situation was new to me and i guess all of us
were trying to make heads or tails out of it, trying to get a good
grip on what was happening and where we fit into it.
I had heard it on the radio, had seen some of the reports on lV. My
reaction was WOW! The tables were turning. As many Black people
as the New York Police Department murdered every year, someone
was finally paying them back. The media were filled with countless
adjectives: senseless, brutal, vicious, deadly, bloody, etc. On May
19, Malcolm X's birthday, two police had been machine-gunned on
Riverside Drive. I felt sorry for their families, sorry for their chil­
dren, but i was relieved to see that somebody else besides Black
folks and Puerto Ricans and Chicanos was being shot at. I was sick
and tired of us being the only victims, and i didn't care who knew
it. As far as i was concerned, the police in the Black communities
were nothing but a foreign, occupying army, beating, torturing, and

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murdering people at whim and without restraint. 1 despise vio­
lence, but i despise it even more when it's one-sided and used to
oppress and repress poor people. But i was still in a state of shock,
the shit was so real. 1 mean, it was happening. Somebody was doing
what the rest of us merely had fantasies about.
1 had an early morning meeting. My friend went to the corner
to pick up the papers and something to munch on. He came back,
all excited.
"Look at this, sister. 1 think you should look at this."
"I don't want to look at anything right now. 1 want something
to eat. What did you buy to eat?"
""This is serious, sister. Will you come over and look at this ?"
"Man, i don't wanna read no paper, i'm starving," i said.
Nevertheless, i went over and picked up the papers. "Oh shit. Oh
shit!" was the only thing that would come out of my mouth.
Hungrily, i read every word of the article. 1 stared down at my
picture on the front page of the Daily News. The paper said i was
wanted for questioning in relation to the machine-gunning. "Shit!"
1 walked aimlessly around in circles. 1 couldn't believe it, but i was
looking at it.
"You've got to get out of here, sister," my friend said.
"Where am i supposed to go ?"
"I don't know, but we've got to get you out of here. Maybe you
can go and hook up with the people."
1 knew that i had to hook up with some people in the under­
ground, but this was no time to go around hunting for people.
Strangely enough, i felt calm and i wanted to stay that way. 1 asked
my friend to go and get me a wig and some other things to enable
me to move around a little bit. While he went to get the things i
needed, i went though my address book and made mental notes of
the people who the pigs could easily trace me to. 1 had to stifle the
desire to call my mother and tell her that, at least for the moment, i
was relatively safe and that i loved her.
Once i got out into the street, i could feel the tension in my
body. 1 walked down the street searching for signs on people's faces.
1 walked a few blocks before i realized that not a soul in the world
was paying me any mind. 1 heard some feet running behind me and
swung around, only to find it was a bunch of children. 1 had
planned to go to my girlfriend's house and decided i'd still head
that way. She lived alone, in a quiet neighborhood, and i knew that
it would be damn near impossible for anyone to trace me to her.
Her life consisted almost completely of working and going to
school at night.

1 was a little nervous when i got to her door. Maybe i was

doing the wrong thing, getting her hooked into all of this. Maybe
she would be angry at me for coming at all. 1 decided that i
wouldn't stay. 1 would just stop by to explain to her why i was late
and to tell her good-bye. She answered the door with a towel
wrapped around her head.
"What the hell took you so long?"
How did i begin ? A funny thing happened to me on the way to
your house? "There's something i've got to tell you," i began. "I just
stopped by to say good-bye. The police are looking for me. My
picture is plastered all over the Daily News. 1 don't believe this is
happening, but it is."
"I know. 1 know," she told me. "What 1 want to know is, what
took you so long to get here?"
1 stared at her, completely surprised. 1 didn't understand. If
she knew what happened, why was she expecting me? "I just
dropped by for a minute to let you know what happened and to let
you know that i'm okay. "
"Are you okay?"
1 told her that i was.
"Where are you going?"
1 told her that i was going to try to hook up with some people i
knew.
"Where do you have to go ? Do you have any money? Do you
know how to contact these people? Do you need any help ?"
1 told her that i had j ust found out what was happening and
that i was just going to have to play it by ear, slipping and sliding
for a while until i could make contact.
"Girl, are you crazy ? You militants ain't got no sense ! Would
you take that shit off your head and sit down so 1 can talk to you !"
She always referred to me and my comrades as "you militants." She
was a militant too, but at the moment she was not active, not out on
Front Street, as she called it.
"Do you have this address written down anywhere or this
phone number?"
"No, nobody even knows who you are or that we even know
each other." Luckily, i had never made a habit of writing too much
down, and since things had gotten so hot, i had put most of the
numbers that i had for contacts in code. 1 knew all of my friend's
numbers by heart, so that was no problem. 1 had never even called
her from the 1 3 8th Street phone at my last place. 1 told her that as
far as i knew there was no way i could be traced to her.
"Then relax, fool. It don't make no sense for you to be out

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23 8

there in the street moving around right now. You've got to relax and
get your head together."
"Look," i told her. "I don't want to impose on you. This is my
thing, not yours, and i don't want to involve you in my stuff."
"Woman, will you please shut up ? This ain't your thing, this is
our thing. You done involved me in it already, and if I didn't want
to be bothered, I wouldn't have opened my door. I'm your friend
and I trust you and love you. I'll hide you out any old time. Where
did you think you were gonna hide out, anyway? On the moon?"
I stared at her in amazement. I had never really known her. A
real sister. Tough, critical, a bit too cynical, but a real stand-up
woman.
"Here," she said, handing me a knife and some onions and
potatoes, "make yourself useful. Even y'all militants got to eat."
I just sat there grinning. Grinning and peeling potatoes. Talk­
ing and feeling really at home.
It's early in the morning. I have to move. The move has got to be
made with care since my picture has j ust been plastered all over the
newspapers. Wanted posters of me are everywhere, and somebody
had told me that the police have a photograph of me in the space
over the glove compartments of their cars. Carefully, i arrange my
disguise. It has been designed not to stand out, something that will
help me blend in with the other people who will be on the subway
early in the morning. I stare at myself in the mirror, debating
whether to look like a secretary or a maid. It's too early in the
morning for secretaries. I decide to look like a poor Black woman.
Thick, ugly stockings, run-over black oxfords, beat-up plastic
pocketbook, hand-me-down-Iooking plaid jacket, and, of course,
lord-have-mercy-Iooking wig. My puffy morning face, smudged
with a dab of awkward-looking eyebrow pencil and lipstick, are
perfect for the look.
I walk down to the subway, stopping to buy the paper. I
stand on the platform waiting for the train. I thumb the news­
papers, making sure that no familiar photographs appear. I skim
the headlines to find the usual assortment of right-wing half-lies,
distortions, and scandal stories. The headlines, as usual, are offen­
sive: "Commies Land in Outer Space." "Cops Nab Lightbulb
Bandit." "Hubby Ties Knot with Country Gal." Finally, the train
comes. I scan the cars as they pass, looking for the transit cop.
Seeing none, i move toward the front of the train. I plop down in a
vacant seat and immediately stick my head into the newspaper.
Carefully, i look around to see who is riding in the car with me. In

an instant i'm reproaching myself for leaving too early in the
morning. I have an eerie feeling that something is wrong, but i can't
put my finger on it. The subway car has a twilight zone air to it.
With the exception of a few white men who look like they are going
to factory jobs, the rest are Black women. One has on a nurse's
uniform, another looks like she is going to church, hat and all, and
the rest of them look more or less like me. I keep staring at. them.
And it registers. Without one exception, every one of these sisters is
wearing a wig. It feels so spooky. I am hiding my beautiful, nappy
hair under this wig and hating it, hiding my stuff to save my life. I,
who have had to give up my headwraps and my big, beaded
earrings, my dungaree jackets, my red, black, and green poncho,
and my long African dresses in order to struggle on another level,
look out from under my wig at my sisters. Maybe we are all
running and hiding. Maybe we are all running from something, all
living a clandestine existence. Surely we are all being oppressed and
persecuted. I imagine the headlines: "Nigger Woman Nabbed for
Nappy Hair." "Afro Gal Has Tangled Hair." "Militant Mom Bares
All." It is really too much to comprehend. Such horrible things
have been done to us. A whole generation of Black women hiding
out under dead white people's hair. I have the urge to cry, but i
don't. It would draw attention. I keep from getting up until my stop
comes. I pray and struggle for the day when we can all come out
from under these wigs.

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C U RRENT EVENTS

i understand that i am
slightly out of fashion.
The in-crowd wants no part of me.
Someone said that i am too sixties
Black.
Someone else told me i had failed to mellow.
It is true i have not
straightened back my hair.
Nor rediscovered maybelline.
And it is also true
that i still like African things,
like statues and dresses
and PEOPLE.
And it is also true
that struggle is foremost in my mind.
And i still rap about disciplinemy anger has not run away.
And i still can't stand ole
el dorado.
And i still can't dig no
one and one.
And i still don't dig no
roka fellas.
And i call a pig a pig.
And a party, to my thinking,
happens only once in a while.
Anyway, i'm really kind of happy
being slightly out of style.

Chapter 1 7

ver the next few years, home
became a lot of places. I traveled quite a bit and met up
with some really beautiful people, people so beautiful
they restored my faith in humanity each time i passed
through their station. Like most of us back in those
days, i was new at this, learning about clandestine
struggle as i lived it. I didn't have many fixed ideas at
first about what i thought armed struggle within the
confines of amerika should be like. I had done a lot of
reading about it in other places, but i had no concrete
idea how to apply the lessons from those struggles to
the struggle of Black people within the United States.
It was clear that the Black Liberation Army
was not a centralized, organized group with a com­
mon leadership and chain of command. Instead,
there were various organizations and collectives work­
ing out of different cities, and in some of the larger
cities there were often several groups working indepen­
dently of each other. Many members of the various
groups had been forced into hiding as a result of the
extreme police repression that took place during the
late sixties and early seventies. Some had serious cases,
some had minor ones, and others, like me, were just
wanted for "questioning."
Sisters and brothers joined these groups because
they were committed to revolutionary struggle in gen­
eral and armed struggle in particular and wanted to
help build the armed movement in amerika. It was the
strangest feeling. People i used to run into at rallies
were now in hiding, sending messages that they
wanted to hook up. Sisters and brothers from just
about every revolutionary or militant group in the
country were either rotting away in prison or had been

24 I

ASSATA

forced underground. Everyone i talked to was interested in taking
the struggle to a higher level. But the question was how. How to
bring together all those people scattered around the country into
an organized body that would be effective in struggling for Black
liberation.
It became evident, almost from the beginning, that consolida­
tion was not a good idea. There were too many security problems,
and different groups had different ideologies, different levels of
political consciousness and different ideas about how armed strug­
gle in amerika should be waged. On the whole, we were weak,
inexperienced, disorganized, and seriously lacking in training. But
the biggest problem was one of political development. There were
sisters and brothers who had been so victimized by amerika that
they were willing to fight to the death against their oppressors.
They were intelligent, courageous and dedicated, willing to make
any sacrifice. But we were to find out quickly that courage and
dedication were not enough. To win any struggle for liberation, you
have to have the way as well as the will, an overall ideology and
strategy that stem from a scientific analysis of history and present
conditions.
Some of the groups thought they could just pick up arms and
struggle and that, somehow, people would see what they were
doing and begin to struggle themselves. They wanted to engage in a
do-or-die battle with the power structure in amerika, even
though they were weak and ill prepared for such a fight. But the
most important factor is that armed struggle, by itself, can never
bring about a revolution. Revolutionary war is a people's war. And
no people's war can be won without the support of the masses of
people. Armed struggle can never be successful by itself; it must be
part of an overall strategy for winning, and the strategy must be
political as well as military.
Since we did not own the TV stations or newspapers, it was
easy for the news media to portray us as monsters and terrorists.
The police could terrorize the Black community daily, yet if one
Black person successfully defended himself or herself against a
police attack, they were called terrorists. It soon became clear to me
that our most important battle was to help politically mobilize,
educate, and organize the masses of Black people and to win their
minds and hearts. It was inconceivable that we could survive, much
less win anything, without their support.
Every group fighting for freedom is bound to make mistakes,
but unless you study the common, fundamental laws of armed
revolutionary struggle you are bound to make unnecessary mis-

takes. Revolutionary war is protracted warfare. It is impossible for
us to win quickly. To win we have got to wear down our oppressors,
little by little, and, at the same time, strengthen our forces, slowly
but surely. I understood some of my more impatient sisters and
brothers. I knew that it was tempting to substitute military for
political struggle, especially since all of our aboveground organiza­
tions were under vicious attack by the FBI, the CIA, and the local
police agencies. All of us who saw our leaders murdered, our
people shot down in cold blood, felt a need, a desire to fight back.
One of the hardest lessons we had to learn is that revolutionary
struggle is scientific rather than emotional. I'm not saying that we
shouldn't feel anything, but decisions can't be based on love or on
anger. They have to be based on the objective conditions and on
what is the rational, unemotional thing to do.
In 1857 the u.s. supreme kourt ruled that Blacks were only
three-fifths of a man and had no rights that whites were bound to
respect. Today, more than a hundred and twenty-five years later, we
still earn less than three-fifths of what white people earn. It was
plain to me that we couldn't look to the kourts for freedom and
justice anymore than we could expect to gain our liberation by
participating in the u.s. political system, and it was pure fantasy to
think we could gain them by begging. The only alternative left was
to fight for them, and we are going to have to fight like any other
people who have fought for liberation.
I wasn't one who believed that we should wait until our
political struggle had reached a high point before we began to
organize the underground. I felt that it was important to start
building underground structures as soon as possible. And although
i felt that the major task of the underground should be organizing
and building, i didn't feel that armed acts of resistance should be
ruled out. As long as they didn't impede our long-range plans,
guerrilla units should be able to carry out a few well-planned, well­
timed armed actions that were well coordinated with aboveground
political objectives. Not any old kind of actions, but actions that
Black people would clearly understand and support and actions
that were well publicized in the Black community.

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Chapter 1 8

244

fter my acquittal in the
Queens bank robbery case in Brooklyn Federal Court
on January 16, 1 976, i was brought back to new jersey,
placed in the basement of the middlesex county jail for
men, in solitary confinement, and held there for more
than a year until the jersey trial was over. Lennox
Hinds, then the head of the National Conference of
Black Lawyers, together with the other members of
the defense team, filed a civil suit against the state,
charging that my conditions were cruel and inhuman.
After a long, drawn-out court battle, both sides agreed
that a hearing officer should review my jail conditions
and make a ruling. The hearing officer was a man
named Ploshnik, who was appointed by the state. We
had no say whatsoever in who was appointed and,
therefore, expected the decision to be favorable to the
state. But he surprised everybody and ruled that my
conditions of imprisonment were indeed inhuman and
recommended that they be changed at once. But
through a series of appeals and legal maneuvers, the
state succeeded in keeping me confined in that base­
ment. When the government finds it convenient to
follow its own laws and administrative procedures, it
does. And when it finds that these same laws are
inconvenient for their own purposes, it simply ignores
them.
I decided that i wanted Stanley Cohen and Evelyn
to work together on the case. This turned out to be a
mistake, since they were not exactly in love with each
other. Neither Stanley nor Evelyn was a new jersey
lawyer and we had to get a new jersey lawyer to be on
the case. Ray Brown was busy with other commit­
ments and couldn't possibly do it. Stanley asked a

young white new jersey lawyer named Stuart Ball, and, after some
reservations, he agreed to be the admitting lawyer. Stanley also
wanted a young lawyer, Lawrence Stern, to act as his assistant. Even
though Evelyn was involved in the defense and Lennox was handling the civil suit around my prison conditions, the Conference of
Black Lawyers assigned a young Black lawyer from Mississippi
named Lewis Myers to work on the case. I was delighted. Everyone
knew that the new jersey trial was the big one and that my chances
of receiving a fair trial were about slim to none. So the strategy was
to try to surround the defense team with as much resources and
expertise as possible.
It sounded like a good idea, but if there was ever a case of too
many cooks in the kitchen, this case was it. Almost from the
beginning the defense team was beset by personality conflicts. The
problems were magnified greatly by the fact that nobody was being
paid. The lawyers were having problems covering even their bare
expenses. It seemed like every other month one or another of the
lawyers was asking the j udge to be relieved from the case.
We were in dire need of experts. We needed to find a ballistics
expert and a forensic chemist, among others, to refute the state's
charges. We were also in desperate need of an investigator to locate
some of the doctors who had treated me while i was hospitalized
and other potential witnesses. We fought and harped on this point
until finally the judge, Theodore Appleby, issued an order that the
state pay for the experts. But once we got the order, we found that
we were in the same position that we started from. Without excep­
tion, everybody that we went to for help turned us down. The types
of experts we needed almost always are police or are working for
police agencies. Because my case involved the murder of a police
officer, none of them would touch the case. The most crucial part of
the prosecutor's case was the "scientific testimony" alleging that i
had huge amounts of the dead state trooper's blood on me. We
wanted someone who knew what they were doing to go over every
inch of those clothes, to check out what was on them and also to
check out what had been done to them. But we could not find one
forensic chemist to work for us, let alone testify for us. If they had,
they would never again have been able to work in peace for any
police agency. People never hear about this side of a trial. But there
is no place a defendant in a criminal trial can go to find "experts" in
sciences commonly known as "police sciences." The police can
virtually write up a report saying anything they want, and there is
no way of refuting it. And there have been cases where "experts"
have been double agents: working for a defendant while secretly
working with the prosecutor.

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One of the amazing things was the number of student support­
ers who gave their time and energy to help us. They volunteered to
index and organize past transcripts and, together with political
activists, did a survey of prospective jurors in Middlesex County.
Members of the defense committee published a bulletin to keep
people informed about what was happening in the case and also
did speaking engagements and fundraising. People circulated peti­
tions and demonstrated in front of the kourtroom. They volun­
teered to do typing, haddle the telephones, etc. Entertainers like
Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee performed at
fundraising benefits. Poets like June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and
Sonia Sanchez, among others, gave poetry readings. Political activ­
ists like Angela Davis and Amiri Baraka worked hard to educate
the people about what was happening in new jersey. When Angela
Davis came to new jersey to do a speaking engagement on my
behalf, the new jersey prosecutor's office ambushed her and her
party, harassing them until the moment they left the state. She tried
to visit me at the jail, and not only did the j udge forbid her to visit
me but he stopped all of my other visits as well.
One of the most moving statements i have ever heard was a
speech Judge Bruce Wright made at a fundraising rally for me.
Judge Bruce Wright is a Black judge who was removed from the
criminal court bench in New York because he was too fair and
honest, and he did something that was unforgivable-he set poor
people's bail at amounts they could afford to pay. The kourts will
never be anything but a tool of repression until there are judges like
Bruce Wright presiding over Black people's trials.
There were many, many people who i never got to meet, even
though they worked so hard on my behalf. And even though i never
got a chance to thank all the Black people, white people, Third
World people, all the students, feminists, revolutionaries, activists,
etc., who worked on the case, i thank you now.
A lot of the pretrial conferences had to do with nothing more
than the defense making motions and the judge denying them.
Every time we went to kourt the judge made a point of reading into
the record that i had refused to stand up for him. He was one of
those racist white dogs who really believed he was massa. He really
took that "your honor" stuff seriously. If he could have made
people bow to him and kiss his hand he would have done it. He
claimed that he was a "stickler for the decorum of his courtroom."
Plenty of decorum but not a bit of justice. Stand for him ? It was out
of the question. He was a real died-in-the-wool craka. The kind
they could send to wipe out the "natives" in Africa, make Central

America safe for United Fruit Company, or run a sterilization center
in Puerto Rico.
Stanley Cohen came to see me. He was excited and upbeat. His
good news was that he had found an investigator, an old friend of
his who owed him a favor. His friend had contacts with the new
jersey state police and thought they might be able to come up with
some information on Harper, the police officer who was the main
witness. He was also making progress in finding a forensic chemist.
We both felt that at least some of the scientific reports had been
fudged by the new jersey state troopers. We talked about this and a
million things before the visit ended. He was so positive. He said he
had a plan, something he wanted to check out, but he didn't want
to discuss it and raise my hopes prematurely. That was the last time
i saw Stanley Cohen.
A few days later i received a phone call. Stanley was dead. His
body had been found in his home with evidence of trauma. No­
body, with the exception of the police and Stanley'S family, knows
to this day the cause of death. The newspapers stated Stanley died
of natural causes. But a friend of Stanley'S, a doctor, told me he had
talked to the coroner's office and had been given conflicting stories.
No one knows for sure how Stanley died and we probably never
will. The one thing we do know is that after his death, all the legal
papers on my case came up missing. Evelyn talked to Phyllis,
Stanley'S widow, and she gave her every legal paper she could find
that had something to do with my case, but the bulk of the material
was still missing. Finally, Evelyn found out that the New York City
police had my legal papers. "How did they get them?" i asked her.
"I don't even want to think about it," she answered.
1 could hardly believe all this was happening. It felt so strange.
The New York police claimed they had taken my legal papers from
Stanley'S house as evidence. "Evidence of what?" i asked Evelyn.
Apparently, my legal papers were the only property the New York
Police Department had removed from his house. It took more than
a month to get some of them back. Some were never recovered.
None of the notes about the investigator or the forensic chemist
were found. All the notes on trial strategy we had mapped out were
missing. It was weird. 1 thought of Stanley'S family and what they
must have been going through. The circumstances of his death were
so strange. 1 walked around with an empty feeling in my stomach
for a long time.
After Stanley'S death, William Kunstler joined the defense
team. The first thing the judge did after admitting Kunstler to the

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case was to rescind the order for state-paid experts, claiming the
lawyers had failed to move fast enough to get them. I became more
suspicious than before. I couldn't understand why Appleby, all of a
sudden, was so anxious we not have expert witnesses. It was ob­
vious that without some financial help i would never be able to
afford expert witnesses. I didn't have a thin dime to my name.
Appleby's strategy was to completely intimidate the lawyers, to
harass them, threaten them until they became fearful of mounting
any significant opposition to the legal lynching that was supposed
to be my trial. Since there were no funds to pay for anything, the
defense committees and the lawyers were forced to launch a
fundraising campaign. The first time Bill Kunstler spoke in new
jersey, Appleby attempted to have him thrown off the case, charging
him with "improper conduct" and "conduct that was prejudicial to
the administration of justice." The improper conduct was giving a
lecture at Rutgers University during which he said that we needed
money for expert witnesses, that the conditions of my confinement
were detrimental to my aiding in my defense, and that under the
law i was presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Appleby's Order to Show Cause why Bill should not be
thrown off the case accomplished what it intended. Instead of
preparing for trial, the lawyers were forced to spend time and
energy preparing for the two-day hearing that would determine
whether or not Bill stayed on the case. Appleby finally decided Bill
would remain, but only after we had spent a month dealing with
that madness. The implication of the hearing was clear. Any at­
tempt the lawyers made to defend me would be met with the
judge's hostility. Appleby threatened every single one of the lawyers
with contempt, not once or twice but regularly. Lew Myers at­
tended a fundraising cocktail party at which Angela Davis spoke.
Someone sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury in Washington and,
approximately ten days later, he was under investigation by the
Internal Revenue Service. Evelyn was repeatedly harassed by Ap­
pleby. Not one day went by when the so-called impartial judge
failed to show his hostility to the defense team.
The lawyers uncovered evidence that the offices across from the
courthouse that they and the defense team were using were bugged.
Motions for an investigation were denied. During a press con­
ference, Lennox Hinds had the courage to call the trial exactly
what it was, "a legal lynching and a kangaroo kourt." Appleby
cited him for contempt and an effort was made to disbar him. Only
after he took his appeal to the highest kourt in new jersey was he

permitted to continue practicing as a lawyer in the state of new
Jersey.
The trial began on January 1 7, 1 977, the same day Gary
Gilmore was shot in Utah. Gary Gilmore was the first person legally
executed since the death penalty was struck down by the u.s.
supreme kourt in the early 1 970s. His execution set the climate for
the trial. The judge had denied almost every one of our motions,
including my right to defend myself and act as co-counsel, a
change of venue, a motion to review Harper's police record, a
motion to introduce evidence that i had been victimized by the
government's counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO), etc.
Even though the National Jury Project had done a study of Mid­
dlesex County and had found that eighty-three percent of the
people had heard about my case in the media and seventy percent
had already formulated an opinion about my guilt, the kourt
maintained that i could receive a fair trial. The judge said he would
question the jurors and make sure they were "fair and impartial."
Appleby took great pains to avoid asking potential jurors
whether they thought i was guilty, electing to ask them instead
whether they could "put their opinions aside." He carefully
avoided asking their opinions about me, the Black Liberation
Army, the Black Panther Party, Black militants, or anything else that
had been negatively and biasedly reported in newspapers. The trial
lawyers had no right to question jurors. Appleby's voir dire was
designed to make sure the most hypocritical, opinionated jurors
stayed on the jury. Here are two examples taken directly from the
transcript:
Q. And have you heard about this case ?
A. Yes, I have.
Q. From what source may you have heard about the case?
A. Newspapers.
.
Q. And have you discussed it with other people ?
A. Occasionally.
Q. And based upon whatever you may have heard from any
source whatsoever, do you feel that you have already in your own
mind formed an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of this defend­
ant?
A. Well, to be perfectly honest, I think I would be a little biased.
Q. Let me ask you another question. In the event that you were
to be chosen to serve, do you feel that you could sit and listen to all
the evidence in the case and then judge it fairly and impartially and
apply the law that the judge gives to you and put aside completely

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any previous opinions or conceptions or ideas about anything in the
case and then do you believe that you could render a fair verdict as to
the guilt or innocence of this defendant?
A. I think I could.
Q. Do you believe that you could?
A. I think so.

Example number two:
Q. Do you feel that based upon whatever information you may
have accumulated about the case from any source whatsoever that
you have already formed an opinion in your mind as to the guilt or
innocence of this defendant?
A. I would think-yeah, I would think that she was guilty, yeah.
Q. You feel that she's guilty?
A. Yes.
Q. And let me ask you another question. In the event that you
might be selected to serve as a juror in this case, do you feel that you
could sit and listen to the evidence and judge it impartially, apply
the law the judge gives you, set aside this opinion that you have
already formed?
A. Yes, I probably could.
Q. And then still judge impartially whether she's guilty or
innocent?
A. Yeah. Depending on the evidence and all that.

These were typical of the answers given. The judge refused to
remove the above two jurors for cause (on the basis of bias that
would prevent them from being fair and impartial jurors) and our
peremptory challenges were quickly exhausted. Remaining on the
final jury were two friends, one girlfriend, and two nephews of new
jersey state troopers. The so-called jury selection process was the
biggest farce in legal history.
About halfway through the so-called jury selection process i
was ready to call it a day. As bad as this jury sounded, it looked
even worse. I didn't want to participate. But almost everyone on the
defense team thought not participating was a mistake. "If you
don't, we'll never get anything on the record. You'll never even be
able to convince an appeal court of anything. You've got to get up
there and tell your side of the story. We can prove by the medical
testimony that you were shot in the back with your hand raised in
the air. We can prove that Harper shot first. We can prove �hat after
you were shot, your hand was paralyzed and, from the location of
his gunshot wound, it would have been impossible for you to have

shot him with yOUT left hand. We can prove that Harper shot first.
We can prove this if you take the stand. We can prove . . . . "
I was tired of this case. I damn sure didn't believe that any
appeals kourt was going to free me or that any racist white,
prejudiced jury was either. It was obvious i didn't have one chance
in a million of receiving any kind of justice. The financial problems,
expert witness problems, personality problems among the lawyers,
in addition to rotting away in solitary confinement, had taken their
toll on me. Every day when i entered the kourtroom i felt like i was
entering the theater of the absurd. I wanted no part of it. The
lawyers said that i could create a political climate which, they
thought, would force the appeal court to give in if i participated in
the trial and put on the record the fact that i was innocent. They
were convinced that at the last minute the forensic chemist they
were trying to locate in Canada was going to come in and save the
day. I didn't put any stock in that, but i knew that keeping the
momentum going around what was happening was important. I
decided to remain and participate, even though it was killing me.
The trial went absurdly on. An all-white jury was selected,
based on the advice of Kunstler and the Jury Project, who decided
that even though the jurors seated in the panel were horrible, the
others were worse. Not only did the judge deny my motion to act as
co-counsel, he refused to permit the lawyers to read my opening
statement to the jury. The defense team's headquarters, located in
New Brunswick, was broken into, papers rummaged through and
stolen, and the judge refused to investigate, calling the motion
"frivolous. " The state's witnesses, almost all of whom were pigs,
got up and said whatever they were told to say. We had no expert
witnesses to refute or even evaluate their testimony. The main
witness, Harper, the state trooper i was supposed to have shot,
testified he had told an "untruth" on direct examination but denied
it was a lie.
I spent most of the trial looking up at the ceiling and hating
myself for sitting there in the first place. When the time came for
me to testify, i was shocked. I had thought i would be able to go
into everything-being a fugitive, how i became a fugitive, the
entire political scenario that led to being in the kourtroom. But
then they told me something about "opening the door." Opening
the door, it was explained, was like opening Pandora's box. If i gave
the political reasons for my being a fugitive, the prosecutor could
then introduce all kinds of prejudicial "evidence" that had nothing
to do with what happened on the turnpike in order to show my

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252

"criminal intent." If i "opened the door," the prosecutor would be
able to introduce manuals of guerrilla warfare and a whole stack of
other material they found in the car that had nothing to do with
this trial. In the absence of political witnesses (whose subpoenas
for their appearance the judge had refused to issue) who would
have testified about COINTELPRO's systematic attack on the Black
Liberation movement, and on Blacks in general, my testimony
would have been distorted. I wanted to back out completely, de­
nounce the trial, but it was too late. The only way out was to testify,
get my side of what happened on the record, and avoid "opening
the door." The year of solitary confinement had made me almost
mute. As i testified, i held on to a small picture of my child.
When i sit back today and examine why i participated in that trial, i
think i must have been crazy. I guess i had been through too many
trials and gotten too many acquittals and let that stuff go to my
head. (Three other indictments had been dismissed. One in Queens
state supreme court, charging me with killing policemen, was dis­
missed because the judge, after examining the grand jury minutes,
determined there was not even enough evidence for me to have been
indicted. The other two, one in Brooklyn supreme kourt and the
other in supreme kourt in New York County, were dismissed for
failure of the state to bring me to trial for six years after the
indictments had been returned.)
Participating in the new jersey trial was unprincipled and
incorrect. By participating, i participated in my own oppression. I
should have known better and not lent dignity or credence to that
sham. In the long run, the people are our only appeal. The only
ones who can free us are ourselves.

Chapter 1 9

was transferred on April 8, 1 978 to the
maximum security prison for women in alderson, west
virginia, the federal facility designed to hold "the most
dangerous women in the country." 1 had been con­
victed of no federal crime, but under the interstate
compact agreement any prisoner can be shipped, like
cargo, to any jail in u.s. territory, including the virgin
islands, miles away from family, friends, and lawyers.
Through the device of this agreement, Sundiata had
been transferred to marion prison in illinois, the
federal prison that was the most brutal concentration
camp in the country.
Alderson was in the middle of the west virginia
mountains, and it seemed as if the mountains formed
an impenetrable barrier between the prison and the
rest of the world. It had no airport, and to reach it,
days of travel were necessary. The trip to alderson was
so expensive and difficult that most of the women
received family visits only once or twice a year.
1 was housed in the maximum security unit (msu)
called davis hall. It was surrounded by an electronic
fence topped by barbed wire, which in turn was cov­
ered by concertina wire (a razor-sharp type of wire
that had been outlawed by the Geneva Convention). It
was a prison within a prison. This place had a stillness
to it like some kind of bizarre death row. Everything
was sterile and dead.
There were three major groups in msu: the nazis,
the "niggah lovers," and me. I was the only Black
woman in the unit, with the exception of one other
who left almost immediately after i arrived. The nazis

253

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2 54

had been sent to alderson from a prison in California, where they
had been accused of setting inmates on fire. They were members of
the aryan sisterhood, the female wing of the aryan brotherhood-a
white racist group that operates in California prisons and is well­
known for its attacks on Black prisoners.
Hooked up with the nazis were the manson family women,
sandra good and linda "squeaky" froame. Sandra had been sen­
tenced to fifteen years for threatening the lives of business ex­
ecutives and government officials, and froame was serving a life
sentence for attempting to kill president gerald ford. They were like
the Bobbsey twins and clear out of their minds.
They called themselves "red" and "blue." Everyday "red" wore
red from head to toe and "blue" wore blue. They were so fanatic in
their devotion to charles manson that they wrote to him everyday,
informing him about everything that happened at msu. They waited
for his "orders," and you can be sure that if he told them to kill
someone they would die trying to do it. Also hooked up with the
nazis were the hillbilly prisoners: an obese sow who never bathed
and walked around barefoot and a tobacco-chewing butch who
acted like she was in the confederate army. There was one "indepen­
dent" nazi who had fallen out with the others. She sported a huge
swastika embroidered on her jeans.
Luckily, Rita Brown, a white revolutionary from the George
Jackson Brigade, a group based on the West Coast, was among the
four or five "niggah lovers." She was a feminist and a lesbian, and
helped me to better understand many issues in the white women's
liberation movement. Unlike Jane Alpert, whom i had met in the
federal prison in New York, and whom i couldn't stand either
personally or politically, Rita did not separate the oppression of
women from the racism and classism of u.s. society. We agreed that
sexism, like racism, was generated by capitalist, imperialist govern­
ments, and that women would never be liberated as long as the
institutions that controlled our lives existed. I respected Rita be­
cause she really practiced sisterhood, and wasn't just one of those
big mouths who go on and on about men.
I'm sure that a lot of prison officials thought i'd never leave the
place alive. It was the perfect setup for a setup, and i dealt with the
situation seriously. I didn't look for trouble, but i let the nazis know
that i was ready to defend myself at any time, and that if they
wanted ass (like they say in prison) they would have to bring ass. I
made it clear to them that i hated them as much as they hated me,
and that if anybody's mother had to cry it would be theirs, not Ms.
Johnson. After a few run-ins, the nazis stayed out of my way.

After i had been at alderson for a while, we learned that the
msu would be closed down because it had been declared uncon­
stitutional. A phase-out stratification program was implemented
that enabled those in msu to leave it during the day and to partici­
pate in the same activities permitted those in the general popula­
tion. I got a job working on the general mechanic's crew, was
allowed recreation, attended classes, and was able to eat and visit
with the other women in general population.
Many of the sisters were Black and poor and from D.C., where
every crime is a violation of a federal statute. They were beautiful
sisters, serving outrageous sentences for minor offenses. Similar to
the situation that existed at the federal prison in New York, some
women could not afford to buy cigarettes without forgoing neces­
sities, while others had money, contacts, wore fur coats, and lived
as if they were in a different prison. That small group of women had
been convicted of drug trafficking. Rumor had it that they per­
formed the same services in prison as they had on the street, only
now they worked for the guards.
One day, as i was returning to davis hall, a middle-aged
woman with "salt-and-pepper" hair caught my eye. She had a
dignified, schoolteacher look. Something drew me towards her. As i
searched her face, i could see that she was also searching mine. Our
eyes locked in a questioning gaze. "Lolita ?" i ventured. "Assata?"
she responded. And there, in the middle of those alderson prison
grounds, we hugged and kissed each other.
For me, this was one of the greatest honors of my life. Lolita
Lebron was one of the most respected political prisoners in the
world. Ever since i had first learned about her courageous struggle
for the independence of Puerto Rico, i had read everything i could
find that had been written about her. She had spent a quarter of a
century behind bars and had refused parole unless her comrades
were also freed. After all those years she had remained strong,
unbent and unbroken, still dedicated to the independence of Puerto
Rico and the liberation of her people. She deserved more respect
than anyone could possibly give her, and i could not do enough to
demonstrate my respect.
In our subsequent meetings i must have been quite a pain in
her neck, falling all over myself to carry her tray, to get a chair for
her, or to do whatever i could for her. Lolita had been through hell
in prison, yet she was amazingly calm and extremely kind. She had
suffered years of isolation in davis hall in addition to years of
political and personal isolation. Until the upsurge of the movement
for Puerto Rican independence in the late 60s, she had received very

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little support. Years had gone by without a visit. For years she had
been cut off from her country, her culture, her family, and had not
been able to speak her own language. Her only daughter had died
while she was in prison.
I supported Lolita a hundred percent, but there was one thing
about which we did not agree. At the time we met, Lolita was
somewhat anticommunist and antisocialist. She was extremely re­
ligous and, i think, believed that religion and socialism were two
opposing forces, that socialists and communists were completely
opposed to religion and religious freedom.
After the resurgence of the Puerto Rican independence move­
ment, Lolita was visited by all kinds of people. Some were pseudo­
revolutionary robots who attacked her for her religious beliefs,
telling her that to be a revolutionary she had to give up her belief in
God. It apparently had never occurred to those fools that Lolita was
more revolutionary than they could ever be, and that her religion
had helped her to remain strong and committed all those years. I
was infuriated by their crass, misguided arrogance.
I had become close friends with a Catholic nun, Mary Alice,
while at alderson, who introduced me to liberation theology. I had
read some articles by Camillo Torres, the revolutionary priest, and i
knew that there were a lot of revolutionary priests and nuns in Latin
America. But i didn't know too much about liberation theology. I
did know that Jesus had driven the money changers out of the
temples and said that the meek would inherit the earth, and a lot of
other things that were directly opposed to capitalism. He had told
the rich to give away their wealth and said that "It is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
into the Kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24). I knew a little bit, but
i had too much respect for Lolita to open my mouth carelessly. I
decided to study liberation theology so that i could have an intel­
ligent conversation with her.
I never got around to it, though. The maximum security unit
closed, and i was shipped back to new jersey. Lolita is free now, and
she is no longer isolated from what is going on in her part of the
world or in her church. I know that wherever she is, she is praying
and struggling for her people.

Chapter 2 0

y mother brings my daugh­
ter to see me at the clinton correctional facility for
women in new jersey, where i had been sent from
alderson. I am delirious. She looks so tall. I run up to
kiss her. She barely responds. She is distant and stand­
offish. Pangs of guilt and sorrow fill my chest. I can see
that my child is suffering. It is stupid to ask what is
wrong. She is four years old, and except for these
pitiful little visits-although my mother has brought
her to see me every week, wherever i am, with the
exception of the time i was in alderson-she has never
been with her mother. I can feel something welling up
in my baby. I look at my mother, my face a question
mark. My mother is suffering too. I try to play. I make
my arms into an elephant's trunk stalking around the
visiting room jungle. It does not work. My daughter
refuses to play baby elephant, or tiger, or anything.
She looks at me like i am the buffoon i must look like.
I try the choo-choo train routine and the la, la, la
song, but she is not amused. I try talking to her, but
she is puffed up and sullen.
I go over and try to hug her. In a hot second she is
all over me. All i can feel are these little four-year-old
fists banging away at me. Every bit of her force is in
those punches, they really hurt. I let her hit me until
she is tired. "It's all right," i tell her. "Let it all out."
She is standing in front of me, her face contorted with
anger, looking spent. She backs away and leans
against the wall. "It's okay," i tell her. "Mommy un­
derstands." "You're not my mother," she screams, the
tears rolling down her face. "You're not my mother
and I hate you." I feel like crying too. I know she is

2 57

ASSATA

confused about who i am. She calls me Mommy Assata and she
calls my mother Mommy.
1 try to pick her up. She knocks my hand away. "You can get
out of here, if you want to," she screams. "You just don't want to."
"No, i can't," i say, weakly. "Yes you can." she accuses. "You just
don't want to."
1 look helplessly at my mother. Her face is choked with pain.
"Tell her to try to open the bars," she says in a whisper.
"I can't open the door," i tell my daughter. "I can't get through
the bars. You try and open the bars."
My daughter goes over to the barred door that leads to the
visiting room. She pulls and she pushes. She yanks and she hits and
she kicks the bars until she falls on the floor, a heap of exhaustion. 1
go over and pick her up. 1 hold and rock and kiss her. There is a
look of resignation on her face that i can't stand. We spend the rest
of the visit talking and playing quietly on the floor. When the guard
says the visit is over, i cling to her for dear life. She holds her head
high, and her back straight as she walks out of the prison. She
waves good-bye to me, her face clouded and worried, looking like a
little adult. 1 go back to my cage and cry until i vomit. 1 decide that
it is time to leave.

TO MY DAUGHTER KAKUYA

i have shabby dreams for you
of some vague freedom
i have never known.
Baby,
i don't want you hungry or thirsty
or out in the cold.
And i don't want the frost
to kill your fruit
before it ripens .
i can see a sunny place­
Life exploding green.
i can see your bright, bronze skin
at ease with all the flowers
and the centipedes.
i can hear laughter,
not grown from ridicule.
And words, not prompted
by ego or greed or jealousy.
i see a world where hatred
has been replaced by love .
and ME replaced by WE.
And i can see a world
where you,
building and exploring,
strong and fulfilled,
will understand.
And go beyond
my little shabby dreams.

ASSATA

259

Chapter 2 1

2 60

y grandmother came all the
way from North Carolina. She came to tell me about
her dream. My grandmother had been dreaming all of
her life, and the dreams have come true. My grand­
mother dreams of people passing and babies being
born and people being free, but it is never specific.
Redbirds sitting on fences, rainbows at sunset, con­
versations with people long gone. My grandmother's
dreams have always come when they were needed and
have always meant what we needed them to mean. She
dreamed my mother would be a schoolteacher, my
aunt would go to law school, and, during the hard
times, she dreamed the good times were coming. She
told us what we needed to be told and made us believe
it like nobody else could have. She did her part. The
rest was up to us. We had to make it real. Dreams and
reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.
I was extremely pleased that she had come. Her
air was confident and victorious. The rest of the family
prompted her to tell me her dream.
"You're coming home soon," my grandmother
told me, catching my eyes and staring down into
them. "I don't know when it will be, but you're com­
ing home. You're getting out of here. It won't be too
long, though. It will be much less time than you've
already been here."
Excited, i asked her to tell me about her dream.
We were all talking, i noticed in a conspiratorial tone.
"I dreamed we were in our old house in Jamaica. I
don't know if you remember that house or not."
I assured her that i did.
"I dreamed tha! i was dressing you," she said,
"putting your clothes on."

"Dressing me?" i repeated.
"Yes. Dressing you."
Fear ran up and down my back. "Was i little or grown?"
"You were grown up in my dream."
1 felt slightly sick. Maybe my grandmother dreamt about my
death. Maybe she dreamt that i was killed while trying to escape.
Why else would she be dressing me, if i wasn't dead? My grand­
mother caught my drift of thought.
"No, you're all right. You're alive. It's just as plain as the nose
on your face. You're coming home. 1 know what I'm talking about.
Don't ask me to explain it anymore, because 1 can't. 1 just know
you're going to come home and that you're going to be all right."
1 drilled her for more details. Some she gave and some she
didn't. Finally, after i had asked a thousand questions, my grand­
mother let all the authority show in her voice. "I know it will
happen, because 1 dreamt it. You're getting out of this place, and 1
know it. That's all there is to it."
My grandmother sat looking at me. There was a kind of smile
on her face i can't describe. 1 knew she was serious. My grand­
mother's dreams were notorious: her dreams came true. All her life
her uncanny senses have been like radar, picking up and identifying
all kinds of things that we don't even see. My family and i just sat
there vibing on each other. Talking and laughing, bringing up old
memories and telling funny stories. Calmness rolled down my
body like thick honey.
When i got back to my cell i thought about it all. No amount
of scientific, rational thinking could diminish the high that i felt. A
tingly, giddy excitement had caught hold of me. 1 had gotten drunk
on my family's arrogant, carefree optimism. 1 literally danced in my
cell, singing, "Feet, don't fail me now." 1 sang the "feet" part real
low, so i guess the guards must have thought i was bugging out,
stomping around my cage singing "feet," "feet."
"You can't win a race just by running," my mother told me
when i was little. "You have to talk to yourself."
"Huh ?" i had asked.
"You have to talk to yourself when you are running and tell
yourself you can win."
It had become a habit of sorts. Anytime i am faced with
something difficult or almost impossible, i chant. Over the years i
have developed different kinds of chants, but i always fall back on
the old one "i can, i can, yes, i can."
1 called my grandparents a day or two before i escaped. 1
wanted to hear their voices one last time before i went. 1 was feeling

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kind of mush and, so as not to sound suspicious, i told them i
wanted to hear some more about the family's history, tracing the
ties back to slavery. All too soon it was time to hang up. "Your
grandmother wants to say something else to you," my grandfather
told me.
"I love you," my grandmother said. "We don't want you to get
used to that place, do you hear? Don't you let yourself get used to
it. "
"No, grandmommy, I won't."
Every day out in the street now, i remind myself that Black
people in amerika are oppressed. It's necessary that I do that.
People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppres­
sion, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people
just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become
free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

THE TRADITION

Carry it on now.
Carry it on.
Carry it on now.
Carry it on.
Carry on the tradition.
There were Black People since the childhood of time
who carried it on.
In Ghana and Mali and Timbuktu
we carried it on.
Carried on the tradition.
We hid in the bush
when the slavemasters came
holding spears.
And when the moment was ripe,
leaped out and lanced the lifeblood
of would-be masters.
We carried it on.
On slave ships,
hurling ourselves into oceans.
Slitting the throats of our captors.
We took their whips.
And their ships.
Blood flowed in the Atlantic­
and it wasn't all ours.
We carried it on.
Fed Missy arsenic apple pies.
Stole the axes from the shed.
Went and chopped off master's head.
We ran. We fought.
We organized a railroad.
An underground.
We carried it on.
In newspapers. In meetings.
In arguments and streetfights.
We carried it on.

ASSATA

ASSATA

In tales told to children.
In chants and cantatas.
In poems and blues songs
and saxophone screams,
We carried it on.
In classrooms. In churches.
In courtrooms. In prisons.
We carried it on.
On soapboxes and picket lines.
Welfare lines, unemployment lines.
Our lives on the line,
We carried it on.
In sit-ins and pray-ins
And march-ins and die-ins,
We carried it on.
On cold Missouri midnights
Pitting shotguns against lynch mobs.
On burning Brooklyn streets.
Pitting rocks against rifles,
We carried it on.
Against water hoses and bulldogs.
Against nightsticks and bullets.
Against tanks and tear gas.
Needles and nooses.
Bombs and birth control.
We carried it on.
In Selma and San Juan.
Mozambique. Mississippi.
In Brazil and in Boston,
We carried it on.
Through the lies and the sell-outs.
The mistakes and the madness.
Through pain and hunger and frustration,
We carried it on.
Carried on the tradition.
Carried a strong tradition.
Carried a proud tradition.

Carried a Black tradition.
Carry it on.
Pass it down to the children.
Pass it down.
Carry it on.
Carry it on now.
Carry it on
TO FREEDOM !

ASSATA

Postscript

2.66

reedom. I couldn't believe that it had really
happened, that the nightmare was over, that finally the
dream had come true. I was elated. Ecstatic. But i was
completely disoriented. Everything was the same, yet
everything was different. All of my reactions were
super-intense. I submerged myself in patterns and tex­
tures, sucking in smells and sounds as if each day was
my last. I felt like a voyeur. I forced myself not to stare
at the people whose conversations i strained to over­
hear.
Suddenly, i was flooded with the horrors of prison
and every disgusting experience that somehow i had
been able to minimize while inside. I had developed
the ability to be patient, calculating, and completely
self-controlled. For the most part, i had been incapa­
ble of crying. I felt rigid, as though chunks of steel and
concrete had worked themselves into my body. I was
cold. I strained to touch my softness. I was afraid that
prison had made me ugly.
My comrades helped a lot. They were so beau­
tiful, natural, and healthy. I loved them for their kind­
ness to me. It had been years since i had
communicated with anyone intensely, and i talked to
them almost compulsively. They were like medicine,
helping me to ease back into myself again.
But i had changed, and in so many ways. I was no
longer the wide-eyed, romantic young revolutionary
who believed the revolution was just around the cor­
ner. I still appreciated energetic idealism, but i had
long ago become convinced that revolution was a
science. Generalities were no longer enough for me.
Like my comrades, I believed that a higher level of
political sophistication was necessary and that unity in
the Black community had to become a priority. We
could never afford to forget the lessons we had learned

from COINTELPRO. As far as i was concerned, building a sense of
national consciousness was one of the most important tasks that lay
ahead of us. I couldn't see how we could seriously struggle without
having a strong sense of collectivity, without being responsible for
each other and to each other.
It was also clear to me that without a truly internationalist
component nationalism was reactionary. There was nothing revolu­
tionary about nationalism by itself-Hitler and Mussolini were
nationalists. Any community seriously concerned with its own
freedom has to be concerned about other peoples' freedom as well.
The victory of oppressed people anywhere in the world is a victory
for Black people. Each time one of imperialism's tentacles is cut off
we are closer to liberation. The struggle in South Africa is the most
important battle of the century for Black people. The defeat of
apartheid in South Africa will bring Africans all over the planet
closer to liberation. Imperialism is an international system of ex­
ploitation, and, we, as revolutionaries, need to be internationalists
to defeat it.

Havana. Lazy sun against blue-green ocean. A beautiful city of
narrow, spider-web streets on one side of town and broad, tree-lined
avenues on the other. Houses with peeling paint and vintage u.s.
cars from the 40s and 50s.
It's a busy place, full of buses, people hurrying, kids in wine­
or gold-colored uniforms walking leisurely down the streets swing­
ing book bags. The first thing that hit me were the open doors.
Everywhere you go doors are open wide. You see people inside
their homes talking, working, or watching television. I was amazed
to find that you could actually walk down the streets at night alone.
Old people strolling slowly, carrying shopping bags, stop to
ask, "Que hay ? Que hay en la mercada?" "What are they selling in
the market?" Without a moment's hesitation they yell at kids to get
out of the street. They stand with their hands on their hips, acting
like they own the place. I guess they do. They're not afraid.
"Es mentira." my neighbors exclaim. "It's a lie." Que men­
tirosa tu eres." "What a liar you are." My neighbors ask me what
the u.s. is like, and they accuse me of lying when i tell them about
the hunger and cold and people sleeping in the streets. They refuse
to believe me. How can that be in such a rich country ? I tell them
about drug addicts and child prostitutes, about crime in the streets.
They accuse me of exaggerating: "We know capitalism is not a
good system, but you don't have to exaggerate. Are there really

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2 68

twelve-year-old drug addicts ?"
Even though they know about racism and the ku klux klan,
about unemployment, such things are unreal to them. Cuba is a
country of hope. Their reality is so different. I'm amazed at how
much Cubans have accomplished in so short a time since the
Revolution. There are new buildings everywhere-schools, apart­
ment houses, clinics, hospitals, and day care centers. They are not
like the skyscrapers going up in midtown Manhattan. There are no
exclusive condominiums or luxury office buildings. The new build­
ings are for the people.
Medical care, dental care, and hospital visits are free. Schools
at all educational levels are free. Rent is no more than about ten
percent of salaries. There are no taxes-no income, city, federal, or
state taxes. It is so strange to pay the price actually listed on
products without any tax added. Movies, plays, concerts, and
sports events all cost one or two pesos at the most. Museums are
free.
On Saturdays and Sundays the streets are packed with people
dressed up and ready to hang out. I was amazed to discover that
such a small island has such a rich cultural life and is so lively,
particularly when the u.s. press gives just the opposite picture.
I'm being introduced at a party. The hostess tells me that the
man is from El Salvador. I hold out my hand to shake his. A few
seconds too late, i realize he is missing an arm. He asks me what
country i come from. I'm so upset and ashamed i'm almost shak­
ing. "Yo soy de los estados unidos, pero no soy yankee," i tell him.
A friend of mine had taught me that phrase. Every time someone
asked me where i was from i cringed. I hated to tell people i was
from the u.s. I would have preferred to say i was New Afrikan,
except that hardly anyone would have understood what that meant.
When i read about death squads in El Salvador or the bombing of
hospitals in Nicaragua, i felt like screaming.
Too many people in the u.s. support death and destruction
without being aware of it. They indirectly support the killing of
people without ever having to look at the corpses. But in Cuba i
could see the results of u.s. foreign policy: torture victims on
crutches who came from other countries to Cuba for treatment,
including Namibian children who had survived massacres, and
evidence of the vicious aggression the u.s. government had com­
mitted against Cuba, including sabotage, and numerous assassina­
tion attempts against Fidel. I wondered how all those people in the
states who tried to sound tough, saying that the u.s. should go in
here, bomb there, take over this, attack that, would feel if they knew

that they were indirectly responsible for babies being burned to
death. I wondered how they would feel if they were forced to take
moral responsibility for that. It sometimes seems that people in the
states are so accustomed to watching death on "Eyewitness News,"
watching people starve to death in Africa, being tortured to death
in Latin America or shot down on Asian streets, that, somehow, for
them, people across the ocean-people "up there" or "down there"
or "over there"-are not real.
One of the first questions on the minds of Blacks from the
states when they come to Cuba is whether or not racism exists. I
was certainly no exception. I had read a little about the history of
Black people in Cuba and knew that it was very different from the
history of Black people in the states. Cuban racism had not been as
violent or as institutionalized as u.s. racism, and the tradition of
the two races, Blacks and whites, fighting together for liberation­
first from colonization and later from dictatorship-was much
stronger in Cuba. Cuba's first war for independence began in 1 868
when Carlos Manuel De-Cespedes freed his slaves and encouraged
them to join the army in the fight against Spain. One of the most
important figures in that war was Antonio Maceo, a Black man,
who was the chief military strategist. Blacks played a crucial role in
Cuba's labor movement in the 1 950s. Jesus Menendez and Lazaro
Peiia led two key unions. And i knew that Blacks like Juan Almeda,
now Commandante of the Revolution, had played a significant role
in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow Batista. But i was most
interested in learning what had happened to Blacks after the tri­
umph of the Revolution.
I spent my first weeks in Havana walking and watching. No­
where did I find a segregated neighborhood, but several people told
me that where i was living had been all white before the Revolution.
Just from casual observation it was obvious that race relations in
Cuba were different from what they were in the u.s. Blacks and
whites could be seen together everywhere-in cars, walking down
streets. Kids of all races played together. It was definitely different.
Whenever i met someone who spoke English i asked their opinion
about the race situation.
"Racism is illegal in Cuba," i was told. Many shook their
heads and said, "Aqui no hay racismo." "There is no racism here."
Although i heard the same response from everyone i remained
skeptical and suspicious. I couldn't believe it was possible to elimi­
nate hundreds of years of racism just like that, in twenty-five years
or so. To me, revolutions were not magical, and no magic wand
could be waved to create changes overnight. I'd come to see revolu-

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tion as a process. 1 eventually became convinced that the Cuban
government was completely committed to eliminating all forms of
racism. There were no racist institutions, structures, or organiza­
tions, and i understood how the Cuban economic system under­
mined rather than fed racism.
1 had assumed that Blacks would be working within the Revo­
lution to implement the changes and to insure the continuation of
the nonracist policies that Fidel and the revolutionary leaders had
instituted in every aspect of Cuban life. A Black Cuban friend
helped me have a better understanding. He told me that Cubans
took their African heritage for granted. That for hundreds of years
Cubans had danced to African rhythms, performed traditional
rituals, and worshipped Gods like Shango and Ogun. He told me
that Fidel, in a speech, had told the people, "We are all Afro­
Cubans, from the very lightest to the very darkest."
1 told him that i thought it was the duty of Africans everywhere
on this planet to struggle to reverse the historical patterns created
by slavery and imperialism. Although he agreed with me, he
quickly informed me that he didn't think of himself as an African.
"Yo soy Cubano." "I am Cuban." And it was obvious he was very
proud of being Cuban. He told me a story about a white Cuban
who had volunteered twice to fight in Angola. He had received
awards for heroism. "His case is not at all common in Cuba, but
there are some who have problems adjusting to change."
"What was his problem ?" 1 asked. "When the guy came home
he caused a big scandal with his family. His daughter wanted to
marry a Black man and he opposed the marriage. He said he
wanted his grandchildren to look like him. It was a big argument,
and his whole family got into it. This guy was so mixed up he went
crazy when his daughter called him a racist. He wanted to fight
everybody. He was out in the street, crying and kicking lamp posts.
He didn't know what to do. All the time he was in Angola fighting
against racism, he never thought about his own racism."
1 agreed with him that whites fighting against racism had to
fight on two levels, against institutionalized racism and against
their own racist ideas. "What happened to the man ?" i asked.
"Well, his daughter got married anyway, and his family con­
vinced him to go to the wedding. Now, he baby-sits for his grand­
children, and he says he's crazy about them, but the guy is still not
right in the head. Every time 1 see him, he's apologetic. 1 told him 1
don't want his apologies. Let him apologize to his daughter and
her husband. As long as he supports the Revolution, 1 don't care
what he thinks. 1 care more about what he does. If he really

supports the Revolution, then he's gonna change. And, even if he
never· changes, his kids are going to change� And his grandchildren
will change even more. That's what I care about."
The whole race question in Cuba was even more confusing to
me because all the categories of race were different. In the first
place, most white Cubans wouldn't even be considered white in the
u.s. They'd be considered Latinos. I was shocked to learn that a lot
of Cubans who looked Black to me didn't consider themselves
Black. They called themselves mulattoes, colorados, jabaos, and a
whole bunch of other names. It seemed to me that anyone who
wasn't jet black was considered a mulatto. The first time someone
called me a "mulatta," i was so insulted that if i had been able to
express myself in Spanish, we would have had a heated argument
right there on the spot.
"Yo no soy una mulatta. Yo soy una mujer negra, y orgullosa
soy una mujer negra," i would tell people as soon as I learned a
little Spanish. "I'm not a mulatto, but a Black woman, and I'm
proud to be Black." Some people understood where i was coming
from, but others thought i was too hung up on the race question.
To them, "mulatto" was just a color, like red, green, or blue. But, to
me, it represented a historical relationship. All of my associations
with the word "mulatto" were negative. it represented slavery, slave
owners raping Black women. It represented a privileged caste,
educated in European values and culture. In some Caribbean coun­
tries, it represented the middle level of a hierarchical, three-caste
system-the caste that acted as a buffer class between the white
rulers and the Black masses.
I found it impossible to separate the word from its history. It
reminded me of a saying i had heard repeatedly since childhood: "If
you're white, you'r right. If you're brown, stick around. And, if
you're black, get back." I realized that in order to really understand
the situation i had to study Cuban history thoroughly. But, some­
how, i felt that the mulatto thing hindered Cubans from dealing
with some of the negative ideas left over from slavery.
The Black pride movement had been very important in helping
Black people in the u.s. and in other English-speaking countries to
view their African heritage in a positive light. I had never heard of
any equivalent movement around mulatto pride and i couldn't
imagine what the basis for it would be. To me, it was extremely
important for all the descendants of Africans everywhere on this
planet to struggle to reverse the political, economic, psychological,
and social patterns created by slavery and imperialism.
The problem of racism takes on so many forms and displays so

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ASSATA

many subtleties. It is a complicated problem that will require much
analysis and much struggle to resolve. Although, in some ways,
Cubans and I approached the problem from different angles, i felt
we shared the same goal: the abolition of racism all over the world.
I respected the Cuban government, not only for adopting nonracist
principles, but for struggling to put those principles into practice.

I held my breath as i waited for my aunt to pick up the phone.
It had been five years since i had last spoken to her. Five years since
i had been able to contact my family. Hopefully, she hadn't
changed her number. A click. And then, at last, i heard her voice. I
was so happy.
"Anty," i almost
.' shouted. "It's me. Assata."
"Who?"
"Assata. "
"Who ?"
"It's me. Assata. I'm in Cuba. I'm in Cuba. Oh, i love you. It's
so good to hear your voice. How are you?"
The voice on the other end was my aunt's, but it was so cold i
could hardly believe it. "Oh. Really. Assata. Hm. Right. Well, I'm
fine."
"What's the matter, Anty? It's me. Assata. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
"Anty. Oh, i missed you so much. It's all right. Everything's
o.K. I'm fine. I'm fine. How's everybody? How's everybody there?"
Again the icy voice. "Everything is just fine. What do you
want?"
"What do i want? What do you mean, what do i want? I want
to talk to you. I love you. You sound so cold."
"Well . . . it . . . it . . . I . . . " There was a pause. And then,
"Say something so I'll know it's really you. Something only you and
I know."
Finally understanding, i said the first thing that popped into
my head. "Anty, panty, jack o'stanty." It was a stupid childhood
rhyme and nobody else could possibly know about it. I used to
taunt her with it when I was a kid.
"It is you. Oh, my God, it really is you," she screamed. "Wait.
Give me a second to catch my breath. How are you?"
"Fine," i said. "How's Mommy and Kakuya ?"
"Your mother's fine. Oh, she's gonna be so happy when I tell
her I've talked to you. Kakuya's fine, too. Your daughter is so big

you won't recognize her. She's almost as tall as you are."
I told her i wanted to call my mother and Kakuya as soon as i
finished talking to her.
"No. You call her tomorrow. Let me call her first, so she really
knows its you. Where did you say you are?"
"Cuba. I'm calling from Cuba. I'm a political refugee here."
"Cuba ?" my aunt repeated. "Cuba ? Are you O.K. there ? I
mean, are you safe?"
"I think so," i told her. "I feel fine. It seems that way."
Talking to Kakuya and my mother the next day was like a
dream. "Hi," this little voice said into the phone. It was the most
beautiful voice i'd ever heard. I was nervous and happy. Sweating
buckets.
"How are you?" i asked my daughter.
"Fine. "
I felt like a pot boiling over. All the feelings i'd kept inside for
so long came gushing out. I had a million things i wanted to ask
her. A million things i wanted to say.
My mother and i made plans. She and my aunt and Kakuya
would come down as soon as possible. It seemed too good to be
true. And it was.
Month after month passed by. In order for Kakuya to get her
passport, she needed a birth certificate. My mother told me that for
ten years Elmhurst Hospital had refused to issue Kakuya a birth
certificate. Finally, after months of hassling, Evelyn had to go to
kourt to get a document proving that my daughter had been born.
Over the months that followed, i began to understand the kind
of hell that the police and the FBI had put my family through. After
i had escaped, the police had so persistently and brutally badgered
my mother that she had had a heart attack. What they had done to
Evelyn was beyond belief. I understood why Evelyn had reacted to
my call the way she did. At one time, Evelyn's office telephone had
ten intercepts on it. She and my mother had received phony notes in
my handwriting. They had received telephone calls with my voice
telling them to "come to the spot and bring some money." They
had found electric eyes and all kinds of other devices in and around
their houses. They had experienced strange break-ins where
nothing of value was taken. But they had survived. And grown
stronger in the process.
As the plane swooped down over Havana, it seemed that my
heart was beating on my ribs to get out. My stomach hurt. My
mouth was dry like cotton. It seemed like a million people poured

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2 74

off the plane before the tall little girl with the great big eyes started
down the ramp. I could see my mother, looking frail, yet so deter­
mined. With my aunt behind her, looking triumphant.
How much we had all gone through. Our fight had started on
a slave ship years before we were born. Venceremos, my favorite
word in Spanish, crossed my mind. Ten million people had stood
up to the monster. Ten million people only ninety miles away. We
were here together in their land, my small little family, holding each
other after so long. There was no doubt about it, our people would
one day be free. The cowboys and bandits didn't own the world.

Preface
As I began to give interviews and talks about my book “They Take
Our Jobs!” And 20 Other Myths about Immigration, published in 2007,
I became more and more convinced that a key, central issue that’s
hampering those of us who support immigrant rights is the absence
of a basic, fundamental ability to say “immigrant rights are human
rights.” Immigration simply should not be illegal. No politician or
talk-show commentator is going to risk saying this, but we have to.
I stand by my arguments about the myths I deconstruct in the
book (Immigrants DON’T take American jobs! Immigrants DO pay
taxes! Immigrants ARE learning English!), but I also, deep down,
think these arguments miss the point. Immigrants are human beings
who have arbitrarily been classified as having a different legal status
from the rest of the United States’ inhabitants. The only thing that
makes immigrants different from anybody else is the fact that they
are denied the basic rights that the rest of us have. There is simply
no humanly acceptable reason to define a group of people as
different and deny them rights.
How can we claim to oppose discrimination based on national
origin when our entire body of citizenship and immigration law is
founded on discrimination based on national origin? When people
ask me, “Why don’t they just apply for citizenship?” or “Why don’t
they just come here legally?” they are betraying a fundamental
ignorance of our immigration and citizenship laws. People don’t
apply for citizenship or don’t obtain proper documents to come
here, because the law forbids it. That’s right: the law forbids them to
come to the United States or to apply for citizenship. US
immigration law is based on a system of quotas and preferences. If
you don’t happen to be one of the lucky few who falls into a quota
or preference category, there is basically no way to obtain legal
permission to immigrate. If you are already in the United States
without proper documentation, you will never, ever be allowed to
apply for citizenship.

Given the choice, nobody would risk his or her life walking
through the desert to enter the country illegally, and nobody would
risk the constant fear, discrimination, and threat of deportation that
comes from being undocumented. Of course, everybody who comes
to the United States would rather enter the country legally, and
everybody who is undocumented would rather be documented. If
only the law allowed them to do it!
The purpose of this book is to denaturalize illegality. I want to
show it as the social construction that it is. I want to show when,
why, and how it came to be, and how it came to be socially
accepted as a fact. I want to show how it works and what purpose it
serves. Or maybe whose purposes it serves. My goal is to unveil the
complex, inconsistent, and sometimes perverse nature of US
immigration law that makes some people illegal.

Introduction
When people say, “What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?”
they imply that they, in fact, understand everything about it. They
take illegality to be self-evident: there’s a law, you break the law,
that’s illegal. Obvious, right?
Actually, illegality is a lot more complicated than that. Laws are
made and enforced by humans, in historical contexts, and for
reasons. They change over time, and they are often created and
modified to serve the interests of some groups—generally the
powerful and privileged—over others.
Most of the citizens who brag that their ancestors came here “the
right way” are making assumptions based on ignorance. They
assume that their ancestors “went through the process” and
obtained visas, as people are required to do today. In fact, most of
them came before any legal process existed—before the concept of
“illegality” existed.
THE INVENTION OF ILLEGALITY
Illegality as we know it today came into existence after 1965. In the
decades before 1965, the media rarely depicted immigration in
negative terms. Nor did the public or Congress consider it a problem
in need of legislation. By the 1970s, though, the demonization of
immigrants—in particular, Mexican and other Latino immigrants—
and the issue of “illegal immigration” were turning into hot-button
issues.1
There are some particular historical reasons for these changes.
Some are economic. The global and the domestic economies
underwent some fundamental structural changes in the late
twentieth century, changes we sometimes refer to as “globalization.”
Some analysts argued that globalization was making the world
“flat,” and that with the spread of connection, technology, and
communication, old inequalities would melt away.2 Others believed

that new inequalities were becoming entrenched—that a “global
apartheid” being imposed, separating the Global North from the
Global South, the rich from the poor, the winners in the new global
economy from the losers.3 I’ll go more into depth about these
changes and show how they contributed to a need for illegality to
sustain the new world order.
The second set of changes is ideological and cultural. Like the big
economic shifts, ideological and cultural changes are a process; they
can’t necessarily be pinpointed to a particular date or year. I use
1965 as a convenience, because that’s when some major changes
were enacted in US immigration law that contributed to creating
illegality. But those changes responded to, and contributed to, the
more long-term economic and ideological shifts that were occurring.
In the cultural realm, overt racism was going out of fashion. Civil
rights movements at home and anti-colonial movements abroad
undercut the legitimacy of racial exclusion and discrimination.
While apartheid continued in South Africa through the 1980s, even
that lost its international legitimacy. In the United States, the Jim
Crow regime was dismantled and new laws and programs were
aimed at creating racial equality, at least on paper. By the new
century, people were beginning to talk about the United States as a
“postracial” society. At the same time, though, new laws hardened
immigration regimes and discrimination against immigrants in the
United States and elsewhere.
TRUE REFUGEES OF THE BORDER WARS
Before deeply delving into the dizzying and sometimes irrational
nature of immigration law, it’s helpful to consider what’s actually
happening on the ground. I had the opportunity to see firsthand the
human tragedy that’s resulted from the new immigration regime in
March 2010, when I participated in a weeklong humanitarian
delegation with the organization No More Deaths, one of several
that take direct action on the US-Mexico border.
Volunteers from these organizations attempt to provide
humanitarian aid to migrants by leaving water at stations along

migrant trails and offering basic first-aid at camps in the desert,
among other things. My group, though, was taking testimonies on
the Mexican side of the border from migrants who had been caught
and deported.
During that week, I met several hundred deportees. They were
arrested for a crime no US citizen can commit: entering the United
States without official permission. Only people who are not US
citizens need official permission to enter US territory.
Nogales, Sonora, on the US-Mexico border, has the feel of a war
zone. Every few hours, a bus from the Wackenhut private security
service arrives on the US side of the border filled with would-be
migrants, mostly from Mexico’s poor southern regions. Most of them
were captured by the Border Patrol somewhere in the Arizona
desert. “They used to try to capture us near the border,” one
migrant told me wearily. “Now, they patrol two or three days’ walk
north of the border. They want to find us when we’re dehydrated,
exhausted, blistered, so we can’t run away.”
First, the drivers unload their belongings from underneath the
bus—a few backpacks, but mostly clear plastic Homeland Security
bags supplied by the Border Patrol. After about half an hour, the
migrants descend from the bus in small groups. Under armed guard,
the lucky ones retrieve their packages and shuffle back across the
border to be processed by Mexican authorities. Many have lost
everything on their trek through the desert, when they were
attacked by robbers, became separated from their group, got lost, or
fled from the Border Patrol.
Processing takes about fifteen minutes. The migrants receive a
slip of paper attesting to the fact that they are deportees. The paper
confirms their eligibility for the fragmentary social services that the
Mexican government and several Catholic church organizations
offer to migrants in Nogales: one phone call, a half-fare bus ride
home, three nights in a shelter, and, most generously, fifteen days of
free meals twice a day at the comedor, or soup kitchen, run by the
Proyecto Kino, supported by both the Mexican and several US
archdioceses of the Catholic church.

After processing, the migrants emerge on the Mexican side of the
border. Taxi drivers and food vendors accost them as they stumble
out, dazed and bewildered. “Everybody wants to pretend to be a
migrant, to get services,” one provider told me. “You have to look at
their shoes. If they have shoelaces, they’re not migrants. Homeland
Security takes their shoelaces so they won’t. . .” He gestured slitting
his throat and laughed conspiratorially. So the migrants stumble
because their feet are raw and torn from walking through the desert,
and because they have no shoelaces in their tattered shoes.
If they’re lucky, one of the first people they’ll encounter is Sal,
with the Transportes Fronterizos (Border Transport) company,
contracted by the Mexican government to provide transportation
services for deportees. Sal is a deportee himself. In his twenties, he
speaks English with a perfect Chicano lilt. That’s not surprising: he
came to the United States with his parents when he was three and
grew up and graduated from high school in Arizona. “How did you
get deported?” I asked him, quickly realizing that we should
communicate in his preferred English, rather than Spanish. “You
don’t want to know,” he grimaced. “Jaywalking.” Was it racial
profiling? The police stopped him for crossing a street where there
was no crosswalk, asked him for his documents, and arrested him.
In Arizona, local police are empowered to enforce immigration laws.
Sal can tell migrants where to find free food and shelter, and how
to access the transportation services offered by Grupo Beta, the
Mexican government agency charged with removing migrants from
the border to prevent them from attempting to recross. He keeps his
booth open from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m., when the last bus leaves for
the shelter. Migrants who get deported after that have to sleep on
the streets.
Most migrants leave their homes in Mexico with identification
papers, money, and family members or other traveling companions.
Most are deported alone and can spend days or weeks trying to
determine the whereabouts of husbands, wives, children, or cousins.
Many have also lost their documents and their cash. The buses
arrive every few hours, all day and night. The migrants who are

dumped and wander the streets of Nogales are the true refugees of
the border wars.
At the door of the Proyecto Kino soup kitchen, the long line for
breakfast starts forming around 8:30 a.m. Some migrants arrive by
bus from the shelters, others by foot after spending the night on the
street or in the cemetery. The hundred or so men line up on the
right, and the ten to twenty women and children, who get served
first, on the left. To get in when the comedor opens at 9 a.m. for the
first breakfast shift, all of them have to show their deportation
document. The paper that proves that they were hunted, captured,
and deported for not having the proper documents to enter the
United States now becomes their ticket to a free meal.
The services available to migrants are paltry compared to their
needs. “My wife, my grown daughters, and our two adopted
grandchildren are in California,” one man in his fifties told me
despairingly. He showed me the adoption papers. His daughter’s
children, aged two and three and both US citizens, were taken by
Child Protective Services when the daughter became a drug user. He
and his wife became their foster parents and then adopted them. “I
had to promise that I’d support them and care for them. How can I
do that if I can’t get back to them?” He asked to use my cell phone
to call his wife and then thrust the phone into my hand. “Talk to
her,” he urged me. “Tell her I’m here. Tell her I’m trying to get
back.”
A young man spent three days waiting outside the exit port. He
and his wife were separated during the deportation process. “Her
name is Brenda. She was wearing gray sweatpants and a green Tshirt,” he told everyone who would listen. As each bus arrived, he
stood waiting with a desperate hopelessness, watching the deportees
slowly trickle out, searching for her familiar face.
As part of No More Deaths, I could offer these people only a few
tokens of aid: a phone to call their relatives, donated clothes and
socks, a granola bar or rehydration drink. I could beg them to share
their stories with us, so that we could tell them back in the United
States and try to change our immigration policies. At the end of the

day, we’d walk back to Nogales, Arizona, stepping lightly across the
border that had destroyed and divided their lives.
THE COURTS PLAY THEIR ROLE
In Tucson, Arizona, the Federal Court processes seventy migrants a
day through the Operation Streamline program. About 4 percent of
migrants who are captured are sent to Streamline, which began
functioning in Tucson in 2008 after beginning in Texas as a pilot
program in 2005. Between Tucson and Yuma, the other Arizona
district using the program, some thirty thousand migrants are
“Streamlined” every year.
Unlike most deportees, Streamlined migrants are charged with a
criminal offense and imprisoned. The daily hearings fall somewhere
between a kangaroo court and a slave auction. The migrants are
shackled hand, foot, and waist, and sit in rows taking up about half
of the courtroom. The judge calls them up in groups of ten or so,
and their harassed lawyers, who represent four or five defendants a
day, scramble to accompany them.4 Almost all of these migrants
were captured in the desert, and are blistered, exhausted,
disoriented, and dehydrated when they are placed in cells. They
describe being stripped of their belongings and their jackets and left
to shiver in T-shirts under the air conditioning, being placed seventy
or eighty people deep in cells designed for four or five. There is no
room even to sit, much less lie down; they receive only a small juice
box and a packet of cheese crackers in two days.
Ten migrants stand before the judge in their shackles, while
dozens of others look on. The lawyers hover beside their clients. The
judge asks: “Mr. ___, do you understand the charge against you and
the maximum penalty? Do you understand your right to a trial? Are
you willing to give up that right and plead guilty? Of what country
are you a citizen? On or about March 18 of this year, did you enter
into Southern Arizona from Mexico? Did you come to a port of
entry?”
Most answer that they are citizens of Mexico, though on the day I
attended the hearing, there were several Hondurans and

Ecuadorians. A court interpreter repeats the questions in Spanish
simultaneously, and the defendants listen through headphones that
they can’t touch because their hands are shackled to their waists.
Their lawyers prompt them if they falter in their responses. Mostly,
they answer sí to everything, which the interpreter dutifully
translates as yes, except to the port-of-entry question, to which they
are supposed to answer no. Some answer dully, staring at the
ground; some respond in strong voices, looking up at the judge. A
few are dismissed because they don’t speak Spanish, and the court
has no interpreters for the indigenous languages of Mexico. A few
scorn the headphones and answer in English.
Occasionally, a defendant breaks the pattern. One answered yes
when asked if he came to a port of entry. The judge was visibly
unnerved. “You came to a port of entry?” she asked. “Let me ask the
question again. Did you come to a port of entry?” Again, the
defendant answered yes. She asked several more times before the
lawyer convinced his client to answer no. Another defendant
became agitated when the judge began to question him. “I’m guilty!
I’m guilty!” he exclaimed. “I know you’re guilty,” responded the
judge impatiently. “But I still have to ask you these questions, and
you have to answer them.”
“How do you plead to illegal entry, guilty or not guilty?” was the
judge’s last question. Every prisoner answered dutifully, culpable—
guilty. Most were sentenced to time served and prepared to be
deported to Nogales, Mexico. They will leave the country that they
sacrificed so much to get to with a criminal record and the threat of
up to twenty years in jail if they enter again. They will be among
those arriving in Nogales, penniless, lost, and bewildered.
What we saw was only part of the picture. The trip to the border
can be as dangerous as the crossing and passage through the US
side. Every year, many thousands of migrants are kidnapped as they
travel through Mexico. Gangs and drug smugglers see migrants as
easy targets and count on the fact that the friends or relatives in the
United States who raised the thousands of dollars to fund their trip
will be able to generate more to pay for their ransom. As violence in
the border region increased, migrants made up many of the victims.

If a ransom was not paid, or if migrants refused to work for the
gang, they might be killed, sometimes in massacres that claimed the
lives of dozens.
SOME BACKGROUND
The many competing interests at stake in the development of law,
policy, and ideology surrounding undocumentedness have led to a
perplexing and constantly shifting landscape. To understand the
changes of the late twentieth century, we need to understand how
the system worked before that. From the eighteenth and, especially,
the nineteenth centuries on, the United States benefited from its
place in the global industrial economy, and white people in the
United States benefited from their place in the racial order. A dual
labor market developed in which some workers began to become
upwardly mobile and enjoy the benefits of industrial society, while
others were legally and structurally stuck at the bottom.
This dual system was reproduced both domestically and
internationally, and race played a big role in it. Legal systems were
created to justify and sustain it. Globally, the system was expressed
through colonialism. Europeans colonized people of color around
the world and benefited from their forced labor and their resources.
In the United States, slavery played a big role in sustaining a dual
labor system, where whites could move up, but blacks could not.
The United States took some colonies, too, at the end of the
nineteenth century, like the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. But
US companies and citizens also benefited from the dual labor system
when American companies like United Fruit established plantations
in Central America and produced bananas using cheap labor there.
They benefited when Brazilian slaveholders or German coffee
planters in Guatemala used forced labor in those countries to supply
cheap coffee for US markets.
Mexico played a big role in the dual labor market in the United
States, both domestically and internationally. US mining companies
operated in both countries from the late 1800s, and in both, they
employed an explicit dual wage system. Mexicans received a lower,

“Mexican” wage, while white US citizens received a so-called gold
or US wage.5
Inside the United States, Mexicans were welcomed as migrant
workers as American investment in the southwest grew after the
territory was taken from Mexico in 1848 and 1853. A reliance on
Mexican workers who contribute their labor to US economic
enterprises—but are denied access to the benefits that US law
affords its citizens—has underpinned the economy for over a
century. Over the course of time, different legal and structural
mechanisms have been used to maintain this system. Early on, it
was done by legally distinguishing immigrants from workers.
Immigrants were the Europeans who came to Ellis Island; workers
were the Mexicans and Chinese who built the railroads and planted
the food that sustained white settlement in the newly conquered
west of the country. They were not expected to settle, stay, or
become citizens. Citizenship, after all, was reserved for people
defined as white until after the Civil War.
US immigration law thus treated Mexicans not as potential
immigrants but as sojourners, temporary migrants who entered the
country to work, rather than as immigrants who intended to stay.
Anti-immigrant sentiment was directed against newly arrived
Europeans, not against Mexicans. Anti-Mexican racism was also
common, but it was directed against the supposed racial category of
Mexicans rather than their status or citizenship.
Until 1924, the new border between the United States and
Mexico was virtually unpoliced, and migration flowed openly.
Mexicans were exempted from the immigration restrictions passed
into law before 1965. Because they were not considered immigrants,
Mexicans were also permanently deportable and were, in fact,
singled out for mass deportations in the 1930s and 1950s. The
nonimmigrant status of Mexican workers over time underlies the
apparent paradox between the United States as a so-called country
of immigrants and its xenophobia and restrictive immigration
policies.

The creation of citizenship by birth through the Fourteenth
Amendment was aimed at remedying the historic exclusion of
African Americans. But it also created the apparent paradox that
other nonwhites—like the Chinese—could become citizens through
birth. Congress quickly moved to remedy this by restricting the
entry of Chinese women in 1873 and all Chinese with the Chinese
Exclusion Act in 1882. California’s farms then became even more
dependent on Mexicans who, unlike the Chinese, could still be
counted on to leave after the harvest rather than remain in the
country and eventually become citizens.
In 1928, the Saturday Evening Post reported that there were some
136,000 farmers in California, 100,000 with farms of under 100
acres, and 83,000 farming fewer than 40 acres. These small farmers
did not use hired labor during most of the year, but during the
harvest, required some 10 to 50 additional workers. “Fluid, casual
labor is for them a factor determining profits or ruin,” the Post
explained.
“Mexican labor fits the requirements of the California farm as no
other labor has done in the past. The Mexican can withstand the
high temperatures of the Imperial and San Joaquin valleys. He is
adapted to field conditions. He moves from one locality to another
as the rotation of the seasonal crops progresses. He does heavy field
work—particularly in the so-called ‘stoop crops’ and ‘knee crops’ of
vegetable and cantaloupe production—which white labor refuses to
do and is constitutionally unsuited to perform.” Mexican labor, the
author estimated, comprised from 70 to 80 percent of “casual” or
seasonal farm labor.6
This informal system of rotating labor prevailed until the 1940s,
when it was supplemented by a government-run system that
continued until the mid-1960s, the Bracero Program. The Bracero
Program, which brought in over 4 million workers between 1942
and 1964, was terminated in the context of civil rights organizing
that highlighted the discriminatory treatment of these guest
workers. But the economic structures that relied on these workers

didn’t disappear, and neither did the workers; they just returned to
the old, informal system.
But, suddenly, the old system became illegal. The 1965
immigration law, which coincided with the termination of the
Bracero Program, responded to the domestic and international
movements for racial equality by getting rid of the racial and
national quota system that had prevailed until then. It gave every
country an equal quota. And it included the countries of the Western
Hemisphere for the first time, considering Mexicans as potential
immigrants rather than just exploitable workers.
Given the structural realities of Mexican migrant labor, treating
Mexicans equally under the new law was actually a way to keep
exploiting them, but now, by calling them “illegal.” From 1965 on,
new laws made them more and more illegal and took more and
more rights away from them.
Although it may seem contradictory, restrictive immigration laws
actually contributed to a rise in both legal and “illegal”
immigration. Two immigration scholars point to a synergy between
the way the 1965 law privileged family members of US citizens and
legal residents—in many cases, exempting them from the new
quotas—and the barrage of laws after 1965 that progressively
restricted the rights of noncitizens. It wasn’t the new quota that led
to increased Mexican legal immigration after 1965, since the quota
drastically reduced the number of Mexicans allowed to immigrate.
Instead, it was the punitive aspects of that and subsequent laws that
increased the numbers of those who decided to become immigrants,
rather than sojourners.7 In other words, workers decided to stay,
bring their families, and become immigrants because the earlier,
seasonal pattern was becoming increasingly criminalized.
Some of the very organizations that were pushing to expand legal
and social rights in the United States in the 1960s continued to draw
a line at the border. The United Farm Workers union campaigned
against “illegal” workers in the 1970s.8 California Rural Legal
Assistance and the UFW supported the nation’s first employer
sanctions law—making it illegal for employers to hire

undocumented workers—in 1971.9 The first attempt to implement
such sanctions at the national level was in 1973, at the initiative of
the AFL-CIO and the NAACP.10 (By the 1990s, all of these
organizations had changed their positions and opposed the
employer sanctions that were created by the 1986 Immigration
Reform and Control Act.) But employer sanctions turned out to be
just one more way to maintain a large, exploitable pool of workers
to fill agriculture’s most backbreaking jobs. The sanctions could be
suspended, as they were after Hurricane Katrina, when federal
contractors desperately needed migrant laborers to clean up and
rebuild the city of New Orleans.
Agriculture continues to employ large numbers of undocumented
workers in the twenty-first century, as farmers and their
organizations throughout the United States have publicly
acknowledged. Larry Wooten, the president of the North Carolina
Farm Bureau, explained at an agricultural summit in Atlanta in
2012 that “agricultural employers who advertise jobs—as is
required for those who are part of the federal guest worker program
—for nearly two months get little to no response. ‘We have no
choice,’ Wooten said. ‘We must use immigrants.’”11
Since the 1980s, economic restructuring in the United States has
created some huge new demands for extra-legal workers who will
contribute to the economy for low wages and few benefits. Many
undocumented people today work at jobs that have been in-sourced.
While most of us are familiar with outsourcing—when jobs, from
manufacturing to call centers, are shifted overseas—in-sourcing is
less well known. The phrase can refer to a company’s decision to
carry out internally those tasks that were previously contracted out,
or it can mean that a company brings back a job that had been
outsourced abroad. Here, though, I’m referring to a particular kind
of in-sourcing: when a company closes down an operation in order
to move it somewhere else inside the United States where it will
have access to cheaper (often immigrant) workers, lower taxes,
fewer environmental or health and safety regulations, or other
financial incentives.

Almost everybody in the United States benefits from that labor in
one way or another, because it underlies almost all of the goods and
services we use. Whether they work in agriculture or in-sourced
industries like meatpacking, or whether they work in landscaping,
newspaper delivery, or cleanup after environmental disasters, the
invisible labor of undocumented workers sustains the economy.
Moreover, the presence of these migrants also serves to create more
jobs. By living in the United States, by spending money and
consuming goods and services themselves, they sustain the jobs of
other workers.
The work that undocumented migrants do is essential to the
functioning of the economy and to the comfort of citizens. The
system is also, however, fundamentally unjust. By creating a
necessarily subordinate workforce without legal status, we maintain
a system of legalized inequality. It’s a domestic reproduction of a
global system. The border is used to rationalize the system globally;
it makes it seem right and natural that exploited workers in one
place should produce cheap goods and services for consumers in
another place. Illegality replicates the rationale domestically: it
makes it seem right and natural that a legally marginalized group of
workers should produce cheap goods and services for another group
defined as legally superior.
STATUS, RACE, AND THE NEW JIM CROWS
At the same time that these big economic shifts were occurring,
other political, social, and cultural changes were happening
globally. After World War II, overt racism and white supremacy
began to lose ground. Europe slowly and painfully let go of most of
its colonies, and the number of independent countries proliferated.
Almost all of the new independent countries were run by people of
color. In the United States, civil rights movements fought to
dismantle legalized discrimination. South Africa became an
international pariah and finally ended apartheid.
In an important book published in 2010, though, Michelle
Alexander argues that the racial caste system that United States has

maintained since the days of slavery did not end with the passage of
civil rights legislation in the 1950s and ’60s. Rather, a new system
of legalized discrimination developed to replace the old Jim Crow
system. The new system, she writes, is mass incarceration. Black
people—and, as I argue here, Mexicans and other Latin Americans
as well—were systematically criminalized. Although, on the surface,
the system is color-blind, in fact, it targets people of color. But it
works better in this supposedly postracial age, because it never uses
race directly to discriminate. Instead, it criminalizes people of color
and then discriminates on the basis of their criminal status.
Most citizens who rail against the undocumented insist that their
opposition is based solely on technical, legal grounds: they oppose
people who broke the law. But becoming undocumented is a highly
racialized crime. Nationality itself has its origins in racial thinking
and still bases itself on birth and origin in ways that echo racialism.
The categories “Mexican” and “Latino” have been racialized in the
United States, and the category of illegality is heavily associated
with the category “Mexican,” whether this is understood as a
nationality, an ethnicity, or a race. In 2011, 93 percent of federal
immigration crimes were committed by noncitizens, and 89.3
percent of them were committed by Hispanics.12
Another way to look at the racialized nature of
undocumentedness is to compare the criminalization of immigrants
(especially Latino immigrants) in the post–civil rights era with the
criminalization of blacks. Alexander argues that laws passed and
implemented in the aftermath of the civil rights movement and
legislation that accompanied it effectively countered the gains made
in the 1950s and ’60s. “We have not ended racial caste in America,”
she writes, “we have merely redesigned it.”13 The new system, mass
incarceration, consists of “not only . . . the criminal justice system
but also . . . the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that
control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison.” Once
caught in the web, former prisoners are in it forever. They “enter a
hidden underworld of legalized discrimination and permanent social
exclusion. . . . The current system of control permanently locks a

huge percentage of the African American community out of the
mainstream society and economy.”14
Alexander focuses not only on incarceration itself, but on what
happens after release. “Once [prisoners] are released, they are often
denied the right to vote, excluded from juries, and relegated to a
racially segregated and subordinated existence. . . . They are legally
denied the ability to obtain employment, housing, and public
benefits.”15 Possession of a felony conviction, then, replicates the
very legal restrictions that used to be enforced by Jim Crow.
In the ideology and culture of exclusion, as well as in the laws
and mechanics of its implementation, the arguments Alexander
makes about African Americans have a parallel in the situation of
immigrants. Like the African Americans that Alexander studies,
large portions of the Latin American immigrant population have
also been permanently criminalized and legally excluded. As with
African Americans, undocumented immigrants are criminalized by a
system that is superficially race-blind and defended on that basis.
Just as African Americans have become stigmatized in the post–
civil rights era through criminalization, so have immigrants. Before,
legal discrimination could be based explicitly on race. When racebased discrimination was outlawed, a new system emerged: turn
people of color into criminals. Then you can discriminate against
them because of their criminality, rather than because of their race.
A new legitimacy for discrimination was thus born.16
Alexander meticulously details the ways in which criminal status
follows black people into every area of life. With minor drug
charges turned into felonies and defendants urged to plea bargain,
huge numbers of black men become permanent “felons”:
When a defendant pleads guilty to a minor drug offense,
nobody will likely tell him that he may be permanently
forfeiting his right to vote as well as his right to serve on a
jury. . . . He will also be told little or nothing about the
parallel universe he is about to enter, one that promises a
form of punishment that is often more difficult to bear than
prison time: a lifetime of shame, contempt, scorn, and

exclusion. In this hidden world, discrimination is perfectly
legal. . . . Commentators liken the prison label to “the mark of
Cain” and characterize the perpetual nature of the sanction as
“internal exile.” Myriad laws, rules, and regulations operate to
discriminate against ex-offenders and effectively prevent their
reintegration into the mainstream society and economy. These
restrictions amount to a form of “civic death” and send the
unequivocal message that “they” are no longer part of “us.”17
Like
convicted
felons—mostly
African
Americans—the
undocumented live in a strange world of internal exile or civic
death. While physically present, they are legally excluded by an
official status that has been ascribed to them. They can’t vote, serve
on a jury, work, live in public housing, or receive public benefits.
These exclusions apply equally to those, mostly blacks, with a
criminal record and those, mostly Mexican, who are undocumented.
Stigmatization and exclusion create a vicious circle of further
stigmatization and exclusion.
“In the era of colorblindness,” Alexander writes, “it is no longer
permissible to hate blacks, but we can hate criminals.”18 The same
argument could be made for Mexicans and criminalized immigrants.
Anti-immigrant blogs, commentaries, and general opinion frequently
emphasize the legalistic nature of their anti-immigrant sentiment:
“They broke the law!” But it’s a law that, in design and in fact, is
aimed at one, racially defined, sector of society.
Another aspect that links the criminalization of blacks and of
Hispanics is the enormous rise in detention and what some have
termed the “prison-industrial complex.”19 The Supreme Court
commented in 2010 on the dramatic changes in federal immigration
law over the previous ninety years. “While once there was only a
narrow class of deportable offenses and judges wielded broad
discretionary authority to prevent deportation, immigration reforms
over time have expanded the class of deportable offenses and
limited the authority of judges to alleviate the harsh consequences
of deportation.” As criminal convictions of people of color for minor
offenses have risen, so have the consequences of these convictions.

Now, even legal permanent residents can be deported for minor
convictions, well after the fact.20
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
This new criminalization of African Americans and Latinos relates to
their different places in a changing labor market. Alexander points
out that earlier racial caste systems (slavery and Jim Crow) served
to keep African Americans as an exploitable labor force. Now, the
criminalization of African Americans has coincided with their
removal from the labor force. With the collapse of the urban
manufacturing sector, their labor was no longer necessary. They
have become a surplus population, to be warehoused in the prison
system.
The criminalization of Mexican immigrants, however, underlies
their increasingly important role in the economy. The language and
ideology are similar: fear, marginalization, and exclusion are based
upon the supposed criminality of the objects of hatred and justified
with repeated invocations of the color-blind nature of modern US
society. But in the case of immigrants, the criminalization justifies
their location in the lowest ranks of the labor force.
Like Alexander, Nicholas De Genova argues that changes in the
law deliberately criminalized a group that could no longer be legally
defined by race. Illegality, he writes, is not “a mere fact of life, the
presumably transparent consequence of unauthorized border
crossing or some other violation of immigration law.” Instead, he
argues, laws themselves were written with the express purpose of
creating this new status of illegality, because it served the purpose
of keeping workers exploitable.21
At an even deeper level, anti-undocumented sentiment plays into
deeply held beliefs and fears about the state, the nation, and
sovereignty. The world’s wealthy nations have created islands of
prosperity and privilege, and those who live in these islands have an
interest in preserving them—and in justifying their own access to
them. Illegality is the flip side of inequality. It serves to preserve the
privileged spaces for those deemed citizens and justify their

privilege by creating a legal apparatus to sustain it. Heightened
panic about “illegality” coincides with growing global inequality
and the dependence of the privileged on the labor of the excluded.
The idea that countries are such discrete entities is inherently
flawed. As every Mexican is aware, the contemporary US-Mexico
border is an arbitrary product of the US invasion of Mexico from
1846 to 1848, and the subsequent demand that a huge segment of
Mexico’s territory be ceded to the United States. As the descendants
of the Mexican population living in what is now the southwestern
United States like to remind us, “We didn’t cross the border; the
border crossed us.”
Even since the creation of this new border, in the case of the
United States, Mexico, and Central America, the histories,
economies, politics, and militaries of these countries are so deeply
intermeshed that each would be totally different without its
relationship with the others. Without Mexican and Central American
labor, and the consumer goods and profits that come from that
labor, US prosperity would look entirely different. And without US
military, political, and economic intervention, Mexico and Central
America would be quite different as well. A person might be a
citizen of, and live inside the borders of, a single country. But the
social and economic systems that structure our lives go well beyond
the borders of any country.
Also worth considering, for a moment, is what it means to
criminalize movement or presence. While we are accustomed to a
global order in which nation-states define their sovereignty in part
by their ability to control movement in and out of their territories,
we should also be capable of critiquing this equation and imagining
different definitions of sovereignty. Is it necessary to rely on a legal
order that forces people to remain inside the political unit into
which they were born and makes unlawful their presence outside of
that political unit? With a bit of critical distance, the notion appears
more and more absurd.
OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

The first chapter of this book, “Where Did Illegality Come From?”
seeks to unveil the beliefs and assumptions that have led us to
accept discrimination on the basis of a human invention that we call
“citizenship.” It places illegality in a long historical trajectory of
different ways that people—and, since 1492, especially Europeans—
have created an unequal world of privilege and marginalization.
The second chapter, “Choosing to Be Undocumented,” looks at
the origins of undocumented people and the different paths to
undocumented status. It looks on the ground at sending
communities in Mexico and Guatemala, and the historical and social
forces that lead people to migrate and lead them into
undocumentedness.
Chapter 3, “Becoming Illegal,” looks at the different ways that
people enter the United States without authorization or lose
authorization after entering legally. Some enter the country with
legal permission but fall out of that status, while others pay
thousands of dollars to coyotes (smugglers) to make a dangerous
and sometimes fatal trip across the desert. This chapter also
discusses how Operation Gatekeeper and other US border policy
choices have affected people’s lives and choices.
Chapter 4, “What Part of ‘Illegal’ Do You Understand?” explores
what exactly is considered illegal about people without documents.
It looks at what is actually prosecuted and how this has changed
over time, and at who is deported and why. It also examines the
contradictory and shifting legal landscape that structures migrants’
lives.
Chapters 5 and 6 look at the world of work. What kinds of work
are undocumented people doing in the United States? How does
their work support the United States and the global economy? Who
benefits, and who is harmed, by the existence of undocumented
status? These chapters look into the jobs and the working conditions
of the undocumented, and how their status affects their rights in the
workplace and the functioning of the US economy as a whole.
Chapter 7 focuses on children and families. As the undocumented
population grew, its profile also changed. In earlier years, the

undocumented were primarily single, working-age men. By the late
twentieth century, large numbers of children were undocumented or
had undocumented parents. How does status affect the lives of
children and families? What kinds of organizations have these youth
formed, and what are the prospects for their future?
The last chapter looks at solutions. If we do not want to live in a
society divided by status, with large numbers of “illegal” people,
what can we do to change the situation? I outline some of the socalled solutions that have been attempted, ranging from deportation
to border patrols to legalizations. I argue that current immigration
reform proposals do not address the problem of being
undocumented in a realistic way, and that only by challenging the
contradictions inherent in the category itself—that is, by declaring
that no human being is illegal—can the law adequately address
human rights and human needs.
When people ask me what I think we should do about
immigration reform, I tell them that I think the immigrant rights
movement had it right back in the 1980s when we insisted that “no
human being is illegal.” If discrimination on the basis of national
origin is illegal, then we need to acknowledge that our immigration
laws are illegal. Human rights—including the right to be recognized
as a person equal to other people—apply to everyone: no
exceptions. Let’s admit that our discriminatory laws are
unjustifiable. Let’s abolish the category “illegal” and give everyone
the right to exist. We would solve the problem of illegal
immigration with the stroke of a pen.
But I also understand that a lot of political and cultural change is
going to have to occur before such a policy change could enter the
realm of possibility. Thus, while we insist on unveiling and
challenging the roots of injustice and inequality, we need to also,
pragmatically and simultaneously, work to relieve its excesses
where we can, even if our larger goals seem distant. It’s important,
though, to keep sight of the larger goals as well and not adopt shortterm campaigns that work at cross-purposes to what we really
believe and seek to change.

If we accept the argument that changes in the law deliberately
created illegality, and did so for the purpose of keeping Mexican
workers available, cheap, and deportable, then it should not be
unimaginable to propose drastically changing the law. Likewise, if
we understand that, with respect to Mexico, restrictive immigration
legislation has had virtually no effect on migration patterns, we
must be able to question the value of such legislation even in
achieving its avowed purpose. I hope that this book will contribute
to opening a new debate that goes well beyond so-called
comprehensive immigration reform to challenge the very concept of
undocumentedness or illegality in our society.

CHAPTER 1

Where Did Illegality Come From?
Most of us think that we know what the word illegal means and
why some people fall into this category. It seems right and natural
to us that people should be divided by citizenship, and by
documents, into different categories with differential rights.
We assume that the world is naturally divided into countries and
that every human being somehow belongs in one country or
another. People are supposed to stay in the country that they were
born in, unless they can get special permission to enter another.
Each country expresses its sovereignty by deciding who is allowed
to enter into its territory and who is allowed access to citizenship.
So we rarely question the idea that countries should be able to
decide who can cross their borders and treat people differently
under the law depending on statuses that these same countries
assign them.
But there is nothing natural about this state of affairs. Countries,
sovereignty, citizenship, and laws are all social constructions:
abstractions invented by humans. What’s more, they are all fairly
recent inventions. Today, we use them to justify differences in legal
status. In this chapter, I will call into question the contemporary
concept of illegality by looking at how we came to accept this
particular kind of status difference as legitimate, even as we have
rejected other historical rationales for laws that inscribe inequality.
We assume that these social constructions have some kind of
independent reality or existence, but in fact they don’t: people
invented them to serve their own interests. There were historical
reasons that people created them, and it’s important to understand
those reasons in order to think critically about them.
Our current system of organizing the world into sovereign
countries made up of citizens (and, in almost all cases, noncitizens)
has roots in past ideas and categories, which have evolved over

hundreds of years. The laws that make some immigration—and
thus, some people—“illegal” are recent creations, though they grow
out of older ideas. Once we carefully examine the history of these
concepts, they start to look more and more untenable. Rather than
the question we often hear, “What part of illegal don’t you
understand?” perhaps we need to ask, “What part of illegal do you
understand?”
There are several concepts that can help us to trace the roots of
illegality. First, we’ll look at ideologies of European domination that
spurred the continent’s expansion after 1492. Ideas about mobility,
and who has the right to move where, played an important role in
the ideologies of European superiority that justified conquests and
colonization.
Connected to ideas about mobility are ideas about the law. In
1894, French novelist Anatole France noted with irony “the majestic
equality of the laws, which forbid rich and poor alike to sleep under
the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”1 Even if a
law looks like it treats everybody equally, laws only exist in social
contexts. If the social context is unequal or unfair, even a law that
purports to be equal might serve to cover up, or even reinforce,
existing inequalities. Recently, the discipline of critical legal studies
has developed this perspective, arguing that despite its pretensions,
the law is never neutral, but rather reflects power relationships in
society. As we talk about mobility, we’ll look at how Europeans used
laws to assert their superiority and their right to move, and to deny
others the right to freedom of movement, all the while asserting that
the rule of law must be held sacred.
We’ll also look at how, over the past one thousand years,
Europeans have used religion, race, and nationality—that is,
countries and citizenship—as organizing principles to divide people
into categories or castes. Each has been used hierarchically to justify
social inequalities and differential legal treatment of different
groups. Once status is inscribed in the law, this becomes an
automatic justification for inequality: “it’s the law!”

Status has been used historically to justify forcing people defined
as inferior or outsiders to work for those defined as superior or
insiders. Low-status people are forced to work in society’s dirtiest,
hardest, and most dangerous jobs.
In today’s world, the connection of status to work is different.
Until recently, one of the main purposes of status was to create a
subject labor force through enslavement and other systems of forced
labor. In the twenty-first century, laws are still used keep certain
people working in low-wage, undesirable jobs. But the way status is
used to enforce labor has changed. Force became more subtle, and
work itself became redefined as a privilege. As twentieth-century
economic changes in the United States and abroad made it more and
more difficult for people to produce their own subsistence, overt
force became less and less necessary as a way of making people
work. Now, people work out of need.
Along with these structural changes came ideological changes. In
today’s ideology, work is a privilege reserved for those of superior
status, rather than a burden imposed on those of inferior status. Of
course, those of inferior status still work, and they still do the worst
jobs. But the system is upheld by laws that claim to prevent people
of inferior status from working. But the laws are only actually
enforced in more desirable sectors of the labor market; thus, people
labeled inferior are once again relegated to the worst jobs. Still, it’s
notable that the late twentieth century was the first time that laws
have claimed to try to reserve jobs for the privileged, rather than
force them upon the unprivileged.
These issues are interrelated in many ways. While we’ll address
them one by one, the discussion will also build an argument about
the arbitrary and historically specific nature of illegality and the
role it serves in the modern world.
DOMINATION AND MOBILITY
Some of the unspoken foundations that support the idea of illegality
today come to us thanks to Christopher Columbus and the European
expansion that followed in his wake. It might surprise readers to

hear that many of the structures that have led to the current ways
that people are moving around the planet—or prevented from this
movement—date back to that same colonial expansion.
The “age of exploration” sent Europeans around the globe with
the aim of settling and ruling distant lands and peoples. They
developed an ideology to justify this exploration: an ideology that
granted full humanity, free will, intellect, and strength to white
Christians. To those who did not fall into that category, the
Europeans (who did not at that time think of themselves as
Europeans or even as white but rather primarily as Christians)
attributed irrationality, brutality, stupidity, and barbarity.2
Along with these ideologies went ideas about movement: who
belonged where. Europeans, apparently, belonged everywhere.
Christians needed to spread their religion to heathens, European
governments needed to expand their realms and bestow the benefits
of their government to others, and settlers needed to fulfill their
pioneering spirit and manifest destiny by applying their will and
their capital to new lands and peoples. And they created countries,
governments, and laws to authorize themselves to do these things.
In the mind frame undergirding European exploration, nonEuropeans were not capable, nor had they the right, to make their
own decisions about residence or movement. It was up to Europeans
to forcibly relocate them to where they could best serve European
needs. Native Americans and Africans were both subject to
transportation—Native Americans to mines and haciendas (in
Spanish America) or simply off of lands that Europeans desired (in
British America), and Africans to those same lands, to work for
Europeans.
In the New Imperialism of the nineteenth century, Europeans
(who by now identified explicitly with that term) once more
demonstrated their will to move, to rule, and to displace. In the
Scramble for Africa, Britain, France, and Germany laid their claims
to the continent. The new United States followed its Manifest
Destiny and displaced Native Americans westward and onto
reservations, and then went on to appropriate colonies like Puerto

Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines from the declining Spanish empire.
After abolishing slavery, the United States established legal systems
of segregation to prohibit African Americans from whites-only
spaces. Meanwhile, the new imperial powers transported indentured
Africans, East Indians, and Chinese to the Caribbean and the
American continent to work on their plantations, railroads, and
other enterprises.
In the intellectual spirit of the time, King Leopold of Belgium
offered a pseudoscientific justification for this European control of
migrations, explaining that “the races inhabiting [the southern
continents] are captives in the bonds of all powerful nature; they
will never break down the fences that sunder them from us. It is for
us, the favored races, to go to them.”3 Go to them, and then confine
them. As one white settler in Arizona proposed, the United States
should “[p]lace the Indians on reservations . . . establish military
posts along their limits, and shoot every Indian found off the
reservations.”4
From apartheid South Africa to the Jim Crow South, white
Europeans during the twentieth century made it clear that the right
to decide who could move where was inherent to domination. In
1917, the United States created the Asiatic Barred Zone prohibiting
immigration by “Asiatics,” who were defined as “aliens ineligible to
citizenship” because of their race. Meanwhile, US forces were
demanding the opening of China and Japan to US migration, trade,
and business enterprise and, indeed, demanding the right of
extraterritoriality for its citizens there. As Woodrow Wilson declared
in 1907 (before he became president), “The doors of the nations
which are closed . . . must be battered down. Concessions obtained
by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the
sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process.
Colonies must be obtained or planted in order that no useful corner
of the world may be overlooked or left unused.”5 Although China
was not a colony, with the Treaty of Wanghia in 1844, the United
States insisted on American access to Chinese ports and, moreover,
that US citizens in China would be subject to US rather than Chinese

law. In the words of Teemu Ruskola, not only were Americans
guaranteed the right to enter China, but “when Americans entered
China, American law traveled with them, effectively attaching to
their very bodies.”6
Americans and Europeans currently assume that freedom to
travel is their birthright. “Over much of the world today citizens of
many countries can travel freely,” Jared Diamond asserts
confidently. “To cross the border into another country, either we
arrive unannounced and just show our passport, or else we have to
obtain a visa in advance but can then travel without restrictions.”7
What he really means is that citizens of the former colonial powers
(and also, generally, postcolonial elites) can travel freely. These
same countries routinely deny entry to people, especially poor
people, from their former colonies. Freedom to travel, then, is still a
privilege reserved for those in control.
Americans and Europeans also rarely question their right to send
troops and establish governments in their former colonies. Iraq and
Afghanistan, they implicitly believe (like Puerto Rico, Cuba,
Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and so on),
simply can’t govern themselves without a US and European
presence. People from all of those former colonies, however, also
need to have their mobility severely restricted. Countries like the
United States established themselves by driving out nonwhites or
non-Europeans or non-Christians, and establishing rule over
nonwhites, non-Europeans, and non-Christians in the Global South.
Now, they argue, they need to erect militarized borders to prevent
the descendants of those nonwhites from infiltrating, at the same
time that they continue to send their citizens to those countries as
occupying armies, aid workers, investors, tourists, or students.
FROM RELIGION TO RACE
Columbus and those who traveled with and after him were heirs to
a medieval Spanish tradition that used religion as the main principle
for organizing and categorizing people. Muslim Spain, from 711 to
1492, like many other medieval and earlier (and some later)

empires, was based on the idea of convivencia, or religious tolerance,
among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities. Not so Christian
Spain. The reconquista, or reconquest, of the Iberian peninsula by
Christians drew on the spirit of the Crusades: to drive out and
destroy the infidels.
Spanish Christian ideas about religion were much more
essentialist than the way most people think about religion today.
Religion was thought to be defined by blood. The Spanish developed
elaborate theories of lineage based on what was called Christians’
purity of blood. Jews’ and Muslims’ blood was considered to be
stained. Even if they converted to Christianity, they would continue
to bear the stain of their non-Christian ancestry. So-called New
Christians were viewed with suspicion and periodically repressed or
expelled.
Ideas about mobility—who belonged where—were based on
religion. The Spanish conquest in the Americas began the same year
—1492—that the last Muslims and Jews were driven out of the
Iberian Peninsula, and the Spaniards took their ideologies with
them. Spanish Christians were already transporting and enslaving
Africans with the rationale that they were not Christian. They
debated the humanity of the native peoples of the Americas, in the
end deciding that they were, in theory, capable of being converted
to Christianity and, therefore, not to be enslaved.
Capable of being converted or not, though, the indigenous
inhabitants clearly did not have pure blood. In the Americas,
Christian Spaniards’ struggle to assert, define, and justify their socalled purity of blood began to take on a more racial cast. The term
purity came to mean the absence of African or indigenous ancestry.
In the elaborate legal hierarchy of Spanish America, racialized
castes proliferated by the eighteenth century. Spaniards born in
Spain were the purest, because there was no chance that their
ancestry could have been compromised with indigenous or African
admixture. People of (supposedly) 100 percent Spanish ancestry
born in the New World occupied a space on a rung lower, and from

there, the ranks descended all the way down to enslaved Africans
and tributary Indians, with multiple mixtures in between.
Emerging ideas about race were also part of an elaborate system
of legal status and access—or lack of access—to rights in society.
People defined as belonging to the lower races were prohibited from
spaces reserved for the privileged and subject to special taxes and
forced labor. Purity of blood could also be purchased. Suspicious or
inferior ancestry could be erased for a fee, thus strengthening the
relationship between race and social status.8
British colonizers in North America were heirs to some of the
same broad European cultural mores as the Spanish, but their
colonial enterprise was also infused with a form of Protestant,
northern European ethno-nationalism exemplified in the “Black
Legend.” Promoted by British and Dutch thinkers and artists like
Theodore de Bry, the Black Legend depicted the cruelties of Spanish
conquest and attributed them to Spanish Catholicism and the
Spanish racialized character. British and Dutch colonialism, in
contrast, was conceived as a benign project.9
Religion was a key factor for the British in defining who they
were as a people and justifying their right to conquer, dominate,
and exclude. Legal scholar Aziz Rana argues that, for the British, the
original “savages” were the Catholic Irish. The conquest of Ireland
served as a “test case” or “rehearsal” for subsequent British conquest
in the Americas. In Ireland, the British refined their rationale for
land expropriation. If the natives didn’t cultivate the land according
to British standards or did not accept British religious dictates, they
lost their rights to the land itself.10
In the American colonies, British ideas about race grew from and
eventually came to supersede those about religion. In King Philip’s
War (1675), colonists slaughtered Native Americans, Christianized
or not.11 By the 1700s, white indentured servants were moving off
the plantations and being replaced by African slaves. As whites took
advantage of the economic rewards of freedom, they also began to
impose laws that protected their privileges and their access to slave
labor—the first racial laws that targeted free blacks solely on the

basis of race. Thus, by the 1700s, free blacks had become “a
segregated and separate caste” in American society.12
Just as religion became a palimpsest for race in the first centuries
of European colonialism, the race/religion complex likewise became
a palimpsest for what came to be called the nation. New ideas
evolved from, and were shaped by, what came before. When the
United States declared itself an independent nation, race was the
key factor in determining who belonged to the polity. Emerging
European nation-states, too, based their legitimacy on what
Benedict Anderson called “imagined communities” of peoples
connected primordially, ethnically—essentially, racially or by
blood.13
FROM RACE TO NATION
Racially based ideas held considerable sway well into the twentieth
century, even as policies and ideologies came to replace race with
nation as the prime rationale for legal domination, discrimination,
and restrictions on mobility. The abolition of racially based slavery,
most analysts now agree, led to an upsurge in racially exclusive and
repressive policies and attitudes throughout the Americas. Not until
the late twentieth century, with Europe’s rejection of Nazism and
the dismantling of the racial regime in the United States, did overtly
racialist thought lose its legitimacy. Precisely in this recent period,
the use of nationality as an excuse for discrimination and
persecution rose to new prominence. It was not a new concept or
justification, but it emerged, perhaps, in full ideological flower, after
generations of germination.
What we think of as countries today—also known as nation-states
—first emerged in Europe several centuries ago. The idea of the
nation-state was that the country was the manifestation of a
historical unity or essence of the people that lived there—the
nation. Older, multicultural empires like the Russian, AustroHungarian, and Ottoman gave way by the twentieth century to a
proliferation of countries or states, each claiming to represent a
people or nation.

In the United States, rights and access that used to be assigned on
the basis of religion or race were gradually transferred to citizenship
status. Racial restrictions on immigration and citizenship were
replaced by national restrictions. Historian John Torpey wrote that
gaining a monopoly over “legitimate means of movement” was
precisely how emerging nation-states established their claims to
sovereignty.14
To examine the different components of this second shift—from
race to nation—let us look for a moment at the evolution of controls
on mobility in the United States. In the nineteenth-century United
States, private individuals and subnational localities held the right
to control freedom of movement, especially that of enslaved and
even free blacks. National membership was overtly based on race:
until 1868, citizenship was restricted to whites. The Dred Scott
decision in 1857 reiterated the primacy of race as a justification for
deprivation of rights, but also of individual rights to control
mobility. Until the civil rights acts of the 1960s, racial controls on
physical access and individual, local, or institutional controls on
access prevailed. School and bus segregation may be the best-known
examples, but sundown towns, in which blacks were allowed to
work but not remain after sunset, also hung on until 1968.15
Explicitly national manifestations of control of movement
emerged in the late nineteenth century, imbued with racial ideas.
The first restrictive immigration laws in the United States conflated
race and nation. Chinese exclusion in 1882 was based on race: as
“racially ineligible to citizenship,” the Chinese should be excluded
from entering the country as well. The quota system that restricted
southern and eastern European immigration—and virtually
proscribed non-European immigration—starting in 1921, likewise
relied on racialized notions of nationality: Italian was as much a
race as an official citizenship status.
Even as national citizenship became more important in the early
twentieth century, race continued to play an important role in
determining status and access to rights. Hiroshi Motomura uses the
term “intending citizenship” to explain the privileges granted to

white immigrants in the nineteenth century. Although not formally
citizens, by virtue of their race they were accorded privileges of
access to the benefits of society, including the right to vote and
virtually automatic naturalization. Aziz Rana elaborates by
distinguishing formal citizenship from “free citizenship”—the latter
available only to whites. Mexicans, after 1848, and blacks, after
1868, were accorded formal citizenship, but still denied the right to
vote, to own land, and to move freely.16 New immigrants from
Europe—Motomura’s “intended” citizens—were accorded all of
those rights, even when they were not yet formally citizens. Thus,
race frequently trumped nationality in determining access to rights.
As the twentieth century progressed, national citizenship more
and more joined race as a primordial legal identification and
determinant of status. For example, voting laws were changed to
prohibit noncitizens from voting. Instead of being considered
automatically part of the country on the basis of their whiteness,
European immigrants came to be considered foreign because of their
immigrant status.17 For the first time, white Europeans were treated
as legally other and subordinate, the way conquered and racially
differentiated peoples—African and Indian—had been since the first
days of British settlement. Noncitizens were also told that, like
Africans and Indians, they were no longer in charge of their own
mobility. State authorities now had the right to exclude or deport
them.18
The 1924 immigration legislation illustrates some of the ways
that national citizenship was coming to stand in for race. Asians
were excluded as “aliens ineligible to citizenship” based on the same
legal ideas that had previously excluded African Americans. The
new legal category of national origins was invented for Europeans.19
They were defined as implicitly belonging to the white race, but
having so-called nationalities or ethnicities that did not preclude
assimilation into the United States. Mexican and Chinese
nationalities, though, became legally defined as nonwhite. So while
race and nationality were separated for European Americans (i.e., a
person could be both white and Italian), they became one for Asians

and Mexicans; their nationalities were essentially legislated to be
nonwhite races.20
These legal changes complicated racial categories by overlaying
them with nation. If Chinese and Mexican became races, the very
meaning of race was changing fundamentally, its power giving way
to nation. If Congress and the courts had to resort more and more to
nationality as a pretext for the denial of rights, it was precisely
because racial justifications were being chipped away, at least in the
legal sphere.
During most of the twentieth century, legal subjection by race
and by immigration or citizenship status coexisted. By the end of the
twentieth century, though, differential legal treatment on the basis
of race had fallen from international favor. Formal abolition of
racial discrimination may not have created actual racial equality,
but it did dismantle and delegitimize legal structures of
discrimination, including racialized restrictions on freedom of
movement. Facilities formerly justified as separate-but-equal were
abolished, along with sundown towns. Federal antidiscrimination
law prohibited long-standing practices that denied access to jobs,
spaces, and benefits on the basis of race.
But just as the first round of antiracialist legislation after the Civil
War led to a surge in anti-immigrant legislation—aimed at racially
defined unwanteds—so did the second round after World War II. If
citizenship were to be granted to all by birth, as per the Fourteenth
Amendment, then race could no longer be explicitly used to deny
citizenship. So nationality stood in for it, and citizens of countries
like China lost their right to immigrate. If formal citizenship was to
be made real—if citizens could no longer be excluded from jobs,
landownership, voting, and other rights on the basis of race—
nationality could once again be mobilized as a method of exclusion.
In 1965, numerical immigration restrictions were applied for the
first time to the Western Hemisphere. Mexicans could no longer be
discriminated against for belonging to the Mexican race; now they
would be discriminated against for their nationality, their Mexican
citizenship, their lack of US citizenship, or their illegality.

The status of illegality and its concomitant legal exclusion
affected more individuals by the early 2000s than did the Jim Crow
system in the US South at its height.21 Just as Jim Crow had
imposed discrimination on the basis of race, new legislation in the
late twentieth century increased discrimination against noncitizens
and especially those who challenged their exclusion from the
country by nonviolent direct action—that is, entering “illegally” or
overstaying a visa. A study of Hispanic immigrants in rural North
Carolina found that they felt that their lack of citizenship status,
rather than their ambiguous place in the black-white racial
hierarchy, was the main factor causing the discrimination they
experienced.22
Recently, political scientist Jacqueline Stevens has suggested that
discrimination on the basis of citizenship is incompatible with the
notion of a liberal, egalitarian society, as much so as earlier laws
and institutions that discriminated on the basis of religion or race.
“The history of the United States, as for all countries, is one of a
struggle between the voices on behalf of rationality and equality, on
the one hand, and those urging the imposition of rigid distinctions
based on ancestry and religion,” she writes.23 The idea of birthright
citizenship—that people belong and should have rights only in the
place they happen to be born—is the epitome of a “rigid distinction
based on ancestry.” An immigration system that attempts to force
people to reside inside the national territory in which they were
born is in fact one of “global apartheid,” she insists.24
Restricting freedom of movement, as in apartheid, is a way of
enforcing domination and maintaining inequality. This is true
whether the restriction is based on something defined as religion,
race, or the arbitrary fact of birthplace. On a global level, patrolled
borders prevent the poor of the world from escaping the poverty
they were born into and gaining access to the jobs, education, and
health and welfare that are reserved for those fortunate enough to
be born in the wealthy countries that border them. Global apartheid
is enforced with walls, stadium lights, and guns. And global
apartheid never talks about race, only nationality.

THE USES OF ILLEGALITY
Throughout most of human history, both states and economic
enterprises have struggled to incorporate people into their
projects.25 A strikingly different characteristic of the contemporary
era is the extent to which access to states and to the right to work
has come to be seen as a privilege. In some ways, this change
reflects very real shifts in the functioning of states and economies,
but in other ways, the differences are more apparent than real.
People have always needed to work for their subsistence. Until
well into the twentieth century—and in some regions, into the
twenty-first—this has meant, primarily, that they have needed
access to land. Most people worked for themselves. Labor for others
generally happened as a result of force: when one group conquered
another, took control of land, or took prisoners of war, those
conquered could be forced to work for their conquerors, often as
slaves. “The use of socially marginalized communities for menial
tasks helped maintain a higher standard of living and greater
property ownership for settlers,” Rana wrote of the early United
States.26 While creating privilege for settlers was characteristic of
settler colonial societies, the creation and use of the socially
marginalized for labor was pretty much a universal of civilization.
Would-be employers initially had to rely on state power to force
people into working for them. Gradually, though, direct force was
no longer required. In the nineteenth century, industrialization and
colonialism separated more and more people worldwide from their
lands and left them no option except wage labor. As access to land
diminished, people started voluntarily moving to cities and seeking
to work for others. Some sectors of the labor force gained access to
the privileges and benefits of consumer society. Other sectors
remained marginalized, creating what sociologists have termed a
segmented or dual labor market. Even in the marginalized sectors,
though, a lack of alternatives rather than force became the prime
motivation for workers. Work, in fact, had become a privilege.
In her study of mass incarceration, Michelle Alexander notes that
coerced labor has given way to mass unemployment among black

men. First slavery and then Jim Crow were designed to make blacks
work for the white-dominated economy. The dismantling of Jim
Crow, she argues, coincided with the collapse of the American
manufacturing sector and loss of the jobs that sustained African
American communities. She cites sociologist Loïc Wacquant, who
“emphasizes that the one thing that makes the current penal
apparatus strikingly different from previous racial caste systems is
that ‘it does not carry out the positive economic mission of
recruitment and disciplining of the workforce.’ Instead it serves only
to warehouse poor black and brown people for increasingly lengthy
periods of time, often until old age. The new system does not seek
primarily to benefit unfairly from black labor, as earlier caste
systems have, but instead views African Americans as largely
irrelevant and unnecessary to the newly structured economy.”27
The newly structured economy may not need to benefit unfairly
from black labor, but it still needs to benefit unfairly from the labor
of some socially marginalized community. In the late twentieth
century, African Americans became less “cheap” because they
gained legal rights, gained access to social services, and organized
unions. Simultaneously, the sectors like manufacturing and
government that had employed them collapsed, contributing to high
unemployment among African Americans. But other sectors
—“downgraded manufacturing and expanded service sectors,” in
Nicolas De Genova’s study of Chicago—began to massively employ
immigrant and, especially, undocumented immigrant workers.28
(Chapters 5 and 6, on the topic of working, go into more detail
about the kinds of work undocumented people do.)
Here, however, I’d like to emphasize how useful illegality has
been in the late twentieth-century reconfiguration of work from an
obligation to a privilege. Illegality is a way to enforce a dual labor
market and keep some labor cheap, in a supposedly postracial era.
Illegality uses lack of citizenship—that is, being born in the wrong
place—to make workers more exploitable. Once naturalized, the
status neatly hides the human agency that forces workers into this
marginalized status. It is not just coincidence that illegality has

burgeoned in the postindustrial societies of the Global North at the
end of the twentieth century. It serves a crucial role in their
economies and ideologies.

CHAPTER 2

Choosing to Be Undocumented
US citizens often wonder why immigrants in the United States don’t
“do it the right way” and obtain proper documents to authorize
their entry and presence in the country.1 They believe—usually
erroneously—that their own ancestors obtained proper visas prior to
coming to the United States and also know that if they intended to
travel or move to another country, they would assemble their
documents before attempting to travel.
When you get your US passport in the mail, it comes with a flyer
that says “With Your US Passport, the World Is Yours!” Holders of
the US passport are accustomed to simply arriving at the border of
another country, showing their passport, and easily crossing. Rarely,
they have to apply for a visa in advance. If they pay the fee and fill
out the application correctly, the visa is routinely granted. Holders
of US passports tend to believe that freedom to travel is their
birthright, a view reinforced by the literature that comes with their
passports. For the cost of a plane ticket, and occasionally a small
visa fee, they can leave the country they were born in any time they
want.
For most of the world’s population, though, freedom to travel is a
distant dream. They can’t leave the country of their birth because,
instead of that magical ownership of the world that comes with a US
passport, they are citizens of countries in Africa, Latin America, or
most of Asia. Many of them are also poor and people of color. They
can’t leave their countries because no other country will let them in.
Least of all, the United States. In today’s global apartheid, whole
countries—almost all of them in the First World—shut themselves
off to travelers, while assuming that their own citizens have the
right to travel anywhere they choose. Meanwhile, the citizens of
other countries—mostly in the Third World—are imprisoned in the

country they are born in, because of the restrictions established by
those richer and more powerful.
From the comfort of their First World homes, many citizens of the
United States assume that anyone can get a visa to travel legally to
any country. If someone comes to and/or lives in the United States
without proper documentation, they assume it must be because they
simply failed to follow the correct procedure. If only there were
such a procedure to follow.
I’ve even heard a Massachusetts state legislator express this
assumption in a hearing on the question of allowing undocumented
students to be considered state residents for the purpose of paying
in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities. He
interrogated a panel of students, members of the Student Immigrant
Movement who had come to testify in favor of the bill. All were
undocumented, and each one explained how and why he or she had
ended up with that status.
“What’s your status now?” the legislator asked them. “I’m
undocumented,” one Brazilian student answered, bewildered. “Why
don’t you start the process to become a citizen?” he continued. “I
can’t,” she explained. “Why not?” he asked, revealing his profound
ignorance of immigration law. Just as the law forbids most residents
of the Third World to travel here—by requiring visas, but refusing
to grant them—it also forbids virtually all people who are
undocumented to regularize their status.
SOME HISTORY
Structural factors, mostly related to the economy and labor needs,
have shaped migrations for centuries. Some of the largest sources of
out-migration to the United States today were recipients of inmigration only a few generations ago. The Caribbean islands in
particular fall into this category. Other places that now send large
numbers of migrants to the United States have long histories of
temporary, seasonal, and permanent out-migration. Mexico stands
out in this regard.

Since the nineteenth century, nation-states have increasingly
attempted to regulate migration and control freedom of movement
across often newly established borders. US immigration policies
have changed frequently, creating a mesh of regulations and
statuses that even immigration lawyers and scholars find confusing.
Until 1890, there was no national immigration system or agency
in the United States. Individual states enforced existing immigration
laws until the establishment of the federally operated immigration
inspection station at Ellis Island in 1892. Certain categories of
people became excludable starting in 1875, and in 1891 the law
provided for deportation of an immigrant who became a public
charge within a year of arrival or was found to belong to a
prohibited or excluded group—like Chinese contract workers,
prostitutes, convicted criminals. After a year, though, those who had
entered “illegally”—that is, in violation of the laws that excluded
them—could no longer be deported. The 1903 Immigration Act
extended these periods of potential deportability to two years for
becoming a public charge, and three years for belonging to an
excludible class. In 1917, this was extended to five years.2
It’s important to note that so-called illegal entry, up until this
time, referred to entry by persons belonging to a class of people who
were unilaterally denied entry: it had nothing to do with the way a
person entered. It was the 1907 Immigration Act that first made
entering without inspection itself a violation of the law. The 1907
act formalized the inspection procedure, requiring every would-be
immigrant coming in by sea to pass through inspection, and made it a
misdemeanor for a ship owner to bring in anybody belonging to an
excluded class.3 The act did not apply to Mexicans. Inspection was
for immigrants, and immigrants were defined as people who arrived
by sea, not Mexicans, who crossed the southern border to work.
Likewise, Mexicans were exempted from the literacy requirement
and head tax imposed on immigrants in 1917, as long as they were
coming to work in agriculture. Mexicans weren’t even required to
enter through an official port or inspection point until 1919.

For Europeans, a passport was first required for entry in 1918,
but even then, it was only for identification. Would-be immigrants
did not need to obtain prior permission in their home countries
before traveling to the United States, and they couldn’t be deported
for entering without inspection until 1924.4 In 1929, entry without
inspection became a misdemeanor, punishable with fines and jail
time.5 But there were still exceptions for Europeans.
A new process called registry for noncitizens who had entered
without inspection prior to this time allowed them—if they were
otherwise (i.e., racially) eligible to citizenship—to regularize their
status if they could demonstrate “that they had resided in the
country continuously since 1921, were not otherwise subject to
deportation, and were of ‘good moral character.’”6 In practice, the
registry helped Europeans who had evaded the 1919 inspection
requirement. The registry system set a precedent—that a period of
residence outweighed the technicalities of inspection, or lack of
inspection, upon entry. Later laws like the 1986 Immigration
Reform and Control Act and the twenty-first-century proposals for a
path to citizenship would revive that idea.
The 1924 Immigration Act created what was called the “quota
system,” putting numerical limits on immigration (still conceived as
European immigration) for the first time. Immigrants from Europe
now had to comply with quotas established based on the proportion
of immigrants from that country already present in the United
States. Non-Europeans didn’t get quotas. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics explained the intent of the law: “Immigrants of New World
countries or their descendants, aliens ineligible to citizenship or
their descendants, the descendants of slave immigrants, and the
descendants of American aborigines were specifically excluded from
the national-origins plan. In a broad sense, therefore, the problem
was to find the extent to which the various countries of Europe, as
now constituted, had contributed to the white population of the
country.”7 For the first time, Europeans could be excluded, not on
the basis of their individual characteristics, but because of the
country they came from. Somewhat paradoxically from today’s

perspective, Mexican labor migration was unaffected by the
restrictive law.
Most Europeans who arrived in the United States prior to 1924
did pretty much what immigrants from Mexico and Central America
did a few decades later: they gathered their families and their
belongings, put together the money they needed for the trip, and
embarked on their journey. They didn’t “do it the right way,” wait
in line, or follow a legal process, because there was no line or
process.
The records of Ellis Island are filled with the stories of individuals
like Irving Berlin, who went on to become an iconic American
songwriter, author of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and
“God Bless America.” The family of Israel Baline, age five, fled their
home in Russia after their village was attacked in a pogrom and
their house burned to the ground. They traveled “illegally” because,
in 1893, Russia (unlike most countries at the time) required a
passport for travel and exit; they “smuggled themselves from town
to town and country to country” until reaching Antwerp, Belgium,
where they boarded a ship bound for New York. On the ship’s
manifest, their last name was changed from Baline to Beilin, so they
entered the United States under a false name. (The name “Irving
Berlin” was introduced by a printer’s error when Israel produced his
first album at age nineteen.)8 Since the United States had only
minimal entry requirements for Europeans at the time, family
members were given a medical inspection by the US Public Health
Service to determine whether they had any infectious disease and a
legal inspection to determine whether they were likely to become
public charges. Only about 2 percent of would-be immigrants were
rejected as a result of these inspections.
Mae Ngai argues that with so few restrictions on immigration in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “there was no such
thing as ‘illegal immigration.’ The government excluded a mere 1%
of the 25 million immigrants who landed at Ellis Island before
World War I, mostly for health reasons. (Chinese were the
exception, excluded on grounds of ‘racial unassimilability.’) The

statutes of limitations of one to five years meant that even those
here unlawfully did not live forever with the specter of
deportation.”9
The 1924 law, in addition to establishing the quota system,
created the concept of illegality by making entry without inspection
illegal, and making deportability permanent by eliminating the
statute of limitations. Before 1924, what made a person deportable
was his or her membership in an excluded class; furthermore, after
the person had been in the country for a period of time, his or her
presence became legal despite prior excludability. Now, a person
who entered without inspection could be, technically, “illegal.”10
Still, there were many ways for Europeans who didn’t “follow the
rules” to become legal. The 1929 registry law helped those who
entered before 1921. Between 1935 and the late 1950s, European
immigrants without documentation were allowed to adjust their
status by reentering through Canada to obtain legal permanent
residency. After 1940, immigrants who could show that their
families would suffer “serious economic detriment” could have their
deportation suspended. All of these provisions applied only to
European immigrants, since they were the only ones allowed to
immigrate under the 1924 exclusions. (Mexicans were still crossing
the border easily, but they were not considered immigrants.) Some
two hundred thousand Europeans without documents were able to
legalize their status using these means.11
In 1965, the United States abandoned the differential quota
system, replacing it with a new one that imposed equal quotas on all
countries. This meant that, for the first time, Western Hemisphere
migrants—primarily Mexicans—were classified as immigrants. This
change essentially created illegal immigration from Mexico and
Central America, but without all of the loopholes and exceptions
that had allowed Europeans to adjust their status.12
Donna Gabaccia’s research shows that media references to socalled illegal immigration closely followed restrictive legislation.

The earliest references are to “illegal immigration,” which
referred to the movement of workers from China; they
appeared immediately after passage of the 1882 Chinese
exclusion. With the exclusion of all Asians and the restriction
of southern and eastern European migrations in the 1920s,
“illegal immigrant” became an intermittent fixture in the
pages of New York Times, where it usually meant stowaways,
persons who “jumped ship,” or the “immigrant bootleggers”
who supposedly smuggled in workers and “immoral” women.
Only after World War II (and a brief period when most stories
about “illegal immigrants” focused on European Jews entering
the British mandate in Palestine) did the term—understood by
then to mean “wetbacks” crossing the Rio Grande—become
attached firmly to workers from Mexico. And only after 1965
did the term become common in a wide array of writings by
journalists, scholars, and Congressional representatives.13
Today, of course, the term “illegal immigrant” has become
common currency. The rest of this chapter will look at two of the
largest sources of undocumented immigrants in the United States
today, Mexico and Guatemala. It will ask how people from those
countries came to migrate to the United States, and how and why
their migrations have become illegalized.
AN OVERVIEW OF UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION
The undocumented population in the United States increased
rapidly between 1965, when the first restrictive measures were
passed against Mexican and other Latin American immigrants, and
the beginning of the twenty-first century. By 1980, there were from
2 to 4 million undocumented immigrants in the country, rising to
8.5 million in 2000 and reaching a peak of almost 12 million in
2007.14
Notably, over half of those undocumented in 2011 had arrived
between 1995 and 2004, with only 14 percent arriving between
2005 and 2011.15 Thus, most undocumented people have been in

the country for quite a while. The rise in the undocumented
coincided with an even greater rise in the overall Hispanic
population in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1970, the
9.6 million Hispanics in the United States made up 4.7 percent of
the population. Four decades later, the Hispanic population had
jumped to 50.5 million or 16 percent of the population.16
Most of these have consistently been Mexicans. Estimates for the
undocumented Mexican population rose from 1.13 million in 1980
to 2.04 million in 1990 and 4.68 million in 2000, rising to a high of
7.03 million in 2008 before stabilizing and declining to 6.8 million
in 2011. The Central American undocumented population also rose
after 1980, reaching 570,000 Salvadorans, 430,000 Guatemalans,
and 300,000 Hondurans in 2008. For Central Americans, the
numbers continued to increase after 2008: in 2011, there were
660,000 from El Salvador, 520,000 from Guatemala, and 380,000
from Honduras. Together, Central Americans and Mexicans made up
three-quarters of the growth in the undocumented population
between 1980 and 2008.17
Moreover, a significant proportion—over half—of Mexicans and
Central Americans who are here are undocumented. Fifty-eight
percent of Mexicans, 57 percent of Salvadorans, 71 percent of
Guatemalans, and 77 percent of Hondurans are undocumented.
“Never before have so many people been outside the law and never
before have the undocumented been so concentrated within such a
small number of national origins,” wrote Douglas Massey and Karen
Pren.18 Mexico and Central America are thus key pieces in the
puzzle of undocumentedness in the United States.
With this big picture in mind, we must start to untangle the
history of undocumented migration from Mexico and Central
America.
MEXICANS
The largest group of undocumented people in the United States
today comes from Mexico. Many are from the central-western
Mexican states that have been sending migrants northward for over

a century, although increasingly migrants hail from heavily
indigenous regions in the south of the country that had seen little
out-migration before the 1990s. Almost 60 percent of the
undocumented, over 6 million people in 2010, were Mexican. Other
Latin Americans make up another 23 percent.19 Mexicans also make
up the largest foreign-born population in the United States, with
about 29 percent of the foreign-born or 12 million people.20 As
noted above, over half of Mexicans in the United States are
undocumented.
Surveys taken of Mexican migrants in Mexico (i.e., having
returned from the United States) show another side of the story: that
lots of undocumented people return home after being in the United
States. The Mexican Migration Project at Princeton University and
the University of Guadalajara surveyed eighty thousand return
migrants from twenty-one Mexican states, as well as migrants from
those communities who have settled in the United States. In Mexico,
the interviews show that 83 percent had entered the United States
illegally on their first trip, and 73 percent on their most recent trip.
In the United States, 77 percent responded that they had entered
illegally on their first trip, and 56 percent that they entered illegally
on their most recent trip. (The last response may be skewed by
individuals reluctant to reveal current illegal status.)21
To understand why and how so many Mexicans have come to be
undocumented, it’s crucial to examine the history.
The border that divides the United States from Mexico, and that
large numbers of Mexicans and Central Americans cross each year
without authorization, was established by the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo in 1848 and adjusted by the Gadsden or La Mesilla
Purchase of 1853. Much of the US Southwest used to be Mexico. The
first Mexicans in the United States did not cross any border; rather,
the border crossed them.
Until 1924, the new border between the United States and
Mexico was virtually unpoliced, and migration flowed openly.
Mexicans worked in the mines and railroads of the Southwest and
migrated to the factories and urban centers in the Midwest. In 1908,

US Bureau of Labor Statistics researcher Victor Clark reported that,
while “complete statistics of those who cross the frontier are not
kept,” an estimated sixty thousand to one hundred thousand
Mexicans crossed each year to work in the United States. “Except in
Texas and California, few Mexicans become permanent residents,
and even in those two states, a majority are transient laborers who
seldom remain more than six months at a time in this country.”22
The many laws that were passed to try to control immigration
from the Civil War on did not apply to Mexicans, because Congress
did not consider them immigrants or potential immigrants at all. In
agriculture, Clark explained, “the main value of the Mexican . . . is
as a temporary worker in crops where the season is short. . . .
Mexicans are not likely to be employed the year round by small
farmers, because they are not entertained in the family like
American, German, Scandinavian, or Irish laborers of the North. Yet
they do not occupy a position analogous to that of the Negro in the
South. They are not permanent, do not acquire land or establish
themselves in little cabin homesteads, but remain nomadic and
outside of American civilization.”23
RAILROADS AND MIGRATION
Railroads played a crucial role both in moving Mexicans to the
border and into the United States and in creating a demand for
Mexican labor. Mexico’s nineteenth-century rail system was
“designed, planned and constructed by Americans” and extended US
lines into Mexico to facilitate the transport of US manufactured
goods into Mexico. Thus, decisions about Mexico’s economy and
infrastructure were made in the United States, for the benefit of US
capitalists. The railroads also helped bring Mexicans to, and across,
the border.24
As US capital moved south, it drew southerners northward.
Railroad concessions displaced over three hundred thousand
peasants in Mexico’s central plateau, creating one pool of potential
migrants. Many of them were recruited to work in new American
enterprises in the north of the country. Some went to work on the

railroad itself; others in new American-owned mining and oil
operations. Mexico’s demographic patterns were fundamentally, and
irrevocably, altered with this shift of population to the North.25 In
Arizona, as the copper mines boomed in the last decades of the
nineteenth century, they sent labor contractors to scour Mexico for
workers being displaced from their lands. The first Mexican
mineworkers in Arizona were Sonorans who crossed the border, but
they were soon joined by central Mexicans who traveled north along
the new rail lines.26
Victor Clark described how the railroads contributed to the
creation of a migrant labor force and the long-term social and
cultural changes that the railroads and the migrations brought:
In Mexico railways have given both the opportunity and the
inducement to emigration. Needing unskilled labor for their
construction and maintenance, they drew among the
agricultural population along their lines, at first for a few days
or weeks of temporary service between crops and later for
more extended periods. At first the true peon was averse to
leaving his home, and would not work where he could not
sleep under his own roof, but gradually he became bolder and
more worldly-wise and could be prevailed upon to work for a
month or so a hundred miles or more up and down the line.
He became accustomed to having silver in his pocket
occasionally and found it would exchange for things he had
not heretofore thought of having for his personal use. He
became attached to cash wages in about the same degree that
he became detached from his home surroundings. Employers
in the more primitive parts of Mexico say that at present the
people will not work for money so long as they have food in
their cabins. When they first leave home they will work only
long enough to provide themselves with food and shelter for a
few days in advance. But the railways, bringing a greater
variety of wares at lower prices, have made possible the
attractive shop of the railway town, and this market for
money has made the latter a more desirable commodity in the

eyes of the peon. . . . The railways have thus attracted labor
and have held it more and more permanently from a
constantly widening area along their lines. A general officer of
the National Railroad of Mexico stated that his company had
brought north about 1,500 laborers to work on the upper
section of the road within a year, and that practically all of
them had ultimately crossed over into Texas.27
Newcomers were met at the entry point and offered “fair wages.”28
US aid and investment, then, directly uprooted Mexican peasants,
recruited them into a migrant labor stream, and initiated the social
and cultural changes that led them to leave their homes and work
for cash in distant lands. It was US influence deep inside Mexico
that set into motion the process of out-migration.
A TYPICAL SENDING COMMUNITY: ARANDAS, JALISCO
By 1933, economist Paul S. Taylor found that a tradition of
migration had become well established in the Mexican sending
community of Arandas in Jalisco. The ongoing migration, he wrote,
was “but a modern and expanded phase” of a process that had
begun decades before.29
First, the railroad arrived. The Mexico City–El Paso rail line,
which passed through Jalisco, recruited workers from the adjacent
countryside. Then US railroad and mining companies began to send
employment agents into Mexico’s interior to contract potential
migrants and deployed station agents on the border to recruit
arriving workers.
The earliest migrants from Arandas had heard rumors about the
availability of work in the United States from former prisoners, local
men who had been arrested and sent to fight in ongoing military
campaigns against the Yaqui Indians in Sonora. They traveled by
rail to El Paso, where an employment agency contracted them for
railroad work in Independence, Kansas. On their next venture,
agents in El Paso sent them to Fresno, California, again to work on
the railroad.30

Mexican employment agents also visited Arandas to recruit
laborers. One former migrant told Taylor that a railroad
construction recruiter offered him free passage to the border.31 “In
1913, an agent [Mexican] from the Santa Fé railroad came to
Arandas and took three or four of us by auto to the railroad, and
north. I did not pay anything to go to the frontier; they paid all,”
one source from the village told Taylor, adding that “American
contratistas, representing railroads and mines, had been all through
the region twenty-odd years ago.”32
Taylor emphasizes that the migration was spurred by US actions.
When Congress passed the Literacy Act for immigrants in 1917,
railroad, agricultural, and mining corporations raised a howl of
protest and insisted that an open border was essential in order to
obtain the labor they needed.33 In response, Congress quickly
exempted Mexicans from the literacy requirement. Migration ebbed
and flowed directly in response to employment demands in the
United States.34 When they needed workers, employers turned to
Mexico. When they didn’t—as in 1929, when Depression-era
unemployment began to rise—the State Department instructed
consular officers to increase their enforcement of the “likely to
become a public charge” restriction on would-be immigrants and
refuse to grant entry visas to Mexicans unlikely to find work.35
Emigrants from the small community of Arandas worked in
twenty-four states in the United States by the 1930s, and in a wide
variety of industries ranging from automobile factories to
agriculture to coal mining, though the railroad was by far the
largest employer.36 Most came to the border without papers and
were automatically granted entry. After 1928, the American
consular service began to encourage prospective migrants to obtain
permits from a consulate before arriving at the border, though this
was still not required.37
Some also crossed without inspection, either paying a small sum
to a professional or simply wading across the river at a spot distant
from any border post. By 1931, though, the word had spread that

the consular service was not granting papers, that deportations were
rising and employment contracting.38
BORDER PATROL AND SEGREGATION
Although the 1924 law did not include any restrictions on
immigration from the Western Hemisphere, it did create a new
border police force, the Border Patrol. In the early years, according
to historian Aristide Zolberg, “its mission was to prevent the entry
of alcohol rather than people, so that in effect, the border remained
an informal affair.”39 The force also sought to deter prohibited
Chinese attempting to enter through Mexico.
Was it a paradox that the Border Patrol was created in the 1920s,
just when agribusiness, with its need for migrant labor, was rapidly
expanding in the Southwest? Several scholars argue that in fact the
system worked well for farmers who needed migrant workers.
Mexican workers could still cross the border easily, but because they
became more deportable, the new laws also made them more
exploitable. “Agribusinessmen kicked, winked, screamed, lobbied,
and cajoled for border patrol practices that allowed unrestricted
access to Mexican workers while promoting effective discipline over
the region’s Mexicano workforce.”40 Deportability was part of that
discipline. Local officials served farmers’ interests by carrying out
deportation raids in cases of union organizing or, sometimes, just
before payday.41
The need to patrol the border was mitigated in some ways by the
fact that the (mostly) men who crossed into the United States
carried the border with them, even before the Border Patrol was
created. Many had worked under segregated conditions for US
enterprises inside Mexico. In Mexico, workers did “Mexican work”
and received a “Mexican wage”; they lived in segregated housing.42
These segregated conditions were replicated in the United States.
“Recruited laborers whether destined for northern Mexico or for the
United States, travel in parties, under a boss, or ‘cabo’ who holds the
tickets,” wrote Victor Clark in 1908. Then, after “crossing a virtual

open border, Mexican workers were again housed in company
towns, confined to ‘Mexican work,’ treated to dual wages, and
segregated socially . . . the workers’ experiences in Mexico
continued in the United States.”43
Thus, the most important border was the internal or racial one
that kept Mexicans and Americans socially separated from each
other, even as they labored in a single, integrated economy on both
sides of the political boundary that separated the countries. Gilbert
González concludes that “rather than interpreting segregation as a
means of keeping people out of the ‘mainstream’ or of
‘marginalizing’ them to the social and economic periphery,
segregation was the method of integrating Mexican immigrants and
their families into the heart of the American economy. . . .
Segregated settlements brought a variation of the border to the
employers’ doorsteps.”44
Mexican workers’ theoretical deportability became real in 1929,
as the country entered the Great Depression. On the pretext that
they were likely to “become a public charge” as employment
opportunities evaporated, both Mexicans and Mexican Americans
were rounded up for deportation. A “frenzy of anti-Mexican
hysteria” justified roundups of entire Mexican neighborhoods and
hundreds of thousands were deported with little attention to legal
niceties.45
THE BRACERO PROGRAM
With the ending of the Depression and the coming of World War II,
agricultural interests confronted a new labor shortage. The US
government responded with the Bracero Program, administered
jointly by the US and Mexican governments from 1942 to 1964,
which recruited millions of Mexicans to migrate north for a season
or more.46 Over the period, 4.5 million contracts were signed,
representing some 2 million workers (many went more than once).
The program cemented US agribusiness’s reliance on migratory
Mexican workers to the present day.

The four central-western states of Jalisco, Guanajuato,
Michoacán, and Zacatecas comprised 45 percent of the participants.
“Here,” argues historian Michael Snodgrass, “is where a culture of
Mexican migration first took root in the early twentieth century.”
Because of demand from both would-be migrants and local officials,
the Mexican government established its processing centers in
Guanajuato and Jalisco. Workers from “depressed mining villages
and drought-stricken farm towns” flocked to the program.47
Alongside Bracero migrants, others from the same region
migrated on their own, undocumented, but not unwelcome. “It was
easy then,” Snodgrass explains. “When he headed north for the first
time in 1955, the first English expression that Gerardo López
learned was ‘go ahead,’ the words a Border Patrol agent spoke while
encouraging his entry.”48 Aristide Zolberg, who was stationed in El
Paso for military service in the mid-1950s, commented that
“informality” prevailed regarding border crossings. “You were more
likely to be stopped crossing the Juarez Bridge if you looked like an
American in military service than like a Mexican seeking work.”49
Former migrants from the highlands of Jalisco recalled that the
program resurrected networks that had been established in the
1920s, only to be temporarily interrupted in the 1930s. Other parts
of Jalisco, like the sugar region, had no prior history of migration.
Now, though, union leaders began to demand Bracero contracts for
their members during the tiempo muerto from May to December,
which conveniently coincided with California’s harvest season.
Thus, new areas were drawn into the “culture of migration.”50
Remittances became Mexico’s third-largest source of foreign
exchange by the 1950s. While renewing old flows and creating new
ones, the Bracero Program also redefined the destinations of
Mexican migrants: now almost all of them were recruited directly
into farm labor.51
The program also deepened the structures and culture of
migration, including extralegal migration, in western Mexico.52 A
whole industry of smugglers or “coyotes” emerged, who worked
with US-based labor contractors to supply undocumented workers to

farmers.53 Some famers preferred to avoid the bureaucracy and
protections involved with the official system. Others lived in states
like Texas that the Mexican government blacklisted from the
program because of labor violations. By the time the program ended
in 1964, it had outlived its demand because the extralegal system
that had grown alongside it had grown large and strong enough to
fulfill the country’s farm labor demand.54
Legal scholar Daniel Kanstroom argues that the program
legitimized “a particularly instrumentalist view of Mexican
immigrant workers.” Employers, the law, and the population in
general had long seen Mexicans as different from other immigrants
—as essentially temporary and disposable. The Bracero Program
institutionalized this position for the post–World War II period.
Mexicans in the United States were automatically assumed to be
temporary and perhaps without papers. In other words, Mexicans’
status was inherently “legally tenuous.”55
The Bracero Program was also accompanied by a “massive
bilateral deportation policy” that increased deportations to some
seven hundred thousand by the early 1950s. “The wetback is a
person of legal disability who is under jeopardy of immediate
deportation if caught. He is told that if he leaves the farm, he will
be reported to the [Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS),
which] will surely find him if he ventures into town or out onto the
roads,” reported the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor in
1951.56
Still, both farmers and government tacitly admitted that the line
between legality and illegality was a fine one, and that “wetbacks”
were an essential component of the system.57 In one incident in
early 1954, as workers massed on the border seeking to cross in
Mexicali, the INS urged them to the edge of town, where they
crossed “illegally.” “Instead of sending them back to Mexico,
however, US Border Patrol officials trotted them to the US side of
the official crossing and directed them to touch a toe onto the
Mexican side. . . . When this was done, US Labor Department

officials gave the migrants contracts to sign, which completed their
transformation from illegal immigrants to guestworkers.”58
Just a few months later, the Eisenhower administration initiated
Operation Wetback, a massive, military-style sweep of Mexican and
Mexican American neighborhoods aimed at deporting en masse
those deemed to be in the country “illegally.” Over a million were
deported. Like the deportations of the 1930s, Operation Wetback
snared many individuals, including US citizens, simply for being
ethnically Mexican.
Attorney General Herbert Brownell distinguished between “the
illegal Mexican migrants known as ‘wetbacks,’ and the legal
Mexican nationals known as ‘braceros.’ . . . The illegals, who cross
the border furtively in violation of the laws and regulations of both
the United States and Mexico cause serious social and economic
problems for the United States.”59 Yet the operation illustrated the
symbiotic relationship between the Bracero Program and
undocumented workers. Even as it was being carried out, Bracero
recruitment continued unabated, and the INS offered numerous
methods for farmers to legalize the workers they needed, a process
termed “drying out the wetbacks.”60 As Kanstroom points out, “The
remarkably symmetrical relationship between labor recruitment and
the deportation system is illustrated by the fact that, up to 1964, the
number of braceros, nearly 5 million, was almost exactly the same
as the number of deportees.”61
After Operation Wetback, deportations dropped again as the
number of Bracero-contracted workers grew alongside the number
of work-permitted or green-card entrants. The green card had its
origins in the Alien Registration Act of 1940 in the context of World
War II, requiring all noncitizens to register at a local post office,
which would then mail them the card. The Security Act of 1950
created the green card as we know it today. Still, for Mexicans, since
there were no numerical restrictions, “obtaining residency [i.e., the
green card] required little more than a letter verifying employment
and a trip to a US consulate.”62 During the 1960s and early 1970s,

some forty thousand Mexicans living south of the border held green
cards that enabled them to commute to work in the United States.
THE 1965 IMMIGRATION LAW AND THE INVENTION OF
ILLEGALITY
During the two major waves of deportation/repatriation of Mexicans
before 1965—during the Depression of the 1930s and in the mid1950s—undocumentedness as we know it today was not the
rationale used to justify deportation. As entry to the country was
restricted on the grounds of indigence or the probability of
becoming a public charge, the vague “likely to become a public
charge” accusation was harnessed to justify the deportations of
Mexicans during the Depression.63 During the 1950s, many people
mounted arguments against both illegal immigrants—then accorded
the insulting moniker wetback—and the Bracero Program,
regardless of the fact that one was technically legal and the other
illegal. Even as Operation Wetback targeted the supposedly illegal,
the INS offered multiple methods for legalization. Mexican
American organizations like LULAC and the American GI Forum
campaigned equally against both the Bracero Program and the
“wetback tide,” both of which they believed to be harmful to the
efforts of Mexican Americans to assimilate into white US society.64
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 for the first time
ever placed numerical limits on Mexican migration, just as the
Bracero Program was being shut down. Suddenly, legal migration
for Mexicans, after so many years of being encouraged, was closed
off. But the demand for Mexican labor, and Mexican workers’ need
for jobs, continued. A smaller guest-worker program, the H-2
program, remained and was expanded over the following decades,
but came nowhere near to filling the demand.
The abolition of the Bracero Program was supposed to create
better, more equal treatment for Mexicans in the United States, in
keeping with the civil rights movements of the era, including a
growing farm-worker movement. It failed miserably. Unlike the
European countries, which legalized their guest workers when they

ended similar programs around the same time, the United States
simply illegalized its Mexican workers. “In essence, in 1965 the
United States shifted from a de jure guestworker program based on
the circulation of bracero migrants to a de facto program based on
the circulation of undocumented migrants.”65
The visa cap for Mexicans was far below the number who had
been migrating as braceros in previous years. Thus, the law
“intensified the institutional framework that further enabled the
codification of Mexicans as ‘illegals.’” And the newly created
problem of illegality became the rationale for a huge increase in
apprehensions and deportations.66 The number of Mexican migrants
who lacked the green card and were therefore deportable rose from
88,823 in 1961 to over a million a year by the mid-1970s.67
Still, writes Oscar Martínez, “because of leniency on the part of
US authorities at the time, undocumented commuters found it rather
easy to cross the border.”68 As the Mexican government pointed out,
many of the undocumented were part of a “seasonal, temporary,
and circular” migration.69 With the “relatively open” border
between 1965 and 1985, “85 percent of undocumented entries were
offset by departures, yielding a relatively modest net increment to
the US population.”70 Still, Douglas Massey wrote that “never before
have so many immigrants been placed in such a vulnerable position
and subject to such high levels of official exclusion and
discrimination.”71
The US government acknowledged the contradictions of this new
situation in 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act
(IRCA) allowed Mexicans in the country illegally to regularize their
status. The concept was not new; earlier European immigrants
became exempt from deportation and were allowed to become
citizens after they had established roots in the country. Some 2.3
million Mexican immigrants (and 700,000 non-Mexicans) were able
to become legal under the IRCA’s provisions.72 To do so, though,
they needed documents: documents proving their continuous
presence in the country since 1982, or documents demonstrating
that they had been involved in seasonal agricultural work. A small

industry grew manufacturing false documents. The ever-fuzzy line
between legal and illegal remained, as many were able to legalize
illegally with fraudulent documents.
When the IRCA was passed, the Department of Agriculture
estimated that some 350,000 undocumented migrants were working
in agriculture and would be eligible for Seasonal Agricultural
Worker (SAW) status. However, some 1.3 million applied—almost
as many as applied for status under the four-years-of-continuousresidence provisions. In California, with an estimated two hundred
thousand undocumented agricultural workers, some seven hundred
thousand applied. By early 1992, the INS had approved 88 percent
of these applications, or over a million nationwide.73 But
independent studies carried out in Mexico, among migrants who had
applied for the SAW provision, showed that only 60–70 percent of
those who applied were actually eligible.74
Thus, the IRCA contributed to what could perhaps be called
illegal legalizations—people using false documents attesting to their
status as agricultural workers to apply for, and obtain, legal status
in the United States—and what Philip Martin called “documented
illegal aliens.” In an article in the New York Times, Robert Suro
claimed there had been “fraud on a huge scale.”75 Yet fraud or no
fraud, people became officially legal. Moreover, the whole process
may have actually spurred further undocumented immigration by
“spreading work authorization documents and knowledge about
them to very poor and unsophisticated rural Mexicans and Central
Americans, encouraging first-time entrants from these areas.”76
The 1986 law also for the first time made it illegal to employ a
worker without proper documents. Employer sanctions created an
enormous and costly illegal infrastructure that migrants had to
navigate to obtain false documents in order to work, but did little to
reduce the numbers of undocumented workers. Moreover, the law
left employers virtually immune to prosecution, and with even
greater ability to exploit their now more legally vulnerable
workers.77

The 1986 IRCA was ostensibly aimed at ending illegality by
legalizing many resident Mexicans and discouraging new arrivals
through increased border controls and employer sanctions that
criminalized work. However, it had exactly the opposite effect.
Mexicans who obtained legal status under the amnesty were able to
leave the more marginalized sectors of the labor market. But these
traditional sectors, like agriculture, plus newly emerging sectors
(discussed in Chapters 5 and 6) only increased their demand for
workers. Some developed new strategies of subcontracting to evade
the law. Meanwhile undocumented migrants, once in the country,
began to extend their stays and send for their families, since the
long-standing circular migration patterns were disrupted by the
border militarization.78
Until the 1990s, what migration scholars call the “traditional” or
central-west region of Mexico, including Jalisco, had been the
source of the majority of migrants.79 Since the 1990s, the proportion
from that region has shrunk considerably and that from the southsoutheast region has increased. Migrants from the traditional
sending regions were primarily Spanish-speaking mestizos.80 Since
the 1980s, though, a series of blows, including the 1982 peso crisis,
the debt crisis that followed it, and neoliberal restructuring in the
1990s and components of the North American Free Trade
Agreement in 1994, have severely affected indigenous communities
in southern Mexico. Over a million families lost their land as a result
of these changes. The result was that new areas started their own
massive out-migration to the North, greatly diversifying the Mexican
population in the United States.81
CASE STUDY: THE HERNáNDEZ CRUZ FAMILY
One family’s story can illustrate the various and contradictory ways
that people become illegal in the contemporary United States.
Consider the case of the Hernández Cruz family of Irapuato, Mexico.
The father, Juan Miguel Hernández Pérez, began the family’s
migration tradition in the middle of the century, when he was
recruited to work in the Bracero Program. But if the program

created a legal means to initiate a migrant stream from 1942 to
1964, the termination of the program did not end either the demand
for migrants’ labor nor their desire to work in the United States.
When Juan Miguel’s son Juan Hernández Cruz left Irapuato to work
in the fields of California in 1981, “he was following his father’s
footsteps but, unlike his father, who had been a registered worker
under the Bracero Program, Juan would be crossing as an
unauthorized migrant.”82
Juan Hernández Cruz’s younger sister, Samantha, followed her
brother in 1988, bringing their seriously ill mother with her. First
they tried to enter without inspection, crossing “through the back
hills of San Ysidro many times without success.” Finally, “the coyote
suggested they get false papers instead. . . . By using someone else’s
papers, altered to include their photos, they found it easy to cross
via the San Ysidro US Port of Entry.”
Meanwhile, Juan was working to regularize his and his sister’s
status using the Seasonal Agricultural Worker provision of the 1986
IRCA. “Through friends, they were connected with a farmer in the
United States who signed all the documents they required for $800
each. They both received a letter that they had worked on a farm for
the required number of years and were both granted permanent
residency.”83 Legally, but on the basis of false documents.
The ins and outs of this family’s immigration history are more
typical than unusual for Mexican migrants. Their story, and the long
history behind it, helps to explain why Mexicans supposedly choose
to come to the United States “illegally.” From the railroads, to the
various maneuvers in US immigration policy over the past century,
to the current neoliberal regime in Mexico, structural factors have
created what is today called Mexican illegality.84
GUATEMALAN MAYANS: A HISTORY OF MIGRATION
Central Americans, coming primarily from Honduras, El Salvador,
and Guatemala, comprise the second-largest group of undocumented
people in the United States. My focus here is on one group of
Central Americans, indigenous rural Mayans from Guatemala’s

highlands. The history of today’s Mayan migration to the United
States began over five hundred years ago.
While we have little evidence about Mayan migration patterns
prior to the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, patterns of coerced and
voluntary migration clearly characterized the colonial period. The
Spanish concentrated the indigenous in new communities to better
implement political, religious, and economic control. They imposed
various systems of coerced labor that forced people out of their
communities for weeks or months at a time to work in colonial
mines, plantations, and factories. Mayans also fled from their
communities to avoid forced labor demands.85
The coffee plantation system that grew in Guatemala after
independence led to new forced labor demands and displacements.
Historians have documented the fearful violence involved with
dispossessing large numbers of indigenous peoples from their lands
and forcing them into labor on the new plantations. They estimate
that one in five of the highland Indian population migrated
seasonally to work in the coffee fields in the 1880s.86 The numbers
increased after the overthrow of the brief revolutionary experiment
in the 1950s: Christopher Lutz and George Lovell calculate some
two hundred thousand Mayan labor migrants a year in the 1950s,
three hundred thousand in the 1960s, and five hundred thousand in
the 1970s.87
Guatemalan Indian activist Rigoberta Menchu described her
initiation into migration to coffee and cotton plantations as a child.
Migration to work was simply a fact of life, not to be questioned.
From when I was very tiny, my mother used to take me down
to the finca, wrapped in a shawl on her back. She told me that
when I was about two I had to be carried screaming into the
lorry because I didn’t want to go. . . . It sometimes took two
nights and a day from my village to the coast. . . . By the time
we got to the finca we were totally stupefied; we were like
chickens coming out of a pot. We were in such a state, we
could hardly walk to the finca. I made many trips from the

altiplano to the coast, but I never saw the countryside we
passed through. . . . I saw the wonderful scenery and places
for the first time when we were thrown out of the finca and
had to pay our own way back on the bus . . . .
I remember that from when I was about eight to when I
was about ten, we worked in the coffee crop. And after that
we worked on the cotton plantations further down the coast,
where it was very, very hot. . . . That was our world. I felt
that it would always be the same, always the same. It hadn’t
ever changed . . . .
The lorries belonged to the fincas, but they were driven by
the recruiting agents, the caporales. These caporales are in
charge of about forty people, or more or less what the lorry
holds. When they get to the finca, the caporal becomes the
overseer of this group. . . . The overseers stay on the fincas. . .
. They are in charge. When you’re working, for example, and
take a little rest, he comes and insults you. . . . They also
punish the slow workers . . . .88
Every finca in Guatemala has a cantina, owned by the
landowner, where the workers get drunk on alcohol and all
kinds of guaro, and pile up debts. They often spend most of
their wages. They drink to get happy and to forget the
bitterness they feel at having to leave their villages in the
Altiplano and come and work so brutally hard on the fincas for
so little.89
Menchu’s testimony suggests that, like the Mexican peasants
described earlier, Guatemalan highlanders were not seeking to leave
their homes to work for pay. It took generations of forced
recruitment to create this migration tradition.
Interestingly, human rights advocate Daniel Wilkinson found that
the Mayan descendants who live on the plantations today know
little of the violence that went into the making of this history.
“People knew where their families had come from, but they didn’t
know—or didn’t care to recall—much more about what had brought

them to the plantations.”90 Wilkinson, like others who study
Guatemala, emphasizes the silences that surround people’s
understanding of their realities. Decades—or centuries—of genocide
and terror have shaped the culture of Guatemala’s highland
indigenous communities. People may have few tools to understand
the forces behind their oppression, and they have learned over and
over that trying to protest or change their situation only invites
further repression.
The civil war—or more accurately, dirty war—against highland
Maya communities during the 1970s and ’80s was one result of
people in the highlands trying to challenge their poverty and
dispossession. It led to the destruction of hundreds of villages, and
perhaps a million internally displaced and one hundred thousand to
two hundred thousand refugees who fled the country, many across
the border to Mexico. Others were forced from their homes into
model villages under army control.
Thus, historians of the Maya have argued that migration has been
a “ubiquitous feature of Maya life” that became central to Mayan
history and identity. Ever since the arrival of the Spanish
conquerors, and in accelerated ways since the 1800s, political, legal,
military, and economic structures have directly enforced migration
or simply made it impossible to survive without it.91
“An absent community or family member may be in one of
several places: on the coast picking coffee (returning home within a
month, with wages); in the capital working as a domestic, merchant,
or worker (sending money home to the family, returning
periodically or permanently, such as after a stint or a marriage
proposal from home); in another municipio selling firewood,
animals, or agricultural products (returning once or twice a month
for business and domestic activities); and, increasingly, allá lejos (in
the United States), sending US dollars home on a regular basis.”92
Both in its structural aspects and in its cultural aspects, today’s
migration is just a new phase in a process that is rooted in hundreds
of years of history.93

CASE STUDY: GUATEMALANS IN PROVIDENCE
Among the undocumented Mayans of Providence, Rhode Island,
Patricia Foxen found a very different conception than what most
citizens understand about illegality. Rather than imagining
themselves as autonomous individuals making a decision to break
the law, they, like Rigoberta Menchu, understand their migration as
a requirement imposed upon them by outsiders, which they have no
right or opportunity to question.
The coyotes that offer to take them across the border may be
considered smugglers under US law, but to the Mayans Foxen
studied, they were no different from the labor contractors who had
been forcibly recruiting them—legally—for generations. Instead of
going to the Pacific coast to work on plantations, now they were
being sent to la costa del Norte to work in jewelry factories. One
woman told Foxen that “the coyote is the same as the contratista
(labor contractor) on the coast: he should know when there is work
over there, and should not be sending people if there is no work.”
Others told her that they went to Providence “because that is where
the coyotes sent them.”94 In many cases, contratistas themselves
became coyotes, relying on their existing networks and standing and
just expanding their geographic scope.95 “As did their forefathers
centuries ago,” Lutz and Lovell write, “Guatemalan Mayas continue
to migrate in order to survive.”96
Once in the United States, understandings and worldviews
shaped by their history in Guatemala continue to inform
immigrants’ understanding of their current realities. One Mayan in
Providence explained to Foxen that “the migra here, it is like, as
they said, the guerrillas over there. . . . If la migra is looking for one
of us, we all run, run escaping, it is like the guerrilla.” Likewise in
Guatemala, one campesino (peasant farmer) told her that “he had
heard that the INS had not yet arrived in Providence, though they
were said to be close (thus likening them to the army or
guerrillas).”97

Foxen also notes a “total confusion surrounding understandings
about the legality and illegality of different types of documentation”
that stems from the population’s long history of the law being used
against them.98 Some of her informants had paid hundreds of
dollars to a notario for a temporary work permit. These notarios
often had no legal credentials, but played on a semantic confusion,
since in Latin America the term often refers to a lawyer. The notarios
would file a fraudulent asylum application, which would
nonetheless entitle the migrant to a temporary, legal work permit,
until their asylum hearing, which would generally result in
deportation. Foxen encountered frequent references to people
obtaining “papeles legalmente falsificados”—legally falsified
documents—a further example of the impenetrable character of the
law from the perspective of the immigrants.99
Describing his experience as a court interpreter for Guatemalan
migrants after an immigration raid at a meatpacking plant in
Postville, Iowa, Erik Camayd-Freixas explained that workers there
had simply followed recruiters’ and employers’ instructions, and had
not knowingly chosen to break any law.
“Do you know what this number is?” asked the lawyer,
pointing to the social security number on his I-9 employment
form. “I don’t know,” said the man. “Who put it there?” “At
the plant, they helped me fill out the papers ’cause I can’t
read or write Spanish, much less English.” “Do you know
what a social security number is?” the lawyer insisted. “No,”
said the man. “Do you know what a social security card is?”
“No.” “Do you know what it’s used for?” “I don’t know any of
that. I’m new in this country,” said the man, visibly
embarrassed.100
Like their ancestors and their contemporaries, these migrants had
simply gone where the recruiters had taken them to work.
A New York Times reporter interviewed Guatemalan and other
Central American migrants on Mexico’s southern border in early
2013. “Few had even heard about the debate to overhaul

immigration laws and possibly open a pathway to citizenship for
immigrants living illegally in the United States,” he commented.
“Instead, the prevailing force seems to be deteriorating conditions at
home.”101
For at least five hundred years, Guatemala’s highland Mayan
populations have been buffeted, or coerced, by the winds of the
global economy. They have been slaughtered, displaced, massacred,
and enslaved. They have had to leave their homes and their families
to do the hardest, dirtiest, and lowest work for the benefit of others.
They have been discriminated against socially and legally. For
centuries, they have been forced to migrate and suffered poor
working conditions and legalized discrimination. Their migration to
the United States is only the latest phase of this long history. Their
technical illegality in the United States is but a small part of a
system that has worked to control their movement and their labor
for hundreds of years.

CHAPTER 3

Becoming Illegal
There are two main ways to become undocumented in the United
States. About half of the undocumented population enters without
inspection. They may have attempted to obtain a visa and been
denied. More likely, they either knew that such an attempt was
hopeless or did not even know that such a process existed and didn’t
try at all. So they crossed somehow, usually by land but sometimes
by sea, through a border that may have been unmarked, invisible, or
at least unpatrolled. Thus, they were not inspected by any official
from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when they
entered. This means that while they may have many kinds of
identification documents, they have none that specifically authorizes
their entry into the United States.
The other portion of the undocumented population entered with
inspection, usually with a visa of some sort or with a Border
Crossing Card. One US government estimate calculates that between
30 percent and 60 percent of the undocumented became so through
visa overstays, meaning that though they were initially authorized
entry, they neglected to leave in the designated time frame.1
Millions of Mexicans obtain tourist visas every year, and the
number has been rising steadily, from about 4 million a year at the
beginning of the 2000s to almost 13 million in 2010.2 However, the
vast majority of Mexicans who obtain tourist visas do not overstay
their visas and become “illegal.” Most Mexicans who are
undocumented became so by crossing the border without inspection,
and most people who become undocumented through visa overstays
are not Mexican.
Under today’s immigration laws, citizens of most countries must
request a visa in their home country before traveling to the United
States. Europeans, as always, are privileged: the Visa Waiver
Program allows most of them to enter as tourists (but not to work)

without a visa. Some Mexicans are eligible for Border Crossing
Cards that allow them to travel for a specified period of time in the
border region. Border Crossing Cards are like tourist or visitors’
visas: they authorize entry into the United States, but they don’t
authorize the holder to work. People who enter with these kinds of
permission can become undocumented if they either overstay their
visa or violate its terms in some other way, including, for Border
Card holders, leaving the twenty-five-mile border zone. Because
nonimmigrant visas are temporary permits with specific conditions
attached to them, ordinary activities that are not in themselves
illegal can still constitute visa violations. In some cases, there are
lies or questionable and illegal activities involved in obtaining the
visa itself.
In 2011, 159 million nonimmigrant visitors entered the United
States with some kind of legal permission. Thirty-three percent or
53.1 million of them were I-94 card holders, meaning that they
either had obtained a nonimmigrant (temporary) visa or were
admitted under the Visa Waiver Program. The largest source of I-94
admissions was Mexico, with 33 percent of the total. (The next
largest source was United Kingdom, with only 8.6 percent.) Eightyseven percent of these visa holders had visitors’ or tourist visas that
allowed them to travel for business or pleasure. The others held
student, temporary worker, or other kinds of visas.3 Some one
hundred thousand were H-2 guest workers, some 80 percent of them
Mexican. Most of the other two-thirds of inspected entries were
Mexicans and Canadians with Border Crossing Cards.4
For all categories of nonimmigrant travel, then—as visitors or
temporary workers with a visa, with a Border Crossing Card, or as
undocumented entries—Mexicans constitute the largest numbers. Of
the 11.5 million or so undocumented immigrants in 2006, some 4–
5.5 million had entered with visitor or tourist visas, and another
250,000–500,000 entered with Border Crossing Cards. The other 6–
7 million entered without inspection.5
ILLEGAL VISAS

Although evading ICE inspection points and the Border Patrol is a
common method of illegal entry, it’s not the only one. The head of
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) explained to researcher
Lynnaire Sheridan that before resorting to a dangerous crossing
through the desert, migrants could attempt to borrow, purchase, or
steal an authentic US passport or permanent resident card. Absent
that possibility, they might obtain a false document or alter a
document themselves by inserting their own photograph. If they
could not access any documents, they might hide in a vehicle and
cross at night.6 The professional cross-border smugglers Sheridan
interviewed offered a rather similar assessment. They told her that
the safest way to cross was to obtain a tourist visa or, if that was not
possible, to use a valid visa belonging to a family member. A bit
riskier was the use of false or altered documents. The most
dangerous method was to attempt to cross without being seen,
generally in isolated areas with little Border Patrol presence.7
Sheridan interviewed many families that had crossed illegally
multiple times. They corroborated this assessment. They listed their
preferred options as, first, crossing with a tourist visa and
overstaying it; second, using someone else’s documents; third, using
false documents; and last, attempting to cross without being
discovered. If the latter was the only option, they emphasized that
the more isolated the area, the more dangerous the crossing.
Cost was also a factor. The safest options were the most
expensive. Sometimes families would pay more to have their young
children, for example, cross with false papers (perhaps
accompanying adults with valid documents), while the adults would
opt for a dangerous clandestine crossing.8
Another method of crossing the border is with a temporary work
visa, generally through the H-2A (agricultural) or H-2B
(nonagricultural) programs. (There are other categories of
temporary work visas, but most require specific types and levels of
skills and don’t apply in most situations.) But with the H-2 program,
as with the Bracero Program before it, paperwork and requirements
are so bureaucratic and onerous that many employers and potential

workers find the program not worth the effort.9 There is also a lot of
room for illegal and unfair maneuvering within the H-2 system.
US employers begin by requesting authorization to recruit H-2
workers from the Department of Labor. Once an employer receives
authorization, they generally turn to a US contracting agency, which
in turn contracts with a Mexican recruiting agency to find available
workers. Opportunities for abuse within the system abound.
The complexity of the H-2 program and the gap between the
overwhelming demand on both sides and the small number of visas
actually available make the program ripe for fraud and exploitation.
“Illegality” enters the system in numerous ways, as uncovered by a
2010 United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
In six cases that the GAO reviewed, “employers charged their H-2B
workers fees that were for the benefit of the employer or charged
excessive fees that brought employees’ wages below the hourly
federal minimum wage. These charges included visa processing fees
far above actual costs, rent in overcrowded apartments that
drastically exceeded market value, and transportation charges
subject to arbitrary ‘late fees.’ Workers left the United States in
greater debt than when they arrived. In one case, these fees reduced
employees’ paychecks to as little as $48 for a 2-week period.” In
eight cases, “employers were alleged to have submitted fraudulent
documentation to Labor, USCIS, and State to either exploit their H2B employees or hire more employees than needed. Employers and
recruiters misclassified employee duties on Labor certification
applications to pay lower prevailing wages; used shell companies to
file fraudulent labor certification applications for unneeded
employees, then leased the additional employees to businesses not
on the visa petitions; and preferentially hired H-2B employees over
American workers in violation of federal law.”10
Eighty percent of H-2A and H-2B visa requests in Mexico are
processed at the US consulate in Monterrey. The director of the
Mexican Oficina de Atención al Migrante in that city has filed
complaints about “hundreds of cases of fraud” in which
unscrupulous agents charge would-be migrants illicit fees in

exchange for promises of access to the coveted visa.11 “In practice,
nobody can hope to obtain one of these visas if they don’t use the
intermediaries. Otherwise how will they find out about the
opportunities that exist?”12 From the perspective of the Mexican
worker, working through the H-2 program might be almost
indistinguishable from crossing without inspection to work. Both
involve relying on shady networks for information, paying
exorbitant fees, and working under poor conditions and at wage
rates that are frequently “illegal” as well as exploitative.
In 2004, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee or FLOC, a farmworkers’ union in the United States, negotiated an agreement with
North Carolina growers that allowed the workers to bypass the
contractors. The organization opened an office in Monterrey to
monitor the recruitment process there. On September 9, 2007, the
director of the FLOC office, Santiago Rafael Cruz, was found tied up,
tortured, and murdered. The union suspected that local labor
contractors were behind the murder. As FLOC president Baldemar
Velázquez explained, “FLOC’s agreement eliminated the extortion of
illegal fees from workers by criminal elements. They have been
unhappy with the union taking away their goldmine. We disrupted
not only the recruiters working for growers in North Carolina, but
all the recruiters who recruit workers for all the other states: from
Florida and Georgia, through South Carolina and Virginia, all the
way up to Pennsylvania and New York.” Labor journalist Dan
LaBotz added that “FLOC’s presence in Mexico meant that the
racketeers were losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in
exorbitant fees and bribes.”13
The chains reach deep into Guatemala. Some twelve hundred
workers recruited by Mexican agency Job Consultoría paid from
$1,000 to $3,000 for supposed access to a visa. In Amatitlán,
Guatemala, 370 men and their families attacked local resident Pablo
Roberto Valencia in late 2011 when they learned that the money
they had given him to pay for their visas had disappeared.14
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, workers generally

arrive in the United States with debts between $500 and $10,000
owed—illegally—to recruiters.15
While these workers do enter with visas that authorize their
presence and permit them to work in the United States, the process
that connects them with these visas violates US, Mexican, and
sometimes other countries’ laws. It frequently involves threats,
violence, extortion, and debt peonage. These violations are
generally met with impunity, however. In fact, the violations are
built into the system itself; they are integral to its functioning and to
the arrival of officially legal H-2 workers to the United States.
GETTING TO THE BORDER
Although the majority of uninspected border crossers are Mexican,
others are Central and South Americans. Today, Central Americans
often travel a perilous land journey from their homes across one or
more countries and through Mexico. A century ago, excluded people
like the Chinese entered through Mexico, because of the openness of
that border.
While the number of Mexicans crossing illegally has declined in
recent years, the number of Central Americans has been steadily
increasing. The economic crisis in the United States meant that some
sectors, like construction, that had traditionally attracted Mexican
migrants, were not hiring. Some experts have also suggested that
increased deportation rates, violence along the border, and a
declining birthrate in Mexico have contributed to a slowing of
Mexican crossings.16
In Central America, though, economic stagnation and horrific
levels of violence, especially in Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Honduras, have meant that the numbers crossing into the United
States continue to increase. Somewhere between 150,000 (according
to the Mexican government) and 400,000 (according to advocacy
organizations) undocumented migrants were entering Mexico each
year as of 2010, mostly from Central America.17 In 2011, 46,997
non-Mexicans, mostly Central Americans, were detained at the
border; in 2012, the figure more than doubled, to 94,532.18 While

still much fewer than the 188,467 Mexicans detained during the
2011–2012 fiscal year, the trend was clear: the number of Mexicans
was decreasing, while that of Central Americans was increasing.19
Although in even smaller numbers, South Americans also cross
the border by land, first traveling by plane to Mexico. In
Montevideo, one travel agency offered a choice of a tourist visa and
a ticket to New York or a ticket to Mexico and a connection to a
coyote who would arrange an illegal land crossing, depending on
how much the traveler was willing to pay.20 Similarly in Brazil,
travel agents sell package deals that include airfare to Mexico City,
a guide to Tijuana, and a coyote for crossing the border. In New
York, Maxine Margolis found that only 3 percent of Brazilians in her
sample had crossed the Mexican border, but in Framingham,
Massachusetts, another study found that 43 percent had. Wealthier
Brazilians were more likely to be able to obtain the tourist visa,
while those who were poorer and less educated were more likely to
have to resort to the Mexican route.21
When US consulates in the Dominican Republic began to reduce
the number of tourist visas they granted, informal visa brokers
began to offer their clients other, more expensive routes. Migrants
were sent to Puerto Rico by boat or to Mexico to cross the land
border. A market sprang up in forged or false papers. Samuel
Martinez noted that while Dominicans saw some modes of entry as
preferable to others, the relative illegality was not their prime
concern. It was just how the system worked: rich people got
preferred access to visas; poor people had to pay huge sums for the
same privilege. “‘Legal’ and ‘illegal’ modes of entry are viewed by
Caribbean people more as bureaucratic obstacles to circumvent than
as immutable law,” he concluded.22
Eugenia Georges’ research on emigration from the Dominican
Republic noted the same pattern of poorer immigrants having to
take more costly and dangerous routes. In the town she studied,
richer residents—those who owned land or businesses—could
usually get tourist visas and fly directly to the United States, since,
as property owners, they could convince US consular officials that

they would return home after their tourist excursions. Poorer,
landless Dominicans had to resort to the more expensive, riskier,
indirect route via Mexico.23
In the case of Central Americans, almost all of those trying to
migrate are poor, and their journey through Mexico is a perilous
one. In 2001, Mexico—under pressure from the Bush administration
—began to implement what it called “Plan Sur” to secure its
southern border, while Guatemala countered with “Venceremos
2001” to control exit traffic from its own country. The militarization
of this border mirrored what had begun a decade earlier on the USMexico border, and the results were also similar. Official statistics
showed migration numbers slowing. But migrants and human rights
organizations pointed out that these statistics were deceptive. Many
migrants shifted away from the newly enforced and militarized
checkpoints into more remote areas. As crossing became more
difficult and more dangerous, it also became more criminalized, as
gangs, drug traffickers, and professional smugglers became
involved.24 Deportations also rose, but much more slowly than the
migrant stream. Between January and November 2010, the Mexican
National Institute of Migration (INAMI) deported 49,143 Central
Americans: 19,876 Hondurans, 8,263 Salvadorans, 20,354
Guatemalans, and 646 Nicaraguans.25 Another 40,971 Central
Americans were detained in Mexico in 2012.26
Many Central Americans attempt to cross Mexico by stowing
away on the freight trains that run from Chiapas on the MexicoGuatemala border up to Mexico City and then on to the US border.
The journey can take days or weeks, as migrants slip from train to
train. Up to fifteen hundred Central Americans attempt to board La
Bestia or the Beast—also known as “The Train of Death”—every day.
Thousands have been killed or maimed in the process.27
Because migrants carry money for their trip and because most of
them have relatives working in the United States who are helping to
pay for them and can be extorted for ransom money, the kidnapping
of migrants has become a regular occurrence on their trip through
Mexico. In just six months between September 2008 and February

2009, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission uncovered
cases of almost 10,000 migrants kidnapped.28 From April to
September 2010, the commission found 11,333 kidnapping cases.
“This figure reflects the fact that there have not been sufficient
government efforts to lower the rates of kidnapping affecting the
migrant population,” the commission declared. Most of the cases
discovered by the commission were Hondurans (44.3 percent),
followed by Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, and small
numbers of Cubans, Nicaraguans, Colombians, and Ecuadorians.29
Although various social actors—including Mexican police and
other government officials—participate in kidnapping and extortion
networks, their modus operandi is similar: migrants are captured
and tortured to force them to reveal contacts in their home country
or in the United States. The kidnappers then call these relatives or
friends and demand payment, threatening to kill the migrant if they
don’t comply.30 The majority of kidnappings take place along the
train route or on the trains themselves.
Kidnapping is only part of the story. A Mexican church-based
human rights coalition decried a broad spectrum of “human rights
violations committed by public servants and federal, state, and
municipal police. This criminalization of undocumented migration
sets the stage for physical, psychological, and sexual aggression, and
human trafficking.”31
The emergence of the Zetas cartel in 2002 greatly worsened the
situation just as the numbers of Central American migrants passing
through Mexico was increasing. According to Mexico’s Assistant
Attorney General’s Office for Special Investigations on Organized
Crime, “its main activities include extortion and sale of protection
services, carrying out assassinations, holding and selling drugs,
piracy, gasoline sales, and the capture and ransom of hostages.”
According to victims, the Zetas are the main perpetrators of migrant
kidnappings.32
The Zetas use a strategy of displacing and taking control of
small communities. They terrorize and extort the local

population and co-opt individuals who belong to gangs or
small local bands, training them to carry out actions like
surveillance of trains, apprehension of migrants, transferring
and overseeing migrants in safe houses, making telephone
calls for the purpose of extortion, and receiving the ransom.
These delinquent groups, made up mostly of young people,
are popularly known as the “Zetitas.” In every kidnapping
case they also commit serious crimes like assassination, sexual
exploitation, and human trafficking. In its first two years, the
Zetas cartel succeeded in establishing itself all along the
routes traveled by migrants.33
As the flow of Central American migrants increased, so did cases
of kidnapping, especially after 2007.34 In one notorious case, in
August 2010, seventy-two migrants from El Salvador, Honduras,
Guatemala, Ecuador, and Brazil were victims of a massacre as they
passed through Tamaulipas on their way to the border. Their
captors—members of a drug gang, possibly the Zetas—demanded
that they pay ransom or agree to work as couriers. When the
migrants refused, they were slaughtered. A lone survivor managed
to reach a nearby military base and tell the story of what had
transpired. A year later, a young member of the Zetas confessed to
the crime.35 In another massacre, in May 2012, forty-nine mutilated
bodies of supposed migrants were found dumped along a highway
near Monterrey. “Because of the number of people, it appears that
they could be passengers from a bus full of illegals; it could be a
case in which organized delinquents [i.e., drug cartels] were
extorting the coyote, since they have now taken over this illegal
business,” a Mexican government representative explained.36
According to the Human Rights Coalition report, “Migrants are
typically captured on the trains themselves, or while waiting along
the tracks. Groups of heavily armed persons approach the migrants,
force them onto pickup trucks, and take them to safe houses. The
kidnappings are carried out with unremitting brutality. In the ‘safe
houses’ where they are held they suffer all kinds of tortures, cruel

and inhuman treatment, and physical and psychological
punishments, until their family in the United States (or in Central
America) collects the money for their ransom.”37
Mexican government officials have also been heavily implicated
in these abuses. The Mexican INAMI and state security forces carry
out “migration verification operations” on the trains, sometimes
using electric shock instruments. They detain some migrants,
leaving others in the hands of the gangs or armed groups.38
While it might be tempting to simply blame this violence against
migrants on Mexican actors, the situation really can’t be separated
from its larger context: the criminalization of migrants by the
United States, and its pressure on Mexico to enforce similar policies.
While Mexico has publicly denounced US anti-immigrant policies,
its government has also collaborated in many ways. US policies
create a political context—illegality—that legitimizes abuses against
migrants. The Bishop of Saltillo in northern Mexico articulated what
many Mexicans and Central Americans believe: “My conclusion is
that the Mexican government’s migration policies are aimed at
preventing migrants from crossing into the United States. It is
abundantly clear that the impunity enjoyed by organized crime, like
that previously enjoyed by gangs, is a policy of terror.”39 A policy of
terror that thrives in and serves the climate of criminalization of
immigrants in their destination.
ON THE BORDER
Crossing the US-Mexico border used to be a rather mundane affair,
as described in earlier chapters. With politicians pandering to (and
fanning the flames of) the rising anti-immigrant climate inside the
United States in the early 1990s, the border changed dramatically.
Operation Hold the Line in El Paso in 1993 and Operation
Gatekeeper in California in 1994 began today’s still-ongoing
obsession with the border.40 In September 1993, the Border Patrol
chief of the El Paso Sector, Silvestre Reyes, launched his new policy,
a “highly visible show of force along a 20-mile section of the
boundary dividing El Paso from Ciudad Juárez. Inspections at

official ports of entry also intensified. The strategy represented a
radical departure from the prior Border Patrol strategy of pursuing
and apprehending unauthorized immigrants after they had crossed
the boundary into the El Paso area.” Apprehensions quickly fell in
this sector, not because overall border crossings declined, but
because migrants simply shifted to new crossing points.41
Likewise, Operation Gatekeeper in California succeeded in
deflecting migrant traffic away from the sixty-six-mile stretch
known as the San Diego Sector of the border. Operation Gatekeeper
included construction of a wall, massive deployment of Border
Patrol agents along the border, stadium lighting, vehicles, sensors,
and other equipment. Beginning at the Imperial Beach Station in the
west and moving east, the Border Patrol hoped to bring the entire
San Diego Sector “under full control” within five years.42 As in
Texas, “control” did not mean that migrants stopped coming; they
simply moved to other, much more treacherous entry points.
In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union and Mexico’s
National Human Rights Commission on accused the US government
of causing thousands of deaths at the border. “This report is the
sounding of an alarm for a humanitarian crisis that has led to the
death of more than 5,000 human beings,” they declared. The crisis
was a direct result, they said, of US decisions: “The deaths of
unauthorized migrants have been a predictable and inhumane
outcome of border security policies on the US-Mexico border over
the last fifteen years.” The new policies implemented by Gatekeeper,
militarizing the more populated San Diego Sector, “intentionally
forc[ed] undocumented immigrants to extreme environments and
natural barriers that the government anticipated would increase the
likelihood of injury and death.”43 To reach safety, migrants had to
hike for miles over treacherous desert terrain, enduring the extreme
heat of the days and cold of the nights. Few were able to carry
enough water. As the death rate rose precipitously, “the chief cause
of death shifted . . . from traffic fatalities to deaths from
hypothermia, dehydration, and drowning.”44

The Arizona-based Coalición de Derechos Humanos has tallied
the dead in the Arizona sector since 2000. Basing its figures on
recovered remains, the organization noted that at least 100 to 300
have died each year, with the highest number, 282, being reached
in 2006. Since many remains are not recovered, the actual death
rates are considerably higher. The organization attributes the slight
decline after that (down to 179 in 2011–2012) to lower numbers of
total crossings.45 A GAO investigation in 2006 found that bordercrossing deaths had doubled in the past decade, to a high of 472 in
2006. Three-quarters of the increase was due to rising death rates in
the Tucson sector, and most were due to heat-related exposure.46
The Pima County, Arizona, medical examiner’s office took custody
of the remains of 1,915 migrants who died in the desert between
2001 and 2010.47 The Border Patrol’s own figures corroborated the
high (492) in fiscal year 2005 and show that despite a slight drop
after that, numbers rose again, to 483 in fiscal year 2012.48
Even as the total number of people crossing may have declined
after 2006, the process became increasingly dangerous. The Arizona
Daily Star noted that the ratio of known deaths per apprehensions
rose from three per one hundred thousand in 1998 to thirty-nine in
2004 and eighty-eight in 2009. “That means the risk of dying is
more than twice as high today compared with five years ago and
nearly 30 times greater than in 1998,” the newspaper reported at
the end of 2009. “Border-county law enforcement, Mexican
Consulate officials, Tohono O’odham tribal officials and
humanitarian groups say the increase in fencing, technology and
agents has caused illegal border crossers to walk longer distances in
more treacherous terrain, increasing the likelihood that people will
get hurt or fatigued and left behind to die.”49
In response to the growing death rate and the outcry it provoked,
the Border Patrol initiated the Border Safety Initiative in 1998 and
formed BORSTAR to train agents in search, trauma, and rescue. The
goal was to address the humanitarian crisis created by the United
States’ own new border policies. Border Patrol agents did provide
life-saving aid to hundreds of migrants in the years since the

program was initiated. But “while the Tucson Sector BORSTAR unit
routinely provided search, rescue, and medical intervention to
undocumented immigrants under harsh conditions, the number of
times it responded was insignificant in comparison to the volume of
Border Patrol law enforcement activities.”50 Soon, other,
independent church-based and grassroots organizations began to
form to try to respond to the issue.
CONCLUSION
The laws that allow or disallow entry into the United States are and
have always been arbitrary and discriminatory. One set of laws,
primarily for Europeans and for the wealthy, allows freedom of
travel. Another set, for Latin Americans and the poor, creates a
labyrinth of enticements and obstacles.
The Las Americas Premium Outlets complex on the US side the
Tijuana–San Ysidro crossing just south of San Diego symbolizes the
contradiction. Looming over the border, the 125 outlet stores
beckon to tourists from the Mexican side, offering them a consumer
mecca if they cross to shop. “The big fence surrounding the outlets
and the Mexican flag [just beyond the complex, on the other side of
the border] was a bit distracting,” wrote one US reviewer on the
popular website Yelp.com.51 Between the mall and the flag are the
imposing border wall and the security apparatus that sustains it,
reminding Mexicans that their welcome is decidedly conditional.
Myriad historical and economic factors draw and sometimes force
migrants from their homes into the US economy. Many of these
factors are the result of deliberate decisions implemented by US
employers, investors, and government. At the same time,
increasingly convoluted webs of laws, restrictions, and
discrimination ensure that migrants remain in a subject position,
exploitable and exploited. Today, the system works by drawing or
forcing them into a status deemed illegality.
The borders that divide immigrants from the United States are
not just physical. Once inside the country—whether by means of a
traumatic border crossing or a simple visa overstay—people without

documents live behind another kind of border, a baffling and
sometimes terrifying border that separates them from those around
them and the country and society in which they live. These internal
borders are the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 4

What Part of “Illegal” Do You Understand?
Arbitrary and precarious. If life for poor people in Mexico and
Central America seems to be filled with precarious status and
arbitrary events to which they must simply adapt in order to
survive, life in the United States continues the pattern. Why do some
government agencies welcome the undocumented, while others
ignore them, and still others threaten, imprison, and deport them?
What really determines their status, and why does it seem to change
so frequently and unpredictably? How can they plan for the future
or prepare, when everything seems so capricious?
THE BLURRINESS OF CATEGORIES
In the minds of most citizens, the terms “legal” and “illegal” are
clearly defined and clearly distinguished categories. In real life,
though, there is a large gray area between the two ostensibly
opposite poles. Most people who are undocumented live ordinary
lives and are not immediately distinguishable from immigrants with
documents or from citizens. Yet in some ways, hidden to the
outside, documented world, their lives are very different. As Jose
Antonio Vargas puts it, “Everyday life for an undocumented
American means a constant search for loopholes and back doors.”1
Most of the approximately 11 million undocumented people in
the United States have been here for quite a while. As noted earlier,
only 14 percent arrived in the country after January 1, 2005,
meaning that 86 percent have been in the country for over seven
years.2 While the law may consider them alien, most of them are
people who have deep roots in the United States.
Mexicans are overrepresented among those deported: Mexicans
make up 58 percent of the undocumented population, but 70
percent of those deported are Mexican.3 Apparently, being Mexican
makes you somehow more undocumented, in the eyes of society and
of law enforcement, than others. Since undocumentedness is a

socially imposed status, then how you are seen by those in authority
is in fact what brings it into being.
Many individuals have experienced being both documented and
undocumented. Laws have changed, as in 1986 when many
undocumented people were offered the chance to legalize.
Individuals who entered the country legally may fall out of status if
they violate the terms of their visa in some way, while, more rarely,
those who are undocumented may find a way to regularize their
status.
The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, the country’s
most recent attempt at some sort of supposedly comprehensive
immigration reform, exemplified the arbitrary nature of immigration
law. In order to qualify for legalization, migrants must have resided
in the country continuously since January 1, 1982. This cutoff date
meant that the large numbers of Central American immigrants who
arrived later were excluded. Of the 500,000 to 850,000 Salvadorans
in the country in 1986, only 146,000 qualified.4 The American
Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh (or ABC) Settlement Agreement in
1990 reopened thousands of political asylum cases, offering a new
chance for legal residence for undocumented Salvadorans and
Guatemalans. But the process was agonizingly slow, and tens of
thousands of Central Americans remained in limbo through the
1990s, renewing their work permits every eighteen months as their
cases languished.
The Immigration Act of 1990 (IMMACT)—among many other
provisions—created the new category of Temporary Protected Status
(TPS), offering temporary protection and work authorization to
immigrants from countries affected by war or natural disaster.
Salvadorans were granted TPS, based on the state of civil war in the
country that made it impossible for them to return. Guatemalans,
despite the war in their country, were not included. TPS for
Salvadorans was extended several times, but ended in 1995 after a
peace agreement ended the war. At that time, some 1 million
Salvadorans lived in the United States. Half of them were legal
immigrants, and between 90,000 and 190,000 had been protected

by TPS.5 (Some 200,000 applied originally, but many failed to
complete the repeated renewal process.)6 When TPS ended, many
Salvadorans returned to the stalled asylum process.
The 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central America Relief Act
(NACARA) was an attempt to address the backlog in asylum cases
by offering permanent residency to certain asylum seekers. But
NACARA too left many Guatemalans and Salvadorans in limbo, as it
favored Cuban and Nicaraguan petitioners and continued to be
plagued with backlogs. In 2001, the INS estimated that it could take
“up to 20 years” to process the pending, almost three hundred
thousand Central American applications.7 Between 1999 and 2003,
the approval rate for Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum applicants
hovered between 7 percent and 11 percent, not much higher than
the low rate in the 1980s that had led to the ABC lawsuit. For
applicants from other countries, the rate was 33 percent to 44
percent.8 Salvadorans and Guatemalans, in the words of Cecilia
Menjívar and Leisy Abrego, “have faced being granted only
temporary permits, seemingly interminable applications, reapplications, long waiting times for their applications to be
processed, and the threat of imminent deportation.” Neither fully
legal nor illegal, they exist in a state of “permanent temporariness”
or “liminal legality.”9
Menjívar describes the experiences of many undocumented
Central American immigrants:
Occasionally they are granted temporary relief from
deportation with multiple and confusing deadlines for
applications and renewals of permits and convoluted
application procedures (e.g., fees, forms, photos, fingerprints,
proofs of residence, and innumerable caveats and conditions).
Indeed, so much work is involved in preparing these
applications and information is so difficult to obtain that a
veritable industry has developed among document preparers,
notaries, and other entrepreneurs (some of whom are not
particularly well qualified) to fulfill the needs of Central

Americans applying for the different dispensations. This
situation creates enormous anxiety, as each deadline
accentuates these immigrants’ precarious situation, which for
many has gone on for over two decades.10
Immigration law revisions have continued the pattern of creating
new ways of punishing illegality, while concomitantly creating
sometimes unexpected and apparently arbitrary new avenues for
legalization. A new Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans
(2001) and Haitians (2011) offered undocumented people from
those countries a temporary respite, but with the knowledge that it
could just as easily be rescinded in the future. President Obama’s
June 2012 announcement of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) granted some youth a similar two-year reprieve during
which they could receive temporary documents, including
permission to work, but with no prediction about what their status
would be at the end of those two years.
Many migrants hope that someday a legal avenue will be opened
for them to regularize their status, as occurred in 1986, and do
everything possible to improve their chances for obtaining legal
status if and when the opportunity arises. Thus, once in the United
States, they are constantly torn between laws they feel they have no
choice but to violate (for instance, laws that prohibit them from
working) and a desire to prove themselves as law abiding and
deserving of legal status.
For this reason, many thousands of undocumented immigrants
apply for and receive Individual Taxpayer ID Numbers (ITINs) that
allow them to file income tax returns each year. They readily appear
in court when cited for traffic violations or the more serious charge
of driving without a license. Yet they continue to work and drive
without official authorization to do so.
SOCIAL SERVICES
The social service network is often a maze of complexity even for
citizens and contributes to the arbitrariness that undocumented

status entails. Undocumented immigrants are eligible for some types
of benefits, while both the undocumented and temporary
immigrants with legal documents are restricted from others. Since
1996, even legal permanent residents are excluded from many
services. Disentangling what an immigrant is legally eligible for is a
complex task. Furthermore, as people often live in mixed-status
families, different services may be available to different members.
Regulations for welfare, Medicaid, and other types of social services
have struggled to parse the categories and decide exactly what
“lawfully present” means when determining eligibility. Several
pages of the 2011 edition of the United States Code are needed to
explain the various legal statuses and determine which qualify a
person for different types of benefits.11
The complexity reveals both the legal and moral difficulty of
identifying individuals by status and the confusing questions that
undocumented immigrants face. Why does one government agency
want to help them, while another wants to harm them? Can they be
punished for accepting services that are offered to them?
To further confuse the issue, most social service providers are
trained and eager to make sure that people obtain access to the
services for which they are eligible. Undocumented immigrants may
be overwhelmed with phone calls and urgings to accept certain
benefits, while finding it impossible to access others that are even
more urgently needed. (Of course, this is true for citizens as well.)
The patchwork reflects competing interests in the passage of laws
and the interests of agencies, but, like status itself, presents a
bewildering panorama to those in need.
Immigrants may learn that pregnant women are eligible for the
federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food supplementation
program, but not for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP). One (US-born) child might be eligible for SNAP, while
another (foreign-born) child in the same family is not.
Undocumented children can go to Head Start and to public schools,
but their eligibility for public higher education varies by state. The
Affordable Care Act explicitly excludes the undocumented from

eligibility, but hospital emergency rooms are still required to
provide care for them. They are not eligible for publicly funded
housing, but can live in such housing if it’s shared with a qualified
family member who is not undocumented.
Because they are ineligible for most publicly funded social
services, and because they are generally reluctant to claim even
those services for which they may be eligible, the undocumented
tend to place fewer costs on the public coffers than would be
expected, given their low incomes. In a careful study of the fiscal
impact of undocumented immigration, the Center for Immigration
Studies concluded that “the primary reason they create a fiscal
deficit is their low education levels and resulting low incomes and
tax payments, not their legal status or heavy use of most social
services.”12
FRAUDULENT DOCUMENTS
Almost all people who are undocumented in fact possess a spectrum
of valid and fraudulent papers. They may hold a birth certificate,
driver’s license, or passport from their home country, but lack a visa
authorizing their presence in the United States or perhaps hold an
expired visa.
There are many degrees of fraudulence and many methods for
trying to gain access to the documents people need for everyday life.
One of the first documents an undocumented immigrant needs upon
arrival in the United States is a Social Security card. A thriving
underground business in false (and often poorly made) Social
Security cards preys on the newly arrived. For a few hundred
dollars, the forgers simply place the immigrant’s name—or a false
name—along with a random number on a card designed to
approximate an actual card.
Since the E-Verify program has become more common in the past
decade, more undocumented people are finding that they need a
Social Security number with a correctly matched name. Sometimes,
an immigrant can borrow a name and number from a friend or

relative. Or, for a much higher fee, a forger will sell an immigrant
an actual person’s name and Social Security number.
Puerto Rico has been an especially lucrative source for valid birth
certificates and Social Security numbers with Spanish names. A
person might sell his own documents, those of a child or elder who
is not working, or even those of a person who has died. Or the
documents could be stolen. The buyer—often an undocumented
immigrant in the continental United States—most often just wants a
valid Social Security number that matches the name on the card so
that he or she can work. In some cases, though, the fraud moves
into more aggressive theft, where a person will use the documents
to apply for social services that are available only to citizens or to
obtain tax refunds, loans, or credit in the other person’s name.13
In 2010, the Puerto Rican government responded to the situation
by invalidating all Puerto Rican birth certificates and requiring
everyone born in Puerto Rico to obtain a new, more secure
document. Many were skeptical that this would end the problem.
One Puerto Rican citizen explained drily, “Money buys everything. .
. . Anyone will do anything for money.”14
There’s a big difference between using a false number and
identity theft. In a case of identity theft, an individual attempts to
access someone’s bank account, credit card, or other property to
benefit from it. Using a false Social Security number—even if it
happens to belong to someone else—does not give you access to
anything that actually belongs to that person. Rather, when an
employer pays payroll taxes using the false number, the IRS flags
the discrepancy and simply transfers the Social Security payments
into its Earnings Suspense File.15 The person to whom the number
actually belongs is not affected in any way. In recognition of the
ubiquity—and the harmlessness—of the use of false Social Security
numbers, the Obama administration clarified that using a false
Social Security number would not count against a young person
applying for DACA.
Marrying for documents is another strategy that ranges from
legal to illegal, with myriad shades of gray in between. Some

marriages may be arranged as financial transactions between
strangers solely in hopes of obtaining documents. This practice is
illegal, and ICE prosecutes people who obtain legal residency
through this kind of arranged marriage. But not all marriages of
convenience are fraudulent. No laws govern the amount of love a
person must feel in order to marry; most people who marry do so
for a spectrum of reasons ranging from the emotional to the
extremely practical. There is nothing illegal about marrying for
security, money, prestige, or power.
DRIVING
During the 1980s and ’90s, most states had no rules preventing the
undocumented from obtaining a driver’s license and driving legally.
This changed after 9/11, when suddenly driver’s licenses were
turned into a matter of national security. Millions of people who
had been driving legally, with legitimate licenses, found that driving
had become illegal.
The REAL ID Act of 2005, passed as part of the recommendations
made by the 9/11 Commission, attempted to set a national standard
for driver’s license issuance. Among other things, the act required a
birth certificate or passport with a visa that demonstrated that the
person was in the country legally. The license would then serve as
an electronically readable, federally approved identification card.
The Department of Homeland Security would set the standard and
approve the cards, essentially turning the state-issued driver’s
license into a national identity card.
The act was slated to go into full effect in 2008, but full
implementation was postponed several times. By the end of 2012,
most states were in compliance. Once fully implemented, a driver’s
license from a state not in compliance would not be considered valid
identification for travel, opening a bank account, applying for
benefits or Social Security, or entry into federal buildings.
Driving is such a basic necessity for adult life in most of the
United States that numerous methods have emerged for
undocumented immigrants to obtain a license. Like a Social Security

card, a false driver’s license can be purchased. A new industry
mushroomed, making false driver’s licenses. Some people used
licenses from their own countries—legal or falsified. Others traveled
to New Mexico or Washington State—two states that still allowed
the undocumented to obtain a license—and claimed residence there.
In Utah, the legislature created a “driver privilege card” in 2005
for those unable to obtain a driver’s license because they had no
Social Security card. The privilege card cannot serve as official
identification, but it does certify that the holder has passed a driving
test and entitles him or her to drive. Other states, concerned with
the safety problems posed by the proliferation of unlicensed drivers,
experimented with other kinds of driving permits that would evade
the REAL ID Act. Some allowed noncitizens to use a license from
their own country for a limited period of time while in the United
States.
Even immigrants legally authorized to work are not always able
to obtain the license they need. Part of the problem is legislators’
simple ignorance of the amazing complexity of immigration law and
status. The state of Texas, for example, passed legislation in 2007
requiring that, in order to obtain a commercial driver’s license, an
applicant must be a citizen, a legal permanent resident, an asylee, or
a refugee, or else provide an I-94 form proving that they crossed the
border legally. But there are many immigrants who are legally
present and have work authorization but don’t fit into those
categories.
A large number of Central Americans in Texas have Temporary
Protected Status, which authorizes their continued presence and
allows them to work even if they were formerly undocumented.
Other undocumented immigrants may have received authorization
to work while they pursue an asylum case. These statuses do not,
however, grant them a permanent status like resident, asylee, or
refugee. Nor do they retroactively create an I-94 form making their
initial entry legal. They give recipients other legal documentation.
When the legislature passed the Transportation Code, however, it
failed to take these other categories into account and thus made it

impossible for these state residents to obtain or keep their
licenses.16
In the case of the driver’s license, a fraudulent document is not
generally of much use. Police are trained and motivated to
recognize a fake license, unlike employers, who are usually content
to do the minimal inspection required by law. Many undocumented
immigrants simply drive without one. The consequences, like so
much about immigration law and enforcement, are arbitrary.
Depending on the state, or even the community within a state, an
undocumented, unlicensed driver who is stopped by police might
receive warning or a small fine, or might lose his or her car or be
imprisoned and deported. If a jurisdiction is participating in a
federal program like ICE 287(g) or Secure Communities, which
requires officials to share data on those arrested with ICE, a routine
court appearance might end in incarceration and deportation. In
2010, the New York Times estimated that 4.5 million undocumented
people were driving, mostly without licenses. That year, some thirty
thousand of those stopped for common traffic violations—or even
being involved in an accident in which they were not at fault—were
deported.17
Some law enforcement agents support the hard-line position.
Republican state senator Chip Rogers of Georgia took a get-tough
attitude in promoting the draconian driving laws in that state.
“There are certain things you can’t do in the state of Georgia if you
are an illegal immigrant,” he said proudly. “One of them is, you
can’t drive.”18 In Los Angeles, however, the police chief joined
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the police commission in
overturning a rule impounding the car of anyone found driving
without a license. The police union protested vociferously, but the
conservative city attorney backed the change.19
Law enforcement agencies have frequently had very mixed
reactions to federal efforts to toughen immigration policies. In
Framingham, Massachusetts, the police pulled out of the 287(g)
Program two years after adopting it. The police chief, Steven Carl,
“said he signed up two years ago exclusively to tap into federal

databases to investigate crime, and balked when federal officials
wanted him to detain immigrants, transport them and even testify in
immigration court. Carl said that could hurt the police’s relationship
in the community, where 26 percent are immigrants. ‘It doesn’t
benefit the police department to engage in deportation and
immigration enforcement,’” he explained.20
In contrast, when Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick
announced his intention to withdraw Massachusetts from the federal
Secure Communities program, the chief of police of Milford, a town
not far from Framingham and, like the latter, home to large
numbers of immigrants, had the opposite reaction. “It takes an
important tool away from police officers, who are trying to perform
a difficult job,” the police chief said. “We need to make it clear to
(people) who are here improperly, and those who are engaged in
employing them, that we need to take this issue seriously.”21
WHAT EXACTLY IS ILLEGAL?
It’s illegal to cross the border without inspection and/or without
approval from US immigration authorities. As we’ve seen above,
about half of the undocumented population entered the country
illegally (as opposed to entering with inspection and permission, but
overstaying or violating the terms of their visas). Entering the
country illegally is a crime, and a person who does so can be subject
to up to six months in prison. Entering the country again after being
deported is a more serious crime—a felony—punishable by up to
two years in prison. Simply being in the country without
authorization, though, is not in itself a crime but rather a civil
violation, remedied by removal (either voluntary departure or
deportation) rather than a criminal penalty. Unlawful presence
becomes a criminal offense only “when an alien is found in the
United States after having been formally removed or after departing
the US while a removal order was outstanding.”22
Even when a would-be immigrant is apprehended at the time of
unlawful entry, neither criminal nor civil immigration charges have
generally been pressed. Because the standards for criminal

prosecution are much higher than for immigration proceedings, the
government has every incentive to keep immigration violations out
of the criminal court system. The immigration court system has a
backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, which means that an
immigrant sent into that system will likely be subject to a lengthy—
and expensive—detention.
Many immigrants who are apprehended are offered voluntary
departure or voluntary return, meaning that the person leaves the
country without being officially deported. There is no order of
removal, but the person tacitly admits to removability, that is, to
being present without authorization. Under voluntary departure, the
person is given a time limit and permitted to arrange his or her own
departure. Mexicans apprehended at the border are usually granted
voluntary removal, which means that they are bused back to the
border and deposited on the Mexican side.23 For many immigrants,
especially those who have little likelihood of winning an
immigration case, voluntary departure is the preferred route,
although many who depart voluntarily soon attempt to reenter.
Immigrants apprehended in the interior or those apprehended at
the border who do not accept voluntary departure, who are accused
of other crimes or infractions, or who are flagged for other reasons
may instead be subject to formal (involuntary) removal or
deportation. In this case, they must appear before a judge who
orders their deportation.24 Those who are removed are not deemed
guilty of any crime, and removal is not considered a punishment.
Once a person is formally removed, however, attempted reentry
becomes a felony, and unlawful presence too becomes criminalized.
For most of the twentieth century, voluntary departures—mostly
by people apprehended by the Border Patrol and returned (usually
to Mexico) without an official deportation order—were far more
numerous than removals. Since 2006, the number of voluntary
departures has plummeted, from over a million a year down to only
323,000 in 2011, while the number of removals (mostly people
apprehended in the interior) has risen steadily, surpassing 50,000 a

year for the first time in 1995 and then rising quickly to almost
400,000 a year since President Obama was elected in 2008.25
Some attribute the decline in border apprehensions to increased
enforcement. The Border Patrol, they point out, grew from nine
thousand agents in 2001 to twenty thousand by the end of 2009,
and twenty-one thousand by 2012, while the Customs and Border
Protection budget rose from about $6 billion in 2004 to about $11
billion in 2009. (The Border Patrol accounted for about $1.4 billion
of that.) The border wall grew and employed increasingly
sophisticated technology. The purpose of all this so-called
“enforcement” was to discourage potential border crossers from
even trying. Maybe it was working, some argued. Others, though,
attribute the decline to the economic downturn in the United States,
arguing that fewer people are trying to cross the border, as demand
for their labor has declined.26
Meanwhile, the number apprehended by ICE Enforcement and
Removal Operations inside the country skyrocketed, principally as
the result of the Obama administration’s emphasis on programs for
interior enforcement.27 This meant that many more people with
jobs, lives, and community ties in the United States were being
uprooted and deported. Through 2005, only about 5 percent of
Mexicans deported had been in the United States for over a year. In
2010, two years into President Obama’s first term, over a quarter of
those deported had been in the United States for over a year; in
2011, it was almost half.28 Meanwhile, in 2010, ICE requested $5.5
billion in discretionary funds for the following year, the majority of
which was designated for detention and deportation.29 Enforcing
illegality was an expensive operation.
WHO BENEFITS FROM ILLEGALITY?
Although illegality resides inherently in the realm of law, it has
significant economic implications, as discussed in the next two
chapters. Employers of low-wage labor benefit from the illegal
status of some workers, as do consumers of low-cost goods and
services. State and local budgets face costs that result from the

economic marginalization of the undocumented, while federal
programs like Social Security benefit handsomely from payments
into the system by undocumented workers who will never be
eligible for benefits.
Illegality also has significant benefits for the prison system, in
particular, the new and mushrooming private prison system.
Immigration enforcement creates jobs in the prison industry, which
in 2011 employed eight hundred thousand people and cost some
$74 billion a year.30
But beyond the economic costs and benefits to different sectors of
society, there are other, intangible benefits. Politicians and talkshow hosts have zeroed in on the issue to whip up audiences and
support.
Anti-immigrant
sentiment
and,
especially,
the
demonization of the undocumented can bring votes and attention.
What Leo Chavez calls the “Latino threat narrative” overlaps with
anti-undocumented sentiment, as “Mexican immigration, the
Mexican-origin population, and Latin American immigration in
general [came] to be perceived as a national security threat” in the
1990s.31 The threat narrative, Chavez explains, has been expressed
so repeatedly that its components have become culturally accepted.
Mexican immigrants are “illegal aliens” or criminals, the narrative
suggests. They want to create a “Quebec” (i.e., a culturally and
linguistically distinct region), invade the country, or reconquer the
Southwest. They refuse to learn English or assimilate, procreate too
rapidly, and threaten national security.32
In addition to attracting votes or increasing ratings, the Latino
threat narrative serves the more subtle purpose of channeling
national anxieties about social inequality; environmental crisis;
economic downturn; lack of access to jobs, housing, health care, and
education; deteriorating social services; and other real issues facing
the US population away from their real causes. Those who benefit
from the status quo would rather have people blame immigrants
than fight for real social and economic change.
DETENTION

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the detention of
immigrants has reached “crisis proportions.” “Over the last 15 years,
the detention system more than quintupled in size, growing from
less than 6,300 beds in 1996 to the current capacity of 33,400 beds.
In 2010, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) held 363,000
immigrants in detention in over 250 facilities across the country.”33
Meanwhile, ICE’s detention operations budget jumped from $864
million in 2005 to over $2 billion in 2012.34 According to Amnesty
International, the use of detention for immigration violations
contradicts international rights law against arbitrary detention.
“Everyone has the right to liberty, freedom of movement, and the
right not to be arbitrarily detained,” Amnesty explained.35
Immigrant detention sends people into a Kafkaesque netherworld.
Immigration court is a separate entity from the criminal justice
system; it is an administrative court. This means that the whole
body of law designed to protect those accused of crimes and
guarantee them a fair trial does not apply. (An immigrant accused of
a crime does receive those rights in criminal court, however.) In the
immigration detention system, prisoners have few rights and often
lack the means to find out what rights they do have or make use of
these rights. For example, immigrants have the right to be
represented by an attorney, but not at public expense. Many
detainees don’t know that they have the right to representation,
don’t know how to obtain representation, and/or can’t afford it. For
those who do go through deportation hearings, 84 percent lack
representation.36
Some detained migrants will choose voluntary departure because
it leaves their names clear for a legal entry sometime in the future.
Many are unaware of legal provisions that might authorize them to
remain in the country and have no way to find out about them,
since they have no way to obtain legal counsel. Some choose
voluntary departure to escape lengthy detention, even if they are
convinced that their case to stay could be won if they were to finally
obtain a hearing. Unlike those detained on criminal charges,
immigrants have generally been ineligible to be released on bail.37

If they do not choose (or are not offered) voluntary departure,
detainees have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge to
determine whether they can obtain legal permission to remain in
the country. Some detainees may be eligible for political asylum;
others, for parole or prosecutorial discretion based on the lack of a
criminal record, family relationships to citizens or permanent
residents, hardship that would be caused to citizens or permanent
residents (e.g., to their children who are citizens) by their removal,
or other reasons. But without a lawyer to argue their case,
immigrant detainees may have no idea what kinds of arguments
could work in their favor.
Moreover, the deportation procedures for those who reject
voluntary departure are often quite lengthy. While the proceedings
crawl along, the petitioner remains in detention. A study by
Amnesty International found that “immigrants and asylum seekers
may be detained for months or even years as they go through
deportation procedures that will determine whether or not they are
eligible to remain in the United States.” The average was ten
months, but some individuals remained in detention for up to four
years before a decision was reached.38 If the judge who hears the
case rules against them, they will be deported and barred from legal
reentry, usually for ten years.
A new twist in this system emerged at the border in 2005 with
Operation Streamline, described in the introduction, which takes
migrants caught at the border out of the civil immigration system
and lodges criminal border-crossing charges against them. After a
criminal conviction, they are generally sentenced to time served and
returned to ICE for civil removal procedures. The program has been
expanded along the border, so that by 2012 every border sector
participated, with some referring all of those apprehended for
criminal prosecution. Tens of thousands of migrants who would
have been returned to Mexico are now instead detained, tried, and
incarcerated at government expense. While Streamline aims to rush
dozens of cases through each court every day, the size of the
program—some fifty-five thousand prosecutions a year—still means

that the government requires a large amount of short-term space for
incarceration.39
Since 2005, the federal government has spent $5.5 billion on
private prison contracts for criminal immigration cases, over $1.4
billion in 2011 alone.40 At the end of 2011 there were sixty-three
thousand Streamline cases in pretrial detention and twenty-five
thousand convicted and incarcerated.41 District Court Judge Sam
Sparks of the Western District of Texas protested that “[t]he
expenses of prosecuting illegal entry and reentry cases (rather than
deportation) on aliens without any significant criminal record is
simply mind boggling. The US Attorney’s policy of prosecuting all
aliens presents a cost to the American taxpayer that is neither
meritorious nor reasonable.”42
Streamline and the overall increase of federal prosecution of
immigration violations turned immigration cases into the top federal
crime by 2011.43 Immigration is a highly racialized crime: as
immigration charges began to take up more and more of the federal
criminal caseload, it meant the courts were prosecuting and
convicting more and more Latinos. Hispanics made up more than
half of those arrested on federal charges in 2011.44
Streamline and other criminal prosecutions account for only a
fraction of immigration arrests. Most of the 391,953 immigrants
removed were apprehended in the interior through ICE enforcement
and apprehension operations, and their removal was ordered by
immigration judges without any involvement of the criminal justice
system. Some of those arrested by ICE enforcement operations inside
the country, though, come into ICE custody with current or prior
criminal charges.
The intersection of criminal law with civil immigration law
creates a web of complexity in which many immigrants and their
attorneys become entangled. Increasingly, criminal charges are
resolved through plea bargains rather than contested in court. In a
plea bargain, the accused agrees to plead guilty to a lesser but still
criminal charge in exchange for receiving a lighter sentence,
frequently a suspended sentence or probation rather than jail time.

Strikingly, more than 96 percent of those arrested on federal charges
pled guilty in 2011.45
For an immigrant, though, a criminal conviction on even a minor
charge can render him or her deportable. Legal permanent residents
(green card holders) may also find themselves in immigration
detention if they are convicted of a crime. Or if they are discovered
by immigration authorities to have previously been convicted of a
crime that is a deportable offense. Or even if they are discovered to
have been convicted of a crime that was not a deportable offense at
the time, but later became one. Even decades-old minor drugpossession convictions have become grounds for deportation.
The public defenders that most poor immigrants rely on in
criminal cases generally have little knowledge of immigration law or
the possible implications of a guilty plea. One attorney told the
American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA): “On the one
hand . . . the immigration matter should not affect the criminal case,
and, from an intellectual purity standpoint, that makes a lot of
sense. But [for the client], that makes no sense at all. It’s part of
their circumstances. . . . I have to be aware of that, and I need to
give advice based upon what their circumstances are.” Public
defenders, AILA explained, rarely have the time or resources to
research the immigration implications of their advice to their
clients. Most are juggling twice as many cases as are allowed by the
American Bar Association. Less than a third worked with
immigration attorneys in their cases involving immigrants, even
though their decisions could directly affect their clients’
immigration status.46
RAMPING UP THE NUMBERS
In early 2010, James Chaparro, director of ICE Detention and
Removal Operations (DRO), wrote an internal memo—later
obtained by the Washington Post—noting that while the number of
removals of criminals so far that year had been satisfactory, the
agency’s numbers in removing “non-criminal aliens” were too low.
“As of February 15, 2010, DRO removed or returned 60,397 non-

criminal aliens which is an average of 437 removals/returns per
day. The current non-criminal removal rate projections will result in
159,740 removals at the close of the fiscal year. Coupling this with
the projections in criminal removals only gives us a total of just over
310,000 overall removals—well under the Agency’s goal of
400,000.” For the first time, the agency had explicitly acknowledged
having an established target.47
Chaparro insisted that field agents increase the average daily
population in ICE detention facilities to 32,600 and “[i]ncrease the
number of Tier One Non-Criminal Fugitive alien arrests along with
Tier Two arrests (Re-Entry/Reinstatement) in every field office.” He
recommended that each office process thirty to sixty noncriminal
cases per day in a “surge” aimed at meeting deportation quotas.48
Basically, the memo instructed ICE officers to increase the detention
and deportation of noncriminals and of “criminals” whose only
offense was reentry into the country, in the interest of meeting the
annual deportation goal.49
Another program that helped ICE increase its numbers in the
Obama years was Secure Communities. Introduced by the Bush
administration and piloted in a number of cities around the country
in late 2008, Secure Communities requires law enforcement
agencies in participating jurisdictions to automatically share with
ICE the fingerprints of anybody arrested. If ICE flags the individual
as potentially deportable, the agency issues a detainer. When the
person is released, he or she is turned over to ICE. The Obama
administration initially stated that participation was voluntary, but
later announced that the program would be required nationwide by
2013. Eighty-three percent of those who come into ICE custody
through Secure Communities are sent to ICE detention centers.
Ninety-three percent are Latino.
Promoters touted the program as a way to “remove dangerous
criminals from your community.”50 However, only about half of
those deported through Secure Communities fit the profile of a
criminal—that is, had been convicted of a crime other than a traffic
or immigration violation. The only violation for 45 percent of those

deported was being “present without admission”—that is, being
undocumented. Only half of those deported received a hearing
before an immigration judge to determine their deportability. The
other half were simply deported under ICE administrative
procedures or pressured into taking voluntary departure. By late
2011, 226,694 immigrants had come into ICE custody through
Secure Communities.51
DETENTION, INC.
In addition to ICE itself, there are powerful interests supporting the
detention industry, ranging from private prison companies to
elected officials who see prisons as a boost to local economies. The
Immigration and Naturalization Service (precursor to today’s ICE)
started to contract out its detainees to private prisons in the early
1980s when the detention system started to exceed its capacity of
beds. By 1989, the agency was holding about two thousand people a
day, with five hundred in private facilities.52 Over the past three
decades, immigration violations served as a reliably increasing
source of revenue for private prisons.53 As ICE detention rates
doubled to the current rate of four hundred thousand a year in the
first decade of the twenty-first century, the proportion of
immigration detainees held in privately run detention facilities also
rose, from one-quarter to one-half.54 Private prisons specialize
disproportionately in detaining immigrants, who tend to be young,
healthy, and nonviolent, and therefore among the cheapest and the
most profitable inmates to house.55
The first private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA, founded in 1983), was poised to benefit from and
promote the increases in criminal sentencing and immigrant
detention in the 1990s. According to Travis Pratt, professor of
criminology at Arizona State University, who studied the private
prison industry’s lobbying campaigns, “The private prisons industry
has a very, very heavy lobby in most states and the federal
government to increase sanctions for a number of offenses. They’ve

been doing this for a very long time. It’s a multi-million-dollar
lobbying effort. . . . And they’ve been exceptionally successful—
longer sentences for more types of offenses means more inmates,
more inmates means they have to be housed somewhere, which
translates to greater profits for that industry. They have a very clear
agenda there, and they’ve been unapologetic about it. They haven’t
hidden that at all.”56 Between 2002 and 2012, private prison
companies had spent over $45 million in campaign contributions
and lobbying.57
The GEO Group (founded in 1984) currently runs 109 facilities in
the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa,
with 75,000 beds in the United States; CCA has 60 in the United
States that can hold 90,000 inmates, and Management and Training
Corporation (MTC), founded in 1987, runs 22 prisons in the United
States with 29,500 beds.58 CCA is the fifth-largest corrections
system in the country, following the federal government and three
states.59 In 2010, GEO and CCA together earned revenues of over
$2.9 billion.60 They have spent millions of dollars lobbying over the
past decade.61
The private prison industry has a vested interest in increasing
both the criminalization of immigrants and the drug wars that
criminalize African Americans. “Our growth is generally dependent
upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage
new correctional and detention facilities,” CCA explained to its
shareholders. “The demand for our facilities and services could be
adversely affected by . . . the decriminalization of certain activities
that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.” In particular,
CCA warned, “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled
substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons
arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing
demand for correctional facilities to house them.”62 Company
officials were optimistic, though, that ICE would continue to supply
“a significant portion of our revenues.” 63
The Justice Policy Institute concluded in 2011 that “[w]hile
private prison companies may try to present themselves as just

meeting existing ‘demand’ for prison beds and responding to current
‘market’ conditions, in fact they have worked hard over the past
decade to create markets for their product. As revenues of private
prison companies have grown over the past decade, the companies
have had more resources with which to build political power, and
they have used this power to promote policies that lead to higher
rates of incarceration.”64
One avenue they have used is the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC), a “conservative, free-market orientated, limitedgovernment group,” in the words of staff director Michael Hough.65
Legislators pay $50 a year to join, while companies pay tens of
thousands of dollars for a seat at the table, giving ALEC a total
budget of over $6 million a year. ALEC’s main focus is on drafting
model legislation. Because it does not officially lobby, it doesn’t
have to disclose its activities. Because it’s a nonprofit, corporations
can deduct their donations to the organization.66
“Is it lobbying when private corporations pay money to sit in a
room with state lawmakers to draft legislation that they then
introduce back home? [ALEC senior director of policy Michael]
Bowman, a former lobbyist, says, ‘No, because we’re not advocating
any positions. We don’t tell members to take these bills. We just
expose best practices. All we’re really doing is developing policies
that are in model bill form.’”67
At an ALEC meeting in late 2009, Arizona senator Russell Pearce
first presented his proposal for what became the state’s radical antiimmigrant Senate Bill 1070, and a draft for the model legislation
was outlined. S.B. 1070 required immigrants to carry proof of their
documentation at all times and required local law enforcement
officials to detain immigrants unable to produce such documents.
After it became law in April 2010, S.B. 1070 became the prototype
for anti-immigrant legislation passed in Georgia, Alabama, Indiana,
South Carolina, and Utah in the following years.
Two representatives of CCA, which clearly stood to benefit from
the bill, sat at the table where the text was agreed upon. “Asked if
the private companies usually get to write model bills for the

legislators, Hough said, ‘Yeah, that’s the way it’s set up. It’s a publicprivate partnership. We believe both sides, businesses and
lawmakers should be at the same table, together.’” 68
ALEC and CCA influence was evident not only in the shaping of
the legislation, but in the response among legislators: “As soon as
Pearce’s bill hit the Arizona statehouse floor in January . . . thirtysix co-sponsors jumped on, a number almost unheard of in the
capitol. . . . Two-thirds of them either went to that December
meeting or are ALEC members.” Furthermore, a report continued,
“thirty of the 36 co-sponsors received donations over the next six
months, from prison lobbyists or prison companies—Corrections
Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation and
The Geo Group.” Two of Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s top advisers
were former lobbyists for private prison companies.69 Referring to
the passage of S.B. 1070, the president of GEO Group stated, “I can
only believe the opportunities at the federal level are going to
continue apace as a result of what’s happening. Those people
coming across the border and getting caught are going to have to be
detained and that for me, at least I think, there’s going to be
enhanced opportunities for what we do.”70 Indeed, CCA and GEO
Group doubled their revenues from the immigration detention
business between 2005 and 2012.71
Depressed communities can see private prisons as engines of
economic opportunity. One such area is Pinal County, Arizona. CCA
is the largest employer in the county, where five facilities hold up to
three thousand detainees a day.72 “The expanding prison
populations have allowed small towns to carry budget surpluses in a
state that has otherwise been pummeled by the recession,” explains
journalist Chris Kirkham. “Prison communities have largely avoided
the dire economic straits suffered by Arizona communities in every
direction, where the housing bust and subsequent foreclosure crisis
have ravaged local government coffers.”
The Pinal County town of Florence, with a population of 7,800,
also houses 17,000 detainees. Flush with state revenues from the
prison industry—$5.2 million in 2011—the town has been able to

offer services and build infrastructure like skate parks, dog parks,
and sports fields. Deputy town manager Jess Knudson bragged that
Florence was “one of the few towns in Arizona that has been able to
stay in the black with this recession.” For Florence, as well as
neighboring Eloy and other Arizona communities, “boosting the
prison population has emerged as a primary economic development
strategy.” The county too has a financial incentive—$2 per day per
prisoner, which adds up to over a million dollars a year—and
County Sheriff Paul Babeu has been a champion for ramped-up
immigrant detentions.73
In rural Irwin County in Georgia, the privately run Irwin
Detention Center was the county’s top employer. As the prison
population dwindled in 2009, the county teamed up with the
company that ran the prison to seek a contract with ICE.
Paradoxically, said a report in the Nation, “even as Georgia and
Alabama passed harsh new immigration laws last year designed to
keep out undocumented immigrants . . . politicians from both states
were lobbying hard to bring immigrant detainees in. ICE succumbed
to the pressure, sending hundreds of detainees to the financially
unstable facility in Georgia that promised to detain immigrants
cheaply.”74
CONCLUSION
Undocumented people face a veneer of ordinary life undergirded by
permanent uncertainty. In the film El Norte, Nacha, a more seasoned
undocumented Mexican woman, tries to convince Rosa, a newly
arrived Guatemalan, to sign up for English classes, free and offered
by the government. Rosa worries that the school will turn her in to
immigration, and Nacha reassures her that it won’t. “Don’t try to
understand the gringos,” she laughs. “It will drive you crazy.” Since
the situation and the policies are essentially incomprehensible, the
best an undocumented person can do is try to survive day by day
and hope for the best.

CHAPTER 5

Working (Part 1)
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be “deportees”. . .
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
—“Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee),” 1948
Words by Woody Guthrie; music by Martin Hoffman1
As we have seen, work has been central to the Mexican experience
in the United States since the nineteenth century, and Mexican
workers have been critical to the growth of the US economy. Prior
to 1965, racism and the law—including government-run guestworker programs like the Bracero Program—enabled and justified
unequal treatment for Mexican workers.
After 1965, when the Bracero Program ended and numerical
restrictions were placed on Mexican immigration, new systems and
rationales were needed to maintain the supply of cheap Mexican
labor. Undocumentedness took on a new importance in the labor
market, replacing earlier methods of legally compartmentalizing
Mexican labor. The undocumented were channeled into the same
types of jobs that Mexicans had long occupied. Reflecting the new
significance of undocumentedness, the 1986 Immigration Reform
and Control Act (IRCA) was both the first legislative attempt in the
country’s history to address this issue and the first immigration
legislation to specifically address the issue of work, making it illegal
for employers to hire workers who lacked documents.
At first glance, this may seem paradoxical. If undocumented
Mexican labor was so necessary, why make it illegal? But IRCA
made it illegal with a large wink. Employers were required to obtain
proof of eligibility to work from new hires, but they were not
required to evaluate the documents they were shown. They could be
punished for knowingly hiring undocumented workers, but usually
only received a small fine. IRCA, it turned out, was more for show

than for changing the country’s labor structure. It was a bumbling
intervention that succeeded in making migrant workers more
vulnerable, while actually contributing to increasing the numbers of
the undocumented.
Though they comprise a small proportion of the overall
workforce (about 5 percent), workers without documents continue
to occupy crucial niches in the economy.2 This chapter and the next
will look at how undocumentedness became an important factor in
the labor market and what kinds of jobs undocumented people fill.
MAKING WORK ILLEGAL
Although the 1965 immigration law made it illegal for many
Mexicans to enter or remain in the United States, it did not
specifically prohibit undocumented people from working, nor did it
forbid employers to hire them. The 1952 immigration law known as
the McCarran-Walter Act had made it illegal to “conceal” or
“harbor” a person who was undocumented, but not to employ them.
The law included the so-called “Texas Proviso”—to satisfy Texas
business interests that depended on undocumented Mexican workers
—stipulating that employment “shall not be deemed to constitute
harboring.” Thus, in the words of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service general counsel, “there was no prohibition at
all on employment of illegal aliens.”3
The idea of criminalizing employment gained ground toward the
end of the century. Senator Peter Rodino introduced the first
national employer sanctions bill in 1973, but it failed to pass in the
Senate. In 1986, though, employer sanctions were a key element of
the new IRCA. Many progressive organizations including the AFLCIO, the NAACP, and the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, a
national coalition of 185 civil rights organizations and the country’s
“premier coordinating mechanism for civil rights advocacy before
Congress and the executive branch,” all supported the idea,
although the Leadership Council was “sharply divided.”4 A century
earlier, the AFL had openly excluded nonwhites from membership.

Now it joined civil rights organizations in advocating for
discrimination based on citizenship.
In 1990, the NAACP reversed its position after an acrimonious
debate. The AFL-CIO did the same in 2000. Those favoring the
sanctions argued that citizenship should determine rights. The
presence and the hiring of undocumented people, they claimed,
lowered the floor and made it harder for blacks or for American
workers to obtain decent employment. If it became more difficult
for the undocumented to work, they reasoned, employers would
have to improve conditions and employ citizen workers. “If you
withdraw those sanctions, then you open the door and you flood
this state with a multitude of undocumented aliens who will take
the jobs of blacks and other minorities,” one NAACP branch
president explained.5
For Latino organizations, though, employer sanctions are a civil
rights issue, and discrimination based on status is both harmful to
workers in general and conducive to racial discrimination. (It is
notable that to be heard in the public sphere, immigrant rights
advocates must often frame their arguments in terms of racial
discrimination—showing, for example, that anti-immigrant policies
contribute to racial profiling—since the idea that humans deserve
equal rights regardless of citizenship status is practically untenable
in today’s climate.) Armed with a March 1990 GAO report that
found a “widespread pattern of discrimination,” especially against
Latinos and Asians who were thought to look “foreign,” Latino
organizations launched a campaign to press the Leadership Council
and the NAACP to withdraw their support for the sanctions. Both
organizations eventually did so.6
Opponents reversed the argument about the sanctions protecting
citizen workers from a feared flood of the undocumented. Instead,
they insisted that the sanctions themselves lowered the floor for
everyone. By making a large group of workers more vulnerable to
exploitation—because they have little recourse under the law—
sanctions enable employers to lower wages and working conditions,
with little fear that workers will protest or organize. Thus, the

sanctions paradoxically make undocumented immigrants a more
desirable workforce, because the sanctions make them more
desperate and more willing to accept substandard working
conditions.
Nicholas De Genova argues that, while billed as “employer”
sanctions, the system actually targeted the workers, not the
employers. Potential workers had to purchase false documents, and
a new industry emerged to produce them. Employers still hired
them, but now they were triply vulnerable: to the document
industry, to the employer, and to the possibility of arrest and
deportation. Rather than punishing employers—who were routinely
given warnings prior to inspections of their hiring records or subject
to token fines, at most—the law instead placed new burdens and
new penalties on the workers.7
During the Bush administration, workplace raids became the
major public face of immigration enforcement. These were highprofile operations that let government authorities bask in the public
impression they created that they were getting tough on
immigration. The Michael Bianco, Inc., factory in New Bedford,
Massachusetts, in March 2007; the Agriprocessors plant in Postville,
Iowa, in May 2008; Swift (at multiple sites) and Smithfield (North
Carolina) meatpacking plants in December 2006 and January 2007;
and Howard Industries electronics plant in Laurel, Mississippi
(August 2008), were the sites of just a few of the many raids.
Immigration authorities would descend upon the workplace and
round up workers, arresting hundreds. The largest were the Swift
raids, where over twelve hundred workers were arrested in a sweep
of six plants.
Barack Obama publicly criticized the raids when he was a
candidate for president, proclaiming during his convention speech
that “I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated
from her infant child.” But he also defended enforcement of
sanctions, continuing to decry the effects when “an employer
undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.”8 As a senator,
he pressed for E-Verify, a federal program designed to electronically

detect fraudulent documents and prevent the hiring of the
undocumented.
As president, Obama pursued a policy during his first term that
some have termed “silent raids.” Instead of descending on the
workplace and making arrests, the new policy used audits. ICE
would require a business to turn over employment eligibility forms
for all of its workers. “Since January 2009,” the Wall Street Journal
reported in May 2012, “the Obama administration has audited at
least 7,533 employers suspected of hiring illegal labor and imposed
about $100 million in administrative and criminal fines—more
audits and penalties than were imposed during the entire George W.
Bush administration.”9 With the audits, workers are not deported.
But they do lose their jobs.
UNDOCUMENTED JOBS
Most undocumented people work in three specific types of jobs, all
of which tend to be low wage and low status, offer few if any
benefits, have difficult or unstable schedules, and offer little job
security. They may be seasonal or involve night shifts. The work is
generally heavy, unpleasant, dirty, and even dangerous.
Agricultural jobs, especially in plantation and other large-scale
enterprises, have always occupied a special low status and employed
many legally excluded workers. As large-scale agriculture spread
through the Southwest in the twentieth century, migrant Mexican
workers became the primary labor force. Today, 42 percent of
agricultural workers work as migrants—that is, they follow the
crops. Seventy-five percent of farm workers were born in Mexico,
with 2 percent born in Central America and 23 percent in the United
States.10 Only about 4 percent of undocumented immigrants work in
agriculture, but they make up somewhere between 25 percent and
90 percent of all agricultural workers.11 The National Agricultural
Worker Survey conducted by the US Department of Labor has
consistently found approximately 50 percent of agricultural workers
as undocumented over the past twenty years.12 Some analysts, such
as Rob Williams of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, believe

that the percentage is even higher, up to 90 percent or more, since
many people when interviewed will not admit to being
undocumented.13 The seasonal and back-breaking nature of farm
work, along with dangerous, often unregulated conditions and low
pay, make these jobs unattractive to potential workers who have the
advantage of citizenship. Most farm workers only find work for
about thirty weeks of the year and earn $12,500 to $15,000
annually.14
Second, undocumented people work at jobs that have been insourced or relocated within the United States, as companies attempt
to resurrect the kinds of conditions they enjoyed before unionization
and government regulation began to cut into their profits. A major
example is the meatpacking industry, which closed down unionized
plants in major urban areas to relocate in the rural Midwest. As
these jobs became more unattractive—because they were relocated
to areas where workers did not want to move and because they
downgraded working conditions and pay—the plants too began to
recruit heavily among undocumented immigrants.
Many of these in-sourced jobs differ from agricultural work
because they are year-round instead of seasonal. Their rise coincides
with a growing long-term, not seasonal migration of undocumented
workers and a growing shift from the historic seasonal migration
areas of California and the Southwest into the Midwest and
especially the South. Despite poor wages and working conditions,
many immigrants consider these jobs a step up from agriculture.15
Another type of in-sourcing has occurred in the construction
industry, which employs almost one in five undocumented
immigrants—about a million in the first decade of the twenty-first
century.16 During the long construction boom between 1970 and
2006, total employment more than doubled to 7.7 million before
declining sharply in the housing-led recession.17 The thriving
construction industry in urban centers like Nevada and post-Katrina
New Orleans attracted large numbers of undocumented immigrants.
Third, new job categories in the service sector have emerged in
recent decades. Fast-food service, newspaper delivery, and

landscaping are three areas with exploding demand for low-paid,
contingent workers. Changing lifestyles including increased pressure
on the middle class, rising expectations for consumption, and the
entry of women into the workforce have created whole new sectors
of the economy that have relied heavily on undocumented workers.
Steve Striffler notes, “Latinos are becoming virtually synonymous
with food preparation and cleanup in our nation’s restaurants. To
find a meal that has not at some point passed through the hands of
Mexican immigrants is a difficult task.”18 Chicken, for example,
boomed in popularity in the 1980s and ’90s, as it was transformed
from a low-profit farm product that was generally sold whole or in
parts to a highly processed—and highly profitable—manufactured
commodity in forms like nuggets and fingers. And who does the
processing in the new plants that have created our contemporary
incarnation of chicken? In large numbers, and across the country, it
is Mexican and Central American workers, many of them
undocumented.
AGRICULTURE
As fruit and vegetable agriculture spread in California at the end of
the nineteenth century, farmers sought a labor force that would be
as tractable and exploitable as African slaves had been in the South,
or even better, one that would be there only when needed for the
labor-intensive seasons. “A California farm spokesman in 1872
observed that hiring seasonal Chinese workers who housed
themselves and then ‘melted away’ when they were not needed
made them ‘more efficient . . . than negro labor in the South
[because] it [Chinese labor] is only employed when actually needed,
and is, therefore, less expensive’ than slavery.”19
When the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 eliminated that option a
decade later, agriculturalists turned to Mexicans. Seasonal farm
labor increased rapidly over the course of the century as farming
centralized. Worker mobility, writes Don Mitchell, was built into the
system. He quotes Harry Drobish of the California Relief
Administration, who wrote in 1935 that “the nature of crop

plantings . . . compels labor mobility.”20 However, as Mitchell
argues, Drobish attributed to “nature” what was actually a result of
economic structure. Human decisions and policies, not nature,
underlay the development of California’s agricultural system.21
A report to Truman’s Commission on Migratory Labor in 1951
noted the shift away from small farms relying on family labor and
the rapid growth of large farms making heavy use of migrant labor.
Earlier, most farms used no hired workers or one or two permanent
employees. By 1951, more and more were using large numbers of
seasonal workers.22
American workers didn’t want these jobs. As the commission
reported, “The American farm worker is still legally and morally
responsible to feed his family every day.” With seasonal work, “it is
almost impossible for him to meet American standards of life.”23 But
employers had little use for permanent workers: “When the work is
done, neither the farmer nor the community wants the wetback
around.”24 Furthermore, agricultural employers preferred a kind of
“feudal” relationship that they could only enjoy with migrants. They
“do not care for workers who may voice complaints in regard to
working conditions, housing, or sanitary facilities. They want only
those people who will go quietly about their work and make no
comments or objections. They want the Mexican worker who has
just come across the border and is strange to our language and ways
of life. They find that the Mexican who has been in this country for
some time and become acquainted with our free customs is no
longer suited to the economic and social status of a stoop laborer.”25
The Bracero Program, starting in 1942, was a building block in
the establishment of the California agricultural system based on a
highly exploitative labor process.26 Migratory labor was “the
essential labor force” at the basis of this system.27 And not only
migratory labor: frequently and cyclically, these migratory workers
were undocumented. As geographer Don Mitchell shows, the
existence of a large pool of “officially invisible” undocumented
workers was crucial to the functioning of the Bracero Program and
tacitly acknowledged by those administering and benefiting from it.

Farmers could request Bracero contract workers even as they
enjoyed a surplus of available (but officially invisible)
undocumented migrants. This permanently renewed oversupply of
labor “was not a privilege big California growers wanted to
relinquish lightly.”28
As Mitchell illustrates, there was never a labor shortage in
California agriculture. California agribusiness depended on workers
who were cheap, temporary, and exploitable, and on government
policies that ensured their continued access to these workers both as
braceros and as undocumented migrants.29
“For growers, a productive, living landscape required that
workers become more and more mere vessels of labor power . . .
[and] less and less living, breathing people.”30 The Bracero system
contributed simultaneously to “the destabilization of working
people” and “the stabilization of the profitable landscape: it saved
the crops—precisely because it destroyed lives.”31 As geographer
Richard Walker points out, the enormous prosperity of California’s
agriculture should—or at least could—have improved the lives of
workers as well. It didn’t. “Low-wage labor has been systematically
built into labor relations and the reproduction of capital. . . . The
low wages of farm labor are an important factor in the continuing
profitability of California agribusiness.”32
With the end of the Bracero Program in 1964, undocumented
workers came to the fore as the migrant agricultural labor force. The
program was phased out gradually between 1965 and 1967, so that
it ended completely just as the limit of 120,000 immigrants per year
from the Western Hemisphere—the first numerical limit ever—went
into effect.33 As described in chapter 2, by 1965 the program was no
longer necessary because the flow of undocumented workers was
large enough to fulfill the needs of agribusiness.34 Seasonal
migration continued unabated, except that now even former
braceros migrated without documents.35 Some scholars termed the
post-1965 system of undocumented migration a “de facto guestworker program.”36

The special provisions for farm workers in the Immigration
Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 highlighted the special need
for undocumented—“illegal”—workers in agriculture. To apply for
legal status, most migrants (mostly Mexicans) had to prove that they
had been in the United States continuously since 1982. This
provision rested on the same rationale that previous legalizations (of
Europeans) had relied upon: that length of residence could outweigh
technical irregularities in means of arrival and justify legalization.
However, the provisions for agricultural workers were different:
instead of requiring the four years of continuous residence, the act
offered legal status to migrant farm workers who had simply been
employed in agriculture for at least ninety days during the 1985–
1986 season. (Or, as shown earlier, who could provide false
documents stating that this was the case.) The law made this
exception precisely because it acknowledged agriculture’s reliance
on these migrant workers.
The employer sanctions provision of IRCA contributed to a shift
away from direct employment and to the use of Farm Labor
Contractors. The use of FLCs increased from about one-third of
farms hiring migrant labor in the mid-1980s to over half in the early
1990s.37 This system allowed employers to evade legal
responsibility for the workers they relied on. As Philip Martin
concludes, “FLCs are practically a proxy for the employment of
undocumented workers and egregious or subtle violations of labor
laws.”38 He noted that while the US manufacturing sector shrank in
the 1980s, the agricultural sector expanded, as farmers continued to
be confident of their ability to rely on low-wage labor. Immigrant
workers earning below poverty-level wages subsidized the
expansion of an agribusiness model that increased poverty at the
same time that it increased profits.39
The IRCA contributed to the growth of the FLC system in three
ways. Employer sanctions encouraged farmers to seek third parties
to take the risks of employing laborers. Many former migrant
workers, now legalized under the SAW Program, took advantage of
their new status to become FLCs. Finally, the rise of the FLC system

coincided with the shift from Mexico’s traditional sending regions to
new, indigenous areas in southern Mexico and Guatemala, in which
the FLCs served as important recruiters and intermediaries.40
A temporary labor force that will simply move on when the work
dwindles at the end of the season may seem ideal from an
employer’s perspective. For the workers, though, such a life is
characterized by poverty, uncertainty, and long periods of
unemployment. The Economist in 2010 noted the parallels between
today’s Mexican migrants and the desperate “Okies” who migrated
during the Depression in their struggle to find work, comparing a
contemporary Mexican migrant family, the Vegas, to the Joads in
John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath:
Often they take the same roads on which the “Okies” travelled
en masse in the 1930s as they fled the depressed dust bowl of
Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas to seek a living in California.
These Okies are forever etched into America’s psyche. . . .
Joads then and Vegas now are pushed by the same need,
pulled by the same promise. Now as then, there is no clearing
house for jobs in the fields, so the migrants follow tips and
rumours. Often, like the Joads, they end up in the right places
at the wrong times. Felix Vega and three of his group,
including his wife, were dropped off in Oxnard, famous for its
strawberries. But they arrived out of season, so they slept on
the streets, then in a doghouse, then in somebody’s car. For
two months they did not bathe and barely ate. Finally, they
found jobs picking strawberries and made their first money in
America.41
In the summer of 2010, the United Farm Workers decided to
confront the myth that “they [immigrants] take our jobs” directly.
The union organized a campaign called “Take Our Jobs,” inviting
citizens and green-card holders to apply for agricultural work. The
campaign got an extra publicity boost when comedian Stephen
Colbert took up the challenge and then testified to Congress about
the experience. Three months into the campaign, the union

announced that its website, takeourjobs.org, had been visited by 3
million people; 8,600 had expressed an interest in a job in
agriculture, but only 7 had actually followed through. “These
numbers demonstrate that there are more politicians and fingerpointers interested in blaming undocumented farm workers for
America’s unemployment crisis than there are unemployed
Americans who are willing to harvest and cultivate America’s food,”
the Farm Workers concluded.42
In 2010 the US Department of Agriculture published an analysis
of the probable impact of increased immigration enforcement on the
US agricultural sector. The report cited the common figure that over
half of the agricultural labor force consisted of undocumented
Mexican workers.43 A reduction in undocumented migrant labor
would lead to rising labor costs, the report concluded, and different
scenarios, depending on the characteristics of the crop. Where the
potential
existed,
mechanization
would
spread.
Where
mechanization was not an option, farmers would face market loss
due to higher costs. Finally, new research in mechanization and
rising consumer prices would likely result. It is notable that in no
case did the report foresee improved working conditions or rising
employment of domestic workers in agriculture.44
“The US fruit and vegetable industry competes in a global
economy with producers from other countries who often have much
lower wages. With increasing trade, competitive pressures are
greater than ever. In summer 2009, the Federal minimum wage was
$7.25 per hour and the minimum wage in California was $8.00 per
hour, while the minimum wage in Mexico ranged from $3.49 to
$4.16 per day, depending on the region,” the report explained.45 It’s
no surprise that so many of the fruits and vegetables we find in the
supermarket are labeled “Product of Mexico.”
Labor’s share made up 42 percent of the variable production
costs for fruit and vegetable farms, and labor is the “single largest
input cost” for many crops. Moreover, said the USDA report, “most
[farm workers] will move on to nonagricultural employment within
a decade of beginning to work in the fields.”46 Thus, agribusiness

interests see a continuing supply of (undocumented) migrant
workers as essential to their continued production and have lobbied
heavily for a century to ensure that this supply continues to be
available to them. As another USDA report put it bluntly: “The
supply of farmworkers for the US produce industry depends on a
constant influx of new, foreign-born labor attracted by wages above
those in the workers’ countries of origin, primarily Mexico.
Immigration policy helps to determine whether the produce
industry’s labor force will be authorized or unauthorized.”47
The State of Kansas sought in 2012 to develop a system of its
own to legalize undocumented farm workers.48 Georgia’s farmers
panicked in the summer of 2011, when a new law made it a felony
for an undocumented person to apply for work. The Georgia
Department of Agriculture wrote that “[n]on-resident immigrant
laborers, those of legal and illegal status, harvest crops, milk cows,
gin cotton and maintain landscapes. Georgia farmers and
agribusiness employers widely attribute the need for these workers
due to the fact that local citizens do not generally possess or care to
develop the specialized skills associated with agriculture and,
further do not regularly demonstrate the work ethic necessary to
meet the productivity requirements of the farm business.”49 A
majority of Georgia farm employers hired laborers for a limited
period of one to three months, another reason that citizen workers
are reluctant to take these jobs.50
One season after the passage of Georgia’s new law, 26 percent of
farmers answered that they had lost income because of the lack of
available labor for their farms. For some specialty crops like laborintensive fruits and vegetables (blueberries, cabbage, cantaloupe,
cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, squash, tobacco, and watermelon),
over 50 percent were in that situation.51 Fifty-six percent said they
had trouble finding qualified workers.52 “A major response theme
for this question was that the work is too physically demanding and
difficult for US citizens (non-immigrants). Respondents believe that
only immigrant workers are willing to do the tasks needed in their
operations.”53

Productivity was also an issue. “Producers expressed great
concern with the quality of work from domestic workers.”
According to data provided by one onion producer, “A migrant
worker was twice as productive as a non-migrant worker in planting
Vidalia onions.”54 As one Georgia farmer remarked, “American
workers are not interested in getting dirty, bloody, sweaty, working
weekends & holidays, getting to work at 4 a.m. 2 mornings a week
& at 6 a.m. 5 mornings a week.”55
Experiments with criminal offenders who are out on probation—
and required to work as a condition of their probation—backed up
the farmer’s opinion. One crew leader “put the probationers to the
test . . . assigning them to fill one truck and a Latino crew to a
second truck. The Latinos picked six truckloads of cucumbers
compared to one truckload and four bins for the probationers. ‘It’s
not going to work,’ [the crew leader] said. ‘No way. If I’m going to
depend on the probation people, I’m never going to get the crops
up.’”56
As Philip Martin explains, most workers won’t spend more than
ten years working in agriculture. “As it is currently structured, fruit
and vegetable agriculture requires a constant inflow of workers from
abroad who are willing to accept seasonal farm jobs.”57 Farm labor
is so marginal, strenuous, and low paid, that if workers achieve legal
status, they quickly move into other sectors. Thus “farmers and their
political allies . . . oppose simply legalizing unauthorized workers,
which would enable them to get nonfarm jobs. Instead, farmers
agree to legalization only in exchange for large guest-worker
programs that give employers considerable control of foreign
workers.”58
Sixty years ago the folk singer–songwriter Woody Guthrie asked
somewhat rhetorically, “Is this the best way we can grow our big
orchards? Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?” In the
ensuing half-century, the United States has only deepened its
“modern agricultural dilemma.” It has devised a vast and
multifaceted agricultural system that depends upon desperate
workers for its survival. True, for many Mexicans—from the Bracero

days to the present—low-wage, temporary, migrant labor in the
United States offers a viable or even hopeful alternative to poverty
at home. But this merely means that the US agricultural system
depends upon the existence of a lot of extremely poor people in
Mexico.59
While modern large-scale agricultural systems produce vast
amounts of food, they have also created large-scale problems: “high
capital costs; environmental deterioration of farmland through
erosion, salinization, compaction, and chemical overload; pesticide
and chemical fertilizer pollution of lakes, streams, and groundwater;
unhealthy working conditions for farm workers, farmers, and farm
families; dependence on an extremely narrow and destabilizing
genetic base in major crops; dependence on nonrenewable mineral
and energy resources; the destruction of rural communities; and the
increasingly concentrated control of the nation’s food supply.”60
Other critiques examine the consumption side: the increasing
reliance on overprocessed, high-sugar, and fatty foods, fast food and
junk food, and the lifestyle diseases like heart disease and diabetes
that have resulted.61
As we in the United States confront the problems in our
agricultural and food production system, the problem of labor
scarcity and continued reliance on impoverished, undocumented
workers has to be central to the discussion. Given the way the
agricultural system currently works, farm labor is so precarious and
so harsh that only displaced migrants, the majority of them
rendered illegal by US laws, are willing and able to carry it out.
Paradoxically, most of these migrants were in fact displaced from
centuries-old systems of subsistence agriculture in Mexico by
precisely the same agricultural modernization that now demands
their labor elsewhere. A truly comprehensive approach to
immigration reform would look at these interlocking economic and
structural systems, not merely make more narrow changes in
immigration law.
We must recognize the basic irrationality, immorality, and
unsustainability of the food production system. Farmers

overwhelmingly oppose the harsh state-level immigration laws that
make it more difficult for them to find the seasonal workers they
need. In the short term, simply making it legal for immigrants to
work in agriculture would address the needs of both farmers and
immigrant farm workers who are undocumented. The larger
problems await a longer-term and more profound reform of the
global agricultural system. We can begin by acknowledging that our
access to relatively cheap and abundant food in the United States
exists because of the hard labor of poor Mexicans, in their country
and in our own.

CHAPTER 6

Working (Part 2)
If the US agricultural system has relied on Mexican labor as it
developed over many decades, meat processing and construction are
two industries that shifted to heavy use of Mexican and Central
American—and, in particular, undocumented—immigrants at the
end of the twentieth century. This shift coincided with the trend of
outsourcing, when manufacturing plants began to shift their laborintensive production abroad. Manufacturing employment declined
from a high of 20 million in 1979 to 11 million in 2012.1
Meatpacking and construction couldn’t exactly be moved abroad.
But meatpacking could be moved out of heavily unionized urban
centers like Chicago into the rural Midwest. Construction boomed in
new regions, with employment doubling between 1970 and 2006 to
a high of 7.7 million.2 Both industries increasingly employed
immigrant, and undocumented, workers.
CONSTRUCTION
While the manufacturing sector was shrinking in the last decades of
the twentieth century, construction was expanding. But this industry
was also changing profoundly. Unionization plummeted, from 40
percent in the 1970s to only 14 percent in 2011. Unions lost ground
especially in the high-growth area of residential construction, which
was being buoyed by low interest rates and subprime loans through
the first decade of the new century. But as employment rose,
working conditions and wages deteriorated. Immigrants and
especially undocumented workers increased their presence in the
workforce.3 The low wages of undocumented workers helped
contribute to the housing bubble by making building costs
artificially cheap.4
In Las Vegas, the population doubled to almost 2 million between
1990 and 2007, and the share of immigrants in the city’s population
also doubled during the same time span from 9 percent to 19
percent. Many of the newcomers worked in hotel construction and

tourism-related services in the booming city: half of the state’s
construction workers were Latino immigrants. By 2008, Nevada had
the largest percentage of undocumented workers of any state, 12
percent.5
Houston’s 1970s oil boom likewise spurred a jump in
construction. “The record-breaking construction of office buildings,
shopping centers, storage facilities, apartment projects, and
suburban homes in the 1970s and early 1980s created an insatiable
demand for Mexican immigrant labor. Undocumented workers from
rural and urban Mexico became a preferred labor force, especially
among construction employers who paid low wages and offered
poor working conditions.”6 The Greater Houston Partnership
estimated that 14 percent of Houston’s construction workforce was
undocumented in 2008, more than any other job category.7
In Texas as a whole, one in thirteen workers—about a million
total—labored in the construction industry as of 2013. Half of them
are undocumented. A study by the Workers Defense Project in
Austin showed that 41 percent of Texas construction workers are
subject to payroll fraud, including being illegally classified as
independent contractors instead of employees. Employers use this
method to evade their legal responsibilities for payroll taxes,
minimum wages, working conditions, and benefits. Working
conditions are so dangerous that one in five construction workers in
the state will require hospitalization for job-related injuries. “More
construction workers die in Texas than in any other state,” the study
discovered.8
In New Orleans, only days after Hurricane Katrina hit, the federal
government waived employer sanctions provisions, allowing
employers to hire workers without documents. Soon after, it waived
prevailing federal wage standard requirements for contractors
working on federally funded reconstruction projects. These
exemptions set the stage for an influx of low-paid, undocumented
workers.9 US census figures showed that some one hundred
thousand Hispanics moved into the Gulf Coast after Katrina.
Hispanics made up half of the labor force working in reconstruction,

and half were undocumented. Undocumented workers formed “the
backbone of post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction,” reported USA
Today.10 Curiously, while the workers remained undocumented, it
was ostensibly not illegal for them to work, at least during the first
month and a half, because of the employer sanctions waiver.
Overall, undocumented workers made up a quarter of the
workforce in New Orleans in the months following the hurricane.11
Almost 90 percent were already in the United States and moved to
New Orleans from other areas, primarily Texas (41 percent) and, to
a lesser extent, Florida (10 percent).12 Unsurprisingly,
undocumented workers faced lower wages and poorer working and
living conditions than those with documents.
When Hurricane Ike hit southeastern Texas in 2008,
undocumented immigrants performed a significant portion of the
cleanup work. “All across southeast Texas, roofs need repair, debris
must be discarded and towns hope to rebuild. Hurricane Ike’s
destruction is sparking one of the largest rebuilding efforts the state
has seen in decades, but at the same time is highlighting a thorny
facet of the region’s labor force: A lot of the recovery work will be
done by illegal immigrants,” reported the Houston Chronicle.13
When the housing boom went bust after 2008, strangely,
statistics showed that construction wages began to rise. What was
actually happening was that the lower-paid newcomers were the
first to lose their jobs, so that the rise in wages was more apparent
than real. Individual workers weren’t receiving better wages; there
were just fewer construction workers employed overall.14
MEATPACKING
Like construction, meatpacking is an industry that is very difficult to
outsource. In some ways, the work process in meatpacking more
resembles that of other large manufacturing plants than it does
construction, in which most workers are employed by small
companies and contractors. But while industries like textiles or
electronics can transport the raw materials and the finished
products over long distances to save on the costs of production, this

strategy is not practical for dealing with a perishable, bulky, and
sometimes cantankerous product. So like construction, meatpacking
has relied on bringing immigrant workers to the point of
production, rather than sending production to countries where it is
cheaper.
Lance Compa summarizes how in-sourcing happened in
Nebraska, in a process repeated throughout the Midwest:
From its founding as a territory in 1854 until the late
twentieth century, Nebraska was mostly populated by white
Americans of European origin, joined by a minority of
African-Americans. Omaha was always an important
meatpacking center because of its proximity to livestock and
feedlots. Immigrant workers from southern and eastern
Europe made up most of the meatpacking labor force in the
early twentieth century. In the 1940s and ’50s, the children of
these immigrants, along with African-American coworkers in
key roles, formed strong local unions of the United
Packinghouse Workers. As happened in the industry generally,
in the 1980s and 1990s, many meatpacking businesses closed
plants that provided good wages and benefits. Following
closures, company owners often relocated plants to rural
areas. In Omaha, some companies later reopened closed
factories employing low wage, new immigrant workforces
without trade union representation.15
Wages in meatpacking fell 45 percent between 1980 and 2007.
The downgrading of meatpacking jobs proved “devastating to the
standard of living for workers in an industry that once sustained a
blue-collar middle class.”16 As both wages and working conditions
deteriorated, immigrant workers became the mainstay of the labor
force. By the late 1990s, fully a quarter of meatpacking workers
were estimated to be undocumented. 17
In the climate of heightened calls for immigration enforcement,
the meatpacking industry attracted attention. In 1999, the INS
launched Operation Vanguard in Nebraska, subpoenaing the

employment records of every meatpacker in the state. After
reviewing all 24,000 employee records received, the agency
identified 4,700 cases in which the employee’s legal status was in
doubt. It presented employers with the list and required all of the
“suspects” to appear for interviews with the agency. It seemed clear
to the meatpackers that “INS’s intention was not to apprehend
potentially unauthorized employees, but to ‘chase off’ those workers
who were present in illegal status.”18
In chasing them off, the operation succeeded. Only one thousand
of the workers dared to appear for their interviews. The others
simply left their jobs. Overnight, the state’s meatpacking industry
lost 13 percent of its workforce. Meanwhile, of the one thousand
interviewed, thirty-four were determined to be unauthorized to
work and were arrested and deported. “Meatpacking company
officials . . . believe that a substantial number of these employees
[who disappeared] were authorized to work but chose not to appear
because of the intimidation inherent in any such interview (for
example, from questions such as ‘are you or any members of your
family not authorized to be present in the United States?’).” The
Nebraska Cattlemen’s Association estimated that its members lost $5
million and the state economy as a whole lost $20 million as the
result of the operation.19
Operation Vanguard ended in 2000, but in 2006 a new
enforcement effort began, focused on workplace raids. On December
12, 2006, ICE agents descended on six Swift meatpacking plants in
Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado, and Utah, arresting
thirteen hundred of the company’s seven thousand day-shift
workers. Swift was also part of the industry pattern of shifting from
urban to rural, and employing large numbers of new Latin American
immigrants, many of them undocumented. In several Swift plants,
researchers drew a direct connection to the Bracero Program. Two
small communities in the Mexican states of Michoacán, Villachuato
and La Huacana, which had begun to send recruits northward as
braceros, had now become major sources of migrants to Swift
plants. These workers were later joined by Central Americans. In

Swift’s Cactus, Texas, plant, most of the workers were Maya Quiche
Guatemalans, many of them undocumented.20
In an eerie replay of previous roundups and deportations of
Mexicans like Operation Wetback, ICE agents relied on appearance
to determine who to detain. One American citizen of Mexican origin
at Swift’s Nebraska plant recounted that “when they said all the US
citizens come over to this place, I went up there and I stood right by
my boss. My boss showed his driver’s license and then he was free
to go. I showed my driver’s license and my voting registration card
and that was not enough. He [the ICE agent] said, no, you need
either your passport or citizenship certificate.”21 Most of those
arrested in the raids were charged not with the civil violation of
unauthorized presence in the country, but with criminal charges of
fraudulent use of Social Security numbers and/or identity theft.
The raids affected more than just those arrested, as family
members and others were afraid to show up to work in the
aftermath. The Center for Immigration Studies looked at what
happened in the devastated plants over the following months. All
managed to replace the hundreds of workers who were arrested, but
none improved working conditions or wages, and none shifted back
to employing US citizens. The companies scoured the United States
for workers willing to accept the jobs, and most of the lost workers
were eventually replaced by immigrants from Burma and different
parts of Africa who held refugee status and thus had legal
authorization to work.22
THE POSTVILLE RAID
Another devastating raid took place at the Agriprocessors plant in
Postville, Iowa, in May 2008. Agriprocessors represented a cross
between in-sourcing and a new industry. Although meatpacking in
general was an old industry that was moving into new rural areas,
kosher processing had been a local, small-scale industry before the
late twentieth century. “In the 1980s, before the Postville plant had
opened, almost all fresh kosher meat had been sold through local
butchers. It came in raw quarters from slaughterhouses that were

rented out by rabbis, and it rarely made it beyond major cities on
the coasts.” 23
The Rubashkin family changed all that. Locating their new plant
in the small town of Postville, Iowa, they proposed to turn kosher
meat into a nationally available, mass-produced product. “The
Rubashkins created a world in which it was possible to buy fresh
kosher beef and poultry in ordinary supermarkets across the
country, even in places that had few Jews. . . . The changes brought
about by the Rubashkins did something more than expand the reach
of kosher meat. They brought an entirely new customer base to
kosher food: the secular Jews and even non-Jews who never would
have stopped at a butcher shop. The expansion also allowed
Orthodox communities in places that had never had them.”24
Agriprocessors also differed from other meatpackers in choosing
the tiny town of Postville as its location. Most meatpackers moved
to medium-sized towns of thirty thousand to sixty thousand when
they left the urban centers. Postville, with a population of fourteen
hundred, was “a town with no stoplights, no fast-food restaurants
and a weekly newspaper that for years featured the ‘Yard of the
Week.’”25 Most of the workers were recruited from two small
villages in Guatemala. Over 75 percent of the workers were
undocumented, and some were minors.26 Working conditions at the
plant were abysmal.
“One of those workers—a woman who agreed to be identified by
the pseudonym Juana—came to this rural corner of Iowa a year ago
from Guatemala,” said one newspaper account. Since then, she has
worked 10-to-12-hour night shifts, six nights a week. Her cutting
hand is swollen and deformed, but she has no health insurance to
have it checked. She works for wages, starting at $6.25 an hour and
stopping at $7, that several industry experts described as the lowest
of any slaughterhouse in the nation.”27
In May 2008, ICE agents descended on the plant and arrested 389
of its 900 workers, most of them Guatemalan. As their lengthy saga
of incarceration and deportation began, the rest of the town’s
immigrant population panicked. “Within weeks, roughly 1,000

Mexican and Guatemalan residents—about a third of the town—
vanished. It was as if a natural disaster had swept through, leaving
no physical evidence of destruction, just silence behind it.”28
The Agriprocessors raid in May 2008 was “the largest single-site
operation of its kind in American history.”29 Because one of the
court interpreters, Erik Camayd-Freixas, wrote a detailed protest
about the irregularity of the procedures, which circulated widely on
the Internet and was later submitted to Congress, the public
obtained access to an unusually complete picture of the process.
According to Camayd-Freixas’s account, “The arrest, prosecution,
and conviction of 297 undocumented workers from Postville was a
process marred by irregularities at every step of the way.” The
government charged the workers en masse, and without any
evidence whatsoever, of the criminal charge of “aggravated identity
theft.” Prosecutors then coerced them into a plea bargain for a lesser
but still criminal charge of misuse of a Social Security number.30
The Guatemalan workers knew that they were in the country
without legal permission. But that’s a civil violation, not a crime.
The only punishment should have been removal. Through their own
networks, most of the undocumented immigrants know that they
have few rights in the immigration court system. Most of them had
no idea what the criminal charges meant, and when pressured to
accept a plea bargain, most of them did so. Many acquiesced out of
desperation, since as the sole support for their families, they could
not afford to remain in detention awaiting trial. They believed they
would quickly be deported. Instead, they had signed up for a fivemonth prison sentence.
Camayd-Freixas described the heart-wrenching scenes as courtappointed lawyers tried to explain the criminal charges and advise
those arrested. One conversation illustrates the utter disconnect
between the world of the workers and the legal system they were
caught in.
The client, a Guatemalan peasant afraid for his family, spent
most of that time weeping at our table, in a corner of the
crowded jailhouse visiting room. How did he come here from

Guatemala? “I walked.” What? “I walked for a month and ten
days until I crossed the river. . . . I just wanted to work a year
or two, save, and then go back to my family, but it was not to
be. . . . The Good Lord knows I was just working and not
doing anyone any harm.” This man, like many others, was in
fact not guilty. “Knowingly” and “intent” are necessary
elements of the [criminal] charges, but most of the clients we
interviewed did not even know what a Social Security number
was or what purpose it served. This worker simply had the
papers filled out for him at the plant, since he could not read
or write Spanish, let alone English. But the lawyer still had to
advise him that pleading guilty was in his best interest. He
was unable to make a decision. “You all do and undo,” he
said. “So you can do whatever you want with me.” To him we
were part of the system keeping him from being deported
back to his country, where his children, wife, mother, and
sister depended on him. He was their sole support and did not
know how they were going to make it with him in jail for 5
months. None of the “options” really mattered to him. Caught
between despair and hopelessness, he just wept. He had failed
his family, and was devastated. I went for some napkins, but
he refused them. I offered him a cup of soda, which he
superstitiously declined, saying it could be “poisoned.” His
Native American spirit was broken and he could no longer
think. He stared for a while at the signature page pretending
to read it, although I knew he was actually praying for
guidance and protection. Before he signed with a scribble, he
said: “God knows you are just doing your job to support your
families, and that job is to keep me from supporting mine.”31
Like Swift, Agriprocessors looked to other sources of
marginalized, immigrant workers in the wake of the raid. “In one of
its most desperate moves, Agri recruited 170 people from the
Micronesian island of Palau—whose status as a former US
protectorate means its citizens can work legally in the United States.
In September 2008, the Palauans traveled 72 hours and 8,000 miles

on planes and buses before arriving in Postville with little more than
flip-flops and brightly colored shorts and tops.”32
Six months later, the plant closed. It was later sold and reopened,
and like other plants in the industry, implemented the E-Verify
system. However, as a journalist found in 2011,
few Iowan-born locals work there. Ridding this small
community of its illegal workforce, far from freeing up jobs
for American-born citizens, has resulted in closed businesses
and fewer opportunities. Even nearly four years later, many
homes still remain empty, and taxable retail sales are about
40 percent lower than they were in 2008.
In order to staff its still low-paying jobs with legal
immigrants, the new owner of the plant has recruited a
hodgepodge of refugees and other immigrants, who often
leave the town as soon as they find better opportunities,
creating a constant churn among the population. The switch
to a legal workforce has made the community feel less stable,
some locals say, and it’s unclear if Postville will again become
a place where immigrants will put down roots, raise children,
and live in relative harmony with their very different
neighbors.33
Years later, a researcher in Guatemala met with families that had
been deported, including sixteen US-born, US citizen children. The
children, Aryah Somers reported, were “growing up in extreme
poverty, with little schooling and scant medical care. . . . The kids
are undernourished and barely literate in either Spanish or English.”
Their parents planned to send them back to the United States once
they are ten or twelve years old and able to travel alone.34
While the Obama administration scaled down the Bush-era policy
of workplace raids, the E-Verify system expanded rapidly. E-Verify
was created in 1997 under the auspices of the 1996 Illegal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and
requires participating employers to check each new hire against a
set of federal databases to ensure that the individual is either a

citizen or an immigrant specifically authorized to work in the
United States. The system was initially voluntary, but in 2007, the
Office of Management and Budget required all federal government
agencies to screen all new hires through the system and, in 2009,
required certain federal contractors and subcontractors to use it for
existing employees as well as new hires. Several states, beginning
with Arizona in 2007, have mandated that all employers in the state
utilize E-Verify.35 Other states have tried to restrict its use.36 S. 744,
the comprehensive immigration reform bill supported by President
Obama and passed by the Senate in June 2013, would make the
system mandatory for all employers nationwide. (As this book goes
to press, the bill seems to have little chance of passing in the House
or becoming law.)
But the experience of the meatpacking industry shows that
eliminating undocumented workers, either through workplace raids
or through the use of E-Verify, has not increased employment
opportunities for citizens. Instead, it has destabilized businesses and
communities, created temporary flows of refugees, and brought
harm to innumerable immigrants, citizens, and businesses with
benefit to none. Many argue against the use of E-Verify because the
GAO found it to be plagued with errors and false alarms, as amply
illustrated by several GAO investigations between 2005 and 2011.37
While it’s quite true that the program has mistakenly ensnared large
numbers of work-authorized immigrants and naturalized citizens,
that is not the only or even the main reason to oppose it. Even if the
program worked perfectly, its impact on individuals, businesses,
communities, and the economy would only be to cause harm.38
NEW JOBS: LANDSCAPING
Other sectors that employ significant numbers of undocumented
workers are the mostly unregulated, small-scale niches in the service
sector like landscaping, nanny services, and newspaper delivery.
The first two are sectors where employment has grown in recent
decades, while in the latter it has shrunk. But all three have been
refuges for undocumented workers, in part because they involve low

pay; insecurity and lack of benefits; difficult hours; and isolated,
heavy, and sometimes dangerous working conditions. These poor
working conditions parallel the working conditions in industries
that have been outsourced (manufacturing) and in-sourced
(meatpacking, construction). The cheap products provided by
outsourcing and in-sourcing, along with the cheap services provided
by these new service industries, have contributed to rising
consumption and illusions of affluence in the United States.
The landscaping industry has grown steadily since the 1970s,
hand in hand with the construction industry. Newly built homes,
businesses, and public buildings created a fresh demand for
landscaping services. Landscaping companies responded to the
increased demand by creating new products and services, which
soon came to be considered essential.39
Two additional, interrelated changes in the past decades have
contributed to the increase in demand for landscaping services.
First, the ranks of the super-rich who hire landscaping companies to
maintain their palatial grounds have increased. Second, middle- and
upper-middle-class suburban families that once might have
maintained their own yards are now too busy and are contracting
out services that they or their children used to provide. As the
industry grew, the new jobs were filled by immigrants, especially
undocumented immigrants.
One of many companies to expand and transform in the new era
belonged to Nikita Floyd. The Washington Post described its
trajectory:
In the early 1990s, Floyd had fewer than a dozen employees,
all of them black. Today, 73 percent of the Washington area’s
landscaping workers are immigrants, along with 51 percent of
office cleaners and 43 percent of construction workers. . . .
Floyd’s 20 wintertime workers are all men from El Salvador,
except for two black women who manage the office. In the
summer, he employs twice as many men, all immigrants.
Floyd’s experience illustrates immigrants’ impact. Once just a
guy with a lawnmower, he runs a business with annual sales

of more than $2.5 million. He credits immigrant employees
for his business’s growth and pays about $10 an hour, with no
work and no pay in inclement weather. It’s grueling labor in
the winter; a man can spend the day stabbing a spade into
frozen dirt or be asked to shimmy up a tree with a chainsaw
in one hand and no netting below.40
Like the farm and meatpacking associations discussed earlier, the
California Landscape Contractors Association is strongly opposed to
the criminalization of immigrant work and implicitly acknowledges
its industry’s reliance on the undocumented. Calling for legalization,
the association notes that “[t]he status quo is untenable, as it puts
employers in a strange ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ situation where they
can never be sure of their workforce.” The industry operates under a
continuous labor shortage, the association explains:
The landscaping industry relies heavily on an immigrant labor
force. Landscaping is physically demanding work. It is
performed in hot, cold, and sometimes rainy weather. Some
landscaping jobs are seasonal. American-born workers
increasingly are not attracted to such jobs. Because
landscaping work involves outdoor manual labor, it is to some
extent young person’s work. Yet America has an aging
workforce. At the same time, the landscape industry is
growing and therefore has a need for more workers, partly
because this same aging population tends to enlarge the
market for landscaping services. Immigrants, who tend to be
young, address this unmet need for younger workers in the
landscape industry.41
NEW JOBS: NANNIES
Landscaping is not the only personal-service job that has
proliferated with the use of undocumented immigrants in recent
decades. A number of high-profile public figures have been
embarrassed when reporters uncovered their use of undocumented
domestic workers. Lawyer Zoe Baird, who had worked for the Carter

administration and the Department of Justice, was withdrawn as
President Bill Clinton’s nominee for attorney general when it was
revealed that she had employed undocumented workers as
chauffeur and nanny. Then Clinton’s second choice, Kimba Wood,
was withdrawn for the same reason.42 When Mitt Romney was
running in the Republican primary in 2007, in large part on an antiimmigrant platform, the Boston Globe published an investigation
showing that undocumented workers maintained the 2.5-acre lot
around his home in Belmont, Massachusetts.43 California Republican
gubernatorial candidate and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman fired
her nanny of nine years during the campaign when she allegedly
first learned that she was undocumented.44 And Bernard Kerik
stepped down from his nomination as chief of the Department of
Homeland Security in 2004 when it was learned that he too had
hired a nanny who lacked documents.45
But not only the super-rich hire nannies, landscapers, and house
cleaners. In 2001, sociologist Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo described
the proliferation of services in the previous twenty years that had
transformed middle-class life in heavily immigrant Los Angeles. At
the time she was writing, Los Angeles was still in the vanguard; a
decade later, what she described had become commonplace
throughout the United States.
She writes:
When you arrive at many a Southern California hotel or
restaurant, you are likely to be first greeted by a Latino car
valet. The janitors, cooks, busboys, painters, carpet cleaners,
and landscape workers who keep the office buildings,
restaurants, and malls running are also likely to be Mexican or
Central American immigrants, as are many of those who work
behind the scenes in dry cleaners, convalescent homes,
hospitals, resorts, and apartment complexes. . . . Only twenty
years ago, these relatively inexpensive consumer services and
products were not nearly as widely available as they are
today. The Los Angeles economy, landscape, and lifestyle

have been transformed in ways that rely on low-wage, Latino
immigrant labor.46
The number of gardeners and domestic workers in Los Angeles
doubled between 1980 and 1990.47
The inexpensive nature of these services—in part because of the
often undocumented immigrant labor that provided them—helped
to sustain an illusion of upward mobility for people in the working
and middle classes.48 This illusion overlays other changes in the US
economy over the past fifty years, as the rapid expansion of the
middle class that began in the post–World War II era slowed and
then reversed in the 1970s, to be replaced by growing economic
inequality. Paradoxically, Hondagneu-Sotelo found that increasing
social inequality led to greater numbers of people employing
domestic help. The middle class works harder to maintain its
standard of living and must increasingly rely on low-cost services
provided by the more impoverished.49 Formerly, domestic workers
were found mostly in the employ of upper-middle-class
suburbanites. By the 1980s, employers came to include “apartment
dwellers with modest incomes, single mothers, college students, and
elderly people living on fixed incomes. They live in tiny bungalows
and condominiums, not just sprawling houses.” Even Latina
domestic workers found themselves employing other immigrant
women to clean, cook, and care for their children, while they
provided those same services to their wealthier clients.50
Tellingly, Los Angeles was the vanguard. In the 1990s, “when
Angelenos, accustomed to employing a full-time nanny/housekeeper
for about $150 or $200 a week, move[d] to Seattle or Durham, they
[were] startled to discover how ‘the cost of living that way’ quickly
escalate[d]. Only then [did] they realize the extent to which their
affluent lifestyle and smoothly running household depended on one
Latina immigrant woman.”51 As the Latino immigrant population
spread from the Southwest to other parts of the country, access to
the services it provided also became more widespread.52

Business Review reported, “[N]annies [are] a growth industry in
slow economy.” With more parents working, and child care
expensive or unavailable, the nanny industry fills the gap.53 The
Arizona Republic reported, “[U]nconventional work schedules,
increased awareness and flexible care options have ignited growth
in the nanny industry. At the same time, parents have a desire for
more personalized care.”54
The New York Times commented on the widespread nature of the
so-called nanny problem with regard to the Zoe Baird case: “As
everyone learned before a conveniently childless candidate ended
the search for an Attorney General, the hiring of illegal caregivers is
an endemic labor practice, among paralegals and secretaries as well
as $250,000-a-year executives, in cities like New York, Los Angeles
or Miami—points of entry to the United States as well as centers of
immigrant population. Cities with a baby sitter or nanny labor force
tend to lack even the fragile, faint day-care networks that exist in
other parts of the country.”55
NEWSPAPER DELIVERY
Newspaper delivery, of course, has been around for a long time. But
today’s newspaper delivery system is something entirely new. No
longer does a neighborhood kid walk or bike through the streets
tossing papers into his neighbors’ yards. Today, 81 percent of paper
deliverers are adults, and a large proportion of them are
undocumented immigrants. A look at the structure of the industry
will help explain why.56
In many areas of the country, newspapers are delivered through a
system of independent contractors—the same system construction
companies use to evade their legal responsibilities as employers. The
newspaper publisher works with a contracting company, which in
turn hires workers who must sign a contract confirming that they
are not employees but independent contractors. In Connecticut, all
fourteen respondents to a survey of newspaper publishers in the
state confirmed that they used this system. 57 Likewise in the Boston

area, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Boston Globe are
all distributed by a single company, which hires contractors to
deliver all three in a given area.
As independent contractors, workers may not receive the
minimum wages and may not be eligible for workers’ compensation
or unemployment benefits. (States and courts have varied as to how
they treat these cases, but newspaper publishers overwhelmingly
insist that their deliverers are contractors, not employees.) In a case
where independent contractors sued and appealed for class status in
a class action suit, the US District Court–Southern District of
California described the job in the following terms:
Plaintiffs deliver the North County Times to the homes of
subscribers. Each morning, the newspaper carriers arrive at
one of several distribution centers in San Diego County. The
carriers arrive at different times. Although they generally
arrive between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m., some arrive earlier or
later. The arrival time varies depending on the day of the
week.
The carriers are contractually obligated to deliver the
assembled newspapers by 6:00 a.m. each weekday and 7:00
a.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Upon arrival, the carriers are responsible for assembling
the newspapers. Some assemble the papers at the distribution
center—those that use the distribution center pay a rental fee
—and others assemble the papers elsewhere. Assembling the
newspapers may involve folding or inserting the following:
newspaper inserts, sections, pre-prints, samples, supplements
and other products at NCT’s direction. The carriers pay for
their own rubber bands and plastic bags used to assemble the
papers. Some carriers buy the rubber bands and bags from
Defendant, and others purchase them elsewhere. The carriers
also pay for their own gas and automobile expenses they incur
delivering the newspapers.58

Contractors sign up to deliver papers 365 days a year, starting no
later than 4 a.m. every day. They cannot miss a day unless they can
arrange for their own replacement, must own a car, and have a
valid driver’s license. They have to maintain and buy gas for the car,
driving hundreds of miles a week. All for less than minimum wage.
During winter weather emergencies, when public transportation is
shut down and the governor of Massachusetts calls a state of
emergency, closing public offices and begging residents to stay at
home and businesses to remain closed until the plows can clear the
streets, independent contractors receive a curt message with their
newspapers. “SNOW IS EXPECTED . . . WE WILL BE WORKING. IC’S
ARE EXPECTED TO DELIVER THEIR ROUTES. PLAN
ACCORDINGLY: BE EARLY; DO NOT ALLOW YOUR CAR TO BE
BLOCKED IN; EXPECT TO HAVE TO SHOVEL OUT.”59
It’s a job, in other words, made for an undocumented immigrant.
CONCLUSION
Overall, the rise in undocumented workers over the past several
decades has gone along with a rise in the invisible, exploited labor
that they perform. The generally unacknowledged work that they do
is a crucial underpinning to the standard of living and consumption
enjoyed by virtually everyone in the United States. But, clearly, an
economic system that keeps a lot of people unemployed and another
group trapped in a legal status that restricts them to the worst kinds
of jobs does not really benefit everyone.
Some have argued that the influx of undocumented workers
depresses the labor market, lowers wages for less educated workers,
and creates more competition for jobs at the lower end of the pay
scale. Labor economist George Borjas has made this argument most
persuasively, and many commentators who argue that we should
restrict immigration base their arguments on his work.60
Other economists, however, have found that the low-wage labor
of undocumented immigrants actually increases the wages and
employment of even low-paid citizen workers. By increasing
productivity, low-paid undocumented workers can increase capital

available for investment, hiring, and wages. Because undocumented
workers add to the population, their consumption stimulates the
economy.61 One recent study tried to document the expected
economic impact of deportation versus legalization of the
undocumented population of Arizona. The study found that
legalization would be far more beneficial and deportation far more
costly for American citizens.
Undocumented immigrants don’t simply “fill” jobs; they
create jobs. Through the work they perform, the money they
spend, and the taxes they pay, undocumented immigrants
sustain the jobs of many other workers in the US economy,
immigrants and native-born alike. Were undocumented
immigrants to suddenly vanish, the jobs of many Americans
would vanish as well. In contrast, were undocumented
immigrants to acquire legal status, their wages and
productivity would increase, they would spend more in our
economy and pay more in taxes, and new jobs would be
created.62
Two recent films, one a feature film and one a documentary,
demonstrate this effect. A Day without a Mexican imagines that
California awakens one morning to a strange fog, which has caused
everyone of Mexican origin to vanish. Non-Mexicans stumble
through their lives trying to fill in the gaps and realizing along the
way how utterly dependent their economy and daily lives are on
Mexican immigrants. In a moving scene at the end, after the fog lifts
and the Mexicans reappear, the Border Patrol comes across a group
in the wilderness at night. Flashing their lights, a patrolman asks,
“Are you guys Mexican?” When the migrants confirm, the patrollers
break into welcoming applause.
The film 9500 Liberty looks at a case in which the fantasy of A
Day without a Mexican became a reality. In Prince William County,
Virginia, a local ordinance in 2007 required police to stop and
question anyone they suspected of being undocumented. Although
the ordinance was eventually repealed, the acrimonious anti-

immigrant mobilization surrounding it as well as fear of its
implementation caused many immigrants to leave. As businesses
closed, schools and neighborhoods emptied, and the housing market
collapsed, the white citizen majority in the county became more
dubious about the supposed benefits of expelling the undocumented.
Although the current system benefits many people in the United
States, we must also recognize its fundamental injustice and think
seriously about how it works and what steps could make it more
just. If immigrants are being exploited by the current system, and if
undocumentedness is one of the concepts that sustains inequality
and unjust treatment, then we need to question undocumentedness
itself.
The system benefits most Americans materially, given that
Americans—even poor Americans—consume an extraordinary
proportion of the planet’s resources. Only 4 percent of the world’s
children are American, but they consume 40 percent of the world’s
toys.63 Despite the fact that many Americans are unemployed, in
debt, and struggle to pay for health care and put food on their
plates, they still consume more than their share. They do so because of
the economic chain that links them to workers who are legally
marginalized, either because they work in other countries or
because they work illegally inside the United States.
Undocumentedness has everything to do with work and the
economy. It is a key component of the late-twentieth-century global
system. Every so-called industrialized country—or more accurately,
deindustrializing country—relies on the labor of workers who are
legally excluded to maintain its high levels of consumption. Like the
United States, these countries rely on the legal conveniences of
borders, countries, and citizenship to impose different rules for
different people and maintain a legally excluded working class.
This system also creates fantastic profits for the few. But a fairer
economic system would distribute the planet’s resources more
equally. If we can understand undocumentedness as a mechanism
for creating and perpetuating economic inequality, it will be easier
for us to reject it outright.

CHAPTER 7

Children and Families
Although the need to work—and the availability of work—has
played a central role in the rise of both immigration and
undocumentedness in the past half-century, every worker is also a
human being. Like everyone else, undocumented workers have
children and families. The undocumented population and those
personally affected through family relations by undocumentedness
include much more than the single, working-age male. As border
enforcement has increased over the past two decades and the
circular, seasonal migration of workers has shifted to long-term
family settlement, more and more children have been affected by
issues of status.
Some children are undocumented themselves, while others live in
mixed-status families, with one or both parents, siblings, or other
relatives who are undocumented. Still others have temporary and
unstable statuses. Some children, whether citizens or undocumented
themselves, lose parents or other family members to deportation,
while others cross the border illegally to reunite with parents they
had lost to migration. Virtually all parents who come to the United
States do so because they want better lives for their children; the US
law claims to protect the best interests of children. But immigration
law makes these children’s lives tenuous and unpredictable.
About 17 percent of all Hispanics and 22 percent of all Hispanic
youth ages sixteen to twenty-five are unauthorized immigrants,
according to Pew Hispanic Center estimates in 2009. These
percentages refer to all Hispanics, whether native-born or
immigrant. Among immigrants, the numbers are, of course, much
higher. Some 41 percent of all foreign-born Hispanics and 58
percent of foreign-born Hispanic youths are estimated to be
unauthorized immigrants.1

Other youth fall into in-between categories, like asylum
applicants or those who have received Temporary Protected Status,
wherein their presence is currently legal, but in an unstable status
that could easily be revoked—what Cecilia Menjívar termed “liminal
legality.”2 President Obama’s DACA program of 2012 created
another temporary status, allowing certain undocumented youth a
two-year respite from illegality, but with no guarantee of what
would occur at the end of the two years. While immensely popular
among Latinos (Romney called it a “big gift” to Hispanic voters),
DACA did little to address the underlying problem of
undocumentedness.3
The immigration system in general is designed to deprive
undocumented adults of most rights, but, in some cases, laws
designed to protect children transcend status and are applied
equally to all children. Laws and policies thus struggle between two
contradictory aims: to punish violations of immigration status or to
protect the rights of children and their need to be with their parents.
In the case of US citizen children of undocumented parents, the goal
of keeping children together with their parents can contradict the
goal of removing the parent, and the goal of promoting the best
interests of the children conflicts with the laws that punish their
parents for their status. In some cases, judges have ruled that a
child’s best interest requires that he or she remain in the United
States and have terminated parental rights of parents who are
deported. In other cases, immigration laws prevent children from
entering the United States to reunite with their parents.
Undocumented youth can also be deported and face legal
discrimination that prevents them from working, going to college,
and receiving public benefits.
From being virtually invisible in the public sphere only a decade
ago, undocumented youth, especially those who have grown up in
the United States, have stepped to the forefront in organizing for
immigrant rights. Their activism openly challenges the antiimmigrant propaganda and may be changing the way the citizen
public views the undocumented.

YOUNG AND ALONE
The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic surge of young
people fleeing their homes in Mexico and Central America and
attempting the treacherous border crossing alone. They may be
seeking to escape violence, gangs, or abuse at home, or they may be
making a desperate attempt to reunite with parents who left them to
journey to the United States. They face all of the hazards that adults
face, and more.
Undocumented youth, especially Central Americans fleeing civil
wars, began crossing the border alone in the 1980s. At the time, the
immigrant detention system had no provisions or capacity to deal
specifically with detained youth: they were simply imprisoned with
and treated as adults. During 1990, the INS reported that eighty-five
hundred minors had been apprehended crossing the border without
documents, 70 percent of them unaccompanied. Most were Mexican
and were quickly returned to Mexico under an agreement with that
government. Non-Mexicans, though, were detained in immigration
facilities, some for lengthy periods, awaiting immigration hearings.4
A series of lawsuits and court decisions starting in 1985 led
finally, in 1997, the then-INS to develop special policies for detained
minors. Under the Flores v. Meese settlement of that year, the INS
developed separate standards for children that took their age and
needs into account. Children would be released, if possible, to a
sponsor; they would be placed in the least restrictive setting
possible, and the agency would implement appropriate standards for
their treatment.
A US government study in 2001 explained that most juveniles the
INS encountered were still of Mexican origin and generally held for
only a few hours before being returned voluntarily to Mexico. The
study emphasized that the Border Patrol worked to ensure that
juveniles were returned to family members or to Mexican
government officials rather than being “simply dropped off across
the border.”5 Most of the children who ended up in US custody,
therefore, were Central American. The numbers taken into custody
(rather than returned) increased rapidly over the first decade of the

new century, from the low thousands to up to ten thousand a year.6
The system scrambled to keep up with the influx.
After 2002, when the INS was replaced by ICE under the new
Department of Homeland Security, responsibility for detained
children was transferred to the Department of Health and Human
Services and the Office of Refugee Resettlement.7 And in 2003, the
ORR created the Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services
(DUCS) to handle the placement of undocumented minors.8
The treatment of children in detention improved with the
involvement of the social service agencies. Rather than being
housed indefinitely with adult criminals, children were sent to
special facilities where they had access to educational and social
services, and most were released within weeks to family members in
the United States (many of them undocumented themselves).
Facilities must provide “classroom education, health care,
socializing/recreation activities, vocational training, mental health
services, case management, and, when possible, assist with family
reunion.”9 According to the New York Times, “It is not unusual for
youths to recall the detention shelters . . . as some of the best times
in their battered lives.”10
Still, in 2006, a study found that detained minors “fall into the
bewildering inner workings of the immigration and asylum system.”
Despite the changes in detention provisions, immigration law did
not distinguish between children and adults, and until 2004, the
courts simply treated any child, no matter how young, as an adult.11
In 2012, yet another study found that children who are detained for
immigration violations “enter a disjointed, labyrinthine system in
which they may interact with numerous agencies within several
federal government departments, as well as with a host of
government contractors.”12
The automatic repatriation of Mexican children was challenged in
2008 when Congress passed the William Wilberforce Trafficking
Victims Protection and Reauthorization Act. The act responded to
concerns that US deportation policies were contributing to the
exploitation and abuse of children. It stated that a child could not be

repatriated if he or she was victim of human trafficking or had a
viable asylum claim and did not voluntarily agree to be repatriated.
This meant that rather than immediately returning Mexican
children, ICE was supposed to evaluate each case individually.13
Still, in 2009, 70 percent of children in ORR custody came from
Central America, primarily El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,
as most Mexican children were still simply deported.14
The number of Mexican children crossing the border alone has
remained steady or fallen over the past few years, along with
crossings by Mexican adults. The number of young unaccompanied
minors from Central America, in contrast, has risen dramatically,
doubling from 2011 to 2012. “The rush of young illegal border
crossers began last fall but picked up speed this year” reported the
New York Times in August 2012.15 During 2012, more than fourteen
thousand youth, most of them Central American, had been taken
into ORR custody. In just the first three months of 2013, seven
thousand more crossed, suggesting that the record increases were
continuing.16
Central America’s political and economic crises—exacerbated by
US military involvement and trade policies—virtually guarantee that
children will continue to try to escape. “Almost all of the children’s
migration arose out of longstanding, complex problems in their
home countries—problems that have no easy or short-term
solutions.”17 According to the Women’s Refugee Commission, which
interviewed 150 young unaccompanied border-crossers, most are
fleeing gangs, drug traffickers, and violence at home. “They are
willing to risk the uncertain dangers of the trip north to escape
certain dangers they face at home.”18
“The conditions in Central America have deteriorated to such a
point that, when the Women’s Refugee Commission asked the
children if they would risk the dangerous journey north through
Mexico all over again now that they had direct knowledge of its
risks, most replied that they would. They said that staying in their
country would guarantee death, and that making the dangerous
journey would at least give them a chance to survive. Many of them

expressed a longing for their homelands, stating that they would not
have left but for fear for their lives.”19
The government was unprepared for the influx and was initially
unable to abide by the 1997 standards. “Children were held for up
to two weeks in CBP short-term hold facilities. These facilities are
not designed for long-term detention or to hold children. The lights
stay on 24 hours a day, and there are no showers or recreation
spaces. During the influx, they were sometimes so overcrowded that
children had to take turns just to lie down on the concrete floor.”
The ORR began to open “emergency surge centers” where it could
hold detained youth.20
The numbers arriving at the US border reveal only part of the
magnitude of the problem, since the Mexican government also
reported a doubling in the numbers of detentions of Central
American children traveling through that country in 2012.21
Perhaps only half of the children who leave Central America even
make it to the US border. Along the way, they face the same hazards
that older migrants face: injury or death on the train, kidnapping,
rape, torture, coercion.
It is clear that conditions for children detained crossing the
border have greatly improved in the past decade. It’s also clear,
though, that a situation in which tens of thousands of children flee
their homelands in Mexico and Central America each year is a
desperate one. It’s not enough to suggest that those countries need
to solve their own problems. The United States has a long history of
military, political, and economic involvement in the region,
including overthrowing and establishing governments. It continues
to provide economic and military support for policies and programs
that is has designed and approved. These policies and programs
provide enormous profits and cheap products for US citizens and
corporations, while exacerbating the very social crises that underlie
the out-migration. Those of us in the United States need to seek
deeper solutions that go beyond offering humane treatment and
social services to these children after they cross the border.

LOSING THEIR PARENTS
Even children who are American citizens are at risk of losing
undocumented parents to deportation. Although the Obama
administration announced early on that immigration detention and
deportation would focus on individuals who had committed crimes
or were a threat to national security, deportations increased
dramatically under his watch, to four hundred thousand a year.
Almost all of those deported were, like most undocumented
immigrants, members of communities with jobs, homes, and
families. Their lives intersected every day with those of US citizens.
In many cases, they were the parents of US citizens.
As with the number of children crossing the border, the number
of children losing their parents to deportation has also been rising.
From 1998 to 2007, some 8 percent of those removed from the
country were parents of US citizens; in 2011, it was 22 percent of a
much larger number of removals. During the first half of 2011, over
forty-six thousand parents of US-citizen children were deported. The
Applied Research Center estimated that as of 2011, there were over
five thousand US citizen children living in foster care because their
parents were either in immigration detention or had been deported.
Some were put up for adoption as incarcerated or deported parents
lacked the resources to enforce their parental rights.22
The term “anchor baby” is frequently thrown around in these
discussions, with the implication that giving birth to a child in the
United States gives the parent some special rights or privileges. It
doesn’t. The child, as a US citizen, has the right to all of the benefits
that citizenship offers, including a US passport, freedom to remain
in or leave the country, and access to work and social services. The
undocumented status of the parent, however, is not ameliorated in
any way by the existence of the so-called anchor baby. Parents of
citizens can be, and are, deported on a regular basis.
The Obama administration’s 2010 and 2011 Morton Memos on
prosecutorial discretion, issued by ICE director John Morton to
revise agency policy, acknowledged the hardships caused for
children when their parents were detained or deported. The first

memo suggested that ICE “should not expend detention resources on
aliens who are known to be suffering from serious physical or
mental illness, or who are disabled, elderly, pregnant, or nursing, or
demonstrate that they are primary caretakers of children or an infirm
person.” Unfortunately, the new guidelines did not significantly
reduce the numbers of parents separated from their children by
ICE.23 The 2011 memo went somewhat further, specifically
mentioning that one factor that ICE should take into consideration
when deciding whether to prosecute a case was the immigrant’s
relationship to US citizens. Still, this was one on a list of suggestions
rather than a specific mandate.24
Behind the statistics are the stories: a crying baby taken from
her mother’s arms and handed to social workers as the mother
is handcuffed and taken away, her parental rights terminated
by a U.S. judge; teenage children watching as parents are
dragged from the family home; immigrant parents
disappearing into a maze-like detention system where they
are routinely locked up hundreds of miles from their homes,
separated from their families for months and denied contact
with the welfare agencies deciding their children’s fate.25
Consider the case of Sandra Molina, an undocumented immigrant
from Guatemala. She married an immigrant with legal status, who
became a citizen in 2009. They had two children, both US citizens.
When her husband became a citizen, they decided that Sandra
should return to Guatemala so that he could sponsor her to come
legally to the United States. Even in the case of the spouse of a US
citizen, however, there is no guarantee that legal permission will be
granted. In Sandra’s case, it was denied, even though she had no
criminal record or other apparent obstacle to legal entry.
She then attempted to cross the border illegally to reunite with
her family, but was caught and returned to Guatemala. Now, legal
entry became even more complicated. Reentry after deportation is a
felony, punishable with jail time, and one of the Obama
administration’s priorities for deportation is those who reentered

after being deported. In Mexico, Sandra “says she feels so hopeless
about her life that she has thought about ending it. ‘I just want to be
forgiven,’ she said, sobbing on the phone. ‘I feel I am about to go
crazy, I miss my children so much. They are all I have. I cannot go
on without them.’ Back home in Stamford, her children are suffering
too. The youngest cried constantly, the eldest became angry and
withdrawn. Though their plight is documented in thick files that
include testimony from psychologists and counselors about their
need for their mother, appeals for humanitarian relief were
denied.”26
The case of an undocumented Ecuadorian immigrant who was
detained with her fifteen-year-old son illustrates the contradictions
as different government agencies pursue conflicting goals. The
mother had lived in the United States for four years and had a oneyear-old daughter born here. She sent for her fifteen-year-old son,
who was detained crossing the border and placed in DUCS custody.
Following DUCS policy, she was called and her son was released to
her. “I received a call to come pick him up,” she explained from her
prison cell, “so I left my daughter with my friend who lived next
door, and took a bus to Arizona to get him. I picked up my son and
we went straight to the bus. At the bus station, I was approached by
some officers and they detained both of us. I have been here for nine
months without seeing my baby girl. She was only one year old
when I left her with my friend. I don’t know what is happening with
her.”27
When parents disappear into the immigration system like this,
they run the risk of losing custody of their children.28 Courts may
terminate parental rights after parents are deported or detained. In
the criminal justice system, prisoners have guaranteed certain rights
and access to services. Immigrant detainees, though, fall into a sort
of constitutional and legal netherworld. The circumstances of their
detention often make it impossible for them to comply with
requirements for retaining custody of their children. Relatives who
could care for a child in the parent’s absence may be afraid to
identify themselves because they too are undocumented. From the

perspective of child welfare services, the system of detention and
deportation can create insuperable obstacles to the goal of enabling
parents to care for their children.29 “In the child welfare system,
immigrant parents are at risk of losing their children without the
same constitutional due process protections in place that other
parents receive.”30 An unknown number of those children are being
put up for adoption against the wishes of their parents, who, once
deported, are often helpless to fight when a US judge decides that
their children are better off here.
In a 2007 case, an undocumented Guatemalan woman was
arrested during a raid at the chicken plant where she worked in
Missouri. While she was in detention, her six-month-old son was
taken from her custody and put up for adoption. The judge ruled
that “smuggling herself into a country illegally and committing
crimes in this country is not a lifestyle that can provide any stability
for a child.” Her parental rights were terminated and the infant was
adopted. Although the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the
judge’s decision in 2011, that ruling was in turn overturned by a
judge who ruled that she had “effectively abandoned her son.” The
mother was deported, leaving the child with his adoptive parents in
Missouri.31
LEARNING TO BE UNDOCUMENTED
Other undocumented children, some of the most politically active
today, were brought or sent here by their parents at a young age.
The United States is now raising a generation of children without
documents, and the legal proposals to address their status, ranging
from in-state tuition to the DREAM (Development, Relief, and
Education for Alien Minors) Act, reveal the discomfort that their
existence poses. “They are Americans in their heart, in their minds,
in every single way but one: on paper,” President Obama declared.32
As one undocumented student put it, “I breathe, eat, and live in
America and have done so since I can remember.”33 The president’s
remarks remind us that a person’s birthplace is an almost entirely

arbitrary fact. Should it really be used to determine his or her
subsequent life chances?
Children, of course, don’t usually know much about status and
immigration law unless their parents choose to explain the status
issue to them. Generally their main interaction with state authority
is through school, and since 1982, schools have been required to
treat all children equally, regardless of status. In that year, the US
Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe decision struck down a Texas law that
allowed local school districts to deny entry to children who lacked
legal documentation and withheld state funds for their education if
local districts did choose to enroll them. The court ruled that to
deny children access to education not only violated the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but would impose
an unwarranted, lifetime hardship on them and bring no benefit to
the state.34 Thus, children may never confront the issue of
documentation in their daily lives.
Most citizens become aware of the importance of identification
documents when they are teenagers and apply for a driver’s license
or for their first formal job. For the first time, they may be required
to dig up a birth certificate or a Social Security card to prove their
citizenship status. Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented
immigrant from the Philippines, described the shock that many
undocumented youth experience when they first become aware that
there is something about their legal status that divides them from
their peers. Vargas joined and propelled a growing movement
among undocumented youth to break the silence, come out of the
shadows, and openly challenge the system that excludes them.
In the summer of 2011, Vargas published a daring exposé of his
own life story in the New York Times Magazine. He began by
recounting how his mother sent him, at age twelve, to live with his
grandparents in Mountain View, California, and how he struggled to
learn English and excel at school.
One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V.
office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already
had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed

the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped
it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t
come back here again.”
Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted [my
grandfather] Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage,
cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him,
showing him the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog.
(“Is this fake?”) My grandparents were naturalized American
citizens—he worked as a security guard, she as a food server
—and they had begun supporting my mother and me
financially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and
inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’
separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his
face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other
fake documents, for me. “Don’t show it to other people,” he
warned.35
The Philippines offers a particularly convoluted case of the
meaning of immigration, citizenship, and documents, since it was a
US colony for the first half of the twentieth century and Filipinos
were unilaterally deemed to be US nationals who could travel freely
to the mainland until 1934. (The category “national” was created
early in the twentieth century to apply to people who lived in newly
acquired US territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific. They were
essentially stateless people, with no country and no citizenship.)
Tens of thousands of Filipinos were recruited legally to the United
States through nursing and military exchange programs after that,
while the United States maintained an enormous military presence
there. Vargas’s migration was a product of this history, as well as
the twists and turns of US immigration law.
In the Philippines, Vargas’s great aunt married a Filipino
American who was serving in the US military, starting a family
chain of migration. Using the family preferences built into the law,
she petitioned for her brother and his wife (Vargas’s grandparents),
who entered the country on immigrant visas in 1984 and later
became naturalized citizens. The grandfather then petitioned for his

two children. Citizens, however, can only sponsor children who are
unmarried. Vargas’s mother was single; she and her husband had
separated almost a decade earlier. But fearing that immigration
would consider the petition fraudulent based on her previous
marriage, the grandfather decided to withdraw it.
Then the family entered the netherworld of false documents,
obtaining a doctored passport and green card (resident alien visa)
and sending twelve-year-old Jose with a coyote—who, he was told,
was his uncle—to live with his grandparents in 1993. The boy never
knew of the extra-legal nature of these arrangements or that there
was anything unauthorized about his presence in the United States.
Vargas’s experience coming of age, symbolized by his rebuff at
the DMV, falls within what sociologist Roberto Gonzalez describes
as the “transition to adulthood” for many undocumented youth. As
Gonzalez explains, becoming an adult also involves a “transition to
illegality” as “public schooling and US immigration laws collide to
produce a shift in the experiences and meanings of illegal status for
undocumented youth at the onset of their transition to
adulthood.”36 These youth, while treated equally under the law
during their childhood, are excluded from the rites of passage that
lead most American youth to the adult world. They are left in a
“developmental limbo.” The extremely low economic status of most
undocumented families pushes young people to assume more
financial responsibility than their documented peers, —but they are
not, officially, allowed to work. At the same time, they are cut off
from other stages in the transition to majority like learning to drive,
registering to vote, undertaking postsecondary education, or
opening a bank account.37 It comes as a shock that the society that
nurtured them suddenly closes its doors. One student wrote, “I did
not think to question the pledge of allegiance or the history that was
being taught to us. . . . Looking back, I should have questioned the
allegiance I pledged every morning to a country that rejected me.”38
YOUTH ACTIVISM

This generation of undocumented youth coming of age in today’s
United States is historically unprecedented. Most undocumented
adults are individuals who were raised in another country and came
here as adults. They knew life in their country of birth, and they
came here of their own volition (but, of course, under historical
circumstances that they did not choose). Their experience of life in
the United States is that of being undocumented.
Their children, who may be undocumented as well, have a
completely different life experience. They were raised and attended
schools in this country, where they were repeatedly told that this is
a nation of immigrants, a country that treats everybody equally.
They were taught that if they worked hard, they could attend
college and get a good job. They were taught that they had rights,
because that’s what the schools teach children in this country. They
learned about Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and about Martin
Luther King Jr. and struggles for racial justice and equality. At
home, they were taught that their parents brought them here so that
they could have a better life.
When Carola Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, and Irina
Todorova studied several generations of immigrant youth and their
experiences in US schools, they found that the immigrants of the
first generation are the highest achievers. They are acutely aware of
the sacrifices their parents made to provide more opportunities for
them, and “these parental sacrifices propel many immigrant
students to launch themselves wholeheartedly into their educational
journey.”39
Learning that they are undocumented and what that means is an
unexpected and unacceptable shock to many of these children. They
never felt or knew that they were any different from their
classmates. Consider these testimonies from students: “It’s almost
like I am tied down to the ground with a ball and chain because I
don’t have citizenship”; “It’s like someone giving you a car, but not
putting any gas in it”; “They say you can accomplish whatever you
want or set your mind to, but they don’t say that it’s just for
some.”40

Just as this new generation of undocumented youth was finishing
high school, the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and IIRIRA made it
almost impossible for them to go to college. By prohibiting them
from receiving public financial aid and depriving them of state
residency, the acts effectively shut the door to higher education.41
These youth have been at the forefront of organizing for
immigrants’ rights over the past decade. Access to higher education
has been one focal organizing point for high-achieving students. At
the state level, they fought for the right to be considered state
residents and to attend public colleges and universities. At the
national level, they fought for the DREAM Act, which would give
them educational rights and also put them on a path to citizenship.
In Texas, Republican governor Rick Perry signed the first in-state
tuition law in 2001, allowing undocumented students to be
considered state residents for tuition purposes. California passed a
similar law later the same year, and other states followed. As of
mid-2013, fourteen states offered in-state tuition to qualified
students who were undocumented.42
Some arguments about in-state tuition were strictly economic.
Proponents explained that it would increase state revenues by
allowing more individuals to enroll in state colleges and
universities, while opponents feared that letting in the
undocumented would reduce the seats available to citizen students.
The number of students able to take advantage of these provisions
has been small: as of 2005, there were 1,620 in the University of
California and California State University systems and 5,100 in
Texas, including the community college system, which accounted
for about 80 percent of undocumented students.43 The
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation estimated that such a law
would allow some 350 students a year to enroll in that state, again
with the majority going to community colleges.44
In-state tuition has been a state-level struggle. Only the federal
government could address the larger issue of status. The DREAM
Act, proposed and defeated or abandoned numerous times at the
federal level, would create a path to citizenship for certain

undocumented youth. The different versions of the act vary slightly
on specifics, but in general they address a population that has come
to be known as the “DREAMers”: young people between the ages of
sixteen and thirty who were brought to the United States by their
parents before they reached the age of sixteen—that is, as children
—who may have crossed the border (or remained in the country)
“illegally,” but not through their own will or decision. The act
would extend provisional legal status to such youth for six years. If
they attend college or serve in the military for two years, their
provisional status could be converted into a path to citizenship.45
(Other individuals and organizations object to the military service
provision, arguing that it is trying to create a de facto military draft
for young Latinos, since most would not be able to afford college
tuition even at in-state rates.)46
The Migration Policy Institute estimated in 2010 (based on 2006–
2008 figures) that there were 2.1 million undocumented youth who
were potential beneficiaries of the DREAM Act. Almost a million of
these were under the age of eighteen.47
The DREAM Act was reintroduced repeatedly in both the US
Senate and the House starting in 2001, and included in S. 2611, the
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act approved by the Senate in
2006 (later defeated in the House of Representatives), and S. 744,
the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration
Modernization Act passed by the Senate in 2013.
Many advocates saw the rights of DREAMers as a front line in a
larger struggle over the meaning of undocumentedness. By placing a
sympathetic face—a high-achieving high school student—together
with the term and the status of undocumented, they sought to
challenge the better-known image associating the status with
criminality.
Still, there was significant debate in the movement over this
tactic. By emphasizing the innocence of students who were brought
to the United States as young children with no choice in the matter,
did the campaign tacitly accept the guilt of these students’ parents,
who had made the decision? Were the students being held up as

exceptional, deserving, undocumented individuals, thus implying
that other undocumented people were not deserving?
While some were wary of the way the DREAM Act seemed to
skim off and privilege the most publicly acceptable portion of the
undocumented population, most organizations believed that it was
an opening to challenge the very concept of undocumentedness.
Undocumented youth who grew up in the United States do not fit
the profile that many citizens hold of the “illegal immigrant.” Many
of these youth feel motivated to take advantage of their relative
privilege as English-speaking, assimilated, and educated members of
US society to fight publicly against anti-immigrant and antiundocumented sentiment.
The DREAM Act both responded to and created an outlet for a
huge upsurge in organizing by undocumented youth. Claudia
Anguiano, who studied the history of undocumented student
activism in depth, outlined three phases. From 2001 to 2007, “selfidentification strategies were used to create a collective group
identity that countered the negative dehumanizing typecast of
‘illegal aliens’ by identifying DREAMers as exceptional students.”
During the following two years, “self-representation strategies
worked to unite undocumented youth through the creation of
national coalitional organizations and through self-identification as
undocumented and unafraid.” Finally, during 2010, “activists utilized
strategies of self-reliance and self-identified as unapologetic
DREAMers. The strategies of intervention included the use of civil
disobedience tactics to petition for the legislation.”48
In 2009, DREAMers founded the organization United We Dream
to coordinate nationally and use the tactic of coming out or telling
their own stories as a political weapon. “Leaders realized that
encouraging young people to recount the stories of their lives in
hiding and of their thwarted aspirations could be liberating for
them, and also compelling for skeptical Americans.”49 Taking
inspiration from the gay rights movement, many have themselves
and encouraged others to come out and hold public coming-out
ceremonies. Jose Antonio Vargas suggested, in his defiantly titled

essay “Not Legal, Not Leaving,” that “we are living in the golden age
of coming out.”50 Coming out can be a personal liberation, but it is
also part of a larger project to insist on social and legal acceptance,
which means fundamentally changing the legal structures of
belonging in the country and challenging the beliefs that underlie
and justify anti-immigrant sentiment.
DREAM activist Gaby Pacheco accompanied much of this process.
Pacheco, like Jose Antonio Vargas and so many others, learned that
she was undocumented when she went to apply for her learner’s
permit. She had come from Ecuador to Miami with her parents
when she was about to start third grade. She began to organize for
the rights of undocumented students in 2004, founding Students for
Immigrant Rights in Florida and working with the Florida
Immigrant Coalition and Presente.org. “From four of us that used to
meet to try to pass the DREAM Act, we now have 16 chapters
throughout Florida. Students Working for Equal Rights is part of the
United We Dream network, which is led by students and represents
26 states,” she explained.51
In January 2010, Pacheco joined three other immigrant Florida
students for a fifteen-hundred-mile march to Washington, DC, part
of the ongoing and increasingly public campaign to press for the
rights of the undocumented. “They said they had concluded that the
exposure to immigration agents on the walk was not much greater
than what they faced in their daily lives. ‘We are aware of the risk,’
[one participant] said . . . ‘We are risking our future because our
present is unbearable.’” ICE declined to comment on the issue.52
“Coming out didn’t endanger me; it had protected me,” wrote
Vargas. “A Philippine-born, college-educated, outspoken mainstream
journalist is not the face the government wants to put on its
deportation program.” He also wanted to use his case to publicize
the arbitrary nature of immigration enforcement. “Who flies under
the radar, and who becomes one of those unfortunate 396,906 [who
are deported]? Who stays, who goes, and who decides?”53
A year after coming out, he recounted his attempt to find out
what ICE planned to do about him.

After months of waiting for something to happen, I decided
that I would confront immigration officials myself. Since I live
in New York City, I called the local ICE office. The phone
operators I first reached were taken aback when I explained
the reason for my call. Finally I was connected to an ICE
officer.
“Are you planning on deporting me?” I asked.
I quickly found out that even though I publicly came out
about my undocumented status, I still do not exist in the eyes
of ICE. Like most undocumented immigrants, I’ve never been
arrested. Therefore, I’ve never been in contact with ICE.
“After checking the appropriate ICE databases, the agency
has no records of ever encountering Mr. Vargas,” Luis
Martinez, a spokesman for the ICE office in New York, wrote
me in an e-mail.
I then contacted the ICE headquarters in Washington. I
hoped to get some insight into my status and that of all the
others who are coming out. How does ICE view these cases?
Can publicly revealing undocumented status trigger
deportation proceedings, and if so, how is that decided? Is ICE
planning to seek my deportation?
“We do not comment on specific cases,” is all I was told.54
Amid increasingly visible activism and sympathetic media
coverage, Congress took up the DREAM Act again at the end of
2010. Although it passed the House of Representatives, advocates
could not muster enough votes to overcome a Senate filibuster.
Most Republicans opposed the DREAM Act in the 2010 vote, even
some who had supported previous attempts. The House was about
to be turned over to a Republican majority. For some DREAMers, it
was time to shift away from a legislative strategy. “In a meeting
after the vote with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority
leader, Ms. [Gaby] Pacheco said she grabbed him and whispered in
his ear. ‘You know the president has the power to stop deporting
us,’ she said. ‘You know you could tell him to do this.’ Startled, Mr.
Reid gave her a hug and walked away.” In early 2011, United We

Dream decided to change its focus to the president. At the National
Council of La Raza meeting in Washington in July, when Obama
tried to explain that he could not bypass Congress to push for
immigrants’ rights, DREAMers “erupted in shouts: ‘Yes you can! Yes
you can!’”55
Meanwhile, Obama’s June 2011 Morton Memo specifically
included DREAMers as a category meriting “prosecutorial
discretion,” essentially advising that ICE refrain from prosecuting
them for immigration violations. (See chapter 8 for a more detailed
discussion of prosecutorial discretion.) DREAMers saw this as a
concession and an opening for further action.
In March 2012, Florida Republican—and potential vice
presidential candidate—Marco Rubio announced that he was
preparing to propose his own version of the DREAM Act. While
reluctant to address specifics, Rubio emphasized that unlike
previous versions of the act, his would not open a path to
citizenship for undocumented youth. “I think that one of the debates
that we need to begin to have is a difference between citizenship
and legalization . . . You can legalize someone’s status in this
country with a significant amount of certainty about their future
without placing them on a path toward citizenship, and I think that
is something that we can find consensus on,” Rubio explained.
DREAM Act supporter and Democratic senator Harry Reid declared
scornfully that this was a “watered-down version” that he would do
“everything in his power” to oppose.56
Still, Democrats worried about ceding momentum—and possibly
Latino votes—to the Republicans during an election year.
DREAMers praised Rubio’s step, and they continued to challenge
Obama to take presidential action. In May, they presented the
administration with a letter signed by over ninety law professors
outlining legal precedents and steps that the president could take to
halt deportations of undocumented youth.57
“[Rubio’s] plan puts Obama in a box,” the Washington Post
reported. “Democrats are reluctant to see Rubio’s efforts as anything
other than a political gambit to repair his party’s tarnished image

with Hispanics and boost his own profile as a potential vicepresidential pick or future White House contender. But if Obama
does not at least try to work with Rubio, he could risk losing a
centerpiece of his appeal to Hispanic voters—that he is their fiercest
ally in Washington and that the GOP is to blame for lack of action
on fixing the country’s immigration ills.”58
In June, Obama regained the initiative for the Democrats when
he announced his DACA program.
DACA
Much smaller than a comprehensive immigration reform, smaller
even than the DREAM Act, DACA offered a two-year respite to
young people who, Obama said, were American “in every single
way but one: on paper.” “We’re a better nation than one that expels
innocent young kids,” he explained.59 While his announcement was
celebrated by many young undocumented immigrants and
organizations that advocate for immigrant rights, it did not make
those young people “American,” and like the DREAM Act, it
implicitly raised questions about the very nature of status and
illegality that were uncomfortable for both DREAMers and their
opponents.
DACA followed the DREAM Act in addressing people thirty and
under who had arrived in the United States before age sixteen and
had lived here continuously since 2007 and were in school, high
school graduates, or veterans. (Vargas, who had just turned thirtyone, was thus excluded.) Unlike the DREAM Act, however, DACA
did not open up a path to citizenship. It was limited to relief from
deportation for two years and, during those two years, permission to
work.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that up to 1.4 million youth
would be eligible for DACA, half of them under eighteen and half
eighteen to thirty and either enrolled in school or high school
graduates. Seventy percent of these were from Mexico. Together,
DACA candidates represented just over 10 percent of undocumented
immigrants in the United States.60

During the first month (August 16 to September 15), US Citizen
and Immigration Services (USCIS) received 82,361 applications.61 A
month later, the agency announced that 179,794 DACA applications
had been received, and 4,591 approved.62 By April 2013, the USCIS
reported a total 488,782 received, and 472,004 approved. The vast
majority of applicants were from Mexico (354,002), followed by El
Salvador (18,949), Honduras (12,603), and Guatemala (11,817).63
Grace Meng from Human Rights Watch pointed out that DACA
was aimed at only a certain sector of immigrant youth. “The
program’s idea of ‘American’ is unlikely to include the children who
picked the oranges for your juice or the tomatoes on your
hamburgers,” she explained. The children of migrant farm workers,
she points out, are more likely to be out of school—they drop out at
four times the national average—and less likely to have the
documentation of continuous presence required to qualify for DACA.
It is clear, Meng writes, that
the program of deferred action was not designed for child
farmworkers who, like many immigrants throughout U.S.
history, live very different lives than middle-class, suburban
kids. . . . It’s not surprising that the Obama administration
designed a program for the best and the brightest immigrant
children. But the fact that deferred action will probably
exclude many farmworker children underscores how much
immigration law is out of sync with the reality of an economy
that depends on unauthorized immigrants.64
By proposing an immigration reform—whether one as farreaching as the DREAM Act or one as limited as DACA—for this
restricted group of people, policymakers and advocates suggested
that this group—and, implicitly but inevitably, not other groups—
deserved access to some sort of legal status. By recognizing these
young people as American, the implication was that other
undocumented people were not American, but rather irredeemably
foreign. If these young people were defined as innocent—because
they were brought to the United States by their parents before they

were old enough to make an independent decision—then their
parents, who made the decision and brought them, were by
implication guilty.
When Senators Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), Dick Durbin
(D-Illinois), and Harry Reid (D-Nevada) introduced a recent version
of the DREAM Act in May 2011, they presented it in precisely those
terms. The act, Reid claimed, was for “children brought to this
nation by their parents through no fault of their own.” “We should
not punish children for their parents’ past decisions,” Menendez
added. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) agreed that “we should not
hold innocent children responsible for the sins of their parents.”65
Many children found it difficult to accept the logic that
counterpoised their own innocence with their parents’ guilt. As one
DREAMer protested, “I was brought to this country by a very
courageous woman. She’s my hero. She’s my mother. She left
everyone and everything she knew behind in order for her to give
me a better life. . . . I’m not going to blame her. . . . I thank her for
bringing me here.”66
Referring to the internal border that separates the undocumented
from the rest of US society, another DREAMer wrote,
Is it possible that DACA is also perpetuating this internal
border? DACA passed largely due to the pressure that was
being put on politicians and President Obama by DREAMers.
But, I began to question, what else could have influenced the
passing of DACA? The strong movement of DREAMers started
getting exposure to the general public of the country and the
movement made many people question why these students . .
. were being punished. DREAMers began to make this internal
border visible to the country. . . . In order for the United
States to keep perpetuating undocumentedness as an
unwanted and illegal “thing,” they chose to help us in a way
that keeps us in the same state of second-class citizenship with
a nicer title and stops the general public from continuing to
ponder this question. . . . Undocumentedness allows the
country to keep its cheap labor and discriminate against non-

whites. And, with undocumented students out of the
immediate picture of undocumentedness, the continual
perpetuation of undocumented people as outsiders can
continue to thrive.67
Many argued that DACA was a first step rather than a solution.
“‘By having this relief and having access to greater resources we can
begin to push harder for relief for the entire community,’ said
Lorella Praeli, advocacy director of the group United We Dream.
‘This fight for DREAMers in our community has never been about
ourselves. . . . It’s been about our families.’”68 Just a month after the
2012 election, United We Dream agreed upon a new platform
demanding “an inclusive pathway to citizenship.” A New York Times
reporter described the meeting:
Their decision to push for legal status for their families was
intensely emotional. When they were asked at a plenary
session how many had been separated by deportation from a
parent or other close family member, hundreds of hands went
up. They were critical of Mr. Obama for deporting more than
1.4 million people during his first term.
“When Obama is deporting all these people, separating all
of our families, I’m sick and tired of that,” said Regem Corpuz,
a 19-year-old student at the University of California, Los
Angeles, who was born in the Philippines.
“Our families’ dreams were to get a better future,” said
Ulises Vasquez of Sonoma County, Calif., “but our future is
with our families together.”
At the meeting, several parents followed their children’s lead and
held a coming-out ceremony to tell their stories publicly for the first
time.69
Other contradictions plagued DACA as well. Presidential
candidate Mitt Romney announced that, if elected, he would
immediately halt the program upon taking office, though he said he
would not revoke the status of those who had already been

approved. With Obama’s election, the program seemed secure at
least for the two years initially announced. But many of those who it
was designed to help found themselves caught in the multiple
contradictions of the immigration system, which DACA could not
transcend.
For many young immigrants, the very documents they needed to
supply to prove that they fulfilled the program’s requirements were
precisely those that they lacked. As the New York Times asked, “How
do you document an undocumented life?” Particularly difficult were
work records. For those who worked off the books and were paid in
cash, no records documented the transactions. For those who used
false Social Security numbers, submitting the evidence incriminated
them in another crime. Moreover, employers were reluctant to
unearth or provide records that could implicate them, too, in legal
problems.70
Furthermore, DACA did not affect the actions of ICE, which was
pursuing deportation cases against a significant number of potential
recipients. Instead, it placed two branches of the Department of
Homeland Security against each other: while USCIS administered
DACA, ICE attorneys were still charged with pursuing deportation
cases. With 325,000 cases pending in its backlogged system, ICE
found itself prosecuting—and even deporting—young people, even
as USCIS was reviewing or approving their applications for deferred
action.71
Obama also disappointed many DREAMers when he announced
that DACA recipients would be excluded from federal health-care
programs under the Affordable Care Act (including Medicaid and
federal subsidies for purchasing private insurance), even though
immigrants deemed “lawfully present” were eligible. The New York
Times noted ironically that “immigrants granted such relief [i.e.,
Deferred Action] would ordinarily meet the definition of ‘lawfully
present’ residents. . . . But the administration issued a rule in late
August that specifically excluded the young immigrants from the
definition of ‘lawfully present.’”72

The Department of Homeland Security left it up to individual
states to decide whether people with DACA status could obtain a
driver’s license or receive state-level benefits like in-state tuition at
state colleges and universities. Arizona’s governor declared that
DACA youth were not eligible for driver’s licenses, while
Massachusetts became the first state to make them eligible for instate tuition. In Michigan, the Secretary of State’s office announced
that DACA youth would not be able to obtain a driver’s license. “We
rely on the federal government to tell us who is here legally; we
don’t determine that,” the office explained. “So far, the federal
government has not provided information to the states indicating
that DACA grants that legal status.” As one Michigan DACA
recipient put it wryly, “I’m caught in this situation where I can go to
work, I can go to school, I’m legal here, but I can’t go to work and
can’t go to school.”73
As President Obama celebrated his victory in the 2012 election,
he highlighted immigrant youth. “We believe in a generous
America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America open to
the dreams of an immigrant’s daughter who studies in our schools
and pledges to our flag, to the young boy on the south side of
Chicago who sees a life beyond the nearest street corner, to the
furniture worker’s child in North Carolina who wants to become a
doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or
even a president,” the president proclaimed stirringly.
“Obama was very clearly referencing the immigrant youth who
he’s supported with his backing of the DREAM Act and deferred
action,” said Julianne Hing, Colorlines immigration reporter. “But it
should be noted that his support came largely because immigrant
youth have put his feet to the fire and relentlessly demanded more
humane treatment of undocumented youth and their families.”74
The Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill (S. 744) passed
in June 2013 included the most generous version yet of the DREAM
Act, but as the bill subsequently stalled in the House, the future for
immigrant youth remained as uncertain as ever.

CHAPTER 8

Solutions
In order to talk about solutions, we have to understand the real
roots and nature of the problem. Many politicians and others who
see immigration control as an issue of security and sovereignty
imagine that hordes of poor people of color are seeking to
appropriate the resources of this land that we now call the United
States. This formulation of the problem is a precise reversal of the
actual European settlement of the country, from the perspective of
the Native Americans.
It is also a mirror image of the United States’ relationship with
the countries—primarily Mexico, Central America, and other Latin
American countries—from which the undocumented come. In every
case, the products and profits accumulated in the sending countries
are a major source of the abundance and affluence in the United
States. A quick review of any supermarket or clothing or electronics
store reveals the Third World and often Latin American origins of
many of the products we consume. More invisible are the mines, oil
wells, multinationals, and profits behind the products. But the flow
of resources is undeniable.
The history that is drummed into the heads of US schoolchildren
insists that the “country of immigrants” was founded and built by
Europeans. The invisible underside of this narrative is the imperial
narrative of conquest and dispossession that continued until the end
of the nineteenth century and upon which the new “country of
[white] immigrants” was built.
The country-of-immigrants narrative is very much a narrative of
race. Immigrants were conceived as white Europeans (the only
people allowed to naturalize), and their presence and comfort
depended upon the labor of people who were legally excluded from
the polity. Throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth
centuries, Mexicans, like African Americans prior to 1868, were

accepted as a necessary evil for their labor and considered
unthreatening to the white nature of the country that viewed them
as exploitable workers rather than as potential citizens. The history
of reliance on Mexican labor coupled with the refusal to grant rights
to Mexican workers is a long one indeed.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase (La
Mesilla Purchase of 1853) offered US citizenship to Mexican citizens
resident in the territories newly taken. By specifying “Mexican
citizens,” the laws excluded the Native American population
resident in the area. And by offering citizenship to Mexicans at a
time when citizenship was restricted to whites, the laws implied that
Mexicans would be considered white. In the midcentury, then, “it
was possible . . . to be both white and Mexican in the United
States.”1 However, as Katherine Benton-Cohn explains in her
detailed study of four Arizona border towns, Mexican nationality
became racialized as nonwhite during the nineteenth century
through work. Where Mexicans were workers, rather than
landholders, they came to be legally defined as racially Mexican and
disqualified from citizenship.
“Where Mexicans owned ranches and farms, racial categories
were blurry and unimportant. But in the industrial copper-mining
town of Bisbee, Mexican workers were segregated economically by
their lower pay (‘Mexican wage’) and geographically by new townplanning experiments. To most non-Mexican residents of Bisbee,
Mexicans were peon workers or potential public charges, not
neighbors or business partners, not co-workers or co-worshipers,
and certainly not potential marriage partners.” In these areas, where
Mexicans became defined as racially Mexican through their laboring
status, “‘American’ increasingly equaled ‘white,’ and so ‘Mexican’
came to mean the opposite of both.”2
Nicolas De Genova notes the “longstanding equation of Mexican
migration with a presumably temporary, disposable (finally,
deportable) labor migration predominated by men (who were
predominantly single or left wives and children behind).”3 The 1911
Dillingham US Immigration Commission argued that “while

[Mexicans] are not easily assimilated, this is of no very great
importance as long as most of them return to their native land. In
the case of the Mexican, he is less desirable as a citizen than as a
laborer.”4 “One way or the other, then,” De Genova concludes, “US
policy would ensure that ‘most of them’ proved to be sojourners.”5
The laws that restricted citizenship to whites did not restrict the
right to work to whites. On the contrary, Congress has repeatedly
created new categories of nonwhite people who were specifically
cast as workers. (Slave laborers comprised the original worker-butnot-potential-citizen category.) Deportability became a crucial factor
in cementing the association between Mexican-ness as a race and
legal status as a temporary worker. The threat of deportation
worked to institutionalize the fragile character of Mexicans’ claims
to rights in the land where they came, invited, to work. It could be
used to accommodate the changing needs of employers, and it could
also be used to discourage union organizing or other forms of social
protest.6 Until the 1960s, racial justifications seemed sufficient for
legal discrimination against Mexicans.
MAKING IMMIGRATION ILLEGAL
After the 1960s, when race was finally rejected as a rationale for
excluding people from access to public spaces, citizenship, or entry
into the United States, new forms of legal and legalized exclusion
took its place. The last two major immigration reforms, in 1965 and
1986, turned Mexican migrant workers into “illegal” workers and
used that legal status to justify discrimination. They also,
paradoxically, helped to greatly increase both the immigrant and
the undocumented population.
The 1965 law is generally seen as a civil rights triumph. One
typical account explains that it “ended discrimination” and
“represented a significant watershed in US immigration history and
particularly in its explicit reversal of decades of systematically
exclusive and restrictive immigration policies.” Immigration
scholars agree that the climate of the civil rights movement of the
1960s set the context for the 1965 immigration reform.7

Despite this generous interpretation, the 1965 law was actually
“distinctly and unequivocally restrictive” when it came to Mexican
migrants.8 Through the 1950s and early 1960s, hundreds of
thousands of Mexicans were crossing the border as braceros or
alongside the braceros each year. Then the Bracero Program was
ended and Mexican immigration was suddenly capped. By 1976, a
cap of twenty thousand immigrant visas a year was enforced. The
seasonal, circular migration of Mexicans over many decades that
had attracted little national attention suddenly became “a yearly
and highly visible violation of American sovereignty by hostile
aliens who were increasingly framed as invaders and criminals.”9
If the new restrictions were intended to lower migration from
Latin America, they failed miserably. Instead, all types of
immigration from Latin America rose after 1965: temporary and
permanent, legal and illegal. Legal immigration from Latin America
grew from about 450,000 between 1950 and 1960 to over 4 million
between 1990 and 2000, while the number of undocumented Latin
Americans living long term in the United States grew from almost
none in 1965 to close to 10 million in the first decade of the new
century.10
Further “unintended consequences” flowed from the greatly
increased border enforcement of the 1990s and 2000s. As border
crossing became more difficult, more dangerous, and more
expensive, seasonal migrants began to change their patterns and
stay on in the United States, sometimes bringing their families as
well. The undocumented population grew rapidly in those decades,
not because more immigrants were arriving, but because fewer were
leaving. “It was thus a sharp decline in the outflow of
undocumented migrants, not an increase in the inflow of
undocumented migrants, that was responsible for the acceleration of
undocumented population growth during the 1990s and early
2000s, and this decline in return migration was to a great extent a
product of US enforcement efforts.”11
Starting in 1990, a series of laws made life even more difficult for
noncitizens, including green-card holders (legal permanent

residents). Family reunification privileges favored citizens over legal
permanent residents. In 1996, legal permanent residents were
barred from receiving most social services, while the Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act made noncitizens deportable for a
wide range of crimes, even if they had been committed in a distant
past. Then, in 2001, the USA-PATRIOT Act made deportation and
arrest possible for virtually any noncitizen, based only upon the US
Attorney General’s decision.12
In response to the increasingly punitive climate for noncitizens,
more immigrants chose to naturalize. As new citizens, they were
now able to take advantage of the family preferences created by the
1965 law and petition for their family members, thus contributing
to an increase in overall immigration.13
STRUCTURAL CAUSES OF INCREASED MIGRATION
While US legislative changes played a large role in increasing both
documented and undocumented immigration, the enormous
political and economic convulsions that wracked Latin America in
the post-1965 era and the shifts in the global economy were also
important. Political movements for social change were crushed as a
wave of extraordinarily repressive right-wing dictatorships spread
through the continent. Supply-side economics and structural
adjustment programs tore apart social safety networks and spurred
export-oriented extraction and production. The new policies
disrupted traditional economies while creating expectations and
hopes that couldn’t be fulfilled at home. Meanwhile, both
consumption and inequality shot up in the United States, creating
massive demand for cheap immigrant workers. Globalizing
technologies and migration chains transformed the possibility of
migration from remote to realistic. The forces behind the rise in
Latin American, especially Mexican and Central American,
migration were multiple indeed.
Even as US politicians railed about illegal immigration and
border control, they pursued policies that served to increase migrant
flows. Policies imposed on Latin America that destroy subsistence

farming and degrade agricultural work, and limit employment
opportunities and social services, set the stage for out-migration.
Policies at home that create demand for low-wage, immigrant
workers and establish recruitment networks structure the
destinations of migrant flows. These are precisely the policies that
the United States has implemented.
Over the past century, the United States has consistently
promoted export-oriented economies in Latin America based on
foreign investment. It has opposed and overthrown Latin American
governments that have tried to take control of or redistribute their
countries’ resources. During recent decades, US policies promoting
neoliberal austerity measures and market fundamentalism have had
noxious effects on Latin American society. They undermine
subsistence agriculture, employment, and the social safety network,
while increasing structural and individual violence in Latin America.
The United States has used international institutions, military
interventions, trade agreements, and corporate privilege to arrive at
a situation in which it, with 4 percent of the world’s population,
consumes between 25 percent and 50 percent of the planet’s major
resources, while simultaneously creating an enormous demand for
low-wage, informal, and seasonal labor. Thus, the United States
continues to set the stage for large migrations from Latin America.14
Perhaps the advocates of border control believe that while the
open border worked in the past, these structural changes have made
it untenable in today’s world. A focus on securing—or more
accurately, militarizing—the border, though, only serves to
reinforce the structural conditions behind migration. As Jacqueline
Stevens argues, “Illegitimate regimes benefit from the restrictive
immigration policies of their neighbors. In most countries run by
tyrants, emigration is not curtailed by the regimes themselves,
which often lack the resources to police wide swaths of their
borders. Rather, neighboring countries fearing the incursion of
political and economic refugees take care of this.”15
In the case of the United States and Latin America, Stevens’s
argument must be refined. It is not pure coincidence that poor and

violent countries in Latin America coexist alongside the
overconsuming United States. Deliberate US policies, from invasions
and occupations to military aid to loans and investments, have
created the Latin American polities and economies and the
disparities that are now the roots of today’s migrations. Attempts to
seal the border only reinforce the very inequalities that contribute
to migration.
CHALLENGING DISCRIMINATION
The campaigns to strengthen immigration law and make it harsher
are fairly well known and have been related to the successive
punitive measures against undocumented immigrants since the
1980s. But organizations that defended the rights of immigrants
and, in particular, the undocumented also grew in the last decades
of the twentieth century.16
While nativism has been part of US society and culture since the
country was founded, specifically anti-undocumented sentiment and
movements date to the post-1965 and especially the post-1986
period. The Republican Party first mentioned immigration
enforcement in its 1980 national platform and in 1984 first
“affirmed the right of the United States to control its boundaries and
voiced concern about illegal immigration.” The Democratic Party
first mentioned illegal immigration in its 1996 platform.17 Popular
movements for the defense of the rights of the undocumented also
grew this period.
Mexican American rights organizations like LULAC have taken
mixed stances on the undocumented and even on immigrants in
general over the course of the twentieth century. Mexican
Americans sought to claim their rights by demonstrating their
patriotism and distancing themselves from new arrivals, even as
their communities, friends, and families included both documented
and undocumented new immigrants.18 Even the United Farm
Workers union, made up primarily of immigrants, was hesitant to
defend the rights of the undocumented.

However, Mexican American rights, immigrant rights, and the
rights of the undocumented have also been intertwined. The
Chicano movement of the 1960s and ’70s rejected the emphasis on
patriotism and assimilation of earlier generations, and insisted on a
cultural nationalism that united people of Mexican origin, regardless
of status. (The movement adopted the name Chicano to emphasize
the indigenous roots of Mexicans and the difference in their
historical experience from that of European immigrants.) “Chicano
families became the new underground railroad,” explained Alma
Martínez evocatively, referring to the ties that bound US-born
Chicanos to new, including undocumented, immigrants.19 Even as
politicians and the media raised their voices against the
undocumented, networks and organizations grew to defend their
rights.
In the 1980s, growing numbers of Central American refugees
joined the ranks of what had previously been primarily a Mexican
phenomenon. The sanctuary movement, growing primarily out of
Central American refugee organizations and Anglo religious
congregations, sought to aid Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees in
the United States without legal status. Some organizations were
made up of refugees themselves, like the Central American Refugee
Center (CARECEN, later changed to Central American Resource
Center), founded in 1983. These and other organizations concerned
with the rights of Salvadoran (and to a lesser extent, Guatemalan)
refugees were the first to bring the question of the rights of the
undocumented into the public sphere. They also emphasized how
US intervention was behind much of the violence that was causing
people to flee Central America.
A series of lawsuits focused specifically on the right to asylum,
reflecting these organizations’ concern with the situation of Central
American refugees. Orantes-Hernandez v. Meese and Perez-Funes v.
District Director both required the INS to strengthen Central
Americans’ right to seek and obtain asylum in the mid-1980s.
Finally, in 1990, American Baptist Church v. Thornburgh required the
INS to reopen asylum cases that had been unfairly denied. The

organizations pushing the lawsuits also worked to end US military
aid to El Salvador. Their focus was on the Central American crisis
and its victims, more than on the issue of undocumentedness per se.
THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE REFORM
The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was
comprehensive in the same way that twenty-first-century proposals
for comprehensive reform were. It combined enforcement—in the
form of employer sanctions and increased border security—with
legalization or amnesty. The rationale was that by legalizing some
of the undocumented population, encouraging others to leave
(through employer sanctions that would make it more difficult for
them to work), and making it more difficult for further
undocumented people to enter the country, the numbers of the
undocumented should be significantly reduced.
IRCA had complicated implications for the undocumented. For
those who could document presence since 1982 or eligibility for
Special Agricultural Worker Status, the chance to obtain legal status
was priceless. (As discussed earlier, the law also created a black
market of falsified papers trying to document eligibility.) The
employer sanctions provisions of the law, however, created a new
system for marginalizing and discriminating against the
undocumented. By offering legal status to some, but not all of the
undocumented, IRCA (like the DREAM Act and DACA) invited even
more pernicious racism against those it left out.
The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights was
established in 1986, growing out of a coalition that coalesced in
1985 to organize a National Day of Justice for Immigrants and
Refugees in opposition to legislative proposals for employer
sanctions for the hiring of undocumented workers, which was
incorporated in the 1986 IRCA. Following the passage of the law,
new organizations like the New York Immigrant Coalition and the
Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition formed
both to help undocumented immigrants gain legal status and to

challenge discriminatory aspects of the enforcement of employer
sanctions (and sometimes the notion of employer sanctions itself).
Despite its supposed comprehensiveness, IRCA did not live up to
its claims. Around 1.7 million immigrants became legalized through
IRCA provisions, which succeeded in reducing the total
undocumented population by that number. However, the gradual
net inflow of undocumented people did not seem to change much.
As Karen Woodrow and Jeffrey Passel explain, “The entire decrease
in the undocumented population from 3.1 million in 1986 to 1.9
million in 1988 is attributable to . . . formerly undocumented
immigrants changing their status to legal residents under the
provisions of the IRCA.”20 In other words, the law led to neither an
increased outflow nor a reduced inflow of undocumented
immigrants. In fact, “after this group [those who legalized] is taken
into account, our research suggests that the remaining
undocumented population may actually have increased between
June 1986 and June 1988. . . . Thus IRCA has not cut off the flow of
new undocumented immigrants to the United States.”21
The AFL-CIO supported employer sanctions in 1986. But as Jeff
Stansbury wrote a few years later, “The IRCA is not a border-control
law,” rather, it is “a worker-control law.” In the words of Asian Law
Caucus staff attorney Bill Tamayo, “The new law has codified the
existence of a cheap and highly exploitable class of labor, largely
non-white and non-English-speaking, with little rights, if any.” And
employers lost no time in using the law as a weapon against workers
who tried to organize unions.22 In 2000, the AFL-CIO reversed its
stance and called for a repeal of employer sanctions.23 AFL-CIO
executive vice president Linda Chavez-Thompson explained,
“Employers often knowingly hire workers who are undocumented,
and then when workers seek to improve working conditions
employers use the law to fire or intimidate workers.”24
Proponents of employer sanctions argued that by making it more
difficult for undocumented immigrants to find work, the law would
discourage them from migrating to begin with. For Mexicans
contemplating migration, though, employer sanctions did not

appear to loom very large. In one important study of Mexican
sending communities in 1990, “Interviewees made it clear that
having a job in the United States is far more important to them than
any law the US Congress might pass: If they have a solid job
prospect, they will migrate, with or without papers. Our field
studies suggest that the robust growth in employment opportunities
in the United States in the second half of the 1980s has been at least
as important in fueling the current wave of emigration as the effects
of Mexico’s lingering economic crisis.”25
THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT 1990S
In the 1990s, explicitly anti-undocumented or anti-illegal
mobilization took off, especially in California, where Proposition 13
in 1978 had decimated state finances. Under Governor Pete Wilson,
“illegal” immigrants became a convenient scapegoat.26 Proposition
187 in 1994 was the first of many state- and nationwide efforts to
impose austerity on the backs of the most vulnerable. Nicknamed
“Save Our State,” it sought primarily to bar the undocumented from
receiving public services. The text of the proposed law began by
stating: “The People of California find and declare as follows: That
they have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by
the presence of illegal aliens in this state. That they have suffered
and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal
conduct of illegal aliens in this state. That they have a right to the
protection of their government from any person or persons entering
this country unlawfully.”27 Wilson “made undocumented
immigration the cornerstone of his 1994 re-election campaign.”28
Proposition 187’s language and rationale became widespread in the
anti-undocumented movement in subsequent years.
Many of Proposition 187’s provisions were never enacted, being
tied up or rejected in the courts. However, as California goes, so
goes the nation. After the Democrat Bill Clinton became president in
1993, Wilson connected anti-immigrant with anti-Washington
bombast, claiming that the federal government had failed to protect
the country’s borders. Wilson’s attacks helped to push Clinton to the

right on border enforcement, as Clinton sought to woo California’s
apparently increasingly anti-immigrant electorate.29
Anti-“illegal” rhetoric mirrored and intertwined with a growing
anti-black, anti–civil rights backlash in multiple ways. It replaced
explicitly racialized language with a two-pronged attack against
people of color. First, starting with the 1980 election, conservatives
“repeatedly raised the issue of welfare, subtly framing it as a context
between hardworking blue-collar whites and poor blacks who
refused to work.”30 Second was rhetoric about law and order.31
“The shift to a general attitude of ‘toughness’ toward problems
associated with communities of color began in the 1960s. . . . By the
late 1980s, however, not only conservatives played leading roles in
the get-tough movement, spouting the rhetoric once associated only
with segregationists. Democratic politicians and policy makers were
now attempting to wrest control of the crime and drug issues from
Republicans by advocating stricter anti-crime and anti-drug laws—
all in an effort to win back the so-called ‘swing voters’ who were
defecting to the Republican Party.”32
By the end of 1993, “politicians began tripping over one another
to take a tough stance on boundary enforcement and unauthorized
migration.”33 In 1994, President Clinton implemented Operation
Gatekeeper to bring the border “under control” and undercut Pete
Wilson’s protagonism by taking the lead on border enforcement as
the elections approached.34 In 1996, Clinton pressed for punitive
Welfare Reform and Immigration Reform laws that enacted federally
much of what California had tried to do at the state level. With
these laws, Clinton made both welfare reform and law and order
centerpieces of the Democratic Party program, and linked the antiblack and the anti-immigrant aspects of these policies. In the panic
following the 9/11 attacks, the USA-PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the
subsequent creation of the Department of Homeland Security in
2003 strengthened both institutional controls against potential and
current immigrants, as well as the ideological climate of antiimmigrant sentiment.

Joseph Nevins argues that the government’s increasing attention
to border enforcement in the 1990s actually served to create the
supposed immigration crisis. Through its sensationalist rhetoric and
justifications, as well as its ostentatious enforcement policies, the
state helped to convince the population that such a crisis indeed
existed.35
Republicans were torn between their traditional allies in the
business community—who had little incentive to join the
anti-“illegal” hysteria—and the new right-wing populism. Texas
went the opposite direction from California in the 1990s. “In Texas,
the economy was booming; the suburbs of Dallas, Houston, Austin,
and San Antonio were exploding; and thousands of illegal
immigrants sat astride two-by-fours, nail guns in hand, building
those neighborhoods. So, then-governor Bush and his man Karl Rove
crafted a different strategy from their California colleagues:
Hispanic-friendly. The result? In 1998, George W. Bush crushed his
Democratic opponent, getting nearly half the Hispanic vote—a
triumph that placed him on the path to the presidency one year
later.”36 In 2001, Texas Republican governor Rick Perry’s decision
to sign the nation’s first in-state tuition law in 2001 represented the
crest of the pro-immigrant wave.
A decade later Texas Republicans had gone the way of their
California colleagues. Texas Republicans promoted a redistricting
plan and voter identification law that federal courts struck down as
discriminatory. As late as 2010, Perry declared that a law like
Arizona’s S.B. 1070 “would not be the right direction for Texas.”37
By 2012, however, he was defending Arizona. “No state should be
held hostage to a federal government that refuses to enforce the
laws of the land. . . . The people of Arizona took action consistent
with federal law and in direct response to the failure of this
administration to secure our nation’s borders. The absence of federal
action on immigration enforcement directly spoils the integrity of
our nation’s laws.”38 Moreover, Perry was pushing for a Texas
version of this legislation, banning sanctuary cities that would

prevent local law enforcement agencies from enforcing federal
immigration law.39
“COMPREHENSIVE” VERSUS “ENFORCEMENT ONLY”
IN THE NEW CENTURY
In January 2004, president and candidate George W. Bush had
lauded the country’s immigrant history in a speech whose audience
included representatives of LULAC and other Hispanic
organizations. Bush acknowledged the country’s need for migrant
workers and expressed great sympathy for the undocumented:
Reform must begin by confronting a basic fact of life and
economics: Some of the jobs being generated in America’s
growing economy are jobs American citizens are not filling.
Yet these jobs represent a tremendous opportunity for workers
from abroad who want to work and to fulfill their duties as a
husband or a wife, a son or a daughter. Their search for a
better life is one of the most basic desires of human beings.
Many undocumented workers have walked mile after mile,
through the heat of the day and the cold of the night. Some
have risked their lives in dangerous desert border crossings or
entrusted their lives to the brutal rings of heartless human
smugglers. Workers who seek only to earn a living end up in
the shadows of American life, fearful, often abused and
exploited. When they’re victimized by crimes they’re afraid to
call the police or seek recourse in the legal system. They are
cut off from their families far away, fearing if they leave our
country to visit relatives back home they might never be able
to return to their jobs.
Thus, Bush proposed offering temporary legal status to all
undocumented workers in the country. Although he emphasized
that the status would be temporary—initially for three years, but
renewable—he also emphasized that those who wanted to apply for
citizenship should also be allowed to do so.40

Several congressional proposals for so-called comprehensive
immigration reform were launched in the first decade of the new
century: John McCain and Ted Kennedy’s Secure America and
Orderly Immigration Act (S. 1033) in 2005; John Cornyn and Jon
Kyl’s Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act (S.
1438), also in 2005; Arlen Specter’s Comprehensive Immigration
Reform Act (S. 2611), which passed the Senate in 2006; and finally
the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act or Secure Borders,
Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S.
1348), which drew on the earlier three and was promoted by
Senators McCain, Kennedy, and Kyl, as well as then-president Bush.
The right-wing reaction against the concept they termed amnesty
gained political traction and contributed to the failure of these
measures, even though all of them incorporated strong antiimmigrant
measures
euphemistically
called
enforcement
components. Rarely was it pointed out that the combination of
legalization and enforcement pioneered in 1986 had been followed
by a huge increase in the size of the undocumented population. The
proposals were generally critiqued from the right rather than from
the left. Comprehensive reform, willy-nilly, had become the rallying
cry of political liberals and supporters of immigrant rights.
While these comprehensive approaches stalled, the House passed
an extraordinarily punitive piece of legislation that epitomized what
came to be called the enforcement-only approach, H.R. 4437, the
Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control
Act of 2005. This vote became a catalyst for a new level of
immigrant rights mobilization, the huge demonstrations in the
spring and especially on May 1, 2006.
NEW PROTESTS IN THE NEW CENTURY
The major academic study of the 2006 demonstrations points out
that they dwarfed even the largest protest movements in the
country’s history, which only occasionally reached a half-million
protesters. “In a short span of twelve weeks between mid-February
and early May 2006, an estimated 3.7 million to 5 million people

took to the streets in over 160 cities across the United States to rally
for immigrant rights.”41 The protests were also unique in being
carried out within the political system but primarily by people
legally excluded from the polity—the undocumented.
Local activist organizations, hometown associations, and unions
as well as Spanish media and the Catholic Church played important
roles in disseminating publicity and motivating participants. “Radio
show hosts and DJs on popular Spanish-language radio stations
across the country endorsed the marches and encouraged listeners
to attend. In addition, the two main Spanish-language networks,
Univisión and Telemundo, promoted it through public service
announcements broadcast during popular evening newscasts,
regular reporting on the preparations for the marches and
interviews with march organizers during newscasts, and frequent
informal banter during talk-show and variety show formats, even
incorporating the subject into the plotlines of their telenovelas, or
soap operas.”42 National-level organizations took a backseat as
different coalitions mobilized in different cities.43 The culmination
of these many protests was on May 1, when a coordinated daywithout-an-immigrant protest brought walkouts and business
closings throughout the country to illustrate the importance of
immigrants to the economy and their role in citizens’ daily lives.
Another thing the immigrant and undocumented communities
had in their favor were the reformers in the labor movement who
pushed for more pro-immigrant, and pro-undocumented positions.
In the fall of 2003, the AFL-CIO, UNITE-HERE, and the SEIU
sponsored the first Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.
Undocumented immigrant workers took off from 101 cities around
the United States, headed for Washington, DC, where they lobbied
and demanded legislative change, and to New York, where they
held public rallies.44 One study suggests that the Immigrant Workers
Freedom Ride three years earlier helped bring groups together and
lay the groundwork for the 2006 mobilizations.45
To the extent that the protests aimed to prevent H.R. 4437 from
becoming law, they succeeded: the Senate declined to consider the

proposal and, in fact, passed its own, comprehensive reform bill
later in May 2006 (which was then rejected by the House).
Some analysts believe that it was Bush’s immigration agenda and
the battles over comprehensive immigration reform that led to the
Republican losses in Congress in 2006. After Obama’s victory in
2008, backlash came in the form of the Tea Party movement,
outflanking the Republicans to the libertarian and anti-immigrant
right. The Republicans are currently torn between appealing to the
fast-growing population of Hispanic voters—who have traditionally
voted Democratic—and playing to the far right anti-immigrant
sentiment fanned by talk radio and the Tea Party. Thirty-five
percent of Hispanics voted for Bush in 2000, and over 40 percent
did so in 2004, when Hispanic Republican support peaked.46 In
2008, with Barack Obama running against John McCain and Sarah
Palin, the Hispanic Republican vote sank to 31 percent. In 2012, as
candidate Mitt Romney took an outspokenly anti-immigrant
position, this went still lower to 27 percent. Meanwhile, the
Hispanic vote rose to 10 percent of the total, up from 9 percent in
2008 and 8 percent in 2004.47
CONSULTING FIRMS AND THE CULTURAL BATTLE
Rinku Sen argues that despite the successes of 2006, a cultural
battle for the rights of the undocumented was lost in the rise of
xenophobia after 9/11. Fox News, talk radio, reality TV, and other
media and entertainment sources offer the public epic battles
between “criminal aliens” and beleaguered law enforcement in what
Sen calls a “racialized cultural fight over the nation’s identity.”48
Sen especially critiques the immigrants’ rights organizations that
have sought and followed the advice of consultants and
“mainstreamed” their messages so as to tacitly accept, rather than
challenge, common anti-immigrant sentiments. Many large
organizations have relied on consulting firms like Westen Strategies
that use surveys and focus groups to determine what messages will
resonate with different sectors of the American public.

The firm’s founder, psychologist Drew Westen, urged advocates
to concede to the public’s antipathy for immigrants considered
illegal, rather than to challenge that stance. Advocates should aim
for the center, he argued, by avoiding talk of immigrants’ rights and
instead relying on some key phrases that would resonate with those
less sympathetic. His surveys found that the phrases “comprehensive
immigration reform” and “fixing a broken immigration system”
went over especially well with these centrist voters. An effective
message, Westen discovered, begins with “taking tough measures to
secure our borders,” continues with “cracking down on illegal
employers,” and finally ends with “requiring those who came here
without our permission to get in line, work hard, obey our laws, and
learn our language.”49 His firm works with and has been
commissioned by major immigrants’ rights organizations like the
Migration Policy Institute, the Center for American Progress, and
Reform Immigration for America. Indeed, Westen’s key phrases
began to enter every politician’s immigration proposals.
The Democratic Party also constructed its twenty-first-century
agenda based on survey and focus group research about what
messages would resonate with the American public. A study the
party commissioned by Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan
Rosner Research as the 2008 election approached argued that
immigration is “especially important in Congressional battleground
districts and states where views on illegal immigration are more
negative. Failing to show real determination to get this problem
under control costs incumbent Democrats votes.”
Like Westen, the authors recommended “acknowledgment of the
problem, pragmatic and tough ideas to stem the flow of illegal
immigration with a path to citizenship laden with the kinds of
requirements that anyone should meet if they are to attain the
honor of being an American citizen.” Their bullet points included
the following:
Attack [then-president] Bush for losing control of the
problem; enforcement at both the border and with employers

[sic]; opposition to non-essential benefits; and responsibility
and a path to citizenship.
A large majority of voters support a path to citizenship if
we are serious about having to qualify for citizenship:
expelling anyone who has committed a crime, others pay a
fine and taxes, learn English, and get in the back of the queue.
But if voters hear only the part about a path to citizenship
without the responsibilities, they do not support this—and
punish incumbent Democrats. But if Democrats “get it” and
are very serious about getting the problem under control,
including benefits, their leaders can get support for solving
this problem.50
As a candidate, Obama echoed this position when he outlined
what he believed comprehensive immigration reform should look
like and vowed to press for its passage. “I can guarantee . . . that we
will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support
and that I’m promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly
as possible,” he stated in May 2008.51 “We need immigration reform
that will secure our borders, and punish employers who exploit
immigrant labor; reform that finally brings the 12 million people
who are here illegally out of the shadows by requiring them to take
steps to become legal citizens,” he told the National Association of
Latino Elected Officials in June.52 A large coalition of immigrant
rights organizations favored this idea of a comprehensive reform,
despite its punitive aspects, and supported the Obama candidacy
and presidency.
Obama continued to reiterate this refrain once in office. “The
way to fix our broken immigration system is through commonsense, comprehensive immigration reform,” he declared at a Cinco
de Mayo celebration in 2010, seeming to take his cue directly from
Westen. “That means responsibility from government to secure our
borders, something we have done and will continue to do. It means
responsibility from businesses that break the law by undermining
American workers and exploiting undocumented workers—they’ve

got to be held accountable. It means responsibility from people who
are living here illegally. They’ve got to admit that they broke the
law and pay taxes and pay a penalty, and learn English, and get
right before the law—and then get in line and earn their
citizenship.’”53
He continued to sound the same themes after winning the 2012
election:
When I say comprehensive immigration reform . . . I think it
should include a continuation of the strong border security
measures that we’ve taken, because we have to secure our
borders. I think it should contain serious penalties for
companies that are purposely hiring undocumented workers
and taking advantage of them. And I do think that there
should be a pathway for legal status for those who are living
in this country, are not engaged in criminal activity, are here
simply to work. It’s important for them to pay back taxes, it’s
important for them to learn English, it’s important for them to
potentially pay a fine, but to give them the avenue whereby
they can resolve their legal status here in this country, I think
is very important.”54
A core of mainstream immigrant rights organizations linked to
the Democratic Party continues to push for this kind of a
comprehensive reform. Organizations like the New Democrat
Network, the National Council of La Raza, National Association of
Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, We Are America Alliance,
Mi Familia Vota Educational Fund, and Democracia USA are
sometimes identified as the inside-the-beltway organizations. They
emphasize the potential of the growing Latino vote, the need to
incorporate new voters into the Democratic Party, and the need of
the party to reach out to its new constituency through the project of
comprehensive reform.
A few advocates and organizations opposed the focus-group
approach. Oscar Chacón, executive director of the National Alliance
of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, or NALAAC,

rejected the “comprehensive” consensus arguing that “this is
oppressive language—punitive and restrictive.” The 2008
Democracy Corps report was “nothing but an effort by D.C. groups
to justify their views with a public opinion survey.” The Democrats
were “accept[ing] more and more of the premises of the antiimmigrant lobby.” “We should be trying to change the way people
think about the situation . . . instead of finding a way to make antiimmigrant sentiments tolerable,” Chacón urged.55
Once Obama took office, the idea of a comprehensive reform died
a quiet death. The Obama administration moved instead on the
enforcement side, promoting and imposing the Secure Communities
and E-Verify programs. Secure Communities, a Bush-era program
that empowered local police forces to share data on arrests with
ICE, grew from a small, voluntary pilot program to one Obama
insisted would be imposed nationwide by 2013. E-Verify likewise
grew from a small-scale, voluntary program to one required for
companies holding government contracts—about 170,000 of them,
employing some 4 million workers—and encouraged for all.56
The immigrant rights organizations that had worked for Obama
were disappointed when the first years of his presidency seemed to
pander to the anti-immigrant right rather than pay them back for
their support of his candidacy. Finally, in 2010, a crumb was
thrown to immigrant rights supporters: prosecutorial discretion.
Memoranda by Immigration Commissioner John Morton, in 2010
and 2011 (described in chapter 7), instructed agents of ICE to
exercise “prosecutorial discretion” with regard to immigration
violations. The term refers to law enforcement agencies’ right to
choose which cases to pursue and when to allow violators relief
from prosecution. Acknowledging that ICE could not possibly deport
all of the millions of people in the United States without
authorization, Morton instructed ICE to prioritize national security,
border security, and public safety in selecting its targets. Immigrants
who had committed no crimes beyond immigration violations, had
US citizens who were dependent upon them, and posed no risk to

national security or public should, in general, be eligible for such
discretion.57
One complicating factor in this new set of priorities was that
while entry without inspection is a civil immigration violation, “reentry after removal” is defined as a felony. The new rules defined
entry without inspection as a low-priority violation, but a second
attempt to enter without inspection made a person a felon and thus
a high priority for removal. In fact, of 391,953 aliens removed by
ICE in 2011, over half (203,571) had no criminal violations. Of the
188,382 who did have a criminal conviction, about 60 percent were
guilty of either minor drug offenses, driving offenses, or
immigration offenses.58 For fiscal year 2012, ICE proudly
announced that it had hit a new record with 409,849 removals.
Slightly over half of those removed (225,000) had been convicted of
felonies or misdemeanors, though the vast majority of these, as
usual, were for immigration or traffic offenses. Only about 7,000
were guilty of violent crimes.59
Toward the end of 2011, ICE began a case-by-case review of over
three hundred thousand pending removal cases in order to
determine which ones merited dismissal under the new guidelines.
As 2012 progressed, however, immigrant advocates became
concerned at the small and diminishing numbers of cases that were
determined to be eligible for dismissal. By the middle of 2012, only
a few thousand of the tens of thousands of cases reviewed had been
approved for dismissal.60 Prosecutorial discretion seemed to be
delivering much less than it had promised.
With the 2012 campaign in full swing, Obama finally offered his
signature DACA program. DACA opened some important doors, as
discussed in chapter 7, and may have contributed to the return of
comprehensive immigration reform to the 2013 Congressional
agenda. The reforms being debated in 2013, though, continued to
follow the consulting firms’ emphasis on enforcement followed by a
punitive path to citizenship or perhaps even something less than
citizenship.

CAN WE ABANDON “ENFORCEMENT”?
The more that US authorities have tried to control or stop Mexican
border crossing over the course of the twentieth century, the more
people have come. Absolute numbers have increased despite the
illegalizing of many border crossings. Despite increasingly harsh
measures aimed at reducing or eliminating illegal crossings, these
too have increased and sometimes decreased, as with those by
Mexicans in recent years, due to factors unrelated to measures
aimed explicitly at border control.
The past few decades have demonstrated that the more the
United States tries to militarily control the border, the more out of
control it gets. The huge growth in organized crime, drug
smuggling, drug and smuggling cartels, kidnappings, and violent
and unnecessary death at the border is the result of misguided
policies attempting to impose control.
Supporters of the idea of border control often argue that without
draconian measures to deter migrants, floods of Mexicans and other
Latin Americans would overwhelm the border and the country. They
forget, perhaps, that during the many decades in which the border
was relatively open, there were no floods. The number of
undocumented immigrants in the United States began its precipitous
rise after the country began to try to seal the border, in large part
because instead of leaving after a season of work, migrants felt
compelled to stay, since they realized that returning would be
difficult.
Recent trends demonstrate the extent to which structural factors
still govern migrant flows. The slowing and even reversal of
migration from Mexico and the concomitant rise in numbers
migrating from Central America, particularly from Honduras,
suggest that factors other than border policies are the ones that
really affect migrant streams. Border policies can shape where
people try to cross, how much it will cost, and how many will die in
the process, but they seem to have little effect on the numbers of
people crossing.

DEEPER QUESTIONS
If the United States can’t close the border, and if comprehensive
immigration reform is such a flawed approach, what can we do?
By now, we have become accustomed to the notion that
controlling the border is a basic prerequisite for security, safety, and
sovereignty. So accustomed, that we rarely question this idea.
The drive for so-called enforcement—through militarizing the
border, criminalizing the undocumented, detention, deportation,
and a punitive path to citizenship based on paying society back for
some supposed wrong inflicted—grows from some of the beliefs
outlined in the first chapter of this book. The entire immigration
apparatus is based on the presumption that we know where people
belong and we need to legislate their mobility.
It’s also based on some unquestioned assumptions about countries.
It is not OK for a public park, a town, a county, or a state to
discriminate regarding who is allowed to enter its space. But it’s OK
for a country to do that. It’s not OK to treat people differently based
on their religion, race, gender, or many other characteristics. But it’s
OK to treat people differently based on where they were born or
their nationality (which is generally determined by where a person
is born). US immigration laws do just that: discriminate, on the basis
of nationality, regarding who is allowed to be where.
If we really want to address the problem of undocumentedness,
or so-called “illegal” immigration, we need to look more in depth at
why the United States made some immigration illegal to begin with.
I hope that I have shown that the drive to illegalize immigration
was wrongheaded from the start. It’s just the latest stage in a
centuries-long process of legislated inequality, a process both global
and domestic.
Rather than what currently passes for comprehensive reform,
some organizations are pushing for what they call a “cultural
strategy” that challenges the nationalist—and racist—underpinnings
of popular views of immigrants. The new generation of
undocumented youth—the DREAMers discussed in chapter 7—has
taken this approach. Rinku Sen emphasizes that their goal goes

beyond gaining their own access to citizenship: the bigger aim is to
challenge the anti-immigrant culture. “Young, savvy with social
media, and artistically inclined, DREAMers have compensated for
their lack of political power by telling their stories in many forms
and venues.” With their stories, they sought to reframe the entire
debate.61
The Applied Research Center launched its Drop-the-I-Word (i.e.,
illegal) campaign in 2010 in another attempt to challenge the terms
of the mainstream debate about immigration that directly
contradicted Westen’s advice. Arguing that the very term “illegal”
(or “illegal immigrant”) “opens the door to racial profiling and
violence and prevents truthful, respectful debate on immigration,”
and that “no human being is illegal,” supporters challenged
politicians, the media, and others to stop using it.62 By 2013,
numerous mainstream news outlets had shifted their usage. “Illegal
immigrant isn’t always accurate because it implies that somebody
illegally immigrated when it fact a lot of people who are here
illegally are here because their documentation expired after they
came,” the Associated Press explained when its new style guide
recommended against using the term.63 The New York Times and Los
Angeles Times soon followed suit.64
In December 2012, Mexican American columnist Ruben
Navarrette penned a controversial column in which he chastised
DREAMers—and implicitly, others who are explicitly challenging
the official terms of the debate—for acting “like spoiled brats.”
“They don’t ask, they demand,” Navarrette complained. “These kids
want it all . . . what some seem to really want is the golden ticket:
US citizenship.” They are “drunk on entitlement,” he wrote, and will
“alienate supporters.”65
At my own university, Salem State, in Massachusetts, a group
supporting undocumented students engaged in a similar debate a
few years ago. Should the university openly admit and support
students who were undocumented? Or should it quietly open some
back doors? One local high school guidance counselor cautioned us
that the anti-immigrant climate at her school was so virulent that

she preferred to counsel students individually and would not
recommend that we hold a public event at her school. A faculty
member worried that if we raised the issue publicly, it would
imperil our undocumented students. Another retorted: “Do you
know of any historical example where social change has come about
by people keeping quiet?”
That question has stayed with me over the years and seems to
surface again and again, as in Navarrette’s column. There are those
who truly believe that the best way to help the undocumented is
through backroom deals that may bring some benefits for some
people without addressing the larger structural issues of unequal
international relations, an economy based on the use of labor kept
cheap through legal marginalization, restrictive immigration
policies, discrimination, and inequality before the law. History
shows, though, that whether we are trying to change foreign policy,
domestic and global economic structures, or laws that discriminate,
Frederick Douglass was closer to the truth when he argued that
change “must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will.”66
Although the cultural strategy is a very important way to raise
awareness and open a real debate about immigration policy, we also
need to address the root global and economic factors that have
contributed to today’s problems. In the most immediate terms, we as
a society created illegal immigration by making immigration illegal.
In larger terms, we created illegal immigration by fostering a global
system that bases the prosperity for the few on the exploitation of
the many and enforcing it, in the modern era, through borders and
exclusive citizenship. It’s up to us to change it.

THE PROBLEM WITH SASS

This is a book by a grown-ass woman written for other grown-ass women.
This is a book for women who expect to be taken seriously and for men who
take grown women seriously. This is a book for women who know shit is
fucked up. These women want to change things but don’t know where to
begin.
To be clear, I’m not really into self-help books, so I don’t have one of
those catchy three-step plans for changing the world. What I have is anger.
Rage, actually. And that’s the place where more women should begin—with
the things that make us angry.
When it comes to Black women, sometimes Americans don’t recognize
that sass is simply a more palatable form of rage. Americans adore sassy
Black women. You know, those caricatures of finger-waving, eye-rolling
Black women at whom everyone loves to laugh—women like Tyler Perry’s
Madea, Mammy in Gone with the Wind, or Nell from that old eighties sitcom
Gimme a Break! These kinds of Black women put white folks at ease.
In my first terrible job after college, my boss, an older white woman, told
me that the students at the predominantly Black school at which we worked
had deemed her an honorary Black woman. When I looked at her with
question marks in my eyes, she said, “You know, they mean the way I talk to
them and roll my neck,” and demonstrated it for me. I went on back to my
desk.
Years after that, I was doing a summer abroad in South Korea. My
Malaysian roommate, who had seen many episodes of the old nineties sitcom
Family Matters, told me that she loved Black women because we were

sassy like Harriette and Laura Winslow, the main Black female characters on
that show. To her, these stereotypical portrayals made Black folks seem
understandable, even though to me, her descriptions felt like we were exotic
others. She loved it, she said, when Black women put their hands on their
hips and swiveled their necks in protest. Not wanting to offend this woman
who I otherwise really liked, I simply said, “We’re not all like that.” She
looked disappointed.
I am fat, Black, and Southern. But this is not a sassy Black girl’s tale.
Black women turn to sass when rage is too risky—because we have jobs to
keep, families to feed, and bills to pay. Black women who hold their
communities together also hold our broader American community together.
But it’s unclear whether we are really being taken seriously.
Owning anger is a dangerous thing if you’re a fat Black girl like me.
Angry Black Women get dismissed all the time. We are told we are
irrational, crazy, out of touch, entitled, disruptive, and not team players. The
story goes that Angry Black Women scare babies, old people, and grown
men. This is absurd. And it is a lie. If you have the nerve to be fat and angry,
then you are treated as a bully even if you are doing nothing aggressive at all.
The truth is that Angry Black Women are looked upon as entities to be
contained, as inconvenient citizens who keep on talking about their rights
while refusing to do their duty and smile at everyone. Don’t you just hate
when folks yell at you to “Smile!”? I told the last man who said that shit to
me, “You smile!”
Some years ago, I ran into a former student on the college campus where I
was teaching. Erica was a brilliant Black girl who wrote great papers and
asked really smart questions. As we were standing around with a group of
others, chatting, she said, “I loved having you as my professor. Your lectures
were filled with rage. But it was, like, the most eloquent rage ever.” I
immediately felt defensive. What did she mean by rage? “I’m not angry,” I
told her. “I’m passionate.” By then, I was wary of the Angry Black Woman
stereotype. Even though I was only in my mid-twenties at the time, I had
already experienced many years of white people doing that thing they do to
articulate Black women—always asking us “Why are you so angry?” I hated
the accusation from others, usually white people, because it was unfair, a

way to discredit the legitimacy of the things Black women say by calling
them emotional and irrational. But Erica was a Black girl. She fixed me with
a telltale look that only another Black woman can give you, a look that said,
Girl, be for real. And then she said, “Brittney, you know you’re angry.” I felt
exposed. I couldn’t even say anything. She had seen through the veneer, seen
the lie I was telling. It was devastating. And life-changing.
I was angry. As hell. And I was fooling no one.
Black women have the right to be mad as hell. We have been dreaming of
freedom and carving out spaces for liberation since we arrived on these
shores. There is no other group, save Indigenous women, that knows and
understands more fully the soul of the American body politic than Black
women, whose reproductive and social labor have made the world what it is.
This is not mere propaganda. Black women know what it means to love
ourselves in a world that hates us. We know what it means to do a whole lot
with very little, to “make a dollar out of fifteen cents,” as it were. We know
what it means to snatch dignity from the jaws of power and come out
standing. We know what it means to face horrific violence and trauma from
both our communities and our nation-state and carry on anyway. But we also
scream, and cry, and hurt, and mourn, and struggle. We get heartbroken, our
feelings get stepped on, our dreams get crushed. We get angry, and we
express that anger. We know what it means to feel invisible.
* * *
I know what it means to feel invisible. To be picked on, bullied,
misunderstood, and dismissed. But when Erica called me out on my anger, it
was clear that she saw me in a way that I wasn’t particularly interested in
being seen. She helped me to realize that my anger could be a powerful force
for good. She had called my rage eloquent. Clear. Expressive. To the point.
In her estimation, it had made me a good teacher, and it had inspired her and
other students.
Over and over again, Black girls have called me out and demanded that I
get my shit together, around my rage, around my work in the world, and
around my feminism. Those Black girl callouts, or “homegirl interventions,”

as I call them in this book, have come from my grandmama, my mama, and
my girls. And they have saved my life.
America needs a homegirl intervention in the worst way. So in this book, I
am doing what Black women do best. I’m calling America out on her bullshit
about racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and a bunch of other stuff.
And I’m using feminism to stage this homegirl intervention. I’m here for
picket signs, pussy hats (as long as there are plenty of brown ones in the
mix), and patchouli. My picket signs are as likely to say FUCK THE POLICE as
they are to say FUCK THE PATRIARCHY. Black-girl feminism is all the rage, and
we need all the rage. Feminism can give us a common language for thinking
about how sexism, and racism, and classism work together to fuck shit up for
everybody.
Like many other feminists, I used to carry around Audre Lorde’s book
Sister Outsider like it was the feminist bible. Her essay “The Uses of Anger:
Women Responding to Racism” taught me that rage is a legitimate political
emotion. She writes, “Focused with precision, it can become a powerful
source of energy serving progress and change.”
Here’s the thing: My anger and rage haven’t always been “focused with
precision.” The process, of both becoming a feminist and becoming okay
with rage as a potential feminist superpower, has been messy as hell. We
need to embrace our messiness more. We need to embrace the ways we are
in process more. Very often Black girls don’t get the opportunity to be in
process. So just know that you don’t have to have everything figured out to
read and enjoy this book.
For more than a decade, since Erica named for me my superpower—
eloquent rage—I’ve been trying to figure out how to focus it with precision.
When I watch the Williams sisters—Venus and Serena—use their power
on a tennis court, I feel like they are a case study in how to use rage with
precision. Born six months after Venus and nine months before Serena, I feel
like I grew up with the Williams sisters. When they first began to win major
tournaments in the late 1990s, sportscasters derisively referred to the “power
tennis” they played. These strong, athletic Black girls had serves with speeds
of more than 120 miles per hour and they scared the shit out of white girls.

Until they learned how to use their power, it often became a liability, causing
them to make lots of mistakes on and off the court.
But in the nearly twenty years since they have come to dominate tennis,
both sisters have figured out how to corral all that power into precise serves
and shots that are nearly unmatched. They have created this kind of alchemy
that uses their physical strength and strategic prowess on the court, together
with all the racial slurs and insults they have endured over the years—being
called the N-word, being called ugly, being told their bodies were too manly
—to create something that looks magical to the rest of us. Watching Venus
play, particularly on grass courts, is like watching a Black girl perform in a
ballet. She is an elegant player. Watching Serena play, particularly when
she’s beating white women, is like watching eloquent rage personified. Her
shots are clear and expressive. Her wins are exultant. Her victories belong to
all of us, even though she’s the one who does all the work.
That’s kind of how it feels to be a Black woman. Like our victories
belong to everyone, even though we do all the work. But here’s the thing—if
I can master any force in my life and slay it like Serena slays tennis balls on
the court, then I’m happy to share the wealth.

CAPITAL B, CAPITAL F

It took nothing short of a homegirl intervention to turn me into a feminist. It
was my senior year at Howard University, and I’d managed to go through
much of college without having even one boyfriend on campus. As much as
Howard offered an explicit education in the workings of racism and white
supremacy, its lessons about sexism were far more subtle. I felt like
something was wrong with me. The boys wanted me to run their student
government campaigns, or they wanted to verbally joust with me, but they
didn’t want to date me. On high self-esteem days, I simply thought it was
because they were dumb. On bad self-esteem days, I thought it was because I
was fat. (Fat is of course relative, because if I could be my college size
again…) I hadn’t considered that sexism had anything to do with it, that
young men had been socialized to desexualize outspoken women. I reveled in
being unconquerable, because that’s an important trait for Black girls
surviving abusive father figures to have. I didn’t realize that living life in a
patriarchy, even in a beautiful Black one, meant that I had to at least appear
conquerable if I wanted to get chose.
One day, on campus, I proclaimed with the confidence of a twenty-yearold who knows just enough to be dangerous, that “feminism is white
women’s shit. At most, I’m a womanist.” I had heard someone else invoking
Alice Walker’s definition of womanism, and it sounded good enough to me.
The thing is: my defection from feminism wasn’t a principled defection. I
hadn’t read Walker’s definition at all. But I had spent a lifetime having
slightly awkward friendships with the white girls with whom I grew up, and I
had escaped after high school to the Blackness of Howard to recover from

all of it. I’ll talk more about my complicated relationship with white women
in the next chapter, but suffice it to say that I was ready to lay the entirety of
my feminist inheritance—the work of women like Sojourner Truth, Anna
Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, and the women of the Combahee River
Collective—on the altar next to all the blond hair that I had mentally burned
in effigy after high school. This is what I like to call doing the most, but
achieving the least. And, luckily, one of my homegirls saw through my
bullshit and staged a friendly but serious intervention.
My friend Tracey heard me making such ignorant pronouncements about
feminism and hemmed me up in the dorms later. “Here,” she said, handing me
a book. “Read this, because you were talking kinda crazy earlier about
feminism.” This wasn’t our first discussion about the f-word. She had also
asked me a few months earlier if I wanted to “come to Blackburn [the student
center] to hear bell hooks?” “Who is bell hooks?” I had asked, vaguely
remembering that I had encountered her name in a book on gender and
equality that I had bought during my days on my high school’s debate team.
“Oh, she writes all this feminist stuff, but she talks real crazy, so it should be
interesting,” Tracey had said, chuckling.
“Talking crazy” in our college parlance could be either an indictment or a
compliment. It was a way to denote those moments of flirtation with ideas
that skirted the line between being profound and being absolutely
nonsensical. For instance, there was the day that the Honors Office Crew (the
Blerds of my day) entertained the idea of whether women might evolve into
being able to impregnate themselves, if it happened to be true that clitorises
were really just small penises. My good Christian self was both scandalized
by the mention of clitorises and penises (and evolution!) but also deeply
curious and seduced by the questions themselves. I vacillated between
wondering whether my friends were going to hell, and tiptoeing into the deep
with them because I secretly loved the irreverence of it all. It felt like any
day in the Howard Honors office could lead to a personal evolution of bigbang proportions.
* * *

Listening to years of “talking crazy” among the crew had made me fall in
love with ideas in a substantive way. For instance, the Crew put me on to TaNehisi Coates back in the early 2000s when he wrote for the Washington
City Paper. His pieces were must-reads, and when we saw him hanging out
on campus, we whispered to each other, stanning ever so slightly. Once, I
remember Coates popping his head into a room of Howard student leaders in
the Blackburn Center and scowling at us, unimpressed. We were probably
having a heated debate about the fate of Black America, and apparently, we
weren’t saying anything earth shattering. I’m pretty sure I scowled back.
Still, it was cool as hell to run into thinkers on campus whose work I’d
read on the regular. I became a Ph.D. because I wanted that kind of life, one
where “talking crazy”—playing with ideas that skirted the line between the
radical and the absurd, the sacred and the profane—was the order of the day.
So I knew that in Tracey’s indictment of hooks’s propensity to “talk crazy”
there was also an endorsement, a belief that she was worth hearing. Curious
about just exactly what kind of crazy talk hooks might engage in, I followed
Tracey to the panel.
I don’t remember much about hooks’s talk. Perhaps we had arrived late. I
do remember that she seemed unimpressed and perhaps agitated, most likely
with the conservative gender politics that shaped Howard during my time
there. But hooks’s feminist “crazy talk” was my first experience with the
kinds of provocations that can be life-changing. And it was quite different
from the dismissive “crazy talk” that had me in the hot seat with my homegirl.
I think Tracey had just assumed, naturally, that I would be a feminist,
given my fierce sense of selfhood and my willingness to drag anyone who
stepped to me with what I deemed a bad argument. She therefore looked at
me both curiously and incredulously when I dared to insist otherwise. I took
the book, a collection of academic essays on feminist theory. She instructed,
“I think you’ll really like this essay on multiple jeopardies by Deborah
King.” Sufficiently chastised, I agreed to read the piece she had chosen.
While I was not especially interested in being a feminist, I was even less
interested in having a raggedy analysis, of being critically uninformed, and
of getting caught out there, assed out and looking ignorant. So I sat down that
same night, turned to the essay Tracey had suggested, and tried to get clearer

on what exactly feminism was and how it might apply to me. King wanted us
to see the effects of oppressions on Black women’s lives as what she called
“multiplicative.” Our class position, sexual identity, and many other vectors
of power shaped our identity in the world, and more specifically, these things
determined how many boots there were on our collective necks.
That essay didn’t turn me into a feminist, because it felt a bit too academic
for me to read without the benefit of a classroom context to work out the
ideas. But I did begin to care deeply about Black women’s legacy of activism
and ask more questions about what historical Black women had said about
issues of racism and sexism. Over the next few years, I would have the
opportunity, via some dope-ass Black feminist professors and because of the
work of Hip Hop feminist Joan Morgan, to name and own a feminism for
myself. But what mattered to me most, what lingers for me now, was the
thoughtfulness and care of another Black girl’s friendship.
Friendships with Black girls have always saved my life. I give the side
eye to any Black woman who doesn’t have other Black women friends, to
any woman who is prone to talk about how she relates better to men than to
women, to anyone who goes on and on about how she “doesn’t trust
females.” If you say fuck the patriarchy but you don’t ride for other women,
then it might be more true that the patriarchy has fucked you, seducing you
with the belief that men care more about your well-being than women do.
It isn’t true.
I came up in an era when Black girls loudly proclaimed that they didn’t
have friends. They had associates. It has always rung false to me, maybe
because the introverted parts of me had absolutely no interest in spending
sustained time fake-grinning at people with whom I couldn’t be my whole
self. I wanted friends to snicker, giggle, and pass notes with, to share secrets
with. I wanted people who would have my back. I worry about a world in
which Black girls on their way to becoming women are taught to distrust
women. I worry about a world in which Black women who are raising boys
cultivate distrust for girls by looking upon every girl who shows interest in
their sons with distrust. We wonder why young men hate women and,
sometimes, the sad truth is that their mamas and aunts and sisters act as an

arm of the patriarchy by parroting the refrain that “girls simply can’t be
trusted.”
It’s hard for Black girls to be friends with each other. But there is wonderworking power in the homegirl hem-up, the particular way that Black women
friends gather you and save your life by telling you lovingly to get your shit
together. It took me a really long time to find my tribe, though. I always knew
I needed Black girls to make it, and I longed for their friendship in
substantial ways throughout childhood. But, more often than not, I was
rebuffed. We live in a world that tells women to distrust other women. And
those of us who do dare to love other women hard are taught to distrust our
impulses, to see that love as queer and wrong.
I have had more than a few crushes on my homegirls, mostly intellectual
and always deeply emotional, and sometimes perhaps a bit sexual. In middle
school, when I finally found my first real-deal, pass-notes-in-class, rushhome-after-school-to-talk-on-the-phone-for-several-more-hours Black-girl
bestie, I was elated. And a bit surprised. Neisha had sidled up to me one day
at the end of seventh grade, as we were walking out the doors toward the
buses after school, and said, “We’re gonna have to stick together next year.”
Up until that point, I didn’t totally know how I felt about her. She was both
smart and cool; I had smart on lock, but couldn’t find my own cool even if
someone had handed it to me in a paper bag.
Neisha and I had come to know each other better a few weeks earlier on
our seventh-grade honors trip to South Louisiana, a place that seemed a
world away from our more rural, North Louisiana experience. On the trip,
we bonded over an episode of Martin, featuring his next-door neighbor
Sheneneh and her homegirls Bonquisha and Keylolo. Together with Reina, a
Black girl whom I had known since I was eight, when we ended up in Girl
Scouts together, the three of us—the only Black girls on the trip—stuck
together. For some reason, perhaps because of the insecurities that plague all
girls at age twelve, occasionally Neisha and Reina would devolve into
mean-girl behaviors with me as the target. Just happy to have Black girls for
friends, I pretended not to hear the commentary they made behind my back,
about how corny I was, or how naïve I was. One day, in eighth grade, after
Neisha and I became actual besties, I heard her walking behind me in the

hall, whispering to someone about why I had worn hot-pink scrunch socks
instead of white tights with the cute skirt I rocked to school that day. My
feelings were hurt; I pretended like I simply didn’t hear her. A confrontation
would surely have ended our friendship.
One of the final outings of the Louisiana Heritage Tour in 1993 was a trip
to New Orleans’ Audubon Zoo, the biggest zoo in our state. Our teachers had
given strict instructions that we were to use the buddy system. Neisha, Reina,
and I, together with James (the only Black boy on the trip), decided we
would navigate the zoo together. None of us had been especially tight before
we had boarded the buses that Monday, but by that Thursday afternoon, the
trip to the plantation, one in which tour guides acted shy about admitting that
enslaved people had lived and worked there, had brought us together.
Apparently my endless chatter, or my inability to be as appropriately cool
and detached as twelve-year-old me should have been, got on the nerves of
Reina and Neisha for the last time. At some point, I turned around and they
had ditched me, abandoning the buddy system and leaving me to find my way
back to the bus. Looking around frantically, I spotted them several yards up
ahead, snickering and giggling to themselves as they assumed they had gotten
away with their mean joke. Not wanting to be lost, I followed slowly behind,
keeping them in sight so that I wouldn’t be late to the bus. But since they
wanted to be away from me, I didn’t catch up to them either. I walked along,
humiliated that I needed them to find my way back and afraid to call out their
behavior for fear that the friends I had finally found would no longer be my
friends. I wondered what it was that I had done to make them hate me. I
arrived back at the bus a few moments after they did, but we never spoke
about how they had left me in the middle of a “jungle” without backup. I
knew I wasn’t ready to ditch them and go it alone again, so there was no
point in making a scene.
A few weeks later, apparently Neisha had reassessed her view of me,
deciding that we would in fact “need each other” next year. Post–thirty-yearold me wishes I had had the nerve to tell her to shove it, but I really did need
her, and she really did need me. We were overachieving Black girls in
predominantly white classrooms, and what that trip to learn about our
heritage had taught us was that our story bound us together and didn’t allow

us the privilege of building friendships based on shared affinity and
personality alone. Black girls had to stick together.
* * *
So stick we did. We exchanged phone numbers and then spent the summers
between seventh and eighth and eighth and ninth grades giggling on the phone
endlessly, talking about boys and having phone romances with boys that we
connected to through an endless string of three-way calls. Two summers
before, it was my white bestie, Mandy, whom I’d called to tell when my
period showed up a few days before the start of sixth grade. But sharing the
secrets of growing into my Black womanhood with my white bestie, when
our social lives were increasingly racially segregated, made for an
unsustainable friendship by the end of middle school, causing Mandy and I to
grow apart. By the summer of ’93, it was my Black bestie Neisha I’d called
to talk about the harrowing events of the night before, when my mother’s
live-in boyfriend, angry over their impending breakup, beat her, forcing me to
choose between grabbing a knife and calling the police. I was thankful that I
had a Black girl to call, and I realized that if circumstances had been
different, I wouldn’t have told Mandy at all. Neisha’s family was different
from mine. She had a married mama and daddy and two big brothers who
lived in the house with her. Still, I felt like she would understand more. And
she did. She listened and offered support. Perhaps that is why my mother,
slightly embarrassed and incensed with me for telling her business, let it
ride. Black girls of every age need other Black girls who can hold their
truths.
I was deep in the throes, that summer, of my girlhood crush on Ronnie
Groves, a nerdy Black boy who was two years older and who had beaten me
in Bible Quiz at Vacation Bible School two summers prior. My head and
diary were filled with hopes and wishes that he would be my first kiss. I was
surprised and unprepared for the moment when I found myself fantasizing
about kissing Neisha, having picked up from the ether, rather than from any
particular conversation, that girls didn’t kiss girls.
* * *

Up until college, I had only ever encountered one lesbian, a woman named
Wendy, whom all the adults in my life seemed to like and respect and smile at
when she was around, but as soon as she was out of earshot, they would
whisper about how she “went the other way.” Wendy rocked a Jheri Curl,
drove a long green car, and always had on shades, which she wore, looking
back on it, like armor. I simply thought she looked a little mysterious. She
had a pretty smile and a friendly demeanor, but it was clear to me that she
existed on the outskirts of our small, tightly knit community because she was
“different.”
Liking girls didn’t seem like a viable possibility for me. Fantasies of
kissing Neisha weren’t frequent, but the closer I felt to her, the more I
imagined what physically expressing that closeness might look like.
Thankfully (or perhaps not), my mother paid for monthly subscriptions to all
the great teen magazines of the nineties: Sassy, Teen, Seventeen, and YM. YM
was my fave and Sassy, the most feminist of them all, was my least fave.
Wokeness has been a process for me. So I turned to the monthly advice
columns every month and read questions that readers would write into the
mag about sex.
My boyfriend and I were messing around one day and he was inside
me a little bit. Am I still a virgin?
While I found that question quite scandalous, I was relieved when I read
this question:
Sometimes I think about what it would be like to kiss another girl.
Does this mean I’m gay?
“No,” the columnist replied.
Your body is changing and you are having lots of feelings. It’s
perfectly normal in the sexual development process to fantasize
about members of the same sex. But don’t worry about it. You’re
probably not gay, and you’ll figure it out in time.

The magazines worked to assure girls that they were most probably
straight, subtly making it clear that queerness was not desirable. But back
then, conversations about queerness and gender fluidity hadn’t trickled down
to my Louisiana middle school. You were one or the other, in or out, gay or
straight. Relieved and assured of my straightness, I placed Neisha, my one
real close Black friend, in the friend-only category and went back to crushing
on cute-ass Ronnie Groves. The thing I know today, after many cycles of
homegirls, many more years of girl crushes, and a life of straight sexual
activity, is that one can’t truly be a feminist if you don’t really love women.
And loving women deeply and unapologetically is queer as fuck. It is erotic
in the way that Audre Lorde talks about eroticism. It’s an opening up, a
healing, a seeing and being seen. Good sex is all these things, too. My
friendships with women have never been overtly sexual, but a good many of
them have been what bell hooks in her book Communion: The Female
Search for Love called romantic, in the soul-inspiring way that someone
being thoughtful about loving you and showing up for you is romantic. Often
those connections have what hooks called “an erotic dimension … that acts
as an energetic force, enhancing and deepening ties.” There is no room in my
life for shallow or basic connections.
Feminism helped me to be okay with what it means to love women in the
womanish and womanist ways that Alice Walker famously talked about
—“sexually and non-sexually.” These days, on what one of my homegirls has
deemed #ThottieThursdays, it has become customary for my girls and I to
sext one another slyly seductive pics of our asses, or thighs, or cleavages,
sometimes bare, or sometimes clothed in the perfect way that all our curves
are accentuated. And the tacit agreement is that we share to be affirmed, in
our sexiness, in our beauty, and in our glory. When this particular group of
homegirls first started with their shameless flirting and body commentary, I
used to blush furiously, not knowing where this kind of engagement fit for me,
a straight girl. But for this same me, who has been single, alone, and often
lonely for most of my grown womanhood, ofttimes the flirtations and sexy
comments from the homies are the only compliments I get.
One of the biggest battles that second-wave feminists of the seventies had
with third-wave feminists of the nineties was over the place of sex and

beauty in feminism. Second wavers critiqued high heels and lipstick as
oppressive expectations of the patriarchy. Third-wave white girls brought
heels and fly red lips back into the mix. Black feminists gave the side eye to
white girls and their feminist waves, because looking fierce and fly has
always been a part of the Black-girl credo. (And also because Black
feminism didn’t fit neatly within the historical trajectory of waves.) Our
embrace of femininity was its own armor in a world where white women
said that Black women should never be called ladies. If I have to pick a side,
I’d say I’m second wave enough to put middle fingers up to the patriarchy
and I’m third wave enough to affirm that beauty and the desire to be wanted
still matter. When you go for months or years without a dude (or any love
interest) ever noticing you, you can begin to feel invisible. And feminist
principles about how the patriarchy has made us beholden to beauty culture
do nothing to assuage the desire we all have to be seen and affirmed.
The old adage is that all feminists are lesbians. So what if that’s true?
Here’s the thing, and there’s really no straight way to say this. Black
feminism is and has always been a fundamentally queer project. Straight
chicks gotta make their peace with that, and hopefully without too much
struggle.
I would venture to say that most tried-and-true feminist chicks are open to
the possibility of their own queerness, because desire is fluid and because
the boundaries and labels matter so much less when you get down to the real
work of what it means to love Black women in a world that hates us all. One
time, when I revealed to one of my girls that I was post-thirty but still hadn’t
figured out how to have an orgasm that I didn’t give myself, she looked at me
with a look of incredulity and thinly veiled disgust at the dudes I had slept
with and said, “Shit. I’ll fuck you.” She was only half-joking. I didn’t take
her up on her offer, but I did realize that I needed to seriously invest in my
own pleasure, or else I was in for a homegirl intervention of a very different
sort. Deep and abiding love can be sisterly and it can be erotic, and
sometimes it can be and needs to be all these things at the same damn time.
On more than one occasion, I’ve had a male lover say to me, upon finding
out I’m a feminist, “Are you a lesbian? Are you sure?” Rather than being
reactionary and defensive, perhaps straight women need to become less

invested in the project of straightness altogether. Let me be clear. I’m not
telling you who to sleep with. I’m also not telling you that all feminists want
to or should want to sleep with women. I am saying that far too many women
leave behind the freedom feminism offers because they want to stay on
patriarchy’s dick, which is to say they want to secure their straightness and
their options for getting chosen.
I love a penis attached to a man who knows how to use it, but I’m
uninterested in femme-style battle royales over dick. That’s just so basic.
Who has time? Feminism wouldn’t be feminism if it didn’t encode a healthy
skepticism about the politics of getting dick. And feminism wouldn’t be
feminism if it didn’t celebrate the power of pussy. It might be trite but it’s
true. To be clear, and not transphobic, feminism is also not about the
elevation of particular body parts. My trans-women comrades have taught me
that you don’t have to have a vagina to have a pussy. And my lesbian
homegirls have extolled to me the virtues of the “D” their own lesbian
partners are throwing down. The larger point is that however dope fellatio
may be, fellating the patriarchy is no way to win.
If Black women don’t figure out how to love other Black women (cis and
trans, queer and straight, and everything in between), it will be the death of
us. This toxic behavior of not fully knowing how to love other Black women
shaped my earliest Black-girl friendship with Neisha, and shaped many of
my other friendships for years to come. I put up with Neisha’s mean-girl
behavior almost until the end of high school. But one summer night, after a
minor spat but after many years of holding in my wounded feelings, I snapped
and tried to fight her, only to have Reina hold me back. It’s the first and last
time I’ve ever come that close to letting a Black woman catch these hands.
Sometimes the sisterhood hurts.
This toxicity that dogs Black women in friendships almost ruined my
college friendship with Tracey, too. Inexplicably, a few months after pulling
my card about feminism, she stopped talking to me. Months later, she said I
had become “too intense,” which I read to mean too close, too attuned, too
involved, too much. The subtext, though neither of us ever spoke it out loud,
was that I was doing “gay shit” and it made her uncomfortable. Perhaps I
was. I never imagined kissing Tracey, never wanted to sleep with her. But I

loved her, deeply, because it’s the only way I know how to love Black
women. I loved her because she loved me enough to check me when my
feminist analysis was raggedy. But Neisha had taught me not to stay in
friendships out of fear of being alone, so I endured the homegirl breakup with
my chin up as much as I could, which is to say, not very much. One day my
roommate Alicia came home and caught me crying big hot tears over this
latest friendship failure. Yet again, I had done too much and managed to run
off the closest Black friend that I had. “Sometimes, Miss Bertney, (Alicia’s
nickname for me), it’s not that people don’t love you, it’s that they don’t have
the same capacity to love as you do. Most people are doing the best they
can.” Alicia’s words felt wise and true, and they helped me to pick my face
up and move on. Months later, Tracey apologized, saying to me, “You simply
loved me, and I didn’t know how to take it. I hope we can repair our
friendship.” Intimacy between Black women matters on its own terms, and it
isn’t a threat to the other kinds of relationships we want to have in our lives.
So many Black women of my generation want access to the suburban
fantasy marriage more than almost anything else. All I had imagined for my
personal life at age twenty was that I would get married, have three kids, and
enjoy taking care of a family. It’s laughable now since I don’t particularly
like children, unless they belong to people I love. I had nuclear-family
dreams because I had bought into the notion that the way I grew up—in a
single-parent home, with a mismatched family of aunties and uncles and
cousins and grandparents bringing up the rear—was not optimal. So part of
my success story involved having it all—the house, the car, the career, the
pretty man, and the kids. It’s fine to want all those things. But it’s dangerous
to get them in a context where you have no analysis of how and why those are
your desires. Feminism helped me to think more robustly about where I had
gotten the idea that my upbringing was wrong or lacking. (Moynihan was one
place. The church was another. And I’ll say more about both of these later.)
And feminism helped me to recognize that there were other versions of a life
to want.
When my patriarchal nuclear fantasy didn’t happen and the privileges of
straightness eluded me and a whole generation of overachieving Black
women, it is my girls who have celebrated my successes, showered me with

compliments, taken me out on dates, traveled the world with me, supported
me through big life decisions, and showed up when disasters struck. One of
feminism’s biggest failures is its failure to insist that feminism is, first and
foremost, about truly, deeply, and unapologetically loving women.
* * *
Beyoncé gets this lesson about feminism better than most. And she has been
one of the biggest victims of this failure to love women among Black
feminists. Until the release of her magnum opus, Lemonade, an album so selfconsciously about the interior lives, struggles, and emotions of Black women
that even most of Bey’s haters had to bow down, I have never seen so much
vitriol, particularly among Black feminist women, as I have seen in their
reactions to Beyoncé. Never.
They simply didn’t believe that the pretty, light-skinned, affluent, superstar
Black girl could really love other Black girls. For most of us, her
#prettyprivilege conjured up the mean girls we encountered at twelve and
thirteen—that age when we all felt deeply misunderstood, and were prone to
be mean to others while being the target of other mean girls ourselves. Of
course we are no longer adolescents, but something about seeing Beyoncé
shine makes that particular truth go right out the window. We could call it the
defenestration of feminist common sense. It’s as if the girls who were bullied
finally have the chance to be the mean girls, and, where Beyoncé is
concerned, they have embraced that role with gusto and absolutely no sense
of irony.
Beyoncé is my feminist muse.
She didn’t start out that way. Back in 1997, she was just one of the
members in a girl group that I loved, singing the soundtrack to my senior year
of high school. Three years later, when two of the original group members
left, I swore that Beyoncé was the cause and refused to buy any more
Destiny’s Child albums. But I’ve always been terrible at holding a grudge,
and by the time Bey dropped her first solo album during the fall of my first
year of graduate school, I was back on board. Over the next decade she
became Beyoncé the multi-talented mega-superstar that we know today,
largely by keeping Black girls supplied with anthems for every possible life

event. She was girl power personified, so I didn’t necessarily need or expect
her to have a critique of the patriarchy or a formal membership to the
feminists club. (BTW, for all you card-pullers, no such club exists.)
By then, she was inspiring all of my best feminist theorizing. When I heard
the 2006 club track “Get Me Bodied,” I definitely did an “old-school dance”
or two, as the song entreated, but I also thought about feminist body politics,
and what it might mean for a Black girl to really get in her body, love it, and
stay there. When I heard her “Upgrade U,” I cringed when she sang, “I can do
for you what Martin did for the people, ran by the men” (both because of the
bad grammar and the even worse politics), but perked up when she said, “but
the women keep the tempo.” I have thought long and hard about what it means
for women’s bodies to keep the tempo of social movements. Some of my best
academic theorization around feminism has come from pondering what kind
of space Bey might be making for the particular ways in which Black women
can be and can lead.
At some point, a journalist named Jane Gordon asked her directly whether
she was a feminist. Many Black women musicians had been asked this
question before Bey. Erykah Badu and Queen Latifah readily come to mind.
Both denied identification with the term, citing an affinity for “humanism” in
Erykah’s case, and a love for Black men in Latifah’s.
Beyoncé replied:
I think I am a feminist, in a way. It’s not something I consciously
decided I was going to be; perhaps it’s because I grew up in a
singing group with other women, and that was so helpful to me. It
kept me out of so much trouble and out of bad relationships. My
friendships with my girls are just so much a part of me that there are
things I am never going to do that would upset that bond. I never
want to betray that friendship because I love being a woman and I
love being a friend to other women.
When I heard Beyoncé articulate friendships with Black women as the core
of what feminism was for her, it felt to me like she got the core essence of
what this is all about. I love being a woman and being a friend to other

women should be feminism’s tagline. If this isn’t true for you, you aren’t a
feminist. I’m not much on pulling people’s feminist cards, but some shit we
should just be able to say.
Eventually Beyoncé went on to adopt Chimamanda Adichie’s position on
feminism in a song called “Flawless” on her 2013 self-titled album, in which
she quoted from a YouTube clip of Adichie’s TED Talk: “Feminism refers to
the social, political, and economic equality of women.” Adichie’s own
failure in early 2017 to understand that transwomen are deserving of this
social, political, and economic equality perhaps makes her a problematic
feminist icon for many of us. When asked about transwomen, Adichie
struggled, in an interview, to acknowledge that they are women. Instead, she
said, “there are women, and then there are transwomen.” And while it is
okay to acknowledge that all kinds of women, whether white, Black,
Indigenous, Latina, Asian, cis, gender nonconforming, trans, queer, bi, or
straight might have different experiences, it’s not cool to act as though
transwomen are in some entirely separate category from the more general
category of woman. That is something that feminism needs to be clear on—
that it isn’t feminism if all women’s concerns, particularly the most
marginalized women’s concerns, aren’t taken seriously.
When I think about why Beyoncé matters so much to me as a feminist, it is
the first definition that always resonates, the one that she seemed hesitant to
articulate, the label she seemed ambivalent about adopting. Her feminism of
deeply connected relationships is one that escapes notice in our rush to make
sure our feminism names every ism and every intersectional category in its
articulation. It doesn’t matter if we get the rhetoric right, though, if we still
keep treating other women wrong.
Some would argue that Beyoncé hasn’t helped with that. On that very
same feminist track “Flawless,” the chorus insists “bow down bitches” over
an infectious Houston Hip Hop beat. Immediately, I watched Black feminist
chicks losing their minds, citing their outrage over having someone as
powerful as Beyoncé telling them to bow down.
This outrage felt rooted
in willful ignorance and emotional dishonesty. I’m glad that Hip Hop has
always been a part of my feminist journey, because I take Joan Morgan’s call
for “a feminism brave enough to fuck with the grays” as bible. You can be

deeply invested in loving other Black women, but still need to proclaim
sometimes that bitches need to bow down. One, I don’t take bitches to be
gender-specific. Call that a feminist disruption of the sexism inherent in the
English language. And two, if I had had Beyoncé’s anthems as a twelve- or
thirteen-year-old, on more than a few occasions, I might have wanted to tell
Reina and Neisha to bow down.
Loving Black girls is complicated, but loving oneself in a world where
there is always someone ready to do you harm is even harder. I’m not trying
to resolve the contradiction of proclaiming you love Black women one day
and potentially telling them to bow down the next. I’m asking us to sit with
the pain and offense that make that space necessary. I’m asking us to sit with
the mean-girl tendencies we all have, with the ways that we hurt each other
and don’t show up for each other. I’m asking us to sit with the Beyoncé
conundrum that exists for all of us. At least she had the courage to own the
messiness of it.
And that’s why feminism needed Beyoncé. Because she has been more
truthful about how hard it is for Black women to get on the same page than
any of us professional feminists have ever been. After Beyoncé, feminism
was no longer something reserved for Black girls with college degrees and
Ph.D.’s. Suddenly feminism wasn’t just the province of Black girls who’d
read bell hooks. Armed with feminist narratives in the digital age, this Black
girl who’d built a singing career instead of going to college could be a
feminist, too. And she would use her considerable cultural power to spread
the gospel of feminism to the masses.
I wasn’t prepared for the ways many of my Black feminist comrades
resented her for it. bell hooks, the scholar and thinker who made it possible
for Black girls like me to write books like this, called Bey a “terrorist.” She
was responding to Bey’s image on the cover of Time magazine, a very blond,
damn-near white rendition of Bey, in which her image approximated white
womanhood in ways that felt a little too close for comfort. I think hooks read
Bey as flirting with whiteness and passing for white in ways that were
fundamentally anti-Black and not affirming for women of color. I wish that
she had said that, rather than throwing around the very loaded language of
“terrorist” all willy-nilly. Another group of Black feminists got together and

proclaimed Bey’s feminism “bottom-bitch feminism,” the kind of faux
feminism that they felt accompanied the politics of sex work.
The rage was eloquent, to say the least. It spilled out in think piece after
think piece after think piece, attempting to beat back the march of Beyoncé’s
feminism, like it was the bubonic plague come to wipe out centuries of effort
from Black women activists. The rage was eloquent, but it wasn’t righteous.
And mostly it read as just plain wrong to me. Black women with unchecked
rage and emotional work left undone can do real harm.
Our feminist origin stories matter. When I watched Black women deem
this girl a brand instead of a human being, a stealthy rhetorical move that
enabled them to distance themselves from her and then drag her for filth
without compunction, it read to me like grown Black women using the power
of feminism to punch down (or up) at the mean girls who they resented in
childhood. I’m no therapist, but I’m a Black girl’s Black girl, and I know
Black-girl pain when I see it. Many of us who couldn’t access pretty
privilege, those of us who weren’t popular or cool, those of us nerdy girls
who stayed to ourselves, wrote stories and dreamed of lives as writers, grew
up and found a home in feminism, a place where we were seen, a place
where others were as mad about injustice as we were.
But for many of us, the first real injustices that mattered to us, that ripped
our hearts out, weren’t the failings of our parents’ relationships, or the boys
we crushed on who didn’t love us, but the Black girls who we wanted to see
us and befriend us instead either ignored or bullied us. I believe Bey
conjures up all that shit, and that feminist analysis gives us the language to
bludgeon her with our pain while feeling as if we are doing so in the cause of
justice.
There is never just cause to beat a Black woman like she stole something
when she is very clearly taking the pieces of her life and trying to build
something magnificent. Misdirected rage is a dangerous thing … a deadly
thing. But the power of Black feminism, of any good analytic frame, really, is
in its ability to clarify what the stakes are.
What would it mean to ask the question, Why is Beyoncé drawn to
feminism? If this feminist world we proclaim is so dope, why wouldn’t a
Black girl like her want to be part of this work, too? And if her husband Jay

Z’s recently released confessional album 4:44 is any indicator, perhaps
feminism helped Bey find her power when she was confronted with an
unfaithful partner. Feminism has certainly been a soothing reminder of my
badassery every time I’ve been forced to mend my own broken heart.
Something about the thoughtfulness and intentionality with which she has
publicly grappled with her feminist journey makes it feel authentic to me.
Yes, my willingness to believe the best about Beyoncé comes from my
insistence on believing the best I can about Black women. It is not a small
thing to have the world’s biggest pop star on our squad. There are still far too
many young women who are hesitant to claim their feminism for us to be
snobs about who gets to be included.
Recently, I had to stage a homegirl intervention of my own for a young
sister struggling with the meaning of feminism. The young woman, a student
at Howard, had emailed to ask if I would come to her research presentation
on my campus. Of course, I obliged her. During her presentation about her
research on Black girls, I sat brimming with pride at her professionalism but
also curiosity about the conspicuous absence of Black feminist theorists from
her presentation. Afterward I asked her about that choice. “Well, Dr. Cooper,
I’m not sure about feminism.” “Why?” I asked, even though I suspected some
of what her answer might be. “It just seems like Black women are trying to
force white women to accept and include them. I’m still not over how those
suffragists treated Ida B. Wells at that march in 1913.” She was right. A
group of white suffragists had tried to force Wells to march in back during a
1913 suffrage march. Wells patently refused, though, and found a way to
march with her state delegation.
As I sat and talked with the student who had far more sophisticated
reasons for rejecting feminism than I had when I was a student, I wondered
yet again about why it is so easy for Black women to ignore how important
feminism is to our lives. I began by reminding her of the obvious: despite
white women’s racism, Ida B. Wells felt she had a right to be at the suffrage
march. Black women care about feminism because sexism and patriarchy
affect our lives, too.
Then I shared with her some things I’ve learned on my journey to
feminism. First, I’m not merely a feminist who happens to be Black. I’m a

Black Feminist, capital B, capital F. That means I learned my feminism from
Black women, and my feminist theory and praxis is situated in the particular
ways Black women have understood, thought about, and written about the
problems of racism and sexism across space and time. My feminism begins
not with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton showing out at Seneca
Falls, but with Maria Stewart, a Black lady abolitionist, who was schooling
audiences of men and women, Black and white, in Boston in the 1830s. When
Sister Stewart asked her audience, “How long shall the fair daughters of
Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron
pots and kettles?” I see in her question an insistence on prioritizing the wellbeing of Black women and girls. When she then steps to Black women and
says, “We have been possessed of by far too mean and cowardly a
disposition, though I highly disapprove of an insolent and impertinent one,” I
see her grappling with the ways that rage has been our constant companion. I
see her challenging Black women to make that rage count. And while I think
Black women have every right to an attitude problem, I get Stewart’s point.
She concludes by telling Black women, “Do you ask the disposition I would
have you possess?… Sue for your rights and privileges. Know the reason you
cannot attain them. Weary them with your importunities. You can but die if
you make the attempt; and we shall certainly die if you do not.” This is my
Black feminism—the kind that is gonna channel all this rage to either get free
or die trying.
Second, I have too much feminist shit to do to spend my time hating white
women. Any time a white woman says something wrong in the public sphere
these days, there is an army of Black feminist writers at the ready with think
pieces that can snatch her wig and have her picking her face up off the floor
months later. Going after white women online will get you lots of clicks and
likes. But you’ll feel exhausted at the end and, often, white women’s attitudes
won’t have changed one iota. I’m not saying white women don’t do
treacherous shit. Far too often they are straight-up enemies to the work of
ending patriarchy and racism. But we still can’t let white women become the
center of a conversation that isn’t about them. I have had other Black
feminists drag me (or try to) when I have said this. They have said I’m caping
for white girls. Have you met me? Black feminism is not a reactionary

project. It is not about the damage that white girls do. Not solely or
primarily. Black feminism is about the world Black women and girls can
build, if all the haters would raise up and let us get to work. When I talk
about owning eloquent rage as your superpower, it comes with the clear
caveat that not everyone is worth your time or your rage. Black feminism
taught me that. My job as a Black feminist is to love Black women and girls.
Period.
The third thing Black feminism taught me is that I was once willing to let a
Black nationalist–centered politic, largely narrated to me by Black men, have
me put my own political needs and concerns on the back burner to center
their needs and concerns. It’s odd in this political moment that Black
feminists resent white women more than Black men because when I think of
the harms I’ve dealt with and who has caused the most pain, done the most
emotional and physical violence, it is always always always Black men.
They have done the shooting, the cheating, the beating, and the devaluing. Yet
when a young Black man gets killed by police, my ass is in the street
proclaiming that “Black lives matter.” When Black women get killed, Black
men never manage to plan such marches in solidarity with us. Though our
bros ain’t loyal, we insist on showing up for them. In a world where capital
“B” Blackness matters as much as it does, I’m not sure that this obviously
contradictory approach to our feminist politics will change. Where brothers
are concerned, shit is and will always be complicated.
After laying all this out, I realized that I sounded like a feminist evangelist
and that perhaps I had hemmed the girl up a little too hard. So I backed up,
and simply urged the young Howardite not to leave her intellectual and
political heritage at the door because of the ways white women often act. She
listened to me, but she still looked skeptical as hell. I guess I deserved it for
all the talking crazy I did way back when.
This is why I worry about a Black feminist politic that spends all its time
tearing down Black girls who aren’t deemed radical enough on the one hand
and white girls and their relationship to racism on the other. Stewart didn’t
say we shouldn’t give white folks the business. She said the opposite. But
she also reminds us that Black women and girls should be at the center. My
Black feminism keeps my eyes on the prize, the prize being Black women and

girls. My Black feminism insists that we center them, that we talk about them,
that we build a world for and with them, that we fight alongside them. Black
feminist rage can change this world, but it can also destroy us if we are not
careful. It’s just that powerful. It’s powerful because the power of a good
political analysis is that it can be a masterful cloak for the emotional work
we haven’t done.
Look, I know the world is not Black and white. But for Black women, our
relationships to white women and Black men are still the primary definers of
our feminism. Being in solidarity with the Latina chick or the Asian
American chick in the struggle feels not uncomplicated but sensible. It’s
dealing with all the feelings around white girls and black boys that get us all
caught up. And in the midst of that predicament Black girls are always the
compass, pointing us to the North. That is the most important lesson that
Black feminism taught me. That a Black girl—my homegirl—saved my life.
She did it by lovingly calling me out (or rather calling me in, as the kids say)
on my bullshit. We need each other to survive.

STRONG FEMALE LEADS

I have a complicated relationship with white women. As clear as I am about
needing Black women as a matter of survival, I feel far less sure about the
need to be in solidarity with white women. And no other relationship causes
me to reckon with that fact more than the political rise and fall of Hillary
Rodham Clinton. I have been a spectator to her political career since 1992,
when her husband became the first Democratic president in my lifetime. I
was twelve years old when he took office, and my conflicted, complicated
feelings about Hillary Clinton are deeply rooted in the very relationships
with white girls that shaped my early adolescence, which happened
simultaneously with her entrance on the national stage. But first, let me tell
you why things with me and white girls are the way they are.
On the one hand, if my television viewing preferences are any indicator, I
love white women, especially those who run shit. My Netflix queue is
populated with shows that feature “Strong Female Leads”: Gilmore Girls,
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Girlboss, and Grace and Frankie. I can
be found on any given day watching reruns of Madame Secretary, Rizzoli &
Isles, or Veep on regular television. And Rachael Ray gets as much credit for
my cooking style as anything my mother and my grandmother ever taught me. I
know I just committed country Southern Black-girl blasphemy, but I long ago
swapped out those delicious cans of flavor-infused, heart-clogging used
grease for a bottle of EVOO (extra virgin olive oil).
On the other hand, I haven’t had a white girl for a friend since 1998, the
year I graduated high school. The last white girl to visit a place where I lived
was my friend Michelle, who famously stepped into my room one day and

put my Luster’s Pink Oil Moisturizer in her blond hair and claimed it gave
her texture and body. We both giggled about it, her in delight at using Black
haircare products and me at the absurdity of this white girl, my friend, putting
my pink oil in her white-girl hair. Real friends can share cross-cultural
intimacies like that.
But until the Netflix-user algorithm clued me in, I had no idea that I had a
predilection for watching white girls run the world. How can an avowed
Black feminist be in love with imagined worlds in which white girls are at
the center of everything?
It all started with The Baby-Sitters Club. Well, really, it all started with
Tami Brown, a poor, mousy-brown haired white girl who could have fit the
description of Ramona Quimby in Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books, which I
loved. Tami screamed the words “dirty nigger!” to me on the playground at
recess. When I was eight years old, I only registered “nigger,” a word I had
heard my father use before among his friends, as an insult because it spewed
forth from the beet-red, angry, scrunched-up face of this white girl. She
delivered it with such force that my body recoiled from the shock of it, even
though I wasn’t fully aware what she meant. That night, I came home and
asked, “Mama, what does the word ‘nigger’ mean?” Before my mother
answered, her face winced in pain. I had never seen that look before, but I
registered that she hated hearing and knowing that her daughter had been
called such a thing. Mama stopped stirring the pot on the stove, looked at me
intently, and replied, “An ignorant person! A nigger is an ignorant person.”
Tami Brown may have been ignorant, but she had just initiated me into a
world of racial knowing of the worst sort.
White girls were still kind of new to me. I had only recently started
spending any significant time with them socially, after my first-grade teacher
discovered that I was an advanced reader. That meant I could no longer stay
in my disproportionately Black, middle-ability-track elementary school
classroom. I was moved to the predominantly white upper-ability classroom.
Mandy, whom I met in second grade, was my best friend. She was nice to me
and we ended up playing together at recess every day. Mandy invited me to
skating parties and church cookouts. But then there was Tami, who looked at
me as though my skin was shit-stained brown.

My newfound congress with white girls brought me great joy. One day
Mandy mentioned that she was part of a cool club called the Brownies, so I
came home and told my mama I wanted to be one. After having worked all
day, she honored the whim of her seven-year-old, hustled back out the door,
packed me into the backseat of her Chevy Chevette, and drove me over to the
school cafeteria for the Brownie meeting. The school was completely dark,
because her seven-year-old had the wrong location. We drove back home,
dug the flyer out of the trash can, found the proper location, and then drove
across town to get me all signed up for Girl Scouts. As a hardworking single
mom, my mother’s commitment to getting me to that meeting taught me that
she was invested in my doing positive activities that would enable me to
become a self-possessed and confident Black girl. She was also probably
just a bit worried about whether I would make real friends given this new
social world in the higher-track classes. Girl Scouts became my proper
introduction to the social lives of Southern white girls, the deliciousness of
s’mores, and the wonders of going to sleepaway camp.
These new friendships also alienated me from any Black friends I might
have had; I quickly became the object of ridicule among my black
classmates, who accused me of “acting white.” I was not yet fully clear on
what all the shifts in my friend demographic meant, but Tami made it plain.
There was a word, an angry, hateful, stigmatizing word that named the
difference between me and my new white friends.
I tried to make sense of this whole new world through the very vehicle
that had brought me into contact with so much whiteness in the first place—a
love of books. By the end of third grade, I had plowed through Judy Blume’s
Fudge series, all of the Ramona Quimby books, and every hardcover chapter
book that arrived at my house from the Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club.
I escaped happily into fictional worlds populated by nice, adventurous,
friendly white girls. I don’t know that I chose these books because the girls
were white. There were so few books about Black girls to choose from. The
few books about Black people that I had, my aunt Colleen had boxed up and
shipped to me from the Black-owned bookstore in Dallas, Texas, where she
lived. A country girl in a small town, I associated access to books about my
own experience with life in the big city. In the books to which I had regular

access, the worlds of white girls were middle-class, nuclear, and
uncomplicated, which is, fairly or unfairly, how I imagined their lives.
That spring, when the circular arrived for the book fair, I noticed one of
the Baby-Sitters Club titles listed on the flyer and felt immediately drawn to
it. I marked it down and asked my mom for money to buy it, along with some
sticker books and other goodies at the fair. She obliged. When it came to
books, my mother always obliged.
When I made it to the book fair, I beelined for book #8, Boy-Crazy
Stacey, the first book I read in the series. Book #8 began a five-year love
affair with the five thirteen-year-old Connecticut girls that comprised the
BSC. Like thousands of other girls, I became a card-carrying member of the
Scholastic, Inc. Baby-Sitters Club and received a real-life printed
membership card and welcome packet in the mail with a letter penned by
Ann M. Martin, the series author. In the fifth grade I tried to start my own
baby-sitters club before I realized that I really didn’t have any babies to sit
and before I realized, quite frankly, that my single working mama would not
take too kindly to this “venture” of mine, since it would probably amount to
extra work for her. Regretfully, I reached into the makeshift loose-leaf paper
“envelope” I had stapled together and refunded each girl her fifty cents in
club dues.
Each month when my allowance arrived, just in time for my mother’s and
my monthly sojourn to the closest mall thirty miles away, I would set aside
my four dollars and change to purchase the newest book in the series. I loved
that it was a series, because I didn’t have to let go of the characters at the end
of each book.
As an only child, I considered the core members of the BSC—Kristy,
Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey, and Dawn—my friends in my head. Eventually,
they took on two junior members, eleven-year-olds Mallory and Jessi.
Interestingly, Jessi was African American, but I was never too pressed to
read about her. I already knew what it felt like to be the only one in a friend
group of white girls, and Ann Martin never quite captured that experience.
But what I loved about these girls was the authenticity of their friendship.
They were young, smart, and enterprising. They didn’t all think alike, but they
did things together. They weren’t the mean girls or the cool kids, but they had

their sacred friendship unit and they honored it. In the safety of that friendship
unit, every girl was her full, best, awesome self. They fought sometimes, but
always made up. And in the end, no matter what, they rode for each other.
I longed for that kind of close female comradeship. I craved it. As thankful
as I was for sleepovers and friends to play with at school, none of my
friendships ever felt like the Baby-Sitters Club. White girls for me existed in
real life somewhere on a continuum from Mandy, the best of them, to Tami,
the worst of them. When, in 2010, my homegirl and I created a blogging crew
called the Crunk Feminist Collective it occurred to me, after we were up and
running and functioning well, that my first act in adulthood, after getting my
first real job, was to basically create a Black-girl adult version of the BabySitters Club! The project we undertook together wasn’t baby-sitting, but the
essential concept was the same—a group of young women who came
together around a shared thing that we all did, to change our little corner of
the world for the better. Black feminism taught me my feminism, and Hip Hop
taught me my crunk, but the Baby-Sitters were the first to help me imagine
what the contours of loving female friendships could look like.
These days, any show, past or present, that demonstrates authentic loving
friendships between strong women (including mothers and daughters) is
always at the top of my list—Gilmore Girls, Grace and Frankie, The
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Sex and the City, Living Single.
I realize now that I was mostly interested in understanding the very
different lives of these older, Northern, sophisticated white girls who,
because they were fictional, were different enough from the Southern white
girls I knew and safe enough for me to admire and love without hurt or
shame. At least that’s the explanation that makes sense to thirtysomethingyear-old me. What I remember is loving these fictional white girl characters,
even as I learned the perils and possibilities of what it meant to live closely
with white girls in real life. My Baby-Sitters Club years were populated
with racial slights from the white girls I called friends. Never overt, these
incidents communicated that I was mostly liked, often tolerated, but
invariably different.
In the fourth grade, I sat at my desk one morning as my friend Candy, a
member of the core group of girls I played with at recess, came around

handing out invitations to her birthday party. When she came to my desk, she
said, “I’m sorry I can’t invite you to my party, Brittney, but my daddy doesn’t
like Black people.” I remember how her light brown hair swung from side to
side as she said it.
Later that year, when I starred in and coproduced our Black History
Month play, The Rosa Parks Story (an idea I got from one of those Black
history books Aunt Colleen had sent), Candy raised her hand first when the
teacher asked for volunteers to play Martin Luther King. Her mother brought
her to school with a bottle of brown makeup, which Candy smeared all over
her own face. She then gave an enthusiastic rendition of King’s “I Have a
Dream” speech. Her mom was in the audience; her dad was not.
In fifth grade, I watched my friends and their families tie yellow ribbons
on trees around town to commemorate Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf
War. A few months later, when we were all treated to the video of Rodney
King being brutally beaten by four LAPD officers, no one at school
mentioned it. I was left to discuss it in the blackness of my own home. In one
of our deep playground conversations, which at tween ages revolved around
everything from how it was to get your period to debating whether white and
Black people could date, Mandy told me that her daddy said “everybody
should stick with their own kind.”
Still, she was my friend. Particularly in the sixth grade when she saved me
in gym. We were sitting there talking about Judy Blume books, and I had just
finished reading Deenie, a book that I had gotten for a few cents on an
afternoon excursion to Fran’s Book Nook with my aunt Punkin, who went
there regularly to restock her endless supply of romance novels. Sometimes,
on her way, she would swoop by after school in her old brown 1977 Toyota
Celica, pick me up, and let me ride with her. At Christmas time, when Aunt
Colleen came home from the city, she and Aunt Punkin would trade romance
novels.
I had also devoured and loved Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,
probably because as a Black girl raised in the Baptist Church, I spent a lot of
time thinking about God, whether He was really as scary as the preacher said
He was every Sunday, wondering whether the world really would end before

I got up enough courage to get “saved,” and wondering just who God was
and how God thought.
Mandy was having no parts of Deenie. “Ew,” she said when I mentioned
it. “That book talks about touching yourself and stuff.” “Yes, it’s called
masturbation,” I said loudly to her and our friends on the top row of the
bleachers. Mandy’s face turned red and she ducked, telling me to keep it
down. I had no idea that I had committed a cardinal teenage sin, that it was a
thing to be embarrassed about, not to be discussed in mixed company. That is
probably because even though I read the descriptions, I still wouldn’t figure
out masturbation properly until I was in college. And I didn’t live in a house
with older siblings who might have discussed these things. Mandy looked out
for a sister that day, because getting caught talking about masturbation is only
second in disaster potential to getting caught doing it.
On her birthday that year, we had a sleepover at her house and went to the
dollar movies to see Fried Green Tomatoes. Late that evening, upon our
return, all the girls were styling each other’s hair, but no one was allowed to
touch mine. A cardinal rule of Black girls is that when your mama has sat up
all night styling your hair, you don’t let anybody else touch it. So I played in
theirs, learning about the difference in textures and that you didn’t need to
pull a comb through a white girl’s hair with nearly as much force as it took to
pull a comb through a Black girl’s kinks and curls.
White girls were exceedingly tender-headed, and it took me a few tries
before Mandy stopped saying “Ouch, not so hard.” That ability, to have a
world that is centered on the prerogatives of white femininity, to command
someone to stop pulling and tugging so hard upon request, is so far from the
truth of so many Black girls’ lives. A delicate, fine-toothed comb is no match
for the average Black girl’s hair. We require wide-toothed combs that are
sturdy and strong and can hold our thick tresses firmly and gently at the same
time, without breaking them or hurting us. For many of us are tender-headed,
too. By the way, we require the same things from our lovers, our mothers,
and the country in which we reside. This is not a one-comb-fits-all nation.
Before the natural hair revolution reemerged in the early 2000s and
chided us for relaxing and combing the hell out of our springy, gravitydefying Black-girl hair, most of us sat between our mamas’ knees and took it.

We endured the endless hours of washing, detangling, drying, oiling, parting,
twisting, and plaiting our hair into respectable styles so that we could look
like we belonged to somebody. And it was precisely because this process
took hours that we were not ever allowed to let anybody touch our hair. But
the process of our mothers and aunties and big sisters and grandmothers
lovingly tugging our hair into place is often the first lesson Black girls learn
about the inherently tough conditions we face, about how much effort it will
take to prepare us to face a waiting world, about where our safe havens are
and always will be—in community with women. Who you let put their
fingers in your head is sacred.
The politics of Black women’s hair matters. It matters in a world where,
as I learned at Mandy’s party, the comb never slips through our hair quite so
easily as it slips through theirs.
Later that spring, when my classmate Layla had her pool party, the great
hair divide was on full display. We were in the pool in her backyard, playing
Marco Polo and water tag and all manner of other games. I was under
express orders not to get my hair wet, because chlorine and permed hair
don’t mix. As I clung to the edges of the pool, both because I couldn’t swim
and because I was trying to limit the amount of water that seeped inside my
swim cap, my friends’ mothers whispered to each other by the side of the
pool, “I don’t understand why it’s that serious. It’s just hair. Kids should just
get to be kids.” Of course, my mama wasn’t there to defend herself because
she had to work.
Still, my efforts proved futile and my hair got wet anyway. When Mama
walked in under the judging eyes of the white moms hanging by the pool, I
said, “I’m sorry for getting my hair wet, Mama. I tried not to.” To which she
replied, “We’ll just have to wash it.” She didn’t make a big deal about it, and
I was grateful, but washing and styling my hair was a several hours’ long
ordeal, and surely not the way my mother had intended to spend her Friday
night at the end of a long week.
A few years later, another white girl friend, one with whom I exchanged
notes and enjoyed a friendly classroom competition for grades, came up to
me and asked, “Can I touch your hair?” Today, I would give her every side
eye I have and a firm “no,” but back then, I let her touch it. Her reply: “It’s so

soft. I thought it would feel more like a Brillo pad.” Her daddy, she once
whispered to me, didn’t much care for Black people either.
These, though, were my friends. And this was the deep stew of Southern
1990s adolescence that shaped my own conception of girlhood. Effectively
shunned by most of the other Black girls who didn’t yet have the tools to
understand their Black-girl magic or to make space for mine, I would have
had no friends but for these white girls who invited me to sleepovers, pool
parties, and the movies.
But so much of what it meant to be a Black girl among white girls, was to
be a spectator and coconspirator in their construction of me as the other, as
not quite like them. By escaping into the world of my beloved baby-sitter
friends and later into the world of Elizabeth and Jessica, the Sweet Valley
Twins, I could be a spectator and an imagined participant without risk. In this
fictive world, I imagined race was only incidental and I got to revel in the
shared tween and teen shenanigans of other girls, unencumbered by social
difference.
To be clear, I did not fully consent to my own othering. I read every Black
book my aunt sent, played with the paper dolls of Josephine Baker that
arrived in one of the books, and diligently hunted for every book in Mildred
Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry trilogy. On Saturday mornings, we
cleaned the house while Video Soul and Soul Train played on the TV and, on
lazy Saturday evenings, Luther Vandross, Johnny Gill, and Alexander O’Neal
blasted from my mother’s stereo system.
In sixth grade, my mama thought it would be fun to take me to my first
concert. It featured MC Lyte (for me), Miki Howard (for her), David
Peaston, and Surface. The Hip Hop of the nineties, which I loved, had its fair
share of strong female leads, dope sistas who were kicking butt and taking
names. These women were unbowed by the male-centered nature of Hip Hop
culture. Hip Hop is all about loud, rowdy, and raunchy testosterone-driven
narratives. These women thrived both because of and in spite of the culture.
If you ask me the most memorable figures in the soundtrack to my girlhood
and adolescence, my personal Hip Hop mixtape would be primarily female.
My first favorite Hip Hop group was J.J. Fad, a bubblegum-pop girl group,
whose 1988 hit “Supersonic” had an infectious beat that I still remember

hearing for the first time as a seven-year-old in the passenger seat of my big
cousin’s blue Pontiac Sunbird on a country summer excursion to the corner
store. J.J. Fad was gimmicky, but when I heard them for the first time, I paid
attention to girls who rhymed.
For the concert my mother, who always took more interest in my
appearance (thankfully) than I did, had hustled me over to Cato Fashions for
an outfit. Once I reached tween age, every school year my mother would go
to Cato and put a few outfits on layaway for me, so I could look fresh at the
start of school. But this was a special treat. I remember that I had a cute top
and these awesome baggy purple pants that felt cool and cute, and kind of
like Hip Hop. I was ready when MC Lyte came out and lit up the stage.
A pioneering MC in Hip Hop, Lyte is the exemplar of a “strong female
lead.” She is, to this day, a confident lyricist who tells it like it is while
coming off as supremely unbothered by any haters who would dare to step to
her. Between Lyte, Queen Latifah, Da Brat, and, later, Lauryn Hill, Missy
Elliot, Lil’ Kim, and Foxy Brown, I was blessed to come of age in the era of
the female emcee. Despite my lack of Black girl friends, listening to Black
music, Hip Hop and R&B, made me know that I was a real Black girl even if
none of the other Black girls around me saw it. Like Ashley Banks, the little
sister on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, I had a massive crush on Tevin Campbell
and squealed when my mama surprised me with a cassette tape of his debut
album T.E.V.I.N. Black girls frequently teased me for “talking white” and
“acting white” but I still remember the exhilaration of seeing MC Lyte
command a stage for the first time, watching Queen Latifah check sexist
dudes in the “U.N.I.T.Y.” video, and learning all the words to Da Brat’s
“Funkdafied.”
Most of my love of Black girl pop icons and Black music lived out of
sight of anyone but my mother. That tucking away of my Black-girlness, even
as I simultaneously tucked away my awareness of my friends’ whiteness, was
a survival skill that I honed, in part, by reading and immersing myself in the
stories of white girls’ lives. Before we fully learn to love ourselves, all
people of color in the United States learn that we are supporting characters
and spectators in the collective story of white people’s lives. The stories we
watch and read ask us to put aside their whiteness and relate to their very

“universal” human struggles around conflict with the world, the self, and
others. The problem is that only the experiences of white people are treated
as universal. Meanwhile, Black movies, shows, and books are typically seen
as limited and particular.
By escaping regularly into the saccharine world of fictional white
girlhood, I could find respite from grappling with the enormously
complicated and devastating meanings of Rodney King, Anita Hill, Clarence
Thomas, and the L.A. Riots, even as all of these formative narratives about
the precarity of Blackness and Black womanhood were happening around
me.
And this brings me back to the moment that I, along with the rest of
America, got our first taste of Bill and Hillary Clinton. When the Arkansas
governor burst onto the political stage in 1992, it seemed pretty clear that
there was something unique about him. His charm was then, as now,
legendary.
When I wasn’t in the fictive world of Stonybrook, Connecticut, or the
raucous world of early nineties Hip Hop, I was devouring teen magazines.
Those magazines had begun to cover a political couple from Arkansas that
they referred to as “Billary.” Before there were corny celebrity portmanteaus
like Bennifer and Brangelina, there was Billary. But Billary was not in the
least celebratory. It was a derisive dig at Hillary Clinton’s political
ambitions and her attempt to move away from the traditional first-lady role of
being a decorous appendage to the president. I wasn’t that interested in
politics, but I found the wordplay clever. I watched as Hillary Clinton built a
name for herself, mostly by ignoring her charismatic husband’s notoriously
womanizing ways. As the news of Bill Clinton’s affair with Gennifer
Flowers made headlines, I learned that men don’t lose presidencies over
cheating on their wives. Moreover, Hillary Clinton was an ambitious wife
who made a failed bid for an office in the West Wing during her husband’s
first term. Americans admired her loyalty to her husband, almost as much as
they despised her political ambitions. I also learned that if wives have the
nerve to have ambitions beyond wifehood, the public chastening and
disciplining is even more severe.

So much of Hillary Clinton’s career in the public eye reads like a modern
version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Oddly enough, two of my
favorite movies, both of which emerged just as Hillary Clinton ran for and
won her Senate seat in New York, are remakes of Shrew. And I love both the
white version, 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), and the Black version,
Deliver Us From Eva (2003). I love them because I always identified with
the strong female leads at the center of these stories. Hillary Clinton’s
personal and professional life has been shaped by the consequences she has
faced for being an ambitious and untamed woman. Though I believe she and
Bill enjoy a great friendship and a political partnership, his multiple
infidelities and his flaunting of them in public have certainly had the effect, if
not the intent, of disciplining his wife into the role of supportive, loyal
spouse. And for playing that role with aplomb, Hillary Clinton garnered the
respect of many women across race and class lines. My mother told me after
the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “I like Hillary. She’s handling this in such a
classy way.”
By that November, as the Clintons were on their way to the White House
and a historic number of women on their way to Congress, the press had
declared 1992 the Year of the Woman. Still, when Hillary made her failed
bid for the West Wing office so she could push the agenda of universal
health-care coverage, she was roundly lambasted, publicly hated, and again
culturally disciplined into silence. But she put the world on notice that, as
Beyoncé might say, “I’m not just his little wife.” I have always lingered over
stories of women who lead, women who know what they want out of this
world, and women who demand that others respect them and recognize their
magic.
When Hillary decided to run for president in 2008, I had initially planned
to vote for her. Before my admiration for Michelle and Barack Obama and,
frankly, my racial loyalty caused me to ascend the Hope train, I could think of
no more qualified person to be our first female president. When again she
chose to run in 2016, my fervor for her was renewed. This was despite the
fact that she had called thirteen-year-old Black children “superpredators” in
support of her husband’s 1994 crime bill. I was thirteen when she said it, just
like her daughter. And despite the fact that in 2008 she seemed to entertain

the notion that someone shooting Barack Obama would put her in line for the
nomination. And despite the fact that her husband made a bunch of entitled
and thinly veiled racist statements to the people of South Carolina when they
backed Barack Obama in ’08.
My relationship with white girls is and remains complicated. And in the
public parts of my life, for good or ill, white women’s racism has never kept
me from admiring them, befriending them, or supporting them. This has been
true for multiple generations of Black women, especially in the South. I
understand Hillary Clinton at the nexus of these competing narratives of my
own womanhood and girlhood—my complicated relationship with white
women, my innate admiration for strong women, and my hard-won
understanding of the similarities between how Black and white communities
constrict and resent women who seek power.
The latter lesson I learned during my junior year at Howard University,
when I decided to run for student-body president. Coincidentally, that was
the same year that Hillary Clinton took office as a U.S. senator. I felt that, as
an overachiever my whole life and an enthusiastic joiner ever since Mandy
told me about Girl Scouts in the second grade, running the student body was a
natural progression of my many years leading and serving in student
organizations in high school and college. Debate team, Young Lawyers
Association, and Future Business Leaders.
I took this joiner sensibility right into college, where I eagerly embraced
all kinds of student associations, honors clubs, and various positions in the
expansive student government network that comprises Howard University. In
my junior year, I decided that I was ready for the big time—president of the
Howard University Student Association (HUSA). Together with my running
mate, Mark, I threw my hat in the ring. At Howard, the only historically
Black college located in the nation’s capital, student government campaigns
are simulations of real life. Candidates spend in the thousands of dollars for
fancy campaign logos and posters and splashy events to attract attention.
Naïve and idealistic, I had yet to learn at age twenty that elections are as
much about popularity as about policy. In the cheerleader-jock-nerd nexus of
my high school, I understood and steered clear of this. I was the girl who
worked out much of what I experienced in the real world by escaping into the

world of books and ideas. At Howard, no one knew the student handbook,
the intercollege student government structure, or the minutiae of policies and
procedures better than I did. Knowing all of these policies and procedures
would equip me, I thought, to lead people.
On the day that my running mate and I went to meet with the university
president, I laid out my ambitious agenda. President Swygert looked at me,
as if amused, and said, “You have to get elected first.” I was taken aback. I
didn’t fully understand the comment. It felt dismissive, condescending, and
insulting. Didn’t he know who I was? I had never at that point failed at any
major endeavor in my life, and I didn’t plan to fail at this one. Still, although
it was before the age of Facebook, he had scribbled the proverbial writing
on my wall.
As the election season progressed, my polling teams (yes, polling teams)
would go out across the campus and canvass dorms on my behalf. They
always began with two questions: Who do you think has the best command of
the issues? and Who do you plan to vote for? Invariably, the response to
Question One would be “Brittney and Mark.” The response to Question Two
would be “Stefanie and Alex,” our erstwhile opponents, who would
eventually emerge victorious.
Completely nonplussed by this information, I was even more taken aback
by the other kinds of feedback my teams brought back with them. Students
said I needed to be more feminine. I should wear stud earrings rather than my
signature hoops. To this day, I only occasionally deviate from hoops. I
needed to style my permed hair more effectively and wear suits and heels. I
was awkward, overweight, and far more interested in books and politics than
in makeup and hairstyles. I didn’t even really know where to begin. Wholly
naïve to the world of political campaigns, I could not understand people who
thought I knew the issues better than anyone, but planned to vote for someone
else. But that is what they did. Stefanie and Alex won in a landslide against
us and another ticket. I should have known how it would go on election day
when a known campus busybody sent a passive-aggressive message to me
through one of my friends that my jeans, campaign T-shirt, and sneakers
didn’t “look presidential.”

My spirit crushed and my eyes open to the intimate cruelty of politics, I
was not a gracious loser. I did not call to congratulate the winners. I skipped
class the next day, ashamed to show my failure of a face on campus, opting
instead to sulk in the darkness of the movies. And I spent much of my senior
year disillusioned with a campus that I felt had betrayed me despite several
years of committed service.
But many of the failures were mine. Mind you, it never even occurred to
me to canvass dorms with my team. The thought of soliciting strangers for
votes still gives me anxiety! (Clearly I shouldn’t have been running.) It was
dramatic and devastating in the way that first failures for overachievers tend
to be. It was a painful opportunity to see myself through the mirror of others
and find my reflection wanting. Over the course of my twenties, it became a
lesson in figuring out what things about myself I would retain and what things
I wanted to change. I learned first and foremost, though, that if people can’t
trust you, you can’t lead them. Second, I learned that electoral politics
weren’t the thing for me. Perhaps that’s petty, but living a life being evaluated
by other people’s impressions of me felt like too much. The third thing I
learned is that it wasn’t just about qualifications, or competence, or
commitment, but about helping people feel connected. As a bit of an introvert
and not much of a people person, I had failed to make the connection.
Stefanie, my opponent, did. Students could relate to her. They found her to be
genuine, rather than haughty or uptight. I was used to being one of the
smartest people in the room and I acted like it, primarily as a defense
mechanism.
I didn’t see Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election coming. Like most
Americans, and most of the polling numbers, I assumed that we had arrived
at a place where America was ready for a female president, especially one
as hypercompetent as Clinton. In the late hours of November 8, 2016, when it
became clear that she would lose, I was nothing short of heartbroken.
Perhaps I should have been less optimistic.
The writing was on the wall. For more than twenty years, journalists have
written essays about the reasons people hate Hillary Clinton. Every time I
heard or read one of those pieces, I winced, remembering acutely how it felt
to be deemed overqualified but simultaneously disliked and distrusted.

The things that made others distrust Hillary Clinton were the things that
made me like her. Something about her social awkwardness, her detailoriented policy-wonk tendencies, and her devotion to the long game of
racking up qualifications through intentional résumé building feels familiar,
because it is the very same strategy of every high-achieving Black woman I
know. Often Black women are cast as cold and unfeeling for having these
qualities. But the hustling spirit that I saw in Hillary Clinton resonated with
the oft-repeated Black proverb: You have to work twice as hard to get half as
far. Black women and girls are forced to navigate the unreasonably high
expectations that go along with proverbs like this throughout their lives. I’ll
come back to that later. But I believe that there is no other group of women
who can understand just how devastating Hillary Clinton’s loss was than
Black women. What might feel like a singular and stunning defeat for her is
one that Black women learn to live with every day—the sense that you are a
woman before your time, that your brilliance and talents are limited by the
historical moment and the retrograde politics within that moment in which
you find yourself living. Black women, from slavery to freedom, know that
struggle so much more than any white person ever will.
Hillary appealed to the parts of me that care far less about impressing
people than about figuring out the nuts and bolts of the kind of thinking that
will actually help people. She appealed to the parts of me that despise the
insincerity and superficiality of small talk. She appealed to the parts of me
that come alive in intimate settings when I have the chance to connect with
real people. My ability to empathize with a woman whose life and political
commitments diverge significantly from my own is rooted in the ways I
learned in early childhood to understand and negotiate the complex humanity
of white women even before I learned to negotiate my own. I learned to like
and value certain white women, despite their racism, long before I learned
how to prioritize and value my own Black-girl magic.
So, yes, I think patriarchy had something to do with Hillary, whom Barack
Obama called the most qualified person ever to run for the job, losing the
election to a man who probably struggles to spell the word “competent.” The
fact that 53 percent of white women voted against her bears all the marks of
the internecine ways that patriarchy pits women in an endless competition

with one another. Throughout the election season, I witnessed so many white
women, on both the right and the left, rolling their eyes and saying “ewwww”
and “ugghh” every time Hillary Clinton came up in conversation. Somewhere
in the midst of the time I spent being friends with white girls, I missed their
penchant for doing mean-girl shit to each other. Everything about the ways
that white women endlessly analyzed and picked Hillary apart felt like it
came from the mean-girl playbook that we all learn in middle school.
Perhaps it’s sexist of me to reduce legitimate political analyses down to
mean-girl infighting, but the political distrust and disdain for Hillary Clinton
is as outsized as the vitriol that some Black feminists reserve for Beyoncé.
Look. It’s not just Black and white women who I think keep replaying
middle-school angst. Working-class white men’s overidentification with
Donald Trump, a man who clearly despises them, is the stuff of middleschool fantasy, too. Perhaps it is difficult to hear that electoral contests still
are what they’ve always been: popularity contests. And popularity is dictated
by all of the worst forms of social privilege—we are conditioned to like the
people who are pretty, charming, handsome, rich, and well-connected.
Donald Trump sure ain’t pretty, but he is rich and well-connected, and that
means that lots of white men who will never be either of these things secretly
identify with him. That’s all I’m saying—that so many of the emotional
impulses that shape our engagements with powerful public figures have to do
with the shit we went through in middle school. I really wish people would
just go to therapy.
The young and woke ones on the Black left also refused to give too much
credence to patriarchy’s influence on the election. Many of these Black folks,
some of them new and first-time voters and some of them old-school
contrarians, saw Hillary Clinton as a shill for the neoliberal, establishment
Democrats, a racist doing her husband’s bidding, a woman unworthy of being
a poster child for feminist anything. It seemed reasonable to them to protest
every imperial fault of the American Republic on Hillary Clinton’s back.
Meanwhile, these same folks lined up behind Bernie Sanders, a socialist
who had radical things to say about money, but not much else. I never
believed the Bernie hype. Perhaps it’s problematic identity politics, but I left
white-savior narratives alone a long time ago. Bernie’s Johnny-come-lately

race analysis, which he hastily put together after young Black women bumrushed him onstage at a rally, felt as opportunistic to me as Hillary’s belated
engagement with the politics of race. It didn’t matter to me that Bernie had
participated in the civil rights movement and, frankly, his close proximity to
that degree of racial animus made his absence of racial analysis more than
fifty years later even more egregious. Moreover, I found it especially terrible
that when it came to racial politics, many young progressives, across racial
lines, were far more willing to train their hatred on Hillary Clinton, a white
woman, than on Bernie Sanders, a white man. White women have absolutely
been accomplices to the American project of white supremacy, but their
husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons have always been the masterminds. Let
us never forget that.
Having grown up in a world where white women were frequently a mixed
bag, I couldn’t technically disagree with assessments of Clinton as a racist
and a neoliberal big-money politician. My problem was that every politician
on the left since Bill Clinton has been exactly this kind of politician. I didn’t
understand how people, knowing how patriarchy works, expected the first
woman president in a deeply masculinist and patriarchal democracy to break
the mold. People demanded nothing short of political purity from a woman
fighting for a position in a system that has been stained bright red with the
blood of countless marginalized groups from the beginning. Women are to be
pure and unsullied, maternal, nurturing, and the conscience of the Republic.
Clinton was maternal to her one child only, and not much interested in any of
those other qualities. And many Americans, including the young of all races
who have grown up with patriarchal expectations as barely detectable
background noise, hated Clinton for all the ways in which she did not
conform to these dictates. At the same time, a curious thing was happening
among young Black feminists and progressives, who hated Hillary Clinton
because she was entirely too white. These folks focused on her race and
class politics exhaustively, and treated her gender and her long life as a
woman in politics as though it were incidental rather than central to the
narrative.
Even before I embraced feminism, the Howard campus election taught me
that patriarchy is always on its job. Other things like race, class, and sexual

orientation, might be central. But gender always matters. The angst I felt over
being deemed simultaneously too good and not good enough set me on the
path to feminism. For the first time, on a campus that was committed to all
Black everything, I ran headlong into the politics of gender. Yes, my
opponent, a woman, won. But in addition to her clear talent for politics and
her doing an admittedly really great job as student body president, she also
met respectable standards of femininity that I hadn’t even truly been aware
existed. On the day of the campus election, she wore a dark-colored suit and
heels. I had no knowledge of the social mores of “looking presidential.”
Never before had my clothing and appearance been policed in this way, other
than by my mother. My insistence on a uniform of jeans and tennis shoes was,
I’m sure, a subconscious rebellion against this very same mother who, to this
day, owns neither a pair of jeans nor a pair of sneakers. Never before had I
encountered a world where the merit of my ideas didn’t rule the day. Even in
high school, though top grades and impressive college admissions didn’t
protect me from racism, the racists did not win. Never before had I been
made to care so much about how my existence and manner of moving through
the world made other people feel.
I wrote my first ever op-ed about my experience for the campus
newspaper. Before Rebecca Solnit gifted us the term “mansplaining,” several
brothers approached me on campus, having read my article, wanting to know
how the demand that I wear lipstick and smaller earrings was any different
from the unspoken edict that they shave their cornrows or locs. True enough,
Howard, like many other Black colleges, had (and has) a culture of
respectability when it comes to what constitutes professional attire. The
politics of respectability is predicated on extremely conservative ideas about
what a proper race man and a proper race woman are and should look like. I
watched, over the course of four years, as many young men in the School of
Business cut their dreadlocks just in time for senior year and the waiting job
market. Still, I offered every brother that stepped to me a withering glare and
asked, “Do you really think this is the same thing?” The stakes weren’t the
same. Respectability politics rooted in sexist ideas suggested that I wasn’t
qualified to be president because I wasn’t feminine enough and was not
enough of a lady. Because my male colleagues were straight men, their

masculinity was not called into question. No one had said that they weren’t
masculine enough to be president. I didn’t have the language for that then.
My lack of answers to these questions left me with a sinking feeling in my
gut that even though I was more than halfway through college, I didn’t have
even half of the answers I needed about my life as a Black woman. I wasn’t a
feminist yet, but my unquestioned commitment to a race-only politic was like
sand slowly slipping through the fingers of my tightly clenched Black-power
fist.
I also never questioned my femininity because, even though I’ve never
been hyperfeminine, I am most at home in the company of other women. Ever
since the days of Girl Scouts and the Baby-Sitters Club, I have been a girl’s
girl. My understanding of my girlhood and my womanhood has always been
forged in relationship to other women and girls, black and white. At Howard,
I ran squarely up against the intersection of race and gender, racism and
sexism, in ways that I could not foresee. The kind of Black womanhood that
Howard valued in its leaders during my time there in the early 2000s was a
womanhood different from my own. Opinionated, outspoken, and far too
serious, I didn’t temper my mouth with cute hairstyles or clothes. I didn’t
know I needed to.
White women taught me about racism; Black institutions, like Howard and
the Black Church, gave me a primer on sexism. My relationship to both are,
consequently, complicated. Of course white women weren’t my only
examples of strong female leads. My life had been intimately shaped by
strong women leading. In the intimate world that shaped me, Black women—
my grandmother, my mother, and my three aunts—ran everything. They
cooked the meals, worked the jobs, paid the bills, managed the kids,
extinguished fires, told off racist teachers, and put out bad lovers; parted,
greased, and plaited hair every night and every morning; sewed, washed, and
ironed clothes; taught us to pray, picked a mean switch for a good whuppin;
and drew the boundaries of every Black child’s world with a simple look.
But the world of girls and women outside my home was white. In graduate
school I read the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black feminist
activists from the 1970s who gave me a new understanding of “identity
politics,” a term they invented. I had learned early how to disidentify with

whiteness but never fully how to inhabit, embrace, and identify with my
particular Black-girl magic. They argued in their famous “Black Feminist
Statement,” written in 1977, that “our politics evolve from a healthy love for
ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our
struggle and work.” So they adopted what they called “identity politics,” a
belief that “the most profound and potentially radical politics come directly
out of our own identity.” These politics of identity were radically different
from the dis-identity politics that had shaped my youth. These were Black
women speaking a language of liberation, of self-possession, that I didn’t
even know I needed.
I like strong female leads, Black and white alike. I want to be strong.
Badass women have to be strong. But I don’t ever want to be strong in ways
that are inauthentic, dishonest, and dangerous to my health and well-being.
Black feminism taught me that in the battle with white women over racism
and with Black men over sexism, I can never go wrong in picking myself. But
I’m grown and I know the choices are never so black and white. I love,
embrace, and keep company with Black men who have yet to fully or even
remotely reckon with their sexism, because those Black men are my father
figures, brothers, cousins, friends, and lovers. Similarly, I can, in limited
instances, admire and offer support to white women who have not yet fully
reckoned with their racism. I can also admit that the struggle to take down the
patriarchy will be a very limited endeavor if white women aren’t a part of it.
I do wish white feminists would embrace the notion, however, that in this
new feminist movement we are all trying to build, they aren’t automatically
our choice for “strong female lead.”

THE SMARTEST MAN I NEVER
KNEW

Every time I hear calls from young radical activists to “burn it all down and
start again,” I feel more fear and distress than possibility. While there are a
fair number of Black women across history who have believed in
revolutionary violence, the posture of burning shit down feels decidedly
masculinist to me. Our nation’s story is one of men using violence—against
Native folks, against Black folks, and against women—to build and fund a
grand “experiment in democracy.” Very often, when we think about the way
the United States likes to wield its “big stick” abroad, through military might,
we forget that this project is inherently phallic. Picking on countries full of
people of color with less money and resources is also a racist and imperial
project. Lots of young activists of color that I know point to this. They point
to the way police occupy Black communities like our military forces occupy
places abroad. But militarism isn’t just racist. It’s also patriarchal, sexist,
and masculinist. Far too many Black men crib from this same playbook,
believing setting fire to white men’s institutions while laying claim to land
and women is what freedom looks like.
My mother’s father was a military man, a World War II vet. For many
black men, joining the military was their only viable option to make
something of themselves in a world where they couldn’t finish school and
couldn’t go on to college. The men in my family lived down South, the place
from which other Black people fled during the Great Migration. There were
no good factory jobs in these rural small towns near the Mississippi Delta to

create economic opportunity for those who didn’t go North. The military
provided a salary and a pension. It also provided an avenue for Black men to
become the kind of normative, proud, self-supporting men that are valorized
in a patriarchy. In my grandfather’s case, his time in the military also gave
him bragging rights. According to the big white leather family Bible that sat
on the coffee table next to my grandmother’s weekly subscription to Jet
magazine, Grandfather Henry saw action at Normandy. He came back from
the war with an injury that he lived with until his death twenty-five years
later. At some point, after he returned from the war, he married my
grandmother, a young woman sixteen years his junior. Depending on who
tells the story, my grandfather’s personality had many faces. My mother’s
older sisters remember him as a mischievous and fun-loving father who piled
them all into the pickup truck and took them down to the jook joint, leaving
them to play in the truck for hours while he went in and gambled with his
friends. My grandmother told me stories of the fights they’d have, most likely
after he came back drunk from the jook. “Yes, I fought him,” she’d say,
reveling in her ability to stand toe-to-toe with her man. But she also spoke of
the PTSD he carried. “Cooper (which is what she called him), could not
sleep on white sheets. My God, he would carry on if I ever tried to make him
sleep on white sheets.” One can only imagine the horrors those white sheets
conjured for a WWII vet born in 1911. My mother, the baby of the family,
remembered her father in his old age as a gentle giant with huge hands that
she’d hold as they walked around the yard to “help him get his exercise.”
It’s not too far a leap to think that her love for her own father, a volatile
but loving family man, shaped the kinds of men my mother came to love when
she was grown enough or thought she was. Bob was also a military man,
several years older, tall, dark, handsome, charming, and gentle. Just the kind
of man that makes mothers scared for their daughters. My grandmother
warned my mother away, telling her that Bob was “no good” for her. As is
the custom of daughters, my mother thought my grandmother didn’t know
what she was talking about.
So Mama let Bob shoot his shot. She obliged him, and things went along
like a dream until, as she mentioned later, in that way that Black women can
say everything while saying so little: “He didn’t treat me right.” As a younger

woman, I wanted to know what that meant. As a grown woman who’s lived a
little bit of life, the broad outlines feel clear. The details matter less. My
mother, a pretty, charming, smart, and ambitious girl in her first year of
college, left Bob and pursued her bliss. At eighteen her bliss was another
older man, himself home from a stint in the military. Charming and smart,
Mann swiftly took up the space Bob had left. Bob, a Vietnam vet who would
later tell my mother that his “head was all screwed up from the War,” viewed
it as a betrayal of the sort that deserved retribution.
On a Saturday afternoon in March, Bob came upon my mother and Mann
sitting in a car across the street from Big Mama’s (Mann’s mother’s) house.
A young woman from the neighborhood would later tell my mother that she
saw Bob coming and ran toward the car, waving her arms wildly in the
rearview mirror, trying to get my mother’s attention. Mann somehow saw
Bob coming and gestured for his nine-year-old nephew David to go into the
house. David heard a pop, pop, pop as soon as he made it inside the door.
Outside, Bob shot my mother three times and Mann once.
My mother awoke in the hospital to her older sister Linda asking her if she
knew where she was and whether she understood what had happened. Mama
had blocked out the shooting, but she knew enough to tell her sister “Bob shot
me.” In the manner of rural Southern boys, my mother’s big brother had
ridden around all night with a shotgun and a willingness to kill. Bob called,
wanting to know if my mother was alive. Lil’ Mama, my mother’s
grandmother, simply said to my mother as she lay in the hospital bed fighting
for her life, “Baby, you didn’t do nothing wrong.”
It has been nearly thirty-eight years since a grown man, drunk on his own
sense of entitlement, attempted to murder my mother. According to several
years of reports by the Violence Policy Center, in this, the second decade of
the twenty-first century, eight Black women per week, more than one per day,
are murdered, usually with guns, and usually by a Black male they know.
More than one thousand women of all races are murdered each year, in
similar incidents, usually by men of their own race. It has been said before,
but it is worth saying again: Toxic masculinity kills.
At eighteen years old and in good health, my mother, thankfully,
recovered. A few weeks later, she found out that she was pregnant, with

Mann’s baby. With me. The first time she heard my heartbeat, big and strong,
she felt like she was floating on air, renewed in her decision to bring her
pregnancy to term. All three of us—my mother, my father, and me—had
survived the shooting. Put another way, we had survived a Black man
attempting to murder us.
Because my mother now had a baby to support, she did not return to
college for her sophomore year. She recovered from the shooting, gave birth
to me in late 1980, and started her career at a local company at the beginning
of 1981. My father struggled, using alcohol to medicate his pain and trauma,
in the same way that his father—my grandfather Claudie, also known as Big
Daddy—had done. On weekends, Mann got drunk and came home to fight my
mother. Many years after his passing, his sister—my aunt Mattie—told me,
“He loved your mother. That was the only way he knew to show it. That was
all he’d ever seen.” Inadvertently, she had revealed something of the
dynamics between Big Mama and Big Daddy, dynamics that I had been
oblivious to as a child, because I knew Big Daddy only as the lovable town
drunk. I saw him far more frequently posted up under a tree, in the projects,
with a brown paper bag in his pocket, than I ever saw him at Big Mama’s
house. I call it her house because I never remember seeing him there. And
whenever I ran into him, Big Daddy always gave me the biggest smile, happy
to see me. Many of my friends and I, with grandparents who grew up in the
aftermath of World War II, repeat to each other the stories our parents handed
down to us in hushed voices, of how their parents got drunk and caroused all
weekend, and then came home and took their anxieties, fears, and frustrations
out on each other. The women sometimes got brutally beaten or killed, but
sometimes they gave as good as they got.
This had been the script of both my grandfathers, Henry and Claudie. It
was the script my mother had to work with when she chose whom to love. It
was the script of both of the men she loved as a young woman. Of my father,
my mother has said, “Your dad and I would work all week trying to build
something. And then in one weekend, he could go out and destroy everything
we had worked that week to build.” This is the father I remember, the
weekend bringer of chaos and destruction, not the faithful, sober builder who
showed up Monday through Friday, not the man who my mother made ride

shotgun with her to drop me off each morning at daycare because I cried too
much when she left me.
Men aren’t born destroyers. Many men imbibe scripts of toxic masculinity
almost from birth. And on their way to becoming men, they enact those toxic
scripts in the lives of the women around them. It’s important to remember that
this conclusion is not inevitable. But that’s the thing that will drive you mad
when you lose someone tragically—wondering about the inevitability of the
outcome.
It was a Saturday morning on the fourteenth of April, at around 5:00 A.M.,
when the phone rang in our house. It was exactly ten years and two weeks
after Bob had shot my parents. I heard my mama on the phone saying, “How
am I gonna tell this girl…?” I knew something bad had happened, but didn’t
know what or to whom. Ever the straight shooter, my mama asked me to get
up, and when we sat down in the living room, she said simply, “Somebody
shot and killed your dad last night.” I was in the fourth grade, and by that time
I was well acquainted with my daddy being shot. He had been shot when I
was in the second grade, and again when I was in the third grade. Both of
those times, and the time with Bob, he had survived. This time, he had not. I
sat on the sofa, digging my toes into our bright blue carpet, shaking my head,
trying to make sense of the senseless. “We should get over to Big Mama’s
house. She’s not doing too well,” my mom said. We got dressed hurriedly,
climbed in the car, and drove the couple of miles down the road to Big
Mama’s house.
Inside, Big Mama’s face was racked with grief, and she kind of rocked
from side to side. Aunt Lil’, my daddy’s baby sister, was distraught. “Mann
never liked Friday the thirteenth. He never did,” she was saying to no one in
particular. But, apparently, my daddy had violated one of his own edicts by
being out of the house on that Friday night. Over the weeks and years to
come, a few more bits and pieces of the story would trickle in. My daddy had
been at his girlfriend’s house. A man—perhaps the landlord, perhaps a
former lover—came by angry about money, waving a gun around, threatening
her and her children. My daddy intervened and ended up dead, shot in the
head. For the second time, my daddy had become the victim of another man’s
vendetta against the special woman in his life.

Each and every time men try to deflect conversations about intimate
partner violence in Black communities by talking about how “men are
victims of abuse, too,” I want to hit them myself. Patriarchy and toxic
masculinity (together with alcoholism and militarism) turned my father into a
violent man. But patriarchy also killed him.
In the nine shared years of our story together, years framed entirely by the
gratuitous violence of men, I struggled to know this man, my father, this
mischievous brother called “Mann” by his family, who was a bit
superstitious, a bit of a romantic, a wild dancer, and a man willing to take a
bullet more than once for a woman he loved. The father I knew harassed and
terrorized my mother and me. He regularly upended and disrupted our lives,
demanding much but giving little. The man I knew as my dad did not square
in any way with the Mann who was beloved by his family.
In the eighth grade, my substitute teacher, Mr. Roebuck, happened to be a
good friend of my mother’s and a minor local celebrity who deejayed at the
local radio station. Soul Roe was his DJ name. In that way that Southern
Black people have with each other, I went up to him after class and said, “I
think you know my mother.” And like Black Southerners are wont to do, Mr.
Roebuck scaffolded me into a whole local genealogy, assessing, rather
quickly, “who my people were.” “I knew your daddy, too,” he told me. I had
no idea what he might say next, because I couldn’t imagine what good thing
he might have to say about my daddy. “He was a really smart guy,” Mr.
Roebuck told me, to my great surprise. “I saw him walking down the street
one day and gave him a ride. He talked to me about starving children in
Africa and all kinds of things, not the kind of things you would think a cat
walking along the side of the road would be thinking about.” I had heard my
father’s sisters’ stories, about how he was smart as a whip, about how he did
Lil’s homework, about how he never had to study for tests. I’ve never met a
test I didn’t have to study for. But other people outside the family thought my
dad, the same man who had come late one night and slashed all the tires on
my mother’s car, was smart. Like really smart, to the point that it was worth
remarking on. Mr. Roebuck was subbing in my gifted and talented class, and
for the first time, he introduced me to the idea that my daddy might have
bequeathed to me more than grief, that my father, and not just my mother,

might have had something to do with the precocity and intelligence that
everyone in my family bragged on me for having.
Several months after my conversation with Mr. Roebuck, I tumbled back
into grief, unable, as had I been able to do at age nine, to tuck in the fear of
violence and death that were the natural aftermath of losing a parent. I could
not reconcile the thoughtful, empathetic man that Mr. Roebuck had picked up
along the side of the road with the man who used to ring our old green rotary
phone incessantly, making it impossible to spend an evening at home in
peace. The man Soul Roe knew, who had empathy and concern for everybody
else’s children—Africa’s children, his girlfriend’s children—didn’t seem to
have any empathy or tangible concern for his own daughter.
My father wanted me to know him. Well acquainted with his violence, I
felt I knew him as much as I would ever need to know him. After an evening
of drunken reveling, it was customary for him to call and demand that my
mother “put Brittney on the phone.” “She doesn’t want to talk to you, Mann,”
my mother would say while I shook my head. Listening from the other end,
I’d hear “No, I haven’t turned her against you.” And after he refused to hang
up, “Here,” Mama would say, handing me the phone, “talk to your daddy.”
“Why don’t you want to talk to me?” he’d ask, hoping I would provide some
evidence of my mother’s campaign to “turn me against him.” There had been
no such campaigns. “Because you hurt Mama,” I’d say. “Do you love me?”
Daddy asked me once. “No, because you hurt Mama.” I didn’t even think
twice about telling my daddy I didn’t love him. How could I love him? I’d
seen him inflict pain with my own two eyes. Small and powerless, I’d heard
him slamming my mother into doors, even while I screamed and cried from
the other room for him to stop. “Well, I love you,” he said, sounding quite
sober. Then he demanded that my mother drop me off to spend the day with
him so that I would know him. That day he gave me as much peanut butter
and jelly mixed together in a green bowl as I wanted to eat. When my mother
came to pick me up, he didn’t fight her. But other times, he did. Seeing me
was frequently a pretext for seeing her. But people are never the sum total of
the wrongs that they do. Men aren’t born monsters.
The only time I ever thought I loved my dad was when I went to see him
one of the times after he’d been shot. He was walking around with a cane,

sober and genuinely happy to see me. He smiled and I smiled back, these
smiles and faces mirror images of each other. On the ride back home, I told
Mama, “Maybe I love my daddy.” She said nothing. Her position on my dad
was always that everything regarding him was better left unsaid. She left me
to form my own opinions. I don’t remember whether it was the second-grade
shooting or the third-grade shooting (that’s how I mark the time) when he got
shot, as my mother told me, “in the lower stomach.” Years later, my aunt
Mattie clarified that one of his testicles had been shot off. But she told me my
dad had attended the court date for the shooter. During his remarks to the
judge, Daddy said, “Don’t lock him up. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst
enemy.” There was that radical empathy again, that fairly sophisticated sense
that locking up a man for a drunken street fight that had gotten out of control
didn’t, in fact, constitute justice. Losing a testicle, my dad had suffered a
violent and material blow to his own masculinity, but still he didn’t equate
carceral solutions with justice.
At thirteen, four years after the gun finally won and Mr. Roebuck
disrupted my particular memories of my father as mostly a monster, these
competing narratives bubbled over, haunting me each night. My mother made
a way, despite limited income, to put me in therapy. Twice a week, the
summer after eighth grade, I would go to sit on the sofa with Dr. Rick, a
middle-aged white man with glasses, a beard, and a long chin. At some point,
Dr. Rick assessed that the cause of my anger, the thing keeping me up nights
and making me anxious, was that I needed to know my father better. The few
good memories of my father that I have—the time he walked me to the store
and bought me Bubble Yum, or the time he sat me on his shoulders and took
me for a walk while he whistled a tune—had been overshadowed by all the
negative memories. Dr. Rick sent me on a fact-finding mission to gather
pictures of my dad (which I didn’t have), and to figure out some of my dad’s
story. Talking to family friends, I started to put the pieces together, trying to
connect the version of the story that I had to the version of the story that
others told.
Aunt Mattie, my dad’s oldest sister and the keeper of the family history,
happily welcomed me for a visit, armed with old pictures, letters, and

stories. In a letter dated “24 March ’75,” my dad wrote to her, from his post
in Germany:
This is a beautiful place over here. I seen towns sitting on top of
mountains and towns sitting way down in the valley under the
mountains.
After checking in on everyone in the family and sending his hellos, my
dad, at eighteen, mischievously concludes,
Have you seen Margie yet. When you see her tell her to write and tell
Patricia to write. I don’t care if she is engaged. (smile)
And he signs it,
Bye now from your BIG LITTLE BROTHER.
At thirteen, the beautiful turn of phrase and the imagery of my dad sitting
in Germany, perhaps on a mountainside somewhere as I imagined it back
then, thinking about the bits of world he’d seen, stuck with me. Years later, he
would affectionately refer to my mother as “Schatzi,” the German word for
“treasure” or “sweetheart.”
During my first year as a professor, I traveled to Heidelberg, Germany, for
a conference called “Toward an International History of Lynching.” I was
giving a paper about Ida B. Wells’s antilynching work, reflecting on Black
women’s long history of standing up to the United States for the wars it has
waged on Black people, and on Black men in particular. Sitting in the
window seat as the plane descended into Germany, I marveled at the
beautiful, idyllic towns sitting on top of verdant green mountains, and looked
curiously off in the distance at other towns tucked in the valleys below. For a
brief moment, I got to see the world through my daddy’s eyes.
I remember all the gifts my daddy ever gave to me: two fancy yellow
bows with ribbons for my hair, a green purse for my fourth birthday, two
half-dollar coins that I still have. And a picture of my sister, his other

daughter, whom I didn’t meet until adulthood. This momentary glimpse of his
view of the world—when he was still young and excited about what was
possible—felt like an inheritance, like a part of my story, whose provenance
I could verify. My dad didn’t leave a will, but through this letter I inherited a
slice of beauty, a slice of his joy, before being a Black boy in a world that
hated Black boys hardened his heart and limited his capacity for kindness.
* * *
I am always struck by the ways other people’s stories about my father tend to
highlight his empathy and kindness for others. I wonder about a world in
which you can be kind to everyone but the people who belong to you. And, in
that regard, my father’s capacity for empathy for the “starving children of
Africa” reflects this conundrum of American empathy. On the one hand, my
father had a deep thoughtfulness that I would not necessarily assume he
would have as a Black man from semirural Louisiana. At the same time, he
cared more for these Black children abroad than he cared for his own
children, whom he never financially or emotionally supported.
In the spring of 2014, the Nigerian rebel group Boko Haram kidnapped
more than two hundred school girls in Chibok and absconded with them to an
obscure and impenetrable part of the country, where they would no doubt be
coerced into being wives for the male rebels. On social media
#BringBackOurGirls trended and then President Obama offered aid to the
Nigerian government. Michelle Obama tweeted a picture of herself holding a
sign that said “#BringBackOurGirls.” While Black women in the States
organized solidarity actions like “Rock a Gele for Our Girls,” folks on the
left began to bellyache about the perils of U.S. military intervention. Many
Black men argued that intervening would be militarist and imperialist, and
that the woke position of any of us committed to radical politics should of
course be against U.S. military intervention. Many on the left had hoped that
the Obama years would bring less rather than more U.S. military incursions
abroad. U.S. imperialism is a uniquely troubling evil, even in these days of a
waning empire. And as the argument went among some Black men on the left,
even two hundred-plus kidnapped, raped, and forcefully impregnated Black
teen girls did not warrant U.S. military intervention.

In the months prior to the kidnapping of the Chibok girls, President Obama
had launched his My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which was aimed at
creating mentorship programs and leadership opportunities solely for young
boys of color. Enraged that he would leave Black girls out of his signature
racial justice initiative, I joined other Black women in organizing an open
letter to the president, calling him out on his exclusion of Black girls. If our
president, a self-proclaimed feminist who lived in the White House with
three generations of Black women, couldn’t bring himself to use his pulpit to
fight for Black women, then all hope felt lost.
Are Black girls ever worth fighting for? I wonder this sometimes as a
feminist who still secretly hopes for a man who will fight for her honor. I
wonder this, more specifically, as a fat feminist who has been in one too
many rooms where brothers have gone on the attack, misreading my large
body as unduly aggressive, often resorting to using their own bodies as
physical intimidation, only to have other men in the room do and say nothing.
It has never been fully clear to me whether I was left on my own out of
resentment, passivity, or some twisted belief that it would be sexist to stand
up for a feminist, especially a physically large one who seems infinitely
capable of defending herself. I have learned to defend myself because I’ve
never been able to rely on a man to do it for me. That doesn’t mean I’ve
never wanted a man to do it for me. It strikes me that if my daddy had lived,
he might have cared deeply about the Chibok girls. The fact of his empathy is
no guarantee that he would have figured out how to care for and father his
own daughters any better than he did when we were children.
One of my all-time favorite quotes, one that has largely been attributed to
civil rights preaching luminary Rev. Vernon Johns is, “If you see a good fight,
get in it.” Is the fight for the lives, safety, and sense of well-being of Black
girls a good fight? I think so. Does it have to be a violent fight? I hope not.
But far too many brothers have walked away from the fight for Black
women’s lives, citing lack of interest, lack of urgency, or dogma. The
feelings of disinterest and the faulty belief that Black girls aren’t engaged in
an urgent struggle for their lives infuriates but does not surprise me. Sexism,
like every other “ism,” is a willful refusal to not see what is right in front of
you.

The dogmatic commitment to not fighting for Black women and girls
confounds me. On principle, many in Black communities believe that there is
never a compelling reason to stand up in unequivocal defense of Black girls.
Though patriarchy is clearly a structural problem, often there is a refusal to
confront it, because to do so makes it seem like Black women are “picking
on” Black men. Naming the terrible things Black men have done to Black
women gets too frequently read as man-bashing and hatred. But as I have said
before, “We can neither heal nor fix that which we will not confront.” Dogma
isn’t just dangerous. It’s deadly. Our politics and beliefs should serve us; we
should not serve them. Now I know that this position is also dangerous. I’m
not advocating for a self-serving, navel-gazing politic that bends and shifts
for our convenience. I’m advocating for people-centered politics that hold
the safety and protection of the least of these—among them Black women and
girls—as a value worth fighting for. I’m asking what it will take to have a
politics that puts Black women and girls (cis, trans, and everything in
between) at the center and keeps them safe. What does that look like?
Because I sure as hell know what it doesn’t look like.
When the Chibok girls were kidnapped, I wanted our Black president to
use the force and resources of the U.S. military to go in there and bring our
girls back. I wanted this same president to use the bully pulpit granted to him
by the American people to proclaim that Black Lives Matter and, more
specifically, the lives of Black women and girls matter. He struggled to do
any of this, only coming around to cite the myriad contributions of Black
women in a speech given in the fall of 2015. Those leftist radical
pontificators who reside in a utopian place I like to call “Wokeland” called
my position—this desire and advocacy for intervention on the part of Black
women—imperialist. Black womanhood is not a politically pure category by
any stretch. Any evil act we can think of, we can of course find some Black
woman who has committed it.
But, structurally, it is absolutely untenable to suggest that Black women
are imperialists and colonizers. In the context of the United States, our
reproductive capacities were conscripted to build the capital base for the
assertion of the U.S. empire. After slavery, our bodies and the children they
produced were tethered to multiple generations of low-wage work and

poverty, providing staffing for the perpetuation of the U.S. underclass. The
desire for protection and safety is not an imperial desire. Asking the leaders
of your country and the members of your race to fight for you (if you’re
Black) is not a colonizing act. They are demands for recognition of
citizenship and humanity.
Black women know intimately what the process of U.S. militarism does to
Black men … what military-style policing does to Black communities. We
know what it means for the military to become the only viable option that so
many of our people have had for access into the middle class. Every
opportunity I get, I stridently discourage the young men in my family from
treating the military as their pathway out. Far too often, in these days of
endless war and in wars past, it sends or has sent back to us men with war
raging in their hearts and ringing in their ears. Those men, who cannot cut
through the madness of the violence they’ve seen and in which they’ve been
forced to engage, see Black girls and women as targets—as objects for
violent sexual release, as punching bags, as emotional chopping blocks.
* * *
When I was five, Bob came back. He had spent a few years in prison for his
crimes against my parents. We were leaving Grandmother’s house when
Rebo, my grandmother’s first cousin, flagged us down to say that “Bob is out,
and he’s been looking for you.” A few minutes later, Bob drove past,
recognized my mother, and pulled over, waving her to his car. Rebo, who
was more like an aunt to my mother and her siblings, looked nervous and my
mama looked shook. She said nothing, but then she didn’t have to. Five-yearolds understand brute emotions like fear. I didn’t know who Bob was or why
it felt so cloudy and dark in the car when the sun was shining so brightly
outside. I didn’t ask questions, though. By then, my own father had caused
enough chaos for me to know what danger looked, smelled, and felt like.
Frantically, my mother rushed back to town and drove directly to Cherry’s
Gun Shop. Inside Cherry’s, a young white woman behind the counter showed
my mother a small handgun. “It’s two-fifty,” she said. My mom just shook her
head, piled me into the car, and took me home while she actively figured out
plan B.

By the time we made it the couple of miles to our place in the projects,
she had arranged for me to go to my next-door neighbor’s, to stay with my
bestie, Lawrence, and his parents. Before she left, she kneeled in the front
yard so that we were eye to eye and told me, “Bob is a bad man. I’m going to
the courthouse to see the judge so he can’t bother me.” I nodded. My mother
has always had a policy of radical honesty with me, even when I was too
young to understand all the ins and outs. I went inside to play with Lawrence,
hoping that the judge could do something to keep the bad man away.
What does it mean to build a world in which Black women and Black
girls are safe? Jail clearly didn’t keep Bob away from my mother and me,
and the restraining order didn’t keep him away forever, either. Moreover,
despite my desire for Barack Obama to send our troops to rescue the Chibok
girls, the U.S. military apparatus causes harm both at home and abroad.
Black men often parrot this logic of the U.S. nation-state, engaging either in
the politics of doing harm or the politics of doing nothing. And we—Black
girls, Black women—are not saved.
How, then, shall we live? What do Black men, who have in the aggregate
been the purveyors of so much harm, owe to Black women? Black men took
those Black girls in Chibok. Black on different terms than we understand
Black manhood in the United States, but Black men nonetheless. That is why
it felt so egregious to hear radical, progressive Black men in the United
States talk about all the reasons why those little girls were not worthy of U.S.
intervention. A Black man shot my mother. Four different Black men shot my
father. One of those Black men killed him. Two different Black men put their
hands on my mother. One of those men was my father.
I’m a Black girl, a grown Black girl, who wants the men in my life, and
men who are bystanders in critical moments, to fight for my honor. I want
them to have the protective impulse that my mother’s big brother had the night
she was almost killed. I want men to have the impulse my uncle Carl Lee, my
daddy’s brother, had the afternoon that he chased Daddy around the living
room to stop him from putting hands on my mother. My uncle Carl Lee
reminds me of the character Carl Lee Hailey in the movie A Time to Kill:
When two white racists in Mississippi kidnapped and raped Carl Lee’s
beautiful little girl, that Black man took his shotgun and took them out. I’ve

seen enough gun violence not to actually desire men to act this way, but I
appreciated his moral clarity. They had harmed his daughter and thrown her
in a ditch to die as though she were disposable. He had to take them out. I
want Black men to feel that impulse of protection for Black girls everywhere,
even when those Black girls aren’t their daughters, but especially when they
are.
I’m a Black woman who wants to live in a nation that believes it has a
responsibility to Black women, as citizens and as people, to make the world
safe for them. I’m a Black feminist who cannot reconcile my desire for men
to fight for my honor with my general abhorrence for violence. I’m a feminist
who cannot reconcile my desire for U.S. military intervention in Chibok with
my utter hatred of guns. I’m a feminist who cannot reconcile my desire for my
nation-state to intervene on my behalf with the woke analysis feminism has
bequeathed me about the perils of getting in bed at any level with the logics
of patriarchy and militarism. For these things might protect you one minute
and kill you the next. I am my mother’s daughter, and I have been taught
always, always to stand up and fight honorably for myself. I am also the
daughter of my father, Mann, who brought more relief in his absence than
with his presence, who taught me that there was more security in his leaving
than in his staying, a man whose lack of respect for boundaries made me
chronically afraid at levels that were no less nerve-racking than the acuteness
of the fear Bob induced.
Now I am a grown woman trying to build a life where I can get in bed
every night with a man who knows that my desire for him to hold me down
does not in any guise mean that I want him to put his foot on my neck. I am a
grown woman who feels like these obvious things have to be said explicitly.
I am too afraid to say these things that need to be said, because the
consequence of my demands might be another man leaving me, and my father
taught me that my needs weren’t compelling enough to make a man stay. I am,
then, a grown woman who struggles mightily to trust what it might mean for a
man to stay, to show up, to catch me when I fall, acquainted as I am with the
relief that comes when they finally, simply, go. The leaving feels like the
tanks are finally pulling out. But also like I am on my own. So when the good
brothers come to stay, looking so much like the enemy, when they come in

talking sweetly and meaning it, being loving and meaning it, occupying your
thoughts and taking up space, it feels just like that—like an occupation.
Now that I’m grown, my mother speaks more freely about what these men
who shaped her youth meant to her. Of my father, she says, looking off into
the distance, “He was a terrorist.” My father controlled our lives through
constant surveillance and random acts of violence designed to reinforce his
control, power, and ownership. But my mother felt like she owed my father
loyalty because she felt guilty for “getting him shot.” And perhaps because
she had learned how costly disloyalty could be. Of Bob she says, “He was a
fatal attraction” to whom she was attracted, in her words, “because of low
self-esteem.” Eventually my mother met and married a lovely man, my
stepfather, to whom she has been married for more than two decades. Much
like these other men, my stepdad, a preacher whom I affectionately call Rev,
told me about his own reckoning with the ways his father had been physically
abusive toward his mother. “I resolved that I would never put my hands on a
woman,” Rev told me once. All of these men, my father, my stepfather, and
Bob, had to contend with the models handed down to them. But only Rev
seemed to come to the right conclusion. My mother, for her part, always felt
like her ability to make better romantic choices came from learning to love
herself. I’m sure that’s part of the story. But it’s certainly not all of it.
Self-help gurus, pastors, and poets love to point to Black women’s “low
self-esteem” as the cause for all Black-girl problems. Just learn to love
yourself, we are told. But patriarchy is nothing if not the structurally induced
hatred of women. If every woman and girl learned to love herself fiercely,
the patriarchy would still be intact; it would demand that she be killed for
having the audacity to think she was somebody. Individual blame isn’t enough
to solve the problem.
How are Black girls supposed to grow up to be Black women in love
with themselves in a country built on the structural negation of Black
women’s humanity and personhood? Too much of the conversation about
patriarchy in Black communities pivots on Black women’s low self-esteem.
Black women are often admonished to make better choices. But my mother
left Bob when he didn’t treat her right. She almost lost her life for it. The
deadliest time for a woman in an abusive relationship is when she decides to

leave. Still, despite almost being killed, when things got to be too terrible
with my father, she left him, too. From where I sit, my mama made the right
choice to leave every time it became clear that her man wasn’t going to treat
her right. The abuse had nothing to do with her choices and everything to do
with the ways we don’t demand that men stop being violent.
Mama says she prayed about when to leave my daddy, asking for the Holy
Spirit to show her, a twenty-three-year-old woman, the right time to end
things. We should not have to rely on supernatural acts of God to keep
women safe. And though my mother is clearly my hero, she deserved better
options and more help. Young women encountering violent men today
deserve those options, too. It’s not enough to teach women how not to attract
violent men. We have to spend our time teaching young men how not to be
violent men and partners.
Surely Mann and Bob did not hold themselves in high esteem. On the day
that my daddy finally, peaceably, retreated from our home, he didn’t even
look me in the eye. He couldn’t. His abdication of responsibility was
egregious, yes. But the humiliation of learning that you have taken so much
that no one in your home wants anything you have to give is surely an
unbearable feeling. The violence that men do demoralizes them, too.
Having a structural analysis of the logics of patriarchy doesn’t let Mann
and Bob off the hook. War narrows the frame of masculine possibility and
tethers it irreparably to violence. In every part of their lives, young men need
access to conversations about what it means to be a man in ways that are not
rooted in power, dominance, and violence. We owe it to ourselves to imagine
what a post-patriarchal Black masculinity might look like. And, frankly, until
we have that conversation, men will continue to kill Black women (cis and
trans). And they will continue to kill each other.
Perhaps we could start with empathy, though. This is the thing about my
father’s story that always strikes me—he was a deeply empathetic man,
caring greatly about the injustices in the world around him. Social scientists
have spoken of a phenomenon that they call the “racial empathy gap,” in
which people, regardless of race, believe that Black people experience less
physical pain than white people experience. This racial empathy gap

influences everything from harsher sentences for crime to differential
prescribing practices for pain medication based on race.
It strikes me that among Black men and Black women, perhaps there is a
gender empathy gap. There is certainly a broader gender empathy gap, in
which women are perceived to experience less pain than men and are treated
for pain less aggressively than men. Professors Diane Hoffman and Anita
Tarzian have found that women frequently receive inadequate treatment for
pain, and often that psychological and emotional pain receive less treatment
than physical pain. The presence of both a racial empathy gap and a gender
empathy gap doesn’t bode well for Black women, even though they haven’t
been a direct focus of these pain-management studies. Because Black women
are viewed as preternaturally strong, our pain often goes unnoticed both in
the broader world and in our own communities. Black men frequently don’t
acknowledge our vulnerability, don’t seem to think we need defending, and
don’t feel a political responsibility to hold Black women (who aren’t their
mothers or sisters or daughters) up and honor them. There seems to be no
empathic register for understanding the sheer magnitude of the physical and
emotional pain that systems of racism, capitalism, and patriarchy inflict on
Black women every day. Black men grow up believing and moving through
the world politically as though they have it the toughest, as though their pain
matters most, as though Black women cannot possibly be feeling anything
similar to the dehumanization and disrespect they have felt. That it might, in
many cases, be worse for us seems to many men a preposterous supposition.
My father, for instance, showed far more empathy for the man who shot
him than he ever showed for the woman whom he claimed to love the most.
Patriarchy numbs men’s collective pain sensors, and it causes Black men to
not see Black women as worthy of care and concern. To be clear, showing
care and concern for the women you want to sleep with or the women who
are related to you is not the same as having an overarching commitment to
Black women’s political, social, and personal well-being as a justice
project.
Lest I be mistaken, though, Black men didn’t invent patriarchy. Patriarchy
is America’s daddy issue. America rules the world through war, the same
way patriarchs rule families with an iron fist and a Janus-faced promise of

either violence or benevolence, depending on which day you catch them, and
how well you bow down and do their bidding. Our government does not just
wage war abroad. It wages war in Black communities at home, controlling
Black folks through surveillance and violence, demanding their submission
and compliance. When submission and compliance is not freely offered, the
state murders Black men, women, and children, citing the rule of law. The
War on Drugs is only the most obvious example of a war that the U.S.
government declared and waged on Black communities. That particular war,
and the ways it targeted Black men and destroyed Black families, often
rendered Black women the spoils of war. And we have been treated as such,
as trophies for men to tote around as evidence of their power and greatness.
White men who waged war paraded narratives of Black women before the
American public in the 1980s, calling them “welfare queens” and “crack
addicts” and using hatred of Black women to curry favor with the American
public. Black men, demoralized by wars both at home and abroad, took
possession of the one thing that was left—the women, treating us as their own
kind of trophies, pretty objects that bolstered their social capital while
commanding or compelling no responsibility from them for, and to, us.
In his famous 1967 sermon, “Beyond Vietnam,” Martin Luther King
preached about the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and
militarism.” He preached about the “brutal solidarity” that brought together
white men and Black men who wouldn’t even “live on the same block” back
home. King didn’t name patriarchy as a founding evil of the U.S. nation-state,
but that brutal solidarity that men experienced across race as they went to
war cannot be understood outside of a Western patriarchal fantasy that
seduces so many brothers whose definition of freedom is a desegregated
patriarchy. Black men didn’t just experience racial equality on the battlefield;
they experienced gender equality, too. After Truman desegregated the armed
forces in time for the Korean Conflict, Black men got to engage in American
carnage as equal citizens—not as Black or white, but simply as men. (I’m
sure that’s how a military brochure might put it.) But what King didn’t live
long enough to think about was what it would look like for a whole
generation of men, Black men in particular, to come back from that war. The
Vietnam War was a Pyrrhic victory not only because of its dubious status as a

victory abroad, but also because it dropped Black men back off in the same
racist hoods they left, this time not only with PTSD, but also with the same
limited access to patriarchy and the power of white men that they learned to
crave.
So many Black men escaped the racist wars of segregation and
criminalization being waged in their own backyards by agreeing to fight
America’s many racist wars of aggression abroad. That is a perverse model
of both masculinity and freedom, and it is Black women and girls who have
paid the highest price for it. But Black men have paid the price, too. My
daddy was certainly a casualty of war, of the wars Black people wage on
each other, when there are no proper outlets for the living out of our dreams
or the expression of our rage. Those wars are wars of mundane but
devastating violence enacted on those who live in closest proximity to us. It
is our own country that uses war as a tool to compel violent submission from
those people in other places that we claim to care about. But unchecked
violence does not just topple empires. It also devastates men. Both Bob and
Mann lost the girl they loved and left a lifetime of resentment, pain, and anger
in their wake because they chose to live out the lie that surveillance, control,
occupation, and terror are acceptable ways to treat the people they claimed
to love, when the truth is that these acts are never acceptable for anyone at
all.

BAG LADY

On the very day that Sandra Bland was pulled over in Waller County, Texas,
just a stone’s throw away from the entrance to her alma mater, Prairie View
A&M University, I was on an Amtrak train on a daylong round trip to
Harvard University. Bland, a twenty-eight-year-old Chicago resident, was
completing a drive to Texas to begin her dream job at Prairie View.
I had been called to come to the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics to speak to young scientists about the importance of employing
intersectional perspectives in STEM research. Intersectionality, or the idea
that we are all integrally formed and multiply impacted by the different ways
that systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy affect our lives,
was a mostly foreign notion to these young scientists. Intersectional education
happens primarily in the kinds of college classrooms that cause conservative
politicians to lose their shit on the regular. Intersectionality is considered
fluffy, liberal, radical, and certainly not scientific. Intersectionality is not
only not objective, it sneers at claims to objectivity, arguing that none of us is
purely objective. We all come with a perspective and an agenda. We all have
investments. We all have skin in the game.
As I stood at the podium doing my thing in that Harvard classroom, no one
could tell that my fervent desire was to find somewhere to curl up and weep.
I had spent the better part of the four-hour train ride arguing via text message
with a high-school sweetheart who had managed to swoop back in with a
load of new-school promises that I had recently discovered he had no
intention of keeping. On the brink of thirty-five at that point, my career was
going exceedingly well, and I thought it the responsible thing to do to begin to

turn my attention toward building a family. When I’m not railing at the
patriarchy and reconsidering whether a traditional marriage is for me, I
spend my time reading romance novels. My favorite romance story plot is
always about young lovers who lose touch, reconnect, and then live happily
ever after. On this particular summer morning, I was learning for the last time
that this would not be my story. I was officially all out of childhood and
teenage sweethearts (and there had been a few) with whom to try to make this
fantasy work.
About one hour before I arrived, I sent my last curse-filled text to my ex,
an equally curse-filled text to my homegirl, who had been offering sympathy,
outrage, and possible revenge plots throughout the entire scenario, and then
tried to calm my spirit and plaster a smile on my face so I could go explain to
this group of eager students the intersectional conundrums that shaped my
regular Black-girl life. I couldn’t fall apart like I wanted to because, well,
I’m a Black girl, and we don’t get the luxury of doing frivolous shit like that.
This was an invitation to speak at Harvard, after all. Business always comes
first, broken hearts later. Black women’s historian Darlene Clark Hine
coined a term for the performance I was putting on. She called it the “culture
of dissemblance,” this enigmatic way that Black women in the late-nineteenth
and early-twentieth centuries moved through the world, often doing race
work of the type I was doing that day, giving the appearance of being open
while fully obscuring the operations of their inner lives from public view.
While I was busy dissembling, Sandra Bland was in another part of the
world completing what amounts to a return migration back to the South from
Chicago, the very city that two generations earlier had seen so many Black
people fleeing North to escape the pervasive, quotidian horror of Southern
state-sanctioned racial violence. She was just a few hundred yards from
completing her journey when she ran into a twenty-first century specter of a
violence that we all hoped was long gone. When she made it to University
Drive, the street that runs into the campus of Prairie View, a Waller County
police officer began following her. She thought he wanted to pass, so she
pulled over. He pulled over behind her, and was apparently planning to write
her a citation for “failure to signal a lane change.” She could almost see the
university from where she was sitting. She was that close to her dream job.

Instead, officer Brian Encinia decided to harass, assault, and arrest Bland
because she refused to be servile during the traffic stop. She did not berate
the officer but she did let him know she wasn’t pleased that he had pulled her
over on a bullshit charge. Incensed by her lack of deference and her seeming
lack of fear, Encinia grabbed his Taser, opened the door, reached into the
vehicle, and yanked Sandra Bland out of her car, while yelling at her, “I will
light you up.” A local bystander stopped to tape the incident, and Bland, who
was a great supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, thanked the
bystander for taping. She narrated that the officer had just slammed her head
into the ground and cuffed her wrists so tightly, she thought they might break.
A Black woman officer can be heard off-camera telling a struggling Bland,
“Well, you shoulda thought about that.”
Bland spent the weekend trying to arrange for someone to bring the $500
needed to bail her out of jail. Five hundred dollars is such a small amount,
but the cost is prohibitively high in a world where Black women between the
ages of eighteen and sixty-four have been estimated to have only about $100
of net wealth. Not only do most Black women not have $500 to spare in case
of emergencies, but many don’t have networks of family or friends with that
kind of money to spare either.
On Monday morning, July thirteenth, at around 9:00 A.M., Sandra Bland
was found dead. The official narrative is that she hanged herself by placing a
trash bag around her neck. I don’t know what happened to Bland in that jail
cell. It’s easier to believe—and entirely plausible—that rogue police
officers murdered her. In March 2016, Brian Encinia was fired and charged
with misdemeanor perjury for giving a false account of what happened at the
traffic stop. In June 2017, local prosecutors dropped all charges; Encinia
surrendered his law enforcement license and agreed that he would never
work in law enforcement again.
Caring for Black women’s actual lives means sitting with the acuteness of
our fragility. We break, too. Police at the White House killed Miriam Carey
in 2013. She was a mother suffering from severe postpartum depression,
who, it seems, took a wrong turn at the White House gates with her baby
daughter strapped into the backseat. She was killed in a hail of bullets while
her baby daughter sat helpless. Tanisha Anderson of Cleveland, Ohio,

experienced a mental health crisis, which caused her children to contact
police for help to assist their mother in taking her medicine. Instead an
officer handcuffed her, and when she began to struggle, he restrained her by
putting a knee in her back, effectively smothering her while her children
watched. The county medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, and the
police department settled with the family for over two million dollars. The
system’s response to seeing us bend is to break us entirely.
For Black girls, many of us teeter on that brink. If one more thing goes
wrong, we feel like we just can’t make it. We go to church like Bland, a
church girl herself. There, preachers tell us, “Your blessing is just around the
bend. Keep pressing.” On March 1, 2015, Bland uploaded a video to her
vlog Sandy Speaks. She admitted to struggling with depression and PTSD,
and spoke out against the stigma and shame that many who struggle with
depression feel. She apologized for not having vlogged regularly, and told
her listeners, “I’m just a human.” And then she mentioned that though she had
missed church that morning, she watched a bit of the service, and the
morning’s message had been about faith.
* * *
Just four months later, that same faith caused Bland to press her way to Texas
for her dream job. Through Sandy Speaks, Bland talked about everything
from her recent struggles with depression after losing a pregnancy to her
outrage over the police killings of unarmed Black people and her support for
the Black Lives Matter Movement. Unlike the race women of old, Sandy
Bland did not dissemble. She shared her private struggles right alongside her
political views.
On the morning of July 10, 2015, Sandra Bland and I were two Black
women chasing our dreams, even in the aftermath of our heartbreak. I know
exactly what it feels like to pack all of my belongings into the car and drive
more than a thousand miles to the gates of a university that holds my career
hopes and dreams. I’ve done it more than once. And I know how much I
relied on my faith in God and myself to travel every mile.
It’s classic for writers to spend time waxing eloquent about the
possibilities and perils of life’s metaphoric journeys, and the roads we either

do or don’t travel. But the dangers that attend Black people’s actual travels
are not in any guise metaphoric. Reminiscent of earlier periods of racial
terror for African Americans, traffic stops have again become the pretext for
the reckless taking of Black life by police. In April 2015, South Carolina
police officer Michael Slager killed Walter Scott after stopping him for a
broken taillight. Slager was charged with murder and brought to trial. Though
a local barber who was walking through the area shot clear video of Slager
shooting an unarmed Scott as he was running away, a judge declared a
mistrial in December 2016 after a local jury failed to return a verdict. In May
2017, Slager pled guilty to federal charges that he violated Scott’s civil
rights. He is now serving time in federal prison. In August 2016, after Korryn
Gaines, a twenty-three-year-old mother from Baltimore, fail-ed to pay a
traffic citation, members of the police force arrived at her house to serve her
a warrant for failure to appear in court. The standoff ended when police
kicked in Gaines’s door, shot and killed her, and shot her five-year-old son.
And in July 2016, a Minnesota police officer shot and killed Philando
Castile, after Castile requested permission to pull out his gun and concealedweapons permit for the officer’s inspection during a traffic stop for a broken
taillight. The officer was acquitted of all charges, despite damning dash cam
video suggesting that Castile did nothing wrong.
Because traffic stops are frequently a life-or-death matter for Black
people, stopping traffic has become one of the primary modes of protest for
the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). The shutdown of major interstate
highways began in August 2014, after a police officer shot eighteen-year-old
Michael Brown and left his dead body lying in the street for four and a half
hours. In the weeks that followed, across the country from St. Louis to
Atlanta to Oakland, protestors began to form human barriers across major
highways while holding signs and chanting, “Black Lives Matter,” and
“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”
Charlene Carruthers, national director of the Black Youth Project 100, has
said “When people disrupt highways and streets, it is about disrupting
business as usual. It’s also about giving a visual that folks are willing to put
their bodies on the line to create the kind of world we want to live in.”
Feminist activist Naomi Wolf once said, “For a protest to be effective, you

have to stop traffic.” Carruthers understands the stakes of Black people
putting their bodies on the line to stop traffic as a kind of visual prophecy of
the world we want to see, a world where we all can go to our destinations
safely and soundly or no one can. When they put their bodies on the line, they
dramatize the danger for all people who are stuck in traffic.
Black women have long been aware of what it means to be stuck in traffic,
confined to the intersections of social discourses that bypass us on their way
to futures to which we don’t have access. In the late 1980s, legal scholar
Kimberlé Crenshaw named this seemingly shared quality of Black women’s
lives intersectionality. Intersectionality makes clear the ways that systems of
power interact in Black women’s lives to restrict social mobility and to
hinder us from moving unencumbered through the social sphere. Pulled over
at a traffic stop, peering intently down University Drive to the destiny she
had created for herself, Sandra Bland was yanked into a future that precisely
mirrored the violent Black past that we are presently—and collectively—
obsessed with escaping. She was right there. Right there. At the intersection
of destiny, dreams, and death. Death won, assisted in its victory by those
with real power.
Five months before she was killed by police, Korryn Gaines was pulled
over in Baltimore County for a traffic stop. She had replaced the front license
plate on her car with a cardboard sign that read “free traveler.” The back
plates had a similar cardboard sign that read, “Any government official who
compromises this pursuit to happiness and right to travel will be held
criminally responsible and fined, as this is a natural right and freedom.” I
know to “regular,” “law-abiding” folks, Korryn sounds crazy. Hers is a kind
of brazenness the world tries to beat out of Black girls before they reach
adulthood. For many who are apologists for state violence, her declaration of
her freedom and her rights sounded like an invitation to harassment. But let’s
do this young Black woman, one who had undoubtedly heard of Sandra
Bland’s story, the courtesy of suspending our disbelief. She chose to be
eccentric, defiant, outrageous, and, dare I say, visionary in a world where
Black women and girls don’t often get to do any of these things without lethal
consequences.

There is a thin line between clarity and craziness, and sometimes clarity
can be crazy-making. For there is a profound argument in the particular terms
through which Korryn Gaines chose to elaborate her freedom project. She
argued, by way of a makeshift license plate, that the pursuit of happiness and
the right to travel are natural rights, rights that are endemic to any declaration
of freedom. The struggle by Black people to obtain the free and full exercise
of their natural rights and continual forms of structural opposition to these
rights have been a fundamental feature of what it means to be Black in
America. To get bogged down or distracted by the policy and procedure
elements of her approach is to miss the soundness of her conclusions. By
declaring her rights to travel, to freedom, and to happiness to be natural
rights, Korryn Gaines invoked a very particular political discourse about the
origin of our natural rights. If freedom to travel and freedom to be happy are
civil rights or legal rights, they exist entirely at the whim and fancy of the
U.S. government. If however, these matters are natural rights, they are not
bound by the exigencies of policy and procedure. The problem is not that
Korryn Gaines believed these ideas about herself, but rather that she chose to
make them explicit.
How can this Black woman’s notions of freedom, her audacity in trying to
live free, seem so preposterous and exasperating and so utterly reasonable
and exhilarating at the same time? More than any of us, she seemed to have a
clear vision of what freedom for Black women looked like—the ability to get
in a vehicle of your choosing, strap your babies safely into the backseat, and
make your way to the place where you were trying to go. This conception of
freedom, the ability to travel unencumbered to the places where you need to
go, is something Black women have been fighting for since they first
encountered America. I think of twenty-one-year-old Ida B. Wells who, in
1883, was violently removed from the ladies’ car of a train in Memphis,
Tennessee, because “colored women” were not allowed to sit there. Because
segregation laws were not yet cemented, Wells tried to flout the unspoken
mandate to segregate, so that she could read her newspaper in the much nicer
ladies’ car in peace. Instead, the conductor and two other passengers tried to
drag her to her “place” in the colored car. She chose to get off the train
instead.

This long history of Black women enduring violent harassment while they
are on their way somewhere—anywhere—makes Korryn Gaines’s demands
to be recognized and respected as a “free traveler” far less preposterous. I’m
also struck by the intimacy of these encounters, the moment when, as Bland
and Wells experienced, suddenly a white man is putting his hands on you,
yanking you violently away from your intended journey. I wonder about what
Ida Wells might have been reading, about what Sandy Bland and Korryn
Gaines might have been bumping on the radio, about what thoughts might
have streamed through their consciousness as they were on their way
somewhere, anywhere. At twenty-one, Wells had her fair share of young men
jockeying for her affections. I wonder if her thoughts moved somewhere
between her love life, her love of pretty dresses, and the injustices she was
undoubtedly reading about in the paper.
The tragic consequences of these traffic and train encounters make clear
that intersectionality has intimate consequences. What does it look like for
Black women to move freely through space when we are always confronting
the precariousness of life at the intersections of race and gender, of class and
mental health, of love and dreams? Erykah Badu once famously cautioned
Black women about the costs of carrying around too much baggage: “Bag
lady, you gone miss yo’ bus. You can’t hurry up cause you got too much
stuff.” Badu then coolly advises, “Pack light.” But, of course, that is not
entirely our choice.
Black women did not agree to or apply for the job of baggage handlers for
the nation. With histories as forced laborers and forced breeders, so much of
our employment history in this country has simply not been up to us. Our
lives are strewn about with structurally deposited baggage. If we assume the
radical position that it isn’t ours to carry, we are called lazy. Degenerate.
Angry. Irresponsible. The nation waves its fingers at us in accusation,
demanding that we take the weight. And, often, we accede to these demands,
taking the weight against our will, but taking it nonetheless. Black women
take it upon ourselves to challenge stereotypes, to raise respectable children,
to build homes, communities, and churches despite our chronic condition of
underemployment. We are masters of wresting sustenance from insufficiency.

We combat structurally imposed trauma much as Erykah Badu demanded of
both herself and us—by taking responsibility for the weight we carry.
I don’t even have to go all the way back to Ida B. Wells in the 1880s to be
appalled by the amount of social and structural baggage foisted upon the
backs of Black women. The 1980s was hell on the social image of Black
women, who were vilified and demonized as money-grubbing welfare
queens and drug-abusing crack fiends birthing crack babies that the system
couldn’t handle. Oprah Winfrey as Miss Sofia in Steven Spielberg’s 1985
screen adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple uttered one of the
most memorable and damning lines about the terrible burdens that America
(and Black men) had heaped upon Black women. “All my life, I had to fight,”
she told Celie after her husband Harpo tried to beat her in an assertion of
male dominance. There’s a reason why Black women my age can recite lines
from The Color Purple at will. The film is iconic because it dared,
following Alice Walker’s lead, to suggest to America that Black women
were the heroes and not the villains of the American national story. It dared
to suggest to a watching world that the baggage we carry is not of our own
stitching. And while we Black girls always recite these lines to each other in
a humorous context, it is mostly humorous because just underneath the
surface, the truth of what we say in jest leaps at us with the clarity of an
Alvin Ailey performance. If you hear one sister saying to another, “Don’t do
it, Miss Celie,” you better move out the way, ’cause somebody is liable to
get cut.
Black women powerbrokers of the 1990s undertook a full-scale rescue
mission to resuscitate the culturally devastated image of Black womanhood
handed to us in the 1980s. In the 1990s, during my tween and adolescent
years, I watched women my mother’s age explode the Black women’s chick
lit and self-help industries. Books by Iyanla Vanzant and Susan L. Taylor
were a staple in my household. Together with books by (and about) Oprah,
Maya Angelou, Terry McMillan, the telltale pink Women’s Devotional Bible
(with which every Black girl of a certain age is familiar), and copies of
Essence and Ebony magazines, I watched my mama fashion a clearly Blackwoman, girl-centered household for the two of us. These books and
magazines acted as therapy for my working-class single mom who couldn’t

afford to sit on someone’s sofa once a week to discuss her problems. She had
a daughter to feed and bills to pay. This bookshelf and coffee-table therapy
gave birth to two unspoken mantras that shaped our life together: “Take care
of business” and “Daughter, heal thyself.”
My mother used the explosion of a body of literature that spoke to Black
women’s interior lives to get hers together. After the abuse she suffered
during my childhood, my mother, tired of being used and abused, began the
process of healing herself in my tween and teen years. Years later, she would
tell me, “I wanted better for you, and if I wanted better for you, then I had to
want better for myself.” I watched my mom read Iyanla’s Yesterday, I Cried
and In the Meantime. And I watched as she intently listened, when a rare day
off permitted her to, to Iyanla on The Oprah Winfrey Show. I was a keen
observer of my mother, and I knew she connected to this material even though
I did not always understand why. I liked to read Essence and Ebony but
didn’t much care for the rest of it. I saw my mother’s admiration for Susan
Taylor’s monthly “In the Spirit” column. I read it and thought it sounded
good, but too heavy and fluffy for my Black-girl tastes. My mother was a
woman, as Alice Walker once said of her character Meridian, “in the process
of changing her mind.” I watched my mother change her mind about her worth
and value and then reflect that shift in her romantic choices. She freed herself
from a cycle of abuse and, in so doing, saved her own life.
I believe wholeheartedly in the internal spiritual work that Black women
must do to save our own lives. But I also wonder whether our spiritual work
is a match for the structural systems that would crush us alive. Audre Lorde
famously said, “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into
other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” But what do we do with this
push for self-definition and self-recognition in a system that would crush us
anyway? It crushed Sandra Bland. It crushed Korryn Gaines. It has crushed
untold numbers of trans Black women, who have been killed simply for
having the audacity to live their truth.
My own mother modeled the importance of taking care of one’s spirit as a
means of saving oneself. This was the model of Black womanhood that
shaped my coming-of-age, and it still shapes how I move through the world
as a grown woman. In the Oprah-Iyanla-Susan era, my mother would always

say to me, when I came home crying about being bullied by mean girls at
school, “The only behavior you can change is your own. What behavior can
you change so you can avoid this kind of attention?” Even if in the end the
“behavior” I changed was my own mind-set, such that the taunts didn’t bother
me as much, the point was that my mother believed in my moving through the
world with a spirit of self-possession. She raised me to be a Black girl who
believes (sometimes stridently) in her own mind and her own counsel. Akin
to that, I believe that each of us is responsible for doing our own emotional
work. We can’t hope to have healthy relationships of any type if we are
unwilling to own our shit.
I am struck by the manner in which my mother’s ability to show up to and
heal her own life was made possible in the particular world of the 1990s, a
brief moment where Black women were allowed to see themselves and their
full set of possibilities. The last decade of the twentieth century found the
nation discovering for the first time what Black business owners and
corporations had long known—that Black women were a target demographic
for cosmetics, self-help literature, and chick lit. In 1991, Maybelline
launched its “Shades of You” campaign, becoming the first mainstream
cosmetics line to explicitly focus on women of color. Consumer culture
scholar and professor Robert Weems has marked this as a “watershed” event,
which led to a proliferation of more than a dozen Black women–focused
cosmetic lines in a two-year period. Today, I have my pick of cosmetic
products that can match and complement my dark brown skin tone, but in my
adolescent years, such products were just coming into existence. Weems
suggests that so much of Black people’s experience of citizenship has been
tied to consumerism; so when Black women became a mainstream target
demographic in the 1990s, they experienced new levels of cultural visibility
that expanded to other arenas like books and movies.
Terry McMillan reached blockbuster success with her 1992 novel
Waiting to Exhale. My mother and I then hustled to the public library on a
Saturday morning to pick up her earlier novels Mama and Disappearing
Acts. Or rather, she picked up Terry McMillan novels, and I checked out
Mildred Taylor books like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Let the Circle
Be Unbroken. Oprah officially reigned as the queen of daytime television,

providing a platform for Iyanla Vanzant to dig into the inner lives of
struggling Black women and call forth a healing. And Susan Taylor’s
oversight of Essence magazine with both her “In the Spirit” column and her
mind/body/spirit approach to presenting Black women’s issues created a
felicitous set of social conditions for Black women to come to voice in ways
that were more personal than political.
Suddenly, Black women professionals were talking about the personal
stakes of being Black women in a world that didn’t love us. Oprah and
Iyanla, for instance, talked little about racism, sexism, and poverty. But they
spoke a lot about the terrible choices we make when we have low selfesteem and don’t love ourselves. I wonder if Sandra Bland watched episodes
of Iyanla, Fix My Life as she struggled to overcome her depression. Now
that I’m grown, I regularly pick up O, The Oprah Magazine, looking for tips
to fix my own life. As a twentysomething, I ran across a column on
narcissism in O magazine, and that column named for me the emotional abuse
I endured for so many years from an old boyfriend. Reading those words
helped me to stop hoping that he would ever change, because narcissists
never do. Those words gave me the language to free myself from that
relationship, to know that I deserved better.
I struggle, then, with how to simultaneously hold the competing truths that
shape Black women’s public and private lives. On the one hand, I have made
many a bad decision, tolerating bad friends and even worse dudes, because I
didn’t love myself as well as I should have. Therefore, I merely accepted
what others offered, even when it was so much less than what I am worth.
That is the truth. And my process of learning that truth was deeply personal
and has been deeply transformative.
On the other hand, individual transformation is neither a substitute for nor
a harbinger of structural transformation. Holding oneself in perpetually low
esteem is a structurally induced condition. Patriarchy propagates a whole
series of narratives about Black women that are designed to make us hate
ourselves. Melissa Harris-Perry argues that Black women carry a great
amount of shame because of our inability to fully inhabit the American
dream. In 1965, when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that Black
communities were caught in a tangle of pathology because our communities

had a disproportionate number of female-led households, his conclusions had
both affective and social dimensions. His 1965 report, “The Negro Family:
The Case for National Action,” offered social and political recommendations
focused on ways to help Black men become breadwinners again so they
could assume their “rightful” place at the head of Black families. But the
affective goal of his infamous Moynihan Report was to shame Black women
for the very mundane magic involved in our making a way out of no way.
That shame persists well into the twenty-first century, when more than 70
percent of Black households are female-led. Black women have
proportionally higher rates of abortion than any other group. There is no
shame in having an abortion. I consider the right to choose the conditions
under which one becomes a parent to be one of the most important social
values. But I believe that decades of discourse about poor Black women and
unwed Black mothers being “welfare queens” who unfairly take more from
the system than they put in has shamed many Black women into not bearing
children that they otherwise might consider having. The idea that only
middle-class, straight, married women deserve to start families is both racist
and patriarchal.
The fact that our society honestly believes that poor women don’t have the
right to start families because they may require public assistance obscures
the variety of ways that middle-class families do receive public assistance.
White families have been the primary beneficiaries of both public and
corporate welfare in the form of redlining policies that drove down property
values in Black neighborhoods, making those neighborhoods undesirable for
businesses, families, and schools. They have been beneficiaries of favorable
bank-loan terms to help them purchase safe, affordable, quality housing. They
are the beneficiaries of marital and housing tax breaks and the
disproportionate beneficiaries of the dwindling number of quality public
schools that we have left.
Public discourse on the right paints a picture of brazen Black and Brown
teenagers and unmarried mothers having baby after baby that they can’t
support to game the system. In fact, the discourse about Korryn Gaines after
she was killed was that she was a bad Black mother who used her son as a
human shield against the cops. But she told her five-year-old to document

what was happening to her, teaching him how to train her smartphone’s video
camera on her as she talked. Less outrage was reserved for the police who
decided that shooting her son who, thankfully, survived was a reasonable
price to pay for apprehending his mother, who had committed the crime of
failing to pay a traffic ticket. When I talk to Black women in my community,
many of them feel shame and guilt about not being respectable Black women
in traditional two-parent homes.
In middle school, there were only two Black girls in my school’s gifted
and talented program, my friend Holly and me. We took to each other quickly
because Black girls find each other as a means to survive. We were both
working-class girls raised by single moms. I insisted on being a good girl,
while Holly was definitely a rebel. By her junior and my senior year of high
school, Holly was pregnant. Neither of us were strangers to teen pregnancy
in our community. Black girls in my community had been getting pregnant
since I was in the sixth grade.
So when Holly got pregnant, I was concerned and a little sad, but not
surprised. She fit the cautionary tale that I was steadfastly trying to avoid,
because I am the daughter of a teen mom. After many years we lost contact
and reconnected via Facebook. By then, she had had five children and was
on her way to baby number six.
One day, we inboxed just to catch up and she told me of the multiple
degrees in nursing she had secured and how proud she was of her family. I
was proud of her and also feeling just a bit lonely. Yes, Holly’s path to
family was risky, but she had made it. And I had toed the line and followed
the rules, a little too well, perhaps. Now I find myself in my thirties with few
prospects of having children in a traditional two-parent family. In fact, my
late thirties are beset with the heaviness of receding childbearing options.
Still, Holly said to me in the inbox, “I’m trying. I don’t want to be another
statistic.” The irony is that I traded being one kind of Black woman statistic
for another. I’m now among the scores of professional Black women who are
unmarried. This, too, is seen as a failure—as just more evidence of the
pervasive social undesirability of Black women.
With her six children by multiple fathers and her multiple nursing degrees
to boot, Holly challenged every stereotype I might have been invested in

believing. And when my doctor, at my behest, began to walk me through the
process and the cost of retrieving and freezing my eggs, I began to wonder if
maybe I had done something wrong. Many Black women like me are so
obsessed with the idea of not having babies too early that frequently it ends
up being too late. No statistic can adequately capture Holly’s story; she
didn’t let respectability politics have the last word.
Black women pay the highest costs for investing in respectability politics.
First, it breeds distrust between middle-class striving women and poor
women of color. We (middle-class women) are taught that those women, who
were once “fast-tailed girls” make us all look bad. I never thought about poor
women as making me look bad, because my community of women was
working-class. And my mother often reminded me when I became a bit too
frivolous with her money: “Child, we are poor.” Like many, many Americans
and most Black folks I know, we lived paycheck to paycheck. And given the
dubious origins of my birth, my family certainly wouldn’t have been invited
to Jack and Jill. But I knew very early on that I didn’t want to be like the girls
in my middle school, saddled with children I couldn’t support and doomed to
a lifetime of low-wage work with little opportunity for advancement.
These are the narratives that working-class “good” girls buy into in order
to make our way out of the hood. The goal to “not be like them” animates our
drive and our hustle. But now that I’m grown, I no longer believe that Black
women should imbibe shame and blame for all the creative ways that we
build families and lives, arrange fulfilling partnerships, and work to maintain
safe homes and steady employment.
I spent my twenties and most of my thirties waiting on a partner to show
up before I would ever consider children, because I never wanted to be a
single mother. I bought into the idea that making good choices around
education and career would entitle me to a broader set of options in every
part of my life. But the world doesn’t work that way for Black women. In my
college, the female-to-male ratio was 3 to 2. Even assuming that everyone
had hooked up in heterosexual pairings, one-third of Black girls were
automatically going to be assed out. When I graduated from Howard without
having even one boyfriend there, it didn’t dawn on me that I was one of the
33 percent. The optimism of my twenties would not let me consider that these

numbers would not improve over the course of my life. My friends and I
didn’t realize the structural clusterfuck that shaped Black partnering options
until we were already in the thick of things. I’ll say more about all that in the
chapter titled “Love in a Hopeless Place.” But suffice it to say that we
thought, as all young people do, that we had endless time, that our chosen
boos would arrive, and that our advanced degrees would bring us into a
world of men with advanced degrees and earning potential, too. It hasn’t
worked out that way for a great many of us.
In my thirties I became an unwilling member of the Sisterhood of Fibroid
Havers. Black women disproportionately struggle with fibroid tumors, and
the medical science continues to offer little explanation. After my fibroid
surgery, a successful outpatient procedure that I thought would buy me a little
more time, my doctor, a lovely Black woman gynecologist, told me, “More
than likely, your fibroids will return. You have a uterus that makes fibroids.”
Perhaps the saddest part of being reminded of the dreaded biological clock
was having to tell my mother that, since I had no partner in sight, I might not
be able to give her grandchildren. For the first time, I began to wonder
whether I should have been less regimented and more reckless in my
twenties, when I was younger and had eggs to spare. Black women deserve
more options than these extremes—that the same choices we make to not ruin
our lives as young people become the choices that make us miserable twenty
years later.
Part of what friendship has meant in my thirties is supporting my
homegirls in their thirties and forties who have limited partnering options,
and even fewer options for starting families. The intimate consequences of
all these good-ass choices we have made are relentlessly brutal. Yes, folks
are quick to say: Adopt. Freeze your eggs. Try in vitro. But with what
money? Black women in prime child-rearing age have negligible net wealth.
Many of these single women, as first-generation middle-class with loads of
educational debt and without a two-income household, have no way to fund a
creative family structure. The weight of the absence—of the partners who
didn’t show up, of the children you didn’t get to have, of the uterus robbed by
fibroids—is a burden none of us was properly prepared to bear.

How much of this baggage can we reasonably be expected to carry? On
that July morning that I found myself at Harvard, I walked off the train
carrying more baggage than I walked onto it with. Life (and, more to the
point, bullshit like heartbreaks and racism and sexism) bequeaths to us
baggage. The end of that relationship was my last shot at a serious
relationship before I reached advanced maternal age. He couldn’t appreciate
the urgent consequences of what was clearly routine fuckery for him. At any
point, he could turn things around and have a child. I could not. That’s how
male privilege is set up.
This is why songs like “Bag Lady,” which point out this baggage to us and
act like we are holding all of it of our own accord, are summarily unhelpful.
The unfair part is that folks are far more concerned with policing how Black
women carry the baggage than with reducing the load hoisted upon us in the
first place. When I read fluffy self-help literature or attend church services
where usually male preachers tell usually female parishioners that our social
conditions are largely a result of our personal failings and individual bad
choices, I often want to throw the book or walk out of the service. But while
I have, in fact, walked out of service, I have, thus far, refrained from
throwing books. Those who preach this sermon, whether in print or from the
pulpit, think they are “empowering” Black women to address the conditions
we face.
But “empowerment” is a tricky word. It’s also a decidedly neoliberal
word that places the responsibility for combating systems on individuals.
Neoliberalism is endlessly concerned with “personal responsibility” and
individual self-regulation. It tells us that in a free market, devoid of any
regulation or accountability at the top, what happens to those on the bottom is
entirely our fault. Did we have enough drive? Enough vision? Enough hustle
to change our condition? The politics of personal empowerment suggests to
us that if we simply “free our minds, then our asses will follow.” I’m not
convinced that this is true. Why? Have you ever noticed that people who
have real “power”—wealth, job security, influence—don’t attend
“empowerment” seminars? Power is not attained from books and seminars.
Not alone, anyway. Power is conferred by social systems. Empowerment and

power are not the same thing. We must quit mistaking the two. Better yet, we
must quit settling for one when what we really need is the other.
Those who feel “empowered” talk about their personal power to change
their individual condition. Those with actual power make decisions that are
of social and material consequence to themselves and others. Sandra Bland
used her faith to empower her to cope with her depression and pursue her
dreams; she met the limits of her narratives of faith and empowerment on the
shoulder of University Drive, and subsequently in a Waller County jail cell.
Empowerment looks like cultivating the wisdom to make the best choices we
can out of what are customarily a piss-poor set of options. Power looks like
the ability to create better options. The powerlessness and capriciousness of
being repeatedly jammed up at the personal and political crossroads of one’s
intersections while a watching world pretends not to see you there, needing
help, is how it feels to be a Black woman on an ordinary day.
Individual solutions to collective problems cannot work, no matter how
personally empowering they may feel. I could have been Sandra Bland,
because I have certainly “mouthed off” to an officer on more than one
occasion. I could have been Holly, but for a few different choices and
opportunities. And I am my mother’s child, a daughter who believes
wholeheartedly that my first patient is always me. I refuse, however, to be
America’s bag lady, resigned to hauling around a load of cultural refuse
heaped on me by the nation. First our country tried to rob us of seats on the
bus. One generation of our foremothers, women like Claudette Colvin, Rosa
Parks, and Pauli Murray, fought for us to have a seat of our own choosing.
Now our generation struggles even to catch the bus, weighed down as we are
by the lies about our worth, our dignity, and our worthiness. Claudette Colvin
was an unwed pregnant teen when she was arrested for refusing to give up
her seat on a bus in 1955. Rosa Parks was a married, respectable officer of
the NAACP when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. Pauli
Murray was a masculine-performing queer Black woman when she was
arrested for refusing to give up her seat. Every kind of Black woman has a
stake in the proverbial “bus.”
Every kind of Black woman has fought for our right to be free to travel in
pursuit of dreams and destiny. One way to start shedding the baggage is to

start telling our truths, to start opening the bags and exposing the lies that
weigh us down. The weight of the nation is not ours to carry.

GROWN-WOMAN THEOLOGY

The summer before I left home for graduate school, I drove down to the rural
Louisiana countryside to sit on the porch with my grandma. As I took the four
steps up to the house, face scowling at the hot Louisiana sun beating down on
my brow, my Gram squinted at me, called me by my nickname, and declared,
“It’s time for you to start having sex!”
I’m sure my eyes bugged out of my head, as the horror dawned upon me
that this wasn’t going to be any old regular visit to the country. There was an
accusation in her words, as though this was something my twenty-two-yearold self should have been doing forever. For the record, I had in fact had a
bit of sex by age twenty-two; for my twenty-second birthday my homegirl,
horrified at my post-college near-virginal status, took me to a sex shop and
purchased a vibrator for me. There was a classic Black woman read in my
grandmother’s words, an unspoken “If that’s true, I can’t tell.” Of course she
couldn’t! I was steeped in all kinds of Christian guilt about the little bit of
sex that I had had and the copious amounts of vibrating I had done. That,
coupled with the asshole I had chosen for a first partner, meant that I wasn’t
having particularly joyful or enthusiastic sex, and most times I was in
sanctified denial about my desire to be sexual in the first place.
I made it onto the porch and sat down to listen to my good Christian
seventy-five-year-old grandmother, a lady given to elaborate hats and
bejeweled suits on the Sundays she didn’t usher at church, extol the virtues of
sex to unmarried me. “Back in my day, we did it,” she said. I squirmed. Who
ever wants to know this about their grandma? “Don’t ever let anybody tell
you we didn’t. We went up in the woods and did it, but we did it.” By the

time I was born, Grandmama had been a widow for ten years. She and my
grandfather got married and then had their children. In the way that none of us
is ever inclined to think about the sex lives of our grandparents, it never even
occurred to me to ask about whether my grandmother had waited until
marriage to have sex or to consider the sexual practices of young Black folks
in the 1940s.
Comically, she explained to me that I should have sex, but only if my
partner was willing to wear “one of those combos.” What the hell is a
combo? I wondered. Condoms. Her colorful descriptions and gestures made
it clear that she meant “condoms!” Grandmama had not been able to hear
well since her teen years, when some kind of fever damaged her ears. So,
when someone said “condom,” she heard “combos.” When I heard combos, I
thought of the hilarious conversations I had had years earlier with my highschool boyfriend about exactly what combos of birth control we would use
so I wouldn’t ruin all my overachieving Black-girl life goals, if I ever gave
in and gave him some. For my Gram, access to birth control mattered greatly.
She told me that she would have opted for only two children rather than the
six she’d had (and raised and loved) if birth control had been widely
available to Black women in the 1950s and 1960s in rural Louisiana. “But
we couldn’t get the stuff,” she told me. In her own way, I think my
grandmama let me know that the women’s movement was a win for Black
women, too, because in the twenty-first century, it meant her granddaughter
could have a wonderful sex life without bearing children, until she chose to.
My grandmother had already developed a pragmatic blend of both
feminism and Christianity that worked in the context of her life, as a poor
rural Southern Black woman born two years before the Great Depression. I
was still far too much of a Christian zealot to be either pragmatic or feminist.
My grandmother didn’t have all the language for these differing ideological
positions, but she had good sense. She looked at me with those laser eyes that
Black mamas use to see right through you, and commanded me to “start
having sex.” She meant real, good sex. Sex that left you with telltale signs
that you had been touched right and handled with care. I didn’t exude
sexuality. I didn’t exude grown womanhood. I did not look like a Black girl
comfortable in my own skin. Because I wasn’t.

I was trapped in a raging battle between my spirit and my flesh. The
evangelical teachings of the Baptist churches in which I grew up insisted that
our flesh—our bodies and their longings and impulses—were sinful,
dangerous, and unhealthy. We were admonished each week to bring our
unruly flesh in submission to our “spirit man.” Having heard this every
Sunday of my life I did not understand how my grandmother, our beloved
family matriarch, could dare advocate that I let my flesh win. Clearly, I
wasn’t ready for the grown-woman theology that this holy woman offered to
me that day. Frankly, I thought she had gotten ahold of some terrible theology,
and I was determined to live my life as a good evangelical should. I had life
goals and desires for success that my provincial grandmother, who once told
me to go to the local college and then “get a good clerical job,” clearly did
not understand. Sex messed with your head, boys were fun, but trouble, and a
baby before you wanted one, could ruin your life. This was my credo in
triplicate.
Dismissing grandmother’s words was easy. I felt that my theology,
informed indirectly by the advent of the “True Love Waits” purity campaigns
of the 1990s, and my ability to recite by rote all the Bible verses condemning
sex before marriage made my spiritual perspective more sophisticated, more
informed, more correct. I had imbibed a set of social ideas about Black
girlhood and womanhood rooted in the fear of being a failure and the social
shame of becoming a statistic. I nearly worshipped my mother, but I didn’t
want to be a teen mother as she had been. I wanted to finish college,
something my birth had prevented her from doing. By the time grandmother
sat me down for the talk, I was twenty-two, had completed two college
degrees, and was on my way to a Ph.D. program. By local standards, I had
already made it.
In 1993, the year that I turned thirteen, Lifeway Bookstores, the publishing
arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, made their intervention in the “sex
sells” culture wars with their True Love Waits sexual abstinence campaign.
Christians wanted to talk about sex, too, even if only to suggest that no one
should be having it. That is, unless they were of age, straight, married, and
preferably Christian. For clarification, even though I was Southern and
Baptist, my church and most Black churches in the South were not in fact part

of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Those were the white Baptists—
the ones who were pro-slavery and pro-segregation. In fact, the SBC did not
issue a formal apology for slavery until 1995.
The purity discourse that emerged from Southern white evangelicalism is
not separable from the racialized discourse of sexuality and purity that these
same Christians have shaped for the whole of American history. The
regulation of sexuality by white Christians in the United States has always
been about the propagation of a socially acceptable and pristine nuclear
family worthy of having the American dream, a family that was heterosexual,
middle class, and white. Because my social circles were mostly white, I had
a front-row seat to the incursion of True Love Waits programs among my
white classmates.
Peppered among their discussions about youth mission trips to Mexico
were conversations about promise rings, purity pledges, and True Love Waits
classes. My church had a makeshift youth group that met irregularly and a
teen Sunday School class, which I attended faithfully. There was no purity
talk beyond bringing the flesh into submission. There were no mission trips
or classes devoted to sex ed. What my community also had was a teen
pregnancy problem—it was not uncommon for Black girls to get pregnant in
my middle school or my high school. I can remember only one white teen
mom in high school (although I am sure there were a few others), and
absolutely none in middle school. For me, the equation was simple. In
communities where they talked about sexual abstinence and “waiting,” they
didn’t have a teen pregnancy problem. In my community, where no such
conversations were had, teen pregnancy was rampant.
These messages about success, whiteness, abstinence, and Christianity
converged for me. Black kids accused me of acting white, but the white kids I
knew loved Jesus (like I did), did well in school (like me), and got to have
interesting discussions and experiences at church (which I didn’t). I have
already mentioned the particular challenges of growing up a nerdy Black girl
in a predominantly white school system. One way that I internalized white
supremacy in my honors classes, which were 95 percent white and in which
the kids were overwhelmingly Christian, was to associate the success I
sought with the kind of whiteness and morality that shaped my classmates’

lives. White privilege works by making the advantages white people have
invisible while making the supposedly “poor” choices of people of color
hypervisible. For instance, on the surface, it simply looks like white people
have better access to education, jobs, and housing because they make better
choices or because they work harder. And, conversely, it looks like Black
people have less access to these same things because they are lazy. In fact, in
most opinion polls, white people believe that Black people don’t work as
hard as they do. And what is perhaps most interesting is that white people
believe this myth as much today as they believed it in the racially volatile
1960s.
Held up as an exceptional Black student, I was conditioned to believe in
the myth of my own exceptionalism, to see other Black students’ struggles to
succeed as a result of their own terrible choices. But white children in my
school district weren’t inherently smarter. They were reared in homes where
their parents had been college educated and where they had access to
enrichment programs and private tutors. I also associated discourses around
sex and sexuality with this narrative of choice. At thirteen or fourteen, I
didn’t recognize that even if the doctrine of abstinence is ineffective at
curtailing early parenthood, youth who have opportunities to talk about sex,
to travel to conferences and go on mission trips, at least know that there is a
world beyond their front door, a world they can’t get to if they end up as
parents before getting out of high school. These kinds of opportunities to
travel and explore were scarce in my working-class community, where most
Black folks had limited resources. But my close proximity to middle-class
white youth put me in a position to culturally eavesdrop on my white friends,
even though I didn’t have the experiences they had. I knew the possibilities of
those experiences existed. What I learned from watching white kids who
were set up to succeed while Black kids were set up to fail, even in matters
of intimacy, was that sexual self-regulation was critical to my success. It took
me being a grown woman to recognize all the ways that systems of white
supremacy regulate our intimate lives, too.
Black girls and Black women, particularly those who have had any
sustained encounter with Christianity, are often immobilized by the
hyperregulation of their sexuality from both the church and the state. These

messages about excessive and unregulated Black flesh that converge from
both the nation-state and the church form a double helix of sexual ideas that
form the core of cultural ideas about Black sexuality. These messages
constitute a critical strand in a sticky social web that immobilizes Black
women caught at the intersections of race, class, gender, and lack of access to
normative modes of sexual behavior. Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill
Collins refers to this sticky web as a matrix of domination, a sociological
term for the way social systems of power converge to impede Black
women’s agency and structural well-being. Far too often the result of trying
to extract ourselves from these webs, which immobilize us until all of the life
is drained from us, is that we leave critical pieces of ourselves behind.
Black women are often robbed of our agency to build healthy intimate lives.
These systems don’t crush every Black woman, but they do retain pieces of
flesh, bone, and spirit.
When you are free enough to run away, you run. It makes no earthly sense
to go back and do battle with the system for the fragments of yourself that
remain. We are taught to be grateful that we “made it,” no matter what we had
to leave behind.
This is why Black women’s self-help literature is obsessed with the
question of “how to be whole again.”
For my grandmother, my very successful regulation of my sexual desires
read like a wholly unhealthy inhabitation of my own Black woman body. I
was a fully grown woman, but my theology and thought process around sex
was adolescent and retrograde. Grandmama pushed me to articulate a
version of my selfhood that would force me to bring my whole self to the
table and prioritize my pleasure.
“Girl,” Grandmama said while gesturing mischievously toward her nether
regions, “I had good stuff.” (I repeat: No one ever wants to know this about
their grandmother.) She wanted me to own the fact that my “stuff” was “good
stuff,” too. My grandmother’s indecent proposal constituted a critical and
intimate dissent from the wholesale American demonization of Black
women’s sexuality. To justify enslaving, raping, and breeding Black women
and girls, white Americans created a mythos around Black women’s
sexuality. They cast us as sexually insatiable, unrapeable, licentious, and

dirty. Today, Black women still experience much handwringing around
owning our sexuality. Calling her sexuality and her sexual body parts good in
the face of these unrelenting social messages suggests that my grandmother
had wrested her own sexual subjectivity from the fearsome clutches of
Christianity and white supremacy. Or maybe she simply didn’t buy in all the
way. She, of course, couldn’t resist a little inappropriate body commentary
as Southern grandmothers are wont to do, telling me “You need to lose a little
weight, so he won’t have to lift it [my tummy] up to get to it [my stuff].”
The problem is that I still inherently saw my “stuff” as bad, as the source
of a temptation so mighty that it could derail my relationship with God and
my life goals all at the same time. This is no way to teach sex education to
teens, and it is a completely absurd way for grown-ass women to think about
sex. Most Christian theology infantilizes women in just this manner. It makes
us think that because we are all children of God, God only ever sees us as
children. And, as a result, we’ll be grown women afraid of embracing our
sexuality, approaching it with the ingrained trepidation we learned in our
teenage years. I rebuke this foolishness. I am God’s child, as I think every
human being is. But God knows I’m grown.
The politics of fear and endless rules that we use to (try to) control
teenagers is unhealthy but understandable. Advocating that teens delay sex is
ultimately about maximizing their life chances by helping them make choices
that will benefit them and the future families they hope to build. We could, of
course, do a better job of telling teens to do something other than wait. It
turns out that my “simple equation” that abstinence would solve teen
pregnancy was totally wrong. In places where abstinence is the only form of
sex education, teen pregnancy rates are alarming. In places where access to
contraception and proper information about birth control is available, teen
pregnancy rates have decreased astronomically. What the poor Black girls in
my school needed was not the True Love Waits campaign, but rather good
information about sex, emotional maturity, and birth control. What was true
for my grandmother in the 1950s was true for my Black girl peers in the
1990s: “They just couldn’t get the stuff.”
Telling grown-ass women that all sex outside of marriage is an affront to
God is absolutely ludicrous. Healthy consensual touch is nothing short of

holy. But the indoctrination is real, especially if you are invested in being a
“good girl,” especially if your goal in life is to not “repeat the cycle,” to not
“become a statistic.” These are the kinds of social messages that Black
women and girls get about their bodies and the potentially enormous public
and personal costs of their sexuality. My mother once mentioned that when
she found herself pregnant with me at age eighteen, at her grandmother’s
insistence she had to go up in front of the church and ask for the
congregation’s forgiveness for getting pregnant out of wedlock. She was
ashamed and infuriated because, as she said, “other girls were doing it. They
just hadn’t gotten caught.”
The theology my grandmother offered to me (one very different from her
mother’s), a theology for grown Black women, was one predicated on
dissent from a set of biblical truths and social mores that shamed women,
cast female sexuality as bad, dirty, and evil, and suggested that marriage was
the only proper context through which women could express their sexual
selves. Widowed at the age of forty-two, my grandmother chose to never
remarry. She told me that same day, “I would never want to marry again,
because I don’t ever want some man telling me what groceries I can and
can’t buy.” That was all she said about marriage—that she understood it as
men being able to dictate to women how to spend money and how to run a
household. Living her own life and being able to raise at least some of her
children independent of my grandfather’s influence had shown my
grandmother that having a male head of household was not, in fact, desirable.
In her forthright rejection of conservative evangelicalism on the matter of
sex, she modeled for me that Black women had the right to dissent from
theologies that didn’t serve them well. Black women had the right to a say
about their finances, their bodies, the number of children they bore, and the
kind of sex they wanted to have. What she offered to me that day was
permission to choose for myself.
I wish I could say that I stepped off my grandmother’s porch a new
woman, ready to own and explore her sexuality. But all her fussing about
what I needed to be doing proved no match for the years of shaming and
moral panic about sex that I experienced both inside and outside of my
community. Four years after that conversation, I came home from church after

a particularly guilt-compelling sermon, bagged up all my romance novels,
astrology books and manuals, and my vibrator, and threw them in the
dumpster. The presence of these items in my apartment were tacit licenses for
me to engage and indulge in sinful living, and surely God was not pleased
with that. These days, I’m sure that between peals of laughter, God is sitting
somewhere, saying, “Girl, bye. I didn’t tell you to throw away all those
books and that perfectly good vibrator.” Live. Learn.
What does it mean when our spiritual and theological systems impede
healthy living? This is a question that Black women should begin to ask
forthrightly. They should insist fervently on answers among themselves and
from their spiritual leaders. We do a kind of violence to ourselves when we
shut down our sexuality. It’s not so much that I should have had more sex,
although I wish I had in my twenties. It’s that there are things we come to
know about our bodies, our impulses, our likes, our dislikes and desires,
when we fully engage the sexual part of ourselves. We go around missing
critical knowledge about who we are, or might be, when we act as though
sex isn’t foundational to who we are.
Also, what does it mean when our theological systems impede our access
to a healthy and robust set of spiritual and political practices—practices that
should give us life? Let me be a bit mischievous (like my grandmother) and
offer you a brief feminist interpretation of one of my favorite Bible stories. In
the Black Church, single Black women love to talk about how they are just
waiting on God to send their Boaz. By Boaz, they are referring to the Old
Testament story in the Book of Ruth. Ruth’s husband (Naomi’s son) had died,
and Naomi decided to return to her hometown of Bethlehem. Ruth went with
her. To support the two of them, Ruth went to work in the fields, and she was
noticed by a well-respected, rich man in town named Boaz, a distant relative
of Naomi. Naomi wanted to make sure Ruth could get married again so she
would have a partner and a community to provide for her. So the two of them
hatched a plot for Ruth to proposition Boaz. Naomi told Ruth to take a bath,
get dressed up, and put on some perfume. After Boaz had gotten good and
drunk at the barley harvest, Ruth was supposed to go into his tent and, as the
Bible says, “lie at his feet” to let him know she was available for marriage.

As the story goes, Boaz woke up and found Ruth there, and he decided to
marry her right on the spot.
Now, think about it. Does this story make any damn sense? A young
woman finds a rich, fine-ass man she wants to marry. So she gets all dressed
up, waits for him to get drunk, sneaks (stalkerishly) into his tent, and then lies
at his feet?! I don’t believe it. Not when there is well-documented evidence
that the word “feet” in the Old Testament was often a euphemism for genitals!
Christian women want their Boaz, but they reject every single part of the
process to get him. Ruth and Naomi plotted to trick Boaz into marrying her.
Ruth kicked it to him first. She didn’t wait on Boaz to ask her out on a date.
And I personally think that Ruth did all manner of sexual acts to drunken
Boaz in the tent (the kind of shit that made him get up out of his sleep and say
“I gotta marry this girl”). But even if you think Ruth simply “lay at his feet”
all night, that’s a serious sexual proposition.
With the blessing of her elders, Ruth mapped out what she wanted and
went after it. She didn’t let cultural conventions about chastity, purity, and
patriarchy keep her from asking for what she wanted. She also seemed to
have a very forthright and embodied sense of her sexuality to help her along.
In short form, I’m saying, “Girl, if you want your Boaz, put on your pretty
dress and perfume and get your cranial maneuvers together. And then go into
the tent and handle your business. But maybe get Boaz’s consent before you
pop up like that, though.”
On her porch that day, my grandmother taught me what it meant for grown
women to have an intergenerational gathering and make meaning out of the
texts and scripts we have about our lives together. My grandmother did for
me what Naomi did for Ruth. She tried to empower me to fight for my
happiness by helping me to not be limited by script and convention. She
modeled the ways that Black women can build a life for themselves. And
sometimes that comes with a willingness to cast aside fear and say no to
what others think is best for you, so you can find the courage to say yes to
yourself.
There are so many ways that Black women need to free themselves from
the strictures of conservative Christian theology. Notice that I didn’t say to
abandon Jesus and the church if it’s important to you. I haven’t. But I’m no

longer checking my thinking cap at the door. For years, I let Christian
preachers convince me that the story of Ruth and Boaz pivoted upon a weird
cultural ritual in which men get drunk and then women lie down next to them
all night, only to wake up with a marriage proposal the next morning. That
shit is just absurd.
We believe a lot of other absurd theologies, too. Many Black Christian
girls are seduced by white evangelicalism, because, hell, it seems to be
working out so well for white people. I mean, white Jesus helps white
people to win a lot. But when my grandmother showed me that I could take a
different approach to my theology, that it could be a push and pull, a debate,
and even an ongoing set of arguments with God, she freed me up from my
investment in being a Christian Goody Two-Shoes. I don’t even believe God
wants that. The God of Christianity seems to love people who are engaged in
all manner of scandals, affairs, and murders. But I digress. We also have an
absurd theology of discrimination against LGBTQ people. And far too many
churches still believe that women can’t be preachers or pastors. The thing we
would all do well to remember is that conservative Christian theology was
used to enslave Black people. We can use our theology to oppress people or
to liberate them. That’s our choice.
Sometimes this means that we have to reject the kind of Christian teaching
that sets up a false binary between flesh and spirit, mind and body, and
sacred and secular. To be Black in the United States is to be taught our flesh
is dirty and evil. A liberatory theology for us cannot set us at war with our
very bodies. A liberatory theology for women cannot set us at war with the
desires for touch, companionship, and connection that well up like deep
springs in our spirits. When we hear about how “the heart is deceitful above
all things,” which is an actual verse, it teaches us to suppress our deepest
longings, to not trust our own thoughts and our own counsel. For people who
have been enslaved and oppressed because of their race, or gender, or
sexuality, such interpretations are dangerous.
I am a professionally trained textual critic, but the Bible isn’t any old
regular text. It is a text endued with thousands of years of political, social,
and cultural power. That means that to wrest a theology for my grown Black
woman life from it, I had to bring my fully embodied, unapologetic self to it.

My grandmother didn’t teach me anything about how to understand the
biblical text more critically. She taught me what it meant not to jump out of
my own skin just because the Bible said I should be at war on the inside. She
offered to me a fully embodied theology of grown Black womanhood that
day, one with its compass set toward freedom. One in which I should
embrace the fundamental goodness of all my stuff, both sexual and otherwise.
I had to become a fully grown Black woman to receive it, though. In my holy
hubris, I had dismissed her as provincial and out-of-pocket. How did she
know, in her sanctified country-ness, that sexual pleasure and the freedom to
pursue it would be critical to a healthy sense of self? She modeled for me
one of the core things Black church girls would do well to remember about
Jesus: He fully embodies both the divine and the human. If we spent as much
time thinking about how he lived as we do worshipping how he died, our
faith would demand that we prioritize a better integration of flesh and spirit,
of humanity and divinity, than we do.
The second thing we need to remember is this: The primarily white male
theologians who created the systematic theology of evangelical Christianity
were trying to make sense of a theology that fit their own lives and their own
worldview. This is why so many white Christians can read the Bible and still
vote Republican. Because for them, nothing about the Bible challenges the
fundamental principles of white supremacy or male domination.
Interpreting the biblical text conservatively has a political function. This
political function differs depending on whether you’re white or Black.
Conservative biblical interpretation became the hallmark of the rise of the
religious right, a political force that rose in response to desegregation in the
South, and Lyndon Johnson’s perceived betrayal of Southern Democrats.
Conservative biblical interpretation in Black churches has conversely risen
in response to the political evils engineered by the white religious right.
White male Christian conservatives used conservative biblical interpretation
to pioneer a religious right wing to shore up the machinations of white
supremacy in government policy. Black religious conservatives adopted
conservative biblical interpretation to inoculate themselves against the
massive devastation of these same social policies. Although the social
desires (or political goals) of these religious communities are wholly

oppositional, the biblical interpretation methods are the same. Obviously,
that can’t work. If Black women are honest, it hasn’t been working for us for
a long time.
Perhaps it’s time for us to read some other sacred texts alongside the
Bible. My grandmother’s words are a sacred text to me—a sacred text of
country Black girlhood. My mother’s words are a sacred text to me—a
sacred text of grown Black womanhood. The words of Sojourner Truth, and
Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston, and Audre Lorde, and Patricia Hill
Collins, and Anna Julia Cooper, and Beyoncé and my homegirls are all
sacred texts to me. Black feminism has been a liberatory theology for me in
its own right. It has made space for me to bring my spiritual self into the
academy and my academic, intellectual self into the spiritual parts of my life.
What Black feminism and my grandmother have taught me is that Black
women are experts on their own lives and their own well-being. Grandmama
taught me that all the sacrifices I was making for middle-class aspirations
weren’t entirely worth it. That if I made it but I was lonely and miserable,
then that was a failure, not a win.
When I first wrote on the Crunk Feminist Collective blog about searching
for a new, more liberatory theology of sexuality, the comments section was a
nightmare. Many of our readers were not here for the kind of Black feminist
theology I was offering. Related to but distinct from womanist theology, what
I call Black feminist theology is something that can help sisters who are
damn near ready to leave the church just so they can act like grown women
with full sex lives in peace. My Black feminist theology is not just focused
on what happens in the church, but rather is a call to those of us who are
Black feminists to remember that lots of Black women are still quite
religious. We need a way to reconcile our feminist politics and our spiritual
lives, not only at church or mosque, but at the office, too. Still, a lot of folks
at our blog weren’t trying to hear it. Some sisters called me “Beelzebub.”
Seriously. They told me my words were poisonous. One said I had a
“reprobate mind” and had been given over to Satan. These angry commenters
all agreed that I was not allowing myself to be led by the Holy Spirit. All of
those sisters, many of whom had been celibate for years and years, were
scared as hell. What if I was right? This is not about right and wrong, though.

This is about what freedom means. This is about not standing by idly or, even
worse, participating as white evangelicals and their enthusiastic Black
counterparts hand to us a theology that does the dirty work of racism,
patriarchy, and homophobia. Even when Black people were enslaved and it
was illegal for them to “read the word for themselves” (as Black Christians
love to say), they knew that God was nothing if not freedom. I believe that
because of all the oppressions that we’ve experienced, Black girls have
unique visions of freedom. I believe those visions are God-given, however
you understand God, even if you simply worship, to paraphrase Alice
Walker, the “God you found in yourself.” Freedom is my theological
compass, and it never steers me wrong.
Recently, a twenty-three-year-old Black woman who worked at a
university where I had flown in to deliver a talk gave me a ride to the airport.
My talk was about what it would mean to move beyond respectability, the
subject of my first book, Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought
of Race Women, and how to embrace a feminist politic that was insistent,
loud, demanding, ratchet, and unapologetic. On the hour-long drive into the
airport, my Black girl chauffeur told me “I hate to make you work, but since I
have you in the car, I’m wondering…” Anybody who flies to places and
speaks for a living often dreads this encounter of being trapped in the car
with a stranger and their questions. But I give Black girls a lot of rope, so I
listened. “Well,” she began, “how have you found that Black men respond to
this discussion about feminism?”
There it was—the question that haunts so many Black girls. “Will
feminism fuck up my love life?” She went on to offer some context for the
behavior of Black men on her campus who were decidedly race-first in their
analysis. But I got the subtext—“Will any brother ever love me if I go down
this path? Cuz it’s not looking too promising.” She was a church girl with
very religious parents. I took the opportunity to share with her some of my
struggles to reconcile faith and feminism. She and I talked about approaching
the Bible not as a rule book, but perhaps as a cultural library of texts that
recount the journeys of a series of ancient human beings with God, an
approach I learned from reading theologian and writer Brian McLaren. When

I floated this “radical” idea, she immediately shot back, “But what about
repentance, though?”
By this she meant what about the demand that we must always atone for
our sins, and always seek to “turn from our wicked ways.” Drawing on
McLaren’s work, I explained to her, “Repentance to me means ‘re-think.’
That’s literally what it means. To think again and to think in a different
direction.”
It was one of those encounters steeped in serendipity, one of those
opportunities to talk to a younger version of myself and to share the things I
wish someone had said to me when I was twenty-three, anxious as shit, and
freaked the hell out. “But, what will my mother say?” she asked. We talked
about how to navigate one’s own needs as a grown woman, even when they
diverge in critical ways from the desire of so many Black girl overachievers
to please the women who raised us. I told this Black girl that if I could tell
my younger self anything, it would be to “chill out.” That is what my
grandmother had been trying to tell me.
And that’s what my grandmother cosmically sent a homegirl to tell me
years later when I was finally ready to listen. Yet again, I required a
homegirl hem-up. Robin and I had become friends at just about the moment
when I was exhausted from trying not to show up to my own life. Even after
the Great Porch Intervention, I went on with these bouts of sexual self-torture
for years, declaring celibacy, falling off the wagon, and then declaring it once
again. By the time I finished with my Ph.D. program and arrived at my first
job, I was sexually frustrated in the worst way and desperate for a new way
to think. During a conversation with Robin, I shared that it had been several
years since I had had any sex at all. Appalled at the absurdity of my quest for
“holiness,” she pinned me with a Black-girl look that said I was being
foolish and told me, “God knows you want to get some.” God knows I did.
So I did.
I don’t know what changed. Maybe, with all of my schooling complete, I
felt like I really had made it. Maybe my twenty-eight-year-old body would no
longer be denied. Maybe I had been looking for permission and I was ready
to listen. Robin’s resistance to the crazy-making sexual politics of the church
helped, too. She was brave enough to see past all the ways that church and

culture told Black women “no.” She was brave enough to go in search of her
own “yeses.” Brave enough to trust that God does, in fact, have some yeses
for grown-ass women. Brave enough, like my grandmother was, to recognize
that all the stuff we’re made of God calls “good.” Because of her, I braved
the roiling waters of my own heart and decided to, for once, stand on my own
side. Spiritual attitude adjustment complete, I set out on a quest for the good
stuff.

ORCHESTRATED FURY

Respectability politics died the day Michelle Obama showed up to her last
official engagement as First Lady with a thrown-together ponytail-bun
combination and a facial expression fit for a funeral. She looked flawless as
always. She also looked fed up and ready to go. Respectability politics, the
belief that Black people can overcome many of the everyday, acute impacts
of racism by dressing properly and having education and social comportment
is, first and foremost, performed as a kind of sartorial prerogative. What I
mean is that your fashion choices are subject to great scrutiny. Black people
are taught to care how they look and how their children look. If you see a
little Black girl out in public with her hair unkempt—her parts
unintentionally jagged, her edges unsmoothed, her ponytails askew, or her
hair ornaments not in their proper place—you can be assured that there is
some Black woman somewhere asking, “Who does that baby belong to?”
Black women’s hairstyles are their own cultural vocabulary, which
change depending on mood, life circumstance, and who exactly will be
seeing us on any given day. Mrs. Obama’s hairstyle was the kind you put
together after you’d been up all night packing and it’s time to get your shit,
leave the keys on the counter, and go. It’s not public hair. It is not hair given
to inaugural pomp and circumstance. It is everyday Black-girl hair. We learn
this complex hair vocabulary as we sit perched, often for hours, between the
knees of mothers, aunties, and hairstylists, trained and untrained, from
babyhood forward.
Every night, my mother painstakingly parted my hair and greased my
scalp, and then plaited or rolled my hair for ease of styling in the morning.

The next morning, I would sit between her legs while she parted my hair into
three or four neat sections, affixed rubber bands to the tops of each section,
and then twisted my ponytails. She finished by tying ribbons at the tops and
snapping barrettes on the ends. At the end of each day, she would fuss and
scold when I came home with those same barrettes missing and ponytails
askew and unraveled after “ripping and running and not being careful” at
recess. At age twelve, when my mother finally decided it was time for me to
get a perm, my hairdresser, Mrs. Earline, asked my mother “Are you sure?”
And, later, when Mom came to pick me up with my newly permed, silky
tresses, Mrs. Earline said, “I prayed over this baby’s head. When I didn’t see
any hair on the comb as I worked it through, I knew the Lord was saying it
was going to be alright.” Maintaining my head of long, thick hair was a
community project.
At age fifteen, when I accompanied my mother and her three sisters to see
the movie premiere of Waiting to Exhale, I knew what it meant, then, when
Bernadine, after being newly separated from her cheating husband, went to
the hairdresser and asked her stylist to chop off nearly every inch of her
beautiful, luxurious mane. Even though I didn’t have the emotional maturity to
understand the devastation of losing a marriage, I knew how much effort it
took to grow that length and thickness of hair and keep it beautiful. I knew
how much Black women and girls envied having long, thick hair in a world
where white women’s ability to grow and regrow hair like weeds was the
standard of beauty. Chopping it all off meant she was going through
something exceedingly terrible.
My social media and text feeds lit up the moment we got a good look at
Mrs. Obama’s last inauguration hairdo. Throughout her two terms as first
lady, and particularly in the second term, Mrs. Obama’s public hair was
always long and flowing, with unique kinds of cuts and styles. Black women
were culturally obsessed with both her fashion choices and her hair. Was it
permed or was it natural? Was she rocking bangs? Who was her stylist and
what were they doing to give her hair all that bounce and body? How were
Malia and Sasha wearing their hair? These questions are all forms of cultural
assessment that Black women and girls do with other Black women and girls.
Though sometimes it can morph into mean-girlness, in Mrs. Obama’s case,

our running cultural commentary about her hair was one of seeing her and
feeling seen. It meant that there were Black girls in the White House with
hair—challenges, and woes, and triumphs—just like us. So when I saw her
hair on her last day, it was clear that she had not spent hours in a stylist’s
chair getting her ’do done just right. Presumably, she would have wanted to
be a fashion stunner for her final formal public appearance. Instead, this bona
fide fashion icon showed up to the inauguration of Donald Trump with a
quick and convenient on-the-go ’do, and what looked like a good church
dress she had pulled from the closet. Certainly, she may simply have been
gracious in letting Melania have her moment. But there was also something
about the refusal to perform the public standard—a standard that Mrs. Obama
had herself set—that marked an unceremonious ending.
Her hair was a signal to the world that what we were about to witness
was some bullshit. She knew it. We knew it. “Do y’all see this shit?” that
hair asked of all of us who were watching or deliberately not watching our
complicated American homeland being placed in the hands of a mentally
unwell fascist. Like the rest of us, she might have to accept it, but she didn’t
have to like it. The “I-refuse-to-be-botheredness” of that ponytail evinced
rage of both the eloquent and the elegant varieties. It wasn’t so much about
the actual hairstyle. A bun or ponytail can be elegant and appropriate. It was
the combination of this kind of informal updo with a dress that was pretty, but
also unremarkable, that signaled a kind of pulling back, a disengagement,
with the American public. Mrs. Obama didn’t throw her middle fingers up at
the system that had just elected Donald Trump. However, the subtlety in her
refusal of pomp and circumstance belied a deep disdain for the way in which
the American people had rejected her work, and that of President Obama, by
installing his nemesis—a man who had started a whole movement
questioning his citizenship—in the White House.
Respectability politics are at their core a rage-management project.
Learning to manage one’s rage by daily tamping down that rage is a response
to routine assaults on one’s dignity in a world where rage might get you
killed or cause you to lose your job. Mrs. Obama had to learn this lesson
quickly, and on the national stage, after being accused and publicly
caricatured as an Angry Black Woman when Mr. Obama ran for his first term.

She chose to channel her energy into slaying the American public in another
way, by offering an impeccable standard of fashion to a watching world.
Sometimes that is what Black women do when we can’t give in to the
murderous levels of rage we feel at the indignities we experience. We can’t
kill. But we can slay.
Rage is a fundamentally more reasonable response to America’s cultural
investment in the disrespect of Black women than being respectable. That’s
why it’s damn near impossible for rage and respectability to reside in the
same place. On her last day, Mrs. Obama didn’t sublimate the rage over
Trump and his wife to the province of the slay. She simply refused. Rage is a
kind of refusal. To be made a fool of, to be silenced, to be shamed, or to
stand for anybody’s bullshit. It is a refusal of the lie that Black women’s
anger in the face of routine, everyday injustice is not legitimate. Black
women’s rage is a way of looking these mischaracterizations in the face and
responding, “You got me all the way fucked up.”
This is what I heard—what I felt—when I saw Mrs. Obama’s ponytail.
Having had her anger hyperpoliced since 2007, when her husband announced
his candidacy, on her very last day on the job Mrs. Obama became, as
comedy writer Damon Young might say, “fuck-deficient.” Since the definition
of respectability politics is that you absolutely give a fuck (because you have
to) about what white folks and everybody else thinks, respectability politics
and fuck-deficiency pretty much cannot coexist in the same body.
Audre Lorde, the first writer to offer a Black feminist theory of anger,
famously argued in “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” the
essay that I always keep close at hand, that “Women of Color in america have
grown up within a symphony of anger, at being silenced, at being unchosen, at
knowing that when we survive, it is in spite of a world that takes for granted
our lack of humanness, and which hates our very existence outside of its
service. And I say symphony rather than cacophony because we have had to
learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do not tear us apart.” Black
women’s rage is a kind of orchestrated fury. Lorde went on to say, “We have
had to learn to move through them and use them for strength and force and
insight within our daily lives. Those of us who did not learn this difficult
lesson did not survive. And part of my anger is always libation for my fallen

sisters.” Michelle Obama’s negotiation of Trump’s inauguration, the manner
in which she both expressed her disdain but kept it respectful at the same
time, was nothing short of symphonic.
Black folks codified the ideology of respectability in the decades
following Reconstruction after the federal government, helped along by
indifferent white Northerners, left newly freed Black folks in the South to
fend for themselves against the terroristic whims and fancies of angry white
Southerners, who were still licking their wounds over their Civil War loss.
Women and men like Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, W.E.B. Du
Bois, and Booker T. Washington reasoned that if Black folks learned to work
hard, educate themselves, and stay out of trouble, white people would see
that we were good, respectable people, human beings, worthy of both
citizenship and protection. Initially, respectability politics was a survival
strategy in the face of the massive potential for violence. It was a
conservative strategy but an imminently reasonable one for nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Blacks faced with high rates of illiteracy, housing and
job insecurity, and cyclical influxes to the North of Black folks looking to
make a better life. Showing these Black people how to present a respectable
image became a key strategy in securing their survival in hostile and violent
conditions.
The problem with all provisional strategies, particularly when they begin
to work for the exceptional few, is that they rise to the level of ideology.
Soon, Black folks began to blame other Black people for bringing the race
down. The Respectables, as I like to call them, claimed that our refusal to
practice chastity and piety and avoid crime led to our low esteem among
white people. Taken to its extreme form, respectability politics will net you
Black people who don’t love Black people. Ben Carson and Clarence
Thomas are the chiefs among these anti-Black Judas types.
But the Obamas themselves practiced and subscribed to a mild, everyday
politics of respectability, too. During an infamous commencement address at
historically Black Bowie State University in 2013, the First Lady critiqued
the propensity among Black youth who had been taken in by the lure of
celebrity. “Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they’re
sitting on couches for hours, playing video games, watching TV. Instead of

dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they’re
fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper.” This is the language of
respectability. It comes from the same place as Sunday sermons that wag
fingers at young men to pull up their pants. It comes from the same place as
Barack Obama’s unique penchant for telling Black men to be good fathers to
their children, a message he never felt compelled to share with
predominantly white audiences. The ways the Obamas engaged Black
audiences during their time in the White House were filled with what we
might call the everyday respectability politics of our parents and
grandparents, who implored us: “Act like you got some sense,” and “Don’t
make me have to come up to that school.”
The Respectables’ credo is two-fold: You have to be twice as good to get
half as far, and Never let ’em catch you slippin’. (But the Respectables
ideally would say this in completely proper English, without my Hip Hop–
era remix.) This sounds like good sense. It sounds like Black people taking
on the very high levels of personal responsibility that those on the right love
to talk about so much. But it doesn’t acknowledge that when you are twice as
good, white folks will resent you for being better. And all human beings
deserve at least a few slips. It’s inhuman to demand otherwise.
When we saw the Obamas exit their caravan and walk down the streets of
Washington, D.C., smiling and waving on January 20, 2009, these guiding
principles reached great commandment status. We felt our ancestors smiling.
We felt new possibilities taking shape for our children. For once, America
had let us win. The project of respectability had triumphed. It had proven that
if Black people would simply get educated, be upstanding and respectable,
and work hard, they could be absolutely anything—even president.
But the respectability project was particularly burdensome for Michelle
Obama. She was policed and critiqued from head to toe by every community
—white, Black, and in-between. When she turned inward to focus on her
children, a safe stance that made her more palatable to broad American
audiences, white feminists expressed disdain for her embrace of the “momin-chief” role, calling it antifeminist. They conveniently forgot that their
ancestors had long claimed ladyhood uniquely for themselves, refusing, to the
great chagrin of Black women, to acknowledge that sisters of a darker hue

were ladies, too. However, Black women refused to cede the volatile turf of
American ladyhood to white women, taking to public outlets to remind white
women that it was a privilege for a Black woman to be able to just focus on
raising her kids. This battle to define ladyhood for ourselves, and to access
its protections, was longstanding. I think again of Ida B. Wells being ejected
from the ladies’ car after she had refused to sit in the smoky, filthy,
segregated colored car of the train. A few years later, Anna Julia Cooper
wrote about needing to use the bathroom at a train station. When she
approached the door, each was marked with a sign, one reading “for ladies,”
and the other “for colored.” Which sign should she, a consummate colored
lady, choose?
To be a Black woman is to be always confronted with these kinds of
profane distinctions, to be asked to choose between your race and your
gender. Black social life in the nineteenth century was marked for Black
women by a lack of access to the protections of ladyhood, and by a steadfast
refusal among white people to even make gender distinctions among Black
people. Those ideas shaped the way in which Michelle Obama was both
perceived and policed. There was a minor public outcry when she took her
official White House portrait in a sleeveless dress. And there was the time
U.S. Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner referred to her as having a big butt.
One of the perks of being a lady is not being subject to people’s lewd, thinly
veiled sexual commentaries. Michelle Obama enjoyed no such perks. It also
bears noting that white people’s regulation of Black women’s bodies in the
public sphere is one reason that Black people have been obsessed with
outward appearance. Michelle Obama’s ascent to ladyhood, despite these
persisting obstacles, conquered that offensive history, proving that Black
women could be the arbiters of American femininity and style, too.
Meanwhile, Melania Trump represented everything that Mrs. Obama did
not. During the 2016 campaign, not only were Mrs. Trump’s educational
credentials in question and her open brand of sexuality deemed antithetical to
respectable American ladyhood, but in her Republican National Convention
speech, she plagiarized Michelle Obama. Yet this is the couple that the
American people chose to succeed the Obamas in the White House.
Meanwhile, Melania Trump was allowed to float above criticism, even

though she initially refused to live in the White House and to take on the
social demands of First Ladyhood. Had Michelle Obama dared to be so
resistant, we would never have heard the end of the insults and bellyaching
of the American public. But Mrs. Trump is the beneficiary of America’s
silence.
Of course, on Inauguration Day, Michelle Obama was put out with this
whole state of affairs. Being compelled by law and custom to hand the mantle
over to someone who tried to obtain it by biting your beats is almost too
much to bear. But it also is perhaps the most symbolic evidence of the failure
of the project of African American respectability.
A Black woman, descended from enslaved people, became the First Lady
of a country that historically used Black women’s bodies merely to
reproduce noncitizens. One of the most unique things about Black women’s
experiences in this country is that we are the only group of people whose
bodies have ever been legally mandated as the place that reproduced
noncitizens. Indigenous women were never striving for their children to have
American citizenship, but rather sovereignty on their own terms. And Latina
immigrant women who are unfairly maligned for giving birth to children on
American shores are hated precisely because they, too, can pass on the rights
of citizenship to their children, even if they have been denied access to it
themselves. It is Black American women whose bodily history is bound up
with the burden of reproducing the condition of unfreedom for our children.
It, therefore, meant something—possibly even everything—to have a Black
woman, descended from these Black women, to ascend to the highest role our
nation designates for women (since the presidency still eludes us.)
But by January 20, 2017, as Melania Trump stepped to the podium in her
baby-blue suit, that project had proved itself unsustainable. African
American respectability might bring us to the highest office in the land, but it
could not ensure any level of long-term respect for Black humanity, Black
womanhood, Black manhood, or Black childhood. During the Obama
administration unarmed Black men, Black women, and Black children had all
been murdered by the police, while most of the offending officers never lost
their jobs or freedom. So it made sense that Mrs. Obama showed up looking
somber, as if she were attending a funeral.

Maybe Michelle Obama hasn’t divested from respectability politics
forever. Truth be told, they have served her well. But a well-timed diss can
let you know the limitations of a way of thinking or mode of being in the
world. If you weren’t looking for it carefully, Lady Obama’s class and social
position might have allowed you to miss her microresistance. In myriad ways
Black women daily resist messages that try to shame us into submission or
otherwise steal and kill our joy. That dissent doesn’t just happen on national
stages. Sometimes it goes down in the everyday spaces that Black women
frequent, spaces that are rife with misogynoir (a term that specifically refers
to hatred of Black women) and that are tasked with the work of disciplining
Black women and girls into respectable ladyhood.
My mother was the first to teach me this lesson. She had come to pick me
up after I had spent six weeks attending the Upward Bound summer program
at a local Black college. This federally funded summer experience for
working-class youth was the closest most of us rural and semirural Southern
Black children would ever get to going to summer sleepaway camp. For six
weeks, we stayed on campus in the dorms, being exposed to what college life
might look like, while we spent our days doing math and science enrichment,
attending cultural experiences like plays and poetry readings, and taking
long-distance field trips. Those programs mattered to single moms like my
own, who had big dreams for their children but very few resources.
Together, Mama and I sat at the final Upward Bound banquet, a
celebration of our achievements that summer, listening to a local preacher
giving the keynote address. He was in the middle of his sermon text, a classic
passage from Proverbs, when my mother began shaking her head: “The Bible
says ‘train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not
depart from it.’ Some of your children are acting up, and the Word says that
means y’all aren’t doing your jobs.” A chorus of “amens” rose up around the
room, affirming this conventional “wisdom.” But my mother’s head continued
to shake. Eventually, a clear but quiet “no,” formed on her lips. The head
shaking drew eyes to our table, so much so that the preacher stopped, looked
at her, and said, “You don’t agree?” “No.” She shook her head again. He said
to her, surprised, “Well, that’s alright.” Murmurs went up around the room, as
other mothers looked at my mother curiously, some with disapproval, some

with surprise, and maybe, hopefully, at least a few, in relief. Satisfied that
her disagreement had been registered, my mother nodded her head, letting
him continue.
Later, in the car on the way home, my mom explained, “That verse says,
‘When they are old, they won’t depart from it.’ Y’all aren’t old yet.” Blaming
Black mothers for having normal boundary-testing teenagers didn’t sit well
with my mother, a single mom herself. Her act of solidarity with the other
single mothers in the room mattered all the more because my mother was
raising a veritable, rule-following, Bible-toting Goody Two-Shoes. But she
refused the carrot of thinking herself better than other folks because her own
child didn’t have the behavior problems or classroom demeanor of some of
the other children. Mama knew she was an underdog in a room full of
underdogs, and like she has told me on more than one occasion, “I always
root for the underdog.”
Too often, Black leaders think rooting for Black folks means shaming them
into respectability. Southern Black male preachers are masters of
propagating sexist common sense to achieve respectable outcomes. On more
Sundays than a few, their rhetoric shames single Black mothers for failing to
raise their children in traditional nuclear families. But my mother was the
first to teach me that we don’t have to accept nonsense simply because it is
common. I learned that day that sometimes you have to say no, even in a room
where everyone else is offering sacrificial “yeses.” Those “yeses” were a
sacrifice because assenting to one’s own public shaming is not an affirmation
any Black woman can ever afford. Saying yes to a religious narrative about
bad Black mothering that props up an even more pernicious state-based
narrative that pathologizes Black mothers costs too much. A Black male
preacher asking Black mothers to collude in their own denigration is unholy.
Black church ladies love the Bible verse that says, “Let all things be done
decently and in order.” My mother was out of order in every respectable
sense. She had challenged a preacher—in public. She challenged his biblical
interpretation in a culture that believes preachers have a direct, anointed line
to God. She dissented from him openly, forthrightly, and unapologetically.
This, too, was eloquent rage—against the theological and social machine of
respectability. This, too, was orchestrated fury, in the form of a symphonic

disruption—a refusal to let “the man of God” use rhetoric to beat up on
vulnerable women trying to make a way in the world for themselves and their
children. My mama didn’t turn over any tables in the temple like her Jesus
might have done, but she did cause just enough of a disruption to make clear
that an injustice was being done. Eloquent rage isn’t always loud, but it is
always effective.
Fourteen and a bit nonplussed by my mother’s decision to make a scene, I
didn’t even know you could do something as bold as challenge a preacher. In
Southern Black communities, the Great Chain of Being goes something like
God, Black Male Preachers, and the Rest of Us. But sometimes the only thing
that is in order is to act out of order. To turn up, show out, and disrupt. That
preacher was touting a particular order of things, a hierarchy of shame that
placed Black women on the bottom. Inherent within his remarks was an
indictment of the kinds of Black families in the audience. These were
working-class Black people raising children in one of the poorest states in
the union. These Black families weren’t two-parent, middle-class Black
families. There were a few fathers, but mostly there were mothers,
grandmothers, aunties, and younger siblings in that room.
Here was the Moynihan Report rearing its ugly head again. Black mothers,
according to Moynihan, were the source of our deepest, most faulty
conditions. The roots of Black social wrongness ran deep. They ran to the
womb, to the mothers, to the maternal labor that birthed us and made space
for us. Parroting the logic of Moynihan, and many Black sociologists who
had come before, this preacher argued that the reason that Black children
were out of line was that fathers were absent and mothers weren’t mothering
well. My mother insisted on a different story. And she was willing to be
disruptive in order to make that story heard.
This is what anti-Blackness looks like. This is what misogynoir sounds
like. The rub is that these mansplaining men think they are helping. Moynihan
thought his report would help. The preacher thought his sermon would help.
But this is the kind of help that will kill you. In the absence of actual
structural resources to ameliorate social problems, sermonic shaming and
policy blaming is the opposite of help. It constitutes harm. It sounds eerily
similar to the kind of shame and blame that undergirds social-welfare policy

in the United States. Dog-whistle policies about welfare moms and Hip Hop
anthems about greedy baby mamas and sermons about mothers who don’t
take care of their children all share a common through line—that Black
women aren’t shit, that they need to be corralled, controlled, and contained.
The logic of otherwise disparately placed men—in public policy, in Hip
Hop, and in the church—converges on the truth that if Black women would
just be better mothers, the state wouldn’t be so taxed, our communities would
not be in such a shambles, and brothers wouldn’t be so short in the pockets.
That’s a huge minefield of structurally induced hatred to navigate.
What’s even more terrible is that we don’t just ask Black women to
traverse this difficult terrain. Black girls encounter the daily violence of this
hateful cultural landscape, too. Remember, there were girls like me, on the
way to becoming women, listening on that day, too, to a narrative of what
proper ladyhood looked like. I was too invested in being a “good girl” to
ever have thought to disrupt the preacher’s message myself. But my mother
had been a bad girl in many ways, a rebel and a teen mom who liked slightly
older bad boys. That’s how I got here.
Though good behavior has its place, it’s the disruptive girls, the loud,
rowdy, attitudinal Black girls, and the defiant, quiet, insolent Black girls who
expose every day exactly what this system is made of. In September 2015, a
school resource officer in South Carolina confronted a high-school student
named Shakara for failure to put away her cell phone as she sat at her desk
during math class. To be clear, the term “school resource officer” is a just a
fancy name for police officers in schools, doing the kinds of jobs that used to
be reserved for principals and school counselors. Although she sat quietly at
her desk, Shakara held the phone tightly in her hand, defying her teacher’s
orders to put it away.
At the behest of the Black male teacher, a white male police officer named
Ben Fields arrived and began hassling Shakara. She neither ignored him nor
responded to him. Instead, Shakara sat quietly, looking straight ahead,
exercising her right to remain silent. An arrest would be forthcoming anyway.
Very rarely are Black girls read in ways that recognize what their fear might
look like. Fields saw only insubordination, and he responded with
escalation, grabbing Shakara with such force that he tipped the desk over

while she was still seated inside it. From that position, he yanked her body
violently out of the desk, creating such momentum that, as he dislodged her
body, she collided violently with the wall.
Shakara’s classmates looked terrified, even as one lone distressed
teenager, a girl named Niya Kenny, stood up and yelled, “What the fuck?!
What the fuck?! This can’t happen.” Niya encouraged her classmates to tape
the incident, and later, said, “I was screaming, ‘What the F___? What the
F____?’ Is this really happening? I was praying out loud for the girl.”
Cussing and praying. Mixing the profane and sacred together. No one can
cuss you out more eloquently than a Black woman can. It might be a
stereotype, but it’s also a truth. We cuss out of rage, and we pray that the
cussing will be enough to get all the rage out. We curse those who trespass
against us, and we pray usually that the rage won’t win. We curse systems,
and we pray for divine help to overcome those very same systems. This is
why it is so egregious for preachers to use biblical texts to shame Black
women and girls into complying with a system that hates them. Most Black
girls and women come to lean on that same holy language for divine help
when the system shows up to smash them into a million pieces. Rage and
respectability can’t exist in the same space. But cussing and praying
absolutely can. These forms of expression, themselves tethered to those
spaces between disrespect and respectability, hold Black women together
when the violence we encounter would otherwise rip us apart.
Shakara and Niya were both arrested for the dubious charge of “disturbing
schools.” More than a year later, the charges were dropped, but not before
students at the high school held protests in favor of the school resource
officer getting his job back. Many of the children who protested were Black,
because Black children learn early that the best way to survive in a broken
system is to go along to get along. If Shakara hadn’t persisted in her small but
mighty act of rebellion, we might never have seen just how violent the world
is toward Black girls who don’t immediately comply. Shakara’s rage was
quiet. But it was no less eloquent, no less clear.
Many, many Black folks, the ones who daily tell their children, “Don’t
make me come up to that school,” were incensed at Shakara. “Why didn’t she
just put the phone away?” They asked similar questions when, months earlier,

Sandra Bland was threatened with tasing and then arrested after challenging a
dubious citation by a Texas police officer.
Because respectability is a rage-management project, those invested in
Black respectability are often deeply uncomfortable with Black rage.
Respectability tells us that staying alive matters more than protecting one’s
dignity. Black rage says that living without dignity is no life at all. This rage
is dangerous because it can’t be reasoned with, can’t be forced to accept the
daily indignities of racism, and more than likely will fight back, rather than
fleeing or submitting. The consequence of all these antirespectable choices
range from violence to death. Ask Sandra Bland.… My anger is always
libation for my fallen sisters.
To be clear, Black living and Black surviving matters. We can’t be
dogmatic about the rightness or wrongness of embracing rage or choosing
safety. It would be irresponsible for me to tell people to embrace rage and
all its consequences when I daily put on a respectable outfit and drive in a
solidly middle-class car to a solidly middle-class job. Perfecting the art of
respectability in the right moments helped me to make it this far. But the more
access I have to halls of power, to places where decisions get made, the
more rage I feel. I know how to “count the costs” of my rage, but I wonder if
we’ve learned how to count the costs of our respectability. It makes us
emotionally dishonest. It makes us unable to see each other. It causes us to
sympathize with the dignity vampires, come to take everything from us while
claiming we brought it on ourselves.
Grown Black people resented Shakara’s youthful rebellion. Underneath
the resentment, clearly people were horrified at the violence. But the view
was, “We already know how they will treat us. So we can never give them a
reason.” Never let them catch you slippin’. Luckily, Niya’s mother had more
vision than much of the shortsighted public discourse. After Niya was
arrested for “disturbing schools,” her mother said, “Looking at the video,
who was really disturbing the school? Was it my daughter? Or was it the
officer who came into the classroom and did that to the young girl?”
Shakara’s silence in the face of such violence, and Niya’s loud wailing of
distress and disruption came to help us. These Black girls asked us to be
emotionally honest about how fucked up this world is. They gave us an

opportunity, if we would only get in touch with our rage, with the
righteousness of it, to imagine a world in which two grown men could figure
out a dignified and reasonable way to get a teenage girl to put away her
phone. Suppressed rage will cause us to accept gratuitous violence as a
necessary evil. Expressed rage offers us an opportunity to do better.
Two grown men, one Black and one white, one a teacher and one an
officer, colluded that day to terrorize two Black girls, and a room full of
mostly Black students, into submission. And only the power of Black girls
refusing to bow down to this unprincipled show of force alerted the nation to
the problem of how Black girls get treated in schools. After she was
arrested, Niya left school in pursuit of her GED. Because Shakara was in the
foster-care system, her anonymity was protected and it’s not clear what
happened to her. Niya became another of the disproportionate number of
Black girls who are suspended every year compared to their white
counterparts. Her contact with the legal system also means that her act of
solidarity made her one more Black student forced into what Monique
Morris has called the “school-to-confinement pathways” that dog Black girls
for the entirety of their educational lives.
Rage is costly. And its costs are directly proportional to the amount of
power any given woman or girl has when she chooses to wield it.
But Black women’s rage also builds movements. Black Lives Matter. This
is the most eloquent statement of rage to come out of Black communities in a
generation. Three Black women began proclaiming this simple truth on July
13, 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin.
The entire narrative of the Zimmerman trial had become a story about Black
women and rage. Much of the trial decision seemed to rely on the testimony
of Trayvon Martin’s good friend Rachel Jeantel. He had been on the phone
with Rachel just as Zimmerman started to stalk him around the neighborhood.
Rachel heard the initial moments of the confrontation before her phone went
dead. And when she took the stand on Trayvon’s behalf, Rachel was all hood
solidarity and unpolished Black-girl attitude. Her rage over the killing of her
friend was apparent, but because she had a speech impediment, and little
investment in taking the stand to relive the trauma of hearing her friend be
murdered, the inelegance of her speech made her rage seem less eloquent.

But it was abundantly, expressly clear that she was mad at losing her friend,
and mad at the farce of a trial that eventually acquitted Zimmerman. All us
Black girls who love bigheaded Black boys as friends and brothers and
cousins were mad.
That very same night, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi got
together on social media and began proclaiming “#BlackLivesMatter.” Those
words became even more salient on August 9, 2014, when Ferguson,
Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson picked a fight with Michael Brown
and his friend Dorian Johnson as they walked in the middle of the street
within a small apartment complex on Canfield Drive. Wilson pulled his gun
and shot Mike Brown multiple times, claiming afterward that Brown tried to
grab his gun. After residents stood vigil for four and a half hours as Mike
Brown’s body lay in the street, the next iteration of the movement was born.
Individualized acts of eloquent rage have limited reach. But the
collective, orchestrated fury of Black women can move the whole world.
This is what the Black Lives Matter movement has reminded us. There is
something clarifying about Black women’s rage, something essential about
the way it drills down to the core truth. The truth is that Black women’s anger
is not the problem. “For it is not the anger of Black women,” Lorde tells us,
“which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not [our]
anger which launches rockets … missiles, and other agents of war and
death.” “Anger,” she said, “is an appropriate response to racist attitudes.”
#AudreLordeTaughtMe
We live in a nation that does everything to induce our rage while
simultaneously doing everything to deny that we have a right to feel it.
American democracy is as much a project of suppressing Black rage as it is
of legitimizing and elevating white rage. American democracy uses calls for
civility, equality, liberty, and justice as smoke screens to obscure all the
ways in which Black folks are treated uncivilly, unequally, illiberally, and
unjustly as a matter of course. Had Darren Wilson been just a bit more
“civil,” Mike Brown might very well be alive.
The lie we are told is that white rage and white fear are honest emotions
that preserve the integrity of American democracy. More often than not, we
keep learning that white rage and white fear are dishonest impulses that lead

us toward fascism. White rage and white fear are reactions to perceptions
among white people that their power might be slipping away. Black rage and
Black fear are fundamentally more honest, because they are reactions to the
violence of white supremacy. When Black women are the collective arbiters
and organizers of Black rage, it is inherently more inclusive. By proclaiming
that Black Lives Matter, the leaders of the Movement for Black Lives
(M4BL) have been insisting that the American democratic project become as
inclusive as it claims to be. White supremacist gaslighting insists that what
the statement really means is “only Black lives matter.” But that is willful
ignorance on the part of folks who refuse to see that the conditions that
prompted the proclamation in the first place were conditions that tried to
assert that Black lives didn’t matter, that they were disposable, and that
Black communities didn’t deserve justice. Black women, therefore, stood up
and said, “We matter.” Too. Also. I simply refuse to believe that white
people don’t know this.
Whether we are at work, at church, at school, in court, in the halls of
government, or in the streets, the rage of Black women and girls does the
necessary work of pushing American democracy forward, of exposing its
flaws, of dramatizing its injustices, of taking its violent beatings. Black
women’s rage isn’t always healthy, particularly when we turn it on ourselves
or on our children. But when we turn it outward and focus it on the powers
that would crush us into submission and give back to us a mangled image of
ourselves, Black women’s rage is a kind of power that America would do
well to heed if it wants to finally live up to its stated democratic aims.

WHITE-GIRL TEARS

The problem with the 2016 presidential election is simple: White feminists
did not come get their people. Who are the people of white feminists? Other
white women. Until the election of Donald Trump, very few Americans,
beyond political scientists and analysts, paid attention to the fact that white
women have a long history of voting predominantly for Republican
candidates in presidential elections. In fact, in 2016, 3 percent fewer white
women voted for Trump than those who had voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.
That’s a significant political shift in one election cycle. But when we woke
up on November 9, 2016, to discover that white women were not interested
in forming a president in their own image, suddenly we began to train our
eyes more heavily on white women, trying to understand what the hell was
going on.
As I made clear earlier, I have always known of white women’s great
capacity to be treacherous. But I did not know that they suffered a far more
acute version of a problem that white feminists have for decades diagnosed
Black women with having: For white women, their race comes before their
gender. See, this tendency to put race before gender does not surprise me
with Black women. We grow up in a world that only secondarily
acknowledges our girlhood and our womanhood. We grow up being denied
the protections of femininity that are always afforded to white women. And
because anti-Blackness is so palpable, it’s easy if you aren’t paying attention
to miss the very sexist ways that racism can present itself. Most racial
stereotypes of Black women—that they are sexually insatiable, unrapeable,
and prone to having a bunch of babies they can’t take care of, are gendered

stereotypes. But most of us don’t learn to identify the problem as one rooted
in racism and sexism. This is a problem that Black feminist organizers and
intellectuals have been attuned to since the very beginning. But I simply
didn’t know that white feminists had a version of this problem, too. Namely,
white women’s voting practices tell us that they vote with the party that
supports their racial issues, even though this means voting with a party that
hates women as a matter of public policy.
On the day after Trump’s inauguration, white women took over America,
to the tune of more than three million protestors. It is the biggest feminist
action ever recorded. But it was hard to see the outraged cries of all these
white women, many of whom had failed to get their people, as anything other
than a public profusion of white-lady tears. White girls usually cry whitelady tears after they have done something hella racist and then been called
out by the offended party for doing so. To shift blame and claim victimhood,
they start to cry. The world falls apart as people rush to their defense. All
knowledge of the fact that they are the ones who caused the problem escapes
the notice of everyone except the person or people they disrespected. It’s a
phenomenon that Black folks know well.
Recently, at a campus lecture I gave, a young Black man told me of an
incident where a white female student who he thought was a friend called
him a nigger. When he expressed deep offense at her racism, she started
crying. He wanted to report her to campus authorities, but felt that given his
race, size, and stature, he would not be believed. He felt he would be cast as
the aggressor. So he walked away and let it go.
I, too, have experienced white women become aggressively angry at
public lectures when I give talks. Recently, I received an award from a
national women’s organization for my work as a feminist activist. In my
remarks, I spoke briefly about the ways the Clinton crime bill had harmed
Black communities and men in my own family. As I walked off stage, an
older white feminist, a judge, shook with anger as she disagreed with my
analysis of the crime bill. I told her that perhaps my analysis could have been
more precise, but that the gist of my point about Clinton and the explosion of
the prison industrial complex was in fact, correct. She moved further into my
personal space, as her face became red, and her voice shook. All of these are

cues of physical aggression, and if you’re Black, they are signs that
somebody is ready to fight. She didn’t cry, but I certainly wanted to make her
cry. The comfort she felt in physically advancing on a stranger and expecting
not to have any clapback for it is a comfort and a privilege that only white
women have.
What that white lady judge didn’t know is that I eat white-lady tears for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So it made sense that on the day of the Women’s
March I skipped it and went to my girl’s spot for a very Black brunch in
Brooklyn. Watching white women take it to the streets to protest an election
outcome that was a result of white women’s powerful voting bloc felt like an
exercise in white-lady tears if I ever saw one, and I knew I couldn’t be
trusted to act right amidst a sea of pink pussy hats and white women
struggling to understand what intersectionality means.
But I felt conflicted. On the one hand, I wanted to be in the streets helping
women make feminist history. It feels really important in this moment to make
clear that feminism is a multiracial project. Feminism doesn’t belong to
white women. When cries arose in the weeks following the election for a
Million Women’s March, I was skeptical and annoyed. Black women had
already had such a march in 1997. Though the organizers of this march
scrambled and recovered, rebranding the event the Women’s March and
placing several women of color at the helm, I decided that I would sit this
particular march out. My conflict arose, though, because even though I want
white women to learn with a quickness about the many other modes of
womanhood that exist outside of white womanhood, I also understand the
power of a unified front.
The election of Trump, a man who had admitted on tape to sexually
assaulting women, women who were presumably white, suggests that 2016 is
the moment white women ran squarely up against the limits of white-lady
tears as a form of political capital. White-lady tears might seem not to be a
big deal, but they are actually quite dangerous. When white women signal
through their tears that they feel unsafe, misunderstood, or attacked, the
whole world rises in their defense. The mythic nature of white female
vulnerability compels protective impulses to arise in all men, regardless of
race.

I think here of the white-girl rapper travesty that is Iggy Azalea. This
Australian white girl built her career by mimicking the accent and cadence of
Black girls in Atlanta, Georgia. She was helped along in this regrettable
experiment in cultural appropriation by Atlanta rapper T.I. In late 2014, Iggy
Azalea dismissed Black female rapper Azealia Banks’s claims that America
appropriates Black culture by engaging in what Banks called “cultural
smudging.” In the midst of the racial uproars of 2014—the killing of Michael
Brown and Tamir Rice and the refusal of the Ferguson, Missouri, prosecutor
to indict Officer Darren Wilson—Banks had called out Iggy for profiting off
of Black culture but not speaking out about Black pain. When, days later,
Banks followed up in an interview about this longstanding problem of
cultural appropriation—think jazz, rock ’n’ roll, blues, and blue-eyed soul—
Iggy dismissed Banks as a bully who had little success because of her
attitude. Rap legend Q-Tip, from A Tribe Called Quest, stepped in to give
Iggy a history lesson on Twitter. It was not long before rapper T.I. defended
his protégé Iggy by saying that many Black people had a “paranoid, ‘All
White People Wanna Steal Our Shit’” mentality. Clearly T.I.’s arguments are
reductive and ludicrous. Black people have every right to be upset about the
long history of cultural appropriation in this country. The fact that Iggy’s
career took off at a moment in Hip Hop when Black girls could barely find a
record deal (Nicki Minaj being the exception) suggests that our fears and
anger about white girls taking up space to which they are not entitled are
well-founded.
During these same years, we have endured everyone from Miley Cyrus to
Taylor Swift to Katy Perry parroting the sounds and idioms of Hip Hop in
their music, while disrespecting Black women in the process. There was the
time that Katy Perry rocked corn rows with her front edges gelled down (a
hair style that is undeniably specific to Black women) in the music video for
her song “This Is How We Do” while pursing her lips, with her head cocked
to the side, to impersonate what she thinks attitudinal, edgy Black girls look
and sound like. Then there was the time Taylor Swift crawled between the
legs of several Black girls twerking in her video “Shake It Off.” Let me also
note that phrases like “this is how we do” and “shake it off” are themselves
Black cultural sayings, indigenous to the Hip Hop generation.

Miley Cyrus even infamously invited Black women with huge posteriors
on stage to twerk with her when she was trying to emerge from the good-girl
gloss of her old Disney character Hannah Montana. Using the logic of white
supremacy to her advantage, she figured that the closer she put her skinny, noass-having self to Black women’s thick and voluptuous bodies, the easier it
would be for people to accept her as a sexually active, slightly vulgar, grown
woman. Black women’s bodies became critical to this performance of grown
womanhood because Miley knew (at least implicitly) that Black women’s
bodies are already coded as hypersexual and excessively vulgar, and this
was everything she wanted to be.
Of late, Cyrus says she has moved away from Hip Hop because, as she
told John Norris at Billboard, “It was too much ‘Lamborghini, got my Rolex,
got a girl on my cock’—I am so not that.” Now that Hip Hop had rescued her
from the stultifying demands to perform pure, chaste white Southern
femininity, she was ready to throw it out like a used-up washrag. Of course,
Hip Hop had been misogynist for more than three decades when Cyrus
thought to use it to add an edge to her image. The ability to take on and peel
off the parts of Black culture that you like at will is exactly what is meant by
the term “white privilege.” And while culture sharing is fine, white people
have proven that they have a problem sharing. White people don’t share.
They take over. They colonize. They claim shit as their own and then accuse
others of being territorial and retrograde for pointing out these aggressive
borrowing practices that shape white culture. It’s wrong to use Black
aesthetics, Black cultural vernaculars, and Black dance in your videos
without any kind of citation or homage.
Beyond the culture wars, there’s a whole political infrastructure designed
to protect the sanctity of white women’s fears and tears. White women’s
complicity and participation in state violence toward Black people has a
long and sordid history. In 1892, after the local lynching of three Black men,
Memphis journalist Ida B. Wells wrote an editorial calling out white men for
the lynching. She wrote, “Nobody in this section of the community believes
that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern men
are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will be very damaging
to the moral reputation of their women.” One of the lynched men, Thomas

Moss, was Wells’s good friend; he was married with a family, and he was a
respected businessman. He and his business partners had, in fact, been
lynched for running a successful grocery store that competed with a local
white grocer. Once Wells saw the economic logics at play, she stopped
believing the myth propagated by white supremacists, that Black men were
running amok raping white women.
Wells also sought to call out the complicity of white women in this racial
terror propagated against Black men. Not only weren’t they victims, but they
were often engaging in consensual, though illicit, sexual relationships with
Black men. Sometimes these women would cry rape when they were caught
in the act. Sometimes the white men in their lives would cry rape for them.
These white women’s tears proved deadly for Black men and Black
communities. Meanwhile, the white men who were outraged over the rape of
white women often raped Black women with impunity. Black men, too, were
often victims. In a world where telling a white woman “no” could lead to as
many consequences as telling her “yes,” surely the social conditions were not
ripe for any Black body to freely consent to interracial liaisons.
Conveniently enough, white men didn’t begin to propagate the myth of
Black male rapists until after the Civil War. During the war, when they left
their wives and daughters on plantations with these same Black men, there
were few to no accusations of sexual assault. But after the war, suddenly (we
are to believe), white men’s outsized outrage and paranoia over the safety of
white women was about actual crimes Black men were committing rather
than about white men’s deep and unbridled rage over losing power. By
turning the nation’s attention to supposed misdeeds by Black men, white men
misdirected attention from the copious amounts of rape they were committing
against Black women. Disregard for the bodily autonomy of Black women
grew in direct proportion to the social valuation of white femininity. Though
this had also been true during slavery, after the Civil War white men used
white femininity as an excuse to terrorize newly freed men and women
through lynching and rape.
White women’s tears are dangerous. Ida B. Wells was run out of Memphis
for challenging white women’s (and men’s) lies about rape, and her
newspaper’s office was burned to the ground. White men sent a threatening

message that they would kill her if she returned to Memphis from her travels
up North. Her story demonstrates the extent to which white men were willing
to go to protect and promote the narrative of vulnerable white femininity. But
it also makes clear just how bothered white men were by the prospect of
white women potentially sleeping with Black men. Not only were white men
willing to lynch Black men to keep them in line but, in the case of Wells, they
were also willing to murder Black women in order to prop up their fantasy
about racially pure sexual desire. The desire of white men to regulate white
women’s intimate desires placed Black people in a clusterfuck of white
terror.
Since the nineteenth century, white feminists have critiqued the ways
white men have attempted to sexually regulate their bodies. They have
decried the demands for sexual chastity, purity, and monogamy that American
culture has presumed to be white women’s civic duty. But often the critique
stops there. White women never make the leap toward solidarity. That
solidarity would be rooted in the fact that the terms and limits of Black
women’s and white women’s sexual agency (while certainly not equal in the
scope of terror and violence) are both bound up with the project of white
supremacy. Far too frequently, white women’s notions of antiracist solidarity
is defined solely by their willingness to date Black men. I’m coming back to
that momentarily.
It is in light of these histories that everyone should be able to understand
the complex reactions that Black communities had to allegations against Bill
Cosby. The allegations that he raped and sexually assaulted nearly fifty
women, most of them white, between the 1960s and the 2000s, were an open
secret that most of us deliberately chose to ignore until the cries of his
victims got louder and louder. Cosby has denied these allegations. When I
initially began hearing about these alleged assaults, my first thought was that
Cosby was yet another Black man who secretly found white women more
sexually desirable than his gorgeous Black wife, Camille. That was
disappointing, but as race-man types go, also rather clichéd. As more and
more stories emerged, however, I returned to my default position—I believe
women when they say they are raped. No matter their race. That is a hard

position to hold, given what Ida B. Wells taught us about the racial and
sexual politics of the post-Reconstruction era.
Postslavery, Black manhood was framed primarily in terms of being a
sexual threat to the purity of white womanhood. To find out that there are
very compelling reasons to believe that Bill Cosby raped dozens of white
women, and began doing so during the racially volatile 1960s, has been hard
for many African Americans to accept. If the allegations are true, that would
make Cosby as much of a monster as many white people love to think all
Black men are. When he was tried in June 2017 for sexually assaulting
Andrea Constand, a judge declared a mistrial after a jury failed to reach a
verdict. However, the mistrial in his case is no more an assurance of
innocence than such mistrials are when the victims are Black men killed by
white cops. Too often, the rampant racism of the criminal justice system is
used as an excuse for the heinous misogyny and sexism of Black men.
I’m no fair-weather feminist, though. Rape is rape. Sexism is sexism. No
matter who commits it. I gave up The Cosby Show, a show I loved and had
continued to watch, even after Cosby became a moralizing grandfatherly
fuckboy who shamed single Black mothers, derided the Black poor, and
mocked Black naming practices. In his infamous 2004 Pound Cake Speech,
Cosby said, “Women having children by five, six different men. Under what
excuse, I want somebody to love me, and as soon as you have it, you forget to
parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room,
raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any
one of the three of them.” His speech is filled with this shame-and-blame
rhetoric, demonizing Black mothers. But I am so used to Black men who
blame Black women for our communities’ social problems, and to Black
elders who believe wholeheartedly in respectability politics, that it seemed a
small price to pay to continue to watch The Cosby Show. As long as Black
women were the targets of Cosby’s ire, I could ignore it and continue to
enjoy reruns of my favorite sitcom after a long, stressful day. I’m used to
brothers being not quite right and even all the way wrong in their dealings
with us. I’m used to seeing their proverbial slips showing and loving them
anyway. But after it came to light that he might be a vicious sexual predator,
any racial solidarity between us fell away. To be clear, I would have made

the same choice if the vast majority of his accusers had been Black. Some
are. But the fact remains that even I sprang into action more readily when I
read all of these white women’s accounts of his actions, in ways that I had
not felt the urgency to do when the targets of his rage were Black. Black
men’s disdain for Black women is so common that it didn’t even occur to me
to stop watching his show. White women’s tears are powerful.
I wish, however, that white feminists specifically weren’t so deliberately
oblivious about their privileged status. Fickle feminism won’t get us
anywhere. Even as Black feminists rallied to denounce Cosby’s (alleged)
despicable conduct and crimes, there was little to no outrage among white
feminists when Daniel Holtzclaw, an Oklahoma police officer of Asian and
white American descent, was accused of raping thirteen Black women, and
was subsequently found guilty of eight of the rapes, in late 2015. While
Cosby’s accusers commanded mainstream news coverage, Holtzclaw’s
victims received embarrassingly little media coverage. If, by contrast, a
Black police officer had been found guilty of raping multiple white women,
this would have been a media circus. This was Ida Wells’s point. The
alleged vulnerability of white women misdirected critical attention away
from the ways in which white men were, in fact, brutalizing and raping Black
women and girls. Today, most rapes are intraracial, but white women’s
perceived vulnerability to crimes at the hands of Black men does untold
amounts of harm to Black communities and, in particular, to Black women
and children.
When George Zimmerman stalked and killed Trayvon Martin, who was
walking home from the corner store in a suburban Florida neighborhood,
Zimmerman claimed to be suspicious because Trayvon, a seventeen-year-old
Black kid wearing a hoodie, was looking at the houses as he walked home. A
Black kid in a hoodie must surely be scoping out these houses, where some
white families lived, in order to commit a crime. At Zimmerman’s trial, the
jury consisted of five white women and one woman of color. As I watched
the trial, I wondered which brand of white womanhood would prevail.
Would these women act out of their socially constructed fear of Black men in
hoodies or would they “transcend” race and identify with Sybrina Fulton,
Trayvon’s mother, in the unjust loss of her child? After jurors failed to

convict Zimmerman on the grounds that he had the right to “stand his ground,”
it became clear that to the jurors, Trayvon Martin wasn’t Sybrina Fulton’s
baby boy. He was a walking embodiment of white women’s worst nightmare.
After the trial, Juror B-37, a white woman, gave an interview to Anderson
Cooper. Cooper asked the juror why Zimmerman might have found Trayvon
to be suspicious, and she responded:
He said he was looking in houses as he was walking down the road.
Kind of just not having a purpose to where he was going. He was
stopping and starting. But I mean, that’s George’s rendition of it, but I
think the situation where Trayvon got into him being late at night, dark
at night, raining, and anybody would think anybody walking down the
road stopping and turning and looking, if that’s exactly what happened,
is suspicious. And George said that he didn’t recognize who he was.
Note several things about the juror’s answer. She fully agreed with
George Zimmerman, that it was reasonable to see Trayvon Martin, a kid
walking home in the rain, talking on his phone, as suspicious. As she put it,
“anybody would think” this way. By anybody, she means any white body.
Even if that were true, the larger question is whether any of us would have
stopped, followed him, and then shot him to death after doing so. That is the
only question. The jurors put themselves fully in George Zimmerman’s shoes.
They could not find any empathy for the teenage boy walking home with
snacks. These women’s acquittal of Zimmerman suggested that their primary
social priority is white safety, even if it means authorizing lethal force
against Black folks who aren’t studying them or their white suburban lives in
the least. After the Zimmerman trial, white feminists did not call out these
jurors. During the trial they did not call on them to exercise integrity, check
their white privilege, or act from a place of empathy. White feminism has
worked hard to make the world safer for white women, but it has stridently
refused to call out the ways that white women’s sexuality and femininity is
used not just as a tool of patriarchy but also as a tool for the maintenance of
white supremacy.

Less than two months before Donald Trump clinched the presidency, a
white police officer from Tulsa, Oklahoma, named Betty Shelby shot and
killed Terence Crutcher, a forty-year-old unarmed Black man, during a traffic
stop. When Shelby shot Crutcher, who was outside of his vehicle at her
request, his hands were in the air. As police helicopters covered the scene,
they could be heard saying that he looked like “a bad dude.” While Shelby’s
partner used his Taser to subdue Crutcher, who officers say wasn’t following
commands, Shelby pulled out her gun and shot him, hitting him in the lung.
Like many other white police officers who have killed unarmed Black
people, her only defense was “I feared for my life.” Her fear became a lethal
weapon against Terence Crutcher, who was carrying no weapons of his own.
Yet again, white feminists did not write think pieces or organize panels
asking their white sistren to interrogate the lethal and anti-Black
consequences of this “fear.” At trial, Betty Shelby was found not guilty of
manslaughter, and she went back to work for the Tulsa Police Department.
When Black men show out, Black feminists call that shit out. In fact, we
viciously dragged men and women in our own communities who tried to hold
on to Bill Cosby and The Cosby Show. Black folks of a certain generation
were hella resentful about being asked to give up watching such shows as an
act of solidarity. For those of us born before 1990, the Huxtables were the
first high-achieving, reasonably functional Black family that we got to see on
TV. For most of the seasons during which it aired, it was a top-ranked
sitcom. This meant that the Cosbys were a Black family that all Americans
could relate to. I loved the Huxtables, particularly the youngest daughter,
Rudy, who was near my age. But I gave them up, because after knowing of
Bill Cosby’s alleged crimes it was hard to watch him without remembering
that I was watching a violent monster. Black women have been some of Bill
Cosby’s most vocal critics. We didn’t just leave white women to fend for
themselves. We came and got our people.
When evidence surfaced that actor Nate Parker and his writing partner
and friend Jean Celestin were accused of running a train on a white woman
without her consent when they were in college, Black feminists expressed
outrage, boycotted Parker’s ironically titled film, The Birth of a Nation, and
demanded that he atone in a thoughtful way for any harm he might have

caused this young woman, who eventually committed suicide. Parker and
Celestin were both tried for sexual assault. Parker was acquitted while
Celestin was initially found guilty. Later that verdict was thrown out. Parker
maintained his innocence, but Black women, who are disproportionately
victims of sexual assault, continued to empathize with the young woman and
to hold Parker’s and Celestin’s feet to the fire. Black feminists were roundly
blamed for the film being a flop in theaters. Still the position of Black
feminists remains clear: first, do no harm.
No comparable outrage emerges from white feminists when Black women
are under attack. Meanwhile, Black women pay a high price for our
commitment to feminism in a culture that reveres our men, precisely because
their extreme social vulnerability is on display. We are called divisive, manhating, combative, unfeminine. All the usual shit. Those of us who are
straight are often chastised for our outspokenness by being denied
partnership. White feminists often struggle to even conceptualize Black
female vulnerability, let alone to call out white men for harming Black
women. When the various forms of structural challenges that Black women
experience come to light, the response from white feminists is, more often
than not, anemic.
White women and Black men share a kind of narcissism that comes from
being viewed as the most vulnerable entities within their respective races.
Black people hesitate to call out Black men for male privilege because they
have experienced such devastation at the hands of a white supremacist
system. And white women frequently don’t recognize that though women are
oppressed around the world, whiteness elevates the value of their femininity
and allows them to get away with shit that women of color pay royally for.
Many Black men struggle to acknowledge that they experience male
privilege. Some years ago, an internet writer published a Black male
privilege checklist, modeled after Peggy McIntosh’s white privilege
checklist. Every time I have posted the Black male checklist, the level of
bellyaching, backtracking, minimizing, and obscuring that Black men do is
unmatched. Yes, it is true that Black men experience what famed Black
feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins has called a “subjugated masculinity.”
This means, like I discussed about Mann and Bob, that they are frustrated

patriarchs. For instance, only male privilege could make Barack Obama do
the shit he did around My Brother’s Keeper, a point I made previously. Only
male privilege could eclipse the struggles of Black girls out of the view of a
man who is a father to two daughters.
Perhaps the frustrated patriarch explanation can shed some light on why
the Bill Cosby case is so appalling. His copious alleged sexual assaults of
women play out a troubling script of a Black man obsessed with dominating
and subjugating white women. There is racialized sexism at play in Bill
Cosby’s apparent choice of victims. The desire to violate predominantly
white female victims at the height of the 1960s, when Cosby was one of the
most powerful and visible Black male stars, suggests that, if these charges
are true, his desire for power was tied uniquely to the ability to subjugate
white women. There was a full one-hundred-year period between the end of
slavery and the first allegations of Bill Cosby raping white women. That
means there was a one-hundred-year period between the emergence of a
narrative about dangerous Black male rapists and the instantiation of one
who was serial in his brutality. For one hundred years, Black men had never
gotten away with it. They were killed, mostly for rapes they didn’t commit.
A history with those contours, a Black masculinity shaped in a toxic stew
of white male rage and white-lady tears, might emerge with a perverted
notion of freedom. Yes, it is true that the Cosby case is so extreme that it
certainly does not reflect the everyday realities of most Black men. But most
white people aren’t members of the KKK, either. The most extreme versions
of a pathology often have much to teach us about the less extreme forms those
pathologies can take. If this were an episode of Criminal Minds, we could
perhaps admit that if it is true that Cosby assaulted all these women, then
white women became the target of his seething but sublimated Black male
rage. The desire to dominate and humiliate white women is a logical
extension of a racialized toxic masculinity, predicated on the idea that
freedom is synonymous with white patriarchy. And white patriarchy inheres
in both the dominating and the possessing of white women. Look, if it is true
that Cosby committed even a portion of these crimes, it’s not clear to me
whether his hatred of white women was because he really wanted to be with
one or because he simply despised what they had meant for the project of

Black manhood. That kind of work is best left up to the psychoanalysts. What
I know is that rape is about power, and if a Black man has been serially
raping white women for nearly fifty years, this is a violent patriarchal form
of hitting back at white supremacy.
In 1968, Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver wrote an infamous
book called Soul On Ice, where he delved—scarily—into the psychosexual
politics of Black men’s relationships to white and Black women. He wrote,
“The white man made the Black woman the symbol of slavery and the white
woman the symbol of freedom. Every time I embrace a Black woman I’m
embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m
hugging freedom.… I will not be free until the day I can have a white woman
in my bed and a white man minds his own business. Until that day comes, my
entire existence is tainted, poisoned, and I will still be a slave—and so will
the white woman.” Thus, Cleaver concludes a few pages later, “I became a
rapist.” Infuriatingly, he recounts, “To refine my technique and modus
operandi, I started out by practicing on black girls in the ghetto … and when
I considered myself smooth enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white
prey.” “Rape,” Cleaver argues, “was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me
that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system
of values, and that I was defiling his women—and this point, I believe, was
the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact
of how the white man has used the black woman. I felt I was getting
revenge.” Does anyone else need a shower?
Now that you’re back, let’s talk about it. First, I know that many of you
reading this are wondering what the fifty-year-old sexist ramblings of a
racial madman have to do with racial and sexual attitudes today. Does the
phrase “Make America Great Again” mean anything to you? So much of the
racial animus that is shaping this current moment in American politics is a
relitigation of the 1950s and 1960s. Often, in the polling data that shaped the
Trump campaign, white Americans cited the 1950s as America’s best
decade. And perhaps the Leave It To Beaver years were really great—if you
were white! The civil rights movement was not yet in full swing. The
women’s liberation movement had not yet begun. White men ruled, and white
ladies looked pretty on TV. So going back to this moment is necessary to

understand the kinds of racialized masculinity that white and Black men are
negotiating in this moment. Also, far too often, we think history doesn’t
matter, but half the time that I spend with Black men talking about feminism
makes me think I’m in some Black Power skit conjured up from 1973.
After reading Eldridge Cleaver’s psychotic rambling, Bill Cosby’s
alleged crimes make far more sense. Both men became the self-fulfilling
prophecies of white supremacy’s worst lies about Black male sexuality.
White folks needed monsters to justify their hatred, and white supremacy plus
patriarchy created just the kind of primordial stew that could bring forth such
creatures. We all have a political and ethical duty to reject the monsters
white supremacy created, but we can’t forget that white patriarchy itself is
the biggest bang of them all. There is also a more hurtful truth that Eldridge
Cleaver points us to in his frightening candor. He spoke of a deep-seated and
collective hatred among Black men for Black women. White women
represented freedom, while Black women represented slavery. Black women
were the literal site for the reproduction of slavery.
Part of the reason no one delved fully into the racial politics of Cosby’s
alleged sex crimes is because they point us back to a key source of enmity
between Black men and Black women, and Black women and white women
—they force us to ask questions about interracial relationships that we would
all rather shy away from speaking honestly about. But Ida B. Wells’s critique
of the sexual politics of racism shows us why interracial dating (between
white and Black people) and interracial rape are conversations that
intrinsically go together. Rape is tied to questions of power and consent, but
interracial dating is tied to questions of power and freedom.
I believe wholeheartedly in the right of all consenting adults to choose the
kinds of partnerships that are best for them, but I’m tired of the lie that
relationships and love are not political. The struggle of queer folks to build
families in the ways they desire demonstrate that love is political. I’m tired
of the lie that desire is a pure social category, unhampered by the politics of
race and gender.
Case in point: Jesse Williams, a biracial Black actor and one of the stars
and heartthrobs of Grey’s Anatomy, has a huge following among Black
women. At the 2016 BET Awards, Williams gave a speech that went viral

after he won the Humanitarian Award. He affirmed the Black Lives Matter
movement, the many victims of police brutality, and the movement’s largely
female leadership. He also called out white cultural appropriation, saying,
“We’re done watching and waiting while this invention called ‘whiteness’
uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while
extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil—black gold,
ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our
genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like
rinds of strange fruit.” It was a perfect moment of a celebrity using his
platform for good. I’m not even into light-skinned men, but in that moment,
Jesse Williams was bae.
A few months later, Williams and his wife, whom he had saluted during
the speech, announced they were divorcing. Much like having a Black wife
had done wonders for Obama’s credibility with Black America, Jesse
Williams having a Black, regular-pretty, slightly thick and curvy wife also
made Black women love him more. But when divorce reports surfaced, some
tabloids suggested that Williams had been cheating with a white female
costar. Though those news reports were never confirmed, the mere thought of
it made Williams’s stock go down quickly among Black women. The divorce
we could understand. Marriage is hard. But the potential white girl—that
was damn-near unforgivable. For once, Williams represented a Black man
who had made it, who had great politics, and who had chosen a Black
woman for a life partner. To most Black women, that choice matters.
Often when Black men show a vocal preference for white women, and
Black women “feel some type of way about it,” as millennials like to say, we
are told that we are tripping over what is simply a matter of preference! My
good friend Dr. Yaba Blay often says, “There is a thin line between
preference and pathology.” When Black men evince a preference for dating
white women, solely or primarily, this crosses the line into the pathological.
Conversely, there are Black men who have sophisticated structural analyses
of white supremacy and of their oppressed conditions as Black men, but treat
their intimate choices through a faulty color-blind lens in which Black
women, in particular, are asked to view the whiteness of their choice of

partner as merely incidental to a larger narrative of love that transcends
racial boundaries. This is bullshit.
I’m tired of Black men who are race men everywhere but in the bedroom.
I’m tired of Black men who buy into the lie that their choice of white female
partners shouldn’t concern anyone but them. That thinking is ahistorical.
Courtesy of white supremacy, Black women have always had to care whom
Black men were dating. Black and white people have never had the luxury of
apolitical romance. Yet, when Black women give either the overt or internal
eye roll to the polished (seemingly), got-it-together brother walking down the
street with the white chick on his arm, we are cast as bitter and angry. Maybe
we should just start admitting that we are angry at seeing some of our best
and brightest brothers choose white women for partners. There. I said it.
Because it is we, Black women, who labor under the historical narrative of
having our bodies cast as the unique and singular site for unfreedom. That’s a
heavy load to bear in a country that romanticizes freedom and justice for all.
Of course, we are resentful of brothers whose freedom dreams are
personified by the ability to date and fuck white women with ease.
I’m tired of meeting white women with no race analysis who marry Black
men and make these men feel like their race—their Blackness—is not a
primary thing that defines them. For many Black men, the best-case scenario
is that they can create a part of their lives where they are not solely defined
by Black manhood. The worst-case scenario is that they think white
womanhood is some kind of come-up from the abjection of Black
womanhood.
This is why I don’t have any problem with Black women who choose to
partner with people who are not Black. The logic of reverse racism won’t
work here, for any of you who were planning on trying it. In the chapter
“Love in a Hopeless Place,” I lay out the challenges that Black girls face in
trying to find partners. There is a real numbers problem that Black women
confront, even though they are the least likely to marry someone who isn’t
Black. This kind of racial loyalty often circumscribes Black women’s
intimate options in ways that cause us to be alone forever. Moreover, if
dating-site statistics are to be believed, Black women are the least likely of
any demographic (Latina and Asian women, white, Black, Latino, and Asian

men) to receive responses to their dating profiles. This cultural and intimate
hatred of Black women is a feminist issue, one that all feminists, Black and
non-Black alike, should care about.
In Kate Weigand’s book Red Feminism, she tells a fascinating story about
Black women who participated in the Communist Party (CP) in the 1930s. In
1934, Black women organizers asked the Party leadership to outlaw
interracial marriages among members. Many of the Black men had married or
begun dating white women, but white men weren’t showing comparable
interest in dating or marrying Black women. The Party’s leadership
appointed Abner Berry, a Black party leader who was married to a white
woman, to deal with the crisis. In typical Black-man fashion, he called Black
women’s demands to outlaw interracial marriage “counterrevolutionary.” But
he did institute organizing sessions on the triple oppressions of race, class,
and gender that Black women faced. Apparently, the party members also
tried to teach white male communists how to dance so they would be more
comfortable approaching Black women at parties.
These are not new problems. In many ways, prospects in heterosexual
dating are far more dismal today than they were eighty years ago. But in the
1930s, radical left organizers framed Black women’s limited intimate
options as a structural problem. They didn’t fall into the neoliberal trap of
framing everything as a simple matter of individual choice. They also seemed
to understand that if they were going to use Black women’s labor to build
movements for social change, they had a responsibility to care about the
quality of Black women’s personal lives. We have far less clarity today
about the ways that Black women’s intimate lives, whether they are in
straight or queer partnerships, should be a part of our political frameworks.
I absolutely know that love doesn’t adhere to racial lines. (Even I have a
white-boys-who-could-get-it list.) But the choice of whom to love is
political. And if white feminists were honest, they would recognize that their
feminism actually does demand that they interrogate the political dimensions
of their intimate engagements. Those white women married to white men
overwhelmingly expressed their solidarity with Donald Trump, clearly
placing racial solidarity and agreement with white supremacy over any kind
of gender solidarity. Those white women who have partnered with Black

men must reckon with what that choice means, in light of histories where
white women are cast as the stuff of which racial freedom dreams are made.
White women and, specifically, white feminists have to reckon with their
complicity and often full participation in this set of social narratives about
Black sexuality that has been exceedingly dangerous to the well-being of
Black lives.
A woke white feminism would recognize that even as they rebel against
the sexual strictures of white patriarchy, through movements to reclaim the
term “slut” and so forth, they have a duty to recognize that white men’s
desires to regulate their sexual lives is predicated not just on controlling
white women’s bodies, but also on criminalizing Black men and denigrating
Black women. The movement to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization
that provides critical health care to many poor women of color, has nothing
to do with the desire of white men on the right for Black and Latina women to
have more babies. Rather, these men seek to control reproduction itself
because they want to control the life possibilities of all women. So much of
right-leaning social policy in the 1980s and 1990s was predicated on white
men controlling white women’s bodies by uplifting the purity and sanctity of
white femininity and simultaneously maligning Black womanhood and Black
femininity.
I’ve already mentioned the way the term “welfare queens” has been used
on the right to summarily vilify Black women. But the idea of the “welfare
queen” is itself a myth, created for nefarious purposes. In 1976, Ronald
Reagan began telling stories about a completely fabricated group of system
abusers that he called “welfare queens.” He named a non-existent social
phenomenon based on a singular incident of abuse of welfare benefits by one
woman in Chicago in the 1970s. But white people who resented the racial
and class progress of the 1960s found a convenient target in hating allegedly
undeserving Black women, who all got subsumed under the category of
welfare queens. From the first time he deployed the term in his 1976
presidential campaign, until 1996, when Bill Clinton passed his infamous
welfare reform bill, white male politicians on both the right and the semi-left
used cultural enmity toward Black women to mobilize a conservative
backlash against the 1960s.

A decade later, two cases cemented the enduring power of the Black male
rapist myth from one hundred years earlier. In 1986, William Horton, a
prisoner who was serving a life sentence for robbery and murder in
Massachusetts, was allowed to participate in a weekend prison furlough
program. He failed to return, and ten months later raped and beat a white
woman from suburban Maryland while her husband was bound and gagged
and forced to listen. During the 1988 presidential race, the George H. W.
Bush campaign ran incendiary television ads that conveniently renamed
William Horton “Willie Horton” and cast him as a monster that liberal
Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, had let out of jail.
A year later, a white woman was brutally raped and beaten in Central
Park, and five young Black and Latino men were arrested for the crime. After
more than a decade in jail, all five young men were exonerated by DNA
evidence. Donald Trump took out a full-page ad in 1989 in several New
York newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for New York to
bring back the death penalty so these young men could be executed. In 2014,
he called the $41 million settlement the five men were awarded “the heist of
the century.” One month before he was elected president, he doubled down in
a CNN interview, saying that the young men had all “admitted they were
guilty.” They were teenagers at the time, and their testimony had been
coerced. Moreover, DNA evidence correctly identified the actual perpetrator
of the crime back in 2002. In the interim years between their arrest and the
overturning of their convictions, the presumed guilt of the Central Park Five
contributed to a powerful narrative exploited by politicians on the right and
the left, everyone from Reagan to Bush I to Bill Clinton about the need to “get
tough on crime” and put away “Black male superpredators,” whom the
Clintons (both Bill and Hillary) argued began terrorizing communities at as
early as thirteen years of age.
With his 1994 crime bill and his 1996 welfare reform package, Clinton,
with the help of a Republican Congress, sounded a late-twentieth-century
death knell for Black social progress, all rooted in an insidious narrative
about the danger of Black sexuality—it turned Black men into rapists and
Black women into baby machines. In this narrative, white women were
everything Black women were not—socially responsible, well-behaved,

marriageable. Therefore, they were the kind of women that Black men should
desire but of which they should never ever understand themselves to be
worthy.
The obsession with curtailing reproductive freedom in this country is
about forcing white women to be hyperproductive in service of reproducing
a white Republic. As of 2014, most children born in the United States are not
white. This important demographic shift has only heightened anxiety about
declining birth rates among white families. God, the right would have us
believe, wants America to remain white. The only way that can happen is for
heterosexual white people to keep getting married and reproducing.
When Ida B. Wells gave the written side eye to the white-girl tears of her
day, she was hoping that maybe by doing so, those folks listening could attune
their ear to the fervent cries of Black women being raped by white men all
over the country. But Wells learned something that every Black girl learns at
some point. When white girls cry, every other girl’s tears cease to matter.
However, what the Trump era has come to teach white women is that
uncritical solidarity with patriarchy is tantamount to sticking your head in a
lion’s mouth. Too many white women thought they could vote for Trump
while sticking everyone else with the consequences. In the battle over power,
when white men run the world, white-lady tears have diminishing returns.
This fact alone should inspire an army of white feminists to arm themselves
with boxes of Kleenex, march into the world of white women, and start doing
the painful work of trying to change their sisters’ minds.

NEVER SCARED

In the summer of 2008, The New Yorker featured a cover called “The Politics
of Fear.” The cover depicted an Afro-wearing, gun-toting Michelle Obama
and her husband, presidential candidate Barack Obama, clad in a turban, in
the Oval Office, engaging in a conspiratorial fist bump under a picture of
Osama Bin Laden. Created by Barry Blitt, the cover, according to the
magazine, sought to “satirize the use of scare tactics and misinformation in
the presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign.” Americans on
the right expressed angst about whether Michelle Obama was a militant
Angry Black Woman and whether her husband, whose father had been
Muslim, was himself a sympathizer with those who erroneously used Islam to
justify terroristic acts. The cover was roundly condemned. Blitt had gambled
that coming face-to-face with their ugliest and most entrenched ideas about
the Obamas, about Black men and women, and about Muslims would force
American conservatives to realize the absurdity of these belief systems. It
did not. The cover seemed to reinscribe rather than to resist the stereotypes,
since it trusted that white Americans would be able to acknowledge their
own problematic assumptions about race.
In 2015, at her Tuskegee University commencement speech, Mrs. Obama
responded specifically to this cover, which she argued was rooted in the
“fears and misperceptions of others.” Those fears and misperceptions
brought up questions about her, such as “Was I too loud, or too angry or too
emasculating?” She said that the cover “knocked [her] back a bit,” and made
her wonder “just how are others seeing me?” The anti-Blackness at the heart
of white fear is predicated on a misrecognition of the humanity of Black

people. Whether that misrecognition is willful or unwitting matters less than
its harmful outcomes. Impact matters more than intent.
Donald Trump is the logical extension of white America’s most fantastical
and distorted ideas about people of color and their power in the Americas.
Despite Barack Obama’s eventual wins in 2008 and 2012, the fear that Blitt
captured in his cover presaged a rise of populist resentment against the
Obamas specifically, and Blacks and Muslims in general, that would come
roaring back fiercely. In the 2016 elections, white fear ruled the day. Trump
used fear to prime the pumps of white American racial resentment by fanning
the flames of the birther myth against Barack Obama, claiming that Obama
was not a native-born American citizen. For years Trump stoked the fires of
the birther myth, continuing even after Canadian-born Ted Cruz became his
primary opposition in the 2016 Republican primaries. Donald Trump deftly
used the narrative of national belonging to make some groups, namely white
male voters (across class lines), feel visible, heard, and affirmed. All voters
should have access to candidates that make them feel recognized, but there’s
a problem when your notion of recognition is predicated on someone else’s
exclusion. There’s a problem when visibility becomes a zero-sum game,
where making one group’s demands visible renders every other group’s
political concerns obscure. Only white supremacy demands such exacting
and fatalistic math.
Trying to make sense of the 2016 election outcome, Toni Morrison named
the problem one of white fear. “The sad plight of grown white men,
crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic
stops, to push black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children.
Only the frightened would do that. Right?” she inquires of us. “So scary are
the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have
flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against
the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified,
with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.”
I once read that the root of all anger is fear, particularly a fear of those
things we cannot control. White rage is deeply connected to a fear of losing
privilege and status in a browning American empire. When your entire
worldview is predicated on being on top, sinking from the top even a little

bit can feel like an annihilation. My fluffy friends, those who have had many
more years of therapy than I have had, are quick to tell me that feelings and
emotions are not to be judged and that there are no right and wrong feelings.
Feelings just are. But I am as judgmental as I can possibly be of white fear. It
is an illegitimate political emotion that has done no good that I can think of,
and more harm than it is humanly possible to tally. To say it in terms that the
“all lives matter” crowd might understand, all fears matter, but some fears
are treated as though they matter more.
To be Black is to grow up in a world where white feelings can become
dangerous weapons. If you’re Black, white fear is frequently lethal. I’m
willing to concede my skepticism toward feelings as a potential personality
flaw, but my approach to life is to view feelings as employees that can’t be
trusted—which is to say, my feelings are subject to intense
micromanagement. I have to be clear about how I want my feelings to work
for me. I set up strict parameters and rules about how they should be
engaged, the lines they can’t cross, and I am quick to put my feelings in a time
out when I feel they are getting out of hand. Frankly, I resent others who
allow their feelings to roam around unmanaged, demanding everybody’s
attention.
My feelings, for their part, go on strike against me all the time, showing up
with picket signs that scream truths I’d rather not hear, all while demanding
that I renegotiate terms. But if you are Black and hope to live to adulthood,
micromanaging your feelings is necessary for survival. Your feelings can’t go
on strike in the workplace. You can’t karate chop every white retail service
person who follows you around a store, is rude to you on the phone, or takes
their good sweet time bringing your food to the table. You also can’t karate
chop the well-meaning white friend who moves to reassure you that “it
wasn’t racial. Clearly they’re just jerks.”
I think I am a micromanager of feelings because my Black mama didn’t
play that. Pouting, angry tears, and back talk were strictly not allowed in our
house. The image of children stomping up the stairs and slamming doors after
getting mad at their parents was some shit reserved for white families on TV.
I was convinced as a child that if I ever tried such a thing in my mother’s
house, she already had a burial site picked out for me. Always sensitive and

quick to cry after being scolded, I tried mightily to hold back tears lest I hear
my mother saying, “Suck up all that crying before I really give you something
to cry about.” Unlike many Black children in my community, my mother
wasn’t fond of giving whippings. Those were few and far between for me.
But the specter of the switch or the belt was always there—for me and for
every Black kid I knew. That was what my community understood good
parenting to be. Unmanaged emotions were one swift way to arrange a
summit for your rear end and the belt. No one had time for my intense Blackgirl emotions.
Black children learn early that our fears are not, and cannot be, the first
order of business in a family trying to survive. When I was seven, and
starting the third grade, my mother asked me one day, “If I get you a key to the
house, do you feel like you can come home on the bus after school every day
and stay by yourself until I get home from work?” “No,” I told her, “I would
just like to keep going to daycare.” The look on my mom’s face, a mix of
disappointment, distress, and a bit of disdain, told me that “No” had not been
the right answer. It wasn’t really a question.
Skyrocketing childcare costs continue to disadvantage Black families,
particularly in households like mine, headed by a single breadwinner mother.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 60.9 percent of all
Black families are headed by a single mother who is the breadwinner for the
family. Another 20 percent of Black households rely on a married mother as
the breadwinner. In every state in the United States, there are more single
than married Black mothers. In every state in the United States, there are
more married white mothers than single ones. In twenty-four states, the cost
of childcare exceeds the cost of rent, and in many states the cost of childcare
exceeds the 10 percent income-affordability threshold established by federal
agencies. In my hometown, childcare currently costs 8 percent of a family’s
budget, that is, if they make enough to meet cost-of-living standards. And if
you live in a big city, forget about it. In the 1980s, my mother was an hourly
employee for a local construction firm. Childcare costs surely exceeded the
affordability threshold.
At age seven, my latchkey status became official. I was just going to have
to “be a big girl,” get over my fear of monsters in the closet and boogie men

under the bed, and do my mama a solid. To manage both our fears, my mother
insisted that I call her as soon as I walked into the house and closed and
locked the door behind me. I was not allowed to go outside until she came
home. And when darkness came earlier and earlier at the end of each fall, I
would turn on all the lights, walk into all the rooms, and make sure no one
who shouldn’t be there was there. I don’t know if latchkey adulthood is a
thing, but since I have lived alone for the entirety of my adult life, I do often
still turn on all the lights when I arrive home and walk into all the rooms to
make sure there are no intruders. Part of what being a latchkey kid taught me
is that overcoming fear is first and foremost about having the courage to look
under the bed.
Black girls learn that managing our fears is the key to our families’ ability
to survive and thrive. At the beginning of third grade, I conquered my fear of
being home alone for the greater good of my family. By the beginning of
fourth grade, my mother had saved enough even on her limited income to
purchase a modest ranch-style home for the two of us. She didn’t tell me then,
but perhaps this was the plan all along. Either her money could go to
childcare, or it could go toward an investment in our future. Nearly thirty
years after my mother was making these kinds of choices, working moms of
color too often still have to choose between housing security and child care.
In order for my mother’s plan to work, I had to do my seven-year-old-Blackgirl part and refuse to let whatever boogie monsters were under my bed not
have the final say. What might it mean to start from the perspective of a Black
girl’s fears and build a world that is safe for her? In hindsight, I can see the
material difference it made when I agreed with my mom that I was “big girl”
enough to stay home. No matter who you are, the stakes of giving in to your
fears are high.
One of my Sunday school teachers told us that F.E.A.R.s are just
“fantasies, expecting a reality.” Years later, a different teacher told us that
fears are just “false expectations appearing real.” Black Christianity
demands that we regularly confront our fears and identify the falsities that
shape them. From childhood forward, you are told to memorize the words of
2 Timothy 1:7: “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of
love, and of a sound mind.” This verse was to be kept in the spiritual arsenal

for moments when anxiety and fear began to encroach on your sense of peace.
When you felt anxious, you were supposed to speak back to your fears,
reminding them that fear does not come from a divine place. We were
learning that our fears, like our feelings in general, were not facts. No matter
the clever acronym, fear was rooted in falsity and fantasy. Fear was always a
thing to be managed by increasing our faith.
In fact, I do believe fear and faith can coexist. But what I appreciate is
that the Black Church demands a continual reckoning with what is true and
what is false. Often religious traditions, invested as they are in what many
think of as the mythic and fantastical, are not given credit for being invested
in anything real. But the Black Church is one of the historic structuring
institutions for the social life of Black people, and it has always known that
part of Black survival is about having the best tools to assess what is and is
not a real threat. In other words, the Black Church doesn’t have the luxury of
acting like white supremacy, sexism, and homophobia aren’t real. These
structural forces take Black lives every day, sometimes through violent
deaths, sometimes after a lifetime of privation. Because of the commitment of
Black churches to running food pantries and tax workshops for the elderly
and trying to meet the needs of impoverished folks in their local
communities, they know well that some of the material realities Black people
face are scary. As I said in the “Grown Woman Theology” chapter, churches
have an exceedingly long way to go in combating matters of homophobia and
sexism. And, frankly, modern-day Black churches also have to reckon with
all the ways in which they have walked away from the clarity of King’s
generation about the role the church should play in ending white supremacy.
Still, it was at church that I learned how to have a healthy relationship with
my fears, anxieties, and fantasies.
White fear is not subject to any such cultural or religious scrutiny. In fact,
white fears are routinely treated as fact rather than fantasy. When the police
shot John Crawford in August 2014 in a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio, those
who called 911 said he was walking around the store pointing the gun at
people. Later the man who made that call retracted his statement, but his
retraction came too late. Video footage confirms that John Crawford simply
perched the air rifle, which he had picked up at the store, on his shoulder as

he shopped. In this instance, white fear of the fantastical threat of Black men
caused the police to take John Crawford’s life. Three months later, two
police officers rolled up on and shot Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old kid
playing with a toy gun in a park near his neighborhood. The cops who shot
Tamir without even giving him a chance to put down the gun or identify it as
a toy claimed to have feared for their lives. None of these officers was
charged and convicted; their fears were treated as facts. In other words,
white fears rest on the presumption that they are rooted in fact; everyone who
is nonwhite is treated as though their fears are the stuff of fantasy.
In April 2017, a Texas police officer shot and killed fifteen-year-old
Jordan Edwards as he and his brothers were frantically driving away from a
party where other young people had started shooting. That officer, Roy
Oliver, was fired and charged with murder. He subsequently pled not guilty.
But Jordan Edwards is still dead. Fear—over having your life or a loved
one’s life snatched away by those sworn to protect and serve—is at least one
of the emotions that animates the cry of “Black Lives Matter.” Most white
people fixate on the anger and rage that feels palpable at Black Lives Matter
protests. They view this rage with a studied indifference and a willful
ignorance that is about not seeing or validating Black people’s fear and right
to be afraid. In the era of Fox News and fake news, the Black Lives Matter
movement has been branded a “hate group” on par with the Ku Klux Klan.
One online interlocutor characterized the political program of BLM as a
desire for “Black supremacy.” Black supremacy is not a thing, if you were
wondering. But the same folks who believe in the possibility of Black
supremacy also have a problem with Black Entertainment Television, Black
History Month, and T-shirts that proclaim that Black Girls Rock. I refuse to
spend my time trying to help these kinds of basic-ass white people.
White fear is the cultural refuse of white supremacy. Strewn about and
never properly disposed of, it becomes an environmental hazard for those of
us who must live in the neighborhoods (metaphoric and otherwise) where
white folks choose to dump all their shit. If I’m being generous (and I’m not
required to be generous), I can understand why shifting power relations in a
world where white folks have always been unequivocally dominant could
have them all in their feelings. The problem is that, with the exception of

former president Barack Obama and a few well-placed Black millionaires
and billionaires, Black people don’t have any appreciable levels of
institutional power. The U.S. Senate currently has three Black senators.
That’s the most it’s ever had, and we are nearly two decades into the twentyfirst century. In 2013, the median net wealth for white families was over
$141,000. For Black families, it was $11,000. According to a joint study by
the Institute for Policy Studies and the Corporation for Enterprise
Development, it would take Black people 228 years to catch up to the amount
of net wealth that white people currently possess. White people fear a
fantastical rise of racial power that they have made damn-near structurally
impossible for Black people to achieve.
Letting fear rule is dangerous if you’re a regular person. If you have levels
of privilege and power unmatched in the modern world, being ruled by fear
is catastrophic for those with less power than you. Fear of Black people is
one of the grandest delusions of white supremacy. It’s the reason why even
police officers of color—Black, Asian, and Latino—are often quick on the
trigger when they are policing Black men. In Charlotte, North Carolina, on
September 20, 2016, a Black officer shot Keith Lamont Scott as he was
sitting in his car waiting on his grandchild to get off the school bus. The
officer said Scott looked suspicious and that he feared for his life. Scott had
no weapon. A Latino officer shot Philando Castile. White fear of Black
people is not limited to white Americans. It is rooted in the ideology of white
supremacy, a virus that infects us all. That Black lives are at the mercy of
those emboldened and sanctioned by the state to enact the worst of their
fantasies upon us is enough to make us lose faith in the whole damn system.
Curiosity is often the first casualty of the politics of fear. Sometimes the
things we fear most are our questions. More specifically, we fear the
questions to which we don’t have answers. When we are afraid, we stop
asking questions and start seeking short-term solutions. The work of my
hands is the work of teaching students how to ask more and better questions.
It is the work of rescuing curiosity from the clutches of fear. What kind of
world can (white) fear really create? What is the end game of white
supremacy? And what would it mean to start from the fears of the
marginalized and build a world that is safe for them?

Though I grew up in a religious household, my mother and stepfather
encouraged my questions. But I was so obsessed with getting the right answer
that often my natural skepticism took a back seat to my overachiever
impulses. Having a carefully ordered world is important for working-class
Black girls trying to make it out of the neighborhood and on to bigger and
better. And sometimes the hood and the structures that beget it don’t make
time for Black kids with questions. At some point, it became more important
to me to pass the tests, get the right SAT scores, write perfect literary
analyses of novels, and produce scholarship-winning essays for college than
to nurture my endless curiosity.
It was years of extended access to the classroom that helped me overcome
my fear of asking questions. If we cannot or will not ask questions, then we
are far, far from the path to freedom. Orderly knowledge systems appeal to
that part of me that is always seeking a clear and linear path forward. But, of
course, life is not given to linearity. I already told y’all that I’m a
micromanager of emotions, and sometimes our questions show up in the form
of feelings. Part of learning to manage our feelings is learning to confront our
questions.
One way that we’ve seen questions arrive in the form of feelings is in the
generalized white anxiety and distrust of President Obama. Rather than
digging deep to find the question at the core of the anxiety, too many white
people let the feeling become an indicator of Obama’s fitness and right to
lead. The question—“Can I, a white person, trust a Black man to lead this
country?”—was left unasked by too many. There are also liberal white folks
who went into the voting booth believing they could. But they stopped after
asking the question one time. Voting once or even twice for a Black man is
not enough to undo years of anti-Black social conditioning. Fear and feelings,
especially about racism, have to be managed constantly. White supremacy
does not fall through singular acts of white resistance and magnanimity.
There are assuredly people who voted for Obama in 2008 and then voted for
Trump in 2016. This is because their support for Obama was predicated on
him emerging as some sort of Magical Black Jesus figure. When he couldn’t
meet such ridiculous expectations, many white folks returned to their comfort
zone.

Every time I write about the emotional lives of white people, some white
person sends me an email or a tweet and tells me, “How dare you act like
you know what white folks are thinking?!” Haven’t white folks learned that
Black folks know them far better than they know themselves? Our survival is
predicated on our willingness to study you, your impulses, your hard
expressions, your laughter (and whether it reaches your eyes), your gifts, and
your lies. Black survival means being endlessly obsessed with figuring out
the depths to which white folks will fall to maintain a position of dominance.
Sometimes Black survival requires that we be the wet nurses and
handmaidens for an endless project of white navel-gazing. In order to save
our own lives, we have to be brutally honest about what the worst of white
folks, as Kiese Laymon calls them, are capable of, even if no one else will.
Politicians on the right know that the kind of work we do in college
classrooms—the work of inquiry and deep questioning, the work of nurturing
curiosity, the work of exposing the myths and fantasies that inform students’
fears—can create an informed and powerful citizenry. The students who sit
in college classrooms like mine today can become powerful leaders in the
fight against racism, sexism, and homophobia two decades from now.
Politicians seek to quash all possibility of this kind of work. Recently I found
out that I had been placed on a “professor watchlist” for a national nonprofit
organization whose mission is to remove “liberal bias” from the college
classroom. What they mean by “liberal bias” is that they don’t want a Black
woman standing in a classroom, teaching college students that racism is real,
sexism is a problem, homophobia is repugnant, and capitalism and the elitism
it begets are worthy of our deepest skepticism. This is not knowledge, they
say. It’s my “racial agenda” governing how I run my classroom. By letting me
know that they are watching me, they are hoping to scare me. But this is why
I’m “never scared,” as we say in the crunk South. This doesn’t mean I’m
never afraid. Being never scared has a cultural inflection to it that is about
defiance, and about a refusal to be cowed into submission. To be black is to
know you are being watched—at all times—anyway.
This is, in fact, the conundrum of being a Black woman in the academy;
that we are simultaneously hypervisible and invisible. Patricia Hill Collins
once called the constant surveillance that attends to our movement in the

ivory tower the politics of containment. Being under the presence of the
white gaze is supposed to elicit different behavior from me—namely to
curtail whatever illicit behaviors that I am automatically presumed to be
engaging in. Moving through the world as though under the constant gaze of
white folks is something Black people with middle-class aspirations are
taught from a young age to perfect. To repeat part two of the Respectables’
Credo: “Never let them catch you slippin’.” Be perfect. Never fuck up.
And my response is, “Fuck all that.” Sometimes you have to have the
clarity that Ida B. Wells had when she told white people the truth about
themselves and their lynching lies. She knew she was poking the hornet’s
nest, but it was a “Give me liberty or give me death” moment. Now, look.
Any given day in my college classroom is never that dramatic. Mostly I don’t
go in thinking my life is on the line. But with the uptick in open-carry permits
on college campuses, and white men’s penchant for taking out their anger,
frustration, entitlement, and anxiety on innocent bystanders, the stakes of
telling the truth are becoming higher and higher. Right-wing organizations are
not above using threats and intimidation to corral and suffocate modes of
knowledge production that challenge the politics of fear. They insist that I be
scared. But what they don’t know is that I’ve been slaying boogie men since
age seven. White folks are not entitled to my fear.
When I was in graduate school, it was customary that when Black students
ran into each other on our predominantly white Southern campus, we would
stop, embrace, and chat it up, so happy were we to see other friendly Black
faces in what could sometimes be a hostile environment. But, frequently, if
there were more than three of us together, white faculty or students might
walk by and passive-aggressively say, “Oh what are y’all over here doing?
Plotting the revolution?” Our running joke whenever more than three of us
were gathered was to yell, “Disperse, disperse! You know they can’t handle
it.” The joke was that we kept right on talking, out in the open, even though
we knew we were conspicuous. It was our way of giving a middle finger to
our very real fear of institutional surveillance and containment.
There is something deeply profane about the politics of white fear and, for
this reason, the sacred is not the only register in which Black folks should
respond to it. Because fear is an emotion viscerally experienced in the body,

Black expressive culture that engages the body is one of the places where we
work out shit that we can’t make sense of any other way. Southern bootyshake music, the kind of stuff you can twerk to, is the place where I find the
most productive synergy between the sacred and the profane, the place where
I feel the most bodily freedom to let all my emotions—particularly the
uncomfortable ones like anger and fear—hang out and find free expression.
In both the Blues and Southern Hip Hop, Black folks have explicitly thrown
off the vestiges of respectability politics to say the shit that needs to be said.
But I’m a child of Hip Hop, not the Blues, and when I need to work out my
feelings in a bodily fashion, it is to Hip Hop that I turn, to Crunk to be exact.
Crunk music, that brand of Hip Hop indigenous to Atlanta, and to the
South more generally, gives me the lyrical and bodily vocabulary to stand up
to our collective cultural bullies with my middle fingers up. Whether it’s the
Youngbloodz yelling, “If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a FUCK!” or
Bone Crusher reminding his foes that he “ain’t never scared,” crunkness has
always been the soundtrack to my resistance. It has kept me supplied in the
lyrical defiance necessary to look white supremacy in the face and emerge
victorious.
Rejecting the politics of fear is a primary sensibility if you were born into
the Age of Hip Hop. This has been true ever since rap group N.W.A became
famous and targeted for their song “Fuck Tha Police.” Defiant and unafraid,
these young men rapped about being regular victims of police harassment and
brutality and they rejected the politics of deference that many police feel is
compulsory. Refusing to be nice to an officer, especially when he pulls you
over on a ludicrous charge is not, in fact, against the law. Incivility is not
illegal. The police know that, which is why they are jerks to Black citizens
on the regular. I was only seven years old when N.W.A told the police
exactly what they thought of them; thus, I was a little young to need or
resonate with their defiant sensibility. Nearly thirty years after N.W.A
became our generational prophets of Black rage, these same rage-inducing
conditions persist.
This is why grown-ass Black women need Beyoncé. With me, it always
comes back to Beyoncé. While her pop anthems gave me all the feminist
good feelings in my twenties, Grown Woman Beyoncé, the Beyoncé that has

emerged since her 2013 eponymous album, is on something different. Like I
mentioned before, Black feminists had all the feelings about Bey telling
bitches to “bow down” on her song “Flawless.” But every time I think about
this Trump presidency, about the magnitude of the destruction it is heaping on
communities of color, I’m grateful for every angry anthem Bey ever made.
This kind of give-no-fucks anthem has been put here for such a prophetic time
as this—a time in which white supremacists feel bold enough to try it. And
because my personal mantra has long been “Be unapologetic,” I can be found
on any given day twerking (or trying my damnedest to twerk) to “I Ain’t
Sorry,” one of my favorite tracks on her blockbuster visual album Lemonade.
“Formation,” the debut track on Lemonade, is an invitation to a Black-girl
conjuring session. In the song, the High Priestess of Hip Hop Culture tells us,
“Okay ladies. Now, let’s get in formation.” She is calling us into very
particular formations—the kinds of collective gatherings that can shift the
culture, that can combat white supremacy, and sexism, and homophobia, the
kinds of spaces that can use Black-girl magic to change the world. When
Beyoncé tells all the fly chicks to get in formation, she is asking us to get our
shit together so we can do the work that needs to be done. And the stakes are
high as hell, because Black people are being killed. So, she reminds us,
“Slay, trick. Or you get eliminated.” Now that might be a reference to some
kind of dance competition. But it’s also a revision of “Never let them catch
you slippin’.” Be the best. Be exceptional. Or get eliminated.
The video for “Formation” pays homage to post-Katrina New Orleans and
ends with Bey using the weight of her body to sink a New Orleans police
cruiser into the flood’s waters. Putting middle fingers up to the state that
incarcerates the most people per capita anywhere on the globe, and including
an image of a Black boy dancing for his life while staring down a line of
police in riot gear, is a bold fuck-you to the forces that seek to snuff out
Black lives. I fucks with Grown Woman Beyoncé, even more than I fucked
with her during my girlhood, because Lemonade gives us a portrait of a
Black woman reckoning with her rage, in both its intimate and its structural
dimensions.
But I also love the political vision that emerges from the visual album that
accompanies Lemonade. That political vision centers its hope in the

collective magic, the indefatigable stamina, and the enduring power of Black
women and girls. When Beyoncé used her own body to sink that police
cruiser, she reminded us of all the ways Black women are willing to put their
lives on the line to combat state violence. The sacrifices that Black women
and girls make create more opportunities and possibilities for our
communities. Getting into formation with other like-minded folks is one way
we can help our fears not to win. In those formations, we can find joy,
support, and strategies to help us overcome. When Black girls get in
formation, the nation should follow.

LOVE IN A HOPELESS PLACE

My grandmother had this way of beginning conversations with me in the
middle. Perhaps you figured that out from the impromptu sex talk. She’d start
conversations with an accusation. On the regular, she told me, “You need to
stop being so mean! Then you could get a boyfriend!” After saying this, she’d
cut her roaming eyes at me, scolding, assessing, and reading me. It was as
though she had been waiting on an opportunity to tell me about myself. Who
says my goal in life is to get a boyfriend, Grandmama?! And if by “mean,”
you mean “serious,” about my business, and inhospitable to bullshit, well,
wonder where I got that from?! Fuming internally, I just shook my head,
frustrated at this unsolicited intrusion and unwelcome advice. How could I
tell Grandmama that my lack of a boyfriend wasn’t because of a lack of
desire on my part? From what I could ascertain, absolutely nobody wanted
me. She started these conversations with me during my vacations home from
college, which was just about the same time I realized that education and
smarts weren’t necessarily a pathway to finding a bae.
My grandmama had never understood why I wanted to go thousands of
miles away, “upstate” as Southerners call it, to college. “Stop studyin’
yourself!” she’d admonish every time she caught seven- or eight-year-old me
zoned out in a world of my own thoughts. “All those books gone run ya
crazy,” she’d pronounce emphatically. Maybe she was right. My love for
books had taken me miles and miles away. To the world of beautiful Black
boys at Howard. I wasn’t the first in my family to attend college, but my goal
was to be the first to graduate. That meant I had to keep my head in the books
and my legs closed. Neither my mother nor my grandmother ever preached

such a sermon to me. But they didn’t have to. Ambition was its own
motivation. I couldn’t let knuckleheaded boys come along and ruin my life
chances. At least, this is what I told myself. But staying in the books and then
later focusing on my career wasn’t in the least bit hard when literally no one
was trying to date me.
How could I tell my grandmother that? That I didn’t have half the swag
she’d apparently had at my age. That brothers didn’t want me. And that it
wasn’t a figment of my imagination. On two separate occasions at Howard,
first with King and then with Rob, classmates had looked me in my face and
said, “You’re so unattractive.” I had dared on both occasions to beat each of
them in an argument. When they were left without anything of substance to
say, they both did what men learn to do when they can’t dominate a woman
intellectually—they berate her physically. But I wasn’t a feminist yet. I didn’t
know then that this is one way patriarchy shows up. I cried in front of Rob,
despite myself, which only made him despise me more. By the time it
happened with King, I was less taken aback. Still, I had been humiliated by
two men who figured out the easiest way to rob me of my sense of victory.
They made me feel unlovable.
I hadn’t wanted either of them and had cared little about their romantic
assessments of me. Still, I winced upon learning that being smart had made
me ugly to them. They were willing to say it, but I wondered what other
romantic suitors had come to similar conclusions. Just how undesirable was
I? Maybe this is why college had been a romantic drought for me. Maybe I
was what the Combahee River Collective called smart-ugly: “We discovered
that all of us, because we were ‘smart’ had also been considered ‘ugly,’ i.e.,
‘smart-ugly.’ ‘Smart-ugly’ crystallized the way in which most of us had been
forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our ‘social’ lives. The
sanctions in the Black and white communities against Black women thinkers
is comparatively much higher than for white women, particularly ones from
the educated middle and upper classes.” The women of Combahee put a
language to the way that patriarchy and the men who love it separate women
into categories of smart and pretty. Or friendable and fuckable. The girls who
manage to be the perfect combination of both have access to some juju that I
still haven’t figured out.

On another occasion, a guy friend asked me one night while we were
working on a campus project, “Brittney, why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
He had a girlfriend, so I knew this wasn’t some awkward roundabout attempt
of his to kick it to me. I sat, searching for an answer but coming up with none.
Really, I wanted to reply, “I don’t know. Can you tell me why?” It was an
odd question, one that I didn’t have an answer for then, one that I don’t have
an answer for now. That question haunted me, for the rest of college, for the
entirety of my twenties, and for a good portion of my thirties.
What is wrong with me?
My grandmother said I was too mean, but surely some of my overly
serious demeanor was a mask, an armor designed to keep men from seeing
my innermost feelings. How could I take off the armor when there were no
guarantees that men would recognize and, more to the point, want the real
me? And what was wrong with being a woman who preferred the company
of her own thoughts much of the time? On plenty of occasions, men, white
and Black alike, have yelled at me to “Smile!” when they catch me going
about my day zoned off in my own world. Grandmama had tried to warn me
from childhood that “studyin’ myself” would cause trouble. But I didn’t
listen, never making the connection that such practices made me seem like the
stereotype—angry and unapproachable. It mattered less that white folks think
unsmiling Black women are plotting the revolution. I revel in denying them
smiles. But it felt costly to know that brothers were using similar assessments
—that women who weren’t smiling were women who had no interest in
romance. Simpletons. Or, as we might call such brothers today, basics.
Grandmama began sounding the alarm about my singleness long before the
rest of the family did. But when I hit age thirty with no appreciable
prospects, the Cooper women staged an intervention. During Christmas, both
my mother and my aunt Colleen pulled me to the side—separately—to say,
“You’re so hard on men.” Apparently, they’d seen one too many a feminist
rant on Facebook. Face hot with indignation, I looked at them both pointedly,
and said, “This is the woman you raised me to be.” “I know,” they both told
me, in conversations that echoed each other so much I wondered if they had
planned it. Despite their fierce investments in being independent, none of
these women who raised me had ever struggled with getting or keeping a

man. Their critiques made it seem as if I had learned all the wrong things
from them. There was an art to “letting a man be a man” and not making him
feel intimidated, my mother told me, as she recounted strategies for how to
date a man who made less money while not offending his ego. Who has time?
Or, better yet, interest? At what point is it fair to ask men to act like grown
human beings?
But there is no one more insistent than a mother with a grandbaby agenda.
Despite the fact that I have arranged my whole life so that I don’t “end up” a
single mother like my mother was for most of my life, her current refrain has
become, “You could have a baby. You don’t have to get married.” What is
this blasphemy that my good Christian, pastor’s wife of a mother is speaking?
With every rant she reads on my Facebook page about how brothers need to
decolonize their minds, divest from the patriarchy, and cease and desist with
the bullshit, my mother can feel her future grandmother status slipping from
her grasp, all of it going the way of the few viable eggs that my post-thirtyfive body has left. My aunt, on the other hand, the one who has remained
single by choice for her entire life, wants me to be lucky in love and to have
a partner to go on adventures with. Her partner looks slightly like radio host
Tom Joyner and drives a Mercedes convertible. These two perpetual
teenagers use this fact to aid and abet their entrance to all the grown-andsexy post-fifty parties that they go to around town.
If I could loosen up and stop being so mean and ornery, which is
Southern-speak for one who takes herself way too seriously, then maybe men
could warm up to my charms. All the Cooper ladies mean well, but, on
feminist principle, I have to reject any advice that blames sisters for the lack
of partnering options. So if it ain’t our fault, then whose fault is this shitty
state of affairs?
Real talk? I blame Bill Clinton.
I mentioned earlier that some of the baggage Black women carry has to do
with the devastating moment when we realize how much our choices around
love and marriage are limited by a fucked-up set of social circumstances. I
blame Bill Clinton for those social circumstances, and let me tell you why. It
is his two terms in office that are most singularly responsible for the
structural devastation of Black intimacy and the piss-poor state of Black

love, generally, among all of us born after 1980. The presidential election of
2016 became a referendum on Hillary Clinton’s support of the Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which her husband signed into
law during his first term as president. At the time, Hillary championed her
husband’s tough-on-crime legislation, parroting an upsurge in rhetoric about
the rise of a class of teenage “superpredators.” Criminologist John DiIulio,
who, at that time, taught at Princeton, began arguing that given skyrocketing
rates of violent crimes committed by teens between the mid-1980s and the
mid-1990s, the country had a problem on its hands. The number of young
Blacks and Latinos would continue to grow, and with them a crime problem
the likes of which the country had never seen. Lawmakers concluded that the
solution was to lock them up.
When Bill Clinton signed the 1994 crime bill into law, effecting policy at
the federal level, it created a ferment of tough-on-crime policies in forty-five
states. The crime bill also funded massive increases in police officers across
the country. Most striking were laws that allowed juveniles to be tried as
adults for violent crimes, and laws that allowed juvenile offenders to receive
automatic life sentences for certain crimes.
Moreover, this rhetoric about violent Black male teenagers shaped the
social context of my Black male counterparts during our adolescent years.
Black boys were being expelled at higher rates than their white male
counterparts. Today, Black school-age boys are expelled three times as often
as white school-age boys. And black boys in the late nineties were part of the
first major wave of the school-to-prison pipeline in which schools pursued
zero-tolerance policies for fighting. This meant that Black youth were
frequently suspended or expelled and sometimes arrested either for fighting
or for truancy. Black male teenagers, boys who were not yet men, became
bona fide enemies of the state, the primary targets in law enforcement’s war
on drugs and crime. The war on Black boys and men was not new. But it
reached a fever pitch just as my generation was coming of age.
In the many years since, none of DiIulio’s predictions have come true. He
and other white male criminologists stoked the most base fears of white
America, and his erroneous conclusions devastated the social, economic, and
intimate prospects of a whole generation of Black folks—my generation of

Black folks. These crime policies took greatest effect just as people born in
the late 1970s and early 1980s began reaching adolescence and young
adulthood. Late Gen Xers, cusp Millennials or “Xennials” (like myself), and
Millennials proper began to use the language of Black men as an
“endangered species” to name the epidemic levels of casualty and outmigration of Black men into prisons that we witnessed. We believed the myth
that there were more Black men in jail than in college. There never were, but
the numbers were always far too close for comfort. And, of course, there
were more Black women than Black men in college. Howard’s ratio in the
early 2000s was 3:2, and that was pretty good among college populations.
These days, DiIulio is notably repentant, having admitted to being wrong.
Now he spends a great deal of time trying to help the very communities that
were hurt by the whack social science that he used to swear by. Twenty years
later, it amounts, for him, to a heavy, if sincere, shoulder shrug. For those of
us young Black people who weathered the storm, the consequences have
been far more severe, far more sinister. I have spent many a Christmas
holiday traveling to even smaller rural areas of Louisiana than the one I grew
up in to visit the many men in my family who have been victimized by the
politics of mass incarceration. I have watched them attempt to father
children, to maintain partnerships, and to hold on to hope from behind bars. I
have seen the endless cotton fields that they spend their days gazing out upon,
in the Podunk backwoods of Louisiana, much like the view that many of our
ancestors must have gazed upon 150 or more years ago. And, for those of us
making life go on while critical parts of our family units were locked away, I
have watched children spiral and struggle, and partners keep vigil, and
mothers labor on makeshift altars in prayer, waiting on men they love to
come home.
I have also been forced to play a numbers game in the name of love that
has increasingly diminished returns for every year that you don’t win. And by
winning, I mean finding someone to spend your life with. I wish I were
mature enough, feminist enough, not to think of marriage or the securing of
lifelong partnership as a win, or of the absence of these things as a loss, but I
do. Despite myself. Sometimes I run the numbers in my head, but this, too, is
a double-edged sword. When I see the abysmal state of Black love by the

numbers, it’s hard to blame myself, but it’s hard to have any sense of hope
either.
Only 49 percent of Black women with college degrees marry men with
some post-secondary education. Fifty-eight percent of married Black women
college graduates marry men with an overall lower level of education than
they have. Moreover, more than 60 percent of Black women college
graduates between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, peak childbearing
years, have never been married. Compare that number with a mere 38
percent of white women for whom this is true.
According to the Pew Research Center, 36 percent of all Black folks
above the age of twenty-five had never been married in the year 2012. In
1960, that number was 9 percent. For white people, those numbers were 16
percent and 8 percent, respectively. So while the numbers doubled for our
white counterparts, they quadrupled for African Americans. The rates of
Black men and Black women who have never been married are roughly equal
at 36 percent and 35 percent, respectively. But it is Black women who have
experienced a far sharper decline in marriageability over the last fifty years.
In 1960, 12 percent of Black men over age twenty-five had never been
married. And 8 percent of Black women over age twenty-five had never been
married. Today the number has tripled for Black men, but more than
quadrupled for Black women. Black women who have never married
outnumber Black men who have never married at a rate of 100 to 92.
Most women across races list stable employment as a primary factor in
whom they choose as a mate. It’s not even about a brother needing to be rich.
But can he at least have a job and the ability to pay his own bills? When the
Pew Research Center accounted for employment status using census data,
they found that there are “51 employed Black men for every 100 young Black
women.” Decades earlier, the numbers were far more equal: There were
nearly 90 employed Black men for every 100 young Black women. Here’s
the rub: “Among never-married white, Hispanic, and Asian American young
adults, the ratio of employed men to women is roughly equal—100 men for
every 100 women.” To add insult to this clear injury, Black folks attach far
more importance to marriage than white folks do, and yet we get married far
less. Fifty-eight percent of Black folks believe that couples should marry if

they plan to spend their lives together. Only 44 percent of white people
believe the same thing.
And we haven’t even begun to talk about what singleness means for Black
women economically. In 2010, the Insight Center for Community Economic
Development found that single Black women in the prime working ages of
thirty-six to forty-nine have a median net wealth of $5. Five whole dollars.
Single white women in this same cohort had a net wealth of $42,600. But for
every sister who has wished at rent time for a partner with whom to split
costs, those numbers get met with our most ardent “Tell us something we
don’t know.”
Given the WTF nature of these statistics, it is absolutely high time that we
stop blaming Black women for what is clearly a structural problem. This shit
simply is not our fault. Social structures have intimate consequences, and
rates of incarceration, employment, and education shape partnering options.
Understanding the piss-poor state of Black relationships cannot be reduced to
a conversation about individual moral failings. It’s not that white folks are
less screwed up than we are. It’s that they have far more chances to get it
right. White people have more access to marriage and partnership because
they have more access to absolutely everything else: jobs, housing, safety,
and wealth. In my small town, white girls started getting married right out of
college. By the time I came home for the ten-year reunion, more of my white
classmates were married than not. For my Black women classmates, the
situation was exactly the opposite. In the ensuing years, many of these same
white girls have gotten divorced. Most of them are seriously dating or have
remarried. Most of the Black girls still haven’t married husband number one.
Having fewer chances to succeed means that you have far fewer chances to
fail. It also means that the stakes are ridiculously high every single time a
potentially good brother walks through the door.
Those stakes show up when you put up with a man who doesn’t treat you
right for longer than you should because fear of being alone feels like too
much to bear. For Black women, those stakes show up when we date brothers
far outside our economic league because we fear being called “bougie,”
“uppity,” and “elitist” if we don’t want to give a broke brother a chance.
During my first year as a professor, I was out having dinner alone at the local

Panera Bread. I frequently take myself out to dinner because, as a single
person who doesn’t have a typical office job, it often happens that I can go
days without seeing anyone of consequence. On this particular night, I was
out in my small Southern college town having dinner alone to beat back the
loneliness awaiting me at my house. One of the servers came over to sweep
the area near me and dropped a note at my booth, calling me cute and asking
me for my number on the back of a receipt. Though I had not imagined a
brother working for close to minimum wage at Panera to be my best
partnering option, my politics demanded that I put aside elitism. He was cute.
I said yes.
He took me on a nice date a few days later and seemed interesting and
passionate. Because he drove a jalopy, I picked him up and dropped him off
at his father’s house, where he lived. A few days after that, he asked to come
over to my house for a movie night in. When he got there, he said, looking
around, pointedly assessing my apartment, “You got a real nice place here.” I
could see his plans for premature cohabitation starting to take shape. After
movies and mediocre sex, the first sex I had had in nearly five years, I never
talked to him again. I’m feminist enough to date a brother who makes less
money than me. I’m not feminist enough to be any man’s plan for a come-up.
When I told my mother about him later, she said, “Well, at least he will
work.” Apparently, this had become the standard—a mere willingness to
work. And Black men have clear and vocal resentment toward Black women
who want brothers with a little money. Kanye made famous these lines: “I
ain’t saying she a golddigger, but she ain’t messin’ with no broke niggas.”
From the age of twenty to twenty-nine, I was celibate with the exception
of a couple of singular and very brief encounters. That is nearly a decade
without being touched, desired, complimented, or engaged at any significant
intimate level. Dude from Panera got lucky because, at some level, I was not
sure when I would again have the opportunity. Among my friends, my years
of celibacy aren’t anywhere near record-setting. At some point, after you’ve
gone years without a man so much as smiling your way or admiring your
looks, you begin to feel invisible. You begin to doubt your own gaze.
Recognition is a human need, and there is something fundamentally violent
about a world that denies Black women recognition on a regular basis. Even

though you look in the mirror and see someone attractive staring back at you,
the fact that no one else ever seems to notice fucks with your head. The selfhelp books that you read before bed tell you that needing external validation
is a weakness. You meditate on this while you sleep, but wake craving touch
despite yourself. This thirst for compliments is probably why no one is
giving them to you. They can see how desperate you are. Desperation is
unattractive. You spiral. But what you never do is win. Statistics and
analyses about how the patriarchy is beating down your door ain’t got
nothing on the fervent, insistent desire to get chose.
Black women are eternal optimists. The numbers about absolutely
everything except getting diabetes and high blood pressure are never in our
favor. We are, therefore, usually unbowed in the face of a dismal social
prognosis. If you’re an overachieving Black girl who is used to winning
more than losing, on a good day, you imagine that you can bend the odds to
your will. On a bad day, you can know the numbers aren’t in your favor and
still obsess (over wine and Oreos) about why you aren’t part of the 51
percent who have a fighting chance. Undaunted by the numbers, the fixing
commences. We read the relationship books, go to therapy, dating workshops,
and the annual church singles conference trying to fix ourselves and each
other to prepare for ever-elusive opportunities at love. I can ashamedly
admit that I was one of the millions of Black women who made comedian
Steve Harvey a best-selling author when I ran out and purchased his book Act
Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. And up until about the year 2012 or so, I
saw every single Tyler Perry movie.
Don’t make me hand over my feminist card, please. A sister was
desperate. It wasn’t that I had abandoned my analysis of patriarchy. By day, I
stepped into classrooms all over campus challenging women and men alike
to get on board with feminism. But every night I came home to a pile of
lesson planning and an empty apartment. It had become exceedingly clear that
my feminist analysis wasn’t gonna keep me warm at night or get me laid at
all. I needed a regular old straight man, not one with a fancy analysis, to clue
me in to how dudes think and what makes them tick. I didn’t grow up in the
house with men, and I always felt at a disadvantage compared to my few
friends who did grow up with father figures in their homes. I saw Tyler

Perry’s movies and Harvey’s book as an opportunity to delve into the
emotional lives of Black men. Call it research. I needed to know: What did
brothers want? When Harvey said every man had a need to profess his love,
provide for his mate, and protect her, I recognized this as patriarchal bullshit.
For certain. Single for the entirety of my adult life, I had long been
confronting things that went bump in the night and providing for myself. And I
was proud of my self-sufficiency. My mama taught me to be. But a man
professing his love—I needed to know what made them do that. This was
valuable insight I needed if I was gonna play the game because, as things
stood, I was playing the game quite badly.
For instance, one thing that Harvey proclaimed that I think is true: If a
brother hasn’t got his career together and has no clear path toward achieving
his professional goals, it’s hard for that brother to focus on a relationship. It
doesn’t matter what feminism has to teach us about the structural realities of
unemployment and underemployment for Black men. We live in a society that
says real men provide. And if you are a man who doesn’t feel good about his
own prospects, then it’s hard to think about building with and providing for a
partner. Even among those of us feminist chicks who have a more expansive
view of these matters, we still want brothers who can share the weight and
spend a little money on us sometime.
Recently, I had a lovely first date with a guy named Mike, whom I had met
on a dating site. When the check came, I pulled out my wallet to split the bill.
One, I’m a feminist and I had kind of pressed Mike to move things offline and
into the real world. But if he had actually made me pay, that probably would
have been the end of things. Luckily, that night, patriarchy worked in my
favor. Mike balked, pushed my hand away, and lightly scolded me, saying, “I
don’t know what kinda niggas you been dating, but the man always pays.” At
that exact moment, I decided that Mike could get it.
Fast-forward eighteen months later: Mike, a lovely, sweet, thoughtful man
comes by for our weekly evening of my home-cooked meals and
conversation and cuddle time. We can’t see each other too much more than
this because he works every available hour and most weekends in order to
make a salary that will allow him to financially support himself and his two
children. Single, childless, and elated to have the consistent company of a

decent man for the first time in my adult life, I remind him that he needs to
take me out on a date. It’s been months since I last dragged him to a showing
of a new romcom. “I know,” he says. And I drop it. I’m still trying to find the
balance between advocating for myself and not being a nag. At thirty-five,
most men have children. If they are decent human beings, they take care of
those children, and this means that children and their economic and relational
needs are always the priority. Like me, Mike grew up without his dad. And,
like so many Black men who grew up with the structural shame of the
Moynihan Report and its denigration of absentee Black fathers, Mike is
trying to be superdad. For my part, I feel a mix of admiration and jealousy.
This is the first time I am witnessing up close a man making the sacrifices to
be a present father. I only knew what it looked like watching my mother do it.
I bring up this super-dad thing to Mike as we are leaving a showing of
Southside With You, a movie that I loved because of the romance and that he
loved because he’s a Barack stan. We are discussing the scene where
Michelle implores Barack to forgive his father for abandoning him. I know
Mike has all the sensitive spots about his father having left him as a child.
But since movies are (I am hoping) a great way to broach relationship topics
that are hard to discuss, I dive in. “It’s interesting that brothers our age who
didn’t have fathers have tried to overcompensate for it with their own kids by
becoming super dads,” I tell him. “It’s interesting because the lesson you
learned from your fathers leaving is that you should be better, more dedicated
fathers. But none of you thinks anything about learning to be better partners.”
He looks at me questioningly: “What do you mean?” “Well, the reason your
fathers left is often because they didn’t know or care to learn how to be good
partners to your mothers. I just find it interesting that for a whole generation
of you, y’all don’t ever think critically about what you should do differently
about the partnership piece. So many brothers still resent the mothers of their
children, but they insist on being fathers regardless.” He says, “Hmmm. I’ll
have to think about it.” And I let the conversation drop, because giving a
patriarchy 101 lecture on date night would be tantamount to cock-blocking
myself. And this good feminist still needs dick. To put it how Maya Angelou
once defined feminism, “It’d be stupid not to be on my own side.”

But it occurs to me, as I feign flexibility in the face of canceled dates
because of the kids and a reduction in date nights because of economic
pressures, that I have no idea how it feels to be a man’s number-one priority.
After the love was gone, my daddy left, too. And now that I’m dating
someone else’s daddy, insisting that my needs come first is selfish. But for
the first time in my life, I’m at least on the list of priorities. My happiness
and my needs are a consideration. This is what I tell my therapist. That what
I want more than anything is to know what it feels like to be a consideration.
Mike laps at my big-girl body and grabs my booty like he’s been waiting all
his life to find it. That counts for something, too.
Black men’s cultural anxiety about the place of money in relationships is
real and palpable. Another brother I dated once asked me, “What do you
want in a relationship?” “Well,” I told him with an S on my chest, “I don’t
need a man to give me money or pay my rent or buy me things. I can do that
myself.” “What do you want, then?” he asked rather testily. “I want a
partner, someone who shows up for me, offers emotional support, and
someone to share my life with.” “Oh,” he said, with no hint of irony, “you
want me to be gay!” This is why we can’t have nice things.
Black men’s refusal to own their feelings about how capitalism,
patriarchy, and white supremacy leave them shit out of luck on the regular
does more harm than good. Scapegoating gay brothers because the
heteropatriarchy ain’t trying to help straight brothers come up is not the
move. And when projecting vulnerability onto gay men doesn’t work, too
many brothers heap their fear, anxiety, and resentment on Black women.
Kanye made millions blaming Black women for desiring men to have some
level of economic stability. This anxiety about unstable economic prospects
is not new. Black women have been talking about the ways Black men show
their asses about this since the 1940s. In 1947, Pauli Murray, a famous civil
rights attorney, wrote an article in Negro Digest titled “Why Negro Girls
Stay Single.” She lamented that education was “a social handicap if [the
educated woman] wanted marriage.” But men didn’t date educated women,
Murray asserted, “because it would be too great a threat to their security.”
Patriarchy had made Black men feel like they should be “the lords of
creation, the breadwinners and warriors of our time and all time.” But given

economic realities that limited educational and economic opportunities, the
men of Murray’s day were mostly stunting while trying to cover up the fact
that they were “as frightened and insecure as modern women are.”
Fear can distort your view of the facts. Despite the fact that Black women
outpace Black men educationally, Black men still have far more net wealth
than Black women do. The way patriarchy is set up, men always have more
wealth and social status. And this means that marriage has long been the path
to economic stability for women of all races. Yet it is Black women who get
branded as welfare queens by the government and as gold-digging baby
mamas by Black men. At some point, brothers gotta own their shit here. They
have to own their fear. They have to own that they have always gauged their
nearness to patriarchal dominance by measuring both how far beneath white
men they fall and how far above Black women they rise. Sisters climbing the
social ladder is scary for so many brothers, but it doesn’t have to be.
About ten years ago, independent, self-supporting women were in vogue
in Black popular culture. Everyone from rapper Webbie to R&B singers NeYo and Jamie Foxx released odes to the independent woman, whom they
loved and celebrated because she didn’t need a man and had her own money.
These brothers seemed to be rejecting Kanye West’s anxiety by celebrating
the fact that a woman “who got her own” didn’t need so much from them. It
was a useful intervention, albeit brief. Most brothers I encountered were
deeply suspicious of independent women. One brother I dated sat on my
couch one night denigrating “all you independent, don’t-need-a-man types.”
When I pointed out the contradiction of hating women who were independent
and hating women who were “gold diggers” (and therefore by definition, too
dependent), all I got was a Kanye shrug.
When I was a kid and an angsty teen nerd experiencing my first crushes
and my first loves, I believed that Black men loved Black women. If the love
songs my mama played on the stereo on Saturday evenings were any
indicator, they saw us as gorgeous, magical, and worthy of their best ploys to
win our affections. Whether I was listening to my mama’s old Luther
Vandross tapes or playing Boyz II Men songs on repeat, I understood what it
meant for men to profess their love for women in their music. They sang
about sex, too, but they also sang about heartbreak, betrayal, unrequited love,

and the joy of falling in love. In high school, I lived for the moments when my
crushes asked me to slow dance at parties. By the time I reached my late
twenties, slow dancing had gone the way of the rotary phone and love songs
had turned into male bitch fests. There is a decided difference between Carl
Thomas singing “I wish I never met her at all” and Chris Brown singing
“These hoes ain’t loyal.” Sometimes I wish I could ask Black men “What did
we do to make you hate us so much?”
I know I sound old, begging for love songs and slow dances. Perhaps I’m
asking too much to demand emotional vulnerability and maturity from Black
men, and at least a smidgen of integrity from those brothers who have access
to cultural and religious pulpits. But can we tell the truth about it? Is there a
way to say, without sounding like somebody’s grandma, that three decades of
turning the disrespect of Black women into a global art form via Hip Hop
might have some intimate and emotional costs for Black folks? Is there a way
to do that without letting white supremacy off the hook for creating the very
social conditions that caused these problems in the first place? Where did all
this resentment come from? What did Black women ever do to warrant this
level of hatred? Where the fuck is the love?
It’s seriously so much easier to just blame Bill Clinton.
Late one night, I trekked to Harlem for a series of Emotional Justice
conversations that my good friend Esther Armah hosted in an attempt to get
Black women and men to be vulnerable with each other in pursuit of mutual
healing. I listened to a bunch of ostensibly in-touch, together-brothers
dialogue about their feelings, hurts, and traumas and the ways that the failure
to think this through in relationships had caused them to do harm to various
women. Like many sisters, I sat in the audience all in my feelings, grateful for
once that maybe there were a few brothers out there willing to share the
weight and do some of the emotional labor of building strong Black
relationships. Still, the audience that night was 90 percent Black women.
There is no justice in that. There can be no justice when brothers fail to show
up to have the tough conversations.
There are a few critical shifts that I think we can make that will move us
closer together. First, we need to pursue intimate solidarity with one
another. Solidarity and allyship matter as much in the bedroom as they matter

in the revolution. Hip Hop generation brothers love to talk about how their
ideal mates are “ride-or-die chicks” who are down for anything. If there is at
all a healthy or just version of ride-or-die Black relationships, it is rooted in
the concept of being allies and coconspirators. It is rooted in a notion of
partnership and solidarity. The way we love each other, or fail to, is a lifeand-death situation. Black families and Black communities can’t thrive
without love in abundance. We need intimate solidarity with one another.
Method Man said it this way in the original ride-or-die anthem: “You’re all
that I need, I’ll be there for you. If you keep it real with me, I’ll keep it real
witchu.” This is what intimate solidarity and just Black Love look like—
acknowledging that we need each other, committing to showing up for each
other, and committing to radical honesty and realness with each other.
Second, Black men have to stop heaping all of their anger and resentment
over the way that patriarchy has failed them on the backs of Black women.
Far too many brothers conceptualize freedom as the sharing of power with
white men. And every time a bid for power fails, it is sisters who get shit
upon and who are asked to pick up the broken pieces. This has to change.
More to the point, if you feel like your manhood is rooted in failure, how can
you possibly love yourself? So much of the discourse of the failure of Black
intimacy is about the ways that Black women just need to love themselves.
But when we look more closely, very often it is brothers who are oozing
wounds of self-hatred and low self-esteem. Any man who treats women as
ornamental clearly believes that outward decoration will hide inner
deficiency. They have therapists for that.
Third, straight Black men have to stop letting homophobia and misogyny
impede healthy possibilities for love. Seeing the desire for partnership as
gay is teenage-boy logic and it should have no place in the emotional lives of
grown men. Homophobia and misogyny will be the death of Black love.
Being vulnerable doesn’t make one gay or straight, and continuing to invest
in a view of romantic relationships that is set up for Black folks to lose isn’t
especially smart. When Black love succeeds in a system that hates us all,
there is something profoundly queer about that. Queer Black folks have
survived precisely because they have refused to let traditional ideas about

what love and relationships should look like dictate what is possible for
them.
Partnership, and all of the practices that are necessary to achieve it,
disrupt the social hierarchies that currently structure Black intimacy.
Partnership demands that we meet each other on equal footing. Partnership
stops placing the entire onus on Black men to profess, protect, and provide.
That’s too much weight to carry. We all need someone to speak up for us, to
look out for us, and to share resources to help us make it. We bring all our
strengths and our weaknesses to the table. We agree that no matter what we
ride for each other. We decide that we are coconspirators in a project of
Black love. We agree to do the work we need to do to be together. We center
a justice practice as a love language. We commit to being intimately and
relationally just with one another.
If my grandmother could see this lay of the land, I think she would say,
“You young folks study yourselves way too much!” In other words, we
overthink everything and take it all so deadly seriously. We have to figure out
how to commit to the fierce pursuit of joy with one another. There was a boy
whom I thought I loved, a Southern country boy intellectual, who seemed like
the prototype of the kind of man I thought I should marry. Randy was the kind
of dude who could quote Black feminist theorists like bell hooks and Patricia
Hill Collins off the dome. We were intellectual kindred spirits. He had a
reputation for being a ladies’ man, though, and once when we were honest
enough to joke about it, he said to me, “I’m a feminist. I love women.” During
one conversation, in the spring of 2008, when it looked like Barack Obama
would have a real chance of clinching the Democratic nomination, I had
lunch with Randy. He said, “I don’t understand why Michelle Obama hasn’t
quit her job yet.” Looking curiously at him, I asked, “Well, why would she?
He isn’t the nominee yet.” And in the parlance of a church boy, he said, “Yes,
but surely it’s time for her to get fully on board with his vision.” In that
moment I knew that, while Randy was a feminist intellectually, his first
impulse emotionally was to expect a high-powered career woman like
Michelle Obama to quit her job, to support her husband going after his
dreams. That wasn’t feminist. Lots of men have feminist rhetoric down, but
many of them haven’t done the emotional work of showing up for a woman

with dreams and visions of her own. I learned in that moment that marrying a
feminist dude wasn’t the goal. Instead, I learned to look for men who
genuinely like and value women as people.
Years later, though, I saw the girl Randy did marry. A lovely woman with
a career of her own, who prioritized supporting his career. None of this
surprised me. But the thing I also discovered was that she made him laugh
uproariously on the regular. I realized that even though my assessments about
the legitimacy of his feminist politics were right, and our intellectual kinship
mattered, in the end he chose a partner with whom he could find
unadulterated joy. And in this, too, is a lesson. Given the hard realities that
Black folks face in finding their way to one another, Black love is nothing if
it is not simultaneously a conduit to Black joy. The lessons seem to be: Find
someone who makes you laugh. Find someone who doesn’t allow you to take
yourself too seriously. Find someone who brings you joy. And please, please
bring back slow dancing.

FAVOR AIN’T FAIR

Survivor’s guilt shows up in a really odd way among Black radical
intellectuals. The ongoing narrative in Black social justice and academic
spaces is that working-class Black neighborhoods—the hood, the ghetto, the
projects—are revolutionary. One activist told me during a training for
organizers that it was the job of Black professionals, those of us who had
“made it,” to return to the live in the hood.
I lived for four of my first five years in the projects. I remember it. And
while the projects in the small-town South are not at all comparable to the
horror stories I hear coming out of urban ghettos, I have no intention of
returning. And I don’t have any guilt about it. The activist who insisted that I
should want to return is himself first-generation middle class. His parents
grew up in the hood, and he suffered from a serious case of FOMO. His
solution was that we should all, therefore, return.
I, on the other hand, witnessed exactly what the daily grind looked like for
my mother, who had the nerve to have middle-class aspirations as she
slowly, methodically worked her way from a place in the projects to a
modest apartment to a house. When I was about four, my mom, dad, and I
went to the A&P grocery store. My mom, still in her work clothes, looked
bone tired. As the groceries sailed down the conveyor belt, my dad stood at
the other end. When time came to pay, only my mother reached for her wallet.
I looked at Daddy, expecting, thinking, waiting on him to contribute. He
looked at me sheepishly, almost shrugging, as my mother paid for the
groceries alone. Why hadn’t my daddy helped my mommy?

In the months to come, Daddy bounced, strutting out the door one sunny
morning, with a white towel slung over the shoulder of his bare torso, after
my mother summoned the courage to tell him “It’s over.” He left without
incident, refusing even to catch my eye as I sat on the sofa, witnessing his
exit.
I asked my mother what motivated her to want to get out of the projects,
even though all of her friends still lived there. She said simply, “I saw
people going to sleep all around me. I wanted better for you.” Concentrated
poverty meant that seeing ambulances and hearing police sirens were a
regular occurrence. One evening, one of mama’s friends showed up holding a
bloody T-shirt in a bag. Her brother had been stabbed and, though he would
be fine, she had gone to the hospital to collect his belongings. I knew her
brother, and I was horrified to see the bloody contents of that bag dangling
from her hands while she stood in our living room.
There is often little peace and quiet and even less space to think when
violence can show up in your living room at any given time. I told the young
activist who began to belligerently insist on his revolutionary hood housing
program that asking Black women to move back into violent, underresourced spaces didn’t seem particularly revolutionary to me. His
revolution was rooted in a male-centered conception of men politicking in
the ghetto. But Black women’s revolutions are always about safety, food, and
education for women, children, and the elderly. No matter where the sisters
are, we are always making meals, raising children, and keeping things
together. When we do make it out, we make it out in the simple hopes that it
will be a little easier to keep things together now. Guilting Black folks,
particularly Black women, for pursuing safety, care, and possibility for their
children is not a freedom project.
When my mother announced casually while putting away laundry in our
apartment, “We’re getting a house,” I jumped on her back, hugging her,
shrieking for joy. This was a big deal, even though she was playing it cool.
When we pulled up to the house, I vaguely remembered that I had seen
Chip Brown, the little brother of Tami Brown (the girl who had called me
“nigger”), peering out from the screen door of this very house, the year
before when my school bus passed through the neighborhood. After they had

moved out, my mother’s realtor had come and cried, she’d told my mother,
over the mess they’d made of the place. On the Saturdays leading up to our
move, I helped wash the walls at our new house while Mama climbed on the
kitchen counters, unscrewed all the old cabinets, stripped the old varnish
from them, and replaced it with a shiny new coat. During breaks, I rolled my
eight-year-old body on the new blue carpet, thinking it felt so nice compared
to the dingy brown carpet in the apartment we were leaving.
Those were the triumphs. But the stress showed up, too, in the form of my
mother’s perpetually upset stomach, her painful and chronic ingrown toenails
that there was no money to fix, and the kind of strictness that occurs when you
don’t have time for your child to do anything but toe the line. My mother
believed in old-school parenting, which meant she didn’t believe it was her
job to entertain me. “That is why you have a room full of books and toys,”
she would pointedly remind me every time I complained too much about
being bored. Getting Mama to play board games with me, or to let me play in
her hair and call her by her first name were treats reserved for special days.
I became an exceptional student, because it was the only job I had. My
mother went to work to make a life for us, and I went to school and made A’s.
A’s made my mother proud, and I was a classic overachieving only child,
deeply adult-identified and invested in keeping my mother happy. Getting A’s
was not rewarded. That was the expectation. When it became clear to my
community—family members, teachers, church congregation—that I was an
exceptionally smart child, the refrain of my interactions with these adults
became “Get your lesson, girl! Keep your head in them books! If you put God
first, you can go anywhere and be anything.” I loved all the positive attention,
and brought home all the A’s I could to keep it going.
Being singled out as exceptional by the adults at home and school created
its own set of problems among my peers. I became a target of other Black
children in the community, who accused me of “talking too proper” and
“acting white.” From their vantage point, I was trying to be special and
different, in ways that they either could not be or did not want to be. One
Saturday, two girls from down the street came to visit. We weren’t friends
entirely, but we were cool. It was almost as if Dominique and Trecie had
been given a dare to come knock on my door and see what would happen. I

let them in and took them to my very girly room, with the pink-and-blue doll
wallpaper and peach bedspread, the Barbie dolls and Baby-Sitters Club
books, the notebooks and papers where I played school with said dolls,
strewn about. Out of sheer Southern politeness, we engaged in banal chatter,
with it all feeling entirely odd to me. These girls were not my friends. Why
were they at my house? Finally, after this performance had gone on for a few
minutes, Dominique looked at me with pity and said, “You really do want to
be white, don’t you?”
“Well, no,” I stumbled, taken aback, offering a none-too-impressive
response. Dominique humored me, nodding as I talked. She still thought I
was weird, though. They had caught me at home on a weekend in a place
where I wasn’t used to being attacked. At school, where my guard was
always up, when I was taunted, I usually shouted back “Does being smart
make you white?” Witty retorts were not my specialty. After a few more
minutes of awkwardness, Dominique and Trecie left. Meanwhile, an
opportunity to connect with some Black girls for friends had slipped away
yet again. I sat in my room, wondering what was wrong with the kind of
Black girl I chose to be, and also thinking they were supremely ignorant for
believing that a love of books and standard English meant I wanted to be
white.
Year upon year of being called white only strengthened my resolve for an
exit strategy. My mother hated that I was so bothered. She came home and
talked to me about an article she had read that said we all have different
ways of talking, depending on the audience. I eagerly sucked up this
information, hoping that I didn’t secretly really want to be white. But
somehow, other Black girls didn’t recognize the Tevin Campbell and Boyz II
Men–loving Black girl in me. On particularly bad days, my mama would give
me the Black mama pep talk. “Those kids ain’t ’bout nothing. You stay
focused. And if you keep on living, one of these days, you’ll see how they
turn out, versus how you turn out.”
She was right, of course. Our paths were largely set by the time we were
nine. My teacher, Mrs. Gaulden, one of only a very few Black teachers that I
had, insisted that I be tested for the Gifted and Talented program. When the
results came in and she was told that I had failed, she insisted they rescore

my test. They had, in fact, made an error. I was indeed gifted and talented
and, therefore, worthy of small, special classes and extracurricular
experiences. Many of my classmates, especially those without benefit of Mrs.
Gaulden, received no such special care, cultivation, or opportunities.
Many of those children continued to labor under the assumption that white
people, and we Blacks who supposedly wanted to be white, had a monopoly
on smartness. Nothing about our deeply segregated school system ever
challenged their ideas. And, of course, my weak retorts to the daily taunts did
not ever rise to the level of a piercing systemic critique. I came to believe
that I was special, unique, and exceptional. Of course, I wanted to be among
smart Black overachieving kids. This is why I set out for Howard at the first
opportunity. But making it out of Ruston, Louisiana, meant that I had to
believe the lie of my own exceptionalism—that my classmates had fewer
opportunities because they didn’t try hard enough and because they were
trying to be too cool for school.
At one point in high school, my godsister April joined in on taunting me.
We had grown up together, my mother the best of friends with her mother and
her aunts. April grew up in the “old projects” while I lived a few blocks
away in the “new projects.” The only thing that really distinguished them was
that the new projects had lighter bricks and metal screen doors, while the old
projects had wooden ones. By high school, April had her crew, and I had
mine. No one knew we had grown up as damn near kin, that we used to sleep
in the same bed together while the adults went down to a club called The
Limb to dance the night away. One aunt always stayed behind and threatened
us late into the night, telling us, “Take your asses to bed before I come in
there and whup somebody!”
On this day, I watched as April giggled at me as other girls, her friends,
tossed barbs my way, berating everything from the way I talked to my long,
straight hair. “She need a perm,” one of them taunted as April giggled.
During my daily debriefing with my mother, I mentioned that some girls at
school said I needed a perm. “They’re just jealous,” my mother said. Back
then, I had an enviable head of long, thick, Black-girl hair that was great for
styling. But I was mostly oblivious to it, since I much preferred to have my
head in a book than in a stylist’s chair. I mentioned the names of the girls

taunting me, thinking nothing of including April. It had been years since we’d
spent weekends having sleepovers while our parents were out on the town.
My mother called her aunt and told it. And April, I heard, got the dressingdown of her life, as every single auntie let her know that “not only do you not
need to be picking on Brittney, but you need to be trying to do what she
doing.” Apparently, being fussed out was effective. The very next time this
scenario went on in the hallway, I looked her in the eye, anticipating the
barbs, but she was curiously, noticeably, silent. I was relieved. I hadn’t
really planned to rat her out, but I appreciated the affirmation that the adults
in her life gave me: “You need to be doing what Brittney is doing.”
Being excluded and being exceptional are the frequent prerequisites for a
bad case of self-righteousness. Because I was a classic good girl, I naturally
thought myself more devout and more Godly than my classmates, and when
that is combined with an evangelical orientation to the world, it’s a problem.
I approached knowing God the same way I approached getting A’s. Follow
the rules, and success will come to you. The more I excelled, the more I
chalked it up to God’s blessing and “favor” on my life. Black church folks
love to talk about how “blessed and highly favored they are.” It is the kind of
explanation that comes to stand in, far too often, for structural inequality.
Favor ain’t fair. Or so the saying goes. So I came to understand my success
in that way, too. In my early twenties, a preacher at my local church went so
far as to prophesy blessings of God’s favor over my life. I had been put here
to make a special impact, he pronounced one evening during a Bible study
class.
Here’s the thing: I’m still a Christian. So I will never discount God’s
favor and the way it has shown up in my life. This is a challenge for
mainstream feminism, because much of it is still a deeply secular project. So
many Black women I know, even those who don’t go to church very much,
still have deep spiritual and religious lives. Most Black feminists I know
have some version of a God-concept. For those of us who watched our
mamas work themselves damn near to death to raise up powerful daughters
like us, attributing it to sheer strength of will and hard work is an American
fable that doesn’t suit us. Liberal white folks tell themselves these kinds of
stories—that they made it because of their own ingenuity and will. But most

Black girls have enough humility to see ourselves as walking miracles who,
as Audre Lorde famously said, “were never meant to survive.” I want to be
clear that God has a place in how I think about justice and feminism, but I
hate God-explanations for structural problems. I learned the limits of these
kinds of explanations clearly when I returned to reckon with my old
classmates at the ten-year high school reunion.
There was no way I was missing the reunion. This was my victory lap,
and I was just petty enough to take it. I was a few months shy of completing
my doctorate and had fulfilled the promise of my senior designation in the
yearbook: “most likely to succeed.” My friend Reina, one of the two mean
girls from middle school, accompanied me. We had grown up around the
corner from each other, ours a friendship borne of necessity, since we were
two of three Black girls routinely taking honors courses together. It wasn’t so
much that we got along back then as we needed each other to get along. We
had weathered the storm of our teenage years, and, with the angst and
competition behind us, we had become real friends. We were a team on
reunion night. Racial politics back home being what they are, there came a
moment at the end of the homecoming football game (think Friday Night
Lights) when the entire class decided to go out for a drink. Once we reach
adulthood in the small town where I went to high school, Black and white
folks don’t really socialize at the same watering holes together to any great
degree. Reina and I stood in the bleachers, watching our classmates split by
race. We looked at each other, wondering which group we should choose.
The Black kids hadn’t been our friends, but the very Republican evangelical
whiteness of our classmates wasn’t as palatable as it had been a decade
before. We figured we might as well throw our lot in with the Blacks.
So, we went to a local restaurant for drinks. I threw back a couple of
shots of Tequila and started dancing to a Hip Hop song blaring over the
speakers. A new dance was out, and as is the custom of folks who are getting
grown, we were trying to figure out who could, in fact, “do tha stanky leg.”
Lashay looked at me and said, “I want Brittney to do it!” It was a gentle,
mocking challenge, one designed to literally have me prove my Blackness
once and for all, by standing up and dancing for the group. This bullshit

again. Seriously? “I’m not that drunk,” I told Lashay. Ten years had helped
my comeback game moderately.
But since she had, I reasoned, started it, I refused to let it go. As our food
came, I said to the table, “It’s just so interesting that I’m here. Because the
narrative was that I wanted to be white back in the day.” Lashay nodded.
“That is true. People did say that.” Lavonne jumped in, hoping to keep the
peace and not fuck up the vibe, saying, “Awww, you know we were just
jealous.” Jealous? Jealous?! Jealous. There was that word again. And I was
as incredulous about it then as I had been years before, when my mama
offered it as an explanation for the actions of April and her friends.
April didn’t make it to the ten-year reunion. She had died suddenly of
natural causes, a few days after giving birth to her daughter, during the fall of
my freshman year of college. Thankfully, we’d made our peace the summer
before I left when I ran into her at Wendy’s, where she worked. She was a
few months’ pregnant and I was heading off to college. Somehow, we both
moved along the trajectories that my town seems to set up for Black girls.
Either you become an exceptional achiever, or you settle into a life of lowwage work and children. Exceptionalism or struggle should not be the only
pathways available to Black people. When my mother talked about watching
“where those girls would end up,” I know she had not, in fact, been thinking
of April. April saw me, smiled, and said, “Hey, Brittney.” I smiled back.
Childhood beefs were squashed, and we were both moving into our
respective paths of womanhood.
Jealousy was the one emotion that I had never ever expected to hear. It
had never occurred to me that the Black children in my school knew there
was something wrong with a system that singled out a few exceptional
children and gave them the keys to the kingdom. I took a moment. Then I
replied, “Man, I’m not holding on to it. We were all victims of a fucked-up
system. It chose particular kids and gave them everything. And it was set up
to make us think that the white kids were so much smarter, while really it was
simply that they got more attention, more resources, and more opportunities. I
don’t blame y’all for that. These people in this town are racist.” Lavonne
nodded her head. And we went back to drinking.

Out in the car, Reina looked at me and said, “I don’t agree at all with how
you handled that. You let them off the hook! And they made our childhoods
miserable!” I had. And they had. Though Reina and I had grown up in the
same neighborhood, with single mamas hustling to make a living for us, we
resolved the trauma very differently. For a long time she took their
internalized anti-Blackness as evidence that there was little room for her in
Black communities. She gravitated toward white friends, multicultural
Christianity, and conservative values. I went to Howard, found thousands of
the overachieving, nerdy Black kids I’d been looking for, and healed because
I began to experience a world in which smart Black folks just made sense. I
was able to see my childhood, the bullying, and small-mindedness as a
function of retrograde racial politics that became magnified in the context of
a small town in the semirural deep South. More than that, I had learned the
pitfalls of using a respectability framework to explain the achievement gap in
our communities. Before going away to college, I thought other Black
children were lazy, unmotivated, and ignorant, and I ultimately concluded that
they had gotten what they deserved. But at the reunion, Lavonne offered me
new insight. When she framed their childhood disdain toward me as jealousy,
what I heard, more precisely, was an awareness of an injustice. Black
children know when they are being left behind, devalued, and overlooked.
Black communities have always been aware of the prickly politics of
racial exceptionalism. W.E.B. Du Bois famously advocated for Black
communities to train what he called the “Talented Tenth,” an exceptional
core of leaders who would get access to education and resources and bring
them back to everyone else. More progressive Black thinkers have long
rejected the elitism of Talented Tenth–based leadership models. These
models favor Black folks who are polished, articulate, and easily able to
acclimate to white environments. There was the pressing danger of Talented
Tenth types returning to their home communities and looking down upon
everyone else as unsophisticated, unintelligent, and self-destructive. But
while Du Bois thought of this as a pragmatic strategy in a world where white
people were not invested in being broadly inclusive, many of the Blacks who
came to have this kind of access felt entitled to it. Thus, part of the
consciousness-raising process on the radical Black left has been to be deeply

suspicious of anything that looks like class-based entitlement. Moreover,
young radical brothers, like the one who tried to convince me to move back
to the hood, located their radicalism in the completion of Du Bois’s strategy.
It had failed because too many of us refused to go back. All would be well if
the educated few would return and lend their talents to the struggling Black
masses. But liberation is never so simple as getting it and bringing it back.
Any educated sister who sends a considerable chunk of her paycheck home to
the folks who haven’t yet made it out will tell you that we leave and return to
the places that made us, many times over the course of a lifetime.
Still, our guilt over leaving people behind nips at our heels, at every new
station that we reach. For instance, whenever there is a convening at an
academic conference, invariably some young radical person will get on the
mic to ask, “Who isn’t in the room? Who are we excluding?” These questions
matter, but they can also be deeply annoying because very often they are a
performance of middle-class angst. These people know full well who won’t
be at the conference before they ever sign up to come to it. How do we
balance the impulse to think that having degrees equips us to speak for
people in their absence with the fact that the degrees in most cases actually
do mean we have something of value to contribute that we might not
otherwise have had? My grandmother, who never finished high school,
stayed on me to “get my lesson,” because she knew there was something of
value in the books I so loved to read. She knew it, and those of us who have
read those books know it, too. Why do we patronize people by acting like
our access to more education didn’t actually teach us anything of value?
That’s a patronizing lie we have to stop telling, for it serves no one and
insults the very folks who made the sacrifices for us to get here.
On one too many occasions I have had social justice–oriented folks chide
me for being elitist while they were diligently grinding their way through
graduate programs at institutions far more elite than the ones I have attended.
Part of what I am saying is that the anxiety about being inclusive is itself a
middle-class Black anxiety, a fear we have of getting too big for our britches,
so to speak. Some of us handle our guilt by blaming it on God and His
mysterious and divine favor and intentions. Others romanticize the very
conditions they have spent their whole lives escaping. How do we deal with

our guilt when we are the ones who achieved in a system that is intentionally
set up for most Black folks to fail?
I don’t know that I have the answer to that question. But I do know that we
annoy the hell out of each other with assertions of our connections to various
hoods, and blocks, and working-class communities. An accusation that one is
elitist is like the sounding of the death knell to any activist or scholar
committed to the struggle. It’s akin to somebody rolling up and dissing your
mama. But there is a gender dynamic to it. When I have experienced these
kinds of accusations from other Black feminist women, typically, it’s meangirl shit and jealousy masquerading as a radical critique. When Black men do
it to Black women, it is a way to deny Black women the authority of being
legitimate theorists or decision makers within Black communities. The
absurdity of this is that most of us are only 1.5 generations, at most, into the
Black middle class. The vast majority of educated Black folks aren’t that far
removed from the mythic “Cousin Pookie” whom Obama was obsessed with
forcing off the sofa and into the voting booth. But President Obama’s
invocation of “Cousin Pookie,” a stereotype signaling disengaged and
disaffected young Black men, was an intentional bid for street cred through
an appeal to a cultural narrative accessible primarily to Black folks.
President Obama wanted us to believe that he knew a Cousin Pookie or two
himself. The ability to claim proximity to such folks is just one way that elite
and middle-class Blacks index their continued insider status in working-class
Black communities. It’s highly problematic, mostly because it’s performative,
and not just on Obama’s part. In other words, this kind of fronting doesn’t
help anybody. The sisters I know remain connected to their working-class
roots because the extra money we do make is often used to help somebody
back home make the rent or car note, pay for Ma’Dear’s light bill or
medications, or just give whoever needs it a few extra dollars to tide them
over till the next payday. Black women’s consistent philosophy is “If we eat,
everybody eats.” If I’m not struggling, no one in my family struggles either. It
is precisely this thinking that leads to Black women my age having a median
net wealth of $5.
Favor isn’t fair. So we should have what womanist theologians call a
“hermeneutic of suspicion”—a healthy skepticism—of the institutions and

opportunities that would make of us exceptions. Relying on the favor of God
to open doors for us is not a plan for systemic change or justice at any broad
level. And using the favor of God to justify the machinations of a system that
routinely forecloses opportunities for Black women’s thriving ain’t
revolutionary, either. In fact, if this framework of favor goes unchecked it
lays the groundwork for an unholy trinity between the church, neoliberalism,
and racial respectability politics. Black preachers point to the work of
currying favor with God by obeying all the rules the Bible sets out because,
to them, God’s favor is more powerful than any systemic obstacle. At their
best, Christian invocations of favor are used as a resource in the fight against
routine injustices that harm Black people and deny them access to
opportunity. One problem, though, is that this approach to currying favor with
God is individual. Second, it is wholly dependent upon the dictates of
respectability politics to work.
God apparently grants favor first and foremost to those who follow the
rules—those who tithe 10 percent of their income, those who don’t have sex
before marriage, those who attend church and Sunday school faithfully, those
who don’t think sinful thoughts, those who don’t struggle with addictions of
any sort, those who strive for perfection, and those who are always on their
best behavior. It turns out that schools favor those who follow these rules,
too. In shorter form, success comes to those who take personal
responsibility for their lives. But following the rules shouldn’t be the
guarantor of rights or dignity.
Black children and Black people are told that if they simply follow the
rules, they can make it into the middle class, where the hope is that they will
experience some level of stability. When this respectability formula links up
with Christian dogma about God’s favor, one comes to believe that their
access to a stable social life, with the ability to pay their bills, have secure
and affordable housing, healthy and affordable meals, good public schools,
and a bit of discretionary income is a function of God’s blessing and favor.
Those who rely on God’s favor to secure what the system cannot provide
unwittingly admit that they know the system is a fraud. They know things are
not set up for Black folks to win. But since God wants us to win as long as

we do right, then theology becomes a substitute for demanding that the system
be more just.
In this way the church, as I mentioned in my discussion of grown-woman
theology, has become complicit in the broader project of neoliberalism,
which is marked by a social abdication of responsibility to create systems
that help the vast majority of citizens achieve some notion of the good life.
Instead, neoliberalism turns our attention to individual self-regulation, and
notions of personal empowerment, as the pathway to having anything in life.
And yet, again, what we teach and preach in churches allows “God”
language to do the dirty work of the system, namely, pretending to empower
us while ultimately blaming our lack of social options on some flaw in our
character or misstep in our conduct.
I very much had to resist the narrative that I made it because I acted right.
Racist teachers humiliated me and tried to break my spirit, even when I acted
right. Acting right, which far too often means “acting white,” didn’t protect
me from what Carol Anderson calls the “white rage” of my classmates when
they realized that I actually would graduate at the top of the class, and atop
all of them. And plenty of Black children who acted right still didn’t have the
levels of opportunity I had.
Part of the work of justice for those of us who made it out of terribly
fucked-up conditions is rejecting the myth of our own exceptionalism. That is
the thing I tried to do at the table in the conversation with my classmates. I
tried to find common cause with them, despite the traumas they enacted on
me. Black people can do terrible harm to each other when we aren’t clear
who the enemy is. But in finding common cause I also wanted to avoid doing
harm to my community, to not participate in the narrative that stripped
children who were just like me of having real educational opportunity,
simply because they didn’t, for instance, show an early facility for reading. I
wanted to forgive my childhood tormentors, and at the same time to put some
of the fancy educational analysis that I’d had the benefit of receiving to good
and just use.
The idea that the pathway to freedom is found in better choices is bullshit.
Take, for instance, the latest research on the racial wealth gap. Any time I’m
in racial justice organizing spaces at least one brother demands the mic so

that he can tell us that “What Black people need to do is support Black
businesses. If we would just pool all our resources and stop spending money
on Jordans and hair weaves, we could have real wealth to invest in our
communities.” The research says differently. Black people at every level
spend less money than white folks in similar economic circumstances. It turns
out that the entire respectability formula for raising Black socioeconomic
status is a fail. Going to college, raising children in a two-parent home,
working full-time, and spending less do not make it possible for Black
people to close the wealth gap that they have with white people. White
people have more money because their ancestors made money from owning
our ancestors. When white people die, other white people gain wealth. When
black folks die, they often leave debt behind.
When my grandmother died a decade ago, the bank let us know that she
had a safe-deposit box. We went expecting that there would be an insurance
policy, a will, and other information about her assets. Instead we found an
unceremonious collection of thirty-year-old receipts from the phone
company. Grandmama took pride in paying her bills, and in owing “nary a
debt.” That was her legacy; that she died owing no one anything. So many
Black folks aren’t that lucky, and death often means loved ones inherit the
debt of those who’ve passed on. In every generation, the vast majority of
Black people must start over trying to build wealth. Sometimes they can only
do that after they’ve resolved the debts others have left for them to handle.
In order for people to make healthier, more sustainable choices that will
support their thriving, they have to have better options. But the Hail Mary
politics of divine favor (i.e., using favor like a Hail Mary) ain’t about having
more options, but rather about what happens when you have far too few of
them. The hood is marked by a lack of access to reasonable options. It
always annoys me to find out that the woke, radical, pro-Black, feminist
position is uncritical valorization of the hood. Let me say this: If the people
on the block had the answers, the revolution would have long since come.
Disproportionate numbers of our people are locked in the structural
hopelessness that attends concentrated poverty. Many of them dissent from
that hopelessness every day by making a way anyway, by using their own
ingenuity and will to create options for themselves where none exist.

Being asked to do more with less is inhumane. Frequently, social
scientists point to the resilience of children from difficult backgrounds. One
time, in a meeting on my campus, in a discussion about the hardships children
of color face, a white woman remarked dismissively, “Oh, but children are
resilient!” Celebrating the resilience of poor folks is a perverse way of
acknowledging the unreasonable demands placed upon people who already
are struggling to make it. In fact, in this moment, when a broad-scale
conservative backlash threatens to absolutely gut the social safety net,
“resilience” is a dangerous word. The logic of relying on people’s resilience
goes something like, “Let’s see just how much we can take away from you
before you break.” That shit is evil. We can celebrate and recognize the
awesome ways that Black humanity and possibility show up without drinking
the Kool-Aid.
My mother is my shero. I’m the biggest beneficiary of her ingenuity and
tenacity. But I don’t mistake the model my mother carved for me for a
liberation plan for all Black people. Nor is it reasonable to blame all the
folks who didn’t do what she did for their own social condition. You can’t
judge the effectiveness of a system by the success of its exceptional actors,
from the president on down.
So, what do we do when the woke position demands that we cosign ways
of thinking that actually don’t make any sense? My entire life, my community
encouraged me to leave and make something of myself. As soon as I achieved
the highest possible credentials, suddenly lots of brothers, some with degrees
and many more who didn’t finish school, started popping up, mansplaining
that “Even though you might be more educated than me, that doesn’t mean you
have more knowledge than me.” Some of the smartest folks I’ve ever known
didn’t have college degrees. As I’ve said, my daddy was the smartest man I
never knew. I can throw a rock and hit an educated fool. But this suspicion of
education and its benefits is part of a broader culture of American antiintellectualism that we simply must reject. From age four to age twenty-eight,
save one year, I was a student. Ten of those years were spent in pursuit of
higher education. This counts for something. The one year that I wasn’t a
student, I worked at a public school. If I had already learned everything I

would need to know in my community of origin, then all of the Black folks in
that community would not have encouraged me to reach for the skies.
Thus, when I see other radicals with elite access valorizing their hoods, I
recognize it as misapplied survivor’s guilt and a deep desire to retain one’s
street cred and authenticity. Whenever we’re together, highly educated folks
start doing this dance of talking about how we really need to appreciate what
the hood taught us. I’ve done some of this dance myself, and much of it I
believe in. Theorizing all the possibilities of resistance in crunk music and
ratchet television is good, important cultural work, rooted in the workingclass sensibilities of the South. Appreciating the epistemological
frameworks, the ways of knowing and making sense of the world that my
grandmother and my mother bequeathed to me is radical work that upends the
politics of the academy as the only place where anyone is saying anything of
value. But. The ignobility of academe doesn’t make the hood noble.
I gained the tools to do better analytic work and ask better questions in the
university. I became a feminist in a Ph.D. program. Hell, I learned the word
epistemology in a Ph.D. program. But, more than all of that, I learned to heal
from the anti-Black trauma and bullying that was the entirety of my childhood
at college. The first day I stepped into Professor Lawrence Jackson’s honors
composition classroom was the first day of my life that I wasn’t presumed to
be the smartest Black person in my classroom. Suddenly I was in the middle
of 360 degrees of Black brilliance and, briefly, I was shook. Who was I, if
“smart Black girl” fit fully 60 percent of the people on campus? Suddenly I
was no longer the only one, a truth I gulped down while I looked around the
room at all the other eager students listening to Dr. Jackson’s lecture about
why the map of the world made Africa look so much smaller than
everywhere else when, really, it was larger.
The trap and the burden of being exceptional is that your entire identity is
wrapped up in being the only one. The stories of infighting and
competitiveness among Blacks that we tell when we get together have
everything to do with building an identity based on being the exception. It
took exactly one day at a Black college to break me of such thinking. It was
both scary and exhilarating, but I came to understand the racial politics of
U.S. public schools in my college and grad-school classrooms. Those

frameworks gave me what I needed to go back and see that my classmates
and I had been victims of a system that pitted us against each other as a
justification for its own logic of white dominance and Black exceptionalism.
American democracy is not interested in acknowledging that a Barack
Obama can be found in every Black community. I have met brilliant Black
boys at every step of my journey. Many of them were languishing in poor
schools and even worse neighborhoods. Just like there are many, many white
men who make viable candidates for the presidency, the same is true for
Black communities. The only difference is structural levels of access, not
levels of talent or intellect. I would not have known that if I had not left my
community.
And, despite what I know now, I still remember the loneliness of being a
Black-girl nerd longing for community for most of my childhood. I forgive
my bullies, but I don’t want to live in any sustained community with them.
Over the years, most of the specific incidents of harm have faded. But
whenever I run into one of my old tormentors around town, typically I know
because my stomach twists and turns into knots, recoiling at slights that have
long since passed. That’s a truth to sit with, too: The harm is no less harmful
simply because we know what caused it. Structural violence is rooted in the
need to maintain hierarchies, but far too often its most gut-wrenching acts are
enacted horizontally, by our peers, not by those positioned above us. Real
radicalism implores us to tell the whole ugly truth, even when it’s
inconvenient. To own the hurt and the pain. To own our shit, too. To think
about it systemically and collectively, but never to diminish the import of the
trauma.
Survivor’s guilt is about as useful as white guilt, which is to say, not
useful at all. My mama worked too hard and my community prayed too much
for me to feel guilty about making it. But I have copious amounts of rage at
the systems that refused to nurture the talents of the kids who looked like me.
And more than that, I have a great sense of responsibility. I’m not planning to
go back home to live, because where I’m from is no place for a radical
feminist Black girl who likes to challenge preachers in her spare time. But I
am responsible in big and small ways for making that place and places like it
better, more equitable and more just. I’m thankful for favor, such as it is, but I

refuse to mistake favor for freedom. Knowing more than the folks with less
education than you, doesn’t mean you know everything. In some cases, it
doesn’t even mean you know the best things or the right things. But education
is powerful. That is ancestral wisdom that our folks fought for us to have. We
don’t serve them well by acting like we don’t know anything worth knowing.
Going off to college and to grad school turned me into a picket-sign carrying,
Jesus-loving radical feminist. I stand by the notion that the ideas I learned in
those places, and that all the things Black feminism has taught me, can help
our folks get free. And for all who would disagree I would say, simply,
“Ain’t no future in our frontin’.”

JOY

The term “feminist killjoys” is well-earned. Sometimes, in the bid for
rightness, feminists and hyperwoke folks can take the joy out of everything. I
actually think it’s irresponsible to wreck shop in people’s world without
giving them the tools to rebuild. It’s fine to quote Audre Lorde to people and
tell them, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” The
harder work is helping people find better tools to work with. We have to
smash the patriarchy, for sure. And we have to dismantle white supremacy,
and homophobia, and a whole bunch of other terrible shit that makes life
difficult for people. Rage is great at helping us to destroy things. That’s why
people are so afraid of it.
But part of what I’ve been trying to say is that rage can help us build
things, too. The clarity that comes from rage should also tell us what kind of
world we want to see, not just what kind of things we want to get rid of. I’m
not interested in a feminist project that only works to tear down things. Black
women know that justice is rarely found in the rubble. If your rage can do
anything for you, I hope it can do for you what it has done for me—help us to
build the world we want to see.
And since, as you know by now, I’m a church girl, I want to end this book
in the way that I’ve watched Black preachers end church services my entire
life. I want to offer you a benediction. My stepdad, a Baptist preacher and the
first pastor I ever had, told us that we should never leave church without the
benediction. Those good words spoken at the end imbued us with power to
go out and live out the things we had just learned about.
So here goes …

* * *
May you have joy.
Joy, as I have heard countless Black preachers say, is different from
happiness, because happiness is predicated on “happenings,” on what’s
occurring, on whether your life is going right, and whether all is well. Joy
arises from an internal clarity about our purpose. My purpose is justice. And
the fight for justice brings me joy.
In your president’s favorite book of the Bible, Two Corinthians, these
words appear: “We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down,
but not destroyed.” In shorter form, the Black Church would say, “Joy—the
world didn’t give it to me, and the world can’t take it away.” Maintaining the
capacity for joy is critical to the struggle for justice. Things are still as
fucked up at the end of this book as they were at the beginning. But we can’t
let the messed-up state of the world steal our joy.
It is critical in reinvigorating our capacity for new visions. When we lack
joy, we have a diminished capacity for self-love and self-valuing and for
empathy. If political struggle is exercise for the soul, joy is the endorphin
rush such struggles bring.
* * *
May you have gut-busting belly laughter, every day.
Laughing with my girls brings me joy. Traveling around the world,
migrating down South to my mama’s sofa, watching Food Network for hours,
reading trashy romance novels and watching sappy romcoms—all of these
things bring me joy. (Yes, I know they reinforce the patriarchy. You win
some, you lose some.)
* * *
May you ask more and better questions.
Homegirl interventions leave me with more questions than answers. But
usually they leave me with far better questions than I began with. May your
curiosity be unceasing.

* * *
May your rage be a force for good.
What you build is infinitely more important than what you tear down.
When the struggle feels unwinnable, may you never forget this one thing:
* * *
You got this. We got this.

INTRODUCTION

HARRIET ]ACOBS'S LINDA: Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl, seven years concealed in Slavery, Written by Herself (1861),
the best-known nineteenth-century African-American woman's
autobiography, makes a marked contribution to American history and letters by having been written, as ]acobs stressed, "by
herself.": Many other narratives by women who had been enslaved (for example, Sojourner Truth) had been dictated to
amanuenses whose roles diluted the authenticity of the texts.' ]acobs not only wrote her own book, but as an abolitionist and ardent reader, she knew the literary genres of her time. Describing
an African-American family whose members cleave to one another against great odds, she skillfully plays on her story's adherence to and departure from the sentimental conventions of
domestic fiction. In so doing, she used its difference to a
woman's advantage. Her self-consciously gendered and thoroughly feminist narrative criticizes slavery for corrupting the
morals and the families of all it touched, whether rich or poor,
white or black. She lays the groundwork for the analysis of black
womanhood.'
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl makes three important
points convincingly: It shows, first, the myriad traumas owners
and their agents inflicted upon slaves. Bloody whippings and
rapes constituted ground zero of the enslaved condition, but in
addition, slaves were subject to a whole series of soul-murdering
psychological violations: destruction of families, abandonment
of children, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, humiliation, contempt. Jacobs details the physical violence so common in her
Southern world, but she especially stresses the assault on slaves'
psyches. Second, she denounces the figure of the "happy darky."
As a slave and later as an abolitionist, she was frequently conIX

x

INTRODUCTION

fronted with this favorite American myth, which she knew to be
false. In answer to this proslavery argument, she enumerates the
miseries of the enslaved; in chapter 13 she shows precisely how
Northerners were gulled into believing black people liked being
enslaved." Third, and most courageously, Jacobs insists that enslaved people-here, black women-cannot be judged by the
same standards as the free. Jacobs expounds the conditions of enslavement that deprived people of autonomy, denying them influence over their own and their children's destinies. While her
enslaved friends and family took advantage of every possible
loophole" within the fabric of an evil system, working the system
allowed them only a modicum of self-determination. Because
they literally belonged to other people, slaves lacked the power
to protect their morals, their bodily integrity, or their children.
In sum, Jacobs delineates a system in which the enslaved and
their enslavers (aided and abetted by Northern sympathizers)
were totally at odds or, as she says, at war." As she sees it, there
could be no identity of interest between the two parties to the
peculiar institution, even though lives and bloodlines frequently
intersected. The frequent occurrence of similar names-for example, Margaret Horniblow (Harriet's first owner) and Molly
Horniblow (Harrier's grandmother)-may confuse the reader
but attest to these very intersections.
Harriet Ann Brent Jacobs was born in about 1813 in Edenton,
North Carolina.' Her younger brother and best friend, John S.
Jacobs, was born two years later. Their parents, Delilah and Elijah" Jacobs, were enslaved, but they lived together as a family
with Delilah's mother, Molly Horniblow. Horniblow, the
daughter of a South Carolina planter who emancipated her during the Revolutionary War and sent her to freedom outside the
United States, had been captured, returned to American territory, and fraudulently reenslaved after her father's death. The
head chef at the Horniblow Inn in Edenton, Molly Horniblow
managed to earn and save money as a caterer even while enslaved. Her industry and clientele made her well known, well respected, and well connected in Edenton, and even before being

INTRODUCTION

XI

freed again at the age of fifty, she had accrued as much standing
as possible by one who was neither white nor free.
As a slave, Horniblow could not marry, yet her daughter
Delilah and her husband Elijah lived with Molly as a married
couple: Delilah even wore a wedding ring, which she left to her
daughter Harriet. Horniblow's effective marital status, on the
other hand, remains a mystery, as does the never mentioned existence or identity of her own children's father. These silences-in
the historical record, in Harriet Jacobs' s / ncidents in the Life ofa
Slave Girl, and in John S. jacobs's "A True Tale of Slavery"speak volumes, given Horniblow's seemingly hypocritical attachment to the feminine ideal of chastity. Her insistence on
premarital sexual purity, a condition which often eluded even
free poor and working-class white women, would wreak havoc
in her enslaved granddaughter's emotional life.
Neither Harriet nor John recalled much about their mother,
who died when Harriet was about six and John about four years
old, although Harriet later praised Delilah as "noble and womanly" in nature." Their father, Elijah, the best house carpenter in
the region, hired himself out from his base at home. Both Harriet
and John recalled their father as a man of independent mind,
whose slave status embittered and depressed him. John was convinced that his father died young-in 1826-precisely because he
was enslaved: "My father, who had an intensely acute feeling of
the wrongs of slavery, sank into a state of mental dejection,
which, combined with bodily illness, occasioned his death when
I was eleven years of age."IO
By dint of their skills, values, connections, and ancestry, the
entire Jacobs family had much in common with Edentori's elite.
However, their African descent, legal status as slaves, and extreme vulnerability placed them firmly on the wrong side of a
towering color bar. Molly Horniblow and her grandchildren experienced the ambiguities of their allegiances differently. The
grandchildren admired, but could not share, her heartfelt Christian piety. The grandmother counted on the existence of conscience in the slaveowning class, another faith beyond her
grandchildren's reach. She sought decent treatment through per-

Xl!

INTRODUCTION

sonal entreaty; they both followed the route of permanent escape. Horniblow's son ]oseph shared her grandchildren's hatred
of slavery; he ran away twice, the second time intending to leave
the United States for good. Punning on the common term for
whipping, he told his brother that he meant to "get beyond the
reach of the stars and stripes of America."!'
The Jacobses lived on the left bank of the Chowan River
where it empties into Albemarle Sound. Connected through internal waterways with Hampton Roads, Virginia, and the Chesapeake Bay during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
Edenton served as an administrative center for its own Chowan
and surrounding counties and as northeastern North Carolina's
main port. In 1820, the population numbered 1261, of whom 634
were white, 499 enslaved, and 67 free black.'! During Harriet's
and John's youth, Edenton was still vibrant enough as a trading
center that the town's leading families would station members in
the New York area. The TredweIls and Blounts in Brooklyn,
New York, who made the jacobses' later residence there unsafe,
belonged to Edenton's merchant families. During the midnineteenth century, Edenton lost importance as the Albemarle
Sound silted up and North Carolina's economy shifted away
from the heavily slaveholding and agricultural East Coast toward
the diversified farming and industry located in the Piedmont farther inland.
In 1819 and 1820 Edenton rated two visits from President
James Monroe; in 1820 the town offered him a banquet, prepared
by none other than Molly Horniblow, the region's finest chef, at
the Horniblow Inn, the local elite's gathering place.
The inn sat on the main street, across an alley from the courthouse. Between the inn, the jail, and the courthouse stood the
whipping post, where slaves were disciplined and blood flowed.
John S. Jacobs recalled seeing "men and women stripped, and
struck from fifteen to one hundred times and more. Some whose
backs were cut to pieces were washed down with strong brine or
brandy ..." He described one instrument of torture, the oak
backing paddle, the blade of which was full of small holes that
pulverized the body and left "the flesh like a steak." He him-

INTRODUCTION

Xlll

self had dressed the back of a woman whose back he "solemnly
declare[d] ... had not a piece of skin left on it as wide as my
finger."!'
The Edenton elite, small and inbred, was closely connected
through ties of ownership and sentiment to the Jacobses and included the heads of the Sawyer, Tredwell, and Norcom families.
Drs. Matthias Sawyer (d. 1835) and James Norcom (1778-1850)
were longtime business and professional partners. An 1808 inventory of the value of their joint practice revealed a net worth
of $8000, half of which consisted of outstanding debts." The
financial precariousness of medicine, combined with doctors'
ostentatious standard of living, kept them constantly on the
lookout for financial advantage. Both Sawyer and Norcom operated plantations that (usually) contributed to their income and
where Harriet and John had occasion to work. During this same
period, Samuel Tredwell Sawyer (1800-1863)15 and John Norcorn (1802-?), attended the Edenton academy together; the
younger Norcom followed in his father's footsteps by graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a medical degree.
Samuel Tredwell Sawyer attended but dropped out of William
and Mary College. With his family connections, neither his limitations as a scholar nor his feckless dandyism impeded his flourishing as a lawyer;"
After her mother's death in 1819, Harriet went to the home of
her owner, Miss Margaret Horniblow. Harriet Jacobs recalled
Margaret Horniblow as a kind mistress "almost like a mother to
me."?" During her six years with Margaret Horniblow, Harriet
learned to read, sew, and generally to carry herself as a lady, a
bearing others remarked upon for the rest of her life.
Reflecting the extreme vulnerability of enslaved people to the
fates of those who owned them, Margaret Horniblow's death in
1825 made Harriet the slave of Horniblow's sister's three-yearold daughter, also the daughter of James Norcom, who became
her de facto owner. The following year, Harrier's father died,
leaving the child with only her grandmother as protector. Molly
Horniblow's stature and residence in the center of town did pose
a counterweight to Norcorn's power over his young female

XIV

INTRODUCTION

slave. Harriet realized that both the town's gossip mill and her
grandmother's standing offered her limited but tangible protection.
When her own mistress died in 1828, fifty-year-old Molly
Horniblow, too, fell to James Norcom and was put up for sale at
auction. On account of her age and stature, the sight of
Molly Horniblow on the auction block scandalized the good citizens of Edenton, but her sale, entirely legal, went through. According to Incidents, an older white woman bought Molly
Horniblow, emancipated her, and made Molly the owner of her
own older son, Mark Ramsey. John S. jacobs's <CA True Tale of
Slavery" tells a different story. It says the grandmother entrusted
her savings to a kindly white man, who carried out her wishes.l"
In any case, Horniblow's younger son Joseph ran away, was recaptured, jailed in Edenton, and sold to New Orleans. Joseph escaped again and met his brother Mark Ramsey in New York
City, prior to disappearing forever. Mark Ramsey hired his time
as a steward on a passenger boat, a position that made it possible
for him to aid many a fugitive slave running toward freedom.
Molly Horniblow bought her own seven-room house in the very
center of the town with excellent access to her catering market of
Edenton's elite.
At the same 1828 auction at which James Norcom sold Molly
Horniblow, he bought Harriet's brother John, then about thirteen years old. John worked in Norcom's medical office, where
he learned the then common practices of cupping, leeching, and
bleeding, and the manufacture and use of various salves and
dressings. As a youth, John doctored the enslaved and later attracted the attention of a medical student, who attempted to buy
him. His then owner, Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, refused to sell
him even for the handsome price of $1500. 19
By 1829 Harriet had fallen in love with a free black carpenter,
who wanted to marry her. James Norcom forbade the marriage
and intensified his pursuit of her by threatening to place her in a
small house outside of town-the isolation of concubinage. As a
very young, enslaved, orphaned African-American woman, Harriet was virtually powerless to resist the obscene advances of her
leading-citizen, middle-aged, white male medical doctor owner.

INTRODUCTION

xv

The close relationship between the elder Norcom and Sawyer
and their sons grew thornily incestuous around the person of
young Harriet. James Norcom, at fifty-two, was trying to seduce
thirteen-year-old Harriet, who lived in his house as a dependent.
He dared not exercise one right against her-exiling her to the
plantation where his son John lived-for fear John would possess her sexually.
Harriet found herself in a common quandary, for during the
nineteenth century, young girls of all races and sexes were regarded as little more than prey: men saw even the most privileged mainly as rich potential wives. In Incidents, Jacobs attacks
this dynamic, calling slavery "that cage of obscene birds." She
chastises Northerners who married their daughters to Southern
slaveholders, for the "poor girls" would soon find themselves
victims of adultery, their homes scenes of "jealousy and hatred."20 Conservatives like the South Carolina novelist Sue Petigm King and Civil War diarist Mary Chestnut-both of whom
accepted the justice of Negro slavery-deplored Southern husbands' habit of committing adultery with women who belonged
to them; it mattered less to Chestnut and Petigru King that the
women under the husbands' control were mere girls. But girls
they often were, vulnerable in both their status and their youth."
James Norcom had been following a Southern tradition of taking
advantage of girls when he married a teenager situated to improve his financial situation. He had been a thirty-two-year-old
divorce in 1810, when he married Mary Matilda Horniblow, the
barely sixteen-year-old daughter of the woman whose business
affairs he managed. This marriage had brought him control of
Harriet jacobs's family.
Norcorri's threats and Harrier's distress alerted Norcorn's
partner's son, the unmarried young lawyer Samuel Tredwell
Sawyer, to her sexual availability and made her quarry. He began
courting her through letters and other expressions of sympathy.
Finding herself trapped, Harriet "made a headlong plunge" into
a sexual relationship with Sawyer. Jacobs admits she knew what
she was doing when she slept with Sawyer instead of Norcom:
Norcom was building a cottage in which to hide her from the
town whose gaze had lent her some meager protection. Harriet

XVI

INTRODUCTION

had "exhausted [her] ingenuity in avoiding the snares, and eluding the power of the hated tyrant." In Incidents, she says, "I tried
hard to preserve my self-respect; but I was struggling alone in
the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery; and the monster
proved too strong for me.... I saw whither all this was tending."22 Caught between two older stalkers, Harriet gave in to the
younger evil. As the peer of Norcom's son John, Samuel Sawyer
belonged to a filial generation. In relation to fourteen-year-old
Harriet, he belonged to a parental generation. When he impregnated her, he was nearly thirty years old.
Harriet's difficulties increased when her pregnancy began to
show. Already jealous of her husband's pursuit of Harriet, Mary
Matilda Horniblow Norcom assumed the child Harriet was carrying was her husband's and threw her out of her house. Harriet
went to her grandmother, touching off a scene that scarred the
younger woman for life.
At first reading, Molly Horniblow's reputation appears to
have both protected Harriet against Norcom and aggravated her
vulnerability. On the one hand, Horniblow's standing among
the Edenton elite made outright rape of her granddaughter too
costly for Norcom and his reputation as a gentleman. The dozen
or so slave women he had raped, impregnated, and sold had all
lived outside of town on the plantation and lacked highly visible
family connections. On the other hand, Harriet held back from
confessing Norcom's harassment to her grandmother, who, in a
contradictory but time-honored pattern, would have blamed
Harriet for prompting the advances both women deplored. Harriet's reticence forestalled her grandmother's confronting Norcorn head-on and, perhaps, forcing him to desist.
A second look at Incidents, however, shows Molly Horniblow aware of her granddaughter's peril and taking all the steps
open to her to warn N orcom off. Her approach-indirect,
moral, and highly contingent-reflected the fundamental disparity of power between owner and grandmother. Although
Horniblow could not afford a direct or angry confrontation with
one of the town's first citizens, she had "high words" with him
over Harriet.P In the last analysis, she lacked means of retaliating

INTRODUCTION

XVll

against him materially; her puny weapons and the need to keep
up appearances failed her on Edenton's sexual hunting ground.
Horniblow's staunch belief in the ideal of female chastity put
her nearly as much at odds with her granddaughter as with her
harasser. Jacobs addresses her reader directly in Incidents: "You
never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by
law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a
chattel, entirely subject to the will of another."24 But when she
says that the prospects of the unfree are so "blighted by slavery"
that chastity becomes an impossible goal, she speaks to her
grandmother as well as the Northern reader she addresses
as "yoU."25
Molly Horniblow accused Harriet of disgracing her dead
mother's memory after Harriet had been turned out of the Norcorns' house. "I had rather see you dead than to see you as you
now are," Horniblow exclaimed as she wrenched Harriet's
mother's wedding ring from her finger and sent her away. Molly
Horniblow waited several days before answering Harriet's plea
to take her back home. Even on relenting, Horniblow pitied
Harriet but never forgave her. One critic wonders whether Harriet sinned chiefly by losing caste: Becoming pregnant without
marrying, she was acting just like all the other ordinary slave
girls. Horniblow, after all, took pride in her and Harriet's superiority over the common run of "degraded" Negro slaves."26
In 1831, two years after Harriet gave birth to her son ]oseph,
Nat Turner led an insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, some
forty miles from Edenton. As in insurrection scares in 1807,
1819, and 1822, the Nat Turner insurrection fomented a pogrom
in and around Edenton." On the pretext of searching for insurrectionists, white men looted, beat, raped, murdered, and generally terrorized African Americans. For a moment, Southern
legislators, particularly in Virginia, considered the possibility of
saving their skins by abolishing slavery. They decided instead to
tighten its controls, making manumission more difficult and the
lives of free blacks yet more precarious.
During the early and mid-1830s, Samuel Tredwell Sawyer
launched his political career with service in the North Carolina

XVlll

INTRODUCTION

state house and senate. He spent increasing amounts of time in
Raleigh but fathered a second child with Jacobs, Louisa
Matilda, born in 1833. Meanwhile, James Norcom flourished in
Edenton as chairman of the town commissioners.i'' To punish
Harriet for rejecting his renewed advances, he sent her to one of
his plantations. Upon learning in 1835 that he intended to send
her children to the plantation to be "broken in," Jacobs panicked. She knew the breaking-in process entailed much physical
and psychological abuse, which Harriet had already witnessed to
her sorrow. Several times in Incidents she mentions slaves who
had been so "brutalized" as to lose all human feeling. We still
recognize the behavior she described, now labeling it trauma and
the effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome: depression, selfloathing, anger, violence against the self and/or others." The
plantation to which Norcom proposed sending her children was
a place of bloodletting torture.
To divert Norcom from his plan and persuade him to let her
children's father purchase them, Harriet ran away, commencing
the long process of self-emancipation that would entail spending
several days and nights in a swamp full of snakes and nearly
seven years hidden in a crawl space in her grandmother's house.
Norcom imprisoned jacobs's Aunt Betty, her brother John, and
her children, but in the end he would allow Sawyer to purchase
their two children and Harriet's brother John.
Sawyer was elected to one term in the United States House of
Representatives in 1837. He took his slave John S. Jacobs to
Washington and then with him on a wedding trip to Chicago,
Canada, and New York. To travel in the North, Sawyer bade jacobs pose as a free man working for wages, which Jacobs, who
said he hated lies and hypocrisy, found repugnant. Toward the
end of the journey he left Sawyer in New York City and emancipated himself.
Now free, John S. Jacohs quickly made his way to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a haven for fugitive slaves where young
Frederick and Anna Douglass had recently settled and where
doubtless all three became acquainted as fellow workers and
budding abolitionists.'?

INTRODUCTION

XIX

The early 1840s also brought the emancipation of Harriet Jacobs and her children, one by one. Sawyer had brought little
Louisa from Edenton to Washington, D.C., to tend her halfsister, his and his wife's new baby. Once Sawyer's term ended,
he sent Louisa to work for his Tredwell cousins in Brooklyn.
Harriet finally escaped from Edenton to New York in 1842. Her
grandmother sent Harrier's son Joseph to her, and Harriet sent
Joseph to her brother in New Bedford. She lived and worked in
the Astor House, the favorite New York stopping place of
wealthy white Southerners and the same hotel where John S. Jacobs had left Sawyer in 1839.
Harriet served as the live-in baby nurse of Nathaniel Parker
Willis, the popular poet, litterateur, and editor of the weekly
Home Journal, and his English wife Mary Stace Willis. They
lived well, thanks to her father's £300/year subvention.'! Willis
was well known among New York's smart set and among its
abolitionists; he had courted Lydia Maria Child, editor of the
New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, who law became
Harriet Jacobs's editor. Child described Willis in terms of his
"aristocratic tastes, social snobbery, dandyism, and political conservatism. "32 Jacobs did not weigh in on the first three of these
characteristics, but she knew Willis to be proslavery. In 1850 he
wrote "Negro Happiness in Virginia,"33 dismissing whatever
doubts Jacobs might have harbored about his politics and, undoubtedly, inspiring a scene she includes in chapter 13 of Incidents. Here, a slaveholder seduces a Northern visitor, producing
slaves who-because, as Jacobs explains, they would suffer
violent reprisals if they spoke the truth-attest to their perfect
contentment. While Willis was hobnobbing with apologists
for slavery, Jacobs attended abolitionist meetings on a regular
basis.
During her years in antebellum New York, Jacobs always felt
hunted. As the North's busiest seaport and one of fugitive slaves'
preferred destinations, New York harbored numerous slave
catchers, whose numbers increased after the 1850 passage of the
Fugitive Slave Act made the recapture of fugitives-or black
people alleged to be fugitives-even more lucrative. Jacobs always felt somewhat safer in Massachusetts. In 1843 she fled to

xx

INTRODUCTION

Boston. She returned to New York City, but another scare in
1844 sent her back to Boston with her daughter Louisa.
After the death of Mary Stace Willis in 1845, Nathaniel Parker
Willis took his daughter Imogen and Jacobs to England to visit
Imogen's grandparents. In London, Jacobs felt truly free-of
slavery, of American white supremacy and racial oppressionfor the first time in her entire life. She was thirty-two years old.
But needing to make a living for herself and her children, Jacobs
returned to employment in New York City and several subsequent recapture scares. Finally, Cornelia Grinnell (the second
Mrs. Willis) bought Jacobs for $300 in 1852 and freed her."
During Harriet Jacobs's years with the Willises, John S. Jacobs
extended his activism in the abolitionist movement, serving as
the corresponding secretary of Boston's black New England
Freedom Association. In 1848 and 1849 he toured as a paid lecturer of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, appearing with
star speakers such as Frederick Douglass, who praised Jacobs's
"calm but feeling manner."35 In 1849 John S. Jacobs purchased
the Rochester Antislavery Office and Reading Room, a bookstore located above Douglass's North Star newspaper offices.
Harriet sent Louisa to school in Clinton, N ew York, and joined
her brother's antislavery enterprise. The reading room failed, as
did John's succeeding endeavor, an oyster restaurant.
During her nine months in Rochester, Harriet roomed with
Amy and Isaac Post, a white feminist abolitionist couple unusual
in their ability to deal with African Americans on a footing of
equality. Through the Posts, Jacobs met another of their black
house guests, the chatty young Bostonian, William C. N ell, who
worked in the offices of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator. Jacobs had already left Rochester when the Posts hosted the itinerant antislavery preacher Sojourner Truth. During their time
together, Harriet Jacobs shared her life story with Amy Post,
who encouraged her to write and publish it. Jacobs eventually
acted on the suggestion, but not in the 1840s.
The Compromise of 1850 included a tough new Fugitive Slave
Act. On the lecture circuit, John S. Jacobs exhorted his black
brethren and sisters to arm themselves for self-defense, then left

INTRODUCTION

XXI

the East for safer and potentially more lucrative fields. Always
enterprising, he went to California to pan for gold. 36 Harriet returned to New York City; her son Joseph, now twenty-one
years old, joined her brother in California. Unbeknownst to her,
her Edenton tormentor, Dr. james Norcom, died late in 1850.
During the 1850s, when she was in her late thirties, Harriet jacobs worked for the Willises, who were now settled in their
Hudson River estate, and wrote her book in secret. LINDA: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, seven years concealed in Slavery, Written by Herself was issued in January 1861 under the
pseudonym "Linda Brent." In it Jacobs indicted the institution
of chattel slavery for its physical torture, its debasement of family attachments among white as well as black, its corruption of
Southern white religion, and the prostitution of young women.
Such a firsthand account had never before appeared. Despite its
uniqueness, Incidents in the Life ofa Slave Girl failed to capture
the attention of a public preoccupied with the breakup of the
Union and the impending war. John S. Jacobs, now living in
London, published serially" A True Tale of Slavery" in the London magazine Leisure Hour in February 1861.
Harriet jacobs, like several other women abolitionists (including, later, Sojourner Truth and Maria Stewart), put her antislavery principles to work in 1862, moving to Washington, D.e., to
volunteer in the freedmen's relief movement under the auspices
of New York and Philadelphia Quakers. Her daughter Louisa,
now about thirty, joined Harriet in 1863. They distributed food
and clothing to "contraband"-black people who had escaped
slavery in Maryland and warfare in northern Virginia. Freedmen's relief took Harriet back to Edenton in 1865 and 1867, as a
free woman able to succor the poor who had in the past shared
her oppression. This relief mission also took her to Savannah,
Georgia; she then traveled to England and raised £100 to build an
orphanage and old-age home. (Harriet Tubman, in Auburn,
New York, acted on a similar vision.) But Ku Klux Klan terrorism made the Savannah undertaking dangerous, and Jacobs finally recommended the home not be built. With the end of
Reconstruction in Georgia and North Carolina, the Jacobses returned North. By 1870 they were running a rooming house for

xxii

INTRODUCTION

Harvard faculty and students in Cambridge, Massachusetts; by
1885 they were living in Washington, D.e., where Louisa taught
at Howard University. Harriet accompanied Louisa to meetings
in 1895 at which the National Association of Colored Women
was organized. Harriet Jacobs died in 1897; Louisa died in 1917.
Although Harriet and Louisa stayed together until the end of
Harrier's life, Joseph, the son and brother, disappeared in Australia in 1863; his mother had been able to send him money but
not to save his life. Harrier's brother John S. Jacobs died in 1875
and is buried beside his sister and niece in Mt. Auburn Cemetery
in Cambridge.'?

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is first and foremost a piece
of engaged writing, a means of advancing the struggle against the
institution of slavery by politicizing respectable Northern white
women-as women. Jacobs agreed with her friend and sister
abolitionist Amy Post that her story should be told in order to
reveal gendered evils of slavery that-due to their sexual nature-were usually passed over in silence. Whereas many other
ex-slave narratives presented testimonials against a vicious institution and also served as a means for their authors' financial support, Jacobs wrote purely out of her antislavery ideology. Well
and gainfully employed, her children grown up, she was not in
great need of money.38
Lacking formal education, Jacobs initially doubted her ability
as a writer to strike the right balance between candor and prurient detail. She thought first to dictate her experiences to someone
more comfortable with writing for publication, as Sojourner
Truth had to Olive Gilbert in the 1840s.39 The best-selling author of Uncle Tom's Cabin struck Jacobs as a potential amanuensis, but Harriet Beecher Stowe saw in Jacobs only grist for her
own mill. She asked to print the whole of Jacobs's experiences in
her Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, but Jacobs allowed her only a
brief sketch. Stowe not only sought to appropriate jacobs's material, she also sent Jacobs's letter, containing details about her
sexual history, to jacobs's employer, without jacobs's permission. Jacobs, perhaps naively, had also proposed to Stowe that
Louisa accompany Stowe on a trip to England. Stowe's patroniz-

INTRODUCTION

XXJU

ing refusal offended Jacobs. Deeply chagrined, Jacobs decided to
become an author in her own right. The death of her grandmother in 1853 removed the last obstacle to her writing her own
story, "by herself."
Between 1853 and 1858, Jacobs wrote in secret, certain her
employer would oppose her mission. She also honed her skills
by writing letters to the editors of New York newspapers.t?
Once the book manuscript was complete, her daughter Louisa,
who had the advantage of formal education, recopied the manuscript, standardizing the spelling and punctuation. Jacobs took
the recopied manuscript to England to engage a publisher; she
did not succeed. In Boston in 1859 she found Phillips and Samson, but the firm went bankrupt before the book could be
printed. Meanwhile, like many other abolitionists, Harriet jacobs was deeply inspired by John Brown's 1859 raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. She added a final chapter
to her book on Brown's visionary attack.
A new publishing firm in Boston, Thayer and Eldridge,
agreed in 1860 to publish Incidents, provided the experienced
abolitionist author and editor Lydia Maria Child would add a
preface. William C. Nell, whom jacobs knew as a fellow abolitionist and Post family friend, introduced jacobs to Child. Child
agreed, further, to edit the manuscript in the late summer of
1860.
The two women's correspondence shows that Jacobs had completed her book before meeting Child and that Child made only
two substantive changes, minor cuts, and one act of reorganization. Child suggested that Jacobs delete the chapter on John
Brown and end with her purchase by CorneIia GrinnelI Willis
and subsequent emancipation. Jacobs complied. Child also gathered together the stories of physical torture, placing them in one
chapter, "Sketches of Neighboring Slaveholders." In addition to
Child's authenticating preface, Jacobs's friends Amy Post (a
white woman) and John Lowther ("a highly respectable colared
citizen of Boston," according to the National Anti-Slavery Standard 4 1) , appended endorsements.
Thayer and Eldridge went bankrupt in December 1860, having stereotyped the plates but not printed the book. Jacobs

XXIV

INTRODUCTION

bought the plates and published the book herself using a Boston
printer, a recourse Sojourner Truth had also used in 1850 with
her Narrative. Lydia Maria Child continued to help with publishing and promotion. She had arranged for a subvention so that
Thayer and Eldridge could print 2000 copies (it is unclear
whether 1000 or 2000 were finally printed), and she wrote
friends such as John Greenleaf Whittier, urging them to have
their local booksellers stock copies of IncidentsS
LINDA: Incidents in the Life ofa Slave Girl, seven years concealed in Slavery, Written by Herself appeared in Boston in January 1861. Although the name "Linda" appeared on the book's
spine, its title page omitted it. As a result, the book is better
known today without "Linda.f''" (W. Tweedie published the
English edition, entitled The Deeper Wrong: or, Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, in September 1862.44
Child used parts of Incidents [citing Jacobs as author] in The
Freedmen's Book, an anthology she compiled for the freedpeople
in 1865.)
The earliest notices of the publication of Incidents in the Life of
a Slave Girl amounted to far less than sustained book reviews.
jacobs's old friend, William C. Nell, puffed the book in a letter
to the editor in the Boston Liberator. Nell acknowledged that
the Liberator overflowed with news of secession and impending
civil war, but he wanted to alert readers to the existence of a
newly published book, "LINDA: Incidents in the Life ofa Slave
Girl, seven years concealed in Slavery," which he thought certain
to "render a signal and most acceptable service" in a time of crisis. Nell praised the book as more useful than most ex-slave narratives because it was straight fact, with no fiction: "This record
of complicated experience in the life of a young woman, a
doomed victim to America's peculiar institution-her seven
years' concealment in slavery-continued persecutions-hopes,
often deferred, but which at length culminated in her freedomsurely need not the charms that any pen of fiction, however
gifted and graceful, could lend. They shine by the lustre of their
own truthfulness ..." Nell expressed the hope that all mothers

INTRODUCTION

xxv

and daughters would read it and "learn yet more of the barbarism of American slavery and the character of its victims. "45
The New York National Anti-Slavery Standard published the
book's "Preface by the Author," signed "Linda Brent," as well as
Lydia Maria Child's introduction and the accompanying notes
from Amy Post and George W. Lowther in its "New Publications" column on 23 February 1861. The editor, claiming to have
read the book, added a paragraph assuring readers that it "will
not disappoint the expectation which these testimonials are so
well adapted to excite. It casts a strong light upon the system of
slavery, revealing features too often obscured by a mistaken delicacy. If this narrative of the terrible experiences of a noble
woman in slavery could be read at every fireside in the free
States, it would kindle such a feeling of moral indignation against
the system and its guilty abettors" that Northerners would no
longer coddle Confederate secessionists.f Several months later,
National Anti-Slavery Standard columnist Richard D. Webb
briefly noted the publication of both Jacobses' narratives, calling
hers "one of the most interesting and affecting in the whole compass of anti-slavery literature.f'V The New York Anglo-African
ran an unsigned review praising Incidents for portraying "the
true romance of American life and history" and showing a "more
revolting phrase ... because it is of the spirit and not the flesh."
The reviewer condemned the sexual dynamics of American slavery and said the book would strike a telling blow against this
"cursed system." As though anticipating twentieth-century interpretations of the provenance of the text, the Anglo-African review stressed the circumscribed nature of Child's role as editor.t"
Lydia Maria Child deplored the antislavery press's lack of interest in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as early as February
1861, and unfortunately, that interest hardly picked Up.49 Jacobs's publication date, coinciding with the furor preceding the
outbreak of the Civil War, practically consigned the book to obscurity; the demise of the institution Jacobs attacked diminished
its interest for American readers for more than a century. Only
in the aftermath of the civil rights, black power, and black studies movements did Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl begin to

XXVI

INTRODUCTION

find a larger readership. The growth of the fields of women's history and women's studies has further elevated it to the status of a
classic American text. The narrative of a slave woman is being
recognized as a story of a representative American woman.

Thanks for research assistance to Malinda Alaine Lindquist and
especially, as ever, to Elaine Wise.
NELL IRVIN PAINTER

East Charleston, Vermont, August 1999

Notes
1. Frances Smith Foster notes that the title page of the first edition of

Jacobs's book bears only the subtitle, leading later reprinters and
critics to call the book simply Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
The spine of the first edition bore the name "Linda," and thus, in
the nineteenth century the author was known by her pseudonym,
"Linda Brent." See Francis Smith Foster, "Resisting Incidents," in
Harriet ]acobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, ed. Deborah M. GarfieId and Rafia Zafar (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1996),69.
2. For example, Louisa Picquet's autobiography, Louisa Picquet, the
Octoraon; or, Inside Views of Southern Domestic Life, as told to
the Reverend Hiram Mattison, also appeared in 1861. It reflected
above all Mattison's prurient interest in Picquet's sexuality. See
William L. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of
Afra-American Autobiography, 1760-1865 (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1986),243-246.
3. This last point is Hazel Carby's in Reconstructing Womanhood: The
Emergence of the Afra-American Woman Novelist (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987),39,45-61.
4. The "happy darky" genre outlived Harriet Jacobs, notably in continual restagings of Uncle Tom's Cabin as a proslavery play and
movie well into the twentieth century.
5. Jacobs calls the crawl space in which she hid for nearly seven years a
"loophole of retreat."
6. Wilma King and Nellie McKay both compare to wartime the conditions under which slave children developed. See Wilma King,

INTRODUCTION

XXVll

Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995); and Nellie Y.
McKay, "The Girls Who Became the Women: Childhood Memories in the Autobiographies of Harriet Jacobs, Mary Church
Terrell, and Anne Moody," in Tradition and the Talents of Women,
ed. Florence Howe (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).
7. According to Jean Fagan Yellin, the definitive authority, [acobs was
born in "around 1813." SeeJean Fagan Yellin, introduction to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, by Harriet A.
Jacobs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), xv.
However, Robanna Sumrell Knott, in "Harriet Jacobs: The Edenton Biography" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994), uses Jacobs's Mt. Auburn
Cemetery gravestone to calculate her dates. Edith Grinnell Willis,
daughter of Cornelia Grinnell and Nathaniel Parker Willis, erected
the stone in 1917, after the death of Harrier's daughter Louisa jacobs, presumably using Louisa's dates. By this reckoning, Harriet
Jacobs would have been born in 1815, her brother John S. [acobs
born in 1819, and her daughter Louisa in 1837. Harrier's son
joseph, who died in Australia, presumably in 1863, is not buried in
Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Yellin gives joseph's birthdate as 1829.
(Knott, p. 33, fn. 1; p. 75, fn. 15). This essay uses Yellin's dates unless otherwise indicated.
8. In her introduction to the 1987 edition of Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl, Jean Fagan Yellin calls Harriet jacobs's father Daniel.
She corrected the name in "Harriet Jacobs's Family History,"
American Literature 66, no. 4 (December 1994): 765-767. Yellin
also explains that after the death of Harriet's mother, Elijah married a free woman, with whom he had a second family, including a
son born in about 1824, also named Elijah. The younger Elijah, surnamed Knox, eventually settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts,
the widowed father of two children. He subsequently remarried
and had a son, whom he also named Elijah. Louisa jacobs, Harrier's
daughter, recognized Elijah Knox and his family in her will.
9. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston: Published for the Author [self-published], 1861),9. All page numbers
refer to this edition.
10. John S.Jacobs, "A True Tale of Slavery," 233. All page numbers refer to this edition.
11. John S.Jacobs, "A True Tale of Slavery," 235.
12. Robanna Sumrell Knott, "Harriet jacobs," 56, 78. All the enslaved

XXV111

INTRODUCTION

would have been considered to be Negroes, but their number
would also include people of European and American Indian descent.
13. John S. Jacobs, "A True Tale of Slavery," 256.
14. Robanna Sumrell Knott, "Harriet jacobs," 128.
15. According to Jean Fagan Yellin (Incidents, 268), Samuel Tredwell
Sawyer died in 1865; in this instance, I have followed Robanna
Sumrell Knott ("Harriet Jacobs," 114), who adds that Sawyer is
buried on Long Island.
16. Robanna Sumrell Knott, "Harriet Jacobs," 130-134.
17. HarrietJacobs, Incidents, 9.
18. P. Gabrielle Foreman speculates enticingly on the possible familial
entanglements motivating Horniblow's sale and emancipation, her
possession of her son, and her purchase of a grand house in the center of town for $1. See Foreman's "Manifest in Signs: The Politics
of Sex and Representation in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,"
in Harriet Jacobs, ed. Deborah M. Garfield and Rafia Zafar, 92.
19. John S. jacobs, "A True Tale of Slavery,"243.
20. The quotes are on pages 58 and 39 of Harrier jacobs, Incidents. See
also pages 4 and 57.
21. Hannah Decker points to the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of
the sweet young thing (das siisse Madel) in Freud's Vienna. See
Nell Irvin Painter, "Three Southern Women and Freud: A NonExceptionalist Approach to Race, Class, and Gender in the Slave
South," in Feminists Revision History, ed. Ann-Louise Shapiro
(New Brunswick, N.].: Rutgers University Press, 1994),205-206.
22. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents, 61-62. The Norcoms named their daughter Mary Matilda after her mother, Mary Matilda Horniblow Norcorn.
23. Harriet [acobs, Incidents, 59.
24. HarrietJacobs, Incidents, 61-62.
25. HarrietJacobs, Incidents, 18,60-61.
26. Deborah M. Garfield, "Earwitness: Female Abolitionist, Sexuality,
and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," in Harriet Jacobs, ed.
Deborah M. Garfield and Rafia Zafar, 121-122; and Harriet jacobs,
Incidents, 86.
27. Robanna Sumrell Knott, "Harrier jacobs," 83, 115.
28. Robanna Sumrell Knott, "Harrier Jacobs," 227.
29. Nell Irvin Painter, "Soul Murder and Slavery: Toward a Full
Loaded Cost Accounting," in U.S. History as Women's History:
New Feminist Essays, ed. Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris,

INTRODUCTION

XXIX

and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 137-138.
30. Frederick Douglass (1818-1885), the leading African-American
antebellum feminist abolitionist and postwar statesman, wrote
three autobiographies and edited several newspapers over the
course of an illustrious public career.
31. Willis's father-in-law supplied half their annual income. See
P. Gabrielle Foreman, "Manifest in Signs," 91.
32. The exact quote is Carolyn Karcher's, rather than Child's. See Carolyn L. Karcher, ed., A Lydia Maria Child Reader (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1997),330.
33. Jean Fagan Yellin, "Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative," American Literature 53, no. 3 (November 1981): 481.
34. Nathaniel Parker Willis's'sister, the popular novelist Fannie Fern,
suspected he married Cornelia Grinnell for her money. Cornelia
Willis's inheritance paid for their Hudson River mansion, Idlewild,
where Harriet Jacobs was the senior housekeeper and surreptitiously wrote Incidents. See P. Gabrielle Foreman, "Manifest in
Signs," 97.
35. Jean Fagan Yellin, "Through Her Brother's Eyes: Incidents and 'A
True Tale,' " in HarrietJacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl, ed. Deborah M. Garfield and Rafia Zafar, 46, 45.
36. Jean Fagan Yellin, "Through Her Brother's Eyes," 47.
37. This material comes from Jean Fagan Yellin's "Chronology," ID
Yellin, ed., Incidents, 224-225.
38. P. Gabrielle Foreman, "Manifest in Signs," 80. Sojourner Truth's
Narrative was meant to raise money to support her in her old age.
She was in her mid-fifties when it appeared.
39. See "Introduction," in Narrative of Sojourner Truth, ed. Nell Irvin
Painter (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).
40. See Jean Fagan Yellin, "Harrier Ann ]acobs, c. 1813-1897," Legacy:
A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers 5, no.
2 (Fall 1988): 56,60-61. This article includes the text of ]acobs's
first letter to the editor, written in 1853.
41. New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, 23 February 1861.
42. Milton Meltzer and Patricia G. Holland, eds., Lydia Maria Child:
Selected Letters, 1817-1880 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1982), 357-359, 378-379. See also Carolyn L. Karcher, The
First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria
Child (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994),435-437.
43. Frances Smith Foster, "Resisting Incidents," 69.

xxx

INTRODUCTION

44. Jean Fagan Yellin, "Through Her Brother's Eyes," 56.
45. William C. Nell, Letter to the Editor, Liberator, 25 January 1861.
46. New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, 23 February 1861. By
this time, Lydia Maria Child had been out of the editorship nearly
twenty years.
47. New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, 17 August 1861,
quoted in [acqueline Goldsby, "I Disguised My Hand," in Harriet
Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, ed. Deborah M.
Garfield and Rafia Zafar, 23.
48. New York Anglo-African, 13 April 1861.
49. Child to Henrietta Sargent, 9 February 1861, in Milton Meltzer and
Patricia G. Holland, eds., Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters,
374-375.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Andrews, WiIliam L. "The Changing Moral Discourse of NineteenthCentury African American Women's Autobiography: Harriet jacobs
and Elizabeth Keckley." In De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics
of Gender in Women's Autobiography. Edited by Sidonie Smith and
Julia Watson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Berlandt, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
1997.
Braxton, Joanne M., and Sharon Zuber. "Silences in Harriet 'Linda
Brent' jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." In Listening to
Silences: New Essays in Feminist Criticism. Edited by Elaine Hedges
and SheIley Fisher Fishkin. New York: Oxford University Press,
1994.
Carby, Hazel. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the AjroAmerican Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Doriani, Beth Maclay. "Black Womanhood in Nineteenth-Century
America: Subversion and Self-Construction in Two Women's Autobiographies." American Quarterly 43, no. 2 (June 1991).
Fleischner, Jennifer. Mastering Slavery: Memory, Family, and Identity
in Women's Slave Narratives. New York: New York University
Press, 1996.
Foreman, P. Gabrielle. "The Spoken and the Silenced in Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl and Our Nig," Callaloo 13, no. 2 (Spring 1990).
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. "To Write My Self: The Autobiographies of
Afro-American Women." In Feminist Issues in Literary Scholarship.
Edited by Shari Benstock. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

j.

1~~

Garfield, Deborah M., and Rafia Zafar, eds. Harriet ]acohs and ncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Kaplan, Carla. "Recuperating Agents: Narrative Contracts, Emancipatory Readers, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." In Provoking

XXXI

XXXll

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice. Edited by judith
Kegan Gardiner. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
Knott, Robanna Sumrel!. "Harriet Jacobs: The Edenton Biography."
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, 1994.
Lovell, Thomas B. "By Dint of Labor and Economy: Harriet Jacobs,
Harriet Wilson, and the Salutary View of Wage Labor," Arizona
Quarterly 52, no. 3 (Autumn 1996).
McKay, Nellie Y. "The Girls Who Became the Women: Childhood
Memories in the Autobiographies of Harrier Jacobs, Mary Church
Terrell, and Anne Moody." In Tradition and the Talents of Women.
Edited by Florence Howe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1991.
Mullen, Harryette, "Runaway Tongue: Resistant Orality in Uncle
Tom's Cabin, Our Nig, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and
Beloved." In The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America. Edited by Shirley
Samuels. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Painter, Nell Irvin. "Three Southern Women and Freud: A NonExceptionalist Approach to Race, Class, and Gender in the Slave
South." In Feminists Revision History. Edited by Ann-Louise
Shapiro. New Brunswick, N.].: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
Smith, Valerie. Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Sorisio, Carolyn, "'There Is Might in Each': Conceptions of Self in
HarrietJacobs's Incidents in the Life ofa Slave Girl, Written by Herself," Legacy: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Women
Writers 13, no. 1 (1996).
Sterling, Dorothy, ed. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.
WaIter, Krista. "Surviving in the Garret: HarrietJacobs and the Critique
of Sentiment," ATQ: 19th C. American Literature and Culture New
Series 8, no. 3 (September 1994).
Yellin, Jean Fagan, "Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative," American Literature 53, no. 3 (November 1981).
- - - . "Harrier Ann Jacobs, c. 1813-1897," Legacy: A Journal ofNineteenth-Century American Women Writers 5, no. 2. (Fall 1988).
- - - . "Harrier Ann [acobs, 1813-1897." In Black Women in America:
An Historical Encyclopedia, Vo!. 1. Edited by Darlene Clark Hine.
Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1993.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUR THER READING

xxxiu

"Harrier jacobs's Family History," American Literature 66,
no. 4 (December 1994).
- - - . "Incidents in the Life of Harriet Jacobs." In The Seductions of
Biography. Edited by Mary Rhiel and David Suchoff. New York:
Routledge, 1996.
Yellin, Jean Fagan, ed. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by
Herself, by Harriet A. [acobs. Edited by L. Maria Child. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

The text reproduced here of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
is based on the 1861 first Boston edition. That of « A True Tale of
Slavery" comes from a bound copy of the Leisure Hour, a London periodical, in which it was published serially in February
1861.
None of the three original manuscripts of Incidents-Harriet
jacobs's version, Louisa jacobs's copy, or Lydia Maria Child's
edited version-survives. After the initial publications in Boston
in 1861 and London in 1862, the book did not begin to circulate
until it was reprinted in 1960 and 1961 in facsimile editions by
Ayer Publishers and the Scholarly Press. In 1972 the travel
writer Waiter Magnes Teller published excerpts in an anthology
entitled Twelve Works of Naive Genius (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1972) and the first annotated edition in 1973.'
Also in 1973, the AMS Press published a facsimile edition.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s Jean Fagan Yellin, following
in the footsteps of Dorothy Sterling, used the Jacobs letters in
the recently deposited Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers in the
University of Rochester Library to corroborate jacobs's claim,
in her title, to have written her book "herself." Although Jacobs
was known as her book's author in the nineteenth century,
twentieth-century readers preferred to see it as the work of
Child. Before Yellin' s research, historians and critics did not
consider the book the authentic work of a former slave.
Yellin began publishing her findings on Jacobs in 1981,
demonstrating conclusively that Jacobs was the actual author of
Incidents. Sterling included jacobs's letters in We Are Your Sisters, published in 1984. Yellin' s research on the Jacobs family
continues, and she is currently preparing the papers of both Harriet and John S. Jacobs for publication.' Historians such as John
xxxv

XXXVi

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

W. Blassingame doubted both the book's truth value and its authenticity as the work of a former slave. In 1972 and 1979
Blassingame exaggerated the role of Lydia Maria Child and
called jacobs's story "not credible" and "too melodramatic.":'
Even in the 1980s, critics and historians continued their disparagement of jacobs's claim.
The 1987 publication of Yellin's carefully researched and annotated edition by Harvard University Press converted literary
critics, and they have continued to give the book far more attention than historians, perhaps in part because Yellin herself works
out of an English department and publishes in literary journals.
The historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, writing in 1988, followed Blassingame's lead in disparaging Incidents's usefulness as
autobiography. For Fox-Genovese, Incidents should be read
skepticaIly, as an improbably «crafted representation" resting
upon "a great factual lie," for Jacobs could not in fact have
evaded Norcom's sexual grasp.4 Doubting historians are now the
minority of Jacobs's readers; since the late 1980s, Incidents has
gained wide acceptance as an important black feminist autobiography. In 1987 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., included it in the onevolume Classic Slave Narratives (New York: New American
Library) and, in 1988, in the multivolume Schomburg Library of
Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers (New York: Oxford
University Press). The late 1990s witnessed the incorporation of
Incidents into the college curriculum and the publication of editions for classroom use.

Notes
1. Harriet jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, ed. Waiter Teller
(New York: Harcourt Brace ]ovanovich, 1973).
2. Bibliographical information from the Jacobs family papers is not yet

available.
3. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the

Antebellum South (revised and enlarged edition) (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1979), 373.
4. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household (Chapel
Hill: Universityof North Carolina Press, 1988),392-394.

INCIDENTS!
IN THE

LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL.
WRITTEN BY HERSELF .
• t'lll.

"Northerners know nothing at all about Slavery. They think it is
perpetual bondage only. They have no conception of the depthof degradation involved in that word, SLAVERY; if they had, they would never
cease their efforts untilso horrible a system was overthrown."
A WOMAN OF NORTH CAROLINA.'

"Rise up, ye women that are at ease! Hear my voice, ye careless
daughters! Give earunto my speech."
ISAIAH XXXII.9.J

EDITED BY L. MARIA CHILD.

BOSTON:
PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR.

1861.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
L. MARIA CHILD.

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
District of Massachusetts.

Preface by the Author

READER, BE ASSURED THIS narrative is no fiction. I am aware

that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are,
nevertheless, strictly true. I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall far short
of the facts. I have concealed the names of places, and given persons fictitious names. I had no motive for secrecy on my own account, but I deemed it kind and considerate towards others to
pursue this course.
I wish I were more competent to the task I have undertaken.
But I trust my readers will excuse deficiencies in consideration of
circumstances. I was born and reared in Slavery; and I remained
in a Slave State twenty-seven years. Since I have been at the
North, it has been necessary for me to work diligently for my
own support, and the education of my children. This has not left
me much leisure to make up for the loss of early opportunities to
improve myself; and it has compelled me to write these pages at
irregular intervals, whenever I could snatch an hour from household duties.
When I first arrived in Philadelphia, Bishop Paine" advised me
to publish a sketch of my life, but I told him I was altogether incompetent to such an undertaking. Though I have improved my
mind somewhat since that time, I still remain of the same opinion; but I trust my motives will excuse what might otherwise
seem presumptuous. I have not written my experiences in order
to attract attention to myself; on the contrary, it would have
been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history. Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings. But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North
to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at
the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of
3

4

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

them far worse. I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens
to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is.
Only by experience can anyone realize how deep, and dark, and
foul is that pit of abominations. May the blessing of God rest on
this imperfect effort in behalf of my persecuted people!
LINDA BRENT

Introduction by the Editor

THE AUTHOR OF THE following autobiography is personally
known to me, and her conversation and manners inspire me with
confidence. During the last seventeen years, she has lived the
greater part of the time with a distinguished family in New
York," and has so deported herself as to be highly esteemed by
them. This fact is sufficient, without further credentials of her
character. I believe those who know her will not be disposed to
doubt her veracity, though some incidents in her story are more
romantic than fiction.
At her request, I have revised her manuscript; but such
changes as I have made have been mainly for purposes of condensation and orderly arrangement. I have not added any thing
to the incidents, or changed the import of her very pertinent remarks. With trifling exceptions, both the ideas and the language
are her own. I pruned excrescences a little, but otherwise I had
no reason for changing her lively and dramatic way of telling her
own story. The names of both persons and places are known to
me; but for good reasons I suppress them.
It will naturally excite surprise that a woman reared in Slavery
should be able to write so well. But circumstances will explain
this. In the first place, nature endowed her with quick perceptions. Secondly, the mistress, with whom she lived till she was
twelve years old, was a kind, considerate friend, who taught her
to read and spell." Thirdly, she was placed in favorable circumstances after she came to the North; having frequent intercourse
with intelligent persons, who felt a friendly interest in her
welfare, and were disposed to give her opportunities for selfimprovement.
I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for
presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this
5

6

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLA VE GIRL

intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which
some call delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This peculiar
phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public
ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I
willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil
withdrawn. I do this for the sake of my sisters in bondage, who
are suffering wrongs so foul, that our ears are too delicate to listen to them. I do it with the hope of arousing conscientious and
reflecting women at the North to a sense of their duty in the exertion of moral influence on the question of Slavery, on all possible occasions. I do it with the hope that every man who reads
this narrative will swear solemnly before God that, so far as
he has power to prevent it, no fugitive from Slavery shall ever
be sent back to suffer in that loathsome den of corruption and
cruelty.
L. MARIA CHILD

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL,
SEVEN YEARS CONCEALED.

I

Childhood

I WAS BORN A slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy
childhood had passed away. My father! was a carpenter, and
considered so intelligent and skilful in his trade, that, when
buildings out of the common line were to be erected, he was sent
for from long distances, to be head workman. On condition of
paying his mistress two hundred dollars a year, and supporting
himself, he was allowed to work at his trade, and manage his
own affairs. His strongest wish was to purchase his children; but,
though he several times offered his hard earnings for that purpose, he never succeeded. In complexion my parents were a light
shade of brownish yellow, and were termed mulattoes. They
lived together in a comfortable home; and, though we were all
slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a
piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, and liable
to be demanded of them at any moment. I had one brother,
William,2 who was two years younger than myself-a bright, affectionate child. I had also a great treasure in my maternal grandmother,' who was a remarkable woman in many respects. She
was the daughter of a planter in South Carolina, who, at his
death, left her mother and his three children free, with money to
go to St. Augustine, where they had relatives. It was during the
Revolutionary War; and they were captured on their passage,
carried back, and sold to different purchasers. Such was the story
my grandmother used to tell me; but I do not remember all the
particulars. She was a little girl when she was captured and sold
to the keeper of a large hotel. I have often heard her tell how
hard she fared during childhood. But as she grew older she
7

8

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

evinced so much intelligence, and was so faithful, that her master
and mistress could not helping seeing it was for their interest to
take care of such a valuable piece of property. She became an indispensable personage in the household, officiating in all capacities, from cook and wet nurse to seamstress. She was much
praised for her cooking; and her nice crackers became so famous
in the neighborhood that many people were desirous of obtaining them. In consequence of numerous requests of this kind, she
asked persmission of her mistress to bake crackers at night, after
all the household work was done; and she obtained leave to do it,
provided she would clothe herself and her children from the
profits. Upon these terms, after working hard all day for her
mistress, she began her midnight bakings, assisted by her two
oldest children. The business proved profitable; and each year
she laid by a little, which was saved for a fund to purchase her
children. Her master died, and the property was divided among
his heirs. The widow had her dower in the hotel, which she continued to keep open. My grandmother remained in her service as
a slave; but her children were divided among her master's children. As she had five, Benjarnin," the youngest one, was sold, in
order that each heir might have an equal portion of dollars and
cents. There was so little difference in our ages that he seemed
more like my brother than my uncle. He was a bright, handsome
lad, nearly white; for he inherited the complexion my grandmother had derived from Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Though only
ten years old, seven hundred and twenty dollars were paid for
him. His sale was a terrible blow to my grandmother; but she
was naturally hopeful, and she went to work with renewed energy, trusting in time to be able to purchase some of her children.
She had laid up three hundred dollars, which her mistress one
day begged as a loan, promising to pay her soon. The reader
probably knows that no promise or writing given to a slave is
legally binding; for, according to Southern laws, a slave, being
property, can hold no property. When my grandmother lent her
hard earnings to her mistress, she trusted solely to her honor.
The honor of a slaveholder to a slave!
To this good grandmother I was indebted for many comforts.
My brother Willie and I often received portions of the crackers,

CHILDHOOD

9

cakes, and preserves, she made to sell; and after we ceased to be
children we were indebted to her for many more important services.

Such were the unusually fortunate circumstances of my early
childhood. When I was six years old, my mother" died; and then,
for the first time, I learned, by the talk about me, that I was
a slave. My mother's mistress was the daughter of my grandmother's mistress. She was the foster sister of my mother; they
were both nourished at my grandmother's breast. In fact, my
mother had been weaned at three months old, that the babe of
the mistress might obtain sufficient food. They played together
as children; and, when they became women, my mother was a
most faithful servant to her whiter foster sister. On her deathbed her mistress promised that her children should never suffer
for any thing; and during her lifetime she kept her word. They all
spoke kindly of my dead mother, who had been a slave merely in
name, but in nature was noble and womanly. I grieved for her,
and my young mind was troubled with the thought who would
now take care of me and my little brother. I was told that my
home was now to be with her mistress; and I found it a happy
one. No toilsome or disagreeable duties were imposed upon me.
My mistress was so kind to me that I was always glad to do her
bidding, and proud to labor for her as much as my young years
would permit. I would sit by her side for hours, sewing diligently, with a heart as free from care as that of any free-born
white child. When she thought I was tired, she would send me
out to run and jump; and away I bounded, to gather berries or
flowers to decorate her room. Those were happy days-too
happy to last. The slave child had no thought for the morrow;
but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.
When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died. As I saw the cheek grow paler, and the eye more
glassy, how earnestly I prayed in my heart that she might live! I
loved her; for she had been almost like a mother to me. My
prayers were not answered. She died, and they buried her in the
little churchyard, where, day after day, my tears fell upon her
grave.

10

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

I was sent to spend a week with my grandmother. I was now
old enough to begin to think of the future; and again and again I
asked myself what they would do with me. I felt sure I should
never find another mistress so kind as the one who was gone. She
had promised my dying mother that her children should never
suffer for any thing; and when I remembered that, and recalled
her many proofs of attachment to me, I could not help having
some hopes that she had left me free. My friends were almost
certain it would be so. They thought she would be sure to do it,
on account of my mother's love and faithful service. But, alas!
we all know that the memory of a faithful slave does not avail
much to save her children from the auction block.
After a brief period of suspense, the will of my mistress was
read, and we learned that she had bequeathed me to her sister's
daughter," a child of five years old. So vanished our hopes. My
mistress had taught me the precepts of God's Word: "Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself." "Whatsoever ye would that men
should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." But I was her
slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor. I
would give much to blot out from my memory that one great
wrong. As a child, I loved my mistress; and, looking back on the
happy days I spent with her, I try to think with less bitterness of
this act of injustice. While I was with her, she taught me to read
and spell; and for this privilege, which so rarely falls to the lot of
a slave, I bless her memory.
She possessed but few slaves; and at her death those were all
distributed among her relatives. Five of them were my grandmother's children, and had shared the same milk that nourished
her mother's children. Notwithstanding my grandmother's long
and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no
more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or
the horses they tend.

II

The New Master and Mistress

DR. FLINT, 1 A PHYSICIAN in the neighborhood, had married

the sister of my mistress, and I was now the property of their little daughter. It was not without murmuring that I prepared for
my new home; and what added to my unhappiness, was the fact
that my brother William was purchased by the same family. My
father, by his nature, as well as by the habit of transacting business as a skilful mechanic, had more of the feelings of a freeman
than is common among slaves. My brother was a spirited boy;
and being brought up under such influences, he early detested
the name of master and mistress. One day, when his father and
his mistress both happened to call him at the same time, he hesitated between the two; being perplexed to know which had the
strongest claim upon his obedience. He finally concluded to go
to his mistress. When my father reproved him for it, he said,
"You both called me, and I didn't know which I ought to go to
first. "
"You are my child," replied our father, "and when I call you,
you should come immediately, if you have to pass through fire
and water."
Poor Willie! He was now to learn his first lesson of obedience
to a master. Grandmother tried to cheer us with hopeful words,
and they found an echo in the credulous hearts of youth.
When we entered our new home we encountered cold looks,
cold words, and cold treatment. We were glad when the night
came. On my narrow bed I moaned and wept, I felt so desolate
and alone.
I had been there nearly a year, when a dear little friend of
mine was buried. I heard her mother sob, as the clods fell on the
coffin of her only child, and I turned away from the grave, feeling thankful that I still had something left to love. I met my
11

12

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

grandmother, who said, "Come with me, Linda;" and from her
tone I knew that something sad had happened. She led me apart
from the people, and then said, "My child, your father is dead."2
Dead! How could I believe it? He had died so suddenly I had
not even heard that he was sick. I went home with my grandmother. My heart rebelled against God, who had taken from me
mother, father, mistress, and friend. The good grandmother tried
to comfort me. "Who knows the ways of God?" said she. "Perhaps they have been kindly taken from the evil days to come."
Years afterwards I often thought of this. She promised to be a
mother to her grandchildren, so far as she might be permitted to
do so; and strengthened by her love, I returned to my master's. I
thought I should be allowed to go to my father's house the next
morning; but I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's
house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day
gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the
dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What
cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property.
Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching
them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous
doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.
The next day I followed his remains to a humble grave beside
that of my dear mother. There were those who knew my father's
worth, and respected his memory.
My home now seemed more dreary than ever. The laugh of
the little slave-children sounded harsh and cruel. It was selfish to
feel so about the joy of others. My brother moved about with a
very grave face. I tried to comfort him, by saying, "Take courage, Willie; brighter days will come by and by."
"You don't know any thing about it, Linda," he replied. "We
shall have to stay here all our days; we shall never be free."
I argued that we were growing older and stronger, and that
perhaps we might, before long, be allowed to hire our own time,
and then we could earn money to buy our freedom. William declared this was much easier to say than to do; moreover, he did
not intend to buy his freedom. We held daily controversies upon
this subject.

THE NEW MASTER AND MISTRESS

13

Little attention was paid to the slaves' meals in Dr. Flint's
house. If they could catch a bit of food while it was going, well
and good. I gave myself no trouble on that score, for on my various errands I passed my grandmother's house, where there was
always something to spare for me. I was frequently threatened
with punishment if I stopped there; and my grandmother, to
avoid detaining me, often stood at the gate with something
for my breakfast or dinner. I was indebted to her for all
my comforts, spiritual or temporal. It was her labor that supplied
my scanty wardrobe. I have a vivid recollection of the linseywoolsey? dress given me every winter by Mrs. Flint. How I
hated it! It was one of the badges of slavery.
While my grandmother was thus helping to support me from
her hard earnings, the three hundred dollars she had lent her mistress were never repaid. When her mistress died, her son-in-law,
Dr. Flint, was appointed executor. When grandmother applied to
him for payment, he said the estate was insolvent, and the law
prohibited payment. It did not, however, prohibit him from retaining the silver candelabra, which had been purchased with
that money. I presume they will be handed down in the family,
from generation to generation.
My grandmother's mistress had always promised her that, at
her death, she should be free; and it was said that in her will she
made good the promise. But when the estate was settled, Dr.
Flint told the faithful old servant that, under existing circumstances, it was necessary she should be sold.
On the appointed day, the customary advertisement was
posted up, proclaiming that there would be a "public sale of negroes, horses, &c." Dr. Flint called to tell my grandmother that
he was unwilling to wound her feelings by putting her up at auction, and that he would prefer to dispose of her at private sale.
My grandmother saw through his hypocrisy; she understood
very well that he was ashamed of the job. She was a very spirited
woman, and if he was base enough to sell her, when her mistress
intended she should be free, she was determined the public
should know it. She had for a long time supplied many families
with crackers and preserves; consequently, "Aunt Marrhy," as
she was called, was generally known, and every body who knew

14

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

her respected her intelligence and good character. Her long and
faithful service in the family was also well known, and the intention of her mistress to leave her free. When the day of sale came,
she took her place among the chattels, and at the first call she
sprang upon the auction-block. Many voices called out, "Shame!
Shame! Who is going to sell you, aunt Marrhy? Don't stand
there! That is no place for you." Without saying a word, she quietly awaited her fate. No one bid for her. At last, a feeble voice
said, "Fifty dollars." It came from a maiden lady, seventy years
old, the sister of my grandmother's deceased mistress. She had
lived forty years under the same roof with my grandmother; she
knew how faithfully she had served her owners, and how cruelly
she had been defrauded of her rights; and she resolved to protect
her. The auctioneer waited for a higher bid; but her wishes were
respected; no one bid above her. She could neither read nor
write; and when the bill of sale was made out, she signed it with
a cross. But what consequence was that, when she had a big heart
overflowing with human kindness? She gave the old servant her
freedom.
At that time, my grandmother was just fifty years old. Laborious years had passed since then; and now my brother and I
were slaves to the man who had defrauded her of her money, and
tried to defraud her of her freedom. One of my mother's sisters,
called Aunt Nancy," was also a slave in his family. She was a
kind, good aunt to me; and supplied the place of both housekeeper and waiting maid to her mistress. She was, in fact, at the
beginning and end of every thing.
Mrs. Flint, like many southern women, was totally deficient
in energy. She had not strength to superintend her household affairs; but her nerves were so strong, that she could sit in her easy
chair and see a woman whipped, till the blood trickled from
every stroke of the lash. She was a member of the church; but
partaking of the Lord's supper did not seem to put her in a
Christian frame of mind. If dinner was not served at the exact
time on that particular Sunday, she would station herself in the
kitchen, and wait till it was dished, and then spit in all the kettles
and pans that had been used for cooking. She did this to prevent

THE NEW MASTER AND MISTRESS

15

the cook and her children from eking out their meagre fare with
the remains of the gravy and other scrapings. The slaves could
get nothing to eat except what she chose to give them. Provisions
were weighed out by the pound and ounce, three times a day. I
can assure you she gave them no chance to eat wheat bread from
her flour barrel. She knew how many biscuits a quart of flour
would make, and exactly what size they ought to be.
Dr. Flint was an epicure. The cook never sent a dinner to his
table without fear and trembling; for if there happened to be a
dish not to his liking, he would either order her to be whipped,
or compel her to eat every mouthful of it in his presence. The
poor, hungry creature might not have objected to eating it; but
she did object to having her master cram it down her throat till
she choked.
They had a pet dog, that was a nuisance in the house. The
cook was ordered to make some Indian mush for him. He refused to eat, and when his head was held over it, the froth flowed
from his mouth into the basin. He died a few minutes after.
When Dr. Flint came in, he said the mush had not been well
cooked, and that was the reason the animal would not eat it. He
sent for the cook, and compelled her to eat it. He thought that
the woman's stomach was stronger than the dog's; but her
sufferings afterwards proved that he was mistaken. This poor
woman endured many cruelties from her master and mistress;
sometimes she was locked up, away from her nursing baby, for a
whole day and night.
When I had been in the family a few weeks, one of the plantation slaves was brought to town, by order of his master. It was
near night when he arrived, and Dr. Flint ordered him to be
taken to the work house, and tied up to the joist, so that his feet
would just escape the ground. In that situation he was to wait
till the doctor had taken his tea. I shall never forget that night.
N ever before, in my life, had I heard hundreds of blows fall, in
succession, on a human being. His piteous groans, and his "0,
pray don't, massa," rang in my ear for months afterwards. There
were many conjectures as to the cause of this terrible punishment. Some said master accused him of stealing corn; others said

16

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

the slave had quarrelled with his wife, in presence of the overseer, and had accused his master of being the father of her child.
They were both black, and the child was very fair.
I went into the work house next morning, and saw the
cowhide still wet with blood, and the boards all covered with
gore. The poor man lived, and continued to quarrel with his
wife. A few months afterwards Dr. Flint handed them both over
to a slave-trader. The guilty man put their value into his pocket,
and had the satisfaction of knowing that they were out of sight
and hearing. When the mother was delivered into the trader's
hands, she said, "You promised to treat me well." To which he
replied, "You have let your tongue run too far; damn you!" She
had forgotten that it was a crime for a slave to tell who was the
father of her child.
From others than the master persecution also comes in such
cases. I once saw a young slave girl dying soon after the birth of
a child nearly white. In her agony she cried out, "0 Lord, come
and take me!" Her mistress stood by, and mocked at her like an
incarnate fiend. "You suffer, do you?" she exclaimed. "I am glad
of it. You deserve it all, and more too."
The girl's mother said, "The baby is dead, thank God; and I
hope my poor child will soon be in heaven, too."
"Heaven!" retorted the mistress. "There is no such place for
the like of her and her bastard."
The poor mother turned away, sobbing. Her dying daughter
called her, feebly, and as she bent over her, I heard her say,
"Don't grieve so, mother; God knows all about it; and HE will
have mercy upon me."
Her sufferings, afterwards, became so intense, that her mistress felt unable to stay; but when she left the room, the scornful
smile was still on her lips. Seven children called her mother. The
poor black woman had but the one child, whose eyes she saw
closing in death, while she thanked God for taking her away
from the greater bitterness of life.

III

The Slaves' New rear's Day

DR. FLINT OWNED A fine residence in town, several farms, and
about fifty slaves, besides hiring a number by the year.
Hiring-day at the south takes place on the 1st of January. On
the 2d, the slaves are expected to go to their new masters. On a
farm, they work until the corn and cotton are laid. They then
have two holidays. Some masters give them a good dinner under
the trees, This over, they work until Christmas eve. If no heavy
charges are meantime brought against them, they are given four
or five holidays, whichever the master or overseer may think
proper. Then comes New Year's eve; and they gather together
their little aIls, or more properly speaking, their little nothings,
and wait anxiously for the dawning of day. At the appointed
hour the grounds are thronged with men, women, and children,
waiting, like criminals, to hear their doom pronounced. The
slave is sure to know who is the most humane, or cruel master,
within forty miles of him.
It is easy to find out, on that day, who clothes and feeds his
slaves well; for he is surrounded by a crowd, begging, "Please,
massa, hire me this year. I will work very hard, massa."
If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is
whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and
promises not to run away during the year. Should he chance to
change his mind, thinking it justifiable to violate an extorted
promise, woe unto him if he is caught! The whip is used till the
blood flows at his feet; and his stiffened limbs are put in chains,
to be dragged in the field for days and days!
If he lives until the next year, perhaps the same man will hire
him again, without even giving him an opportunity of going to
the hiring-ground. After those for hire are disposed of, those for
sale are called up.
17

18

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

0, you happy free women, contrast your New Year's day
with that of the poor bond-woman! With you it is a pleasant season, and the light of the day is blessed. Friendly wishes meet you
every where, and gifts are showered upon you. Even hearts that
have been estranged from you soften at this season, and lips that
have been silent echo back, "1 wish you a happy New Year."
Children bring their little offerings, and raise their rosy lips for a
caress. They are your own, and no hand but that of death can
take them from you.
But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the
children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day
dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system
that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's
instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies.
On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children
to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be
taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a
slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own
town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the
trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused
to do. How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by
one, wherever he could command the highest price? 1 met that
mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day
in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed,
"Gone! All gone! Why don't God kill me?" 1 had no words
wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily,
yea, of hourly occurrence.
Slaveholders have a method, peculiar to their institution, of
getting rid of old slaves, whose lives have been worn out in their
service. I knew an old woman, who for seventy years faithfully
served her master. She had become almost helpless, from hard labor and disease. Her owners moved to Alabama, and the old
black woman was left to be sold to any body who would give
twenty dollars for her.

IV

The Slave Who Dared to Feel Like a Man

Two YEARS HAD PASSED since I entered Dr. Flint's family, and
those years had brought much of the knowledge that comes from
experience, though they had afforded little opportunity for any
other kinds of knowledge.
My grandmother had, as much as possible, been a mother to
her orphan grandchildren. By perseverance and unwearied industry, she was now mistress of a snug little home,' surrounded
with the necessaries of life. She would have been happy could her
children have shared them with her. There remained but three
children and two grandchildren, all slaves. Most earnestly did
she strive to make us feel that it was the will of God: that He
had seen fit to place us under such circumstances; and though it
seemed hard, we ought to pray for contentment.
It was a beautiful faith, coming from a mother who could not
call her children her own. But I, and Benjamin, her youngest
boy, condemned it. We reasoned that it was much more the will
of God that we should be situated as she was. We longed for a
home like hers. There we always found sweet balsam for our
troubles. She was so loving, so sympathizing! She always met us
with a smile, and listened with patience to all our sorrows. She
spoke so hopefully, that unconsciously the clouds gave place to
sunshine. There was a grand big oven there, too, that baked
bread and nice things for the town, and we knew there was always a choice bit in store for us.
But, alas! even the charms of the old oven failed to reconcile
us to our hard lot. Benjamin was now a tall, handsome lad,
strongly and gracefully made, and with a spirit too bold and daring for a slave. My brother William, now twelve years old, had
the same aversion to the word master that he had when he was an
urchin of seven years. I was his confidant. He came to me with
19

20

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

all his troubles. I remember one instance in particular. It was on
a lovely spring morning, and when I marked the sunlight dancing here and there, its beauty seemed to mock my sadness. For
my master, whose restless, craving, vicious nature roved about
day and night, seeking whom to devour, had just left me, with
stinging, scorching words; words that scathed ear and brain like
fire. 0, how I despised him! I thought how glad I should be, if
some day when he walked the earth, it would open and swallow
him up, and disencumber the world of a plague.
When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey
his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave,
whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had
my puny arm felt half so strong.
So deeply was I absorbed in painful reflections afterwards, that
I neither saw nor heard the entrance of anyone, till the voice of
William sounded close beside me. "Linda," said he, "what makes
you look so sad? I love you. 0, Linda, isn't this a bad world?
Every body seems so cross and unhappy. I wish I had died when
poor father did."
I told him that every body was not cross, or unhappy; that
those who had pleasant homes, and kind friends, and who were
not afraid to love them, were happy. But we, who were slavechildren, without father or mother, could not expect to be happy.
We must be good; perhaps that would bring us contentment.
"Yes," he said, "I try to be good; but what's the use? They are
all the time troubling me." Then he proceeded to relate his afternoon's difficulty with young master Nicholas.i It seemed that
the brother of master Nicholas had pleased himself with making
up stories about William. Master Nicholas said he should be
flogged, and he would do it. Whereupon he went to work; but
William fought bravely, and the young master, finding he was
getting the better of him, undertook to tie his hands behind him.
He failed in that likewise. By dint of kicking and fisting, William
came out of the skirmish none the worse for a few scratches.
He continued to discourse on his young master's meanness;
how he whipped the little boys, but was a perfect coward when a
tussle ensued between him and white boys of his own size. On
such occasions he always took to his legs. William had other

THE SLAVE WHO DARED TO FEEL LIKE A MAN

21

charges to make against him. One was his rubbing up pennies
with quicksilver, and passing them off for quarters of a dollar on
an old man who kept a fruit stall. William was often sent to buy
fruit, and he earnestly inquired of me what he ought to do under
such circumstances. I told him it was certainly wrong to deceive
the old man, and that it was his duty to tell him of the impositions practised by his young master. I assured him the old man
would not be slow to comprehend the whole, and there the matter would end. William thought it might with the old man, but
not with him. He said he did not mind the smart of the whip, but
he did not like the idea of being whipped.
While I advised him to be good and forgiving I was not unconscious of the beam in my own eye. It was the very knowledge
of my own shortcomings that urged me to retain, if possible,
some sparks of my brother's God-given nature. I had not lived
fourteen years in slavery for nothing. I had felt, seen, and heard
enough, to read the characters, and question the motives, of
those around me. The war of my life had begun; and though one
of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered. Alas, for me!
If there was one pure, sunny spot for me, I believed it to be in
Benjamin's heart, and in another's, whom I loved with all the ardor of a girl's first love. My owner knew of it, and sought in
every way to render me miserable. He did not resort to corporal
punishment, but to all the petty, tyrannical ways that human ingenuity could devise.
I remember the first time I was punished. It was in the month
of February. My grandmother had taken myoid shoes, and replaced them with a new pair. I needed them; for several inches of
snow had fallen, and it still continued to fall. When I walked
through Mrs. Flint's room, their creaking grated harshly on her
refined nerves. She called me to her, and asked what I had about
me that made such a horrid noise. I told her it was my new shoes.
"Take them off," said she; "and if you put them on again, I'll
throw them into the fire."
I took them off, and my stockings also. She then sent me a
long distance, on an errand. As I went through the snow, my
bare feet tingled. That night I was very hoarse; and I went to bed

22

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

thinking the next day would find me sick, perhaps dead. What
was my grief on waking to find myself quite well!
1 had imagined if I died, or was laid up for some time, that my
mistress would feel a twinge of remorse that she had so hated
"the little imp," as she styled me. It was my ignorance of that
mistress that gave rise to such extravagant imaginings.
Dr. Flint occasionally had high prices offered for me; but he
always said, "She don't belong to me. She is my daughter's property, and I have no right to sell her." Good, honest man! My
young mistress was still a child, and 1 could look for no protection from her. I loved her, and she returned my affection. lance
heard her father allude to her attachment to me; and his wife
promptly replied that it proceeded from fear. This put unpleasant doubts into my mind. Did the child feign what she did not
feel? or was her mother jealous of the mite of love she bestowed
on me? I concluded it must be the latter. 1 said to myself,
"Surely, little children are true."
One afternoon 1 sat at my sewing, feeling unusual depression
of spirits. My mistress had been accusing me of an offence, of
which I assured her 1 was perfectly innocent; but I saw, by the
contemptuous curl of her lip, that she believed I was telling a lie.
1 wondered for what wise purpose God was leading me
through such thorny paths, and whether still darker days were in
store for me. As 1 sat musing thus, the door opened softly, and
William came in. "Well, brother," said I, "what is the matter this
time?"
"0 Linda, Ben and his master have had a dreadful time!"
said he.
My first thought was that Benjamin was killed. "Don't be
frightened, Linda," said William; "1 will tell you all about it."
It appeared that Benjamin's master had sent for him, and he
did not immediately obey the summons. When he did, his master
was angry, and began to whip him. He resisted. Master and slave
fought, and finally the master was thrown. Benjamin had cause
to tremble; for he had thrown to the ground his master-one of
the richest men in town. I anxiously awaited the result.
That night I stole to my grandmother's house, and Benjamin

THE SLAVE WHO DARED TO FEEL LIKE A MAN

23

also stole thither from his master's. My grandmother had gone to
spend a day or two with an old friend living in the country.
"I have come," said Benjarnin, "to tell you good bye. I am going away."
I inquired where.
"To the north," he replied.
I looked at him to see whether he was in earnest. I saw it all in
his firm, set mouth. I implored him not to go, but he paid no
heed to my words. He said he was no longer a boy, and every
day made his yoke more galling. He had raised his hand against
his master, and was to be publicly whipped for the offence. I reminded him of the poverty and hardships he must encounter
among strangers. I told him he might be caught and brought
back; and that was terrible to think of.
He grew vexed, and asked if poverty and hardships with freedom, were not preferable to our treatment in slavery. "Linda,"
he continued, "we are dogs here; foot-balls, cattle, every thing
that's mean. No, I will not stay. Let them bring me back. We
don't die but once."
He was right; but it was hard to give him up. "Go," said I,
"and break your mother's heart."
I repented of my words ere they were out.
"Linda," said he, speaking as I had not heard him speak that
evening, "how could you say that? Poor mother! be kind to her,
Linda; and you, too, cousin Fanny.""
Cousin Fanny was a friend who had lived some years with us.
Farewells were exchanged, and the bright, kind boy, endeared
to us by so many acts of love, vanished from our sight.
It is not necessary to state how he made his escape. Suffice it
to say, he was on his way to New York when a violent storm
overtook the vessel. The captain said he must put into the nearest
port. This alarmed Benjamin, who was aware that he would be
advertised in every port near his own town. His embarrassment
was noticed by the captain. To port they went. There the advertisement met the captain's eye. Benjamin so exactly answered its
description, that the captain laid hold on him, and bound him in
chains. The storm passed, and they proceeded to New York. Be-

24

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

fore reaching that port Benjamin managed to get off his chains
and throw them overboard. He escaped from the vessel, but was
pursued, captured, and carried back to his master.
When my grandmother returned home and found her youngest child had fled, great was her sorrow; but, with characteristic
piety, she said, "God's will be done." Each morning, she inquired if any news had been heard from her boy. Yes, news was
heard. The master was rejoicing over a letter, announcing the
capture of his human chattel.
That day seems but as yesterday, so well do I remember it. I
saw him led through the streets in chains, to jail. His face was
ghastly pale, yet full of determination. He had begged one of the
sailors to go to his mother's house and ask her not to meet him.
He said the sight of her distress would take from him all selfcontrol. She yearned to see him, and she went; but she screened
herself in the crowd, that it might be as her child had said.
We were not allowed to visit him; but we had known the jailer
for years, and he was a kind-hearted man. At midnight he
opened the jail door for my grandmother and myself to enter, in
disguise. When we entered the cell not a sound broke the stillness. "Benjamin, Benjamin!" whispered my grandmother. No
answer. "Benjamin!" she again faltered. There was a jingle of
chains. The moon had just risen, and cast an uncertain light
through the bars of the window. We knelt down and took Benjamin's cold hands in ours. We did not speak. Sobs were heard,
and Benjamin's lips were unsealed; for his mother was weeping
on his neck. How vividly does memory bring back that sad
night! Mother and son talked together. He asked her pardon for
the suffering he had caused her. She said she had nothing to forgive; she could not blame his desire for freedom. He told her that
when he was captured, he broke away, and was about casting
himself into the river, when thoughts of her came over him, and
he desisted. She asked if he did not also think of God. I fancied I
saw his face grow fierce in the moonlight. He answered, "No, I
did not think of him. When a man is hunted like a wild beast he
forgets there is a God, a heaven. He forgets every thing in his
struggle to get beyond the reach of the bloodhounds."

THE SLAVE WHO DARED TO FEEL LIKE A MAN

25

"Don't talk so, Benjamin," said she. "Put your trust in God.
Be humble, my child, and your master will forgive you."
"Forgive me for what, mother? For not letting him treat
me like a dog? No! I will never humble myself to him. I have
worked for him for nothing all my life, and I am repaid with
stripes and imprisonment. Here I will stay till I die, or till he
sells me."
The poor mother shuddered at his words. I think he felt it; for
when he next spoke, his voice was calmer. "Don't fret about me,
mother. I ain't worth it," said he. "I wish 1 had some of your
goodness. You bear every thing patiently, just as though you
thought it was all right. I wish 1 could."
She told him she had not always been so; once, she was like
him; but when sore troubles came upon her, and she had no arm
to lean upon, she learned to call on God, and he lightened her
burdens. She besought him to do likewise.
We overstaid our time, and were obliged to hurry from the jail.
Benjamin had been imprisoned three weeks, when my grandmother went to intercede for him with his master. He was immovable. He said Benjamin should serve as an example to the
rest of his slaves; he should be kept in jail till he was subdued, or
be sold if he got but one dollar for him. However, he afterwards
relented in some degree. The chains were taken off, and we were
allowed to visit him.
As his food was of the coarsest kind, we carried him as often
as possible a warm supper, accompanied with some little luxury
for the jailer.
Three months elapsed, and there was no prospect of release or
of a purchaser. One day he was heard to sing and laugh. This
piece of indecorum was told to his master, and the overseer was
ordered to re-chain him. He was now confined in an apartment
with other prisoners, who were covered with filthy rags. Benjamin was chained near them, and was soon covered with vermin. He worked at his chains till he succeeded in getting out of
them. He passed them through the bars of the window, with a
request that they should be taken to his master, and he should be
informed that he was covered with vermin.

26

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

This audacity was punished with heavier chains, and prohibition of our visits.
My grandmother continued to send him fresh changes of
clothes. The old ones were burned up. The last night we saw him
in jail his mother still begged him to send for his master, and beg
his pardon. Neither persuasion nor argument could turn him
from his purpose. He calmly answered, "I am waiting his time."
Those chains were mournful to hear.
Another three months passed, and Benjamin left his prison
walls. We that loved him waited to bid him a long and last
farewell. A slave-trader had bought him. You remember, 1 told
you what price he brought when ten years of age. Now he was
more than twenty years old, and sold for three hundred dollars.
The master had been blind to his own interest. Long confinement had made his face too pale, his form too thin; moreover, the
trader had heard something of his character, and it did not strike
him as suitable for a slave. He said he would give any price if the
handsome lad was a girl. We thanked God that he was not.
Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when
they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard
her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander
wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you
have witnessed that scene as 1 saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery
is damnable!
Benjamin, her youngest, her pet, was forever gone! She could
not realize it. She had had an interview with the trader for the
purpose of ascertaining if Benjarnin could be purchased. She was
told it was impossible, as he had given bonds not to sell him till
he was out of the state. He promised that he would not sell him
till he reached New Orleans.
With a strong arm and unvaried trust, my grandmother began
her work of love. Benjamin must be free. If she succeeded, she
knew they would still be separated; but the sacrifice was not too
great. Day and night she labored. The trader's price would treble
that he gave; but she was not discouraged.
She employed a lawyer to write to a gentleman, whom she
knew, in New Orleans. She begged him to interest himself for

THE SLAVE WHO DARED TO FEEL LIKE A MAN

27

Benjamin, and he willingly favored her request. When he saw
Benjamin, and stated his business, he thanked him; but said he
preferred to wait a while before making the trader an offer. He
knew he had tried to obtain a high price for him, and had invariably failed. This encouraged him to make another effort for freedom. So one morning, long before day, Benjamin was missing.
He was riding over the blue billows, bound for Baltimore.
For once his white face did him a kindly service. They had no
suspicion that it belonged to a slave; otherwise, the law would
have been followed out to the letter, and the thing rendered back
to slavery. The brightest skies are often overshadowed by the
darkest clouds. Benjamin was taken sick, and compelled to remain in Baltimore three weeks. His strength was slow in returning; and his desire to continue his journey seemed to retard his
recovery. How could he get strength without air and exercise?
He resolved to venture on a short walk. A by-street was selected,
where he thought himself secure of not being met by anyone
that knew him; but a voice called out, "Halloo, Ben, my boy!
what are you doing here?"
His first impulse was to run; but his legs trembled so that he
could not stir. He turned to confront his antagonist, and behold,
there stood his old master's next door neighbor! He thought it
was all over with him now; but it proved otherwise. That man
was a miracle. He possessed a goodly number of slaves, and
yet was not quite deaf to that mystic clock, whose ticking is
rarely heard in the slaveholder's breast.
"Ben, you are sick," said he. "Why, you look like a ghost. I
guess 1 gave you something of a start. Never mind, Ben, 1 am not
going to touch you. You had a pretty tough time of it, and you
may go on your way rejoicing for all me. But 1 would advise you
to get out of this place plaguy quick, for there are several gentlemen here from our town." He described the nearest and safest
route to New York, and added, "1 shall be glad to tell your
mother 1 have seen you. Good bye, Ben."
Benjamin turned away, filled with gratitude, and surprised
that the town he hated contained such a gem-a gem worthy of a
purer setting.

28

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

This gentleman was a Northerner by birth, and had married a
southern lady. On his return, he told my grandmother that he
had seen her son, and of the service he had rendered him.
Benjamin reached New York safely, and concluded to stop
there until he had gained strength enough to proceed further. It
happened that my grandmother's only remaining son had sailed
for the same city on business for his mistress. Through God's
providence, the brothers met. You may be sure it was a happy
meeting. "0 Phil.:" exclaimed Benjamin, "I am here at last."
Then he told him how near he came to dying, almost in sight
of free land, and how he prayed that he might live to get one
breath of free air. He said life was worth something now, and it
would be hard to die. In the old jail he had not valued it; once, he
was tempted to destroy it; but something, he did not know what,
had prevented him; perhaps it was fear. He had heard those who
profess to be religious declare there was no heaven for selfmurderers; and as his life had been pretty hot here, he did not desire a continuation of the same in another world. "If I die now,"
he exclaimed, "thank God, I shall die a freeman!"
He begged my uncle Phillip not to return south; but stay and
work with him, till they earned enough to buy those at home.
His brother told him it would kill their mother if he deserted her
in her trouble. She had pledged her house, and with difficulty
had raised money to buy him. Would he be bought?
"No, never!" he replied. "Do you suppose, Phil, when I have
got so far out of their clutches, I will give them one red cent?
No! And do you suppose I would turn mother out of her home
in her old age? That I would let her pay all those hard-earned
dollars for me, and never to see me? For you know she will stay
south as long as her other children are slaves. What a good
mother! Tell her to buy you, Phil. You have been a comfort to
her, and I have been a trouble. And Linda, poor Linda; what'll
become of her? Phil, you don't know what a life they lead her.
She has told me something about it, and I wish old Flint was
dead, or a better man. When I was in jail, he asked her if she
didn't want him to ask my master to forgive me, and take me
home again. She told him, No; that I didn't want to go back. He
got mad, and said wc were all alike. I never despised my own

THE SLAVE WHO DARED TO FEEL LIKE A MAN

29

master half as much as I do that man. There is many a worse
slaveholder than my master; but for all that I would not be his
slave."
While Benjamin was sick, he had parted with nearly all his
clothes to pay necessary expenses. But he did not part with a little pin I fastened in his bosom when we parted. It was the most
valuable thing I owned, and I thought none more worthy to
wear it. He had it still.
His brother furnished him with clothes, and gave him what
money he had.
They parted with moistened eyes; and as Benjamin turned
away, he said, "Phil, I part with all my kindred." And so it
proved. We never heard from him again.
Uncle Phillip came home; and the first words he uttered when
he entered the house were, "Mother, Ben is free! I have seen him
in N ew York." She stood looking at him with a bewildered air.
"Mother, don't you believe it?" he said, laying his hand softly
upon her shoulder. She raised her hands, and exclaimed, "God be
praised! Let us thank him." She dropped on her knees, and
poured forth her heart in prayer. Then Phillip must sit down and
repeat to her every word Benjamin had said. He told her all; only
he forbore to mention how sick and pale her darling looked.
Why should he distress her when she could do him no good?
The brave old woman still toiled on, hoping to rescue some of
her other children. After a while she succeeded in buying
Phillip." She paid eight hundred dollars, and came home with the
precious document that secured his freedom. The happy mother
and son sat together by the old hearthstone that night, telling
how proud they were of each other, and how they would prove
to the world that they could take care of themselves, as they had
long taken care of others. We all concluded by saying, "He that
is willing to be a slave, let him be a slave."

v

The Trials of Girlhood

DURING THE FIRST YEARS of my service in Dr. Flint's family, I
was accustomed to share some indulgences with the children of
my mistress. Though this seemed to me no more than right, I
was grateful for it, and tried to merit the kindness by the faithful discharge of my duties. But I now entered on my fifteenth
year-a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to
whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import. I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master's age, my extreme youth, and the
fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother,
made him bear this treatment for many months. He was a crafty
man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purposes.
Sometimes he had stormy, terrific ways, that made his victims
tremble; sometimes he assumed a gentleness that he thought
must surely subdue. Of the two, I preferred his stormy moods,
although they left me trembling. He tried his utmost to corrupt
the pure principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled
my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster
could think of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred. But
he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof
with him-where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was
his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My
soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn
for protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as
ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow
of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from
death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men.
The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no
other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage. The
30

THE TRIALS OF GIRLHOOD

31

degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are
more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe. Surely, if you credited one half the truths that are
told you concerning the helpless millions suffering in this cruel
bondage, you at the north would not help to tighten the yoke.
You surely would refuse to do for the master, on your own soil,
the mean and cruel work which trained bloodhounds and the
lowest class of whites do for him at the south.
Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow;
but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows. Even the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her children, will learn, before she is twelve years old,
why it is that her mistress hates such and such a one among the
slaves. Perhaps the child's own mother is among those hated
ones. She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble
when she hears her master's footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty
upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands
admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of
the female slave. I know that some are too much brutalized by
slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves
feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it. I cannot
tell how much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs, nor
how I am still pained by the retrospect. My master met me at
every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing
by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him.
If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied
toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mother's grave, his
dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature
had given me became heavy with sad forebodings. The other
slaves in my master's house noticed the change. Many of them
pitied me; but none dared to ask the cause. They had no need to
inquire. They knew too well the guilty practices under that roof;
and they were aware that to speak of them was an offence that
never went unpunished.
I longed for some one to confide in. I would have given the

32

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

world to have laid my head on my grandmother's faithful bosom, and told her all my troubles. But Dr. Flint swore he would
kill me, if I was not as silent as the grave. Then, although my
grandmother was all in all to me, I feared her as well as loved her.
I had been accustomed to look up to her with a respect bordering upon awe. I was very young, and felt shamefaced about
telling her such impure things, especially as I knew her to be very
strict on such subjects. Moreover, she was a woman of a high
spirit. She was usually very quiet in her demeanor; but if her indignation was once roused, it was not very easily quelled. I had
been told that she once chased a white gentleman with a loaded
pistol, because he insulted one of her daughters. I dreaded the
consequences of a violent outbreak; and both pride and fear kept
me silent. But though I did not confide in my grandmother, and
even evaded her vigilant watchfulness and inquiry, her presence
in the neighborhood was some protection to me. Though she
had been a slave, Dr. Flint was afraid of her. He dreaded her
scorching rebukes. Moreover, she was known and patronized by
many people; and he did not wish to have his villany made public. It was lucky for me that I did not live on a distant plantation,
but in a town not so large that the inhabitants were ignorant of
each other's affairs. Bad as are the laws and customs in a slaveholding community, the doctor, as a professional man, deemed it
prudent to keep up some outward show of decency.
0, what days and nights of fear and sorrow that man caused
me! Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am
telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do it to kindle
a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still
in bondage, suffering as I once suffered.
I once saw two beautiful children playing together. One was a
fair white child; the other was her slave, and also her sister. When
I saw them embracing each other, and heard their joyous laughter, I turned sadly away from the lovely sight. I foresaw the inevitable blight that would fall on the little slave's heart. I knew
how soon her laughter would be changed to sighs. The fair child
grew up to be a still fairer woman. From childhood to womanhood her pathway was blooming with flowers, and overarched

THE TRIALS OF GIRLHOOD

33

by a sunny sky. Scarcely one day of her life had been clouded
when the sun rose on her happy bridal morning.
How had those years dealt with her slave sister, the little playmate of her childhood? She, also, was very beautiful; but the
flowers and sunshine of love were not for her. She drank the cup
of sin, and shame, and misery, whereof her persecuted race are
compelled to drink.
In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and
women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance
of the right? Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so
full, and my pen is so weak! There are noble men and women
who plead for us, striving to help those who cannot help themselves. God bless them! God give them strength and courage to
go on! God bless those, every where, who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity!

VI

The Jealous Mistress

I WOULD TEN THOUSAND times rather that my children should
be the half-starved paupers of Ireland than to be the most pampered among the slaves of America. I would rather drudge out
my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me
rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress. The felon's home in a penitentiary is preferable. He may
repent, and turn from the error of his ways, and so find peace;
but it is not so with a favorite slave. She is not allowed to have
any pride of character. It is deemed a crime in her to wish to be
virtuous.
Mrs. Flint' possessed the key to her husband's character before I was born. She might have used this knowledge to counsel
and to screen the young and the innocent among her slaves; but
for them she had no sympathy. They were the objects of her
constant suspicion and malevolence. She watched her husband
with unceasing vigilance; but he was well practised in means to
evade it. What he could not find opportunity to say in words he
manifested in signs. He invented more than were ever thought of
in a deaf and dumb asylum. I let them pass, as if I did not understand what he meant; and many were the curses and threats bestowed on me for my stupidity. One day he caught me teaching
myself to write. He frowned, as if he was not well pleased; but I
suppose he came to the conclusion that such an accomplishment
might help to advance his favorite scheme. Before long, notes
were often slipped into my hand. I would return them, saying, "I
can't read them, sir." "Can't you?" he replied; "then I must read
them to you." He always finished the reading by asking, "Do
you understand?" Sometimes he would complain of the heat of
the tea room, and order his supper to be placed on a small table
in the piazza. He would seat himself there with a well-satisfied
34

THE JEALOUS MISTRESS

35

smile, and tell me to stand by and brush away the flies. He would
eat very slowly, pausing between the mouthfuls. These intervals
were employed in describing the happiness I was so foolishly
throwing away, and in threatening me with the penalty that finally awaited my stubborn disobedience. He boasted much of
the forbearance he had exercised towards me, and reminded me
that there was a limit to his patience. When I succeeded in avoiding opportunities for him to talk to me at home, I was ordered to
come to his office, to do some errand. When there, I was obliged
to stand and listen to such language as he saw fit to address to
me. Sometimes I so openly expressed my contempt for him that
he would become violently enraged, and I wondered why he did
not strike me. Circumstanced as he was, he probably thought it
was a better policy to be forbearing. But the state of things grew
worse and worse daily. In desperation I told him that I must and
would apply to my grandmother for protection. He threatened
me with death, and worse than death, if I made any complaint to
her. Strange to say, I did not despair. I was naturally of a buoyant disposition, and always I had a hope of somehow getting out
of his clutches. Like many a poor, simple slave before me, I
trusted that some threads of joy would yet be woven into my
dark destiny.
I had entered my sixteenth year, and every day it became
more apparent that my presence was intolerable to Mrs. Flint.
Angry words frequently passed between her and her husband.
He had never punished me himself, and he would not allow any
body else to punish me. In that respect, she was never satisfied;
but, in her angry moods, no terms were too vile for her to bestow upon me. Yet I, whom she detested so bitterly, had far
more pity for her than he had, whose duty it was to make her life
happy. I never wronged her, or wished to wrong her; and one
word of kindness from her would have brought me to her feet.
After repeated quarrels between the doctor and his wife, he
announced his intention to take his youngest daughter.? then
four years old, to sleep in his apartment. It was necessary that a
servant should sleep in the same room, to be on hand if the child
stirred. I was selected for that office, and informed for what purpose that arrangement had been made. By managing to keep

36

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

within sight of people, as much as possible, during the day time,
I had hitherto succeeded in eluding my master, though a razor

was often held to my throat to force me to change this line of
policy. At night I slept by the side of my great aunt;' where I felt
safe. He was too prudent to come into her room. She was an old
woman, and had been in the family many years. Moreover, as a
married man, and a professional man, he deemed it necessary to
save appearances in some degree. But he resolved to remove the
obstacle in the way of his scheme; and he thought he had planned
it so that he should evade suspicion. He was well aware how
much I prized my refuge by the side of my old aunt, and he determined to dispossess me of it. The first night the doctor had the
little child in his room alone. The next morning, I was ordered to
take my station as nurse the following night. A kind Providence
interposed in my favor. During the day Mrs. Flint heard of this
new arrangement, and a storm followed. I rejoiced to hear it
rage.
After a while my mistress sent for me to come to her room.
Her first question was, "Did you know you were to sleep in the
doctor's room?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Who told you?"
"My master."
"Will you answer truly all the questions I ask?"
"Yes, ma' am."
"Tell me, then, as you hope to be forgiven, are you innocent
of what I have accused you?"
"I am."
She handed me a Bible, and said, "Lay your hand on your
heart, kiss this holy book, and swear before God that you tell me
the truth."
I took the oath she required, and I did it with a clear conSCIence.
"You have taken God's holy word to testify your innocence,"
said she. "If you have deceived me, beware! Now take this stool,
sit down, look me directly in the face, and tell me all that has
passed between your master and you."

THE JEALOUS MISTRESS

37

I did as she ordered. As I went on with my account her color
changed frequently, she wept, and sometimes groaned. She spoke
in tones so sad, that I was touched by her grief. The tears came to
my eyes; but I was soon convinced that her emotions arose from
anger and wounded pride. She felt that her marriage vows were
desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for
the poor victim of her husband's perfidy. She pitied herself as a
martyr; but she was incapable of feeling for the condition of
shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slave was
placed.
Yet perhaps she had some touch of feeling for me; for when
the conference was ended, she spoke kindly, and promised to
protect me. I should have been much comforted by this assurance if I could have had confidence in it; but my experiences in
slavery had filled me with distrust. She was not a very refined
woman, and had not much control over her passions. I was an
object of her jealousy, and, consequently, of her hatred; and I
knew I could not expect kindness or confidence from her under
the circumstances in which I was placed. I could not blame her.
Slaveholders' wives feel as other women would under similar circumstances. The fire of her temper kindled from small sparks,
and now the flame became so intense that the doctor was obliged
to give up his intended arrangement.
I knew I had ignited the torch, and I expected to suffer for it
afterwards; but I felt too thankful to my mistress for the timely
aid she rendered me to care much about that. She now took me
to sleep in a room adjoining her own. There I was an object of
her especial care, though not of her especial comfort, for she
spent many a sleepless night to watch over me. Sometimes I
woke up, and found her bending over me. At other times she
whispered in my ear, as though it was her husband who was
speaking to me, and listened to hear what I would answer. If she
startled me, on such occasions, she would glide stealthily away;
and the next morning she would tell me I had been talking in my
sleep, and ask who I was talking to. At last, I began to be fearful
for my life. It had been often threatened; and you can imagine,
better than I can describe, what an unpleasant sensation it must

38

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

produce to wake up in the dead of night and find a jealous
woman bending over you. Terrible as this experience was, I had
fears that it would give place to one more terrible.
My mistress grew weary of her vigils; they did not prove satisfactory. She changed her tactics. She now tried the trick of accusing my master of crime, in my presence, and gave my name
as the author of the accusation. To my utter astonishment, he
replied, "I don't believe it; but if she did acknowledge it, you tortured her into exposing me." Tortured into exposing him! Truly,
Satan had no difficulty in distinguishing the calor of his soul! I
understood his object in making this false representation. It was
to show me that I gained nothing by seeking the protection of
my mistress; that the power was still all in his own hands. I pitied
Mrs. Flint. She was a second wife, many years the junior of her
husband; and the hoary-headed miscreant was enough to try the
patience of a wiser and better woman. She was completely foiled,
and knew not how to proceed. She would gladly have had me
flogged for my supposed false oath; but, as I have already stated,
the doctor never allowed anyone to whip me. The old sinner
was politic. The application of the lash might have led to remarks
that would have exposed him in the eyes of his children and
grandchildren. How often did I rejoice that I lived in a town
where all the inhabitants knew each other! If I had been on a remote plantation, or lost among the multitude of a crowded city,
I should not be a living woman at this day.
The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the Inquisition. My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven
slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of
their children? Did the other slaves dare to allude to it, except in
whispers among themselves? No, indeed! They knew too well
the terrible consequences.
My grandmother could not avoid seeing things which excited
her suspicions. She was uneasy about me, and tried various ways
to buy me; but the never-changing answer was always repeated:
"Linda does not belong to me. She is my daughter's property,
and I have no legal right to sell her." The conscientious man! He
was too scrupulous to sell me; but he had no scruples whatever
about committing a much greater wrong against the helpless

THE JEALOUS MISTRESS

39

young girl placed under his guardianship, as his daughter's property. Sometimes my persecutor would ask me whether I would
like to be sold. I told him I would rather be sold to any body
than to lead such a life as I did. On such occasions he would assume the air of a very injured individual, and reproach me for my
ingratitude. "Did I not take you into the house, and make you
the companion of my own children?" he would say. "Have I
ever treated you like a negro? I have never allowed you to be
punished, not even to please your mistress. And this is the recompense I get, you ungrateful girl!" I answered that he had reasons of his own for screening me from punishment, and that the
course he pursued made my mistress hate me and persecute me.
If I wept, he would say, "Poor child! Don't cry! don't cry! I will
make peace for you with your mistress. Only let me arrange
matters in my own way. Poor, foolish girl! you don't know what
is for your own good. I would cherish you. I would make a lady
of you. Now go, and think of all I have promised you."
I did think of it.
Reader, I draw no imaginary pictures of southern homes. I am
telling you the plain truth. Yet when victims make their escape
from this wild beast of Slavery, northerners consent to act the
part of bloodhounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his
den, "full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness." Nay, more,
they are not only willing, but proud, to give their daughters in
marriage to slaveholders. The poor girls have romantic notions
of a sunny clime, and of the flowering vines that all the year
round shade a happy home. To what disappointments are they
destined! The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose
hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her
own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto
him of his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery
home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness.
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about
it. They regard such children as property, as marketable as the
pigs on the plantation; and it is seldom that they do not make
them aware of this by passing them into the slave-trader's hands

40

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

as soon as possible, and thus getting them out of their sight. I am
glad to say there are some honorable exceptions.
I have myself known two southern wives who exhorted their
husbands to free those slaves towards whom they stood in a
"parental relation;" and their request was granted. These husbands blushed before the superior nobleness of their wives' natures. Though they had only counselled them to do that which it
was their duty to do, it commanded their respect, and rendered
their conduct more exemplary. Concealment was at an end, and
confidence took the place of distrust.
Though this bad institution deadens the moral sense, even in
white women, to a fearful extent, it is not altogether extinct. I
have heard southern ladies say of Mr. Such a one, "He not only
thinks it no disgrace to be the father of those little niggers, but he
is not ashamed to call himself their master. I declare, such things
ought not to be tolerated in any decent society!"

VII

The Lover

WHY DOES THE SLAVE ever love? Why allow the tendrils of the
heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be
wrenched away by the hand of violence? When separations come
by the hand of death, the pious soul can bow in resignation, and
say, "Not my will, but thine be done, 0 Lord!" But when the
ruthless hand of man strikes the blow, regardless of the misery
he causes, it is hard to be submissive. I did not reason thus when
I was a young girl. Youth will be youth. I loved, and I indulged
the hope that the dark clouds around me would turn out a bright
lining. I forgot that in the land of my birth the shadows are too
dense for light to penetrate. A land
"Where laughter is not mirth; nor thought the mind;
Nor words a language; nor e'en men mankind.
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell."!

There was in the neighborhood a young colored carpenter; a
free born man. We had been well acquainted in childhood, and
frequently met together afterwards. We became mutually attached, and he proposed to marry me. I loved him with all the ardor of a young girl's first love. But when I reflected that I was a
slave, and that the laws gave no sanction to the marriage of such,
my heart sank within me. My lover wanted to buy me; but I
knew that Dr. Flint was too wilful and arbitrary a man to consent to that arrangement. From him, I was sure of experiencing
all sorts of opposition, and I had nothing to hope from my mistress. She would have been delighted to have got rid of me, but
not in that way. It would have relieved her mind of a burden if
she could have seen me sold to some distant state, but if I was
41

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

married near home I should be just as much in her husband's
power as I had previously been,-for the husband of a slave has
no power to protect her. Moreover, my mistress, like many others, seemed to think that slaves had no right to any family ties of
their own; that they were created merely to wait upon the family
of the mistress. lance heard her abuse a young slave girl, who
told her that a colored man wanted to make her his wife. "I will
have you peeled and pickled, my lady," said she, "if I ever hear
you mention that subject again. Do you suppose that I will have
you tending my children with the children of that nigger?" The
girl to whom she said this had a mulatto child, of course not acknowledged by its father. The poor black man who loved her
would have been proud to acknowledge his helpless offspring.
Many and anxious were the thoughts I revolved in my mind. I
was at a loss what to do. Above all things, I was desirous to spare
my lover the insults that had cut so deeply into my own soul. I
talked with my grandmother about it, and partly told her my
fears. I did not dare to tell her the worst. She had long suspected
all was not right, and if I confirmed her suspicions I knew a
storm would rise that would prove the overthrow of all my
hopes.
This love-dream had been my support through many trials; and
I could not bear to run the risk of having it suddenly dissipated.
There was a lady in the neighborhood, a particular friend of Dr.
Flint's, who often visited the house. I had a great respect for her,
and she had always manifested a friendly interest in me. Grandmother thought she would have great influence with the doctor. I
went to this lady, and told her my story. I told her I was aware
that my lover's being a free-born man would prove a great objection; but he wanted to buy me; and if Dr. Flint would consent to
that arrangement, I felt sure he would be willing to pay any reasonable price. She knew that Mrs. Flint disliked me; therefore, I
ventured to suggest that perhaps my mistress would approve of
my being sold, as that would rid her of me. The lady listened with
kindly sympathy, and promised to do her utmost to promote my
wishes. She had an interview with the doctor, and I believe she
pleaded my cause earnestly; but it was all to no purpose.
How I dreaded my master now! Every minute I expected to

THE LOVER

43

be summoned to his presence; but the day passed, and 1 heard
nothing from him. The next morning, a message was brought to
me: "Master wants you in his study." 1 found the door ajar, and
1 stood a moment gazing at the hateful man who claimed a right
to rule me, body and soul. 1 entered, and tried to appear calm. 1
did not want him to know how my heart was bleeding. He
looked fixedly at me, with an expression which seemed to say, "I
have half a mind to kill you on the spot." At last he broke the silence, and that was a relief to both of us.
"So you want to be married, do you?" said he, "and to a free
nigger. "
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I'll soon convince you whether 1 am your master, or
the nigger fellow you honor so highly. If you must have a husband, you may take up with one of my slaves."
What a situation 1 should be in, as the wife of one of his slaves,
even if my heart had been interested!
1 replied, "Don't you suppose, sir, that a slave can have some
preference about marrying? Do you suppose that all men are
alike to her?"
"Do you love this nigger?" said he, abruptly.
"Yes, sir."
"How dare you tell me so!" he exclaimed, in great wrath. After a slight pause, he added, "I supposed you thought more of
yourself; that you felt above the insults of such puppies."
1 replied, "If he is a puppy 1 am a puppy, for we are both of
the negro race. It is right and honorable for us to love each other.
The man you call a puppy never insulted me, sir; and he would
not love me if he did not believe me to be a virtuous woman."
He sprang upon me like a tiger, and gave me a stunning blow.
It was the first time he had ever struck me; and fear did not enable me to control my anger. When I had recovered a little from
the effects, I exclaimed, "You have struck me for answering you
honestly. How I despise you!"
There was silence for some minutes. Perhaps he was deciding
what should be my punishment; or, perhaps, he wanted to give
me time to reflect on what I had said, and to whom I had said it.
Finally, he asked, "Do you know what you have said?"

44

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

"Yes, sir; but your treatment drove me to it."
"Do you know that I have a right to do as I like with you,that I can kill you, if I please?"
"You have tried to kill me, and I wish you had; but you have
no right to do as you like with me."
"Silence!" he exclaimed, in a thundering voice. "By heavens,
girl, you forget yourself too far! Are you mad? If you are, I will
soon bring you to your senses. Do you think any other master
would bear what I have borne from you this morning? Many
masters would have killed you on the spot. How would you like
to be sent to jail for your insolence?"
"I know I have been disrespectful, sir," I replied; "but you
drove me to it; I couldn't help it. As for the jail, there would be
more peace for me there than there is here."
"You deserve to go there," said he, "and to be under such
treatment, that you would forget the meaning of the word peace.
It would do you good. It would take some of your high notions
out of you. But I am not ready to send you there yet, notwithstanding your ingratitude for all my kindness and forbearance.
You have been the plague of my life. I have wanted to make you
happy, and I have been repaid with the basest ingratitude; but
though you have proved yourself incapable of appreciating my
kindness, I will be lenient towards you, Linda. I will give you
one more chance to redeem your character. If you behave yourself and do as I require, I will forgive you and treat you as I always have done; but if you disobey me, I will punish you as I
would the meanest slave on my plantation. Never let me hear
that fellow's name mentioned again. If I ever know of your
speaking to him, I will cowhide you both; and if I catch him
lurking about my premises, I will shoot him as soon as I would a
dog. Do you hear what I say? I'll teach you a lesson about marriage and free niggers! Now go, and let this be the last time I
have occasion to speak to you on this subject."
Reader, did you ever hate? I hope not. I never did but once;
and I trust I never shall again. Somebody has called it "the atmosphere of hell;" and I believe it is so.
For a fortnight the doctor did not speak to me. He thought to
mortify me; to make me feel that I had disgraced myself by re-

THE LOVER

45

ceiving the honorable addresses of a respectable colored man, in
preference to the base proposals of a white man. But though his
lips disdained to address me, his eyes were very loquacious. No
animal ever watched its prey more narrowly than he watched
me. He knew that I could write, though he had failed to make me
read his letters; and he was now troubled lest I should exchange
letters with another man. After a while he became weary of silence; and I was sorry for it. One morning, as he passed through
the hall, to leave the house, he contrived to thrust a note into my
hand. I thought I had better read it, and spare myself the vexation of having him read it to me. It expressed regret for the blow
he had given me, and reminded me that I myself was wholly to
blame for it. He hoped I had become convinced of the injury I
was doing myself by incurring his displeasure. He wrote that he
had made up his mind to go to Louisiana; that he should take
several slaves with him, and intended I should be one of the
number. My mistress would remain where she was; therefore I
should have nothing to fear from that quarter. If I merited kindness from him, he assured me that it would be lavishly bestowed.
He begged me to think over the matter, and answer the following day.
The next morning I was called to carry a pair of scissors to his
room. I laid them on the table, with the letter beside them. He
thought it was my answer, and did not call me back. I went as
usual to attend my young mistress to and from school. He met
me in the street, and ordered me to stop at his office on my way
back. When I entered, he showed me his letter, and asked me
why I had not answered it. I replied, "I am your daughter's
property, and it is in your power to send me, or take me, wherever you please." He said he was very glad to find me so willing
to go, and that we should start early in the autumn. He had a
large practice in the town, and I rather thought he had made up
the story merely to frighten me. However that might be, I was
determined that I would never go to Louisiana with him.
Summer passed away, and early in the autumn Dr. Flint's eldest sorr' was sent to Louisiana to examine the country, with a
view to emigrating. That news did not disturb me. I knew very
well that I should not be sent with him. That I had not been

46

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

taken to the plantation before this time, was owing to the fact
that his son was there. He was jealous of his son; and jealousy of
the overseer had kept him from punishing me by sending me
into the fields to work. Is it strange that I was not proud of these
protectors? As for the overseer, he was a man for whom I had
less respect than I had for a bloodhound.
Young Mr. Flint did not bring back a favorable report of
Louisiana, and I heard no more of that scheme. Soon after this,
my lover met me at the corner of the street, and I stopped to
speak to him. Looking up, I saw my master watching us from his
window. I hurried home, trembling with fear. I was sent for, immediately, to go to his room. He met me with a blow. "When is
mistress to be married?" said he, in a sneering tone. A shower of
oaths and imprecations followed. How thankful I was that my
lover was a free man! that my tyrant had no power to flog him
for speaking to me in the street!
Again and again I revolved in my mind how all this would
end. There was no hope that the doctor would consent to sell me
on any terms. He had an iron will, and was determined to keep
me, and to conquer me. My lover was an intelligent and religious
man. Even if he could have obtained permission to marry me
while I was a slave, the marriage would give him no power to
protect me from my master. It would have made him miserable
to witness the insults I should have been subjected to. And then,
if we had children, I knew they must "follow the condition of
the mother." What a terrible blight that would be on the heart of
a free, intelligent father! For his sake, I felt that I ought not to
link his fate with my own unhappy destiny. He was going to Savannah to see about a little property left him by an uncle; and
hard as it was to bring my feelings to it, I earnestly entreated him
not to come back. I advised him to go to the Free States, where
his tongue would not be tied, and where his intelligence would
be of more avail to him. He left me, still hoping the day would
come when I could be bought. With me the lamp of hope had
gone out. The dream of my girlhood was over. I felt lonely and
desolate.
Still I was not stripped of all. I still had my good grandmother, and my affectionate brother. When he put his arms

THE LOVER

47

round my neck, and looked into my eyes, as if to read there the
troubles I dared not tell, I felt that I still had something to love.
But even that pleasant emotion was chilled by the reflection that
he might be torn from me at any moment, by some sudden freak
of my master. If he had known how we loved each other, I think
he would have exulted in separating us. We often planned together how we could get to the north. But, as William remarked,
such things are easier said than done. My movements were very
closely watched, and we had no means of getting any money to
defray our expenses. As for grandmother, she was strongly opposed to her children's undertaking any such project. She had
not forgotten poor Benjamin's sufferings, and she was afraid that
if another child tried to escape, he would have a similar or a
worse fate. To me, nothing seemed more dreadful than my present life. I said to myself, "William must be free. He shall go to
the north, and I will follow him." Many a slave sister has formed
the same plans.

VIII

What Slaves Are Taught to Think of the North

SLAVEHOLDERS PRIDE THEMSELVES UPON upon being honor-

able men; but if you were to hear the enormous lies they tell
their slaves, you would have small respect for their veracity. I
have spoken plain English. Pardon me. I cannot use a milder
term. When they visit the north, and return home, they tell their
slaves of the runaways they have seen, and describe them to be in
the most deplorable condition. A slaveholder once told me that
he had seen a runaway friend of mine in N ew York, and that she
besought him to take her back to her master, for she was literally
dying of starvation; that many days she had only one cold potato
to eat, and at other times could get nothing at all. He said he refused to take her, because he knew her master would not thank
him for bringing such a miserable wretch to his house. He ended
by saying to me, "This is the punishment she brought on herself
for running away from a kind master."
This whole story was false. I afterwards staid with that friend
in New York, and found her in comfortable circumstances. She
had never thought of such a thing as wishing to go back to slavery. Many of the slaves believe such stories, and think it is not
worth while to exchange slavery for such a hard kind of freedom.
It is difficult to persuade such that freedom could make them
useful men, and enable them to protect their wives and children.
If those heathen in our Christian land had as much teaching as
some Hindoos, they would think otherwise. They would know
that liberty is more valuable than life. They would begin to understand their own capabilities, and exert themselves to become
men and women.
But while the Free States sustain a law which hurls fugitives
back into slavery,' how can the slaves resolve to become men?
There are some who strive to protect wives and daughters from
48

WHAT SLAVES ARE TAUGHT OF THE NORTH

49

the insults of their masters; but those who have such sentiments
have had advantages above the general mass of slaves. They have
been partially civilized and Christianized by favorable circumstances. Some are bold enough to utter such sentiments to their
masters. 0, that there were more of them!
Some poor creatures have been so brutalized by the lash that
they will sneak out of the way to give their masters free access to
their wives and daughters. Do you think this proves the black
man to belong to an inferior order of beings? What would you
be, if you had been born and brought up a slave, with generations of slaves for ancestors? I admit that the black man is inferior. But what is it that makes him so? It is the ignorance in
which white men compel him to live; it is the torturing whip that
lashes manhood out of him; it is the fierce bloodhounds of the
South, and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds of the
north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. They do the work.
Southern gentlemen indulge in the most contemptuous expressions about the Yankees, while they, on their part, consent
to do the vilest work for them, such as the ferocious bloodhounds and the despised negro-hunters are employed to do at
home. When southerners go to the north, they are proud to do
them honor; but the northern man is not welcome south of Mason and Dixori's line, unless he suppresses every thought and
feeling at variance with their "peculiar institution." Nor is it
enough to be silent. The masters are not pleased, unless they obtain a greater degree of subservience than that; and they are generally accommodated. Do they respect the northerner for this? I
trow not. Even the slaves despise "a northern man with southern
principles;" and that is the class they generally see. When northerners go to the south to reside, they prove very apt scholars.
They soon imbibe the sentiments and disposition of their neighbors, and generally go beyond their teachers. Of the two, they
are proverbially the hardest masters.
They seem to satisfy their consciences with the doctrine that
God created the Africans to be slaves. What a libel upon the
heavenly Father, who "made of one blood all nations of men!"
And then who are Africans? Who can measure the amount of
Anglo-Saxon blood coursing in the veins of American slaves?

50

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

I have spoken of the pains slaveholders take to give their
slaves a bad opinion of the north; but, notwithstanding this, intelligent slaves are aware that they have many friends in the Free
States. Even the most ignorant have some confused notions
about it. They knew that I could read; and I was often asked if I
had seen any thing in the newspapers about white folks over in
the big north, who were trying to get their freedom for them.
Some believe that the abolitionists have already made them free,
and that it is established by law, but that their masters prevent
the law from going into effect. One woman begged me to get a
newspaper and read it over. She said her husband told her that
the black people had sent word to the queen of 'Merica that they
were all slaves; that she didn't believe it, and went to Washington
city to see the president about it. They quarrelled; she drew her
sword upon him, and swore that he should help her to make
them all free.
That poor, ignorant woman thought that America was governed by a Queen, to whom the President was subordinate. I
wish the President was subordinate to Queen Justice.

IX

Sketches of Neighboring Slaveholders

THERE W AS A PLANTER in the country, not far from us, whom
I will call Mr. Litch.' He was an ill-bred, uneducated man, but
very wealthy. He had six hundred slaves, many of whom he did
not know by sight. His extensive plantation was managed by
well-paid overseers. There was a jail and a whipping post on his
grounds; and whatever cruelties were perpetrated there, they
passed without comment. He was so effectually screened by his
great wealth that he was called to no account for his crimes, not
even for murder.
Various were the punishments resorted to. A favorite one was
to tie a rope round a man's body, and suspend him from the
ground. A fire was kindled over him, from which was suspended
a piece of fat pork. As this cooked, the scalding drops of fat continually fell on the bare flesh. On his own plantation, he required
very strict obedience to the eighth commandment. But depredations on the neighbors were allowable, provided the culprit managed to evade detection or suspicion. If a neighbor brought a
charge of theft against any of his slaves, he was browbeaten by
the master, who assured him that his slaves had enough of every
thing at home, and had no inducement to steal. No sooner was
the neighbor's back turned, than the accused was sought out, and
whipped for his lack of discretion. If a slave stole from him even
a pound of meat or a peck of corn, if detection followed, he was
put in chains and imprisoned, and so kept till his form was attenuated by hunger and suffering.
A freshet once bore his wine cellar and meat house miles away
from the plantation. Some slaves followed, and secured bits of
meat and bottles of wine. Two were detected; a ham and some
liquor being found in their huts. They were summoned by their
master. No words were used, but a club felled them to the
51

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

ground. A rough box was their coffin, and their interment was a
dog's burial. Nothing was said.
Murder was so common on his plantation that he feared to be
alone after nightfall. He might have believed in ghosts.
His brother, if not equal in wealth, was at least equal in cruelty. His bloodhounds were well trained. Their pen was spacious, and a terror to the slaves. They were let loose on a
runaway, and, if they tracked him, they literally tore the flesh
from his bones. When this slaveholder died, his shrieks and
groans were so frightful that they appalled his own friends. His
last words were, "I am going to hell; bury my money with me."
After death his eyes remained open. To press the lids down,
silver dollars were laid on them. These were buried with him.
From this circumstance, a rumor went abroad that his coffin was
filled with money. Three times his grave was opened, and his
coffin taken out. The last time, his body was found on the
ground, and a flock of buzzards were pecking at it. He was again
interred, and a sentinel set over his grave. The perpetrators were
never discovered.
Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities. Mr. Conant, a neighbar of Mr. Litch, returned from town one evening
in a partial state of intoxication. His body servant gave him some
offence. He was divested of his clothes, except his shirt,
whipped, and tied to a large tree in front of the house. It was a
stormy night in winter. The wind blew bitterly cold, and the
boughs of the old tree crackled under falling sleet. A member of
the family, fearing he would freeze to death, begged that he
might be taken down; but the master would not relent. He remained there three hours; and, when he was cut down, he was
more dead than alive. Another slave, who stole a pig from this
master, to appease his hunger, was terribly flogged. In desperation, he tried to run away. But at the end of two miles, he was so
faint with loss of blood, he thought he was dying. He had a wife,
and he longed to see her once more. Too sick to walk, he crept
back that long distance on his hands and knees. When he reached
his master's, it was night. He had not strength to rise and open
the gate. He moaned, and tried to call for help. I had a friend living in the same family. At last his cry reached her. She went out

SKETCHES OF NEIGHBORING SLAVEHOLDERS

53

and found the prostrate man at the gate. She ran back to the
house for assistance, and two men returned with her. They carried him in, and laid him on the floor. The back of his shirt was
one clot of blood. By means of lard, my friend loosened it from
the raw flesh. She bandaged him, gave him cool drink, and left
him to rest. The master said he deserved a hundred more lashes.
When his own labor was stolen from him, he had stolen food to
appease his hunger. This was his crime.
Another neighbor was a Mrs. Wade. At no hour of the day
was there cessation of the lash on her premises. Her labors began
with the dawn, and did not cease till long after nightfall. The
barn was her particular place of torture. There she lashed the
slaves with the might of a man. An old slave of hers once said to
me, "It is hell in missis's house. 'Pears I can never get out. Day
and night I prays to die."
The mistress died before the old woman, and, when dying,
entreated her husband not to permit anyone of her slaves to
look on her after death. A slave who had nursed her children,
and had still a child in her care, watched her chance, and stole
with it in her arms to the room where lay her dead mistress. She
gazed a while on her, then raised her hand and dealt two blows
on her face, saying, as she did so, "The devil is got you now!"
She forgot that the child was looking on. She had just begun to
talk; and she said to her father, "I did see ma, and mammy did
strike ma, so," striking her own face with her little hand. The
master was startled. He could not imagine how the nurse could
obtain access to the room where the corpse lay; for he kept the
door locked. He questioned her. She confessed that what the
child had said was true, and told her how she had procured
the key. She was sold to Georgia.
In my childhood I knew a valuable slave, named Charity, and
loved her, as all children did. Her young mistress married, and
took her to Louisiana. Her little boy, James, was sold to a good
sort of master. He became involved in debt, and James was sold
again to a wealthy slaveholder, noted for his cruelty. With this
man he grew up to manhood, receiving the treatment of a dog.
After a severe whipping, to save himself from further infliction
of the lash, with which he was threatened, he took to the woods.

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

He was in a most miserable condition-cut by the cowskin, half
naked, half starved, and without the means of procuring a crust
of bread.
Some weeks after his escape, he was captured, tied, and carried
back to his master's plantation. This man considered punishment
in his jail, on bread and water, after receiving hundreds of lashes,
too mild for the poor slave's offence. Therefore he decided, after
the overseer should have whipped him to his satisfaction, to have
him placed between the screws of the cotton gin, to stay as long
as he had been in the woods. This wretched creature was cut
with the whip from his head to his feet, then washed with strong
brine, to prevent the flesh from mortifying, and make it heal
sooner than it otherwise would. He was then put into the cotton gin, which was screwed down, only allowing him room to
turn on his side when he could not lie on his back. Every morning a slave was sent with a piece of bread and bowl of water,
which were placed within reach of the poor fellow. The slave was
charged, under penalty of severe punishment, not to speak to
him.
Four days passed, and the slave continued to carry the bread
and water. On the second morning, he found the bread gone, but
the water untouched. When he had been in the press four days
and five nights, the slave informed his master that the water had
not been used for four mornings, and that a horrible stench came
from the gin house. The overseer was sent to examine into it.
When the press was unscrewed, the dead body was found partly
eaten by rats and vermin. Perhaps the rats that devoured his
bread had gnawed him before life was extinct. Poor Charity!
Grandmother and I often asked each other how her affectionate
heart would bear the news, if she should ever hear of the murder
of her son. We had known her husband, and knew that lames
was like him in manliness and intelligence. These were the qualities that made it so hard for him to be a plantation slave. They
put him into a rough box, and buried him with less feeling than
would have been manifested for an old house dog. Nobody
asked any questions. He was a slave; and the feeling was that the
master had a right to do what he pleased with his own property.
And what did he care for the value of a slave? He had hundreds

SKETCHES OF NEIGHBORING SLAVEHOLDERS

55

of them. When they had finished their daily toil, they must hurry
to eat their little morsels, and be ready to extinguish their pine
knots before nine o'clock, when the overseer went his patrol
rounds. He entered every cabin, to see that men and their wives
had gone to bed together, lest the men, from over-fatigue, should
fall asleep in the chimney corner, and remain there till the morning horn called them to their daily task. Women are considered
of no value, unless they continually increase their owner's stock.
They are put on a par with animals. This same master shot a
woman through the head, who had run away and been brought
back to him. No one called him to account for it. If a slave resisted being whipped, the bloodhounds were unpacked, and set
upon him, to tear his flesh from his bones. The master who did
these things was highly educated, and styled a perfect gentleman.
He also boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though
Satan never had a truer follower.
I could tell of more slaveholders as cruel as those I have described. They are not exceptions to the general rule. I do not say
there are no humane slaveholders. Such characters do exist,
notwithstanding the hardening influences around them. But they
are "like angels' visits-few and far between."
I knew a young lady who was one of these rare specimens.
She was an orphan, and inherited as slaves a woman and her six
children. Their father was a free man. They had a comfortable
home of their own, parents and children living together. The
mother and eldest daughter served their mistress during the day,
and at night returned to their dwelling, which was on the
premises. The young lady was very pious, and there was some
reality in her religion. She taught her slaves to lead pure lives,
and wished them to enjoy the fruit of their own industry. Her
religion was not a garb put on for Sunday, and laid aside till Sunday returned again. The eldest daughter of the slave mother was
promised in marriage to a free man; and the day before the wedding this good mistress emancipated her, in order that her marriage might have the sanction of law.
Report said that this young lady cherished an unrequited affection for a man who had resolved to marry for wealth. In the
course of time a rich uncle of hers died. He left six thousand dol-

56

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

lars to his two sons by a colored woman, and the remainder of
his property to this orphan niece. The metal soon attracted the
magnet. The lady and her weighty purse became his. She offered
to manumit her slaves-telling them that her marriage might
make unexpected changes in their destiny, and she wished to insure their happiness. They refused to take their freedom, saying
that she had always been their best friend, and they could not be
so happy any where as with her. 1 was not surprised. 1 had often
seen them in their comfortable home, and thought that the whole
town did not contain a happier family. They had never felt slavery; and, when it was too late, they were convinced of its reality.
When the new master claimed this family as his property, the
father became furious, and went to his mistress for protection. "I
can do nothing for you now, Harry," said she. "I no longer have
the owner 1 had a week ago. 1 have succeeded in obtaining the
freedom of your wife; but 1 cannot obtain it for your children."
The unhappy father swore that nobody should take his children
from him. He concealed them in the woods for some days; but
they were discovered and taken. The father was put in jail, and
the two oldest boys sold to Georgia. One little girl, two young
to be of service to her master, was left with the wretched mother.
The other three were carried to their master's plantation. The
eldest soon became a mother; and, when the slaveholder's
wife looked at the babe, she wept bitterly. She knew that her
own husband had violated the purity she had so carefully inculcated. She had a second child by her master, and then he sold her
and his offspring to his brother. She bore two children to the
brother, and was sold again. The next sister went crazy. The life
she was compelled to lead drove her mad. The third one became
the mother of five daughters. Before the birth of the fourth the
pious mistress died. To the last, she rendered every kindness to
the slaves that her unfortunate circumstances permitted. She
passed away peacefully, glad to close her eyes on a life which had
been made so wretched by the man she loved.
This man squandered the fortune he had received, and sought
to retrieve his affairs by a second marriage; but, having retired after a night of drunken debauch, he was found dead in the morning. He was called a good master; for he fed and clothed his

SKETCHES OF NEIGHBORING SLAVE HOLDERS

57

slaves better than most masters, and the lash was not heard on his
plantation so frequently as on many others. Had it not been for
slavery, he would have been a better man, and his wife a happier
woman.
No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading
corruption produced by slavery. The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear. The lash and the foul talk of
her master and his sons are her teachers. When she is fourteen or
fifteen, her owner, or his sons, or the overseer, or perhaps all of
them, begin to bribe her with presents. If these fail to accomplish
their purpose, she is whipped or starved into submission to their
will. She may have had religious principles inculcated by some
pious mother or grandmother, or some good mistress; she may
have a lover, whose good opinion and peace of mind are dear to
her heart; or the profligate men who have power over her may be
exceedingly odious to her. But resistance is hopeless.
"The poor worm
Shall prove her contest vain. Life's little day
Shall pass, and she is gone!"

The slaveholder's sons are, of course, vitiated, even while
boys, by the unclean influences every where around them. Nor
do the master's daughters always escape. Severe retributions
sometimes come upon him for the wrongs he does to the daughters of the slaves. The white daughters early hear their parents
quarrelling about some female slave. Their curiosity is excited,
and they soon learn the cause. They are attended by the young
slave girls whom their father has corrupted; and they hear such
talk as should never meet youthful ears, or any other ears. They
know that the women slaves are subject to their father's authority in all things; and in some cases they exercise the same authority over the men slaves. I have myself seen the master of such a
household whose head was bowed down in shame; for it was
known in the neighborhood that his daughter had selected one of
the meanest slaves on his plantation to be the father of his first
grandchild. She did not make her advances to her equals, nor
even to her father's more intelligent servants. She selected the

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

most brutalized, over whom her authority could be exercised
with less fear of exposure. Her father, half frantic with rage,
sought to revenge himself on the offending black man; but his
daughter, foreseeing the storm that would arise, had given him
free papers, and sent him out of the state.
In such cases the infant is smothered, or sent where it is never
seen by any who know its history. But if the white parent is the
father, instead of the mother, the offspring are unblushingly
reared for the market. If they are girls, I have indicated plainly
enough what will be their inevitable destiny.
You may believe what I say; for I write only that whereof I
know. I was twenty-one years in that cage of obscene birds. I can
testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is
a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white
fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. And as
for the colored race, it needs an abler pen than mine to describe
the extremity of their sufferings, the depth of their degradation.
Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread
moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of
blighted cotton crops-not of the blight on their children's
souls.
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader.
Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear
things that will seem to you impossible among human beings
with immortal souls.

x
A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl's Life

AFTER MY LOVER WENT away, Dr. Flint contrived a new plan.
He seemed to have an idea that my fear of my mistress was his
greatest obstacle. In the blandest tones, he told me that he was
going to build a small house for me, in a secluded place, four
miles away from the town. I shuddered; but I was constrained to
listen, while he talked of his intention to give me a home of my
own, and to make a lady of me. Hitherto, I had escaped my
dreaded fate, by being in the midst of people. My grandmother
had already had high words with my master about me. She had
told him pretty plainly what she thought of his character, and
there was considerable gossip in the neighborhood about our affairs, to which the open-mouthed jealousy of Mrs. Flint contributed not a little. When my master said he was going to build
a house for me, and that he could do it with little trouble and expense, I was in hopes something would happen to frustrate his
scheme; but I soon heard that the house was actually begun. I
vowed before my Maker that I would never enter it. I had rather
toil on the plantation from dawn till dark; I had rather live and
die in jail, than drag on, from day to day, through such a living
death. I was determined that the master, whom I so hated and
loathed, who had blighted the prospects of my youth, and made
my life a desert, should not, after my long struggle with him,
succeed at last in trampling his victim under his feet. I would do
any thing, every thing, for the sake of defeating him. What could
I do? I thought and thought, till I became desperate, and made a
plunge into the abyss.
And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life,
which I would gladly forget if I could. The remembrance fills me
with sorrow and shame. It pains me to tell you of it; but I have
promised to tell you the truth, and I will do it honestly, let it cost
59

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

me what it may. I will not try to screen myself behind the plea of
compulsion from a master; for it was not so. Neither can I plead
ignorance or thoughtlessness. For years, my master had done his
utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the
pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good
mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the
same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had
made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the
world. I knew what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation.
But, 0, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered
from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of
your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge
the poor desolate slave girl too severely! If slavery had been
abolished, I, also, could have married the man of my choice; I
could have had a home shielded by the laws; and I should have
been spared the painful task of confessing what I am now about
to relate; but all my prospects had been blighted by slavery. I
want to keep myself pure; and, under the most adverse circumstances, I tried hard to preserve my self-respect; but I was struggling alone in the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery; and the
monster proved too strong for me. I felt as if I was forsaken by
God and man; as if all my efforts must be frustrated; and I became reckless in my despair.
I have told you that Dr. Flint's persecutions and his wife's
jealousy had given rise to some gossip in the neighborhood.
Among others, it chanced that a white unmarried gentleman 1 had
obtained some knowledge of the circumstances in which I was
placed. He knew my grandmother, and often spoke to me in the
street. He became interested for me, and asked questions about
my master, which I answered in part. He expressed a great deal
of sympathy, and a wish to aid me. He constantly sought opportunities to see me, and wrote to me frequently. I was a poor slave
girl, only fifteen years old.
So much attention from a superior person was, of course, flattering; for human nature is the same in all. I also felt grateful for
his sympathy, and encouraged by his kind words. It seemed to
me a great thing to have such a friend. By degrees, a more tender
feeling crept into my heart. He was an educated and eloquent

A PERILOUS PASSAGE IN THE SLAVE GIRL'S LIFE

61

gentleman; too eloquent, alas, for the poor slave girl who trusted
in him. Of course I saw whither all this was tending. I knew the
impassable gulf between us; but to be an object of interest to a
man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable
to the pride and feelings of a slave, if her miserable situation has
left her any pride or sentiment. It seems less degrading to give
one's self, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin
to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except
that which he gains by kindness and attachment. A master may
treat you as rudely as he pleases, and you dare not speak; moreover, the wrong does not seem so great with an unmarried man,
as with one who has a wife to be made unhappy. There may be
sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practise of them impossible.
When I found that my master had actually begun to build the
lonely cottage, other feelings mixed with those I have described.
Revenge, and calculations of interest, were added to flattered
vanity and sincere gratitude for kindness. I knew nothing would
enrage Dr. Flint so much as to know that I favored another; and
it was something to triumph over my tyrant even in that small
way. I thought he would revenge himself by selling me, and I
was sure my friend, Mr. Sands, would buy me. He was a man of
more generosity and feeling than my master, and I thought my
freedom could be easily obtained from him. The crisis of my fate
now came so near that I was desperate. I shuddered to think of
being the mother of children that should be owned by myoid
tyrant. I knew that as soon as a new fancy took him, his victims
were sold far off to get rid of them; especially if they had children. I had seen several women sold, with his babies at the
breast. He never allowed his offspring by slaves to remain long
in sight of himself and his wife. Of a man who was not my master I could ask to have my children well supported; and in this
case, I felt confident I should obtain the boon. I also felt quite
sure that they would be made free. With all these thoughts revolving in my mind, and seeing no other way of escaping the
doom I so much dreaded, I made a headlong plunge. Pity me,
and pardon me, 0 virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLA VE GIRL

be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have
the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject
to the will of another. You never exhausted your ingenuity in
avoiding the snares, and eluding the power of a hated tyrant; you
never shuddered at the sound of his footsteps, and trembled
within hearing of his voice. I know I did wrong. No one can feel
it more sensibly than I do. The painful and humiliating memory
will haunt me to my dying day. Still, in looking back, calmly, on
the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be
judged by the same standard as others.
The months passed on. I had many unhappy hours. I secretly
mourned over the sorrow I was bringing on my grandmother,
who had so tried to shield me from harm. I knew that I was the
greatest comfort of her old age, and that it was a source of pride
to her that I had not degraded myself, like most of the slaves. I
wanted to confess to her that I was no longer worthy of her love;
but I could not utter the dreaded words.
As for Dr. Flint, I had a feeling of satisfaction and triumph in
the thought of telling him. From time to time he told me of his
intended arrangements, and I was silent. At last, he came and
told me the cottage was completed, and ordered me to go to it. I
told him I would never enter it. He said, "I have heard enough of
such talk as that. You shall go, if you are carried by force; and
you shall remain there."
I replied, "I will never go there. In a few months I shall be a
mother."
He stood and looked at me in dumb amazement, and left the
house without a word. I thought I should be happy in my triumph over him. But now that the truth was out, and my relatives
would hear of it, I felt wretched. Humble as were their circumstances, they had pride in my good character. Now, how could I
look them in the face? My self-respect was gone! I had resolved
that I would be virtuous, though I was a slave. I had said, "Let
the storm beat! I will brave it till I die." And now, how humiliated I felt!
I went to my grandmother. My lips moved to make confession, but the words stuck in my throat. I sat down in the shade
of a tree at her door and began to sew. I think she saw something

APE R I L 0 U SPA SSAG E IN THE S L A V E G I R L 'S LI F E

63

unusual was the matter with me. The mother of slaves is very
watchful. She knows there is no security for her children. After
they have entered their teens she lives in daily expectation of
trouble. This leads to many questions. If the girl is of a sensitive
nature, timidity keeps her from answering truthfully, and this
well-meant course has a tendency to drive her from maternal
counsels. Presently, in came my mistress, like a mad woman, and
accused me concerning her husband. My grandmother, whose
suspicions had been previously awakened, believed what she
said. She exclaimed, "0 Linda! has it come to this? I had rather
see you dead than to see you as you now are. You are a disgrace
to your dead mother." She tore from my fingers my mother's
wedding ring and her silver thimble. "Go away!" she exclaimed,
"and never come to my house, again." Her reproaches fell so hot
and heavy, that they left me no chance to answer. Bitter tears,
such as the eyes never shed but once, were my only answer. I
rose from my seat, but fell back again, sobbing. She did not speak
to me; but the tears were running down her furrowed cheeks,
and they scorched me like fire. She had always been so kind to .
me! So kind! How I longed to throw myself at her feet, and tell
her all the truth! But she had ordered me to go, and never to
come there again. After a few minutes, I mustered strength, and
started to obey her. With what feelings did I now close that little
gate, which I used to open with such an eager hand in my childhood! It closed upon me with a sound I never heard before.
Where could I go? I was afraid to return to my master's. I
walked on recklessly, not caring where I went, or what would
become of me. When I had gone four or five miles, fatigue compelled me to stop. I sat down on the stump of an old tree. The
stars were shining through the boughs above me. How they
mocked me, with their bright, calm light! The hours passed by,
and as I sat there alone a chilliness and deadly sickness came over
me. I sank on the ground. My mind was full of horrid thoughts.
I prayed to die; but the prayer was not answered. At last, with
great effort I roused myself, and walked some distance further,
to the house of a woman who had been a friend of my mother.
When I told her why I was there, she spoke soothingly to me;
but I could not be comforted. I thought I could bear my shame if

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

I could only be reconciled to my grandmother. I longed to open
my heart to her. I thought if she could know the real state of the
case, and all 1 had been bearing for years, she would perhaps
judge me less harshly. My friend advised me to send for her. 1
did so; but days of agonizing suspense passed before she came.
Had she utterly forsaken me? No. She came at last. 1 knelt before
her, and told her the things that had poisoned my life; how long
1 had been persecuted; that 1 saw no way of escape; and in an
hour of extremity 1 had become desperate. She listened in silence.
1 told her 1 would bear any thing and do any thing, if in time 1
had hopes of obtaining her forgiveness. 1 begged of her to pity
me, for my dead mother's sake. And she did pity me. She did not
say, "I forgive you;" but she looked at me lovingly, with her eyes
full of tears. She laid her old hand gently on my head, and murmured, "Poor child! Poor child!"

XI

The New Tie to Life

I RETURNED TO MY good grandmother's house. She had an interview with Mr. Sands. When she asked him why he could not
have left her one ewe lamb,-whether there were not plenty of
slaves who did not care about character,-he made no answer;
but he spoke kind and encouraging words. He promised to care
for my child, and to buy me, be the conditions what they might.
I had not seen Dr. Flint for five days. 1 had never seen him
since I made the avowal to him. He talked of the disgrace 1 had
brought on myself; how I had sinned against my master, and
mortified myoid grandmother. He intimated that if I had accepted his proposals, he, as a physician, could have saved me
from exposure.' He even condescended to pity me. Could he
have offered wormwood more bitter? He, whose persecutions
had been the cause of my sin!
"Linda," said he, "though you have been criminal towards
me, I feel for you, and 1 can pardon you if you obey my wishes.
Tell me whether the fellow you wanted to marry is the father of
your child. If you deceive me, you shall feel the fires of hell."
I did not feel as proud as I had done. My strongest weapon
with him was gone. I was lowered in my own estimation, and
had resolved to bear his abuse in silence. But when he spoke contemptuously of the lover who had always treated me honorably;
when I remembered that but for him I might have been a virtuous, free, and happy wife, 1 lost my patience. "1 have sinned
against God and myself," 1 replied; "but not against you."
He clinched his teeth, and muttered, "Curse you!" He came
towards me, with ill-suppressed rage, and exclaimed, "You obstinate girl! I could grind your bones to powder! You have thrown
yourself away on some worthless rascal. You are weak-minded,
and have been easily persuaded by those who don't care a straw
65

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

for you. The future will settle accounts between us. You are
blinded now; but hereafter you will be convinced that your master was your best friend. My lenity towards you is a proof of it. I
might have punished you in many ways. 1 might have had you
whipped till you fell dead under the lash. But I wanted you to
live; I would have bettered your condition. Others cannot do it.
You are my slave. Your mistress, disgusted by your conduct,
forbids you to return to the house; therefore I leave you here for
the present; but I shall see you often. I will call to-morrow."
He came with frowning brows, that showed a dissatisfied
state of mind. After asking about my health, he inquired whether
my board was paid, and who visited me. He then went on to say
that he had neglected his duty; that as a physician there were certain things that he ought to have explained to me. Then followed
talk such as would have made the most shameless blush. He ordered me to stand up before him. I obeyed. "I command you,"
said he, "to tell me whether the father of your child is white or
black." 1 hesitated. "Answer me this instant!" he exclaimed. 1 did
answer. He sprang upon me like a wolf, and grabbed my arm as
if he would have broken it. "Do you love him?" said he, in a
hissing tone.
"1 am thankful that I do not despise him," 1 replied.
He raised his hand to strike me; but it fell again. I don't know
what arrested the blow. He sat down, with lips tightly compressed. At last he spoke. "I came here," said he, "to make you a
friendly proposition; but your ingratitude chafes me beyond endurance. You turn aside all my good intentions towards you. I
don't know what it is that keeps me from killing you." Again he
rose, as if he had a mind to strike me.
But he resumed. "On one condition I will forgive your insolence and crime. You must henceforth have no communication
of any kind with the father of your child. You must not ask any
thing from him, or receive any thing from him. I will take care of
you and your child. You had better promise this at once, and not
wait till you are deserted by him. This is the last act of mercy I
shall show towards you."
1 said something about being unwilling to have my child sup-

THE NEW TIE TO LIFE

67

parted by a man who had cursed it and me also. He rejoined,
that a woman who had sunk to my level had no right to expect
any thing else. He asked, for the last time, would I accept his
kindness? I answered that I would not.
"Very well," said he; "then take the consequences of your
wayward course. Never look to me for help. You are my slave,
and shall always be my slave. I will never sell you, that you may
depend upon."
Hope died away in my heart as he closed the door after him. I
had calculated that in his rage he would sell me to a slave-trader;
and I knew the father of my child was on the watch to buy me.
About this time my uncle Phillip was expected to return from
a voyage. The day before his departure I had officiated as bridesmaid to a young friend. My heart was then ill at ease, but my
smiling countenance did not betray it. Only a year had passed;
but what fearful changes it had wrought! My heart had grown
gray in misery. Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are
born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances. None of us
know what a year may bring forth.
I felt no joy when they told me my uncle had come. He
wanted to see me, though he knew what had happened. I shrank
from him at first; but at last consented that he should come to
my room. He received me as he always had done. 0, how my
heart smote me when I felt his tears on my burning cheeks! The
words of my grandmother came to my mind,-"Perhaps your
mother and father are taken from the evil days to come." My disappointed heart could now praise God that it was so. But why,
thought I, did my relatives ever cherish hopes for me? What was
there to save me from the usual fate of slave girls? Many more
beautiful and more intelligent than I had experienced a similar
fate, or a far worse one. How could they hope that I should escape?
My uncle's stay was short, and I was not sorry for it. I was
too ill in mind and body to enjoy my friends as I had done. For
some weeks I was unable to leave my bed. I could not have any
doctor but my master, and I would not have him sent for. At
last, alarmed by my increasing illness, they sent for him. I was

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

very weak and nervous; and as soon as he entered the room, I began to scream. They told him my state was very critical. He had
no wish to hasten me out of the world, and he withdrew.
When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It
weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.! I heard the doctor say I could not survive till morning. I had often prayed for
death; but now I did not want to die, unless my child could die
too. Many weeks passed before I was able to leave my bed. I was
a mere wreck of my former self. For a year there was scarcely a
day when I was free from chills and fever. My babe also was
sickly. His little limbs were often racked with pain. Dr. Flint
continued his visits, to look after my health; and he did not fail
to remind me that my child was an addition to his stock of
slaves.
I felt too feeble to dispute with him, and listened to his remarks in silence. His visits were less frequent; but his busy spirit
could not remain quiet. He employed my brother in his office,
and he was made the medium of frequent notes and messages to
me. William was a bright lad, and of much use to the doctor. He
had learned to put up medicines, to leech, cup, and bleed. He had
taught himself to read and spell. I was proud of my brother; and
the old doctor suspected as much. One day, when I had not seen
him for several weeks, I heard his steps approaching the door. I
dreaded the encounter, and hid myself. He inquired for me, of
course; but I was nowhere to be found. He went to his office,
and despatched William with a note. The color mounted to my
brother's face when he gave it to me; and he said, "Don't you
hate me, Linda, for bringing you these things?" I told him I
could not blame him; he was a slave, and obliged to obey his
master's will. The note ordered me to come to his office. I went.
He demanded to know where I was when he called. I told him I
was at home. He flew into a passion, and said he knew better.
Then he launched out upon his usual themes,-my crimes
against him, and my ingratitude for his forbearance. The laws
were laid down to me anew, and I was dismissed. I felt humiliated that my brother should stand by, and listen to such language
as would be addressed only to a slave. Poor boy! He was powerless to defend me; but I saw the tears, which he vainly strove to

THE NEW TIE TO LIFE

69

keep back. This manifestation of feeling irritated the doctor.
William could do nothing to please him. One morning he did not
arrive at the office so early as usual; and that circumstance afforded his master an opportunity to vent his spleen. He was put
in jail. The next day my brother sent a trader to the doctor, with
a request to be sold. His master was greatly incensed at what he
called his insolence. He said he had put him there to reflect upon
his bad conduct, and he certainly was not giving any evidence of
repentance. For two days he harassed himself to find somebody
to do his office work; but every thing went wrong without
William. He was released, and ordered to take his old stand, with
many threats, if he was not careful about his future behavior.
As the months passed on, my boy improved in health. When
he was a year old, they called him beautiful. The little vine was
taking deep root in my existence, though its clinging fondness
excited a mixture of love and pain. When I was most sorely oppressed I found a solace in his smiles. I loved to watch his infant
slumbers; but always there was a dark cloud over my enjoyment.
I could never forget that he was a slave. Sometimes I wished that
he might die in infancy. God tried me. My darling became very
ill. The bright eyes grew dull, and the little feet and hands were
so icy cold that I thought death had already touched them. I had
prayed for his death, but never so earnestly as I now prayed for
his life; and my prayer was heard. Alas, what mockery it is for a
slave mother to try to pray back her dying child to life! Death is
better than slavery. It was a sad thought that I had no name to
give my child. His father caressed him and treated him kindly,
whenever he had a chance to see him. He was not unwilling that
he should bear his name; but he had no legal claim to it; and if I
had bestowed it upon him, my master would have regarded it as
a new crime, a new piece of insolence, and would, perhaps, revenge it on the boy. 0, the serpent of Slavery has many and poisonous fangs!

XII

Fear of Insurrection

NOT FAR FROM THIS time

Nat Turner's insurrection' broke
out; and the news threw our town into great commotion. Strange
that they should be alarmed, when their slaves were so "contented and happy"! But so it was.
It was always the custom to have a muster every year. On that
occasion every white man shouldered his musket. The citizens
and the so-called country gentlemen wore military uniforms.
The poor whites took their places in the ranks in every-day
dress, some without shoes, some without hats. This grand occasion had already passed; and when the slaves were told there was
to be another muster, they were surprised and rejoiced. Poor
creatures! They thought it was going to be a holiday. I was informed of the true state of affairs, and imparted it to the few I
could trust. Most gladly would I have proclaimed it to every
slave; but I dared not. All could not be relied on. Mighty is the
power of the torturing lash.
By sunrise, people were pouring in from every quarter within
twenty miles of the town. I knew the houses were to be searched;
and I expected it would be done by country bullies and the poor
whites. I knew nothing annoyed them so much as to see colored
people living in comfort and respectability; so I made arrangements for them with especial care. I arranged every thing in my
grandmother's house as neatly as possible. I put white quilts on
the beds, and decorated some of the rooms with flowers. When
all was arranged, I sat down at the window to watch. Far as my
eye could reach, it rested on a motley crowd of soldiers. Drums
and fifes were discoursing martial music. The men were divided
into companies of sixteen, each headed by a captain. Orders were
given, and the wild scouts rushed in every direction, wherever a
colored face was to be found.
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FEAR OF INSURRECTION

71

It was a grand opportunity for the low whites, who had no
negroes of their own to scourge. They exulted in such a chance
to exercise a little brief authority, and show their subserviency to
the slaveholders; not reflecting that the power which trampled
on the calored people also kept themselves in poverty, ignorance, and moral degradation. Those who never witnessed such
scenes can hardly believe what I know was inflicted at this time
on innocent men, women, and children, against whom there was
not the slightest ground for suspicion. Colored people and slaves
who lived in remote parts of the town suffered in an especial
manner. In some cases the searchers scattered powder and shot
among their clothes, and then sent other parties to find them,
and bring them forward as proof that they were plotting insurrection. Every where men, women, and children were whipped
till the blood stood in puddles at their feet. Some received five
hundred lashes; others were tied hands and feet, and tortured
with a bucking paddle, which blisters the skin terribly. The
dwellings of the colored people, unless they happened to be protected by some influential white person, who was nigh at hand,
were robbed of clothing and every thing else the marauders
thought worth carrying away. All day long these unfeeling
wretches went round, like a troop of demons, terrifying and tormenting the helpless. At night, they formed themselves into patrol bands, and went wherever they chose among the colored
people, acting out their brutal will. Many women hid themselves
in woods and swamps, to keep out of their way. If any of the
husbands or fathers told of these outrages, they were tied up to
the public whipping post, and cruelly scourged for telling lies
about white men. The consternation was universal. No two people that had the slightest tinge of color in their faces dared to be
seen talking together.
I entertained no positive fears about our household, because
we were in the midst of white families who would protect us. We
were ready to receive the soldiers whenever they came. It was
not long before we heard the tramp of feet and the sound of
voices. The door was rudely pushed open; and in they tumbled,
like a pack of hungry wolves. They snatched at every thing
within their reach. Every box, trunk, closet, and corner under-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

went a thorough examination. A box in one of the drawers containing some silver change was eagerly pounced upon. When I
stepped forward to take it from them, one of the soldiers turned
and said angrily, "What d'ye foller us fur? D'ye s'pose white
folks is come to steal?"
I replied, "You have come to search; but you have searched
that box, and I will take it, if you please."
At that moment I saw a white gentleman who was friendly to
us; and I called to him, and asked him to have the goodness to
come in and stay till the search was over. He readily complied.
His entrance into the house brought in the captain of the company, whose business it was to guard the outside of the house,
and see that none of the inmates left it. This officer was Mr.
Litch, the wealthy slaveholder whom I mentioned, in the account of neighboring planters, as being notorious for his cruelty.
He felt above soiling his hands with the search. He merely gave
orders; and, if a bit of writing was discovered, it was carried to
him by his ignorant followers, who were unable to read.
My grandmother had a large trunk of bedding and table
cloths. When that was opened, there was a great shout of surprise; and one exclaimed, "Where'd the damned niggers git all dis
sheet an' table clarf?"
My grandmother, emboldened by the presence of our white
protector, said, "You may be sure we didn't pilfer'em from your
houses."
"Look here, mammy," said a grim-looking fellow without
any coat, "you seem to feel mighty gran' 'cause you got all them
'ere fixens. White folks oughter have 'em all."
His remarks were interrupted by a chorus of voices shouting,
"We's got 'em! We's got 'em! Dis 'ere yaller gal's got letters!"
There was a general rush for the supposed letter, which, upon
examination, proved to be some verses written to me by a friend.
In packing away my things, I had overlooked them. When their
captain informed them of their contents, they seemed much disappointed. He inquired of me who wrote them. I told him it was
one of my friends. "Can you read them?" he asked. When I told
him I could, he swore, and raved, and tore the paper into bits.
"Bring me all your letters!" said he, in a commanding tone. I told

FEAR OF INSURRECTION

73

him I had none. "Don't be afraid," he continued, in an insinuating way. "Bring them all to me. Nobody shall do you any
harm." Seeing I did not move to obey him, his pleasant tone
changed to oaths and threats. "Who writes to you? half free niggers?" inquired he. I replied, "0, no; most of my letters are from
white people. Some request me to burn them after they are read,
and some I destroy without reading."
An exclamation of surprise from some of the company put a
stop to our conversation. Some silver spoons which ornamented
an old-fashioned buffet had just been discovered. My grandmother was in the habit of preserving fruit for many ladies in the
town, and of preparing suppers for parties; consequently she had
many jars of preserves. The closet that contained these was next
invaded, and the contents tasted. One of them, who was helping
himself freely, tapped his neighbor on the shoulder, and said,
"Wal done! Don't wonder de niggers want to kill all de white
folks, when dey live on 'sarves" [meaning preserves]. I stretched
out my hand to take the jar, saying, "You were not sent here to
search for sweetmeats."
"And what were we sent for?" said the captain, bristling up to
me. I evaded the question.
The search of the house was completed, and nothing found to
condemn us. They next proceeded to the garden, and knocked
about every bush and vine, with no better success. The captain
called his men together, and, after a short consultation, the order
to march was given. As they passed out of the gate, the captain
turned back, and pronounced a malediction on the house. He
said it ought to be burned to the ground, and each of its inmates
receive thirty-nine lashes. We came out of this affair very fortunately; not losing any thing except some wearing apparel.
Towards evening the turbulence increased. The soldiers, stimulated by drink, committed still greater cruelties. Shrieks and
shouts continually rent the air. Not daring to go to the door, I
peeped under the window curtain. I saw a mob dragging along a
number of colored people, each white man, with his musket upraised, threatening instant death if they did not stop their shrieks.
Among the prisoners was a respectable old colored minister.
They had found a few parcels of shot in his house, which his wife

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

had for years used to balance her scales. For this they were going
to shoot him on Court House Green. What a spectacle was that
for a civilized country! A rabble, staggering under intoxication,
assuming to be the administrators of justice!
The better class of the community exerted their influence to
save the innocent, persecuted people; and in several instances
they succeeded, by keeping them shut up in jail till the excitement abated. At last the white citizens found that their own
property was not safe from the lawless rabble they had summoned to protect them. They rallied the drunken swarm, drove
them back into the country, and set a guard over the town.
The next day, the town patrols were commissioned to search
colored people that lived out of the city; and the most shocking
outrages were committed with perfect impunity. Every day for a
fortnight, if I looked out, I saw horsemen with some poor panting negro tied to their saddles, and compelled by the lash to keep
up with their speed, till they arrived at the jail yard. Those who
had been whipped too unmercifully to walk were washed with
brine, tossed into a cart, and carried to jail. One black man, who
had not fortitude to endure scourging, promised to give information about the conspiracy. But it turned out that he knew nothing at all. He had not even heard the name of N at Turner. The
poor fellow had, however, made up a story, which augmented
his own sufferings and those of the colored people.
The day patrol continued for some weeks, and at sundown a
night guard was substituted. Nothing at all was proved against
the colored people, bond or free. The wrath of the slaveholders
was somewhat appeased by the capture of Nat Turner. The imprisoned were released. The slaves were sent to their masters, and
the free were permitted to return to their ravaged homes. Visiting was strictly forbidden on the plantations. The slaves begged
the privilege of again meeting at their little church in the woods,
with their burying ground around it. It was built by the colored
people, and they had no higher happiness than to meet there and
sing hymns together, and pour out their hearts in spontaneous
prayer. Their request was denied, and the church was demolished. They were permitted to attend the white churches, a certain portion of the galleries being appropriated to their use.

FEAR OF INSURRECTION

75

There, when every body else had partaken of the communion,
and the benediction had been pronounced, the minister said,
"Come down, now, my colored friends." They obeyed the summons, and partook of the bread and wine, in commemoration of
the meek and lowly Jesus, who said, "God is your Father, and all
ye are brethren."

XIII

The Church and Slavery

AFTER THE ALARM CAUSED by Nat Turner's insurrection had

subsided, the slaveholders came to the conclusion that it would
be well to give the slaves enough of religious instruction to keep
them from murdering their masters. The Episcopal clergyman
offered to hold a separate service on Sundays for their benefit.
His colored members were very few, and also very respectablea fact which I presume had some weight with him. The difficulty
was to decide on a suitable place for them to worship. The
Methodist and Baptist churches admitted them in the afternoon;
but their carpets and cushions were not so costly as those at the
Episcopal church. It was at last decided that they should meet at
the house of a free colored man, who was a member.
I was invited to attend, because I could read. Sunday evening
came, and, trusting to the cover of night, I ventured out. I rarely
ventured out by daylight, for I always went with fear, expecting
at every turn to encounter Dr. Flint, who was sure to turn me
back, or order me to his office to inquire where I got my bonnet,
or some other article of dress. When the Rev. Mr. Pike came,
there were some twenty persons present. The reverend gentleman knelt in prayer, then seated himself, and requested all present, who could read, to open their books, while he gave out the
portions he wished them to repeat or respond to.
His text was, "Servants, be obedient to them that are your
masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ."
Pious Mr. Pike brushed up his hair till it stood upright, and, in
deep, solemn tones, began: "Hearken, ye servants! Give strict
heed unto my words. You are rebellious sinners. Your hearts are
filled with all manner of evil. 'Tis the devil who tempts you. God

76

THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY

77

is angry with you, and will surely punish you, if you don't forsake your wicked ways. You that live in town are eye-servants
behind your master's back. Instead of serving your masters faithfully, which is pleasing in the sight of your heavenly Master, you
are idle, and shirk your work. God sees you. You tell lies. God
hears you. Instead of being engaged in worshipping him, you are
hidden away somewhere, feasting on your master's substance;
tossing coffee-grounds with some wicked fortuneteller, or cutting cards with another old hag. Your masters may not find you
out, but God sees you, and will punish you. 0, the depravity of
your hearts! When your master's work is done, are you quietly
together, thinking of the goodness of God to such sinful creatures? No; you are quarrelling, and tying up little bags of roots
to bury under the door-steps to poison each other with. God
sees you. You men steal away to every grog shop to sell your
master's corn, that you may buy rum to drink. God sees you.
You sneak into the back streets, or among the bushes, to pitch
coppers. Although your masters may not find you out, God sees
you; and he will punish you. You must forsake your sinful ways,
and be faithful servants. Obey your old master and your young
master-your old mistress and your young mistress. If you disobey your earthly master, you offend your heavenly Master.
You must obey God's commandments. When you go from here,
don't stop at the corners of the streets to talk, but go directly
home, and let your master and mistress see that you have come."
The benediction was pronounced. We went home, highly
amused at brother Pike's gospel teaching, and we determined to
hear him again. I went the next Sabbath evening, and heard
pretty much a repetition of the last discourse. At the close of the
meeting, Mr. Pike informed us that he found it very inconvenient
to meet at the friend's house, and he should be glad to see us,
every Sunday evening, at his own kitchen.
I went home with the feeling that I had heard the Reverend
Mr. Pike for the last time. Some of his members repaired to his
house, and found that the kitchen sported two tallow candles;
the first time, I am sure, since its present occupant owned it, for
the servants never had any thing but pine knots. It was so long

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

before the reverend gentleman descended from his comfortable
parlor that the slaves left, and went to enjoy a Methodist shout.
They never seem so happy as when shouting and singing at religious meetings. Many of them are sincere, and nearer to the gate
of heaven than sanctimonious Mr. Pike, and other long-faced
Christians, who see wounded Samaritans, and pass by on the
other side.
The slaves generally compose their own songs and hymns;
and they do not trouble their heads much about the measure.
They often sing the following verses:
"Old Satan is one busy ale man;
He rolls dem blocks all in my way;
But Jesus is my bosom friend;
He rolls dem blocks away.

"If I had died when I was young,
Den how my stam'ring tongue would have sung;
But I am ale, and now I stand
A narrow chance for to tread dat heavenly land."

I well remember one occasion when I attended a Methodist
class meeting. I went with a burdened spirit, and happened to sit
next to poor, bereaved mother, whose heart was still heavier than
mine. The class leader was the town constable-a man who
bought and sold slaves, who whipped his brethren and sisters of
the church at the public whipping post, in jail or out of jail. He
was ready to perform that Christian office any where for fifty
cents. This white-faced, black-hearted brother came near us, and
said to the stricken woman, "Sister, can't you tell us how the
Lord deals with your soul? Do you love him as you did formerly?"
She rose to her feet, and said, in piteous tones, "My Lord and
Master, help me! My load is more than I can bear. God has hid
himself from me, and I am left in darkness and misery." Then,
striking her breast, she continued, "I can't tell you what is in
here! They've got all my children. Last week they took the last

THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY

79

one. God only knows where they've sold her. They let me have
her sixteen years, and then-O! O! Pray for her brothers and
sisters! I've got nothing to live for now. God make my time
short!"
She sat down, quivering in every limb. I saw that constable
class leader become crimson in the face with suppressed laughter,
while he held up his handkerchief, that those who were weeping
for the poor woman's calamity might not see his merriment.
Then, with assumed gravity, he said to the bereaved mother,
"Sister, pray to the Lord that every dispensation of his divine
will may be sanctified to the good of your poor needy soul!"
The congregation struck up a hymn, and sung as though they
were as free as the birds that warbled round us,"Ole Satan thought he had a mighty aim;
He missed my soul, and caught my sins.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God!
"He took my sins upon his back;
Went muttering and grumbling down to hell.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God!
"Ole Satan's church is here below.
Up to God's free church I hope to go.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God!"

Precious are such moments to the poor slaves. If you were to
hear them at such times, you might think they were happy. But
can that hour of singing and shouting sustain them through the
dreary week, toiling without wages, under constant dread of the
lash?
The Episcopal clergyman, who, ever since my earliest recollection, had been a sort of god among the slaveholders, concluded, as his family was large, that he must go where money
was more abundant. A very different clergyman took his place.
The change was very agreeable to the colored people, who said,
"God has sent us a good man this time." They loved him, and
their children followed him for a smile or a kind word. Even the

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

slaveholders felt his influence. He brought to the rectory five
slaves. His wife taught them to read and write, and to be useful
to her and themselves. As soon as he was settled, he turned his
attention to the needy slaves around him. He urged upon his
parishioners the duty of having a meeting expressly for them
every Sunday, with a sermon adapted to their comprehension.
After much argument and importunity, it was finally agreed that
they might occupy the gallery of the church on Sunday evenings.
Many colored people, hitherto unaccustomed to attend church,
now gladly went to hear the gospel preached. The sermons were
simple, and they understood them. Moreover, it was the first
time they had ever been addressed as human beings. It was not
long before his white parishioners began to be dissatisfied. He
was accused of preaching better sermons to the negroes than he
did to them. He honestly confessed that he bestowed more pains
upon those sermons than upon any others; for the slaves were
reared in such ignorance that it was a difficult task to adapt himself to their comprehension. Dissensions arose in the parish.
Some wanted he should preach to them in the evening, and to the
slaves in the afternoon. In the midst of these disputings his wife
died, after a very short illness. Her slaves gathered round her dying bed in great sorrow. She said, "I have tried to do you good
and promote your happiness; and if I have failed, it has not been
for want of interest in your welfare. Do not weep for me; but
prepare for the new duties that lie before you. I leave you all free.
May we meet in a better world." Her liberated slaves were sent
away, with funds to establish them comfortably. The colored
people will long bless the memory of that truly Christian
woman. Soon after her death her husband preached his farewell
sermon, and many tears were shed at his departure.
Several years after, he passed through our town and preached
to his former congregation. In his afternoon sermon he addressed the colored people. "My friends," said he, "it affords me
great happiness to have an opportunity of speaking to you again.
For two years I have been striving to do something for the colored people of my own parish; but nothing is yet accomplished.
I have not even preached a sermon to them. Try to live according
to the word of God, my friends. Your skin is darker than mine;

THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY

81

but God judges men by their hearts, not by the color of their
skins." This was strange doctrine from a southern pulpit. It was
very offensive to slaveholders. They said he and his wife had
made fools of their slaves, and that he preached like a fool to the
negroes.
1 knew an old black man, whose piety and childlike trust in
God were beautiful to witness. At fifty-three years old he joined
the Baptist church. He had a most earnest desire to learn to read.
He thought he should know how to serve God better if he could
only read the Bible. He came to me, and begged me to teach him.
He said he could not pay me, for he had no money; but he would
bring me nice fruit when the season for it came. 1 asked him if he
didn't know it was contrary to law; and that slaves were whipped
and imprisoned for teaching each other to read. This brought the
tears into his eyes. "Don't be troubled, uncle Fred," said I. "I
have no thoughts of refusing to teach you. 1 only told you of the
law, that you might know the danger, and be on your guard." He
thought he could plan to come three times a week without its being suspected. 1 selected a quiet nook, where no intruder was
likely to penetrate, and there 1 taught him his A, B, C. Considering his age, his progress was astonishing. As soon as he could
spell in two syllables he wanted to spell out words in the Bible.
The happy smile that illuminated his face put joy into my heart.
After spelling out a few words, he paused, and said, "Honey, it
'pears when 1 can read dis good book 1 shall be nearer to God.
White man is got all de sense. He can lam easy. It airi't easy for
ale black man like me. 1 only wants to read dis book, dat 1 may
know how to live; den 1 hab no fear 'bout dying."
1 tried to encourage him by speaking of the rapid progress he
had made. "Hab patience, child," he replied. "I lams slow."
1 had no need of patience. His gratitude, and the happiness 1
imparted, were more than a recompense for all my trouble.
At the end of six months he had read through the New Testament, and could find any text in it. One day, when he had recited
unusually well, 1 said, "Uncle Fred, how do you manage to get
your lessons so well?"
"Lord bress you, chile," he replied. "You nebber gibs me a
lesson dat 1 don't pray to God to help me to understan' what 1

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IN C ID ENT SIN THE LI F E 0 F A SL A V E G I R L

spells and what I reads. And he does help me, chile. Bress his
holy name!"
There are thousands, who, like good uncle Fred, are thirsting
for the water of life; but the law forbids it, and the churches
withhold it. They send the Bible to heathen abroad, and neglect
the heathen at home. I am glad that missionaries go out to the
dark corners of the earth; but I ask them not to overlook the
dark corners at home. Talk to American slaveholders as you talk
to savages in Africa. Tell them it is wrong to traffic in men. Tell
them it is sinful to sell their own children, and atrocious to violate their own daughters. Tell them that all men are brethren, and
that man has no right to shut out the light of knowledge from his
brother. Tell them they are answerable to God for sealing up the
Fountain of Life from souls that are thirsting for it.
There are men who would gladly undertake such missionary
work as this; but, alas! their number is small. They are hated by
the south, and would be driven from its soil, or dragged to
prison to die, as others have been before them. The field is ripe
for the harvest, and awaits the reapers. Perhaps the great grandchildren of uncle Fred may have freely imparted to them the
divine treasures, which he sought by stealth, at the risk of the
prison and the scourge.
Are doctors of divinity blind, or are they hypocrites? I suppose some are the one, and some the other; but I think if they felt
the interest in the poor and the lowly, that they ought to feel,
they would not be so easily blinded. A clergyman who goes to
the south, for the first time, has usually some feeling, however
vague, that slavery is wrong. The slaveholder suspects this, and
plays his game accordingly. He makes himself as agreeable as
possible; talks on theology, and other kindred topics. The reverend gentleman is asked to invoke a blessing on a table loaded
with luxuries. After dinner he walks round the premises, and sees
the beautiful groves and flowering vines, and the comfortable
huts of favored household slaves. The southerner invites him to
talk with these slaves. He asks them if they want to be free, and
they say, "0, no, massa." This is sufficient to satisfy him. He
comes home to publish a "South-Side View of Slavery," and to

THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY

83

complain of the exaggerations of abolitionists. He assures people
that he has been to the south, and seen slavery for himself; that it
is a beautiful "patriarchal institution;" that the slaves don't want
their freedom; that they have hallelujah meetings, and other religious privileges.
What does he know of the half-starved wretches toiling from
dawn till dark on the plantations? of mothers shrieking for their
children, torn from their arms by slave-traders? of young girls
dragged down into moral filth? of pools of blood around the
whipping post? of hounds trained to tear human flesh? of men
screwed into cotton gins to die? The slaveholder showed him
none of these things, and the slaves dared not tell of them if he
had asked them.
There is a difference between Christianity and religion at the
south. If a man goes to the communion table, and pays money
into the treasury of the church, no matter if it be the price of
blood, he is called religious. If a pastor has offspring by a woman
not his wife, the church dismiss him, if she is a white woman; but
if she is colored, it does not hinder his continuing to be their
good shepherd.
When I was told that Dr. Flint had joined the Episcopal
church, I was much surprised. I supposed that religion had a purifying effect on the character of men; but the worst persecutions
I endured from him were after he was a communicant. The conversation of the doctor, the day after he had been confirmed, certainly gave me no indication that he had "renounced the devil
and all his works." In answer to some of his usual talk, I reminded him that he had just joined the church. "Yes, Linda,"
said he. "It was proper for me to do so. I am getting on in years,
and my position in society requires it, and it puts an end to all
the damned slang. You would do well to join the church, too,
Linda."
"There are sinners enough in it already," rejoined I. "If I
could be allowed to live like a Christian, I should be glad."
"You can do what I require; and if you are faithful to me, you
will be as virtuous as my wife," he replied.
I answered that the Bible didn't say so.

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

His voice became hoarse with rage. "How dare you preach to
me about your infernal Bible!" he exclaimed. "What right have
you, who are my negro, to talk to me about what you would
like, and what you wouldn't like? I am your master, and you
shall obey me."
No wonder the slaves sing,"Ole Satan's church is here below;
Up to God's free church I hope to go."

XIV

Another Link to Life

I HAD NOT RETURNED to my master's house since the birth of
my child. The old man raved to have me thus removed from his
immediate power; but his wife vowed, by all that was good and
great, she would kill me if I came back; and he did not doubt
her word. Sometimes he would stay away for a season. Then he
would come and renew the old threadbare discourse about his
forbearance and my ingratitude. He labored, most unnecessarily,
to convince me that I had lowered myself. The venomous old
reprobate had no need of descanting on that theme. I felt humiliated enough. My unconscious babe was the ever-present witness
of my shame. I listened with silent contempt when he talked
about my having forfeited his good opinion; but I shed bitter
tears that I was no longer worthy of being respected by the good
and pure. Alas! slavery still held me in its poisonous grasp. There
was no chance for me to be respectable. There was no prospect
of being able to lead a better life.
Sometimes, when my master found that I still refused to accept what he called his kind offers, he would threaten to sell my
child. "Perhaps that will humble you," said he.
Humble me! Was I not already in the dust? But his threat lacerated my heart. I knew the law gave him power to fulfil it; for
slaveholders have been cunning enough to enact that "the child
shall follow the condition of the mother," not of the father; thus
taking care that licentiousness shall not interfere with avarice.
This reflection made me clasp my innocent babe all the more
firmly to my heart. Horrid visions passed through my mind
when I thought of his liability to fall into the slave trader's
hands. I wept over him, and said, "0 my child! perhaps they will
leave you in some cold cabin to die, and then throw you into a
hole, as if you were a dog."
85

86

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

When Dr. Flint learned that I was again to be a mother, he
was exasperated beyond measure. He rushed from the house,
and returned with a pair of shears. I had a fine head of hair; and
he often railed about my pride of arranging it nicely. He cut
every hair close to my head, storming and swearing all the time.
I replied to some of his abuse, and he struck me. Some months
before, he had pitched me down stairs in a fit of passion; and
the injury I received was so serious that I was unable to turn
myself in bed for many days. He then said, "Linda, I swear by
God I will never raise my hand against you again;" but I knew
that he would forget his promise.
After he discovered my situation, he was like a restless spirit
from the pit. He came every day; and I was subjected to such insults as no pen can describe. I would not describe them if I could;
they were too low, too revolting. I tried to keep them from my
grandmother's knowledge as much as I could. I knew she had
enough to sadden her life, without having my troubles to bear.
When she saw the doctor treat me with violence, and heard him
utter oaths terrible enough to palsy a man's tongue, she could
not always hold her peace. It was natural and motherlike that she
should try to defend me; but it only made matters worse.
When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, 1 my heart
was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for
men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the
burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and
mortifications peculiarly their own.
Dr. Flint had sworn that he would make me suffer, to my last
day, for this new crime against him, as he called it; and as long as
he had me in his power he kept his word. On the fourth day after the birth of my babe, he entered my room suddenly, and
commanded me to rise and bring my baby to him. The nurse
who took care of me had gone out of the room to prepare some
nourishment, and I was alone. There was no alternative. I rose,
took up my babe, and crossed the room to where he sat. "Now
stand there," said he, "till I tell you to go back!" My child bore a
strong resemblance to her father, and to the deceased Mrs. Sands,
her grandmother. He noticed this; and while I stood before him,
trembling with weakness, he heaped upon me and my little one

ANOTHER LINK TO LIFE

87

every vile epithet he could think of. Even the grandmother in her
grave did not escape his curses. In the midst of his vituperations
I fainted at his feet. This recalled him to his senses. He took the
baby from my arms, laid it on the bed, dashed cold water in my
face, took me up, and shook me violently, to restore my consciousness before anyone entered the room. Just then my grandmother came in, and he hurried out of the house. I suffered in
consequence of this treatment; but I begged my friends to let me
die, rather than send for the doctor. There was nothing I dreaded
so much as his presence. My life was spared; and I was glad for
the sake of my little ones. Had it not been for these ties to life, I
should have been glad to be released by death, though I had lived
only nineteen years.
Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim
to a name. Their father offered his; but, if I had wished to accept
the offer, I dared not while my master lived. Moreover, I knew it
would not be accepted at their baptism. A Christian name they
were at least entitled to; and we resolved to call my boy for our
dear good Benjamin, who had gone far away from us.
My grandmother belonged to the church; and she was very
desirous of having the children christened. I knew Dr. Flint
would forbid it, and I did not venture to attempt it. But chance
favored me. He was called to visit a patient out of town, and was
obliged to be absent during Sunday. "Now is the time," said my
grandmother; "we will take the children to church, and have
them christened."
When I entered the church, recollections of my mother came
over me, and I felt subdued in spirit. There she had presented me
for baptism, without any reason to feel ashamed. She had been
married, and had such legal rights as slavery allows to a slave.
The vows had at least been sacred to her, and she had never violated them. I was glad she was not alive, to know under what different circumstances her grandchildren were presented for
baptism. Why had my lot been so different from my mother's?
Her master had died when she was a child; and she remained
with her mistress till she married. She was never in the power of
any master; and thus she escaped one class of the evils that generally fall upon slaves.

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

When my baby was about to be christened, the former mistress of my father stepped up to me, and proposed to give it her
Christian name. To this I added the surname of my father, who
had himself no legal right to it; for my grandfather on the paternal side was a white gentleman. What tangled skeins are the genealogies of slavery! I loved my father; but it mortified me to be
obliged to bestow his name on my children.
When we left the church, my father's old mistress invited me
to go home with her. She clasped a gold chain round my baby's
neck. I thanked her for this kindness; but I did not like the emblem. I wanted no chain to be fastened on my daughter, not even
if its links were of gold. How earnestly I prayed that she might
never feel the weight of slavery's chain, whose iron entereth into
the soul!

xv
Continued Persecutions

My CHILDREN GREW FINELY; and Dr. Flint would often say to
me, with an exulting smile, "These brats will bring me a handsome sum of money one of these days."
I thought to myself that, God being my helper, they should
never pass into his hands. It seemed to me I would rather see
them killed than have them given up to his power. The money
for the freedom of myself and my children could be obtained;
but I derived no advantage from that circumstance. Dr. Flint
loved money, but he loved power more. After much discussion,
my friends resolved on making another trial. There was a slaveholder about to leave for Texas, and he was commissioned to
buy me. He was to begin with nine hundred dollars, and go up to
twelve. My master refused his offers. "Sir," said he, "she don't
belong to me. She is my daughter'S property, and I have no right
to sell her. I mistrust that you come from her paramour. If so,
you may tell him that he cannot buy her for any money; neither
can he buy her children."
The doctor came to see me the next day, and my heart beat
quicker as he entered. I never had seen the old man tread with so
majestic a step. He seated himself and looked at me with withering scorn. My children had learned to be afraid of him. The little
one would shut her eyes and hide her face on my shoulder whenever she saw him; and Benny, who was now nearly five years old,
often inquired, "What makes that bad man come here so many
times? Does he want to hurt us?" I would clasp the dear boy in
my arms, trusting that he would be free before he was old
enough to solve the problem. And now, as the doctor sat there so
grim and silent, the child left his play and came and nestled up by
me. At last my tormentor spoke. "So you are left in disgust, are
you?" said he. "It is no more than I expected. You remember I
89

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

told you years ago that you would be treated so. So he is tired of
you? Ha! ha! ha! The virtuous madam don't like to hear about it,
does she? Ha! ha! ha!" There was a sting in his calling me virtuous madam. I no longer had the power of answering him as I had
formerly done. He continued: "So it seems you are trying to get
up another intrigue. Your new paramour came to me, and offered to buy you; but you may be assured you will not succeed.
You are mine; and you shall be mine for life. There lives no human being that can take you out of slavery. I would have done it;
but you rejected my kind offer."
I told him I did not wish to get up any intrigue; that I had
never seen the man who offered to buy me.
"Do you tell me I lie?" exclaimed he, dragging me from my
chair. "Will you say again that you never saw that man?"
I answered, "I do say so."
He clinched my arm with a volley of oaths. Ben began to
scream, and I told him to go to his grandmother.
"Don't you stir a step, you little wretch!" said he. The child
drew nearer to me, and put his arms round me, as if he wanted to
protect me. This was too much for my enraged master. He
caught him up and hurled him across the room. I thought he was
dead, and rushed towards him to take him up.
"Not yet!" exclaimed the doctor. "Let him lie there till he
comes to."
"Let me go! Let me go!" I screamed, "or I will raise the whole
house." I struggled and got away; but he clinched me again.
Somebody opened the door, and he released me. I picked up my
insensible child, and when I turned my tormentor was gone.
Anxiously I bent over the little form, so pale and still; and when
the brown eyes at last opened, I don't know whether I was very
happy.
All the doctor's former persecutions were renewed. He came
morning, noon, and night. No jealous lover ever watched a rival
more closely than he watched me and the unknown slaveholder,
with whom he accused me of wishing to get up an intrigue.
When my grandmother was out of the way he searched every
room to find him.
In one of his visits, he happened to find a young girl, whom

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91

he had sold to a trader a few days previous. His statement was,
that he sold her because she had been too familiar with the overseer. She had had a bitter life with him, and was glad to be sold.
She had no mother, and no near ties. She had been torn from all
her family years before. A few friends had entered into bonds for
her safety, if the trader would allow her to spend with them the
time that intervened between her sale and the gathering up of his
human stock. Such a favor was rarely granted. It saved the trader
the expense of board and jail fees, and though the amount was
small, it was a weighty consideration in a slave-trader's mind.
Dr. Flint always had an aversion to meeting slaves after he had
sold them. He ordered Rose out of the house; but he was no
longer her master, and she took no notice of him. For once the
crushed Rose was the conqueror. His gray eyes flashed angrily
upon her; but that was the extent of his power. "How came this
girl here?" he exclaimed. "What right had you to allow it, when
you knew I had sold her?"
I answered, "This is my grandmother's house, and Rose came
to see her. I have no right to turn any body out of doors, that
comes here for honest purposes."
He gave me the blow that would have fallen upon Rose if she
had still been his slave. My grandmother's attention had been attracted by loud voices, and she entered in time to see a second
blow dealt. She was not a woman to let such an outrage, in her
own house, go unrebuked. The doctor undertook to explain that
I had been insolent. Her indignant feelings rose higher and
higher, and finally boiled over in words. "Get out of my house!"
she exclaimed. "Go home, and take care of your wife and children, and you will have enough to do, without watching my
family."
He threw the birth of my children in her face, and accused her
of sanctioning the life I was leading. She told him I was living
with her by compulsion of his wife; that he needn't accuse her,
for he was the one to blame; he was the one who had caused all
the trouble. She grew more and more excited as she went on. "I
tell you what, Dr. Flint," said she, "you ain't got many more
years to live, and you'd better be saying your prayers. It will take
'em all, and more too, to wash the dirt off your soul."

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

"Do you know whom you are talking to?" he exclaimed.
She replied, "Yes, I know very well who I am talking to."
He left the house in a great rage. I looked at my grandmother.
Our eyes met. Their angry expression had passed away, but she
looked sorrowful and weary-weary of incessant strife. I wondered that it did not lessen her love for me; but if it did she never
showed it. She was always kind, always ready to sympathize
with my troubles. There might have been peace and contentment
in that humble home if it had not been for the demon Slavery.
The winter passed undisturbed by the doctor. The beautiful
spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also. My drooping hopes came to life
again with the flowers. I was dreaming of freedom again; more
for my children's sake than my own. I planned and I planned.
Obstacles hit against plans. There seemed no way of overcoming
them; and yet I hoped.
Back came the wily doctor. I was not at home when he called.
A friend had invited me to a small party, and to gratify her I
went. To my great consternation, a messenger came in haste to
say that Dr. Flint was at my grandmother's, and insisted on seeing me. They did not tell him where I was, or he would have
come and raised a disturbance in my friend's house. They sent
me a dark wrapper; I threw it on and hurried home. My speed
did not save me; the doctor had gone away in anger. I dreaded
the morning, but I could not delay it; it came, warm and bright.
At an early hour the doctor came and asked me where I had been
last night. I told him. He did not believe me, and sent to my
friend's house to ascertain the facts. He came in the afternoon to
assure me he was satisfied that I had spoken the truth. He
seemed to be in a facetious mood, and I expected some jeers were
coming. "I suppose you need some recreation," said he, "but I
am surprised at your being there, among those negroes. It was
not the place for you. Are you allowed to visit such people?"
I understood this covert fling at the white gentleman who was
my friend; but I merely replied, "I went to visit my friends, and
any company they keep is good enough for me."
He went on to say, "I have seen very little of you of late, but
my interest in you is unchanged. When I said I would have no

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93

more mercy on you I was rash. I recall my words. Linda, you desire freedom for yourself and your children, and you can obtain
it only through me. If you agree to what I am about to propose,
you and they shall be free. There must be no communication of
any kind between you and their father. I will procure a cottage,
where you and the children can live together. Your labor shall be
light, such as sewing for my family. Think what is offered you,
Linda-a home and freedom! Let the past be forgotten. If I have
been harsh with you at times, your wilfulness drove me to it.
You know I exact obedience from my own children, and I consider you as yet a child."
He paused for an answer, but I remained silent.
"Why don't you speak?" said he. "What more do you
wait for?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Then you accept my offer?"
"No, sir."
His anger was ready to break loose; but he succeeded in curbing it, and replied, "You have answered without thought. But I
must let you know there are two sides to my proposition; if you
reject the bright side, you will be obliged to take the dark one.
You must either accept my offer, or you and your children shall
be sent to your young master's plantation, there to remain till
your young mistress is married; and your children shall fare
like the rest of the negro children. I give you a week to consider
of it."
He was shrewd; but I knew he was not to be trusted. I told
him I was ready to give my answer now.
"I will not receive it now," he replied. "You act too much
from impulse. Remember that you and your children can be free
a week from to-day if you choose."
On what a monstrous chance hung the destiny of my children! I knew that my master's offer was a snare, and that if I entered it escape would be impossible. As for his promise, I knew
him so well that I was sure if he gave me free papers, they would
be so managed as to have no legal value. The alternative was inevitable. I resolved to go to the plantation. But then I thought
how completely I should be in his power, and the prospect was

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

appalling. Even if I should kneel before him, and implore him to
spare me, for the sake of my children, I knew he would spurn me
with his foot, and my weakness would be his triumph.
Before the week expired, I heard that young Mr. Flint was
about to be married to a lady! of his own stamp. I foresaw the
position I should occupy in his establishment. I had once been
sent to the plantation for punishment, and fear of the son had induced the father to recall me very soon. My mind was made up;
I was resolved that I would foil my master and save my children,
or I would perish in the attempt. I kept my plans to myself; I
knew that friends would try to dissuade me from them, and I
would not wound their feelings by rejecting their advice.
On the decisive day the doctor came, and said he hoped I had
made a wise choice.
"I am ready to go to the plantation, sir," I replied.
"Have you thought how important your decision is to your
children?" said he.
I told him I had.
"Very well. Go to the plantation, and my curse go with you,"
he replied. "Your boy shall be put to work, and he shall soon be
sold; and your girl shall be raised for the purpose of selling welJ.2
Go your own ways!" He left the room with curses, not to be repeated.
As I stood rooted to the spot, my grandmother came and said,
"Linda, child, what did you tell him?"
I answered that I was going to the plantation.
"Must you go?" said she. "Can't something be done to
stop it?"
I told her it was useless to try; but she begged me not to give
up. She said she would go to the doctor, and remind him how
long and how faithfully she had served in the family, and how
she had taken her own baby from her breast to nourish his wife.
She would tell him I had been out of the family so long they
would not miss me; that she would pay them for my time, and
the money would procure a woman who had more strength for
the situation than I had. I begged her not to go; but she persisted
in saying, "He will listen to me, Linda." She went, and was
treated as I expected. He coolly listened to what she said, but de-

CONTINUED PERSECUTIONS

95

nied her request. He told her that what he did was for my good,
that my feelings were entirely above my situation, and that on
the plantation I would receive treatment that was suitable to my
behavior.
My grandmother was much cast down. I had my secret hopes;
but I must fight my battle alone. I had a woman's pride, and a
mother's love for my children; and I resolved that out of the
darkness of this hour a brighter dawn should rise for them. My
master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will.
There is might in each.

XVI

Scenes at the Plantation

EARL Y THE NEXT MORNING I left my grandmother's with my
youngest child. My boy was ill, and I left him behind. I had
many sad thoughts as the old wagon jolted on. Hitherto, I had
suffered alone; now, my little one was to be treated as a slave. As
we drew near the great house, I thought of the time when I was
formerly sent there out of revenge. I wondered for what purpose
I was now sent. I could not tell. I resolved to obey orders so far
as duty required; but within myself, I determined to make my
stay as short as possible. Mr. Flint was waiting to receive us, and
told me to follow him up stairs to receive orders for the day. My
little Ellen was left below in the kitchen. It was a change for her,
who had always been so carefully tended. My young master said
she might amuse herself in the yard. This was kind of him, since
the child was hateful to his sight. My task was to fit up the house
for the reception of the bride. In the midst of sheets, tablecloths,
towels, drapery, and carpeting, my head was as busy planning, as
were my fingers with the needle. At noon I was allowed to go to
Ellen. She had sobbed herself to sleep. I heard Mr. Flint say to a
neighbor, "I've got her down here, and I'll soon take the town
notions out of her head. My father is partly to blame for her
nonsense. He ought to have broke her in long ago." The remark
was made within my hearing, and it would have been quite as
manly to have made it to my face. He had said things to my face
which might, or might not, have surprised his neigh bar if he had
known of them. He was "a chip of the old block."
I resolved to give him no cause to accuse me of being too
much of a lady, so far as work was concerned. I worked day and
night, with wretchedness before me. When I lay down beside my
child, I felt how much easier it would be to see her die than to see
her master beat her about, as I daily saw him beat other little
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97

ones. The spirit of the mothers was so crushed by the lash, that
they stood by, without courage to remonstrate. How much more
must I suffer, before I should be "broke in" to that degree?
I wished to appear as contented as possible. Sometimes I had
an opportunity to send a few lines home; and this brought up
recollections that made it difficult, for a time, to seem calm and
indifferent to my lot. Notwithstanding my efforts, I saw that Mr.
Flint regarded me with a suspicious eye. Ellen broke down under
the trials of her new life. Separated from me, with no one to look
after her, she wandered about, and in a few days cried herself
sick. One day, she sat under the window where I was at work,
crying that weary cry which makes a mother's heart bleed. I was
obliged to steel myself to bear it. After a while it ceased. I looked
out, and she was gone. As it was near noon, I ventured to go
down in search of her. The great house was raised two feet above
the ground. I looked under it, and saw her about midway, fast
asleep. I crept under and drew her out. As I held her in my arms,
I thought how well it would be for her if she never waked up;
and I uttered my thought aloud. I was startled to hear some one
say, "Did you speak to me?" I looked up, and saw Mr. Flint
standing beside me. He said nothing further, but turned, frowning, away. That night he sent Ellen a biscuit and a cup of
sweetened milk. This generosity surprised me. I learned afterwards, that in the afternoon he had killed a large snake, which
crept from under the house; and I supposed that incident had
prompted his unusual kindness.
The next morning the old cart was loaded with shingles for
town. I put Ellen into it, and sent her to her grandmother. Mr.
Flint said I ought to have asked his permission. I told him the
child was sick, and required attention which I had no time to
give. He let it pass; for he was aware that I had accomplished
much work in a little time.
I had been three weeks on the plantation, when I planned a
visit home. It must be at night, after every body was in bed. I was
six miles from town, and the road was very dreary. I was to go
with a young man, who, I knew, often stole to town to see his
mother. One night, when all was quiet, we started. Fear gave
speed to our steps, and we were not long in performing the jour-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

ney. I arrived at my grandmother's. Her bed room was on the
first floor, and the window was open, the weather being warm.
I spoke to her and she awoke. She let me in and closed the
window, lest some late passer-by should see me. A light was
brought, and the whole household gathered round me, some
smiling and some crying. I went to look at my children, and
thanked God for their happy sleep. The tears fell as I leaned over
them. As I moved to leave, Benny stirred. I turned back, and
whispered, "Mother is here." After digging at his eyes with his
little fist, they opened, and he sat up in bed, looking at me curiously. Having satisfied himself that it was I, he exclaimed, "0
mother! you airi't dead, are you? They didn't cut off your head
at the plantation, did they?"
My time was up too soon, and my guide was waiting for me. I
laid Benny back in his bed, and dried his tears by a promise to
come again soon. Rapidly we retraced our steps back to the plantation. About half way we were met by a company of four patrols. Luckily we heard their horse's hoofs before they came in
sight, and we had time to hide behind a large tree. They passed,
hallooing and shouting in a manner that indicated a recent
carousal. How thankful we were that they had not their dogs
with them! We hastened our footsteps, and when we arrived on
the plantation we heard the sound of the hand-mill. The slaves
were grinding their corn. We were safely in the house before the
horn summoned them to their labor. I divided my little parcel of
food with my guide, knowing that he had lost the chance of
grinding his corn, and must toil all day in the field.
Mr. Flint often took an inspection of the house, to see that no
one was idle. The entire management of the work was trusted to
me, because he knew nothing about it; and rather than hire a superintendent he contented himself with my arrangements. He
had often urged upon his father the necessity of having me at the
plantation to take charge of his affairs, and make clothes for the
slaves; but the old man knew him too well to consent to that
arrangement.
When I had been working a month at the plantation, the great
aunt of Mr. Flint came to make him a visit. This was the good old
lady who paid fifty dollars for my grandmother, for the purpose

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99

of making her free, when she stood on the auction block. My
grandmother loved this old lady, whom we all called Miss
Fanny. She often came to take tea with us. On such occasions the
table was spread with a snow-white cloth, and the china cups and
silver spoons were taken from the old-fashioned buffet. There
were hot muffins, tea rusks, and delicious sweetmeats. My
grandmother kept two cows, and the fresh cream was Miss
Fanny's delight. She invariably declared that it was the best in
town. The old ladies had cosey times together. They would work
and chat, and sometimes, while talking over old times, their spectacles would get dim with tears, and would have to be taken off
and wiped. When Miss Fanny bade us good bye, her bag was
filled with grandmother's best cakes, and she was urged to come
agam soon.
There had been a time when Dr. Flint's wife came to take tea
with us, and when her children were also sent to have a feast of
"Aunt Marthy's" nice cooking. But after I became an object of
her jealousy and spite, she was angry with grandmother for giving a shelter to me and my children. She would not even speak to
her in the street. This wounded my grandmother's feelings, for
she could not retain ill will against the woman whom she had
nourished with her milk when a babe. The doctor's wife would
gladly have prevented our intercourse with Miss Fanny if she
could have done it, but fortunately she was not dependent on the
bounty of the Flints. She had enough to be independent; and that
is more than can ever be gained from charity, however lavish it
may be.
Miss Fanny was endeared to me by many recollections, and I
was rejoiced to see her at the plantation. The warmth of her
large, loyal heart made the house seem pleasanter while she was
in it. She staid a week, and I had many talks with her. She said
her principal object in coming was to see how I was treated, and
whether any thing could be done for me. She inquired whether
she could help me in any way. I told her I believed not. She condoled with me in her own peculiar way; saying she wished that I
and all my grandmother's family were at rest in our graves, for
not until then should she feel any peace about us. The good old
soul did not dream that I was planning to bestow peace upon

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her, with regard to myself and my children; not by death, but by
securing our freedom.
Again and again I had traversed those dreary twelve miles, to
and from the town; and all the way, I was meditating upon some
means of escape for myself and my children. My friends had
made every effort that ingenuity could devise to effect our purchase, but all their plans had proved abortive. Dr. Flint was suspicious, and determined not to loosen his grasp upon us. I could
have made my escape alone; but it was more for my helpless children than for myself that I longed for freedom. Though the boon
would have been precious to me, above all price, I would not
have taken it at the expense of leaving them in slavery. Every trial
I endured, every sacrifice I made for their sakes, drew them
closer to my heart, and gave me fresh courage to beat back the
dark waves that rolled and rolled over me in a seemingly endless
night of storms.
The six weeks were nearly completed, when Mr. Flint's bride
was expected to take possession of her new home. The arrangements were all completed, and Mr. Flint said I had done well. He
expected to leave home on Saturday, and return with his bride
the following Wednesday. After receiving various orders from
him, I ventured to ask permission to spend Sunday in town. It
was granted; for which favor I was thankful. It was the first I had
ever asked of him, and I intended it should be the last. It needed
more than one night to accomplish the project I had in view; but
the whole of Sunday would give me an opportunity. I spent the
Sabbath with my grandmother. A calmer, more beautiful day
never came down out of heaven. To me it was a day of conflicting emotions. Perhaps it was the last day I should ever spend under that dear, old sheltering roof! Perhaps these were the last
talks I should over have with the faithful old friend of my whole
life! Perhaps it was the last time I and my children should be together! Well, better so, I thought, than that they should be
slaves. I knew the doom that awaited my fair baby in slavery,
and I determined to save her from it, or perish in the attempt. I
went to make this vow at the graves of my poor parents, in the
burying-ground of the slaves. "There the wicked cease from
troubling, and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest

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101

together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor; the servant is
free from his master." I knelt by the graves of my parents, and
thanked God, as I had often done before, that they had not lived
to witness my trials, or to mourn over my sins. I had received my
mother's blessing when she died; and in many an hour of tribulation I had seemed to hear her voice, sometimes chiding me,
sometimes whispering loving words into my wounded heart. I
have shed many and bitter tears, to think that when I am gone
from my children they cannot remember me with such entire
satisfaction as I remembered my mother.
The graveyard was in the woods, and twilight was coming on.
Nothing broke the death-like stillness except the occasional twitter of a bird. My spirit was overawed by the solemnity of the
scene. For more than ten years I had frequented this spot, but
never had it seemed to me so sacred as now. A black stump, at
the head of my mother's grave, was all that remained of a tree my
father had planted. His grave was marked by a small wooden
board, bearing his name, the letters of which were nearly obliterated. I knelt down and kissed them, and poured forth a prayer to
God for guidance and support in the perilous step I was about to
take. As I passed the wreck of the old meeting house, where, before Nat Turner's time, the slaves had been allowed to meet for
worship, I seemed to hear my father's voice come from it, bidding me not to tarry till I reached freedom or the grave. I rushed
on with renovated hopes. My trust in God had been strengthened by that prayer among the graves.
My plan was to conceal myself at the house of a friend, and
remain there a few weeks till the search was over. My hope was
that the doctor would get discouraged, and, for fear of losing my
value, and also of subsequently finding my children among the
missing, he would consent to sell us; and I knew somebody
would buy us. I had done all in my power to make my children
comfortable during the time I expected to be separated from
them. I was packing my things, when grandmother came into the
room, and asked what I was doing. "I am putting my things in
order," I replied. I tried to look and speak cheerfully; but her
watchful eye detected something beneath the surface. She drew
me towards her, and asked me to sit down. She looked earnestly

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at me, and said, "Linda, do you want to kill your old grandmother? Do you mean to leave your little, helpless children?
I am old now, and cannot do for your babies as I once did
for you."
I replied, that if I went away, perhaps their father would be
able to secure their freedom.
"Ah, my child," said she, "don't trust too much to him. Stand
by your own children, and suffer with them till death. Nobody
respects a mother who forsakes her children; and if you leave
them, you will never have a happy moment. If you go, you will
make me miserable the short time I have to live. You would be
taken and brought back, and your sufferings would be dreadful.
Remember poor Benjamin. Do give it up, Linda. Try to bear a
little longer. Things may turn out better than we expect."
My courage failed me, in view of the sorrow I should bring on
that faithful, loving old heart. I promised that I would try longer,
and that I would take nothing out of her house without her
knowledge.
Whenever the children climbed on my knee, or laid their
heads on my lap, she would say, "Poor little souls! what would
you do without a mother? She don't love you as I do." And she
would hug them to her own bosom, as if to reproach me for my
want of affection; but she knew all the while that I loved them
better than my life. I slept with her that night, and it was the last
time. The memory of it haunted me for many a year.
On Monday I returned to the plantation, and busied myself
with preparations for the important day. Wednesday came. It
was a beautiful day, and the faces of the slaves were as bright as
the sunshine. The poor creatures were merry. They were expecting little presents from the bride, and hoping for better times under her administration. I had no such hopes for them. I knew
that the young wives of slaveholders often thought their authority and importance would be best established and maintained by
cruelty; and what I had heard of young Mrs. Flint gave me no
reason to expect that her rule over them would be less severe
than that of the master and overseer. Truly, the colored race are
the most cheerful and forgiving people on the face of the earth.
That their masters sleep in safety is owing to their superabun-

SCENES AT THE PLANTA nON

103

dance of heart; and yet they look upon their sufferings with less
pity than they would bestow on those of a horse or a dog.
I stood at the door with others to receive the bridegroom and
bride. She was a handsome, delicate-looking girl, and her face
flushed with emotion at sight of her new home. I thought it
likely that visions of a happy future were rising before her. It
made me sad; for I knew how soon clouds would come over her
sunshine. She examined every part of the house, and told me she
was delighted with the arrangements I had made. I was afraid old
Mrs. Flint had tried to prejudice her against me, and I did my
best to please her.
All passed off smoothly for me until dinner time arrived. I did
not mind the embarrassment of waiting on a dinner party, for the
first time in my life, half so much as I did the meeting with Dr.
Flint and his wife, who would be among the guests. It was a
mystery to me why Mrs. Flint had not made her appearance at
the plantation during all the time I was putting the house in order. I had not met her, face to face, for five years, and I had no
wish to see her now. She was a praying woman, and, doubtless,
considered my present position a special answer to hcr prayers.
Nothing could please her better than to see me humbled and
trampled upon. I was just where she would have me-in the
power of a hard, unprincipled master. She did not speak to me
when she took her seat at table; but her satisfied, triumphant
smile, when I handed her plate, was more eloquent than words.
The old doctor was not so quiet in his demonstrations. He ordered me here and there, and spoke with peculiar emphasis when
he said "your mistress." I was drilled like a disgraced soldier.
When all was over, and the last key turned, I sought my pillow,
thankful that God had appointed a season of rest for the weary.
The next day my new mistress began her housekeeping. I was
not exactly appointed maid of all work; but I was to do whatever
I was told. Monday evening came. It was always a busy time. On
that night the slaves received their weekly allowance of food.
Three pounds of meat, a peck of corn, and perhaps a dozen herring were allowed to each man. Women received a pound and a
half of meat, a peck of corn, and the same number of herring.
Children over twelve years old had half the allowance of the

104

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

women. The meat was cut and weighed by the foreman of the
field hands,' and piled on planks before the meat house. Then
the second foreman went behind the building, and when the first
foreman called out, "Who takes this piece of meat?" he answered
by calling somebody's name. This method was resorted to as a
means of preventing partiality in distributing the meat. The
young mistress came out to see how things were done on her
plantation, and she soon gave a specimen of her character.
Among those in waiting for their allowance was a very old slave,
who had faithfully served the Flint family through three generations. When he hobbled up to get his bit of meat, the mistress
said he was too old to have any allowance; that when niggers
were too old to work, they ought to be fed on grass. Poor old
man! He suffered much before he found rest in the grave.
My mistress and I got along very well together. At the end of
a week, old Mrs. Flint made us another visit, and was closeted a
long time with her daughter-in-law. I had my suspicions what
was the subject of the conference. The old doctor's wife had been
informed that I could leave the plantation on one condition, and
she was very desirous to keep me there. If she had trusted me, as
I deserved to be trusted by her, she would have had no fears of
my accepting that condition. When she entered her carriage to
return home, she said to young Mrs. Flint, "Don't neglect to
send for them as quick as possible." My heart was on the watch
all the time, and I at once concluded that she spoke of my children. The doctor came the next day, and as I entered the room to
spread the tea table, I heard him say, "Don't wait any longer.
Send for them to-morrow." I saw through the plan. They
thought my children's being there would fetter me to the spot,
and that it was a good place to break us all in to abject submission to our lot as slaves. After the doctor left, a gentleman called,
who had always manifested friendly feelings towards my grandmother and her family. Mr. Flint carried him over the plantation
to show him the results of labor performed by men and women
who were unpaid, miserably clothed, and half famished. The cotton crop was all they thought of. It was duly admired, and the
gentleman returned with specimens to show his friends. I was
ordered to carry water to wash his hands. As I did so, he said,

SCENES AT THE PLANTATION

105

"Linda, how do you like your new home?" I told him I liked it
as well as I expected. He replied, "They don't think you are contented, and to-morrow they are going to bring your children to
be with you. I am sorry for you, Linda. I hope they will treat
you kindly." I hurried from the room, unable to thank him. My
suspicions were correct. My children were to be brought to the
plantation to be "broke in."
To this day I feel grateful to the gentleman who gave me this
timely information. It nerved me to immediate action.

XVII

The Flight

MR. FLINT WAS HARD pushed for

house servants, and rather
than lose me he had restrained his malice. I did my work faithfully, though not, of course, with a willing mind. They were evidently afraid I should leave them. Mr. Flint wished that I should
sleep in the great house instead of the servants' quarters. His wife
agreed to the proposition, but said I mustri't bring my bed into
the house, because it would scatter feathers on her carpet. I knew
when I went there that they would never think of such a thing as
furnishing a bed of any kind for me and my little one. I therefore
carried my own bed, and now I was forbidden to use it. I did as
I was ordered. But now that I was certain my children were to be
put in their power, in order to give them a stronger hold on me,
I resolved to leave them that night. I remembered the grief this
step would bring upon my dear old grandmother; and nothing
less than the freedom of my children would have induced me to
disregard her advice. I went about my evening work with trembling steps. Mr. Flint twice called from his chamber door to inquire why the house was not locked up. I replied that I had not
done my work. "You have had time enough to do it," said he.
"Take care how you answer me!"
I shut all the windows, locked all the doors, and went up to
the third story, to wait till midnight. How long those hours
seemed, and how fervently I prayed that God would not forsake
me in this hour of utmost need! I was about to risk every thing
on the throw of a die; and if I failed, 0 what would become of
me and my poor children? They would be made to suffer for my
fault.
At half past twelve I stole softly down stairs. I stopped on the
second floor, thinking I heard a noise. I felt my way down into
the parlor, and looked out of the window. The night was so in106

THE FLIGHT

107

tensely dark that I could see nothing. I raised the window very
softly and jumped out. Large drops of rain were falling, and the
darkness bewildered me. I dropped on my knees, and breathed a
short prayer to God for guidance and protection. I groped my
way to the road, and rushed towards the town with almost lightning speed. I arrived at my grandmother's house, but dared not
see her. She would say, "Linda, you are killing me;" and I knew
that would unnerve me. I tapped softly at the window of a room,
occupied by a woman, who had lived in the house several years.
I knew she was a faithful friend, and could be trusted with my
secret. I tapped several times before she heard me. At last she
raised the window, and I whispered, "Sally, I have run away. Let
me in, quick." She opened the door softly, and said in low tones,
"For God's sake, don't. Your grandmother is trying to buy you
and de chillern. Mr. Sands was here last week. He to le her he was
going away on business, but he wanted her to go ahead about
buying you and de chillern, and he would help her all he could.
Don't run away, Linda. Your grandmother is all bowed down
wid trouble now."
I replied, "Sally, they arc going to carry my children to the
plantation to-morrow; and they will never sell them to any body
so long as they have me in their power. Now, would you advise
me to go back?"
"No, chile, no," answered she. "When dey finds you is gone,
dey won't want de plague ob de chillern; but where is you going
to hide? Dey knows ebery inch ob dis house."
I told her I had a hiding-place, and that was all it was best for
her to know. I asked her to go into my room as soon as it was
light, and take all my clothes out of my trunk, and pack them in
hers; for I knew Mr. Flint and the constable would be there early
to search my room. I feared the sight of my children would be
too much for my full heart; but I could not go out into the uncertain future without one last look. I bent over the bed where
lay my little Benny and baby Ellen. Poor little ones! fatherless
and motherless! Memories of their father came over me. He
wanted to be kind to them; but they were not all to him, as they
were to my womanly heart. I knelt and prayed for the innocent
little sleepers. I kissed them lightly, and turned away.

108

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

As I was about to open the street door, Sally laid her hand on
my shoulder, and said, "Linda, is you gwine all alone? Let me
call your uncle."
"No, Sally," I replied, "I want no one to be brought into trouble on my account."
I went forth into the darkness and rain. I ran on till I came to
the house of the friend who was to conceal me.
Early the next morning Mr. Flint was at my grandmother's inquiring for me. She told him she had not seen me, and supposed
I was at the plantation. He watched her face narrowly, and said,
"Don't you know anything about her running off?" She assured
him that she did not. He went on to say, "Last night she ran off
without the least provocation. We had treated her very kindly.
My wife liked her. She will soon be found and brought back. Are
her children with you?" When told that they were, he said, "I am
very glad to hear that. If they are here, she cannot be far off. If I
find out that any of my niggers have had any thing to do with
this damned business, I'll give 'em five hundred lashes." As he
started to go to his father's, he turned round and added, persuasively, "Let her be brought back, and she shall have her children
to live with her."
The tidings made the old doctor rave and storm at a furious
rate. It was a busy day for them. My grandmother's house was
searched from top to bottom. As my trunk was empty, they concluded I had taken my clothes with me. Before ten o'clock every
vessel northward bound was thoroughly examined, and the law
against harboring fugitives was read to all on board. At night a
watch was set over the town. Knowing how distressed my
grandmother would be, I wanted to send her a message; but it
could not be done. Everyone who went in or out of her house
was closely watched. The doctor said he would take my children,
unless she became responsible for them; which of course she
willingly did. The next day was spent in searching. Before night,
the following advertisement was posted at every corner, and in
every public place for miles round:"$300 REWARD! Ran away from the subscriber, an intelligent,
bright, mulatto girl, named Linda, 21 years of age. Five feet four

THE FLIGHT

109

inches high. Dark eyes, and black hair inclined to curl; but it can
be made straight. Has a decayed spot on a front tooth. She can
read and write, and in all probability will try to get to the Free
States. All persons are forbidden, under penalty of the law, to
harbor or employ said slave. $150 will be given to whoever takes
her in the state, and $300 if taken out of the state and delivered to
me, or lodged in jail.
DR. FLINT."

XVIII

Months of Peril

THE SEARCH FOR ME was kept up with more perseverence than
I had anticipated. I began to think that escape was impossible.
I was in great anxiety lest I should implicate the friend who
harbored me. I knew the consequences would be frightful; and
much as I dreaded being caught, even that seemed better than
causing an innocent person to suffer for kindness to me. A week
had passed in terrible suspense, when my pursuers came into such
close vicinity that I concluded they had tracked me to my hidingplace. I flew out of the house, and concealed myself in a thicket of
bushes. There I remained in an agony of fear for two hours. Suddenly, a reptile of some kind seized my leg. In my fright, I struck
a blow which loosened its hold, but I could not tell whether I had
killed it; it was so dark, I could not see what it was; I only knew it
was something cold and slimy. The pain I felt soon indicated that
the bite was poisonous. I was compelled to leave my place of concealment, and I groped my way back into the house. The pain had
become intense, and my friend was startled by my look of anguish. I asked her to prepare a poultice of warm ashes and vinegar, and I applied it to my leg, which was already much swollen.
The application gave me some relief, but the swelling did not
abate. The dread of being disabled was greater than the physical
pain I endured. My friend asked an old woman, who doctored
among the slaves, what was good for the bite of a snake or a
lizard. She told her to steep a dozen coppers in vinegar, over
night, and apply the cankered vinegar to the inflamed part.':'
"The poison of a snake is a powerful acid, and is counteracted by powerful alkalies, such as potash, ammonia, &c. The Indians are accustomed to apply wet
ashes, or plunge the limb into strong lie. White men, employed to layout railroads in snaky places, often carry ammonia with them as an antidoce.c-Enrrox.
110

MONTHS OF PERIL

111

I had succeeded in cautiously conveying some messages to my
relatives. They were harshly threatened, and despairing of my
having a chance to escape, they advised me to return to my master, ask his forgiveness, and let him make an example of me. But
such counsel had no influence with me. When I started upon this
hazardous undertaking, I had resolved that, come what would,
there should be no turning back. "Give me liberty, or give me
death," was my motto. When my friend contrived to make
known to my relatives the painful situation I had been in for
twenty-four hours, they said no more about my going back to
my master. Something must be done, and that speedily; but
where to turn for help, they knew not. God in his mercy raised
up "a friend in need."
Among the ladies who were acquainted with my grandmother, was one who had known her from childhood, and always been very friendly to her.' She had also known my mother
and her children, and felt interested for them. At this crisis of affairs she called to see my grandmother, as she not unfrequently
did. She observed the sad and troubled expression of her face,
and asked if she knew where Linda was, and whether she was
safe. My grandmother shook her head, without answering.
"Come, Aunt Martha," said the kind lady, "tell me all about it.
Perhaps I can do something to help you." The husband of this
lady held many slaves, and bought and sold slaves. She also held
a number in her own name; but she treated them kindly, and
would never allow any of them to be sold. She was unlike the
majority of slaveholders' wives. My grandmother looked
earnestly at her. Something in the expression of her face said
"Trust me!" and she did trust her. She listened attentively to the
details of my story, and sat thinking for a while. At last she said,
"Aunt Martha, I pity you both. If you think there is any chance
of Linda's getting to the Free States, I will conceal her for a time.
But first you must solemnly promise that my name shall never
be mentioned. If such a thing should become known, it would
ruin me and my family. No one in my house must know of it,
except the cook. She is so faithful that I would trust my own life
with her; and I know she likes Linda. It is a great risk; bur I trust
no harm will come of it. Get word to Linda to be ready as soon

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

as it is dark, before the patrols are out. 1 will send the housemaids on errands, and Betty shall go to meet Linda." The place
where we were to meet was designated and agreed upon. My
grandmother was unable to thank the lady for this noble deed;
overcome by her emotions, she sank on her knees and sobbed
like a child.
1 received a message to leave my friend's house at such an
hour, and go to a certain place where a friend would be waiting
for me. As a matter of prudence no names were mentioned. 1 had
no means of conjecturing who 1 was to meet, or where 1 was going. 1 did not like to move thus blindfolded, but 1 had no choice.
It would not do for me to remain where 1 was. 1 disguised myself, summoned up courage to meet the worst, and went to the
appointed place. My friend Betty was there; she was the last person 1 expected to see. We hurried along in silence. The pain in
my leg was so intense that it seemed as if 1 should drop; but fear
gave me strength. We reached the house and entered unobserved.
Her first words were: "Honey, now you is safe. Dem devils ain't
coming to search dis house. When 1 get you into missis' safe
place, 1 will bring some nice hot supper. 1 specs you need it after
all dis skeering." Berry's vocation led her to think eating the
most important thing in life. She did not realize that my heart
was too full for me to care much about supper.
The mistress came to meet us, and led me up stairs to a small
room over her own sleeping apartment. "You will be safe here,
Linda," said she; "1 keep this room to store away things that are
out of use. The girls are not accustomed to be sent to it, and they
will not suspect any thing unless they hear some noise. 1 always
keep it locked, and Betty shall take care of the key. But you must
be very careful, for my sake as well as your own; and you must
never tell my secret; for it would ruin me and my family. 1 will
keep the girls busy in the morning, that Betty may have a chance
to bring your breakfast; but it will not do for her to come to you
again till night. 1 will come to see you sometimes. Keep up your
courage. 1 hope this state of things will not last long." Betty came
with the "nice hot supper," and the mistress hastened down
stairs to keep things straight till she returned. How my heart
overflowed with gratitude! Words choked in my throat; but 1

MONTHS OF PERIL

113

could have kissed the feet of my benefactress. For that deed of
Christian womanhood, may God forever bless her!
I went to sleep that night with the feeling that I was for the
present the most fortunate slave in town. Morning came and
filled my little cell with light. I thanked the heavenly Father for
this safe retreat. Opposite my window was a pile of feather beds.
On the top of these I could lie perfectly concealed, and command a view of the street through which Dr. Flint passed to his
office. Anxious as I was, I felt a gleam of satisfaction when I saw
him. Thus far I had outwitted him, and I triumphed over it. Who
can blame slaves for being cunning? They are constantly compelled to resort to it. It is the only weapon of the weak and
oppressed against the strength of their tyrants.
I was daily hoping to hear that my master had sold my children; for I knew who was on the watch to buy them. But Dr.
Flint cared even more for revenge than he did for money. My
brother William, and the good aunt who had served in his family
twenty years, and my little Benny, and Ellen, who was a little
over two years old, were thrust into jail, as a means of compelling my relatives to give some information about me. He
swore my grandmother should never see one of them again till I
was brought back. They kept these facts from me for several
days. When I heard that my little ones were in a loathsome jail,
my first impulse was to go to them. I was encountering dangers
for the sake of freeing them, and must I be the cause of their
death? The thought was agonizing. My benefactress tried to
soothe me by telling me that my aunt would take good care of
the children while they remained in jail. But it added to my pain
to think that the good old aunt, who had always been so kind to
her sister's orphan children, should be shut up in prison for no
other crime than loving them. I suppose my friends feared a
reckless movement on my part, knowing, as they did, that my
life was bound up in my children. I received a note from my
brother William. It was scarcely legible, and ran thus: "Wherever
you are, dear sister, I beg of you not to come here. We are all
much better off than you are. If you come, you will ruin us all.
They would force you to tell where you had been, or they would
kill you. Take the advice of your friends; if not for the sake of me

114

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

and your children, at least for the sake of those you would ruin."
Poor William! He also must suffer for being my brother. I
took his advice and kept quiet. My aunt was taken out of jail at
the end of a month because Mrs. Flint could not spare her any
longer. She was tired of being her own housekeeper. It was quite
too fatiguing to order her dinner and eat it too. My children remained in jail, where brother William did all he could for their
comfort. Betty went to see them sometimes, and brought me tidings. She was not permitted to enter the jail; but William would
hold them up to the grated window while she chatted with them.
When she repeated their prattle, and told me how they wanted to
see their ma, my tears would flow. Old Betty would exclaim,
"Lors, chile! what's you crying 'bout? Dem young uns viI kill
you dead. Don't be so chick'n hearted! If you does, you vil nebber git thro' dis world."
Good old soul! She had gone through the world childless.i
She had never had little ones to clasp their arms round her neck;
she had never seen their soft eyes looking into hers; no sweet little voices had called her mother; she had never pressed her own
infants to her heart, with the feeling that even in fetters there was
something to live for. How could she realize my feelings? Berry's
husband loved children dearly, and wondered why God had denied them to him. He expressed great sorrow when he came to
Betty with the tidings that Ellen had been taken out of jail and
carried to Dr. Flint's. She had the measles a short time before
they carried her to jail, and the disease had left her eyes affected.
The doctor had taken her home to attend to them. My children
had always been afraid of the doctor and his wife. They had
never been inside of their house. Poor little Ellen cried all day to
be carried back to prison. The instincts of childhood are true.
She knew she was loved in the jail. Her screams and sobs annoyed Mrs. Flint. Before night she called one of the slaves, and
said, "Here, Bill, carry this brat back to the jail. I can't stand her
noise. If she would be quiet I should like to keep the little minx.
She would make a handy waiting-maid for my daughter by and
by. But if she staid here, with her white face, I suppose I should
either kill her or spoil her. I hope the doctor will sell them as far

MONTHS OF PERIL

115

as wind and water can carry them. As for their mother, her ladyship will find out yet what she gets by running away. She hasn't
so much feeling for her children as a cow has for its calf. If she
had, she would have come back long ago, to get them out of jail,
and save all this expense and trouble. The good-for-nothing
hussy! When she is caught, she shall stay in jail, in irons, for one
six months, and then be sold to a sugar plantation. I shall see her
broke in yet. What do you stand there for, Bill? Why don't you
go off with the brat? Mind, now, that you don't let any of the
niggers speak to her in the street!"
When these remarks were reported to me, I smiled at Mrs.
Flint's saying that she should either kill my child or spoil her. I
thought to myself there was very little danger of the latter. I have
always considered it as one of God's special providences that
Ellen screamed till she was carried back to jail.
That same night Dr. Flint was called to a patient, and did not
return till near morning. Passing my grandmother's, he saw a
light in the house, and thought to himself, "Perhaps this has
something to do with Linda." He knocked, and the door was
opened. "What calls you up so early?" said he. "I saw your light,
and I thought I would just stop and tell you that I have found
out where Linda is. I know where to put my hands on her, and I
shall have her before twelve o'clock." When he had turned away,
my grandmother and my uncle looked anxiously at each other.
They did not know whether or not it was merely one of the doctor's tricks to frighten them. In their uncertainty, they thought it
was best to have a message conveyed to my friend Betty. Unwilling to alarm her mistress, Betty resolved to dispose of me herself.
She came to me, and told me to rise and dress quickly. We hurried down stairs, and across the yard, into the kitchen. She
locked the door, and lifted up a plank in the floor. A buffalo skin
and a bit of carpet were spread for me to lie on, and a quilt
thrown over me. "Stay dar," said she, "till I sees if dey know
'bout you. Dey say dey vil put thar hans on you afore twelve
o'clock. If dey did know whar you are, dey won't know now.
Dey'll be disapinted dis time. Dat's all I got to say. If dey comes
rummagin 'mong my tings, dey'll get one bressed sarssin from

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

dis 'ere nigger." In my shallow bed I had but just room enough
to bring my hands to my face to keep the dust out of my eyes;
for Betty walked over me twenty times in an hour, passing from
the dresser to the fireplace. When she was alone, I could hear her
pronouncing anathemas over Dr. Flint and all his tribe, every
now and then saying, with a chuckling laugh, "Dis nigger's too
cute for 'em dis time." When the housemaids were about, she
had sly ways of drawing them out, that I might hear what they
would say. She would repeat stories she had heard about my being in this, or that, or the other place. To which they would answer, that I was not fool enough to be staying round there; that I
was in Philadelphia or N ew York before this time. When all
were abed and asleep, Betty raised the plank, and said, "Come
out, chile; come out. Dey don't know nottin 'bout you. 'Twas
only white folks' lies, to skeer de niggers."
Some days after this adventure I had a much worse fright. As
I sat very still in my retreat above stairs, cheerful visions floated
through my mind. I thought Dr. Flint would soon get discouraged, and would be willing to sell my children, when he lost all
hopes of making them the means of my discovery. I knew who
was ready to buy them. Suddenly I heard a voice that chilled my
blood. The sound was too familiar to me, it had been too dreadful, for me not to recognize at once my old master. He was in the
house, and I at once concluded he had come to seize me. I looked
round in terror. There was no way of escape. The voice receded.
I supposed the constable was with him, and they were searching
the house. In my alarm I did not forget the trouble I was bringing on my generous benefactress. It seemed as if I were born to
bring sorrow on all who befriended me, and that was the bitterest drop in the bitter cup of my life. After a while I heard approaching footsteps; the key was turned in my door. I braced
myself against the wall to keep from falling. I ventured to look
up, and there stood my kind benefactress alone. I was too much
overcome to speak, and sunk down upon the floor.
"I thought you would hear your master's voice," she said;
"and knowing you would be terrified, I came to tell you there is
nothing to fear. You may even indulge in a laugh at the old gentleman's expense. He is so sure you are in New York, that he

MONTHS OF PERIL

117

came to borrow five hundred dollars to go in pursuit of you. My
sister had some money to loan on interest. He has obtained it,
and proposes to start for New York to-night. So, for the present,
you see you are safe. The doctor will merely lighten his pocket
hunting after the bird he has left behind."

XIX

The Children Sold

THE DOCTOR CAME BACK from New York, of course without
accomplishing his purpose. He had expended considerable
money, and was rather disheartened. My brother and the children had now been in jail two months, and that also was some
expense. My friends thought it was a favorable time to work on
his discouraged feelings. Mr. Sands sent a speculator to offer him
nine hundred dollars for my brother William, and eight hundred
for the two children. These were high prices, as slaves were then
selling; but the offer was rejected. If it had been merely a question of money, the doctor would have sold any boy of Benny's
age for two hundred dollars; but he could not bear to give up the
power of revenge. But he was hard pressed for money, and he revolved the matter in his mind. He knew that if he could keep
Ellen till she was fifteen, he could sell her for a high price; but I
presume he reflected that she might die, or might be stolen away.
At all events, he came to the conclusion that he had better accept
the slave-trader's offer. Meeting him in the street, he inquired
when he would leave town. "To-day, at ten o'clock," he replied.
"Ah, do you go so soon?" said the doctor; "I have been reflecting upon your proposition, and I have concluded to let you have
the three negroes if you will say nineteen hundred dollars." After
some parley, the trader agreed to his terms. He wanted the bill of
sale drawn up and signed immediately, as he had a great deal to
attend to during the short time he remained in town. The doctor
went to the jail and told William he would take him back into his
service if he would promise to behave himself; but he replied that
he would rather be sold. "And you shall be sold, you ungrateful
rascal!" exclaimed the doctor. In less than an hour the money
was paid, the papers were signed, sealed, and delivered, and my
brother and children were in the hands of the trader.
118

THE CHILDREN SOLD

119

It was a hurried transaction; and after it was over, the doctor's
characteristic caution returned. He went back to the speculator,
and said, "Sir, I have come to lay you under obligations of a
thousand dollars not to sell any of those negroes in this state."
"You come too late," replied the trader; "our bargain is closed."
He had, in fact, already sold them to Mr. Sands, but he did not
mention it. The doctor required him to put irons on "that rascal,
Bill," and to pass through the back streets when he took his gang
out of town. The trader was privately instructed to concede to
his wishes. My good old aunt went to the jail to bid the children
good bye, supposing them to be the speculator's property, and
that she should never see them again. As she held Benny in her
lap, he said, "Aunt Nancy, I want to show you something." He
led her to the door and showed her a long row of marks, saying,
"Uncle Will taught me to count. I have made a mark for every
day I have been here, and it is sixty days. It is a long time; and
the speculator is going to take me and Ellen away. He's a bad
man. It's wrong for him to take grandmother's children. I want
to go to my mother."
My grandmother was told that the children would be restored
to her, but she was requested to act as if they were really to be
sent away. Accordingly, she made up a bundle of clothes and
went to the jail. When she arrived, she found William handcuffed
among the gang, and the children in the trader's cart. The scene
seemed too much like reality. She was afraid there might have
been some deception or mistake. She fainted, and was carried
home.
When the wagon stopped at the hotel, several gentlemen came
out and proposed to purchase William, but the trader refused
their offers, without stating that he was already sold. And now
came the trying hour for that drove of human beings, driven
away like cattle, to be sold they knew not where. Husbands were
torn from wives, parents from children, never to look upon each
other again this side of the grave. There was wringing of hands
and cries of despair.
Dr. Flint had the supreme satisfaction of seeing the wagon
leave town, and Mrs. Flint had the gratification of supposing that
my children were going "as far as wind and water would carry

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

them." According to agreement, my uncle followed the wagon
some miles, until they came to an old farm house. There the
trader took the irons from William, and as he did so, he said,
"You are a damned clever fellow. I should like to own you myself. Them gentlemen that wanted to buy you said you was a
bright, honest chap, and I must git you a good home. I guess
your old master will swear to-morrow, and call himself an old
fool for selling the children. I reckon he'll never git their mammy
back agin. I expect she's made tracks for the north. Good bye,
old boy. Remember, I have done you a good turn. You must
thank me by coaxing all the pretty gals to go with me next fall.
That's going to be my last trip. This trading in niggers is a bad
business for a fellow that's got any heart. Move on, you fellows!" And the gang went on, God alone knows where.
Much as I despise and detest the class of slave-traders, whom
I regard as the vilest wretches on earth, I must do this man the
justice to say that he seemed to have some feeling. He took a
fancy to William in the jail, and wanted to buy him. When he
heard the story of my children, he was willing to aid them in
getting out of Dr. Flint's power, even without charging the customary fee.
My uncle procured a wagon and carried William and the children back to town. Great was the joy in my grandmother's
house! The curtains were closed, and the candles lighted. The
happy grandmother cuddled the little ones to her bosom. They
hugged her, and kissed her, and clapped their hands, and
shouted. She knelt down and poured forth one of her heartfelt
prayers of thanksgiving to God. The father was present for a
while; and though such a "parental relation" as existed between
him and my children takes slight hold of the hearts or consciences of slaveholders, it must be that he experienced some moments of pure joy in witnessing the happiness he had imparted.
I had no share in the rejoicings of that evening. The events of
the day had not come to my knowledge. And now I will tell you
something that happened to me; though you will, perhaps, think
it illustrates the superstition of slaves. I sat in my usual place on
the floor near the window, where I could hear much that was
said in the street without being seen. The family had retired for

THE CHILDREN SOLD

121

the night, and all was still. I sat there thinking of my children,
when I heard a low strain of music. A band of serenaders were
under the window, playing "Home, sweet home." I listened till
the sounds did not seem like music, but like the moaning of children. It seemed as if my heart would burst. I rose from my sitting posture, and knelt. A streak of moonlight was on the floor
before me, and in the midst of it appeared the forms of my two
children. They vanished; but I had seen them distinctly. Some
will call it a dream, others a vision. I know not how to account
for it, but it made a strong impression on my mind, and I felt certain something had happened to my little ones.
I had not seen Betty since morning. Now I heard her softly
turning the key. As soon as she entered, I clung to her, and
begged her to let me know whether my children were dead, or
whether they were sold; for I had seen their spirits in my room,
and I was sure something had happened to them. "Lor, chile,"
said she, putting her arms round me, "you's got de highsterics.
I'll sleep wid you to-night, 'cause you'll make a noise, and ruin
missis. Something has stirred you up mightily. When you is done
cryin, I'll talk wid you. De chillern is well, and mighty happy. I
seed 'em myself. Does dat satisfy you? Dar, chile, be still! Somebody viII hear you." I tried to obey her. She lay down, and was
soon sound asleep; but no sleep would come to my eyelids.
At dawn, Betty was up and off to the kitchen. The hours
passed on, and the vision of the night kept constantly recurring
to my thoughts. After a while I heard the voices of two women
in the entry. In one of them I recognized the housemaid. The
other said to her, "Did you know Linda Brent's children was
sold to the speculator yesterday. They say ole massa Flint was
mighty glad to see'em drove out of town; but they say they've
come back agin. I 'spect it's all their daddy's doings. They say
he's bought WiIliam too. Lor! how it will take hold of ole massa
Flint! I'm going roun' to aunt Marthy's to see 'bout it."
I bit my lips till the blood came to keep from crying out. Were
my children with their grandmother, or had the speculator carried them off? The suspense was dreadful. Would Betty never
come, and tell me the truth about it? At last she came, and I eagerly repeated what I had overheard. Her face was one broad,

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

bright smile. "Lor, you foolish ting!" said she. "I'se gwine to tell
you all 'bout it. De gals is eating thar breakfast, and missus tole
me to let her tell you; but, poor creeter! r'aint right to keep you
waitin', and I'se gwine to tell you. Brudder, chillern, all is bought
by de daddy! I'se laugh more dan nuff, tinking 'bout ole massa
Flint. Lor, how he vill swar! He's got ketched dis time, any
how; but I must be getting out 0' dis, or dem gals vill come and
ketch me."
Betty went off laughing; and I said to myself, "Can it be true
that my children are free? I have not suffered for them in vain.
Thank God!"
Great surprise was expressed when it was known that my
children had returned to their grandmother's. The news spread
through the town, and many a kind word was bestowed on the
little ones.
Dr. Flint went to my grandmother's to ascertain who was the
owner of my children, and she informed him. "I expected as
much," said he. "1 am glad to hear it. 1 have had news from Linda
lately, and 1 shall soon have her. You need never expect to see
her free. She shall be my slave as long as 1 live, and when I am
dead she shall be the slave of my children. If 1 ever find out that
you or Phillip had any thing to do with her running off I'll kill
him. And if I meet William in the street, and he presumes to look
at me, I'll flog him within an inch of his life. Keep those brats out
of my sight!"
As he turned to leave, my grandmother said something to remind him of his own doings. He looked back upon her, as if he
would have been glad to strike her to the ground.
1 had my season of joy and thanksgiving. It was the first time
since my childhood that 1 had experienced any real happiness. 1
heard of the old doctor's threats, but they no longer had the
same power to trouble me. The darkest cloud that hung over my
life had rolled away. Whatever slavery might do to me, it could
not shackle my children. If I fell a sacrifice, my little ones were
saved. It was well for me that my simple heart believed all that
had been promised for their welfare. It is always better to trust
than to doubt.

xx
New Perils

THE DOCTOR, MORE EXASPERATED than ever, again tried to
revenge himself on my relatives. He arrested uncle Phillip on the
charge of having aided my flight. He was carried before a court,
and swore truly that he knew nothing of my intention to escape,
and that he had not seen me since I left my master's plantation.
The doctor then demanded that he should give bail for five hundred dollars that he would have nothing to do with me. Several
gentlemen offered to be security for him; but Mr. Sands told him
he had better go back to jail, and he would see that he came out
without giving bail.
The news of his arrest was carried to my grandmother, who
conveyed it to Betty. In the kindness of her heart, she again
stowed me away under the floor; and as she walked back and
forth, in the performance of her culinary duties, she talked apparently to herself, but with the intention that I should hear
what was going on. I hoped that my uncle's imprisonment
would last but few days; still I was anxious. I thought it likely
Dr. Flint would do his utmost to taunt and insult him, and I was
afraid my uncle might lose control of himself, and retort in some
way that would be construed into a punishable offence; and I
was well aware that in court his word would not be taken against
any white man's. The search for me was renewed. Something had
excited suspicions that I was in the vicinity. They searched the
house I was in. I heard their steps and their voices. At night,
when all were asleep, Betty came to release me from my place of
confinement. The fright I had undergone, the constrained posture, and the dampness of the ground, made me ill for several
days. My uncle was soon after taken out of prison; but the movements of all my relatives, and of all our friends, were very closely
watched.
123

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

We all saw that I could not remain where I was much longer.
I had already staid longer than was intended, and I knew my
presence must be a source of perpetual anxiety to my kind benefactress. During this time, my friends had laid many plans for my
escape, but the extreme vigilance of my persecutors made it impossible to carry them into effect.
One morning I was much startled by hearing somebody trying to get into my room. Several keys were tried, but none fitted.
I instantly conjectured it was one of the housemaids; and I concluded she must either have heard some noise in the room, or
have noticed the entrance of Betty. When my friend came, at her
usual time, I told her what had happened. "I knows who it was,"
said she. " 'Pend upon it, 'twas dat Jenny. Dat nigger allers got
de debble in her." I suggested that she might have seen or heard
something that excited her curiosity.
"Tut! tut! chile!" exclaimed Betty, "she ain't seen notin', nor
hearn notin', She only 'spects someting. Dat's all. She wants to
fine out who hab cut and make my gownd. But she won't nebber
know. Dat's sartin. I'll git missis to fix her."
I reflected a moment, and said, "Berry, I must leave here tonight."
"Do as you tink best, poor chile," she replied. "I'se mighty
'fraid dat 'ere nigger vill pop on you some time."
She reported the incident to her mistress, and received orders
to keep Jenny busy in the kitchen till she could see my uncle
Phillip. He told her he would send a friend for me that very
evening. She told him she hoped I was going to the north, for it
was very dangerous for me to remain any where in the vicinity.
Alas, it was not an easy thing, for one in my situation, to go to
the north. In order to leave the coast quite clear for me, she went
into the country to spend the day with her brother, and took
Jenny with her. She was afraid to come and bid me good bye, but
she left a kind message with Betty. I heard her carriage roll from
the door, and I never again saw her who had so generously befriended the poor, trembling fugitive! Though she was a slaveholder, to this day my heart blesses her!
I had not the slightest idea where I was going. Betty brought
me a suit of sailor's clothes,-jacket, trowsers, and tarpaulin hat.

NEW PERILS

125

She gave me a small bundle, saying I might need it where I was
going. In cheery tones, she exclaimed, "I'se so glad you is gwine
to free parts! Don't forget ole Betty. P'raps I'll come 'long by
and by."
I tried to tell her how grateful I felt for all her kindness, but
she interrupted me. "I don't want no tanks, honey. I'se glad I
could help you, and I hope de good Lord vill open de path for
you. I'se gwine wid you to de lower gate. Put your hands in your
pockets, and walk ricketty, like de sailors."
I performed to her satisfaction. At the gate I found Peter, a
young colored man, waiting for me. I had known him for years.
He had been an apprentice to my father, and had always borne a
good character. I was not afraid to trust to him. Betty bade me a
hurried good bye, and we walked off. "Take courage, Linda,"
said my friend Peter. "I've got a dagger, and no man shall take
you from me, unless he passes over my dead body."
It was a long time since I had taken a walk out of doors, and
the fresh air revived me. It was also pleasant to hear a human
voice speaking to me above a whisper. I passed several people
whom I knew, but they did not recognize me in my disguise. I
prayed internally that, for Peter's sake, as well as my own, nothing might occur to bring out his dagger. We walked on till we
came to the wharf. My aunt Nancy's husband was a seafaring
man, and it had been deemed necessary to let him into our secret.
He took me into his boat, rowed out to a vessel not far distant,
and hoisted me on board. We three were the only occupants of
the vessel. I now ventured to ask what they proposed to do with
me. They said I was to remain on board till near dawn, and then
they would hide me in Snaky Swamp, 1 till my uncle Phillip had
prepared a place of concealment for me. If the vessel had been
bound north, it would have been of no avail to me, for it would
certainly have been searched. About four o'clock, we were again
seated in the boat, and rowed three miles to the swamp. My fear
of snakes had been increased by the venomous bite I had received, and I dreaded to enter this hiding-place. But I was in no
situation to choose, and I gratefully accepted the best that my
poor, persecuted friends could do for me.
Peter landed first, and with a large knife cut a path through

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

bamboos and briers of all descriptions. He came back, took me
in his arms, and carried me to a seat made among the bamboos.
Before we reached it, we were covered with hundreds of mosquitos. In an hour's time they had so poisoned my flesh that I was a
pitiful sight to behold. As the light increased, I saw snake after
snake crawling round us. I had been accustomed to the sight of
snakes all my life, but these were larger than any I had ever seen.
To this day I shudder when I remember that morning. As evening approached, the number of snakes increased so much that
we were continually obliged to thrash them with sticks to keep
them from crawling over us. The bamboos were so high and so
thick that it was impossible to sec beyond a very short distance.
Just before it became dark we procured a seat nearer to the entrance of the swamp, being fearful of losing our way back to the
boat. It was not long before we heard the paddle of oars, and the
low whistle, which had been agreed upon as a signal. We made
haste to enter the boat, and were rowed back to the vessel. I
passed a wretched night; for the heat of the swamp, the mosquitos, and the constant terror of snakes, had brought on a burning
fever. I had just dropped asleep, when they came and told me it
was time to go back to that horrid swamp. I could scarcely summon courage to rise. But even those large, venomous snakes were
less dreadful to my imagination than the white men in that community called civilized. This time Peter took a quantity of tobacco to burn, to keep off the mosquitos. It produced the desired
effect on them, but gave me nausea and severe headache. At dark
we returned to the vessel. I had been so sick during the day, that
Peter declared I should go home that night, if the devil himself
was on patrol. They told me a place of concealment had been
provided for me at my grandmother's. I could not imagine how
it was possible to hide me in her house, every nook and corner of
which was known to the Flint family. They told me to wait and
see. We were rowed ashore, and went boldly through the streets,
to my grandmother's. I wore my sailor's clothes, and had blackened my face with charcoal. I passed several people whom I
knew. The father of my children came so near that I brushed
against his arm; but he had no idea who it was.

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127

"You must make the most of this walk," said my friend Peter,
"for you may not have another very soon."
I thought his voice sounded sad. It was kind of him to conceal
from me what a dismal hole was to be my home for a long, long
time.

XXI

The Loophole of Retreat

A SMALL SHED HAD been added to my grandmother's house
years ago. Some boards were laid across the joists at the top, and
between these boards and the roof was a very small garret, never
occupied by any thing but rats and mice. It was a pent roof, covered with nothing but shingles, according to the southern custom for such buildings. The garret was only nine feet long and
seven wide. The highest part was three feet high, and sloped
down abruptly to the loose board floor. There was no admission
for either light or air. My uncle Phillip, who was a carpenter, had
very skilfully made a concealed trap-door, which communicated
with the storeroom.' He had been doing this while I was waiti ng
in the swamp. The storeroom opened upon a piazza. To this hole
I was conveyed as soon as I entered the house. The air was stifling; the darkness total. A bed had been spread on the floor. I
could sleep quite comfortably on one side; but the slope was so
sudden that I could not turn on the other without hitting the
roof. The rats and mice ran over my bed; but I was weary, and I
slept such sleep as the wretched may, when a tempest has passed
over them. Morning came. I knew it only by the noises I heard;
for in my small den day and night were all the same. I suffered
for air even more than for light. But I was not comfortless. I
heard the voices of my children. There was joy and there was
sadness in the sound. It made my tears flow. How I longed to
speak to them! I was eager to look on their faces; but there was
no hole, no crack, through which I could peep. This continued
darkness was oppressive. It seemed horrible to sit or lie in a
cramped position day after day, without one gleam of light. Yet I
would have chosen this, rather than my lot as a slave, though
white people considered it an easy one; and it was so compared
with the fate of others. I was never cruelly over-worked; I was
!28

THE LOOPHOLE OF RETREAT

129

never lacerated with the whip from head to foot; I was never so
beaten and bruised that I could not turn from one side to the
other; I never had my heel-strings cut to prevent my running
away; I was never chained to a log and forced to drag it about,
while I toiled in the fields from morning till night; I was never
branded with hot iron, or torn by bloodhounds. On the contrary, I had always been kindly treated, and tenderly cared for,
until I came into the hands of Dr. Flint. I had never wished for
freedom till then. But though my life in slavery was comparatively devoid of hardships, God pity the woman who is
compelled to lead such a life!
My food was passed up to me through the trap-door my uncle had contrived; and my grandmother, my uncle Phillip, and
aunt Nancy would seize such opportunities as they could, to
mount up there and chat with me at the opening. But of course
this was not safe in the daytime. It must all be done in darkness.
It was impossible for me to move in an erect position, but I
crawled about my den for exercise. One day I hit my head
against something, and found it was a gimlet.! My uncle had left
it sticking there when he made the trap-door. I was as rejoiced as
Robinson Crusoe could have been at finding such a treasure. It
put a lucky thought into my head. I said to myself, "Now I will
have some light. Now I will see my children." I did not dare to
begin my work during the daytime, for fear of attracting attention. But I groped round; and having found the side next the
street, where I could frequently see my children, I stuck the gimlet in and waited for evening. I bored three rows of holes, one
above another; then I bored out the interstices between. I thus
succeeded in making one hole about an inch long and an inch
broad. I sat by it till late into the night, to enjoy the little whiff of
air that floated in. In the morning I watched for my children.
The first person I saw in the street was Dr. Flint. I had a shuddering, superstitious feeling that it was a bad omen. Several familiar faces passed by. At last I heard the merry laugh of
children, and presently two sweet little faces were looking up at
me, as though they knew I was there, and were conscious of the
joy they imparted. How I longed to tell them I was there!
My condition was now a little improved. But for weeks I was

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

tormented by hundreds of little red insects, fine as a needle's
point, that pierced through my skin, and produced an intolerable
burning. The good grandmother gave me herb teas and cooling
medicines, and finally I got rid of them. The heat of my den was
intense, for nothing but thin shingles protected me from the
scorching summer's sun. But I had my consolations. Through
my peeping-hole I could watch the children, and when they were
near enough, I could hear their talk. Aunt Nancy brought me all
the news she could hear at Dr. Flint's. From her I learned that
the doctor had written to New York to a colored woman, who
had been born and raised in our neighborhood, and had breathed
his contaminating atmosphere. He offered her a reward if she
could find out any thing about me. I know not what was the nature of her reply; but he soon after started for New York in
haste, saying to his family that he had business of importance to
transact. I peeped at him as he passed on his way to the steamboat. It was a satisfaction to have miles of land and water between us, even for a little while; and it was a still greater
satisfaction to know that he believed me to be in the Free States.
My little den seemed less dreary than it had done. He returned,
as he did from his former journey to New York, without obtaining any satisfactory information. When he passed our house next
morning, Benny was standing at the gate. He had heard them say
that he had gone to find me, and he called out, "Dr. Flint, did
you bring my mother home? I want to see her." The doctor
stamped his foot at him in a rage, and exclaimed, "Get out of the
way, you little damned rascal! If you don't, I'll cut off your
head."
Benny ran terrified into the house, saying, "You can't put me
in jail again. I don't belong to you now." It was well that the
wind carried the words away from the doctor's ear. I told my
grandmother of it, when we had our next conference at the trapdoor; and begged of her not to allow the children to be impertinent to the irascible old man.
Autumn came, with a pleasant abatement of heat. My eyes
had become accustomed to the dim light, and by holding my
book or work in a certain position near the aperture I contrived
to read and sew. That was a great relief to the tedious monotony

THE LOOPHOLE OF RETREAT

131

of my life. But when winter came, the cold penetrated through
the thin shingle roof, and I was dreadfully chilled. The winters
there are not so long, or so severe, as in northern latitudes; but
the houses are not built to shelter from cold, and my little den
was peculiarly comfortless. The kind grandmother brought me
bed-clothes and warm drinks. Often I was obliged to lie in bed
all day to keep comfortable; but with all my precautions, my
shoulders and feet were frostbitten. 0, those long, gloomy days,
with no object for my eye to rest upon, and no thoughts to occupy my mind, except the dreary past and the uncertain future! I
was thankful when there came a day sufficiently mild for me to
wrap myself up and sit at the loophole to watch the passers by.
Southerners have the habit of stopping and talking in the streets,
and I heard many conversations not intended to meet my ears. I
heard slave-hunters planning how to catch some poor fugitive.
Several times I heard allusions to Dr. Flint, myself, and the history of my children, who, perhaps, were playing near the gate.
One would say, "I wouldn't move my little finger to catch her,
as old Flint's property." Another would say, "I'll catch any nigger for the reward. A man ought to have what belongs to him, if
he is a damned brute." The opinion was often expressed that I
was in the Free States. Very rarely did anyone suggest that I
might be in the vicinity. Had the least suspicion rested on my
grandmother's house, it would have been burned to the ground.
But it was the last place they thought of. Yet there was no place,
where slavery existed, that could have afforded me so good a
place of concealment.
Dr. Flint and his family repeatedly tried to coax and bribe my
children to tell something they had heard said about me. One
day the doctor took them into a shop, and offered them some
bright little silver pieces and gay handkerchiefs if they would tell
where their mother was. Ellen shrank away from him, and would
not speak; but Benny spoke up, and said, "Dr. Flint, I don't
know where my mother is. I guess she's in New York; and when
you go there again, I wish you'd ask her to come home, for I
want to see her; but if you put her in jail, or tell her you'll cut her
head off, I'll tell her to go right back."

XXII

Christmas Festivities

CHRISTMAS WAS APPROACHING. Grandmother brought me
materials, and I busied myself making some new garments and
little playthings for my children. Were it not that hiring day is
near at hand, and many families are fearfully looking forward to
the probability of separation in a few days, Christmas might be a
happy season for the poor slaves. Even slave-mothers try to
gladden the hearts of their little ones on that occasion. Benny
and Ellen had their Christmas stockings filled. Their imprisoned
mother could not have the privilege of witnessing their surprise
and joy. But I had the pleasure of peeping at them as they went
into the street with their new suits on. I heard Benny ask a little
playmate whether Santa Claus brought him any thing. "Yes,"
replied the boy; "but Santa Claus ain't a real man. It's the children's mothers that put things into the stockings." "No, that
can't be," replied Benny, "for Santa Claus brought Ellen and me
these new clothes, and my mother has been gone this long time."
How I longed to tell him that his mother made those garments, and that many a tear fell on them while she worked!
Every child rises early on Christmas morning to see the
johnkannaus.' Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its
greatest attraction. They consist of companies of slaves from the
plantations, generally of the lower class. Two athletic men, in
calico wrappers, have a net thrown over them, covered with all
manner of bright-colored stripes. Cows' tails are fastened to
their backs, and their heads are decorated with horns. A box,
covered with sheepskin, is called the gumbo box. A dozen beat
on this, while others strike triangles and jawbones, to which
bands of dancers keep time. For a month previous they are composing songs, which are sung on this occasion. These companies,
of a hundred each, turn out early in the morning, and are allowed
132

CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES

133

to go round till twelve o'clock, begging for contributions. Not a
door is left unvisited where there is the least chance of obtaining
a penny or a glass of rum. They do not drink while they are out,
but carry the rum home in jugs, to have a carousal. These Christmas donations frequently amount to twenty or thirty dollars. It
is seldom that any white man or child refuses to give them a trifle. If he does, they regale his ears with the following song:"Poor massa, so dey say;
Down in de heel, so dey say;
Got no money, so dey say;
Not one shillin, so dey say;
God A'mighty bress you, so dey say."
Christmas is a day of feasting, both with white and colored
people. Slaves, who are lucky enough to have a few shillings, are
sure to spend them for good eating; and many a turkey and pig is
captured, without saying, "By your leave, sir." Those who cannot obtain these, cook a 'possum, or a raccoon, from which savory dishes can be made. My grandmother raised poultry and
pigs for sale; and it was her established custom to have both a
turkey and a pig roasted for Christmas dinner.
On this occasion, I was warned to keep extremely quiet, because two guests had been invited. One was the town constable,
and the other was a free colored man, who tried to pass himself
off for white, and who was always ready to do any mean work
for the sake of currying favor with white people. My grandmother had a motive for inviting them. She managed to take
them all over the house. All the rooms on the lower floor were
thrown open for them to pass in and out; and after dinner, they
were invited up stairs to look at a fine mocking bird my uncle
had just brought home. There, too, the rooms were all thrown
open, that they might look in. When I heard them talking on the
piazza, my heart almost stood still. I knew this colored man had
spent many nights hunting for me. Every body knew he had the
blood of a slave father in his veins; but for the sake of passing
himself off for white, he was ready to kiss the slaveholders' feet.
How I despised him! As for the constable, he wore no false col-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

ors. The duties of his office were despicable, but he was superior
to his companion, inasmuch as he did not pretend to be what he

was not. Any white man, who could raise money enough to buy
a slave, would have considered himself degraded by being a constable; but the office enabled its possessor to exercise authority.
If he found any slave out after nine o'clock, he could whip him
as much as he liked; and that was a privilege to be coveted. When
the guests were ready to depart, my grandmother gave each of
them some of her nice pudding, as a present for their wives.
Through my peep-hole I saw them go out of the gate, and I was
glad when it closed after them. So passed the first Christmas in
my den.

XXIII

Still in Prison

WHEN SPRING RETURNED, AND I took in the little patch of
green the aperture commanded, I asked myself how many more
summers and winters I must be condemned to spend thus. I
longed to draw in a plentiful draught of fresh air, to stretch my
cramped limbs, to have room to stand erect, to feel the earth under my feet again. My relatives were constantly on the lookout
for a chance of escape; but none offered that seemed practicable,
and even tolerably safe. The hot summer came again, and made
the turpentine drop from the thin roof over my head.
During the long nights I was restless for want of air, and I had
no room to toss and turn. There was but one compensation; the
atmosphere was so stifled that even mosquitos would not condescend to buzz in it. With all my detestation of Dr. Flint, I could
hardly wish him a worse punishment, either in this world or that
which is to come, than to suffer what I suffered in one single
summer. Yet the laws allowed him to be out in the free air, while
I, guiltless of crime, was pent up here, as the only means of
avoiding the cruelties the laws allowed him to inflict upon me! I
don't know what kept life within me. Again and again, I thought
I should die before long; but I saw the leaves of another autumn
whirl through the air, and felt the touch of another winter. In
summer the most terrible thunder storms were acceptable, for
the rain came through the roof, and I rolled up my bed that it
might cool the hot boards under it. Later in the season, storms
sometimes wet my clothes through and through, and that was
not comfortable when the air grew chilly. Moderate storms I
could keep out by filling the chinks with oakum.
But uncomfortable as my situation was, I had glimpses of
things out of doors, which made me thankful for my wretched
hiding-place. One day I saw a slave pass our gate, muttering,
135

136

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

"It's his own, and he can kill it if he will." My grandmother told
me that woman's history. Her mistress had that day seen her
baby for the first time, and in the lineaments of its fair face she
saw a likeness to her husband. She turned the bondwoman and
her child out of doors, and forbade her ever to return. The slave
went to her master, and told him what had happened. He
promised to talk with her mistress, and make it all right. The
next day she and her baby were sold to a Georgia trader.
Another time I saw a woman rush wildly by, pursued by two
men. She was a slave, the wet nurse of her mistress's children.
For some trifling offence her mistress ordered her to be stripped
and whipped. To escape the degradation and the torture, she
rushed to the river, jumped in, and ended her wrongs in death.
Senator Brown, I of Mississippi, could not be ignorant of
many such facts as these, for they are of frequent occurrence in
every Southern State. Yet he stood up in the Congress of the
United States, and declared that slavery was "a great moral, social, and political blessing; a blessing to the master, and a blessing
to the slave!"
I suffered much more during the second winter than I did
during the first. My limbs were benumbed by inaction, and the
cold filled them with cramp. I had a very painful sensation of
coldness in my head; even my face and tongue stiffened, and I
lost the power of speech. Of course it was impossible, under the
circumstances, to summon any physician. My brother William
came and did all he could for me.! Uncle Phillip also watched
tenderly over me; and poor grandmother crept up and down to
inquire whether there were any signs of returning life. I was restored to consciousness by the dashing of cold water in my face,
and found myself leaning against my brother's arm, while he
bent over me with streaming eyes. He afterwards told me he
thought I was dying, for I had been in an unconscious state sixteen hours. I next became delirious, and was in great danger of
betraying myself and my friends. To prevent this, they stupefied
me with drugs. I remained in bed six weeks, weary in body and
sick at heart. How to get medical advice was the question.
William finally went to a Thompsonian doctor,' and described
himself as having all my pains and aches. He returned with

STILL IN PRISON

137

herbs, roots, and ointment. He was especially charged to rub on
the ointment by a fire; but how could a fire be made in my little
den? Charcoal in a furnace was tried, but there was no outlet for
the gas, and it nearly cost me my life. Afterwards coals, already
kindled, were brought up in an iron pan, and placed on bricks. I
was so weak, and it was so long since I had enjoyed the warmth
of a fire, that those few coals actually made me weep. I think the
medicines did me some good; but my recovery was very slow.
Dark thoughts passed through my mind as I lay there day after
day. I tried to be thankful for my little cell, dismal as it was, and
even to love it, as part of the price I had paid for the redemption
of my children. Sometimes I thought God was a compassionate
Father, who would forgive my sins for the sake of my sufferings.
At other times, it seemed to me there was no justice or mercy in
the divine government. I asked why the curse of slavery was permitted to exist, and why I had been so persecuted and wronged
from youth upward. These things took the shape of mystery,
which is to this day not so clear to my soul as I trust it will be
hereafter.
In the midst of my illness, grandmother broke down under
the weight of anxiety and toil. The idea of losing her, who had always been my best friend and a mother to my children, was the
sorest trial I had yet had. 0, how earnestly I prayed that she
might recover! How hard it seemed, that I could not tend upon
her, who had so long and so tenderly watched over me!
One day the screams of a child nerved me with strength to
crawl to my peeping-hole, and I saw my son covered with blood.
A fierce dog, usually kept chained, had seized and bitten him. A
doctor was sent for, and I heard the groans and screams of my
child while the wounds were being sewed up. 0, what torture to
a mother's heart, to listen to this and be unable to go to him!
But childhood is like a day in spring, alternately shower and
sunshine. Before night Benny was bright and lively, threatening
the destruction of the dog; and great was his delight when the
doctor told him the next day that the dog had bitten another boy
and been shot. Benny recovered from his wounds; but it was
long before he could walk.
When my grandmother's illness became known, many ladies,

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

who were her customers, called to bring her some little comforts,
and to inquire whether she had every thing she wanted. Aunt
Nancy one night asked permission to watch with her sick
mother, and Mrs. Flint replied, "I don't see any need of your going. I can't spare you." But when she found other ladies in the
neighborhood were so attentive, not wishing to be outdone in
Christian charity, she also sallied forth, in magnificent condescension, and stood by the bedside of her who had loved her in
her infancy, and who had been repaid by such grievous wrongs.
She seemed surprised to find her so ill, and scolded uncle Phillip
for not sending for Dr. Flint. She herself sent for him immediately, and he came. Secure as I was in my retreat, I should have
been terrified if I had known he was so near me. He pronounced
my grandmother in a very critical situation, and said if her attending physician wished it, he would visit her. Nobody wished
to have him coming to the house at all hours, and we were not
disposed to give him a chance to make out a long bill.
As Mrs. Flint went out, Sally told her the reason Benny was
lame was, that a dog had bitten him. ''I'm glad of it," replied she.
"I wish he had killed him. It would be good news to send to his
mother. Her day will come. The dogs will grab her yet." With
these Christian words she and her husband departed, and, to my
great satisfaction, returned no more.
I heard from uncle Phillip, with feelings of unspeakable joy
and gratitude, that the crisis was passed and grandmother would
live. I could now say from my heart, "God is merciful. He has
spared me the anguish of feeling that I caused her death."

XXIV

The Candidate for Congress

THE SUMMER HAD NEARLY ended, when Or. Flint made a third
visit to New York, in search of me.' Two candidates were running for Congress, and he returned in season to vote. The father
of my children was the Whig candidate. The doctor had hitherto
been a stanch Whig; but now he exerted all his energies for the
defeat of Mr. Sands. He invited large parties of men to dine in the
shade of his trees, and supplied them with plenty of rum and
brandy. If any poor fellow drowned his wits in the bowl, and, in
the openness of his convivial heart, proclaimed that he did not
mean to vote the Democratic ticket, he was shoved into the street
without ceremony.
The doctor expended his liquor in vain. Mr. Sands was
elected; an event which occasioned me some anxious thoughts.
He had not emancipated my children, and if he should die they
would be at the mercy of his heirs. Two little voices, that frequently met my ear, seemed to plead with me not to let their father depart without striving to make their freedom secure. Years
had passed since I had spoken to him. I had not even seen him
since the night I passed him, unrecognized, in my disguise of a
sailor. I supposed he would call before he left, to say something
to my grandmother concerning the children, and I resolved what
course to take.
The day before his departure for Washington I made arrangements, towards evening, to get from my hiding-place into the
storeroom below. I found myself so stiff and clumsy that it was
with great difficulty I could hitch from one resting place to another. When I reached the storeroom my ankles gave way under
me, and I sank exhausted on the floor. It seemed as if I could
never use my limbs again. But the purpose I had in view roused
all the strength I had. I crawled on my hands and knees to the
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140

INCIDENTS IN TIlE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

window, and, screened behind a barrel, I waited for his coming.
The clock struck nine, and I knew the steamboat would leave between ten and eleven. My hopes were failing. But presently I
heard his voice, saying to some one, "Wait for me a moment. I
wish to see aunt Martha." When he came out, as he passed the
window, I said, "Stop one moment, and let me speak for my children." He started, hesitated, and then passed on, and went out of
the gate. I closed the shutter I had partially opened, and sank
down behind the barrel. I had suffered much; but seldom had I
experienced a keener pang than I then felt. Had my children,
then, become of so little consequence to him? And had he so little feeling for their wretched mother that he would not listen a
moment while she pleaded for them? Painful memories were so
busy within me, that I forgot I had not hooked the shutter, till I
heard some one opening it. I looked up. He had come back.
"Who called me?" said he, in a low tone. "I did," I replied. "Oh,
Linda," said he, "I knew your voice; but I was afraid to answer,
lest my friend should hear me. Why do you come here? Is it possible you risk yourself in this house? They are mad to allow it. I
shall expect to hear that you are all ruined." I did not wish to implicate him, by letting him know my place of concealment; so 1
merely said, "I thought you would come to bid grandmother
good bye, and so 1 came here to speak a few words to you about
emancipating my children. Many changes may take place during
the six months you are gone to Washington, and it does not seem
right for you to expose them to the risk of such changes. I want
nothing for myself; all I ask is, that you will free my children, or
authorize some friend to do it, before you go."
He promised he would do it, and also expressed a readiness to
make any arrangements whereby I could be purchased.
I heard footsteps approaching, and closed the shutter hastily. I
wanted to crawl back to my den, without letting the family
know what I had done; for I knew they would deem it very imprudent. But he stepped back into the house, to tell my grandmother that he had spoken with me at the storeroom window,
and to beg of her not to allow me to remain in the house over
night. He said it was the height of madness for me to be there;
that we should certainly all be ruined. Luckily, he was in too

THE CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS

141

much of a hurry to wait for a reply, or the dear old woman
would surely have told him all.
1 tried to go back to my den, but found it more difficult to go
up than 1 had to come down. Now that my mission was fulfilled,
the little strength that had supported me through it was gone,
and 1 sank helpless on the floor. My grandmother, alarmed at the
risk 1 had run, came into the storeroom in the dark, and locked
the door behind her. "Linda," she whispered, "where are you?"
"I am here by the window," 1 replied. "I couldn't have him go
away without emancipating the children. Who knows what may
happen?"
"Come, come, child," said she, "it won't do for you to stay
here another minute. You've done wrong; but 1 can't blame you,
poor thing!"
1 told her 1 could not return without assistance, and she must
call my uncle. Uncle Phillip came, and pity prevented him from
scolding me. He carried me back to my dungeon, laid me tenderly on the bed, gave me some medicine, and asked me if there
was any thing more he could do. Then he went away, and 1 was
left with my own thoughts-starless as the midnight darkness
around me.
My friends feared 1 should become a cripple for life; and 1 was
so weary of my long imprisonment that, had it not been for the
hope of serving my children, 1 should have been thankful to die;
but, for their sakes, 1 was willing to bear on.

xxv

Competition in Cunning

DR. FLINT HAD NOT given me up. Every now and then he
would say to my grandmother that I would yet come back, and
voluntarily surrender myself; and that when I did, I could be
purchased by my relatives, or anyone who wished to buy me. I
knew his cunning nature too well not to perceive that this was a
trap laid for me; and so all my friends understood it. I resolved to
match my cunning against his cunning. In order to make him believe that I was in New York, I resolved to write him a letter
dated from that place. I sent for my friend Peter, and asked him
if he knew any trustworthy seafaring person, who would carry
such a letter to N ew York, and put it in the post office there. He
said he knew one that he would trust with his own life to the
ends of the world. I reminded him that it was a hazardous thing
for him to undertake. He said he knew it, but he was willing to
do any thing to help me. I expressed a wish for a New York paper, to ascertain the names of some of the streets. He run his
hand into his pocket, and said, "Here is half a one, that was
round a cap I bought of a pedler yesterday." I told him the letter
would be ready the next evening. He bade me good bye, adding, "Keep up your spirits, Linda; brighter days will come by
and by."
My uncle Phillip kept watch over the gate until our brief interview was over. Early the next morning, I seated myself near
the little aperture to examine the newspaper. It was a piece of the
New York Herald; and, for once, the paper that systematically
abuses the colored people, was made to render them a service.
Having obtained what information I wanted concerning streets
and numbers, I wrote two letters, one to my grandmother, the
other to Dr. Flint. I reminded him how he, a gray-headed man,
had treated a helpless child, who had been placed in his power,
142

COMPETITION IN CUNNING

143

and what years of misery he had brought upon her. To my
grandmother, I expressed a wish to have my children sent to me
at the north, where I could teach them to respect themselves, and
set them a virtuous example; which a slave mother was not allowed to do at the south. I asked her to direct her answer to a
certain street in Boston, as I did not live in New York, though I
went there sometimes. I dated these letters ahead, to allow for
the time it would take to carry them, and sent a memorandum of
the date to the messenger. When my friend came for the letters, I
said, "God bless and reward you, Peter, for this disinterested
kindness. Pray be careful. If you are detected, both you and I
will have to suffer dreadfully. I have not a relative who would
dare to do it for me." He replied, "You may trust to me, Linda. I
don't forget that your father was my best friend, and I will be a
friend to his children so long as God lets me live."
It was necessary to tell my grandmother what I had done, in
order that she might be ready for the letter, and prepared to hear
what Dr. Flint might say about my being at the north. She was
sadly troubled. She felt sure mischief would come of it. I also
told my plan to aunt Nancy, in order that she might report to us
what was said at Dr. Flint's house. I whispered it to her through
a crack, and she whispered back, "I hope it will succeed. I shan't
mind being a slave all my life, if I can only see you and the children free."
I had directed that my letters should be put into the New
York post office on the 20th of the month. On the evening of the
24th my aunt came to say that Dr. Flint and his wife had been
talking in a low voice about a letter he had received, and that
when he went to his office he promised to bring it when he came
to tea. So I concluded I should hear my letter read the next
morning. I told my grandmother Dr. Flint would be sure to
come, and asked her to have him sit near a certain door, and leave
it open, that I might hear what he said. The next morning I took
my station within sound of that door, and remained motionless
as a statue. It was not long before I heard the gate slam, and the
well-known footsteps enter the house. He seated himself in the
chair that was placed for him, and said, "Well, Martha, I've
brought you a letter from Linda. She has sent me a letter, also. I

144

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

know exactly where to find her; but I don't choose to go to
Boston for her. I had rather she would come back of her own accord, in a respectable manner. Her uncle Phillip is the best person to go for her. With him, she would feel perfectly free to act.
I am willing to pay his expenses going and returning. She shall be
sold to her friends. Her children are free; at least I suppose they
are; and when you obtain her freedom, you'll make a happy family. I suppose, Martha, you have no objection to my reading to
you the letter Linda has written to you."
He broke the seal, and I heard him read it. The old villain! He
had suppressed the letter I wrote to grandmother, and prepared a
substitute of his own, the purport of which was as follows:Dear Grandmother:
I have long wanted to write to you; but the disgraceful manner in
which I left you and my children made me ashamed to do it. If
you knew how much I have suffered since I ran away, you would
pity and forgive me. I have purchased freedom at a dear rate. If
any arrangement could be made for me to return to the south
without being a slave, I would gladly come. If not, I beg ofyou to
send my children to the north. I cannot live any longer without
them. Let me know in time, and I will meet them in New York or
Philadelphia, which ever place best suits my uncle's convenience.
Write as soon as possible to your unhappy daughter,
LINDA.

"It is very much as I expected it would be," said the old hypocrite, rising to go. "You see the foolish girl has repented of her
rashness, and wants to return. We must help her to do it, Martha,
Talk with Phillip about it. If he will go for her, she will trust to
him, and come back. I should like an answer tomorrow. Good
morning, Martha."
As he stepped out on the piazza, he stumbled over my little
girl. "Ah, Ellen, is that you?" he said, in his most gracious manner. "I didn't see you. How do you do?"
"Pretty well, sir," she replied. "I heard you tell grandmother
that my mother is coming home. I want to see her."
"Yes, Ellen, I am going to bring her home very soon," re-

COMPETITION IN CUNNING

145

joined he; "and you shall see her as much as you like, you little
curly-headed nigger."
This was as good as a comedy to me, who had heard it all; but
grandmother was frightened and distressed, because the doctor
wanted my uncle to go for me.
The next evening Dr. Flint called to talk the matter over. My
uncle told him that from what he had heard of Massachusetts, he
judged he should be mobbed if he went there after a runaway
slave. "All stuff and nonsense, Phillip!" replied the doctor. "Do
you suppose I want you to kick up a row in Boston? The business can all be done quietly. Linda writes that she wants to come
back. You are her relative, and she would trust you. The case
would be different if I went. She might object to coming with
me; and the damned abolitionists, if they knew I was her master,
would not believe me, if I told them she had begged to go back.
They would get up a row; and I should not like to see Linda
dragged through the streets like a common negro. She has been
very ungrateful to me for all my kindness; but I forgive her, and
want to act the part of a friend towards her. I have no wish to
hold her as my slave. Her friends can buy her as soon as she arrives here."
Finding that his arguments failed to convince my uncle, the
doctor "let the cat out of the bag," by saying that he had written
to the mayor of Boston, to ascertain whether there was a person
of my description at the street and number from which my letter
was dated. He had omitted this date in the letter he had made up
to read to my grandmother. If I had dated from New York, the
old man would probably have made another journey to that city.
But even in that dark region, where knowledge is so carefully excluded from the slave, I had heard enough about Massachusetts
to come to the conclusion that slaveholders did not consider it a
comfortable place to go to in search of a runaway. That was before the Fugitive Slave Law was passed; before Massachusetts
had consented to become a "nigger hunter" for the south.
My grandmother, who had become skittish by seeing her family always in danger, came to me with a very distressed countenance, and said, "What will you do if the mayor of Boston sends

146

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLA VE GIRL

him word that you haven't been there? Then he will suspect the
letter was a trick; and maybe he'll find out something about it,
and we shall all get into trouble. 0 Linda, I wish you had never
sent the letters."
"Don't worry yourself, grandmother," said 1. "The mayor of
Boston won't trouble himself to hunt niggers for Dr. Flint. The
letters will do good in the end. I shall get out of this dark hole
some time or other."
"I hope you will, child," replied the good, patient old friend.
"You have been here a long time; almost five years; but whenever you do go, it will break your old grandmother's heart. I
should be expecting every day to hear that you were brought
back in irons and put in jail. God help you, poor child! Let us be
thankful that some time or other we shall go cc 'where the wicked
cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' " My heart responded, Amen.
The fact that Dr. Flint had written to the mayor of Boston
convinced me that he believed my letter to be genuine, and of
course that he had no suspicion of my being any where in the
vicinity. It was a great object to keep up this delusion, for it
made me and my friends feel less anxious, and it would be very
convenient whenever there was a chance to escape. I resolved,
therefore, to continue to write letters from the north from time
to time.
Two or three weeks passed, and as no news came from the
mayor of Boston, grandmother began to listen to my entreaty to
be allowed to leave my cell, sometimes, and exercise my limbs to
prevent my becoming a cripple. I was allowed to slip down into
the small storeroom, early in the morning, and remain there a little while. The room was all filled up with barrels, except a small
open space under my trap-door. This faced the door, the upper
part of which was of glass, and purposely left uncurtained, that
the curious might look in. The air of this place was close; but it
was so much better than the atmosphere of my cell, that I
dreaded to return. I came down as soon as it was light, and remained till eight o'clock, when people began to be about, and
there was danger that some one might come on the piazza. I had
tried various applications to bring warmth and feeling into my

COMPETITION IN CUNNING

147

limbs, but without avail. They were so numb and stiff that it was
a painful effort to move; and had my enemies come upon me
during the first mornings I tried to exercise them a little in the
small unoccupied space of the storeroom, it would have been impossible for me to have escaped.

XXVI

Important Era in My Brother's Life

I MISSED THE COMPANY and kind attentions of my brother
William, who had gone to Washington with his master, Mr.
Sands. We received several letters from him, written without any
allusion to me, but expressed in such a manner that I knew he
did not forget me. I disguised my hand, and wrote to him in the
same manner. It was a long session; and when it closed, William
wrote to inform us that Mr. Sands was going to the north, to be
gone some time, and that he was to accompany him. I knew that
his master had promised to give him his freedom, but no time
had been specified. Would William trust to a slave's chances? I
remembered how we used to talk together, in our young days,
about obtaining our freedom, and I thought it very doubtful
whether he would come back to us.
Grandmother received a letter from Mr. Sands, saying that
William had proved a most faithful servant, and he would also
say a valued friend; that no mother had ever trained a better boy.
He said he had travelled through the Northern States and
Canada; and though the abolitionists had tried to decoy him
away, they had never succeeded. He ended by saying they
should be at home shortly.
We expected letters from William, describing the novelties of
his journey, but none came. In time, it was reported that Mr.
Sands would return late in the autumn, accompanied by a bride.'
Still no letters from William. I felt almost sure I should never see
him again on southern soil; but had he no word of comfort to
send to his friends at home? to the poor captive in her dungeon?
My thoughts wandered through the dark past, and over the uncertain future. Alone in my cell, where no eye but God's could
see me, I wept bitter tears. How earnestly I prayed to him to re-

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IMPORTANT ERA IN MY BROTHER'S LIFE

149

store me to my children, and enable me to be a useful woman
and a good mother!
At last the day arrived for the return of the travellers. Grandmother had made loving preparations to welcome her absent boy
back to the old hearthstone. When the dinner table was laid,
William's plate occupied its old place. The stage coach went by
empty. My grandmother waited dinner. She thought perhaps he
was necessarily detained by his master. In my prison I listened
anxiously, expecting every moment to hear my dear brother's
voice and step. In the course of the afternoon a lad was sent by
Mr. Sands to tell grandmother that William did not return with
him; that the abolitionists had decoyed him away. But he begged
her not to feel troubled about it, for he felt confident she would
see William in a few days. As soon as he had time to reflect he
would come back, for he could never expect to be so well off at
the north as he had been with him.
If you had seen the tears, and heard the sobs, you would have
thought the messenger had brought tidings of death instead of
freedom. Poor old grandmother felt that she should never see her
darling boy again. And I was selfish. I thought more of what I
had lost, than of what my brother had gained. A new anxiety began to trouble me. Mr. Sands had expended a good deal of
money, and would naturally feel irritated by the loss he had incurred. I greatly feared this might injure the prospects of my
children, who were now becoming valuable property. I longed to
have their emancipation made certain. The more so, because their
master and father was now married. I was too familiar with slavery not to know that promises made to slaves, though with kind
intentions, and sincere at the time, depend upon many contingencies for their fulfilment.
Much as I wished William to be free, the step he had taken
made me sad and anxious. The following Sabbath was calm and
clear; so beautiful that it seemed like a Sabbath in the eternal
world. My grandmother brought the children out on the piazza,
that I might hear their voices. She thought it would comfort me
in my despondency; and it did. They chatted merrily, as only
children can. Benny said, "Grandmother, do you think uncle

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

Will has gone for good? Won't he ever come back again? May be
he'll find mother. If he does, won't she be glad to see him! Why
don't you and uncle Phillip, and all of us, go and live where
mother is? I should like it; wouldn't you, Ellen?"
"Yes, I should like it," replied Ellen; "but how could we find
her? Do you know the place, grandmother? I don't remember
how mother looked-do you, Benny?"
Benny was just beginning to describe me when they were interrupted by an old slave woman, a near neighbor, named Aggie.
This poor creature had witnessed the sale of her children, and
seen them carried off to parts unknown, without any hopes of
ever hearing from them again. She saw that my grandmother had
been weeping, and she said, in a sympathizing tone, "What's the
matter, aunt Marthy?"
"0 Aggie," she replied, "it seems as if I shouldn't have any of
my children or grandchildren left to hand me a drink when I'm
dying, and lay my old body in the ground. My boy didn't come
back with Mr. Sands. He staid at the north."
Poor old Aggie clapped her hands for joy. "Is dat what you's
crying fur?" she exclaimed. "Cit down on your knees and bress
de Lord! I don't know whar my poor chillern is, and I nebber
'spect to know. You don't know whar poor Linda's gone to; but
you do know whar her brudder is. He's in free parts; and dat's de
right place. Don't murmur at de Lord's doings, but git down on
your knees and tank him for his goodness."
My selfishness was rebuked by what poor Aggie said. She
rejoiced over the escape of one who was merely her fellowbondman, while his own sister was only thinking what his good
fortune might cost her children. I knelt and prayed God to forgive me; and I thanked him from my heart, that one of my family was saved from the grasp of slavery.
It was not long before we received a letter from William. He
wrote that Mr. Sands had always treated him kindly, and that he
had tried to do his duty to him faithfully. But ever since he was a
boy, he had longed to be free; and he had already gone through
enough to convince him he had better not lose the chance that
offered. He concluded by saying, "Don't worry about me, dear
grandmother. I shall think of you always; and it will spur me on

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151

to work hard and try to do right. When 1 have earned money
enough to give you a home, perhaps you will come to the north,
and we can all live happy together."
Mr. Sands told my uncle Phillip the particulars about
William's leaving him. He said, "1 trusted him as if he were my
own brother, and treated him as kindly. The abolitionists talked
to him in several places; but 1 had no idea they could tempt him.
However, 1 don't blame William. He's young and inconsiderate,
and those Northern rascals decoyed him. I must confess the
scamp was very bold about it. 1 met him coming down the steps
of the Astor House with his trunk on his shoulder, and 1 asked
him where he was going. He said he was going to change his old
trunk. 1 told him it was rather shabby, and asked if he didn't
need some money. He said, No, thanked me, and went off. He
did not return so soon as 1 expected; but 1 waited patiently. At
last 1 went to see if our trunks were packed, ready for our journey. 1 found them locked, and a sealed note on the table informed me where 1 could find the keys. The fellow even tried to
be religious. He wrote that he hoped God would always bless
me, and reward me for my kindness; that he was not unwilling to
serve me; but he wanted to be a free man; and that if 1 thought he
did wrong, he hoped 1 would forgive him. 1 intended to give him
his freedom in five years. He might have trusted me. He has
shown himself ungrateful; but 1 shall not go for him, or send for
him. 1 feel confident that he will soon return to me."
1 afterwards heard an account of the affair from William himselP He had not been urged away by abolitionists. He needed
no information they could give him about slavery to stimulate
his desire for freedom. He looked at his hands, and remembered
that they were once in irons. What security had he that they
would not be so again? Mr. Sands was kind to him; but he might
indefinitely postpone the promise he had made to give him his
freedom. He might come under pecuniary embarrassments, and
his property be seized by creditors; or he might die, without
making any arrangements in his favor. He had too often known
such accidents to happen to slaves who had kind masters, and he
wisely resolved to make sure of the present opportunity to own
himself. He was scrupulous about taking any money from his

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

master on false pretences; so he sold his best clothes to pay for
his passage to Boston. The slaveholders pronounced him a base,
ungrateful wretch, for thus requiting his master's indulgence.
What would they have done under similar circumstances?
When Dr. Flint's family heard that William had deserted Mr.
Sands, they chuckled greatly over the news. Mrs. Flint made her
usual manifestations of Christian feeling, by saying, ''I'm glad of
it. I hope he'll never get him again. I like to see people paid back
in their own coin. I reckon Linda's children will have to pay for
it. I should be glad to see them in the speculator's hands again,
for I'm tired of seeing those little niggers march about the
streets. "

XXVII

New Destination for the Children

MRS. FLINT PROCLAIMED HER intention of informing Mrs.
Sands who was the father of my children. She likewise proposed
to tell her what an artful devil I was; that I had made a great deal
of trouble in her family; that when Mr. Sands was at the north,
she didn't doubt I had followed him in disguise, and persuaded
William to run away. She had some reason to entertain such an
idea; for I had written from the north, from time to time, and I
dated my letters from various places. Many of them fell into Dr.
Flint's hands, as I expected they would; and he must have come
to the conclusion that I travelled about a good deal. He kept a
close watch over my children, thinking they would eventually
lead to my detection.
A new and unexpected trial was in store for me. One day,
when Mr. Sands and his wife were walking in the street, they met
Benny. The lady took a fancy to him, and exclaimed, "What a
pretty little negro! Whom does he belong to?"
Benny did not hear the answer; but he came home very indignant with the stranger lady, because she had called him a negro.
A few days afterwards, Mr. Sands called on my grandmother,
and told her he wanted her to take the children to his house. He
said he had informed his wife of his relation to them, and told
her they were motherless; and she wanted to see them.
When he had gone, my grandmother came and asked what I
would do. The question seemed a mockery. What could I do?
They were Mr. Sands's slaves, and their mother was a slave,
whom he had represented to be dead. Perhaps he thought I was.
I was too much pained and puzzled to come to any decision; and
the children were carried without my knowledge.
Mrs. Sands had a sister from Illinois staying with her. This
lady, who had no children of her own, was so much pleased with
153

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

EIlen, that she offered to adopt her, and bring her up as she
would a daughter. Mrs. Sands wanted to take Benjamin. When
grandmother reported this to me, I was tried almost beyond endurance. Was this all I was to gain by what I had suffered for the
sake of having my children free? True, the prospect seemed fair;
but I knew too well how lightly slaveholders held such "parental
relations." If pecuniary troubles should come, or if the new wife
required more money than could conveniently be spared, my
children might be thought of as a convenient means of raising
funds. I had no trust in thee, 0 Slavery! Never should I know
peace till my children were emancipated with all due formalities
of law.
I was too proud to ask Mr. Sands to do any thing for my own
benefit; but I could bring myself to become a supplicant for my
children. I resolved to remind him of the promise he had made
me, and to throw myself upon his honor for the performance of
it. I persuaded my grandmother to go to him, and tell him I was
not dead, and that I earnestly entreated him to keep the promise
he had made me; that I had heard of the recent proposals concerning my children, and did not feel easy to accept them; that he
had promised to emancipate them, and it was time for him to redeem his pledge. I knew there was some risk in thus betraying
that I was in the vicinity; but what will not a mother do for her
children? He received the message with surprise, and said, "The
children are free. I have never intended to claim them as slaves.
Linda may decide their fate. In my opinion, they had better be
sent to the north. I don't think they are quite safe here. Dr. Flint
boasts that they are still in his power. He says they were his
daughter's property, and as she was not of age when they were
sold, the contract is not legally binding."
So, then, after all I had endured for their sakes, my poor children were between two fires; between myoId master and their
new master! And I was powerless. There was no protecting arm
of the law for me to invoke. Mr. Sands proposed that Ellen
should go, for the present, to some of his relatives, who had removed to Brooklyn, Long Island. It was promised that she
should be well taken care of, and sent to school. I consented to it,
as the best arrangement I could make for her. My grandmother,

NEW DESTINA IrON FOR THE CHILDREN

155

of course, negotiated it all; and Mrs. Sands knew of no other person in the transaction. She proposed that they should take Ellen
with them to Washington, and keep her till they had a good
chance of sending her, with friends, to Brooklyn. She had an infant daughter. I had had a glimpse of it, as the nurse passed with
it in her arms. It was not a pleasant thought to me, that the bondwoman's child should tend her free-born sister;' but there was
no alternative. Ellen was made ready for the journey. 0, how it
tried my heart to send her away, so young, alone, among
strangers! Without a mother's love to shelter her from the storms
of life; almost without memory of a mother! I doubted whether
she and Benny would have for me the natural affection that children feel for a parent. I thought to myself that I might perhaps
never see my daughter again, and I had a great desire that she
should look upon me, before she went, that she might take my
image with her in her memory. It seemed to me cruel to have her
brought to my dungeon. It was sorrow enough for her young
heart to know that her mother was a victim of slavery, without
seeing the wretched hiding-place to which it had driven her. I
begged permission to pass the last night in one of the open chambers, with my little girl. They thought I was crazy to think of
trusting such a young child with my perilous secret. I told them
I had watched her character, and I felt sure she would not betray
me; that I was determined to have an interview, and if they
would not facilitate it, I would take my own way to obtain it.
They remonstrated against the rashness of such a proceeding; but
finding they could not change my purpose, they yielded. I
slipped through the trap-door into the storeroom, and my uncle
kept watch at the gate, while I passed into the piazza and went
up stairs, to the room I used to occupy. It was more than five
years since I had seen it; and how the memories crowded on me!
There I had taken shelter when my mistress drove me from her
house; there came myoid tyrant, to mock, insult, and curse me;
there my children were first laid in my arms; there I had watched
over them, each day with a deeper and sadder love; there I had
knelt to God, in anguish of heart, to forgive the wrong I had
done. How vividly it all came back! And after this long, gloomy
interval, I stood there such a wreck!

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

In the midst of these meditations, I heard footsteps on the
stairs. The door opened, and my uncle Phillip came in, leading
Ellen by the hand. 1 put my arms round her, and said, "Ellen, my
dear child, 1 am your mother." She drew back a little, and looked
at me; then, with sweet confidence, she laid her cheek against
mine, and I folded her to the heart that had been so long desolated. She was the first to speak. Raising her head, she said, inquiringly, "You really are my mother?" 1 told her 1 really was;
that during all the long time she had not seen me, 1 had loved her
most tenderly; and that now she was going away, 1 wanted to see
her and talk with her, that she might remember me. With a sob in
her voice, she said, "I'm glad you've come to see me; but
why didn't you ever come before? Benny and 1 have wanted so
much to see you! He remembers you, and sometimes he tells me
about you. Why didn't you come home when Dr. Flint went
to bring you?"
I answered, "I couldn't come before, dear. But now that I am
with you, tell me whether you like to go away." "I don't know,"
said she, crying. "Grandmother says 1 ought not to cry; that 1 am
going to a good place, where 1 can learn to read and write, and
that by and by 1 can write her a letter. But I shan't have Benny,
or grandmother, or uncle Phillip, or any body to love me. Can't
you go with me? 0, do go, dear mother!"
1 told her 1 couldn't go now; but sometime 1 would come to
her, and then she and Benny and 1 would live together, and have
happy times. She wanted to run and bring Benny to see me now.
1 told her he was going to the north, before long, with uncle
Phillip, and then 1 would come to see him before he went away.
1 asked if she would like to have me stay all night and sleep with
her. "0, yes," she replied. Then, turning to her uncle, she said,
pleadingly, "May 1 stay? Please, uncle! She is my own mother."
He laid his hand on her head, and said, solemnly, "Ellen, this is
the secret you have promised grandmother never to tell. If you
ever speak of it to any body, they will never let you see your
grandmother again, and your mother can never come to Brooklyn." "Uncle," she replied, "I will never tell." He told her she
might stay with me; and when he had gone, 1 took her in my
arms and told her 1 was a slave, and that was the reason she must

NEW DESTINATION FOR THE CHILDREN

157

never say she had seen me. 1 exhorted her to be a good child, to
try to please the people where she was going, and that God
would raise her up friends. 1 told her to say her prayers, and remember always to pray for her poor mother, and that God
would permit us to meet again. She wept, and 1 did not check her
tears. Perhaps she would never again have a chance to pour her
tears into a mother's bosom. All night she nestled in my arms,
and 1 had no inclination to slumber. The moments were too precious to lose any of them. Once, when 1 thought she was asleep,
1 kissed her forehead softly, and she said, "1 am not asleep, dear
mother."
Before dawn they came to take me back to my den. 1 drew
aside the window curtain, to take a last look of my child. The
moonlight shone on her face, and 1 bent over her, as 1 had done
years before, that wretched night when 1 ran away. 1 hugged her
close to my throbbing heart; and tears, too sad for such young
eyes to shed, flowed down her cheeks, as she gave her last kiss,
and whispered in my ear, "Mother, 1 will never tell." And she
never did.
When I got back to my den, I threw myself on the bed and
wept there alone in the darkness. It seemed as if my heart would
burst. When the time for Ellen's departure drew nigh, 1 could
hear neighbors and friends saying to her, "Good bye, Ellen. 1
hope your poor mother will find you out. Won't you be glad to
see her!" She replied, "Yes, ma' am;" and they little dreamed of
the weighty secret that weighed down her young heart. She was
an affectionate child, but naturally very reserved, except with
those she loved, and 1 felt secure that my secret would be safe
with her. I heard the gate close after her, with such feelings as
only a slave-mother can experience. During the day my meditations were very sad. Sometimes 1 feared 1 had been very selfish
not to give up all claim to her, and let her go to Illinois, to be
adopted by Mrs. Sands's sister. It was my experience of slavery
that decided me against it. 1 feared that circumstances might arise
that would cause her to be sent back. 1 felt confident that 1
should go to New York myself; and then 1 should be able to
watch over her, and in some degree protect her.
Dr. Flint's family knew nothing of the proposed arrangement

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

till after Ellen was gone, and the news displeased them greatly.
Mrs. Flint called on Mrs. Sands's sister to inquire into the matter.
She expressed her opinion very freely as to the respect Mr. Sands
showed for his wife, and for his own character, in acknowledging
those "young niggers." And as for sending Ellen away, she pronounced it to be just as much stealing as it would be for him to
come and take a piece of furniture out of her parlor. She said her
daughter was not of age to sign the bill of sale, and the children
were her property; and when she became of age, or was married,
she could take them, wherever she could lay hands on them.
Miss Emily Flint, the little girl to whom I had been bequeathed, was now in her sixteenth year.? Her mother considered it all right and honorable for her, or her future husband, to
steal my children; but she did not understand how any body
could hold up their heads in respectable society, after they had
purchased their own children, as Mr. Sands had done. Dr. Flint
said very little. Perhaps he thought that Benny would be less
likely to be sent away if he kept quiet. One of my letters, that fell
into his hands, was dated from Canada; and he seldom spoke of
me now. This state of things enabled me to slip down into the
storeroom more frequently, where I could stand upright, and
move my limbs more freely.
Days, weeks, and months passed, and there came no news of
Ellen. I sent a letter to Brooklyn, written in my grandmother's
name, to inquire whether she had arrived there. Answer was returned that she had not. I wrote to her in Washington; but no
notice was taken of it. There was one person there, who ought to
have had some sympathy with the anxiety of the child's friends
at home; but the links of such relations as he had formed with
me, are easily broken and cast away as rubbish. Yet how protectingly and persuasively he once talked to the poor, helpless slave
girl! And how entirely I trusted him! But now suspicious darkened my mind. Was my child dead, or had they deceived me, and
sold her?
If the secret memoirs of many members of Congress should
be published, curious details would be unfolded. I once saw a
letter from a member of Congress to a slave, who was the mother
of six of his children. He wrote to request that she would send

NEW DESTINATION FOR THE CHILDREN

159

her children away from the great house before his return, as he
expected to be accompanied by friends. The woman could not
read, and was obliged to employ another to read the letter. The
existence of the colored children did not trouble this gentleman,
it was only the fear that friends might recognize in their features
a resemblance to him.
At the end of six months, a letter came to my grandmother,
from Brooklyn. It was written by a young lady in the family, and
announced that Ellen had just arrived. It contained the following
message from her: "I do try to do just as you told me to, and I
pray for you every night and morning." I understood that these
words were meant for me; and they were a balsam to my heart.
The writer closed her letter by saying, "EBen is a nice little girl,
and we shall like to have her with us. My cousin, Mr. Sands,' has
given her to me, to be my little waiting maid. I shall send her to
school, and I hope some day she will write to you herself." This
letter perplexed and troubled me. Had my child's father merely
placed her there till she was old enough to support herself? Or
had he given her to his cousin, as a piece of property? If the last
idea was correct, his cousin might return to the south at any
time, and hold Ellen as a slave. I tried to put away from me the
painful thought that such a foul wrong could have been done to
us. I said to myself, "Surely there must be some justice in man;"
then I remembered, with a sigh, how slavery perverted all the
natural feelings of the human heart. It gave me a pang to look on
my light-hearted boy. He believed himself free; and to have him
brought under the yoke of slavery, would be more than I could
bear. How I longed to have him safely out of the reach of its
power!

XXVIII

Aunt Nancy

I HA YE MENTIONED MY great-aunt, who was a slave in Dr.
Flint's family, and who had been my refuge during the shameful
persecutions I suffered from him. This aunt had been married at
twenty years of age; that is, as far as slaves can marry. She had
the consent of her master and mistress, and a clergyman performed the ceremony. But it was a mere form, without any legal
value. Her master or mistress could annul it any day they
pleased. She had always slept on the floor in the entry, near Mrs.
Flint's chamber door, that she might be within call. When she
was married, she was told she might have the use of a small room
in an out-house. Her mother and her husband furnished it. He
was a seafaring man, and was allowed to sleep there when he was
at home. But on the wedding evening, the bride was ordered to
her old post on the entry floor.
Mrs. Flint, at that time, had no children; but she was expecting
to be a mother, and if she should want a drink of water in the
night, what could she do without her slave to bring it? So my
aunt was compelled to lie at her door, until one midnight she was
forced to leave, to give premature birth to a child. In a fortnight
she was required to resume her place on the entry floor, because
Mrs. Flint's babe needed her attentions. She kept her station
there through summer and winter, until she had given premature
birth to six children; and all the while she was employed as
night-nurse to Mrs. Flint's children. Finally, toiling all day, and
being deprived of rest at night, completely broke down her constitution, and Dr. Flint declared it was impossible she could ever
become the mother of a living child. The fear of losing so valuable a servant by death, now induced them to allow her to sleep
in her little room in the out-house, except when there was sick-

160

AUNT NANCY

161

ness in the family. She afterwards had two feeble babes, one of
whom died in a few days, and the other in four weeks. I well remember her patient sorrow as she held the last dead baby in her
arms. "I wish it could have lived," she said; "it is not the will of
God that any of my children should live. But I will try to be fit
to meet their little spirits in heaven."
Aunt Nancy was housekeeper and waiting-maid in Dr. Flint's
family. Indeed, she was the factotum of the household. Nothing
went on well without her. She was my mother's twin sister, and,
as far as was in her power, she supplied a mother's place to us orphans. I slept with her all the time I lived in myoid master's
house, and the bond between us was very strong. When my
friends tried to discourage me from running away, she always
encouraged me. When they thought I had better return and ask
my master's pardon, because there was no possibility of escape,
she sent me word never to yield. She said if I persevered I might,
perhaps, gain the freedom of my children; and even if I perished
in doing it, that was better than to leave them to groan under the
same persecutions that had blighted my own life. After I was
shut up in my dark cell, she stole away, whenever she could, to
bring me the news and say something cheering. How often did I
kneel down to listen to her words of consolation, whispered
through a crack! "I am old, and have not long to live," she used
to say; "and I could die happy if I could only see you and the
children free. You must pray to God, Linda, as I do for you, that
he will lead you out of this darkness." I would beg her not to
worry herself on my account; that there was an end of all suffering sooner or later, and that whether I lived in chains or in freedom, I should always remember her as the good friend who had
been the comfort of my life. A word from her always strengthened me; and not me only. The whole family relied upon her
judgment, and were guided by her advice.
I had been in my cell six years when my grandmother was
summoned to the bedside of this, her last remaining daughter.
She was very ill, and they said she would die. Grandmother had
not entered Dr. Flint's house for several years. They had treated
her cruelly, but she thought nothing of that now. She was grate-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

ful for permission to watch by the death-bed of her child. They
had always been devoted to each other; and now they sat looking
into each other's eyes, longing to speak of the secret that had
weighed so much on the hearts of both. My aunt had been
stricken with paralysis. She lived but two days, and the last day
she was speechless. Before she lost the power of utterance, she
told her mother not to grieve if she could not speak to her; that
she would try to hold up her hand, to let her know that all was
well with her. Even the hard-hearted doctor was a little softened
when he saw the dying woman try to smile on the aged mother,
who was kneeling by her side. His eyes moistened for a moment,
as he said she had always been a faithful servant, and they should
never be able to supply her place. Mrs. Flint took to her bed,
quite overcome by the shock. While my grandmother sat alone
with the dead, the doctor came in, leading his youngest son, who
had always been a great pet with aunt Nancy, and was much attached to her. "Martha," said he, "aunt Nancy loved this child,
and when he comes where you are, I hope you will be kind to
him, for her sake." She replied, "Your wife was my foster-child,
Or. Flint, the foster-sister of my poor Nancy, and you little
know me if you think I can feel any thing but good will for her
children."
"I wish the past could be forgotten, and that we might never
think of it," said he; "and that Linda would come to supply her
aunt's place. She would be worth more to us than all the money
that could be paid for her. I wish it for your sake also, Martha.
Now that Nancy is taken away from you, she would be a great
comfort to your old age."
He knew he was touching a tender chord. Almost choking
with grief, my grandmother replied, "It was not I that drove
Linda away. My grandchildren are gone; and of my nine children
only one is left. God help me!"
To me, the death of this kind relative was an inexpressible sorrow. I knew that she had been slowly murdered; and I felt that
my troubles had helped to finish the work. After I heard of her
illness, I listened constantly to hear what news was brought from
the great house; and the thought that I could not go to her made

AUNT NANCY

163

me utterly miserable. At last, as uncle Phillip came into the
house, I heard some one inquire, "How is she?" and he answered, "She is dead." My little cell seemed whirling round, and
I knew nothing more till I opened my eyes and found uncle
Phillip bending over me. I had no need to ask any questions. He
whispered, "Linda, she died happy." I could not weep. My fixed
gaze troubled him. "Don't look so," he said. "Don't add to my
poor mother's trouble. Remember how much she has to bear,
and that we ought to do all we can to comfort her." Ah, yes, that
blessed old grandmother, who for seventy-three years had borne
the pelting storms of a slave-mother's life. She did indeed need
consolation!
Mrs. Flint had rendered her poor foster-sister childless, apparently without any compunction; and with cruel selfishness had
ruined her health by years of incessant, unrequited toil, and broken rest. But now she became very sentimental. I supposed she
thought it would be a beautiful illustration of the attachment existing between slaveholder and slave, if the body of her old
worn-out servant was buried at her feet. She sent for the clergyman and asked if he had any objection to burying aunt Nancy in
the doctor's family burial-place. No colored person had ever
been allowed interment in the white people's burying-ground,
and the minister knew that all the deceased of our family reposed
together in the old graveyard of the slaves. He therefore replied,
"I have no objection to complying with your wish; but perhaps
aunt Nancy's mother may have some choice as to where her remains shall be deposited."
It had never occurred to Mrs. Flint that slaves could have any
feelings. When my grandmother was consulted, she at once said
she wanted Nancy to lie with all the rest of her family, and
where her own old body would be buried. Mrs. Flint graciously
complied with her wish, though she said it was painful to her to
have Nancy buried away from her. She might have added with
touching pathos, "I was so long used to sleep with her lying near
me, on the entry floor."
My uncle Phillip asked permission to bury his sister at his
own expense; and slaveholders are always ready to grant such fa-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIfE OF A SLAVE GIRL

vors to slaves and their relatives. The arrangements were very
plain, but perfectly respectable. She was buried on the Sabbath,
and Mrs. Flint's minister read the funeral service. There was a
large concourse of colored people, bond and free, and a few
white persons who had always been friendly to our family. Dr.
Flint's carriage was in the procession; and when the body was
deposited in its humble resting place, the mistress dropped a tear,
and returned to her carriage, probably thinking she had performed her duty nobly.
It was talked of by the slaves as a mighty grand funeral.
Northern travellers, passing through the place, might have described this tribute of respect to the humble dead as a beautiful
feature in the "patriarchal institution;" a touching proof of the
attachment between slaveholders and their servants; and tenderhearted Mrs. Flint would have confirmed this impression, with
handkerchief at her eyes. We could have told them a different
story. We could have given them a chapter of wrongs and sufferings, that would have touched their hearts, if they had any hearts
to feel for the colored people. We could have told them how the
poor old slave-mother had toiled, year after year, to earn eight
hundred dollars to buy her son Phillip's right to his own earnings; and how that same Phillip paid the expenses of the funeral,
which they regarded as doing so much credit to the master. We
could also have told them of a poor, blighted young creature,
shut up in a living grave for years, to avoid the tortures that
would be inflicted on her, if she ventured to come out and look
on the face of her departed friend.
All this, and much more, I thought of, as I sat at my loophole,
waiting for the family to return from the grave; sometimes weeping, sometimes falling asleep, dreaming strange dreams of the
dead and the living.
It was sad to witness the grief of my bereaved grandmother.
She had always been strong to bear, and now, as ever, religious
faith supported her. But her dark life had become still darker,
and age and trouble were leaving deep traces on her withered
face. She had four places to knock for me to come to the trapdoor, and each place had a different meaning. She now came oftener than she had done, and talked to me of her dead daughter,

AUNT NANCY

165

while tears trickled slowly down her furrowed cheeks. I said all I
could to comfort her; but it was a sad reflection, that instead of
being able to help her, I was a constant source of anxiety and
trouble. The poor old back was fitted to its burden. It bent under
it, but did not break.

XXIX

Preparations for Escape

I HARDLY EXPECT THAT the reader will credit me, when I affirm that I lived in that little dismal hole, almost deprived of light
and air, and with no space to move my limbs, for nearly seven
years. But it is a fact; and to me a sad one, even now; for my
body still suffers from the effects of that long imprisonment, to
say nothing of my soul. Members of my family, now living in
New York and Boston, can testify to the truth of what I say.
Countless were the nights that I sat late at the little loophole
scarcely large enough to give me a glimpse of one twinkling star.
There, I heard the patrols and slave-hunters conferring together
about the capture of runaways, well knowing how rejoiced they
would be to catch me.
Season after season, year after year, I peeped at my children's
faces, and heard their sweet voices, with a heart yearning all the
while to say, "Your mother is here." Sometimes it appeared to
me as if ages had rolled away since I entered upon that gloomy,
monotonous existence. At times, I was stupefied and listless; at
other times I became very impatient to know when these dark
years would end, and I should again be allowed to feel the sunshine, and breathe the pure air.
After Ellen left us, this feeling increased. Mr. Sands had agreed
that Benny might go to the north whenever his uncle Phillip
could go with him; and I was anxious to be there also, to watch
over my children, and protect them so far as I was able. Moreover, I was likely to be drowned out of my den, if I remained
much longer; for the slight roof was getting badly out of repair,
and uncle Phillip was afraid to remove the shingles, lest some one
should get a glimpse of me. When storms occurred in the night,
they spread mats and bits of carpet, which in the morning appeared to have been laid out to dry; but to cover the roof in the
166

PREPARATIONS FOR ESCAPE

167

daytime might have attracted attention. Consequently, my
clothes and bedding were often drenched; a process by which the
pains and aches in my cramped and stiffened limbs were greatly
increased. I revolved various plans of escape in my mind, which I
sometimes imparted to my grandmother, when she came to
whisper with me at the trap-door. The kind-hearted old woman
had an intense sympathy for runaways. She had known too
much of the cruelties inflicted on those who were captured. Her
memory always flew back at once to the sufferings of her bright
and handsome son, Benjamin, the youngest and dearest of her
flock. So, whenever I alluded to the subject, she would groan
out, "0, don't think of it, child. You'll break my heart." I had no
good old aunt Nancy now to encourage me; but my brother
William and my children were continually beckoning me to the
north.
And now I must go back a few months in my story. I have
stated that the first of January was the time for selling slaves, or
leasing them out to new masters. If time were counted by heartthrobs, the poor slaves might reckon years of suffering during
that festival so joyous to the free. On the New Year's day preceding my aunt's death, one of my friends, named Fanny, was to
be sold at auction, to pay her master's debts. My thoughts were
with her during all the day, and at night I anxiously inquired
what had been her fate. I was told that she had been sold to one
master, and her four little girls to another master, far distant; that
she had escaped from her purchaser, and was not to be found.
Her mother was the old Aggie I have spoken of. She lived in a
small tenement belonging to my grandmother, and built on the
same lot with her own house. Her dwelling was searched and
watched, and that brought the patrols so near me that I was
obliged to keep very close in my den. The hunters were somehow eluded; and not long afterwards Benny accidentally caught
sight of Fanny in her mother's hut. He told his grandmother,
who charged him never to speak of it, explaining to him the
frightful consequences; and he never betrayed the trust. Aggie
little dreamed that my grandmother knew where her daughter
was concealed, and that the stooping form of her old neighbor
was bending under a similar burden of anxiety and fear; but these

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLA VE GIRL

dangerous secrets deepened the sympathy between the two old
persecuted mothers.
My friend Fanny and I remained many weeks hidden within
call of each other; but she was unconscious of the fact.' I longed
to have her share my den, which seemed a more secure retreat
than her own; but I had brought so much trouble on my grandmother, that it seemed wrong to ask her to incur greater risks.
My restlessness increased. I had lived too long in bodily pain and
anguish of spirit. Always I was in dread that by some accident,
or some contrivance, slavery would succeed in snatching my
children from me. This thought drove me nearly frantic, and I
determined to steer for the North Star at all hazards. At this crisis, Providence opened an unexpected way for me to escape. My
friend Peter came one evening, and asked to speak with me.
"Your day has come, Linda," said he. "I have found a chance for
you to go to the Free States. You have a fortnight to decide." The
news seemed too good to be true; but Peter explained his
arrangements, and told me all that was necessary was for me to
say I would go. I was going to answer him with a joyful yes,
when the thought of Benny came to my mind. I told him the
temptation was exceedingly strong, but I was terribly afraid of
Dr. Flint's alleged power over my child, and that I could not go
and leave him behind. Peter remonstrated earnestly. He said such
a good chance might never occur again; that Benny was free, and
could be sent to me; and that for the sake of my children's welfare I ought not to hesitate a moment. I told him I would consult
with uncle Phillip. My uncle rejoiced in the plan, and bade me go
by all means. He promised, if his life was spared, that he would
either bring or send my son to me as soon as I reached a place of
safety. I resolved to go, but thought nothing had better be said to
my grandmother till very near the time of departure. But my uncle thought she would feel it more keenly if I left her so suddenly. "I will reason with her," said he, "and convince her how
necessary it is, not only for your sake, but for hers also. You cannot be blind to the fact that she is sinking under her burdens." I
was not blind to it. I knew that my concealment was an everpresent source of anxiety, and that the older she grew the more
nervously fearful she was of discovery. My uncle talked with her,

PREPARATIONS FOR ESCAPE

169

and finally succeeded in persuading her that it was absolutely
necessary for me to seize the chance so unexpectedly offered.
The anticipation of being a free woman proved almost too
much for my weak frame. The excitement stimulated me, and at
the same time bewildered me. I made busy preparations for my
journey, and for my son to follow me. I resolved to have an interview with him before I went, that I might give him cautions
and advice, and tell him how anxiously I should be waiting for
him at the north. Grandmother stole up to me as often as possible to whisper words of counsel. She insisted upon my writing to
Dr. Flint, as soon as I arrived in the Free States, and asking him
to sell me to her. She said she would sacrifice her house, and all
she had in the world, for the sake of having me safe with my children in any part of the world. If she could only live to know that
she could die in peace. I promised the dear old faithful friend that
I would write to her as soon as I arrived, and put the letter in a
safe way to reach her; but in my own mind I resolved that not
another cent of her hard earnings should be spent to pay rapacious slaveholders for what they called their property. And even
if I had not been unwilling to buy what I had already a right to
possess, common humanity would have prevented me from accepting the generous offer, at the expense of turning my aged relative out of house and home, when she was trembling on the
brink of the grave.
I was to escape in a vessel; but I forbear to mention any further particulars. I was in readiness, but the vessel was unexpectedly detained several days. Meantime, news came to town of a
most horrible murder committed on a fugitive slave, named
James. Charity, the mother of this unfortunate young man, had
been an old acquaintance of ours. I have told the shocking particulars of his death, in my description of some of the neighboring slaveholders. My grandmother, always nervously sensitive
about runaways, was terribly frightened. She felt sure that a similar fate awaited me, if I did not desist from my enterprise. She
sobbed, and groaned, and entreated me not to go. Her excessive
fear was somewhat contagious, and my heart was not proof
against her extreme agony. I was grievously disappointed, but I
promised to relinquish my project.

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

When my friend Peter was apprised of this, he was both disappointed and vexed. He said, that judging from our past experience, it would be a long time before I had such another chance to
throwaway. I told him it need not be thrown away; that I had a
friend concealed near by, who would be glad enough to take the
place that had been provided for me. I told him about poor
Fanny, and the kind-hearted, noble fellow, who never turned his
back upon any body in distress, white or black, expressed his
readiness to help her. Aggie was much surprised when she found
that we knew her secret. She was rejoiced to hear of such a
chance for Fanny, and arrangements were made for her to go on
board the vessel the next night. They both supposed that I had
long been at the north, therefore my name was not mentioned in
the transaction. Fanny was carried on board at the appointed
time, and stowed away in a very small cabin. This accommodation had been purchased at a price that would pay for a voyage to
England. But when one proposes to go to fine old England, they
stop to calculate whether they can afford the cost of the pleasure;
while in making a bargain to escape from slavery, the trembling
victim is ready to say, "Take all I have, only don't betray me!"
The next morning I peeped through my loophole, and saw
that it was dark and cloudy. At night I received news that the
wind was ahead, and the vessel had not sailed. I was exceedingly
anxious about Fanny, and Peter too, who was running a tremendous risk at my instigation. Next day the wind and weather remained the same. Poor Fanny had been half dead with fright
when they carried her on board, and I could readily imagine how
she must be suffering now. Grandmother came often to my den,
to say how thankful she was I did not go. On the third morning
she rapped for me to come down to the storeroom. The poor old
sufferer was breaking down under her weight of trouble. She was
easily flurried now. I found her in a nervous, excited state, but I
was not aware that she had forgotten to lock the door behind
her, as usual. She was exceedingly worried about the detention of
the vessel. She was afraid all would be discovered, and then
Fanny, and Peter, and I, would all be tortured to death, and
Phillip would be utterly ruined, and her house would be torn
down. Poor Peter! If he should die such a horrible death as the

PREPARATIONS FOR ESCAPE

171

poor slave James had lately done, and all for his kindness in trying to help me, how dreadful it would be for us all! Alas, the
thought was familiar to me, and had sent many a sharp pang
through my heart. I tried to suppress my own anxiety, and speak
soothingly to her. She brought in some allusion to aunt Nancy,
the dear daughter she had recently buried, and then she lost all
control of herself. As she stood there, trembling and sobbing, a
voice from the piazza called out, "Whar is you, aunt Marthy?"
Grandmother was startled, and in her agitation opened the door,
without thinking of me. In stepped Jenny, the mischievous
housemaid, who had tried to enter my room, when I was concealed in the house of my white benefactress. ''I's bin huntin
ebery whar for you, aunt Marthy," said she. "My missis wants
you to send her some crackers." I had slunk down behind a barrel, which entirely screened me, but I imagined that Jenny was
looking directly at the spot, and my heart beat violently. My
grandmother immediately thought what she had done, and went
out quickly with Jenny to count the crackers, locking the door
after her. She returned to me, in a few minutes, the perfect picture of despair. "Poor child!" she exclaimed, "my carelessness
has ruined you. The boat ain't gone yet. Get ready immediately,
and go with Fanny. I ain't got another word to say against it
now; for there's no telling what may happen this day."
Uncle Phillip was sent for, and he agreed with his mother in
thinking that Jenny would inform Dr. Flint in less than twentyfour hours. He advised getting me on board the boat, if possible;
if not, I had better keep very still in my den, where they could
not find me without tearing the house down. He said it would
not do for him to move in the matter, because suspicion would
be immediately excited; but he promised to communicate with
Peter. I felt reluctant to apply to him again, having implicated
him too much already; but there seemed to be no alternative.
Vexed as Peter had been by my indecision, he was true to his
generous nature, and said at once that he would do his best to
help me, trusting I should show myself a stronger woman this
time.
He immediately proceeded to the wharf, and found that
the wind had shifted, and the vessel was slowly beating down

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

stream. On some pretext of urgent necessity, he offered two
boatmen a dollar apiece to catch up with her. He was of lighter
complexion than the boatmen he hired, and when the captain
saw them coming so rapidly, he thought officers were pursuing
his vessel in search of the runaway slave he had on board. They
hoisted sails, but the boat gained upon them, and the indefatigable Peter sprang on board.
The captain at once recognized him. Peter asked him to go below, to speak about a bad bill he had given him. When he told his
errand, the captain replied, "Why, the woman's here already; and
I've put her where you or the devil would have a tough job to
find her."
"But it is another woman I want to bring," said Peter. "She is
in great distress, too, and you shall be paid any thing within reason, if you'll stop and take her."
"What's her name?" inquired the captain.
"Linda," he replied.
"That's the name of the woman already here," rejoined the
captain. "By George! I believe you mean to betray me."
"O!" exclaimed Peter, "God knows I wouldn't harm a hair of
your head. I am too grateful to you. But there really is another
woman in great danger. Do have the humanity to stop and take
her.I "
After a while they came to an understanding. Fanny, not
dreaming I was any where about in that region, had assumed my
name, though she called herself Johnson. "Linda is a common
name," said Peter, "and the woman I want to bring is Linda
Brent."
The captain agreed to wait at a certain place till evening, being
handsomely paid for his detention.
Of course, the day was an anxious one for us all. But we concluded that if Jenny had seen me, she would be too wise to let
her mistress know of it; and that she probably would not get a
chance to see Dr. Flint's family till evening, for I knew very well
what were the rules in that household. I afterwards believed that
she did not see me; for nothing ever came of it, and she was one
of those base characters that would have jumped to betray a suffering fellow being for the sake of thirty pieces of silver.

PREPARATIONS FOR ESCAPE

173

I made all my arrangements to go on board as soon as it was
dusk. The intervening time I resolved to spend with my son. I
had not spoken to him for seven years, though I had been under
the same roof, and seen him every day, when I was well enough
to sit at the loophole. I did not dare to venture beyond the storeroom; so they brought him there, and locked us up together, in a
place concealed from the piazza door. It was an agitating interview for both of us. After we had talked and wept together for a
little while, he said, "Mother, I'm glad you're going away. I wish
I could go with you. I knew you was here; and I have been so
afraid they would come and catch you!"
I was greatly surprised, and asked him how he had found
it out.
He replied, "I was standing under the eaves, one day, before
Ellen went away, and I heard somebody cough up over the wood
shed. I don't know what made me think it was you, but I did
think so. I missed Ellen, the night before she went away; and
grandmother brought her back into the room in the night; and I
thought maybe she'd been to see you, before she went, for I
heard grandmother whisper to her, 'Now go to sleep; and re-

member never to tell.' "
I asked him if he ever mentioned his suspicions to his sister.
He said he never did; but after he heard the cough, if he saw her
playing with other children on that side of the house, he always
tried to coax her round to the other side, for fear they would
hear me cough, too. He said he had kept a close lookout for Dr.
Flint, and if he saw him speak to a constable, or a patrol, he always told grandmother. I now recollected that I had seen him
manifest uneasiness, when people were on that side of the house,
and I had at the time been puzzled to conjecture a motive for
his actions. Such prudence may seem extraordinary in a boy of
twelve years, but slaves, being surrounded by mysteries, deceptions, and dangers, early learn to be suspicious and watchful, and
prematurely cautious and cunning. He had never asked a question of grandmother, or uncle Phillip, and I had often heard him
chime in with other children, when they spoke of my being at
the north.
I told him I was now really going to the Free States, and if he

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

was a good honest boy, and a loving child to his dear old grandmother, the Lord would bless him, and bring him to me, and we
and Ellen would live together. He began to tell me that grandmother had not eaten any thing all day. While he was speaking,
the door was unlocked, and she came in with a small bag of
money, which she wanted me to take. I begged her to keep a part
of it, at least, to pay for Benny's being sent to the north; but she
insisted, while her tears were falling fast, that I should take the
whole. "You may be sick among strangers," she said, "and they
would send you to the poorhouse to die." Ah, that good grandmother!
For the last time I went up to my nook. Its desolate appearance no longer chilled me, for the light of hope had risen in my
soul. Yet, even with the blessed prospect of freedom before me, I
felt very sad at leaving forever that old homestead, where I had
been sheltered so long by the dear old grandmother; where I
had dreamed my first young dream of love; and where, after that
had faded away, my children came to twine themselves so closely
round my desolate heart. As the hour approached for me to
leave, I again descended to the storeroom. My grandmother and
Benny were there. She took me by the hand, and said, "Linda, let
us pray." We knelt down together, with my child pressed to my
heart, and my other arm round the faithful, loving old friend I
was about to leave forever. On no other occasion has it ever been
my lot to listen to so fervent a supplication for mercy and protection. It thrilled through my heart, and inspired me with trust
in God.
Peter was waiting for me in the street. I was soon by his side,
faint in body, but strong of purpose. I did not look back upon
the old place, though I felt that I should never see it again.

xxx
Northward Bound

I NEVER COULD TELL how we reached the wharf. My brain was
all of a whirl, and my limbs tottered under me. At an appointed
place we met my uncle Phillip, who had started before us on a
different route, that he might reach the wharf first, and give us
timely warning if there was any danger. A row-boat was in
readiness. As I was about to step in, I felt something pull me gently, and turning round I saw Benny, looking pale and anxious. He
whispered in my ear, "I've been peeping into the doctor's window, and he's at home. Good bye, mother. Don't cry; I'll come."
He hastened away. I clasped the hand of my good uncle, to
whom I owed so much, and of Peter, the brave, generous friend
who had volunteered to run such terrible risks to secure my
safety. To this day I remember how his bright face beamed with
joy, when he told me he had discovered a safe method for me to
escape. Yet that intelligent, enterprising, noble-hearted man was
a chattel! liable, by the laws of a country that calls itself civilized,
to be sold with horses and pigs! We parted in silence. Our hearts
were all too full for words!
Swiftly the boat glided over the water. After a while, one of
the sailors said, "Don't be down-hearted, madam. We will take
you safely to your husband, in ---." At first I could not
imagine what he meant; but I had presence of mind to think that
it probably referred to something the captain had told him; so I
thanked him, and said I hoped we should have pleasant weather.
When I entered the vessel the captain came forward to meet
me. He was an elderly man, with a pleasant countenance. He
showed me to a little box of a cabin, where sat my friend Fanny.
She started as if she had seen a spectre. She gazed on me in utter
astonishment, and exclaimed, "Linda, can this be you? or is it
your ghost?" When we were locked in each other's arms, my
175

176

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

overwrought feelings could no longer be restrained. My sobs
reached the ears of the captain, who came and very kindly reminded us, that for his safety, as well as our own, it would be
prudent for us not to attract any attention. He said that when
there was a sail in sight he wished us to keep below; but at other
times, he had no objection to our being on deck. He assured us
that he would keep a good lookout, and if we acted prudently, he
thought we should be in no danger. He had represented us as
women going to meet our husbands in - - - . We thanked him,
and promised to observe carefully all the directions he gave us.
Fanny and I now talked by ourselves, low and quietly, in our
little cabin. She told me of the sufferings she had gone through in
making her escape, and of her terrors while she was concealed in
her mother's house. Above all, she dwelt on the agony of separation from all her children on that dreadful auction day. She could
scarcely credit me, when I told her of the place where I had
passed nearly seven years. "We have the same sorrows," said 1.
"No," replied she, "you are going to see your children soon, and
there is no hope that I shall ever even hear from mine."
The vessel was soon under way, but we made slow progress.
The wind was against us. I should not have cared for this, if we
had been out of sight of the town; but until there were miles of
water between us and our enemies, we were filled with constant
apprehensions that the constables would come on board. Neither
could I feel quite at ease with the captain and his men. I was an
entire stranger to that class of people, and I had heard that sailors
were rough, and sometimes cruel. We were so completely in
their power, that if they were bad men, our situation would be
dreadful. Now that the captain was paid for our passage,' might
he not be tempted to make more money by giving us up to those
who claimed us as property? I was naturally of a confiding disposition, but slavery had made me suspicious of every body.
Fanny did not share my distrust of the captain or his men. She
said she was afraid at first, but she had been on board three days
while the vessel lay in the dock, and nobody had betrayed her, or
treated her otherwise than kindly.
The captain soon came to advise us to go on deck for fresh air.
His friendly and respectful manner, combined with Fanny's tes-

NORTHWARD BOUND

177

timony, reassured me, and we went with him. He placed us in a
comfortable seat, and occasionally entered into conversation. He
told us he was a Southerner by birth, and had spent the greater
part of his life in the Slave States, and that he had recently lost a
brother who traded in slaves. "But," said he, "it is a pitiable and
degrading business, and I always felt ashamed to acknowledge
my brother in connection with it." As we passed Snaky Swamp,
he pointed to it, and said, "There is a slave territory that defies all
the laws." I thought of the terrible days I had spent there, and
though it was not called Dismal Swamp, it made me feel very dismal as I looked at it.
I shall never forget that night. The balmy air of spring was so
refreshing! And how shall I describe my sensations when we
were fairly sailing on Chesapeake Bay? 0, the beautiful sunshine! the exhilarating breeze! and I could enjoy them without
fear or restraint. I had never realized what grand things air and
sunlight are till I had been deprived of them.
Ten days after we left land we were approaching Philadelphia.
The captain said we should arrive there in the night, but he
thought we had better wait till morning, and go on shore in
broad daylight, as the best way to avoid suspicion.
I replied, "You know best. But will you stay on board and
protect us?"
He saw that I was suspicious, and he said he was sorry, now
that he had brought us to the end of our voyage, to find I had so
little confidence in him. Ah, if he had ever been a slave he would
have known how difficult it was to trust a white man. He assured
us that we might sleep through the night without fear; that he
would take care we were not left unprotected. Be it said to the
honor of this captain, Southerner as he was, that if Fanny and I
had been white ladies, and our passage lawfully engaged, he
could not have treated us more respectfully. My intelligent
friend, Peter, had rightly estimated the character of the man to
whose honor he had intrusted us.
The next morning I was on deck as soon as the day dawned. I
called Fanny to see the sun rise, for the first time in our lives, on
free soil; for such I then believed it to be. We watched the reddening sky, and saw the great orb come up slowly out of the wa-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

ter, as it seemed. Soon the waves began to sparkle, and every
thing caught the beautiful glow. Before us lay the city of
strangers. We looked at each other, and the eyes of both were
moistened with tears. We had escaped from slavery, and we supposed ourselves to be safe from the hunters. But we were alone
in the world, and we had left dear ties behind us; ties cruelly sundered by the demon Slavery.'

XXXI

Incidents in Philadelphia

I HAD HEARD THAT the poor slave had many friends at the
north. I trusted we should find some of them. Meantime, we
would take it for granted that all were friends, till they proved to
the contrary. I sought out the kind captain, thanked him for his
attentions, and told him I should never cease to be grateful for
the service he had rendered us. I gave him a message to the
friends I had left at home, and he promised to deliver it. We were
placed in a row-boat, and in about fifteen minutes were landed
on a wood wharf in Philadelphia. As I stood looking round, the
friendly captain touched me on the shoulder, and said, "There is
a respectable-looking colored man behind you. I will speak to
him about the New York trains, and tell him you wish to go directly on." I thanked him, and asked him to direct me to some
shops where I could buy gloves and veils. He did so, and said he
would talk with the colored man till I returned. I made what
haste I could. Constant exercise on board the vessel, and frequent rubbing with salt water, had nearly restored the use of my
limbs. The noise of the great city confused me, but I found the
shops, and bought some double veils and gloves for Fanny and
myself. The shopman told me they were so many levies.' I had
never heard the word before, but I did not tell him so. I thought
if he knew I was a stranger he might ask me where I came from.
I gave him a gold piece, and when he returned the change, I
counted it, and found out how much a levy was. I made my way
back to the wharf, where the captain introduced me to the colored man, as the Rev. Jeremiah Durham," minister of Bethel
church. He took me by the hand, as if I had been an old friend.
He told us we were too late for the morning cars? to New York,
and must wait until the evening, or the next morning. He invited
me to go home with him, assuring me that his wife would give
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INCID E NTS I N THE LIFE OF A SLA VE GIRL

me a cordial welcome; and for my friend he would provide a
home with one of his neighbors. 1 thanked him for so much
kindness to strangers, and told him if 1 must be detained, 1
should like to hunt up some people who formerly went from our
part of the country. Mr. Durham insisted that I should dine with
him, and then he would assist me in finding my friends. The
sailors came to bid us good bye. I shook their hardy hands, with
tears in my eyes. They had all been kind to us, and they had rendered us a greater service than they could possibly conceive of.
1 had never seen so large a city, or been in contact with so
many people in the streets. It seemed as if those who passed
looked at us with an expression of curiosity. My face was so blistered and peeled, by sitting on deck, in wind and sunshine, that I
thought they could not easily decide to what nation I belonged.
Mrs. Durham met me with a kindly welcome, without asking
any questions. I was tired, and her friendly manner was a sweet
refreshment. God bless her! 1 was sure that she had comforted
other weary hearts, before 1 received her sympathy. She was surrounded by her husband and children, in a home made sacred by
protecting laws. 1 thought of my own children, and sighed.
After dinner Mr. Durham went with me in quest of the
friends 1 had spoken of. They went from my native town, and 1
anticipated much pleasure in looking on familiar faces. They
were not at home, and we retraced our steps through streets delightfully clean. On the way, Mr. Durham observed that 1 had
spoken to him of a daughter 1 expected to meet; that he was surprised, for I looked so young he had taken me for a single
woman. He was approaching a subject on which I was extremely
sensitive. He would ask about my husband next, I thought, and
if 1 answered him truly, what would he think of me? I told him I
had two children, one in New York, the other at the south. He
asked some further questions, and I frankly told him some of the
most important events of my life. It was painful for me to do it;
but I would not deceive him. If he was desirous of being my
friend, 1 thought he ought to know how far I was worthy of it.
"Excuse me, if I have tried your feelings," said he. "1 did not
question you from idle curiosity. I wanted to understand your
situation, in order to know whether I could be of any service to

INCIDENTS IN PHILADELPHIA

181

you, or your little girl. Your straight-forward answers do you
credit; but don't answer every body so openly. It might give
some heartless people a pretext for treating you with contempt."
That word contempt burned me like coals of fire. I replied,
"God alone knows how I have suffered; and He, I trust, will forgive me. If I am permitted to have my children, I intend to be a
good mother, and to live in such a manner that people cannot
treat me with contempt."
"I respect your sentiments," said he. "Place your trust in God,
and be governed by good principles, and you will not fail to find
friends."
When we reached home, I went to my room, glad to shut out
the world for a while. The words he had spoken made an indelible impression upon me. They brought up great shadows from
the mournful past. In the midst of my meditations I was startled
by a knock at the door. Mrs. Durham entered, her face all beaming with kindness, to say that there was an anti-slavery friend
down stairs, who would like to see me. I overcame my dread of
encountering strangers, and went with her. Many questions were
asked concerning my experiences, and my escape from slavery;
but I observed how careful they all were not to say any thing
that might wound my feelings. How gratifying this was, can be
fully understood only by those who have been accustomed to be
treated as if they were not included within the pale of human beings. The anti-slavery friend had come to inquire into my plans,
and to offer assistance, if needed. Fanny was comfortably established, for the present, with a friend of Mr. Durham. The AntiSlavery Society agreed to pay her expenses to New York. The
same was offered to me, but I declined to accept it; telling them
that my grandmother had given me sufficient to pay my expenses
to the end of my journey. We were urged to remain in Philadelphia a few days, until some suitable escort could be found for us.
I gladly accepted the proposition, for I had a dread of meeting
slaveholders, and some dread also of railroads. I had never entered a railroad car in my life, and it seemed to me quite an important event.
That night I sought my pillow with feelings I had never carried to it before. I verily believed myself to be a free woman. I

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

was wakeful for a long time, and I had no sooner fallen asleep,
than I was roused by fire-bells. I jumped up, and hurried on my
clothes. Where I came from, every body hastened to dress themselves on such occasions. The white people thought a great fire
might be used as a good opportunity for insurrection, and that it
was best to be in readiness; and the colored people were ordered
out to labor in extinguishing the flames. There was but one engine in our town, and calored women and children were often
required to drag it to the river's edge and fill it. Mrs. Durham's
daughter slept in the same room with me, and seeing that she
slept through all the din, I thought it was my duty to wake her.
"What's the matter?" said she, rubbing her eyes.
"They're screaming fire in the streets, and the bells are ringing," I replied.
"What of that?" said she, drowsily. "We are used to it. We
never get up, without the fire is very near. What good would
it do?"
I was quite surprised that it was not necessary for us to go
and help fill the engine. I was an ignorant child, just beginning to
learn how things went on in great cities.
At daylight, I heard women crying fresh fish, berries,
radishes, and various other things. All this was new to me. I
dressed myself at an early hour, and sat at the window to watch
that unknown tide of life. Philadelphia seemed to me a wonderfully great place. At the breakfast table, my idea of going out to
drag the engine was laughed over, and I joined in the mirth.
I went to see Fanny, and found her so well contented among
her new friends that she was in no haste to leave. I was also very
happy with my kind hostess. She had had advantages for education, and was vastly my superior. Every day, almost every hour,
I was adding to my little stock of knowledge. She took me out to
see the city as much as she deemed prudent. One day she took
me to an artist's room, and showed me the portraits of some of
her children. I had never seen any paintings of calored people
before, and they seemed to me beautiful.
At the end of five days, one of Mrs. Durham's friends offered
to accompany us to New York the following morning. As I held
the hand of my good hostess in a parting clasp, I longed to know

INCIDENTS IN PHILADELPHIA

183

whether her husband had repeated to her what I had told him. I
supposed he had, but she never made any allusion to it. I presume it was the delicate silence of womanly sympathy.
When Mr. Durham handed us our tickets, he said, "I am
afraid you will have a disagreeable ride; but I could not procure
tickets for the first-class cars."
Supposing I had not given him money enough, I offered
more. "0, no," said he, "they could not be had for any money.
They don't allow colored people to go in the first-class cars."?
This was the first chill to my enthusiasm about the Free
States. Colored people were allowed to ride in a filthy box, behind white people, at the south, but there they were not required
to pay for the privilege. It made me sad to find how the north
aped the customs of slavery.
We were stowed away in a large, rough car, with windows on
each side, too high for us to look out without standing up. It was
crowded with people, apparently of all nations. There were
plenty of beds and cradles, containing screaming and kicking babies. Every other man had a cigar or pipe in his mouth, and jugs
of whiskey were handed round freely. The fumes of the whiskey
and the dense tobacco smoke were sickening to my senses, and
my mind was equally nauseated by the coarse jokes and ribald
songs around me. It was a very disagreeable ride. Since that time
there has been some improvement in these matters.

XXXII

The Meeting of Mother and Daughter

WHEN WE ARRIVED IN New York, I was half crazed by the
crowd of coachmen calling out, "Carriage, ma'am?" We bargained with one to take us to Sullivan Street for twelve shillings.'
A burly Irishman stepped up and said, "I'll tak' yo for sax
shillings." The reduction of half the price was an object to us,
and we asked if he could take us right away. "Troth an I will,
ladies," he replied. I noticed that the hackmen smiled at each
other, and I inquired whether his conveyance was decent. "Yes,
it's dacent it is, marm. Devil a bit would I be after takin' ladies in
a cab that was not dacent. " We gave him our checks. He went for
the baggage, and soon reappeared, saying, "This way, if you
plase, ladies." We followed, and found our trunks on a truck,
and we were invited to take our seats on them. We told him that
was not what we bargained for, and he must take the trunks off.
He swore they should not be touched till we had paid him six
shillings. In our situation it was not prudent to attract attention,
and I was about to pay him what he required, when a man near
by shook his head for me not to do it. After a great ado we got
rid of the Irishman, and had our trunks fastened on a hack. We
had been recommended to a boarding-house in Sullivan Street,
and thither we drove. There Fanny and I separated. The AntiSlavery Society provided a home for her, and I afterwards heard
of her in prosperous circumstances. I sent for an old friend from
my part of the country, who had for some time been doing business in New York. He came immediately. I told him I wanted to
go to my daughter, and asked him to aid me in procuring an interview.
I cautioned him not to let it be known to the family that I had
just arrived from the south, because they supposed I had been at

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THE MEETING OF MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

185

the north seven years. He told me there was a colored woman in
Brooklyn who came from the same town I did, and I had better
go to her house, and have my daughter meet me there. I accepted
the proposition thankfully, and he agreed to escort me to Brooklyn. We crossed Fulton ferry.? went up Myrtle Avenue, and
stopped at the house he designated. I was just about to enter,
when two girls passed. My friend called my attention to them. I
turned, and recognized in the eldest, Sarah, the daughter of a
woman who used to live with my grandmother, but who had left
the south years ago. Surprised and rejoiced at this unexpected
meeting, I threw my arms round her, and inquired concerning
her mother.
"You take no notice of the other girl," said my friend. I
turned, and there stood my Ellen! I pressed her to my heart, then
held her away from me to take a look at her. She had changed a
good deal in the two years since I parted from her. Signs of neglect could be discerned by eyes less observing than a mother's.
My friend invited us all to go into the house; but Ellen said she
had been sent of an errand, which she would do as quickly as
possible, and go home and ask Mrs. Hobbs to let her come and
see me. It was agreed that I should send for her the next day. Her
companion, Sarah, hastened to tell her mother of my arrival.
When I entered the house, I found the mistress of it absent, and I
waited for her return. Before I saw her, I heard her saying,
"Where is Linda Brent? I used to know her father and mother."
Soon Sarah came with her mother. So there was quite a company
of us, all from my grandmother's neighborhood. These friends
gathered round me and questioned me eagerly. They laughed,
they cried, and they shouted. They thanked God that I had got
away from my persecutors and was safe on Long Island. It was a
day of great excitement. How different from the silent days I had
passed in my dreary den!
The next morning was Sunday. My first waking thoughts
were occupied with the note I was to send to Mrs. Hobbs, the
lady with whom Ellen lived. That I had recently come into that
vicinity was evident; otherwise I should have sooner inquired for
my daughter. It would not do to let them know I had just arrived

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

from the south, for that would involve the suspicion of my having been harbored there, and might bring trouble, if not ruin, on
several people.
1 like a straight-forward course, and am always reluctant to
resort to subterfuges. So far as my ways have been crooked, 1
charge them all upon slavery. It was that system of violence and
wrong which now left me no alternative but to enact a falsehood.
1 began my note by stating that 1 had recently arrived from
Canada, and was very desirous to have my daughter come to see
me. She came and brought a message from Mrs. Hobbs, inviting
me to her house, and assuring me that 1 need not have any fears.
The conversation 1 had with my child did not leave my mind at
ease. When 1 asked if she was well treated, she answered yes; but
there was no heartiness in the tone, and it seemed to me that she
said it from an unwillingness to have me troubled on her account. Before she left me, she asked very earnestly, "Mother,
when will you take me to live with you?" It made me sad to
think that 1 could not give her a home till 1 went to work and
earned the means; and that might take me a long time. When she
was placed with Mrs. Hobbs, the agreement was that she should
be sent to school. She had been there two years, and was now
nine years old, and she scarcely knew her letters. There was no
excuse for this, for there were good public schools in Brooklyn,
to which she could have been sent without expense.
She staid with me till dark, and 1 went home with her. 1 was
received in a friendly manner by the family, and all agreed in saying that Ellen was a useful, good girl. Mrs. Hobbs looked me
coolly in the face, and said, "1 suppose you know that my cousin,
Mr. Sands, has given her to my eldest daughter. She will make a
nice waiting-maid for her when she grows up." I did not answer
a word. How could she, who knew by experience the strength of
a mother's love, and who was perfectly aware of the relation Mr.
Sands bore to my children,-how could she look me in the face,
while she thrust such a dagger into my heart?
1 was no longer surprised that they had kept her in such a
state of ignorance. Mr. Hobbs had formerly been wealthy, but he
had failed, and afterwards obtained a subordinate situation in the
Custom House. Perhaps they expected to return to the south

THE MEETING OF MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

187

some day; and Ellen's knowledge was quite sufficient for a
slave's condition. I was impatient to go to work and earn money,
that I might change the uncertain position of my children. Mr.
Sands had not kept his promise to emancipate them. I had also
been deceived about Ellen. What security had I with regard to
Benjamin? I felt that I had none.
I returned to my friend's house in an uneasy state of mind. In
order to protect my children, it was necessary that I should own
myself. I called myself free, and sometimes felt so; but I knew I
was insecure. I sat down that night and wrote a civil letter to Dr.
Flint, asking him to state the lowest terms on which he would
sell me; and as I belonged by law to his daughter, I wrote to her
also, making a similar request.
Since my arrival at the north I had not been unmindful of my
dear brother William. I had made diligent inquiries for him, and
having heard of him in Boston, I went thither. When I arrived
there, I found he had gone to New Bedford.' I wrote to that
place, and was informed he had gone on a whaling voyage, and
would not return for some months. I went back to New York to
get employment near Ellen. I received an answer from Dr. Flint,
which gave me no encouragement. He advised me to return and
submit myself to my rightful owners, and then any request I
might make would be granted. I lent this letter to a friend, who
lost it; otherwise I would present a copy to my readers.

XXXIII

A Home Found

My GREATEST ANXIETY NOW was to obtain employment. My
health was greatly improved, though my limbs continued to
trouble me with swelling whenever I walked much. The greatest
difficulty in my way was, that those who employed strangers required a recommendation; and in my peculiar position, I could,
of course, obtain no certificates from the families I had so faithfully served.
One day an acquaintance told me of a lady who wanted a
nurse for her babe, and I immediately applied for the situation.
The lady told me she preferred to have one who had been a
mother, and accustomed to the care of infants. I told her I had
nursed two babes of my own. She asked me many questions, but,
to my great relief, did not require a recommendation from my
former employers. She told me she was an English woman, 1 and
that was a pleasant circumstance to me, because I had heard they
had less prejudice against calor than Americans entertained. It
was agreed that we should try each other for a week. The trial
proved satisfactory to both parties, and I was engaged for a
month.
The heavenly Father had been most merciful to me in leading
me to this place. Mrs. Bruce was a kind and gentle lady, and
proved a true and sympathizing friend. Before the stipulated
month expired, the necessity of passing up and down stairs
frequently, caused my limbs to swell so painfully, that I became
unable to perform my duties. Many ladies would have thoughtlessly discharged me; but Mrs. Bruce made arrangements to save
me steps, and employed a physician to attend upon me. I had not
yet told her that I was a fugitive slave. She noticed that I was often sad, and kindly inquired the cause. I spoke of being separated
from my children, and from relatives who were dear to me; but I
188

A HOME FOUND

189

did not mention the constant feeling of insecurity which oppressed my spirits. I longed for some onc to confide in; but I had
been so deceived by white people, that I had lost all confidence
in them. If they spoke kind words to me, I thought it was for
some selfish purpose. I had entered this family with the distrustful feelings I had brought with me out of slavery; but ere six
months had passed, I found that the gentle deportment of Mrs.
Bruce and the smiles of her lovely babe were thawing my chilled
heart. My narrow mind also began to expand under the influences of her intelligent conversation, and the opportunities for
reading, which were gladly allowed me whenever I had leisure
from my duties. I gradually became more energetic and more
cheerful.
The old feeling of insecurity, especially with regard to my
children, often threw its dark shadow across my sunshine. Mrs.
Bruce offered me a home for Ellen; but pleasant as it would have
been, I did not dare to accept it, for fear of offending the Hobbs
family. Their knowledge of my precarious situation placed me in
their power; and I felt that it was important for me to keep on
the right side of them, till, by dint of labor and economy, I could
make a home for my children. I was far from feeling satisfied
with Elleri's situation. She was not well cared for. She sometimes
came to New York to visit me; but she generally brought a request from Mrs. Hobbs that I would buy her a pair of shoes, or
some article of clothing. This was accompanied by a promise of
payment when Mr. Hobbs's salary at the Custom House became
due; but some how or other the pay-day never came. Thus many
dollars of my earnings were expended to keep my child comfortably clothed. That, however, was a slight trouble, compared with
the fear that their pecuniary embarrassments might induce them
to sell my precious young daughter. I knew they were in constant communication with Southerners, and had frequent opportunities to do it. I have stated that when Dr. Flint put Ellen in
jail, at two years old, she had an inflammation of the eyes, occasioned by measles. This disease still troubled her; and kind Mrs.
Bruce proposed that she should come to New York for a while,
to be under the care of Dr. Elliott, a well known oculist. It did
not occur to me that there was any thing improper in a mother's

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

making such a request; but Mrs. Hobbs was very angry, and refused to let her go. Situated as I was, it was not politic to insist
upon it. I made no complaint, but I longed to be entirely free to
act a mother's part towards my children. The next time I went
over to Brooklyn, Mrs. Hobbs, as if to apologize for her anger,
told me she had employed her own physician to attend to Ellen's
eyes, and that she had refused my request because she did not
consider it safe to trust her in New York. I accepted the explanation in silence; but she had told me that my child belonged to her
daughter, and I suspected that her real motive was a fear of my
conveying her property away from her. Perhaps I did her injustice; but my knowledge of Southerners made it difficult for me to
feel otherwise.
Sweet and bitter were mixed in the cup of my life, and I was
thankful that it had ceased to be entirely bitter. I loved Mrs.
Bruce's babe. When it laughed and crowed in my face, and
twined its little tender arms confidingly about my neck, it made
me think of the time when Benny and Ellen were babies, and my
wounded heart was soothed. One bright morning, as I stood at
the window, tossing the baby in my arms, my attention was attracted by a young man in sailor's dress, who was closely observing every house as he passed. I looked at him earnestly.
Could it be my brother William? It must be he-and yet, how
changed! I placed the baby safely, flew down stairs, opened the
front door, beckoned to the sailor, and in less than a minute I
was clasped in my brother's arms. How much we had to tell each
other! How we laughed, and how we cried, over each other's adventures! I took him to Brooklyn, and again saw him with Ellen,
the dear child whom he had loved and tended so carefully, while
I was shut up in my miserable den. He staid in New York a
week. His old feelings of affection for me and Ellen were as
lively as ever. There are no bonds so strong as those which are
formed by suffering together.

XXXIV

The Old Enemy Again

My YOUNG MISTRESS, MISS Emily Flint, did not return any answer to my letter requesting her to consent to my being sold. But
after a while, I received a reply, which purported to be written
by her younger brother. In order rightly to enjoy the contents of
this letter, the reader must bear in mind that the Flint family supposed I had been at the north many years. They had no idea that
I knew of the doctor's three excursions to N ew York in search of
me; that I had heard his voice, when he came to borrow five hundred dollars for that purpose; and that I had seen him pass on his
way to the steamboat. Neither were they aware that all the particulars of aunt Nancy's death and burial were conveyed to me at
the time they occurred. I have kept the letter, of which I herewith subjoin a copy:"Your letter to sister was received a few days ago. I gather
from it that you are desirous of returning to your native place,
among your friends and relatives. We were all gratified with the
contents of your letter; and let me assure you that if any members of the family have had any feeling of resentment towards
you, they feel it no longer. We all sympathize with you in your
unfortunate condition, and are ready to do all in our power to
make you contented and happy. It is difficult for you to return
home as a free person. If you were purchased by your grandmother, it is doubtful whether you would be permitted to remain, although it would be lawful for you to do so. If a servant
should be allowed to purchase herself, after absenting herself so
long from her owners, and return free, it would have an injurious
effect. From your letter, I think your situation must be hard and
uncomfortable. Come home. You have it in your power to be reinstated in our affections. We would receive you with open arms
and tears of joy. You need not apprehend any unkind treatment,
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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

as we have not put ourselves to any trouble or expense to get
you. Had we done so, perhaps we should feel otherwise. You
know my sister was always attached to you, and that you were
never treated as a slave. You were never put to hard work, nor
exposed to field labor. On the contrary, you were taken into the
house, and treated as one of us, and almost as free; and we, at
least, felt that you were above disgracing yourself by running
away. Believing you may be induced to come home voluntarily
has induced me to write for my sister. The family will be rejoiced
to see you; and your poor old grandmother expressed a great desire to have you come, when she heard your letter read. In her
old age she needs the consolation of having her children round
her. Doubtless you have heard of the death of your aunt. She was
a faithful servant, and a faithful member of the Episcopal church.
In her Christian life she taught us how to live-and, 0, too high
the price of knowledge, she taught us how to die! Could you
have seen us round her death bed, with her mother, all mingling
our tears in one common stream, you would have thought the
same heartfelt tie existed between a master and his servant, as between a mother and her child. But this subject is too painful to
dwell upon. I must bring my letter to a close. If you are contented to stay away from your old grandmother, your child, and
the friends who love you, stay where you are. We shall never
trouble ourselves to apprehend you. But should you prefer to
come home, we will do all that we can to make you happy. If
you do not wish to remain in the family, I know that father, by
our persuasion, will be induced to let you be purchased by any
person you may choose in our community. You will please answer this as soon as possible, and let us know your decision. Sister sends much love to you. In the mean time believe me your
sincere friend and well wisher."
This letter was signed by Emily's brother, who was as yet a
mere lad. I knew, by the style, that it was not written by a person
of his age, and though the writing was disguised, I had been
made too unhappy by it, in former years, not to recognize at
once the hand of Dr. Flint. 0, the hypocrisy of slaveholders! Did
the old fox suppose I was goose enough to go into such a trap?
Verily, he relied too much on "the stupidity of the African race."

THE OLD ENEMY AGAIN

193

I did not return the family of Flints any thanks for their cordial
invitation-a remissness for which I was, no doubt, charged with
base ingratitude.
Not long afterwards I received a letter from one of my friends
at the south, informing me that Dr. Flint was about to visit the
north. The letter had been delayed, and I supposed he might be
already on the way. Mrs. Bruce did not know I was a fugitive. I
told her that important business called me to Boston, where my
brother then was, and asked permission to bring a friend to supply my place as nurse, for a fortnight. I started on my journey
immediately; and as soon as I arrived, I wrote to my grandmother that if Benny came, he must be sent to Boston. I knew
she was only waiting for a good chance to send him north, and,
fortunately, she had the legal power to do so, without asking
leave of any body. She was a free woman; and when my children
were purchased, Mr. Sands preferred to have the bill of sale
drawn up in her name. It was conjectured that he advanced the
money, but it was not known. At the south, a gentleman may
have a shoal of colored children without any disgrace; but if he is
known to purchase them, with the view of setting them free, the
example is thought to be dangerous to their "peculiar institution," and he becomes unpopular.
There was a good opportunity to send Benny in a vessel coming directly to New York. He was put on board with a letter to a
friend, who was requested to see him off to Boston. Early one
morning, there was a loud rap at my door, and in rushed Benjamin, all out of breath. "0 mother!" he exclaimed, "here I am! I
run all the way; and I come all alone. How d'you do?"
o reader, can you imagine my joy? No, you cannot, unless
you have been a slave-mother. Benjamin rattled away as fast as
his tongue could go. "Mother, why don't you bring Ellen here? I
went over to Brooklyn to see her, and she felt very bad when
I bid her good bye. She said, '0 Ben, I wish I was going too.' I
thought she'd know ever so much; but she don't know so much
as I do; for I can read, and she can't. And, mother, I lost all my
clothes coming. What can I do to get some more? I 'spose free
boys can get along here at the north as well as white boys."
I did not like to tell the sanguine, happy little fellow how

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

much he was mistaken. I took him to a tailor, and procured a
change of clothes. The rest of the day was spent in mutual asking
and answering of questions, with the wish constantly repeated
that the good old grandmother was with us, and frequent injunctions from Benny to write to her immediately, and be sure to tell
her every thing about his voyage, and his journey to Boston.
Dr. Flint made his visit to New York, and made every exertion to call upon me, and invite me to return with him; but not
being able to ascertain where I was, his hospitable intentions
were frustrated, and the affectionate family, who were waiting
for me with "open arms," were doomed to disappointment.
As soon as I knew he was safely at home, I placed Benjamin
in the care of my brother William, and returned to Mrs. Bruce.
There I remained through the winter and spring, endeavoring to
perform my duties faithfully, and finding a good degree of happiness in the attractions of baby Mary, the considerate kindness
of her excellent mother, and occasional interviews with my darling daughter.
But when summer came, the old feeling of insecurity haunted
me. It was necessary for me to take little Mary out daily, for exercise and fresh air, and the city was swarming with Southerners,
some of whom might recognize me. Hot weather brings out
snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous
creatures as little as I do the other. What a comfort it is, to be
free to say so!

xxxv
Prejudice Against Color

IT WAS A RELIEF to my mind to see preparations for leaving the
city. We went to Albany in the steamboat Knickerbocker. When
the going sounded for tea, Mrs. Bruce said, "Linda, it is late, and
you and baby had better come to the table with me." I replied, "I
know it is time baby had her supper, but I had rather not go with
you, if you please. I am afraid of being insulted." "0 no, not if
you are with me," she said. I saw several white nurses go with
their ladies, and I ventured to do the same. We were at the extreme end of the table. I was no sooner seated, than a gruff voice
said, "Get up ! You know you are not allowed to sit here." I
looked up, and, to my astonishment and indignation, saw that
the speaker was a colored man. If his office required him to enforce the by-laws of the boat, he might, at least, have done it politely. I replied, "I shall not get up, unless the captain comes and
takes me up." No cup of tea was offered me, but Mrs. Bruce
handed me hers and called for another. I looked to see whether
the other nurses were treated in a similar manner. They were all
properly waited on.
Next morning, when we stopped at Troy for breakfast, every
body was making a rush for the table. Mrs. Bruce said, "Take my
arm, Linda, and we'll go in together." The landlord heard her,
and said, "Madam, will you allow your nurse and baby to take
breakfast with my family?" I knew this was to be attributed to
my complexion; but he spoke courteously, and therefore I did
not mind it.
At Saratoga' we found the United States Hotel crowded, and
Mr. Bruce took one of the cottages belonging to the hotel. I had
thought, with gladness, of going to the quiet of the country,
where I should meet few people, but here I found myself in the
midst of a swarm of Southerners. I looked round me with fear
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INCiDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

and trembling, dreading to see some one who would recognize
me. I was rejoiced to find that we were to stay but a short time.
We soon returned to New York, to make arrangements for
spending the remainder of the summer at Rockaway.i While the
laundress was putting the clothes in order, I took an opportunity
to go over to Brooklyn to see Ellen. I met her going to a grocery
store, and the first words she said, were, "0, mother, don't go to
Mrs. Hobbs's, Her brother, Mr. Thorne, has come from the
south, and may be he'll tell where you are." I accepted the warning. I told her I was going away with Mrs. Bruce the next day,
and would try to see her when I came back.
Being in servitude to the Anglo-Saxon race, I was not put into
a "Jim Crow car," on our way to Rockaway, neither was I invited to ride through the streets on the top of trunks in a truck;
but every where I found the same manifestations of that cruel
prejudice, which so discourages the feelings, and represses the
energies of the colored people. We reached Rockaway before
dark, and put up at the Pavilion-a large hotel, beautifully situated by the sea-side-a great resort of the fashionable world.
Thirty or forty nurses were there, of a great variety of nations.
Some of the ladies had colored waiting-maids and coachmen, but
I was the only nurse tinged with the blood of Africa. When the
tea bell rang, I took little Mary and followed the other nurses.
Supper was served in a long hall. A young man, who had the ordering of things, took the circuit of the table two or three times,
and finally pointed me to a seat at the lower end of it. As there
was but one chair, I sat down and took the child in my lap.
Whereupon the young man came to me and said, in the blandest
manner possible, "Will you please to seat the little girl in the
chair, and stand behind it and feed her? After they have done,
you will be shown to the kitchen, where you will have a good
supper."
This was the climax! I found it hard to preserve my selfcontrol, when I looked round, and saw women who were nurses,
as I was, and only one shade lighter in complexion, eyeing me
with a defiant look, as if my presence were a contamination.
However, I said nothing. I quietly took the child in my arms,
went to our room, and refused to go to the table again. Mr.

PREJUDICE AGAINST COLOR

197

Bruce ordered meals to be sent to the room for little Mary and I.
This answered for a few days; but the waiters of the establishment were white, and they soon began to complain, saying they
were not hired to wait on negroes. The landlord requested Mr.
Bruce to send me down to my meals, because his servants rebelled against bringing them up, and the colored servants of
other boarders were dissatisfied because all were not treated
alike.
My answer was that the colored servants ought to be dissatisfied with themselves, for not having too much self-respect to
submit to such treatment; that there was no difference in the
price of board for colored and white servants, and there was no
justification for difference of treatment. I staid a month after this,
and finding I was resolved to stand up for my rights, they concluded to treat me well. Let every colored man and woman do
this, and eventually we shall cease to be trampled under foot by
our oppressors.

XXXVI

The H airbreadth Escape

AFTER WE RETURNED TO New York, I took the earliest opportunity to go and see Ellen. I asked to have her called down stairs;
for I supposed Mrs. Hobbs's southern brother might still be
there, and I was desirous to avoid seeing him, if possible. But
Mrs. Hobbs came to the kitchen, and insisted on my going up
stairs. "My brother wants to see you," said she, "and he is sorry
you seem to shun him. He knows you are living in New York.
He told me to say to you that he owes thanks to good old aunt
Martha for too many little acts of kindness for him to be base
enough to betray her grandchild."
This Mr. Thorne' had become poor and reckless long before
he left the south, and such persons had much rather go to one of
the faithful old slaves to borrow a dollar, or get a good dinner,
than to go to one whom they consider an equal. It was such acts
of kindness as these for which he professed to feel grateful to my
grandmother. I wished he had kept at a distance, but as he was
here, and knew where I was, I concluded there was nothing to be
gained by trying to avoid him; on the contrary, it might be the
means of exciting his ill will. I followed his sister up stairs. He
met me in a very friendly manner, congratulated me on my escape from slavery, and hoped I had a good place, where I felt
happy.
I continued to visit Ellen as often as I could. She, good
thoughtful child, never forgot my hazardous situation, but always kept a vigilant lookout for my safety. She never made any
complaint about her own inconveniences and troubles; but a
mother's observing eye easily perceived that she was not happy.
On the occasion of one of my visits I found her unusually serious. When I asked her what was the matter, she said nothing was
the matter. But I insisted upon knowing what made her look so
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THE HAIRBREADTH ESCAPE

199

very grave. Finally, I ascertained that she felt troubled about the
dissipation that was continually going on in the house. She was
sent to the store very often for rum and brandy, and she felt
ashamed to ask for it so often; and Mr. Hobbs and Mr. Thorne
drank a great deal, and their hands trembled so that they had to
call her to pour out the liquor for them. "But for all that," said
she, "Mr. Hobbs is good to me, and I can't help liking him. I feel
sorry for him." I tried to comfort her, by telling her that I had
laid up a hundred dollars, and that before long I hoped to be able
to give her and Benjamin a home, and send them to school. She
was always desirous not to add to my troubles more than she
could help, and 1 did not discover till years afterwards that Mr.
Thorne's intemperance was not the only annoyance she suffered
from him. Though he professed too much gratitude to my
grandmother to injure any of her descendants, he had poured
vile language into the ears of her innocent great-grandchild.
I usually went to Brooklyn to spend Sunday afternoon. One
Sunday, I found Ellen anxiously waiting for me near the house.
"0, mother," said she, "I've been waiting for you this long
time. I'm afraid Mr. Thorne has written to tell Dr. Flint where
you are. Make haste and come in. Mrs. Hobbs will tell you all
about it!"
The story was soon told. While the children were playing in
the grape-vine arbor, the day before, Mr. Thorne came out with
a letter in his hand, which he tore up and scattered about. Ellen
was sweeping the yard at the time, and having her mind full of
suspicions of him, she picked up the pieces and carried them to
the children, saying, "1 wonder who Mr. Thorne has been writing to."
"I'm sure I don't know, and don't care," replied the oldest of
the children; "and I don't see how it concerns you."
"But it does concern me," replied Ellen; "for I'm afraid he's
been writing to the south about my mother."
They laughed at her, and called her a silly thing, but goodnaturedly put the fragments of writing together, in order to read
them to her. They were no sooner arranged, than the little girl
exclaimed, "I declare, Ellen, I believe you are right."
The contents of Mr. Theme's letter, as nearly as I can rernem-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

ber, were as follows: "1 have seen your slave, Linda, and conversed with her. She can be taken very easily, if you manage prudently. There are enough of us here to swear to her identity as
your property. I am a patriot, a lover of my country, and 1 do
this as an act of justice to the laws." He concluded by informing
the doctor of the street and number where I lived. The children
carried the pieces to Mrs. Hobbs, who immediately went to her
brother's room for an explanation. He was not to be found. The
servants said they saw him go out with a letter in his hand, and
they supposed he had gone to the post office. The natural inference was, that he had sent to Dr. Flint a copy of those fragments.
When he returned, his sister accused him of it, and he did not
deny the charge. He went immediately to his room, and the next
morning he was missing. He had gone over to New York, before
any of the family were astir.
It was evident that 1 had no time to lose; and 1 hastened back
to the city with a heavy heart. Again 1 was to be torn from a
comfortable home, and all my plans for the welfare of my children were to be frustrated by that demon Slavery! 1 now regretted that 1 never told Mrs. Bruce my story. 1 had not concealed it
merely on account of being a fugitive; that would have made her
anxious, but it would have excited sympathy in her kind heart. 1
valued her good opinion, and 1 was afraid of losing it, if 1 told
her all the particulars of my sad story. But now 1 felt that it was
necessary for her to know how 1 was situated. 1 had once left her
abruptly, without explaining the reason, and it would not be
proper to do it again. I went home resolved to tell her in the
morning. But the sadness of my face attracted her attention, and,
in answer to her kind inquiries, I poured out my full heart to her,
before bed time. She listened with true womanly sympathy, and
told me she would do all she could to protect me. How my heart
blessed her!
Early the next morning, Judge Vanderpool and Lawyer Hopper were consulted.' They said I had better leave the city at once,
as the risk would be great if the case came to trial. Mrs. Bruce
took me in a carriage to the house of one of her friends, where
she assured me I should be safe until my brother could arrive,

THE HAIRBREADTH ESCAPE

201

which would be in a few days. In the interval my thoughts were
much occupied with Ellen. She was mine by birth, and she was
also mine by Southern law, since my grandmother held the bill
of sale that made her so. I did not feel that she was safe unless I
had her with me. Mrs. Hobbs, who felt badly about her brother's
treachery, yielded to my entreaties, on condition that she should
return in ten days. I avoided making any promise. She came to
me clad in very thin garments, all outgrown, and with a school
satchel on her arm, containing a few articles. It was late in October, and I knew the child must suffer; and not daring to go out in
the streets to purchase any thing, I took off my own flannel skirt
and converted it into one for her. Kind Mrs. Bruce came to bid
me good bye, and when she saw that I had taken off my clothing
for my child, the tears came to her eyes. She said, "Wait for me,
Linda," and went out. She soon returned with a nice warm shawl
and hood for Ellen. Truly, of such souls as hers are the kingdom
of heaven.
My brother reached New York on Wednesday. Lawyer Hopper advised us to go to Boston by the Stonington route,' as there
was less Southern travel in that direction. Mrs. Bruce directed
her servants to tell all inquirers that I formerly lived there, but
had gone from the city.
We reached the steamboat Rhode Island in safety. That boat
employed colored hands, but I knew that colored passengers
were not admitted to the cabin. I was very desirous for the seclusion of the cabin, not only on account of exposure to the night
air, but also to avoid observation. Lawyer Hopper was waiting
on board for us. He spoke to the stewardess, and asked, as a particular favor, that she would treat us well. He said to me, "Go
and speak to the captain yourself by and by. Take your little girl
with you, and I am sure that he will not let her sleep on deck."
With these kind words and a shake of the hand he departed.
The boat was soon on her way, bearing me rapidly from the
friendly home where I had hoped to find security and rest. My
brother had left me to purchase the tickets, thinking that I might
have better success than he would. When the stewardess came to
me, I paid what she asked, and she gave me three tickets with

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

clipped corners. In the most unsophisticated manner I said, "You
have made a mistake; I asked you for cabin tickets. I cannot possibly consent to sleep on deck with my little daughter." She assured me there was no mistake. She said on some of the routes
calored people were allowed to sleep in the cabin, but not on this
route, which was much travelled by the wealthy. I asked her to
show me to the captain's office, and she said she would after tea.
When the time came, I took Ellen by the hand and went to the
captain, politely requesting him to change our tickets, as we
should be very uncomfortable on deck. He said it was contrary
to their custom, but he would see that we had berths below; he
would also try to obtain comfortable seats for us in the cars; of
that he was not certain, but he would speak to the conductor
about it, when the boat arrived. I thanked him, and returned to
the ladies' cabin. He came afterwards and told me that the conductor of the cars was on board, that he had spoken to him, and
he had promised to take care of us. I was very much surprised at
receiving so much kindness. I don't know whether the pleasing
face of my little girl had won his heart, or whether the stewardess
inferred from Lawyer Hopper's manner that I was a fugitive, and
had pleaded with him in my behalf.
When the boat arrived at Stonington, the conductor kept his
promise, and showed us to seats in the first car, nearest the engine. He asked us to take seats next the door, but as he passed
through, we ventured to move on toward the other end of the
car. No incivility was offered us, and we reached Boston in
safety.
The day after my arrival was one of the happiest of my life. I
felt as if I was beyond the reach of the bloodhounds; and, for the
first time during many years, I had both my children together
with me. They greatly enjoyed their reunion, and laughed and
chatted merrily. I watched them with a swelling heart. Their
every motion delighted me.
I could not feel safe in New York, and I accepted the offer of
a friend, that we should share expenses and keep house together.
I represented to Mrs. Hobbs that Ellen must have some schooling, and must remain with me for that purpose. She felt ashamed

THE HAIRBREADTH ESCAPE

203

of being unable to read or spell at her age, so instead of sending
her to school with Benny, I instructed her myself till she was fitted to enter an intermediate school. The winter passed pleasantly, while I was busy with my needle, and my children with
their books.

XXXVII

A Visit to England

IN THE SPRING, SAD news came to me. Mrs. Bruce was dead.

Never again, in this world, should I see her gentle face, or hear
her sympathizing voice. I had lost an excellent friend, and little
Mary had lost a tender mother. Mr. Bruce wished the child to
visit some of her mother's relatives in England, and he was desirous that I should take charge of her. The little motherless one
was accustomed to me, and attached to me, and I thought she
would be happier in my care than in that of a stranger. I could
also earn more in this way than I could by my needle. So I put
Benny to a trade, and left Ellen to remain in the house with my
friend and go to school.
We sailed from New York, and arrived in Liverpool after
a pleasant voyage of twelve days. We proceeded directly to
London, and took lodgings at the Adelaide Hotel. The supper
seemed to me less luxurious than those I had seen in American
hotels; but my situation was indescribably more pleasant. For
the first time in my life I was in a place where I was treated according to my deportment, without reference to my complexion.
I felt as if a great millstone had been lifted from my breast. Ensconced in a pleasant room, with my dear little charge, I laid my
head on my pillow, for the first time, with the delightful consciousness of pure, unadulterated freedom.
As I had constant care of the child, I had little opportunity to
see the wonders of that great city; but I watched the tide of life
that flowed through the streets, and found it a strange contrast to
the stagnation in our Southern towns. Mr. Bruce took his little
daughter to spend some days with friends in Oxford Crescent,
and of course it was necessary for me to accompany her. I had
heard much of the systematic method of English education, and I
was very desirous that my dear Mary should steer straight in the
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A VISIT TO ENGLAND

205

midst of so much propriety. I closely observed her little playmates and their nurses, being ready to take any lessons in the science of good management. The children were more rosy than
American children, but I did not see that they differed materially
in other respects. They were like all children-sometimes docile
and sometimes wayward.
We next went to Steventon, in Berkshire. It was a small town,
said to be the poorest in the county. I saw men working in the
fields for six shillings, and seven shillings, a week, and women
for sixpence, and sevenpence, a day, out of which they boarded
themselves. Of course they lived in the most primitive manner; it
could not be otherwise, where a woman's wages for an entire day
were not sufficient to buy a pound of meat. They paid very low
rents, and their clothes were made of the cheapest fabrics, though
much better than could have been procured in the United States
for the same money. I had heard much about the oppression of
the poor in Europe. The people I saw around me were, many of
them, among the poorest poor. But when I visited them in their
little thatched cottages, I felt that the condition of even the
meanest and most ignorant among them was vastly superior to
the condition of the most favored slaves in America. They labored hard; but they were not ordered out to toil while the stars
were in the sky; and driven and slashed by an overseer, through
heat and cold, till the stars shone out again. Their homes were
very humble; but they were protected by law. No insolent patrols could come, in the dead of night, and flog them at their
pleasure. The father, when he closed his cottage door, felt safe
with his family around him. No master or overseer could come
and take from him his wife, or his daughter. They must separate
to earn their living; but the parents knew where their children
were going, and could communicate with them by letters. The
relations of husband and wife, parent and child, were too sacred
for the richest noble in the land to violate with impunity. Much
was being done to enlighten these poor people. Schools were established among them, and benevolent societies were active in efforts to ameliorate their condition. There was no law forbidding
them to learn to read and write; and if they helped each other
in spelling out the Bible, they were in no danger of thirty-nine

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

lashes, as was the case with myself and poor, pious, old uncle
Fred. I repeat that the most ignorant and the most destitute of
these peasants was a thousand fold better off than the most pampered American slave.
I do not deny that the poor are oppressed in Europe. I am not
disposed to paint their condition so rose-colored as the Hon.
Miss Murray! paints the condition of the slaves in the United
States. A small portion of my experience would enable her to
read her own pages with anointed eyes. If she were to lay aside
her title, and, instead of visiting among the fashionable, become
domesticated, as a poor governess, on some plantation in Louisiana or Alabama, she would see and hear things that would
make her tell quite a different story.
My visit to England is a memorable event in my life, from the
fact of my having there received strong religious impressions.
The contemptuous manner in which the communion had been
administered to colored people, in my native place; the church
membership of Dr. Flint, and others like him; and the buying
and selling of slaves, by professed ministers of the gospel, had
given me a prejudice against the Episcopal church. The whole
service seemed to me a mockery and a sham. But my home in
Steventon was in the family of a clergyman, who was a true disciple of Jesus. The beauty of his daily life inspired me with faith
in the genuineness of Christian professions. Grace entered my
heart, and I knelt at the communion table, I trust, in true humility of soul.
I remained abroad ten months, which was much longer than I
had anticipated. During all that time, I never saw the slightest
symptom of prejudice against color. Indeed, I entirely forgot it,
till the time came for us to return to America.

XXXVIII

Renewed Invitations to Go South

WE HAD A TEDIOUS winter passage, and from the distance spectres seemed to rise up on the shores of the United States. It is a
sad feeling to be afraid of one's native country. We arrived in
New York safely, and I hastened to Boston to look after my children. I found Ellen well, and improving at her school; but Benny
was not there to welcome me. He had been left at a good place to
learn a trade, and for several months every thing worked well.
He was liked by the master, and was a favorite with his fellowapprentices; but one day they accidentally discovered a fact they
had never before suspected-that he was colored! This at once
transformed him into a different being. Some of the apprentices
were Americans, others American-born Irish; and it was offensive to their dignity to have a "nigger" among them, after they
had been told that he was a "nigger." They began by treating him
with silent scorn, and finding that he returned the same, they resorted to insults and abuse. He was too spirited a boy to stand
that, and he went off. Being desirous to do something to support
himself, and having no one to advise him, he shipped for a whaling voyage. When I received these tidings I shed many tears, and
bitterly reproached myself for having left him so long. But I had
done it for the best, and now all I could do was to pray to the
heavenly Father to guide and protect him.
Not long after my return, I received the following letter from
Miss Emily Flint, now Mrs. Dodge: 1"In this you will recognize the hand of your friend and mistress.
Having heard that you had gone with a family to Europe, I have
waited to hear of your return to write to you. I should have answered the letter you wrote to me long since, but as I could not
then act independently of my father, I know there could be noth207

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

ing done satisfactory to you. There were persons here who were
willing to buy you and run the risk of getting you. To this I
would not consent. I have always been attached to you, and
would not like to see you the slave of another, or have unkind
treatment. I am married now, and can protect you. My husband
expects to move to Virginia this spring, where we think of settling. I am very anxious that you should come and live with me. If
you are not willing to come, you may purchase yourself; but I
should prefer having you live with me. If you come, you may, if
you like, spend a month with your grandmother and friends, then
come to me in Norfolk, Virginia. Think this over, and write as
soon as possible, and let me know the conclusion. Hoping that
your children are well, I remain you friend and mistress."

Of course I did not write to return thanks for this cordial invitation. I felt insulted to be thought stupid enough to be caught by
such professions.
"'Come up into my parIor,' said the spider to the fly;
, 'Tis the prettiest little parIor that ever you did spy.' "

It was plain that Dr. Flint's family were apprised of my movements, since they knew of my voyage to Europe. I expected to
have further trouble from them; but having eluded them thus far,
I hoped to be as successful in future. The money I had earned, I
was desirous to devote to the education of my children, and to
secure a home for them. It seemed not only hard, but unjust, to
pay for myself. I could not possibly regard myself as a piece of
property. Moreover, I had worked many years without wages,
and during that time had been obliged to depend on my grandmother for many comforts in food and clothing. My children
certainly belonged to me; but though Dr. Flint had incurred no
expense for their support, he had received a large sum of money
for them. I knew the law would decide that I was his property,
and would probably still give his daughter a claim to my children; but I regarded such laws as the regulations of robbers, who
had no rights that I was bound to respect.
The Fugitive Slave Law had not then passed. The judges of

RENEWED INVITATIONS TO GO SOUTH

209

Massachusetts had not then stooped under chains to enter her
courts of justice, so called. I knew my old master was rather skittish of Massachusetts. I relied on her love of freedom, and felt
safe on her soil. I am now aware that I honored the old Commonwealth beyond her deserts.

XXXIX

The Confession

FOR TWO YEARS MY daughter and I supported ourselves com-

fortably in Boston. At the end of that time, my brother William
offered to send Ellen to a boarding school.' It required a great effort for me to consent to part with her, for I had few near ties,
and it was her presence that made my two little rooms seem
home-like. But my judgment prevailed over my selfish feelings. I
made preparations for her departure. During the two years we
had lived together I had often resolved to tell her something
about her father; but I had never been able to muster sufficient
courage. I had a shrinking dread of diminishing my child's love.
I knew she must have curiosity on the subject, but she had never
asked a question. She was always very careful not to say any
thing to remind me of my troubles. Now that she was going
from me, I thought if I should die before she returned, she might
hear my story from some one who did not understand the palliating circumstances; and that if she were entirely ignorant on the
subject, her sensitive nature might receive a rude shock.
When we retired for the night, she said, "Mother, it is very
hard to leave you alone. I am almost sorry I am going, though I
do want to improve myself. But you will write to me often;
won't you, mother?"
I did not throw my arms round her. I did not answer her. But
in a calm, solemn way, for it cost me great effort, I said, "Listen
to me, Ellen; I have something to tell you!" I recounted my early
sufferings in slavery, and told her how nearly they had crushed
me. I began to tell her how they had driven me into a great sin,
when she clasped me in her arms, and exclaimed, "0, don't,
mother! Please don't tell me any more."
I said, "But, my child, I want you to know about your
father."
210

THE CONFESSION

211

"I know all about it, mother," she replied; "I am nothing to
my father, and he is nothing to me. All my love is for you. 1 was
with him five months in Washington, and he never cared for me.
He never spoke to me as he did to his little Fanny. 1 knew all the
time he was my father, for Fanny's nurse told me so; but she said
1 must never tell any body, and 1 never did. 1 used to wish he
would take me in his arms and kiss me, as he did Fanny; or that
he would sometimes smile at me, as he did at her. 1 thought if he
was my own father, he ought to love me. 1 was a little girl then,
and didn't know any better. But now 1 never think any thing
about my father. All my love is for you." She hugged me closer
as she spoke, and 1 thanked God that the knowledge 1 had so
much dreaded to impart had not diminished the affection of my
child. 1 had not the slightest idea she knew that portion of
my history. If 1 had, 1 should have spoken to her long before; for
my pent-up feelings had often longed to pour themselves out to
some one 1 could trust. But 1 loved the dear girl better for the
delicacy she had manifested towards her unfortunate mother.
The next morning, she and her uncle started on their journey
to the village in N ew York, where she was to be placed at school.
It seemed as if all the sunshine had gone away. My little room
was dreadfully lonely. 1 was thankful when a message came from
a lady, accustomed to employ me, requesting me to come and
sew in her family for several weeks. On my return, 1 found a letter from brother William. He thought of opening an anti-slavery
reading room in Rochester.? and combining with it the sale of
some books and stationery; and he wanted me to unite with him.
We tried it, but it was not successful. We found warm antislavery friends there, but the feeling was not general enough to
support such an establishment. 1 passed nearly a year in the family of Isaac and Amy Post, practical believers in the Christian
doctrine of human brotherhood. They measured a man's worth
by his character, not by his complexion. The memory of those
beloved and honored friends will remain with me to my latest
hour.'

XL

The Fugitive Slave Law

My BROTHER, BEING DISAPPOINTED in his project, concluded
to go to California; and it was agreed that Benjamin should go
with him. Ellen liked her school, and was a great favorite there.
They did not know her history, and she did not tell it, because
she had no desire to make capital out of their sympathy. But
when it was accidentally discovered that her mother was a fugitive slave, every method was used to increase her advantages and
diminish her expenses.
I was alone again. It was necessary for me to be earning
money, and I preferred that it should be among those who knew
me. On my return from Rochester, I called at the house of Mr.
Bruce, to see Mary, the darling little babe that had thawed my
heart, when it was freezing into a cheerless distrust of all my
fellow-beings. She was growing a tall girl now, but I loved her always. Mr. Bruce had married again, 1 and it was proposed that I
should become nurse to a new infant. I had but one hesitation,
and that was my feeling of insecurity in New York, now greatly
increased by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. However, I
resolved to try the experiment. I was again fortunate in my employer. The new Mrs. Bruce was an American, brought up under
aristocratic influences, and still living in the midst of them; but if
she had any prejudice against color, I was never made aware of it;
and as for the system of slavery, she had a most hearty dislike of
it. No sophistry of Southerners could blind her to its enormity.
She was a person of excellent principles and a noble heart. To
me, from that hour to the present, she has been a true and sympathizing friend. Blessings be with her and hers!
About the time that I reentered the Bruce family, an event occurred of disastrous import to the calored people.? The slave
Hamlin, the first fugitive that came under the new law, was given
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213

up by the bloodhounds of the north to the bloodhounds of the
south. It was the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored
population. The great city rushed on in its whirl of excitement,
taking no note of the "short and simple annals of the poor." But
while fashionables were listening to the thrilling voice of Jenny
Lind in Metropolitan Hall, the thrilling voices of poor hunted
colored people went up, in an agony of supplication, to the Lord,
from Zion's church.' Many families, who had lived in the city for
twenty years, fled from it now. Many a poor washerwoman,
who, by hard labor, had made herself a comfortable home, was
obliged to sacrifice her furniture, bid a hurried farewell to
friends, and seek her fortune among strangers in Canada. Many a
wife discovered a secret she had never known before-that her
husband was a fugitive, and must leave her to insure his own
safety. Worse still, many a husband discovered that his wife had
fled from slavery years ago, and as "the child follows the condition of its mother," the children of his love were liable to be
seized and carried into slavery. Every where, in those humble
homes, there was consternation and anguish. But what cared the
legislators of the "dominant race" for the blood they were crushing out of trampled hearts?
When my brother William spent his last evening with me, before he went to California, we talked nearly all the time of the
distress brought on our oppressed people by the passage of this
iniquitous law; and never had I seen him manifest such bitterness
of spirit, such stern hostility to our oppressors. He was himself
free from the operation of the law; for he did not run from any
Slaveholding State, being brought into the Free States by his
master. But I was subject to it; and so were hundreds of intelligent and industrious people all around us. I seldom ventured
into the streets; and when it was necessary to do an errand for
Mrs. Bruce, or any of the family, I went as much as possible
through back streets and by-ways. What a disgrace to a city calling itself free, that inhabitants, guiltless of offence, and seeking to
perform their duties conscientiously, should be condemned to
live in such incessant fear, and have nowhere to turn for protection! This state of things, of course, gave rise to many impromptu vigilance committees. Every colored person, and every

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

friend of their persecuted race, kept their eyes wide open. Every
evening I examined the newspapers carefully, to see what Southerners had put up at the hotels. I did this for my own sake,
thinking my young mistress and her husband might be among
the list; I wished also to give information to others, if necessary;
for if many were "running to and fro," I resolved that "knowledge should be increased."
This brings up one of my Southern reminiscences, which I
will here briefly relate. I was somewhat acquainted with a slave
named Luke, who belonged to a wealthy man in our vicinity.
His master died, leaving a son and daughter heirs to his large fortune. In the division of the slaves, Luke was included in the son's
portion. This young man became a prey to the vices growing out
of the "patriarchal institution," and when he went to the north,
to complete his education, he carried his vices with him. He was
brought home, deprived of the use of his limbs, by excessive dissipation. Luke was appointed to wait upon his bed-ridden master, whose despotic habits were greatly increased by exasperation
at his own helplessness. He kept a cowhide beside him, and, for
the most trivial occurrence, he would order his attendant to bare
his back, and kneel beside the couch, while he whipped him till
his strength was exhausted. Some days he was not allowed to
wear any thing but his shirt, in order to be in readiness to be
flogged. A day seldom passed without his receiving more or less
blows. If the slightest resistance was offered, the town constable
was sent for to execute the punishment, and Luke learned from
experience how much more the constable's strong arm was to be
dreaded than the comparatively feeble one of his master. The
arm of his tyrant grew weaker, and was finally palsied, and then
the constable's services were in constant requisition. The fact
that he was entirely dependent on Luke's care, and was obliged
to be tended like an infant, instead of inspiring any gratitude or
compassion towards his poor slave, seemed only to increase his
irritability and cruelty. As he lay there on his bed, a mere degraded wreck of manhood, he took into his head the strangest
freaks of despotism; and if Luke hesitated to submit to his
orders, the constable was immediately sent for. Some of these
freaks were of a nature too filthy to be repeated. When I fled

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215

from the house of bondage, Lleft poor Luke still chained to the
bedside of this cruel and disgusting wretch.
One day, when I had been requested to do an errand for Mrs.
Bruce, I was hurrying through back streets, as usual, when I saw
a young man approaching, whose face was familiar to me. As he
came nearer, I recognized Luke. I always rejoiced to see or hear
of anyone who had escaped from the black pit; but, remembering this poor fellow's extreme hardships, I was peculiarly glad to
see him on Northern soil, though I no longer called it free soil. I
well remembered what a desolate feeling it was to be alone
among strangers, and I went up to him and greeted him cordially. At first, he did not know me; but when I mentioned my
name, he remembered all about me. I told him of the Fugitive
Slave Law, and asked him if he did not know that New York was
a city of kidnappers.
He replied, "De risk ain't so bad for me, as 'tis fur you. 'Cause
I runned away from de speculator, and you runned away from
de massa. Dem speculators vont spen dar money to come here
fur a runaway, if dey airi't sartin sure to put dar hans right on
him. An I tell you I's tuk good car 'bout dat. I had too hard
times down dar, to let 'em ketch dis nigger."
He then told me of the advice he had received, and the plans
he had laid. I asked if he had money enough to take him to
Canada. " 'Pend upon it, I hab," he replied. "I tuk car fur dat. I'd
bin workin all my days fur dem cussed whites, an got no pay but
kicks and cuffs. So I tought dis nigger had a right to money nuff
to bring him to de Free States. Massa Henry he lib till ebery
body vish him dead; an ven he did die, I knowed de debbil would
hab him, an vouldn't vant him to bring his money 'long too. So I
tuk some of his bills, and put'em in de pocket of his ole trousers.
An ven he was buried, dis nigger ask fur dem ole trousers, an dey
gub 'em to me." With a low, chuckling laugh, he added, "You see
I didn't steal it; dey gub it to me. I tell you, I had mighty hard
time to keep de speculator from findin it; but he didn't git it."
This is a fair specimen of how the moral sense is educated by
slavery. When a man has his wages stolen from him, year after
year, and the laws sanction and enforce the theft, how can he be
expected to have more regard to honesty than has the man who

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

robs him? 1 have become somewhat enlightened, but 1 confess
that 1 agree with poor, ignorant, much-abused Luke, in thinking
he had a right to that money, as a portion of his unpaid wages.
He went to Canada forthwith, and 1 have not since heard from
him.
All that winter 1 lived in a state of anxiety. When 1 took the
children out to breathe the air, 1 closely observed the countenances of all 1 met. 1 dreaded the approach of summer, when
snakes and slaveholders make their appearance. 1 was, in fact, a
slave in New York, as subject to slave laws as 1 had been in a
Slave State. Strange incongruity in a State called free!
Spring returned, and 1 received warning from the south that
Dr. Flint knew of my return to my old place, and was making
preparations to have me caught. 1 learned afterwards that my
dress, and that of Mrs. Bruce's children, had been described to
him by some of the Northern tools, which slaveholders employ
for their base purposes, and then indulge in sneers at their cupidity and mean servility.
1 immediately informed Mrs. Bruce of my danger, and she
took prompt measures for my safety. My place as nurse could
not be supplied immediately, and this generous, sympathizing
lady proposed that 1 should carry her baby away. It was a comfort to me to have the child with me; for the heart is reluctant to
be torn away from every object it loves. But how few mothers
would have consented to have one of their own babes become a
fugitive, for the sake of a poor, hunted nurse, on whom the legislators of the country had let loose the bloodhounds! When 1
spoke of the sacrifice she was making, in depriving herself of her
dear baby, she replied, "It is better for you to have baby with
you, Linda; for if they get on your track, they will be obliged to
bring the child to me; and then, if there is a possibility of saving
you, you shall be saved."
This lady had a very wealthy relative, a benevolent gentleman
in many respects, but aristocratic and pro-slavery. He remonstrated with her for harboring a fugitive slave; told her she was
violating the laws of her country; and asked her if she was aware
of the penalty. She replied, "1 am very well aware of it. It is imprisonment and one thousand dollars fine. Shame on my country

THE FUGITIVE SLA VE LAW

217

that it is so! I am ready to incur the penalty. I will go to the
state's prison, rather than have any poor victim torn from my
house, to be carried back to slavery."
The noble heart! The brave heart! The tears are in my eyes
while I write of her. May the God of the helpless reward her for
her sympathy with my persecuted people!
I was sent into New England, where I was sheltered by the
wife of a senator, whom I shall always hold in grateful rernembrance." This honorable gentleman would not have voted for the
Fugitive Slave Law, as did the senator in "Uncle Tom's Cabin;"
on the contrary, he was strongly opposed to it; but he was
enough under its influence to be afraid of having me remain in
his house many hours. So I was sent into the country, where I remained a month with the baby. When it was supposed that Dr.
Flint's emissaries had lost track of me, and given up the pursuit
for the present, I returned to New York.

XLI

Free at Last

MRS. BRUCE, AND EVERY member of her family, were exceedingly kind to me. I was thankful for the blessings of my lot, yet I
could not always wear a cheerful countenance. I was doing harm
to no one; on the contrary, I was doing all the good I could in
my small way; yet I could never go out to breathe God's free air
without trepidation at my heart. This seemed hard; and I could
not think it was a right state of things in any civilized country.
From time to time I received news from my good old grandmother. She could not write; but she employed others to write
for her. The following is an extract from one of her last letters:"Dear Daughter: I cannot hope to see you again on earth; but
I pray to God to unite us above, where pain will no more rack
this feeble body of mine; where sorrow and parting from my
children will be no more. God has promised these things if we
are faithful unto the end. My age and feeble health deprive me of
going to church now; but God is with me here at home. Thank
your brother for his kindness. Give much love to him, and tell
him to remember the Creator in the days of his youth, and strive
to meet me in the Father's kingdom. Love to Ellen and Benjamin. Don't neglect him. Tell him for me, to be a good boy.
Strive, my child, to train them for God's children. May he
protect and provide for you, is the prayer of your loving old
mother."
These letters both cheered and saddened me. I was always
glad to have tidings from the kind, faithful old friend of my unhappy youth; but her messages of love made my heart yearn to
see her before she died, and I mourned over the fact that it was
impossible. Some months after I returned from my flight to New
England, I received a letter from her, in which she wrote, "Dr.

218

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219

Flint is dead.' He has left a distressed family. Poor old man! I
hope he made his peace with God."
I remembered how he had defrauded my grandmother of the
hard earnings she had loaned; how he had tried to cheat her out
of the freedom her mistress had promised her, and how he had
persecuted her children; and I thought to myself that she was a
better Christian than I was, if she could entirely forgive him. I
cannot say, with truth, that the news of myoid master's death
softened my feelings towards him. There are wrongs which even
the grave does not bury. The man was odious to me while he
lived, and his memory is odious now.
His departure from this world did not diminish my danger.
He had threatened my grandmother that his heirs should hold
me in slavery after he was gone; that I never should be free so
long as a child of his survived. As for Mrs. Flint, I had seen her in
deeper afflictions than I supposed the loss of her husband would
be, for she had buried several children; yet I never saw any signs
of softening in her heart. The doctor had died in embarrassed circumstances, and had little to will to his heirs, except such property as he was unable to grasp. I was well aware what I had to
expect from the family of Flints; and my fears were confirmed by
a letter from the south, warning me to be on my guard, because
Mrs. Flint openly declared that her daughter could not afford to
lose so valuable a slave as I was.
I kept close watch of the newspapers for arrivals; but one Saturday night, being much occupied, I forgot to examine the
Evening Express as usual. I went down into the parlor for it,
early in the morning, and found the boy about to kindle a fire
with it. I took it from him and examined the list of arrivals.
Reader, if you have never been a slave, you cannot imagine the
acute sensation of suffering at my heart, when I read the names
of Mr. and Mrs. Dodge, at a hotel in Courtland Street. It was a
third-rate hotel, and that circumstance convinced me of the truth
of what I had heard, that they were short of funds and had need
of my value, as they valued me; and that was by dollars and
cents. I hastened with the paper to Mrs. Bruce. Her heart and
hand were always open to everyone in distress, and she always

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE 01; A SLAVE GIRL

warmly sympathized with mine. lt was impossible to tell how
near the enemy was. He might have passed and repassed the
house while we were sleeping. He might at that moment be waiting to pounce upon me if I ventured out of doors. I had never
seen the husband of my young mistress, and therefore I could
not distinguish him from any other stranger. A carriage was
hastily ordered; and, closely veiled, I followed Mrs. Bruce, taking the baby again with me into exile. After various turnings and
crossings, and returnings, the carriage stopped at the house of
one of Mrs. Bruce's friends, where I was kindly received. Mrs.
Bruce returned immediately, to instruct the domes tics what to
say if anyone came to inquire for me.
lt was lucky for me that the evening paper was not burned up
before I had a chance to examine the list of arrivals. lt was not
long after Mrs. Bruce's return to her house, before several people
came to inquire for me. One inquired for me, another asked for
my daughter Ellen, and another said he had a letter from my
grandmother, which he was requested to deliver in person.
They were told, "She has lived here, but she has left."
"How long ago?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Do you know where she went?"
"I do not, sir." And the door was closed.
This Mr. Dodge, who claimed me as his property, was originally a Yankee pedler in the south; then he became a merchant,
and finally a slaveholder. He managed to get introduced into
what was called the first society, and married Miss Emily Flint.
A quarrel arose between him and her brother, and the brother
cowhided him. This led to a family feud, and he proposed to remove to Virginia. Dr. Flint left him no property, and his own
means had become circumscribed, while a wife and children depended upon him for support. Under these circumstances, it was
very natural that he should make an effort to put me into his
pocket.
I had a colared friend, a man from my native place, in whom I
had the most implicit confidence. I sent for him, and told him
that Mr. and Mrs. Dodge had arrived in New York. I proposed
that he should call upon them to make inquiries about his friends

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221

at the south, with whom Dr. Flint's family were well acquainted.
He thought there was no impropriety in his doing so, and he
consented. He went to the hotel, and knocked at the door of Mr.
Dodge's room, which was opened by the gentleman himself,
who gruffly inquired, "What brought you here? How came you
to know I was in the city?"
"Your arrival was published in the evening papers, sir; and I
called to ask Mrs. Dodge about my friends at home. I didn't suppose it would give any offence."
"Where's that negro girl, that belongs to my wife?"
"What girl, sir?"
"You know well enough. I mean Linda, that ran away from
Dr. Flint's plantation, some years ago. I dare say you've seen her,
and know where she is."
"Yes, sir, I've seen her, and know where she is. She is out of
your reach, sir."
"Tell me where she is, or bring her to me, and I will give her a
chance to buy her freedom."
"I don't think it would be of any use, sir. I have heard her say
she would go to the ends of the earth, rather than pay any man
or woman for her freedom, because she thinks she has a right to
it. Besides, she couldn't do it, if she would, for she has spent her
earnings to educate her children."
This made Mr. Dodge very angry, and some high words
passed between them. My friend was afraid to come where I was;
but in the course of the day I received a note from him. I supposed they had not come from the south, in the winter, for a
pleasure excursion; and now the nature of their business was
very plain.
Mrs. Bruce came to me and entreated me to leave the city the
next morning. She said her house was watched, and it was possible that some clew to me might be obtained. I refused to take her
advice. She pleaded with an earnest tenderness, that ought to
have moved me; but I was in a bitter, disheartened mood. I was
weary of flying from pillar to post. I had been chased during half
my life, and it seemed as if the chase was never to end. There I
sat, in that great city, guiltless of crime, yet not daring to worship
God in any of the churches. I heard the bells ringing for after-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

noon service, and, with contemptuous sarcasm, I said, "Will the
preachers take for their text, 'Proclaim liberty to the captive, and
the opening of prison doors to them that are bound'? or will
they preach from the text, 'Do unto others as ye would they
should do unto you'?" Oppressed Poles and Hungarians could
find a safe refuge in that city; John Mitchell was free to proclaim
in the City Hall his desire for "a plantation well stocked with
slaves;'? but there I sat, an oppressed American, not daring to
show my face. God forgive the black and bitter thoughts I indulged on that Sabbath day! The Scripture says, "Oppression
makes even a wise man mad;" and I was not wise.
I had been told that Mr. Dodge said his wife had never signed
away her right to my children, and if he could not get me, he
would take them. This it was, more than any thing else, that
roused such a tempest in my soul. Benjamin was with his uncle
William in California, but my innocent young daughter had
come to spend a vacation with me. I thought of what I had suffered in slavery at her age, and my heart was like a tiger's when a
hunter tries to seize her young.
Dear Mrs. Bruce! I seem to see the expression of her face, as
she turned away discouraged by my obstinate mood. Finding her
expostulations unavailing, she sent Ellen to entreat me. When ten
o'clock in the evening arrived and Ellen had not returned, this
watchful and unwearied friend became anxious. She came to us
in a carriage, bringing a well-filled trunk for my journey-trusting that by this time I would listen to reason. I yielded to her, as
I ought to have done before.
The next day, baby and I set out in a heavy snow storm,
bound for New England again. I received letters from the City of
Iniquity, addressed to me under an assumed name. In a few days
one came from Mrs. Bruce, informing me that my new master
was still searching for me, and that she intended to put an end to
this persecution by buying my freedom. I felt grateful for the
kindness that prompted this offer, but the idea was not so pleasant to me as might have been expected. The more my mind had
become enlightened, the more difficult it was for me to consider
myself an article of property; and to pay money to those who
had so grievously oppressed me seemed like taking from my suf-

FREE AT LAST

223

ferings the glory of triumph. I wrote to Mrs. Bruce, thanking
her, but saying that being sold from one owner to another
seemed too much like slavery; that such a great obligation could
not be easily cancelled; and that I preferred to go to my brother
in California.
Without my knowledge, Mrs. Bruce employed a gentleman in
New York:' to enter into negotiations with Mr. Dodge. He proposed to pay three hundred dollars down, if Mr. Dodge would
sell me, and enter into obligations to relinquish all claim to me or
my children forever after. He who called himself my master said
he scorned so small an offer for such a valuable servant. The gentleman replied, "You can do as you choose, sir. If you reject this
offer you will never get any thing; for the woman has friends
who will convey her and her children out of the country."
Mr. Dodge concluded that "half a loaf was better than no
bread," and he agreed to the proffered terms. By the next mail I
received this brief letter from Mrs. Bruce: "I am rejoiced to tell
you that the money for your freedom has been paid to Mr.
Dodge. Come home to-morrow. I long to see you and my sweet
babe."
My brain reeled as I read these lines. A gentleman near me
said, "It's true; I have seen the bill of sale." "The bill of sale!"
Those words struck me like a blow. So I was sold at last! A human being sold in the free city of New York! The bill of sale is
on record, and future generations will learn from it that women
were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth
century of the Christian religion. It may hereafter prove a useful document to antiquaries, who are seeking to measure the
progress of civilization in the United States. I well know the
value of that bit of paper; but much as I love freedom, I do not
like to look upon it. I am deeply grateful to the generous friend
who procured it, but I despise the miscreant who demanded payment for what never rightfully belonged to him or his.
I had objected to having my freedom bought, yet I must confess that when it was done I felt as if a heavy load had been lifted
from my weary shoulders. When I rode home in the cars I was
no longer afraid to unveil my face and look at people as they
passed. I should have been glad to have met Daniel Dodge him-

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INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL

self; to have had him seen me and known me, that he might have
mourned over the untoward circumstances which compelled him
to sell me for three hundred dollars.
When I reached home, the arms of my benefactress were
thrown round me, and our tears mingled. As soon as she could
speak, she said, "0 Linda, I'm so glad it's all over! You wrote to
me as if you thought you were going to be transferred from one
owner to another. But I did not buy you for your services. I
should have done just the same, if you had been going to sail for
California to-morrow. I should, at least, have the satisfaction of
knowing that you left me a free woman."
My heart was exceedingly full. I remembered how my poor
father had tried to buy me, when I was a small child, and how he
had been disappointed. I hoped his spirit was rejoicing over me
now. I remembered how my good old grandmother had laid up
her earnings to purchase me in later years, and how often her
plans had been frustrated. How that faithful, loving old heart
would leap for joy, if she could look on me and my children now
that we were free! My relatives had been foiled in all their efforts,
but God had raised me up a friend among strangers, who had bestowed on me the precious, long-desired boon. Friend! It is a
common word, often lightly used. Like other good and beautiful
things, it may be tarnished by careless handling; but when I
speak of Mrs. Bruce as my friend, the word is sacred.
My grandmother lived to rejoice in my freedom; but not long
after, a letter came with a black seal. She had gone "where the
wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."
Time passed on, and a paper came to me from the south, containing an obituary notice of my uncle Phillip. It was the only
case I ever knew of such an honor conferred upon a colored person. It was written by one of his friends, and contained these
words: "Now that death has laid him low, they call him a good
man and a useful citizen; but what are eulogies to the black man,
when the world has faded from his vision? It does not require
man's praise to obtain rest in God's kingdom." So they called a
colored man a citizen! Strange words to be uttered in that region!
Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way,
with marriage. I and my children are now free! We are as free

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225

from the power of slaveholders as are the white people of the
north; and though that, according to my ideas, is not saying a
great deal, it is a vast improvement in my condition. The dream
of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a
home of my own. I still long for a hearthstone of my own, however humble. I wish it for my children's sake far more than for
my own. But God so orders circumstances as to keep me with
my friend Mrs. Bruce. Love, duty, gratitude, also bind me to her
side. It is a privilege to serve her who pities my oppressed people, and who has bestowed the inestimable boon of freedom on
me and my children.
It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary
years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could.
Yet the retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with
those gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good
old grandmother, like light, fleecy clouds floating over a dark
and troubled sea.

Appendix

THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT IS from Amy Post, a member of
the Society of Friends in the State of New York, well known and
highly respected by friends of the poor and the oppressed. As
has been already stated, in the preceding pages, the author of this
volume spent some time under her hospitable roof.
L. M. C.
"The author of this book is my highly-esteemed friend. If its
readers knew her as I know her, they could not fail to be deeply
interested in her story. She was a beloved inmate of our family
nearly the whole of the year 1849. She was introduced to us by
her affectionate and conscientious brother, who had previously
related to us some of the almost incredible events in his sister's
life. I immediately became much interested in Linda; for her appearance was prepossessing, and her deportment indicated remarkable delicacy of feeling and purity of thought.
"As we became acquainted, she related to me, from time to
time some of the incidents in her bitter experiences as a slavewoman. Though impelled by a natural craving for human sympathy, she passed through a baptism of suffering, even in
recounting her trials to me, in private confidential conversations.
The burden of these memories lay heavily upon her spirit-naturally virtuous and refined. I repeatedly urged her to consent to
the publication of her narrative; for I felt that it would arouse
people to a more earnest work for the disinthralrnent of millions
still remaining in that soul-crushing condition, which was so unendurable to her. But her sensitive spirit shrank from publicity.
She said, 'You know a woman can whisper her cruel wrongs in
the ear of a dear friend much easier than she can record them for
the world to read.' Even in talking with me, she wept so much,
and seemed to suffer such mental agony, that I felt her story was
226

APPENDIX

227

too sacred to be drawn from her by inquisitive questions, and I
left her free to tell as much, or as little, as she chose. Still, I urged
upon her the duty of publishing her experience, for the sake of
the good it might do; and, at last, she undertook the task.
"Having been a slave so large a portion of her life, she is unlearned; she is obliged to earn her living by her own labor, and
she has worked untiringly to procure education for her children;
several times she has been obliged to leave her cmployrnents, in
order to fly from the man-hunters and woman-hunters of our
land; but she pressed through all these obstacles and overcame
them. After the labors of the day were over, she traced secretly
and wearily, by the midnight lamp, a truthful record of her
eventful life.
"This Empire State is a shabby place of refuge for the oppressed; but here, through anxiety, turmoil, and despair, the freedom of Linda and her children was finally secured, by the
exertions of a generous friend. She was grateful for the boon; but
the idea of having been bought was always galling to a spirit that
could never acknowledge itself to be a chattel. She wrote to us
thus, soon after the event: '1 thank you for your kind expressions
in regard to my freedom; but the freedom I had before the
money was paid was dearer to me. God gave me that freedom;
but man put God's image in the scales with the paltry sum of
three hundred dollars. I served for my liberty as faithfully as ]acob served for Rachel. At the end, he had large possessions; but 1
was robbed of my victory; I was obliged to resign my crown, to
rid myself of a tyrant.'
"Her story, as written by herself, cannot fail to interest the
reader. It is a sad illustration of the condition of this country,
which boasts of its civilization, while it sanctions laws and customs which make the experiences of the present more strange
than any fictions of the past.
AMY POST.
"ROCHESTER, N. Y., OCT. 30TH, 1859."

The following testimonial is from a man who is now a highly
respectable colored citizen of Boston.
L. M. C.

228

APPENDIX

"This narrative contains some incidents so extraordinary, that,
doubtless, many persons, under whose eyes it may chance to fall,
will be ready to believe that it is calored highly, to serve a special
purpose. But, however it may be regarded by the incredulous, I
know that it is full of living truths. I have been well acquainted
with the author from my boyhood. The circumstances recounted
in her history are perfectly familiar to me. I knew of her treatment from her master; of the imprisonment of her children; of
their sale and redemption; of her seven years' concealment; and
of her subsequent escape to the North. I am now a resident of
Boston, and am a living witness to the truth of this interesting
narrative.
GEORGE W. LOWTHER."l

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVERY

CHAPTER I

Some Account of My Early Lije"

I WAS BORN in Edenton, North Carolina, one of the oldest
States in the Union, and had four different owners in eighteen
years. My first owner was Miss Penelope H--, the invalid
daughter of an innkeeper. 1 After her death I became the property
of her mother. My only sister was given to a niece of hers,
daughter of Dr. James R. N--, also of Edenton.
My father and mother were slaves.? I have a slight recollection
of my mother, who died when I was young, though my father
made impressions on my mind in childhood that can never be
forgotten. I should do my dear old grandmother injustice did I
not mention her too. There was a great difference between her
meekness and my father's violent temper, although, in justice to
him, I must say that slavery was the cause of it.
To be a man, and not to be a man-a father without authority-a husband and no protector-is the darkest of fates. Such
was the condition of my father, and such is the condition of
every slave throughout the United States: he owns nothing, he
can claim nothing. His wife is not his: his children are not his;
they can be taken from him, and sold at any minute, as far away
from each other as the human fleshmonger may see fit to carry
them. Slaves are recognised as property by the law, and can own
nothing except by the consent of their masters. A slave's wife or
daughter may be insulted before his eyes with impunity. He
himself may be called on to torture them, and dare not refuse. To
raise his hand in their defence is death by the law. He must bear
all things and resist nothing. If he leaves his master's premises at
"The writer of these autobiographical sketches has, since his escape from slavery, held positions of trust in free countries, and every statement may be relied
on, although it is not thought advisable to publish names in full.
231

232

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVERY

any time without a written permit, he is liable to be flogged. Yet,
it is said by slaveholders and their apologists, that we are happy
and contented. I will admit that slaves are sometimes cheerful;
they sing and dance, as it is politic for them to do. I myself had
changed owners three times before I could see the policy of this
appearance of contentment. My father taught me to hate slavery,
but forgot to teach me how to conceal my hatred. I could frequently perceive the pent-up agony of his soul, although he tried
hard to conceal it in his own breast. The knowledge that he was
a slave himself, and that his children were also slaves, embittered
his life, but made him love us the more.
Up to this time our services had not been required, and the
old lady to whom I belonged had paid little or no attention to
how our time was spent. Our father, when working in or near
the town, made our home his home.
I should state here that my father was owned by a Mrs.
K--,3 a widow lady, who was, however, no relative of Mrs.
H--, to whom I belonged.
Dr. N--, being related to the family of my owner, was permitted to take me from my father in my tenth year, and put me
in his shop. He too well knew the value of knowledge, and the
danger of communicating it to human "property," to allow it to
be disseminated among his slaves; and he therefore instructed his
sons, who had charge of me, to see that I did not learn to write.
Soon after this, my sister was taken into his house, but no interdict against the acquisition of knowledge, such as he had
imposed upon me, could avail in her case. Our father had endeavoured to bestow upon both of us some rays of intellectual
light, which the tyrant could not rob us of.
In the meanwhile, my father's young mistress married a rich
planter, named C__,4 who lived in the neighbourhood of
Edenton. Shortly afterwards the old lady died, and my father became Mr. James C--'s property. Being, as he was then considered, the best house-carpenter in or near the town, he was not
put to field-work, although the privilege of working out, and
paying his owner monthly, which he once enjoyed, was now
denied him. This added another link to his galling chain-sent
another arrow to his bleeding heart. My father, who had an in-

SOME ACCOUNT OF MY EARLY LIFE

233

tensely acute feeling of the wrongs of slavery, sank into a state of
mental dejection, which, combined with bodily illness, occasioned his death when I was eleven years of age. He left us the
only legacy that a slave father can leave his child, his whips and
chains. These he had taught us to hate, and we resolved to seek
for liberty, though we travelled through the gates of death to
find it.

CHAPTER II

A Further Account of My Family,
and of My New Master

TIME PASSED SWIFTLY on, and in due season death smote down
Mrs. H--, my mistress. The hungry heirs ordered us slaves to
mount the auction-block; and all of us, old and young, male and
female, married and single, were sold to the highest bidder. Even
my grandmother'sl grey hairs and many years' hard service in
the public-house did not save her from the auctioneer's hammer.
But, fortunately for her, she possessed a tried and trusty friend,"
in whose hands she placed the savings of thirty years, that he
might purchase her and her son Mark. She had two other children, a son and a daughter, but they were owned by other parties.'
They began to sell off the old slaves first, as rubbish. One very
old man went for one dollar; the old cook sold for seventeen dollars. The prices varied from that to 1600 dollars, which was the
price of a young man who was a carpenter. Dr. N-- bought
me for a shop-boy. It would be in vain for me to attempt to give
a description of my feelings while standing under the auctioneer's hammer: I can safely say that I shall not realize such feelings
agam.
The man whom my grandmother trusted to do her business
for her acted very honourably. As soon as it could be done, after
the sale, he procured her free papers and the bill of sale of her
son, to show that he was her property by right of purchase. It
may seem rather strange that my grandmother should hold her
son a slave; but the law required it. She was obliged to give security that she would never be any expense to the town or state before she could come in possession of her freedom. Her property
in him was sufficient to satisfy the law; he could be sold at any
minute to pay her debts, though it was not likely this would ever
234

A FURTHER ACCOUNT OF MY FAMIL Y

235

be the case. They had a snug home of their own, but their troubles were not yet at an end.
My uncle Joseph, who was owned by Mr. J. C--, ran away
about this time, and got as far as New York, where he was seen
by Mr. S-- of Edenton, who had him taken and sent back to
his master. He was heavily manacled, and lodged in gaol, where
he remained most of the winter, and was then sold to go to New
Orleans.
My uncle Mark, whom my grandmother had bought, was at
that time steward on board of a packet or vessel of some kind,
and some months after my uncle Joseph had been sold, my uncle
Mark met him in New York. He had made his second escape.
The vessel was about to sail, and they had but little time to spend
with each other, though my uncle Joseph told him he had not
come there to stop. His intention was to get beyond the reach of
the stars and stripes of America. Unwilling to trust his liberty
any longer in the hands of a professed Christian, he purposed
seeking safety in another hemisphere.
But to return to my subject. I left my sister in the doctor's
family. Some six or eight years have passed since I was sold, and
she has become the mother of two children. After the birth of
her second child, she was sent to live on his plantation, where she
remained for two or three months, and then ran away. As soon
as she was gone, my aunt," the two children, and myself, were
sent to gaol. My aunt was married, but happily her children were
beyond the power of slavery. God had taken them to his rest.
The old doctor no doubt thought that this would be the
means of bringing my sister back; but you will by-and-by see
that she did not leave with the intention of returning. She had
not yet been called to make her back bare for the lash; but she
had gone to live on the doctor's plantation, where she daily expected it. Her mental sufferings were more than she could longer
bear. With her it was, in the language of one of our fathers "liberty or death."
The doctor offered 100 dollars reward for he and threatened
to punish to the extreme penalty of the law, any person or persons found harbouring, or assisting her in any way to make her
escape. He then wrote a letter to a gentleman by the name of

236

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVER Y

T__ ,5 living in New York, who had formerly lived in North
Carolina. I am not prepared to say that Mr. T-- took an interest in this letter. I rather believe he did not. But the news was
soon circulated among the slave-catchers of the north, and they
were sticking their unwanted faces in every coloured man's door,
on account of my sister. The doctor pretended to sell me and the
two children to a negro trader. In two or three weeks he received
a letter from New York, stating (erroneously, as it turned out)
that my sister was taken, and safely lodged in gaol. This called
the old man from home. He had got to prove property and pay
expenses. Now that the old doctor was gone, I had a good time.
Mr. L--, the gaoler, was an old acquaintance of mine. Though
he was a white man, and I a slave, we had spent many hours together in Mr. J--'s family. We had taken tea there.
To make my story short, and go back to the doctor-Mr.
J-- had a very fine daughter, and we were very fond of each
other. Mr. L-- had been a visitor of Mr. J--'s for many
years. Now that he had me under lock and key, and knowing
that it was not for any crime that I was there, he could not be
otherwise than kind. He allowed me every indulgence. My
friends, such as could come, could call and see me whenever they
pleased, and stop as long as they liked; he would never turn the
key on them. Sometimes he would give me the key on the inside.
While the doctor had me here for safe keeping, I could have
made my escape every day or night; but in the first place, if I had
wanted to go, I would not have taken the advantage of Mr.
L--'s kindness; in the second place, I saw no chance of bettering myself. I knew he would not get my sister, because she had
not left town. My uncle-in-law, who was a sea-faring man, had
intended to take her to New York, but the doctor's threats
frightened him so much, that he did not dare make the attempt.
While the old man was gone, I had a negro trader call with
others to see me. His name was G--; he said he would buy me
if the old doctor would sell me; I told him I thought he wouldthat he told me he intended to do so when he put me in gaol.
After some two weeks the doctor returned home without my
sister. The woman that had been taken up and put in gaol was a
free woman; but what could she do with the wretch who put her

A FURTHER ACCOUNT OF MY FAMILY

237

there? America is a free country, and a white man can do what he
pleases with a coloured man or woman in most of the States.
They may have a few friends now, who would not allow this if
they knew it; but they are hated by the nation at large.
My aunt was taken out of gaol and sent home to the doctor's
house; the children and myself were left in. The old man came to
have a little talk with me about my sister.
"Well, John, I have not got Harriet, but I will have her yet.
Don't you know where she is?"
"How can I know, sir? I have been in gaol ever since my sister
left you. Mr. G-- was here while you were away, sir, and said
that he wanted to buy me."
"Buy you! I don't want to sell you."
"Y ou told me when you put me here that you did."
"Yes, but not if you will go back to the shop and behave
yourself. Mr. G-- has not got money enough to buy you."
"I do not know how to behave differently from what I have
done."
"Your behaviour will do; but I am afraid you are going to run
away from me."
"I have not said anything about running away from you, sir."
"I know that; but your sister is gone, and you will be going
next."
Up to this time I had heard nothing of my sister; but I felt
sure that she was with her friends in Edenton.

CHAPTER III

My Uncle's Troubles-My Further Experience of
the Doctor, and Our Parting

WHILE THE EVENTS DESCRIBED in the foregoing chapter were
transpiring, my uncle-in-law Stephen returned from sea. His
master, Mr. B--, was owner of the vessel in which he sailed;
and, although he had had several chances to make his escape
from slavery, yet he had returned on every voyage. The doctor,
who owned my aunt, forbad his going to see her, although they
had lived together for twenty years, and had never been known
to quarrel. It was most cruel that they should be separated, not
for their own, but for another's acts. The doctor was inexorable;
they were strictly interdicted from seeing each other. The only
tie that bound my uncle to slavery was his wife, to whom he was
truly attached. When their sacred union-a union holy in the
sight of God, however desecrated by wicked men-was broken,
he would not longer submit to the yoke. He took advantage of
his next voyage to release himself from it, and he returned no
more. His wife was dead to him-ay, worse than dead. "That
which God hath joined together, let no man put asunder," saith
those Scriptures which the slaveholder professes to believe, but
which he blasphemes day by day and hour by hour.
At the doctor's last visit to the jail, he described to me the
wretchedness of the free people of colour in New York, and
stated that they had not the comforts of his slaves, and how
much better off we were than they. To this I said nothing. My
mind was fully made up, that I must, in order to effect my escape, hide as much as possible my hatred to slavery, and affect a
respect to my master, whoever he might be. The doctor and myself knew each other too well for me to hope to get away from
him. I must change owners in order to do that. Secondly, I had
made up my mind that, let the condition of the coloured people
238

MY UNCLE'S TROUBLES

239

of New York be what it might, I would rather die a free man
than live a slave. The doctor evidently did not want to sell me,
neither did he want to run the risk of losing me. Not that he had
any particular regard for me, but he could not replace me for the
same money that a slave-trader would give for me.
Before he left the jail, he told me that he did not want to keep
me in jail any longer, and would let me out at any time when I
would get my uncle Mark to be security that I would not run
away from him. When leaving, he told me to send for my uncle,
and see if he would not do it for me. To all this I was dumb. I
was in no particular hurry to get out of jail. I wanted a little time
for serious reflection, and this was the only place where I could
get an opportunity for it.
A few days passed, and he heard nothing from me. He saw
my uncle, and told him that I wanted to see him at the jail. He
accordingly came, and asked me if I wished him to become my
security. I promptly told him no; that I wanted my liberty; that I
would make good the first opportunity to secure it; that he
might do as he pleased; but, God being my helper, I would die a
free man. This satisfied my uncle at once, that he might as well
take the money out of his pocket and pay for me as to become
my security; and he thought, if I could get a chance to make my
escape without bringing any expense on him, so much the better.
Here we parted. The old doctor waited for an answer, but got
none, which satisfied him that I no longer had a desire to make
his shop my home.
There were two or three slaveholders in the town, that would
give him more for me than he could get from a trader, but he
would not sell me to anyone in the town. Mr. S--, who afterwards bought me, came to the jail, and asked me if I would live
with him if he bought me. I told him that I would; but the question was not asked how long.
I had been here just two months when Mr. S__ 1 got a negro
trader to buy the two children for my grandmother and me for
himself. The doctor at first tried to bind the trader not to sell me
to anyone in the State; but this he would not agree to, saying
that he sold his slaves wherever he could get the most for them;
he finally agreed to take me out of town in irons, but to sell me

240

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVERY

the first chance he could get. The old man did not think that he
had bargained for me before I was sold. This important part of
the business being settled, we were sold, the two children for 500
dollars, I believe, and I for 900 dollars. The blacksmith's tools,
handcuffs, and chain were all in readiness at the jail. The chain
was thirty or forty feet long, with handcuffs every two or three
feet. The slaves were handcuffed right and left on each side of the
chain. In the gang there was one who was free by birth. He was
born not more than fifty miles from Edenton, He had been put
in jail here for some trifling offence; not being able to pay the
fine, he was sold for six months or a year to William R--, a
planter, who was so cruel to him that he ran away from him. He
was caught, and, after being flogged, was put in irons and set to
work. He attempted to cut the irons off, and being caught in the
act, was sent to jail, and finally sold to a trader. I saw the irons
that he had been made to work in; they were fetters for the ankles, weighing from fifteen to twenty pounds in weight.
Now we were all snugly chained up, the children in the cart,
and the women walking behind; friends weeping, and taking a
farewell shake of the hand-wives of their husbands, and parents
of their children. I went with the gang as far as Mr. J. B. 5-'s,
the man that had my uncle taken in New York. Here the cart
was stopped and the blacksmith's tools taken out, and Mr. L - began to hammer away at my irons. When they were off, he told
me to take the children and go home to Mr. S--; the children
went to my grandmother, and I to Mr. S--, who had purchased me for a body servant; but, knowing the temper of the
doctor, who would be angry at being outwitted, he sent me to
his plantation, where I stopped for three months. During that
time I was often in town of an evening to see my grandmother;
and on two occasions he tried to trap me. What he would have
done to me I know not; but up to the day that I left North Carolina, I never dared to trust myself in his power. Again and again
he searched my grandmother's house for my sister, and at length
he put my uncle Mark in jail. After a few days he was taken before the magistrate. The doctor could prove nothing against him,
and yet the magistrate made my uncle pay the jail fees. Had my
grandmother been destitute of friends, as many of the coloured

MY UNCLE'S TROUBLES

241

people in the Slave States are, doubtless the doctor would have
tried to extort from my uncle my sister's hiding-place. It was for
this purpose he wanted to get hold of me, for, with oaths of the
most dreadful kind, he told me he would butcher me. I had seen
too much of his cruelty to doubt his purpose.

CHAPTER IV

My New Master's Plantation-My Medical
Practice Among the SlavesMy Sister's Hiding-Place
DURING THE THREE MONTHS that I was on the plantation, my
master changed overseers. The last one was a member of a Christian church. He was particularly fond of two things, namely,
singing hymns and flogging slaves; but he had been told to spare
me from the lash. I could see that it went very much against his
wishes to do so. Soon after this overseer came on the plantation,
my master took me into town to live with him. He had one
brother and a sister, who were both subject to fits, returning
about every four weeks. When his brother Dr. M. E. S__ 1 was
sick with them, I stopped by him for a few days, until the illness
was over. His sister died soon after I went to live with him. My
work had never been very hard, neither had I known, as many
do, the want of food; and as for the lash, from a boy I had declared that I would never carry its stripes upon my back. It is
true my condition was much bettered with my new master; but I
was happier only as I could see my chance for escape clearer. At
length I grew sick of myself in acting the deceitful part of a slave,
and pretending love and friendship where I had none. Unpleasant as it was thus to act, yet, under the circumstances in which I
was placed, I feel that I have done no wrong in so doing; I did
everything that I could to please my master, who treated me with
as much kindness as I could expect from anyone to whom I was
a slave.
Having been so long with Dr. N--, my master thought me
quite capable of visiting the sick slaves on the plantation. This
part of my work caused the overseer much unpleasantness; he
would sometimes want to give them oil, or something of the
kind, saying they were not sick; at other times he would say they
242

MY NEW MASTER'S PLANTATION

243

were well enough to go to work, and if they were too sick to
work, they were too sick to eat. Knowing that he would not
strike me for having my own way in what I was sent there forto see if they were sick and give them what they needed-I took
great pleasure in differing with him on all occasions when I
thought my patient dangerously ill. My judgment in regard to
such diseases as are most common on a plantation was considered very good for one of my age; so much so, that a young
planter who was studying medicine at the time, offered my master one thousand five hundred dollars for me. The way I came to
know this was thus: he asked me one day if I wanted to be sold.
This woke up a little of the old feeling, and I had almost forgotten myself for a minute. "No, sir," I said, "I am not anxious to be
sold, but I know I have got to serve some one." Here he made
me a promise which I shall never forget, though it was not consoling to me. He said, "You shall not serve anyone after me: I
have been offered a very handsome price for you; but I don't
want to sell you." True, I was glad to hear him say that I should
serve no one after him; this required a little consideration; he was
but a few years older than me, and to wait for him to die looked
to me too much like giving a man who was in want of his daily
bread a cheque on the bank to be paid when he is dead. To have
prayed for his death would have been wrong; to have killed him
would have been worse; so, finally, I concluded to let him live as
long as the Lord was willing he should, and I would get off as
soon as possible. My pride would not allow me to let a man feed
and clothe me for nothing; I would work the ends of my fingers
off first.
I have said nothing about Mr. S--'s plantation slaves; I have
only spoken of his treatment to me. I am willing to acknowledge
kindness, even in a slaveholder, wherever I have seen it; but had
he treated all of his slaves as he treated me, the probability is that
they would have been of as little value to him as I was. Some may
try to make out of this a case of ingratitude; but I do not feel myself under the slightest obligation to anyone who holds me
against my will, though he starved himself to feast me. Doubtless
he meant to do me a good turn; but he put it off too far. I appreciated his kindness, and endeavoured to be as useful as I could.

244

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVERY

At this time my condition was so much better than my sister's, that I had almost ceased to speak of leaving in the presence
of my grandmother; for there is an inexpressible feeling in the
breast of a woman who has lost child after child, whether it has
been taken by force or by the hand of death, that makes her cling
with tighter grasp to the last one. No doubt many of my readers
can picture to themselves the force of the prayers and tears of a
pious mother under such trials. My uncle Joseph was gone, she
knew not where, and my sister was so closely pursued that they
were obliged to hide her in the house between the roof and the
ceiling. They are now beyond the reach of the slave power, or I
would not dare to tell how this was done.
My grandmother's house had seven rooms-two upper rooms,
and five on the lower floor: on the west side there was a piazza.
On the east side there were two rooms, with a lobby leading to
the centre of the house. The room on the left on entering the
lobby was used as a store-room; the ceiling of this room was of
boards, the roof was shingled; the space between the roof and
ceiling was from three and a half to four feet in height, running
off to a point. My uncle made a cupboard in one corner of this
room, with the top attached to the ceiling. The part of the board
that covered the top of the cupboard was cut and made into a
trap-door; the whole of it was so small and neatly done that no
one would have believed it to be what it was-the entrance to
her hiding-place. Everything that she received was put in that little cupboard. One of the upper rooms was lathed and plastered;
a hole was broken in the wall, through which she could speak to
my uncle or grandmother; and, to prevent her losing the use of
her limbs, the windows were sometimes closed that she might
come down and walk about the room. When she was sick, I visited her, and gave her such medicines as she needed. After my
uncle-in-law left, Uncle Mark knew of no one in whom to confide; he was suspected by the doctor, and narrowly watched
wherever he went; and although he could hear nothing of her, he
somehow seemed to think that she had not made her escape.
During the short time that my sister was on the plantation, she
saw one of the women so cruelly whipped that she died in a few
days: it was done by James N--, the doctor's son. These are

MY NEW MASTER'S PLANTA nON

245

called isolated cases; but we shall never know the wrongs that
have been perpetrated in the slave states of America, until the oppressor and the oppressed shall stand before the Judge of all the
world, The doctor's wife was as anxious as himself to get my
sister again, and made promises of handsome presents to the
slaves if they would try to find out where she was, but to no
effect. She remained in that strange place of concealment six
years and eleven months before she could get away!

CHAPTER V

My Master Goes to Washington as Member of
Congress-He Is Engaged to Be MarriedWedding Trip to Chicago-CanadaNew lOrk-My Escape from Slavery

THE LATTER END OF the third year after I was sold, my master
was elected Member of Congress.' I was ordered to get ready for
Washington. We were not many days on the way to this place,
which I so much wanted to see. It is a very lively place during the
Session, and much enjoyed by the slaves, their privileges being
greatly extended. They get up balls and parties, and seem to be as
happy as their masters. I have had the pleasure of meeting some
of these slaves in the Northern States, with whom I have danced,
whose happiness, like mine, ended with the ball.
I could tell many things I observed of the life of members of
Congress when at Washington, but I refrain from mentioning
more than one or two customs of social life.
I will say it is twelve o'clock. The ladies have taken breakfast.
A visitor comes and rings the door-bell, and you, on answering
it, tell her that the mistress is not in; the reply most invariably is,
"Go and tell her who it is, and she will be in." Just as well say,
"Go and tell her she has lied, not knowing who has called to see
her." The same is the case of the gentlemen. Here is a bill before
the House, the merits and demerits of which they have spent
weeks in discussing; it is now to be voted on at such an hour.
The sergeant-at-arms is sent out in search of the absent members;
some of them are having a little game of cards-could not think
of waiting until after four o'clock; the pay is just the same for
playing cards as though they were making laws, only you must
lie a little when the sergeant-at-arms calls, and say that you are

246

MY MASTER GOES TO WASHINGTON

247

not in. I could not bear this system of lying. I avoided answering
these calls whenever I could.
After my master had been there a short time, he went to board
with Mrs. P--, who had two young nieces here, to one of
whom he was soon engaged to be married." As good luck would
have it, this young lady had a sister living in Chicago, and no
place would suit her like that to get married in. I admired her
taste much. I wanted to go there too. My master could not do
otherwise than give his consent to go there with her. The next
question to be settled was about taking me with him into a free
state. Near the time for him to leave, he told me that he intended
to marry. 1 was pleased at this, and anxious to know who the fortunate lady might be. He did not hesitate to tell me what he intended to do, stating at the same time that he would take me with
him if I would not leave him. "Sir," said I, "I never thought that
you suspected me of wanting to leave you."
"I do not suspect you, John. Some of the members of the
House have tried to make me believe that you would run away if
I took you with me. Well, get my things all ready; we are to leave
on the first day of next week; I will try you, any how."
Everything was ready, and the hoped-for time came. He took
his intended, and off we started for the West. When we were taking the boat at Baltimore for Philadelphia, he came up to me and
said, "Call me Mr. Sawyer; and if anybody asks you who you
are, and where you are going, tell them that you are a free man,
and hired by me."
We stopped two or three days at the Niagara Falls; from
thence we went to Buffalo, and took the boat for Chicago; Mr.
Sawyer had been here but a few days before he was taken sick. In
five weeks from the time of his arrival here, he was married and
ready to leave for home. On our return, we went into Canada.
Here 1 wanted to leave him, but there was my sister and a friend
of mine at home in slavery; 1 had succeeded in getting papers that
might have been of great value to my friend. 1 had tried, but
could not get anything to answer my purpose. I tried to get a
seaman's protection from the English Custom-house, but could
not without swearing to a lie, which I did not feel disposed to do.

248

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVERY

We left here for New York, where we stopped three or four
days. I went to see some of myoId friends from home, who I
knew were living there. I told them that I wanted their advice.
They knew me, they knew my master, and they knew my friends
also. "Now tell me my duty," said I. The answer was a very natural one, "Look out for yourself first." I weighed the matter in
my mind, and found the balance in favour of stopping. If I returned along with my master, I could do my sister no good, and
could see no further chance of my own escape. I then set myself
to work to get my clothes out of the Astor House Hotel, where
we were stopping;' I brought them out in small parcels, as if to
be washed. This job being done, the next thing was to get my
trunk to put them in. I went to Mr. johnson's shop, which was in
sight of the Astor House Hotel, and told him that I wanted to
get my trunk repaired. The next morning I took my trunk in my
hand with me: when I went down, whom should I see at the foot
of the steps but Mr. Sawyer? I walked up to him, and showed
him a rip in the top of the trunk, opening it at the same time that
he might see that I was not running off. He told me that I could
change it, or get a new one if I liked. I thanked him, and told him
we were very near home now, and with a little repair the old one
would do. At this we parted. I got a friend to call and get my
trunk, and pack up my things for me, that I might be able to get
them at any minute. Mr. Sawyer told me to get everything of his
in, and be ready to leave for home the next day. I went to all the
places where I had carried anything of his, and where they were
not done, I got their cards and left word for them to be ready by
the next morning. What I had got were packed in his trunk; what
I had not been able to get, there were the cards for them in his
room. They dine at the Astor at three o'clock; they leave the
room at four o'clock; at half-past four o'clock I was to be on
board the boat for Providence. Being unable to write myself at
that time, and unwilling to leave him in suspense, I got a friend
to write as follows:"Sir-I have left you, not to return; when I have got settled, I
will give you further satisfaction. No longer yours, JOHN S.
JACOB."

This note was to be put into the post-office in time for him to

MY MASTER GOES TO WASHINGTON

249

get it the next morning. I waited on him and his wife at dinner.
As the town clock struck four, I left the room. I then went
through to New Bedford, where I stopped for a few months.
Thank God! I am now out of their reach; the old doctor is
dead; I can forgive him for what he did do, and would have done
if he could. The lawyer I have quite a friendly feeling for, and
would be pleased to meet him as a countryman and a brother;
but not as a master.

CHAPTER VI

Sensations of Freedom-Self-EducationA Whaling Voyage-l Meet My Sister, and Hear
from Her About My Friends at EdentonThe Fugitive Slave Bill

ON ARRIVING AT New Bedford, I was introduced to Mr.
William P--, a very fatherly old man, who had been a slave in
Alexandria. For the first week or so I could not realize the great
transformation from a chattel slave to a man; it seemed to me like
a dream; but I soon began to feel my responsibility, and the necessity of mental improvement. The first thing, therefore, that I
strove to do was to raise myself above the level of the beast,
where slavery had left me, and fit myself for the society of man.
I first tried this in New Bedford by working in the day and going to school at night. Sometimes my business would be such
that I could not attend evening schools; so I thought the better
plan would be to get such books as I should want, and go a voyage to sea. I accordingly shipped on board the "Frances Henrietta," of New Bedford. This was a whaling voyage; but I will not
trouble you with any fishing stories. I will make it short. After
being absent three years and a half, we returned home with a full
ship, 1700 barrels of sperm oil and 1400 of whale oil.
I had made the best possible use of my leisure hours on board,
and kept the object that drove me from my friends and my home
before me when on shore. I had promised myself, if what money
I had coming to me would be an inducement to anyone to bring
my sister off from the south, that I would have her; but there was
better news than that, in the bosom of an old friend, waiting to
be delivered. The ship dropped her anchor, and the shore boats
came off with friends of different persons on board, among
whom was R. P--. He had scarcely spoken to me before he
250

SENSA nONS OF FREEDOM

251

began to tell me about my sister; her coming to New Bedford in
search of me, and her going back to N ew York, where, he told
me, I should find her. This news was to me quite unexpected. I
said, if my sister was free from her oppressor, I was a happy
man. I hurried on shore, drew some money of the owners, and
made my way to New York. I found my sister living with a family as nurse at the Astor House. At first she did not look natural
to me; but how should she look natural, after having been shut
out from the light of heaven for six years and eleven months! I
did not wish to know what her sufferings were, while living in
her place of concealment. The change that it had made in her was
enough to make one's soul cry out against this curse of curses,
that has so long trampled humanity in the dust.
After she had recovered a little from the surprise of seeing me,
I began to speak of home. "Oh, brother," she said, "grandmother
was so disappointed in your stopping behind. Mr. S-- had
written for them to make ready his house for his reception on
such a day; grandmother got the news of it, and invited some of
your old friends to come and spend the evening with you. Supper was all ready, and our ears were all intent to catch the first
blast of the stage horn, when Uncle Mark left the room to go and
meet you. The coach drove up to the tavern door, and the passengers had all got out, when Dr. W-- asked Mr. S-- what
had become of you. He said the abolitionists had got you away
from him in New York. When Uncle Mark returned, grandmother looked for awhile, and then asked, 'Where is my child?'
'He is gone, mother; he left Mr. S-- in New York.'
"When she heard that you were gone, she wept like a child.
Aunt Sue Bent was there, and on seeing grandmother's tears, said
to her: 'Molly, my child, this is no time for crying. Dry up those
tears, fall upon your knees, and thank God that one more has
made his escape from the house of bondage. I came here to see
him, but I am glad he is not here. God bless the boy, and keep
him from all harm.'
"This (continued my sister) increased my anxiety, and caused
me to adopt new plans for my escape. I wrote a letter to the doctor, asking him if he would sell me to my grandmother. It was
sent to New York, and there mailed for Edenton. The letter was

252

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVER Y

received by the doctor, and answered by his son Caspar. He
could now no longer doubt that I was gone, and resorted to a
cunningly-devised artifice to bring me back. Part of his son's letter ran as follows:-'Harriet, we are all glad to hear from you;
and let me assure you, if our family ever did entertain anything
different from the most friendly feelings for you, they exist no
longer. We want to see you once more, with your old friends
around you, made happy in your own home. We cannot sell you
to your grandmother; the community would object to your returning to live in a state of freedom. Harriet, doubtless before
this you have heard of the death of your aunt Betty. In her life
she taught us how to live, and in her death she taught us how
to die.'
"From that letter, my uncle saw that escape was my only
hope, and that there was no time like the present for action.
While everybody believed that I was in New York was the best
time to get there. He accordingly made arrangements with the
captain of a vessel running between N ew York and Edenton, for
my passage to the former port.
"I had been here but a short time, when some of my friends
sent for me to acquaint me of my danger. Mrs. T-- gave me a
letter that Mr. T-- had received from Dr. N--. In that letter
he said he wanted to catch me, to make an example of, for the
good of the institution of slavery. But, brother, I have now fallen
into new hands. Mary Matilda N-- is married to a northern
man.' He, too, is trying to find out where I am stopping in New
York. I know not where to go, nor what to do."
I could see my sister's danger, and well imagine her feelings.
We selected Boston, Massachusetts, for our home, and remained
there quietly for a few years. Massachusetts had so far precluded
the slaveholders from her borders, as to make the hunted fugitive
feel himself somewhat secure under the shadow of her laws. Her
great men had not sold themselves to the slave power, and her
little men had not learnt that they were slaves until after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Bill. From that hour I resolved to seek a
home in some foreign clime.
Mrs.---, on hearing my intention to leave the north, sent

MY MASTER GOES TO WASHINGTON

253

for me. I called on her and was shown to her room by my sister,
when the following conversation took place.
"John, I understand you intend to leave for some years."
"I do, madam."
"Then my business with you is with respect to your sister.
She has spent many years in our family, and we are still desirous
to have her remain with us. John, I know that the law is an absolute one, and that the prosecutors are deaf to the claims of justice and humanity; but I have resolved that Harriet shall not be
taken out of my house. This I will promise you as a lady."
A few months after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Bill, my
sister was looking over the list of arrivals in one of the daily papers, when she saw the names of Mr. and Mrs. M-- of Edenton. She immediately made it known to Mrs.---, who sent
her out of the house without a moment's delay. As the little girl
that she had charge of at the time would not be separated from
her, they were both sent off together. In due time Mr. M-came rapping at the door, not as an honest man, but as a slavecatcher. The door being opened, he said to the woman, "Go and
tell Harriet that I have got a letter for her; it is from her grandmother, and I have promised to deliver it to her myself." The
message was taken to Mrs.---, who informed him that my
sister had left town, and that he could not see her. M-- saw
that all of his plans were frustrated, and sold my sister for 300
dollars. She was paid for by her mistress and her friends, and is
now living in safety.

CHAPTER VII

Cruel Treatment of Slaves-The Fugitive Slave
Law-Slavery Opposed to Natural Rights
and to Christianity

IN CONCLUDING THIS SHORT statement of my experience of
slavery, I beg the reader to remember that I am not writing of
what I have heard, but of what I have seen, and of what I defy
the world to prove false. There lived about two miles up a river
emptying itself into the Albemarle Sound, a planter, whose name
was Carabas. His plantation was called Pembroke. At his death
his slaves were sold. I mention this because slaves seldom or ever
have more than one name; their surname is most generally that of
their first master. The person I am now about to allude to was
known by the name of George Carabas. After the death of his
own master, he was owned by Mr. Popelston: after that by
young John Horton, who sold him to a negro trader.
George was chained in the gang with other slaves, and
dragged from his wife and his friends. After a few days' travel on
the road, by some means or other he made his escape, and returned back to that spot where he knew he could find one heart
to feel for him, and in whom he could confide; but he had not
been there long before the bloodthirsty negro-hunters got on his
trail, one beautiful Sunday morning, about midsummer, while
the church-bells were ringing. Four of the pursuers overtook
poor George, and shot him dead.
"If he is outlawed," they doubtless argued, "we only need
show his head, and the reward is ours; but if he is not outlawed,
what then? Why, they may try to make us pay for him; but we
will not be fools enough to say that we shot him, unless we are to
be paid for shooting him." His body is put into a canoe, his head
thrown in, which lies on his breast. These four southern gentle254

eR VEL TREA TMENT OF SLAVES

255

men now return to the town, leaving the canoe to inquire how
the advertisement reads. On finding that the reward was to be
given to anyone who would apprehend and confine him in any
jail in the State, they saw that they could not publicly boast of
their fiendish work.
Now, the question is, what had this man done that he should
be so inhumanly butchered and beheaded? The crime that he had
committed, and the only crime, was to leave the unnatural trader
in slaves, and the souls of men, to return to his natural and affectionate wife. Nothing is done to the murderers. They only made
a blunder. Slaves are outlawed and shot with impurity, and the
tyrant who shoots them is paid for it; but in this case George was
not outlawed, so their trouble was all for nothing, and the glory
only known to themselves.
Tom Hoskins was a slave belonging to James N--, the son
of Dr. N __ .l This slave was found just out of the town, in the
scrub. He was shot in the back, and must have been killed instantly. There was no pay for this-only a feast of blood. Tom's
crime was running away from one whom I know to be an unmerciful tyrant. Another was shot, but not killed. There were
three brothers, William, James, and Josiah N--. I know not
which of the three this slave belonged to. They had been out that
day with their bloodhounds hunting slaves. They shot Sirus a little before dark. By some means or other he made his escape from
them, and reached Dr. S--'s shop soon after dark. He was
taken in, and as many of the shots taken out of him as they could
get at, and his wounds dressed. This being done, Dr. S-- sent a
despatch to Mr. C--, to let him know that the slave that they
had shot had come into him, and got his wounds dressed. As
soon as they received this intelligence, they mounted their
horses, and rode off in fiendish glee for town. They came up to
the shop, hooting and yelling as if all Bedlam was coming. When
they had reached the door, the first cry from them was, "Bring
him out-finish him." The doctor came out and said to them,
"Gentlemen, the negro has given himself up to me, and I will be
responsible for his safe delivery to you as soon as he is able to be
moved from hence; but at present he is not." Seeing that the doctor would not let them have him, they returned home.

256

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVERY

The C--s were very rich; they owned a great many slaves,
and shooting with them was common. They did not feel the loss
of a slave or two; it was a common thing for them to offer fifty
or a hundred dollars reward for a slave, dead or alive, so that
there was satisfactory proof of his being killed.
Just at the back of the court-house and in front of the jail is a
whipping post, where I have seen men and women stripped, and
struck from fifteen to one hundred times and more. Some whose
backs were cut to pieces were washed down with strong brine or
brandy; this is done to increase pain. But the most cruel torture
is backing; the hands are crossed and tied, then taken over the
knee and pinned by running a stick between the arms and the
legs, which tightens the skin and renders the slave as helpless as a
child. The backing paddle is made of oak, about an inch and a
quarter thick, and five by eight inches in the blade, with about
twelve inches of a handle. The blade is full of small holes, which
makes the punishment severer. I have seen the flesh like a steak.
Slaves flogged in this way are unable to sit down for months.
I will give you but one case of flogging in detail; that will be
of Agnes, the slave of Augustus M--. She was hired to John
B--; she was some six months advanced in pregnancy at the
time. Being in an unfit state for field labour, she could not do as
much as other slaves. For this cause, B--tied her up and commenced whipping her. With my own hands have I dressed her
back, and I solemnly declare that she had not a piece of skin left
on it as wide as my finger. She was a hired slave. Had B-killed her at a single blow, her master could have punished
B--, if he could have got white witnesses to certify to that effect, which is not likely; but she might have died in an hour after
being cut down, and there was no law to harm him. It would
have been death caused by moderate correction, which North
Carolina does not punish a slaveholder for.
I know that the picture I have drawn of slavery is a black one,
and looks most unnatural; but here you have the State, the town,
and the names of all the parties. One who has never felt the sting
of slavery would naturally suppose that it was to the slaveholder's advantage to treat his slaves with kindness; but the more
indulgent the master the more intelligent the slave; the more in-

CRUEL TREATMENT OF SLAVES

257

telligent the slave, the nearer he approximates to a man; the
nearer he approximates to a man, the more determined he is to be
a free man; and to argue that the slaves are happy, or can be
happy while in slavery, is to argue that they have been brutalized
to that degree that they cannot be considered men. What better
proof do you want in favour of universal freedom than can be
given? You can find thousands of ignorant men who will lay
down their lives for their liberty; can you find one intelligent
man who would prefer slavery?
The last thing that remained to be done to complete this hell
on earth was done in 1850, in passing the Fugitive Slave Law.
There is not a State, a city, nor a town left as a refuge for the
hunted slave; there is not a United States officer but what has
sworn to act the part of the bloodhound in hunting me down, if
I dare visit the land of Stars and Stripes, the home of the brave,
and land of the free. Yet, according to the American declaration
of independence, it is a self-evident truth that all men are created
by their Maker free and equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights-life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where are
the coloured man's rights to-day in America? They once had
rights allowed them. Yes, in the days that tried men's souls they
had a right to bleed and die for the country; but their deeds are
forgotten, their swords and bayonets have been beaten into
chains and fetters to bind the limbs of their children. The first
man that was seen to fall in the revolutionary struggle for liberty,
was a coloured man; and I have seen one of his brethren, who
had fled from his whips and chains, within sight of that monument erected to liberty, dragged from it into slavery, not by the
slave-owners of the south, for they knew not of his being there,
but by northern men.
I cannot agree with that statesman who said, "What the law
makes property, is property." What is law, but the will of the
people-a mirror to reflect a nation's character? Robbery is robbery; it matters not whether it is done by one man or a million,
whether they were organized or disorganized; the principle is the
same. No law, unless there be one that can change my nature, can
make property of me. Freedom is as natural for man as the air he
breathes, and he who robs him of his freedom is also guilty of

258

A TRUE TALE OF SLAVERY

murder, for he has robbed him of his natural existence. On this
subject the Church and the State are alike. One will tell a lie, and
the other will swear to it. The State says, "That which the law
makes property is property." The Church says that "organic sin
is no sin at all;" both parties having reference to slavery. With a
few exceptions, their politics and religion are alike oppressive,
and rotten, and false. None but political tyrants would ever establish slavery, and none but religious hypocrites would ever
support it. What says Matthew, 15th chapter, 8th and 9th verses:
"This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in
vain they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments
of men."
What is to be hoped of a people like this? They are full of lies
and hypocrisy. Give me liberty amidst savages, rather than slavery with such professed Christians. No man should hold unlimited power over his fellow-man. From the repeated abuses of this
power, he becomes the most brutal of the human species; and the
more he himself has been abused, the more eager he is to abuse
others. But slavery is unnatural, and it requires unnatural means
to support it. Everything droops that feels its sting. Hope grows
dimmer and dimmer, until life becomes bitter and burdensome.
At last death frees the slave from his chains, but his wrongs are
forgotten. He was oppressed, robbed, and murdered. Better
would it be for the slaves, if they must submit to slavery, if the
immortal part of them were blotted out. But, since God has
breathed undying life into the soul of man, rather let us blot that
out of existence which stands between man and his rights, God
and his laws, the world and its progress. The Christian religion,
that binds heart to heart and hand to hand, and makes each and
every man a brother, is at war with it; and shall we, whose very
souls it has wrung out, be longer at peace. If possible, let us make
those whom we have left behind feel that the ground they till is
cursed with slavery, the air they breathe poisoned with its venom
breath, and that which made life dear to them lost and gone.
In conclusion, let me say that the experience of the past, the
present feeling, and above all this, the promise of God, assure me
that the oppressor's rod shall be broken. But how it is to be done

CRUEL TREATMENT OF SLAVES

259

has been the question among our friends for years. After the
prayers of twenty-five years, the slaves' chains are tighter than
they were before, their escape more dangerous, and their cup of
misery filled nearer its brim. Since I cannot forget that I was a
slave, I will not forget those that are slaves. What I would have
done for my liberty I am willing to do for theirs, whenever I can
see them ready to fill a freeman's grave, rather than wear a
tyrant's chain. The day must come; it will come. Human nature
will be human nature; crush it as you may, it changes not; but
woe to that country where the sun of liberty has to rise up out of
a sea of blood. When I have thought of all that would pain the
eye, sicken the heart, and make us turn our backs to the scene
and weep, I then think of the oppressed struggling with their oppressors, and have a scene more horrible still. But I must drop
this subject; I do not like to think of the past, nor look to the future, of wrongs like these.

‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘No justice, no peace’ and even ‘Black Power’ were
chants bellowed by the crowd of protestors. The killings of Philando Castile
in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in New Orleans sparked a mass reaction.
Watching Castile bleed to death on Facebook was bound to provoke a
response. Thousands of people poured out onto the streets to demonstrate
their anger and disgust at the slaying of yet more Black bodies at the hands
of the police. As the march settled outside the police station, speaker after
speaker stepped to the mobile podium condemning the racism and brutality
of the ‘pigs’. Family members of those who had died in police custody gave
impassioned calls for justice. Tension on the streets of Birmingham
crackled through the crowd. When Malcolm X spoke of a ‘racial powder
keg’, it was this kind of scene he had in mind. Close your eyes, take in the
crowd and you could well be in Alabama in the 1960s. But this is a protest
in the second city of Britain in the twenty-first century and the picture tells
us how little things have changed in the last fifty years, and speaks to the
global nature of racism.
Crowds of Black people came onto the streets following events that took
place thousands of miles away because they related directly to our
experiences. Just as in America, the police are often seen as ‘an occupying
force’ in Black communities in Britain. There is a long history of overpolicing, harassment and brutality. To be Black is to be a suspect. To live in
a Black neighbourhood is to be a target. In the 1980s the situation came to a
head, with large-scale rebellions taking place across the country in cities
like London, Birmingham and Liverpool. Communities tired of the police
taking advantage of the ‘Sus Laws’, where they had the power to arrest on
the basis of suspicion, to crack the head of a ‘darkie’. Despite changing
laws and police reforms, if you are Black and in Britain today you are up to
eighteen times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police. You
are more likely to be charged if arrested, and subject to a longer prison

sentence if found guilty. The criminal injustice system means that in
Britain, compared to our numbers in the country, Black people are actually
more overrepresented in the prison population than in America. We only
make up 3% of the population but account for 13% of prison inmates. Black
people also represent 9% of deaths after police contact that were
independently investigated.1 The protest in Birmingham was actually a prearranged march for justice for Kingsley Burrell, who died in police custody
after a chain of events that started when he had called the police. At the
march the families recounted the names of Demetre Fraser, Sarah Reed,
Mark Duggan and many more. You are unlikely to be shot by the police in
Britain because the majority do not carry guns. But if you are Black you are
more vulnerable to death after police contact.
Black Lives Matter protests sweeping across Britain were not just about
the shared experiences of police abuse. The shootings in America drew a
much larger protest than the typical marches for justice for people killed in
Britain. To understand the depth of feeling in Britain to slayings in America
is to grasp the connections of Blackness, which cannot be contained by
national borders. When we see Philando Castile bleeding out we are not
looking at a distant stranger. We are seeing our brother, our father, our
cousin, our friend. His killing happened to Black communities in Britain as
much as it did to those in Minnesota. It is that connection, that pain, which
drew the largest Black mobilisations for years onto the streets of Britain.
Black Lives Matter has re-energised Black political movements across
the globe. In both Britain and America the battles and hard-fought victories
for recognition and legislation have lulled us into a false sense of progress.
Landmark gains for civil and voting rights in America, and race relations
bills in Britain opened up the dreams of inclusion and equality for Black socalled citizens. The sad reality is that fifty years after these apparent gains
racism is as embedded in the fabric of society as ever, coded into the DNA
of the system. There may have been a Black man in the White House for
eight years, but under his rule the value of Black life depreciated. The
poverty rate, wealth gap, evictions and food stamp usage all went up under
the watch of the first Black president.2 It was truly a case of a Black man,
White house. Meanwhile, the police continued to bring the hammer down
on Black communities, providing the horrifying footage that relit the sparks
of protest. Now that the fires of protest have been lit the question is what
direction they will take.

There is no such thing as a unified Black politics. Mobilisations have
taken forms so wide-ranging they have led to violent confrontations. Black
people have disagreed with each other as to the way forward as much as, if
not more than, we have with White people. One of the most frustrating
rewrites of history is the common description of Malcolm X as a ‘civil
rights leader’. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Malcolm
was perhaps the fiercest critic of the civil rights movement, its tactics and
its leaders. He famously called the showpiece 1963 March on Washington a
‘farce’, denouncing it as a ‘circus with clowns and all’.3 Though he and the
figure he is most tied to, Martin Luther King, were active at the same time,
they only ever met once, very briefly. We should not be surprised given
Malcolm’s public scorn for King, including calling him ‘a twentieth
century, or modern day Uncle Tom’.4 These disagreements were not some
personal squabble between two men; they were based on a fundamentally
different view of the world. Malcolm and Martin did not have the same
goals; they did not even see the problem through the same eyes.
Broadly speaking, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement
represent a liberal tradition in Black politics. Liberals acknowledge the
problems of racial inequality but put them down to a lack of access to the
system. So Black people are poorer because we do not have equal access to
the job market. In order to get equal access it is seen as necessary to reform
the system through legislation that outlaws discriminatory practices. A
barrier to these laws being passed is that we also lack access to political
power, and so it is necessary to get Black politicians elected to bring about
reform. This is the logic that made ‘69% of African Americans believe that
Obama’s election mean that King’s dream had been fulfilled’.5 It is also the
logic that leads to campaigns for more Black police officers, chiefs and
commissioners. The system is not the problem in this analysis, just the fact
we are not fully part of it. If Black faces were in high places then of course
a different set of decisions would be made and equality would emerge.
In stark contrast, Malcolm represents a radical tradition in Black politics.
He was never interested in being part of what he called the ‘American
nightmare’. In the radical tradition the system is the problem. There can be
no reform, no adjustments and we as Black people should not waste time
daydreaming of equality. When Malcolm proclaimed ‘we want no part of
integration with this wicked race of devils’,6 he was not attacking individual
White people but condemning the system of the West as being evil at its

core. So the battle is not to get good jobs or to be elected, but to end the
system of oppression and create the world in a new image. No amount of
Black faces in the police force will make it anti-racist. As the hip hop artist
KRS-ONE pointed out, during apartheid (and after) it was the ‘Black cop
killing Black kids in Johannesburg’.7
Black radicalism therefore calls for an overturning of the system that
oppresses Black people, and for nothing short of a revolution. The aim of
this book is to reclaim that tradition of Black radicalism because it has been
widely misused and misunderstood. Radicalism has become a dirty and
even dangerous word in the current climate. It has been distorted in
association with violence and most usually Islamic extremism. But
radicalism and extremism are actually completely opposite concepts.
Extremism is based on taking the fundamental principles of an idea to
the extreme. Making them solid absolutes, with no room for flexibility or
different interpretations. The terrorism we are seeing across the world in the
name of Islam is extremism, taking the principles of Islam so far that they
become destructive. But as Angela Davis explained, ‘radical simply means
grasping things at the root’.8 Radicalism is based on rejecting the
fundamental principles that govern society and creating a new paradigm. So
one of President Trump’s favourite phrases, ‘radical Islam’, is completely
nonsensical. A radical version of Islam would do away with the principles
of the religion and cease even to be Islam. The Jihadists who are wreaking
havoc in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa follow in the footsteps of
a long line of extremists. Just as there was nothing radical about the Nazis,
or Christian fundamentalism, there is nothing radical about Islamic
extremism.
For the goals of the Jihadists to be radical they would need to be based
on overthrowing the existing social order. Sharia law may seem radically
different to us in the West but the Middle East is made up of many countries
observing conservative Islamic principles. The Jihadists are simply
following a well-worn path of taking these to the extreme. In many ways
this rise of extremism is in direct correlation to the decline of truly radical
alternatives to Western domination. Once you give up on overthrowing the
unjust social order it is easy to fall into the trap of trying to find spiritual
salvation. For all of the rhetoric about fighting the infidels in the holy land,
the main beneficiary of the chaos caused by extremism is the West. While
Muslims are killing Muslims there is no prospect of the region uniting to

challenge imperialism. The ongoing conflicts are a money-making machine
for the war and reconstruction industries. Even if an Islamic caliphate were
installed across the Middle East there is nothing to suggest this could not
co-exist with Western interests. Saudi Arabia is governed by extremist
principles and is one of the West’s closest allies.
Radicalism is confused with extremism because we incorrectly conflate
what is radical with what is violent. This confusion is dangerous and has
helped to spread the contagion of Islamic extremism across the African
continent, in particular. In Professor Robert Beckford’s excellent
documentary The Great African Scandal he chronicled the impact of
Western trade policies on Ghana.9 Rice farming was one of the successes of
the post-independence economy, because it was supported by government
subsidies and there was a ban on foreign imports. In the 1980s the country
wanted to improve its rice production by developing irrigation systems, so
it turned to the West for a helping hand. The International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and World Bank loaned Ghana the money but on the condition that it
‘liberalise’ its markets to help boost the economy. Liberalise meant open its
market to free trade, and therefore the end of government subsidies to rice
farmers and of course no more banning of foreign imports. The inevitable
happened when the West gets involved in Africa. Much cheaper and higher
quality, mostly American, rice flooded the Ghanaian market. Worse still,
America subsidises its rice farmers, in the way that the Ghanaian
government was now barred from doing. Even with the development from
the loan, locally produced rice had no chance to compete and the deal with
the devil ended up destroying rice production in the country. The first
president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, was right when he said that the
relationship between Africa and the West has an ‘Alice in wonderland
craziness’ about it.10 Beckford’s documentary highlighted the poverty that
the collapse of rice farming had caused and the resentment of the people in
Ghana. In a chilling and telling section of the film, one of the former rice
farmers, who was living in poverty, showed Beckford that he had a picture
of Osama Bin Laden as his phone’s screensaver. He explained that ‘he is the
only one fighting the West’ and the system that had caused the destruction
of his livelihood. The decline of radical liberation movements on the
continent have left a space that is being filled by the violent rhetoric of
resistance presented by Islamic extremism, and to deadly effect.

Critical to understanding Black radicalism is to completely untangle its
politics from the tactic of violence. The key distinction between Malcolm X
and Martin Luther King was not whether to use violence or not, it was the
diagnosis of the problems in society. Non-violence makes sense for liberal
movements for racial justice because they want to be part of the system and
therefore do not want to alienate the mainstream society. Malcolm objected
to non-violence because he wanted to overturn the system, so was not
interested in placating White officials. As radical politics is based on
overthrow it is more than likely that a revolution would involve violence.
But this is not because radicals are bloodthirsty and seeking violent
confrontation. It is because the system of oppression is unlikely to give up
its power without suppressing the struggle through violence. Black
radicalism promotes violence only for self-defence and liberation, and
recognises that the liberal forces of oppression are defined by violence. The
hypocrisy of defining ‘political violence’ as the possession of the radicals,
or the extremists, is truly frightening. Liberalism, upon which the West is
built, is the most violent system that has ever existed on the planet. The
West is founded on the genocide of 80% of the native people in the
Americas. Once they had exhausted the native population they then brutally
enslaved Africans for three centuries, murdering tens of millions of people.
Colonial regimes were dominated by horrific violence; for example, it is
estimated that Belgium killed half the population of the Congo during its
rule. The legacy of underdevelopment and continued exploitation, like that
which Beckford saw in Ghana, is a world where a child dies every ten
seconds because of poor access to food.
Violence is not a choice that Black radicals want to embrace. In fact, in
one of Malcolm’s most famous speeches he gives America the chance to
have a ‘bloodless revolution’ by offering either the ‘ballot or the bullet’.11
The ballot represented America deciding to give its Black population equal
citizenship, and if they refused then the bullet would be the violence that
erupted across the nation. But Malcolm understood it was a fantasy to
pretend that you can overthrow the murderous beast of the West without
engaging in violence. This is why he was so scornful of the civil rights
‘love thy enemy’ approach. Malcolm X’s most famous quote is ‘by any
means necessary’, but this actually distorts the importance of his legacy.
Radicalism is not about the means (violence/non-violence), but the ends
(reform/revolution).

Reclaiming Black radicalism is vital because it is one of the few politics
that presents an alternative to the iniquitous system of the West. In the
words of Kwame Ture, ‘a true revolutionary must provide an alternative,
not just rhetoric condemning the existing system’.12 There have been any
number of false prophets clothing themselves in revolutionary rhetoric. But
there are true radical politics that live up to Ture’s challenge, that provide a
blueprint for overturning the system. In 1963, Malcolm warned that ‘many
of our people are using this word “revolution” loosely, without taking into
account careful consideration of what it actually means’.13 So starved are
we for radical politics that Beyoncé’s performance at the Super Bowl, the
very pinnacle of commercialism, is being hailed as revolutionary.
Even if you do not believe in the politics of Black radicalism, its revival
is essential. Without the radical alternative putting pressure on the state,
even the liberal demands fail to be met. As Malcolm explained, ‘at one time
the Whites in the United States called him a racialist, and extremist, and a
communist. Then the Black Muslims came along and the Whites thanked
the Lord for Martin Luther King’.14 Black radicalism changes the nature of
the debate and opens up space for liberal ‘progress’. Malcolm expanded on
the complementary relationship between radical and liberal politics in a
meeting with Coretta Scott King in Selma. Martin was furious that Malcolm
had visited directly before he was due to speak, feeling he was trying to
upstage him. Against her husband’s wishes Coretta took the opportunity to
meet with Malcolm, and she recalls that he explained: ‘I want Dr. King to
know that I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come
thinking I could make it easier. If the White people realize what the
alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King’.15
A lot of credit is given to the civil rights campaigners for the legislative
gains but it has to be recognised that the authorities were terrified of the
alternative to supporting non-violent leaders. You will see a correlation
between rebellions in the inner cities and civil rights legislation, as those in
charge looked to the civil rights leaders to cool things down. It is also no
coincidence that the initial police reforms in Britain followed urban
rebellions. The uprisings in the 1980s led to the Scarman Report and
acknowledgement of police racism, as well as the formation of the Police
Complaints Authority, which significantly boosted the powers of
independent investigations into the police. Anti-racism has stalled in the

present day, and even reversed in America, without a radical politics to
force the debate.
More important than trying to achieve the illusory goals of the liberal
project is to re-engage with the politics of Black radicalism. Black Lives
Matter has caught the imagination of a younger generation who understand
the system has failed them. The thousands who came onto the streets across
the world to protest need to choose the kind of society they want to fight
for. The last thing Black Lives Matter needs to become is the new civil
rights movement. The legacy of civil rights struggle is the current system,
which has opened up enough for some to ‘make it’ and receive some of the
food from the table. However, the majority remain locked out, left to fight
for the scraps. If fifty years of so-called progress has taught us anything, it
should be that ‘this system can never provide freedom, justice and equality’
for Black people in the same way that ‘a chicken can never lay a duck
egg’.16 The West is built on and maintained by oppressing Black people and
this oppression cannot end without overturning the system.
We need to reclaim the politics of Black radicalism, connecting the
struggles today to the long history of Black freedom movements. In doing
so, we should stop thinking of Black radicalism as a tradition and start to
understand it as its own political ideology. The aim of the book is to lay out
the basis of this politics and how we can re-engage with Black radicalism in
the twenty-first century. Essential to this project is to debunk the myths and
distinguish Black radicalism from the various other forms of Black politics
is it often confused with. The first misunderstanding that will be debunked
is that Black Nationalism equals Black radicalism. In order to do this, we
must undo the ugly caricature of Black Nationalism as ‘divisive, fanatical,
dangerous, unprincipled, racist delusional and even mad’.17 We must also
distinguish between radicalism and the many different forms of nationalism,
most of which are narrow and regressive. Black radicalism has always been
based on the connections that cannot be contained by national borders. We
will outline the radical concept of ‘Black is a country’, which links the
Black Lives Matter protests across the globe.
Another important idea to detach from our understandings of Black
radicalism is that of ‘cultural nationalism’. In Los Angeles in the 1960s
there were actual gunfights over the differences between the revolutionary
Black Panthers and the US cultural movement headed by Maulana Karenga.
The Panthers rejected the idea that any salvation could be found in wishing

ourselves back to Africa, culturally or spiritually. With the decline of radical
politics, cultural nationalism has been confused with an actual radical
politics of resistance. Much of the resistance to embracing Black radicalism
is in truth a reaction to the restrictive forms of cultural nationalism. We will
severely critique the limits of cultural nationalism and explain how Black
radicalism is in part built on a rejection of fixed, regressive ideas of Africa,
gender and the Black family. Blackness emerged as an identity rooted in the
liberation of people of African descent, and has never been closed off
because of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any of the other
differences within the Diaspora.
In terms of charting a way forward for movements today, the Black
Panther Party is important both in America and globally. One of the key
debates in Black politics has been the issue of class and Black Marxism has
often been viewed as the Black radical tradition. While Marxism is
certainly radical, we will explore the key departures of this politics from
Black radicalism. We will consider the contradictions of the Panthers, who
were Marxist in their rhetoric but Black radical in their activities. For all the
talk of the Marxist revolution, most of the members were engaged in
‘survival programmes’, providing support for Black communities that the
state would not. This is a crucial lesson for movements today: as romantic
as the idea of Marxism may sound, it can never provide freedom for the
African Diaspora. We will explore what the Black revolution has
historically looked like and imagine what that means for the politics of
today.
When it comes to outlining a vision for Black radicalism today, it is
important to critique the limitations of my own position. I work in
universities, spaces that are historically and structurally overwhelmingly
White. Universities were culpable in producing the very racism that Black
radicalism emerged to combat. Those of us privileged enough to enjoy the
benefits of being part of the system have a complicated relationship to
Black radicalism. In fact, it is not really complicated; Black academics have
tended to take one of three options in the situation I find myself in.
Complacency is common, where we enjoy the spoils and ignore the
problem. Becoming complicit in the system of racism by denouncing
radical alternatives from our pulpits is also a favoured route. But the most
harmful has been what I call liberal radicalism, where academics embrace
radical theory but reject revolutionary practice, calling out the system as

inherently racist and then pretending there is nothing we can do about it. If
the system is the problem, then the university cannot be decolonised, so we
are basically fighting to be part of the oppressive machine.
One of the biggest problems with mobilising around Black radicalism is
that the analysis can make the issues we face feel insurmountable. If
nothing can change without revolution, and the overthrow of the West
seems unimaginable, then it easy to lose hope, to get stuck. We will end
with tying the bigger issues into a programme of local action. All global
movements are based on local groups coming together on the national and
international stage. The struggle for Black liberation starts in your home,
your community, your school. Black radicalism has always offered a
concrete politics of liberation, and a blueprint to struggle where you are.
Fifty years of so-called progress, false promises and symbolic change have
meant we have moved away from a political programme that can lead to
liberation. If we want freedom, justice and equality we need to root the next
generation of mobilisations in the politics of Black radicalism.

Chapter 1

Narrow Nationalism

A veteran campaigner against police abuse in Black communities, Stafford
Scott was in many ways the ideal person to keynote the first major Black
Lives Matter (BLM) conference held in Britain, in October 2015. He battled
through the notorious Broadwater Farm rebellion in Tottenham in 1985,
which were sparked by the police killing Joy Gardner; and, as he explained
in his keynote speech, he has been ‘supporting the people who are receiving
the hard face of racism’ for decades. After a day of listening to speeches in
solidarity with the movement that started in America it was jarring to hear
some of his scepticism about how BLM had been mobilised in Britain. In
comments before the conference he explained that:
When I have to talk to the parents of Jermaine Baker (shot dead by
police in December 2015), and Pam Duggan, the mother of Mark
Duggan and explain to them why they can’t get justice and why our
young people are more interested in what is happening in America,
than England, it irks me.1
These words highlight the dwindling community support that movements
for justice for Black people killed by the police in Britain have been
receiving. The police in Britain do not routinely carry guns, so in
comparison to America there are very few police killings. But the problem
with the police is exactly the same and I have never met anyone who doubts
that if all police were armed then the streets and social media feeds in
Britain would be equally stained with Black blood. But aside from the
killing of Mark Duggan, which sparked protests in 2011, there has not been
the same reaction as to police brutality in America in recent years.
The Black Lives Matter protest in Birmingham, which I referred to in the
introduction, drew thousands people onto the streets in solidarity with

America. It was planned on the same day as a march to put pressure on the
authorities over the death of a local man, Kingsley Burrell, in custody. But
the Kingsley Burrell march drew a fraction of the numbers of the BLM
protest, and though the two eventually connected, it was not until a large
proportion of the BLM protesters had gone home. It is easy to understand
the frustrations of campaigners who have been fighting for justice for
families, sometimes for decades, and do not feel the support of the
community. Scott is also right when he argues that ‘when you cannot get
justice for people that look like you in your own country, you ain’t got no
chance for people that might look like you somewhere else’. In fairness to
him, he has also been positive about the numbers on the street and has
supported BLM demonstrations. However, the comments raise an important
limitation on much of Black political thought in that it gets trapped within
the boundaries of the nation state.
Political movements that focus their attention solely on local or national
problems, accepting the enforced separation of American, British or other
issues, fall outside a radical analysis. The vicious system of racial
oppression causes impacts at the ground level that must be addressed.
Poverty, unemployment, police brutality, mass incarceration, and the list
goes on. But we cannot be so focused on the symptoms of racism that we
ignore the systemic problem. The issues that we see on the streets on a daily
basis are caused by the same system of racism wherever we are located in
the Diaspora. There is no ‘British’ problem that is not an American,
Caribbean or African one. BLM protesters in Britain are not being seduced
by the romanticism of America, they are responding to the same racism that
impacts their lives here. Perhaps the majority of Black politics have not
been driven by this global concern and any discussion of Black radicalism
has to begin with a separation of the concept from various Black Nationalist
traditions.
Black Nationalism has become wrongly conflated with Black radicalism,
and Black Nationalism itself is mostly misunderstood. The collective
memory has created a set of ‘Black nationalist tropes of violence and ultrasexuality’ to represent the tradition,2 rather than focusing on the
revolutionary and liberatory forms of nationalism. In these tropes Black
nationalists are portrayed as ‘divisive, fanatical, dangerous, unprincipled,
racist, delusional and even mad’;3 or ‘demonized as the civil rights
movement’s “evil twin” and stereotyped as a politics of rage practiced by

gun toting’ and ‘men’.4 The tropes are then used to discredit not only Black
Nationalism but also the distinct yet conflated forms of Black radicalism.
Complicating the effort to decouple the two concepts is that Black
radicals have often embraced the rhetoric of nationalism. Malcolm X
declared he was a ‘Black nationalist freedom fighter’5 and the call for Black
nationhood is essential to the radical tradition. However, revolutionary
forms of nationalism must be distinguished from a variety of narrow calls
for nationhood that do not seek to radically transform the system.
The nation within a nation
It is wrong to speak of Black Nationalism as singular political philosophy.
The label Black Nationalism has been applied to so many different contexts
that Hill Collins argues we should now see it as a ‘system of meaning’
rather than a cohesive set of ideas.6 Key to this system of meaning is the
belief that the Black community needs to unite and work together in order
to move forward. The looseness of this idea has brought something of a
banality to the term, where anything remotely pro-Black can be included as
nationalist. Justice Clarence Thomas, the right-wing ideologue, has been
described as Black Nationalist because he ‘suggested that black middle and
high schools “can function as the center and symbol of black communities,
and provide examples of independent black leadership, success, and
achievement”’.7 In one of the more surreal discussions of Black politics,
Michael Jackson’s They Don’t Care About Us is said to be ‘Black
nationalist in temperament’ because he talks of an ‘us’.8 As testament to the
negative view of Black Nationalism, the apparently anti-Semitic use of the
word ‘kike’ in the song is part of this ‘temperament’. When Black
Nationalism is used to describe figures as diverse and incompatible as
Malcolm X, Clarence Thomas and Michael Jackson, there is certainly a
need for a much better understanding of the concept.
Part of the reason for the wide application of Black Nationalism is that
one of its common forms is what Shelby terms ‘weak Black Nationalism:
the political program of black solidarity and group self’. The connection
here is so weak that ‘it could mean working to create a racially integrated
society or even a “post racial” polity, a political order where “race” has no
social or political meaning’.9 This form of nationalism has also been

described as ‘community nationalism’ which ‘seeks black selfdetermination within existing social and political arrangements’.10 These
forms of nationalism are distinguished from the ‘strong’11 or ‘separatist’12
nationalisms, which aim to provide a separate nation outside of the current
nation state arrangement. Black Nationalism without a call for an actual
nation has a long tradition, particularly in the United States.
W.E.B. Du Bois, who early in his career was a staunch integrationist,
argued that,
With the use of their political powers, power as consumers, and their
brain power, added to that a chance of personal appeal which
proximity and neighbourhood always give to human beings, Negroes
can develop in the United States an economic nation within a nation,
able to work through inner cooperation, to found its own institutions
… it must happen in our case or there is no hope for the Negro in
America.13
The nation within a nation thesis laid the theoretical foundation for weak
Black Nationalism. The pooling of resources in order to improve the
conditions for Black communities within the American system is the basis
for campaigns we see in Britain to support Black business, and ‘keep the
Black pound circulating in the community’. This kind of Black Nationalism
is not radical, it is simply rational. As a minority group, Black communities
cannot rely on the wider society to support us. Any successful minority
group, even White ones, have had to rely on community nationalism in
order to have success in society. Little Italy in New York stands as
testimony to this. When Italian Americans first settled in America, they
faced discrimination and built a large community in New York full of
Italian business using community support to create an economic base as a
platform for success in society. Since the community has raised economic,
social and cultural capital, Italians have integrated into mainstream
American society and Little Italy is today a couple of streets with a lot of
history. Carmichael and Hamilton captured this idea in their book Black
Power:

Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks. By
this we mean that group solidarity is necessary before a group can
operate effectively from a bargaining position of strength in a pluralist
society … By building Irish Power, Italian Power, Polish Power or
Jewish Power these groups got themselves together and operated from
positions of strength.14
Trying to decouple more liberal forms of nationalism from the radical ones
is complicated because Black radicalism has argued for and mobilised
community nationalism. Malcolm X explained that ‘the economic
philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we should own and
operate and control the economy of our community’.15 Quotes like this
support the ideas of Black capitalism and pooling resources in order to have
a slice of the American Dream for Black communities. However, as will be
explored in Chapter 3, Malcolm is invoking community nationalism as part
of a radical strategy of liberation. He famously denounced capitalists as
‘bloodsuckers’,16 and wanted no part of integration into the ‘American
nightmare’.17 For those who embrace community nationalism, building a
power base within the existing nation state is the end in itself. Black
economic development is key to solving the problems in African American
communities. Kunjufu argues that there is a need to increase the number of
Black businesses; to convince the ‘talented tenth’ to invest in those
enterprises; and to encourage children to go into business. He even goes so
far as to argue that ‘we need African American institutions to emphasize
economic over political development’.18 Even in his calls for reparatory
justice he would use the capital to invest in ‘college scholarships, business
loans and land’;19 in other words, to achieve success for Black people
within the American system.
Weak nationalism within the nation state is clearly not radical because it
does not aim to overthrow the existing social system and is therefore
perfectly compatible with liberal ideals.20 The malleability of Black
Nationalism is similar to the way that the slogan ‘Black Power’ can be used
to various political ends:
For some the phrase became shorthand to articulate a critique of the
middle class focus of civil rights. For others, ‘Black Power’ was a

catchphrase pushing black America to get its fair share of American
capitalism. And still others saw in the phrase a call for African
Americans to celebrate themselves as beautiful and their culture as
significant.21
In his book Dark Days, Bright Nights, Joseph attempts to link Black Power
politics to the emergence of Barack Obama. There is a passage where he
connects the battle for Black Studies, trade union organising, Black
feminism, the Black Arts movement and prison reform into a backdrop that
led to ‘hundreds of thousands of ordinary local people’ backing a ‘new
generation of Black politicians and successfully electing them as mayors of
a range of urban cities in the 1960s and 1970s’.22 Although he is right that
this history paved the way for Obama’s election, it was also composed of a
disparate range of movements and ideologies which are only weakly
connected on the basis of Blackness. One of Joseph’s arguments is that
these movements transformed American democracy enough to allow
Obama to be elected president. However, while they certainly made his
presidency possible, neither they, nor his election, fundamentally changed
the American system. Black faces on university campuses, in unions or the
mayor’s office do not alter the function of those spaces. Institutional racism
means that no matter the amount of Black presence, if the structure is racist,
so too will be the outcomes.
Obama certainly owes a debt to the array of Black social movements that
came before him, but counter to the faith held by 69% of African
Americans on his election, his presidency was not ‘the fulfilment of Martin
Luther King’s dream’.23 The structural position of African Americans
actually declined under the eight years of Obama’s presidency, with a
higher proportion in poverty and four million more people in Black
communities dependent on food aid.24 Weak Black Nationalism has rallied
African Americans to support a growing political class that has
demonstrated a total ‘inability to alter the poverty, unemployment, and
housing and food insecurity their Black constituents face’.25 Even though
there have been few tangible results from the incorporation of Black faces
into the mainstream political machine, Taylor argues that Black
communities hold out hope because the ‘potential for Black political and

economic development was a welcome alternative to decades of neglect and
disinvestment’.26
The pull of weak Black Nationalism, even when it is irrational, can be
seen in the widespread support for Obama’s presidency, even within socalled radical organisations. The New Black Panther Party (NBP), which
claims to be more radical than the original Panthers, rhetorically rejects the
American system and therefore the legitimacy of a president of any colour.
However, it supported Obama based on the weak nationalist logic that
‘every President has been a white man, now the Black man must have his
time to rule’.27 The NBP is problematic for far more reasons than this
(covered in Chapter 4) but it speaks to the banality of the idea of Black
Nationalism when it is reduced to simply supporting anyone who is Black,
in whatever endeavour, even if it goes against the core beliefs of your stated
politics.
Arguments for creating a Black nation within a nation are not confined
to America, with one of the best examples being in South Africa. One of the
mechanisms used to manage the country by apartheid governments was to
give a measure of self-rule to the African population. Bantustans, or
homelands, for specific African ethnic groups were established in 1951,
with the move to provide Black people political rights only in their
designated ‘homelands’ completed in 1971.28 This was not a new idea. The
British had created ‘reserves’ to keep the African population segregated
from Whites in the nineteenth century, codified in the 1913 Native Land
Act.29 Bantustans were a form of control used to exclude Africans from the
national government of South Africa. Anxiety over the results of the 1970
census, which showed Black people significantly outnumbering Whites, led
to calls to strengthen the ‘homelands’ and ensure that a greater proportion
of the Black population was housed in them.30 Even given their complicity
in the apartheid state there remained African leaders who supported the
Bantustans as a legitimate means for Black progress.
A good example of collusion with this idea of the Bantu nation within
the White nation is Chief Buthelezi, who was appointed head of the Kwa
Zulu Natal homeland by the authorities. He created the Inkatha Freedom
Party in 1975 as a vehicle to drive Zulu nationalism within the apartheid
state.31 In defence of his political project he argued:

Zulu nationalism is a real factor in the context of South African
politics. Nationalism is nothing to be ashamed of in a situation of
cultural and linguistic heterogeneity. Therefore the emergence of Zulu
self-consciousness in our attempts to develop inner directedness is
inevitable in the circumstances in which fate has placed us.32
The problem with his narrow conception of Zulu nationalism is that it was
entirely predicated on the apartheid state, in the same way that his authority
was. His rise to prominence was facilitated by apartheid leaders, who
promoted pliant chiefs who would do their bidding. The combination of his
royal Zulu heritage and the platform given by the state led him to be seen as
‘a leader worthy of national and international recognition and as a bridge
between black and white’ in South Africa.33 Buthelezi often posed as a
supporter of the anti-apartheid struggle, but was supported by Nixon and
Reagan, gave his support to regressive regimes in countries like
Mozambique and carried out apartheid policy in Kwazulu Natal.34 No
doubt his aim was to create a Zulu nation free from the rest of South Africa
if apartheid did end. The quest for Zulu nationalism as opposed to joining
forces with the rest of South Africa led to conflict with the African National
Congress (ANC). From at least 1985 up until the elections in 1994 (and
beyond) sectarian violence killed thousands of people in the Kwa Zulu
Natal region.35 This conflict was complex, as are the claims in general for
Zulu nationalism. However, the creation of a narrow Zulu nationalism, in
violent opposition to other Black freedom movements, was facilitated by
the apartheid state. As much as Mandela can be criticised for selling out the
freedom movement in South Africa and beyond, his decision to make peace
with the apartheid rulers was certainly influenced by violent confrontation
with Inkatha.36 Confronting the forces of White supremacy was difficult
enough, without the internal battle with the Zulus. Narrow nationalisms can
never be the solution to the problem of Black freedom, because they create
divisions that prevent the unity that is essential for overthrowing the
existing social order.
From a radical perspective, the fundamental problem with the idea of the
nation within a nation is that it leaves the regressive structure of the nation
state intact. The goal is to improve our standing with the national setting
rather than to transform what the nation represents. Better integrating Black

communities into oppressive Western nations, or former colonies, is not a
radical challenge; but there are more seemingly critical approaches to Black
nationhood which remain outside of the radical tradition.
A nation outside the nation
The Nation of Islam (NOI) is perhaps the most notorious Black Nationalist
organisation, whose leader Elijah Muhammad appealed for a separate
portion of land where a Black nation could be founded: ‘Come and let us
unite under the crescent and do something for ourselves in the way of
supporting our own needs. Go after some of this earth for our nation of 22
million here in North America.’37 The NOI was by no means the first group
to advocate for a separate nation, with calls to leave America tracing back
at least to emancipation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, after being granted socalled freedom, ‘there is little evidence that for Blacks in general, being
American was considered desirable, even if attainable, until well into the
nineteenth century’.38 Figures such as Martin Delaney and Hubert Harrison
argued that the only solution to African Americans’ problems was to leave
America and create a new nation.39 Desire for separation has typically been
seen as the radical alternative to integration into the existing society.
However, advocating emigration from a Western nation state is not
necessarily radical, because it does not always involve an overturning of the
existing social order.
Delaney has been dubbed the ‘father’ of Black Nationalism, being one of
the first to articulate the call for Black emigration and laying the foundation
for later appeals from groups like the NOI.40 While this move would
require a strong form of nationalism, in a commitment from Black people to
build a nation, his was not a radical call. Delaney planned for a carefully
selected African American vanguard to establish social and industrial
settlements in Africa, with the purpose of instituting the pursuits of ‘modern
civilised life’.41 This is just a more advanced version of the Black capitalist
logic, which runs through the nation within a national position. America
itself is not the problem here; the issue is that because of prejudice Black
people will never be accepted. Therefore it becomes necessary to leave
America and replicate ‘modern civilised life’ but with Black faces. The
structure of the existing society is maintained, but Black people are given

the chance to replicate its success, just elsewhere. It is for this reason that
emigration was a popular solution of White politicians to the problem
caused by emancipation.
The great Abraham Lincoln saw it as moral duty for African Americans
to found a new society on the African continent. In 1862 he informed a
group of free Black people that while they may want to live in America, the
mere thought of doing so was ‘an extremely selfish view of the case’.42 Key
figures like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Andrew Jackson all
supported African Americans leaving the United States. The American
Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in 1816 and attempted to establish
settlements in Liberia before emancipation, and afterwards in Haiti, in
1867.43 The motivation behind this colonisation movement was to maintain
the American system by keeping it White. There was no fear that the Black
nations they were attempting to create would pose any threat to the social
order. In fact, the paternalistic relationship that was at the core of White
abolitionism meant that these colonies would always be defined by their
relationship to the United States. It is no coincidence that the word colony
was used; they were attempting to create a colonial relationship such as
existed with European countries and their territories. The call from African
Americans both during and after emancipation, including from Delaney, are
bound up in this colonisation discourse. The aim was not to overturn the
social order, but to create a co-existing society led by Black faces in another
geographical area. Rather than challenging White domination, the creation
of such apparently independent states would actually reinforce it.
The idea of excluding Black people from the nation state also has a
powerful history in Britain. Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’
speech, delivered in 1968, has been remembered because of its prediction of
chaos caused by allowing mass immigration of the dark peoples of the
world into the country. However, an often overlooked argument in his
speech is not simply that immigration has to stop, but that Britain needed to
reverse the movement of people that had already taken place:
I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of
growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would
be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in
the population would still leave the basic character of the national
danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable

proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this
country during the last ten years or so.44
Repatriation was a common call from the far right who wanted to ‘keep
Britain White’, who were perfectly happy for Black people to ‘go home’, to
our ‘own countries’, as long as we no longer polluted Whiteness in Britain.
Again, there was never any fear that the nations of the Caribbean or Africa
would rise up and challenge the dominance of the Britain, because of the
colonial relationship that makes the idea of ‘independence’ a hollow
fantasy. Therefore no call to Black nationhood can be radical if it leaves the
existing system intact and is welcomed by Whiteness.
A halfway house between the weak Black Nationalism to connect us to
the nation and the strong version that seeks to repatriate Black people to
other lands is the call for separation within the geographic area of the
existing nation state. The NOI appealed for a ‘portion of land’ in the South
to be given over to African Americans to develop separately from the
nation. This idea also spread in the ‘Black belt thesis’, which emerged from
Black communists in the 1920s and held that the South was home to such a
large Black population that part of it could secede from the union.45 But the
dangers of segregation led by the White power structure were obvious in
America.
The doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ became enshrined in American race
relations with the Plessy vs Ferguson decision in 1896.46 Segregation was
deemed legal as long as the facilities provided for both Black and White
were equal. This was a key ruling that provided the basis for Jim Crow, the
system of segregation in the South, which remained intact until the civil
rights movement bought about desegregation and voting reforms in the
1960s. The problem with the concept is that while there was segregation,
there was no equality, with African Americans not only being denied access
to equivalent services, but also being second class citizens with restricted
voting rights. Segregation was used as a tool to disempower and oppress
African Americans, providing a glimpse into the problems any Black nation
would experience in dealing with an unreformed America. Advocates of a
Black nation just outside the nation were keenly aware of the problems with
segregation.

While still a member of the NOI, Malcolm X outlined the position on
separation in the organisation. He was keen to stress that ‘we don’t want to
be segregated by the white man. We don’t want to be integrated with the
white man. We want to be separated from the white man’.47 The distinction
between separation and segregation was an attempt to deal with the
criticisms that they would simply rectify the oppression of Jim Crow.
Malcolm actually argues that reparatory justice is key to this call for
separation in that it would be unjust to expect African Americans to flourish
in their new land without compensation for the exploitation they had
endured:
the government, again, should supply us with the machinery and the
tools necessary to establish our own independent society and our own
independent country and in this way it will be creating a solution that
the Black man himself, our people ourselves, can bring about if we
have that capability.48
The separation into a new nation for African Americans was seen as the
solution to the limitation of segregation in the United States. By providing
the resources and also the possibility for African Americans to develop their
own society, it was hoped that the equality that was denied in America
could be achieved.
In the same way that calls for colonisation had support from the far right,
so too did the NOI’s ambitions for a separate Black nation. Due to their
programmes of racial separation the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the NOI
became curious bedfellows. According to Malcolm, the Klan was
supportive of the NOI’s goals for national liberation and he negotiated a
pact between the two groups to support each other’s agendas. As well as
dealing with the KKK, the Nation formed alliances with the equally antiSemitic American Nazi Party, members of which would actually turn up to
NOI rallies in their uniforms.49 At the 1996 National African American
Leadership Summit that brought together a range of Black organisations,
Farrakhan, leader of the NOI, caused a fist fight to break out when he
invited Lyndon La Rouche to speak. La Rouche’s participation was so
troubling because he was a high-profile far right activist, who supported

apartheid and had historic links to the KKK. The NOI’s appeal to the far
right did not stop at the American border:
By the early 1980s, Farrakhan’s activities and speeches had come to
the attention of British fascists, who quickly embraced the black
Muslim’s programme of racial separatism. The far-right, racist
National Front praised Farrakhan as ‘God-sent’ and subsequently
distributed leaflets defending the Nation of Islam’s positions.50
The political programme of the NOI should never be confused with, or even
discussed in the same vein as, a radical politics. However, the aim for a
separate Black nation in America was taken up by more progressive forces.
After Malcolm’s death, his calls for a Black nation were picked up by the
Republic of New Afrika (RNA), founded at the Black Government
Conference in 1968. The aim of the movement was to set up a new republic
in the Black Belt, which consisted of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi and South Carolina. In its 1972 Anti-Depression programme,
the Republic demanded from America the territory, a vote for Black people
on independence and $300 billion in reparations payments to establish the
Black nation.51 The RNA rejected ideas of Western capitalism in how the
state should be organised, proposing a form of African socialism, where the
wealth was distributed equitably. It also aimed to build international links to
protect the new republic by having the new nation recognised by the United
Nations. The RNA featured high-profile membership, becoming a standard
bearer for Black critical thought in the late 1960s and 1970s. Members
included Robert Williams, Queen Mother Audely Moore, Amiri Baraka,
Betty Shabazz and Assata Shakur. Given its aims, its roots in Malcolm’s
ideas and its cast of supporters, the RNA on the surface would seem a
logical contribution to Black radicalism. However, complete separation in
this manner, even if calls for reparatory justice were fulfilled, still would
not lead to the transformation necessary for Black radicalism.
For one thing, the same criticism that was applied to the idea of
repatriation still applies. The most likely scenario for the new Black nation
in the South would be to fall into a colonial relationship with America.
Even if we take Malcolm’s call for reparatory justice, America would only
agree to a sum that would not cripple it, and to receive support for twenty-

five years meant that the system would need to stay intact. It also stands to
reason that for America to pay the $300 billion, it would need to be able to
do so. In order to be radical, the solutions sought must overturn the system
of oppression. America itself is the oppressor, and therefore radical politics
must seek to overcome it. Simply leaving, and remaining next door, will not
end racism, it will just change the way that it manifests. In many ways, this
argument is similar to the ideas of the American Colonization Society, just
within the geographic area of America. It is here that we can see another
fundamental limitation of its radicalism.
Muhammed specifically calls for a land for ‘the 22 million here in North
America’, while the RNA aims to give a place for African Americans to
find sanctuary from racism. This restrictive call entirely ignores the African
Diaspora to provide a distinctively American response. It is a call that still
clearly fits within the model of ‘separate but equal’ by not going beyond the
boundaries of the nation state. Racism is a global system and therefore
Black radicalism must be truly international in how it is conceived. Even if
separation would solve the problems for African Americans, it would leave
them intact for the rest of the Diaspora. The RNA attempted to add a
dimension of internationalism by making connections through the United
Nations to other oppressed nations. This approach is problematic because it
displays too much faith in the UN as a body able to equalise power relations
between richer and poorer nations. The RNA adopted this miscalculation
from Malcolm, who put a lot of stock in taking ‘Uncle Sam to the world
court’.52 As history has demonstrated, petitioning the UN has been fruitless
for Black freedom movements, because the institution is controlled by
Western powers.53 More problematically, the RNA attempted to add an
international element to a fundamentally isolationist and narrow
nationalism. Separation for African Americans, depending on the support of
the American government, is not at its heart a radical project. It is one that
seeks refuge for part of the Diaspora at the ultimate expense of the rest.
The best example of the limits of the nation outside the nation may be,
ironically, the most successful Black revolution in history. In 1804 Haiti
declared its independence, completing the rebellion that had started over a
decade before. The revolution sent shockwaves around the world, proving
that the might of Europe could be challenged and defeated by enslaved
Africans. One of the impacts of the revolution was the Abolition of the
British Slave Trade Act passed in 1807, in large part because the British

were terrified of the African-born enslaved who were so central to the
revolution. Haiti’s particular brand of slavery meant that people were often
worked to death and they would simply restock with fresh African flesh,
meaning most of the population was African-born.54 Slaving nations were
also terrified that the contagion of revolution would spread across the
Americas and the system would be overturned. This was particularly the
case in the Dominican Republic, which shared the island with the newly
independent Haiti. Upon achieving freedom Haiti declared itself a sanctuary
for those escaping slavery and repelled numerous attempts at European
invasions to recapture the island. Haiti is still used as a symbol of resistance
across the globe, with figures like Toussain’t L’Overture immortalised in
the Black imagination. But though they were unable to retake Haiti,
Western powers actually achieved a much bigger success with the newly
liberated nation.
In 1825 France threatened the young nation with its warships and
demanded the equivalent of billions of dollars in compensation for the loss
of the colony. In return France would recognise Haitian sovereignty.55 It
took until 1947 for Haiti to make the payment, crippling the country’s
economy during that time and since. The price paid for Haitain nationhood
was not just symbolic; the problems Haiti has faced since its liberation is
that it is surrounded by the hostile enemies of Black freedom. Haiti was
effectively cut off from the rest of the world and never allowed to be a
successful state. The result was internal chaos driven by the poverty that the
West created. An American occupation of Haiti in 1915 further destabilised
the country and it should come as no surprise that François Duvalier, also
known as Papa Doc, was able to come to power in the 1950s and install a
violent dictatorship over the island. Haiti remains one of the poorest nations
in the world with no route to meaningful change. If ever there was a
warning that a Black nation outside the West can succeed without the
overthrow of the global system of oppression, it is the story of Haiti.
In the case of Black populations in Western nation states, nationalism is
a theoretical discussion, but post-independence there are now numerous
former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean that are officially nation states.
The search for racial equality in the nation states of the former colonies is
even more problematic. At least in America or Britain, there is a faint hope,
however illusory, that Black people will be fully integrated into the system
and enjoy equal spoils from the nation. Given the neo-colonial relationship

that exists with the former colonies, there is almost total futility in seeking a
national response to the issues the countries face.
Colonial nationalism
The idea of Jamaican nationalism is a perfect example of the limits of
national approaches to freedom. Jamaican nationalism began to emerge as a
political project in 1938, with the founding of the People’s National Party
(PNP) under Norman Manley, and the Jamaican Labour Party, led by his
cousin Alexander Bustamate.56 Importantly, this nationalism was supported
and nurtured by the British colonial government which had already
cultivated an elite class to help govern the island. Britain designed the
transition towards Jamaican independence to be a national system
dominated by the two original parties, governed by leaders educated in and
produced by the British system. This is the same relationship that exists to
this day and should come as no surprise given that the Jamaican nation state
is fundamentally a British creation.
‘Out of Many, One People’ is the national mantra of Jamaica, a creation
myth meant to tie the population into a national and multi-racial project. An
editorial in the Jamaican Observer explained the motto’s creation:
The leadership of the new independent Jamaica and colonialists
happily vacating the country wanted to first, assure the wealthy and
potential foreign investors that they had no need to fear the
desperately poor black masses. Second, it sought to convince the poor
black people that those with wealth were their genuine brothers and
sisters.57
Jamaican nationalism may have succeeded in its first aim of suppressing the
masses, which is a key part of any Western nation state project.58 However,
the current state of the nation should make it evident that the second is
entirely untrue and has been since before the nation was founded.
Prior to Western interference, Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean were
islands sparsely populated by native Amerindians. Columbus’ so-called
‘discovery’ of the region in 1492 led to European expansion and the

genocide of 80% of the native population of the Americas as a whole.59 The
slaughter of the natives meant that Europeans enslaved Africans in order to
do the labour necessary to create the industrial revolution in Europe.60 The
majority of the Jamaican population is only Black because of the countless
Africans taken there in chains by Europeans. The common conception of
Jamaica as ‘home’ for those who have left the island brings to mind
Malcolm’s chastisement of African Americans who acted as though they
arrived voluntarily on the ship Mayflower, with European pilgrims.61 The
island of Jamaica was a key part of the British Empire, for centuries raising
huge revenues from enslaving and killing Black people. There is no way to
understand Jamaica and Britain as separate entities, because the entire
colony was designed, built and run to enrich Britain. Up until so-called
independence in 1962, people born in Jamaica were British subjects, ruled
by the crown, paying taxes and living life in service to the mother country.
After the Second World War, those born in Jamaica were even invited to
work to rebuild Britain, leading to the substantial Jamaican community.
This voluntary migration from the Caribbean to Britain is often seen as
creating a different relationship between African Caribbeans in Britain and
African Americans in the United States.
It is important to recognise that this migration was only voluntary in a
very limited view of the term. There are stark similarities in the relationship
between the Caribbean and Britain, with the American South and the North.
Africans were brought in chains to both the Caribbean and the South, and
because they had been enslaved they could only voluntarily migrate after
emancipation. During the period of mass migration after the Second World
War, Jamaica was British soil, so even though people needed to cross an
ocean, this was still internal migration within the British Empire. After
independence in 1962 it is not as though the colonial relationship between
Jamaica and Britain ceased to exist. It is also no coincidence that
independence was granted in the same year that Britain started to limit the
migration of Black and Asian people from the colonies by passing the
Commonwealth Immigration Act. Therefore, the illusion of nationhood for
Jamaica was primarily granted to limit the number of Black people entering
the mother country. The continued migration after 1962 should still be seen
in the same way as international migration in America.
Up until 1962, the British Caribbean was essentially the British version
of the American South: the former slaveholding part of the British nation,

which produced an agrarian economy with a lack of opportunities and jobs,
leading to migration to the industrial heartlands. One of the most important
myths to dispel is that countries like Jamaica are self-functioning,
independent nations. Jamaica has had a measure of political independence
since 1962 but its economy is entirely controlled from the outside and is the
perfect example of neo-colonial economics.
During the 1970s the Jamaican government under Michael Manley
attempted to introduce social democracy to more evenly distribute the
wealth and close the gaping inequalities. But the lack of control the island
has over its economy became apparent in the response from the
international community. The global economic crisis in the 1970s meant
that the experiment was blamed for the worsening economy and abandoned
in the 1980s. At this point the Jamaican government looked to the
International Monetary Fund for loans to support the economy. The
problem with these loans is that, like any deal with the devil, there are
debilitating strings attached. In order to access the money, nations have to
agree to structural adjustments to their economy. These adjustments
typically, and certainly in the case of Jamaica, include opening up trade and
imports to foreign markets, slashing spending on welfare programmes and
ending government subsidies to key industries like food production.62 The
impact of these policies on Jamaica was devastating to the poor, with cuts to
provision, and also collapsed agricultural production by flooding the market
with foreign produce. In addition to increasing inequality and reducing the
limited economic independence of the island, the series of loans from
apparently benevolent Western institutions has led to Jamaica having one of
the highest debt burdens in the world, currently at around 120% of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP).63 As a result Jamaica spends ‘twice as much on
debt repayments as it does on education and health combined’.64 The
economic policy of Jamaica is largely dictated by external forces due to
these loans, but the economic picture is even bleaker.
In Jamaica the biggest industry by far is tourism, which accounts for
30% of GDP, and employs almost a quarter of the total workforce.65 An
overreliance on tourism is problematic due to the extent to which it makes a
country dependent on outside forces. For example, the majority of
investment in infrastructure in Jamaica is spent on the tourism trade,
building hotels and facilities for visitors. A major road-building project was
recently completed on the north coast, to connect the tourist side of the

island to the airport. But this kind of investment neglects the less touristfriendly parts of the island, creating further exclusions. The other major
problem with the tourist industry is that it is largely foreign owned,
meaning that anywhere between 30% and 80% of the money spent in the
industry ‘leaks’ out of Jamaica.66 The same is true for other exports, like
the diminishing mineral deposits of bauxite.
Foreign ownership of the key parts of the economy means that the
biggest source of income for Jamaica is from remittances, which account
for 30% of GDP.67 These are payments made by family members in the
Jamaican Diaspora and also pensions to those who have retired to the island
after working in the West. Therefore the Jamaican economy is being kept
afloat by those who have migrated and kept economic ties. Importantly, this
continued relationship depends on the countries to which migration has
occurred continuing to welcome Jamaican migrants. In the case of the two
primary countries for Jamaican migration, America and Britain, exactly the
opposite trend is dominant in immigration policy. As fewer people migrate
out, and the previous generations of migrants pass away, this vital source of
income for the economy will decline. It is almost unimaginable to think
what the impact of a growing population twinned with a steep decline in
income will have on the island.
Jamaica’s economic future is bleak, and the embrace of colonial
nationalism has led to policies and ideas that are the definition of a cul-desac. One of the more depressing approaches to this nationalism is the
pretence that the economy can become self-sufficient by streamlining and
embracing neo-liberal austerity agendas. For example, Andre Haughton, an
economics lecturer at the University of the West Indies, opined in his
column in the Gleaner that ‘this year alone, the Government increased
spending on social safety net projects to US$14.5 million; a fraction of this
could be used to facilitate the establishment of social enterprises to produce
niche goods and services for export’.68 Advocating that one of the most
unequal countries in the world should cut back on its paltry welfare
spending is problematic enough. Arguing that the money would be better
spent in developing exportable commodities in a nation that is in a neocolonial dependency relationship with the rest of the world takes a special
kind of short-sightedness. Jamaica, and the Caribbean as a whole, are net
importers of fish.69 If an island nation cannot even control its waters then it
is madness to expect it to be able to gain anything but oppression from the

global economy. This is the problem with colonial nationalism; it creates
the pretence that Jamaica can possibly be a self-functioning economy that
can prosper on the global stage, even though all the evidence is to the
contrary.
Perhaps the best example of colonial nationalism is Jamaica’s National
Diaspora policy. The basis of the policy is to ensure that ‘national identity,
pride and cultural affinity with “Brand Jamaica” are tenets which will be
embraced by all Jamaicans, at home and abroad, and future generations’.70
The government has recognised that migration from Jamaica has kept the
country afloat and is now making strengthening ‘national’ ties to those who
have left a priority.
Remittances are highlighted as an important aspect of Diaspora
contributions, with the aim to develop the ‘legal and institutional
mechanisms implemented to support the[ir] transmission, regulation,
measurement’.71 However, the document also displays the government’s
problems with individual remittances on a family or personal basis, and the
damage that this can do to the nation-building project. In the particularly
short section on remittances, given their centrality to the economy, the focus
shifts to the ‘management’ of these payments and exploring ‘options for
using a portion of remittances for investments created through partnerships
with the government and financial institutions in Jamaica’.72 In the
document there is an effort to shift the economic contribution away from an
individual connection and towards a national idea of Jamaica, and using
social ‘remittances, tourism and philanthropic engagements primarily in the
sectors of health and education’.73
In order to create a sustainable contribution from the Jamaican Diaspora,
the policy also recognises the importance of ‘engendering national identity
and cultural affinity among Jamaican descendants in the second generation
and beyond, particularly the youth’.74 By creating this national affinity with
Jamaica the aim is to encourage investment, philanthropy and partnership
that will assure the country can succeed. At least the government is
acknowledging that the survival of the island requires thinking beyond
nation state boundaries. However, it is still based on a narrow conception of
the nation. The entire basis of this project is the idea of ‘brand Jamaica’,
and national unity as the mechanism for bringing in the Diaspora. The
evidence of remittances is that the Diaspora, in particular the second

generation, is personal, with money being sent to family members or in
pension payments. There is no reason to assume that Black people born in
Britain would have or want a national connection to Jamaica. Nations are
always, in part, built on common culture and imagined bonds, but they are
solidified by concrete realities of nationhood. The allure of nationhood is
never enough, particularly when the second and third generations are often
fighting for national status within the countries where they were born. If the
fate of Jamaica lies with those born off the island embracing ‘brand
Jamaica’ then the future is very bleak indeed. Even if it were possible to get
this national buy-in from the Diaspora, it would remain a very limited and
narrow form of colonial nationalism.
One of the reasons the policy highlights that those outside of Jamaica are
important is because ‘Diaspora capital markets can contribute significantly
to national development by mobilizing savings for investments and
providing long-term alternatives to facilitate wealth creation’.75 This is a
recognition that out-migration has taken place to developed countries where
there are more resources and the aim is to use the Diaspora to utilise access
to this wealth to benefit Jamaica. The assumption appears to be that the
Jamaican Diaspora has access to this capital, and has ignored the reality that
Black people in places like Britain suffer severe forms of economic
discrimination. If we cannot mobilise the resources of Britain for those of
us in the country, there is little hope of us being able to spread their benefits
to Jamaica.
More importantly, what this idea entirely neglects is that the wealth that
the Diaspora has access to is derived from the West exploiting countries like
Jamaica through neo-colonial trade practices, effectively meaning that this
is a policy of supporting the same system that impoverishes Jamaica, in an
effort to enrich it. The same applies for all the areas of development in this
policy, including remittances, tourism and philanthropy. The entire
conception of Jamaica as a nation state, with its own Diaspora that can help
better integrate the island into the global economic system is a form of neocolonialism. Jamaica is a creation of the Western imperial order, and
therefore it cannot be the vehicle for its overthrow.
Black Nationalism has all too often been conflated with Black radicalism,
making it essential we began the book by drawing clear distinctions. The
various forms of Black Nationalism are usually based on narrow concepts

of the nation, which mean they do challenge the global social order. From
the conservative idea of the ‘nation within a nation’ to the more militant
arguments for land for African Americans, these politics can be
accommodated within the status quo. Narrow forms of nationalism across
the Diaspora and on the African continent present some of the most shortsighted and dangerous politics that promise to further embed Black people
in the global system of racial oppression. Black radicalism must be based
on a much broader idea of the nation, one that transcends the limits of the
Western idea of the nation state, and unites Africa and its Diaspora to
liberate all Black people across the globe.

Chapter 2

Pan-Africanism

One of the most important books for introducing me to the politics of Black
radicalism was Stokely Carmichael’s (he became Kwame Ture), Stokely
Speaks. Up to this point I had avoided the vast array of Black political
books commanding my parents’ bookshelf. I only picked up Stokely Speaks
because the cover was so unintentionally funny. It had a red background
with Stokely holding a shotgun over his head with both hands, complete
with Afro and sunglasses. My teenage self was amused and started reading,
expecting to find the content as ridiculous as the cover. Instead, the saying
about books and their covers has never been truer and I was captivated from
beginning to end. Over thirty years after it was published, thousands of
miles away, its analysis rang out as though he was speaking to me about the
day’s events from my living room setee. What really impressed was how
the book outlined a politics of liberation that made practical sense. The
subtitle of the work is From Black Power to Pan Africanism and he argued
that the only logical conclusion of Black Power politics in the West was
Pan-Africanism. Some of the most powerful words I recall from reading the
book that first time are ‘a true revolutionary must provide an alternative, not
just rhetoric condemning the existing system’.1 He outlines Pan-Africanism
as an alternative, predicated on a land base and the ability to create a
different political and economic system on the continent. Africa has been
savaged by both the West and the East because of its wealth of resources,
and in Stokely’s argument it is this wealth that made the continent uniquely
placed to build a different model of society. Pan-Africanism was
synonymous with Black radical politics, providing the substance behind the
rhetoric.
Pan-Africanism as the mode of the Black revolution has dominated my
experience of activist circles since my first reading of Stokely Speaks. The
Pan-African Congress Movement in Britain has been the standard bearer for
work on the liberation of Africa. The fifth Pan-African Congress (PAC) in

Manchester in 1945 has been elevated to an almost mythic status for its role
in spurring liberation movements across the African continent. The recent
commemorations of the seventieth anniversary re-lit this meeting in the
radical imaginary and I got caught up in the hype, writing that ‘we need to
revive the revolutionary spirit of the Pan-African Congress’.2 It is not
difficult to see how the rhetoric of Pan-Africanism would be viewed as
being at the forefront of the global movement against imperialism.
Centred on a critique of European colonialism, the Pan-African
movement certainly was at the heart of many of the African struggles for
independence from colonialism. Shirley Graham DuBois summed up the
Pan-African sentiment towards the European colonisers when she argued:
‘They love our African sunshine, our beautiful broad rivers, our bright gold,
sparkling diamonds, copper, magnesia, bauxite and oil. They do not love
Africans or the Children of Africa – wherever they may be’.3 In his
founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in 1964,
Malcolm X proclaimed that ‘Africa will not go forward any faster than we
[the Diaspora] will and we will not go forward any faster than Africa will.
We have one destiny’.4 Pan-Africanism was seen to represent the
revolutionary overthrow of imperialism on the African continent. PanAfricanism has become synonymous with movements such as Garveyism,
which spread across the globe in the early twentieth century aiming to
liberate ‘Africa for the Africans’.5
Pan-Africanism, however, has a far more complicated history than being
the revolutionary antidote to global racism.6 In much of the literature on the
topic the consensus is that, rather than representing a clear set of politics,
the movement has ‘no founder, or particular set of political tenets’ and so
‘almost defies definition’.7 So broad is the realm of the Pan-African that it
has been defined as including ‘the liberation of Africa; the economic, social
and cultural regeneration of Africa; and the promotion of African unity and
of African influence in world affairs’.8 These may all seem like worthwhile
goals but Fanon warned that the main problem facing Africa in regard to
independence was the lack of a coherent ideology.9 It is not enough to want
to liberate Africa, the question is how we go about doing so. In order to
begin to distinguish between the varying forms, Shepperson marked the
difference between capital and small ‘p’ Africanism.10 Pan-Africanism with
a capital letter marks the series of conferences and congresses that were

started in London in 1900, while pan-Africanism captures the array of
political movements that have put the unity of Africa and the Diaspora at
their core.
We must reject this orthodoxy of seeing Pan-Africanism as a wide range
of different viewpoints and competing ideas. One of the most infuriating
things about the way Black intellectual and political thought is understood
is that we lump everything together as though it were one united history.
The differences in how Africa is placed at the heart of Black politics are so
diverse and contradictory it is an insult to think of them as being part of a
whole. Instead, we should view Pan-Africanism only as the formal
movement that may have had its roots before the first conference in 1900,
but was launched at that point. Other traditions have different names, ideas
and political bases. Importantly, to separate out the movement in this way is
to trace a different reality than the one that has such a hold on the Black
radical imaginary.
Far from resulting in revolutionary politics in Africa, the legacy of PanAfricanism is the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and after its demise
the African Union (AU). Quite rightly, both of these institutions have been
heavily criticised for cementing imperialism on the African continent.11 It is
not that Pan-Africanism has been too loosely defined so that it has been ‘coopted and used by the enemies of the African Revolution’,12 but that the
movement has from its outset been one that has further embedded Africa
into the system of oppression.
Pan-Africanism as imperialism
Britain has been an important site for the formal movement of PanAfricanism. The first Pan-African Conference and the second congress
were convened in London, and perhaps the most influential meeting took
place in Manchester in 1945.13 Britain as the location of the birthplace of
organised Pan-Africanism is not a coincidence. Not only was the congress
held in Britain, the seat of imperial power, it actually took place in the
Palace of Westminster. This is not mere symbolism, but testament to the
fact that the movement’s origins were not in direct conflict with the colonial
administration. In many ways the forerunner to organised Pan-Africanism
was not the politics of resistance embedded in slave revolts and anti-

imperialism. Instead, it was in the imperial movement to resettle the
formerly enslaved in the West back on the African continent. As explained
in the previous chapter, efforts to ‘save’ Africa with enlightened African
Americans were conceived as a solution to the supposed race problem in
the nineteenth century. Far from representing a rejection of colonialism,
these efforts were a collusion in the imperial project and essential to
understanding the emergence of Pan-Africanism.
The first Pan-African Conference was organised in Britain in 1900 and
spearheaded by the barrister Henry Sylvester Williams.14 Though the aims
of the conference included African unity and improving the conditions of
those on the continent and in the Diaspora, the routes to achieving these lie
more in the colonisation movement from America than in any radical
politics of liberation. Williams saw one of the goals of Pan-Africanism as
being to improve the relations between Europeans and Africans, not to
overturn the oppressive relationship. He also wanted ‘to start a movement
looking forward to securing all African races living in civilized countries
their full rights and to promote their business interests’.15 Pan-Africanism
was founded as a bourgeois project to bring modernisation to the African
continent, within the framework of imperialism. There were subsequently
Pan-African congresses held in London, Paris and New York. It was not
until the fifth of these, in Manchester in 1945, that the delegates called for
independence on the African continent. Up until this point they had argued
for a form of trusteeship over the colonies, which would still be ruled by
European powers. This was the liberal, gradualist, reformist approach of the
civil rights movement being enacted on the world stage.
Parallel to the emergence of Pan-Africanism there was a far more radical
alternative that called for immediate independence and claimed ‘Africa for
the Africans, at home and abroad’.16 The Garvey movement built the
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) into a global
organisation with over five million members across the African Diaspora, at
its peak.17 Garvey’s message was similar to Pan-Africanism in that he
planned for a physical return to the African continent, but not under the
auspices of the colonial powers. Central to Garvey’s appeal was the
rejection of the Westphalian notion of the nation state.18 Garvey aimed to
create a global Black nation with Africa at its centre and a key part of this
endeavour was the great conventions, which were held in New York from

the 1920s.19 Unlike the smaller Pan-African congresses with their invited
delegates from the limited bourgeois class of Black folk, these were mass
events that drew thousands of people. The contrast here is vital to
understanding the politics of Pan-Africanism. Due to Garvey’s embrace of
Africa he is often incorrectly seen as a founder of Pan-Africanism. In fact,
while Pan-Africanism developed at the time he was active, during the
formative stages of the movement it rejected both him and his more radical
ideas of Black sovereignty. The intellectual figure at the heart of PanAfricanism was W.E.B. Dubois, who was vehemently anti-Garvey, leading
to a bitter personal rivalry.
Garvey was an admirer of DuBois, who was actually part of the group
that welcomed the American scholar on his visit to Jamaica in 1915.20
When Garvey moved to Harlem he sought out Dubois in his offices at the
Crisis magazine in order to see how the two could work together. His
experience there was instructive to the differences between the two. Garvey
was struck by the lack of Black people employed by the magazine, and
Dubois was not keen to embrace Garvey.21 In fact, Dubois became one of
Garvey’s fiercest critics, not only attacking his politics but also calling him
stupid, ugly and black, in reference to his dark skin tone.22 This personal
attack demonstrates some of the very limited racial politics of DuBois.
Hallmarking his early (and continued to some extent later) work is the idea
that:
The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional
men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all
deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best
of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the
contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.23
This notion of the ‘Best of the race’ elevating the masses is the kind of
bourgeois sentiment that is the antithesis of Garveyism. Even more
problematically, when civilisation is defined as proximity to Whiteness,
these ideas also become entangled in the notion of colourism, where being
phenotypically closer to Whiteness also becomes marked as a sign of
advancement.24 Unfortunately, these sentiments are embedded within the
early forms of Pan-Africanism, which involved bringing together these

upright men to imagine the future for the African continent and Diaspora.
While for Pan-Africanism, colourism may not play as central a role, the
plan to colonise Africa with the more civilised Black people who had
benefited from the West is at the core foundation of the movement. For all
the problems of Garveyism, the movement always insisted on being rooted
in mass appeal. Pan-Africanism has never achieved this, being mainly
coordinated between the ‘Best of the race’ in formal settings.
Britain as a location for the emergence of Pan-Africanism also speaks to
the limitations of the movement. As one of the major imperial powers,
Britain’s influence spreads across the African Diaspora. When PanAfricanism emerged in 1900, Britain was not limited to the shores of the
British Isles. Large parts of Africa and the Caribbean were a part of
Britain’s imperial project. Henry Sylvester Williams, born in Trinidad, was
a barrister in South Africa and founded the first congress in London,25 and
did all of this in Britain. It is not happenstance that London was the site for
the first conference; given its status as the metropolis for the colonial
outposts it was the logical venue.
As the seat of British imperial power, London also had a central role in
reproducing empire. Colonialism could only be carried out with the help of
a native bourgeois class that would impart Western wisdom in the colonies.
The civil servants and future leaders of Africa and the Caribbean were
trained and educated in the West, with Britain being a key landing point.
The Pan-African congresses in Europe were therefore mostly made up of
this class, the appointed colonial elite. Even some of the more celebrated
anti-colonial leaders like Jomo Kenyatta received their education in
Britain.26 Attempts to hold the congresses on African soil were stopped by
the imperial powers, worried that ideas of African unity were too dangerous
on the continent itself.27 Separated from the masses, the congresses were
free to develop along lines compatible with imperialism.
Dubois himself admitted his earlier problematic view of the African
continent. Writing towards the end of his life in 1959 he explained that:
‘Once I thought of you Africans as children, whom we educated African
Americans would lead to liberty. I was wrong. We could not even lead
ourselves, much less you. Today I see you rising under your own
leadership, guided by your own brains.’28 The fact that this realisation had
to come to Dubois should be telling. Interestingly, Kwame Nkrumah, the
first president of Ghana and a close friend of DuBois, saw his politics as

representing ‘bourgeois Negro reformism’.29 In his celebration of DuBois at
the sixth Pan-African Congress, Julius Nyerere, president of Tanzania,
pointed out that he was not a ‘mass or popular leader’ and limited his
achievements to ‘the advances towards human dignity which black people
have recorded’.30 This is one of the greatest limitations of DuBois; from the
beginning his work aimed to prove that Black people were equal to, and
deserving of, the same treatment as Whites. He was not interested in
overthrowing the system of imperialism; he was fundamentally committed
to carving out a space of equality for Black people within it. We can see this
in his final vision of Pan-Africanism, where he calls for a re-engagement
with the congress movement,
The new series of Pan African congresses would seek common aims
of progress for Black Africa, including types of political control,
economic cooperation, cultural development, universal education and
freedom from religious dogma. The consequent Pan Africa, working
together as independent units should seek to develop a new African
economy and cultural center standing between Europe and Asia,
taking from and contributing to both.31
For Dubois, Africa cannot stand on its own feet, and needs to find support
from either the West or the East. He even talks of having to ‘starve a while
longer’ in order to extract the best deal.32 This is not a vision of overturning
the system of imperialism, but rather one where Africa can pull itself up to
the level where it can fully integrate into the global order. The goal is a
form of equality and not a politics of liberation. It is for this reason that
‘DuBois’s pan-Africanist activities fit squarely within the realm of classical
liberal thought’,33 and has contributed to the development of a Pan-African
movement that never challenged imperialism. To fully understand the limits
of Pan-Africanism it is necessary to examine the role of the nation state in
the movement.
Colonial nation state

At the momentous fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945 the
tenor of the movement changes. There is a declaration that independence is
needed for Africa and many of the delegates, including Nkrumah, Nyerere,
Kenyatta and Hastings Banda from Malawi, went on to lead their countries
to independence.34 Though there was only one more recognised congress,
in Tanzania in 1974, the movement continued through the legacy of formal
Pan-African organisation on the continent after independence. The
preceding Pan-African congresses laid the foundation for a politics where
Africans ‘entrusted their new found independence in the colonial state,
despite the fact that none of these states had any existence prior to their
invention by colonial regimes’.35
The container within which independence was allowed to develop in
Africa was the colonial nation state. While there were a number of
liberation struggles, Europeans were often happy to turn over the running of
African nations to the natives.36 The limits of the nation state set enough
boundaries to control against revolutionary notions of African unity. The
impact of accepting nation state boundaries was to balkanise the continent,
allowing imperial powers to control small territories with limited power. It
also solidified national boundaries as artificial divides pitting the
proliferation of nations against one another. Pan-African leaders at the time,
such as Nyerere, insisted that ‘the African national State is an instrument
for the unification of Africa, and not for dividing Africa’.37 The stated aim
was to use the development of national movements to independence as a
platform for developing a more fundamental African nationalism, which
would permeate the colonial borders. However, in much the same way as
communist revolutions tend to get stuck in the dictatorship of the
proletariat, Pan-Africanism remained firmly rooted in the colonial nation
state. As Diop noted, ‘for all the fine public statements, multifarious
individual and general interests are at work to make people cling to the
established frontiers of the various territories’.38
From the outset of Pan-Africanism on the continent there were
competing nations and groups. The most notable split was between what
came to be known as the Monrovia and Casablanca groups of countries.
The Casablanca bloc met in Morocco in 1961 and included nations such as
Ghana, Egypt and Guinea whose leaders were open to a more fundamental
cooperation of African states, under a federal system. Meanwhile, a group

of nations met in Monrovia, also in 1961, composed of Nigeria and much of
Francophone Africa.39 The setting of Liberia is more than symbolic given
that the country had been the site for one of the largest settlements in the
drive to colonise Africa with formerly enslaved Africans from America.
This group was steadfastly opposed to the federal approach and insisted on
maintaining nation state boundaries and sovereignty.
Founded in 1962, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) officially
brought together the disparate Casablanca and Monrovia groups. This
formal commitment was seen by many as a radical step towards unity.
Malcolm X took inspiration, explaining that the ‘organisation consists of all
independent African states who reached the agreement to submerge all
differences and combine their efforts toward eliminating from the continent
of Africa colonialism and all vestiges of oppression and exploitation being
suffered by African people’.40 So impressed was Malcolm with the OAU
that he named his organisation to bring radical change in the West the
Organization of Afro-American Unity. Malcolm’s optimism, however,
proved to be misplaced. This is one of the few miscalculations that
Malcolm made in his analysis of the system of racial oppression, but is
connected to his other misstep of having too much faith in the United
Nations.
By no means was Malcolm alone in putting stock in the promises
enshrined in the Atlantic Charter of the UN. Liberal and more radical
movements across the globe saw the body, with its one member, one vote
system, as a vehicle for holding the West to account.41 Given the location of
the headquarters in New York, the UN became a focal point for Black
political movements in America. Malcolm spoke of taking America to the
‘world court’,42 and after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961
there was a protest inside the UN building involving high-profile Black
activists including Maya Angelou. It is true, and remains so, that in the
General Assembly it is one nation, one vote and the West is outnumbered
by the rest of the nations in the world.
In the areas where the General Assembly has control there have been
limited benefits to the global majority. For instance, a UN Decade for
People of African Descent was declared from 2015. Part of the remit is to
call governments to recognise the impacts of their enslavement of African
people and to consider paying reparations. However, the existence of the
decade is also a reminder of the limits of the UN. There is no money to

support these endeavours and no obligation on member states to do
anything for the decade, much less consider reparatory justice. The decade
is just a rhetorical tool, something that may make us feel empowered but
does nothing to empower us. The power in the UN does not lie in the
General Assembly. There is no chance that the West would hand over
control of world affairs to an actual majority vote. Real decision-making
power in global affairs lies in the Security Council and specifically in the
hands of the five permanent members: the United States, Russia, France,
China and the United Kingdom. While there are ten other member states
that are elected to two-year terms, the permanent members all have the
power of veto over globally important resolutions that the rest of the UN
must adhere to.
The permanent members are a snapshot in time of the bridge from the
old colonial order dominated by Britain and France to the emergence of the
neo-colonial empire led by America. It also shows the cold war
compromises that were struck between East and West, capitalism and
communism. In the 1960s, with the battle for the economic future of the
globe taking place, this compromise may have represented a victory in
itself, especially given the faith that Black radical movements placed in
communist countries. However, with communism effectively finished and
China and Russia folding into the neo-colonial global order it is now clear
that the Security Council members have no interest in the liberation of
Africa. Even if the UN did decide to act as a control on the neo-colonial
adventures of member states, it has proven itself to be completely
incapable. Without the support of a UN resolution America led the invasion
of Iraq in 2003, which was effectively illegal. As much hand-wringing as
there was from the international community, nothing was done and no one
has been charged despite the chaos unleashed. There is no salvation to be
found in any international body led by the West.
As fundamental to the issue of power within the UN is the problem that
it is based entirely on the Western model of the nation state. Particularly on
the African continent this means cementing one of the most serious hurdles
to radical political action. The prospect of mathematical superiority in the
General Assembly actually led some in the movements for African
liberation to celebrate the balkanisation of the continent.43 The more
countries Africa was divided into the more votes it had at the UN. It should

be a stark warning sign that the UN incentivised the break-up of Africa
under the illusion of global influence.
The UN works because it guarantees nation state sovereignty to each
member, and nations are seeking protection for this statehood. In order for
the OAU to bring the newly independent African nations together it also
had to deal with the issue of sovereignty. The way this was achieved was to
insert into the constitution of the OAU the principle of ‘non-interference in
the internal affairs of individual states’.44 This nation state compromise
blunted the radicalism of the OAU by promoting colonial state nationhood.
As Adoghame argued, ‘the dilemma of African post-colonial states is that
they have not really abandoned the colonial logic of oppression and
domination … One major obstacle to African integration is the fear of
losing state sovereignty’.45
As much as is made of the Monrovia group leading the charge towards
neo-colonial statehood, the Casablanca group was just as complicit. If the
principle of African nationalism beyond the nation state was so important, it
would not have ceded to the demands of the Monrovia group. So
fundamental is the issue of sovereignty that basing unity on the premise of
individual nation states undermines any point of having a collective. Even
the preferred creation of a federation of states by the Casablanca group
would have maintained colonial borders. They may have had less meaning
but it is instructive that they would still have been the vehicle for African
nationalism. The uncomfortable truth is that most of the leaders who
attended the much heralded fifth Pan-African Congress did not strive for
African nationalism and revolutionary change, but became heads of African
colonial nation states and remained in power well beyond any reasonable
period of time. The only leader to whom this does not apply is Nkrumah,
who remained a stalwart for revolutionary nationalism until he was
overthrown in a coup. Unsurprisingly, it appears as though accepting the
limits of colonial nation statehood was a prerequisite for maintaining power
in Africa.
Rather than representing a revolutionary body on the African continent
the OAU played a role in facilitating the continued grip of imperialism.
Malcolm recognised that many of the key players were ‘considered Uncle
Toms’,46 with a number being complicit in the assassination of the
revolutionary leader of Congo, Patrice Lumumba.47 He had hoped that
uniting the continent would lead to differences being erased in the fight

against colonialism. It is interesting that, looking at the case of Africa,
Malcolm becomes accepting to the notion of compromising ideology. Just a
few months earlier he had celebrated China as one ‘of the toughest,
roughest, most feared countries on this earth’. The reason he gave for this
was that there were ‘no more Toms in China’, because they had been wiped
out in the revolution.48 On founding the OAAU, however, the idea of sitting
down with reactionary, traitorous leaders becomes ‘maturity’. The OAU
could serve as a case study in how unity is not worth sacrificing to ideology.
The failure of the OAU to challenge imperialism is not simply down to a
compromise between competing ideas in order to promote unity. The
problem is that the ideology of Pan-Africanism was always suited to
maintain and not challenge the imperial social order. Given its historical
roots, ideas and the leadership of African countries there was little hope of
revolutionary nationalism being embraced in the movement. Even at the
most radical of the congresses, held in Tanzania in 1974, the ideological
limitations of Pan-Africanism were apparent.
Held at a time of armed struggle in Angola and Mozambique, the sixth
PAC was the largest of the congresses, drawing in over 1400 delegates from
the African continent, South America, Europe, the Caribbean and the
United States. The congress came out in support of the armed struggle and
also professed a commitment to ideas of socialism.49 However, for all the
rhetoric of liberation that came from the congress it did not practically offer
support to revolutionary movements. If anything it was hallmarked by the
differences and disunity that have been features of Pan-Africanism in
general. There was little agreement amongst the delegates and the African
American delegation came in for particular criticism for being too large and
disorganised.50 The sixth PAC also marked the last time an agreed congress
took place. After this, formalised Pan-Africanism became crystallised in the
OAU and later its successor the African Union.
As with many progressive Black movements, Pan-Africanism became
obsessed with Marxism, which will be explored in more detail in Chapter 6
when we discuss the concept of African socialism. The infatuation with
socialism in Pan-Africanism also had implications for questions of how
race and racism were understood within the movement. Pan-Africanism
developed alongside and was partly shaped by its relationship to
Garveyism. While the movement was led in the West, with a heavy
influence from African American academics like DuBois, ‘Garveyism was

an embarrassment to it’; but when it moved to the African continent Garvey
became ‘almost an essential element’.51 Garvey’s influence on the African
continent cannot be overstated, with the red, black and green that appears in
flags across the continent being a testament to this. Garvey’s politics of race
were uncompromising and always at odds with a Marxist analysis. For
Garvey it was race first, and he saw Black people coming together on the
continent to liberate themselves.52 This has put him at odds with Marxists
in early Pan-Africanism such as George Padmore, and Garvey’s stance on
race was also heavily criticised.
Garvey’s view of race was controversial because he appears to reify the
European conceptions of racial difference. He was vehemently against race
mixing so as not to dilute the Blackness of the Diaspora. His belief in this
was so strong that he even met with the Ku Klux Klan in America to
discuss their similarities on the issue.53 This problematic view of race led to
accusations of racialism, that he reinforced the prejudices of the oppressor
and that his politics were therefore ultimately regressive.54 As revered as
Garvey became in Pan-Africanism once the movement shifted to the
African continent, there are clear denunciations of unity around race.
Two of the main speeches at the sixth PAC were given by Nyerere and
Sekou Toure, president of Guinea. Nyerere makes direct reference to
fighting against ideas of ‘racialism’ in his explanation that the congress had
‘non-black participants, and has to concern itself with oppression affecting
any man, of any color’.55 Toure railed against Leopold Senghor’s concept
of negritude when he argued that ‘the racists of Southern Africa and the
poets of Negritude all drink from the same fountain of racial prejudice and
serve the same cause’.56 Though he does not mention Garvey, this is clearly
logic used to critique his ideas of race and unity.
The embrace of socialism should be seen in the context of rearticulating
a rejection of Garveyism within Pan-Africanism. Marxism provided a
theoretical basis for the renunciation of Garvey, as he prioritised race over
class. The American delegation’s dogmatic insistence on scientific
socialism at the sixth PAC is emblematic of this reaction.57 The rejection of
Garveyism and the importance of Blackness had important consequences
for Pan-Africanism.
The Third World movement offered a promise of a unified resistance to
imperialism from the darker parts of the globe.58 Pan-African leaders

embraced this promise as early as the Bandung Afro-Asian conference in
1954,59 and continued to do so in aligning with communism. As previously
explained, this faith was ill-conceived and led to a path of further
exploitation. By not rooting the politics around Blackness, the movement
never safeguarded the interests of the Black people on the continent or in
the Diaspora.
The overt rejection of racialism is also one of the reasons why the
movement became trapped in the colonial nation state. As we will discuss
in the next chapter, for all of Garvey’s flaws, once you view the Black
nation as consisting of ‘400,000,000 men and women with warm blood
coursing through their veins’ it becomes impossible to be contained by the
nation state.60 The irony is that in the desire to avoid racialism, embrace
Marxism and make links to the Third World, Pan-Africanism needlessly
rejected the one concept that could have provided the revolutionary glue to
the project. Rather than redefining sovereignty, Pan-Africanism developed
into one of the most frustrating movements centred on narrow nationalism.
Pan-Africanism as neo-colonialism
The African Union was launched in 2002, after the failure of the OAU to
deal with the issues on the continent. The elusive search for African unity
was spearheaded by Gadhafi in Libya, but carried over all the problems of
its predecessor. The AU continued to enshrine colonial nation statehood as
the vehicle for unity and if anything further embraced the logic of Western
imperialism. The OAU arose at a time of global revolution, with armed
struggle taking place on the African continent. There was real hope for an
overturning of the capitalist world order, and though the OAU did nothing
to aid in this endeavour it had to give a nod to more radical ideas. In
contrast, the AU formed at a time of complete Western domination, after the
collapse of not only the revolutionary struggles in Africa, but the fall of the
Soviet Union and China’s wholehearted embrace of the Western economic
and colonial model. All the dissenting voices to the tide of capitalism had at
this point been assassinated or run out of office in Western-backed coups.
The AU never had to present a façade of revolutionary politics and quickly
set about fully integrating the future of the continent into the global system
of oppression.

Prior to the founding of the AU, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa
was devising a new way forward for Africa’s development, creating a
Millennium Action Plan in 2001. Demonstrating the fatal flaw in Mbeki’s
efforts was that he was attempting to create a strategy that ‘both George
Bush and Robert Mugabe would sign up to’.61 He had to appease the
dominant Western power on the one hand, and on the other the demagogic
leader who seized power in the Zimbabwean liberation struggle only after
the revolutionary leaders had been killed. There is perhaps no better
metaphor for the limits of Pan-Africanism. This plan was endorsed by the
OAU before its demise, being fully adopted by the AU and launched as the
New Plan for African Development (NEPAD); it became fully integrated
into the structures of the Union in 2010.
To understand the limits of NEPAD we need only listen to Olusegun
Obasanjo, former president of Nigeria, who praised the programme for
focusing on the key issues of ‘bad governance, democracy deficit,
corruption, lack of transparency and poor leadership’.62 His analysis of the
problems facing the continent entirely adopted the Western paradigm of
development. In this model, Africa is poor because it is backwards and has
not gone through the necessary industrial, scientific and political
revolutions that have made the West exceptional. This is the classic logic
from the Enlightenment, which promotes the idea that knowledge is
produced in Europe by the great dead White men and spread out to the less
advanced, savage parts of the world. In order to succeed, therefore, Africa
needs to learn the lessons from the West and accept its benevolent helping
hand.
A doctrine called modernisation theory has come to dominate how we
understand international development, which was developed by Rostow in
the 1960s. The key tenets of the theory are that backwards countries need to
move from their position as ‘traditional societies’ through a ‘drive to
maturity’, eventually arriving at the ‘age of high mass consumption’.63 Just
in case it is not clear that this is very much a hierarchical process, the
transition is depicted as an ‘evolutionary ladder’ that the savages must
scale. It is quite literally social Darwinism on a global level. Importantly,
the essential element to so-called development is that the West has to come
in and provide the necessary industrial and financial aid to set the
conditions for economic development. As much work on development
theory has evolved since Rostow, it is indisputable that this basic premise

still drives the development industry. Whether it is on the nation state, notfor-profit or transnational level, aid is dispensed on the premise that the
West knows best. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank have built a formidable reputation for dictating economic policy to
developing nations in return for assistance in the form of loans. This advice
always looks the same: liberalise the economy by removing trade barriers
and state assistance; open up to foreign imports; remove what little state
support existed by enforcing extreme austerity measures; and foster
‘democratic’ models of governance. The technical term for this package of
aid has been dubbed the ‘Washington consensus’, named because it is the
proscription of the DC-based IMF, World Bank and the American treasury.
Of course, this entire paradigm is utter nonsense and ignores the role that
the West has played in the impoverishment of Africa. The continent is not
poor because of corruption, but due to rampant colonial and neo-colonial
economics that have destroyed any possibility of prosperity. The current
existence of Africa is one entirely manufactured in order to promote the
development of Western imperialism. Science and industry may have been
central to the emergence of the West, but they were both built on the three
pillars of genocide, slavery and colonialism: genocide of the natives of the
Americas, where 80% of the population was erased to make way for
Western expansion;64 the transatlantic slave trade, which for three centuries
enriched the West on the backs of African flesh to unparalleled levels of
wealth;65 and colonialism, which provided the markets, labour and
resources necessary to feed the insatiable hunger of capitalism. The West
was built and is maintained on the oppression of the African continent,
underdeveloped by design to provide sustenance to global capital.66
It would also be wrong to see these horrors as acts restricted to the
distant past. For one thing they continue to shape the world today. Africa
would not exist in its current form were it not for borders imposed by
European powers, and also would not be the most underpopulated continent
without transatlantic slavery killing or forcibly removing countless millions.
The wealth extracted from the continent during slavery and colonialism did
not just disappear; it is the foundation of the current inequalities. Africa was
purposefully held back from developing, with the only infrastructure
designed to take wealth out of the continent. Even if formal independence
actually marked a removal of Western domination from Africa, the damage
caused by slavery and colonialism still has far-reaching consequences

today. But the end of Empire and direct rule did not signal the death of
Western oppression in Africa. Domination continued, in a different form
known as neo-colonialism. Africa is still under the control of the West, both
economically and politically.
Rather than providing a helping hand for poorer countries, the
development initiatives are actually neo-colonial tools to further embed
systems of oppression across the globe. Ghana, covered in the introduction,
would be a case in point. The country went to the global institutions looking
for money to develop its rice production and the opening up of the markets
to American rice ended up destroying the industry, further developing only
the nation’s dependency on the West. Ghana ended up owing the institutions
crippling debts in return for destroying its rice industry.
Ghana is far from the only case of the destruction on the continent by the
IMF and the World Bank; we could pick out almost any developing country
as an example. After independence in 1980 Zimbabwe managed to halve
infant mortality, preside over a growing economy and had no problems with
food security during the 1980s.67 The economy of Zimbabwe was by no
means perfect, but it went to the IMF and the Word Bank for a loan after
sluggish growth. The country received the money with all the strings that
are usually attached. Amongst other things Zimbabwe had to open up to
foreign trade, abolish subsidies for key industries like farming and cut
government spending. Just some of the results of this action were to
drastically reduce healthcare and education spending, cut a quarter of public
sector jobs and collapse wages across the country. With reduced public
spending the number of women dying in childbirth doubled from 1990 to
1993, life expectancy fell from sixty-one to forty-eight and the vast
majority of children did not attend secondary school because of the
introduction of fees. To make matters worse, all of this social pain did not
result in any economic gain. After the loans Zimbabwe fell into recession,
manufacturing and farming declined and even foreign direct investment
declined during the 1990s. On top of all of this, Zimbabwe was left with
crippling debts from taking out loans that significantly damaged the
economy and the life chances of the population. It is easy to blame Mugabe
for hyperinflation after he kicked out the White farmers, but that disaster
had been years in the making due to the neo-colonial claws that are so
deeply embedded in Zimbabwe.

When Malcolm stopped condemning individual White people as devils
he could easily have reserved the term for the IMF and the World Bank.
These two institutions have decimated the developing world, allowing
corporations to exploit resources and markets while trapping poor countries
into unsustainable debt. But when you make a deal with the devil the only
thing you can be assured of is pain and suffering.
The very concept of African nations owing any debt to the West is
absurd. The West enriched itself through exploitation and Africa is clearly
owed sizeable reparations for the exploitation of labour and resources and
the damage caused to the continent. But reality is not shaped by what is
just, rather simply by what is. Once we accept that Africa is poor because
the West is rich then it is entirely impossible to conceive of any action the
West would take to transform the situation on the continent. Liberation can
only come at the expense of the prosperity of the West. In academic
discussions much is made of the shift from production to consumption in
Western economies. However, neither is possible without resources, and
Africa remains the continent richest in mineral wealth. None of the
technology that the West is so proud of could be produced without the
wealth literally stolen from the ground in Africa. If the West had to pay a
fair price for these resources then the entire edifice of Western capitalism
would crumble.
In order to maintain control of Africa the West has used direct tactics
such as the assassination of revolutionary leaders like Patrice Lumumba in
the Congo or supporting coups like that which deposed Nkrumah in Ghana.
However, political violence has not been the preferred or necessary method
for reproducing neo-colonial leadership. Any radical analysis must
completely do away with any notion of Western-led development, which is
why one of the most insidious features of neo-colonialism is the continued
training of future African leaders in Western countries.
The entire structure of Western education is designed to maintain and
reproduce the oppressions upon which the system is based. Students from
Africa come with good intentions to learn about systems of governance and
development that can improve conditions at home. However, they leave
poisoned with economic and political ideas created to continue the
oppression of the continent. In fact the roots of neo-colonial education are
so deep that they have probably already been trained into these ways of
thinking in Africa before entering Western universities. White rule is not

necessary when the mechanisms of knowledge production are so tightly
controlled that the system can reproduce itself through the very population
that is trying to overcome its oppression. There is nothing worse that the
future leaders of Africa could fill their head with than the propaganda
which disguises itself as international development.
Given the Duboisian and colonisation roots of Pan-Africanism, the
embrace of Western ideas of development in the AU should come as no
surprise. In researching this book I came across an edited collection, PanAfricanism Reconsidered, which draws together papers from a Pan-African
conference hosted by the American Society of African Culture in the 1960s.
Not only were some of the contributors quoting Rostow but the man
himself actually presented a paper. It was called ‘Some History Lessons for
Africa’, and he argued the need on the continent for ‘men and women
trained appropriately and motivated to operate a modern society’.68
Obviously, not all of the movement embraced his ideas, but the fact that he
could even be entertained at such an event points to the extreme limits of
Pan-Africanism.
The AU is effectively based on a model of nation state cooperation,
which aims to fully integrate into the global economy. The key word in
NEPAD is the partnerships that lie at the core of the supposedly new
strategy for development. The agency is meant to be an African initiative
but the partnerships it is seeking to form are with the G8, Western
developed countries whose resources are seen as necessary to drive
economic growth. Before he was deposed Gadhafi registered a defiant tone
for NEPAD, proclaiming that Africa would ‘accept help, but we refuse
conditions. We are not beggars’.69 Rhetorically, NEPAD is meant to
represent a break with the neo-colonial relationship, where Africa decided
the projects and engaged in meaningful partnerships with the West to
deliver them. Any real hopes that this would happen were dashed very
quickly when the G8 refused to back specific projects, like a hydroelectric
dam in the Congo, in favour of more vague and general commitments to
aid. They insisted on conditions for their funding, including only supporting
countries with a track record of ‘good governance and economic
performance’.70 The G8 was also keen to emphasise the role of good
governance and security on the continent and gloss over the need for
infrastructure development, food security and schools and hospitals. The
fundamental problem with NEPAD is that rather than recasting the

relationship with the West it is ultimately a continuation of the imperial
legacy of Pan-Africanism. It is a strategy of going cap in hand to the West
for billions of dollars of investment, while accepting all of the neo-colonial
conditions which have so disabled African progress.71 NEPAD’s complete
adoption of the neo-colonial framework of African development is the
logical conclusion of Pan-Africanism: a bourgeois, colonial nation state-led
enterprise that looks to further integrate into the oppressive world system,
rather than to overturn it.
Part of the reason that Pan-Africanism has been embraced as radicalism
is because of the assumption that embracing Africa must represent a radical
politics. We all too often act as though African unity in and of itself must
lead to revolutionary politics. This was one of the few limitations of
Malcolm X’s work and why he was more optimistic about the OAU than he
should have been. Africa is a place, it is not a politics. If we only focus on
unity then it is easy to develop a politics like Pan-Africanism, which
compromises any radical analysis to keep the ‘uncle Toms’ at the table. It is
certainly true that in order to rule the continent Western powers have used
strategies to divide and conquer, but simply coming together does not
represent revolutionary change. National unity within the colonial nation
state was used to control the independence process in the same way that
Pan-African unity has been used to bring the continent into the global
system of oppression. Unity is not enough; we need clear politics and
ideology if a movement is to produce radical change.
As dispiriting as this journey from the Pan-African Conference in
London to the formation of the AU and NEPAD has been, it is an essential
step to charting a truly radical politics of Blackness. Too often we look for
the positives in our history and find salvation in the rhetoric rather than the
reality. There is not a number of different Pan-Africanisms, there is a clear
history, tradition and doctrine that explains the current neo-colonial version
of unity. There have certainly been competing ideas and politics for African
unity and revolution, but to cast them all in the same mould as PanAfricanism actually does them a disservice. Pan-Africanism may not be the
radical programme it is heralded as being, but there are movements which
have radically redefined sovereignty that form the basis for a Black radical
approach to nationhood and the liberation of Africa and its Diaspora.

Chapter 3

Black is a Country

‘That’s offensive, you can’t say that’ came the interruption from the man in
the front row who was so angry it looked as though he only came to the talk
to tell me I was wrong. ‘There are too many countries in Africa alone to say
that “Black is a Country”, that is what the Europeans think that we are all
the same.’ At this point I hadn’t even started the talk, which was being held
in Harriet Tubman bookshop in Handsworth, Birmingham. The angry
audience member was from Zimbabwe and his frustration demonstrated the
extent to which the nation state is such a powerful force in how we
understand the world. ‘Country’ is taken to mean the nation state, best
summarised by Smith’s five components: ‘an historic territory or homeland;
common myths and historical memories; a common, mass public culture;
common legal rights and duties for all members; and a common economy
with territorial mobility for members’.1 For the man who challenged me on
the title of the talk, to say that Black was a country erased the ‘national’
standing that we have all become so invested in. There is no passport, no
currency, no elections for the nation of Black, nothing that we are trained to
cherish and obey in the nation state framework, so the idea seems foreign to
us. In the previous chapter we explored how the trappings of the colonial
nation state were a key tool used to entice African leaders into maintaining
the neo-colonial oppression. The same is true for the masses, which are sold
the idea of a national belonging that separates them from the rest of the
continent and the Diaspora. We take for granted the reality of the nation
state and believe, because we are told, that the millionaire bankers in the
south of Britain are connected to the poor migrant workers picking cockles
on the beaches in the north. To question the reality of the nation is to
challenge some of the basic assumptions about how we understand the
world. But as ingrained as these ideas have become, it does not take too
much to unravel them. As I got into the talk and explained the argument and
the weak foundation upon which our ideas of nation are built, I could see

my accuser’s body language change. By the time I had come to the end of
the talk he was interrupting me again, this time to tell me that we
experienced the same issues across the Diaspora because ‘Black is a
country’. In this chapter we will explore the idea of the global Black nation,
an alternative construction of nationhood that is absolutely essential to the
politics of Black radicalism.2
Empires not nations
One of the greatest myths at the heart of Western knowledge is that the
treaty of Westphalia, signed in 1648, brought in the era of sovereign,
separate nation states which became the driving force of the modern world.3
The emergence of the great nations give immense pride to those embedded
in nationalist projects in the present day. According to former British Prime
Minister David Cameron, Britain is the country that ‘launched the
Enlightenment, that abolished slavery, that drove the industrial revolution,
that defeated fascism’.4 The dangers of the nation state go much further
than promoting such misty-eyed, rose-tinted reminiscences.
We have fallen into the trap of ‘methodological nationalism’, in which
we ‘equate society with nation-state, and see states and their governments
as the cornerstones of analysis’.5 But there are a number of problems with
treating the nation state as though it is a natural site for analysis, which
must be viewed as a social construction. What becomes key to a discussion
about the concept of nation is how ‘particular definition[s] often favour one
group (in terms of interests and identities) at the expense of the claims of
another’.6 It turns out that the cultural and linguistic sameness central to
classic understandings of nation exist in less than 10% of countries
recognised by the United Nations. In order to understand this, the role of
Western imperialism must be acknowledged. While promoting an ideal
form of the culturally unified nation, Western powers enforced artificial
national boundaries on continents like Africa, as we explored in the
previous chapter. In fact, during the root period of the Western mythic
nation, the colonial era, there were in truth very few nations.7 Most Western
states were in reality empires, which do not adhere to any of Smith’s mythic
five components, with the colonies being subjected to entirely different
forms of national belonging than the metropolis.

Once we understand the nation state as a controlling idea, rather than a
reality; an ideology, not a natural creation, then we can begin to undo the
dominance it has on how we understand the world. The hallmark of
Western imperialism is a system of cooperation between so-called nation
states in the service of White domination. On the surface it may seem as
though there has been conflict between the nations of West, but these have
been wars for the resources taken from the collective system of Western
oppression. For instance, Britain and France battled for supremacy over the
seas and colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The two
nations’ slave colonies were in direct competition in producing
commodities for the world market, and the threat of one nation invading the
other’s territories always had to be accounted for. But despite all of this,
over half of the enslaved Africans in French colonies were taken there by
British ships, meaning French slavery could not have survived without the
support of Britain.8 The transatlantic slave trade was a system collectively
maintained so that Western powers could engorge themselves. Even
countries that were not directly involved in the trade in African flesh
enriched themselves off the profits from the system.
We often talk about globalisation as if the interconnectedness of the
world today is something new, but ‘what is more global than a few
European countries colonising almost all of Africa, Asia, Australia and the
Americas and organising them into a hierarchical world system of nationstates?’9 The IMF and the World Bank may be the most blatant collective
tools of Western oppression, but they are following in a long tradition.
After the First World War, in the ‘scramble for Africa’, victorious
European powers doled out German-owned territory. The treatment of
Germany after the First World War was a major component in stoking the
German nationalism that resulted in the barbarous Nazi Party. Again,
though, we should not pretend that the Nazis, and their brutal final solution,
were unique to the German national ideology. Racial science, a subject that
was accepted across Western universities as valid, lay at the heart of the
persecution of the Jews. Eugenicists, like Francis Galton at Britain’s
University College London, were key to developing the logic that led to the
extermination of six million Jews. Concentration camps had been
developed by the British during the Boer War in South Africa, and lest we
forget that genocide is at the foundation of the Western project. The

holocaust is an expression of the logic of Western imperialism, the
collective system that created race in order to facilitate conquest.10
One of the most patronising and dishonest parts of British nationalism is
the erasure of the colonies’ contribution to both world wars. The sentiment
in the period after the war that servicemen were losing out to the foreigners
in terms of housing sums up the national ignorance on this issue. Troops
from the Empire fought and died in both world wars as well as fully
contributing to the war efforts. This should come as no surprise given that
the colonies were a part of Britain, and designed to support crown and
country. After Britain needed to be rebuilt it again turned to the colonies for
the necessary labour, inviting workers into the mother country in large
numbers for the first time. The NHS is the perfect example of a so-called
British staple that could not exist without support from the Empire. A
significant proportion of doctors and nurses are still born in the former
colonies, matching a trend that goes back to its founding. Black nurses have
historically made a huge contribution to the NHS, so to pretend it is a story
of the British Isles alone is a complete fantasy of Whiteness.
The British Isles itself is a contested site of the nation. Scotland may be
on the brink of leaving the union; Northern Ireland has always been
controversial; and even Wales has its own parliament. The contestation over
who is British has created a hiding place for some from the evils committed
in the name of the nation. If we see Britain as an empire then it is possible
to view Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as victims of English
colonialism. While constructing the nation of Britain has certainly involved
conflict and conquest, to do so would be to get lost in the fantasy of
nostalgia. Nation building is always a contested project, and often involves
one region subsuming others. The question is not whether there was any
force used in creating a nation, but in building the state how regions were
incorporated. It would be madness to suggest that the incorporation of the
rest of the British Isles into the British nation state was on the same terms as
the colonies. Northern Island would have the most compelling case given
the terrible history of Britain in relation to Ireland. But so-called Irish
slavery was actually indentured labour, which may not have been pleasant
but was not equivalent to chattel slavery. As many problems as the Irish
have had in Britain it would be difficult to make a case that they remain
disadvantaged today. Around 10% of the British population is of Irish
descent and they have better than average success in most major economic

and social categories. Irish migrants have also made a major contribution to
America, becoming White by, amongst other things, racially abusing and
lynching African Americans. The traditions of the New York Police
Department are as steeped in memories of Ireland as they are in the blood
and bruises of Black people.
For the Scots and the Welsh to claim affinity with the colonies really
does display the levels to which the ‘psychosis of Whiteness’ prevents
rational thought.11 Both parts of the British nation state hugely benefited
from slavery and colonialism. It is no coincidence that my surname is
Andrews, taken from the Scottish slaver who owned my ancestors in
Jamaica. Cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh are knee-deep in money from
the slave trade. Wales is no different, and there are still Welsh speakers in
Argentina where a colony was formed in Patagonia in 1865. All of the
countries of the British Isles benefited from the system of slavery and
colonialism, and continue to do so to this day. Rethinking the concept of
nation does not include revisiting the status of the component parts of socalled Great Britain. It does however change how we see the place of
minorities within Western nation states.
Ghetto as an internal colony
In America, high residential segregation has created large inner city areas
where the vast majority of the population is Black and which are
hallmarked by high unemployment, poverty and violence. This experience
has led to a 180-year tradition of viewing the ghetto as an internal colony.12
Carmichael and Hamilton accept that the analogy of the colony is not
perfect because in the ghetto there is no appropriation of land or
exploitation of raw materials that are then sold back to the population.13
Although with commodification of Black cultural forms you could argue
that the process continues of exploiting raw materials (this time cultural) to
be sold back to Black communities. Though the classical relationship of
colonialism may not apply, they argue that the ‘white power structure is as
monolithic as Europe’s colonial offices have been to African and Asian
colonies’.14 This can be seen through the political, social and economic
domination of Black America by the mainstream.

In terms of political domination, Carmichael and Hamilton argue that the
ghetto is controlled by a system of indirect rule, with the people elected to
represent the ghetto serving as puppets for the mainstream political parties.
As they explain, Black politicians have to ‘put loyalty to their political party
over loyalty to their constituents and thus nullify any bargaining power the
black community might develop … Colonial politics causes the subject to
muffle his voice while participating in the councils of the white power
structure’.15 Within this system Black people strive for political
representation in order to get power, without realising that once in elected
post their role is to keep the people in check. This dimension of political
domination by Black faces, with strings pulled from the outside, is key to
the internal colony argument.16 It is also important to note that this indirect
rule is often carried out by the Black people fortunate enough to raise
themselves out of the condition of ghettos.
Allen explains how the civil rights gains led to the expansion of a Black
middle class that could gain access to mainstream America.17 In keeping
with classic colonialism, this class served to divide and conquer the Black
colony and acted as a buffer between the Black masses and the White
power structure. Following on from Malcolm X’s House versus Field Negro
split,18 it is this class of ‘Uncle Toms’ that is appointed to manage and
suppress revolt in the ghetto.
That the classical colonial economic relationship is not present in the
American ghetto has been used to diminish the internal colony argument
even by those who mobilise it. Blauner rejects the term colonialism but
instead argues that African Americans experience a colonisation complex.19
This experience is deemed to be similar in many respects to those in the
former colonies in terms of being forced into the system; the destruction of
culture; being managed by the colonisers; and racism. Blauner’s utilisation
of the internal colony argument is helpful in better understanding the
experience of oppression of African Americans, but it does not see the
ghetto as a real colony, subject to economic subordination. Such a lack of
economic elaboration is taken by Marxists to be the fundamental flaw with
the concept.
In keeping with a Marxist analysis, Burawoy argues that Blacks in
America should be ‘looked upon as an exploited but nevertheless integral
part of capitalist societies’,20 unlike the colonies that are seen as separate

entities to the metropolis. However, capitalism is not merely a process of
economic development that emerges in Europe and then exploits less
developed countries. The colonies are, and always have been, an ‘integral
part of capitalist societies’. Far from lacking an economic analysis, as
Burawoy claims, the internal colony argument is based on an understanding
of both the ghetto and the external colonies being economically exploited
units within the system of Western imperialism.
The economic exploitation of the internal colony can be traced back to
the surplus value extracted during the slave trade.21 Abolition of slavery
was a strategy by the North to control the industrial economy of the South,
and the Jim Crow laws further cemented the Black colonial economic
exploitation. Post-segregation, economic stagnation and a lack of capital for
business start-ups meant that African Americans were dependent for
income and products from outside the ghetto, trapped in a colonial
relationship.
Alongside the political and economic domination of the ghetto, the
internal colony argument also features social and psychological
colonialism. The ideas of Black inferiority and imprints of the dominant
culture are institutionalised into the ways of life that Black people must
depend on in the internal colony. School plays a foundational role in this
process, as Tabb explains:
ghetto schools traditionally teach the history of the ‘Mother Country’
as if blacks had no part in its development, as if blacks had no identity
of their own, no culture, no origins worthy of mention in the
chronicles of the world’s great nations and peoples. The dominant
culture is constantly held up as good, desirable, worthy of emulation.
The destruction of the [Black] culture is an important weapon in
creating dependence and reinforcing control.22
The internal colony argument presents the case that African Americans are
controlled through political domination, economic dependency and cultural
imperialism through institutionalised practice. However, due to the
particular conditions of the American experience, namely slavery within the
nation state and high residential segregation, there is a question as to
whether this can be applied across Black populations in the West.

In Britain, for instance, though minority groups are concentrated in
particular urban centres there is not the high level of residential segregation
that is seen in the United States.23 A key ingredient for an internal colony is
therefore missing. However, Tabb argues that ‘the spatial separation of
colony and colonial power is secondary to the existence of control of the
ghetto from the outside through political and economic domination by
white society’.24 Political domination by indirect rule can certainly be
applied to the limited Black political class; economic dependency as seen in
the United States is an insidious feature of the Black British experience;25
and cultural imperialism embodied through institutions such as schools has
been consistently argued in the British context.26
In the traditional nation state view, African Caribbeans and African
Americans are invited not to make allies across the Atlantic, but to create
movements for equality within their respective nation states. In Britain this
manifests itself in embracing ‘political blackness’, which is the unity of
‘African, African-Caribbean, Asian and other visible minority ethnic
communities who are oppressed by racism’,27 while in America it is argued
that ‘people of colour’ must build an ‘epistemic coalition’ to battle against
racial injustice.28 Although there is certainly a place for and a long history
of activism in both nation states, such politics is limited by methodological
nationalism. It is assumed in the strategic essentialism of people of colour
that all those who are not White in a nation state are tied together by their
experience of racism. However, this ignores the reality that racial inequality
works in far more nuanced ways.
Any analysis of racism in Britain shows that different minority groups
experience different levels of success in British society. For example,
educational attainment at sixteen (a key measure for success), shows Indian
and Chinese students over-performing compared to the White average and
Pakistani, Bangladeshi, African and African-Caribbean students
traditionally under-performing. Different groups have different levels of
access to success in British society, which should not be a surprise given the
different histories and experiences of colonialism across the former
colonies.
Similar dynamics are true of minority groups in America. A good
example of this would be in the Latino community; although they are
viewed as people of colour, almost half of them identify as White.29 There

is a history in the United States of Latinos claiming Whiteness, for example
Mexican Americans attempting to assimilate in the 1950s as ‘whites of a
different colour’.30 There remain issues that African Americans and Latinos
should unite on, but it is also increasingly the case that ‘as Latinos become
more Americanized it is likely that more among them will become white,
and we will see an ever-growing distancing from Blackness’.31
Political blackness traps us in a regressive nation state logic of race
relations. Black radicalism is based on a radical politics that necessitates an
analysis of racism that transcends nation state boundaries. Members of
African Diasporas separated by thousands of miles are subject to processes
of racial oppression that are more similar than those experienced by their
allies ‘of colour’ in the adjacent neighbourhood. To illustrate this
connection, the example of African Caribbeans in Britain and African
Americans is instructive.
Underlying the history of Black people in the West is the original sin of
enslavement. It can be argued that the slave experience of Black people in
America is markedly different because the plantations were not on the
British Isles. But as we discussed in Chapter 1, we need to conceive of
Britain as an empire, not a nation state. The Caribbean was Britain’s version
of the American South. The migration from the slaveholding South to the
free North, and from the Caribbean to enlightened Britain is remarkably
similar.
The size of America shielded much of the North from the realities of
enslavement, but more importantly from the associated guilt, with it being
seen very much as a Southern issue.32 In a very real way Northerners take
responsibility for ending enslavement, but not the system itself. It was the
South that had the plantations and the North that fought for the freedom of
its African American citizenry. For an example of this, see none other than
the romanticism surrounding New York. This was the same New York that
was founded by one of the most vicious corporations in history, the Dutch
West India Company, and was originally built by slave labour.33
British notions of freedom and progressivism are also built on myths
surrounding the slave trade. Britain is only ever actively conceived of being
engaged in the ending of, and not participation in, enslavement, because the
plantations were outside of its borders. Abolitionist heroes like William
Wilberforce are elevated in the historical record to obscure the insidious

history in which Britain took such a leading role.34 Largely ignored is the
role which British cities played in the slave trade, Liverpool and Bristol in
particular, having been built almost entirely off the back of enslavement.
What is clearly set up on both sides of the Atlantic is an enlightened part of
society that ended enslavement and embraced the Black population, which
lies at the heart of the liberal myth of progressivism in both countries.
Black people in both America and the Caribbean found themselves in a
post-enslavement society where they remained firmly at the bottom. Both
groups had little choice with unemployment but to migrate to the urban
centres of their respective saviours. When they arrived in these
‘progressive’ countries they encountered the same forms of racism. For
African Caribbeans in Britain and African Americans in Northern cities of
America the stereotype of the aggressive, over-sexualised savage that was
key to enslavement formed the basis of relations with the majority
population. It should come as no surprise then that in terms of
discrimination the experience of African Caribbeans and African
Americans (regardless of which part of the country) are mirror images.
Education is very good example of this, where both groups are associated
with lower educational attainment. If we look more closely at schooling, the
arguments about the hidden curriculum, devaluation of Black cultural
forms, treatment of Black vernacular language and teacher expectations
have been argued to apply equally to both settings.35 The nature of the
racism along with the formation of racial characterisations facing African
Caribbeans in Britain is identical to that faced by African Americans.
In Britain there is no internal colony akin to the expansive American
ghetto because the descendants of the enslaved live in the Caribbean, not on
the island. So the colonies are the Caribbean islands, or the African nations
where migrant families arrived from, but relations on the British Isles
remain defined by the colonial relationship. We have to go beyond a
national analysis so as not to be blinded to this fundamental point, and
when Black people are viewed as a colonised minority it necessitates a
transformation, rather than reform, of the societies in which we reside.
Perhaps the most serious issue the internal colony argument has to
overcome is that of independence. In the former colonies battles for
economic and political independence, though difficult, are conceivable
because they exist outside of the physical encompass of the West. The
question is how to disentangle the mechanisms of control that the West uses

to dictate from afar. Residing in Western nation states means that however
much community control can be gained there can never be full
independence for the Black population. The advancement of Black people
in the West is therefore inextricably linked to the success of the Western
nation states in which people reside. For those in the former colonies the
relationship is inverse, as Western power and success is generated from
neo-colonial exploitation.36 This relationship would appear not only to
undermine the internal colony argument but also to set Black people in the
West in opposition to those in the former colonies. This can only be
resolved by embracing Black radical positions that are grounded in global
understandings, which transcend national boundaries.
For Black radicals, America, Britain or any other Western nation state
are not places which we should be seeking to integrate into but rather
empires that we need to ‘oppose – not beloved communities of shared
tradition and aspirations but coercive states to be overthrown’.37 Black
radicalism sees the Black population in the West as cells of displaced
Africans who must play their part in the overthrow of the Western empire,
as we will explore further in Chapter 8.
Redefining sovereignty
Nation states in the Caribbean and Africa did not exist before European
intervention; they are creations of imperialism. Supposed Caribbean nation
states are even more so, because the people who inhabit the islands were
taken there in chains on European slave ships. The Europeans erased the
natives, created plantation societies from stolen Africans, ruled over the
colonies and then freed them into separate nation states. Seeing the
Caribbean as constituent parts of European nations also means that we have
to do away with ideas of colonial nation state sovereignty.
For instance, I often ask audiences who the most influential Black Briton
is. When you confine yourselves to the British Isles the answers are
uninspiring, which should not be surprising because there have not been
that many of us on the island for all that long. Once we open up the nation
to include the Empire the answer quickly becomes apparent: Marcus
Mosiah Garvey. Garvey was born a subject of the British crown on the
island of Jamaica long before the pretence of independence was bestowed.

After his incarceration in America he was deported to London, because the
authorities feared his influence on the Jamaican colony. They were only
able to do this because of his nationality. He died in London in 1940, never
having experienced the Jamaican so-called nation state. Garvey is as British
as a cup of tea, or going to eat at an Indian restaurant on a weekend. This
will sound like heresy to those committed to the Jamaican national project,
but it should also point to the limitations of that venture. Garvey understood
that he was rejecting the product of an oppressive world system that needed
to be overturned and he put no faith in the Jamaican national state. He saw
the solution as the physical return of Black people to the African continent,
and in doing so entirely redefined claims of national sovereignty.
Ethiopia’s place in the Bible meant that it had particular significance to
Black movements in the West and also in Africa. ‘Princes shall come out of
Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God’ (Psalms 68:31
KJB) was used a rallying cry for various movements that sought to connect
to Africa. Figures like Blyden and Delaney in the colonisation movement
used the passage as a signal to their civilising mission on the continent;
while Garvey embraced it as evidence of the need for African self-rule.
The Bible has had so much importance historically because of the role of
Christianity in Western imperialism. As Jomo Kenyatta, the first president
of Kenya, explained: ‘When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the
land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our
eyes closed. When we opened them, they had our land and we had the
Bible’.38 The same verse of the Bible that inspired Black people to self-rule
was also used to justify civilising the African savage, stretching out their
hands for help from enlightened Christians who could save their heathen
souls. Colonialism was not only done by force but by implanting a Western
religion with the aim to pacify and control the natives. Missionary
education was the dominant form of schooling, teaching not only European
languages but the codes of behaviour and values expected of the colonised.
For those who were enslaved, Christianity also was used to attempt this
pacifying role, and to de-Africanise the beasts of burden made to toil on the
plantations. Reading was forbidden, with the only teaching permitted being
from the Bible. A few of the enslaved were allowed to learn to read the
Bible in order to teach the word and obedience to the rest of their kin. The
result of this history is the embeddedness of Christianity across the Black
world. Black participation in churches in the West, the Caribbean and

Africa are now outstripping that of White people, with the Anglican Church
facing a shift of power away from the mother country. It should come as no
surprise that the Bible had such an impact with regard to understandings of
Blackness. But as regressive as the history of Christianity and Black people
is, they were never able to remove the spirit of resistance from how we
interpreted it. There is not a single part of our history where we simply
passively accepted what was passed down to us.
Many of the revolts during slavery were led by preachers on the
plantations, by figures such as Sam Sharpe in Jamaica and Nat Turner in
America. Far from being disabled by the Bible they were spurred on by it,
reading it not as a text of submission but as a liberation theology. With the
greater freedom to travel around the plantations to spread the word they
were also in a unique position to bring together slave revolts. Preacher as
slave revolt leader is not our typical association but we need to reform our
imaginations. Given the dominance of the church in Black communities,
they are perhaps the only independent, well-funded institutions that
regularly bring the masses of Black people together, even today. The Black
church would do well to remember its roots of resistance.
The spiritual connection to Ethiopia was transformed into a radical
redefinition of sovereignty by the invasion of Ethiopia by the Italians.
Ethiopia was one of the few parts of Africa untouched by European
colonialism at the end of the nineteenth century, but the Italians wanted to
expand their colonial territory, which included Eritrea and part of Somalia.
In 1896 at the Battle of Adwa the Ethiopians won a decisive victory over
colonialism that is still celebrated today. This was an immense source of
pride across the Diaspora and galvanised the movement for Ethiopianism.
When Ras Tafari Makonnen Woldemikae was crowned emperor of Ethiopia
in 1930, he assumed the name Haile Selassie I, and Western dignitaries
came to celebrate his coronation. A picture of Queen Mary bowing to the
emperor during the celebrations was extremely powerful at a time when
Europe dominated the world. Another image with his foot on an
unexploded bomb gave him an almost supernatural aura of power. Selassie
became seen as not only the emperor of Ethiopia but of the entire global
Black nation.39 When Italy again launched a colonial invasion under
Mussolini in 1934, the global Black nation rallied to protect Ethiopia. In the
war that followed, Black people in South Africa and America were stopped
by their respective nation states from going to join the battle for Ethiopia.

Narrow conceptions of nationalism were torn apart by the desire for Black
liberation.
A connection to Ethiopia also birthed the influential Rastafari
movement, which remains active today. The movement takes its name from
Selassie’s title ‘Ras’ and name ‘Tafari’ before he became emperor. Rastafari
was hugely influential in changing the terms of the debate on racism in
West, critiquing the ‘Babylon system’ as corrupt. Rastas rejected the ways
of the ‘crazy baldheads’ who integrated themselves into the system of
colonialism, and they embraced the rural poor of Jamaica, aiming to create
a political re-education of the masses. The message has been popularised in
reggae music, but it is more than just a cultural movement. Rasta ideology
changes how we see the world, presenting a radical critique of the system
that oppresses Black people by design. Rastafari has been hugely influential
in the West, particularly in Britain, and today represents one of the truly
independent and radical critiques in the way that it aims to create new forms
of liberatory knowledge.40 Rastafari also calls for a physical return to the
African continent, pledging absolutely no allegiance to colonial nation
statehood. In 1948 Selassie gave a portion of land in Ethiopia called
Shashamane for Rastas to repatriate back to the continent. Though
diminished in size, the settlement remains to this day.
As much as both Ethiopianism and Rastafari redefined sovereignty,
embracing the global Black nation, they were both limited in their radical
scope by their roots in religion. Ethiopianism never really overcame its
foundation in the Black Christian civilising mission of the colonisation
movement. Rastafari has developed more along religious lines, making
links to the Ethiopian Coptic Church, rather than strengthening its
commitment to the revolutionary struggle. Given the religious basis of the
connection, both movements have been hurt by their loyalty to Selassie as
the vessel. The problem is that the Selassie of myth and divinity in no way
matched the real-life figure. Selassie was a staunch ally of the West, a
strong defender of colonial nationalism on the continent, and also had his
own imperial agenda over Eritrea, which still has implications today.41 His
vision for Pan-Africanism was for a limited set of African institutions, even
more watered down than the Monrovia group’s plans. Rastafari will be
further explored in Chapter 8, but for all its limitations it helped to develop
the platform for the global Black nation.

Garveyism
Rastafari’s roots are as much in Garveyism as in Ethiopianism, explaining
its radical take on sovereignty. Garvey’s appeal to the Rastas was his focus
on the rural poor and devotion to Africa, and he remains revered in the
movement. Garvey’s legacy is complicated and Garveyism has significant
limitations, by no means representing the perfect ideology of liberation.
Garvey’s was not a revolutionary economic analysis; in many ways his
vision was to create a capitalist Africa that could take its place in the
existing economic system. It would be tempting to see Garveyism in the
same light as the American Colonization Society, a bourgeois Westernised
project wanting to ‘modernise’ the continent. However, this would be an
unfair caricature and ignores the importance of Garveyism’s redefinition of
nationhood as a revolutionary concept.
The inspiration for Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association
was his travels around the Caribbean, South America and the United States.
He recognised that the plight of the formerly enslaved was the same in each
location; that there was a common problem for all to oppose.42 From its
conception Garveyism transcended the nation state, arguing that ‘Black is a
country’, which includes all Africans and their descendants.43 At the root of
his analysis is the conclusion that the West can never provide freedom for
Black people, and therefore there is a need to liberate the African continent
and for the physical return by those descendants in the Diaspora. The UNIA
set about selling shares in order to purchase steamships for the Black Star
Line, which would transport those in the West back to the African
continent. Garvey was trying to secure land in Liberia in order to resettle
the Black population in exile. This is completely different to the
colonisation movement in that it was neither sanctioned nor controlled by
the imperial powers. Garvey was arguing for the complete liberation and
independence from imperialism in Africa, and building a mass organisation,
owned by the people, in order to do so.
It is true that Garvey’s position from outside the continent is effectively
one of Black capitalism. He had a lot of reverence for the West and what he
saw as the great achievements it had built. In a speech praising capitalism in
general, and J.D. Rockefeller in particular, he explained that White people
had nothing to fear from the Garvey movement. He argued that the UNIA

was striving for ‘progress of and among’ Black people that would ‘advance
them in the respect and appreciation of their fellows’.44 By their fellows he
meant the White world that held Black people in such low esteem. In this
respect Garvey’s self-help mission is similar to that of Booker T.
Washington, who thought that Black people needed to ‘pull themselves up
by their bootstraps’, and make no excuses for the state in which they found
themselves.45 This conservative version of Black self-help still has
resonance as it can easily be read as absolving White racism of all
responsibility. But Garvey was making no simple appeal to hard work; the
reason he advocated the physical return to Africa was that he recognised
that due to the structures of racism, no amount of toil in the West could
produce Black liberation. Garveyism did not extend to radically
transforming the economic system but his reliance on capitalism has been
overstated for a number of reasons.
Firstly, because of imperial control Garvey was never able to visit Africa
and he was also prevented by federal authorities in America from
continuing the work of building the Black Star Line. This is important
because political ideas adapt when they are enacted. Had the prospect of
nation building been allowed to develop it is very possible that Garvey’s
economic analysis would have changed. He was not raised to believe that
the West could never provide for Black people, but came to this conclusion
through experience. The practicalities of establishing a liberated Africa
would have necessitated a radical rethink of the economy, given how
embedded capitalism is in the system that impoverishes the continent.
Second and relatedly, unlike Pan-Africanism, the UNIA was a mass
movement, which meant that the people themselves shaped and influenced
the politics and economic ideas. Once you base your politics on the concept
of the global Black nation, it necessitates building an analysis that can
provide for the masses. Capitalism and imperialism can never provide for
all of us, so through the process of doing the work the movement would
have to have oriented away from capitalism. This is where we need to
separate out the radicalism of Garveyism from the limitations of the man
himself. The power of Garveyism is creating a movement that both
redefined the idea of sovereignty and was led by the masses, both central
ingredients to Black radicalism.
The UNIA was an achievement unmatched by any Black social
movement before or since. The organisation spread across the Americas, the

Caribbean, Europe and onto the African continent between 1915 and into
the 1920s, a time before the internet, social media or even widespread use
of the telephone. So successful was the UNIA that it was given observer
status at the League of Nations in the 1920s. Garveyism was seen as an
enemy to the British Empire with its focus on overturning colonialism, and
the Negro World, the official publication of the organisation, was banned
across the colonies because it was deemed to be a seditious paper.
Nevertheless the UNIA was so effective at organising Jamaican (meaning
British) migrant workers in Haiti that the colonial authorities seriously
considered officially recognising the organisation.46
Garveyism was full of pageantry and parades and he saw the UNIA as
the bedrock of the new global Black nation. He even appointed
ambassadors and handed out titles to those across the Black world who
were seen as deserving. There was no room for colonial nation statehood in
Garvey’s analysis or politics, which was a key reason for the success of the
organisation. Even though he never set foot on African soil, Garveyism had
a massive impact on the continent. During the Kenyan battle for
independence people would go from village to village reading out the
Negro World in their native tongues.47 As explained in the previous chapter,
Garvey was one of the most influential thinkers for Pan-African leaders as
his message captured the spirit of liberation. These notions were not alien
concepts from a foreign elite: ‘Africans in Africa agreed to adopt the
theories given birth by Africans in exile, because of the truth these theories
embrace’.48 By no means does Garveyism provide a fully formed radical
politics. However, it does include some of the key ingredients, including
building a mass movement and being rooted in the revolutionary concept of
the global Black nation. Malcolm X later developed these threads into the
most complete understanding of revolutionary Black Nationalism.
Revolutionary Black Nationalism
Malcolm X defined himself as a ‘Black nationalist freedom fighter’ all the
way up until his assassination in 1965.49 This is important because in the
narratives that aim to redeem Malcolm from his days in the Nation of Islam
he is often said to have abandoned his Black Nationalism in favour of a
more civil rights type of approach to Black politics.50 This mythical

convergence between Malcolm and Martin Luther King never actually took
place. Malcolm never stopped embracing Black Nationalism; in fact he best
articulates the radical nature of the global Black nation in his redefinition of
the idea of being American. Five days before he died, Malcolm explained:
When I speak of the Afro-American, I’m not speaking of just the 22
million of us who are here in the United States. But the AfroAmerican is that large number of people in the Western Hemisphere,
from the southernmost tip of South America to the northernmost tip
of North America, all of whom have a common heritage and have a
common origin when you go back to the roots of these people.51
Malcolm was always destined to leave the Nation of Islam (NOI) because
his politics was far more radical than its narrow nationalism. Throughout
his time in the NOI he met with global revolutionary figures, most famously
talking to Fidel Castro during his visit to New York. By the time he split
with the NOI in 1963 his politics had fully integrated into the revolutionary
struggles taking place on the African continent, and this global outlook put
him at odds with the organisation that had raised him.
In many ways Malcolm’s ‘basic ideology was Garveyism’.52 His father
was murdered for being a Garveyite preacher and Malcolm was nurtured by
the NOI, which was heavily influenced by the Garvey movement.53
Malcolm’s analysis also located racism as the fundamental site of
oppression, but he evolved from a narrower view of race to progress some
of the more regressive positions of Garvey and the NOI. For instance,
Malcolm abandoned the NOI’s blanket indictment of all White people as
devils and began to indict Whiteness as a system of control. Prefiguring
much of the literature on critical Whiteness, he distinguished White being
used as an adjective, as he had heard on his trip through the Muslim world,
from what White meant in America: ‘When he says he’s white, he means
something else. You can listen to the sound of his voice – when he says he’s
white, he means he’s a boss. That’s right. That’s what “white” means in this
language’.54
After leaving the NOI Malcolm also moved away from Black capitalist
ideas of advancement to considering the global battle against imperialism.
This meant engaging with, though not wholeheartedly embracing, Marxism,

and it was at the Militant Labor Forum in 1965 that he declared: ‘it is
impossible for this system; this economic system; this political system; this
social system; this system, period. It is impossible for it as it stands to
produce freedom right now [for Afro-Americans] … in the same way it is
impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg’.55
One of Malcolm’s strongest criticisms of the civil rights movement was
that ‘whenever you are in a civil rights struggle, whether you know it or
not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam’.56 If the
goal is to get rights within the nation state, then the message will have to be
accepted by the powers that be in order to make the necessary reforms to
society. This means having to keep powerful people and the society at large
on board. Here we find one of the most fundamental differences between
the philosophies of Malcolm and Martin Luther King. King firmly believed
that America could be reformed and that activists needed to get powerful
people to listen. So he made allies of presidents, politicians and high-profile
White people who could help spread the message to turn public opinion.
The best example of this would be the 1963 March on Washington, a multiracial march that ended with a photo opportunity in the White House with
Kennedy.
Malcolm slammed the march, condemning it as the ‘farce on Washington
… a circus, a performance that beat anything Hollywood could ever do’.57
Malcolm’s frustration was that he saw the march as having been taken over
by the civil rights leaders who wanted to contain and control the anger of
the people. The march was originally a grassroots idea that had arisen out of
frustration at the lack of progress on racial issues. The original protesters
were going to march on the Congress, and ‘tie it up, bring it to a halt; not let
the government proceed. They even said they was going out to the airport
and lay down on the runway’; this is what Malcolm saw as the ‘the Black
revolution’.58 After the civil rights leaders got involved, they sanitised the
march by bringing to bear the weight of their organisations. The organic
grassroots movement became tightly organised and controlled, with
approved speakers, march route and timings, and they only allowed official
placards to be displayed.59 Malcolm was furious that the march had been
infiltrated and integrated, asking ‘who ever heard of angry revolutionists
swinging their bare feet together with their oppressor in lily-pad park pools,
with gospels and guitars and “I Have a Dream” speeches?’60

Contrary to the historical memory of Malcolm, his outright rejection of
the march had nothing to do with its peaceful nature, or because he hated
White people. Rather, the march was the opposite of his politics of
liberation. Being limited to nation state boundaries, the civil rights leaders
had to control the march, put on a good public face and keep the president
happy. This put obvious limits around the appeals and demands that could
be made. Malcolm was looking beyond the American nation state and
therefore his audience was not the politicians or White society, but solely
the Black masses. Only once you have given up on reforming the system
can you articulate a politics of liberation, and this means going beyond the
limits of the nation state.
Methodological nationalism prevents the struggles in the Diaspora being
systematically linked. When Garvey went to America he faced significant
hostility to his politics, partly on the basis that he was from the Caribbean.
His ultimate goal of a physical return to Africa was rejected by the Black
intelligentsia at the time, who were committed to integrating into the nation
state. Dubois dismissed Garvey because he did not understand that ‘the
American Negro problem is very different from … the problem of the
Negro in the West Indies’.61 This idea of American exceptionalism is
something that has hallmarked much of Black political thought in the
nation. By focusing only on African Americans, even the stronger forms of
Black Nationalism have forgone a radical analysis. Racism is a global
system and therefore any politics that offers a national solution can never be
radical, because it will never overturn the existing system.
Malcolm was able to develop and remove some of the serious limitations
of Garveyism before he died, but he is indebted to the movement for his
political ideology. This is clearest in the formation of the Organization of
Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Focusing on his violent rhetoric and antiWhite sentiment, the Malcolm of the popular imaginary is a fiery
demagogue with no practical programme. In truth when Malcolm died he
was building the OAAU as the vehicle for revolutionary change and left a
detailed blueprint for his vision in the organisation’s constitution.62 The
OAAU insisted on mass membership and was organised around
departments on issues such as education, health and defence. The idea was
that different locations in the Diaspora would develop their own strategies
for combating the key issues that faced them, funded by money from within
the community. The different chapters would then form to make one

cohesive organisation built for radical change. Key to this was that the
OAAU was made to be an organisation for the Western Hemisphere, taking
no regard for nation state boundaries. If this plan were to be fulfilled, the
OAAU would have effectively created a government for the African
Diaspora in the West, developed from the grassroots level into a global
organisation. This may sound unlikely, but it is a model taken directly from
the UNIA. If the OAAU were expanded to include the African continent,
the blueprint would allow for the creation of a mass movement, rooted in
local concerns replacing any idea of the colonial nation state. We explore
the OAAU further and this practical programme in Chapter 8.
A key ingredient of Black radicalism is the redefinition of national
sovereignty. Radical politics must always reject and dismantle the central
pillars of the status quo and there is none more pivotal to Western
imperialism than the idea of the nation state. There can be no room in Black
radicalism for the narrow nationalisms, in any of their varied forms, which
have defined so many Black political movements. Revolutionary Black
Nationalism transforms not only how we analyse the problem of racism, but
more importantly how we solve it.

Chapter 4

Cultural Nationalism

On 17 January 1969 a meeting took place at the University of California,
Los Angeles to discuss the leadership of the Afro-American centre at the
college. It was a small meeting with around fifteen people attending but the
tension behind the gathering far outstripped the numbers present. The Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense and the US Organisation had been fighting
over control of not just the centre, but of the Black community in Los
Angeles. At the end of the meeting a fight broke out between the groups
and two Panthers, Alprentice ‘Bunchy’ Carter and John Huggins, were shot
dead. The killings marked the lowest point of the struggle between the two
groups and destabilised both organisations in the aftermath.1
Many factors led to the rivalry between the two Black Power groups
turning so destructive. Both groups recruited heavily from the ‘bad niggers
off the block’,2 meaning the politics of the street often collided with
revolutionary ideals. The competition for recruitment to an extent aligned
along gang lines in LA, with the requisite territorial disputes. One of the
main criticisms of the Panthers has been how they did not reform the streets
but became trapped in the negative aspects of masculinity and violence.3 As
well as importing gang culture into the politics, the White power structure
also played a role in the conflict that led to the shootings. Sowing seeds of
division both within and between Black Power groups was one of the major
strategies of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s infamous
counterintelligence programme (COINTELPRO). The FBI specifically
disrupted any alliances between the Panthers and the US Organisation by
planting agent provocateurs and fabricating insulting messages in the name
of each organisation.4 As much as it would be reassuring to believe that it
was the state that caused the unrest between the two groups, they only
added fuel to a much larger fire of division. The Panthers and the US
Organisation were destined to conflict, not because of gangs or the feds but

due to them embracing entirely different sets of political beliefs, one radical
and the other reactionary.
As we will cover in Chapter 6, the Panthers are firmly within the
tradition of Black radicalism, with their global politics of liberation. The US
Organisation, however, was based on cultural nationalism, which substitutes
revolutionary change of the system for the internal mission of saving the
self spiritually, by connecting with Africa. The Panthers referred to the US
Organisation as ‘pork chop nationalists’,5 who obsessed over culture at the
expense of revolution. It is no coincidence that US was founded by
Malauna Karenga, who lies at the foundation of the regressive politics of
cultural nationalism. If the Panthers were the children of Malcolm, then
Karenga was his illegitimate child with no rightful claim to his legacy.
Karenga has had a major influence on Black politics, with his influence
reaching across the Diaspora. The problem is that the regressive politics of
cultural nationalism have become conflated with Black radicalism in the
popular imaginary. This chapter will present a detailed critique of cultural
nationalism, making clear the distinction between its regressive ideals and
the politics of Black radicalism. Before doing this, though, we need to
consider what makes cultural nationalism so popular.
We are a broken people
It is indisputable that the destruction of African culture was a primary
process in maintaining slavery. Europeans did not just enslave us; they
sought to break us in order to control us. Central to being able to do so was
to create what the late Cedric Robinson called ‘the Negro … who had no
civilisation, no cultures, no religions, no history, no place, and finally no
humanity that might command consideration’.6 The Negro was the beast of
burden who had no more rights than cattle under the law. The Negro could
be traded, abused, raped and worked to death. It was not enough that the
enslavers saw us in this way; to prevent revolt they needed us to internalise
the nature of the Negro. Therefore, from the very beginning of enslavement
everything possible was done to break connections to the African continent.
Different tribes were purposefully separated and mixed up on the slave
ships to limit communication. African names were replaced with European
ones, and we were given the surnames of the masters. African languages

and religions were banned, and Christianity was enforced on the
plantations. We were taught to loathe Africa, its backwardness and evil
black magic. We were taught to fear the remnants of Africa that made it to
the New World in the maroon communities that had escaped enslavement,
which we will discuss in more depth in Chapter 7. In Jamaica, for example,
the maroons were led in the early eighteenth century by Nanny and her
brother Cudjoe, who had been Asante leaders in Ghana. In order to scare
the enslaved away from attempting to escape to join them, Nanny was
painted as an evil witch, with dark and supernatural powers. The idea of
traditional African religion as evil and wicked, the voodoo from the horror
movies, comes from trying to instil fear in the enslaved. These messages
were so powerful they still have purchase; the mysticism surrounding
Maroon Town in Jamaica leaves many afraid to stay beyond nightfall even
today. As explained in Chapter 3, one of the main motivations for stopping
the trade in Africans was because of fear of the influence of those who were
African born, who still had connections to their roots.
There was of course resistance, and the connection to Africa remains in
the cultural forms that emerged out of enslavement. The widespread
celebration of carnival across the Caribbean is a testament to the undying
connection to Africa. On the solitary day of the year the enslaved were
allowed to celebrate, they used the time to recuperate their African-ness.
Carnival is not just culture, it is politics; a statement of never being cowed,
of maintaining the links that were supposed to have been extinguished. But
the separation of families, the widespread rape of men, women and
children, and the unceasing brutality severely damaged the social lives of
the enslaved.
Cultural genocide against Black populations did not stop with the end of
chattel slavery, nor was it confined to the process of enslavement. Images of
the lazy coon, thieving nigger and salacious Black vixen have dominated
popular culture for centuries. Blackface in Britain has been a consistent
feature since the sixteenth century. Do not believe those who peddle the
myth that Blackface is a harmless pastime from the days of mining; the
practice far outdates the industry. Blackface comes from the early
encounters in Europe with the African Moors who ruled Spain for 800 years
from 711 AD. The Blackamoor and ‘Ethiop’ became features of English
popular culture. Donning Blackface was done to signify either evil (the
Black threat) or foolishness (the coon). The tradition of Blackface in Morris

dancing not only includes the fool sooting up their face but also donning a
frizzy wig, wearing coconuts and being called King Coffee, Old Sooty Face
or Dirty Bet.7 Shakespeare’s character of Othello was an outlier in that he
was seen to be a forthright, commanding and noble presence. That is until
he caught the White woman disease and descended into madness,
demonstrating the fragility of Blackness. From books, to film, to theatre and
the arts, the cultural genocide of Blackness has continued to the present day.
Representations of Black as evil, dirty and inferior have real-world
implications. Studies going back as far as 1940 have consistently shown
that Black children prefer to play with White dolls from a young age.8
Results such as these are said to prove the low self-esteem of Black
children, poisoned as a result of the legacy of ‘four centuries of white
supremacist beliefs’ being programmed into them.9 Post-traumatic slave
syndrome attempts to explain the devastating legacy that not only
enslavement, but the lack of reparations after so-called emancipation had
taken place.10 It is as impossible to truly account for the cost of the
dehumanisation of Black people during enslavement as it is to ignore it. In a
sense, then, we are seen as a broken people, who have fallen into
destructive cultures of being that must be remedied. Healing plays an
important role in Black politics, given this history of abuse. Even Kwame
Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael), who denounced cultural nationalism,
argued that
[the] cultural personality of the Black community must be preserved
… integrity includes a pride – in the sense of self-acceptance, not
chauvinism – in being Black, in the historical attainment and
contributions of Black people. No person can be healthy, complete
and mature if he must deny a part of himself.11
Cultural ‘revolution’
Cultural nationalism emerged to fill this void, the absence of African
culture in Black life. In order to become whole again Afrocentrism is the
most developed and popular paradigm. Pioneered by Molefi Asante, a
professor at Temple University, the discipline aims to restore us to our
cultural heritage. As he explains, ‘culture is at the base of all values … a

people without an appreciation of the value of historical experiences will
always create chaos’.12 Reclaiming Africa is said to allow for not only a
fuller appreciation of the African self but also to restore African knowledge
in the ‘global village’.13 This basic premise of centring Black life around a
cultural and spiritual return to Africa has been very popular and cemented
itself into American academic life and even onto high school curricula.14
Afrocentrism owes its intellectual heritage to Maulana Karenga’s
influence. Karenga laid the foundation for the academic flourishing of
cultural nationalism, and is currently a professor at California State
University. The founder of US thought that the first stage for Black
liberation must be a cultural revolution. One of his lasting achievements
was the creation of the celebration Kwanzaa, meaning ‘first fruits’, which
starts on Boxing Day and lasts seven days. The festival is based on seven
Afrocentric principles known as the Nguzo Saba, and drapes itself in
Garvey’s colours, using the Swahili language to draw on for its legitimacy.
Rhetorically, Kwanzaa hits all the right notes with its calls for kujichakalia
(self-determination), umoja (unity) and uhuru (freedom). Kwanzaa is now
very popular across the Diaspora, including in Britain, and is used as a tool
to bring Black communities together. On the fiftieth anniversary of the
celebration in 2016, Karenga reaffirmed how essential the celebration is to
his politics,
It is an act of freedom in its recovery and reconstruction of African
culture, our return to its best values and practices and our resistance to
the imposition of Eurocentric ways of understanding and engaging the
world. Kwanzaa was also conceived as an instrument of struggle, to
raise and cultivate the consciousness of the people, to unite them
around principles that anchored and elevated their lives and involve
them in the struggle to be themselves and free themselves and build
the just and good world we all want, work for and deserve.15
With the history of enslavement and psychological assault on the formerly
enslaved, the appeal of Afrocentrism and a festival like Kwanzaa is easy to
understand. Everything, including our names, was taken from us, meaning
that we still bear the mark of the master even within our identities. One of
the most fascinating clips to watch of Malcolm X is of an interview he did

on Chicago’s news show ‘City Desk’ on 17 March 1963. Members of the
Nation of Islam dropped their last name and replaced it with an X to
remove the slave name that had been handed down from the plantation. The
interviewer pushed Malcolm to reveal his ‘real’ or ‘legal’ name and he
steadfastly refused to speak it. When the interviewer asked him his father’s
last name he responded ‘my father didn’t know his last name. He got it
from his grandfather, who got it from his grandfather, who got it from the
slave master’. Malcolm also stressed the importance of connecting back to
African history and at times spoke of a ‘cultural return’.16 There is no doubt
that restoring a connection to Africa has to be a part of any progressive
Black political movement in the Diaspora. As Garvey said, ‘take the kinks
out of your minds, instead of your hair’.17
Cultural nationalism also has a history and a role in Africa. Until socalled independence Africa was directly controlled by European powers,
meaning Africans had the same colonial education as those in the Diaspora.
The majority of these nations retain the school systems of their former
mother countries and, as we explored in Chapter 3, one of the key neocolonial mechanisms is the training of the African political and economic
class in Western universities. Africa has not been spared the cultural
genocide, with high levels of skin bleaching being a testament to the depth
of hatred of Blackness that has taken root. Leopold Senghor was the first
president of independent Senegal, taking power in 1960. As well as being a
politician he was also a poet who helped mould the negritude movement in
the French-speaking colonies. Negritude was founded by the Martiniquean
poet Aimé Césaire and focused on centring Blackness and Africa in cultural
life, in order to overcome the whitewashing that was so endemic. Césaire’s
impact was electrifying, creating a ‘delirium’ in the Caribbean and across
the Diaspora.18 Fanon, never a fan of cultural nationalism, explained the
importance of Black people being represented for the first time in cultural
terms. He explained that ‘before Césaire … the West Indian identified
himself with the white man’s attitude, “was a white man”’ and that
negritude helped to bring a ‘new generation into being’.19 French
colonialism always put a particular emphasis on the devastation of other
cultures because to be ‘French’ means to submit to the country’s cultural
values. This holds true today, with the republic adopting a policy of
assimilation towards its minority groups. France does not even keep records
of its ethnic population and therefore cannot measure discrimination,

because it refuses to formally recognise that there are differences. To be
French is to be one, the same, the unified body. Deviations from this cannot
be acknowledged, much less tolerated. That is why the ban on face
coverings in public was made law, in the name of protecting the sameness
of the republic, not of course to penalise the un-French religion of Islam. It
should come as no shock that France faces such a serious problem with
terrorists bred in the country. The totalitarian approach to French culture
and identity means it is impossible for the nation to come to terms with its
horrendous slave and colonial history or its legacy. The banlieues are filled
with the descendants of the French empire, who remain locked out from
success in the nation, with far more reasons to hate France than to embrace
its whitewashed identity.
France’s cultural impact was no less great in its African colonies, with
Blackness being just as erased. Therefore, Senghor’s influence on Senegal
and the African continent was keenly felt. As president he argued for the
role of negritude in fully liberating the people. The problem with negritude,
or Afrocentrism, is not the idea of reclaiming African culture, which is
clearly important given the extent of cultural genocide. The problem is that
it presents reclaiming our culture as an end point to liberation itself. Asante
would have us believe that ‘Malcolm’s philosophy generated a thousand
ways to fight for liberation’,20 but this is untrue. Culture was one small part
of Malcolm’s political philosophy of Black radicalism. To take that alone,
or apart from political liberation, is to create a hollow and regressive form
of politics.
Civic religion
The problems facing Black people worldwide are not in our minds. They
are in our streets, the schools, and the political and economic system. There
is no way to think, teach or drum our way to freedom. Senghor’s version of
Pan-Africanism has been severely critiqued, where he reduced the
connection of the Diaspora to the ‘realm of ideas and aesthetics rather than
political activism’.21 Rather than embrace a revolutionary concept of Black
Nationalism, Senghor relied on the poetics of Blackness and in fact was a
keen advocate for keeping Senegal within the French system. He argued for
the creation of a French commonwealth, explaining that ‘in Africa, when

children have grown up, they leave their parents’ hut, and build a hut of
their own by its side. Believe me, we don’t want to leave the French
compound. We have grown up in it, and it is good to be alive in it. We
simply want to build our own huts’.22
On achieving independence Senegal maintained close ties to France,
retaining the language and also French control of the currency. For all his
rhetoric of negritude, Senghor was to all intents and purposes a French man.
As president he married a White Frenchwoman; on leaving office he
became the first African elected to the Académie Française, the key
authority on the French language, and he died in 2001 in his spiritual
homeland, France. Senghor’s version of Pan-Africanism was clearly a
‘reactionary and dangerous concept advocated to retard the African
Revolution’.23 Senghor’s politics were all about integrating into France, the
imperial infrastructure, and there was no contradiction between this and his
cultural nationalism.
To understand the reactionary politics of cultural nationalism we need to
view it as a ‘civic religion’ rather than a political ideology.24 Hill Collins
explains that the movements are based on symbols, dress and other cultural
codes. Though the rhetoric may be about freedom, the reality is that cultural
nationalism prepares for internal rather than societal transformation. Ras
Makonnen spoke of the need for ‘Pan-Africanism from within’ in order to
liberate our minds.25 Karenga described the Black nation as ‘injured
physicians who have it within themselves to heal, repair, re-new and remake
themselves’.26 Asante ends his book detailing how Afrocentrism can be
used for social change by declaring ‘let the artist imagine, let the scientists
expand, let the priests see visions, let the writers be free to create, and let an
Afrocentric revolution be born!’27 The whole metric for salvation is based
on the cultural system: dressing correctly, using the right language and
praying to the correct gods. Mazama, one of the key disciples of Asante,
acknowledges as much when she explains that African spirituality is
essential for Afrocentrism and that being in tune with ‘African
metaphysics’ is necessary to produce liberatory practice.28 A version of
history is presented where radical figures such as Nat Turner, who used the
Bible as his motivation, embraced African spirituality as a starting point for
liberatory practice.

Afrocentrism is popular because of the historical attack on Blackness,
but Asante’s attempts to make it the basis for social change border on the
absurd. His practical uses of the concept are limited to a number of different
ways to ‘help others to take control of their minds and bodies through an
Afrocentric lifestyle’.29 These include avoiding deviations from African
symbols and imagining greatness, and he actually argues that progress has
been made because we now have salad dressings that are not just named
after European countries. Apparently mental liberation includes such
revolutionary practices as when flying in an aeroplane thoughtfully
considering ‘how you would design it Afrocentrically’.30 Perhaps, the
revolution will be televised on the back seat of the headrests at 30,000 feet,
and there will be no Eurocentric commercials.
It should come as no surprise that the largest section of Asante’s book on
applying the lessons of Afrocentrism is focused on the church as these are
the biggest Black-owned, Black-led institutions in the Diaspora. Thousands
of people flock to Sunday services, and it is one of the few places you can
see hundreds of Black people gathering that do not revolve around music
and dancing (though even in the church this is a major part of the appeal).
Focusing on spiritual salvation over trying to solve the problems facing
people in their real lives has been a perpetual issue for the Black church.
Once you gear your life towards eternal salvation, it can make the routine
struggles seem mundane, even secondary. As Bob Marley famously sang,
‘some people think great god will come from the sky, take away everything
and make everybody feel high’.31
Asante wants an Afrocentric revolution in the Black church, to remove
the symbols of Whiteness and recommit the congregation to the Black
community. Again, here Asante is drawing some inspiration from Malcolm
X, who criticised churches that prayed to a ‘white Jesus and a white Mary
and some white angels’, explaining that those churches were ‘preaching
white nationalism’.32 While Malcolm recommends people support those
churches that promote Black Nationalism, Asante misses the point.
Malcolm is not making a special case for the church; he is telling the world
that Black radicals will work with anyone, and explicitly pointing out that
religion should not be used to drive the cause. His message in that same
speech is ‘to leave your religion home … keep it between you and your
god’, because it will only get in the way. Malcolm was not against any form
of religion as long as it did not detract from the Black revolution, and he did

not see an overhaul of the church as an essential or necessary step to
revolution. This is one of the most fundamental changes to Malcolm’s
philosophy after leaving the Nation of Islam.
The NOI is one of the best examples of a civic religion, stressing as it
does religious authority and using this as a basis of community action.
According to the NOI, Whites were bred by the evil Dr Yacub in order to
‘trick and rob and rule the earth’.33 They are literally devils on earth, whose
purpose is to destroy Black people. The leader of the NOI when Malcolm
was recruited, Elijah Mohammed, prophesied that the White man’s time on
the earth had been preordained and that they would soon be wiped out in an
Armageddon.34 Therefore, there could be no solution found to the problems
of Black people in politics or revolution. The choice was simple: we could
either ‘integrate into this wicked race’ and ‘be destroyed along with them’
or separate and inherit the earth.35 So the NOI focused on building its own
way of life; supporting itself through collective economics and; reclaiming
minds by connecting to the original nature of the Black man. Importantly,
because it was waiting for salvation the NOI did not want to cause too
much tension with the state. Malcolm’s departure from the group occurred
after he learnt that far from practising what he was preaching, Muhammad
was committing adultery and had fathered a number of children with his
young secretaries. But his split was inevitable on political grounds. Prior to
his leaving he had been suspended for speaking his mind on the Kennedy
assassination. His explanation that it was simply ‘chickens come home to
roost’ angered Muhammad, who did not want to upset the country at such a
tragic time. Malcolm had also been barred from engaging with the civil
rights struggle. In 1965 he sent a telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell, the
leader of the American Nazi Party, that he was ‘no longer held in check’
and that ‘you and your Ku Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum
physical retaliation from those of us who are not hand-cuffed by the
disarming philosophy of nonviolence’. For all its blood and damnation
rhetoric towards White people, the reality is that the NOI has a history of
collaborating with police and state forces to keep order in Black
communities. There is a reason why Malcolm was assassinated, while
Farrakhan is allowed to retain his pulpit even today. Once we accept
religion as the solution to the problem of racism we have lost the battle.
Rastafari has been a standard bearer for radical politics, producing the
culture and soundtrack for the revolution. In Britain, in particular, the

impact of Rasta was profound, with its calls to reject the evils of the
‘Babylon system’ and presenting a liberation psychology.36 To be a ‘dread’
came to be symbolised both by the community and the police as being a
rebel, someone who resisted the system. Cloaked in the red, black, green
and gold and the politics of Garvey, Rasta has been at the forefront of the
rebellions and political movements of Blackness in Britain.
As real as the radical roots of Rastafari are, there has been an ascendency
of cultural nationalist themes.37 Authors such as Nettleford and Owens have
highlighted the mysticism and religious sect-like qualities of Rastafari.38
Campbell argues against this characterisation, but recognises a shift in
Rastafari, with the doctrine becoming increasingly religious and more
interested in maintaining cultural distinctions than being involved in
liberatory politics. He explains how the Jamaican state was involved in
strengthening the religious aspects of the Rastafari, by taking action such as
officially recognising the Ethiopian Coptic Church.39 Visions of Selassie as
a Christ-like figure emerge later on in Rastafari with this religious turn to
the movement. While once Rastafari was shunned and demonised by the
national apparatus, the dreaded figure, singing reggae and smoking a spliff,
has become an integral part of brand Jamaica. All of this is made possible
by the retreat to cultural nationalism that presents no threat to the neocolonial status quo on the island.
Cultural nationalism is a way of making ourselves feel better without
challenging the system. We can find salvation in our African spirituality, or
our reasonings where we condemn the Babylon system. We can feel
superior to the crazy baldheads and sell-outs who have not come to their
true nature. We can fill ourselves with spiritual joy on a Sunday, feeling
confident in navigating our lives as we walk with Christ. We can do any of
these without having to address the structural causes that so harm us. There
is no healing for a broken people while the system that breaks us is left
intact.
None of this is a critique of any religion or culture. There are many
different routes to Blackness, to the politics of liberation. Islam,
Christianity, Afrocentricity and Rastafari can all lead to and play in a part in
Black radical becoming. But they should never be confused with Black
radicalism itself. Religious people have a role in the Black revolution, but
there is no religious solution to our problems, and certainly none that could
ever be radical. Once we start to view cultural nationalism as another

religious system of belief, we can allocate its place in the revolutionary
struggle. As Warren succinctly explains, ‘Kwanzaa might liberate the mind
but it does little to eliminate economic and political oppression … Culture
is crucial to revolution, but it is not revolution’.40
Cultural nation within a nation
Cultural nationalism is at its most dangerous when it prevents radical action
by masquerading as a politics of liberation. The main way it does this is by
providing an alternative way of living that appears to take the followers out
of the mainstream system. The NOI was the model for Karenga’s US
Organisation in the sense that it involved a ‘complete acceptance of an
alternative lifestyle … dress, mannerism and an entire social life’.41
Members were given new names and had to submit to the principles of the
Kawaida. This kind of wholesale devotion to a way of life can
unsurprisingly have a profound impact on the individual, but it has little
effect on wider society.
The US Organisation was originally founded by Karenga and Hakim
Jamal, who was a close friend of Malcolm X. One of their first activities
was to found a newspaper, Message to the Grassroots, and to take up
Malcolm’s political programme. However Jamal quickly left because he
saw ‘little value in US’s use of African rituals and languages’ and was
dismayed by the cult of personality growing around Karenga.42 Maulana
means ‘master teacher’ in Swahili, a title Karenga anointed himself with.
He was the unquestioned head of the organisation and members had to
pledge ‘loyalty to Maulana Ron Karenga who believed in us and accepted
us before we believed in or accepted ourselves, or him, who found in all our
weaknesses a hidden strength who gave us more than we asked from us that
something of value which no one can take’.43
The new identity, lifestyle and value system showed a devotion to a
Karenga that reached ‘mystical proportions’.44 The US Organisation was
not only a form of cultural nationalism, but an actual cult. This brand of
cult-ural nationalism even included the kind of violence and control we
would expect from a sect. Karenga was jailed from 1971 to 1974 for
torturing and imprisoning a female US member because he believed she
was a traitor. Before those of you who believe in conspiracy theories

protest, it should be noted that his own wife testified against him.45 US was
clearly a regressive, cult-like organisation, whose leader’s idea of a cultural
return was of no revolutionary value. Given this, it is somewhat astounding
that Karenga’s legacy has been so long-lasting and pervasive. He is the
definition of the fruit of the poisonous tree that invalidates Afrocentrism in
particular, and post-NOI Black cultural nationalism in general.
Amiri Baraka represents the best attempt, and also the severe limits, of
applying cultural nationalism to the social world. Baraka also took his lead
from Karenga, and faced the same accusations that his work amounts to
‘telling Black people what Blackness is’.46 He was an integral member of
Karenga’s US and later founded the Committee for Unified Newark
(CFUN). One of the regular events it ran were Soul Sessions, a mixture of
dancing, cultural and political talks. One of the attendees at a Soul Session
remarked of a Baraka speech, ‘I will never forget it. It was dealing with
morality, like cleaning up your lifestyle – like drinking smoking, this kind
of stuff. The new man, and alternative system’.47 This kind of
transformative appeal is key to the popularity of cultural nationalism, and
also its inherently conservative nature.
The Nation of Islam has probably been the most successful organisation
at changing the lives of ex-convicts. It recruits heavily in prisons and aims
to provide a new social and moral system for those who have been caught
up crime. The NOI preaches moral responsibility, clean living, smart dress
and discipline. Malcolm always wore a suit, even after he had left the NOI.
He spent the first couple of minutes of one of his last speeches apologising
because of his attire. His house had been firebombed, ruining his clothes,
and he felt he had to give an explanation for his appearance.48 The sense of
belonging and new structure provided to NOI members helps to keep them
away from their former lives and from re-offending. But as we have already
explained, the NOI does not change the situation for those outside its reach,
simply creating a cocoon which members can be a part of. The result is that
the politics of clean living becomes the solution to the problem, perfectly
fitting into right-wing rhetoric about responsibility and family, affirming the
‘Black cultural pathology paradigm’.49
The high point of Farrakhan’s leadership of the Nation of Islam was the
Million Man March in 1995. The march saw hundreds of thousands of
African Americans march on Washington in order to ‘atone to God for our

failure as men to be the providers, the protectors, the defenders of our
women and children’.50 We will address the regressive gender politics of
this idea later, but it is striking how over forty years after the march for jobs
and freedom the rhetoric had changed to atonement for our failures. As
much as Malcolm savaged the 1963 march, at least it was trying to address
the issue of racism. Malcolm critiqued the alliances with liberal Whites, so
it is not difficult to imagine how much scorn he would have poured over the
Million Man March’s ‘political cooperation with white conservatives’.51
Marching to Washington for atonement almost entirely removes any
societal responsibility for the issues that are present in Black communities.
Farrakhan and the NOI have always played off being able to reform the
inner city, which is seen as ‘crime driven, drug crazed, and over-run with
immorality’.52 Having designed a programme of self-repair, they can then
stand as the moral guardians, the ones who have cleaned up and offer a
model for others to follow. This is why the NOI was praised by Republican
vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp, in 1996, for its ‘emphasis on
personal responsibility, Black self-sufficiency and morality’.53 When you
focus on the cultural as political, you end up supporting the status quo,
because the cultural nation has to fit into the existing one.
In fairness to Baraka, he makes the best attempt to deal with the political
conservativism at the core of cultural nationalism. He argued that it was not
enough to produce revolutionary rhetoric and that the ‘most revolutionary
Africans as far as the community are concerned, are those who can deliver
goods and services’.54 In the 1960s and 1970s Baraka became one of the
key figures of the Modern Black Convention Movement, which organised
mass meetings of Black politicians and activists to try to create a Black
political alliance. By 1972, at the Black Political Convention in Gary,
Indiana Baraka was the de facto leader of the move to create a distinctive
Black political agenda. The convention drew in over 10,000 delegates and
Baraka’s fingerprints are all over the declaration from the convention,
which called on the Black nation to stop relying on Democrats and
Republicans, and seek to represent ourselves. It declared that the time had
come to ‘consolidate and organize our own Black role as the vanguard in
the struggle for a new society. To accept that challenge is to move into
independent Black politics’.55 Creating the Black nation as a political force
within America was seen as vital to success.

Baraka’s work in Newark stuck to these narrow nationalist lines. He
aimed to create a model for Black Power in practice, developing a ‘liberated
zone’ for African Americans.56 In order to do this CFUN, along with
Karenga’s United Brothers, campaigned successfully for Black
representation on the city council. In 1974, both Mayor Kenneth Gibson
and the head of the city council, Earl Harris, were Black and owed their
success to Black cultural nationalist support. In fact, Harris was a former
member of United Brothers. With this representation at the political level
Baraka pushed forward two urban development projects. The first was
Kawaida Towers, a 210-plot development to provide decent housing and a
community hub for Black residents. The second was a more expansive
vision called the New Ark, which would include affordable quality housing;
communal cooking facilities; a multi-purpose community centre; a
communications centre to produce television and radio; as well as a medical
centre. Both were designed by Black architects and aimed to enhance
community life, based as they were on Afrocentric principles.
In order to get this plan approved and funded Baraka had to work closely
with federal, state and local officials. To get the dig started on the Kawaida
Towers project he even compromised on Afrocentric principles, hiring an
Italian building firm as the main contractor and ensuring the building site
had White as well as Black labour. He negotiated a minefield of local
politics and mob justice to get the project ready to go. However, on the
opening of the building site the web he had managed to weave quickly
started to unravel. The site for Kawaida Towers was in an Italian
neighbourhood, rather than one that housed predominantly African
Americans, which caused uproar in the local community. A picket line
formed around the dig, the same White politicians who had supported the
project in secret openly challenged it in court and violence erupted to stop
Black labourers entering the site. The project was held up in the courts and
eventually ended when the city council removed its support in the form of a
tax break. The collapse of Kawaida Towers also spelled the end of the New
Ark project and Baraka’s vision of cultural nationalism in practice.
That the project fell apart should come as no surprise given the history of
racism and housing in America. White Americans have fought extremely
hard to ensure that Black people stay in their place, in substandard housing
and away from White neighbourhoods. The limits of any politics that works
within the system always end up being the system itself. The idea that

Baraka could create a liberation zone within a hostile and racist America
speaks volumes to the problems of narrow nationalism. The best that could
be hoped for is a much smaller version of the issues we discussed in
Chapter 1 in regard to so-called independent former colonies, or Haiti after
it won its freedom: a freedom so limited by the surrounding imperialism
that it ends up being just another form of subjugation. Even the most
progressive form of cultural nationalism cannot ever hope to be radical
when it involves working within the system of oppression. The fact that
mainstream institutions were keen to work with Baraka is testament enough
to his lack of a radical project. What may (or may not) come as more of a
surprise though is the role the Black elected officials played in the downfall
of the CFUN initiatives.
Within two years of being elected due to CFUN support, Mayor Gibson
was already at odds with Baraka, attempting (and failing) to get an
opposing slate of candidates elected to the city council. At the outbreak of
the hostility over Kawaida Towers the mayor was at first silent, and
eventually sided with the White power structure. Council leader Earl Harris
was even more brazen in the betrayal of his former backer, at one point
declaring him a ‘racial extremist’, a ‘dictator’ and declaring that the council
would work with anyone else but him.57 Boiling point was reached when
Harris had Karenga and a number of CFUN activists arrested during a
council meeting. The strategy of electing Black officials severely backfired
on Baraka, to the point that he ended up rejecting integration into the
system and advocating a socialist revolution. The problem with cultural
nationalism is that it transforms the individual, resurrects and empowers
them. As the impact is on the individual then there is nothing that
automatically leads to that person using any successes they reap for the
benefit of the community. Leaving the structures of power and oppression
in place allows for the possibility that these supposedly liberated
individuals will fall into the system’s ways of working. This is particularly
true of politicians, who have routinely showed that they become part of the
machine, rather than challenging it.
Lacking a political philosophy, cultural nationalism has also supported
the narrow nationalism of Black capitalism. Asante makes it crystal clear
that one of the steps to so-called liberation is to ‘gain a foothold in every
sector of the American economy’.58 The logic goes that by doing capitalism
Afrocentrically we will produce fairer practices. This is the classic liberal

argument about representation. The only difference is the idea that we first
need to transform into our true African selves in order to deliver the social
change. Once we know our history, have pride in self and carry ourselves
with an ‘erect posture’,59 we will be able to take our rightful seat at the
table with the rest of civilised society.
Not only does cultural nationalism embrace the politics of integration, it
is also based on claiming ‘authenticity’ that can be measured by how
‘rooted we are in our tradition’.60 This idea of cultural authenticity is
hugely problematic, particularly when it is based on the concept of a return
to some mythic, utopian ideal of pre-colonial Africa. The notion that we can
look back to a specific point in time where the true African identity can be
found is regressive in both theory and practice. There is not one truth of
pre-colonial Africa that can be restored, but a number of different
interpretations and understandings of that history. What cultural nationalism
does is to take a particular view of African history and render it immovable.
When we consider who is doing the rendering of history, it becomes clear
that a narrow, patriarchal and heteronormative vision of Africa is being
created.
Black Power movements in general have been criticised for their gender
and sexual politics. Kwame Ture once remarked that the best place for
women in the movement was ‘prone’, meaning on their backs.61 The Black
Panthers had many issues with gender inequality and sexual violence was
not uncommon in the party.62 We tend to deify the great men of history like
Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and Toussaint L’Overture and ignore the
women who were integral to those movements. In Chapter 5 we will discuss
in more detail the Black radical position on gender, but it is essential to
distinguish the politics from cultural nationalism, which is patriarchal and
heteronormative at its core.
Building on the success of the Million Man March, Farrakhan took the
next logical cultural nationalist step and announced plans to marry 10,000
couples on the fifth anniversary of the march. He explained that he wanted
to ‘go into the new century and new millennium not black male, black
female but as a wholesome family with God at the center’.63 He also
claimed that the march had led to a drop in the crime rate as Black men
were ‘returning to their families and taking responsibility for their lives’. It
is not difficult to see how his ideas have so much support from conservative

Whites because it clearly lays the responsibility on the community atoning
and recommitting to a more positive and ‘wholesome’ culture with
marriage and stable family at the core. The apparently dysfunctional Black
family, with absent fathers and single mothers on welfare, is targeted as the
cause of the issues facing Black people.
Before taking these notions apart it is important to acknowledge that the
destruction of Black family units has been a consistent feature of racism in
the West. When we were kidnapped in chains from Africa this tore apart
familial bonds. Systematic efforts were made to split up families on the
plantations, breaking apart relationships and removing children from their
parents. Constant sexual violence meant that there could be no sanctity of
relationships or families. In America enslaved men had no paternal rights,
and women were reduced to passing on the inheritance of slavery. After
emancipation the conditions for raising a family were far from ideal.
Poverty and racial violence made the prospect extremely difficult. We have
to consider the impact that thousands of men being lynched would have on
the family.
In the British context, the mother country’s call for labour after the
Second World War was a further assault on the family. The first migration
was predominantly male, and people who came to the country started new
lives and often families. There is a lot of work to be done on the impact this
had on family life, on both the children who stayed in the Caribbean and
those who were brought over and had to integrate into new family
dynamics. These realities of migration still occur today, presenting the same
complex issues.64 The state has also played a divisive role in Black
families, often being far too eager to take children into care because of how
they perceive cultural deficits. There have been campaigns both in America
and in Britain to keep social workers and the state out of Black families due
to this interference.
It is certainly true that Black families in America (and Britain) are more
likely to be headed by a single woman. But this should not come as a
surprise given the staggeringly high Black male unemployment rate, and the
historically unprecedented number who languish in prison every year. We
live in a society that has made it extremely difficult for Black men to play a
productive role in their families and then wonder why some do not. Western
society is certainly geared towards the two-parent nuclear family, and

financially it definitely makes sense to have two adults in the house. But
there is a much bigger question here as to what is meant by a family.
It is ironic that cultural nationalism puts such emphasis on the nuclear
family, when African cultures have been replete with different family
forms. ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ is not just a mantra to keep an eye
out for your neighbour’s children. It is a recognition that child rearing is a
communal activity that stretches beyond the boundaries of the two-parent
family. These kinds of practices survived into post-enslavement
communities, with grandparents, uncles and aunts (related by blood or
otherwise) taking on roles within the family. In Baraka’s plans for the New
Ark there were to be communal kitchens precisely to acknowledge the role
of collective cooking that they did within the organisation. We should be
extremely careful about demonising alternative forms of the family just
because they do not fit the societal norm.
The Black, or rather the African, family in cultural nationalism is a fixed
idea, with specific gender roles. Even when different forms of family are
embraced, they remain steeped in patriarchy. The separation of men’s and
women’s roles that exist within the NOI were replicated in groups like the
US Organisation. It was the women who did the cooking and served their
men. Women were meant to reproduce for the revolution, not actively
create it. Karenga made it abundantly clear that the role of a woman was to
‘inspire her man, educate her children and participate in social
organisation’.65 Black men were the gods of their household and Karenga
even went as far as to say that ‘what makes a woman appealing is
femininity and she can’t be feminine without being submissive’.66
I had heard stories from my mother about women having to serve the
men in some cultural nationalist movements in the old days. I only half
believed them until I witnessed it myself in the twenty-first century. We
were at a meeting and food was mentioned; the women around the table just
got up, brought out the food and served it up to the hungry warriors. These
regressive ideas of family and gender have no place in radical politics;
aping the discrimination of mainstream society is not revolutionary.
The narrow ideas of gender also mean that Black women bear the brunt
of the blame for dysfunction in the family. By claiming their independence
they are seen to be emasculating men and driving them away from their
families. The welfare state is said to have destroyed the family by replacing

the father with a benefits cheque. By restoring traditional family values,
equilibrium can be restored to the family and Black life.
By attempting to restore the traditional family, cultural nationalism
logically leaves no room for same-sex relationships. Women’s role is to
reproduce and men’s to plant their seed, so it is unquestioned that the
healthy relationship is the heterosexual one. Asante attempts to take a
measured tone, arguing that African culture has never persecuted anyone
because of their sexuality, but is also sure to mention that it has never been
promoted as ideal. He is keen to insist that although he is not ‘homophobic’,
he does not ‘support homosexuality as a way of life for black people’.67 He
sees same-sex relationships as a deviation from the African concept of
being and therefore ‘the optimum relationship, the historical relationship,
the biologically natural relationship is between men and women’.68 Also
important in Asante’s position on same-sex relationships is what he sees as
an agenda that is anti-Black liberation.
One of the reasons he cites for homosexuality being a deviation is that it
causes people to place their sexual orientation before their African-ness. He
complains that ‘black gays are often put in front of white or integrated
organizations to show the liberalism of the group’, essentially being used as
token for another cause. The issue of the gay agenda is one that has a
certain amount of purchase in Black communities. As part of the cultural
genocide against Black people, the imposition of homosexuality is seen to
be one of the tools. The ‘feminisation of Black boys’ is said to rob them of
their manhood and effectively castrate them, so that they are pliable and
easy to control.69 The images of Black homosexuality on television and the
idea of teaching about same-sex relationships in schools are seen to be part
of this conspiracy. I have had numerous conversations with people who are
convinced that there is too much focus on the gay issue, with the aim of
blunting Black progress. One of the most uncomfortable moments in my
academic career occurred at one of our major Blackness in Britain
conferences. A stalwart of the community struggle had been listening to
discussions about Blackness and Queerness and snapped. He went on a
tirade about the gay agenda, feminisation of Black boys, the spread of HIV
and ended with ‘I’m sick of all this Battymanism!’ As you can probably
imagine, the room exploded in outrage and dissent. When confronted with
these kinds of attitudes it is easy to dismiss them as outrageous and try to
silence them. Unfortunately, they are more commonplace and deep-rooted

than we would perhaps like to believe. The idea of the gay agenda can be
traced all the way back to enslavement. Rape was not just reserved for
women, but was a tool used to ‘correct’ men who were enslaved, to punish
and placate them. The rejection of homosexuality that is seen in Black
communities is at least in part attributable to the legacy of such abuses
never having been dealt with. None of this is to excuse homophobia, which
has some terrible, even deadly consequences. But in order to overcome it
we need to understand and trace its roots. The problem with cultural
nationalism is that it is based on principles that will never be able to accept
same-sex relationships.
If freedom is about finding the authentic self, it means being entirely
proscriptive in defining what that self is. There can be no space for
deviation from the accepted norm, because to do so ruins the very basis of
liberation. Defining the authentic by a mythic conception of Africa
compounds the issue by freezing Black identity in the past. It may well be
true that polygamy was the basis of tribal life and there was a clear
gendered division of labour in pre-colonial Africa. It may also be true that
homosexuality was given no space or legitimacy. It is likely that this is not
actually the case, but the truth of the matter is irrelevant. Debating the
cultural norms of communities centuries past can never lead to any
progressive ideals or outcomes. Although Europe interrupted Africa’s
progress, the idea that hundreds of years ago pre-colonial Africa was some
kind of utopia of values is clearly nonsensical.
There was no unified Africa in pre-colonial times. There were different
kingdoms, empires and tribes speaking diverse languages with a range of
cultural traditions. Attempting to define a restricted African culture is
exactly how Europeans treated (and continue to treat) the continent. When
Blackness becomes a set of behaviours, ideas and cultural codes then it is
easy to conflate the idea with race, a limiting set of attributes to be that
should rightfully be rejected. As will be discussed in the next chapter, it is
precisely this kind of logic that has led to Blackness and Black politics
being so heavily criticised.
Just as importantly, the Sankofa bird of the Ghanaian Adinkrah symbols
has two heads, one looking to the past and one to the future. It is not simply
fixed on the past as the salvation, but acknowledges that as we develop we
adapt and change. The radical nationalism that lies at the heart of Black
radicalism cannot be contained in traditions from pre-colonial Africa. In

fact, some of those traditions would necessarily need to be transcended.
Tribalism is certainly an African tradition but it is the antithesis of the unity
needed to create the global Black nation. Even Nkrumah, who used
tribalism in order to gain power, understood that it prevented the unification
he sought.70 Rather than being forward looking, however, cultural
nationalism stresses tradition, even when it goes against the logic of African
unity.
Black or African
A perfect example of the regressive nature of cultural nationalism is the
insistence that proclaiming oneself to be African is an essential step to
liberation. I have lost count of the number of times I have been challenged
on using the word Black by people who insist that referring to yourself as
African is an evolution. The logic runs that we used to be Niggers, then
Negroes, then Coloured, then Black, then Afro, and finally African. We
have now arrived at our rightful designation and ‘the use of the term
“black” for Africans should be abandoned’.71 It is probably the question I
am most asked about, and when we started the Black Studies degree at
Birmingham City University I had to deal with a potential petition that
wanted the course renamed because they found the term ‘Black’ offensive.
The ‘African or Black’ question is a seemingly endless debate rooted in a
cultural nationalist perspective that freedom is a mental state rather than a
structural one. The fact the question is still raised indicates the limits of
cultural nationalism.
The idea of evolution suggests that as we have moved through different
stages of identity we have also made social progress. When we were
enslaved we were Niggers and now that we can be bankers we are Africans.
This demonstrates the conservative nature of the politics. Rather than focus
on Black suffering, we should rejoice in the glory of our African-ness.
Unfortunately, progress is an illusion. For all the freedoms some of us
enjoy, Black people remain locked out of the social system worldwide. The
prison industrial complex and mass unemployment in the West; extreme
poverty and violence in the Caribbean, Latin America and parts of Africa;
and three million children a year dying in East and Southern Africa alone
for no good reason. African migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea are

purposely left to drown, their floating bodies used as dead Nigger buoys to
warn off other Niggers from attempting to come to Europe. To pretend that
we have made any progress in these conditions is to succumb to the
delusions of advancement that have kept the West afloat. This brings to
mind Tupac Shakur’s passionate defence of his use of the word Nigga
during a panel discussion:
I don’t care if you’re a lawyer, if you’re a man, if you’re an African
American, if you’re whatever the fuck you think you are. We’re thugs
and Niggas to these motherfuckers … How you gonna be a man if
you’re starving? You know? You could go to four or five different
houses and there ain’t a man in any one of those motherfuckers. How
we gonna be African Americans if we out here dying? We’re thugs
and we’re Niggas until we set this shit straight.72
He is literally spitting these words out of his mouth, so frustrated is he by
the idea that calling yourself an African is any kind of progress. We can
only judge our success by how far we have improved the condition of the
Black nation, and we are desperately failing by that metric. Calling yourself
an African, wearing Kente cloth and celebrating Kwanzaa is a lifestyle
choice and not an achievement. Tupac reminds us of our political
commitment to each other over our individual quest for selfhood. His
remarks should also challenge the idea that language is all-powerful.
Meaning gives language sense rather than the other way round. When
Tupac says Nigga, or Malcolm said Black, or Garvey said Negro, they were
all drawing on radical conceptions of Black unity. How they used these
words is far preferable to how the cultural nationalists mobilise the term
African.
Africa is a place, not a politics. As we discovered in the last chapter on
Pan-Africanism, neo-colonialism can make just as strong claims to Africa
as can radical politics. If being African meant embracing a politics of
liberation then there would surely be no problems on the continent itself.
Many supposedly authentic African leaders have sold out to Western
interests; in fact many have done so in the name of Africanism. If being
culturally African is the marker of authenticity then surely the White settler
colonialists who have laid down roots and embraced the native culture are

now equally African. I have sat in meetings with staunch cultural
nationalists who refute the word Black, and when it has come to discussing
the politics of the continent they have had to use Black to distinguish
between the indigenous and the settlers. I constantly hear that Black is
inauthentic because ‘they don’t use Black in Africa’. For one thing that is
not actually true. But more importantly, the politics of Blackness is just as
important for those on the continent as it is for the Diaspora.
People who do not like the word Black simply do not understand it.
Black is beautiful and Blackness is liberation. The politics of Blackness
rejects the faux unity, principles and notions of self that lay at the
foundation of cultural nationalism. These are entirely inauthentic visions of
an African identity that in truth has never existed. In constructing a narrow,
patriarchal and conservative view of African-ness not only is cultural
nationalism not radical, it is actually a regressive politics that must be
overcome. In the next chapter we will explore the Blackness that is
forward-looking, building on what has gone before but laying a foundation
for the liberation of Africa and its Diaspora. Blackness is never a complete
process, but is essential for the politics of Black radicalism.

Chapter 5

Blackness

Beyoncé’s performance during Super Bowl 50 was hailed as a representing
‘a new political moment’,1 delivering as she did a ‘radical halftime
statement’.2 Clad in black leather and singing about loving her ‘Negro
nose’, she paid homage to the Black Panthers, with raised fists and all. This
outpouring of Black pride was one of the most watched spectacles on
television and drew praise, including from Black Lives Matter activist
Melina Abdullah who was impressed that Beyoncé was using her ‘artistry
to advance social justice’.3 The Super Bowl performance in tandem with the
video for Formation, with its strong anti-police violence message, raised
Beyoncé from performer to activist.
For days after the Super Bowl my social media timelines were full of
awe for Beyoncé’s bravery and apparently revolutionary act in taking
Blackness to the half-time show. I was mostly surprised by the response. I
had watched the performance live and honestly had not even noticed the
supposedly political statement; as far as I could see it was a case of
Beyoncé being Beyoncé. There were the customary well-choreographed
dance routines, on-point vocals and of course the nod to sexualisation, with
her and the dancers wearing fishnet tights, hot pants and garters. We get so
used to this commodification of Blackness that I didn’t even have a
response. Well done to Beyoncé for finding her niche and exploiting it for
every penny. But the reaction from Black people across the spectrum was
truly troubling. When we are canonising pop artists’ performances during
the most commercial moment in mainstream culture as revolutionary, then
Black politics has reached its low point.
There was nothing brave or activist about Beyoncé’s performance, it was
well-orchestrated and sanctioned by the mainstream media. She received
some criticism from the right-wing press and the police, but all that just
played into the marketing campaign. Beyoncé was not risking anything
during the performance, unlike when Nina Simone wrote Mississippi

Goddamn. The civil rights anthem about America’s naked racism sparked a
major backlash against Simone. The song was banned in several states,
significantly damaged her career and she eventually left the country.
Simone openly condemned America at a time of extraordinary racial
violence, and even her level of stardom could not guarantee her safety.
Beyoncé eventually making the choice to sing about being Black, with mild
references to her nose and the Jackson 5, once she had attained a level of
celebrity that completely incubated her from real-world consequences, pales
in comparison. To elevate Beyoncé’s performance to the level of activism
disrespects the struggles and sacrifices that have gone before.
What really incensed me about the reaction to the performance was the
idea that Beyoncé was treading new ground with her ode to the Panthers. In
reality she was drawing on the same tropes of Black Nationalism we
covered in Chapter 1. The top half of her costume was two ammunition
belts, invoking the violent masculinist memory of the Panthers. The bottom
half, with fishnets and garters, clearly gives women a particular role in the
struggle. The Black Panthers had a uniform, and it did not involve fishnet
tights and garters. This sexualised representation of women in the Panthers
in the mainstream media is nothing new. Blaxploitation movies in the 1970s
were popular precisely because of this patriarchal representation of Black
Power politics. Pam Grier’s Foxy Brown is the embodiment of this view of
Black female supposed liberation. In one movie poster she is described as
‘brown sugar and spice, but if you don’t treat her nice, she’ll put you on
ice’. Foxy Brown had two main assets to appeal to mainstream audiences,
and neither involved revolutionary politics. Worse still, Beyoncé had
already invoked this trope of Blaxploitation when she played the role of
Foxxy Cleopatra in Austin Powers in Goldmember. Not only was the
representation of the Panthers regressive, but we had already seen it from
Beyoncé over a decade ago.
After a few days of being deluged by the adulation for the half-time
show I penned a piece for the Independent explaining why I thought people
were getting a bit too caught up in the hype. Of all the things I have written
this got the most volume and negative response on social media. The
headline that the paper gave the article certainly did not help the reception:
‘Beyoncé’s “bootylicious” sexualisation of black women isn’t inspiring’.4
My argument that Beyoncé was reproducing sexist tropes of Black women
was greeted by a deluge of criticism, including being called an Uncle Tom

and being guilty of misogynoir. I well and truly kicked the Beyhive by
calling out the sexual politics and lack of revolutionary credentials of
Queen Bey. I probably should not have been surprised by the response; the
image of a Black man policing the body of a Black woman is one that
sparks a lot of emotions and for good reason, as we will explore in this
chapter. Something missed in the criticism of my piece is that I have no
problem with Beyoncé advancing her career in any way she sees fit. If she
wants to shake her booty, try to look as light skinned as possible or pay
homage to the Panthers by drawing on regressive tropes, then more power
(just not Black power) to her. My problem is with the response to her
supposedly radical performance, rather than the spectacle itself, which I
honestly had no reaction to at all. To dismiss the critique of her performance
because of misogynoir is to divert attention from the point being made.
Comments from bell hooks about Beyoncé’s Lemonade were just as mauled
by the Beyhive.5 These arguments are not about trying to police how people
use their bodies, but a critique of the politics that are attached to such
performances.
Beyoncé’s performance was undeniably a political act, one endorsed by
the Columbia Broadcasting Service (CBS), the National Football League
(NFL) and a whole host of corporate sponsors. It was not subversive, or
remotely radical. Unfortunately, Beyoncé at the Super Bowl managed to
draw on the same reductive problematic tropes of Black politics that have
so prevented us from having a proper discussion of gender, sexuality and
Blackness. Black radicalism has to account for all the varied forms of
Blackness and in this chapter we will consider just how the politics has
done so.
Black radicalism is anti-misogynoir
In the first four chapters of this book I have dealt in depth with the need to
separate out different strands of Black politics. There is no such thing as a
unified take on Black Power; there are a variety of different ideas and
movements, many of which violently disagree with each other. But the
collective memory conflates and confuses these different politics into a
mass trope of a movement defined by violence and misogyny. In
constructing our understandings of Black Power movements it is as though

we have collectively agreed that ‘womanhood was not essential to
revolution. Or so everyone thought by the end of the 1960s’.6 Michele
Wallace’s highly controversial book Black Macho and the Myth of the Black
Superwoman has been taken as a credible account of Black Power politics,
even though she reduces the movement to a quest for ‘black manhood,
black macho – which could combine the ghetto cunning, cool, and
unrestrained sexuality of black survival’.7 In this reductive account of the
movement, Kwame Ture’s call for Black Power was nothing more than ‘a
black man with an erect phallus, and he was pushing it up into the face of
America’.8 Endorsing this reductive view of the movement does a
disservice not only to the men, but also to the women involved.
Across a range of Black activist movements there is no denying that
there have been issues with sexism and misogyny. For example, the
Panthers have faced heavy criticism for the way women were treated in the
movement. But there is nothing special about Black Power or Black
activism in this regard. For example, the Socialist Workers Party in Britain
is in crisis after covering up rapes of women in the organisation. To mark
out Black Power as some kind of unique space of misogyny is to do the
work of the state in discrediting the politics.
Certainly true is that the ‘hetero-patriarchal Black male body’ has
dominated ‘mainstream scholarship’.9 Not only do we view the history of
Black struggle through great Black leaders, most of the writing is done by
Black men too. This book is a case in point; a brief scan of the authors cited
so far and their subjects demonstrates a male-centric discussion. Much more
must be done to bring out the voice of women in this history and
scholarship. But we should never confuse the historical record or collective
memory with the actual reality of the movements that took place. This is
why I have gone to such lengths in the book to distinguish the different
traditions of Black politics. Cultural nationalism of groups like US and the
Nation of Islam were, and remain, misogynistic at their core. The roles they
assign for women are those of the domestic and caregiver, in support of
their revolutionary men. But these are not radical movements; in fact they
are regressive and can never form a basis for progressive Black politics. It
is also in these groups that you find virulently anti-LGBTQ ideas. Much has
been made about how efforts to integrate Black communities, such as
Dubois’ ‘nation within a nation’, are structurally misogynistic because it
means embracing the mainstream idea of a feminine home life and a

masculine public sphere.10 Again these claims to mainstream nation
statehood sit well outside of the Black radicalism I am outlining here so
cannot be used to discredit the politics. In seeking to overturn the system,
Black radicalism must be calling for ‘the whole system of colonialism’
which produces misogyny to be transformed.11 Black radicalism is not the
politics of Karenga, or Farrakhan, or even Dubois, so to criticise it for their
gender biases is unfair.
In the next chapter the Black Panthers will be discussed as a key strand
in Black radicalism, but even here we need to distinguish which Panthers
we are talking about. When I think Cleaver, I imagine Kathleen and not
Eldridge. In the struggle to view Black Power as misogynoir, Eldridge is a
key figure, especially because he admitted raping Black women in
preparation for committing the crime against White ones.12 Rather than
being spurred to a life of misogynoir action by his book Soul on Ice, I had
to put it down in disgust before finishing it. If there is any person who is
held as an example of Black radicalism but can lay least claim to it, it is
probably Eldridge. His entire role in the Panthers seems to have been to
destabilise it. He was famous for incendiary comments and for pushing
violent confrontations with the police. On 4 April 1968, after the
assassination of Martin Luther King, Eldridge led an ambush on a squad of
police. This kind of action was the Black Macho in search of his manhood
that Michele Wallace so caricatured and that is so present in the memory of
the Panthers. The latest documentary, The Vanguard, lionises these ‘bad
niggers off the block’ who were ready for action.13 The unsurprising result
was a shootout that led to Eldridge and L’il Bobby Hutton being trapped in
a burning building surrounded by the police. Hutton was shot to death but
Eldridge survived. He later managed to smuggle himself out of the country
and ended up in Algeria.14 From there he became a vocal critic of the
Panthers and their programmes of free food and medical supplies. From the
safety of abroad he demanded the party take violent action against the state.
Even if Eldridge was not working with the state, he did just as much to
undermine the solidity of the Panthers. His conversion to the Republicans in
later life only adds fuel to the suspicion that his motives towards the party
were never pure. His prominence in the memory of the Panthers and his
actual place in their history do not match up. I was surprised when I
mentioned Eldridge to my father; his first words were ‘we always thought

he was planted by the FBI’. I am apparently not the only one who saw
through Eldridge.
The Panthers must take responsibility for creating a culture in which
Eldridge was ever allowed to be a prominent figure. No doubt, many of the
members subscribed to his poisonous views of women. But that doesn’t
mean we should ignore the totality of the role of women in the party. The
Panthers’ membership was 60% female and only a small fraction of their
work involved armed confrontation. The bulk of the efforts involved
producing and distributing the Black Panther newspaper, the free breakfast
programme, free health clinics, running liberation schools and giving out
free legal advice. Women were active across all areas of the Panthers’ work,
and though men may have dominated powerful positions in Black politics
we should not discount the role of women. As Kathleen Cleaver explained,
‘the form of assistance that women give in political movements to men is
just as crucial as the leadership that men give to those movements’.15 In the
case of the Panthers, though, Elaine Brown spoke of the discrimination
facing women in the party, of which she became chairperson in 1974.16
This is a testament to the idea that the problem of misogyny within the
Panthers was the members, rather than a structural limitation like those that
render cultural nationalism inherently regressive.
Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association also suffered from
similar limitations of leadership. Both of Garvey’s wives were hugely
influential in the organisation, with Amy Jacques being the de facto second
in command and the person who curated the legacy of Garveyism through
books like Garvey and Garveyism and The Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey. When Garvey was imprisoned in 1925, he entrusted the
leadership of the UNIA to Amy Jacques but the men in the organisation
rejected female direction, contributing to its downfall. Even though
misogyny was certainly present in the UNIA, it did not define it. The
organisation took leadership on ‘women’s issues’ from the very beginning
because, as Amy Jacques explained, ‘if the mothers of men are not treated
fairly, men are but limiting their own progress and development’.17 In 1920,
Henrietta Vincent Davis founded the Black Cross Nurses (BCN) as part of
the UNIA, set up as a vehicle for women to be involved in nation building.
There is certainly something patriarchal in setting up the female work as
that involving nursing, nutrition and education. But this was 1920, and an
organisation openly discussing and working in women’s health, being run

and led by women, was far ahead of its time. The role of women was also
not limited to the BCN in the Garvey movement. The UNIA was an
organisation of over five million members at its peak, so we should decentre the role of Garvey himself. While he was the founder and inspiration,
the organization was successful because of the collective; and if we think of
Garveyism as a movement, women were fundamentally involved at all
levels. In many ways it is our memory of these movements that is the
problem and not their actual structures; somehow ‘both historians of the
Black movement and women’s movement have overlooked the activities of
Black women in the most important mass movement in Black history’.18
We should not be surprised misogyny exists in movements that developed
in a misogynistic society; the question is whether the organisation itself
allows the limitations of the mainstream to be overcome.
Building the Black nation has been the central concern of Black radical
politics in order to overturn the existing political and economic system. The
focus on the nation has been used to argue that the movement is
misogynistic because of the gendered nature of national formations.19 This
argument misses the point of Black radicalism, which is to shatter the
Western nation state in order to rebuild with a revolutionary foundation.
Nation takes on an entirely different meaning in this context. The idea that
only men have been involved in imagining revolutionary concepts of
nationhood is disrespectful to the women who have been central in pushing
for a redefinition. It is not just young Black men who obsess over the
nation, as someone once disparagingly warned me at a conference. Women
like ‘Queen Mother’ Audley Moore, Grace P. Campbell, Claudia Jones and
Sunni Ali all engaged in rethinking the nation. Ironically, marking out the
nation as something men think about is precisely the gendering of social
thought that mainstream knowledge is based on. The same is true for the
issue of violence.
To engage in revolutionary politics means having to consider the
question of violence. Not as some kind of psychoanalytic tool for Black
manhood, but because the system that needs to be overturned is the most
violent that has ever existed. When Malcolm admonished the Civil Rights
movement for its ‘love thy enemy’ approach, he was chiding the naïve
belief that non-violence could solve the systemic problems. To see this
discussion of violence as inherently male is extraordinarily problematic. To
do so again draws on the tropes of the masculine demagogues of Black

Power: they must have meant men do the violence and women make the
home. Though this was definitely true for some regressive figures, we are
distorting Malcolm’s legacy if we cast him in the same light as someone
like Eldridge Cleaver. ‘Message to the Grassroots’ is Malcolm’s most vivid
speech on violence, where he consistently talks about ‘bloodshed’ in the
cause of revolution. But the example he uses for revolutionary violence
couldn’t be further from the caricature of the Black Macho:
when I was in prison, I read an article in Life magazine showing a
little Chinese girl, nine years old; her father was on his hands and
knees and she was pulling the trigger ’cause he was an Uncle Tom
Chinaman. When they had the revolution over there, they took a
whole generation of Uncle Toms – just wiped them out. And within
ten years that little girl become [sic] a full-grown woman. No more
Toms in China.20
Not only is his example of revolutionary violence enacted by a little girl,
but the traitor, the Tom, is male. Malcolm made it clear that ‘you don’t have
to be a man to fight for freedom’,21 and if we honestly account for the
legacy of Black radicalism it should come as no surprise that he would draw
on a female figure to represent the use of violence. Contrary to the failures
of our collective memory, Black women have been just as involved in
political violence as men. Dahir Al Kahina led troops against the Arab
invasion into Tunisia in the seventh century, declaring ‘Africa for the
Africans’.22 Queen Nzinga in Angola fought on the front lines in the battle
against the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, until she was sixty. Queen
Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica led a fearsome guerrilla war against the
slaveholders in Jamaica until her death in 1734. Her brother Cudjoe, on the
other hand, signed a treaty with the British and colluded in returning
enslaved Africans and rebels. During the Haitian revolution Black women
were just as involved in revolutionary violence as the men. Mbuya Nehanda
fought the British in Zimbabwe and was executed by hanging in 1897. Yaa
Asantewaa led a rebellion of the Ashanti tribe against the British in 1900,
chastising the men ‘if you the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we
will. We the women will. We will fight till the last of us falls in the
battlefields’.23 Whether it was the revolutionary post-war struggles in

Guinea, Tanzania, Angola or South Africa, women shed just as much blood
as men.
Throughout this book you will hear me draw on Malcolm X more than
any other person. This is not because he is a man, but because he provides
the fullest account of Black radicalism that can be found. To centre on
Malcolm does not mean to belittle the contributions of Black women,
because Malcolm is harnessing a tradition that has always had Black
women at its core. We absolutely do not need to create ‘definitions of
Blackness that do not exclude, isolate or stigmatize’, because such an
understanding is already the basis of Black radicalism.24
Blackness is not race
When Malcolm declared that there ‘is a new type of Negro, who calls
himself Black … He doesn’t make any apology for his Black skin’,25 he
ushered in a new type of Black politics. Prior to this, in the Englishspeaking world we did not refer to ourselves as Black. We were Niggers,
Negroes, Coloureds, West Indians, and the list goes on. Malcolm was
claiming Blackness as the political basis for revolution. He was also
building on historical precedents like the Haitian constitution which
declared the nation after the revolution in 1804 as a Negre, or Black,
republic.26 Blackness in Haiti had to be built, and was a not a natural
identity before the revolution. In his excellent analysis in Black Jacobins
C.L.R. James explains in detail how the French built a system designed to
fragment the population of African descent in the colony.27 As well as the
enslaved, there was a small number of liberated Africans and also a class of
free people whose heritage was mixed with the slave owners. None of the
free Black people on the island were quick to join the revolution, which
started on the plantations with those at the bottom of the system. The
revolution was only successful when all the groups came together as Black
and united to defeat the French. Blackness has never been simply about
colour, but a commitment to a liberatory politics that our colour ties us into.
Malcolm distinguished between the ‘Negro’ and ‘Black’ revolutions to
make clear the politics behind Blackness. He dismissed the Negro
revolution stating:

The only revolution based on loving your enemy is the Negro
revolution. The only revolution in which the goal is a desegregated
lunch counter, a desegregated theater, a desegregated park, and a
desegregated public toilet; you can sit down next to white folks on the
toilet.28
Blackness was a rejection of the politics of civil rights, of trying to gain
access to a system that oppresses us. There would be no more patiently
waiting, cap in hand, for incremental changes to the system. The Black
revolution was ‘hostile’, knew ‘no compromise’ and ‘overturns and
destroys everything in its way’. The key for Malcolm was to eradicate the
existing system and build a new nation on a completely different set of
principles, and Blackness was central to this goal.
Blackness is a radical concept because it ties the destiny of the Diaspora
together. As we discussed in Chapter 3, breaking the conceptual prison of
the Western nation state is essential to building a radical project. To claim a
connection to all those marked with Black skin means incorporating
Fanon’s ‘wretched of the Earth’ into your political programme.29 The
liberal politics of civil rights must be rejected because there is no way to
integrate the three million children who die for no good reason in South
East Africa every year into the global political social order. Malcolm’s
embrace of Blackness took the struggle outside of the ‘jurisdiction of Uncle
Sam’,30 and laid a foundation for connecting the struggles against apartheid
in South Africa, Jim Crow in America and colonial rule in the Caribbean.
Given that White supremacy has devastated most of the world, rooting
Blackness on the wretched of the earth could lead to the inclusion of more
than just the African Diaspora. A child dies every ten seconds because of
lack of access to food, and many of those children live in Asia and Latin
America. In fact, in the speech quoted above Malcolm says ‘when I say
Black, I mean non-white’, and includes China in the Black revolution
sweeping the globe. Malcolm very much believed in the Third World
Movement against imperialism, which was hallmarked by meetings such as
took place in Bandung between Pan-African and Asian leaders in 1954.31
But it would be incorrect from this quote to think Malcolm saw Black as
equal to non-White. His use of the term more often relates to what he
termed the ‘so-called Negro’ and his Organization of Afro-American Unity,

the political organisation he was building when he died, was explicitly
targeted to those of African descent. As much as I have used Malcolm as
the basis for the arguments in this book, he is also not infallible. Malcolm
died before the optimism of the Third World Movement had waned. Not
being White did not prevent Arab exploitation of North Africa or China’s
neo-colonial role on the continent. It is also entirely disempowering to
define yourself in relation to White people; it marks Whiteness out as the
standard, the norm.32 The hierarchy of White supremacy creates the Negro
at the bottom, as the inhuman beast of burden, cementing our location in the
political economy. Blackness is a rejection of the Negro, the reclamation of
our link to each other and to Africa. This political statement is an essential
component of the Blackness at heart of Black radicalism.
It would be easy to critique Malcolm’s expression of Blackness on the
basis that he declares the Black subject as male: ‘he calls himself Black’.
The focus on violence and the nation could be highlighted as the standard
male imagining of agency. It would be easy to do so, but also lazy. As
explained above, Malcolm imagines the revolutionary subject as female and
draws on a tradition where women have been instrumental. Also,
Malcolm’s OAAU did not have defined roles for men and women. The
question is not whether Malcolm used the patriarchal language of the time
but whether the idea is structurally exclusive. A slight tweak leads to a new
type of Negro who calls themselves Black, making no apology for their
Black skin. It is here that we have the radical platform of Blackness.
Blackness was called into being during the 1960s but the concept predates this. At its root Blackness is the call to unite all those of African
descent in order to organise a struggle for liberation. As we discussed in
Chapter 3, one of the strongest influences on Malcolm was Marcus Garvey
and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey mobilised
around the idea of the Negro, but this was identical to how Malcolm used
Black. In fact, Garvey was in Harlem and influential for the new Negro
movement, which aimed to challenge the gradualist approach to freedom.
Garvey built the UNIA into the most successful global organisation linking
the African Diaspora.
To understand the link of Blackness, we must be able to separate out the
concept from race, because the two could not be more distinct.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of scholarship on Blackness has conflated
the two. For example, Michelle Wright argues in her book Physics of

Blackness that ‘Blackness was not a scientific discovery but an economic
and political argument first used to justify the slave trade’.33 That is an
excellent description of race, the regressive concept used to slaughter and
dominate the globe. However, it is literally the opposite of Blackness,
which is first used to resist the work that race was doing. When Europeans
loaded Africans onto the slave ships, purposefully mixing up tribes so that
they could not communicate, it was the Blackness of the enslaved that
brought them together. It was their Blackness that unified them into a force
to resist and mutiny. Blackness is relational to Whiteness only in that sense;
it was the contrast to the racism of Whites that brought together the
expression of Blackness in that form. Our understandings of difference and
Blackness are not simply to mimic those of White society. They have their
own genealogy, and distinct meanings.
In their inability to accept that we have produced our own knowledge
and understandings, academia has been quick to distance itself from
Blackness. Black liberation movements are patronised for their ‘romantic
conceptions of “race”, “people” and “nation”’,34 and advised to ‘consider
abandoning’ altogether the ‘misleading discourse’ of unity and
nationhood.35 The inability to distinguish race from Blackness has led to
figures such as Garvey being either demonised or ignored.
Garvey’s embrace of race certainly had problematic elements; for
instance, he viewed race mixing as a sin that could not stand. His motto was
‘race first’, and to be a member of the UNIA meant pledging to maintain
the purity of the Black race. The extreme end of this logic led him to meet
with the Ku Klux Klan in America to discuss how they could work together
on their common goal of preventing race mixing.36 This was actually very
similar to Malcolm meeting the KKK during his time in the Nation of Islam
and the uncomfortable alliance between the group and the American Nazi
Party.37 Although this is clearly problematic, we have to be more nuanced
in our analysis and not condemn him for ‘drinking from the same fountain
of racial prejudice’ as the fascists.38 Western concepts of race are not only
based on supposed genetic differences, but also on a hierarchy with
Whiteness established as the pinnacle. Neither of these apply to how
Garvey viewed race, or what it mean to be Black.
Even the NOI’s view of race, which creates a distinct version of Black
supremacy, cannot be simply lumped together with Western notions of race.

In the NOI’s creation myth White people are literally the devil incarnate.
While a member, Malcolm would teach the story of Dr Yacub, an evil
scientist who started breeding the light-skinned Black people, then their
offspring, and subsequent generations until he had created the ‘blonde
haired, blue eyed devil’. Once he had bred the White devils, Yacub taught
them ‘tricknology, which is a science of tricks and lies, and then this weak
man’ was ‘able to use that science to trick and rob and rule the world’.39
White people are inferior in this narrative and there are many
uncomfortable references to the White race being more like dogs than
people. However, this is still clearly distinct from European ideas of race.
The basis of Whites’ inferiority is in some sense genetic, in that they were
bred that way by Yacub. But the reason they are evil is because they were
taught tricknology; it is based on their actions in the world rather than presupposed by genetic traits. There are clearly similarities here to race in that
these traits become mapped on the biology of Whites; to be White is to be a
devil and there is no redemption from this. In contrast to race, though, the
role of this story is not to rule and dominate Whites, but as a tool for Black
people to liberate themselves. Whites’ reign on earth was only supposed to
last 6000 years, which ran out in 1914, and it is supposedly only because
Black people have been asleep as to the nature of our divine selves that we
have not yet inherited the earth. The story is told for Black people to resist
racism, separate from White America and start anew in a land for ourselves.
As flawed and regressive as this story is, it is the basis of a version of
anti-racist politics, and therefore a repudiation, at least to some extent, of
Western notions of race. By subverting the Western racial hierarchy it aims
to deal with the problem of racism. White supremacy is a fundamental part
of race, and you cannot reify race with claims of Black superiority. As
problematic as this notion of Black supremacy is, it can also be a powerful
step towards radical versions of Blackness. Malcolm was politically raised
in the NOI and ended up articulating the most powerful and radical concept
of Blackness. We cannot dismiss the influence of his eleven years in the
organisation in a desire to present a sanitised version of Malcolm that the
bourgeois and academic can relate to. We like to pretend that once Malcolm
left the NOI he transformed, throwing off the shackles that were holding
him back, with his visit to Mecca being this transformative part of his
journey, his supposed reinvention. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There is only one moment of complete transformation for Malcolm and that

is from when he was Detroit Red, the hustler, to when, after immersing
himself in reading in prison, he joined the NOI and became Malcolm X. He
refers to that period as completely altering his way of thinking and entire
approach to life, likening it to the suddenness of falling ‘snow off a roof’.40
Malcolm’s radical approach to Blackness and the nation was developing
during his time in the NOI, with his split being inevitable given his
revolutionary politics. His trip to Mecca opened his eyes only to the reality
that all White people were not evil and led him to condemn the system of
Whiteness, rather than individuals. Malcolm’s journey is one of evolution,
not transformation, and was the inspiration for one of the most influential
psychological models of Black identity.
William Cross developed the ‘Nigrescence’ model to explain what he
called ‘Negro to Black conversion experiences’.41 Heavily influenced by
both Malcolm’s journey and Kwame Ture’s statement that ‘every Negro is a
potential Black man’, Cross tried to explain the stages someone could go
through to achieve a radical Black identity. In the first stage they are the
Negro, unaware of racism and playing along with their role in White
society. For Malcolm this is him as the hustler, the stereotypical Black man
for the mainstream to fear (and desire). Then, Cross theorised, came the
Encounter, an event that shakes you out of the pretence that your colour is
not important. Malcolm’s incarceration would serve as quite a vivid
encounter with the racism of the criminal injustice system. Cross gives the
example of people’s reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King,
seeing the non-violent spokesman gunned down woke people to the realities
of the system. After the Encounter there would be a period of intense antiWhiteness, what Cross called Immersion/Emersion. As people threw
themselves into learning about racism they could not help being anti-White
given all of the horrors and injustices that the West has wrought. This would
be Malcolm embracing the NOI and its view of White people as devils. But
eventually, as people went through a process of Internalisation of Black
consciousness, they would become Committed to the liberation struggle and
be the ‘new type of Negro’, Black, proud and in the struggle. Picture
Malcolm after he leaves the NOI and founds the OAAU, pro-Black but no
longer defined by Whiteness, whether for or against it. Cross’ model
oversimplifies the issues here and he updated it in later versions,42 but the
point is that anti-Whiteness can be a part of an oppositional politics and
may even be a necessary stage to Black radicalism. To simply see even the

most Black supremacist logic of groups like the NOI as the same concept as
race is to badly miss the point. This is particularly the case when there are
plenty of forms of Blackness that involve no hierarchy at all, such as
Garveyism, which has often been dismissed as Black fascism.
Although Garvey was against race mixing and met with the KKK, he
was not arguing that White people were inferior or that mixing would ruin
the Black racial stock. For Garvey, mixing meant diluting African blood
and therefore weakening the connection to Africa, the Diaspora and the
politics of liberation. It’s worth noting that in Garvey’s day the impact of
colourism across the Americas was unmistakeable. He would have directly
witnessed the privileges afforded to those with lighter skin tones and seen
how some had been incorporated into the management of imperialism.
Given the colour-coded hierarchy it is not surprising that he would have
associated dark skin with the masses and liberation, and light skin with the
bourgeois and imperialism. More problematic for Garvey in how he viewed
White society was that he was too complimentary to it. Garvey wanted to
elevate the Negro world to the level of the White race and can therefore
stand accused of capitalism, but not mimicking the fascists.
Garvey consistently mobilises the word ‘blood’ in talking about the
connection of the African Diaspora, and this is a term that Appiah takes
issue with in his supposed classic In My Father’s House. He rails against
Dubois’ use of the term ‘common blood’ to speak of the connection of
Blackness because he argues that ‘dressed with fancy craniometry, a dose of
melanin, and some measure for curly hair is what the scientific notion
amounts to’.43 For Appiah, the only use of colour, blood or ancestry in
identity is rooted in the European concept of race, and he is entirely
blinkered to the idea that Blackness is a separate and opposing concept. We
need to be much more sophisticated in how we understand ‘blood’ in the
connection of Blackness.
For Garvey, blood is not meant as a genetic marker of attributes and
abilities. Blood is the familial, historical connection to Africa. It does not
presuppose any genetic traits, and limits the connection to a shared history
and experiences of those whose skin in Black. Due to this connection,
Garvey effectively argues that the Diaspora has a responsibility to each
other, and must unite under a common destiny. Blood is our ancestral
connection, the ties that bind us together. To the extent that it is genetic, it is
the loose familial bond, that which colours our skin and curls our hair. It is

our direct link back to the continent of Africa, the permanent reminder of a
shared connection. Blood takes on such importance because due to the
horrors of slavery and cultural genocide we have nothing else to connect us.
What academics like Appiah are ignorant of is that Blackness is not about
the colour, or even the blood, but is founded on what they both represent.
We choose to see the connection to Africa and the Diaspora as important.
This is why it is no way a surprise that, as Appiah admits, ‘Dubois managed
to maintain Pan-Africanism while officially rejecting talk of race as
anything other than a synonym for colour’.44 It has never been anything
more than that, embracing our Blackness as the starting point for
understanding our place and struggles in the world.
Wright takes issue with a narrative of Blackness that ties the Diaspora
together through the middle passage of slavery.45 She argues that it is
impossible to maintain historical continuity and prioritise the middle
passage at the same time as including all parts of the Diaspora. Wright
argues that in order to have a more open definition of Blackness we need to
use non-linear ideas of time and to de-centre the middle passage. The idea
of linear progress may be central to narrow and cultural nationalism, but the
same is not true of Black radicalism. To say that we are connected because
of our shared history and roots in Africa does not mean this is based on a
simple step-by-step link to the past. Wright expends a lot of intellectual
energy using the analogy of quantum physics to argue the need to see the
past, present and future as fluid in space and time. Rather than mooring her
understandings on Eurocentric philosophies of knowledge, Wright would
have found that this very concept is alive in African knowledge systems,
and is the basis of Black radicalism.
I am usually wary of claiming the idea of African epistemologies
because of the large diversity of thought across the continent and Diaspora.
But on the issues of time, specifically linked to death, there is a clear
distinction to European thought. Death does not mark the end in African
thought, because the ancestors retain a connection to the world.46 You pray
and atone to your ancestors to influence the present and future, and it is this
connection to the spirit world that Europeans have used to demonise and
mock traditional African belief systems. The act of praying to the dead in
the present to influence the future transcends any notion of linear time. The
Akan Adinkrah symbol of the Sankofa bird, which looks backwards and
forwards simultaneously, is the visual representation of this idea. When

Garvey talks of blood, he is making that ancestral connection. Not in a
simple linear sense, but viewing the future of Black people through the lens
of the past. So the middle passage is not a horror that happened a long time
ago and is necessary for a continuity narrative, it is something that we
connect to from this moment to understand our place in the world. The
same is true of slave rebellions and struggles for resistance across time.
The idea that the middle passage is only important for the narrative of
the enslaved Diaspora is extremely problematic. The victims of transatlantic
slavery were not just those who boarded slave ships. There was fierce
resistance to enslavement on the African continent and countless died
fighting Europeans. The impact of transatlantic slavery on the continent was
also devastating, removing millions of people, destroying communities and
setting back economic and political progress for centuries.47 Slavery did not
just happen to the Diaspora; nor did the middle passage break the link to the
African continent. Many rebel leaders like Nanny of the Maroons were
African born and drew on these roots for the struggle. Nanny was an Asante
leader and used her knowledge of guerrilla warfare to get the best of the
British in Jamaica. As discussed in Chapter 1, the presence of so many
African-born leaders in Haiti was a key reason for the success of the
revolution. Rather than seeing the middle passage as some sort of
discontinuity between Africa and the Diaspora we should instead embrace it
as the ‘unbreakable umbilical cord’ between the two.48 It is entirely
incorrect to analyse the situation on the continent of Africa as somehow
distinct from the Diaspora, as Appaih does when he argues that ‘the
“discrimination and insult” Dubois experienced in the … industrialized
world were different in character from that experienced by, say, Kwame
Nkrumah in colonized West Africa’.49 This is a painting by numbers
analysis of racism, which has become all too common when theorising
Blackness.
The middle passage is perhaps the ultimate example of the creation of
the ‘Negro’. Stripped, shackled, beaten and packed like cattle with those
whose language you cannot speak: this is the definition of the sub-human
being with no history or culture; the beast of burden necessary to build the
new world. But the Negro is not just essential outside of Africa, but also on
the continent; to procure the labour force upon which capitalism is based,
but also to control and dominate the continent. The mineral resources from
Africa were as important as the labour, and certainly more so today.

Negroes do not have claims to land, or need of mineral wealth. They do not
have the capacity to rule themselves and it is therefore the ‘white man’s
burden’ to do so.50 King Leopold’s Belgium killed up to ten million people
in the Congo and maimed countless more. The punishment for not meeting
your rubber quota was to lose your hand, even if you were a child.51 The
justification for this genocide is no different than that for transatlantic
slavery. White supremacy was, and remains, the same problem on the
African continent as it is in the Diaspora. So while Dubois’ problems may
have manifested differently in America than Nkrumah’s in Ghana, the root
problem was the same.
One of the most quoted parts of Fanon’s work is the story of when he
first realised he was a Negro. Growing up in Martinique surrounded by
other Black people he had never considered his colour, it was only in
France when a young boy shouted ‘look mama, the Negro … I am
frightened’ that he understood he was Black.52 Stuart Hall had a similar
experience:
Until I left [Jamaica], though I suppose 98 per cent of the Jamaican
population is either Black or colored in one way or another, I had
never ever heard anybody either call themselves, or refer to anybody
else as ‘Black’. Never. I heard a thousand other words. My
grandmother could differentiate about fifteen different shades
between light brown and dark brown.53
I cannot count the number of times I have heard these two accounts, or
variations of them, used to distance the experiences in the West from those
in the colonies, to argue against the unity of Blackness. The fact that you do
not appreciate something does not mean it has not shaped your life. Once
we accept that the Negro was created across the continent of Africa and all
of the Diaspora, then even though Hall or Fanon did not realise the impact
of this it does not mean they did not feel it. Hall’s reference to the
multitudes of shades his grandmother could differentiate is an indication of
the power of colourism in Jamaica. Even today the political world and
economic prosperity in the island is colour coded. In fact, issues like skin
bleaching, being so disgusted by your Blackness that you burn off the
colour, are far more prevalent in Caribbean and African countries than they

are in those nations where we are the minority. Fanon was keenly aware of
the issues of racism in the Caribbean, arguing that the West Indian
identified himself with the White man’s attitude, stating that ‘the West
Indian … is a Negro’.54 The astronomical murder rate in Jamaica is allowed
to continue because the victims are Negroes. Families trying to cross the
Mediterranean from Africa in search of a better life are left to drown,
because they are Negroes. Three million children die in South East Africa
every year because they are Negroes. People do not become Negroes in the
West, they just realise it when they see the contrasts to Whiteness.
Wright’s other objection to how we understand Blackness is that in
trying to find continuity we narrate a narrow story dominated by men as the
only way to ‘point to the existence and pedigree of Black culture, Black
politics, Black music, Black literature’.55 This is a perfect example of how
academic discussions of Blackness have become limited to viewing the
concept ‘as political expression of racial essentialism’.56
Blackness is a political essentialism
Essentialism in the discussion of Blackness means to ‘assume the existence
of a transhistorical and organic “black essence”’ that defines all Black
people.57 It is to reduce us to set ways of being and cultural forms, to make
Blackness rigid and inflexible. There are two primary concerns from the
academy with essentialism and Blackness. The first is that the ‘myth of a
black community’58 ‘inadvertently helps to reproduce some of the thinking
and practices that have created black disadvantage in the first place’.59 In
this dubious logic, racist society is based on dealing with Black people as a
unit, and we collude in this project by embracing the idea that we are a
separate and different community. Basically, this is the latest version of the
integration over separation debate. We should have long ago realised that
dreaming that we can be an undifferentiated part of the system is a fantasy.
Whether we imagine ourselves as equals, or cosmopolitan individuals who
transcend the boundaries of race, makes absolutely no impact on the
realities of racism. Even the most successful Black people, who have
apparently ‘made it’, have their ‘acute moments of disrespect’ that Elijah
Anderson calls the ‘nigger moment’.60 This whole argument is predicated
on the idea that the only way to see Blackness is through the lens of

Whiteness as if we have no control over our own meaning. When enslaved
Africans during the middle passage united in their Blackness to mutiny,
they were hardly supporting the logic that disadvantaged them. Perhaps
they should have avoided embracing the myth of Blackness and appealed to
the slave ship captains as equal members of the human family.
The more serious critique the idea of essentialism presents for Blackness
is the idea that it creates an exclusionary Black subject, which reinforces
ideas of patriarchy and anti-LGBTQ narratives. Cultural nationalism, as we
discussed in Chapter 4, is most certainly guilty of this error, with clear
cultural and behavioural roles for the authentic ‘African’. There is no space
in this logic for men who are not protectors, women who are not
domesticated or anyone who is not straight and reproducing the Black
family. It is from these kinds of politics that the obsession over creating a
more open Blackness has emerged. Stuart Hall proposed that we need
newer, more hybrid forms of identity that open up space for varying forms
of identity.61 bell hooks articulated the need for a ‘postmodern Blackness’
in order to ‘challenge notions of universality and over-determined identity’
in movements.62 In trying to retain some sort of basis of Black politics Paul
Gilroy tied himself in theoretical knots arguing for an ‘anti-antiessentialism’ to recognise both the lived experience and the limits of
cultural authenticity.63
Hundreds of thousands of words have been split on trying to retain a
form of Blackness that can move beyond the limits of cultural authenticity.
But lacking in this myriad of work is a recognition that Blackness is a
political rather than a cultural essentialism. Blackness is the ultimate
rejection of Negro status, the call for unity in order to overturn the system
that oppresses Africa and the Diaspora. In this sense it is mediated through
the Black body but there is no need for any cultural sameness or hierarchy.
We are linked because of politics and not culture, and therefore whatever
cultural forms people choose to embrace are unimportant. Authenticity for
Black radicalism simply comes down to a commitment to the liberation of
the Diaspora. But there is no doubt that authenticity has been generally
misread, and more widely misused, even outside of cultural nationalism.
To sell out, be a traitor to the race, has become defined in cultural
terms.64 Having a White partner, dressing a certain way, speaking in a
particular manner have all become symbols of ‘acting White’.65 The

cultural performance of a so-called authentic Blackness determines who is
labelled a ‘bounty bar’ or a ‘coconut’ (brown on the outside but white on
the inside). Yet it was never meant to be this way.
Malcolm likens the House Negro on the plantation to the middle class
Black folk who receive material advantages in capitalist society. He
contrasts this to the Field Negro who caught hell on the plantation, in the
same way that poor Black folk experience the brutal realities of racism
today. Malcolm is saying that the poor Black person is more authentically
Black than the middle class, not because of their culture but due to their
location in the system of oppression and more importantly their political
outlook. The House Negro is duped by the system because they cannot see
a reality where they can ‘get a better house’, ‘better clothes’ or ‘better food’
than from the master. So they ‘identify with the master more than the
master identifies with himself’,66 and refuse to run away from the
plantation or separate from White society. Catching hell on the plantation
makes the Field Negro much more attuned to the realities of racism. So if
‘someone came to the Field Negro and said, “Let’s separate, let’s run”, he
didn’t say “Where we going?” He’d say, “Any place is better than here”’.67
The Field Negro is authentic because they embrace the politics of
revolution, while the House Negro ‘is out of his mind’ because they are
committed to the system that is oppressing them. Black radical authenticity
takes this further and is not based on class distinctions but political ones. To
understand this we must distinguish between the House Negro and the
Uncle Tom.
For Malcolm, it wasn’t just any old middle class Black person
supporting a racist system who was an Uncle Tom. They were Kwame
Ture’s ‘potential’ Black people who could be awakened to the system. The
Uncle Tom was a specific role where the system ‘takes a so-called Negro,
and makes him prominent, builds him up, publicizes him, makes him a
celebrity. And then he becomes a spokesman for Negroes’.68 Tomming
means to pretend to be speaking on behalf of Black liberation while being
an agent of the system, a tool used to slow down progress. It is easy to point
out the well-educated, middle class, government-appointed Uncle Toms like
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in America, or former head of the
Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Phillips in Britain. But we miss the
point if we conflate Tomming with the culture of the middle class.69 A good
example of the modern-day Uncle Tom would be a rapper like L’il Wayne

who clothes himself in the culture of street to appeal the masses, but writes
lyrics such as ‘I whip it like a slave’. By removing the cultural basis from
authenticity we have a solid platform for the political nature of Black
radical solidarity.
Securing Black authenticity within this political framework is seen as
problematic because of the lens though which Black radical history is
viewed. Viewing Black politics as a history of misogyny means Blackness
is seen to exclude those identities that do not fit, for example ‘LGBTTQ
Blacks during decolonization and Black Power movements in Africa and
the West’.70 In the same way that we discussed for women, this is in part a
response to narrow and cultural nationalism. Huey P. Newton declared that
people needed to ‘deal with their insecurities’ around homosexuality and
that the Panthers needed to unite with gay and women’s movements in a
‘revolutionary fashion’. He was open about his own prejudices but made it
clear that there was nothing in the Panthers’ politics that was necessarily
homophobic and even acknowledged that ‘a homosexual could be the most
revolutionary’.71 It would be wrong to say that this demonstrates Huey’s,
the Panther’s or Black radicalism’s excellent credentials on the issue of gay
liberation. While not being hostile, there has been a lack of discussion of
the issue. This absence has led to calls for ‘queer’ Black politics.72 Wright
argues that the only way to create the concept as ‘wholly inclusive and nonhierarchical is to understand Blackness as the intersection of constructs’.73
In other words it can only have meaning in relation to concepts of gender,
sexuality, disability and class. But the assumption that Blackness, in its
radical sense, needs to be transformed is problematic.
It would be wrong to assume that because Black radicalism has not
explicitly centred on LGBTQ issues it excludes those who are not
heterosexual. When Africans were enslaved, or areas colonised, they didn’t
separate out the Black population by sexuality. People of all sexualities and
gender identities were both re-created as Negroes and rose up to resist,
whether in slave rebellions, anti-colonial struggles or in post-war
movements. Malcolm’s comments on religion could equally apply to sexual
orientation: ‘they don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you
’cause you’re Black. They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim; they
attack me ’cause I’m Black. They attack all of us for the same reason’.74 As
the police killings in America demonstrate, being gay or transgender is no

protection from police bullets. To underscore how the issues impact across
the board, Black Lives Matter was founded by three queer women, Alicia
Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Opal Tometi. Blackness cannot just exist
at the intersection or it has no real meaning at all, it just becomes one of
many differences. It is also true that being queer opens you to attacks that
being Black and heterosexual do not, and we certainly need to understand
how Blackness intersects with other oppressions; but a central feature of
Black radicalism is that Blackness is the underlying concept that unites the
Diaspora.
One of the main reasons that LGBTQ issues have not been highlighted in
Black radicalism is not because of the problems themselves but because the
campaigns are often based on appeals to civil rights. Seeking legislative
changes on age of consent, same-sex marriage or transgender recognition
may be important but these are not radical challenges to the system. The
same criticisms that were levelled at civil rights campaigns for racial
equality apply to efforts to make the system fairer based on sexuality. Of
course there should be equality, but it is not reasonable to expect a radical
politics to engage in liberal struggles with the state. Black radicalism is
concerned with liberation of Black people from the West, not social equality
within the system. Black radicalism also unapologetically privileges
Blackness analytically. But Blackness must be a cultural and expressive
blank slate upon which we can build our revolution.
There is no point in pretending that there is some Black radical blueprint
for the nation after the revolution that is the model of gender and sexuality
equality. But equally there is none that provides for Black straight men
either. To this point Black radicalism has provided the basis and articulation
for struggle but has not answered the question of what comes next.
Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality is vital in making sure we
do not lose sight of the plurality of Blackness, but debating the misogyny of
Black radicalism based on the past will not get us very far.75 What Black
radicalism has done is to provide the basis for liberation, with Blackness
being at the centre. It is only by coming together, pushing the politics
forward and articulating how the Black nation will function that we can
fulfil the promise of the radical tradition. Black radicalism must be a space
open to all those in the Diaspora who have felt on the outside. There can be
no exclusions in what unites us in our Blackness. In terms of producing a
radical culture that overcomes the centuries of Western influence, this can

only be produced in the furnace of radical action. Communing together,
working together and struggling together is the only way to build a society
together.
In the effort to distance themselves from race and to either link, or
disconnect, the various cultures of the African Diaspora, scholars have had
to abandon the real world for the imagined and theoretical. Wright seriously
argues that ‘political traditions serve only a limited use’ in understanding
Blackness and privileges intellectual formations, which she locates in the
literary world.76 To effectively dismiss centuries of political resistance in
order to prioritise the work of contemporary fiction writers is a dangerous
indulgence in academia. Sadly, Wright is not alone in this kind of rewriting
of Blackness, detaching the concept from its radical and grassroots origins.
It is an ongoing ‘crisis of the Negro intellectual’ to be unable to articulate
the radical nature of Blackness because of the limits of the White academic
framework.77 Blackness is not a theoretical, literary or abstract construct. It
is a concept produced in struggle, by those facing the brutal realities of
racial oppression. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Black
intelligentsia have been unable to comprehend the basis and importance of
this radical idea. I can personally testify to the assault of the Eurocentric
canon and the insular nature of the academic industrial project. It is only by
rooting our understandings in that knowledge produced outside of the
university, in the process of struggle, that we can trace radical versions of
Blackness.
The misogynistic Blackness that you have been led to believe has
dominated our politics has never been at the heart of the radical project.
Black political movements have been by no means perfect models of gender
and sexuality equality, but Blackness provides the unifying concept that can
build a truly inclusive and liberatory politics.

Chapter 6

Black Marxism

In 2012 I attended a Black History Month event in an African Caribbean
community centre in Birmingham. There was nothing particularly
memorable about the event itself; it was one of the many indistinguishable
celebrations of Blackness that we crowd into every October in Britain.
There is nothing like state funding to remind the community of their roots.
This occasion stands out because a discussion arose about South African
farmers who were striking over pay and conditions at the time. The strikes
began organically in the Western Cape and eventually spread across the
country. At the event members of the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP) were
present and brought their rhetoric with them. You may well question why
the SWP was at a random Black History Month workshop, but only if you
have never attended a Black community event. Malcolm used to joke that
the FBI always lingered at Black community meetings; in Britain it’s not
the feds who are ever-present, but the SWP or some other variant of the left.
An undeniable part of this hyper-presence is certainly to lecture us that our
problems are really about class and not race. In fact, when Critical Race
Theory first emerged in Britain, every conference was attended by Mike
Cole and/or Dave Hill, Marxists sent to teach us the error of our ways. But
there is also a genuine attempt to reach out to an audience that, as we will
see in this chapter, has often been overlooked or side-lined in Marxist
analysis.
At this meeting the SWP was there to get support for a potential
teachers’ strike over pension changes. It has stuck with me because their
spokesperson seriously tried to tie the fate of the South African farm
workers, who were going on strike at the time, to the struggle for teacher’s
pensions. The argument was that these were both examples of the general
oppression of the working classes. If we were supporting the South African
farm workers we should also be backing the teachers. This argument
demonstrates many of the problems with Marxism that we will discuss in

the chapter, and as you can probably imagine did not go down very well at
the event. In the simplistic calculations of groups like the SWP, we are all
workers in a fight against the capitalists, and must unite to succeed. But
they have neglected the privileges that those in the West receive. The case
of teachers is a perfect example. The starting salary in England is over
£22,000, meaning you begin your career in the top half of earners in the
country. With increments and promotion you are set to end up anywhere as
high as the top 5%. On the global scale that places teachers well in the
upper section of earnings there is no material comparison to be made by
those in a comfortable and financially sound profession fighting over their
pensions, to farm workers in South Africa demanding a wage that can feed
them. Worse still, teacher’s salary and pension contributions come from the
state and therefore tax revenue. As we have seen already, the wealth in
Britain is produced by historically under-developing places like South
Africa and maintaining their poverty through neo-colonial economic
practices. Not only are British teachers rich in comparison to South African
farmers; they have that wealth in large part because the farmers are poor. It
is actually offensive to pretend that they are in the same struggle, and makes
a complete nonsense of the idea that there is a 99% in a battle with the
global elite. However, as much as the central tenet of Marxism falls apart on
scrutiny, Black Marxism has historically been a dominant form of
organising.
There is perhaps no more influential radical school of thought than
Marxism. The Communist Manifesto published by Marx and Engels in 1848
is, after the Bible, the most read book in the entire world and inspired
revolutions in Russia, China, Korea, Cuba and across the globe. Marx
provides a searing critique of capitalism, arguing that the rich are rich
because the poor are poor, and concluding that there can be no justice
within its economic framework. Nothing short of a revolution can bring
about a transformation of the system, and liberate the oppressed. This is a
direct parallel to the Black radical position that we have discussed so far.
The similarities go further when we look at the processes of historical
change in Marxism.
In pursuing their exploitation of the workers, the oppressors or
‘bourgeoisie’ were said to be creating their own ‘grave-diggers’.1 This is
often taken to mean that Marx saw the end of capitalism as inevitable, but it
is actually more complicated than this. The gravediggers of capitalism for

Marx were the Proletariat, but we have to distinguish this group from the
working class. Marx saw the Proletariat as a ‘class in itself’, oppressed but
also controlled by the system. In order to bring about the revolution they
would need to become a ‘class for themselves’, and understand their place
and power to form as the Proletariat. In other words, every worker is a
potential Proletarian but they need to be educated and awakened from the
delusions trained into them by the system of oppression. Brazilian educator
Paolo Freire called this processes ‘conscientization’,2 removing the veil of
false consciousness, while Malcolm X explained the need for a programme
of ‘political re-education to open our people’s minds to the truth’.3
It is not difficult to see why Marxism would be appealing to Black
communities looking for liberation from oppression. In the same way as
those who rebelled in Haiti took inspiration from the French Revolution,
Black communities will always rally to those movements that can bring
down the oppressive system. Figures like George Padmore, Paul Robeson,
Angela Davis and Claudia Jones have historically been prominently
involved in Marxism. The late Stuart Hall, so influential in Britain, was
probably most notable for his contributions to contemporary debates in
Marxism, and the Black left in this country has deep links to the tradition.
That is not even to mention the Black Panther Party and revolutionary
movements in colonies such as Grenada in the Caribbean,4 or Guinea in
Africa.5 So influential was Marxism on the continent that the first president
of Tanzania, Nyerere, created the concept of ‘African Socialism’ to apply
the doctrine in the conditions outside of Europe.6 The late Cedric
Robinson’s classic text Black Marxism captures the deep connections across
history.7 As excellent and foundational as this book is, Robinson makes the
fundamental error of conflating Black Marxism with Black radicalism.
Although Marxism is radical, it is not Black. There are almost as many
Black activists who joined Marxist groups as who left them once they
understood that the politics is undermined by how it views the questions of
racism. Marxism is certainly one of the very few radical arguments, but
there is a difference between Black radicalism and Black people being
radical.
The Negro question

Marxism’s central problem is its relegation of the question of racism. Class
is the central, underlying antagonism in Marxism, which has been widely
critiqued as being too simplistic.8 It is also true that the accusation that
Marx reduced everything to the economic has become an oversimplified
critique that avoids engaging with Marxism’s complexities. Marx died a
long time ago and intellectuals such as Gramsci have done much to move
away from narrow interpretations of his work.9 There is some room for
manoeuvre in how the question of racism is used in Marxism, and of course
Black scholars have had a key influence in these discussions. We would be
wrong to reject Marxism outright because it prioritises class over racism.
The issue here is how and why class is given primacy and what this tells us
about the limits of Marxism.
The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) has historically been central
in the discussion of race and class. As the Western country with the largest
Black population, the issue of racism in the United States was pressing.
After the emancipation of enslaved Africans in America the competition
between Black and White workers impacted greatly on the future formation
of the nation. Dubois argued that an opportunity had been lost in the South
for the workers of both colours to unite and fight the wealthy exploiters. He
argued that the psychological ‘wages of whiteness’ had convinced the
White workers to despise the formerly enslaved.10 Resolving this conflict
was seen as important because of the presence of millions of African
American potential Proletarians. The CPUSA could not afford to ignore
issues of race and set about discussing whether ‘African Americans be
considered a subject nation, an oppressed race, or simply a particularly
disadvantaged section of the American working class’.11
The CPUSA doing the legwork on what the Communist Party as a whole
called the ‘Negro Question’ is in itself an indictment of the party. Though
Lenin had made it clear that the exploitation of the colonies was absolutely
essential to the maintenance of capitalism, the Negro Question and wider
issues of race were relegated to the side-lines. Communist groups in places
like Britain and France were uninterested in the discussion because they had
very few bodies from the colonies within their nation states. They did not
have to deal with Negro workers, so they felt no urgency in addressing the
issues of racism. Ironically, given that Marxism condemns the nation state,
organisation of the Communist International took place firmly within the
colonial national framework. Black Marxists colluded in the logic of the

British and French by seeing America as the ‘headquarters and centre of
political thought’ for Black people.12 The colonies were not viewed as
advanced enough to be at the forefront of the revolution because the
Proletariat was defined in relation to industry, which the colonies did not
possess. The communist thesis on the Negro question in 1919, mostly
authored by the Afro-Surinamese Otto Houiswood, acknowledged the
importance of Black people worldwide but argued that their cooperation
was essential to the Western ‘Proletarian Revolution’,13 which would
deliver the victory against capitalism. In the very formulation of the Negro
question the Communist Party placed Black people on the periphery.
None of this should come as any surprise. Marx acknowledged the
importance of slavery and colonialism in building the West, arguing that ‘it
is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have
created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of largescale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest
importance’.14 The problem with a Marxist analysis, though, is that even
though he recognised the role of slavery and colonialism, Marx saw this as
‘pre-capitalist accumulation’. In the same way as you could not have
capitalism without feudalism, colonialism was seen as a necessary
precursor. But importantly they both lay outside of capitalism, which was
seen to be more advanced and dominated by industrial relations. One of the
most lasting critiques of Marx is how he downplays the role of peasants in
the revolution. They are not workers in advanced economies and therefore
are outside the system of capitalism. The Proletarians were meant be forged
in the factories, but history has taught us it is actually that peasantry who
have taken the lead. Russia, China, Grenada, Burkino Faso, Korea, Guinea,
Cuba all depended on the agricultural communities. What should also stand
out in this list is how little progress communism has made in the West. The
biggest failing of Marx is that he ‘imagined that the industrial Proletariat
was the hero of capitalism and invented a history whose narrative justified
this’.15
Far from marking a break with feudalism or colonialism, capitalism is an
advanced form of the Western imperial project. It is impossible to separate
what happens in the colonies from what happens in the West. While the
West may have been rapidly urbanising and industrialising in Marx’s time,
the colonies were not. They were purposefully being underdeveloped in
order to maintain control by European powers. So although the peasantry

were disappearing in the West they remained a force outside of it. It is only
in recent years that globally more people live in cities than rural areas. The
idea that colonial rule is ‘pre-capitalism’ is also inadequate. It is true that
capitalism was built on the wealth from slavery and colonialism, but that is
just as true today as it was in the nineteenth century, in terms of the legacies
of historic oppression, which can be seen in the wealth generated, and the
poverty caused. Even if the end of slavery and direct rule was the end of
Western exploitation, the colonies would have been put back in their
development by centuries. As no reparations have been forthcoming there is
clearly still a debt owed; you cannot just steal the wealth, hold on to it and
then blame your victims for being poor. Actually you can, and that is the
basis of the global economy, which takes it further with neo-colonial trade
practices. By prioritising the experience of Europe, drawing a line between
pre- and post-capitalism and pretending you can understand the economies
of the West without considering their exploitation of the rest of the world,
Marx was just as guilty of Eurocentrism as his more liberal contemporaries.
In fairness to Marxism, newer developments have attempted to deal with
this problem. Wallerstein’s World System Theory, for example, places the
wealth of the West at the core in relation to the exploitation of the colonies
on the periphery of global economics.16 It is no longer controversial to
argue that capitalism is a form of imperialism, rooted in the oppression of
the former colonies. But it is one thing to recognise the problem of global
capital and quite another to deal with the issue of racism.
It is in the mechanism for change where we can see Marxism’s most
fundamental error. The industrial working class has not and will never be
the most exploited group in the system of imperialism, and therefore
capitalism. Even though the conditions in the factories during the industrial
revolution were terrible, they were a luxury compared to the enslavement of
African people. Due to how dehumanising slavery was, the history has been
sanitised in the collective memory. We can picture the chains, whippings
and even rapes, but the scale of the torture, mutilations and genocide is
mostly hidden from view. One brutal slave-owner in Jamaica, Thomas
Thistlewood, as well as raping hundreds of women, invented a punishment
where the enslaved ‘would be beaten, and salt pickle, lime juice, and bird
pepper would be rubbed into his or her open wounds. Another slave would
defecate into the mouth of the miscreant, who would then be gagged for
four to five hours’.17 If we truly comprehended the horrors of slavery we

would not only be saddened but sickened. We would certainly not do the
history the disservice of comparing it to the labour that Europeans
experienced in the workhouses. As horrible as it was, Thistlewood’s Derby
Dose, as he called it, was not being practised on the production line. When
Europeans had exhausted the lives of the natives in the America they did
not enslave poor Whites to produce their commodities. In order to extract
maximum wealth they needed to create the Negro, the commodity to be
bought and sold. There were some White people on the plantations and you
may have come across the popular ‘myth of Irish slaves’.18 The reality is
that there were some poor Europeans on the plantations who were
indentured servants. They had to serve for limited periods of time, and still
had human rights.19 They were not slaves, they were not seen as beasts, or
treated as subhuman. Indentured labourers were effectively serfs; by no
means were they equal, and they experienced tremendous hardship, but they
were not slaves. Britain did not round up its, or Ireland’s, poor at the barrel
of a gun and chain them into chattel slavery. Those horrors were reserved
for Africans, who were used to produce the wealth that the industrial
revolution developed from.
As the conditions for the working classes in the West improved, they did
not do so in the colonies. In fact, the conditions in the West improved
because of the continued poverty in the colonies. The wealth generated
from imperialism was a key part of allowing for the abolition of child
labour, the introduction of the working week and the comforts provided by
the welfare state. The fear of communism after the Second World War was
enough for Britain and other countries to offer social welfare, free
schooling, free healthcare and to bring in more progressive taxation
systems. But these benefits were not passed down to the colonies, which
suffered further exploitation to secure social democracy in the West. If we
take the example of Britain, at the founding of the welfare state the colonies
were still controlled by the mother country and they provided the wealth
and labour to make the project possible. The National Health Service was
described by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson as ‘the very temple of
our social security system’, providing universal, free medical care.20 From
its outset the NHS has been entirely dependent on migrant workers from the
colonies and nations after independence. The only reason Black people are
in the country in large numbers is because our labour was needed to build a
welfare state that the colonies saw no benefit from. As is typical of the

White left, they tend to celebrate these advances in progress as the result of
their tireless working class campaigning. But considering the welfare state
should be impossible without recognising Britain’s colonial subjects.
Therefore it was particularly offensive that Ken Loach’s Spirit of ’45 movie,
celebrating the era, was almost exclusively White.
The unfortunate truth about Marx’s hero of history is that the Western
working class has benefited from imperialism and forged political
movements that mostly aim to distribute the wealth gained from the
exploitation of darker people more equitably between Whites. Trades
Unions have largely operated to ‘defend the short term interests’ for their
members within the framework of the nation state.21 On top of this, the
unions have also been a bastion of racism and exclusion. When Caribbean
and Indian workers came to Britain they found themselves subject to colour
bars from both the unions and workers’ organisations like social clubs.22
Groups like the Indian Workers Association had to form because they had
no representation in the mainstream unions. Even now, though we are
welcome to pay our fees, I don’t remember anyone ever expressing the
feeling that their union was particularly supportive over issues of racism. If
we are honest, the history of working class movements in the West has
largely been one based on self-interest, and these interests generally do not
align with the victims of imperialism. Though this has never stopped the
left attempting to organise on behalf of the Black and Brown.
After the financial crisis in 2007, Western economies felt a severe
impact: declines in share prices, the near collapse of Greece and banks
having to be bailed out with public money. The result was the politics of
austerity and a significant squeeze on public spending and resources. The
credit crunch laid bare the lie of progress built on loans and the rebalancing
of Western economies has been terrible for the poor. Wages have stagnated,
public safety nets have been removed, houses repossessed and people are
now regularly struggling to feed themselves. Unemployment in some
countries has not been the problem it could have been, but
underemployment is just as big an issue. Having a job that does not pay
enough to live on is hardly better than not having one at all.
All of this financial chaos led to a reaction from the left and the Occupy
Movement was born, rallying around the slogan ‘we are the 99%’. Marxism
is not in vogue at present so the movement was not keen to embrace its
politics, although there is a clear influence in the idea of the elite against the

rest of the world. We will not go into any depth of critique of Occupy,
which has since become a distant memory, but will simply point out that all
of those things that the movement were complaining about were not new to
the former colonies. Poverty, food insecurity, precarious work and
especially austerity have been features of the global development package
for decades. It was only when these inequalities were felt in the West that
people deemed it necessary to rise up. More to the point, the financial crisis
did not bring anything new to Black and Brown communities in the West.
Much has been made of the staggering unemployment in Southern Europe,
but Black male youth unemployment has hit as high as 50% in some parts
of Britain. One of the starkest figures I have seen on racial inequality
recently is that, of all African Americans who have jobs in New York, half
of them work in fast food outlets.23 Austerity and the financial crisis have
also hit Black communities disproportionately hard. Losing a million public
sector jobs is devastating in Britain to a Black community that has relied on
public sector work because of discrimination in the employment sector. To
be told that we are now in a collective struggle is a bit difficult to hear when
our plight has mostly fallen on deaf ears for decades.
The response to the politics of austerity has been typical of the White left
through the ages: fight to get a more even distribution of the profits of
imperialism, while making sure to keep the system in place. Appeals to the
White working class have either been made directly on a racist, nationalist
basis as we saw with Trump in America or Le Pen in France, or with calls
for a return to social democracy and more equality within the nation state,
as with Podemos in Spain or Corbynism in Britain. Nationalising railways
and taxing the rich are good ideas but let’s not pretend that they will
alleviate global poverty. Britain was a social democracy when my
grandmother came to Britain and faced the kind of overt racism I have only
seen on screen. Gains for workers in the West have always been secured off
the backs of those in the underdeveloped world. This is a necessary feature
of capitalism.
A perfect example of the ignorance of racism and neo-colonialism from
the left is the idea of the universal basic income (UBI). In short, the idea is
to abolish welfare spending and give everyone a set income. This would
mean everyone could eat, have a foothold in society and work to earn more
money. It has been a part of the Green party agenda for years and the
Finnish government has even run a trial. One of the justifications for UBI is

that increases in robotics have eroded many of the manual jobs that were
the staple of working class communities.24 Again we see the bias towards
the West because the problem in the underdeveloped world is not the loss of
manual work. In fact, in many places it is the opposite, the outsourcing of
manual labour to poorer countries that do not have the same working
conditions and are paid far less than the Western worker. When you are paid
less than a dollar a day for your ten-hour shift, robots taking your job is not
your number one concern. For the African continent the problem is the
complete marginalisation of the economies, where the West (and China)
take the resources and do not leave enough for the native populations. The
fascination with robotics is the definition of a First World problem, and UBI
is the fittingly Western solution.
Even if UBI was a good idea, it would not necessarily do anything to
alleviate the global issues of inequality. One of the pioneers of this idea,
Guy Standing, actually researched the concept in the underdeveloped world,
an ideal setting because the amount is pegged to subsistence levels.25 In a
poor country UBI is much less than in a rich one, so he did not need as
much research funding for the project. Surprise, surprise, the results were
positive: if you give people money their lives get a bit easier. Setting aside
the ethics of giving people money in a poor country and then stopping when
the research finishes, the whole notion actually reinforces global
inequalities. The West gets to keep its inflated UBI, while the rest live off a
much lower figure. But because no one is starving, everything is alright
with the world. Worse still, the campaigns for UBI are typically at the
nation state level, so there is little concern for applying the model to the
globe. UBI is the perfect example of the left coming up with a solution that
benefits the West and does not challenge the world system, which provides
the wealth for their social safety net.
Psychosis of Whiteness
Marxism has been unable to overcome what I call the ‘psychosis of
Whiteness’,26 which infects Western thought. Whiteness is actually rooted
in the political economy; it is in the fabric of the institutions and social life.
You cannot work the natives in the Americas to death without Whiteness.
You do not enslave millions of African people and kill millions more

without Whiteness. You do not steal the resources from the places of the
world you have underdeveloped and then create a system of unfair trade
practices without Whiteness. The modern world was shaped in the image of
Whiteness. Swedish botanist Linnaeus gave the perfect illustration of the
hierarchy of Whiteness in his categorisations of the species of mankind in
the eighteenth century:
Eurpaues albus: ingenious, white, sanguine, governed by law,
Americus rubescus; happy with his lot, liberty loving, tanned and
irascible, governed by custom, Asiatic luridus; yellow, melancholy,
governed by opinion, Afer Niger; crafty, lazy, black, governed by
arbitrary will of the master.27
Europeans perceived themselves as superior and built a world in the image
of this belief. It is telling that the hierarchy outlined by Linnaeus is a very
good approximation of global poverty. The wealth in the West is built and
maintained off this embrace of Whiteness. The West never needs to account
for its multiple sins because the poverty in the developing world is
attributed to the inadequacies of the Black and Brown victims of the
system. Western governments can brush off any claims for reparations for
transatlantic slavery because it all happened so long ago that we should
have pulled ourselves together by now. The ideology of Whiteness, the
irrational set of ideas that distances White people from blame for the ills of
the world, are absolutely essential to maintaining the system of imperialism.
If White people were to acknowledge their role in the world, the blood and
destruction upon which their liberty is built, then the whole system would
come tumbling down. So Whiteness becomes ingrained in not only the
political economy but also the intellectual ideas. The Enlightenment
provides the knowledge necessary for science and progress in Europe, while
at the same time cementing the hierarchy of Whiteness into how we
understand the world. The idea of Europe being the centre of knowledge,
which shines its light out onto the darker, savage parts of the world, is
absolutely central to both the Enlightenment as a project and the West in
general. It was no contradiction for John Locke to believe in freedom for
all, but make money from the slave trade and be opposed to rights for
Native Americans.28 He did not view the savage as worthy of the same

liberty as Whites. Kant’s much praised writings on pure reason are of
course in no way in conflict with his numerous clearly racist writings on the
human family. Whiteness is not a reasonable frame, and once you exalt
Europeans to a different level of existence you understand that liberty and
freedom have never been meant for us. These are not just ideas; Whiteness
is in the DNA of the social system. Therefore overcoming Whiteness is
impossible because it is a product of the structural condition, a psychosis
caused to ensure that the system remains intact.
There is no reasoning with a psychosis, just as there is no point in
engaging in a rational debate with Whiteness. So embedded within the
fabric of society is the psychosis that it even frames the critical Whiteness
Studies literature. Much has been written on critical Whiteness Studies in
the last few decades, identifying Whiteness that privileges White skin.29
When Whiteness is produced, it becomes normalised and invisible to the
White population.30 The concept is not static, it shifts in time and space, in
terms of who is and who is not included in the exclusive club.31 Whiteness
has also been acknowledged as a key to a global system of oppression by
the West over the ‘rest’, being used to mobilise the ‘civilised’ over the
‘uncivilised’ world.32 However, the wealth of writing on the subject has
remained too optimistic on the issues of Whiteness.
In identifying Whiteness as an issue, the solution has often been to
engage in critical pedagogy, to make people realise their Whiteness so that
they can remedy it.33 If only Whiteness could be taught out of White people
then they could play an important part in the ‘liberation of people of colour
around the globe’.34 To see Whiteness as something that can be trained out
of the poor souls infected by it is to locate the source of the problem in the
wrong place. Unfortunately, this is a dominant theme in the literature, most
perfectly represented by the so-called ‘new abolitionists’.
Whiteness is something that can be abolished according to scholars such
as Ignatiev, who argued that ‘so-called whites must cease to exist as whites
in order to realize themselves as something else … White people must
commit suicide as whites in order to come alive as workers … fully
developed human subjects’.35 This is the classic Marxist appraisal of the
problem of Whiteness, which is betrayed later in the talk by his assertion
that by committing ‘race treason’ and defying ‘White rules’, poor White
people would realise ‘their real condition of life’. In other words, Whiteness

is nothing more than the false consciousness of working class Whites, who
have been tricked into being racist by their capitalist oppressors. This theme
is recurrent in the work of Ignatiev, who is famous for his How the Irish
Became White,36 where he argues that the immigrants from Europe to
America were not always accepted as White, but became so by embracing
racism and defining themselves in opposition to African Americans. If
Whiteness can be learned, then presumably it can be undone, if people are
treasonous to their supposed race.
Like all Marxist arguments in regard to racism, it misses the point and
importance of the concept. The Irish did not become White in America,
they arrived as White and were eventually accepted into the national
framework. It is vitally important that we distinguish analytically between
racism and xenophobia in this discussion. The Irish have undoubtedly
historically experienced xenophobia in America and Britain. As foreigners
they have been derided, scorned and faced discrimination. In competing for
resources with those already inside the nation state they have faced
marginalisation and had to overcome this to become part of the respective
societies. This is a process that any migrant community has to go through
and is distinct from racism, which works on a different set of metrics. Those
groups that are not White will face the xenophobia of being a foreigner, but
racism is more elemental than this. It is tied to and written on the body, it is
rejection for having difference rooted in biology. Racism cannot be
overcome through integration into the social system. While the Irish
assimilated into America and Britain, Black people in both countries have
largely remained marginalised. Even though I was born in Britain, and I am
relatively successful, my children are still Black British, and will never
fully be granted equality in the national picture. Structurally, the Irish are
now indistinguishable from White people in general, while Black people
remain subject to severe disadvantage. The idea that the Irish were not
White before they arrived in America is also typically ahistorical. There is a
reason that Irish people migrated voluntary to America on boats, while
Africans were stolen and taken there in chains.
The very notion that it is possible to abolish Whiteness speaks to how
little weight is truly given to both the concept, and issues of racism in
general. Abolition ties into the myth that anything other than one form of
racial oppression was ended with the so-called emancipation of enslaved
Africans. Rather than being the solution to the problem of racism, abolition

just heralded the dawn of new ways to oppress Black people. But it is also
the perfect metaphor for the new abolitionists, the illusion of progress while
ignoring the structural issues of racism. Even better, abolition is the
definition of the White saviour discourse, celebrating the White heroes who
abolished the evil system of slavery. Central to the psychosis of Whiteness
is that White people are the key agents of history, the ones who decide the
future of the world, for all of us.
Importantly, the psychosis of Whiteness is not limited to those whose
skin is white. Whiteness is rooted in the political economy of the West and
not only White people benefit from this. From the very outset of the
imperial social order there were those who were bought off by Western
interests, or elevated into positions of authority in order to manage the
imperial system for the West. The former colonial elite very much exists
today, allowing the West to leech off the homelands for a small share of the
spoils. Those of us who reside in the West must also accept our collusion in
the global system of oppression. While racial oppression is endemic for
Black people in the West, we are mostly spared the harshest forms of
brutality. Many of us have integrated to the point where we comfortably
benefit from the fruits of imperialism. So we are also not immune to the
psychosis of Whiteness. There are many Black members of the
Conservative party; Black entertainers get rich living up to racial
stereotypes; and everyone apparently lost their minds thinking that Barack
Obama was going to end racism. Black Marxists have also fallen into the
trap of the psychosis.
In the 1920s African American scholar Abram Harris accused those who
embraced race consciousness as being in the grip of ‘colour psychosis’ and
needing to gain an ‘awareness of working-class-consciousness’ in order to
join the real struggle.37 For Marxism, class always trumps race, and the
history of Black Marxists lecturing those who cannot accept that equation is
well worn. Garvey’s principle of ‘race first’ was the subject of scorn by
Marxists, including the African Blood Brother (ABB). However, both the
ABB and the CPUSA attempted to infiltrate the UNIA and convert the
members to communism.38 Garveyism attracted the Black masses because
it resonated with the situation they found themselves in. Instead of engaging
with why this was, the Marxists sought to play the role of the revolutionary
vanguard and lead the people to where they thought they needed to be, in
desperation to provide the theoretical basis for solidarity with the White

workers. Harris also wrote that ‘the negro was not enslaved because of his
complexion’.39 It is here we see the fundamental fallacy at the heart of the
Marxist discussion of race.
In Eric Williams’ Black Marxist classic Capitalism and Slavery he
repeats this idea when he argues that ‘slavery was born not of racism; rather
racism was the consequence of slavery’.40 In this logic racism was justified
after the decision was made to enslave countless African people. As we
have noted earlier, this logic cannot be defended. The brutality of slavery
was only an inevitable feature of capitalism because Whiteness was already
driving the process of imperialism. In fact, racism actually pre-dates class in
a Marxist sense, shaping the development of the system that will eventually
lead to the Proletarian revolution.
Williams goes into a lot of detail explaining how White indentured
servants were not treated in the same way as enslaved Africans, and were
even a ‘democratic force in society’.41 However, the main thrust of his
argument is that the enslavement of Africans ‘seen in its historical
perspective, forms a part of the general picture of the harsh treatment of the
underprivileged classes’.42 Denying the particular experience of
enslavement to Black populations is a particularly insidious form of the
psychosis of Whiteness. Even more harmful in terms of activism is the
reduction of Blackness to a product of class.
By arguing that racism is produced by capitalism, race consciousness
becomes problematic. Steeped in the psychosis of Whiteness, Marxists can
only see the production of race through European eyes. The Negro is a
product of racism, produced in the image of Whiteness. In that sense we are
racialised through the eyes, oppression and institutions of Western society.
Indeed, racialisation has become a central way in which academia
understands the issue of race.43 The fundamental logic of Marxism is
therefore to abolish Blackness and join the ranks of the oppressed workers.
But, as we explored in the last chapter, Blackness was never created by
Whiteness; it is a rejection of it. I am not racialised into Blackness; I am
Black. My Blackness is a declaration of self and resistance, not a position of
victimhood and oppression. The same cannot be said for the White working
class who from the outset have been racialised into Whiteness. Far from
breaking down this racialisation Marxism tends to feed it, transforming the
White workers from collaborators in the system of oppression into the vital

hero of the story. The White working class is part of the problem of
imperialism; it does us no favours to pretend they will be the solution. But
Black Marxists have been unable to break free of the illusion that the White
working classes are a ‘sleeping beauty’ of allyship. It’s time to realise they
have no intention of waking up.44
African socialism
As well as embracing Marxism in the West, Black activists in the colonies
have attempted to apply the theory to their conditions. Walter Rodney’s
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa was an essential text in applying a
material analysis to the problems in the colonies. The idea of analysing the
situations in the colonies through the lens of Marxism was a powerful one.
The Communist bloc presented an alternative to Western imperialism and
the Soviets, Chinese and Cubans also provided key support to African and
Caribbean revolutionary struggles. For instance, before the hero of the
Cuban revolution Che Guevara was assassinated in Bolivia, he spent part of
1965 in Congo trying to support the revolutionary movement.45 The failure
of this mission could stand as a metaphor for communism in Africa, but
there was a time when the struggle between capitalism and communism was
uncertain. Africa was a central battlefield given the continent’s wealth of
material resources, so Marxist revolutions in places like Angola, Guinea
and Mozambique were a clear threat to Western dominance.
In adopting Marxism, efforts were made to adapt its core principles.
Africa was not in an industrial stage of development and had vastly
different social and cultural norms to Europe. Amilcar Cabral, who led the
revolutionary struggle in Guinea and Cape Verde, also developed a
significant analysis of Marxism on the African continent. Rather than
dismiss colonialism as a prior force to capitalism he explained that ‘what
commands history in colonial conditions is not the class struggle … it is the
colonial state’.46 Colonialism is at the heart, not the periphery of the
analysis and is the foundation of the class system. He explored the elevation
of some tribal leaders into a managerial class overseeing Portuguese rule
and the creation of a city-dwelling class to serve the Portuguese residents.
The marginalisation of the rural peasants was total and they were locked
away from any social advancement, even literacy. In presenting these class

distinctions Cabral importantly does not conclude that the African petty
bourgeoisie, who collude with the Portuguese, are a counterrevolutionary
class. In fact, he argues that it is this class that is absolutely essential for the
revolutionary struggle, because although they based the ‘whole armed
liberation struggle on the peasantry’, the leadership was drawn from the
petty bourgeoisie.47 National liberation became the primary objective in the
colonial struggle and in order for this to occur all the classes of Black
people in Guinea had to unite. The picture Cabral draws is very similar to
the unity of the enslaved, Mulattoes and free Blacks that we examined in
the Haitian revolution. However, this struggle for national liberation was
not in itself Marxist, because to hope that the petty bourgeoisie ‘will just
carry out a revolution when it comes to power in an undeveloped country is
to hope for a miracle’.48 Classical colonialism stifled the petty bourgeoisie
in African countries, but they could be bought off by the colonial powers
offering them a place in the global elite with trappings of state power.
Guarding against neo-colonialism, therefore, became key in the
revolutionary struggle.
In reinterpreting Marxism through the colonial relationship, Cabral
based the revolutionary struggle on the immediate evil facing the African
continent. In the 1980s, in Burkino Faso, Thomas Sankara would blend
Marxism in a similar manner, in order to ‘eliminate imperialist domination
and exploitation; and to purge the countryside of all social, economic, and
cultural obstacles that keep it in a backward state’.49 Not only should this be
a reminder that the material relations in the colonies are vastly different to
those in the West, but it raises questions about whether Marxism in the
African context is even the same concept.
Cabral attempts to link the struggle in Africa to the West, arguing that
‘neo-colonialism is more of a defeat for the international working class than
for the colonised people’.50 If the welfare state was founded off the back of
Empire in the 1950s, it should come as no surprise that social democracy
starts to fall apart after independence movements in the colonies. Neocolonialism marks a shift to the dominance of the economic over the
political in the West as well as the colonies: corporations, globalisation of
trade and the ability to move production to poorer countries. All of these
undermine the post-war settlement that kept the natives in the industrialised
West happy. We are still seeing Western governments try to come to terms
with this new reality of a smaller state, less unskilled work and a rampant

and unpretending class of profiteering, tax-dodging elites. So we could be
seeing the convergence of the interests of White workers in the West with
the oppressed in the global South. However, this view would be ahistorical
and overly optimistic.
Levels of inequality within the West have risen to their highest since the
1920s. A detached elite rubbing the faces of the poor in the dirt is not a
production of neo-colonialism. The welfare state was founded off the back
of the colonies, but not because of classic colonialism. It was the fear of the
spread of communism that led to the gains after the Second World War. The
collapse of the global revolution and the Soviet Union is the reason that the
elite gorged themselves on the proceeds of inequality. Once there is an
organised push-back the elite will make some concessions, which will no
doubt placate the working classes in the West. There is no evidence, either
historical or current, that the Western working class is throwing its lot in
with the Black and Brown wretched of the earth.
Cabral effectively spells out a vision that allows for African agency in
the liberation struggle and also to remain non-aligned from the Soviet
Union. This is very different to how Marxism was often applied in Africa.
Socialism became a foundation of the left in the Pan-African movement.
Nkrumah died in Bucharest after his exile from Ghana and even DuBois
turned to China and Marxism in the end. Just as we explored in Chapter 2,
Pan-Africanism was ultimately an imperial project, and even its embrace of
socialism took this form. Dubois’ vision of socialism involved leaning on
both West and East to provide the necessary support for Africa. In climbing
into bed with China many African countries have now found themselves on
the receiving end of imperialism under a different guise.51 Truly
revolutionary projects like Cabral’s were not allowed to continue and the
socialism that was largely embraced in Africa actually hindered any radical
progress.
Similar to how calls for Pan-Africanism became empty rhetoric, so did
the call for socialism. It allowed leaders to sound progressive, without
actually committing to socialist principles. Twenty years after independence
‘none of the states implemented policies which would qualify as effectively
fighting for socialism’.52 The extent of socialism for many countries was to
allow China to interfere in their economic affairs. Whether by accident or
design, when socialism was applied in the African context it largely became
devoid of its revolutionary politics. Nyerere’s African socialism is an

example of these limitations, being rooted in connecting communism to the
communalism of traditional African society. In the village everyone’s fate
was tied together. If the crop failed, the chief and the servant both suffered
due to the nature of communal living. But the differences between
communism and communalism are stark and undermine the radical nature
of Marxism.
In a society based on the communal production and distribution of food,
where housing and clothing can be built within the family unit,
communalism can thrive. Crops failing will be devastating to everyone, so
it makes sense to pool resources. But there is no comparison of this
situation to that of industrialised, mass production with wealth that far
outstrips subsistence levels. Providing the basic material of life is no longer
done on the village scale. Think of the complex system that gets milk to
someone in the city. You need the farmer, farm machinery, the market,
infrastructure, mechanics, vehicles, and the list goes on. There is not one
aspect that everyone contributes to, which everyone relies on for the system
to work. If one farmer has trouble and goes out of business, there is another
one to take their place. Rich and poor are perfectly possible. The very
individual idea of profit that underlines the system runs contrary to
communalism. Once you base a system on the idea of individual wealth you
structure inequality into social life. To argue that there is something innately
African about sharing this wealth is to grossly oversimplify the situation.
The limits of Nyerere’s concept of African socialism can be seen in his
discussion of the role of individuals in socialism:
In the individual, as in the society, it is an attitude of mind which
distinguishes the socialist from the non-socialist. It has nothing to do
with the possession or non-possession of wealth. Destitute people can
be potential capitalist exploiters of their fellow human beings. A
millionaire can equally well be socialist; he may value his wealth only
because it can be used in the service of his fellow men.53
Socialism is reduced to a mere state of mind, detached from all economic
analysis. To argue that someone who is destitute is equally capable of being
a capitalist exploiter as someone who is wealthy is to remove any Marxist
analysis from socialism. It is this thinking that makes the bourgeoisie

comfortable in their oppression, because if they do not hold capitalist
attitudes then they can feel on the right side of history. By invoking
platitudes about traditional African life and removing any material analysis,
African socialism becomes a tool for maintaining the economic status quo
of the imperial social order.
Marxism on the African continent becomes so transformed that it is not
recognisable to the Eurocentric doctrine. In the revolutionary case like
Cabral the theory has to be changed, almost beyond recognition, or we are
left with meaningless platitudes like Nyerere’s African socialism. Marx
never had a monopoly on the concept of universalised resources, so it is
best to abandon the label in order to build an alternative and Black radical
economic analysis.
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
Untangling Marxism from Black radicalism is difficult because of the
crossover and linkages, as the Cabral discussion demonstrates. The Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense is perhaps the best example of the
complexities here. The Panthers were an openly Marxist-Leninist
organisation that saw itself as part of the vanguard of the global revolution.
The party first raised funds by selling copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red
Book to college kids.54 Fred Hampton, a leader in Chicago who was
famously murdered by the police while he slept,55 declared ‘I am a
revolutionary … I am the proletariat, I am the people’. He even predicted
that he would ‘die a revolutionary in the international revolutionary
proletarian struggle’.56 The influence of their contemporary neo-Marxists
on the Panthers was also keenly felt. Suspicions about Eldridge Cleaver
aside, he penned a piece ‘On Lumpen Ideology’, where he argued that the
pampered working classes in the West would not lead the revolution.57
Instead, it would be the lumpen proletariat, those Marx called the ‘the
dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass’ at the bottom
of the society.58 The Panthers believed they could reform the dealers,
robbers, murderers, pimps and put them in service of the revolution. Huey
P. Newton was famous for long and theoretical speeches about Marxism,
and he eventually completed a PhD on the Panthers with neo-Marxist Erik
Olin Wright.59 There is absolutely no doubt that the Panthers were an avidly

Marxist organisation, in theory at least. But we need to separate the practice
of the Panthers to understand why they lie firmly within the Black
radicalism.
Organisationally it is important that the Panthers were not part of any
overarching communist body. While they preached the international
struggle and made links with communist groups, they were never part of, or
led by them. In contrast, the African Blood Brotherhood was founded in
1919 but folded into the CPUSA by 1924. The independence of the
Panthers is important because they maintained Black leadership and
therefore went beyond the limitations of seeing Black people as a ‘class
fraction’ of the wider struggle.60 Unlike the framing of the ‘Negro
question’, the Panthers always prioritised the issues of racism. In fact none
of the key activities of the Panthers were Marxist in orientation.
In the last chapter we debunked the masculine history of the Panthers,
drawing attention to the newspaper, the free breakfast programmes, the
liberation schools and free health clinics. The paper and the school could fit
into Marxism with their political re-education to fight against the
ideological tyranny of the elites. But providing free breakfast and medical
care is not a classically revolutionary act (though we will pick up this
discussion in Chapter 8). The Panthers also used violence for self-defence
and spent most of the time organising programmes for survival; tactics
which are not, in isolation, those of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary
vanguard.
None of this should come as a surprise because the Panthers were the
self-proclaimed ‘children of Malcolm’,61 and Malcolm’s fundamental
influence was Garveyism. Ignore the Marxist rhetoric and you see the tools
of Garveyism at work, the newspaper and the programmes that were aiming
to make the Black community self-sufficient and able to survive America.
Bobby Seale running for mayor and Elaine Brown for city council in 1972
fit perfectly into this Garveyite scheme, pulling the levers in order to
generate power for the Black nation.
The Panthers also inspired movements outside of America. In Britain,
the Black Panther Party was founded in 1968 by a group including Althea
Jones-LeCointe, Eddie Chambers and Darcus Howe. It is telling of their
legacy that the Marxist rhetoric was even less present. The group set about
campaigning on issues of policing, housing and immigration, following the
lead of being rooted in the concerns of Black communities.

Marxism is appealing because it offers a searing analysis of the problem
of exploitation, tied directly into the material conditions people face. Black
people are all too well aware of how inequality is woven into the fabric of
society and therefore the need for a revolution. Black Marxism may well be
an avenue to revolutionary overthrow and I have avoided getting into a
discussion of the merits and logic of Marxist analysis. The aim of the
chapter is to demonstrate that despite all of its appeal, Marxism remains a
fundamentally Eurocentric paradigm. Robinson’s Black Marxism attempts
to deal with the Eurocentric bias of Marxism by centring on Black activists
rather than the European working class.62 But to do so changes the nature of
Marxism to the point that it becomes a different political ideology. This is
why we have seen Black activists often break away from Marxism or
stretch it beyond its meaning; perhaps maintaining the rhetoric, but in
reality engaging in other forms of engagement. Whether or not Marxism
can produce revolution, it is a different project to Black radicalism.
The categorical difference to Marxism is that Black radicalism does not
rely on White agency. If the White working classes surprise the world and
join the fight against imperialism then of course that would be welcome.
But Black radicalism is based on seeing the fundamental contradiction in
society as that of racism, Whiteness, hierarchy. The Black revolution will
destroy this foundation and alter the lives of the working classes in the
West, but it is just as likely (if not more so) that they will be a central
component of the reactionary response. Increasingly this is also the case
with workers in China, India and the rest of ‘dark mankind’. Black Marxists
may have far more faith in the workers of the world, which is
commendable, but the politics of Black radicalism has no room for this
optimism.

Chapter 7

Liberal Radicalism

Since being placed on the FBI’s most wanted list in August 1970, Angela
Davis has been an iconic figure in radical circles. Davis was on the run
because she had bought the gun that seventeen-year-old Jonathan Jackson
had used to take a judge, prosecutor and three jurors hostage. Jackson was
hoping to use the hostages to bargain for the release of his brother George
and fellow ‘Soledad Brothers’ who were facing charges of murder for the
death of a guard at Soledad Prison, in California.1 The situation did not end
well; after a shootout with police as they were trying to escape, the judge
and the three Black Panthers were dead.
Davis had developed a relationship with George while he was in prison,
and Jonathan served as her bodyguard. By 1970 Davis was heavily involved
with the Communist Party and had been fired from her role as assistant
professor at UCLA because of her politics. When she was caught, President
Nixon celebrated the ‘capture of the dangerous terrorist’ and a mass
campaign to free Angela spread across America and the world.2 One of the
iconic images from the Black Power era is of Angela Davis, with her
immaculate Afro, confronting the system of racism. Following her acquittal
on all charges Davis resumed an academic career, writing on feminism,
liberation and becoming one of the strongest critics of the ‘prison industry
complex’, arguing that prisons should be abolished.3 Her work and activism
make her one of the most sought-after speakers today and an inspiration to
countless generations.
For all these reasons I was extremely excited to get the chance to hear
Davis speak at the Black Matters conference at the University of Texas in
2016. It will become apparent in this chapter, if it has not already, that my
biggest struggle is reconciling my role as an academic with the radical
politics that I believe in. Universities are a central part of the system that
oppresses Black communities. The very idea of race, the hierarchy of White
supremacy, was produced and maintained by universities. Universities have

continued to produce the knowledge that supports ideas of White
supremacy, and are the peak of a school system that is the enemy of Black
progress on a global level. Universities are as institutionally racist as the
police force, so in the same way that a Black cop is always problematic, so
too is a Black academic. I was fortunate enough to get to ask a question so I
used the opportunity to ask Angela Davis how she had maintained being a
radical, while being an academic. In my experience these two are entirely
contradictory and it is a constant struggle to negotiate the academic
industrial complex and maintain radical commitments. Much to my surprise
her response was to explain that she ‘did not see the contradiction’, and that
maintaining links outside of the university was the solution.
Davis also raised the fact that as an academic she had been attacked by
politicians and fired for her radical political beliefs. But it is precisely here
that we can see the contradiction of the academic. When Davis was an
active member of the Communist Party and providing the weapons for
attempts to break Black Panthers out of prison, she was hunted down and
arrested, and of course not permitted into the hallowed halls of the academy.
When she shifted to writing, speaking and theorising revolution from the
comfort of the university Professor Davis was no longer hounded by the
state. In fact, she is one of the most celebrated academics in America. To be
unable to see this contradiction demonstrates the level to which we can
easily fall into the trap of liberal radicalism; to embrace radical theory, but
ignore radical solutions because we benefit from the liberal system.
Symptom-free racism
One of the statements that Davis made in 2015, while in Berlin, is a good
starting point in this discussion. After speaking to refugee activists and
being taken to see one of the housing facilities, Davis remarked that ‘the
refugee movement is the movement of the 21st century. It’s the movement
that is challenging the effects of global capitalism, it’s the movement that is
calling for civil rights for all human beings’.4 Due to the sheer numbers of
people fleeing their homelands in search of refuge, immigration has become
a priority issue across the globe. Not only in terms of refugees, who are in
fear for their safety, but millions of people are seeking economic stability
and escaping the biting poverty that exists where they were born. Despite

the media panic, the majority of displaced people reside in countries in the
global South. Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Uganda and Ethiopia are the
nations that house the most displaced people.5 The refugees and economic
migrants who do make it to the West face hostility and a range of different
laws aimed to keep them out.
In Berlin, Davis was greeted with stories of discrimination and saw the
squalid living conditions that migrants faced in the city. This should come
as no surprise given the anti-migrant feeling that has become a mainstay of
political discourse in the West. The European Union reducing support for
search and rescue in the Mediterranean is indicative of the callous approach
to migrant life of Western governments. So keen are they to keep people
out, they use floating bodies as a deterrent to migration. Britain has a
particularly inhumane system for those who wish to claim asylum. People
are prevented from working and forced to live on an income far below the
poverty level while their cases can take years. During this time they are
incredibly insecure and in danger of being apprehended at a moment’s
notice if their case fails. Detention centres are used to house families and
unaccompanied minors, and deportations are carried out by private security
firms. Put this together with a hostile media and suspicious public and life
for migrants in Britain should bring shame to us all. Davis is right when she
compares the refugee movement to those campaigns for civil rights. The
quest is for decency and dignity to be applied to all. But if this is the
movement of the twenty-first century then we have given up on radical
change.
The plight of refugees is not the problem, it is a symptom of the wider
structural issues. Rather than trying to simply deal with how migrants are
treated in the West, we must be trying to prevent their arrival in the first
place. In truth, there is too much migration, which is caused by the
imbalances of global inequality. This is a resources issue, though it is not
that migrants are stealing from the West, but the exact opposite. Due to the
continued imperial global order the West enriches itself from the poverty
and instability that is driving millions to flee their homes. We should be
trying to stop there being any need to flee in the first place, not just trying to
make the process of moving easier. Radical arguments seek to cure society,
not just alleviate the suffering.
Unfortunately, the desire for symptom-free racism is strong and at the
core of much of our politics, activism and theory. We focus on surviving by

treating the symptoms rather than the disease. Police brutality, educational
inequalities, unemployment, migrant rights, and the list goes on. By
engaging our energies in the symptoms we can convince ourselves that we
are healing, without having to address the fundamental concern. We build a
politics that helps us live with the disease of racism, rather than overcome
it. This is the liberal individual approach to tackling racism. Our aim is to
make the effects of racism as little seen in our lives as possible, to push it to
the side-lines. We know we will not avoid the symptoms forever, but as
long as they only act up every so often we can deal with it.
The quest for symptom-free racism is most keenly felt in the Black
bourgeoisie, those who have managed to alleviate some of their condition.
Unsurprisingly, then, symptom-free contagion is rampant in Black
academia. The best example of this would be the theorisation and focus on
‘micro-aggressions’,6 which are the slights of everyday racism; the subtle
papercuts that as they accumulate do enormous damage to the psyche. Any
Black person in a professional job will testify to the pain caused by microaggressions. People are often surprised when I explain I have a ‘uniform’
for work. I always go to the office in smart trousers and shoes because I
have been scarred by being treated as a student by both the security and my
colleagues. Any Black male academic will have a story of being harassed
while carrying out their job because they simply did not fit the expected
profile of an esteemed academic. For the first year as an academic I made
sure to wear my staff card around my neck, because the treatment was so
noticeably different when I did not. Having to adjust to the constant slights
in the corridor, in meetings and in general takes its toll. But as my mother
said when I tried to explain micro-aggressions to her, ‘that’s just what being
Black is’. The micro-aggressions are a symptom of racism, and unless we
thought the disease had gone away there is no reason we should expect not
to suffer from its effects.
As symptoms go, micro-aggressions are incredibly mild ones. I have to
deal with slights and stresses at work, but I do not get harassed by the
police; I am in one of the best paid professions in the world and reap the
societal benefits that such an income provides. If the only symptoms of
racism that we experience are micro-aggressions then we should be
thankful, because we are extraordinarily privileged. In a world where a
child dies every ten seconds because they cannot eat we should be grateful
for the papercuts of racism. Instead, and I won’t name names here because

the individuals are not important, many of us dedicate our privileged
academic lives to researching and writing about micro-aggressions. Papers,
books, inaugural lectures on how bad we have it because of the everyday
slights and the pressure it puts us under.
It is impossible to eradicate micro-aggressions and making them the
focus of our work is the worst and most insular way we could approach the
issue. Micro-aggressions are a reminder that we are Black, that no matter
how far we have come we cannot cure racism within this system. We should
use this reminder as our way of connecting to struggles off-campus, not
indulge ourselves in trying to treat our minor symptoms. I can already hear
the howls of disapproval from colleagues affected by micro-aggressions and
fighting to stay sane in the halls of privilege. But the radical analysis has
always been based on the liberation of the masses. You cannot build a
revolution by trying to make it more comfortable for the lucky few to
endure the master’s house.
Symptom-free racism is by no means confined to Black academia. Much
of the criticism that applied to cultural nationalism in Chapter 3 would
apply here as well. The idea that we are a broken people who first need to
be fixed is the perfect example of putting the symptoms before the disease.
Cultural nationalists focus on those aspects they deem problematic like
absentee fathers, substance abuse, violence and even dietary choices. To the
extent that these are problems within Black communities, they are the
symptoms of racism. For instance, Amos Wilson insightfully explored how
the disproportionate numbers of Black people killing each other (a
phenomenon we see across the globe) are caused by the destruction of
Black selfhood in this system of oppression.7 Cultural nationalism can
never be radical because it presents treating the symptoms as the solution to
racism. In reality, embracing a new world view may make you feel better
individually but it does nothing to end the problem of racism. We may well
be a broken people but we cannot be fixed within a system of oppression.
Treating the symptoms of racism necessarily locates the issues at the
individual level. Even when we attempt to apply the treatment on a mass
scale it often results in trying to inoculate individuals. We work with young
people to help them navigate the school system, or avoid getting caught up
in gangs. We mentor, coach and inspire people to survive and resist. There
is nothing wrong with any of this work; it is vital given the conditions that
find ourselves in. But we have to acknowledge that we are treating the

symptoms and never the disease. The whole voluntary and not-for-profit
sector is set up to be this way. The state, businesses, philanthropists and
communities put resources into dealing with the results of racism but never
the oppression itself.
Medical metaphors are fitting here because there has been a push for
‘self-care’ in activist circles,8 ensuring that we have the resources and time
to recharge our batteries. Before we can love the people, we first need to
love and look after ourselves. Again, there is nothing wrong with this in
principle; running yourself into the ground is not a great strategy for social
change. Though it may be a good idea, it is certainly not a radical one, and
the self-care paradigm can easily cross over into the indulgent politics of
self. No one individual is so vital to the revolution that they need to be
pampered and cherished. Radical engagement must be built on collective
agency. Also, the idea of sacrifice has always been at the basis of radical
politics. When Assata Shakur threw off her slave name, she purposefully
picked the name meaning ‘she who struggles’ in order to connect to the
politics of the movement.9 We call it the struggle for a reason. It is
uncomfortable, unforgiving and exposes you to all kinds of danger. Newton
talked about the need to commit ‘revolutionary suicide’, to give your life to
the people.10 We used to be prepared to die for the people, now we are not
even committed enough to be stressed and overworked. It speaks to what
we have on the line, the comforts of the West that we are so keen to cling on
to.
Self-care is also problematic because it again treats the symptoms, not
the disease. There is no sanctuary within this imperial system; there is no
respite, no safe space. We can only ever partially heal when we are
constantly living under oppression. Our spaces of healing may enrich us
individually, but they are a mirage and in the long term no more useful than
the distant dream of paradise on the horizon. Rather than trying to escape
from feelings of despair, anger, anxiety and depression, we should lean into
them. Given the state of the world these are all appropriate responses. I
keep coming back to dead children because the image is so stark. In the
time it will take you to read this book the number of children who have
been killed by this political and economic system would be overwhelming.
If you do not despair at the brutal reality of the system then you either do
not appreciate the depths of it, or are somewhere on the psychopathy scale.
We should use our discomfort to challenge us, to propel us, to keep us on

edge. We should be ‘angry’, we should be ‘hot’ and we must be
‘uncompromising’.11 At its worst, self-care can act as a painkiller against
the racial oppression that we face. Malcolm used the metaphor of the dentist
applying novocaine to your gums to stop you fighting them pulling out your
teeth. He warned that the worst we could do as a community was to take the
novocaine and ‘don’t stop suffering – just suffer peacefully’.12 Embracing
our suffering is key to our resisting it. We should not wallow in our pain, or
be consumed by it. We must use it as the driving force to push us into
building a radical alternative. Once we get too comfortable, we stop
struggling, but struggle is the only route to freedom.
Flight is not freedom
In his book Freedom as Marronage, Neil Roberts made the argument that
‘freedom is not a place, it is a state of being’.13 The book offers a
fascinating account of maroon experiences, with a particular focus on Haiti.
Maroon refers to communities of the formerly enslaved who liberated
themselves from slavery and set up villages, towns and settlements out of
the reaches of the slaving powers. Wherever there was slavery there were
maroons. We have talked already about Queen Nanny Jamaica. The
Quilombo settlements in Brazil were home to thousands of escaped
Africans, with the largest, Palmares, operating as a republic that was
hundreds of miles long and home to 30,000 people, from 1600 to 1694.14 In
America, Harriet Tubman is the most notable maroon, who freed hundreds
of the enslaved using the Underground Railroad. Roberts argues that
refusing to be enslaved and reclaiming their bodies gave the maroons a
measure of freedom. But flight is not the same as freedom, and Roberts
recognises this when he distinguishes different forms of marronage. Petitmarronage was temporary flight, where the enslaved would leave the
plantation from a few hours to a week, but return. Grand marronage was the
quilombos and maroon communities who never returned to the plantations.
But his highest form is sociogenic marronage that he models after the
Haitian revolution, which by ‘abolishing slavery outright’ marked ‘a radical
move’.15 That is precisely because fleeing the plantation did not bring
freedom. The plantation continued to shape social life for the maroons. It
defined where and how they could live and they had to constantly be

vigilant for fear of raids and capture. The lack of freedom meant that many
maroon communities signed treaties with the colonial powers in order to
protect themselves. Under these treaties the maroons would have to agree
not only to stop attempting to free the enslaved but also to return any
runaways to the plantations. Collusion between some maroons and the
imperialists ran so deep that it continued even after the end of slavery. Paul
Bogle, who started the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica in 1865, was
captured for the British by maroons.
Flight may be a rational response, but it is not a radical one. By leaving
the system of slavery intact the maroons could never be free from it. This is
an extension to the problem of narrow nationalism that we discussed in
Chapter 1. Separation can never solve the problems, it just relocates them.
This was even true for Haiti because the republic could never succeed,
surrounded as it was by the imperial might of the West. Freedom can only
be won by overturning the system that oppresses you. Flight, as part of a
process of liberation, should never be confused with the condition of
freedom. Roberts ends the book by connecting Rastafari into the history of
marronage, and it works as the perfect case for its limits.
In rejecting the language, culture and mind-set of the West, or the
Babylon system, Rastafari represents cultural flight. At the birth of the
movement Rastas also lived apart from the crazy baldheads in the city and
survived off the land. In Chapter 3 we covered how the increasing cultural
nationalism of the movement took it away from the Black radical tradition.
But even in its most political sense Rastafari is based on fleeing Babylon
rather than conquering it. The notion of ‘chanting down Babylon’ plays a
key part in Rasta practice,16 using culture to transform the Black population
and eventually to destroy the wicked system. But Rastafari offers a
primarily ‘ideological assault’ and alternative cultural and value system as
the solution.17 No matter how free Rastafari may make you feel, it cannot
provide liberation.
Attitudes to Rastafari by the mainstream have also dramatically changed.
At one point the Jamaican government was in open warfare with Rastas and
in Britain dreadlocks were synonymous with crime and drugs.18 In Britain,
Rastafari became closely associated with the uprisings against police racism
that shook Britain in the 1980s. Rasta’s overt connection to radical
liberation struggles marked it out as something to be opposed. But as the
movement took on more cultural nationalist overtones, the mainstream

embraced Rasta, or at least the symbols of it. In Britain, dreadlocks, dub
and parts of the Reggae scene have become gentrified. They are now
markers of the White, middle class youth who are bravely reclaiming inner
city spaces. Rastafari has become firmly a part of brand Jamaica, with the
global success of Reggae being seen as a boost to the tourism industry.
Undoubtedly, the diluted version of the culture being taken on in the
mainstream bears no resemblance to the roots of Rastafari, but the fact that
the movement is no longer seen as dangerous tells us its radical limits.
Rastafari should remind us that there is no way to check out of the
system. It is almost impossible not to engage in Babylon. I have seen all
sorts of strategies for avoiding the system, including destroying your birth
certificate and refusing to register your car, or even your child. None of
these take you out, or put you beyond the reach of, the system. It may feel
liberating to reject the formalities but you are still just as much a part of
system as anyone else.
Assata Shakur is probably the best example of a modern-day maroon.19
Assata was part of the Black Liberation Army, active in the 1960s and
1970s in America. Along with her comrades Sundiata Acoli and Zayd
Shakur, Assata was involved in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike with
State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973. Both Zayd and the officer were
killed and Assata was badly injured, arrested and eventually convicted of
murder. But in 1979 she was broken out of prison and escaped to Cuba,
where she still lives with political asylum.
Technically, Assata is free, out of prison and away from the clutches of
the American state. But her entire existence remains framed by America.
There is currently a $2 million bounty on her head and she is on the FBI’s
Most Wanted Terrorist List. Therefore she has to remain in hiding in Cuba
and have limited contact with family and the outside world. She cannot
leave the island or lead anything remotely like a normal life. Cuba is
effectively a prison for Assata, so it should be no surprise that when asked
what freedom meant to her, she responded ‘you asking me about freedom? I
know a whole lot more about what freedom isn’t than about what it is’.20
Flight can never bring about freedom, because the act of running ensures
that the system of oppression remains. Freedom is not a process, it is not the
struggle. Freedom is the dream that we struggle for.
Misuse of ‘revolution’

Radical dreams of freedom are uncompromising, totalising and demand the
complete transformation of the social, political and economic order. For
radicals the only solution is revolution, in order to ‘overturn’ and ‘destroy’
the existing system.21 But Malcolm warned that ‘many of our people are
using this word “revolution” loosely’,22 lightly embracing radical rhetoric
without truly taking on board revolutionary practice. This critique definitely
applies to Black politics and theory, where to be radical or revolutionary
appears to mean adopting a position that differs somewhat from the norm.
Part of the misuse of the term revolution is closely tied to the idea that
change must come from within before it can lead to social transformation.
For cultural nationalists that is the spiritual and cultural transformation; in
academia we focus on the ideas, the knowledge to produce change.
While acknowledging that Cesaire’s negritude movement was ‘never
intended to be a road map or a blueprint for revolution’, Kelley contends
that his classic work Discourse on Colonialism was ‘poetry and therefore
revolt’. He goes further to argue that the book was an ‘act of insurrection …
a hand grenade thrown with deadly accuracy, clearing the field so that we
might write a new history with what’s left standing’.23 Cesaire is the perfect
figure to explain the limits of intellectual radicalism. As we explored in
Chapter 3, his work was hugely influential, with Fanon crediting him for
transforming how Black subjects of colonialism saw themselves. But we
also discussed how Cesaire was a French republican to the core, who did
not see liberation from France as being desirable. Negritude was about
claiming Black personhood in order to integrate more equally into the
Western ideal. There is nothing radical or revolutionary about the project.
Just because it went against the prevailing ideas of the time (that Black
people were inferior) that does not make it radical. To judge the radical
nature of an argument we have to engage in the ‘new history’ that it writes,
not just its condemnation of the old one.
To be revolutionary also means going beyond deconstructing the present
and offering abstract visions of a different future. This clearly applies to a
range of post-structural theoretical reminiscences on society that even if
they were written intelligibly would make little sense. In terms of Black
radicalism the more common misuse of revolutionary relates to giving too
much power to music and popular culture. Moten argues that ‘Black
radicalism is (like) music. The broken circle demands a new analytic (way
of listening to the music)’.24 He spends a lot of time making the argument

that Black music with its different arrangements, soulful cries and
boundary-breaking forms of expression represent the ‘aesthetics’ of Black
radicalism. Kelley speaks of the ‘revolutionary nature of the blues’,25 and
the power of the surreal in transforming our vision for reality. A lot of
emphasis is placed on this work in the idea of desire, fantasy and soul being
alternative concepts to build our understanding on rather than European
ideas of rationality. To be a blues people is to embody a different form of
being, and can perhaps lead to a revolutionary transformation of society
based on ‘love and creativity’.26
There’s certainly something romantic about the idea of the artists,
writers, poets and musicians being the revolutionary vanguard, painting a
new vision for the future and calling us to its tune. However, in reality this
is just an intellectual version of cultural nationalism. We know society is
corrupt but instead of trying to overthrow it we seek solace in the beauty
that has been created in the hideous. We can affirm ourselves by getting lost
in the sorrow songs, fiction and poetry or watching the achingly beautiful
choreography of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre. But none of this culture,
no matter how beautiful or genre defying, is revolutionary. It does not pave
the way for revolution, or even in itself open up possibilities. Culture is
always a product of the political moment. Slavery and marronage make the
blues; the New Negro movement shapes the Harlem Renaissance; PanAfricanism calls into existence Afro-beat; Rastafari and Garveyism produce
Reggae; and Black Power creates the Black Arts movement. Even the lack
of cohesive Black political movements can be traced to the
commercialisation and gangsta-isation of Hip Hop. In a memorable quote
from the James Baldwin documentary I am Not Your Negro, he explains
that he was a ‘witness’ to the political events that shaped his work. The film
is based on a book he was writing about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King
and Medgar Evers. Unlike those three he was not a leader in any
organisation, and he did not pay with his life for his commitment. Baldwin
was on the side-lines, linked in but not fully part of the movements. This is
not to belittle or downplay Baldwin’s role, but to recognise it. Artists
document the political moment, they do not create it. It is a vital role, but
not a revolutionary one.
Perhaps the loosest use of the term revolution I have come across is in
Shayne Lee’s Erotic Revolutionaries. Lee argues that ‘erotic revolutionaries
… effectively wage war against the politics of respectability and challenge

traditional scripts offering women a greater space to indulge in a fuller
range of sexual expressiveness’.27 His revolutionary vanguard includes
singers, video vixens and models who blaze their transformative trail
against sexual conformity. It is almost too obvious that this version of
revolutionary is not radical, and is probably not meant to be. I doubt even
Lee believes that doing video blogs giving tips on how to improve your sex
life is a revolutionary act on a par with trying to bring down a political and
economic system that kills children. But the redefinition of revolutionary is
important to discuss because it has implications for Black political
movements, particularly in the West where revolutionary overthrow is not
an option.
One of the most fundamental problems with Lee’s argument is his
obsession with the politics of respectability and therefore the need to move
beyond it. Respectability politics refers to the notion that Black people must
represent ourselves as upright and decent citizens to counter the negative
stereotypes of the lazy and deviant Black person. There is long history of
respectability in Black politics, with Booker T. Washington and the ‘pull
yourself up by your bootstraps’;28 and Dubois’ notion of the ‘Best of the
Race’. For radical figures such as Garvey and even Malcolm, the idea of
being clean-cut and upright was seen as paramount in how we portrayed
ourselves. For more conservative versions of Black politics, it is not just a
question of appearance but the idea that acting, dressing and talking ‘right’
is the key ingredient to success in society.
One of the best examples of this poisonous logic was when Bill Cosby
used his speech at the fiftieth anniversary of the desegregation of schooling
to attack the ‘people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the
crack’. He launched a tirade against women with their ‘dresses all the way
up to the crack’ and ‘five or six different children’ with ‘eight or ten
different’ fathers. He even goes as far as to blame victims of police killings
for their deaths, using the hypothetical example of people getting upset over
the police shooting someone who was stealing pound cake. The problem is
not the police but that they ‘were holding the pound cake’ in the first
place.29 Respectability politics is a problem with vastly negative
consequences for Black politics and also has particular implications for
gender.
Rosa Parks was not the first Black woman in Montgomery, Alabama to
refuse to give up her seat to a White passenger. Nine months previously

Claudette Colvin had been carried off a bus in handcuffs after she asserted
her constitutional right to a seat. She sought the support of the civil rights
apparatus but they did not want to use her as a test case. Claudette was
fifteen and pregnant, the opposite of the steadfast Black working woman
they would later use as the symbol of the campaign.30 Rosa Parks is the
embodiment of what Lisa Thompson calls the ‘Black lady’ archetype, a
representation that ‘relies heavily on the aggressive shielding of the body
concealing sexuality; and foregrounding morality, civility and
intelligence’.31 Claudette was too much the stereotype, not respectable
enough as the face of the campaign. In order to have the necessary esteem
in the eyes of the public and the state they needed to call in the Black lady.
Lee rails against how the Black lady has dominated not just Black
political representation but also Black feminist scholarly work. Seminal
scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins have forensically analysed how
mainstream culture provides limited ‘controlling images’ of Black women.
From the sexless, nurturing ‘mammy’ figure to the deviant, oversexed
‘jezebel’,32 the Black female body has been policed in popular culture. Lee
is critical of how scholarship has overdetermined the role that sexualisation
of Black females has played and therefore limited the space for Black
female sexuality to be appreciated on its own terms. There is some truth to
this; the Black lady in particular is an over-correction to the negative
representations of mainstream culture. But we have to view it as a response
and a resistance to this cultural oppression.
Sexual abuse of Black female bodies has historically been so central to
racial oppression that it is difficult to overstate. Rape was part of the fabric
of plantation life. The gruesome world tour that Saartije Baartman was
subjected to, paraded naked in a cage to show off her big breasts and large
backside, is testament to the powerful image of Black female sexuality
underlying mainstream discourse. The controlling image of deviant Black
people is not just used to make White people feel superior, but also to
justify oppressive treatment. If Black women are sexual vixens then they
cannot be raped. Embracing the image of the Black lady was a political
manoeuvre in part enacted to protect Black women, to desexualise and
make them less of a target of unwanted desire. Of course, this is a limited
kind of defence and you could even argue it perpetuates rape myths about
people bringing on their own assaults. But the reality is that the Black lady,
and the politics of respectability in general, however misguided, are a

defence mechanism. It is a symptom and not the disease. Therefore
rejecting it is not a revolutionary act of liberation, just a correction of a
problematic political position that arose in the struggle.
It is also completely incorrect to paint the Black lady as the dominant
form of Black female representation. Perhaps in the Black church, or even
within some Black community circles this may be the case, but most
certainly not in mainstream culture. Scholars object to seeing Black
women’s bodies being displayed with same contempt for Black female
sexuality as Saartije Baartman experienced, as they rightly should. Black
female sexuality has been given space to be explored in popular culture,
through the lens of White oppression. There is absolutely nothing new or
transformative about the presentation of Nicki Minaj, or the plethora of
video vixens. The only difference is that now they are paraded on screen,
rather than in a cage.
Liberation is not rebelling against Black political formation. Of course
we need to refocus our lenses, learn from mistakes of the past and reject
conservative ideas. But the trend that views Black politics as the problem is
disturbing. If we strip back much of Lee’s argument we see an embrace of
the individual, with Black women being restricted in their sexuality by the
moralising Black feminists who take a more collective position on
representation. There is an urge to free Black women to fulfil their desires
and sexual fulfilment. Similar to cultural nationalism or finding solace in
the break of the beat, this is an illusion of freedom. Revolutionising your
sex life is not a radical act.
More problematic from a Black radical perspective is how this is yet
another example of forgoing the collective for the individual revolution.
Broader critiques about the industry and the way that the Black female body
is used are not about policing representation. You can believe that Nicki
Minaj’s representation is problematic, while defending her right to pursue
her career in whatever way she sees fit. But her individual career choices
are not so sacred that they are above criticism and when they reproduce
harmful controlling images we should have the right to critique those
decisions. More importantly, to reassert Black radicalism we have to push
back against the corrosive idea that there can ever be an individual
revolution, whether centred on culture or the body.
Part of the desire to shift the terrain to newer sites of resistance is
because of the perceived gender dichotomy between the public, private and

even personal spheres. This follows on from the discussion in Chapter 5
about the critique of the masculine history of Black political movements.
Opening new terrain for radical politics can be seen to break the gendered
binary that placed men on the front lines and women on the domestic front.
Recasting domestic labour as a site of resistance is an important project.33 If
the kitchen is a radical space then the labour within it can be revolutionary.
As we will discuss in the next chapter, redefining what we mean by
revolutionary labour is vital to understanding Black radicalism. The
Panthers’ survival programmes, which fed children and provided medical
care, were just as revolutionary as their armed patrols of the police. But that
does not mean that all domestic labour is revolutionary. The women who
were cooking and cleaning for the men in Karenga’s US Organisation were
not revolutionaries because they were contributing to a cultural nationalist
and regressive project. Worse still, they were reproducing the gendered
politics that have held back Black political progress. To embrace the
domestic sphere as a potentially revolutionary site does not mean
necessarily to cast it as one. Doing so runs the risk of further gendering the
political movements. A radical role for women is carved out but only in the
home, doing so-called women’s work. There is no real difference to the idea
that the woman’s place in the struggle is to support her man, and to raise the
family. The same danger is present in the idea of an erotic revolution.
If the body can be a terrain for liberation, then embracing different forms
of expression can be seen as a radical act. Egalitarian sexual relations and
overcoming the misogyny that has been present in Black political
movements are certainly necessary for revolutionary practice. Our visions
of freedom must liberate all Black people, not just recreate patriarchal
hierarchies. But this does not mean that every embrace of sexual freedom is
revolutionary. Reproducing racialised gender norms would clearly be
counterrevolutionary, as would embracing the individualism of desire at the
expense of collective engagement. More importantly, radicalism means
those politics that aim to overturn the existing system. If one of the goals of
Black radicalism is to fundamentally transform patriarchy then no amount
of individualised expression of desire and sexual liberation will achieve
this. The same structure that produces the celebrity of video vixens,
modern-day Saartije Baartmans and places celebrities as spokespeople is
the very one that needs to be overturned. Revolutions in Black sexual

expression will never happen in mainstream media, in the same way that ‘a
chicken will never lay a duck egg’.34
Maintaining this gendered binary also misses how supposedly feminine
notions have been debated within Black politics. Love, for instance, has
been frequently used in Black politics, with the difference being in how it is
mobilised to distinguish radical from liberal movements. Martin Luther
King believed in ‘love power’, in a soul force that could transform society
by reaching the hearts of the oppressor. He argued that ‘we will meet the
forces of hate with the power of love … we must say to our white brothers
all over the South, we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our
capacity to endure suffering … Bomb our homes and we will still love
you’.35 King’s conception of unconditional love for the oppressor was a
central concept underlying the political nature of the civil rights movement.
In its focus on being a part of society, civil rights had to appeal to White
people to let us in. Unconditional love was not just a moral issue of nonviolence and Christian ethics, it was the only way that the movement could
make sense. Forgive them father for they know not what they do, and if we
just keep loving them eventually they will come to their senses.
Unsurprisingly, Black radicalism takes a different approach to love.
In complete opposition to King’s approach, Malcolm declared ‘you don’t
have a revolution in which you love your enemy’.36 In complete contrast to
King’s politics, Malcolm was clear that ‘you don’t have a revolution in
which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it’.37
King’s unconditional love was that of the supplicant House Negro who
‘loved their master more than they loved themselves’; who was desperate to
remain on the plantation. For Black radicalism, embracing the oppressor is
the antithesis of revolutionary love. Instead it is essential to ground the
politics on an ‘undying love for the people’.38 The radical commitment is to
the grassroots, the masses, to build the unity that is necessary to create the
world anew. There is no space to love the oppressor. We cannot indulge in
love for ourselves. It is love for the people, for the Black nation, that is
absolute essential to bring about the Black revolution.
Limits of Critical Race Theory

Looking for revolution in aesthetics and desire expresses the cultural turn
that we have seen in both academic and some activist circles. The result is
to switch the terrain of revolution by removing the gaze from the structural
concerns of Black radicalism. The most frustrating bodies of thought are
those that embrace the radical analysis of Black radicalism but do not
engage in the revolutionary solutions. There is a tendency for this kind of
liberal radicalism to be present in Critical Race Theory (CRT), which has
become a well-used paradigm for understanding racism in America and
Europe.
Critical Race Theory represents some of the best scholarship on the
foundational role that racism plays in society. The movement emerged out
of critical legal studies in America and the dissatisfaction once scholars
realised that the momentous civil rights legislation many had devoted their
lives to had failed to improve the conditions for most African Americans.39
Derek Bell, the late founder of CRT, argued that Black people will ‘never
gain fully equality’ in America because racism is a permanent feature of
society.40 It is not so much that civil rights legislation failed, but that it was
never meant to make society more equal. For Bell, even the most
progressive legislation is meant only to further White interests. He explains
that the motivation behind the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed
citizenship to the formerly enslaved, was not equality but for the Northern
states to prevent the South from exploiting the labour of African Americans
by paying them inhuman wages. But the implications are far worse than
simply empty legislation; the law is used to provide the illusion of equality
and therefore discrimination becomes more effective because it is covert,
and harder to prove. In a quote that I always use in talks, Bell explains how
this basic framework means that ‘what we designate as “racial progress” is
not a solution to that problem. It is a regeneration of the problem in a
particularly perverse form’.41
One of the reasons I appreciate CRT so much is that it is an academic
articulation of many of the key Black radical ideas. These concepts were
not alien to me when I came across them, but felt familiar. In fact,
Malcolm’s condemnation of the civil rights movement pre-dates Bell by
almost thirty years. We have already discussed Malcolm’s dismissal of the
March on Washington as farce, in Chapter 3. Without the benefit of
hindsight he saw that the best Black people could hope for was second class

citizenship in America. The problem with CRT is that though it eventually
embraces the analysis it does not adopt the revolutionary solution.
Education has been a key site of CRT research in Britain. The
longstanding racial inequalities in terms of both Black attainment and
higher exclusion rates have persisted, despite funding and attention from
policy makers. All that the money has done is ‘altered the processes and
experiences of minority young people’ but ‘done little to alter the outcomes
recorded for them’.42 CRT is useful because it removes the need for evil
intent to reproduce racism; as Gillborn argues, the situation is ‘worse than
that’.43 Britain is no different from any other nation in regard to schooling
inequalities facing Black students. Even with good intent from teachers and
policy makers, racism is reproduced because it is a necessary feature of the
system. Once we have established the permanence of racism in schooling
then surely we need to radically rethink how we educate our children.
A mainstay of the educational response to the challenge of CRT has been
to develop strategies of critical pedagogy. Often this entails using the school
system to transform the understandings of White students by getting them
to think critically about their own experiences and privileges of
Whiteness.44 Also, by presenting counter-narratives and alternative
understandings from marginalised communities critical pedagogy aims to
be ‘productive of empathy’ and promote ‘awareness of racism in society’.45
The only problem is that the theory of CRT tells us that awareness of racism
could not possibly solve the problem because even with positive intent
racism is reproduced. In a study of teachers’ racial attitudes this is exactly
what was found:
awareness did not lead to empathy amongst teachers, but resulted in a
reinvention of meaning that reified existing, culturally constructed,
racist frameworks … racism adapts to any new ideology introduced,
accommodating the discourse within a framework of continued racial
supremacy.46
The problem has not been that people are unaware, but that they are fully
aware and yet continue to reproduce a racist society even with the best
intentions. As we discussed in Chapter 6, Whiteness is a psychosis; it is
entirely irrational and immune to logical thought or persuasion. By

presenting itself as some kind of solution to an issue it can never solve,
critical pedagogy is in fact a ‘regeneration’ of the problem that is
‘particularly perverse’ because of its good intent while actually
contradicting the core theoretical foundations of CRT.
Further contradictions in the theory and practice of CRT emerge when it
comes to the idea of social justice. The term is littered through the writings
of CRT and much progressive research. Milner sees the role of CRT as
being to ‘assist social-justice-oriented individuals in organising to actively
do something, to change racist systems, policies and practices’.47 What is
meant by social justice is unclear, and also what it means to ‘do something’.
Civil rights activists were no doubt ‘social justice oriented’ and certainly
did ‘something’ to change racist systems; however, CRT is founded on the
basis of critiquing these actions. In order to overcome the permanence of
racism in society it must therefore be far more complex than supporting
those with good intentions. Milner acknowledges ‘interests and their
ideological convergence that are most profound for movements to be
successful’,48 but this then precludes embracing the social justice mantra.
CRT cannot at once be in support of ideologically committed and interest
driven groups, while simultaneously agitating for vague coalitions of the
well intentioned. But this is precisely what CRT often becomes, a method
for diagnosing systemic inequality and championing solutions that
contradict its own theory.
Bell somehow argues that ‘we delegitimate it [racism] if we can pinpoint
it’, and appears to present CRT as a claim of truth to power where stating
the reality of oppression loudly and firmly is advanced as noble action.
Bell’s paradox is most clearly demonstrated in his embrace of both the
permanence of racism and the constant struggle against it. He bleakly
contends that we must come to ‘both the recognition of the futility of action
… and the unalterable conviction that something must be done, that action
must be taken’.49 Cheerfully singing into the abyss is not the foundation of
a radical politics and here is where we find the fundamental limit of CRT. A
body of thought produced in the university is liberal by its very nature. So
while CRT can appreciate radical rhetoric it can never make the next logical
step to revolutionary practice. To do so would undermine the very
foundation upon which the idea was produced in the first place.
Universities are built on the basis of separating thought from action, of
the intellectual from the communities they serve. The role of the academic

is not to bring about social change but to reproduce the status quo, ‘the
social relations of oppression and exploitation’.50 By becoming part of the
academic furniture it is debateable to what extent we have changed our
traditional oppressive function. By remaining largely detached from the
movements for social change we cannot produce the knowledge of
liberation. This is what separates Malcolm from CRT and why he was able
to foresee the limits of the civil rights movement. He was with the
grassroots, trying to enact change so understood how the system would
react. Rather than producing knowledge that is engaged in social change,
academics often prefer to take the traditional role of the intellectual. Gloria
Ladson-Billings does not even see the academic’s role as necessarily
creating the limited critical pedagogy. Instead, she argues that ‘CRT’s
project is to uncover the way pedagogy is racialised and selectively offered
to students according to the setting’;51 in other words, we just provide the
analysis not the solution. Trapped in the academic industrial complex, our
internal bubble where we write, speak and engage with the same audience,
Bell’s theoretical cul-de-sac is transformed from a paradox into business as
usual. We were never meant to actually solve the problem, so we can be
content diagnosing the need to act, and the futility in doing so.
Racism is a permanent feature of Western society, but we only become
resigned to it if we cease to imagine the alternative. We make a fatal error to
conflate this society with the only possible one. Taking on board the radical
analysis and refusing to consider its solution means that we become trapped
in a black hole, unable to see any real hope. Academic versions of
radicalism therefore become hallmarked by either a misplaced optimism or
an inherent pessimism.
Orlando Patterson argued that slavery was a state of ‘social death’, being
reduced to the subhuman, with no rights or full claims to humanity.52 The
notion that this social death is the basis of Black life in the Western world is
the foundation upon which Afro-pessimism is based. As Sexton argues,
‘black life is not social, or rather that black life is lived in social death’
because society is built on, and therefore permeated by, anti-Blackness.53
Afro-pessimism has been critiqued because it associates with the negative
connotations of Blackness and appears to offer no hope of redemption.54 In
keeping with a radical analysis, Afro-pessimism refuses to ignore the brutal
reality of racism. One of the most enduring strengths of Blackness is its

ability to endure and to create beauty in spite of oppression. But the fact we
have survived while suffering such abuse does not negate the realities of
that torment. As we discussed in Chapter 6, the Negro was a creation of the
West with real consequences, and social death still exists today. Afropessimism is an ‘affirmation of pathological being’ in order that we
comprehend the total incompatibility of Black life with Western society. As
Sexton argues, ‘Blackness is not the pathogen in afro-pessimism, the world
is’, it is an indictment of the society that creates Blackness as social death.
But Afro-pessimism suffers from the same fundamental flaw as many
analyses of racism emerging from the academy, in that it gives too much
emphasis to how White society has conceived of Blackness.
Negro-ness is a state of social death, the construction of non-humanness
by the West. Blackness is rejection of the Negro and therefore the cure to
the disease of racism. Blackness is the opposite of social death; it is the
rejection of the condition imposed by the West. Not in the sense of being
proud, or finding moments in cultural resistance, but in proclaiming an
uncompromising commitment to the Black revolution. Ruminating on how
social death still frames Black life is not the Black radical project. Calling
into being the methodologies, strategies and politics for overturning the
political system and building the Black nation is the work that needs to be
done.
Black radicalism is one of the most optimistic politics that exists. While
recognising the totality of oppression that Black people face, it refuses to
lose faith that the problem of racism can be solved. Given the nature of our
oppression, and how far the condition has spread, this might seem unlikely.
In fact, this is one of the main reasons that we have generally stopped
fighting for a cure and tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible.
But we are not resigned to treating the symptoms or relieving our pain with
cultural palliative care. As Malcolm put it, ‘we don’t want to hear nothing
about the odds are against us’.55 Black radicalism is built on a revolutionary
vision that provides the antidote to racial oppression.

Chapter 8

Black Survival

When Malcolm X died in 1965 the world was at a tipping point.
Revolutions raged across Africa and the West was terrified that much of the
continent would turn to communism and add to the powerful Eastern bloc.
America was still entangled in the bloody conflict in Vietnam and European
empires were losing control of their colonies. The Bay of Pigs fiasco in
Cuba in 1961 showed just how close the world was to nuclear war.
Capitalism was in crisis and overturning Western imperialism was a
tangible possibility. The Black revolution was not some far-off fantasy, but
a political reality. Malcolm’s optimism in the Organisation of African Unity
and the United Nations must be seen in this context. With the right politics
and strategy, the West could have been taken down. A unified Africa could
have provided a new model for society, free from the domination of the
West.
Malcolm also died before the realisation of most civil rights legislation.
There was little pretence of equality in the West; until 1965 it was legal to
discriminate on grounds of race in Britain. It was only in the 1960s that
many colonies achieved their so-called independence and before this it was
obvious that they were exploited by colonialism. Black people were not
accepted into the system in any meaningful way and therefore the idea of
revolt was attractive. One of the reasons that the Garvey movement
managed to build a membership of five million people before the internet
was that it did not need to convince Black people that they had no place in
the West. It was blindingly obvious due to the conditions of racial
oppression.
In the ensuing fifty years both the probability of revolution and the
conditions that would lead those in the West to embrace regime change
have steeply declined. Revolutionary movements were violently put down
across the African Diaspora and the globe. The Western political consensus
dominates to the point that the ‘end of history’ has been declared due to the

lack of viable alternatives.1 Communism is now symbolic, after the collapse
of the Soviet Union and China’s integration into the capitalist system. In the
current context, the Black revolution can seem like a distant, utopian dream
to those of us suffering the brunt of institutional racism. The realities of
racism mean that there are any number of struggles on a daily basis that
need to be resisted that do not necessarily aim to overturn the system. I was
in fact once accused by a high-profile professor of ‘abandoning my sons to
racism’ at home by focusing on the fantasy of revolution.
Black radicalism also seems distant because for all of the racism we
suffer, we have also become a part of the system. Alongside destroying
revolutionary movements, the powers that be also offered just enough of a
glimmer of access to provide the illusion of hope. Civil rights, race relations
and so-called independence have blinded us to the totality of our
oppression. As we discussed in the last chapter we are seeking to relieve the
symptoms and not treat the disease of racism. We are trapped in a paradox,
where we see no prospect for liberation and so cling to an illusion of false
hope offered by our improved access to the system, and those who have
benefited from it. In this limiting framework we are left with recognising
the ‘historical limitation of the “new” black petite bourgeoisie’ but arguing
that they ‘play a crucial role’ in the Black struggle. According to none other
than Cornel West, the ‘Black middle class – preachers, teachers, lawyers,
doctor, politicians – possesses the requisite skills and legitimacy’ that are
essential for Black progress.2 In reality the Black middle class possesses the
skills necessary to succeed within Western imperialism, a system opposed
to Black freedom. We are deluding ourselves if we are looking for the
House Negro to solve the problems of the plantation.
Now all this may appear contradictory coming from a card-carrying
member of the Black middle class. I have a level of income and privilege
which would make it absurd for me to claim any other location than that
firmly entrenched in the master’s house. It is a contradiction that none of us
unfortunate enough to suffer the symptoms of racism in the West can escape
from: from activists celebrating the smartphone, which is built off Black
suffering, to the academic getting paid through the taxes from a system that
kills Black children. The Black revolution is based on the idea of creating a
world entirely independent of the oppression of the West, making it difficult
to chart a radical politics by those who live off the teat of imperialism. In
this chapter we will discuss how to navigate that contradiction and build a

Black revolutionary politics that can deal with local symptoms and the
global disease of racism.
Separateness is not a problem
Black separatism has been a central feature of Black Nationalism, as we
discussed in Chapter 1. But we must distinguish these calls from the
independence that lies at the heart of Black radicalism. Before we do so, it
is necessary to offer a defence of the idea of separation, while recognising
its limitations. Separatism has been used as an example to point to the
obvious extremism of those who want to live apart. We reduce the debate to
civil rights, love thy neighbour, integrationists vs. Black Power, hate
Whitey, separatists. Separation is seen as problematic because it must
prevent our progress in society. But the discussion on separateness is based
on ideology, not evidence. Ironically, many of the arguments against
separatism are actually harmful to Black progress even within the system.
In Britain, the idea of communities living separate or ‘parallel’ lives is
seen as not only problematic for integration but also as an essential element
in the breeding of terrorists.3 Separate and isolated communities will
obviously not be able to integrate and of course develop a mistrust of
mainstream society. In the 1960s when Britain was first having to deal with
large numbers of Black and Brown children, it was a left-wing government
which issued an edict that schools could have no more than a third of
students from a migrant background.4 In the cases where the numbers
exceeded this limit, minority children were bussed to other schools. It was
inconceivable that these migrant children could learn the culture and the
language to fully assimilate into a British identity if there were too many of
them in the schools. Britain has a limited history of bussing,5 but there is a
much stronger legacy of the practice in America.6 In desegregating
schooling and trying to create a racial mix, bussing was the perfectly liberal
response to the problem of racial inequality. The aim was to give Black
children access to the cultural resources of Whiteness so that all the good
cultural capital could rub off onto the kids, who could then better integrate
into mainstream society.
Underlying the concept of bussing, and fear of separateness, is the
wrongheaded idea that racism is located at the level of the individual and

mostly caused by ignorance. Seeking increased contact between people
from different backgrounds is meant to educate racism out of people as well
as integrate minorities. Up until riots in the north of England in 2001 that
pitted largely British Pakistani and Bangladeshi youth against White racists,
Britain pursued a race relations policy of multiculturalism. In this doctrine
the local and national state supported the development of Britain into a
‘community of communities’ where support was offered for different ethnic
groups.7 But after the riots, the ‘death of multiculturalism’ was proclaimed
because it was seen as culpable in the unrest.8 Under the so-called
community cohesion agenda the state is unlikely to provide funding to
specific minority groups in order to prevent segregation. In the new
paradigm cross-cultural initiatives with White and Muslim young people
became a fixture of state-funded programmes.9 Such cross-cultural
initiatives typically occur within cities between deprived communities,
focusing on educating the White formerly working class who often display
the most open and aggressive forms of racism. This is patronising and
wrongheaded for a number of reasons.
White working class racism is certainly problematic, vocal and
distressing. In Britain, marches for far right groups such as Britain First and
the English Defence League are filled with White people who feel
dispossessed. This group also has real political clout, fuelling the success of
the UK Independence Party, the vote for Brexit and the shift to the right on
immigration for all the major parties. The same is true in America, with the
Rust Belt providing Trump with his surprise presidential victory and his
calls to Make America Great [White] Again. A section of poor Whites have
always played this role in maintaining racist societies, but poor Whites
embracing the wages of Whiteness is a symptom of racism. As we explored
in the last chapter, we love nothing better than ignoring the disease and
treating the symptoms. Whenever there is a fascist demonstration, there is
an anti-racist response to let the ‘scum’ know that they are not welcome in
our cities. These confrontations have become a staple of anti-racist
movements. But they are more to salve the conscience of the protesters
rather than to make meaningful change. The skinheads are not going to
change their minds or stop acting out. We just give them attention so that
we feel as though we are doing something active in the struggle. People
count their anti-fascist demos like tours of duty in an actual conflict. The
problem is that the White people in the streets are not the real enemy; they

have little power and embrace their bigotry mostly out of frustration. I am
writing this in the days after the Charlottesville White supremacist march in
2017, and the counter anti-racist mobilisation. My twitter feed has been full
for days with people dumping on Trump for not explicitly condemning the
far right. The problem with this approach is that people are looking at
Trump as though he is somehow distinguishable from the violent racism of
White supremacy; that as odious as he is, he is somehow above the
hideousness of the Klan. Not only did Trump court the very constituency he
eventually came out to condemn, he actually represents the disease of
racism far more than they do. Racism is systemic, not symbolic, vocal or
overt, and Trump has been implicated in perpetuating the system of racism,
first as a business guru and now as president. If Trump can gain some sort
of credibility by disavowing White nationalist protests it tells us just how
distorted our view of racism is. He is the embodiment of White nationalism,
not the White masses on the street who have no other voice but to hold a
rally and cause trouble. The real problem with racism lies with the
privileged and it is here we can see the anti-separateness logic fall to pieces.
The people who choose to have the least contact with ethnic minorities
are typically not the White formerly working class. Due to residential
segregation there are certainly areas that are predominantly White and
deprived. But particularly in the major cities in countries like Britain,
minorities have historically moved into areas that are occupied by those
Whites with less resources. Contact in this context is competition, and
highly unlikely to produce friendly relations. A major cause of the tensions
has been based around the idea of migrants taking the jobs and resources
from the supposedly native White folk. Even for those who have very little
contact with minorities, they have been told they are in conflict with the
hordes of undeserving migrants who are stealing their resources. As
nonsensical as these notions are, they did not just emerge through the
ignorance of the poor. Politicians have learnt to play the politics of like a
drum creating the fear of the dark invaders in order to boost their electoral
prospects. Thatcher talked about Britain being ‘swamped’, and Trump was
elected on a solidly White nationalist platform. For all the middle class
handwringing about separate lives and the need for contact between
different communities, the most self-segregating group is always, without
question, the White middle class and elite.

Inner city areas in Britain are not dominated by minorities by accident.
This was the housing that was available to us when we migrated and there
was a strict colour bar as to where we could live. For example, when
Birmingham City Council wanted to put a boarding house for Caribbean
men in the then affluent Northfield, the residents protested and the
residence ended up in the inner city area of Handsworth.10 Around 80% of
inner city Birmingham is now ethnic minority (an ironic term given the
numbers), not from our choice but because as we moved in the White
people who could afford it moved out. White flight is the only way to
explain how areas that were once entirely populated by White people have
been almost completely emptied of the so-called native population. The
most segregated areas in Britain are not those spaces inhabited by
minorities but the almost exclusively White middle class enclaves that are
self-selecting. In Birmingham the only area where over 90% of the
population is one ethnicity is Sutton Coldfield, the Whitest part of town.
Even in affluent neighbourhoods, there was a slight increase in the Indian
population because some managed to afford to move in and the area has
ceased to be the chosen destination for the White middle class. Now it is the
villages in the commuter belt that are the dream, away from the hustle,
bustle and darkness of the city. They don’t call the hit TV show, where
people try out expensive homes in rural areas, Escape to the Country for
nothing. White people with money get as far away from minorities as they
can. In America this trend is even more pronounced, as the White middle
class has effectively abandoned the city limits entirely in major cities and
resides exclusively in the commuter belt, with the good (White) public
schools and picture book homes. Residential segregation is so acute in
America that the public schools are now more segregated than they were
before the supposedly momentous decision of Brown vs Board of Education
in 1954.11
If separateness really were seen as a problem in itself then the focus of
the concern would be entirely with the middle class and their parallel lives.
Instead, in Britain there is constant handwringing about self-segregating
minority communities that are failing to integrate properly. The 2016
government review into integration led by Dame Casey opined that there
were seventeen out 9456 local electoral wards where the non-White British
population was over 90%. The report neglected to count the number where
the inverse of this is true, but given that half of all minorities live in three

cities,12 we can assume that there are thousands of electoral wards where
more than 90% of the population is White. While the big inner cities might
have very few White people in them, they are incredibly diverse. Migrants
and their descendants from hundreds of different countries live side by side
and manage to get on just fine. But the rhetoric from the government and
the press is how multiculturalism has damaged the fabric of the great
nation. This fear of separateness is really about ideology.
The inclusion logic is not about separation itself but about who is living
apart. There is no problem with White people, particularly those with
money, living separately because they obviously have the correct values and
identity in the first place. There is no need for them to mix with minorities
to learn about tolerance, compromise and how to live with diversity because
these can be taught in exclusively White neighbourhoods, schools and
universities. They are the solution to the problem, not the cause of it. The
anti-separateness agenda is fundamentally based on the politics of
assimilation, trying to ensure that minorities can become sufficiently like
White people to be a part of society.
Railing against separateness is also problematic because it ignores all the
available evidence as to how minorities succeed in a society, even when
integration is your goal. The discrimination that new migrants feel in any
country is acute and debilitating. Therefore a sensible and common practice
is for communities to form, to support and protect each other. This process
is no different for White migrants than it is for those of colour, as we
discussed in Chapter 1. The idea of a Black, residentially segregated
community coming together to support each other is not a radical but rather
a rational response to the situation that any minority group finds itself in.
Part of the problem with Black communities is that we have been so busy
trying not to be separate, we forgot to focus on uniting to change the
conditions we find ourselves in.13 Integration can also have negative
effects. A much ignored impact of the infamous Brown vs the Board of
Education decision was the closure of the Black schools that children were
segregated into. These were deemed inferior and Black students were
integrated into the supposedly better White institutions. In the aftermath of
the decision, thousands of Black teachers lost their jobs in the South, and
African Americans remain significantly underrepresented in the
profession.14 In chasing the dream of integration African Americans

undermined the systems of support they had built up within the Black
community.
Separation to independence
As much as we must defend the notion of separation, we must also
acknowledge its limitations. Separation is similar to flight in that you may
feel liberated because you are out of the direct clutches of the oppressor, but
it does not provide freedom. As long as the system that oppresses you
remains in place you cannot be free from it, no matter how separate you
feel. For Black people in the West, separation is a misguided goal. We are in
the belly of the beast and cannot separate from it. We should certainly use
the resources that we have better, and unite to improve our conditions, but
we should never confuse relieving the symptoms with curing the disease.
After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm understood that separateness
was not enough. He argued that ‘this word separation has been misused … a
better word than separation is independence’.15 Black independence is the
basis of the politics of Black radicalism: aiming not just at being apart from
the West, but being immune to its poisonous influence by being completely
independent from it. As explored in Chapter 3, this is why Africa is so
important for the Black revolution. Not only is independence possible, but it
would cripple the Western empire, which is so dependent on the
exploitation of the resources of the African continent.
Black independence in the West is impossible, and the biggest paradox
for Black radicalism is that we are part of the system (and therefore the
problem), so how can we be engaged in bringing it to an end. Everything
we do to improve our conditions here further embeds us into the system that
we are aiming to fight against. Black businesses, Black schools, Black
political parties, and every other attempt to be outside of the mainstream,
ultimately can never be independent. We need to expand Malcolm’s
metaphor of the House and Field Negro. On the plantation the divide was
very clear and remained so after emancipation. Those who were locked out
of the system were in the Field and those who managed to find some
foothold in professional or political classes were in the House. But the
situation has now changed with civil rights legislation that has opened up
the doors to the House to many more than before. Make no mistake, there

are plenty in the Field, poverty and mass incarceration ensure that.
However, the distinction between House and Field now mostly needs to be
made on the global level. The conditions facing Black people outside the
West are not comparable, and explain why millions risk life and limb trying
to escape the global South. Our relative prosperity in the West is based on
the exploitation of Black people outside of our national and experiential
borders. Worse still, we can unconsciously create a politics that is
dependent on the exploitation at the heart of the West.
Black Lives Matter has re-energised Black political movements by
reshaping how we experience racial state violence. No longer do we hear
about atrocities committed by the police through the news, or by word of
mouth. We witnessed live on Facebook Philando Castile bleeding out after
being shot by police. The ability to broadcast video and images across the
globe instantly without a mainstream press filter has made state violence
accessible. None of what people are protesting against is new, we just live
in an age where it is impossible to hide the violence, and the exposure has
reignited protests.
Due to social media, the ability to mobilise and organise has also been
key. Black Lives Matter emerged from a tweet by Patricia Cullors who used
the phrase in a poem after the killing of Trayvon Martin. The hashtag was
added to the phrase by a friend and the tagline grew into a movement.
Social media allowed for Black Lives Matter to spread across the globe,
connecting an array of local and national movements. We are also able to
follow the protests from the perspectives of the activists and avoid the
mainstream media’s lazy demonisation of peaceful protesters as rioters.
Black Lives Matter is in many ways the product of social media, which
has led to criticism of the substance of the movement and the limits of
‘clicktivism’, where people will commit only in the digital realm where
there is little real at stake.16 This kind of criticism is unfair when levelled at
Black Lives Matter given the record of street protests and the platform
‘Movement for Black Lives’, which outlines a clear agenda for the
movement. The success of Black Lives Matter has been to transform what
began as a hashtag into a meaningful network of local movements, bringing
publicity and funding to the cause. From a radical perspective the issue is
not with the digital beginnings of the movement but the contradictions of
that digital platform.

The smartphone is the key piece of technology that has facilitated the
move, allowing instant access to video and content, streaming police
brutality live wherever you are. Reverend Gregory Drumwright, who
organised a protest in Washington, noted that the device meant ‘society has
a body camera’ and Erica England, one of the protesters, explained that ‘it’s
important to have a smartphone … It can mean life or death’.17 But the
smartphone is also one of the most direct symbols of African oppression.
The technology is only possible and so widely available because the raw
materials necessary are stolen from the African continent in the neocolonial economic arrangement. Worse still, many of the key minerals are
mined by young children who are not only exploited by the companies but
risk death in their labour.18 The smartphone is the definition of what Audre
Lorde called the master’s tools and Black Lives Matter cannot be for all
Black lives if it relies on technology that oppresses African children. This
does not of course mean that the movement cannot deal with this
contradiction. We must struggle where we are and with the resources we
have at our disposal. But it should be a reminder of Lorde’s warning that the
‘master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’.19
The challenge for Black Lives Matter, or any movement that was born in
the West, is to build meaningful connections to the African Diaspora. This
does not mean abandoning oppressive instruments like the smartphone, but
building a political connection that can transcend their limitations. As we
have seen so far, it is easy to fall into narrow nationalist movements that
only try to overcome problems for Black people within nation state
boundaries. Black radicalism offers a blueprint for overcoming this
contradiction.
In the constitution of the Organization of Afro-American Unity
(OAAU), Malcolm concretely tied Black progress in the West to that on the
African continent. In the first article, ‘Establishment’, the importance of this
connection was embedded in the organisation:
Anyone of African descent, with African blood, can become a
member of the Organization of Afro American Unity, and also any
one of our brothers and sisters from the African continent. We must
unite together in order to go forward together. Africa will not go

forward any faster than we will and we will not go forward any faster
than Africa will.20
Importantly, this is not just a rhetorical connection to Africa but an
organisational one. Not only was Malcolm encouraging African brothers
and sisters to join, he also spent months of his last year on earth travelling
and making connections with African leaders and freedom fighters. A key
component of Black independence in the West is to be independent of the
colonial nation state narrative that limits our politics. We must go beyond
the idea of political alliances with the Diaspora and build a complete
political movement. Only then can we overcome the contradiction of our
successes being built on the Black people who live in poverty in the global
South.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the OAAU aimed to be the global
organisation that could transcend the nation state. But its appeal and
programme was hyper-local as well as attending to the global Black nation.
Malcolm explained that ‘we start in Harlem with the intention of spreading
throughout the state, and from the state throughout the country, and from
the country throughout the Western Hemisphere’.21 Building the
organisation from the grassroots outwards was absolutely essential to
creating a strong foundation.
There were four areas that the OAAU staked its ground on. The first was
on the issues of self-defence, given the brutality that Black people were
facing from racist mobs, during protests and from the police. The infamous
battle between violence and non-violence had to play out at the
organisational level. For Malcolm, not to defend yourself and your
community was cowardly and criminal. A solid commitment to self-defence
is very clearly stated early on in the charter for the OAAU. As we will see
later in the chapter this was picked up by the Panthers after Malcolm was
assassinated. But in spite of the prominence that self-defence has in much
of Malcolm’s rhetoric and in the founding of the OAAU, it is not
fundamental to the programme of the organisation. The idea was for the
OAAU to create departments that would organise in the key areas of
struggle; there was no self-defence department and concrete proposals are
conspicuous by their absence. Self-defence appears more as a philosophy, a
mind-set, rather than a practical reality. To understand this we must look at
the context in the West. We are a minority in the most violent system that

has ever existed on the planet. Engaging the state in violence is always
going to be a losing battle. The downfall of the Panthers is a testament to
this; many of them were murdered by the state. Malcolm talks about selfdefence in the context of protecting protestors in the South against White
racists, and not taking on the state. When it comes to state violence this
forms part of the political programme, exerting pressure over officials and
politicians. Even the notion of self-defence is a particular form of violence
reserved for the West. The goal is for protection, reacting to the violence
from others. This is not the revolutionary violence that Malcolm endorses
on the African continent where overthrowing the state is possible. For the
other key objectives of the OAAU there is a more fully formed programme
of action.
Education was a prominent feature of the organisation because of the
substandard schooling that Black people have historically received. One of
the aims of the OAAU was to gain representation on school boards and take
over 10% of the schools in New York, with the idea being to provide a
platform for Black education. A department of education was seen as
essential in terms of taking over Black schooling but also in providing a
‘political re-education’ for the community as a whole. A Black education,
independent of the mainstream, was vital to connect the community to a
political programme for revolutionary change, rather than just for Black
people to succeed in America. So we must distinguish the call of the OAAU
from the more liberal and even conservative ideas of Black education that
seek to fix perceived deficits in the Black children, rather than the system.
My first book, Resisting Racism, studied the Black supplementary school
movement in Britain, which began in the 1960s to counter the racism of the
mainstream schools.22 Supplementary schools are the definition of a
grassroots movement, with projects springing up in people’s houses,
community centres, churches and school buildings as the community sought
to respond to the crisis of racism in the school system. In the archives I
came across teachings on Malcolm, Garvey, the Panthers and Caribbean and
African histories. There were exercises where the students did reading
comprehension with excerpts from George Jackson’s Soledad Brother. At
one of the oldest supplementary schools, the Sankofa Sesh, run by the
African Caribbean Self Help Organisation (ACSHO) in Birmingham since
1967, they talked about the battles they had with the local education
authorities and the police in setting up the school. Their curriculum

included not only Black radical thinkers but also lessons on MarxismLeninism and revolutionary theory. ACHSO was also connected to the PanAfrican Congress Movement in Britain, and was a hub for Black radical
organising in the city and country. The building that housed the school was
the same venue where figures from the Black liberation movement
worldwide would come and give talks. For example, Herman Chitepo, who
was a key figure in the Zimbabwean freedom struggle, visited ACSHO
weeks before he was assassinated in Zambia in 1975. ACSHO has
organised the Africa Liberation Day celebrations in Birmingham since
1977, annually bringing figures from the Black world into the city. Such a
political organisation running a supplementary school for Black children
was seen as dangerous by the state, which in the words of Bini Brown, one
of the founders of the organisation, tried to ‘smash’ Sankofa Sesh. Given
this history I was expecting to find in the movement a location for
contemporary politics of Black radicalism. Instead, I found the opposite.
Alongside the radical histories there was always a more conservative
trend, a split between the ‘official’ and ‘self-help’ projects.23 Sankofa Sesh
represents the self-help group of schools, independent from the state and its
politics, while the official projects are those that take funding from the state
and are often run by Black schoolteachers. These official projects may or
may not have Black Studies curricula and are very much focused on
mainstream subjects and success. The purpose of these schools is to boost
the grades and performance in mainstream schools, not to provide Black
education. Over the years the official sector has come to dominate the
movement and radical education has almost disappeared. In its place is
often a focus on culture, but lacking any concrete commitment to politics.
Black Studies becomes about teaching Black children to know themselves
and their history so that they will have the confidence and self-esteem to
achieve mainstream success. Where once there was a movement indicting
the mainstream school system, the focus now has moved to critiquing the
community and the investment by parents in their children’s schooling.
Black supplementary schooling is a perfect example of how the state funds
and then accommodates a grassroots movement into the system. The Black
independent education that the OAAU called for sought to reject this
process by remaining financially, as well as politically, independent.
Culture played an important part in the OAAU, with its own dedicated
department. Malcolm envisioned a ‘cultural revolution to unbrainwash an

entire people’ and start the ‘journey to our rediscovery of ourselves’.24
Opening a cultural centre in Harlem was seen as a key step in this cultural
revolution, and towards regaining the power to shape Black representation.
Importantly, culture was not seen as a solution in itself, as in cultural
nationalism. The role of culture was to educate people regarding their
history and selves so that they would commit to ‘action’. Embracing Black
culture was also central in building the connection back to Africa, not only
historically but for constructing the global Black nation politically. Culture
is crucial to any revolutionary politics, and Black radicalism is no different.
A department for political action was also seen as essential to develop
the OAAU. Just as with the rest of the organisation, the aim here was to
build political independence within the Black community. Stressing local
concerns, the goal was to ‘organize the Afro American community block by
block’ and to form independent Black political clubs.25 Assessing the
situation in New York in particular and America in general, the OAAU
sought to capitalise on the possibility of building electoral power through
the ballot box. Residential segregation provided possibilities for electoral
gains at every level of local, state and national government. These
opportunities have been seized upon, with a raft of Black elected officials,
but the OAAU was against signing up to the politics of either Democrats or
Republicans. The aim was to support Black politicians independent of the
main parties, with the logical conclusion being an OAAU party. It may
seem liberal and contradictory to the radical philosophy behind the OAAU
to engage in the corrupt electoral system, with voter registration drives and
running candidates. But again, we have to respond to the conditions that
face us. While we are in the West a key lever of power is electoral, and
therefore to create as independent a Black political front as possible is
essential. But mainstream political representation was not seen as a solution
to any of the problems facing Black people. I met Gus Newport, who was
formerly mayor of Berkeley and knew Malcolm. He explained that people
were trying to convince Malcolm to run for Adam Clayton Powell’s seat in
Congress. Powell represented Harlem in the House of Representatives and
if there was any seat that Malcolm could win, it would be the place he had
become a legend. Newport was convinced that Malcolm was seriously
considering the prospect and may well have run had he not been
assassinated. As much as the move may have been tempting and would
have provided some financing and a national platform, I just cannot see

how it would fit into Malcolm’s politics. Wielding a limited influence in
Congress and having to submit to the confines of a role so deeply imbedded
in the political system runs contrary to the ethos of the OAAU. Malcolm
could not have maintained the radical nature of the OAAU while
representing Harlem in Congress. It is entirely possible that Malcolm would
have run for Congress but, make no mistake, to do so would have been a
betrayal of the Black radical politics he so well defined. Unfortunately,
history is littered with examples of people who blazed radical trails and
ended up dissolving into the very systems that they were trying to overturn.
Given the groundwork laid in the OAAU I have faith that Malcolm would
have stayed true to his Black radicalism and used the engagement in
mainstream politics as a tool to further the liberation of Black people
worldwide.
Another area where the OAAU firmly staked a claim was in economics
and as we saw in Chapter 1 this is also an issue where radical sentiment can
bleed into liberal action. The desire to create Black businesses can often
descend into Black capitalism, changing the colour of the skin of the people
who are exploiting the community. There are plenty of Black millionaires,
but if they refuse to support Black people then they are no better than
anyone else who profits from the community. In the economic programme
for the OAAU, building Black business and cooperatives certainly comes
up as a focus, but does not have the prominence that may have been
expected. Particularly while in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm professed the
need for Black businesses and continued to do so once he left.26 Key to
economic empowerment is being able to provide jobs for Black people
when others will not. Economic independence is utterly reliant on building
a base of Black businesses that support the community. But the focus on the
launch of the OAAU was far more on stopping economic exploitation in
housing, and the proposal to coordinate a Harlem-wide rent strike to
respond to the economic injustice of high prices for substandard living. We
can see that the economic programme was integrally tied to political action,
moving beyond just empowerment to a political agenda.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the OAAU was the funding model
for the organisation. Malcolm was critical of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He criticised the $2.50
annual membership and explained that it was this figure which meant that
they had to always go begging to White liberals for support. Malcolm knew

that whoever funded the organisation would own and control its message.
Instead of charging a small fee and having to find funding from elsewhere
to survive, Malcolm insisted that the Black community must fund the
OAAU. Membership was set at $2.50 a week to ensure that the organisation
was self-sufficient. This funding model is absolutely essential to making the
politics of the OAAU different from other organisations. You could
challenge the radical credentials of an organisation that does voting drives,
plays electoral politics, organises rent strikes and supports Black business.
As I have been at pains to explain throughout this book, none of these
activities are radical as they involve engaging with, rather than overturning,
the system. In fact, a number of organisations that I have been highly
critical of in this book are engaged in similar activities. But being
independently sourced from the grassroots changes the complexion of all
these activities. Combined with the radical and Diasporic politics professed
in the organisation, the independent funding means that these measures can
be seen as tools to progress Black liberation, the sum being far greater than
the parts. Remember that the New York chapter of the OAAU was only
ever meant to be one of many dotted across the African Diaspora, all of
which were dealing with local concerns but connected into a global
movement for Black liberation. The aim was to build a power base within
New York and spread the model out to other locations. Only from that
position of power could the necessary revolutionary work take place. In the
West, independence means taking as much control over our political and
economic destinies as possible but always putting this in service to the
wider global Black nation.
Survival
Strategies for Black independence in the West contain a fundamental
contradiction in terms of their radical nature. Uniting and mobilising the
community to gain political and economic power will undoubtedly improve
the conditions facing Black communities. History suggests that once people
are doing better they are less likely to revolt against a system they are
making gains in. The biggest recruiter for Black politics has always been
racism, and if the symptoms are lessened we are more likely to want to keep
reaping the benefits of the master’s house. We should not delude ourselves

into thinking that Black prosperity in the West is any more righteous than
when White people enjoy the spoils of racial capitalism. The most likely
outcome of a successful OAAU-type organisation is that it better integrates
us into the system of oppression, creating more opportunities for symptomfree racism. That is why the political education and organic links to the
global Black nation are so vital. But we also need to amend the equation
away from independence, because self-sufficiency is impossible and the
rhetoric allows us to believe we can be free within the belly of the beast.
Once we accept that we are simply trying to survive, rather than thrive, we
have an avenue to frame supporting Black communities in the West, while
recognising that we must always internationalise the struggle.
Survival itself is a testament to the endurance that has kept the spirit of
resistance alive in Blackness. After centuries of unimaginable oppression
we are still standing and have never just accepted our treatment. But
survival is not enough and certainly does not on its own represent a radical
political stance. It may sound contradictory to all the rhetoric put forward so
far, but Black radicalism necessitates creating structures in the West to help
us survive the system, allowing those of us located here to play our part in
the global revolutionary struggle. The debate about the revolutionary nature
of survival played out most publicly in the Black Panther Party.
Huey P. Newton strongly advocated for the Panther survival
programmes, which included providing free breakfasts for children, free
medical care and liberation schools. He equated the programmes to a life
raft for the struggling Black community and argued that they were part of a
revolutionary process, ‘a means of bringing the people closer to the
transformation of society’. But this point was not accepted by all members
of the Panthers. Eldridge Cleaver’s mentality was that you ‘either pick up
the gun or remain a snivelling coward’ and that the survival programmes
were a distraction from the revolutionary work of the party.27 During his
exile in Algeria he very publicly split with the party over this issue of
revolutionary tactics, and took the New York chapter with him.
Tensions had been brewing between Newton and Cleaver over the issue
of tactics. Cleaver argued it was necessary to create a guerrilla army and
wage direct war against the American government. Geronimo Pratt was
expelled from the party by Newton for trying to raise an army of the
vanguard. Further divisions were caused when Newton expelled the New
York-based Panther 21, which included Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur. The

Panther 21 were on trial for allegedly planning to target and kill police
officers. Much of the discord in the party was stoked by the FBI and its
counterintelligence
programme
(COINTELPRO),
which
fed
misinformation and lies throughout the party. The FBI sent false letters
between Panthers and started rumours that the Newton and Cleaver factions
were planning to kill each other.28 As I made clear in Chapter 6, I am
sceptical about Eldridge’s motives in relation to the party and firmly believe
that his role in splitting the Panthers was no coincidence. The authorities
took an ideological rift and helped create a chasm. In 1971 Newton hoped
to heal the problems with Eldridge and arranged a phone call mediated by a
San Francisco television presenter, live on air, between the two of them.
The scene descended into farce, with Eldridge insisting that the Panther 21
be reinstated and calling for the resignation of the central committee of the
party, which he deemed inadequate. The end result was Newton expelling
Eldridge from the party, and Eldridge declaring that Newton was no longer
fit to lead and doing likewise. The resultant chaos severely damaged the
party and, combined with the continued assault from the state, it never fully
recovered.
We should not be surprised that the FBI used this ideological split over
tactics to divide the party. Guerrilla warfare with the American state
apparatus is clearly a cul-de-sac, a blind alley with no possible exit. Not
only is toppling the state in that manner impossible, but efforts to do so also
provided the FBI and police with the perfect cover to destroy the Panthers.
Picking up the gun in that way makes you an easy target for police
repression, and COINTELPRO made sure that these aspects of the Panthers
were always at the forefront of the public consciousness. J. Edgar Hoover,
head of the FBI, called the Panthers ‘the greatest threat to the internal
security of the country’.29 But America did not fear the Panthers because of
the threat of some fantastical violent overthrow of the state.
Hoover highlighted the free breakfast programme as particularly
problematic because it gave the Panthers too much good publicity and built
close connections to Black communities.30 The authorities were terrified a
Black organisation that could rally the masses would emerge and present a
serious threat to the status quo. The Panthers knew that dealing with the
day-to-day concerns of the people was absolutely essential to build any
meaningful political programme. After the split of the guerrilla-obsessed

Panthers the party launched the slogan ‘survival pending revolution’,31
which perfectly captures Black radical efforts in the West.
Every political movement has to embed itself in the community it serves.
To have ‘love for the people’ means that you have to address the very real
and present suffering. Black radicalism cannot just operate on a theoretical
or impractical level. Revolution is essential but there are stages that we
need to take to get there. One of those stages is to organise Black people in
every street, neighbourhood, city and nation where we reside. The only way
to do this is to meet people where they are, to address the issues that impact
on people’s lives. The Panthers increased popular support because they
knew that there can be no revolution without survival as popular support is
necessary in order to overthrow the system.
So the day-to-day, the small acts and confronting racism where we find
it, play an essential role in Black radical politics; but again we have to be
aware of our privileges here. The Panthers sought to provide the
fundamentals of food, education and healthcare to the Black poor. Survival
programmes aimed at that purpose, to support those people who were being
failed on a basic level by the state. Free legal advice and patrols of the
police also served to help people survive the system. There is a stark
difference to these programmes and efforts to integrate Black people into
the mainstream through mentoring programmes or support to get youngsters
into elite universities. We must also draw a strong distinction between the
focus on micro-aggressions, the middle class problems of the aspiring Black
bourgeoisie. Survival has to be aimed at those who are struggling to make
ends meet, not those with the means suffering through the process of
meeting them. Black politics must always root its authenticity in serving the
least of those in our communities. Survival should also force us to take a
global perspective on Black politics. Racism has a life or death impact on
Black people, with children dying by the second due to entirely preventable
causes on the African continent. Once we commit to the politics of survival
we have to internationalise the struggle and make solving the problems of
the whole Black nation our concern.
Taking a global rather than a national view of revolution means
understanding that the Black revolution will take place on the African
continent. This is the only means of securing Black freedom and building
an independent political and economic system. But that does not mean that
we have no role to play if we reside outside of Africa. Those in the

Diaspora have the responsibility to build up the resources and organisations
to support the eventual revolution on the continent. It also does not mean
that our struggles in the West are not relevant. We must build a movement
that connects the grassroots struggles across the global Black nation to a
cohesive politics of revolutionary resistance. None of this is new; we just
need to go back to the politics of Blackness, which connected the Black
nation into the same struggle for freedom. The OAAU is the perfect vehicle
for the Black radical politics that we need, combining local concerns with a
global politics of revolution. The blueprint is there and has been for the last
fifty years. There is a reason that the organisation has been wiped from the
collective memory of Malcolm X.
Considering Malcolm was working on building the OAAU at the time he
was being interviewed by Alex Haley for the autobiography, it is
astounding that it receives scant attention in the book. Given the history of
infiltration and subversion by the authorities into the workings of Black
organisations and their leaders, we would be foolish to view this glaring
omission as a coincidence. We also know that there are missing chapters
and notes in the book on the OAAU that were never written up.32 The
OAAU, with Malcolm’s links across the Diaspora, represented the
organisation that could have built the global Black nation into a truly
revolutionary force that threatened the West. Simply assassinating the
character of Malcolm, controlling how he is remembered, and removing his
radical programme of action from that memory is the perfect way to
dismantle his political agenda.
We have been taught to misunderstand and fear the politics of Black
radicalism. We have been told that the ideas are unworkable and dangerous;
that the leaders were irresponsible, misogynistic and violent. Black radical
movements were attacked through spies and propaganda as well as with
oppression and murder. We have been sold a distorted legacy, while being
promised a slightly bigger slice of the diseased pie of capitalism. We need
to reject the illusion of equality and the idea that Black radicalism has had
its day. We must re-engage with the politics that so terrified those
responsible for maintaining the status quo. We must organise for ‘survival
pending revolution’ and pick up the baton from those who have gone
before. We need to go back to Black.

Epilogue

It’s Already Too Late

Black radicalism is an unapologetic politics that leaves little room for either
practical or theoretical compromise. I have tried to match that approach in
this book, clearly distinguishing radical politics from those that may clothe
themselves in revolutionary rhetoric, but in reality offer nothing but
maintaining the status quo. Critiquing movements like narrow Black
Nationalism, cultural nationalism and even Pan-Africanism will likely bring
howls of disapproval from the conscious community. Undermining the
liberal radicalism of Black academia and challenging intellectual
movements I have contributed to is also unlikely to be well received by my
academic peers. But that is precisely the point of the politics of Black
radicalism: to trouble and disturb, to shake us out of our complacency,
especially that induced when we presume we are ‘awake’. The undeniable
truth is that we are not on the right track. Whatever we are currently doing
is not enough and is taking us no closer to the liberation of Black people
worldwide. We need to rethink, reset and regather ourselves and our
movements by facing the radical critique. This is not something that can
ever be done comfortably. If you read a book on radicalism and it did not
make you uneasy and cause you to question your basic assumptions then it
could only be masquerading as revolutionary. There are very few radical
politics for a reason: because revolution overturns everything we have come
to accept. It is a lot to expect people to risk however little (or much) we
have managed to claim to mobilise for a world that offers no promises, only
the dream of liberation. It’s far more rational to try to improve what we
have, to convince ourselves that this system that so reviles us can be
redeemed. But we have to understand that there is no prospect of racism
being eradicated from capitalism. One cannot exist without the other;
racism is the system. Malcolm argued that we needed an ‘it’s already too
late philosophy’ in order to push us towards the Black revolution,1 and
accept nothing less than complete and total liberation.

Liberty or death
We opened the book with a discussion of nationalism and the need to break
beyond the limits of the colonial national state. If you were just to focus
your attention on Black people in Britain, Europe or the West you might see
enough glimmers of progress to maintain the delusion that freedom is
possible: the emergent Black middle class, Black millionaires and even a
Black president. In Britain in particular, we make up only 3% of the
population; even if we will never have full equality the harsher edges of
oppression could be softened. But we do not need to look far to see futility
of this logic. For the vast majority of us in Britain our roots lie in the
Caribbean or Africa. As I have explained in detail throughout the book, the
conditions facing our relatives there make the racism we experience here
look like a privilege.
In Chapter 1, we explored the bleak future prospects for places like
Jamaica, and in Chapter 3 how neo-colonial trade policies keep most
Africans in the grip of poverty. We have to build a politics that recognises
the nature of the plight we are in and can deliver liberation for Black people
across the globe. The West was built by reducing us to the Negro, the
Nigger, devaluing our lives to the point where we could be treated as less
than human. Nothing has changed in this regard, and we see the deadly
results. We can mobilise against micro-aggressions in middle class jobs all
we want, but it is already too late for the millions of children who die on the
African continent because of the wealth exploited by the West. In the time it
has taken you to read this book the number of Black children who have died
because of our relative prosperity would form a pile so large that the
thought of it should sicken you.
It is already too late for the hundreds of thousands who have died by
violence in South Africa since apartheid ended due to the utter failure to
provide a state that can work for all. Make no mistake, it is life and death
for many of those in the West. It is already too late for the thousands that
die by the gun not only in the developing world but also for African
Americans who have been killed at unimaginable rates. It is already too late
for those who have died at the hands of, and in the custody of, police. It is
already too late for those bodies left floating in the Mediterranean after
trying to cross the sea to find some sanctuary in Europe. These are the
stakes; it is liberty or death, not as a battle cry but the simple description of

the state of the Black nation. Without liberation we will continue to die in
the millions due to racial oppression.
When we comprehend the struggle in terms of life and death it becomes
easy to see the limits of most of our approaches to racial justice. Black
capitalism actually makes the conditions outside of the West worse, feeding
the system of economic exploitation. Subscribing to cultural nationalism, by
dressing, talking and praying ‘African’, helps only to heal your psyche and
does nothing to reduce the pile of dead children, which is added to by the
second. Seeking liberation in our individual joy or experience offers
nothing to those who do not have the luxury of existence, let alone desire.
Trying to make ourselves safe in bourgeois institutions, or being
represented in the mainstream of social and political life, is a lucrative culde-sac. We might be able to get some of the benefits of the system but it
will always be oppressive to us and deadly to those who look like us but are
not as fortunate. It’s already too late to try to reform a system built on our
oppression. Freedom can only be found in overturning the Western imperial
status quo. To do so means adopting an uncompromising politics, the
radical politics of Blackness.
Blackness is essential as a concept because it can be nothing other than
political. To truly claim Blackness is to recognise our situation and
ultimately commit to a revolutionary politics. Black is not negative. It is not
taking on the words of the oppressor. It is not to be racialised. If you believe
we need to go beyond Blackness then you simply do not understand the
politics of the word. Faced with White oppression and the disregard for our
African-ness there were many possible avenues for resistance. We could
have tried to maintain ties to tribe, or region. We could have sought refuge
in our individuality and tried to elevate our position within the system. We
could have given in to desperation and ended it all. We could have focused
on surviving, making sure that we prevailed. All of these were and still are
tactics used to navigate racism. Embracing Blackness means uniting around
not only our oppression but also our connection via Africa. It means taking
on the responsibility for all those in the global Black nation. Blackness is a
choice, a commitment to the ‘dead and unborn’ to engage in a politics of
true liberation.2 Black is crucially different to African in this regard. Black
is a politics, Africa is place. It is only a political statement to say you are
African if you were born in the Diaspora. On the continent it is a
description, and as we saw in Chapter 2, one of the main limitations of Pan-

Africanism is the lack of any ideology. It is not an achievement to be
African and there are many versions of African-ness that are just as bad for
Black people as Whiteness. The radical politics of Blackness is just as
necessary on the African continent as it is in the Diaspora. As Malcolm
made clear, ‘if you’re Black, you should be thinking Black, and if you’re
not thinking Black at this late stage I’m sorry for you’.3
Thinking Black at the intersection
To be clear, ‘thinking Black’ is not about how you dress, talk, walk or who
you choose to sleep with. Thinking Black is solely about politics and not
culture. It is about uniting around our Blackness to organise and mobilise.
That Blackness must be open to diverse cultural and representational forms.
We explored, in Chapter 5, how patriarchy and homophobia has infected
Black political movements, something that cannot be accepted. Freedom for
all of us must mean liberation for everyone. We need to recognise that our
Blackness connects us across location, age, gender, sexuality, disability and
the rest of our differences. That does not mean that those differences are not
important, just a recognition that our Blackness is a connection that goes
beyond them. Audre Lorde offered a warning that ‘there is no such thing as
a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives’; the key is
to stop thinking of Blackness as a single issue.4
Hopefully, the systemic analysis that Black radicalism insists on has
been apparent in the book. White supremacy is an essential part of the
political economy and therefore our Blackness cannot be reduced to the
cultural or representative. Our position within the system is as essential to
its maintenance as the location of the heart in the body. There is no way to
understand how class, gender, sexuality or disability impacts on a person
without considering how this intersects with Blackness. You do not escape
the oppression that comes from being Black because you are a woman or
queer. For instance, no matter your gender identity you are more likely to be
killed by the police. Being a man does not guarantee me typically male
benefits; for example, Black men in Britain are less likely to be employed
than women. As Malcolm put it, ‘we are all in the same boat and we’re all
going to catch the same hell’.5

Being Black obviously does not prevent us from experiencing the
oppression that goes with being a woman or not being heterosexual, but it is
the same society that discriminates on the grounds of gender and sexuality.
You could argue then that we need allies across different struggles and
communities to support the Black struggle. But anti-discrimination
movements are not immune from Whiteness. Feminism has been accused of
maintaining Whiteness from ignoring the pleas from activists like Ida B.
Wells over lynching,6 to taking the same stance today on mass
incarceration. Gender, sexuality and disability equality can be achieved for
some without solving any of the issues facing the Black segments of these
communities. In the same way that you are always a Black + nationality,
you are always Black + discrimination. Coalitions can be important
strategically but we must always remember that there can be no liberation
within this political and economic system for Black people. Therefore we
must always be agitating for revolution and building an alternative that can
bring us freedom. It is vital that in building the alternative, it is one rooted
in a Black politics open to all its various manifestations. But losing sight of
our Blackness risks the global solidarity necessary for the revolution.
Of course it is not just Black people who suffer horrifically at the hands
of the West. The children that die every six seconds for lack of access to
food are spread across the global South. In resisting Whiteness we could reengage with calls for Third World solidarity and the global majority of
people of colour. But there is little more harmful we can do than base our
political identity solely in relation to Whiteness. Blackness is of course
relational, in the sense that if we were all the same colour it would not be a
concept, but it is not just relational to Whiteness. To claim Blackness as the
link to Africa is to tie ourselves into a shared heritage, the ‘unbreakable
umbilical cord’ across the Diaspora.7 It also distinguishes us from other
groups that have sought to exploit the continent, like the Arab invaders into
North Africa who instituted their own slave trade.8 As much as the
hierarchy of White supremacy ultimately oppresses all those who are not
White, that does not mean it cannot be amended to give additional benefits
to some over others. The reason that China was not wholly supportive of
the anti-apartheid movement was because it was busy integrating itself into
the economy of the West. It is true that the majority of Chinese are
viciously oppressed both by their government and global system of
capitalism that relies on their poverty wage labour. But given China’s

exploitation of Africa’s resources it is also not hard to imagine the nation
lifting its people out of poverty off the back of the continent. Capitalism has
always required an army of destitute labourers and most of the world’s
population growth will be in Africa over the next fifty years. If Africans are
again to be the source of labour for capitalism, the whip may not be yielded
by White hands.
All of this is a speculative but necessary reminder that it is a delusion to
think that people will not exploit us just because they are also not White.
That is why independence is so important to the politics of Black
radicalism. We of course have solidarity with oppressed people across the
globe and the Black revolution will end the system that exploits them. But
the only way to ensure Black liberation is to build the Black nation into one
that can stand on its own two feet.
Drawing these sharp lines around Blackness can lead to accusations of
separatism and divisiveness that typically we can brush away. But this does
pose a serious question. I have been asked a lot about where people of
mixed heritage fit into the equation. Most often this is put to me as a
question of choosing sides, as if embracing Blackness goes against White or
other heritages that a person may possess. The choosing side’s metaphor
demonstrates the way that rather than challenging the binary view of race,
much of the rhetoric of mixedness reinforces it. At times it seems as though
we are talking of a combining of oil and water, substances that can never
truly mix but remain separate from one another in the same body. The
reality is that the vast majority of those descended from enslaved Africans
are mixed to some extent, so the idea that when you are half and half you
are in a new category of ‘mixed’ is highly problematic. The uncomfortable
truth is that our conceptions of mixedness are directly linked to racial
categorisations from slavery. On British plantations the racial categories
that deemed those with one White and one Black parent a Mulatto through
successive generations could produce offspring who came closer to
Whiteness. Having a Mulatto and ‘Negro’ parent, though, meant you were a
‘Sambo’, remaining firmly on the Black side of the dividing line.9 No
different than today, on the plantation a White grandparent meant you were
Black, but a White parent represented being mixed. Part of the embrace of a
mixed identity is to resist the legacy of the ‘one drop rule’, which in
America both during slavery and segregation meant that any African
heritage marked you as a Negro and restricted your legal status. Even on

British plantations, though being mixed afforded advantages, to be in one of
the many categories was still to be different and oppressed. The way to
overcome the racist categorisation is to abandon the logic, not embrace it.
Blackness is a rejection of race and so makes no claims to unity based on
biological purity. You are no more or less likely to think Black based on
your complexion. Blackness is rooted on our connection to the Diaspora
and so the ‘one drop’ is the link to the Black nation. But this does not
determine your biological or cultural destiny. Blackness is a choice,
embracing the importance of that link as the basis for political mobilisation.
You could argue that it may be more difficult with people of mixed heritage
to embrace that connection, but some of the darkest skinned people on the
African continent are less Black (politically) than some of the lightest
people of mixed heritage. Make no mistake, Black radicalism does mean
choosing sides: either maintaining faith in a system based on White
supremacy or embracing your African descent to unite and struggle against
that racist system. It really is that simple and is a choice that will not
depend on how mixed you are, or are not. There may once have been a time
where the system could have developed along a different path, and a
melting pot society where these distinctions did not matter could exist. But
it is already too late be deluded by that fantasy.
Beyond repair
We find ourselves at a turning point. In the 1960s we were poised for a
revolution that could have toppled the West. But state violence, race
relations legislations and so-called independence of the colonies offered a
glimmer of hope that the system could be redeemed. Fifty years later it
must be blatantly obvious that the promise was a mirage, a delusion to keep
us surviving but still suffering. However, leaving the door ajar has given
some of us access to resources and even some levers of power. Let’s not
pretend that we are not still under surveillance and that the state will not use
violent means to suppress any real opposition. But we are afforded
platforms and technologies for building unity that we never had before. Yet
so complete is the domination of our politics, economics and even
intellectual life that we ourselves have stopped agitating for revolution,
keeping faith in some faint hope in transforming the system from within.

We are currently in the United Nations Decade for People of African
Descent (2015–2024). It is mostly symbolic, with no funding provided and
only a suggestion given to the nation state governments that they should
provide resources. UN Resolution 69/16 of the General Assembly, which
outlines the programme for the decade is strongly worded and advises
member states to consider affirmative action, and for those states that have
not have not yet ‘expressed remorse or presented apologies’ or paid
reparations for slavery ‘to find some way to contribute to the restoration of
the dignity of victims’.10 This focus on reparations has been pushed by
grassroots activists to the point where Caribbean nations are pressing
Europe for compensation for centuries of enslavement. The Movement for
Black Lives in America and the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in
Europe (PARCOE) also demand reparatory justice. In Britain there is an
annual march and many organisations, including Rastas, ensuring
reparations are on the agenda.
The case for reparations is indisputable. In reality there is no credible
argument that reparations are not due. Current wealth in the West is built off
riches deriving from the enslavement of African people. Port cities like
Bristol and Liverpool in Britain simply would not exist without the wealth
from the triangular trade, and my hometown of Birmingham has its roots in
the guns and shackles needed to subdue the enslaved.11 The industrial
revolution was fuelled by the proceeds and also products of enslavement,
with the steam engine processing cotton from the Americas. Finance
capitalism engorged itself on the trade, with Britain’s biggest corporation,
Lloyds of London, founded on insuring the merchant (slave) trade. The
banking sector has so many links to slavery that it may as well sign all the
companies over to the global Black nation. The church, the political class,
the elites all owe their wealth in large part to the enslavement of African
people. When slavery was abolished it was so lucrative that the British
government paid the equivalent of £2 billion in compensation to the slave
owners for their losses. Researchers at University College London have
tracked where that money went and it demonstrates just how deeply
implicated in slavery was a whole swathe of British society. Every other
slave-trading nation will have similar stories, and even those that were not
directly part of the trade benefited directly and indirectly from it. Swedish
companies, in that social democratic beacon of justice, made a fortune
selling iron ore to Britain for the manufacture of guns and chains. In return

for building the West our ancestors received nothing. The bill for unpaid
labour for centuries of work runs into the countless trillions. In America
alone it is estimated that Black people are owed anywhere between $5.9 and
$14.2 trillion in back pay,12 not including damages for murder, rape and
torture. A staggering figure, but more so when you consider that less than
20% of enslaved Africans ended up in America, not counting the millions
who perished during the middle passage or fighting to remain free in Africa.
A debt is clearly owed, and nothing short of full payment could even
come close to repairing the damage that has been done. But rather than
pushing for payment in full the reparations debate has now changed to
being no longer ‘all about money’. The demands of the Caribbean
Community and Common Market (Caricom) include a call for the end of
debt repayments, an apology and a literacy programme. The Movement for
Black Lives asks for free college tuition. In Britain we also hear appeals for
educational and even psychological repair. What all these demands have in
common is that they seek to reform the system. They retain hope that our
relationship to the West can be healed. But the paradox of the reparations
debate should tell us that this kind of repair can never happen.
Reparations are long overdue and also impossible. Forget the logistics of
where the money would go, the massive transfer of wealth necessary for
reparatory justice would cripple the Western economy. Exploiting African
flesh is one of the key foundation stones of the political economy, and to
have to account for it would inevitably bring the house of cards tumbling
down. Even if we could imagine that it was possible to transfer the wealth,
we have to acknowledge that slavery was just a mechanism of our
oppression, not the basis of it. The reality is that our lives are worth less and
can therefore be exploited and discarded. After slavery the mechanism for
this became direct colonial rule. As we discussed in Chapter 2, once the
façade of so-called independence was granted, neo-colonial economic rule
became the method. So the wealth that would be transferred would be based
on a system that still oppresses us on the same basis for which reparations
would be paid. If we used the wealth correctly we would eradicate the
problems that inflict us, making it impossible for the West to continue to
exploit us. Capitalism that had to pay fair price for the resources of Africa is
not a feasible economic project. The West is not going to destroy itself
paying off the debt, and even if it did the complete collapse of the economy
would make the wealth meaningless. Once we understand that the entire

political and economic system is based on our oppression then we should
come to the realisation that it is already too late to be asking for reparations.
The danger in the mobilisations for reparations are that the West
complies with the demands but in a way that does not solve any of the
problems. It may offer an apology, cut some debt and provide some (mostly
privately funded) aid initiatives for the Caribbean. Given the trickery of
Western states this is the most likely outcome of the campaigns. A big
ceremony and display will be made about how the West is atoning for its
original sin and making peace with Black communities and nations.
Nothing substantive will be passed over, no repair will be made but we will
have been lulled into thinking that we have made progress. The best
possible outcome of the campaign for reparations is ‘not a solution … but a
regeneration of the problem in a particularly perverse form’.13 I do not
mean to argue that there is no value in the reparations movement. There has
been excellent and tireless activism around this issue for decades that
should never be downplayed. Reparations are the perfect tool for the
political education necessary to explain the depth of our plight to Black
communities. When used as a tool to mobilise Black people into radical
action then reparations is an incredibly powerful campaign. But campaigns
for reparations that expect to achieve repair from the West are the definition
of liberal radicalism.
Blueprint for Black radicalism
Black radicalism is its own ideology and way of understanding the world.
We must separate it out from more reactionary and liberal forms of Black
politics. Throughout this book I have tried to be as precise, and
unsentimental, as possible in distinguishing Black radicalism as its own
ideology. My aim was to provide a blueprint that we can use to move
forward, which deals with the critiques I have heard over the years. Many
of those critiques were in fact of other politics I have never identified with,
but others’ criticisms have shaped how I have come to understand the need
for and process of the Black revolution. For me it has been at times an
uncomfortable journey, having to unlearn and challenge my own position.
The chapter on Pan-Africanism was probably the hardest because I had
always been invested in Pan-Africanism as the solution to the Black

struggle. That the opposite was true was a difficult, but necessary,
realisation. The more I have written and talked about Black radicalism the
more I have also become discomforted by my position. As an academic I
am the model of the liberal radical I so criticised in Chapter 7. A semi-elite
that makes a good living off talking about revolution, while reaping the
benefits of racial oppression. My hands are just as soaked as anyone else’s
in the blood of those who die by the second because of the relative wealth I
enjoy. That realisation creates a jarring jolt of guilt, anguish and pain. I
fully understand why people seek refuge in culture or religion, or convince
themselves that we can be part of the system and part of the solution. I can
see why people go off the grid and try to escape Babylon by rejecting it. But
deep down all of those responses are to make us feel better because we do
not believe that the system can change. We have learnt helplessness and
either seek to escape or conclude that doing something, no matter if it
makes little or no difference, is better than doing nothing. Instead of
ignoring or debating our complicity, we need to embrace it. It is the feelings
of anguish that will never let us be comfortable in this wicked system. We
can turn the pain into anger, to fuel our constant movement towards
liberation. More than anything, we must use the privileges we do have to
build the politics of Black radicalism. We cannot change the system from
within, but we can leverage the resources we have access to in support of
mobilisations on the outside.
What we can never do is lose hope that revolutionary change is possible.
Fifty years is a long time. In the 1960s we were on the cusp of the Black
revolution and we are now further away than we have ever been. In the next
fifty years the world can be a completely different place if we choose to
build it. The West was built on our backs because they have been able,
through various means, to control us. But we have always had the power to
bring the system crashing down, which is why they invested so much effort
in shackling us. I do not pretend to present any new ideas in this book
because that it is not what we need. Black radical politics has always been
there; we have just not looked hard enough. What I have tried to do is to
dust off, re-package and re-articulate the radical basis for the Black
revolution. We need to go back to this politics, retrace our steps to the last
turning point in the 1960s where we headed down the cul-de-sac of
integrating into the system of racial oppression. The blueprint exists to
build a grassroots organisation based on uniting the global Black nation;

one which embraces a vision of Blackness that includes all of our cultural,
social and representational forms and is rooted in providing for those
suffering the worst oppression. There can be no shortcut to our liberation,
no freedom without sacrifice. We cannot theorise or perform our way to
revolution. When Kwame Ture visited Birmingham in 1983 his message
was simple: ‘if you’re not part of an organisation then you are against your
people’.14 The only vehicle to liberation is building an organisation that can
empower the global Black nation. No excuses about how organisations have
failed in the past, or how we have tried this before, will do. It’s already too
late to be standing on the side-lines waiting to see whether you should
commit.
It is only by rejecting the system of Western imperialism that we can
ever be free. But as we leave the house we must bring it crashing down in
order to truly liberate not only the Black nation, but all oppressed peoples.

Foreword
Racism Is a Matter of Life and Death

Witnessing the police killing George Floyd in May 2020 was the straw that
broke the camel’s back, coming so close on the heels of the lynching of
Ahmaud Arbery and state-sanctioned murder of Breonna Taylor. A wave of
protest and rebellion was unleashed onto the streets in the United States,
reminiscent of the hot summers of the 1960s, when racial tensions exploded
and cities burned. Millions of people across the world joined the movement,
protesting the experiences of racism that are all too common. Black Lives
Matter came into vogue and was adopted by media companies, major
corporations and even national governments. An optimism has been felt,
that society is now ready to face up to the realities of racism. But rather
than celebrating the new-found enthusiasm for talking about racism, we
should approach with extreme caution. Unilever and L’Oréal loudly
trumpeting that they were removing the word ‘fair’ from their skinlightening products is the perfect metaphor for the meaningless change
being offered in response to the moment. Rebranding a racist product is not
a step in the right direction, it is a kick in the teeth to all those who suffer
the impacts of White supremacy. We entirely miss the point if we believe
that racism can be overcome with token gestures, commitment to diverse
hiring practices or statements of brand solidarity. It is not mere coincidence
that the latest wave of protests took hold during the lockdowns for the
Covid-19 pandemic. The cynic in me will always be convinced that the lack
of other news and places to go was a major factor in the mainstreaming of
racial justice. We saw the exact same responses to the murders of Alton
Sterling and Philando Castile in 2016 from Black communities across the

globe, which somehow failed to grasp the attention of the Whiter wider
public. But by the time the protests kicked off, the pandemic itself had
already exposed the racism underpinning society.
Covid-19 tore through the West so completely that there were discussion
about whether the virus was the ‘great leveller’ of conditions in society.
When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized with the virus,
we were reminded that no one was safe. Donald Trump, the most unlikely
president of the United States, started taking the anti-malarial drug
hydroxychloroquine, later proved to be ineffective, in an effort to protect
himself. Facing the impending loss of tens of thousands of lives, nations
went into unprecedented lockdowns, and even the most right-wing,
neoliberal governments provided economic safety nets for families and
business that would have won the approval of Marx. But the delusions of all
being in it together, or that viruses do not discriminate, quickly fell apart as
the evidence began to show that Covid-19 simply laid bare existing social
inequalities. The poor, the vulnerable and ethnic minorities were all shown
to be far more likely both to catch the virus and to die from it, in Britain and
the United States. The surprise at these findings tells us just how little we
understand racism, which is not about personal prejudice, but rather is a
matter of life or death. Covid-19 targeted ethnic minorities, thanks in part to
our heavy concentration in the inner cities; disproportionate rates of
poverty; and over-representation in the ranks of key workers.1 These same
conditions mean that in both Britain and the United States minorities are
more likely to suffer almost all chronic illnesses and conditions, including
asthma from polluted neighbourhoods, diabetes and obesity because of food
deserts, and the rest of the so-called ‘comorbidities’ that increase the risk of
Covid-19 deaths. The result of these inequalities is statistics like Black men
in England and Wales being up to four times more likely to die from Covid
than their White ‘counterparts’.2 The brutal and uncomfortable truth is that
racism takes years off a life and the ability to enjoy it. But the racial fault
lines in the developed world are minor cracks compared to the devastating
chasms of the value of life across the globe, and the response to Covid-19
reveals the logics of empire that continue to govern the world.
When the West was threatened with a staggering death toll, it was
remarkable to see how quickly investment in and the development of a
vaccine occurred. A vaccine within a year of the virus appearing would
previously have been truly unprecedented but has been willed into

existence. Malaria has existed for over a hundred years and claims the lives
of 400,000 children annually, but there is still no reliable vaccination. If
those children were dying in Europe, rather than Africa, the political will
would have existed to find a cure. We saw the speed with which a vaccine
was developed for Ebola once the disease left Africa and arrived in the
United States. Even illnesses for which there are vaccines, that have been
all but eradicated in the West, still claim lives in the Rest. Tuberculosis kills
1.5 million people annually. The primary logic underpinning the Western
world order is that Black and Brown life is worth less.
The Covid-19 death toll will pale into insignificance compared to the loss
of life annually due to poverty. Nine million people die around the world
each year due to hunger. A child dies every ten seconds because they do not
have access to food and water. These lives are almost exclusively Black and
Brown. One of the main reasons that Covid-19 was not as devastating in
Africa is because there are far fewer old people, because they die younger.
In Nigeria, which has the largest population on the continent, only 2.5 per
cent are over sixty-five, compared to over 15 per cent of the United States.
In South Africa, one of the supposed success stories of the continent, more
people die each year in the 30–34 age bracket than the 80–84 range.3 Such
a figure is unimaginable in the nation’s former colonial ruler, Britain, where
there are almost fifty times as many fatalities in the older age group. A virus
that mainly kills old people was never going to be as much of a problem for
a region whose life expectancy has just crept above sixty. Covid-19 brought
the fear of life and death into the West that is the daily experience of
billions around the globe.
For all the so-called aid dumped into the underdeveloped world, the
problems of poverty remain entrenched. The majority of the progress of the
much-lauded United Nations Development Goals, which sought to reduce
world poverty by 2015, has been because of China’s success. We still live in
a world where a family of four, including children, farming tobacco leaves
in Malawi for multinational corporation British American Tobacco can
expect to earn £140 for a whole year.4 These kinds of conditions are just as
prevalent in the majority of the world, where people live in levels of
poverty that we in the West can only imagine. We’re so used to this reality
that we forget it is no historical accident. There is a reason and a logic
behind global poverty. Although you would never guess it from the analysis
of the United Nations (UN), World Bank, International Monetary Fund

(IMF) or Western governments, racism still governs the entire political and
economic system. Truly addressing this inequality cannot be done without a
transfer of wealth and resources that would be transformative to the West.
As long as we delude ourselves with rebranding and tinkering at the
margins we will never be able to address the issue of racism.

Introduction
The Logic of Empire

We urgently need to destroy the myth that the West was founded on the
three great revolutions of science, industry and politics. Instead we need to
trace how genocide, slavery and colonialism are the key foundation stones
upon which the West was built. The legacies of each of these remain present
today, shaping both wealth and inequality in the hierarchy of White
supremacy. The Enlightenment was essential in providing the intellectual
basis for Western imperialism, justifying White supremacy through
scientific rationality. In other words, the West invented scientific theories to
‘prove’ the superiority of White people and acted as if they were truth. It is
also in the Enlightenment that we can see the roots of the new age of
empire, the universal application of colonial logic.
The breakdown of European countries’ direct administration of their
colonies made way for the United States to become the centre of empire.
The UN, IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization all play their part
in administering colonial logic and neo-colonialism. In the new age of
empire, the so-called independence of the colonies laid the groundwork for
the emergence of an elite in the underdeveloped world who administer the
system with brutal efficiency. Colonial logic has always incorporated the
ladder of White supremacy, with some taking advantage of their superior
positions in the racial hierarchy. We must consider how China has adopted
Western approaches to enrich itself by plundering Africa for its resources.
This feeding frenzy is not restricted to China but includes nations from
across the underdeveloped world. If the former Third World cannot be
relied on for solidarity the same is certainly true for the new so-called

radicals of the Western left. Rather than offering truly radical visions of the
future we must consider how Whiteness pervades these movements that are
continuations of racist progress. Following the 2008 financial crisis we are
in a moment where the chickens are coming home to roost in the seat of
empire. China is becoming a more efficient version of the West; the
financial crisis further unleashed the forces of neoliberalism; and the
children of empire are migrating into the old mother countries because of
what the West has done to their homelands. The world looks different today
than it did four hundred years ago but the same logic which were being
embedded into the system then continues to shape the world in the image of
White supremacy.
Before we delve into the book I want to draw attention to four aspects of
the new age of empire that are not referred to by name again but are present
throughout. The aim of the book is to build on these concepts and ideas in
order to understand the logic of Western imperialism.

RACIAL CAPITALISM
In the new age of empire, the United States has become the centre of
modern colonial power. The country likes to present itself as a victim of
British colonialism, which freed itself from tyranny and now looks to do the
same for the rest of the world. But this is a delusional fantasy. The United
States is in fact the most extreme expression of the racist world order. Not
only does the United States have its own history (and present) of colonial
possession but its entire existence is based on the logic of Western empire.
Built by enslaved Africans on land stolen through the genocide of the native
inhabitants, the United States became a Garden of Eden for Europeans
looking for wealth and opportunity. After the Second World War, the great
European powers having exhausted themselves, the United States inherited
its birthright as the leader of the new age. Now we have major institutions
that manage globalization and maintain the logic of empire under the guise
of ‘development’: the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and United
Nations are all based in the US. This new regime is as effective as the
European empires were at maintaining global White supremacy and
colonial domination.

Racism is not only the glue that holds the system together but the
material of which it is comprised. In his classic work Black Marxism, the
late Cedric Robinson explained the nature of ‘racial capitalism’.1 On the
domestic front we can see how these dynamics play out in the United
States. Ava DuVernay’s heartbreaking documentary 13th brought a greater
awareness of the extent of the racist problem of mass incarceration, which
is so stark that one in every three African American boys born in 2001 is
expected to spend time in prison.2 The film takes its name from the
Thirteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which abolished slavery and
‘involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted’. After emancipation, African Americans
were far more likely to be arrested and imprisoned, to be put to work in
various forms of prison labour, and slavery was therefore maintained within
the prison system. The fact that the state of servitude was maintained in the
very amendment that ended slavery is a chilling reminder that there is no
such thing as progress in racial capitalism.3
Michelle Alexander explained in The New Jim Crow how the ‘war on
drugs’ following the crack epidemic took the problem of racialized
incarceration and pumped it with steroids.4 By racializing the drug crisis in
the 1980s the United States government targeted Black communities,
flooding neighbourhoods with police and incarcerating unprecedented
numbers of people. This was a shared conservative and liberal project, with
each side outdoing the other to seem ‘tough on crime’. We should never
forget that it was the so-called first ‘Black president’5 Bill Clinton who
introduced the infamous Crime Bill in 1994 that was so pivotal in
amplifying the impact of mass incarceration and which included threestrikes sentencing; flooding the streets with police officers; and a huge
boost in funding for prisons. In the last forty years the United States prison
population has ballooned by 500 per cent, almost exclusively by
incarcerating predominantly African Americans for non-violent drug
offences.6 There is perhaps no better illustration of how racism works in
the United States today, but also of how intertwined it is with capitalism.
One of the drivers of mass incarceration is the privatization of the prison
industry, which creates incentives to lock up historic numbers of people.
Slave labour is also an economic incentive; there is no need to outsource if
you can pay prisoners a few cents an hour for their toil. In 1994 the

telephone company AT&T broke its workers’ union action by laying off call
centre workers and replacing them with prison labour. McDonald’s, Macy’s
and Microsoft have all exploited prison labour, as well as countless more
corporations across the United States. The US government has a Federal
Prison Industries company, Unicor, producing a vast array of products
including air filters and office supplies, that pays its workers between 23
cents and $1.15 an hour. Prior to 2011 its products were only sold within the
public sector, but since that restriction was lifted Unicor has been selling
goods and services with relish to private corporations. As well as the
benefits of modern-day slave labour wages Unicor also touts that
companies can stamp their products as ‘Made in America’ with pride. This
is Third World wages for homemade produce, the embodiment of Trump’s
promise to ‘Make America Great Again’. In the first half of 2018 alone
Unicor had made $300 million worth of sales in goods and services across
the public and private sectors.7 Providing prison labour on the cheap is a
form of corporate welfare: the state foots the bill for their incarceration and
the companies make a profit off the lack of prisoner wages. Incarceration is
expensive for the state – over $35,000 per prisoner per year in federal
prison.8 It seems like insanity for them to provide labour at this huge
expense – until we remember that it fits perfectly into the logic of racial
capitalism.
Veteran prison activist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore explained how
she first saw prisons a ‘consequence of state failure’ but had to learn they
were actually a ‘project of state-building’.9 Billions of dollars spent on
incarcerating a disproportionate number of Black people is not only
corporate but social welfare. The major problem the United States has with
its Black population is that they are now surplus to requirements. Slavery
was the reason we were taken there in chains and that labour is no longer
needed. During the era of the New Deal and national regeneration African
American labour was needed once again to build the infrastructure and the
promise of a new America. In the war years that followed African
American labour was once again vital. But neoliberalism has cut public
sector jobs and labour has either been outsourced to the underdeveloped
world or mechanized. We are once again surplus to requirements, and it is
no coincidence that mass incarceration coincided with the transition to
Reaganomics. Neoliberalism is just a more extreme version of Western
society, so racism was bound to be emphasized in an economic regime that

steeply increases inequality. A major reason that the unrestrained
individualism at the heart of the neoliberal project won at the ballot box is
because there was no way that the body politic of the United States could
survive if social welfare was dispensed to African Americans in the
amounts needed, because the nation is so steeped in racism. A functioning
welfare state, that at least dulled the harder edges of poverty, would
probably cost the state less than mass incarceration in the long run. But we
must remember that throughout the history of the West the state has been a
mechanism for private enterprise to reap the benefits of racial exploitation.
Various versions of the welfare state in different countries were but shortlived experiments in sharing the spoils of empire more fairly in the West.
Racial capitalism makes the public happy for their tax dollars to be spent on
caging the mostly Black and Brown, as corporations are then free to feast
on modern-day American slave labour. And of course, all that profit will
eventually trickle down to the average voter.

COLONIAL NOSTALGIA
‘Make America Great Again’ was a slogan built on colonial nostalgia, for a
time when the logic of empire was much neater. Racial segregation; no civil
rights legislation; respect for law and order; and unchecked United States
dominance of the globe. Britain also experienced its own bout of yearning
for the good old days. Once the nation had freed itself from the supposed
shackles of the European Union in 2016, Whitehall officials fantasized
about the prospect of the nation re-engaging with the world and establishing
‘Empire 2.0’. The vote for Brexit was driven in large part by a colonial
nostalgia to make Britain great again by returning to the days when
Britannia ruled the waves. One of the main slogans from the Vote Leave
campaign was ‘Take Back Control’ in order to return the nation to its
former glories. Empire 2.0 was at least an acknowledgement that Britain
was only ever ‘great’ when it ruled over an area so large that the sun never
set on its dominions. Brexit, apparently, provided the opportunity to
rekindle the country’s abusive relationship with its former colonies.
Yearning for the glory days is not a new phenomenon in Britain, which
has the Empire firmly embedded in its psyche. Almost 60 per cent of people
believe that the Empire was ‘something to be proud of’, apparently either

unaware of or uncaring about the centuries of slavery and brutality that
Britain inflicted on other parts of the world.10 Given this, it is unsurprising
that the monarchy in general, and the Queen in particular, are extremely
popular. Replete with crowns crusted in jewels stolen from various
colonies, Her Majesty may be the premier symbol of Whiteness on this
planet. Britain’s former colonies remain part of the Commonwealth group
of fifty-three nations, and the Queen is still the head of state of fifteen
former colonies, a list that includes Jamaica, Australia, Canada and Belize.
The royal family represents all the problems of elitism in Britain and
privilege given to mediocre White people, with their only claim to their
position being that they were born to rule. This is clearly not just a British
problem, given the adulation the Queen receives from around the world.
The popularity of Netflix’s The Crown shows the cross-Atlantic appeal of
imperial romance.
The idea of refashioning the Empire was problematic for an array of
reasons. For a start, Britain lost the majority of its colonial possessions prior
to joining the EU. In fact, the lack of an empire to exploit meant that Britain
needed (and still needs) to be part of a large economic bloc to maintain its
standing in the world. Many of its former colonies fought for their freedom
and would not be happy to simply fall back under the thumb if Britain
renewed its colonial ambitions. Not only that but India, at one point the
jewel in the crown of the Empire, is now one of the fastest growing
economies in the world, which Britain could not re-colonize even with
force. The tables have turned so much that Indian company Tata took over
what was British Steel in 2006. Whilst the ‘Empire 2.0’ episode did tell us
just how much the colonial arrogance of the British ruling class remains, the
Empire is never coming back, whatever the dreams of Whitehall officials.
The emergence of nations like India as leading world powers has
bolstered the narrative that the West is in decline. The G20 forum for
international economic cooperation, made up of the most apparently
influential countries in the world, now includes South Korea, Japan, India,
Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Summit pictures are more reminiscent of a United Colours of Benneton
advert than the imagery from the 1884–5 Berlin Conference, where
European nations carved up Africa between them. China’s rise in particular
has shaken the West’s confidence in itself and its prospects for continued
global domination. This changing global arithmetic has led to many a think

piece on the so-called decline of the West. In many ways Trump’s election
was driven by this desire to see White America at the forefront of global
politics again, with his ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan. On the
campaign trail Trump railed against globalization and in office has sparked
trade wars with China to try and recapture the lost power of the United
States. Running through all of this is the existential dread that the West has
lost the battle for power, and that the underdeveloped world is leading the
path into the future. But don’t believe the hype. China’s rapid economic
development has been achieved in large part by exploiting their own poor
and looting Africa in a disturbingly European fashion. Diversifying those
dining on the spoils of empire does not change the menu and there is
nothing new about some Black and Brown people taking advantage of a
framework designed to exploit them. In other words, a handful of rich
Nigerian students studying at Oxford does not change the system of
oppression. Conditions in the underdeveloped world today are marked by
the kind of poverty that those of us in the West could not imagine. To
pretend we have moved into a post-racial dream is to ensure that the
majority of Black and Brown people of the world continue to experience
the Western nightmare.
So-called independence in the former colonies has provided for a
privileged few to reap financial rewards from access to a slice of the
Western imperial pie. A post-colonial elite have amassed wealth well
beyond the dreams of even those doing relatively well in the West. There is
also a growing middle class in the underdeveloped world who have some of
the same opportunities as those in the West to spend money buying
unneeded commodities. But their access and wealth are based on exploiting
the same system that impoverishes the vast majority of those in the world
who are Black and Brown. As I will discuss at length in Chapter 6, the
multitude of ‘dark mankind’11 are not a homogenous mass but a varied
group of people, many of whom have few qualms about using the
hierarchical ladder of global White supremacy to pull themselves up on the
back of those less fortunate.
All the old inequalities were simply built into the supposedly progressive
system of international trade and law, ensuring that the West remained in an
exploitative relationship to the former colonies. The new age of empire
depends on corporations, unfair trade practices and puppet governments in
the underdeveloped world, all of whom are perfectly happy to take their cut

from selling off their population’s assets and labour. The inclusion of the
elite from the underdeveloped world has allowed for the mirage of progress
in the new operating system. Institutions like the UN and the G20 even
offer seats at the tables of power but, as Malcolm X warned us, ‘sitting at
the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that
plate’.12 If these leaders are meant to be representing their people then the
question is not whether they are getting a taste of the delicacies of the West
but whether their nations are being nourished. The stark reality is that the
hierarchy of White supremacy is alive and well, with the White West at the
head of the table and Africa lucky if it gets any scraps from the floor.
Racism frames life in the new age of empire just as fundamentally as it did
during the eras of slavery and direct colonization.

RACIAL PATRIARCHY
‘Thinking intersectionally’ means recognizing that there is no way to fully
understand society without appreciating the interlocking oppressions that
shape inequality. We must however recognize the roots of the concept in
Critical Race Theory, Black Feminism and mobilizations such as the
Combahee River Collective. It was by viewing the world from the
standpoint of Black women that intersectionality was born, highlighting the
nature of inequality. Unlike in some of the co-opted takes on
intersectionality (which has been reduced to a buzzword in many academic
and policy circles), it is impossible, in any genuine understanding, to
remove racism from how we think intersectionally. A central thesis of this
book is that White supremacy, and therefore anti-Blackness, is the
fundamental basis of the political and economic system and therefore
infects all interactions, institutions and ideas. My aim is to trace how White
supremacy has been maintained and plays out in the various updates to
Western empire. Discussions of genocide, slavery, colonialism, unfair trade
practices and everything else we will consider all echo across the
intersections of race, gender, class and other social divisions. But I have not
generally touched the rich vein of vital work exploring the detailed
intersections of racism and interlocking oppressions. If we see racism as the
intersection then this book explores the junction but has not traced the roads
that lead to it.13 Scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Keeanga-Yamahtta

Taylor, Patricia Hill Collins, Mikki Kendall and many other Black feminists
have travelled these arteries and produced exceptional insights into the
intersectional dimensions of oppression.14
It is essential to understand how fundamental patriarchy is to shaping the
modern world. Academics have tended to locate class as the primary prism
through which to understand society. But class relations in capitalism are
produced out of the colonial logic of Western imperialism. Industrial labour
is only possible because of the wealth generated from colonial exploitation.
Without genocide, slavery and colonialism there is neither the wealth nor
the resources for the supposedly revolutionary proletarian toiling in the
European factory to come into existence. Therefore, Marx’s hero of history
is in fact a product of racism. Social classes existed before the dawn of the
new age but were fundamentally transformed by the new system. But the
patriarchy is different. It was not created by Western imperialism, although
empire was propagated through it, via figures like the great male explorers
Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, who braved the new worlds and
conquered the savages. Violence was the key ingredient in establishing
Western empire, and sexual violence against women was a universal tool.
The foot soldiers of empire, colonial leaders and slave owners, all
presided over patriarchal households where women were relegated to the
domestic realm and unable to contribute fully to public life. White men
were deemed to be at the top of the food chain of human beings while
women were thought to be incapable of rationality because of their
troublesome biology. So deeply ingrained were these ideas that Black men
in the United States were allowed to vote (at least in theory) decades before
the privilege was extended to White women. Gendered inequality remains a
hallmark of empire, deeply seated in the West and around the globe.
The inspiration for this book came from a short video that I made for the
Guardian called ‘The West Is Built on Racism’, which went viral. One of
the responses to that was a tweet exclaiming that it was constructed on
‘patriarchy too’. As fundamental as patriarchy is to the enactment of
empire, this is not strictly true. The West is practised through patriarchy but
is built on White supremacy. It is the expansion into the Americas and the
exploitation of Black and Brown bodies and resources that enabled the West
to come into being. I do not want to make the same mistake as Marx here in
reducing other forms of oppression to the margins. To say that Western
imperialism is practised through patriarchy does not diminish it, rather the

opposite. Just as communism does not necessarily lead to the end of racism,
overthrowing Western imperialism does not automatically dispense with
patriarchy. It is perfectly possible to imagine a revolutionary future free
from the West but governed by patriarchy. Equally important is the truth
that patriarchy could potentially be abolished in a new iteration of Western
imperialism, however unlikely that is.
Racial patriarchy lies at the heart of the new age of empire and tracing its
practice is utterly essential. To do so means understanding that gender plays
out at the intersection with racism in complex ways. For instance, whilst
there is no doubt that women have experienced, and continue to experience,
gendered oppression it is also true that those who are White accrue the
benefits of colonial logic. Like the working classes in the West, women here
are also spared the conditions of the underdeveloped world. For all the
exclusions of women in the middle and ruling classes, they remain
privileged compared to those poorer than them. While we remember the
brave male pioneers of genocide, slavery and colonialism it was Queen
Isabella of Spain who gave the green light to this new world ‘discovery’
and Queen Elizabeth I who launched Britain’s industrial involvement in the
slave trade when she assented to John Hawkins’ mission on the slave ship
Jesus. In the Jim Crow South thousands of Black people were lynched by
mobs of predominantly White men. Not only were many White women
happy to join in the festivities around the strange fruit hanging from the
poplar trees but their false accusations of rape and sexual misconduct
against Black men often triggered the lynching in the first place. In the
infamous murder of Emmett Till – a fourteen-year-old boy – Carolyn
Bryant Donham had the ‘decency’ (or rather, the audacity) six decades later
to admit she had made up her allegations against him.15 Ida B. Wells, the
African American anti-lynching activist, found support from White
feminists of her day entirely absent because they did not view the murder of
predominantly Black men as a feminist issue.16 The failure to see how the
issue of lynching was a result of racial patriarchy, and that the so-called
‘protection’ of White women was a central feature of anti-Black racism,
was a major failing of White feminism at the time.17
If thousands of Black men are being lynched then the impact will
inevitably be felt by Black women, who lose their partners, brothers, family
and friends. An assault aimed disproportionately at Black men is therefore
an attack on Black women, and vice versa. We can see the same process at

work today with mass incarceration and the incredible levels of state
violence that Black men are subject to. It is estimated that there are 1.5
million fewer Black men in the United States than there should be due to
these effects. In Ferguson, the problem is so acute that there are 40 per cent
fewer Black men than women.18 Given this disparity we really should not
be surprised that single parenthood rates are higher in African American
communities, the result being that Black women with children are far more
likely to live in poverty and to be evicted. This is not to mention the police
violence and surveillance that invades communities in order to maintain the
sheer number of African Americans in prison or on probation. Black
women are also caught up in the same processes, and are far more likely to
be arrested, jailed and killed than their White counterparts. In the UK we
see exactly the same processes playing out, with Black men far more likely
to be arrested and far less likely to be employed than their White
counterparts. One of the results of this is a mirroring of higher rates of
single parent households and poverty for Black women.
The assault on Black men is a result of the same racial patriarchy that
subjugates Black women. Kimberlé Crenshaw explains that ‘Black men are
feared, Black women are despised.’19 Europeans enslaved Africans
because they believed we were subhuman, more beast than person. Black
men were seen to be hypermasculine, with no intellect but instead full of
brute force and dangerous sexual energy. In plantation societies like Haiti,
around two-thirds of the enslaved were men, and 80 per cent of the Africans
enslaved by the British were male, because the nature of the labour required
the savage brute.20 Deeply woven into these racist ideas was the brute
sexual force of the beast, something that had to be restrained after
emancipation. Black men were, and remain, very publicly assaulted.
Beaten, whipped, lynched, and gunned down by police. Black women were
also subject to all these crimes, but the primary mode of their oppression
has been behind closed doors. They have been subjected to sexual violence,
either in the house on the plantation or at the hands of the police in the
present day. They have lived with the impact of poverty, evictions and steep
health inequalities. As well as conforming to the public/private sphere split
in terms of how we are oppressed, racial patriarchy also changes traditional
expectations for men and women.
Sexual violence was not reserved for women, but was also meted out to
enslaved African men as away to pacify and control them on the plantation.

Rape and castration were common punishments used to control the savage
beast. The enslaved were prevented from marrying and families were
subject to being sold at the whim of their ‘owners’. During slavery the
nuclear family was essentially legislated against. After emancipation the
idea of the male breadwinner was difficult to maintain due to high male
unemployment, a process that has been exacerbated with mass
incarceration. The right, in both Europe and the United States, criticizes
Black communities for lacking the supposedly ‘correct’ familial structure,
when it is racial patriarchy that makes the supposed ideal more elusive.
In Britain, one of the reasons that Black women were encouraged to
emigrate from the Caribbean to work as nurses was so that White women
could be put back into the home after their taste of work during the War.
While White feminism was bemoaning the role of the housewife, Black
women were being conscripted into the labour force. There was nothing
novel about this. Women were incorporated into plantation society in order
to put them to work. Ideas about gender were transformed when
intersecting with race and were not simply re-enacted on different bodies.
Intersectionality is not about adding up various oppressions, but rather
accounting for the interplay of race, gender, class and other divisions.21
There have been attempts to treat an analysis of racism in intersectionality
as optional but this completely undermines the concept.22 Racism is always
there, an ever-present factor shaping the way we relate to each other and
society. There is no way to understand how patriarchy plays out for Black,
White or Brown women without considering the colonial logic of Western
imperialism. For instance, rape was permissible on the plantations because
Black women were seen as subhuman, not only the property of the master
but chattels who had no rights that needed to be respected. White women
were also subject to rape, but there really is no comparison to the systemic
sexual violence used against the enslaved. Thomas Thistlewood, for
example, was a Brit who worked his way up the slavery system in Jamaica,
starting as an overseer in 1750 and eventually owning his own plantation.
He is notable only because he kept a diary of his barbarous exploits that
remains a testimony to the horrors of slavery. He kept a log of the 3,852
sexual ‘encounters’ he had in his sorry life, the majority of those being with
enslaved Africans.23 The fact that there appears to be debate as to whether
these were consensual tells us just how poor understandings of both race
and gender are in society. Thistlewood documented his subjection of

numerous women to repeated rapes, none of which were considered crimes
because of their racial status as slaves. Women do not escape colonial logic
because of their gender. The same is true of White women, who benefit
from Western imperialism.
The liberalization of gender roles in the West is built on the same benefits
from empire as those which accrued to the working classes. Gendered
inequalities in the underdeveloped world are not a result of backward
attitudes that can be undone with some Western education but are rooted in
the political and economic system. For instance, when child mortality is
high there is a need to have large families because the chances are some of
the children will not survive. The role of women then becomes largely
reproductive, delivering as many children as possible to ensure that the
family can continue. Children are also necessary as labourers because pay
and conditions are so poor. When women’s roles are seen as wholly
reproductive, this intensifies a public–private dichotomy where the man is
seen as the breadwinner, the earner. It should be no surprise then that boys
are more valuable in such societies because they can work rather than
reproduce. The liberalization of gender roles in the West was dependent on
improving child mortality rates because this meant that women could afford
to have fewer children, safe in the knowledge they would likely survive to
adulthood. In the underdeveloped world, where we have seen child
mortality rates decrease in recent decades, there has also been a decrease in
the number of children per woman, reducing the maternity imperative. If
current trends continue, with improved access to health, we will reach ‘peak
child’ in 2057 when the average number of children per woman globally
will be two (down from over five in 1950), meaning that the population will
not continue to grow exponentially.24 It is because of the riches bestowed
on the West from imperialism that women’s equality is at an advanced
stage.
We have not even mentioned how the riches stolen from the
underdeveloped world allow for higher wages, the welfare state and
therefore no need for child labourers to make ends meet. Contrary to
popular belief, girls not being able to go to school in the underdeveloped
world is not the same problem as the gender pay gap, thanks to the differing
ways they experience womanhood, due to the intersection of race and
gender. Women in the West are simply battling for equality of access to the
resources leached from the underdeveloped world, the exploitation of which

is a direct cause of why girls around the globe have poorer access to
schooling.
The New Age of Empire focuses on tracing the colonial logic of the West
and explores how Whiteness is embedded into the political and economic
system. In doing so I have not specifically engaged in how the application
of empire is gendered. Tracing the histories and legacies of racial patriarchy
is central to a complete understanding of Western imperialism, but such a
task would require at least another book, and more likely several. It is my
hope that this book can be useful for taking that vital work forward.

POST-RACIALISM
If the greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing the world he does not
exist, then the proudest achievement of Western imperialism is the delusion
that we have moved beyond racism, that we are in a post-racial society. We
are assured that the real people losing out are not minorities, or those in the
underdeveloped world, but White people who are being left behind by a
changing world. It is multiculturalism, immigration and globalization that
are all conspiring to hold White people down. In this climate the right have
even managed to hijack the legacy of Martin Luther King.
On the forty-seventh anniversary of the infamous ‘I have a dream’ speech
Glenn Beck, a quasi-fascist talk radio host who had previously declared
Obama ‘a racist who hates White culture’, took thousands of mostly White
Tea Party supporters to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, invoking King’s
famous speech.25 He even brought along one of King’s nieces, Alveda
King, to burnish his post-racial credentials. The march was in order to
‘restore the honor’ of the US by turning to God and also to raise money for
a charity providing finance to the children of special forces killed in action.
Alveda King’s address urged the audience to ‘focus not on elections or on
political causes but on honor, on character … not the color of our skin’, as
well as supporting Beck’s vision that ‘there is one human race … we are not
here to divide. I’m about unity.’ She really twisted the post-racial knife
when she announced the reason she was speaking was to ‘honor’ her
uncle.26 Malcolm X denounced the 1963 March on Washington as a
‘farce’, a ‘circus with clowns and all’, due to its integrationist ‘love thy

enemy’ approach.27 After this debacle he is probably teasing a furious
King with taunts of ‘I told you so.’
King’s speech must be one of the most abused political statements of all
time. A militant campaigner for racial justice who was widely unpopular
when he died, has been transformed into the cuddly uncle (Tom) of the
nation, used to ease the conscience of White America. The mechanism for
this whitewashing of King is primarily the most famous soundbite from his
dream that his ‘four little children will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character’.28 Rather than viewing this comment in the context of trying to
solve racial inequality, it has been turned on its head to avoid addressing the
very issues that King spent his life fighting against.
The yearnings for the good old days of empire or Jim Crow could be
used to indicate that there has been a fundamental shift, that we actually are
in a post-racial moment thanks to all the progress that has been made over
the last fifty years. Nothing could be further from the truth. Critical Race
Theory (CRT) emerged in the United States in the late eighties precisely
because those involved in key civil rights reforms realized just how limited
they were.29 So successful was the civil rights movement that the United
States now has affirmative action, something unimaginable in Britain. But
for all the successes, and the likes of Jay-Z having too much money and too
little sense to work with the NFL, the nation remains a beacon of racial
inequality. Segregation is more of a problem today than after the landmark
Brown vs Board of Education decision; poverty is still a blight on Black
communities; the police continue to gun down the Black population; and
there are new problems like mass incarceration that have made apartheidera South Africa the correct analogy for the US race problem.30 Britain is
no better, with stark racial inequalities in every area of social life; police
brutality and abuse of power; steep economic differences; health
inequalities; and unemployment.31 If you want one statistic to tell you the
scale of racial injustice in Britain then the fact that over half of the juvenile
prison population is from an ethnic minority should send shudders down
your spine.32 It is not just that we are making no strides towards freedom
but as Derrick Bell, one of the founders of CRT explained, ‘what we
designate as “racial progress” is not a solution to that problem. It is a
regeneration of the problem in a particularly perverse form.’33 By creating

enough opportunity for a Black middle class, and dare I say Black
professors, to exist we have given fuel to the lie that everyone can make it if
they would only just try hard enough and ignore the chips on their
shoulders. This of course is utter nonsense for those of us discriminated
against in the West and an even more ludicrous suggestion if applied to the
underdeveloped world. The purpose of this book is to put the final nail in
the coffin of the post-racial narrative, illustrating just how fundamental the
racist logic of empire remains in shaping the world.

1

I’m White, Therefore I Am
‘Of course the Enlightenment was racist,’ I responded to Emily Maitlis on
the BBC television show Newsnight, when asked about the intellectual
movement that underpins Western society. It was 2017 and I was debating
the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) student union’s
campaign demanding that ‘the majority of philosophers’ taught on their
courses should be from Africa and Asia. Rather than questioning why the
intellectual production of a narrow parade of dead White men was ever
deemed a suitable basis of knowledge to understand the regions, the
students’ mild demands caused an uproar in sections of the British media
and the university establishment.1 The head of philosophy at SOAS called
the demands ‘rather ridiculous’2 and a slew of right-wing commentators
lined up to decry the ‘crackpot’ head of the union and the generation of
‘snowflake students’ who were too wrapped up in their security blankets of
political correctness to understand the real world.3 The backlash against the
SOAS movement was part of a wider reaction to the student-led movements
that asked ‘Why is my curriculum White?’ and campaigned to ‘decolonize
the university’.4 As one of the founders of the first Black Studies degree in
Europe I was there to give a counterpoint to the tired Eurocentric dogma
that cherishes the Enlightenment as though it were holy.
The Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries emerged
from Western Europe and the United States and is the intellectual basis of

the modern world. Condemning the sacred foundations of Western
knowledge as racist did not go down well with either the establishment or a
large segment of the Twitter commentariat, but I wasn’t exaggerating for
greater impact. My words were simply an honest and indisputable
assessment of the intellectual movement. In his criticism of the SOAS
students, my adversary in the debate Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of
the University of Buckingham and author of numerous biographies of
British prime ministers, accidentally hit the nail on the head. I couldn’t have
put it better myself – he said that ‘we need to understand the world as it was
and not to rewrite history as some might like it to have been.’ 5 If we were
to do this then we would understand the Enlightenment as the racist
intellectual project it was, and how culpable the ideas it produced are in
creating the unjust world we inhabit.
These debates are not simply academic. The world can only ever be as
equal as the knowledge it is built upon. The Enlightenment emerged at a
time when Europe had laid waste to much of the world through genocide
and slavery and was asserting its dominance through colonial expansion.
The arrogance of its thinkers was only possible due to the violence of the
first version of Western empire. The ‘great thinkers’ found themselves on
top of the world as a result and theorized about their apparent supremacy.
One of their purposes was to provide the justification for the genocide,
slavery and colonialism that were utterly indispensable to Western progress.
The Enlightenment was pivotal in the shift into the new age of empire: it
provided the universalist, supposedly rational and scientific framework of
knowledge that maintained colonial logic. It is heresy to question the dead
White men because their bodies of work lie at the foundation of the current
unjust social order. To push them aside would lead to the system crashing
down. Understanding how the Enlightenment and racism cannot be
separated is the first step in truly appreciating that colonial logic still
governs the world today.

YOU KANT BE SERIOUS
In the history of European thought we are presented with all the positive
aspects of the sainted philosophers and none of the negative. There is
perhaps no better example of this Whitewashing of the record than

Immanuel Kant. I never realized how cherished an icon Kant was until I
pointed out he was racist on television. Apparently, criticizing Kant is the
academic equivalent of questioning the morality of Jesus. His Critique of
Pure Reason is offered not only as the basis for anti-racism but as the
atonement for the sins of all mankind. I was surprised to find out that so
many held the man and his work so dear, or that they had even read it. What
is abundantly clear is that few have read Kant’s extensive writing on race,
where his racism is simply a matter of historical fact.
Even a scant review of his work would reveal Kant as a violent and ugly
racist who saw ‘humanity at its greatest perfection in the race of the
Whites’. Kant’s writing career spanned the second half of the eighteenth
century, after the genocide of the natives in the Americas and during the
peak of the transatlantic slave trade. He generously acknowledged that ‘the
yellow [Asian] Indians do have a meagre talent’ but asserted that the
‘Negroes are far below them and at the lowest point are a part of the
American peoples’.6 His belief that the ‘Negro’ was ‘lazy, indolent and
dawdling’7 was not just used to disparage Black people but also to justify
enslavement. Kant even used his pseudo-scientific approach to advise the
most efficient way to beat the ‘indolent’ Negroes to get them to be
productive labourers. He explained that it was best to
use a split bamboo cane instead of a whip, so that the Negro will
suffer a great deal of pains (because of the Negro’s thick skin, he
would not be racked with sufficient agonies through a whip) but
without dying … the blood needs to find a way out of the Negro’s
thick skin to avoid festering.8
Prior to writing this book I had always known that the idea you can separate
Kant’s racism from his intellectual output is nonsense, but to see it so
clearly illustrated in his own words is shocking. The devil really is in the
detail. Not only did he use his ‘intellect’ to devise ways to inflict torture on
Africans, his work was some of the most influential in creating the modern
idea of so-called races and White supremacy.9
He outlined four different races based on biology and climate: White; the
Negro; the Hun (Mongol or Kalmuck); and the Hindu or Hindustani.10 He
detested Native Americans the most but thought they were a ‘Hunnish race
… not yet fully acclimated’.11 For Kant, geography was the key

determining factor in racial categorizations. He argued that all the
‘inhabitants of the hottest zones are, without exceptions, idle’.12 These
declarations about the different races were not separate from his moral
philosophy but an integral part of it. For Kant, through ‘moral geography’ it
was possible to grasp the true nature of what it meant to be human. His
pursuit was to find an ‘inner nature upon which to found moral
existence’.13 But, for him, this was not possible without the exterior of
moral geography, because he thought the climate shaped the extent to which
the different races possessed the talents necessary for moral development.
Importantly, these climates produce biological adaptions that become fixed
as different races even if people move to other parts of the world.
Kant’s explanation of how ‘blackness’ emerges is the perfect example of
his racial logic:
The growth of the spongy parts of the body had to increase in a hot
and humid climate. This growth produced a thick, turned up nose
and thick, fatty lips. The skin had to be oily, not only to lessen the
too heavy perspiration, but also to ward off the harmful absorption
of the foul, humid air. The profusion of iron particles, which are
otherwise found in the blood of every human being, and, in this
case, are precipitated in the net-shaped substance through the
evaporation of the phosphoric acid (which explains why all Negroes
stink), is the cause of the blackness that shines through the
epidermis.14
These supposed biological differences are used to explain why Black people
are incapable of being fully and rationally human. In terms of attempting to
understand reason and moral existence, Kant writes off those who are not
White. We’ve already discounted ‘Negroes’, and remember he saw Native
Americans as even less useful. Of the ‘Hindus’ Kant argued that they can be
‘cultivated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences.
They never achieve the level of abstract concepts.’15 It is for this reason
that Kant focused his discovery of the state of rational human nature in
Europe; he firmly believed that ‘the White race possess all the motivating
forces and talents in itself; therefore we must examine it more closely.’16 If
ever you need a quote that explains the Eurocentric curriculum you will not
find a better one. We have only covered a few of Kant’s pronouncements on

race but already it is abundantly clear that they are not just racist, but
absurd.
In order to defend his racial theory of climate Kant produced theories
about the blood of ‘Negroes’. He also believed that ‘Hindus’ had a lower
body temperature and therefore cold hands and that the ‘long slitty, half
closed eyes’ of the ‘Hun race’ came from living in the snow and then
migrating to East Asia.17 His declarations about the races were supposedly
based on evidence but he never collected any of this first-hand and relied on
the accounts of Europeans who actually ventured out to meet the savages.
One of the most dishonest defences of Kant that is also used to defend the
rest of the racist Enlightenment thinkers is when we are told that the
‘evidence available’ to him at the time supported his racist theories.18 This
is vitally important because it maintains the delusion that science is based
on logic and reason. But as the evidence changes, so does the science, and
therefore Kant was just a hostage to his time. We see this argument even
today in the idea that advances in genetic science are all we need to undo
racism; we have the proof that race is not real so we can all move on.19 But
we should reject this notion out of hand. There was plenty of ‘evidence
available’ that directly contradicted Kant’s ideas, he just chose to select the
accounts that suited his twisted agenda. Towards the end of his career in
1788 he wrote an article where he specifically chose to dismiss the claims
of abolitionist James Ramsay, who had spent time with those of African
descent and could testify to our humanity, and elevated the accounts of the
pro-slavery James Tobin, who stressed our laziness and stupidity.20 What
made this even more remarkable is that Kant’s work is part of his response
to a challenge from the anthropologist Georg Forster, who had first-hand
experience of the supposed savages and criticized Kant for his use of
colonial stereotypes.21 Forster was interested in seeing whether Kant’s
theories could offer a notion of humanity to the enslaved, and Kant
responded by advancing pro-slavery arguments.22
His racial philosophy was not based on evidence, but a particular – racist
– view of the world, which produced an absurd racial theory. But it gets
worse: at times Kant’s ideas cross the threshold into the ludicrous. His
racial theory was so universal that he theorized it reached ‘as far as into
space’. He genuinely supposed that ‘the intelligence of creatures on
different planets depends on the distance of the planet from the centre of

gravity: the closer the planet is to the sun, the mentally lazier its
inhabitants.’23 Kant’s pronouncements are so wrong-headed and bizarre
that it should make us question his entire intellectual output. Trying to
salvage the Critique of Pure Reason from the wreckage of his racial theory
is like looking for coherent moral philosophy on a far-right conspiracy
YouTube channel.
Nevertheless, Kant still has an array of defenders who contort themselves
into various untenable positions to stand by their man. The most obvious
example of doublespeak I came across was a defence in an academic work
of his racial theory on the grounds that it ‘is not racist simply because it
claims that there are superior and inferior races’. Apparently, a theory is
only racist if it relies on a ‘culpable neglect of evidence … or expresses or
encourages contempt or disregard for people because of the race they are
alleged to belong to’.24 The fact that Kant’s theory of race is guilty of both
of these is lost on the authors. Most defenders of Kant avoid trying to make
excuses for his obviously racist theory and focus on his other works,
essentially arguing that his universalist moral philosophy eventually makes
him an outspoken critic of slavery and colonialism.
It is certainly true that in his latest writings Kant condemns colonization.
In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals he says that ‘even if a
“superior” society encounters “savages” it is not justified in settling on their
land, even with the motivation of spreading civilization.’25 But to pretend
this makes him some kind of anti-racist takes a special kind of shortsightedness. Kant came to the realization that non-Europeans have rights
that should be respected, but this is perfectly compatible with his racial
theory. In fact, as late as 1788, just a few years before the Metaphysics of
Morals, he reaffirms that the ‘Negro … holds the lowest of all remaining
levels by which we have designated the different races’.26 These two
positions are in no way contradictory; it is entirely possible to believe that
apes should have dominion over their habitat and be free from the gun of
the poacher. It is also reminiscent of the uncomfortable reality that, during
the Victorian period in Britain, black-and-white minstrel shows were a
central part of the British abolitionist movement. ‘White men in blackface
delivered anti-racist speeches’ from the stage in performances that criticized
slavery whilst embracing the stereotypes that made it possible. If even

avowed abolitionists upheld racial hierarchies, this demonstrates just how
inescapable they were, and remain, to understanding the world.27
Kant is just one philosopher, but he is an important starting point because
his work has all the ingredients that are so potent in the regimes of
knowledge that underpin and maintain the current unjust social order. His
concept of so-called universal human rights also laid the foundation for the
United Nations and the European Union. He is so vigorously defended
because he is one of the most important architects of the new age of empire.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AS WHITE IDENTITY
POLITICS
It is no coincidence that the architects of the Enlightenment were White
men who had very exclusive views about race, class and gender. In the
effort to deflect from the movement’s inherent problems there has been a
move away from seeing the Enlightenment as a unified whole. We are
directed to the English, Scottish, French and American versions and the
debates within and between them.28 But the West is founded on collusion
beyond national borders while pretending to maintain nationalist
sovereignty. Intellectual production is certainly no exception, and while
there has obviously been plenty of quite heated debate, there is consensus
on the key issues. No concept is more important to the West than race, so it
is no surprise that on the central premises the dead White men who
represent the foundation stones of knowledge sang from the same sordid
hymn sheet.
Racial science arose as a discipline to explore the superiority of the
White race, and it is telling that basically all the key Enlightenment thinkers
were architects of its intellectual framework. Voltaire (in France) believed
that ‘none but the blind can doubt that the Whites, the Negroes, the
Albinoes [sic], the Hottentots, the Laplanders, the Chinese, the Americans,
are races entirely different.’29 Hegel (in Germany) thought that ‘Negroes
are to be regarded as a race of children who remain immersed in their state
of naïveté. They are sold and let themselves be sold without any reflection
on the rights or wrongs of the matter.’30 John Locke (in seventeenthcentury England) believed that ‘Negroes’ were the product of African

women sleeping with apes and therefore that we were subhuman.31 David
Hume (in Scotland) was ‘apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the
other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be
naturally inferior to the Whites’.32 One of the architects of the Greatest
Democracy on Earth™, Thomas Jefferson (in the United States) believed
that Black people ‘whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by
time and circumstances, are inferior to the Whites in the endowments of
both mind and body’.33 All agreed that race was real and defined in
biology that determined the extent to which a people could claim full
humanity. The racial hierarchy that the Enlightenment produced is best
summed up by the botanist Linnaeus’ (who has a university in Sweden
named after him) classification of the human species:
Europaeus albus: ingenious, white, sanguine, governed by law;
Americanus rubescus: happy with his lot, liberty loving, tanned and
irascible, governed by custom; Asiaticus luridus: yellow,
melancholy, governed by opinion; Afer niger: crafty, lazy, careless,
black, governed by the arbitrary will of the master.34
White in this metric is right and even Johann von Herder, who was first
Kant’s student and later his rival, and is often ‘either quoted … in defence
of the struggle against racialism or ignored’,35 presented the same beliefs
(albeit more poetically):
the perfect human form found a site on the coast of the
Mediterranean, where it was capable of uniting with the intellect,
and displaying all the charms of terrestrial and celestial beauty to the
mind, as well as to the eye … Here figures were conceived and
executed, which no admirer of Circassian beauty, no Indian or
Cashmirian artist, could have invented. The human form ascended
Olympus, and clothed itself in divine beauty.36
Certainly there were differences in how each of these esteemed scholars
understood what exactly race was. Whether or not the different races were
from the same original source was the first dispute. Polygenists believed
that there was more than one original man and that the races were
completely distinct, whereas monogenists believed there to be one original

source of humanity, but that White people represented the most developed,
advanced incarnation of man. Voltaire and Hume were polygenists, who
could not conceive of the lesser races having any relation to the perfection
of Whiteness. The word mulatto was applied to those of mixed heritage
because scholars such as Voltaire believed they were a ‘bastard race’
produced by the same type of inter-species breeding as the mule, the
offspring of a horse and a donkey.37 In perhaps the most obvious example
of these great intellectuals ignoring all available evidence, Voltaire was
among a number of his contemporaries who argued that just like mules,
‘mulattoes’ were infertile because they were the combination of two
different species.
Whilst the monogenists believed that all races were part of a broader
human family, this did not mean that their concepts were any less racist.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, one of the most notorious racial
theorists, believed in the single human family and that ‘if Africans were
imported to Europe, their colour would gradually change and become
“perhaps as White as the native” of Europe.’38 Later, this idea was picked
up by the monogenist-in-chief, Charles Darwin, who incorporated it into his
theory of evolution. To support this hypothesis Darwin was not the first to
cite the ‘considerable evidence showing that in the Southern states the
house-slaves of the third generation present a markedly different
appearance from the field slaves’.39 Apparently these theorists overlooked
the rape of the enslaved by slave-masters as a far more logical explanation
for the successively lighter skin tones. This is surprising not only because it
is fairly obvious, but because it would have put a nail in the coffin of the
polygenist notion that ‘mulattoes’ could not breed. But that is precisely the
point: whichever side of the debate these so-called intellectuals fell on, they
were jointly contributing to the same cause. Buffon believed in shared
descent and also that slavery was justified on the grounds that ‘Negroes’
were ‘so naturally lazy’ that they were in a ‘violent state’ if not subject to
forced labour.40 Darwin’s theory of evolution was the perfect, supposedly
scientific scheme to prove the superiority of Whites. Man evolved from
apes, and Africans, with their differently shaped bodies and skulls, were
evidence of the chain of human progression. The search for the so-called
missing link between man and ape was in reality a discussion of which
African people most closely resembled monkeys. Distinct races observed
from supposedly scientific evidence are a key feature of White supremacy.

These ideas permeate the Enlightenment and bled into the Eugenics
movement that gave the theoretical basis for the Holocaust. There is a
reason that Adolf Eichmann, who was executed for crimes against
humanity, ‘appealed to Kant in justifying his behaviour’.41
Racial science was not some marginal concern at the corners of European
philosophy, it was an integral component of its intellectual framework. See
how coldly Darwin justifies the imperial conquest by the West that cost the
lives of tens of millions:
When civilized nations come into contact with barbarians the
struggle is short … New diseases and vices are highly destructive;
and it appears that in every nation a new disease causes much death,
until those who are most susceptible to its destructive influence are
gradually weeded out; and so it may be with the evil effects from
spirituous liquors, as well as with the unconquerably strong taste for
them shown by so many savages.42
Darwin was simply building off the established intellectual order. Hegel had
already declared the natives of the Americas a ‘vanishing, feeble race’, and
asserted that ‘when brought into contact with brandy and guns these
savages become extinct’.43 Whilst John Stuart Mill had proclaimed that
‘despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians,
provided the end be their improvement’.44
To think rationally is what separates man from beast, and the whole basis
of the Enlightenment is that rational thought is the sole possession of the
White man. Even the idea of bringing light to the world – that Europe is the
beacon to shine its torch on the dark and savage corners of the globe – is
instructive. For, whatever their disagreements, the dead White men were
unified in the belief that Europe was the foundation through which
knowledge was spread. As Herder explained, ‘The Negro has invented
nothing for the European … From the region of well-formed people we
have derived our religion, our arts, our sciences, and the whole frame of our
cultivation and humanity.’45 This is nothing short of White identity
politics, racist propaganda to boost the collective self-esteem of Europe.
The truth is that Europe was not superior to the rest of the world in the
fifteenth century. If anything, the only part of the world in a Dark Age
during that period was Europe, and it was only through violence and the

murder of hundreds of millions that the West established its superiority.
Imperial violence created the blank slate, the intellectual terra nullius
(empty land) from which the Enlightenment thinkers emerged with their
claims to a unique form of rationality and understanding.46 Had the world
not been built in the image of White supremacy the racial intellectual
framework of the Enlightenment would have been impossible. It was selfevident that the natives of the Americas were inferior because they had
been exterminated. ‘Negroes’ were obviously closer to livestock than
humans because they were enslaved. Indians had nothing noteworthy to
contribute because the West had already plundered their societies. It is from
the rubble of colonial slaughter that supposedly universal reason emerges.
Enlightenment thinkers claimed that to be rational, to think, to be human,
was to be European. In other words, ‘I’m White, therefore I am’, and the
imperial world at their feet was all the empirical evidence they needed to
justify this claim. To sustain this belief, the truth about knowledge, science
and reason had to first be erased.
Kant once noted Hume’s challenge for ‘anyone to cite a simple example
in which a Negro has shown talents’, arguing that ‘not a single one was ever
found who presented anything great in art or science or any other
praiseworthy quality’.47 In the twenty-first century it should not be
necessary to offer a corrective to such racist fantasies. Unfortunately, I have
been involved in far too many conversations with supposedly educated
people to know that the idea that Europe produced science and reason is all
too alive and well. So let’s take up Hume’s challenge and take it further.
Not only can we find plenty of examples of talented ‘Negroes’, but the
foundation of the knowledge we have today lies almost exclusively outside
the West.

DECOLONIZING KNOWLEDGE
At the end of the fifteenth century Europe had been largely isolated from
the rest of the world for centuries, ever since the collapse of the Roman
Empire. The region was in a Dark Age dominated by religious dogma and
feudal repression, and aside from the crusades into the Muslim world had
little thought of, or interest in, conquering the globe. This was the age when
Christian beliefs supposedly explained the universe, and located the earth at

the centre of Creation. Such beliefs limited the European imagination, most
notably the idea that the world was flat and that to travel over the horizon
would lead to falling into the abyss. As I will discuss, 1492 marked the
beginning of the West, but importantly it also coincided with the fall of the
empire that Europe most directly drew its intellectual tradition from.
Columbus’s maiden voyage was delayed until the Spanish had conquered
Al-Andalus and driven the Moorish Empire out of Spain.48 For the 700
years prior to this, a large part of the south of the country had been ruled by
a Muslim empire that stretched out of North Africa. In fact, by the early
eighth century the Muslims occupied over 5 million square miles of land, an
area larger than the Roman Empire.49 Only once they were defeated could
the West begin its path to global domination.
By all accounts the Moorish occupation of southern Spain brought
unparalleled levels of progress and development to the region. Prior to the
Moors it had been ruled by the Visigoths who were so brutal and barbaric
that the locals welcomed their foreign invaders as liberators. More than half
the population had recently (707–9) died in a famine. When their Muslim
saviours arrived they brought with them eastern ‘sophistication’ including
the development of canals, irrigation techniques and farming expertise as
well as relative luxuries like toothpaste, hairstyling and cutlery.50 Córdoba
became a centre of knowledge and learning under the Moors and in the
tenth century a university famous for astronomy was founded in the
legendary Mezquita. In her book The Map of Knowledge historian Violet
Moller gives us an indication of just how far advanced the Muslim world
was compared to Europe during this period:
twelfth-century scholar Bernard of Chartres [France] was proud of
the twenty-four books he owned, but, in 1258, the city of Baghdad
boasted thirty-six public libraries and over a hundred book
merchants. The largest medieval library in Christian Europe, at the
Abbey of Cluny, contained a few hundred books, while the royal
library of Córdoba had 400,000.51
Throughout the Muslim Empire learning flourished and cities like Baghdad
competed for the honour of being the capital of knowledge production.
Ophthalmology, medicine and astronomy all thrived. In ninth-century
Baghdad scientists studying at Caliph Al-Ma’um’s ‘House of Wisdom’

could calculate the circumference of the world to within 400 miles of
modern measurements using astronomy. The algorithms that determine so
much of twenty-first century life are named after the Persian scholar AlKhwarizmi, and for the concept of zero we owe a debt to Hindu intellectual
Bramahgupta’s Siddhanta, which was written in the seventh century. These
are simple truths in direct contradiction of Enlightenment thinkers’ ideas
that only Europeans were capable of abstract thought. So central was the
Muslim world to scholarship that Christian scholar Paul Alvarus of
Córdoba lamented in the ninth century that ‘all talented young Christians
read and study with enthusiasm Arab books; they gather immense libraries
at great expense … they have forgotten their own language’.52
At the heart of the intellectual tradition in the Muslim world was the
acquisition and writing of books. After the fall of the Roman Empire there
was little left of the once-great library in Alexandria or of the key texts
essential to preserving knowledge. It was scholars in the Muslim world who
went about securing and translating the classic texts as well as adding to
them with new discoveries. Arabic became the language of knowledge until
the fifteenth century. Once Europe asserted its dominion this was no longer
allowed to be the case. Erasure of non-Europeans was at the core of the
Western project in terms of both actual slaughter and symbolic destruction.
After Granada was conquered by the Spanish, the powerful Cardinal
Ximenéz de Cisneros, in his position as part of the Spanish Inquisition,
organized a book burning on an almost unimaginable scale. In the city’s
main square almost 2 million Arabic books were incinerated because he
thought that to ‘destroy the written word is to deprive a culture of its soul,
and eventually its identity’.53 Although the books were burnt, their content
was not always lost. Latin translations had been made to Europeanize the
knowledge, the Arabic names changed to Latin ones. Ibn Sina, an eleventhcentury Persian scientist credited with being the founder of modern
medicine, became Avicenna. Abbas al-Zahrawi, who pioneered surgical
techniques in Córdoba in the tenth century, was transformed into Abulcasis.
By burning books and libraries and Whitewashing history, Western
intellectual thought was able to start from a clean slate of White supremacy.
It is likely that the Enlightenment scholars genuinely believed they had
inherited their knowledge solely from Europe, given the source material
they were working from.

Tracing the history of knowledge through the Muslim world is important
but also has limitations. For a start we could also explore the knowledge
produced in the rest of Asia: China has had unbroken civilization for
thousands of years. Then there’s the indigenous knowledges of the
Americas and Australia. The other major limitation is that this narrative
ends up leading back to Greece, where the texts that the Islamic scholars
were translating and building upon were largely produced. We could
therefore add in the Muslim world and still end up with a Eurocentric
foundation of knowledge. In The Map of Knowledge, from which I have
drawn many of the above examples, it is exactly this intellectual geography
that is reproduced. This is made worse by the exclusion of Timbuktu in
what is now Mali, which was at the heart of Muslim scholarship from as
early as the twelfth century when the University of Sankore was founded.
By the sixteenth century the university had grown to teach 25,000 students
and the library was one of the largest in the world, with hundreds of
thousands of manuscripts.54 The erasure of Africa from intellectual history
continues in the book when the only Egyptian city that appears in it is
Alexandria during its occupation by the Roman Empire. After reading it
you could be forgiven for thinking that Egypt played a negligible part in the
history of knowledge, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Prior to Greek civilization, Egypt reigned as the centre of progress for
thousands of years. The Greeks learned from the Egyptians and even their
‘cult of the Gods’.55 Egypt was undoubtedly well advanced in science
before Greece was. The pyramids alone are testimony to the civilization’s
scientific achievements. In school we learn that Archimedes discovered pi
in the third century BC, but if you divide half the perimeter of the Great
Pyramid of Giza, built over 2,000 years earlier, by its height, the number
you come to is an approximation of pi. It is clear that the level of
development in Egypt far outstripped anything in Europe at the time: even
scholars in early Europe agreed that the Egyptians, and before them the
Ethiopians, produced developed civilizations whilst Europe was in a stage
of ‘deep barbarism’.56 Just as Europeans Whitewashed the Muslims out of
their intellectual history, so the Greeks did the Egyptians. The most
excruciating example of this was Imhotep (c. 2700–2611), the great
Egyptian scientist and one of the earliest founders of medicine, who became
worshipped as Asclepius by the Greeks. Historical Whitewashing would be
bad enough, but in the 1999 film The Mummy Imhotep is the character they

choose to raise from the dead, and depicts an evil monster who wants to
rule the world. Imagine watching a movie where Aristotle comes back to
life to destroy the world and you have the scale of intellectual sacrilege we
are dealing with. As if defaming a dead scholar was not enough, the film
also managed to reproduce the commonplace racist depiction of the ancient
Egyptians by Hollywood.
Imhotep was played in the film by Arnold Vosloo, an actor who grew up
in apartheid South Africa. Usually, ancient Egyptians are misrepresented as
the Arabs who dominate the area today. In Vosloo’s case they browned-up
an actor classified as White by the apartheid regime. As I will discuss in
Chapter 2, Egypt is sealed off from ‘Africa proper’ in the intellectual
imagination. We are told its inhabitants were not part of Black Africa but
rather the Mediterranean, so that it can be annexed into the Western
tradition of intellectual thought. The truth is that though the country, and
North Africa, is now predominantly Arab this was not the case at the time
of the ancient Egyptian civilization. The Arab invasion of North Africa
occurred in the seventh century, in the same move that saw the Moors take
over southern Spain. In his classic work The African Origin of Civilization,
African intellectual Cheik Anta Diop forensically delivers the evidence in
terms of sculptures, artwork and history that the ancient Egyptians were
Black. He explains that ‘whenever the Egyptians use the word “Black”
(khem) it is to designate themselves or their country: Kemit, land of the
Blacks.’57 He also traces Egyptian civilization back to Ethiopians who
migrated north. The reality that maths, science and medicine were being
practised across Africa centuries before the Greeks imagined any of them to
be possible is undeniable. By focusing on the written word recorded in
books we have ignored the truth that ‘Africa is home to mathematical
bodies of knowledge so vital they provide the bedrock of modern
computing’.58 In her excellent book Don’t Touch My Hair, Emma Dabiri
uses the patterns encoded in African hairstyles as evidence of complex
mathematical formulas that have been used on the continent for centuries.
For instance, in braiding patterns widely used in Africa for centuries we can
see a representation of infinity. This may not sound particularly important,
but the concept of infinity was so far beyond the comprehension of the
Greeks it was associated with ‘paradox and pathology’.59 In 1877,
European scholar Georg Cantor tried to represent the concept but was
denounced as a heretic and ended his days in an asylum. His treatment,

even in the so-called age of reason, harks back to how scientists were
treated in fifth-century Greece: ‘In 415, a mob of Christian zealots
murdered the philosopher and mathematician Hypatia. Believing her to be a
witch they flayed her alive with oyster shells.’60 Whilst infinity is
commonplace in traditional African hairstyles, village design and clothing,
it took centuries for the West to catch up.
It was also not as though the Enlightenment thinkers needed to go far to
find evidence of Black intelligence: there was plenty of it, they simply
chose to ignore it. In direct response to Hume’s challenge that Kant used as
evidence for Black inferiority we can present Thomas Fuller, an enslaved
African in eighteenth-century Virginia. He was so talented in mathematics
that he could ‘accurately count the hairs in a cow’s tail, or the number of
grains in bushels of wheat or flax seed’ doing ‘complex astronomy-related
calculations that today would be done by computers’.61 Fuller imported his
mathematical genius into the United States from his education in West
Africa before he was stolen into slavery. He was just one of countless
examples of Black excellence that Europeans were well aware of but which
were always discounted, interpreted as some kind of exception that proved
the rules of racism. For example, Phyllis Wheatley was taken into slavery
around 1760, but rose to become a world-renowned poet. Still, Thomas
Jefferson discounted her talent, arguing that it was impossible to ‘find that a
black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw an
elementary trait of painting or sculpture … Religion, indeed, has produced a
Phyllis Wheatley; but it could not produce a poet.’62 Of course Wheatley
was just parroting White skills through her rigorous training, rather than
being capable of actually producing poetry. In direct conflict to everything
we are told about Western science, time and again the great thinkers of the
time ignored the clear empirical evidence around them in order to protect
the superiority that lay at the heart of their White identity politics.
In Jefferson’s case this was particularly egregious given that he not only
owned enslaved Africans but subjected one of his ‘property’ to long-term
sexual abuse. Jefferson’s so-called relationship with Sally Hemings began
when she was fourteen and his abuse of her continued for years. She bore
him several children, who were freed, but Hemings remained Jefferson’s
captive until he died. Jefferson’s ‘affection’ for Hemings and his children
did not dissuade him from his White supremacist philosophy.
Notwithstanding his obsession with Hemings, he asserted the ‘superior

beauty’ of the White race; that Black people gave off a very strong and
disagreeable odour; and that Black women preferred sleeping with orangutans than with Black men.63 These ideas were ideological, and the
available evidence was twisted to fit his diseased view of the world.
As should by now be obvious, the central thesis of the Enlightenment –
that knowledge and reason spreads out from Europe – is entirely bogus. It is
not an exaggeration to say that Europe is responsible for very few genuinely
new ideas and made its advances by building on an inheritance of
knowledge derived from other parts of the world. Science, maths, medicine,
reason and even political organization all have their roots in the world
outside the West, while Europe had a scant awareness of these concepts.
Even racism was not a novel European idea. As I will discuss in Chapter 2,
the Arab slave trade pre-dates Europe’s, and when Columbus started
enslaving the natives of the Americas it was for markets in the Muslim
world. As we have seen in this chapter, Western racial science codified the
idea of White supremacy based on biological superiority to the so-called
lesser races. But in the fourteenth century the Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun
was hundreds of years ahead of the dead White men in declaring that
Africans ‘have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are
quite similar to those of dumb animals’.64 Before we get too carried away,
although the West may not have birthed the idea of racism, it found its
prosperity by exploiting the concept to its fullest.
On the one hand, it is important to destroy the notion of the
Enlightenment as some unique achievement of Western civilization, to
recognize that it was built on a foundation of global knowledge. But we
should not give up on the idea that it is an utterly transcendent intellectual
tradition upon which the success of the West is built. It may be exclusive,
wrong and racist but that is simply the nature of the West. Without the racial
intellectual framework inherited from the Enlightenment the current version
of Western empire would be impossible. Decolonizing the curriculum has to
mean more than being a bit critical of Kant or adding some diversity to
reading lists. If, and this is a big if, we want to build an anti-racist society
we need to completely rethink the underlying basis of the knowledge that
produces the world.

WHITE WORLD SUPREMACY

The global economy today is built in the image of White supremacy that
was so neatly outlined by the Enlightenment thinkers. Africa is the poorest
continent on earth, while the countries with White majorities are the richest.
We only need to look at Linnaeus’ ladder of the species to understand the
political and economic system. These debates are not simply about the past,
because the Enlightenment shapes our present: a society can only be as fair
as the knowledge it is built on, and established Western intellectual thought
is rooted in racism. The most frustrating aspect of the way in which the
Enlightenment is used is that we are told to believe ‘it is reason that will
enable us to solve the problem’, if only we can just shine light on the
relevant evidence.65 Absent from this propaganda is the reality that
Western concepts of reason can never be the solution to the problem of
racism they helped to create and continue to maintain. Ignorance was never
the issue: Western reason is based on White supremacy, the idea that those
at the top of the racial hierarchy have the monopoly on knowledge. Freeing
ourselves from the very nature of this intellectual framework is essential.
One of the main areas used to illustrate the positive contribution of the
Western intellectual framework is the arena of human rights, which is
deeply invested in the Enlightenment tradition.66 Key documents like the
US Bill of Rights and the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of
Man are celebrated as the sacred texts of our freedoms, which are
guaranteed by the human rights agenda. It is in this narrative that Locke,
Hume, Kant, Voltaire and Hegel are applauded for their heroic theories of
individual rights and freedom. The only problem is that you cannot separate
their theories of rights from their racism, which goes to the core of their
intellectual output.
A case in point is the American framework of rights. All men were
apparently created equal – apart from Black men, of course. When the
founding fathers were designing the Bill of Rights at the 1787
Constitutional Convention in the newly formed United States, they came
upon the issue of representation for states based on population. The
Southern states wanted to ensure that their slave populations could be used
to give them representational power in the new nation. But a beast could
obviously not be taken to be equal to a White person, and could certainly
never vote. Therefore it was agreed that each of the enslaved would account
for three-fifths of a White full human being. A dissenting voice from
Massachusetts’ Elbridge Gerry objected ‘why should their representation be

increased to the southward on account of the number of slaves, [rather] than
[on the basis of] horses or oxen to the north?’67
It was not only race that limited rights in the United States:68 full rights
were granted solely to those who were wealthy, White and male. It should
be no surprise that it was only that same group who were able to access
university education at the time, where they created a framework of
knowledge and rights that only their kind could enjoy. Yale, one of the most
prestigious universities in the world, takes its name from Elihu Yale, a slave
trader who also enriched himself in colonial India. There is perhaps no
better representative of the unbreakable links to colonial violence and
knowledge, but Yale is by no means alone.
The racist nature of inclusion in democracy is not incidental; it was
embedded in those who were creating the concept of rights. Full
participation in humanity was reserved for White and wealthy men while
everyone else’s rights were contingent. We could presume that extending
rights only to White people was based on the erroneous assumption that
other so-called races were not human, and that now that those notions have
been (largely) cast aside these universal rights can be applied to all the
human family. While that might be a comforting idea, it is a dangerous one,
and ignores the basic framework of both knowledge and the political and
economic system in the last 200 years.
When the Enlightenment is presented as the architect of the antiimperialist movement it is on the basis that the movement eventually
accepted that freedom means tolerating the diversity, or pluralism, that
makes up humanity.69 Ultimately, this is the position Kant arrives at in his
later works. Whereas previously he used his ‘moral geography’ to justify
the enslavement of the savages, he later saw that even though the natives
were inferior they too possessed rights. But to pretend that this transformed
his basic position is delusional. Kant essentially believed that ‘special
protection’ was needed for the ‘childlike’ races, who could not be trusted to
look after themselves.70 We become accepted into the human family but
forever frozen in a state of nature, destined to remain a step below in the
racial hierarchy. We have the right to life, but the standard of that life was
never thought to be at the level of the enlightened European. So, not only
does Kant contribute to the theory of racial hierarchy, he also outlines a
moral universalist philosophy that can be summed up most neatly in
Kipling’s idea of the ‘White man’s burden’. Here we can see the fatal

weaknesses in the framework of human rights. It emerged at a time when it
was understood that only White men were fully human citizens and that
everyone else was deserving of rights according to their place in the
hierarchy of ‘moral geography’. Diderot ‘praised the primitive and rejected
the civilized … specifically celebrat[ing] the sexual freedom of
Tahitians’.71 Reminiscent of Rousseau’s idea that savages lived in a state of
nature which was purer than the rational world of Europeans, there was a
celebration of their perceived basic and carnal instincts. In this framework
the Tahitians have the right to maintain their supposedly backward ways of
life, stuck for ever historically as the happy, smiling natives at peace with a
world they do not truly understand.
I’ve seen these ideas at play countless times when having discussions
about global poverty. Well-meaning volunteers to the underdeveloped world
often come back fulfilled by the work they have done and contented with
the idea that the people they have met have been so ‘happy’ with their lives.
When you ask about the grinding poverty and conditions in which the
natives struggle, you are chastised for applying ‘Western’ ideals. In the
Enlightenment framework, humanity is not universal, it is contextual,
allowing us to provide a completely different set of standards of individual
rights across the world.
As seen in the example of the original US Constitution, property was at
the foundation of how rights were granted. The same was true in Europe,
where in order to vote, to have full rights, you had to be White, male and
have money. Even White women only had a set of individual rights which
disqualified them from taking part in democracy. The classed basis for the
franchise is important too, because this economic limitation to rights is still
in place today. There are no longer economic restrictions directly placed on
voting rights in the West and most countries around the world have some
sort of voting system. But wealth is indispensable to the kind of rights you
will be afforded. Take for instance the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child that offers universal rights to young people around the globe. Article
six has two parts, firstly that ‘every child has the inherent right to life’ and
secondly that all ‘parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the
survival and development of the child’. Sounds reasonable enough, but look
more closely: the ‘maximum extent possible’ is wildly different depending
on where you live. In the West child deaths are extremely rare and most
often occur in tragic circumstances. However, a child in the underdeveloped

world dies every ten seconds because they have no proper access to food
and water. The UN Convention in theory stresses the rights of those
children, but in practice absolves signatories from ensuring those rights are
achieved, due to their economic circumstances. That is the cultural
pluralism which is the hallmark of Enlightenment reason.
It is a diversity that we accept all the time, whenever we enjoy the
benefits of sweatshop labour or purchase smartphones powered by minerals
stolen out of Africa’s ground. Because living standards are so much lower
in the underdeveloped world, we have normalized a different framework of
reality. When children’s rights are discussed in the West, apart from in the
context of abuse, the topics are about the right to play or to not have too
much stress from exams. In the underdeveloped world they are still stuck on
the basic right to life. Vitally, these different economic conditions are racist.
It is no coincidence that the poorest countries are the darkest ones. The
West created a racial global order and then built a framework of rights that
would maintain the status quo.
A major vehicle for maintaining this uneven pluralism of rights is the
nation state. Sovereign nations were meant to deliver rights through their
constitutions and their representative democracies. Hopefully, it is easy to
see how this enshrines the unequal global order, making it the responsibility
of the nation state only to provide rights for its citizens. If nations were
empires, like Britain, then the colonial populations were subject to a
different set of rules and rights.72 It was Kant who first imagined a
supranational collection of states to govern world affairs, something akin to
the UN. It is the UN that has to ratify national sovereignty but, in testimony
to the elastic nature of nation states, the only consistent aspect of their
definition is that they have been legally recognized as individual states.73
Rather than being natural systems of organization, nation states are
containers used to control the political order. While the UN may look
democratic from the outside, with its one-member-one-vote in the General
Assembly, the organization is governed by fiat from the Security Council,
with four of the five permanent members – France, the United States,
Britain and Russia – being White Western countries. China is the exception
whose economic might could not be ignored. This is again the cultural
pluralism of rights: all nations have a right to a seat at the table, but only the
preordained ones get to decide what to eat.

Worse still, by operating under the framework of universal rights, the
West is free to moralize over its superior democracy and human rights
records compared to the underdeveloped world. The solution to the
problems of impoverished nation states is explained as the deficit of rights
and freedom: if only they had more democracy and good governance, then
of course they would prosper. The failure to provide economic freedom and
basic rights belongs to the nation state and the West has absolved itself of
all responsibility. The West has maintained its control over the world by
Balkanizing Africa into individual nation states so that it can be more
effectively managed and controlled.74 This would appear to be
contradictory to the universalist moral philosophy but, as we have seen, the
only aspect of these ideas that is universal is that the globe should be
exploited on the principle of White supremacy.
Ultimately, the problem of the human rights framework is its perceived
focus on the individual. The Enlightenment search for the moral agent, the
rational core of humanity, was based on finding the uniqueness at the heart
of man. This is usually taken to mean that what is true for one accounts for
all, and therefore we are presented with a universal theory that elevates all
humanity. As we have discussed, this is untrue. Human nature was
theorized to be influenced by the external (racial factors) which determined
the talents that people had to reach human potential. Full, rational, moral
humanity was not understood as something that all humans achieved, only
those with White skin. Therefore, the individual could be understood only
through their race and through their gender. It is for this reason that there
was no contradiction in Jefferson declaring that ‘all people were created
equal’ whilst owning Africans. He saw them as ‘Negroes’, chattels, not in
the category of human. All of the founding texts upon which the human
rights framework was built were designed as the rights of White men.
Within the West these rights have been extended, to some extent, to those
who are not White and male. But countless Black people killed by the
police would strongly contest their right to life. To be a full human being is
still defined in Whiteness, the unquestioned right to freedom and prosperity
that even the most privileged minority can only dream of. It remains the
case that those who reside in the underdeveloped world are not afforded
these rights. African migrants are left to drown crossing the Mediterranean;
sweatshop workers in Asia are subject to medieval conditions; migrants in
Latin America are brutalized on their journeys to find freedom; and Black

and Brown children die by the second. The architecture of a society that
creates these injustices is the Enlightenment and its universalist philosophy.
The transition of Kant from adviser of slave drivers to opponent of
colonialism is important because it marks the shift from the first version of
Western empire, one that was rooted in violence and direct control, to the
emergence of the updated system.
The Enlightenment was a product of the first stage of Western
imperialism, with slavery and colonialism clearing the ground for its
intellectual project. It then provided the intellectual bridge to the new age of
empire, which maintains colonial logic but has clothed itself in the
legitimacy of democracy, human rights and universal values. It is essential
that we unlearn the distorted view of history that we have been conditioned
into. We will explore the truth of how the West brutally established its
imperial dominance before the dawning of a new, more enlightened, age of
empire. To do so means starting at the beginning of the tale, in 1492 when
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

2

Genocide
In the wake of protests following the murder of George Floyd statues of
Christopher Columbus became a target. Across the United States
monuments were beheaded, vandalized, torched and even torn down
entirely.1 The anger at Columbus shows the power he still holds in the
psyche of the nation, as does President Trump’s 4 July speech celebrating
the Italian as the person who ‘discovered America’.2 The reverence for
Columbus has a long history, particularly in Colorado, which is where the
Columbus national holiday celebrations first started.
In 2016 Denver City Council announced they would be celebrating
Indigenous Peoples’ Day rather than marking Columbus Day. This came
about as a result of decades of activism, notably in 1992 when, minutes
before it was due to start, the Columbus Day parade had to be cancelled
because 500 protestors descended on the scene.3 Halting the march in
Denver was seen as a key victory for the activists because the idea of
celebrating Christopher Columbus with a public holiday first came from
Denver. Angelo Noce, an Italian immigrant to the city, persuaded the state
to adopt Columbus Day in 1907 as a mark of recognition, given the
significant discrimination that Italians were facing in the United States at
the time.4 It took until 1937 for the celebration to be adopted nationally,
although this wasn’t due to Columbus being controversial – on the contrary,
Columbus is one of the most venerated figures in the United States. Most

US cities have monuments in his honour as well as streets and major
institutions named after him. There is a Columbus city in Ohio, and the
United States seat of government is housed in the District of Columbia. The
beatification of Columbus is remarkable, considering that he never set foot
in what is now the United States of America.
Protests against Columbus Day have been going on for decades, because
in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and when he got off the boat
unleashed a reign of genocidal terror on the indigenous people he
supposedly ‘discovered’. Notwithstanding his historical role as slave trader
and mass murderer, Columbus Day continues to be celebrated, but the tales
told to schoolchildren may as well begin ‘Once upon a genocide’.5
European expansion into the Americas was vital to the development of
the West. And yet explorers like Columbus did not ‘discover’ a new and
empty land to be exploited. When they arrived, they found millions of
people living in complex societies who needed to be erased in order to
create the clean slate necessary for Western progress. The genocide in the
Americas is without precedent, wiping up to 99 per cent of the natives off
the face of the earth. The bodies of those slaughtered are the foundation of
the current social order. Westward expansion was the key that unlocked the
bounties of European domination. Slavery, colonialism, industry, science
and so-called democracy are all indebted to the tens of millions sacrificed at
the altar of ‘progress’.
Although the genocide in the Americas was by far the largest in human
history, it is rarely commented on. It is consigned to the dustbin of history
as Western commentators decry genocide as the possession either of evil
regimes like the Nazis or of supposedly backward peoples in the
underdeveloped world. In truth, the West was birthed by genocide and
relied on the slaughter of millions of Black and Brown bodies to develop
and enrich itself. You cannot separate genocide and the West, which is by
far the most brutal, violent and murderous system to ever grace the globe.
Rather than come to terms with the centrality of genocide to the West it is
understood as a process alien to the progressive society built on science.
Understanding genocide through the lens of the evil perpetuated by Nazis,
or backward savages in Rwanda, allows the West to maintain its moral
superiority. In truth both examples were products of the West, born out of
the logic of empire. In order to appreciate this history we need to undo the
lies at the heart of how the West understands itself.

ONCE UPON A GENOCIDE
This fairy tale revolving around Columbus has some key elements that we
need to dismiss. The first is that when Columbus mistakenly came across
the Americas, when he was in fact looking for India, he discovered the land.
Not only were there indigenous peoples across the Americas, there is clear
evidence that Africans had visited and settled long before Columbus took
his wrong turn. The Olmec civilization in Latin America made statues with
clear African features at least 2,500 years before Columbus made his
journey; remains of Africans have also been found in Olmec territory, along
with Egyptian artefacts, in the Americas.6 The finding of narcotics from
the Americas in Egyptian mummies in 19927 was roundly criticized mostly
because of the disbelief that Africans could have made it to the continent
before Europeans. Despite a wealth of evidence, scholars have been
deterred from tracing these connections for fear of career suicide.8 It is
only because of the conceit of Western ideas of supremacy that we ignore
the history of global travel and interaction that far pre-dates European
exploration. In fact, prior to Columbus departing on his third voyage to the
Americas King Juan of Portugal had told him that Africans had a trade
route to the region from Guinea, and Columbus confirmed this with the
indigenous people when he arrived.9 The notion that Columbus made a
discovery is based on the White supremacist logic of knowledge. If a people
live in a place and there are no Europeans around to witness it, contrary to
Western beliefs, they still exist.
Central to the idea of discovery is the notion that the Americas were
sparsely populated by pre-civilization natives who, even if we accept their
existence, are discounted because of their savagery. I must admit that this
myth is so embedded in how we understand the world that until I started
researching for this book I had assumed that the population numbers were
very low, though I obviously rejected the savagery part. But the midpoint
estimate for the number of people who lived in the Americas when
Columbus landed is 72 million.10 The sheer number of people who
inhabited the region is evidence that the image of the backward native is
one of colonial fiction. Latin America was home to empires like the Aztecs,
with cities and civilizations that dwarfed anything Europe had to offer.
When Columbus landed on what was then named by Europeans,

Hispaniola, rather than finding so-called primitives, he encountered a
complex society that had a strong history of civilization and social order.
Columbus did the most damage to the island that today is made up of Haiti
and the Dominican Republic. The Taino and Arawaks who inhabited the
islands had developed centuries of civilization, were experts in agriculture
and lived in harmony with the land. From first contact in 1492 up until
1509, when Columbus ceased to run the island, the population of native
Taino went from a midpoint estimate of 8 million to just 100,000,11 and by
1542 there were only 200 left. The scale of death has no parallel in human
history.12
Alongside grossly under-portraying the numbers of indigenous people
erased by Europeans, the bulk of the deaths are attributed to disease. It is
certainly true that illness was a major killer of tens of millions. Indigenous
populations did not have immunity to European illnesses like smallpox and
flu and these spread rapidly. But it would be wrong to excuse the invaders
for their accidental murder of millions. For one, there is no doubt that the
invaders could see the result of their presence and the deadly impact of their
germs. Evidently there were no steps made to stop the spread of disease,
because genocide was the logic of the European invasion. Instead
throughout the ensuing period of history we see the exact opposite, with
germ warfare being used to spread deadly diseases to eradicate indigenous
populations. For instance, during a siege by Native Americans of Fort Pitt
(now Pittsburgh) in 1763, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander in chief of the
British forces, suggested that the indigenous people should be purposefully
infected with smallpox ‘by means of [infected] blankets as well as to try
every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race’. Captain
Ecuyer, of the Royal Americans, a colonial regiment of the British Army,
later noted that ‘we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the
smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.’13
As well as biological warfare contributing to the spread of disease, we
have to take into account the impact of the reign of colonial terror that
Europeans executed. Columbus was particularly brutal in his colonization
of Hispaniola. After his initial voyage he returned to the island in 1493,
invading with a band of mercenaries and man-eating dogs who rounded up
the natives and subjugated them violently by ‘hacking, roasting, burning
and working them to death’.14 Columbus instituted a law of tribute which
meant that if a native did not meet their quota of collected gold they would

have limbs chopped off. The brutal conditions in which the indigenous
people were forced to live made their succumbing to disease inevitable.
Starved of access to their usual diet, sanitary conditions and traditional
ways of healing, the Taino were unable to resist illness. There is no doubt
that European diseases would have taken a toll, but their genocidal impact
was only possible in the context of colonial brutality.15
It is impossible to overstate, or even imagine, the scale of violence that
Columbus inflicted on the Taino people. From the outset he saw them as
subhuman, godless creatures who were to be used as fodder to enrich
himself and his Spanish benefactors. After he realized he had ended up in
entirely the wrong place and that the bounty he imagined did not readily
exist, Columbus exploited the Taino, using them to find gold in newly
constructed mines, and as commodities in themselves, becoming one of
Europe’s first slave traders. In an example of the inhumanity and horror
induced by Columbus, in 1495 his mercenaries rounded up 1,600 Taino.
Five hundred and fifty were taken in chains and sold into slavery in Spain
and 650 were shared out between the Spanish colonists. The remaining 400
were set free but were so terrified that their tormentors would change their
mind, according to Michele de Cuneo, one of Columbus’s men, many of the
women with ‘infants at the breast … left their infants anywhere on the
ground and started to flee like desperate people’.16 This is the terror that
you are celebrating when you elevate Columbus to a hero worthy of naming
buildings and cities after, erecting statues of, or marching in a parade in
honour for. Columbus sparked the deadliest period in human history; it did
not take long for other European powers to fully immerse themselves in the
genocidal method.
Britain entered the Americas later than the Spanish and Portuguese, who
had an early monopoly over the region. But when the British did get
involved, they built on what their fellow Europeans had developed. In order
to establish themselves they had to overcome fierce resistance from the
indigenous populations. In contrast to the picture book story of backward
and disorganized natives, the indigenous people were extremely organized
and resisted Europeans to the bitter end. Hilary Beckles, in his book
Britain’s Black Debt, explains that one of the reasons that Britain’s first
slave colony was Barbados in 1630 is because the island had largely been
abandoned by the native Kalinago people.17 The Kalinago caused hell for
the Europeans through their resistance and organization. They mostly left

Barbados to build strongholds on St Vincent and Dominica, where they
maintained resistance and launched raids on other islands. For example, in
1640, the Kalinago attacked Antigua, killing at least fifty people and
kidnapping the governor and his family. Resistance accelerated the
genocidal impulses of the invaders, who viewed the Kalinago as enemies of
Europe.
Due to the disruption of British commercial interests on plantations in the
Caribbean in 1675 ‘“several merchants of London” addressed the Lords of
Trade and Plantations in support of Governor [of Barbados] Stapleton’s
extermination plan … to destroy the barbarous savages’.18 The genocidal
war with the Kalinago continued for a century, replete with expeditions and
massacres of men, women and children. In 1795 this resistance was
eventually broken on the stronghold of St Vincent and 5,000 Kalinago were
transported by the British to the island of Baliceaux. Within four months a
third had died from starvation and the rest were left to eventually die off in
horrendous conditions.
Massacres and removals were a pattern seen across the region, creating
an industrial method of death that cleared the path for European
advancement. This genocidal approach to conquest is the hallmark of
Western development, and an absolutely essential ingredient to building the
modern world. Columbus is an All American hero because he paved the
way for the nation to develop. In keeping with Columbus’s model, the
indigenous people were almost erased from the land with a complete lack of
regard for their lives.
During the American Revolutionary War, General George Washington
launched the Sullivan Expedition to break the resistance of Native
American Iroquois who had taken up arms for the British. With typical
brutality, he ordered a scorched earth policy with his expressed intent to
‘lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most
effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but
destroyed.’19 More than forty villages were destroyed and those who
remained alive fled to Canada. This conquest was vital to victory and for
establishing the US nation state. We see the same logic present in later
efforts to expand the nation: the indigenous population of California was
reduced from an estimated 310,000–750,000 in 1800 to just 18,000 in 1907.
This was done in part through brutal massacres by death squads. In one
such event around 1868 at Mill Creek, Norman Kingsley led a massacre of

the Yahi Yana so sustained that he changed his gun mid-shooting because
his rifle ‘tore up’ the bodies so badly, ‘particularly the babies’.20 A few
years earlier, during the massacre of the Southern Cheyenne at Sand Creek
in 1864, a Colorado death squad led by former minister John Chivington
raided a village shooting at unarmed men, women and children, following
them to the Sand Creek as they fled. Around 150 civilians were slaughtered,
and the following scene took place:
One poor woman, heavy with child, fell behind the others racing up
the stream bed. Soldiers killed her too. Then one of them cut her
open, and pulling out her unborn baby, he threw the little one down
on the earth bedside her.21
Native Americans were erased from their lands and eventually moved onto
reservations where they would be unable to interfere with the development
of the United States. In keeping with the celebration of the genocidal
Columbus, this period in American history is valorized in folklore. There is
a whole genre of Cowboy movies that show the brave frontier folk battling
savages and outlaws in order to make their way in the Wild West. The fairytale representation of this history, with the hardworking Europeans bravely
taming the frontiers, provides the necessary comfort blanket for people
looking back today. Rather than being the heroes of this history, the new
Americans built their nation on genocidal slaughter. To recognize this
would mean honestly accounting for the racist foundations of the nation.

THE FOUNDATION OF THE WEST
Atrocities in the Americas were not carried out because of some pathology
within the European settlers. Erasing the natives was a necessary foundation
upon which to build the development of the West. The expansion out of
Europe was an essential step in the creation of industrial capitalism because
it provided all the ingredients for the modern world.
Columbus’s voyage was supported by the Spanish because he promised
to bring back riches, and it was this pursuit of gold that drove the
horrendous labour conditions for the natives of Hispaniola, which
decimated the population. Later, it was the Gold Rush in the United States

which accelerated expansion west. Rather than gold, Columbus stumbled
into a far more valuable resource necessary for the West: the land itself. The
Americas provided the territory necessary for the production that fuelled the
development of industry. As I will explore in the next chapter on slavery,
the key commodities that powered the Industrial Revolution were produced
in the Americas. Cotton and sugar in particular were of outsize importance
to capitalist growth. Colonizing the region was a pre-condition for slavery:
once the natives were made extinct the transatlantic slave trade began, to
provide the labour that built the modern world.
When Columbus accidentally landed in the Americas, Europe was behind
most of the world. Religious dogma, war and a Dark Age had caused
European development to stagnate. Europe did not dominate the world in
the fifteenth or even the sixteenth century. It was the wealth produced from
the Atlantic system that propelled the West to the position it is in today.
Gold and silver from the mines of Brazil allowed European countries to
amass wealth and make inroads into the East, which was far richer, more
developed and powerful than Europe at this time. It was the profits from the
Atlantic that allowed Europe to come to dominate the globe, leading the
way in industry and science. But none of this was possible without the
genocide in the Americas. Europe could not spread into the West and allow
the indigenous people to remain on the land. They had to be cleared away to
create the blank slate on which the West could be built.
Think of the Industrial Revolution, so much a part of the progressive
myth the West tells about itself. I will never forget my A-level History
course on the subject: the perfect example of schooling as propaganda. We
learned about the accepted causes of industrial progress, which included the
ingenuity of European scientists, capital investment, and also a population
boom that meant there was more demand for goods and therefore the
market had to work out ways to respond. At this point I did not know the
specifics but I did wonder how it was possible that transatlantic slavery was
not part of the discussion, given it was happening at the time and was
extremely important to the economy. My teacher’s response was very clear.
We would be ignoring any discussion of either slavery or colonialism
because it ‘wasn’t in the textbook’ and ‘definitely wouldn’t be in the exam’.
But if we want an honest assessment of the Industrial Revolution it is
impossible to separate industry from colonial violence and genocide. Just

consider the issue of population increase that was so central to providing
the demand for industrial production.
The Americas were not just a cash-cow, they became an extension of
Europe. Millions of Europeans flooded into North and South America,
leaving space for population growth in Europe. If increased demand was a
key driver of industrialization, there is no honest way to discuss this without
including the expansion into the West. As more commodities were needed,
science and industry had to transform to keep up with demand. I cannot
imagine my teacher’s response had I asked how it was possible for
Europeans to expand into territory that had tens of millions of native
inhabitants. Cooperating with the indigenous peoples, sharing land and
coexisting could never have produced the modern world. In a very concrete
way the genocide in the Americas cleared the way for the population
explosion of Europeans and the political and economic systems which
sustained them.
Worshipping at the altar of Columbus is tragically the appropriate
response, given his role in founding the West. It is not an accident that he is
adulated because nothing that we currently have would have been possible
without his so-called discovery of the Americas. To pretend that there is
some way to celebrate the birth of the United States that is free from the
history of genocide is perhaps worse than the delusional mainstream
narratives of its beginnings. Not holding a parade, or taking down every
statue of Columbus, would not alter the rotten foundations of the current
world order. In a perverse way, both sides of this debate are attempting to
present a distorted view of the nation. Pro-Columbus forces want to play
down the negative aspects to ease collective guilt, whilst the anti-Columbus
faction is hoping to eliminate the colonial nostalgia that makes it difficult
for minorities to feel at home in the nation. There are many versions of this
debate relating to all the horrors upon which the West is built. But
recognition of atrocities does not change either their history or legacy.
Acknowledging the barbarity of the West is meaningless unless we are
committed to undoing the system that was created by it. If you are proud to
be an American, Brit, European, or whatever else, and feel that there is
some utility in this wicked system then you should proudly celebrate
Columbus and all his genocidal contemporaries. They forged the way for
the West, burning, hacking, roasting and enslaving their way along the path
to the modern world. We can have theoretical debates about whether

genocide was a necessary condition for Western development; in some
alternate universe perhaps Europeans and the natives are coexisting in
capitalist harmony, but in our reality, the foundation stone of the West is the
tens of millions of bodies of the indigenous people of the Americas. If you
fly the flag for the West then every last one of your heroes is drenched in
blood. No amount of atonement can alter this basic fact.

SETTLER COLONIALISM IS GENOCIDE
As uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge, settler colonialism in the
Americas was an essential feature of Western development (it is not
coincidence that the United States is the richest Western nation), and it is a
method of imperialism that ‘destroys to replace’.22 Elimination of the
native population became a necessary feature once the invading population
became too large. Land and resources were taken away from the natives,
making their survival almost impossible. In the United States, for example,
the killing of buffalo for hides by Europeans drastically reduced the stock of
food available to the indigenous population.23 Destroying indigenous
peoples’ way of life ultimately led to conflict, and this resistance was used
as an excuse to annihilate the troublesome savages. The pattern that we saw
with Kalinago resistance in the Caribbean has been repeated so often that it
should be treated as a fundamental process of modernity. Europeans needed
land, the indigenous population resisted its seizure, and so they were
exterminated. It is a pattern that can be seen across the history of Western
colonialism around the globe.
When the British settled in Tasmania, an island off Australia, in the
nineteenth century, they eradicated between 4,000 and 7,000 of the
indigenous population, including all of those who were ‘full-blooded
natives’. Visiting after the native genocide was almost complete, the British
Reverend Thomas Atkins attributed the ‘“almost extinct” condition of the
Aborigines to the “universal law in the Divine government” that “savage
tribes disappear before the progress of the civilized races”’ .24 This
violence was essential to Enlightenment ideals of progress and White
supremacy in civilization. The genocide accelerated after a native rebellion
in 1826: extermination was the method chosen to quell resistance. The
remainder of the indigenous population were forcibly removed to a

reservation on Flinders Island, where the conditions were so dire that by
1847 only forty-six remained alive.
Exactly the same process occurred with the Yuki of California, whose
population was reduced from between 5,000 and 20,000 to just 300 by
1864. An article in the San Francisco Bulletin in 1856 justified the
slaughter of the Yuki by explaining that ‘extermination is the quickest and
cheapest remedy, and effectually prevents all other difficulties when an
outbreak [of Indian violence] occurs.’25 Wherever Europeans settled and
populated in mass numbers the policy of the British in Australia, terra
nullus or ‘empty land’, was enforced, regardless of the existence of native
populations. In places like the United States, Latin America and Australia,
where settler colonialism took hold and millions of Europeans migrated, the
genocide of the indigenous population was almost total. Space is, after all,
finite.
In Australia a debate has been ongoing over whether genocide is the
correct term to use for the treatment of the Aborigines. Tasmania is often
cited as a classic case study in genocide, but in Australia there has been
extreme reluctance to use that label for the nation’s actions. At the height of
the so-called ‘history wars’ between historians and right-wing
commentators, Prime Minister John Howard decried the usage of the term
as ‘outrageous’.26 Australia likes to see itself as a bastion of liberal values
and multicultural tolerance, preferring to imagine a deluded version of
history rather than the ugly truth that it is a ‘nation founded on genocide’.27
As with every other example of settler colonialism, genocide was a
necessary feature of creating the Australian state. The British did not find
empty land but a population who had been there for tens of thousands of
years. Britain’s entry and domination of the land led to the same patterns of
destruction we saw in the Americas. It is estimated that in 1788 there were
between 750,000 and 1.2 million Aborigines and by 1900 only 75,000
remained.28 After the British settled in Melbourne in 1835 the native
population dropped from more than 10,000 to less than 2,000 in eighteen
years – a decline of over 80 per cent.29 So stark were the consequences of
British settlement that in the ten years to 1849 there were only ten children
born amongst all the native tribes in the area. In Queensland alone it is
estimated that the death toll of indigenous people during the frontier period
was at least 50,000.30

In terms of dodging accusations of genocide there is the common refrain
that much of this death was accidental. Disease or competition for food was
what led to the expiration of the Aborigines – an unintended consequence
of industrial progress. We should pour as much scorn on that notion as
possible. Not only did British settlement lead to the extinguishing of
countless Aboriginal lives, the settlers knew exactly what they were doing
and intended that very outcome. The first governor of Western Australia
pronounced in 1835 that the Aborigines must ‘gradually disappear’ and that
nothing could ‘prevent the ulterior [sic] Extinction of that Race’.31 In 1913
the Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes celebrated that the inauguration
of the new national capital at Canberra was ‘taking place “without the
slightest trace of that race we have banished from the face of the earth”’ .32
Australians were well aware that annexing the land meant the destruction of
the Aborigines and had no problem watching a ‘backward’ race extinguish
itself in the face of Darwinian progress. Just as in the United States, the
settlers were also a key factor in perpetuating genocide.
Between 1860 and 1895 in Alice Springs approximately 20 per cent of
the Aboriginal population was lost to disease but 40 per cent to what the
colonists called ‘dispersal’, a practice that involved clearing the land of the
natives with the use of force and shootings.33 Queensland was notorious
for settler violence, supported by the Native Police Force, who created an
‘environment of terror which governed the lives of Aboriginal people’.34
Thousands were slaughtered, a subject that the British High Commissioner,
Arthur Hamilton Gordon, raised with British Prime Minister William
Gladstone in 1883. He was troubled by the culture of terror in Queensland:
The habit of regarding the natives as vermin, to be cleared off the
face of the earth, has given the average Queenslander a tone of
brutality and cruelty … I have heard men of culture and refinement
… talk, not only of the wholesale butchery … but of the individual
murder of natives, exactly as they would talk of a day’s sport, or
having to kill some troublesome animal.35
Such barbarity was not reserved for Queenslanders. In 1824 martial law
was declared in Bathurst, west of Sydney, to deal with the problem of
Aboriginal resistance. At a public meeting one of the largest sheep farmers
declared that ‘the best thing that could be done, would be to shoot all the

blacks and manure the ground with their carcases, which was all the good
they were fit for !’ At the same meeting it was ‘recommended likewise that
the Women and Children should especially be shot as the most certain
method of getting rid of the race’. After martial law was declared the
Aborigines were savagely attacked, which led to brutal inhumanities such
as this event recounted by L. E. Threlkeld, a missionary at the time:
A large number were driven into a swamp, and mounted police rode
round and round and shot them off indiscriminately until they were
all destroyed ! When one of the police enquired of the Officer if a
return should be made of the killed, wounded there were none, all
were destroyed, Men, Women and Children ! But forty-five heads
were collected and boiled down for the sake of the skulls ! My
informant, a Magistrate, saw the skulls packed for exportation in a
case at Bathurst ready for shipment to accompany the commanding
Officer on his voyage shortly afterwards taken to England.36
Such colonial brutality is the foundation stone of Australia, which could not
have come into being without it. Genocide deniers can point to the fact that
some in the leadership of the British Empire felt uncomfortable about the
violence, and blame the slaughter on individual acts of the settlers. In
theory the Aborigines were subjects of the British Crown and therefore
extended protections. After one of the most notorious massacres, at Myall
Creek, New South Wales in 1838, the perpetrators were eventually found
guilty of murder and hanged for killing twenty-eight Aborigines. But it
appears as though this massacre became notorious because it was one of the
very few times that any murderers were punished. In fact, the case had to be
re-tried after they were first acquitted and the perpetrators maintained that
‘they were not aware that in destroying the aboriginals they were violating
the law … as it had … been so frequently done in the colony before.’37
The reality is that slaughter was an essential part of nation building: the
state was happy to turn a blind eye and to participate in it when necessary.
It is not as though an enlightened country emerged from this foundation
of colonial genocide. Australia maintained the logic of empire and
continued to treat its Aboriginal population as less than human. In 1956 in
the Maralinga Lands in South Australia, Aborigines were removed from
their lands to make way for atomic bomb tests. They were left wandering

the desert and many died from starvation and thirst. Conditions were so bad
that parliament commissioned a report, which condemned the awful fact
that Aborigines were going ‘blind and dying from thirst’ in a nation as rich
as Australia. But the report was dismissed as alarmist by politicians and the
right-wing press. In an ominous sign of what was to come, none other than
a young Rupert Murdoch flew in to investigate and found that the report
was ‘“hopelessly exaggerated” and that “these fine native people have
never enjoyed better conditions”’ .38 Aboriginal life was, and in many
ways continues to be, expendable in the pursuit of Australian so-called
progress.
The more controversial dimension of the Australian genocide is the very
clear attempt to biologically absorb the Aborigines, or to put it another way,
to breed them out of existence. In Western Australia the 1936 Native
Administration Act outlawed the marriage of so-called ‘half castes’ with
supposedly ‘full bloods’, language steeped in the ideas of racial science. A.
O. Neville (ironically titled ‘Chief Protector of Aborigines’) was clear that
the aim of this law was that Australia would be able to ‘forget that there
ever were any aborigines’.39 This followed a precedent set by the
Department of the Interior, which prohibited Aborigines from interracial
‘mating’, but also from sexual union with women of ‘part aboriginal blood’.
They were making ‘every endeavour to breed out the colour by elevating
female half-castes to the White standard’.40 In both law and policy this aim
was being driven by the state. Neville explained the policy of using socalled ‘half castes’ in domestic service:
Our policy is to send them out into the white community, and if a
girl comes back pregnant our rule is to keep her for two years. The
child is then taken away from the mother and sometimes never sees
her again. Thus these children grow up as whites, knowing nothing
of their own environment. At the expiration of the period of two
years the mother goes back into service so it really does not matter if
she has half a dozen.41
The region’s records from this period corroborate the impact of this sordid
abuse of Aboriginal women. They reveal ‘a remarkably high rate of
pregnancy for girls indentured to service, especially those sent to the
cities’.42

None of this should be surprising, given how Australia treated the
children of Aborigines. Between one in three and one in ten Aboriginal
children were removed from their families between around 1910 and
1970.43 Those of mixed descent were particularly preyed upon, given the
intent to breed out the natives. The award-winning 2002 film Rabbit-Proof
Fence, based loosely on a true story of three young girls who ran away and
made it back to their families, documents this history of abuse. Most were
not so fortunate, and the legacies of the damage done are still being felt. So
commonplace was the practice of removing children and placing them with
White families that when researcher Colin Tatz paid a research visit to the
Retta Dixon Home in Darwin in 1962 he and his wife were offered an
Aboriginal child for the one-time price of just 25 guineas. So accepted was
the practice that ‘they didn’t blanch at the prospective “sale”’ but drove
around for an hour contemplating the offer.44 (In a chilling parallel, in the
United States and Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there
were policies of removing native children from their families and placing
them in boarding schools in order to assimilate them into Western
culture.)45 The debate about whether the policy of removing children from
their parents was genocidal is essentially pointless: the intent was to
forcibly assimilate the Aborigines into Australian life in order to extinguish
them. It was part of the broader history of the nation where at both the local
and national level for the majority of the twentieth century the state
enforced a policy aimed at eventually destroying any trace of the
Aborigines.46
The question of whether we apply the genocidal label to Australia
matters so much because we need to shake ourselves out of the usual
delusions we apply to the term. One of the objections to using the term is
that it supposedly diminishes the unique suffering of Jewish people during
the Holocaust. If incidental killing, or frontier violence, or mating policies
are equated with the death camps and systematic slaughter of the final
solution, we are somehow devaluing the horror of what the Nazis did. The
notion that the violence suffered by Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis
is unique only holds true if you discount the suffering, torture and brutality
meted out to those who are not considered White. There is no questioning
the horrors of the concentration camps, but to elevate the Holocaust to the
status of primary evil done in the world has the added advantage of
meaning that our eyes are averted from the brutality that Europe inflicted

across the globe. Race cannot possibly be the defining logic if White people
suffered the worst crime against humanity. It also allows Western nations to
distance themselves from evil: Australia is progressive because it is not
Nazi Germany. To compare the two is therefore heresy because it shatters
the mirage necessary to maintain the nation’s distorted image of itself. In
truth the colonial logic of empire was at work in the destruction of both the
Aborigines and Jewish people. The Holocaust was the logic of empire
brought into the heart of Europe.
Before we deal in depth with the Holocaust, it is important to trace the
genocidal roots of the final solution to German colonialism in Africa.
German treatment of the natives in their colonies is particularly instructive
and, given the events of the twentieth century, also hugely influential in
how we understand the roots of modern genocide.
After the First World War, as a consequence of defeat, Germany was
stripped of its colonies. Due to this it is easy to overlook Germany as a
colonial nation, but make no mistake, the country was a major player in
imperialism, particularly in Africa. What are now Namibia, Tanzania,
Rwanda, Cameroon and Togo were part of the German Empire until
Germany’s defeat in the War. South-west Africa was initially seen as a
place that Germans could settle in, and as the British had done in India a
private company, the Society for German Colonization, was established to
lead the charge. The private enterprise’s progress was slower than expected,
in large part because of the resistance of the indigenous population, who did
not roll over and allow German conquest. As Chancellor, in 1891 Bismarck
bought shares in the company, nationalizing the colonial effort and
imposing the full force of the German Empire on the region.
At the turn of the twentieth century the Germans found themselves at a
military disadvantage to the native Herero and Nama people, who
outgunned them and were skilled fighters on horseback. This did not
prevent the colonizers from appropriating land, raping women or forcing
the natives into work. The practice of rape was ‘so common that German
settlers had names for it: Verkafferung, or going native, and
Schmutzwirtschaft, or dirty trade’.47 When the Herero and Nama rose up
against the Germans in 1904 the invaders were ill equipped to win a war,
either conventional or guerrilla. As we have seen elsewhere, genocidal logic
prevailed. In the Schrecklichkeit (extermination) order to his officers,

General Lothar von Trotha proclaimed at Osombo-Windimbe, on 2 October
1904:
All Hereros must leave the country. If they do not do so, I will force
them with cannons to do so. Within the German borders, every
Herero, with or without weapons … will be shot. I shall no longer
shelter women and children. They must either return to their people
or I will shoot them. This is my message to the Herero nation.48
After being slaughtered in the thousands, the Herero were on the run and
the Germans purposely forced them to retreat into the desert, fully aware of
what the consequences would be. Thousands perished in the harsh
conditions and the remainder were rounded up and put into concentration
camps. Of the 35,000 Herero forced into such camps between 1904 and
1906 it is estimated that only 193 survived.49 At least 70,000 Herero and
30,000 Nama were slaughtered by the Germans in just this two-year period,
devastating the population. Overall, fighting, hunger and disease killed
around 250,000 Africans as a result of German campaigns to stop rebellions
in their southern African colonies.50
In the present day, the populations have returned to what they were
before the genocide but the fact it took a hundred years tells us the scale of
the annihilation. The case of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia has
recently been in the spotlight because their present-day leaders sued
Germany in the United States for reparations for this genocide in 2017. The
reparations suit aims for historical redress for the mass slaughter and uses
the $90 billion paid to the survivors of the Jewish Holocaust as its
precedent.51 Linking the atrocities in Namibia to the Holocaust is
important because German actions in Africa were the precursor to the mass
murder of Jewish people almost half a century later. All the ingredients
existed: concentration camps, racial science, and of course genocide. The
annihilation of the Herero and Nama was the first genocide of the twentieth
century, and it provided the blueprint for what was to come.
The genocide was committed in large part by up to 14,000 soldiers and
became part of the folklore of the German nation. As though it were a
routine holiday destination, ‘a host of photographs [were] taken, and made
into picture postcards of soldiers sent with greetings from afar and
representing anything from concentration camps, over [sic] emaciated

prisoners in chains to execution scenes’.52 Gustav Frenssen’s 1906 novel
Peter Moors Fahrt nach Südwest was a gruesome celebration of the horrors
of the genocide told as an adventure of the German Empire. Not only was it
translated into several languages (including English), it sold 400,000 copies
in Germany up until 1945 and became standard school reading from 1908
until it fell out of favour with the fall of the Nazi regime.53 Genocide in
Namibia set an important precedent for the nation that may well have been
a necessary pre-condition for the Holocaust.

THE HOLOCAUST IS MODERNITY
During the Second World War the lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term
genocide. He was of Polish Jewish descent and lost almost fifty family
members to the Nazi Holocaust that devastated Europe, so it is no surprise
that he dedicated his life to defining and creating a legal framework for the
prevention of genocide. Up until this point there was no conceptual or legal
definition of the mass slaughter of particular groups and he based the word
on the Greek genos (for tribe, race or family) and Latin cide (killing),
explaining that genocide was the ‘crime of destroying national, racial or
religious groups’.54 The horrors of the Holocaust reshaped much of the
way that we think about the world, including defining generational
slaughter.
Undoubtedly the annihilation of 6 million Jewish people by the Nazis is
one of history’s worst atrocities. The manner in which families were
rounded up, forced into concentration camps and gassed to death as the
‘final solution’ left a sickening trail of destruction. ‘Never again’ rightly
became the mantra across Europe after seeing the consequences of
genocidal logic in Germany. But the way that we understand the Holocaust
detracts from an honest assessment of genocide and its fundamental role in
shaping the West.
Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote Modernity and the Holocaust in
1989, which upended how we view the genocide. Having fled from the
Nazis himself he was keenly aware of the brutality and significance of the
Holocaust but disturbed by the mainstream narrative. British Historian
Everett Hughes was typical of the dominant account:

The National Socialist Government of Germany carried out the most
colossal piece of ‘dirty work’ in history on the Jews. The crucial
problems concerning such an occurrence are (1) who are the people
who actually carry out such work and (2) what are the circumstances
in which other ‘good’ people allow them to do it? What we need is
better knowledge of the signs of their rise to power and better ways
of keeping them out of power.55
If we understand the Holocaust in this way then the genocide is an
aberration in complete contrast to the progressive ideals of Western
development. Hitler and his gang of Nazis are the bogeymen of history,
pure evil in human form, whose type need to be prevented from seizing
power by any means necessary. Evil is located at the individual level and
soul searching is done to work out why so many people followed their
sinister tune.
Rather than seeing the Holocaust as an aberration, going against the
principles of the West, Bauman argued that
The Holocaust was not an irrational outflow of the not-yet-fullyeradicated residues of pre-modern barbarity. It was a legitimate
resident in the house of modernity; indeed, one who would not be at
home in any other house.56
In other words, to see the Holocaust as the result of evil people who are not
modern is to miss the point. The logic of the Holocaust is the logic of
Western development. When we acknowledge this we can see the fallacies
within the dominant approach to ‘never again’. As we have already seen in
this chapter, while the Holocaust was a horrendously brutal genocide, it
does not stand alone in human history and certainly not within the
formation of the West. Since 1492 genocide has been a key organizing
principle of the rise of Western modernity, from the annihilation of tens of
millions in the Americas and the Caribbean, to the almost total eradication
of the Aborigines in Tasmania. The Holocaust represents colonial practices
coming into play in Europe. Africans, Asians and indigenous people being
slaughtered by Europeans did not trouble the psyche of the West, but seeing
colonial violence enacted on White bodies meant a complete rethinking of
long-held paradigms of race and power. Jewish people were racialized into

a subhuman position using the same racial science that justified colonial
brutality.
The fact that the term genocide only came to exist in the West during the
Holocaust is testament enough to the problem. Systematic killing of
hundreds of millions of ‘savages’ in the colonies did not merit the creation
of a new concept. There was unfortunately very little that was remarkable
about mass murder of the Black and Brown. As is evident from even the
smallest glance at history, the genocide of the Herero and Nama in Namibia
is the grandfather of the Holocaust. But in the cases seeking for reparations
against Germany the government continues to resist calling the
indiscriminate slaughter a genocide. In a perverse way they are correct to do
so. The reason that the concept of genocide was not conceived of in the
West until the Holocaust is that the term does not apply to those deemed
subhuman, and the inhumanity of those that the Europeans encountered was
presumed from the outset.
In 1550 the question of whether the indigenous people of the Americas
‘had a soul or not’ was put to a theological trial in Valladolid. Bartolomé de
las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda debated the issue, with las Casas
eventually prevailing in his proposition that although the natives were
backward they nevertheless had a soul and so could be Christianized.57
Prior to this declaration it was assumed that the natives were subhuman and
therefore their annihilation and enslavement by Europeans was perfectly
acceptable. Las Casas had been arguing for the rights of the indigenous
Americans for years but at this point there was no doubt in the European
mind that Africans were inhuman beasts, more akin to animals than
humans. In fact, las Casas argued that indigenous slave labour could be
replaced with savage beasts from Africa. Transatlantic slavery was one of
the single most barbaric and murderous of systems and was justified by the
belief that Africans were not people.
It should come as no surprise then that even when the atrocities
committed in the colonies were so egregious that they turned the stomachs
of Europeans, their perpetration did not lead to any conceptual change in
the West. As reward for organizing the Berlin Conference of 1884–5 that
literally carved up Africa and divided it between the European powers,
King Leopold II was granted the Congo Free State. We have already seen
many examples of the European presumption that inhabited land was the
possession of the colonizers. But this was a step beyond the usual: Congo

was the personal possession of Leopold, who engaged his own private army
to rule the region.58 The result was perhaps one of the most extreme and
brutal colonial regimes, one that stands out even in the horrors of the time.
As a direct result of Leopold’s reign from 1885 to 1908, approximately
10 million, or half of the entire population of Congo were killed. Leopold’s
atrocities were crafted in the furnaces of Enlightenment thought, which led
him to actually believe he was on a noble mission. He declared that ‘to open
to civilization the only part of our globe which it has yet to penetrate, to
pierce the darkness which envelops entire peoples, is, I dare to say, a
crusade worthy of this century of progress.’59 Massacres, starvation and
extreme physical cruelty accounted for the mass loss of life, but even in
current literature there is debate about whether the deaths amounted to
genocide.60 In the twisted logic of Western scholarship, the intent to wipe
out the population is seen as a vital ingredient for mass deaths to qualify as
a genocide. In Congo much of the murder was done in efforts to get the
natives to work rather than to erase the population. But when we consider
the horrific brutality of Leopold’s regime it should be obvious that if we do
not consider it a genocide, that is only because of a deeply problematic
definition of the word.
Congo is rubber rich and Leopold made a fortune extracting it. In a
macabre similarity to Columbus four centuries earlier, he forced the locals
to collect his bounty with horrific tactics. Not meeting your quota meant the
amputation of your hand, even for small children. A particularly, but not
uncommonly, gruesome account from a sub-agent of the Anversoise Trust,
which Leopold set up to rule in Congo, told the story of being
sent into a village to ascertain if the natives were collecting rubber,
and in the contrary case to murder all, including men, women and
children. We found the natives sitting peaceably. We asked them
what they were doing. They were unable to reply, thereupon we fell
upon them all, and killed them without mercy. An hour later we
were joined by X—, and told him what had been done. He
answered, ‘It is well, but you have not done enough !’ Thereupon he
ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the
village palisades, also their sexual members, and to hang the women
and children on the palisades in the form of a cross.61

Obviously, Leopold did not want to annihilate all the natives because if he
did he would have no one to do his labour. Settler colonialism was not an
option for a state owned by one man. But to debate whether the acts that led
to the deaths of 10 million people are genocide demonstrates the conceptual
problem at the heart of modernity. Black and Brown death simply is of less
value intellectually. The definition of genocide is taken from the Nazi aim
to eradicate all Jews and if we accept that as the definition of genocide then
it would not apply in the case of Congo. But the fact that we have no word
to account for the killing (intentionally or otherwise) of millions of people
shows how little thought went into the problem of colonial genocides.
It is also noteworthy that, alongside the Holocaust, Lemkin repeatedly
cited the Armenian genocide in 1915 as a motivator for a new language
surrounding ethnic violence. The Armenian genocide was also horrendous:
up to 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by the Ottoman Empire in
Turkey, over fears that they would join the war effort against the Empire,
which was allied with Germany in the First World War.62 But it is telling
that the systematic murder of a Christian minority by a Muslim empire
would be central for the conceptual framework of the term genocide. There
is no doubt in Western philosophy that the Christian victim has a soul and is
therefore worthy of conceptual consideration. Colonial slaughter like that in
Congo has not, and maybe could never have had the same impact on
Western thought.
Apart from the sheer scale of the brutality, events in Congo stand out
because they drew widespread condemnation from the rest of Europe. An
international campaign to end the regime of terror in the Free State emerged
to bring an end to the slaughter. In 1908 the Belgian parliament bowed to
pressure and took Congo away from the sole control of Leopold. But before
we celebrate this as some momentous victory and turning point in Europe’s
relationship to the peoples of the colonies, we should tread with extreme
caution. No doubt the massacres, rapes, and mutilation of children had an
impact and brought home the realities of other nations’ own colonial
brutality. But Edmund Morel, a British journalist who was one of the
leading anti-Leopold campaigners, was honest in his objections to the Free
State. As well as humanitarian concerns he was deeply troubled that
Leopold’s private fiefdom was a ‘destruction of [the] commercial
relationship between the European and the African’.63 Not only was
Leopold disrupting free trade in the region with his monopoly of Congo, in

his excessive brutality he was endangering the colonial relationship
between Africa and Europe. The British have always favoured an approach
to colonial exploitation that left enough room for them to pretend they were
doing the savages a favour by nobly picking up the ‘White man’s burden’ to
civilize the world. Mutilated children and mass killings put that fantasy
beyond reasonable reach. Leopold had his playground taken away, but the
exact same relationship of exploitation and a more managed brutality
continued in its place. The rest of Europe also carried on with empire
without the reality of their genocidal logic ever hitting home. That was
impossible, until victims who we consider to be White were caught within
the very same mechanisms.
Nazis justified the Holocaust using the same racial science that
legitimized genocide, slavery and colonialism in the colonies. Germany was
at the forefront of racial science because of its genocidal approach in South
West Africa. At a ceremony in Berlin in 2018, Germany handed back
human remains including nineteen skulls from Africans in the region, but
still holds 1,000 skulls it took between 1884 and 1915 to conduct scientific
experiments.64 The archive of knowledge for scientific racism was built of
such macabre colonial exploits that provided rigorous ‘evidence’ of the
inferiority of Africans. Notorious Nazi scientist Eugen Fischer, whose work
influenced Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, cut his teeth researching in Namibia
in 1905 during the genocide. He created a device to categorize the ‘races’, a
box with thirty different strands of hair from blonde to black, with colour
and texture often meaning the difference between ‘life and death’.65 In a
testament to how widespread these ideas were, he gave this device to Karl
Pearson, who was one of the people who invented the field of statistics, at
University College London in 1908. Pearson was the protégé of Francis
Galton who pioneered the study of eugenics, which aimed to create a
superior human family by breeding only the best stock and sterilizing the
poor and non-White. These ideas of ‘racial hygiene’ were mainstream and
powerful in the early twentieth century. Tens of thousands of poor and
minority women in America were put through enforced sterilization and the
notion of lesser peoples was used to limit immigration into the United
States from Eastern European nations deemed to produce those of spoiled
stock.
Jewish people became subject to the same genocidal logic as natives in
the colonies because they were rendered subhuman by racial science.

Galton made it clear that ‘Jews are specialised for a parasitical existence’,
and the eugenicists agreed that they were on a lower ladder of human
development.66 The Nazis were not only influenced but also inspired by
the network of Western scholars in esteemed universities who provided the
‘evidence’ that Jews were less than human. They even copied the US
sterilization laws as one of the first steps to eliminate the backward race.
The Holocaust was the logic of race brought to bear within Europe. Racism
is as essential to the West as water is to human beings, so in looking to
explain the Holocaust we should not look for reasons outside the system
itself.
Bauman explains that only modernity could produce the Holocaust,
because of notions of scientific rationality developed in the Enlightenment.
Annihilating 6 million people over the course of a few years required an
efficiency and cold-blooded ruthlessness perfected in Western development.
Nazi scientists studied the most efficient methods to kill, devising the most
effective gas for the desired effect. The process of massacre in gas
chambers resembled the bureaucratic mechanisms of the assembly line.
Race was used to determine that Jewish people were subhuman and
capitalist bureaucracy was enacted to dispose of the unwanted people. Race,
bureaucracy, science and rationality, all key principles of modernity, came
together to produce a genocide, one of the key mechanisms for the
development of the West. The uncomfortable truth is that the Nazis did not
undermine the governing principles of the West, they took them to their
extreme, with deadly consequences. The simple ‘never again’ rhetoric
misses the mark so widely because it presents the West as the solution,
when in fact it was the system that was the problem all along. The call is
coming from inside the house that produced the Holocaust, and we can see
this same logical fallacy with how modern-day genocides are understood.

POST-COLONIAL GENOCIDE
Between April and July 1994 approximately 1 million Rwandans were
massacred in the worst genocide since the Holocaust. At its conclusion 70
per cent of the Tutsi (who were the primary target for annihilation) in the
country had been killed.67 Images of Africans butchering other Africans
with machetes cast the genocide as being derived from a barbarism that

went decidedly against the progressive values of the West. A tribal blood
feud between the Hutus and Tutsis perfectly fits the narrative of savage
Africa, unable to resist urges for violence and division. The West, and the
United States in particular, faced a lot of criticism for not intervening in the
violence sooner and for their reluctant to term the slaughter a genocide.
Declaring a genocide would have included a responsibility to react, and the
West was reluctant to do so. Rwanda had no strategic relevance and the
United States had already suffered an embarrassment in Somalia in 1993,
immortalized in the film Black Hawk Down, where a US helicopter was hit
with a rocket-propelled grenade. Bill Clinton, who was president at the time
of the Rwandan massacre, admitted in an interview with CNN in 2013 that
the slow response cost lives, saying, ‘If we’d gone in sooner, I believe we
could have saved at least a third of the lives that were lost. It had an
enduring impact on me.’ Whilst on a state visit to Rwanda in 1998 he
apologized for the error, blaming a lack of awareness:
It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who
lost members of your family, but all over the world there were
people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not
fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being
engulfed by this unimaginable terror.68
It was in fact incredibly strange for the president to claim ignorance, when
it was later revealed that the US government knew the scale of the slaughter
almost immediately. Although the administration did not use the word
publicly until 25 May, at least as early as 23 April internal memos to the
government warned of the need to ‘stop the genocide’, and the words ‘final
solution’ were used to describe the situation to officials.69 Worse still, both
the CIA and US officials were well aware of the escalating tensions before
the genocide and the US provided arms to neighbouring Uganda in full
knowledge that these were crossing into Rwanda.70 All sorts of pragmatic
and cynical reasons existed for the US in particular, and the West in general,
to sit on their hands whilst the Tutsis were being exterminated. But the fact
that the United Nations only officially designated the systematic
annihilation of one ethnic group a genocide in February 2014 is a testament
to the conceptual problem of genocide in the colonies. As we have seen
throughout this chapter, the deaths of the Black and Brown do not matter in

the formation of the West. Genocide is a category reserved for the human
and even in the twenty-first century our presence in that category has to be
argued for.
The hand-wringing over the delayed response from the West in
preventing the genocide is also problematic. It is entirely disempowering to
portray the West as the benevolent hero in a tale of African savagery. Here
again we can see the narrative of the ‘White man’s burden’ being to civilize
the colonies. We can also see the same conceptual error as we did with the
Holocaust: that the Rwandan genocide was anti-Western, caused by tribal
barbarity. In reality, the unspeakable horror of Rwanda was entirely a
production of Western imperialism.
Hutus and Tutsis existed as distinct groups long before colonization by
Europe, a process which began in earnest in 1890 when Germany was
granted the region. Belgium also had an early influence in Rwanda due to
the lack of clarity over borders until 1900. Although the different ethnic
groups existed and there were tensions between the minority Tutsis and
majority Hutus, the Europeans institutionalized and racialized these
differences into solid absolutes that meant a person’s tribe determined their
role in the colony. Missionaries began this process, with one of the first
schools being opened in 1905 by Father Classe, who explained that the
purpose was to ‘turn the Tutsi, the “born rulers” of Rwanda into an elite
“capable of understanding and implementing progress”’ .71 The school was
solely for Tutsis and if a stray Hutu was educated their instruction was in
Swahili rather than the supposedly more civilized French. Once the
Belgians took over the colony in 1916 they fully implemented a system of
division that included forced labour for Hutus and a regime in which the
highest local administrator was always a Tutsi chief. The 1933–4 census
cemented the institutionalization of this policy by categorizing the
population as either Tutsi, Hutu or Twa (another ethnic group in the region).
It was not an arbitrary decision to elevate the Tutsi over the Hutu in
Rwanda, but one rooted in racist ideas that the Belgians institutionalized.
To explain the scientific superiority of Africa historically, European
scholars had to create racial mythologies. Burning books or Whitewashing
the names of scholars would only go so far. Hegel is famous for drawing a
distinction between European Africa and Africa Proper, but there is a long
history of that idea. We should reject the term sub-Saharan Africa out of
hand because it is built on the premise that proper Africa is where the

savage Black people live and the north is inhabited by a different, more
civilized race. This belief was etched onto Rwandan society by way of the
Tutsis tending to be taller and lighter-skinned that the Hutus, a physical
difference that was seized upon as proof of their superiority. When the
Belgians colonized Rwanda they did so believing the Hamitic myth that a
Tutsi was a ‘European under a black skin’ rather than an African.72
Ham is a biblical character, the son of Noah, who saw his father naked
and drunk. As punishment for embarrassing him in front of his other sons,
Noah cursed Ham’s son Canaan to be the ‘servant of servants’. The curse of
Ham was used to justify both the Arab and European enslavement of
Africans because Ham’s descendants were understood to have Black skin
and the curse of servitude became linked to their colour.73 However, the
Hamitic myth takes the same story and turns it on its head. In the version
applied to Rwanda the Tutsis were claimed as the descendants of Ham cast
into the wilderness in order to prove they were superior to real Africans.
Based on anthropological studies, including of course examination of
skulls, it was concluded that all inhabitants of Africa were not created
equally, and the Hamites were identified as Caucasians with black skin. As
academic Mahmood Mamdani explains,
Every sign of ‘progress’ on the Dark Continent was now taken as
evidence of a civilizing influence of an outsider race. This race of
civilizers, it was said, were Caucasians who were black in color
without being Negroid in race.74
Unfortunately, both the Hutu and Tutsi leant into this racialization of their
differences. Tutsis largely accepted the benefits of being the privileged
colonial class and the Hutus built up an anti-Tutsi sentiment based on the
supposedly foreign nature of their ruling class. While creating
independence movements in the 1950s, Hutu nationalism coalesced around
the slogan ‘Hutu Power’, whilst the Tutsi leadership attempted to maintain
their colonial position. Colonial borders did not help matters, since the
Hutu/Tutsi split was not contained in the neat parcels of land the Europeans
made into nation states. Neighbouring Burundi was also Tutsi-controlled
and supported Tutsi incursions to gain power in Rwanda. After a raid on the
capital Kigali in 1963, between 5,000 and 20,000 Tutsis were massacred
and a Hutu republic was declared in 1964 that removed all Tutsis from

political office. In Burundi, which had very similar dynamics, 200,000 of
the Hutu majority population were slaughtered to quell unrest. The postcolonial Hutu (Bantu)/Tutsi (Hamite) division based on race and sealed in
blood was complete.
The 1994 genocide came after a civil war sparked by the Tutsi Rwandan
Patriotic Front (RPF) seizing land in Rwanda. By the time of the genocide
the RPF had made substantial gains and one in seven Hutus from Rwanda
were refugees who had fled from RPF-controlled areas. ‘Hutu Power’ made
a strong comeback in Rwanda due to the war and fears of being dominated
by the Tutsis again. A central part of this project was to restore the Hamitic
myth and confirm that Tutsis were an alien race. By April 1994 a
compromise sharing of power had been agreed and the Hutu republic had to
concede to Tutsi representation. However, on 6 April a plane carrying the
Hutu presidents Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira
Burundi was shot down. This act unleashed the anti-Tutsi sentiment that
had been building up and when news spread the massacres began almost
immediately. Given the scale of the violence, the genocide was wellplanned, with the groundwork being prepared some time in advance. But
the roots of the slaughter were planted almost a century earlier with the
racialization and institutionalization of tribal difference by Europeans. This
is not to excuse the actions of the murderers but to understand their
behaviour in the context that produced it.
There are key similarities to the process of colonial genocide we have
seen elsewhere. We have the idea of different racial groups pitted against
one another and conflict that arises due to the clashes between the groups.
When faced with defeat (in this case, power-sharing) the Hutu extremists
did what all European forces in the colonies did, which was to exterminate
the enemy to eliminate the threat. The history, logic, context and execution
were not alien to the modern world: just as with the Holocaust, the
Rwandan genocide was the product of the colonial logic of Western
imperialism.
Genocide is an essential component of the current political and economic
order. The West was founded upon genocide in the Americas and the
Caribbean and was sustained with colonial slaughter around the globe.
Western prosperity is propped on the countless bodies sacrificed for socalled development. Instead of engaging with the brutality of the system,

the popular imagination pictures genocides as the product of evil-doers and
savages committing atrocities contrary to Western values of reason and
tolerance. But as we have seen, the roots of genocides such as the Holocaust
and the horrors in Rwanda are a product of the West, which that could only
have occurred in the house built on the violence of Enlightenment thought.
To understand that genocide is a central pillar of the West is to begin to
unpick the myths that sustain the illusions of progress. Just as genocide still
echoes in the present day, so too does the next foundation stone of the West
that we will explore: transatlantic slavery.

3

Slavery
On 9 February 2018 the Twitter account of Her Majesty’s Treasury posted
the following surprising #FridayFact:
Did you know that in 1833, Britain used £20 million, 40% of its
national budget, to buy freedom for all slaves in the Empire? The
amount of money borrowed for the Slavery Abolition Act was so
large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015. Which means that living
British citizens helped pay to end the slave trade.
Whoever sent out the post seemed to think that the public would be proud
that ‘millions of you’ helped end the slave trade through your taxes. We
have become so accustomed to historical inaccuracies in understanding
transatlantic slavery that we can set aside the lack of any distinction
between the slave trade, abolished in 1807, and slavery itself, which
continued until 1838 and is the subject of the #FridayFact. But the idea that
the public would be happy we have been paying taxes for the ‘freedom’ of
the so-called slaves is so offensive that this tweet should only make sense as
a macabre parody. The revelation that I and generations of family
descended from those enslaved in the Caribbean effectively paid
compensation to slave owners is sickening, not comforting.
Slavery was formally abolished in the British Empire by the Slavery
Abolition Act passed in 1833, which became law in 1834. However, even

though slavery was abolished, the enslaved were forced into what was
called ‘apprenticeship’ for four further years. This meant having to spend
three-quarters of their time working on the former slave plantations, for no
wages. A funny sort of freedom. Perversely, the system was justified on the
basis that the enslaved had to be trained into the ways of wage labour. The
savages obviously could not be expected to understand how to be free. In
defence of apprenticeship, Sir James Carmichael Smyth declared that the
‘transition from the dejected and almost naked slave to the cheerful and
decently clad labourer could only be believed by those who had recently
revisited the colony after an absence of several years’.1 In reality,
apprenticeship did not have the welfare of the formerly enslaved in mind.
The goal was to ensure that the slave owners should not ‘lose … the benefit
to which they were entitled to by contract’ of slavery.2 Therefore the
enslaved had to pay for their own freedom by continuing to work for free, a
key part of history oddly missing from the Treasury’s fun #FridayFact. The
other essential ingredient absent from their tweet was from who exactly the
British taxpayer bought the freedom of the enslaved. Just as with
apprenticeship, the money went to compensate slave owners for their loss
of wealth.
In a shock development, the news that we have been paying slave owners
with our tax money was not something the public widely celebrated.
Especially considering that millions of us are descendants of the very
enslaved who were not only never compensated but were also forced to
work off their ‘debt’ to their masters. This incident speaks to the truth of
slavery and Britain, but also the fantasy version of history that operates in
the dominant historical narrative. Britain should, apparently, be proud of
ending slavery but not feel guilty about profiting from it.
The reparation payment for slave owners is of an unprecedented scale in
British history. Twenty million pounds represented 40 per cent of the entire
expenditure of the British government in 1833. In today’s money the
payment would be the equivalent to £17 billion.3 But £20 million
represented around 5 per cent of GDP in 1833, which would be over £100
billion in 2020. Whichever number you prefer, it is clearly a massive
transfer of wealth by the government. The only government pay-out in
history that was larger was the one made to bail out the banks after the 2008
financial crisis, which cost £200 billion. However, that was a series of loans
that have supposedly been paid back since. There simply is no other

example of the equivalent of over £100 billion to compensate for private
individual losses, an amount of money so overwhelming that the
government had to take a loan from the Bank of England that was so large it
took 182 years to pay back. The fact the government invested so much
money in this bailout demonstrates just how essential the plantation system
was to the economy.
Transatlantic slavery was the fuel that powered Western development. It
was the massive wealth derived from the system that allowed the West to
catch up with and then overtake the rest of the world. Slavery was not new:
Europe developed on the back of the Arab slave trade that was hundreds of
years old when Columbus sailed back from Hispaniola with indigenous
Americans to sell into slavery. But the transatlantic trade was a unique
development, reducing Africans to subhuman commodities who became the
major currency for Western progress. By 1833, however, the system had
begun to fray.
The Haitian revolution in 1804 had been a major factor in Britain
abandoning the trade from Africa: the British were terrified of Africans who
would revolt in the Caribbean. Between 1831 and 1832 the Christmas
Rebellion of the enslaved in Jamaica led by Sam Sharpe also shook the
British commitment to slavery.4 Over 20,000 enslaved Africans took part
and more than 300 were executed in the aftermath. Rebellion and resistance
had made the system dangerous and less profitable. Sugar, which was the
primary product in the British Caribbean, was also becoming cheaper and
faced competition from new producers in places like India, who could pay
close to slave-labour rates without the same risks. The plantation economies
were in danger of collapse, which would have ruined the wider British
economy.
Britain was not alone. The entire Western economic system depended on
the wealth from slavery. That wealth remains with us to this day, as does the
poverty created through the brutal system. We think of slavery as belonging
to the distant past, but the world we live in remains created in its image.

LEGACIES OF SLAVERY
Britain was by no means the only country to engage in the slave system, nor
to give reparations to its slave owners at abolition. Denmark, the

Netherlands and Spain all paid out compensation, and as I will discuss in
more depth later, France forced Haiti to pay over 150 million francs for
having the audacity to successfully revolt against slavery. After claiming its
independence from Britain, the United States rose to become one of the
primary nations reliant on slavery. Lincoln authorized compensation for
slave owners in order to achieve emancipation in Virginia in 1862. Every
enslaved African freed merited a payment of $100, over $2,500 in today’s
money, and the largest individual pay-out was $18,000, the equivalent of
almost $500,000.5 Compensation was not widespread in the United States;
in fact after the Civil War General Sherman confiscated slave owners’ land
and promised each emancipated African 40 acres and the use of a mule to
tend the land, in reparation for their toil and suffering. But this order was
reversed by President Andrew Johnson, who compensated the slave owners
for their losses by returning the land taken from the defeated Confederacy.6
Britain is unique, however, in that it holds a comprehensive record of
where the slave reparations went, thanks to the Legacies of British Slave
Ownership project at University College London (UCL). The project has
documented the 47,000 recipients of payments to try to establish where the
money ended up.7 What is abundantly clear from these records is just how
widespread slave ownership was. The church, politicians, banks and
thousands of individuals had personal stakes in slavery; and all were
compensated at abolition. Among the notable people with links to slavery
reparations are former prime minister David Cameron and his wife, who
both have beneficiaries in their families. Samantha Cameron is descended
from William Jolliffe, who received the equivalent of £3 million for his
holding of 164 enslaved Africans. Slave-owning members of David
Cameron’s family include Sir James Duff, who also received the equivalent
of £3 million for his 202 enslaved Africans in Jamaica. Cameron is not the
only British prime minister with links to the slave trade. William
Gladstone’s father received £83 million in today’s money to compensate for
his loss of the labour of the 2,508 enslaved Africans he owned across a
number of Caribbean plantations. The news of Cameron’s links to slaveowner reparations was particularly egregious given that he famously told
the Jamaican parliament in 2015 that their demands for reparations for
being the victims of slavery were falling on deaf ears and that it was time to
‘move on’.8

Researchers at UCL were also keen to follow this money into
investments in British industry. They found that the money was invested
across society, including in the railways, industry and philanthropy.
Financial services were particularly implicated in slavery: the Bank of
England has recently acknowledged that many of the Bank’s directors in the
eighteenth century were slave-owners or their descendants. The practice of
banks using the enslaved as security for loans also ‘permeated banking’.9
Insurance brokers were central to the slave system, underwriting the
hazardous journeys of slave ships and also the plantations in the Americas
and Caribbean, and slave owners were constant features on the boards of
insurance companies. Two of the first five presidents of what is now Royal
Sun Alliance, one of the biggest insurance firms today, were slave owners,
and the group grew by incorporating slave-owner dominated companies.
Accounting was no different: two of the largest firms in the world today,
Deloitte and Price Waterhouse Coopers, were founded by families enriched
by profits from slavery. By accounting for the slave compensation money,
the UCL project demonstrated just some of the afterlives of slavery. But the
extent to which Britain, and the West as a whole, engorged itself on slavery
cannot be captured solely in the money from slave-owner compensation.
As we have already seen, the ‘discovery’ of the Americas was the
starting point of the West. Expansion across the Atlantic marked the shift
from the limits of Europe to the endless possibilities of the so-called New
World. Resources and labour were two of the elements that were essential
to unlocking the wealth across the Atlantic, and slavery became central to
both for over three centuries. Minerals such as gold, and other commodities
that powered the industrial development of products like tobacco, sugar and
cotton were all produced across the Atlantic, providing the fuel for Western
expansion. In the first instance the natives were put to work, but genocide
meant there were not enough workers to sustain production. European
indentured labourers, conscripted as serfs to toil on the plantations for a
limited number of years, were favoured by Britain into the seventeenth
century. But when demand grew the nation enthusiastically embraced slave
labour, in which the Spanish and Portuguese had been pre-eminent from the
fifteenth century. Enslaving Africans to be put to work in the Americas and
Caribbean became the basis of production in the Atlantic system, which
was ‘the first principle and foundation of all the rest, the mainspring of the

machine which sets every wheel in motion’ for the development of the
West.10
Eric Williams’ classic Capitalism and Slavery, first published in 1944,
remains the go-to book for the case that slavery provided the fuel for British
development. He painstakingly outlined how central slave labour and
produce was to British industry and the development of capital. A chilling
example is the case of Lloyd’s of London, which is now one of Britain’s
largest companies, with assets in excess of £50 billion. In 2014 I remember
watching an executive on BBC Breakfast News celebrating the company’s
325th anniversary and being proud of their roots in ‘insuring the merchant
trade’. What she neglected to mention was that what Lloyd’s cut their teeth
on insuring was the slave trade. But Lloyd’s commitment to slavery predated its involvement in the trade, as Williams explains:
In the early years, when Lloyd’s was a coffee house and nothing
more, many advertisements in the London Gazette about runaway
slaves listed Lloyd’s as the place where they should be returned.11
Following the global protests after the murder of George Floyd, Lloyd’s
apologized for its sordid past and committed to ‘invest in positive
programmes to attract, retain and develop black and minority ethnic talent’
and offer ‘financial support to charities and organizations promoting
opportunity and inclusion for black and minority ethnic groups’.12 The fact
this stomach-churning PR move was dubbed ‘reparations’ in the press tells
us how little we understand the centrality of slavery to today’s conditions.
There is nothing that a company that gorged on the flesh of enslaved
Africans to amass its wealth could do to atone short of liquidating its assets
and turning them over to Black communities.
Lloyd’s was sued by the descendants of enslaved Africans, led by
Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, in the United States in 2002 along with a slew
of major companies and the US government. One of the US firms included
in the suit was Aetna, among the nation’s largest health insurance
companies, founded in 1853. The company issued a public apology in 2000
for selling insurance policies for the enslaved on US plantations, after
Farmer-Paellmann’s activism had revealed their links to slavery. In 1853
Aetna New Orleans were selling policies for $17.53 per year, which would
yield $600 if the enslaved African died. Such policies were not rare. There

was a major industry of insuring the enslaved, with prices being cheaper for
children than for those who were older.13
The involvement of insurance companies, accounting firms and banks is
central to the argument that slavery fuelled development because of how
important the finance sector was to Western industry. Credit and capital
were absolute prerequisites for industrial development, and for the majority
of the eighteenth century there were few better placed than slave owners or
cotton brokers to invest in industry.
Plantations were hugely profitable, which is why so much money was
paid out in reparations to slave owners to secure abolition. Barbados was
Britain’s richest slave colony in the seventeenth century, off the back of
sugar production. The island had been producing tobacco by using White
indentured labourers, but switched to sugar and primarily slave labour in
1640.14 The transformation in the fortunes of the island were swift. Half a
plot of 5,000 acres which had been purchased for £400 in 1640 was valued
at £7,000 by 1648.15 For an example of how much money could be made,
Colonel Thomas Moyford emigrated to Barbados in 1647 and just three
years later was boasting he had made a hundred times his initial £1,000
investment. James Parker, who found his fortune on the island, wrote a year
earlier that ‘a man with about 200 odd pounds … might quickly gaine an
estate by sugar’.16 Sugar became a highly profitable commodity as
consumption ballooned in Britain and across Europe. Between 1650 and
1800 British sugar consumption increased 2,500 per cent, all of it produced
by slave labour.17 These profits from sugar and other slave-produced
commodities were ploughed back into the nation, reaping untold collective
dividends.
One of the many lies we like to tell about British development is that the
Industrial Revolution was the product of scientific ingenuity and hard work.
But what is often omitted from the story is how it also depended on the
financing and resources from slavery and colonialism. James Watt and
Matthew Boulton have for all intents and purposes been elevated to the
status of saints in my hometown of Birmingham because of their input into
the city. The story of the steam engine has an almost mythical quality,
produced by the divine inspiration of our city’s patrons. But Watt expressed
eternal ‘gratitude’ to slave owners in the Caribbean because it was their
finance that allowed him to realize his design and ambitions for the steam

engine, and plantations were some of the first places to benefit from
industrial mechanization, to refine sugar.18 By 1808 the Spanish colony of
Cuba already had twenty-five steam engines supplied by Fawcett and
Preston, based in Liverpool.19
Cotton was also indispensable to the Industrial Revolution, both in terms
of mechanization and development. Contrary to the misguided belief that
industrial development replaced the need for slave labour, the relationship
was the inverse. When Eli Whitney developed the cotton gin in 1793, he
unleashed the potential for the fabric to be used in mass production. The
separation of seeds from fibres in the plants is essential to make fabric but
before the cotton gin this process was done manually and was extremely
time-consuming. Prior to the cotton gin’s invention slave labour was not
generally applied to cotton because the time invested in the separation
process made it unprofitable. But the invention gave a ‘terrible second
wind’ to cotton produced on slave plantations and led to the major boom of
the plantation economy, particularly in the United States.20 So fundamental
was this transformation that cotton plantations became the new centre of
American slavery in the nineteenth century and cotton came to represent
half of all US exports. Enslaved Africans were sold into the deep South,
where cotton could be grown more easily than in the more northern
plantations, to cash in on the cotton boom.
The boom in US cotton production also provided a major boost for the
British economy. By the time of the abolition of slavery in the British
colonies, cotton had become the dominant British industry. Between 1785
and 1830 cotton exports had grown from £1 million to £30 million in value.
Between 1788 and just 1806 the amount of people employed in the cotton
industry in Britain leapt from 350,000 to 800,000, and off the back of this
production the population of Manchester grew six-fold between 1773 and
1824. Cotton was king, but the enterprise was based on the import of raw
cotton, which grew from £11 million to £283 million between 1784 and
1832.21 Cotton does not grow in Britain, and at this point the majority of
the raw material was being imported from the United States, procured, of
course, by slave labour. After Britain abolished slavery in 1833, its imports
of slave-produced cotton from the US South continued to grow, until the
emancipation of the enslaved in America in 1865. From 1790 to 1860 the
enslaved population of the United States grew from around 790,000 to over
4 million, and it was this growth that fed the cotton boom on both sides of

the Atlantic. It is no exaggeration to say that slave labour built the north of
England and that its beloved cotton mills, such a fixture in literary and
historical imagination of the nation, are just as steeped in the history of
slavery as the plantations in the Americas. The same is true for northern
cities in the United States like Boston and New York, which were just as
reliant on the wealth produced from the horrors of slavery.

THE TRIANGULAR TRADE
In the face of the insurmountable evidence of the importance of slavery to
the development of Britain and the United States, various scholars have
tried to downplay its significance for industrial development. A parade of
academics in economics journals have apparently tested the idea that the
slave trade was indispensable to British industry, their conclusion being to
reassure everyone that Britain would have developed just fine without the
horrendous trade in human flesh. Walter Rodney, the prominent Guyanese
scholar, chided that ‘this kind of argument is worth noting more as an
example of the distortions of which White bourgeois scholarship is capable
than as something requiring serious consideration’.22 But this is not simply
an academic debate that we can ignore, since these ideas frame how poorly
society understands the centrality of slavery to the present day. My A-level
teacher’s, and the textbooks’, off-hand dismissal of transatlantic slavery as a
factor in the Industrial Revolution is a direct result of academic work. It is
the same source which allows us to ignore massive global inequality today,
since we believe the West deserves its riches and conveniently ignore the
reality of oppression that produces them.
Not much surprises me any more about the lengths to which White
scholarship (this includes a lot written by authors of colour) will go to try to
minimize the centrality of racism to their current position of privilege. But
even I raised an eyebrow when reading supposedly ‘scientific’ analyses
diminishing the importance of slavery to the development of the British
economy. It is worth exploring the acrobatic contortions such ‘scholarship’
has to go through to bend the abundance of evidence to support its dubious
case. The principal device for doing this is by reducing the argument that
the profits from slavery powered British industrial development, by
counting solely the profits made from the voyages of slave ships.23

It has been widely recognized that the business of trading the enslaved
was a dangerous task.24 Voyages took months at sea, and from the time the
ships landed on the African coast to when they left the Caribbean and
Americas the crews had to deal with the resistance and revolt of their
captured bounty. Conditions on slave ships were notoriously horrendous
and the spread of disease was common. The death toll for those working on
the ships was high, and was even higher for the enslaved Africans, a
significant number of whom died in transit. Nations also tried to establish
monopolies over the importation of the enslaved. Britain abandoned the
approach of having one slave-trading Royal African Company for the logic
of free trade in the ‘market’ in 1698.25 But British companies were legally
forbidden from trading with foreign-owned plantations, thereby limiting the
trade. The profits from slave-trading voyages varied but it is not difficult to
see how the trade itself would not be the most lucrative part of the system.
However, it is absurd to overstate the case. Focusing on only the voyages
from Africa also ignores the internal trade, where the enslaved were sold
within the plantation system across the Americas often for huge profits.
Given that the slave ships would often sell Africans to brokers in markets in
the ports who would then trade with plantations, the trade was far larger
than the voyages to Africa.
In a paper published in a peer-reviewed and respected academic journal it
is argued that the ‘direct participants in trade’ did not profit ‘because the
price of a slave was too low’.26 Reading this literature the focus and
language of the research is as striking as it is disturbing. They reduced their
scope of enquiry to ‘logbooks’, calculating expenses for transporting human
cargo. This is like studying the Holocaust by a cost–benefit analysis of gas
chambers.27 Leaving aside the callous, inhuman way that these scholars
discuss enslaved Africans, the basis of their conclusion is the definition of
so-called ‘voodoo’ economics. They try to argue that African slave catchers
were the greatest beneficiaries of the trade because they had more control
over ‘supply’ and therefore the costs they could charge for Africans. This is
done in a desperate attempt to minimize the importance of slavery to the
economics of the West and at the same time to argue that Africa actually
profited from it. These twisted arguments are used to reject the idea of
reparations for slavery, by asserting that the West never actually made any
money from it. You do not need to have more than a superficial
understanding of the slave trade to see through this nonsense.

It is often called the triangular trade, because ships would leave from
Europe, laden with goods to trade for the enslaved in Africa, then transport
their human cargo to the Americas before returning to Europe with the
products of slave labour from the plantations. There is no doubt that
rewards on the African side of the transactions were far less valuable than
the human capacity being traded away.
The goods that Europeans traded included guns and textiles produced in
Europe. Wool was a key commodity that Africans desired, along with
cotton fabrics. But these were finished products imported into Africa and
not capital-producing, like the labour of the enslaved. The textiles and guns
traded in Africa were a key outlet for exports that benefited Western
economies. An argument could be made that guns were valuable in terms of
acquiring land, but often these were purchased in order to defend against
slave raiders or other groups who also had guns.28 In return for millions of
labourers who would produce untold wealth through commodity
production, African enslavers received nothing that would stimulate any
economic development. In addition, the risks to the enslavers on the
continent were far greater than those for the Europeans involved. Journeys
from the interior of the continent could take eight months, with up to 40 per
cent of those enslaved dying on the way.29 The risk of mutiny and attack
was extremely high and the reward for all of this was relatively minimal.
The truth is that slavery devastated the African political and economic
system. To suggest that this is where the profits of the trade ended up goes
beyond delusion into the realm of racist propaganda.
Reducing the impact of slavery to the profits of individual voyages is a
fallacy, but so too is limiting the contribution of the slave trade only to its
profit margin. Slaving voyages required a whole range of other industries to
carry on the horrendous trade. Ships needed to be built and maintained,
meaning a boom in the timber and shipbuilding trades. The ports involved
also needed to develop, and these became focal points for commerce, labour
and population. Bristol dominated the British slave trade in the early
eighteenth century. Between 1721 and 1730 British ships in total carried
100,000 enslaved, but from 1728 to 1732 ships launched from Bristol alone
carried the same number.30 Bristol developed a trade that was bigger than
the entire Dutch system and by 1790 40 per cent of the city’s income came
from the trade.31 Slavery literally built Bristol. The hallmarks of this
history remain across the city, most notably with the monuments and public

commemoration of one of Bristol’s famous sons, Edward Colston. His only
notable accomplishment was profiting from the trade in human flesh. He is
deified in the city because he used some of the money he earned to invest in
local philanthropy. In the wave of Black Lives Matters protests a statue of
him in the city was toppled after years of activism from #ColstonMustFall.
But in a macabre way it is perfectly sensible to celebrate Colston, given that
his trade is responsible for building the city, and Bristol is certainly not
alone in owing its development to slavery.
By the late eighteenth century Liverpool had overtaken Bristol as the
primary slave port in Britain, accounting for over 60 per cent of the nation’s
slave trafficking and more than 40 per cent of Europe’s. Slave trading also
sparked a population surge, with an increase from 5,000 inhabitants in 1700
to 34,000 by 1773. The rise in trade triggered an exponential growth in
customs duties, from an average of £51,000 between 1750 and 1757, to
£648,000 in 1785.32 The slave trade brought money and people flooding
into Liverpool, without which it could not have developed into the city it is
today. None of this was lost on Liverpudlians at the time. There was fierce
resistance to the abolition of the slave trade. James Penny, a principal owner
of dozens of Liverpool slaving ventures, remarked in 1788,
Should this trade be abolished, it would not only affect the
Commercial Interest, but also the Landed Property of the County of
Lancaster, and more particularly the Town of Liverpool, whose fall,
in that case, would be as rapid as its Rise has been astounding.33
London similarly benefited from being a port for slave ships, and – in case
you were worried this was solely an English endeavour – after the Act of
Union in 1707 Glasgow became a major player in the slave trade, providing
another Atlantic port. Tobacco and in particular sugar were essential to
Glasgow’s economy – as important as slave-produced sugar was to Bristol’s
economy. By the late eighteenth century Glasgow had eighty sugar
refineries compared to Bristol’s twenty, marking just how important the
industry was to the city.34 Make no mistake: this was a collective effort,
and the trade impacted all corners of the nation.
Industrial cities away from the coast also saw an enormous boost to their
income as a consequence of the development of the slave trade. To
complete the trade triangle, the ships needed to be stocked with

commodities to trade for human flesh. The wool industry boomed by
providing the necessary currencies, and the same is true for cotton
manufacturers, who turned the raw material from slave labour into fabrics
that were used to purchase more of the enslaved. Manchester was a key
beneficiary that depended heavily on the trade for its development.
Liverpool becoming a centre for the trade led directly to the growth of
Manchester through the cotton boom. In 1772 a canal was built linking the
site of production with the port and it was this that led to the explosion of
Manchester. By 1788 the city was exporting £200,000 worth of goods to
Africa, the production of which employed 180,000 people.35
Even further inland the impacts of the trade were being felt. It was
remarked that ‘the price of a negro was one Birmingham gun’, and the city
was exporting between 100,000 and 150,000 guns a year by the nineteenth
century, largely to support the trade.36 Birmingham also produced the
manacles and chains that were essential to enslave people. Unsurprisingly
the city came out against the abolition of the trade, declaring that it ‘was
dependent on the slave trade to a considerable extent … Abolition would
ruin the town and impoverish many of its inhabitants’.37 In order to make
these guns and shackles, huge quantities of iron were needed, boosting
British ironworks in places like Merthyr Tydfil in Wales.
London’s benefits from the trade extended beyond just being a port city.
As we saw when tracing the legacies of slave ownership, insurance,
accounting and banking all profited immensely from slavery. One of the
factors that made the trade itself less profitable was its dangerous nature,
and insurance took advantage of this by underwriting the voyages. While
the cost of insurance premiums may have dented the profits of the ships,
these were accrued by the insuring companies. The same is true for debt
repayments for financing the loans. In fact, if you look at where all the
money that reduced the profits of slave ship voyages went, the vast majority
was dispersed throughout the British economy. To focus on solely the profit
of individual slave voyages is to wilfully misrepresent how central slavery
was to Britain as a whole. Untold sums of money were ploughed into the
key industries that powered development, generated by the trade of
enslaved Africans. But impact-of-slavery-deniers are correct about one
thing: the trade itself was not the most significant aspect in terms of
impacting Britain. It was the entire Atlantic system of production that could
not have existed without the trade.

Another device to minimize the importance of slavery is to solely focus
on the sugar produced by slave labour in the Caribbean, which although
highly profitable was a consumer good that was popular but not strictly
necessary. By isolating sugar, the idea is to claim that Britain could have
done without it. Comparing the size of the sugar business to other
contributors to the economy, the conclusion is drawn that industries like
‘banking, insurance, horse-breeding, canals, hospitality, construction, wheat
farming, fishing, and the manufacture of wooden implements’ were equally,
if not more, important to the British economy.38 Hopefully, you can see
through the distortions of this kind of thinking by this point in the book.
The majority of the industries thought of as being separate from sugar were
either dependent on or heavily involved in slavery. Banking and insurance
were necessary to finance and underwrite the trade. Canals were essential to
connect the ports to the manufacturing centres. Hospitality would have at
least in part been built up around slave ports to serve their wealthy
beneficiaries. Whole cities developed out of their role in slavery, thereby
boosting construction. No doubt wheat, fishing and wooden implements
supported either the system directly or along the supply chain. Elsewhere in
this kind of supposed scholarship we see comparisons to cotton, wool and
iron again ignoring the obvious links to slavery (though how this is possible
with cotton is beyond me). If anything, these academic delusions are a
reminder of just how important slavery was, because it permeated the
majority of British industry at the time.
Yet all the evidence is distorted and misused to draw the conclusion
(without any proof offered but their own certainty) that it was the Industrial
Revolution itself that led to the increase in British industry. Apparently it is
reasonable to believe that British ingenuity is so all-powerful that not only
could it create the finance needed to bring about mass production, it could
also create the markets necessary to sell its produce. This is the Immaculate
Conception narrative of British industry, sparked into being by divine
British genius. The truth is that the slave system produced the wealth,
resources and markets that powered industrial progress.
The Atlantic system was the key to unlocking Western progress in
general, and the British Industrial Revolution in particular. Commodities
like tobacco, sugar and cotton generated wealth and commerce that fed
back into the nation. Even impact-of-slavery-deniers recognize that the key
advantage was that an abundance of ‘suitable virgin land’ was available in

the Americas for free in order to cultivate the commodities necessary for
industry.39 What they fail to acknowledge is that this was because of the
genocide of the indigenous people that I covered in the last chapter. Racism
is the continuous underpinning logic of the West, and to solve the problem
of labour in the Garden of Eden, Western powers enslaved millions of
Africans. Without this labour the bounty of the Americas would have stayed
locked away, unable to enrich Europe. That is the true value of the slave
trade, which is impossible to calculate. You cannot isolate any one aspect
because the enslavement of Africans made the whole system possible. Even
if the trade itself was less profitable its contribution to economic
development was indispensable. So while it may be possible that British
industry would have developed without slavery, that is speculation best left
for a science-fiction novel about alternative realities. In the timeline that we
are in, slavery cannot be untangled from the development of either
capitalism or industry.

THE WESTERN SYSTEM
The Atlantic system represents the dawn of the West, the founding logic
based on the interdependent exploitation of the rest of the world by those of
European descent. Columbus, an Italian sailing under the banner of the
Spanish, is the perfect symbol because his voyages represent the beginning
of the new system of global conquest that came out of Europe.40 Although
there was fierce rivalry between European powers for domination of the
system, it could not have prospered without their collaboration.
The Portuguese and the Dutch dominated the slave trade in the
seventeenth century. Portugal had the benefit of the enormous colony of
Brazil to supply with enslaved Africans. In fact, the largest number of
enslaved Africans anywhere toiled on Brazilian plantations, accounting for
between 38 per cent and half of all those stolen from Africa.41 Between
1721 and 1730 alone, nearly 150,000 Africans were taken to Brazil.42
Portugal’s demand for slave labour was so high that the Portuguese held a
near-monopoly of the slave trade in places like Angola, from where over 70
per cent of those enslaved ended up in Brazil.43 Enslaved Africans in
Brazil were forced to work mining for gold and diamonds as well as
producing sugar, but the demand for labour was so great that it outstripped

the Portuguese supply. Brazilian colonists relied on enslaved Africans from
other slaving nations to make up the difference, particularly Holland in the
seventeenth century.
The Dutch held their own colonies, most notably Surinam, but rose to
prominence off the back of the slave trade rather than the plantations.
Despite military losses in the region that meant ceding plantations, in the
1650s Amsterdam was the centre of the commercial world because it
‘dominated the market’ of enslaved Africans to the Caribbean.44 The
Dutch West India Company was founded in 1621 to hold a monopoly over
the Dutch involvement and was extremely successful in its terrible trade.
The Dutch did not possess a large number of colonies, which meant that the
company was free to trade African flesh to other European empires because
they were not in direct competition for labour. They used the small
Caribbean island of Curaçao not as a plantation, but as a docking station for
their human cargo. In just one example of the company’s flexibility, when
they were forced out of Brazil by a rebellion of Portuguese colonists, they
took the opportunity to begin to trade with the British in Barbados.45
From the very beginning the Dutch West India Company was a model of
collaboration between European powers. When it was set up in 1621, the
Dutch proposed to the Danes and the French that they incorporate similar
companies and embark on collective expeditions. The Dutch were central to
Britain’s early involvement in the slave system, not only supplying the
enslaved but working together to break up Spain’s monopoly in the
Caribbean.46 Without this facilitation and cooperation the system could not
have fully developed in the seventeenth century. The same is true of the
naval technological innovations which improved the speed and longevity of
ships, which were essential in facilitating the trafficking of millions across
the Atlantic. The Dutch developed the work of the Portuguese and Spanish,
and ultimately Britain built on the advances of the Dutch and became preeminent.47
When Britain and France came to dominate the trade in the eighteenth
century, we could view this period as one marked more by intense rivalry
than collusion. Both nations were fierce enemies and their plantations were
in direct competition. Nantes, Marseilles and Bordeaux at various times
rivalled Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow as slave ports. Nantes began
trading in the enslaved in 1666 and by 1789 the city’s merchants were

investing 50 million francs annually into the Caribbean.48 During the
eighteenth century the Caribbean accounted for a fifth of France’s external
trade,49 and the vast majority of French industries had links to either Africa
or the Americas and the Caribbean.50 Haiti was the jewel in the crown of
French slavery. In 1759, 1,587 ships docked in Haiti, more than in
Marseilles, a port that was used for more than the triangular trade. Haiti was
a huge success for France – by the middle of the eighteenth century
Bordeaux alone was refining 10,000 tons of raw sugar from the colony –
and it was one shared across Europe. Bordeaux became a hub of Flemish,
Dutch, Irish and even rival English traders keen to make money out of the
booming industry. Haiti’s produce was sold all across Europe, with profit
being made across the region. In the early eighteenth century Hamburg was
a major centre for refining sugar even though Germany was only a small
player in the direct buying, selling and enslaving of Africans. The wealth
from the Atlantic system created a new world order where Europe gorged
on the fruits of empire, regardless of which nation state owned the various
colonies.
Alongside France, Britain also fed this market, providing raw materials
and produce for the networks of capital. British slaving interests depended
on other nations both for markets to sell produce and also for the raw
materials necessary for slavery. Timber for the ships needed to be sourced
as did the steel needed for Birmingham to manufacture the guns and
shackles. Sweden was a major supplier of iron for the slave trade and
enriched itself greatly from the Atlantic system.51 We often see Sweden
and Scandinavia as some kind of bastion of equality, but the region is just as
tied up with the history of slavery as anywhere else. Both Sweden and
Denmark got their hands soaked in the blood of the trade. Denmark was
more successful, having a foothold in Guinea for 200 years and trafficking
as many as 4,000 enslaved Africans per year.52 St Croix, now part of the
US Virgin Islands, was a Danish colony from 1672 to 1917, prompting the
Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen to admit that the country
had ‘exploited the slaves in the West Indian Islands during 250 years and
made good money on them’, during a public commemoration of the 75th
anniversary of passing the colony to the Americans in 1992.53 No corner of
Western Europe is untouched by the history of slavery.

As well as collaborating in the European economic network infused by
their slave colonies, Britain and France also directly collaborated with each
other in the trade. This seems counterintuitive, given that they were fierce
rivals and both had to invest heavily in defence to ensure that their colonial
treasures were not captured by the other power. Britain was jealous of Haiti
and the revenues it was generating for its rival, but the reality was that
Haiti, and all of French slavery, was only as successful as it was because of
the British slave trade. By the start of the eighteenth century Britain had
given up on the Dutch model of creating a monopoly company to run the
British trade and had given into the logic of the free market. Although it
was technically forbidden, traders made a fortune selling to whoever would
buy. As a result, half of all the Africans trafficked onto French plantations
came from the British slave trade.54 So during the time that Britain and
France were in direct competition and even conflict, French slavery was
kept afloat by British merchants. This was particularly the case in Haiti,
where around two-thirds of the enslaved were African born when the
revolution broke out in 1791.
Conditions on Haitian plantations were so harsh that the enslaved were
mostly worked to death like disposable beasts of burden, due to the cold
calculation that it was cheaper to replace Africans than to raise them.55
When William Pitt the Younger, prime minister of Britain, realized that the
British trade was enabling the success of their bitter rival he enlisted a
certain William Wilberforce to begin a campaign to end the slave trade in
1786.56 The campaign was dressed up as a moral crusade but was driven
by the calculation that British colonies had trafficked enough Africans to
maintain the plantations for ever, whereas French plantations would be
permanently damaged by losing their supply of enslaved Africans. This
explains why a supposedly moral campaign did not attempt to end slavery
itself and only focused on the trafficking of Africans. Even after the trade
was officially abolished in the Empire, British merchants continued to
supply those foreign colonies which continued to trade, and British
companies carried on purchasing slave-produced commodities.
One of the hallmarks of Western economies is the domination of private
interests over the state, and the Atlantic system is where we can see this
emerge. Business interests colluded across national boundaries until they
convinced the nation states to change their approach. Pitt’s campaign is a
reminder that whilst the state may well have wanted to maintain national

supremacy and conflict, the market would not allow it. The abolition of the
slave trade took over twenty years from his intervention and was mostly
successful not because of the edicts of the nation state but because of
resistance from the enslaved. After the trade ended the birth rate on the
plantations plummeted as enslaved African women refused to breed the
next batch of the enslaved.57 Those invested in slavery were also terrified
by the Haitian revolution. In 1804 the Haitians completed history’s only
recorded successful slave revolution, declaring their independence from
France. The revolution took over a decade to complete, sparked by a Vodou
ceremony at Bwa Kayiman in 1791 led by the enslaved Boukman Dutty and
Cécile Fatiman. In a reminder of the collusion at the heart of the system,
Boukman was originally enslaved in the British colony of Jamaica but sold
to a Haitian plantation. The rebellion spread across the island, eventually
uniting the enslaved and the far smaller number of free Black people, whose
numbers included a class of ‘Creoles’ who were mixed heritage as a
consequence of sexual abuse by plantation owners. Efforts were made by
the French, Spanish and British to take back the island and break the revolt,
but the revolutionaries stood firm. As already mentioned, one of the major
causes of the revolution was that around two-thirds of the enslaved were
African born. Not only were they born free, many were warriors sold into
slavery as prisoners of a civil war in Congo. The direct linkages to Africa,
and African traditions like Vodou, struck fear in the heart of the slave
owners, and Britain decided it did not want to risk importing revolution into
its plantations. Britain’s firms calculated they had enough home-grown
cattle to toil in their fields.
Spain was the empire that tried the hardest to maintain its national
monopoly, to the detriment of its plantation holdings. In Cuba, the Spanish
Crown refused to allow the importation of enslaved Africans by other
nations until 1789. It was likely the British colonization of Cuba in 1762
that changed Spanish thinking on this issue. During their brief occupation
the British opened the island to the full economic opportunities of the
Atlantic trade. Prior to the British presence only six ships a year docked;
eighteen years later the number had increased to over 200. The result was
that plantation slavery also greatly increased. Between 1512 and 1761
around 60,000 enslaved Africans arrived in Cuba, but from 1762 to 1838
that number was over 400,000.58 Although the Spanish Crown objected, its
colonies had relied on foreign sales of the enslaved as far back as the

seventeenth century from the Dutch. In fact, in 1692 Britain gave Jamaica
and Barbados not only the freedom to trade the enslaved to the Spanish but
also to provide protection to Spanish merchants during business. One of
Spain’s greatest losses in the Caribbean was Jamaica, which was captured
by the British; but it may actually have proved beneficial in the long run
because the presence of a large British slave colony meant there was a
steady flow of enslaved Africans to purchase.59
In the Western imagination slavery often starts with the ships – the
horrendous middle passage – and then follows on to plantation labour. It is
this narrative that leads even contemporary Black scholars to mistakenly
assume that a focus on slavery, or the ‘middle passage epistemology’,60
excludes the experience of people in Africa. Slavery happened to Africa as
much as it did to those who arrived in the Americas. It is as if we have
forgotten that the people stolen in chains were African and left behind
families, communities and societies. The loss of millions of people had a
devastating impact from which Africa still has not recovered. If the
population explosion in Europe is credited as a major factor leading to the
Industrial Revolution then imagine the negative impact on economic
development that the removal of millions of working or soon to be
working-age people would have.
The lower end of estimates is that 12 million Africans arrived in chains in
the Americas and the Caribbean. But this does not account for those who
were smuggled illegally, nor for the loss of life that occurred during the
process of enslavement. As noted earlier, up to 40 per cent of those captured
and transported from the interior of Africa to the coast died, though it is
impossible to fully account for the scale of human loss. When they arrived
at the coast the European traders would often house the enslaved in forts
like the notorious Elmina in Ghana. Conditions in these prisons were
appalling, with the enslaved often imprisoned underground in what they
called the ‘slave hole’, which was a ‘massive airless cellar’.61 After these
became too risky, because of attacks from the natives and competitors,
Europeans took to mooring their slave ships off the coast and as captives
arrived, keeping them in the holds of the ships, potentially for months until
the vessel was full. Death was not uncommon, mostly due to disease; those
who perished were dumped on the shore.
I will not regale you with tales of just how harrowing the middle passage
was. Rest assured, being kept cramped in the hold, bound together in chains

and packed in so tightly that there was barely room to move, was not
conducive to good health. So appalling were the conditions that some slave
ships had a death rate of 50 per cent. It was not only disease that killed the
enslaved: mutiny was common, as was suicide. So terrible was the situation
that many would rather throw themselves overboard than continue to
submit to the degradation. Given that the enslaved represented bounty and
profits for the enslavers you might think that they would have had more
concern for the health of those on board. But the price of an African was
such that it was easier to pack them in as tightly as possible and anticipate
that some of the niggers would die off. When all else failed there was
always the option of an insurance write-off. The infamous case of the Zong
slave ship is testament to how little African life was worth during slavery.
In 1781 the ship was in trouble due to running out of water. So the
captain took the, at the time perfectly reasonable, step of throwing 132 of
the Africans overboard so that the remaining water could be saved for the
crew. There was nothing particularly notable about the act itself; the
disposal of cargo in times of necessity was commonplace and covered by
insurance. The case became prominent solely because of a dispute over
whether the insurance claim made by the Liverpool-based Gregson
Company should be paid out. Abolitionists later popularized the story by
using it as an example of the inhumanity of the system, and the fact remains
that it is probably the most infamous insurance case in history. In his ruling
in favour of the insurers, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield made abundantly
clear that the enslaved were ‘property to be treated by the parties concerned
as no different from any other animate chattel’.62 It is not an exaggeration
to say that the bottom of the Atlantic became a tomb, an unmarked grave
for countless Africans who perished crossing the ocean in chains.
Accounting for the entire loss of population to Africa due to slavery is
impossible but the lower end of the estimates is at least 24 million.63
It was not only the loss of population that changed the continent. In order
to procure millions of enslaved Africans for the Atlantic system an
infrastructure had to be put in place: ports, slave castles and trafficking
routes from the interior. African populations and communities were
decimated and had to retreat from coastal areas and set up defensive
mechanisms to avoid being stolen into the trade. The impact was the
emergence of a way of life that dealt with the brutal reality of slavery. The
changing state of African societies is the perfect example of the geopolitical

shifts caused by the European trade. The historical record is somewhat
cloudy as to the emergence of the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa. It
conquered part of what is now Nigeria in the early eighteenth century, either
to end the slave trade in the region or to gain access to the slave markets on
the coast.64 What is indisputable is that the Dahomey Empire grew out of
the chaos that slavery brought to the region and gained prominence from its
role in supplying Africans for the trade. The same can be said to differing
extents of the Asante and Oyo empires in Ghana and Nigeria respectively.
While slavery was outlawed within both nations, they colluded with the
European traders to supply those from other ethnic groups, either through
raids or by selling those defeated in wars. There is no doubt at all that
slavery was facilitated by collaboration with Africans, but that does not
mean it was not a Western system.
African collusion, and particularly the narrative that the involvement of
Africans somehow mitigates the West’s responsibility for the system, is
nonsense for a number of reasons. Most simply, there were countless
numbers of Jewish collaborators with Hitler’s regime and this of course
does not absolve the Nazis of responsibility. People respond to the
situations that they find themselves in and slavery dominated the
infrastructure of the continent. Make no mistake, this was a Western system
from the outset: a range of European nations were involved in establishing
the framework that some Africans collaborated in. By the end of the
seventeenth century, Dutch, English, Danes and Germans were all present
on the West African ‘Gold Coast’, creating the outposts to supply the
Atlantic system.
Violence was the underpinning logic of the framework, with Western
superiority being embedded by the barrel of the gun. In this system
collusion and resistance often blurred together in the impossible situation
that the barbaric trade created. For instance, people were given the
opportunity to free their relatives from the trade by exchanging two other
Africans they had captured. People were traded for guns, with the express
purpose of the weapons being to defend their communities from the trade.
One of the driving forces for the collaboration of kingdoms like Dahomey
or Asante was that by colluding with the enslavers they would preserve
their own people from being ravaged by slavery. There was also the obvious
allure of making a living out of trading in human flesh. None of this
mitigates the European involvement and we should never lose sight of the

fact that slavery was not something that was beneficial to Africa. The loss
of population and reorganization of social life, either to avoid or to collude
in the trade, devastated the African political and economic system – and all
for guns, textiles and trinkets produced in Europe.
In contrast to the Western system of slavery, we also need to recognize
that Africans were not a unified political or economic entity at the time.
There were different empires, nations and ethnic groups competing for land
and commerce. The idea of African betrayal in this paradigm is clearly
nonsensical because the disparate groups did not feel a particular affinity to
each other. Europeans exploited these differences and rivalries to the fullest
extent. To defend their own communities, Africans were enlisted to enslave
others on the continent. Europeans used the lack of an organized African
polity to exploit the continent, something that, as we will see, became a
common tactic for Western domination of the globe.
Alongside African involvement in slavery being used to mitigate Western
guilt, the existence of slavery on the continent prior to the European trade is
also often mobilized. It is important to dismiss the notion of so-called
African slavery from the start. What is often referred to as slavery in Africa
is more like serfdom, where people were tied to a lord for a fixed period of
time and enjoyed basic human rights. Africans in this position of servitude
could rise from their position and eventually take full part in civic life.
Given the differences between European and African ‘slavery’ (so stark it
make no sense to use the same word), it is likely that Africans had little
knowledge of what exactly they were selling people into. They would have
witnessed the enslaved being transported to the coast and had some
knowledge of the slave castles. But once on the slave ships, slavery was out
of sight of those in Africa, and the abuses of the middle passage and on the
plantation may as well have taken place in an alternate universe.
It is noteworthy that there were no plantations in Africa, although cotton
and sugar could have been cultivated on the continent. Resistance from
Africans is likely a major reason, given how much fortification Europeans
had to invest in to prevent the natives rebelling. There were forts for a
reason, because Africans would not tolerate plantation slavery on the
continent, despite attempts to establish the system by Europeans. There was
a stand-off in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when Europeans did
not have the capacity to conquer the mainland but Africans were unable to
reclaim the coast.65 It took Europe time to develop enough military

superiority to conquer and fully colonize Africa, with the devastation that
the system of slavery left being a key contributing factor to that eventuality.
European slavery decimated the continent but the West did not start the
mass enslavement of African people. As with most ideas, the West did not
originate the concept but took what existed before and developed it to new,
unparalleled heights.
Long before Europe had the idea to turn to Africa for a slave labour
force, Arabs who invaded North Africa in the seventh century had
established a system of slavery on the continent. Over a span of more than
1,250 years around 6 to 7 million Africans were forcibly trafficked across
the Sahara Desert.66 It was, in fact, the Arab system that gave Europeans
the idea and early access to African flesh. When Columbus enslaved the
500 indigenous Americans it was the Arab slave markets that he sold them
into. Europe did not even invent the idea of Africans being inferior, as I
explained in the last chapter. Ibn Khaldun, one of the most influential
scholars in the fourteenth century (who is rarely recognized because he was
Tunisian and not from the West), thought that Africans were submissive to
slavery because ‘they have little [that is essentially] human and have
attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals’.67 Even though
Europe essentially plagiarized Arab racial thinking and Arab slavery lasted
far longer, it is the Western system that had the most damaging impact on
Africa and reaped the greatest rewards for the enslavers. Racial thinking
was prevalent in the Arab world. But the West took those ideas and built
them into the fabric of the political and economic system in order to exploit
the globe and build the modern world.
Whilst racial constructs certainly informed the Arab trade, the role that
Africans played in the system was not based solely on racism. Europeans
were prominent features of slave markets. In fact, the word ‘slave’ derives
from ‘Slav’ because of their prominence in the trade. Notwithstanding the
diversity of those enslaved, there was an anti-Black hierarchy in the system.
The Arabic work mamluk referred to a high-status slave of White European
stock, whereas enslaved Africans called abd were cheaper and consigned to
more menial tasks.68 But, even so, the dehumanization that was an
unremitting feature of European slavery was not always present. The story
of Bilal ibn Rabah, at least in the Sunni view, is a case in point for the
complexities of the relationship of the enslaved to society. An African born
into slavery, Bilal was prevented from reaching the highest positions in

Arab society, but he was one of the Prophet Mohammed’s most trusted
companions who was given the responsibility of leading the call to prayer.
We should not romanticize the Arab slave trade: it was a brutal system
that killed countless Africans. The average life expectancy for the enslaved
was only seven years and they were subject to savage mistreatment and
abuse.69 The slave caravans that took Africans from the interior and
crossed the Sahara were deadly and those who could not make it were left
to die where they fell. Just as with European slavery, the impact on African
society was devastating. Major Dixon Denham, a British traveller to Sudan
in 1823, witnessed how ‘villages were raided, the young women and
children enslaved, the surplus men who had not escaped massacred, and the
old, the lame and the sick killed off or left to die on the roadside’.70 We
cannot overestimate the damage that this scene, reproduced on an industrial
scale, had on the continent and we must acknowledge the central role that
the Arab system had in creating the European trade that followed. But there
is a major difference that distinguishes the Arab trade from the Atlantic
system, which goes to the core argument presented in this book: African
slavery was endemic in the Arab world but it was not essential to the
political and economic development of that region.
The Atlantic system lasted for over 300 years, with a peak during the
eighteenth century. The Arab trade existed over four times as long but
enslaved around half the number of people. But it is not just the size of the
trade that is important, we also have to look at the nature of the two
systems. Around two-thirds of those captured in Arab slavery were women,
and the two main employments of the enslaved were sexual labour and
domestic work. The enslaved were luxuries of the elite, largely used for
pleasure and as house servants. This is in complete contrast to the Atlantic
system where around 80 per cent of those enslaved on British ships were
men and the desire for slave labour was to produce commodities on
plantations and to power the development of capitalism.71 As we have
seen, European slavery produced untold wealth which fired industrial
development and formed the bedrock of European advancement. In
contrast, the profits were in Arab trade, not in slave ownership. As
profitable as the Arab slave trade was, there are tales of slave traders in the
medieval period with nowhere to spend their fortunes.72 The West is built
in large part off the wealth of slavery, whereas the same cannot be said of
the Arab world. This does not make Arab slavery less barbaric or

objectionable but it is important to separate out the legacies of the two
trades. The Atlantic slave trade is still with us, in both the wealth and
poverty caused by the murderous industry.

REPARATIONS NOW
Photographs of slave markets in Libya, in 2017, sparked international
protests against the treatment of Black Africans in the country. Under
Colonial Gaddafi the African population was given protection and
prominence, but after the US-led regime change in 2011 the forces of antiBlackness were unleashed in the nation. We should not be at all surprised,
given how central anti-Black racism has been in the region since the Arab
invasion of North Africa in the seventh century. The crisis in Sudan that
sparked the creation of the new state of South Sudan was also a reminder of
the significant tensions that continue to exist. The Arab slave trade is the
most obvious example of the history of conflict and brutality towards
African people, and the scenes in Libya were a reminder of that painful
legacy. It is clear that the practice has not ended, though it is now usually
forced underground and called human trafficking. But as reprehensible as
the events in Libya are, we must not fall into the trap of conflating Arab
slavery with the European trade; that is perhaps the worst way to discuss the
legacy of the system.
I have lost count of the number of times I have been at a Black History
Month event and a discussion about Atlantic slavery has ended with a
speaker talking about the need to end so-called ‘modern-day slavery’.
Google ‘slavery’ right now and you will find some video claiming the need
to end modern-day slavery with a link to the history of the transatlantic
trade. But not only is this completely nonsensical, it actually prevents us
from looking at the work that actually needs to be done to repair the
damage of the Atlantic system. Human trafficking is an outrage to human
decency and must end, but it has no relation to the transatlantic slave trade,
which was a perfectly legal system of chattel slavery that produced the
modern world. It may make those in the West feel better to embrace a
narrative that places Britain at the centre of abolishing the evils of slavery
and at the forefront of trying to end modern-day practices in backward parts
of the world. But the legacies of slavery are all around us, in the very same

political and economic system from which we generate money for charity in
order to combat the ills of human trafficking. Please do not just take it from
me. Britain’s favourite White supremacist, Winston Churchill,
acknowledged as much when he explained
Our possession of the West Indies, like that of India … gave us the
strength, the support, but especially the capital … to come through
the great struggles of the Napoleonic wars, the keen competition of
commerce in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and enabled us
not only to acquire the appendage of possessions which we have,
but also to lay the foundations of that commercial and financial
leadership which … enabled us to make our great position in the
world.73
As the wealth of Britain, and the wider Western world, was built on the
back of slavery it therefore follows that a debt is owed to those descendants
of the enslaved. I started this chapter by exploring the payment of
reparations to slave owners, so large they created a debt so enormous that it
was only paid off by the twenty-first century taxpayer. It is perverse that
those who laboured and suffered received no restitution in any country.
There is plenty of legal precedent for reparations that are based solely on
the experience of oppression. In 1995 New Zealand agreed to pay the
Maoris for historic abuses committed under the British crown dating back
to 1863.74 Germany paid over $90 billion to Jewish victims of the
Holocaust and their descendants, and the United States has made a number
of payments and settlements with indigenous peoples, although these have
been offensively small and little more than token gestures.75 The horrors of
the slave trade are such that a claim based solely on the torture and
inhumanity of it would be worthy of restitution. But in this case we are also
talking about centuries of unpaid labour that needs to be accounted for. If
the slave owners were compensated at the end of slavery there can be no
justifiable reason for denying reparations to those suffering the legacies of
the system. There have been many campaigns for reparations across the
diaspora.
The Nation of Islam and the Republic of New Afrika in the US in the
1960s both called for General Sherman’s post-American Civil War promise
of forty acres and a mule for each enslaved to be honoured by a parcel of

land in the South being turned over to the Black population. The Black
Lives Matter movement is currently campaigning for reparations for the
damage caused and there is a Europe-wide movement for reparatory justice,
the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE). In Britain
there is an annual Stop the Maangamizi march and calls for an all-party
parliamentary commission into the subject. Africa also formed a reparations
movement through the Organization of African Unity in 1990. The
Caribbean nations have joined the reparations case through the Caribbean
Community (CARICOM), demanding restitution for the impact of slavery.
There are now widespread social movements that recognize that the West
was enriched on the back of slavery and also that the poverty we see across
the Black world today is the legacy of the system. Since the killing of
George Floyd we have even seen companies jump on the reparations PR
bandwagon. The problem with reparations, though, is whether they can ever
account for just how important the system of slavery was to the
development of the West.
Various calculations have been done based on damages and loss of
earnings to arrive at an estimate of just how much the West owes. For the
Caribbean alone, one estimate back in 2005 was $7.5 trillion.76 In the
United States the estimates range from $3 to $14 trillion.77 What is clear
from these figures is that if we were able to calculate a figure owed it would
be so large that it would be impossible for the West to pay. The truth is that
the figure is incalculable because of how steeped the West remains in the
wealth from the Atlantic system. It touches every part of the West’s society
and economy and has also impoverished the Black world to a degree that
cannot be overestimated. The West remains built on these foundations and
to transfer the wealth necessary to repair the damage would destroy the
West, not only because of the money involved, but also because if the Black
world had freedom that would mean the end of the Western project.
Reparations are due, and tearing down Western capitalism is an utter
necessity if we are serious about ending racism. But to realize the
revolutionary politics necessary for this transformation we first need to
recognize that the West can never pay full reparations for slavery without
destroying itself.
Slavery may have ended, but the next phase in Western supremacy was
colonialism, built on the same principles of racial hierarchy and
exploitation. The West simply cannot end racism through reparations

because racial hierarchy is the fuel that feeds the system. The end of slavery
dissolved into the colonial era of racial exploitation, which is still very
much alive and well today.

4

Colonialism
If you want to see colonialism at work today, take a visit to Cadbury World
in Birmingham. The site is still a working factory, the home of the Cadbury
empire, one of Britain’s leading brands with annual revenues exceeding $3
billion.1 From its humble start as a grocery shop in 1824 the company has
become a global juggernaut, selling over 350 million of its signature Dairy
Milk bars every year. Cadbury’s employs more than 45,000 people
worldwide and, including its supply chain, is responsible for keeping
thousands of people in work in the city of Birmingham. Neither the city nor
the company is shy of boasting about the tremendous success of the
business and in 1990 Cadbury World opened on the site of its Bournville
factory, attracting visitors to learn about the history and future plans of the
company. They have added different attractions over the years but the
central structure of the place has remained the same. A tour through
Cadbury World takes you from the first European encounter with chocolate
right through to its present-day production. While the aim is to celebrate the
success of the company, walking through the space is the perfect tour of
neo-colonialism, providing all the ingredients to explain why the West
remains just as built on racism today as it ever was.
Aztec civilization greets you when you first step into the exhibition.
Well, a plastic replica of jungle replete with smiling cocoa beans and wax
figures. There is at least a recognition here that Europeans did not invent or

‘discover’ chocolate, which was introduced to the continent when the
Spanish brought it back from South America. In fairness to the curators,
they give a nod to some of the violence committed by the Spanish, and
reference the Aztec ruler Montezuma being killed by the forces of Cortés in
the sixteenth century. But, typical of how this period is remembered, the
genocide we have already explored is breezily skipped over. I suppose
recounting the murder of tens of millions in a children’s attraction would be
bad for business.
After you learn about the origins of chocolate the story moves to
Birmingham, and the founding of the original shop by John Cadbury in
1824. We hear about his ingenuity and hard work, and how he came up with
the magic formula for the incredibly popular Dairy Milk. In these
foundation stories we are told about cocoa and milk, but conspicuous in its
absence is any reference to the other main ingredient, which is of course
sugar. As we saw in the last chapter, sugar was one of the main slaveproduced commodities. When Cadbury’s began as a small shop, slavery
was still fully functioning in the British Empire, and slave-produced sugar
would have made it into the country until at least 1888, when Brazil
abolished the system. Cadbury’s became a huge commercial success in the
latter part of the nineteenth century after building the Bournville factory in
1878, so is often not seen as having ties to slavery. But this misses the point
for two main reasons. Firstly, Cadbury’s was able to open Bournville due to
the wealth it had generated from using slave-produced sugar. As we have
already seen, wealth produced from slavery was used after abolition to
continue development. More importantly, the ending of slavery did not stop
the exploitative relationship between the Caribbean (or the rest of the
Empire) and Britain. Caribbean colonies continued to produce sugar, often
in dire conditions and certainly for pay that was not too far removed from
the realities of enslavement. Sugar production was a system created by
slavery, with a workforce descended from those stolen in chains and
indentured labourers from other parts of the Empire. There was nothing
clean about the sugar that went into building Cadbury’s.
Instead of focusing on the exploitation at the heart of Cadbury’s, the
exhibition is a celebration of the entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit of
the Cadbury family. Not only did the family build the factory, they also
secured a 120-acre site and on it created the village of Bournville. We are
told that George Cadbury ‘was a housing reformer interested in improving

the living conditions of working people in addition to advancing working
practices’.2 Bournville was a model village for workers in the factory, with
swimming pools and parks. Workers also received far better treatment than
was usual in Victorian times, with the Cadburys seen as ‘pioneering
employee welfare’.3 In fact, the housing and development of Bournville
was so attractive that it is now one of the most expensive places to live in
the city. The irony of celebrating the success of Cadbury’s in supporting the
working classes when they have long since been priced out of the area
seems entirely lost. Being serenaded with tales of how wonderful an
employer the Cadburys were in Birmingham is also telling for what, or
more particularly who, is absent in the story.
Only once, and very briefly, do we see the workers in Ghana picking the
key ingredient for Cadbury’s product: cocoa. I wish I were joking, but sadly
not. In a grainy black-and-white film narrated by an exceedingly posh
gentleman, who is actually wearing the white pith helmet we associate with
colonialism, we see the smiling natives happily chopping down the cocoa
and loading it into vans for export to Britain. There is no mention of the
conditions they faced either historically or in the present day. But when the
president of the World Cocoa Foundation declared in 2018 that ‘our first
and most important target is to raise farmers above the extreme poverty
line’ of $1.90 a day,4 you can imagine just how appalling the situation is
still for those harvesting the base ingredient for a multibillion dollar empire.
The complete lack of care by the Cadburys, or consideration by Cadbury
World, for workers outside Britain is the perfect demonstration of how
gains for workers in the West are built on the back of exploitation of those
in the global South.
By the end of the tour we are introduced to the innovations in advertising
and the array of different products that Cadbury’s now produces. The
impression given is very much that the company is a local and national
success: the best of British as it were. But Cadbury World were honest, the
tour would end with the singing of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ as staff
pledge allegiance to the Stars and Stripes. Cadbury’s has not been a British
company for over a decade now, having been bought by American giant
Kraft Foods in a hostile takeover in 2010. As testament to just how
successful Cadbury’s neo-colonial business model is, the company cost
them $18.9 billion. The US takeover also tells us much about what
colonialism looks like in the present day. The old colonial regimes are no

longer leading the charge. America is now setting the tone for Western
imperialism.

NO SUCH THING AS FAIR TRADE
To understand the continued exploitation of the developing world by the
West, we can start by undoing the fallacy of the idea of fair trade. Cadbury
World again provides a good starting point for this discussion. In their
exhibition they quite openly describe the process of raw cocoa leaving
Ghana and being shipped to a processing plant in Britain before ending up
in the Bournville factory. As part of the tour you get to witness the
production process and see the finished commercial products (they are even
nice enough to give you a discount at the gift shop). There is no recognition
of the exploitation at the heart of this relationship. A resource from Africa
is taken out of the continent at an extremely low cost, processed into a
luxury good in Europe and sold for a huge profit, often back into Africa. It
is the European company that makes all the money off an African resource.
Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, said this reality had an
‘Alice in Wonderland craziness’ about it.5
In the context of trade relationships like this, companies like Cadbury’s
partnering with the Fairtrade Partnership may mean that farmers get a few
more pennies a day, but the notion that there can ever be fair trade is as
offensive as it is absurd. Cocoa farmers receive only 6 per cent of the
money made from the product they labour over.6 The nations which
produce raw materials like cocoa receive a pittance for their resources,
while Western corporations make a fortune exploiting resources that they
otherwise would have no access to. As we saw in the first two chapters, the
expansion of the West was necessary for both the resources and the labour
needed for modern industrial progress.
The thread that unites Western development since 1492 is the
exploitation by those of European descent of the rest of the world. We
incorrectly think of the horrors of Western empire as separate, disconnected
historical events. First, genocide in the Americas, then transatlantic slavery
and finally colonialism. But in reality they are overlapping manifestations
of White supremacy that cannot be separated from each other and which
bleed into the current forms of colonial domination. In the Caribbean, for

instance, colonialism did not follow on after slavery. The islands were slave
colonies, taken by deadly force from the natives who were wiped out in a
genocide. Colonialism is often understood in its dictionary definition of
direct rule over a subject people by a foreign power, but this is an
inadequate way to view the process.
Africa provides the perfect example of the far more widespread talons of
colonialism. Most of the continent was under direct rule by European
powers for a period less than a hundred years. But it would be wrong to
think that a colonial relationship only existed for that short period of time.
Ever since the West dug its claws into Africa it has been building and then
sustaining its exploitative hold over the continent. As we saw in Chapter 2,
the transatlantic slave trade fundamentally transformed the politics,
economies and organization of the continent. As well as looting the
continent for slave labour, Europe also plundered resources like gold from
it. Before formally taking control of any part of the continent, Europe had
already begun to ‘underdevelop’ Africa.7
In Walter Rodney’s classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa he lays
out with supreme clarity the damage done to the continent. The book
explains the global economic contradiction that ‘many parts of the world
that are naturally rich are actually poor and parts that are not so well off in
wealth of soil and sub-soil are enjoying the highest standards of living’.8
Slavery powered Western development to the point that one of the main
problems since the late ninetieth century has been finding the resources to
feed into its industrial machine. The wealth from the Atlantic system
enabled European powers to colonize large parts of Asia and replace slave
labour with the inhumane wages we still see in the world. So the focus on
Africa shifted from seeing it as a source of cheap labour to the rush to milk
the continent for its resources. Centuries of slavery enabled this by
devastating both the political and economic system of Africa and its ability
to resist.
By the end of the nineteenth century almost the entire continent was
under colonial rule. ‘Underdevelopment’ is used to describe Europe’s
involvement because when Europeans took control of the continent they
halted any African progress in order to enrich their respective mother
countries.
At a time when Africa needed to be developing industrial farming
techniques to provide food and resources for the continent, precisely the

opposite was occurring. From the nineteenth century to the present day
many African economies have depended on cash crops from small-scale
farmers. It is these barely-above-subsistence-level farmers who provide
much of the cocoa for Cadbury’s factories. Individual farmers selling their
wares to a trader are extremely easy for large corporations to exploit
financially, which is one of the main reasons why the price of most
commodities is so low. This method of procuring crops has been doubly
cheap for the West, which did not have to invest in heavy machinery or
even worry about transporting the crops to the depot. Under colonial rule,
infrastructure was only ever developed to the extent it was necessary to take
commodities out of Africa, with ‘all roads and railways leading to the
sea’.9 One result of this underdevelopment was that people, mostly women,
were forced to trek miles on foot to deliver the cash crops to the depots.10
Cotton, rubber, oil palm, cocoa, coffee and more were procured to be
exploited away from Africa, with huge profits going to European
companies.
Under formal colonial rule Africans were often forced to work
cultivating particular crops for their colonial masters and accept whatever
price they were given. Conditions were particularly harsh during economic
crises like the Depression, or the World Wars, when the colonies were
expected to support the war effort. One of the most extreme examples of
forced labour was the building of the Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire railway in
Congo from 1921 to 1933. Every year 100,000 Africans were forced to
work at the site in conditions so appalling that ‘25% died annually from
starvation and disease’.11
In 1938 Britain established the West African Produce Control Board to
regulate prices for commodities. As evidence of just how lucrative this
system was for European companies, in 1946 the control board paid £16.15
to African suppliers for a ton of oil palm, and this same ton then sold for
£95 in Britain. For groundnuts the purchase price was £15 and the sale price
£110. This does not even consider what the British company then received
after processing the product and selling it on.12 Whilst Africa may no
longer be under colonial rule, and subject to direct physical oppression, it is
abundantly clear that this economic relationship remains unchanged.
One of Britain’s largest companies is so successful that its £44.68 billion
turnover for 2018 represented a ‘dip’ in its performance due to ‘challenging

market conditions’.13 Spare a thought for its shareholders who had to take
a dividend of merely £8.6 billion for the year. Unilever is a global giant that
makes all manner of soaps meant to clean everything from your skin to your
floor. Much like Cadbury’s, the company has its roots in nineteenth-century
Britain when the Lever brothers began manufacturing and selling soap. Like
the Cadburys they procured the main ingredient for their product from
Africa, in this case oil palm. Lever Brothers sourced this from Nigeria,
Sierra Leone and Liberia, forming the United African Company to manage
its procurement. Oil palm has a lot of uses, and the company expanded into
foods, making margarines and oils, eventually merging with a Dutch
company, Margarine Uni, in 1929. The growth of the company was based
on its success in European markets but Unilever acknowledged the source
of its prosperity. In 1920 the Information Division of the company
recognized that
Unilever’s centre of gravity is Europe, but far and away its largest
member (the UAC) is almost wholly dependent for its livelihood
(represented by a turnover of £300 million) on the well-being of
Africa.14
In a pattern we see repeated again and again, a Western corporation grew
extraordinarily rich by exploiting the resources of a colony. Nothing has
changed today, except that the countries are now formally free. Unilever
still depends on oil palm for its success, a crop that is becoming
increasingly important as an alternative fuel source. It is no coincidence that
the same crops that were so important to development during colonialism
are powering the global economy today. From 2000 to 2013 the space that
sugar-cane plantations took up across the globe grew from 19 to 26 million
hectares; rubber from 7 to 10 million; and oil palm from 10 to 18 million.15
It is realities like this that make a nonsense of the Western navel-gazing
concern with the apparent ‘rise of the robots’, which I will cover in more
depth in Chapter 7. Millions of poor people in the underdeveloped world
find themselves trapped in work and working conditions similar to those
under colonial rule. Most oil palm production is now located outside Africa,
with Indonesia and Malaysia producing over 80 per cent of the global
market.16 Sadly, this is not a sign of progress, just a continuation of the
same neo-colonial relations that mark the African story.

Indonesia accounts for the bulk of oil palm production and farming in
Malaysia is often done by Indonesian migrant workers. Dutch colonization
of Indonesia goes back to 1602, with the Portuguese involved in the region
prior to that. By 1823 the Netherlands East India Association, the successor
to the much-reviled Dutch East India Company, was reliant on coffee
produced in Java for 77 per cent of its export revenue. Forced labour was
the norm in the colony and it is estimated that in 1840 30 per cent of
Indonesian families were toiling against their will.17 Thousands of people
were forced into what were effectively work camps in the nineteenth
century because they would not voluntarily accept the low wages on offer.
Oil palm did not develop as a crop in the region until 1930, and in a nod
to just how global the colonial network was, the first workers were
indentured labours from China. These workers had been in Indonesia before
oil palm was, working under inhuman conditions. Known as ‘contract
Coolies’ they were ruled by a set of ordinances which meant they were
subject to whippings, prison and execution if they did not show enough
deference to their masters, put in enough effort, or if they tried to escape
their plight.18
Today, such conditions no longer exist. However, there is a reason that
most oil palm is produced in Indonesia, or by Indonesian labourers, and it is
because Indonesians are cheap to employ. The majority of workers are not
employed on a permanent basis, making them even more insecure. There
has been much hand-wringing over the need to improve the wages and
conditions of oil palm workers but Wilmar International, one of the largest
global oil palm corporations, openly admits that on some of its plantations
only 5 to 10 per cent of the workers are on permanent contracts.19

CORRUPT ‘DEVELOPMENT’
Africa became less attractive as a producer of cash crops like oil palm for a
number of reasons. Demographics is the simplest explanation. Labour is
cheaper in East Asia because there is an abundance of workers. India and
China both have more inhabitants than the entire African continent. Slavery
is the most important reason behind the lack of population in Africa, the
only underpopulated part of the world. But after slavery ended, the logic of
underdevelopment ensured that Africa’s population would remain low. The

genocidal tendencies of the West spread into Africa. Leopold’s murder of
10 million in Congo stands out, but countless Africans were killed across
the continent to exert colonial control by all the major European powers.
But it was not only direct slaughter that culled the African population.
Under colonial rule the continent was only developed to the extent that it
benefited the European powers, and this did not include supporting the
welfare of the native population.
On taking over as president of Ghana in 1957, Kwame Nkrumah
inherited a state that had only thirty-seven hospitals for 4 million
Ghanaians.20 This was no different to the rest of the continent. In
neighbouring Nigeria in the 1930s under colonialism, the 4,000 British
immigrants (let’s not dignify them by the term ‘ex-pats’) had the use of two
modern hospitals while the 40 million Nigerians had to share fifty-two.21
Facilities like medical care or sanitation were reserved mainly for the White
population, meaning that when so-called independence came, African
countries were sorely lacking in the infrastructure they needed to take good
care of their populations. Europe had not only stolen their wealth but had
also prevented the development necessary for them to prosper. This put
African governments in an almost impossible position because their
economies needed mass investment but remained under economic
oppression from the West. Taking over the government offices did not mean
removing the claws of the West, which dug so deep and extracted so much.
Under colonial rule Europe made huge profits, with investments making
25 per cent more in the colonies than in Britain. Profits being leached from
Benin by French investors represented half of the colony’s GDP.22 The USbased Firestone Company, which extracted rubber from Liberia, made so
much money that in 1951, even after it had paid tax to the Liberian
government the company still made three times the amount of the total
income of the state.23 By 1955 Africa was contributing £1.446 billion
annually to British gold and dollar reserves – over half of the total. Belgium
and France extracted so much wealth from their colonies that they did not
need to take out loans to pay for their war efforts.24 The West literally
drained the financial, human and mineral resources out of Africa and
continues to exploit the continent using the same economic tools.
France continues to use hard power, a ‘coercive neo-colonialism’25 that
locks its African colonies into a currency union based around the West

African CFA franc. As part of the West African Economic and Monetary
Union, which covers Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau,
Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, France can still veto monetary policy. This
currency dependency also encourages the nations to remain over-reliant on
French imports of goods manufactured from the former colonies’ raw
materials. Britain and other Western powers take a more indirect approach,
through international trade and bodies such as the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank, but the result is the same.
There were varying models for running colonies in Africa. In places like
Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia, there was a far larger presence of British citizens
than in countries like Nigeria. Even when indirect rule was chosen as the
model, a very limited native elite was trained to administer colonialism.
This meant there was a strong presence of European civil servants across
Africa who worked above the native administrators. For example in 1930s
Ghana, European civil servants were paid £40 per month, while Africans
received only £4 for the same hours of work. There was no need to educate
the locals because they were deemed unworthy of rising into the intellectual
ranks that could lead the country. In 1959 Britain ‘spent £11 per African
pupil, £38 per Indian and £186 per European’ in Uganda for their
schooling.26 On independence Kenya had only thirty-five schools for 5.5
million young people.27 In 1950 the student body of the University of
Sakar, established for all those in the West African French colonies, was 50
per cent White.28 This lack of educational provision was not only meant to
convey the idea that Africans could not think, but created a reality where
the native population did not have the skills (particularly in literacy) to
administer their countries. The select few who were given the opportunity
for education received the most Eurocentric indoctrination imaginable,
having to travel to the mother country to be taught in the ways of
Whiteness.
The purpose of educating Africans was to create a class who could
administer European colonialism as a proxy for Europeans. It brings to
mind Malcolm X’s description of the Uncle Tom figure from the slave
plantation:
The slavemaster took Tom and dressed him well, and fed him well,
and even gave him a little education – a little education; gave him a
long coat and a top hat and made all the other slaves look up to him.

Then he used Tom to control them. The same strategy that was used
in those days is used today. He takes a Negro, a so-called Negro,
and makes him prominent, builds him up, publicizes him, makes
him a celebrity. And then he becomes a spokesman for Negroes.29
Replace ‘Negro’ with ‘African’, and ‘celebrity’ with ‘administrator’ and
you have the exact relationship of the colonial period. On independence it
was these anointed ones who were trusted to ‘lead’ their countries. Given
that all the leaders who emerged from the continent went through different
varieties of this process, the surprise is that so many of them rejected their
masters’ ideas. The movement to unite and liberate the continent from
European control emerged in Britain and America and was spearheaded by
Africans educated by their respective mother countries. It is also true that
ultimately too many of the leaders betrayed the radical promise of
continental unity in favour of the individual status and wealth gained from
leading their nations further into the bowels of the West. But revolutionary
leaders like Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Amílcar Cabral in Guinea and
Patrice Lumumba in Congo were also educated in the West. The problem is
that they were never given the chance to implement their revolutionary
programmes because the West made sure to dispose of them and support
puppets in their place who had taken to the Western training they had
received.
Patrice Lumumba’s assassination is the perfect case study in the
corruption the West embedded into Africa, post-independence. Lumumba
was the first prime minister of independent Congo, who sought to
Africanize the government and administer state-led economic development,
using the resources of the nation for the benefit of its people. Congo was
(and remains) far too important to the West to allow this to happen, being
one of the most mineral-rich parts of the world. Rather than allow the
people of Congo to decide their destiny the West, including the Belgians
and the CIA, supported his rival, the reactionary Moise Tshombe. Malcom
X devoted a lot of time speaking about the situation in Congo, condemning
the United States’ role in supporting Tshombe, the ‘Uncle Tom’ leader who
was a puppet for Western interests. In 1961 the Lumumba problem was
taken care of when he was killed in what has been dubbed the ‘most
important assassination of the twentieth century’.30

Tshombe’s leadership led to the dictatorial reign of Mobuto Sese Seko,
which lasted from 1965 to 1997, and which devastated Congo, opening up
the nation to Western interests and impoverishing it further. He also
personally looted billions of dollars. The civil wars sparked after his
departure claimed more lives than any other conflict since the Second
World War. Congo is just one example of what has happened across Africa
and the rest of the underdeveloped world when leaders threaten the interests
of the West: regimes are changed to install pro-Western governments. It is
the political and economic system that is corrupt in Africa, and the puppet
‘Uncle Tom’ leaders who syphon off money into Western bank accounts are
a by-product of that central problem. Just as there is no such thing as free
trade, so-called good governance is a nonsense in this system.

THE DE-INDUSTRIALIZATION OF INDIA
The British Empire was vast, by 1900 covering a quarter of the globe and
ruling over 372 million subjects. This scene from Queen Victoria’s
Diamond Jubilee in 1897 demonstrates the extent of her dominions:
50,000 troops from every corner of the empire – Camel Corps and
Gurkhas, Canadian hussars and Jamaicans in white gaiters, the
procession led by the loftiest officer in the army, 6-foot-8 Captain
Ames of the Horse Guards – had marched or trotted through London
to celebrate.31
India was Britain’s largest colony and Britain did not just underdevelop
India, it actively de-industrialized the region. When Britain colonized India
in the late eighteenth century, it was a rich nation that accounted for 25 per
cent of the world’s trade. By the time Britain’s rule collapsed in 1947, India
only held a 3 per cent share. Before British colonialism the standard of
living in India was on a par with what would become the mother country.
Afterwards, levels of absolute poverty no longer seen in Britain plagued the
nation.32 During the initial eastern expansion of their Empire the British
did not seize what they wanted at the barrel of a gun. Europeans used gifts
and signed treaties to gain access to societies in the East. It was only in the
eighteenth century that attitudes towards India began to change, and rather

than being seen as people worthy of trade, Indians were viewed as brutes to
be dominated.33
That is not to say that in the beginning there was none of the underlying
White supremacy we saw at work in the Atlantic system. Although the
westward expansion of empire was important, the move into the East was
just as indispensable to the emergence of the West, and equally brutal.
Vasco da Gama is less celebrated than his Italian counterpart Columbus, but
his opening up of India to the Portuguese in 1497–9 was as pivotal as
Columbus’s so-called discovery, and he wrought a similar campaign of
terror. The year 1492 marked the expulsion of the Muslim conquerors from
Spain, but they maintained power in the East. Europeans set about
destroying ports and strongholds in the Muslim world on their travels
eastward, and da Gama showed no mercy, as this tale of how he dealt with a
ship full of Muslim pilgrims returning to India shows:
he ordered the ship to be set on fire … Women held up their
jewellery to beg for mercy from the flames or from the water, while
others held up their infants to try to protect them. Da Gama watched
impassively, ‘cruelly and without pity’ as every last passenger and
crew member drowned before his eyes.34
Dehumanizing ideas about those from the ‘East’ have a long history in the
European imagination. The battle of East versus West has been played out
in the Greek and Roman Empires, in the Crusades from the eleventh
century, the battles against the occupation of Spain by the Moors, wars with
the Ottoman Empire, and into the present day with the supposed ‘clash of
civilizations’ between the West and the Islamic world that is shaping much
of the West’s policy agenda.35
The long history of the West viewing the East through a lens of the exotic
and inferior is dubbed ‘Orientalism’ by scholar Edward Said, who defines
the idea as a ‘Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having
authority over the Orient’.36 Importantly, he argues that European culture
gained strength and identity by setting itself ‘against the Orient as a sort of
surrogate and even underground self’.37 In other words, the West’s selfbelief in its superiority, given supposedly scientific legitimacy in the
Enlightenment, was in part bolstered by the supposed inferiority of the
people and cultures it encountered in the East. But for all of Europe’s

aggrandizing ideas, the reality was that Westerners were not superior to
those they encountered in the East, and they had no choice but to ingratiate
themselves in order to trade.
In the fifteenth century Europe was emerging from its Dark Age and
lagged behind the East. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that the West
was able to begin to assert its dominance. In fact, the same was true in
Africa, where, although the first instinct may have been to conquer,
Europeans found this impossible given the strength of the societies they
encountered. There is a reason that Europe never directly colonized Africa
until much later, and kept its forts and presence for the most part limited to
the coast. White supremacy had to be established. It was not a divine right.
Britain had to wait for its opportunity to fulfil its ambition to conquer
India, which came with the decline of the Mughal Empire in the mid
eighteenth century. The Mughals ruled a vast area in India from the
sixteenth to well into the seventeenth century – a centralized power that the
British could not displace. But the death of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707
tipped the Empire into a series of wars to decide who would succeed as
ruler. Within fifty years the Mughal regime had collapsed in on itself,
unable to keep control of its sprawling dominions. Britain seized on the
chaos caused by the fall of the Mughals, and through the East India
Company (EIC) embarked on colonization. By 1857 the EIC had an army
of 260,000 troops and dominion over 200 million subjects.38 Echoing
present-day US imperialism driven by private corporations, the EIC was a
business, set up with a monopoly over British interests in India.
The British government provided loans and support to establish the
company and individuals made massive profits from its endeavours. There
was no surer investment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than EIC
stock, and its directors amassed fortunes from exploiting the people and
resources of India. Between 1765 and 1815 Indians paid over £18 million a
year to the EIC in taxes alone. The word ‘loot’ comes from Hindi, and
directly from the pillaging of India, incorporated into English by the same
people who robbed it. Robert Clive ‘of India’, military general, first
governor of Bengal and director of the EIC, amassed a personal fortune in
excess of £40 million in today’s money. The seizure of Calcutta in 1757
was a large source of this wealth. After claiming the region, the employees
of the EIC shared the tax take of £2 million – billions in current money –
between themselves. As the EIC was gorging itself on the locals’ taxes, the

first Bengal famine struck, killing millions of people – up to a third of the
region’s population – but the British ‘had thought only of enriching
themselves as the local population starved to death’.39 Such callous
disregard for lives that are not White in the face of profit has been the
defining feature of Western development.
The abuses by the EIC were such that eventually even the British
government had to step in. It took a rebellion of the Indian population in
1857 to spur the government into action and to disband the EIC. The last
thing the country needed was restless natives in one of its most important
colonies. India was hugely important for British trade and industry,
particularly after the end of the transatlantic slave system. In fact the price
of labour there was so cheap that it rivalled the economy of slavery even
when the system was ongoing.40 Commodities like cotton and sugar were
increasingly derived from cheap labour on Indian plantations and therefore
Britain had to maintain order over the colony. But, in the same way as when
Belgium took over Congo from Leopold, when the British government
ruled India as a colony the relationship established by the private
corporation did not change. Through violent subjugation India continued to
be milked of its resources by Britain.
In 1901, the salary for the Secretary of State of India brought in the same
amount of income that 90,000 Indians survived on. By the 1920s 7,500
British civil servants in India were taking a total of £20 million annually in
pensions. The British Indian army was also paid for out of Indian taxes,
sustaining a standing army of over 325,000 troops by the late nineteenth
century.41 But robbing India through taxation was not the only way that
Britain de-industrialized the nation.
In keeping with the logic of Western imperialism, the sheer brutality of
British colonialism did major demographic damage to India. This included
the kind of genocide to conquer the natives we have seen in other parts of
the world. Disease was also a major killer, where outbreaks such as cholera
epidemics claimed the lives of millions. Cholera had existed in India before
the arrival of the British but troop invasions into India were associated with
outbreaks, as they carried the disease across the region. Cholera was also a
massive killer during famines, intersecting with starvation to deadly
effect.42 It was these famines in India that accounted for the majority of
those killed by British colonialism. I have already briefly discussed the first
famine in the nation in 1770, but these tragedies continued to beset colonial

India even after the British government had taken the reins from the EIC.
As Shashi Tharoor explains in his book Inglorious Empire,
in the entire 107 years from 1793 to 1900, only an estimated 5
million people had died in all the wars around the world combined,
whereas in just ten years 1891–1900, 19 million had died in India in
famines alone.43
In total over 35 million Indians died in famines under British colonial rule.
The most infamous is perhaps the second Bengal famine in 1943 which
took the lives of 3 million people before Britain mobilized an appropriate
response. This particular famine has had more public attention because of
the involvement of British wartime hero Winston Churchill.
Prime minister at the time, Churchill took the decision to divert grain
away from India and actually import grain from the famine-hit country into
Britain, so that it could be stockpiled for the war effort. He did so with full
knowledge of the scale of the crisis. Worse still, Britain prohibited Indian
ships from sailing to get food, or using their currency reserves to buy it.
Churchill’s defence was to blame the Indians for ‘breeding like rabbits’; in
any case they would soon replenish their number. He had such a total
disregard for the Indian people that the Secretary of India at the time Leo
Amery (hardly an avowed anti-racist) once told him that in terms of his
views of Indians, he could not see ‘much difference between his outlook
and Hitler’s’.44 This ghastly episode is a reminder of the disposability of
Indian life in the Empire, but Churchill was just carrying on a wellestablished tradition. Viceroy Lord Lytton had banned any price reductions
during famines in the nineteenth century and when colonial administrators
imported rice to feed the hungry during the Orissa famine in 1866, The
Economist magazine chastised them for sending the message to the Indians
that it was ‘the duty of the Government to keep them alive’.45
Such disregard for life was even seen when Britain left India. Labour’s
Attlee government wanted a quick exit from the colony after the War, and
Britain hastily drew up plans to leave. Divisions between the Hindu
majority and Muslim minority had been stoked by Britain, divide and rule
being one of the best forms of maintaining control. The Muslim League,
under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was campaigning for a
separate state for the large Muslim population. Lord Mountbatten was put in

charge of the process and came up with the plan to partition India, creating
the new state of Pakistan. You may know him as ‘Uncle Dickie’ in the
Netflix series The Crown, although in keeping with the idealization of such
figures you are much less likely to have heard about the significant amount
of blood on his hands from the catastrophe of Indian Partition.
Despite warnings of the carnage and upheaval that would be unleashed
by creating a religious national divide overnight, the British went ahead
and, following colonial tradition, arbitrarily drew a new boundary. On
Independence the result was as expected: more than 14 million people
became refugees, fleeing for the safety of their appointed homelands.
During the ethnic violence that was then unleashed, over 1 million people
lost their lives. British hands may not have been directly involved in the
slaughter, but they were by no means clean: they had callously created the
conditions that allowed India to become a bloodbath.
Under British rule India went from being one of the richest places on
earth to one of the most underdeveloped. The textile industry was purposely
prevented from competing with Britain. Cities shrank as work disappeared.
Indian shipping and steel production were also destroyed by the Empire to
create British supremacy. By the time the British left in 1947 poverty and
illiteracy had become the norm. It was only after Independence that the
country began to grow and prosper, and today India is one of the fastestgrowing economies on the planet and expected to be in the top three in
terms of size in the coming years.
Extreme poverty has been slashed in India: according to the World Bank
only 5 per cent of the population lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2018,
compared to a quarter in 2011. On Independence the literacy rate in the
country was only 18 per cent, which improved to 80 per cent by 2017, the
same year that Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash
Javadekar announced a ‘guarantee that within next five years, it will be 100
per cent’.46 In a seeming reversal of the economics of empire, India once
again manufactures the clothes for Britain and much of the world. Even the
steel sector is booming: in a sign of the apparently post-colonial times an
Indian company, Tata, in 2007 took over what once was British Steel. Part
of the pitch of those pushing for Britain to leave the EU was so that they
could forge independent trade deals with countries like India. You could be
mistaken for looking at India and claiming a success story; empire

happened, but that is all in the past. That would be to mistake a mirage for a
waterhole.
Of all these prosperous figures, GDP is the most misleading. India is the
second largest country by population, by some distance. Only China also
has more than a billion inhabitants, and the third largest country is the
United States with over 300 million people. GDP measures the product of
the population and more people should lead to a higher output; India is
supposed to have a large economy. Britain has a comparable GDP to India
but a population of only 66 million. If we look at GDP per capita (person),
India only ranks 139th in the world. In other words, poverty is still rife.
Extreme poverty may well have declined in recent years, but hundreds of
millions of Indians live in conditions unimaginable in the West. Wealth is
not being equally distributed across the country. While claiming back textile
production sounds like a success, it is actually the opposite. Manufacturing
jobs moved to places like India because poverty made it cheaper to pay
workers in the underdeveloped world a pittance in sweatshops, rather than
pay a decent minimum wage in the West. Indian labour is being exploited
by multinationals in exactly the same relationship as we saw under
colonialism. We can celebrate the boom in the service sector in India, but
just consider the economics of having people thousands of miles away
working in call centres for Western countries. It is only cheaper to offshore
this kind of work because the standard of living in India is so much lower
than the West. If conditions improved and wages rose enough to provide the
Western lifestyle that we are so comfortable with, then the jobs that are
underpinning the so-called success of India would quickly be moved to a
poorer part of the world. It is a strange sort of prosperity that depends on
millions of your people being poor.
Such poverty has dire consequences. Neo-colonial India may have dealt
with the problem of famines, which were so widespread under British rule,
but in 2018 almost a million children died in India before their fifth
birthday because they were poor.47 India is making as much progress as
any nation of a billion Brown people can in a racist world order. We only
accept the poverty and appalling conditions because they are imposed on
those who are not White. Doing the dirty work so that we in the West do not
have to is exactly what they are worth, these disposable bodies propping up
the West.

AMERICAN EMPIRE
The updated system of Western imperialism needs to be understood in the
context of supposedly post-colonial nations like India, but also in the shift
of the centre of power from Europe to the United States. One of the main
lies America tells itself is that it was a victim of colonial oppression which
freed itself from the tyranny of the British. While it is true that the original
thirteen states were colonies of the British Empire, the Pilgrims were the
first ex-pats, pioneers bravely taking their religion and so-called civilization
to the New World. Opening the American frontier was the essential first
step to building the West. American settlers are not just implicated in but
directly benefited from the founding genocide. The nation was then built on
the back of slave labour from Africa. The United States is a settler colony
where we can see the logic of the West play out in its clearest, most
undiluted form.
When the newly United States broke away from their British overlords,
this did not mark a break in the progress of the West but a necessary
evolution. Losing the colony ended up being of benefit to Britain. Trade
with the United States increased after independence in 1783. After the
abolition of slavery in Britain, when the country was basking in its moral
superiority to the United States, it was perfectly happy to import the
products of US slave plantations. During the US Civil War in the early
1860s, when the North blockaded Southern ships, there was a cotton famine
in Britain that led to a steep decline in the industry, with many factories
closing down and people out of work. The impact was to raise pro-slavery
sentiment and support for the South in Britain, particularly in places
dependent on slave-produced cotton.
During the war Liverpool was a stronghold of Confederacy support, with
three out of the four local papers on the side of the South. The city even
held a Confederate Bazaar in 1864 to raise money for Southern prisoners of
war. The bazaar was held in the grand St George’s Hall and was attended by
prominent businesspeople, aristocrats and the local member of parliament.
The Liverpool Daily Courier called the event a ‘triumphant success’ as it
raised £20,000 (more than £2.5 million today) and was attended by
thousands of people.48
By 1850, 40 per cent of British exports were finished cotton goods and at
least three-quarters, and in some years 95 per cent, of the raw material

imported into the Liverpool docks was from US plantations.49 New
Orleans hosted the biggest market in enslaved Africans because of its
centrality in connecting US cotton plantations to factories in the north of
England. The United States was also a key market for British industry, and
a destination for capital finance, making it more important than any part of
Britain’s actual empire. In the long term Britain has maintained a special
relationship with its former colony, basking in the reflected glory of the new
centre of Western imperialism.
As well as being a settler colony, the United States has been and remains
a colonial force in the classic sense of the word. At different times Puerto
Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guam and
Samoa have been US colonies. Hawaii has since been incorporated into the
nation, Puerto Rico has a unique status as not quite colony or state, and the
US Virgin Islands remain a colony to this very day. The United States even
took the very European step of establishing a colony in Africa.
Liberia was founded in 1847 with the intention of solving the supposed
race problem that would result from having millions of formerly enslaved
people running free in the United States. The idea was to repatriate the
Black population to Liberia, thereby cleansing the nation.50 Liberia was
formally a free state led by African Americans who, with support from the
US military, subjugated the natives of the area in order to establish their
new homeland. In reality, Liberia was a colony of the United States, entirely
dependent on the mother country for resources, military support and trade.
In keeping with the pattern across the rest of the continent, Liberia was
developed only insofar as this benefited the mother country and was set up
to strip the new nation of its resources. US companies flocked to Liberia to
make their fortunes and underdevelopment was an essential element of this
process. If Liberia had industrialized it would have challenged Western
dominance on the continent.51 As well as using the colony to enrich the
mother country, Liberia was also a tool in wider US interests in the region.
One of the main reasons that a more revolutionary approach to African
unity never occurred after most countries gained their independence was
that a group of them, including Nigeria, Ethiopia and most of francophone
Africa, were fundamentally opposed to truly unifying the continent. Instead
they sought the trappings of nation-state sovereignty and maintaining close
links to their paymasters in the West. It is no coincidence that this group
were dubbed the ‘Monrovia bloc’, after the capital of Liberia, holding their

first meeting there in 1961.52 Given the importance of Africa in terms of
resources, the United States and the rest of the West were terrified of a
radical vision of African political unity. Liberian president William Tubman
spearheaded the successful efforts to block radical proposals for change,
and the country went much further in doing its colonial master’s bidding.
In 1975 President William Tolbert ignored the ban imposed by the
Organization of African Unity and hosted South African apartheid prime
minister John Vorster. The meeting of the leaders of two of America’s client
states in Africa was more than just symbolic. Liberia was also used as a
base for CIA operations in Chad in support of warlord Hissène Habré in
1982, and more recently for US efforts to oust Gaddafi in Libya.53
America’s use of Liberia as a military outpost is just part of a much larger
aspect of US colonial foreign policy. To solidify its power across the globe
the US has over 800 military bases in more than seventy countries. Africa is
no exception: there are at least thirty-four US bases on the continent.54 In
2007 the United States announced its intentions in Africa by launching its
Africa Command, known as Africom. President George W. Bush explained
that the aim was to ‘enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the
people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health,
education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa’.55 The neo-colonial
intent of the operation is embedded in the quote, from the paternalism of
wanting to ‘bring peace and security’ to the continent, to the list of
aspirations that the mission wants to fulfil. Africom stands out from other
US commands because of its largely non-military objectives. The official
rhetoric makes it sound more like an aid agency than an army. The fact that
the United States believes it needs the might of its military power to ‘bring’
prosperity to the continent should be no surprise.
Colonial civilizing missions were always done at the barrel of a gun. We
should also be sceptical of these noble intentions. Africa is a key resource
for oil and other minerals and Africom’s presence appears aimed at securing
the safety of the extraction of these rather than promoting authentic
continental supremacy. It should also be noted that even the reactionary
African leaders that run the continent today are wary of Africom. No
country has accepted US overtures to host the headquarters of the
command, which runs out of Stuttgart in Germany. A US military command
for Africa, run from Germany, should give all the symbolic clues to its
nature that we need.

A major part of US imperialism is the power it wields as the dedicated
police force of the world. The establishment of Africom is meant to further
those networks and allow the US to strike across the globe. We have already
seen the use of US hard power, with Africom leading the coalition of
Western forces to topple Gaddafi, military action that went expressly
against the wishes of the African Union (which replaced the Organization
of African Unity).
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the most blatant neo-colonial
expression of hard power of the twenty-first century. A key source of oil
and a strategic defence against Iran, Iraq has been a major piece in Western
dominance of the Middle East. Saddam Hussein was once a key ally of the
West; in fact, I grew up driving past the Saddam Hussein Mosque in
Birmingham, built in the dictator’s honour. Not long after the Second Gulf
War the name of the mosque was changed as Britain tried to create a new
narrative around its involvement in the region. Whether we view the war as
legal or moral are important questions, but what is indisputable is that it
reflected the entitlement of the West, led by the United States, to enforce its
will on other parts of the world. There was no global mandate for invasion –
there was not even agreement across the West – but it occurred,
nonetheless. The result was the destabilization of Iraq and the rise of the
Islamic State, which quickly became the new bogeyman for the West. In the
same way that the United States had not tried to create al-Qaeda as a
terrorist group that would kill thousands of people in New York, neither was
it a conscious act to create its descendants. But as damaging as both groups
have been in the West, they have perversely served the expansion of the
militarist US-led empire.
Before the Iraq War the invasion of Afghanistan was supported by the
Western world in order to bring down the Taliban regime that harboured alQaeda. Iraq was never implicated in 9/11 and therefore a different pretext
was needed to expand the mission. But without the initial presence in
Afghanistan it is very unlikely that the Iraq invasion would have happened,
no matter how many weapons of mass destruction the United States
imagined Saddam Hussein was stockpiling. Al-Qaeda provided the pretext
for a reshaping of relations in the Middle East, one of the most important
regions for the US Empire, which invested heavily in its neo-colonial
adventure. The United States may have spent as much as $3 trillion on Iraq
alone,56 not to mention the vast sums of money allies like Britain ploughed

into the invasion. Part of this gigantic outlay was because of neo-colonial
arrogance – the idea that these puny countries in the desert would quickly
bow to Western military might.
The sight of George Bush the younger landing in a fighter jet on the USS
Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier on 1 May 2003, to unveil a ‘mission
accomplished’ banner is the most obvious symbol of the hubris of the US
Empire. The war would not actually end for more than eight years and there
is still chaos in the region. As has been true for anywhere there has been
colonialism, there was also resistance, and the United States and its allies
were trapped for years in conflict that claimed the lives of thousands of
Western troops. But the blood and treasure were worth it. The invasion
renewed Western control over resources in the region and solidified a new
frontier in the US Empire.
The bombing of the World Trade Center led directly to the signing of the
Patriot Act in October 2001, which has been much criticized for trampling
on domestic civil liberties. But the Patriot Act, and other laws passed in the
aftermath of 9/11, allowed the United States to make more gains for its
global empire. Following the attacks the US government froze the assets of
any group suspected of funding terror abroad. Sanctions were imposed
without the need for trial or much evidence. The ban was widespread and
covered all ‘aspects of financial support including food and medical aid’.57
As a result the assets of a number of Islamic charities were frozen,
irrespective of whether they were actually funding terrorism. The impact of
these decisions was felt not only by those in need of aid but may also have
contributed directly to financial crisis in Somalia.
As many underdeveloped countries do, Somalia relies on remittances
from its diaspora. A large proportion of these were handled by Al-Barakaat,
a Muslim money-transfer company which the United States financially
ruined ‘despite lack of evidence, trial or conviction’.58 The collapse of the
company sent Somalia into an economic tailspin. The economic attacks of
the US Empire were the softer side of the wider offensive.
Alongside massive military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
United States also increased its militarization of the entire region, and
beyond. Extraordinary rendition of subjects to black sites, beyond the
jurisdiction of international law, where they were subsequently tortured,
became the norm. Almost 800 people were imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay,
including British citizens. The majority were eventually released without

charge. Despite President Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo Bay
within a year of his coming to office in 2009, at the time of writing there are
still people imprisoned in the camp. The CIA has ramped up its activity
around the world and legitimized the use of drone strikes to kill terror
suspects without the need for anything like arrest and trial. The US security
apparatus has extended across the globe and set precedents for the use of
force that are reminiscent of old colonial days. It has been estimated that
since the start of the ‘War on Terror’ between 244,124 and 266,427
civilians have been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, the three main
targets of the US mission. In addition, over 100,000 members of the local
armies and police forces have lost their lives.59 Not all of these deaths were
the direct consequence of US armed forces pulling the trigger or dropping a
bomb, but they are a consequence of their neo-colonial agenda in the
region. The callous disregard for life that is not White can be seen in the
drone strikes targeting ‘terror’ suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen
and Somalia. Between 8,858 and 16,901 people have been killed by remote
control from the sky, including up to 2,200 civilians, of which as many as
454 have been children.60 US imperialism has industrialized and
legitimated the killing of Brown civilians, including children, in pursuit of
its goals.
A key feature of the expansion of the US Empire is one reminiscent from
older forms of colonialism: of the fortune that the United States spent on the
invasion of Iraq, a third was spent employing private military contractors,
often ex-soldiers paid by a private company to wage war. As such, there is
far less scrutiny of and accountability for their actions. The biggest force in
Iraq apart from the US army was the private militia, paid for by US tax
dollars. Iraq is just one example of the global trend. Private militias operate
in more than ninety countries, amassing budgets of over $100 billion.61
Not only did they make a financial killing from the conflict in Iraq, they
also profited mightily in the reconstruction effort. Contracts worth at least
$138 billion were handed out to private firms to rebuild the damage caused
by the US-inflicted war. Most controversially, a company previously run by
the then Vice President Dick Cheney was the most rewarded from this
privatization of state rebuilding, receiving contracts worth $39.5 billion.62
Capitalism, from Columbus’s voyages to slave-owning companies, to
outsourced colonial corporations, to hedge-fund managers today, has been
based on the state setting the table for private interests to fill their bellies.

Western empires have facilitated the ransacking of various parts of the
world, underdeveloping supposedly backward nations so that the West can
continue to profit. The myth of the risk-taking entrepreneur is central to
justifying the staggering inequality the system produces, but it is also rooted
in colonial logic. In fact, the notion is central to Enlightenment ideals of
progress, which identify the rational, individual White man as he who
ploughs the way for capitalist progress. Ignored in this is the role various
states have played in tilting the playing field so far in their favour that you
would be forgiven for believing that it is natural for wealth to fall into the
hands of the West. The current version of the US Empire is simply the
latest, most efficient way of delivering Western imperialism.

5

Dawn of a New Age
After the Second World War the initial version of Western imperialism
could no longer continue to function in the same way it had during the
previous centuries. Competition between European nation states vying to
dominate the globe led to the loss of millions of lives and bankrupted these
seats of empire. The great European powers simply no longer had the
resources to directly control and maintain their colonies. Worse still, both
World Wars were truly global and the natives who had fought in their
millions for the mother countries were restless. They demanded freedom
and had the experience of armed warfare to achieve it. The fifth PanAfrican Congress, which brought together leaders of resistance movements
across Africa and the diaspora took place in Manchester in 1945. For the
first time in the movement’s forty-five year history the delegates from
Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas proclaimed their demands for the
full independence of Africa from European rule.
The writing was on the wall, and the empires that had defined the world
were in danger of collapse. In fact, in the popular imagination this is exactly
what is thought to have happened. Europe had to, either in response to
armed resistance by the natives or through a supposedly benevolent process,
eventually grant independence to its colonies. The old logic of racial
domination melted away, leading to the globalized world we inhabit today.

Unfortunately, that version of history is an utter myth. Rather than
marking the beginning of the end of Western imperialism, the Second
World War instead led to a system update that changed the delivery of a
racist, unjust social order, but maintained all of its logic. By rebooting the
system it was able to continue, in many ways more successfully than in the
first, outdated version. In the deluded world-view of historians like Niall
Ferguson, the brutal forms of colonial oppression in the earlier version of
Western imperialism did more good than harm, representing a sort of
‘liberal imperialism’ that brought light to the backward parts of the world.1
These arguments are distorted, dangerous and wrong-headed, as any reader
of the previous chapters will understand. Inadvertently, however, Ferguson
stumbles upon the perfect phrase to capture the updated form of the system
that emerged after the Second World War: liberal imperialism. The current
incarnation of Western empire is one that presents itself as working for the
good of humanity, while maintaining the colonial logic upon which it was
founded.
Before the Second World War had even ended, plans were being made to
update the imperial system. After the carnage of the First World War and
the subsequent Great Depression it was becoming clear that the system was
unstable even prior to the rise of Nazi Germany. In order to move to a more
sustainable system of imperialism the West realized that it had to go beyond
the nation state-led format that had until this point been its dominant
feature. Collaboration between Western powers was always a central feature
of the emergence of the current racial order. European nation states simply
could not have dominated the globe without cooperation and systematic
coordination. But this was still done under the banner of nation statehood,
with competition and wars an unrelenting reality. Given this history, the
outbreak of neither the First nor the Second World War came as a great
surprise.
After the Germans lost in 1918 their colonies were divided up between
the Allies, and this became a key source of national frustration that
contributed to the rise of such a virulent, racist nationalism in the form of
Nazism. Western nation states at war with each other was bad for the
business of exploiting the world and therefore a more substantive form of
unity was necessary. The League of Nations, founded in 1920, was the first
attempt. It was ultimately doomed to failure because, although President
Woodrow Wilson was a key proponent of the League, the United States

never joined due to opposition in Congress. The fact that the United States
was essential to making the alliance work also marks a key shift in the
centre of Western imperialism. By 1920, although Europe still controlled
most of the world, the stage was set for the United States to become the
heart of the Western empire. The wealth and power of the United States
were the definition of colonial logic and European collaboration. It was a
nation formed in genocide, built by slave labour to offer a new frontier for
peoples from across Europe. The US was engorged by wealth accrued from
the first stage of Western imperialism and was ready to lead the transition
into the new world order.
When the United States decided to end its isolationist stance and take its
place on the world stage, it did so on the basis of the same grand vision that
remains largely intact today. While the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor
was the act of aggression that ultimately tipped the United States into the
Second World War, the stage had been set earlier. In August 1941 Churchill
and Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter, which was not a treaty or
binding document but rather a pledge of the principles that would govern
world affairs after the Nazis had been defeated. The eight principles of the
Charter were designed to create lasting peace and even included the
‘abandonment of the use of force’, which, given the empire that Britain
ruled over at the time, would have been a remarkable new principle, had
they ever intended it to apply to the colonies.2 In fact the entire Charter
reads like an anti-colonial manifesto, promising that ‘countries seek no
aggrandizement, territorial or other’; ‘no territorial changes that do not
accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned’; and ‘the
right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will
live’. Whether Britain liked it or not, once professed, the principles
enshrined in these documents became used by decolonial freedom
movements in both the colonies and the mother countries. When Malcolm
X founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964 he explained
that they were partly ‘inspired by’ the Atlantic Charter in their quest for
self-determination.3
As well as inspiring liberation movements, the Charter became the
foundation of the United Nations (UN), created in 1945 in order to meet the
aims of national cooperation, global peace and security. By maintaining the
nation-state framework the UN has been able to convince countries to sign
up and agree to general principles of collaboration. As each member has

one vote the UN has been seen as a site where the global majority, i.e. those
countries not in the West, can have its say. As an organization the UN has
certainly done some good in the underdeveloped world, spearheading
development programmes and working to reduce ills like infant mortality.
But don’t be fooled by the façade of internationalism. It is no coincidence
that the UN was originally conceived by the British and Americans, nor that
its headquarters are in New York. The principal function of the UN has
always been to aid the transition from the old system of imperialism to the
new. Nothing could be stronger evidence of this than the make-up of the
real decision-making body in the UN.
The General Assembly, with its one-country-one-vote, may well be a
perfect space for grand speeches denouncing colonialism, but all the real
power lies with the Security Council, which is made up of five permanent
members: France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United
States and China; plus a further ten nations elected to two-year terms. At
the time that the UN was founded, Russia was technically not in the West;
at that point it was the major state in the Soviet Union and the foundation of
the Communist bloc. The USSR was undoubtedly a major power, and since
the Soviets had been pivotal in defeating the Nazis, they could not be
excluded. And, of course, Communism’s difference to the West on the
fundamental issue of the global racial order is a matter only of degree.
China stands out as the only non-White country on the council, but it was
also a key ally in the War and has been entirely complicit in racial
capitalism in order to develop itself. Not being White has never
automatically meant being opposed to the colonial logic of White
supremacy.
Permanent Security Council members have the right of veto over
substantive resolutions, which is why the Iraq War was never declared
illegal by the UN. That ultimate power means that the five permanent
members shape the decision-making of the organization. As neither Russia
nor China remain Communist in any meaningful sense, the domination of
Western interests in the UN is now indisputable. The UN is the global
institution with the best reputation in the world but it is inextricably bound
up with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, whose
names evoke fear across the underdeveloped world. In fact, article five of
the Atlantic Charter speaks of the ‘desire to bring about the fullest
collaboration between all nations in the economic field’, which became the

most important frontier for the updated global system of Western
imperialism.
In 1944 the seeds were planted for the IMF, World Bank and World Trade
Organization at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire. They
were later dubbed an ‘unholy trinity’ that developed a ‘regime’ of financial
control over the world.4 Just as with the UN, Britain and the United States
took the lead in establishing both the meeting and the ensuing global
institutions. Bretton Woods’ express purpose was to reshape the global
order after the War. In keeping with tradition, the headquarters of the IMF
and the World Bank are in the United States, both in Washington, DC. The
special relationship across the Atlantic was more than just symbolic. It
represented a passing of the torch from the former centre of Western
imperialism to the new one. Britain and the United States spent two years
designing the framework of the new world order prior to Bretton Woods,
and the purpose of the meeting was simply to ratify this. To maintain the
appearance of a global agreement, forty-four countries attended; but only
fifteen sent their finance ministers. Demonstrating just how central their
role in the process was, Guatemala sent a postgraduate economics student.
In testament to the attitudes of the architects of the new system, John
Maynard Keynes, the British economist who was instrumental in Bretton
Woods, had made an effort to restrict the participation of countries other
than the United States and Britain ‘fearing that a “great monkey house”
would result if all of the wartime allies were invited’.5 The financial
regime ratified at Bretton Woods therefore represented US economic
priorities, slightly steered by Britain, rather than any unified global
alliance.6
American dominance should not come as a shock given the context.
Europe was bankrupt and depleted after years of war, whereas the United
States’ economy was buoyant. The US used the opportunity to establish its
place at the head of the table in the post-war period, notably giving the
equivalent of $100 billion in aid to Western European countries impacted
by the War, in the Marshall Plan of 1948. As well as providing aid directly
to Europe, the US also supplied the bulk of funding to establish the new
global economic institutions.
The IMF began operating in 1947 and its principal initial purpose was to
provide loans to stabilize Western economies and promote collaboration
between countries. France was the first country to borrow from the IMF and

between 1947 and 1971 Britain drew down $7.25 billion.7 There were five
original shareholders: the United States, Britain, France, Germany and
Japan. Voting rights depended on the amount of money a nation put in, and
the size of the United States’ share in 1947 meant that it had an effective
veto over the fund. The United States was willing to invest so much money
in stabilizing the Western powers because it was in its economic interests to
do so and shifted the centre of the global economy across the Atlantic. It
was also in its economic and political interests to fight the spread of
Communism. If Europe had become infected by the Red menace, the
economic system that the United States had inherited leadership of could
have come to an end.
After 1971 the role of the IMF changed significantly. At this point
Western economies had largely recovered from the War but there was a new
problem. The West has always depended on the exploitation of the
underdeveloped world, but by the seventies most of the former colonies
were ruling themselves. There was a major fear that they would turn to
Communism, which would also have ended Western economic dominance,
given its dependence on the logic of empire. We should not pretend that the
old forms of coercion were not attempted in this more liberal period of
imperialism. Many countries had to win their freedom through armed
struggle, and in places like Mozambique and Angola the death throes of
direct colonization were brutal for the natives. Radical leaders were
assassinated in order to install corrupt puppet regimes. The United States
also began violent campaigns to prevent the spread of Communism, taking
colonial-era violence to places like Vietnam and Korea. But for the most
part the methods of control in the new age of empire were financial, and the
IMF played a pivotal role.
Colonialism had left the newly independent countries underdeveloped.
They lacked basic infrastructure and were impoverished by colonial
exploitation. After so-called independence neo-colonial trade practices
ensured that even if they were rich in resources, like most African
countries, their wealth was in the hands of foreign multinationals.
Independence was gained by individual nation states that were too small to
wield any influence on the world stage. Most of the underdeveloped nations
found themselves in steep debt not long after the mirage of their liberation,
and the IMF was only too willing to oblige them with loans. Unlike lending
to Western countries, in the underdeveloped world these loans had strong

conditions; they came with strings attached. The prevailing assumption was
that the nations had got themselves in debt by acting economically
inappropriately. For their economies to prosper and therefore pay back the
loans they would have to make structural adjustments to their economic
life. The orthodoxy of what apparently makes for a successful economy
includes abolishing controls on imports, imposing austerity to reduce the
size of the state, devaluing the currency and opening the doors to foreign
private investors.8 Countries in desperate need of support continue to
voluntarily submit to these conditions because they have no place else to
turn.
What on the surface was an economic bailout was in reality direct
interference in the political decision-making of underdeveloped countries.
Reducing public spending is a euphemism for cutting jobs and privatizing
services, making them more expensive, in the poorest countries in the
world. Consequently, IMF policies have caused strikes and riots across the
underdeveloped world. In 1976 protests erupted in Argentina after
government wages were frozen. A 1981 general strike occurred in Mexico
after government subsidies on food were removed. The removal of
subsidies on petrol brought unrest to Nigeria in 1988. Riots broke out in
Egypt in 1997 and Indonesia in 1998 after food subsidies were removed or
reduced. Decisions to make the poor even poorer are made with the
coldness that only a global bureaucracy could produce.
The evidence shows that IMF involvement in underdeveloped countries
is a net negative. A study of 135 recipient countries found that accepting
money from the IMF significantly increased income inequality.9 Structural
adjustment has a negative effect on women’s employment.10 IMF loans
lead to higher suicide rates in countries that accept them.11 IMF policies
also reduce human rights in a recipient country, specifically increasing the
incidence of torture and extra-judicial killings.12 The whole purpose of
IMF intervention is meant to be to save struggling economies, but financial
crises are a continuing feature for IMF recipients.13
‘Structural adjustment’ is a term often associated with Latin America,
where a debt crisis in the eighties sparked an economic shock across the
continent. The root of the problem was that, particularly due to a steep rise
in oil prices, in order to balance their budgets Latin American countries had
been borrowing money from Western banks and governments, and were

unable to service their foreign debts. For instance, by 1982 Bolivia was
spending 15 per cent of its gross national product (GNP) on debt
repayments, a clearly unsustainable position to be in. But Bolivia was not
treated as harshly by the IMF for reasons that reveal the true motives for
Western financial intervention.
Although Bolivia had one of the worst debt ratios of any country, because
it was a small and poor country its absolute debt was relatively low: it owed
only $44 million to Western banks. Argentina, on the other hand, was
spending 4.5 per cent of its GNP on debt repayments, but as a richer and
larger country had a total debt of $45 billion.14 It seems obvious that the
two economies were vastly different and would not require the same
prescription, but the IMF mercilessly and harshly imposed structural
adjustment on Argentina in any case. The purpose of these policies was not
to solve the problems of the recipient economies but to secure Western
interests. Argentina owed vastly more money to the West and needed to be
squeezed to ensure this was paid back.
Another reason for the blanket application of the IMF prescriptions is
that by devaluing the currency, privatizing utilities and opening up the
economy to foreign direct investment, structural adjustment makes the
receiving nations ripe for takeover by Western interests. Global capital has
been aided in its expansion across the world, looting whole economies to
fill the coffers of Western financial capitals.15 The eighties are referred to
as the ‘lost decade’ in Latin America for a reason: triple-digit inflation,
enforced austerity and poverty had a devastating impact on the region.
Mexico was one of the countries hardest hit by the debt crisis and the
international financial regime: the impact was so severe that the economy
had not fully recovered two decades later, remaining 30 per cent below
where it should have been.16
The idea that organizations like the IMF act solely on the basis of sound
economic principles is a fairytale. The organization is based in Washington
and funded by Western governments, on whose say the amount of money to
be invested depends. Bolivia’s more favourable treatment by the IMF
exposes the political incentives behind the actions of the Western financial
regime. The United States is the dominant source of funding, and the
priorities of the IMF align with the holders of the purse strings. In the 1980s
the US pursued a ‘war on drugs’ in Central and South America, even
though attacking the coca-leaf producers decimated the lives of the quarter

of a million farmers and their families who depended on the crop.17 Bolivia
was a key ally in this war, and as a reward for its fealty to American
interests, received a somewhat more lenient ride with the IMF. This was
also the case with the monstrous Pinochet regime in Chile, which received
preferential treatment in negotiations with the IMF, after taking power
following a CIA-backed coup d’état against socialist leader Salvador
Allende in 1973.18 It is always worth remembering the dictators and
despots whose politics have aligned so well with the West.
The history of the IMF as a political tool is by no means restricted to
Latin America: preferential negotiations were used to try and prevent
Pakistan from arming itself with nuclear weapons as well as to induce
Turkey’s support for the Gulf War.19 Countries in the underdeveloped
world who vote more often with the United States in the UN also get a
better deal from the IMF.20 The new age of empire functions on the basis
of this financial intervention regime, one that plunders the economies of the
underdeveloped world to support the interests of the West.
It might be tempting to argue that the IMF takes its actions in good, but
ill-conceived, faith. That the countries are in debt because their economies
are badly run and they need support to make the correct adjustments on
their way to becoming highly developed capitalist utopias. But the West is
not rich because of its genius, democracy and capitalism. It is affluent
because it has expropriated wealth from the underdeveloped word: the Rest
is poor because the West is rich. Newly independent nations were always
going to end up struggling and having to take loans from Western interests,
who only had the resources to lend because they were plundered from the
Rest. Third World debt is obscene at every level. It’s as if I stole your
money and then, when you failed to make ends meet, offered you a payday
loan at extortionate interest rates, all the while berating you for being bad at
running your personal finances, and then forcing you to spend the money in
the way that benefited me the most. The West can never be the solution to
global poverty because it is the cause of it. The places in the
underdeveloped world that have made the biggest strides forward since the
dawn of the new age of empire are those that have had the least support
from the West.
Prior to the late nineties, East Asia was seen as a miracle of economic
development. Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia had
experienced three decades of economic growth and poverty reduction.

Contrary to Western economic wisdom, this had not been achieved because
they followed the dictates of the Washington consensus but because they
had not.21 In particular, in these countries the state had been heavily
involved in their economic transformation, and economic liberalization and
privatization were happening only slowly.
At the end of the Korean War in 1953 South Korea was poorer than
India, but by 1990 it was so ‘successful’ it was a member of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a pool
of largely Western countries tasked with stimulating economic trade and socalled global progress. All of this was done with little foreign direct
investment, although it did rely on loans from Western banks. We should
never forget that the so-called progress of nations like South Korea is built
on their integration into the mechanism of Western imperialism. Alongside
including steep inequalities within their borders, this also means feeding off
the bounty of global White supremacy. Dealing with the devil has its
consequences, as many of the nations in East Asia found out at the end of
the nineties.
In 1997 currency speculators drove down the value of the Thai baht,
which caused an economic crisis that spread across the region. In stepped
the saviour, in the form of the IMF, who managed to only make the problem
worse. The IMF provided $95 billion in loans, which was in effect a bailout
for the Western banks the nations were having difficulty repaying. As
always, the money had strings attached that included austerity, tax increases
on the poor and neoliberal structural reforms. The results were disastrous.
GDP collapsed across the region and unemployment increased four-fold in
Korea and three-fold in Indonesia. In Korean cities a quarter of the
population fell into poverty. Austerity made the situation far worse than it
could have been, and reductions in food and fuel subsidies for the poor led
to riots in Indonesia. The IMF may not have started the crisis but their
actions deepened it, and placed a heavy burden on the poor. As economist
Joseph Stiglitz explains, the impact was so negative in the region that
‘history is dated “before” and “after” the IMF, just as countries that are
devastated by an earthquake or some other natural disaster date events
“before” or “after” the earthquake’.22
As an example of the absurdity of IMF orthodoxy, Stiglitz offers Ethiopia
in 1997. The IMF refused to loan Ethiopia money in the midst of an
economic crisis because they argued that foreign aid was too big a

proportion of the country’s economy. They genuinely suggested that
Ethiopia would be better served by paying foreign aid into the nation’s
reserves, rather than spending the money on schools and hospitals. Stiglitz
uses this example to make the case that the World Bank was a more
benevolent organization, since it had workers on the ground trying to
engage with and support the poor. But the World Bank was created by the
same people and for the same purpose as the IMF. As a former director and
chief economist of the World Bank, we should take Stiglitz’s
pronouncements about the organization as little more than company PR.

THE ‘WHITE MAN’S BURDEN’
Unlike the IMF, the World Bank sees itself as a development agency. It
aims to end extreme poverty and it was primarily set up to provide support
for the underdeveloped world so that countries would not fall for the
charms of the Soviets. Just as with the IMF, the organization is financed
largely by Western governments and the United States is the biggest donor.
Also like the IMF, the World Bank is used as a political tool, so it should be
no surprise that its programme benefits wealthier nations, whilst supposedly
supporting the underdeveloped world.23 While Stiglitz has been more
critical of the economic orthodoxy of Western financial intervention, the
World Bank generally has not. It has embraced the same conditionality to
its loans as the IMF, and the two names are often used interchangeably
because of the collective destruction they have wrought on underdeveloped
economies. John Williamson, whose tenure at the World Bank spanned over
a decade, said in 2004, ‘we argue the desirability of completing rather than
reversing the liberalizing reforms of the Washington Consensus.’24
Rather than challenging the cartel of Western intervention, the World
Bank has been happy to enforce neoliberalism on the nations it is supposed
to be helping. When the World Bank was considering the impact of
charging people for healthcare in Peru in order to shrink public debt they
came to the conclusion that ‘the introduction of user fees at public health
facilities will have only a small effect on the rural poor because they tend
not to visit health facilities.’25 The fact that the poor do not have access to
healthcare somehow became a reason to introduce charges. The callous
disregard for life outside the West is one of the key features that has been

maintained in the updated system of racial oppression. To borrow from
Stiglitz, ‘from one’s luxury hotel, one can callously impose policies about
which one would think twice if one knew the people whose lives one was
destroying.’26
The intentions of the World Bank may genuinely be positive. They are a
resource of information on global poverty and invest billions of dollars in
the underdeveloped world. But the road to neo-colonialism is paved with
good intentions. Believing that you are doing good while inflicting damage
is not a new feature of Western imperialism. Even during the horrific
violence of its first iteration, colonialists imagined that they were doing the
savages good by dragging them into civilization. Kipling said it was the
‘White man’s burden’ to lift the world out of its state of nature. We can see
this rhetoric at work in the new centre of empire when in 1901 Vice
President Theodore Roosevelt declared the need to annex the Philippines,
explaining that ‘it is our duty toward the people living in barbarism to see
that they are freed from their chains.’27 In the development agenda
weapons are not used to save the savages. Instead aid is sent, and expertise
is granted, to help pull up the underdeveloped world.
In exactly the same way that the notion the underdeveloped world should
be indebted to the developed world is absurd, so is the idea that aid could be
of any serious benefit. We are trapped in a similar paradox to the
reparations debate, where the wealth necessary to repair the damage would
destroy the entire Western economic system. The West enriches itself off
the Rest, and therefore donating an extremely small amount of that money
back through aid is clearly not going to solve the problem. While the
absolute numbers in terms of aid sound high, they are actually relatively
small. By the early 2000s the West had spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid.28
But when you consider that Britain’s GDP in 2017 alone was $2.6 trillion
you can begin to understand the scale of the problem. It should be no
surprise then that the record of foreign aid is not encouraging. For instance,
$2 billion has been invested in Tanzania’s roads, but they show little
improvement.29 There have been strides made in the underdeveloped world
but most of the countries that have done well received relatively little
development aid.
In 2000 the United Nations committed to a series of Millennium
Development Goals that it hoped the world could achieve by 2015. Progress
was made in most areas and many of the targets were hit, including more

than halving the number of people living in extreme poverty across the
globe to 14 per cent.30 The proportion of undernourished children also fell
by almost half, more children were in education, including girls, and the
number of people in the global working middle class grew significantly. All
this apparent progress is accompanied by a host of cheerleaders promising
us that we are well on the path to a better world.
Psychologist Steven Pinker assures us not only that the Enlightenment
has ‘worked’ but that its ideals are ‘stirring, inspiring, noble’ and nothing
short of a ‘reason to live’.31 Bill Gates, perhaps the embodiment of the
White saviour complex, called Pinker’s ode to the Enlightenment his
‘favourite book of all time’. Sam Harris, self-described neuroscientist (but
in reality pop psychologist), is so convinced of the power of so-called
science he believes it will ultimately determine correct moral values.32
Having endured an undergraduate degree in psychology, it is no shock to
me that authors steeped in the subject have so fully drunk the progressnarrative Kool-Aid. Psychology is trying to make its presence known,
having been promoted to the premier league of pseudo-sciences, vying for
position with stalwarts such as economics, politics and some versions of
sociology. But wherever you look you can find plenty of academics waving
pom-poms in support of progress. Development studies was basically
designed to lead the PR campaign for Enlightenment ideals, and Hans
Rosling, with his captivating TED talks, colourful charts and accessible
books, is the leader of the cheer squad.33 But before we get lured by the
allure of the future dead White men we only need to take a closer look at all
these so-called gains to see through the mirage.
In terms of the poverty indicators, China accounted for the vast majority
of improvements. This is the same China that received very little aid and
has a planned economy run by its central Communist Party machinery.
Though the numbers of people living in extreme poverty fell in Africa, this
did not happen to anything like the same extent. In fact, by 2015, 36 per
cent of people in work in Africa lived in extreme poverty. The World Bank
figures report that half of people living in extreme poverty are in so-called
sub-Saharan Africa, and that figure will be nine in ten by 2030.34 As we
have already explored, anti-Blackness is a feature of Western empire, so we
should have been prepared for the news that progress is far slower in

Africa. But we should not get carried away by how much life has changed
for most of the world’s poor.
The UN Millennium Development Goals report admits that ‘almost half
of global workers are still working in vulnerable conditions, rarely enjoying
the benefits associated with decent work’,35 while the World Bank
estimates that half the world lives on less than $5.50 a day. To qualify for
the working middle class you only need to earn more than $4 a day, and
over 80 per cent of people in the world live on less than $13 daily. The
development agenda has never been about equality, but has been tailored to
remove the harshest edges of suffering from the global system of
oppression. In a 1977 speech to the World Bank, Robert McNamara, its
fifth president, gave the game away when he explained that
closing the gap [between the developed and underdeveloped worlds]
was never a realistic objective in the first place. Given the immense
differences in the capital and technological base of the industrialized
nations as compared with that of the developing countries, it was
simply not a feasible goal. Nor is it one today.36
The same is true now. The UN goals are all worthy. Reducing extreme
poverty, educating children and tackling health emergencies like HIV are
imperative to alleviate human suffering. But this is not the same as
addressing global inequality. The fact that people earning $4 a day are
labelled ‘working middle class’ should be proof of the obscenity of this
paradigm. Conditions that we would never accept in the West are marked as
progress in the Rest. Whereas we may have accepted that killing and
enslaving the natives is wrong, we have normalized poverty for the Black
and Brown because in the new world order our lives matter, just a lot less.
In many ways this is the fulfilment of Kant’s universal reason, rooted in his
‘ moral geography’. We have a supranational body (the UN) working to
ensure that the savages are not murdered or deposed by colonial troops, but
are given just enough to subsist on so that the West is free to carry on
exploiting them through colonial logic, with no twinges of its conscience.
The UN’s complete ignorance of race can only be understood in the
context of Enlightenment reason, which imagines civilization rebooted in
Europe in the eighteenth century (after a long hiatus following the fall of
the Romans). Cheerleaders like Pinker and Rosling point to the data

supporting the idea that progress is being made in areas like infant mortality
and absolute poverty around the world. This is the world-view that allows
the UN to claim victory in its millennium goals. Conveniently ignored is
that we are measuring progress since the destruction wrought by Western
imperialism. It is perverse to celebrate marginal gains in the
underdeveloped world after genocide, slavery and colonialism produced the
racially unjust social order. The number one cause of global poverty is
racism, with nations so desperate to improve their condition because of the
lived reality of White supremacy.
It would be charitable to see this foreign-aid industrial complex as a
benevolent form of imperialism, where at least people’s hearts are in the
right place. In just one example, a UN-funded Millennium Villages project
in Uganda trained farmers in techniques to provide a higher crop yield. The
result was a bumper harvest, but there was no market for the goods and they
ended up rotting, with the famers losing out even further because of their
increased costs of production.37 Maybe we should forgive such misguided
errors and the well-to-do bumbling of do-gooders. But when we look at
how the money is spent it is very hard not to see a purposeful campaign to
maintain the dispossession of the underdeveloped world. It is even more
difficult to avoid this conclusion when the British Minister for International
Development openly declares that she wants to use her budget to ‘tear down
the barriers to free trade’, as Priti Patel did in 2017.38
The Conservatives are not typically seen as a party that supports foreign
aid. In both classical and neoliberal versions of Western economics the idea
of giving handouts is a terrible distortion of the sanctity of the market.
There is a whole body of economic thought, typified by Milton Friedman,
that believes global inequality is caused in part because the underdeveloped
world is ‘receiving unwarranted assistance’.39 But since gaining power in
2010 the Conservatives have been keen to champion their foreign aid
credentials. On his last day in office, after crashing his premiership on the
rocks of Brexit, David Cameron claimed that his government’s commitment
to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid was one of his ‘proudest
achievements’.40 The aid spending was particularly significant for a
government that pursued the severest austerity agenda in British history,
and they weren’t forced into it by the IMF either. The Department for
International Development saw its budget increase by 24 per cent from

2010/11 to 2015/16 at a time when cuts to other departments were 28 per
cent.41
Given how the aid budget is actually being spent, however, it becomes
far less surprising that the Conservatives have been so keen to invest.
Before the Cameron government came to power, in 2009, the Tories
published a Green Paper extolling the virtues of ‘capitalism and
development’ as ‘Britain’s gift to the world’.42 Once in power the
Conservatives set about changing the law so that they could use the aid
budget to support the interests of global capitalism and British business in
particular.43 A perfect example of such worthwhile spending was to grant
£450 million to Adam Smith International (ASI), a free-market Londonbased consultancy – more than the government spent in total on human
rights and women’s equality, and double the amount given to combat the
spread of HIV and AIDS.44 One of the roles of the ASI is to advise
countries to liberalize (meaning privatize) whatever they can. Since 2005
the ASI has led a £99 million project to advise Nigeria’s government on
reforming infrastructure in order to benefit the poorest. Its main
achievement has been the privatization of the electricity sector, which is
seen as a success because it is so total it would be almost impossible to
reverse. The result of this ‘progress’ is that electricity prices have been
hiked by up to 45 per cent; over half the country remains without any
power; and the service cuts out so regularly that even those with electricity
have to rely on back-up generators. The only beneficiaries of the UK aid
were the ASI and the private companies feasting on Nigeria.
Another form of creative accounting in the UK aid budget is the dispersal
of £1.5 billion over five years into the university sector. Announced as part
of the comprehensive spending review of the coalition government in 2015,
the Global Challenges Research Fund aims to ‘harness the expertise of the
UK’s world-leading researchers’ in the cause of saving the underdeveloped
world.45 I work in the sector so I do not want to totally undermine the
validity of my profession, but the idea of transferring £1.5 billion of a
budget meant to save lives to academics is obscene. This is even more so
the case when we dig into how this money is being allocated.
I first found out about it in a meeting at work where it was revealed that
as part of our core research funding the university had been given a slice of
the development budget without even having to request it. The university

higher-ups then managed to retroactively find some activity that we could
pass off as ‘development’ focused. In this meeting we were discussing how
we could find projects to justify keeping our grant from the fund. Not all the
money has just been dished out to UK universities. For most of it there are
rigorous controls, and applications have to be sent through funding bodies.
UK Research and Innovation has a website where you can see the various
countries and research projects that have been funded.46 The sheer volume
tells you just how much money is being invested in the scheme. Some very
interesting projects on issues ranging from social policy to health and
violence prevention have been funded. But identifying Western universities
as a conduit for development creates the paradox of offering a ‘new White
Man’s Burden to clean up the mess left behind by the old White Man’s
Burden’.47
The Eurocentric knowledge that is vitally important to maintaining the
unjust racial order was produced in universities. That is no different today,
with the dreaded Washington consensus, the name given to the economic
policies supported by the IMF and World Bank, and by a wealth of
academics. In fact, the workforce of the Western financial intervention
regime is an army of graduates trained in development orthodoxy. It is
through the façade of pseudo-scientific technical expertise presented by the
World Bank and the IMF that their looting of economies in the
underdeveloped world is justified. If we accept that the development
industry is just another mechanism to continue Western imperialism, then
universities are one of the foundation stones of that agenda. One of the key
mechanisms of neo-colonialism is the training of thousands of students
from the underdeveloped world who are sent back home with all the tools to
continue letting the West ransack their economies. Giving development aid
to universities only makes sense if the purpose is to continue to produce
knowledge that entrenches global racial inequality.
Syphoning money from the aid budget in order to support British private
enterprise is a longstanding problem and so it makes perfect sense that
funding is now being diverted to universities. Since the reforms of 2017
British universities have almost fully completed their transition into private
companies. We charge fees, operate in a marketplace and treat students as
customers. Pumping in £300 million of the aid budget each year for half a
decade is essentially a public investment in the private sector. As is the
same with any non-governmental aid agency, the majority of costs go on

employing staff in the West. It would be revealing to see just how much of
the money ended up paying staff, overheads, travel and catering expenses in
British universities. We are essentially using foreign aid to pay the elite
(academics) to take on the burden of pulling the underdeveloped world out
of its barbarism. The difference between sending administrators to the
colonies, the Adam Smith International consultants, and universities
producing expert solutions is one of degree.
Britain is not alone in using its foreign aid budget to support its own
companies or national interest. USAID (the United States Agency for
International Development) is as much a brand that bolsters the progressive
credentials of the United States as it is a development agency. In the recent
past the United States has been guilty of the most brazen forms of using
foreign aid to further its agenda. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the perfect
example of how, when necessary, the United States has embraced ‘the
violence, brutality, and barbarity befitting any European imperialist
power’.48 After the carnage and devastation of Iraq, the rebuilding of the
country provided an opportunity for USAID to loot an underdeveloped
economy through ‘aid’. The United States prosecuted the war under the
guise of ‘advancing freedom’ in the Middle East.
Almost two years after the invasion President Bush delivered a live
prime-time speech at the military base of Fort Bragg in North Carolina
where he uttered the word ‘freedom’ twenty-one times to emphasize the
civilizing mission of America.49 The freedom he was referring to was not
what most would understand by the word. Rather than freedom from
tyranny, want or fear, Bush really meant unleashing the forces of the free
market in Iraq. Once President Saddam was toppled, the US-led Coalition
set about regime change, installing the fundamental principles of Western
financial intervention. The Coalition’s first acts, through USAID, included
making half a million soldiers and public officials unemployed, removing
barriers to foreign direct investment and privatizing 200 state industries. To
put icing on the neoliberal cake they also contracted an affiliate of the
leading international services firm KPMG to construct a free market from
the ground zero the invasion had created.50 Iraq became a breeding ground
for profiteering from nation-building.
To truly understand the problematic nature of the foreign-aid industrial
complex we need to look no further than the recipient of the highest amount
of US aid dollars. Rather than pouring money into one of the poorest

countries in the world, one in terrible need of infrastructure spending, the
United States has donated around a fifth of its aid to Israel, a relatively rich
country not considered a developing nation.51 In 2016 the United States
signed a military aid package for Israel worth $38 billion over ten years.52
Not only does Israel receive the most aid from the United States, it does so
under the most favourable conditions: it does not have to account for where
the money is spent like other recipient countries.
The United States has company in using its aid budget to support Israel
and its armed forces. In 2017 Priti Patel had to step down as Minister for
International Development in Britain when it was revealed that she was
having secret meetings with the Israelis and attempting to use her
department’s budget to fund Israel’s military activity.53 Although this
somehow did not prevent her from being appointed Home Secretary less
than two years later. Israel’s subsidy through foreign aid is important not
just because it exposes the contradictions in funding. It also highlights
another fundamental change in the updated version of empire that marked
the new age of empire that emerged after the Second World War.

POST-RACIAL IMPERIALISM
A visceral and overt form of racism underpinned the first iteration of
Western empire. A racial hierarchy was clearly coded and enforced with
racial science, providing the pseudo-intellectual backing for White
supremacy. If the Second World War brought an end to violent competition
between Western powers, as well as ending direct control of their colonies,
it also reframed the racial logic necessary to dominate the world. The
slaughter of 6 million Jewish people in Nazi Germany brought racial logic
home, disturbing the otherwise largely settled consensus. The horror of the
concentration camps upset the social order and it was decided that ‘race’
had to be abandoned to the dustbin of history. A 1950 statement brought
together by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) declared that
National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not
necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of
such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial

traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed
when the term ‘race’ is used in popular parlance, it would be better
when speaking of human races to drop the term ‘race’ altogether and
speak of ethnic groups.54
In other words, the West had used the concept of race to slaughter people
and dominate the globe, and when the horror of that system was brought
home they decided to terminate the idea. On the face of it, abandoning such
a flawed concept of race seems like a noble pursuit. Embracing ethnicity
retains the idea of difference but allows for more complexity. But over sixty
years after the UNESCO statement the world remains ordered around the
logic of race, so this change has clearly only been semantic. This is largely
because ethnicity merely became a stand-in for race, so all the hierarchies
were retained, just with cultural justifications rather than biological ones.
Africans were inferior not because of their genetics but because of their
tribal affiliations and backward way of life.
The main problem with this shift in discourse was that in erasing race it
becomes almost impossible to talk about racism. Black people remain
oppressed because of our race; we just talk about the problem in relation to
ethnicity and then wonder why the inequalities persisted. There is a reason
that the UN makes no mention of racism in its goals: it simply does not
have the language to talk about race. This post-racialism is important to the
system update of Western imperialism because it helps to maintain the
façade of progressivism that is so important when it comes to justifying the
continuing oppression. We tumble into a deluded view of the world where
the West cannot possibly be racist, because they abandoned race and are
investing trillions of dollars in aid.
It is ironic then that one of the responses to the Holocaust was to reify
race and racism, and to engage in older forms of colonial violence. Israel
was founded in 1948 after a longer struggle of Zionism that sought to return
Jewish people to their biblical homeland. Zionism had some support before
the Second World War but it was the Holocaust that spurred action from
Western powers, who became certain of the need for a Jewish homeland.
The only problem of course was that the land where Israel was created had
an established population. With a mindset reminiscent of those who created
the settler colonies that cleared the way for the West, German rabbi Isaac
Rolf declared before the War that

In our land there is only room for us. We will say to the Arabs:
move, and if they disagree, if they resist by force – we will force
them to move, we will hit them on their heads and force them to
move.55
Before 1948 Palestine was a British-held colonial territory and therefore
directly subject to the logic of empire. Zionists did not appeal to the Arabs
living there but to the British who ruled the territory. Britain had been on
the fence about Zionism but embraced the idea of a Jewish homeland in
1917 when Lord Balfour declared, ‘His Majesty’s Government view with
favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of
this object.’56
Britain had its own reasons for supporting Zionism. The Balfour
Declaration was in part used to legitimize the British invasion of the
territory earlier in the year in an effort to further extend the Empire. Coming
out for Zionism was not an easy decision and was also predicated on the
belief that the global Jewish citizenry were vital to the First World War
effort. There was a genuine belief in the British government that if they won
over American Jews they in turn would use their influence to get the United
States involved in the War. It was also felt that after the Bolshevik
Revolution, Russian Jews would move to take Russia, a key ally, out of the
War and therefore needed to be appeased. In large part it was the fear of the
power of the influence of a global Jewish cabal, a deeply racist trope at the
heart of anti-Semitism, that sparked the Balfour Declaration. Activists were
well aware of this reality. Edgar Suares, a leader in the important
Alexandrian Jewish community, wrote to the Foreign Office in 1916 that
‘England could assure to herself the active support of the Jews all over the
neutral world if only the Jews knew that British policy accorded with their
aspirations in Palestine.’57 The Zionist campaign depended on anti-Semitic
ideas about the power and coordination of Jews worldwide for it to succeed.
Theodor Herzl, a central figure in the early Zionist movement who died
before the Balfour Declaration, argued that anti-Semitism was the ‘chief
asset’ of the movement.58
When the UN recommended the partition to create the Jewish state of
Israel in 1947, they did so as an apparently anti-racist act. Supporting the
Jewish people who had been racialized and slaughtered as an

ethnic/national group in need of a homeland perfectly suited the new postracial order. But to establish the new nation the West would have to support
the kind of racist colonial acts it had supposedly left behind. For a start, the
very notion that a state of White settlers could be built with a complete
disregard of the native Brown population is the epitome of colonial logic. In
order to clear the land of the natives, large-scale violence reminiscent of the
previous colonial era was necessary.
At Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948, 250 unarmed people were slaughtered, a
number that included 100 women and children, by 120 militiamen from the
Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi.59 Menachem Begin, the leader
of Irgun, praised his troops, declaring ‘as in Deir Yassin, so everywhere …
Oh Lord, Oh Lord you have chosen us for conflict.’60 This kind of violence
was not uncommon and it was meant to terrorize the Palestinians into
fleeing their land. It had the desired effect, with over 700,000 Palestinians
becoming refugees by the time Israel was established in 1948. So traumatic
was this period in history that Palestinians named it the Nakba, which
literally translates as ‘the catastrophe’.
The violence enacted to clear the ground for the Israeli state is eerily
reminiscent of the genocidal frontier campaigns to establish the United
States. This was not lost on Israel’s greatest ally. With the Jewish state
facing threats from Arabs on all sides, in 1967 White House aide John
Roche drew the perfect analogy, explaining, ‘I confess, I look on the Israelis
as Texans’, drawing parallels with those who braved the United States’
frontiers and tamed the threat from Mexicans.61 The United States’ dogged
support for Israel could be in no small part down to recognizing the plight
of a fellow settler colony that needed to rally the wagons in order to defend
itself from the existential threat of the hordes of natives.
The United States’ support for Israel has been questioned on the strategic
front. The sheer amount of financial assistance means there is an economic
burden, but there are other ways that Israel is detrimental to the interests of
the United States. For one, Israel’s actions undoubtedly adversely impact on
the United States’ global image. As a settler colony Israel is one of the few
examples left of the unrestrained brutality of the previous colonial era. For
all the pretence of ethnicity, Israel is a Jewish state with citizenship based
on blood rights.62 Minorities are brutally oppressed and locked out of full
participation in the state: to establish itself, Israel has serially abused the
rights of the Palestinians. It continuously flouts both international law and

United States’ advice by attacking civilians and building illegal settlements
on the West Bank. The situation is so dire that comparisons to apartheid
South Africa are not only common but appropriate. The United States’
embrace of Israel means that it regularly defends abhorrent actions to
protect its ally, particularly blocking the international community in the UN
from taking any action against what is in many ways a rogue state.
Reputational damage is not just about PR but has consequences for the
United States. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has long been a
motivating factor for Islamic extremism, and by being an extension of
Israel, the United States is a prime target for terrorists.
Israel has a dire relationship not only with Palestinians but also with its
neighbouring Arab states, being involved in multiple wars and having
annexed territory from Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Israel’s military policy
frequently consists of ‘unilateral aggressive actions’ that destabilize the
region and could jeopardize the United States’ access to its most valuable
commodity, oil.63 Not to mention Israel is the nuclear power that may be
the likeliest nation to unleash Armageddon. Israel’s existential crisis is
rooted in its precarious position as a settler colony unable to fulfil its
genocidal logic. European settlement into the Americas and Australia was
secured by the almost complete erasure of the native threat. Israel will never
achieve that security surrounded by hostile Arab states, which is why its
reaction to threats is so extreme and disproportionate. It is certainly not too
difficult to imagine Israel pressing the nuclear button in a pique of settler
colonial genocide. Such murderous brutality would fit perfectly into the
logic of Western imperialism. It is because of this existential dread that
Israel is prone to bite the hand that feeds it, frequently spying on the United
States, passing on information and colluding with its benefactor’s
enemies.64
To understand America’s steadfast support for Israel we need to put it in
the context of the new age of empire. Whilst the West rallied to Zionism
after the Second World War, the United States only began the journey
towards wholeheartedly embracing Israel in 1956, and this transition was
not complete until 1967. It was then that the fledgling nation was seen as an
essential strategic interest to block the Soviets from influence in the Middle
East.65 Israel was able to embarrass Egypt’s Soviet-backed President
Nasser with swift victory in the Six Day War in 1967 and has since served
as the battering ram for the United States’ soft power in the region.

Oil was the key commodity underpinning the transition into the new age
of empire and the United States needed to control the area that produced
most of it. Israel is the reminder that, as much as things have changed, they
have stayed the same within this iteration of empire. Aid may be the carrot,
but the stick can be wielded at any time. By offshoring its violence to Israel,
the United States can maintain the pretence of benevolence in world affairs.
Islamic extremism is the new bogeyman raised to justify Israel’s role in the
Middle East. It is the counterweight to Iran and the last bastion preventing
an Islamic caliphate being established. Of course this is nonsense: for all its
protestations about the clash of civilizations between Christianity and
Islam, and moralizing about human rights in the region, the United States’
other major partner in the region is Saudi Arabia. That nation is an Islamic
state that harshly imposes its reading of Sharia law. Israel is useful to the
United States because it can trample on the rights of the Brown natives to
maintain Western imperialism.
Israel is unique because it allows the old forms of imperial brutality to be
continued in plain sight in the new age of empire. Because we have
abandoned race, the Jewish state is defended as a mechanism of ethnic selfdetermination and therefore Israel has the ‘right to exist’, regardless of the
consequences for the region or the Palestinians. In fact, because of the
horrors of the Holocaust, to question Israel, Zionism or its steps to defend
itself is to run the risk of being labelled anti-Semitic. Under the widely
adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antiSemitism it is forbidden to claim that the ‘existence of a State of Israel is a
racist endeavour’. But what other conclusion could we draw from looking
at the historical record? And this has nothing to do with being anti-Semitic:
the United States, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and any other settler colony
are all ‘racist endeavours’. More to the point, we could say the same about
the existence of every country in Africa, with their boundaries drawn by
colonial administrators; or India and Pakistan after the horrors of Partition.
But in the new post-racial order we exempt Israel from proper scrutiny and
in doing so legitimize the continuation of Western imperialism, and the key,
brutal role that Israel plays.
Western imperialism did not end after the Second World War, it merely
evolved. The horrors of the Holocaust did away with the notion of race,
which was simply replaced by a version of ethnicity that allowed colonial
logic to continue. Israel is a reminder of the brutality of the older order that

underpins the new. The UN, IMF and World Bank pose as friends to the
underdeveloped world, all whilst creating a framework that continues to
allow the West to leach from the Rest. We live in a time defined by the
dreams of the Enlightenment, universal values that set in stone the unjust
racial order. Aid is offered as the solution to absolve the West of its sins,
whilst it actually works to further oppress the underdeveloped world and
enrich Western interests. But we are so keen to believe we are making
progress that we ignore the uncomfortable truth before us. The starving
children beamed in haunting images onto our TV screens are in dire poverty
because of our excessive wealth. No matter how big your direct debit is to
whichever charity tugged your heart strings, it cannot change the fact the
reason you can afford to donate is because those children have no food. But
we can all comfort ourselves with delusions that we are moving towards a
better, more enlightened world.
So complete and perverse is the new age of empire that it has allowed the
face of Western domination to become increasingly diverse. In order to
maintain the façade it is essential that the only diners at the trough of
empire are no longer just White people. There have always been those in
the underdeveloped world who colluded with the oppressive system to
enrich themselves. One of the more dispiriting features of the new age is
that there is a growing class of Black and Brown faces profiting off the
logic of racial oppression who are, knowingly or not, being used to market
the fairness of the system.

6

The Non-White West
In 2018 US president Donald Trump launched a trade war against China,
railing against the ‘billions of dollars’ lost to the country each year in
unbalanced trading on his favourite medium, Twitter. In a particularly
alarming social media rant, even for Trump, on 23 August 2019 he declared
that
The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the
United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our
great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start
looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your
companies HOME and making your products in the USA.
Trying to reassert American economic protectionism is one thing, but
believing that he had the power to order private corporations around
displayed a spectacular misunderstanding of both global capital and his own
role. Trump’s concern over China was the substantial trade deficit between
the two countries. In 2018 the United States exported $120 billion worth of
goods but imported over $539 billion worth, making an almost $420 billion
loss in terms of trade.1 To counter this, the substance of Trump’s trade war
was to increase tariffs on Chinese imports so that companies are
disincentivized from doing business in the country. China retaliated,

imposing its own tariffs on American imports, with both countries using
their actions as leverage for a new trade agreement.
Trump’s trade war was sparked by wider fears that globalization is
disadvantaging the West, and in particular working-class communities that
have seen their jobs disappear overseas. The reason for the trade imbalance
is that China is now the workshop of the world, leading the way in
manufacturing goods for sale in the West including the United States.
Nations across the West have experienced the kind of de-industrialization
that has seen factories relocate to the underdeveloped world and large
swathes of people lose their jobs. Trump was elected in large part because
he won in the American ‘rust belt’, the Midwestern states whose
populations lost out when manufacturing moved overseas. The trade war
was a key part of his ‘Make America Great Again’ appeal, taking on
foreign nations who are attacking United States power, and reasserting
economic nationalism. In this version of the new world order the real
victims of the new age are the White formerly working class, left behind by
a global system that now privileges foreign nations.
It is undeniable that the post-war settlement has led to some interesting,
and likely unintended, consequences in the operation of Western
imperialism. Manufacturing was previously the domain of the West.
Producing the goods to sell into newly found markets around the world was
one of the main goals of empire. India’s textile industry was purposely
destroyed so that Britain could lead the way in manufacturing. This
situation has now been completely reversed. Along with China, India is one
of the fastest growing economies and there is a real sense that centres of
power are shifting to the underdeveloped world. China is now seen as the
main threat to the West and there are projections that it will eventually
become the largest economy in the world. It has positive trade deficits with
every major nation and trillions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves.2
The new economic and political order created after the Second World War
has paved the way for the rise of China and other underdeveloped nations.
But if we imagine that the development of non-Western, non-White
countries proves that the racial logic of empire has changed in any
substantive way we are sorely mistaken. China’s rise is instructive,
considering its predicted global dominance has been due to the logic of
Western imperialism, not in spite of it.

After the declaration of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the
nation was a key part of the Communist challenge to the capitalist status
quo. China’s support was central to the defeat of United States forces in
Korea and Vietnam, and China also backed several African liberation
struggles that threatened Western dominance on that continent.3 But the
China that has emerged today is not the revolutionary Communist state that
sought to reshape the economic order. In truth, it is quite the opposite. To
achieve its current status China had to realize that the ‘Western order is hard
to overturn and easy to join’.4
China’s economic rise only began after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976
and the subsequent repudiation of his policies. At that point China was an
extremely poor country which had undergone one of the worst famines in
human history a decade earlier. From 1978 the nation embraced capitalism,
undergoing a series of market reforms, welcoming foreign direct investment
and making exports the basis of its economy.5 This meant opening up
China to the rest of the world and fully engaging with global finance, and it
was an extremely successful approach: the nation pulled 600 million of its
citizens out of extreme poverty between 1978 and 2010. China’s success
could be mistaken as evidence that the new economic system is not
inherently racist, if an underdeveloped country can make such strides. But,
as always, we should not get ahead of ourselves.
China’s emergence has been due to the very reason that Trump started his
trade war: its domination of global manufacturing. ‘Made in China’ has
become so commonplace it is almost a surprise when an item is produced
elsewhere. But this occurred because the cost of labour in China is so low
relative to the West. It is the same problem I discussed in relation to India’s
economic miracle. While there is lots of wealth in China, and many newly
minted billionaires, there is also an abundance of poverty. China may have
the second largest economy in the world, but the important measure is GDP
per capita: the amount of wealth produced per person. By this measure
China is 65th, demonstrating that many people are not feeling the benefits
of the growing economy. China is extremely unequal and government
statistics class anyone earning $295 a month as middle-income, despite the
complaints from those living on that amount that they cannot make ends
meet.6 Because China’s position depends on being the world’s primary
exporter, mass poverty is necessary in order to sustain its economic growth.
Just like India, if the standard of living rises so too do the wages and

manufacturing costs. Soon enough China would find itself in the same
position as the West, offshoring its factory labour to a poorer country. What
Trump has seriously misunderstood in his trade war is that even if increased
costs through tariffs on Chinese goods incentivized manufacturers to move,
they would simply relocate to a different Black or Brown country with
inhumanly low labour costs. There is only one source in the West that can
compete with the wages in the underdeveloped world and that is prison
labour, which no doubt explains why Trump is a supporter of increased
privatization of the sector.
In order to establish itself China has relied on hundreds of millions of its
own citizens living in conditions and taking wages that would be
unacceptable in the West. It’s one of the key principles of Western
imperialism: Black and Brown life is worth less and it is therefore
legitimate to exploit it. But it is not only in exploiting its own citizens that
China has embraced the logic of empire. White supremacy is based on a
hierarchy from White down to Black, with anti-Blackness a specific feature
of the system. In order to establish a secure footing, or to move up the
ladder of supremacy, there is a long history of other racialized groups using
Black populations as a stepping stone. China is no different, as an
examination of the nation’s increasing role in Africa demonstrates.

THE CHINESE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA
China’s links to Africa go back centuries, at least as far as the Han dynasty
in 202 BC. (The idea that Europe initiated global trade and connectedness is
one of the many fictions of Whitewashed intellectual history.) The
Communist People’s Republic of China had strong ties to Africa and the
liberation movements to end colonialism. In the global fight against capital,
Mao was keen to support the armed struggle in places like Mozambique and
Angola. China was a key player in the 1955 Afro-Asian Bandung
Conference, which sought to create a united non-aligned front to combat the
global power of both the West and the Soviet bloc. China’s credentials in
Africa were well forged and included building a railway line connecting
Zambia to Tanzania in the early 1970s. In return for its support, African
nations backed UN recognition of revolutionary China and supported the
nation’s rise to prominence on the world stage.7

China was influential in the Black radical imagination and was seen by
many ‘as the land where true freedom might be had’.8 The Black Panther
Party initially started fundraising by selling copies of Mao’s ‘Little Red
Book’ to college students,9 and co-founder Huey P. Newton invoked Mao
in his book Revolutionary Suicide when he argued that their revolutionary
commitment was the Panthers’ ‘great leap forward’.10 Numerous Panthers
visited China, including Elaine Brown who would become the party’s
chairperson. Given China’s progressive history with Africa and Black
politics, its increasing influence on the African continent has been
welcomed by many. Indeed, China plays off its historical relationship,
painting itself as an underdeveloped country aiming for a mutually
beneficial relationship with a friend in need.
Although China’s links to Africa are not new, its economic role in the
continent has drastically changed since the start of the new millennium.
From 2000 to 2012 trade between China and Africa grew twenty-fold to
$200 billion.11 Between 2001 and 2010 China’s Export–Import Bank
provided $67.2 billion in loans to so-called sub-Saharan African countries,
$12.5 billion more than the World Bank.12 The West is wary of China’s
rapid expansion in Africa due to the increased competition for resources in
the region and also because Chinese money provides an alternative to the
conditional loans enforcing the dreaded Washington consensus.13 China
does not attach structural adjustment strings to its loans, preferring to stay
out of matters of state and stick to finance. Chinese aid has empowered
African countries to say no to the devilish pacts with the IMF and the World
Bank.
While the West has looted resources and meddled in political and
economic systems, China has been busy building the roads, dams, buildings
and railways that Africa so sorely needs. Not only that, but China has also
invested in the manufacturing sector, to the tune of over $3 billion by the
end of 2012.14 With its history of comradeship, its massive investment, and
the fact it represents an alternative to the hated IMF and World Bank, it is
easy to see why there is some optimism and a view that ‘the Chinese are our
friends’ among many on the continent.15 But we must remember that the
China that holds the revolutionary link to Africa is an historical artefact.
Since China’s economic reforms, the country has embraced the same

political and economic order that oppresses Africa, and in many ways has
legitimized neo-colonialism by posing as a friend.16
To understand China’s neo-colonial role in Africa we need look no
further than the reason for its increased involvement in the first place. After
China embraced the capitalist global order, and its economy grew on the
basis of production, it needed to find fresh sources of raw materials. You
cannot make the goods for the world without their ingredients. China’s
entry into Africa has been driven by the need to acquire resources such as
oil and minerals to secure its place in the global economy. China’s
expansion in Africa also occurred mostly after it joined the World Trade
Organization in 2001 and it therefore operates firmly within the global
economic consensus that is a major part of the continued underdevelopment
of Africa. While Chinese money may not come with the requirement for
structural adjustment, it is a lie to say there are no strings attached. For
China finance is tied to natural resource extraction rather than political
control. China’s interest rates are typically higher than those from Western
financial institutions and it generally takes payment in the form of mining
rights rather than cash. Therefore the vast majority of Chinese assistance
goes to mineral-rich African countries.
In places like Congo, Angola and Zambia, China is providing money to
build infrastructure while stripping the natural resources of the countries. A
classic example of this arrangement, in what was dubbed the ‘deal of the
century’ when it was signed between China and the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) in 2007, is a $9 billion loan that meant China would commit
to building roads, hospitals and other vital infrastructure projects in return
for almost monopolistic control over the mining of cobalt and copper.17 It
may sound like a good deal for Congo, but consider that the minerals in
question are worth an estimated $87 billion and it is quickly apparent that
China is extracting the materials from Congo for a fraction of what they are
worth.18 The IMF were against the loan because they wanted to offer their
own finance package with the usual conditions. But by avoiding the
Western institutions the DRC has jumped out of the frying pan and into the
fire.
Across the African continent, countries are making the same deals with
China, selling off their most valuable resources on the cheap to get at least
some infrastructure built. It is not hard to see why, when Africa is in dire
need of such spending, with estimates that it requires well over $22 billion

spent annually to address its infrastructure problems.19 But these resources
are precious to the future of Africa, which by rights should be the richest
place on earth thanks to its abundance of natural wealth. By cashing in, the
continent is destroying its future. Natural resources are finite and for Africa
to prosper it should be maximizing the wealth produced from them to truly
transform the continent. Green technology will become the next boom
industry and Africa holds a bounty of the minerals necessary for the shift to
sustainable energy. China, on the other hand, has only accelerated the
exploitation of Africa’s resources.
Worse still, the model used to build this infrastructure is of more benefit
to China than Africa. When signing agreements such as the ‘deal of the
century’ China insists that it provides the majority of the equipment and
labour (usually 70 per cent).20 In effect the vast majority of the ‘aid’ that is
given to a country is spent buying goods from China and paying Chinese
companies and workers to rebuild Africa. China is basically providing a
stimulus to its own economy, dressed up as foreign aid. Not only does the
recipient country have to pay this loan back with interest but China also
reaps massive profits from its preferential access to precious mineral
resources. This model has all of the ‘Alice in Wonderland craziness’ about it
that Kwame Nkrumah described in Western neo-colonialism.21 Even
China’s support for infrastructure spending is not as benevolent as it can
appear.
European colonizers spent massive sums on roads, railways and the like
because they were necessary to extract the wealth out of the continent.
When the Chinese offer to build roads that connect an untapped mine to the
sea, they are not doing so out of their wish to better the economic
circumstances of Africa. China has also built forty-four sports stadiums in
Africa, raising serious questions about the nature and utility of its
infrastructure spending.22 These projects routinely end up as white
elephants, something the rulers can use to show off but which have no longterm beneficial impact on the economy.
It is abundantly clear that China’s involvement in infrastructure is not a
break with the logic of Western empire. It may be a different model, but it is
one that supports the principles and functioning of the current system. After
all, the Chinese are extracting these resources to make products to be sold,
in large part, to the West. China’s presence in Africa is also not always at
odds with Western interests. There are a number of direct collaborations

between Chinese and Western companies in Africa, who are after all in the
region for the same reasons. The French company Total partnered with a
Chinese oil company to extract oil from the Nigerian seabed,23 and
Chinese companies also enrich themselves by bidding for contracts funded
by Western agencies like the World Bank. Bamako International Airport in
Mali underwent a $181 million upgrade between 2007 and 2012 funded by
the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US aid agency. Regardless of the
fact that China and the United States may be in a struggle for global
dominance, this United States government contract was carried out by
Chinese workers.24
Migrant workers being imported into Africa to rebuild the continent has
created a specific form of tension. It is estimated that there are now over 1
million Chinese people living in Africa, attracted to the continent by the
opportunities there. It should be no surprise that the natives of the poorest
continent in the world are wary. Chinese migrant workers enjoy better pay
and working conditions. This marks a reversal of Chinese people being
used as a cheap and discriminated-against labour force to build the original
version of Western empire. China is now providing the frontier folk,
seeking new opportunities. It is also not difficult to find attitudes
reminiscent of the old European colonizers who went to Africa to make
their fortunes. In journalist Howard French’s book China’s Second
Continent he explains how commonplace colonial-era racism was with the
Chinese migrants he spoke to across Africa. His discussion with Hao, a
migrant to Mozambique, stands out. Hao had migrated with little, had not
learned a local language, and yet managed to acquire 5,000 acres of land,
much to the displeasure of the locals, and planned to grow cash crops to sell
to Western countries. He explained his decision to try his luck in
Mozambique as follows:
Can you imagine if I had gone to America or to Germany first? The
people in those fucking places are too smart. I wouldn’t have gotten
anywhere. I don’t think I could have beaten them. So we had to find
backward countries, poor countries that we can lead.25
Colonial-era attitudes could also be found among those delivering aid
projects. Li Jinjun, head of the Central Agricultural Research Institute in
Liberia, explained that the Chinese would only run the project for a limited

time in order that the locals ‘learn to support themselves’. In classic
civilizing mission language, the Institute was proud that ‘little by little …
can change them in this way.’26 Of course, we cannot generalize these
attitudes to the whole of the Chinese migrant population in Africa but we
also should not be surprised if they are prevalent. They are only important
insofar as they speak to the wider power dynamics of the Chinese neocolonial relationship with Africa.
Objections to Chinese migration are not solely down to their colonial
attitudes or denying locals the opportunity to work on infrastructure
projects, but tie into the other major area where China has continued the
work of Western imperialism on the continent. As heralded as the increased
trade between China and Africa has been, it represents the classic
relationship between colonizer and colony. China’s imports from Africa are
comprised of well over 90 per cent oil and other natural resources. At the
same time, Africa’s imports from China are 90 per cent finished
manufactured products. Africa exports its resources well below the value
that they are worth to China, which manufactures goods and sells them back
into Africa, collecting all the profit. As a result China is able to produce
cheap goods and flood African markets at prices that local producers have
no way of competing with. The result has been a de-industrialization of
Africa as local manufacturers are forced out of business.
In 2008 manufacturing made up 12.8 per cent of GDP in Africa, and just
eight years later that figure had fallen to 10.5 per cent. Between 1980 and
2008 Africa’s share of global manufacturing was down from 1.2 per cent to
0.9 per cent.27 In Nigeria the impact of Chinese textile imports has been
devastating to local manufacturing. In the 1980s there were 175 textile
factories in the country, but within twenty-five years that number had
declined to only twenty-five. Even though imported textiles are illegal they
account for over 85 per cent of the market and are valued at $2.2 billion
annually, versus only $40 million for locally produced products.28 The
impact on jobs has been catastrophic, with the number of those working in
Nigeria’s textile industry in 2015 declining to 20,000 from 600,000 in the
1990s.29 The result has been tension and even strikes in Senegal over the
presence of the Chinese in local markets: they have become a feature as
imports have flooded in. There is no doubt that the Chinese who are trading
into Africa are profiting from the underdeveloped state of Africa and taking
advantage of the situation created by Western imperialism. This kind of

opportunism from those whose skin is not White is also nothing new for
Africa. Lebanese traders were dominant as middlemen between the French
and their African colonies and there was a similar relationship between
South Asian communities in East Africa and the British.
The only real difference with the Chinese is that they are not playing the
role of middlemen to European colonizers; instead they represent one of the
strongest emerging neo-colonial forces. China is certainly not a colonial
power in the same way as Britain, France or any of the other European
nations were. There is no invasion, violence and domination of political
affairs. But, as we already know, that is not how the new age of empire
works. Although the former colonial masters may have links and historical
advantages in particular countries (particularly in relation to language),
underdeveloped economies are open to exploitation from any nation or
corporation that has the capital. There is no metropolis, no mother country,
just a racialized political and economic system that allows for such
exploitation.

BUILDING BRICS OF EMPIRE
China is not alone in following Western colonial logic to build its wealth.
The new scramble for Africa features a whole host of underdeveloped
countries vying to make the most of the devastating position that the
continent has been placed in. As underdeveloped nations begin to acquire
more wealth there is celebration of the progress being made. None more so
than in recent years with the rise of the so-called ‘BRICS’: Brazil, Russia,
India, China and South Africa, whose rapid levels of growth have marked
them out as new economic forces in a supposed reshaping of the global
order. In reality, talk of BRICS is disingenuous because South Africa is in a
very, very different situation to the rest of the perceived bloc. If we remove
South Africa, then the BRIC countries increased their foreign direct
investment from less than $10 billion in the 1990s to $147 billion by
2008.30 Much of this ‘investment’ went to Africa in the same exploitative
relationship as China’s investments.
For all the Cold War tension between the capitalists and the Soviets, the
USSR no longer exists and Russia has returned firmly to its historical place
as part of the Western bloc. Putin’s Russia may seem like a menace, but

remember there has always been discord between the various Western
powers. On the fundamental issue of the economic world order Russia is
firmly in step with the West. We should not be shocked to find the logic of
empire alive and well in Mother Russia. But Brazil and India have taken the
same approach as China to fuel their economic growth, using Africa as a
stepping stone.
Along with China, India was one of the main players in the Bandung
Conference in 1955, which pledged allegiance to Afro-Asian solidarity.
India also has a common experience of colonialism with Africa, having
been part of the same British Empire that large chunks of the continent were
occupied by. This shared history means that India has a presence in Africa,
with around a tenth of the Indian diaspora living there, and it has tried to
build on these links to make partnerships. Like China, India needs
resources, and trade with Africa almost trebled between 2007 and 2013.31
India has also been involved in infrastructure projects, and exports finished
products to Africa, but its economy is based more on services than Chinesestyle manufacturing.
A good example of how India offers aid to Africa is the telemedicine
project that was piloted in Ethiopia and then rolled out in fifty-three
countries. India provided finance for Africans to be able to access Indian
doctors through video conferencing software to combat the shortage of
doctors on the continent. Considering that Ethiopia has 0.1 doctors per
1,000 people compared to India’s 0.9 and Britain’s 2.8, the shortage of
doctors is a serious problem.32 Providing access to Indian healthcare on a
short-term basis may be essential, but it does not solve the problem long
term. Africa needs more doctors, and exporting medical care to places like
India only makes the shortage more acute. In typical colonial fashion there
is a built-in dependency, where Africans come to rely on the care provided
over the internet instead of building up their own resources. In Britain we
raise hell when our calls to the bank are diverted to India, and I can only
imagine the outrage if our GP appointments were diverted to a
teleconference with a doctor in Mumbai. But this is seen as acceptable for
Africa because Africans are less valued. Teleconferencing projects are also
seen as aid, and India is following the example of the West by spending
development money on projects that benefit itself.
Indian doctors and technicians are paid out of development funding, in
the same way that a significant proportion of the aid from China is spent on

Chinese labour. In many ways these projects are tools to provide
employment opportunities for the two largest workforces in the world. It is
also necessary to build the infrastructure to support teleconferencing, which
is an area that Indian businesses excel in. Across Africa Indian companies
are building (and owning) the telecommunications that are so vital to the
twenty-first century. On the plus side this has meant that Africa is
connected to the globe, with over 80 per cent of people in ‘Africa proper’
owning a mobile phone (most likely imported cheaply from China).33 But
the necessary infrastructure and access are foreign-owned, making Africa
not only dependent on outside interests but also locked out of the wealth
created by these industries.
Brazil has a complicated relationship with Africa. At least 38 per cent of
the enslaved people stolen from Africa were taken to Brazil and the nation
has the largest population of African descent of any country other than
Nigeria. Under the more progressive presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva (Lula) between 2003 and 2010, Brazil rhetorically embraced its
African roots and made overtures to the continent, increasing trade with
Africa from $4 billion in 2002 to $27 billion in 2012.34 But Brazil is also
the perfect case study in how wrong-headed our understanding of the racial
nature of global capital is. In reality, there is no reason whatsoever to
assume that Brazil would have any affinity with Africa, other than the
colonial logic that built the country. Brazil is more like the United States
than it is any African country. It was a European settler colony where the
indigenous people were all but wiped out and enslaved African labour was
used to build the economy. There may be a very large population of those of
African descent but Brazil is one of the most racially unequal countries in
the world, in which its Black population is subject to intense discrimination.
In a country where half the population is Black, President Lula’s
appointment of four cabinet members of African descent was seen as a
watershed moment, but this only happened in 2009. Lula’s government was
the exception, not the rule, and the current fascist president, Jair Bolsonaro,
is far more representative of the racial politics of the nation.
After independence in 1825 Brazil was happy to continue enslaving
Africans legally until 1888, over fifty years after Britain implemented its
so-called abolition, and more than twenty years later than the United States
outlawed the inhumanity. Brazil was also the only underdeveloped nation
that voted against UN resolutions condemning Portugal’s barbaric colonial

regimes in Africa, and for good measure continued to trade with apartheid
South Africa during the embargo.35 Brazil is representative of Latin
America, which is a collection of European settler colony ethno-states
where White supremacy exists in its most virulent form. It is only due to the
poverty of Western political philosophy that we imagine Latin America as a
bastion of ‘people of colour’ who can challenge the Western order.
Make no mistake: there are millions of Black and Brown colonial
subjects in the region, but they are victims of their various states rather than
being represented by them. Latin America features poverty and conditions
that we would not accept in the West, and Western financial institutions,
particularly the IMF, devastated their emerging economies through
structural adjustment. The colonial dependency relationship we have
discussed in relation to Africa also applies to much of Latin America. So
the region is definitely not (yet) in the West, but it is of it and far up the
ladder of global White supremacy in general, which is why a nation like
Brazil has the finances to be investing in Africa. But just as many people in
the West are not of it, the same applies in Latin America and its millions of
neo-colonial subjects. This is not really much different than during slavery,
when Brazil’s population included millions of enslaved Africans, overseen
by a European settler elite. Brazil was technically a colony, so not in the
West, whilst the Portuguese settlers were of the West and the enslaved and
indigenous were the system’s victims. That same relationship continues in
the stark inequalities that exist today.
Brazil may have some of the poorest people in the entire world, but tens
of thousands of Portuguese migrated to Brazil following the global financial
crisis to take advantage of its growing economy.36 As demonstrated by the
hordes of almost exclusively White crowds at the 2014 football World Cup
hosted in Brazil, the descendants of White settlers inhabit a different nation
to those at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. It makes perfect sense that
Brazil’s relationship to Africa follows the same exploitative logic of
Western imperialism.
Brazilian corporation Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (Vale) is one of the
largest mining companies in the world and has a presence in Guinea,
Zambia, Congo, Angola, Gabon and South Africa. Extracting a range of
resources, it is also involved in the classic colonial relationship of funding
infrastructure projects. To put the size of the company in perspective, its
$34 billion revenue would make it the fifteenth biggest economy in Africa,

with a larger GDP than almost all the countries it extracts resources from.
Brazilian companies have also entered into partnerships similar to those of
China across Africa, and have a tendency to use migrant labour. An area
where Brazil is a world leader is in the production of biofuels and it has
seen the potential for Africa to be a source for the necessary crops.
Alongside mineral wealth Africa holds 60 per cent of the uncultivated
arable farmland on the planet.37 In the new scramble for Africa this
abundance of fertile farmland is one of the key commodities.
The race for farmland is not only taking place in Africa. By 2020 it is
estimated that investors had spent more than ‘one hundred billion dollars
for over 40 million hectares … from Ethiopia to Indonesia’ in order to
acquire land.38 As the Brazil example demonstrates, this is driven by the
rising demand for food for an increasing population, and also for other
commodities like biofuels. Oil palm is a key crop, used in a range of
products from soap to plastics. It has become so popular that by 2040 an
additional area the size of Germany may be necessary to cultivate enough
of it to meet the demand.39 The fires spread in the Amazon rainforest in
2019 are an example of the lengths that people will go to create additional
farmland. With its vast acres of uncultivated land, Africa is a centre of
global land acquisition.
Alongside the West, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Qatar and China have all
been key players in the land grab in Africa. It is estimated that between
2004 and 2009 2.5 million hectares of choice land had been allocated to
foreign entities in Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Sudan.40 In
2007, China acquired rights to 2.7 million hectares in the Democratic
Republic of Congo alone.41 As with all the other examples, we could
welcome the investment that comes with foreign capital, but it is surely
obvious how damaging it is to sell off every commodity that the continent
has to foreign interests for far less than it is worth. The insanity of the land
grab is demonstrated in the reality that the nations suffering the most from
hunger are also those selling off their farmland.42 Burundi, Chad, Ethiopia
and Congo are some of the countries where this contradiction is the
sharpest. Africa is once again being carved up by foreign actors to feed the
updated version of Western imperialism. The only difference now is that
many of the nations leading the way are not led by White people. But

throughout the book I have highlighted non-White collusion in building
Western imperialism.
Without the Arab slave trade, which lasted far longer than the Atlantic
system, it is not clear that the enslavement of Africans would have
occurred. It was Muslim scholars who first codified anti-Black racism,
something later picked up by Europeans, and created the slave-trading
networks that Europe tapped into. To gain access to the riches of the East,
the West used the wealth gained from enslaving Africans. When the
Portuguese and Spanish began mining precious metals in the so-called New
World the wealth generated dispersed across Europe, with countries like
France, Britain and Holland using the commodities to enrich themselves. At
this point the West was not particularly advanced, but access to gold and
silver in the Americas allowed the ‘relatively backward’ European
merchants to tap into Asian markets and eventually monopolize them,
creating conditions under which the West would come to rule.43 It was
demand from China for silver that made the early slave plantations in the
Americas profitable. The Taj Mahal was built with gold mined from slave
labour, since empires in the East were more than happy to accept the wealth
produced by racism. In the new age of empire it is this same relationship
that survives today, with the economies of Asia and Latin America being
boosted by the looting of Africa. There is nothing truly new in this system,
just updated manifestations of the old order.
As an indicator of how embedded India, China and Brazil are in the new
global order, in addition to Africa’s resources, farmland and markets, they
are also keen to gain the continent’s influence in the United Nations. China
achieved its UN recognition largely through African votes. Brazil and India
are both seeking permanent seats on the Security Council, and the continent
with the most countries is not a bad place to garner influence.
If the idea that the emergence of the BRIC countries represents systemic
change is an illusion, then the idea that Africa, led by South Africa, is
achieving some kind of renaissance is a mirage. Whilst there certainly have
been some improvements in terms of health, literacy, poverty and economic
growth rates, Africa remains firmly at the bottom of the global racial
hierarchy.
The illusion of the African renaissance is based on its levels of GDP
growth, which from 2000 until 2015 ranged between 3 and 6 per cent
annually, although they have tapered off since.44 South Africa was seen as

the leader of the continent in growth and economic development, hence its
inclusion in the BRICS. South Africa’s economic boom in the 2000s was
also accompanied by a steady fall in its unemployment rate. After rising to
33 per cent by 2000 the percentage of those out of work fell to 22 per cent
by 2008. In a reminder of how connected African economies are to the
West, the financial crisis caused by sub-prime lending in Europe and the
United States had a devastating effect on the continent. Since 2008, the
joblessness rate has been increasing and in 2019 stood at 28.5 per cent.45
After the end of apartheid there was optimism about the future of the nation
but South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world,
and while the economy has grown in the last twenty years, so has the
poverty rate.46 This same pattern is replicated across the continent. In
Nigeria between 2005 and 2011 the economy grew by 5 per cent a year but
unemployment rose from 15 to 20 per cent, with 60 per cent of young
people out of work.47 None of these figures should be a shock given
everything that we have learnt so far about African so-called development.
Economic growth is entirely the wrong focus if we want to understand
progress. African GDP figures are inflated by the increase in foreign
investment and trade with the formerly underdeveloped world that has
accelerated the stripping of the continent’s resources. All those cut-price
sales of minerals boost GDP but harm progress in Africa. Billions of dollars
in loans from the Chinese to pay Chinese companies and workers to build
infrastructure may inflate the economic balance sheet but offer little work
and few skills for African people. A large part of the supposed growth in
Africa is really just an indication of increased wealth extraction.
The other fallacy of growth is that it is inevitable that African economies
will grow because the population is rising rapidly. In the next thirty years it
is estimated that the majority of the world’s population growth will occur in
Africa, with the number of people living on the continent doubling by
2050.48 By 2100 it is possible that the population will have trebled to 3.5
billion and there will be more people in Africa than in India and China
combined.49 As the population grows, so too does the economy, but since
2015 GDP growth has been smaller than it should be, given the rise in
population.50 In other words, economies that are already struggling to
provide for the people they have are falling further behind their rising
populations. To put the growth figures in context, California has a larger

GDP than the whole of Africa, and yet somehow we are supposed to be
celebrating the rise of the continent.
It is truly terrifying to imagine Africa with treble its current population,
given the track of underdevelopment it remains firmly planted on. By 2100
the majority of its natural resources will have been depleted by foreign
interests and its farmland either overused or in the hands of offshore
investors. On its current trajectory it is impossible to imagine a future that
does not involve the same kind of colonial dependency that has been the
hallmark of Africa’s relationship to Western empire. The fact that some
countries which are not predominantly White will have firmly joined that
system makes no difference.

A CORRUPT SYSTEM
Up to this point I have painted a very bleak picture of life in Africa, but we
should avoid falling into the trap of seeing the continent through the eyes of
Live Aid. Many people have been able to find success, build businesses and
prosper. It is not uncommon to hear about those living in the West migrating
back to Africa to invest in and pursue opportunities that are a distant dream
to Black people living in their former mother countries. There are also
many affluent Africans who travel frequently, settle and are educated in the
West, who have the kind of wealth that is mythical to the majority of White
people in the world. But just as we should not let the images from charity
appeals distort our understanding of life in Africa, we should not allow the
people who have acquired wealth make us fall for the lie that progress is
being achieved.
The proportion of those in the middle class in Africa has actually
declined since 1980 to only 13.4 per cent.51 The reality is that the majority
of Africans are not pot-bellied and covered in flies, but nor do they have the
money to send their children to British private schools. There is a huge
scale of inequality, and unfortunately most people in Africa are towards the
wrong end of it. As with all features of the new order, there is nothing new
about a scale of Black inequality. There have always been those who have
been somewhat better off in the system.
Studying the plight of Africa, it is clear that not all of its problems are to
be located in the foreign interests which have ravaged the continent.

Nothing that we have discussed to this point would be possible without
systemic collaboration in Western imperialism by those who are
empowered to run the continent. In Western development parlance, one of
the main problems in Africa is the lack of ‘good governance’, which is a
more polite way of saying that the disease of corruption is killing the
continent. Many of the conditions tied to Western development aid are
related to building greater transparency in political affairs, with the hope
that by shedding the light of democracy through Africa this will end corrupt
practices and allow the continent to succeed. We can again see the influence
of Enlightenment ideals – that if only the savage parts of the world would
embrace Western values they could be lifted out of their barbarism.
Furthermore, billions of dollars have been spent on so-called good
governance initiatives and there is even a ‘corruption perception index’,
which ranks countries.52 Needless to say, African countries fare poorly, as
does most of the underdeveloped world.
On the Transparency International website, the German-based company
that runs the index represents corruption on a world map with countries
allocated a colour based on where they rank. The deeper the red, the more
corrupt, the lighter the yellow, the less. It may as well be a map of the West
versus the Rest, as the only areas in yellow are Western Europe, North
America, Australia and Japan. The top two most corrupt countries by this
measure are Somalia (in at number one) followed by South Sudan. The
message is abundantly clear that the problem of corruption is something the
West has dealt with and that it is holding the rest of the world back.
There is clearly a problem with corruption across the underdeveloped
world and certainly in Africa. Between 1970 and 2015, thirty African
countries lost $1.8 trillion to capital flight – i.e., the money left those
economies – a figure dwarfing the $497 billion these nations owed in
foreign debt, and representing 65 per cent of their collective GDP in
2015.53 Over $148 billion in capital flight occurs on the continent every
year, with at least 60 per cent of this down to ‘mispricing of resources’, or
in other words, fraud.54 There is no term to describe what many of the
elites are doing in Africa other than looting.
Consider the case of Angola, where between 2007 and 2010 $32 billion
disappeared from the country’s account, which was at the time a figure
larger than the GDP of forty-three African countries.55 Isabel dos Santos is
celebrated as Africa’s richest woman, with a net worth of over $2 billion,

but given that she is the daughter of Angola’s former president José
Eduardo dos Santos we should not be impressed by this wealth. Dos Santos
ran the country for thirty-eight years, during which time he took a personal
stake in the nation’s resources and presided over the looting of billions of
dollars. After 700,000 documents were leaked about how Isabel built her
business empire she now finds herself subject to criminal investigation in
Angola. The documents were damning, showing how numerous Western
interests had enabled her to embezzle a fortune from her ownership stake in
the state-run oil company Sonangol.56 Angola is the perfect model for how
corruption functions in Africa. As well as personally enriching themselves,
dictators like dos Santos use money from foreign investors to prop up their
regimes. One of the poorest countries in the world, Angola ‘spent 1.4 times
as much on defence as it did on health and schools combined’ in 2013.57
Having access to vast amounts of money also helps to win elections when
they are called.
Angola is hardly alone. There is undoubtedly a political elite who are
participating in Africa’s continued underdevelopment so that they can
plunder its resources to fund their own personal wealth. In return they open
up their countries to be exploited by foreign interests with extraordinarily
favourable terms and tax requirements. The result is stark: for instance, the
public purses of Zambia and Congo received only 2.4 and 2.5 per cent of
revenues from their raw materials exported during the commodity price
boom in the early 2000s.58 So it may seem relatively simple: African
corruption is the problem that needs to be solved. But there is nothing
African about this corruption.
Even the slightest glance at this situation demonstrates that it is a
problem created from the outside. Of cross-border corruption, between
‘1995 and 2014, virtually all (99.5 per cent) involved non-African firms’
and all of this money, which is being used to buy off African leaders, is
flowing in from foreign interests.59 In a frankly astounding corruption case
in the Italian courts, oil companies Shell and Eni stand accused of a $1.1
billion bribe for President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and other
government officials in return for access to oil-drilling rights.60 Worse still,
this money was not a gift from the companies but came out of Nigeria’s
share of the future oil take. When this $1.1 billion was taken offshore the
leaders were stealing money directly from the nation. Western companies

like Shell have had to admit, or been found guilty of, a range of bribery
schemes, with some being so ridiculous they would be funny if not for the
consequences. An instalment of a $5 million kickback in Nigeria from
Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) took up so much space when converted
into Nigerian nairas that it had to be delivered in trucks.61 African leaders
are being corrupted by foreign investment and showered with money so that
the global system can continue to bleed the continent.
Colonialism was a form of corruption, and what we are seeing today is
just an updated version. When the European powers departed they left
behind a local elite who took the place of colonial administrators but whose
power remained limited.62 As long as the remaining elite followed the
rules laid down by the departing powers they could survive, otherwise they
would be deposed.
When leaders like Patrice Lumumba emerged in Congo, pledging to
overturn Western domination of Africa’s resources, they were dealt with. As
already mentioned, Lumumba, the first elected prime minster after
independence, was assassinated in 1961 with the help of the Belgians and
the CIA in order to make way for a more pliable regime.63 The West were
happy to support the brutal military dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko from
1965 until 1997. During his reign Mobutu amassed a personal fortune of
over $5 billion which he used, in part, to build a $400 million palace where
he hosted such luminaries as the Pope, the King of Belgium and the director
of the CIA.64 Like other African kleptocrats he spent lavishly in European
department stores and had a penchant for flying Concorde. After Mobutu
was chased out of office he was replaced by the equally Western-compliant
Laurent Kabila, whose son, Joseph, inherited the presidency when Kabila
senior was assassinated. In case you thought the Kabilas might have turned
away from the colonial methods of running the country, it is estimated that
Kabila Jr was taking $4 million a week from mining companies during his
presidency. He also brutally put down a rebellion in Kilwa, killing over 100
peaceful protestors in 2004.65 But he received full support from the West
until he threatened to ignore his nation’s time limits on the presidency and
illegally stand for re-election after his term expired in 2016.
The framework established by the new age of empire is clear. Leaders
who comply with the prevailing order are supported and lavished with
money to keep them in power and build staggering personal wealth. If you

are still questioning the complicity of the West in this system then just
examine where all this wealth that is fleeing from Africa goes. It is
offshored into the same banks used by hedge-fund managers and
corporations who are seeking to avoid paying taxes at home. It is lavished
in Western department stores and invested in property in places like
London. None of this so-called African corruption would be possible were
it not facilitated by Western interests. As former leader of opposition party
UNITA in Angola, Isaías Samakuva, explained of corrupt African rulers,
‘the only explanation we can find is that they have the blessing of the
international community’.66
Underdeveloped countries jumping on the foreign direct investment
bandwagon have, if anything, made the problem more acute. While, largely
through pressure from media and activism, Western governments and
agencies have become more wary of supporting abusive regimes, China has
avoided moral judgements. During the crisis in Darfur the UN Secretary
General warned of the risks of genocide and the West wanted to isolate the
regime, but China increased its investment, reaching $5.6 billion in 2006.67
The West deserted Guinean military dictator Captain Moussa Dadis Camara
after his troops slaughtered 156 protestors and gang-raped dozens of
women in public in 2009. China, however, continued with a $7 billion
investment package and Dadis used part of the money to buy arms to
solidify his power. It was only his betrayal by his right-hand man, who shot
him in the head, that ended Dadis’s reign of terror.68
Empowering elites in the former colonies is also a continuation of older
colonial logic. To control Africa, Europeans ruled through a system of tribal
chiefs. Where none existed, Europeans created them to rule the people.69
Each chief had only one superior and that was the European advising
him.70 The chiefs collected taxes and enforced labour, doing the bidding of
their colonial masters. The uncomfortable truth is that Europeans simply
could not have run their colonies without the use of indigenous
collaborators. Across their various empires Europeans established systems
of indirect rule to administer colonialism. For example, by 1893 out of the
4,849 officials running India only 898 were British, and in 1885 the 78,000
British troops in the colony were outnumbered more than two to one by
154,000 Indians.71 Those leaders today who are selling out Africa to the

interests of global capital are simply picking up the baton from their
predecessors.
Consider Omar Bongo Ondimba, who ruled Gabon from 1967 until 2009
(his son took over after him and is currently carrying on the family
dynasty). Bongo served in the French army during colonialism and the
French engineered his rise in Gabon following independence. He admired
de Gaulle so much that he wept during the former French president’s
funeral and is on record for declaring ‘his gratitude to the French for their
assistance in the development of his country’.72 Despite being oil and
mineral rich there is widespread poverty in the nation. Gabon actually has
one of the highest GDPs per capita in Africa but a third of the population
live below the poverty line and 20 per cent of people are unemployed,
including 35 per cent of young people.73 Bongo’s administration facilitated
foreign control of Gabon’s economy and resources in exactly the same way
you would expect a native chief doing the bidding of a European colonial
agent. It is the system that is corrupt in Africa. The only difference now is
that there are more Black people getting incredibly wealthy from the
exploitation.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the economic darling of the
continent, South Africa. The end of apartheid was meant to herald the birth
of a non-racial democracy that could provide justice and equality for all of
the nation’s citizens. Free and fair elections have been held since 1994, with
South Africa not being beset by the kind of blatant abuses of power at the
ballot box that we have seen in other nations. In terms of transparency,
South African democracy was meant to lead the way for the future of the
continent. But for all the promise of the fledgling state, since the advent of
so-called democracy a Black elite has been created but a number of
corruption scandals have shaken people’s faith in the new politicians. So
rampant has the corruption been that even the former president Jacob Zuma
is set to stand trial for taking bribes related to an arms sale whilst in office,
and no one believes this to be his only offence.
Given how deeply rooted corruption has become in South Africa, it is
now common to talk about the ‘state capture’ by corrupt forces. There is
even an official Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State
Capture that started holding public hearings in August 2018. Much of this
corruption is linked to the noble desire to boost so-called Black economic
empowerment by ensuring that Black South Africans get access to lucrative

contracts. The system has been open to abuse and has blurred the lines
between politics, business and corruption. The case of the Watson brothers,
two White anti-apartheid heroes, demonstrates that it is not just Black
Africans who have managed to cheat the system. Bosasa, the company they
ran, was supposedly a Black majority-owned company that received
government contracts to run a range of privatized state operations, including
prison catering and IT, worth up to $140 million between 2000 and 2016.74
The Black ownership was a front for the Watson brothers to make money,
allegedly using their contacts in the government, civil service and even the
courts to bribe their way into a fortune.
A Black front for White corruption is the perfect metaphor for the state
capture of South Africa. As the Bosasa case demonstrates, Black economic
empowerment is based on imposing neoliberalism on the post-apartheid
economy. If it is not making money from government contracts it is making
it in deals with multinationals involved in the same colonial relationship as
on the rest of the continent. South Africa’s elite is not a sign of progress,
especially when over half of all Black South Africans live below a poverty
line that we could never imagine in the West.75
South Africa was once a beacon of radical politics on the continent, with
the anti-apartheid struggle committed to land reform that would have put
the wealth of the country into the hands of the people. But like most of
Africa, in order to end apartheid South Africa’s leaders compromised,
accepting the basic political and economic framework that was already in
place. The threat of violence was one of the key drivers of this, with the
apartheid state being one of the most visceral reminders of the brutality of
the West. But the West’s claws were so deep into the country that even if a
revolutionary struggle had succeeded, it would have been difficult to
survive without outside support. The biggest limitation of the revolutionary
movements in Africa was that they each settled on a national struggle,
winning control of the existing levers of power. But this was doomed to
failure because the real power in the system is in the West, with the controls
in Africa mostly being for show. Apartheid was a problem in South Africa
but it was not the problem. Merely changing the colour of some of those at
the wheel of the ship, or sitting on the top decks, was never going to be
enough to change course, because it is a vessel that works by remote
control.

The logic of empire has always depended on a Black and Brown elite to
administer Western domination across the globe. So we should not be
surprised about a growing class filling their bellies from the misery of the
poor in the underdeveloped world. The rise of China and other nations,
somewhat higher up on the ladder of White supremacy, is only causing a
stir because of how badly understood the racial dynamics of the system are.
Anti-Black racism was a lynchpin in the establishment of Western global
dominance, using the profits from the Atlantic system to finance the
exploitation of the East. By using Africa as a stepping stone, countries like
China are employing the codes of colonial logic embedded in the operating
system. The wealth of these emerging economies is also based on the brutal
exploitation of their own poor, whose bodies are sacrificed on the altar of
progress. The West continues to enrich itself by leaching off the Black and
Brown, but can now hide behind the rulers of its former colonies.
The emergence of a non-White elite in the underdeveloped world
collaborating with Western imperialism could be seen as an incentive to
embrace a global politics of class solidarity. The elite can be viewed as the
problem regardless of their colour and there is certainly no shortage of
scholars and activists (mostly in the West) yearning for a politics that unites
the global proletariat against the bourgeois ruling classes. Unfortunately, the
left has always been incapable of coming to terms with both the centrality
of racism to their position in the West and the extent to which the logic of
Western imperialism radiates through their own politics.

7

Imperial Democracy
Sitting on a plane on the way to São Paolo is not the most guilt-free way to
watch a lecture about the dangers of climate change. But the poor movie
selection had led me to the documentary section where I stumbled across
The Third Industrial Revolution, a filmed lecture and Q&A delivered by the
economist Jeremy Rifkin. Apocalyptic images of flooding and extreme
weather events jarred me enough to keep me awake and feeling bad about
my carbon footprint, if not guilty enough to rethink my next trip. Rifkin’s
message was clear: the world is on the brink of annihilation, the sixth
extinction-level event, due to our pollution of the atmosphere, and a radical
new alternative is essential in order to save it. Thankfully for us all, he had
come to deliver the plan to rescue humanity, embodied in what he called the
third industrial revolution.
According to the lecture, existence has been brought to the brink because
of the previous two industrial revolutions. First, British ingenuity in the
eighteenth century created the technology that became the engine behind
rapid industrial progress, urbanization and factory labour. In the early
twentieth century it was the United States’ turn to be the fulcrum behind
progress with a second industrial revolution based on the exploitation of
electricity, oil and the motor engine. While these revolutions both brought
unprecedented development, they also created the climate crisis by
polluting the air. But, fear not, we are at the cusp of a third industrial

revolution that not only promises to bring even greater bounties than the
first two but to do so in a completely carbon-neutral fashion that will pull
humankind from the edge of the abyss.
The third industrial revolution is based on the digital transformation to
the ‘internet of things’, which opens up possibilities that can transform the
world. For Rifkin, the key is the ‘zero marginal cost’ of producing
innovations that the new interconnected world creates. He argues that in the
future we will be able to sustain our energy needs for relatively little. The
example that makes the most sense is electricity from solar power. The cost
of producing solar power has been rapidly declining over the years and will
shortly be cheaper than fossil fuel energy. If houses and other buildings
were fitted with solar panels they could produce their own energy and, once
connected to a grid, could feed back surpluses into the system. By
connecting across a digital network that would manage the flow of
electricity we could create a free source of power for everyone. Imagine the
grid powering the train system or driverless electric car apps and you are
beginning to imagine the dream that is the third industrial revolution. A
networked, digital, green economy providing untold efficiency and
therefore wealth for all. Given the setting of the plane I wondered if I had
drifted off to sleep, but no, Rifkin had given the technological version of
Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. It was full of all the same
hope and promise but also contained the basic limitations present any time
someone is picturing a fantasy, if not an outright delusion. Rifkin is not the
only one to offer such a revolutionary mirage. A cottage industry has
developed around imagining salvation in the form of Western technological
development, and Rifkin’s lecture contained all the key ingredients.

ENLIGHTENMENT 2.0
Barely distinguishable from Rifkin’s ideas is the notion that we are
currently embarking on a fourth industrial revolution, which will transform
both the political sphere and the very fabric of the economy.1 In this
narrative Britain and the steam engine are still at the foundation of industry
but the second revolution is thought to have taken place between 1867 and
1914, with greater scientific advancements and progress in manufacturing.
Computing is said to mark the third major shift, after the Second World

War. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, is a key
proponent, arguing that this fourth industrial revolution will bring ‘profound
and systemic change’ in global power relations.2 Zero marginal costs mean
that in theory everyone with an internet connection can plug in and benefit
from the new economy. Rifkin actually argues that the underdeveloped
world is at an advantage because of its lack of infrastructural development.
Whereas the West is designed for an earlier system of production and needs
to be retrofitted, the lack of infrastructure in developing countries will make
it cheaper to just equip the nations with the hardware needed to exploit the
next industrial revolution. I am sure those living in grinding poverty feel
reassured.
Both the third and fourth industrial revolutions are ideas generated from
relatively mainstream political centres. Rifkin cites his experience of
working with governments including Germany and China, and companies
like the energy giant EDF and Daimler; and the fourth industrial revolution
has been picked up by policy makers around the world and the United
Nations.3 These are the classic Enlightenment progress narratives: more
science, reason and technology will lead to a fairer, more just world.
But we can also see very similar ideas about saving the world coming
from newer, left-wing voices. Saving the planet from the impending climate
catastrophe has rightly become a central issue in progressive politics. If
drastic action is not taken shortly to reduce emissions there may well be
little of the world left to save. Climate change is also decimating countries
in the underdeveloped world, with extreme weather events set to create
millions of climate refugees whose homelands will be uninhabitable.4 It
seems even the climate has embraced the logic of White supremacy,
punishing those in the Rest for the excesses of the West.
Activists around the globe are protesting, with one of the most notable
mobilizations being the climate strike movement led by children and young
people. The third strike in 2019 spanned 150 countries, with over 4 million
people estimated to have taken part. As valuable as this grassroots activism
is, it remains strictly within the framework of empire. The strike was timed
to coincide with the UN Climate Summit, and as powerful as figures like
climate protestor Greta Thunberg are, they spend their time appealing to the
heads of nation states. Once we locate the system as the problem then it
should be clear that no matter how many Extinction Rebellion protestors
stage nude protests in the British parliament, they will not dismantle the

colonial logic of the world order. The concern for the underdeveloped world
fits firmly within the framework of so-called universal rights, as developed
in the Enlightenment. Sure, they have a right not to be flooded, burnt or
starved out of their homes, but that remains the limit of their humanity.
In fairness, there are attempts to formulate the climate debate in terms of
the need for a transformative political agenda. Naomi Klein has been
dubbed the ‘intellectual godmother’ of the push for a Green New Deal, an
ambitious policy agenda for reducing carbon emissions to zero and
reforming capitalism.5 Klein makes it abundantly clear that reducing
emissions is not enough, and connects the climate struggle to her earlier
work exposing conditions in sweatshops in the underdeveloped world.
Climate goals can only be reached by ending an economy that seeks
constant growth and luxuries, the pursuit of which exploits workers in the
poorest parts of the world.6 The Sunrise Movement, who have been
campaigning for the realization of the Green New Deal, sum up its vision as
being ‘to stop climate change, achieve environmental sustainability, create
millions of good jobs, and realize economic prosperity for all’.7
So successful have the campaigns been that the Green New Deal forced
its way into the political debate. Bernie Sanders put the proposals at the
centre of his presidential campaigns and rising star of the Democratic Party
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped introduce a resolution in Congress to
support this policy agenda. Ocasio-Cortez represents a younger, more
diverse and more progressive slate of politicians in the United States, who
are determined to change the policy agenda. As part of the campaign for the
Green New Deal she voiced a video with The Intercept and Naomi Klein
called ‘A Message from the Future’ that imagines herself looking back at
the world created after achieving the Green New Deal. It is a beautifully
realized utopia where the green economy has created jobs, shifted the
debate on universal healthcare and inspired more women and minorities
into office. Unfortunately, it contains much of the short-sightedness we
should by now be used to.
The Green New Deal takes its name from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
package to counteract the Great Depression of the 1930s. As important as
these reforms were, providing housing, jobs and welfare for millions of
Americans, they did not tackle the problems of racism in the United States.
In fact, the New Deal was racially unjust in its application, particularly in
the extremely segregated housing boom it induced.8 Klein admits that the

Green New Deal metaphor is somewhat limited by its predecessor and that
delivering on climate justice is ‘not a magic cure for racism or misogyny or
homophobia or transphobia’.9 The problem is that nowhere in the agenda is
there any real attempt to address these issues. They remain on the margins
in the classic mode of believing that the economy is somehow separate
from issues of identity. Much of Sanders’ platform sounds like a direct
appeal to the White working classes languishing in the rust belt of the
Midwest, the alleged real victims of globalization, with promises of
American jobs ‘with strong benefits, a living wage, training … and
protecting the right of all workers to form a union’.10 These are all noble
pursuits but they would not deal with racism in the United States and,
crucially for understanding the implications of the new age of empire, they
depend on the exploitation of the underdeveloped world.
Proposals to tax the rich sound progressive, but the rich make their
money from a system that brutally exploits Black and Brown bodies. Using
that wealth to retrofit the West and provide high-quality jobs and healthcare
depends on the very same colonial logic. The left in Britain is no different:
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party represented the resurgence of the left and
embraced the politics of the Green New Deal. Underlying the promise of
these new endeavours is a promise of equality for all; the liberation of
society by technology. But it is telling that on neither side of the Atlantic is
there any real effort to address the problems of global inequality. In keeping
with colonial logic, ‘equality for all’ really means improving the lives of
those in the West, which remain the central concern in the latest version of
Western empire. The uncomfortable reality is that the new intellectual left is
lining up to retrofit the Enlightenment for the present day.
Dutch historian Rutger Bregman went viral when he attacked billionaires
for not paying tax at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2019.
He diagnosed the problem of inequality as being about ‘taxes, taxes, taxes.
All the rest is bullshit in my opinion’ – much to the disappointment of the
assembled tax dodgers. But in his book Utopia for Realists Bregman
outlines a vision so deeply steeped in Enlightenment thinking that he argues
that all we need to do is to ‘reclaim the language of progress’ in order to
‘rehoist the sails !’ to a brighter future. The idea of picking up a fallen
mantle is only possible because he somehow believes that ‘historically,
politics was the preserve of the left’.11 As we have seen throughout this
book, the truth is the complete opposite, at least with regard to the West. If

we conceive of the left as broadly about redistributive politics and fighting
for the rights of workers, then the only real period that was the preserve of
the left was the social democratic era after the Second World War. But that
settlement has already melted away in Britain and the United States, and is
fraying even in the more progressive parts of Europe. Even during the
heady days of the welfare state, the period was still characterized by White
supremacy. Racism, sexism and labour exploitation have, in reality, been
the preserve of Western politics.
Bregman’s argument manages to get even more absurd when he names
the historical figures we should look to for inspiration. He lavishes praise
on the sixteenth-century Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas for
advocating equality between the colonial masters and the indigenous people
of the Americas and for attempting to found a colony where everyone
received a comfortable living. Las Casas might ring a bell: in Chapter 2 I
discussed how his ruling on the natives having souls also provided the
justification for the enslavement of Africans, who were deemed incapable
of salvation. John Stuart Mill also gets a shout-out for his belief in the
equality of women. That would be the same Mill we encountered earlier
who justified ‘despotism’ in attempting to improve the ‘barbarians’ in the
colonies. For Bregman, without these ‘wide-eyed dreamers we would all
still be poor, hungry, afraid, stupid and ugly’.12 This is just a more
palatable version of lionizing Hitler for building motorways. Bregman was
invited to the World Economic Forum in the first place, so perhaps it is
unfair to put too much faith in his progressive credentials, but we see this
same kind of thinking across the political spectrum.
Novara Media has become an important source for alternative news for
the left in Britain, with a major online presence. Co-founder Aaron Bastani
has become a key figure on the left but he offers the same basic blueprint
for technological progress freeing humanity. Rather than seeing three or
four industrial revolutions, he acknowledges only two previous so-called
‘disruptions’. First, the emergence of Homo sapiens, who started
agricultural development, and second, the sacred British-led Industrial
Revolution of the eighteenth century. We are supposedly in the midst of a
third disruption that promises all the bounties that we have already spoken
of. If anything, Bastani is even more optimistic, imagining that under ‘fully
luxury automated communism … we will see more of the world than ever
before, eat varieties of food we have never heard of, and lead lives

equivalent – if we so wish – to those of today’s billionaires’. As if sensing
the scepticism of the reader, he declares that ‘our ambitions must be
Promethean because our technology is already making us gods – so we
might as well get it.’13 Such hubris is not just reminiscent of
Enlightenment thinking but lies at the very heart of the Eurocentric
intellectual project.
The greatest lie underpinning the Enlightenment is embedded in its name.
Knowledge did not spread out of Europe to bring light to the uncivilized
parts of the world. In fact, it was the very opposite: Europe took knowledge
produced around the globe and Whitewashed it, pretending it was theirs.
Science has certainly contributed much to the world but to pretend it is the
possession of the West is only possible due to the conceits of Whiteness. A
parallel in all the various progress narratives is that they imagine the
modern world only begins with the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the
eighteenth century. I suppose we should give some credit to Bastani for
locating his first disruption outside the West with the emergence of Homo
sapiens in Africa. But development is then apparently frozen in time until
James Watt came onto the scene with his steam engine. To discount the
thousands of years of history and development around the globe that laid
the foundation for the Western Industrial Revolution is not just shortsighted but deeply offensive. Worse still is the complete lack of any
acknowledgement of the dark side of the emergence of Western industry.
The whole purpose of this book is to counter the dominant mythology
around the progressive West. By now I hope you are convinced that
genocide, slavery and colonialism were just as important, if not more so, as
the emergence of science and industry to everything that we have today.
You simply do not have the technological advances without the violence
that underpinned them. Reading the new so-called radicals is just a
reminder that the mythology of progressivism is endemic today even in the
circles of the left. In none of the above accounts of history are any of the
atrocities of the West even mentioned, let alone given their rightful strategic
place. If Europeans colonizing almost the entire globe to exploit labour and
resources does not meet the threshold for a disruption then we are in dire
need of a new measuring stick.
It is by no means a surprising development that the supposed new
radicals are replicating the intellectual exclusions of the Enlightenment; it is
just how they were raised. There is a reason that in 2015 students in Britain

launched the #WhyIsMyCurriculumWhite campaign. Western thought is
still dominated by the notion that knowledge springs forth from the
foundation laid by the supposed founding fathers we are told to revere. It
may be jarring for me to read a whole body of work written in the twentyfirst century that almost exclusively cites White men, but that is just the
currency for those producing ideas today.
We have come to expect too much from the left because we have
neglected to understand that its intellectual heritage is just as rooted in the
progress narratives as neoliberalism’s. Marx remains at the core of radical
Western thought, but he was just as much a product of the Enlightenment as
Kant. Marx saw capitalism as an evil that needed to be overturned, but a
necessary one to bring about communism (even its luxury automated form).
Just as we are seeing with the arguments today, Marx thought that the
technological progress brought about by capitalism was essential to
providing the abundance necessary for human liberation. Ideas of White
supremacy and scientific progress led by the West are absolutely integral to
Marxism and remain its greatest limitation. Marx’s inability to understand
that the underdeveloped world was inhabited by fully human people
capable of struggle led him to completely misidentify the revolutionary
class. He could see no further than the Western industrial worker created by
the contradictions of capital and labour, and theorized that it was from here
that the proletariat would arise to overthrow the unjust system. But history
has shown that those who have embraced Marxism and committed
successfully to revolution have resided almost exclusively in the
underdeveloped world. In Cuba, China, North Korea, Guinea, Grenada,
Mozambique, Angola, North Vietnam, and even in beloved Mother Russia
the revolution was largely led by the peasantry rather than the workers.14
Marx’s principal failing was that he ‘imagined that the industrial
proletariat was the hero of capitalism and had invented a history whose
narrative justified this’.15 It was his roots in the Enlightenment that led him
to this conclusion. If knowledge and progress spread out from Europe then
so must the revolution. Rather than representing a break from intellectual
White supremacy, Marxism is just the flipside of the coin of its logic. It is a
paradox of Marxism that the Western industrial worker never managed to
produce a communist revolution whilst across the underdeveloped world
Marx inspired the overthrow of the state from Cuba to China, via GuineaBissau and many stops in between.16 Marx was so blinded by White

supremacy that he was (and far too many of his disciples remain) unable to
understand that the most oppressed, the true revolutionary class has always
resided outside the West because of the racist nature of capitalism. The new
so-called radicals today are no different, presenting alternative visions of
the future clouded by Whiteness.

WHOSE ECONOMY IS IT ANYWAY?
Faith in technological progress stands out from the various alternative
conceptions of the world because of how the left has typically been resistant
to mechanization due to its impact on the workforce. Since the beginning of
automation, workers have had an inherent fear of being replaced by
machines. The word Luddite, used for someone sceptical of technology,
comes from the followers of Ned Ludd who would break factory machinery
in early nineteenth-century England. One of the strongest narratives shaping
current social policy is the idea that (White) workers in the West are being
left behind because of the disappearance of manufacturing jobs either
overseas or because of the sinister sounding ‘rise of the robots’. There is no
doubt that the economy is changing. Globally, factories employed 163
million people in 2003, but that number is likely to dwindle to ‘a few
million’ in the near future.17
In the West the decimation of the manufacturing base played no small
part in the election of Donald Trump, although it was on the outsourcing of
so-called ‘American’ jobs to foreigners that he laid the blame. Robotics and
artificial intelligence are replacing human labour at an alarming rate. But
this circle can be squared by the promise of abundance that comes with the
third/fourth industrial revolution, which is supposed to be more efficient,
and therefore could provide greater levels of wealth to be distributed in the
economy. Manufacturing output actually increased by 60 per cent between
1997 and 2005 even though 4 million jobs vanished from the sector.18 It is
the promise of abundance that holds the progress narrative together.
The massive infrastructure development needed to complete the
technological revolution when society commits to it will depend on millions
of workers being trained, and paid to lead the charge into the new age.
Robots are not equipped to install solar panels, cables and all the hardware
necessary to network the internet of things together. This promise of

employment is one of the key appeals of the Green New Deal, which will
engage workers in the raft of new industries necessary to decarbonize the
world. It is not that work will disappear, just that it will change. In the
progressive utopia, due to the amount of wealth and efficiency, labour itself
will become obsolete as the robots do all the dirty work, leaving us humans
free to embrace our leisure time. Bregman has a whole section on the
pursuit of leisure, quoting Marx’s desire to be free to ‘hunt in the morning,
fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner’.19
Central to the new left in Britain, underpinning Corbynism’s political
programme, is this desire for leisure time, expressed in the demand to
shorten the working week.
Such faith in technological development to provide is a key feature of the
progress narrative: science will create abundance that frees us all. There are
a myriad of problems with the idea of creating an automated society where
we are freed from the mundane. For one, the dystopia of the Terminator
series of movies hangs over this whole concept, where the artificial
intelligent network created to improve the world decides to eliminate the
human race once it is switched on. Creating a world run by intelligent
machines may actually be the ultimate version of building our own
gravediggers. There’s an ancient South African legend about the evil Za-huRrellel who created creatures out of the earth, and who did everything for
the people, including transfer the food into their stomachs. The population
got so used to everything being done for them that they got fat and forgot
how to walk or speak, allowing Za-hu-Rrellel to take over the land.20
Despite the nightmarish quality of these visions of the future they both offer
warnings. Terminator is about the unintended consequences of trying to
master technology. The cautionary tale of Za-hu-Rrellel is about how
technology can be used for nefarious purposes by the powerful. This is one
of the principal limitations of the idea of utopia through technology.
While pioneers like Rifkin are keen to point out the free products of the
internet of things, like Wikipedia or open-source software, they are working
with governments and corporations. Hardware for the networks that are
building the future cannot be built for free, or by plucky start-ups.
Governments and corporations are leading the charge and China is one of
the principal forces in developing the third/fourth industrial revolution.
China’s ‘belt and road’ initiative aims to bring the old trade routes into the
new age by building digital hardware and capacity across much of Asia,

Africa and Europe.21 While the nation may clothe itself in the red of
Communism and fond memories of Chairman Mao, it is now a firmly
capitalist country. The only aspect of old-style Communism left is a very
large and authoritarian state. One of the key mechanisms to maintain the
power of the Chinese state is the very same internet of things that Rifkin is
so proud of. For instance, China’s Muslim minorities are under constant
surveillance and attack. Since 2017, more than 1 million have been placed
in detention centres because they have been deemed ‘unsafe’. By
monitoring smartphone use the authorities have built algorithms to detect
‘un-Chinese’ behaviours and flag Muslims, using their Integrated Joint
Operations Platform. China has created a ‘web of surveillance’ with facial
recognition cameras and mobile phone tracking that records the movement
of its ethnic Muslim populations.22 The internet of things has created a
virtual prison for Muslims in China.
Technology in the West has always been used to suppress the population
as much as to free it. The FBI’s counter-intelligence programme
(COINTELPRO) of surveillance, wire-tapping and more mundane activities
such as using spies undid groups like the Black Panthers in the sixties and
seventies. It is terrifying to imagine what the modern-day version of that
programme looks like, with the sheer access to our lives that technology
allows the powerful. Your phone, computer, digital speaker, smart car,
television, the internet, the cameras everywhere, can all be turned against
you to curtail your freedom. The mechanisms of our supposed freedom very
easily become the tools of oppression. Less violent but equally sinister
accusations are already made against the uses of this technology, from
algorithms personally tailored to get you to buy goods you do not need, to
the targeting of fake news to convince you to support a political party that
means you harm.
In terms of employment, the outlook is potentially just as bleak. For all
the talk of changing the nature of work, the reality is that there is a steep
class divide in who has benefited from automation. Those in middle-class
professions, which are less easy to mechanize, have prospered, whilst
unemployment has befallen millions of those with low or no skills who
could previously have worked in manufacturing. Digitization has also led to
worsening conditions for low-wage workers, who are subject to monitoring
and targets.

On a different plane journey (carbon footprint alert !) I was watching a
Vice documentary, The Future of Work, that had a whole segment on the
role of automation in warehouses (please let’s refrain from calling them
‘fulfilment centres’). The company was proud of their efforts to
synchronize the work of humans and machines. But the workers were less
enthusiastic because of the demands involved in keeping pace with the
automated schedule. Rather than liberating the workers, the results of
automation have largely been to cut the workforce along with their wages
and working conditions, while increasing surveillance and allowing an evershrinking minority to amass untold wealth.23 Amazon represents the
embodiment of all those forces, with its warehouse workers surveilled every
moment to the point they are afraid to take bathroom breaks whilst doing
back-breaking work to keep up with the targets mandated by an
algorithm.24 Meanwhile founder Jeff Bezos is on the way to becoming the
world’s first trillionaire, making roughly $2,489 every second, more than
double the average US worker’s earnings in a week.25 Bezos and his ilk are
the emperors in the new age of imperialism and the corporations are their
fiefdoms. For those hoping for the liberating impact of technology, be
warned: it is these corporations that are laying the foundation for the
third/fourth industrial revolution. There is no reason to believe that the new
system will differ from the old, in fact we should expect more of the same.
Due to the liberation of capital from nation-state control, national
governments find it almost impossible to regulate global corporations, for
the obvious reason that they simply do not have the jurisdiction. More could
certainly be done, but corporations pour their wealth into politicians
precisely so they can influence inaction. Look at the difficulty in getting
Facebook to stop sharing fake news stories. In 2019 Microsoft beat Apple
to a $10 billion contract to host the cloud services for the US Department of
Defense. Good luck regulating a company that stores your nation’s
classified documents.
The biggest flaw in the argument that abundance will save us is that we
already live in the land of plenty. Just sixty-two people hold the wealth of
an entire third of the world. There is more than enough food to feed
everyone, yet millions die every year while tons of food rot in the West.
Scarcity is not the problem, inequality is, and if the new system is built by
the same people who profit from the old then it is lunacy to expect better
technology to liberate the poor. It is particularly delusional to think that

global inequality, or White supremacy in the flesh, could possibly be
remedied by a reboot of Enlightenment narratives of progress.
Greater than all other influences over your life chances is where you
reside. Living in one of the top 10 per cent wealthiest areas of Britain could
put ten more years on your life than if you are trapped in one of the most
deprived.26 Meanwhile, a child born in Somalia today has a one in five
chance of dying before their fifth birthday, more than the chances of a
soldier being killed in the US Civil War, the Second World War, Vietnam or
any other major conflict of the last two centuries.27 While we complain
about our dodgy wi-fi connections most people in the world do not have an
inside toilet. There is literally no parallel between our lives in the West and
those of most around the globe. On average the poverty line is seventeen
times higher in the West than the underdeveloped world. This is the greatest
conceit of the supposedly radical new thinkers. By ignoring the dark side of
history that created the modern world they have also neglected any serious
analysis of how to repair the damage that has been done. Science and
technology can never be the solution to the problem of racism.
Absent from any of the analyses of the social order in the alternatives
presented is any question about just where the West gets the money and
resources needed to develop the next industrial revolution. Slavery and
colonialism produced the first two/three revolutions. There is now a new
scramble for Africa’s resources, which are being plundered for the green
revolution. Africa is the most mineral-rich continent, home to the raw
materials necessary for the solar panels and efficient batteries that are set to
power the globe. As we have seen, the West has the wealth to steal these
resources and develop them because of the racial global imbalances in
power. If it is highly unlikely that the poor in the West will benefit from
technological innovation it is unimaginable that the underdeveloped world,
and in particular Africa, will. Bastani fantasizes about being able to mine
asteroids for the bounties we will need to retrofit the globe. In the meantime
Africa is being stripped of its wealth, and if it ever becomes possible to
feast from the stars it remains to be seen how the continent will benefit.
So that everyone can gain from the land of plenty, Bregman proposes
tearing down the iron gates that are national borders and allowing those in
the underdeveloped world to freely travel into the Garden of Eden that is
the West. Apparently global freedom of movement would grow the world
economy by between 67 and 147 per cent, bringing huge benefits to the

underdeveloped world. He argues that ‘if all the developed countries would
let in just 3 per cent more immigrants the world’s poor would have $305
billion more to spend.’28 At least Bregman recognizes that most of the
world is locked out from the fruits of Western progress and proposes a
mechanism for sharing the dividends. It is just a shame that he presents
such a short-sighted solution.
Global freedom of movement would certainly lead to more money in the
underdeveloped world. Jamaica is the perfect example of the power of
migration, with the nation kept afloat by the reality that there are more
Jamaicans in the diaspora than on the island. A reduced population means
there are fewer mouths to feed, but the main benefit is the money made by
those in the diaspora in places like Britain, the United States and Canada.
Remittances, money sent back to Jamaica or claimed in foreign pensions,
represent 15 per cent of the overall GDP of the nation, a number that
somehow manages to mask Jamaica’s dependence on foreign payments.29
When accounting for the amount of money that actually remains in the
country (more than 60 per cent of tourism dollars immediately disappear to
the foreign entities that own the resorts), remittances are the largest source
of foreign income in the country.30 Outward migration has therefore
massively boosted Jamaica’s economy. But after all these years of
remittances Jamaica still remains extremely poor, unable to overcome its
colonial legacy. Whilst the closing-off of migration routes to Britain and the
United States makes the future look even bleaker, if they reopened the
plight of the average Jamaican would not greatly improve.
For a start, although freedom of movement sounds liberating in principle,
only those who can afford to travel, and their families, receive any benefit.
The poorest will stay exactly where they are and, worse still, migration
encourages the so-called ‘brain drain’, where those with skills leave an
underdeveloped nation to take advantage of opportunities in the West.31
The impact on an economy is obvious, particularly on those that already
lack infrastructure and services. Migration as the solution also suggests that
the onus should be on the poor to migrate to countries in the West in order
to live a better life. No one should want to come to Britain with its
miserable weather, dodgy infrastructure and brutal inequalities. We should
be trying to make the places people migrate from secure and wealthy
enough so that there is no desperation to flee in the first place. But the

bigger problem with the idea of open borders as a solution is the intellectual
arrogance of the progress narrative.
Only by pretending that the abundance in the West is produced by
legitimate means can anyone suggest inviting those in the former colonies
to feast. The fruits we are inviting them in to dine on are derived from the
exploitation of their home countries. To take back any of that wealth the
system of racism that exploits them has to stay intact. That is why Jamaica
stayed poor even after it had sent half its population out to raise its fortunes.
Jamaicans are in effect cannibalizing their own wealth when they cash a
remittance cheque. It is no different for any of the many other countries
dependent on remittances for their survival. ‘No borders’ would just keep
the underdeveloped locked in dependency on the forces of neo-colonialism.
Using GDP as a measure of progress is nonsensical in any case. GDP
measures only certain contributions to the economy, missing out things like
domestic labour whilst highlighting aspects like debt.32 I covered this
mirage in the discussion of the illusion of Africa rising through loans from
foreign sources. More money certainly does not mean more equality: it is
often the opposite. For example, since Thatcherism in the eighties Britain
has got a whole lot richer, but the gap between rich and poor has turned into
a chasm. Growing global GDP is meaningless if we do not account for
where the wealth ends up. Given both the history and present of how the
abundance in the West is produced it should now be glaringly obvious that
the spoils can never be equitably shared with the underdeveloped world.
Troublesome as the idea of no borders as the solution is, it at least makes
an attempt to include those in the underdeveloped world. This is rarely the
case when imagining the new utopias. In response to the crisis of work and
rise of the robots, one of the most fashionable ideas is that of a universal
basic income (UBI). Rather than implementing welfare states based on
various entitlements, the idea here is for the state to provide every citizen
with a set level of guaranteed income. There are various proposals of how
much this should be, but for the idea to work it would need to be a
significant amount, set to cover subsistence.33 Providing enough to survive
deals with the decline of available work and also the increased leisure time
that we are all pursuing. But the point is not for the income to replace work,
just to eradicate poverty by making sure everyone can survive.
The aversion of policy makers to UBI is the narrative that it will make
people lazy and workshy. When trialled the result has usually been that

people spend the money wisely and work harder, and it vastly improves
their lives and economies. Many of the pilots have taken place as
development projects and there are suggestions that directly giving people
aid would be better than dispensing it through Western agencies. But it is in
the underdeveloped world that we can see the severe limitations of the
entire project.
The West is bloated with enough wealth to fund a generous basic income.
One of the bastions of progressive left democracy, Finland, launched a twoyear UBI experiment in 2017, making unconditional payments of around
$590 a month to 2,000 randomly selected unemployed individuals in order
to research the impact on outcomes and their participation in the workforce.
Contrast this to a similar experiment in Kenya, where the US charity
GiveDirectly selected 44 villages to make unconditional payments of $23 a
month per adult for twelve years in order to study the effects. The yawning
chasm between the amounts tells us the scale of racial global inequality and
how UBI does absolutely nothing to solve it.34 Providing enough money to
allow people to survive in Kenya is useful but it is never going to be able to
overturn the steep global inequalities that the nation is subject to.
Eradicating absolute poverty may be a good thing, but UBI would
actually lock in the logic of empire. Remember, the West only has such a
disproportionate amount of wealth because of poverty in places like Kenya.
A world in which a basic income is universal and paid for by no borders,
where the Black and Brown poor can make money by doing low-paid
migrant work in the West, is the definition of a dystopia. Everyone may be
able to eat but the political and economic system would be frozen in the
image of White supremacy, with the underdeveloped world unable to ever
catch up. The problem for places like Kenya is a global economic system
that exploits them, draining out their resources so that the standard of living
is so low that a Western charity can afford to pay subsistence to 4,966
villagers for twelve years. Whilst it may make those in the West feel better,
the fact that charities have the resources to do UBI experiments on the best
way to spend their benevolence is the problem.
UBI is not a new or radical idea: one of its proponents is the archneoliberal economist Milton Friedman. There is a world in which UBI is
‘Thatcherism on steroids’, where the welfare state is replaced by payments
to the individuals who constitute the myth that is society.35 Given how
unequal Western societies are, welfare spending is a major part of all

Western budgets. In addition to further costs caused by poverty in areas
such as criminal justice and the health service, UBI may actually present as
a far more cost-efficient way of delivering a welfare state.
Accounting for police, courts and prison, criminal justice alone costs an
estimated $182 billion a year in the United States.36 This does not include
the impacts of crime on the economy, just the price of dealing with the
problem. This figure pales in comparison to estimates of how much poverty
overall costs the US economy. Child poverty alone is estimated to cost
$1.03 trillion a year.37 Overall poverty could cost the economy $4 trillion,
which is more than the $3.8 trillion a UBI of $1,000 a month would
entail.38 It should not be unimaginable that the right wing may seize on the
opportunity to end welfare by bringing in an individualized system of
payments, especially because it has already happened.
In 1968 Richard Nixon almost enacted unconditional payments to poor
families, which would have been the equivalent of $10,000 to a family of
four in today’s money. Millions of dollars were spent on experiments
involving thousands of families, with the results showing benefits and no
huge decline in working hours. Nixon’s plan was eventually derailed by the
ideological zeal of neo-conservatives who worshipped at the altar of Ayn
Rand and the free market, consigning the dream of UBI to the dustbin of
history.39 But the fact that Nixon was in favour should give us a big reason
to think twice about the idea. UBI is basically a conversation about how to
share out the spoils of empire and to mitigate the extreme inequality that
capitalism creates.

IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY
What ultimately undermines the Enlightenment is the claim to the universal
when its theories are based on the particular. Whiteness is at the heart of
Enlightenment thinking and this is no different in the supposedly radical
new approaches. All are fundamentally incapable of even naming the
racism that is the basis of the global political and economic system, let
alone able to offer any actual solutions. We can see this in the distorted
Enlightenment progress narratives that underpin the new utopias, but also in
the genesis and creation myths of the social movements that have informed
the theory.

The sparks that lit many of the new social movements were the financial
crisis in 2008, the election of Trump and the vote for Brexit, which created,
in Bregman’s words, ‘more and more people hungry for a real radical
antidote to both xenophobia and inequality … for a new source of hope’.40
Ground zero in this narrative is the birth of neoliberalism, ushered in by
Thatcherism and Reaganomics in the eighties. Dismantling the social
democratic settlement unleashed the forces of capital and sowed the seeds
for the economic crash in 2008. The unemployment, insecurity and
austerity that followed led to the inevitable rise of the new right as people
looked for causes of their poverty. It also exposed the inherent
contradictions of capital and stoked the embers of protest by revealing their
oppression to the oppressed. One of the first and most high-profile
responses to this crisis was the Occupy movement, which swept the globe.
On 17 September 2011, protestors occupied Zuccotti Park in downtown
Manhattan near the financial district in order to protest at the cause of the
financial crisis. The movement grew rapidly, spreading to a thousand cities
and racking up 6,500 arrests within its first six months.41 The occupation
was prompted by the Canadian anti-capitalist magazine Adbusters which
‘issued a call to action for a “revolution,” a “people’s revolt in the West”’ in
response to the crisis of capitalism.42 Occupy took inspiration from
previous movements like the Indignados in Spain, who had occupied public
space in response to rising unemployment, austerity and other structural
adjustments enforced by external financial institutions.43 The Arab Spring,
highlighted by the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2011, had a large
influence on Occupy as the images of mass occupation of a public space
took hold in the imagination. Thousands occupied Zuccotti Park for almost
two months, until police raided and shut down the protest on 15 November.
Occupy’s reach was such that President Obama gave the movement his
approval in his 2012 re-election campaign. By focusing on the economic
crisis Occupy changed the political language and ‘income inequality’
became the ‘crisis du jour’, something that all the 2016 presidential
candidates at least had to address.44 The power of the economic message
was its simplicity. The Occupiers declared that they were the 99 per cent
standing up to the evil 1 per cent who hoarded the wealth. The only
problem is that this idea is a delusional fantasy and a continuation of the

universalizing of the White particular that we have seen from both left and
right.
Global inequality is so stark that those on the poverty line in the United
States are still in the top 14 per cent of earners worldwide. The average US
salary puts you in the top 4 per cent of earners. There is simply no
comparison between the conditions facing the poorest in the world and
those who are at the bottom in the United States, or in the rest of the West.
Only by focusing on a national analysis could the ‘99 per cent’ rhetoric
make any sense. By looking at its demands, or at least its articulation of the
problem, it is abundantly clear that Occupy was focused on those in the
West, not the victims of it.
The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, collectively
produced by Occupiers, is a laundry list of national demands around
healthcare, jobs and student debt. The most telling line is the complaint that
the 1 per cent ‘have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing
as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay’.45 No prizes for guessing
which ‘workers’ they are referring to here. Presumably, bringing back those
jobs and further impoverishing the underdeveloped world would be
acceptable as long as the true ‘workers’ had access to unskilled and wellpaid work. The declaration does include a line condemning the elite
because ‘they have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.’ But this is
so vague and contradictory to the rest of the declaration that it makes a
mockery of their plea for the ‘people of the world’ to join the struggle. In
the same vein as the Enlightenment thinkers, the centre of Occupy’s world
was the West because it contained the fully formed workers, the movers of
history.
Even within the West the movement faced criticism for its tendency to
‘exclude minority voices’46 and faced serious issues of misogyny.47 There
were also marked class differences, with the people who could afford to
sleep in Zuccotti Park in protest brushing up against those who had already
made it their home because of poverty. The classed differences also spread
into tactics. Occupy Seattle angered working-class dock workers by closing
down the port in protest against commercialism; their principled stance
meant the people they were supposed to be fighting for, the ‘workers’, lost
valuable income. Occupy prided itself on democratic decision-making but it
was ‘limited by failures to build alliances beyond those implicit inside its

inner community’.48 Democracy matters very little if your electorate is
highly exclusive, a lesson that the left needs desperately to learn.
It might be tempting to see Occupy as ‘a global movement (inspired by
the Arab Spring)’, but the reality is that it was in a long tradition of Western
social movements which broke out in the United States and spread into
Europe and the rest of the world.49 In claiming to represent the 99 per cent,
Occupy, perhaps unwittingly, followed in the path of Enlightenment
universalism, speaking for the entire world through the very narrow lens of
Western privilege.
Occupy’s other main accomplishment is said to be its commitment to
horizontal, leaderless organization and a democratic style of decisionmaking. It is commendable that although ‘Occupy’ itself is extremely
memorable the names of its leaders do not immediately come to mind. This
was done on purpose, with painstaking efforts taken to build consensus.
During speeches the rest of the protestors could respond with hand signals
and interject to make their points known. Due originally to lack of
technology, they used a ‘human microphone’ to communicate, where the
audience in earshot of the speaker would shout out their words to those
behind and so on. With such commitment to participation it must have been
almost impossible to come to any consensus. The declaration that came
from the occupiers of Zuccotti Park is frustratingly vague, but given the
circumstances it is miraculous that anything was produced at all. The
looseness of its political goals was one of the strengths of Occupy but also
its primary weakness. Due to its very broadly stated aims the movement had
a wide range of support from figures ‘including Noam Chomsky, Michael
Moore, Kanye West, Russell Simmons, Alec Baldwin and Susan
Sarandon’.50 But with a tent that large it could never hope to articulate a
coherent platform.
There were attempts to produce a more defined agenda, particularly by
those at Adbusters who had put out the call for action in the first place.
Micah White and Kalle Lasn, both from the magazine, tried to put together
a manifesto to send to Obama three days after the start of the occupation,
including the threat to ‘to stay here in our encampment in Liberty Plaza’
until their demands were met.51 The only problem was that they were
thousands of miles away in Canada at the time. Credit to Occupy, although
a lot of its success was found in digital networks, it relied on people on the
ground coming together to form bonds and consensus. Given the broad

range of people, ideas and motivations involved it is not surprising that the
loose-knit coalition eventually splintered, but many of the protestors would
argue that although occupation ended it achieved much of what it set out to
do.
It would be wrong to judge the movement by conventional metrics
because it set out to subvert them. The most obvious way Occupy was
effective was as a ‘communications success’, utilizing social media to
spread its messages across the world and making truly global links.52
Using these networks to bring people together during occupations allowed
those gathered to think through how they could address social problems, to
engage in ‘DIY politics’ in the space.53 During occupations, tent city
universities sprang up offering seminars and workshops, food was delivered
to the hungry, medical advice was dispensed and successes were had in
buying people out of their debt. To truly see the power of Occupy you have
to view it through a different lens:
it is not a media object or a march. It is first and foremost, a church
of dissent, a space made sacred by a community. But like Medieval
churches, it is also now the physical center of that community. It has
become many things. Public square. Carnival. Place to get news.
Daycare center. Health care center. Concert venue. Library.
Performance space. School.54
In many ways Occupy was ‘the idealist moment, the performance rather
than permanence’.55 In Zuccotti Park, or in their hundreds of other
locations around the world, they were performing the ideal. Occupy was
performance art, a grand piece of ‘utopian theatre’ dramatizing the other
world that is otherwise out of reach.56
Here we see the White left at its most stomach-churning. Reading
through some of the misty-eyed reflections on the movement, they have the
feeling of romantic holiday diaries. Nothing may have changed and the
movement may have collapsed but no fear, we will always have Zuccotti
Park. Occupy’s horizontal organization involved both a deep narcissism –
with slogans such as ‘we are our demands’ – and a way of building
community that relied on ‘people forming loose connections quickly’ which
fit perfectly into current times.57 It was the swipe-right of social
movements, with no deep ideological commitments, loose connections, and

the ability to find some fun elsewhere without feeling guilty. Performance
over permanence is only an option to those in the land of plenty who have
jobs or at least a welfare state to fall back on.
What made Tahrir Square a completely different sort of movement was
that the protestors had a clear demand, which was life or death, and they
refused to move until it was met. We can debate how much difference came
about when the military took over from President Mubarak in Egypt but not
the organic commitment of the people to their struggle, nor that they risked
their lives for their cause. The stakes in the West are of a different nature
and therefore so are the politics.
Democracy as a principle runs through the new left agenda. In Britain the
new left is pushing for a more inclusive economy, similar to the demands of
Occupy. Neoliberalism is diagnosed as the source of the ills of society, with
the rich taking too much of the economic pie. We are promised that by a
‘democratic revolution’ we can transform the institutions of governance and
society at large.58 Not only is this struggle about income but it is also about
reducing the social distance between people in society so that ‘everyone can
share a common life as citizens’.59 The Labour Party under the leadership
of Jeremy Corbyn embraced these ideals when he was unexpectedly voted
leader in 2015. Prior to this, Labour had been in a period of mimicking
Conservative policy on the economy, fully embracing neoliberalism with
the idea that the spoils could be shared across society. After Labour’s
surprising success (but not victory) in the general election of 2017, Corbyn
launched what he called Labour’s ‘radical and ambitious’ manifesto for the
2019 election, promising to transform both society and the economy.60
Labour’s plans mirrored much of the New Economic Foundation’s
recommendations for policy reform (the NEF is a key think-tank for the
new left).
The NEF hits all the key notes with the goal to build a society where all
people are ‘paid well, have more time off to spend with their families, have
access to affordable housing, know there is a decent safety net if they need
one, and are provided with a high level of care throughout their lives’.61 In
order to do this they propose a four-day week, a living wage, boosting trade
union membership and fashioning a ‘well-being state’ where targets are not
simply economic but relate to the mental and physical health of the nation.
They stopped short of a universal basic income, instead suggesting a far
more modest national allowance of £50 a week that counts when calculating

benefit entitlements. But they are in favour of universal basic services,
nationalizing key industries and providing free childcare to support
families. The Green New Deal is of course embraced as a motor for both
saving the world and job creation. They are also keen on ‘people’s
participation in decision making’ in both policy-making and business.62
One of the NEF’s and Labour’s main focuses is on establishing workers’
cooperatives as a model for sharing wealth.
Preston, a small city in the north of England, has an outsize importance in
the new economy, since it has become a model for local-government led
cooperatives. The council’s decision to source more locally and create
cooperatives in the city has both boosted income and dispersed that extra
money somewhat more fairly. Other large local employers like the
university have followed suit by engaging with local suppliers, and the city
is improving. But we should be wary of celebrating a radical new dawn.63
For a start it is nothing new, with democratic reforms being part of the leftwing imagination for ‘at least a century’. Labour governments and councils
attempted such projects before neoliberalism took over in the Thatcher
era.64 John McDonnell, the architect of Corbyn’s economic policy, served
his political apprenticeship in the eighties under Tony Benn, who developed
a series of cooperative projects.
The major flaw with these concepts of participation is who is included
and who remains firmly on the outside. For all the talk of participation there
is scant regard for the fact that those in the underdeveloped world are
equally stakeholders in the economic life of the West. One of the
cooperatives so praised in Preston is a coffee shop, and while we celebrate
the benefits to the worker in Britain, the shop’s success is only possible
because of the racial exploitation of the poor people farming the coffee
beans it uses for next to nothing (it may be a surprise, but coffee does not
grow in the north of England). This is Cadbury World all over again but on
a societal scale. The wealth the left wants to share with those in their
nations is derived in large part from global, racial exploitation. What the
new left are offering is just a modified version of social democracy. A
return to the days of high taxes, social housing, reduced inequality and the
guarantee of a decent wage … but only in the West. In reality it is not a
social but an imperial democracy they are yearning for.
My grandmother came to Britain during the wonderful days of social
democracy and found a nation even more overtly racist than the one I grew

up in under neoliberalism. Malcolm X visited Birmingham in 1965 and his
trip to Smethwick is remembered because of his comments on the racial
situation in the town, which he heard was similar to how the ‘Jews were
[being treated] under Hitler’.65 This was in large part because he visited the
year after what has been dubbed the most racist election in British history,
when the Conservative Party candidate Peter Griffith won with the
unofficial slogan ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour’. But
people often forget that the Labour club in the area was for Whites only;
and there is a long tradition of the trade unions barring people of colour
from membership.66 Imperial democracy cannot deal with the problem of
racism because it limits the collective to the citizens of the West, allowing
them to participate in economic decisions and to increase their access to the
bounty stolen off the backs of the Black and Brown. It took the financial
crisis in 2008 to spark this new so-called radicalism, and the uncomfortable
truth is that if some of the wealth generated from the new age of empire was
distributed fairly enough to provide stability and comfort to everyone in the
West, calls for the transformation of society would swiftly end.
The rebooted version of Western imperialism updated the colonial logic
embedded in the progressive left. Undoubtedly, the inclusion of Black and
Brown activists in the West has meant that there is currently more
awareness of issues of racial justice. We have always organized, resisted
and ensured that there was a spotlight on White supremacy. But if we are
honest, activism for the most part remains one of the most segregated social
spaces. Green issues have always formed a part of Black and Brown
activism in the West and in the Rest because we are more likely to feel the
impacts. But whilst the Green New Deal offers at least a view on racial
justice, it is a partial and unfocused one. Solving the climate crisis is an
existential priority, but doing so will not end the logic of empire.
Enlightenment narratives of science and progress as the solution to the
world’s ills are still the foundation of the various branches of the left. A
narrow focus on full humanity for workers in the West, and merely the right
to life for the those in the Rest, prevents any serious reckoning with the
scale of injustice upon which global wealth disparities are built. Bernie or
Trump, Corbyn or Boris, are decisions that matter, but the degree to which
they end Western imperialism is the same. Heads the West wins, tails the
Rest loses. Those of us lucky enough to be in the land of plenty will benefit

from a return to social democratic values. But nothing short of a revolution
that overturns the very foundations of empire can ever undo the problem of
racism.

8

Chickens Coming Home to Roost
Britain and the United States came towards the top of the death charts from
Covid-19 in 2020 in an unwelcome demonstration of the much-vaunted
‘special relationship’. Given the history there is a dark irony in a virus
tearing through the past and present centres of Western imperialism. Unlike
the genocide in the Americas and Caribbean this illness was never an
existential threat, but the death toll is a reminder that imperialism has
unintended consequences. Britain and the United States were not hit hard
due to historical karma, but because they are at the most advanced stage of
development of the new age of empire: neoliberalism. The deadly
prescription of austerity, privatization and unrestrained private capital for
the underdeveloped world is now being firmly implanted in the West, with
Britain and the United States leading the way. The United States has a
disastrous private healthcare system that fails to manage its normal load, so
it is no surprise the pandemic was so catastrophic. Britain has the much
cherished National Health Service, but decades of privatization and cuts
have led to a service unable to effectively mobilize against the virus.
Prioritizing profit and the individual over services and society is deadly at
the best of times but utterly ruinous during a pandemic.
The financial regimes inflicted on the Rest coming home to roost in the
West was a likely but not inevitable result of the new age of empire. Once
the nation state lost its centrality in coordinating empire, and business was

free to exploit with no restraints, it was only a matter of time before
neoliberal forces would try to bang down the door. Social democracy was a
vital element in rebuilding the West after the devastation wrought by the
Second World War. The post-war settlement shared the spoils of colonial
plunder more fairly in the West, easing internal inequality and tying its
White majorities firmly to the imperial project. High taxes, public
ownership and restraints on financial markets were the status quo until the
1980s. In order for the floodgates of neoliberalism to open, people had to be
convinced to vote for an agenda that would reduce the quality of their lives.
More than anything else it was the racist logic of empire that opened the
floodgates to imposing the Washington consensus in the West.
Brexit unleashed the rabid dogs of neoliberalism, hell-bent on
maximizing their profits from liberating the United Kingdom from the
regulation (or protection) of the European Union. The ironically named
European Research Group, made up of a segment of Conservative members
of parliament, made it impossible to get a deal done, effectively forcing the
resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019. Let us be clear: May
was part of one of the most racist British governments of recent times,
creating a ‘hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants that included vans
with ‘go home’ written on them driving around the capital, massdeportation flights, and withdrawing support for search-and-rescue missions
for predominantly African migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea
into Europe. If that wasn’t enough, she was also the architect of the
‘Windrush Scandal’, which left thousands of people with every legal and
historic right to live in Britain subject to losing their jobs and to deportation
if they could not provide documentation to prove they had migrated before
1973, when Commonwealth citizens were legally entitled to enter. Bear in
mind that there was no need for documentation at the time and the only
official proof of entry held by the government was destroyed in 2010
because they ran out of office space. Thousands of those encouraged to
migrate to Britain because of a labour shortage, who had grown up in
Britain, were deemed illegal and subject to removal to countries they had
often never previously returned to.1 May’s response to the Grenfell Tower
tragedy, in which more than seventy mostly Black and Brown people were
killed, was so disgraceful and lacking humanity she later admitted that
failing to meet the families in the immediate aftermath was something she
would ‘always regret’.2

I despised her politics to the point I argued that she was ‘more dangerous
than Donald Trump’.3 May was more problematic because she represented
what Malcolm X called the ‘Northern foxes’ of racism who ‘show their
teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling’.4 May shrouded
herself in the pretence of social justice, making all the right noises about
racial discrimination and the police, and commissioning reports into
inequality, without making any changes and continuing policies of austerity
that made everything worse. Trump is Malcolm’s Southern ‘bloody jawed
wolf’, one of those who ‘show their teeth in a snarl’ by being openly racist
in both word and deed.5
Theresa May’s departure opened the door to Britain’s Trump, Boris
Johnson, who has in the past referred to Black young people as
‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’, claimed Obama had an ‘ancestral
dislike for the United States because he is part Kenyan’,6 and compared
Muslim women in the veil to ‘letterboxes’.7 Comparisons to Agent Orange
– sorry, I mean President Trump – do not stop there. He is also a highly
mediocre White man born into a wealthy family, with all the sense of
entitlement that comes from growing up with a silver spoon in one’s mouth.
Lies flow so effortlessly from both their mouths it is as if they feel that they
are not bound by the rules of the poor and unwashed. They create their own
realities, including the one where they represent the will of the people. I
was never a fan of May but celebrating her decline was premature. Her
replacement is not only an openly racist buffoon who is allergic to the truth
but a cheerleader for the forces of unrestrained neoliberalism that are due to
be unleashed on Britain.
The new reality that Johnson and the hardcore Brexiteers have created is
that people voted for a hard Brexit, a clean break from the EU. Although
even the most extreme of those advocating to leave, including the vile Nigel
Farage (another Trump favourite), assured voters in the referendum
campaign that there would be a deal that maintained substantive EU links,
they went on to pretend that leaving without a deal was what the people
really wanted. No economist or sensible politician believes that leaving the
EU without a deal is a practical strategy. So dire are the consequences that it
would likely mean food shortages, the end of whole industries that rely on
frictionless trade with the EU; and according to the government’s own
watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, could cost the UK £30

billion a year.8 The truth is no one knows the potential impact but the
prospects are so bleak that the government allocated over £6 billion to
prepare for the disaster that would ensue if Britain left without a deal.9
None of this mattered to the hardcore Brexiteers, who were perfectly happy
to risk the wellbeing of others if it means the creative destruction necessary
to build the kind of society they can maximize profits from. They may even
make a fortune off the chaos. There have been plenty of people with money
making a profit from betting against the pound, whose value has fallen to
historic lows due to the Brexit turmoil.
Johnson’s Brexit promises to shed regulations and workers’ rights and
open up the economy to even more privatization than Britain is currently
defined by. Some of the biggest fears raised during the so-called ‘Brexit
election’ in December 2019 were the looming impact of a trade deal with
the United States that would allow weaker food standards and protections.
Under a ‘Trump Brexit’, as the leader of the opposition dubbed it, we could
expect to be flooded with chlorinated chicken, currently banned by EU
regulations due to the unsanitary nature of the process. Worse still, the
much-loved National Health Service, which provides free-at-the-point-ofdelivery care to the population is on the table to be carved up by US
healthcare companies. Britain has always been far closer to the United
States than most of Europe in its economic policy and the fear is that Brexit
will push the nation more towards the neoliberal extremes of life across the
Atlantic. If, and when, Britain tips fully into the neoliberal abyss it will be
the result of ‘chickens coming home to roost’, the inevitable conclusion
where the logic of imperialism returns to wreak havoc at home.

WAGES OF WHITENESS
The ground zero for the emergence of the new left is the wrecking ball that
Thatcher and Reagan took to the welfare state in the eighties. Destroying
the post-war social democratic settlement led to the unrestrained greed of
bankers, which resulted in the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing misery
of austerity. Steep declines in living standards, the casualization of work
and whole communities being ‘left behind’ in the new economy led to the
rise in populism that elected Trump and gave the charlatan Brexiteers the
opportunity to argue that it was the EU that was to blame for society’s ills.

Neither President Trump, Prime Minister Johnson or Brexit would be
possible without the support of millions of poor (White) people for agendas
that are diametrically opposed to their interests. There is no way to
understand this phenomenon separate from the racism that underpins
society. It is not an issue of class consciousness but the delusions of
Whiteness that have allowed the harbingers of the neoliberal apocalypse to
rise to power.
African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois theorized that even the
poorest of White people in the United States during the period of
Reconstruction after the Civil War received a ‘public and psychological
wage’ from their Whiteness.10 Even though they were being exploited by
the same people as African Americans, their status as Whites gave them
limited privilege, which they clung to. For Du Bois, this was the principal
reason that Black and White workers did not unite against their common
enemy and overthrow American capitalism. We see similar arguments
throughout the critical literature on Whiteness, with historian Noel Ignatiev
arguing that ‘White people must commit suicide as Whites in order to come
alive as workers, or youth, or women.’11 This is a classically Marxist
notion that race (Whiteness) is an inauthentic identity enacted by the ruling
class to divide the workers. As should hopefully now be evident, it is not
that simple. Whiteness is not a mirage, there are actual benefits to being in
the category that White workers have fought, and continue to fight, very
hard for. Still, Whiteness is a tool used by those in power to control poor
Whites, to tie them to the project of imperialism. The rise of neoliberalism
is the perfect case study.
Social democracy distributed wealth, at least within places like Britain
and the United States, reducing inequality between the rich and poor.
Conditions for the poor in the early twentieth century were horrendous and
there were almost no vehicles for social uplift. Providing housing,
infrastructure, transport, social security benefits, healthcare and schooling
vastly improved the lives of the poor. We should never forget that the
wealth to do this was achieved through colonial exploitation, but at least
within the bubble of the West social democracy transformed social
conditions. The only problem with the model of state-led, protectionist
economies is that they represented the outdated political and economic
model of the original version of Western empire. In the new ‘globalized’
world the state has less power and lacks sovereignty over the corporations

that manage the new imperialism. Once capital is liberated from national
constraints it becomes impossible for nation-state governments to control.
High taxes on individuals and corporations cannot work because capital is
mobile – often stored and registered offshore. There is no longer any such
thing as a British or American corporation because they are now all global
entities spread across disparate tax regimes.
In order to impose neoliberal regimes internally the White masses,
including the poor and the workers, needed to be convinced they were in
their interests so that they would vote them into being. The oil crisis in the
1970s destabilized the West and provided just the opportunity. Prior to
ruining underdeveloped economies, the IMF was primarily used to support
the West. Britain’s economy was so damaged by the crisis that it not only
sought help from the fund in 1976 but also accepted some of the conditions
that have been such a bane to the rest of the world, cutting back some of its
more left-wing programmes.12
The oil crisis was a result of the United States establishing its central role
at the heart of empire. In 1971 Nixon broke the Bretton Woods agreement
by removing the dollar from the gold standard, which had underpinned
global trade. The result was a devastating loss of revenue for the oil-rich
countries of the Middle East, who put an embargo on selling their most
valuable commodity to the United States.13 A global recession took hold
that made the costs of social democracy in the West exceedingly difficult to
meet and forced Britain into the conditional IMF loan. The country’s
economic crisis led to wage freezes in the public sector and a showdown
with the trade unions, who organized a series of strikes, which included bin
collectors and gravediggers. The chaos is seared into the political
imagination as the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978–9 and provided all the
impetus necessary for the Thatcherite takeover in the election of 1979.
Social democracy was scapegoated as too expensive given the financial
crisis; inefficient; and as having given far too much power to the unions
who could bring the country to a halt. Privatization, individualism and a
small state were the obvious solutions to the statist former model. But
remember that this economic context existed in large part because the
United States was laying the foundations of the new age of empire. They
eventually won the battle with the Middle East and liberation from the gold
standard allowed for rapid expansion of finance capitalism, the boom on
Wall Street and the eventual financial crash of 2008.

It was not only economics that allowed the rise of neoliberalism. In
Britain, Margaret Thatcher stormed to power in 1979 in large part because
she was able to secure the support of some traditional Labour, workingclass voters whose aversion to the Tory party was deeply ingrained. An area
that Thatcher could exploit was the issue of immigration. Due to labour
shortages, post-war Britain had opened its doors to immigration from the
colonies. Millions of people from the Caribbean, South Asia and Africa had
settled in the UK by the time of the momentous election in 1979. My family
were part of that migration and the reason I am writing this book in Britain.
There were also millions of immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Old
Commonwealth (Australasia, Canada, White South Africans) but they did
not concern Thatcher, who openly spoke about the ‘four million people of
the new Commonwealth or Pakistan’ flooding into Britain, in a nationally
televised interview.14 She argued that
people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather
swamped by people with a different culture and, you know, the
British character has done so much for democracy, for law and done
so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might
be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those
coming in.
This was by no means the first time that the Conservatives had engaged in
such racist political language. Thatcher was mobilizing a more polite
version of Peter Griffiths’ ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote
Labour’ tactic. ‘Swamped’ is important because it suggests there are too
many darkies and that we are a corrupting influence on British institutions
and values.
Social democracy only works if society feels that everyone should have a
stake in sharing the wealth. The idea that foreigners, Black ones at that,
should be able to jump the queue for housing or doctor’s appointments
undermines the idea of universal service provision. Notions of being ‘left
behind’ are intrinsically tied up in this idea. White workers are supposedly
being short-changed by multiculturalism, which is privileging the darkies
who are swamping the country and demanding special protections under
anti-racist legislation. Britain’s embrace of individualism was in large part
driven by its rejection of diversity.

There can be no ‘we’ if that includes the uninvited foreigners destroying
the so-called British way of life. Thatcher’s famous declaration that ‘there’s
no such thing as society’ must be seen in this context. She continued, ‘there
are individual men and women and there are families … It is our duty to
look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.’15 Given
the context of steep racial segregation in housing it is clear who the
neighbours are that she is referring to. In this logic, mass migration has torn
down the fabric of what once were the shared British values that held the
country together. Old ideas of community, nation and class are broken down
with the idea that the uniqueness of Britain is being lost and the neoliberal
individual is free to come into being, fending for themselves against the
hordes of foreigners swamping the country.
The anti-immigration rhetoric of Thatcher was key to her appeal and to
being able to maintain a Conservative government for the following
eighteen years. In that period taxes were slashed, public utilities privatized,
and social housing sold off to those individuals with enough money to be
able to afford to buy them. Finance capital was also set free to dominate the
economy, and neoliberalism flourished in Britain. Of course, inequality
soared and public services became run down through lack of investment,
whilst the rich kept on getting filthier and richer.
We saw the same use of racist logic in the campaign for Brexit. The
expansion of the EU in 2007 to include Eastern European countries meant
that freedom of movement within member states was open to those poorer
citizens of the former Communist bloc. As a result, large numbers of
migrants began to come to Britain to work, which became an increasing
source of discontent for many. Right-wing racists like Nigel Farage came to
prominence, with his United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), focused
on the single issue of leaving the EU, with fears of uncontrolled
immigration being its major talking point. Farage made clear the limits of
the social democratic dream with his declaration during an election debate
that the beloved NHS was ‘our National Health Service, not the
International Health Service’.16 Extending the protections of the welfare
state to bloody foreigners was not what the decent hardworking British
people had signed up to.
Fearing that the rise of UKIP, who did very well in the EU elections,
could be dangerous for his party, Prime Minister David Cameron sought to
outflank them on Europe by offering the referendum on membership of the

EU. It worked to depress the UKIP vote in the 2015 general election but he
was then left with the prospect of having to deliver on this promise. He
made a massive miscalculation when he assumed that people would not
‘vote themselves poorer because they don’t like the Poles living next
door’.17 But by voting in the Conservatives for ever more austerity, that is
precisely what a large chunk of the British electorate had already done.
Cameron’s Brexit gamble was no doubt in part influenced by the history
of racial politics and immigration. As we discussed earlier, migration from
Eastern Europe is not a new phenomenon in Britain. In fact, Cameron’s
opposite number in the Labour Party in 2015, Ed Miliband, was the son of
Polish Jewish migrants.18 There was certainly some questionable coverage
in the largely morally deficient right-wing press about his inability to eat a
bacon sandwich and how his refugee Marxist father hated Britain.19 But
his background did not receive any of the fanfare, for good or ill, that would
have been made had his parents migrated from Jamaica. White migrants are
still White and their children melt into the population in a way that we
never can. In many ways freedom of movement from Europe was just a
continuation of the long-held immigration policy to encourage White
migration whilst discouraging those who are Black and Brown. But the
pace and scale of migration had an impact on the debate.
Between 2004 and 2017 the proportion of the UK population from
Europe, excluding Ireland, rose from 1.5 per cent to 5 per cent. It is not
incredibly surprising that the xenophobic backlash against EU migrants
coincided with the financial crash and austerity. When people are struggling
it is easy to pin the blame on the newly arrived, even when they are
migrating from worse conditions. But Cameron should have seen this
writing on the wall because it had his fingerprints all over it.
Farage has been ridiculed for his blaming of all things on immigrants,
including too much traffic,20 but Cameron’s government was just a more
sophisticated version of the UKIP spin machine. During the 2015 general
election campaign Cameron warned that a Labour government would
massively increase immigration. His immigration minister James
Brokenshire declared that ‘uncontrolled mass immigration makes it difficult
to maintain social cohesion, puts pressure on public services and forces
down wages.’21 Shifting the blame for poverty and lack of investment
away from their root cause of neoliberalism and onto immigrants has been

key to the Conservatives’ electoral success. Millions have been duped into
believing that their problem is poor people from other countries looking for
a better life, rather than the rich and politicians who are robbing the
population of the opportunities to succeed.
Even when immigration is not about race, it still is. EU migrants are
overwhelmingly White but this did not stop the campaigners looking to
leave the EU during the Brexit referendum invoking race. Farage
consistently invoked the spectre of Turkey joining the EU, with its 75
million Muslims supposedly threatening to invade Britain. This is ironic
because Turkey has basically zero chance of EU membership because it is
not a White country. The EU has always been an exclusive club. Farage
also unveiled an infamous poster that depicted a long line of Syrian
refugees crossing into Croatia from Slovenia with the slogan ‘Breaking
Point: The EU has failed us all’. So egregious was the imagery that even
Boris Johnson denounced it; the imagery was reported to the police and
even evoked comparisons to Nazi propaganda. But the message was clear:
immigration is always a racial issue.
The result of all of this has been the vote for Brexit and the rise of Boris
Johnson, who threatens to complete the neoliberal project. There should be
no more worrying prospect for the average Brit. The problem is that the
nation voted for all of it in no small part because they bought into the racial
politics that underpin the system.
Immigration, in and of itself, is the chickens of imperialism coming home
to roost. By conquering a quarter of the globe Britain incorporated hundreds
of millions of Black and Brown people into its Empire. For all the fantasies
of Britain being great, the reality is that as a little, insignificant island, it
was the Empire that established the role of the nation in the world. Colonial
subjects were born in Britain, not outside it. Our blood, sweat and tears lay
at the foundation of British progress. After the War, when the mother
country needed labour to rebuild it naturally turned to the source it had been
exploiting for centuries. It was seen as your duty to do your part for Queen
and country in the same way as supporting the war effort had been.
Often forgotten in the anti-immigration debate is that we were invited. In
fact, Enoch Powell, who became infamous for his racist, anti-immigration
‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, was one of the first health secretaries to reach out
to the colonies for nurses. More than any other cherished institution, the
NHS has always relied, and still very much continues to rely, on the labour

of doctors and nurses from the former colonies to exist. Farage’s quip about
it not being the International Health Service is as ignorant as it is racist. The
truth is that the British welfare state has heavily relied on the former
colonies for both the wealth necessary to exist and the labour to run it. Fears
of ‘swamping’ and ‘losing’ the country are entirely imagined and frankly
ridiculous. But if immigration has been seen as a problem and has led to the
embrace of the neoliberal individual, then this was a problem of Britain’s
own making. As the late intellectual Ambalavaner Sivanandan put it, ‘we
are here because you were there.’22 Had the West not colonized and then
underdeveloped the world there would not be millions of former colonial
subjects trying to migrate into their former mother countries for a better life.
The dark chickens of the colonies coming home to roost happened later in
Europe because of the nature of empire, with indirect rule and slavery in the
Caribbean, but the United States had to deal with this issue from its
foundation.
The rise of neoliberalism in the United States was no different, driven by
the same forces of White supremacy. Donald Trump’s victory has been seen
as an outlier because he is so ill-suited and unprepared for the role of
president, but his election was decades in the making. He is the poster boy
for neoliberalism and the silver-spoon-in-the-mouth elite, posing as the
friend of the people; and his election was driven by the same basic factors
as we saw in Britain. Poor Whites supposedly being left behind by
multiculturalism. Fear of the immigrants taking control. A wish to return to
the glory days when racism could openly form public policy. Trump’s
embrace of ‘law and order’ is the classic racialized language of the right:
that the dark inner cities need to be heavily policed to keep the savages in
the jungle in check.
Following his tragicomic handling of the Covid-19 outbreak, the rise of
the Black Lives Matter protests unfortunately gave Trump the opportunity
to play to his strengths and his base. As well as threatening to use the army
to quell the unrest, Trump has described Black Lives Matter as a ‘symbol of
hate’23 and vowed to defend the monuments to the slave-owning ‘patriots’
who built the United States that he described as ‘heroes’ rather than
villains.24 Doubling down on his appeals to Whiteness was undoubtedly
the best call in the lead-up to the presidential election. He may have
ultimately lost but more voters voted for him than did for Obama in his
historic victory of 2008. Millions of voters are seduced by the wages of

Whiteness even in the absence of actual wages to support them.25 Just as in
Britain, the real problem is the rich and the politicians who support them,
while the blame for inequality is shifted to immigrants and Black folk.
Du Bois declared that the issue of ‘the twentieth century was the problem
of the color line’,26 and the so-called race problem has been a focus of
attention, both well-meaning and mendacious, since emancipation. Having
to deal with millions of African Americans is the definition of chickens
coming home to roost, the result of stolen bodies, lives and labour. The
wages of Whiteness can be traced to the development of the United States,
to which the issue of the enslavement of African people was central. We
should not delude ourselves with the mythology that the Civil War was
about ending slavery. Lincoln made it clear that if he could ‘save the Union
without freeing any slave’ he was perfectly happy to do so.27 To win the
battle with the South, the North ended up issuing the emancipation
proclamation in order to enlist the support of the enslaved. During the war
so many African Americans had liberated themselves from bondage that if
he wanted victory Lincoln had no real choice but to support emancipation.
After the war the first solution to the ‘problem’ of living with millions of
free Black folk was, in effect, to deport them to another country. The more
polite term of ‘colonization’ was used, and Lincoln and his successors
pursued the idea of ejecting their Black population to another place,
possibly Haiti or Liberia.28 It is in the Reconstruction period that Du Bois’
phrase ‘wages of Whiteness’ was applied to the inability of White workers
to find comradeship with the formerly enslaved. This dynamic only got
worse with the immigration of millions of Europeans into the nation who
‘became White’ in large part by embracing the racism of the United States
and directing hatred towards African Americans.29
By being openly racist and segregationist wolves, politicians in the South
were able to maintain their power whilst the cunning foxes in the North
gave nods to racial equality while presiding over de facto Jim Crow through
housing segregation, police brutality and institutional racism. In his 1964
‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ speech Malcolm X declares that he is ‘not a
Democrat, nor a Republican, nor even an American’ because of how
misused the votes of Black people had been by politicians.30
Like Thatcher, when Reagan wanted to usher in neoliberalism he knew
the perfect scapegoat. During both his presidential campaigns, and while in

office trying to dismantle the welfare state, he invoked the tale of a Black
woman in Chicago who had been gaming the system to the extent that her
‘tax-free cash income alone had been running at $150,000 a year’.31
Reagan’s tale of the ‘welfare queen’ hit all the right notes with certain
segments of the electorate. A freeloader, living off the backs of the
hardworking. It was abundantly clear that this was a stereotype built on the
longstanding racist idea that Black people are workshy. The United States is
so racially segregated that nodding to the ‘woman in Chicago’, one of the
cities where the problem of segregation is most acute, created a clear
picture of exactly whom Reagan was talking about. Just as in Britain, social
democratic principles can only hold if everyone feels everyone else is an
equal part of the nation. African Americans, and immigrants, were the
perfect weapon to break the New Deal consensus.
Welfare reform was ushered in on the myth of the undeserving Blacks,
and the ‘war on drugs’ sparked mass incarceration as an alternative to
welfare provision for African Americans, as well as hugely expanding the
role of the private sector in prisons. Trump’s election, on a tide of antiBlack and anti-immigration rhetoric, is not an aberration but the logical
conclusion of the resentment at neoliberalism being turned onto those
perceived as alien to the nation.
We have seen the same process of neoliberal structural adjustment wreak
havoc across Britain and the United States, enabled by the same colonial
logic that remains deeply written into the political calculus. When covid
struck with Trump on one side of the Atlantic and Johnson on the other, we
were stuck in the middle, with the chickens that well and truly came home
to roost.

LOOK TO THE EAST
Much has been made about the rise of the East as a major change in the
global political and economic system. There is no doubt that ‘we are living
in the Asian century’, with dramatic increases of both wealth and standards
of living across the continent.32 China’s influence, in particular, is being
increasingly felt on the world stage, with the trade war with the United
States being just one example. There has undoubtedly been a shift in the
balance of power to the East that is not set to reverse. With rising standards

of living come greater economic influence, China and India alone hold
more than a third of the world’s population. In India between 1990 and
2014 the number of households with more than $10,000 a year in
disposable income leapt from 2 to 50 million.33 China has become the new
workshop of the world, manufacturing goods for global consumption, while
the region is also at the forefront of technological and communications
innovations. It is not difficult to see why the West would be worried about
China hosting both the means of production and a mass consumer base. But
the reality is that the emergence of Asia neither ends the Western imperial
project nor calls for a system update. What we are seeing today is the logic
of the current version of the system, and ‘the sun rising in the east does not
mean that it is setting on the west.’34
In order to deliver its remarkable economic growth the East has ingrained
itself into the Western political and economic system. It is not a coincidence
that it is not Mao’s China that is poised to become the centre of the global
political and economic system; China holds that position because the
Chairman’s legacy has been abandoned. The collapse of Communism led to
the infamous declaration of the ‘end of history’ by Francis Fukuyama, who
theorized ‘that liberal democracy may constitute the end point of mankind’s
ideological evolution’.35 No one could accuse China of being a liberal
democracy, but its surrender to market capitalism is almost total. While
certainly not neoliberal, the country is remarkably comfortable with
billionaires for a supposedly Communist nation. As China depends on the
West for its prosperity there is nothing to be gained from trying to foment
revolution. Fukuyama’s argument is wrong-headed because it is steeped so
deeply in Enlightenment principles he forgets that actors, particularly in the
former colonies, have agency. But he is right about the extent to which the
Western economic model has erased almost all alternatives.
Just as New Labour was Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement,
China is the ultimate success of the West: a potential successor to the seat of
power that maintains the relations and exclusions of the old system. This is
an absolute defeat of the revolutionary principles that the nation was
founded upon. In fact, because China has yet to embrace liberal democracy,
let alone neoliberalism, it may end up representing a better form of Western
imperialism. With its population of over 1 billion led firmly by the state it is
able to mobilize and plan its economy with military precision in a way the
rest of the world should equally envy and fear.

The fact that there are non-White faces at the head of the latest version of
empire does not mean the system has changed. It is perfectly possible to
maintain racism whilst diversifying those in charge of dispensing it. It was
precisely by exploiting racial political and economic systems that the region
grew. Asia’s growth depends on the extreme poverty of hundreds of
millions of its own citizens and the continued evisceration of Africa in
order to plunder the continent’s resources. There are no signs of this
changing, and a collection of crazy rich Asians does not alter reality for the
majority of people on the continent. One of the most disappointing
arguments for the decline of racism is the presence of rich Black and Brown
folk. A Black middle class is no more evidence of racial salvation than the
existence of many more rich White people means that the class struggle is
over. There have always been some who were better-off than others, even
under the brutally violent version of Western imperialism. The current
edition has meant that there are now far more opportunities for a limited
elite, both in the West and the former colonies, to enjoy the fruits of the
system. But we should not delude ourselves into believing that means that
the nature of the system itself has changed.
Rather than seeing the emergence of Black and Brown elites as a break
from Western imperialism, we should understand them as one of the logics
of the new system. The new age of empire is based on moving away from
formal colonialism, breaking down the power of the state and delivering
racial exploitation through economic, not physical, coercion. This meant
granting so-called independence and relying even more on local elites to
manage their countries. There are classes of the wealthy from the former
colonies who owe their lifestyles and positions to Western imperialism. To
be in the elite in the former colonies is to inhabit a position beyond most of
those in the West. This also tends to come with Western education, offshore
bank accounts and truly being able to access the world as a global citizen.
Occupy’s 1 per cent certainly includes some of those who are not White,
but we are mistaken if we think that their positions are not defined by
Whiteness. To gain that level of wealth in economies that include some of
the poorest people on the planet tells us the scale of the inequalities in the
system. Even for those of us who are by no means rich but still successful,
our relative prosperity remains built on the same colonial logic that keeps
the masses of the Black and Brown in poverty. The most painful
development of the new age of empire is that we have now become part of

the problem, with our hands stained with the blood of the victims of our
success.
When the architects of the new age of empire were designing the update
to the system they doubtless did not predict the emergence and potential
takeover of China and the East. Belief in White supremacy has a tendency
to override common sense, and they more than likely thought that the
impoverished East could be contained. But taking the boot directly off the
neck of the underdeveloped world allowed space for the changes that have
occurred. One of the biggest factors has been offshoring as part of the
neoliberal project. Due to the racist political and economic system, wages
are far lower in the underdeveloped world and therefore when capital and
technology were free to be global it made economic sense for companies to
move their production overseas. China has been adept at using its cheap
labour to become the workshop of the world. This labour was offshored
precisely because of the wealth in the West: it became too expensive to pay
the workers here for it, and the work is mundane.
Consumption, technology and services replaced manufacturing as the
basis of Western economies. In the pursuit of the middle-class dream this
makes some kind of sense, but it is also a big driver of the ‘left behind’
narrative because it means that unskilled manual jobs are in short supply.
Ceding production to the underdeveloped world always had the potential
for the rapid development we are seeing. For all the hype about
consumption, it is impossible without production. China in particular, but
also the region in general, has become expert at making the most of owning
substantial elements of the means of production.
When the centre of empire shifts to China, or robots take over
production, it may well mean the West moves to its next stage. None of
these developments will mean ending the racist political and economic
system, and at best they only offer a slightly more bearable format.

END OF EMPIRE
No matter how many of the chickens come home to roost in the West they
will never erase the racism at the heart of the global political and economic
system. As Malcolm X warned us, ‘this system can no more provide
freedom, justice and equality … than a chicken can lay a duck egg.’36 But

history tells us that all empires end. They either collapse under their own
contradictions or are brought crashing down by rebellion or conquest. We
may have been told that there is no alternative, but Western imperialism
will at some point come to a conclusion. The West has only been truly
dominant for 250 years, a blip on the timeline of human history. But despite
diagnosing racism as a fundamental sequence in the DNA of the current
social order, the premise of this book is deeply optimistic. We do not need
to placate the powers that be by limiting our vision to reforming a system
that is not broken. Police brutality, health inequalities, thousands of children
dying a day are all symptoms of the disease of racism caused by the
machine of Western imperialism. Once we recognize that this racism is a
necessary a by-product of the political and economic system then we have
the freedom to imagine what comes after we have torn it down.
Revolution is possible, but we have to accept that it will not come from
those who benefit from Western imperialism. There are centuries-long
traditions of radical politics emerging from the oppressed. The bulk of my
work is about developing the politics of Black radicalism, which centres on
uniting Africa and the African diaspora to create a true revolution, which
remains the only solution to the problem of racism.37 The oppressed never
accept their condition and will always struggle to overturn the system that
holds them down. Enslaved Africans in Haiti cast off their shackles and
took their freedom. Black Power movements changed the conditions of
possibility for Black people in the belly of the beast. It was revolutions
across the Third World that forced the West to abandon the brutally violent
forms of colonial domination. This book is a reminder of the stakes, to not
accept edits to the status quo as some kind of progress. Revolution is not
only possible but it is absolutely essential if we truly want freedom.
The protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd are deeply rooted in
the histories of Black resistance but offer a new hope in one regard. In the
sixties there was a struggle between the agendas of revolution and reform:
overturning the system or trying to fix it. Reform won out in the shape of
civil rights movements in the West and independence for nations in the
underdeveloped world. These were some of the most successful movements
in history, gaining access to voting rights, changes to legislation and even
representation in the halls of power. For fifty years we have been promised
we are on a path to freedom, but it is more than just symbolic that Black
Lives Matter first came into existence with a Black man in the White

House. No amount of editing or inclusion to this racist system will ever
give us freedom, and we now have a generation who should no longer be
persuaded we are on the right path. The future is now, and it is one in which
we can watch a police officer kneel on the neck of a Black person in public
for almost nine minutes. If that does not remove the scales from our eyes
then nothing will.
The question that I get asked the most, and have no answer to, is ‘What
can White people do?’ If you got to the end of this book hoping there would
be a magic bullet, some quick fix or anti-racist potion that could build
meaningful allyship then you will leave disappointed. The quest for allyship
is in itself misguided. The problem is that society is built on a White
supremacy that permeates every institution, intellectual framework and
interaction within it. If you have come this far and believe that White
people offering a meaningful hand of friendship is the solution then you
have entirely missed the point. It is not the place of the oppressed to suggest
a progressive role for those who benefit from their oppression. My hope is
that understanding the scale of the problem and the limits of the solutions
offered can spark a genuine conversation about how to overhaul this wicked
system. In one of Malcolm X’s most famous speeches he offered a seeming
olive branch to mainstream White society, arguing that America was ‘the
only country in history in a position to actually become involved in a
bloodless revolution’.38 All it had to do was give Black people ‘everything
they’re due’, in order to repair the damage done over the centuries.
Malcolm did not hold out much hope, and busied himself with organizing
the Black masses. If anything should be clear by now, it is that we cannot
wait for White allies to join the struggle to end their systemic privilege.
The glimmer of hope for true transformation in the West is that if the
system is left to collapse under its own weight it may well end human
existence as we know it. The pile of Black and Brown bodies stacked up
since Columbus, to millions each year dying from poverty, is of an
unimaginable scale. But the West has not shied away from White-on-White
violence when vying for the leadership of its empire. Millions of European
and American lives were lost in the two World Wars, and we were on the
brink of Armageddon more than once during the Cold War. One of the
consequences of the rise of a non-White power such as China threatening to
take control of the reins is the increased likelihood of nuclear holocaust. It
was not by chance that the Japanese were used as guinea pigs for the atomic

bomb. Black and Brown bodies are far easier to erase in the logic of empire.
Violence consuming the West (and the entire globe in the process) would be
the ultimate example of chickens coming home to roost, but there is an even
more likely existential threat to humanity.
Over-consumption is killing the planet. The constant pursuit of growth at
all costs is polluting the atmosphere to the point where the world may
become uninhabitable. If drastic action is not taken to reverse global
warming soon then floods of a biblical nature are coming to not only wash
away the sins of the West but also its victims. Solar panels, electric cars and
planting trees are not enough to undo the damage that has been done. It is
the very nature of Western consumption that is due to melt the ice-caps.39
Climate justice is not just a matter of life and death for those who are Black
and Brown; a radical rethink is necessary for humanity to continue.
Maybe it is in this moment, standing on the cliff-edge of annihilation,
staring into the abyss caused by Western so-called civilization, that the
depth of the problem and scale of the solution can be grasped. Perhaps we
can wipe away the illusions of progress based on the distorted vision of
Whiteness we are brainwashed into. This is the chance to refuse the next
system update of imperialism, destroy the hard drive and create an entirely
new framework for the world’s political and economic system. But make no
mistake, whether spurred by revolution or tipped into collapse under its
own weight, the West will eventually fall. Malcolm was right when he
warned that it will be ‘the ballot or the bullet, liberty or death, freedom for
everybody or freedom for nobody’.40

Preface
This book is not for everyone. I have a specific audience in mind—people
who care deeply about racial justice but who, for any number of reasons, do
not yet appreciate the magnitude of the crisis faced by communities of color
as a result of mass incarceration. In other words, I am writing this book for
people like me—the person I was ten years ago. I am also writing it for
another audience—those who have been struggling to persuade their
friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers, co-workers, or political
representatives that something is eerily familiar about the way our criminal
justice system operates, something that looks and feels a lot like an era we
supposedly left behind, but have lacked the facts and data to back up their
claims. It is my hope and prayer that this book empowers you and allows
you to speak your truth with greater conviction, credibility, and courage.
Last, but definitely not least, I am writing this book for all those trapped
within America’s latest caste system. You may be locked up or locked out
of mainstream society, but you are not forgotten.

Introduction
Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather,
and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in
our electoral democracy. Cotton’s family tree tells the story of several
generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were
denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises—the freedom to
vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one’s life.
Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His greatgrandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to
vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His
father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today,
Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United
States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.1
Cotton’s story illustrates, in many respects, the old adage “The more
things change, the more they remain the same.” In each generation, new
tactics have been used for achieving the same goals—goals shared by the
Founding Fathers. Denying African Americans citizenship was deemed
essential to the formation of the original union. Hundreds of years later,
America is still not an egalitarian democracy. The arguments and
rationalizations that have been trotted out in support of racial exclusion and
discrimination in its various forms have changed and evolved, but the
outcome has remained largely the same. An extraordinary percentage of
black men in the United States are legally barred from voting today, just as
they have been throughout most of American history. They are also subject
to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, education, public
benefits, and jury service, just as their parents, grandparents, and greatgrandparents once were.
What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the
basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In
the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race,
explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social
contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice
system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the

practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to
discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to
discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the
old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing
discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity,
denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury
service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights,
and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height
of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it.
I reached the conclusions presented in this book reluctantly. Ten years ago, I
would have argued strenuously against the central claim made here—
namely, that something akin to a racial caste system currently exists in the
United States. Indeed, if Barack Obama had been elected president back
then, I would have argued that his election marked the nation’s triumph
over racial caste—the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow. My elation would
have been tempered by the distance yet to be traveled to reach the promised
land of racial justice in America, but my conviction that nothing remotely
similar to Jim Crow exists in this country would have been steadfast.
Today my elation over Obama’s election is tempered by a far more
sobering awareness. As an African American woman, with three young
children who will never know a world in which a black man could not be
president of the United States, I was beyond thrilled on election night. Yet
when I walked out of the election night party, full of hope and enthusiasm, I
was immediately reminded of the harsh realities of the New Jim Crow. A
black man was on his knees in the gutter, hands cuffed behind his back, as
several police officers stood around him talking, joking, and ignoring his
human existence. People poured out of the building; many stared for a
moment at the black man cowering in the street, and then averted their gaze.
What did the election of Barack Obama mean for him?
Like many civil rights lawyers, I was inspired to attend law school by the
civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s. Even in the face of growing
social and political opposition to remedial policies such as affirmative
action, I clung to the notion that the evils of Jim Crow are behind us and
that, while we have a long way to go to fulfill the dream of an egalitarian,

multiracial democracy, we have made real progress and are now struggling
to hold on to the gains of the past. I thought my job as a civil rights lawyer
was to join with the allies of racial progress to resist attacks on affirmative
action and to eliminate the vestiges of Jim Crow segregation, including our
still separate and unequal system of education. I understood the problems
plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with
crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of
access to quality education—the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim
Crow. Never did I seriously consider the possibility that a new racial caste
system was operating in this country. The new system had been developed
and implemented swiftly, and it was largely invisible, even to people, like
me, who spent most of their waking hours fighting for justice.
I first encountered the idea of a new racial caste system more than a
decade ago, when a bright orange poster caught my eye. I was rushing to
catch the bus, and I noticed a sign stapled to a telephone pole that screamed
in large bold print: THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW. I paused
for a moment and skimmed the text of the flyer. Some radical group was
holding a community meeting about police brutality, the new three-strikes
law in California, and the expansion of America’s prison system. The
meeting was being held at a small community church a few blocks away; it
had seating capacity for no more than fifty people. I sighed, and muttered to
myself something like, “Yeah, the criminal justice system is racist in many
ways, but it really doesn’t help to make such an absurd comparison. People
will just think you’re crazy.” I then crossed the street and hopped on the
bus. I was headed to my new job, director of the Racial Justice Project of
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Northern California.
When I began my work at the ACLU, I assumed that the criminal justice
system had problems of racial bias, much in the same way that all major
institutions in our society are plagued with problems associated with
conscious and unconscious bias. As a lawyer who had litigated numerous
class-action employment-discrimination cases, I understood well the many
ways in which racial stereotyping can permeate subjective decision-making
processes at all levels of an organization, with devastating consequences. I
was familiar with the challenges associated with reforming institutions in
which racial stratification is thought to be normal—the natural consequence
of differences in education, culture, motivation, and, some still believe,

innate ability. While at the ACLU, I shifted my focus from employment
discrimination to criminal justice reform and dedicated myself to the task of
working with others to identify and eliminate racial bias whenever and
wherever it reared its ugly head.
By the time I left the ACLU, I had come to suspect that I was wrong
about the criminal justice system. It was not just another institution infected
with racial bias but rather a different beast entirely. The activists who
posted the sign on the telephone pole were not crazy; nor were the
smattering of lawyers and advocates around the country who were
beginning to connect the dots between our current system of mass
incarceration and earlier forms of social control. Quite belatedly, I came to
see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a
stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social
control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.
In my experience, people who have been incarcerated rarely have
difficulty identifying the parallels between these systems of social control.
Once they are released, they are often denied the right to vote, excluded
from juries, and relegated to a racially segregated and subordinated
existence. Through a web of laws, regulations, and informal rules, all of
which are powerfully reinforced by social stigma, they are confined to the
margins of mainstream society and denied access to the mainstream
economy. They are legally denied the ability to obtain employment,
housing, and public benefits—much as African Americans were once
forced into a segregated, second-class citizenship in the Jim Crow era.
Those of us who have viewed that world from a comfortable distance—
yet sympathize with the plight of the so-called underclass—tend to interpret
the experience of those caught up in the criminal justice system primarily
through the lens of popularized social science, attributing the staggering
increase in incarceration rates in communities of color to the predictable,
though unfortunate, consequences of poverty, racial segregation, unequal
educational opportunities, and the presumed realities of the drug market,
including the mistaken belief that most drug dealers are black or brown.
Occasionally, in the course of my work, someone would make a remark
suggesting that perhaps the War on Drugs is a racist conspiracy to put
blacks back in their place. This type of remark was invariably accompanied
by nervous laughter, intended to convey the impression that although the

idea had crossed their minds, it was not an idea a reasonable person would
take seriously.
Most people assume the War on Drugs was launched in response to the
crisis caused by crack cocaine in inner-city neighborhoods. This view holds
that the racial disparities in drug convictions and sentences, as well as the
rapid explosion of the prison population, reflect nothing more than the
government’s zealous—but benign—efforts to address rampant drug crime
in poor, minority neighborhoods. This view, while understandable, given
the sensational media coverage of crack in the 1980s and 1990s, is simply
wrong.
While it is true that the publicity surrounding crack cocaine led to a
dramatic increase in funding for the drug war (as well as to sentencing
policies that greatly exacerbated racial disparities in incarceration rates),
there is no truth to the notion that the War on Drugs was launched in
response to crack cocaine. President Ronald Reagan officially announced
the current drug war in 1982, before crack became an issue in the media or
a crisis in poor black neighborhoods. A few years after the drug war was
declared, crack began to spread rapidly in the poor black neighborhoods of
Los Angeles and later emerged in cities across the country.2 The Reagan
administration hired staff to publicize the emergence of crack cocaine in
1985 as part of a strategic effort to build public and legislative support for
the war.3 The media campaign was an extraordinary success. Almost
overnight, the media was saturated with images of black “crack whores,”
“crack dealers,” and “crack babies”—images that seemed to confirm the
worst negative racial stereotypes about impoverished inner-city residents.
The media bonanza surrounding the “new demon drug” helped to catapult
the War on Drugs from an ambitious federal policy to an actual war.
The timing of the crack crisis helped to fuel conspiracy theories and
general speculation in poor black communities that the War on Drugs was
part of a genocidal plan by the government to destroy black people in the
United States. From the outset, stories circulated on the street that crack and
other drugs were being brought into black neighborhoods by the CIA.
Eventually, even the Urban League came to take the claims of genocide
seriously. In its 1990 report “The State of Black America,” it stated: “There
is at least one concept that must be recognized if one is to see the pervasive

and insidious nature of the drug problem for the African American
community. Though difficult to accept, that is the concept of genocide.”4
While the conspiracy theories were initially dismissed as far-fetched, if not
downright loony, the word on the street turned out to be right, at least to a
point. The CIA admitted in 1998 that guerilla armies it actively supported in
Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the United States—drugs that
were making their way onto the streets of inner-city black neighborhoods in
the form of crack cocaine. The CIA also admitted that, in the midst of the
War on Drugs, it blocked law enforcement efforts to investigate illegal drug
networks that were helping to fund its covert war in Nicaragua.5
It bears emphasis that the CIA never admitted (nor has any evidence been
revealed to support the claim) that it intentionally sought the destruction of
the black community by allowing illegal drugs to be smuggled into the
United States. Nonetheless, conspiracy theorists surely must be forgiven for
their bold accusation of genocide, in light of the devastation wrought by
crack cocaine and the drug war, and the odd coincidence that an illegal drug
crisis suddenly appeared in the black community after—not before—a drug
war had been declared. In fact, the War on Drugs began at a time when
illegal drug use was on the decline.6 During this same time period, however,
a war was declared, causing arrests and convictions for drug offenses to
skyrocket, especially among people of color.
The impact of the drug war has been astounding. In less than thirty years,
the U.S penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2
million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase.7
The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world,
dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those
in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. In Germany, 93
people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the United
States, the rate is roughly eight times that, or 750 per 100,000.8
The racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature.
No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic
minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black
population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington,
D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black
men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve

time in prison.9 Similar rates of incarceration can be found in black
communities across America.
These stark racial disparities cannot be explained by rates of drug crime.
Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at
remarkably similar rates.10 If there are significant differences in the surveys
to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth,
are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color.11 That is not
what one would guess, however, when entering our nation’s prisons and
jails, which are overflowing with black and brown drug offenders. In some
states, black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates
twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men.12 And in major cities
wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African
American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized
discrimination for the rest of their lives.13 These young men are part of a
growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream
society.
It may be surprising to some that drug crime was declining, not rising, when
a drug war was declared. From a historical perspective, however, the lack of
correlation between crime and punishment is nothing new. Sociologists
have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a
tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often
unrelated to actual crime patterns. Michael Tonry explains in Thinking
About Crime: “Governments decide how much punishment they want, and
these decisions are in no simple way related to crime rates.”14 This fact, he
points out, can be seen most clearly by putting crime and punishment in
comparative perspective. Although crime rates in the United States have not
been markedly higher than those of other Western countries, the rate of
incarceration has soared in the United States while it has remained stable or
declined in other countries. Between 1960 and 1990, for example, official
crime rates in Finland, Germany, and the United States were close to
identical. Yet the U.S. incarceration rate quadrupled, the Finnish rate fell by
60 percent, and the German rate was stable in that period.15 Despite similar
crime rates, each government chose to impose different levels of
punishment.

Today, due to recent declines, U.S. crime rates have dipped below the
international norm. Nevertheless, the United States now boasts an
incarceration rate that is six to ten times greater than that of other
industrialized nations16—a development directly traceable to the drug war.
The only country in the world that even comes close to the American rate of
incarceration is Russia, and no other country in the world incarcerates such
an astonishing percentage of its racial or ethnic minorities.
The stark and sobering reality is that, for reasons largely unrelated to
actual crime trends, the American penal system has emerged as a system of
social control unparalleled in world history. And while the size of the
system alone might suggest that it would touch the lives of most Americans,
the primary targets of its control can be defined largely by race. This is an
astonishing development, especially given that as recently as the mid1970s, the most well-respected criminologists were predicting that the
prison system would soon fade away. Prison did not deter crime
significantly, many experts concluded. Those who had meaningful
economic and social opportunities were unlikely to commit crimes
regardless of the penalty, while those who went to prison were far more
likely to commit crimes again in the future. The growing consensus among
experts was perhaps best reflected by the National Advisory Commission
on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, which issued a recommendation
in 1973 that “no new institutions for adults should be built and existing
institutions for juveniles should be closed.”17 This recommendation was
based on their finding that “the prison, the reformatory and the jail have
achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming evidence
that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it.”18
These days, activists who advocate “a world without prisons” are often
dismissed as quacks, but only a few decades ago, the notion that our society
would be much better off without prisons—and that the end of prisons was
more or less inevitable—not only dominated mainstream academic
discourse in the field of criminology but also inspired a national campaign
by reformers demanding a moratorium on prison construction. Marc Mauer,
the executive director of the Sentencing Project, notes that what is most
remarkable about the moratorium campaign in retrospect is the context of
imprisonment at the time. In 1972, fewer than 350,000 people were being

held in prisons and jails nationwide, compared with more than 2 million
people today. The rate of incarceration in 1972 was at a level so low that it
no longer seems in the realm of possibility, but for moratorium supporters,
that magnitude of imprisonment was egregiously high. “Supporters of the
moratorium effort can be forgiven for being so naïve,” Mauer suggests,
“since the prison expansion that was about to take place was unprecedented
in human history.”19 No one imagined that the prison population would
more than quintuple in their lifetime. It seemed far more likely that prisons
would fade away.
Far from fading away, it appears that prisons are here to stay. And despite
the unprecedented levels of incarceration in the African American
community, the civil rights community is oddly quiet. One in three young
African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice
system—in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole—yet mass
incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed
to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis).
The attention of civil rights advocates has been largely devoted to other
issues, such as affirmative action. During the past twenty years, virtually
every progressive, national civil rights organization in the country has
mobilized and rallied in defense of affirmative action. The struggle to
preserve affirmative action in higher education, and thus maintain diversity
in the nation’s most elite colleges and universities, has consumed much of
the attention and resources of the civil rights community and dominated
racial justice discourse in the mainstream media, leading the general public
to believe that affirmative action is the main battlefront in U.S. race
relations—even as our prisons fill with black and brown men.
My own experience reflects this dynamic. When I first joined the ACLU,
no one imagined that the Racial Justice Project would focus its attention on
criminal justice reform. The ACLU was engaged in important criminal
justice reform work, but no one suspected that work would eventually
become central to the agenda of the Racial Justice Project. The assumption
was that the project would concentrate its efforts on defending affirmative
action. Shortly after leaving the ACLU, I joined the board of directors of
the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Although the organization included racial justice among its core priorities,
reform of the criminal justice system was not (and still is not) a major part
of its racial justice work. The Lawyers’ Committee is not alone.
In January 2008, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights—an
organization composed of the leadership of more than 180 civil rights
organizations—sent a letter to its allies and supporters informing them of a
major initiative to document the voting record of members of Congress.
The letter explained that its forthcoming report would show “how each
representative and senator cast his or her vote on some of the most
important civil rights issues of 2007, including voting rights, affirmative
action, immigration, nominations, education, hate crimes, employment,
health, housing, and poverty.” Criminal justice issues did not make the list.
That same broad-based coalition organized a major conference in October
2007, entitled Why We Can’t Wait: Reversing the Retreat on Civil Rights,
which included panels discussing school integration, employment
discrimination, housing and lending discrimination, economic justice,
environmental justice, disability rights, age discrimination, and immigrants’
rights. Not a single panel was devoted to criminal justice reform.
The elected leaders of the African American community have a much
broader mandate than civil rights groups, but they, too, frequently overlook
criminal justice. In January 2009, for example, the Congressional Black
Caucus sent a letter to hundreds of community and organization leaders
who have worked with the caucus over the years, soliciting general
information about them and requesting that they identify their priorities.
More than thirty-five topics were listed as areas of potential special interest,
including taxes, defense, immigration, agriculture, housing, banking, higher
education, multimedia, transportation and infrastructure, women, seniors,
nutrition, faith initiatives, civil rights, census, economic security, and
emerging leaders. No mention was made of criminal justice. “Re-entry” was
listed, but a community leader who was interested in criminal justice reform
had to check the box labeled “other.”
This is not to say that important criminal justice reform work has not
been done. Civil rights advocates have organized vigorous challenges to
specific aspects of the new caste system. One notable example is the
successful challenge led by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to a racist
drug sting operation in Tulia, Texas. The 1999 drug bust incarcerated

almost 15 percent of the black population of the town, based on the
uncorroborated false testimony of a single informant hired by the sheriff of
Tulia. More recently, civil rights groups around the country have helped to
launch legal attacks and vibrant grassroots campaigns against felon
disenfranchisement laws and have strenuously opposed discriminatory
crack sentencing laws and guidelines, as well as “zero tolerance” policies
that effectively funnel youth of color from schools to jails. The national
ACLU recently developed a racial justice program that includes criminal
justice issues among its core priorities and has created a promising Drug
Law Reform Project. And thanks to the aggressive advocacy of the ACLU,
NAACP, and other civil rights organizations around the country, racial
profiling is widely condemned, even by members of law enforcement who
once openly embraced the practice.
Still, despite these significant developments, there seems to be a lack of
appreciation for the enormity of the crisis at hand. There is no broad-based
movement brewing to end mass incarceration and no advocacy effort that
approaches in scale the fight to preserve affirmative action. There also
remains a persistent tendency in the civil rights community to treat the
criminal justice system as just another institution infected with lingering
racial bias. The NAACP’s Web site offers one example. As recently as May
2008, one could find a brief introduction to the organization’s criminal
justice work in the section entitled Legal Department. The introduction
explained that “despite the civil rights victories of our past, racial prejudice
still pervades the criminal justice system.” Visitors to the Web site were
urged to join the NAACP in order to “protect the hard-earned civil rights
gains of the past three decades.” No one visiting the Web site would learn
that the mass incarceration of African Americans had already eviscerated
many of the hard-earned gains it urged its members to protect.
Imagine if civil rights organizations and African American leaders in the
1940s had not placed Jim Crow segregation at the forefront of their racial
justice agenda. It would have seemed absurd, given that racial segregation
was the primary vehicle of racialized social control in the United States
during that period. This book argues that mass incarceration is,
metaphorically, the New Jim Crow and that all those who care about social
justice should fully commit themselves to dismantling this new racial caste
system. Mass incarceration—not attacks on affirmative action or lax civil

rights enforcement—is the most damaging manifestation of the backlash
against the Civil Rights Movement. The popular narrative that emphasizes
the death of slavery and Jim Crow and celebrates the nation’s “triumph over
race” with the election of Barack Obama, is dangerously misguided. The
colorblind public consensus that prevails in America today—i.e., the
widespread belief that race no longer matters—has blinded us to the
realities of race in our society and facilitated the emergence of a new caste
system.
Clearly, much has changed in my thinking about the criminal justice system
since I passed that bright orange poster stapled to a telephone pole ten years
ago. For me, the new caste system is now as obvious as my own face in the
mirror. Like an optical illusion—one in which the embedded image is
impossible to see until its outline is identified—the new caste system lurks
invisibly within the maze of rationalizations we have developed for
persistent racial inequality. It is possible—quite easy, in fact—never to see
the embedded reality. Only after years of working on criminal justice
reform did my own focus finally shift, and then the rigid caste system
slowly came into view. Eventually it became obvious. Now it seems odd
that I could not see it before.
Knowing as I do the difficulty of seeing what most everyone insists does
not exist, I anticipate that this book will be met with skepticism or
something worse. For some, the characterization of mass incarceration as a
“racial caste system” may seem like a gross exaggeration, if not hyperbole.
Yes, we may have “classes” in the United States—vaguely defined upper,
middle, and lower classes—and we may even have an “underclass” (a
group so estranged from mainstream society that it is no longer in reach of
the mythical ladder of opportunity), but we do not, many will insist, have
anything in this country that resembles a “caste.”
The aim of this book is not to venture into the long-running, vigorous
debate in the scholarly literature regarding what does and does not
constitute a caste system. I use the term racial caste in this book the way it
is used in common parlance to denote a stigmatized racial group locked into
an inferior position by law and custom. Jim Crow and slavery were caste
systems. So is our current system of mass incarceration.

It may be helpful, in attempting to understand the basic nature of the new
caste system, to think of the criminal justice system—the entire collection
of institutions and practices that comprise it—not as an independent system
but rather as a gateway into a much larger system of racial stigmatization
and permanent marginalization. This larger system, referred to here as mass
incarceration, is a system that locks people not only behind actual bars in
actual prisons, but also behind virtual bars and virtual walls—walls that are
invisible to the naked eye but function nearly as effectively as Jim Crow
laws once did at locking people of color into a permanent second-class
citizenship. The term mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal
justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and
customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison. Once
released, former prisoners enter a hidden underworld of legalized
discrimination and permanent social exclusion. They are members of
America’s new undercaste.
The language of caste may well seem foreign or unfamiliar to some.
Public discussions about racial caste in America are relatively rare. We
avoid talking about caste in our society because we are ashamed of our
racial history. We also avoid talking about race. We even avoid talking
about class. Conversations about class are resisted in part because there is a
tendency to imagine that one’s class reflects upon one’s character. What is
key to America’s understanding of class is the persistent belief—despite all
evidence to the contrary—that anyone, with the proper discipline and drive,
can move from a lower class to a higher class. We recognize that mobility
may be difficult, but the key to our collective self-image is the assumption
that mobility is always possible, so failure to move up reflects on one’s
character. By extension, the failure of a race or ethnic group to move up
reflects very poorly on the group as a whole.
What is completely missed in the rare public debates today about the
plight of African Americans is that a huge percentage of them are not free
to move up at all. It is not just that they lack opportunity, attend poor
schools, or are plagued by poverty. They are barred by law from doing so.
And the major institutions with which they come into contact are designed
to prevent their mobility. To put the matter starkly: The current system of
control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American
community out of the mainstream society and economy. The system

operates through our criminal justice institutions, but it functions more like
a caste system than a system of crime control. Viewed from this
perspective, the so-called underclass is better understood as an undercaste
—a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and
custom from mainstream society. Although this new system of racialized
social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains racial
hierarchy much as earlier systems of control did. Like Jim Crow (and
slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws,
policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the
subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.
This argument may be particularly hard to swallow given the election of
Barack Obama. Many will wonder how a nation that just elected its first
black president could possibly have a racial caste system. It’s a fair
question. But as discussed in chapter 6, there is no inconsistency
whatsoever between the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in
the land and the existence of a racial caste system in the era of
colorblindness. The current system of control depends on black
exceptionalism; it is not disproved or undermined by it. Others may wonder
how a racial caste system could exist when most Americans—of all colors
—oppose race discrimination and endorse colorblindness. Yet as we shall
see in the pages that follow, racial caste systems do not require racial
hostility or overt bigotry to thrive. They need only racial indifference, as
Martin Luther King Jr. warned more than forty-five years ago.
The recent decisions by some state legislatures, most notably New
York’s, to repeal or reduce mandatory drug sentencing laws have led some
to believe that the system of racial control described in this book is already
fading away. Such a conclusion, I believe, is a serious mistake. Many of the
states that have reconsidered their harsh sentencing schemes have done so
not out of concern for the lives and families that have been destroyed by
these laws or the racial dimensions of the drug war, but out of concern for
bursting state budgets in a time of economic recession. In other words, the
racial ideology that gave rise to these laws remains largely undisturbed.
Changing economic conditions or rising crime rates could easily result in a
reversal of fortunes for those who commit drug crimes, particularly if the
drug criminals are perceived to be black and brown. Equally important to
understand is this: Merely reducing sentence length, by itself, does not

disturb the basic architecture of the New Jim Crow. So long as large
numbers of African Americans continue to be arrested and labeled drug
criminals, they will continue to be relegated to a permanent second-class
status upon their release, no matter how much (or how little) time they
spend behind bars. The system of mass incarceration is based on the prison
label, not prison time.
Skepticism about the claims made here is warranted. There are important
differences, to be sure, among mass incarceration, Jim Crow, and slavery—
the three major racialized systems of control adopted in the United States to
date. Failure to acknowledge the relevant differences, as well as their
implications, would be a disservice to racial justice discourse. Many of the
differences are not as dramatic as they initially appear, however; others
serve to illustrate the ways in which systems of racialized social control
have managed to morph, evolve, and adapt to changes in the political,
social, and legal context over time. Ultimately, I believe that the similarities
between these systems of control overwhelm the differences and that mass
incarceration, like its predecessors, has been largely immunized from legal
challenge. If this claim is substantially correct, the implications for racial
justice advocacy are profound.
With the benefit of hindsight, surely we can see that piecemeal policy
reform or litigation alone would have been a futile approach to dismantling
Jim Crow segregation. While those strategies certainly had their place, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the concomitant cultural shift would never
have occurred without the cultivation of a critical political consciousness in
the African American community and the widespread, strategic activism
that flowed from it. Likewise, the notion that the New Jim Crow can ever be
dismantled through traditional litigation and policy-reform strategies that
are wholly disconnected from a major social movement seems
fundamentally misguided.
Such a movement is impossible, though, if those most committed to
abolishing racial hierarchy continue to talk and behave as if a statesponsored racial caste system no longer exists. If we continue to tell
ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to
ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too
daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our

energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us
harshly. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.
A new social consensus must be forged about race and the role of race in
defining the basic structure of our society, if we hope ever to abolish the
New Jim Crow. This new consensus must begin with dialogue, a
conversation that fosters a critical consciousness, a key prerequisite to
effective social action. This book is an attempt to ensure that the
conversation does not end with nervous laughter.
It is not possible to write a relatively short book that explores all aspects of
the phenomenon of mass incarceration and its implications for racial justice.
No attempt has been made to do so here. This book paints with a broad
brush, and as a result, many important issues have not received the attention
they deserve. For example, relatively little is said here about the unique
experience of women, Latinos, and immigrants in the criminal justice
system, though these groups are particularly vulnerable to the worst abuses
and suffer in ways that are important and distinct. This book focuses on the
experience of African American men in the new caste system. I hope other
scholars and advocates will pick up where the book leaves off and develop
the critique more fully or apply the themes sketched here to other groups
and other contexts.
What this book is intended to do—the only thing it is intended to do—is
to stimulate a much-needed conversation about the role of the criminal
justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United
States. The fate of millions of people—indeed the future of the black
community itself—may depend on the willingness of those who care about
racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the
criminal justice system in our society. The fact that more than half of the
young black men in any large American city are currently under the control
of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not—as
many argue—just a symptom of poverty or poor choices, but rather
evidence of a new racial caste system at work.
Chapter 1 begins our journey. It briefly reviews the history of racialized
social control in the United States, answering the basic question: How did
we get here? The chapter describes the control of African Americans
through racial caste systems, such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to

die but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of
the time. As we shall see, there is a certain pattern to the births and deaths
of racial caste in America. Time and again, the most ardent proponents of
racial hierarchy have succeeded in creating new caste systems by triggering
a collapse of resistance across the political spectrum. This feat has been
achieved largely by appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class
whites, a group of people who are understandably eager to ensure that they
never find themselves trapped at the bottom of the American totem pole.
This pattern, dating back to slavery, has birthed yet another racial caste
system in the United States: mass incarceration.
The structure of mass incarceration is described in some detail in chapter
2, with a focus on the War on Drugs. Few legal rules meaningfully
constrain the police in the drug war, and enormous financial incentives have
been granted to law enforcement to engage in mass drug arrests through
military-style tactics. Once swept into the system, one’s chances of ever
being truly free are slim, often to the vanishing point. Defendants are
typically denied meaningful legal representation, pressured by the threat of
lengthy sentences into a plea bargain, and then placed under formal control
—in prison or jail, on probation or parole. Upon release, ex-offenders are
discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, and most will
eventually return to prison. They are members of America’s new
undercaste.
Chapter 3 turns our attention to the role of race in the U.S. criminal
justice system. It describes the method to the madness—how a formally
race-neutral criminal justice system can manage to round up, arrest, and
imprison an extraordinary number of black and brown men, when people of
color are actually no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes and many other
offenses than whites. This chapter debunks the notion that rates of black
imprisonment can be explained by crime rates and identifies the huge racial
disparities at every stage of the criminal justice process—from the initial
stop, search, and arrest to the plea bargaining and sentencing phases. In
short, the chapter explains how the legal rules that structure the system
guarantee discriminatory results. These legal rules ensure that the
undercaste is overwhelmingly black and brown.
Chapter 4 considers how the caste system operates once people are
released from prison. In many respects, release from prison does not

represent the beginning of freedom but instead a cruel new phase of
stigmatization and control. Myriad laws, rules, and regulations discriminate
against ex-offenders and effectively prevent their meaningful re-integration
into the mainstream economy and society. I argue that the shame and stigma
of the “prison label” is, in many respects, more damaging to the African
American community than the shame and stigma associated with Jim Crow.
The criminalization and demonization of black men has turned the black
community against itself, unraveling community and family relationships,
decimating networks of mutual support, and intensifying the shame and
self-hate experienced by the current pariah caste.
The many parallels between mass incarceration and Jim Crow are
explored in chapter 5. The most obvious parallel is legalized discrimination.
Like Jim Crow, mass incarceration marginalizes large segments of the
African American community, segregates them physically (in prisons, jails,
and ghettos), and then authorizes discrimination against them in voting,
employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service. The
federal court system has effectively immunized the current system from
challenges on the grounds of racial bias, much as earlier systems of control
were protected and endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The parallels do
not end there, however. Mass incarceration, like Jim Crow, helps to define
the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, the stigma of
criminality functions in much the same way that the stigma of race once
did. It justifies a legal, social, and economic boundary between “us” and
“them.” Chapter 5 also explores some of the differences among slavery, Jim
Crow, and mass incarceration, most significantly the fact that mass
incarceration is designed to warehouse a population deemed disposable—
unnecessary to the functioning of the new global economy—while earlier
systems of control were designed to exploit and control black labor. In
addition, the chapter discusses the experience of white people in this new
caste system; although they have not been the primary targets of the drug
war, they have been harmed by it—a powerful illustration of how a racial
state can harm people of all colors. Finally, this chapter responds to skeptics
who claim that mass incarceration cannot be understood as a racial caste
system because many “get tough on crime” policies are supported by
African Americans. Many of these claims, I note, are no more persuasive
today than arguments made a hundred years ago by blacks and whites who

claimed that racial segregation simply reflected “reality,” not racial animus,
and that African Americans would be better off not challenging the Jim
Crow system but should focus instead on improving themselves within it.
Throughout our history, there have been African Americans who, for a
variety of reasons, have defended or been complicit with the prevailing
system of control.
Chapter 6 reflects on what acknowledging the presence of the New Jim
Crow means for the future of civil rights advocacy. I argue that nothing
short of a major social movement can successfully dismantle the new caste
system. Meaningful reforms can be achieved without such a movement, but
unless the public consensus supporting the current system is completely
overturned, the basic structure of the new caste system will remain intact.
Building a broad-based social movement, however, is not enough. It is not
nearly enough to persuade mainstream voters that we have relied too
heavily on incarceration or that drug abuse is a public health problem, not a
crime. If the movement that emerges to challenge mass incarceration fails to
confront squarely the critical role of race in the basic structure of our
society, and if it fails to cultivate an ethic of genuine care, compassion, and
concern for every human being—of every class, race, and nationality—
within our nation’s borders (including poor whites, who are often pitted
against poor people of color), the collapse of mass incarceration will not
mean the death of racial caste in America. Inevitably a new system of
racialized social control will emerge—one that we cannot foresee, just as
the current system of mass incarceration was not predicted by anyone thirty
years ago. No task is more urgent for racial justice advocates today than
ensuring that America’s current racial caste system is its last.

1
The Rebirth of Caste

[T]he slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved
back again toward slavery.
—W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America

For more than one hundred years, scholars have written about the illusory
nature of the Emancipation Proclamation. President Abraham Lincoln
issued a declaration purporting to free slaves held in Southern Confederate
states, but not a single black slave was actually free to walk away from a
master in those states as a result. A civil war had to be won first, hundreds
of thousands of lives lost, and then—only then—were slaves across the
South set free. Even that freedom proved illusory, though. As W.E.B. Du
Bois eloquently reminds us, former slaves had “a brief moment in the sun”
before they were returned to a status akin to slavery. Constitutional
amendments guaranteeing African Americans “equal protection of the
laws” and the right to vote proved as impotent as the Emancipation
Proclamation once a white backlash against Reconstruction gained steam.
Black people found themselves yet again powerless and relegated to convict
leasing camps that were, in many ways, worse than slavery. Sunshine gave
way to darkness, and the Jim Crow system of segregation emerged—a
system that put black people nearly back where they began, in a subordinate
racial caste.
Few find it surprising that Jim Crow arose following the collapse of
slavery. The development is described in history books as regrettable but
predictable, given the virulent racism that gripped the South and the
political dynamics of the time. What is remarkable is that hardly anyone

seems to imagine that similar political dynamics may have produced
another caste system in the years following the collapse of Jim Crow—one
that exists today. The story that is told during Black History Month is one of
triumph; the system of racial caste is officially dead and buried. Suggestions
to the contrary are frequently met with shocked disbelief. The standard
reply is: “How can you say that a racial caste system exists today? Just look
at Barack Obama! Just look at Oprah Winfrey!”
The fact that some African Americans have experienced great success in
recent years does not mean that something akin to a racial caste system no
longer exists. No caste system in the United States has ever governed all
black people; there have always been “free blacks” and black success
stories, even during slavery and Jim Crow. The superlative nature of
individual black achievement today in formerly white domains is a good
indicator that Jim Crow is dead, but it does not necessarily mean the end of
racial caste. If history is any guide, it may have simply taken a different
form.
Any candid observer of American racial history must acknowledge that
racism is highly adaptable. The rules and reasons the political system
employs to enforce status relations of any kind, including racial hierarchy,
evolve and change as they are challenged. The valiant efforts to abolish
slavery and Jim Crow and to achieve greater racial equality have brought
about significant changes in the legal framework of American society—new
“rules of the game,” so to speak. These new rules have been justified by
new rhetoric, new language, and a new social consensus, while producing
many of the same results. This dynamic, which legal scholar Reva Siegel
has dubbed “preservation through transformation,” is the process through
which white privilege is maintained, though the rules and rhetoric change.1
This process, though difficult to recognize at any given moment, is easier
to see in retrospect. Since the nation’s founding, African Americans
repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim
Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the
needs and constraints of the time. As described in the pages that follow,
there is a certain pattern to this cycle. Following the collapse of each system
of control, there has been a period of confusion—transition—in which those
who are most committed to racial hierarchy search for new means to

achieve their goals within the rules of the game as currently defined. It is
during this period of uncertainty that the backlash intensifies and a new
form of racialized social control begins to take hold. The adoption of the
new system of control is never inevitable, but to date it has never been
avoided. The most ardent proponents of racial hierarchy have consistently
succeeded in implementing new racial caste systems by triggering a
collapse of resistance across the political spectrum. This feat has been
achieved largely by appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class
whites, a group of people who are understandably eager to ensure that they
never find themselves trapped at the bottom of the American hierarchy.
The emergence of each new system of control may seem sudden, but
history shows that the seeds are planted long before each new institution
begins to grow. For example, although it is common to think of the Jim
Crow regime following immediately on the heels of Reconstruction, the
truth is more complicated. And while it is generally believed that the
backlash against the Civil Rights Movement is defined primarily by the
rollback of affirmative action and the undermining of federal civil rights
legislation by a hostile judiciary, the seeds of the new system of control—
mass incarceration—were planted during the Civil Rights Movement itself,
when it became clear that the old caste system was crumbling and a new
one would have to take its place.
With each reincarnation of racial caste, the new system, as sociologist
Loïc Wacquant puts it, “is less total, less capable of encompassing and
controlling the entire race.”2 However, any notion that this evolution
reflects some kind of linear progress would be misguided, for it is not at all
obvious that it would be better to be incarcerated for life for a minor drug
offense than to live with one’s family, earning an honest living under the
Jim Crow regime—notwithstanding the ever-present threat of the Klan.
Moreover, as the systems of control have evolved, they have become
perfected, arguably more resilient to challenge, and thus capable of
enduring for generations to come. The story of the political and economic
underpinnings of the nation’s founding sheds some light on these recurring
themes in our history and the reasons new racial caste systems continue to
be born.

The Birth of Slavery

Back there, before Jim Crow, before the invention of the Negro or the
white man or the words and concepts to describe them, the Colonial
population consisted largely of a great mass of white and black
bondsmen, who occupied roughly the same economic category and
were treated with equal contempt by the lords of the plantations and
legislatures. Curiously unconcerned about their color, these people
worked together and relaxed together.3
—Lerone Bennett Jr.

The concept of race is a relatively recent development. Only in the past
few centuries, owing largely to European imperialism, have the world’s
people been classified along racial lines.4 Here, in America, the idea of race
emerged as a means of reconciling chattel slavery—as well as the
extermination of American Indians—with the ideals of freedom preached
by whites in the new colonies.
In the early colonial period, when settlements remained relatively small,
indentured servitude was the dominant means of securing cheap labor.
Under this system, whites and blacks struggled to survive against a
common enemy, what historian Lerone Bennett Jr. describes as “the big
planter apparatus and a social system that legalized terror against black and
white bondsmen.” 5 Initially, blacks brought to this country were not all
enslaved; many were treated as indentured servants. As plantation farming
expanded, particularly tobacco and cotton farming, demand increased
greatly for both labor and land.
The demand for land was met by invading and conquering larger and
larger swaths of territory. American Indians became a growing impediment

to white European “progress,” and during this period, the images of
American Indians promoted in books, newspapers, and magazines became
increasingly negative. As sociologists Keith Kilty and Eric Swank have
observed, eliminating “savages” is less of a moral problem than eliminating
human beings, and therefore American Indians came to be understood as a
lesser race—uncivilized savages—thus providing a justification for the
extermination of the native peoples.6
The growing demand for labor on plantations was met through slavery.
American Indians were considered unsuitable as slaves, largely because
native tribes were clearly in a position to fight back. The fear of raids by
Indian tribes led plantation owners to grasp for an alternative source of free
labor. European immigrants were also deemed poor candidates for slavery,
not because of their race, but rather because they were in short supply and
enslavement would, quite naturally, interfere with voluntary immigration to
the new colonies. Plantation owners thus viewed Africans, who were
relatively powerless, as the ideal slaves. The systematic enslavement of
Africans, and the rearing of their children under bondage, emerged with all
deliberate speed—quickened by events such as Bacon’s Rebellion.
Nathaniel Bacon was a white property owner in Jamestown, Virginia,
who managed to unite slaves, indentured servants, and poor whites in a
revolutionary effort to overthrow the planter elite. Although slaves clearly
occupied the lowest position in the social hierarchy and suffered the most
under the plantation system, the condition of indentured whites was barely
better, and the majority of free whites lived in extreme poverty. As
explained by historian Edmund Morgan, in colonies like Virginia, the
planter elite, with huge land grants, occupied a vastly superior position to
workers of all colors.7 Southern colonies did not hesitate to invent ways to
extend the terms of servitude, and the planter class accumulated
uncultivated lands to restrict the options of free workers. The simmering
resentment against the planter class created conditions that were ripe for
revolt.
Varying accounts of Bacon’s rebellion abound, but the basic facts are
these: Bacon developed plans in 1675 to seize Native American lands in
order to acquire more property for himself and others and nullify the threat
of Indian raids. When the planter elite in Virginia refused to provide militia

support for his scheme, Bacon retaliated, leading an attack on the elite, their
homes, and their property. He openly condemned the rich for their
oppression of the poor and inspired an alliance of white and black bond
laborers, as well as slaves, who demanded an end to their servitude. The
attempted revolution was ended by force and false promises of amnesty. A
number of the people who participated in the revolt were hanged. The
events in Jamestown were alarming to the planter elite, who were deeply
fearful of the multiracial alliance of bond workers and slaves. Word of
Bacon’s rebellion spread far and wide, and several more uprisings of a
similar type followed.
In an effort to protect their superior status and economic position, the
planters shifted their strategy for maintaining dominance. They abandoned
their heavy reliance on indentured servants in favor of the importation of
more black slaves. Instead of importing English-speaking slaves from the
West Indies, who were more likely to be familiar with European language
and culture, many more slaves were shipped directly from Africa. These
slaves would be far easier to control and far less likely to form alliances
with poor whites.
Fearful that such measures might not be sufficient to protect their
interests, the planter class took an additional precautionary step, a step that
would later come to be known as a “racial bribe.” Deliberately and
strategically, the planter class extended special privileges to poor whites in
an effort to drive a wedge between them and black slaves. White settlers
were allowed greater access to Native American lands, white servants were
allowed to police slaves through slave patrols and militias, and barriers
were created so that free labor would not be placed in competition with
slave labor. These measures effectively eliminated the risk of future
alliances between black slaves and poor whites. Poor whites suddenly had a
direct, personal stake in the existence of a race-based system of slavery.
Their own plight had not improved by much, but at least they were not
slaves. Once the planter elite split the labor force, poor whites responded to
the logic of their situation and sought ways to expand their racially
privileged position.8
By the mid-1770s, the system of bond labor had been thoroughly
transformed into a racial caste system predicated on slavery. The degraded

status of Africans was justified on the ground that Negros, like the Indians,
were an uncivilized lesser race, perhaps even more lacking in intelligence
and laudable human qualities than the red-skinned natives. The notion of
white supremacy rationalized the enslavement of Africans, even as whites
endeavored to form a new nation based on the ideals of equality, liberty, and
justice for all. Before democracy, chattel slavery in America was born.
It may be impossible to overstate the significance of race in defining the
basic structure of American society. The structure and content of the
original Constitution was based largely on the effort to preserve a racial
caste system—slavery—while at the same time affording political and
economic rights to whites, especially propertied whites. The southern
slaveholding colonies would agree to form a union only on the condition
that the federal government would not be able to interfere with the right to
own slaves. Northern white elites were sympathetic to the demand for their
“property rights” to be respected, as they, too, wanted the Constitution to
protect their property interests. As James Madison put it, the nation ought to
be constituted “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”9
Consequently, the Constitution was designed so the federal government
would be weak, not only in its relationship to private property, but also in
relationship to the rights of states to conduct their own affairs. The language
of the Constitution itself was deliberately colorblind (the words slave or
Negro were never used), but the document was built upon a compromise
regarding the prevailing racial caste system. Federalism—the division of
power between the states and the federal government—was the device
employed to protect the institution of slavery and the political power of
slaveholding states. Even the method for determining proportional
representation in Congress and identifying the winner of a presidential
election (the electoral college) were specifically developed with the interest
of slaveholders in mind. Under the terms of our country’s founding
document, slaves were defined as three-fifths of a man, not a real, whole
human being. Upon this racist fiction rests the entire structure of American
democracy.

The Death of Slavery

The history of racial caste in the United States would end with the Civil
War if the idea of race and racial difference had died when the institution of
slavery was put to rest. But during the four centuries in which slavery
flourished, the idea of race flourished as well. Indeed, the notion of racial
difference—specifically the notion of white supremacy—proved far more
durable than the institution that gave birth to it.
White supremacy, over time, became a religion of sorts. Faith in the idea
that people of the African race were bestial, that whites were inherently
superior, and that slavery was, in fact, for blacks’ own good, served to
alleviate the white conscience and reconcile the tension between slavery
and the democratic ideals espoused by whites in the so-called New World.
There was no contradiction in the bold claim made by Thomas Jefferson in
the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” if Africans
were not really people. Racism operated as a deeply held belief system
based on “truths” beyond question or doubt. This deep faith in white
supremacy not only justified an economic and political system in which
plantation owners acquired land and great wealth through the brutality,
torture, and coercion of other human beings; it also endured, like most
articles of faith, long after the historical circumstances that gave rise to the
religion passed away. In Wacquant’s words: “Racial division was a
consequence, not a precondition of slavery, but once it was instituted it
became detached from its initial function and acquired a social potency all
its own.”10 After the death of slavery, the idea of race lived on.
One of the most compelling accounts of the postemancipation period is
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, written by C. Vann Woodward in 1955.11
The book continues to be the focal point of study and debate by scholars
and was once described by Martin Luther King Jr. as the “historical bible of
the Civil Rights Movement.” As Woodward tells the story, the end of
slavery created an extraordinary dilemma for Southern white society.

Without the labor of former slaves, the region’s economy would surely
collapse, and without the institution of slavery, there was no longer a formal
mechanism for maintaining racial hierarchy and preventing “amalgamation”
with a group of people considered intrinsically inferior and vile. This state
of affairs produced a temporary anarchy and a state of mind bordering on
hysteria, particularly among the planter elite. But even among poor whites,
the collapse of slavery was a bitter pill. In the antebellum South, the
lowliest white person at least possessed his or her white skin—a badge of
superiority over even the most skilled slave or prosperous free African
American.
While Southern whites—poor and rich alike—were utterly outraged by
emancipation, there was no obvious solution to the dilemma they faced.
Following the Civil War, the economic and political infrastructure of the
South was in shambles. Plantation owners were suddenly destitute, and
state governments, shackled by war debt, were penniless. Large amounts of
real estate and other property had been destroyed in the war, industry was
disorganized, and hundreds of thousands of men had been killed or maimed.
With all of this went the demoralizing effect of an unsuccessful war and the
extraordinary challenges associated with rebuilding new state and local
governments. Add to all this the sudden presence of 4 million newly freed
slaves, and the picture becomes even more complicated. Southern whites,
Woodward explains, strongly believed that a new system of racial control
was clearly required, but it was not immediately obvious what form it
should take.
Under slavery, the racial order was most effectively maintained by a large
degree of contact between slave owners and slaves, thus maximizing
opportunities for supervision and discipline, and minimizing the potential
for active resistance or rebellion. Strict separation of the races would have
threatened slaveholders’ immediate interests and was, in any event, wholly
unnecessary as a means of creating social distance or establishing the
inferior status of slaves.
Following the Civil War, it was unclear what institutions, laws, or
customs would be necessary to maintain white control now that slavery was
gone. Nonetheless, as numerous historians have shown, the development of
a new racial order became the consuming passion for most white
Southerners. Rumors of a great insurrection terrified whites, and blacks

increasingly came to be viewed as menacing and dangerous. In fact, the
current stereotypes of black men as aggressive, unruly predators can be
traced to this period, when whites feared that an angry mass of black men
might rise up and attack them or rape their women.
Equally worrisome was the state of the economy. Former slaves literally
walked away from their plantations, causing panic and outrage among
plantation owners. Large numbers of former slaves roamed the highways in
the early years after the war. Some converged on towns and cities; others
joined the federal militia. Most white people believed African Americans
lacked the proper motivation to work, prompting the provisional Southern
legislatures to adopt the notorious black codes. As expressed by one
Alabama planter: “We have the power to pass stringent police laws to
govern the Negroes—this is a blessing—for they must be controlled in
some way or white people cannot live among them.”12 While some of these
codes were intended to establish systems of peonage resembling slavery,
others foreshadowed Jim Crow laws by prohibiting, among other things,
interracial seating in the first-class sections of railroad cars and by
segregating schools.
Although the convict laws enacted during this period are rarely seen as
part of the black codes, that is a mistake. As explained by historian William
Cohen, “the main purpose of the codes was to control the freedmen, and the
question of how to handle convicted black law breakers was very much at
the center of the control issue.”13 Nine southern states adopted vagrancy
laws—which essentially made it a criminal offense not to work and were
applied selectively to blacks—and eight of those states enacted convict laws
allowing for the hiring-out of county prisoners to plantation owners and
private companies. Prisoners were forced to work for little or no pay. One
vagrancy act specifically provided that “all free negroes and mulattoes over
the age of eighteen” must have written proof of a job at the beginning of
every year. Those found with no lawful employment were deemed vagrants
and convicted. Clearly, the purpose of the black codes in general and the
vagrancy laws in particular was to establish another system of forced labor.
In W.E.B. Du Bois’s words: “The Codes spoke for themselves.... No openminded student can read them without being convinced they meant nothing
more nor less than slavery in daily toil.”14

Ultimately, the black codes were overturned, and a slew of federal civil
rights legislation protecting the newly freed slaves was passed during the
relatively brief but extraordinary period of black advancement known as the
Reconstruction Era. The impressive legislative achievements of this period
include the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery; the Civil Rights Act
of 1866, bestowing full citizenship upon African Americans; the Fourteenth
Amendment, prohibiting states from denying citizens due process and
“equal protection of the laws”; the Fifteenth Amendment, providing that the
right to vote should not be denied on account of race; and the Ku Klux Klan
Acts, which, among other things, declared interference with voting a federal
offense and the violent infringement of civil rights a crime. The new
legislation also provided for federal supervision of voting and authorized
the president to send the army and suspend the writ of habeas corpus in
districts declared to be in a state of insurrection against the federal
government.
In addition to federal civil rights legislation, the Reconstruction Era
brought the expansion of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the agency charged with
the responsibility of providing food, clothing, fuel, and other forms of
assistance to destitute former slaves. A public education system emerged in
the South, which afforded many blacks (and poor whites) their first
opportunity to learn to read and write.
While the Reconstruction Era was fraught with corruption and arguably
doomed by the lack of land reform, the sweeping economic and political
developments in that period did appear, at least for a time, to have the
potential to seriously undermine, if not completely eradicate, the racial
caste system in the South. With the protection of federal troops, African
Americans began to vote in large numbers and seize control, in some areas,
of the local political apparatus. Literacy rates climbed, and educated blacks
began to populate legislatures, open schools, and initiate successful
businesses. In 1867, at the dawn of the Reconstruction Era, no black man
held political office in the South, yet three years later, at least 15 percent of
all Southern elected officials were black. This is particularly extraordinary
in light of the fact that fifteen years after the passage of the Voting Rights
Act of 1965—the high water mark of the Civil Rights Movement—fewer
than 8 percent of all Southern elected officials were black.15

At the same time, however, many of the new civil rights laws were
proving largely symbolic.16 Notably absent from the Fifteenth Amendment,
for example, was language prohibiting the states from imposing
educational, residential, or other qualifications for voting, thus leaving the
door open to the states to impose poll taxes, literacy tests, and other devices
to prevent blacks from voting. Other laws revealed themselves as more an
assertion of principle than direct federal intervention into Southern affairs,
because enforcement required African Americans to take their cases to
federal courts, a costly and time-consuming procedure that was a practical
impossibility for the vast majority of those who had claims. Most blacks
were too poor to sue to enforce their civil rights, and no organization like
the NAACP yet existed to spread the risks and costs of litigation. Moreover,
the threat of violence often deterred blacks from pressing legitimate claims,
making the “civil rights” of former slaves largely illusory—existing on
paper but rarely to be found in real life.
Meanwhile, the separation of the races had begun to emerge as a
comprehensive pattern throughout the South, driven in large part by the
rhetoric of the planter elite, who hoped to re-establish a system of control
that would ensure a low-paid, submissive labor force. Racial segregation
had actually begun years earlier in the North, as an effort to prevent racemixing and preserve racial hierarchy following the abolition of Northern
slavery. It had never developed, however, into a comprehensive system—
operating instead largely as a matter of custom, enforced with varying
degrees of consistency. Even among those most hostile to Reconstruction,
few would have predicted that racial segregation would soon evolve into a
new racial caste system as stunningly comprehensive and repressive as the
one that came to be known simply as Jim Crow.

The Birth of Jim Crow

The backlash against the gains of African Americans in the Reconstruction
Era was swift and severe. As African Americans obtained political power
and began the long march toward greater social and economic equality,
whites reacted with panic and outrage. Southern conservatives vowed to
reverse Reconstruction and sought the “abolition of the Freedmen’s Bureau
and all political instrumentalities designed to secure Negro supremacy.”17
Their campaign to “redeem” the South was reinforced by a resurgent Ku
Klux Klan, which fought a terrorist campaign against Reconstruction
governments and local leaders, complete with bombings, lynchings, and
mob violence.
The terrorist campaign proved highly successful. “Redemption” resulted
in the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the effective
abandonment of African Americans and all those who had fought for or
supported an egalitarian racial order. The federal government no longer
made any effort to enforce federal civil rights legislation, and funding for
the Freedmen’s Bureau was slashed to such a degree that the agency
became virtually defunct.
Once again, vagrancy laws and other laws defining activities such as
“mischief” and “insulting gestures” as crimes were enforced vigorously
against blacks. The aggressive enforcement of these criminal offenses
opened up an enormous market for convict leasing, in which prisoners were
contracted out as laborers to the highest private bidder. Douglas Blackmon,
in Slavery by Another Name, describes how tens of thousands of African
Americans were arbitrarily arrested during this period, many of them hit
with court costs and fines, which had to be worked off in order to secure
their release.18 With no means to pay off their “debts,” prisoners were sold
as forced laborers to lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, farms,
plantations, and dozens of corporations throughout the South. Death rates
were shockingly high, for the private contractors had no interest in the

health and well-being of their laborers, unlike the earlier slave-owners who
needed their slaves, at a minimum, to be healthy enough to survive hard
labor. Laborers were subject to almost continual lashing by long horse
whips, and those who collapsed due to injuries or exhaustion were often left
to die.
Convicts had no meaningful legal rights at this time and no effective
redress. They were understood, quite literally, to be slaves of the state. The
Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had abolished slavery but
allowed one major exception: slavery remained appropriate as punishment
for a crime. In a landmark decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, Ruffin v.
Commonwealth, issued at the height of Southern Redemption, the court put
to rest any notion that convicts were legally distinguishable from slaves:
For a time, during his service in the penitentiary, he is in a state of
penal servitude to the State. He has, as a consequence of his crime, not
only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which
the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being a slave
of the State. He is civiliter mortus; and his estate, if he has any, is
administered like that of a dead man.19
The state of Mississippi eventually moved from hiring convict labor to
organizing its own convict labor camp, known as Parchman Farm. It was
not alone. During the decade following Redemption, the convict population
grew ten times faster than the general population: “Prisoners became
younger and blacker, and the length of their sentences soared.”20 It was the
nation’s first prison boom and, as they are today, the prisoners were
disproportionately black. After a brief period of progress during
Reconstruction, African Americans found themselves, once again, virtually
defenseless. The criminal justice system was strategically employed to
force African Americans back into a system of extreme repression and
control, a tactic that would continue to prove successful for generations to
come. Even as convict leasing faded away, strategic forms of exploitation
and repression emerged anew. As Blackmon notes: “The apparent demise . .
. of leasing prisoners seemed a harbinger of a new day. But the harsher
reality of the South was that the new post-Civil War neoslavery was
evolving—not disappearing.”21

Redemption marked a turning point in the quest by dominant whites for a
new racial equilibrium, a racial order that would protect their economic,
political, and social interests in a world without slavery. Yet a clear
consensus among whites about what the new racial order should be was still
lacking. The Redeemers who overthrew Reconstruction were inclined to
retain such segregation practices as had already emerged, but they displayed
no apparent disposition to expand or universalize the system.
Three alternative philosophies of race relations were put forward to
compete for the region’s support, all of which rejected the doctrines of
extreme racism espoused by some Redeemers: liberalism, conservatism,
and radicalism. 22 The liberal philosophy of race relations emphasized the
stigma of segregation and the hypocrisy of a government that celebrates
freedom and equality yet denies both on account of race. This philosophy,
born in the North, never gained much traction among Southern whites or
blacks.
The conservative philosophy, by contrast, attracted wide support and was
implemented in various contexts over a considerable period of time.
Conservatives blamed liberals for pushing blacks ahead of their proper
station in life and placing blacks in positions they were unprepared to fill, a
circumstance that had allegedly contributed to their downfall. They warned
blacks that some Redeemers were not satisfied with having decimated
Reconstruction, and were prepared to wage an aggressive war against
blacks throughout the South. With some success, the conservatives reached
out to African American voters, reminding them that they had something to
lose as well as gain and that the liberals’ preoccupation with political and
economic equality presented the danger of losing all that blacks had so far
gained.
The radical philosophy offered, for many African Americans, the most
promise. It was predicated on a searing critique of large corporations,
particularly railroads, and the wealthy elite in the North and South. The
radicals of the late nineteenth century, who later formed the Populist Party,
viewed the privileged classes as conspiring to keep poor whites and blacks
locked into a subordinate political and economic position. For many
African American voters, the Populist approach was preferable to the
paternalism of liberals. Populists preached an “equalitarianism of want and

poverty, the kinship of a common grievance, and a common oppressor.”23
As described by Tom Watson, a prominent Populist leader, in a speech
advocating a union between black and white farmers: “You are kept apart
that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate
each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of
financial despotism that enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded
that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary
system which beggars both.”24
In an effort to demonstrate their commitment to a genuinely multiracial,
working-class movement against white elites, the Populists made strides
toward racial integration, a symbol of their commitment to class-based
unity. African Americans throughout the South responded with great hope
and enthusiasm, eager to be true partners in a struggle for social justice.
According to Woodward, “It is altogether probable that during the brief
Populist upheaval in the nineties Negroes and native whites achieved a
greater comity of mind and harmony of political purpose than ever before
or since in the South.”25
The challenges inherent in creating the alliance sought by the Populists
were formidable, as race prejudice ran the highest among the very white
populations to which the Populist appeal was specifically addressed—the
depressed lower economic classes. Nevertheless, the Populist movement
initially enjoyed remarkable success in the South, fueled by a wave of
discontent aroused by the severe agrarian depression of the 1880s and
1890s. The Populists took direct aim at the conservatives, who were known
as comprising a party of privilege, and they achieved a stunning series of
political victories throughout the region. Alarmed by the success of the
Populists and the apparent potency of the alliance between poor and
working-class whites and African Americans, the conservatives raised the
cry of white supremacy and resorted to the tactics they had employed in
their quest for Redemption, including fraud, intimidation, bribery, and
terror.
Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate effort to drive a
wedge between poor whites and African Americans. These discriminatory
barriers were designed to encourage lower-class whites to retain a sense of
superiority over blacks, making it far less likely that they would sustain

interracial political alliances aimed at toppling the white elite. The laws
were, in effect, another racial bribe. As William Julius Wilson has noted,
“As long as poor whites directed their hatred and frustration against the
black competitor, the planters were relieved of class hostility directed
against them.”26 Indeed, in order to overcome the well-founded suspicions
of poor and illiterate whites that they, as well as blacks, were in danger of
losing the right to vote, the leaders of the movement pursued an aggressive
campaign of white supremacy in every state prior to black
disenfranchisement.
Ultimately, the Populists caved to the pressure and abandoned their
former allies. “While the [Populist] movement was at the peak of zeal,”
Woodward observed, “the two races had surprised each other and
astonished their opponents by the harmony they achieved and the good will
with which they co-operated.”27 But when it became clear that the
conservatives would stop at nothing to decimate their alliance, the biracial
partnership dissolved, and Populist leaders re-aligned themselves with
conservatives. Even Tom Watson, who had been among the most forceful
advocates for an interracial alliance of farmers, concluded that Populist
principles could never be fully embraced by the South until blacks were
eliminated from politics.
The agricultural depression, taken together with a series of failed reforms
and broken political promises, had pyramided to a climax of social tensions.
Dominant whites concluded that it was in their political and economic
interest to scapegoat blacks, and “permission to hate” came from sources
that had formerly denied it, including Northern liberals eager to reconcile
with the South, Southern conservatives who had once promised blacks
protection from racial extremism, and Populists, who cast aside their darkskinned allies when the partnership fell under siege.28
History seemed to repeat itself. Just as the white elite had successfully
driven a wedge between poor whites and blacks following Bacon’s
Rebellion by creating the institution of black slavery, another racial caste
system was emerging nearly two centuries later, in part due to efforts by
white elites to decimate a multiracial alliance of poor people. By the turn of
the twentieth century, every state in the South had laws on the books that
disenfranchised blacks and discriminated against them in virtually every

sphere of life, lending sanction to a racial ostracism that extended to
schools, churches, housing, jobs, restrooms, hotels, restaurants, hospitals,
orphanages, prisons, funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries. Politicians
competed with each other by proposing and passing ever more stringent,
oppressive, and downright ridiculous legislation (such as laws specifically
prohibiting blacks and whites from playing chess together). The public
symbols and constant reminders of black subjugation were supported by
whites across the political spectrum, though the plight of poor whites
remained largely unchanged. For them, the racial bribe was primarily
psychological.
The new racial order, known as Jim Crow—a term apparently derived
from a minstrel show character—was regarded as the “final settlement,” the
“return to sanity,” and “the permanent system.”29 Of course, the earlier
system of racialized social control—slavery—had also been regarded as
final, sane, and permanent by its supporters. Like the earlier system, Jim
Crow seemed “natural,” and it became difficult to remember that alternative
paths were not only available at one time, but nearly embraced.

The Death of Jim Crow

Scholars have long debated the beginning and end of Reconstruction, as
well as exactly when Jim Crow ended and the Civil Rights Movement or
“Second Reconstruction” began. Reconstruction is most typically described
as stretching from 1863 when the North freed the slaves to 1877, when it
abandoned them and withdrew federal troops from the South. There is
much less certainty regarding the beginning of the end of Jim Crow.
The general public typically traces the death of Jim Crow to Brown v.
Board of Education, although the institution was showing signs of
weakness years before. By 1945, a growing number of whites in the North
had concluded that the Jim Crow system would have to be modified, if not
entirely overthrown. This consensus was due to a number of factors,
including the increased political power of blacks due to migration to the
North and the growing membership and influence of the NAACP,
particularly its highly successful legal campaign challenging Jim Crow laws
in federal courts. Far more important in the view of many scholars,
however, is the influence of World War II. The blatant contradiction
between the country’s opposition to the crimes of the Third Reich against
European Jews and the continued existence of a racial caste system in the
United States was proving embarrassing, severely damaging the nation’s
credibility as leader of the “free world.” There was also increased concern
that, without greater equality for African Americans, blacks would become
susceptible to communist influence, given Russia’s commitment to both
racial and economic equality. In Gunnar Myrdal’s highly influential book
The American Dilemma, published in 1944, Myrdal made a passionate plea
for integration based on the theory that the inherent contradiction between
the “American Creed” of freedom and equality and the treatment of African
Americans was not only immoral and profoundly unjust, but was also
against the economic and foreign-policy interests of the United States.30

The Supreme Court seemed to agree. In 1944, in Smith v. Allwright, the
Supreme Court ended the use of the all-white primary election; and in 1946,
the Court ruled that state laws requiring segregation on interstate buses
were unconstitutional. Two years later, the Court voided any real estate
agreements that racially discriminated against purchasers, and in 1949 the
Court ruled that Texas’s segregated law school for blacks was inherently
unequal and inferior in every respect to its law school for whites. In 1950,
in McLaurin v. Oklahoma, it declared that Oklahoma had to desegregate its
law school. Thus, even before Brown, the Supreme Court had already begun
to set in motion a striking pattern of desegregation.
Brown v. Board of Education was unique, however. It signaled the end of
“home rule” in the South with respect to racial affairs. Earlier decisions had
chipped away at the “separate but equal” doctrine, yet Jim Crow had
managed to adapt to the changing legal environment, and most Southerners
had remained confident that the institution would survive. Brown threatened
not only to abolish segregation in public schools, but also, by implication,
the entire system of legalized discrimination in the South. After more than
fifty years of nearly complete deference to Southern states and
noninterference in their racial affairs, Brown suggested a reversal in course.
A mood of outrage and defiance swept the South, not unlike the reaction
to emancipation and Reconstruction following the Civil War. Again, racial
equality was being forced upon the South by the federal government, and
by 1956 Southern white opposition to desegregation mushroomed into a
vicious backlash. In Congress, North Carolina Senator Sam Erwin Jr.
drafted a racist polemic, “the Southern Manifesto,” which vowed to fight to
maintain Jim Crow by all legal means. Erwin succeeded in obtaining the
support of 101 out of 128 members of Congress from the eleven original
Confederate states.
A fresh wave of white terror was hurled at those who supported the
dismantling of Jim Crow. White Citizens’ Councils were formed in almost
every Southern city and backwater town, comprised primarily of middle- to
upper-middle-class whites in business and the clergy. Just as Southern
legislatures had passed the black codes in response to the early steps of
Reconstruction, in the years immediately following Brown v. Board, five
Southern legislatures passed nearly fifty new Jim Crow laws. In the streets,
resistance turned violent. The Ku Klux Klan reasserted itself as a powerful

terrorist organization, committing castrations, killings, and the bombing of
black homes and churches. NAACP leaders were beaten, pistol-whipped,
and shot. As quickly as it began, desegregation across the South ground to a
halt. In 1958, thirteen school systems were desegregated; in 1960, only
seventeen.31
In the absence of a massive, grassroots movement directly challenging
the racial caste system, Jim Crow might be alive and well today. Yet in the
1950s, a civil rights movement was brewing, emboldened by the Supreme
Court’s decisions and a shifting domestic and international political
environment. With extraordinary bravery, civil rights leaders, activists, and
progressive clergy launched boycotts, marches, and sit-ins protesting the
Jim Crow system. They endured fire hoses, police dogs, bombings, and
beatings by white mobs, as well as by the police. Once again, federal troops
were sent to the South to provide protection for blacks attempting to
exercise their civil rights, and the violent reaction of white racists was met
with horror in the North.
The dramatic high point of the Civil Rights Movement occurred in 1963.
The Southern struggle had grown from a modest group of black students
demonstrating peacefully at one lunch counter to the largest mass
movement for racial reform and civil rights in the twentieth century.
Between autumn 1961 and the spring of 1963, twenty thousand men,
women, and children had been arrested. In 1963 alone, another fifteen
thousand were imprisoned, and one thousand desegregation protests
occurred across the region, in more than one hundred cities.32
On June 12, 1963, President Kennedy announced that he would deliver to
Congress a strong civil rights bill, a declaration that transformed him into a
widely recognized ally of the Civil Rights Movement. Following Kennedy’s
assassination, President Johnson professed his commitment to the goal of
“the full assimilation of more than twenty million Negroes into American
life,” and ensured the passage of comprehensive civil rights legislation. The
Civil Rights Act of 1964 formally dismantled the Jim Crow system of
discrimination in public accommodations, employment, voting, education,
and federally financed activities. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 arguably
had even greater scope, as it rendered illegal numerous discriminatory
barriers to effective political participation by African Americans and

mandated federal review of all new voting regulations so that it would be
possible to determine whether their use would perpetuate voting
discrimination.
Within five years, the effects of the civil rights revolution were
undeniable. Between 1964 and 1969, the percentage of African American
adults registered to vote in the South soared. In Alabama the rate leaped
from 19.3 percent to 61.3 percent; in Georgia, 27.4 percent to 60.4 percent;
in Louisiana, 31.6 percent to 60.8 percent; and in Mississippi, 6.7 percent to
66.5 percent.33 Suddenly black children could shop in department stores,
eat at restaurants, drink from water fountains, and go to amusement parks
that were once off-limits. Miscegenation laws were declared
unconstitutional, and the rate of interracial marriage climbed.
While dramatic progress was apparent in the political and social realms,
civil rights activists became increasingly concerned that, without major
economic reforms, the vast majority of blacks would remain locked in
poverty. Thus at the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, activists and others
began to turn their attention to economic problems, arguing that
socioeconomic inequality interacted with racism to produce crippling
poverty and related social problems. Economic issues emerged as a major
focus of discontent. As political scientists Frances Fox Piven and Richard
Cloward have described, “blacks became more indignant over their
condition—not only as an oppressed racial minority in a white society but
as poor people in an affluent one.”34 Activists organized boycotts, picket
lines, and demonstrations to attack discrimination in access to jobs and the
denial of economic opportunity.
Perhaps the most famous demonstration in support of economic justice is
the March on Washington for Jobs and Economic Freedom in August 1963.
The wave of activism associated with economic justice helped to focus
President Kennedy’s attention on poverty and black unemployment. In the
summer of 1963, he initiated a series of staff studies on those subjects. By
the end of the summer, he declared his intention to make the eradication of
poverty a key legislative objective in 1964.35 Following Kennedy’s
assassination, President Lyndon Johnson embraced the antipoverty rhetoric
with great passion, calling for an “unconditional war on poverty,” in his

State of the Union Address in January 1964. Weeks later he proposed to
Congress the Economic Opportunities Bill of 1964.
The shift in focus served to align the goals of the Civil Rights Movement
with key political goals of poor and working-class whites, who were also
demanding economic reforms. As the Civil Rights Movement began to
evolve into a “Poor People’s Movement,” it promised to address not only
black poverty, but white poverty as well—thus raising the specter of a poor
and working-class movement that cut across racial lines. Martin Luther
King Jr. and other civil rights leaders made it clear that they viewed the
eradication of economic inequality as the next front in the “human rights
movement” and made great efforts to build multiracial coalitions that
sought economic justice for all. Genuine equality for black people, King
reasoned, demanded a radical restructuring of society, one that would
address the needs of the black and white poor throughout the country.
Shortly before his assassination, he envisioned bringing to Washington,
D.C., thousands of the nation’s disadvantaged in an interracial alliance that
embraced rural and ghetto blacks, Appalachian whites, Mexican Americans,
Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans to demand jobs and income—the
right to live. In a speech delivered in 1968, King acknowledged there had
been some progress for blacks since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of
1964, but insisted that the current challenges required even greater resolve
and that the entire nation must be transformed for economic justice to be
more than a dream for poor people of all colors. As historian Gerald
McKnight observes, “King was proposing nothing less than a radical
transformation of the Civil Rights Movement into a populist crusade calling
for redistribution of economic and political power. America’s only civil
rights leader was now focusing on class issues and was planning to descend
on Washington with an army of poor to shake the foundations of the power
structure and force the government to respond to the needs of the ignored
underclass.”36
With the success of the Civil Rights Movement and the launching of the
Poor People’s Movement, it was apparent to all that a major disruption in
the nation’s racial equilibrium had occurred. Yet as we shall see below,
Negroes stood only a “brief moment in the sun.” Conservative whites
began, once again, to search for a new racial order that would conform to

the needs and constraints of the time. This process took place with the
understanding that whatever the new order would be, it would have to be
formally race-neutral—it could not involve explicit or clearly intentional
race discrimination. A similar phenomenon had followed slavery and
Reconstruction, as white elites struggled to define a new racial order with
the understanding that whatever the new order would be, it could not
include slavery. Jim Crow eventually replaced slavery, but now it too had
died, and it was unclear what might take its place. Barred by law from
invoking race explicitly, those committed to racial hierarchy were forced to
search for new means of achieving their goals according to the new rules of
American democracy.
History reveals that the seeds of the new system of control were planted
well before the end of the Civil Rights Movement. A new race-neutral
language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language
accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast
majority of blacks back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found
they could install a new racial caste system without violating the law or the
new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding “law and order”
rather than “segregation forever.”

The Birth of Mass Incarceration

The rhetoric of “law and order” was first mobilized in the late 1950s as
Southern governors and law enforcement officials attempted to generate
and mobilize white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. In the years
following Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights activists used directaction tactics in an effort to force reluctant Southern states to desegregate
public facilities. Southern governors and law enforcement officials often
characterized these tactics as criminal and argued that the rise of the Civil
Rights Movement was indicative of a breakdown of law and order. Support
of civil rights legislation was derided by Southern conservatives as merely
“rewarding lawbreakers.”
For more than a decade—from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s—
conservatives systematically and strategically linked opposition to civil
rights legislation to calls for law and order, arguing that Martin Luther King
Jr.’s philosophy of civil disobedience was a leading cause of crime. Civil
rights protests were frequently depicted as criminal rather than political in
nature, and federal courts were accused of excessive “lenience” toward
lawlessness, thereby contributing to the spread of crime. In the words of
then-Vice President Richard Nixon, the increasing crime rate “can be traced
directly to the spread of the corrosive doctrine that every citizen possesses
an inherent right to decide for himself which laws to obey and when to
disobey them.”37 Some segregationists went further, insisting that
integration causes crime, citing lower crime rates in Southern states as
evidence that segregation was necessary. In the words of Representative
John Bell Williams, “This exodus of Negroes from the South, and their
influx into the great metropolitan centers of other areas of the Nation, has
been accompanied by a wave of crime.... What has civil rights
accomplished for these areas? . . . Segregation is the only answer as most
Americans—not the politicians—have realized for hundreds of years.”38

Unfortunately, at the same time that civil rights were being identified as a
threat to law and order, the FBI was reporting fairly dramatic increases in
the national crime rate. Despite significant controversy over the accuracy of
the statistics, these reports received a great deal of publicity and were
offered as further evidence of the breakdown in lawfulness, morality, and
social stability.39 To make matters worse, riots erupted in the summer of
1964 in Harlem and Rochester, followed by a series of uprisings that swept
the nation following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
The racial imagery associated with the riots gave fuel to the argument that
civil rights for blacks led to rampant crime. Cities like Philadelphia and
Rochester were described as being victims of their own generosity.
Conservatives argued that, having welcomed blacks migrating from the
South, these cities “were repaid with crime-ridden slums and black
discontent.”40
Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 presidential campaign, aggressively
exploited the riots and fears of black crime, laying the foundation for the
“get tough on crime” movement that would emerge years later. In a widely
quoted speech, Goldwater warned voters, “Choose the way of [the Johnson]
Administration and you have the way of mobs in the street.”41 Civil rights
activists who argued that the uprisings were directly related to widespread
police harassment and abuse were dismissed by conservatives out of hand.
“If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to
worry about police brutality,” argued West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd.42
Early on, little effort was made to disguise the racial motivations behind
the law and order rhetoric and the harsh criminal justice legislation
proposed in Congress. The most ardent opponents of civil rights legislation
and desegregation were the most active on the emerging crime issue. Wellknown segregationist George Wallace, for example, argued that “the same
Supreme Court that ordered integration and encouraged civil rights
legislation” was now “bending over backwards to help criminals.”43 Three
other prominent segregationists—Senators McClellan, Erwin, and
Thurmond—led the legislative battle to curb the rights of criminal
defendants.44
As the rules of acceptable discourse changed, however, segregationists
distanced themselves from an explicitly racist agenda. They developed

instead the racially sanitized rhetoric of “cracking down on crime”—
rhetoric that is now used freely by politicians of every stripe. Conservative
politicians who embraced this rhetoric purposefully failed to distinguish
between the direct action tactics of civil rights activists, violent rebellions in
inner cities, and traditional crimes of an economic or violent nature.
Instead, as Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project has noted, “all of these
phenomenon were subsumed under the heading of ‘crime in the streets.’”45
After the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the public debate shifted focus
from segregation to crime. The battle lines, however, remained largely the
same. Positions taken on crime policies typically cohered along lines of
racial ideology. Political scientist Vesla Weaver explains: “Votes cast in
opposition to open housing, busing, the Civil Rights Act, and other
measures time and again showed the same divisions as votes for
amendments to crime bills.... Members of Congress who voted against civil
rights measures proactively designed crime legislation and actively fought
for their proposals.”46
Although law and order rhetoric ultimately failed to prevent the formal
dismantling of the Jim Crow system, it proved highly effective in appealing
to poor and working-class whites, particularly in the South, who were
opposed to integration and frustrated by the Democratic Party’s apparent
support for the Civil Rights Movement. As Weaver notes, “rather than
fading, the segregationists’ crime-race argument was reframed, with a
slightly different veneer,” and eventually became the foundation of the
conservative agenda on crime.47 In fact, law and order rhetoric—first
employed by segregationists—would eventually contribute to a major
realignment of political parties in the United States.
Following the Civil War, party alignment was almost entirely regional.
The South was solidly Democratic, embittered by the war, firmly
committed to the maintenance of a racial caste system, and extremely
hostile to federal intervention on behalf of African Americans. The North
was overwhelming Republican and, while Republicans were ambivalent
about equality for African Americans, they were far more inclined to adopt
and implement racial justice reforms than their Democratic counterparts
below the Mason-Dixon line.

The Great Depression effectuated a sea change in American race
relations and party alignment. The New Deal—spearheaded by the
Democratic Party of President Franklin D. Roosevelt—was designed to
alleviate the suffering of poor people in the midst of the Depression, and
blacks, the poorest of the poor, benefited disproportionately. While New
Deal programs were rife with discrimination in their administration, they at
least included blacks within the pool of beneficiaries—a development,
historian Michael Klarman has noted, that was “sufficient to raise black
hopes and expectations after decades of malign neglect from
Washington.”48 Poor and working-class whites in both the North and South,
no less than African Americans, responded positively to the New Deal,
anxious for meaningful economic relief. As a result, the Democratic New
Deal coalition evolved into an alliance of urban ethnic groups and the white
South that dominated electoral politics from 1932 to the early 1960s.
That dominance came to an abrupt end with the creation and
implementation of what has come to be known as the Southern Strategy.
The success of law and order rhetoric among working-class whites and the
intense resentment of racial reforms, particularly in the South, led
conservative Republican analysts to believe that a “new majority” could be
created by the Republican Party, one that included the traditional
Republican base, the white South, and half the Catholic, blue-collar vote of
the big cities.49 Some conservative political strategists admitted that
appealing to racial fears and antagonisms was central to this strategy,
though it had to be done surreptitiously. H.R. Haldeman, one of Nixon’s
key advisers, recalls that Nixon himself deliberately pursued a southern,
racial strategy: “He [President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the
fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a
system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”50 Similarly, John
Ehrlichman, special counsel to the president, explained the Nixon
administration’s campaign strategy of 1968 in this way: “We’ll go after the
racists.”51 In Ehrlichman’s view, “that subliminal appeal to the anti-black
voter was always present in Nixon’s statements and speeches.”52
Republican strategist Kevin Phillips is often credited for offering the
most influential argument in favor of a race-based strategy for Republican
political dominance in the South. He argued in The Emerging Republican

Majority, published in 1969, that Nixon’s successful presidential election
campaign could point the way toward long-term political realignment and
the building of a new Republican majority, if Republicans continued to
campaign primarily on the basis of racial issues, using coded antiblack
rhetoric.53 He argued that Southern white Democrats had become so
angered and alienated by the Democratic Party’s support for civil rights
reforms, such as desegregation and busing, that those voters could be easily
persuaded to switch parties if those racial resentments could be maintained.
Warren Weaver, a New York Times journalist who reviewed the book upon
its release, observed that Phillips’s strategy largely depended upon creating
and maintaining a racially polarized political environment. “Full racial
polarization is an essential ingredient of Phillip’s political pragmatism. He
wants to see a black Democratic party, particularly in the South, because
this will drive into the Republican party precisely the kind of anti-Negro
whites who will help constitute the emerging majority. This even leads him
to support some civil rights efforts.” 54 Appealing to the racism and
vulnerability of working-class whites had worked to defeat the Populists at
the turn of the century, and a growing number of conservatives believed the
tactic should be employed again, albeit in a more subtle fashion.
Thus in the late 1960s and early 1970s, two schools of thought were
offered to the general public regarding race, poverty, and the social order.
Conservatives argued that poverty was caused not by structural factors
related to race and class but rather by culture—particularly black culture.
This view received support from Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s now infamous
report on the black family, which attributed black poverty to a black
“subculture” and the “tangle of pathology” that characterized it. As
described by sociologist Katherine Beckett, “The (alleged) misbehaviors of
the poor were transformed from adaptations to poverty that had the
unfortunate effect of reproducing it into character failings that accounted for
poverty in the first place.”55 The “social pathologies” of the poor,
particularly street crime, illegal drug use, and delinquency, were redefined
by conservatives as having their cause in overly generous relief
arrangements. Black “welfare cheats” and their dangerous offspring
emerged, for the first time, in the political discourse and media imagery.

Liberals, by contrast, insisted that social reforms such as the War on
Poverty and civil rights legislation would get at the “root causes” of
criminal behavior and stressed the social conditions that predictably
generate crime. Lyndon Johnson, for example, argued during his 1964
presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater that antipoverty programs
were, in effect, anticrime programs: “There is something mighty wrong
when a candidate for the highest office bemoans violence in the streets but
votes against the War on Poverty, votes against the Civil Rights Act and
votes against major educational bills that come before him as a legislator.”56
Competing images of the poor as “deserving” and “undeserving” became
central components of the debate. Ultimately, the racialized nature of this
imagery became a crucial resource for conservatives, who succeeded in
using law and order rhetoric in their effort to mobilize the resentment of
white working-class voters, many of whom felt threatened by the sudden
progress of African Americans. As explained by Thomas and Mary Edsall
in their insightful book Chain Reaction, a disproportionate share of the
costs of integration and racial equality had been borne by lower- and lowermiddle-class whites, who were suddenly forced to compete on equal terms
with blacks for jobs and status and who lived in neighborhoods adjoining
black ghettos. Their children—not the children of wealthy whites—attended
schools most likely to fall under busing orders. The affluent white liberals
who were pressing the legal claims of blacks and other minorities “were
often sheltered, in their private lives, and largely immune to the costs of
implementing minority claims.”57 This reality made it possible for
conservatives to characterize the “liberal Democratic establishment” as
being out of touch with ordinary working people—thus resolving one of the
central problems facing conservatives: how to persuade poor and workingclass voters to join in alliance with corporate interests and the conservative
elite. By 1968, 81 percent of those responding to the Gallup Poll agreed
with the statement that “law and order has broken down in this country,”
and the majority blamed “Negroes who start riots” and “Communists.”58
During the presidential election that year, both the Republican candidate,
Richard Nixon, and the independent segregationist candidate, George
Wallace, made “law and order” a central theme of their campaigns, and
together they collected 57 percent of the vote.59 Nixon dedicated seventeen

speeches solely to the topic of law and order, and one of his television ads
explicitly called on voters to reject the lawlessness of civil rights activists
and embrace “order” in the United States.60 The advertisement began with
frightening music accompanied by flashing images of protestors, bloodied
victims, and violence. A deep voice then said:
It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United
States. Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change, but in a system of
government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that
justifies resort to violence. Let us recognize that the first right of every
American is to be free from domestic violence. So I pledge to you, we
shall have order in the United States.
At the end of the ad, a caption declared: “This time . . . vote like your
whole world depended on it . . . NIXON.” Viewing his own campaign ad,
Nixon reportedly remarked with glee that the ad “hits it right on the nose.
It’s all about those damn Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there.”61
Race had become, yet again, a powerful wedge, breaking up what had
been a solid liberal coalition based on economic interests of the poor and
the working and lower-middle classes. In the 1968 election, race eclipsed
class as the organizing principle of American politics, and by 1972,
attitudes on racial issues rather than socioeconomic status were the primary
determinant of voters’ political self-identification. The late 1960s and early
1970s marked the dramatic erosion in the belief among working-class
whites that the condition of the poor, or those who fail to prosper, was the
result of a faulty economic system that needed to be challenged. As the
Edsalls explain, “the pitting of whites and blacks at the low end of the
income distribution against each other intensified the view among many
whites that the condition of life for the disadvantaged—particularly for
disadvantaged blacks—is the responsibility of those afflicted, and not the
responsibility of the larger society.”62 Just as race had been used at the turn
of the century by Southern elites to rupture class solidarity at the bottom of
the income ladder, race as a national issue had broken up the Democratic
New Deal “bottom-up” coalition—a coalition dependent on substantial
support from all voters, white and black, at or below the median income.

The conservative revolution that took root within the Republican Party in
the 1960s did not reach its full development until the election of 1980. The
decade preceding Ronald Reagan’s ascent to the presidency was
characterized by political and social crises, as the Civil Rights Movement
was promptly followed by intense controversy over the implementation of
the equality principle—especially busing and affirmative action—as well as
dramatic political clashes over the Vietnam War and Watergate. During this
period, conservatives gave lip service to the goal of racial equality but
actively resisted desegregation, busing, and civil rights enforcement. They
repeatedly raised the issue of welfare, subtly framing it as a contest between
hardworking, blue-collar whites and poor blacks who refused to work. The
not-so-subtle message to working-class whites was that their tax dollars
were going to support special programs for blacks who most certainly did
not deserve them. During this period, Nixon called for a “war on drugs”—
an announcement that proved largely rhetorical as he declared illegal drugs
“public enemy number one” without proposing dramatic shifts in drug
policy. A backlash against blacks was clearly in force, but no consensus had
yet been reached regarding what racial and social order would ultimately
emerge from these turbulent times.
In his campaign for the presidency, Reagan mastered the “excision of the
language of race from conservative public discourse” and thus built on the
success of earlier conservatives who developed a strategy of exploiting
racial hostility or resentment for political gain without making explicit
reference to race.63 Condemning “welfare queens” and criminal
“predators,” he rode into office with the strong support of disaffected whites
—poor and working-class whites who felt betrayed by the Democratic
Party’s embrace of the civil rights agenda. As one political insider
explained, Reagan’s appeal derived primarily from the ideological fervor of
the right wing of the Republican Party and “the emotional distress of those
who fear or resent the Negro, and who expect Reagan somehow to keep
him ‘in his place’ or at least echo their own anger and frustration.”64 To
great effect, Reagan echoed white frustration in race-neutral terms through
implicit racial appeals. His “colorblind” rhetoric on crime, welfare, taxes,
and states’ rights was clearly understood by white (and black) voters as
having a racial dimension, though claims to that effect were impossible to

prove. The absence of explicitly racist rhetoric afforded the racial nature of
his coded appeals a certain plausible deniability. For example, when Reagan
kicked off his presidential campaign at the annual Neshoba County Fair
near Philadelphia, Mississippi—the town where three civil rights activists
were murdered in 1964—he assured the crowd “I believe in states’ rights,”
and promised to restore to states and local governments the power that
properly belonged to them.65 His critics promptly alleged that he was
signaling a racial message to his audience, suggesting allegiance with those
who resisted desegregation, but Reagan firmly denied it, forcing liberals
into a position that would soon become familiar—arguing that something is
racist but finding it impossible to prove in the absence of explicitly racist
language.
Crime and welfare were the major themes of Reagan’s campaign rhetoric.
According to the Edsalls, one of Reagan’s favorite and most-often-repeated
anecdotes was the story of a Chicago “welfare queen” with “80 names, 30
addresses, 12 Social Security cards,” whose “tax-free income alone is over
$150,000.”66 The term “welfare queen” became a not-so-subtle code for
“lazy, greedy, black ghetto mother.” The food stamp program, in turn, was a
vehicle to let “some fellow ahead of you buy a T-bone steak,” while “you
were standing in a checkout line with your package of hamburger.”67 These
highly racialized appeals, targeted to poor and working-class whites, were
nearly always accompanied by vehement promises to be tougher on crime
and to enhance the federal government’s role in combating it. Reagan
portrayed the criminal as “a staring face—a face that belongs to a
frightening reality of our time: the face of the human predator.”68 Reagan’s
racially coded rhetoric and strategy proved extraordinarily effective, as 22
percent of all Democrats defected from the party to vote for Reagan. The
defection rate shot up to 34 percent among those Democrats who believed
civil rights leaders were pushing “too fast.”69
Once elected, Reagan’s promise to enhance the federal government’s role
in fighting crime was complicated by the fact that fighting street crime has
traditionally been the responsibility of state and local law enforcement.
After a period of initial confusion and controversy regarding whether the
FBI and the federal government should be involved in street crime, the
Justice Department announced its intention to cut in half the number of

specialists assigned to identify and prosecute white-collar criminals and to
shift its attention to street crime, especially drug-law enforcement.70 In
October 1982, President Reagan officially announced his administration’s
War on Drugs. At the time he declared this new war, less than 2 percent of
the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the
nation.71 This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the
outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with
public concern about race. By waging a war on drug users and dealers,
Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined
“others”—the undeserving.
Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies
soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8
million to $95 million.72 Department of Defense antidrug allocations
increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that
same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and
FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.73 By contrast,
funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and
education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on
Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million
from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of
Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.74
Determined to ensure that the “new Republican majority” would continue
to support the extraordinary expansion of the federal government’s law
enforcement activities and that Congress would continue to fund it, the
Reagan administration launched a media offensive to justify the War on
Drugs.75 Central to the media campaign was an effort to sensationalize the
emergence of crack cocaine in inner-city neighborhoods—communities
devastated by deindustrialization and skyrocketing unemployment. The
media frenzy the campaign inspired simply could not have come at a worse
time for African Americans.
In the early 1980s, just as the drug war was kicking off, inner-city
communities were suffering from economic collapse. The blue-collar
factory jobs that had been plentiful in urban areas in the 1950s and 1960s
had suddenly disappeared.76 Prior to 1970, inner-city workers with
relatively little formal education could find industrial employment close to

home. Globalization, however, helped to change that. Manufacturing jobs
were transferred by multinational corporations away from American cities
to countries that lacked unions, where workers earn a small fraction of what
is considered a fair wage in the United States. To make matters worse,
dramatic technological changes revolutionized the workplace—changes that
eliminated many of the jobs that less skilled workers once relied upon for
their survival. Highly educated workers benefited from the pace of
technological change and the increased use of computer-based technologies,
but blue-collar workers often found themselves displaced in the sudden
transition from an industrial to a service economy.
The impact of globalization and deindustrialization was felt most
strongly in black inner-city communities. As described by William Julius
Wilson, in his book When Work Disappears, the overwhelming majority of
African Americans in the 1970s lacked college educations and had attended
racially segregated, underfunded schools lacking basic resources. Those
residing in ghetto communities were particularly ill equipped to adapt to the
seismic changes taking place in the U.S. economy; they were left isolated
and jobless. One study indicates that as late as 1970, more than 70 percent
of all blacks working in metropolitan areas held blue-collar jobs.77 Yet by
1987, when the drug war hit high gear, the industrial employment of black
men had plummeted to 28 percent.78
The new manufacturing jobs that opened during this time period were
generally located in the suburbs. The growing spatial mismatch of jobs had
a profound impact on African Americans trapped in ghettos. A study of
urban black fathers found that only 28 percent had access to an automobile.
The rate fell to 18 percent for those living in ghetto areas.79
Women fared somewhat better during this period because the socialservice sector in urban areas—which employs primarily women—was
expanding at the same time manufacturing jobs were evaporating. The
fraction of black men who moved into so called pink-collar jobs like
nursing or clerical work was negligible.80
The decline in legitimate employment opportunities among inner-city
residents increased incentives to sell drugs—most notably crack cocaine.
Crack is pharmacologically almost identical to powder cocaine, but it has
been converted into a form that can be vaporized and inhaled for a faster,

more intense (though shorter) high using less of the drug—making it
possible to sell small doses at more affordable prices. Crack hit the streets
in 1985, a few years after Reagan’s drug war was announced, leading to a
spike in violence as drug markets struggled to stabilize, and the anger and
frustration associated with joblessness boiled. Joblessness and crack swept
inner cities precisely at the moment that a fierce backlash against the Civil
Rights Movement was manifesting itself through the War on Drugs. The
Reagan administration leaped at the opportunity to publicize crack cocaine
in inner-city communities in order to build support for its new war.
In October 1985, the DEA sent Robert Stutman to serve as director of its
New York City office and charged him with the responsibility of shoring up
public support for the administration’s new war. Stutman developed a
strategy for improving relations with the news media and sought to draw
journalists’ attention to the spread of crack cocaine. As Stutman recounted
years later:
The agents would hear me give hundreds of presentations to the media
as I attempted to call attention to the drug scourge. I wasted no time in
pointing out its [the DEA’s] new accomplishments against the drug
traffickers.... In order to convince Washington, I needed to make it
[drugs] a national issue and quickly. I began a lobbying effort and I
used the media. The media were only too willing to cooperate, because
as far the New York media was concerned, crack was the hottest
combat reporting story to come along since the end of the Vietnam
War.81
The strategy bore fruit. In June 1986, Newsweek declared crack to be the
biggest story since Vietnam/Watergate, and in August of that year, Time
magazine termed crack “the issue of the year.” Thousands of stories about
the crack crisis flooded the airwaves and newsstands, and the stories had a
clear racial subtext. The articles typically featured black “crack whores,”
“crack babies,” and “gangbangers,” reinforcing already prevalent racial
stereotypes of black women as irresponsible, selfish “welfare queens,” and
black men as “predators”—part of an inferior and criminal subculture.82
When two popular sports figures, Len Bias and Don Rogers, died of
cocaine overdoses in June 1986, the media erroneously reported their deaths

as caused by crack, contributing to the media firestorm and groundswell of
political activity and public concern relating to the new “demon drug,”
crack cocaine. The bonanza continued into 1989, as the media continued to
disseminate claims that crack was an “epidemic,” a “plague,” “instantly
addictive,” and extraordinarily dangerous—claims that have now been
proven false or highly misleading. Between October 1988 and October
1989, the Washington Post alone ran 1,565 stories about the “drug scourge.”
Richard Harwood, the Post’s ombudsmen, eventually admitted the paper
had lost “a proper sense of perspective” due to such a “hyperbole
epidemic.” He said that “politicians are doing a number on people’s
heads.”83 Sociologists Craig Reinarman and Harry Levine later made a
similar point: “Crack was a god-send to the Right.... It could not have
appeared at a more politically opportune moment.”84
In September 1986, with the media frenzy at full throttle, the House
passed legislation that allocated $2 billion to the antidrug crusade, required
the participation of the military in narcotics control efforts, allowed the
death penalty for some drug-related crimes, and authorized the admission of
some illegally obtained evidence in drug trials. Later that month, the Senate
proposed even tougher antidrug legislation, and shortly thereafter, the
president signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 into law. Among other
harsh penalties, the legislation included mandatory minimum sentences for
the distribution of cocaine, including far more severe punishment for
distribution of crack—associated with blacks—than powder cocaine,
associated with whites.
Few criticisms of the legislation could be heard en route to enactment.
One senator insisted that crack had become a scapegoat distracting the
public’s attention from the true causes of our social ills, arguing: “If we
blame crime on crack, our politicians are off the hook. Forgotten are the
failed schools, the malign welfare programs, the desolate neighborhoods,
the wasted years. Only crack is to blame. One is tempted to think that if
crack did not exist, someone somewhere would have received a Federal
grant to develop it.”85 Critical voices, however, were lonely ones.
Congress revisited drug policy in 1988. The resulting legislation was
once again extraordinarily punitive, this time extending far beyond
traditional criminal punishments and including new “civil penalties” for

drug offenders. The new Anti-Drug Abuse Act authorized public housing
authorities to evict any tenant who allows any form of drug-related criminal
activity to occur on or near public housing premises and eliminated many
federal benefits, including student loans, for anyone convicted of a drug
offense. The act also expanded use of the death penalty for serious drugrelated offenses and imposed new mandatory minimums for drug offenses,
including a five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession of cocaine
base—with no evidence of intent to sell. Remarkably, the penalty would
apply to first-time offenders. The severity of this punishment was
unprecedented in the federal system. Until 1988, one year of imprisonment
had been the maximum for possession of any amount of any drug. Members
of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) were mixed in their assessment
of the new legislation—some believing the harsh penalties were necessary,
others convinced that the laws were biased and harmful to African
Americans. Ultimately the legislation passed by an overwhelming margin—
346 to 11. Six of the negative votes came from the CBC.86
The War on Drugs proved popular among key white voters, particularly
whites who remained resentful of black progress, civil rights enforcement,
and affirmative action. Beginning in the 1970s, researchers found that racial
attitudes—not crime rates or likelihood of victimization—are an important
determinant of white support for “get tough on crime” and antiwelfare
measures. 87 Among whites, those expressing the highest degree of concern
about crime also tend to oppose racial reform, and their punitive attitudes
toward crime are largely unrelated to their likelihood of victimization.88
Whites, on average, are more punitive than blacks, despite the fact that
blacks are far more likely to be victims of crime. Rural whites are often the
most punitive, even though they are least likely to be crime victims.89 The
War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to
racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks
and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism.
Reagan’s successor, President George Bush Sr., did not hesitate to
employ implicit racial appeals, having learned from the success of other
conservative politicians that subtle negative references to race could
mobilize poor and working-class whites who once were loyal to the
Democratic Party. Bush’s most famous racial appeal, the Willie Horton ad,

featured a dark-skinned black man, a convicted murderer who escaped
while on a work furlough and then raped and murdered a white woman in
her home. The ad blamed Bush’s opponent, Massachusetts governor
Michael Dukakis, for the death of the white woman, because he approved
the furlough program. For months, the ad played repeatedly on network
news stations and was the subject of incessant political commentary.
Though controversial, the ad was stunningly effective; it destroyed
Dukakis’s chances of ever becoming president.
Once in the Oval Office, Bush stayed on message, opposing affirmative
action and aggressive civil rights enforcement, and embracing the drug war
with great enthusiasm. In August 1989, President Bush characterized drug
use as “the most pressing problem facing the nation.”90 Shortly thereafter, a
New York Times/CBS News Poll reported that 64 percent of those polled—
the highest percentage ever recorded—now thought that drugs were the
most significant problem in the United States.91 This surge of public
concern did not correspond to a dramatic shift in illegal drug activity, but
instead was the product of a carefully orchestrated political campaign. The
level of public concern about crime and drugs was only weakly correlated
with actual crime rates, but highly correlated with political initiatives,
campaigns, and partisan appeals.92
The shift to a general attitude of “toughness” toward problems associated
with communities of color began in the 1960s, when the gains and goals of
the Civil Rights Movement began to require real sacrifices on the part of
white Americans, and conservative politicians found they could mobilize
white racial resentment by vowing to crack down on crime. By the late
1980s, however, not only conservatives played leading roles in the gettough movement, spouting the rhetoric once associated only with
segregationists. Democratic politicians and policy makers were now
attempting to wrest control of the crime and drug issues from Republicans
by advocating stricter anticrime and antidrug laws—all in an effort to win
back the so-called “swing voters” who were defecting to the Republican
Party. Somewhat ironically, these “new Democrats” were joined by virulent
racists, most notably the Ku Klux Klan, which announced in 1990 that it
intended to “join the battle against illegal drugs” by becoming the “eyes and
ears of the police.”93 Progressives concerned about racial justice in this

period were mostly silent about the War on Drugs, preferring to channel
their energy toward defense of affirmative action and other perceived gains
of the Civil Rights Movement.
In the early 1990s, resistance to the emergence of a new system of
racialized social control collapsed across the political spectrum. A century
earlier, a similar political dynamic had resulted in the birth of Jim Crow. In
the 1890s, Populists buckled under the political pressure created by the
Redeemers, who had successfully appealed to poor and working-class
whites by proposing overtly racist and increasingly absurd Jim Crow laws.
Now, a new racial caste system—mass incarceration—was taking hold, as
politicians of every stripe competed with each other to win the votes of poor
and working-class whites, whose economic status was precarious, at best,
and who felt threatened by racial reforms. As had happened before, former
allies of African Americans—as much as conservatives—adopted a
political strategy that required them to prove how “tough” they could be on
“them,” the dark-skinned pariahs.
The results were immediate. As law enforcement budgets exploded, so
did prison and jail populations. In 1991, the Sentencing Project reported
that the number of people behind bars in the United States was
unprecedented in world history, and that one fourth of young African
American men were now under the control of the criminal justice system.
Despite the jaw-dropping impact of the “get tough” movement on the
African American community, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans
revealed any inclination to slow the pace of incarceration.
To the contrary, in 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that
he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime
than he. True to his word, just weeks before the critical New Hampshire
primary, Clinton chose to fly home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of
Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black man who had so little
conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert
from his last meal to be saved for him until the morning. After the
execution, Clinton remarked, “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I’m
soft on crime.”94
Once elected, Clinton endorsed the idea of a federal “three strikes and
you’re out” law, which he advocated in his 1994 State of the Union address

to enthusiastic applause on both sides of the aisle. The $30 billion crime bill
sent to President Clinton in August 1994 was hailed as a victory for the
Democrats, who “were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans
and make it their own.”95 The bill created dozens of new federal capital
crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and
authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and expansion of
state and local police forces. Far from resisting the emergence of the new
caste system, Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives had
imagined possible a decade earlier. As the Justice Policy Institute has
observed, “the Clinton Administration’s ‘tough on crime’ policies resulted
in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president
in American history.”96
Clinton eventually moved beyond crime and capitulated to the
conservative racial agenda on welfare. This move, like his “get tough”
rhetoric and policies, was part of a grand strategy articulated by the “new
Democrats” to appeal to the elusive white swing voters. In so doing,
Clinton—more than any other president—created the current racial
undercaste. He signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act, which “ended welfare as we know it,” and replaced it
with a block grant to states called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families
(TANF). TANF imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance, as
well as a permanent, lifetime ban on eligibility for welfare and food stamps
for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense—including simple possession
of marijuana.
Clinton did not stop there. Determined to prove how “tough” he could be
on “them,” Clinton also made it easier for federally-assisted public housing
projects to exclude anyone with a criminal history—an extraordinarily
harsh step in the midst of a drug war aimed at racial and ethnic minorities.
In his announcement of the “One Strike and You’re Out” Initiative, Clinton
explained: “From now on, the rule for residents who commit crime and
peddle drugs should be one strike and you’re out.”97 The new rule promised
to be “the toughest admission and eviction policy that HUD has
implemented.” 98 Thus, for countless poor people, particularly racial
minorities targeted by the drug war, public housing was no longer available,

leaving many of them homeless—locked out not only of mainstream
society, but their own homes.
The law and order perspective, first introduced during the peak of the
Civil Rights Movement by rabid segregationists, had become nearly
hegemonic two decades later. By the mid-1990s, no serious alternatives to
the War on Drugs and “get tough” movement were being entertained in
mainstream political discourse. Once again, in response to a major
disruption in the prevailing racial order—this time the civil rights gains of
the 1960s—a new system of racialized social control was created by
exploiting the vulnerabilities and racial resentments of poor and workingclass whites. More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at
the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to the
margins of mainstream society, banished to a political and social space not
unlike Jim Crow, where discrimination in employment, housing, and access
to education was perfectly legal, and where they could be denied the right
to vote. The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing
system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed
natural. Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in
many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of
communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to
the needs and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow
was born.

2
The Lockdown
We may think we know how the criminal justice system works. Television
is overloaded with fictional dramas about police, crime, and prosecutors—
shows such as Law & Order. These fictional dramas, like the evening news,
tend to focus on individual stories of crime, victimization, and punishment,
and the stories are typically told from the point of view of law enforcement.
A charismatic police officer, investigator, or prosecutor struggles with his
own demons while heroically trying to solve a horrible crime. He ultimately
achieves a personal and moral victory by finding the bad guy and throwing
him in jail. That is the made-for-TV version of the criminal justice system.
It perpetuates the myth that the primary function of the system is to keep
our streets safe and our homes secure by rooting out dangerous criminals
and punishing them. These television shows, especially those that
romanticize drug-law enforcement, are the modern-day equivalent of the
old movies portraying happy slaves, the fictional gloss placed on a brutal
system of racialized oppression and control.
Those who have been swept within the criminal justice system know that
the way the system actually works bears little resemblance to what happens
on television or in movies. Full-blown trials of guilt or innocence rarely
occur; many people never even meet with an attorney; witnesses are
routinely paid and coerced by the government; police regularly stop and
search people for no reason whatsoever; penalties for many crimes are so
severe that innocent people plead guilty, accepting plea bargains to avoid
harsh mandatory sentences; and children, even as young as fourteen, are
sent to adult prisons. Rules of law and procedure, such as “guilt beyond a
reasonable doubt” or “probable cause” or “reasonable suspicion,” can easily
be found in court cases and law-school textbooks but are much harder to
find in real life.

In this chapter, we shall see how the system of mass incarceration
actually works. Our focus is the War on Drugs. The reason is simple:
Convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the
explosion in incarceration rates in the United States. Drug offenses alone
account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more
than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000.1
Approximately a half-million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense
today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980—an increase of 1,100
percent.2 Drug arrests have tripled since 1980. As a result, more than 31
million people have been arrested for drug offenses since the drug war
began.3 Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration
of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs.
Before we begin our tour of the drug war, it is worthwhile to get a couple
of myths out of the way. The first is that the war is aimed at ridding the
nation of drug “kingpins” or big-time dealers. Nothing could be further
from the truth. The vast majority of those arrested are not charged with
serious offenses. In 2005, for example, four out of five drug arrests were for
possession, and only one out of five was for sales. Moreover, most people
in state prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or significant
selling activity.4
The second myth is that the drug war is principally concerned with
dangerous drugs. Quite to the contrary, arrests for marijuana possession—a
drug less harmful than tobacco or alcohol—accounted for nearly 80 percent
of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.5 Despite the fact that most drug
arrests are for nonviolent minor offenses, the War on Drugs has ushered in
an era of unprecedented punitiveness.
The percentage of drug arrests that result in prison sentences (rather than
dismissal, community service, or probation) has quadrupled, resulting in a
prison-building boom the likes of which the world has never seen. In two
short decades, between 1980 and 2000, the number of people incarcerated
in our nation’s prisons and jails soared from roughly 300,000 to more than 2
million. By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans—or one in
every 31 adults—were behind bars, on probation, or on parole.6
We begin our exploration of the drug war at the point of entry—arrest by
the police—and then consider how the system of mass incarceration is

structured to reward mass drug arrests and facilitate the conviction and
imprisonment of an unprecedented number of Americans, whether guilty or
innocent. In subsequent chapters, we will consider how the system
specifically targets people of color and then relegates them to a secondclass status analogous to Jim Crow. At this point, we simply take stock of
the means by which the War on Drugs facilitates the roundup and lockdown
of an extraordinary percentage of the U.S. population.

Rules of the Game

Few legal rules meaningfully constrain the police in the War on Drugs. This
may sound like an overstatement, but upon examination it proves accurate.
The absence of significant constraints on the exercise of police discretion is
a key feature of the drug war’s design. It has made the roundup of millions
of Americans for nonviolent drug offenses relatively easy.
With only a few exceptions, the Supreme Court has seized every
opportunity to facilitate the drug war, primarily by eviscerating Fourth
Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by the
police. The rollback has been so pronounced that some commentators
charge that a virtual “drug exception” now exists to the Bill of Rights.
Shortly before his death, Justice Thurgood Marshall felt compelled to
remind his colleagues that there is, in fact, “no drug exception” written into
the text of the Constitution.7
Most Americans do not know what the Fourth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution actually says or what it requires of the police. It states, in its
entirety:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the person or things to be seized.
Courts and scholars agree that the Fourth Amendment governs all
searches and seizures by the police and that the amendment was adopted in
response to the English practice of conducting arbitrary searches under
general warrants to uncover seditious libels. The routine police harassment,
arbitrary searches, and widespread police intimidation of those subject to
English rule helped to inspire the American Revolution. Not surprisingly,
then, preventing arbitrary searches and seizures by the police was deemed

by the Founding Fathers an essential element of the U.S. Constitution. Until
the War on Drugs, courts had been fairly stringent about enforcing the
Fourth Amendment’s requirements.
Within a few years after the drug war was declared, however, many legal
scholars noted a sharp turn in the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence. By the close of the Supreme Court’s 1990-91 term, it had
become clear that a major shift in the relationship between the citizens of
this country and the police was underway. Justice Stevens noted the trend in
a powerful dissent issued in California v. Acevedo, a case upholding the
warrantless search of a bag locked in a motorist’s trunk:
In the years [from 1982 to 1991], the Court has heard argument in 30
Fourth Amendment cases involving narcotics. In all but one, the
government was the petitioner. All save two involved a search or
seizure without a warrant or with a defective warrant. And, in all
except three, the Court upheld the constitutionality of the search or
seizure. In the meantime, the flow of narcotics cases through the courts
has steadily and dramatically increased. No impartial observer could
criticize this Court for hindering the progress of the war on drugs. On
the contrary, decisions like the one the Court makes today will support
the conclusion that this Court has become a loyal foot soldier in the
Executive’s fight against crime.8
The Fourth Amendment is but one example. Virtually all constitutionally
protected civil liberties have been undermined by the drug war. The Court
has been busy in recent years approving mandatory drug testing of
employees and students, upholding random searches and sweeps of public
schools and students, permitting police to obtain search warrants based on
an anonymous informant’s tip, expanding the government’s wiretapping
authority, legitimating the use of paid, unidentified informants by police
and prosecutors, approving the use of helicopter surveillance of homes
without a warrant, and allowing the forfeiture of cash, homes, and other
property based on unproven allegations of illegal drug activity.
For our purposes here, we limit our focus to the legal rules crafted by the
Supreme Court that grant law enforcement a pecuniary interest in the drug
war and make it relatively easy for the police to seize people virtually

anywhere—on public streets and sidewalks, on buses, airplanes and trains,
or any other public place—and usher them behind bars. These new legal
rules have ensured that anyone, virtually anywhere, for any reason, can
become a target of drug-law enforcement activity.

Unreasonable Suspicion

Once upon a time, it was generally understood that the police could not stop
and search someone without a warrant unless there was probable cause to
believe that the individual was engaged in criminal activity. That was a
basic Fourth Amendment principle. In Terry v. Ohio, decided in 1968, the
Supreme Court modified that understanding, but only modestly, by ruling
that if and when a police officer observes unusual conduct by someone the
officer reasonably believes to be dangerous and engaged in criminal
activity, the officer “is entitled for the protection of himself and others in
the area” to conduct a limited search “to discover weapons that might be
used against the officer.”9 Known as the stop-and-frisk rule, the Terry
decision stands for the proposition that, so long as a police officer has
“reasonable articulable suspicion” that someone is engaged in criminal
activity and dangerous, it is constitutionally permissible to stop, question,
and frisk him or her—even in the absence of probable cause.
Justice Douglas dissented in Terry on the grounds that “grant[ing] police
greater power than a magistrate [judge] is to take a long step down the
totalitarian path.”10 He objected to the notion that police should be free to
conduct warrantless searches whenever they suspect someone is a criminal,
believing that dispensing with the Fourth Amendment’s warrant
requirement risked opening the door to the same abuses that gave rise to the
American Revolution. His voice was a lonely one. Most commentators at
the time agreed that affording police the power and discretion to protect
themselves during an encounter with someone they believed to be a
dangerous criminal is not “unreasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.
History suggests Justice Douglas had the better of the argument. In the
years since Terry, stops, interrogations, and searches of ordinary people
driving down the street, walking home from the bus stop, or riding the train,
have become commonplace—at least for people of color. As Douglas
suspected, the Court in Terry had begun its slide down a very slippery

slope. Today it is no longer necessary for the police to have any reason to
believe that people are engaged in criminal activity or actually dangerous to
stop and search them. As long as you give “consent,” the police can stop,
interrogate, and search you for any reason or no reason at all.

Just Say No

The first major sign that the Supreme Court would not allow the Fourth
Amendment to interfere with the prosecution of the War on Drugs came in
Florida v. Bostick. In that case, Terrance Bostick, a twenty-eight-year-old
African American, had been sleeping in the back seat of a Greyhound bus
on his way from Miami to Atlanta. Two police officers, wearing bright
green “raid” jackets and displaying their badges and a gun, woke him with a
start. The bus was stopped for a brief layover in Fort Lauderdale, and the
officers were “working the bus,” looking for persons who might be carrying
drugs. Bostick provided them with his identification and ticket, as
requested. The officers then asked to search his bag. Bostick complied, even
though he knew his bag contained a pound of cocaine. The officers had no
basis for suspecting Bostick of any criminal activity, but they got lucky.
They arrested Bostick, and he was charged and convicted of trafficking
cocaine.
Bostick’s search and seizure reflected what had become an increasingly
common tactic in the War on Drugs: suspicionless police sweeps of buses in
interstate or intrastate travel. The resulting “interviews” of passengers in
these dragnet operations usually culminate in a request for “consent” to
search the passenger’s luggage.11 Never do the officers inform passengers
that they are free to remain silent or to refuse to answer questions. By
proceeding systematically in this manner, the police are able to engage in an
extremely high volume of searches. One officer was able to search over
three thousand bags in a nine-month period employing these techniques.12
By and large, however, the hit rates are low. For example, in one case, a
sweep of one hundred buses resulted in only seven arrests.13
On appeal, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in Bostick’s case that the
police officer’s conduct violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of
unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fourth Amendment, the court
reasoned, forbids the police from seizing people and searching them

without some individualized suspicion that they have committed or are
committing a crime. The court thus overturned Bostick’s conviction, ruling
that the cocaine, having been obtained illegally, was inadmissible. It also
broadly condemned “bus sweeps” in the drug war, comparing them to
methods employed by totalitarian regimes:
The evidence in this case has evoked images of other days, under other
flags, when no man traveled his nation’s roads or railways without fear
of unwarranted interruption, by individuals who had temporary power
in Government.... This is not Hitler’s Berlin, nor Stalin’s Moscow, nor
is it white supremacist South Africa. Yet in Broward County, Florida,
these police officers approach every person on board buses and trains
(“that time permits”) and check identification, tickets, ask to search
luggage—all in the name of “voluntary cooperation” with law
enforcement.14
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed. The Court ruled that Bostick’s
encounter with the police was purely voluntary, and therefore he was not
“seized” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Even if Bostick did
not feel free to leave when confronted by police at the back of the bus, the
proper question, according to the Court, was whether “a reasonable person”
in Bostick’s shoes would have felt free to terminate the encounter. A
reasonable person, the Court concluded, would have felt free to sit there and
refuse to answer the police officer’s questions, and would have felt free to
tell the officer “No, you can’t search my bag.” Accordingly, Bostick was
not really “seized” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and the
subsequent search was purely consensual. The Court made clear that its
decision was to govern all future drug sweeps, no matter what the
circumstances of the targeted individual. Given the blanket nature of the
ruling, courts have found police encounters to be consensual in truly
preposterous situations. For example, a few years after Bostick, the District
of Columbia Court of Appeals applied the ruling to a case involving a
fourteen-year-old girl interrogated by the police, concluding that she must
be held to the same reasonable-person standard.15
Prior to the Bostick decision, a number of lower courts had found absurd
the notion that “reasonable people” would feel empowered to refuse to

answer questions when confronted by the police. As federal judge Prentiss
Marshall explained, “The average person encountered will feel obliged to
stop and respond. Few will feel that they can walk away or refuse to
answer.”16 Professor Tracey Maclin put it this way: “Common sense
teaches that most of us do not have the chutzpah or stupidity to tell a police
officer to ‘get lost’ after he has stopped us and asked us for identification or
questioned us about possible criminal conduct.”17 Other courts emphasized
that granting police the freedom to stop, interrogate, and search anyone who
consented would likely lead to racial and ethnic discrimination. Young
black men would be the likely targets, rather than older white women.
Justice Thurgood Marshall acknowledged as much in his dissent in Bostick,
noting “the basis of the decision to single out particular passengers during a
suspicionless sweep is less likely to be inarticulable than unspeakable.”18
Studies have shown that Maclin’s common sense is correct: the
overwhelming majority of people who are confronted by police and asked
questions respond, and when asked to be searched, they comply.19 This is
the case even among those, like Bostick, who have every reason to resist
these tactics because they actually have something to hide. This is no secret
to the Supreme Court. The Court long ago acknowledged that effective use
of consent searches by the police depends on the ignorance (and powerlessness) of those who are targeted. In Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, decided in
1973, the Court admitted that if waiver of one’s right to refuse consent were
truly “knowing, intelligent, and voluntary,” it would “in practice create
serious doubt whether consent searches would continue to be conducted.”20
In other words, consent searches are valuable tools for the police only
because hardly anyone dares to say no.

Poor Excuse

So-called consent searches have made it possible for the police to stop and
search for drugs just about anybody walking down the street. All a police
officer has to do in order to conduct a baseless drug investigation is ask to
speak with someone and then get their “consent” to be searched. So long as
orders are phrased as a question, compliance is interpreted as consent. “May
I speak to you?” thunders an officer. “Will you put your arms up and stand
against the wall for a search?” Because almost no one refuses, drug sweeps
on the sidewalk (and on buses and trains) are easy. People are easily
intimidated when the police confront them, hands on their revolvers, and
most have no idea the question can be answered, “No.” But what about all
the people driving down the street? How do police extract consent from
them? The answer: pretext stops.
Like consent searches, pretext stops are favorite tools of law enforcement
in the War on Drugs. A classic pretext stop is a traffic stop motivated not by
any desire to enforce traffic laws, but instead motivated by a desire to hunt
for drugs in the absence of any evidence of illegal drug activity. In other
words, police officers use minor traffic violations as an excuse—a pretext—
to search for drugs, even though there is not a shred of evidence suggesting
the motorist is violating drug laws. Pretext stops, like consent searches,
have received the Supreme Court’s unequivocal blessing. Just ask Michael
Whren and James Brown.
Whren and Brown, both of whom are African American, were stopped by
plainclothes officers in an unmarked vehicle in June 1993. The police
admitted to stopping Whren and Brown because they wanted to investigate
them for imagined drug crimes, even though they did not have probable
cause or reasonable suspicion such crimes had actually been committed.
Lacking actual evidence of criminal activity, the officers decided to stop
them based on a pretext—a traffic violation. The officers testified that the
driver failed to use his turn signal and accelerated abruptly from a stop sign.

Although the officers weren’t really interested in the traffic violation, they
stopped the pair anyway because they had a “hunch” they might be drug
criminals. It turned out they were right. According to the officers, the driver
had a bag of cocaine in his lap—allegedly in plain view.
On appeal, Whren and Brown challenged their convictions on the ground
that pretextual stops violate the Fourth Amendment. They argued that,
because of the multitude of applicable traffic and equipment regulations,
and the difficulty of obeying all traffic rules perfectly at all times, the police
will nearly always have an excuse to stop someone and go fishing for drugs.
Anyone driving more than a few blocks is likely to commit a traffic
violation of some kind, such as failing to track properly between lanes,
failing to stop at precisely the correct distance behind a crosswalk, failing to
pause for precisely the right amount of time at a stop sign, or failing to use a
turn signal at the appropriate distance from an intersection. Allowing the
police to use minor traffic violations as a pretext for baseless drug
investigations would permit them to single out anyone for a drug
investigation without any evidence of illegal drug activity whatsoever. That
kind of arbitrary police conduct is precisely what the Fourth Amendment
was intended to prohibit.
The Supreme Court rejected their argument, ruling that an officer’s
motivations are irrelevant when evaluating the reasonableness of police
activity under the Fourth Amendment. It does not matter, the Court
declared, why the police are stopping motorists under the Fourth
Amendment, so long as some kind of traffic violation gives them an excuse.
The fact that the Fourth Amendment was specifically adopted by the
Founding Fathers to prevent arbitrary stops and searches was deemed
unpersuasive. The Court ruled that the police are free to use minor traffic
violations as a pretext to conduct drug investigations, even when there is no
evidence of illegal drug activity.
A few months later, in Ohio v. Robinette, the Court took its twisted logic
one step further. In that case, a police officer pulled over Robert Robinette,
allegedly for speeding. After checking Robinette’s license and issuing a
warning (but no ticket), the officer then ordered Robinette out of his
vehicle, turned on a video camera in the officer’s car, and then asked
Robinette whether he was carrying any drugs and would “consent” to a

search. He did. The officer found a small amount of marijuana in
Robinette’s car, and a single pill, which turned out to be methamphetamine.
The Ohio Supreme Court, reviewing the case on appeal, was obviously
uncomfortable with the blatant fishing expedition for drugs. The court noted
that traffic stops were increasingly being used in the War on Drugs to
extract “consent” for searches, and that motorists may not believe they are
free to refuse consent and simply drive away. In an effort to provide some
minimal protection for motorists, the Ohio court adopted a bright-line rule,
that is, an unambiguous requirement that officers tell motorists they are free
to leave before asking for consent to search their vehicles. At the very least,
the justices reasoned, motorists should know they have the right to refuse
consent and to leave, if they so choose.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down this basic requirement as
“unrealistic.” In so doing, the Court made clear to all lower courts that,
from now on, the Fourth Amendment should place no meaningful
constraints on the police in the War on Drugs. No one needs to be informed
of their rights during a stop or search, and police may use minor traffic
stops as well as the myth of “consent” to stop and search anyone they
choose for imaginary drug crimes, whether or not any evidence of illegal
drug activity actually exists.
One might imagine that the legal rules described thus far would provide
more than enough latitude for the police to engage in an all-out, no-holdsbarred war on drugs. But there’s more. Even if motorists, after being
detained and interrogated, have the nerve to refuse consent to a search, the
police can arrest them anyway. In Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, the
Supreme Court held that the police may arrest motorists for minor traffic
violations and throw them in jail (even if the statutory penalty for the traffic
violation is a mere fine, not jail time).
Another legal option for officers frustrated by a motorist’s refusal to
grant “consent” is to bring a drug-sniffing dog to the scene. This option is
available to police in traffic stops, as well as to law enforcement officials
confronted with resistant travelers in airports and in bus or train stations
who refuse to give the police consent to search their luggage. The Supreme
Court has ruled that walking a drug-sniffing dog around someone’s vehicle
(or someone’s luggage) does not constitute a “search,” and therefore does

not trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny.21 If the dog alerts to drugs, then the
officer has probable cause to search without the person’s consent. Naturally,
in most cases, when someone is told that a drug-sniffing dog will be called,
the seized individual backs down and “consents” to the search, as it has
become apparent that the police are determined to conduct the search one
way or another.

Kissing Frogs

Court cases involving drug-law enforcement almost always involve guilty
people. Police usually release the innocent on the street—often without a
ticket, citation, or even an apology—so their stories are rarely heard in
court. Hardly anyone files a complaint, because the last thing most people
want to do after experiencing a frightening and intrusive encounter with the
police is show up at the police station where the officer works and attract
more attention to themselves. For good reason, many people—especially
poor people of color—fear police harassment, retaliation, and abuse. After
having your car torn apart by the police in a futile search for drugs, or being
forced to lie spread-eagled on the pavement while the police search you and
interrogate you for no reason at all, how much confidence do you have in
law enforcement? Do you expect to get a fair hearing? Those who try to
find an attorney to represent them in a lawsuit often learn that unless they
have broken bones (and no criminal record), private attorneys are unlikely
to be interested in their case. Many people are shocked to discover that
what happened to them on the side of the road was not, in fact, against the
law.
The inevitable result is that the people who wind up in front of a judge
are usually guilty of some crime. The parade of guilty people through
America’s courtrooms gives the false impression to the public—as well as
to judges—that when the police have a “hunch,” it makes sense to let them
act on it. Judges tend to imagine the police have a sixth sense—or some
kind of special police training—that qualifies them to identify drug
criminals in the absence of any evidence. After all, they seem to be right so
much of the time, don’t they?
The truth, however, is that most people stopped and searched in the War
on Drugs are perfectly innocent of any crime. The police have received no
training that enhances the likelihood they will spot the drug criminals as
they drive by and leave everyone else alone. To the contrary, tens of

thousands of law enforcement officers have received training that
guarantees precisely the opposite. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
trains police to conduct utterly unreasonable and discriminatory stops and
searches throughout the United States.
Perhaps the best known of these training programs is Operation Pipeline.
The DEA launched Operation Pipeline in 1984 as part of the Reagan
administration’s rollout of the War on Drugs. The federal program,
administered by over three hundred state and local law enforcement
agencies, trains state and local law enforcement officers to use pretextual
traffic stops and consent searches on a large scale for drug interdiction.
Officers learn, among other things, how to use a minor traffic violation as a
pretext to stop someone, how to lengthen a routine traffic stop and leverage
it into a search for drugs, how to obtain consent from a reluctant motorist,
and how to use drug-sniffing dogs to obtain probable cause.22 By 2000, the
DEA had directly trained more than 25,000 officers in forty-eight states in
Pipeline tactics and helped to develop training programs for countless
municipal and state law enforcement agencies. In legal scholar Ricardo
Bascuas’s words, “Operation Pipeline is exactly what the Framers meant to
prohibit: a federally-run general search program that targets people without
cause for suspicion, particularly those who belong to disfavored groups.”23
The program’s success requires police to stop “staggering” numbers of
people in shotgun fashion.24 This “volume” approach to drug enforcement
sweeps up extraordinary numbers of innocent people. As one California
Highway Patrol Officer said, “It’s sheer numbers.... You’ve got to kiss a lot
of frogs before you find a prince.”25 Accordingly, every year, tens of
thousands of motorists find themselves stopped on the side of the road,
fielding questions about imaginary drug activity, and then succumbing to a
request for their vehicle to be searched—sometimes torn apart—in the
search for drugs. Most of these stops and searches are futile. It has been
estimated that 95 percent of Pipeline stops yield no illegal drugs.26 One
study found that up to 99 percent of traffic stops made by federally funded
narcotics task forces result in no citation and that 98 percent of task-force
searches during traffic stops are discretionary searches in which the officer
searches the car with the driver’s verbal “consent” but has no other legal
authority to do so.27

The “drug-courier profiles” utilized by the DEA and other law
enforcement agencies for drug sweeps on highways, as well as in airports
and train stations, are notoriously unreliable. In theory, a drug-courier
profile reflects the collective wisdom and judgment of a law enforcement
agency’s officials. Instead of allowing each officer to rely on his or her own
limited experience and biases in detecting suspicious behavior, a drugcourier profile affords every officer the advantage of the agency’s collective
experience and expertise. However, as legal scholar David Cole has
observed, “in practice, the drug-courier profile is a scattershot hodgepodge
of traits and characteristics so expansive that it potentially justifies stopping
anybody and everybody.”28 The profile can include traveling with luggage,
traveling without luggage, driving an expensive car, driving a car that needs
repairs, driving with out-of-state license plates, driving a rental car, driving
with “mismatched occupants,” acting too calm, acting too nervous, dressing
casually, wearing expensive clothing or jewelry, being one of the first to
deplane, being one of the last to deplane, deplaning in the middle, paying
for a ticket in cash, using large-denomination currency, using smalldenomination currency, traveling alone, traveling with a companion, and so
on. Even striving to obey the law fits the profile! The Florida Highway
Patrol Drug Courier Profile cautioned troopers to be suspicious of
“scrupulous obedience to traffic laws.”29 As Cole points out, “such profiles
do not so much focus an investigation as provide law enforcement officials
a ready-made excuse for stopping whom-ever they please.”30
The Supreme Court has allowed use of drug-courier profiles as guides for
the exercise of police discretion. Although it has indicated that the mere fact
that someone fits a profile does not automatically constitute reasonable
suspicion justifying a stop, courts routinely defer to these profiles, and the
Court has yet to object. As one judge said after conducting a review of
drug-courier profile decisions: “Many courts have accepted the profile, as
well as the Drug Enforcement Agency’s scattershot enforcement efforts,
unquestioningly, mechanistically, and dispositively.”31

It Pays to Play

Clearly, the rules of the game are designed to allow for the roundup of an
unprecedented number of Americans for minor, nonviolent drug offenses.
The number of annual drug arrests more than tripled between 1980 and
2005, as drug sweeps and suspicionless stops and searches proceeded in
record numbers.32
Still, it is fair to wonder why the police would choose to arrest such an
astonishing percentage of the American public for minor drug crimes. The
fact that police are legally allowed to engage in a wholesale roundup of
nonviolent drug offenders does not answer the question why they would
choose to do so, particularly when most police departments have far more
serious crimes to prevent and solve. Why would police prioritize drug-law
enforcement? Drug use and abuse is nothing new; in fact, it was on the
decline, not on the rise, when the War on Drugs began. So why make druglaw enforcement a priority now?
Once again, the answer lies in the system’s design. Every system of
control depends for its survival on the tangible and intangible benefits that
are provided to those who are responsible for the system’s maintenance and
administration. This system is no exception.
At the time the drug war was declared, illegal drug use and abuse was not
a pressing concern in most communities. The announcement of a War on
Drugs was therefore met with some confusion and resistance within law
enforcement, as well as among some conservative commentators.33 The
federalization of drug crime violated the conservative tenet of states’ rights
and local control, as street crime was typically the responsibility of local
law enforcement. Many state and local law enforcement officials were less
than pleased with the attempt by the federal government to assert itself in
local crime fighting, viewing the new drug war as an unwelcome
distraction. Participation in the drug war required a diversion of resources
away from more serious crimes, such as murder, rape, grand theft, and

violent assault—all of which were of far greater concern to most
communities than illegal drug use.
The resistance within law enforcement to the drug war created something
of a dilemma for the Reagan administration. In order for the war to actually
work—that is, in order for it to succeed in achieving its political goals—it
was necessary to build a consensus among state and local law enforcement
agencies that the drug war should be a top priority in their hometowns. The
solution: cash. Huge cash grants were made to those law enforcement
agencies that were willing to make drug-law enforcement a top priority. The
new system of control is traceable, to a significant degree, to a massive
bribe offered to state and local law enforcement by the federal government.
In 1988, at the behest of the Reagan administration, Congress revised the
program that provides federal aid to law enforcement, renaming it the
Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance
Program after a New York City police officer who was shot to death while
guarding the home of a drug-case witness. The Byrne program was
designed to encourage every federal grant recipient to help fight the War on
Drugs. Millions of dollars in federal aid have been offered to state and local
law enforcement agencies willing to wage the war. This federal grant
money has resulted in the proliferation of narcotics task forces, including
those responsible for highway drug interdiction. Nationally, narcotics task
forces make up about 40 percent of all Byrne grant funding, but in some
states as much as 90 percent of all Byrne grant funds go toward specialized
narcotics task forces.34 In fact, it is questionable whether any specialized
drug enforcement activity would exist in some states without the Byrne
program.
Other forms of valuable aid have been offered as well. The DEA has
offered free training, intelligence, and technical support to state highway
patrol agencies that are willing to commit their officers to highway drug
interdiction. The Pentagon, for its part, has given away military intelligence
and millions of dollars in firepower to state and local agencies willing to
make the rhetorical war a literal one.
Almost immediately after the federal dollars began to flow, law
enforcement agencies across the country began to compete for funding,
equipment, and training. By the late 1990s, the overwhelming majority of

state and local police forces in the country had availed themselves of the
newly available resources and added a significant military component to
buttress their drug-war operations. According to the Cato Institute, in 1997
alone, the Pentagon handed over more than 1.2 million pieces of military
equipment to local police departments.35 Similarly, the National Journal
reported that between January 1997 and October 1999, the agency handled
3.4 million orders of Pentagon equipment from over eleven thousand
domestic police agencies in all fifty states. Included in the bounty were
“253 aircraft (including six- and seven-passenger airplanes, UH-60
Blackhawk and UH-1 Huey helicopters, 7,856 M-16 rifles, 181 grenade
launchers, 8,131 bulletproof helmets, and 1,161 pairs of night-vision
goggles.”36 A retired police chief in New Haven, Connecticut, told the New
York Times, “I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted.”37

Waging War

In barely a decade, the War on Drugs went from being a political slogan to
an actual war. Now that police departments were suddenly flush with cash
and military equipment earmarked for the drug war, they needed to make
use of their new resources. As described in a Cato Institute report,
paramilitary units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or
SWAT, teams) were quickly formed in virtually every major city to fight the
drug war.38
SWAT teams originated in the 1960s and gradually became more
common in the 1970s, but until the drug war, they were used rarely,
primarily for extraordinary emergency situations such as hostage takings,
hijackings, or prison escapes. That changed in the 1980s, when local law
enforcement agencies suddenly had access to cash and military equipment
specifically for the purpose of conducting drug raids.
Today, the most common use of SWAT teams is to serve narcotics
warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home. In fact, in
some jurisdictions drug warrants are served only by SWAT teams—
regardless of the nature of the alleged drug crime. As the Miami Herald
reported in 2002, “Police say they want [SWAT teams] in case of a hostage
situation or a Columbine-type incident, but in practice the teams are used
mainly to serve search warrants on suspected drug dealers. Some of these
searches yield as little as a few grams of cocaine or marijuana.”39
The rate of increase in the use of SWAT teams has been astonishing. In
1972, there were just a few hundred paramilitary drug raids per year in the
United States. By the early 1980s, there were three thousand annual SWAT
deployments, by 1996 there were thirty thousand, and by 2001 there were
forty thousand.40 The escalation of military force was quite dramatic in
cities throughout the United States. In the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota,
for example, its SWAT team was deployed on no-knock warrants thirty-five

times in 1986, but in 1996 that same team was deployed for drug raids more
than seven hundred times.41
Drug raids conducted by SWAT teams are not polite encounters. In
countless situations in which police could easily have arrested someone or
conducted a search without a military-style raid, police blast into people’s
homes, typically in the middle of the night, throwing grenades, shouting,
and pointing guns and rifles at anyone inside, often including young
children. In recent years, dozens of people have been killed by police in the
course of these raids, including elderly grandparents and those who are
completely innocent of any crime. Criminologist Peter Kraska reports that
between 1989 and 2001 at least 780 cases of flawed paramilitary raids
reached the appellate level, a dramatic increase over the 1980s, when such
cases were rare, or earlier, when they were nonexistent.42 Many of these
cases involve people killed in botched raids.
Alberta Spruill, a fifty-seven-year-old city worker from Harlem, is
among the fallen. On May 16, 2003, a dozen New York City police officers
stormed her apartment building on a no-knock warrant, acting on a tip from
a confidential informant who told them a convicted felon was selling drugs
on the sixth floor. The informant had actually been in jail at the time he said
he’d bought drugs in the apartment, and the target of the raid had been
arrested four days before, but the officers didn’t check and didn’t even
interview the building superintendent. The only resident in the building was
Alberta, described by friends as a “devout churchgoer.” Before entering,
police deployed a flash-bang grenade, resulting in a blinding, deafening
explosion. Alberta went into cardiac arrest and died two hours later. The
death was ruled a homicide but no one was indicted.
Those who survive SWAT raids are generally traumatized by the event.
Not long after Spruill’s death, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia
Fields held hearings on SWAT practices in New York City. According to the
Village Voice, “Dozens of black and Latino victims—nurses, secretaries,
and former officers—packed her chambers airing tales, one more horrifying
than the next. Most were unable to hold back tears as they described police
ransacking their homes, handcuffing children and grandparents, putting
guns to their heads, and being verbally (and often physically) abusive. In

many cases, victims had received no follow-up from the NYPD, even to fix
busted doors or other physical damage.”43
Even in small towns, such as those in Dodge County, Wisconsin, SWAT
teams treat routine searches for narcotics as a major battlefront in the drug
war. In Dodge County, police raided the mobile home of Scott Bryant in
April 1995, after finding traces of marijuana in his garbage. Moments after
busting into the mobile home, police shot Bryant—who was unarmed—
killing him. Bryant’s eight-year-old son was asleep in the next room and
watched his father die while waiting for an ambulance. The district attorney
theorized that the shooter’s hand had clenched in “sympathetic physical
reaction” as his other hand reached for handcuffs. A spokesman for the
Beretta company called this unlikely because the gun’s double-action
trigger was designed to prevent unintentional firing. The Dodge County
sheriff compared the shooting to a hunting accident.44
SWAT raids have not been limited to homes, apartment buildings, or
public housing projects. Public high schools have been invaded by SWAT
teams in search of drugs. In November 2003, for example, police raided
Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina. The raid was
recorded by the school’s surveillance cameras as well as a police camera.
The tapes show students as young as fourteen forced to the ground in
handcuffs as officers in SWAT team uniforms and bulletproof vests aim
guns at their heads and lead a drug-sniffing dog to tear through their book
bags. The raid was initiated by the school’s principal, who was suspicious
that a single student might be dealing marijuana. No drugs or weapons were
found during the raid and no charges were filed. Nearly all of the students
searched and seized were students of color.
The transformation from “community policing” to “military policing,”
began in 1981, when President Reagan persuaded Congress to pass the
Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which encouraged the
military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases,
intelligence, research, weaponry, and other equipment for drug interdiction.
That legislation carved a huge exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, the
Civil War-era law prohibiting the use of the military for civilian policing. It
was followed by Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive, which
declared drugs a threat to U.S. national security, and provided for yet more

cooperation between local, state, and federal law enforcement. In the years
that followed, Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton enthusiastically
embraced the drug war and increased the transfer of military equipment,
technology, and training to local law enforcement, contingent, of course, on
the willingness of agencies to prioritize drug-law enforcement and
concentrate resources on arrests for illegal drugs.
The incentives program worked. Drug arrests skyrocketed, as SWAT
teams swept through urban housing projects, highway patrol agencies
organized drug interdiction units on the freeways, and stop-and-frisk
programs were set loose on the streets. Generally, the financial incentives
offered to local law enforcement to pump up their drug arrests have not
been well publicized, leading the average person to conclude reasonably
(but mistakenly) that when their local police departments report that drug
arrests have doubled or tripled in a short period of time, the arrests reflect a
surge in illegal drug activity, rather than an infusion of money and an
intensified enforcement effort.
One exception is a 2001 report by the Capital Times in Madison,
Wisconsin. The Times reported that as of 2001, sixty-five of the state’s
eighty-three local SWAT teams had come into being since 1980, and that
the explosion of SWAT teams was traceable to the Pentagon’s weaponry
giveaway program, as well as to federal programs that provide money to
local police departments for drug control. The paper explained that, in the
1990s, Wisconsin police departments were given nearly a hundred thousand
pieces of military equipment. And although the paramilitary units were
often justified to city councils and skeptical citizens as essential to fight
terrorism or deal with hostage situations, they were rarely deployed for
those reasons but instead were sent to serve routine search warrants for
drugs and make drug arrests. In fact, the Times reported that police
departments had an extraordinary incentive to use their new equipment for
drug enforcement: the extra federal funding the local police departments
received was tied to antidrug policing. The size of the disbursements was
linked to the number of city or county drug arrests. Each arrest, in theory,
would net a given city or county about $153 in state and federal funding.
Non-drug-related policing brought no federal dollars, even for violent
crime. As a result, when Jackson County, Wisconsin, quadrupled its drug

arrests between 1999 and 2000, the county’s federal subsidy quadrupled
too.45

Finders Keepers

As if the free military equipment, training, and cash grants were not
enough, the Reagan administration provided law enforcement with yet
another financial incentive to devote extraordinary resources to drug law
enforcement, rather than more serious crimes: state and local law
enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use,
the vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war.
This dramatic change in policy gave state and local police an enormous
stake in the War on Drugs—not in its success, but in its perpetual existence.
Law enforcement gained a pecuniary interest not only in the forfeited
property, but in the profitability of the drug market itself.
Modern drug forfeiture laws date back to 1970, when Congress passed
the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The Act
included a civil forfeiture provision authorizing the government to seize and
forfeit drugs, drug manufacturing and storage equipment, and conveyances
used to transport drugs. As legal scholars Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen
have explained, the provision was justified as an effort “to forestall the
spread of drugs in a way criminal penalties could not—by striking at its
economic roots.”46 When a drug dealer is sent to jail, there are many others
ready and willing to take his place, but seizing the means of production,
some legislators reasoned, may shut down the trafficking business for good.
Over the years, the list of properties subject to forfeiture expanded greatly,
and the required connection to illegal drug activity became increasingly
remote, leading to many instances of abuse. But it was not until 1984, when
Congress amended the federal law to allow federal law enforcement
agencies to retain and use any and all proceeds from asset forfeitures, and to
allow state and local police agencies to retain up to 80 percent of the assets’
value, that a true revolution occurred.
Suddenly, police departments were capable of increasing the size of their
budgets, quite substantially, simply by taking the cash, cars, and homes of

people suspected of drug use or sales. At the time the new rules were
adopted, the law governing civil forfeiture was so heavily weighted in favor
of the government that fully 80 percent of forfeitures went uncontested.
Property or cash could be seized based on mere suspicion of illegal drug
activity, and the seizure could occur without notice or hearing, upon an ex
parte showing of mere probable cause to believe that the property had
somehow been “involved” in a crime. The probable cause showing could be
based on nothing more than hearsay, innuendo, or even the paid, selfserving testimony of someone with interests clearly adverse to the property
owner. Neither the owner of the property nor anyone else need be charged
with a crime, much less found guilty of one. Indeed, a person could be
found innocent of any criminal conduct and the property could still be
subject to forfeiture. Once the property was seized, the owner had no right
of counsel, and the burden was placed on him to prove the property’s
“innocence.” Because those who were targeted were typically poor or of
moderate means, they often lacked the resources to hire an attorney or pay
the considerable court costs. As a result, most people who had their cash or
property seized did not challenge the government’s action, especially
because the government could retaliate by filing criminal charges—baseless
or not.
Not surprisingly, this drug forfeiture regime proved highly lucrative for
law enforcement, offering more than enough incentive to wage the War on
Drugs. According to a report commissioned by the Department of Justice,
between 1988 and 1992 alone, Byrne-funded drug task forces seized over
$1 billion in assets.47 Remarkably, this figure does not include drug task
forces funded by the DEA or other federal agencies.
The actual operation of drug forfeiture laws seriously undermines the
usual rhetoric offered in support of the War on Drugs, namely that it is the
big “kingpins” that are the target of the war. Drug-war forfeiture laws are
frequently used to allow those with assets to buy their freedom, while drug
users and small-time dealers with few assets to trade are subjected to
lengthy prison terms. In Massachusetts, for example, an investigation by
journalists found that on average a “payment of $50,000 in drug profits won
a 6.3 year reduction in a sentence for dealers,” while agreements of $10,000
or more bought elimination or reduction of trafficking charges in almost

three-fourths of such cases.48 Federal drug forfeiture laws are one reason,
Blumenson and Nielsen note, “why state and federal prisons now confine
large numbers of men and women who had relatively minor roles in drug
distribution networks, but few of their bosses.”49

The Shakedown

Quite predictably, the enormous economic rewards created by both the
drug-war forfeiture and Byrne-grant laws has created an environment in
which a very fine line exists between the lawful and the unlawful taking of
other people’s money and property—a line so thin that some officers
disregard the formalities of search warrants, probable cause, and reasonable
suspicion altogether. In United States v. Reese, for example, the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals described a drug task force completely corrupted
by its dependence on federal drug money. Operating as a separate unit
within the Oakland Housing Authority, the task force behaved, in the words
of one officer, “more or less like a wolfpack,” driving up in police vehicles
and taking “anything and everything we saw on the street corner.”50 The
officers were under tremendous pressure from their commander to keep
their arrest numbers up, and all of the officers were aware that their jobs
depended on the renewal of a federal grant. The task force commander
emphasized that they would need statistics to show that the grant money
was well spent and sent the task force out to begin a shift with comments
like, “Let’s go out and kick ass,” and “Everybody goes to jail tonight for
everything, right?”51
Journalists and investigators have documented numerous other instances
in which police departments have engaged in illegal shakedowns, searches,
and threats in search of forfeitable property and cash. In Florida, reporters
reviewed nearly one thousand videotapes of highway traffic stops and found
that police had used traffic violations as an excuse—or pretext—to
confiscate “tens of thousands of dollars from motorists against whom there
[was] no evidence of wrongdoing,” frequently taking the money without
filing any criminal charges.52 Similarly, in Louisiana, journalists reported
that Louisiana police engaged in massive pretextual stops in an effort to
seize cash, with the money diverted to police department ski trips and other
unauthorized uses.53 And in Southern California, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s

Department employee reported that deputies routinely planted drugs and
falsified police reports to establish probable cause for cash seizures.54
Lots of small seizures can be nearly as profitable, and require the
expenditure of fewer investigative resources, than a few large busts. The
Western Area Narcotics Task Force (WANT) became the focus of a major
investigation in 1996 when almost $66,000 was discovered hidden in its
headquarters. The investigation revealed that the task force seized large
amounts of money, but also small amounts, and then dispensed it freely,
unconstrained by reporting requirements or the task force’s mission. Some
seizures were as small as eight cents. Another seizure of ninety-three cents
prompted the local newspaper to observe that “once again the officers were
taking whatever the suspects were carrying, even though by no stretch
could pocket change be construed to be drug money.”55
In 2000, Congress passed the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act which
was meant to address many of the egregious examples of abuse of civil
forfeiture. Some of the most widely cited examples involved wealthy whites
whose property was seized. One highly publicized case involved a reclusive
millionaire, Donald Scott, who was shot and killed when a multiagency task
force raided his two-hundred-acre Malibu ranch purportedly in search of
marijuana plants. They never found a single marijuana plant in the course of
the search. A subsequent investigation revealed that the primary motivation
for the raid was the possibility of forfeiting Scott’s property. If the forfeiture
had been successful, it would have netted the law enforcement agencies
about $5 million in assets.56 In another case, William Munnerlynn had his
Learjet seized by the DEA after he inadvertently used it to transport a drug
dealer. Though charges were dropped against him within seventy-two
hours, the DEA refused to return his Learjet. Only after five years of
litigation and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees was he able to secure
return of his jet. When the jet was returned, it had sustained $100,000 worth
of damage. 57 Such cases were atypical but got the attention of Congress.
The Reform Act resulted in a number of significant due-process changes,
such as shifting the burden of proof onto the government, eliminating the
requirement that an owner post a cost bond, and providing some minimal
hardship protections for innocent parties who stand to lose their homes.
These reforms, however, do not go nearly far enough.

Arguably the most significant reform is the creation of an “innocent
owner” defense. Prior to the Reform Act, the Supreme Court had ruled that
the guilt or innocence of the property’s owner was irrelevant to the
property’s guilt—a ruling based on the archaic legal fiction that a piece of
property could be “guilty” of a crime. The act remedied this insanity to
some extent; it provides an “innocent owner” defense to those whose
property has been seized. However, the defense is seriously undermined by
the fact that the government’s burden of proof is so low—the government
need only establish by a “preponderance of the evidence” that the property
was involved in the commission of a drug crime. This standard of proof is
significantly lower than the “clear and convincing evidence” standard
contained in an earlier version of the legislation, and it is far lower than the
“proof beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for criminal convictions.
Once the government meets this minimal burden, the burden then shifts
to the owner to prove that she “did not know of the conduct giving rise to
the forfeiture” or that she did “all that reasonably could be expected under
the circumstances to terminate such use of the property.” This means, for
example, that a woman who knew that her husband occasionally smoked
pot could have her car forfeited to the government because she allowed him
to use her car. Because the “car” was guilty of transporting someone who
had broken a drug law at some time, she could legally lose her only form of
transportation, even though she herself committed no crime. Indeed, women
who are involved in some relationship with men accused of drug crimes,
typically husbands or boyfriends, are among the most frequent claimants in
forfeiture proceedings.58 Courts have not been forgiving of women in these
circumstances, frequently concluding that “the nature and circumstances of
the marital relationship may give rise to an inference of knowledge by the
spouse claiming innocent ownership.”59
There are other problems with this framework, not the least of which
being that the owner of the property is not entitled to the appointment of
counsel in the forfeiture proceeding, unless he or she has been charged with
a crime. The overwhelming majority of forfeiture cases do not involve any
criminal charges, so the vast majority of people who have their cash, cars,
or homes seized must represent themselves in court, against the federal
government. Oddly, someone who has actually been charged with a crime is

entitled to the appointment of counsel in civil forfeiture proceedings, but
those whose property has been forfeited but whose conduct did not merit
criminal charges are on their own. This helps to explain why up to 90
percent of forfeiture cases in some jurisdictions are not challenged. Most
people simply cannot afford the considerable cost of hiring an attorney.
Even if the cost is not an issue, the incentives are all wrong. If the police
seized your car worth $5,000, or took $500 cash from your home, would
you be willing to pay an attorney more than your assets are worth to get
them back? If you haven’t been charged with a crime, are you willing to
risk the possibility that fighting the forfeiture might prompt the government
to file criminal charges against you?
The greatest failure of the Reform Act, however, has nothing to do with
one’s due process rights once property has been seized in a drug
investigation. Despite all of the new procedural rules and formal
protections, the law does not address the single most serious problem
associated with drug-war forfeiture laws: the profit motive in drug-law
enforcement. Under the new law, drug busts motivated by the desire to
seize cash, cars, homes, and other property are still perfectly legal. Law
enforcement agencies are still allowed, through revenue-sharing agreements
with the federal government, to keep seized assets for their own use.
Clearly, so long as law enforcement is free to seize assets allegedly
associated with illegal drug activity—without ever charging anyone with a
crime—local police departments, as well as state and federal law
enforcement agencies, will continue to have a direct pecuniary interest in
the profitability and longevity of the drug war. The basic structure of the
system remains intact.
None of this is to suggest that the financial rewards offered for police
participation in the drug war are the only reason that law enforcement
decided to embrace the war with zeal. Undoubtedly, the political and
cultural context of the drug war—particularly in the early years—
encouraged the roundup. When politicians declare a drug war, the police
(our domestic warriors) undoubtedly feel some pressure to wage it. But it is
doubtful that the drug war would have been launched with such intensity on
the ground but for the bribes offered for law enforcement’s cooperation.
Today the bribes may no longer be necessary. Now that the SWAT teams,
the multiagency drug task forces, and the drug enforcement agenda have

become a regular part of federal, state, and local law enforcement, it
appears the drug war is here to stay. Funding for the Byrne-sponsored drug
task forces has dwindled in recent years, but President Obama has promised
to revive the Byrne grant program, claiming that it is “critical to creating
the anti-drug task forces our communities need.”60 Relatively little
organized opposition to the drug war currently exists, and any dramatic
effort to scale back the war may be publicly condemned as “soft” on crime.
The war has become institutionalized. It is no longer a special program or
politicized project; it is simply the way things are done.

Legal Misrepresentation

So far, we have seen that the legal rules governing the drug war ensure that
extraordinary numbers of people will be swept into the criminal justice
system—arrested on drug charges, often for very minor offenses. But what
happens after arrest? How does the design of the system help to ensure the
creation of a massive undercaste?
Once arrested, one’s chances of ever being truly free of the system of
control are slim, often to the vanishing point. Defendants are typically
denied meaningful legal representation, pressured by the threat of a lengthy
sentence into a plea bargain, and then placed under formal control—in
prison or jail, on probation or parole. Most Americans probably have no
idea how common it is for people to be convicted without ever having the
benefit of legal representation, or how many people plead guilty to crimes
they did not commit because of fear of mandatory sentences.
Tens of thousands of poor people go to jail every year without ever
talking to a lawyer, and those who do meet with a lawyer for a drug offense
often spend only a few minutes discussing their case and options before
making a decision that will profoundly affect the rest of their lives. As one
public defender explained to the Los Angeles Times, “They are herded like
cattle [into the courtroom lockup], up at 3 or 4 in the morning. Then they
have to make decisions that affect the rest of their lives. You can imagine
how stressful it is.”61
More than forty years ago, in Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court
ruled that poor people accused of serious crimes were entitled to counsel.
Yet thousands of people are processed through America’s courts annually
either with no lawyer at all or with a lawyer who does not have the time,
resources or, in some cases, the inclination to provide effective
representation. In Gideon, the Supreme Court left it to state and local
governments to decide how legal services should be funded. However, in
the midst of a drug war, when politicians compete with each other to prove

how “tough” they can be on crime and criminals, funding public defender
offices and paying private attorneys to represent those accused of crimes
has been a low priority.
Approximately 80 percent of criminal defendants are indigent and thus
unable to hire a lawyer.62 Yet our nation’s public defender system is
woefully inadequate. The most visible sign of the failed system is the
astonishingly large caseloads public defenders routinely carry, making it
impossible for them to provide meaningful representation to their clients.
Sometimes defenders have well over one hundred clients at a time; many of
these clients are facing decades behind bars or life imprisonment. Too often
the quality of court-appointed counsel is poor because the miserable
working conditions and low pay discourage good attorneys from
participating in the system. And some states deny representation to
impoverished defendants on the theory that somehow they should be able to
pay for a lawyer, even though they are scarecely able to pay for food or
rent. In Virginia, for example, fees paid to court-appointed attorneys for
representing someone charged with a felony that carries a sentence of less
than twenty years are capped at $428. And in Wisconsin, more than 11,000
poor people go to court without representation every year because anyone
who earns more than $3,000 per year is considered able to afford a
lawyer.63 In Lake Charles, Louisiana, the public defender office has only
two investigators for the 2,500 new felony cases and 4,000 new
misdemeanor cases assigned to the office each year.64 The NAACP Legal
Defense Fund and the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta sued
the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, alleging that the city operated a “modern
day debtor’s prison” by jailing poor people who are unable to pay their
fines and denying them the right to lawyers.
In 2004, the American Bar Association released a report on the status of
indigent defense, concluding that, “All too often, defendants plead guilty,
even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or
what is occurring. Sometimes the proceedings reflect little or no recognition
that the accused is mentally ill or does not adequately understand English.
The fundamental right to a lawyer that Americans assume applies to
everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice
for countless people across the United States.”65

Even when people are charged with extremely serious crimes, such as
murder, they may find themselves languishing in jail for years without
meeting with an attorney, much less getting a trial. One extreme example is
the experience of James Thomas, an impoverished day laborer in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, who was charged with murder in 1996, and waited eight
and a half years for his case to go to trial. It never did. His mother finally
succeeded in getting his case dismissed, after scraping together $500 to hire
an attorney, who demonstrated to the court that, in the time Thomas spent
waiting for his case to go to trial, his alibi witness had died of kidney
disease. Another Louisiana man, Johnny Lee Ball, was convicted of seconddegree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of
parole after meeting with a public defender for just eleven minutes before
trial. If indicted murderers have a hard time getting meaningful
representation, what are the odds that small-time drug dealers find
themselves represented by a zealous advocate? As David Carroll, the
research director for the National Legal Aid & Defender Association
explained to USA Today, “There’s a real disconnect in this country between
what people perceive is the state of indigent defense and what it is. I
attribute that to shows like Law & Order, where the defendant says, ‘I want
a lawyer,’ and all of a sudden Legal Aid appears in the cell. That’s what
people think.”66
Children caught up in this system are the most vulnerable and yet are the
least likely to be represented by counsel. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled in In re Gault that children under the age of eighteen have the right to
legal assistance with any criminal charges filed against them. In practice,
however, children routinely “waive” their right to counsel in juvenile
proceedings. In some states, such as Ohio, as many as 90 percent of
children charged with criminal wrongdoing are not represented by a lawyer.
As one public defender explained, “The kids come in with their parents,
who want to get this dealt with as quickly as possible, and they say, ‘You
did it, admit it.’ If people were informed about what could be done, they
might actually ask for help.”67

Bad Deal

Almost no one ever goes to trial. Nearly all criminal cases are resolved
through plea bargaining—a guilty plea by the defendant in exchange for
some form of leniency by the prosecutor. Though it is not widely known,
the prosecutor is the most powerful law enforcement official in the criminal
justice system. One might think that judges are the most powerful, or even
the police, but in reality the prosecutor holds the cards. It is the prosecutor,
far more than any other criminal justice official, who holds the keys to the
jailhouse door.
After the police arrest someone, the prosecutor is in charge. Few rules
constrain the exercise of his or her discretion. The prosecutor is free to
dismiss a case for any reason or no reason at all. The prosecutor is also free
to file more charges against a defendant than can realistically be proven in
court, so long as probable cause arguably exists—a practice known as
overcharging.
The practice of encouraging defendants to plead guilty to crimes, rather
than affording them the benefit of a full trial, has always carried its risks
and downsides. Never before in our history, though, have such an
extraordinary number of people felt compelled to plead guilty, even if they
are innocent, simply because the punishment for the minor, nonviolent
offense with which they have been charged is so unbelievably severe. When
prosecutors offer “only” three years in prison when the penalties defendants
could receive if they took their case to trial would be five, ten, or twenty
years—or life imprisonment—only extremely courageous (or foolish)
defendents turn the offer down.
The pressure to plead guilty to crimes has increased exponentially since
the advent of the War on Drugs. In 1986, Congress passed The Anti-Drug
Abuse Act, which established extremely long mandatory minimum prison
terms for low-level drug dealing and possession of crack cocaine. The
typical mandatory sentence for a first-time drug offense in federal court is

five or ten years. By contrast, in other developed countries around the
world, a first-time drug offense would merit no more than six months in
jail, if jail time is imposed at all.68 State legislatures were eager to jump on
the “get tough” bandwagon, passing harsh drug laws, as well as “three
strikes” laws mandating a life sentence for those convicted of any third
offense. These mandatory minimum statutory schemes have transferred an
enormous amount of power from judges to prosecutors. Now, simply by
charging someone with an offense carrying a mandatory sentence of ten to
fifteen years or life, prosecutors are able to force people to plead guilty
rather than risk a decade or more in prison. Prosecutors admit that they
routinely charge people with crimes for which they technically have
probable cause but which they seriously doubt they could ever win in
court.69 They “load up” defendants with charges that carry extremely harsh
sentences in order to force them to plead guilty to lesser offenses and—
here’s the kicker—to obtain testimony for a related case. Harsh sentencing
laws encourage people to snitch.
The number of snitches in drug cases has soared in recent years, partly
because the government has tempted people to “cooperate” with law
enforcement by offering cash, putting them “on payroll,” and promising
cuts of seized drug assets, but also because ratting out co-defendants,
friends, family, or acquaintances is often the only way to avoid a lengthy
mandatory minimum sentence.70 In fact, under the federal sentencing
guidelines, providing “substantial assistance” is often the only way
defendants can hope to obtain a sentence below the mandatory minimum.
The “assistance” provided by snitches is notoriously unreliable, as studies
have documented countless informants who have fabricated stories about
drug-related and other criminal activity in exchange for money or leniency
in their pending criminal cases.71 While such conduct is deplorable, it is not
difficult to understand. Who among us would not be tempted to lie if it was
the only way to avoid a forty-year sentence for a minor drug crime?
The pressure to plea-bargain and thereby “convict yourself” in exchange
for some kind of leniency is not an accidental by-product of the mandatorysentencing regime. The U.S. Sentencing Commission itself has noted that
“the value of a mandatory minimum sentence lies not in its imposition, but
in its value as a bargaining chip to be given away in return for the resource-

saving plea from the defendant to a more leniently sanctioned charge.”
Describing severe mandatory sentences as a bargaining chip is a major
understatement, given its potential for extracting guilty pleas from people
who are innocent of any crime.
It is impossible to know for certain how many innocent drug defendants
convict themselves every year by accepting a plea bargain out of fear of
mandatory sentences, or how many are convicted due to lying informants
and paid witnesses, but reliable estimates of the number of innocent people
currently in prison tend to range from 2 percent to 5 percent.72 While those
numbers may sound small (and probably are underestimates), they translate
into thousands of innocent people who are locked up, some of whom will
die in prison. In fact, if only 1 percent of America’s prisoners are actually
innocent of the crimes for which they have been convicted, that would
mean tens of thousands of innocent people are currently languishing behind
bars in the United States.
The real point here, however, is not that innocent people are locked up.
That has been true since penitentiaries first opened in America. The critical
point is that thousands of people are swept into the criminal justice system
every year pursuant to the drug war without much regard for their guilt or
innocence. The police are allowed by the courts to conduct fishing
expeditions for drugs on streets and freeways based on nothing more than a
hunch. Homes may be searched for drugs based on a tip from an unreliable,
confidential informant who is trading the information for money or to
escape prison time. And once swept inside the system, people are often
denied attorneys or meaningful representation and pressured into plea
bargains by the threat of unbelievably harsh sentences—sentences for minor
drug crimes that are higher than many countries impose on convicted
murderers. This is the way the roundup works, and it works this way in
virtually every major city in the United States.

Time Served

Once convicted of felony drug charges, one’s chances of being released
from the system in short order are slim, at best. The elimination of judicial
discretion through mandatory sentencing laws has forced judges to impose
sentences for drug crimes that are often longer than those violent criminals
receive. When judges have discretion, they may consider a defendant’s
background and impose a lighter penalty if the defendant’s personal
circumstances—extreme poverty or experience of abuse, for example—
warrant it. This flexibility—which is important in all criminal cases—is
especially important in drug cases, as studies have indicated that many drug
defendants are using or selling to support an addiction.73 Referring a
defendant to treatment, rather than sending him or her to prison, may well
be the most prudent choice—saving government resources and potentially
saving the defendant from a lifetime of addiction. Likewise, imposing a
short prison sentence (or none at all) may increase the chances that the
defendant will experience successful re-entry. A lengthy prison term may
increase the odds that reentry will be extremely difficult, leading to relapse,
and re-imprisonment. Mandatory drug sentencing laws strip judges of their
traditional role of considering all relevant circumstances in an effort to do
justice in the individual case.
Nevertheless, harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders
have been consistently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1982, the
Supreme Court upheld forty years of imprisonment for possession and an
attempt to sell 9 ounces of marijuana.74 Several years later, in Harmelin v.
Michigan, the Court upheld a sentence of life imprisonment for a defendant
with no prior convictions who attempted to sell 672 grams (approximately
23 ounces) of crack cocaine.75 The Court found the sentences imposed in
those cases “reasonably proportionate” to the offenses committed—and not
“cruel and unusual” in violation of the Eighth Amendment. This ruling was
remarkable given that, prior to the Drug Reform Act of 1986, the longest

sentence Congress had ever imposed for possession of any drug in any
amount was one year. A life sentence for a first-time drug offense is
unheard of in the rest of the developed world. Even for high-end drug
crimes, most countries impose sentences that are measured in months,
rather than years. For example, a conviction for selling a kilogram of heroin
yields a mandatory ten-year sentence in U.S. federal court, compared with
six months in prison in England.76 Remarkably, in the United States, a life
sentence is deemed perfectly appropriate for a first-time drug offender.
The most famous Supreme Court decision upholding mandatory
minimum sentences is Lockyer v. Andrade.77 In that case, the Court rejected
constitutional challenges to sentences of twenty-five years without parole
for a man who stole three golf clubs from a pro shop, and fifty years
without parole for another man for stealing children’s videotapes from a
Kmart store. These sentences were imposed pursuant to California’s
controversial three strikes law, which mandates a sentence of twenty-five
years to life for recidivists convicted of a third felony, no matter how minor.
Writing for the Court’s majority, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
acknowledged that the sentences were severe but concluded that they are
not grossly disproportionate to the offense, and therefore do not violate the
Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishments. In dissent,
Justice David H. Souter retorted, “If Andrade’s sentence [for stealing
videotapes] is not grossly disproportionate, the principle has no meaning.”
Similarly, counsel for one of the defendants, University of Southern
California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, noted that the Court’s
reasoning makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to challenge any
recidivist sentencing law: “If these sentences aren’t cruel and unusual
punishment, what would be?”78
Mandatory sentencing laws are frequently justified as necessary to keep
“violent criminals” off the streets, yet these penalties are imposed most
often against drug offenders and those who are guilty of nonviolent crimes.
In fact, under three-strikes regimes, such as the one in California, a “repeat
offender” could be someone who had a single prior case decades ago. First
and second strikes are counted by individual charges, rather than individual
cases, so a single case can result in first, second, and even third strikes. For
example, a person arrested for possession of a substantial amount of

marijuana, as well as a tiny amount of cocaine, could be charged with at
least two separate felonies: possession with intent to sell marijuana, as well
as possession of cocaine. Pleading guilty to each of these crimes would
result in “two strikes.” Fifteen years later, if the individual is arrested for
passing a bad check, he or she could be facing a third strike and a life
sentence. To make matters worse, sentences for each charge can run
consecutively, so a defendant can easily face a sentence of fifty, seventyfive, or one hundred years to life arising from a single case. In fact, fifty
years to life was the actual sentence given to Leandro Andrade, whose
sentence for stealing videotapes was upheld by the Supreme Court.
The clear majority of those subject to harsh mandatory minimum
sentences in the federal system are drug offenders. Most are low-level,
minor drug dealers—not “drug kingpins.” The stories are legion. Marcus
Boyd was arrested after selling 3.9 grams of crack cocaine to a confidential
informant working with a regional drug task force. At the time of his arrest,
Marcus was twenty-four years old and had been addicted to drugs for six
years, beginning shortly after his mother’s death and escalating throughout
his early twenties. He met the informant through a close family friend,
someone he trusted. At sentencing, the judge based the drug quantity
calculation on testimony from the informant and another witness, who both
claimed they bought crack from Marcus on other occasions. As a result,
Marcus was held accountable for 37.4 grams (the equivalent of 1.3 ounces)
based on the statements made by the informant and the other witness. He
was sentenced to more than fourteen years in prison. His two children were
six and seven years old at the time of his sentencing. They will be adults
when he is released.79
Weldon Angelos is another casualty of the drug war. He will spend the
rest of his life in prison for three marijuana sales. Angelos, a twenty-fouryear-old record producer, possessed a weapon—which he did not use or
threaten to use—at the time of the sales. Under federal sentencing
guidelines, however, the sentencing judge was obligated to impose a fiftyfive-year mandatory minimum sentence. Upon doing so, the judge noted his
reluctance to send the young man away for life for three marijuana sales.
He said from the bench, “The Court believes that to sentence Mr. Angelos
to prison for the rest of his life is unjust, cruel, and even irrational.”80

Some federal judges, including conservative judges, have quit in protest
of federal drug laws and sentencing guidelines. Face-to-face with those
whose lives hang in the balance, they are far closer to the human tragedy
occasioned by the drug war than the legislators who write the laws from
afar. Judge Lawrence Irving, a Reagan appointee, noted upon his
retirement: “If I remain on the bench, I have no choice but to follow the
law. I just can’t, in good conscience, continue to do this.”81 Other judges,
such as Judge Jack Weinstein, publicly refused to take any more drug cases,
describing “a sense of depression about much of the cruelty I have been a
party to in connection with the ‘war on drugs.’”82 Another Reagan
appointee, Judge Stanley Marshall, told a reporter, “I’ve always been
considered a fairly harsh sentencer, but it’s killing me that I’m sending so
many low-level offenders away for all this time.”83 He made the statement
after imposing a five-year sentence on a mother in Washington, D.C., who
was convicted of “possession” of crack found by police in a locked box that
her son had hidden in her attic. In California, reporters described a similar
event:
U.S. District Judge William W. Schwarzer, a Republican appointee, is
not known as a light sentencer. Thus it was that everyone in his San
Francisco courtroom watched in stunned silence as Schwarzer, known
for his stoic demeanor, choked with tears as he anguished over
sentencing Richard Anderson, a first offender Oakland longshoreman,
to ten years in prison without parole for what appeared to be a minor
mistake in judgment in having given a ride to a drug dealer for a
meeting with an undercover agent.84
Even Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has condemned the harsh
mandatory minimum sentences imposed on drug offenders. He told
attorneys gathered for the American Bar Association’s 2003 annual
conference: “Our [prison] resources are misspent, our punishments too
severe, our sentences too loaded.” He then added, “I can accept neither the
necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences. In all
too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unjust.”85

The Prison Label

Most people imagine that the explosion in the U.S. prison population during
the past twenty-five years reflects changes in crime rates. Few would guess
that our prison population leapt from approximately 350,000 to 2.3 million
in such a short period of time due to changes in laws and policies, not
changes in crime rates. Yet it has been changes in our laws—particularly the
dramatic increases in the length of prison sentences—that have been
responsible for the growth of our prison system, not increases in crime. One
study suggests that the entire increase in the prison population from 1980 to
2001 can be explained by sentencing policy changes.86
Because harsh sentencing is the primary cause of the prison explosion,
one might reasonably assume that substantially reducing the length of
prison sentences would effectively dismantle this new system of control.
That view, however, is mistaken. This system depends on the prison label,
not prison time.
Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel
universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal,
and privileges of citizenship such as voting and jury service are off-limits. It
does not matter whether you have actually spent time in prison; your
second-class citizenship begins the moment you are branded a felon. Most
people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison. As of 2008, there
were approximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, and a staggering
5.1 million people under “community correctional supervision”—i.e., on
probation or parole.87 Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major
impact on the majority of people in the system. It is the badge of inferiority
—the felony record—that relegates people for their entire lives, to secondclass status. As described in chapter 4, for drug felons, there is little hope of
escape. Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private
landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to “check the box” indicating a
felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and

denied licenses for a wide range of professions, people whose only crime is
drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use
find themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy—
permanently.
No wonder, then, that most people labeled felons find their way back into
prison. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study, about 30 percent
of released prisoners in its sample were rearrested within six months of
release. 88 Within three years, nearly 68 percent were rearrested at least
once for a new offense.89 Only a small minority are rearrested for violent
crimes; the vast majority are rearrested for property offenses, drug offenses,
and offenses against the public order.90
For those released on probation or parole, the risks are especially high.
They are subject to regular surveillance and monitoring by the police and
may be stopped and searched (with or without their consent) for any reason
or no reason at all. As a result, they are far more likely to be arrested
(again) than those whose behavior is not subject to constant scrutiny by law
enforcement. Probationers and parolees are at increased risk of arrest
because their lives are governed by additional rules that do not apply to
everyone else. Myriad restrictions on their travel and behavior (such as a
prohibition on associating with other felons), as well as various
requirements of probation and parole (such as paying fines and meeting
with probation officers), create opportunities for arrest. Violation of these
special rules can land someone right back in prison. In fact, that is what
happens a good deal of the time.
The extraordinary increase in prison admissions due to parole and
probation violations is due almost entirely to the War on Drugs. With
respect to parole, in 1980, only 1 percent of all prison admissions were
parole violators. Twenty years later, more than one third (35 percent) of
prison admissions resulted from parole violations.91 To put the matter more
starkly: About as many people were returned to prison for parole violations
in 2000 as were admitted to prison in 1980 for all reasons.92 Of all parole
violators returned to prison in 2000, only one-third were returned for a new
conviction; two-thirds were returned for a technical violation such as
missing appointments with a parole officer, failing to maintain employment,
or failing a drug test.93 In this system of control, failing to cope well with

one’s exile status is treated like a crime. If you fail, after being released
from prison with a criminal record—your personal badge of inferiority—to
remain drug free, or if you fail to get a job against all the odds, or if you get
depressed and miss an appointment with your parole officer (or if you
cannot afford the bus fare to take you there), you can be sent right back to
prison—where society apparently thinks millions of Americans belong.
This disturbing phenomenon of people cycling in and out of prison,
trapped by their second-class status, has been described by Loïc Wacquant
as a “closed circuit of perpetual marginality.”94 Hundreds of thousands of
people are released from prison every year, only to find themselves locked
out of the mainstream society and economy. Most ultimately return to
prison, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Others are released again, only
to find themselves in precisely the circumstances they occupied before,
unable to cope with the stigma of the prison label and their permanent
pariah status.
Reducing the amount of time people spend behind bars—by eliminating
harsh mandatory minimums—will alleviate some of the unnecessary
suffering caused by this system, but it will not disturb the closed circuit.
Those labeled felons will continue to cycle in and out of prison, subject to
perpetual surveillance by the police, and unable to integrate into the
mainstream society and economy. Unless the number of people who are
labeled felons is dramatically reduced, and unless the laws and policies that
keep ex-offenders marginalized from the mainstream society and economy
are eliminated, the system will continue to create and maintain an enormous
undercaste.

3
The Color of Justice
Imagine you are Emma Faye Stewart, a thirty-year-old, single African
American mother of two who was arrested as part of a drug sweep in
Hearne, Texas.1 All but one of the people arrested were African American.
You are innocent. After a week in jail, you have no one to care for your two
small children and are eager to get home. Your court-appointed attorney
urges you to plead guilty to a drug distribution charge, saying the
prosecutor has offered probation. You refuse, steadfastly proclaiming your
innocence. Finally, after almost a month in jail, you decide to plead guilty
so you can return home to your children. Unwilling to risk a trial and years
of imprisonment, you are sentenced to ten years probation and ordered to
pay $1,000 in fines, as well as court and probation costs. You are also now
branded a drug felon. You are no longer eligible for food stamps; you may
be discriminated against in employment; you cannot vote for at least twelve
years; and you are about to be evicted from public housing. Once homeless,
your children will be taken from you and put in foster care.
A judge eventually dismisses all cases against the defendants who did not
plead guilty. At trial, the judge finds that the entire sweep was based on the
testimony of a single informant who lied to the prosecution. You, however,
are still a drug felon, homeless, and desperate to regain custody of your
children.
Now place yourself in the shoes of Clifford Runoalds, another African
American victim of the Hearne drug bust.2 You returned home to Bryan,
Texas, to attend the funeral of your eighteen-month-old daughter. Before the
funeral services begin, the police show up and handcuff you. You beg the
officers to let you take one last look at your daughter before she is buried.
The police refuse. You are told by prosecutors that you are needed to testify
against one of the defendants in a recent drug bust. You deny witnessing
any drug transaction; you don’t know what they are talking about. Because

of your refusal to cooperate, you are indicted on felony charges. After a
month of being held in jail, the charges against you are dropped. You are
technically free, but as a result of your arrest and period of incarceration,
you lose your job, your apartment, your furniture, and your car. Not to
mention the chance to say good-bye to your baby girl.
This is the War on Drugs. The brutal stories described above are not
isolated incidents, nor are the racial identities of Emma Faye Stewart and
Clifford Runoalds random or accidental. In every state across our nation,
African Americans—particularly in the poorest neighborhoods—are
subjected to tactics and practices that would result in public outrage and
scandal if committed in middle-class white neighborhoods. In the drug war,
the enemy is racially defined. The law enforcement methods described in
chapter 2 have been employed almost exclusively in poor communities of
color, resulting in jaw-dropping numbers of African Americans and Latinos
filling our nation’s prisons and jails every year. We are told by drug
warriors that the enemy in this war is a thing—drugs—not a group of
people, but the facts prove otherwise.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that, in seven states, African
Americans constitute 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.3
In at least fifteen states, blacks are admitted to prison on drug charges at a
rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than that of white men.4 In
fact, nationwide, the rate of incarceration for African American drug
offenders dwarfs the rate of whites. When the War on Drugs gained full
steam in the mid-1980s, prison admissions for African Americans
skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling in three years, and then increasing steadily
until it reached in 2000 a level more than twenty-six times the level in
1983.5 The number of 2000 drug admissions for Latinos was twenty-two
times the number of 1983 admissions.6 Whites have been admitted to prison
for drug offenses at increased rates as well—the number of whites admitted
for drug offenses in 2000 was eight times the number admitted in 1983—
but their relative numbers are small compared to blacks’ and Latinos’.7
Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are
white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been
black or Latino.8 In recent years, rates of black imprisonment for drug
offenses have dipped somewhat—declining approximately 25 percent from

their zenith in the mid-1990s—but it remains the case that African
Americans are incarcerated at grossly disproportionate rates throughout the
United States.9
There is, of course, an official explanation for all of this: crime rates.
This explanation has tremendous appeal—before you know the facts—for it
is consistent with, and reinforces, dominant racial narratives about crime
and criminality dating back to slavery. The truth, however, is that rates and
patterns of drug crime do not explain the glaring racial disparities in our
criminal justice system. People of all races use and sell illegal drugs at
remarkably similar rates.10 If there are significant differences in the surveys
to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth,
are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than people of color.11 One
study, for example, published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug
Abuse reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of
black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students,
and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students.12 That same survey
revealed that nearly identical percentages of white and black high school
seniors use marijuana. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse
reported in 2000 that white youth aged 12-17 are more than a third more
likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth.13 Thus the
very same year Human Rights Watch was reporting that African Americans
were being arrested and imprisoned at unprecedented rates, government
data revealed that blacks were no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes
than whites and that white youth were actually the most likely of any racial
or ethnic group to be guilty of illegal drug possession and sales. Any notion
that drug use among blacks is more severe or dangerous is belied by the
data; white youth have about three times the number of drug-related
emergency room visits as their African American counterparts.14
The notion that whites comprise the vast majority of drug users and
dealers—and may well be more likely than other racial groups to commit
drug crimes—may seem implausible to some, given the media imagery we
are fed on a daily basis and the racial composition of our prisons and jails.
Upon reflection, however, the prevalence of white drug crime—including
drug dealing—should not be surprising. After all, where do whites get their
illegal drugs? Do they all drive to the ghetto to purchase them from

somebody standing on a street corner? No. Studies consistently indicate that
drug markets, like American society generally, reflect our nation’s racial
and socioeconomic boundaries. Whites tend to sell to whites; blacks to
blacks.15 University students tend to sell to each other.16 Rural whites, for
their part, don’t make a special trip to the ’hood to purchase marijuana.
They buy it from somebody down the road.17 White high school students
typically buy drugs from white classmates, friends, or older relatives. Even
Barry McCaffrey, former director of the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy, once remarked, if your child bought drugs, “it was
from a student of their own race generally.”18 The notion that most illegal
drug use and sales happens in the ghetto is pure fiction. Drug trafficking
occurs there, but it occurs everywhere else in America as well.
Nevertheless, black men have been admitted to state prison on drug charges
at a rate that is more than thirteen times higher than white men.19 The racial
bias inherent in the drug war is a major reason that 1 in every 14 black men
was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men.20 For young
black men, the statistics are even worse. One in 9 black men between the
ages of twenty and thirty-five was behind bars in 2006, and far more were
under some form of penal control—such as probation or parole.21 These
gross racial disparities simply cannot be explained by rates of illegal drug
activity among African Americans.
What, then, does explain the extraordinary racial disparities in our
criminal justice system? Old-fashioned racism seems out of the question.
Politicians and law enforcement officials today rarely endorse racially
biased practices, and most of them fiercely condemn racial discrimination
of any kind. When accused of racial bias, police and prosecutors—like most
Americans—express horror and outrage. Forms of race discrimination that
were open and notorious for centuries were transformed in the 1960s and
1970s into something un-American—an affront to our newly conceived
ethic of colorblindness. By the early 1980s, survey data indicated that 90
percent of whites thought black and white children should attend the same
schools, 71 percent disagreed with the idea that whites have a right to keep
blacks out of their neighborhoods, 80 percent indicated they would support
a black candidate for president, and 66 percent opposed laws prohibiting
intermarriage. 22 Although far fewer supported specific policies designed to

achieve racial equality or integration (such as busing), the mere fact that
large majorities of whites were, by the early 1980s, supporting the
antidiscrimination principle reflected a profound shift in racial attitudes.
The margin of support for colorblind norms has only increased since then.
This dramatically changed racial climate has led defenders of mass
incarceration to insist that our criminal justice system, whatever its past
sins, is now largely fair and nondiscriminatory. They point to violent crime
rates in the African American community as a justification for the
staggering number of black men who find themselves behind bars. Black
men, they say, have much higher rates of violent crime; that’s why so many
of them are locked in prisons.
Typically, this is where the discussion ends.
The problem with this abbreviated analysis is that violent crime is not
responsible for the prison boom. As numerous researchers have shown,
violent crime rates have fluctuated over the years and bear little relationship
to incarceration rates—which have soared during the past three decades
regardless of whether violent crime was going up or down.23 Today violent
crime rates are at historically low levels, yet incarceration rates continue to
climb.
Murder convictions tend to receive a tremendous amount of media
attention, which feeds the public’s sense that violent crime is rampant and
forever on the rise. But like violent crime in general, the murder rate cannot
explain the prison boom. Homicide convictions account for a tiny fraction
of the growth in the prison population. In the federal system, for example,
homicide offenders account for 0.4 percent of the past decade’s growth in
the federal prison population, while drug offenders account for nearly 61
percent of that expansion.24 In the state system, less than 3 percent of new
court commitments to state prison typically involve people convicted of
homicide. 25 As much as a third of state prisoners are violent offenders, but
that statistic can easily be misinterpreted. Violent offenders tend to get
longer prison sentences than nonviolent offenders, and therefore comprise a
much larger share of the prison population than they would if they had
earlier release dates. The uncomfortable reality is that convictions for drug
offenses—not violent crime—are the single most important cause of the

prison boom in the United States, and people of color are convicted of drug
offenses at rates out of all proportion to their drug crimes.
These facts may still leave some readers unsatisfied. The idea that the
criminal justice system discriminates in such a terrific fashion when few
people openly express or endorse racial discrimination may seem farfetched, if not absurd. How could the War on Drugs operate in a
discriminatory manner, on such a large scale, when hardly anyone
advocates or engages in explicit race discrimination? That question is the
subject of this chapter. As we shall see, despite the colorblind rhetoric and
fanfare of recent years, the design of the drug war effectively guarantees
that those who are swept into the nation’s new undercaste are largely black
and brown.
This sort of claim invites skepticism. Nonracial explanations and excuses
for the systematic mass incarceration of people of color are plentiful. It is
the genius of the new system of control that it can always be defended on
nonracial grounds, given the rarity of a noose or a racial slur in connection
with any particular criminal case. Moreover, because blacks and whites are
almost never similarly situated (given extreme racial segregation in housing
and disparate life experiences), trying to “control for race” in an effort to
evaluate whether the mass incarceration of people of color is really about
race or something else—anything else—is difficult. But it is not impossible.
A bit of common sense is overdue in public discussions about racial bias
in the criminal justice system. The great debate over whether black men
have been targeted by the criminal justice system or unfairly treated in the
War on Drugs often overlooks the obvious. What is painfully obvious when
one steps back from individual cases and specific policies is that the system
of mass incarceration operates with stunning efficiency to sweep people of
color off the streets, lock them in cages, and then release them into an
inferior second-class status. Nowhere is this more true than in the War on
Drugs.
The central question, then, is how exactly does a formally colorblind
criminal justice system achieve such racially discriminatory results? Rather
easily, it turns out. The process occurs in two stages. The first step is to
grant law enforcement officials extraordinary discretion regarding whom to
stop, search, arrest, and charge for drug offenses, thus ensuring that
conscious and unconscious racial beliefs and stereotypes will be given free

reign. Unbridled discretion inevitably creates huge racial disparities. Then,
the damning step: Close the courthouse doors to all claims by defendants
and private litigants that the criminal justice system operates in racially
discriminatory fashion. Demand that anyone who wants to challenge racial
bias in the system offer, in advance, clear proof that the racial disparities are
the product of intentional racial discrimination—i.e., the work of a bigot.
This evidence will almost never be available in the era of colorblindness,
because everyone knows—but does not say—that the enemy in the War on
Drugs can be identified by race. This simple design has helped to produce
one of the most extraordinary systems of racialized social control the world
has ever seen.

Picking and Choosing—The Role of Discretion

Chapter 2 described the first step in some detail, including the legal rules
that grant police the discretion and authority to stop, interrogate, and search
anyone, anywhere, provided they get “consent” from the targeted
individual. It also examined the legal framework that affords prosecutors
extraordinary discretion to charge or not charge, plea bargain or not, and
load up defendants with charges carrying the threat of harsh mandatory
sentences, in order to force guilty pleas, even in cases in which the
defendants may well be innocent. These rules have made it possible for law
enforcement agencies to boost dramatically their rates of drug arrests and
convictions, even in communities where drug crime is stable or declining.26
But that is not all. These rules have also guaranteed racially discriminatory
results.
The reason is this: Drug-law enforcement is unlike most other types of
law enforcement. When a violent crime or a robbery or a trespass occurs,
someone usually calls the police. There is a clear victim and perpetrator.
Someone is hurt or harmed in some way and wants the offender punished.
But with drug crime, neither the purchaser of the drugs nor the seller has
any incentive to contact law enforcement. It is consensual activity. Equally
important, it is popular. The clear majority of Americans of all races have
violated drug laws in their lifetime. In fact, in any given year, more than one
in ten Americans violate drug laws. But due to resource constraints (and the
politics of the drug war), only a small fraction are arrested, convicted, and
incarcerated. In 2002, for example, there were 19.5 million illicit drug
users, compared to 1.5 million drug arrests and 175,000 people admitted to
prison for a drug offense.27
The ubiquity of illegal drug activity, combined with its consensual
nature, requires a far more proactive approach by law enforcement than
what is required to address ordinary street crime. It is impossible for law
enforcement to identify and arrest every drug criminal. Strategic choices

must be made about whom to target and what tactics to employ. Police and
prosecutors did not declare the War on Drugs—and some initially opposed
it—but once the financial incentives for waging the war became too
attractive to ignore, law enforcement agencies had to ask themselves, if
we’re going to wage this war, where should it be fought and who should be
taken prisoner?
That question was not difficult to answer, given the political and social
context. As discussed in chapter 1, the Reagan administration launched a
media campaign a few years after the drug war was announced in an effort
to publicize horror stories involving black crack users and crack dealers in
ghetto communities. Although crack cocaine had not yet hit the streets
when the War on Drugs was declared in 1982, its appearance a few years
later created the perfect opportunity for the Reagan administration to build
support for its new war. Drug use, once considered a private, public-health
matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a
grave threat to the national order.
Jimmie Reeves and Richard Campbell show in their research how the
media imagery surrounding cocaine changed as the practice of smoking
cocaine came to be associated with poor blacks.28 Early in the 1980s, the
typical cocaine-related story focused on white recreational users who
snorted the drug in its powder form. These stories generally relied on news
sources associated with the drug treatment industry, such as rehabilitation
clinics, and emphasized the possibility of recovery. By 1985, however, as
the War on Drugs moved into high gear, this frame was supplanted by a
new “siege paradigm,” in which transgressors were poor, nonwhite users
and dealers of crack cocaine. Law enforcement officials assumed the role of
drug “experts,” emphasizing the need for law and order responses—a
crackdown on those associated with the drug. These findings are consistent
with numerous other studies, including a study of network television news
from 1990 and 1991, which found that a predictable “us against them”
frame was used in the news stories, with “us” being white, suburban
America, and “them” being black Americans and a few corrupted whites.29
The media bonanza inspired by the administration’s campaign solidified
in the public imagination the image of the black drug criminal. Although
explicitly racial political appeals remained rare, the calls for “war” at a time

when the media was saturated with images of black drug crime left little
doubt about who the enemy was in the War on Drugs and exactly what he
looked like. Jerome Miller, the former executive director of the National
Center for Institutions and Alternatives, described the dynamic this way:
“There are certain code words that allow you never to have to say ‘race,’
but everybody knows that’s what you mean and ‘crime’ is one of those....
So when we talk about locking up more and more people, what we’re really
talking about is locking up more and more black men.”30 Another
commentator noted, “It is unnecessary to speak directly of race [today]
because speaking about crime is talking about race.”31 Indeed, not long
after the drug war was ramped up in the media and political discourse,
almost no one imagined that drug criminals could be anything other than
black.
A survey was conducted in 1995 asking the following question: “Would
you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that
person to me?” The startling results were published in the Journal of
Alcohol and Drug Education. Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a
black drug user, while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups.32 These
results contrast sharply with the reality of drug crime in America. African
Americans constituted only 15 percent of current drug users in 1995, and
they constitute roughly the same percentage today. Whites constituted the
vast majority of drug users then (and now), but almost no one pictured a
white person when asked to imagine what a drug user looks like. The same
group of respondents also perceived the typical drug trafficker as black.
There is no reason to believe that the survey results would have been any
different if police officers or prosecutors—rather than the general public—
had been the respondents. Law enforcement officials, no less than the rest
of us, have been exposed to the racially charged political rhetoric and media
imagery associated with the drug war. In fact, for nearly three decades,
news stories regarding virtually all street crime have disproportionately
featured African American offenders. One study suggests that the standard
crime news “script” is so prevalent and so thoroughly racialized that
viewers imagine a black perpetrator even when none exists. In that study,
60 percent of viewers who saw a story with no image falsely recalled seeing

one, and 70 percent of those viewers believed the perpetrator to be African
American.33
Decades of cognitive bias research demonstrates that both unconscious
and conscious biases lead to discriminatory actions, even when an
individual does not want to discriminate.34 The quotation commonly
attributed to Nietzsche, that “there is no immaculate perception,” perfectly
captures how cognitive schemas—thought structures—influence what we
notice and how the things we notice get interpreted.35 Studies have shown
that racial schemas operate not only as part of conscious, rational
deliberations, but also automatically—without conscious awareness or
intent.36 One study, for example, involved a video game that placed
photographs of white and black individuals holding either a gun or other
object (such as a wallet, soda can, or cell phone) into various photographic
backgrounds. Participants were told to decide as quickly as possible
whether to shoot the target. Consistent with earlier studies, participants
were more likely to mistake a black target as armed when he was not, and
mistake a white target as unarmed, when in fact he was armed.37 This
pattern of discrimination reflected automatic, unconscious thought
processes, not careful deliberations.
Most striking, perhaps, is the overwhelming evidence that implicit bias
measures are disassociated from explicit bias measures.38 In other words,
the fact that you may honestly believe that you are not biased against
African Americans, and that you may even have black friends or relatives,
does not mean that you are free from unconscious bias. Implicit bias tests
may still show that you hold negative attitudes and stereotypes about
blacks, even though you do not believe you do and do not want to.39 In the
study described above, for example, black participants showed an amount
of “shooter bias” similar to that shown by whites.40 Not surprisingly, people
who have the greatest explicit bias (as measured by self-reported answers to
survey questions) against a racial group tend also to have the greatest
implicit bias against them, and vice versa.41 Yet there is often a weak
correlation between degrees of explicit and implicit bias; many people who
think they are not biased prove when tested to have relatively high levels of
bias.42 Unfortunately, a fairly consistent finding is that punitiveness and
hostility almost always increase when people are primed—even

subliminally—with images or verbal cues associated with African
Americans. In fact, studies indicate that people become increasingly harsh
when an alleged criminal is darker and more “stereotypically black”; they
are more lenient when the accused is lighter and appears more
stereotypically white. This is true of jurors as well as law enforcement
officers.43
Viewed as a whole, the relevant research by cognitive and social
psychologists to date suggests that racial bias in the drug war was
inevitable, once a public consensus was constructed by political and media
elites that drug crime is black and brown. Once blackness and crime,
especially drug crime, became conflated in the public consciousness, the
“criminalblackman,” as termed by legal scholar Kathryn Russell, would
inevitably become the primary target of law enforcement.44 Some
discrimination would be conscious and deliberate, as many honestly and
consciously would believe that black men deserve extra scrutiny and
harsher treatment. Much racial bias, though, would operate unconsciously
and automatically—even among law enforcement officials genuinely
committed to equal treatment under the law.
Whether or not one believes racial discrimination in the drug war was
inevitable, it should have been glaringly obvious in the 1980s and 1990s
that an extraordinarily high risk of racial bias in the administration of
criminal justice was present, given the way in which all crime had been
framed in the media and in political discourse. Awareness of this risk did
not require intimate familiarity with cognitive bias research. Anyone
possessing a television set during this period would likely have had some
awareness of the extent to which black men had been demonized in the War
on Drugs.
The risk that African Americans would be unfairly targeted should have
been of special concern to the U.S. Supreme Court—the one branch of
government charged with the responsibility of protecting “discrete and
insular minorities” from the excesses of majoritarian democracy, and
guaranteeing constitutional rights for groups deemed unpopular or subject
to prejudice.45 Yet when the time came for the Supreme Court to devise the
legal rules that would govern the War on Drugs, the Court adopted rules
that would maximize—not minimize—the amount of racial discrimination

that would likely occur. It then closed the courthouse doors to claims of
racial bias.
Whren v. United States is a case in point. As noted in chapter 2, the Court
held in Whren that police officers are free to use minor traffic violations as
an excuse to stop motorists for drug investigations—even when there is no
evidence whatsoever that the motorist has engaged in drug crime. So long
as a minor traffic violation—such as failing to use a turn signal, exceeding
the speed limit by a mile or two, tracking improperly between the lines, or
stopping on a pedestrian walkway—can be identified, police are free to stop
motorists for the purpose of engaging in a fishing expedition for drugs.
Such police conduct, the Court concluded, does not violate the Fourth
Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures.”46
For good reason, the petitioners in Whren argued that granting police
officers such broad discretion to investigate virtually anyone for drug
crimes created a high risk that police would exercise their discretion in a
racially discriminatory manner. With no requirement that any evidence of
drug activity actually be present before launching a drug investigation,
police officers’ snap judgments regarding who seems like a drug criminal
would likely be influenced by prevailing racial stereotypes and bias. They
urged the Court to prohibit the police from stopping motorists for the
purpose of drug investigations unless the officers actually had reason to
believe a motorist was committing, or had committed, a drug crime. Failing
to do so, they argued, was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment and
would expose African Americans to a high risk of discriminatory stops and
searches.
Not only did the Court reject the petitioners’ central claim—that using
traffic stops as a pretext for drug investigations is unconstitutional—it ruled
that claims of racial bias could not be brought under the Fourth
Amendment. In other words, the Court barred any victim of race
discrimination by the police from even alleging a claim of racial bias under
the Fourth Amendment. According to the Court, whether or not police
discriminate on the basis of race when making traffic stops is irrelevant to a
consideration of whether their conduct is “reasonable” under the Fourth
Amendment.

The Court did offer one caveat, however. It indicated that victims of race
discrimination could still state a claim under the equal protection clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees “equal treatment under the
laws.” This suggestion may have been reassuring to those unfamiliar with
the Court’s equal protection jurisprudence. But for those who have actually
tried to prove race discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment, the
Court’s remark amounted to cruel irony. As we shall see below, the
Supreme Court has made it virtually impossible to challenge racial bias in
the criminal justice system under the Fourteenth Amendment, and it has
barred litigation of such claims under federal civil rights laws as well.

Closing the Courthouse Doors—McCleskey v. Kemp

First, consider sentencing. In 1987, when media hysteria regarding black
drug crime was at fever pitch and the evening news was saturated with
images of black criminals shackled in courtrooms, the Supreme Court ruled
in McCleskey v. Kemp that racial bias in sentencing, even if shown through
credible statistical evidence, could not be challenged under the Fourteenth
Amendment in the absence of clear evidence of conscious, discriminatory
intent. On its face, the case appeared to be a straightforward challenge to
Georgia’s death penalty scheme. Once the Court’s opinion was released,
however, it became clear the case was about much more than the death
penalty. The real issue at hand was whether—and to what extent—the
Supreme Court would tolerate racial bias in the criminal justice system as a
whole. The Court’s answer was that racial bias would be tolerated—
virtually to any degree—so long as no one admitted it.
Warren McCleskey was a black man facing the death penalty for killing a
white police officer during an armed robbery in Georgia. Represented by
the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, McCleskey challenged his
death sentence on the grounds that Georgia’s death penalty scheme was
infected with racial bias and thus violated the Fourteenth and Eighth
Amendments. In support of his claim, he offered an exhaustive study of
more than two thousand murder cases in Georgia. The study was known as
the Baldus study—named after Professor David Baldus, who was its lead
author. The study found that defendants charged with killing white victims
received the death penalty eleven times more often than defendants charged
with killing black victims. Georgia prosecutors seemed largely to blame for
the disparity; they sought the death penalty in 70 percent of cases involving
black defendants and white victims, but only 19 percent of cases involving
white defendants and black victims.47
Sensitive to the fact that numerous factors besides race can influence the
decision making of prosecutors, judges, and juries, Baldus and his

colleagues subjected the raw data to highly sophisticated statistical analysis
to see if nonracial factors might explain the disparities. Yet even after
accounting for thirty-five nonracial variables, the researchers found that
defendants charged with killing white victims were 4.3 times more likely to
receive a death sentence than defendants charged with killing blacks. Black
defendants, like McCleskey, who killed white victims had the highest
chance of being sentenced to death in Georgia.48
The case was closely watched by criminal lawyers and civil rights
lawyers nationwide. The statistical evidence of discrimination that Baldus
had developed was the strongest ever presented to a court regarding race
and criminal sentencing. If McCleskey’s evidence was not enough to prove
discrimination in the absence of some kind of racist utterance, what would
be?
By a one-vote margin, the Court rejected McCleskey’s claims under the
Fourteenth Amendment, insisting that unless McCleskey could prove that
the prosecutor in his particular case had sought the death penalty because of
race or that the jury had imposed it for racial reasons, the statistical
evidence of race discrimination in Georgia’s death penalty system did not
prove unequal treatment under the law. The Court accepted the statistical
evidence as valid but insisted that evidence of conscious, racial bias in
McCleskey’s individual case was necessary to prove unlawful
discrimination. In the absence of such evidence, patterns of discrimination
—even patterns as shocking as demonstrated by the Baldus study—did not
violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
In erecting this high standard, the Court knew full well that the standard
could not be met absent an admission that a prosecutor or judge acted
because of racial bias. The majority opinion openly acknowledged that
longstanding rules generally bar litigants from obtaining discovery from the
prosecution regarding charging patterns and motives, and that similar rules
forbid introduction of evidence of jury deliberations even when a juror has
chosen to make deliberations public.49 The very evidence that the Court
demanded in McCleskey—evidence of deliberate bias in his individual case
—would almost always be unavailable and/or inadmissible due to
procedural rules that shield jurors and prosecutors from scrutiny. This

dilemma was of little concern to the Court. It closed the courthouse doors to
claims of racial bias in sentencing.
There is good reason to believe that, despite appearances, the McCleskey
decision was not really about the death penalty at all; rather, the Court’s
opinion was driven by a desire to immunize the entire criminal justice
system from claims of racial bias. The best evidence in support of this view
can be found at the end of the majority opinion where the Court states that
discretion plays a neccessary role in the implementation of the criminal
justice system, and that discrimination is an inevitable by-product of
discretion. Racial discrimination, the Court seemed to suggest, was
something that simply must be tolerated in the criminal justice system,
provided no one admits to racial bias.
The majority observed that significant racial disparities had been found
in other criminal settings beyond the death penalty, and that McCleskey’s
case implicitly calls into question the integrity of the entire system. In the
Court’s words: “Taken to its logical conclusion, [Warren McCleskey’s
claim] throws into serious question the principles that underlie our criminal
justice system. . . . [I]f we accepted McCleskey’s claim that racial bias has
impermissibly tainted the capital sentencing decision, we could soon be
faced with similar claims as to other types of penalty.”50 The Court openly
worried that other actors in the criminal justice system might also face
scrunity for allegedly biased decision-making if similar claims of racial bias
in the system were allowed to proceed. Driven by these concerns, the Court
rejected McCleskey’s claim that Georgia’s death penalty system violates the
Eighth Amendment’s ban on arbitrary punishment, framing the critical
question as whether the Baldus study demonstrated a “constitutionally
unacceptable risk” of discrimination. Its answer was no. The Court deemed
the risk of racial bias in Georgia’s capital sentencing scheme
“constitutionally acceptable.” Justice Brennan pointedly noted in his dissent
that the Court’s opinion “seems to suggest a fear of too much justice.”51

Cracked Up—Discriminatory Sentencing in the War on Drugs

Anyone who doubts the devastating impact of McCleskey v. Kemp on
African American defendants throughout the criminal justice system,
including those ensnared by the War on Drugs, need only ask Edward Clary.
Two months after his eighteenth birthday, Clary was stopped and searched
in the St. Louis airport because he “looked like” a drug courier. At the time,
he was returning home from visiting some friends in California. One of
them persuaded him to take some drugs back home to St. Louis. Clary had
never attempted to deal drugs before, and he had no criminal record.
During the search, the police found crack cocaine and promptly arrested
him. He was convicted in federal court and sentenced under federal laws
that punish crack offenses one hundred times more severely than offenses
involving powder cocaine. A conviction for the sale of five hundred grams
of powder cocaine triggers a five-year mandatory sentence, while only five
grams of crack triggers the same sentence. Because Clary had been caught
with more than fifty grams of crack (less than two ounces), the sentencing
judge believed he had no choice but to sentence him—an eighteen-year-old,
first-time offender—to a minimum of ten years in federal prison.
Clary, like defendants in other crack cases, challenged the
constitutionality of the hundred-to-one ratio. His lawyers argued that the
law is arbitrary and irrational, because it imposes such vastly different
penalties on two forms of the same substance. They also argued that the law
discriminates against African Americans, because the majority of those
charged with crimes involving crack at that time were black (approximately
93 percent of convicted crack offenders were black, 5 percent were white),
whereas powder cocaine offenders were predominantly white.
Every federal appellate court to have considered these claims had
rejected them on the ground that Congress—rightly or wrongly—believed
that crack was more dangerous to society, a view supported by the
testimony of some drug-abuse “experts” and police officers. The fact that

most of the evidence in support of any disparity had since been discredited
was deemed irrelevant; what mattered was whether the law had seemed
rational at the time it was adopted. Congress, the courts concluded, is free
to amend the law if circumstances have changed.
Courts also had rejected claims that crack sentencing laws were racially
discriminatory, largely on the ground that the Supreme Court’s decision in
McCleskey v. Kemp precluded such a result. In the years following
McCleskey , lower courts consistently rejected claims of race discrimination
in the criminal justice system, finding that gross racial disparities do not
merit strict scrutiny in the absence of evidence of explicit race
discrimination—the very evidence unavailable in the era of colorblindness.
Judge Clyde Cahill of the Federal District of Missouri, an African
American judge assigned Clary’s case, boldly challenged the prevailing
view that courts are powerless to address forms of race discrimination that
are not overtly hostile. Cahill declared the hundred-to-one ratio racially
discriminatory in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, notwithstanding
McCleskey .52 Although no admissions of racial bias or racist intent could
be found in the record, Judge Cahill believed race was undeniably a factor
in the crack sentencing laws and policies. He traced the history of the gettough movement and concluded that fear coupled with unconscious racism
had led to a lynch-mob mentality and a desire to control crime—and those
deemed responsible for it—at any cost. Cahill acknowledged that many
people may not believe they are motivated by discriminatory attitudes but
argued that we all have internalized fear of young black men, a fear
reinforced by media imagery that has helped to create a national image of
the young black male as a criminal. “The presumption of innocence is now
a legal myth,” he declared. “The 100-to-1 ratio, coupled with mandatory
minimum sentencing provided by federal statute, has created a situation that
reeks with inhumanity and injustice.... If young white males were being
incarcerated at the same rate as young black males, the statute would have
been amended long ago.” Judge Cahill sentenced Clary as if the drug he had
carried home had been powder cocaine. The sentence imposed was four
years in prison. Clary served his term and was released.
The prosecution appealed Clary’s case to the Eighth Circuit Court of
Appeals, which reversed Judge Cahill in a unanimous opinion, finding that

the case was not even close. In the court’s view, there was no credible
evidence that the crack penalties were motivated by any conscious racial
bigotry, as required by McCleskey v. Kemp. The court remanded the case
back to the district court for resentencing. Clary—now married and a father
—was ordered back to prison to complete his ten-year term.53
Few challenges to sentencing schemes, patterns, or results have been
brought since McCleskey, for the exercise is plainly futile. Yet in 1995, a
few brave souls challenged the implementation of Georgia’s “two strikes
and you’re out” sentencing scheme, which imposes life imprisonment for a
second drug offense. Georgia’s district attorneys, who have unbridled
discretion to decide whether to seek this harsh penalty, had invoked it
against only 1 percent of white defendants facing a second drug conviction
but against 16 percent of black defendants. The result was that 98.4 percent
of those serving life sentences under the provision were black. The Georgia
Supreme Court ruled, by a 4-3 vote, that the stark racial disparity presented
a threshold case of discrimination and required the prosecutors to offer a
race-neutral explanation for the results. Rather than offer a justification,
however, the Georgia attorney general filed a petition for rehearing signed
by every one of the state’s forty-six district attorneys, all of whom were
white. The petition argued that the Court’s decision was a dire mistake; if
the decision were allowed to stand and prosecutors were compelled to
explain gross racial disparities such as the ones at issue, it would be a
“substantial step toward invalidating” the death penalty and would
“paralyze the criminal justice system”—apparently because severe and
inexplicable racial disparities pervaded the system as a whole. Thirteen
days later, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed itself, holding that the fact
that 98.4 percent of the defendants selected to receive life sentences for
repeat drug offenses were black required no justification. The court’s new
decision relied almost exclusively on McCleskey v. Kemp. To date, not a
single successful challenge has ever been made to racial bias in sentencing
under McCleskey v. Kemp anywhere in the United States.

Charging Ahead—Armstrong v. United States

If sentencing were the only stage of the criminal justice process in which
racial biases were allowed to flourish, it would be a tragedy of gargantuan
proportions. Thousands of people have had years of their lives wasted in
prison—years they would have been free if they had been white. Some, like
McCleskey, have been killed because of the influence of race in the death
penalty. Sentencing, however, is not the end, but just the beginning. As we
shall see, the legal rules governing prosecutions, like those that govern
sentencing decisions, maximize rather than minimize racial bias in the drug
war. The Supreme Court has gone to great lengths to ensure that prosecutors
are free to exercise their discretion in any manner they choose, and it has
closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias.
As discussed in chapter 2, no one has more power in the criminal justice
system than prosecutors. Few rules constrain the exercise of prosecutorial
discretion. The prosecutor is free to dismiss a case for any reason or no
reason at all, regardless of the strength of the evidence. The prosecutor is
also free to file more charges against a defendant than can realistically be
proven in court, so long as probable cause arguably exists. Whether a good
plea deal is offered to a defendant is entirely up to the prosecutor. And if the
mood strikes, the prosecutor can transfer drug defendants to the federal
system, where the penalties are far more severe. Juveniles, for their part,
can be transferred to adult court, where they can be sent to adult prison.
Angela J. Davis, in her authoritative study Arbitrary Justice: The Power of
the American Prosecutor, observes that “the most remarkable feature of
these important, sometimes life-and-death decisions is that they are totally
discretionary and virtually unreviewable.”54 Most prosecutors’ offices lack
any manual or guidebook advising prosecutors how to make discretionary
decisions. Even the American Bar Association’s standards of practice for
prosecutors are purely aspirational; no prosecutor is required to follow the
standards or even consider them.

Christopher Lee Armstrong learned the hard way that the Supreme Court
has little interest in ensuring that prosecutors exercise their extraordinary
discretion in a manner that is fair and nondiscriminatory. He, along with
four of his companions, was staying at a Los Angeles motel in April 1992
when federal and state agents on a joint drug crime task force raided their
room and arrested them on federal drug charges—conspiracy to distribute
more than fifty grams of crack cocaine. The federal public defenders
assigned to Armstrong’s case were disturbed by the fact that Armstrong and
his friends had something in common with every other crack defendant
their office had represented during the past the past year: they were all
black. In fact, of the fifty-three crack cases their office had handled over the
prior three years, forty-eight defendants were black, five were Hispanic, and
not a single one was white. Armstrong’s lawyers found it puzzling that no
white crack offenders had been charged, given that most crack offenders are
white. They suspected that whites were being diverted by federal
prosecutors to the state system, where the penalties for crack offenses were
far less severe. The only way to prove this, though, would be to gain access
to the prosecutors’ records and find out just how many white defendants
were transferred to the state system and why. Armstrong’s lawyers thus
filed a motion asking the district court for discovery of the prosecutors’
files to support their claim of selective prosecution under the Fourteenth
Amendment.
Nearly one hundred years earlier, in a case called Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the
Supreme Court had recognized that racially selective enforcement violates
equal protection of the laws. In that case, decided in 1886, the Court
unanimously overturned convictions of two Chinese men who were
operating laundries without a license. San Francisco had denied licenses to
all Chinese applicants, but granted licenses to all but one of the nonChinese laundry operators who applied. Law enforcement arrested more
than a hundred people for operating laundries without licenses, and every
one of the arrestees was Chinese. Overturning Yick Wo’s conviction, the
Supreme Court declared in a widely quoted passage, “Though the law itself
be fair on its face, and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and
administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so
as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations, between persons in
similar circumstances . . . the denial of equal justice is still within the

prohibition of the Constitution.”55 Armstrong’s lawyers sought to prove
that, like the law at issue in Yick Wo, federal crack laws were fair on their
face and impartial in their appearance, but were selectively enforced in a
racially discriminatory manner.
In support of their claim that Armstrong should, at the very least, be
entitled to discovery, Armstrong’s lawyers offered two sworn affidavits.
One was from a halfway house intake coordinator who testified that, in his
experience treating crack addicts, whites and blacks dealt and used the
drugs in similar proportions. The other affidavit was from a defense
attorney who had extensive experience in state prosecutions. He testified
that nonblack defendants were routinely prosecuted in state, rather than
federal, court. Arguably the best evidence in support of Armstrong’s claims
came from the government, which submitted a list of more than two
thousand people charged with federal crack cocaine violations over a threeyear period, all but eleven of whom were black. None were white.
The district court ruled that the evidence presented was sufficient to
justify discovery for the purposes of determining whether the allegations of
selective enforcement were valid. The prosecutors, however, refused to
release any records and appealed the issue all the way to the U.S. Supreme
Court. In May 1996, the Supreme Court reversed. As in McCleskey, the
Court did not question the accuracy of the evidence submitted, but ruled
that because Armstrong failed to identify any similarly situated white
defendants who should have been charged in federal court but were not, he
was not entitled even to discovery on his selective-prosecution claim. With
no trace of irony, the Court demanded that Armstrong produce in advance
the very thing he sought in discovery: information regarding white
defendants who should have been charged in federal court. That
information, of course, was in the prosecution’s possession and control,
which is why Armstrong filed a discovery motion in the first place.
As a result of the Armstrong decision, defendants who suspect racial bias
on the part of prosecutors are trapped in a classic catch-22. In order to state
a claim of selective prosecution, they are required to offer in advance the
very evidence that generally can be obtained only through discovery of the
prosecutor’s files. The Court justified this insurmountable hurdle on the
grounds that considerable deference is owed the exercise of prosecutorial

discretion. Unless evidence of conscious, intentional bias on the part of the
prosecutor could be produced, the Court would not allow any inquiry into
the reasons for or causes of apparent racial disparities in prosecutorial
decision making. Again the courthouse doors were closed, for all practical
purposes, to claims of racial bias in the administration of the criminal
justice system.
Immunizing prosecutors from claims of racial bias and failing to impose
any meaningful check on the exercise of their discretion in charging, plea
bargaining, transferring cases, and sentencing has created an environment in
which conscious and unconscious biases are allowed to flourish. Numerous
studies have shown that prosecutors interpret and respond to identical
criminal activity differently based on the race of the offender.56 One widely
cited study was conducted by the San Jose Mercury News. The study
reviewed 700,000 criminal cases that were matched by crime and criminal
history of the defendant. The analysis revealed that similarly situated whites
were far more successful than African Americans and Latinos in the plea
bargaining process; in fact, “at virtually every stage of pretrial negotiation,
whites are more successful than nonwhites.”57
The most comprehensive studies of racial bias in the exercise of
prosecutorial and judicial discretion involve the treatment of juveniles.
These studies have shown that youth of color are more likely to be arrested,
detained, formally charged, transferred to adult court, and confined to
secure residential facilities than their white counterparts.58 A report in 2000
observed that among youth who have never been sent to a juvenile prison
before, African Americans were more than six times as likely as whites to
be sentenced to prison for identical crimes.59 A study sponsored by the U.S.
Justice Department and several of the nation’s leading foundations,
published in 2007, found that the impact of the biased treatment is
magnified with each additional step into the criminal justice system.
African American youth account for 16 percent of all youth, 28 percent of
all juvenile arrests, 35 percent of the youth waived to adult criminal court,
and 58 percent of youth admitted to state adult prison.60 A major reason for
these disparities is unconscious and conscious racial biases infecting
decision making. In the state of Washington, for example, a review of
juvenile sentencing reports found that prosecutors routinely described black

and white offenders differently.61 Blacks committed crimes because of
internal personality flaws such as disrespect. Whites did so because of
external conditions such as family conflict.
The risk that prosecutorial discretion will be racially biased is especially
acute in the drug enforcement context, where virtually identical behavior is
susceptible to a wide variety of interpretations and responses and the media
imagery and political discourse has been so thoroughly racialized. Whether
a kid is perceived as a dangerous drug-dealing thug or instead is viewed as
a good kid who was merely experimenting with drugs and selling to a few
of his friends has to do with the ways in which information about illegal
drug activity is processed and interpreted, in a social climate in which drug
dealing is racially defined. As a former U.S. Attorney explained:
I had an [assistant U.S. attorney who] wanted to drop the gun charge
against the defendant [in a case in which] there were no extenuating
circumstances. I asked, “Why do you want to drop the gun offense?”
And he said, “‘He’s a rural guy and grew up on a farm. The gun he had
with him was a rifle. He’s a good ol’ boy, and all good ol’ boys have
rifles, and it’s not like he was a gun-toting drug dealer.” But he was a
gun-toting drug dealer, exactly.
The decision in Armstrong effectively shields this type of biased decision
making from judicial scrutiny for racial bias. Prosecutors are well aware
that the exercise of their discretion is unchecked, provided no explicitly
racist remarks are made, as it is next to impossible for defendants to prove
racial bias. It is difficult to imagine a system better designed to ensure that
racial biases and stereotypes are given free reign—while at the same time
appearing on the surface to be colorblind—than the one devised by the U.S.
Supreme Court.

In Defense of the All-White Jury—Purkett v. Elm

The rules governing jury selection provide yet another illustration of the
Court’s complete abdication of its responsibility to guarantee racial
minorities equal treatment under the law. In 1985, in Batson v. Kentucky,
the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits prosecutors from
discriminating on the basis of race when selecting juries, a ruling hailed as
an important safeguard against all-white juries locking up African
Americans based on racial biases and stereotypes. Prior to Batson,
prosecutors had been allowed to strike blacks from juries, provided they did
not always strike black jurors. The Supreme Court had ruled in 1965, in
Swain v. Alabama, that an equal-protection claim would arise only if a
defendant could prove that a prosecutor struck African American jurors in
every case, regardless of the crime involved or regardless of the races of the
defendant or the victim.62 Two decades later, in Batson, the Supreme Court
reversed course, a nod to the newly minted public consensus that explicit
race discrimination is an affront to American values. Almost immediately
after Batson was decided, however, it became readily apparent that
prosecutors had no difficulty circumventing the formal requirement of
colorblindness in jury selection by means of a form of subterfuge the Court
would come to accept, if not endorse.
The history of race discrimination in jury selection dates back to slavery.
Until 1860, no black person had ever sat on a jury in the United States.
During the Reconstruction era, African Americans began to serve on juries
in the South for the first time. The all-white jury promptly returned,
however, when Democratic conservatives sought to “redeem” the South by
stripping blacks of their right to vote and their right to serve on juries. In
1880, the Supreme Court intervened, striking down a West Virginia statute
that expressly reserved jury service to white men. Citing the recently
enacted Fourteenth Amendment, the Court declared that the exclusion of
blacks from jury service was “practically a brand upon them, affixed by

law, an assertion of their inferiority, and a stimulant to that race prejudice
which is an impediment to . . . equal justice.”63 The Court asked, “How can
it be maintained that compelling a colored man to submit to a trial for his
life by a jury drawn from a panel from which the State has expressly
excluded every man of his race, because of his color alone, however well
qualified in other respects, is not a denial to him of equal protection?”64
For all its bluster, the Court offered no meaningful protection against jury
discrimination in the years that followed. As legal scholar Benno Schmidt
has observed, from the end of Reconstruction through the New Deal, “the
systematic exclusion of black men from Southern juries was about as plain
as any legal discrimination could be short of proclamation in state statutes
or confession by state officials.”65 The Supreme Court repeatedly upheld
convictions of black defendants by all-white juries in situations where
exclusion of black jurors was obvious.66 The only case in which the Court
overturned a conviction on the grounds of discrimination in jury selection
was Neal v. Delaware, a case decided in 1935. State law in Delaware once
had explicitly restricted jury service to white men, and “no colored citizen
had ever been summoned as a juror.”67 The Delaware Supreme Court had
rejected Neal’s equal protection claim on the ground that “the great body of
black men residing in this State are utterly unqualified [for jury service] by
want of intelligence, experience, or moral integrity.”68 The Supreme Court
reversed. Clearly, what offended the U.S. Supreme Court was not the
exclusion of blacks from jury service per se, but rather doing so openly and
explicitly. That orientation continues to hold today.
Notwithstanding Batson’s formal prohibition on race discrimination in
jury selection, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have tolerated
all but the most egregious examples of racial bias in jury selection. Miller
El v. Cockrell was such a case.69 That case involved a jury-selection manual
that sanctioned race-based selection. The Court noted that it was unclear
whether the official policy of race-based exclusion was still in effect, but
the prosecution did in fact exclude ten of eleven black jurors, in part by
employing an unusual practice of “jury shuffling” that reduced the number
of black jurors.70 The prosecution also engaged in disparate questioning of
jurors based on race—practices that seemed linked to the jury-selection
manual. This was a highly unusual case. In typical cases, there are no

official policies authorizing race discrimination in jury selection still
lurking around, arguably in effect. Normally, the discrimination is obvious
yet unstated, and the systematic exclusion of black jurors continues largely
unabated through use of the peremptory strike.
Peremptory strikes have long been controversial. Both prosecutors and
defense attorneys are permitted to strike “peremptorily” jurors they don’t
like—that is, people they believe will not respond favorably to the evidence
or witnesses they intend to present at trial. In theory, peremptory strikes
may increase the fairness of the proceeding by eliminating jurors who may
be biased but whose biases cannot be demonstrated convincingly to a judge.
In practice, however, peremptory challenges are notoriously discriminatory.
Lawyers typically have little information about potential jurors, so their
decisions to strike individual jurors tend to be based on nothing more than
stereotypes, prejudices, and hunches. Achieving an all-white jury, or nearly
all-white jury, is easy in most jurisdictions, because relatively few racial
minorities are included in the jury pool. Potential jurors are typically called
for service based on the list of registered voters or Department of Motor
Vehicle lists—sources that contain disproportionately fewer people of color,
because people of color are significantly less likely to own cars or register
to vote. Making matters worse, thirty-one states and the federal government
subscribe to the practice of lifetime felon exclusion from juries. As a result,
about 30 percent of black men are automatically banned from jury service
for life.71 Accordingly, no more than a handful of strikes are necessary in
many cases to eliminate all or nearly all black jurors. The practice of
systematically excluding black jurors has not been halted by Batson; the
only thing that has changed is that prosecutors must come up with a raceneutral excuse for the strikes—an exceedingly easy task.
In fact, one comprehensive study reviewed all published decisions
involving Batson challenges from 1986 to 1992 and concluded that
prosecutors almost never fail to successfully craft acceptable race-neutral
explanations to justify striking black jurors.72 Courts accept explanations
that jurors are too young, too old, too conservative, too liberal, too
comfortable, or too uncomfortable. Clothing is also favorite reason; jurors
have been stricken for wearing hats or sunglasses. Even explanations that
might correlate with race, such as lack of education, unemployment,

poverty, being single, living in the same neighborhood as the defendant, or
prior involvement with the criminal justice system—have all been accepted
as perfectly good, non-pretextual excuses for striking African Americans
from juries. As professor Sheri Lynn Johnson once remarked, “If
prosecutors exist who . . . cannot create a ‘racially neutral’ reason for
discriminating on the basis of race, bar exams are too easy.”73
Given how flagrantly prosecutors were violating Batson’s ban on race
discrimination in jury selection, it was reasonable to hope that, if presented
with a particularly repugnant case, the Supreme Court might be willing to
draw the line at practices that make a mockery of the antidiscrimination
principle. Granted, the Court had been unwilling to accept statistical proof
of race discrimination in sentencing in McCleskey, and it had brushed off
concerns of racial bias in discretionary police stops in Whren, and it had
granted virtual immunity to prosecutors in their charging decisions in
Armstrong , but would it go so far as to allow prosecutors to offer blatantly
absurd, downright laughable excuses for striking blacks from juries? It turns
out the answer was yes.
In Purkett v. Elm, in 1995, the Supreme Court ruled that any race-neutral
reason, no matter how silly, ridiculous, or superstitious, is enough to satisfy
the prosecutor’s burden of showing that a pattern of striking a particular
racial group is not, in fact, based on race. In that case, the prosecutor
offered the following explanation to justify his strikes of black jurors:
I struck [juror] number twenty-two because of his long hair. He had
long curly hair. He had the longest hair of anybody on the panel by far.
He appeared not to be a good juror for that fact.... Also, he had a
mustache and a goatee type beard. And juror number twenty-four also
had a mustache and goatee type beard.... And I don’t like the way they
looked, with the way the hair is cut, both of them. And the mustaches
and the beards look suspicious to me.74
The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that the foregoing
explanation for the prosecutor’s strikes of black jurors was insufficient and
should have been rejected by the trial court because long hair and facial hair
are not plausibly related to a person’s ability to perform as a juror. The
appellate court explained: “Where the prosecution strikes a prospective

juror who is a member of the defendant’s racial group, solely on the basis of
factors which are facially irrelevant to the question of whether that person is
qualified to serve as a juror in the particular case, the prosecution must at
least articulate some plausible race neutral reason for believing that those
factors will somehow affect the person’s ability to perform his or her duties
as a juror.”75
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that when a pattern of racebased strikes has been identified by the defense, the prosecutor need not
provide “an explanation that is persuasive, or even plausible.”76 Once the
reason is offered, a trial judge may choose to believe (or disbelieve) any
“silly or superstitious” reason offered by prosecutors to explain a pattern of
strikes that appear to be based on race.77 The Court sent a clear message
that appellate courts are largely free to accept the reasons offered by a
prosecutor for excluding prospective black jurors—no matter how irrational
or absurd the reasons may seem.

The Occupation—Policing the Enemy

The Court’s blind eye to race discrimination in the criminal justice system
has been especially problematic in policing. Racial bias is most acute at the
point of entry into the system for two reasons: discretion and authorization.
Although prosecutors, as a group, have the greatest power in the criminal
justice system, police have the greatest discretion—discretion that is
amplified in drug-law enforcement. And unbeknownst to the general public,
the Supreme Court has actually authorized race discrimination in policing,
rather than adopting legal rules banning it.
Racially biased police discretion is key to understanding how the
overwhelming majority of people who get swept into the criminal justice
system in the War on Drugs turn out to be black or brown, even though the
police adamantly deny that they engage in racial profiling. In the drug war,
police have discretion regarding whom to target (which individuals), as well
as where to target (which neighborhoods or communities). As noted earlier,
at least 10 percent of Americans violate drug laws every year, and people of
all races engage in illegal drug activity at similar rates. With such an
extraordinarily large population of offenders to choose from, decisions must
be made regarding who should be targeted and where the drug war should
be waged.
From the outset, the drug war could have been waged primarily in
overwhelmingly white suburbs or on college campuses. SWAT teams could
have rappelled from helicopters in gated suburban communities and raided
the homes of high school lacrosse players known for hosting coke and
ecstasy parties after their games. The police could have seized televisions,
furniture, and cash from fraternity houses based on an anonymous tip that a
few joints or a stash of cocaine could be found hidden in someone’s dresser
drawer. Suburban homemakers could have been placed under surveillance
and subjected to undercover operations designed to catch them violating

laws regulating the use and sale of prescription “uppers.” All of this could
have happened as a matter of routine in white communities, but it did not.
Instead, when police go looking for drugs, they look in the ’hood. Tactics
that would be political suicide in an upscale white suburb are not even
newsworthy in poor black and brown communities. So long as mass drug
arrests are concentrated in impoverished urban areas, police chiefs have
little reason to fear a political backlash, no matter how aggressive and
warlike the efforts may be. And so long as the number of drug arrests
increases or at least remains high, federal dollars continue to flow in and fill
the department’s coffers. As one former prosecutor put it, “It’s a lot easier
to go out to the ’hood, so to speak, and pick somebody than to put your
resources in an undercover [operation in a] community where there are
potentially politically powerful people.”78
The hypersegregation of the black poor in ghetto communities has made
the roundup easy. Confined to ghetto areas and lacking political power, the
black poor are convenient targets. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton’s
book, American Apartheid, documents how racially segregated ghettos
were deliberately created by federal policy, not impersonal market forces or
private housing choices.79 The enduring racial isolation of the ghetto poor
has made them uniquely vulnerable in the War on Drugs. What happens to
them does not directly affect—and is scarcely noticed by—the privileged
beyond the ghetto’s invisible walls. Thus it is here, in the poverty-stricken,
racially segregated ghettos, where the War on Poverty has been abandoned
and factories have disappeared, that the drug war has been waged with the
greatest ferocity. SWAT teams are deployed here; buy-and-bust operations
are concentrated here; drug raids of apartment buildings occur here; stopand-frisk operations occur on the streets here. Black and brown youth are
the primary targets. It is not uncommon for a young black teenager living in
a ghetto community to be stopped, interrogated, and frisked numerous times
in the course of a month, or even a single week, often by paramilitary units.
Studies of racial profiling typically report the total number of people
stopped and searched, disaggregated by race. These studies have led some
policing experts to conclude that racial profiling is actually “worse” in
white communities, because the racial disparities in stop and search rates
are much greater there. What these studies do not reveal, however, is the

frequency with which any given individual is likely to be stopped in
specific, racially defined neighborhoods.
The militarized nature of law enforcement in ghetto communities has
inspired rap artists and black youth to refer to the police presence in black
communities as “The Occupation.” In these occupied territories, many
black youth automatically “assume the position” when a patrol car pulls up,
knowing full well that they will be detained and frisked no matter what.
This dynamic often comes as a surprise to those who have spent little time
in ghettos. Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago,
reports that his students frequently express shock and dismay when they
venture into those communities for the first time and witness the distance
between abstract legal principles and actual practice. One student reported,
following her ride-along with Chicago police: “Each time we drove into a
public housing project and stopped the car, every young black man in the
area would almost reflexively place his hands up against the car and spread
his legs to be searched. And the officers would search them. The officers
would then get back in the car and stop in another project, and this would
happen again. This repeated itself throughout the entire day. I couldn’t
believe it. This was nothing like we learned in law school. But it just
seemed so normal—for the police and the young men.”
Numerous scholars (and many law enforcement officials) attempt to
justify the concentration of drug law enforcement resources in ghetto
communities on the ground that it is easier for the police to combat illegal
drug activity there. The theory is that black and Latino drug users are more
likely than white users to obtain illegal drugs in public spaces that are
visible to the police, and therefore it is more efficient and convenient for the
police to concentrate their efforts on open-air drug markets in ghetto
communities. Sociologists have been major proponents of this line of
reasoning, pointing out that differential access to private space influences
the likelihood that criminal behavior will be detected. Because poor people
lack access to private space (often sharing small apartments with numerous
family members or relatives), their criminal activity is more likely to be
conducted outdoors. Concentrating law enforcement efforts in locations
where drug activity will be more easily detected is viewed as a race-neutral
organizational necessity. This argument is often buttressed by claims that
most citizen complaints about illegal drug activity come from ghetto areas,

and that the violence associated with the drug trade occurs in inner cities.
These facts, drug war defenders claim, make the decision to wage the drug
war almost exclusively in poor communities of color an easy and logical
choice.
This line of reasoning is weaker than it initially appears. Many law
enforcement officials acknowledge that the demand for illegal drugs is so
great—and the lack of alternative sources of income so few in ghetto
communities—that “if you take one dealer off the street, he’ll be replaced
within an hour.” Many also admit that a predictable consequence of
breaking up one drug ring is a slew of violence as others fight for control of
the previously stabilized market.80 These realities suggest—if the past two
decades of endless war somehow did not—that the drug war is doomed to
fail. They also call into question the legitimacy of “convenience” as an
excuse for the mass imprisonment of black and brown men in ghetto
communities.
Even putting aside such concerns, though, recent research indicates that
the basic assumptions upon which drug war defenses typically rest are
simply wrong. The conventional wisdom—that “get tough” tactics are a
regrettable necessity in poor communities of color and that efficiency
requires the drug war to be waged in the most vulnerable neighborhoods—
turns out to be, as many have long suspected, nothing more than wartime
propaganda, not sound policy.

Unconventional Wisdom

In 2002, a team of researchers at the University of Washington decided to
take the defenses of the drug war seriously, by subjecting the arguments to
empirical testing in a major study of drug-law enforcement in a racially
mixed city—Seattle.81 The study found that, contrary to the prevailing
“common sense,” the high arrest rates of African Americans in drug-law
enforcement could not be explained by rates of offending; nor could they be
explained by other standard excuses, such as the ease and efficiency of
policing open-air drug markets, citizen complaints, crime rates, or drugrelated violence. The study also debunked the assumption that white drug
dealers deal indoors, making their criminal activity more difficult to detect.
The authors found that it was untrue stereotypes about crack markets,
crack dealers, and crack babies—not facts—that were driving discretionary
decision making by the Seattle Police Department. The facts were as
follows: Seattle residents were far more likely to report suspected narcotics
activities in residences—not outdoors—but police devoted their resources
to open-air drug markets and to the one precinct that was least likely to be
identified as the site of suspected drug activity in citizen complaints. In fact,
although hundreds of outdoor drug transactions were recorded in
predominantly white areas of Seattle, police concentrated their drug
enforcement efforts in one downtown drug market where the frequency of
drug transactions was much lower. In racially mixed open-air drug markets,
black dealers were far more likely to be arrested than whites, even though
white dealers were present and visible. And the department focused
overwhelmingly on crack—the one drug in Seattle more likely to be sold by
African Americans—despite the fact that local hospital records indicated
that overdose deaths involving heroin were more numerous than all
overdose deaths for crack and powder cocaine combined. Local police
acknowledged that no significant level of violence was associated with
crack in Seattle and that other drugs were causing more hospitalizations, but

steadfastly maintained that their deployment decisions were
nondiscriminatory.
The study’s authors concluded, based on their review and analysis of the
empirical evidence, that the Seattle Police Department’s decisions to focus
so heavily on crack, to the near exclusion of other drugs, and to concentrate
its efforts on outdoor drug markets in downtown areas rather than drug
markets located indoors or in predominantly white communities, reflect “a
racialized conception of the drug problem.”82 As the authors put it: “[The
Seattle Police Department’s] focus on black and Latino individuals and on
the drug most strongly associated with ‘blackness’ suggest that law
enforcement policies and practices are predicated on the assumption that the
drug problem is, in fact, a black and Latino one, and that crack, the drug
most strongly associated with urban blacks, is ‘the worst.’”83 This
racialized cultural script about who and what constitutes the drug problem
renders illegal drug activity by whites invisible. “White people,” the study’s
authors observed, “are simply not perceived as drug offenders by Seattle
police officers.”84

Hollow Hope

One might imagine that the facts described above would provide grounds
for a lawsuit challenging the Seattle Police Department’s drug war tactics as
a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and
demanding reform. After all, obtaining reform through the city council or
state legislature may seem unlikely, for black “criminals” are perhaps the
most despised minority in the U.S. population. Few politicians will leap at
the opportunity to support black people labeled criminals. Accordingly, a
lawsuit may seem like the best option. The purpose of our Constitution—
especially the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection guarantee—is to
protect minority rights even when, or especially when, they are unpopular.
So shouldn’t African American defendants be able to file a successful
lawsuit demanding an end to these discriminatory practices or challenge
their drug arrests on the grounds that these law enforcement practices are
unlawfully tainted by race? The answer is yes, they should, but no, they
probably can’t.
As legal scholar David Cole has observed, “The Court has imposed
nearly insurmountable barriers to persons challenging race discrimination at
all stages of the criminal justice system.”85 The barriers are so high that few
lawsuits are even filed, notwithstanding shocking and indefensible racial
disparities. Procedural hurdles, such as the “standing requirement,” have
made it virtually impossible to seek reform of law enforcement agencies
through the judicial process, even when the policies or practices at issue are
illegal or plainly discriminatory.
Adolph Lyons’s attempt to ban the use of lethal chokeholds by the Los
Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is a good example. Lyons, a twentyfour-year-old black man, was driving his car in Los Angeles one morning
when he was pulled over by four police officers for a burnt-out taillight.
With guns drawn, police ordered Lyons out of his car. He obeyed. The
officers told him to face the car, spread his legs, and put his hands on his

head. Again, Lyons did as he was told. After the officers completed a patdown, Lyons dropped his hands, prompting an officer to slam Lyons’s
hands back on his head. When Lyons complained that the car keys he was
holding were causing him pain, the officer forced Lyons into a chokehold.
He lost consciousness and collapsed. When he awoke, “he was spitting up
blood and dirt, had urinated and defecated, and had suffered permanent
damage to his larynx.”86 The officers issued a traffic ticket for the burnt-out
taillight and released him.
Lyons sued the City of Los Angeles for violation of his constitutional
rights and sought, as a remedy, a ban against future use of the chokeholds.
By the time his case reached the Supreme Court, sixteen people had been
killed by police use of the chokehold, twelve of them black men. The
Supreme Court dismissed the case, however, ruling that Lyons lacked
“standing” to seek an injunction against the deadly practice. In order to
have standing, the Court reasoned, Lyons would have to show that he was
highly likely to be subject to a chokehold again.
Lyons argued that, as a black man, he had good reason to fear he would
be stopped by the police for a minor traffic violation and subjected to a
chokehold again. He had done nothing to provoke the chokehold; to the
contrary, he had obeyed instructions and cooperated fully. Why wouldn’t he
believe he was at risk of being stopped and choked again? The Court,
however, ruled that in order to have standing
Lyons would have had not only to allege that he would have another
encounter with the police but also to make the incredible assertion
either (1) that all police officers in Los Angeles always choke any
citizen with whom they have an encounter, whether for the purpose of
arrest, issuing a citation or for questioning, or (2) that the City ordered
or authorized the police to act in such a manner.87
Lyons did not allege race discrimination, but if he had, that claim would
almost certainly have been a loser too. The Court’s ruling in Lyons makes it
extremely difficult to challenge systemic race discrimination in law
enforcement and obtain meaningful policy reform. For example, African
Americans in Seattle who hope to end the Seattle police department’s
discriminatory tactics through litigation would be required to prove that

they plan to violate drug laws and that they will almost certainly face race
discrimination by Seattle police officers engaged in drug-law enforcement,
in order to have standing to seek reform—i.e., just to get in the courthouse
door.
It is worthy of note that the Lyons standard does not apply to suits for
damages. But any suggestion that litigants need not worry about policy
reform because they can always sue for damages would be disingenuous—
particularly as applied to race discrimination cases. Why? Neither the state
nor the state police can be sued for damages. In a series of cases, the
Supreme Court has ruled that the state and its offices are immune from
federal suits for damages under the Eleventh Amendment to the
Constitution (unless they consent), and the state can’t be sued for damages
for constitutional violations in state court either.88 City police departments,
like the LAPD, are also typically off limits. The Court has ruled that a city
police department cannot be sued for damages unless a specific city policy
or custom can be identified authorizing the illegal practice.89 Most cities, of
course, do not have policies specifically authorizing illegal conduct
(particularly race discrimination), and “custom” is notoriously difficult to
prove. Accordingly, suing a city police department for damages is generally
not an option. Yet even if all of those hurdles can somehow be overcome,
there is still the matter of proving a claim of race discrimination. As we
have seen, to establish an equal-protection violation, one must prove
intentional discrimination—conscious racial bias. Law enforcement
officials rarely admit to having acted for racial reasons, leaving most
victims of discriminatory law enforcement without anyone to sue and
without a claim that can be proven in a court of law. But even if a plaintiff
managed to overcome all of the procedural hurdles and prove that a police
officer deliberately exercised his or her discretion on the basis of race, that
still might not be enough.

Race as a Factor

The dirty little secret of policing is that the Supreme Court has actually
granted the police license to discriminate. This fact is not advertised by
police departments, because law enforcement officials know that the public
would not respond well to this fact in the era of colorblindness. It is the sort
of thing that is better left unsaid. Civil rights lawyers—including those
litigating racial profiling cases—have been complicit in this silence, fearing
that any acknowledgment that race-based policing is authorized by law
would legitimate in the public mind the very practice they are hoping to
eradicate.
The truth, however, is this: At other stages of the criminal justice process,
the Court has indicated that overt racial bias necessarily triggers strict
scrutiny—a concession that has not been costly, as very few law
enforcement officials today are foolish enough to admit bias openly. But the
Supreme Court has indicated that in policing, race can be used as a factor in
discretionary decision making. In United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, the
Court concluded it was permissible under the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment for the police to use race as a factor in making
decisions about which motorists to stop and search. In that case, the Court
concluded that the police could take a person’s Mexican appearance into
account when developing reasonable suspicion that a vehicle may contain
undocumented immigrants. The Court said that “the likelihood that any
person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican
appearance a relevant factor.”90 Some commentators have argued that
Brignoni-Ponce may be limited to the immigration context; the Court might
not apply the same principle to drug-law enforcement. It is not obvious
what the rational basis would be for limiting overt race discrimination by
police to immigration. The likelihood that a person of Mexican ancestry is
an “alien” could not be significantly higher than the likelihood that any
random black person is a drug criminal.

The Court’s quiet blessing of race-based traffic stops has led to
something of an Orwellian public discourse regarding racial profiling.
Police departments and highway patrol agencies frequently declare, “We do
not engage in racial profiling,” even though their officers routinely use race
as a factor when making decisions regarding whom to stop and search. The
justification for the implicit doublespeak—“we do not racial-profile; we just
stop people based on race”—can be explained in part by the Supreme
Court’s jurisprudence. Because the Supreme Court has authorized the police
to use race as a factor when making decisions regarding whom to stop and
search, police departments believe that racial profiling exists only when
race is the sole factor. Thus, if race is one factor but not the only factor, then
it doesn’t really count as a factor at all.
The absurdity of this logic is evidenced by the fact that police almost
never stop anyone solely because of race. A young black male wearing
baggy pants, standing in front of his high school surrounded by a group of
similarly dressed black friends, may be stopped and searched because
police believe he “looks like” a drug dealer. Clearly, race is not the only
reason for that conclusion. Gender, age, attire, and location play a role. The
police would likely ignore an eighty-five-year-old black man standing in the
same spot surrounded by a group of elderly black women.
The problem is that although race is rarely the sole reason for a stop or
search, it is frequently a determinative reason. A young white male wearing
baggy pants, standing in front of his high school and surrounded by his
friends, might well be ignored by police officers. It might never occur to
them that a group of young white kids might be dealing dope in front of
their high school. Similarly situated people inevitably are treated differently
when police are granted permission to rely on racial stereotypes when
making discretionary decisions.
Equally important, though, the sole-factor test ignores the ways in which
seemingly race-neutral factors—such as location—operate in a highly
discriminatory fashion. Some law enforcement officials claim that they
would stop and search white kids wearing baggy jeans in the ghetto (that
would be suspicious)—it just so happens they’re rarely there. Subjecting
people to stops and searches because they live in “high crime” ghettos
cannot be said to be truly race-neutral, given that the ghetto itself was

constructed to contain and control groups of people defined by race.91 Even
seemingly race-neutral factors such as “prior criminal history” are not truly
race-neutral. A black kid arrested twice for possession of marijuana may be
no more of a repeat offender than a white frat boy who regularly smokes pot
in his dorm room. But because of his race and his confinement to a racially
segregated ghetto, the black kid has a criminal record, while the white frat
boy, because of his race and relative privilege, does not. Thus, when
prosecutors throw the book at black repeat offenders or when police stalk
ex-offenders and subject them to regular frisks and searches on the grounds
that it makes sense to “watch criminals closely,” they are often exacerbating
racial disparities created by the discretionary decision to wage the War on
Drugs almost exclusively in poor communities of color.
Defending against claims of racial bias in policing is easy. Because race
is never the only reason for a stop or search, any police officer with a fifthgrade education will be able to cite multiple nonracial reasons for initiating
an encounter, including any number of the so-called “indicators” of drug
trafficking discussed in chapter 2, such as appearing too nervous or too
calm. Police officers (like prosecutors) are highly adept at offering raceneutral reasons for actions that consistently disadvantage African
Americans. Whereas prosecutors claim they strike black jurors not because
of their race but because of their hairstyle, police officers have their own
stock excuses—e.g., “Your honor, we didn’t stop him because he’s black;
we stopped him because he failed to use his turn signal at the right time,” or
“It wasn’t just because he was black; it was also because he seemed nervous
when he saw the police car.” Judges are just as reluctant to second-guess an
officer’s motives as they are to second-guess prosecutors’. So long as
officers refrain from uttering racial epithets and so long as they show the
good sense not to say “the only reason I stopped him was ’cause he’s
black,” courts generally turn a blind eye to patterns of discrimination by the
police.
Studies of racial profiling have shown that police do, in fact, exercise
their discretion regarding whom to stop and search in the drug war in a
highly discriminatory manner.92 Not only do police discriminate in their
determinations regarding where to wage the war, but they also discriminate

in their judgments regarding whom to target outside of the ghetto’s invisible
walls.
The most famous of these studies were conducted in New Jersey and
Maryland in the 1990s. Allegations of racial profiling in federally funded
drug interdiction operations resulted in numerous investigations and
comprehensive data demonstrating a dramatic pattern of racial bias in
highway patrol stops and searches. These drug interdiction programs were
the brain-child of the DEA, part of the federally funded program known as
Operation Pipeline.
In New Jersey, the data showed that only 15 percent of all drivers on the
New Jersey Turnpike were racial minorities, yet 42 percent of all stops and
73 percent of all arrests were of black motorists—despite the fact that
blacks and whites violated traffic laws at almost exactly the same rate.
While radar stops were relatively consistent with the percentage of minority
violators, discretionary stops made by officers involved in drug interdiction
resulted in double the number of stops of minorities.93 A subsequent study
conducted by the attorney general of New Jersey found that searches on the
turnpike were even more discriminatory than the initial stops—77 percent
of all consent searches were of minorities. The Maryland studies produced
similar results: African Americans comprised only 17 percent of drivers
along a stretch of I-95 outside of Baltimore, yet they were 70 percent of
those who were stopped and searched. Only 21 percent of all drivers along
that stretch of highway were racial minorities (Latinos, Asians, and African
Americans), yet those groups comprised nearly 80 percent of those pulled
over and searched.94
What most surprised many analysts was that, in both studies, whites were
actually more likely than people of color to be carrying illegal drugs or
contraband in their vehicles. In fact, in New Jersey, whites were almost
twice as likely to be found with illegal drugs or contraband as African
Americans, and five times as likely to be found with contraband as
Latinos.95 Although whites were more likely to be guilty of carrying drugs,
they were far less likely to be viewed as suspicious, resulting in relatively
few stops, searches, and arrests of whites. The former New Jersey attorney
general dubbed this phenomenon the “circular illogic of racial profiling.”
Law enforcement officials, he explained, often point to the racial

composition of our prisons and jails as a justification for targeting racial
minorities, but the empirical evidence actually suggested the opposite
conclusion was warranted. The disproportionate imprisonment of people of
color was, in part, a product of racial profiling—not a justification for it.
In the years following the release of the New Jersey and Maryland data,
dozens of other studies of racial profiling have been conducted. A brief
sampling:
• In Volusia County, Florida, a reporter obtained 148 hours of
video footage documenting more than 1,000 highway stops conducted
by state troopers. Only 5 percent of the drivers on the road were
African American or Latino, but more than 80 percent of the people
stopped and searched were minorities.96
• In Illinois, the state police initiated a drug interdiction program
known as Operation Valkyrie that targeted Latino motorists. While
Latinos comprised less than 8 percent of the Illinois population and
took fewer than 3 percent of the personal vehicle trips in Illinois, they
comprised approximately 30 percent of the motorists stopped by drug
interdiction officers for discretionary offenses, such as failure to signal
a lane change.97 Latinos, however, were significantly less likely than
whites to have illegal contraband in their vehicles.
• A racial profiling study in Oakland, California, in 2001 showed
that African Americans were approximately twice as likely as whites
to be stopped, and three times as likely to be searched.98
Pedestrian stops, too, have been the subject of study and controversy. The
New York Police Department released statistics in February 2007 showing
that during the prior year its officers stopped an astounding 508,540 people
—an average of 1,393 per day—who were walking down the street, perhaps
on their way to the subway, grocery store, or bus stop. Often the stops
included searches for illegal drugs or guns—searches that frequently
required people to lie face down on the pavement or stand spread-eagled
against a wall while police officers aggressively groped all over their bodies
while bystanders watched or walked by. The vast majority of those stopped
and searched were racial minorities, and more than half were African
American.99

The NYPD began collecting data on pedestrian stops following the
shooting of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant who died in a hail of
police bullets on the front steps of his own home in February 1999. Diallo
was followed to his apartment building by four white police officers—
members of the elite Street Crime Unit—who viewed him as suspicious and
wanted to interrogate him. They ordered him to stop, but, according to the
officers, Diallo did not respond immediately. He walked a bit further to his
apartment building, opened the door, and retrieved his wallet—probably to
produce identification. The officers said they thought the wallet was a gun,
and fired forty-one times. Amadou Diallo died at the age of twenty-two. He
was unarmed and had no criminal record.
Diallo’s murder sparked huge protests, resulting in a series of studies
commissioned by the attorney general of New York. The first study found
that African Americans were stopped six times more frequently than whites,
and that stops of African Americans were less likely to result in arrests than
stops of whites—presumably because blacks were less likely to be found
with drugs or other contraband.100 Although the NYPD attempted to justify
the stops on the grounds that they were designed to get guns off the street,
stops by the Street Crime Unit—the group of officers who supposedly are
specially trained to identify gun-toting thugs—yielded a weapon in only 2.5
percent of all stops.101
Rather than reducing reliance on stop-and-frisk tactics following the
Diallo shooting and the release of this disturbing data, the NYPD
dramatically increased its number of pedestrian stops and continued to stop
and frisk African Americans at grossly disproportionate rates. The NYPD
stopped five times more people in 2005 than in 2002—the overwhelming
majority of whom were African American or Latino.102
In Los Angeles, mass stops of young African American men and boys
resulted in the creation of a database containing the names, addresses, and
other biographical information of the overwhelming majority of young
black men in the entire city. The LAPD justified its database as a tool for
tracking gang or “gang-related” activity. However, the criterion for
inclusion in the database is notoriously vague and discriminatory. Having a
relative or friend in a gang and wearing baggy jeans is enough to put youth
on what the ACLU calls a Black List. In Denver, displaying any two of a

list of attributes—including slang, “clothing of a particular color,” pagers,
hairstyles, or jewelry—earns youth a spot in the Denver Police’s gang
database. In 1992, citizen activism led to an investigation, which revealed
that eight out of every ten people of color in the entire city were on the list
of suspected criminals.103

The End of an Era

The litigation that swept the nation in the 1990s challenging racial profiling
practices has nearly vanished. The news stories about people being stopped
and searched on their way to church or work or school have faded from the
evening news. This is not because the problem has been solved or because
the experience of being of being stopped, interrogated, and searched on the
basis of race has become less humiliating, alienating, or demoralizing as
time has gone by. The lawsuits have disappeared because, in a little noticed
case called Alexander v. Sandoval, decided in 2001, the Supreme Court
eliminated the last remaining avenue available for challenging racial bias in
the criminal justice system.104
Sandoval was not, on its face, even about criminal justice. It was a case
challenging the Alabama Department of Public Safety’s decision to
administer state driver’s license examinations only in English. The plaintiffs
argued that the department’s policy violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 and its implementing regulations, because the policy had the effect
of subjecting non-English speakers to discrimination based on their national
origin. The Supreme Court did not reach the merits of the case, ruling
instead that the plaintiffs lacked the legal right even to file the lawsuit. It
concluded that Title VI does not provide a “private right of action” to
ordinary citizens and civil rights groups; meaning that victims of
discrimination can no longer sue under the law.
The Sandoval decision virtually wiped out racial profiling litigation
nationwide. Nearly all of the cases alleging racial profiling in drug-law
enforcement were brought pursuant to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and its implementing regulations. Title VI prohibits federally funded
programs or activities from discriminating on the basis of race, and the
regulations employ a “disparate impact test” for discrimination—meaning
that plaintiffs could prevail in claims of race discrimination without proving
discriminatory intent. Under the regulations, a federally funded law

enforcement program or activity is unlawful if it has a racially
discriminatory impact and if that impact cannot be justified by law
enforcement necessity. Because nearly all law enforcement agencies receive
federal funding in the drug war, and because drug war tactics—such as
pretext stops and consent searches—have a grossly discriminatory impact
and are largely ineffective, plaintiffs were able to argue persuasively that
the tactics could not be justified by law enforcement necessity.
In 1999, for example, the ACLU of Northern California filed a class
action lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol (CHP), alleging that its
highway drug interdiction program violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act
because it relied heavily on discretionary pretext stops and consent searches
that are employed overwhelmingly against African American and Latino
motorists. During the course of the litigation, the CHP produced data that
showed African Americans were twice as likely, and Latinos three times as
likely, to be stopped and searched by its officers as were whites. The data
further showed that consent searches were ineffective; only a tiny
percentage of the discriminatory searches resulted in the discovery of drugs
or other contraband, yet thousands of black and brown motorists were
subjected to baseless interrogations, searches, and seizures as a result of
having committed a minor traffic violation. The CHP entered into a consent
decree that provided for a three-year moratorium on consent searches and
pretext stops statewide and the collection of comprehensive data on the race
and ethnicity of motorists stopped and searched by the police, so that it
would be possible to determine whether discriminatory practices were
continuing. Similar results were obtained in New Jersey, as a result of
landmark litigation filed against the New Jersey State Police. After
Sandoval, these cases can no longer be brought under Title VI by private
litigants. Only the federal government can sue to enforce Title VI’s
antidiscrimination provisions—something it has neither the inclination nor
the capacity to do in most racial profiling cases due to its limited resources
and institutional reluctance to antagonize local law enforcement. Since the
War on Drugs, private litigants represented by organizations such as the
ACLU have been at the forefront of racial profiling litigation. Those days,
however, have come to an end. The racial profiling cases that swept the
nation in the 1990s may well be the last wave of litigation challenging
racial bias in the criminal justice system that we see for a very long time.

The Supreme Court has now closed the courthouse doors to claims of
racial bias at every stage of the criminal justice process, from stops and
searches to plea bargaining and sentencing. The system of mass
incarceration is now, for all practical purposes, thoroughly immunized from
claims of racial bias. Staggering racial disparities in the drug war continue
but rarely make the news. The Obama administration has indicated it
supports abolition of the hundred-to-one disparity in sentencing for crack
versus powder cocaine—the most obvious and embarrassing example of
racial bias in a system that purports to be colorblind. But that disparity is
just the tip of the iceberg. As noted in chapter 2, this system depends
primarily on the prison label, not prison time. What matters most is who
gets swept into this system of control and then ushered into an undercaste.
The legal rules adopted by the Supreme Court guarantee that those who find
themselves locked up and permanently locked out due to the drug war are
overwhelmingly black and brown.

4
The Cruel Hand

A heavy and cruel hand has been laid upon us. As a people, we feel
ourselves to be not only deeply injured, but grossly misunderstood.
Our white countrymen do not know us. They are strangers to our
character, ignorant of our capacity, oblivious to our history and
progress, and are misinformed as to the principles and ideas that
control and guide us, as a people. The great mass of American citizens
estimates us as being a characterless and purposeless people; and
hence we hold up our heads, if at all, against the withering influence of
a nation’s scorn and contempt.1
—Frederick Douglass, in a statement on behalf of delegates to the National Colored Convention held
in Rochester, New York, in July 1853

When Frederick Douglass and the other delegates to the National Colored
Convention converged in Rochester, New York, in the summer of 1853 to
discuss the condition, status, and future of “coloreds” (as they were called
then), they decried the stigma of race—the condemnation and scorn heaped
upon them for no reason other than the color of their skin. Most of the
delegates were freed slaves, though the younger ones may have been born
free. Northern emancipation was complete, but freedom remained elusive.
Blacks were finally free from the formal control of their owners, but they
were not full citizens—they could not vote, they were subject to legal
discrimination, and at any moment, Southern plantation owners could
capture them on the street and whisk them back to slavery. Although
Northern slavery had been abolished, every black person was still presumed
a slave—by law—and could not testify or introduce evidence in court. Thus

if a Southern plantation owner said you were a slave, you were—unless a
white person interceded in a court of law on your behalf and testified that
you were rightfully free. Slavery may have died, but for thousands of
blacks, the badge of slavery lived on.
Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and
arguably less respect, than a freed slave or a black person living “free” in
Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow. Those released from prison on parole
can be stopped and searched by the police for any reason—or no reason at
all—and returned to prison for the most minor of infractions, such as failing
to attend a meeting with a parole officer. Even when released from the
system’s formal control, the stigma of criminality lingers. Police
supervision, monitoring, and harassment are facts of life not only for all
those labeled criminals, but for all those who “look like” criminals. Lynch
mobs may be long gone, but the threat of police violence is ever present. A
wrong move or sudden gesture could mean massive retaliation by the
police. A wallet could be mistaken for a gun. The “whites only” signs may
gone, but new signs have gone up—notices placed in job applications,
rental agreements, loan applications, forms for welfare benefits, school
applications, and petitions for licenses, informing the general public that
“felons” are not wanted here. A criminal record today authorizes precisely
the forms of discrimination we supposedly left behind—discrimination in
employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service. Those
labeled criminals can even be denied the right to vote.
Criminals, it turns out, are the one social group in America we have
permission to hate. In “colorblind” America, criminals are the new
whipping boys. They are entitled to no respect and little moral concern.
Like the “coloreds” in the years following emancipation, criminals today
are deemed a characterless and purposeless people, deserving of our
collective scorn and contempt. When we say someone was “treated like a
criminal,” what we mean to say is that he or she was treated as less than
human, like a shameful creature. Hundreds of years ago, our nation put
those considered less than human in shackles; less than one hundred years
ago, we relegated them to the other side of town; today we put them in
cages. Once released, they find that a heavy and cruel hand has been laid
upon them.

Brave New World

One might imagine that a criminal defendant, when brought before the
judge—or when meeting with his attorney for the first time—would be told
of the consequences of a guilty plea or conviction. He would be told that, if
he pleads guilty to a felony, he will be deemed “unfit” for jury service and
automatically excluded from juries for the rest of his life.2 He would also be
told that he could be denied the right to vote. In a country that preaches the
virtues of democracy, one could reasonably assume that being stripped of
basic political rights would be treated by judges and court personnel as a
serious matter indeed. Not so. When a defendant pleads guilty to a minor
drug offense, nobody will likely tell him that he may be permanently
forfeiting his right to vote as well as his right to serve on a jury—two of the
most fundamental rights in any modern democracy.
He will also be told little or nothing about the parallel universe he is
about to enter, one that promises a form of punishment that is often more
difficult to bear than prison time: a lifetime of shame, contempt, scorn, and
exclusion. In this hidden world, discrimination is perfectly legal. As Jeremy
Travis has observed, “In this brave new world, punishment for the original
offense is no longer enough; one’s debt to society is never paid.”3 Other
commentators liken the prison label to “the mark of Cain” and characterize
the perpetual nature of the sanction as “internal exile.”4 Myriad laws, rules,
and regulations operate to discriminate against ex-offenders and effectively
prevent their reintegration into the mainstream society and economy. These
restrictions amount to a form of “civic death” and send the unequivocal
message that “they” are no longer part of “us.”
Once labeled a felon, the badge of inferiority remains with you for the
rest of your life, relegating you to a permanent second-class status.
Consider, for example, the harsh reality facing a first-time offender who
pleads guilty to felony possession of marijuana. Even if the defendant
manages to avoid prison time by accepting a “generous” plea deal, he may

discover that the punishment that awaits him outside the courthouse doors is
far more severe and debilitating than what he might have encountered in
prison. A task force of the American Bar Association described the bleak
reality facing a petty drug offender this way:
[The] offender may be sentenced to a term of probation, community
service, and court costs. Unbeknownst to this offender, and perhaps
any other actor in the sentencing process, as a result of his conviction
he may be ineligible for many federally-funded health and welfare
benefits, food stamps, public housing, and federal educational
assistance. His driver’s license may be automatically suspended, and
he may no longer qualify for certain employment and professional
licenses. If he is convicted of another crime he may be subject to
imprisonment as a repeat offender. He will not be permitted to enlist in
the military, or possess a firearm, or obtain a federal security clearance.
If a citizen, he may lose the right to vote; if not, he becomes
immediately deportable.5
Despite the brutal, debilitating impact of these “collateral consequences”
on ex-offenders’ lives, courts have generally declined to find that such
sanctions are actually “punishment” for constitutional purposes. As a result,
judges are not required to inform criminal defendants of some of the most
important rights they are forfeiting when they plead guilty to a felony. In
fact, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys may not even be aware of
the full range of collateral consequences for a felony conviction. Yet these
civil penalties, although not considered punishment by our courts, often
make it virtually impossible for ex-offenders to integrate into the
mainstream society and economy upon release. Far from collateral, these
sanctions can be the most damaging and painful aspect of a criminal
conviction. Collectively, these sanctions send the strong message that, now
that you have been labeled, you are no longer wanted. You are no longer
part of “us,” the deserving. Unable to drive, get a job, find housing, or even
qualify for public benefits, many ex-offenders lose their children, their
dignity, and eventually their freedom—landing back in jail after failing to
play by rules that seem hopelessly stacked against them.

The churning of African Americans in and out of prisons today is hardly
surprising, given the strong message that is sent to them that they are not
wanted in mainstream society. In Frederick Douglass’s words, “Men are so
constituted that they derive their conviction of their own possibilities
largely from the estimate formed of them by others. If nothing is expected
of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation.”6
More than a hundred years later, a similar argument was made by an exoffender contemplating her eventual release into a society that had
constructed a brand-new legal regime designed to keep her locked out, fifty
years after the demise of Jim Crow. “Right now I’m in prison,” she said.
“Like society kicked me out. They’re like, ‘Okay, the criminal element, We
don’t want them in society, we’re going to put them in prisons.’ Okay, but
once I get out, then what do you do? What do you do with all these millions
of people that have been in prison and been released? I mean, do you accept
them back? Or do you keep them as outcasts? And if you keep them as
outcasts, how do you expect them to act?”7
Remarkably, the overwhelming majority of ex-offenders struggle
mightily to play by the rules and to succeed in a society seemingly hell-bent
on excluding them. Like their forbears, they do their best to survive, even
thrive—against all odds.

No Place Like Home

The first question on the minds of many released prisoners as they take their
first steps outside the prison gates is where they will sleep that night. Some
prisoners have families eagerly awaiting them—families who are willing to
let their newly released relative sleep on the couch, floor, or extra bed
indefinitely. Most, however, desperately need to find a place to live—if not
immediately, at least soon. After several days, weeks, or months of sleeping
in your aunt’s basement or on a friend’s couch, a time comes when you are
expected to fend for yourself. Figuring out how, exactly, to do that is no
easy task, however, when your felony record operates to bar you from any
public housing assistance. As one young man with a felony conviction
explained in exasperation, “I asked for an application for Section 8. They
asked me if I had a felony. I said, ‘yes.’ . . . They said, ‘Well, then, this
application isn’t for you.’”8
This young man had just hit his first brick wall coming out of prison.
Anyone convicted of a felony—any felony—is automatically ineligible for
public housing assistance for at least five years. Even after the five-year
period has expired, those labeled “criminals” face a lifetime of
discrimination in public and private housing markets. Housing
discrimination against former felons (as well as suspected “criminals”) is
perfectly legal. During Jim Crow, it was legal to deny housing on the basis
of race, through restrictive covenants and other exclusionary practices.
Today, discrimination against felons, criminal suspects, and their families is
routine among public and private landlords alike. Rather than racially
restrictive covenants, we have restrictive lease agreements, barring the new
“undesirables.”
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, passed by Congress as part of the War
on Drugs, called for strict lease enforcement and eviction of public housing
tenants who engage in criminal activity. The Act granted public housing
agencies the authority to use leases to evict any tenant, household member,

or guest engaged in any criminal activity on or near public housing
premises. In 1996, President Clinton, in an effort to bolster his “tough on
crime” credentials, declared that public housing agencies should exercise no
discretion when a tenant or guest engages in criminal activity, particularly if
it is drug-related. In his 1996 State of the Union address, he proposed “One
Strike and You’re Out” legislation, which strengthened eviction rules and
strongly urged that drug offenders be automatically excluded from public
housing based on their criminal records. He later declared, “If you break the
law, you no longer have a home in public housing, one strike and you’re
out. That should be the law everywhere in America.”9 In its final form, the
act, together with the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of
1998, not only authorized public housing agencies to exclude automatically
(and evict) drug offenders and other felons; it also allowed agencies to bar
applicants believed to be using illegal drugs or abusing alcohol—whether or
not they had been convicted of a crime. These decisions can be appealed,
but appeals are rarely successful without an attorney—a luxury most public
housing applicants cannot afford.
In response to the new legislation and prodding by President Clinton, the
Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) developed guidelines
to press public housing agencies to “evict drug dealers and other criminals”
and “screen tenants for criminal records.”10 HUD’s “One Strike Guide”
calls on housing agencies to “take full advantage of their authority to use
stringent screening and eviction procedures.” It also encourages housing
authorities not only to screen all applicants’ criminal records, but to develop
their own exclusion criteria. The guide notes that agency ratings and
funding are tied to whether they are “adopting and implementing effective
applicant screening,” a clear signal that agencies may be penalized for not
cleaning house.11
Throughout the United States, public housing agencies have adopted
exclusionary policies that deny eligibility to applicants even with the most
minor criminal backgrounds. The crackdown inspired by the War on Drugs
has resulted in unprecedented punitiveness, denying poor people access to
public housing for virtually any crime. “Just about any offense will do, even
if it bears scant relation to the likelihood the applicant will be a good
tenant.”12

The consequences for real families can be devastating. Without housing,
people can lose their children. Take for example, the forty-two-year-old
African American man who applied for public housing for himself and his
three children who were living with him at the time.13 He was denied
because of an earlier drug possession charge for which he had pleaded
guilty and served thirty days in jail. Of course, the odds that he would have
been convicted of drug possession would have been extremely low if he
were white. But as an African American, he was not only targeted by the
drug war but then denied access to housing because of his conviction. Since
being denied housing, he has lost custody of his children and is homeless.
Many nights he sleeps outside on the streets. Stiff punishment, indeed, for a
minor drug offense—especially for his children, who are innocent of any
crime.
Remarkably, under current law, an actual conviction or finding of a
formal violation is not necessary to trigger exclusion. Public housing
officials are free to reject applicants simply on the basis of arrests,
regardless of whether they result in convictions or fines. Because African
Americans and Latinos are targeted by police in the War on Drugs, it is far
more likely that they will be arrested for minor, nonviolent crimes.
Accordingly, HUD policies excluding people from housing assistance based
on arrests as well as convictions guarantee highly discriminatory results.
Perhaps no aspect of the HUD regulatory regime has been as
controversial, however, as the “no-fault” clause contained in every public
housing lease. Public housing tenants are required to do far more than
simply pay their rent on time, keep the noise down, and make sure their
homes are kept in good condition. The “One Strike and You’re Out” policy
requires every public housing lease to stipulate that if the tenant, or any
member of the tenant’s household, or any guest of the tenant, engages in
any drug-related or other criminal activity on or off the premises, the
tenancy will be terminated. Prior to the adoption of this policy, it was
generally understood that a tenant could not be evicted unless he or she had
some knowledge of or participation in alleged criminal activity.
Accordingly, in Rucker v. Davis, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck
down the “no-fault” clause, on the ground that the eviction of innocent

tenants—who were not accused or even aware of the alleged criminal
activity—was inconsistent with the legislative scheme.14
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed.15 The Court ruled in 2002 that, under
federal law, public housing tenants can be evicted regardless of whether
they had knowledge of or participated in alleged criminal activity.
According to the Court, William Lee and Barbara Hill were rightfully
evicted after their grandsons were charged with smoking marijuana in a
parking lot near their apartments. Herman Walker was properly evicted as
well, after police found cocaine on his caregiver. And Perlie Rucker was
rightly evicted following the arrest of her daughter for possession of
cocaine a few blocks from home. The Court ruled these tenants could be
held civilly liable for the nonviolent behavior of their children and
caregivers. They could be tossed out of public housing due to no fault of
their own.
In the abstract, policies barring or evicting people who are somehow
associated with criminal activity may seem like a reasonable approach to
dealing with crime in public housing, particularly when crime has gotten
out of control. Desperate times call for desperate measures, it is often said.
The problem, however, is twofold: These vulnerable families have nowhere
to go, and the impact is inevitably discriminatory. People who are not poor
and who are not dependent upon public assistance for housing need not fear
that, if their son, daughter, caregiver, or relative is caught with some
marijuana at school or shoplifts from a drugstore, they will find themselves
suddenly evicted—homeless. But for countless poor people—particularly
racial minorities who disproportionately rely on public assistance—that
possibility looms large. As a result, many families are reluctant to allow
their relatives—particularly those who are recently released from prison—
to stay with them, even temporarily.
No one knows exactly how many people are excluded from public
housing because of criminal records, or even the number of people with
criminal records who would be ineligible if they applied. There is no
national data available. We do know, however, that there are several million
ex-felons in the United States and that under existing rules everyone
convicted of a felony is automatically ineligible for a minimum of five
years. We also know there are tens of millions of Americans who have been

arrested but never convicted of any offense, or convicted only of minor
misdemeanors, and they too are routinely excluded from public housing.
What happens to these people denied housing assistance or evicted from
their homes? Where do they go? Thousands of them become homeless. A
study conducted by the McCormick Institute of Public Affairs found that
nearly a quarter of guests in homeless shelters had been incarcerated within
the previous year—people who were unable to find somewhere to live after
release from prison walls.
Prisoners returning “home” are typically the poorest of the poor, lacking
the ability to pay for private housing and routinely denied public housing
assistance—the type of assistance which could provide some much-needed
stability in their lives. For them, “going home” is more a figure of speech
than a realistic option. More than a half million people are released from
prison each year, and for many, finding a new home appears next to
impossible, not just in the short term, but for the rest of their lives. As a
forty-one-year-old African American mother remarked after being denied
housing because of a single arrest four years prior to her application, “I’m
trying to do the right thing; I deserve a chance. Even if I was the worst
criminal, I deserve a chance. Everybody deserves a chance.”16

Boxed In

Aside from figuring out where to sleep, nothing is more worrisome for
people leaving prison than figuring out where to work. In fact, a study by
the Vera Institute found that during the first month after release from prison,
people consistently were more preoccupied with finding work than anything
else.17 Some of the pressure to find work comes directly from the criminal
justice system. According to one survey of state parole agencies, forty of
the fifty-one jurisdictions surveyed (the fifty states and the District of
Columbia) required parolees to “maintain gainful employment.”18 Failure
to do so could mean more prison time.
Even beyond the need to comply with the conditions of parole,
employment satisfies a more basic human need—the fundamental need to
be self sufficient, to contribute, to support one’s family, and to add value to
society at large. Finding a job allows a person to establish a positive role in
the community, develop a healthy self-image, and keep a distance from
negative influences and opportunities for illegal behavior. Work is deemed
so fundamental to human existence in many countries around the world that
it is regarded as a basic human right. Deprivation of work, particularly
among men, is strongly associated with depression and violence.
Landing a job after release from prison is no small feat. “I’ve watched
the discrimination and experienced it firsthand when you have to check the
box,” says Susan Burton, an ex-offender who founded a business aimed at
providing formerly incarcerated women the support necessary to reestablish themselves in the workforce. The “box” she refers to is the
question on job applications in which applicants are asked to check “yes” or
“no” if they have ever been convicted of a crime. “It’s not only [on] job
[applications],” Burton explains. “It’s on housing. It’s on a school
application. It’s on welfare applications. It’s everywhere you turn.”19
Nearly every state allows private employers to discriminate on the basis
of past criminal convictions. In fact, employers in most states can deny jobs

to people who were arrested but never convicted of any crime. Only ten
states prohibit all employers and licensing agencies from considering
arrests, and three states prohibit some employers and occupational and
licensing agencies from doing so.20 Employers in a growing number of
professions are barred by state licensing agencies from hiring people with a
wide range of criminal convictions, even convictions unrelated to the job or
license sought.21
The result of these discriminatory laws is that virtually every job
application, whether for dog catcher, bus driver, Burger King cashier, or
accountant, asks ex-offenders to “check the box.” Most ex-offenders have
difficulty even getting an interview after they have checked the box,
because most employers are unwilling to consider hiring a self-identified
criminal. One survey showed that although 90 percent of employers say
they are willing to consider filling their most recent job vacancy with a
welfare recipient, only 40 percent are willing to consider doing so with an
ex-offender.22 Similarly, a 2002 survey of 122 California employers
revealed that although most employers would consider hiring someone
convicted of a misdemeanor offense, the numbers dropped dramatically for
those convicted of felonies. Less than a quarter of employers were willing
to consider hiring someone convicted of a drug-related felony; the number
plummeted to 7 percent for a property-related felony, and less than 1
percent for a violent felony.23 Even those who hope to be self-employed—
for example, as a barber, manicurist, gardener, or counselor—may discover
that they are denied professional licenses on the grounds of past arrests or
convictions, even if their offenses have nothing at all to do with their ability
to perform well in their chosen profession.
For most people coming out of prison, a criminal conviction adds to their
already problematic profile. About 70 percent of offenders and ex-offenders
are high school dropouts, and according to at least one study, about half are
functionally illiterate.24 Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages,
labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their
decrepit, underfunded inner city schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons.
The communities and schools from which they came failed to prepare them
for the workforce, and once they have been labeled criminals, their job
prospects are forever bleak.

Adding to their troubles is the “spatial mismatch” between their
residence and employment opportunities.25 Willingness to hire ex-offenders
is greatest in construction or manufacturing—industries that require little
customer contact—and weakest in retail trade and other service sector
businesses.26 Manufacturing jobs, however, have all but disappeared from
the urban core during the past thirty years. Not long ago, young, unskilled
men could find decent, well-paying jobs at large factories in most major
Northern cities. Today, due to globalization and deindustrialization, that is
no longer the case. Jobs can be found in the suburbs—mostly service sector
jobs—but employment for unskilled men with criminal convictions, while
difficult to find anywhere, is especially hard to find close to home.
An ex-offender whose driver’s license has been suspended or who does
not have access to a car, often faces nearly insurmountable barriers to
finding employment. Driving to the suburbs to pick up and drop off
applications, attend interviews, and pursue employment leads may be
perfectly feasible if you have a driver’s license and access to a vehicle, but
attempting to do so by bus is another matter entirely. An unemployed black
male from Chicago’s South Side explains: “Most of the time ... the places
be too far and you need transportation and I don’t have none right now. If I
had some I’d probably be able to get one [a job]. If I had a car and went
way into the suburbs, ’cause there ain’t none in the city.”27 Those who
actually land jobs in the suburbs find it difficult to keep them without
reliable, affordable transportation.
Murray McNair, a twenty-two-year-old African American, returned to
Newark, New Jersey, after being locked up for drug offenses. He shares a
small apartment with his pregnant girlfriend, his sister, and her two
children. Through a federally funded job training program operated by
Goodwill Industries, McNair found a $9-an-hour job at a warehouse twenty
miles—two buses and a taxi ride—away. “I know it’s going to be tough,” he
told a New York Times reporter. “But I can’t be thinking about myself
anymore.”28
The odds of McNair, or any ex-offender in a similar situation, succeeding
under these circumstances are small. If you make $9 per hour, but spend
$20 dollars or more getting to and from work every day, how do you
manage to pay rent, buy food, and help to support yourself and a growing

family? An unemployed thirty-six-year-old black man quit his suburban job
because of the transportation problem. “I was spending more money getting
to work than I earned working.”29

The Black Box

Black ex-offenders are the most severely disadvantaged applicants in the
modern job market. While all job applicants—regardless of race—are
harmed by a criminal record, the harm is not equally felt. Not only are
African Americans far more likely to be labeled criminals, they are also
more strongly affected by the stigma of a criminal record. Black men
convicted of felonies are the least likely to receive job offers of any
demographic group, and suburban employers are the most unwilling to hire
them.30
Sociologist Devah Pager explains that those sent to prison “are
institutionally branded as a particular class of individuals” with major
implications for their place and status in society.31 The “negative
credential” associated with a criminal record represents a unique
mechanism of state-sponsored stratification. As Pager puts it, “it is the state
that certifies particular individuals in ways that qualify them for
discrimination or social exclusion.” The “official status” of this negative
credential differentiates it from other sources of social stigma, offering
legitimacy to its use as a basis for discrimination. Four decades ago,
employers were free to discriminate explicitly on the basis of race; today
employers feel free to discriminate against those who bear the prison label
—i.e., those labeled criminals by the state. The result is a system of
stratification based on the “official certification of individual character and
competence”—a form of branding by the government.32
Given the incredibly high level of discrimination suffered by black men
in the job market and the structural barriers to employment in the new
economy, it should come as no surprise that a huge percentage of African
American men are unemployed. Nearly one-third of young black men in the
United States today are out of work.33 The jobless rate for young black
male dropouts, including those incarcerated, is a staggering 65 percent.34

In an effort to address the rampant joblessness among black men labeled
criminals, a growing number of advocates in recent years have launched
Ban the Box campaigns. These campaigns have been successful in cities
like San Francisco, where All of Us or None, a nonprofit grassroots
organization dedicated to eliminating discrimination against ex-offenders,
persuaded the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to approve a resolution
designed to eliminate hiring discrimination against people with criminal
records. San Francisco’s new policy (which took effect in June 2006) seeks
to prevent discrimination on the basis of a criminal record by removing the
criminal-history box from the initial application. An individual’s past
convictions will still be considered, but not until later in the hiring process,
when the applicant has been identified as a serious candidate for the
position. The only exception is for those jobs for which state or local laws
expressly bar people with certain specific convictions from employment.
These applicants will still be required to submit conviction-history
information at the beginning of the hiring process. However, unlike a
similar ordinance adopted in Boston, San Francisco’s policy applies only to
public employment, not to private vendors that do business with the city or
county of San Francisco.
While these grassroots initiatives and policy proposals are major
achievements, they raise questions about how best to address the complex
and interlocking forms of discrimination experienced by black ex-offenders.
Some scholars believe, based on the available data, that black males may
suffer more discrimination—not less—when specific criminal history
information is not available.35 Because the association of race and
criminality is so pervasive, employers may use less accurate and
discriminatory methods to screen out those perceived to be likely criminals.
Popular but misguided proxies for criminality—such as race, receipt of
public assistance, low educational attainment, and gaps in work history—
could be used by employers when no box is available on the application
form to identify criminals. This concern is supported by ethnographic work
suggesting that employers have fears of violence by black men relative to
other groups of applicants and act on those fears when making hiring
decisions. Without disconfirming information in the job application itself,
employers may (consciously or unconsciously) treat all black men as

though they have a criminal record, effectively putting all (or most) of them
in the same position as black ex-offenders. This research suggests that
banning the box is not enough. We must also get rid of the mind-set that
puts black men “in the box.”

Debtor’s Prison

The lucky few who land a decent job—one that pays a living wage and is in
reasonable proximity to their residence—often discover that the system is
structured in such a way that they still cannot survive in the mainstream,
legal economy. Upon release from prison, ex-offenders are typically
saddled with large debts—financial shackles that hobble them as they
struggle to build a new life. In this system of control, like the one that
prevailed during Jim Crow, one’s “debt to society” often reflects the cost of
imprisonment.
Throughout the United States, newly released prisoners are required to
make payments to a host of agencies, including probation departments,
courts, and child-support enforcement offices. In some jurisdictions, exoffenders are billed for drug testing and even for the drug treatment they are
supposed to receive as a condition of parole. These fees, costs, and fines are
generally quite new—created by law within the past twenty years—and are
associated with a wide range of offenses. Every state has its own rules and
regulations governing their imposition.
Examples of preconviction service fees imposed throughout the United
States today include jail book-in fees levied at the time of arrest, jail per
diems assessed to cover the cost of pretrial detention, public defender
application fees charged when someone applies for court-appointed
counsel, and the bail investigation fee imposed when the court determines
the likelihood of the accused appearing at trial. Postconviction fees include
pre-sentence report fees, public defender recoupment fees, and fees levied
on convicted persons placed in a residential or work-release program. Upon
release, even more fees may attach, including parole or probation service
fees. Such fees are typically charged on a monthly basis during the period
of supervision. 36 In Ohio, for example, a court can order probationers to
pay a $50 monthly supervision fee as a condition of probation. Failure to

pay may warrant additional community control sanctions or a modification
in the offender’s sentence.37
Two-thirds of people detained in jails report annual incomes under
$12,000 prior to arrest. Predictably, most ex-offenders find themselves
unable to pay the many fees, costs, and fines associated with their
imprisonment, as well as their child-support debts (which continue to
accumulate while a person is incarcerated). As a result, many ex-offenders
have their paychecks garnished. Federal law provides that a child-support
enforcement officer can garnish up to 65 percent of an individual’s wages
for child support. On top of that, probation officers in most states can
require that an individual dedicate 35 percent of his or her income toward
the payment of fines, fees, surcharges, and restitution charged by numerous
agencies.38 Accordingly, a former inmate living at or below the poverty
level can be charged by four or five departments at once and can be
required to surrender 100 percent of his or her earnings. As a New York
Times editorial soberly observed, “People caught in this impossible
predicament are less likely to seek regular employment, making them even
more susceptible to criminal relapse.”39
Whether or not ex-offenders make the rational choice to participate in the
illegal economy (rather than have up to 100 percent of their wages
garnisheed), they may still go back to prison for failure to meet the financial
portion of their probation supervision requirements. One study of probation
revocations found that 12 percent were due at least in part to a failure of
probationers to pay their debts. Some ex-offenders are thrown back in
prison simply because they have been unable—with no place to live, and no
decent job—to pay back thousands of dollars of prison-related fees, fines,
and child support.
Some offenders, like Ora Lee Hurley, find themselves trapped by fees
and fines in prison and find it nearly impossible to get out. Hurley was a
prisoner held at the Gateway Diversion Center in Atlanta in 2006. She was
imprisoned because she owed a $705 fine. As part of the diversion program,
Hurley was permitted to work during the day and return to the center at
night. “Five days a week she work[ed] fulltime at a restaurant earning $6.50
an hour and, after taxes, net about $700 a month.”40 Room and board at the
diversion center was about $600, and her monthly transportation cost $52.

Miscellaneous other expenses, including clothes, shoes, and personal items
such as toothpaste, quickly exhausted what was left. Hurley’s attorney
decried the trap she was in: “This is a situation where if this woman was
able to write a check for the amount of the fine, she would be out of there.
And because she can’t, she’s still in custody. It’s as simple as that.”41
Although she worked a full-time job while in custody, most of her income
went to repay the diversion program, not the underlying fine that put her in
custody in the first place.
This harsh reality harks back to the days after the Civil War, when former
slaves and their descendents were arrested for minor violations, slapped
with heavy fines, and then imprisoned until they could pay their debts. The
only means to pay off their debts was through labor on plantations and
farms—known as convict leasing—or in prisons that had been converted to
work farms. Paid next to nothing, convicts were effectively enslaved in
perpetuity, as they were unable to earn enough to pay off their debts.
Today, many inmates work in prison, typically earning far less than the
minimum wage—often less than $3 per hour, sometimes as little as 25
cents. Their accounts are then “charged” for various expenses related to
their incarceration, making it impossible for them to save the money that
otherwise would allow them to pay off their debts or help them make a
successful transition when released from prison. Prisoners are typically
released with only the clothes on their backs and a pittance in gate money.
Sometimes the money is barely enough to cover the cost of a bus ticket
back home.

Let Them Eat Cake

So here you are—a newly released prisoner—homeless, unemployed, and
carrying a mountain of debt. How do you feed yourself? Care for your
children? There is no clear answer to that question, but one thing is for sure:
do not count on the government for any help. Not only will you be denied
housing, but you may well be denied food.
Welfare reform legislation signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 ended
individual entitlements to welfare and provided states with block grants.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Family Program (TANF) imposes a
five-year lifetime limit on benefits and requires welfare recipients,
including those who have young children and lack child care, to work in
order to receive benefits. In the abstract, a five-year limit may sound
reasonable. But consider this: When one is labeled a criminal, forced to
“check the box” on applications for employment and housing, and burdened
by thousands of dollars in debt, is it possible that one will live on the brink
of severe poverty for more than five years and thus require food stamps for
oneself and one’s family? Until 1996, there was a basic understanding that
poverty-stricken mothers raising children should be afforded some minimal
level of assistance with food and shelter.
The five-year limit on benefits, however, is not the law’s worst feature.
The law also requires that states permanently bar individuals with drugrelated felony convictions from receiving federally funded public
assistance. No exceptions are made to the felony drug ban. Accordingly,
pregnant women, women raising young children, people in drug treatment
or recovery, and people suffering from HIV/AIDS are ineligible for food
assistance for the rest of their lives—simply because they were once caught
with drugs.

The Silent Minority

If shackling former prisoners with a lifetime of debt and authorizing
discrimination against them in employment, housing, education, and public
benefits is not enough to send the message that they are not wanted and not
even considered full citizens, then stripping voting rights from those labeled
criminals surely gets the point across.
Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia prohibit inmates from
voting while incarcerated for a felony offense. Only two states—Maine and
Vermont—permit inmates to vote. The vast majority of states continue to
withhold the right to vote when prisoners are released on parole. Even after
the term of punishment expires, some states deny the right to vote for a
period ranging from a number of years to the rest of one’s life.42
This is far from the norm in other countries—like Germany, for instance,
which allows (and even encourages) prisoners to vote. In fact, about half of
European countries allow all incarcerated people to vote, while others
disqualify only a small number of prisoners from the polls.43 Prisoners vote
either in their correctional facilities or by some version of absentee ballot in
their town of previous residence. Almost all of the countries that place some
restrictions on voting in prison are in Eastern Europe, part of the former
Communist bloc.44
No other country in the world disenfranchises people who are released
from prison in a manner even remotely resembling the United States. In
fact, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has charged that U.S.
disenfranchisement policies are discriminatory and violate international law.
In those few European countries that permit limited postprison
disqualification, the sanction is very narrowly tailored and the number of
people disenfranchised is probably in the dozens or hundreds.45 In the
United States, by contrast, voting disqualification upon release from prison
is automatic, with no legitimate purpose, and affects millions.

Even those former prisoners who are technically eligible to vote
frequently remain disenfranchised for life. Every state has developed its
own process for restoring voting rights to ex-offenders. Typically the
restoration process is a bureaucratic maze that requires the payment of fines
or court costs. The process is so cumbersome, confusing, and onerous that
many ex-offenders who are theoretically eligible to vote never manage to
get their voting rights back.46 Throughout much of the United States, exoffenders are expected to pay fines and court costs, and submit paperwork
to multiple agencies in an effort to win back a right that should never have
been taken away in a democracy. These bureaucratic minefields are the
modern-day equivalent of poll taxes and literacy tests—“colorblind” rules
designed to make voting a practical impossibility for a group defined
largely by race.
The message communicated by felon disenfranchisement laws, policies,
and bureaucratic procedures is not lost on those, such as Clinton Drake,
who are effectively barred from voting for life.47 Drake, a fifty-five-yearold African American man in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested in 1988
for possession of marijuana. Five years later, he was arrested again, this
time for having about $10 worth of the drug on him. Facing between ten
and twenty years in prison as a repeat offender, Drake, a Vietnam veteran
and, at the time, a cook on a local air force base, took his public defender’s
advice and accepted a plea bargain. Under the plea agreement, he would
“only” have to spend five years behind bars. Five years for five joints.
Once released, Drake found he was forbidden by law from voting until he
paid his $900 in court costs—an impossible task, given that he was
unemployed and the low-wage jobs he might conceivably find would never
allow him to accumulate hundreds of dollars in savings. For all practical
purposes, he would never be able to vote again. Shortly before the 2004
presidential election, he said in despair:
I put my life on the line for this country. To me, not voting is not right;
it lead to a lot of frustration, a lot of anger. My son’s in Iraq. In the
army just like I was. My oldest son, he fought in the first Persian Gulf
conflict. He was in the Marines. This is my baby son over there right
now. But I’m not able to vote. They say I owe $900 in fines. To me,
that’s a poll tax. You’ve got to pay to vote. It’s “restitution,” they say. I

came off parole on October 13, 1999, but I’m still not allowed to vote.
Last time I voted was in ’88. Bush versus Dukakis. Bush won. I voted
for Dukakis. If it was up to me, I’d vote his son out this time too. I
know a lot of friends got the same cases like I got, not able to vote. A
lot of guys doing the same things like I was doing. Just marijuana.
They treat marijuana in Alabama like you committed treason or
something. I was on the 1965 voting rights march from Selma. I was
fifteen years old. At eighteen, I was in Vietnam fighting for my
country. And now? Unemployed and they won’t allow me to vote.48
Drake’s vote, along with the votes of millions of other people labeled
felons, might have made a real difference in 2004. There is no doubt their
votes would have changed things in 2000. Following the election, it was
widely reported that, had the 600,000 former felons who had completed
their sentence in Florida been allowed to vote, Al Gore would have been
elected president of the United States rather than George W. Bush.49
Four years later, voter registration workers in the South encountered
scores of ex-offenders who were reluctant to register to vote, even if they
were technically eligible, because they were scared to have any contact with
governmental authorities. Many on welfare were worried that any little
thing they did to bring attention to themselves might put their food stamps
at risk. Others had been told by parole and probation officers that they could
not vote, and although it was not true, they believed it, and the news spread
like wildfire. “How long you think it take if someone tells you you can’t
vote before it spreads?” asked one ex-offender. “It’s been years and years
people telling you you can’t vote. You live in a slum, you’re not counted.”50
Even those who knew they were eligible to register worried that
registering to vote would somehow attract attention to them—perhaps land
them back in jail. While this might strike some as paranoia, many Southern
blacks have vivid memories of the harsh consequences that befell their
parents and grandparents who attempted to vote in defiance of poll taxes,
literacy tests, and other devices adopted to suppress the black vote. Many
were terrorized by the Klan. Today, ex-offenders live in constant fear of a
different form of racial repression—racial profiling, police brutality, and
revocation of parole. One investigative journalist described the situation

this way: “Overwhelmingly, black people [in Mississippi] are scared of any
form of contact with authorities they saw as looking for excuses to
reincarcerate them. In neighborhood after neighborhood, the grandchildren
of the civil rights pioneers from the 1950s were as scared to vote, because
of prisons and the threat of prisons, as their grandparents were half a
century ago because of the threat of the lynch mob.”51 Nshombi Lambright,
of the Jackson ACLU, concurs. “People aren’t even trying to get their vote
back,” she said. “It’s hard just getting them to attempt to register. They’re
terrorized. They’re so scared of going back to jail that they won’t even try
it.”52
Research indicates that a large number of close elections would have
come out differently if felons had been allowed to vote, including at least
seven senatorial races between 1980 and 2000.53 The impact on those major
elections undoubtedly would be greater if all those deterred or prevented
from voting were taken into account. But as ex-offenders will hasten to
emphasize, it is not just the “big” elections that matter. One ex-offender put
it this way: “I have no right to vote on the school referendums that ... will
affect my children. I have no right to vote on how my taxes is going to be
spent or used, which I have to pay whether I’m a felon or not, you know?
So basically I’ve lost all voice or control over my government.... I get mad
because I can’t say anything because I don’t have a voice.”54
Those who do have their voting rights restored often describe a feeling of
validation, even pride. “I got a voice now,” said Willa Womack, a fortyfour-year-old African American woman who had been incarcerated on drug
charges. “I can decide now who will be my governor, who will be my
president. I have a vote now. I feel like somebody. It’s a feeling of relief
from where I came from—that I’m actually somebody.”55

The Pariahs

For Americans who are not caught up in this system of control, it can be
difficult to imagine what life would be like if discrimination against you
were perfectly legal—if you were not allowed to participate in the political
system and if you were not even eligible for food stamps or welfare and
could be denied housing assistance. Yet as bad as these forms of
discrimination are, many ex-offenders will tell you that the formal
mechanisms of exclusion are not the worst of it. The shame and stigma that
follows you for the rest of your life—that is the worst. It is not just the job
denial but the look that flashes across the face of a potential employer when
he notices that “the box” has been checked—the way he suddenly refuses to
look you in the eye. It is not merely the denial of the housing application
but the shame of being a grown man who has to beg his grandmother for a
place to sleep at night. It is not simply the denial of the right to vote but the
shame one feels when a co-worker innocently asks, “Who you gonna vote
for on Tuesday?”
One need not be formally convicted in a court of law to be subject to this
shame and stigma. As long as you “look like” or “seem like” a criminal,
you are treated with the same suspicion and contempt, not just by police,
security guards, or hall monitors at your school, but also by the woman who
crosses the street to avoid you and by the store employees who follow you
through the aisles, eager to catch you in the act of being the
“criminalblackman”—the archetypal figure who justifies the New Jim
Crow.56
Practically from cradle to grave, black males in urban ghettos are treated
like current or future criminals. One may learn to cope with the stigma of
criminality, but like the stigma of race, the prison label is not something that
a black man in the ghetto can ever fully escape. For those newly released
from prison, the pain is particularly acute. As Dorsey Nunn, an ex-offender
and cofounder of All of Us or None, once put it, “The biggest hurdle you

gotta get over when you walk out those prison gates is shame—that shame,
that stigma, that label, that thing you wear around your neck saying ‘I’m a
criminal.’ It’s like a yoke around your neck, and it’ll drag you down, even
kill you if you let it.” Many ex-offenders experience an existential angst
associated with their permanent social exclusion. Henry, a young African
American convicted of a felony, explains, “[It’s like] you broke the law, you
bad. You broke the law, bang—you’re not part of us anymore.”57 That
sentiment is shared by a woman, currently incarcerated, who described the
experience this way:
When I leave here it will be very difficult for me in the sense that I’m a
felon. That I will always be a felon ... for me to leave here, it will
affect my job, it will affect my education ... custody [of my children],
it can affect child support, it can affect everywhere—family, friends,
housing.... People that are convicted of drug crimes can’t even get
housing anymore.... Yes, I did my prison time. How long are you going
to punish me as a result of it? And not only on paper, I’m only on
paper for ten months when I leave here, that’s all the parole I have.
But, that parole isn’t going to be anything. It’s the housing, it’s the
credit reestablishing.... I mean even to go into the school, to work with
my child’s class—and I’m not a sex offender—but all I need is one
parent who says, “Isn’t she a felon? I don’t want her with my child.”58
The permanence of one’s social exile is often the hardest to swallow. For
many it seems inconceivable that, for a minor offense, you can be subjected
to discrimination, scorn, and exclusion for the rest of your life. Human
Rights Watch, in its report documenting the experiences of America’s
undercaste, tells the story of a fifty-seven-year-old African American
woman, denied rental housing by a federally funded landlord due to a minor
conviction she did not even know was on her record. After being refused
reconsideration, she asked her caseworker in pained exasperation, “Am I
going to be a criminal for the rest of my life?”59
When someone is convicted of a crime today, their “debt to society” is
never paid. The “cruel hand” that Frederick Douglass spoke of more than
150 years ago has appeared once again. In this new system of control, like
the last, many black men “hold up [their] heads, if at all, against the

withering influence of a nation’s scorn and contempt.” Willie Johnson, a
forty-three-year-old African American man recently released from prison in
Ohio, explained it this way:
My felony conviction has been like a mental punishment, because of
all the obstacles.... Every time I go to put in a [job] application—I have
had three companies hire me and tell me to come to work the next day.
But then the day before they will call and tell me don’t come in—
because you have a felony. And that is what is devastating because you
think you are about to go to work and they call you and say because of
your felony we can’t hire [you]. I have run into this at least a dozen
times. Two times I got very depressed and sad because I couldn’t take
care of myself as a man. It was like I wanted to give up—because in
society nobody wants to give us a helping hand. Right now I am
considered homeless. I have never been homeless until I left the
penitentiary, and now I know what it feels to be homeless. If it was not
for my family I would be in the streets sleeping in the cold.... We
[black men] have three strikes against us: 1) because we are black, and
2) because we are a black male, and the final strike is a felony. These
are the greatest three strikes that a black man has against him in this
country. I have friends who don’t have a felony—and have a hard time
getting a job. But if a black man can’t find a job to take care of himself
—he is ashamed that he can’t take care of his children.60
Not surprisingly, for many black men, the hurt and depression gives way
to anger. A black minister in Waterloo, Mississippi, explained his outrage at
the fate that has befallen African Americans in the post-civil rights era. “It’s
a hustle,” he said angrily. “‘Felony’ is the new N-word. They don’t have to
call you a nigger anymore. They just say you’re a felon. In every ghetto you
see alarming numbers of young men with felony convictions. Once you
have that felony stamp, your hope for employment, for any kind of
integration into society, it begins to fade out. Today’s lynching is a felony
charge. Today’s lynching is incarceration. Today’s lynch mobs are
professionals. They have a badge; they have a law degree. A felony is a
modern way of saying, ‘I’m going to hang you up and burn you.’ Once you
get that F, you’re on fire.”61

Remarkably, it is not uncommon today to hear media pundits, politicians,
social critics, and celebrities—most notably Bill Cosby—complain that the
biggest problem black men have today is that they “have no shame.” Many
worry that prison time has become a badge of honor in some communities
—“a rite of passage” is the term most often used in the press. Others claim
that inner-city residents no longer share the same value system as
mainstream society, and therefore are not stigmatized by criminality. Yet as
Donald Braman, author of Doing Time on the Outside, states, “One can only
assume that most participants in these discussion have had little direct
contact with the families and communities they are discussing.”62
Over a four-year period, Braman conducted a major ethnographic study
of families affected by mass incarceration in Washington, D.C., a city where
three out of every four young black men can expect to spend some time
behind bars.63 He found that, contrary to popular belief, the young men
labeled criminals and their families are profoundly hurt and stigmatized by
their status: “They are not shameless; they feel the stigma that accompanies
not only incarceration but all the other stereotypes that accompany it—
fatherlessness, poverty, and often, despite every intent to make it otherwise,
diminished love.” The results of Braman’s study have been largely
corroborated by similar studies elsewhere in the United States.64
These studies indicate that the biggest problem the black community may
face today is not “shamelessness” but rather the severe isolation, distrust,
and alienation created by mass incarceration. During Jim Crow, blacks were
severely stigmatized and segregated on the basis of race, but in their own
communities they could find support, solidarity, acceptance—love. Today,
when those labeled criminals return to their communities, they are often
met with scorn and contempt, not just by employers, welfare workers, and
housing officials, but also by their own neighbors, teachers, and even
members of their own families. This is so, even when they have been
imprisoned for minor offenses, such as possession and sale of a small
amount of drugs. Young black males in their teens are often told “you’ll
amount to nothing” or “you’ll find yourself back in jail, just like your
father”—a not-so-subtle suggestion that a shameful defect lies deep within
them, an inherited trait perhaps—part of their genetic makeup. “You are a
criminal, nothing but a criminal. You are a no good criminal.”65

The anger and frustration directed at young black men returning home
from prison is understandable, given that they are returning to communities
that are hurt by joblessness and crime. These communities desperately need
their young men to be holding down jobs and supporting their families,
rather than wasting away in prison cells. While there is widespread
recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused
to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and
ex-offenders still feel intense shame—shame that their children have turned
to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an
incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: “Regardless of
what you feel like you’ve done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and
you feel like, ‘Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up.
You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn’t a happened that
way.’” After her son’s arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and
relatives and kept the family’s suffering private. Constance is not alone.

Eerie Silence

David Braman’s ethnographic research shows that mass incarceration, far
from reducing the stigma associated with criminality, actually creates a
deep silence in communities of color, one rooted in shame. Imprisonment is
considered so shameful that many people avoid talking about it, even within
their own families. Some, like Constance, are silent because they blame
themselves for their children’s fate and believe that others blame them as
well. Others are silent because they believe hiding the truth will protect
friends and family members—e.g., “I don’t know what [his incarceration]
would do to his aunt. She just thinks so highly of him.” Others claim that a
loved one’s criminality is a private, family matter: “Somebody’s business is
nobody’s business.”66
Remarkably, even in communities devastated by mass incarceration,
many people struggling to the cope with the stigma of imprisonment have
no idea that their neighbors are struggling with the same grief, shame, and
isolation. Braman reported that “when I asked participants [in the study] if
they knew of other people in the neighborhood, many did know of one or
two out of the dozens of households on the block that had members
incarcerated but did not feel comfortable talking with others.”67 This type
of phenomenon has been described in the psychological literature as
pluralistic ignorance, in which people misjudge the norm. One example is
found in studies of college freshman who overestimate the drinking among
other freshman.68 When it comes to families of prisoners, however, their
underestimation of the extent of incarceration in their communities
exacerbates their sense of isolation by making the imprisonment of their
family members seem more abnormal than it is.
Even in church, a place where many people seek solace in times of grief
and sorrow, families of prisoners often keep secret the imprisonment of
their children or relatives. As one woman responded when asked if she
could turn to church members for support, “Church? I wouldn’t dare tell

anyone at church.”69 Far from being a place of comfort or refuge, churches
can be a place where judgment, shame, and contempt are felt most acutely.
Services in black churches frequently contain a strong mixture of concern
for the less fortunate and a call to personal responsibility. As Cathy Cohen
has observed, ministers and members of black congregations have helped to
develop what she calls the “indigenous constructed image of ‘good, black
Christian folk.’”70 Black churches, in this cultural narrative, are places
where the “good” black people in the community can be found. To the
extent that the imprisonment of one’s son or relative (or one’s own
imprisonment) is experienced as a personal failure—a failure of personal
responsibility—church can be a source of fresh pain rather than comfort.
Those who have had positive experiences of acceptance and sympathy
after disclosing the status of a loved one (or their own status) report they are
better able to cope. Notably, however, even after such positive experiences,
most family members remain committed to maintaining tight control over
who knows and who does not know about the status of their loved one.
According to Braman, not one of the family members in his study “had
‘come out’ completely to their extended families at church and at work.”71

Passing (Redux)

Lying about incarcerated family members is another common coping
strategy—a form of passing. Whereas light-skinned blacks during the Jim
Crow era sometimes cut off relations with friends and family in an effort to
“pass” as white and enjoy the upward mobility and privilege associated
with whiteness, today many family members of prisoners lie and try to hide
the status of their relatives in an effort to mitigate the stigma of criminality.
This is especially the case at work—employment settings where family
members interact with people they believe could not possibly understand
what they are going through.
One woman, Ruth, whose younger brother is incarcerated, says she
would never discuss her brother with her co-workers or supervisor, though
they have long shared information about their personal lives. “You know, I
talk to [my supervisor] about stuff, but not this. This was too much, and it
definitely made, well it was just harder to talk to him. He wants to know
how my brother is. I just can’t tell it to him. What does he know about
prison?”72 When asked to explain why her white co-workers and
supervisors would have trouble understanding her brother’s incarceration,
Ruth explained that it was not just incarceration but “everything”—
everything related to race. As an example, she mentioned nights when she
works late: “I tell my boss all the time, I say, ‘If you want me to take a taxi
you go down there and flag one for me. I’m not going out there and stand
twenty minutes for a cab when they’ll run over me to get to you.’ ... He’s
white and, see, he don’t know the difference because he’s from Seattle,
Washington. He looks at me real strange, like, ‘What are you talking
about?’”73
Many ex-offenders and families of prisoners are desperately attempting
to be perceived as part of the modern upwardly mobile class, even if their
income does not place them in it. Ex-offenders lie (by refusing to check the
box on employment applications), and family members lie through

omission or obfuscation because they are painfully aware of the historically
intransigent stereotypes of criminal, dysfunctional families that pervade not
only public discussions of inner cities but of the black community in
general. This awareness can lead beyond shame to a place of self-hate.
One mother of an incarcerated teenager described the self-hate she
perceives in the black community this way:
All your life you been taught that you’re not a worthy person, or
something is wrong with you. So you don’t have no respect for
yourself. See, people of color have—not all of them, but a lot of them
—have poor self-esteem, because we’ve been branded. We hate
ourselves, you know. We have been programmed that it’s something
that’s wrong with us. We hate ourselves.74
This self-hate, she explained, does not affect just the young boys who
find themselves getting in trouble and fulfilling the negative expectations of
those in the community and beyond. Self-hate is also part of the reason
people in her neighborhood do not speak to each other about the impact of
incarceration on their families and their lives. In her nearly all-black
neighborhood, she worries about what the neighbors would think about her
if she revealed that her son had been labeled a criminal: “It’s hard, because,
like I say ... we’ve been labeled all our lives that we are the bad people.”75
The silence this stigma engenders among family members, neighbors,
friends, relatives, co-workers, and strangers is perhaps the most painful—
yet least acknowledged—aspect of the new system of control. The historical
anthropologist Gerald Sider once wrote, “We can have no significant
understanding of any culture unless we also know the silences that were
institutionally created and guaranteed along with it.”76 Nowhere is that
observation more relevant in American society today than in an analysis of
the culture of mass incarceration.
Descriptions of the silence that hovers over mass incarceration are rare
because people—whether they are social scientists, judges, politicians, or
reporters—are usually more interested in speech, acts, and events than in
the negative field of silence and estrangement that lurks beneath the
surface. But, as Braman rightly notes, those who live in the shadows of this
silence are devalued as human beings:

There is a repression of self experienced by these families in their
silence. The retreat of a mother or wife from friendships in church and
at work, the words not spoken between friends, the enduring silence of
children who guard what for them is profound and powerful
information—all are telling indicators of the social effects of
incarceration. As relationships between family and friends become
strained or false, not only are people’s understandings of one another
diminished, but, because people are social, they themselves are
diminished as well.77
The harm done by this social silence is more than interpersonal. The
silence—driven by stigma and fear of shame—results in a repression of
public thought, a collective denial of lived experience. As Braman puts it,
“By forcing out of public view the struggles that these families face in the
most simple and fundamental acts—living together and caring for one
another—this broader social silence makes it seem as though [ghetto
families] simply are ‘that way’: broken, valueless, irreparable.”78 It also
makes community healing and collective political action next to impossible.

Gangsta Love

For some, the notion that black communities are severely stigmatized and
shamed by criminality is counterintuitive: if incarceration in many urban
areas is the statistical norm, why isn’t it socially normative as well? It is
true that imprisonment has become “normal” in ghetto communities. In
major cities across the United States, the majority of young black men are
under the control of the criminal justice system or saddled with criminal
records. But just because the prison label has become normal does not mean
that it is generally viewed as acceptable. Poor people of color, like other
Americans—indeed like nearly everyone around the world—want safe
streets, peaceful communities, healthy families, good jobs, and meaningful
opportunities to contribute to society. The notion that ghetto families do not,
in fact, want those things, and instead are perfectly content to live in crimeridden communities, feeling no shame or regret about the fate of their
young men is, quite simply, racist. It is impossible to imagine that we would
believe such a thing about whites.
The predictable response is: What about gangsta rap and the culture of
violence that has been embraced by so many black youth? Is there not some
truth to the notion that black culture has devolved in recent years, as
reflected in youth standing on the street corners with pants sagging below
their rears and rappers boasting about beating their “hos” and going to jail?
Is there not some reason to wonder whether the black community, to some
extent, has lost its moral compass?
The easy answer is to say yes and wag a finger at those who are behaving
badly. That is the road most traveled, and it has not made a bit of difference.
The media fawn over Bill Cosby and other figures when they give stern
lectures to black audiences about black men failing to be good fathers and
failing to lead respectable lives. They act as though this is a message black
audiences have not heard many times before from their ministers, from their
family members, and from politicians who talk about the need for more

“personal responsibility.” Many seem genuinely surprised that blacks in the
audience applaud these messages; for them, it is apparently news that black
people think men should be good fathers and help to support their families.
The more difficult answer—the more courageous one—is to say yes, yes
we should be concerned about the behavior of men trapped in ghetto
communities, but the deep failure of morality is our own. Economist Glenn
Loury once posed the question: “are we willing to cast ourselves as a
society that creates crimogenic conditions for some of its members, and
then acts-out rituals of punishment against them as if engaged in some
awful form of human sacrifice?” A similar question can be posed with
respect to shaming those trapped in ghettos: are we willing to demonize a
population, declare a war against them, and then stand back and heap shame
and contempt upon them for failing to behave like model citizens while
under attack?
In this regard, it is helpful to step back and put the behavior of young
black men who appear to embrace “gangsta culture” in the proper
perspective. There is absolutely nothing abnormal or surprising about a
severely stigmatized group embracing their stigma. Psychologists have long
observed that when people feel hopelessly stigmatized, a powerful coping
strategy—often the only apparent route to self-esteem—is embracing one’s
stigmatized identity. Hence, “black is beautiful” and “gay pride”—slogans
and anthems of political movements aimed at ending not only legal
discrimination, but the stigma that justified it. Indeed, the act of embracing
one’s stigma is never merely a psychological maneuver; it is a political act
—an act of resistance and defiance in a society that seeks to demean a
group based on an inalterable trait. As a gay activist once put it, “Only by
fully embracing the stigma itself can one neutralize the sting and make it
laughable.”79
For those black youth who are constantly followed by the police and
shamed by teachers, relatives, and strangers, embracing the stigma of
criminality is an act of rebellion—an attempt to carve out a positive identity
in a society that offers them little more than scorn, contempt, and constant
surveillance. Ronny, a sixteen-year-old African American on probation for
a drug-related offense, explains it this way:

My grandma keeps asking me about when I’m gonna get arrested
again. She thinks just ’cause I went in before, I will go in again.... At
my school my teachers talk about calling the cop[s] again to take me
away.... [The] cop keeps checking up on me. He’s always at the park
making sure I don’t get into trouble again.... My P.O. [probation
officer] is always knocking on my door talking shit to me.... Even at
the BYA [the local youth development organization] the staff treat me
like I’m a fuck up.... Shit don’t change. It doesn’t matter where I go,
I’m seen as a criminal. I just say, if you are going to treat me as a
criminal then I’m gonna treat you like I am one, you feel me? I’m
gonna make you shake so that you can say that there is a reason for
calling me a criminal.... I grew up knowing that I had to show these
fools [adults who criminalize youth] that I wasn’t going to take their
shit. I started to act like a thug even if I wasn’t one.... Part of it was me
trying to be hard, the other part was them treating me like a criminal.80
The problem, of course, is that embracing criminality—while a natural
response to the stigma—is inherently self-defeating and destructive. While
“black is beautiful” is a powerful antidote to the logic of Jim Crow, and
“gay pride” is a liberating motto for those challenging homophobia, the
natural corollary for young men trapped in the ghetto in the era of mass
incarceration is something akin to “gangsta love.” While race and sexual
orientation are perfectly appropriate aspects of one’s identity to embrace,
criminality for its own sake most certainly is not. The War on Drugs has
greatly exacerbated the problems associated with drug abuse, rather than
solved them, but the fact remains that the violence associated with the
illegal drug trade is nothing to be celebrated. Black crime cripples the black
community and does no favors to the individual offender.
So herein lies the paradox and predicament of young black men labeled
criminals. A war has been declared on them, and they have been rounded up
for engaging in precisely the same crimes that go largely ignored in middleand upper-class white communities—possession and sale of illegal drugs.
For those residing in ghetto communities, employment is scarce—often
nonexistent. Schools located in ghetto communities more closely resemble
prisons than places of learning, creativity, or moral development. And
because the drug war has been raging for decades now, the parents of

children coming of age today were targets of the drug war as well. As a
result, many fathers are in prison, and those who are “free” bear the prison
label. They are often unable to provide for, or meaningfully contribute to, a
family. Any wonder, then, that many youth embrace their stigmatized
identity as a means of survival in this new caste system? Should we be
shocked when they turn to gangs or fellow inmates for support when no
viable family support structure exists? After all, in many respects, they are
simply doing what black people did during the Jim Crow era—they are
turning to each other for support and solace in a society that despises them.
Yet when these young people do what all severely stigmatized groups do
—try to cope by turning to each other and embracing their stigma in a
desperate effort to regain some measure of self esteem—we, as a society,
heap more shame and contempt upon them. We tell them their friends are
“no good,” that they will “amount to nothing,” that they are “wasting their
lives,” and that “they’re nothing but criminals.” We condemn their baggy
pants (a fashion trend that mimics prison-issue pants) and the music that
glorifies a life many feel they cannot avoid. When we are done shaming
them, we throw up our hands and then turn our backs as they are carted off
to jail.

The Minstrel Show

None of the foregoing should be interpreted as an excuse for the violence,
decadence, or misogyny that pervades what has come to be known as
gangsta culture. The images and messages are extremely damaging. On an
average night, one need engage in only a few minutes of channel surfing
during prime-time hours to stumble across images of gangsta culture on
television. The images are so familiar no description is necessary here.
Often these images emanate from BET or black-themed reality shows and
thus are considered “authentic” expressions of black attitudes, culture, and
mores.
Again, though, it is useful to put the commodification of gangsta culture
in proper perspective. The worst of gangsta rap and other forms of
blaxploitation (such as VH1’s Flavor of Love) is best understood as a
modern-day minstrel show, only this time televised around the clock for a
worldwide audience. It is a for-profit display of the worst racial stereotypes
and images associated with the era of mass incarceration—an era in which
black people are criminalized and portrayed as out-of-control, shameless,
violent, oversexed, and generally undeserving.
Like the minstrel shows of the slavery and Jim Crow eras, today’s
displays are generally designed for white audiences. The majority of
consumers of gangsta rap are white, suburban teenagers. VH1 had its best
ratings ever for the first season of Flavor of Love—ratings driven by large
white audiences. MTV has expanded its offerings of black-themed reality
shows in the hopes of attracting the same crowd. The profits to be made
from racial stigma are considerable, and the fact that blacks—as well as
whites—treat racial oppression as a commodity for consumption is not
surprising. It is a familiar form of black complicity with racialized systems
of control.
Many people are unaware that, although minstrel shows were plainly
designed to pander to white racism and to make whites feel comfortable

with—indeed, entertained by—racial oppression, African Americans
formed a large part of the black minstrels’ audience. In fact, their numbers
were so great in some areas that theater owners had to relax rules
segregating black patrons and restricting them to certain areas of the
theater.81
Historians have long debated why blacks would attend minstrel shows
when the images and content were so blatantly racist. Minstrels projected a
greatly romanticized and exaggerated image of black life on plantations
with cheerful, simple, grinning slaves always ready to sing, dance, and
please their masters. Some have suggested that perhaps blacks felt in on the
joke, laughing at the over-the-top characters from a sense of “in-group
recognition.” 82 It has also been argued that perhaps they felt some
connection to elements of African culture that had been suppressed and
condemned for so long but were suddenly visible on stage, albeit in racist,
exaggerated form.83 Undeniably, though, one major draw for black
audiences was simply seeing fellow African Americans on stage. Black
minstrels were largely viewed as celebrities, earning more money and
achieving more fame than African Americans ever had before.84 Black
minstrelsy was the first large-scale opportunity for African Americans to
enter show business. To some degree, then, black minstrelsy—as degrading
as it was—represented success.
It seems likely that historians will one day look back on the images of
black men in gangsta rap videos with a similar curiosity. Why would these
young men, who are targets of a brutal drug war declared against them, put
on a show—a spectacle—that romanticizes and glorifies their
criminalization? Why would these young men openly endorse and
perpetuate the very stereotypes that are invoked to justify their second-class
status, their exclusion from mainstream society? The answers, historians
may find, are not that different from the answers to the minstrelsy puzzle.
It is important to keep in mind, though, that many hip-hop artists today
do not embrace and perpetuate the worst racial stereotypes associated with
mass incarceration. Artists like Common, for example, articulate a sharp
critique of American politics and culture and reject the misogyny and
violence preached by gangsta rappers. And while rap is often associated
with “gangsta life” in the mainstream press, the origins of rap and hip-hop

culture are not rooted in outlaw ideology. When rap was born, the early rap
stars were not rapping about gangsta life, but “My Adidas” and good times
in the ’hood in tunes like “Rapper’s Delight.” Rap music changed after the
War on Drugs shifted into high gear and thousands of young, black men
were suddenly swept off the streets and into prisons. Violence in urban
communities flared in those communities, not simply because of the new
drug—crack—but because of the massive crackdown, which radically
reshaped the traditional life course for young black men. As a tidal wave of
punitiveness, stigma, and despair washed over poor communities of color,
those who were demonized—not only in the mainstream press but often in
their own communities—did what all stigmatized groups do: they struggled
to preserve a positive identity by embracing their stigma. Gangsta rap—
while it may amount to little more than a minstrel show when it appears on
MTV today—has its roots in the struggle for a positive identity among
outcasts.

The Antidote

It is difficult to look at pictures of black people performing in minstrel
shows during the Jim Crow era. It is almost beyond belief that at one time
black people actually covered their faces with pitch-black paint, covered
their mouths with white paint drawn in an exaggerated, clownish smile, and
pranced on stage for the entertainment and delight of white audiences, who
were tickled by the sight of a black man happily portraying the worst racial
stereotypes that justified slavery and later Jim Crow. The images are so
painful they can cause a downright visceral reaction. The damage done by
the minstrel’s complicity in the Jim Crow regime was considerable. Even
so, do we hate the minstrel? Do we despise him? Or do we do understand
him as an unfortunate expression of the times?
Most people of any race would probably condemn the minstrel show but
stop short of condemning the minstrel as a man. Pity, more than contempt,
seems the likely response. Why? With the benefit of hindsight, we can see
the minstrel in his social context. By shuckin’and jivin’for white audiences,
he was mirroring to white audiences the shame and contempt projected onto
him. He might have made a decent living that way—may even have been
treated as a celebrity—but from a distance, we can see the emptiness, the
pain.
When the system of mass incarceration collapses (and if history is any
guide, it will), historians will undoubtedly look back and marvel that such
an extraordinarily comprehensive system of racialized social control existed
in the United States. How fascinating, they will likely say, that a drug war
was waged almost exclusively against poor people of color—people already
trapped in ghettos that lacked jobs and decent schools. They were rounded
up by the millions, packed away in prisons, and when released, they were
stigmatized for life, denied the right to vote, and ushered into a world of
discrimination. Legally barred from employment, housing, and welfare
benefits—and saddled with thousands of dollars of debt—these people were

shamed and condemned for failing to hold together their families. They
were chastised for succumbing to depression and anger, and blamed for
landing back in prison. Historians will likely wonder how we could
describe the new caste system as a system of crime control, when it is
difficult to imagine a system better designed to create—rather than prevent
—crime.
None of this is to suggest that those who break the law bear no
responsibility for their conduct or exist merely as “products of their
environment.” To deny the individual agency of those caught up in the
system—their capacity to overcome seemingly impossible odds—would be
to deny an essential element of their humanity. We, as human beings, are
not simply organisms or animals responding to stimuli. We have a higher
self, a capacity for transcendence.
Yet our ability to exercise free will and transcend the most extraordinary
obstacles does not make the conditions of our life irrelevant. Most of us
struggle and often fail to meet the biggest challenges of our lives. Even the
smaller challenges—breaking a bad habit or sticking to a diet—often prove
too difficult, even for those of us who are relatively privileged and
comfortable in our daily lives.
In fact, what is most remarkable about the hundreds of thousands of
people who return from prison to their communities each year is not how
many fail, but how many somehow manage to survive and stay out of
prison against all the odds. Considering the design of this new system of
control, it is astonishing that so many people labeled criminals still manage
to care for and feed their children, hold together marriages, obtain
employment, and start businesses. Perhaps most heroic are those who, upon
release, launch social justice organizations that challenge the discrimination
ex-offenders face and provide desperately needed support for those newly
released from prison. These heroes go largely unnoticed by politicians who
prefer to blame those who fail, rather than praise with admiration and awe
all those who somehow manage, despite seemingly insurmountable hurdles,
to survive.
As a society, our decision to heap shame and contempt upon those who
struggle and fail in a system designed to keep them locked up and locked
out says far more about ourselves than it does about them.

There is another path. Rather than shaming and condemning an already
deeply stigmatized group, we, collectively, can embrace them—not
necessarily their behavior, but them—their humanness. As the saying goes,
“You gotta hate the crime, but love the criminal.” This is not a mere
platitude; it is a prescription for liberation. If we had actually learned to
show love, care, compassion, and concern across racial lines during the
Civil Rights Movement—rather than go colorblind—mass incarceration
would not exist today.

5
The New Jim Crow
It was no ordinary Sunday morning when presidential candidate Barack
Obama stepped to the podium at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago.
It was Father’s Day. Hundreds of enthusiastic congregants packed the pews
at the overwhelmingly black church eager to hear what the first black
Democratic nominee for president of the United States had to say.
The message was a familiar one: black men should be better fathers. Too
many are absent from their homes. For those in the audience, Obama’s
speech was an old tune sung by an exciting new performer. His message of
personal responsibility, particularly as it relates to fatherhood, was anything
but new; it had been delivered countless times by black ministers in
churches across America. The message had also been delivered on a
national stage by celebrities such as Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier. And the
message had been delivered with great passion by Louis Farrakhan, who
more than a decade earlier summoned one million black men to
Washington, D.C., for a day of “atonement” and recommitment to their
families and communities.
The mainstream media, however, treated the event as big news, and many
pundits seemed surprised that the black congregants actually applauded the
message. For them, it was remarkable that black people nodded in approval
when Obama said: “If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that too
many fathers are missing—missing from too many lives and too many
homes. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL. They
have abandoned their responsibilities. They’re acting like boys instead of
men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and
I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is this more true than in the
African American community.”
The media did not ask—and Obama did not tell—where the missing
fathers might be found.

The following day, social critic and sociologist Michael Eric Dyson
published a critique of Obama’s speech in Time magazine. He pointed out
that the stereotype of black men being poor fathers may well be false.
Research by Boston College social psychologist Rebekah Levine Coley
found that black fathers not living at home are more likely to keep in
contact with their children than fathers of any other ethnic or racial group.
Dyson chided Obama for evoking a black stereotype for political gain,
pointing out that “Obama’s words may have been spoken to black folk, but
they were aimed at those whites still on the fence about whom to send to the
White House.”1 Dyson’s critique was a fair one, but like other media
commentators, he remained silent about where all the absent black fathers
could be found. He identified numerous social problems plaguing black
families, such as high levels of unemployment, discriminatory mortgage
practices, and the gutting of early-childhood learning programs. Not a word
was said about prisons.
The public discourse regarding “missing black fathers” closely parallels
the debate about the lack of eligible black men for marriage. The majority
of black women are unmarried today, including 70 percent of professional
black women.2 “Where have all the black men gone?” is a common refrain
heard among black women frustrated in their efforts to find life partners.
The sense that black men have disappeared is rooted in reality. The U.S.
Census Bureau reported in 2002 that there are nearly 3 million more black
adult women than men in black communities across the United States, a
gender gap of 26 percent.3 In many urban areas, the gap is far worse, rising
to more than 37 percent in places like New York City. The comparable
disparity for whites in the United States is 8 percent.4 Although a million
black men can be found in prisons and jails, public acknowledgement of the
role of the criminal justice system in “disappearing” black men is
surprisingly rare. Even in the black media—which is generally more willing
to raise and tackle issues related to criminal justice—an eerie silence can
often be found.5
Ebony magazine, for example, ran an article in December 2006 entitled
“Where Have the Black Men Gone?” The author posed the popular question
but never answered it.6 He suggested we will find our black men when we
rediscover God, family, and self-respect. A more cynical approach was

taken by Tyra Banks, the popular talk show host, who devoted a show in
May 2008 to the recurring question, “Where Have All the Good Black Men
Gone?” She wondered aloud whether black women are unable to find “good
black men” because too many of them are gay or dating white women. No
mention was made of the War on Drugs or mass incarceration.
The fact that Barack Obama can give a speech on Father’s Day dedicated
to the subject of fathers who are “AWOL” without ever acknowledging that
the majority of young black men in large urban areas are currently under the
control of the criminal justice system is disturbing, to say the least. What is
more problematic, though, is that hardly anyone in the mainstream media
noticed the oversight. One might not expect serious analysis from Tyra
Banks, but shouldn’t we expect a bit more from the New York Times and
CNN? Hundreds of thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers
for their children, not because of a lack of commitment or desire but
because they are warehoused in prisons, locked in cages. They did not walk
out on their families voluntarily; they were taken away in handcuffs, often
due to a massive federal program known as the War on Drugs.
More African Americans are under correctional control today—in prison
or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before
the Civil War began.7 The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part
of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both
parents than a black child born during slavery.8 The absence of black
fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness,
immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black
men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes
that are largely ignored when committed by whites.
The clock has been turned back on racial progress in America, though
scarcely anyone seems to notice. All eyes are fixed on people like Barack
Obama and Oprah Winfrey, who have defied the odds and risen to power,
fame, and fortune. For those left behind, especially those within prison
walls, the celebration of racial triumph in America must seem a tad
premature. More black men are imprisoned today than at any other moment
in our nation’s history. More are disenfranchised today than in 1870, the
year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly
deny the right to vote on the basis of race.9 Young black men today may be

just as likely to suffer discrimination in employment, housing, public
benefits, and jury service as a black man in the Jim Crow era—
discrimination that is perfectly legal, because it is based on one’s criminal
record.
This is the new normal, the new racial equilibrium.
The launching of the War on Drugs and the initial construction of the
new system required the expenditure of tremendous political initiative and
resources. Media campaigns were waged; politicians blasted “soft” judges
and enacted harsh sentencing laws; poor people of color were vilified. The
system now, however, requires very little maintenance or justification. In
fact, if you are white and middle class, you might not even realize the drug
war is still going on. Most high school and college students today have no
recollection of the political and media frenzy surrounding the drug war in
the early years. They were young children when the war was declared, or
not even born yet. Crack is out; terrorism is in.
Today, the political fanfare and the vehement, racialized rhetoric
regarding crime and drugs are no longer necessary. Mass incarceration has
been normalized, and all of the racial stereotypes and assumptions that gave
rise to the system are now embraced (or at least internalized) by people of
all colors, from all walks of life, and in every major political party. We may
wonder aloud “where have the black men gone?” but deep down we already
know. It is simply taken for granted that, in cities like Baltimore and
Chicago, the vast majority of young black men are currently under the
control of the criminal justice system or branded criminals for life. This
extraordinary circumstance—unheard of in the rest of the world—is treated
here in America as a basic fact of life, as normal as separate water fountains
were just a half century ago.

States of Denial

The claim that we really know where all the black men have gone may
inspire considerable doubt. If we know, why do we feign ignorance? Could
it be that most people really don’t know? Is it possible that the roundup,
lockdown, and exclusion of black men en masse from the body politic has
occurred largely unnoticed? The answer is yes and no.
Much has been written about the ways in which people manage to deny,
even to themselves, that extraordinary atrocities, racial oppression, and
other forms of human suffering have occurred or are occurring.
Criminologist Stanley Cohen wrote perhaps the most important book on the
subject, States of Denial. The book examines how individuals and
institutions—victims, perpetrators, and bystanders—know about yet deny
the occurrence of oppressive acts. They see only what they want to see and
wear blinders to avoid seeing the rest. This has been true about slavery,
genocide, torture, and every form of systemic oppression.
Cohen emphasizes that denial, though deplorable, is complicated. It is not
simply a matter of refusing to acknowledge an obvious, though
uncomfortable, truth. Many people “know” and “not-know” the truth about
human suffering at the same time. In his words, “Denial may be neither a
matter of telling the truth nor intentionally telling a lie. There seem to be
states of mind, or even whole cultures, in which we know and don’t know at
the same time.”10
Today, most Americans know and don’t know the truth about mass
incarceration. For more than three decades, images of black men in
handcuffs have been a regular staple of the evening news. We know that
large numbers of black men have been locked in cages. In fact, it is
precisely because we know that black and brown people are far more likely
to be imprisoned that we, as a nation, have not cared too much about it. We
tell ourselves they “deserve” their fate, even though we know—and don’t
know—that whites are just as likely to commit many crimes, especially

drug crimes. We know that people released from prison face a lifetime of
discrimination, scorn, and exclusion, and yet we claim not to know that an
undercaste exists. We know and we don’t know at the same time.
Upon reflection, it is relatively easy to understand how Americans come
to deny the evils of mass incarceration. Denial is facilitated by persistent
racial segregation in housing and schools, by political demagoguery, by
racialized media imagery, and by the ease of changing one’s perception of
reality simply by changing television channels. There is little reason to
doubt the prevailing “common sense” that black and brown men have been
locked up en masse merely in response to crime rates when one’s sources of
information are mainstream media outlets. In many respects, the reality of
mass incarceration is easier to avoid knowing than the injustices and
sufferings associated with slavery or Jim Crow. Those confined to prisons
are out of sight and out of mind; once released, they are typically confined
in ghettos. Most Americans only come to “know” about the people cycling
in and out of prisons through fictional police dramas, music videos, gangsta
rap, and “true” accounts of ghetto experience on the evening news. These
racialized narratives tend to confirm and reinforce the prevailing public
consensus that we need not care about “those people”; they deserve what
they get.
Of all the reasons that we fail to know the truth about mass incarceration,
though, one stands out: a profound misunderstanding regarding how racial
oppression actually works. If someone were to visit the United States from
another country (or another planet) and ask: Is the U.S. criminal justice
system some kind of tool of racial control? Most Americans would swiftly
deny it. Numerous reasons would leap to mind why that could not possibly
be the case. The visitor would be told that crime rates, black culture, or bad
schools were to blame. “The system is not run by a bunch of racists,” the
apologist would explain. “It’s run by people who are trying to fight crime.”
That response is predictable because most people assume that racism, and
racial systems generally, are fundamentally a function of attitudes. Because
mass incarceration is officially colorblind, it seems inconceivable that the
system could function much like a racial caste system. The widespread and
mistaken belief that racial animus is necessary for the creation and
maintenance of racialized systems of social control is the most important
reason that we, as a nation, have remained in deep denial.

The misunderstanding is not surprising. As a society, our collective
understanding of racism has been powerfully influenced by the shocking
images of the Jim Crow era and the struggle for civil rights. When we think
of racism we think of Governor Wallace of Alabama blocking the
schoolhouse door; we think of water hoses, lynchings, racial epithets, and
“whites only” signs. These images make it easy to forget that many
wonderful, good-hearted white people who were generous to others,
respectful of their neighbors, and even kind to their black maids, gardeners,
or shoe shiners—and wished them well—nevertheless went to the polls and
voted for racial segregation. Many whites who supported Jim Crow justified
it on paternalist grounds, actually believing they were doing blacks a favor
or believing the time was not yet “right” for equality. The disturbing images
from the Jim Crow era also make it easy to forget that many African
Americans were complicit in the Jim Crow system, profiting from it
directly or indirectly or keeping their objections quiet out of fear of the
repercussions. Our understanding of racism is therefore shaped by the most
extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it
functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign
intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system.
The unfortunate reality we must face is that racism manifests itself not
only in individual attitudes and stereotypes, but also in the basic structure of
society. Academics have developed complicated theories and obscure
jargon in an effort to describe what is now referred to as structural racism,
yet the concept is fairly straightforward. One theorist, Iris Marion Young,
relying on a famous “birdcage” metaphor, explains it this way: If one thinks
about racism by examining only one wire of the cage, or one form of
disadvantage, it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped.
Only a large number of wires arranged in a specific way, and connected to
one another, serve to enclose the bird and to ensure that it cannot escape.11
What is particularly important to keep in mind is that any given wire of
the cage may or may not be specifically developed for the purpose of
trapping the bird, yet it still operates (together with the other wires) to
restrict its freedom. By the same token, not every aspect of a racial caste
system needs to be developed for the specific purpose of controlling black
people in order for it to operate (together with other laws, institutions, and

practices) to trap them at the bottom of a racial hierarchy. In the system of
mass incarceration, a wide variety of laws, institutions, and practices—
ranging from racial profiling to biased sentencing policies, political
disenfranchisement, and legalized employment discrimination—trap
African Americans in a virtual (and literal) cage.
Fortunately, as Marilyn Frye has noted, every birdcage has a door, and
every birdcage can be broken and can corrode.12 What is most concerning
about the new racial caste system, however, is that it may prove to be more
durable than its predecessors. Because this new system is not explicitly
based on race, it is easier to defend on seemingly neutral grounds. And
while all previous methods of control have blamed the victim in one way or
another, the current system invites observers to imagine that those who are
trapped in the system were free to avoid second-class status or permanent
banishment from society simply by choosing not to commit crimes. It is far
more convenient to imagine that a majority of young African American
men in urban areas freely chose a life of crime than to accept the real
possibility that their lives were structured in a way that virtually guaranteed
their early admission into a system from which they can never escape. Most
people are willing to acknowledge the existence of the cage but insist that a
door has been left open.
One way of understanding our current system of mass incarceration is to
think of it as a birdcage with a locked door. It is a set of structural
arrangements that locks a racially distinct group into a subordinate political,
social, and economic position, effectively creating a second-class
citizenship. Those trapped within the system are not merely disadvantaged,
in the sense that they are competing on an unequal playing field or face
additional hurdles to political or economic success; rather, the system itself
is structured to lock them into a subordinate position.

How It Works

Precisely how the system of mass incarceration works to trap African
Americans in a virtual (and literal) cage can best be understood by viewing
the system as a whole. In earlier chapters, we considered various wires of
the cage in isolation; here, we put the pieces together, step back, and view
the cage in its entirety. Only when we view the cage from a distance can we
disengage from the maze of rationalizations that are offered for each wire
and see how the entire apparatus operates to keep African Americans
perpetually trapped.
This, in brief, is how the system works: The War on Drugs is the vehicle
through which extraordinary numbers of black men are forced into the cage.
The entrapment occurs in three distinct phases, each of which has been
explored earlier, but a brief review is useful here. The first stage is the
roundup. Vast numbers of people are swept into the criminal justice system
by the police, who conduct drug operations primarily in poor communities
of color. They are rewarded in cash—through drug forfeiture laws and
federal grant programs—for rounding up as many people as possible, and
they operate unconstrained by constitutional rules of procedure that once
were considered inviolate. Police can stop, interrogate, and search anyone
they choose for drug investigations, provided they get “consent.” Because
there is no meaningful check on the exercise of police discretion, racial
biases are granted free reign. In fact, police are allowed to rely on race as a
factor in selecting whom to stop and search (even though people of color
are no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes than whites)—effectively
guaranteeing that those who are swept into the system are primarily black
and brown.
The conviction marks the beginning of the second phase: the period of
formal control. Once arrested, defendants are generally denied meaningful
legal representation and pressured to plead guilty whether they are or not.
Prosecutors are free to “load up” defendants with extra charges, and their

decisions cannot be challenged for racial bias. Once convicted, due to the
drug war’s harsh sentencing laws, drug offenders in the United States spend
more time under the criminal justice system’s formal control—in jail or
prison, on probation or parole—than drug offenders anywhere else in the
world. While under formal control, virtually every aspect of one’s life is
regulated and monitored by the system, and any form of resistance or
disobedience is subject to swift sanction. This period of control may last a
lifetime, even for those convicted of extremely minor, nonviolent offenses,
but the vast majority of those swept into the system are eventually released.
They are transferred from their prison cells to a much larger, invisible cage.
The final stage has been dubbed by some advocates as the period of
invisible punishment.13 This term, first coined by Jeremy Travis, is meant
to describe the unique set of criminal sanctions that are imposed on
individuals after they step outside the prison gates, a form of punishment
that operates largely outside of public view and takes effect outside the
traditional sentencing framework. These sanctions are imposed by operation
of law rather than decisions of a sentencing judge, yet they often have a
greater impact on one’s life course than the months or years one actually
spends behind bars. These laws operate collectively to ensure that the vast
majority of convicted offenders will never integrate into mainstream, white
society. They will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives
—denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Unable to
surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison and then be
released again, caught in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality.
In recent years, advocates and politicians have called for greater
resources devoted to the problem of “prisoner re-entry,” in view of the
unprecedented numbers of people who are released from prison and
returned to their communities every year. While the terminology is well
intentioned, it utterly fails to convey the gravity of the situation facing
prisoners upon their release. People who have been convicted of felonies
almost never truly reenter the society they inhabited prior to their
conviction. Instead, they enter a separate society, a world hidden from
public view, governed by a set of oppressive and discriminatory rules and
laws that do not apply to everyone else. They become members of an
undercaste—an enormous population of predominately black and brown

people who, because of the drug war, are denied basic rights and privileges
of American citizenship and are permanently relegated to an inferior status.
This is the final phase, and there is no going back.

Nothing New?

Some might argue that as disturbing as this system appears to be, there is
nothing particularly new about mass incarceration; it is merely a
continuation of past drug wars and biased law enforcement practices. Racial
bias in our criminal justice system is simply an old problem that has gotten
worse, and the social excommunication of “criminals” has a long history; it
is not a recent invention. There is some merit to this argument.
Race has always influenced the administration of justice in the United
States. Since the day the first prison opened, people of color have been
disproportionately represented behind bars. In fact, the very first person
admitted to a U.S. penitentiary was a “light skinned Negro in excellent
health,” described by an observer as “one who was born of a degraded and
depressed race, and had never experienced anything but indifference and
harshness.”14 Biased police practices are also nothing new, a recurring
theme of African American experience since blacks were targeted by the
police as suspected runaway slaves. And every drug war that has ever been
waged in the United States—including alcohol prohibition—has been
tainted or driven by racial bias.15 Even postconviction penalties have a long
history. The American colonies passed laws barring criminal offenders from
a wide variety of jobs and benefits, automatically dissolving their marriages
and denying them the right to enter contracts. These legislatures were
following a long tradition, dating back to ancient Greece, of treating
criminals as less than full citizens. Although many collateral sanctions were
repealed by the late 1970s, arguably the drug war simply revived and
expanded a tradition that has ancient roots, a tradition independent of the
legacy of American slavery.
In view of this history and considering the lack of originality in many of
the tactics and practices employed in the era of mass incarceration, there is
good reason to believe that the latest drug war is just another drug war
corrupted by racial and ethnic bias. But this view is correct only to a point.

In the past, the criminal justice system, as punitive as it may have been
during various wars on crime and drugs, affected only a relatively small
percentage of the population. Because civil penalties and sanctions imposed
on ex-offenders applied only to a few, they never operated as a
comprehensive system of control over any racially or ethnically defined
population. Racial minorities were always overrepresented among current
and ex-offenders, but as sociologists have noted, until the mid-1980s, the
criminal justice system was marginal to communities of color. While young
minority men with little schooling have always had relatively high rates of
incarceration, “before the 1980s the penal system was not a dominant
presence in the disadvantaged neighborhoods.”16
Today, the War on Drugs has given birth to a system of mass
incarceration that governs not just a small fraction of a racial or ethnic
minority but entire communities of color. In ghetto communities, nearly
everyone is either directly or indirectly subject to the new caste system. The
system serves to redefine the terms of the relationship of poor people of
color and their communities to mainstream, white society, ensuring their
subordinate and marginal status. The criminal and civil sanctions that were
once reserved for a tiny minority are now used to control and oppress a
racially defined majority in many communities, and the systematic manner
in which the control is achieved reflects not just a difference in scale. The
nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer concerned
primarily with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the
management and control of the dispossessed. Prior drug wars were ancillary
to the prevailing caste system. This time the drug war is the system of
control.
If you doubt that this is the case, consider the effect of the war on the
ground, in specific locales. Take Chicago, Illinois, for example. Chicago is
widely considered to be one of America’s most diverse and vibrant cities. It
has boasted black mayors, black police chiefs, black legislators, and is
home to the nation’s first black president. It has a thriving economy, a
growing Latino community, and a substantial black middle class. Yet as the
Chicago Urban League reported in 2002, there is another story to be told.17
If Martin Luther King Jr. were to return miraculously to Chicago, some
forty years after bringing his Freedom Movement to the city, he would be

saddened to discover that the same issues on which he originally focused
still produce stark patterns of racial inequality, segregation, and poverty. He
would also be struck by the dramatically elevated significance of one
particular institutional force in the perpetuation and deepening of those
patterns: the criminal justice system. In the few short decades since King’s
death, a new regime of racially disparate mass incarceration has emerged in
Chicago and become the primary mechanism for racial oppression and the
denial of equal opportunity.
In Chicago, like the rest of the country, the War on Drugs is the engine of
mass incarceration, as well as the primary cause of gross racial disparities in
the criminal justice system and in the ex-offender population. About 90
percent of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense in Illinois are
African American.18 White drug offenders are rarely arrested, and when
they are, they are treated more favorably at every stage of the criminal
justice process, including plea bargaining and sentencing.19 Whites are
consistently more likely to avoid prison and felony charges, even when they
are repeat offenders. 20 Black offenders, by contrast, are routinely labeled
felons and released into a permanent racial undercaste.
The total population of black males in Chicago with a felony record
(including both current and ex-felons) is equivalent to 55 percent of the
black adult male population and an astonishing 80 percent of the adult black
male workforce in the Chicago area.21 This stunning development reflects
the dramatic increase in the number and race of those sent to prison for drug
crimes. From the Chicago region alone, the number of those annually sent
to prison for drug crimes increased almost 2,000 percent, from 469 in 1985
to 8,755 in 2005.22
When people are released from Illinois prisons, they are given as little as
$10 in “gate money” and a bus ticket to anywhere in the United States.
Most return to impoverished neighborhoods in the Chicago area, bringing
few resources and bearing the stigma of their prison record.23 In Chicago,
as in most cities across the country, ex-offenders are banned or severely
restricted from employment in a large number of professions, job
categories, and fields by professional licensing statutes, rules, and practices
that discriminate against potential employees with felony records.
According to a study conducted by the DePaul University College of Law

in 2000, of the then ninety-eight occupations requiring licenses in Illinois,
fifty-seven placed stipulations and/or restrictions on applicants with a
criminal record.24 Even when not barred by law from holding specific jobs,
ex-offenders in Chicago find it extraordinarily difficult to find employers
who will hire them, regardless of the nature of their conviction. They are
also routinely denied public housing and welfare benefits, and they find it
increasingly difficult to obtain education, especially now that funding for
public education has been hard hit, due to exploding prison budgets.
The impact of the new caste system is most tragically felt among the
young. In Chicago (as in other cities across the United States), young black
men are more likely to go to prison than to college.25 As of June 2001, there
were nearly 20,000 more black men in the Illinois state prison system than
enrolled in the state’s public universities.26 In fact, there were more black
men in the state’s correctional facilities that year just on drug charges than
the total number of black men enrolled in undergraduate degree programs in
state universities.27 To put the crisis in even sharper focus, consider this:
just 992 black men received a bachelor’s degree from Illinois state
universities in 1999, while roughly 7,000 black men were released from the
state prison system the following year just for drug offenses.28 The young
men who go to prison rather than college face a lifetime of closed doors,
discrimination, and ostracism. Their plight is not what we hear about on the
evening news, however. Sadly, like the racial caste systems that preceded it,
the system of mass incarceration now seems normal and natural to most, a
regrettable necessity.

Mapping the Parallels

Those cycling in and out of Illinois prisons today are members of America’s
new racial undercaste. The United States has almost always had a racial
undercaste—a group defined wholly or largely by race that is permanently
locked out of mainstream, white society by law, custom, and practice. The
reasons and justifications change over time, as each new caste system
reflects and adapts to changes in the social, political, and economic context.
What is most striking about the design of the current caste system, though,
is how closely it resembles its predecessor. There are important differences
between mass incarceration and Jim Crow, to be sure—many of which will
be discussed later—but when we step back and view the system as a whole,
there is a profound sense of déjà vu. There is a familiar stigma and shame.
There is an elaborate system of control, complete with political
disenfranchisement and legalized discrimination in every major realm of
economic and social life. And there is the production of racial meaning and
racial boundaries.
Many of these parallels have been discussed at some length in earlier
chapters; others have yet to be explored. Listed below are several of the
most obvious similarities between Jim Crow and mass incarceration,
followed by a discussion of a few parallels that have not been discussed so
far. Let’s begin with the historical parallels.
Historical parallels. Jim Crow and mass incarceration have similar
political origins. As described in chapter 1, both caste systems were born, in
part, due to a desire among white elites to exploit the resentments,
vulnerabilities, and racial biases of poor and working-class whites for
political or economic gain. Segregation laws were proposed as part of a
deliberate and strategic effort to deflect anger and hostility that had been
brewing against the white elite away from them and toward African
Americans. The birth of mass incarceration can be traced to a similar
political dynamic. Conservatives in the 1970s and 1980s sought to appeal to

the racial biases and economic vulnerabilities of poor and working-class
whites through racially coded rhetoric on crime and welfare. In both cases,
the racial opportunists offered few, if any, economic reforms to address the
legitimate economic anxieties of poor and working-class whites, proposing
instead a crackdown on the racially-defined “others.” In the early years of
Jim Crow, conservative white elites competed with each other by passing
ever more stringent and oppressive Jim Crow legislation. A century later,
politicians in the early years of the drug war competed with each other to
prove who could be tougher on crime by passing ever harsher drug laws—a
thinly veiled effort to appeal to poor and working-class whites who, once
again, proved they were willing to forego economic and structural reform in
exchange for an apparent effort to put blacks back “in their place.”29
Legalized discrimination. The most obvious parallel between Jim Crow
and mass incarceration is legalized discrimination. During Black History
Month, Americans congratulate themselves for having put an end to
discrimination against African Americans in employment, housing, public
benefits, and public accommodations. Schoolchildren wonder out loud how
discrimination could ever have been legal in this great land of ours. Rarely
are they told that it is still legal. Many of the forms of discrimination that
relegated African Americans to an inferior caste during Jim Crow continue
to apply to huge segments of the black population today—provided they are
first labeled felons. If they are branded felons by the time they reach the age
of twenty-one (as many of them are), they are subject to legalized
discrimination for their entire adult lives. The forms of discrimination that
apply to ex-drug offenders, described in some detail in chapter 4, mean that,
once prisoners are released, they enter a parallel social universe—much like
Jim Crow—in which discrimination in nearly every aspect of social,
political, and economic life is perfectly legal. Large majorities of black men
in cities across the United States are once again subject to legalized
discrimination effectively barring them from full integration into
mainstream, white society. Mass incarceration has nullified many of the
gains of the Civil Rights Movement, putting millions of black men back in
a position reminiscent of Jim Crow.
Political disenfranchisement. During the Jim Crow era, African
Americans were denied the right to vote through poll taxes, literacy tests,

grandfather clauses, and felon disenfranchisement laws, even though the
Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifically provides that
“the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied ... on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Formally raceneutral devices were adopted to achieve the goal of an all-white electorate
without violating the terms of the Fifteenth Amendment. The devices
worked quite well. Because African Americans were poor, they frequently
could not pay poll taxes. And because they had been denied access to
education, they could not pass literacy tests. Grandfather clauses allowed
whites to vote even if they couldn’t meet the requirements, as long as their
ancestors had been able to vote. Finally, because blacks were
disproportionately charged with felonies—in fact, some crimes were
specifically defined as felonies with the goal of eliminating blacks from the
electorate—felony disenfranchisement laws effectively suppressed the
black vote as well.30
Following the collapse of Jim Crow, all of the race-neutral devices for
excluding blacks from the electorate were eliminated through litigation or
legislation, except felon disenfranchisement laws. Some courts have found
that these laws have “lost their discriminatory taint” because they have been
amended since the collapse of Jim Crow; others courts have allowed the
laws to stand because overt racial bias is absent from the legislative
record.31 The failure of our legal system to eradicate all of the tactics
adopted during the Jim Crow era to suppress the black vote has major
implications today. Felon disenfranchisement laws have been more
effective in eliminating black voters in the age of mass incarceration than
they were during Jim Crow. Less than two decades after the War on Drugs
began, one in seven black men nationally had lost the right to vote, and as
many as one in four in those states with the highest African American
disenfranchisement rate.32 These figures may understate the impact of
felony disenfranchisement, because they do not take into account the
millions of ex-felons who cannot vote in states that require ex-felons to pay
fines or fees before their voting rights can be restored—the new poll tax. As
legal scholar Pamela Karlan has observed, “felony disenfranchisement has
decimated the potential black electorate.”33

It is worthy of note, however, that the exclusion of black voters from
polling booths is not the only way in which black political power has been
suppressed. Another dimension of disenfranchisement echoes not so much
Jim Crow as slavery. Under the usual-residence rule, the Census Bureau
counts imprisoned individuals as residents of the jurisdiction in which they
are incarcerated. Because most new prison construction occurs in
predominately white, rural areas, white communities benefit from inflated
population totals at the expense of the urban, overwhelmingly minority
communities from which the prisoners come.34 This has enormous
consequences for the redistricting process. White rural communities that
house prisons wind up with more people in state legislatures representing
them, while poor communities of color lose representatives because it
appears their population has declined. This policy is disturbingly
reminiscent of the three-fifths clause in the original Constitution, which
enhanced the political clout of slaveholding states by including 60 percent
of slaves in the population base for calculating Congressional seats and
electoral votes, even though they could not vote.
Exclusion from juries. Another clear parallel between mass
incarceration and Jim Crow is the systematic exclusion of blacks from
juries. One hallmark of the Jim Crow era was all-white juries trying black
defendants in the South. Although the exclusion of jurors on the basis of
race has been illegal since 1880, as a practical matter, the removal of
prospective black jurors through race-based peremptory strikes was
sanctioned by the Supreme Court until 1985, when the Court ruled in
Batson v. Kentucky that racially biased strikes violate the equal protection
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.35 Today defendants face a situation
highly similar to the one they faced a century ago. As described in chapter
3, a formal prohibition against race-based peremptory strikes does exist; as
a practical matter, however, the Court has tolerated the systematic exclusion
of blacks from juries by allowing lower courts to accept “silly” and even
“superstitious” reasons for striking black jurors.36 To make matters worse, a
large percentage of black men (about 30 percent) are automatically
excluded from jury service because they have been labeled felons.37 The
combined effect of race-based peremptory strikes and the automatic

exclusion of felons from juries has put black defendants in a familiar place
—in a courtroom in shackles, facing an all-white jury.
Closing the courthouse doors. The parallels between mass incarceration
and Jim Crow extend all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the
years, the Supreme Court has followed a fairly consistent pattern in
responding to racial caste systems, first protecting them and then, after
dramatic shifts in the political and social climate, dismantling these systems
of control and some of their vestiges. In Dred Scott v. Sanford, the Supreme
Court immunized the institution of slavery from legal challenge on the
grounds that African Americans were not citizens, and in Plessy v.
Ferguson, the Court established the doctrine of “separate but equal”—a
legal fiction that protected the Jim Crow system from judicial scrutiny for
racial bias.
Currently, McCleskey v. Kemp and its progeny serve much the same
function as Dred Scott and Plessy. In McCleskey, the Supreme Court
demonstrated that it is once again in protection mode—firmly committed to
the prevailing system of control. As chapter 3 demonstrated, the Court has
closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the
criminal justice process, from stops and searches to plea bargaining and
sentencing. Mass incarceration is now off-limits to challenges on the
grounds of racial bias, much as its predecessors were in their time. The new
racial caste system operates unimpeded by the Fourteenth Amendment and
federal civil rights legislation—laws designed to topple earlier systems of
control. The Supreme Court’s famous proclamation in 1857—“[the black
man] has no rights which the white man is bound to respect”—remains true
to a significant degree today, so long as the black man has been labeled a
felon.38
Racial segregation. Although the parallels listed above should be
enough to give anyone pause, there are a number of other, less obvious,
similarities between mass incarceration and Jim Crow that have not been
explored in earlier chapters. The creation and maintenance of racial
segregation is one example. As we know, Jim Crow laws mandated
residential segregation, and blacks were relegated to the worst parts of
town. Roads literally stopped at the border of many black neighborhoods,
shifting from pavement to dirt. Water, sewer systems, and other public

services that supported the white areas of town frequently did not extend to
the black areas. The extreme poverty that plagued blacks due to their legally
sanctioned inferior status was largely invisible to whites—so long as whites
remained in their own neighborhoods, which they were inclined to do.
Racial segregation rendered black experience largely invisible to whites,
making it easier for whites to maintain racial stereotypes about black values
and culture. It also made it easier to deny or ignore their suffering.
Mass incarceration functions similarly. It achieves racial segregation by
segregating prisoners—the majority of whom are black and brown—from
mainstream society. Prisoners are kept behind bars, typically more than a
hundred miles from home.39 Even prisons—the actual buildings—are a rare
sight for many Americans, as they are often located far from population
centers. Although rural counties contain only 20 percent of the U.S.
population, 60 percent of new prison construction occurs there.40 Prisoners
are thus hidden from public view—out of sight, out of mind. In a sense,
incarceration is a far more extreme form of physical and residential
segregation than Jim Crow segregation. Rather than merely shunting black
people to the other side of town or corralling them in ghettos, mass
incarceration locks them in cages. Bars and walls keep hundreds of
thousands of black and brown people away from mainstream society—a
form of apartheid unlike any the world has ever seen.
Prisons, however, are not the only vehicle for racial segregation.
Segregation is also created and perpetuated by the flood of prisoners who
return to ghetto communities each year. Because the drug war has been
waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, when drug
offenders are released, they are generally returned to racially segregated
ghetto communities—the places they call home. In many cities, the re-entry
phenomenon is highly concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods.
According to one study, during a twelve-year period, the number of
prisoners returning home to “core counties”—those counties that contain
the inner city of a metropolitan area—tripled.41 The effects are felt
throughout the United States. In interviews with one hundred residents of
two Tallahassee, Florida, communities, researchers found that nearly every
one of them had experienced or expected to experience the return of a
family member from prison.42 Similarly, a survey of families living in the

Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago found that the majority of residents either
had a family member in prison or expected one to return within the next
two years.43 Fully 70 percent of men between the ages of eighteen and
forty-five in the impoverished and overwhelmingly black North Lawndale
neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side are ex-offenders, saddled for life
with a criminal record.44 The majority (60 percent) were incarcerated for
drug offenses.45 These neighborhoods are a minefield for parolees, for a
standard condition of parole is a promise not to associate with felons. As
Paula Wolff, a senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020 observes, in
these ghetto neighborhoods, “It is hard for a parolee to walk to the corner
store to get a carton of milk without being subject to a parole violation.”46
By contrast, whites—even poor whites—are far less likely to be
imprisoned for drug offenses. And when they are released from prison, they
rarely find themselves in the ghetto. The white poor have a vastly different
experience in America than do poor people of color. Because whites do not
suffer racial segregation, the white poor are not relegated to racially defined
areas of intense poverty. In New York City, one study found that 70 percent
of the city’s poor black and Latino residents live in high-poverty
neighborhoods, whereas 70 percent of the city’s poor whites live in
nonpoverty neighborhoods—communities that have significant resources,
including jobs, schools, banks, and grocery stores.47 Nationwide, nearly
seven out of eight people living in high-poverty urban areas are members of
a minority group.48
Mass incarceration thus perpetuates and deepens pre-existing patterns of
racial segregation and isolation, not just by removing people of color from
society and putting them in prisons, but by dumping them back into ghettos
upon their release. Youth of color who might have escaped their ghetto
communities—or helped to transform them—if they had been given a fair
shot in life and not been labeled felons, instead find themselves trapped in a
closed circuit of perpetual marginality, circulating between ghetto and
prison.49
The racially segregated, poverty-stricken ghettos that exist in inner-city
communities across America would not exist today but for racially biased
government policies for which there has never been meaningful redress.50
Yet every year, hundreds of thousands of poor people of color who have

been targeted by the War on Drugs are forced to return to these racially
segregated communities—neighborhoods still crippled by the legacy of an
earlier system of control. As a practical matter, they have no other choice.
In this way, mass incarceration, like its predecessor Jim Crow, creates and
maintains racial segregation.
Symbolic production of race. Arguably the most important parallel
between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define
the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary
function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its
time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow
defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass
incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people,
especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.
The temptation is to insist that black men “choose” to be criminals; the
system does not make them criminals, at least not in the way that slavery
made blacks slaves or Jim Crow made them second-class citizens. The
myth of choice here is seductive, but it should be resisted. African
Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell prohibited drugs
than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for
precisely the same conduct. In fact, studies suggest that white professionals
may be the most likely of any group to have engaged in illegal drug activity
in their lifetime, yet they are the least likely to be made criminals.51 The
prevalence of illegal drug activity among all racial and ethnic groups
creates a situation in which, due to limited law enforcement resources and
political constraints, some people are made criminals while others are not.
Black people have been made criminals by the War on Drugs to a degree
that dwarfs its effect on other racial and ethnic groups, especially whites.
And the process of making them criminals has produced racial stigma.
Every racial caste system in the United States has produced racial stigma.
Mass incarceration is no exception. Racial stigma is produced by defining
negatively what it means to be black. The stigma of race was once the
shame of the slave; then it was the shame of the second-class citizen; today
the stigma of race is the shame of the criminal. As described in chapter 4,
many ex-offenders describe an existential angst associated with their pariah
status, an angst that casts a shadow over every aspect of their identity and

social experience. The shame and stigma is not limited to the individual; it
extends to family members and friends—even whole communities are
stigmatized by the presence of those labeled criminals. Those stigmatized
often adopt coping strategies African Americans once employed during the
Jim Crow era, including lying about their own criminal history or the status
of their family members in an attempt to “pass” as someone who will be
welcomed by mainstream society.
The critical point here is that, for black men, the stigma of being a
“criminal” in the era of mass incarceration is fundamentally a racial stigma.
This is not to say stigma is absent for white criminals; it is present and
powerful. Rather, the point is that the stigma of criminality for white
offenders is different—it is a nonracial stigma.
An experiment may help to illustrate how and why this is the case. Say
the following to nearly anyone and watch the reaction: “We really need to
do something about the problem of white crime.” Laughter is a likely
response. The term white crime is nonsensical in the era of mass
incarceration, unless one is really referring to white-collar crime, in which
case the term is understood to mean the types of crimes that seemingly
respectable white people commit in the comfort of fancy offices. Because
the term white crime lacks social meaning, the term white criminal is also
perplexing. In that formulation, white seems to qualify the term criminal—
as if to say, “he’s a criminal but not that kind of criminal.” Or, he’s not a
real criminal—i.e., not what we mean by criminal today.
In the era of mass incarceration, what it means to be a criminal in our
collective consciousness has become conflated with what it means to be
black, so the term white criminal is confounding, while the term black
criminal is nearly redundant. Recall the study discussed in chapter 3 that
revealed that when survey respondents were asked to picture a drug
criminal, nearly everyone pictured someone who was black. This
phenomenon helps to explain why studies indicate that white ex-offenders
may actually have an easier time gaining employment than African
Americans without a criminal record.52 To be a black man is to be thought
of as a criminal, and to be a black criminal is to be despicable—a social
pariah. To be a white criminal is not easy, by any means, but as a white
criminal you are not a racial outcast, though you may face many forms of

social and economic exclusion. Whiteness mitigates crime, whereas
blackness defines the criminal.
As we have seen in earlier chapters, the conflation of blackness with
crime did not happen organically; rather, it was constructed by political and
media elites as part of the broad project known as the War on Drugs. This
conflation served to provide a legitimate outlet to the expression of
antiblack resentment and animus—a convenient release valve now that
explicit forms of racial bias are strictly condemned. In the era of
colorblindness, it is no longer permissible to hate blacks, but we can hate
criminals. Indeed, we are encouraged to do so. As writer John Edgar
Wideman points out, “It’s respectable to tar and feather criminals, to
advocate locking them up and throwing away the key. It’s not racist to be
against crime, even though the archetypal criminal in the media and the
public imagination almost always wears Willie Horton’s face.”53
It is precisely because our criminal justice system provides a vehicle for
the expression of conscious and unconscious antiblack sentiment that the
prison label is experienced as a racial stigma. The stigma exists whether or
not one has been formally branded a criminal, yet another parallel to Jim
Crow. Just as African Americans in the North were stigmatized by the Jim
Crow system even if they were not subject to its formal control, black men
today are stigmatized by mass incarceration—and the social construction of
the “criminalblackman”—whether they have ever been to prison or not. For
those who have been branded, the branding serves to intensify and deepen
the racial stigma, as they are constantly reminded in virtually every contact
they have with public agencies, as well as with private employers and
landlords, that they are the new “untouchables.”
In this way, the stigma of race has become the stigma of criminality.
Throughout the criminal justice system, as well as in our schools and public
spaces, young + black + male is equated with reasonable suspicion,
justifying the arrest, interrogation, search, and detention of thousands of
African Americans every year, as well as their exclusion from employment
and housing and the denial of educational opportunity. Because black youth
are viewed as criminals, they face severe employment discrimination and
are also “pushed out” of schools through racially biased school discipline
policies.54

For black youth, the experience of being “made black” often begins with
the first police stop, interrogation, search, or arrest. The experience carries
social meaning—this is what it means to be black. The story of one’s “first
time” may be repeated to family or friends, but for ghetto youth, almost no
one imagines that the first time will be the last. The experience is
understood to define the terms of one’s relationship not only to the state but
to society at large. This reality can be frustrating for those who strive to
help ghetto youth “turn their lives around.” James Forman Jr., the cofounder
of the See Forever charter school for juvenile offenders in Washington,
D.C., made this point when describing how random and degrading stops
and searches of ghetto youth “tell kids that they are pariahs, that no matter
how hard they study, they will remain potential suspects.” One student
complained to him, “We can be perfect, perfect, doing everything right and
still they treat us like dogs. No, worse than dogs, because criminals are
treated worse than dogs.” Another student asked him pointedly, “How can
you tell us we can be anything when they treat us like we’re nothing?”55
The process of marking black youth as black criminals is essential to the
functioning of mass incarceration as a racial caste system. For the system to
succeed—that is, for it to achieve the political goals described in chapter 1
—black people must be labeled criminals before they are formally subject
to control. The criminal label is essential, for forms of explicit racial
exclusion are not only prohibited but widely condemned. Thus black youth
must be made—labeled—criminals. This process of being made a criminal
is, to a large extent, the process of “becoming” black. As Wideman
explains, when “to be a man of color of a certain economic class and milieu
is equivalent in the public eye to being a criminal,” being processed by the
criminal justice system is tantamount to being made black, and “doing
time” behind bars is at the same time “marking race.”56 At its core, then,
mass incarceration, like Jim Crow, is a “race-making institution.” It serves
to define the meaning and significance of race in America.

The Limits of the Analogy

Saying that mass incarceration is the New Jim Crow can leave a
misimpression. The parallels between the two systems of control are
striking, to say the least—in both, we find racial opportunism by politicians,
legalized discrimination, political disenfranchisement, exclusion of blacks
from juries, stigmatization, the closing of courthouse doors, racial
segregation, and the symbolic production of race—yet there are important
differences. Just as Jim Crow, as a system of racial control, was
dramatically different from slavery, mass incarceration is different from its
predecessor. In fact, if one were to draft a list of the differences between
slavery and Jim Crow, the list might well be longer than the list of
similarities. The same goes for Jim Crow and mass incarceration. Each
system of control has been unique—well adapted to the circumstances of its
time. If we fail to appreciate the differences, we will be hindered in our
ability to meet the challenges created by the current moment. At the same
time, though, we must be careful not to assume that differences exist when
they do not, or to exaggerate the ones that do. Some differences may appear
on the surface to be major, but on close analysis they prove less significant.
An example of a difference that is less significant than it may initially
appear is the “fact” that Jim Crow was explicitly race-based, whereas mass
incarceration is not. This statement initially appears self-evident, but it is
partially mistaken. Although it is common to think of Jim Crow as an
explicitly race-based system, in fact a number of the key policies were
officially colorblind. As previously noted, poll taxes, literacy tests, and
felon disenfranchisement laws were all formally race-neutral practices that
were employed in order to avoid the prohibition on race discrimination in
voting contained in the Fifteenth Amendment. These laws operated to
create an all-white electorate because they excluded African Americans
from the franchise but were not generally applied to whites. Poll workers
had the discretion to charge a poll tax or administer a literacy test, or not,

and they exercised their discretion in a racially discriminatory manner.
Laws that said nothing about race operated to discriminate because those
charged with enforcement were granted tremendous discretion, and they
exercised that discretion in a highly discriminatory manner.
The same is true in the drug war. Laws prohibiting the use and sale of
drugs are facially race neutral, but they are enforced in a highly
discriminatory fashion. The decision to wage the drug war primarily in
black and brown communities rather than white ones and to target African
Americans but not whites on freeways and train stations has had precisely
the same effect as the literacy and poll taxes of an earlier era. A facially
race-neutral system of laws has operated to create a racial caste system.
Other differences between Jim Crow and mass incarceration are actually
more significant than they may initially appear. An example relates to the
role of racial stigma in our society. As discussed in chapter 4, during Jim
Crow, racial stigma contributed to racial solidarity in the black community.
Racial stigma today, however—that is, the stigma of black criminality—has
turned the black community against itself, destroyed networks of mutual
support, and created a silence about the new caste system among many of
the people most affected by it.57 The implications of this difference are
profound. Racial stigma today makes collective action extremely difficult—
sometimes impossible; whereas racial stigma during Jim Crow contained
the seeds of revolt.
Described below are a number of the other important differences between
Jim Crow and mass incarceration. Listing all of the differences here is
impractical; so instead we will focus on a few of the major differences that
are most frequently cited in defense of mass incarceration, including the
absence of overt racial hostility, the inclusion of whites in the system of
control, and African American support for some “get tough” policies and
drug war tactics.
Absence of racial hostility. First, let’s consider the absence of overt
racial hostility among politicians who support harsh drug laws and the law
enforcement officials charged with enforcing them. The absence of overt
racial hostility is a significant difference from Jim Crow, but it can be
exaggerated. Mass incarceration, like Jim Crow, was born of racial
opportunism—an effort by white elites to exploit the racial hostilities,

resentments, and insecurities of poor and working-class whites. Moreover,
racial hostility and racial violence have not altogether disappeared, given
that complaints of racial slurs and brutality by the police and prison guards
are fairly common. Some scholars and commentators have pointed out that
the racial violence once associated with brutal slave masters or the Ku Klux
Klan has been replaced, to some extent, by violence perpetrated by the
state. Racial violence has been rationalized, legitimated, and channeled
through our criminal justice system; it is expressed as police brutality,
solitary confinement, and the discriminatory and arbitrary imposition of the
death penalty.58
But even granting that some African Americans may fear the police
today as much as their grandparents feared the Klan (as a wallet can be
mistaken for a gun) and that the penal system may be as brutal in many
respects as Jim Crow (or slavery), the absence of racial hostility in the
public discourse and the steep decline in vigilante racial violence is no
small matter. It is also significant that the “whites only” signs are gone and
that children of all colors can drink from the same water fountains, swim in
the same pools, and play on the same playgrounds. Black children today
can even dream of being president of the United States.
Those who claim that mass incarceration is “just like” Jim Crow make a
serious mistake. Things have changed. The fact that a clear majority of
Americans were telling pollsters in the early 1980s—when the drug war
was kicking off—that they opposed race discrimination in nearly all its
forms should not be dismissed lightly.59 Arguably some respondents may
have been telling pollsters what they thought was appropriate rather than
what they actually believed, but there is no reason to believe that most of
them were lying. It is more likely that most Americans by the early 1980s
had come to reject segregationist thinking and values, and not only did not
want to be thought of as racist but did not want to be racist.
This difference in public attitudes has important implications for reform
efforts. Claims that mass incarceration is analogous to Jim Crow will fall on
deaf ears and alienate potential allies if advocates fail to make clear that the
claim is not meant to suggest or imply that supporters of the current system
are racist in the way Americans have come to understand that term. Race
plays a major role—indeed, a defining role—in the current system, but not

because of what is commonly understood as old-fashioned, hostile bigotry.
This system of control depends far more on racial indifference (defined as a
lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups) than racial
hostility—a feature it actually shares with its predecessors.
All racial caste systems, not just mass incarceration, have been supported
by racial indifference. As noted earlier, many whites during the Jim Crow
era sincerely believed that African Americans were intellectually and
morally inferior. They meant blacks no harm but believed segregation was a
sensible system for managing a society comprised of fundamentally
different and unequal people. The sincerity of many people’s racial beliefs
is what led Martin Luther King Jr. to declare, “Nothing in all the world is
more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” The
notion that racial caste systems are necessarily predicated on a desire to
harm other racial groups, and that racial hostility is the essence of racism, is
fundamentally misguided. Even slavery does not conform to this limited
understanding of racism and racial caste. Most plantation owners supported
the institution of black slavery not because of a sadistic desire to harm
blacks but instead because they wanted to get rich, and black slavery was
the most efficient means to that end. By and large, plantation owners were
indifferent to the suffering caused by slavery; they were motivated by
greed. Preoccupation with the role of racial hostility in earlier caste systems
can blind us to the ways in which every caste system, including mass
incarceration, has been supported by racial indifference—a lack of caring
and compassion for people of other races.
White victims of racial caste. We now turn to another important
difference between mass incarceration and Jim Crow: the direct harm to
whites caused by the current caste system. Whites never had to sit at the
back of the bus during Jim Crow, but today a white man may find himself
in prison for a drug offense, sharing a cell with a black man. The direct
harm caused to whites caused by mass incarceration seems to distinguish it
from Jim Crow; yet, like many of the other differences, this one requires
some qualification. Some whites were directly harmed by Jim Crow. For
example, a white woman who fell in love with a black man and hoped to
spend the rest of her life with him was directly harmed by antimiscegenation laws. The laws were intended for her benefit—to protect her

from the corrupting influence of the black man and the “tragedy” of mulatto
children—but she was directly harmed nonetheless.
Still, it seems obvious that mass incarceration directly harms far more
whites than Jim Crow ever did. For some, this fact alone may be reason
enough to reject the analogy. An “interracial racial caste system” may seem
like an oxy-moron. What kind of racial caste system includes white people
within its control? The answer: a racial caste system in the age of
colorblindness.
If 100 percent of the people arrested and convicted for drug offenses
were African American, the situation would provoke outrage among the
majority of Americans who consider themselves nonracist and who know
very well that Latinos, Asian Americans, and whites also commit drug
crimes. We, as a nation, seem comfortable with 90 percent of the people
arrested and convicted of drug offenses in some states being African
American, but if the figure were 100 percent, the veil of colorblindness
would be lost. We could no longer tell ourselves stories about why 90
percent might be a reasonable figure; nor could we continue to assume that
good reasons exist for extreme racial disparities in the drug war, even if we
are unable to think of such reasons ourselves. In short, the inclusion of
some whites in the system of control is essential to preserving the image of
a colorblind criminal justice system and maintaining our self-image as fair
and unbiased people. Because most Americans, including those within law
enforcement, want to believe they are nonracist, the suffering in the drug
war crosses the color line.
Of course, the fact that white people are harmed by the drug war does not
mean they are the real targets, the designated enemy. The harm white
people suffer in the drug war is much like the harm Iraqi civilians suffer in
U.S. military actions targeting presumed terrorists or insurgents. In any war,
a tremendous amount of collateral damage is inevitable. Black and brown
people are the principal targets in this war; white people are collateral
damage.
Saying that white people are collateral damage may sound callous, but it
reflects a particular reality. Mass incarceration as we know it would not
exist today but for the racialization of crime in the media and political
discourse. The War on Drugs was declared as part of a political ploy to
capitalize on white racial resentment against African Americans, and the

Reagan administration used the emergence of crack and its related violence
as an opportunity to build a racialized public consensus in support of an allout war—a consensus that almost certainly would not have been formed if
the primary users and dealers of crack had been white.
Economist Glenn Loury made this observation in his book The Anatomy
of Racial Inequality. He noted that it is nearly impossible to imagine
anything remotely similar to mass incarceration happening to young white
men. Can we envision a system that would enforce drug laws almost
exclusively among young white men and largely ignore drug crime among
young black men? Can we imagine large majorities of young white men
being rounded up for minor drug offenses, placed under the control of the
criminal justice system, labeled felons, and then subjected to a lifetime of
discrimination, scorn, and exclusion? Can we imagine this happening while
most black men landed decent jobs or trotted off to college? No, we cannot.
If such a thing occurred, “it would occasion a most profound reflection
about what had gone wrong, not only with THEM, but with US.”60 It would
never be dismissed with the thought that white men were simply reaping
what they have sown. The criminalization of white men would disturb us to
the core. So the critical questions are: “What disturbs us? What is
dissonant? What seems anomalous? What is contrary to expectation?”61 Or
more to the point: Whom do we care about?
An answer to the last question may be found by considering the
drastically different manner that we, as a nation, responded to drunk driving
in the mid-1980s, as compared to crack cocaine. During the 1980s, at the
same time crack was making headlines, a broad-based, grassroots
movement was under way to address the widespread and sometimes fatal
problem of drunk driving. Unlike the drug war, which was initiated by
political elites long before ordinary people identified it as an issue of
extraordinary concern, the movement to crack down on drunk drivers was a
bottom-up movement, led most notably by mothers whose families were
shattered by deaths caused by drunk driving.
Media coverage of the movement peaked in 1988, when a drunk driver
traveling the wrong way on Interstate 71 in Kentucky caused a head-on
collision with a school bus. Twenty-seven people died and dozens more
were injured in the ensuing fire. The tragic accident, known as the

Carrollton bus disaster, was one of the worst in U.S. history. In the
aftermath, several parents of the victims became actively involved in
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and one became its national
president. Throughout the 1980s, drunk driving was a regular topic in the
media, and the term designated driver became part of the American lexicon.
At the close of the decade, drunk drivers were responsible for
approximately 22,000 deaths annually, while overall alcohol-related deaths
were close to 100,000 a year. By contrast, during the same time period,
there were no prevalence statistics at all on crack, much less crack-related
deaths. In fact, the number of deaths related to all illegal drugs combined
was tiny compared to the number of deaths caused by drunk drivers. The
total of all drug-related deaths due to AIDS, drug overdose, or the violence
associated with the illegal drug trade, was estimated at 21,000 annually—
less than the number of deaths directly caused by drunk drivers, and a small
fraction of the number of alcohol-related deaths that occur every year.62
In response to growing concern—fueled by advocacy groups such as
MADD and by the media coverage of drunk-driving fatalities—most states
adopted tougher laws to punish drunk driving. Numerous states now have
some type of mandatory sentencing for this offense—typically two days in
jail for a first offense and two to ten days for a second offense.63 Possession
of a tiny amount of crack cocaine, on the other hand, carries a mandatory
minimum sentence of five years in federal prison.
The vastly different sentences afforded drunk drivers and drug offenders
speaks volumes regarding who is viewed as disposable—someone to be
purged from the body politic—and who is not. Drunk drivers are
predominantly white and male. White men comprised 78 percent of the
arrests for this offense in 1990 when new mandatory minimums governing
drunk driving were being adopted.64 They are generally charged with
misdemeanors and typically receive sentences involving fines, license
suspension, and community service. Although drunk driving carries a far
greater risk of violent death than the use or sale of illegal drugs, the societal
response to drunk drivers has generally emphasized keeping the person
functional and in society, while attempting to respond to the dangerous
behavior through treatment and counseling.65 People charged with drug

offenses, though, are disproportionately poor people of color. They are
typically charged with felonies and sentenced to prison.
Another clue that mass incarceration, as we know it, would not exist but
for the race of the imagined enemy can be found in the history of drug-law
enforcement in the United States. Yale historian David Musto and other
scholars have documented a disturbing, though unsurprising pattern:
punishment becomes more severe when drug use is associated with people
of color but softens when it is associated with whites.66 The history of
marijuana policy is a good example. In the early 1900s, marijuana was
perceived—rightly or wrongly—as a drug used by blacks and Mexican
Americans, leading to the Boggs Act of the 1950s, penalizing first-time
possession of marijuana with a sentence of two to five years in prison.67 In
the 1960s, though, when marijuana became associated with the white
middle class and college kids, commissions were promptly created to study
whether marijuana was really as harmful as once thought. By 1970, the
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act differentiated
marijuana from other narcotics and lowered federal penalties.68 The same
drug that had been considered fearsome twenty years earlier, when
associated with African Americans and Latinos, was refashioned as a
relatively harmless drug when associated with whites.
In view of the nation’s treatment of predominately white drunk drivers
and drug offenders, it is extremely difficult to imagine that our nation
would have declared all-out war on drug offenders if the enemy had been
defined in the public imagination as white. It was the conflation of
blackness and crime in the media and political discourse that made the drug
war and the sudden, massive expansion of our prison system possible.
White drug “criminals” are collateral damage in the War on Drugs because
they have been harmed by a war declared with blacks in mind. While this
circumstance is horribly unfortunate for them, it does create important
opportunities for a multiracial, bottom-up resistance movement, one in
which people of all races can claim a clear stake. For the first time in our
nation’s history, it may become readily apparent to whites how they, too,
can be harmed by antiblack racism—a fact that, until now, has been difficult
for many to grasp.

Black support for “get tough” policies. Yet another notable difference
between Jim Crow and mass incarceration is that many African Americans
seem to support the current system of control, while most believe the same
could not be said of Jim Crow. It is frequently argued in defense of mass
incarceration that African Americans want more police and more prisons
because crime is so bad in some ghetto communities. It is wrong, these
defenders claim, for the tactics of mass incarceration—such as the
concentration of law enforcement in poor communities of color, the stopand-frisk programs that have proliferated nationwide, the eviction of drug
offenders and their families from public housing, and the drug sweeps of
ghetto neighborhoods—to be characterized as racially discriminatory,
because those programs and policies have been adopted for the benefit of
African American communities and are supported by many ghetto
residents.69 Ignoring rampant crime in ghetto communities would be
racially discriminatory, they say; responding forcefully to it is not.
This argument, on the surface, seems relatively straightforward, but there
are actually many layers to it, some of which are quite problematic. To
begin with, the argument implies that African Americans prefer harsh
criminal justice policies to other forms of governmental intervention, such
as job creation, economic development, educational reform, and restorative
justice programs, as the long-term solution to problems associated with
crime. There is no evidence to support such a claim. To the contrary,
surveys consistently show that African Americans are generally less
supportive of harsh criminal justice policies than whites, even though
blacks are far more likely to be victims of crime.70 This pattern is
particularly remarkable in that less educated people tend to be more
punitive and blacks on average are less educated than whites.71
The notion that African Americans support “get tough” approaches to
crime is further complicated by the fact that “crime” is not a generic
category. There are many different types of crime, and violent crime tends
to provoke the most visceral and punitive response. Yet as we have seen in
chapter 2, the drug war has not been aimed at rooting out the most violent
drug traffickers, or so-called kingpins. The vast majority of those arrested
for drug crimes are not charged with serious offenses, and most of the
people in state prison on drug charges have no history of violence or

significant selling activity. Those who are “kingpins” are often able to buy
their freedom by forfeiting their assets, snitching on other dealers, or
becoming paid government informants. Thus, to the extent that some
African Americans support harsh policies aimed at violent offenders, they
cannot be said to support the War on Drugs, which has been waged
primarily against nonviolent, low-level offenders in poor communities of
color.
The one thing that is clear from the survey data and ethnographic
research is that African Americans in ghetto communities experience an
intense “dual frustration” regarding crime and law enforcement. As Glenn
Loury explained more than a decade ago, when violent crime rates were
making headlines, “The young black men wreaking havoc in the ghetto are
still ‘our youngsters’ in the eyes of many of the decent poor and workingclass black people who sometimes are their victims.”72 Throughout the
black community, there is widespread awareness that black ghetto youth
have few, if any, realistic options, and therefore dealing drugs can be an
irresistible temptation. Suburban white youth may deal drugs to their
friends and acquaintances as a form of recreation and extra cash, but for
ghetto youth, drug sales—though rarely lucrative—are often a means of
survival, a means of helping to feed and clothe themselves and their
families. The fact that this “career” path leads almost inevitably to jail is
often understood as an unfortunate fact of life, part of what it means to be
black in America.
Women, in particular, express complicated, conflicted views about crime,
because they love their sons, husbands, and partners and understand their
plight as current and future members of the racial undercaste. At the same
time, though, they abhor gangs and the violence associated with inner-city
life. One commentator explained, “African American women in poor
neighborhoods are torn. They worry about their young sons getting
involved in gang activity. They worry about their sons possibly selling or
using drugs. They worry about their children getting caught in the crossfire
of warring gangs.... These mothers want better crime and law enforcement.
Yet, they understand that increased levels of law enforcement potentially
saddle their children with a felony conviction—a mark that can ensure
economic and social marginalization.”73

Given the dilemma facing poor black communities, it is inaccurate to say
that black people “support” mass incarceration or “get tough” policies. The
fact that some black people endorse harsh responses to crime is best
understood as a form of complicity with mass incarceration—not support
for it. This complicity is perfectly understandable, for the threat posed by
crime—particularly violent crime—is real, not imagined. Although African
Americans do not engage in drug crime at significantly higher rates than
whites, black men do have much higher rates of violent crime, and violent
crime is concentrated in ghetto communities. Studies have shown that
joblessness—not race or black culture—explains the high rates of violent
crime in poor black communities. When researchers have controlled for
joblessness, differences in violent crime rates between young black and
white men disappear.74
Regardless, the reality for poor blacks trapped in ghettos remains the same:
they must live in a state of perpetual insecurity and fear. It is perfectly
understandable, then, that some African Americans would be complicit with
the system of mass incarceration, even if they oppose, as a matter of social
policy, the creation of racially isolated ghettos and the subsequent transfer
of black youth from underfunded, crumbling schools to brand-new, hightech prisons. In the era of mass incarceration, poor African Americans are
not given the option of great schools, community investment, and job
training. Instead, they are offered police and prisons. If the only choice that
is offered blacks is rampant crime or more prisons, the predictable (and
understandable) answer will be “more prisons.”
The predicament African Americans find themselves in today is not
altogether different from the situation they faced during Jim Crow. Jim
Crow, as oppressive as it was, offered a measure of security for blacks who
were willing to play by its rules. Those who flouted the rules or resisted
them risked the terror of the Klan. Cooperation with the Jim Crow system
often seemed far more likely to increase or maintain one’s security than any
alternative. That reality helps to explain why African American leaders
such as Booker T. Washington urged blacks to focus on improving
themselves rather than on challenging racial discrimination. It is also why
the Civil Rights Movement initially met significant resistance among some
African Americans in the South. Civil rights advocates strenuously argued

that it was the mentality and ideology that gave rise to Jim Crow that was
the real source of the danger experienced by blacks. Of course they were
right. But it is understandable why some blacks believed their immediate
safety and security could best be protected by cooperation with the
prevailing caste system. The fact that black people during Jim Crow were
often complicit with the system of control did not mean they supported
racial oppression.
Today complicity with the system of mass incarceration may seem like
the best option for African Americans, though in reality it is no option at
all. We declared a war on people residing in racially segregated ghettos—
just at the moment their economies had collapsed—rather than providing
community investment, quality education, and job training when work
disappeared. Of course those communities are suffering from serious crime
today. Did we expect otherwise? Did we think that, miraculously, they
would thrive? And now, having waged this war for decades, we claim some
blacks “support” mass incarceration, as though they would rather have their
young men warehoused in prison than going off to college. As political
theorist Tommie Shelby has observed, “Individuals are forced to make
choices in an environment they did not choose. They would surely prefer to
have a broader array of good opportunities. The question we should be
asking—not instead of but in addition to questions about penal policy—is
whether the denizens of the ghetto are entitled to a better set of options, and
if so, whose responsibility it is to provide them.”75
Clearly a much better set of options could be provided to African
Americans—and poor people of all colors—today. As historian Lerone
Bennett Jr. eloquently reminds us, “a nation is a choice.” We could choose
to be a nation that extends care, compassion, and concern to those who are
locked up and locked out or headed for prison before they are old enough to
vote. We could seek for them the same opportunities we seek for our own
children; we could treat them like one of “us.” We could do that. Or we can
choose to be a nation that shames and blames its most vulnerable, affixes
badges of dishonor upon them at young ages, and then relegates them to a
permanent second-class status for life. That is the path we have chosen, and
it leads to a familiar place.

We faced a fork in the road one decade after Martin Luther King Jr. and
Malcolm X were laid to rest. As described in chapter 1, during the late
1970s, jobs had suddenly disappeared from urban areas across America,
and unemployment rates had skyrocketed. In 1954, black and white youth
unemployment rates in America were equal, with blacks actually having a
slightly higher rate of employment in the age group sixteen to nineteen. By
1984, however, the black unemployment rate had nearly quadrupled, while
the white rate had increased only marginally.76 This was not due to a major
change in black values or black culture; this dramatic shift was the result of
deindustrialization, globalization, and technological advancement. Urban
factories shut down as our nation transitioned to a service economy.
Suddenly African Americans were trapped in jobless ghettos, desperate for
work.
The economic collapse of inner-city black communities could have
inspired a national outpouring of compassion and support. A new War on
Poverty could have been launched. Economic stimulus packages could have
sailed through Congress to bail out those trapped in jobless ghettos through
no fault of their own. Education, job training, public transportation, and
relocation assistance could have been provided, so that youth of color
would have been able to survive the rough transition to a new global
economy and secure jobs in distant suburbs. Constructive interventions
would have been good not only for African Americans trapped in ghettos,
but also for blue-collar workers of all colors, many of whom were suffering
too, if less severely. A wave of compassion and concern could have flooded
poor and working-class communities, in honor of the late Martin Luther
King Jr. All of this could have happened, but it didn’t. Instead we declared a
War on Drugs.
The collapse of inner-city economies coincided with the conservative
backlash against the Civil Rights Movement, resulting in the perfect storm.
Almost overnight, black men found themselves unnecessary to the
American economy and demonized by mainstream society. No longer
needed to pick cotton in the fields or labor in factories, lower-class black
men were hauled off to prison in droves. They were vilified in the media
and condemned for their condition as part of a well-orchestrated political
campaign to build a new white, Republican majority in the South. Decades

later, curious onlookers in the grips of denial would wonder aloud, “Where
have all the black men gone?”
No one has made this point better than sociologist Loïc Wacquant.
Wacquant has written extensively about the cyclical nature of racial caste in
America. He emphasizes that the one thing that makes the current penal
apparatus strikingly different from previous racial caste systems is that “it
does not carry out the positive economic mission of recruitment and
disciplining of the workforce.”77 Instead it serves only to warehouse poor
black and brown people for increasingly lengthy periods of time, often until
old age. The new system does not seek primarily to benefit unfairly from
black labor, as earlier caste systems have, but instead views African
Americans as largely irrelevant and unnecessary to the newly structured
economy—an economy that is no longer driven by unskilled labor.
It is fair to say that we have witnessed an evolution in the United States
from a racial caste system based entirely on exploitation (slavery), to one
based largely on subordination (Jim Crow), to one defined by
marginalization (mass incarceration). While marginalization may sound far
preferable to exploitation, it may prove to be even more dangerous.
Extreme marginalization, as we have seen throughout world history, poses
the risk of extermination. Tragedies such as the Holocaust in Germany or
ethnic cleansing in Bosnia are traceable to the extreme marginalization and
stigmatization of racial and ethnic groups. As legal scholar john a. powell
once commented, only half in jest, “It’s actually better to be exploited than
marginalized, in some respects, because if you’re exploited presumably
you’re still needed.”78
Viewed in this light, the frantic accusations of genocide by poor blacks in
the early years of the War on Drugs seem less paranoid. The intuition of
those residing in ghetto communities that they had suddenly become
disposable was rooted in real changes in the economy—changes that have
been devastating to poor black communities as factories have closed, lowskill jobs have disappeared, and all those who had the means to flee the
ghetto did. The sense among those left behind that society no longer has use
for them, and that the government now aims simply to get rid of them,
reflects a reality that many of us who claim to care prefer to avoid simply
by changing channels.

6
The Fire This Time
Shortly after sunrise on September 20, 2007, more than ten thousand
protestors had already descended on Jena, Louisiana, a small town of about
three thousand people. Because of the congestion on the roads to Jena,
some protestors left their vehicles and walked into town on foot. Jesse
Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Martin Luther King III were among those who
traveled hundreds of miles to participate in what was heralded as “the
beginnings of a new civil rights movement.”1
Black youth turned out to protest in record numbers, joined by rappers
Mos Def, Ice Cube, and Salt-n-Pepa. National news media swarmed the
town; cameras rolled as thousands of protestors from all over the country
poured into the rural community to condemn the attempted murder charges
filed against six black teenagers who allegedly beat a white classmate at a
local high school.
This was no ordinary schoolyard fight. Many believed the attack was
related to a string of racially charged conflicts and controversies at the
school, most notably the hanging of nooses from a tree in the school’s main
courtyard. Rev. Al Sharpton captured the spirit of the protest when he stated
boldly, “We’ve gone from plantations to penitentiaries.... They have tried to
create a criminal justice system that particularly targets our young black
men. And now we sit and stand in a city that says it’s a prank to hang a
hangman’s noose, but that it is attempted murder to have a fight. We cannot
sit by silently. That’s why we came, and that’s why we intend to keep
coming.”2
For a moment, the nation’s eyes were trained on the plight of the “Jena
6,” and debates could be heard in barber shops, in cafés, and in lines at
grocery stores about whether the criminal justice system was, in fact, biased
against black men or whether the black teens got exactly what they
deserved for a brutal attack on a defenseless young white teen. Grim

statistics about the number of black men in prison were trotted out, and
commentators argued over whether those numbers reflected crime rates or
bias and whether white teens would ever be charged with attempted murder
and tried as adults if they attacked a black kid in a schoolyard fight.
The uprising on behalf of the six black teens paid off. Although the
prosecutor refused to back down from his decision to bring adult charges
against the youths, an appellate court ultimately ruled the teens had to be
tried as juveniles, and many of the charges were reduced or dropped. While
this result undoubtedly cheered the thousands of Jena 6 supporters around
the country, the spectacle may have been oddly unsettling to parents of
children imprisoned for far less serious crimes, including those locked up
for minor drug offenses. Where were the protestors and civil rights leaders
when their children were tried as adults and carted off to adult prisons?
Where was the national news media then? Their children were accused of
no crimes of violence, no acts of cruelty, yet they faced adult criminal
charges and the prospect of serving years, perhaps decades, behind bars for
possessing or selling illegal drugs—crimes that go largely ignored when
committed by white youth. Why the outpouring of support and the promises
of a “new civil rights movement” on behalf of the Jena youth but not their
children?
If there had been no nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree, there would
have been no Jena 6—no mass protests, no live coverage on CNN. The
decision to charge six black teens as adults with attempted murder in
connection with a schoolyard fight was understood as possibly racist by the
mainstream media and some protestors only because of the sensational fact
that nooses were first hung from a tree. It was this relic—the noose—
showing up so brazenly and leading to a series of racially charged conflicts
and controversies that made it possible for the news media and the country
as a whole to entertain the possibility that these six youths may well have
been treated to Jim Crow justice. It was this evidence of old-fashioned
racism that made it possible for a new generation of protestors to frame the
attempted murder charges against six black teens in a manner that
mainstream America would understand as racist.
Ironically, it was precisely this framing that ensured that the events in
Jena would not actually launch a “new civil rights movement.” A new civil
rights movement cannot be organized around the relics of the earlier system

of control if it is to address meaningfully the racial realities of our time.
Any racial justice movement, to be successful, must vigorously challenge
the public consensus that underlies the prevailing system of control.
Nooses, racial slurs, and overt bigotry are widely condemned by people
across the political spectrum; they are understood to be remnants of the
past, no longer reflective of the prevailing public consensus about race.
Challenging these forms of racism is certainly necessary, as we must always
remain vigilant, but it will do little to shake the foundations of the current
system of control. The new caste system, unlike its predecessors, is
officially colorblind. We must deal with it on its own terms.

Rethinking Denial—Or, Where Are Civil Rights Advocates
When You Need Them?

Dealing with this system on its own terms is complicated by the problem of
denial. Few Americans today recognize mass incarceration for what it is: a
new caste system thinly veiled by the cloak of colorblindness. Hundreds of
thousands of people of color are swept into this system and released every
year, yet we rationalize the systematic discrimination and exclusion and
turn a blind eye to the suffering. Our collective denial is not merely an
inconvenient fact; it is a major stumbling block to public understanding of
the role of race in our society, and it sharply limits the opportunities for
truly trans-formative collective action.
The general public’s collective denial is fairly easy to forgive—if not
excuse—for all the reasons discussed in chapter 5. The awkward silence of
the civil rights community, however, is more problematic. If something akin
to a racial caste system truly exists, why has the civil rights community
been so slow to acknowledge it? Indeed, how could civil rights
organizations, some of which are larger and better funded than at any point
in American history, have allowed this human rights nightmare to occur on
their watch?
The answer is not that civil rights advocates are indifferent to racial bias
in the criminal justice system. To the contrary, we care quite a lot. Nor have
we been entirely ignorant of the realities of the new caste system. In recent
years, civil rights advocates have launched important reform efforts, most
notably the campaigns challenging felon disenfranchisement laws, cracksentencing policies, and racial profiling by law enforcement. Civil rights
groups have also developed litigation and important coalitions related to the
school-to-prison pipeline, inadequate indigent defense, and juvenile justice
reform, to name a few.
Despite these important efforts, what is most striking about the civil
rights community’s response to the mass incarceration of people of color is

the relative quiet. Given the magnitude—the sheer scale—of the New Jim
Crow, one would expect that the War on Drugs would be the top priority of
every civil rights organization in the country. Conferences, strategy
sessions, and debates regarding how best to build a movement to dismantle
the new caste system would be occurring on a regular basis. Major
grassroots organizing efforts would be under way in nearly every state and
city nationwide. Foundations would be lobbied to prioritize criminal justice
reform. Media campaigns would be unleashed in an effort to overturn the
punitive public consensus on race. The rhetoric associated with specific
reform efforts would stress the need to end mass incarceration, not merely
tinker with it, and efforts would be made to build multiracial coalitions
based on the understanding that the racial politics that gave birth to the War
on Drugs have harmed poor and working-class whites as well as people of
color. All of that could have happened, but it didn’t. Why not?
Part of the answer is that civil rights organizations—like all institutions—
are comprised of fallible human beings. The prevailing public consensus
affects everyone, including civil rights advocates. Those of us in the civil
rights community are not immune to the racial stereotypes that pervade
media imagery and political rhetoric; nor do we operate outside of the
political context. Like most people, we tend to resist believing that we
might be part of the problem.
One day, civil rights organizations may be embarrassed by how long it
took them to move out of denial and do the hard work necessary to end
mass incarceration. Rather than blaming civil rights groups, however, it is
far more productive to understand the reasons why the response to mass
incarceration has been so constrained. Again, it’s not that civil rights
advocates don’t care; we do. And it’s not just that we are afflicted by
unconscious racial bias and stereotypes about those behind bars. Civil rights
organizations have reasons for their constraint—reasons that no longer
make good sense, even if they once did.
A bit of civil rights history may be helpful here. Civil rights advocacy
has not always looked the way it does today. Throughout most of our
nation’s history—from the days of the abolitionist movement through the
Civil Rights Movement—racial justice advocacy has generally revolved
around grassroots organizing and the strategic mobilization of public
opinion. In recent years, however, a bit of mythology has sprung up

regarding the centrality of litigation to racial justice struggles. The success
of the brilliant legal crusade that led to Brown v. Board of Education has
created a widespread perception that civil rights lawyers are the most
important players in racial justice advocacy. This image was enhanced
following the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1965, when civil rights
lawyers became embroiled in highly visible and controversial efforts to end
hiring discrimination, create affirmative action plans, and enforce school
desegregation orders. As public attention shifted from the streets to the
courtroom, the extraordinary grassroots movement that made civil rights
legislation possible faded from public view. The lawyers took over.
With all deliberate speed, civil rights organizations became
“professionalized” and increasingly disconnected from the communities
they claimed to represent. Legal scholar and former NAACP Legal Defense
Fund lawyer Derrick Bell was among the first to critique this phenomenon,
arguing in a 1976 Yale Law Journal article that civil rights lawyers were
pursuing their own agendas in school desegregation cases even when they
conflicted with their clients’ expressed desires.3 Two decades later, former
NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer and current Harvard Law School
professor Lani Guinier published a memoir in which she acknowledged
that, “by the early 1990s, [civil rights] litigators like me had become like
the Washington insiders we were so suspicious of.... We reflexively
distanced ourselves from the very people on whose behalf we brought the
cases in the first place.”4 This shift, she noted, had profound consequences
for the future of racial justice advocacy; in fact, it was debilitating to the
movement. Instead of a moral crusade, the movement became an almost
purely legal crusade. Civil rights advocates pursued their own agendas as
unelected representatives of communities defined by race and displayed
considerable skill navigating courtrooms and halls of power across
America. The law became what the lawyers and lobbyists said it was, with
little or no input from the people whose fate hung in the balance. Guinier
continued:
In charge, we channeled a passion for change into legal negotiations
and lawsuits. We defined the issues in terms of developing legal
doctrine and establishing legal precedent; our clients became
important, but secondary, players in a formal arena that required

lawyers to translate lay claims into technical speech. We then
disembodied plaintiffs’ claims in judicially manageable or judicially
enforceable terms, unenforceable without more lawyers.
Simultaneously, the movement’s center of gravity shifted to
Washington, D.C. As lawyers and national pundits became more
prominent than clients and citizens, we isolated ourselves from the
people who were our anchor and on whose behalf we had labored. We
not only left people behind; we also lost touch with the moral force at
the heart of the movement itself.5
Not surprisingly, as civil rights advocates converted a grassroots
movement into a legal campaign, and as civil rights leaders became
political insiders, many civil rights organizations became top-heavy with
lawyers. This development enhanced their ability to wage legal battles but
impeded their ability to acknowledge or respond to the emergence of a new
caste system. Lawyers have a tendency to identify and concentrate on
problems they know how to solve—i.e., problems that can be solved
through litigation. The mass incarceration of people of color is not that kind
of problem.
Widespread preoccupation with litigation, however, is not the only—or
even the main—reason civil rights groups have shied away from
challenging the new caste system. Challenging mass incarceration requires
something civil rights advocates have long been reluctant to do: advocacy
on behalf of criminals. Even at the height of Jim Crow segregation—when
black men were more likely to be lynched than to receive a fair trial in the
South—NAACP lawyers were reluctant to advocate on behalf of blacks
accused of crimes unless the lawyers were convinced of the men’s
innocence.6 The major exception was anti-death penalty advocacy. Over the
years, civil rights lawyers have made heroic efforts to save the lives of
condemned criminals. But outside of the death penalty arena, civil rights
advocates have long been reluctant to leap to the defense of accused
criminals. Advocates have found they are most successful when they draw
attention to certain types of black people (those who are easily understood
by mainstream whites as “good” and “respectable”) and tell certain types of
stories about them. Since the days when abolitionists struggled to eradicate
slavery, racial justice advocates have gone to great lengths to identify black

people who defy racial stereotypes, and they have exercised considerable
message discipline, telling only those stories of racial injustice that will
evoke sympathy among whites.
A prime example is the Rosa Parks story. Rosa Parks was not the first
person to refuse to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery,
Alabama. Civil rights advocates considered and rejected two other black
women as plaintiffs when planning a test case challenging segregation
practices: Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith. Both of them were
arrested for refusing to give up their seats on Montgomery’s segregated
buses, just months before Rosa Parks refused to budge. Colvin was fifteen
years old when she defied segregation laws. Her case attracted national
attention, but civil rights advocates declined to use her as a plaintiff because
she got pregnant by an older man shortly after her arrest. Advocates worried
that her “immoral” conduct would detract from or undermine their efforts to
show that blacks were entitled to (and worthy of) equal treatment. Likewise,
they decided not to use Mary Louise Smith as a plaintiff because her father
was rumored to be an alcoholic. It was understood that, in any effort to
challenge racial discrimination, the litigant—and even the litigant’s family
—had to be above reproach and free from every negative trait that could be
used as a justification for unequal treatment.
Rosa Parks, in this regard, was a dream come true. She was, in the words
of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (another key figure in the Montgomery Bus
Boycott), a “medium-sized, cultured mulatto woman; a civic and religious
worker; quiet, unassuming, and pleasant in manner and appearance;
dignified and reserved; of high morals and strong character.”7 No one
doubted that Parks was the perfect symbol for the movement to integrate
public transportation in Montgomery. Martin Luther King Jr. recalled in his
memoir that “Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history,”
largely because “her character was impeccable” and she was “one of the
most respected people in the Negro community.”8
The time-tested strategy of using those who epitomize moral virtue as
symbols in racial justice campaigns is far more difficult to employ in efforts
to reform the criminal justice system. Most people who are caught up in the
criminal justice system have less than flawless backgrounds. While many
black people get stopped and searched for crimes they did not commit, it is

not so easy these days to find young black men in urban areas who have
never been convicted of a crime. The new caste system labels black and
brown men as criminals early, often in their teens, making them “damaged
goods” from the perspective of traditional civil rights advocates. With
criminal records, the majority of young black men in urban areas are not
seen as attractive plaintiffs for civil rights litigation or good “poster boys”
for media advocacy.
The widespread aversion to advocacy on behalf of those labeled
criminals reflects a certain political reality. Many would argue that
expending scarce resources on criminal justice reform is a strategic mistake.
After all, criminals are the one social group in America that nearly everyone
—across political, racial, and class boundaries—feels free to hate. Why
champion the cause of the despised when there are so many sympathetic
stories about racial injustice one could tell? Why draw public attention to
the “worst” of the black community, those labeled criminals? Shouldn’t we
direct scarce resources to battles that are more easily won, such as
affirmative action? Shouldn’t we focus the public’s attention on the socalled root causes of mass incarceration, such as educational inequity?
We can continue along this road—it is a road well travelled—but we
must admit the strategy has not made much of a difference. African
Americans, as a group, are no better off than they were in 1968 in many
respects.9 In fact, to some extent, they are worse off. When the incarcerated
population is counted in unemployment and poverty rates, the best of times
for the rest of America have been among the worst of times for African
Americans, particularly black men. As sociologist Bruce Western has
shown, the notion that the 1990s—the Clinton years—were good times for
African Americans, and that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” is pure fiction. As
unemployment rates sank to historically low levels in the late 1990s for the
general population, jobless rates among noncollege black men in their
twenties rose to their highest levels ever, propelled by skyrocketing
incarceration rates.10
One reason so many people have a false impression of the economic
well-being of African Americans, as a group, is that poverty and
unemployment statistics do not include people who are behind bars.
Prisoners are literally erased from the nation’s economic picture, leading

standard estimates to underestimate the true jobless rate by as much as 24
percentage points for less-educated black men.11 Young African American
men were the only group to experience a steep increase in joblessness
between 1980 and 2000, a development directly traceable to the increase in
the penal population. During the much heralded economic boom of the
1990s, the true jobless rate among noncollege black men was a staggering
42 percent (65 percent among black male dropouts).12
Despite these inconvenient truths, though, we can press on. We can
continue to ignore those labeled criminals in our litigation and media
advocacy and focus public attention on more attractive plaintiffs—like
innocent doctors and lawyers stopped and searched on freeways, innocent
black and brown schoolchildren attending abysmal schools, or innocent
middle- and upper-middle-class black children who will be denied access to
Harvard, Michigan, and Yale if affirmative action disappears. We can
continue on this well-worn path. But if we do so, we should labor under no
illusions that we will end mass incarceration or shake the foundations of the
current racial order. We may improve some school districts, prolong
affirmative action for another decade or two, or force some police
departments to condemn racial profiling, but we will not put a dent in the
prevailing caste system. We must face the realities of the new caste system
and embrace those who are most oppressed by it if we hope to end the new
Jim Crow.
That said, no effort is made here to describe, in any detail, what should or
should not be done in the months and years ahead to challenge the new
caste system. Such an undertaking is beyond the scope of this book. The
aim of this chapter is simply to reflect on whether traditional approaches to
racial justice advocacy are adequate to the task at hand. What follows is not
a plan, but several questions and claims offered for serious consideration by
those committed to racial justice and interested in dismantling mass
incarceration. They are offered as conversation starters—food for thought,
debate, and—I hope—collective action. Each is a challenge to conventional
wisdom or traditional strategies. Far more should be said about each point
made, but, as indicated, this is meant to be the beginning of a conversation,
not an end.

Tinkering Is for Mechanics, Not Racial-Justice Advocates

The first and arguably most important point is that criminal justice reform
efforts—standing alone—are futile. Gains can be made, yes, but the new
caste system will not be overthrown by isolated victories in legislatures or
courtrooms. If you doubt this is the case, consider the sheer scale of mass
incarceration. If we hope to return to the rate of incarceration of the 1970s
—a time when many civil rights activists believed rates of imprisonment
were egregiously high—we would need to release approximately four out of
five people currently behind bars today.13 Prisons would have to be closed
across America, an event that would likely inspire panic in rural
communities that have become dependent on prisons for jobs and economic
growth. Hundreds of thousands of people—many of them unionized—
would lose their jobs. As Marc Mauer has observed, “The more than
700,000 prison and jail guards, administrators, service workers, and other
personnel represent a potentially powerful political opposition to any
scaling-down of the system. One need only recall the fierce opposition to
the closing of military bases in recent years to see how these forces will
function over time.”14
Arguably, Mauer underestimates the scope of the challenge by focusing
narrowly on the prison system, rather than counting all of the people
employed in the criminal justice bureaucracy. According to a report
released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Statistics in 2006,
the U.S. spent a record $185 billion for police protection, detention,
judicial, and legal activities in 2003. Adjusting for inflation, these figures
reflect a tripling of justice expenditures since 1982. The justice system
employed almost 2.4 million people in 2003—58 percent of them at the
local level and 31 percent at the state level. If four out of five people were
released from prisons, far more than a million people could lose their jobs.
There is also the private-sector investment to consider. Prisons are big
business and have become deeply entrenched in America’s economic and

political system. Rich and powerful people, including former Vice President
Dick Cheney, have invested millions in private prisons.15 They are deeply
interested in expanding the market—increasing the supply of prisoners—
not eliminating the pool of people who can be held captive for a profit. The
2005 annual report for the Corrections Corporation of America explained
the vested interests of private prisons matter-of-factly in a filing with the
Securities and Exchange Commission:
Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new
contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention
facilities. This possible growth depends on a number of factors we
cannot control, including crime rates and sentencing patterns in
various jurisdictions and acceptance of privatization. The demand for
our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation
of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices
or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently
proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with
respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could
affect the number of persons arrested, convicted and sentenced,
thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house
them.16
American Correctional Association President Gwendolyn Chunn put the
matter more bluntly that same year when lamenting that the unprecedented
prison expansion boom of the 1990s seemed to be leveling off. “We’ll have
a hard time holding on to what we have now,” she lamented.17 As it turns
out, her fears were unfounded. Although prison growth appeared to be
slowing in 2005, the market for prisoners has continued to expand. The
nation’s prison population broke new records in 2008, with no end in sight.
The nonprofit PEW Charitable Trusts reports that inmate populations in at
least ten states are expected to increase by 25 percent or more between 2006
and 2011. In short, the market for private prisons is as good as it has ever
been. Damon Hininger, the president and chief operations officer of
Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private-prison operator in
the United States, is thoroughly optimistic. His company boosted net

income by 14 percent in 2008, and he fully expects the growth to continue.
“There is going to be a larger opportunity for us in the future,” he said.18
Even beyond private prison companies, a whole range of prison
profiteers must be reckoned with if mass incarceration is to be undone,
including phone companies that gouge families of prisoners by charging
them exorbitant rates to communicate with their loved ones; gun
manufacturers that sell Taser guns, rifles, and pistols to prison guards and
police; private health care providers contracted by the state to provide
(typically abysmal) health care to prisoners; the U.S. military, which relies
on prison labor to provide military gear to soldiers in Iraq; corporations that
use prison labor to avoid paying decent wages; and the politicians, lawyers,
and bankers who structure deals to build new prisons often in
predominately white rural communities—deals that often promise far more
to local communities than they deliver.19 All of these corporate and political
interests have a stake in the expansion—not the elimination—of the system
of mass incarceration.
Consider also the lengthy to-do list for reformers. If we become serious
about dismantling the system of mass incarceration, we must end the War
on Drugs. There is no way around it. The drug war is largely responsible for
the prison boom and the creation of the new undercaste, and there is no path
to liberation for communities of color that includes this ongoing war. So
long as people of color in ghetto communities are being rounded up by the
thousands for drug offenses, carted off to prisons, and then released into a
permanent undercaste, mass incarceration as a system of control will
continue to function well.
Ending the drug war is no simple task, however. It cannot be
accomplished through a landmark court decision, an executive order, or
single stroke of the presidential pen. Since 1982, the war has raged like a
forest fire set with a few matches and a gallon of gasoline. What began as
an audacious federal program, has spread to every state in the nation and
nearly every city. It has infected law enforcement activities on roads,
sidewalks, highways, train stations, airports, and the nation’s border. The
war has effectively shredded portions of the U.S. Constitution—eliminating
Fourth Amendment protections once deemed inviolate—and it has
militarized policing practices in inner cities across America. Racially

targeted drug-law enforcement practices taken together with laws that
specifically discriminate against drug offenders in employment, housing,
and public benefits have relegated the majority of black men in urban areas
across the United States to a permanent second-class status.
If we hope to end this system of control, we cannot be satisfied with a
handful of reforms. All of the financial incentives granted to law
enforcement to arrest poor black and brown people for drug offenses must
be revoked. Federal grant money for drug enforcement must end; drug
forfeiture laws must be stripped from the books; racial profiling must be
eradicated; the concentration of drug busts in poor communities of color
must cease; and the transfer of military equipment and aid to local law
enforcement agencies waging the drug war must come to a screeching halt.
And that’s just for starters.
Equally important, there must be a change within the culture of law
enforcement. Black and brown people in ghetto communities must no
longer be viewed as the designated enemy, and ghetto communities must no
longer be treated like occupied zones. Law enforcement must adopt a
compassionate, humane approach to the problems of the urban poor—an
approach that goes beyond the rhetoric of “community policing” to a
method of engagement that promotes trust, healing, and genuine
partnership. Data collection for police and prosecutors should be mandated
nationwide to ensure that selective enforcement is no longer taking place.
Racial impact statements that assess the racial and ethnic impact of criminal
justice legislation must be adopted.20 Public defender offices should be
funded at the same level as prosecutor’s offices to eliminate the unfair
advantage afforded the incarceration machine. The list goes on: Mandatory
drug sentencing laws must be rescinded. Marijuana ought to be legalized
(and perhaps other drugs as well). Meaningful re-entry programs must be
adopted—programs that provide a pathway not just to dead-end, minimumwage jobs, but also training and education so those labeled criminals can
realistically reach for high-paying jobs and viable, rewarding career paths.
Prison workers should be retrained for jobs and careers that do not involve
caging human beings. Drug treatment on demand must be provided for all
Americans, a far better investment of taxpayer money than prison cells for
drug offenders. Barriers to re-entry, specifically the myriad laws that

operate to discriminate against drug offenders for the rest of their lives in
every aspect of their social, economic, and political life, must be eliminated.
The list could go on, of course, but the point has been made. The central
question for racial justice advocates is this: are we serious about ending this
system of control, or not? If we are, there is a tremendous amount of work
to be done. The notion that all of these reforms can be accomplished
piecemeal—one at a time, through disconnected advocacy strategies—
seems deeply misguided. All of the needed reforms have less to do with
failed policies than a deeply flawed public consensus, one that is
indifferent, at best, to the experience of poor people of color. As Martin
Luther King Jr. explained back in 1965, when describing why it was far
more important to engage in mass mobilizations than file lawsuits, “We’re
trying to win the right to vote and we have to focus the attention of the
world on that. We can’t do that making legal cases. We have to make the
case in the court of public opinion.”21 King certainly appreciated the
contributions of civil rights lawyers (he relied on them to get him out of
jail), but he opposed the tendency of civil rights lawyers to identify a
handful of individuals who could make great plaintiffs in a court of law,
then file isolated cases. He believed what was necessary was to mobilize
thousands to make their case in the court of public opinion. In his view, it
was a flawed public consensus—not merely flawed policy—that was at the
root of racial oppression.
Today, no less than fifty years ago, a flawed public consensus lies at the
core of the prevailing caste system. When people think about crime,
especially drug crime, they do not think about suburban housewives
violating laws regulating prescription drugs or white frat boys using ecstasy.
Drug crime in this country is understood to be black and brown, and it is
because drug crime is racially defined in the public consciousness that the
electorate has not cared much what happens to drug criminals—at least not
the way they would have cared if the criminals were understood to be
white. It is this failure to care, really care across color lines, that lies at the
core of this system of control and every racial caste system that has existed
in the United States or anywhere else in the world.
Those who believe that advocacy challenging mass incarceration can be
successful without overturning the public consensus that gave rise to it are

engaging in fanciful thinking, a form of denial. Isolated victories can be
won—even a string of victories—but in the absence of a fundamental shift
in public consciousness, the system as a whole will remain intact. To the
extent that major changes are achieved without a complete shift, the system
will rebound. The caste system will reemerge in a new form, just as convict
leasing replaced slavery, or it will be reborn, just as mass incarceration
replaced Jim Crow.
Sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant make a similar point in
their book Racial Formation in the United States. They attribute the
cyclical nature of racial progress to the “unstable equilibrium” that
characterizes the United States’ racial order.22 Under “normal” conditions,
they argue, state institutions are able to normalize the organization and
enforcement of the prevailing racial order, and the system functions
relatively automatically. Challenges to the racial order during these periods
are easily marginalized or suppressed, and the prevailing system of racial
meanings, identity, and ideology seems “natural.” These conditions clearly
prevailed during slavery and Jim Crow. When the equilibrium is disrupted,
however, as in Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement, the state
initially resists, then attempts to absorb the challenge through a series of
reforms “that are, if not entirely symbolic, at least not critical to the
operation of the racial order.” In the absence of a truly egalitarian racial
consensus, these predictable cycles inevitably give rise to new,
extraordinarily comprehensive systems of racialized social control.
One example of the way in which a well established racial order easily
absorbs legal challenges is the infamous aftermath of the Brown v. Board of
Education decision. After the Supreme Court declared separate schools
inherently unequal in 1954, segregation persisted unabated. One
commentator notes: “The statistics from the Southern states are truly
amazing. For ten years, 1954-1964, virtually nothing happened.”23 Not a
single black child attended an integrated public grade school in South
Carolina, Alabama, or Mississippi as of the 1962-1963 school year. Across
the South as a whole, a mere 1 percent of black school children were
attending school with whites in 1964—a full decade after Brown was
decided.24 Brown did not end Jim Crow; a mass movement had to emerge
first—one that aimed to create a new public consensus opposed to the evils

of Jim Crow. This does not mean Brown v. Board was meaningless, as some
commentators have claimed.25 Brown gave critical legitimacy to the
demands of civil rights activists who risked their lives to end Jim Crow, and
it helped to inspire the movement (as well as a fierce backlash).26 But
standing alone, Brown accomplished for African Americans little more than
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. A civil war had to be
waged to end slavery; a mass movement was necessary to bring a formal
end to Jim Crow. Those who imagine that far less is required to dismantle
mass incarceration and build a new, egalitarian racial consensus reflecting a
compassionate rather than punitive impulse toward poor people of color fail
to appreciate the distance between Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream and the
ongoing racial nightmare for those locked up and locked out of American
society.
The foregoing should not be read as a call for movement building to the
exclusion of reform work. To the contrary, reform work is the work of
movement building, provided that it is done consciously as movementbuilding work. If all the reforms mentioned above were actually adopted, a
radical transformation in our society would have taken place. The relevant
question is not whether to engage in reform work, but how. There is no
shortage of worthy reform efforts and goals. Differences of opinion are
inevitable about which reforms are most important and in what order of
priority they should be pursued. These debates are worthwhile, but it is
critical to keep in mind that the question of how we do reform work is even
more important than the specific reforms we seek. If the way we pursue
reforms does not contribute to the building of a movement to dismantle the
system of mass incarceration, and if our advocacy does not upset the
prevailing public consensus that supports the new caste system, none of the
reforms, even if won, will successfully disrupt the nation’s racial
equilibrium. Challenges to the system will be easily absorbed or deflected,
and the accommodations made will serve primarily to legitimate the system,
not undermine it. We run the risk of winning isolated battles but losing the
larger war.

Let’s Talk About Race—Resisting the Temptation of
Colorblind Advocacy

So how should we go about building this movement to end mass
incarceration? What should be the core philosophy, the guiding principles?
Another book could be written on this subject, but a few key principles
stand out that can be briefly explored here. These principles are rooted in an
understanding that any movement to end mass incarceration must deal with
mass incarceration as a racial caste system, not as a system of crime control.
This is not to say crime is unimportant; it is very important. We need an
effective system of crime prevention and control in our communities, but
that is not what the current system is. This system is better designed to
create crime, and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals, rather than
to eliminate crime or reduce the number of criminals.
It is not uncommon, however, to hear people claim that the mere fact that
we have the lowest crime rates, at the same time that we have the highest
incarceration rates, is all the proof needed that this system works well to
control crime. But if you believe this system effectively controls crime,
consider this: standard estimates of the amount of crime reduction that can
be attributable to mass incarceration range from 3 to 25 percent.27 Some
scholars believe we have long since passed a tipping point where the
declining marginal return on imprisonment has dipped below zero.
Imprisonment, they say, now creates far more crime than it prevents, by
ripping apart fragile social networks, destroying families, and creating a
permanent class of unemployables. 28 Although it is common to think of
poverty and joblessness as leading to crime and imprisonment, this research
suggests that the War on Drugs is a major cause of poverty, chronic
unemployment, broken families, and crime today. But even assuming 25
percent is the right figure, it still means that the overwhelming majority of
incarceration—75 percent—has had absolutely no impact on crime, despite
costing nearly $200 billion annually. As a crime reduction strategy, mass

incarceration is an abysmal failure. It is largely ineffective and
extraordinarily expensive.
Saying mass incarceration is an abysmal failure makes sense, though,
only if one assumes that the criminal justice system is designed to prevent
and control crime. But if mass incarceration is understood as a system of
social control—specifically, racial control—then the system is a fantastic
success. 29 In less than two decades, the prison population quadrupled, and
large majorities of poor people of color in urban areas throughout the
United States were placed under the control of the criminal justice system
or saddled with criminal records for life. Almost overnight, huge segments
of ghetto communities were permanently relegated to a second-class status,
disenfranchised, and subjected to perpetual surveillance and monitoring by
law enforcement agencies. One could argue this result is a tragic,
unforeseeable mistake, and that the goal was always crime control, not the
creation of a racial undercaste. But judging by the political rhetoric and the
legal rules employed in the War on Drugs, this result is no freak accident.
In order to make this point, we need to talk about race openly and
honestly. We must stop debating crime policy as though it were purely
about crime. People must come to understand the racial history and origins
of mass incarceration—the many ways our conscious and unconscious
biases have distorted our judgments over the years about what is fair,
appropriate, and constructive when responding to drug use and drug crime.
We must come to see, too, how our economic insecurities and racial
resentments have been exploited for political gain, and how this
manipulation has caused suffering for people of all colors. Finally, we must
admit, out loud, that it was because of race that we didn’t care much what
happened to “those people” and imagined the worst possible things about
them. The fact that our lack of care and concern may have been, at times,
unintentional or unconscious does not mitigate our crime—if we refuse,
when given the chance, to make amends.
Admittedly, though, the temptation to ignore race in our advocacy may
be overwhelming. Race makes people uncomfortable. One study found that
some whites are so loath to talk about race and so fearful of violating racial
etiquette that they indicate a preference for avoiding all contact with black
people.30 The striking reluctance of whites, in particular, to talk about or

even acknowledge race has led many scholars and advocates to conclude
that we would be better off not talking about race at all. This view is
buttressed by the fact that white liberals, nearly as much as conservatives,
seem to have lost patience with debates about racial equity. Barack Obama
noted this phenomenon in his book, The Audacity of Hope: “Rightly or
wrongly, white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America; even the most
fair-minded of whites, those who would genuinely like to see racial
inequality ended and poverty relieved, tend to push back against racial
victimization—or race-specific claims based on the history of race
discrimination in this country.”
Adding to the temptation to avoid race is the fact that opportunities for
challenging mass incarceration on purely race-neutral grounds have never
been greater. With budgets busting, more than two dozen states have
reduced or eliminated harsh mandatory minimum sentences, restored earlyrelease programs, and offered treatment instead of incarceration for some
drug offenders.31 The financial crisis engulfing states large and small has
led to a conversion among some legislators who once were “get tough” true
believers. Declining crime rates, coupled with a decline in public concern
about crime, have also helped to create a rare opening for a productive
public conversation about the War on Drugs. A promising indicator of the
public’s receptivity to a change in course is California’s Proposition 36,
which mandated drug treatment rather than jail for first-time offenders, and
was approved by more than 60 percent of the electorate in 2000.32 Some
states have decriminalized marijuana, including Massachusetts, where 65
percent of state voters approved the measure.33 Taken together, these factors
suggest that, if a major mobilization got underway, impressive changes in
our nation’s drug laws and policies would be not only possible, but likely,
without ever saying a word about race.
This is tempting bait, to put it mildly, but racial justice advocates should
not take it. The prevailing caste system cannot be successfully dismantled
with a purely race-neutral approach. To begin with, it is extremely unlikely
that a strategy based purely on costs, crime rates, and the wisdom of drug
treatment will get us back even to the troubling incarceration rates of the
1970s. As indicated earlier, any effort to downsize dramatically our nation’s
prisons would inspire fierce resistance by those faced with losing jobs,

investments, and other benefits provided by the current system. The
emotion and high anxiety would likely express itself in the form of a
racially charged debate about values, morals, and personal responsibility
rather than a debate about the prison economy. Few would openly argue
that we should lock up millions of poor people just so that other people can
have jobs or get a good return on their private investments. Instead, familiar
arguments would likely resurface about the need to be “tough” on criminals,
not coddle them or give “free passes.” The public debate would inevitably
turn to race, even if no one was explicitly talking about it. As history has
shown, the prevalence of powerful (unchallenged) racial stereotypes,
together with widespread apprehension regarding major structural changes,
would create a political environment in which implicit racial appeals could
be employed, once again, with great success. Failure to anticipate and
preempt such appeals would set the stage for the same divide-and-conquer
tactics that have reliably preserved racial hierarchy in the United States for
centuries.
Even if fairly dramatic changes were achieved while ignoring race, the
results would be highly contingent and temporary. If and when the economy
improves, the justification for a “softer” approach would no longer exist.
States would likely gravitate back to their old ways if a new, more
compassionate public consensus about race had not been forged. Similarly,
if and when crime rates rise—which seems likely if the nation’s economy
continues to sour—nothing would deter politicians from making black and
brown criminals, once again, their favorite whipping boys. Since the days
of slavery, black men have been depicted and understood as criminals, and
their criminal “nature” has been among the justifications for every caste
system to date. The criminalization and demonization of black men is one
habit America seems unlikely to break without addressing head-on the
racial dynamics that have given rise to successive caste systems. Although
colorblind approaches to addressing the problems of poor people of color
often seem pragmatic in the short run, in the long run they are
counterproductive. Colorblindness, though widely touted as the solution, is
actually the problem.

Against Colorblindness

Saying that colorblindness is the problem may alarm some in the civil rights
community, especially the pollsters and political consultants who have
become increasingly influential in civil rights advocacy. For decades, civil
rights leaders have been saying things like “we all want a colorblind
society, we just disagree how to get there” in defense of race-conscious
programs like affirmative action or racial data collection.34 Affirmative
action has been framed as a legitimate exception to the colorblindness
principle—a principle now endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the
American electorate. Civil rights leaders are quick to assure the public that
when we reach a colorblind nirvana, race consciousness will no longer be
necessary or appropriate.
Far from being a worthy goal, however, colorblindness has proved
catastrophic for African Americans. It is not an overstatement to say the
systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States would
not have been possible in the post-civil rights era if the nation had not fallen
under the spell of a callous colorblindness. The seemingly innocent phrase,
“I don’t care if he’s black ...” perfectly captures the perversion of Martin
Luther King Jr.’s dream that we may, one day, be able to see beyond race to
connect spiritually across racial lines. Saying that one does not care about
race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of
cruelty. It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared much about
African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to
create a new racial undercaste.
The deeply flawed nature of colorblindness, as a governing principle, is
evidenced by the fact that the public consensus supporting mass
incarceration is officially colorblind. It purports to see black and brown men
not as black and brown, but simply as men—raceless men—who have
failed miserably to play by the rules the rest of us follow quite naturally.
The fact that so many black and brown men are rounded up for drug crimes

that go largely ignored when committed by whites is unseen. Our collective
colorblindness prevents us from seeing this basic fact. Our blindness also
prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions that persist in
society: the segregated, unequal schools, the segregated, jobless ghettos,
and the segregated public discourse—a public conversation that excludes
the current pariah caste. Our commitment to colorblindness extends beyond
individuals to institutions and social arrangements. We have become blind,
not so much to race, but to the existence of racial caste in America.
More than forty-five years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. warned of this
danger. He insisted that blindness and indifference to racial groups is
actually more important than racial hostility to the creation and
maintenance of racialized systems of control. Those who supported slavery
and Jim Crow, he argued, typically were not bad or evil people; they were
just blind. Even the Justices who decided the infamous Dred Scott case,
which ruled “that the Negro has no rights which the white man is bound to
respect,” were not wicked men, he said. On the contrary, they were decent
and dedicated men. But, he hastened to add, “They were victims of a
spiritual and intellectual blindness. They knew not what they did. The
whole system of slavery was largely perpetuated through spiritually
ignorant persons.” He continued:
This tragic blindness is also found in racial segregation, the not-toodistant cousin of slavery. Some of the most vigorous defenders of
segregation are sincere in their beliefs and earnest in their motives.
Although some men are segregationists merely for reasons of political
expediency and political gain, not all of the resistance to integration is
the rearguard of professional bigots. Some people feel that their
attempt to preserve segregation is best for themselves, their children,
and their nation. Many are good church people, anchored in the
religious faith of their mothers and fathers.... What a tragedy! Millions
of Negroes have been crucified by conscientious blindness.... Jesus
was right about those men who crucified him. They knew not what
they did. They were inflicted by a terrible blindness.35
Could not the same speech be given about mass incarceration today?
Again, African Americans have been “crucified by conscientious

blindness.” People of good will have been unwilling to see black and brown
men, in their humanness, as entitled to the same care, compassion, and
concern that would be extended to one’s friends, neighbors, or loved ones.
King recognized that it was this indifference to the plight of other races that
supported the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow. In his words, “One of
the great tragedies of man’s long trek along the highway of history has been
the limiting of neighborly concern to tribe, race, class or nation.” The
consequence of this narrow, insular attitude “is that one does not really
mind what happens to the people outside his group.”36 Racial indifference
and blindness—far more than racial hostility—form the sturdy foundation
for all racial caste systems.
Abandoning the quest for a colorblind society is easier said than done, of
course. Racial justice advocates, if they should choose this path, will be
required to provide uncomfortable answers to commonly asked questions.
For example, advocates are frequently asked, When will we (finally)
become a colorblind society? The pursuit of colorblindness makes people
impatient. With courage, we should respond: Hopefully never. Or if those
words are too difficult to utter, then say: “Not in the foreseeable future.”
More than a little patience will be needed when explaining the complete
about-face. Probably around the same number of people think the Earth is
flat as think race consciousness should be the rule in perpetuity, rather than
the exception. It would be a mistake, though, to assume that people are
incapable of embracing a permanent commitment to color consciousness.
The shift may, in fact, come as something of a relief, as it moves our
collective focus away from a wholly unrealistic goal to one that is within
anyone’s reach right now. After all, to aspire to colorblindness is to aspire to
a state of being in which you are not capable of seeing racial difference—a
practical impossibility for most of us. The shift also invites a more
optimistic view of human capacity. The colorblindness ideal is premised on
the notion that we, as a society, can never be trusted to see race and treat
each other fairly or with genuine compassion. A commitment to color
consciousness, by contrast, places faith in our capacity as humans to show
care and concern for others, even as we are fully cognizant of race and
possible racial differences.

If colorblindness is such a bad idea, though, why have people across the
political spectrum become so attached to it? For conservatives, the ideal of
colorblindness is linked to a commitment to individualism. In their view,
society should be concerned with individuals, not groups. Gross racial
disparities in health, wealth, education, and opportunity should be of no
interest to our government, and racial identity should be a private matter,
something best kept to ourselves. For liberals, the ideal of colorblindness is
linked to the dream of racial equality. The hope is that one day we will no
longer see race because race will lose all of its significance. In this fantasy,
eventually race will no longer be a factor in mortality rates, the spread of
disease, educational or economic opportunity, or the distribution of wealth.
Race will correlate with nothing; it will mean nothing; we won’t even
notice it anymore. Those who are less idealistic embrace colorblindness
simply because they find it difficult to imagine a society in which we see
race and racial differences yet consistently act in a positive, constructive
way. It is easier to imagine a world in which we tolerate racial differences
by being blind to them.
The uncomfortable truth, however, is that racial differences will always
exist among us. Even if the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and mass
incarceration were completely overcome, we would remain a nation of
immigrants in a larger world divided by race and ethnicity. It is a world in
which there is extraordinary racial and ethnic inequality, and our nation has
porous boundaries. For the foreseeable future, racial and ethnic inequality
will be a feature of American life.
This reality is not cause for despair. The idea that we may never reach a
state of perfect racial equality—a perfect racial equilibrium—is not cause
for alarm. What is concerning is the real possibility that we, as a society,
will choose not to care. We will choose to be blind to injustice and the
suffering of others. We will look the other way and deny our public
agencies the resources, data, and tools they need to solve problems. We will
refuse to celebrate what is beautiful about our distinct cultures and histories,
even as we blend and evolve. That is cause for despair.
Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is
the problem. The fact that the meaning of race may evolve over time or lose
much of its significance is hardly a reason to be struck blind. We should
hope not for a colorblind society but instead for a world in which we can

see each other fully, learn from each other, and do what we can to respond
to each other with love. That was King’s dream—a society that is capable
of seeing each of us, as we are, with love. That is a goal worth fighting for.

The Racial Bribe—Let’s Give It Back

The foregoing could be read as a ringing endorsement of affirmative action
and other diversity initiatives. To a certain extent, it is. It is difficult to
imagine a time, in the foreseeable future, when the free market and partisan
politics could be trusted to produce equitable inclusion in all facets of
American political, economic, and social life, without anyone giving any
thought—caring at all—about race. It may always be necessary for us, as a
society, to pay careful attention to the impact of our laws, policies, and
practices on racial and ethnic groups and consciously strive to ensure that
biases, stereotypes, and structural arrangements do not cause unnecessary
harm or suffering to any individual or any group for reasons related to race.
There is, however, a major caveat. Racial justice advocates should
consider, with a degree of candor that has not yet been evident, whether
affirmative action—as it has been framed and defended during the past
thirty years—has functioned more like a racial bribe than a tool of racial
justice. One might wonder, what does affirmative action have to do with
mass incarceration? Well, perhaps the two are linked more than we realize.
We should ask ourselves whether efforts to achieve “cosmetic” racial
diversity—that is, reform efforts that make institutions look good on the
surface without the needed structural changes—have actually helped to
facilitate the emergence of mass incarceration and interfered with the
development of a more compassionate race consciousness. In earlier
chapters, we have seen that throughout our nation’s history, poor and
working-class whites have been bought off by racial bribes. The question
posed here is whether affirmative action has functioned similarly, offering
relatively meager material advantages but significant psychological benefits
to people of color, in exchange for the abandonment of a more radical
movement that promised to alter the nation’s economic and social structure.
To be clear: This is not an argument that affirmative action policies
conflict with King’s dream that we might one day be “judged by the content

of our character, not the color of our skin.” King himself would have almost
certainly endorsed affirmative action as a remedy, at least under some
circumstances. In fact, King specifically stated on numerous occasions that
he believed special—even preferential—treatment for African Americans
may be warranted in light of their unique circumstances.37 And this is not
an argument that affirmative action has made no difference in the lives of
poor or working-class African Americans—as some have claimed. Fire
departments, police departments, and other public agencies have been
transformed, at least in part, due to affirmative action.38 Finally, this is not
an argument that affirmative action should be reconsidered simply on the
grounds that it is “unfair” to white men as a group. The empirical evidence
strongly supports the conclusion that declining wages, downsizing,
deindustrialization, globalization, and cutbacks in government services
represent much greater threats to the position of white men than so-called
reverse discrimination.39
The argument made here is a less familiar one. It is not widely debated in
the mainstream media or, for that matter, in civil rights organizations. The
claim is that racial justice advocates should reconsider the traditional
approach to affirmative action because (a) it has helped to render a new
caste system largely invisible; (b) it has helped to perpetuate the myth that
anyone can make it if they try; (c) it has encouraged the embrace of a
“trickle down theory of racial justice”; (d) it has greatly facilitated the
divide-and-conquer tactics that gave rise to mass incarceration; and (e) it
has inspired such polarization and media attention that the general public
now (wrongly) assumes that affirmative action is the main battlefront in
U.S. race relations.
It may not be easy for the civil rights community to have a candid
conversation about any of this. Civil rights organizations are populated with
beneficiaries of affirmative action (like myself) and their friends and allies.
Ending affirmative action arouses fears of annihilation. The reality that so
many of us would disappear overnight from colleges and universities
nationwide if affirmative action were banned, and that our children and
grandchildren might not follow in our footsteps, creates a kind of panic that
is difficult to describe. It may be analogous, in some respects, to the panic
once experienced by poor and working-class whites faced with

desegregation—the fear of a sudden demotion in the nation’s racial
hierarchy. Mari Matsuda and Charles Lawrence’s book We Won’t Go Back
captures the determination of affirmative-action beneficiaries not to allow
the clock to be turned back on racial justice, back to days of racial caste in
America. The problem, of course, is that we are already there.
Affirmative action, particularly when it is justified on the grounds of
diversity rather than equity (or remedy), masks the severity of racial
inequality in America, leading to greatly exaggerated claims of racial
progress and overly optimistic assessments of the future for African
Americans. Seeing black people graduate from Harvard and Yale and
become CEOs or corporate lawyers—not to mention president of the United
States—causes us all to marvel at what a long way we have come. As recent
data shows, however, much of black progress is a myth. Although some
African Americans are doing very well—enrolling in universities and
graduate schools at record rates thanks to affirmative action—as a group,
African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther
King Jr. was assassinated and riots swept inner cities across America.
Nearly one-fourth of African Americans live below the poverty line today,
approximately the same as in 1968. The child poverty rate is actually higher
today than it was then.40 Unemployment rates in black communities rival
those in Third World countries. And that is with affirmative action!
When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our so-called
colorblind society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar
social, political, and economic structure—the structure of racial caste.
When those behind bars are taken into account, America’s institutions
continue to create nearly as much racial inequality as existed during Jim
Crow.41 Our elite universities, which now look a lot like America, would
whiten overnight if affirmative action suddenly disappeared. One recent
study indicates that the elimination of race-based admissions policies would
lead to a 63 percent decline in black matriculants at all law schools and a 90
percent decline at elite law schools.42 Sociologist Stephen Steinberg
describes the bleak reality this way: “Insofar as this black middle class is an
artifact of affirmative action policy, it cannot be said to be the result of
autonomous workings of market forces. In other words, the black middle
class does not reflect a lowering of racist barriers in occupations so much as

the opposite: racism is so entrenched that without government intervention
there would be little ‘progress’ to boast about.”43
In view of all this, we must ask, to what extent has affirmative action
helped us remain blind to, and in denial about, the existence of a racial
undercaste? And to what extent have the battles over affirmative action
distracted us and diverted crucial resources and energy away from
dismantling the structures of racial inequality?
The predictable response is that civil rights advocates are as committed to
challenging mass incarceration and other forms of structural racism as they
are to preserving affirmative action. But where is the evidence of this? Civil
rights activists have created a national movement to save affirmative action,
complete with the marches, organizing, and media campaigns, as well as
incessant strategy meetings, conferences, and litigation. Where is the
movement to end mass incarceration? For that matter, where is the
movement for educational equity? Part of the answer is that it is far easier
to create a movement when there is a sense of being under attack. It is also
easier when a single policy is at issue, rather than something as enormous
(and seemingly intractable) as educational inequity or mass incarceration.
Those are decent explanations, but they are no excuse. Try telling a sixteenyear-old black youth in Louisiana who is facing a decade in adult prison
and a lifetime of social, political, and economic exclusion that your civil
rights organization is not doing much to end the War on Drugs—but would
he like to hear about all the great things that are being done to save
affirmative action? There is a fundamental disconnect today between the
world of civil rights advocacy and the reality facing those trapped in the
new racial undercaste.
There is another, more sinister consequence of affirmative action: the
carefully engineered appearance of great racial progress strengthens the
“colorblind” public consensus that personal and cultural traits, not structural
arrangements, are largely responsible for the fact that the majority of young
black men in urban areas across the United States are currently under the
control of the criminal justice system or branded as felons for life. In other
words, affirmative action helps to make the emergence of a new racial caste
system seem implausible. It creates an environment in which it is
reasonable to ask, how can something akin to a racial caste system exist

when people like Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Barack Obama are
capable of rising from next to nothing to the pinnacles of wealth and
power? How could a caste system exist, in view of the black middle class?
There are answers to these questions, but they are difficult to swallow
when millions of Americans have displayed a willingness to elect a black
man president of the United States. The truth, however, is this: far from
undermining the current system of control, the new caste system depends,
in no small part, on black exceptionalism. The colorblind public consensus
that supports the new caste system insists that race no longer matters. Now
that America has officially embraced Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream (by
reducing it to the platitude “that we should be judged by the content of our
character, not the color of our skin”), the mass incarceration of people of
color can be justified only to the extent that the plight of those locked up
and locked out is understood to be their choice, not their birthright.
In short, mass incarceration is predicated on the notion that an
extraordinary number of African Americans (but not all) have freely chosen
a life of crime and thus belong behind bars. A belief that all blacks belong
in jail would be incompatible with the social consensus that we have
“moved beyond” race and that race is no longer relevant. But a widespread
belief that a majority of black and brown men unfortunately belong in jail is
compatible with the new American creed, provided that their imprisonment
can be interpreted as their own fault. If the prison label imposed on them
can be blamed on their culture, poor work ethic, or even their families, then
society is absolved of responsibility to do anything about their condition.
This is where black exceptionalism comes in. Highly visible examples of
black success are critical to the maintenance of a racial caste system in the
era of colorblindness. Black success stories lend credence to the notion that
anyone, no matter how poor or how black you may be, can make it to the
top, if only you try hard enough. These stories “prove” that race is no
longer relevant. Whereas black success stories undermined the logic of Jim
Crow, they actually reinforce the system of mass incarceration. Mass
incarceration depends for its legitimacy on the widespread belief that all
those who appear trapped at the bottom actually chose their fate.
Viewed from this perspective, affirmative action no longer appears
entirely progressive. So long as some readily identifiable African
Americans are doing well, the system is largely immunized from racial

critique. People like Barack Obama who are truly exceptional by any
standards, along with others who have been granted exceptional
opportunities, legitimate a system that remains fraught with racial bias—
especially when they fail to challenge, or even acknowledge, the prevailing
racial order. In the current era, white Americans are often eager to embrace
token or exceptional African Americans, particularly when they go out of
their way not to talk about race or racial inequality.
Affirmative action may be counterproductive in yet another sense: it
lends credence to a trickle-down theory of racial justice. The notion that
giving a relatively small number of people of color access to key positions
or institutions will inevitably redound to the benefit of the larger group is
belied by the evidence. It also seems to disregard Martin Luther King Jr.’s
stern warnings that racial justice requires the complete transformation of
social institutions and a dramatic restructuring of our economy, not
superficial changes that can purchased on the cheap. King argued in 1968,
“The changes [that have occurred to date] are basically in the social and
political areas; the problems we now face—providing jobs, better housing
and better education for the poor throughout the country—will require
money for their solution, a fact that makes those solutions all the more
difficult.”44 He emphasized that “most of the gains of the past decade were
obtained at bargain prices,” for the desegregation of public facilities and the
election and appointment of a few black officials cost close to nothing.
“White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be
achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The
comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at
the prospect of change in the status quo.”45
Against this backdrop, diversity-driven affirmative action programs seem
to be the epitome of racial justice purchased on the cheap. They create the
appearance of racial equity without the reality and do so at no great cost,
without fundamentally altering any of the structures that create racial
inequality in the first place. Perhaps the best illustration of this fact is that,
thanks in part to affirmative action, police departments and law
enforcement agencies nationwide have come to look more like America
than ever, at precisely the moment that they have waged a war on the ghetto
poor and played a leading role in the systematic mass incarceration of

people of color. The color of police chiefs across the country has changed,
but the role of the police in our society has not.
Gerald Torres and Lani Guinier offer a similar critique of affirmative
action in The Miner’s Canary. They point out that “conventional strategies
for social change proceed as though a change in who administers power
fundamentally affects the structure of power itself.”46 This narrow approach
to social change is reflected in the justifications offered for affirmative
action, most notably the claim that “previous outsiders, once given a
chance, will exercise power differently.”47 The reality, however, is that the
existing hierarchy disciplines newcomers, requiring them to exercise power
in the same old ways and play by the same old rules in order to survive. The
newcomers, Torres and Guinier explain, are easily co-opted, as they have
much to lose but little to gain by challenging the rules of the game.
Their point is particularly relevant to the predicament of minority police
officers charged with waging the drug war. Profound racial injustice occurs
when minority police officers follow the rules. It is a scandal when the
public learns they have broken the rules, but no rules need be broken for the
systematic mass incarceration of people of color to proceed unabated. This
uncomfortable fact creates strong incentives for minority officers to deny, to
rationalize, or to be willingly blind to the role of law enforcement in
creating a racial undercaste. Reports that minority officers may engage in
nearly as much racial profiling as white officers have been met with some
amazement, but the real surprise is that some minority police officers have
been willing to speak out against the practice, given the ferocity of the drug
war. A war has been declared against poor communities of color, and the
police are expected to wage it. Do we expect minority officers, whose
livelihood depends on the very departments charged with waging the war,
to play the role of peacenik? That expectation seems unreasonable, yet the
dilemma for racial justice advocates is a real one. The quiet complicity of
minority officers in the War on Drugs serves to legitimate the system and
insulate it from critique. In a nation still stuck in an old Jim Crow mind-set
—which equates racism with white bigotry and views racial diversity as
proof the problem has been solved—a racially diverse police department
invites questions like: “How can you say the Oakland Police Department’s
drug raids are racist? There’s a black police chief, and most of the officers

involved in the drug raids are black.” If the caste dimensions of mass
incarceration were better understood and the limitations of cosmetic
diversity were better appreciated, the existence of black police chiefs and
black officers would be no more encouraging today than the presence of
black slave drivers and black plantation owners hundreds of years ago.
When meaningful change fails to materialize following the achievement
of superficial diversity, those who remain locked out can become extremely
discouraged and demoralized, resulting in cynicism and resignation.
Perhaps more concerning, though, is the fact that inclusion of people of
color in power structures, particularly at the top, can paralyze reform
efforts. People of color are often reluctant to challenge institutions led by
people who look like them, as they feel a personal stake in the individual’s
success. After centuries of being denied access to leadership positions in
key social institutions, people of color quite understandably are hesitant to
create circumstances that could trigger the downfall of “one of their own.”
An incident of police brutality that would be understood as undeniably
racist if the officers involved were white may be given a more charitable
spin if the officers are black. Similarly, black community residents who
might have been inspired to challenge aggressive stop-and-frisk policies of
a largely white police department may worry about “hurting” a black police
chief. People of color, because of the history of racial subjugation and
exclusion, often experience success and failure vicariously through the few
who achieve positions of power, fame, and fortune. As a result, cosmetic
diversity, which focuses on providing opportunities to individual members
of under-represented groups, both diminishes the possibility that unfair
rules will be challenged and legitimates the entire system.

Obama—the Promise and the Peril

This dynamic poses particular risks for racial justice advocacy during an
Obama presidency. On the one hand, the election of Barack Obama to the
presidency creates an extraordinary opportunity for those seeking to end the
system of mass incarceration in America. Obama’s stated positions on
criminal justice reform suggest that he is opposed to the War on Drugs and
the systematic targeting of African Americans for mass incarceration.48
Shouldn’t we trust him, now that he is holding the reins of power, to do the
right thing?
Trust is tempting, especially because Obama himself violated our
nation’s drug laws and almost certainly knows that his life would not have
unfolded as it did if he had been arrested on drug charges and treated like a
common criminal. As he wrote in his memoir about his wayward youth,
“Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it.”
Unlike Bill Clinton, who famously admitted he experimented with
marijuana on occasion “but didn’t inhale,” Obama has never minimized his
illegal drug use. As he said in a 2006 speech to the American Society of
Magazine Editors, “Look, you know, when I was a kid, I inhaled.
Frequently. That was the point.”49 Those “bad decisions,” Obama has
acknowledged, could have led him to a personal dead end. “Junkie.
Pothead. That’s where I’d have been headed: the final, fatal role of the
young would-be black man.” No doubt if Obama had been arrested and
treated like a common criminal, he could have served years in prison and
been labeled a drug felon for life. What are the chances he would have gone
to Harvard Law School, much less become president of the United States, if
that had happened? It seems reasonable to assume that Obama, who knows
a little something about poverty and the temptations of drugs, would have a
“there but for the grace of God go I” attitude about the millions of African
and Latino men imprisoned for drug offenses comparable to his own or
saddled for life with felony records.

But before we kick back, relax, and wait for racial justice to trickle down,
consider this: Obama chose Joe Biden, one of the Senate’s most strident
drug warriors, as his vice president. The man he picked to serve as his chief
of staff in the White House, Rahm Emanuel, was a major proponent of the
expansion of the drug war and the slashing of welfare rolls during President
Clinton’s administration. And the man he tapped to lead the U.S.
Department of Justice—the agency that launched and continues to oversee
the federal war on drugs—is an African American former U.S. attorney for
the District of Columbia who sought to ratchet up the drug war in
Washington, D.C., and fought the majority black D.C. City Council in an
effort to impose harsh mandatory minimums for marijuana possession.
Moreover, on the campaign trail, Obama took a dramatic step back from an
earlier position opposing the death penalty, announcing that he now
supports the death penalty for child rapists—even if the victim is not killed
—even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty for
nonhomicides unconstitutional and international law strongly disfavors the
practice. The only countries that share Obama’s view are countries like
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and China, which allow the death penalty for things
like adultery and tax evasion. So why did Obama, on the campaign trail, go
out of his way to announce disagreement with a Supreme Court decision
ruling the death penalty for child rapists unconstitutional? Clearly he was
attempting to immunize himself from any attempt to portray him as “soft”
on crime—a tactic reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s decision to fly back to
Arkansas during the 1992 presidential campaign to oversee the execution of
a mentally retarded black man.
Seasoned activists may respond that all of this is “just politics,” but, as
we have seen in earlier chapters, they are the same politics that gave rise to
the New Jim Crow. Now that crime seems to be rising again in some ghetto
communities, Obama is pledging to revive President Clinton’s Community
Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program and increase funding for the
Byrne grant program—two of the worst federal drug programs of the
Clinton era.50 These programs, despite their benign names, are responsible
for the militarization of policing, SWAT teams, Pipeline drug task forces,
and the laundry list of drug-war horrors described in chapter 2.

Clinton once boasted that the COPS program, which put tens of
thousands of officers on the streets, was responsible for the dramatic
fifteen-year drop in violent crime that began in the 1990s. Recent studies,
however, have shown that is not the case. A 2005 report by the Government
Accountability Office concluded the program may have contributed to a 1
percent reduction in crime—at a cost of $8 billion.51 A peer-reviewed study
in the journal Criminology found that the COPS program, despite the hype,
“had little or no effect on crime.”52 And while Obama’s drug czar, former
Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, has said the War on Drugs should no
longer be called a war, Obama’s budget for law enforcement is actually
worse than the Bush administration’s in terms of the ratio of dollars devoted
to prevention and drug treatment as opposed to law enforcement.53 Obama,
who is celebrated as evidence of America’s triumph over race, is proposing
nothing less than revving up the drug war through the same failed policies
and programs that have systematically locked young men of color into a
permanent racial undercaste.
The unique and concerning situation racial justice advocates now face is
that the very people who are most oppressed by the current caste system—
African Americans—may be the least likely to want to challenge it, now
that a black family is living in the White House. If Obama were white, there
would be no hesitation to remind him of his youthful drug use when arguing
that he should end the drug war and make good on his promises to end
unjust mandatory minimums. But do African Americans want the media to
talk about Obama’s drug use? Do African Americans want to pressure
Obama on any issue, let alone issues of race? To go one step further, could
it be that many African Americans would actually prefer to ignore racial
issues during Obama’s presidency, to help ensure him smooth sailing and a
triumphant presidency, no matter how bad things are for African Americans
in the meantime?
The fact that the last question could plausibly be answered yes raises
serious questions for the civil rights community. Have we unwittingly
exaggerated the importance of individuals succeeding within pre-existing
structures of power, and thereby undermined King’s call for a “complete
restructuring” of our society? Have we contributed to the disempowerment
and passivity of the black community, not only by letting the lawyers take

over, but also by communicating the message that the best path—perhaps
the only path—to the promised land is infiltrating elite institutions and
seizing power at the top, so racial justice can trickle down?
Torres and Guinier suggest the answer to these questions may be yes.
They observe that, “surprisingly, strategists on both the left and right,
despite their differences, converge on the individual as the unit of power.”54
Conservatives challenge the legitimacy of group rights or race
consciousness and argue that the best empowerment strategy is
entrepreneurship and individual initiative. Civil rights advocates argue that
individual group members “represent” the race and that hierarchies of
power that lack diversity are illegitimate. The theory is, when black
individuals achieve power for themselves, black people as a group benefit,
as does society as a whole. “Here we see both liberals and conservatives
endorsing the same meta-narrative of American individualism: When
individuals get ahead, the group triumphs. When individuals succeed,
American democracy prevails.”55
The absence of a thoroughgoing structural critique of the prevailing
racial order explains why so many civil rights advocates responded to
Barack Obama’s election with glee, combined with hasty reminders that
“we still have a long way to go.” The predictable response from the casual
observer is: well, how much further? A black man was just elected
president. How much further do black people want to go? If a black person
can be elected president, can’t a black person do just about anything now?

All of Us or None

At the same time that many civil rights advocates have been pursuing
lawyer-driven, trickle-down strategies for racial justice, a growing number
of formerly incarcerated men and women have been organizing in major
cities across the United States, providing assistance to those newly released
from prison and engaging in grassroots political activism in pursuit of basic
civil rights. One such organization, based in Oakland, California, is named
All of Us or None. The name explicitly challenges a politics that affords
inclusion and acceptance for a few but guarantees exclusion for many. In
spirit, it asserts solidarity with the “least of these among us.”
Diversity-driven affirmative action, as described and implemented today,
sends a different message. The message is that “some of us” will gain
inclusion. As a policy, it is blind to those who are beyond its reach, the
colored faces at the bottom of the well. One policy alone can’t save the
world, the skeptic might respond. True enough. But what if affirmative
action, as it has been framed and debated, does more harm than good,
viewed from the perspective of “all of us”?
This brings us to a critical question: who is the us that civil rights
advocates are fighting for? Judging from the plethora of groups that have
embarked on their own civil rights campaigns since Martin Luther King
Jr.’s assassination—women, gays, immigrants, Latinos, Asian Americans—
the answer seems to be that us includes everyone except white men.
This result is not illogical. When Malcolm X condemned “the white
man” and declared him the enemy, he was not, of course, speaking about
any particular white man, but rather the white, patriarchal order that
characterized both slavery and Jim Crow. Malcolm X understood that the
United States was created by and for privileged white men. It was white
men who dominated politics, controlled the nation’s wealth, and wrote the
rules by which everyone else was forced to live. No group in the United

States can be said to have experienced more privilege, and gone to greater
lengths to protect it, than “the white man.”
Yet the white man, it turns out, has suffered too. The fact that his
suffering has been far less extreme, and has not been linked to a belief in his
inherent inferiority, has not made his suffering less real. Civil rights
advocates, however, have treated the white man’s suffering as largely
irrelevant to the pursuit of the promised land. As civil rights lawyers
unveiled plans to desegregate public schools, it was poor and working-class
whites who were expected to bear the burden of this profound social
adjustment, even though many of them were as desperate for upward social
mobility and quality education as African Americans. According to the
1950 census, among Southerners in their late twenties, the state-by-state
percentages of functional illiterates (people with less than five years of
schooling) for whites on farms overlapped with those for blacks in the
cities. The majority of Southern whites were better off than Southern
blacks, but they were not affluent or well educated by any means; they were
semiliterate (with less than twelve years of schooling). Only a tiny minority
of whites were affluent and well educated. They stood far apart from the
rest of the whites and virtually all blacks.56
What lower-class whites did have was what W.E.B. Du Bois described as
“the public and psychological wage” paid to white workers, who depended
on their status and privileges as whites to compensate for low pay and harsh
working conditions.57 As described in chapter 1, time and time again, poor
and working-class whites were persuaded to choose their racial status
interests over their common economic interests with blacks, resulting in the
emergence of new caste systems that only marginally benefited whites but
were devastating for African Americans.
In retrospect, it seems clear that nothing could have been more important
in the 1970s and 1980s than finding a way to create a durable, interracial,
bottom-up coalition for social and economic justice to ensure that another
caste system did not emerge from the ashes of Jim Crow. Priority should
have been given to figuring out some way for poor and working-class
whites to feel as though they had a stake—some tangible interest—in the
nascent integrated racial order. As Lani Guinier points out, however, the
racial liberalism expressed in the Brown v. Board of Education decision and

endorsed by civil rights litigators “did not offer poor whites even an
elementary framework for understanding what they might gain as a result of
integration.”58 Nothing in the opinion or in the subsequent legal strategy
made clear that segregation had afforded elites a crucial means of
exercising social control over poor and working-class whites as well as
blacks. The Southern white elite, whether planters or industrialists, had
successfully endeavored to make all whites think in racial rather than class
terms, predictably leading whites to experience desegregation, as Derrick
Bell put it, as a net “loss.”59
Given that poor and working-class whites (not white elites) were the ones
who had their world rocked by desegregation, it does not take a great leap
of empathy to see why affirmative action could be experienced as salt in a
wound. Du Bois once observed that the psychological wage of whiteness
put “an indelible black face to failure.”60 Yet with the advent of affirmative
action, suddenly African Americans were leapfrogging over poor and
working-class whites on their way to Harvard and Yale and taking jobs in
police departments and fire departments that had once been reserved for
whites. Civil rights advocates offered no balm for the wound, publicly
resisting calls for class-based affirmative action and dismissing claims of
unfairness on the grounds that whites had been enjoying racial preferences
for hundreds of years. Resentment, frustration, and anger expressed by poor
and working-class whites was chalked up to racism, leading to a
subterranean discourse about race and to implicitly racial political appeals,
but little honest dialogue.
Perhaps the time has come to give up the racial bribes and begin an
honest conversation about race in America. The topic of the conversation
should be how us can come to include all of us. Accomplishing this degree
of unity may mean giving up fierce defense of policies and strategies that
exacerbate racial tensions and produce for racially defined groups primarily
psychological or cosmetic racial benefits.
Of course, if meaningful progress is to be made, whites must give up
their racial bribes too, and be willing to sacrifice their racial privilege.
Some might argue that in this game of chicken, whites should make the first
move. Whites should demonstrate that their silence in the drug war cannot
be bought by tacit assurances that their sons and daughters will not be

rounded up en masse and locked away. Whites should prove their
commitment to dismantling not only mass incarceration, but all of the
structures of racial inequality that guarantee for whites the resilience of
white privilege. After all, why should “we” give up our racial bribes if
whites have been unwilling to give up theirs? In light of our nation’s racial
history, that seems profoundly unfair. But if your strategy for racial justice
involves waiting for whites to be fair, history suggests it will be a long wait.
It’s not that white people are more unjust than others. Rather it seems that
an aspect of human nature is the tendency to cling tightly to one’s
advantages and privileges and to rationalize the suffering and exclusion of
others. This tendency is what led Frederick Douglass to declare that “power
concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.”
So what is to be demanded in this moment in our nation’s racial history?
If the answer is more power, more top jobs, more slots in fancy schools for
“us”—a narrow, racially defined us that excludes many—we will continue
the same power struggles and can expect to achieve many of the same
results. Yes, we may still manage to persuade mainstream voters in the
midst of an economic crisis that we have relied too heavily on incarceration,
that prisons are too expensive, and that drug use is a public health problem,
not a crime. But if the movement that emerges to end mass incarceration
does not meaningfully address the racial divisions and resentments that
gave rise to mass incarceration, and if it fails to cultivate an ethic of genuine
care, compassion, and concern for every human being—of every class, race,
and nationality—within our nation’s borders, including poor whites, who
are often pitted against poor people of color, the collapse of mass
incarceration will not mean the death of racial caste in America. Inevitably
a new system of racialized social control will emerge—one that we cannot
foresee, just as the current system of mass incarceration was not predicted
by anyone thirty years ago. No task is more urgent for racial justice
advocates today than ensuring that America’s current racial caste system is
its last.
Given what is at stake at this moment in history, bolder, more inspired
action is required than we have seen to date. Piecemeal, top-down policy
reform on criminal justice issues, combined with a racial justice discourse
that revolves largely around the meaning of Barack Obama’s election and
“post-racialism,” will not get us out of our nation’s racial quagmire. We

must flip the script. Taking our cue from the courageous civil rights
advocates who brazenly refused to defend themselves, marching unarmed
past white mobs that threatened to kill them, we, too, must be the change
we hope to create. If we want to do more than just end mass incarceration—
if we want to put an end to the history of racial caste in America—we must
lay down our racial bribes, join hands with people of all colors who are not
content to wait for change to trickle down, and say to those who would
stand in our way: Accept all of us or none.
That is the basic message that Martin Luther King Jr. aimed to deliver
through the Poor People’s Movement back in 1968. He argued then that the
time had come for racial justice advocates to shift from a civil rights to a
human rights paradigm, and that the real work of movement building had
only just begun.61 A human rights approach, he believed, would offer far
greater hope for those of us determined to create a thriving, multiracial,
multiethnic democracy free from racial hierarchy than the civil rights model
had provided to date. It would offer a positive vision of what we can strive
for—a society in which all human beings of all races are treated with
dignity, and have the right to food, shelter, health care, education, and
security.62 This expansive vision could open the door to meaningful
alliances between poor and working-class people of all colors, who could
begin to see their interests as aligned, rather than in conflict—no longer in
competition for scarce resources in a zero-sum game.
A human rights movement, King believed, held revolutionary potential.
Speaking at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in
May 1967, he told SCLC staff, who were concerned that the Civil Rights
Movement had lost its steam and its direction, “It is necessary for us to
realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human
rights.” Political reform efforts were no longer adequate to the task at hand,
he said. “For the last 12 years, we have been in a reform movement.... [But]
after Selma and the voting rights bill, we moved into a new era, which must
be an era of revolution. We must see the great distinction between a reform
movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise
certain basic questions about the whole society.”63
More than forty years later, civil rights advocacy is stuck in a model of
advocacy King was determined to leave behind. Rather than challenging the

basic structure of society and doing the hard work of movement building—
the work to which King was still committed at the end of his life—we have
been tempted too often by the opportunity for people of color to be included
within the political and economic structure as-is, even if it means alienating
those who are necessary allies. We have allowed ourselves to be willfully
blind to the emergence of a new caste system—a system of social
excommunication that has denied millions of African Americans basic
human dignity. The significance of this cannot be overstated, for the failure
to acknowledge the humanity and dignity of all persons has lurked at the
root of every racial caste system. This common thread explains why, in the
1780s, the British Society for the Abolition of Slavery adopted as its official
seal a woodcut of a kneeling slave above a banner that read, “AM I NOT A
MAN AND A BROTHER?” That symbol was followed more than a
hundred years later by signs worn around the necks of black sanitation
workers during the Poor People’s Campaign answering the slave’s question
with the simple statement, I AM A MAN.
The fact that black men could wear the same sign today in protest of the
new caste system suggests that the model of civil rights advocacy that has
been employed for the past several decades is, as King predicted,
inadequate to the task at hand. If we can agree that what is needed now, at
this critical juncture, is not more tinkering or tokenism, but as King insisted
forty years ago, a “radical restructuring of our society,” then perhaps we can
also agree that a radical restructuring of our approach to racial justice
advocacy is in order as well.
All of this is easier said than done, of course. Change in civil rights
organizations, like change in society as a whole, will not come easy. Fully
committing to a vision of racial justice that includes grassroots, bottom-up
advocacy on behalf of “all of us” will require a major reconsideration of
priorities, staffing, strategies, and messages. Egos, competing agendas,
career goals, and inertia may get in the way. It may be that traditional civil
rights organizations simply cannot, or will not, change. To this it can only
be said, without a hint of disrespect: adapt or die.
If Martin Luther King Jr. is right that the arc of history is long, but it
bends toward justice, a new movement will arise; and if civil rights
organizations fail to keep up with the times, they will pushed to the side as
another generation of advocates comes to the fore. Hopefully the new

generation will be led by those who know best the brutality of the new caste
system—a group with greater vision, courage, and determination than the
old guard can muster, trapped as they may be in an outdated paradigm. This
new generation of activists should not disrespect their elders or disparage
their contributions or achievements; to the contrary, they should bow their
heads in respect, for their forerunners have expended untold hours and
made great sacrifices in an elusive quest for justice. But once respects have
been paid, they should march right past them, emboldened, as King once
said, by the fierce urgency of now.
Those of us who hope to be their allies should not be surprised, if and
when this day comes, that when those who have been locked up and locked
out finally have the chance to speak and truly be heard, what we hear is
rage. The rage may frighten us; it may remind us of riots, uprisings, and
buildings aflame. We may be tempted to control it, or douse it with buckets
of doubt, dismay, and disbelief. But we should do no such thing. Instead,
when a young man who was born in the ghetto and who knows little of life
beyond the walls of his prison cell and the invisible cage that has become
his life, turns to us in bewilderment and rage, we should do nothing more
than look him in the eye and tell him the truth. We should tell him the same
truth the great African American writer James Baldwin told his nephew in a
letter published in 1962, in one of the most extraordinary books ever
written, The Fire Next Time. With great passion and searing conviction,
Baldwin had this to say to his young nephew:
This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen,
and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that
they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives
and do not know it and do not want to know it.... It is their innocence
which constitutes the crime.... This innocent country set you down in a
ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. The limits
of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born
into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many
ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were
not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace
with mediocrity.... You have, and many of us have, defeated this
intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents

who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their
grasp on reality. But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger
brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it
means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as
they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is
your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done
great things here, and will again, and we can make America what it
must become. It will be hard, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock,
men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in
the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and
monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets since
Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My
dungeon shook and my chains fell off.... We cannot be free until they
are free. God bless you, and Godspeed.64

Prologue:

Prophets
Thanksgiving is the quintessential origin story a settler nation tells itself:
“peace” was achieved between Natives and settlers at Plymouth,
Massachusetts, where Mayflower pilgrims established a colony in 1620,
over roast turkey and yams. To consummate the wanton slaughter of some
700 Pequots, in 1637 the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
William Bradford, proclaimed that Thanksgiving Day be celebrated “in
honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.”
Peace on stolen land is borne of genocide.
It was Thanksgiving 2016. We had spent a bitterly cold night at a
Wyoming gas station off I-80, among a half-dozen other cars loaded with
camp supplies and Water Protectors. Everyone was up before sunrise,
hoping the interstate would reopen after the overnight freeze. Among them
were Natives and non-Natives from the Pacific Northwest and West Coast,
sporting fatigues and signature black and tan Carhartt jackets with patches
declaring: “WATER IS LIFE.” “This is Trump country—we gotta hit the
road!” one of the Water Protectors exclaimed, half-jokingly, to the packed
truck stop bathroom. Outside, white men glared at us from their dually
pickups. Wyoming is an oil, gas, and coal state, and it was sending its
police to fight the modern-day Indian war that we were on our way to help
resist. We filed into our cars and took the on-ramp toward Standing Rock.
This was my fourth and final trip to Oceti Sakowin Camp, the largest of
several camps that existed at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri
Rivers, north of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, from April 2016 to
February 2017. Initially, the camps had been established to block
construction of Energy Transfer Partners’ $3.8 billion Dakota Access
Pipeline (DAPL), a 1,712-mile oil pipeline that cut through unceded
territory of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and crossed under Mni Sose (the

Missouri River) immediately upstream from Standing Rock, threatening the
reservation’s water supply.
This was not just about Standing Rock water: The pipeline crossed
upriver from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation on the Missouri River,
transporting oil extracted from that reservation’s booming fracking industry.
It cut under the Mississippi River at the Iowa–Illinois border, where a
coalition of Indigenous peoples and white farmers, ranchers, and
environmentalists in Iowa opposed it. And it crossed four states—North
Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. But it was Standing Rock and
allied Indigenous nations, including Fort Berthold, who had put up the most
intense resistance.
After North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple declared a state of
emergency on August 19, 2016—to safeguard the pipeline’s final
construction—the movement surged. Dalrymple deployed the National
Guard and invoked powers under the Emergency Management Assistance
Compact (EMAC) that are normally used only during natural disasters, such
as floods, fires, and hurricanes. EMAC also allows for state, municipal, and
federal law enforcement agencies to share equipment and personnel during
what are declared “community disorders, insurgency, or enemy attack.” In
April 2015, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan had also used EMAC powers
to crush a Black-led uprising for justice for Freddie Gray, a Black man
killed by Baltimore police. This time it was an Indigenous nation that was
declared the threat.
The encampments were about more than stopping a pipeline. Scattered
and separated during invasion, the long-awaited reunification of all seven
nations of Dakota-, Nakota-, and Lakota-speaking peoples hadn’t occurred
in more than a hundred years, or at least seven generations. Oceti Sakowin,
dubbed the “Great Sioux Nation” by settlers, once encompassed territory
that spanned from the western shores of Lake Superior to the Bighorn
Mountains. Only in stories had I heard about the Oceti Sakowin uniting, its
fire lit, and the seven tipis or lodges—each representing a nation—arranged
in the shape a buffalo horn. Historically, this reunification had happened in
times of celebration, for annual sun dances, large multi-tribal trading fairs,
and buffalo hunts. But the last time was also in a time of war—to resist
invasion. Now, the gathering had become what the passengers of our car—
Carolina, an Indigenous immigration lawyer, Dina, an Indigenous writer,
and I—liked to call “Indian City”; at its peak, the camp was North Dakota’s

tenth-largest city. Its population surpassed 10,000 people, possibly reaching
as many as 15,000.
The camp was at a standstill when we arrived, and completely encircled
by law enforcement employing hundreds of miles of concertina wire, road
blocks, and twenty-four-hour aerial surveillance, in what resembled a
military occupation. In an effort to sow division, TigerSwan, a private
security contractor hired by DAPL to assist North Dakota law enforcement,
infiltrated the camps and planted false reports on social media and local
news comparing Water Protectors to jihadist insurgents. The #NoDAPL
movement was “an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious
component,” they claimed, in documents released by the Intercept.1 The
effects were devastating, and many of the planted stories continue to
circulate as truth, the divisions cleaved still festering. And because of the
violent police crackdown on protests, including the infamous October 27
raid on the 1851 Treaty Camp, a hiatus had been placed on high-risk direct
actions like placing bodies before earthmovers.
So the next day—Black Friday—we went to the mall. In Bismarck,
North Dakota, shoppers, mostly white, flooded the Kirkwood Mall, eager to
cash in on holiday discounts. Our plan was to disrupt Black Friday
shopping, in unison with other Black Friday actions, to keep the message of
#NoDAPL in the news and the fire burning in people’s hearts and minds.
Back at camp, I had run into a childhood friend, Michael, and his partner
Emma, and we had packed into his car. Through traffic was entirely blocked
on Highway 1806, the fastest route to reservation border towns Mandan and
Bismarck, and military checkpoints choked off business to Prairie Knights
Casino—a major employer in the reservation and source of revenue for
Standing Rock—and hampered residents’ access to off-reservation jobs and
groceries. What resembled an economic embargo and, in different
circumstances, could be considered an act of war against a sovereign nation,
added an extra half hour to forty-five minutes to our drive.
The mall was packed. Bismarck police, all of them white, guarded the
entrances with AR-15 rifles. Once inside, our goal was to create a prayer
circle in the mall’s large food court, without getting caught; this meant we
would have to “blend in.” That’s hard enough for Natives in a sea of whites.
Our cover was blown. A white woman cried out: “They smell like
campfire!” Shoppers stopped and looked. She pointed to a group of women
—faces wind and sun-burnt, jackets and skirts unwashed—heading toward

the mall’s restrooms. Two cops, their AR-15s slung over their shoulders,
approached, and grabbed and twisted one of the women’s arm. She was
dark-skinned, and her black hair was neatly braided to her waist. I waited to
hear her arm pop from dislocation or fracture, as the cop slammed her facefirst on the thin carpet.
“I’m trying to go to the bathroom!”
“Shut the fuck up!”
Soon all four of them were sitting on the ground with their hands zip-tied
behind them, and then the cops dragged them away. The smell of fire, a
central aspect of camp life—ceremony, planning, cooking, eating, sleeping,
singing, storytelling, and keeping warm—had given them away. “Oceti” in
“Oceti Sakowin,” after all, means “council fire.” In another time, they
might have been accused of “smelling like an Indian” because fire is central
to Lakota ceremonial life; but now, smoke also indicated that one had come
from the #NoDAPL camps.
“What’s your problem?” asked a white man, approaching the cops. With
a leg sweep, he was also facedown, with a knee on his neck and knee on his
spine.
“Quit resisting!” the officer shouted. They didn’t bother to pick him up,
instead dragging him belly-first across the ground.
“He smelled like campfire,” shrugged the cop who had thrown him
down.
Eventually, we formed a prayer circle—before cops began tackling,
punching, and kicking us too. A man’s crutches were taken from him, and
he hobbled on one foot as another cop tackled him. White men from the
crowd began holding Water Protectors for the police or throwing them into
the police line.
“Go back to the reservation! Prairie niggers!” one of them screamed in
our faces.
White children looking on also screamed, though they seemed more
scared of the police than of the Water Protectors. A woman got caught
between the police and our retreating line, and cops grabbed her by the hair
and dragged her to the ground crying. Her partner stepped in and was kneed
several times in the face. A woman began running as we made our way
through the exit doors and was tackled on the pavement by a cop.
We had flinched each time they nabbed one of us from the crowd,
expecting the now-familiar chemical shower of CS gas or pepper spray—

another odor that was mixed in with the smoke, and that, in a single attack,
could dull a person’s sense of smell for days, sometimes weeks. But the
presence of white shoppers and their families—unwanted collateral damage
—protected us from being shot or sprayed. Instead, the cops used their
hands and feet. Thirty-three were arrested. After Michael, Emma, and I
escaped, we rendezvoused at the car.
Michael turned to me, his hands shaking. “Now I know what it’s like to
be hunted.”
At camp, the smell of campfire brought us back to another world—an
older world, an Indigenous world always thought to be on the brink of
extinction, a place at once familiar to Native peoples and radically
unfamiliar to settlers. In the twilight hours, Water Protectors told stories and
shared the prophetic visions of a better world, not just in the past, but one
currently in the making, as purple-grey smoke filled the spaces between
tipis, tents, and lines of cars and trucks.
The camps had attracted Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from
across North America. On my first day in camp, in August, I dug compost
holes with my Ojibwe relative Josh—a cook from Bismarck—and built a
cook shack at the camp’s main kitchen with my Diné relative Brandon and a
Palestinian network administrator, Emad, from Yankton, South Dakota—
himself a refugee from the US-backed Israeli colonization of his
homelands. My Palestinian comrade Samia once called our sacrosanct duty
at camp an “intifada on the plains,” because she saw it as an uprising
against the same occupier. The cook shack, pieced together with genuine
solidarity and gnarly fallen trees, survived a brutal Northern Plains winter
and helped feed thousands.
I also knew Michael, a white kid from my small hometown of
Chamberlain, South Dakota, along the Missouri River. I grew up in a
single-parent, single-income household, in a mobile home literally on the
wrong side of the tracks. Michael’s parents made ends meet by working at
the Catholic-run Indian boarding school where my father and his siblings
had their Lakota culture and language beaten from them. Along with other
kids like us, both Native and white, the two of us bonded over
skateboarding, punk rock, and left politics—everything we felt rebelled
against the pervasive, and often violent, conservatism of our hometown.
Politicians and media attempted to play up divisions in the camps,
depicting white Water Protectors as “hippies” who treated the movement

like “Burning Man.” Those elements existed, and some Native people
played along. But such portrayals gloss over meaningful solidarities. For
example, our national camp, Kul Wicasa, welcomed everyone. Our camp’s
leader, my friend and Tahansi (cousin) Lewis Grassrope, helped create the
Oceti Sakowin Horn, inviting not only Indigenous, but also non-Indigenous
peoples to participate. (Our families had shared political commitments that
went back generations. In the 1930s his great-grandfather Daniel Grassrope,
a traditional headman, and my great-grandfather Ruben Estes, a translator,
traveled together to Washington, DC, to encourage Congress to pass the
1934 Indian Reorganization Act.)2 Lewis knew the importance of allies.
Two years earlier he and I had spent cold nights in poorly insulated tipis
protesting our own nation. Of all the tribal councils, that of the Lower Brule
Sioux Tribe was the only to cast support for TransCanada, the company
building the Keystone XL Pipeline. Our protest camp had little to no help
from our own people, nor from the outside world. There were no television
cameras or social media live streams, and there was no Mark Ruffalo. But
now the world had come to #NoDAPL. A white woman named Maria, a
local reporter and a friend from Chamberlain, embedded herself in the camp
as a cook, feeding thousands. Abe, a white military veteran from Colorado,
ran our camp security. In Chicago, my comrades Kofi from
#BlackLivesMatter and Renae, a Nuu-chah-nulth revolutionary socialist,
led solidarity delegations. And there were many more.
Political elites and corporate media have frequently depicted poor whites
and poor Natives as irreconcilable enemies, without common ground
competing for scarce resources in economically depressed rural areas. Yet,
the defense of Native land, water, and treaties brought us together. Although
not perfect, Oceti Sakowin camp was a home to many for months. And the
bonds were long lasting, despite the horrific histories working against them.
Chamberlain is a white-dominated border town next to the Lower Brule
and Crow Creek Indian reservations. The settlement began as Fort Kiowa,
across the river, a notorious trade hub whose early history is depicted in the
2015 blockbuster film The Revenant with great historical accuracy, despite
its tired trope of a white savior “playing Indian.” The film shows the
nineteenth-century fur trade’s organized plunder of not only the river
ecosystem, but entire nations of people, and its apocalyptic death-world of
rape, genocide, poaching, trespass, theft, and smallpox. In the final scene,
the main protagonist, Hugh Glass, a real historical figure, approaches Fort

Kiowa, where he sees Native women and children begging outside the gates
and being bought and sold inside by drunk white traders. These river trade
forts were the first “man camps”: large, usually temporary, encampments of
men working in extractive industries, from the fur trade to oil and gas
development, where rates of sexual and domestic violence, and murders and
disappearances of Native women and girls are intensified. As Ihanktonwan
elder and member of the Brave Heart Society Faith Spotted Eagle has
pointed out, “history teaches us that during times of crisis violence
escalates;”3 indeed, the proliferation of violence against the land has been
directly related to attacks on Indigenous women’s bodies.
This region—our homeland—is also part of He Sapa, the Black Hills, or
the heart of everything that is. He Sapa is the beating heart of the Lakota
cosmos, where we emerged from red earth, took our first breath, and gained
our humanity as Oyate Luta: the “Red People,” or the “Red Nation.” During
the last ice age, massive glaciers carved up the land. After the ice retreated,
it left rolling hills and tunneling valleys that became buffalo roads, where
herds that once blackened the plains traveled during seasonal migrations to
and from water. The buffalo followed the stars, and the people followed the
buffalo. To honor our relations, we called ourselves “Pte Oyate” (the
Buffalo Nation), and “Wicahpi Oyate” (the Star Nation). In these ebbs and
flows of migration, all roads led to Mni Sose, which translates to “roiling
water,” for the once-astir and often-muddy river. Many Lakotayapi nouns,
like “Mni Sose,” indicate not merely static, inanimate form, but also action.
In this landscape, water is animated and has agency; it streams as liquid,
forms clouds as gas, and even moves earth as solid ice—because it is alive
and gives life. If He Sapa is the heart of the world, then Mni Sose is its
aorta. This is a Lakota and Indigenous relationship to the physical world.
What has been derided for centuries as “primitive superstition” has only
recently been “discovered” by Western scientists and academics as “valid”
knowledge. Nevertheless, knowledge alone has never ended imperialism.
The US military understood this vital connection to place and other-thanhumans in the 1860s when it annihilated the remaining 10 to 15 million
buffalos in less than two decades. A century later another branch of the
military, the US Army Corps of Engineers, constructed five earthen rolled
dams on the main stem of the Missouri River, turning life-giving waters
into life-taking waters. A river that was once astir was now choked and
plugged. After World War II, the United States also aimed to “get out of the

Indian business”: to terminate federal responsibilities to Indigenous peoples
that had been guaranteed through treaties, to relocate Indigenous peoples
off their reservations, and to sell off remaining lands and resources to
private industry and white settlers. The Pick-Sloan Plan, a basin-wide
multipurpose dam project—which aimed to provide postwar employment,
hydroelectricity, flood control, and irrigation to white farming communities
and far-off cities—worked in tandem with Indian termination and
relocation. With the flooding of the fertile river bottomlands, people were
forced off the reservation. Remaining lands were largely uninhabitable,
making relocation the only option for many. Thirty percent of Missouri
River reservation populations were removed; 90 percent of commercial
timber was destroyed; thousands of acres of subsistence farms and gardens
were flooded; and 75 percent of wildlife and plants indigenous to the river
bottomlands disappeared.
Oglala visionary and prophet Nicholas Black Elk, himself a Catholic,
compared the invasion of white Christians as akin to the biblical flood. But
unlike the Genesis flood that receded after 150 days, Black Elk’s
apocalyptic deluge had no end. It has worked continuously to eliminate
Indigenous peoples and their other-than-human relatives from the land,
thereby severing their relationship with the land. According to the vision
Black Elk described to poet John Neihardt in 1931, white men came like an
endless wall of floodwater, creating “a little island,” or a reservation,
“where we were free to try to save our nation, but we couldn’t do it.”
Constantly hounded as fugitives, escaping from one patch of dry land to the
next, the people “were always leaving our lands and the flood devours the
four-leggeds as they flee.” The four-leggeds were bears, elk, deer, buffalos,
wolves, and so forth—some of whom are presently extinct in the lands of
the Oceti Sakowin. The Department of the Interior is tasked with managing
the diminished lands and territories of both wildlife and Indians, survivors
of an ongoing holocaust. “All of our religion of the old times that the early
Indians had was left behind them as they fled and the water covered the
region,” Black Elk lamented. “Now, as I look ahead, we are nothing but
prisoners of war.”4 His “we” included the four-leggeds.
Over the last 200 years, the US military has waged relentless war on the
Oceti Sakowin as much as it has on their kinship relations, such as Pte
Oyate (the buffalo nation) and Mni Sose (the Missouri River). What
happened at Standing Rock was the most recent iteration of an Indian War

that never ends. DAPL was originally meant to cross the Missouri River
upstream from Bismarck, a city that is 90 percent white. But the Army
Corps rerouted it to cross downstream, citing a shorter route, fewer water
crossings, and reduced proximity to residential areas. Now, it crossed the
river just upstream from an 84 percent Native residential area—a
suggestion made not by Dakota Access, but by the Army Corps, which
went so far as to guide companies funding the pipeline to create
environmental justice studies that would find no “disproportionate risk to a
racial minority.”5
In fact, the Army Corps had been one of the main driving forces behind
choking the Missouri River after World War II. In 1946, without
authorization from Congress, the Army Corps modified the Garrison Dam
project to protect the small majority-white town of Williston, North Dakota,
from flooding. Nothing was done, however, to protect against the flooding
of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The 212-foot dam flooded 152,360
acres of reservation lands, dislocating 325 families (80 percent of the tribal
membership) and destroying 94 percent of their agricultural lands.6 In 1955,
the Army Corps selected the Big Bend dam site on Lower Brule and Crow
Creek reservation lands, without notifying either tribal council. Six different
sites were considered, four of which would not have flooded the agency
town of Lower Brule. The reservation site was chosen for hydraulic reasons
but also because its location wouldn’t flood the upriver town of Pierre, the
white-dominated state capital of South Dakota, or its neighboring town of
Fort Pierre.7 Big Bend Dam flooded and dislocated both reservation
communities for the second time, forcing some families who had moved to
higher ground to relocate yet again. The first flood took out the Crow Creek
Agency (the combined headquarters of the Crow Creek and Lower Brule
tribes). A quarter of Lower Brule’s population was removed during the first
deluge, and half during the second.
My grandparents, Joyce and Andrew Estes—both Kul Wicasa from
Lower Brule—fought the construction of the Pick-Sloan dams in the 1950s
and 1960s. The dams flooded nearly all of my great-grandmother Cornelia
Swalla’s allotment. My grandfather, a World War II veteran and, according
to my father, Ben, a Lakota code talker, returned from the war to find his
homelands and nation under threat from the very government he fought to
defend. Our lands, and lives, were targeted not because they held precious
resources or labor to be extracted. In fact, the opposite was true: our lands

and lives were targeted and held value because they could be wasted—
submerged, destroyed. Grandpa Andrew, nicknamed “Brown” for his dark
complexion, later gifted his mother Cornelia’s remaining allotted lands to
the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe so that our nation could rebuild the inundated
Lower Brule town site. In 1937, my great-grandfather Ruben Estes,
Cornelia’s husband and the first tribal chairman, opposed the state of South
Dakota’s attempt to build dams on the Missouri River without Lower
Brule’s consent. The old ones called Ruben “Tongue” because, after
butchering his cattle, he gave away all the meat to elders and the hungry,
keeping only the tongues for himself. My ancestors were tribal historians,
writers, intellectuals, and fierce Indigenous nationalists at a time when
Indians weren’t supposed to be anything but drunk, stupid, or dead. They
were also Water Protectors, treaty defenders, and humble people of the
earth, and they fought for and took care of Mni Sose as best as they could.
In 1963, my grandfather Frank Estes, who was named after Franklin
Delano Roosevelt in honor of the “Indian New Deal,” wrote and published
the first book on Lower Brule, Make Way for the Brules.8 His book was a
study of Indigenous movement before and during the reservation period. It
was a response to the forced removals caused by the Fort Randall and Big
Bend Dams and a challenge to the confinement narrative that Native people
should just stay “home” in prisoner of war camps, now called
“reservations,” out of sight and out of mind. In 1971, my grandfather
George Estes, with Richard Loder, cowrote Kul-Wicasa-Oyate—a more
extensive history of Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, including the reconstitution
of communities and families after surviving forced removal by the US
military to our river reservation homeland in the nineteenth century, as well
as the two forced relocations caused by the Pick-Sloan dams in the
twentieth century.
My grandfather Andrew, who had an eighth-grade education, wrote in
the preface of Kul-Wicasa-Oyate what would have been a fitting epigraph
for this book about our nation’s history of the defense of our land, our
water, and our people:
My people’s history has been lost or destroyed since the coming of the white man. My people, in
many ways, have been lost and destroyed by the coming of the white man … This book is not the
whole story of my people nor is it all that is best in our heritage. Some of our traditions, our hopes
and our roots, we will never write down for the world to see. What we will allow the world to see is,
in good part, in these pages. Read them my brothers and you white man, you read them too. It is a
history of a proud people: a people who believe in the land and themselves. My people were civilized

before the white came and we will be civilized and be here after the white man goes away, poisoned
by his misuse of the land and eaten up by his own greed and diseases.9

In September 2016, at a #NoDAPL protest in Chicago organized by the
Native community and groups such as #BlackLivesMatter, I told this family
history in front of a crowd of thousands outside the Army Corps
headquarters. That city’s vibrant Native community was itself a result of
federal relocation programs onto traditional Potawatomi territory, an
Indigenous nation subjected to genocide and removed from its homelands
in the place currently called “Chicago.” My ancestors could never have
imagined that thousands, perhaps millions, would one day rally to defend
the river, our relative Mni Sose. Half a century ago, there were no mass
protests against the dams that still wreak havoc on our river, a history I have
spent the more than a decade speaking and writing about, with little interest
from the outside world.
As we marched, a light rain fell.
“Tell me what the prophecy looks like!” we chanted.
“This is what the prophecy looks like!”
And it was prophecy. Prophecy told of Zuzeca Sapa, the Black Snake,
extending itself across the land and imperiling all life, beginning with the
water. From its heads, or many heads, it would spew death and destruction.
Zuzeca Sapa is DAPL—and all oil pipelines trespassing through Indigenous
territory. But while the Black Snake prophecy foreshadows doom, it also
foreshadows historic resistance and resurgent Indigenous histories not seen
for generations, if ever. To protect Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth,
Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples will have to unite to turn back the
forces destroying the earth—capitalism and colonialism. But prophets and
prophecies do not predict the future, nor are they mystical, ahistorical
occurrences. They are simply diagnoses of the times in which we live, and
visions of what must be done to get free. In the past, youth followed the
guidance of Indigenous elders, the old ones. But in these prophetic times, it
is the old ones who are following the leadership of the young, the youth
leaders of the #NoDAPL movement—among them, Zaysha Grinnell, Bobbi
Jean Three Legs, Jasilyn Charger, and Joseph White Eyes, among others,
who brought the message of the Black Snake to the world through
thousand-mile relay runs from April to July of 2016.
For the Oceti Sakowin, prophecies like the Black Snake are
revolutionary theory, a way to help us think about our relationship to the

land, to other humans and other-than-humans, and to history and time. How
does one relate to the past? Settler narratives use a linear conception of time
to distance themselves from the horrific crimes committed against
Indigenous peoples and the land. This includes celebrating bogus origin
stories like Thanksgiving. But Indigenous notions of time consider the
present to be structured entirely by our past and by our ancestors. There is
no separation between past and present, meaning that an alternative future
is also determined by our understanding of our past. Our history is the
future. Concepts such as Mni Wiconi (water is life) may be new to some,
but like the nation of people the concept belongs to, Mni Wiconi predates
and continues to exist in spite of white supremacist empires like the United
States.
The protestors called themselves Water Protectors because they weren’t
simply against a pipeline; they also stood for something greater: the
continuation of life on a planet ravaged by capitalism. This reflected the
Lakota and Dakota philosophy of Mitakuye Oyasin, meaning “all my
relations” or “we are all related.” Water Protectors led the movement in a
disciplined way, by what Lakotas call Wocekiye, meaning “honoring
relations.” To the outside world this looks like “praying,” the smoking of
the Canupa, the sacred pipe, offering tobacco, ceremony, and song to
human and other-than-human life. The late Lakota linguist and scholar
Albert White Hat Sr. notes that Wocekiye was purposely mistranslated to
“praying” by Christian missionaries to describe “bowing and kneeling to a
supreme power, which is much different from the original meaning of
acknowledging or meeting a relative.” There was no equivalent to
“praying” in the Lakota language, although the word has taken on that
meaning because of Christian influence.10
For the Oceti Sakowin, Mni Sose, the Missouri River, is one such
nonhuman relative who is alive, and who is also of the Mni Oyate, the
Water Nation. Nothing owns her, and therefore she cannot be sold or
alienated like a piece of property. (How do you sell a relative?) And
protecting one’s relatives is part of enacting kinship and being a good
relative, or Wotakuye, including from the threat of contamination by
pipeline leak—in other words, death. This would also spell death for the
Oceti Sakowin and its nonhuman relations. In this way, the rallying cry of
Mni Wiconi—“water is life”—is also an affirmation that water is alive.
Hunkpapa historian Josephine Waggoner has suggested that the word mni

(water) is a combination of the words mi (meaning “I”) and ni (meaning
“being”), indicating that it also contains life.11
Mni Wiconi and these Indigenous ways of relating to human and otherthan-human life exist in opposition to capitalism, which transforms both
humans and nonhumans into labor and commodities to be bought and sold.
These ways of relating also exist in opposition to capitalism’s twin, settler
colonialism, which calls for the annihilation of Indigenous peoples and their
other-than-human kin. This is distinct from the romantic notion of
Indigenous people and culture that is popular among non-Natives and has
been aided by disciplines such as anthropology—a discipline that has
robbed us of a viable future by trapping us in a past that never existed. In
the last two centuries, armies of anthropologists, historians, archaeologists,
hobbyists, and grave robbers have pillaged and looted Indigenous bodies,
knowledges, and histories, in the same way that Indigenous lands and
resources were pillaged and looted. Their distorted, misinterpreted
Indigenous histories are both irrelevant and unfamiliar to actually existing
Indigenous peoples, and they are deeply disempowering.
There exists no better example of Indigenous revolutionary theory, and
its purposeful distortion, than the Ghost Dance. In popular history books,
the Ghost Dance appears briefly, only to die at the Wounded Knee Massacre
in 1890. The Ghost Dance, in the revolutionary sense, was about life, not
death; it was about imagining and enacting an anticolonial Indigenous
future free from the death world brought on by settler invasion. It originated
with Paiute prophet and healer Wovoka. In his vision, the Great Spirit’s Red
Son transforms the earth. This Red coming of the Messiah wipes away the
colonial world, bringing back the animals, plants, and human and otherthan-human ancestors destroyed by white men and, in turn, destroying the
destroyers. Wovoka did not predict the future. Rather, he profoundly
understood the times in which he lived, and his prophecy occurred in
response to the hardships brought on by reservation life. Its message of a
coming Indigenous future spread like wildfire up the Western Canadian
coast, down to the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico, and
onto the Plains. The Ghost Dance unified Indigenous peoples behind a
revolutionary movement—one that sought nothing less than the complete
departure of the colonial reality. Its visions were powerful and remain so
today. Indigenous dancing had itself been outlawed and was therefore a
criminal act. Lakota and Dakota Ghost Dancers attempted to shut down the

reservation system by refusing to send children to boarding schools or to
heed the orders of Indian agents. But the absence of the colonial system was
not enough to bring about true freedom; rather, freedom could only find its
genuine expression in actions that would create a new Indigenous world to
replace the nightmarish present.
The beauty and power of the Ghost Dance moved Oglala prophet
Nicholas Black Elk, who saw it as parallel to his own vision: that the people
must unite to nourish back to health the tree of life, so that it can bloom
once again. The dance brought Black Elk new visions of Wanikiya, the
Lakota word for the Red Messiah that literally means “to make live.” In
1932, poet John Neihardt published a literary interpretation of Black Elk’s
vision in Black Elk Speaks, an influential book that Standing Rock scholar
Vine Deloria Jr. described as “a North American bible of all tribes.”12 After
the Seventh Cavalry Regiment massacred more than 300 Lakota Ghost
Dancers at Wounded Knee in 1890, the Ghost Dance and Black Elk’s vision
were thought to be dead or dying, like Native people. Neihardt contributed
to this notion by fabricating the most-quoted lines in Black Elk Speaks. “A
people’s dream died there,” mourned Black Elk in this made-up version,
seeing the carnage at Wounded Knee and his relatives’ bodies strewn across
the bloody snow. “The nation’s hoop is broken and scattered.”13 But Black
Elk never believed that, and he knew that collective visions for liberation
didn’t die at Wound Knee. “The tree that was to bloom just faded away,” he
said reflecting on the massacre forty years later, “but the roots will stay
alive, and we are here to make that tree bloom.”14
Roots are an apt metaphor to explain how the aspirations for freedom—
the tree of life—had stayed alive. Ceremonies, dance, language, warrior and
political societies, and spiritual knowledge were forced underground, each
of them made illegal by the punitive Civilization Regulations and only fully
“legalized” in 1978 with the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Like
many, to protect himself and his family, Black Elk had converted to
Catholicism, but he never lost faith in his vision. For him, liberation wasn’t
a one-off event, a single action, or a moment. If history books do not
altogether deny the Wounded Knee Massacre, sympathetic treatments tend
to label the Ghost Dance as a “harmless” trend that would have faded into
the past, like the Indians practicing it. But if it were just dancing that was
the threat, then why did the United States deploy nearly half its army
against starving, horseless, and unarmed people in order to crush it?

Indigenous resistance draws from a long history, projecting itself
backward and forward in time. While traditional historians merely interpret
the past, radical Indigenous historians and Indigenous knowledge-keepers
aim to change the colonial present, and to imagine a decolonial future by
reconnecting to Indigenous places and histories. For this to occur, those
suppressed practices must make a crack in history.
Karl Marx explained the nature of revolutions through the figure of the
mole, which burrows through history, making elaborate tunnels and
preparing to surface again. The most dramatic moments come when the
mole breaks the surface: revolution. But revolution is a mere moment
within the longer movement of history. The mole is easily defeated on the
surface by counterrevolutionary forces if she hasn’t adequately prepared her
subterranean spaces, which provide shelter and safety; even when pushed
back underground, the mole doesn’t stop her work. In song and ceremony,
Lakotas revere the mole for her hard work collecting medicines from the
roots underfoot. During his campaign against US military invasion, to
protect himself Crazy Horse collected fresh dirt from mole mounds.
Because he knew it to contain medicines, he washed his body with the dirt.
Hidden from view to outsiders, this constant tunneling, plotting, planning,
harvesting, remembering, and conspiring for freedom—the collective faith
that another world is possible—is the most important aspect of
revolutionary work. It is from everyday life that the collective confidence to
change reality grows, giving rise to extraordinary events.
At Oceti Sakowin Camp, courage manifested through the combination of
direct actions and the legal strategy to defeat DAPL in court, which the
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe spearheaded. Direct actions drew media
attention and thus amplified the messages of #NoDAPL and Mni Wiconi,
putting pressure on the federal courts and institutions to weigh in on the
issue of Standing Rock’s sovereignty. Direct actions also had the
immeasurable psychological effect of empowering the powerless to action,
by encouraging everyday people to take control of their lives and to shrug
off the self-doubt and genuine fear that accompanies centuries of violent
occupation. It also formed in everyday camp life.
The camps also performed another critical function: caretaking, or
providing nourishment, replenishment, comradery, encouragement, warmth,
songs, stories, and love. The ultimate goal for Dakotas, and therefore the
Oceti Sakowin, “was quite simple: One must obey kinship rules; one must

be a good relative,” wrote the Dakota scholar Ella Deloria.15 This was the
underground work of the mole and the foundation of any long-term
struggle, though it often receives less attention than headline-grabbing
spectacles of mass protest and frontline action. Yet, both are equally
important and necessary. As Dakota scholar Kim TallBear argues,
caretaking labor is often gendered, and is seen as the work of women. But
the fact that many contemporary social movements—in particular
#NoDAPL, Idle No More, and #BlackLivesMatter—were led by women,
and Two-Spirit and LGBTQ people, is important.16
My friend and relative, Lakota Water Protector Marcella Gilbert, pointed
out how these roles have been taken up by generations of Indigenous
women. Marcella’s mother, Madonna Thunder Hawk, and her aunties,
Phyllis Young and Mabel Anne Eagle Hunter, were all leaders and
participants of the Red Power Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. They
were all pivotal members of the American Indian Movement, helped found
the International Indian Treaty Council at Standing Rock in 1974, and
formed Women of All Red Nations that same year—movements I will
describe later in this book. Their leadership continued at Oceti Sakowin
Camp by seeing to it that the next generation carried on the tradition.
Phyllis Young was a respected Standing Rock elder and former
councilwoman. Madonna and Mabel Anne fell back into leadership roles in
their own camps, teaching and mentoring young people. For Marcella,
freedom was education. She was a product of the “We Will Remember”
Survival School, founded in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1974. Her
mother, Madonna, helped to create the school, where students were taught
treaty rights and Native culture and history. We Will Remember was one of
many survival schools created to address rampant discrimination against
Native students in public schools, and to undo the indoctrination of
Christianity and US patriotism at government- and church-run boarding
schools. For Marcella, the #NoDAPL camps continued the tradition,
providing a radical grassroots education on Indigenous self-determination
and political autonomy—what it’s like to live and be free—to thousands of
young Native people.17 In other words, moments like #NoDAPL are ones
where the Indigenous movement reproduces itself and grows.
Our History Is the Future explores the movement to protect the Missouri
River marching under the banner of Mni Wiconi. How did it emerge, and
how does settler colonialism, a key element of US history, continue to

inform our present? #NoDAPL and Mni Wiconi are part of a longer history
of Indigenous resistance against the trespass of settlers, dams, and pipelines
across the Mni Sose, the Missouri River. The Oceti Sakowin—our
relationship to Mni Sose, and our historic struggle for liberation—are
fundamentally tied to our prior history of Indigenous nationhood and
political authority. This book is less a story about objects, individuals, and
ideas than it is a history of relationships—those between the Oceti Sakowin,
Mni Sose, and the United States as an occupying power. By focusing on
these relationships, we can see that Indigenous history is not a narrow
subfield of US history—or of the history of capitalism or imperialism, for
that matter. Rather, Indigenous peoples are central subjects of modern world
history.
This is not simply an examination of the past. Like #NoDAPL and Mni
Wiconi, what I call traditions of Indigenous resistance have far-reaching
implications, extending beyond the world that is normally understood as
“Indigenous.” A tradition is usually defined as a static or unchanging
practice. This view often suggests that Indigenous culture or tradition
doesn’t change over time—that Indigenous people are trapped in the past
and thus have no future. But as colonialism changes throughout time, so too
does resistance to it. By drawing upon earlier struggles and incorporating
elements of them into their own experience, each generation continues to
build dynamic and vital traditions of resistance. Such collective experiences
build up over time and are grounded in specific Indigenous territories and
nations.
For the Oceti Sakowin, the affirmation Mni Wiconi, “water is life,”
relates to Wotakuye, or “being a good relative.” Indigenous resistance to the
trespass of settlers, pipelines, and dams is part of being a good relative to
the water, land, and animals, not to mention the human world. Contrast this
with the actions of Energy Transfer Partners (the financial backers of
DAPL)—and of capitalism, more broadly, which seeks above all else to
extract profits from the land and all forms of life. This is not to suggest that
Indigenous societies possess the solution to climate change (and in fact,
many Indigenous nations actively participate in resource extraction and
capitalist economies in order to strengthen their self-determination). But in
its best moments, #NoDAPL showed us a future that becomes possible
when everyday Native people take control of their own destinies and lands,
while drawing upon their own traditions of resistance. I am interested in the

kind of tradition of Indigenous resistance that is a radical consciousness,
both anti-capitalist and anti-colonial, and is deeply embedded in history and
place—one that expresses the ultimate desire for freedom.
In this book, I move through seven episodes of Oceti Sakowin history
and resistance. This history is by no means exhaustive, but I have chosen to
focus on these particular cases to show how they inform our present
moment, and to chart a historical road map for collective liberation.
Chapter 1 tells the story of the #NoDAPL movement at Standing Rock
and its origins in the battle against tar sands extraction and the Keystone XL
Pipeline, whose defense of Lakota and Dakota lands are part of a tradition
of resistance against US imperialism that began centuries ago. I turn to the
beginning of that history in chapter 2, which describes the Oceti Sakowin’s
emergence as a nation and its first encounters, in the nineteenth century,
with the United States as a predator nation.
Before long, those encounters evolved into the Indian Wars of the
nineteenth century—the subject of chapter 3—that raged across the
Northern Plains, in which the Oceti Sakowin defended against US military
invasion and counterinsurgency tactics. By the turn of the twentieth century,
Indigenous people had been largely confined to ever-dwindling
reservations. The Oceti Sakowin, however, confronted the US military—the
Army Corps of Engineers—again in the mid twentieth century, as US
policy turned to the use of large-scale river development to continue the
project of Indigenous dispossession—with policymakers attempting, all the
while, to relieve themselves of the responsibilities outlined in the treaties.
In chapter 4, I outline these schemes through the story of the midcentury Pick-Sloan Plan, which authorized the Army Corps of Engineers
and the Bureau of Reclamation to dam the main stem of the Missouri River.
These dams specifically targeted and destroyed Native lives and lands, with
611,642 acres of land condemned through eminent domain, 309,584 acres
of which were vital reservation bottomlands. Flooding also forced more
than a thousand Native families to relocate, in patent violation of treaties
and without prior consent. The memory of this experience was still fresh at
the #NoDAPL camps.
Chapter 5 outlines the story of the urban-centered American Indian
Movement (AIM) and their 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee in the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation—the culmination of more than a decade of Red
Power organizing. This became the catalyst for a mass gathering of

thousands at Standing Rock in 1974, which resulted in the founding of the
International Indian Treaty Council—a body that would eventually lead
international efforts for Indigenous recognition that have had a deep, global
significance.
Chapter 6 traces the history of twentieth-century Indigenous
internationalism—particularly, the Oceti Sakowin’s central role in
spearheading the four-decade-long campaign for Indigenous recognition at
the United Nations, which was the basis for the 2007 UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The global Red Power movement eventually
became a catalyst for the contemporary #NoDAPL movement at Standing
Rock. Chapter 7 draws out these links, reflecting upon the ways our past
and present struggles are connected, as they are to both past and present
international anti-colonial and anti-capitalist movements around the world.

Two-Spirit Nation leads a march to the police line. October 2016. Photo by author.

1

Siege
To us, as caretakers of the heart of Mother Earth, falls the special responsibility of turning back the
powers of destruction … Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of
such terrible danger?
—Chief Arvol Looking Horse,
Keeper of the Sacred Buffalo Calf Pipe1

“We’re going to declare war on the Keystone XL Pipeline,” announced
Oglala Sioux Tribal President Bryan Brewer, before a throng of cameras
and microphones.2 It was late March 2014, at an opening ceremony for a
spirit camp on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A crowd
erupted into bursts of akisas and lililis—Lakota war cries and the highpitched tremolos of assent. Keystone XL (KXL), or any oil pipeline, would
not pass through Oceti Sakowin territory without a fight. This is a war story.
But it is not always with weapons that warriors wage their struggle.
A dozen tribal national flags fluttered behind Brewer in the prairie wind,
a sign of growing unity among Indigenous nations. His speech marked the
beginning of a historic resistance that was to coalesce against the Dakota
Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016. It was not orchestrated behind
closed doors by wealthy think tanks or big environmental NGOs. Rather,
like its people, it grew from the earth and this humble landscape, often
viewed as flyover country. It also grew from a deep history of struggles
over land and water, and a fight for a livable future on a planet so
thoroughly devastated by climate change.
Earlier in March, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, under the direction of its
president, Cyril “Whitey” Scott, abruptly ended a lease with a white farmer
renting reservation land adjacent to the KXL pipeline’s path. The pipeline
snaked carefully through a complex checkerboard of private and tribal land
ownership, a legacy of the 1887 Dawes General Allotment Act that broke

up large chunks of reservation land by selling it off to white settlers. With
yellow cornstalks still jutting through the snow from last year’s harvest,
workers from the Wica Agli men’s health initiative, citizens of Rosebud,
and supporting Native people erected tipis on reclaimed earth—directly in
the path of the pipeline. They called the camp Oyate Wahacanka Woecun,
meaning “shield the people.” Large, round hay bales were taken from
another plot leased by a white rancher and stacked to surround the camp,
forming a barrier against harsh winds. The thick straw walls, it was said,
may have also stopped bullets fired in the cover of darkness by vengeful
white farmers.
It didn’t matter if this was private property. It was still treaty territory,
territory that generations of Lakotas and Dakotas had died defending and
lived to care for. If not stopped, 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil would be
transported each day across 1,200 miles of land—from Hardisty, Alberta, to
Steele City, Nebraska—traversing 357 streams and rivers (all tributaries of
the Missouri River), and crossing the Ogallala Aquifer, North America’s
largest aquifer. Because everyone depended on the water, whether for
drinking or agriculture, Mni Wiconi (Water is life) trumped the sacredness
of private property. “It’s not an Indian thing, it’s not a white thing,”
Rosebud Sioux Council Representative Wayne Frederick explained. “It’s
everybody’s issue.”3
White landowners from Nebraska were also at the camp’s opening,
standing at the edge of the crowd holding signs that read “PIPELINE
FIGHTER.” They had joined the Cowboy-Indian Alliance, a campaign led
by a progressive group of white farmers and ranchers from Bold Nebraska
and Dakota Rural Action. Some of the landowners, however, were
libertarians who were more concerned with the sanctity of private property
and the evils of “big government” than with Indian treaties and climate
change. And while they captured much of the media attention around KXL
resistance, they represented a minority of the affected white landowners
from Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.4 On the plains, solidarity with
Indigenous nations is a hard sell that often comes down to land and money.
By this time, TransCanada, the company building the KXL, reported at least
92 percent of the 302 South Dakotan landowners in the pipeline’s path had
agreed to sell their lands voluntarily.5 The situation was similar in Nebraska
and Montana. The holdouts had filed lawsuits to stop eminent domain
proceedings, the seizure of private land for “public use,” the definition of

which includes privately owned oil pipelines. But these were a mere
handful of individuals, as compared to the many Indigenous nations who,
for the most part, wholly opposed KXL.
This leg of KXL crossed through the permanent reservation boundaries
of the Great Sioux Nation and unceded lands of the 1868 Fort Laramie
Treaty, which forbids white settlement without Indigenous consent. The
irony, Lakota historian Edward Valandra observed, was that any condemned
private land would be “twice stolen”—land white squatters first stole from
Natives would then be taken by a Canadian oil company.6 Settlers and
private property have always been the vanguards of invasion, and the
sanctity of private property never applied to Indigenous peoples. But
instead of turning their backs, like the first settlers did to them, Native
nations—such as Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Yankton, Cheyenne River, and
Standing Rock—welcomed the potential allies. After all, “Lakota” (or
“Nakota” or “Dakota”) translates to “ally.” To turn away, on account of
differences, those with shared enemies or mutual interests goes against the
very being of Lakota culture.
Much as it has been for centuries, this conflict was about the land: who
stole it, who owned it, and who claimed it. On the High Plains, land is a
matter of race, class, and colonialism. KXL was possible only because
Indigenous genocide and removal had cleared the way for private
ownership of land. Federal laws such as the Dawes Act and the 1862
Homestead Act, which opened up 270 million acres of Native land,
subsidized white settlement to supplant entire Native nations, and
eventually concentrated it in the hands of a few. According to a 2002 report
by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), white settlers own
96 percent of all private agricultural lands in the United States, and 98
percent of private lands overall.7 According to a 2012 USDA report, in
Lakota and Dakota reservations, non-Natives collect 84.5 percent of all
agricultural income, controlling nearly 60 percent of the agricultural lands
and 65 percent of all reservation-based farms.8 This includes the white
billionaire and media tycoon Ted Turner, who owns more than 2 million
acres of ranchland across the globe and more than 200,000 acres of Oceti
Sakowin treaty land in western South Dakota.9 The radical scholar Cedric
Robinson identified this system, in which a single white man owns more
wealth and land than entire Indigenous nations, as racial capitalism.10

Capitalism arose under a racist European feudal system. It used “race” as a
form of rule—to subordinate, to kill, and to enslave others—and used that
difference for profit-making. Racial capitalism was exported globally as
imperialism, including to North America in the form of settler colonialism.
As a result, the colonized and racialized poor are still burdened with the
most harmful effects of capitalism and climate change, and this is why they
are at the forefront of resistance. The legacy of racial capitalism and
ongoing settler colonialism were why the Oceti Sakowin had gathered to
oppose KXL in 2014, and why they would gather again to oppose DAPL.
KXL resistance emerged six years after the US housing market collapsed
and the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama, inherited the mantle
of a white supremacist empire. As global temperatures continued rising,
Obama committed to curbing carbon emissions, but as part of his “all-ofthe-above energy strategy,” he also embraced the oil industry as it opened
new markets and lands to exploit. US domestic crude oil production
skyrocketed from 2008 to 2016—an 88 percent increase, thanks to the shale
oil boom in the United States and the tar sands boom in Canada. With this
acceleration came new oil pipelines and new sites of extraction. As 9.3
million US families—many of them poor, Black, and Latinx—faced home
foreclosures, Indigenous lives, lands, waters, and air were once again
sacrificed to help pull settler economies out of the gutter.
In response to the economic crisis, revolutionary flowers had blossomed
in public squares around the world, offering for a brief moment a vision for
a different world. In 2010, young people of the Arab Spring toppled
dictators, and tragedy and betrayal soon followed. In 2011, disenchanted
millennials of the Occupy Wall Street movement put anti-capitalism back
on the agenda to challenge the rule of the 1 percent, the wealthy elite. In
response, police bludgeoned, tear gassed, and jailed the 99 percent. Out of
this chaos, a mass Indigenous movement reawakened, the seeds of which
were planted generations before. While the movements of public squares
arose in the cities, the Indigenous uprising mobilized city and country alike,
everywhere Indigenous peoples and their allies were found.
During the winter of 2012 to 2013, Indigenous rebellion was afoot on
Turtle Island. Its heartbeat was a drum, its voice a song. In what is currently
Canada, Indigenous women of Idle No More led a mass movement of round
dances (traditional healing and celebratory dancing and singing) in
shopping malls and blockades of rail lines transporting oil. They protested

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government’s abuse of Indigenous rights,
privatization of Indigenous lands, and rollback of environmental protections
to intensify fossil fuel extraction. As Cree Idle No More cofounder Sylvia
McAdam noted, it was out of necessity that the movement linked
Indigenous and environmental struggles to protest a system that, if not
stopped, will continue to “devastate the very things needed to sustain
humanity—our lands and waters—for the generations to come.”11 It was
more than a battle for the present; it was a battle for the future. The growing
alliances resonated across the Medicine Line, the US–Canada divide. In
February 2013, one of the largest actions in the history of the US climate
movement descended on Washington, DC. More than 40,000 people
gathered outside the White House to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline,
bringing together Indigenous and non-Indigenous movements committed to
halting the extraction and transportation of highly toxic and volatile tar
sands.
That summer, Métis and Cree women and elders led hundreds in a twoday journey through the Alberta tar sands during an annual Healing Walk.
Jesse Cardinal, a Métis cofounder of the walk, described how “participants
[saw] tailings ponds and desert-like areas of ‘reclaimed land’ that was once
the boreal forest and now grows almost nothing.”12 It’s a stark and immense
landscape, encompassing an area larger than the state of Florida. In Treaty 6
and Treaty 8 territories, tar sands extraction—by companies such as Suncor
Energy, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell Canada—has poisoned
water, land, air, plants, animals, and people. Duck and moose—staple foods
of many Indigenous communities—have become contaminated with toxins,
and harvests of wild berries and plants have been decimated. According to
Cardinal, in this modern-day gold rush, “many ‘outsiders’ are driven here
by their own economic desperation.”13
Like the land itself, the bodies of Indigenous women, girls, trans, and
Two-Spirit people are also seen as open for violence and violation.
Resource extraction intensifies a murderous heteropatriarchy, meaning that
grounding resistance in Indigenous feminist interventions has become all
the more urgent. An influx of men has also flooded the region’s “man
camps,” which house migrant oil laborers.14 Men outnumber women two to
one in the tar sands boomtown of Fort McMurray, Alberta. While a
movement has existed since the 1970s to honor the lives of the thousands of
missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada, the Two-Spirit

Métis activist Sâkihitowin Awâsis has noted the “links between presence of
the tar sands industry and heightened rates of missing and murdered
Indigenous Two-Spirits, women, and girls.”15 It’s no coincidence that
Indigenous women led the movement against the tar sands.
Put another way, settler states like Canada and the United States continue
to settle the land, raping and killing Native women and Two-Spirit people in
order to do so. From the 1970s onward, communities and activists have
documented thousands of cases where Indigenous women, girls, trans, and
Two-Spirited people who have been murdered, disappeared, and targeted by
all forms of violence in Canada. The movement, operating under the
hashtag #MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls),
holds rallies around Canada every February 14, honoring the lives of the
disappeared and demanding answers—a call that has been partially
answered by the creation of the National Inquiry into Murdered and
Missing Indigenous Women. Canada’s death culture, however, is little
different than its southern neighbor. In the United States, May 5 has been
declared the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native
Women and Girls. In a 2016 report, there were 5,712 cases of missing
Indigenous women nationwide; experts and activists, however, believe the
number to be considerably higher.16
And Canadian prosperity is gained not just at the expense of First
Nations. More than half the world’s mining companies are headquartered in
Canada, with properties in more than one hundred countries. Canadian
extractive industries target Indigenous and colonized people throughout the
world, and some have been linked to egregious human rights abuses,
especially against Indigenous peoples. For example, beginning in 2007,
Hudbay Minerals, a Canadian company with investments in the Fenix
nickel mine, was linked to assassinations, beatings, gang rapes of women
and girls, and arsons in Mayan communities in Guatemala.17
The links between the extractive industry and violence against
Indigenous peoples also turn up in the United States. The Bakken shale oil
boom that began in 2007, and would eventually prompt the construction of
the Dakota Access pipeline, made North Dakota the second-largest oil
producing state, after Texas. Much of this occurred on the Fort Berthold
Reservation, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara (MHA) Nation, which sits
atop some of the region’s deepest oil reserves. In 2011, Tex Hall, the tribal
chairman, adopted the mantra “sovereignty by the barrel,” expressing a

belief that oil wealth can strengthen economic self-determination and
autonomy. Oil revenues, Hall hoped, would bring his nation out of crushing
poverty and relieve the enduring devastation caused by the federal
government’s construction of the Garrison Dam in the heart of the
reservation in the 1950s, which forced the reservation’s residents from the
fertile Missouri River valley onto the open, less productive plains. In short
order, the MHA Nation became one of the wealthiest in Indian Country, and
with this ascent came political corruption and high rates of violence,
especially against women and girls.18
“We found a crying, naked, four-year-old girl running down one of the
roads right outside of the Man Camp. She had been sexually assaulted,”
Grace Her Many Horses recalled. It was just one of many horrific incidents
of rape, abuse, and sex trafficking during Her Many Horses’ time at Fort
Berthold in 2013 as a tribal cop. Most of her calls were related to man
camps or the oil and gas industry they served.19 Towns of thousands
literally sprang up overnight, made up of mobile homes and FEMA trailers,
as hotels overflowed. Existing towns doubled and quadrupled in population,
taxing already overstretched or nonexistent social infrastructure, including
reservation emergency services. Nearly all the new arrivals were men,
leading to some of the highest concentrations of men, outside of prisons, in
North America. While emergency calls and violent assaults were frequent,
prosecutions were not. Non-Native oil workers exploited a complex
patchwork of federal, state, and tribal jurisdictions in which tribal law
enforcement has little or no jurisdiction over non-Natives, allowing
perpetrators to escape tribal justice.20
Since the Bakken boom, the rolling prairies and lush river valleys that
had survived Army Corps flooding in 1953 have been replaced by miles of
metal fracking rigs and heavy construction equipment. Clustered
constellations of oil flares burning off methane are visible from space at
night. “What we’re dealing with is a death by a thousand cuts,” said Kandi
Mossett, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network and
citizen of the MHA Nation.21 She explained that cancer, asthma, and
respiratory diseases have increased among the children and elders because
of the toxic environment. Mossett herself is a cancer survivor. But this toxic
landscape is connected to another. “You would never see this in Houston’s
most affluent neighborhoods,” said Yudith Neito, a resident of Houston’s
mostly Latinx community Manchester, where the air smells of burnt plastic

and diesel from the oil refineries along the Houston Ship Channel next
door.22 These are the refineries that process oil from the Canadian tar sands
and the Bakken shale.
Nevertheless, in 2012, despite massive opposition, Obama fast-tracked
the construction of KXL’s southern leg from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the
Gulf Coast. “As long as I’m president,” he boasted in 2012, “we’re going to
keep on encouraging oil development and infrastructure, and we’re going to
do it in a way that protects the health and safety of American people.”23 But
those protections didn’t extend to communities like Neito’s or Mossett’s—
nor would they be extended, with the Dakota Access Pipeline, to Standing
Rock and the millions who depend on the Missouri River for fresh water.
In response to Obama’s order, that same year the Tar Sands Blockade
sprang into action, a coalition that reflected the diversity of communities
affected: conservative landowners, green anarchists and leftists, Latinx and
Mexican-American communities, and Indigenous organizations from
Canada and the United States. At an eighty-day sit-in action obstructing
KXL construction on its southern route, local authorities and private
security crushed the opposition with beatings, Tasers, and pepper spray—a
prelude of what was to come.24 It was also part of what Canadian author
and activist Naomi Klein calls “Blockadia,” a “roving transnational conflict
zone” of grassroots resistance to the fossil fuel developments—whether
“open-pit mines, or gas fracking, or tar sands pipelines”—that are not
simply causing climate change, but threatening the very livelihoods of
communities.25
But some communities remained disunited, especially among the Oceti
Sakowin. Despite pulling together a historic alliance with non-Natives, one
small nation remained an outlier—my own. TransCanada had carefully
avoided crossing reservation lands to avoid provoking Indigenous
resistance, except at one key location: the Lower Brule Indian Reservation,
a place that received little media attention, despite its central role.
TransCanada needed to build a seventy-one-mile electric transmission
line that connected hydroelectricity generated at the Big Bend Dam to one
of seventeen pipeline pump stations at Witten, South Dakota. Because the
power line crossed sixteen acres of Lower Brule land, it required tribal
consent. Although a crucial detail, the power line project was easy to miss,
buried in the thousand-page technical manuals TransCanada produced. It
was also easy to miss the name of the Lower Brule Sioux tribal chairman,

Michael B. Jandreau, listed among the “Consulting Tribes’ Points of
Contact.” Jandreau was the longest-serving tribal chairman in US history, in
office for more than three decades before dying in office in 2015. As his
health declined during his last term, so too did faith in his administration.
After months of denying negotiating with the company, in March 2014
suspicions surrounding the Lower Brule Tribal Council’s collaboration with
TransCanada had been confirmed. A November 12, 2013, Lower Brule
Sioux Tribal Council resolution had been leaked to the public in which the
council spelled out plans to pursue “prospective benefits and working
relationships” with TransCanada and to inform President Obama and Vice
President Joe Biden of its support for the Canadian oil company.26 Lower
Brule’s actions directly violated the spirit of the Mother Earth Accord,
which its leaders signed in September 2011 at a historic summit held in
Rosebud with Alberta First Nations, Indigenous governments, grassroots
treaty councils, human rights NGOs, and the Cheyenne River, Crow Creek,
Fort Peck, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Standing Rock, and Santee Reservations.
By signing the accord, the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe committed to end the
extraction, transportation, and refinement of Alberta tar sands by asking
President Obama to reject the presidential permit required for KXL.27 Now,
Lower Brule had crossed a picket line, betraying not only their relatives in
the Oceti Sakowin but also frontline communities around the world being
devastated by climate change and extractivism.
The label “sellouts” stung, spurring the small nation into action. The Kul
Wicasa, the people of Lower Brule, called an emergency town hall meeting,
inviting tribal leaders and organizations from other reservations as well as
the entire Lower Brule Tribal Council. Members of Owe Aku (Bring Back
the Way), led by renowned Oglala environmentalist Debra White Plume,
facilitated the meeting in a show of solidarity.28 From Lower Brule, the
brother-and-sister twins Loretta and Lewis Grassrope, Kevin Wright, and
Marlo Langdeau, among others, organized a town hall meeting calling on
their nation to end its relationship with TransCanada, to uphold the Mother
Earth Accord, and to join the growing alliance against KXL. More than a
hundred attended, including the presidents of Pine Ridge and Rosebud. But
the Lower Brule council boycotted the entire gathering.
“I used to be proud to be from here,” said Langdeau, with tears in her
eyes, after Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud had booted
TransCanada officials off the reservation. Now, their leaders refused to face

their own people. “It’s embarrassing to be called a ‘sellout’ when you don’t
even know what’s going on.”
When there was no response from their elected officials, the organizers
took matters into their own hands. Lewis Grassrope and Kevin Wright
attempted to occupy land in front of the proposed transmission line, but
before they could establish a camp, Bureau of Indian Affairs police (a
federal police agency that operates without tribal oversight) stopped them.
Undeterred, they set up on Grassrope’s mother’s homesite, several miles
north of Medicine Butte on reservation land. They called the camp “Wiconi
Un Tipi,” which loosely translates to “the way we live when we live in
community.” As the name suggests, this was about more than stopping a
pipeline. It was about restoring dignity to a little nation of people that had
earned the reputation as “the forgotten Sioux.”29
For Grassrope, a former tribal cop, it was Indigenous people at the grass
roots who made the movement. The ikce wicasa, the ikce winyan, (the
common men and women, the humble people of the earth), were the ones
who changed history, not “great men” or tribal councils. When humble
people moved, the earth moved with them. “We don’t have a voice. We
don’t have a standing. We don’t have influence. But as you can see here,”
Grassrope said in November 2016, gesturing to seven tipis embodying the
reunification of the Oceti Sakowin Camp at the confluence of the
Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, “we are the tip of the spear. We’re saying,
‘mni wiconi.’ We’re saying, ‘treaty.’”
Wright, a firefighter, was a Water Protector from a different generation
and a long-time dissident of his own government. In 1999 Wright joined
members of the Lakota Student Alliance in a yearlong occupation of
LaFramboise Island, a nature reserve in the middle of the Missouri River
and, to the Oceti Sakowin, unceded earth. At the time, he also stood against
the Lower Brule council’s support of federal legislation known as the
“Mitigation Bill,” in which South Dakota lawmakers had proposed
transferring jurisdiction over more than 200,000 acres of Missouri shoreline
from the Army Corps of Engineers to the state of South Dakota. All
Missouri River Indigenous nations objected to it except for Cheyenne River
and Lower Brule, who chose to support it.30
This history of bad faith on the part of both state politicians and their
own tribal council was fresh in the minds of the Lower Brule opposition in
2014. To Wright and Grassrope, the primary conflict boiled down to

governance. The reservation system and the imposition of the elected tribal
councils had all but dissolved traditional governance. In its place, a winnertakes-all electoral system turned relatives against each other, and harsh
political divisions broke down the family kinship unit, the tiospaye—an
extended network of relatives that was fundamental to decision making and
caretaking. The arrangement that replaced it instead fomented division and
rivalry over scant resources, catering to outside corporate and state
interests; it was a type of neocolonialism.
The divisions were a result of a sordid history of colonial land grabs. In
1889, in advance of North and South Dakota statehood and to encourage
white settlement, Congress passed the so-called “Sioux Agreement” that
broke up the Great Sioux Reservation into five separate reservations—
Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Lower Brule.
For traditionalists and treaty councils, it was hardly an agreement; the 1889
partition didn’t get the required three-fourths approval from adult Native
men, as stipulated by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. In their eyes the
creation, under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), of modern
reservations, which later became separate governments, fractured national
unity and undermined customary government and treaty law. This was the
primary dispute in 1973 when American Indian Movement members, at the
request of Oglala elders, took over Wounded Knee in protest of Pine
Ridge’s IRA government, which was under the authoritarian leadership of
Chairman Dick Wilson, who was criminalizing dissent. In short, AIM and
their supporters opposed colonial administration. While AIM promoted
traditional governance, it never achieved the reunification of the Oceti
Sakowin on the scale realized at Standing Rock in 2016. But AIM’s
militancy a generation earlier paved the way for the historic movement.
While Indigenous nations rallied to support Standing Rock and the Oceti
Sakowin, two years earlier Lower Brule was thrown into turmoil as
grassroots councils called for overturning the status quo.
The so-called “Lower Brule constitutional crisis” of 2014 to 2016 was
not an armed takeover like the one that took place at Wounded Knee in
1973. Nevertheless, it was without hesitation that supporters of the old
order called it “an attempted overthrow of the tribal government.”31 And
they weren’t entirely wrong. In the fall of 2014, a grassroots reform
movement had galvanized under the slogan Mni Wiconi, electing three antiKXL candidates to the six-person council: Sonny Zeigler and Desiree

LaRoche as council members, and Kevin Wright as vice-chair. Michael
Jandreau defeated Lewis Grassrope for the position of chairman by a slim
margin. The new council members quickly set to work pushing for reform
and transparency, and they met a strident opposition.
A November council meeting escalated to a shouting match, nearly
ending in a fistfight between opposing sides, when Wright called for
Jandreau’s removal for corruption and financial malfeasance, among other
charges. In December, the opposition council members attempted to
circumvent Jandreau and his supporters by appointing an entirely new
council. This back-and-forth led to a flurry of lawsuits and countersuits, and
day-to-day operations ground to a halt. After Jandreau passed away in April
2015, Grassrope was named his successor, but due to opposition from other
council members, he never fully assumed the role. In May, in response to
the unfolding political chaos, the Kul Wicasa Ospiye, a grassroots treaty
organization, gathered signatures from the leadership of the traditional
tiospayes of the Kul Wicasa to assert their right to be “self-governing” and
that the people, not the federally recognized IRA council, were “the sole
source for the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe’s existence.”32 The move
underscored the gravity of the vicious power struggle that was unfolding,
and the profound desire for an accountable government based on Lakota
values, including kinship.
In Jandreau’s absence, and with the backing of the grassroots movement,
Wright called for the removal of TransCanada from 1868 Treaty lands. “We
see [TransCanada] as ‘bad men’ as defined by our treaties with the United
States,” Wright said in a statement. He cited a treaty clause that allows for
the removal of “bad men among the whites” who “commit any wrong upon
the person or property of the Indians.” It was a bold move: the question of
whether or not a corporation, which has personhood under US law, can be
removed from treaty lands has yet to be tested in court. But for Wright and
his supporters, the existential threat posed by KXL and climate change
justified the risk. “This land is all we have,” Wright explained, “and we are
obligated to preserve it for our future generations.”33 However, the action
went nowhere, as the council had failed to form a consensus—or even to
convene.
The Lower Brule opposition, even with support from the grassroots
community, was unable to dramatically improve conditions on the
reservation or to significantly change the structure of the IRA council

during their brief two-year tenure. Nevertheless, their advocacy would have
a resonating impact. After Obama denied the required presidential permit
for KXL’s northern leg in December of 2015, the newly elected Lower
Brule council changed course. One of its first actions was the passage of a
resolution supporting Standing Rock’s battle against the Dakota Access
Pipeline. And in December 2016, preempting Donald Trump’s incoming
administration, which was expected to reapprove KXL’s northern leg, the
council passed a resolution opposing construction of the Big Bend–Witten
line that would power KXL, stating that they opposed oil pipeline
development and the construction of any infrastructure related to it.34 Those
two major victories would not have occurred without the tumultuous
grassroots struggle against KXL, a movement that fed into the DAPL fight.
In November 2016 at Oceti Sakowin Camp, Lewis Grassrope was sitting
in his tipi. It was one of seven that were arranged in the shape of a buffalo
horn, with a large fire pit in the middle. The entire camp was arranged in a
half circle facing Mni Sose and Wiyohiyapata (meaning “where the sun
rises”). About half the size of a football field, the camp horn at the
confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball rivers was surrounded by
Indigenous national camps—such as Ihanktonwan Camp, Oglala Camp, and
Kul Wicasa Camp—and organizations’ camps—such as Indigenous
People’s Power Project and Red Warrior Camp. The Seven Council Fires of
the seven nations—the Mdewakantonwan, Sissintonwan, Wahpetonwan,
Wahpekute, Ihanktonwan, Ihanktonwanna, and Tintonwan—had been lit,
and a nation reunited. It was a dream come true. On the horizon, on a hill,
shadowy figures of cops in riot gear idled under floodlights and behind
tangled razor wire. But the constant drone of the surveillance aircraft
circling above was hardly noticeable over the sounds of children playing
and the boisterous chuckles around campfires. Young boys and girls sang
round dance songs and raced horses along the shoreline. Men and women
cleaned and sliced up tripe for menudo. This was Wiconi Un Tipi, Lower
Brule’s national camp and one of the first camps to set up at Oceti Sakowin
after Standing Rock put out the call in August.
“A lot of people didn’t believe, they didn’t have faith,” Grassrope said,
reflecting on the adversity he and his small nation faced over the years. He
looked outside his tipi to the life, breath, prayer, and song around him.
“When KXL happened, the belief came back. When DAPL happened, the
belief came back.”

The harbingers of the Dakota Access Pipeline arrived on an early fall
morning, September 30, 2014, to Fort Yates, the headquarters of the
Standing Rock tribe. A special meeting had been scheduled between the
Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council, and representatives of the Dakota
Access Pipeline (DAPL) and Energy Transfer Partners (ETP, the Texasbased firm financing the project).
Earlier in 2014, the Army Corps had rerouted the pipeline from upriver
of North Dakota’s white-dominated capital, Bismarck, to upriver of the
poorest county in North Dakota, Sioux County—the Standing Rock
Reservation. In its environmental analysis, the Army Corps had concluded
that the Bismarck path crossed a “high consequence area,” which meant
that a spill would have an adverse effect.35 Not once did it mention
Standing Rock, for which a spill half a mile upriver was of no consequence
to the Army Corps. The new route also saved on time, constructions costs,
and the unwanted headache of contaminating the drinking water of white
settlers in the state’s capital.
In an audio recording of the September meeting in Fort Yates released by
the tribe, Chairman David Archambault II can be heard whispering off mic,
“What is the name of the company?” He then asks, “Dakota Access
Pipeline, are they here?”36 No answer. DAPL was late. It seemed fitting.
Amid the historic resistance unfolding against tar sands and KXL across the
continent, DAPL seemed like an afterthought, arriving late and under the
radar. At this time, a year ahead of the pipeline permitting process, hardly
anyone had heard of DAPL. But those who saw it coming knew it was
dangerous.
When DAPL representatives finally arrived, Archambault made
Standing Rock’s position clear: “We oppose the pipeline,” he stated.
Archambault cited a 2012 resolution that forbade any oil pipeline within the
boundaries of the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868. Where federal
and state governments have historically chosen to ignore them, Standing
Rock has recognized and enforced its original treaty boundaries. In their
report, DAPL representatives Tammy Ibach, Chuck Frey, and Joe Malucci
mentioned that the pipeline crossed less than a mile north of the reservation
boundaries, but they never mentioned treaty lands. They also never asked
whether Standing Rock wanted the pipeline in the first place. DAPL was
looking for “consultation,” not consent.

“It’s not consultation, because the plan’s already done,” Councilman
Randy White rebuked the representatives. “And to me, that’s really wrong.”
Wasté Win Young, the Standing Rock Tribal Historic Preservation
Officer, agreed. After studying the company’s initial reports, what
concerned her most was the Army Corps’ intention to fast-track the project.
(Despite their central role planning DAPL’s route, the Army Corps did not
attend the September 30 meeting.) Unlike KXL, which crossed an
international border and therefore required State Department review and
presidential approval, DAPL was a domestic project. This allowed the
Army Corps to assess the pipeline according to a Nationwide Permit 12,
which only considers individual construction sites, rather than cumulative
negative impacts on entire nations of people, ecosystems, or the climate. As
Young pointed out, fast-tracking the project under Permit 12 regulations
bypassed environmental reviews under the Clean Water Act and the
National Environmental Policy Act. It also skirted the type of public
scrutiny received by KXL and significantly undermined the ability of
impacted communities to mobilize, protect, and defend themselves.
Moreover, DAPL cut through about 380 archeological sites, such as
burials, with at least 60 at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri
Rivers alone. Though not recognized as reservation land, under the National
Historic Preservation Act’s Section 106, the presence of these culturally
sensitive sites made the area “ancestral territory.” Any potential disturbance
required the Army Corps to consult with Standing Rock in order to proceed,
a procedure Young claimed the Army Corps had failed to do in the past.
The place where the pipeline crossed the river also held deep historical and
cultural significance. Many Horses Heads Bottom, where DAPL crossed the
Missouri River, Young explained, was where Dakotas fled generals Sibley
and Sully’s 1863 “columns of vengeance.” After the 1862 Dakota Uprising,
the United States punished survivors of that war at the Whitestone Hill
Massacre, where they gunned down more than 400 Lakotas and Dakotas on
a buffalo hunt. It was a massacre nearly forgotten by settlers, but no less
horrific than Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. The soldiers led a manhunt
up and down the river, capturing or killing survivors. Mothers plugged their
babies’ noses to silence their cries as they swam to safety across the river in
the cover of darkness.
“I struggled with this last night,” said Young at the meeting. “Do we
want to tell something so important and sacred to us to a pipeline

company?” Descendants of those who survived that genocidal campaign
were sitting in the room, face to face with the very people who would two
years later bring a whole new wave of chaos and violence.
What concerned Councilwoman Avis Little Eagle was the water. “Every
oil pipeline leaks,” she said, “and it’s going to ruin the water we consume
and that future generations are going to consume.” Her fears were
warranted: from 2010 to 2016, Sunoco Logistics, the operators of DAPL,
had more than 200 of their pipelines leak;37 indeed, DAPL would leak five
times within six months of beginning operation.38 Little Eagle also sat on
the Standing Rock water control board, which, having reviewed DAPL’s
route the previous day, passed a resolution opposing it on the grounds that it
threatened the reservation’s source of drinking water, the Missouri River.
This action fell in line with Standing Rock’s Constitution, which was
drafted with the water in mind. Article 1 of the Constitution reserves
jurisdiction over “all rights-of-way, waterways, watercourses[,] and streams
running through any part of the Reservation.”39 A threat to its drinking
water was thus a threat to Standing Rock’s sovereignty, as well.
“Our water is our single last property that we have for our people, and
water is life—Mni Wiconi,” remarked Phyllis Young to the DAPL
representatives. Young was a council-woman, a longtime AIM member, and
Wasté Win Young’s mother. The elder stateswoman described her
homelands as a “national sacrifice area.” In order to generate
hydroelectricity to power homes in far-off cities like Minneapolis and
Chicago, the Army Corps had flooded her home in the middle of a cold
winter. “I know what it is to be homeless,” Young said. “I know what it is to
be hungry in this great land of plenty, where we lived in the richest riverbed
in the world.”
The dams, which I describe in chapter 5, were the reason why the Army
Corps had final say over DAPL’s route: claiming sole jurisdiction over the
river and shoreline, they had inundated the land in the 1950s and 1960s,
usurping Indigenous jurisdiction, kicking people out of their homes,
destroying the river that nurtured them, and shrinking reservation
boundaries in the process. The Army Corps never sought the consent of
Missouri River Indigenous nations for these incursions, nor did Congress
ever authorize them to extinguish Indigenous jurisdiction over the river.40
Now, it was also without their consent that the Army Corps sought to route
the Dakota Access Pipeline through their homelands.

“We are not stupid people. We are not ignorant people,” Young chided
the DAPL spokespeople. “Do not underestimate the people of Standing
Rock. We know what’s going on, and we know what belongs to us, and we
know what we have to keep for our children and our grandchildren.”
This was a history she had lived through, and it was an intergenerational
struggle her children had inherited. In 1974, Phyllis Young and Standing
Rock council representatives, including David Archambault Sr. (David
Archambault II’s father), organized the first International Indian Treaty
Council at Standing Rock (detailed in chapter 6). Standing Rock gave AIM
the mandate to pursue, at the United Nations, all legal means available to
enforce the 1868 Treaty. The historic meeting brought together 5,000
people from ninety-seven Indigenous nations from around the world, and it
was the beginning of a movement that culminated in a touchstone document
on Indigenous rights: the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples. Unlike other federally recognized IRA governments at the time,
Standing Rock had maintained amiable relations with treaty councils,
grassroots movements, and even militants such as AIM. On occassions
when, as in Lower Brule in 2014, the antagonisms between these bodies
turned destructive or violent, the Standing Rock’s capacity to bridge these
divides set it apart from other IRA governments. This history was decisive
in the creation of the #NoDAPL movement, which began with the
coalescence of tribal councils and Indigenous grassroots movements.
“It’s nothing for you to come and say, ‘We want to do this [build a
pipeline]. We want to be friends with you,’” Young said to DAPL. To her,
naming a pipeline, Dakota Access, and a state, North Dakota, after the very
people they intended to swindle, and about whom they knew nothing, was
an insult. “North Dakota?” she asked. “Miye ma Dakota! I am Dakota!
Dakota means ‘friend’ and ‘ally.’” By trespassing, the pipeline company
and the state didn’t behave as “friends” or “allies.” Quite the opposite.
“This is Dakota territory. This is treaty territory. This is where you
agreed not to come into my territory,” she continued. It was a reminder that
treaties are not an “Indian problem”; they are everyone’s problem. Signed
between settler government and Indigenous nations, they are also the
responsibility of non-Natives: an even older document, the US Constitution,
regards treaties as “the supreme law of the land.”
If DAPL didn’t respect Standing Rock’s sovereignty or the Oceti
Sakowin’s ancestral and treaty territory, then, Young warned, “We will put

our best warriors in the front. We are the vanguard. We are Hunkpapa
Lakota. That means the ‘horn of the buffalo.’ That’s who we are. We are the
protectors of our nation, of Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires. Know
who we are.” She left them with this final message: “We understand the
forked tongue that our grandfathers talked about. We know about talking
[out of] both sides of your mouth, smiling with one side of your face. We
know all the tricks of the wasicu world [the colonizer’s world]. Our young
people have mastered it. I have mastered your language. I can speak
eloquently in the English language. My grandmother taught me. But I also
know the genetic psyche. And I also have the collective memory of the
damages that have occurred to my people. And I will never submit to any
pipeline to go through my homeland. Mitakuye Oyasin!”
DAPL seemed to have forgotten the lessons imparted that day. “I really
wish for the Standing Rock Sioux that they had engaged in discussions way
before they did,” Kelcy Warren, a billionaire Texas oilman and CEO of
ETP, told the Wall Street Journal in November 2016. “We could have
changed the route. It could have been done, but it’s too late.”41 Apparently,
Warren didn’t consider the initial 2014 meeting a “discussion,” nor did he
accept Standing Rock’s flat-out refusal. In a 2016 statement to a federal
judge, however, DAPL Vice-President Joey Mahmoud did confirm his
company had received Standing Rock’s message loud and clear. He
admitted the company was told “to stop the project” and to avoid Oceti
Sakowin territory altogether. But Mahmoud found it “an impossible request
to accommodate,” and he and his employees could hardly hide their
contempt.42 In March 2016, an Army Corps archeologist warned in an
email: “Someone needs to tell Joey [Mahmoud] the next RACIST comment
will shut down the entire project.”43 The email concerned Mahmoud and his
employees’ treatment of Native cultural resource workers who had
identified culturally sensitive sites, such as graves and sacred sites, along
the pipeline route. This wasn’t a “clash of cultures” or a lack of “cultural
sensitivity” towards those they saw as different; this was full-blown settler
colonialism—a struggle over the land and water in which a people were
fighting for their lives.
#NoDAPL was also a struggle over the meaning of land. For the Oceti
Sakowin, history is the land itself: the earth cradles the bones of the
ancestors. As Tasunka Witko, Crazy Horse, once said, “My land is where
my dead lie buried.” For others, however, the earth had to be tamed and

dominated by a plow or drilled for profit. Because Native people remain
barriers to capitalist development, their bodies needed to be removed—both
from beneath and atop the soil—therefore eliminating their rightful
relationship with the land.
Recognizing this, Standing Rock chose a legal route to stop the pipeline,
filing a complaint in federal court against the Army Corps on July 27, 2016,
the day after the Army Corps approved DAPL’s route across the Missouri
River and through culturally sensitive sites. In late August 2016, as pipeline
construction approached Highway 1806, Standing Rock grew desperate.
Legal mechanisms weren’t working; more drastic measures had to be taken.
Sensing what was coming, on August 15, DAPL filed a lawsuit seeking an
injunction against a number of individuals, including Chairman
Archambault, from interfering with pipeline construction (a suit dismissed
on September 19). Four days later, the governor, Jack Dalrymple, a legacy
Yale man, declared a state of emergency, asking for assistance from the
federal government, DAPL, “and any entity we can think of.”44
“Perhaps only in North Dakota, where oil tycoons wine and dine elected
officials, and where the governor, Jack Dalrymple, serves as an adviser to
the Trump campaign, would state and county governments act as the armed
enforcement for corporate interests,” penned Archambault in a New York
Times op-ed, days before police arrested him. “In recent weeks, the state has
militarized my reservation, with road blocks and license-plate checks, lowflying aircraft and racial profiling of Indians.”45
Standing Rock, the nation of the great Tatanka Iyotake, Sitting Bull, was
facing down county, state, federal, and corporate powers. His people—some
of the poorest in North America, and armed only with sage, prayer bundles,
Canupas (sacred pipes), and the spirit of their ancestors—were facing down
a mounting legion of police and private security backed by some of the
most powerful people in the world.
On Friday, August 26, Chairman Dave Archambault II gave tribal
employees the day off. He joined a prayer action at the location where
DAPL crossed the highway and was arrested trying to break through a
police line, along with eighteen others, during a two-day blockade of a
construction site. Tribal cultural resource management experts, among them
Tim Mentz Sr., an elder and citizen of Standing Rock, had identified at least
twenty-seven burials west of the highway—on private land, and directly in
the pipeline’s path. The immense historical importance of the discoveries,

in other circumstances, would have given pause to tribal historians and
scholars. Mentz characterized one finding—a rock structure arranged in the
shape of the Dakota constellation Iyokaptan Tanka (the “Big Dipper”)—as
“one of the most significant archeological finds in North Dakota in many
years.”46 He notified a federal court of the discovery on Friday, September
2, and requested immediate action to protect the site. What happened the
next day, Mentz and others believed, was no accident.
In the early morning hours of Saturday, September 3, 2016, blood was
spilled in the struggle over hallowed ground. Caterpillar earthmovers came
barreling across the prairie. A small army of attack dogs and their handlers,
private security hired by DAPL, guarded the site, followed closely by a
spotter helicopter whirling above; all of them were ready for a fight. It was
Saturday of Labor Day weekend, a holiday celebrating the working poor
who had picketed and protested (and were beaten and shot) to win an eighthour workday. But this holiday weekend, it was unionized pipeline workers
who clocked in while Indigenous people formed a picket line. The
Indigenous marchers who showed up that day were working to protect their
lands and waters—they were Land Defenders and Water Protectors.47
Workers who cross picket lines, on the other hand, are called “scabs”
because they undermine working-class solidarity. The pipeline workers met
a march of Water Protectors coming down Highway 1806, which had begun
with the Canupa, a pipe ceremony (as had nearly all actions), to grant
strength and protection for the ancestors who might be unearthed. When the
Water Protectors saw the heavy machinery that morning turning soil, it was
human remains—their relatives—that were unearthed. Native people
quickly formed a blockade. The Water Protectors pushed down fences,
throwing themselves in front of bulldozers. A white man jumped from a
truck, spraying a line of women and children with CS gas, a chemical that
burns skin, eyes, and throats and can cause blindness. The handlers—the
people who train animals to hunt human beings: manhunters—sicced attack
dogs on the picket line. Blood dripped from the dogs’ maws.
“In that moment, everything changed,” recalled LaDonna BraveBull
Allard, Tamakawastewin, Her Good Earth Woman. That morning
Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman was interviewing BraveBull Allard
when the phone rang. “The bulldozers are here!” They rushed to film the
scene. BraveBull Allard had been in the middle of telling the story of Nape
Hota Winyan, her great-grandmother, a survivor of the Whitestone Hill

Massacre, which occurred September 3, 1863; the same day 155 years later,
Caterpillar earthmovers desecrated her ancestors’ graves. At Whitestone
Hill, women tied their babies to dogs in hopes that they would escape the
soldiers. As soldiers finished off the wounded, the order came to shoot the
dogs. These terrible histories, separated by time, were eerily similar.
“They took our footprint out of the ground,” said BraveBull Allard of the
havoc wreaked upon the land. “And who has the right to do that?” Before
DAPL, Ladonna BraveBull Allard considered herself a tribal historian, but
never an activist. That changed when DAPL released its plans showing the
proposed pipeline crossing near the confluence of Mni Sose (the Missouri
River) and Inyan Wakanagapi Wakpa (the Cannonball River), threatening
the land and water. Once, shallow waters made it a place of passage, trade,
and commerce. Large villages of the Mandan, Arikara, and Dakota peoples
hugged the lush riverfront, and the Cheyennes and Pawnees were known to
frequent the area, too. Many came to fast and hold ceremony; and because
of its deep spiritual significance, the landscape was also considered neutral
territory where, out of reverence, warring factions laid down their arms and
camped within sight of each other without incident. Lewis and Clark
misnamed it “Cannonball”—to their minds, the spherical sandstones
resembled tools of war—but for the Dakota people, it was a place of life.
They called it “Inyan Wakangapi Wakpa” (River that Makes the Sacred
Stones). BraveBull Allard’s grandfather, Tatanka Ohitika (Brave Bull) held
sun dances here, continuing to maintain relations with the landscape by
putting medicine and prayer into the earth while also harvesting food from
it.
It was here that water shaped earth—making sacred stones. It was also
here that state institutions used water and earth to shape and destroy a
people’s history. After the Army Corps dredged the mouth of the
Cannonball River, the swirling waters stopped creating the sacred stones. In
the 1950s, the Army Corps built the Oahe Dam, flooding the sun dance
grounds and the most fertile, arable land. When land and water are taken
and destroyed, so too is the possibility of a livable future.
“Our people are in that water,” recalled BraveBull Allard who, as a little
girl, saw the floodwaters take her land. “This river holds the story of my
entire life.” To honor this history, “Inyan Wakanagapi Oti,” the name for the
Cannon Ball area, became the name for the prayer camp that BraveBull
Allard helped found in April 2016. She was in Long Soldier District at a

meeting on the KXL fight with Joye Braun, Jasilyn Charger, and Joseph
White Eyes from Cheyenne River, and Wiyaka Eagleman from Standing
Rock. Together they decided to start a #NoDAPL camp. BraveBull Allard
approached Braun afterward and offered up her land.
On April 1, they attended a meeting with the Army Corps to give
testimony against DAPL. The Oceti Sakowin, Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota
nations arrived in caravans by horse, motorcycle, and car to show support.
Indigenous youth organized a run. Elders came to offer their Canupas and
prayers, and tipis went up; they called it “Sacred Stone.”
BraveBull Allard remembers one day coming down to camp after work:
“They were roasting deer meat on the grill. The women were cutting meat
on the side to dry it. Kids were running and screaming. All of these people
sitting around the fire were telling stories and what it was like to live on the
river. Here was the catch: nobody was speaking English. They were all
speaking Dakota. I looked at them and I thought, ‘This is how we’re
supposed to live. This makes sense to me.’ Every day I came down to the
camp and saw such blessings. I saw our culture and our way of life come
alive. Nobody can take that away from me.”
Between the first meeting with DAPL in 2014 and the founding of
Sacred Stone in 2016, Standing Rock ran grassroots awareness campaigns
about Mni Wiconi and #NoDAPL. Chairman Dave Archambault II traveled
tirelessly from district to district, informing the reservation that DAPL was
coming. The youth organized a water campaign called “Rezpect Our
Water,” crafting the media message to the outside world and demonstrating
this was a youth-led movement. But as construction began in April 2016, a
sense of urgency grew. Given that Obama denied the permit for KXL,
would he do the same for DAPL? Did he care about Native sovereignty and
lives?
Archambault once had a connection to, and admiration for, President
Obama. His sister, Jodi Archambault Gillette, had served as the president’s
special assistant for Native American affairs from 2009 to 2015. On June
13, 2014, Obama gave the opening remarks at Cannon Ball’s annual Flag
Day Powwow, accompanied by Archambault and his family. Obama’s visit
was historic. Only eight sitting US presidents had ever visited Indian
reservations, the last being Bill Clinton.
During his speech, Obama focused on Native youth and played off the
oft-quoted line by Sitting Bull: “Let’s put our minds together to see what

life we can build for our children.” “Let’s put our minds together to advance
justice—because like every American, you deserve to be safe in your
communities and treated equally under the law,” Obama told a crowd of
thousands of cheering Lakotas and Dakotas.
Shortly after Obama’s visit, Archambault issued a statement assuring
Native youth across the nation “that the President and First Lady are truly
listening to them.”48 But were they really? Beginning in July 2016, thirtyeight Indigenous youth ran a grueling 2,000 mile relay from their homes in
North Dakota to Washington, DC and hand-delivered to the White House
and the Army Corps a petition with 160,000 signatures opposing DAPL’s
construction. Tariq Brownotter, a sixteen-year-old Standing Rock youth
runner and organizer with Rezpect Our Water, wrote to Obama: “After your
visit to Standing Rock you said you felt we were like your own children.
Mr. President and First Lady we have no doubt you meant every word you
said and we know you have not forgotten us.”49 There was no public
response from Obama to the youth’s demands to stop DAPL.
Not until November 2—months after DAPL began construction, and
hundreds of arrests later—did Obama speak publicly about the pipeline,
simply saying he wanted to respect Native sacred lands, was open to a
possible reroute (by then the pipeline was less than a half mile from the
river), and would take cues from the Army Corps of Engineers. He would
“let it play out for several more weeks.”50 This stance angered both North
Dakota politicians like governor Jack Dalrymple, who demanded federal
intervention to crush the protests, and Indigenous people, who were being
mercilessly brutalized by cops. Obama’s statement came five days after live
video showed a militarized police force, acting on orders from the state of
North Dakota, violently evict the short-lived 1851 Treaty Camp that
blockaded DAPL construction crews on Highway 1806. Cops in riot gear
conducted tipi-by-tipi raids, slashing tents and tipi canvases. They dragged
half-naked elders from ceremonial sweat lodges, tasered a man in the face,
doused people with CS gas and tear gas, and blasted adults and youth with
deafening LRAD sound cannons. The 142 arrested were marked with a
number in black permanent marker on their forearm, led onto buses, and
kept overnight in dog kennels. To add insult to injury, personal belongings
—including ceremonial items like pipes and eagle feathers, as well as
jackets and tents—confiscated by the police during the raid were returned
soaked in urine.

When asked what Obama thought about this level of brutality and
dehumanization, the Nobel laureate admonished “both sides,” the unarmed
protestors defending Indigenous land and the heavily-militarized, small
army of police who ritualistically beat the Water Protectors, all the while
extolling the virtues of civility: “There’s an obligation for protestors to be
peaceful and there’s and obligation for authorities to show restraint.”51
Three days before the 1851 Treaty Camp raid, Archambault wrote to US
Attorney General Lorretta Lynch, urgently requesting a civil rights
investigation into the escalating police violence. After declaring a state of
emergency, Governor Dalrymple immediately went to work soliciting aid
and personnel under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact. It
was the largest mobilization of cops and military in the state’s history since
1890, when nearly half the standing military was deployed to crush the
horseless and starving Ghost Dancers in Standing Rock. Seventy-six law
enforcement jurisdictions responded to Dalrymple’s call and were deployed
alongside the National Guard and private security firms hired by DAPL
such as TigerSwan. The agencies that arrived were among the largest
recipients of the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program that ships surplus
military equipment to law enforcement agencies nationwide. For example,
between 2006 and 2015 the South Dakota Highway Patrol, which sent
troopers to police Water Protectors, obtained $2 million worth of military
equipment, including dozens of assault rifles and five armored vehicles.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office in northwestern Indiana, which sent four
deputies, had collected $1.5 million in military gear, including one hundred
assault rifles and two armored trucks. (Demonstrating incompetence with
this military-grade weaponry, one deputy shot himself in the foot with one
of the assault rifles while deployed at the protests.) The fifteen-ton, tanklike MRAP vehicles, which were visible at nearly all the major police
actions, were also Department of Defense military surplus placed at the
disposal of county sheriff’s offices.52 Because of the large influx of
equipment and personnel, police saw it “as a sort of law enforcement
laboratory.” Tom Butler, a colonel with Montana Highway Patrol, called the
multi-agency police response “enlightening and educational,” encouraging
police agencies in western states like Montana to attend on account that
they share “all those same issues” with states like North Dakota. To Butler,
those “same issues” were the large, land-based Indigenous nations
protesting extractive industries.53 In other words, these states had a lot to

learn from North Dakota about how better to police their own “Indian
problem.”
Despite the intimidating display of force, it was the standard-issue
weapons of police—chemical weapons like tear gas and pepper spray—that
inflicted the most pain and violence. As Paiute anthropologist Kristen
Simmons points out, because these weapons were the dominant means of
crowd control, rather than military combat gear, they inflicted more injuries
upon Water Protectors. While the Geneva Protocol prohibits such chemical
weapons in warfare, they are, paradoxically, permitted for domestic
policing. For example, on November 20, a day known as “Backwater
Sunday,” police sprayed Water Protectors with water laced with pepper
spray from a water cannon mounted to an MRAP and shot with tear gas
canisters, used as projectile weapons. Temperatures dropped below
freezing. Police also used beanbag rounds, rubber bullets, and flashbang
grenades to pummel the young, the old, the unarmed. More than 200 people
suffered injuries—one Navajo woman lost an eye, becoming permanently
disabled, and one white woman had her arm nearly blown off by an
exploding crowd-control agent lobbed at her by police. Most, however,
suffered from hypothermia and chemical exposure. Camp medics saved
many lives that night by treating hypothermia with heat blankets and by
applying an antacid mixture to chemical burns in the eyes, nose, and mouth
to prevent suffocation.54
In a Democracy Now! interview, Archambault also pointed out how
police humiliated Water Protectors by strip-searching them upon arrest (he
was also strip-searched in late August).55 According to Laguna Pueblo
journalist Jenni Monet, strip searches were common and primarily reserved
for Native people and people of color, while white inmates were often
exempt. Monet also reported that some Native transgender people were
separated from the general population and placed in solitary confinement as
a “policy.”56 The police also targeted journalists covering the protests,
arresting Amy Goodman in September 2016, Monet in January 2017, and
several reporters from the media collective Unicorn Riot.
In his letter to Lynch, Archambault compared the policing tactics used
against Water Protectors as “reminiscent of the tactics used against
protesters during the civil rights movement some 50 years ago.” In an 2018
Netflix interview, Obama spoke of being inspired by the courage of Black
civil rights activists and freedom riders, who faced dog attacks, fire hoses,

and police brutality, and “who risked everything to advance democracy.”57
Yet under his watch, private security working on behalf of DAPL unleashed
attack dogs on unarmed Water Protectors who were attempting to stop
bulldozers from destroying a burial ground; Morton County sheriff’s
deputies sprayed Water Protectors with water cannons in freezing
temperatures, injuring hundreds; and police officers and private security
guards brutalized hundreds of unarmed protesters. All of this violence was
part of an effort to put a pipeline through Indigenous lands. In the twilight
of his presidency, on December 4, 2016, the Army Corps denied the permit
for DAPL to cross the Missouri River. But the move was too little, too late,
and it was quickly reversed by President Trump within two weeks of taking
office. (Trump also reversed KXL’s presidential permit, bringing back to
life the all-but-dead pipeline project.)
Even though Obama had thus far turned his back on Indigenous youth
and written off the violence inflicted upon them by police, their courage,
demonstrated in the thousand-mile relay across the country, had won the
hearts and minds of conscientious people, regardless of political affiliation.
Following the historic run, the ranks of Sacred Stone swelled. By late
August there were more than 90 Indigenous nations present, as well as
allies from across the globe; by November that number had grown to nearly
400. Oceti Sakowin Camp was created partially to capture the growing
influx of people, who came pouring in from all corners of the globe.
The media also arrived in droves, often covering the violent clashes
between Water Protectors and the police that, while frequent, also gave a
distorted view of both everyday camp life and the actions themselves. From
August to October, marches and rallies occurred almost daily, and without
incident. At first, they started from Oceti Sakowin Camp and headed
several miles north, where the pipeline crossed Highway 1806. The keeper
of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, frequently led
these early marches, beginning with a pipe ceremony. Later on, marches
branched out to target construction sites or to provide a distraction for those
brave enough to chain themselves to heavy machinery.
“Men have come up to me, young men who said they were ready to lay
down their lives,” Archambault said to a crowd in late August. From the
beginning, he had feared someone would be killed (fortunately, no one
was), and his message was one of life: “But I told them, no! We do not want

that! We want you to live and prosper and be good fathers and
grandfathers.”
Indeed, Mni Wiconi and the spirit of #NoDAPL, enacted daily in camp
life, embodied a brief vision of what Native life could be.
“I think it’s a rebirth of a nation,” Faith Spotted Eagle said. “And I think
that all of these young people here dreamed that one day they would live in
a camp like this, because they heard the old people tell them stories of
living along the river. They heard them talking about the campfires and the
Horse Nation, and they’re actually living it. They’re living the dream.”58
All one had to do was walk through camp to witness that dream. Flag
Row—a half-mile procession of more than 300 Indigenous national flags
that lined each side of the road—cut through the heart of camp. Starting at
the north gate, where new arrivals checked in with camp security, it was the
“main drag” of the “Indian city”—the tenth-largest city in North Dakota at
its peak. Alcohol and drugs were strictly prohibited. Media were required to
report to the media tent. No photographs of children, or of anyone, were
permitted without consent. Nor was the recording of prayers or ceremonies.
Facebook Hill rose beyond the main camp kitchen; a grassy knoll with the
only decent cellphone reception in the entire camp, it was where people
reconnected with loved ones. (Someone jokingly called it “little Brooklyn,”
for all the white filmmakers from Brooklyn who congregated there.)
The main camp was a fully functioning city. There was no running water,
but the Cannon Ball Community Center opened its doors for showers.
There was no electricity, but Prairie Knights Casino, the tribal casino two
miles up the road, had Wi-Fi. And there were no flushable toilets, but
Standing Rock paid for porta potties. Where physical infrastructure lacked,
an infrastructure of Indigenous resistance and caretaking of relations
proliferated—of living and being in community according to Indigenous
values—which for the most part kept people safe and warm.
If you brought donations, you checked in at the main council fire.
Supervised by Standing Rock elders, the council fire remained lit twentyfour hours a day. A steady rotation of young Native men, the firekeepers,
fed logs to the fire at all hours, a humble but important duty. An Eyapaha (a
town crier or emcee) handled the mic, announcing grand entries of visiting
delegations, mealtimes, activities for children, missing or lost items, and
guest speakers. At sunup and sundown, elders of Standing Rock and the
Oceti Sakowin sang grandmother’s lullabies for the children and gave

words of encouragement to Water Protectors. Next to the PA system stood
several large fire pits with industrial-grade cooking pots, always boiling
corn and soup. The main kitchen served three hot meals a day. (At its
height, there were about thirteen free camp kitchens and a half dozen medic
tents.) Elders and children ate first, following a meal prayer. If there were
guests (and there were often delegations from around the world), they ate
first. The donations tent was well stocked with sleeping bags, blankets,
tents, socks, gloves, hats, boots, and so forth. Native families frequently
arrived by the carload, sometimes wearing only T-shirts and gym shorts.
Everyone was fed and clothed. Everyone had a place. At camp check-in,
bodies were needed to cook, dig compost holes, chop wood, take care of
children, give rides to Walmart, among other tasks. Many quit their jobs,
instead making it their full-time work to cook and to keep others warm and
safe. After all, one ceases to be Lakota if relatives or travelers from afar are
not nurtured and welcomed. Generosity, Wowacantognake, is a fundamental
Lakota virtue. And it was this Indigenous generosity—so often exploited as
a weakness—that held the camp together.
It was an all-ages affair in which youth played a major role, and there
was a fully functioning day school. The camp was an unprecedented
concentration of Indigenous knowledge keepers. Standing Rock Lakota
language specialist Alayna Eagle Shield saw this. She went to every camp
asking if they could share their knowledge with the children families
brought with them. “From there,” Eagle Shield recalled, “I was told that we
need a school and a place for children to be.”59 So she founded the Mní
Wičhóni Nakíčižin Owáyawa, the Defenders of the Water School, a name
chosen by the students. Education centered treaties, language, culture, and
land and water defense. The curriculum of Indigenous song, dance, math,
history, and science was less about indoctrinating youth to be good citizens
of settler society. As Indigenous educator Sandy Grande points out, the
Defenders of the Water School provided anticolonial education for
liberation—how to live and be free and in good relation with others and the
land and water.60
If one was willing and able, there were nonviolent direct action trainings
hosted daily. Mark Tilsen, an Oglala poet and teacher from Pine Ridge, led
most of the direct action trainings. He possessed a biting but magnetic
humor that added a playfulness to otherwise-serious trainings on nonviolent
resistance. Dallas Goldtooth, comedian and organizer with Indigenous

Environmental Network, lightheartedly referred to Tilsen as the camp’s
“spirit animal” because nearly everyone knew him and turned to him for
advice on actions. Almost every day, Tilsen read aloud and explained the
Oceti Sakowin Camp principles to new arrivals, whose numbers typically
ranged from a handful to several dozen. The rules, which applied to
everyone, were scrawled on whiteboards and hand-painted signs:
We are protectors.
We are peaceful and prayerful.
“Isms” have no place here.
Here we all stand together.
We are non-violent. We are proud to stand, no masks.
Respect locals.
No weapons or what could be construed as a weapon.
Property damage does not get us closer to our goal.
All campers must get an orientation.
Direct action training is required for everyone taking action.
We keep each other accountable to these principles.
This is a ceremony—act accordingly.

Campers were also directed to the legal tent, where they wrote a phone
number in permanent marker on their forearms to call in case they were
arrested. Volunteer lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild and elsewhere
provided free legal aid and kept in touch with arrestees.
Prayer actions generally started with the call “Kikta po! Kikta po! Wake
up! Wake up!”—a voice blaring over a megaphone as the sun rose. When
there was an action planned for the day, an Eyapaha rode through the camp
on a bicycle, a horse, or in the back of a pickup rousing people from
slumber. “You didn’t come here to sleep. This ain’t a vacation. We came
here to stop a pipeline!”
At one action in mid October, the Two-Spirit Nation led the prayer and
march. Police intercepted the caravan of cars and barred vehicle travel on a
gravel road. Only foot traffic, they said. By the time the march arrived at
the construction site, more than a hundred police officers with riot gear and
sniper rifles, a dozen SUVs, and an armored personnel carrier had formed a
police line. The Two-Spirit Nation offered tobacco and water to the land
and marched toward the police line. The officers rebuffed them, telling the
entire crowd to disperse over a megaphone. But where? It was surreal, but
soon it became a normal experience. Unlike protest marches in the cities
where there are bystanders, buildings, and plenty of media, the majority of

#NoDAPL marches happened on backcountry roads where there was no
CNN, just independent media like Democracy Now!, Unicorn Riot, and
Indian Country Today. Sometimes the police outnumbered protestors—in
the middle of nowhere! Because it was private property, Water Protectors
couldn’t go as far as the ditch on the road; the fields were off limits. And
there were certainly no bathrooms or water fountains to be found in the
midday heat. That day, the march was a grueling eight miles, and an elder
fainted from exhaustion.
“What you’re doing here is wrong,” Brandon Sazue, the Crow Creek
tribal chairman, approached the line of masked police as Water Protectors
retreated once the action ended. “What we’re doing here is right, because
we are not the ones [who are] trespassing. You are trespassing for big
money. But we pray for you, we pray for your children.”
Sazue was a man of his people. In 2009, the IRS attempted to seize
7,100 acres of Crow Creek land—in Buffalo County, the poorest in the
United States—for purported back payroll taxes. During the brutal South
Dakota winter of 2009 to 2010, Sazue camped out on a portion of the land
in protest of the sale. He joined the DAPL protests in August, providing
tribal resources to the Crow Creek Riders, a group of youth horse riders. On
October 27, Sazue was arrested during the police raid of the 1851 Treaty
Camp.
While the media foregrounded images of the camp’s leadership, often
donning headdresses, and frequently men, it was common for Two-Spirited
people and women to hold leadership roles in all aspects of camp life—
from sitting on the general camp council (composed of elders and
traditional leadership), to leading direct actions. Candi Brings Plenty, an
Oglala trans and queer healthcare specialist, was the leader of Two-Spirit
Nation at Oceti Sakowin camp. For Brings Plenty, “Two-Spirit” is “an
umbrella term for Indigenous people who identify as LGBTQAI+.”
Colonization imposed a gender binary that largely destroyed historically
plural Indigenous gender formations and fluid Indigenous sexualities, which
are much more dynamic and expansive than those of the hetero-nuclear
family introduced by white Christian society. Prior to colonization, TwoSpirited people also held social and cultural significance among Indigenous
societies, from performing naming ceremonies to adopting the roles and
responsibilities of male-, female-, or nonbinary-gendered people. TwoSpirit Nation played a central role in camp life, and one that went far

beyond merely calling out heteropatriarchy. “We have Two-Spirit folk in
security, at the school, at the medics, at the kitchen, and I sit on the
Council,” Brings Plenty explained. In other words, Two-Spirit Nation was
represented in all aspects of everyday life at camp.61
The vision of an anticolonial Indigenous world coexisting with nonIndigenous people has been overshadowed by violent police crackdowns.
There were important political victories, but they were short lived, too late,
and not enough to stop DAPL. On November 25, 2016, the Army Corps
issued an evacuation order for Oceti Sakowin Camp, setting December 5 as
the deadline. On December 4, the Army Corps announced that they would
not grant DAPL the easement to cross the Missouri River, pending a more
thorough environmental assessment. This temporary win coincided with the
arrival of more than 4,000 veterans, who braved a whiteout blizzard to
march to the barricade where police were mercilessly dousing Water
Protectors with chemical weapons and water in freezing temperatures.
Veterans also staged a forgiveness ceremony, asking Indigenous elders—
Arvol Looking Horse, Faith Spotted Eagle, Phyllis Young, Paula Horne, Jon
Eagle Sr., and Leonard Crow Dog—for forgiveness for the horrors the US
military inflicted upon Indigenous peoples that continued with the police
and military violence against unarmed protesters. It was vindication for the
months of brutality. But it didn’t last long.
While the punishment was collective, it proved effective at fomenting
divisions. For months police blockaded Highway 1806, cutting off Standing
Rock from the state of North Dakota and creating a strain between the
camps and local community. Chairman Archambault asked Water
Protectors to go home in December, in hopes of relieving the burden of the
police checkpoints and constant influx of outsiders to the reservation. When
Trump took office in January 2017, he expedited the environmental review
process, giving the go-ahead for DAPL to drill under the Missouri River.
With the camps largely evacuated, Standing Rock activist Chase Iron Eyes
led a group called “Last Child Camp” to reclaim treaty land in response to
Trump’s decision. Police quickly raided the camp, which was on private
land, and arrested seventy-six, including Iron Eyes. In February, the Cannon
Ball District and the Standing Rock Council passed resolutions calling for
the evacuation of remaining campers at Sacred Stone and the defunct Oceti
Sakowin Camp. It was a controversial move that pitted factions against
each other at a critical juncture when unity was needed most.

On February 22, 2017, the Army Corps, Morton County deputies, and
North Dakota Highway Patrol forcefully evicted the remaining campers at
Oceti Sakowin. The same day, the Bureau of Indian Affairs raided and
evicted campers at Sacred Stone—the only police action to take place on
reservation land, and one that contributed to mounting divisions between
grassroots organizers and Standing Rock. Those divisions came to a head at
a March 10 Native Nations Rise march in Washington, DC, when Water
Protectors booed Archambault during his speech and confronted him as he
left the rally. The march garnered 5,000 attendees and arrived on the heels
of the larger Women’s March. Despite the smaller turnout, it was a unified
showing of support for Standing Rock, even if some didn’t agree with its
political leadership. There was also mounting disillusionment with the
established political order, both Democrat and Republican, for selling out
the movement under Obama, and now under Trump.
“There’s only one resolution,” said Lewis Grassrope reflecting on the
camp eviction and the march in Washington, DC. “Let us be who we are.
Let us live. Let us be free.”
By the time that the last Water Protector was led off the land in
handcuffs, 832 had been arrested. Four Water Protectors face years in
prison. Red Fawn Fallis faced charges for discharging a firearm (later
dropped) when she was arrested during the October 27, 2016, Treaty Camp
raid. The gun belonged to Heath Harmon, an FBI informant, who had
infiltrated the camp and had a relationship with Fallis. As it has for all
political struggles, the state created a new generation of political prisoners
to discourage other potential movements. Fallis’s family was active in AIM
and had been also surveilled by the FBI. In their day, Dakota political
prisoner Leonard Peltier, who is currently serving two life sentences,
represented the suppression of the Red Power movement. During the
#NoDAPL movement, Obama once again turned his back on Indigenous
peoples. Because he had already issued so many pardons (including, for
example, Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera), and with so
much pressure mounting from the horrific police violence against Water
Protectors, many through Indian Country thought Obama would grant
clemency to Peltier. But Obama denied his clemency application. And after
#NoDAPL, there are even more Native political prisoners, more Leonard
Peltiers: Redfawn Fallis was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison;
Michael “Little Feather” Giron was sentenced to 36 months in federal

prison; and Michael “Rattler” Markus and Dion Ortiz face years in federal
prison.62
Though not without its faults, the reunification of the Oceti Sakowin
reawakened an Indigenous movement intent on making, and remaking, a
world premised on Indigenous values, rather than on private ownership and
heteropatriarchy. While Indigenous peoples committed themselves to
caretaking relations, the police had also taken up their familiar role as
caretakers of violence, attempting to snuff out the fires of resistance before
they burned too hot or spread too far. But the fire of the prophesied Seventh
Generation had been lit, and although the Oceti Sakowin campfire was
ceremonially extinguished to mark the end of one form of resistance (and
the beginning of another), its warm coals went on to rekindle the fires of
Water Protectors’ home communities.
For Lakotas, fire is also a gateway to the past, because it is around fires
that histories are shared and ceremonies held. Now, the long tradition of
Indigenous resistance also includes the story of #NoDAPL. But to
understand it, we have to look further into the past: to the history of the
land, the water, and its people, the Oceti Sakowin.

The first pictograph of the 1880 Battiste Good (Brown Hat) winter count documents the arrival of Pte
Ska Win, the White Buffalo Calf Woman, the most significant historical figure of the Oceti Sakowin
who formalized the first treaty with the human and other-than-human worlds. Manuscript 2372: Box
12: F6, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological
Archives, Smithsonian Museum Support Center, Suitland, Maryland.

2

Origins
There are no two sides to the history of the United States and its relationship to people who have
lived here for thousands of years. There are no two sides to that story. You have no right to displace
people, to steal their resources, and steal their lives … What America has done is criminal. And
they’re still doing it.
—Elizabeth Cook-Lynn1

There is one essential reason why Indigenous peoples resist, refuse, and
contest US rule: land. In fact, US history is all about land and the
transformation of space, fundamentally driven by territorial expansion, the
elimination of Indigenous peoples, and white settlement. From its original
1784 boundaries of the first thirteen colonies, the US rapidly expanded
westward from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Pacific coast, annexing nearly 2
billion acres of Indigenous territory in less than a century. Most was west of
the Mississippi River.
This includes the Missouri basin, a massive circulatory system of
streams, rivers, creeks, and tributaries that empties into its main artery, Mni
Sose (the Missouri River). In Oceti Sakowin cosmology, Mni Sose begins
everywhere the water falls from the sky to touch the earth and trickle into
one of these waterways. The river is 2,466 miles long, with a drainage basin
encompassing a massive 529,000 square miles, a landmass one-sixth the
size of the continental United States. The Oceti Sakowin and the Indigenous
nations with which it has shared territory, and has sometimes fought, are as
much defined by Mni Sose as they are by their own political, cultural, and
social relationship to its life-giving waters.
In this world, water is life, and so too is the buffalo nation, the Pte
Oyate. Vast buffalo herds once migrated according to the river’s seasonal
ebbs and flows, followed by the hunting nations of the Northern Plains. At
the center of this world is He Sapa, the Black Hills, the heart of everything
that is. If He Sapa is the heart of the earth, then Mni Sose is its aorta. It is

from this country that the Oceti Sakowin emerged as a nation, a people, and
gained its humanity.
Much has been written about the history of the Missouri River. Yet, few
histories have focused on the river’s role in the colonial project. Book titles
such as Unruly River, River of Promise, River of Peril, and The Dark
Missouri, as well as the settler nickname for the Missouri—“Old Misery,”
for its frequent flooding and the property damage that ensued—depict the
river as a deadly, treacherous, and inhospitable landscape.2 Early settlers
often described the Missouri basin as an irrational and violent country,
plagued by endless inter-Indigenous warfare; settlers saw Indigenous
peoples as equally irrational and violent. “This is a delightful country,”
wrote British trader Alexander Henry about the Northern Plains in 1800,
“and were it not for perpetual wars, the natives might be the happiest people
on earth.”3
European and US explorers, traders, and settlers dubbed the many
nations here “the Sioux,” mythologizing them as the most hated, the most
feared, and the most violent North American Indigenous people. Viewed as
a noble warrior society, they have come to symbolize the violent
hypermasculinity of the frontier and are the basis of the standard image of
Indigenous culture as equestrians who lived in tipis, wore headdresses, and
aimlessly wandered the land like the wild game they called kin. The
University of North Dakota’s racist “Fighting Sioux” mascot (retired in
2012), a disembodied head of a Native male warrior, represented such
views. (Among the tribes in the state, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe stood
alone in opposing it).4 The “Sioux warrior” myth is portrayed in the awardwinning film Dances with Wolves (1990). Such stereotypes, however, are
not confined to the realm of popular culture. Prominent US historians such
as Richard White portray the Sioux as a pillaging band of expansionists
who violently expelled their Indigenous neighbors, and who never crossed
west of the Missouri River—with no small irony—until the signing of the
Declaration of Independence in 1776.5 In fact, these attempts to classify the
Sioux as imperialist newcomers—a label that more accurately describes the
United States—marked the Sioux as nomadic, rootless, unsettled, and
malicious, which made their removal, genocide, and colonization more
palatable.6 Oral histories and careful Indigenous record keeping, including
Dakota and Lakota winter counts, show otherwise. Winter counts marked

each year or winter by recording a significant event with a pictograph on
hide (or sometimes on paper), accompanied by an oral recounting of the
event, and constitute a meticulous record of family, individual, and larger
national histories.7 US historians, however, have misinterpreted winter
counts to support their claims that the Lakotas crossed the Missouri River
and subsequently “discovered” the Black Hills sometime around 1776.8
The Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota nations never called themselves
“Sioux”—that term derives from an abbreviation of “Nadouessioux,” a
French adoption of the Ojibwe word for “little snakes,” denoting the
Ojibwe’s enemies to its west. Instead, they simply called themselves the
“Oyate,” the “Nation,” or the “People,” and sometimes the “Oyate Luta”
(the Red Nation); as a political confederacy, they called themselves the
“Oceti Sakowin Oyate” (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires). Their
geographical span was vast. The oldest Dakota-speaking nations were
located mostly in the western Great Lakes forests, glacial lakes, and rivers.
They are the Mdewakantonwan (the Sacred Nation that Lives by the
Water); the Sissintonwan (the Medicine Nation that Lives by the Water); the
Wahpetonwan (the Nation that Lives in the Forest); and the Wahpekute (the
Nation that Shoots Among the Leaves).9 The Nakota-speaking nations are
the caretakers of the middle territory that began on the eastern banks of the
Missouri River. Their names came from their location in the camp horn:
Ihanktonwan (the Nation that Camps at the End) and Ihanktonwanna (the
Little Nation that Camps at the End). And the youngest and largest, the
Lakota-speaking nations, covered the vast expanse of the Northern Plains
west of the Missouri River, called Tintonwan (the Nation of the Plains).
Among the Tintonwans, there are also seven divisions: the Oglala (the
Nation that Scatters Their Own); the Sicangu (the Nation of the Burnt
Thighs, also known as the Brulé); the Hunkpapa (the Nation at the Head of
the Circle); the Mniconjou (the Nation that Plants by the Water); Itazipco
(the Nation without Bows, or the Sans Arc); the Sihasapa (the Blackfeet
Nation); and the Oohenupa (the Nation of Two Kettles).10
Like most human societies, the origin stories of the Oceti Sakowin are as
diverse as its people and the lands they continue to live with and protect. To
name but a few examples, their origin histories include emergence from the
earth—from the Wase (red clay); emergence from He Sapa; emergence
from Bde Wakan (Spirit Lake or Mille Lacs); descent from the Wicahpi
Oyate (the Star Nation); descent from the Pte Oyate (the Buffalo Nation);

and westward and southern migrations from the Atlantic Seaboard or
Central America. None of these origin stories are more or less true than
others. What they have in common, however, is their collective significance
in defining both a historical experience within a specific geography, and the
moral universe of how one relates to others and the land. The origin stories
contradict settler narratives that describe the Oceti Sakowin as “late
arrivals” west of the Missouri River, at best; or as expansionists, at worst—
driven, like their US counterpart, by purely economic motives to control
river trade by violently displacing other Indigenous nations.
In the absence of written law, according to Lakota author Luther
Standing Bear, “a great tribal consciousness” reigned at the individual level
in Oceti Sakowin societies. No human institution employed force or
violence to compel behavior. Social conduct was based on mutual solidarity
and kinship, in what Standing Bear calls Woucage, “our way of doing
things.” The ultimate punishment for breaking group solidarity was exile,
which “meant to lose identity or die.” An individual’s responsibility was
first and foremost to ensure the survival of the collective. Decisions—
concerning anything from hunting to travel to warfare—were made at the
community level in the open council, a decentralized political authority that
frequently rotated leadership, affording equal say, that is, to separate
societies of men and of women and, in some cases, places of honor to
Wintke societies, those who did not conform to the binary gender roles. An
Oyate Okizu, or the assembly of the entire Oceti Sakowin, was called only
for matters of great importance such as sun dances, or, in the late nineteenth
century, the negotiation of treaties and repulsion of US invasion. In contrast
to their own customary laws, Lakotas created the word Woope Wasicu to
describe the white man’s law. Woope Wasicu described “the cruel
equipment” of law—from armed soldiers and cops, to guns, cannons, balls
and chains, and prisons. According to Luther Standing Bear, this kind of
law “designated not order but force and disorder.”11 Next to the
maintenance of good relations within the nation, an individual’s second
duty was the protection of communal territory. In the east, the vast wild rice
patties and seasonal farms that grew corn, beans, and squash demarcated
Dakota territory. In the west, Lakota territory extended as far as the buffalo
herds that traveled in the fertile Powder River country. For Dakotas,
Lakotas, and Nakotas, territory was defined as any place where they

cultivated relations with plant and animal life; this often overlaid, and was
sometimes in conflict, with other Indigenous nations.
For example, the Lakotas were by no means the only Indigenous nation
with connections to the Black Hills. When different peoples combined
through alliance (whether through the formation of kinship relations, or
purely for survival), they often incorporated aspects of one another’s
histories. Among the more than fifty Indigenous nations who possessed
similar, often overlapping, relationships and claims to the Black Hills were
the Arikara, Osage, Shoshone, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Pawnee, Mandan,
Hidatsa, Kiowa, Ponca, Crow, Omaha, Winnebago, Cheyenne, Arapaho,
and Blackfeet.12
Like the countries that constitute the United Nations, the political
authority of the Oceti Sakowin didn’t prevent them from sometimes warring
with other Indigenous nations. Luther Standing Bear, commenting on
Lakota warfare in 1931, admits as much. He notes how the United States
criminalized the assertion of Indigenous political authority to make war and
defend territory. “We kept our lands to ourselves,” he writes, “by making all
other tribes stay away from us.” When whites began to fear the Oceti
Sakowin’s political power, Standing Bear observed, “they called us
Sioux.”13 In settler vernacular, “Sioux” became equivalent to “criminal”
and was used to justify invasion and endless war. But, as Indigenous
scholars and intellectuals have contended for the last two centuries, war,
diplomacy, and sovereignty are just a few of the Oceti Sakowin’s many
characteristics. Nonetheless, “Sioux” warfare, diplomacy, and sovereignty
dominate settler histories of nineteenth-century Indigenous life on the
Missouri River and in the Northern Plains. This is not because Indigenous
nations are inherently militaristic, but because they had come to know the
United States—which the Lakotas called “Milahanskan” (the nation of the
long knives)—best through its army.
The first Indigenous–US interactions on the Missouri River were
military encounters. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson finalized the
Louisiana Purchase from the French Republic: an annexation of 827 million
acres. Louisiana Territory encompassed the entire Missouri River basin and
more than doubled the territory of the fledgling United States. Shortly
thereafter, Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead a
military expedition up the Missouri River, bearing arms, flags, and “gifts,”
to claim the “new” land and its people. Their goal was to proclaim US

sovereignty over the region and its nations, and to bring the Indigenous
people into trade relations with the United States. And of all the Indigenous
nations, Jefferson mentioned only “the Sioux” by name. “On that nation,”
Jefferson ordered Lewis, “we wish most particularly to make a friendly
impression, because of their immense power, and because we learn they are
very desirous of being on the most friendly terms with us.”14
The Corps of Discovery (a unit of the US Army) met several divisions of
the Oceti Sakowin as they traveled upriver. After navigating the Big Bend
of the Missouri (present-day Crow Creek and Lower Brule Reservations) in
late September of 1804, the expedition was intercepted by a camp of
Sicangus, a political subdivision of the Lakotas.15 As per custom, the
Lakotas hailed the corps with a plume of smoke that rose in the northwest,
signaling the expedition had been spotted. The Lakotas sought council and
some form of payment to pass through their territory, but Lewis and Clark
rebuffed the Lakotas’ assertion to determine who shall pass and at what cost
—clearly disobeying Jefferson’s instructions “to make a friendly
impression.”
After eight days of failing to negotiate their passage without paying a
toll, Lewis and Clark resorted to violence. According to John Ordway, an
expedition volunteer, Clark informed the intransigent Lakota headman,
Black Buffalo, that they were sent by Thomas Jefferson, who could “have
them all distroyed [sic].”16 But, obviously surrounded and overwhelmed,
Lewis and Clark’s threats were worthless. Because he led the negotiations
between the Corps of Discovery and the Sicangus and he refused to let the
expedition pass, Lewis and Clark took Buffalo Medicine (and possibly
other leaders like him) hostage and to secure their passage north. (Buffalo
Medicine was later released once the expedition was free from Lakota
country.) Taking Indigenous hostages was common practice; Jefferson had
earlier advised Lewis that “taking influential chiefs” or their children
“would give some security to your party.”17 Reflecting on the encounter,
Clark later wrote that the Lakotas were “the vilest miscreants of the savage
race, and must ever remain the pirates of the Missouri.” “Unless these
people are reduced to order, by coercive measures, I am ready to pronounce
that the citizens of the United States can never enjoy but partially the
advantages which the Missouri presents,” he continued. “[The Sioux] view

with contempt the merchants of the Missouri, whom they never fail to
plunder, when in their power.”18
Historians have uncritically taken Lewis and Clark’s testimony of that
first encounter at face value: they were waylaid by a band of river pirates
straight from the pages of a Robinson Crusoe fantasy novel. This was most
recently retold in popular accounts like US historian Stephen Ambrose’s
1997 bestselling book Undaunted Courage and documentarian Ken Burns’s
2001 PBS film Lewis and Clark.19 But in their estimation, the Lakotas
didn’t make much of the encounter. Lewis and Clark came and left, and the
Lakotas continued living as before. This was a fairly routine engagement:
merely a different flavor of whites traveling through their territory bearing
flags and guns. According to Clark, even the downriver and more
“peaceful” Ihanktonwan “invariably arrested the progress” of all traders
traversing the river by exacting tolls and demanding more accommodating
trade prices.20 However, for the United States this first interaction held
great significance, and it profoundly shaped their feelings toward a nation
they viewed as criminal “pirates of the Missouri.” As Oglala historian Craig
Howe observes, this exchange “gave rise to storm clouds of deceit that have
in some sense darkened two centuries” of Lakota–US relations.21
But for the historian Jeffrey Ostler, the foundation for genocide in US
Indian policy had in fact been laid decades earlier, in the 1787 Northwest
Ordinance.22 The ordinance opened up the area north of the Ohio River and
in the Great Lakes region for settlement, creating territories that became the
states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Additionally,
Article 3 stated (of the “Indians”) that “in their property, rights, and liberty,
they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars
authorized by Congress.” While, as Ostler observes, this “did not call for
genocide in the first instance,” it legalized genocidal war in the event that
land cessions could not be achieved through “peaceful” means and
Indigenous people were unwilling to submit to US authority.”23
The 1823 Supreme Court decision Johnson v. M’Intosh, in which Chief
Justice John Marshall spelled out the rights of the United States to
Indigenous lands, also drew upon a centuries-old doctrine. Indigenous
peoples, he ruled, only possessed “occupancy” rights, meaning their lands
could be taken by powers that “discovered” them: the “Doctrine of
Discovery.” The origin of this notion was a fifteenth-century papal bull

known as the “Doctrine of Christian Discovery” that distinguished Christian
from non-Christian nations. The latter were regarded as little more than
“savage” peoples awaiting the gift of European civilization, and according
to Lenape scholar Steven Newcomb, the United States interpreted the
doctrine as describing Indigenous peoples as “politically non-existent,
partially or entirely.”24 Therefore, Indigenous title to the land could not be
extinguished where it did not exist. Commenting on the Johnson decision,
Onondaga international jurist Tonya Gonnella Frichner observes, “The
newly formed United States needed to manufacture an American Indian
political identity and concept of Indian land that would open the way for the
United States in its westward colonial expansion.”25 This founding myth
eventually became known as “Manifest Destiny.”
In 1807, following the expedition, Jefferson appointed Clark brigadier
general and Indian agent for Louisiana Territory, and he served as an Indian
Affairs agent under the War Department until his death in 1838. The
expedition and the annexation of land west of the Mississippi was a part of
a rapid push westward, and the Louisiana Purchase was a landmark
achievement. For one, it provided the means by which southern plantation
capitalists could expand their “cotton kingdom” to new markets—hence the
importance of imposing trade relations with the Indigenous nations.
Without expansion, the plantation system was doomed to fail.26 Jefferson
envisioned an “Empire of Liberty” for the lands west of the Mississippi;
one that required the expansion of Black slavery and the transformation of
Indigenous land into private property for advancing a yeoman farming
empire. In this way, the expansion of the plantation system coincided with
Indigenous dispossession and removal.
Jefferson saw the Louisiana Territory as a partial solution to the “Indian
problem”—the problem being that the “Indian tribes” still resided on lands
coveted by the United States. His primary targets were the so-called “Five
Civilized Tribes”—the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and
Seminole—and his intention was to break up and ultimately dissolve these
eastern nations. Because these nations had become slaveowners with farms
and plantations, like their white neighbors, their system of land tenure
resembled a claim to permanence. Thus, they had to be departed. And new
lands in the West offered a new opportunity for eastern Indigenous removal.
For example, Section 15 of the 1804 Louisiana Territorial Act afforded that
“the President of the United States is hereby authorized to stipulate with

any Indian tribes owning lands on the east side of the Mississippi, and
residing thereon, for an exchange of lands, the property of the United
States, on the west side of the Mississippi, in case the said tribes shall
remove and settle thereon.” Jefferson wanted to further concentrate eastern
Indigenous nations into ever-diminishing territories. By making their wild
game, land, and resources scarce, he could force them to either
“incorporate” or “remove beyond the Mississippi.”27
Dakotas, Nakotas, and Lakotas had been trading with the French and
British for decades by the time the Lewis and Clark expedition arrived. By
the early 1800s, the fur trade had enveloped Northern Plains life (the
Europeans also brought the Bible, the gun, and disease), and the Lakotas
had a vested interest in maintaining a foothold in the river trade; they
certainly didn’t consent to the US claim over the land and waterway.28 But
the Lakotas never saw themselves as owning the river; on the contrary, it
was to the river that they belonged. The many centuries they spent living in
relationship to the land and water reinforced this understanding. And by
1804 they also belonged to the river trade, both economically and
politically, making the river a different source of their livelihood and
survival.
Early settlers and traders heavily relied on Indigenous labor and
patronage for trapping and hunting, while Indigenous societies in turn relied
on trade goods such as cloth, guns, ammunition, knives, iron cooking
utensils, and food items.29 From the early colonial times through the end of
the nineteenth century, the fur trade was dominated by rival trading firms
(and rival European colonizers), who encouraged sporadic inter-Indigenous
trade wars. From 1806 to 1835, US Indian policy introduced a factory
system of trade houses to curb the criminal behavior of these white traders,
but the policy had little effect, because the US government and traders
themselves participated in the same criminal enterprise of trespass and
theft.30 All of these companies were in the business of trading beaver pelts,
to be sold on the European and US markets; however, by the 1830s beaver
populations had been all but exterminated.
Historians and archeologists largely view Indigenous peoples as
responsible for the decline of fur-bearing animals in the Northern Plains,
and the adoption of horse culture increased the ability of Indigenous
peoples to hunt buffalo.31 But their capabilities never compared to the

killing efficiency of white trappers and hunters. For example, the killing
efficiency of the “Rocky Mountain system” of trapping, dominant in the
early nineteenth century, rapidly depleted fur-bearing animals. Made up of
heavily armed company employees, these units knowingly trespassed into
Lakota and Arikara territories, fortifying their positions and trade routes as
they advanced.32 According to Indigenous custom, no one was barred from
hunting for subsistence and survival. But they did place restrictions on
whites who hunted for profit; thus, these highly romanticized frontiersmen
were in fact little more than poachers. As beaver populations declined and
demand for their pelts decreased, buffalo robes were quick to fill their
place. Yet when US companies began to bypass Indigenous peoples and
dominate the trade, buffalo herds, like the beaver, were all but exterminated,
from the 1870s to the 1880s. This expropriation went hand in hand with
military-sponsored extermination campaigns, which began in 1865.33
Taking only the hides, white hunters not only left buffalo carcasses to rot on
the plains, but also poisoned them with strychnine to kill off coyotes,
wolves, and other scavengers—and sometimes starving Native people.34
Estimates place the precontact North American buffalo population at 25 to
30 million. It took settlers nearly a century to exterminate the herds in the
east, forcing the survivors of the holocaust, much like their human kin, west
of the Mississippi River. Annihilating the remaining 10 to 15 million in the
Great Plains took just two decades.35
These were acts of genocide. For genocide encompasses much more than
merely acts committed during war, as most US historians believe. The 1948
UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide defines the intent of genocide as “to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Examples include, but are not
limited to, murder, torture, or the deliberate deprivation of resources needed
for physical survival, like clean water, food (e.g., buffalo), clothing, shelter
or medical services. This definition also includes actions targeting women
specifically, like involuntary sterilization, forced abortion, prohibition of
marriage, and long-term separation of men and women, all of which
threaten the ability to produce future generations. (Another tactic is the
forcible transfer of children.) United States policy has subjected Indigenous
peoples to all of these genocidal acts. Some of which are historical, others
are ongoing. “Settler colonialism is inherently genocidal in terms of the

genocide convention,” writes historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.36 Although
the genocide convention is not retroactive (it only became applicable in the
United States in 1988, the year the US Senate ratified it), it is a useful lens
for studying Indigenous history.
The fur trading forts were rampant with sexual violence. White traders,
low-level laborers, and soldiers often stopped by for a drunken “frolic,”
which involved demanding the sexual services of Indigenous women’s
bodies—with or without their consent. Access to whiskey, treaty annuities,
and trade goods sometimes came with the expectation that Indigenous men
should forfeit their daughters’, sisters’, and wives’ bodies to white men (as
if Indigenous women’s bodies were theirs to give), and soldiers also
frequently raped Indigenous women whom they had taken prisoner. “To
celebrate victory, troopers often rounded up the prettiest girls to be passed
around among the officers, leaving the enlisted men with the less attractive,
older women,” wrote Sicangu scholar Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve in her
account, based on family oral histories of the well-known abuses against
Lakota women at Fort Platte (in operation from 1840 to 1846).37 Many
Indigenous activists today have identified “man camps,” the transient allmen communities of oil and gas workers, as hubs for the exploitation of
Indigenous women through trafficking and sex work.38 In some ways,
trading forts were the first man camps—the vanguards of capital that
extracted wealth not only from the land, but also through the conquest of
Indigenous women’s bodies. Later, these trade forts also became border
towns, the white-dominated settlements that today ring Indigenous
reservations.
The fur trade also violently transformed gender relations. As Driving
Hawk Sneve recounts, Lakota society didn’t adhere to monogamous sexual
values, possessed nothing on par with the puritanical Christian views of
sexual conduct or marriage, and considered property in the home to be
owned by the women.39 But Lakota women who married white traders were
placed under the protection and control of a patriarch (a practice known as
“coverture”). Descending from a society where women owned all the
property in the home, losing control of their property, their bodies, and their
children, and being placed under the dominion of a white patriarch was a
harrowing, alien experience.40 Maybe this should come as no surprise. In
white society women and children held little or no political authority and

were little more than domestic servants. Diplomacy, trade, and war—the
public sphere—were the sole privilege of men. This included the sale and
trade of hides at European or US forts along the Missouri River, unlike the
Indigenous systems they had replaced, in which trade, exchange, and the
sharing of material wealth was intended to strengthen kinship relations,
rather than a market economy and private ownership. During the fur trade,
Indigenous women labored to prepare the buffalo hides, but they didn’t
“own” the hides sold to whites because the hunting and sale of those hides
was a male-dominated business. And white traders often owned or
“married” multiple Indigenous women to increase their access to the
women’s relatives—and their trade markets—or to sell her off to others. In
this sense, the subordination of Indigenous women was lucrative for a
trader and increased his social standing.41
One of these men was the French Canadian trader Toussaint
Charbonneau, who is famous for joining Lewis and Clark in November
1804, when the expedition camped among the Mandans at Fort Mandan. He
offered up his services and those of his “wife,” a Shoshone woman by the
name of Sacagawea, as interlocutors and interpreters for Indigenous peoples
they would encounter upriver. Although Sacagawea has surpassed
Charbonneau in fame for her aid to the expedition, little is known about her
other than her services to white men. Captured by Hidatsas at the age of
thirteen, Sacagawea was one of many women Charbonneau purchased
throughout his life.42 Although she bore him children, Sacagawea was little
more than chattel to Charbonneau—a piece of property he sometimes
resented, and at others physically abused.43 And it wasn’t only Sacagawea
whom he subjected to violence. In May 1795, while working for the
Montreal-based North West Company, Charbonneau was sent to pick up
supplies at a trading post near Lake Manitou. According to the journal of
John Macdonell, a North West Company clerk, an elder Ojibwe woman
caught Charbonneau “in the act of committing Rape upon her Daughter.”
Furious, the woman stabbed Charbonneau with a canoe awl, “a fate he
highly deserved for his brutality.”44
Like Charbonneau, white traders, explorers, soldiers, and settlers
believed they possessed the right to trespass freely across Indigenous
territory, and they also believed they possessed unrestricted access to
Indigenous women’s bodies and their children. Muscogee jurist Sarah Deer
argues that rape “can be employed as a metaphor for the entire concept of

colonialism” because it is not only experienced individually but is also part
of an ongoing structure of domination—one with a beginning, but no end.45
More so than Indigenous men, the subordination of Indigenous women was
about realizing profits in the fur trade. Violence against Native women
undermined their customary political authority and used their bodies to
create profit. As noted above, unlike their white counterparts, whose bodies
were used for sexual reproduction, Indigenous women’s bodies increased
white traders’ access to new markets through their kin—and by extension,
land, capital, and political and economic influence. Thus, while Indigenous
women did bear children for white men, their main use was for securing the
future of white settlement. As Athabascan scholar Dian Million puts it,
“Gender violence marks … the evisceration of Indigenous nations.”46
White traders and trappers appropriated Indigenous women’s bodies as
much as they had appropriated the wealth of the land by harvesting and
selling the skins of animals. The two practices went hand in hand.
But this was only one component of settler society’s attack on
Indigenous women’s political authority. With women already shut out of the
fur trade, the treaties, which barred Indigenous women from participation in
this specific realm of diplomacy, offered an externally imposed means to
recognize Indigenous men’s political authority.47 From 1805 to 1873, the
United States made thirty-five treaties and agreements with various political
divisions of the Oceti Sakowin—or, as they became known in treaty
parlance, “the Sioux Nation of Indians.” Not one woman was allowed to
“touch-the-pen,” place an “x-mark,” or formally consent to any land
cessions, peace agreements, or political relationships with the United
States.48 By the time the Oceti Sakowin had been forcefully confined to
reservations in the 1890s, Indigenous women had been completely confined
to the domestic sphere, while Indigenous men occupied the primary roles in
the reservation political economy, including as reservation police, political
leaders, and traders.49 Gender divisions were sometimes enforced by
military rule, and the boarding school system, which was controlled by the
military like the reservations, further entrenched these divisions, ripping
children from their families and educating young girls and boys on their
proper places in a “civilized Christian society”: homemaking for the girls,
and wage labor for the boys.50 Finally, in 1924—after Indigenous peoples
had achieved a relative degree of “civilization”—the United States granted

them citizenship, annexing both Indigenous lands and lives into the US
nation-state. It was not only within the home that Indigenous women’s
political authority been domesticated, but also in the settler nation as a
whole.
This upheaval of gender relations significantly undermined the political
traditions of the Oceti Sakowin. After all, it was a woman who formalized
the first compact—or treaty—with the human and other-than-human world.
Pte Ska Win, White Buffalo Calf Woman—the most significant historical
figure in Oceti Sakowin history—established not only the basis of
customary and ceremonial laws of humans, but also how humans would
exist in correct relations to the Pte Oyate and the nonhuman world. In his
earliest entry on his winter count, the Sicangu historian Brown Hat depicts
White Buffalo Calf Woman as a white buffalo arriving in the center of a
camp circle in the first decade of the tenth century. Above her are the Calf
Pipe, a yucca plant, and a cornstalk. To the right, in English, Brown Hat
lists the various animal nations the White Buffalo Calf Woman brought into
formal relations with the Oceti Sakowin: elk, deer, antelope, buffalo,
beaver, and wolves. Corn kernels fall from her udders into water, making
the connection between humans, plants, animals, the earth, and water.51
Therefore, no one had the right to cede these relations to the land, water,
plants, and animals—because those relations were grounded in the first
compact, the first treaty with Pte Ska Win. (This is why Arvol Looking
Horse, the nineteenth-generation keeper of this Calf Pipe, led the prayer
marches at #NoDAPL to honor those original instruction and the Oceti
Sakowin’s first commitments.)
To gain access to Indigenous lands, white men had used Indigenous men
to break communal land practices and undermine Indigenous women’s
political authority. As a result, Indigenous women are largely absent from
early historical narratives.52 Yet their power posed an obstacle to US
annexation of Indigenous lands.53 It should come as no surprise that
#NoDAPL was led primarily by Indigenous women, from youth leaders,
such as Bobbi Jean Three Legs, Zaysha Grinnell, Tokata Iron Eyes, and
Jasilyn Charger; to women like LaDonna BraveBull Allard, Phyllis Young,
and Faith Spotted Eagle.
Zaysha Grinnell, a fifteen-year-old citizen of the Mandan Hidatsa
Arikara Nation, the descendants of Sacagawea, successfully petitioned her
tribal council in March 2016 to oppose DAPL. She described the scene

faced by her nation during the oil boom as similar to the one confronted by
her ancestors during the fur trade, two centuries ago:
When these oil companies come in, they bring in the men … These men bring with them the man
camps, and with that comes violence and sex trafficking. Indigenous women and girls near the camps
are really affected by this and we are not going to put up with it. Making more girls into leaders,
because we witness it firsthand, is so important.54

As the first entry of capitalism in the Upper Missouri, the fur trade,
spreading through existing Indigenous networks, brought with it apocalypse
in the form of smallpox. By the time Lewis and Clark arrived, the European
disease had already devastated the Missouri River Indigenous peoples
several times, most likely being introduced by French and British traders.
The advent of steamboats greatly increased the spread of smallpox. In 1824
Congress authorized the Army Corps of Engineers, a construction branch of
the military, to regulate the navigation of rivers and harbors. By 1838
Congress had assigned the Army Corps to pull snags and clear the river for
steamboat traffic coming from Saint Louis. The federal government
assumed its authority over navigable waterways under the Constitution’s
commerce clause—the same clause that also regulated trade with
Indigenous nations. Indian affairs, under the supervision of the War
Department, was tasked with the creation and management of federally
subsidized trading posts to undercut British, Spanish, and French trade and
bolster US influence over Indigenous nations.55 The increase in steamboat
traffic intensified the fur trade; and the fur trade in turn intensified
commerce and, therefore, US authority over the river. As R. G. Robertson
points out, the fur trade “was the primary means by which smallpox reached
the Indians in the interior.”56 In other words, the spread of smallpox and
other diseases coincided with an intensification of colonial invasion.
Steamships transporting treaty annuities, ammunition, Indian agents,
traders and soldiers to Missouri River forts and trading posts also brought
disease and death. The consequences of their passage brought pure horror to
Indigenous nations. In the summer of 1837, an American Fur Company
steamboat, the St. Peter’s, traveled from Saint Louis transporting trade
goods and Indigenous treaty annuities; it was, in turn, to collect Indigenousharvested buffalo hides. It also knowingly carried, in its human cargo, the
smallpox virus.

At Fort Clark, where the Mandans lived, along the Missouri River, the
deadly virus arrived on June 19, 1837, via the St. Peter’s. As early as April,
the crew had seen signs of the disease among themselves, but they
nevertheless unloaded treaty annuities and loaded buffalo robes onto the
ship that day. Smallpox, too, was unloaded, as the infected crew embarked
on a drunken “frolic” with the Mandans. Within twenty-five days, the
Mandans showed the first signs of infections. The only ones spared were
elders who had built up an immunity, and who were already scarred from
previous outbreaks. Children and adults writhed and stung from intense
fevers. Putrid, hideous sores filled with pus, scarring them for life—if they
survived. Francis A. Chardon, a fur trader at the fort, stopped counting the
dead “as they die so fast it is impossible.” To end the suffering, parents
killed their children; friends, relatives, and lovers killed each other; and
some committed suicide. The smell of decaying corpses was discernable
from miles away.57
Many have speculated that Indigenous peoples were incapable of
understanding infection and the spread of disease. What is clear from
Chardon’s journals is that Indigenous peoples knew the source of their
affliction—the fur trade and the trading forts—and sought retribution
against the traders and the fur trade itself. “We are badly situated,” wrote
Chardon, “as we are threatened to be Murdered by the Indians every
instant.” Indigenous peoples knew traders and explorers sometimes carried
smallpox or cowpox with them in vials for inoculations. George Catlin, a
white painter and traveler of the American West, recounted a story he heard
among the Pawnees that a trader threatened unleashing smallpox upon them
if they didn’t submit to his will: “He would let the smallpox out of a bottle
and destroy the whole [lot] of them.”58 “The Sioux had it in contemplation
… to murder us in the spring,” Lewis wrote while he and Clark wintered
with the Mandans in 1805 and 1805, “but were prevented from making the
attack, by our threatening to spread the smallpox, with all its horrors among
them.”59
Accurate Indigenous population data does not exist, but some studies
suggest that Indigenous nations with closer contact to the whites had
increased exposure to diseases. These nations, such as the Mandans at Fort
Clark, had positioned themselves as brokers in the fur trade, often settling
near trading forts or allowing trade posts in or near their villages. Diseases
were quick to spread in these intimate river communities, making

quarantine or flight nearly impossible. Some calculations estimate that from
1780 to 1877, Indigenous river nations lost around 80 percent of their
populations, with the Mandan, Caddo, Wichita, and Pawnee experiencing
almost 90 percent population loss. Buffalo-hunting nations on the Northern
Plains from 1780 to 1877 experienced a 40 percent population decline
overall; among them, this figure approached 80 percent for the Assiniboine,
Atsina, and Comanche. While smallpox epidemics arrived again and again
to the Plains nations—1778, 1781, 1801—the 1837 outbreak was the most
devastating for those along the Missouri River, nearly wiping out the
Mandans and forcing them to join together with the Hidatsas and Arikaras.
(The Lakotas and Dakotas, however, largely escaped the outbreak because
of prior inoculation and by avoiding trading posts after learning of the
epidemic.)60 In 1849 cholera killed about one-fourth of the Pawnees, along
with many Lakotas. The last major smallpox epidemic in the region
occurred in 1871, killing thousands of Assiniboines and Blackfeet.61
Turning the river into profit required little capital investment in
Indigenous lives, as long as the trade goods and annuities continued to flow.
But it did require the continual extraction of furs. The employment of
Indigenous societies as trappers, hunters, and patrons was the first effort at
turning the river into a source of wealth. But the Missouri River wasn’t a
“middle ground” scenario where all parties were equals, even when the
British and French dominated trade. A popular convention in US history,
the “middle ground” thesis posits that in some cases, such as the fur trade,
Indigenous and white people found common ground in forms of trade
where one group was not allowed to assert too much control or influence
over the other.62 Lost in these imaginary and ahistorical situations, however,
is the simple fact that early European and US colonization, in all its forms,
was fundamentally extractive and imperial. Lakotas and Dakotas did
actively compete with other Indigenous nations for control over the river
trade, but such conflict never approached the holocaust brought by disease
and the calculated violence of the US military and traders.
The Oceti Sakowin had good reason to despise the imposition of white
traders and US forts. As the fur trade peaked, the Oceti Sakowin east and
west of the Missouri began to wage defensive wars to expel the invaders
whom they rightfully blamed for the disappearing buffalo and other animal
kin. Foremost among their grievances was the devastation inflicted by white
traders, emigrants traversing the land, and the increasing US military

presence. Each was a foreboding sign of white encroachment. Instead of
justice, however, what they got was a “peace” through the permanence of
war.

Rochelle Bullhead wears a penny dress during the October 27, 2016 police raid on the 1851 Treaty
Camp. Photo by Linsey Norton.

3

War
The whole world is coming.
A Nation is coming,
A Nation is coming.
The Eagle has brought the message to the Nation …
Over the whole earth they are coming.
The Buffalo are coming,
The Buffalo are coming.
—“Maka Sitomaniya Olowan,”
Lakota Ghost Dance Song, 18901

The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism—the
specific form of colonialism whereby an imperial power seizes Native
territory, eliminates the original people by force, and resettles the land with
a foreign, invading population. Unlike other forms of colonialism in which
the colonizers rule from afar and sometimes leave, settler colonialism
attempts to permanently and completely replace Natives with a settler
population. The process is never complete, and the colonial state’s methods
for gaining access to new territories change over time, evolving from a
program of outright extermination to one of making Indigenous peoples
“racial minorities” and “domestic dependent nations” within their own
lands, and of sacrificing Indigenous lands for resource extraction. But even
if elimination strategies evolve to appear more humane or ethical, “the
question of genocide,” writes anthropologist Patrick Wolfe, “is never far
from discussions of settler colonialism.”2
Indigenous elimination, in all its orientations, is the organizing principle
of settler society. Unlike the European Holocaust, which had a beginning
and an end, and targeted humans alone, Indigenous elimination, as a
practice and formal policy, continues today, entailing the wholesale
destruction of nonhuman relations. Today’s state violence and surveillance

against Water Protectors is a continuation of the Indian Wars of the
nineteenth century. It is no coincidence that the law enforcement agency
that led the siege against the #NoDAPL camps in order to protect DAPL
construction, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department, inherited the legacy
of the infamous Indian fighter and Seventh Cavalry general George
Armstrong Custer. Present-day Mandan, North Dakota, a white-dominated
border town to Standing Rock and the county seat of Morton County, is
seven miles north of Fort Abraham Lincoln, where Custer was stationed to
secure the passage of the Northern Pacific Railroad across the Missouri
River and through Oceti Sakowin territory.
Bloody wars of conquest defined the period following the United States’
assertion of control over the river trade, lasting for nearly half of the
nineteenth century. Its goal was to control the river, and then the entire
Missouri River basin (especially the fertile buffalo hunting grounds in the
western Powder River country). Following the Civil War, the Oceti
Sakowin’s relationship with the Missouri River was increasingly defined by
avoidance, because the river had since been enflamed by invasion: violence,
death, and disease. The escalation of the river trade brought unwanted
changes, such as an increased US presence through the construction of
military and trade forts, and an intensifying assault on rapidly thinning
buffalo herds.
Initially, Indigenous subsistence hunting, gathering, and agriculture had
provided the means to effectively resist settler encroachment. But by
separating Indigenous producers from the land and attempting to make
them dependent on treaty annuities or cash economies, the colonizers
waged total war on Indigenous life. The Oceti Sakowin were not the first to
confront US total war. Haudenosaunees, for instance, call every US
commander in chief “town destroyer”—a title bestowed on the first US
president, George Washington, who ordered a bloody, punitive campaign
that burned forty Haudenosaunee towns in New York during the
Revolutionary War. Haudenosaunee cornfields were also burned to thwart
the reclamation of the land and impose starvation. To consummate
possession by mixing blood and soil, the troops responsible for razing the
Haudenosaunee towns were afterward rewarded with title to Indigenous
lands.3
In a very real sense, the founding of the United States was a declaration
of war against Indigenous peoples. But to formally declare war would have

been to acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ status among the “civilized” or
“Christian” nations. On the other hand, an undeclared war was a “savage
war,” in which the rules of “civilized war” were suspended. US army
historian Andrew Birtle reports that the military academy at West Point
studies US Indian Wars only in its course on the law, and in “the same
manner as it did the treatment of guerrillas and actively hostile civilian
populations in civilized warfare.” The implication was “that soldiers were
free to employ the harshest measures necessary to subdue them.”4
In other words, the US Indian Wars developed the tactics and strategies
that would inform US counterinsurgency operations abroad. As Chickasaw
scholar Jodi Byrd argues, “the United States propagates empire not through
frontiers but through the production of a paradigmatic Indianness.”5 As the
US military became professionalized following the Civil War, these lessons
were passed down informally, though most never became written doctrine.
And as anthropologist Laleh Khalili argues, they “became the necessary, if
unwritten, manual for subsequent overseas asymmetric warfare, in the
Philippines, the Caribbean, and Latin America.”6 These included techniques
like the use of native scouts, the establishment of reservations to control and
monitor native fighters and civilians, and attacks on villages to undermine
native economies.
But because Indigenous peoples are not seen as full sovereigns under US
or international law, Indigenous resistance to colonialism—even if for selfdefense—is considered criminal, much as it was in places throughout the
Americas, Africa, and more recently in Palestine.7 Libraries have been
filled with volumes written by armchair historians, colonial apologists, and
scholars of all stripes—too many to name here—on Northern Plains
Indigenous warfare. Very few researchers, however, have actually
questioned the premises of waging just wars on the part of Indigenous
nations against US empire. A question that many historians have
entertained—did the Oceti Sakowin have a right to defend itself with armed
force?—is not posed here. The simple truth is that Indigenous nations, like
all nations, possess the right to defend themselves, and how a people choose
to defend themselves cannot be placed neatly into categories of “right” and
“wrong.” Survival by any means necessary is an act of resistance.
It was through war and self-defense that the Oceti Sakowin made their
most historic agreements with the United States: the 1851 and 1868 treaties
of peace. In 1849 Congress transferred the Bureau of Indian Affairs from

the Department of War to the Department of Interior, a newly created
federal bureaucracy dedicated to the management of wildlife, public lands,
and the conservation of natural resources. Indian affairs have remained
there ever since. The shift marked a new direction in Indian policy that
emphasized “peace” while explicitly promoting the “civilizing mission.”
“Peace and friendship” treaties had already placed the various divisions of
the Oceti Sakowin exclusively “under the protection of the United States of
America, and of no other nation, power, or sovereign” (in 1805, 1815 and
1825), but they never ceded large amounts of territory or drastically
diminished Oceti Sakowin political authority.8
The Oceti Sakowin possessed significant military and political power, so
it is unlikely this Indigenous nation viewed treaties with the United States
as acquiescing to a superior sovereign power. This began to change after
decades of the fur trade and diseases exacted their toll on the Northern
Plains ecology and Indigenous nations. By the time of the peace policy,
thousands of Lakotas had already withdrawn west of the Missouri into the
Powder River country to avoid the unfolding apocalypse brought on by the
river trade. In the east traders had swindled the Dakotas out of land and
treaty annuities, reducing them to starvation and creating the conditions for
an Indigenous uprising. In some areas, the once-numerous buffalo nations
that blackened the Missouri River valley had been all but wiped out, and
elsewhere they had been totally exterminated. Infectious disease—cholera,
measles, and smallpox outbreaks—arrived with the white invasion of the
West, which swept through Pawnee, Crow, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Arapaho
hunting grounds and into Oregon Territory.
In 1847 Brigham Young led an exodus of tens of thousands of Mormons
to settle Indigenous lands in Utah, while the discovery of gold in California
in 1849 and later in Montana in 1853 added to the westward white flood. In
1846 a group of Sicangus and Oglalas in Powder River country demanded
payment for the damages that the increased overland travel had inflicted on
the land: the depletion of game, the clearing of scarce timber, and the
spreading of disease.9 They got escalated military occupation instead. The
US military found it impossible to control the waves of white settlers and
mounting Indigenous indignation. The year the peace policy was declared,
the United States established a fort at the confluence of the North Platte and
Laramie rivers to address the problem. Fort Laramie thus became the site
for them to pursue “peace” by means of increased military occupation in

Powder River country. Strategically positioned at the point where the
overland trail trespassed through the territory of the last remaining large
buffalo herds, the fort was a symbol of increasing US presence and
authority.
The vision for the military outpost came from the Upper Platte Indian
agent Thomas Fitzpatrick, a leading advocate of peace by military
occupation.10 As part of his vision for peace, Fitzpatrick hoped to advance
US interests by securing a wide-ranging inter-Indigenous peace treaty to
definitively establish Indigenous territory, guarantee safe passage for
overland travelers, and secure land cessions. The Plains nations called a
mass council. For three weeks in September 1851, tens of thousands from
the Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, Crow, Gros Ventre, Blackfeet, Assiniboine,
Shoshone, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Dakota nations met with US
treaty commissioners at Horse Creek, thirty-six miles downriver of Fort
Laramie. The first Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 was signed by all parties,
ensuring the right of the United States to build wagon roads and railroads,
and payment of $50,000 for fifty years for damages caused by the overland
emigrations.11 Perhaps demonstrating the commitment of the United States
to this “peace” policy, the Senate limited the period of treaty annuities to
ten years, with the possibility of a five-year renewal. The amendment was
sent back to the Plains nations for approval, and then back to the Senate,
where it was never ratified. Regardless, the United States paid the $50,000
in annuities for the next fifteen years.12 The spirit of peace, however, was
short-lived and the treaty was deeply flawed.
Six headmen of the Oceti Sakowin signed the treaty, presumably with
the understanding that the emigrant depredations would cease and that the
United States would live up to its commitments. The Oceti Sakowin
representatives, however, protested over having to select a single “head
chief” to represent all the nations in the treaty negotiations because it
contradicted the decentralized political structure more familiar to them,
which allowed each division to select its own representatives. This
configuration offended the autonomy previously possessed by each political
division. Mato Wayuhi (Conquering Bear), a Sicangu, was arbitrarily
chosen by the Oceti Sakowin councils as a representative of the 1851 Fort
Laramie Treaty, but he protested his appointment because of his own young
age—he was fifty years old, not yet an elder—and lack of experience.13 The
selection of “treaty chiefs” to represent entire Indigenous nations was an

age-old settler tactic to exert influence and concentrate leadership, while
cleaving political factions. Most Indigenous leaders were more committed
to diplomacy than to armed resistance, though the two strategies sometimes
worked in tandem. Some wanted to give up the Powder River country and
remove to reservations to start a new life. “The hostiles,” as the Indian
agents called them, wished to end treaty making altogether and keep their
lands free of reservations and restrictions. Although the two divisions both
agreed with the premises of the 1851 Treaty, the western divisions
demanded that the reservation groups cease accepting annuities and remove
themselves from the negative influence of the trading forts, where the
annuities were distributed.14
In 1853 Fitzpatrick criticized the outcome of the 1851 Treaty, calling it a
temporary fix to coming war. “Either an inducement must be offered to
them greater than the gains of plunder, or a force must be at hand able to
restrain them and check their depredations. Any compromise between the
systems will only be liable to all the miseries of failure,” he argued.15
Neither was agreeable to the Oceti Sakowin. Annuities meant submission
and land cessions, while an increased military presence meant violence. To
the Oceti Sakowin, treaty making became more and more a zero-sum game,
in which all roads led to diminishing independence and increasing relations
with the United States.
Three years after the treaty signing, in August, a lame calf belonging to
an emigrant Mormon wandered into a camp of near-starving Sicangus.
Believing the calf was abandoned, it was killed, butchered, and almost
immediately consumed. The Mormon owner called for retribution, and John
L. Grattan, a young West Point graduate stationed at the nearby Fort
Laramie, answered. Although Indigenous peoples at first allowed the
overland emigrants to travel through and hunt freely within their territories,
under US law the killing or theft of a domestic animal, such as a lame calf,
was considered a property crime. Private property held more sanctity than
the Indigenous treaties or lives. Grattan descended on the camp, demanding
that Conquering Bear relinquish the guilty party. As the “treaty chief” of the
1851 Treaty that was committed to maintaining peace, Conquering Bear
offered restitution to the Mormon and pled for a peaceful resolution.
Grattan’s men responded by shooting Conquering Bear. The Sicangus
descended on Grattan and his soldiers, killing him and all twenty-eight of
his men. Six days later, Conquering Bear died, and with him the spirit of the

1851 peace treaty. The Sicangus, quick to seek revenge, robbed a mail
coach near Fort Laramie, making off with a large amount of money and
killing three white men.16
Tensions remained high. While treaty annuities continued to arrive on
time, white traders preyed on the Lakotas and Dakotas collecting their
annuities at Missouri River trading posts. In the winter of 1853 to 1854,
Sihasapas and Hunkpapas refused treaty annuities and began to wage war
on white traders. Traders (and even contemporary historians) have
mistakenly called treaty annuities “gifts.” Annuities were not gifts, but
contractual treaty obligations. Although their intended purpose was to
guarantee peace, they were often withheld to pay trade “debts” or used to
coerce “hostile” groups into submitting to a trader’s will. White traders
were welcomed for their seemingly endless supply of highly prized
commodities such as guns and cloth, for which the Oceti Sakowin called
them “Wasichun,” or “people who possess a mysterious power.” Now, it
was clear that this power also brought evil, earning them a second name,
which played on the first: “Wasicu”—the “fat taker,” the settler, the
colonizer, the capitalist. To be called “Wasicu” was the highest insult. It
meant that a person behaved selfishly, individualistically, with no
accountability, as if they had no relatives. Such behavior was normally
punished by alienation or banishment. “Wasicu” became synonymous with
the United States, a nation that behaved as if it had no relatives.17
For this reason, Little Bear, a leader of the Hunkpapa, waged a bitter
campaign against the white traders on the Upper Missouri. According to
American Fur Company employee Edwin Thompson Denig, in 1853 when
the fur company attempted to construct a trade fort in Hunkpapa territory
without their consent, Little Bear’s akicitas (soldiers) “cut up the carts,
killed the horses, and flogged the traders and sent them home.” Little Bear
first earned his status as a leader when he killed a despised white trader
from the American Fur Company in the trader’s own home, for which
Denig assumed he sought the “destruction of all traders in the country.”
According to Denig, the Sihasapas and Hunkpapas under Little Bear’s
command
cut off every white man they meet and pillage or destroy all property outside the forts at the
Yellowstone. They declare war to the knife with the Government of the United States and all whites
in the country, threaten to burn up the forts, make no buffalo robes except what they want for their
own use and wish to return to their primitive mode of life.18

Some Missouri River Lakotas and Dakotas revolted against the fur trade
and the profit motive by eschewing alcohol, boycotting the fur and river
trade, and actively sabotaging the trading forts—the primary source of their
affliction. These efforts, along with the return to subsistence buffalo
hunting, allowed Indigenous nations to resist the encroachment of
capitalism.
Later that year Indian agent Alfred J. Vaughn traveled the Missouri
River, meeting with various divisions of the Oceti Sakowin to distribute
annuities and gather reports on the recent hostilities against traders. When
he arrived at the Sihasapas and Hunkpapas’ camp, they firmly refused
Vaughn’s annuities. And in an encounter with the Ihanktonwannas, the
headman, Red Leaf, cut open all the bags of the Indian agent’s provisions,
scattering the contents across the prairie. The akicitas then threw the
remaining gunpowder keg in the river, shooting it until it exploded.19 The
more militant divisions among the Oceti Sakowin resented what the trading
posts and the treaty annuities symbolized: nonconsensual occupation and an
attack on the land. The frequency of these acts of resistance should put to
rest any claims that the Oceti Sakowin had become helplessly dependent
and devastatingly transformed by the fur trade, thus leading to their
inevitable defeat and collapse. However, this strident refusal depended upon
maintaining access to a crucial resource: the buffalo herds. Like a good
relative, the Pte Oyate initially provided the means to confront invasion;
however, this dependency would soon be exploited as a weakness when the
military targeted the buffalo nations for extermination. An attack on the
land and the buffalo was an attack on Indigenous subsistence practices and
the ability to resist encroachment.
The military and traders were quick to claim victimhood following
Grattan’s defeat and the war on the Missouri River trade.20 In response the
War Department sent 600 soldiers under the command of General William
S. Harney up the Platte River. On September 5, 1855, Harney engaged 250
Sicangus camped at Blue Water Creek. The leaders, Tukiha Maza (Iron
Shell), and Wakinyan Cikala (Little Thunder), asked for peace, telling
Harney their camp was peaceful and mostly made up of women and
children. Harney ordered his men to raze the camp, killing eighty-six—half
of them women and children. They took another seventy women and
children as prisoners, holding them at Fort Laramie. According to one
account, the soldiers seized an infant from her wounded mother and used

the child as target practice.21 At Fort Laramie, the officers raped the
Sicangu women, who, according to the testimony of Susan Bettelyoun
Bordeaux, “became the property of their captors.” In a letter accompanying
Bordeaux’s testimony, Hunkpapa historian Josephine Waggoner writes,
“There were many war babies born after Harney left Laramie.”22 That day
Harney earned his Lakota name—“Woman Killer.”23
Woman Killer intended to terrorize the Lakotas into submission, but this
had the opposite effect. A young man, who would later earn the name
“Tasunka Witko” (Crazy Horse), returned from a hunting trip to find his
relatives’ mutilated bodies scattered across the prairie. That day Crazy
Horse committed his life to fighting the Woman Killer’s nation. Crazy
Horse’s uncle Sinte Gleska (Spotted Tail) had attempted to stop the
massacre. Although unarmed and surrounded by soldiers, Spotted Tail
grabbed a soldier’s knife and killed ten of Woman Killer’s men before
being taken down, wounded but not killed, by two bullets.24 Crazy Horse
and Spotted Tail came to represent two traditions of Indigenous resistance;
one would follow a path of armed struggle, the other the path of diplomacy.
Despite these divergences, the two remained good relatives to each other in
the trying years to come, a testament to the strong bonds of kinship that
held the nation together as their world was taken from them. While Crazy
Horse and Spotted Tail were accomplished warriors and leaders, their
highest virtue was their commitment to the defense of their human and
nonhuman relations. The events of that day forever shaped their resolve for
self-defense and survival; this did not always mean picking up the gun, but
sometimes it did. At that moment, however, for both Crazy Horse and
Spotted Tail, preserving a grounded authority in the land was the theory,
and the gun was the practice. Both were necessary for the survival of
human and nonhuman relations. It was from settler colonialism’s
nightmarish scenario of fight, flight, or accommodate that Indigenous
heroes were made and immortalized—some known, and many more
unknown. Heroes of Indigenous resistance didn’t just make history. History
made them.
While in the west the Lakotas confronted the punitive campaigns of the
US peace policy, in the east the Dakotas faced increased settler
encroachment. White settlements depleted nearly all the game, and the
treaty annuities were meager and slow to arrive—when they arrived at all.
Starvation set in. To make matters worse, Minnesota Territory organized in

1849 and began its path toward statehood, which meant the expulsion of
Indigenous peoples. In 1857 Inkpaduta, a Wahpekute leader, led a
retaliatory campaign against white settlers at Spirit Lake and Springfield
after settlers wantonly murdered his brother and forcefully exiled the
Wahpekutes from their homelands in 1856. In total the Wahpekutes killed
twenty-eight settlers and sustained minimal casualties. Inkpaduta, whose
body was badly scarred from the 1837 smallpox scourge, which he survived
as a child, became a veteran of many major engagements with the US
military and died in exile Canada in the 1880s. His attacks on settlements
earned him the reputation as a frontier bogeyman. He was so hated and
feared by whites that his name was never translated into English unlike his
more celebrated and well-known contemporaries.25 Nevertheless,
Inkpaduta’s legacy is now widely revered for his evasion of capture and
death, refusal to surrender, and rejection of reservation life.
The Wahpekute’s attacks were also partly in response to the Treaty of
Traverse des Sioux and the Treaty of Mendota. Together these treaties,
signed in 1851 by all four Dakota nations, ceded all Dakota land claims
except for a narrow twenty-mile strip. There is no doubt that the Dakota
leaders were coerced into making such disastrous concessions. To force
signatures, treaty commissioners threatened military force and the
withholding of rations. White traders got first access to any treaty moneys,
which they used to pay outstanding debts allegedly accrued by the Dakotas.
When the treaties went through the Senate for approval, amendments were
attached that left the Dakotas without any legal title to the land, essentially
making them homeless or trespassers in their own homelands.26
In August 1862, when Taoyateduta (He Loves His Red Nation), also
known as Kangi Cistinna (Little Crow), and his warriors began to expel
white settlers from their Dakota homelands, most of the Dakota
communities were starving, horseless, unarmed, and living on reservations.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, treaty annuities arrived late or not at all
—and were sometimes intentionally withheld by traders. Andrew Myrick, a
notorious white trader responsible for distributing treaty annuities and
rations at the Lower Sioux Agency, put it bluntly: “So far as I’m concerned,
if they are hungry, let them eat grass or dung.” The Dakotas, facing the real
possibility of starving to death, came to the Lower Agency, and, some
stories say, killed Myrick while he was running away; according to these
accounts, his body was found with grass stuffed in his mouth.27 The

criminal acts of the traders and agency officials had led to the uprising. But
the United States’ theft, mass killing, starvation, and punishment of all
Dakotas remained “lawful.”
The Dakotas waged deadly battles, killing more than 800 white settlers,
traders, and soldiers. By late September most Dakotas had surrendered,
ending the brief thirty-seven-day war. The captured Dakotas were not
treated as prisoners of war but instead faced a military tribunal created by
Henry Sibley, Minnesota’s first governor, and colonel of the state militia.
Military officers who had just fought Dakotas were appointed to oversee the
trials. By November the military tribunal tried 392 Dakotas for “murder and
outrages,” convicting 323 of them, 303 of whom they condemned to death.
More than 2,000 Dakotas were also imprisoned at Fort Snelling in a large
concentration camp, where many died. Whether or not they participated in
the war mattered little; all Dakotas became targets for collective
punishment. President Lincoln, though he commuted most of the Dakota
death sentences, maintained an iron fist to crush Indigenous resistance—
one he wielded not only against the Dakotas, but others too. In 1864 in the
Southwest, a similar policy of collective punishment and removal targeted
Navajo and Apache resistance, resulting in the Hwéeldi, or the Long Walk.
The removal, forced march, and imprisonment at Bosque Redondo in New
Mexico killed more than 2,000 Navajos.28
On December 26, 1862, a week before signing the Emancipation
Proclamation, Lincoln ordered the hanging of the thirty-eight Dakota men
at Maka To (or “Blue Earth”—present-day Mankato, Minnesota) as
retribution for the 1862 US–Dakota War. The execution of the Dakota
thirty-eight remains the largest mass execution in US history. Minnesota
Governor Alexander Ramsey, who helped negotiate the 1851 Treaty with
the Dakotas, then ordered the extermination or complete banishment of
remaining Dakotas from the state. Settlers were encouraged and rewarded
to take their own revenge with government-issued $25 scalp bounties,
which later increased to $200. When the Civil War came to an end, very
few confederate officials and soldiers were sent to prison, and only one was
hanged for war crimes. After surrender, many confederates went back to
holding public office. General Sibley ordered that the Dakotas were to be
treated as criminals, and not as prisoners of war.29 The aftermath of the war
to maintain slavery, which cost half a million lives, was profoundly

different from the aftermath of the Dakota uprising—and rarely are the two
stories told side by side.
In punishment for his part in the uprising, in 1863 Minnesotan settlers
murdered Little Crow, collecting $500 for his scalp and decapitated head.
Little Crow’s scalp, severed head, and the rest of his body were collected
and put on public display by the Minnesota Historical Society until 1915, a
grim trophy to remind settlers exactly how they “won” the land. Little
Crow’s remains were only returned to his family in 1971. Nearly a thousand
Dakotas fled to Canada, and 2,500 remained at large, fleeing into Dakota
Territory to join their relatives on the Missouri River. In 1863 in Minnesota,
General John Pope organized “columns of vengeance” to punish and
capture fugitive Dakotas.30 Instead of recognizing their own criminality for
outright land theft and state-imposed starvation, they would force Dakotas
to pay with their lives. Facing scalp bounties and the harsh imprisonment of
their relatives, surrender usually meant death and was simply not an option.
To survive—to resist—meant to flee.
Pope sent two columns, led by brigadier generals Henry Sibley and
Alfred Sully, to halt the fleeing Dakotas from crossing the Missouri River
and joining their western relatives. The campaign had three goals: crush the
fleeing Dakotas, secure the Missouri River for steamboat travel, and
eliminate remaining Indigenous opposition to the settlement of eastern
Dakota Territory. By 1863, overland travel on the Oregon Trail had greatly
subsided. But the 1862 Montana gold rush drew throngs of miners and
settlers who traveled overland on the Bozeman Trail, which cut through
1851 Treaty territory and up the Missouri River via steamship. Sibley’s
mounted cavalry headed south, then traveled north up the eastern shoreline
of the Missouri, encountering little opposition. Sully commanded more than
2,000 soldiers, and the skirmishes they engaged in were minor and inflicted
minimal casualties—all except for one.
On September 3, 1863, Sibley’s men attacked 4,000 peaceful Dakotas
and Lakotas in a summer camp after a buffalo hunt at Inyan Ska
(Whitestone Hill). Standing Rock historian and Sacred Stone Camp founder
LaDonna Bravebull Allard recounts the events of that day through the oral
history of her ancestor Mary Big Moccasin:
It was a time of celebration and ceremony—a time to pray for the coming year, meet relatives,
arrange marriages, and make plans for winter camps. Many refugees from the 1862 uprising in
Minnesota, mostly women and children, had been taken in as family. Mary’s father, Oyate Tawa, was

one of the 38 Dah’kotah hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, less than a year earlier, in the largest mass
execution in the country’s history … As my great-great-grandmother Mary Big Moccasin told the
story, the attack came the day after the big hunt, when spirits were high. The sun was setting and
everyone was sharing an evening meal when Sully’s soldiers surrounded the camp on Whitestone
Hill. In the chaos that ensued, people tied their children to their horses and dogs and fled. Mary was 9
years old. As she ran, she was shot in the hip and went down. She laid there until morning, when a
soldier found her. As he loaded her into the wagon, she heard her relatives moaning and crying on the
battlefield. She was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Crow Creek where she stayed until her release
in 1870.31

The dogs returned to camp with babies still tied to them, where they were
shot by the soldiers. In all, the soldiers slaughtered more than 400 Lakotas
and Dakotas, most of them women and children. They destroyed half a
million pounds of dried buffalo meat and razed more than 300 lodges.
Thirty-two men and 124 women were taken prisoner and transported to Fort
Pierre to be shipped to Crow Creek, where the remaining survivors of the
US–Dakota War were held.32
The massacre had a profound psychological impact on the Dakotas and
Lakotas. The scorched-earth campaign against the Dakotas and the
“columns of vengeance” were intended to deter a military alliance among
the Oceti Sakowin; and indeed, the tactic may have worked on some. On
the other hand, it also encouraged many to risk everything to repel the
invaders. The success of armed resistance, in fact, would be measured not
in the annihilation of the United States as an enemy nation, but in the
resilience of the political alliances that formed.
Immediately following the punitive campaigns waged against the
Dakotas, in November 1863 Colonel John M. Chivington and his soldiers
massacred more than 200 peaceful Cheyennes at Sand Creek in Colorado
Territory, taking scalps and severed genitals as souvenirs. Enraged at the
growing brutality, the Cheyennes, Lakotas, Arapahos, and some Dakotas
formed a political alliance under the leadership of Mahpiya Luta (Red
Cloud). Believing the United States had violated the spirit of the 1851 Fort
Laramie Treaty with the construction of the Bozeman Trail, the historic
alliance vowed to expel them from the buffalo hunting grounds.33 The
alliance successfully defeated the US military in hit-and-run battles from
1866 to 1868. In December 1866, most famously, Crazy Horse, a rising
military leader, drew one hundred soldiers under the command of Colonel
William J. Fetterman from Fort Kearney into a trap, killing Fetterman and
all his men. The fort had been established along the Bozeman Trail to

protect white miners heading to the Montana goldmines.34 Facing an
undefeatable, highly mobile guerrilla force, in 1868 the United States once
again sought peace.
In the summer of 1868, a mass council was called at Mato Paha (Bear
Butte) to discuss a treaty of peace, and Red Cloud was selected to lead any
negotiations with the United States. Since 1857 most of the Oceti Sakowin
had been gathering annually at Mato Paha, at the northeast fringes of the
Black Hills, to discuss the peace treaties and mounting resistance. Some
historians and scholars have challenged the idea that the “Sioux Nation,” or
the Oceti Sakowin, ever existed, or that such gatherings took place in the
Black Hills prior to US invasion. What is known is that all seven political
divisions met at these annual summer councils, and that all were
represented in the most famous battles. But it is true the Oceti Sakowin had
not gathered in quite this way since 1857, when they were joined by allied
nations such as the Arapaho and Cheyenne in considering “taking the fight
to the wasicu” (in other words, to US imperialism)—by marching all the
way down to Saint Louis and wiping out every white settlement—as
Sicangu historian Edward Valandra has asserted.35
Previously, the Oceti Sakowin more often gathered at Mato Paha for
peace, including for the Wiwang Wacipi, the sun dance. The Oceti Sakowin
war councils, however, have drawn more scrutiny and attention than the
ceremonial celebrations of life.36 In fact, most political divisions chose to
avoid armed resistance altogether and, as the buffalo became scarce, slowly
began to accustom themselves to living near the agencies. Soldiers and
fellow Indigenous peoples pejoratively termed these people “loafer bands”
for hanging around the forts.37 Others who were willing to break policy and
sell land, which they were not authorized to do, were called Maka Utacipi,
or “earth eaters.”38 Many Oceti Sakowin disapproved of these individuals’
behavior, but they were still considered relatives, though pitied for “eating”
the land for the annuities and food rations they received for selling it.
Political custom dictated that families and larger political divisions were
allowed to disagree with or decline to follow a course of action set out by
others. If the disagreement was serious, individuals or entire nations were
allowed to leave. Just as easily as they could leave, they could also rejoin
their relatives. Force or coercion never compelled others to action, or to
stay.39 But when the entire Oceti Sakowin was confined to the reservation,

this harmony was disturbed because differing factions could not depart each
other’s company. In other instances, “agency chiefs” were selected to
represent an entire Indigenous nation, breaking down internal democratic
processes. Whatever these competing views, the war on the Bozeman Trail
drew the United States to the negotiation table once again.
By 1865, the 1851 Treaty had expired with little consequence, having
failed to bring about the peace it promised. Another costly military
campaign in the Northern Plains was not an option. Most of the US military
was stationed in the South to oversee Reconstruction, following the
conclusion of the Civil War. As an effort to make freed Blacks into citizens,
W. E. B. Du Bois called Reconstruction “a splendid failure”—one that
offered only a temporary vision of a free society, because absolute equality
demanded too much of a departure from the white supremacist status quo.40
The same could also be said of its contemporaneous US–Indigenous
treaties. Allowing Indigenous peoples to live in peace and respecting their
political autonomy proved too much to ask of a settler state. So why did it
make Indigenous treaties in the first place?
Treaties are the central agreements among sovereigns and the primary
instruments of international relations. After all, a sovereign nation does not
enter into international relations with internal or domestic peoples. But
despite the 1831 Supreme Court decision that found Indigenous nations to
be “domestic dependent nations,” the United States entered into
international relations with the Oceti Sakowin.41 This is the fundamental
paradox of federal Indian law: it takes international agreements and
attempts to determine their validity in the realm of domestic federal law—
that is, in the courts of the colonizers.
Patrick Wolfe argues that “domestic dependent nations” was less a legal
redefinition than a “manifesto” for settler colonialism.42 The intention
behind the treaties was not to recognize the inherent political sovereignty or
self-determining authority of Indigenous nations, but to facilitate land
cessions and eventual incorporation. Justifying what would otherwise be a
criminal act—invasion—the treaties were really an instrument for affirming
US design over all lands, and especially lands that could not be taken by
force. And to carry out the land cessions, the US government needed
settlers to hold private property in perpetuity. Private ownership (or “fee
simple”) is seen, under US law, as the highest possible form of ownership,
while Indigenous occupancy is seen as temporary; thus, collective

Indigenous ownership and use could be dissolved for private ownership, but
not the other way around. But because private property is exclusive, the two
systems of land tenure fundamentally could not overlap. The confinement
and removal of Indigenous peoples to reservations was racial segregation,
and Indigenous peoples were the original “Red Scare.”
It was from this belief of political superiority that the United States sued
the Oceti Sakowin for peace. As a token of good will, the United States
abandoned several forts along the Bozeman Trail, and Red Cloud and his
followers set fire to the deserted buildings. The forts on the Missouri River,
however, remained untouched and became the new bases of operations for
corralling the Oceti Sakowin closer to the influence of the United States,
and away from the Powder River country which more and more represented
freedom.43 The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty established a 32-million-acre
“permanent reservation,” which encompassed the entirety of the presentday West River region of South Dakota. To appease those who refused
agency life, a vast expanse of hunting grounds was set aside at nearly the
same acreage of the permanent reservation, making the total territory more
than 70 million acres, or about the size of the present-day state of Nevada.
Article 11 of the treaty, however, stipulated that the Lakotas surrendered
“all right to occupy permanently the territory outside their reservation as
herein defined,” but retained the right to hunt in the Powder River country
“so long as the buffalo may range thereon in such numbers to justify the
chase.”44 General William Tecumseh Sherman, a member of the peace
commission, at first opposed this provision, fearing that sustained resistance
through buffalo hunting over a vast region would make it impossible to
reign in the militant divisions. Fellow peace commissioners, however,
assured him the treaty’s clause was “merely temporary” because once the
buffalo were vanquished so too would the millions of acres of hunting
territory.45
In 1903 Red Cloud recalled what Lakotas said to treaty commissioners
regarding the hunting lands: “We told them that the country of the buffalo
was the country of the Lakotas. We told them that the buffalo must have
their country and the Lakotas must have their buffalo.”46 The Lakotas
didn’t believe the United States had the authority to simply “give” them
back land that already rightfully belonged to them and their buffalo kin.
Red Cloud made clear that the 1868 Treaty was not just an agreement
between two human nations, but also an agreement among the nonhuman

ones as well—including the buffalo nations. His interpretation, that Lakota
territory began and ended with the buffalo nations’ territory, was not a
“mystical” reading, but a simple fact of Lakota life—and, at the time, a fact
linked to pure survival.
For example, the most significant figure in Oceti Sakowin history
descended from the Pte Oyate. It was a woman, Pte Ska Win (the White
Calf Buffalo Woman), who made the first treaty with the human and
nonhuman worlds. To be a good relative is to honor that original instruction.
Lakotas often viewed treaties with the United States and other nations as
commitments not just to human relations, but also to nonhuman ones. And
such agreements were not the sole domain of men, as was the tradition of
white society. Most important, pte means “female buffalo,” and the Pte
Oyate was alternatively known as “her nation.”47 When Red Cloud spoke of
the Pte Oyate, he spoke of their true leaders—of the women, not the bulls
(men), and of the original covenant with the White Buffalo Calf Woman.
The future of the Oceti Sakowin was bound to the future of the Pte Oyate.
For its part, the military began to take seriously this vital connection
with the buffalo as sustaining continued Indigenous resistance. The frontier
army’s operations turned toward exterminating Oceti Sakowin kin—the Pte
Oyate—as defeating highly mobile Plains nations in conventional battles
was near impossible. From 1865 to 1883, the frontier army sanctioned the
mass slaughter of buffalo to shatter the will to resist by eliminating a
primary food supply and a close relative. Russia’s Grand Duke Alexie
Alexandrovich even joined a buffalo hunt in 1872 near Denver with the
frontier army, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong
Custer and General Philip Sheridan. As they descended upon a herd, the
hunters and soldiers acted as if the buffalo slaughter was also a massacre of
Indigenous peoples, with a guide, Chalkley M. Beeson, recounting that they
even called the buffalo “redskins.”48
The extermination of the buffalo was incredibly effective and efficient.
In two decades, soldiers and hunters had eradicated the remaining 10 to 15
million buffalo, leaving only several hundred survivors. The “Indian
problem” was also a “buffalo problem,” and both faced similar
extermination processes, as much connected in death as they were in life.
The destruction of one required the destruction of the other. The treaty
clause “so long as the buffalo may range” was effectively a warrant to kill
millions of buffalo, which translated literally into the killing of Indians and

the seizure of millions of acres of 1868 Treaty territory—a direct attack on
Indigenous sovereignty.
Another contentious aspect of the 1868 Treaty was the granting of the
right to construct railroads through Oceti Sakowin territory. By the time the
Northern Pacific Railroad began building its line through the Yellowstone
Valley connecting Duluth, Minnesota, to the Puget Sound, Red Cloud,
Spotted Tail, and their followers had accepted the terms of the peace treaty.
Most took it to mean that if they refrained from attacking the railroads,
stage coaches, and overland emigrants, they would in turn be free from the
threat of attack if they stayed within the reservation boundaries. The
hunting grounds remained open, and so they thought that they could go on
living as they always had, with little change. But railroads threatened that
precarious peace and the provisional space of the hunting grounds that came
with it. They provoked another fight and hardened the resolve of the
remaining militants to stay off the reservations. Tatanka Iyotake (Sitting
Bull), a powerful political leader of the Hunkpapas, refused the conditions
of peace specifically over the question of rail lines and began making war
on the railroad surveyors as they trespassed into Yellowstone territory. The
military sent two expeditions of thousands of men in 1871 and 1873 to
secure the passage of railroad engineers. But Sitting Bull and his followers
halted construction of the Northern Pacific across the Missouri River at
Bismarck, and the 1873 economic crisis further imperiled the Northern
Pacific’s progress westward. Nevertheless, the military now had a sizeable
standing army at Fort Rice downriver, under the command of Custer, a less
well-known veteran officer of the Civil War who history would only
remember because he was killed by the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho
alliance in 1876 at the Battle of Greasy Grass (Battle of the Little Bighorn).
Custer and his men were stationed at the northern border of the “Great
Sioux Reservation” to prevent the Hunkpapas and Sihasapas from leaving
the reservation, waging war on the railroad surveys, and joining their offreservation relatives in the west.49
Soon, those living off the reservation were considered outlaws,
renegades, hostiles, and criminals to be hunted down, summarily shot,
hanged, or imprisoned. Those on the reservation were considered
“peaceful,” and as “friendlies” who were not to be disturbed. Either way,
soldiers and settlers could hardly distinguish between the two; when it came
to collective punishment, all were at fault.

Since 1865, transcontinental railroads began lurching from east to west.
With the Panic of 1873, US capitalists and politicians sought a new form of
currency and a new national project that would pull the country out of
recession. Relief would come in the form of gold, more railroads, and
continuous westward expansion—in other words, through the acquisition of
more Indigenous land, and more Indian Wars. The discovery of gold in the
Black Hills in 1874 triggered a massive push to quickly end the Indian
problem on the Northern Plains. From the military’s perspective, reformers
had failed to secure peace with the 1868 Treaty. Prior military campaigns in
the West and the South were also coming to a close. The wars of conquests
against the Apaches, Arapahos, Cheyennes, Comanches, Kiowas, and
Modocs from 1869 to 1873 had largely ended. Meanwhile, in the South,
Radical Reconstruction had lost political backing from a growing
conservatism in the North, and as the United States began withdrawing
federal troops, freed Blacks were left to fend for themselves against the
white Southern elites who sought to violently recapture political and
economic power. Facing the squeeze of economic recession, labor in the
industrial east also began agitating. As historian Richard Slotkin argues,
depictions of Black lawlessness in the South, relentless Indigenous
criminality in the West, and growing labor militancy in the east provided
the moral justification for the seizure of the Black Hills as a way to
prioritize national economic development.50 To contain the “threat” on its
western frontier, in an 1871 Indian appropriations bill the United States
abolished treaty making with Indigenous nations (although the treaties
themselves were never abolished). Meanwhile, the nationalistic military
campaign to seize the Black Hills and continue westward expansion was a
much-needed pressure valve for anxieties of social unrest and economic
uncertainty. An order to the US military went out to notify all the Lakotas
and Dakotas to return to the reservation by January 31, 1876, or face
military action. Because it was issued during winter, both the US military
and the Oceti Sakowin largely ignored the impractical command.
By spring 1876, the majority of the Lakotas lived on reservations and
were horseless, unarmed, and starving. Nevertheless, several groups had
refused reservation life, and the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho alliance
had evaded army capture for several years. Crazy Horse, no longer a
military leader at this point, led several small groups into the Black Hills,
killing numerous white miners. But the imposition of reservation borders

combined with the cutting off of British-Canadian and US traders made
ammunition scarce and sustained armed resistance increasingly
impossible.51 General Sheridan and Brigadier General George Crook had
decided to stop evicting gold miners, in hopes of making real what could
only be imagined at this point: the takeover of the Black Hills, the
settlement of treaty lands, and the final surrender of the Oceti Sakowin.
Allowing the trespass of settlers and miners was a clear violation of the
1868 Treaty, which forbade whites from entering the permanent reservation
encompassing the entirety of the Black Hills. A violation of the treaty, as an
international agreement, would have meant conditions reverted to pre-treaty
terms. Therefore, the Oceti Sakowin, at this point, could have suspended
their obligations—such as allowing the passage of settlers, roads, or
railways, or the cession of certain lands. However, instead of curbing the
criminal behavior of the white trespassers and living up to their treaty
obligations, the army mobilized to the enforce the “peace” of the 1868
Treaty by making war against the Cheyennes, Lakotas, and Arapahos who
refused to stay on the reservation.
On June 25, 1876, Custer and Brigadier General Marcus Reno led a
group of 650 men against a camp of thousands of Lakotas, Cheyennes, and
Arapahos. Among them were Sitting Bull, Pizi (or Gall), Inkpaduta, Crazy
Horse, Pretty Nose, Left Hand, Two Moons, Wooden Leg, and many more
who would be remembered as among the heroic armed resisters of the
Cheyennes, Arapahos, Dakotas, and Lakotas. Custer led the first assault on
the large camp, which was supposed to be a surprise attack. Custer’s men
were quickly halted and forced to retreat uphill. Despite popular myths,
Custer and his men never mounted a brave last stand but were instead taken
down as they ran away from the Indigenous warrior men and warrior
women. For his courage, Custer was promoted to the rank of general after
his death.
Hunkpapa warrior woman Moving Robe Woman, who fought against
cavalrymen, later remembered that historic day. A young woman at the
time, Moving Robe Woman was harvesting tinpsila, or prairie turnips, when
the cavalry stormed the camp. After hearing her brother was killed in the
initial attack, she recalled, “I ran to a nearby thicket and got my black horse.
I painted my face with crimson and braided my black hair. I was mourning.
I was a woman, but I was not afraid.”52 Among Plains nations, it was
common for warriors to be women. In fact, according to Northern

Cheyenne histories, Buffalo Calf Trail Woman is credited for knocking
Custer from his horse before he was killed.53 Indigenous women also knew
what defeat meant—if they were not killed, their bodies would be forced
over to the desires of their captors. They fought back not because they
wanted to, but because they had to.
The defeat of Custer’s Seventh Calvary and the killing of 268 of his men
was a major victory. But according to Moving Robe Woman, no one
“staged a victory dance that night. They were mourning for their own
dead.”54 About four dozen Indigenous warriors were killed during the fight.
Many popular accounts of the Battle of Greasy Grass and histories of the
West over-romanticize the extreme violence and wanton slaughter of what
became known as “the Great Sioux Wars.” Each victory against the
invaders also resulted in immeasurable casualties in later battles, and armed
resistance was a calculated risk that was not undertaken carelessly. Either
way, the Oceti Sakowin was in constant mourning over the theft of their
lives, their world, and so many countless relatives—ancestors both present
and future. Armed Indigenous resistance has always been a future-oriented
and life-oriented project, and it is because of this fearless struggle that we
survived and that we can remember.
After Greasy Grass, the military sought retribution. Unable to sustain
long, drawn-out resistance, the Plains alliance dispersed and Sitting Bull
and his followers, including Inkpaduta, fled to Canada. In May 1877, Crazy
Horse surrendered himself and his followers at the Red Cloud Agency near
Fort Robinson in Nebraska, and he was imprisoned there by the reservation
authorities. On September 5, 1877, Crazy Horse was led to Fort Robinson
to be formally arrested on the charge he was planning an uprising. While
attempting to flee, one of the guards stabbed Crazy Horse in the back with a
bayonet, killing him. He was thirty-seven. In 1881 Sitting Bull finally
surrendered himself and his followers and was taken to Fort Yates on the
Missouri River at present-day Standing Rock. The battleground had shifted:
Christian missionaries, boarding schools, and military discipline and
punishment were the new vanguards of white civilization.
The design and development of the carceral reservation world was well
under way by the time Cheyennes, Lakotas, and Arapahos made Custer and
his Seventh Cavalry famous. In 1876 Indian Commissioner John Q. Smith
envisioned US Indian policy as having three central goals: to concentrate
remaining Indigenous peoples onto fewer reservations, to allot remaining

lands, and to expand US laws and courts’ jurisdiction over reservations.55
Although the number of reservations didn’t decline, the latter two goals
were achieved through the disintegration of political and social structures,
and the carving up of the remaining communally held lands. The fur trade
may have introduced the capitalist market, but it never made the Oceti
Sakowin truly individualistic, and communal land practices and social
customs still prevailed. This was the final frontier.
First came the assertion of US law. In 1881 an ongoing dispute between
Spotted Tail and Kangi Sunka (Crow Dog) on the Rosebud Reservation led
to Crow Dog murdering Spotted Tail, a reservation leader and “agency
chief.” Crow Dog made amends with Spotted Tail’s surviving family,
paying restitution for the slain relative according to customary law. Internal
harmony was quickly and effectively restored. Nevertheless, federal and
territorial officials demanded Crow Dog’s arrest and prosecution. With little
legal authority to do so, the case wound up at the Supreme Court, where it
was ruled federal courts had no jurisdiction on reservation lands. As a
result, Congress passed the 1885 Major Crimes Act, authorizing federal
jurisdiction over certain crimes committed in Indian Country—including
murder, larceny, rape, arson, and burglary. Congress used Crow Dog’s case
as an opportunity to extend plenary power—or complete or absolute power
—over Indigenous nations and assert criminal jurisdiction, further eroding
and defining the parameters of Indigenous sovereignty.56
The creation of the modern-day reservation system had a significant
impact on both Indigenous and settler societies. Military and trading forts
grew into either white settlements or reservation agency towns. As a new
spatial arrangement of apartheid, the confinement of Native people to
diminishing reservation lands made it simpler for settlers to assume
ownership over “unused” land. Among the most highly prized possessions
were the gold-rich Black Hills. To secure title to the land, Congress passed
the 1877 Black Hills Act, which stole the Black Hills from the Oceti
Sakowin and opened it to white settlement. A clause of the 1868 Treaty
stipulated that any future land cessions, including the Black Hills, must “be
signed by three-fourths of all the adult male” members. Its passage was thus
a clear case of fraud and theft, as the United States was able to obtain only
10 percent of the needed signatures.57
Agency towns, which were often located at military forts or near them,
were established to control and surveil the movements and the behaviors of

Indigenous peoples, both on and off reservation. Reservations thus became
sites where social engineering was used to break communal organization. In
1878, to administer law and order, the first reservation police forces were
formed, drawing from Indigenous ranks to enforce the new social order
dictated by federal agents and church officials. In 1883 the Bureau of Indian
Affairs created the Court of Indian Offenses to compel “civilization.”
Punishable offenses included sun dancing, ceremonial dancing, customary
giveaways, owning guns or weapons, owning ponies, men wearing long
hair, polygamy, large feasts not organized by the church, Indigenous
funerary rites, leaving the reservation, and honoring ceremonies. A
violation brought punishment through starvation by withholding rations or
imprisonment. These “offenses,” also known as “the civilization
regulations,” were enforced until their repeal in 1935.58 The use of coercive
force by an armed body of the state, such as the police or the courts, to
control behavior was relatively unknown to the Oceti Sakowin. “No Lakota
chief,” writes Luther Standing Bear, “ever dreamed of using the power of a
judge in court, or a policeman on a street corner, for it was not a tenet of his
society that one individual should account to another for his conduct.”59
As punishment for the defiant political leadership, their children were
taken from them and sent to far-off boarding schools, where many died.
Although leaders such as Red Cloud and Spotted Tail voluntarily sent their
children to boarding schools, they protested the military-like discipline and
corporal punishment. The system, however, was as much about taking the
children hostage as it was using them as leverage to coerce the behavior of
reservation leadership. Richard Pratt, a former Indian fighter who marched
under Custer against the Oceti Sakowin, was the main architect for the
modern off-reservation boarding school system. The idea first came to him
when in charge of Indigenous prisoners of war at Fort Marion in Florida.
Assigned to oversee the confinement of Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne
inmates, Pratt experimented with assimilation through education. To his
military mind, the Indian War would no longer be waged on the battlefield
but in the classroom. Pratt’s vision won him the backing of Indian
reformers, and in 1879 he founded the Carlisle Boarding School in
Pennsylvania.
The success of the Fort Marion experiment, however, could only be
reproduced in similar prison-like and militarized conditions because it was
impossible to “recruit” and “retain” students without the use of force.

Complete removal from their parents, it was believed, was the only way to
prevent relapse to Indigenous ways. Taken and then returned to their
communities, the children were sometimes alienated from their parents and
relatives because they could not speak their languages or had no bonds to
their kin. At Carlisle, Indigenous students were subjected to a highly
regimented routine. Although founded on military principles of discipline
and order, the boarding schools didn’t train Indigenous students to fight;
rather, they taught them docility, compliance, and submission—the
necessary ingredients for indoctrinating US patriotism and citizenship. “The
Indians are destined to become absorbed into the national life,” one Indian
commissioner advised in an 1889 memo entitled “Inculcation of Patriotism
in Indian Schools,” “not as Indians, but as Americans.”60
To many the US flag, which flew above the soldiers as they killed, raped,
and pillaged Indigenous peoples and lands, was a detested symbol of
growing US authority. It was one of the first means used to signify US
supremacy at reservation headquarters. When soldiers attempted to build
the first flagpole to fly the “Stars and Stripes” at the Red Cloud Agency in
1874, outraged Oglalas took hatchets and chopped it down. The troopers
rebuilt the flagpole and proceeded to take the population count of the
reservation agency—wielding two highly symbolic instruments of growing
colonial rule: a flag and a census.61 With armed struggle mostly abandoned,
Indigenous resistance changed from military resistance to a strategy of
challenging the reservation system by continuing to refuse to sell land or to
cooperate with reservation officials.
On the heels of a five-year recession, from 1878 to 1887 the desire for
cheap or “free” Indigenous land in Dakota Territory infected white settlers
like a fever. The decade, during which the white population in the region
nearly doubled, was known as the “Great Dakota Boom.” In 1887, under
increasing pressure to open more of the remaining 1868 Treaty lands,
Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act, signaling a new assault on
Lakota and Dakota lands. Dawes sought to disintegrate collective Native
identities and communal land practices by allotting private plots to Native
families and opening millions of acres of “excess” land for white
settlement. The Plains nations began organizing against the Dawes Bill as
soon as they learned of its dire consequences, and the Lakotas and Dakotas
came to a consensus that they would refuse unconditionally to sell the land
or to accept the terms of allotment. Achieving mass consensus and the

consent of all divisions of the western Lakotas and Dakotas—under the
ever-watchful eye of agency and church officials, and in conditions where
most were half-starved—was a significant feat of political mobilization and
discipline. In 1888 Pratt led a commission to convince the Lakotas to accept
the terms of the Dawes Bill. While the United States had not followed 1868
Treaty protocol for the Black Hills Act, this time the Pratt Commission, as
it was known, attempted to obtain the three-fourths male consent required
to fractionate remaining reservation lands and open up millions of acres for
eventual settlement.
In one instance the Pratt Commission came to the Standing Rock
Reservation. All the commissioners needed were votes of either “yes” or
“no” to accept allotment or not. Twenty-two million acres remained of the
1868 Treaty lands. If half were sold, the United States would sell land at 50
cents an acre, which would create a permanent fund of $1 million. Earning
5 percent interest per year, half would go toward education and agriculture,
while the other half would be payed to those who accepted allotments.
Under the leadership of Hunkpapa John Grass, the entire Standing Rock
Reservation held council to discuss the conditions of the Dawes Bill. In allnight meetings, the Standing Rock council calculated the total distribution
of money, which would amount to an insulting payment of $1 per year to
each individual on the reservations. Grass had signed the 1877 Black Hills
Act, which ceded the Black Hills, without understanding the terms. For
him, the Dawes Bill was most likely another elaborate scheme to swindle
lands. On the basis of the earlier act’s outright fraud and failure to address
either past wrongs or ongoing depredations, Grass led Standing Rock’s
opposition to allotment. In a speech enunciating his refusal to sign any
paper—either the red for “no,” or the black for “yes”—Grass remarked,
The whole nation here that are located on this reservation have come to the conclusion that we will
not sign that black paper. We say also that we will not sign the red paper. You know exactly how
many there are of us. I do not see what further evidence you would want. Here is the whole nation,
and we say: “We decline.”62

The Pratt Commission, unable to acquire minimal consent to even vote on
the Dawes Bill at Standing Rock, went to the remaining reservations and
faced similar unified refusal. An utter failure, the bill received a mere 120
signatures.
The initial defeat of the Dawes Bill was but a momentary victory. In
1889 General George Crook, a veteran Indian fighter who was responsible

for coaxing Crazy Horse to surrender, led another commission to secure
“consent.” This time Crook lied about the bill, saying it would alleviate
restrictions on dancing and generally improve reservation life without
affecting prior treaty agreements. At first, when lies didn’t work, threats of
violence and of the outright taking of the land, with or without Indigenous
consent, pressured many to sign. When met with resistance, the Indian
agent at Rosebud warned the opposition that their refusal to sign would
jeopardize not just their standing with the United States, but also their entire
legacy: “After you are dead and gone, and somebody reads … the names of
the people who signed this treaty, I think you will want your names to be
read out.”63 At Pine Ridge Agency, when Oglalas under the leadership of
Red Cloud refused to sign, an Indian agent “read the riot act” to Red Cloud
and his followers to criminalize those who refused to sign away land.64
Oglala leader Wasicu Tasunka (American Horse) had signed but regretted
his decision later when beef rations were drastically cut, further imperiling
an already-famished people. The commissioners previously stated that the
bill would not affect rations or annuities. Cutting rations, combined with a
whole host of other grievances that went unaddressed, according to
American Horse, was like “cutting our heads off.”65 Among the unfulfilled
promises were the failure to improve the poor quality of annuity goods such
as clothing and farming equipment, and continued unexplained deaths of
children at off-reservation boarding schools such as Carlisle.
Indeed, the new reservation political order had attempted to sever the
heads of the Oceti Sakowin by taking children, usurping land,
exterminating the buffalo nations, and diminishing Indigenous political
authority. Having gained the necessary signatures to enforce allotment, the
“permanent reservation” guaranteed under the 1868 Treaty was now open
for white settlement. Crook’s commission had left the western divisions of
the Oceti Sakowin deeply divided and in disarray after it destroyed the
unified effort to resist the sale and further dissolution of remaining
reservation lands. Now the Black Hills had been taken and 9 million acres
of land opened for white settlement. What became known as the 1889 Sioux
Agreement created the six modern reservation boundaries for the Pine
Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Lower Brule, and Crow
Creek Reservations.
During the late 1880s—disarmed, hungry, horseless, confined to
concentration camps, the buffalo nearly exterminated, their land broken up

and taken, and their children stolen from them—a new political movement
spread like prairie fire across the West, promising Indigenous rebirth.
Wovoka, a Paiute holy man, had a vision that assured the restoration of
Indigenous peoples to their rightful place in a world taken from them.
According to him, dead relatives and the buffalo nations would once again
walk the earth. The Ghost Dance prophecy envisioned the end of the
present world through the settlers’ erasure from the earth, and the return of
human and nonhuman relations that had been vanquished by colonialism. It
was foretold that, at some unspecified time in the near future, a cataclysmic
event—such as an earthquake or whirlwind—would wipe the United States
off the surface of the earth. Once the land was cleansed, life would be free
of disease and colonialism, and correct relations among human and
nonhuman worlds would be restored. Dakota anthropologist Ella Deloria
recorded the following description of the Ghost Dance from the viewpoint
of an unnamed Lakota man who participated in the dance at the Pine Ridge
Agency as a young runaway from boarding school:
The rumor got about: “The dead are to return. The buffalo are to return. The Dakota people will get
back their own way of life. The white people will soon go away, and that will mean happier times for
us once more!” That part about the dead returning was what appealed to me …
Soon fifty of us, little boys about eight to ten, started out across country over hills and valleys,
running all night … There on Porcupine Creek thousands of Dakota people were in camp, all
hurrying about very purposefully … A woman quickly spied us and came weeping toward us. “These
[children] also shall take part,” she was saying of us. So a man called out, “You runaway boys, come
here.” They stripped our ugly clothes from us and sent us inside [a purification lodge]. When we
were well purified, they sent us out the other end and placed sacred shirts on us … Everyone wore
one magpie and one eagle feather in his hair, but in our case there was nothing to tie them to. The
school had promptly ruined us by shaving off our long hair till our scalps showed lighter than our
faces!
The people, wearing the sacred shirts and feathers, now formed a ring … All walked cautiously
and in awe, feeling their dead were close at hand … The leaders beat time and sang as the people
danced going round to the left in a sidewise step. They danced without rest, on and on, and they got
out of breath but still they kept going as long as possible. Occasionally someone thoroughly
exhausted and dizzy fell unconscious into the center and lay there “dead” … After a while, many lay
about in that condition. They were now “dead” and seeing their dear ones. As each one came to, she,
or he, slowly sat up and looked about, bewildered, and then began wailing inconsolably …
The visions varied at the start, but they ended the same way, like a chorus describing a great
encampment of all the Dakotas who had ever died, where the buffalo came eagerly to feed them, and
there was no sorrow but only joy, where relatives thronged out with happy laughter to greet the
newcomer. That was the best of all!
Waking up to the drab and wretched present after such a glowing vision, it was little wonder that
they walked as if their poor hearts would break in two with disillusionment. But at least they had
seen! … They preferred that to rest or food or sleep. And so I suppose the authorities did think they
were crazy—but they weren’t. They were only terribly unhappy.66

The visions were not escapist, but rather part of a growing anticolonial
theory and movement. Participants were transported to a forthcoming world
where the old ways and dead relatives lived. It was a utopian dream that
briefly suspended the nightmare of the “wretched present” by folding the
remembered experience of a precolonial freedom into an anti-colonial
future. Upon awakening, dancers were forced to relive the horrors of their
current reality. Above all, the visions were a reminder that life need not
always be this way, and the Ghost Dance anticipated nothing less than the
utter destruction of the colonial relation with the United States. But this was
no cultural revitalization movement—anyway, the Ghost Dance did not
derive from Oceti Sakowin culture. Also, the Ghost Dance was
fundamentally oppositional in spirit. Lakota Ghost Dancers, historian
Jeffrey Ostler observes, “hoped to see the present world destroyed and a
new one come into being.”67 Indigenous life could not be remade inside
reservations, nor within a colonial system, but only through the complete
destruction of both.
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century anthropologists and historians have
often downplayed (or misconstrued) the revolutionary premises of the
Ghost Dance. The most widely used text on the movement, The GhostDance Religion and Wounded Knee, written in 1896 by armchair
ethnographer James Mooney, for instance, distorted the meaning of the
Ghost Dance. Pandering to the sympathies of a US public in an attempt to
make the Ghost Dance more palatable, Mooney used cultural relativism to
justify its existence. In his mind, because Ghost Dancers followed a Christlike messianic figure, Wovoka, the movement had largely embraced
elements of Christianity and thus resembled modern Judeo-Christian
religions. Further, he claimed, Lakota Ghost Dancers failed to properly
adhere to Wovoka’s message of nonviolence and pacifism, warping it into a
“hostile expression” and confirming the US military’s later characterization
of the Lakota Ghost Dancers as “militants.”68 But in reality, Wovoka taught
peace—not through perpetual harmony with white settlers, and certainly not
through submission to Christian morality or dogmatic pacifism. Rather, his
call for peace was pragmatic: under present conditions, armed Indigenous
resistance was futile. Thus, the Ghost Dance’s mass appeal had less in
common with Christianity than it did with earlier prophet-inspired panIndigenous movements. These include the 1760s Lenni Lenape prophet
Neolin and his Odawa follower Pontiac (who fought British military

occupation in the Great Lakes region); the 1800s Shawnee prophet
Tenskwatawa and his brother Tecumseh, who together fought US
occupation of the Ohio River valley; the 1860s Wanapum prophet Smohalla
and his follower, the Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph; and the 1870s Pauite
prophet Wodziwob, Wovoka’s predecessor and the first practitioner of the
Ghost Dance.69 Each of these successive prophets built upon the messages
and doctrines of the others by calling for pan-Indigenous resistance—
sometimes through armed struggle—to reject colonial occupation. Each
drew upon an accumulation of historical experience, and all were united by
a common desire for Indigenous liberation.
Public debate at the time over Lakotas’ adherence to the Ghost Dance’s
alleged pacifism served only to divide people fighting for survival into two
camps: “legitimate” nonviolent pacifists and “illegitimate” violent militants.
Indeed, these divisions cater to the feelings of settler society more than they
accurately portray the lived experiences of real Indigenous peoples. The
categories of “good Indians” and “bad Indians” purposefully create criminal
elements within Indigenous nations and movements, in order to obscure or
hide the United States’ own criminal enterprise. But the Ghost Dance was
not meant for the US colonizers, nor did its followers seek its recognition as
a “legitimate” religion equivalent to Christianity. It was the US state’s
criminalization of not only the dancers themselves, but all things defying
the civilizing mission, that led the military to conclude that the dance was a
“hostile expression.” All dancing—and practicing Indigenous lifeways, in
general—was a criminal act punishable by imprisonment or the withholding
of rations. To reservation officials, it didn’t matter if the dancers were
militant or nonviolent: Ghost Dancing was inherently an oppositional,
political act.
Nearly a third of all Lakotas—between four and five thousand—along
with many Dakotas, participated in the Ghost Dance, a figure that
demonstrates its mass influence. As a resistance movement, its tactics
included complete withdrawal from reservation life; opposition to
reservation authorities; the creation of resistance camps in remote areas far
removed the influence of the agency; the pilfering of annuity distribution
centers (and sometimes white settlers’ cattle and crops); the destruction of
agricultural equipment; and the refusal to send children to school, to speak
English, to participate in censuses, and to attend work, church, or agency
and council meetings; their tactics also included the refusal to live on

assigned allotments, to obey “agency chiefs,” to cut one’s hair, to quit
dancing, to wear white clothing and attire, or to use metal tools. In short,
the movement posed a comprehensive challenge to the colonial order of
things. At first Indian police were sent to suppress the dances, which were
illegal, but their resolve was shaken when they were met by armed guards
willing to defend the dancers with violence if necessary. Upon meeting a
strident refusal to quit dancing, some Indian police simply resigned, rather
than face the prospect of killing their relatives or imprisoning them.70
The widespread appeal of the Ghost Dance as an anti-colonial movement
was in large part due to historical experience of its primary promoters and
interlocutors: boarding school–educated Indigenous students. Two of its
primary Lakota visionaries, Mato Wanahtake (Kicking Bear) and Tatanka
Ptecela (Short Bull), used trains and writing to diffuse the message of the
Ghost Dance to the Oceti Sakowin. Boarding school students who could
read and write, often in both English and Lakota, transcribed Kicking
Bear’s and Short Bull’s reports after the two men traveled by train to meet
with Wovoka in Nevada. Ghost Dance prophesies, prayers, and songs were
also transcribed and mailed to the various reservations, where boarding
school students would read them aloud to fellow Ghost Dancers. Without
this means of dissemination, the Ghost Dance would not have been so
widespread—a fact Mooney admits in his ethnography. Letters conveying
Ghost Dance songs and doctrines poured into Oceti Sakowin reservations
from Indigenous nations in Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Oklahoma.71
When Ghost Dancing began among the Lakotas, it was reported in the
press as troubling and unrelenting. The largest deployment of the military
since the Civil War arrived on the Northern Plains to crush the movement,
and National Guard units from the surrounding states were brought in as
backup for the federal troops. The first target was Sitting Bull, the last
remaining powerful leader who had never signed a treaty and who still
resisted the imposition of reservation life. The Standing Rock Indian agent,
James McLaughlin, feared Sitting Bull and his Ghost Dancers would leave
the reservation. On December 15, 1890, under heavy surveillance for his
role in spreading the Ghost Dance, Indian police attempted to arrest Sitting
Bull. Roused from bed early that morning, Indian police dragged Sitting
Bull from his log cabin and shot him in the head. A brief firefight ensued, in
which Sitting Bull’s followers killed six Indian police and the Indian police
killed seven of his followers. After Sitting Bull’s assassination, military

arrest warrants were issued for other Ghost Dance leaders such as
Mniconjou chief Hehaka Gleska (Spotted Elk). In an effort to diminish
Spotted Elk’s standing among his own people, white soldiers derisively
called him “Si Tanka,” or “Big Foot,” because he wore US government–
issued shoes that were too small for his feet. Fearing further reprisals,
Sitting Bull’s followers joined with Spotted Elk’s people at the Cheyenne
River Reservation. The Ghost Dancers then fled to turn themselves in at
Red Cloud’s agency in Pine Ridge, where they were detained at Wounded
Knee Creek and surrounded by soldiers. The Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s old
regiment, took command of the camp and began by demanding the group
turn over all weapons and surrender. They conducted tipi-by-tipi raids,
confiscating anything that could be construed as a weapon, such as hatchets
and knives.
On the morning of December 29, 1890, Spotted Elk and all the camp
leaders were called to council with soldiers to turn in the last remaining
guns. Hotchkiss guns (mobile light artillery) were strategically placed on
the hillsides and trained at the starving, surrendering, and mostly unarmed
Ghost Dancers. A scuffle broke out and a shot was fired. The Seventh
Cavalry massacred between 270 and 300 Lakotas that day, including
Spotted Elk. More than two-thirds among the slain were women and
children. The Ghost Dancers fought back against the soldiers, inflicting
casualties; if not for their struggle, there is no doubt more would have been
killed, and that others would not have been able to escape. In the course of
several hours, the cavalry chased down and killed the fleeing Lakotas.
When the soldiers administered the killing blows, often by point-blank
execution, they were heard muttering, “Remember Custer.”72
The military still refers to the massacre of half-starved and surrendering
people as a battle against armed militants. Congress awarded twenty medals
of honor to the soldiers involved in the massacre. In retaliation for the
unprovoked slaughter, Ghost Dancers sought revenge. The story of a young
Sicangu Carlisle boarding school graduate who returned to the reservation
and joined the Ghost Dance movement is significant in this regard. Tasunka
(Plenty Horses) was stripped of his language and culture at a crucial
moment in his childhood, returning to his family and community with
nothing to offer. “I found that the education I had received,” Plenty Horses
recalled, “was of no benefit to me. There was no chance to get employment,
nothing for me to do whereby I could earn my board and clothes, no

opportunity to learn more and remain with the whites. It disheartened me
and I went back to live as I had before going to school.”73
His experience was not exceptional. The civilization experiment failed.
Growing his hair long and donning pre–boarding school Lakota clothing,
Plenty Horses joined armed resisters in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee
Massacre. Lieutenant Edward Casey went to meet with the resistance camp
that had holed up in the Badlands. Angry at what he had experienced in
boarding school, the starving conditions to which he returned on the
reservation, and witnessing his people killed with impunity at Wounded
Knee, Plenty Horses positioned himself behind Casey as he approached and
shot him in the back of the head. Army officials charged Plenty Horses with
murder, but he was later acquitted. Had he been guilty of murder, then so
too were the soldiers who massacred his people at Wounded Knee, the court
reasoned. At trial, the court concluded that a state of war existed, although
not formally declared, and therefore that Plenty Horses was not at fault, and
neither were the soldiers involved in the Wounded Knee massacre—thus
suspending the criminal act of genocidal murder.74
In the aftermath of the October 27, 2016, raid on the 1851 Treaty Camp
blockading the Dakota Access Pipeline, a rancid smell permeated the
camps. Police and private security had heaped the camp’s remnants—
ceremonial items, such as eagle feathers, pipes, medicine bundles, and
staffs, along with mangled tents, sleeping bags, clothing, and tipis—into a
large pile near the entrance of Oceti Sakowin Camp. Cops and private
security had urinated on the items before returning them.
One night, after it was decided to ceremonially burn the urine-soaked
remnants, an Ihanktonwan elder gathered young Water Protectors around a
fire. She was dressed in the regalia she wore the day of the raid. Hundreds
of copper pennies hung by red ribbons from her dark blue trade cloth dress.
She told of her ancestors who were killed during the 1862 US–Dakota War.
Evicted from their homelands, they fled to present-day Standing Rock,
crossing the Missouri River not far from the location of Oceti Sakowin
Camp, after US cavalrymen massacred Dakotas and Lakotas in the
Whitestone Hill buffalo hunt camp. This was, to the day, exactly 150 years
before DAPL private security unleashed attack dogs on unarmed Water
Protectors at a nearby pipeline construction site.
The day after Christmas in 1862, soldiers gathered up thirty-eight
Dakota men and boys and imprisoned them at Fort Snelling in Mankato,

Minnesota. Their medicine bundles were confiscated, heaped in a large pile,
and burned as they were led to the gallows, singing their death songs. Their
crime? Defending their nation and homelands. The same week that
President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing
Black slaves, he also signed the death sentences of the thirty-eight Dakota
patriots. The copper pennies hanging from the elder’s regalia had holes
drilled into Lincoln’s ears with red ribbon threaded through. “He didn’t
listen,” she said of the Great Emancipator, “so we opened his ears.”
After the 1876 Battle of Greasy Grass, Lakota women used awls to carve
holes in Custer’s ears so he would hear better in the afterlife. Now, it was
President Barack Obama, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple, and
Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier who refused to listen. As singers
began a prayer song, the elder reminded the younger ones that the tears
flowing from their eyes were their “ancestors speaking through them,” and
that they were not tears of trauma but of liberation. “We survived genocide
after genocide.”
Then she danced, and the pennies swayed with the flickering fire and
billowing smoke. Behind her, armed police were perched on a hill half a
mile away, and their bright floodlights glared down on us. Our history is the
future.
What continues to sustain Indigenous peoples through the horrors of
settler colonialism are the recent memories of freedom, the visions enacting
it, and the daring conspiracies to recapture it. The Ghost Dance was not a
monolithic movement, but an accumulation of prior anti-colonial
experiences, sentiments, and struggles that informed #NoDAPL. Each
struggle had adopted essential features of previous traditions of Indigenous
resistance, while creating new tactics and visions to address the present
reality, and, consequently, projected Indigenous liberation into the future.
Trauma played a major role. But if we oversimplify Indigenous peoples as
perpetually wounded, we cannot possibly understand how they formed
kinship bonds and constantly recreated and kept intact families,
communities, and governance structures while surviving as fugitives and
prisoners of a settler state and as conspirators against empire; how they
loved, cried, laughed, imagined, dreamed, and defended themselves; or how
they remain, to this day, the first sovereigns of this land and the oldest
political authority.

Water Protectors protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline outside the US Army Corps of Engineers
headquarters in downtown Chicago. September 2016. Photo by Kristen Simmons.

4

Flood
When our land is gone, our way of life is gone, our tribes are destroyed. The bottom lands the Corps
of Engineers want to take are the very best on the reservations. They are our heart lands. They can
never be replaced. No similar lands are for sale. We depend on land for our livelihood, it furnishes us
our income. To take our land is to take our homes and income, and a part of our history and heritage.
—J. W. “Jiggs” Thompson, US Senate Subcommittee
on Public Works, Washington, DC, 19591

After Wounded Knee, spectacular armed struggle would not come again
until the 1970s. In the meantime, nevertheless, the fight for land, life, and
self-determination continued. Over the course of the mid twentieth century,
the United States increasingly used its powers of eminent domain to seize
Indigenous lands for large public works projects, especially for Army Corps
of Engineers dams. For the Oceti Sakowin along the Missouri River,
dispossession through eminent domain emerged in the form of floods and
dams. The Pick-Sloan Plan, a joint water-development project designed by
the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation in 1944 with
the input of Missouri River states, called for the construction of large
multipurpose earthen-rolled dams for flood control, reclamation, and
irrigation that, as its promoters claimed, promised to make otherwise-arid
grasslands bloom. Four of the five Pick-Sloan dams flooded seven Missouri
River Lakota and Dakota reservations—Santee, Yankton, Rosebud, Lower
Brule, Crow Creek, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock. But unlike during
the previous century, when Indigenous land was coveted for its endless
bounty, for the Pick-Sloan Plan in the twentieth century, Indigenous land
was desired merely so that it could be wasted—covered with water. All of
the risks, and none of the rewards, of cheap hydroelectricity and irrigation,
were imposed on generations of Indigenous people who depended upon
their relations to the land and water for life. And floodwaters provided the
physical means to terminate Indigenous nations and relocate people—a

violent severing of those relations—to end the “Indian problem” once and
for all.
The Pick-Sloan dams were a twentieth-century Indigenous apocalypse,
inflicting an immeasurable amount of loss that is still experienced today.
When the river trade increased violence in the nineteenth century, the Oceti
Sakowin escaped invasion by following the buffalo onto the plains. When
the US Army annihilated the buffalo, the survivors were forced onto
reservations, where they found refuge once again in the lush river
bottomlands where food and game abounded, subsistence agriculture
flourished, and fresh water was plenty. When the reservation cattle boom
came in the early twentieth century, river bottomlands provided shelter for
livestock and prime ranchland for small-scale, Native-owned cattle
enterprises. A mixed economy consisted of subsistence hunting and
gathering, along with small-scale agriculture and small-scale reservation
cattle enterprises. Virtually all reservation timber was concentrated along
shoreland, providing the necessary materials for home construction, shelter,
and fuel for heating and cooking. What could not be produced by the sale of
livestock was replaced with the harvest of wild game, fruits, and vegetables
that flourished in the river valley. Those less fortunate avoided starvation in
winter months, when employment was scarce, through total dependence on
“the free goods of nature” that the river provided.
All of this was destroyed by the Pick-Sloan Plan, setting the stage for the
#NoDAPL movement half a century later. The Army Corps’ discretion to
plot the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2014 rested on power they
assumed under the Pick-Sloan Plan, following which the Army Corps have
continually asserted—but never been officially granted—jurisdiction over
the Missouri River flowing through Oceti Sakowin reservations. This was a
direct violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which delineated treaty
territory as encompassing the entire channel of the river flowing through it,
including the eastern shoreline. According to US law, only Congress had
the power to alter treaty boundaries or extinguish Indigenous jurisdiction,
and the Pick-Sloan Plan authorized the Army Corps to do neither; it merely
authorized them to build dams on the reservations. However, the assertion
of jurisdiction didn’t just happen with the stroke of a pen. Rather, it arrived
as a wall of water brought on by the dams—extinguishing life and
Indigenous jurisdiction along with it. And because reservation life had
imposed starvation conditions on the Oceti Sakowin in the earlier half of

the twentieth century, by the mid twentieth century when the Pick-Sloan
dams were built, it was hard to assemble a formidable resistance against the
Army Corps and its allied federal agencies. The results were nothing short
of genocide: by destroying the land—and with it the plants, animals, and
water—the dams targeted and destroyed the very nations of people who
reproduced themselves upon the soil. In this way, taking land and water also
took away the possibility of a viable future.
Pick-Sloan also dovetailed with federal policies of termination and
relocation, which liquidated federally recognized Indigenous nations and
removed people from the reservation to far-off urban centers. In 1953,
Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, which called for the
immediate termination of the Flathead, Klamath, Menominee, Potawatomi,
and Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribes—opening millions of acres of
Indigenous lands for privatization. The bill adopted a perverse logic: only
through the destruction of Indigenous nations could they “be freed from
Federal supervision and control from all disabilities and limitations.”2 That
same year, Public Law 280 authorized states to assume criminal and civil
jurisdiction over Native lands. Together, the bills promised to end federal
trust protections and transfer payments guaranteed by treaties and
agreements, extinguishing what little Indigenous political authority
remained after close to a century of genocidal policies. In tandem with this
termination legislation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs began busing Natives
off reservations to cities like San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles,
and Cleveland as part of the federal relocation program. Between the 1950s
and 1960s, an estimated 750,000 Native people moved off reservation.
Termination, in the words of Edward Valandra, “made legal the overthrow
of Native governments, the stealing of their lands, and the extermination of
Native Peoples and cultures.”3
Termination marked a dramatic shift in policy from the gains made
during the Indian New Deal, which, despite its flaws, had ushered in a new
era of tribal self-determination under the 1935 Indian Reorganization Act
(IRA). The dramatic reforms overhauled years of collective punishment that
the Indian Bureau had inflicted on whole nations held captive on
reservations. The year of the Wounded Knee Massacre, the US Census
concluded that the western frontier was officially “closed.” With it, the
centuries of war, famine, disease, and genocidal policy brought the
American Indian population to its lowest point in the history of North

American settler colonialism. In 1928, in response to American Indian
activists’ demands, an extensive study, The Problem of Indian
Administration, also known as the Meriam Report, found the Indian Bureau
incompetent, corrupt, and murderous. Among its most egregious acts was
mass starvation across reservations, as what little land remained for Natives
to eke out a living was sold off to white settlers. Because of the disastrous
Dawes Act, between 1887 and 1932 allotment—and the “surplus” land sold
to whites—devoured 91 million acres of Indigenous lands, leaving just 48
million acres for reservations. In order to limit the number of individual
American Indians who could receive an allotment and become landowners,
a racist federal “competency commission” issued patents based on racial
mixture, disallowing “full-bloods” from becoming private owners, and
instead keeping their lands in trust. This created conflict between landless
“mixed-bloods” and “full-bloods” who kept allotments because they were
deemed too “incompetent” to sell them to whites. Oklahoma tribes were
hardest hit; for instance, the Osage lost 70 percent of their allotted lands
during the oil boom of the 1920s. By contrast, the Oceti Sakowin lost 30
percent of their allotted lands overall; among them, Rosebud and Lower
Brule experienced the greatest hit, losing 40 percent of their lands.4
The IRA provided a temporary reprieve to the onslaught by making three
important reforms: First, it ended the catastrophic allotment policy. Second,
it ended the draconian prohibition on dancing, improved Indigenous
freedom of religion and speech, improved the reservation criminal justice
system, and provided monies for land reacquisition and economic
development. Lastly, it imposed Western-style governance through a BIA
model constitution, which required reservations to adopt a constitution
based on the US Constitution and pledge fealty to the United States. The
last point was the most contentious. While Indigenous peoples desired
increased political autonomy, they didn’t want to replace existing
governance, based on consensus and kinship, with colonial institutions.
They also feared the competitive Western-style electoral system would
further intensify political factionalism and create a class of reservation
elites whose allegiance lay not with community councils but with an
external authority—the US government—and whose political power would
be kept in check by the BIA and the Department of the Interior.
In fact, the IRA’s primary architect, Commissioner of Indian Affairs
John Collier, saw the IRA as part of a global design of colonial

administration. Collier drew inspiration from Lord Lugord’s earlytwentieth-century model for British colonial administration. Under this
system national independence was prevented through its permanent
suspension. In 1947 Collier even compared the US colonial administration
of Indigenous peoples to its imperial annexation and colonial management
of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, the Pacific Islands, the
Panama Canal, and the Virgin Islands.5 The IRA was a New Deal program,
but it was also part of global imperialism; the view that Indian policy is
only “domestic policy” fails take this fact seriously, and normalizes
colonialism by reproducing the notion that Indigenous peoples are domestic
US subjects. Indian affairs were thus removed from the realm of
international relations—from treaty making and diplomacy—and relegated
to domestic, territorial rule, a process that should be challenged rather than
reproduced.
National independence for colonized peoples was never the goal for US
imperial endeavors. Nevertheless, the IRA lifted the Oceti Sakowin “from
absolute deprivation to mere poverty, and this was the best time the
reservation had,” as Standing Rock Sioux scholar and activist Vine Deloria
Jr. observed.6 And for all its flaws, the IRA enshrined certain principles of
self-government for Indigenous peoples and provided them with a federally
recognized government. Not all reservations accepted the IRA, but those
that did possessed a distinct advantage in years to come. For example, the
Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Lower Brule, and Crow Creek
Reservations created IRA tribal councils. The Yankton Reservation adopted
the IRA but never formally adopted a model constitution or tribal council.
With no federally recognized government, the Yankton reservation and its
trustee, the Secretary of the Interior, were completely bypassed by the Army
Corps, which proceeded to seize Native property by right of eminent
domain in order to construct the Fort Randall Dam. Yankton Reservation
members had little to no recourse. In the end, while IRA governments were
deeply flawed, without them the Oceti Sakowin would not have been able
to negotiate Army Corps damages—nor to ultimately resist termination. But
it was a false choice to begin with: adopt the colonizers’ model fully; accept
“self-determination” with permanent tutelage; or perish.
During this era, treaties were broken by statute rather than by brute
force. In the Missouri River basin, the Pick-Sloan Plan destroyed more
Indigenous lands than any other public works project in US history,

affecting twenty-three different reservation communities. The project,
writes Deloria, “was without a doubt, the single most destructive act ever
perpetrated on any tribe by the United States.”7 The land taken and
destroyed was the best land on the reservation: riverfront bottomlands that
were heavily wooded on otherwise treeless plains, and full of wildlife and
plants, including animals on which many Indigenous peoples still depended
for sustenance. A third of the residents of Standing Rock, Cheyenne River,
Lower Brule, Crow Creek, and Yankton reservations were removed to
marginal lands on the open prairies or were forced to leave the reservation
entirely; in either case, they could not reproduce the lives they lived in the
lush river bottoms. In total, the United States took 550 square miles of
Indigenous lands, an area half the size of Rhode Island.
During the nineteenth century, treaty making was deployed as a way to
ensure Indian title over lands so they could later be ceded to the United
States. D’Arcy McNickle, a Flathead scholar and Indian Affairs employee
at the time of the Pick-Sloan Plan, argued that under eminent domain,
Indian tribes became categorized as private landowners “against whom the
state could proceed.” In other words, the identity of entire Indigenous
nations became nothing more than a dollar sign. “The process, in time,”
McNickle argued, “can only lead to the extinction of the Indian people.”8
Unlike white farmers and landowners, who could easily reproduce their
businesses and lifestyles elsewhere, Indigenous peoples and the favorable
river environment upon which they depended could not be replaced.
This was a cruel reward for those returning from the Second World War.
In every war from the First World War to present, Indigenous peoples have
served and volunteered at rates higher than the US population. The US
military has also purposely distorted Indigenous warrior culture for its own
ends, often enlisting Indigenous names and motifs, such as the “Lakota”
helicopter or the “Tomahawk” cruise missile, for imperialist endeavors.
Natives have served not so much as “national minorities” but more often as
separate, sovereign nations. During World War I, the Haudenosaunee
Confederacy, for example, independently declared war on Germany in
1917, choosing to send their soldiers to fight for their own nation. They did
the same during World War II, independently declaring war on the Axis
powers. Initially, Native military service had much to do with the
maintenance of Indigenous sovereignty, with Native soldiers fighting
alongside an empire in which they were not citizens. Although widely

resisted by Indigenous nations, American Indian citizenship would not be
granted until 1924.
The Oceti Sakowin held similar views toward military service,
maintaining an understanding with the United States that their military
service was for the protection of their own homelands, and nothing more.
They understood their service would not require deployment overseas
against enemies named by the US empire that didn’t directly threaten
Indigenous livelihoods. “There was an agreement between the [US]
Government and the Indian people,” Lakota holy man Fools Crow
explained in 1978, regarding Lakotas’ volunteerism during World War I,
“that they will only fight within their own country, in defense. They send
him [Lakotas] overseas which is contrary to the agreement that was made. It
is something unusual for an Indian to fight in a foreign country … When
they come back they are not the same boys. They drink. They destroy
themselves.”
When thousands returned home after the Second World War, the enemy
threatening their homelands was the very military they fought for. A
country that demanded Natives sacrifice their lives in war now demanded
the sacrifice of their best lands and their governments. What was coming up
the river was a new round of dispossession, a new round of enclosure, that
used the most precious resource—water—as its weapon to eliminate and
destroy nations and the land on which they depended for life. However, the
struggle for control over the river began not with the Army Corps, but with
states like South Dakota, whose political elite became staunch advocates for
termination. But like termination, river development met resistance.
By 1910 the state of South Dakota, barely two decades old, was at the
forefront of the movement to develop the Upper Missouri. Other states such
as Montana and North Dakota had their own plans, but none compared to
the scale and organization of those in South Dakota. Early attempts had
failed to garner federal support, especially from the US Army Corps of
Engineers, who had final say over any river improvement projects. In 1924
the state designated Big Bend, the largest oxbow bend on the Missouri, as
the site for a hydroelectric plant. A large multipurpose dam, according to
this plan, promised cheap electricity and irrigation for the exclusive benefit
of the nearby white-dominated border towns of Pierre, Winner,
Chamberlain, White River, Mitchell, Huron, Redfield, and Murdo. Ignored
were the very people most impacted: the Lower Brule and Crow Creek

reservations. Although the dam targeted their lands and threatened their
water rights, neither Indigenous nation was consulted, and both were
disregarded entirely during the initial planning of the project. And when
South Dakota’s river development projects failed to gain the necessary
federal support, the Upper Missouri Valley Development Association
formed in the spring of 1933 to take up their campaign.
The Big Bend site was just miles south from where the Lakotas first
discovered the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804, attempting to trespass
through their territory unnoticed. So too did boosters of river development
attempt to bypass the scrutiny of the Oceti Sakowin. Like the expedition,
their plan was soon discovered. On May 16, 1937, Lower Brule Tribal
Chairman Ruben Estes wrote to South Dakota Republican Congressman
Francis Case expressing support for a hydroelectric plant at Big Bend that
could provide “labor and relief,” and electricity to the Lower Brule town
site. But Estes also expressed concern at the tribal council’s exclusion from
plans for the development of Lower Brule lands and water, invoking the
new powers Lower Brule was willing to exercise under the IRA to
challenge a state project initiated on tribal lands without their consent.
Ultimately, he questioned if the state or the federal government had the
right to develop water within reservation boundaries “without the consent
of the people” of Lower Brule and Crow Creek, or perhaps any Indigenous
nation living on the river.9
By 1935 the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe adopted the IRA, becoming the
first tribe among the Oceti Sakowin to do so, and the second in the United
States.10 They did so for pragmatic reasons: to counter attempts by state and
federal agencies to lay claim to and develop the Missouri River.11 Without
an IRA council, the Lower Brule had little power to halt river development,
to apply for federal loans, or to employ legal counsel to defend its lands. In
the first instance, the Lower Brule did not support the development of the
river without their consent. But they did support plans in which they could
determine what that development would look like, and to what extent it
would provide much-needed relief in the form of employment, and
electricity during the Great Depression.
On June 1, 1937, Case responded to Estes agreeing that the Big Bend
site “is right there in your reservation and you are entitled to first
consideration.”12 Lower Brule followed suit, passing a resolution seeking
federal loans from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to develop a small-

scale hydroelectric plant. While the tribe had planned a smaller project for
the immediate benefit of their community, Case had bigger ideas, in which
the Indigenous communities were not considered or were minor players.
Case claimed that the Big Bend site “could mean much to national defense,
to Indian rehabilitation and to the general welfare of central South
Dakota.”13 From 1937 to 1940, the Lower Brule requested approval for
developing the site, and the secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, favored
the plan as a BIA-led project to increase the Department of Interior’s
influence and control over the river.14 But the Army Corps rejected both the
BIA and Lower Brule proposals, basing their decision on a “cost-to-benefit”
analysis and the simple fact that they didn’t want to relinquish any authority
to tribes or the federal government.15 On the surface, it may have seemed
like bureaucratic conflict or a lack of political will. What South Dakota, the
Army Corps, and BIA did agree on, however, was that river development
would happen—with or without Indigenous consent.
Lower Brule’s initial opposition was consistent with other Indigenous
nations’ earlier attempts to protect their water rights. In the 1908 Winters
decision, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Fort Belknap
Reservation’s claim to water rights over a white farmer’s effort to control
the flow of the Milk River, a tributary of the Missouri River in Montana.
The court ruled that even if Fort Belknap had given up its fertile former
lands in exchange for arid ones—which were, according to the court,
adequate for “nomadic uncivilized people”—that their occupancy of those
lands was inconsistent with the federal government’s desire to have them
“become a pastoral and civilized people.”16 Put simply, Indigenous peoples
retained quantifiable water rights if, and only if, the water was used in
accordance with the civilizing mission of the federal government. The
decision became known as the Winters Doctrine. The doctrine holds that,
however diminished current reservation boundaries may be, tribes retain
senior, reserved rights to water flowing through the originally defined
boundaries established by treaty, statute, or executive order.17
Neither the Lower Brule or any Indigenous nation challenging Missouri
River development had ever invoked the Winters Doctrine. But they still
possessed the power to do so. The doctrine’s intended use illustrates limits
to Indigenous water rights under settler law; nevertheless, state or federal
alteration or disruption of the flow of the river for any reason without the

consent of the tribes, such as through the construction of dams, violates the
spirit of the Winters Doctrine.
The 1944 Flood Control Act, which authorized the Pick-Sloan Plan,
permitted the Army Corps only to construct dams—not to expunge
Indigenous jurisdiction, treaty rights, or water rights. In less-than-precise
language, Section 4 of the act opened the river for “public use” and
“recreational purposes.” It didn’t strip Crow Creek, Lower Brule, Standing
Rock, Cheyenne River, Yankton, Fort Berthold, or any Indigenous nation,
for that matter, of their political authority over their river. Regardless, from
the 1950s to the 1960s the Army Corps condemned reservation lands under
eminent domain and Congress awarded compensation to the affected
reservations. Neither the Flood Control Act (which took the land) nor the
congressional acts addressing damages (which rewarded compensation for
taking the land) explicitly extinguished Indigenous jurisdiction; and neither
authorized nor provided any compensation for the Army Corps’ taking the
Missouri River itself. Compensation was provided only for taking the land,
but not for the water. Since then, the Oceti Sakowin have contended that the
Missouri River and its shoreline were never legally ceded. And, according
to statute, they are right: the Army Corps’ alteration of the flow of the river
by damming it directly violates both the Winters Doctrine and the 1868 Fort
Laramie Treaty.18 But, regardless of treaty rights and sheer legality, the
Army Corps proceeded anyway.
For Dakotas and Lakotas, water rights are defined by treaty. For
example, Article 2 of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty delineated the eastern
boundary of “Sioux territory” as beginning at the “low-water mark” of the
east bank of the Missouri River. In contrast, the tribal constitutions for the
Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, and Lower Brule Reservations delineated
reservation boundaries according to the 1889 Sioux Agreement. The
agreement divided West River tribes into five distinct reservations (Pine
Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Lower Brule, and Standing Rock) and
defined the eastern boundary of the three reservations bordering the river
(Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, and Lower Brule) as beginning at “the
center of the main channel of the Missouri River.”19 Regardless of the 1889
Agreement’s diminishment of reservation lands, all these reservations and
the Oceti Sakowin still possess powers under the Winters Doctrine to the
Missouri River according to the original 1868 Treaty boundaries, as long as
the water is used in a “civilized” manner.

Winters rights take effect on the date reservations are created by federal
authority and are considered unquantifiable or, according to the court
decision, “uncircumscribed,” allowing for the perpetual benefit and use for
a permanent Indigenous homeland. According to Diné scholar Melanie K.
Yazzie in her analysis of the 2012 Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River water
settlement, subsequent Supreme Court decisions have interpreted this
“uncircumscribed” quality to mean a “minimal need” required by the
reservation. In other words, Indigenous nations are only entitled to water
they can use for “civilized” purposes. Those purposes are quantified—or,
put another way, Indigenous sovereignty is quantified according to water
usage and degrees of “civilized” usage. Anything falling outside these
qualifications is considered surplus, unused, or wasted. The rest can be
measured and siphoned away to meet the need of non-Native interests.
After each party quantifies their needs, water that flows through reservation
or treaty lands is then, by no small feat of the imagination, not entirely
“owned” by Indigenous nations. The result is that Indigenous nations can
only use a restricted amount—in some instances, a fraction of a percentage
—of the water flowing through their territory.
Settler agricultural interests in water, because they are so insatiable, have
always outweighed the bare survival of Indigenous peoples. On the plains
of the Missouri River basin, irrigation is necessary for agriculture, which as
a mode of production personifies settler colonialism: it’s sedentary and
mostly permanent; it reproduces itself; and it always needs more land and
water. As it expands, it eats away at Indigenous territory, destroying fauna
and flora and annihilating Indigenous subsistence economies. This is not to
say Indigenous peoples were not pastoralists, farmers, or ranchers before
and during colonization. (Prior to colonization most Indigenous societies
were agricultural, not “hunter-gatherer,” with great affinities to
domesticated plants such as corn.)20 Indeed, by the time the Pick-Sloan
Plan was proposed, Missouri River Indigenous nations had already
developed successful Native-run cattle ranching enterprises and small-scale
agricultural projects, often reflecting communal practices. These smallscale economies allowed Indigenous nations to resist and challenge the
further diminishment of their reservation lands by preventing the need to
sell it off to feed themselves.
Lanniko L. Lee, a Lakota writer and a citizen of Cheyenne River
Reservation, remembers the river bottomlands before the floods. Drawing

on memories of her childhood, she recalls what life was like before the
Oahe Dam took her lands:
I see a river shoreline of men and women, young and old, carrying water, picking berries, gathering
firewood, fishing from the shore, wading in the sloughs for cattail root, gathering teas of so many
kinds, making toys for children from the fallen leaves and branches, telling stories of how we came
to be a people, making furniture, women telling river stories to their grandchildren, children learning
the gifts of the river. I hear men singing; I hear women, old and young, singing as they work and live
among the trees. I hear children’s laughter, too.21

Pick-Sloan’s massive dam projects, for instance, quite literally snatched
the food from the mouths of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous sovereignty
could be felt through the hunger in one’s stomach, as was the case for the
Oceti Sakowin who had their most productive lands taken. In this sense,
Indigenous sovereignty can be calculated according to their water rights,
which, according to Yazzie, face “unlimited limitations” in federal courts.22
That is, settler law has never expanded the material basis of Indigenous
sovereignty—land and water; it has only eroded it by placing upon it
endless restrictions. When it comes to water rights, it is not just the legal
character of “Indians” that is defined. “Settlers,” too, become legal subjects
with a vested interest in the taking of Indigenous water. Put differently, in
cases where Indigenous peoples possess water rights according to federal
statute, executive order, or treaty, settler communities, to fulfill their needs,
are dependent on diminishing those rights—with or without Indigenous
consent. Thus, Indigenous water rights are calculated first and foremost
according to settler needs.
The undercurrents of the Pick-Sloan Plan also originated from the
centralization of the power of the federal government to imagine and enact
theories of space through land policy. The practice began as early as the
1785 Land Ordinance and continued into the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries as federal authorities worked to know, map, reorganize, and
manage land as territory. Water management was vital to these policies, as
westward expansion and the taking of Indigenous lands confronted the
problem of creating irrigation systems to make settler life possible in arid
environments. After removing Indigenous peoples, the first task was to
induce colonization. Federal policies such as the 1862 Homestead Act
encouraged agricultural settlement on dry western lands unsuitable for
settler farming techniques developed in the east. Pushed by the railroad
lobby to spur settlement and therefore the need for railroads to transport

agricultural goods, the 1877 Desert Land Act amended the Homestead Act
and provided federal money for western irrigation projects. The Northern
Pacific Railway, for example, also opened colonization offices in Germany,
Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and England to entice European immigrants to
settle the Northern Plains and, therefore, to create a demand for railroad
transportation.23 Conservation policy, influenced by President Theodore
Roosevelt at the turn of the century, led to the creation of the Bureau of
Reclamation in 1902 to provide for the irrigation of arid lands in the West.
Land policy was the legal justification for the sometimes-unwilling shock
troops of colonization—white European settlers. Settlement and settlers
literally made “legal” and operational contemporary water law that depends
so heavily on the theft of Indigenous water.
“Public land” for “public good” was a highly subsidized federal
endeavor for private enterprise, racial exclusion, and Indigenous
elimination. One and a half million white families gained title to 246
million acres of Indigenous lands—an area nearly the size of California and
Texas combined—under the Homestead Act, with the added value of
federally subsidized irrigation. A quarter of adults alive today in the United
States are direct descendants of those who profited from the Homestead
Act’s legacy of exclusive, racialized property ownership and economic
mobility, a legacy that categorically excluded Black, Indigenous, and other
nonwhite peoples.24 Access to Indigenous water was crucial for securing
the ownership of Indigenous lands and generating wealth from these lands
over generations. Thus, a single land policy has had a profound lasting
political and economic legacy. It informs present disparities, which boil
down to a single axiom: land is wealth and water is wealth. The Pick-Sloan
Plan is part and parcel of this massive settler-colonial agricultural machine
that greases its gears with water. Today, agriculture in the western United
States accounts for three-quarters of all water usage.25 Water is settler
colonialism’s lifeblood—blood that has to be continually excised from
Indigenous peoples.
To meet incessant demands for irrigation, the Pick-Sloan Plan was made
to appear inevitable. But it was not a dream manifested in a dusty federal
office building in Washington, DC, to be handed down to unwitting
agricultural communities. States, local governments, the Army Corps, and
other federal agencies all pushed for Missouri River development in various
ways, in spite of the consequences for Indigenous communities. Although

most of the power was concentrated in federal authorities by 1944,
“grassroots” organizations continued to play a significant role. By 1941, the
Upper Missouri River Valley Development Authority had dissolved. In its
place formed the Missouri River States Committee, an organization of
governors from Missouri basin states. It is rather telling that the first states
to enthusiastically join the committee (South Dakota, North Dakota,
Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska) encompassed thirteen Indian
reservations whose lands either immediately included or bordered the
Missouri River (the Omaha, Winnebago, Santee, Rosebud, Ponca, Yankton,
Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Fort Berthold,
and Fort Peck Reservations). Later, Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa would join
the committee. Representation ranged from federal, state, and municipal
agencies and officials to businesses and community organizations. The
channelization of the river benefited mostly downriver states, while upriver
states would bear the heaviest burden by taking on the majority of the dams
and reservoirs. Since most of the land to be flooded was Indigenous, this
was a “burden” South Dakota and North Dakota politicians were willing to
assume. In 1951 during an appraisal hearing, Standing Rock Chairwoman
Josephine Kelly challenged this aspect of the Pick-Sloan Plan, and
especially the Oahe Dam’s appropriation of Standing Rock lands. Someone
asked why the dams were not built in the lower basin states, who benefitted
the most from flood control, to which Kelly responded bluntly, in front of
Army Corps and federal authorities: “Because there are no Indians down in
that country.”26
At no time did the state committee solicit the attendance or input of a
single Indigenous representative from the affected reservations. The
committee would work closely with the Bureau of Reclamation and the
Army Corps, in the words of its chair M. Q. Sharpe, “for the general
development [of the Missouri River] for the multiple purposes of flood
control, power development, irrigation, navigation, soil conservation, [and]
wildlife and recreational development.” As he went on to explain, “the
Missouri River States Committee had really become the general over-all
supervising, coordinating, steering and representative committee for the
development of the Missouri River basin on a valley-wide, over-all plan,
representing all the sovereign states of the basin in their sovereign status
and in a semi-official way.”27 Thus, states’ interests didn’t lay solely in

river development; they also proposed the total liquidation of Indigenous
political authority through termination.
The construction of the Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri River in
Montana in 1933 set a precedent for the way the Army Corps would ignore
Indigenous communities, treaties, and water rights. After destructive floods
in 1927, the Army Corps conducted an exhaustive four-year hydrological
study on the Missouri River. The findings were published in what was
called the 308 Report, which became the go-to manual for all future
developments in the basin, including the 1944 Pick-Sloan Plan. The report
also designated Fort Peck (not to be confused with the Fort Peck Indian
Reservation) as the best site for a massive reservoir. The project fell in line
with New Deal labor relief and public work projects, and President Franklin
D. Roosevelt quickly authorized the Fort Peck Dam under the 1933
National Industrial Recovery Act. The Army Corps built what was at the
time of its construction the largest dam on earth, in the process providing
much-needed employment for about 10,000 workers. Regional histories
celebrate the dam as a historic engineering masterpiece, and it is considered
instrumental in pulling Montana and the region out of the Great Depression.
The successes of the Fort Peck Dam secured Army Corps control in
planning and constructing future massive multipurpose dams on the main
stem of the Missouri and, according to historian Michael Lawson, “greatly
expanded its powers and functions beyond its constitutional limits.”28
While the dam’s history is well publicized and well remembered as an
economic boon and engineering marvel, missing from these popular
accounts is the largely untold and undocumented history of the removal of
350 Nakota, Dakota, and Assiniboine families on the Fort Peck Indian
Reservation and the flooding of earlier Indian Affairs irrigation projects that
had benefited Native farmers.29 The Fort Peck project paved the way for the
1944 Pick-Sloan Plan and Flood Control Act, and a similar process would
repeat itself: postwar employment and river development projects would
come primarily at the sacrifice of Indigenous lives and lands.
In anticipation of the need for postwar employment, and on the heels of
massive flooding, in 1944 the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps,
with the input and guidance of the Missouri River states, called for the
construction of five earthen rolled dams that would create massive
reservoirs on the river’s main stem. In South Dakota and North Dakota, the
dams flooded 611,642 acres of land. Just over a half of this land—309,584

acres in all—belonged to the Yankton, Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Cheyenne
River, Standing Rock, Rosebud, Santee, and Fort Berthold reservations.
Oahe Dam flooded the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock; Fort Randall
Dam flooded the Yankton and Rosebud Reservations; Fort Randall and Big
Bend Dams flooded the Lower Brule and Crow Creek reservations, while
Garrison Dam flooded Fort Berthold and Gavin’s Point Dam flooded the
Santee Reservation. As a result, from these five reservations alone more
than 900 Native families, one-third of their overall populations, were forced
to relocate. Entire communities were forever submerged. Indigenous
communities were well aware of the Pick-Sloan dams but had little idea
where they would be built and how much it would affect them. Some
communities were even flooded twice and experienced two dislocations,
such as Crow Creek and Lower Brule. Seventy-five percent of wildlife and
plants, and 90 percent of all commercial timber on these reservations lands
were destroyed.30 By design, the Pick-Sloan Plan was a destroyer of
nations.
The Garrison Dam inundated the Fort Berthold Reservation, composed
of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nations, taking 152,360 acres of their
land. Thirty percent of the community populations from Lower Brule, Crow
Creek, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock would be removed. Although
less land was taken by the Garrison Dam than by the Oahe Dam, Fort
Berthold lost a quarter of its entire land base, including its agency at
Elbowoods. Because of its smaller size and the greater concentration of its
residents in the river valley, approximately 80 percent of its people (325
families) were removed and 94 percent of its agricultural lands were
destroyed.31 No care was exercised to minimize the damage to Indigenous
lands. To protect the majority-white border town of Williston, North
Dakota, from losing its land, however, the Army Corps modified the
Garrison Dam. The dam was also built safely upriver so as not to flood
Bismarck, a white-dominated border town and the state capital of North
Dakota. (Such were the considerations the Army Corps made when
planning the Dakota Access Pipeline: minimization of damage to white
settlements was prioritized.) The reservoir that sits atop Fort Berthold lands
was named “Lake Sakakawea,” after the Shoshone woman, captured and
sold by the Hidatsas, who gained notoriety for her services to the Lewis and
Clark expedition and US empire.32 According to historian Michael Lawson,

the Pick-Sloan dams “destroyed more Indian land than any single public
works project in the United States.”33
Lanniko Lee remembers teary-eyed women and men, young and old,
gathering near the shorelines to watch as Mni Sose, the Missouri River,
slowly widened and the flood waters crept up the rolling gumbo hills.
“Some of them were singing the ancient songs for mourning,” she recalled.
“They sang of the coming death to the river life that the people had known.”
To Lee, it was an existential question about Indigenous identity grounded in
land and water: “Would we still be able to call ourselves Minnecoujou,
planters by the water?”34
While Indigenous peoples mourned the loss of their river, US President
John F. Kennedy celebrated the Oahe’s construction. At a dedication
ceremony for the dam on August 17, 1962, held in Pierre, South Dakota,
Kennedy spoke to a crowd of thousands, including businessmen,
politicians, and the very Indigenous peoples whose lands were sacrificed.
His message was one of salvation—the triumph of lightness over darkness,
civilization over savagery. “This dam and the rest of the dams on this river,”
he said, “which 30 years ago would have provided only floods and
darkness, now provide irrigation and light.”
Although the Army Corps proclaimed before Congress that they would
negotiate with the affected reservations, they never did.35 White landowners
were dealt with on an individual, case-by-case basis, and Missouri River
tribes were dealt with as separate reservations. In contrast to the treatment
of white landowners, the entire tribe received compensation, rather than the
individual tribal members whose allotments were directly flooded or
condemned. The creation of separate reservations had already severely
weakened national unity for the Oceti Sakowin. Allotment emphasized
individualism, breaking up the tightly knit family units of direct kin and
extended relations called the tiospaye, isolating them on different plots of
land in distant parts of the reservation. Tiospayes were the fundamental
political unit of Oceti Sakowin governance, and they were where each
family collectively selected its own representatives for general councils;
though individuals once identified by political affiliation (for instance, as
Hunkpapapa or Sicangu), they now identified by reservation (as Standing
Rock or Rosebud). Now, Pick-Sloan, by negotiating with separate
reservations rather than individual allottees, further fomented disunity

between reservations, individual tribal members, and their tribal
governments.
Indigenous nations were, nevertheless, awarded more money per acre
than their white neighbors; this was to better enable tribes to “throw off the
shackles of Federal supervision,” as South Dakota Congressman E. Y. Berry
declared during a debate on the Cheyenne River settlement in 1954.36 In
other words, Berry wanted to terminate the reservations and extinguish
treaty obligations, and the dams provided the perfect opportunity. The
initial negotiations for taken lands and relocation resulted in a $34 million
award to Lower Brule, Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, Yankton, and
Standing Rock. But this came with strings attached—namely, that these
tribes would eventually give up their political authority.
As early damages were still being calculated, on November 2, 1949, BIA
Superintendent Frell M. Owl wrote to the Lower Brule and Crow Creek
Tribal Councils advising them, perhaps for the first time, of the inevitable
flooding of their lands. The two tribes no doubt knew about Pick-Sloan, but
none fathomed the catastrophe it would bring. Owl told them Congress
transferred to the Army Corps all the lands “required” for the Big Bend and
Fort Randall Dams. Emphasizing Lower Brule and Crow Creek had no say
in the matter, Owl wrote that the proposal to take their lands “is submitted
to you not as a document that you should adopt but it, more or less, points
out the events to come in the future.” Owl later conveyed the convoluted
negotiations process: the Army Corps would condemn the land and
negotiate directly with Crow Creek and Lower Brule legal counsel. The
BIA would then approve and submit estimates of damages, but Congress
would hold final approval over all the negotiations and pass legislation
awarding monetary compensation.37 This lengthy back-and-forth process
resulted in the tribes negotiating with three different entities—the Army
Corps, the BIA, and Congress—often causing such a backlog in hearings
and proceedings that tribes received their relocation money only after their
lands were flooded.
In 1946 the BIA sponsored a two-year fact-finding mission, known as
the Missouri River Basin Investigation (MRBI), to estimate damages to
Missouri River tribes and estimate monetary awards for relocation, taken
lands, and “intangible damages.” In the process, they saw “opportunity” in
Indigenous “removal,” “relocation,” and “rehabilitation,” words that were
synonymous with “termination.” This would sever Native people from the

one thing keeping them from “merging with the total population” and
evolving beyond their “primitive status”: the reservation and the land. Put
plainly, the dams would speed up termination and relocation. Indigenous
culture, a “self-contained and ingrowing” culture of poverty, the BIA
investigation concluded, wanted for benevolent state intervention and the
civilizing project. Indigenous nations had achieved a relative degree of
autonomy under the IRA, but it was only through the liquidation of
Indigenous political authority and federal trust responsibilities—undergoing
destruction as nations—that they could receive the “gift of democracy.”38
Most Indigenous river communities, as the MRBI put it, still depended
on the “free goods of Nature”—such as hunting, trapping, and gathering—
in the lush bottomlands where many Lakotas and Dakotas historically
camped, and taking those lands would “force [Indians] into seeking cash
income to make up for the substantial portion of income now represented in
their use of natural resources of their present environment,” the BIA
concluded.39 In other words, Indigenous peoples could only attain
democracy once they were destroyed as nations.
The BIA made it sound like flooding agencies, the reservations’
headquarters, constituted liberation from dictatorial rule. “Our Indian
agencies are growths descended from the frontier,” the report claimed. It
called the towns “undemocratic” and stated that their end “might take the
course of transferring most of the Federal Government’s services to the
States.” The transfer of treaty obligations (federal services such as
healthcare and education) to the states is termination in line with Public
Law 280. The “wiping out” of the agencies, the MRBI concluded, was a
“rare opportunity” that “may lead to significant discoveries which will have
wide application to the conduct of Indian affairs in the United States.” In
other words, it was an experiment in democracy.40
“It takes the very heart out of these Indians,” one congressman said,
speaking candidly about the legislation. “When you take reservation land,
you destroy not only the land that is taken, but you destroy the community
life, [the] religious and civil life of the people. You destroy nations, as a
matter of fact.”
Agencies were the heart of these nations. Hospitals, health clinics,
schools, and administrative offices—the very institutions necessary to
continue on as a sovereign nation—were all located in agency towns. The
damages are worth reviewing in full.

The Oahe Dam entirely inundated Cheyenne Agency, Cheyenne River’s
largest community. The agency had to reestablish sixty miles inland at the
isolated prairie town of Eagle Butte. More than 180 families, about 30
percent of the population of the agency, were forced to leave their homes.
Fort Yates, the Standing Rock Agency, remained above the Oahe Dam flood
waters, but the land below it, where most of the community’s population
lived, was flooded. As a result, Fort Yates was made into an island that had
to be connected by a bridge, and 170 families were forced to relocate—25
percent of the reservation population. At Crow Creek, the Fort Randall Dam
flooded Fort Thompson, the agency headquarters for Lower Brule and
Crow Creek and the largest community, dislocating eighty-four families
from Crow Creek, thirty-five families from Lower Brule, and twenty
families from Yankton. The combined agency headquarters from Crow
Creek and Lower Brule were relocated to Pierre, the small capital city of
South Dakota some sixty miles north of both reservations. Indian health
services were relocated to Chamberlain, a notoriously racist, whitedominated border town twenty miles to the south.
Beyond the agencies, the damage to the rest of the reservations was no
less diffuse. The Oahe Dam, the most destructive, destroyed 160,889 acres
of Standing Rock and Cheyenne River, including 104,420 acres of
Cheyenne River lands and 55,994 acres of Standing Rock lands. Nearly all
the Cheyenne River lands taken were grazing lands; 75 percent and 60
percent of Native ranchers were displaced at Cheyenne River and Standing
Rock, respectively. The most expensive and largest of the Pick-Sloan dams,
the Oahe project cost $346 million, is 245 feet high, and generates 595,000
kilowatts of hydropower. The Oahe reservoir (Lake Oahe), stretching 250
miles from Pierre to Bismarck and storing 23.5 million acre-feet of water, is
as deep as Lake Eerie and longer than Lake Ontario.
The second-largest, Fort Randall Dam, rises 160 feet high and destroyed
21,497 acres of Indigenous land. Crow Creek lost 9,418 acres of land in the
flooding and had eighty-four families removed; Lower Brule lost 7,997
acres and had thirty-five families removed; Yankton lost 2,851 acres and
had twenty families removed; and Rosebud lost 1,231 acres of land. The
Fort Randall generates 320,000 kilowatts of hydro-power and cost $200
million. The reservoir it created, Lake Francis Case (named after a South
Dakota congressman and early river-development advocate) is 107 miles
long and has a storage capacity of 5.7 million acre-feet.

In an incredibly stupid and cruel engineering calculation, the Big Bend
Dam, the third-largest of those constructed under Pick-Sloan, flooded and
dislocated Crow Creek and Lower Brule lands to which communities had
been already relocated from the previous Fort Randall flooding. Both
reservations would have to relocate twice. Ninety-four feet high and
producing 468,000 kilowatts of power, the Big Bend Dam was built directly
on the now-inundated Fort Thompson town site and directly on Crow Creek
and Lower Brule lands, flooding 20,478 acres of each and destroying the
Lower Brule Agency headquarters. Lower Brule lost 14,299 acres and had
sixty-two families, more than half its population, removed. Half the
remaining Lower Brule farms not destroyed by the Fort Randall project
were destroyed by Big Bend. Crow Creek lost 6,179 acres and had twentyseven families removed. The reservoir behind Big Bend, Lake Sharpe, was
named after the appointed Lower Brule and Crow Creek attorney M. Q.
Sharpe, who represented the two tribes during the Pick-Sloan negotiations.
For his lifelong commitment, not to Indigenous peoples, but to the taking of
their lands by flooding it, Sharpe is immortalized by the water that sits atop
Lower Brule and Crow Creek lands.
The smallest and southernmost dam, Gavin’s Point, took 593 acres of
Santee lands. Gavin’s Point created Lewis and Clark Lake, named for the
two US explorers who famously branded the Oceti Sakowin as “the vilest
miscreants of the savage race.”
As much as the Army Corps already viewed the Missouri River as a
technical problem to be managed and administered, the MRBI reduced
Indigenous relocation and the trauma it inflicted to a set of technical
questions and problems to be sorted out by the administration of federal and
state services. Each of these problems had a solution, followed with a cash
payment. By all accounts most of the Indigenous river communities, as the
MRBI put it, still depended on the “free goods of Nature”—such as
hunting, trapping, and gathering. This relationship was viewed as
preventing full integration into the market economy. The BIA argued that
taking the bottomlands would “force [Indians] into seeking cash income to
make up for the substantial portion of income now represented in their use
of natural resources of their present environment.” “Income” calculated not
only cash income from wage labor, but also what was harvested from the
land for consumption, rather than for profit. The assessment of “intangible”
and “tangible” resources would force Indigenous people to begin thinking

in terms of the cash economy, rather than relying upon goods that were
otherwise considered “free” and, if properly managed, naturally
replenishing. “Substitutes for native products destroyed by the reservoirs
will be commercial products acquired through cash payments,” reasoned
the MRBI.41
During a 1958 congressional hearing on the Oahe Dam, Standing Rock
member Louis Thief compared the catastrophic impact of “intangible
damages” to the delayed explosion of an atomic bomb—unfolding
gradually over time and space rather than in a split second—forever
destroying the land, and whose consequences could only be fully
understood by future generations. The bomb killed the “little things” that
had no market value, such as mice or mouse beans, which had prevented
many Indigenous peoples from starvation on the reservations. Mouse beans,
or makatomnica in Lakota, are ground beans that are highly revered in
Indigenous culture. Lakota and Dakota women would sing special songs in
which they asked the mice for permission to take their beans, promising to
leave appropriate gifts. The beans were a major source of protein for many
families and today remain nearly extinct.42 Thief explained how the
previous winter a man had dug up some of these mouse beans and had
“enough to tide him over two weeks and [save] his family from starving.”43
The loss of wildlife and plant life and the gardens also had a deleterious
health impact. Prior to the dams, there was no diabetes. After the dams,
diabetes rates soared. US Department of Agriculture commodity foods,
such as canned meats and vegetables, white flour, and white sugar, replaced
healthy foods. “Civilizing” the river landscape replaced a healthy diet of
vegetables and lean meats with a high carb, sugar, and fat diet, causing
generational health issues.44
Thief’s testimony evoked the idea that Missouri Indigenous communities
were also “energy sacrifice zones,” a term that the Nixon-era National
Academy of Sciences used to describe the Shoshone and Paiute lands that
were taken for nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. With no small irony,
the US Department of Energy created a 1,360-square-mile “reservation”
where 928 nuclear bombs were detonated, making it the most heavily
nuclear-bombed area in the world. The only difference was that while the
Nevada Test Site sought to transform atoms into nuclear energy, Pick-Sloan
sought to transform water into hydropower. Both made the landscapes

uninhabitable. Despite MRBI attempts to calculate the costs of damage, the
value of the land could never be replaced.
Also at stake was the future realization of life that sustained Indigenous
lives, that kept families from starving to death. In this sense, the dams
reached into the future to take human and nonhuman life, and literally
drowned its potential reproduction. Calculations were not for immediate
damages but future damages, demonstrating the MRBI’s inability to realize
relations with other-than-human life. For the Oceti Sakowin, the attempt at
compensation for taking their future was not a new phenomenon. During
the illegal annexation of the Black Hills, a federal official offered Red
Cloud and his people $6 million for the Black Hills. When Red Cloud
refused, the official asked him the value of the Black Hills. “The Black
Hills [are] worth seven generations to me,” Red Cloud responded.45 In
other words, it was not about money but about a viable future, something
entirely unquantifiable. It was not merely about surrendering one’s lands,
but also surrendering one’s future relations to that land. As Lower Brule
Tribal Council member Richard LaRoche Jr. testified before Congress in
1955,
We doubt if any group of strangers to this land, even though they may have some skill as
appraisers[,] could come on to it and find all of the real values of it and appraise them accurately. We
who have lived with it and owned some of it and worked it all of our lives, we think, are better able
to tell you its true value.46

The BIA, seeking to account for the loss of “intangible” things like mice
beans, wild plums, chokecherries, buffalo berries, wild game, plant
medicines, and a bountiful timber supply, was estimating the “value of wild
products” to be equivalent to “the grocery of food to replace the loss of wild
products.”47 But many of the “wild products” lost also played central roles
in seasonal ceremonial practices. One such practice involving women’s
coming of age required the use of buffalo berries, which would never again
grow on Lower Brule land after inundation, thus ending the ceremonial
practice. LaRoche was outraged at having to explain this and place a
monetary value on the loss of ceremonial rites: “Well, the white man, he
never cared about these things; he didn’t even know what it was.”48
In a 1958 congressional hearing on the Oahe relocation and
rehabilitation program for Standing Rock, Josephine Kelly, no longer the
chairwoman, expressed disgust at the way the United States government

and the Army Corps ran roughshod over treaties. Frustrated congressmen
told her in patronizing tones that the settlement would provide agricultural
and community development loans. “We don’t want loans,” Kelly shot
back. The congressman compared the loan to a gift from Santa Claus, as if
Kelly was an entitled child. “We have been Santa Clauses, too, the Sioux
Indians. We gave up our Black Hills and gave up our land,” she replied,
“and now we are down to bedrock, just like a bunch of beggars, and that is
really sad.”49
No matter. Human and animal life, BIA officials harshly explained,
would “have to reestablish on the open upland plains where a less
hospitable and more rigorous climate prevails.”50 And compensating land
loss at “fair market value” was next to impossible because this sudden rise
in demand for hospitable lands drove up real estate prices and market
competition for prime ranchland.51 As a result, many families had to subsist
on a monetary compensation that arrived only after their homes had been
flooded, “with the result that they run the real risk of ending up penniless
and homeless.”52 And many did. Michael Lawson describes an all-toofamiliar scene that unfolded at Standing Rock, which was also experienced
by the Lower Brule and Crow Creek Reservations:
In January 1960, when the Corps of Engineers finally delivered the settlement funds to Standing
Rock, it also served the tribe with an immediate eviction order. In the midst of a fierce Dakota winter,
with temperatures falling as low as thirty degrees below zero, tribal families who lived within the
Oahe reservoir taking area were forced to gather all their possessions and to leave their land. Because
the federal government had not yet made funds available for either the construction of new homes or
the relocation of old dwellings, these people were crowded into cold and cheerless trailer houses,
which they had to maintain at their own expense until permanent housing could be prepared.53

Although the dams promised to hasten the death of Indigenous nations
by destroying the land, they failed to accomplish this task, thanks to the
Oceti Sakowin’s ability to mobilize, unite, and defeat termination
legislation—not once, but twice. However, it was an enormous task. During
early Pick-Sloan negotiations, most of the politicians “advocating” for the
Oceti Sakowin were also ardent terminationists and Pick-Sloan supporters,
like South Dakota congressmen Karl Mundt, E. Y. Berry, and Francis Case;
the Lower Brule and Crow Creek legal counsel M. Q. Sharpe; and the
commissioner of Indian Affairs, Dillon Myer. From the time Myer took
over as commissioner of Indian affairs, he was intent on overturning the
progressive legacy of his predecessor, John Collier, who introduced the

IRA. Myer was also the perfect man for overseeing the overthrow of
Indigenous nations. Appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as director
of the War Relocation Authority, Myer earned his credentials, imprisoning
more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in concentration
camps during World War II.
If facing imminent flooding were not a bleak enough situation for the
Lower Brule and Crow Creek, they also had an enthusiastic Pick-Sloan
advocate and terminationist representing them in the negotiations process.
In June 1951, the consolidated agencies of Lower Brule and Crow Creek
appointed M. Q. Sharpe as their legal counsel because his law practice was
located near the reservations and he had political connections in Congress
and within federal agencies—and, above all, because he was the most
affordable lawyer. Indian Commissioner Dillon Myer had also refused to
allow Crow Creek to hire separate legal counsel after they selected Lakota
attorney Ramon Roubideaux.54 When the failure to select a legal counsel
for both reservations delayed negotiations, Myer intervened and made the
decision for them.55 In the course of the negotiations, Myer, as well as the
South Dakota politicians, consistently tried to steer the conversation toward
termination.
The issue arose of relocating the agency headquarters—the seat of the
tribes’ IRA government—off the reservation to nearby white-dominated
towns, a move which would fulfill the dual purpose of providing a model
for termination while also beginning the process of Indigenous relocation
into surrounding white communities. Berry and Myer claimed that the
leaders of the white-dominated border town Chamberlain offered up their
town as a potential site for Lower Brule. This move, wrote Myer to Berry
on August 31, might “result in some inconvenience to individual Indians,”
but in the longer-term, “many of the Indians who now take all their
problems, great and small, to the agency superintendent might through
necessity have to start taking care of some of them for themselves.” The
completion of Fort Randall Dam, Myer continued, might “become the
starting point” for pushing them toward “more assimilation and
integration”—and away from the “narrow and inbred way of life” that was
“customary of reservation living.”56
Local white leadership reacted virulently. Because Chamberlain was the
seat of Brule County, the county commissioners adopted a resolution to
thwart an effort by the BIA and Congress to force the members of Lower

Brule and Crow Creek into integration at the public schools and into the
community at large, claiming it “would place an intolerable financial
burden on Brule County, South Dakota.”57 Chamberlain Mayor Herschel V.
Melcher took an even more threatening tone, in a March 30, 1954, letter to
Case and Berry, reminding them that carrying the “relief load for Indians”
was the job of the federal government.58 “We do not intend to let an Indian
light around here at all. We do not want to live with them, we don’t want
them in our schools,” he wrote. Impatient, he sent another letter just two
weeks later, threatening racial violence. “Anybody who rents them any
property will have to change his address and I would not want the insurance
on his building. We do not feel that this town should be ruined by a mess
like this and we do not intend to take this lying down.”59
Crow Creek and Lower Brule also opposed the proposed relocation,
adopting a resolution that barred Commissioner Myer from further
obstructing the tribe’s requests for legal counsel and to open negotiations
with Congress and the Corps of Engineers.60 But Myer refused to halt the
proposed relocation, to allow the tribe to select its own legal counsel, or to
open immediate negotiations for Fort Randall claims. This rebuff
highlighted a larger failure of termination, and a persistent feature of settler
colonialism’s “Indian problem”: white settlers want Indigenous lands, but
they don’t want Indigenous peoples. Federal agencies adopted a hands-off
approach when dealing with tribes once their land bases were destroyed,
with the BIA and Congress recommending a course of action, then standing
back, leaving already hard-pressed Indigenous communities to fight for
themselves against powerful federal bureaucracies and violently hostile
white settlers. It was a tactic of neglect. The Pick-Sloan Plan created an
opportunity to experiment with forced Native relocation and assimilation as
a way of relinquishing federal wardship responsibilities. Ultimately, the
experiment failed, but termination remained on the table.
In 1957 the South Dakota legislature introduced a bill to assume criminal
jurisdiction over Dakota and Lakota lands, but the Oceti Sakowin fought
back. The majority of the Lakotas and Dakotas whose lands were
circumscribed by the state resoundingly rejected state jurisdiction in a 1958
reservation-wide referendum.61 But the victory was short-lived. In 1963
South Dakota again introduced legislation to attempt to overthrow tribal
governments under the auspices of Public Law 280, which did not

immediately require Indigenous consent but mandated states to assume all
the financial burdens of taking over Indigenous authority. Within weeks the
Oceti Sakowin formed United Sioux Tribes (UST) and collected more than
20,000 signatures to put the legislation up for a statewide referendum. In
1964 UST mobilized both Native and non-Native communities with a savvy
media and publicity campaign appealing to the “fairness” of state
jurisdiction, which had been imposed without consent. Although they had
never participated in large numbers in state politics, because of South
Dakota’s history of anti-Indian hostilities, nearly 90 percent of Natives in
South Dakota turned out to vote. The referendum won in a landslide
victory, with nearly 80 percent in favor (and therefore against termination)
statewide.62 South Dakota, which was deeply anti-Indian, wanted to take
reservation land but could not fathom taking care of Indigenous peoples
once they were “liberated” from federal rule, as the financial “burden” of
termination and state jurisdiction was too much to bear. Nevertheless, the
victory of the plebiscite killed the state’s terminationist agenda,
demonstrating the resiliency of the Oceti Sakowin.
Yet the Pick-Sloan dams endure, remaining disruptive structures on the
riverscape whose longer-term impacts are hard to ascertain. Rob Nixon
argues that environmental devastation, much like climate change, is
difficult to understand because it unfolds over such a long duration.
Violence is often viewed as immediate, explosive, and spectacular, like the
Indian Wars of the nineteenth century. But Nixon sees environmental
degradation as a kind of “slow violence”: a violence that is neither
“spectacular [n]or instantaneous.”63 Pick-Sloan might not have been an
explicit attempt to overthrow tribal governments, but it nevertheless
perpetuated “slow violence” on Indigenous people as sovereign nations—
not simply as cultures. These are nations of people who need food, shelter,
warmth, safety, and care, without which the nations cannot reproduce
themselves or live as they choose. And this is far more than a question of
cultural survival; cultural revitalization, while important, cannot bring back
the stolen lands that once offered up food, clothes, materials for shelter, and
medicines. Any cultural and spiritual connection to Mni Sose was also
accompanied by a material connection: the river kept people from starving
or freezing to death.
Indigenous peoples are more than cultures, they are sovereign nations.
Thinking purely in terms of culture as a form of historical agency tends to

neglect the concrete reality of Indigenous life. While Nixon’s framework of
“slow violence” as a steady accumulation—a gradual buildup—of violences
through environmental contamination is useful for understanding the lasting
impact of the Pick-Sloan Plan, there is also another kind of accumulation,
one that is not always spectacular, nor instantaneous, but that nevertheless
makes the endgame of elimination an impossibility: the tradition of
Indigenous resistance. This accumulation is a radical consciousness and
political practice, deeply embedded in history and place, and cannot be
simply overturned by colonial fiat or by inundation with water. It cannot be
killed. It endures the long game of colonial occupation. With the Pick-Sloan
dams and the failed project of termination, a new generation of young
people, thrown from their reservation homelands and shipped off to the city,
took up the mantle of Red Power in the spirit of their ancestors and
demanded freedom and justice in the face of this history of dispossession.

Water Protectors protest outside the White House for the Native Nations Rise march and rally. March
2017. Photo by author.

5

Red Power
They can’t stop the wind and they can’t stop the rain. They can’t stop the earthquake and the volcano
and the tornado. They can’t stop power.
—John Trudell, “We Are Power,” Black Hills
Survival Gathering, South Dakota, July 18, 19801

Visions for Indigenous freedom coalesced into the Red Power movement in
the 1960s. For the Oceti Sakowin, the American Indian Movement (AIM)
became the militant vanguard for the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and
Indigenous nationhood in the 1970s. Policies of termination, relocation, and
the damming and flooding of the Missouri River had torn thousands of
Indigenous peoples from rural reservations, scattering them in far-off urban
centers. Many of them saw a direct link between the Pick-Sloan Plan, which
took reservation lands in the 1950s and 1960s, and relocation policies. “I
grew up along the Missouri River,” Madonna Thunder Hawk told Indian
Country Today, “and I saw that land go when it was flooded.” The Oahe
Dam flooded her home and community on the Cheyenne River Reservation.
“I’ve never been able to take my children and grandchildren to where I
grew up. That was probably one of the major events that put me on the road
to activism.”2 She later joined AIM, following the 1969 Alcatraz takeover.
The eighty-nine-day occupation of the federal prison island in the San
Francisco Bay marked the beginning of a militant protest movement. “It
was like a bomb that dropped, and we were scattered like shrapnel,” Lakota
and Ho-Chunk AIM activist Lakota Harden recalls.3 The shrapnel that was
Native life, which became radical activism, was scattered to places like
Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Denver, and
other major cities.
In 1973, Thunder Hawk served as a leader and medic during AIM’s
armed takeover of Wounded Knee. But the hard work for her began once

the occupation ended. She was central to organizing the Wounded Knee
Legal Defense/Offense Committee, to combat the legal repression
following the takeover; the We Will Remember Survival School, to provide
an alternative education for Native youth; the International Indian Treaty
Council, which advocates for the defense of Indigenous treaty rights at the
United Nations; the Women of All Red Nations, organizing American
Indian women around reproductive health, including against illegal
sterilization and environmental contamination of Native lands; and the
Black Hills Alliance, a Native and non-Native alliance formed to halt
uranium mining in Black Hills. Lakota Harden, like her sister Marcella
Gilbert (Thunder Hawk’s daughter), came of age in the movement. As a
student of the We Will Remember Survival School, she also became a
leader. Each of these women had been impacted by genocidal Indian policy.
Finding themselves flung far from their reservation homelands, instead of
dissolving into the melting pot of settler society, they helped organize the
twentieth century’s most audacious Indigenous uprisings: Red Power.
Originally envisioned as a means to dismantle Native communities by
removing them from the land and integrating them into mainstream urban
society, relocation in fact had the opposite effect. Indians didn’t simply stop
being Indians once they left the reservation. Relocation, for all its malicious
intent, helped birth a new movement that arose from both poverty-stricken
urban ghettos and rural reservations. Natives on relocation found each other
in the cities and at universities, forming pan-Indigenous organizations such
as the National Indian Youth Council, United Native Americans, AIM, and
many more. Their concerns, however, were fundamentally no different than
those of their reservation-based relatives. They merged their respective rural
and urban experiences into one, and what emerged was a radical, explicitly
anti-colonial political consciousness that took the world by storm. It viewed
the federal system as a colonial structure rather than as a solution. And,
unlike youthful generational protests of its day, Red Power looked to older
generations, the traditional reservation leadership, for guidance—the elders
who had rejected federal administration and kept alive the “old ways.”
In less than a decade from its founding in 1968, AIM would go from
being a neighborhood patrol in the streets of Minneapolis, stopping police
violence against Natives on relocation, to a far grander stage: the United
Nations. To understand this trajectory, and how they wound up there, it is
necessary to take a deeper look at the historical context of Red Power.

Powerful pan-Indigenous organizations, including the National Congress
of American Indians (NCAI), preceded Red Power by nearly two decades.
While it had led the fight against and successfully defeated termination
legislation in the 1950s, which sought to end trust responsibilities to tribes,
NCAI was ambivalent about the future of Native sovereignty, seeing it as
heavily wedded to formal IRA governments and incremental reforms within
the federal system. NCAI hoped to keep in place what a younger generation
intended to end: colonial administration. Like its predecessors, many of
NCAI’s solutions pandered to the rampant anti-communism and flagwaving patriotism at the time. It was the height of the Cold War. To curb
Soviet influence in the Third World, where colonial regimes were being
violently overturned, the United States expanded its covert
counterinsurgency campaigns in Latin America, the Middle East, and
Southeast Asia. The justification was an intensifying ideological and
economic struggle between Soviet Communism and Third World
decolonization, on one side, and North Atlantic imperialism and capitalism,
on the other. Humanitarian aid became empire’s bargaining chip, a way to
win hearts and minds, both at home and abroad. NCAI leaders understood
this and appealed to domestic contests over the meaning of freedom and
democracy. Black Americans had also pointed to the disparities in civil
rights and racial injustice in the United States. In 1951 NCAI cofounder
D’Arcy McNickle called for “a domestic Point Four Program for our Indian
reservations.” McNickle drew parallels with President Harry Truman’s
Point Four Program for international aid, which he undertook in the world’s
poorest countries in an effort to forestall the spread of communism.4
Furthermore, McNickle understood that Natives shared “the world
experience of other native peoples subjected to colonial domination.”5
How could the United States defend its claims to moral superiority when
Native people were not free and remained in an impoverished state,
excluded from the wealth and bounty of the new global superpower? “The
assertion of a global indigenous identity stands among the most potentially
transformative aspects of the struggle for tribal sovereignty during the Cold
War era (1945–1991),” writes Daniel Cobb.6 The geopolitical realignment
of the world created a sense of uncertainty and urgency. New nation-states
emerged as old European empires were carved up, and more division was
on the horizon as colonized people clamored for independence. Native
people posed a parallel threat to the United States, and the fast-growing

decolonization movement inspired Indigenous activists. During the Cold
War, the Indigenous movement began to identify less with domestic policy
solutions, instead starting to imagine itself as part of a larger political
community of colonized peoples.
The more Native youth followed NCAI leadership, the more they
became disenchanted with its limited vision for change. As part of President
Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty,” NCAI’s efforts had garnered funding
from the new Office of Economic Opportunity for rural and community
development known as “Community Action Programs.” Once Johnson’s
priorities switched from the war on poverty to the war in Vietnam,
organizations like the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) adopted more
militant tactics, arguing for a more robust form of Indigenous autonomy
that wasn’t wedded to the Indian Bureau. NIYC was founded in Gallup,
New Mexico, in 1961 after the fallout of an NCAI conference in Chicago,
where young activists “grabbed the mic” to protest the conservatism of the
older generation and demanded for more radical change. The young
militants initially gained traction by supporting the “fish-ins,” a drawn-out
struggle for Pacific Northwest Native treaty rights where many were beaten,
and some killed, by white vigilantes and state officials.7 This generation of
activists—including Hank Adams, Clyde Warrior, Shirley Hill Witt, Janet
McCloud, and many others—pioneered a new era of Indigenous protest that
called itself “Red Power.” It deployed confrontational tactics that included
sit-ins, occupations, and direct action, while also working within existing
channels of power.
At its core, as Vine Deloria has suggested, Red Power was ideological,
and it went beyond the facile settler politics of liberal versus conservative.
In line with a flowering worldwide revolutionary spirit, Red Power was
about Indigenous liberation. More so than others of his generation, Deloria
read the pulse of Indian Country. His wit and relentless advocacy made him
the most prolific and iconic Oceti Sakowin intellectual of the twentieth
century. His 1969 classic Custer Died for Your Sins set aflame a generation
of young Indigenous activists. Deloria’s calls for a renewal of Native
politics and culture spoke truth to everyday Native experiences. What’s
more, Custer Died for Your Sins’s main arguments still ring true today:
Indigenous peoples are political by default. They continue to exist as
nations when they are supposed to have disappeared, and they have to fight,
not only for bare survival, but also for accurate representation. They

incarnate the inconvenient truth that the United States was founded on
genocide and the continuing theft of a continent. Deloria understood all this.
He also came from a prominent family of scholars and activists—his aunt
Ella Deloria was a prominent anthropologist who studied under Franz Boas;
his father, Vine Deloria Sr., was a well-known reservation-based Episcopal
priest; and his son Philip Deloria is a preeminent Native historian.8 This
pedigree, combined with the tumultuous years—in which, according to him,
“the Indian revolution was well under-way”—situated Deloria as the
intellectual lightning rod for the burgeoning movement.9
Deloria’s potent Red Power ideology—spelled out in his numerous
writings—was fundamentally at odds with US and Western values and their
corresponding economic and political systems. This new ideology sought to
reclaim tribalism, not as a thing of the past, but as a modern political
identity that existed both within and beyond the borders of the United
States. From the reservation era onward, a collective Indigenous national
identity had been targeted by assimilation and allotment policies and was
seen as preventing individuals from achieving “civilization.” The
destruction of tribalism meant the eradication of nationhood, which worked
in tandem with land theft. In a 1964 Senate hearing on termination
legislation, Deloria, then the executive director of NCAI, charted a new
path forward. “We suggest that tribes are not vestiges of a past, but
laboratories of the future,” he stated. For him, the difference between “civil
rights” and Indigenous rights was that settlers “came over as individuals”
and earned citizenship by converting Indigenous lands into private property.
Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, had been brought into the US
constitutional framework as separate nations through treaties—not by way
of individual or civil rights. “We were here as independent nations,” he
proclaimed, “and treaties were made with us, and we each have traditions.”
Pan-Indigenous organizations such as NCAI and NIYC unified Indigenous
nations, not in sameness, but in difference, with “independent relations to
each other” as “a kind of miniature United Nations.”10 He envisioned
Indigenous international relations as existing not only among themselves or
within the United States, but also with nations from around the world.
Deloria was especially taken by the version of Black Power enunciated
by Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). Kwame Ture, the former leader of
SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), had adopted a
pan-African Black nationalism, which saw little use for civil rights or

further incorporation into a white supremacist state. For Deloria, Black
Power and Red Power weren’t just repudiations of “the exploitation of land,
people, and life itself” by capitalism, colonialism, and racism; they were
also affirmations of peoplehood. “Peoplehood is impossible without cultural
independence,” Deloria argued, “which in turn is impossible without a land
base.”11 The notion of peoplehood was a departure from civil rights
discourse that called for equality under the law. Rather, Deloria’s calls for
peoplehood—an understanding of unique tribal or national status—were a
step toward national self-determination: Black and Indigenous peoples
taking charge of their own lives and destinies. To do so first required the
restoration of Indigenous governance and territories, a project long in the
making, as well as the abolition of the colonial system.
Deloria saw the 1960s and 1970s as “the third ideological American
revolution.” According to his thinking, major racial groups—Blacks,
Mexicans, and Native nations—had been brought under the US
constitutional framework not as individuals, but as entire groups of people
and nations, making them more apt to wage struggle as whole peoples or
nations (versus as alienated individuals). For example, the 1848 Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the US–Mexican war and annexed Mexican
territory and citizens; the end of the Civil War in 1865 made freed Black
slaves citizens; and the 1871 abolition of Indigenous treaty making made
Native nations an internal “problem” to be dealt with.12 In each instance,
each group had no say about citizenship or how they would be incorporated.
It was thrust upon them, often without consent. The revolutionary potential
of these colonized peoples had to do with the inability of the settler state to
seamlessly “absorb” them into mainstream political and social life as
individuals. At the same time, understanding Native grievances as simply
linked to their economic status as poor people failed to account for how
race and colonialism intersected with class; doing so also reproduced the
“melting pot” theory that the United States is a “nation of immigrants.”
Native nations and Indigenous Mexicans had not migrated from elsewhere.
Black slaves had come in chains. These people were not “immigrants.” And
even if economic inequality could be leveled, it would still be atop stolen
Indigenous land. After all, Third World nations, at the time, had waged the
most successful and widespread struggles, linking race, class, and
colonialism. Why couldn’t the same happen in the United States, where

entire peoples had been incorporated into a colonial system against their
will?
Indigenous concerns were, nevertheless, socioeconomic. The devastating
poverty experienced both on and off the reservation was closely linked to
centuries of land theft and forced removals. But the false promise of
“equality” had also been guaranteed under termination. For Natives, “civil
rights” frequently meant assimilation into settler society, and the language
of civil rights had been the justification for termination. “Equality of the
law” was the language of termination Utah Senator Arthur V. Watkins, a
right-wing Mormon, used in 1954 when he invoked the Emancipation
Proclamation: “I see the following words emblazoned in letters of fire
above the heads of the Indians—THESE PEOPLE SHALL BE FREE!”13
“Restrictions” on Native property, so the argument went, held Native people
back from “freely” selling their lands and lives to white people. Native
concerns dealt specifically with the colonial relation that many saw
enshrined in the 1871 abolition of treaty making. Prior to this, the United
States had confirmed through its ratification of more than 370 Indigenous
treaties that Indigenous peoples were in fact distinct, self-governing nations
in control of their own territories. In total, the United States negotiated
more than 500 treaties and agreements with Indigenous nations. As a result
of treaty making, numerous other agreements, and the reservation system,
more than 567 federally recognized tribes still exist as largely autonomous
political entities. “The real issue for Indians—tribal existence within the
homeland reservation—appeared to have been completely be ignored,”
Deloria observed, criticizing Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 Poor People’s
Campaign, which had not garnered significant Native support.14 Poverty
was only a symptom of the root problem: colonialism. And the Native
struggle, for Deloria, “was one of historical significance, not of temporary
domestic discontent.”15 If Native people truly were nations, then they
should act like nations, make their own relations, and determine their own
futures.
A fellow traveler, the fiery Ponca prophet and NIYC president Clyde
Warrior, explained in a 1967 speech before a presidential committee on
poverty that the very things holding back Native freedom were the systems
in place to secure it:
We are not free. We do not make choices. Our choices are made for us; we are the poor. For those of
us who live on reservations these choices and decisions are made by federal administrators,

bureaucrats, and their “yes men,” euphemistically called tribal governments. Those of us who live in
non-reservation areas have our lives controlled by white power elites. They are called social workers,
“cops,” school teachers, churches, etc., and now OEO [Office of Economic Opportunity]
employees.16

The bureaucratic practices of the BIA, tribal governments, and state
institutions were part of the same colonial structure, he argued, and
therefore part of the same problem. Throwing money at the “Indian
problem” wouldn’t make it go away, especially when Congress determined
the amount of money (which was never enough), and unelected bureaucrats
determined how and where it was spent. According to Warrior, “the solution
to Indian poverty is not ‘government programs.’” Rather, the solution could
only be self-determination: “Let poor people decide for once, what is best
for themselves.”17 Centuries of paternalism dictated everyday Native life. It
was engrained in the very institutions and ways of thinking that were meant
to lift them out of poverty; it was an ideological force with real power that
had to be reckoned with.
By contrast, Red Power was not just an abstract theory or an intellectual
exercise. It was a practice of everyday Native people taking charge of their
lives and their communities. It was a movement, a revolution. Education,
paternalism, police violence and incarceration, and the false promise of
citizenship all had to be challenged, if not entirely undone. Red Power, built
upon centuries-old traditions of Indigenous resistance, sprang into action in
rural reservations and urban centers alike.
In the coming years, Red Power galvanized around attention-grabbing
occupations and protests, including takeovers of Alcatraz, the BIA
headquarters in Washington, DC, Mount Rushmore, and Wounded Knee.
While these actions often overshadow their origins, specifically in the
1960s and with NIYC, they also point toward a significant shift. The 1969
occupation of Alcatraz island, an abandoned federal prison, by Natives in
the San Francisco Bay was the spark, and growing Native discontent was
the kindling. Previously, in 1964, a group of Lakotas—Russell and Hank
Means, Belva Cottier, Richard McKenzie, and others—attempted
unsuccessfully to reclaim the island as federal surplus property when the
prison shut down, under an alleged provision of the 1868 Fort Laramie
Treaty. In fact, the island is Indigenous land belonging to the Ohlone
people. Five years later, another group—organized by LaNada Means (War
Jack), a Shoshone-Bannock student who helped organize the Third World

Liberation Front strikes (calling for the creation of ethnic studies programs,
among other things, at the University of California Berkeley), and Mohawk
activist Richard Oakes (murdered in 1972 by a white man)—led a nineteenmonth occupation of the island.18 Calling themselves “Indians of All
Tribes,” the Alcatraz occupiers symbolized and practiced a pan-Indigenous
unity that had been “long dreamed by our people.” They saw themselves as
a “new” but “old” movement, beholden not to government funding, but to
the people. Its principles arose from desires and experiences of everyday
Natives, both on relocation and in reservation communities. “New concepts
based upon old ideas demand that new leaders emerge,” their manifesto
read. “Our children will know Freedom and Justice.”19 To be sure, the
reclamation of the island and the plans to turn it into an “all-Indian
university” constituted a major historical event and turning point. Although
they never achieved their goals and were evicted by police under orders
from the Nixon administration, the occupiers had galvanized the movement
to go beyond merely seeking reform within the halls of power, turning
power into the hands of poor, working-class Native people.
The formation of United Native Americans in the San Francisco Bay and
the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis made the occupation
possible. In 1968 AIM was founded by a group of Ojibwes—Dennis Banks,
Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt, Patricia Bellanger, George Mitchell, and
others—as a community patrol, partly inspired by the Black Panther Party
for Self-Defense, founded two years earlier in Oakland. Like the Black
Panthers, the original focus was on community empowerment and service
programs, such as creating survival schools to educate urban Native youth
about native history and culture. But AIM also confronted the institutions of
the state, such as the police and education systems. At the time, police often
swept Indian bars, making mass arrests and profiling poor, urban Natives,
many of whom were on relocation. Through community organizing and
AIM patrols, often involving violent confrontations with police that ended
in the arrests of AIM members, they succeeded in bringing the practice to a
near halt.
Even in its early days, AIM was more than a protest movement. It
founded survival schools in Minneapolis, Rapid City, and Pine Ridge—an
alternative for youth who had faced discrimination in public schools. By the
1970s there were about sixteen AIM survival schools in urban centers and
reservation communities. The founders of these schools were all women,

among them Miniconjou activist Madonna Thunder Hawk and Ojibwe
activist Patricia Bellanger. According to the We Will Remember Survival
School, founded in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1974 and then moved to
the Pine Ridge Reservation, the school didn’t accept government funds. “If
we are to learn the truth about the history of the Lakota since the start of
colonization and its results called genocide,” the teachers and students
wrote in a collective document, “we must maintain our independence. To
learn the true meaning of Native American Sovereignty, we must have full
control of what our young people are taught.”20 AIM also provided legal
advocacy for parents and children against state welfare programs that
incarcerated Native youth, or otherwise removed them from their homes
and placed them in the custody of white families—a practice that continues,
to a large degree, to this day.21
As in every revolutionary movement, women’s roles in AIM are nearly
forgotten, with men taking center stage as leaders. The feminist slogan
“women hold up more than half the sky” was equally true for AIM and has
been for Indigenous movements, in general. When the FBI began targeting
AIM men, AIM women filled the vacuum and kept the movement going.
As in the past, Indigenous women were not seen as leaders by the media or
by state institutions; this relative invisibility, however, also provided
freedom and security in ways not granted to male leadership. “The women
of AIM then realized that we could just about do anything under the eyes of
the feds and press because we were invisible,” Madonna Thunder Hawk
recalled.22 “The stability of our people has always been with the women,
regardless of what disease has come along, whether it has been religion, or
federal Indian policy.”23
Nevertheless, Indigenous women participated and filled leadership roles
in all major AIM actions, takeovers, and campaigns. In 1977, after
attending an international conference on ending apartheid and colonialism,
and seeing other women’s committees with other revolutionary movements,
the AIM women decided to create their own. The next year in Rapid City,
with the motto “Indian women have always been in the front lines in the
defense of our nations,” Thunder Hawk, Young, Bellanger, Lorelei DeCora
Means, Agnes Williams, Lakota Harden, and Janet McCloud formed
Women of All Red Nations (WARN).24 “We are American Indian women,
in that order,” their manifesto read, which was read by Oglala activist

Lorelei DeCora Means. “We are oppressed, first and foremost, as American
Indians, as peoples colonized by the United States of America, not as
women.” Moreover, what defined American Indian women’s struggles was
decolonization—the end of the continual destruction of Native life and land
—which Means declared as “the only agenda that counts.”25 Within the
movement, WARN argued that colonialism had different consequences for
American Indian women than it did for men. Both on and off the
reservation, women faced forced sterilization, malnutrition among young
children, and high levels of domestic violence and abuse.
But ultimately, AIM came to be known more for its high-publicity
protests. After Alcatraz, AIM grew rapidly: by 1973, there were seventynine chapters, eight of them in Canada.26 When the movement swept
through Oceti Sakowin country, it adopted a specifically nationalist
character, focusing on the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and the Oceti Sakowin.
In 1970, AIM, United Native Americans, and Lakota activists from South
Dakota occupied Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills to bring attention to
the 1868 Treaty and the fact that the land upon which the monument had
been built was stolen. Activists pointed out that the monument itself was a
form of vandalism—not “a shrine of democracy” but “a shrine of
hypocrisy.” Each president—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt
—had participated in Indigenous genocide and land theft. The
Haudenosaunee Confederacy called Washington “Town Destroyer” for his
role in the extirpation of their villages. Jefferson had advanced Indigenous
removal policies and begun the expansion of the US empire west of the
Mississippi. Lincoln had ordered the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota patriots
after the 1862 US–Dakota War and oversaw the 1864 Long Walk for
Navajos in the Southwest. Roosevelt had “nationalized” millions of acres of
Indigenous lands for national parks. While symbolic, there was a growing
militancy to the tactics of takeover and occupation. Across the United
States, BIA headquarters became the targets for protest. Among the
protestors’ many concerns was the failure to uphold treaties. Critics in the
federal government viewed treaty claims as mere rhetoric.
As the war in Vietnam intensified, by 1972 a full-throated treaty
movement had crystallized. Eight Native organizations—including AIM,
NIYC, and the Canadian National Indian Brotherhood, among others—led a
coast-to-coast caravan of thousands of Natives to Washington, DC,
gathering participants in each city and reservation along the way, and

occupied the BIA headquarters from November 3 to 9. The occupation and
the negative media it attracted overshadowed the real issues of the caravan.
The Trail of Broken Treaties, as it was known, intended to disrupt the
presidential election by drawing attention to unfulfilled treaty rights.
Organizers drafted a document, primarily authored by Hank Adams, called
the “Twenty Points.” The first point demanded, “Restoration of
Constitutional Treaty-making Authority: This would force federal
recognition of each Indian nation’s sovereignty.”27 The most salient points
proposed the restoration and enforcement of treaty making. Although the
federal officials promised to look into the demands, their response led to no
action. A genius document, the Twenty Points was presented in 1977 at the
United Nations, forming the basis of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples.28
After the Trail of Broken Treaties, AIM regrouped and continued
working on urban Native rights, or what Paul Chaat Smith and Robert
Warrior call its “border town campaign.”29 In February 1972, in brutally
harsh winter conditions, four white men—Melvin and Leslie Hare, Bernard
Ludder, and Robert Bayless—kidnapped fifty-one-year-old Oglala man
Raymond Yellow Thunder, stripped him naked, beat him, forced him to
dance as a “drunk Indian” for the entertainment of whites in a dance hall,
and left him to die in Gordon, Nebraska. The town is on the southern border
of the Pine Ridge Reservation. In common vernacular, the white-dominated
settlements—cities and towns—that ring Indian reservations are called
“border towns.” In border towns, persistent patterns of anti-Indian
exploitation, discrimination, violence, and criminalization define everyday
Native life. Gordon was such a place. AIM was called to investigate the
death by Yellow Thunder’s family, who were worried that the authorities
would chalk it up as “just another dead Indian,” an all-too-frequent
sentiment for dead Natives found off the reservation. Because of AIM’s
advocacy, Leslie and Melvin Hare were charged with manslaughter and
sentenced to prison. Yellow Thunder was immortalized in the “Raymond
Yellow Thunder Song” that became the AIM anthem.30 The successful
campaign earned AIM the respect of the Oglala elders and traditionalists in
Pine Ridge, who called upon AIM again in 1973 to take a stand at Wounded
Knee.
Despite the horrific nature of the crime, it is important to turn to career
anti-AIM critic and journalist Stew Magnuson who has cast doubt on

Yellow Thunder’s murder. He criminalizes Red Power activists much in the
same way Yellow Thunder’s killers targeted him for violence: they were all
Indians off the reservation and deserved what they got. For example,
Magnuson’s award-winning 2008 book, The Death of Raymond Yellow
Thunder, purposefully questions calling a “murder” what even an all-white
jury had unequivocally decided was one. Like generations of journalists
before him, Magnuson peddles a myth of white settlers and friendly Indians
as victims of “criminal, “militant,” and “hostile” “Sioux warriors.” In this
view, there are “good Indians” and “bad Indians.” AIM members were the
“bad Indians.” Magnuson’s narrative has less to do with the historical and
brutal reality of colonialism than it does with an obsession with the bravado
of AIM men. In the book’s opening pages, he describes a 1999 protest
against alcohol sales in White Clay, a notorious border town less than a
mile south of the reservation, with a population of about a dozen. White
Clay liquor stores sold millions of cans of beer a year, entirely to residents
of Pine Ridge, where alcohol is banned. A frequent site of protest until
relatively recently after liquor stores closed, countless Native lives have
been consumed and destroyed by such profiteering of death and suffering
on the part of White Clay and border towns like it. “Everyone feared the
young men,” Magnuson writes of the protestors as they descended on White
Clay—a description evocative of the common trope of settlers being
surrounded by lawless Natives.31 By casting the settlers as victims—in this
case, a handful of white liquor store owners—he makes colonialism look
like self-defense. The description also invokes the fearsome image of AIM
warriors descending on racist border towns, like they did in Gordon and
elsewhere in the 1970s.
Despite its racial undertones, Magnuson’s “angry Indians” stereotype is
useful for understanding what AIM was trying to accomplish and how they
became criminalized for it. AIM consisted primarily of Natives “off the
reservation.” “Off the reservation” is an American English idiom that took
on murderous meaning with the creation of Indian reservations. The Oxford
English Dictionary defines the phrase as meaning “to deviate from what is
expected or customary.”32 The expression is also current in military and
political spheres to describe someone who defies orders, who is
unpredictable and therefore ungovernable. Those who “go off the
reservation” are rogues or mavericks in military jargon—the ones who
“cross the wire” of military bases (called “reservations”) or enter hostile

territory (called “Indian Country”).33 For Natives, to “go off the
reservation” refers to those who historically refused reservation life or
refused to respect its borders, where they could be contained and managed.
Those willfully crossing borders were considered renegades, outlaws, or
hostiles and were usually hunted down and summarily shot, hanged, or
imprisoned. It is no coincidence the phrase arose from the language of the
nineteenth-century Indian Wars and the murderous consequences inflicted
upon those who refused reservation life. In this way, to go “off the
reservation” is to question territory and sovereignty, and a political practice.
To evoke Kahnawà:ke Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson, Native trespass
into the domain of what is considered “settled” territory calls into question
the legitimacy of settlement—asserting that indeed it is anything but
settled.34 In other words, Natives off the reservation are the unfinished
business of settler colonialism—the ones who refused to disappear, refused
to sell their lands, and refused to quit being Indians.
In Rapid City, South Dakota, such sentiments thrived and became a
target for AIM’s border town campaign. The city occupies the moral and
political universe of the Oceti Sakowin, He Sapa, the Black Hills, and, like
the towns of Gordon and White Clay, is within the territory of the 1868 Fort
Laramie Treaty. As they had for generations, most Natives in Rapid City
lived in squalor in shantytowns near Rapid Creek, the downtown area next
to the railroad district, or in Sioux Addition, the “Indian ghetto” (or “Red
ghetto”) outside city limits and built upon remaining trust lands of the
Rapid City Indian School, an off-reservation boarding school that closed its
doors in the 1930s.35 The “Indian problem” had returned in the form of
“urban Indians” who left the reservation.
To curb and control off-reservation migration into white towns, in 1939
South Dakota passed a series of “warning out” laws that required
“transient” populations to fill out and sign “certificates of non-residence”
that excluded them from poor relief, public welfare, voting, and establishing
permanent residency. In Rapid City, Pennington County, and South Dakota
more broadly, warning-out laws specifically targeted off-reservation
Natives, barring them from legally residing within certain communities or
receiving basic housing, social, welfare, educational, and medical services.
Ramon Roubideaux, a Sicangu attorney from the Rosebud Reservation,
described the practice at a 1962 civil rights hearing: “In Rapid City they
follow that program religiously. They serve transient Indians … a

nonresident notice. This is what they call it. In other words, by service of
this notice on the individual, you prevent him [sic] from acquiring, as the
statute says, a legal settlement.”36 Often county social service and health
officials issued nonresident certificates when Natives applied for services,
or they were simply denied services altogether. The labeling of Natives off
reservation as “transient” did important work. It normalized the practice of
settling—home ownership, citizenship, paying taxes, employment, and so
forth—as a prerequisite for personhood, as opposed to the lifestyle of a
“nomadic” or “transient” Indian. Questions of personhood and citizenship
came to a head in 1972. It began with a flood.
On June 9, fifteen inches of torrential rain clogged the Canyon Lake
Dam, which burst early the next morning, sending a wall of water down
Rapid Creek. In a matter of hours, the flood swept away more than 1,300
homes, 5,000 automobiles, and 238 lives. Hardest hit were the poor—both
Natives and whites—who lived near the creek in mobile homes and
dilapidated structures. Although Natives made up 5 percent of Rapid City’s
population, they accounted for 14 percent of those who perished in the
flood, and a significant number of those displaced. The city received $160
million for disaster relief and urban renewal programs.37 The relief money,
however, was allocated along racial and class lines. While all flood victims
were equally entitled to relief, Mayor Don Bartlett, a liberal Democrat,
observed, “That doesn’t mean that we just divvied up the money equally all
around. The Indian who lost a shack and few sticks of furniture didn’t get as
much as somebody who lost a $40,000 house with 25 years of accumulated
possessions.”38 More relief was dispensed to white, middle-class
homeowners and business owners. Discrimination didn’t end there. Many
Natives fled to live with relatives elsewhere, including on the reservation,
making them ineligible for relief. For those who stayed, temporary shelter
was offered but was segregated.39
While white residents re-sheltered within city gymnasiums and churches,
hundreds of Natives were concentrated at “Camp Rapid” at the National
Guard base, on land originally belonging to the Rapid City Indian School.
The camp housed Natives in militarized conditions that were intensely
policed and they were kept under constant surveillance, in what amounted
to little more than an open-air concentration camp. “The segregating of
HUD [Housing and Urban Development] trailers, we believe, was partly
done out of prejudice against the stereotype (drunken, troublemaking)

Indian,” described Lakota housing activist Edgar Lonehill. “It was done, we
think, so that it would be easier for the white police and HUD to ‘keep an
eye on us.’ Further proof of this is offered by the fact that the Indian trailer
courts are floodlighted at night.”40
Relief was slow, uneven, and often used to collectively punish the Native
community. Camp Rapid was supposed to be temporary, but months passed
before all the Native families were given homes, although many white
families had already been rehoused. HUD homes were made available at
Sioux Addition for Native families—which became the federal housing
project Lakota Homes—outside city limits. Yet, community harassment and
policing intensified because Natives were now cordoned off into a
designated neighborhood—a permanent fix to the city’s perpetual “Indian
problem.” It wasn’t leaving the reservation but rather leaving the “Red
ghetto” that made the Indian suspect.41
The flood accomplished what could not be done previously: it gave the
city a clean slate, as the built environment that had kept everyone in their
place was destroyed. City officials viewed the flood as a social equalizer
that leveled not only homes but also race and class divisions. Yet, the flood
also cleared the way to reinforce structural racism in new ways. It removed
(and killed) the undesirable, poor, and Native people concentrated in the
city center, literally forcing them out of town to make way for the business
community’s “urban renewal” program to rebuild the destroyed downtown
area. The practice aligned with federal housing policies and community
development programs in targeting low-income families and
disenfranchised communities. Housing activists call this “gentrification”—
the process, often backed by wealthy business interests, of removing poor,
racialized urban communities to make way for middle-class and wealthier
neighborhoods and businesses that raise real estate values. High rent and
housing prices make it nearly impossible for poor communities to return to
or inhabit these “renewed” neighborhoods. Typically, activists and scholars
see such practices as taking place in larger cities, most famously in New
York City’s Lower East Side during the 1970s. But gentrification doesn’t
only happen in cities, and it doesn’t only mimic colonial processes—it is
colonialism. Settler colonialism, whether in border towns, rural areas, or
urban geographies, is fundamental to the history of US expansion that has
required the removal, dispossession, and elimination of Indigenous peoples.
Rapid City is thrice-stolen land—first, in the illegal seizure of the Black

Hills; second, in the theft of remaining Indian trust lands from the Rapid
City Indian School; and third, in the taking of Native and poor communities
by the flood and the subsequent imposition of exploitative housing policies.
But the colonial parallels don’t end there.
A 1974 article in HUD’s serial publication, the Challenge, promoted
“urban homesteading” inspired by the 1862 Homestead Act that gave rural
acreage to farmers for free under the condition they migrate to it and
improve it. “Just as nineteenth century homesteaders required government
aid to hack out an existence as they helped to develop the West,” the article
reasoned, “people who are willing to undertake a difficult and rugged
experience in the urban wilderness require aid designed to make the
communities around them viable.” In other words, urban homesteading
sought to revitalize and repurpose land and housing “not worth maintaining
because disease, crime, and lack of public services have made it too
depressing and dangerous for anyone to live in.”42 Former slums and
abandoned neighborhoods would be made anew. It was a civilizing effort.
Rapid City utilized this program to deal with its own “urban wilderness,”
the savage Indians who refused to go away and who brought down property
values because they embodied the disease and crime of what Lonehill
identified as the criminal, “drunken, troublemaking Indian.” Nevertheless,
the city rebuilt itself and became an HUD success story. Meanwhile, Native
resentment simmered against enforced gentrification and further
segregation. In fact, the fundamental “challenge”—that the city sat atop
stolen land—was never addressed, and was only exacerbated by the influx
of federal programs meant to “improve” Native lives by granting
community self-determination and autonomy through subsidized housing.
While federal housing policies re-entrenched Native-settler boundaries
within border towns such as Rapid City, vigilantes, police, and everyday
settlers defended (often with violence) against the hyperbolic threat of
Native invasion. The figure of the “drunk Indian” became a specific target.
The murderous practice of “Indian busting”—the targeting of intoxicated
Native men for beating, torture, and homicide—was a weekend pastime and
sport for white settlers in border towns. In January 1973, after Wesley Bad
Heart Bull was stabbed to death by a white man in Buffalo Gap near Custer,
South Dakota, 200 AIM members descended on Custer to demand murder
charges be brought against the accused. After being denied access to the
courthouse where Bad Heart Bull’s murderer was being arraigned for

manslaughter, a violent confrontation with police ensued. Several police
cars were set ablaze. Dozens were arrested.
The Custer fight spilled over into Rapid City’s bar district, where
Natives faced violent discrimination from both white vigilantes and the
police. The figure of the “drunk Indian” is seared into the popular settler
imaginary. Although being “drunk” or “Indian,” or both, as not definitively
illegal, constructing Natives off the reservation as drunk, militant, and
violent is a classic example of the political art of policing. Native presence
in border towns, therefore, is always conflated with criminality and
lawlessness. “I don’t think any of us go out on purpose to arrest Innuns [sic]
for being drunk, but chances are an Innun’s on the street by himself, he’ll be
arrested, because chances are he’s got no place to go. A drunken white
man’ll have a home,” explained a Rapid City police officer in 1973. “Of
course that makes our record for arresting Innuns look pretty high.”43
To counter this, AIM called for actions in Rapid City bars and saloons—
where Natives had been victimized by vigilantes and the police—to “keep
the people stirred up.”44 Mayor Bartlett described AIM’s campaign as
creating “a sense of uncertainty and fear.”45 On February 6, 1973, just
weeks before the armed takeover of Wounded Knee, AIM stormed a
hearing of the Racial Conciliation Committee, a commission created partly
to resolve ongoing discrimination in housing and employment (exacerbated
by the flood) and to improve “race relations.” About 200 Natives packed
the meeting. “They weren’t committed civil rights people,” Bartlett
described the crowd. The officials sank in their seats as AIM leadership
gave fiery speeches calling for revolt if their demands for equal housing,
more Native police officers, and the hiring of a Native city attorney were
not met. AIM leader Dennis Banks stated that they were prepared “to
declare war on every town in the Black Hills” if demands were not met. The
committee agreed to host a series of meetings to discuss the demands—
some of which were carried out, although most were not.46
In response, Bartlett reminded the Native community that if they
participated in “uncivil” disobedience and didn’t follow the liberal doctrine
of level-headed, rational dialogue, he would respond with violence. “If
[AIM] wanted Rapid City to be as famous as Selma, Alabama I could take
care of that in about 15 minutes,” he said. AIM didn’t relent. Neither did
Rapid City. For several nights AIM members took to the streets after their
demand to close the bars for thirty days, while they negotiated with city

officials, was not met. Street fights broke out. Riot cops were deployed and
hundreds were beaten, arrested, and driven out of town. Bartlett even
directly participated in strong-arming AIM members from local motels and
out of downtown.47 White elites were on high alert as the tenuousness of
their claims to the land were made clear.
The same month that AIM took Rapid City by storm, they also occupied
Wounded Knee. In February 1973, the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights
Commission (OSCRC), a grassroots organization, along with a group of
traditional leaders, called upon AIM to take a stand. Richard “Dick”
Wilson, the elected tribal councilman of Pine Ridge, had become
increasingly authoritarian, terrorizing political opponents with his
paramilitary “GOON” squad (which stood for “Guardians of the Oglala
Nation”). In particular, the grassroots people opposed the Indian
Reorganization Act government and called for the restoration of the treaty
councils and customary leadership. At this time, ceremonies such as the sun
dance were still criminalized and were practiced underground. People
wanted a return of the “old ways,” the return to treaty relations with the
United States, and the end to the rampant violence on the reservation. They
saw the successful publicity received by AIM as potentially useful for
inspiring a political and cultural revitalization of the Oceti Sakowin. More
importantly, they wanted the means for their own self-defense against the
GOONs and the rest of Dick Wilson’s regime, which was backed by federal
marshals.
On February 27, in a late-night meeting in Calico, a small village in Pine
Ridge, the OSCRC and a council of customary chiefs—Red Cloud, Iron
Cloud, Fools Crow, Bad Cob, and Kills Enemy—met with AIM and
deliberated on what was to be done. But it was the elder women who
proved decisive. While the men discussed in the public forum, Oglala elders
Gladys Bissonette and Ellen Moves Camp spoke directly to the AIM
warriors, pleading with them to take a stand. The two recalled how those
who protested Wilson were mostly elders and women who strongly
believed in traditional governance. Moves Camp asked, “Where are our
men? Where are our defenders?”48 Their impassioned plea worked, and
Fools Crow asked Russell Means, an Oglala leader of AIM, to take his
warriors to the hamlet of Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 massacre at
the hands of the vengeful Seventh Cavalry. AIM would make a stand for the

life and liberation of all Indigenous peoples. The message was heard around
the world.
While the media trailed AIM and the Red Power movement from one
action to another, the FBI also followed. Informants infiltrated the
organization, and a smear campaign began. In 1956 the FBI began its
Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to infiltrate, disrupt, and
destroy the Communist Party. By the 1960s and 1970s, COINTELPRO also
targeted civil rights leaders, student antiwar movements, the Black Panther
Party, and the Black freedom movement in general. According to an
internal 1967 memo titled “Counter Intelligence Program Black NationalistHate Groups,” the program’s stated goal was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect,
discredit, or otherwise neutralize” targeted groups and “their leadership,
spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to count the propensity for
violence and civil disorder.”49 After reports were leaked to the press about
COINTELPRO, it was officially terminated in 1971. It was later revealed,
however, that the FBI had infiltrated AIM and begun its own
COINTELPRO operation to discredit and neutralize the organization and its
leadership.
The seventy-one-day takeover of Wounded Knee revealed to AIM and
the world the lengths to which the United States was willing to go to crush
the Indigenous movement. Armed mainly with shotguns and hunting rifles,
AIM faced off with the paramilitary GOON squad and federal marshals
armed with fully automatic weapons and armored personnel carriers. Fire
fights broke out daily. On AIM’s side, Frank Clearwater and Lawrence
“Buddy” Lamont were killed by law enforcement. Despite the heavyhanded police tactics, AIM, OSCRC, and the Oglala traditional leadership
declared the Independent Oglala Nation under the authority of the 1868 Fort
Laramie Treaty, and with it the need to end the colonial relationship
between the United States and the Oceti Sakowin and Indigenous peoples.
Coincidentally, the five-year anniversary of the My Lai Massacre
occurred during the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover. It was hard to miss the
similarities between Wounded Knee in 1890 and the US Army’s wanton
slaughter of hundreds of Vietnamese villagers. Military historian John
Grenier defines what he calls “the first way of war” as frontier violence:
“From both military necessity and hands-on experience, successive
generations of Americans, both soldiers and civilians, made the killing of
Indian men, women, and children a defining element of their first military

tradition and thereby part of a shared identity.”50 What D’Arcy McNickle in
1949 termed “the Indian war that never ends”—the perpetual conflict
between Natives and imperial dispossessors—clearly had global
implications.51 It’s been said that the war was “brought home” to America
in the 1960s and 1970s, but it had always been “home” in occupied
Indigenous lands. The US empire’s counterrevolutionary wars to crush the
decolonization campaign, the Viet Cong in Vietnam, and Black Power and
Red Power activists in the United States employed tactics first used in its
“irregular wars” against Indigenous people—the original enemies of
empire. Vigilante murders and rampant police violence against Indigenous
peoples in border towns were simply the modern face of the military
tradition of frontier homicide. AIM had painstakingly linked the everyday
policing, surveillance, and criminalization of Indigenous peoples in border
towns to the global anti-colonial struggle and treaty rights. The takeover of
Wounded Knee was the continuation of this struggle.
For seventy-one days, Wounded Knee was an independent Indigenous
territory, attracting worldwide attention and the support of revolutionary
movements. For the first time, American Indians had a captive and
sympathetic international audience, the awareness of which attracted a
harsh military and police response. In the aftermath of Wounded Knee in
1973, the FBI and Dick Wilson waged a dirty war against their opponents in
Pine Ridge in what became known as the “reign of terror.” Dozens were
murdered. Hundreds were imprisoned. On June 26, 1975, ninety-nine years
after Custer Jumping Bull ranch. The two FBI agents entered the property
over a reported theft of a pair of cowboy boots. AIM had set up camp on the
property to protect the Jumping Bulls, an elderly couple, from GOON and
FBI harassment. They had also constructed a culture camp there for youth.
A firefight broke out, in which agents Ronald A. Williams and Jack R.
Coler were killed. In the ensuing battle with FBI and BIA officers, Joeseph
Stuntz Killsright, a young Native man, was killed by sniper fire. A massive
manhunt ensued. AIM leader Leonard Peltier was later charged and
condemned to two life sentences for the murder of the FBI agents. Federal
prosecutors and agents manufactured evidence, hid proof of innocence,
presented false testimony, ignored court orders, and lied to the jury about
Peltier’s involvement in the murders. Since his incarceration, former FBI
agents and federal prosecutors (including the head of the prosecution team
that convicted him), along with numerous civil rights and human rights

organizations, have found faults on the FBI’s handling of Peltier’s case and
called for his clemency. Twice Peltier’s case has come close to presidential
pardon or clemency. In both instances, the FBI led a smear campaign
against AIM and Peltier, showing that the Indian War continues unabated.
Most recently, President Obama denied Peltier’s clemency application
during the efforts to halt Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, after
issuing more executive clemencies than the past thirteen administrations.
He could not let go of neither his commitments to the oil and gas industry,
nor to the continued imprisonment of an innocent Indigenous freedom
fighter.
As a result of the loss of life at Wounded Knee in 1973, AIM has been
blamed for the murderous crackdown and the increased deprivations of
Indigenous communities that followed. The dirty war that came after in
Pine Ridge left forty-five unsolved homicides of AIM leaders and
organizers. Among the more well known was the execution of Anna Mae
Aquash, a Mi’kmaq activist, whose murder resulted in the conviction, years
later, of two Native men associated with AIM. While the rumors swirl about
Aquash, the other forty-five killed, mostly Lakotas who were less well
known, left behind families, relatives, and children who are to this day
without answers.52 While Red Power attracted a heavy response from the
state, historian Jordan Camp notes that “those focusing on the
criminalization of street protests rarely connect it to the everyday and
routine policing, surveillance, and criminalization of the racialized poor.”53
In other words, those struggles—whether on the part of AIM or the Black
Panthers—seek to undo the state violence inflicted on them each day.
AIM’s border town campaign, which confronted rampant police and
vigilante violence head-on, is a case in point.
Pervasive anti-AIM sentiment persists, especially in places like South
Dakota, where state politicians, including William Janklow, have made
careers out of arresting and demonizing Indigenous activists. In 1974, after
being elected attorney general on a wave of anti-Indianism, Janklow
remarked: “The only way to deal with the Indian problem in South Dakota
is to put a gun to the AIM leaders’ heads and pull the trigger.”54 But instead
of killing AIM members, in 2003 the two-time state governor and South
Dakota senator killed a white man, Randy Scott, with his Cadillac. Janklow
subsequently resigned from politics, serving one hundred days in jail for
manslaughter, and died in disrepute in 2012.

Anti-Indianism has also been reinforced under neoliberalism—the
restructuring of politics and economy towards privatization, including the
widespread defunding of public education, transportation, healthcare, and
public sector employment—services that in other parts of the world are
considered fundamental human rights. But the role of the US state in
reproducing anti-Indianism has also increased since the mid twentieth
century, including through the expansion of the military and prisons. For
example, the prison population increased from about 200,000 in the late
1960s to 2.4 million in the 2000s; as of 2018, there are 6.9 million adults in
jail, in prison, or on probation or parole. Most are nonwhite and poor. In
South Dakota, incarceration rates are among the highest in the nation. In
spite of an overall decrease in crime nationally and statewide over the last
two decades, South Dakota’s imprisonment rate is ten times higher than the
national average, growing over 500 percent from 1977 to 2012. Native
inmates make up over 30 percent of the total population while only
constituting about 9 percent of the state’s population.55 The rise in
incarceration rates directly correlates with increased Native political
activity in the 1970s. The historical process of elimination as a tool for
political repression—removing Natives from the land and imprisoning them
—has taken the new form of mass incarceration. The “Indian problem” was
thus solved not through granting treaty rights—such as access to healthcare,
employment, education, and social welfare—but through the use of police
and prisons.
Today, in Rapid City, South Dakota—a city located in the cosmological
and political center of the Lakota universe, He Sapa (the Black Hills)—
Natives (mostly Lakotas) make up 12 percent of the urban population. Yet,
more than half of the Native population lives below the poverty line—a rate
higher than in most reservations.56 Three-fourths of the city’s homeless are
Native. Natives also make up half the city’s jail population and are five
times more likely to get arrested or receive traffic citations.57 These
statistics reveal a general pattern of police violence against Natives in the
United States. According to The Guardian’s “The Counted,” an online
database of police killings, 2016 was a particularly deadly year for Natives.
Police killed twenty-four Natives, more than they had the previous year and
at a rate higher than any other group. Almost all the killings were at the
hands of non-reservation law enforcement.58 Police are the instrument
employed to manage the political, social, and economic crisis that is

Indigenous life, especially off reservation. The intense police violence
directed against the #NoDAPL movement at Standing Rock was no
aberration: most, if not all, arrests of Water Protectors protesting the
pipeline were at the hands of non-Native, off-reservation law enforcement
agencies.
From the perspective of the United States, it has been more realistic to
increase incarceration and law enforcement budgets than it has to uphold
the basic tenets of treaties—international agreements—made with
Indigenous nations. Despite the violent backlash, AIM and Red Power
turned their sights elsewhere (as noted earlier in this chapter), to the United
Nations, to let the world judge the United States for its criminal behavior.
But the legacy of AIM remains incomplete and underappreciated to this
day. In 1981 Nisqually activist Janet McCloud (Yet-Si-Blue) noted that
“AIM’s brave and daring effort to uplift the lives of their people, to
challenge a powerfully hostile enemy, and to promote a better social order
for all Indian people” inspired not only Native people but the oppressed of
North Vietnam, Northern Ireland, the peasants of Southern France, and the
aboriginal peoples of Australia and Africa. But “the greatest beneficiaries of
the American Indian Movement are the tribal council leaders who are
always quick to seize opportunities created by the Movement, and to claim
unwarranted credit for the positive social changes won for Indian people.”
Yet many others benefited too: Native youth who enjoy “new cars, live
longer, have better health, are bettered educated, have well-paid jobs,” she
said.59
The formation of the International Indian Treaty Council in 1974—
another outcome of Wounded Knee and the rise of AIM—also paved the
way for Indigenous internationalism at the UN and laid the groundwork for
the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 1980, AIM
returned to the Black Hills and Rapid City. This time, however, Women of
All Red Nations, an AIM contingent of women leadership, formed the
Black Hills Alliance (BHA), a coalition of white ranchers and Native
activists to halt uranium and coal mining in the Black Hills. Eleven
thousand people from around the world gathered, succeeding in halted
mining operations altogether. After the Alliance dissipated, AIM formed a
short-lived encampment on the outskirts of Rapid City, named “Yellow
Thunder Camp” (YTC), after Raymond Yellow Thunder. Their goal was to
begin to reclaim the Black Hills region under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

Unlike the previous border town campaign, BHA and YTC garnered local
white support under the umbrella of environmentalism and treaty rights. For
example, a union of Black Hills gold miners supported both campaigns,
citing the inviolability of Lakota treaty rights and concerns regarding
corporate energy development that jeopardized “the health and welfare of
working people.”60
The alliance with white working people and farmers—historic enemies
of Lakotas—proved vital because it demonstrated that working-class
settlers and Natives shared a common struggle against corporate
exploitation. Fighting for Native land rights and sovereignty was also
necessary to protect the lands upon which both groups depended for their
continued existence. If dispossession was the primary mode for exploitation
in Rapid City and the Black Hills, then liberation for both Native and settler
required upholding, at bare minimum, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. For a
while, white sentiments toward Natives in border towns actually improved.
Even one of AIM’s main detractors, Mayor Bartlett, conceded that in the
wake of the uprisings, “quietly behind the scenes there is an effort being
made without headlines” to improve the lives of Natives in Rapid City.61

A signpost at Oceti Sakowin Camp shows the diversity of movements and Indigenous nations
represented at the camps, an outcome of decades of international work. November 2016. Photo by
author.

6

Internationalism
As we came with this Pipe, also we come with the Treaty, the 1868 Treaty. That Treaty is bloody. It
was made over a hundred years ago. It was our elders who told us that this was a good Treaty. But
somebody spilled blood on this Treaty. And they said, “You are going before the world with your
Pipe, and you will offer it to the world, the world community, and if they accept, then together we
can help to clean this Treaty.”
—Larry Red Shirt, Palais des Nations, Geneva, 19771

In the late summer of 1977, a small group of Indigenous elders from
Canada’s Six Nations, the Oceti Sakowin, Hopi, Panama, Guatemala, the
Amazon, Mexico, and Chile led a delegation of 120 through Geneva,
Switzerland. The march bore the marks of history. Having survived
centuries of genocide and punitive colonial policies of assimilation and land
theft, they also carried with them the aspirations of hundreds of millions of
Indigenous peoples from around the globe to gain a seat at the United
Nations. Geneva and the UN had never seen anything like it before, and
probably have not since. Dressed in their traditional regalia, the delegation
sang the “Raymond Yellow Thunder Song,” (widely known as the “AIM
Song”) to honor the Oglala elder brutally murdered by white vigilantes in
1972. The procession wound through the quaint mountain town, arriving at
the Palais des Nations. UN security guards opened the tall double doors as
they approached. The singing grew louder as they ascended the stairwell to
the second-floor council chambers, where world leaders had met to decide
the fates of colonized peoples, and where generations of American Indians
had been categorically denied entry as nations. Fifty-four years earlier at
this exact location, the Cayuga leader Deskaheh (Levi General) from the
Haudenosaunee Confederacy made an unsuccessful appeal to the League of
Nations in defense of Indigenous rights and nationhood, in protest of the
overthrow of the Six Nations government by the Canadian state. This time,
however, with the support of Soviet bloc countries, Third World nations of

the Non-Aligned Movement, and national liberation movements such as the
South African anti-apartheid struggle and the Palestine Liberation
Organization, Indigenous peoples had, to a large degree, provincialized the
influence of North Atlantic powers to dictate their diplomatic relations
“outside” the settler colony. Consequently, US media and diplomats largely
boycotted the conference that laid the groundwork for what became the
touchstone document of international Indigenous rights: the 2007
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a document four Anglo
settler states—the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia—
initially refused to endorse.
While Indigenous representation has become a permanent feature at the
UN, its radical origins are less well known. The historic 1977 Geneva
gathering was preceded by a simpler, but no less monumental, gathering in
Standing Rock, along the banks of the Missouri River. In the heat of the
Northern Plains summer, 5,000 people from more than ninety-seven
different Indigenous nations met from June 8 to 16, 1974. By the end of the
week, the International Indian Treaty Council was founded as an
international arm of the American Indian Movement (AIM), tasked with
gaining international recognition at the UN for Indigenous peoples of the
Western Hemisphere. The Treaty Council’s founding document, the
“Declaration of Continuing Independence,” foregrounded nationhood and
treaty rights as central features of an American Indian political identity.
“We condemn the United States of America for its gross violation of the
1868 Fort Laramie Treaty in militarily surrounding, killing, and starving the
citizens of the Independent Oglala Nation into exile,” it read, in reference to
the brutal crackdown on AIM following their occupation of Wounded Knee
in 1973. The Treaty Council appealed to “conscionable nations” to join “in
charging and prosecuting the United States of America for its genocidal
practices against the sovereign Native Nations; most recently illustrated by
Wounded Knee 1973 and the continued refusal to sign the United Nations
1948 Treaty on Genocide.”2 Following the seventy-one-day siege, AIM
leadership had been arrested and tied up in court proceedings. Then came
the brutal repression under the infamous FBI Counterintelligence Program
(COINTELPRO) that nearly destroyed Indigenous, Black, and
revolutionary movements in the United States. The strategic turn to
international human rights law largely saved the Indigenous movement
from utter collapse in a moment of intense state repression.3

The Treaty Council, however, was not the first or only version of what
historian Daniel Cobb calls a “global Indigenous identity.”4 Rather, it
belonged to and drew from a long tradition of Indigenous internationalism.5
Prior to European contact, Indigenous nations had often entered into
relations with each other for alliance, kinship, war, peace, or trade. As
shown in previous chapters, agreements were made not solely between
human nations, but also among nonhuman nations as well, such as the
buffalo and the land. Such treaties were, and continue to be, the basis of
diplomacy and the evidence of a prior and continuing status of Indigenous
nationhood. Sovereign nations do not enter into international relations or
treaties with domestic or “internal” populations. On the contrary, the very
basis of sovereignty is the power to negotiate relationships between those
who are seen as different—between other sovereigns and nations. But
concepts of “sovereignty” and “nation” possess different meanings for
Indigenous peoples than for their European-derived counterparts. And they
are not entirely consistent, either, with the aspirations for a nation-state that
came to define decolonization movements in the Third World. While doing
important defensive work, on face value these Western and Third World
concepts only partially reflect traditions of Indigenous resistance.
Far beyond the project of seeking equality within the colonial state, the
tradition of radical Indigenous internationalism imagined a world altogether
free of colonial hierarchies of race, class, and nation. This vision allowed
revolutionary Indigenous organizations such as the Treaty Council to make
relatives, so to speak, with those they saw as different, imagining
themselves as part of Third World struggles and ideologies, and entirely
renouncing the imperialism and exceptionalism of the First World (while
still living in it). They were in the First World but not of it—much like
American Indians are in, but not entirely of, the United States. Indigenous
peoples across North America and the world have fought, died, and
struggled to reclaim, restore, and redefine these powerful ideas. Their goal
has been to take their proper place in the family of nations.
Radical Indigenous internationalism, however, predates AIM and the
Treaty Council. Contemporary pan-Indigenous movements were a result of
more than a decade of Red Power organizing that began in the early 1960s,
nearly a decade before the creation of AIM. Earlier, in the 1950s, Flathead
scholar and writer D’Arcy McNickle and the National Congress of
American Indians had explored a similar intellectual and political terrain of

internationalism. And before that, the Society of American Indians
advocated for a seat at the table during the 1919 Paris peace talks and
representation at the League of Nations. Each distinct instance posed a
similar question: If Indigenous peoples are nations, why are they not
afforded the right to self-determination?
Two strands of thinking about self-determination for the colonial world
prevailed following the First World War. In the first, US President
Woodrow Wilson argued for self-determination with a limited set of rights
that would not radically upset the colonial order. Such liberal
internationalism, however, glaringly omitted Indigenous peoples, as they
understood themselves as nations that existed prior to the formation of
settler states. Rarely were Wilson’s principles applied to North America or
the United States; nor were they ever intended to extend to Indigenous
peoples.
A second, more radical vision put forward by Communist revolutionary
V. I. Lenin argued for the right of colonized nations to secede and declare
independence from their colonial masters. This view was echoed by the
Third World decolonization movement, as part of a global Socialist and
Communist revolution, and it has frequently been applied in the Asian,
African, and South American contexts. But this view remained almost
entirely absent in North America, except among radical Indigenous, Black,
Asian, Caribbean, and Chicanx national liberation movements.
The Treaty Council advocated Indigenous nationhood as part of this
global anti-colonial movement and in line with Third World liberation
movements. After decades of experiencing land loss, enduring bare
survival, attempting to work with federal programs, filing court cases,
defeating termination legislation, and facing mass relocation, an assertion of
Oceti Sakowin sovereignty went from ambition to prescription. Few
avenues remained other than the pursuit of international treaty rights.
Treaties made with the United States were proof of nationhood. But what
legal institution would uphold this position if the United States refused to?
If the goal was to reverse the unjust occupation of an entire continent, the
advancement of Indigenous rights through the very legal and political
systems that justified that occupation in the first place had proven limited in
some instances, and hopeless in others. To survive, AIM and the Treaty
Council therefore had to look elsewhere to make their case—beyond the

confines of the most powerful political construct in world history, the
nation-state.
Prior to and during colonization, Indigenous nations had self-organized
into deliberate confederacies, alliances, and governments. The Nation of the
Seven Council Fires (the Oceti Sakowin), for instance, is a confederacy of
seven different nations of Lakota-, Dakota-, and Nakota-speaking peoples
in the Northern Plains and Western Great Lakes. They are hardly unique; in
North America alone there are the Creek Confederacy in the Southeast, the
Haudenosaunee Confederacy of Six Nations in the Northeast, the Council
of Three Fires (made up of Ojibwes, Odawas, and Potawatomis) in the
Great Lakes region, the United Indian Nations in the Ohio River valley
(under the Shawnee leadership of Tecumseh), the All Indian Pueblo Council
of the Southwest, and the Iron Confederacy of the Northern Plains. Many
other political confederacies also flourished prior to, alongside, and in spite
of settler states in North America.6 And their legacies are hardly relegated
to the primordial past.
Modern Oceti Sakowin internationalism, for instance, traces its origins
to the early twentieth century, an era generally viewed as a low point for
Indigenous activism and resistance. In North America alone, an estimated
precolonial population of tens of millions of Indigenous peoples had been
reduced to about 300,000, and for Flathead historian D’Arcy McNickle,
writing in 1949, two processes contributed greatly to this decimation: the
institution of private property and the destruction of Indigenous governance
that once held land in common. Indigenous nations at the time also
possessed little in the way of either collective property or political power, as
Indigenous territory had been drastically diminished, and the reservation
system had overthrown or almost entirely dissolved customary
governments. If Indigenous peoples once constituted the tree of the
Americas, whose roots deeply entwined in the land, the cultivation of
“growth from the severed stump,” McNickle argued, was the pivotal
challenge of the twentieth century.7
Physical extermination and the repression of Indigenous political power
verified the United States’ genocidal intent, but these had not accomplished
their purpose. And despite otherwise stating pluralistic claims to inclusion,
McNickle concluded that the United States simply “can not tolerate a nation
within a nation.” If Natives were to be assimilated, they would be
assimilated as individuals and not as nations. In the popular imaginary,

Natives disappeared into the wilderness of history, were never truly nations,
and had been overpowered by a superior civilization. If they were nations,
they were eclipsed and replaced by the real nation—the United States. Such
erasure notwithstanding, vibrant Indigenous political traditions persisted.
But to the untrained eye, nothing was awry. From the severed stump began
to regrow the tree of life—the tree of resistance that would blossom into
revolt decades later.
Two Dakota activists of the early twentieth century stand out as
forbearers to current Indigenous internationalism, but they are by no means
the only ones. The first was Ohiyesa, or Charles Eastman, a
Mdewakantonwan medical doctor born and raised in buffalo hide tipis in
his Dakota homelands. At age four, after the Dakotas were violently
expelled from Minnesota Territory during the 1862 US–Dakota War,
Eastman and his family fled to Canada. He later attended a Christian
mission school, graduating from Dartmouth College in 1887, then from
Boston University with a medical degree. Dr. Eastman was among the first
American Indians to practice European medicine as a licensed physician,
becoming a BIA physician who treated casualties of the 1890 Wounded
Knee Massacre in Pine Ridge.8
The other was Zitkala-Ša, née Gertrude Simmons, an Ihanktonwan
writer, musician, and activist born the same year as the Battle of Greasy
Grass, along the Missouri River in the Yankton Reservation. Quaker
missionaries plucked Zitkala-Ša from her homeland when she was a child
and sent her to a Christian mission school in Indiana. A product of
government- and church-run boarding schools, Zitkala-Ša became an
instructor at the Carlisle Indian School and also one of its staunchest critics.
Her biting wit and strident Indigenous nationalism launched her literary
career and lifelong commitment to restore her nation to its proper place in
history. More so than her peers, including Eastman, Zitkala-Ša advocated
Indigenous cultural renewal and a radical form of political selfdetermination, which made her, according to one biographer, “a forerunner
of Red Power.”9 Both were, however, unique products of their time:
boarding school–educated, but firmly rooted in Indigenous history, culture,
and politics. Eastman and Zitkala-Ša both joined the ranks by attending the
first meetings of the formally educated American Indians known as “Red
Progressives.”

In 1911, Oglala treaty council member Henry Standing Bear joined with
Charles Eastman to form a national organization to bridge grassroots treaty
council organizing with the younger generation of boarding school–
educated American Indians. On Columbus Day, the Society of American
Indians (SAI) emerged with the aim of combatting the continued dissolution
of Oceti Sakowin lands, which had dwindled from 13 million acres to 8
million in less than a decade. Foremost among their grievances was He
Sapa (the Black Hills), which was “taken by the gun,” in the words of
James Crow Feather, a Cheyenne River leader, after the so-called 1876
Black Hills Act.10 Predating the workers’ councils—or soviets—that
formed in revolutionary Russia in 1905 and took power in 1917, Oceti
Sakowin grassroots leadership formed treaty councils in North America as
early as 1887 (the same year as the Dawes Allotment Act) to oppose a
reservation system dominated by federal Indian agents. (Zitkala-Ša later
joined to serve as SAI’s secretary and editor of its quarterly publication,
American Indian Magazine.)
In many ways, the treaty councils—which were primarily formed around
historical leadership structures based on kinship—were the political
collectives that passed on traditions of Indigenous resistance from the
generations who made and signed treaties to those who Indian agents
designated “assimilated” by the boarding school system. As the name
suggests, central to the councils’ political identity were treaties made
between the United States and Indigenous nations. Treaties, in this case the
1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, were therefore proof of international relations
and separate nationhood status.
Although short lived (officially disbanding in 1923), SAI became the
first entirely American Indian–led, national professional organization, and
an ideological predecessor to the National Congress of American Indians,
which would be founded in 1944. SAI is typically compared to its
Progressive Era contemporaries, such as the Black-led NAACP, formed two
years earlier. But the organizations differed in their understandings of how
to get free. Foremost among SAI’s goals were the abolition of the Indian
Bureau, the end of allotment, the upholding of treaty rights, and the
granting of US citizenship to Indigenous peoples. But the fulfilment of
treaty obligations, on the one hand, and US citizenship, on the other, didn’t
—and still don’t—neatly fit within Black and white racial binaries.
Whereas the former is about racial inclusion and democratizing the settler

colony, the latter stands in for opposition to the US occupation, invasion,
and colonization of Turtle Island.
Calls for citizenship and formal equality under the law could be viewed
as assimilationist—and in many cases they were. Some Indigenous nations,
such as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, asserted their sovereignty by
flatly rejecting settler citizenship in the United States and in Canada. For
others citizenship was not about complete surrender to the nation-state. At
its first annual meeting in 1912, for instance, SAI framed the “Indian
problem” as one of being “doubly wronged” and “held in the grip of false
conditions.” On one hand, the return to a “former condition” of absolute
independence was impossible under colonial rule. On the other, US
citizenship had been denied. American Indians were “neither citizen nor
foreigner.” “Contracts made with his ‘nation’ are dignified with the title of
‘treaty,’” SAI argued, “yet he is unable to exercise the rights of a nation or
to enforce the provisions of the treaty.”11 Eastman scoffed at the absurdity
of devolving from “an independent foreign nation” to a “domestic
dependent nation.” He preferred, as a more accurate description, a
“perpetual inhabitant with diminutive rights,” citing Chief Justice John
Marshall’s ruling in the 1823 Johnson v. M’Intosh decision.12
Thanks to the 1887 Dawes Act, US citizenship could be achieved only
by individual Natives, by privatizing their land—thereby, diminishing
collective treaty lands. Once individual Natives proved “competence”
through land stewardship and agriculture, they were eligible for citizenship,
which was granted to American Indians in 1924. Land allotment formally
ended in 1934 with the Indian Reorganization Act. This made citizenship a
form of elimination because it required individuals to relinquish collective
rights, collective property, and a distinct political identity in order to
become private landowners and citizens. They were not considered
permanent members of nations in control of their own territory and
destinies. On the contrary, “after negotiating treaties as an equal,” Eastman
commented, the Indian was “strangely born again a child—incompetent,
irresponsible, and unable to think for himself.”13 Despite this unequal
position of ward to guardian, he affirmed, “we must try the highest
obligation of all civilized nations; treaties; the highest obligation; the
international law.”14
The paradox of settler citizenship and the perpetual colonial condition
didn’t stop SAI from working within the framework of US racial politics, or

what were dubiously called “race relations.” Eastman had befriended Black
intellectual and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, who no doubt influenced
Eastman and the early direction of SAI, of which Du Bois was the only
non-Native voting member.15 In 1911 Eastman published The Soul of the
Indian, whose title was inspired by Du Bois’s 1903 book The Souls of Black
Folk. While different in scope, each book shared a similar commitment to
crafting a racial imaginary in which the souls of a white nation and those
who it excluded were both at stake. “Between me and the other world there
is ever an unasked question,” Du Bois famously wrote. “How does it feel to
be a problem?” The question cut to the bone of Black experience in the
United States under Jim Crow: that of being considered a problem to be
dealt with. This definition of the “Negro problem” was an issue for Du Bois
because it was dissociated from what actually constituted racism—the
legacies of slavery, institutions of segregation, lynching, and racial terror.
His diagnosis of the “Negro problem” was that Blacks had developed a
“double consciousness,” “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled
strivings”—one “American” and the other “Negro.” This racial imaginary
extended beyond the United States; as Du Bois famously declared, “The
problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the
relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in
America and the islands of the sea.”16
Du Bois looked to the South for a history of the color line. In his
narrative he navigates the “Black Belt” by train, inviting fellow travelers to
witness US history from the vantage of a segregated “Jim Crow Car.” The
train cuts through the “ancient land of the Cherokees—that brave Indian
nation which strove so long for its fatherland, until Fate and the United
States Government drove them beyond the Mississippi.” He summarizes the
history of the Black Belt with mentions of Hernando de Soto, the Georgia
slave trade, the Creek Confederacy, the Haitian Revolution, and Cherokee
presence and removal. According to Du Bois’s account of Southeastern
Indigenous resistance, “the war-cry was hushed and the Indians glided back
into the west.”17 While perceptive of race in the binary, Du Bois could not
make sense of the vexed history of settler colonialism, nor of the continued
existence of Indigenous nations in the South and elsewhere.
Relegating Native presence to a past or “ancient” culture is a popular
convention in history and contemporary politics. To counter this, in The
Soul of the Indian, Eastman embraced “the human, not the ethnological

standpoint.” He dismissed ethnographies written by “strangers” that
reduced complex Indigenous social systems to a “matter of curiosity,” and
he didn’t see Indigenous peoples as the last vestiges of a dying race, far
removed from their homelands and from the modern world. During this
time, anthropologists flooded Indian reservations, intent on preserving this
“ancient” people they believed to be always on the brink of extinction.
Knowledge of this vanishing race had to be extracted through their stories
and by digging up their remains, in what amounted to little more than grave
robbery under the guise of “archeology.” In contrast, Eastman aimed “not to
pile up more bones, but to clothe them with flesh and blood.” Put simply,
Indigenous peoples were humans with rights, and Eastman desired to
engage the world on terms of cultural integrity and self-determination. He
compared Native religion against Christianity, emphasizing the fallacy of
Europe’s impulse to civilize, which was merely the “lust for money, power
and conquest so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race.” Under the moral
authority “of their God,” the United States made treaties with Indigenous
nations that “were promptly and shamelessly broken.” Indigenous history
could not be simply grafted onto Black–white racial dynamics. It missed
what Eastman characterized as “not only the anger, but contempt” for
earlier crimes and ongoing colonialism.18
Such erasure is not Du Bois’s alone, and it still persists today. Despite
his conceptual shortcomings, Du Bois himself was more ally than
antagonist to American Indian rights. As race progressives, Eastman and
Du Bois didn’t confine their activism to just US audiences. In 1911, the
same year SAI formed, Eastman was chosen to represent American Indians
at the Universal Races Congress in London, held from July 26 to 29. He
was the only Indigenous person invited from the Western Hemisphere.
According to conference proceedings, the gathering proposed to address
“the problem of the contact of European with other developed types of
civilization.” Most discussion, however, focused on East–West binaries, as
though colonization and imperialism were happening everywhere other than
North America. The debates were framed as ethical and barred any
presentations of “a political character” or any “particular scheme for
reforms.”19
In London, Eastman presented during the same session as Du Bois. In
his talk, Eastman attempted to establish racial identity for Natives as a way
to be counted among the minorities of the world. But he was quick to note

the “pauperising effect” of the reservation system as a “miserable prison
existence.” Under this system, the world could ignore the imprisonment of
Indigenous peoples while praising their culture, making them “like that of a
wild animal confined in a zoological garden.”20 His solution to the “Indian
problem” was not a return to the past. US citizenship and the abolition of
the Indian Bureau were all that prevented the fulfilment of treaty rights. But
citizenship and equality didn’t imply becoming the same as the settlers.
Rather, Indigenous identity could be simultaneously “American” and
distinctly “Indian.” But identity was as far as Eastman ever went. His vision
was one of spiritual awakening, and a reconciliation of the Native identity
with the modern world. Eastman admitted that he was an advocate “in this
new line of defense of the native American, not so much of his rights in the
land as of his character and religion.”21
Zitkala-Ša and the later phase of the SAI took a more robust and
confrontational approach. When the United States entered the First World
War in 1917, SAI began adopting the language of nationalism,
internationalism, and anti-colonialism. Natives volunteered for military
service at rates far surpassing any other group, even though most were not
considered US citizens—circumstances much like those of other colonized
peoples serving in white Europe’s bloody civil war. An astounding 25
percent of all adult Native men served in some capacity, compared to 15
percent of men in the US overall. Most were drawn from the ranks of offreservation boarding schools—such as Carlisle Indian School where
Zitkala-Ša was once a teacher—where pupils had been indoctrinated with
military discipline and US patriotism.22
Yet the war and Wilsonian internationalism provided the possibility of a
new terrain of Native struggle. For many Red Progressives, Wilson’s
Fourteen Points, in which he outlined his vision for long-term peace in
Europe, gave meaning to US and American Indian involvement in the
bloody war. Wilson argued the sacrifice of lives and resources and the
creation of an international body would prevent another great war. The
principal vision was the right to self-determination and the abolition of
colonial regimes. Because of military service, SAI thought the United
States would live up to its democratic commitments to Indigenous peoples
and help them attain representation in a world forum alongside other
colonized peoples. “The sunbursts of democratic ideals cannot bring new
hope and courage to the small peoples of the earth without reaching the

remotest corners within America’s own bounds,” wrote Zitkala-Ša in SAI’s
quarterly American Indian Magazine. “As America has declared democracy
abroad, so must we consistently practice it at home.”23 Wilson’s stance,
however, ran contrary to the strong isolationism of the United States, and,
in the end, Congress rejected membership in the League of Nations.
Celebrations of Wilson’s internationalism overshadow other histories or
futures that could have been. This is not to mention that Wilson, a so-called
“progressive,” also resegregated the federal civil service and valorized the
Ku Klux Klan—positions entirely consistent with his foreign policy, which
included the military invasions of Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. The
Russian Revolution, however, offered an alternative vision for another
world: proletarian and anti-colonial revolution. What came immediately
was imperial counterrevolution; and what came later was a decolonization
movement that toppled colonial regimes. For American Indians, following
the Second World War, an anti-colonial nationalism came in the form of
Red Power. Yet none of this could have become possible without ZitkalaŠa’s unrelenting advocacy for American Indian political renewal and selfdetermination during the early twentieth century.
The war—and with it the draft—was also a turning point in the political
direction of SAI. How could a country conscript those it did not consider
citizens? Apache medical doctor Carlos Montezuma, a former SAI member
who left the organization as his politics became more radical, argued that a
Native draft was morally wrong. Intensely suspicious of the Indian Office
and the federal government, Montezuma became a strident opponent of
forced conscription. “The Indian Office keeps us Indians from our rights,”
Montezuma wrote in 1917, the year the Selective Service Act was passed.
“It tells the country that we are competent soldiers, but are not competent
citizens … We are nothing but wards; we are not citizens and we are
without a country in this world … The wards are called upon to protect
their Protectors!”24 His fiery rhetoric and activism attracted the attention of
the US Bureau of Investigation (which would later become the FBI). That
same year the Espionage Act made anti-war activity a criminal offense
punishable by imprisonment, while the 1918 Sedition Act did the same for
those using “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” toward US
institutions such as the Indian Bureau or national symbols such as the flag.
Thousands of draft resisters were either deported or imprisoned. Most
famously, six-time Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs was

charged in the summer of 1918 and swiftly sentenced to prison. Perhaps
fearing reprisals against its own members, SAI adopted a nationalist stance
on the war. One member went as far as to denounce the 1917 Green Corn
Rebellion in Oklahoma, which was a Native-led armed uprising of poor
whites, Blacks, Seminoles, and Muscogee Creeks against the Selective
Service Act.25
In spite of its best efforts, however, the American Indian Magazine,
under the leadership of Zitkala-Ša, came under fire for subversive content.
After US entry into the war and during the same month of the October 1917
Bolshevik Revolution, Zitkala-Ša’s opening editorial read, “BREAK THE
SHACKLES NOW, MAKE US FREE.” The controversial special issue,
called “The Sioux Number,” detailed the horror the Oceti Sakowin endured
during the brutal military campaigns after the 1862 US–Dakota War, at the
1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, and the legacy of the United States’ broken
promises contained in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The editors also called
for the abolition of the Indian Bureau, the creation of a comprehensive
program that allowed individual Indigenous nations to opt for or against US
citizenship, and the upholding of treaty rights, especially the 1868 Treaty.
Only once these bold demands were met could the United States retain
moral authority in the world—or so they believed.26
The special issue also targeted US military aggression. A sarcastic play
on the patriotic anthem “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” Zitkala-Ša penned a
rebuke of US nationalism in her poem “The Red Man’s America.” She
changed the verse “Land where my fathers died / Land of the pilgrims’
pride / From ev’ry mountainside / Let freedom ring!” to “Land where OUR
fathers died / Whose offspring are denied / The Franchise given wide /
Hark, while I sing.”27 In another poem, “A Sioux Woman’s Love for Her
Grandchild,” she depicted the courage of a grandmother who refuses to
leave her grandchild behind as they are overrun by US soldiers, noting the
courage of the Oceti Sakowin and the tyranny of the military.28 Other
contributors joined her in condemning militarism. “Why proclaim the
sacredness of a treaty, or cry ‘Shame!’ to the German invasion of
Belgium?” Eastman asked, attacking the hypocrisy of US military
intervention in Europe, when the US continually violated the 1868 Treaty
(among others).
This brutal honesty unnerved policy makers and allies with “unmixed
horror.” Critics accused Zitkala-Ša of becoming the “rankest Bolshevekist”

who had descended into “Apacheism,” a derogatory term for criminal
gangs. “If we were severe,” Zitkala-Ša reminded critics, “the faults we saw
were still more severe.”29 She clarified her position in a 1919 editorial titled
“The Black Hills Council.” In it, she argued that if “[the Sioux] were good
enough to fight and die for world democracy,” then they were “worthy of
full American citizenship and the protection of the law under our
constitution.”30 The eagerness of Congress to send noncitizens to war but to
ignore their legitimate grievances over treaty rights infuriated Zitkala-Ša.
While they sent their sons overseas to fight and die, Oceti Sakowin treaty
council leaders—all respected elders—pleaded their case before Congress
and drafted bills that would allow them to take the Black Hills claim to
court. “One after another these bills failed passage by Congress,” she
recalled, “while access to the Court of Claims to all other Americans was
comparatively easy, types of men like the IWW [the Industrial Workers of
the World] and the Bolsheveki [were] not excepted.” Clearly referencing
the attacks on SAI and its magazine, Zitkala-Ša spoke a simple truth: even
the anarchists, socialists, communists, and draft resisters—all considered
enemies of the state—had their day in court, a national headline, and some
protections under the law. But any talk of Indigenous treaties, stolen land,
genocide, the Black Hills, or citizenship was rejected as treasonous, or
simply ignored. Those issues could not even be entertained in a court room,
because the United States refused to recognize its own criminal behavior—
and it refused to recognize the Oceti Sakowin as either citizens or their own
nation. “Small wonder that Immortal Justice must be blindfolded upon her
marble pedestal lest her tranquility be marred by the Red Man’s dilemma!”
Zitkala-Ša remarked.31 But SAI offered other possibilities beyond the
United States, as the promise of a new political order arose at the
conclusion of the Great War.
As peace approached, SAI members, including Eastman, Zitkala-Ša, and
Montezuma, were undeterred by Congress’s stubbornness and seized upon
Wilson’s principles to defend Native rights. “Under the new sun an epoch is
being staged. Little peoples are to be granted the right of selfdetermination!” exclaimed Zitkala-Ša in 1919.32 Montezuma was more
critical. “There is no picture as black as the history of our race. You may
speak about abuses and mistreatment received by the Belgians, Bohemians,
Poles, Serbians and other nations of the old country, their griefs and wild
kings are no comparison to the treatment of the Indians at the hands of the

American Government,” he wrote in a 1918 piece, provocatively titled
“Another Kaiser in America.”33
Eastman, however, echoed Zitkala-Ša, arguing that the scourge of
wardship was thoroughly undemocratic, stunted the renewal of Indigenous
autonomy, and ran counter to Wilson’s principles of self-determination.
“The whole system reminds of the story of Two-Face in the Sioux legend.
He stole a child to feed on his tender substance, sucking his blood while
still living, and if anyone protested or aroused by the baby’s screams,
attempted a rescue, he would pat it tenderly and pretend to caress it,” he
wrote. A vampiric Indian Bureau, if not stopped, would continue to wither
away Indigenous life and land. But Eastman cautioned, “We do not ask for
territorial grant or separate government. We ask only to enjoy with Europe’s
sons the full privileges of American citizenship.”34
Despite their best efforts, Eastman, Zitkala-Ša, and SAI could not break
the mold that cast them. Conservative factions within prevented SAI from
petitioning President Wilson to attend the peace conference. Non-Native
supporters viewed SAI as novelty, rather than a serious political
organization. Slowly, the organization descended into obscurity, officially
disbanding in 1923, a year before the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act,
which unilaterally imposed citizenship upon all individual Indigenous
peoples without consent. The criticism leveled at the Indian Bureau did,
however, result in a sweeping investigation and report of its practices. The
publication in 1928 of The Problem of Indian Administration, also known
as the Meriam Report, was a massive indictment of federal Indian policies
of assimilation and allotment. Whether as an intentional or unintentional
outcome, the report found, Natives lived in destitution, poverty, and misery,
and they had access only to highly deficient education and health services.
The Indian Bureau became the focus of a massive reform under the Indian
New Deal, which ended allotment, along with some bans on Native cultural
and religious ceremonies. SAI’s ideas, especially those of Zitkala-Ša around
cultural and political renewal, were taken up by John Collier, who is often
credited with envisioning the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. It is clear
that many elements of the IRA drew inspiration from SAI, but none of its
members received credit.
Having failed to gain entry to the Paris peace talks and the League of
Nations, and likewise failed to garner support for the treaty claims (despite
overwhelming numbers of American Indian servicemen), Zitkala-Ša penned

a final rebuke of the United States in 1923, the year SAI collapsed. “It were
better to slay this greedy octopus for a museum exhibit, before it sucked all
the life blood of helpless Indian victims,” she scathingly wrote of the Indian
Bureau in an unpublished tract called “Our Sioux People.” “In spite of all
the efforts to segregate and differentiate the human family by color, and a
sea of names,” she continued, “at heart they are all the same.” It was the
white man who with “his Bible under one arm and gun powder under the
other” had excluded himself from any true claim to humanity. The Sioux
had not been militarily defeated but “subdued by starvation,” forced to
surrender lands “filled with the stench of putrefying carcass of buffalo herds
wantonly killed by paid sharp shooters, [the] outcome of the white man’s
broken promises to the Sioux weeping over little cold lifeless bodies in their
weak arms, their little darlings dead from hunger and fever.” After
relentless imperial expansion, “the Sioux were driven into smaller
reservations, out of which they were never to go again without a pass—
never again as free men.” Segregated by reservations, “the course of their
evolution, determined by their own initiative, and according to their own
philosophy, has been interrupted.” Yet, those who held most tightly to their
political traditions—those of the treaty councils—were rendered “criminal”
and “the most backward.” The treaty councils, nevertheless, were “the most
helpful because of their reluctance to cast aside our native culture.” This
fact didn’t necessarily prevent American Indians from taking part in society.
What prevented that success was the Indian Bureau, whose legacy was one
“of absolute tyranny over America’s aboriginal people, and a despoliation
of his land and native culture.” The more serious crime of “treaty
mutilation” had been the cause of great wars in this country when Sioux
people, who successfully resisted, were tricked by “good faith” but were
“trampled underfoot when the wild lust for gold stampeded white men
across the place to the Black Hills, into the country of the Sioux.”
Subsequent laws disallowed them the right to interpret the very documents
that were meant to guarantee their freedom. “Who owned America before
the white man came?” Zitkala-Ša asked. “And by what process has the
ownership vested in the United States?” These were supposed to be
“pertinent questions” of any “highly civilized nations” wishing to represent
“the universal laws of justice.” The United States, thus, is the antithesis of
civilization and justice. To Zitkala-Ša, America is the root of war.35

Angered by Collier’s dismissal of her work and activism, and concerned
that the IRA didn’t go far enough, Zitkala-Ša organized her nation, the
Yankton Reservation, to oppose the IRA. Although Yankton ultimately
accepted the IRA, they never adopted an IRA constitution. Instead, a
council of Ihanktonwan traditionals, organized by Zitkala-Ša, drafted a
different constitution, with a broader vision of sovereignty that granted
voting rights to off-reservation members and self-appointed tribal officials,
and allowed the tribal council full veto power over any federal decisions
over tribal lands, jurisdiction, and members. Effectively, the constitution
virtually eliminated any influence of BIA and federal government
interference over internal tribal affairs. Of course, Collier and the secretary
of interior opposed the new constitution, which left the Yankton
Reservation without a formally recognized council—a decision that had
dire consequences when the Army Corps flooded their lands in the 1950s.36
Even by today’s standards, Zitkala-Ša’s visions for Indigenous nationhood
and sovereignty are radical and beyond the imagination and will of most
tribal governments. In spite of her monumental contributions to traditions of
Indigenous resistance, she died exhausted, poor, and unrecognized. Her
death certificate ingloriously read: “Gertrude Bonnin from South Dakota—
Housewife.”37
In the end, SAI never accomplished its major goals. But the organization
nevertheless succeeded in carrying forward previous notions of Indigenous
nationhood and sovereignty. Against the background of anti-colonial
movements, their internationalism was at best aspirational, as it failed to
imagine itself outside the nation-state. On one hand, SAI’s nationalistic
rhetoric was strategic, given the intense climate of repression; but on the
other, it descended into blind patriotism. The political visions of Zitkala-Ša
and Eastman were nevertheless far reaching. Treaty rights, human rights,
and governance continue to be central challenges facing Indigenous nations;
and central to each of these issues was the failure of the United States to
live up to its agreements in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty for peaceful
coexistence. Both envisioned an Indigenous sovereignty that existed
alongside US state sovereignty, but that could, at the same time, refuse US
colonial rule because it represented a prior (and therefore superior) form of
governance and authority. Those bold visions, however, would not come to
fruition for the Oceti Sakowin in the international arena until the 1970s,
with the creation of the International Indian Treaty Council.

After the SAI failed to accomplish its goals of attending the 1919 Paris
peace talks and gaining the recognition of the League of Nations, in 1923,
Haudenosaunee hereditary chief Deskaheh (Levi General) took his nation’s
grievances against the United States and Canadian governments to the
League of Nations. Although unsuccessful, the Treaty Council picked up
where Deskaheh and SAI left off. They, too, attempted to transcend the
colonial bureaucracy and assert treaty rights to a wider world, transposing
the frontlines of struggle from armed barracks to the US courts and, finally,
to the international arena.
In the aftermath of Wounded Knee 1973, many tribal governments
wanted nothing to do with the American Indian Movement. They could
hardly go anywhere without attracting negative attention. Nevertheless, the
Standing Rock Tribal Council unanimously passed a resolution inviting
AIM to the reservation to form a council to take the treaty issue to the
World Court and the United Nations Committee on Colonialism. Standing
Rock spelled out its intentions unambiguously: “The Great Sioux Nation
does not want money damages and is determined to enforce the Treaty of
1868 for all Sioux people.”38 The treaty meeting also had the blessing of the
Oglala Treaty Council, the same group of traditional elders who invited
AIM to Wounded Knee. The Oglala Treaty Council demanded “total
recognition of the treaty—nothing less” and the remuneration of all lands
and resources that had been taken either by the Pick-Sloan flooding or
goldmining in the Black Hills. Acts on behalf of the United States
subsequent to the 1868 Treaty, the council determined, “did not diminish
our inherent right to govern ourselves as a sovereign nation”; also, “all
actions taken by the US government on the 1868 treaty has been illegal and
contrary to the practices of international law and the usual relationship
between sovereign nations.”39 Further, they pushed the United States to
sign and ratify the 1948 Genocide Convention. In spite of its prior hostility
toward IRA governments, AIM now had the backing of the traditionalists,
the grassroots people, and Standing Rock’s IRA tribal council.
The coalescence of forces was truly historic, yet the June 1974 treaty
meeting attracted hardly any media attention. This was in part due to Indian
Health Service misdiagnosing a case of hepatitis at the gathering. Immune
booster shots ran out on the reservation, forcing many UN observers and
media to cancel their participation.40 However, this made the gathering no
less important for its 5,000 attendees, representing ninety-seven different

Indigenous nations. To mark the landmark occasion, Hunkpapa elder
Evelyn Gabe—a direct descendent of John Grass, the Hunkpapa chief and
treaty council leader who led the successful resistance against allotment in
1887—welcomed AIM and thanked them for coming to Standing Rock.
“We have agreed to make a stand in unity with the most valid treaties, one
of which is the 1868 treaty,” she told the crowd in attendance.41 As a result
of Standing Rock’s support, the 1868 Treaty became the tip of the spear for
the UN work. With this reminder of why they had come, they posed these
questions first: How was Indigenous law to be judged by a court of nonIndigenous peers? Who were peers to Indigenous knowledge keepers, the
lawmakers and elders?
It was decided that only other Indigenous peoples could determine their
peers, and that other colonized peoples could be their peers, along with any
nation willing to recognize them—since the United States wouldn’t. To get
the UN to work for them, Jimmie Durham, who was later appointed
executive director of the Treaty Council, suggested following the lead of
African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral, whom he had befriended in Geneva.
To get his message across to the UN and to the European world, Cabral had
“to make speeches and use ‘white’ ideals and pretentions.”42 Those “white”
ideals and pretentions included speaking in the language of sovereignty,
culture, and nationhood. Pressed by their legal counsel that they would need
“concrete evidence of sovereignty” at the UN, Santee AIM member John
Trudell responded, “The treaties are our evidence.”43
For Russell Means, Indigenous treaties and culture were only steppingstones to a larger goal. Recognition, whether cultural or political, was
pointless if it didn’t entail the destruction of the colonial system and, above
all, the restoration of treaty lands and Indigenous modes of governance.
Although Means never knew Amílcar Cabral, the two shared a similar
vision of decolonization. Throughout the Treaty Council documents,
meeting notes, and newsletters, Cabral’s thoughts and visions of anticolonial struggle were occasionally cited. Cabral, who founded the African
Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (or PAIGC), a
Marxist revolutionary party, proposed that colonized Africans “return to the
source.” That source was a distinct African culture that was preserved
primarily by those most oppressed by Portuguese colonialism—not urban
elites, but the villagers and the tribal people who lived in the forest. The
power of the latter lay in their culture of resistance, which had held at bay

complete domination by a foreign culture. Revolution, for Cabral, didn’t
mean becoming a European society or a European-style state, but becoming
a society that reflected its own culture and values. Yet more than cultural
resistance was at stake. These Indigenous cultures also exemplified
horizontalism, as they were free of arbitrary hierarchy and abundant with
self-rule.44
On the last day of the Standing Rock Treaty Council meeting, Russell
Means took the microphone. Throughout the day, he had been reading
various communiqués from the Irish Republican Army, the Organization of
African Unity, and several Arab nations in support of the Standing Rock
gathering. There was some tension about the direction the Treaty Council
would take. Most of AIM’s leadership was still tied up in the courts from
the Wounded Knee arrests, so how could the organization fight for
recognition at the UN? More importantly, people who had no experience
with international law or human rights were in charge of their destinies but
had no clue about the maze of UN decision-making processes. The path
ahead was daunting and uncertain, and the tenor of the meetings sober. This
was clearly a departure from the past one-off actions. Means stated that the
Treaty Council must look to all potential allies, “the United Nations, the
Organization of American States, the Organization of African Unity, the
Arab countries, the communist bloc and whatever is necessary for us to get
our treaties in court and would give the world forums a chance to hear us.”
Moreover, Means emphasized the historic character of American Indian
struggle as it related to the rest of the world. “What we are into is
revolution, turning that cycle of life always back,” he said. It wasn’t just
about Turtle Island, because “in the history of the world the successful
struggles for independence and the struggles which are still going on for
independence all involve land, all involve land—whether it’s in Africa or
Asia or Southeast Asia or the [Mediterranean], or in the Middle East, or in
Ireland and the United States or Canada or South America or Central
America, or Micronesia or Puerto Rico.” In the nineteenth century, the
Oceti Sakowin had no way to enlist the aid of other countries, or even the
people of the United States. Now the Treaty Council had a global forum and
allies worldwide. “If we are going to struggle for our land, it can’t be just
with words, just with paper,” Means solemnly declared. “It has to be with
our lives.”45

The outcome of the conference was the “Declaration of Continuing
Independence,” which was in large part written and framed by Phyllis
Young—the Standing Rock leader who, decades later, stood defiant against
the Dakota Access Pipeline (see chapter 1). The declaration called for (1)
the recognition of the United States’ violation of Indigenous treaties; (2)
acknowledgment of the “inviolate international relationship” between
Native nations and the United States; (3) restoration of treaty land; (4)
eschewal of violence, except in self-defense; (5) rejection of all legislative
and executive acts since 1871; and (6) entry into international diplomatic
relations with the United States and colonial states through UN recognition
and membership. Above all, the 1974 Declaration cited violations arising
from the failure of the United States and other colonial states to adhere to
international human rights standards, which it charged had not yet been
adequately extended to Indigenous peoples, or to abide by Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
While these were bold statements, AIM leadership was still hamstrung
by the courts. Hundreds of cases still had to be resolved. The traditional
leadership suggested near the conclusion of the treaty meeting at Standing
Rock that these cases be resolved before moving on with the international
work. And there was one more request. AIM should try one last time to get
the federal courts to recognize Oceti Sakowin sovereignty.
With its high-risk, attention-grabbing protests, including the siege at
Wounded Knee in 1973, AIM had won in the court of public opinion, or at
least held its attention. But the movement soon found itself and its
aspirations for freedom on trial in the courts of the conquerors—a situation
that was immobilizing for an organization sustained by constant action. By
the end of 1973, arrests from Wounded Knee had tied up most of the AIM
leadership in federal and state courts for months, and sometimes years. The
case against Dennis Banks and Russell Means was one of the longest
criminal trials in US history at the time; following a nine-month trial,
Federal Judge Fred Nichols threw out all charges against Means and Banks
on the grounds of government misconduct. After the tanks rolled away from
Wounded Knee, a team of volunteer lawyers rolled in, forming the
Wounded Knee Defense/Offense Committee, led by attorney Ken Tilsen, to
represent to the hundred-plus AIM members. Five defendants initially
cooperated with federal prosecutors, pleading guilty in exchange for the
dismissal of the other hundred-plus cases. However, the Justice Department

would have none of it, and the trials continued on for nearly two years. The
US lawyers came down heavy. Nevertheless, for all their efforts, only two
of the five AIM members who took the plea deal served any jail time.
Because of a committed legal defense and the weak nature of the charges,
most of the other cases were thrown out.46
In another well-known case, some sixty-five AIM defendants argued that
the United States lacked criminal jurisdiction in Oceti Sakowin territory
protected under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Because the defendants were
charged with alleged criminal acts in the Pine Ridge Reservation and were
within the 1868 Treaty boundaries, the legal defense team moved for
dismissal. The Lakota patriots and their allies who made their stand at
Wounded Knee had also asserted sovereignty based on the 1868 Treaty. “I
went to Wounded Knee only because of that Treaty,” declared Russell
Means. “The first night we were in there, we [sent] out a copy of the 1868
Sioux Treaty to the FBI and said that was why we were at Wounded
Knee.”47
The hearing became known as the “Sioux Treaty Hearing.” Vine Deloria
Jr., along with lead defense attorney John Thorne, engineered the treaty
defense. Deloria cited the accuracy of oral tradition as the basis for the
Oceti Sakowin’s understanding of treaties. These oral histories were just as
accurate as US records of treaty proceedings and provided a point of view
often overlooked. “You can’t imply that the Sioux[,] in signing any treaty,
ever thought that they were submitting to a process whereby they would
someday be in a federal court with endless appeals leading up the United
States Supreme Court,” argued Deloria. “We cannot say that the United
States has ever legally taken jurisdiction over the Sioux Nation of
Indians.”48
For the defense, the 1868 Treaty was undeniable evidence of Oceti
Sakowin sovereignty and nationhood, not only because Natives said so, but
also because the United States itself said so. Nothing could be clearer than
Article 6 of the US Constitution, which unequivocally states that “all
Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United
States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”49 If the United States had
abrogated its responsibility or changed the terms of the treaty, Deloria
reasoned, it had done so without the consent of the Oceti Sakowin, which
was beyond the original intent of the agreement. Treaty signing was also
not an acquiescence to a superior sovereign; rather the United States has

interpreted it that way, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. In
spite of its strengths, the treaty defense was a bold and controversial claim
with little chance of success.
Questions of Indigenous survival were of pressing concern during the
thirteen-day hearing. In December 1974 in a Lincoln, Nebraska, courthouse,
Federal Judge Warren Urbom listened attentively to the testimony from
Lakota and Dakota elders, scholars, and activists. The hearing was unique
and groundbreaking. Among the forty-nine “expert witnesses” on the
defense’s witness list were historians, anthropologists, activists, and
Indigenous elders and traditionalists. The list was the who’s who, not just of
AIM, but of the entire Indigenous movement and its organic and new
intellectuals, including Leonard Crow Dog, Vine Deloria Jr., Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz, Russell Means, Dennis Banks, Edith Bull Bear, Beatrice
Medicine, Irma Bear Stops, Severt Young Bear, Alex Chasing Hawk,
Evelyn Gabe, Francis He Crow, Gladys Bissonette, Robert Yellow Bird,
Frank Kills Enemy, Ted Means, Nellie Red Owl, Faith Traversie, Matthew
King, and many more. Breaking with tradition, witnesses could swear to the
truth over the Canupa (a Lakota ceremonial pipe), rather than the Bible.
Because the hearing didn’t require a jury, Lakota and Dakota elders and
traditionalists filled the empty jury box. For the first time in a US court of
law, as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz contends, “it was the Great Sioux Nation
sitting in judgment on America, not the reverse.”50 The issues presented—
treaty rights, sovereignty, colonialism, and genocide—were matters of
survival for all Indigenous peoples, not just the Oceti Sakowin.
While a sympathetic US public expressed concern for the abuse of
Native peoples and the heroic patriots of Wounded Knee 1973, they tended
to—and, to a large extent, still do—view Indigenous issues as just another
civil rights movement. But the testimony threw into question the very
legitimacy of the United States’ control of the continent, positioning the
Oceti Sakowin and, by default, all Indigenous peoples, in the camp of other
colonized people unjustly subjected to US and European colonialism.
It was a long shot. Everyone knew it. In the end Judge Urbom ruled
against the defendants’ dismissal. The Oceti Sakowin, Urbom decided,
“were once fully sovereign people. They are not now and have not been for
a long time. Whether they ever will be again is dependent upon actions of
the Congress and the President of the United States and not of the courts.”51
While not the desired outcome, the hearing forced Urbom to confront the

inherent conservative nature of his profession, especially when it came to
Indigenous peoples. US law, and the entire Western legal tradition for that
matter, is conservative—and not in the binary political sense of liberal
versus conservative. Western court law is conservative because in the
absence of “good” legislation, it frequently draws from crude and archaic
expressions of its own past to determine “justice” in the present, therefore
setting precedent for future cases. Only congressional or executive action
can redirect the course of law away from its inherent conservativism,
avenues that have provided little relief for Indigenous peoples. Otherwise,
as is often the case for major Indian court decisions, a “bad” decision
becomes doctrine. By following its own legal traditions, the arc of the
Western moral universe never bends toward Indigenous justice. At best, it
ignores it. At worst, it annihilates it.
To justify conquest, enslavement, and genocide under European law,
Indigenous peoples, and the darker nations, have been categorically
excluded from the realm of humanity—a principle that has been little
challenged.52 For example, in his ruling Urbom questioned, but reaffirmed,
the basis of federal Indian law as defined by Chief Justice John Marshall in
the early nineteenth century, when the United States was a fledgling nation.
“Every lower federal court is bound” by Marshall’s assertion in the 1823
Johnson v. McIntosh decision, he argued. In that decision Marshall held that
under US law, Indigenous nations cannot be considered fully sovereign,
because prior to European contact, Indigenous peoples were “fierce
savages, whose occupation was war, and whose subsistence was drawn
chiefly from the forest. To leave them in possession of their country, was to
leave the country a wilder-ness.”53 And only “civilized” people can be fully
sovereign. Such logic virtually mandates settler colonialism to “civilize”
“fierce savages” and their “wilderness” landscape. Nevertheless, every
court is expected to uphold this view—even if it has never been factually
true, and even if the world no longer views it as legitimate. Urbom was
merely keeping with tradition.
All was not lost, however. The defense viewed the decision as a partial,
if not significant, victory. While he dismissed the main jurisdiction claim,
Urbom agreed that the 1868 Treaty was proof of an international
relationship between the Oceti Sakowin and the United States, a
relationship no US court had the authority to resolve. To the casual
observer, this may not seem important. But it was why AIM members

risked their lives at Wounded Knee against the US government, and why
North America’s poorest people faced off with the greatest military power
the world had ever known. In his fiery closing statement, defense attorney
John Thorne compared the Oceti Sakowin’s aspiration for international
recognition to that of other oppressed nations like the Palestine Liberation
Organization, Northern Ireland, Black South Africa under apartheid, and
within the United States, the Black Panther Party, La Raza, and the United
Farm Workers.
“They talk about oppression, and they talk about a better life. They move
and they act. In response, we build bigger and better prisons, appoint more
and more judges, more police officers, and make more arrests,” said Thorne
to Judge Urbom. “I want you to be bound by moral law.”
“Whence comes my authority?” asked Urbom.
“To do what?”
“To do anything. I am a judge. Where did I get my authority?” Urbom
shot back.
“Exactly the same place that the [1868] Treaty between the United States
and the Sioux Nation gained its status as a solemn agreement,” Thorne
reminded the court.54
“Feeling what was wrong does not describe what is right,” Urbom
reasoned, as if the colonial reality were in the past. “Anguish about
yesterday does not alone make wise answers for tomorrow.”55
Urbom spoke as if the Indigenous elders who had for two weeks stood
before the judge sharing their stories had walked out of a history book.
Nevertheless, the defendants had gotten what they came for: admission that
Indigenous treaties were rooted in international law. The next step was to
take the struggle to the world.
Indigenous nationhood is often misunderstood as an exclusive project—
the sole aspiration of just Indigenous peoples—or as confined within
narrow definitions of the nation-state. This is similar to the way the “Indian
problem” is treated as solely an Indian problem. According to the
International Indian Treaty Council that first met at the Standing Rock
Indian Reservation in 1974 and drafted the “Declaration of Continuing
Independence,” the problem was not Indigenous peoples; the problem was,
and always has been, imperialism. The aspiration for nationhood set the
Treaty Council apart from other Red Power movements that sought the
freedom associated with nation-states. It looked instead to the global South,

to the darker nations. The Treaty Council made common cause with Third
World movements (including within the US) to gain recognition for
Indigenous peoples at the United Nations. In response to more than a
decade of Red Power protests beginning in the 1960s, in the 1970s
President Nixon authorized Indian self-determination as domestic policy,
thus ending termination and granting more powers to tribal councils to
manage their own affairs and increasing “nation-to-nation” relations. But
the Treaty Council had bigger dreams.
In its early days the Treaty Council faced several obstacles. The first was
the lack of media publicity in the United States. While they maintained
strong connections with grassroots communities (their base) and some tribal
councils, the broader public was largely unaware of their important work.
Second, according to its “Declaration,” the Treaty Council was a national
liberation organization that desired full representation at the UN. The
Indigenous nations the Treaty Council represented, however, were not
recognized as independent sovereign states by the world community—a
prerequisite for entry into the UN. Still, the Treaty Council filed for
nongovernmental organization (NGO) status with the UN Economic and
Social Council, gaining consultative status in 1977. To some, the
channeling of energy into an NGO—arguably a non-revolutionary and nonsovereign entity—seemed in contradiction to their larger project.56 A 1977
Treaty Council communiqué titled “Decolonization, Liberation and the
International Community” offered their explaination of the NGO strategy:
“Decolonization, or a better term, liberation, is a slow, painstaking process.
What the colonialists accomplished over the past four centuries cannot be
overcome easily.”57
The Treaty Council also faced two obstacles in seeking international
recognition. First, the United States simply could not tolerate Indigenous
rights, let alone sovereign Indigenous nations, and it did everything in its
power to thwart their efforts. Second, the very internal mechanisms of the
UN prevented the delivery of full Indigenous sovereignty that was on par
with that of states. The formal process of decolonization, outlined in UN
decolonization charters, didn’t account for, nor did it recognize, Indigenous
peoples as potential nations. Typically, colonized nations gained their
independence through a combination of armed struggle and international
recognition. After Wounded Knee, AIM had eschewed the former in favor
of the latter, but international legal frameworks ultimately proved

inadequate. Allies elsewhere in the world had to be sought and maintained.
Only by winning world opinion could international recognition be achieved.
Immediately following the 1974 Treaty Council meeting, two offices
were set up—one in San Francisco and the other across the street from the
UN in New York City. The slow process of gaining international
recognition began. A Treaty Council delegation attended the International
Conference of Solidarity with the Independence of Puerto Rico in Havana
at the invitation of the Cuban government, where the Treaty Council was
recognized alongside seventy-six other nations and fourteen liberation
movements from around the world. Thus began a close collaboration with
Third World independence movements and Socialist countries. Soon Treaty
Council delegations visited the Eastern bloc and nations of the global South
in North Africa, South America, and the Middle East in an effort to garner
support. At their second gathering in the Yankton Reservation in June 1976,
the Treaty Council drafted a “Red Paper,” condemning the United States for
ongoing practices of genocide and imperialist intervention across the globe.
The Treaty Council directed international delegations to make friendly
relations with other countries and to ask them to recognize the 1868 Fort
Laramie.58
The delegations were well received by their hosts, especially in the
Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries, who were eager not only to
support Indigenous causes but also to point out the hypocrisy of US
“humanitarian” intervention abroad while it denied freedom to its own
people. During a 1977 visit to the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and
West Germany, Treaty Council representatives—Allene Goddard, Bill
Means, Greg Zephier, and Bill Wahpepah—met with Iraqi, Algerian, and
Namibian delegations. “I think because we got to know our brothers from
the south better on these tours, we understand more than before that we are
one people,” observed Wahpepah.59 Sherry Means, the fifteen-year-old
daughter of Russell Means, found the tour of the Eastern bloc eye-opening.
In contrast to the United States’ treatment of Indigenous peoples, “these
countries believe strongly in human rights,” she reported.60 The warm
reception by Eastern bloc countries in Europe was in part due to a prolific
Indian hobbyist culture. Under Socialist regimes such as the German
Democratic Republic (or East Germany), Indian hobbyist clubs received
state funding and played a significant role in providing transnational
solidarity to American Indian causes. Much like the European Socialist

regimes supported Black revolutionaries like Angela Davis, who was
imprisoned by the state of California and later released, Eastern bloc
countries provided genuine transnational solidarity to American Indian
struggles.61 More importantly, where Indigenous peoples found a hostile
audience in North America, they found a welcoming one abroad, especially
among Socialist nations and other colonized peoples. The “red nations” of
Europe and Asia now provided a platform of support for the Red nations of
North America.
Treaty Council delegations were frequent, and the relationships they
fostered were lasting and deep. For example, in 1979 when the Iranian
Revolution erupted, revolutionary students took hostage fifty-two US
diplomats and citizens, holding them at the US embassy for more than a
year. By taking US hostages, revolutionary students hoped to prevent the
US-backed dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, from returning to
power. Nearly forgotten, however, is the Treaty Council’s role in helping to
peacefully end the situation, as well as the mail exchange program they ran
for the US hostages. According to Russell Means, after the 1977 Geneva
conference AIM’s ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) gave
the Treaty Council “some credibility in that part of the world.” Since Means
was barred from leaving the United States as part of the terms of his parole,
John Thomas, a Dakota AIM member and Means’s second in command
—“a witty, lovable guy who gets along with everybody”—served as a
“roving ambassador” in Lebanon, Iran, and Egypt. The Treaty Council sent
Thomas to Tehran after the Revolutionary Guards took over the US
embassy “to see what he could do.” Ultimately, the students only allowed
packages and mail to be delivered in person by an AIM member.62
In one instance, Thomas arrived at the embassy with a bag of 150 letters.
Iranian students welcomed him, and he was allowed to see one hostage,
Army Sergeant Joseph Subic Jr. “You have our deepest sympathy. Our
people [American Indians] have been held in bondage for 150 years by the
US government,” Thomas told the sergeant.
“I know. Thank you for coming,” Subic answered.63 For their efforts Bill
Means, John Thomas, and the Treaty Council received a formal “thank
you” from the UN secretary general, commending the mail exchange for
helping in “the negotiation of a peaceful settlement.”64 Although the mail
exchange didn’t receive widespread publicity, the humanitarian diplomatic
mission showed that American Indians were at odds with the US

government and its colonial policies, but not with US citizens in general.
That it was authorized to carry out such a unique humanitarian mission also
revealed the level of trust the Treaty Council had developed with the UN,
Third World regimes, and national liberation organizations.
While the Treaty Council brought the struggle of Turtle Island to the
world, the world also came to Turtle Island. International delegations were
often guests of Indigenous nations in the United States, and Palestinian and
Indigenous solidarity was particularly strong and visible. Both Palestinians
and American Indians were unrecognized nations, stateless peoples, who
were fighting settler-colonial regimes occupying their lands. At nearly
every major Treaty Council event, Palestinians were in attendance. And it
wasn’t just political meetings. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn recalls their presence at
powwows in the 1970s and 1980s. “Groups of thirty, forty, fifty Palestinians
with their guns, with their uniforms, came after the prayers in the morning,
after and before the grand entry, and when people could go to breakfast and
[were] having coffee and getting organized, the Palestinians were out on
that tarmac doing military maneuvers,” she recalls. “They were invited
there by our tribes.”65
While American Indians sometimes referred to themselves as the
Palestinians of North America, in the sense that they had been invaded and
were being replaced by a foreign occupying power, not all Palestinians saw
themselves as American Indians. To some, American Indians were a fait
accompli—a lesson to Palestinians that they could end up stateless,
unrecognized, in exile, or permanently placed on reservations if they did not
overturn occupation. In the 1980s, when asked how he felt about the
comparison, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat responded, “This is one part of
our struggle—to ensure that we do not suffer the same fate of the American
Indians at the hands of the Yankees.”66 His implication was not that
American Indians were beneath Palestinians. But Palestine and Turtle
Island have different histories and are experiencing different stages of
settler colonialism. From 1516 to 1918, Palestine was part of the Ottoman
Empire. In 1920 it was placed under British authority as part of the League
of Nations mandate system that allowed states (primarily European ones) to
administer overseas territory. In 1948 Israel became a “Jewish homeland,”
and their expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians (around 85 percent of
the Arab population) from their homes became known as the Nakba—the
“catastrophe.” Israel soon attacked surrounding Arab states, leading to three

major wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973, resulting in the Israeli occupation of
Eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights.
In other words, Palestinians were still engaged in direct combat with Israeli
settlers at this time, much in the same way the Oceti Sakowin had fought to
repel settler invasion a century earlier. Like the tens of thousands of Oceti
Sakowin who were displaced by military occupation, flooding, and
industrial development, today there are around 6 million Palestinian
refugees who do not have the right of return to their homelands.
Palestine, with a landmass the size of New Jersey—smaller than some
Indian reservations—was like a microcosm of nineteenth-century settler
colonialism in North America. So, in some ways Arafat was correct:
Indigenous peoples of North America were the evidence of the advanced
stages of settler colonialism, today making up less than 1 percent of the
total population and possessing less than 3 percent of their original land. Yet
Palestinians had something American Indians didn’t have in the nineteenth
century: access to the UN, an international body founded in 1945—partly to
end colonialism—where they could attempt to change world opinion. At the
height of their physical elimination and removal, American Indians didn’t
have an international institution to which they could bring their grievances.
They couldn’t even enlist the aid of US citizens, who were benefiting from
and actively participating in their elimination.
Not all American Indian activists supported this close relationship with
Palestine. A common trope used to explain the existence of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas, since the Bible made no mention of them, was that
they were a lost tribe of Israel. Many American Indians, having been
indoctrinated into Christianity, accepted as a matter of biblical doctrine the
legitimacy of the state of Israel as a “Jewish homeland,” much in the same
manner the United States has commonly called itself a “Christian nation.”
Vine Deloria Jr. stands out during this time as a promoter of this view of
Zionism—an ideology, on par with Manifest Destiny, that calls for the
reestablishment and the protection of a Jewish nation, Israel. In his 1974
book Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties, Deloria predicted the rise of the
international Indigenous movement, but he argued that full Indigenous
sovereignty and autonomy wouldn’t radically threaten the political and
territorial sovereignty of the United States. Israel and Zionism, he asserted,
were prime examples of how traditional, historical claims to specific
territory as the sovereign heritage of a particular people could become

legitimate. “If the US is capable of recognizing Jewish rights to sovereign
land in Israel, it must be capable of acknowledging a similar right for
American Indians in the US.”67 The opposite was true, however, and
Deloria’s views were entirely out of step with radical Indigenous
internationalism at the time. Palestinian American scholar Steven Salaita
argues that the Israeli Zionist project was not so much a departure from US
Manifest Destiny as it was an extension of it. The dog (the US) wags its tail
(Israel)—not the other way around. Both were different versions of what he
calls a “holy land in transit”—the usage of biblical references and imperial
ideologies to map a European “old world” onto a Native “new world” of
Turtle Island and Palestine, and to erase the histories and presence of both
native peoples.68
Tellingly, Israel (like the US at this time) sided with the white
supremacist South African apartheid regime when the rest of the world
condemned it. Israel also adopted settler-colonial tactics similar to those of
the United States in order to expel, remove, contain, and ultimately
eliminate Palestinians; at the same time, the United States has politically,
economically, and culturally backed the Israeli occupation of Palestine,
effectively making the colonization project an extension of US domestic
and foreign policy and intervention in the Middle East. In this way, each
struggle was bound to the other. And this view wasn’t unique to American
Indians. Scholar Alex Lubin, for instance, describes the interconnection of
global struggles as “geographies of liberation.” The Black Panther Party’s
concept of “intercommunalism,” which resembled radical Indigenous
internationalism at the time, also moved away from efforts to win equality
within the nation-state. In this way, Lubin argues, these disparate struggles
all sought to imagine a world that was fundamentally different—one absent
of class, race, national, and colonial hierarchies.69
In its publication Oyate Wicaho (voice of the people), Dakota AIM
frequently published interviews, short stories, poetry, and reports from
Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation, even referring to Palestinians as
“relatives.” Indigenous internationalism, as Means spelled out in his 1974
speech at the first Treaty Council meeting, was bound to the struggles of
those fighting for the emancipation of their lands. And in the end, these
alliances with the global South and national liberation organizations proved
the most productive for the Treaty Council. When the world turned its back
on AIM after Wounded Knee, the world’s colonized reached out and helped

launch Indigenous peoples’ rights to the international level. The very notion
that the Treaty Council met with Third World and Socialist regimes
offended even some of their Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies,
especially those engaged in the UN campaigns. Other organizations, such as
the World Council of Indigenous Peoples and the Indian Law Resource
Center, chose to ally themselves with the North Atlantic states (the
traditional imperial powers) and take money from their own colonial
governments—both moves that AIM and the Treaty Council vehemently
eschewed. But the alliances made sense, pragmatically and ideologically.
And there was also the issue of funding: to avoid being beholden to private
or government donors, the Treaty Council depended mostly on donations
from church groups to exert autonomy from settler states.
The Treaty Council also faced a greater challenge: there were no
appropriate working definitions of Indigenous peoples under international
law. Until then, the UN categorized Indigenous peoples as internal
“populations.” At the urging of Indigenous activists, “indigenous peoples”
was included as a category in the first UN Decade for Action to Combat
Racism and Racial Discrimination, which began in 1974. The
corresponding UN resolution also called out South African apartheid and
Israeli Zionism as forms of racism.70 For this reason, US presidents from
Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush boycotted both the first and second
iterations of the UN “Decade” program, spanning from 1974 to 1993.
The crucial event, however, was the 1977 International NGO Conference
on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in the Americas at the
UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, from September 20 to 23. The
Treaty Council initiated the conference and the NGO Sub-Committee on
Racism, Racial Discrimination, Apartheid, and Colonialism organized it. At
the invitation of the Treaty Council, more than one hundred Indigenous
representatives from across the hemisphere attended, including Indigenous
delegates from Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala,
Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, and the
United States. Representatives also joined from Australia, Cuba, France,
Iraq, Mongolia, Syria, and Yemen, among others. Notable NGOs and
international organizations in attendance included Amnesty International,
the World Alliance of YMCAs, and the Muslim World League.71
The conference was a monumental achievement and was covered widely
by the international press—unsurprisingly, the US press boycotted the

entire affair. In all-night sessions, the Indigenous leaders hammered out a
collective document, called the “Draft Declaration of Principles for the
Defense of the Indigenous Nations and Peoples of the Western
Hemisphere.” It contained thirteen principles, defining the parameters of
Indigenous nationhood under international law, the right to Indigenous
independence and autonomy, the upholding of treaties and other agreements
with colonizing nations, Indigenous legal and territorial jurisdiction over
their lands and members, a process to settle disputes with colonizing states,
rights to environmental protection, and the rights to define Indigenous
membership. The first principle urged that “Indigenous people shall be
accorded recognition as nations” if they possess the requirements of
nationhood under international law—namely, a permanent population, a
defined territory, a government, and the ability to enter into relations with
other states. The Oceti Sakowin, by this point, had long since checked all
the boxes for nationhood status.72 These points built upon the Twenty
Points of the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties that demanded the return to
Indigenous treaty relations—that is, international relations—with the
United States. The Indigenous movement came full circle. Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz argues that the draft declaration may be “the fundamental
political document of the international Indigenous movement.”73 But it
would not be until four decades later, in 2007, that the UN adopted the
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.74
In 1987, under mandate from the UN, Cuban special rapporteur Miguel
Alfonso Martínez led a ten-year investigation into the status of the treaties
and agreements. He concluded that colonial powers like the United States,
by virtue of treaties such as the 1868 Treaty, have unjustly claimed
authority over Indigenous nations and lands. Martínez calls this the
“domestication” process, whereby Indigenous nations were “removed from
the sphere of international law and placed squarely under the exclusive
competence and internal jurisdiction” of settler states.75 In spite of
continued US aggression toward Indigenous nations, Martínez argues that
treaty rights have ongoing effective status under both domestic and
international law. Verifying his claim, some legal decisions have, in fact,
come down on the side of the Oceti Sakowin.
In 1980, the US Supreme Court confirmed the Oceti Sakowin’s claim
that the Black Hills had indeed been stolen. “A more ripe and rank case of
dishonorable dealing will never, in all probability, be found in our history,”

the ruling stated.76 As a result, the court awarded a $106 million settlement.
The Oceti Sakowin responded nearly unanimously under a popular slogan:
“The Black Hills are not for sale!” In the spirit of Standing Rock and the
Treaty Council’s original 1974 contention, they considered a full restoration
of the illegally taken lands to be the only just solution. And this gets at the
heart of the matter. The Oceti Sakowin’s struggle for its land is not about
getting reparations, apologies, or reconciliation. It is about justice and
ending the settler-colonial system. Still, many settlers cannot imagine the
return of lands—or, for that matter, future peaceful coexistence of the more
than 500 distinct Indigenous nations. While many will agree that
colonialism is wrong, they cannot imagine a future without it.
During a 1999 civil rights commission hearing in Rapid City, South
Dakota, renowned Lakota environmentalist Charmaine White Face
reflected upon the fact that when the US Supreme Court issued its ruling on
the 1868 Treaty, many of South Dakota’s “non-Indian” people feared losing
their land. “Are they remembering the fashion in which many of their
ancestors forced the loss of the homes and livelihoods of Lakota people and
think the same will happen to them, or are they afraid that the federal
government will turn on them also as it has turned on Lakota people?” she
asked.77
White Face was identifying the implicit admission from non-Natives that
indeed this land was stolen by force and coercion. This also implies a limit
to the project of settler justice, which can extract an admission of
wrongdoing, but cannot reorder the world or redistribute wealth, especially
land, back to its rightful owners. Non-Natives believe that somehow
Indigenous peoples will do to settlers what they did to them. But the
opposite is true. The example of the Black Hills Alliance in the previous
chapter demonstrates that when Indigenous and poor settlers organize
around treaty rights, they can beat multinational energy corporations and
take control of their lives. The same happened during the 2013 protests to
stop the Keystone XL Pipeline and the 2016 efforts at Standing Rock to
defeat the Dakota Access Pipeline. Although both projects remain active, a
diversity of forces, from environmentalist groups, to farmers and ranchers,
to labor unions—what Zoltán Grossman calls “unlikely alliances”—have
put up significant obstacles.78
Renowned Pawnee jurist Walter Echo-Hawk sees contemporary Native
nations as “simply coasting under the Indian Self-Determination Policy

initiated by President Nixon in 1970,” suggesting that they have failed to
adequately address “indigenous conditions, problems, or rights in over
thirty-five years.”79 But the much-lauded accomplishment of the 2007
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)
is testament to Indigenous internationalism’s commitment to seeking selfdetermination beyond nation-state solutions. The Non-Aligned Movement,
the Eastern bloc, and the Soviet Union provided a check to Western
aggression. The decline of each hindered the work of the radical Indigenous
internationalist movement, as they lost allies at the UN. Where visions of
Indigenous freedom had eclipsed the confines of the imperial nation-state,
they were now forced once again to seek recognition and rights from the
colonizer. Even though the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and
Australia voted against UNDRIP’s passage, all three states have reversed
their decisions—a possibility because of the “non-binding” aspect of UN
declarations. More troubling, however, was what accompanied the United
States’ 2010 decision to reverse its vote against UNDRIP—an official
apology resolution as part of the 2010 Defense Appropriations Act.
In 2009, Congress approved the largest and most expansive defense
appropriations bill in world history. Defense expenditures totaled $683.7
billion for fiscal year 2010. This exorbitant sum has served as a benchmark
that continues to justify the US-led “war on terror,” which has extended
covert military actions abroad and increased national security and
surveillance programs domestically. Buried in the 2010 Department of
Defense Appropriations Act, which Obama signed into law in 2010, is an
official “Apology to Native Peoples of the United States”80—what has been
called “the world’s quietest apology.”81 More importantly, the “Apology”
stipulated, “Nothing in this section (1) authorizes or supports any claim
against the United States; or (2) serves as a settlement of any claim against
the United States.”82 Within a single bill, billions of dollars were devoted to
policing the world, but not a cent went toward upholding the original
treaties, the original promises, made with North America’s first nations.
In a 2012 report, The Situation of Indigenous Peoples in the United
States of America, the UN special rapporteur on Indigenous people, James
Anaya, discusses the general lack of awareness of the 2010 “Apology”
resolution. Moreover, Anaya links the lack of concrete action on
outstanding Indigenous land claims to devastating social realities such as
poverty, domestic and family violence, youth suicide, and lack of education

or adequate healthcare. Chief among the Oceti Sakowin’s outstanding
claims is the Black Hills, of which the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty is the
“emblematic” and “visible reminder of their loss.”83
The theft of Indigenous lands and the subdual of Indigenous nations is an
essential part of global imperialism. Recognizing this, the international
Indigenous movement continues its work today (though often quietly). This
is necessary because the Indian Wars have never truly ended. The Treaty
Council saw its sacred duty as ending imperialism abroad by ending it at
home, and at Standing Rock in 2016, this spirit of internationalism was
visible once again as a parade of Indigenous nations from around the world
showed up in solidarity.

A hand-drawn map of Oceti Sakowin Camp given to new camp arrivals. Map by author.

7

Liberation
At Greasy Grass on June 25, 1876, Lakotas, Cheyennes, and Arapahos blew
out the birthday candles a week before the United States celebrated its one
hundred years of “liberty.” The Plains Indigenous alliance annihilated
Custer and 268 of his men. Custer had launched the surprise attack on the
large encampment to kill Indians and force them back onto reservations, in
a perfect expression of the settler state’s death culture. The Indigenous
encampment was, in contrast, a life culture, celebrating the annual renewal
of life with a sun dance—a humble ceremony in which dancers sacrifice
their bodies by fasting without food or water for four days in order for their
nation and the world to live. Indigenous peoples from reservations had
slipped away to join their relatives at the camp and enjoy a brief taste of
freedom. US history books and popular culture typically depict the battle as
“Custer’s Last Stand.” “The very earth seemed to grow Indians,” Colonel
Marcus Reno later reported, “running toward me in swarms, and from all
directions.” Put simply, they were surrounded.
In their book The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study,
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney draw from Michael Parenti’s antiimperialist study of Hollywood films, which always portray colonization
“upside down”: invasion looks like self-defense, and the settlers, hiding in
their militarized forts, are the “real” victims of an encircling native
aggression. Such a reversal of roles, in which aggressor becomes victim, is
a make-believe national narrative that began when settlers first invaded
Indigenous lands in North America and repeats itself every time the United
States invades or bombs another country in its overseas imperial project.
Yet, Moten and Harney argue, it is simultaneously very much true that the
settler is, in a way, surrounded and outnumbered.1 While Indigenous
peoples have been rendered a statistical minority within their own

homelands, the power of Indigenous lifeways and resistance has always
surrounded settlers in North America, along with their tenuous claims to
land ownership. The perpetual threat of Indigenous nations is that they are a
reminder of the settler’s own precarious claims to land and belonging.
Ancestors of Indigenous resistance didn’t merely fight against settler
colonialism; they fought for Indigenous life and just relations with human
and nonhuman relatives, and with the earth. When Custer and his men
descended on the sun dance at Greasy Grass, the ancestors were dancing, as
they have since time immemorial, to make the tree of life in Black Elk’s
vision bloom, and to ensure the rebirth of their people and the earth. In
2016, as construction of the Black Snake—the Dakota Access pipeline—
began, they danced again, this time on the shores at Oceti Sakowin Camp
and at Sacred Stone to protect Mni Sose (the Missouri River) and Unci
Maka (Grandmother Earth). Indigenous resistance is not a one-time event.
It continually asks: What proliferates in the absence of empire? Thus, it
defines freedom not as the absence of settler colonialism, but as the
amplified presence of Indigenous life and just relations with human and
nonhuman relatives, and with the earth. To invoke the Kahnawà:ke
Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson, the refusal to accept the impossible
condition of banishment and disappearance from one’s homelands, and
outright dispossession, structures the Indigenous political practice of return,
restoration, and reclamation of belonging and place.2
Ancestors also danced during the initial planning stage of the Pick-Sloan
dams on the Missouri River, before their sun dance grounds were flooded.
Indian reservations and Indigenous life were entirely absent from the
original Army Corps maps and plans. When the Army Corps flooded our
homelands and agency headquarters twice, our nation, the Lower Brule
Sioux Tribe, was forced to imagine how to reconstruct itself after flooding
and relocation, and how to do so in a way that would reflect our values. We
drew, and redrew, the layout of our community. New roads and water
pipelines had to be planned and constructed. Entire cemeteries—our dead
ancestors—had to be disinterred and relocated along with our living
ancestors to higher ground. Planners ultimately chose a half-moon-shaped
community structure, a symbolic gesture to traditional camp arrangements
with an open community center surrounded by tipi lodges whose entrances
opened east to the rising sun. In the center of the newly planned Lower
Brule community was a school, emphasizing the importance placed on

education. Fanning out from there were municipal and administration
buildings, churches, a juvenile detention facility, and several outer rows of
housing. While imprisonment and Christianity were foreign institutions to
traditional Oceti Sakowin societies, the modern relocated community made
and imagined space for youth incarceration and churches.
Like the Army Corps (and often working alongside them), the planners
of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) imagined building a pipeline in a
world where Native people did not exist. And they had to imagine us out of
existence to justify trespassing on Indigenous territory and protected treaty
lands. When the pipeline risked interfering with white residential areas in
Bismarck, North Dakota, it was rerouted such that the danger of water
contamination was outsourced to the downriver Native nation of Standing
Rock. When DAPL sought protection of its private property and
investments—the rights of way across the land—police and private security
stepped in on their behalf, imagining Indigenous peoples as the threat.
These were modern-day settlers surrounded by an Indigenous-led uprising.
DAPL’s trespass through unceded treaty territory and the militarized
crackdown on Water Protectors was made to look like self-defense—settlers
in the fort, surrounded by hostile natives.
Police, military, and private security set up their own bases and planned
their own theater of operations to wage low-level warfare against the prayer
camps. In emails published by the MuckRock watchdog website, Toby
Schweitzer, a helicopter contractor from Bakken Western, a quick-response
oil spill and environmental cleanup company operating out of Mandan,
North Dakota, sent an email on September 14, 2016, with the subject line
“Israeli Crowd Control Method” to North Dakota probation officers
working the #NoDAPL protests. “U tube [sic] crowd control. Have a great
day!” Schweitzer wrote to the police officers. In the email, sent prior to the
major police attacks and raids that would later make national headline
news, he suggested the cops policing pipeline protest invest in “skunk
spray”—an Israeli chemical weapon invented to degrade and humiliate
Palestinians by dousing them in a nauseating, putrid biomedical odor that
takes days to remove. “Forget the wall,” he wrote. “Just put sprayers all
along the southern border with sensors. Might have saved lots of store
fronts in Baltimore and Ferguson. The US needs to get some of this for the
looters in any out of control demonstrations. Israelis crowd control method.
NOW WE ARE TALKING. BRILLIANT. Skunk spray!”3 Such comments

add insult to injury for Palestinians defending their homes against
demolition or protesting the killing of loved ones.
In other emails, officers shared a Federal Emergency Management
Agency “Field Force Operations” manual, which guided police officers in
correct “crowd control” methods, “pain compliance” techniques, and
application of “riot control agents,” including chemical weapons and
projectiles such as rubber bullets and beanbag rounds. These “non-lethal”
weapons were deployed against unarmed protestors with ritualistic brutality,
taking two individuals’ eyesight and one woman’s arm, while wounding
and traumatizing countless others. The connections were clear: local law
enforcement and private security imagined themselves participating in a
global counterinsurgency against civilian populations that extended from
Palestine to Baltimore, Ferguson, the US–Mexico border, and now Standing
Rock. The war was against Black life, Palestinian life, migrant life, and
Native life.
The tactics employed by TigerSwan, the murky mercenary security
contractor hired by DAPL, were also confirmation that this was a global
war. The security company had cut its teeth in the United States’ neverending “war on terror,” in which it was deployed to run counterinsurgency
operations against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. TigerSwan now
applied the same techniques to Water Protectors. The Intercept reports that
security personnel frequently referred to Water Protectors as “terrorists,”
planned prayer actions as “attacks,” and the camps as a “battlefield.” They
also tracked the presence of Water Protectors of Middle Eastern descent,
noting specifically the presence of Palestinians in the camps. TigerSwan
went so far as to describe the Indigenous uprising as a “jihadist insurgency.”
When TigerSwan briefed local law enforcement on the camp activities, they
frequently referenced aerial photography, which they used to monitor the
growth and movement of the camps. In one situation report, an image of a
gorilla is superimposed atop the camp. This was Harambe, the gorilla killed
at the Cincinnati Zoo when a Black child fell into his cage. On one hand,
white supremacists have used the killing of Harambe to mock Black people
online, charging that the gorilla had to be killed because the Black parents
are careless. On the other, the comparison of Black people to monkeys and
gorillas is a well-established racist trope. Now, TigerSwan was evoking this
anti-Black history to racialize, mock, and degrade Water Protectors with
tropes of primitivism. To DAPL and law enforcement, the camps were a

place of death, a place to be destroyed, a place that threatened to expose the
illegitimacy of settlement.
In the orientation pamphlet for new camp arrivals at the #NoDAPL camp
was a hand-drawn map of the site. Roads had been named for Indigenous
revolutionary heroes, such as Red Cloud and the Red Warrior Society.
Indigenous nations had set up their own camps on site, and their locations
were also shown. The map indicated where to find camp security, who were
tasked, in part, with keeping out drugs and alcohol; it also showed where to
get food, medical care, and camp supplies. This reflected the values of the
new community: that Indigenous peoples not merely survive, but thrive.
#NoDAPL offered a brief vision of what a future premised on Indigenous
justice would look like. For all its faults, there is something to be learned
from the treaty camps at the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball
Rivers. Free food, free education, free health care, free legal aid, a strong
sense of community, safety, and security were guaranteed to all. Most
reservations in the United States don’t have access to these services, nor do
most poor people. Yet, in the absence of empire, people came together to
help each other, to care for one another. The #NoDAPL camps were
designed according to need, not profit. (There were no prisons or armed
bodies of the state.) That’s what separated them from the world of cops,
settlers, and oil companies that surrounded them. Capitalism is not merely
an economic system, but also a social system. And it was here abundantly
evident that Indigenous social systems offered a radically different way of
relating to other people and the world.
Drawing from the Black radical tradition, Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls the
creation of this kind of world a form of “abolition geography” that “starts
from the homely premise that freedom is a place.”4 Indeed, Indigenous
freedom was, and is, a place; and for a moment, it took shape in the form of
the #NoDAPL camps. The #NoDAPL camps didn’t just imagine a future
without settler colonialism and the oppressive institution of the state, but
created that future in the here and now. They were a resurgent geography
that reconnected Indigenous peoples with the land. Unlike the cynical and
exclusive world of the settler, who had removed, confined, erased, and
dispossessed Indigenous peoples from place, this place capaciously
welcomed the excluded, while also centering the core of an Indigenous
lifeworld—relationality. At its center was the resurgence and reunification
of the Oceti Sakowin. Much like the First Palestinian Intifada, anti-colonial

resistance began by de-linking the community from the settler state. From
1987 to 1993, Palestinians built alternative economies, popular education
models, healthcare services, and women’s committees. Palestinian women
also used the revolution underway to challenge heteropatriarchy, which was
as anathema to Palestinian liberation from Israeli occupation.5 During the
#NoDAPL camps, women, LGBTQ, and Two-Spirit activists challenged
settler colonialism, and did so according to their own customs, calling on
cis Indigenous men to recognize that heteropatriarchy was just as untenable
as the US occupation, or as the destruction of land and water.
Beyond the Dakota Access Pipeline, a growing international movement
is fighting the expanding network of pipelines across North America. The
Kinder Morgan, Keystone XL, Enbridge Line 9, Bayou Bridge, and
TransCanada Energy East, among a whole host of others, connect
Indigenous nations and frontline communities. The appearance of each new
flashpoint of struggle indicates a growing anti-colonial resistance, led by
Indigenous peoples against settler colonialism and extractive capitalism.
New pipelines are creeping across the continent like a spiderweb, with
frightening speed, but in the process, they are also connecting and inciting
to action disparate communities of the exploited and dispossessed. Each
pipeline exists in relation to other pipelines, and while DAPL technically
only extends from North Dakota to Illinois, it is fundamentally a
transnational project, interlinking with other pipelines and infrastructure to
ship oil to a global market, crossing the boundaries of settler states and
trespassing through Indigenous territory.6
A vast array of solidarity networks supported the #NoDAPL struggle.
Black Lives Matter, Palestinian justice organizations, religious groups,
military veterans, and many more from other social locations and
movements galvanized support for the Indigenous-led resistance from far
beyond the physical geography of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
#NoDAPL was reminiscent of other allied struggles that have enriched the
Indigenous struggles in the past, including the International Indian Treaty
Council and Indigenous internationalist movements of the twentieth
century. Countering settler colonialism’s own physical infrastructure—trade
routes, railroads, dams, and oil pipelines—is the infrastructure of
Indigenous resistance, its ideas and practices of solidarity. The resistance
camps may have been temporary, but the struggle for Native liberation
continues, and the fort is falling.

Given that the western frontier of US expansion closed in 1890 (the
nineteenth-century Indian Wars fought and won), Indian citizenship was
imposed in 1924, a formal apology was issued in 2010, the tribal “SelfDetermination Era” was inaugurated by Nixon in 1970, past wrongs were
“settled” under the recent Cobell lawsuit, and “nation-to-nation” rhetoric
and policies increased under Obama (along with the placement of
Indigenous leaders in key roles within his administration), why was there
the need to create a new movement?
One way of answering this question is to look to the movement marching
under the banner of “Black Lives Matter.” Why did it arise under the
Obama administration? Anti-Black police violence didn’t profoundly
increase under Obama’s presidency, but it did not dramatically decrease
either. Nevertheless, Obama’s presidency brought into sharp focus the limits
of racial inclusion under the rule of liberalism and capitalism. Consider the
2015 police murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Freddie Gray was killed
by Black police officers, and neither a Black district attorney, a Black
mayor, nor a Black president could save his life. No matter who’s in charge,
as Keenga-Yamahtta Taylor points out, the current political system cannot
save Black lives.7 The same could be said for Indigenous peoples and the
warming planet. Obama’s 2010 “new energy security plan”—greatly
enhanced under Trump in 2017—incentivized and dramatically increased
domestic oil and gas production, opening up previously protected federal
lands managed by the Department of the Interior. Under capitalism, neither
Democrat nor Republican can save Indigenous lands or Black and
Indigenous lives. The continuation of state-sanctioned racial terror against
Black and Native people, from police violence to energy development, from
one administration to the next demonstrates only radical change in the form
of decolonization, the repatriation of stolen lands and stolen lives, can undo
centuries of settler colonialism.
The continuing legacy of the Pick-Sloan dams also thwarts the
possibility of a liveable future for the Oceti Sakowin and the millions of
people who depend the Missouri River for life. The dams personify settler
colonialism—their concrete and rolled earth endowed with the will to
disrupt, flood, dispossess, remove, and ultimately eliminate Native society.
The Dakota Access Pipeline echoed this process. The full force of the
settler state—politicians, police, private security, banks, and private
companies—carried out the will of Energy Transfer Partners, the

corporation building the $3.7 billion pipeline that would tunnel under the
Missouri River twice, the Mississippi River once, and cross four states
(South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois). Today, their tools are
more sophisticated: assault rifles, arrest warrants, rural county jails,
felonies, misdemeanors, body armor, armed drones, tear gas, mace, armored
Humvees, the National Guard and state patrol, Black Hawk helicopters,
Caterpillar earthmovers, and media censorship. But the Water Protectors
draw from the history of past Water Protectors who fought to protect the
same relative, Mni Sose. While corporations take on legal personhood
under current US law, Water Protectors personify water and enact kinship to
the water, the river, enforcing a legal order of their own. If the water, a
relative, is not protected, then the river is not free, and neither are its
people.
Mni Wiconi, as much as it reaches into the past, is a future-oriented
project. It forces some to confront their own unbe-longing to the land and
the river. How can settler society, which possesses no fundamental ethical
relationship to the land or its original people, imagine a future premised on
justice? There is no simple answer. But whatever the answer may be,
Indigenous peoples must lead the way. Our history and long traditions of
Indigenous resistance provide possibilities for futures premised on justice.
After all, Indigenous resistance is animated by our ancestors’ refusal to be
forgotten, and it is our resolute refusal to forget our ancestors and our
history that animates our visions for liberation. Indigenous revolutionaries
are the ancestors from the before and before and the already forthcoming.
Perhaps the answers lie within the kinship relations between Indigenous
and non-Indigenous and the lands we both inhabit. There is a capaciousness
to Indigenous kinship that goes beyond the human and that fundamentally
differs from the heteronuclear family or biological family. “Making kin is to
make people into familiars in order to relate,” writes Dakota scholar Kim
TallBear. “This seems fundamentally different from negotiating relations
between those who are seen as different—between ‘sovereigns’ or
‘nations’—especially when one of those nations is a militarized and white
supremacist empire.”8
The Water protectors also ask us: What does water want from us? What
does the earth want from us? Mni Wiconi—water is life—exists outside the
logic of capitalism. Whereas past revolutionary struggles have strived for
the emancipation of labor from capital, we are challenged not just to

imagine, but to demand the emancipation of earth from capital. For the
earth to live, capitalism must die.
Hecetu welo!

Introduction
I did not know James Baldwin the essayist before my rst year of
college. I knew only the James Baldwin of novels and short stories
and plays, a trusted man who gave me, with his Harlem and his
Harlem people, the kind of world I knew so well from growing up
in my Washington, D.C. They were all one family, the people in
Harlem and the people in Washington, Baldwin told me in that
way of all grand and eloquent writers who speak the eternal and
universal by telling us, word by hard-won word, of the minutiae of
the everyday: The church ladies who put heart and soul into every
church service as if to let their god know how worthy they are to
step through the door into his heaven. The dust of poor folks’
apartments that forever hangs in the air as though to remind the
people of their station in life. The streets of a city where the
buildings Negroes live in never stand straight up but lean in
mourning every which way.
So I knew this Baldwin and, in that strange way of members of
the same family, he knew me. When I went o to college in late
August 1968, I took few books, anticipating the adequacy of the
library that awaited me at Holy Cross College. I packed only two
books of non ction, both bought in a used bookstore not long after
I was accepted to college. Both had never been read. The rst was
a ponderous 1950s tome on writing logical and well-reasoned
essays. I was never to read it in my time at Holy Cross, perhaps
because it was so inaccessible. (Seeing it on my dormitory room’s
bookshelf, Clarence Thomas, a month before his graduation from
Holy Cross in 1971, purchased the book from me for $5; I do not
recall what I paid for it.) And the second was Notes of a Native Son.
I was going o to a new life, a life of the mind and education
among white people, and I felt that since Baldwin’s ction had

taught me so much about black people, his essays might have a
similar e ect given where I was going.
I entered Holy Cross as a mathematics major, primarily because
I had done well in math in high school. I was extremely shy then,
and I had never had my vision tested and did not know enough
about anything to realize that my frequent inability to see the
blackboard could be solved with eyeglasses. I sat in the back of the
freshman calculus class run by a stando sh professor who spent
most of the period with his back to his students as he wrote on the
blackboard, and with all of that, I fell further and further behind as
the semester progressed.
I will go into English, I told myself in December, knowing how
much I loved to read and knowing that a calculus D was coming
and so there would be no life in mathematics. Before leaving for
Christmas vacation, I picked up Notes of a Native Son for the rst
time, perhaps understanding that now my life would be
increasingly one of essay writing. The rst thing James Baldwin
tells me in “Autobiographical Notes” is, “I was born in Harlem….”
A simple, unadorned statement, as if in saying it plainly the reader
would have a better sense of the importance of that fact. It was
Harlem, but because I was so familiar with the Baldwin of ction,
the Baldwin whose black people could be Washingtonians, he could
only have begun to connect in a better way if he had said, “I was
born in Washington, D.C….”
A good bit of that introductory essay deals with being a writer,
something that would not have much meaning for me for many
years: the necessity of delving into oneself to be able to tell the
truth about the world one writes about; the di culties of being a
Negro writer when “the Negro problem” is so widely written about;
the desire, at the end of the day, to be “a good writer.”
But within that short essay is a thirty-one-year-old, somewhat
worldly man (I did not get my rst passport until I was fty-four)
who is still grappling with having been born into a small and often
less than caring world, which was, for good or bad, a part of a
larger world that generally rejected him and his small world. I was

a Holy Cross student—often happy to be a student at “the Cross”—
but I knew every time I stepped out of my room in Beaven
dormitory that no part of that place in Worcester, Massachusetts,
had been made with me in mind. I felt that but did not yet have
very many words for it. Baldwin gave them to me. This is Baldwin,
with his “special attitude,” talking of Shakespeare and the
cathedral at Chartres and Rembrandt and the Empire State
Building and Bach: “These were not really my creations, they did
not contain my history; I might search in them in vain forever for
any re ection of myself. I was an interloper; this was not my
heritage.”
And so he continued throughout the rest of Notes, a gloriously
keen and sensitive mind, something I did not completely
appreciate at the time, something I’m sure he would smile about
now. I confess that I could not then grasp some of his more
complex thoughts, perhaps because I was merely too young and
the world had yet to take such a harsh hold on me. And other
thoughts of his I just dismissed, no doubt because I was, again, too
young and because I was developing a militant streak that sco ed
at notions not in line with my own developing ones. That
militancy came naturally with the murder of Martin Luther King
Jr. and the Vietnam War and with the new awareness that I was
black in a white world. The militant me asked, for example, why
would Baldwin write at times as if he were not black but some
observer, a guilty one, true, but still an observer. “Our
dehumanization of the Negro then,” he says to me in “Many
Thousands Gone,” “is indivisible from dehumanization of ourselves:
the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment
of his.” And later: “We (Americans in general, that) like to point to
Negroes and to most of their activities with a kind of tolerant
scorn….”
But with my focus on the constant use of words like “we” and
“our,” it was easy for eighteen-year-old me in those last days of
December 1968 to lose sight of so much of the truth and pain of
that and other statements in “Thousands.” People, I have learned,

have a way of taking root in one’s still-developing mind without
our knowing it, especially people, like Baldwin, who live in the
world of words. How else, then, to explain my every e ort to tell
in a novel as best I could the stories of slave masters, black and
white, and how slavery crushed their souls every morning they got
up from their beds and thanked their god for their dominion over
others. If I knew the importance of telling that, it was because
Baldwin and his kind had planted the idea long ago. (I give him so
much credit because he was in the minority of all the black writers
I was reading who understood the importance of giving white
people their due as full- edged human beings. Even before I knew
I would get into this writing thing, Baldwin told me this: You do
not have to fully humanize your black characters by dehumanizing
the white ones.)
Traveling with Baldwin through Notes’ “The Harlem Ghetto,”
“Journey to Atlanta,” and “Notes of a Native Son,” I was given a
grander portrait of the man I had known only through ction. His
ction certainly had an unprecedented and absolute life of its own,
and I might have tried to imagine the man I was dealing with, but
those essays a orded me something beyond the postage stamp–
sized pictures of him and the few sentences of biography that came
with my paperback editions of, say, Go Tell It on the Mountain or
Another Country. He would have been Baldwin had I never read
those essays, but he would not have been real enough to deign to
share a moment or two with me. The ction o ered a person of
enormous humanity. The essays o ered a man, a neighbor, or, yes,
an older brother.
I had gone through the Washington, D.C., riots after King’s
assassination, an explosion that took place some twenty- ve years
after the Harlem riots Baldwin describes in “Notes.” Di erent city,
di erent actors, but the same script as that used in the nationwide
riots of the 1910s, also a con agration that included Washington. I
was mainly on the periphery of matters that April 1968. (My poor
mother had enough to worry about; the last thing I wanted was to

add another thousand pounds to her burden and have her see her
college-bound child in jail.) And with a summer job and college
looming, I had not had time to assess my feelings or consider those
of my classmates or neighbors. The wonderful thing about writers
like Baldwin is the way we read them and come across passages
that are so arresting we become breathless and have to raise our
eyes from the page to keep from being spirited away. During those
few days in April, I had been out and about enough in my city to
sense something new and di erent about all the shouting and
window-breaking and looting people, something ancient and deep.
This is Baldwin explaining to me in words written twelve years
after the Harlem riots and thirteen years before the Washington
riots: “[S]omething heavy in their stance seemed to indicate that
they had all, incredibly, seen a common vision, and on each face
there seemed to be the same strange, bitter shadow.”
Time after time, he keeps doing this so that it becomes not
enough for the reader to just raise the eyes to nd breath again. In
“Equal in Paris,” there is the sad tale of Baldwin being jailed for
days during Christmastime in 1949 after being given a used hotel
sheet he did not know had been stolen. Yes. Days. Used sheet. One
does not understand the full meaning of “Kafkaesque” until this
tale has been absorbed. Baldwin does not say it outright, but what
becomes clear with his journey through a perversely blind justice
system is that France, for “all the wretched,” had not moved very
far from what the people were enduring before the French
Revolution.
It is all so utterly absurd (and this absurdity is another layer of
oppression) that it truly becomes humorous. And with that as well
is Baldwin’s realization that the people who run such a system are
rst cousins of those who run things in “my native land.” He
cannot escape them, even in a place called Paris, and he is better
for knowing this. “In some deep, black, stony, and liberating way,
my life, in my own eyes, began during that rst year in Paris….”

And so he continues on, page after page, o ering light and
understanding and a ruthless insistence not so much that he is
correct with his vision of matters, but that to ignore his side of
things is to see only a partial picture that will not lead to lasting
solutions. I can see this best now that I have reread Notes for this
essay and now that life has done things to me. Which is why his
book is to be treasured. In small ways, in large ways.
Of the Amsterdam Star-News, he notes in “The Harlem Ghetto”
that it “is Republican [no doubt the legacy of Abraham Lincoln
freeing the slaves with the belief that it would shorten the Civil
War], a political a liation that has led it into some strange
doubletalk….” I had to chuckle. He was writing of possibly gentler,
kinder Republicans, who were, in a matter of years, to grow into
even more vicious and uncaring political animals. I do not know if
Baldwin witnessed any of what happened when black
conservatives came out of the woodwork during Ronald Reagan’s
presidency. A collection of blacks who to this day have to defend
all the white racists in the various spokes of the Republican Party
wheel. Doubletalk.
And the entire essay “Journey to Atlanta” is a grand cautionary
story about black politicians and white radicals and liberals, who
with their own doubletalk seek to mask a paternalism that sees
black people as no more than children. As I read his words again, I
kept thinking of all the white liberals around Washington, D.C.,
who wrote racist comments in 2010 to area newspapers and blogs
after the black mayor (a rather reviled gure among many black
folks) was defeated by another black candidate, complaining that
“nigger” voters simply did not know what was good for them.
Baldwin—with his tale of his teenage brother David going South—
o ered his warning in 1948.
One of the wonders of coming back to Notes after such a long time
is how “current” Baldwin is. That might sound like a cliché, but in
so many instances in our lives we learn that some clichés are built

on things solid and familiar and timeless. “Journey to Atlanta” is
but one of a hundred examples in Notes. What also comes across,
again, is how optimistic James Baldwin was about himself, his
world, black people. Even when he describes the awfulness of
being black in America, he presents us with an optimism that is
sometimes like subtle background music, and sometimes like an
insistent drumbeat. But through it all, with each word—perhaps as
evidence of a man certain of his message—he never shouts.
—Edward P. Jones
June 29–July 5, 2012
Washington, D.C.

Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the following publications for permission
to reprint material that rst appeared in their pages: Commentary
for “Carmen Jones” (which appeared in the January 1955 issue as
“Life Straight in De Eye”), “The Harlem Ghetto” (February 1948),
and “Equal in Paris” (March 1955); Harper’s Magazine for “Notes of
a Native Son” (November 1955) and “Stranger in the Village”
(October 1953); The New Leader for “Journey to Atlanta” (October
9, 1948); Partisan Review for “Everybody’s Protest Novel” (June
1949), “Many Thousands Gone” (November–December 1951), and
“A Question of Identity” (July–August 1954); and The Reporter for
“Encounter on the Seine” (which appeared in the issue of June 6,
1950, as “The Negro in Paris”).

Preface to the 1984 Edition
James Baldwin

It was Sol Stein, high school buddy, editor, novelist, playwright,
who rst suggested this book. My reaction was not enthusiastic: as
I remember, I told him that I was too young to publish my
memoirs.
I had never thought of these essays as a possible book. Once they
were behind me, I don’t, in fact, think that I thought of them at all.
Sol’s suggestion had the startling and unkind e ect of causing me
to realize that time had passed. It was as though he had dashed
cold water in my face.
Sol persisted, however, and so did the dangers and rigors of my
situation. I had returned from Paris, in 1954, out of motives not at
all clear to me. I had promised a Swiss friend a visit to the land of
my birth, but that, I think, has to be recognized as a pretext: it fails
to have the weight of a motive. I nd no objective reason for my
return to America at that time—I am not sure that I can nd the
subjective one, either.
Yet, here I was, at the top of 1954, several months shy of thirty,
scared to death, but happy to be with my family and my friends. It
was my second return since my departure, in 1948.

I had returned in 1952, with my rst novel, stayed long enough
to show it to my family, and to sell it, and, then, I hauled on out of
here. In 1954, I came back with The Amen Corner, and I was
working on Giovanni’s Room—which had broken o from what was
to become Another Country.
Actually, ’54–’55, in spite of frightening moments, and not only
in retrospect, was a great year. I had, after all, survived something
—the proof was that I was working. I was at the Writer’s Colony,

Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, when my buddy, Marlon Brando, won
the Oscar, and I watched Bette Davis present it to him, and kiss
him, on TV. The late Owen Dodson called me there, from
Washington, D.C., to say that he was directing, at Howard
University, a student production of my play. I went to
Washington, where I met the late, great E. Franklin Frazier and
the great Sterling Brown. Howard was the rst college campus I
had ever seen, and, without these men, I do not know what would
have become of my morale. The play, thank God, was a
tremendous seven-or ten-day wonder, playing to standing room
only on the last night, in spite of a reluctant, not yet Black faculty
(“This play will set back the Speech Department by thirty years!”),
a bewildered Variety (“What do you think Negroes in the North will
think of this play?”), and the fact that it was not to be seen again
for nearly ten years. And I had fallen in love. I was happy—the
world had never before been so beautiful a place.
There was only one small hitch. I—we—didn’t have a dime, no
pot, nor no window.
Sol Stein returned to the attack. We had agreed on nine essays,
he wanted a tenth, and I wrote the title essay between Owen’s
house and the Dunbar Hotel. Returned to New York, where I
nished Giovanni’s Room. Publisher’s Row, that hotbed of
perception, looked on the book with horror and loathing, refused
to touch it, saying that I was a young Negro writer, who, if he
published this book, would alienate his audience and ruin his
career. They would not, in short, publish it, as a favor to me. I
conveyed my gratitude, perhaps a shade too sharply, borrowed
money from a friend, and myself and my lover took the boat to
France.
I had never thought of myself as an essayist: the idea had never
entered my mind. Even—or, perhaps, especially now—I nd it
hard to re-create the journey.
It has something to do, certainly, with what I was trying to
discover and, also, trying to avoid. If I was trying to discover
myself—on the whole, when examined, a somewhat dubious

notion, since I was also trying to avoid myself—there was,
certainly, between that self and me, the accumulated rock of ages.
This rock scarred the hand, and all tools broke against it. Yet, there
was a me, somewhere: I could feel it, stirring within and against
captivity. The hope of salvation—identity—depended on whether
or not one would be able to decipher and describe the rock.
One song cries, “lead me to the rock that is higher than I,” and
another cries, “hide me in the rock!” and yet another proclaims, “I
got a home in that rock.” Or, “I ran to the rock to hide my face: the
rock cried out, no hiding place!”
The accumulated rock of ages deciphered itself as a part of my
inheritance—a part, mind you, not the totality—but, in order to
claim my birthright, of which my inheritance was but a shadow, it
was necessary to challenge and claim the rock. Otherwise, the rock
claimed me.
Or, to put it another way, my inheritance was particular,
speci cally limited and limiting: my birthright was vast,
connecting me to all that lives, and to everyone, forever. But one
cannot claim the birthright without accepting the inheritance.
Therefore, when I began, seriously, to write—when I knew I was
committed, that this would be my life—I had to try to describe that
particular condition which was—is—the living proof of my
inheritance. And, at the same time, with that very same
description, I had to claim my birthright. I am what time,
circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also,
much more than that. So are we all.
The conundrum of color is the inheritance of every American, be
he/she legally or actually Black or White. It is a fearful
inheritance, for which untold multitudes, long ago, sold their
birthright. Multitudes are doing so, until today. This horror has so
welded past and present that it is virtually impossible and
certainly meaningless to speak of it as occurring, as it were, in
time. It can be, and it has been, suicidal to attempt to speak of this

to a multitude, which, assuming it knows that time exists, believes
that time can be outwitted.
Something like this, anyway, has something to do with my
beginnings. I was trying to locate myself within a speci c
inheritance and to use that inheritance, precisely, to claim the
birthright from which that inheritance had so brutally and
speci cally excluded me.
It is not pleasant to be forced to recognize, more than thirty
years later, that neither this dynamic nor this necessity have
changed. There have been super cial changes, with results at best
ambiguous and, at worst, disastrous. Morally, there has been no
change at all and a moral change is the only real one. “Plus ça
change,” groan the exasperated French (who should certainly
know), “plus c’est le même chose.” (The more it changes, the more it
remains the same.) At least they have the style to be truthful about
it.
The only real change vividly discernible in this present,
unspeakably dangerous chaos is a panic-stricken apprehension on
the part of those who have maligned and subjugated others for so
long that the tables have been turned. Not once have the Civilized
been able to honor, recognize, or describe the Savage. He is,
practically speaking, the source of their wealth, his continued
subjugation the key to their power and glory. This is absolutely
and unanswerably true in South Africa—to name but one section of
Africa—and, as to how things fare for Black men and women;
here, the Black has become, economically, all but expendable and
is, therefore, encouraged to join the Army, or, a notion espoused, I
believe, by Daniel Moynihan and Nathan Glazer, to become a
postman—to make himself useful, for Christ’s sake, while White
men take on the heavy burden of ruling the world.
Well. Plus ça change. To say nothing, speaking as a Black citizen,
regarding his countrymen, of friends like these.
There is an unadmitted icy panic coiled beneath the sca olding
of these present days, hopes, endeavors. I have said that the

Civilized have never been able to honor, recognize, or describe the
Savage. Once they had decided that he was savage, there was
nothing to honor, recognize or describe. But the savages describe
the Europeans, who were not yet, when they landed in the New (!)
World, White, as the people from heaven. Neither did the savages in
Africa have any way of foreseeing the anguished diaspora to which
they were about to be condemned. Even the chiefs who sold
Africans into slavery could not have had any idea that this slavery
was meant to endure forever, or for at least a thousand years.
Nothing in the savage experience could have prepared them for
such an idea, any more than they could conceive of the land as
something to be bought and sold. (As I cannot believe that people
are actually buying and selling air space above the towers of
Manhattan.)
Nevertheless, all of this happened, and is happening. Out of this
incredible brutality, we get the myth of the happy darky and Gone
With the Wind. And the North Americans appear to believe these
legends, which they have created and which absolutely nothing in
reality corroborates, until today. And when these legends are
attacked, as is happening now—all over a globe which has never
been and never will be White—my countrymen become childishly
vindictive and unutterably dangerous.
The unadmitted panic of which I spoke above is created by the
terror that the Savage can, now, describe the Civilized: the only
way to prevent this is to obliterate humanity. This panic proves
that neither a person nor a people can do anything without
knowing what they are doing. Neither can anyone avoid paying
for the choices he or she has made. It is savagely, if one may say
so, ironical that the only proof the world—mankind—has ever had
of White supremacy is in the Black face and voice: that face never
scrutinized, that voice never heard. The eyes in that face prove the
unforgivable and unimaginable horror of being a captive in the
promised land, but also prove that trouble don’t last always: and the
voice, once lled with a rage and pain that corroborated the
reality of the jailer, is addressing another reality, in other tongues.

The people who think of themselves as White have the choice of
becoming human or irrelevant.
Or—as they are, indeed, already, in all but actual fact: obsolete.
For, if trouble don’t last always, as the Preacher tells us, neither
does Power, and it is on the fact or the hope or the myth of Power
that that identity which calls itself White has always seemed to
depend.
I had just turned thirty-one when this book was rst published,
and, by the time you read this, I will be sixty. I think that quite
remarkable, but I do not mention it, now, as an occasion for
celebrations or lamentations. I don’t feel that I have any reason to
complain: emphatically, the contrary, to leave it at that, and no
matter what tomorrow brings. Yet, I have reason to re ect—one
always does, when forced to take a long look back. I remember
many people who helped me in indescribable ways, all those years
ago, when I was the popeyed, tongue-tied kid, in my memory
sitting in a corner, on the oor. I was having a rough time in the
Village, where the bulk of the populace, egged on by the cops,
thought it was great fun to bounce tables and chairs o my head,
and I soon stopped talking about my “constitutional” rights. I am, I
suppose, a survivor.
A survivor of what? In those years, I was told, when I became
terri ed, vehement, or lachrymose: It takes time, Jimmy. It takes
time. I agree: I still agree: though it certainly didn’t take much time
for some of the people I knew then—in the Fifties—to turn tail, to
decide to make it, and drape themselves in the American ag. A
wretched and despicable band of cowards, whom I once trusted
with my life—friends like these!
But we will discuss all that another day. When I was told, it
takes time, when I was young, I was being told it will take time
before a Black person can be treated as a human being here, but it
will happen. We will help to make it happen. We promise you.
Sixty years of one man’s life is a long time to deliver on a
promise, especially considering all the lives preceding and

surrounding my own.
What has happened, in the time of my time, is the record of my
ancestors. No promise was kept with them, no promise was kept
with me, nor can I counsel those coming after me, nor my global
kinsmen, to believe a word uttered by my morally bankrupt and
desperately dishonest countrymen.
“And,” says Doris Lessing, in her preface to African Stories, “while
the cruelties of the white man toward the black man are among the
heaviest counts in the indictment against humanity, colour prejudice is
not our original fault, but only one aspect of the atrophy of the
imagination that prevents us from seeing ourselves in every creature
that breathes under the sun.”
Amen. En avant.
18 April 1984
Amherst, Massachusetts

Autobiographical Notes
I was born in Harlem thirty-one years ago. I began plotting novels
at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is
the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained
observation that I certainly would not consider living it again. In
those days my mother was given to the exasperating and
mysterious habit of having babies. As they were born, I took them
over with one hand and held a book with the other. The children
probably su ered, though they have since been kind enough to
deny it, and in this way I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Tale of Two
Cities over and over and over again; in this way, in fact, I read just
about everything I could get my hands on—except the Bible,
probably because it was the only book I was encouraged to read. I
must also confess that I wrote—a great deal—and my rst
professional triumph, in any case, the rst e ort of mine to be
seen in print, occurred at the age of twelve or thereabouts, when a
short story I had written about the Spanish revolution won some
sort of prize in an extremely short-lived church newspaper. I
remember the story was censored by the lady editor, though I don’t
remember why, and I was outraged.
Also wrote plays, and songs, for one of which I received a letter
of congratulations from Mayor La Guardia, and poetry, about
which the less said, the better. My mother was delighted by all
these goings-on, but my father wasn’t; he wanted me to be a
preacher. When I was fourteen I became a preacher, and when I
was seventeen I stopped. Very shortly thereafter I left home. For
God knows how long I struggled with the world of commerce and
industry—I guess they would say they struggled with me—and
when I was about twenty-one I had enough done of a novel to get
a Saxton Fellowship. When I was twenty-two the fellowship was
over, the novel turned out to be unsalable, and I started waiting on

tables in a Village restaurant and writing book reviews—mostly, as
it turned out, about the Negro problem, concerning which the color
of my skin made me automatically an expert. Did another book, in
company with photographer Theodore Pelatowski, about the storefront churches in Harlem. This book met exactly the same fate as
my rst—fellowship, but no sale. (It was a Rosenwald Fellowship.)
By the time I was twenty-four I had decided to stop reviewing
books about the Negro problem—which, by this time, was only
slightly less horrible in print than it was in life—and I packed my
bags and went to France, where I nished, God knows how, Go Tell
It on the Mountain.
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was
born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his
talent—which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On
the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with
such a frightening indi erence that the artist is compelled to make
his talent important. So that any writer, looking back over even so
short a span of time as I am here forced to assess, nds that the
things which hurt him and the things which helped him cannot be
divorced from each other; he could be helped in a certain way only
because he was hurt in a certain way; and his help is simply to be
enabled to move from one conundrum to the next—one is tempted
to say that he moves from one disaster to the next. When one
begins looking for in uences one nds them by the score. I haven’t
thought much about my own, not enough anyway; I hazard that
the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-front church,
something ironic and violent and perpetually understated in Negro
speech—and something of Dickens’ love for bravura—have
something to do with me today; but I wouldn’t stake my life on it.
Likewise, innumerable people have helped me in many ways; but
nally, I suppose, the most di cult (and most rewarding) thing in
my life has been the fact that I was born a Negro and was forced,
therefore, to e ect some kind of truce with this reality. (Truce, by
the way, is the best one can hope for.)

One of the di culties about being a Negro writer (and this is not
special pleading, since I don’t mean to suggest that he has it worse
than anybody else) is that the Negro problem is written about so
widely. The bookshelves groan under the weight of information,
and everyone therefore considers himself informed. And this
information, furthermore, operates usually (generally, popularly)
to reinforce traditional attitudes. Of traditional attitudes there are
only two—For or Against—and I, personally, nd it di cult to say
which attitude has caused me the most pain. I am speaking as a
writer; from a social point of view I am perfectly aware that the
change from ill-will to good-will, however motivated, however
imperfect, however expressed, is better than no change at all.
But it is part of the business of the writer—as I see it—to
examine attitudes, to go beneath the surface, to tap the source.
From this point of view the Negro problem is nearly inaccessible. It
is not only written about so widely; it is written about so badly. It
is quite possible to say that the price a Negro pays for becoming
articulate is to nd himself, at length, with nothing to be articulate
about. (“You taught me language,” says Caliban to Prospero, “and
my pro t on’t is I know how to curse.”) Consider: the tremendous
social activity that this problem generates imposes on whites and
Negroes alike the necessity of looking forward, of working to bring
about a better day. This is ne, it keeps the waters troubled; it is
all, indeed, that has made possible the Negro’s progress.
Nevertheless, social a airs are not generally speaking the writer’s
prime concern, whether they ought to be or not; it is absolutely
necessary that he establish between himself and these a airs a
distance which will allow, at least, for clarity, so that before he can
look forward in any meaningful sense, he must rst be allowed to
take a long look back. In the context of the Negro problem neither
whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the
faintest desire to look back; but I think that the past is all that
makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain
horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.

I know, in any case, that the most crucial time in my own
development came when I was forced to recognize that I was a
kind of bastard of the West; when I followed the line of my past I
did not nd myself in Europe but in Africa. And this meant that in
some subtle way, in a really profound way, I brought to
Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt, to the stones of Paris, to the
cathedral at Chartres, and to the Empire State Building, a special
attitude. These were not really my creations, they did not contain
my history; I might search in them in vain forever for any
re ection of myself. I was an interloper; this was not my heritage.
At the same time I had no other heritage which I could possibly
hope to use—I had certainly been un tted for the jungle or the
tribe. I would have to appropriate these white centuries, I would
have to make them mine—I would have to accept my special
attitude, my special place in this scheme—otherwise I would have
no place in any scheme. What was the most di cult was the fact
that I was forced to admit something I had always hidden from
myself, which the American Negro has had to hide from himself as
the price of his public progress; that I hated and feared white
people. This did not mean that I loved black people; on the
contrary, I despised them, possibly because they failed to produce
Rembrandt. In e ect, I hated and feared the world. And this
meant, not only that I thus gave the world an altogether
murderous power over me, but also that in such a self-destroying
limbo I could never hope to write.
One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience.
Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this
experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This
is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder
of life that order which is art. The di culty then, for me, of being
a Negro writer was the fact that I was, in e ect, prohibited from
examining my own experience too closely by the tremendous
demands and the very real dangers of my social situation.
I don’t think the dilemma outlined above is uncommon. I do
think, since writers work in the disastrously explicit medium of

language, that it goes a little way towards explaining why, out of
the enormous resources of Negro speech and life, and despite the
example of Negro music, prose written by Negroes has been
generally speaking so pallid and so harsh. I have not written about
being a Negro at such length because I expect that to be my only
subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I
could hope to write about anything else. I don’t think that the
Negro problem in America can be even discussed coherently
without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history,
traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of
the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the
contrary, no one in America escapes its e ects and everyone in
America bears some responsibility for it. I believe this the more
rmly because it is the overwhelming tendency to speak of this
problem as though it were a thing apart. But in the work of
Faulkner, in the general attitude and certain speci c passages in
Robert Penn Warren, and, most signi cantly, in the advent of
Ralph Ellison, one sees the beginnings—at least—of a more
genuinely penetrating search. Mr. Ellison, by the way, is the rst
Negro novelist I have ever read to utilize in language, and
brilliantly, some of the ambiguity and irony of Negro life.
About my interests: I don’t know if I have any, unless the morbid
desire to own a sixteen-millimeter camera and make experimental
movies can be so classi ed. Otherwise, I love to eat and drink—it’s
my melancholy conviction that I’ve scarcely ever had enough to
eat (this is because it’s impossible to eat enough if you’re worried
about the next meal)—and I love to argue with people who do not
disagree with me too profoundly, and I love to laugh. I do not like
bohemia, or bohemians, I do not like people whose principal aim is
pleasure, and I do not like people who are earnest about anything.
I don’t like people who like me because I’m a Negro; neither do I
like people who nd in the same accident grounds for contempt. I
love America more than any other country in the world, and,
exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her
perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the nest

principles may have to be modi ed, or may even be pulverized by
the demands of life, and that one must nd, therefore, one’s own
moral center and move through the world hoping that this center
will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities,
but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my
work done.
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

PART ONE

Everybody’s Protest Novel
In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that cornerstone of American social protest
ction, St. Clare, the kindly master, remarks to his coldly
disapproving Yankee cousin, Miss Ophelia, that, so far as he is
able to tell, the blacks have been turned over to the devil for the
bene t of the whites in this world—however, he adds thoughtfully,
it may turn out in the next. Miss Ophelia’s reaction is, at least,
vehemently right-minded: “This is perfectly horrible!” she exclaims.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”
Miss Ophelia, as we may suppose, was speaking for the author;
her exclamation is the moral, neatly framed, and incontestable like
those improving mottoes sometimes found hanging on the walls of
furnished rooms. And, like these mottoes, before which one
invariably inches, recognizing an insupportable, almost an
indecent glibness, she and St. Clare are terribly in earnest. Neither
of them questions the medieval morality from which their dialogue
springs: black, white, the devil, the next world—posing its
alternatives between heaven and the ames—were realities for
them as, of course, they were for their creator. They spurned and
were terri ed of the darkness, striving mightily for the light; and
considered from this aspect, Miss Ophelia’s exclamation, like Mrs.
Stowe’s novel, achieves a bright, almost a lurid signi cance, like
the light from a re which consumes a witch. This is the more
striking as one considers the novels of Negro oppression written in
our own, more enlightened day, all of which say only: “This is
perfectly horrible! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” (Let us
ignore, for the moment, those novels of oppression written by
Negroes, which add only a raging, near-paranoiac postscript to this
statement and actually reinforce, as I hope to make clear later, the
principles which activate the oppression they decry.)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a very bad novel, having, in its selfrighteous, virtuous sentimentality, much in common with Little
Women. Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and
spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel;
the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to
experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always,
therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of
cruelty. Uncle Tom’s Cabin—like its multitudinous, hard-boiled
descendants—is a catalogue of violence. This is explained by the
nature of Mrs. Stowe’s subject matter, her laudable determination
to inch from nothing in presenting the complete picture; an
explanation which falters only if we pause to ask whether or not
her picture is indeed complete; and what constriction or failure of
perception forced her to so depend on the description of brutality
—unmotivated, senseless—and to leave unanswered and unnoticed
the only important question: what it was, after all, that moved her
people to such deeds.
But this, let us say, was beyond Mrs. Stowe’s powers; she was
not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer; her book
was not intended to do anything more than prove that slavery was
wrong; was, in fact, perfectly horrible. This makes material for a
pamphlet but it is hardly enough for a novel; and the only question
left to ask is why we are bound still within the same constriction.
How is it that we are so loath to make a further journey than that
made by Mrs. Stowe, to discover and reveal something a little
closer to the truth?
But that battered word, truth, having made its appearance here,
confronts one immediately with a series of riddles and has,
moreover, since so many gospels are preached, the unfortunate
tendency to make one belligerent. Let us say, then, that truth, as
used here, is meant to imply a devotion to the human being, his
freedom and ful llment; freedom which cannot be legislated,
ful llment which cannot be charted. This is the prime concern, the
frame of reference; it is not to be confused with a devotion to
Humanity which is too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause;

and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty. We have, as
it seems to me, in this most mechanical and interlocking of
civilizations, attempted to lop this creature down to the status of a
time-saving invention. He is not, after all, merely a member of a
Society or a Group or a deplorable conundrum to be explained by
Science. He is—and how old-fashioned the words sound!—
something more than that, something resolutely inde nable,
unpredictable. In overlooking, denying, evading his complexity—
which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves
—we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of
ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we nd at
once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is
this power of revelation which is the business of the novelist, this
journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence
over all other claims. What is today parroted as his Responsibility
—which seems to mean that he must make formal declaration that
he is involved in, and a ected by, the lives of other people and to
say something improving about this somewhat self-evident fact—
is, when he believes it, his corruption and our loss; moreover, it is
rooted in, interlocked with and intensi es this same
mechanization. Both Gentleman’s Agreement and The Postman
Always Rings Twice exemplify this terror of the human being, the
determination to cut him down to size. And in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
we may nd foreshadowing of both: the formula created by the
necessity to nd a lie more palatable than the truth has been
handed down and memorized and persists yet with a terrible
power.
It is interesting to consider one more aspect of Mrs. Stowe’s
novel, the method she used to solve the problem of writing about a
black man at all. Apart from her lively procession of eld hands,
house niggers, Chloe, Topsy, etc.—who are the stock, lovable
gures presenting no problem—she has only three other Negroes
in the book. These are the important ones and two of them may be
dismissed immediately, since we have only the author’s word that
they are Negro and they are, in all other respects, as white as she

can make them. The two are George and Eliza, a married couple
with a wholly adorable child—whose quaintness, incidentally, and
whose charm, rather put one in mind of a darky bootblack doing a
buck and wing to the clatter of condescending coins. Eliza is a
beautiful, pious hybrid, light enough to pass—the heroine of
Quality might, indeed, be her reincarnation—di ering from the
genteel mistress who has overseered her education only in the
respect that she is a servant. George is darker, but makes up for it
by being a mechanical genius, and is, moreover, su ciently unNegroid to pass through town, a fugitive from his master, disguised
as a Spanish gentleman, attracting no attention whatever beyond
admiration. They are a race apart from Topsy. It transpires by the
end of the novel, through one of those energetic, last-minute
convolutions of the plot, that Eliza has some connection with
French gentility. The gure from whom the novel takes its name,
Uncle Tom, who is a gure of controversy yet, is jet-black, woolyhaired, illiterate; and he is phenomenally forbearing. He has to be;
he is black; only through this forbearance can he survive or
triumph. (Cf. Faulkner’s preface to The Sound and the Fury: These
others were not Compsons. They were black:—They endured.) His
triumph is metaphysical, unearthly; since he is black, born without
the light, it is only through humility, the incessant morti cation of
the esh, that he can enter into communion with God or man. The
virtuous rage of Mrs. Stowe is motivated by nothing so temporal as
a concern for the relationship of men to one another—or, even, as
she would have claimed, by a concern for their relationship to God
—but merely by a panic of being hurled into the ames, of being
caught in tra c with the devil. She embraced this merciless
doctrine with all her heart, bargaining shamelessly before the
throne of grace: God and salvation becoming her personal
property, purchased with the coin of her virtue. Here, black
equates with evil and white with grace; if, being mindful of the
necessity of good works, she could not cast out the blacks—a
wretched, huddled mass, apparently, claiming, like an obsession,
her inner eye—she could not embrace them either without
purifying them of sin. She must cover their intimidating nakedness,

robe them in white, the garments of salvation; only thus could she
herself be delivered from ever-present sin, only thus could she
bury, as St. Paul demanded, “the carnal man, the man of the esh.”
Tom, therefore, her only black man, has been robbed of his
humanity and divested of his sex. It is the price for that darkness
with which he has been branded.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, then, is activated by what might be called a
theological terror, the terror of damnation; and the spirit that
breathes in this book, hot, self-righteous, fearful, is not di erent
from that spirit of medieval times which sought to exorcize evil by
burning witches; and is not di erent from that terror which
activates a lynch mob. One need not, indeed, search for examples
so historic or so gaudy; this is a warfare waged daily in the heart, a
warfare so vast, so relentless and so powerful that the interracial
handshake or the interracial marriage can be as crucifying as the
public hanging or the secret rape. This panic motivates our cruelty,
this fear of the dark makes it impossible that our lives shall be
other than super cial; this, interlocked with and feeding our
glittering, mechanical, inescapable civilization which has put to
death our freedom.
This, notwithstanding that the avowed aim of the American
protest novel is to bring greater freedom to the oppressed. They
are forgiven, on the strength of these good intentions, whatever
violence they do to language, whatever excessive demands they
make of credibility. It is, indeed, considered the sign of a frivolity
so intense as to approach decadence to suggest that these books
are both badly written and wildly improbable. One is told to put
rst things rst, the good of society coming before niceties of style
or characterization. Even if this were incontestable—for what
exactly is the “good” of society?—it argues an insuperable
confusion, since literature and sociology are not one and the same;
it is impossible to discuss them as if they were. Our passion for
categorization, life neatly
tted into pegs, has led to an
unforeseen, paradoxical distress; confusion, a breakdown of
meaning. Those categories which were meant to de ne and control

the world for us have boomeranged us into chaos; in which limbo
we whirl, clutching the straws of our de nitions. The “protest”
novel, so far from being disturbing, is an accepted and comforting
aspect of the American scene, ramifying that framework we
believe to be so necessary. Whatever unsettling questions are
raised are evanescent, titillating; remote, for this has nothing to do
with us, it is safely ensconced in the social arena, where, indeed, it
has nothing to do with anyone, so that nally we receive a very
de nite thrill of virtue from the fact that we are reading such a
book at all. This report from the pit reassures us of its reality and
its darkness and of our own salvation; and “As long as such books
are being published,” an American liberal once said to me,
“everything will be all right.”
But unless one’s ideal of society is a race of neatly analyzed,
hard-working ciphers, one can hardly claim for the protest novels
the lofty purpose they claim for themselves or share the present
optimism concerning them. They emerge for what they are: a
mirror of our confusion, dishonesty, panic, trapped and
immobilized in the sunlit prison of the American dream. They are
fantasies, connecting nowhere with reality, sentimental; in exactly
the same sense that such movies as The Best Years of Our Lives or
the works of Mr. James M. Cain are fantasies. Beneath the
dazzling pyrotechnics of these current operas one may still discern,
as the controlling force, the intense theological preoccupations of
Mrs. Stowe, the sick vacuities of The Rover Boys. Finally, the aim of
the protest novel becomes something very closely resembling the
zeal of those alabaster missionaries to Africa to cover the
nakedness of the natives, to hurry them into the pallid arms of
Jesus and thence into slavery. The aim has now become to reduce
all Americans to the compulsive, bloodless dimensions of a guy
named Joe.
It is the peculiar triumph of society—and its loss—that it is able
to convince those people to whom it has given inferior status of the
reality of this decree; it has the force and the weapons to translate
its dictum into fact, so that the allegedly inferior are actually made

so, insofar as the societal realities are concerned. This is a more
hidden phenomenon now than it was in the days of serfdom, but it
is no less implacable. Now, as then, we nd ourselves bound, rst
without, then within, by the nature of our categorization. And
escape is not e ected through a bitter railing against this trap; it is
as though this very striving were the only motion needed to spring
the trap upon us. We take our shape, it is true, within and against
that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is
precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most
endlessly betrayed. Society is held together by our need; we bind it
together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we
will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before
the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden. From
this void—ourselves—it is the function of society to protect us; but
it is only this void, our unknown selves, demanding, forever, a
new act of creation, which can save us—“from the evil that is in
the world.” With the same motion, at the same time, it is this
toward which we endlessly struggle and from which, endlessly, we
struggle to escape.
It must be remembered that the oppressed and the oppressor are
bound together within the same society; they accept the same
criteria, they share the same beliefs, they both alike depend on the
same reality. Within this cage it is romantic, more, meaningless, to
speak of a “new” society as the desire of the oppressed, for that
shivering dependence on the props of reality which he shares with
the Herrenvolk makes a truly “new” society impossible to conceive.
What is meant by a new society is one in which inequalities will
disappear, in which vengeance will be exacted; either there will be
no oppressed at all, or the oppressed and the oppressor will
change places. But, nally, as it seems to me, what the rejected
desire is, is an elevation of status, acceptance within the present
community. Thus, the African, exile, pagan, hurried o the auction
block and into the elds, fell on his knees before that God in
Whom he must now believe; who had made him, but not in His
image. This tableau, this impossibility, is the heritage of the Negro

in America: Wash me, cried the slave to his Maker, and I shall be
whiter, whiter than snow! For black is the color of evil; only the
robes of the saved are white. It is this cry, implacable on the air
and in the skull, that he must live with. Beneath the widely
published catalogue of brutality—bringing to mind, somehow, an
image, a memory of church-bells burdening the air—is this reality
which, in the same nightmare notion, he both ees and rushes to
embrace. In America, now, this country devoted to the death of the
paradox—which may, therefore, be put to death by one—his lot is
as ambiguous as a tableau by Kafka. To ee or not, to move or not,
it is all the same; his doom is written on his forehead, it is carried
in his heart. In Native Son, Bigger Thomas stands on a Chicago
street corner watching airplanes own by white men racing
against the sun and “Goddamn” he says, the bitterness bubbling up
like blood, remembering a million indignities, the terrible, ratinfested house, the humiliation of home-relief, the intense, aimless,
ugly bickering, hating it; hatred smoulders through these pages like
sulphur re. All of Bigger’s life is controlled, de ned by his hatred
and his fear. And later, his fear drives him to murder and his
hatred to rape; he dies, having come, through this violence, we are
told, for the rst time, to a kind of life, having for the rst time
redeemed his manhood. Below the surface of this novel there lies,
as it seems to me, a continuation, a complement of that monstrous
legend it was written to destroy. Bigger is Uncle Tom’s descendant,
esh of his esh, so exactly opposite a portrait that, when the
books are placed together, it seems that the contemporary Negro
novelist and the dead New England woman are locked together in
a deadly, timeless battle; the one uttering merciless exhortations,
the other shouting curses. And, indeed, within this web of lust and
fury, black and white can only thrust and counter-thrust, long for
each other’s slow, exquisite death; death by torture, acid, knives
and burning; the thrust, the counter-thrust, the longing making the
heavier that cloud which blinds and su ocates them both, so that
they go down into the pit together. Thus has the cage betrayed us
all, this moment, our life, turned to nothing through our terrible
attempts to insure it. For Bigger’s tragedy is not that he is cold or

black or hungry, not even that he is American, black; but that he
has accepted a theology that denies him life, that he admits the
possibility of his being sub-human and feels constrained, therefore,
to battle for his humanity according to those brutal criteria
bequeathed him at his birth. But our humanity is our burden, our
life; we need not battle for it; we need only to do what is in nitely
more di cult—that is, accept it. The failure of the protest novel
lies in its rejection of life, the human being, the denial of his
beauty, dread, power, in its insistence that it is his categorization
alone which is real and which cannot be transcended.

Many Thousands Gone
It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because
a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the
Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which
otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to
hear. As is the inevitable result of things unsaid, we nd ourselves
until today oppressed with a dangerous and reverberating silence;
and the story is told, compulsively, in symbols and signs, in
hieroglyphics; it is revealed in Negro speech and in that of the
white majority and in their di erent frames of reference. The ways
in which the Negro has a ected the American psychology are
betrayed in our popular culture and in our morality; in our
estrangement from him is the depth of our estrangement from
ourselves. We cannot ask: what do we really feel about him—such a
question merely opens the gates on chaos. What we really feel
about him is involved with all that we feel about everything, about
everyone, about ourselves.
The story of the Negro in America is the story of America—or,
more precisely, it is the story of Americans. It is not a very pretty
story: the story of a people is never very pretty. The Negro in
America, gloomily referred to as that shadow which lies athwart
our national life, is far more than that. He is a series of shadows,
self-created, intertwining, which now we helplessly battle. One
may say that the Negro in America does not really exist except in
the darkness of our minds.
This is why his history and his progress, his relationship to all
other Americans, has been kept in the social arena. He is a social
and not a personal or a human problem; to think of him is to think
of statistics, slums, rapes, injustices, remote violence; it is to be
confronted with an endless cataloguing of losses, gains, skirmishes;
it is to feel virtuous, outraged, helpless, as though his continuing

status among us were somehow analogous to disease—cancer,
perhaps, or tuberculosis—which must be checked, even though it
cannot be cured. In this arena the black man acquires quite
another aspect from that which he has in life. We do not know
what to do with him in life; if he breaks our sociological and
sentimental image of him we are panic-stricken and we feel
ourselves betrayed. When he violates this image, therefore, he
stands in the greatest danger (sensing which, we uneasily suspect
that he is very often playing a part for our bene t); and, what is
not always so apparent but is equally true, we are then in some
danger ourselves—hence our retreat or our blind and immediate
retaliation.
Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our
dehumanization of ourselves: the loss of our own identity is the
price we pay for our annulment of his. Time and our own force act
as our allies, creating an impossible, a fruitless tension between
the traditional master and slave. Impossible and fruitless because,
literal and visible as this tension has become, it has nothing to do
with reality.
Time has made some changes in the Negro face. Nothing has
succeeded in making it exactly like our own, though the general
desire seems to be to make it blank if one cannot make it white.
When it has become blank, the past as thoroughly washed from the
black face as it has been from ours, our guilt will be nished—at
least it will have ceased to be visible, which we imagine to be
much the same thing. But, paradoxically, it is we who prevent this
from happening; since it is we, who, every hour that we live,
reinvest the black face with our guilt; and we do this—by a further
paradox, no less ferocious—helplessly, passionately, out of an
unrealized need to su er absolution.
Today, to be sure, we know that the Negro is not biologically or
mentally inferior; there is no truth in those rumors of his body odor
or his incorrigible sexuality; or no more truth than can be easily
explained or even defended by the social sciences. Yet, in our most
recent war, his blood was segregated as was, for the most part, his

person. Up to today we are set at a division, so that he may not
marry our daughters or our sisters, nor may he—for the most part
—eat at our tables or live in our houses. Moreover, those who do,
do so at the grave expense of a double alienation: from their own
people, whose fabled attributes they must either deny or, worse,
cheapen and bring to market; from us, for we require of them,
when we accept them, that they at once cease to be Negroes and
yet not fail to remember what being a Negro means—to remember,
that is, what it means to us. The threshold of insult is higher or
lower, according to the people involved, from the bootblack in
Atlanta to the celebrity in New York. One must travel very far,
among saints with nothing to gain or outcasts with nothing to lose,
to nd a place where it does not matter—and perhaps a word or a
gesture or simply a silence will testify that it matters even there.
For it means something to be a Negro, after all, as it means
something to have been born in Ireland or in China, to live where
one sees space and sky or to live where one sees nothing but
rubble or nothing but high buildings. We cannot escape our
origins, however hard we try, those origins which contain the key
—could we but nd it—to all that we later become. What it means
to be a Negro is a good deal more than this essay can discover;
what it means to be a Negro in America can perhaps be suggested
by an examination of the myths we perpetuate about him.
Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom are dead, their places taken by a
group of amazingly well-adjusted young men and women, almost
as dark, but ferociously literate, well-dressed and scrubbed, who
are never laughed at, who are not likely ever to set foot in a cotton
or tobacco eld or in any but the most modern of kitchens. There
are others who remain, in our odd idiom, “underprivileged”; some
are bitter and these come to grief; some are unhappy, but,
continually presented with the evidence of a better day soon to
come, are speedily becoming less so. Most of them care nothing
whatever about race. They want only their proper place in the sun
and the right to be left alone, like any other citizen of the republic.
We may all breathe more easily. Before, however, our joy at the

demise of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom approaches the indecent,
we had better ask whence they sprang, how they lived? Into what
limbo have they vanished?
However inaccurate our portraits of them were, these portraits
do suggest, not only the conditions, but the quality of their lives
and the impact of this spectacle on our consciences. There was no
one more forbearing than Aunt Jemima, no one stronger or more
pious or more loyal or more wise; there was, at the same time, no
one weaker or more faithless or more vicious and certainly no one
more immoral. Uncle Tom, trustworthy and sexless, needed only to
drop the title “Uncle” to become violent, crafty, and sullen, a
menace to any white woman who passed by. They prepared our
feast tables and our burial clothes; and, if we could boast that we
understood them, it was far more to the point and far more true
that they understood us. They were, moreover, the only people in
the world who did; and not only did they know us better than we
knew ourselves, but they knew us better than we knew them. This
was the piquant avoring to the national joke, it lay behind our
uneasiness as it lay behind our benevolence: Aunt Jemima and
Uncle Tom, our creations, at the last evaded us; they had a life—
their own, perhaps a better life than ours—and they would never
tell us what it was. At the point where we were driven most
privately and painfully to conjecture what depths of contempt,
what heights of indi erence, what prodigies of resilience, what
untamable superiority allowed them so vividly to endure, neither
perishing nor rising up in a body to wipe us from the earth, the
image perpetually shattered and the word failed. The black man in
our midst carried murder in his heart, he wanted vengeance. We
carried murder too, we wanted peace.
In our image of the Negro breathes the past we deny, not dead
but living yet and powerful, the beast in our jungle of statistics. It
is this which defeats us, which continues to defeat us, which lends
to interracial cocktail parties their rattling, genteel, nervously
smiling air: in any drawing room at such a gathering the beast
may spring, lling the air with ying things and an unenlightened

wailing. Wherever the problem touches there is confusion, there is
danger. Wherever the Negro face appears a tension is created, the
tension of a silence lled with things unutterable. It is a
sentimental error, therefore, to believe that the past is dead; it
means nothing to say that it is all forgotten, that the Negro himself
has forgotten it. It is not a question of memory. Oedipus did not
remember the thongs that bound his feet; nevertheless the marks
they left testi ed to that doom toward which his feet were leading
him. The man does not remember the hand that struck him, the
darkness that frightened him, as a child; nevertheless, the hand
and the darkness remain with him, indivisible from himself
forever, part of the passion that drives him wherever he thinks to
take ight.
The making of an American begins at that point where he himself
rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the
vesture of his adopted land. This problem has been faced by all
Americans throughout our history—in a way it is our history—and
it ba es the immigrant and sets on edge the second generation
until today. In the case of the Negro the past was taken from him
whether he would or no; yet to forswear it was meaningless and
availed him nothing, since his shameful history was carried, quite
literally, on his brow. Shameful; for he was heathen as well as
black and would never have discovered the healing blood of Christ
had not we braved the jungles to bring him these glad tidings.
Shameful; for, since our role as missionary had not been wholly
disinterested, it was necessary to recall the shame from which we
had delivered him in order more easily to escape our own. As he
accepted the alabaster Christ and the bloody cross—in the bearing
of which he would nd his redemption, as, indeed, to our outraged
astonishment, he sometimes did—he must, henceforth, accept that
image we then gave him of himself: having no other and standing,
moreover, in danger of death should he fail to accept the dazzling
light thus brought into such darkness. It is this quite simple

dilemma that must be borne in mind if we wish to comprehend his
psychology.
However we shift the light which beats so ercely on his head, or
prove, by victorious social analysis, how his lot has changed, how
we have both improved, our uneasiness refuses to be exorcized.
And nowhere is this more apparent than in our literature on the
subject—“problem” literature when written by whites, “protest”
literature when written by Negroes—and nothing is more striking
than the tremendous disparity of tone between the two creations.
Kingsblood Royal bears, for example, almost no kinship to If He
Hollers Let Him Go, though the same reviewers praised them both
for what were, at bottom, very much the same reasons. These
reasons may be suggested, far too brie y but not at all unjustly, by
observing that the presupposition is in both novels exactly the
same: black is a terrible color with which to be born into the world.
Now the most powerful and celebrated statement we have yet
had of what it means to be a Negro in America is unquestionably
Richard Wright’s Native Son. The feeling which prevailed at the
time of its publication was that such a novel, bitter,
uncompromising, shocking, gave proof, by its very existence, of
what strides might be taken in a free democracy; and its
indisputable success, proof that Americans were now able to look
full in the face without inching the dreadful facts. Americans,
unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter
truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform
their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such
contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for
heroism on the eld of battle. Such a book, we felt with pride,
could never have been written before—which was true. Nor could
it be written today. It bears already the aspect of a landmark; for
Bigger and his brothers have undergone yet another
metamorphosis; they have been accepted in baseball leagues and
by colleges hitherto exclusive; and they have made a most
favorable appearance on the national screen. We have yet to

encounter, nevertheless, a report so indisputably authentic, or one
that can begin to challenge this most signi cant novel.
It is, in a certain American tradition, the story of an
unremarkable youth in battle with the force of circumstance; that
force of circumstance which plays and which has played so
important a part in the national fables of success or failure. In this
case the force of circumstance is not poverty merely but color, a
circumstance which cannot be overcome, against which the
protagonist battles for his life and loses. It is, on the surface,
remarkable that this book should have enjoyed among Americans
the favor it did enjoy; no more remarkable, however, than that it
should have been compared, exuberantly, to Dostoevsky, though
placed a shade below Dos Passos, Dreiser, and Steinbeck; and
when the book is examined, its impact does not seem remarkable
at all, but becomes, on the contrary, perfectly logical and
inevitable.
We cannot, to begin with, divorce this book from the speci c
social climate of that time: it was one of the last of those angry
productions, encountered in the late twenties and all through the
thirties, dealing with the inequities of the social structure of
America. It was published one year before our entry into the last
world war—which is to say, very few years after the dissolution of
the WPA and the end of the New Deal and at a time when bread
lines and soup kitchens and bloody industrial battles were bright in
everyone’s memory. The rigors of that unexpected time lled us
not only with a genuinely bewildered and despairing idealism—so
that, because there at least was something to ght for, young men
went o to die in Spain—but also with a genuinely bewildered selfconsciousness. The Negro, who had been during the magni cent
twenties a passionate and delightful primitive, now became, as
one of the things we were most self-conscious about, our most
oppressed minority. In the thirties, swallowing Marx whole, we
discovered the Worker and realized—I should think with some
relief—that the aims of the Worker and the aims of the Negro were
one. This theorem—to which we shall return—seems now to leave

rather too much out of account; it became, nevertheless, one of the
slogans of the “class struggle” and the gospel of the New Negro.
As for this New Negro, it was Wright who became his most
eloquent spokesman; and his work, from its beginning, is most
clearly committed to the social struggle. Leaving aside the
considerable question of what relationship precisely the artist
bears to the revolutionary, the reality of man as a social being is
not his only reality and that artist is strangled who is forced to
deal with human beings solely in social terms; and who has,
moreover, as Wright had, the necessity thrust on him of being the
representative of some thirteen million people. It is a false
responsibility (since writers are not congressmen) and impossible,
by its nature, of ful llment. The unlucky shepherd soon nds that,
so far from being able to feed the hungry sheep, he has lost the
wherewithal for his own nourishment: having not been allowed—
so fearful was his burden, so present his audience!—to recreate his
own experience. Further, the militant men and women of the
thirties were not, upon examination, signi cantly emancipated
from their antecedents, however bitterly they might consider
themselves estranged or however gallantly they struggled to build
a better world. However they might extol Russia, their concept of a
better world was quite helplessly American and betrayed a certain
thinness of imagination, a suspect reliance on suspect and badly
digested formulae, and a positively fretful romantic haste. Finally,
the relationship of the Negro to the Worker cannot be summed up,
nor even greatly illuminated, by saying that their aims are one. It
is true only insofar as they both desire better working conditions
and useful only insofar as they unite their strength as workers to
achieve these ends. Further than this we cannot in honesty go.
In this climate Wright’s voice rst was heard and the struggle
which promised for a time to shape his work and give it purpose
also xed it in an ever more unrewarding rage. Recording his days
of anger he has also nevertheless recorded, as no Negro before him
had ever done, that fantasy Americans hold in their minds when
they speak of the Negro: that fantastic and fearful image which we

have lived with since the rst slave fell beneath the lash. This is the
signi cance of Native Son and also, unhappily, its overwhelming
limitation.
Native Son begins with the Brring! of an alarm clock in the squalid
Chicago tenement where Bigger and his family live. Rats live there
too, feeding o the garbage, and we rst encounter Bigger in the
act of killing one. One may consider that the entire book, from
that harsh Brring! to Bigger’s weak “Good-by” as the lawyer, Max,
leaves him in the death cell, is an extension, with the roles
inverted, of this chilling metaphor. Bigger’s situation and Bigger
himself exert on the mind the same sort of fascination. The premise
of the book is, as I take it, clearly conveyed in these rst pages: we
are confronting a monster created by the American republic and
we are, through being made to share his experience, to receive
illumination as regards the manner of his life and to feel both pity
and horror at his awful and inevitable doom. This is an arresting
and potentially rich idea and we would be discussing a very
di erent novel if Wright’s execution had been more perceptive and
if he had not attempted to redeem a symbolical monster in social
terms.
One may object that it was precisely Wright’s intention to create
in Bigger a social symbol, revelatory of social disease and
prophetic of disaster. I think, however, that it is this assumption
which we ought to examine more carefully. Bigger has no
discernible relationship to himself, to his own life, to his own
people, nor to any other people—in this respect, perhaps, he is
most American—and his force comes, not from his signi cance as a
social (or anti-social) unit, but from his signi cance as the
incarnation of a myth. It is remarkable that, though we follow him
step by step from the tenement room to the death cell, we know as
little about him when this journey is ended as we did when it
began; and, what is even more remarkable, we know almost as
little about the social dynamic which we are to believe created
him. Despite the details of slum life which we are given, I doubt

that anyone who has thought about it, disengaging himself from
sentimentality, can accept this most essential premise of the novel
for a moment. Those Negroes who surround him, on the other
hand, his hard-working mother, his ambitious sister, his poolroom
cronies, Bessie, might be considered as far richer and far more
subtle and accurate illustrations of the ways in which Negroes are
controlled in our society and the complex techniques they have
evolved for their survival. We are limited, however, to Bigger’s
view of them, part of a deliberate plan which might not have been
disastrous if we were not also limited to Bigger’s perceptions. What
this means for the novel is that a necessary dimension has been cut
away; this dimension being the relationship that Negroes bear to
one another, that depth of involvement and unspoken recognition
of shared experience which creates a way of life. What the novel
re ects—and at no point interprets—is the isolation of the Negro
within his own group and the resulting fury of impatient scorn. It
is this which creates its climate of anarchy and unmotivated and
unapprehended disaster; and it is this climate, common to most
Negro protest novels, which has led us all to believe that in Negro
life there exists no tradition, no eld of manners, no possibility of
ritual or intercourse, such as may, for example, sustain the Jew
even after he has left his father’s house. But the fact is not that the
Negro has no tradition but that there has as yet arrived no
sensibility su ciently profound and tough to make this tradition
articulate. For a tradition expresses, after all, nothing more than
the long and painful experience of a people; it comes out of the
battle waged to maintain their integrity or, to put it more simply,
out of their struggle to survive. When we speak of the Jewish
tradition we are speaking of centuries of exile and persecution, of
the strength which endured and the sensibility which discovered in
it the high possibility of the moral victory.
This sense of how Negroes live and how they have so long
endured is hidden from us in part by the very speed of the Negro’s
public progress, a progress so heavy with complexity, so
bewildering and kaleidoscopic, that he dare not pause to

conjecture on the darkness which lies behind him; and by the
nature of the American psychology which, in order to apprehend
or be made able to accept it, must undergo a metamorphosis so
profound as to be literally unthinkable and which there is no doubt
we will resist until we are compelled to achieve our own identity
by the rigors of a time that has yet to come. Bigger, in the
meanwhile, and all his furious kin, serve only to whet the
notorious national taste for the sensational and to reinforce all
that we now nd it necessary to believe. It is not Bigger whom we
fear, since his appearance among us makes our victory certain. It
is the others, who smile, who go to church, who give no cause for
complaint, whom we sometimes consider with amusement, with
pity, even with a ection—and in whose faces we sometimes
surprise the merest arrogant hint of hatred, the faintest,
withdrawn, speculative shadow of contempt—who make us
uneasy; whom we cajole, threaten, atter, fear; who to us remain
unknown, though we are not (we feel with both relief and hostility
and with bottomless confusion) unknown to them. It is out of our
reaction to these hewers of wood and drawers of water that our
image of Bigger was created.
It is this image, living yet, which we perpetually seek to evade
with good works; and this image which makes of all our good
works an intolerable mockery. The “nigger,” black, benighted,
brutal, consumed with hatred as we are consumed with guilt,
cannot be thus blotted out. He stands at our shoulders when we
give our maid her wages, it is his hand which we fear we are
taking when struggling to communicate with the current
“intelligent” Negro, his stench, as it were, which lls our mouths
with salt as the monument is unveiled in honor of the latest Negro
leader. Each generation has shouted behind him, Nigger! as he
walked our streets; it is he whom we would rather our sisters did
not marry; he is banished into the vast and wailing outer darkness
whenever we speak of the “purity” of our women, of the “sanctity”
of our homes, of “American” ideals. What is more, he knows it. He
is indeed the “native son”: he is the “nigger.” Let us refrain from

inquiring at the moment whether or not he actually exists; for we
believe that he exists. Whenever we encounter him amongst us in
the esh, our faith is made perfect and his necessary and bloody
end is executed with a mystical ferocity of joy.
But there is a complementary faith among the damned which
involves their gathering of the stones with which those who walk
in the light shall stone them; or there exists among the intolerably
degraded the perverse and powerful desire to force into the arena
of the actual those fantastic crimes of which they have been
accused, achieving their vengeance and their own destruction
through making the nightmare real. The American image of the
Negro lives also in the Negro’s heart; and when he has surrendered
to this image life has no other possible reality. Then he, like the
white enemy with whom he will be locked one day in mortal
struggle, has no means save this of asserting his identity. This is
why Bigger’s murder of Mary can be referred to as an “act of
creation” and why, once this murder has been committed, he can
feel for the rst time that he is living fully and deeply as a man
was meant to live. And there is, I should think, no Negro living in
America who has not felt, brie y or for long periods, with anguish
sharp or dull, in varying degrees and to varying e ect, simple,
naked and unanswerable hatred; who has not wanted to smash
any white face he may encounter in a day, to violate, out of
motives of the cruelest vengeance, their women, to break the
bodies of all white people and bring them low, as low as that dust
into which he himself has been and is being trampled; no Negro,
nally, who has not had to make his own precarious adjustment to
the “nigger” who surrounds him and to the “nigger” in himself.
Yet the adjustment must be made—rather, it must be attempted,
the tension perpetually sustained—for without this he has
surrendered his birthright as a man no less than his birthright as a
black man. The entire universe is then peopled only with his
enemies, who are not only white men armed with rope and ri e,
but his own far- ung and contemptible kinsmen. Their blackness is

his degradation and it is their stupid and passive endurance which
makes his end inevitable.
Bigger dreams of some black man who will weld all blacks
together into a mighty st, and feels, in relation to his family, that
perhaps they had to live as they did precisely because none of
them had ever done anything, right or wrong, which mattered very
much. It is only he who, by an act of murder, has burst the
dungeon cell. He has made it manifest that he lives and that his
despised blood nourishes the passions of a man. He has forced his
oppressors to see the fruit of that oppression: and he feels, when
his family and his friends come to visit him in the death cell, that
they should not be weeping or frightened, that they should be
happy, proud that he has dared, through murder and now through
his own imminent destruction, to redeem their anger and
humiliation, that he has hurled into the spiritless obscurity of their
lives the lamp of his passionate life and death. Henceforth, they
may remember Bigger—who has died, as we may conclude, for
them. But they do not feel this; they only know that he has
murdered two women and precipitated a reign of terror; and that
now he is to die in the electric chair. They therefore weep and are
honestly frightened—for which Bigger despises them and wishes to
“blot” them out. What is missing in his situation and in the
representation of his psychology—which makes his situation false
and his psychology incapable of development—is any revelatory
apprehension of Bigger as one of the Negro’s realities or as one of
the Negro’s roles. This failure is part of the previously noted failure
to convey any sense of Negro life as a continuing and complex
group reality. Bigger, who cannot function therefore as a re ection
of the social illness, having, as it were, no society to re ect,
likewise refuses to function on the loftier level of the Christsymbol. His kinsmen are quite right to weep and be frightened,
even to be appalled: for it is not his love for them or for himself
which causes him to die, but his hatred and his self-hatred; he does
not redeem the pains of a despised people, but reveals, on the
contrary, nothing more than his own erce bitterness at having

been born one of them. In this also he is the “native son,” his
progress determinable by the speed with which the distance
increases between himself and the auction-block and all that the
auction-block implies. To have penetrated this phenomenon, this
inward contention of love and hatred, blackness and whiteness,
would have given him a stature more nearly human and an end
more nearly tragic; and would have given us a document more
profoundly and genuinely bitter and less harsh with an anger
which is, on the one hand, exhibited and, on the other hand,
denied.
Native Son nds itself at length so trapped by the American
image of Negro life and by the American necessity to nd the ray
of hope that it cannot pursue its own implications. This is why
Bigger must be at the last redeemed, to be received, if only by
rhetoric, into that community of phantoms which is our tenaciously
held ideal of the happy social life. It is the socially conscious whites
who receive him—the Negroes being capable of no such objectivity
—and we have, by way of illustration, that lamentable scene in
which Jan, Mary’s lover, forgives him for her murder; and,
carrying the explicit burden of the novel, Max’s long speech to the
jury. This speech, which really ends the book, is one of the most
desperate performances in American ction. It is the question of
Bigger’s humanity which is at stake, the relationship in which he
stands to all other Americans—and, by implication, to all people—
and it is precisely this question which it cannot clarify, with which
it cannot, in fact, come to any coherent terms. He is the monster
created by the American republic, the present awful sum of
generations of oppression; but to say that he is a monster is to fall
into the trap of making him subhuman and he must, therefore, be
made representative of a way of life which is real and human in
precise ratio to the degree to which it seems to us monstrous and
strange. It seems to me that this idea carries, implicitly, a most
remarkable confession: that is, that Negro life is in fact as debased
and impoverished as our theology claims; and, further, that the use
to which Wright puts this idea can only proceed from the

assumption—not entirely unsound—that Americans, who evade, so
far as possible, all genuine experience, have therefore no way of
assessing the experience of others and no way of establishing
themselves in relation to any way of life which is not their own.
The privacy or obscurity of Negro life makes that life capable, in
our imaginations, of producing anything at all; and thus the idea
of Bigger’s monstrosity can be presented without fear of
contradiction, since no American has the knowledge or authority to
contest it and no Negro has the voice. It is an idea, which, in the
framework of the novel, is digni ed by the possibility it promptly
a ords of presenting Bigger as the herald of disaster, the danger
signal of a more bitter time to come when not Bigger alone but all
his kindred will rise, in the name of the many thousands who have
perished in re and ood and by rope and torture, to demand their
rightful vengeance.
But it is not quite fair, it seems to me, to exploit the national
innocence in this way. The idea of Bigger as a warning
boomerangs not only because it is quite beyond the limit of
probability that Negroes in America will ever achieve the means of
wreaking vengeance upon the state but also because it cannot be
said that they have any desire to do so. Native Son does not convey
the altogether savage paradox of the American Negro’s situation,
of which the social reality which we prefer with such hopeful
super ciality to study is but, as it were, the shadow. It is not
simply the relationship of oppressed to oppressor, of master to
slave, nor is it motivated merely by hatred; it is also, literally and
morally, a blood relationship, perhaps the most profound reality of
the American experience, and we cannot begin to unlock it until
we accept how very much it contains of the force and anguish and
terror of love.
Negroes are Americans and their destiny is the country’s destiny.
They have no other experience besides their experience on this
continent and it is an experience which cannot be rejected, which
yet remains to be embraced. If, as I believe, no American Negro
exists who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in the

skull, then what most signi cantly fails to be illuminated here is
the paradoxical adjustment which is perpetually made, the Negro
being compelled to accept the fact that this dark and dangerous
and unloved stranger is part of himself forever. Only this
recognition sets him in any wise free and it is this, this necessary
ability to contain and even, in the most honorable sense of the
word, to exploit the “nigger,” which lends to Negro life its high
element of the ironic and which causes the most well-meaning of
their American critics to make such exhilarating errors when
attempting to understand them. To present Bigger as a warning is
simply to reinforce the American guilt and fear concerning him, it
is most forcefully to limit him to that previously mentioned social
arena in which he has no human validity, it is simply to condemn
him to death. For he has always been a warning, he represents the
evil, the sin and su ering which we are compelled to reject. It is
useless to say to the courtroom in which this heathen sits on trial
that he is their responsibility, their creation, and his crimes are
theirs; and that they ought, therefore, to allow him to live, to make
articulate to himself behind the walls of prison the meaning of his
existence. The meaning of his existence has already been most
adequately expressed, nor does anyone wish, particularly not in
the name of democracy, to think of it any more; as for the
possibility of articulation, it is this possibility which above all
others we most dread. Moreover, the courtroom, judge, jury,
witnesses and spectators, recognize immediately that Bigger is
their creation and they recognize this not only with hatred and
fear and guilt and the resulting fury of self-righteousness but also
with that morbid fullness of pride mixed with horror with which
one regards the extent and power of one’s wickedness. They know
that death is his portion, that he runs to death; coming from
darkness and dwelling in darkness, he must be, as often as he rises,
banished, lest the entire planet be engulfed. And they know,
nally, that they do not wish to forgive him and that he does not
wish to be forgiven; that he dies, hating them, scorning that appeal
which they cannot make to that irrecoverable humanity of his
which cannot hear it; and that he wants to die because he glories in

his hatred and prefers, like Lucifer, rather to rule in hell than serve
in heaven.
For, bearing in mind the premise on which the life of such a man
is based, i.e., that black is the color of damnation, this is his only
possible end. It is the only death which will allow him a kind of
dignity or even, however horribly, a kind of beauty. To tell this
story, no more than a single aspect of the story of the “nigger,” is
inevitably and richly to become involved with the force of life and
legend, how each perpetually assumes the guise of the other,
creating that dense, many-sided and shifting reality which is the
world we live in and the world we make. To tell his story is to
begin to liberate us from his image and it is, for the rst time, to
clothe this phantom with esh and blood, to deepen, by our
understanding of him and his relationship to us, our understanding
of ourselves and of all men.
But this is not the story which Native Son tells, for we nd here
merely, repeated in anger, the story which we have told in pride.
Nor, since the implications of this anger are evaded, are we ever
confronted with the actual or potential signi cance of our pride;
which is why we fall, with such a positive glow of recognition,
upon Max’s long and bitter summing up. It is addressed to those
among us of good will and it seems to say that, though there are
whites and blacks among us who hate each other, we will not;
there are those who are betrayed by greed, by guilt, by blood lust,
but not we; we will set our faces against them and join hands and
walk together into that dazzling future when there will be no white
or black. This is the dream of all liberal men, a dream not at all
dishonorable, but, nevertheless, a dream. For, let us join hands on
this mountain as we may, the battle is elsewhere. It proceeds far
from us in the heat and horror and pain of life itself where all men
are betrayed by greed and guilt and bloodlust and where no one’s
hands are clean. Our good will, from which we yet expect such
power to transform us, is thin, passionless, strident: its roots,
examined, lead us back to our forebears, whose assumption it was
that the black man, to become truly human and acceptable, must

rst become like us. This assumption once accepted, the Negro in
America can only acquiesce in the obliteration of his own
personality, the distortion and debasement of his own experience,
surrendering to those forces which reduce the person to anonymity
and which make themselves manifest daily all over the darkening
world.

Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough
Hollywood’s peculiar ability to milk, so to speak, the cow and the
goat at the same time—and then to peddle the results as ginger ale
—has seldom produced anything more arresting than the 1955
production of Carmen Jones. In Hollywood, for example,
immorality and evil (which are synonyms in that lexicon) are
always vividly punished, though it is the way of the transgressor—
hard perhaps but far from unattractive—which keeps us on the
edge of our seats, and the transgressor himself (or herself) who
engages all our sympathy. Similarly, in Carmen Jones, the implicit
parallel between an amoral Gypsy and an amoral Negro woman is
the entire root idea of the show; but at the same time, bearing in
mind the distances covered since The Birth of a Nation, it is
important that the movie always be able to repudiate any
suggestion that Negroes are amoral—which it can only do,
considering the role of the Negro in the national psyche, by
repudiating any suggestion that Negroes are not white. With a
story like Carmen interpreted by a Negro cast this may seem a
di cult assignment, but Twentieth Century-Fox has brought it o .
At the same time they have also triumphantly not brought it o ,
that is to say that the story does deal with amoral people, Carmen
is a baggage, and it is a Negro cast.
This is made possible in the rst place, of course, by the fact that
Carmen is a “classic” or a “work of art” or something, therefore,
sacrosanct and, luckily, quite old: it is as ludicrously unenlightened
to accuse Mérimée and Bizet of having dirty minds as it is
impossible to accuse them of being anti-Negro. (Though it is
possible perhaps to accuse them of not knowing much and caring
less about Gypsies.) In the second place the music helps, for it has
assuredly never sounded so bald, or been sung so badly, or had less
relevance to life, anybody’s life, than in this production. The lyrics,

too, in their way, help, being tasteless and vulgar in a way, if not
to a degree, which cannot be called characteristic of Negroes. The
movie’s lifeless unreality is only occasionally threatened by Pearl
Bailey, who has, however, been forestalled by Mr. Preminger’s
direction and is reduced—in a series of awful costumes, designed,
it would appear, to camou age her personality—to doing what is
certainly the best that can be done with an abomination called
Beat Out That Rhythm on a Drum and delivering her lines for the
rest of the picture with such a murderously amused disdain that
one cannot quite avoid the suspicion that she is commenting on the
lm. For a second or so at a time she escapes the lm’s deadly
inertia and in Miss Bailey one catches glimpses of the imagination
which might have exploded this movie into something worth
seeing.
But this movie, more than any movie I can remember having
seen, cannot a ord, dare not risk, imagination. The “sexiness,” for
example, of Dorothy Dandridge, who plays Carmen, becomes quite
clearly manufactured and even rather silly the moment Pearl
Bailey stands anywhere near her.1 And the moment one wishes
that Pearl Bailey were playing Carmen one understands that
Carmen Jones is controlled by another movie which Hollywood was
studiously not making. For, while it is amusing to parallel Bizet’s
amoral Gypsy with a present-day, lower-class Negro woman, it is a
good deal less amusing to parallel the Bizet violence with the
violence of the Negro ghetto.
To avoid this—to exploit, that is, Carmen as a brown-skinned
baggage but to avoid even suggesting any of the motivations such
a present-day Carmen might have—it was helpful, rst of all, that
the script failed to require the services of any white people. This
seals the action o , as it were, in a vacuum in which the spectacle
of color is divested of its danger. The color itself then becomes a
kind of vacuum which each spectator will ll with his own
fantasies. But Carmen Jones does not inhabit the never-never land
of such bogus but rather entertaining works as Stormy Weather or
Cabin in the Sky—in which at least one could listen to the music;

Carmen Jones has moved into a stratosphere rather more
interesting and more pernicious, in which even Negro speech is
parodied out of its charm and liberalized, if one may so put it, out
of its force and precision. The result is not that the characters
sound like everybody else, which would be bad enough; the result
is that they sound ludicrously false and a ected, like ante-bellum
Negroes imitating their masters. This is also the way they look, and
also rather the way they are dressed, and the word that springs
immediately to mind to describe the appallingly technicolored sets
—an army camp, a room, and a street on Chicago’s South Side,
presumably, which Bigger Thomas would certainly fail to recognize
—is “spotless.” They could easily have been dreamed up by
someone determined to prove that Negroes are as “clean” and as
“modern” as white people and, I suppose, in one way or another,
that is exactly how they were dreamed up.
And one is not allowed to forget for an instant that one is
watching an opera (a word apparently synonymous in Mr.
Preminger’s mind with tragedy and fantasy), and the tone of
Carmen Jones is sti ing: a wedding of the blank, lofty solemnity
with which Hollywood so often approaches “works of art” and the
really quite helpless condescension with which Hollywood has
always handled Negroes. The fact that one is watching a Negro
cast interpreting Carmen is used to justify their remarkable vacuity,
their complete improbability, their total divorce from anything
suggestive of the realities of Negro life. On the other hand, the
movie cannot possibly avoid depending very heavily on a certain
quaintness, a certain lack of inhibition taken to be typical of
Negroes, and further, the exigencies of the story—to say nothing of
the images, which we will discuss in a moment—make it necessary
to watch this movie, holding in the mind three disparate ideas: (1)
that this is an opera having nothing to do with the present day,
hence, nothing, really, to do with Negroes; but (2) the greater
passion, that winning warmth (of which the movie exhibits not a
trace), so typical of Negroes makes Carmen an ideal vehicle for
their graduation into Art; and (3) these are exceptional Negroes, as

American, that is, as you and me, interpreting lower-class Negroes
of whom they, also, are very fond, an a ection which is proven
perhaps by the fact that everyone appears to undergo a tiny,
strangling death before resolutely substituting “de” for “the.”
A movie is, literally, a series of images, and what one sees in a
movie can really be taken, beyond its stammering or misleading
dialogue, as the key to what the movie is actually involved in
saying. Carmen Jones is one of the rst and most explicit—and far
and away the most self-conscious—weddings of sex and color
which Hollywood has yet turned out. (It will most certainly not be
the last.) From this point of view the color wheel in Carmen Jones
is very important. Dorothy Dandridge—Carmen—is a sort of ta ycolored girl, very obviously and vividly dressed, but really in
herself rather more sweet than vivid. One feels—perhaps one is
meant to feel—that here is a very nice girl making her way in
movies by means of a bad-girl part; and the glow thus caused,
especially since she is a colored girl, really must make up for the
glow which is missing from the performance she is clearly working
very hard at. Harry Belafonte is just a little darker and just as
blankly handsome and fares very badly opposite her in a really
o ensive version of an already unendurable role. Olga James is
Micaela, here called Cindy Lou, a much paler girl than Miss
Dandridge but also much plainer, who is compelled to go through
the entire movie in a kind of tearful stoop. Joe Adams is Husky
Miller (Escamillo) and he is also rather ta y-colored, but since he
is the second lead and by way of being the villain, he is not
required to be as blank as Mr. Belafonte and there is therefore,
simply in his presence, some eeting hint of masculine or at least
boyish force. For the rest, Pearl Bailey is quite dark and she plays,
in e ect, a oozie. The wicked sergeant who causes Joe to desert
the army—in one of many wildly improbable scenes—and who has
evil designs on Carmen is very dark indeed; and so is Husky
Miller’s trainer, who is, one is given to suppose, Miss Bailey’s
sugar-daddy. It is quite clear that these people do not live in the
same world with Carmen, or Joe, or Cindy Lou. All three of the

leads are presented as inde nably complex and tragic, not after
money or rhinestones but something else which causes them to be
misunderstood by the more earthy types around them. This
something else is love, of course, and it is with the handling of this
love story that the movie really goes to town.
It is true that no one in the original Carmen, least of all Carmen
and her lover, are very clearly motivated; but there it scarcely
matters because the opera is able to get by on a purely theatrical
excitement, a sort of papier-mâché violence, and the intense, if
nally incredible, sexuality of its heroine. The movie does not have
any of this to work with, since here excitement or violence could
only blow the movie to bits, and, while the movie certainly
indicates that Carmen is a luscious lollipop, it is on rather more
uncertain ground when confronted with the notion of how
attractive she nds men, and it cannot, in any case, use this as a
motivating factor. Carmen is thus robbed at a stroke of even her
fake vitality and all her cohesiveness and has become, instead, a
nice girl, if a little ery, whose great fault—and, since this is a
tragedy, also her triumph—is that she looks at “life,” as her nal
aria states it, “straight in de eye.” In lieu of sexuality the moviemakers have dreamed up some mumbo jumbo involving buzzards’
wings, signs of the zodiac, and death-dealing cards, so that, it
appears, Carmen ruins Joe because she loves him and decides to
leave him because the cards tell her she is going to die. The fact
that between the time she leaves him and the time he kills her she
acquires some new clothes, and drinks—as one of her arias rather
violently indicates she intends to—a great deal of champagne is
simply a sign of her intense inner su ering.
Carmen has come a long way from the auction block, but Joe, of
course, cannot be far behind. This Joe is a good, ne-looking boy
who loves his Maw, has studied hard, and is going to be sent to
ying school, and who is engaged to a girl who rather resembles
his Maw, named Cindy Lou. His indi erence to Carmen, who has
all the other males in sight quivering with a passion never seen on
land or sea, sets her ablaze; in a series of scenes which it is di cult

to call erotic without adding that they are also infantile, she goes
after him and he falls. Here the technicolored bodies of Dandridge
and Belafonte, while the movie is being glum about the ruin of
Joe’s career and impending doom, are used for the maximum erotic
e ect. It is a sterile and distressing eroticism, however, because it
is occurring in a vacuum between two mannequins who clearly are
not involved in anything more serious than giving the customers a
run for their money. One is not watching either tenderness or love,
and one is certainly not watching the complex and consuming
passion which leads to life or death—one is watching a timorous
and vulgar misrepresentation of these things.
And it must be said that one of the reasons for this is that, while
the movie-makers are pleased to have Miss Dandridge ouncing
about in tight skirts and plunging necklines—which is not exactly
sexuality, either—the Negro male is still too loaded a quantity for
them to know quite how to handle. The result is that Mr. Belafonte
is really not allowed to do anything more than walk around
looking like a spaniel: his sexuality is really taken as given because
Miss Dandridge wants him. It does not, otherwise, exist and he is
not destroyed by his own sexual aggressiveness, which he is not
allowed to have, but by the sexual aggressiveness of the girl—or,
as it turns out, not even really by that, but by tea leaves. The only
reason, nally, that the eroticism of Carmen Jones is more potent
than, say, the eroticism of a Lana Turner vehicle is that Carmen
Jones has Negro bodies before the camera and Negroes are
associated in the public mind with sex. Since darker races always
seem to have for lighter races an aura of sexuality, this fact is not
distressing in itself. What is distressing is the conjecture this movie
leaves one with as to what Americans take sex to be.
The most important thing about this movie—and the reason that,
despite itself, it is one of the most important all-Negro movies
Hollywood has yet produced—is that the questions it leaves in the
mind relate less to Negroes than to the interior life of Americans.
One wonders, it is true, if Negroes are really going to become the
ciphers this movie makes them out to be; but, since they have until

now survived public images even more appalling, one is
encouraged to hope, for their sake and the sake of the Republic,
that they will continue to prove themselves incorrigible. Besides,
life does not produce ciphers like these: when people have become
this empty they are not ciphers any longer, but monsters. The
creation of such ciphers proves, however, that Americans are far
from empty; they are, on the contrary, very deeply disturbed. And
this disturbance is not the kind which can be eased by the doing of
good works, but seems to have turned inward and shows every
sign of becoming personal. This is one of the best things that can
possibly happen. It can be taken to mean—among a great many
other things—that the ferment which has resulted in as odd a brew
as Carmen Jones can now be expected to produce something which
will be more bitter on the tongue but sweeter in the stomach.
1 I have singled out Miss Bailey because the quality of her personality, forthright and wry,

and with the authoritative ring of authenticity, highlights for me the lack of any of these
qualities, or any positive qualities at all, in the movie itself. She is also the only performer

with whose work I am more or less familiar. Since even she is so thoroughly handicapped

by the peculiar necessities of Carmen Jones, I should like to make it clear that, in
discussing the rest of the cast, I am not trying to judge their professional competence,

which, on the basis of this movie—they do not even sing in their own voices—it would be
quite unfair to do.

PART TWO

The Harlem Ghetto
Harlem, physically at least, has changed very little in my parents’
lifetime or in mine. Now as then the buildings are old and in
desperate need of repair, the streets are crowded and dirty, there
are too many human beings per square block. Rents are 10 to 58
per cent higher than anywhere else in the city; food, expensive
everywhere, is more expensive here and of an inferior quality; and
now that the war is over and money is dwindling, clothes are
carefully shopped for and seldom bought. Negroes, traditionally
the last to be hired and the rst to be red, are nding jobs harder
to get, and, while prices are rising implacably, wages are going
down. All over Harlem now there is felt the same bitter expectancy
with which, in my childhood, we awaited winter: it is coming and
it will be hard; there is nothing anyone can do about it.
All of Harlem is pervaded by a sense of congestion, rather like
the insistent, maddening, claustrophobic pounding in the skull that
comes from trying to breathe in a very small room with all the
windows shut. Yet the white man walking through Harlem is not at
all likely to nd it sinister or more wretched than any other slum.
Harlem wears to the casual observer a casual face; no one
remarks that—considering the history of black men and women
and the legends that have sprung up about them, to say nothing of
the ever-present policemen, wary on the street corners—the face
is, indeed, somewhat excessively casual and may not be as open or
as careless as it seems. If an outbreak of more than usual violence
occurs, as in 1935 or in 1943, it is met with sorrow and surprise
and rage; the social hostility of the rest of the city feeds on this as
proof that they were right all along, and the hostility increases;
speeches are made, committees are set up, investigations ensue.
Steps are taken to right the wrong, without, however, expanding
or demolishing the ghetto. The idea is to make it less of a social

liability, a process about as helpful as make-up to a leper. Thus, we
have the Boys’ Club on West 134th Street, the playground at West
131st and Fifth Avenue; and, since Negroes will not be allowed to
live in Stuyvesant Town, Metropolitan Life is thoughtfully erecting
a housing project called Riverton in the center of Harlem;
however, it is not likely that any but the professional class of
Negroes—and not all of them—will be able to pay the rent.
Most of these projects have been stimulated by perpetually
embattled Negro leaders and by the Negro press. Concerning Negro
leaders, the best that one can say is that they are in an impossible
position and that the handful motivated by genuine concern
maintain this position with heartbreaking dignity. It is unlikely
that anyone acquainted with Harlem seriously assumes that the
presence of one playground more or less has any profound e ect
upon the psychology of the citizens there. And yet it is better to
have the playground; it is better than nothing; and it will, at least,
make life somewhat easier for parents who will then know that
their children are not in as much danger of being run down in the
streets. Similarly, even though the American cult of literacy has
chie y operated only to provide a market for the Reader’s Digest
and the Daily News, literacy is still better than illiteracy; so Negro
leaders must demand more and better schools for Negroes, though
any Negro who takes this schooling at face value will nd himself
virtually incapacitated for life in this democracy. Possibly the most
salutary e ect of all this activity is that it assures the Negro that he
is not altogether forgotten: people are working in his behalf,
however hopeless or misguided they may be; and as long as the
water is troubled it cannot become stagnant.
The terrible thing about being a Negro leader lies in the term
itself. I do not mean merely the somewhat condescending
di erentiation the term implies, but the nicely re ned torture a
man can experience from having been created and defeated by the
same circumstances. That is, Negro leaders have been created by
the American scene, which thereafter works against them at every
point; and the best that they can hope for is ultimately to work

themselves out of their jobs, to nag contemporary American
leaders and the members of their own group until a bad situation
becomes so complicated and so bad that it cannot be endured any
longer. It is like needling a blister until it bursts. On the other
hand, one cannot help observing that some Negro leaders and
politicians are far more concerned with their careers than with the
welfare of Negroes, and their dramatic and publicized battles are
battles with the wind. Again, this phenomenon cannot be changed
without a change in the American scene. In a land where, it is said,
any citizen can grow up and become president, Negroes can be
pardoned for desiring to enter Congress.
The Negro press, which supports any man, provided he is
su ciently dark and well-known—with the exception of certain
Negro novelists accused of drawing portraits un attering to the
race—has for years received vastly confusing criticism based on the
fact that it is helplessly and always exactly what it calls itself, that
is, a press devoted entirely to happenings in or about the Negro
world. This preoccupation can probably be forgiven in view of the
great indi erence and frequent hostility of the American white
press. The Negro press has been accused of not helping matters
much—as indeed, it has not, nor do I see how it could have. And it
has been accused of being sensational, which it is; but this is a
criticism di cult to take seriously in a country so devoted to the
sensational as ours.
The best-selling Negro newspaper, I believe, is the Amsterdam
Star-News, which is also the worst, being gleefully devoted to
murders, rapes, raids on love-nests, interracial wars, any item—
however meaningless—concerning prominent Negroes, and
whatever racial gains can be reported for the week—all in just
about that order. Apparently, this policy works well; it sells papers
—which is, after all, the aim; in my childhood we never missed an
edition. The day the paper came out we could hear, far down the
street, the news vendor screaming the latest scandal and people
rushing to read about it.

The Amsterdam has been rivaled, in recent years, by the People’s
Voice, a journal, modeled on PM and referred to as PV. PV is not so
wildly sensational a paper as the Amsterdam, though its coverage is
much the same (the news coverage of the Negro press is naturally
pretty limited). PV’s politics are less murky, to the left of center
(the Amsterdam is Republican, a political a liation that has led it
into some strange doubletalk), and its tone, since its inception, has
been ever more hopelessly militant, full of warnings, appeals, and
open letters to the government—which, to no one’s surprise, are
not answered—and the same rather pathetic preoccupation with
prominent Negroes and what they are doing. Columns signed by
Lena Horne and Paul Robeson appeared in PV until several weeks
ago, when both severed their connections with the paper. Miss
Horne’s column made her sound like an embittered Eleanor
Roosevelt, and the only column of Robeson’s I have read was
concerned with the current witch-hunt in Hollywood, discussing the
kind of movies under attack and Hollywood’s traditional treatment
of Negroes. It is personally painful to me to realize that so gifted
and forceful a man as Robeson should have been tricked by his
own bitterness and by a total inability to understand the nature of
political power in general, or Communist aims in particular, into
missing the point of his own critique, which is worth a great deal
of thought: that there are a great many ways of being unAmerican, some of them nearly as old as the country itself, and
that the House Un-American Activities Committee might nd
concepts and attitudes even more damaging to American life in a
picture like Gone With the Wind than in the possibly equally
romantic but far less successful Watch on the Rhine.
The only other newspapers in the eld with any signi cant sale
in Harlem are the Pittsburgh Courier, which has the reputation of
being the best of the lot, and the Afro-American, which resembles
the New York Journal-American in layout and type and seems to
make a consistent if unsuccessful e ort to be at once readable,
intelligent, and ery. The Courier is a high-class paper, reaching its
peak in the handling of its society news and in the columns of

George S. Schuyler, whose Olympian serenity infuriates me, but
who, as a matter of fact, re ects with great accuracy the state of
mind and the ambitions of the professional, well-to-do Negro who
has managed to nd a place to stand. Mr. Schuyler, who is
remembered still for a satirical novel I have not read, called Black
No More, is aided enormously in this position by a genteel white
wife and a child-prodigy daughter—who is seriously regarded in
some circles as proof of the incomprehensible contention that the
mating of white and black is more likely to produce genius than
any other combination. (The Afro-American recently ran a series of
articles on this subject, “The Education of a Genius,” by Mrs.
Amarintha Work, who recorded in detail the development of her
mulatto son, Craig.)
Ebony and Our World are the two big magazines in the eld,
Ebony looking and sounding very much like Life, and Our World
being the black man’s Look. Our World is a very strange,
disorganized magazine indeed, sounding sometimes like a college
newspaper and sometimes like a call to arms, but principally, like
its more skillful brothers, devoted to the proposition that anything
a white man can do a Negro can probably do better. Ebony digs
feature articles out of such things as the “real” Lena Horne and
Negro FBI agents, and it travels into the far corners of the earth for
any news, however trivial, concerning any Negro or group of
Negroes who are in any way unusual and/or newsworthy. The
tone of both Ebony and Our World is a rmative; they cater to the
“better class of Negro.” Ebony’s November 1947 issue carried an
editoral entitled “Time To Count Our Blessings,” which began by
accusing Chester Himes (author of the novel Lonely Crusade) of
having a color psychosis, and went on to explain that there are
Negro racists also who are just as blind and dangerous as Bilbo,
which is incontestably true, and that, compared to the millions of
starving Europeans, Negroes are sitting pretty—which comparison,
I hazard, cannot possibly mean anything to any Negro who has not
seen Europe. The editorial concluded that Negroes had come a long
way and that “as patriotic Americans” it was time “we” stopped

singing the blues and realized just how bright the future was. These
cheering sentiments were anked—or underscored, if you will—by
a photograph on the opposite page of an aging Negro farm woman
carrying home a bumper crop of onions. It apparently escaped the
editors of Ebony that the very existence of their magazine, and its
table of contents for any month, gave the lie to this e ort to make
the best of a bad bargain.
The true raison d’être of the Negro press can be found in the
letters-to-the-editor sections, where the truth about life among the
rejected can be seen in print. It is the terrible dilemma of the
Negro press that, having no other model, it models itself on the
white press, attempting to emulate the same e ortless,
sophisticated tone—a tone its subject matter renders utterly
unconvincing. It is simply impossible not to sing the blues, audibly
or not, when the lives lived by Negroes are so inescapably harsh
and stunted. It is not the Negro press that is at fault: whatever
contradictions, inanities, and political infantilism can be charged
to it can be charged equally to the American press at large. It is a
black man’s newspaper straining for recognition and a foothold in
the white man’s world. Matters are not helped in the least by the
fact that the white man’s world, intellectually, morally, and
spiritually, has the meaningless ring of a hollow drum and the odor
of slow death. Within the body of the Negro press all the wars and
falsehoods, all the decay and dislocation and struggle of our
society are seen in relief.
The Negro press, like the Negro, becomes the scapegoat for our
ills. There is no di erence, after all, between the Amsterdam’s
handling of a murder on Lenox Avenue and the Daily News’
coverage of a murder on Beekman Hill; nor is there any di erence
between the chauvinism of the two papers, except that the News is
smug and the Amsterdam is desperate. Negroes live violent lives,
unavoidably; a Negro press without violence is therefore not
possible; and, further, in every act of violence, particularly
violence against white men, Negroes feel a certain thrill of
identi cation, a wish to have done it themselves, a feeling that old

scores are being settled at last. It is no accident that Joe Louis is
the most idolized man in Harlem. He has succeeded on a level that
white America indicates is the only level for which it has any
respect. We (Americans in general, that is) like to point to Negroes
and to most of their activities with a kind of tolerant scorn; but it
is ourselves we are watching, ourselves we are damning, or—
condescendingly—bending to save.
I have written at perhaps excessive length about the Negro press,
principally because its many critics have always seemed to me to
make the irrational demand that the nation’s most oppressed
minority behave itself at all times with a skill and foresight no one
ever expected of the late Joseph Patterson or ever expected of
Hearst; and I have tried to give some idea of its tone because it
seems to me that it is here that the innate desperation is betrayed.
As for the question of Negro advertising, which has caused so much
comment, it seems to me quite logical that any minority identi ed
by the color of its skin and the texture of its hair would eventually
grow self-conscious about these attributes and avoid advertising
lotions that made the hair kinkier and soaps that darkened the
skin. The American ideal, after all, is that everyone should be as
much alike as possible.
It is axiomatic that the Negro is religious, which is to say that he
stands in fear of the God our ancestors gave us and before whom
we all tremble yet. There are probably more churches in Harlem
than in any other ghetto in this city and they are going full blast
every night and some of them are lled with praying people every
day. This, supposedly, exempli es the Negro’s essential simplicity
and good-will; but it is actually a fairly desperate emotional
business.
These churches range from the august and publicized Abyssinian
Baptist Church on West 138th Street to resolutely unclassi able
lofts, basements, store-fronts, and even private dwellings. Nightly,
Holyroller ministers, spiritualists, self-appointed prophets and
Messiahs gather their ocks together for worship and for strength
through joy. And this is not, as Cabin in the Sky would have us

believe, merely a childlike emotional release. Their faith may be
described as childlike, but the end it serves is often sinister. It may,
indeed, “keep them happy”—a phrase carrying the inescapable
inference that the way of life imposed on Negroes makes them
quite actively unhappy—but also, and much more signi cantly,
religion operates here as a complete and exquisite fantasy revenge:
white people own the earth and commit all manner of
abomination and injustice on it; the bad will be punished and the
good rewarded, for God is not sleeping, the judgment is not far o .
It does not require a spectacular degree of perception to realize
that bitterness is here neither dead nor sleeping, and that the white
man, believing what he wishes to believe, has misread the symbols.
Quite often the Negro preacher descends to levels less abstract and
leaves no doubt as to what is on his mind: the pressure of life in
Harlem, the conduct of the Italian-Ethiopian war, racial injustice
during the recent war, and the terrible possibility of yet another
very soon. All these topics provide excellent springboards for
sermons thinly coated with spirituality but designed mainly to
illustrate the injustice of the white American and anticipate his
certain and long overdue punishment.
Here, too, can be seen one aspect of the Negro’s ambivalent
relation to the Jew. To begin with, though the traditional Christian
accusation that the Jews killed Christ is neither questioned nor
doubted, the term “Jew” actually operates in this initial context to
include all in dels of white skin who have failed to accept the
Savior. No real distinction is made: the preacher begins by
accusing the Jews of having refused the light and proceeds from
there to a catalog of their subsequent sins and the su erings visited
on them by a wrathful God. Though the notion of the su ering is
based on the image of the wandering, exiled Jew, the context
changes imperceptibly, to become a fairly obvious reminder of the
trials of the Negro, while the sins recounted are the sins of the
American republic.
At this point, the Negro identi es himself almost wholly with the
Jew. The more devout Negro considers that he is a Jew, in bondage

to a hard taskmaster and waiting for a Moses to lead him out of
Egypt. The hymns, the texts, and the most favored legends of the
devout Negro are all Old Testament and therefore Jewish in origin:
the ight from Egypt, the Hebrew children in the ery furnace, the
terrible jubilee songs of deliverance: Lord, wasn’t that hard trials,
great tribulations, I’m bound to leave this land! The covenant God
made in the beginning with Abraham and which was to extend to
his children and to his children’s children forever is a covenant
made with these latter-day exiles also: as Israel was chosen, so are
they. The birth and death of Jesus, which adds a non-Judaic
element, also implements this identi cation. It is the covenant
made with Abraham again, renewed, signed with his blood.
(“Before Abraham was, I am.”) Here the gure of Jesus operates as
the intercessor, the bridge from earth to heaven; it was Jesus who
made it possible, who made salvation free to all, “to the Jew rst
and afterwards the Gentile.” The images of the su ering Christ and
the su ering Jew are wedded with the image of the su ering slave,
and they are one: the people that walked in darkness have seen a
great light.
But if the Negro has bought his salvation with pain and the New
Testament is used to prove, as it were, the validity of the
transformation, it is the Old Testament which is clung to and most
frequently preached from, which provides the emotional re and
anatomizes the path of bondage; and which promises vengeance
and assures the chosen of their place in Zion. The favorite text of
my father, among the most earnest of ministers, was not “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do,” but “How can I
sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
This same identi cation, which Negroes, since slavery, have
accepted with their mothers’ milk, serves, in contemporary
actuality, to implement an involved and speci c bitterness. Jews
in Harlem are small tradesmen, rent collectors, real estate agents,
and pawnbrokers; they operate in accordance with the American
business tradition of exploiting Negroes, and they are therefore
identi ed with oppression and are hated for it. I remember

meeting no Negro in the years of my growing up, in my family or
out of it, who would really ever trust a Jew, and few who did not,
indeed, exhibit for them the blackest contempt. On the other hand,
this did not prevent their working for Jews, being utterly civil and
pleasant to them, and, in most cases, contriving to delude their
employers into believing that, far from harboring any dislike for
Jews, they would rather work for a Jew than for anyone else. It is
part of the price the Negro pays for his position in this society that,
as Richard Wright points out, he is almost always acting. A Negro
learns to gauge precisely what reaction the alien person facing him
desires, and he produces it with disarming artlessness. The friends I
had, growing up and going to work, grew more bitter every day;
and, conversely, they learned to hide this bitterness and to t into
the pattern Gentile and Jew alike had xed for them.
The tension between Negroes and Jews contains an element not
characteristic of Negro-Gentile tension, an element which accounts
in some measure for the Negro’s tendency to castigate the Jew
verbally more often than the Gentile, and which might lead one to
the conclusion that, of all white people on the face of the earth, it
is the Jew whom the Negro hates most. When the Negro hates the
Jew as a Jew he does so partly because the nation does and in
much the same painful fashion that he hates himself. It is an aspect
of his humiliation whittled down to a manageable size and then
transferred; it is the best form the Negro has for tabulating vocally
his long record of grievances against his native land.
At the same time, there is a subterranean assumption that the
Jew should “know better,” that he has su ered enough himself to
know what su ering means. An understanding is expected of the
Jew such as none but the most naïve and visionary Negro has ever
expected of the American Gentile. The Jew, by the nature of his
own precarious position, has failed to vindicate this faith. Jews,
like Negroes, must use every possible weapon in order to be
accepted, and must try to cover their vulnerability by a frenzied
adoption of the customs of the country; and the nation’s treatment
of Negroes is unquestionably a custom. The Jew has been taught—

and, too often, accepts—the legend of Negro inferiority; and the
Negro, on the other hand, has found nothing in his experience with
Jews to counteract the legend of Semitic greed. Here the American
white Gentile has two legends serving him at once: he has divided
these minorities and he rules.
It seems unlikely that within this complicated structure any real
and systematic cooperation can be achieved between Negroes and
Jews. (This is in terms of the over-all social problem and is not
meant to imply that individual friendships are impossible or that
they are valueless when they occur.) The structure of the American
commonwealth has trapped both these minorities into attitudes of
perpetual hostility. They do not dare trust each other—the Jew
because he feels he must climb higher on the American social
ladder and has, so far as he is concerned, nothing to gain from
identi cation with any minority even more unloved than he; while
the Negro is in the even less tenable position of not really daring
to trust anyone.
This applies, with quali cations and yet with almost no
exceptions, even to those Negroes called progressive and
“unusual.” Negroes of the professional class (as distinct from
professional Negroes) compete actively with the Jew in daily
contact; and they wear anti-Semitism as a de ant proof of their
citizenship; their positions are too shaky to allow them any real
ease or any faith in anyone. They do not trust whites or each other
or themselves; and, particularly and vocally, they do not trust
Jews. During my brief days as a Socialist I spent more than one
meeting arguing against anti-Semitism with a Negro college
student, who was trying to get into civil service and was
supporting herself meanwhile as a domestic. She was by no means
a stupid girl, nor even a particularly narrow-minded one: she was
all in favor of the millennium, even to working with Jews to
achieve it; but she was not prepared ever to accept a Jew as a
friend. It did no good to point out, as I did, that the exploitation of
which she accused the Jews was American, not Jewish, that in fact,
behind the Jewish face stood the American reality. And my Jewish

friends in high school were not like that, I said, they had no
intention of exploiting me, we did not hate each other. (I
remember, as I spoke, being aware of doubt crawling like fog in
the back of my mind.) This might all be very well, she told me, we
were children now, with no need to earn a living. Wait until later,
when your friends go into business and you try to get a job. You’ll
see!
It is this bitterness—felt alike by the inarticulate, hungry
population of Harlem, by the wealthy on Sugar Hill, and by the
brilliant exceptions ensconced in universities—which has defeated
and promises to continue to defeat all e orts at interracial
understanding. I am not one of the people who believe that
oppression imbues a people with wisdom or insight or sweet
charity, though the survival of the Negro in this country would
simply not have been possible if this bitterness had been all he felt.
In America, though, life seems to move faster than anywhere else
on the globe and each generation is promised more than it will get:
which creates, in each generation, a furious, bewildered rage, the
rage of people who cannot nd solid ground beneath their feet.
Just as a mountain of sociological investigations, committee
reports, and plans for recreational centers have failed to change
the face of Harlem or prevent Negro boys and girls from growing
up and facing, individually and alone, the unendurable frustration
of being always, everywhere, inferior—until nally the cancer
attacks the mind and warps it—so there seems no hope for better
Negro-Jewish relations without a change in the American pattern.
Both the Negro and the Jew are helpless; the pressure of living is
too immediate and incessant to allow time for understanding. I can
conceive of no Negro native to this country who has not, by the
age of puberty, been irreparably scarred by the conditions of his
life. All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into
stunted maturity, trying desperately to nd a place to stand; and
the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many
survive. The Negro’s outlets are desperately constricted. In his
dilemma he turns rst upon himself and then upon whatever most

represents to him his own emasculation. Here the Jew is caught in
the American cross re. The Negro, facing a Jew, hates, at bottom,
not his Jewishness but the color of his skin. It is not the Jewish
tradition by which he has been betrayed but the tradition of his
native land. But just as a society must have a scapegoat, so hatred
must have a symbol. Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the
Jew.

Journey to Atlanta
The Progressive Party has not, so far as I can gather, made any
very great impression in Harlem, and this is not so much despite as
because of its campaign promises, promises rather too extravagant
to be believed. It is considered a rather cheerful axiom that all
Americans distrust politicians. (No one takes the further and less
cheerful step of considering just what e ect this mutual contempt
has on either the public or the politicians, who have, indeed, very
little to do with one another.) Of all Americans, Negroes distrust
politicians most, or, more accurately, they have been best trained
to expect nothing from them; more than other Americans, they are
always aware of the enormous gap between election promises and
their daily lives. It is true that the promises excite them, but this is
not because they are taken as proof of good intentions. They are
the proof of something more concrete than intentions: that the
Negro situation is not static, that changes have occurred, and are
occurring and will occur—this, in spite of the daily, dead-end
monotony. It is this daily, dead-end monotony, though, as well as
the wise desire not to be betrayed by too much hoping, which
causes them to look on politicians with such an extraordinarily
disenchanted eye.
This fatalistic indi erence is something that drives the optimistic
American liberal quite mad; he is prone, in his more exasperated
moments, to refer to Negroes as political children, an appellation
not entirely just. Negro liberals, being consulted, assure us that this
is something that will disappear with “education,” a vast, allpurpose term, conjuring up visions of sunlit housing projects,
stacks of copybooks and a race of well-soaped, dark-skinned
people who never slur their R’s. Actually, this is not so much
political irresponsibility as the product of experience, experience
which no amount of education can quite e ace. It is, as much as

anything else, the reason the Negro vote is so easily bought and
sold, the reason for that exclamation heard so frequently on Sugar
Hill: “Our people never get anywhere.”
“Our people” have functioned in this country for nearly a
century as political weapons, the trump card up the enemies’
sleeve; anything promised Negroes at election time is also a threat
levelled at the opposition; in the struggle for mastery the Negro is
the pawn. It is inescapable that this is only possible because of his
position in this country and it has very frequently seemed at least
equally apparent that this is a position which no one, least of all
the politician, seriously intended to change.
Since Negroes have been in this country their one major,
devastating gain was their Emancipation, an emancipation no one
regards any more as having been dictated by humanitarian
impulses. All that has followed from that brings to mind the rather
unfortunate image of bones thrown to a pack of dogs su ciently
hungry to be dangerous. If all this sounds rather deliberately grim,
it is not through any wish to make the picture darker than it is; I
would merely like to complete the picture usually presented by
pointing out that no matter how many instances there have been
of genuine concern and good-will, nor how many hard, honest
struggles have been carried on to improve the position of the
Negro people, their position has not, in fact, changed so far as
most of them are concerned.
Sociologists and historians, having the historical perspective in
mind, may conclude that we are moving toward ever-greater
democracy; but this is beyond the ken of a Negro growing up in
any one of this country’s ghettos. As regards Negro politicians,
they are considered with pride as politicians, a pride much akin to
that felt concerning Marian Anderson or Joe Louis: they have
proven the worth of the Negro people and in terms, American
terms, which no one can negate. But as no housewife expects
Marian Anderson’s genius to be of any practical aid in her dealings
with the landlord, so nothing is expected of Negro representatives.
The terrible thing, and here we have an American phenomenon in

relief, is the fact that the Negro representative, by virtue of his
position, is ever more removed from the people he ostensibly
serves. Moreover, irrespective of personal integrity, his position—
neatly and often painfully paradoxical—is utterly dependent on
the continuing debasement of fourteen million Negroes; should the
national ideals be put into practice tomorrow, countless prominent
Negroes would lose their raison d’être.
Finally, we are confronted with the psychology and tradition of
the country; if the Negro vote is so easily bought and sold, it is
because it has been treated with so little respect; since no Negro
dares seriously assume that any politician is concerned with the
fate of Negroes, or would do much about it if he had the power, the
vote must be bartered for what it will get, for whatever short-term
goals can be managed. These goals are mainly economic and
frequently personal, sometimes pathetic: bread or a new roof or
ve dollars, or, continuing up the scale, schools, houses or more
Negroes in hitherto Caucasian jobs. The American commonwealth
chooses to overlook what Negroes are never able to forget: they
are not really considered a part of it. Like Aziz in A Passage to India
or Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, they know that white people,
whatever their love for justice, have no love for them.
This is the crux of the matter; and the Progressive Party, with its
extravagant claims, has, therefore, imposed on itself the
considerable burden of proof. The only party within recent
memory which made equally strident claims of fellowship were the
Communists, who failed to survive this test; and the only politician
of similar claims was, of course, Wallace’s erstwhile master,
Roosevelt, who did not after all, now that the magic of his voice is
gone, succeed in raising the darker brother to the status of a
citizen. This is the ancestry of the Wallace party, and it does not
work wholly in its favor. It operates to give pause to even the most
desperate and the most gullible.
It is, however, considered on one level, the level of short-term
goals, with approval, since it does a ord temporary work for
Negroes, particularly those associated in any manner with the arts.

The rather ippant question on 125th Street now is: “So? You
working for Mr. Wallace these days?” For at least there is that:
entertainers, personalities are in demand. To forestall lawsuits, I
must explain that I am not discussing “names”—who are in rather
a di erent position, too touchy and complex to analyze here—but
the unknown, the struggling, endless armies of Negro boys and
girls bent on, and as yet very far from, recognition. A segment of
this army, a quartet called The Melodeers, made a trip to Atlanta
under the auspices of the Progressive Party in August, a trip which
lasted about eighteen days and which left them with no love for
Mr. Wallace. Since this quartet included two of my brothers, I was
given the details of the trip; indeed, David, the younger, kept a
sort of journal for me—literally a blow-by-blow account.
Harlem is lled with churches and on Sundays it gives the
impression of being lled with music. Quartets such as my
brothers’ travel from church to church in the fashion of circuit
preachers, singing as much for the love of singing and the need for
practice as for the rather indi erent sums collected for them which
are then divided. These quartets have “battles of song,” the
winning team adding, of course, immensely to its prestige, the
most consistent winners being the giants in this eld. The aim of
all these quartets, of course, is to branch out, to hit the big time
and sing for a livelihood. The Golden Gate Quartet, judging at
least from its music, had its roots here, and out of such a
background came Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whom I heard, not quite
ten years ago, plunking a guitar in a storefront church on Fifth
Avenue. The Melodeers have not been singing very long and are
very far from well-known, and the invitation to sing on tour with
the Wallace party in the South seemed, whatever their misgivings
about the Mason-Dixon line, too good an opportunity to pass up.
This invitation, by the way, seems to have been the brainstorm
of a Clarence Warde, a Negro merchant seaman once employed as
a cottage father in a corrective institution up-state; it was he in
New York who acted as a go-between, arranging, since The
Melodeers are minors, to be their legal guardian and manager on

the road. An extended tour, such as was planned, met with some
opposition from the parents, an opposition countered by the
possible long-term bene ts of the tour in so far as the boys’ careers
were concerned and, even more urgently, by the assurance that, at
the very least, the boys would come home with a considerably
larger sum of money than any of them were making on their jobs.
(The political implications do not seem to have carried much
weight.) A series of churches had been lined up for them
presumably throughout the South. “The understanding,” writes
David, “was that we were supposed to sing”; after which the party
was to take over to make speeches and circulate petitions. “The
arrangement,” David notes laconically, “sounded very promising,
so we decided to go.”
And, indeed, they traveled South in splendor, in a Pullman, to be
exact, in which, since what David describes as a “Southern
gentleman and wife” took exception to their presence, they
traveled alone.
At the Wallace headquarters in Atlanta they were introduced to a
Mrs. Branson Price, a grey-haired white woman of incurably
aristocratic leanings who seems to have been the directress of the
party in that region. The graciousness of her reception was only
slightly marred by the fact that she was not expecting singers and
thought they were a new group of canvassers. She arranged for
them to take rooms on Butler Street at the YMCA. Here the rst
gap between promise and performance was made manifest, a gap,
they felt, which was perhaps too tri ing to make a fuss about. In
New York they had been promised comparative privacy, two to a
room; but now, it developed, they were to sleep in a dormitory.
This gap, in fact, it was the province of Mr. Warde to close, but
whether he was simply weary from the trip or overwhelmed by the
aristocratic Mrs. Price, he kept his mouth shut and, indeed, did not
open it again for quite some time.

When they returned to headquarters, somewhat irritated at
having had to wait three hours for the arrival of Louis Burner, who
had the money for their rooms, Mrs. Price suggested that they go
out canvassing. This was wholly unexpected, since no one had
mentioned canvassing in New York and, since, moreover,
canvassers are voluntary workers who are not paid. Further, the
oldest of them was twenty, which was not voting age, and none of
them knew anything about the Progressive Party, nor did they care
much. On the other hand, it is somewhat di cult to refuse a greyhaired, aristocratic lady who is toiling day and night for the
bene t of your people; and Mr. Warde, who should have been their
spokesman, had not yet recovered his voice; so they took the
petitions, which were meant to put the Wallace party on the
ballot, and began knocking on doors in the Negro section of
Atlanta. They were sent out in pairs, white and black, a political
device which operates not only as the living proof of brotherhood,
but which has the additional virtue of intimidating into passive
silence the more susceptible beholder, who cannot, after all,
unleash the impatient scorn he may feel with a strange, benevolent
white man sitting in his parlor.
They canvassed for three days, during which time their expenses
—$2.25 per man per day—were paid, but during which time they
were doing no singing and making no money. On the third day
they pointed out that this was not quite what they had been
promised in New York, to be met with another suggestion from the
invincible Mrs. Price: how would they like to sing on the soundtruck? They had not the faintest desire to sing on a sound-truck,
especially when they had been promised a string of churches;
however, the churches, along with Mr. Warde’s vigor, seemed
unavailable at the moment; they could hardly sit around Atlanta
doing nothing; and so long as they worked with the party they
were certain, at least, to be fed. “The purpose of our singing,”
David writes, “was to draw a crowd so the party could make
speeches.” Near the end of the singing and during the speeches,
lea ets and petitions were circulated through the crowd.

David had not found Negroes in the South di erent in any
important respect from Negroes in the North; except that many of
them were distrustful and “they are always talking about the
North; they have to let you know they know somebody in New
York or Chicago or Detroit.” Of the crowds that gathered—and,
apparently, The Melodeers attracted great numbers—“many of
these people couldn’t read or write their names” and not many of
them knew anything at all about the Progressive Party. But they
did divine, as American Negroes must, what was expected of them;
and they listened to the speeches and signed the petitions.
Becoming both desperate and impatient, The Melodeers began
making engagements and singing on their own, stealing time from
canvassing to rehearse. They made more appointments than they
were able to keep; partly because the lack of money limited their
mobility but also because the Party, discovering these clandestine
appointments, moved in, demanding to be heard. Those churches
which refused to make room for the Party were not allowed to hear
the quartet, which thus lost its last hope of making any money. The
quartet wondered what had happened to Mr. Warde. David’s
account all but ignores him until nearly the end of the trip, when
his position during all this is perhaps given some illumination.
Things now began to go steadily worse. They got into an argument
with the manager of the Y, who objected to their rehearsing, and
moved to a private home, for which the Party paid 75¢ per man
per day; and the Party, which was, one gathers, furiously
retrenching, arranged for them to eat at Fraziers’ Cafe, a Negro
establishment on Hunter Street, for $1.25 per man per day. My
correspondent notes that they had no choice of meals—“they
served us what they liked”—which seems to have been mainly limp
vegetables—and “we were as hungry when we walked out as we
were when we walked in.” On the other hand, they were allowed
to choose their beverage: tea or co ee or soda pop.

Heaven only knows what prompted Mrs. Branson Price to give a
party at this point. Perhaps the campaign was going
extraordinarily well; perhaps Fraziers’ Cafe, where the party was
held, was in need of a little extra revenue as well as the knowledge
that its adoption of the Party would help to bring about a better
world; perhaps Mrs. Price merely longed to be a gracious hostess
once again. In any case, on a Sunday night she gave a party to
which everyone was invited. My brother, who at this point was
much concerned with food, observed glumly, “We had ice-cream.”
The quartet sat at a table by itself, robbed, however, of the
presence of Mr. Warde, who was invited to sit at Mrs. Price’s table:
“she said it would be an honor,” my correspondent notes, failing,
however, to say for whom. “There was a man there called a folksinger,” says David with venom, “and, naturally, everybody had to
hear some folk songs.” Eventually, the folksy aspect of the evening
was exhausted and the quartet was invited to sing. They sang four
selections, apparently to everyone’s delight for they had to be
quite adamant about not singing a fth. The strain of continual
singing in the open air had done their voices no good and it had
made one of them extremely hoarse. So they refused, over loud
protests, and apologized. “This displeased Mrs. Price.”
Indeed, it had. She was not in the least accustomed to having her
suggestions, to say nothing of her requests, refused. Early Monday
morning she called Mr. Warde to her o ce to inquire who those
black boys thought they were? and determined to ship them all
back that same day in a car. Mr. Warde, who, considering the
honors of the evening before, must have been rather astounded,
protested such treatment, to be warned that she might very well
ship them o without a car; the six of them might very well be
forced to take to the road. This is not a pleasant mode of traveling
for a Negro in the North and no Negro in Atlanta, particularly no
Northern Negro, is likely to get very far. Mr. Warde temporized:
they could not leave on such short notice; for one thing, the boys
had clothes at the cleaners which would not be ready for a while
and which they could hardly a ord to lose. Mrs. Price, every

aristocratic vein pounding, did not wish to be concerned with such
plebeian matters and, nally, losing all patience, commanded Mr.
Warde to leave her o ce: Had he forgotten that he was in
Georgia? Didn’t he know better than sit in a white woman’s o ce?
Mr. Warde, in whose bowels last night’s bread of fellowship must
have acquired the weight of rock, left the o ce. Then the quartet
attempted to secure an audience; to be met with implacable refusal
and the threat of the police. There were, incidentally, according to
my brother, ve Negro policemen in Atlanta at this time, who,
though they were not allowed to arrest whites, would, of course, be
willing, indeed, in their position, anxious, to arrest any Negro who
seemed to need it. In Harlem, Negro policemen are feared even
more than whites, for they have more to prove and fewer ways to
prove it. The prospect of being arrested in Atlanta made them a
little dizzy with terror: what might mean a beating in Harlem
might quite possibly mean death here. “And at the same time,”
David says, “it was funny”; by which he means that the ve
policemen were faint prophecies of that equality which is the
Progressive Party’s goal.
They did not see Mrs. Price again; this was their severance from
the Party, which now refused to pay any expenses; it was only the
fact that their rent had been paid in advance which kept them o
the streets. Food, however, remained a problem. Mr. Warde
brought them a “couple of loaves of bread” and some jam; they
sang one engagement. During this week Mrs. Price relented
enough to get their clothes from the cleaners and send Mr. Warde,
in custody of a white man who had been at the party, to the bus
station for tickets. This man, whose resemblance to the Southern
Gentleman of the Pullman is in no way diminished by his
allegiance to Mr. Wallace, bought the tickets and threw them on
the ground at Mr. Warde’s feet, advising him not to show his black
face in Georgia again.
The quartet, meanwhile, had gotten together six dollars doing
odd jobs, which was enough, perhaps, for three of them to eat on
the road. They split up, three leaving that Friday and the other two

staying on about ten days longer, working for a construction
company. Mr. Warde stopped o to visit his family, promising to
see The Melodeers in New York, but he had not arrived as this was
being written. The Melodeers laugh about their trip now, that goodnatured, hearty laughter which is, according to white men, the
peculiar heritage of Negroes, Negroes who were born with the
fortunate ability to laugh all their troubles away. Somewhat
surprisingly, they are not particularly bitter toward the Progressive
Party, though they can scarcely be numbered among its supporters.
“They’re all the same,” David tells me, “ain’t none of ’em gonna do
you no good; if you gonna be foolish enough to believe what they
say, then it serves you good and right. Ain’t none of ’em gonna do
a thing for me.”

Notes of a Native Son
On the 29th of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a
few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this,
while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these
events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of
the century. A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in
state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem.
On the morning of the 3rd of August, we drove my father to the
graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.
The day of my father’s funeral had also been my nineteenth
birthday. As we drove him to the graveyard, the spoils of injustice,
anarchy, discontent, and hatred were all around us. It seemed to
me that God himself had devised, to mark my father’s end, the
most sustained and brutally dissonant of codas. And it seemed to
me, too, that the violence which rose all about us as my father left
the world had been devised as a corrective for the pride of his
eldest son. I had declined to believe in that apocalypse which had
been central to my father’s vision; very well, life seemed to be
saying, here is something that will certainly pass for an apocalypse
until the real thing comes along. I had inclined to be contemptuous
of my father for the conditions of his life, for the conditions of our
lives. When his life had ended I began to wonder about that life
and also, in a new way, to be apprehensive about my own.
I had not known my father very well. We had got on badly,
partly because we shared, in our di erent fashions, the vice of
stubborn pride. When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever
spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish
I had. It seems to be typical of life in America, where
opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on
the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the
rst. No one, including my father, seems to have known exactly

how old he was, but his mother had been born during slavery. He
was of the rst generation of free men. He, along with thousands
of other Negroes, came North after 1919 and I was part of that
generation which had never seen the landscape of what Negroes
sometimes call the Old Country.
He had been born in New Orleans and had been a quite young
man there during the time that Louis Armstrong, a boy, was
running errands for the dives and honky-tonks of what was always
presented to me as one of the most wicked of cities—to this day,
whenever I think of New Orleans, I also helplessly think of Sodom
and Gomorrah. My father never mentioned Louis Armstrong,
except to forbid us to play his records; but there was a picture of
him on our wall for a long time. One of my father’s strong-willed
female relatives had placed it there and forbade my father to take
it down. He never did, but he eventually maneuvered her out of
the house and when, some years later, she was in trouble and near
death, he refused to do anything to help her.
He was, I think, very handsome. I gather this from photographs
and from my own memories of him, dressed in his Sunday best and
on his way to preach a sermon somewhere, when I was little.
Handsome, proud, and ingrown, “like a toe-nail,” somebody said.
But he looked to me, as I grew older, like pictures I had seen of
African tribal chieftains: he really should have been naked, with
war-paint on and barbaric mementos, standing among spears. He
could be chilling in the pulpit and indescribably cruel in his
personal life and he was certainly the most bitter man I have ever
met; yet it must be said that there was something else in him,
buried in him, which lent him his tremendous power and, even, a
rather crushing charm. It had something to do with his blackness, I
think—he was very black—with his blackness and his beauty, and
with the fact that he knew that he was black but did not know that
he was beautiful. He claimed to be proud of his blackness but it
had also been the cause of much humiliation and it had xed bleak
boundaries to his life. He was not a young man when we were
growing up and he had already su ered many kinds of ruin; in his

outrageously demanding and protective way he loved his children,
who were black like him and menaced, like him; and all these
things sometimes showed in his face when he tried, never to my
knowledge with any success, to establish contact with any of us.
When he took one of his children on his knee to play, the child
always became fretful and began to cry; when he tried to help one
of us with our homework the absolutely unabating tension which
emanated from him caused our minds and our tongues to become
paralyzed, so that he, scarcely knowing why, ew into a rage and
the child, not knowing why, was punished. If it ever entered his
head to bring a surprise home for his children, it was, almost
unfailingly, the wrong surprise and even the big watermelons he
often brought home on his back in the summertime led to the most
appalling scenes. I do not remember, in all those years, that one of
his children was ever glad to see him come home. From what I was
able to gather of his early life, it seemed that this inability to
establish contact with other people had always marked him and
had been one of the things which had driven him out of New
Orleans. There was something in him, therefore, groping and
tentative, which was never expressed and which was buried with
him. One saw it most clearly when he was facing new people and
hoping to impress them. But he never did, not for long. We went
from church to smaller and more improbable church, he found
himself in less and less demand as a minister, and by the time he
died none of his friends had come to see him for a long time. He
had lived and died in an intolerable bitterness of spirit and it
frightened me, as we drove him to the graveyard through those
unquiet, ruined streets, to see how powerful and over owing this
bitterness could be and to realize that this bitterness now was
mine.
When he died I had been away from home for a little over a
year. In that year I had had time to become aware of the meaning
of all my father’s bitter warnings, had discovered the secret of his
proudly pursed lips and rigid carriage: I had discovered the weight
of white people in the world. I saw that this had been for my

ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live with and
that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also
kill me.
He had been ill a long time—in the mind, as we now realized,
reliving instances of his fantastic intransigence in the new light of
his a iction and endeavoring to feel a sorrow for him which
never, quite, came true. We had not known that he was being
eaten up by paranoia, and the discovery that his cruelty, to our
bodies and our minds, had been one of the symptoms of his illness
was not, then, enough to enable us to forgive him. The younger
children felt, quite simply, relief that he would not be coming
home anymore. My mother’s observation that it was he, after all,
who had kept them alive all these years meant nothing because the
problems of keeping children alive are not real for children. The
older children felt, with my father gone, that they could invite their
friends to the house without fear that their friends would be
insulted or, as had sometimes happened with me, being told that
their friends were in league with the devil and intended to rob our
family of everything we owned. (I didn’t fail to wonder, and it
made me hate him, what on earth we owned that anybody else
would want.)
His illness was beyond all hope of healing before anyone
realized that he was ill. He had always been so strange and had
lived, like a prophet, in such unimaginably close communion with
the Lord that his long silences which were punctuated by moans
and hallelujahs and snatches of old songs while he sat at the livingroom window never seemed odd to us. It was not until he refused
to eat because, he said, his family was trying to poison him that
my mother was forced to accept as a fact what had, until then,
been only an unwilling suspicion. When he was committed, it was
discovered that he had tuberculosis and, as it turned out, the
disease of his mind allowed the disease of his body to destroy him.
For the doctors could not force him to eat, either, and, though he
was fed intravenously, it was clear from the beginning that there
was no hope for him.

In my mind’s eye I could see him, sitting at the window, locked
up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul including his
children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching towards the world
which had despised him. There were nine of us. I began to wonder
what it could have felt like for such a man to have had nine
children whom he could barely feed. He used to make little jokes
about our poverty, which never, of course, seemed very funny to
us; they could not have seemed very funny to him, either, or else
our all too feeble response to them would never have caused such
rages. He spent great energy and achieved, to our chagrin, no
small amount of success in keeping us away from the people who
surrounded us, people who had all-night rent parties to which we
listened when we should have been sleeping, people who cursed
and drank and ashed razor blades on Lenox Avenue. He could not
understand why, if they had so much energy to spare, they could
not use it to make their lives better. He treated almost everybody
on our block with a most uncharitable asperity and neither they,
nor, of course, their children were slow to reciprocate.
The only white people who came to our house were welfare
workers and bill collectors. It was almost always my mother who
dealt with them, for my father’s temper, which was at the mercy of
his pride, was never to be trusted. It was clear that he felt their
very presence in his home to be a violation: this was conveyed by
his carriage, almost ludicrously sti , and by his voice, harsh and
vindictively polite. When I was around nine or ten I wrote a play
which was directed by a young, white schoolteacher, a woman,
who then took an interest in me, and gave me books to read and,
in order to corroborate my theatrical bent, decided to take me to
see what she somewhat tactlessly referred to as “real” plays.
Theater-going was forbidden in our house, but, with the really
cruel intuitiveness of a child, I suspected that the color of this
woman’s skin would carry the day for me. When, at school, she
suggested taking me to the theater, I did not, as I might have done
if she had been a Negro, nd a way of discouraging her, but agreed
that she should pick me up at my house one evening. I then, very

cleverly, left all the rest to my mother, who suggested to my father,
as I knew she would, that it would not be very nice to let such a
kind woman make the trip for nothing. Also, since it was a
schoolteacher, I imagine that my mother countered the idea of sin
with the idea of “education,” which word, even with my father,
carried a kind of bitter weight.
Before the teacher came my father took me aside to ask why she
was coming, what interest she could possibly have in our house, in
a boy like me. I said I didn’t know but I, too, suggested that it had
something to do with education. And I understood that my father
was waiting for me to say something—I didn’t quite know what;
perhaps that I wanted his protection against this teacher and her
“education.” I said none of these things and the teacher came and
we went out. It was clear, during the brief interview in our living
room, that my father was agreeing very much against his will and
that he would have refused permission if he had dared. The fact
that he did not dare caused me to despise him: I had no way of
knowing that he was facing in that living room a wholly
unprecedented and frightening situation.
Later, when my father had been laid o from his job, this
woman became very important to us. She was really a very sweet
and generous woman and went to a great deal of trouble to be of
help to us, particularly during one awful winter. My mother called
her by the highest name she knew: she said she was a “christian.”
My father could scarcely disagree but during the four or ve years
of our relatively close association he never trusted her and was
always trying to surprise in her open, Midwestern face the
genuine, cunningly hidden, and hideous motivation. In later years,
particularly when it began to be clear that this “education” of mine
was going to lead me to perdition, he became more explicit and
warned me that my white friends in high school were not really my
friends and that I would see, when I was older, how white people
would do anything to keep a Negro down. Some of them could be
nice, he admitted, but none of them were to be trusted and most of
them were not even nice. The best thing was to have as little to do

with them as possible. I did not feel this way and I was certain, in
my innocence, that I never would.
But the year which preceded my father’s death had made a great
change in my life. I had been living in New Jersey, working in
defense plants, working and living among southerners, white and
black. I knew about the south, of course, and about how
southerners treated Negroes and how they expected them to
behave, but it had never entered my mind that anyone would look
at me and expect me to behave that way. I learned in New Jersey
that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at
but was simply at the mercy of the re exes the color of one’s skin
caused in other people. I acted in New Jersey as I had always
acted, that is as though I thought a great deal of myself—I had to
act that way—with results that were, simply, unbelievable. I had
scarcely arrived before I had earned the enmity, which was
extraordinarily ingenious, of all my superiors and nearly all my coworkers. In the beginning, to make matters worse, I simply did not
know what was happening. I did not know what I had done, and I
shortly began to wonder what anyone could possibly do, to bring
about such unanimous, active, and unbearably vocal hostility. I
knew about jim-crow but I had never experienced it. I went to the
same self-service restaurant three times and stood with all the
Princeton boys before the counter, waiting for a hamburger and
co ee; it was always an extraordinarily long time before anything
was set before me; but it was not until the fourth visit that I
learned that, in fact, nothing had ever been set before me: I had
simply picked something up. Negroes were not served there, I was
told, and they had been waiting for me to realize that I was always
the only Negro present. Once I was told this, I determined to go
there all the time. But now they were ready for me and, though
some dreadful scenes were subsequently enacted in that restaurant,
I never ate there again.
It was the same story all over New Jersey, in bars, bowling
alleys, diners, places to live. I was always being forced to leave,
silently, or with mutual imprecations. I very shortly became

notorious and children giggled behind me when I passed and their
elders whispered or shouted—they really believed that I was mad.
And it did begin to work on my mind, of course; I began to be
afraid to go anywhere and to compensate for this I went places to
which I really should not have gone and where, God knows, I had
no desire to be. My reputation in town naturally enhanced my
reputation at work and my working day became one long series of
acrobatics designed to keep me out of trouble. I cannot say that
these acrobatics succeeded. It began to seem that the machinery of
the organization I worked for was turning over, day and night,
with but one aim: to eject me. I was red once, and contrived, with
the aid of a friend from New York, to get back on the payroll; was
red again, and bounced back again. It took a while to re me for
the third time, but the third time took. There were no loopholes
anywhere. There was not even any way of getting back inside the
gates.
That year in New Jersey lives in my mind as though it were the
year during which, having an unsuspected predilection for it, I rst
contracted some dread, chronic disease, the unfailing symptom of
which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and re in
the bowels. Once this disease is contracted, one can never be really
carefree again, for the fever, without an instant’s warning, can
recur at any moment. It can wreck more important things than
race relations. There is not a Negro alive who does not have this
rage in his blood—one has the choice, merely, of living with it
consciously or surrendering to it. As for me, this fever has recurred
in me, and does, and will until the day I die.
My last night in New Jersey, a white friend from New York took
me to the nearest big town, Trenton, to go to the movies and have
a few drinks. As it turned out, he also saved me from, at the very
least, a violent whipping. Almost every detail of that night stands
out very clearly in my memory. I even remember the name of the
movie we saw because its title impressed me as being so patly
ironical. It was a movie about the German occupation of France,
starring Maureen O’Hara and Charles Laughton and called This

Land Is Mine. I remember the name of the diner we walked into
when the movie ended: it was the “American Diner.” When we
walked in the counterman asked what we wanted and I remember
answering with the casual sharpness which had become my habit:
“We want a hamburger and a cup of co ee, what do you think we
want?” I do not know why, after a year of such rebu s, I so
completely failed to anticipate his answer, which was, of course,
“We don’t serve Negroes here.” This reply failed to discompose me,
at least for the moment. I made some sardonic comment about the
name of the diner and we walked out into the streets.
This was the time of what was called the “brown-out,” when the
lights in all American cities were very dim. When we re-entered the
streets something happened to me which had the force of an
optical illusion, or a nightmare. The streets were very crowded and
I was facing north. People were moving in every direction but it
seemed to me, in that instant, that all of the people I could see,
and many more than that, were moving toward me, against me,
and that everyone was white. I remember how their faces gleamed.
And I felt, like a physical sensation, a click at the nape of my neck
as though some interior string connecting my head to my body had
been cut. I began to walk. I heard my friend call after me, but I
ignored him. Heaven only knows what was going on in his mind,
but he had the good sense not to touch me—I don’t know what
would have happened if he had—and to keep me in sight. I don’t
know what was going on in my mind, either; I certainly had no
conscious plan. I wanted to do something to crush these white
faces, which were crushing me. I walked for perhaps a block or
two until I came to an enormous, glittering, and fashionable
restaurant in which I knew not even the intercession of the Virgin
would cause me to be served. I pushed through the doors and took
the rst vacant seat I saw, at a table for two, and waited.
I do not know how long I waited and I rather wonder, until
today, what I could possibly have looked like. Whatever I looked
like, I frightened the waitress who shortly appeared, and the
moment she appeared all of my fury owed towards her. I hated

her for her white face, and for her great, astounded, frightened
eyes. I felt that if she found a black man so frightening I would
make her fright worth-while.
She did not ask me what I wanted, but repeated, as though she
had learned it somewhere, “We don’t serve Negroes here.” She did
not say it with the blunt, derisive hostility to which I had grown so
accustomed, but, rather, with a note of apology in her voice, and
fear. This made me colder and more murderous than ever. I felt I
had to do something with my hands. I wanted her to come close
enough for me to get her neck between my hands.
So I pretended not to have understood her, hoping to draw her
closer. And she did step a very short step closer, with her pencil
poised incongruously over her pad, and repeated the formula: “…
don’t serve Negroes here.”
Somehow, with the repetition of that phrase, which was already
ringing in my head like a thousand bells of a nightmare, I realized
that she would never come any closer and that I would have to
strike from a distance. There was nothing on the table but an
ordinary water-mug half full of water, and I picked this up and
hurled it with all my strength at her. She ducked and it missed her
and shattered against the mirror behind the bar. And, with that
sound, my frozen blood abruptly thawed, I returned from wherever
I had been, I saw, for the rst time, the restaurant, the people with
their mouths open, already, as it seemed to me, rising as one man,
and I realized what I had done, and where I was, and I was
frightened. I rose and began running for the door. A round,
potbellied man grabbed me by the nape of the neck just as I
reached the doors and began to beat me about the face. I kicked
him and got loose and ran into the streets. My friend whispered,
“Run!” and I ran.
My friend stayed outside the restaurant long enough to misdirect
my pursuers and the police, who arrived, he told me, at once. I do
not know what I said to him when he came to my room that night.
I could not have said much. I felt, in the oddest, most awful way,
that I had somehow betrayed him. I lived it over and over and over

again, the way one relives an automobile accident after it has
happened and one nds oneself alone and safe. I could not get
over two facts, both equally di cult for the imagination to grasp,
and one was that I could have been murdered. But the other was
that I had been ready to commit murder. I saw nothing very
clearly but I did see this: that my life, my real life, was in danger,
and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred I
carried in my own heart.
II
I had returned home around the second week in June—in great
haste because it seemed that my father’s death and my mother’s
con nement were both but a matter of hours. In the case of my
mother, it soon became clear that she had simply made a
miscalculation. This had always been her tendency and I don’t
believe that a single one of us arrived in the world, or has since
arrived anywhere else, on time. But none of us dawdled so
intolerably about the business of being born as did my baby sister.
We sometimes amused ourselves, during those endless, sti ing
weeks, by picturing the baby sitting within in the safe, warm dark,
bitterly regretting the necessity of becoming a part of our chaos
and stubbornly putting it o as long as possible. I understood her
perfectly and congratulated her on showing such good sense so
soon. Death, however, sat as purposefully at my father’s bedside as
life stirred within my mother’s womb and it was harder to
understand why he so lingered in that long shadow. It seemed that
he had bent, and for a long time, too, all of his energies towards
dying. Now death was ready for him but my father held back.
All of Harlem, indeed, seemed to be infected by waiting. I had
never before known it to be so violently still. Racial tensions
throughout this country were exacerbated during the early years of
the war, partly because the labor market brought together
hundreds of thousands of ill-prepared people and partly because
Negro soldiers, regardless of where they were born, received their

military training in the south. What happened in defense plants
and army camps had repercussions, naturally, in every Negro
ghetto. The situation in Harlem had grown bad enough for
clergymen, policemen, educators, politicians, and social workers to
assert in one breath that there was no “crime wave” and to o er,
in the very next breath, suggestions as to how to combat it. These
suggestions always seemed to involve playgrounds, despite the fact
that racial skirmishes were occurring in the playgrounds, too.
Playground or not, crime wave or not, the Harlem police force had
been augmented in March, and the unrest grew—perhaps, in fact,
partly as a result of the ghetto’s instinctive hatred of policemen.
Perhaps the most revealing news item, out of the steady parade of
reports of muggings, stabbings, shootings, assaults, gang wars, and
accusations of police brutality, is the item concerning six Negro
girls who set upon a white girl in the subway because, as they all
too accurately put it, she was stepping on their toes. Indeed she
was, all over the nation.
I had never before been so aware of policemen, on foot, on
horseback, on corners, everywhere, always two by two. Nor had I
ever been so aware of small knots of people. They were on stoops
and on corners and in doorways, and what was striking about
them, I think, was that they did not seem to be talking. Never,
when I passed these groups, did the usual sound of a curse or a
laugh ring out and neither did there seem to be any hum of gossip.
There was certainly, on the other hand, occurring between them
communication extraordinarily intense. Another thing that was
striking was the unexpected diversity of the people who made up
these groups. Usually, for example, one would see a group of
sharpies standing on the street corner, jiving the passing chicks; or
a group of older men, usually, for some reason, in the vicinity of a
barber shop, discussing baseball scores, or the numbers, or making
rather chilling observations about women they had known.
Women, in a general way, tended to be seen less often together—
unless they were church women, or very young girls, or prostitutes
met together for an unprofessional instant. But that summer I saw

the strangest combinations: large, respectable, churchly matrons
standing on the stoops or the corners with their hair tied up,
together with a girl in sleazy satin whose face bore the marks of
gin and the razor, or heavy-set, abrupt, no-nonsense older men, in
company with the most disreputable and fanatical “race” men, or
these same “race” men with the sharpies, or these sharpies with the
churchly women. Seventh Day Adventists and Methodists and
Spiritualists seemed to be hobnobbing with Holyrollers and they
were all, alike, entangled with the most agrant disbelievers;
something heavy in their stance seemed to indicate that they had
all, incredibly, seen a common vision, and on each face there
seemed to be the same strange, bitter shadow.
The churchly women and the matter-of-fact, no-nonsense men
had children in the Army. The sleazy girls they talked to had lovers
there, the sharpies and the “race” men had friends and brothers
there. It would have demanded an unquestioning patriotism,
happily as uncommon in this country as it is undesirable, for these
people not to have been disturbed by the bitter letters they
received, by the newspaper stories they read, not to have been
enraged by the posters, then to be found all over New York, which
described the Japanese as “yellow-bellied Japs.” It was only the
“race” men, to be sure, who spoke ceaselessly of being revenged—
how this vengeance was to be exacted was not clear—for the
indignities and dangers su ered by Negro boys in uniform; but
everybody felt a directionless, hopeless bitterness, as well as that
panic which can scarcely be suppressed when one knows that a
human being one loves is beyond one’s reach, and in danger. This
helplessness and this gnawing uneasiness does something, at
length, to even the toughest mind. Perhaps the best way to sum all
this up is to say that the people I knew felt, mainly, a peculiar
kind of relief when they knew that their boys were being shipped
out of the south, to do battle overseas. It was, perhaps, like feeling
that the most dangerous part of a dangerous journey had been
passed and that now, even if death should come, it would come

with honor and without the complicity of their countrymen. Such a
death would be, in short, a fact with which one could hope to live.
It was on the 28th of July, which I believe was a Wednesday,
that I visited my father for the rst time during his illness and for
the last time in his life. The moment I saw him I knew why I had
put o this visit so long. I had told my mother that I did not want
to see him because I hated him. But this was not true. It was only
that I had hated him and I wanted to hold on to this hatred. I did
not want to look on him as a ruin: it was not a ruin I had hated. I
imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so
stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will
be forced to deal with pain.
We traveled out to him, his older sister and myself, to what
seemed to be the very end of a very Long Island. It was hot and
dusty and we wrangled, my aunt and I, all the way out, over the
fact that I had recently begun to smoke and, as she said, to give
myself airs. But I knew that she wrangled with me because she
could not bear to face the fact of her brother’s dying. Neither could
I endure the reality of her despair, her unstated ba ement as to
what had happened to her brother’s life, and her own. So we
wrangled and I smoked and from time to time she fell into a heavy
reverie. Covertly, I watched her face, which was the face of an old
woman; it had fallen in, the eyes were sunken and lightless; soon
she would be dying, too.
In my childhood—it had not been so long ago—I had thought her
beautiful. She had been quick-witted and quick-moving and very
generous with all the children and each of her visits had been an
event. At one time one of my brothers and myself had thought of
running away to live with her. Now she could no longer produce
out of her handbag some unexpected and yet familiar delight. She
made me feel pity and revulsion and fear. It was awful to realize
that she no longer caused me to feel a ection. The closer we came
to the hospital the more querulous she became and at the same
time, naturally, grew more dependent on me. Between pity and
guilt and fear I began to feel that there was another me trapped in

my skull like a jack-in-the-box who might escape my control at any
moment and ll the air with screaming.
She began to cry the moment we entered the room and she saw
him lying there, all shriveled and still, like a little black monkey.
The great, gleaming apparatus which fed him and would have
compelled him to be still even if he had been able to move brought
to mind, not bene cence, but torture; the tubes entering his arm
made me think of pictures I had seen when a child, of Gulliver, tied
down by the pygmies on that island. My aunt wept and wept,
there was a whistling sound in my father’s throat; nothing was
said; he could not speak. I wanted to take his hand, to say
something. But I do not know what I could have said, even if he
could have heard me. He was not really in that room with us, he
had at last really embarked on his journey; and though my aunt
told me that he said he was going to meet Jesus, I did not hear
anything except that whistling in his throat. The doctor came back
and we left, into that unbearable train again, and home. In the
morning came the telegram saying that he was dead. Then the
house was suddenly full of relatives, friends, hysteria, and
confusion and I quickly left my mother and the children to the care
of those impressive women, who, in Negro communities at least,
automatically appear at times of bereavement armed with lotions,
proverbs, and patience, and an ability to cook. I went downtown.
By the time I returned, later the same day, my mother had been
carried to the hospital and the baby had been born.
III
For my father’s funeral I had nothing black to wear and this posed
a nagging problem all day long. It was one of those problems,
simple, or impossible of solution, to which the mind insanely clings
in order to avoid the mind’s real trouble. I spent most of that day
at the downtown apartment of a girl I knew, celebrating my
birthday with whiskey and wondering what to wear that night.
When planning a birthday celebration one naturally does not

expect that it will be up against competition from a funeral and
this girl had anticipated taking me out that night, for a big dinner
and a night club afterwards. Sometime during the course of that
long day we decided that we would go out anyway, when my
father’s funeral service was over. I imagine I decided it, since, as
the funeral hour approached, it became clearer and clearer to me
that I would not know what to do with myself when it was over.
The girl, sti ing her very lively concern as to the possible e ects of
the whiskey on one of my father’s chief mourners, concentrated on
being conciliatory and practically helpful. She found a black shirt
for me somewhere and ironed it and, dressed in the darkest pants
and jacket I owned, and slightly drunk, I made my way to my
father’s funeral.
The chapel was full, but not packed, and very quiet. There were,
mainly, my father’s relatives, and his children, and here and there
I saw faces I had not seen since childhood, the faces of my father’s
one-time friends. They were very dark and solemn now, seeming
somehow to suggest that they had known all along that something
like this would happen. Chief among the mourners was my aunt,
who had quarreled with my father all his life; by which I do not
mean to suggest that her mourning was insincere or that she had
not loved him. I suppose that she was one of the few people in the
world who had, and their incessant quarreling proved precisely the
strength of the tie that bound them. The only other person in the
world, as far as I knew, whose relationship to my father rivaled
my aunt’s in depth was my mother, who was not there.
It seemed to me, of course, that it was a very long funeral. But it
was, if anything, a rather shorter funeral than most, nor, since
there were no overwhelming, uncontrollable expressions of grief,
could it be called—if I dare to use the word—successful. The
minister who preached my father’s funeral sermon was one of the
few my father had still been seeing as he neared his end. He
presented to us in his sermon a man whom none of us had ever
seen—a man thoughtful, patient, and forbearing, a Christian
inspiration to all who knew him, and a model for his children. And

no doubt the children, in their disturbed and guilty state, were
almost ready to believe this; he had been remote enough to be
anything and, anyway, the shock of the incontrovertible, that it
was really our father lying up there in that casket, prepared the
mind for anything. His sister moaned and this grief-stricken
moaning was taken as corroboration. The other faces held a dark,
non-committal thoughtfulness. This was not the man they had
known, but they had scarcely expected to be confronted with him;
this was, in a sense deeper than questions of fact, the man they
had not known, and the man they had not known may have been
the real one. The real man, whoever he had been, had su ered and
now he was dead: this was all that was sure and all that mattered
now. Every man in the chapel hoped that when his hour came he,
too, would be eulogized, which is to say forgiven, and that all of
his lapses, greeds, errors, and strayings from the truth would be
invested with coherence and looked upon with charity. This was
perhaps the last thing human beings could give each other and it
was what they demanded, after all, of the Lord. Only the Lord saw
the midnight tears, only He was present when one of His children,
moaning and wringing hands, paced up and down the room. When
one slapped one’s child in anger the recoil in the heart
reverberated through heaven and became part of the pain of the
universe. And when the children were hungry and sullen and
distrustful and one watched them, daily, growing wilder, and
further away, and running headlong into danger, it was the Lord
who knew what the charged heart endured as the strap was laid to
the backside; the Lord alone who knew what one would have said if
one had had, like the Lord, the gift of the living word. It was the
Lord who knew of the impossibility every parent in that room
faced: how to prepare the child for the day when the child would
be despised and how to create in the child—by what means?—a
stronger antidote to this poison than one had found for oneself.
The avenues, side streets, bars, billiard halls, hospitals, police
stations, and even the playgrounds of Harlem—not to mention the
houses of correction, the jails, and the morgue—testi ed to the
potency of the poison while remaining silent as to the e cacy of

whatever antidote, irresistibly raising the question of whether or
not such an antidote existed; raising, which was worse, the
question of whether or not an antidote was desirable; perhaps
poison should be fought with poison. With these several schisms in
the mind and with more terrors in the heart than could be named,
it was better not to judge the man who had gone down under an
impossible burden. It was better to remember: Thou knowest this
man’s fall; but thou knowest not his wrassling.
While the preacher talked and I watched the children—years of
changing their diapers, scrubbing them, slapping them, taking
them to school, and scolding them had had the perhaps inevitable
result of making me love them, though I am not sure I knew this
then—my mind was busily breaking out with a rash of
disconnected impressions. Snatches of popular songs, indecent
jokes, bits of books I had read, movie sequences, faces, voices,
political issues—I thought I was going mad; all these impressions
suspended, as it were, in the solution of the faint nausea produced
in me by the heat and liquor. For a moment I had the impression
that my alcoholic breath, ine ciently disguised with chewing gum,
lled the entire chapel. Then someone began singing one of my
father’s favorite songs and, abruptly, I was with him, sitting on his
knee, in the hot, enormous, crowded church which was the rst
church we attended. It was the Abyssinia Baptist Church on 138th
Street. We had not gone there long. With this image, a host of
others came. I had forgotten, in the rage of my growing up, how
proud my father had been of me when I was little. Apparently, I
had had a voice and my father had liked to show me o before the
members of the church. I had forgotten what he had looked like
when he was pleased but now I remembered that he had always
been grinning with pleasure when my solos ended. I even
remembered certain expressions on his face when he teased my
mother—had he loved her? I would never know. And when had it
all begun to change? For now it seemed that he had not always
been cruel. I remembered being taken for a haircut and scraping
my knee on the footrest of the barber’s chair and I remembered my

father’s face as he soothed my crying and applied the stinging
iodine. Then I remembered our ghts, ghts which had been of the
worst possible kind because my technique had been silence.
I remembered the one time in all our life together when we had
really spoken to each other.
It was on a Sunday and it must have been shortly before I left
home. We were walking, just the two of us, in our usual silence, to
or from church. I was in high school and had been doing a lot of
writing and I was, at about this time, the editor of the high school
magazine. But I had also been a Young Minister and had been
preaching from the pulpit. Lately, I had been taking fewer
engagements and preached as rarely as possible. It was said in the
church, quite truthfully, that I was “cooling o .”
My father asked me abruptly, “You’d rather write than preach,
wouldn’t you?”
I was astonished at his question—because it was a real question.
I answered, “Yes.”
That was all we said. It was awful to remember that that was all
we had ever said.
The casket now was opened and the mourners were being led up
the aisle to look for the last time on the deceased. The assumption
was that the family was too overcome with grief to be allowed to
make this journey alone and I watched while my aunt was led to
the casket and, mu ed in black, and shaking, led back to her seat.
I disapproved of forcing the children to look on their dead father,
considering that the shock of his death, or, more truthfully, the
shock of death as a reality, was already a little more than a child
could bear, but my judgment in this matter had been overruled and
there they were, bewildered and frightened and very small, being
led, one by one, to the casket. But there is also something very
gallant about children at such moments. It has something to do
with their silence and gravity and with the fact that one cannot
help them. Their legs, somehow, seem exposed, so that it is at once

incredible and terribly clear that their legs are all they have to hold
them up.
I had not wanted to go to the casket myself and I certainly had
not wished to be led there, but there was no way of avoiding either
of these forms. One of the deacons led me up and I looked on my
father’s face. I cannot say that it looked like him at all. His
blackness had been equivocated by powder and there was no
suggestion in that casket of what his power had or could have
been. He was simply an old man dead, and it was hard to believe
that he had ever given anyone either joy or pain. Yet, his life lled
that room. Further up the avenue his wife was holding his newborn
child. Life and death so close together, and love and hatred, and
right and wrong, said something to me which I did not want to
hear concerning man, concerning the life of man.
After the funeral, while I was downtown desperately celebrating
my birthday, a Negro soldier, in the lobby of the Hotel Braddock,
got into a ght with a white policeman over a Negro girl. Negro
girls, white policemen, in or out of uniform, and Negro males—in
or out of uniform—were part of the furniture of the lobby of the
Hotel Braddock and this was certainly not the rst time such an
incident had occurred. It was destined, however, to receive an
unprecedented publicity, for the ght between the policeman and
the soldier ended with the shooting of the soldier. Rumor, owing
immediately to the streets outside, stated that the soldier had been
shot in the back, an instantaneous and revealing invention, and
that the soldier had died protecting a Negro woman. The facts
were somewhat di erent—for example, the soldier had not been
shot in the back, and was not dead, and the girl seems to have
been as dubious a symbol of womanhood as her white counterpart
in Georgia usually is, but no one was interested in the facts. They
preferred the invention because this invention expressed and
corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly. It is just as well to
remember that people are always doing this. Perhaps many of
those legends, including Christianity, to which the world clings
began their conquest of the world with just some such concerted

surrender to distortion. The e ect, in Harlem, of this particular
legend was like the e ect of a lit match in a tin of gasoline. The
mob gathered before the doors of the Hotel Braddock simply began
to swell and to spread in every direction, and Harlem exploded.
The mob did not cross the ghetto lines. It would have been easy,
for example, to have gone over Morningside Park on the west side
or to have crossed the Grand Central railroad tracks at 125th Street
on the east side, to wreak havoc in white neighborhoods. The mob
seems to have been mainly interested in something more potent
and real than the white face, that is, in white power, and the
principal damage done during the riot of the summer of 1943 was
to white business establishments in Harlem. It might have been a
far bloodier story, of course, if, at the hour the riot began, these
establishments had still been open. From the Hotel Braddock the
mob fanned out, east and west along 125th Street, and for the
entire length of Lenox, Seventh, and Eighth avenues. Along each of
these avenues, and along each major side street—116th, 125th,
135th, and so on—bars, stores, pawnshops, restaurants, even little
luncheonettes had been smashed open and entered and looted—
looted, it might be added, with more haste than e ciency. The
shelves really looked as though a bomb had struck them. Cans of
beans and soup and dog food, along with toilet paper, corn akes,
sardines and milk tumbled every which way, and abandoned cash
registers and cases of beer leaned crazily out of the splintered
windows and were strewn along the avenues. Sheets, blankets, and
clothing of every description formed a kind of path, as though
people had dropped them while running. I truly had not realized
that Harlem had so many stores until I saw them all smashed open;
the rst time the word wealth ever entered my mind in relation to
Harlem was when I saw it scattered in the streets. But one’s rst,
incongruous impression of plenty was countered immediately by
an impression of waste. None of this was doing anybody any good.
It would have been better to have left the plate glass as it had been
and the goods lying in the stores.

It would have been better, but it would also have been
intolerable, for Harlem had needed something to smash. To smash
something is the ghetto’s chronic need. Most of the time it is the
members of the ghetto who smash each other, and themselves. But
as long as the ghetto walls are standing there will always come a
moment when these outlets do not work. That summer, for
example, it was not enough to get into a ght on Lenox Avenue, or
curse out one’s cronies in the barber shops. If ever, indeed, the
violence which lls Harlem’s churches, pool halls, and bars erupts
outward in a more direct fashion, Harlem and its citizens are likely
to vanish in an apocalyptic ood. That this is not likely to happen
is due to a great many reasons, most hidden and powerful among
them the Negro’s real relation to the white American. This relation
prohibits, simply, anything as uncomplicated and satisfactory as
pure hatred. In order really to hate white people, one has to blot
so much out of the mind—and the heart—that this hatred itself
becomes an exhausting and self-destructive pose. But this does not
mean, on the other hand, that love comes easily: the white world is
too powerful, too complacent, too ready with gratuitous
humiliation, and, above all, too ignorant and too innocent for that.
One is absolutely forced to make perpetual quali cations and one’s
own reactions are always canceling each other out. It is this,
really, which has driven so many people mad, both white and
black. One is always in the position of having to decide between
amputation and gangrene. Amputation is swift but time may prove
that the amputation was not necessary—or one may delay the
amputation too long. Gangrene is slow, but it is impossible to be
sure that one is reading one’s symptoms right. The idea of going
through life as a cripple is more than one can bear, and equally
unbearable is the risk of swelling up slowly, in agony, with poison.
And the trouble, nally, is that the risks are real even if the choices
do not exist.
“But as for me and my house,” my father had said, “we will serve
the Lord.” I wondered, as we drove him to his resting place, what
this line had meant for him. I had heard him preach it many times.

I had preached it once myself, proudly giving it an interpretation
di erent from my father’s. Now the whole thing came back to me,
as though my father and I were on our way to Sunday school and I
were memorizing the golden text: And if it seem evil unto you to
serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the
gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the ood,
or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and
my house, we will serve the Lord. I suspected in these familiar lines a
meaning which had never been there for me before. All of my
father’s texts and songs, which I had decided were meaningless,
were arranged before me at his death like empty bottles, waiting
to hold the meaning which life would give them for me. This was
his legacy: nothing is ever escaped. That bleakly memorable
morning I hated the unbelievable streets and the Negroes and
whites who had, equally, made them that way. But I knew that it
was folly, as my father would have said, this bitterness was folly. It
was necessary to hold on to the things that mattered. The dead
man mattered, the new life mattered; blackness and whiteness did
not matter; to believe that they did was to acquiesce in one’s own
destruction. Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to
destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law.
It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind
forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The rst idea
was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it
is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without
saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that
one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power:
that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as
commonplace but must ght them with all one’s strength. This
ght begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my
charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This
intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was
irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could
have searched his face for the answers which only the future would
give me now.

PART THREE

Encounter on the Seine: Black Meets Brown
In Paris nowadays it is rather more di cult for an American Negro
to become a really successful entertainer than it is rumored to have
been some thirty years ago. For one thing, champagne has ceased
to be drunk out of slippers, and the frivolously colored thousandfranc note is neither as elastic nor as freely spent as it was in the
1920’s. The musicians and singers who are here now must work
very hard indeed to acquire the polish and style which will land
them in the big time. Bearing witness to this eternally tantalizing
possibility, performers whose eminence is unchallenged, like Duke
Ellington or Louis Armstrong, occasionally pass through. Some of
their ambitious followers are in or near the big time already;
others are gaining reputations which have yet to be tested in the
States. Gordon Heath, who will be remembered for his
performances as the embattled soldier in Broadway’s Deep Are the
Roots some seasons back, sings ballads nightly in his own night
club on the Rue L’Abbaye; and everyone who comes to Paris these
days sooner or later discovers Chez Inez, a night club in the Latin
Quarter run by a singer named Inez Cavanaugh, which specializes
in fried chicken and jazz. It is at Chez Inez that many an unknown
rst performs in public, going on thereafter, if not always to
greater triumphs, at least to other night clubs, and possibly landing
a contract to tour the Riviera during the spring and summer.
In general, only the Negro entertainers are able to maintain a
useful and unquestioning comradeship with other Negroes. Their
nonperforming, colored countrymen are, nearly to a man,
incomparably more isolated, and it must be conceded that this
isolation is deliberate. It is estimated that there are ve hundred
American Negroes living in this city, the vast majority of them
veterans studying on the G.I. Bill. They are studying everything
from the Sorbonne’s standard Cours de Civilisation Française to

abnormal psychology, brain surgery, music,
ne arts, and
literature. Their isolation from each other is not di cult to
understand if one bears in mind the axiom, unquestioned by
American landlords, that Negroes are happy only when they are
kept together. Those driven to break this pattern by leaving the
U.S. ghettos not merely have e ected a social and physical leavetaking but also have been precipitated into cruel psychological
warfare. It is altogether inevitable that past humiliations should
become associated not only with one’s traditional oppressors but
also with one’s traditional kinfolk.
Thus the sight of a face from home is not invariably a source of
joy, but can also quite easily become a source of embarrassment or
rage. The American Negro in Paris is forced at last to exercise an
undemocratic discrimination rarely practiced by Americans, that of
judging his people, duck by duck, and distinguishing them one
from another. Through this deliberate isolation, through lack of
numbers, and above all through his own overwhelming need to be,
as it were, forgotten, the American Negro in Paris is very nearly
the invisible man.
The wariness with which he regards his colored kin is a natural
extension of the wariness with which he regards all of his
countrymen. At the beginning, certainly, he cherishes rather
exaggerated hopes of the French. His white countrymen, by and
large, fail to justify his fears, partly because the social climate does
not encourage an outward display of racial bigotry, partly out of
their awareness of being ambassadors, and nally, I should think,
because they are themselves relieved at being no longer forced to
think in terms of color. There remains, nevertheless, in the
encounter of white Americans and Negro Americans the high
potential of an awkward or an ugly situation.
The white American regards his darker brother through the
distorting screen created by a lifetime of conditioning. He is
accustomed to regard him either as a needy and deserving martyr
or as the soul of rhythm, but he is more than a little intimidated to
nd this stranger so many miles from home. At rst he tends

instinctively, whatever his intelligence may belatedly clamor, to
take it as a re ection on his personal honor and good-will; and at
the same time, with that winning generosity, at once good-natured
and uneasy, which characterizes Americans, he would like to
establish communication, and sympathy, with his compatriot. “And
how do you feel about it?” he would like to ask, “it” being anything
—the Russians, Betty Grable, the Place de la Concorde. The trouble
here is that any “it,” so tentatively o ered, may suddenly become
loaded and vibrant with tension, creating in the air between the
two thus met an intolerable atmosphere of danger.
The Negro, on the other hand, via the same conditioning which
constricts the outward gesture of the whites, has learned to
anticipate: as the mouth opens he divines what the tongue will
utter. He has had time, too, long before he came to Paris, to re ect
on the absolute and personally expensive futility of taking any one
of his countrymen to task for his status in America, or of hoping to
convey to them any of his experience. The American Negro and
white do not, therefore, discuss the past, except in considerately
guarded snatches. Both are quite willing, and indeed quite wise, to
remark instead the considerably overrated impressiveness of the
Ei el Tower.
The Ei el Tower has naturally long since ceased to divert the
French, who consider that all Negroes arrive from America,
trumpet-laden and twinkle-toed, bearing scars so unutterably
painful that all of the glories of the French Republic may not
su ce to heal them. This indignant generosity poses problems of
its own, which, language and custom being what they are, are not
so easily averted.
The European tends to avoid the really monumental confusion
which might result from an attempt to apprehend the relationship
of the forty-eight states to one another, clinging instead to such
information as is a orded by radio, press, and lm, to anecdotes
considered to be illustrative of American life, and to the myth that
we have ourselves perpetuated. The result, in conversation, is
rather like seeing one’s back yard reproduced with extreme

delity, but in such a perspective that it becomes a place which
one has never seen or visited, which never has existed, and which
never can exist. The Negro is forced to say “Yes” to many a
di cult question, and yet to deny the conclusion to which his
answers seem to point. His past, he now realizes, has not been
simply a series of ropes and bon res and humiliations, but
something vastly more complex, which, as he thinks painfully, “It
was much worse than that,” was also, he irrationally feels,
something much better. As it is useless to excoriate his countrymen,
it is galling now to be pitied as a victim, to accept this ready
sympathy which is limited only by its failure to accept him as an
American. He nds himself involved, in another language, in the
same old battle: the battle for his own identity. To accept the
reality of his being an American becomes a matter involving his
integrity and his greatest hopes, for only by accepting this reality
can be hope to make articulate to himself or to others the
uniqueness of his experience, and to set free the spirit so long
anonymous and caged.
The ambivalence of his status is thrown into relief by his
encounters with the Negro students from France’s colonies who live
in Paris. The French African comes from a region and a way of life
which—at least from the American point of view—is exceedingly
primitive, and where exploitation takes more naked forms. In
Paris, the African Negro’s status, conspicuous and subtly
inconvenient, is that of a colonial; and he leads here the intangibly
precarious life of someone abruptly and recently uprooted. His
bitterness is unlike that of his American kinsman in that it is not so
treacherously likely to be turned against himself. He has, not so
very many miles away, a homeland to which his relationship, no
less than his responsibility, is overwhelmingly clear: His country
must be given—or it must seize—its freedom. This bitter ambition
is shared by his fellow colonials, with whom he has a common
language, and whom he has no wish whatever to avoid; without
whose sustenance, indeed, he would be almost altogether lost in
Paris. They live in groups together, in the same neighborhoods, in

student hotels and under conditions which cannot fail to impress
the American as almost unendurable.
Yet what the American is seeing is not simply the poverty of the
student but the enormous gap between the European and American
standards of living. All of the students in the Latin Quarter live in
ageless, sinister-looking hotels; they are all forced continually to
choose between cigarettes and cheese at lunch.
It is true that the poverty and anger which the American Negro
sees must be related to Europe and not to America. Yet, as he
wishes for a moment that he were home again, where at least the
terrain is familiar, there begins to race within him, like the
despised beat of the tom-tom, echoes of a past which he has not yet
been able to utilize, intimations of a responsibility which he has
not yet been able to face. He begins to conjecture how much he has
gained and lost during his long sojourn in the American republic.
The African before him has endured privation, injustice, medieval
cruelty; but the African has not yet endured the utter alienation of
himself from his people and his past. His mother did not sing
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” and he has not, all his
life long, ached for acceptance in a culture which pronounced
straight hair and white skin the only acceptable beauty.
They face each other, the Negro and the African, over a gulf of
three hundred years—an alienation too vast to be conquered in an
evening’s good-will, too heavy and too double-edged ever to be
trapped in speech. This alienation causes the Negro to recognize
that he is a hybrid. Not a physical hybrid merely: in every aspect of
his living he betrays the memory of the auction block and the
impact of the happy ending. In white Americans he nds re ected
—repeated, as it were, in a higher key—his tensions, his terrors,
his tenderness. Dimly and for the rst time, there begins to fall
into perspective the nature of the roles they have played in the
lives and history of each other. Now he is bone of their bone, esh
of their esh; they have loved and hated and obsessed and feared
each other and his blood is in their soil. Therefore he cannot deny
them, nor can they ever be divorced.

The American Negro cannot explain to the African what surely
seems in himself to be a want of manliness, of racial pride, a
maudlin ability to forgive. It is di cult to make clear that he is not
seeking to forfeit his birthright as a black man, but that, on the
contrary, it is precisely this birthright which he is struggling to
recognize and make articulate. Perhaps it now occurs to him that
in this need to establish himself in relation to his past he is most
American, that this depthless alienation from oneself and one’s
people is, in sum, the American experience.
Yet one day he will face his home again; nor can he realistically
expect to nd overwhelming changes. In America, it is true, the
appearance is perpetually changing, each generation greeting with
short-lived exultation yet more dazzling additions to our renowned
façade. But the ghetto, anxiety, bitterness, and guilt continue to
breed their indescribable complex of tensions. What time will bring
Americans is at last their own identity. It is on this dangerous
voyage and in the same boat that the American Negro will make
peace with himself and with the voiceless many thousands gone
before him.

A Question of Identity
The American student colony in Paris is a social phenomenon so
amorphous as to at once demand and defy the generality. One is
far from being in the position of nding not enough to say—one
nds far too much, and everything one nds is contradictory. What
one wants to know at bottom, is what they came to nd: to which
question there are—at least—as many answers as there are faces
at the café tables.
The assumed common denominator, which is their military
experience, does not shed on this question as much light as one
might hope. For one thing, it becomes impossible, the moment one
thinks about it, to predicate the existence of a common experience.
The moment one thinks about it, it becomes apparent that there is
no such thing. That experience is a private, and a very largely
speechless a air is the principal truth, perhaps, to which the
colony under discussion bears witness—though the aggressively
unreadable face which they, collectively, present also suggests the
more disturbing possibility that experience may perfectly well be
meaningless. This loaded speculation aside, it is certainly true that
whatever this experience has done to them, or for them, whatever
the e ect has been, is, or will be, is a question to which no one has
yet given any strikingly coherent answer. Military experience does
not, furthermore, necessarily mean experience of battle, so that the
student colony’s common denominator reduces itself to nothing
more than the fact that all of its members have spent some time in
uniform. This is the common denominator of their entire
generation, of which the majority is not to be found in Paris, or,
for that matter, in Europe. One is at the outset, therefore,
forbidden to assume that the fact of having surrendered to the
necessary anonymity of uniform, or of having undergone the shock
of battle, was enough to occasion this ight from home. The best

that one can do by way of uniting these so disparate identities is
simply to accept, without comment, the fact of their military
experience, without questioning its extent; and, further, to suggest
that they form, by virtue of their presence here, a somewhat
unexpected minority. Unlike the majority of their fellows, who
were simply glad to get back home, these have elected to tarry in
the Old World, among scenes and people unimaginably removed
from anything they have known. They are willing, apparently, at
least for a season, to endure the wretched Parisian plumbing, the
public baths, the Paris age, and dirt—to pursue some end,
mysterious and largely inarticulate, arbitrarily summed up in the
verb to study.
Arbitrarily, because, however hard the ex-GI is studying, it is
very di cult to believe that it was only for this reason that he
traveled so far. He is not, usually, studying anything which he
couldn’t study at home, in far greater comfort. (We are limiting
ourselves, for the moment, to those people who are—more or less
seriously—studying, as opposed to those, to be considered later,
who are merely gold-bricking.) The people, for example, who are
studying painting, which seems, until one looks around, the best
possible subject to be studying here, are not studying, after all,
with Picasso, or Matisse—they are studying with teachers of the
same caliber as those they would have found in the States. They
are treated by these teachers with the same highhandedness, and
they accept their dicta with the very same measure of American
salt. Nor can it be said that they produce canvases of any greater
interest than those to be found along Washington Square, or in the
cold-water ats of New York’s lower east side. There is, au
contraire, more than a little truth to the contention that the east
side has a certain edge over Montparnasse, and this in spite of the
justly renowned Paris light. If we tentatively use—purely by virtue
of his numbers—the student painter as the nearest possible
approach to a “typical” student, we nd that his motives for
coming to Paris are anything but clear. One is forced to suppose
that it was nothing more than the legend of Paris, not infrequently

at its most vulgar and super cial level. It was certainly no love for
French tradition, whatever, indeed, in his mind, that tradition may
be; and, in any case, since he is himself without a tradition, he is ill
equipped to deal with the traditions of any other people. It was no
love for their language, which he doesn’t, beyond the most
inescapable necessities, speak; nor was it any love for their
history, his grasp of French history being yet more feeble than his
understanding of his own. It was no love for the monuments,
cathedrals, palaces, shrines, for which, again, nothing in his
experience prepares him, and to which, when he is not totally
indi erent, he brings only the hurried bewilderment of the tourist.
It was not even any particular admiration, or sympathy for the
French, or, at least, none strong enough to bear the strain of actual
contact. He may, at home, have admired their movies, in which
case, confronting the reality, he tends to feel a little taken in.
Those images created by Marcel Carné, for example, prove
themselves treacherous precisely because they are so exact. The
sordid French hotel room, so admirably detailed by the camera,
speaking, in its quaintness, and distance, so beautifully of
romance, undergoes a sea-change, becomes a room positively
hostile to romance, once it is oneself, and not Jean Gabin, who
lives there. This is the di erence, simply, between what one desires
and what the reality insists on—which di erence we will not
pursue except to observe that, since the reasons which brought the
student here are so romantic, and incoherent, he has come, in
e ect, to a city which exists only in his mind. He cushions himself,
so it would seem, against the shock of reality, by refusing for a
very long time to recognize Paris at all, but clinging instead to its
image. This is the reason, perhaps, that Paris for so long fails to
make any mark on him; and may also be why, when the tension
between the real and the imagined can no longer be supported, so
many people undergo a species of breakdown, or take the rst
boat home.
For Paris is, according to its legend, the city where everyone
loses his head, and his morals, lives through at least one histoire

d’amour, ceases, quite, to arrive anywhere on time, and thumbs his
nose at the Puritans—the city, in brief, where all become drunken
on the ne old air of freedom. This legend, in the fashion of
legends, has this much to support it, that it is not at all di cult to
see how it got started. It is limited, as legends are limited, by being
—literally—unlivable, and by referring to the past. It is perhaps
not amazing, therefore, that this legend appears to have virtually
nothing to do with the life of Paris itself, with the lives, that is, of
the natives, to whom the city, no less than the legend, belong. The
charm of this legend proves itself capable of withstanding the most
improbable excesses of the French bureaucracy, the weirdest
vagaries of the concierge, the fantastic rents paid for uncomfortable
apartments, the discomfort itself, and, even, the great confusion
and despair which is re ected in French politics—and in French
faces. More, the legend operates to place all of the inconveniences
endured by the foreigner, to say nothing of the downright misery
which is the lot of many of the natives, in the gentle glow of the
picturesque, and the absurd; so that, nally, it is perfectly possible
to be enamored of Paris while remaining totally indi erent, or
even hostile to the French. And this is made possible by the one
person in Paris whom the legend seems least to a ect, who is not
living it at all, that is, the Parisian himself. He, with his
impenetrable politesse, and with techniques unspeakably more
direct, keeps the traveler at an unmistakable arm’s length. Unlucky
indeed, as well as rare, the traveler who thirsts to know the lives of
the people—the people don’t want him in their lives. Neither does
the Parisian exhibit the faintest personal interest, or curiosity,
concerning the life, or habits, of any stranger. So long as he keeps
within the law, which, after all, most people have su cient
ingenuity to do, he may stand on his head, for all the Parisian
cares. It is this arrogant indi erence on the part of the Parisian,
with its unpredictable e ects on the traveler, which makes so
splendid the Paris air, to say nothing whatever of the exhilarating
e ect it has on the Paris scene.

The American student lives here, then, in a kind of social limbo.
He is allowed, and he gratefully embraces irresponsibility; and, at
the same time, since he is an American, he is invested with power,
whether or not he likes it, however he may choose to con rm or
deny it. Though the students of any nation, in Paris, are allowed
irresponsibility, few seem to need it as desperately as Americans
seem to need it; and none, naturally, move in the same aura of
power, which sets up in the general breast a perceptible anxiety,
and wonder, and a perceptible resentment. This is the “catch,” for
the American, in the Paris freedom: that he becomes here a kind of
revenant to Europe, the future of which continent, it may be, is in
his hands. The problems proceeding from the distinction he thus
nds thrust upon him might not, for a sensibility less de nitively
lonely, frame so painful a dilemma: but the American wishes to be
liked as a person, an implied distinction which makes perfect sense
to him, and none whatever to the European. What the American
means is that he does not want to be confused with the Marshall
Plan, Hollywood, the Yankee dollar, television, or Senator
McCarthy. What the European, in a thoroughly exasperating
innocence, assumes is that the American cannot, of course, be
divorced from the so diverse phenomena which make up his
country, and that he is willing, and able, to clarify the American
conundrum. If the American cannot do this, his despairing aspect
seems to say, who, under heaven, can? This moment, which
instinctive ingenuity delays as long as possible, nevertheless
arrives, and punctuates the Paris honeymoon. It is the moment, so
to speak, when one leaves the Paris of legend and nds oneself in
the real and di cult Paris of the present. At this moment Paris
ceases to be a city dedicated to la vie bohème, and becomes one of
the cities of Europe. At this point, too, it may be suggested, the
legend of Paris has done its deadly work, which is, perhaps, so to
stun the traveler with freedom that he begins to long for the prison
of home—home then becoming the place where questions are not
asked.

It is at this point, precisely, that many and many a student packs
his bags for home. The transformation which can be e ected, in
less than a year, in the attitude and aspirations of the youth who
has divorced himself from the crudities of main street in order to be
married with European nesse is, to say the very least, astounding.
His brief period of enchantment having ended, he cannot wait, it
seems, to look again on his native land—the virtues of which, if
not less crude, have also become, abruptly, simple, and vital. With
the air of a man who has but barely escaped tumbling headlong
into the bottomless pit, he tells you that he can scarcely wait to
leave this city, which has been revealed to the eye of his maturity
as old, dirty, crumbling, and dead. The people who were, when he
arrived at Le Havre, the heirs of the world’s richest culture, the
possessors of the world’s largest esprit, are really decadent,
penurious, self-seeking, and false, with no trace of American
spontaneity, and lacking in the least gratitude for American
favors. Only America is alive, only Americans are doing anything
worth mentioning in the arts, or in any other eld of human
activity: to America, only, the future belongs. Whereas, but only
yesterday, to confess a fondness for anything American was to be
suspected of the most indefensible jingoism, to suggest today that
Europe is not all black is to place oneself under the suspicion of
harboring treasonable longings. The violence of his embrace of
things American is embarrassing, not only because one is not quite
prepared to follow his admirable example, but also because it is
impossible not to suspect that his present acceptance of his country
is no less romantic, and unreal, than his earlier rejection. It is as
easy, after all, and as meaningless, to embrace uncritically the
cultural sterility of main street as it is to decry it. Both extremes
avoid the question of whether or not main street is really sterile,
avoid, in fact—which is the principal convenience of extremes—
any questions about main street at all. What one vainly listens for
in this cacophony of a rmation is any echo, however faint of
individual maturity. It is really quite impossible to be a rmative
about anything which one refuses to question; one is doomed to
remain inarticulate about anything which one hasn’t, by an act of

the imagination, made one’s own. This so suddenly a rmative
student is but changing the fashion of his innocence, nothing being
more improbable than that he is now prepared, as he insists, to
embrace his Responsibilities—the very word, in the face of his
monumental aversion to experience, seems to shrink to the
dimensions of a new, and rather sinister, frivolity.
The student, homeward bound, has only chosen, however, to ee
down the widest road. Of those who remain here, the majority
have taken roads more devious, and incomparably better hidden—
so well hidden that they themselves are lost.

One very often nds in this category that student whose
adaptation to French life seems to have been most perfect, and
whose studies—of French art, or the drama, the language, or the
history—give him the greatest right to be here. This student has put
aside chewing gum forever, he eschews the T-shirt, and the crew
cut, he can only with di culty be prevailed upon to see an
American movie, and it is so patent that he is actually studying that
his appearance at the café tables is never taken as evidence of
frivolity, but only as proof of his admirable passion to study the
customs of the country. One assumes that he is living as the French
live—which assumption, however, is immediately challenged by
the suspicion that no American can live as the French live, even if
one could nd an American who wanted to. This student lives,
nevertheless, with a French family, with whom he speaks French,
and takes his meals; and he knows, as some students do not, that
the Place de la Bastille no longer holds the prison. He has read, or
is reading, all of Racine, Proust, Gide, Sartre, and authors more
obscure—in the original, naturally. He regularly visits the
museums, and he considers Arletty to be the most beautiful woman
and the nest actress in the world. But the world, it seems, has
become the French world: he is unwilling to recognize any other.
This so severely cramps the American conversational style, that
one looks on this student with awe, and some shame—he is so
spectacularly getting out of his European experience everything it

has to give. He has certainly made contact with the French, and
isn’t wasting his time in Paris talking to people he might perfectly
well have met in America. His friends are French, in the classroom,
in the bistro, on the boulevard, and, of course, at home—it is only
that one is sometimes driven to wonder what on earth they nd to
talk about. This wonder is considerably increased when, in the rare
conversations he condescends to have in English, one discovers
that, certain picturesque details aside, he seems to know no more
about life in Paris than everybody knew at home. His friends have,
it appears, leaped unscathed from the nineteenth into the
twentieth century, entirely undismayed by any of the reverses
su ered by their country. This makes them a remarkable band
indeed, but it is in vain that one attempts to discover anything
more about them—their conversation being limited, one gathers, to
remarks about French wine, witticisms concerning l’amour, French
history, and the glories of Paris. The remarkably limited range of
their minds is matched only by their perplexing de nition of
friendship, a de nition which does not seem to include any
suggestion of communication, still less of intimacy. Since, in short,
the relationship of this perfectly adapted student to the people he
now so strenuously adores is based simply on his unwillingness to
allow them any of the human attributes with which his countrymen
so confounded him at home, and since his vaunted grasp of their
history reveals itself as the merest academic platitude, involving
his imagination not at all, the extent of his immersion in French
life impresses one nally as the height of arti ciality, and, even, of
presumption. The most curious thing about the passion with which
he has embraced the Continent is that it seems to be nothing more
or less than a means of safeguarding his American simplicity. He
has placed himself in a kind of strongbox of custom, and refuses to
see anything in Paris which can’t be seen through a golden haze.
He is thus protected against reality, or experience, or change, and
has succeeded in placing beyond the reach of corruption values he
prefers not to examine. Even his multitudinous French friends help
him to do this, for it is impossible, after all, to be friends with a
mob: they are simply a cloud of faces, bearing witness to romance.

Between these two extremes, the student who embraces Home, and
the student who embraces The Continent—both embraces, as we
have tried to indicate, being singularly devoid of contact, to say
nothing of love—there are far more gradations than can be
suggested here. The American in Europe is everywhere confronted
with the question of his identity, and this may be taken as the key
to all the contradictions one encounters when attempting to discuss
him. Certainly, for the student colony one nds no other common
denominator—this is all, really, that they have in common, and
they are distinguished from each other by the ways in which they
come to terms, or fail to come to terms with their confusion. This
prodigious question, at home so little recognized, seems, germ-like,
to be vivi ed in the European air, and to grow disproportionately,
displacing previous assurances, and producing tensions and
bewilderments entirely unlooked for. It is not, moreover, a
question which limits itself to those who are, so to speak, in tra c
with ideas. It confronts everyone, nding everyone unprepared; it
is a question with implications not easily escaped, and the attempt
to escape can precipitate disaster. Our perfectly adapted student,
for example, should his strongbox of custom break, may nd
himself hurled into that coterie of gold-bricks who form such a
spectacular element of the Paris scene that they are often what the
Parisian has in the foreground of his mind when he wonderingly
mutters, C’est vraiment les Américains. The great majority of this
group, having attempted, on more or less personal levels, to lose
or disguise their antecedents, are reduced to a kind of rubble of
compulsion. Having cast o all previous disciplines, they have also
lost the shape which these disciplines made for them and have not
succeeded in nding any other. Their rejection of the limitations of
American society has not set them free to function in any other
society, and their illusions, therefore, remain intact: they have yet
to be corrupted by the notion that society is never anything less
than a perfect labyrinth of limitations. They are charmed by the
re ection that Paris is more than two thousand years old, but it
escapes them that the Parisian has been in the making just about
that long, and that one does not, therefore, become Parisian by

virtue of a Paris address. This little band of bohemians, as grimly
singleminded as any evangelical sect, illustrate, by the very
ferocity with which they disavow American attitudes, one of the
most American of attributes, the inability to believe that time is
real. It is this inability which makes them so romantic about the
nature of society, and it is this inability which has led them into a
total confusion about the nature of experience. Society, it would
seem, is a imsy structure, beneath contempt, designed by and for
all the other people, and experience is nothing more than
sensation—so many sensations, added up like arithmetic, give one
the rich, full life. They thus lose what it was they so bravely set out
to nd, their own personalities, which, having been deprived of all
nourishment, soon cease, in e ect, to exist; and they arrive,
nally, at a dangerous disrespect for the personalities of others.
Though they persist in believing that their present shapelessness is
freedom, it is observable that this present freedom is unable to
endure either silence or privacy, and demands, for its ultimate
expression, a rootless wandering among the cafés. Saint Germain
des Près, the heart of the American colony, so far from having
absorbed the American student, has been itself transformed, on
spring, summer, and fall nights, into a replica, very nearly, of
Times Square.
But if this were all one found in the American student colony,
one would hardly have the heart to discuss it. If the American
found in Europe only confusion, it would obviously be in nitely
wiser for him to remain at home. Hidden, however, in the heart of
the confusion he encounters here is that which he came so blindly
seeking: the terms on which he is related to his country, and to the
world. This, which has so grandiose and general a ring, is, in fact,
most personal—the American confusion seeming to be based on
the very nearly unconscious assumption that it is possible to
consider the person apart from all the forces which have produced
him. This assumption, however, is itself based on nothing less than
our history, which is the history of the total, and willing, alienation
of entire peoples from their forebears. What is overwhelmingly

clear, it seems, to everyone but ourselves is that this history has
created an entirely unprecedented people, with a unique and
individual past. It is, indeed, this past which has thrust upon us our
present, so troubling role. It is the past lived on the American
continent, as against that other past, irrecoverable now on the
shores of Europe, which must sustain us in the present. The truth
about that past is not that it is too brief, or too super cial, but only
that we, having turned our faces so resolutely away from it, have
never demanded from it what it has to give. It is this demand
which the American student in Paris is forced, at length, to make,
for he has otherwise no identity, no reason for being here, nothing
to sustain him here. From the vantage point of Europe he discovers
his own country. And this is a discovery which not only brings to
an end the alienation of the American from himself, but which also
makes clear to him, for the rst time, the extent of his involvement
in the life of Europe.

Equal in Paris
On the 19th of December, in 1949, when I had been living in Paris
for a little over a year, I was arrested as a receiver of stolen goods
and spent eight days in prison. My arrest came about through an
American tourist whom I had met twice in New York, who had
been given my name and address and told to look me up. I was
then living on the top oor of a ludicrously grim hotel on the rue
du Bac, one of those enormous dark, cold, and hideous
establishments in which Paris abounds that seem to breathe forth,
in their airless, humid, stone-cold halls, the weak light, scurrying
chambermaids, and creaking stairs, an odor of gentility long long
dead. The place was run by an ancient Frenchman dressed in an
elegant black suit which was green with age, who cannot properly
be described as bewildered or even as being in a state of shock,
since he had really stopped breathing around 1910. There he sat at
his desk in the weirdly lit, fantastically furnished lobby, day in and
day out, greeting each one of his extremely impoverished and
louche lodgers with a stately inclination of the head that he had no
doubt been taught in some impossibly remote time was the proper
way for a propriétaire to greet his guests. If it had not been for his
daughter, an extremely hardheaded tricoteuse—the inclination of
her head was chilling and abrupt, like the downbeat of an ax—the
hotel would certainly have gone bankrupt long before. It was said
that this old man had not gone farther than the door of his hotel
for thirty years, which was not at all di cult to believe. He looked
as though the daylight would have killed him.
I did not, of course, spend much of my time in this palace. The
moment I began living in French hotels I understood the necessity
of French cafés. This made it rather di cult to look me up, for as
soon as I was out of bed I hopefully took notebook and fountain
pen o to the upstairs room of the Flore, where I consumed rather

a lot of co ee and, as evening approached, rather a lot of alcohol,
but did not get much writing done. But one night, in one of the
cafés of St. Germain des Près, I was discovered by this New Yorker
and only because we found ourselves in Paris we immediately
established the illusion that we had been fast friends back in the
good old U.S.A. This illusion proved itself too thin to support an
evening’s drinking, but by that time it was too late. I had
committed myself to getting him a room in my hotel the next day,
for he was living in one of the nest of hotels near the Gare St.
Lazare, where, he said, the propriétaire was a thief, his wife a
repressed nymphomaniac, the chambermaids “pigs,” and the rent a
crime. Americans are always talking this way about the French and
so it did not occur to me that he meant what he said or that he
would take into his own hands the means of avenging himself on
the French Republic. It did not occur to me, either, that the means
which he did take could possibly have brought about such dire
results, results which were not less dire for being also comic-opera.
It came as the last of a series of disasters which had perhaps
been made inevitable by the fact that I had come to Paris
originally with a little over forty dollars in my pockets, nothing in
the bank, and no grasp whatever of the French language. It
developed, shortly, that I had no grasp of the French character
either. I considered the French an ancient, intelligent, and cultured
race, which indeed they are. I did not know, however, that ancient
glories imply, at least in the middle of the present century, present
fatigue and, quite probably, paranoia; that there is a limit to the
role of the intelligence in human a airs; and that no people come
into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for
it. This price they cannot, of course, assess, but it is revealed in
their personalities and in their institutions. The very word
“institutions,” from my side of the ocean, where, it seemed to me,
we su ered so cruelly from the lack of them, had a pleasant ring,
as of safety and order and common sense; one had to come into
contact with these institutions in order to understand that they
were also outmoded, exasperating, completely impersonal, and

very often cruel. Similarly, the personality which had seemed from
a distance to be so large and free had to be dealt with before one
could see that, if it was large, it was also in exible and, for the
foreigner, full of strange, high, dusty rooms which could not be
inhabited. One had, in short, to come into contact with an alien
culture in order to understand that a culture was not a community
basket-weaving project, nor yet an act of God; was something
neither desirable nor undesirable in itself, being inevitable, being
nothing more or less than the recorded and visible e ects on a
body of people of the vicissitudes with which they had been forced
to deal. And their great men are revealed as simply another of
these vicissitudes, even if, quite against their will, the brief battle
of their great men with them has left them richer.
When my American friend left his hotel to move to mine, he took
with him, out of pique, a bedsheet belonging to the hotel and put it
in his suitcase. When he arrived at my hotel I borrowed the sheet,
since my own were lthy and the chambermaid showed no sign of
bringing me any clean ones, and put it on my bed. The sheets
belonging to my hotel I put out in the hall, congratulating myself
on having thus forced on the attention of the Grand Hôtel du Bac
the unpleasant state of its linen. Thereafter, since, as it turned out,
we kept very di erent hours—I got up at noon, when, as I
gathered by meeting him on the stairs one day, he was only just
getting in—my new-found friend and I saw very little of each
other.
On the evening of the 19th I was sitting thinking melancholy
thoughts about Christmas and staring at the walls of my room. I
imagine that I had sold something or that someone had sent me a
Christmas present, for I remember that I had a little money. In
those days in Paris, though I oated, so to speak, on a sea of
acquaintances, I knew almost no one. Many people were
eliminated from my orbit by virtue of the fact that they had more
money than I did, which placed me, in my own eyes, in the
humiliating role of a free-loader; and other people were eliminated
by virtue of the fact that they enjoyed their poverty, shrilly

insisting that this wretched round of hotel rooms, bad food,
humiliating concierges, and unpaid bills was the Great Adventure.
It couldn’t, however, for me, end soon enough, this Great
Adventure; there was a real question in my mind as to which
would end soonest, the Great Adventure or me. This meant,
however, that there were many evenings when I sat in my room,
knowing that I couldn’t work there, and not knowing what to do,
or whom to see. On this particular evening I went down and
knocked on the American’s door.
There were two Frenchmen standing in the room, who
immediately introduced themselves to me as policemen; which did
not worry me. I had got used to policemen in Paris bobbing up at
the most improbable times and places, asking to see one’s carte
d’identité. These policemen, however, showed very little interest in
my papers. They were looking for something else. I could not
imagine what this would be and, since I knew I certainly didn’t
have it, I scarcely followed the conversation they were having with
my friend. I gathered that they were looking for some kind of
gangster and since I wasn’t a gangster and knew that gangsterism
was not, insofar as he had one, my friend’s style, I was sure that
the two policemen would presently bow and say Merci, messieurs,
and leave. For by this time, I remember very clearly, I was dying
to have a drink and go to dinner.
I did not have a drink or go to dinner for many days after this,
and when I did my outraged stomach promptly heaved everything
up again. For now one of the policemen began to exhibit the most
vivid interest in me and asked, very politely, if he might see my
room. To which we mounted, making, I remember, the most
civilized small talk on the way and even continuing it for some
moments after we were in the room in which there was certainly
nothing to be seen but the familiar poverty and disorder of that
precarious group of people of whatever age, race, country, calling,
or intention which Paris recognizes as les étudiants and sometimes,
more ironically and precisely, as les nonconformistes. Then he
moved to my bed, and in a terrible ash, not quite an instant

before he lifted the bedspread, I understood what he was looking
for. We looked at the sheet, on which I read, for the rst time,
lettered in the most brilliant scarlet I have ever seen, the name of
the hotel from which it had been stolen. It was the rst time the
word stolen entered my mind. I had certainly seen the hotel
monogram the day I put the sheet on the bed. It had simply meant
nothing to me. In New York I had seen hotel monograms on
everything from silver to soap and towels. Taking things from New
York hotels was practically a custom, though, I suddenly realized, I
had never known anyone to take a sheet. Sadly, and without a
word to me, the inspector took the sheet from the bed, folded it
under his arm, and we started back downstairs. I understood that I
was under arrest.
And so we passed through the lobby, four of us, two of us very
clearly criminal, under the eyes of the old man and his daughter,
neither of whom said a word, into the streets where a light rain
was falling. And I asked, in French, “But is this very serious?”
For I was thinking, it is, after all, only a sheet, not even new.
“No,” said one of them. “It’s not serious.”
“It’s nothing at all,” said the other.
I took this to mean that we would receive a reprimand at the
police station and be allowed to go to dinner. Later on I concluded
that they were not being hypocritical or even trying to comfort us.
They meant exactly what they said. It was only that they spoke
another language.
In Paris everything is very slow. Also, when dealing with the
bureaucracy, the man you are talking to is never the man you have
to see. The man you have to see has just gone o to Belgium, or is
busy with his family, or has just discovered that he is a cuckold; he
will be in next Tuesday at three o’clock, or sometime in the course
of the afternoon, or possibly tomorrow, or, possibly, in the next
ve minutes. But if he is coming in the next ve minutes he will be
far too busy to be able to see you today. So that I suppose I was
not really astonished to learn at the commissariat that nothing

could possibly be done about us before The Man arrived in the
morning. But no, we could not go o and have dinner and come
back in the morning. Of course he knew that we would come back
—that was not the question. Indeed, there was no question: we
would simply have to stay there for the night. We were placed in a
cell which rather resembled a chicken coop. It was now about
seven in the evening and I relinquished the thought of dinner and
began to think of lunch.
I discouraged the chatter of my New York friend and this left me
alone with my thoughts. I was beginning to be frightened and I
bent all my energies, therefore, to keeping my panic under control.
I began to realize that I was in a country I knew nothing about, in
the hands of a people I did not understand at all. In a similar
situation in New York I would have had some idea of what to do
because I would have had some idea of what to expect. I am not
speaking now of legality which, like most of the poor, I had never
for an instant trusted, but of the temperament of the people with
whom I had to deal. I had become very accomplished in New York
at guessing and, therefore, to a limited extent manipulating to my
advantage the reactions of the white world. But this was not New
York. None of my old weapons could serve me here. I did not know
what they saw when they looked at me. I knew very well what
Americans saw when they looked at me and this allowed me to
play endless and sinister variations on the role which they had
assigned me; since I knew that it was, for them, of the utmost
importance that they never be confronted with what, in their own
personalities, made this role so necessary and gratifying to them, I
knew that they could never call my hand or, indeed, a ord to
know what I was doing; so that I moved into every crucial
situation with the deadly and rather desperate advantages of
bitterly accumulated perception, of pride and contempt. This is an
awful sword and shield to carry through the world, and the
discovery that, in the game I was playing, I did myself a violence
of which the world, at its most ferocious, would scarcely have been
capable, was what had driven me out of New York. It was a

strange feeling, in this situation, after a year in Paris, to discover
that my weapons would never again serve me as they had.
It was quite clear to me that the Frenchmen in whose hands I
found myself were no better or worse than their American
counterparts. Certainly their uniforms frightened me quite as
much, and their impersonality, and the threat, always very keenly
felt by the poor, of violence, was as present in that commissariat
as it had ever been for me in any police station. And I had seen,
for example, what Paris policemen could do to Arab peanut
vendors. The only di erence here was that I did not understand
these people, did not know what techniques their cruelty took, did
not know enough about their personalities to see danger coming,
to ward it o , did not know on what ground to meet it. That
evening in the commissariat I was not a despised black man. They
would simply have laughed at me if I had behaved like one. For
them, I was an American. And here it was they who had the
advantage, for that word, Américain, gave them some idea, far
from inaccurate, of what to expect from me. In order to
corroborate none of their ironical expectations I said nothing and
did nothing—which was not the way any Frenchman, white or
black, would have reacted. The question thrusting up from the
bottom of my mind was not what I was, but who. And this question,
since a what can get by with skill but a who demands resources,
was my rst real intimation of what humility must mean.
In the morning it was still raining. Between nine and ten o’clock
a black Citroën took us o to the Ile de la Cité, to the great, gray
Préfecture. I realize now that the questions I put to the various
policemen who escorted us were always answered in such a way as
to corroborate what I wished to hear. This was not out of
politeness, but simply out of indi erence—or, possibly, an ironical
pity—since each of the policemen knew very well that nothing
would speed or halt the machine in which I had become entangled.
They knew I did not know this and there was certainly no point in
their telling me. In one way or another I would certainly come out
at the other side—for they also knew that being found with a

stolen bedsheet in one’s possession was not a crime punishable by
the guillotine. (They had the advantage over me there, too, for
there were certainly moments later on when I was not so sure.) If I
did not come out at the other side—well, that was just too bad. So,
to my question, put while we were in the Citroën—“Will it be over
today?”—I received a “Oui, bien sûr.” He was not lying. As it
turned out, the procès-verbal was over that day. Trying to be
realistic, I dismissed, in the Citroën, all thoughts of lunch and
pushed my mind ahead to dinner.
At the Préfecture we were rst placed in a tiny cell, in which it
was almost impossible either to sit or to lie down. After a couple of
hours of this we were taken down to an o ce, where, for the rst
time, I encountered the owner of the bedsheet and where the
procès-verbal took place. This was simply an interrogation, quite
chillingly clipped and e cient (so that there was, shortly, no doubt
in one’s own mind that one should be treated as a criminal), which
was recorded by a secretary. When it was over, this report was
given to us to sign. One had, of course, no choice but to sign it,
even though my mastery of written French was very far from
certain. We were being held, according to the law in France,
incommunicado, and all my angry demands to be allowed to speak
to my embassy or to see a lawyer met with a stony “Oui, oui. Plus
tard.” The procès-verbal over, we were taken back to the cell, before
which, shortly, passed the owner of the bedsheet. He said he hoped
we had slept well, gave a vindictive wink, and disappeared.
By this time there was only one thing clear: that we had no way
of controlling the sequence of events and could not possibly guess
what this sequence would be. It seemed to me, since what I
regarded as the high point—the procès-verbal—had been passed and
since the hotel-keeper was once again in possession of his sheet,
that we might reasonably expect to be released from police custody
in a matter of hours. We had been detained now for what would
soon be twenty-four hours, during which time I had learned only
that the o cial charge against me was receleur. My mental
shifting, between lunch and dinner, to say nothing of the physical

lack of either of these delights, was beginning to make me dizzy.
The steady chatter of my friend from New York, who was
determined to keep my spirits up, made me feel murderous; I was
praying that some power would release us from this freezing pile
of stone before the impulse became the act. And I was beginning to
wonder what was happening in that beautiful city, Paris, which
lived outside these walls. I wondered how long it would take
before anyone casually asked, “But where’s Jimmy? He hasn’t been
around”—and realized, knowing the people I knew, that it would
take several days.
Quite late in the afternoon we were taken from our cells;
handcu ed, each to a separate o cer; led through a maze of steps
and corridors to the top of the building;
ngerprinted;
photographed. As in movies I had seen, I was placed against a
wall, facing an old-fashioned camera, behind which stood one of
the most completely cruel and indi erent faces I had ever seen,
while someone next to me and, therefore, just outside my line of
vision, read o in a voice from which all human feeling, even
feeling of the most base description, had long since ed, what must
be called my public characteristics—which, at that time and in that
place, seemed anything but that. He might have been roaring to
the hostile world secrets which I could barely, in the privacy of
midnight, utter to myself. But he was only reading o my height,
my features, my approximate weight, my color—that color which,
in the United States, had often, odd as it may sound, been my
salvation—the color of my hair, my age, my nationality. A light
then ashed, the photographer and I staring at each other as
though there was murder in our hearts, and then it was over.
Handcu ed again, I was led downstairs to the bottom of the
building, into a great enclosed shed in which had been gathered
the very scrapings o the Paris streets. Old, old men, so ruined and
old that life in them seemed really to prove the miracle of the
quickening power of the Holy Ghost—for clearly their life was no
longer their a air, it was no longer even their burden, they were
simply the clay which had once been touched. And men not so old,

with faces the color of lead and the consistency of oatmeal, eyes
that made me think of stale café-au-lait spiked with arsenic, bodies
which could take in food and water—any food and water—and
pass it out, but which could not do anything more, except possibly,
at midnight, along the riverbank where rats scurried, rape. And
young men, harder and crueler than the Paris stones, older by far
than I, their chronological senior by some ve to seven years. And
North Africans, old and young, who seemed the only living people
in this place because they yet retained the grace to be bewildered.
But they were not bewildered by being in this shed: they were
simply bewildered because they were no longer in North Africa.
There was a great hole in the center of this shed, which was the
common toilet. Near it, though it was impossible to get very far
from it, stood an old man with white hair, eating a piece of
camembert. It was at this point, probably, that thought, for me,
stopped, that physiology, if one may say so, took over. I found
myself incapable of saying a word, not because I was afraid I
would cry but because I was afraid I would vomit. And I did not
think any longer of the city of Paris but my mind ew back to that
home from which I had ed. I was sure that I would never see it
any more. And it must have seemed to me that my ight from
home was the cruelest trick I had ever played on myself, since it
had led me here, down to a lower point than any I could ever in
my life have imagined—lower, far, than anything I had seen in
that Harlem which I had so hated and so loved, the escape from
which had soon become the greatest direction of my life. After we
had been here an hour or so a functionary came and opened the
door and called out our names. And I was sure that this was my
release. But I was handcu ed again and led out of the Préfecture
into the streets—it was dark now, it was still raining—and before
the steps of the Préfecture stood the great police wagon, doors
facing me, wide open. The handcu s were taken o , I entered the
wagon, which was peculiarly constructed. It was divided by a
narrow aisle, and on each side of the aisle was a series of narrow
doors. These doors opened on a narrow cubicle, beyond which was
a door which opened onto another narrow cubicle: three or four

cubicles, each private, with a locking door. I was placed in one of
them; I remember there was a small vent just above my head
which let in a little light. The door of my cubicle was locked from
the outside. I had no idea where this wagon was taking me and, as
it began to move, I began to cry. I suppose I cried all the way to
prison, the prison called Fresnes, which is twelve kilometers
outside of Paris.
For reasons I have no way at all of understanding, prisoners
whose last initial is A, B, or C are always sent to Fresnes;
everybody else is sent to a prison called, rather cynically it seems
to me, La Santé. I will, obviously, never be allowed to enter La
Santé, but I was told by people who certainly seemed to know that
it was in nitely more unbearable than Fresnes. This arouses in me,
until today, a positive storm of curiosity concerning what I
promptly began to think of as The Other Prison. My colleague in
crime, occurring lower in the alphabet, had been sent there and I
confess that the minute he was gone I missed him. I missed him
because he was not French and because he was the only person in
the world who knew that the story I told was true.
For, once locked in, divested of shoelaces, belt, watch, money,
papers, nail le, in a freezing cell in which both the window and
the toilet were broken, with six other adventures, the story I told of
l’a aire du drap de lit elicited only the wildest amusement or the
most suspicious disbelief. Among the people who shared my cell
the rst three days no one, it is true, had been arrested for
anything much more serious—or, at least, not serious in my eyes. I
remember that there was a boy who had stolen a knitted sweater
from a monoprix, who would probably, it was agreed, receive a sixmonth sentence. There was an older man there who had been
arrested for some kind of petty larceny. There were two North
Africans, vivid, brutish, and beautiful, who alternated between
gaiety and fury, not at the fact of their arrest but at the state of the
cell. None poured as much emotional energy into the fact of their
arrest as I did; they took it, as I would have liked to take it, as
simply another unlucky happening in a very dirty world. For,

though I had grown accustomed to thinking of myself as looking
upon the world with a hard, penetrating eye, the truth was that
they were far more realistic about the world than I, and more
nearly right about it. The gap between us, which only a gesture I
made could have bridged, grew steadily, during thirty-six hours,
wider. I could not make any gesture simply because they
frightened me. I was unable to accept my imprisonment as a fact,
even as a temporary fact. I could not, even for a moment, accept
my present companions as my companions. And they, of course,
felt this and put it down, with perfect justice, to the fact that I was
an American.
There was nothing to do all day long. It appeared that we would
one day come to trial but no one knew when. We were awakened
at seven-thirty by a rapping on what I believe is called the Judas,
that small opening in the door of the cell which allows the guards
to survey the prisoners. At this rapping we rose from the oor—we
slept on straw pallets and each of us was covered with one thin
blanket—and moved to the door of the cell. We peered through the
opening into the center of the prison, which was, as I remember,
three tiers high, all gray stone and gunmetal steel, precisely that
prison I had seen in movies, except that, in the movies, I had not
known that it was cold in prison. I had not known that when one’s
shoelaces and belt have been removed one is, in the strangest way,
demoralized. The necessity of shu ing and the necessity of holding
up one’s trousers with one hand turn one into a rag doll. And the
movies fail, of course, to give one any idea of what prison food is
like. Along the corridor, at seven-thirty, came three men, each
pushing before him a great garbage can, mounted on wheels. In
the garbage can of the rst was the bread—this was passed to one
through the small opening in the door. In the can of the second
was the co ee. In the can of the third was what was always called
la soupe, a pallid paste of potatoes which had certainly been
bubbling on the back of the prison stove long before that rst, so
momentous revolution. Naturally, it was cold by this time and,
starving as I was, I could not eat it. I drank the co ee—which was

not co ee—because it was hot, and spent the rest of the day,
huddled in my blanket, munching on the bread. It was not the
French bread one bought in bakeries. In the evening the same
procession returned. At ten-thirty the lights went out. I had a
recurring dream, each night, a nightmare which always involved
my mother’s fried chicken. At the moment I was about to eat it
came the rapping at the door. Silence is really all I remember of
those rst three days, silence and the color gray.
I am not sure now whether it was on the third or the fourth day
that I was taken to trial for the rst time. The days had nothing,
obviously, to distinguish them from one another. I remember that I
was very much aware that Christmas Day was approaching and I
wondered if I was really going to spend Christmas Day in prison.
And I remember that the rst trial came the day before Christmas
Eve.
On the morning of the rst trial I was awakened by hearing my
name called. I was told, hanging in a kind of void between my
mother’s fried chicken and the cold prison oor, “Vous préparez.
Vous êtes extrait”—which simply terri ed me, since I did not know
what interpretation to put on the word “extrait,” and since my
cellmates had been amusing themselves with me by telling terrible
stories about the ine ciency of French prisons, an ine ciency so
extreme that it had often happened that someone who was
supposed to be taken out and tried found himself on the wrong line
and was guillotined instead. The best way of putting my reaction
to this is to say that, though I knew they were teasing me, it was
simply not possible for me to totally disbelieve them. As far as I
was concerned, once in the hands of the law in France, anything
could happen. I shu ed along with the others who were extrait to
the center of the prison, trying, rather, to linger in the o ce,
which seemed the only warm spot in the whole world, and found
myself again in that dreadful wagon, and was carried again to the
Ile de la Cité, this time to the Palais de Justice. The entire day,
except for ten minutes, was spent in one of the cells, rst waiting
to be tried, then waiting to be taken back to prison.

For I was not tried that day. By and by I was handcu ed and led
through the halls, upstairs to the courtroom where I found my New
York friend. We were placed together, both stage-whisperingly
certain that this was the end of our ordeal. Nevertheless, while I
waited for our case to be called, my eyes searched the courtroom,
looking for a face I knew, hoping, anyway, that there was
someone there who knew me, who would carry to someone outside
the news that I was in trouble. But there was no one I knew there
and I had had time to realize that there was probably only one
man in Paris who could help me, an American patent attorney for
whom I had worked as an o ce boy. He could have helped me
because he had a quite solid position and some prestige and would
have testi ed that, while working for him, I had handled large
sums of money regularly, which made it rather unlikely that I
would stoop to tra cking in bedsheets. However, he was
somewhere in Paris, probably at this very moment enjoying a
snack and a glass of wine and as far as the possibility of reaching
him was concerned, he might as well have been on Mars. I tried to
watch the proceedings and to make my mind a blank. But the
proceedings were not reassuring. The boy, for example, who had
stolen the sweater did receive a six-month sentence. It seemed to
me that all the sentences meted out that day were excessive;
though, again, it seemed that all the people who were sentenced
that day had made, or clearly were going to make, crime their
career. This seemed to be the opinion of the judge, who scarcely
looked at the prisoners or listened to them; it seemed to be the
opinion of the prisoners, who scarcely bothered to speak in their
own behalf; it seemed to be the opinion of the lawyers, state
lawyers for the most part, who were defending them. The great
impulse of the courtroom seemed to be to put these people where
they could not be seen—and not because they were o ended at the
crimes, unless, indeed, they were o ended that the crimes were so
petty, but because they did not wish to know that their society
could be counted on to produce, probably in greater and greater
numbers, a whole body of people for whom crime was the only
possible career. Any society inevitably produces its criminals, but a

society at once rigid and unstable can do nothing whatever to
alleviate the poverty of its lowest members, cannot present to the
hypothetical young man at the crucial moment that so-welladvertised right path. And the fact, perhaps, that the French are
the earth’s least sentimental people and must also be numbered
among the most proud aggravates the plight of their lowest,
youngest, and unluckiest members, for it means that the idea of
rehabilitation is scarcely real to them. I confess that this attitude
on their part raises in me sentiments of exasperation, admiration,
and despair, revealing as it does, in both the best and the worst
sense, their renowned and spectacular hard-headedness.
Finally our case was called and we rose. We gave our names. At
the point that it developed that we were American the proceedings
ceased, a hurried consultation took place between the judge and
what I took to be several lawyers. Someone called out for an
interpreter. The arresting o cer had forgotten to mention our
nationalities and there was, therefore, no interpreter in the court.
Even if our French had been better than it was we would not have
been allowed to stand trial without an interpreter. Before I clearly
understood what was happening, I was handcu ed again and led
out of the courtroom. The trial had been set back for the 27th of
December.
I have sometimes wondered if I would ever have got out of
prison if it had not been for the older man who had been arrested
for the mysterious petty larceny. He was acquitted that day and
when he returned to the cell—for he could not be released until
morning—he found me sitting numbly on the oor, having just
been prevented, by the sight of a man, all blood, being carried
back to his cell on a stretcher, from seizing the bars and screaming
until they let me out. The sight of the man on the stretcher proved,
however, that screaming would not do much for me. The pettylarceny man went around asking if he could do anything in the
world outside for those he was leaving behind. When he came to
me I, at rst, responded, “No, nothing”—for I suppose I had by
now retreated into the attitude, the earliest I remember, that of my

father, which was simply (since I had lost his God) that nothing
could help me. And I suppose I will remember with gratitude until I
die the fact that the man now insisted: “Mais, êtes-vous sûr?” Then
it swept over me that he was going outside and he instantly
became my rst contact since the Lord alone knew how long with
the outside world. At the same time, I remember, I did not really
believe that he would help me. There was no reason why he
should. But I gave him the phone number of my attorney friend
and my own name.
So, in the middle of the next day, Christmas Eve, I shu ed
downstairs again, to meet my visitor. He looked extremely well fed
and sane and clean. He told me I had nothing to worry about any
more. Only not even he could do anything to make the mill of
justice grind any faster. He would, however, send me a lawyer of
his acquaintance who would defend me on the 27th, and he would
himself, along with several other people, appear as a character
witness. He gave me a package of Lucky Strikes (which the turnkey
took from me on the way upstairs) and said that, though it was
doubtful that there would be any celebration in the prison, he
would see to it that I got a ne Christmas dinner when I got out.
And this, somehow, seemed very funny. I remember being
astonished at the discovery that I was actually laughing. I was, too,
I imagine, also rather disappointed that my hair had not turned
white, that my face was clearly not going to bear any marks of
tragedy, disappointed at bottom, no doubt, to realize, facing him
in that room, that far worse things had happened to most people
and that, indeed, to paraphrase my mother, if this was the worst
thing that ever happened to me I could consider myself among the
luckiest people ever to be born. He injected—my visitor—into my
solitary nightmare common sense, the world, and the hint of
blacker things to come.
The next day, Christmas, unable to endure my cell, and feeling
that, after all, the day demanded a gesture, I asked to be allowed
to go to Mass, hoping to hear some music. But I found myself, for a
freezing hour and a half, locked in exactly the same kind of cubicle

as in the wagon which had rst brought me to prison, peering
through a slot placed at the level of the eye at an old Frenchman,
hatted, overcoated, mu ed, and gloved, preaching in this
language which I did not understand, to this row of wooden boxes,
the story of Jesus Christ’s love for men.
The next day, the 26th, I spent learning a peculiar kind of game,
played with match-sticks, with my cellmates. For, since I no longer
felt that I would stay in this cell forever, I was beginning to be
able to make peace with it for a time. On the 27th I went again to
trial and, as had been predicted, the case against us was dismissed.
The story of the drap de lit, nally told, caused great merriment in
the courtroom, whereupon my friend decided that the French were
“great.” I was chilled by their merriment, even though it was
meant to warm me. It could only remind me of the laughter I had
often heard at home, laughter which I had sometimes deliberately
elicited. This laughter is the laughter of those who consider
themselves to be at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom
the pain of the living is not real. I had heard it so often in my
native land that I had resolved to nd a place where I would never
hear it any more. In some deep, black, stony, and liberating way,
my life, in my own eyes, began during that rst year in Paris,
when it was borne in on me that this laughter is universal and
never can be stilled.

Stranger in the Village
From all available evidence no black man had ever set foot in this
tiny Swiss village before I came. I was told before arriving that I
would probably be a “sight” for the village; I took this to mean
that people of my complexion were rarely seen in Switzerland, and
also that city people are always something of a “sight” outside of
the city. It did not occur to me—possibly because I am an
American—that there could be people anywhere who had never
seen a Negro.
It is a fact that cannot be explained on the basis of the
inaccessibility of the village. The village is very high, but it is only
four hours from Milan and three hours from Lausanne. It is true
that it is virtually unknown. Few people making plans for a
holiday would elect to come here. On the other hand, the villagers
are able, presumably, to come and go as they please—which they
do: to another town at the foot of the mountain, with a population
of approximately ve thousand, the nearest place to see a movie
or go to the bank. In the village there is no movie house, no bank,
no library, no theater; very few radios, one jeep, one station
wagon; and, at the moment, one typewriter, mine, an invention
which the woman next door to me here had never seen. There are
about six hundred people living here, all Catholic—I conclude this
from the fact that the Catholic church is open all year round,
whereas the Protestant chapel, set o on a hill a little removed
from the village, is open only in the summertime when the tourists
arrive. There are four or ve hotels, all closed now, and four or
ve bistros, of which, however, only two do any business during
the winter. These two do not do a great deal, for life in the village
seems to end around nine or ten o’clock. There are a few stores,
butcher, baker, épicerie, a hardware store, and a money-changer—
who cannot change travelers’ checks, but must send them down to

the bank, an operation which takes two or three days. There is
something called the Ballet Haus, closed in the winter and used for
God knows what, certainly not ballet, during the summer. There
seems to be only one schoolhouse in the village, and this for the
quite young children; I suppose this to mean that their older
brothers and sisters at some point descend from these mountains in
order to complete their education—possibly, again, to the town
just below. The landscape is absolutely forbidding, mountains
towering on all four sides, ice and snow as far as the eye can
reach. In this white wilderness, men and women and children
move all day, carrying washing, wood, buckets of milk or water,
sometimes skiing on Sunday afternoons. All week long boys and
young men are to be seen shoveling snow o the rooftops, or
dragging wood down from the forest in sleds.
The village’s only real attraction, which explains the tourist
season, is the hot spring water. A disquietingly high proportion of
these tourists are cripples, or semicripples, who come year after
year—from other parts of Switzerland, usually—to take the waters.
This lends the village, at the height of the season, a rather
terrifying air of sanctity, as though it were a lesser Lourdes. There
is often something beautiful, there is always something awful, in
the spectacle of a person who has lost one of his faculties, a faculty
he never questioned until it was gone, and who struggles to
recover it. Yet people remain people, on crutches or indeed on
deathbeds; and wherever I passed, the rst summer I was here,
among the native villagers or among the lame, a wind passed with
me—of astonishment, curiosity, amusement, and outrage. That
rst summer I stayed two weeks and never intended to return. But
I did return in the winter, to work; the village o ers, obviously, no
distractions whatever and has the further advantage of being
extremely cheap. Now it is winter again, a year later, and I am
here again. Everyone in the village knows my name, though they
scarcely ever use it, knows that I come from America—though, this,
apparently, they will never really believe: black men come from
Africa—and everyone knows that I am the friend of the son of a

woman who was born here, and that I am staying in their chalet.
But I remain as much a stranger today as I was the rst day I
arrived, and the children shout Neger! Neger! as I walk along the
streets.
It must be admitted that in the beginning I was far too shocked
to have any real reaction. In so far as I reacted at all, I reacted by
trying to be pleasant—it being a great part of the American
Negro’s education (long before he goes to school) that he must
make people “like” him. This smile-and-the-world-smiles-with-you
routine worked about as well in this situation as it had in the
situation for which it was designed, which is to say that it did not
work at all. No one, after all, can be liked whose human weight
and complexity cannot be, or has not been, admitted. My smile
was simply another unheard-of phenomenon which allowed them
to see my teeth—they did not, really, see my smile and I began to
think that, should I take to snarling, no one would notice any
di erence. All of the physical characteristics of the Negro which
had caused me, in America, a very di erent and almost forgotten
pain were nothing less than miraculous—or infernal—in the eyes
of the village people. Some thought my hair was the color of tar,
that it had the texture of wire, or the texture of cotton. It was
jocularly suggested that I might let it all grow long and make
myself a winter coat. If I sat in the sun for more than ve minutes
some daring creature was certain to come along and gingerly put
his ngers on my hair, as though he were afraid of an electric
shock, or put his hand on my hand, astonished that the color did
not rub o . In all of this, in which it must be conceded there was
the charm of genuine wonder and in which there was certainly no
element of intentional unkindness, there was yet no suggestion
that I was human: I was simply a living wonder.
I knew that they did not mean to be unkind, and I know it now;
it is necessary, nevertheless, for me to repeat this to myself each
time that I walk out of the chalet. The children who shout Neger!
have no way of knowing the echoes this sound raises in me. They
are brimming with good humor and the more daring swell with

pride when I stop to speak with them. Just the same, there are
days when I cannot pause and smile, when I have no heart to play
with them; when, indeed, I mutter sourly to myself, exactly as I
muttered on the streets of a city these children have never seen,
when I was no bigger than these children are now: Your mother
was a nigger. Joyce is right about history being a nightmare—but it
may be the nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are
trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
There is a custom in the village—I am told it is repeated in many
villages—of “buying” African natives for the purpose of converting
them to Christianity. There stands in the church all year round a
small box with a slot for money, decorated with a black gurine,
and into this box the villagers drop their francs. During the
carnaval which precedes Lent, two village children have their faces
blackened—out of which bloodless darkness their blue eyes shine
like ice—and fantastic horsehair wigs are placed on their blond
heads; thus disguised, they solicit among the villagers for money
for the missionaries in Africa. Between the box in the church and
the blackened children, the village “bought” last year six or eight
African natives. This was reported to me with pride by the wife of
one of the bistro owners and I was careful to express astonishment
and pleasure at the solicitude shown by the village for the souls of
black folk. The bistro owner’s wife beamed with a pleasure far
more genuine than my own and seemed to feel that I might now
breathe more easily concerning the souls of at least six of my
kinsmen.
I tried not to think of these so lately baptized kinsmen, of the
price paid for them, or the peculiar price they themselves would
pay, and said nothing about my father, who having taken his own
conversion too literally never, at bottom, forgave the white world
(which he described as heathen) for having saddled him with a
Christ in whom, to judge at least from their treatment of him, they
themselves no longer believed. I thought of white men arriving for
the rst time in an African village, strangers there, as I am a
stranger here, and tried to imagine the astounded populace

touching their hair and marveling at the color of their skin. But
there is a great di erence between being the rst white man to be
seen by Africans and being the rst black man to be seen by
whites. The white man takes the astonishment as tribute, for he
arrives to conquer and to convert the natives, whose inferiority in
relation to himself is not even to be questioned; whereas I, without
a thought of conquest, nd myself among a people whose culture
controls me, has even, in a sense, created me, people who have
cost me more in anguish and rage than they will ever know, who
yet do not even know of my existence. The astonishment with
which I might have greeted them, should they have stumbled into
my African village a few hundred years ago, might have rejoiced
their hearts. But the astonishment with which they greet me today
can only poison mine.
And this is so despite everything I may do to feel di erently,
despite my friendly conversations with the bistro owner’s wife,
despite their three-year-old son who has at last become my friend,
despite the saluts and bonsoirs which I exchange with people as I
walk, despite the fact that I know that no individual can be taken
to task for what history is doing, or has done. I say that the culture
of these people controls me—but they can scarcely be held
responsible for European culture. America comes out of Europe,
but these people have never seen America, nor have most of them
seen more of Europe than the hamlet at the foot of their mountain.
Yet they move with an authority which I shall never have; and
they regard me, quite rightly, not only as a stranger in their village
but as a suspect latecomer, bearing no credentials, to everything
they have—however unconsciously—inherited.
For this village, even were it incomparably more remote and
incredibly more primitive, is the West, the West onto which I have
been so strangely grafted. These people cannot be, from the point
of view of power, strangers anywhere in the world; they have
made the modern world, in e ect, even if they do not know it. The
most illiterate among them is related, in a way that I am not, to
Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci,

Rembrandt, and Racine; the cathedral at Chartres says something
to them which it cannot say to me, as indeed would New York’s
Empire State Building, should anyone here ever see it. Out of their
hymns and dances come Beethoven and Bach. Go back a few
centuries and they are in their full glory—but I am in Africa,
watching the conquerors arrive.
The rage of the disesteemed is personally fruitless, but it is also
absolutely inevitable; this rage, so generally discounted, so little
understood even among the people whose daily bread it is, is one
of the things that makes history. Rage can only with di culty, and
never entirely, be brought under the domination of the intelligence
and is therefore not susceptible to any arguments whatever. This is
a fact which ordinary representatives of the Herrenvolk, having
never felt this rage and being unable to imagine it, quite fail to
understand. Also, rage cannot be hidden, it can only be
dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and
strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt. There are, no doubt,
as many ways of coping with the resulting complex of tensions as
there are black men in the world, but no black man can hope ever
to be entirely liberated from this internal warfare—rage,
dissembling, and contempt having inevitably accompanied his rst
realization of the power of white men. What is crucial here is that,
since white men represent in the black man’s world so heavy a
weight, white men have for black men a reality which is far from
being reciprocal; and hence all black men have toward all white
men an attitude which is designed, really, either to rob the white
man of the jewel of his naïveté, or else to make it cost him dear.
The black man insists, by whatever means he nds at his
disposal, that the white man cease to regard him as an exotic rarity
and recognize him as a human being. This is a very charged and
di cult moment, for there is a great deal of will power involved in
the white man’s naïveté. Most people are not naturally re ective
any more than they are naturally malicious, and the white man
prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because
it is easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity and avoid being

called to account for crimes committed by his forefathers, or his
neighbors. He is inescapably aware, nevertheless, that he is in a
better position in the world than black men are, nor can he quite
put to death the suspicion that he is hated by black men therefore.
He does not wish to be hated, neither does he wish to change
places, and at this point in his uneasiness he can scarcely avoid
having recourse to those legends which white men have created
about black men, the most usual e ect of which is that the white
man nds himself enmeshed, so to speak, in his own language
which describes hell, as well as the attributes which lead one to
hell, as being as black as night.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the
root function of language is to control the universe by describing
it. It is of quite considerable signi cance that black men remain, in
the imagination, and in overwhelming numbers in fact, beyond the
disciplines of salvation; and this despite the fact that the West has
been “buying” African natives for centuries. There is, I should
hazard, an instantaneous necessity to be divorced from this so
visibly unsaved stranger, in whose heart, moreover, one cannot
guess what dreams of vengeance are being nourished; and, at the
same time, there are few things on earth more attractive than the
idea of the unspeakable liberty which is allowed the unredeemed.
When, beneath the black mask, a human being begins to make
himself felt one cannot escape a certain awful wonder as to what
kind of human being it is. What one’s imagination makes of other
people is dictated, of course, by the laws of one’s own personality
and it is one of the ironies of black-white relations that, by means
of what the white man imagines the black man to be, the black
man is enabled to know who the white man is.
I have said, for example, that I am as much a stranger in this
village today as I was the rst summer I arrived, but this is not
quite true. The villagers wonder less about the texture of my hair
than they did then, and wonder rather more about me. And the
fact that their wonder now exists on another level is re ected in
their attitudes and in their eyes. There are the children who make

those delightful, hilarious, sometimes astonishingly grave overtures
of friendship in the unpredictable fashion of children; other
children, having been taught that the devil is a black man, scream
in genuine anguish as I approach. Some of the older women never
pass without a friendly greeting, never pass, indeed, if it seems
that they will be able to engage me in conversation; other women
look down or look away or rather contemptuously smirk. Some of
the men drink with me and suggest that I learn how to ski—partly,
I gather, because they cannot imagine what I would look like on
skis—and want to know if I am married, and ask questions about
my métier. But some of the men have accused le sale nègre—behind
my back—of stealing wood and there is already in the eyes of
some of them that peculiar, intent, paranoiac malevolence which
one sometimes surprises in the eyes of American white men when,
out walking with their Sunday girl, they see a Negro male
approach.
There is a dreadful abyss between the streets of this village and
the streets of the city in which I was born, between the children
who shout Neger! today and those who shouted Nigger! yesterday—
the abyss is experience, the American experience. The syllable
hurled behind me today expresses, above all, wonder: I am a
stranger here. But I am not a stranger in America and the same
syllable riding on the American air expresses the war my presence
has occasioned in the American soul.
For this village brings home to me this fact: that there was a day,
and not really a very distant day, when Americans were scarcely
Americans at all but discontented Europeans, facing a great
unconquered continent and strolling, say, into a marketplace and
seeing black men for the rst time. The shock this spectacle
a orded is suggested, surely, by the promptness with which they
decided that these black men were not really men but cattle. It is
true that the necessity on the part of the settlers of the New World
of reconciling their moral assumptions with the fact—and the
necessity—of slavery enhanced immensely the charm of this idea,
and it is also true that this idea expresses, with a truly American

bluntness, the attitude which to varying extents all masters have
had toward all slaves.
But between all former slaves and slave-owners and the drama
which begins for Americans over three hundred years ago at
Jamestown, there are at least two di erences to be observed. The
American Negro slave could not suppose, for one thing, as slaves
in past epochs had supposed and often done, that he would ever be
able to wrest the power from his master’s hands. This was a
supposition which the modern era, which was to bring about such
vast changes in the aims and dimensions of power, put to death; it
only begins, in unprecedented fashion, and with dreadful
implications, to be resurrected today. But even had this supposition
persisted with undiminished force, the American Negro slave could
not have used it to lend his condition dignity, for the reason that
this supposition rests on another: that the slave in exile yet
remains related to his past, has some means—if only in memory—
of revering and sustaining the forms of his former life, is able, in
short, to maintain his identity.
This was not the case with the American Negro slave. He is
unique among the black men of the world in that his past was
taken from him, almost literally, at one blow. One wonders what
on earth the rst slave found to say to the rst dark child he bore. I
am told that there are Haitians able to trace their ancestry back to
African kings, but any American Negro wishing to go back so far
will nd his journey through time abruptly arrested by the
signature on the bill of sale which served as the entrance paper for
his ancestor. At the time—to say nothing of the circumstances—of
the enslavement of the captive black man who was to become the
American Negro, there was not the remotest possibility that he
would ever take power from his master’s hands. There was no
reason to suppose that his situation would ever change, nor was
there, shortly, anything to indicate that his situation had ever been
di erent. It was his necessity, in the words of E. Franklin Frazier,
to nd a “motive for living under American culture or die.” The
identity of the American Negro comes out of this extreme situation,

and the evolution of this identity was a source of the most
intolerable anxiety in the minds and the lives of his masters.
For the history of the American Negro is unique also in this: that
the question of his humanity, and of his rights therefore as a
human being, became a burning one for several generations of
Americans, so burning a question that it ultimately became one of
those used to divide the nation. It is out of this argument that the
venom of the epithet Nigger! is derived. It is an argument which
Europe has never had, and hence Europe quite sincerely fails to
understand how or why the argument arose in the rst place, why
its e ects are so frequently disastrous and always so unpredictable,
why it refuses until today to be entirely settled. Europe’s black
possessions remained—and do remain—in Europe’s colonies, at
which remove they represented no threat whatever to European
identity. If they posed any problem at all for the European
conscience, it was a problem which remained comfortingly
abstract: in e ect, the black man, as a man, did not exist for
Europe. But in America, even as a slave, he was an inescapable
part of the general social fabric and no American could escape
having an attitude toward him. Americans attempt until today to
make an abstraction of the Negro, but the very nature of these
abstractions reveals the tremendous e ects the presence of the
Negro has had on the American character.
When one considers the history of the Negro in America it is of
the greatest importance to recognize that the moral beliefs of a
person, or a people, are never really as tenuous as life—which is
not moral—very often causes them to appear; these create for
them a frame of reference and a necessary hope, the hope being
that when life has done its worst they will be enabled to rise above
themselves and to triumph over life. Life would scarcely be
bearable if this hope did not exist. Again, even when the worst has
been said, to betray a belief is not by any means to have put
oneself beyond its power; the betrayal of a belief is not the same
thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no
moral standards in the world at all. Yet one must also recognize

that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous—
dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the
action leads no man can say. And dangerous in this respect: that
confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s
beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one
can be driven to the most inhuman excesses. The ideas on which
American beliefs are based are not, though Americans often seem
to think so, ideas which originated in America. They came out of
Europe. And the establishment of democracy on the American
continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the
necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to
include black men.
This was, literally, a hard necessity. It was impossible, for one
thing, for Americans to abandon their beliefs, not only because
these beliefs alone seemed able to justify the sacri ces they had
endured and the blood that they had spilled, but also because these
beliefs a orded them their only bulwark against a moral chaos as
absolute as the physical chaos of the continent it was their destiny
to conquer. But in the situation in which Americans found
themselves, these beliefs threatened an idea which, whether or not
one likes to think so, is the very warp and woof of the heritage of
the West, the idea of white supremacy.
Americans have made themselves notorious by the shrillness and
the brutality with which they have insisted on this idea, but they
did not invent it; and it has escaped the world’s notice that those
very excesses of which Americans have been guilty imply a certain,
unprecedented uneasiness over the idea’s life and power, if not,
indeed, the idea’s validity. The idea of white supremacy rests
simply on the fact that white men are the creators of civilization
(the present civilization, which is the only one that matters; all
previous civilizations are simply “contributions” to our own) and
are therefore civilization’s guardians and defenders. Thus it was
impossible for Americans to accept the black man as one of
themselves, for to do so was to jeopardize their status as white
men. But not so to accept him was to deny his human reality, his

human weight and complexity, and the strain of denying the
overwhelmingly undeniable forced Americans into rationalizations
so fantastic that they approached the pathological.
At the root of the American Negro problem is the necessity of the
American white man to nd a way of living with the Negro in
order to be able to live with himself. And the history of this
problem can be reduced to the means used by Americans—lynch
law and law, segregation and legal acceptance, terrorization and
concession—either to come to terms with this necessity, or to nd a
way around it, or (most usually) to nd a way of doing both these
things at once. The resulting spectacle, at once foolish and
dreadful, led someone to make the quite accurate observation that
“the Negro-in-America is a form of insanity which overtakes white
men.”
In this long battle, a battle by no means
nished, the
unforeseeable e ects of which will be felt by many future
generations, the white man’s motive was the protection of his
identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an
identity. And despite the terrorization which the Negro in America
endured and endures sporadically until today, despite the cruel and
totally inescapable ambivalence of his status in his country, the
battle for his identity has long ago been won. He is not a visitor to
the West, but a citizen there, an American; as American as the
Americans who despise him, the Americans who fear him, the
Americans who love him—the Americans who became less than
themselves, or rose to be greater than themselves by virtue of the
fact that the challenge he represented was inescapable. He is
perhaps the only black man in the world whose relationship to
white men is more terrible, more subtle, and more meaningful than
the relationship of bitter possessed to uncertain possessor. His
survival depended, and his development depends, on his ability to
turn his peculiar status in the Western world to his own advantage
and, it may be, to the very great advantage of that world. It
remains for him to fashion out of his experience that which will
give him sustenance, and a voice.

The cathedral at Chartres, I have said, says something to the
people of this village which it cannot say to me; but it is important
to understand that this cathedral says something to me which it
cannot say to them. Perhaps they are struck by the power of the
spires, the glory of the windows; but they have known God, after
all, longer than I have known him, and in a di erent way, and I
am terri ed by the slippery bottomless well to be found in the
crypt, down which heretics were hurled to death, and by the
obscene, inescapable gargoyles jutting out of the stone and
seeming to say that God and the devil can never be divorced. I
doubt that the villagers think of the devil when they face a
cathedral because they have never been identi ed with the devil.
But I must accept the status which myth, if nothing else, gives me
in the West before I can hope to change the myth.
Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of
the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American white
men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of
recovering the European innocence, of returning to a state in
which black men do not exist. This is one of the greatest errors
Americans can make. The identity they fought so hard to protect
has, by virtue of that battle, undergone a change: Americans are as
unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I
do not think, for example, that it is too much to suggest that the
American vision of the world—which allows so little reality,
generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life,
which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and
white—owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to
maintain between themselves and black men a human separation
which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne
in on us—very faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very
much against our will—that this vision of the world is dangerously
inaccurate, and perfectly useless. For it protects our moral highmindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of
reality. People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their
own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state

of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a
monster.
The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out
on the American continent has not only created a new black man,
it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead
Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where
white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I
am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One
of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that
no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of
black men, and vice versa. This fact faced, with all its implications,
it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is
not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For
even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the
perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow,
perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which
may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today.
This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

Introduction
The machete of memory can cut swiftly or slowly.
It’s August 4, 2019. Pop and I are watching news of the latest shooting
rampage. A white supremacist slaughtered twenty people in El Paso
yesterday. Most of the victims were people who looked like us, people
whose last names end in z. This shooting and the one in Dayton days before
have the country aghast. The El Paso shooter’s declared motive—
preventing “the Hispanic invasion of Texas”—has friends talking or posting
on social media about the possibility we may have to take up arms to
defend ourselves. No stranger to guns, Pop has other concerns.
“Those fucking gangs are ruining El Salvador,” he says suddenly, as if
out of sync with the more urgent news in the Spanish-speaking United
States. A few minutes earlier, the newscast that reported on the El Paso
massacre also reported on the relentless killing in the tiny country of titanic
sorrows that bore him.
Pop has never met a member of MS-13, the most notorious of these
gangs. Over the course of several decades, I’ve met dozens, and even
befriended members of a gang that the president of the United States
compares to Al-Qaeda and calls “animals” who, he says, have “literally
taken over towns and cities of the United States.”1 I watch the news and the
snake in my stomach twists and tightens my gut before the eternal return of
two figures whose outsize contributions to the cataclysmic cycles of
Salvadoran violence go back to the early nineties but remain largely
forgotten: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and two-time US
attorney general William Barr.2

I nod, as if silently agreeing with Pop’s gangs-as-cause-of-every-problem
thesis. The snake in my gut lets me know there’s no room to deal with the
shooting and Giuliani and Barr and Pop all at once.
“Yeah. You’re right, Pop.”
The news from El Paso and my friends’ terrified social media responses
tighten my shoulders and neck, my body reminding me of those times
someone has tried to hurt or kill me. It brings back a memory of sitting at
Pop’s dining room table last April. I was helping him pay some overdue
bills, while he watched Animal Planet. During a commercial break, Pop
stood suddenly and hobbled back to his bedroom. The soft steady skss-skssskss of his fluffy gray orthopedic slipper rubbing against the faded linoleum
sounded faster than his usual pace.
A minute later, another, faster-paced skss-skss-skss signaled he was
navigating his way through the kitchen toward the living room. As he
neared the table, he stopped and stood next to me.
I looked up and smiled at him. He had a strangely familiar look on his
tense, unshaven face. His eyes like daggers, looking at me with a wrath I
hadn’t seen since my adolescent years, when our anger was at its mutual
worst.
I raised my eyes in disbelief when I saw his hand wrapped tight around
the dusty, varnished black handle of a machete. Without warning Pop
swung his machete toward me, screaming, “You drogadicto son of a bitch!
Stop trying to steal my money!”
I glanced at the ninety-six-year-old hands clutching the machete’s handle.
The flags of Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and El Salvador
on the old souvenir were about to come down on my head. I jumped to
Pop’s side and grabbed the machete before he could finish the act.
Pop stood dazed, and frustrated, and alone. I rushed out of the dining
room to hide the machete downstairs in a safe corner of the garage. He
rarely went into the garage, since he stopped driving two years ago at age
ninety-four. From down below, I heard my cousin Ana’s hurried footsteps
rushing from her room through the kitchen and into the dining room. I
remained downstairs a few minutes to let my cousin chill Pop out.
In the cool silence of the garage, a couple of five-by-three-foot cardboard
boxes sit side by side in the shadows beneath the stairs. The boxes bear
musty old clothes, cheap new blouses, radios, calculators, TVs and other
ancient electronics, and outdated toys, remnants of my family’s contraband

empire, once a source of income—and serious family conflict and inner
conflict of my own.
Minutes later, the mellifluous guitars and layered three-part harmonies of
“Golondrina Viajera,” a bittersweet bolero by Trio Los Condes followed by
the soulful, dreamy sounds of Jose Feliciano singing “La Barca,” another
nostalgic Pop favorite, signaled Pop’s latest storm had subsided. It was safe
to come back upstairs.
Music, we were told some years ago, would help calm Pop’s dementia.
Doctors predict his process of mental fragmentation will only accelerate
over time.
The machete cuts slowly.
Now we’re watching Alex Trebek start Jeopardy! Months after Pop’s
outburst, we no longer have machetes in the house, a decision that runs
contrary to the traditions of Salvadorans in the US. Many of the two to three
million Salvadorans living here3 since the bloody civil war of the eighties
and early nineties have souvenir machetes in their homes. Machetes
adorned the waists of countless men back when most Salvadorans lived in
the countryside. Revolvers replaced them in the age of the urban majority.
The image of skinny, droopy immigrant kids strutting into Liborio
Market in LA’s Pico Union–Westlake district to buy the machetes in the
nineties lingers. They were among the first mareros I saw. Only later did I
realize that the machetes those gang members bought gave local media,
Hollywood, and the LAPD—and eventually the Pentagon and US
presidents—the exotic ethos they needed to turn the skinny kids into a
tattoo-faced scourge, “the most violent gang in the world.”
Those of us in the Pico Union area knew why those early mareros carried
rocks and baseball bats and bought machetes: the poor immigrant youth
needed to defend themselves from larger gangs but couldn’t afford the AK47s and other weapons used by the older, richer, more sophisticated Crips,
Bloods, or Mexican Mafia. Those gangs possessed another, more powerful
weapon the mareros also lacked: US citizenship.
The story of the maras and their real violence remains hidden, buried in
half-truths and myth in a labyrinth of intersecting underworlds—criminal
and political, revolutionary and reactionary, psychological and cultural.
Many Salvadorans are mired in simplistic explanations. Even before his
dementia set in, Pop, for example, agreed with the one of every three

Salvadorans4 who told pollsters they support a Kurtzian solution to the gang
problem: “Exterminate all the brutes!”5
The machete makes us hack at ourselves.
No matter how much I try, Pop won’t ever understand the subterranean
connections I’ve spent my adult life excavating and documenting in the
hopes of finding fragments of our heart lost in the darkness. So I resist his
ancient provocations around things we simply won’t agree on. The framed
photo of Mom on the mantel—the one in which she’s wearing her favorite
polka dot blue dress and the pearl necklace he gave her—beckons us to
overcome the great paradox of Salvadoran life: to speak of the darkness is
impossible, but to not speak of the darkness is also impossible. Mom’s spirit
offers a simpler, more effective solution to the paradox: recordar—literally
“to pass through the heart again.” The two-by-one-foot color photo rests on
the mantel, inciting us daily to remember, despite the fear of the dark.
“Death is and always will be a part of life, mijito.” Mom said this often.
Mom, our great lover of life, was the same woman who wore a wax
Halloween bracelet with skulls on it in order, she said, “to remind myself
we’re all mortal.”
Mom’s love resembled that of many a working Salvadoran mother:
rebellious with a ferocious passion couched in a preternatural ability to
curse; the strength to take on the role of sole disciplinarian during my
father’s emotional absence; and a warm, bubbly disrespect for personal and
other boundaries. Prior to Mom’s death in 2013, the spot on the mantel
where her portrait rests was reserved for the old souvenir steel machete.
Beneath the portrait is the brown mahogany box containing half of her
remains. Mom left instructions for us to place her ashes at locations
marking the two cardinal points on her spiritual map of the American
continent: her hometown of San Vicente and her home in San Francisco’s
foggy outer Mission neighborhood. For all that he loved his partner of sixty
years, Pop made me fight to get him to respect Mom’s wish to be cremated,
arguing in his great grief that “cremation violates our traditions.” Several
heated discussions later, my siblings and I eventually won him over.
Mom never let borders—physical, linguistic, cultural, political borders—
dismember her family. For most of his life, Pop did.
No mementos, no letters, no pictures of Pop’s family and life in
Ahuachapán ever graced my parents’ home, except for a painting an artist
in the Mission District made from a photo of his mother, Mamá Tey.

Throughout my life, our family has been divided by the border between
memory and forgetting.
The machete chops up our families.
Similar borders exist within the country we live in, the United States,
including borders put up by the media Pop and I watched, the media I
belong to. The journalist in me watches news of the “Central American
child refugee crisis” with deep skepticism, a skepticism that often morphs
into utter disbelief. The half-truths and absolute lies in stories about the
crisis that even liberal media engages in disturbed me. In the summer of
2018, I decided to take action and convinced the Columbia Journalism
Review (CJR) to let a couple of volunteers and me analyze the quality of the
media coverage of the refugee child separation crisis of earlier that year.
That year the refugee crisis, MS-13, and caravans generated hundreds of
stories and dominated the US news cycle for several weeks.6 Most media
outlets reported the child separation issue as if it was separate from both the
caravan and gang stories.
The machete simplifies with the speed of the silicon revolution erasing
the memory of us from the Mission, the historic neighborhood where we
were once the majority.
Our CJR research7 identified some of the roots of the distortion, including
one that surprised even me: all the stories in all the main media outlets of
the United States erased Central American experts from the refugee crisis
story. All of them. There were no US-born or -based Central American
lawyers, no Central American scholars, no Central American NGO leaders,
no Central American journalists in any of the coverage on any channel.
The Central American voices that were included in the news stories about
the refugee crisis looked more like the stereotypes we’ve come to expect:
two-dimensional images of refugee mothers’ pain and sound bites of
refugee child suffering. One major magazine literally cut and pasted a
picture of a crying child8 who was not separated from her mother and placed
it next to a picture of the president, beneath a headline of a cover story
about child separation.
Video of Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez, a teenage Guatemalan
migrant who died in a South Texas immigrant prison, confirms the
journalistic and moral crises—and real-life consequences—of erasure.
Surveillance footage shows Carlos’s last moments. He was diagnosed with
a flu that caused his temperature to reach 103 degrees. His weakness caused

him to slip from the toilet in his last minutes of life. He fell to the ground,
his head surrounded by a pool of blood. After a news organization released
the footage without their permission, Carlos’s parents released the
following statement: “It’s been really painful for our family to lose
Carlos . . . but having all these people watching him die on the internet is
something we couldn’t have imagined in a movie or a nightmare.”9
The machete dismembers our humanity from our stories.
Left out of the English-language versions of the refugee crisis and gang
stories are the Salvadoran culture, politics, and history that underlie them—
described by the great poet Claribel Alegría and others in sublime and even
mystical terms. Also left out is any notion of a Salvadoran political culture
in which one out of every three Salvadorans adopted “radicalized” politics
against the fascist military dictatorship during the civil war.10 Though it
might prove useful in the post-COVID-19 world, our ability to organize and
fight under dire political circumstances doesn’t fit the victim narratives that
non-Salvadorans ascribe to us. Locking Salvadorans into the violent-orviolated binary is the storytelling tradition that turned an oft-quoted phrase
from Joan Didion into the definitive English-language statement about us.
In the almost forty years since Didion wrote her book Salvador, most
English-language writing about Salvadorans and El Salvador remains a
variation on her theme: “Terror is the given of the place.”
Where most see the refugee crisis as “new,” I see the longue durée of
history and memory. Where many see the story beginning at the border, I
see the time-space continuum of violence, migration, and forgetting that
extends far beyond and below the US-Mexico border. Where others see
mine as a Central American story, I see it as a story about the United States.
Just six years after the Vietnam War ended, my family and all other
Salvadorans started living with the profound consequences of the Reagan
administration’s decision to draw a line in the sand, as it spent billions to
bolster the universally condemned Salvadoran government and military in
their war against the guerrilleros of the Farabundo Martí National
Liberation Front (FMLN). The FMLN was the Salvadoran embodiment of
what Reagan referred to as the “evil empire” of communism. By the end of
the war, seventy-five to eighty thousand people had been killed in a country
of just over five million that’s the size of Massachusetts. Most of the
innocents were slaughtered by their own government, according to the
United Nations and international human rights groups. I’m the son of

Salvadorans, so the ongoing humanitarian crisis of violence, perpetual war,
and mass migration is, before anything else, personal.
The machete severs any understanding that epic history is a stitching
together of intimate histories.
This is why I decided, in 2015, to embark on my own life adventure: a
journey along the 2,500-mile chain of mass graves, forgotten dead, and
devalued life that begins in wartime El Salvador and travels deep into the
remote tropical forests, where gangs and governments have killed,
dismembered, and buried their victims for decades. I’ve interviewed
countless refugees who’ve braved the migrant trail where cartels and
security forces have been digging mass graves for their victims since the
wars in Central America ended in the 1990s. And I’ve traversed the
southwestern border states to watch as the pox came to my house, the
United States, where I visited mass graves dug by local Texas officials to
bury migrant children and mothers and fathers whose remains were put in
burlap bags and milk crates after they died during the migration wave of
2014. Leaked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memos show
that the US government builds child and mom refugee prisons in remote
South Texas for silent reasons of state11: in order to make it difficult for
media and immigration advocates to report on and advocate for those
fleeing failed policies in the Southern Hemisphere, many of which the
United States had a direct hand in creating. The institutional denial of the
destruction of Central American child refugee innocence puts up borders to
protect and sustain the myth of American innocence shared by
conservatives and liberals alike.
Different circumstances in each country yield the same result: the
remains of Salvadoran children and adults buried without investigation into
their deaths, unstoried, and without remembrance, regardless of who is
president in Mexico, the United States, or El Salvador, the country where
the first history department at a public university was established just
eighteen years ago, in 2001. The migrant journey is nothing if not a
testament to the true constitution of countries.
We’re all dismembered from above by that ultimate machete of memory:
borders.
My own childhood “American” innocence was protected by my family.
Pop cordoned off key parts of his own story, leaving me to sort through and
try to make sense of the half-truths and outright myths of my family’s

history. My lack of access to these lost fragments of memory, my ignorance
of this history, almost got me killed.
I myself have been a party to silent dismemberment from above,
remaining quiet about painful—and inspiring—secrets I held in the
shadows for decades. Separated from my self, my experience, my history, I
was dismembered, to the point of wanting to do myself in. I remembered
this during visits to children caged in immigrant prisons where their soft
voices uttered that hardest of realities, “Quiero morirme.” Psychologists
treating them told me that one of the primary ways they treat these children
involves creating conditions for them to reconstitute the fragments of
themselves into stories they can share, to stir the memory and imagination
of that part of themselves that’s still resilient and powerful, something we
will all need to survive and move forward in this fragmented world of
perpetual crisis.
What I am about to share is my best effort at reconstituting the layered
and discontinuous fragments of my forgotten, macheted self.
Mine is the story of the re-membering that saved my life. Mine is the
story of unforgetting.

Prologue
Los Angeles, California
May 1992

Staccato pops of rotor blades on the helicopters above us twisted and
tangled my innards. LAPD’s helicopters didn’t seem to bother Leland the
way they did me. His surroundings had him too busy to notice either the
copters or my gritted teeth. Leland stood silently mesmerized by the
panorama of ruin surrounding his lime green Buick LeSabre: blackened
cars, burned-out swap meets, fast-food restaurants, and crowded apartment
buildings, hollowed out as if Molotoved by revolucionario students back in
wartime El Salvador.
We were on the northeast corner of MacArthur Park, the spiritual and
criminal center of the Pico Union–Westlake neighborhood of LA, a densely
populated immigrant community that, during the week of April 29 to May
4, 1992—just days before—had become one of the sites of the most
destructive riots in US history.1 After a court acquitted four LAPD officers
who had been videotaped beating Rodney King, years of rage over racial
inequality and police brutality bubbling below the surface burst onto the
streets of LA.
Wherever he turned, Leland Chen, representative of a big corporation
visiting our nonprofit, the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN),
to consider giving us a major donation, stood transfixed, his eyes darting
back and forth across the blackened landscape. The slick, impenetrable wall
created by his round designer glasses, pinstripe suit, and expensive

feathered haircut had been breached by the scale of the destruction all
around us, giving way to a vulnerability that tethered him to me. He stayed
physically close to me and asked a lot of questions about our surroundings,
as if on a deadly safari. I worried that the shock would distract him from
considering giving CARECEN seed funding to start a youth program.
Leland looked westward, toward the tall buildings on Wilshire
Boulevard, where the moguls, movie stars, and mighty politicians who had
once called the Art Deco neighborhood home had vanished long ago. One
block east of us were the CARECEN offices, located on the same palmlined street where Raymond Chandler turned his Lost Generation
disillusionment into noir, hard-boiled detective novels and films about LA’s
shadow world. Highest among the towers of faded fame and fortune is the
historic twelve-story Wilshire Royale apartment building with a gigantic
US flag on top, billowing above the mile-and-a-half radius of destruction
wrought by the red-orange flames of the riots.
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed. The smell of burned wood and plastic
filled my nostrils as we walked toward the southeast corner of the park. “I
didn’t even know there was rioting here. It looks like a war zone.”
No. It doesn’t, Tito, my adolescent, rebellious, crazy side fired back
silently, my stomach hardening and teeth clenching as if I was preparing to
get punched or kicked. War looks like war. Nothing else.
Leland’s reaction to the riots felt predictable. His response was similar to
those I’d heard during post-riot bus tours guided by CARECEN staff—
urban safaris to view the damage that included all manner of visitors, from
heads of major philanthropic foundations to Fortune 500 executives,
international scholars, national religious leaders, and members of Congress.
All parroted the war analogy. CARECEN staff had met many dignitaries,
including the young Arkansas governor challenging George H. W. Bush for
the presidency, Bill Clinton.
I was jaded. Cansadisimo. I’d had enough of all this Virgil-leadingDante-through-hell shit. Leland had it within his power to help us create
jobs and education programs for at-risk kids in our crowded corner in the
City of Angels, some of whom had taken a torch to it. So I dug deep for
some patience.
“Who put up those barriers?” he asked, looking back at one of the many
thick, brown steel poles stretching across entire streets throughout parts of

the neighborhood with big signs that said NARCOTICS ENFORCEMENT ZONE,
RESIDENTS ONLY.
“They’re the borders LAPD put up to try and isolate the gangs,” I said.
“LAPD’s CRASH anti-gang units use the barriers to play members of one
gang off against those of another. They also use false arrests, falsifying
evidence, and other stuff.”
“Which gangs?”
“Salvadoran gangs,” I responded tersely.
“Do the barriers work?”
“They do nothing to reduce crime but are quite successful in helping
escalate violence by reinforcing mental barriers between members of rival
gangs.”
“No!”
“Yes. It’s like they made young homies forget they were friends and, in
some cases, family, before the riots.”
Leland said nothing, but his eyes were wide. We walked half a block
farther south, down to the corner of Seventh and Alvarado. Standing on the
north side of the corner were the evangelicos. Today the Gloria-a-Dioses of
the Bible-thumping brothers with the bullhorn drowned out the Spanishspeaking tongues of the miqueros, thickset guys wearing dress shirts, jeans,
and dress shoes, spewing out promises of the legal identity contained in the
shiny, laminated micas. Other, gruffer, tattooed men, wearing thick chains,
tank tops, and jeans, waited for passersby before saying in raspier tones,
“Roca, roca. Roca-roca-roca.”
“What are they selling?” Leland asked.
“Crack cocaine.”
I didn’t tell him Pico Union was the main hub of the crack trade north of
South Central LA. Nor did I let him know that the park’s southeastern
corner was one of the deadliest in the country.
“OK, let’s keep walking, Leland.”
In front of us was the fountain at the center of the lake, the beautiful
center of the cyclone that had just hit the Pico Union–Westlake district.
Leland looked westward again, at the constant movement of people filling
the park—immigrant mothers pushing baby carriages, Mayan men and
women wearing flowery traditional clothing and selling candy, kids on
bikes.
“Ground Zero is over there, near Ninth.”

“Ground Zero?”
“Yes,” I said. “Ground Zero, the place they say the first mara was born:
the 7-Eleven Locos.”2
“You mean MS-13?”
“Yes. But they didn’t call themselves that till later. They started off as a
bunch of long-haired stoner kids in tight jeans, smoking pot and hanging in
front of a 7-Eleven on Westmoreland.”
“Why there?”
“Don’t know. These skinny kids came together out of immigrant
loneliness and their love of Ronnie James Dio and Metallica,” I said. “Their
hardcore violence is a relatively recent development. Even today, most gang
members aren’t killers.”
“But weren’t the gangs the ones behind all the rioting in Pico Union?”
Leland asked, parroting talking points repeated by Bush attorney general
William Barr after the riots.
“They were involved—but so were thousands of others, including white
folks.”
Leland looked perplexed. But then he said, “Wow! That’s gorgeous!” as
he gazed at the sunny sparkle of the downtown skyline mirrored on and
moved by the lake’s ripples.
Just a few weeks ago, on Sunday, January 19, 1992, between five and ten
thousand* Salvadorans had gathered around the lake to celebrate one of the
most important moments of our lives: the end of the Salvadoran Civil War.3
The end of the Cold War reinforced the efforts of the Salvadoran
government to crush the leftist guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National
Liberation Front (FMLN), which had been fighting for twelve years to end
the extreme endemic poverty in El Salvador and the mass murders
committed by the US-backed fascist military dictatorship. One of the
bloodiest, most barbaric wars on the continent had ended. More than one of
every three Salvadorans who responded to a 1996 survey said a family
member had been killed during the war.4 All of us had friends and family
members among them. That day, longtime enemies shook hands and
hugged next to children born and bred entirely in times of war. Even gang
members who considered themselves rivals temporarily put aside their
differences in the spirit of peace.
Leland looked down at the water beneath him, his nonresponse to my
comments indicating his apparent disinterest in hearing about the war and

our efforts to start overcoming its effects.
I, too, looked at the tiny black dots on the surface of the dark, algae-green
lake. Leland and I were still taking in the sights around the lake and nonstop
activity of the park when somebody walked up behind us, grabbed me, and
said, “Hands up. It’s La Migra!”
I turned around. There, greeting me with the biggest, brightest smile
beneath the ashen skies above MacArthur Park, was José, the first MS-13
member I’d come to know personally. I smiled back at him. Leland didn’t.
He was too busy looking the kid over, his gaze gliding quickly past the
young man’s thick, carefully coiffed, semi-pompadour hairstyle, his
heavyset build, and gigantic smile. Instead, Leland eyed the sixteen-yearold’s T-shirt, khakis, and winos—canvas shoes—before focusing his gaze
on his biggest concern: the big, beautiful MS tattooed in calligraphy on
José’s forearm. Leland looked like he was about to shit his pants. He
glanced back at me again for reassurance.
“José and his mom are our clients,” I said in an especially comforting
tone, the guide letting the safari spectator know the lion won’t bite him.
“Lots of gang members have family that are our clients. The gangs have
declared CARECEN off-limits.”
His look—a combination of dumbfoundedness and fear—told me he still
didn’t get it.
“That means we’re safe,” I said.
“Q-vo, homes,” José quickly greeted him, intuiting the need to chill my
tourist guest out. “Nice to meet you.”
“Hello, José,” Leland responded, before extending his hand with a
hesitation that made the young MS member and me look at each other.
“Nice to meet you, too.” That awkward silence and the tension of José and
me fighting to keep straight faces filled the space between us.
“Puta, Lovato!” José said in the playful way that Pop, Mom, Mamá Tey,
and most other Salvadorans regularly use the word for prostitute as an
exclamation. “When you guys gonna get my mom and me our papeles? We
been waitin’ for a while.”
José and his mom were among the thousands of undocumented families
who came to CARECEN seeking legal help after the Reagan and Bush
administrations rejected 97 percent of all Salvadoran political asylum
claims, one of the only ways for them to gain legal status. Their kids often

found solace and community—and protection from the bigger black and
Mexican gangs—in the maras. José’s father wasn’t in the picture.
When I was first getting to know him, José had told me about his odyssey
as an “unaccompanied minor.” As a seven-year-old he’d fled his poor, wartorn neighborhood in San Salvador and crossed the border, one of thousands
of children forced by the conflict to undertake the great migration journey
in hopes of survival and relative “stability,” if such a thing even existed.
“He’s a good kid,” I said, “when he’s not being a smartass.”
José smiled.
“The cops are getting out of hand, Lovato.”
“How’s that?”
“The family of a vato I know said he had all these bruises and scars from
a beating the chota gave him during the riots. They said they tortured him
and then gave him over to the INS”—the Immigration and Naturalization
Service. José’s words had a familiar ring. CARECEN had documented
many similar cases of abuse during the riots. “Fuck the chota, homes. Fuck
them.”
A distaste for the infamous cops of Rampart station bonded José and me,
as did one of the great loves of our lives: lowrider oldies.
“Dang, vato,” José said as he scanned the park, his friendly gaze landing
on the evangelical preachers who had started singing. “Those religious
tunes make me wanna puke. I’d rather be listenin’ to some firme rolitas
with my jaina”—some cool songs with my girlfriend.
“Órale,” the resentful former evangelico in me responded. We were
connecting in Caló, a once secret insider lingo first developed by the Roma
people,5 especially those involved in illicit activities in the ghettos of
sixteenth-century Spain, some of whom migrated to the New World. Like
the Roma and the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, José’s
generation and my generation of gang and non-gang California Latino
youth used Caló for friendship, for secrets, for love, and for war.
“Hey, Lovato,” he said to me in an aside, as Leland wandered away in
curiosity—or fear. “Shit’s getting heavy. I need to talk wit’ you, ’ey.” His
tone conveyed an urgency that caught my attention. Before we could
continue, however, José saw some of his homies across the park and left to
join them, saying as he did, “Ay te watcho, Lo-Vato.”
His abrupt departure left a lot of unanswered questions, but I couldn’t do
much about it. I had to give Leland the rest of the tour.

“What’s wrong, Roberto?” Leland asked me, clearly afraid he was in
danger.
“Nothing. It’s just that, after years of relative peace between them, the
maras are increasing their drive-bys, escalating violence for reasons we’re
not entirely clear about.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We suspect LAPD’s Rampart division has a hand in it. I’m
worried for kids like José. That’s all.”
“Oh. OK.”
“So, Leland,” I began, hoping that meeting José had left him sympathetic
to our cause. “We’re hoping your support for our youth program can help us
try to do something to help decrease the violence.” With the money,
CARECEN would work to draw José and other youths away from gang life
by providing jobs, job training, community service, and other opportunities
to young people in the neighborhood.
“We’ve already made commitments to groups in South Central LA, and
I’m just not sure we can swing it, Roberto,” he responded.
Damn it. Here I am doing the urban safari tour, answering all his fucking
questions, everything short of begging, only to have his punk ass reject us.
Shit.
I drove back toward the ABC coffee shop, a spot on Bonnie Brae, where
I liked to conduct business over Korean food, tacos, and pupusas. I prepared
to try one last time to persuade him, before he left the gates of our little hell
for the blue skies beyond LAX. We parked Leland’s rented LeSabre across
from the CARECEN office, a gorgeous, black-and-white Eastlake Victorian
at 668 South Bonnie Brae. Leland and I started walking southward, toward
ABC. All around us, on streets crossing Wilshire, were more rows of
hulking brick SRO residences packed with Mexican and Salvadoran
migrants.
Shortly after we ordered, Leland stood and said, “I’ll be right back. I
have to make a phone call.” He rushed out to the public phone stand near
the southeast corner of Bonnie Brae and Seventh. Across the street from the
phone booth, several young men in tank tops and jeans were hanging out in
front of a big wall covered with MS-13 calligraphy and other graffiti.
I was lost in daydreams of visiting sunny beaches in postwar El Salvador
when the all-too-familiar staccato sound rang out on Bonnie Brae: bambam-bam!

Somebody was firing what sounded like one of Pop’s .38s. The shots
continued, followed by the sound of shattering glass. Screams of mothers
rang out across the street. More clips from a pistol of an unknown caliber
followed. Bam, bam, bam-bam-bam! The sound of car tires skidding
followed the dark, heavy rain of more glass shattering.
“Holy shit!” someone beside me screamed as he hid beneath his table.
“They’re shooting! They’re shooting!”
An imaginary bullet whistling into my head or chest kept me on the
ground, ducking for cover. Around me, ABC’s workers and customers did
the same.
Peeking out through the ABC window, I saw people fleeing in all
directions. Then I remembered Leland. Fuck.
As the shots continued, I crept to the front of the restaurant, staying low
to the ground, to see where Leland had landed. I spotted the young guys in
tank tops chasing a car with their revolvers, but couldn’t see Leland. At that
moment, the Salvadoreño part of me—the part that has been in similar
situations during the civil war—took over. My breathing slowed. I inhaled
deeply, eyes wide open, as if taking in everything around me. The
automatic, safety-seeking pilot of a young adult life of risks acknowledged
the fear and took over my body, focused my mind. I breathed in again, as
my sense of responsibility moved me to find Leland.
I crawled outside and spotted him ducking behind the phone booth. He
looked like he wanted to scream as bullets whistled and burst just across the
street from him. I crawled across the sidewalk to the phone booth and
ducked next to him. I grabbed Leland’s arm and we both crawled back into
the restaurant.
A long Pico Union minute later, the shooting stopped. Minutes after that,
several cars from the Rampart police station drove up. The drive-by
incident had ended with no blood, no casualties.
Unfortunately, a few weeks later, we got word of another drive-by
shooting, one that left the blood of two victims on the sidewalk. One of
those victims was José.
The end of the war months before had convinced us all that time and
history and God all moved forward along the straight line of progress. We’d
believed that, depending on our ideological bent, either providence or the
proletariat was ushering in an era of peace unknown to generations of
Salvadorans. The mara violence that escalated following the LA riots of

April 1992 reminded us that time is cyclical, and that violence moves in
spirals as the innocent choose between becoming the violent or the violated
—or both.

Part I

1

Karnes City, Texas
2015

“I’m ready to show you the picture I’m drawing,” an ebullient David
declares. His mother, Elena, gently asks him to take the crayons and go
draw in the play area so the adults can talk. My friend Úrsula and I are
sitting with Elena at a white plastic picnic table. Watching us on their
monitors, somewhere behind the windowless, dull mustard walls of the
meeting room, are the tattooed Tejanas, former fracking-industry employees
hired by the prison corporation to run this immigrant “detention” facility.
Before he walks away, six-year-old David spots me eyeing his drawing: an
egg-shaped cockpit, two propeller blades, landing skids, and a searchlight
illuminating stick-bodied people on the ground below.
An invitation to speak at the UT Austin conference on refugee youth and
gangs turned out to be more than I bargained for. I hadn’t planned to face
real refugees who’d escaped the maras of Central America only to end up at
the prison in Karnes. Karnes is one of many South Texan agricultural
towns, deadened from deep below by fracking, now turned prison town
after the oil boom economy busted. Like dozens of other facilities the US
government built in remote regions throughout the country—converted
prisons and similarly unsanitary makeshift concrete concentration camps,
complete with cages—the Karnes prison now houses mothers and their
children following the most recent mass exodus from Central America, in
July 2014.1 It’s a place the US government takes young noncitizen souls to
be forgotten.

But Elena and other mothers and their children have different plans.
They’re clandestinely preparing to wage war against oblivion.
“What the women and children jailed here want more than anything,”
Úrsula declares, as she looks into one of the security cameras, “is to go to
misa.”
“Church? That’s what they want most? To go to church?”
“Yes,” an emphatic and somewhat incredulous Úrsula snaps. “Church.”
The tightness in her forehead, jaw, and lips signal urgency—probable
signs of an epic struggle to stop her tongue from firing off an “¡Idiota!”
“Elena is a leader in the church,” Úrsula says in an irritated singsong
Salvadoran tone.
“Ahh,” I say in a voice that hopefully indicates that I finally get their
coded misa messages.
On the drive down from Austin with her scholar husband, Felipe, Úrsula
explained that, with the help of her organization, the Human Rights
Alliance, Elena and the other mothers are organizing protests using the code
word misa. At an agreed-upon date next month, several of the women and
children will secretly release a statement announcing a hunger strike. Úrsula
and her organization will circulate the statement to the media and facilitate
phone interviews with inmates. Other mothers and children will create signs
and protest when the media arrives.
Elena’s power, her organizing other inmates in coded language en voz
bajita, springs from the same cultural, historical wells of repression and
rebellion lost in most news reports. For Salvadorans and other Central
Americans, the “refugee crisis” and “gang problem” in those reports are
hardly new.
The sight of the imprisoned curly-haired kiddie Caravaggio’s drawing
stirs the light and dark of my imagination. David reminds me of my former
partner Angela’s son, Gio. I helped Angela raise Gio starting when he was
about David’s age. When Angela and I separated a few months ago, I lost
the closest thing I’ve known to having a family of my own. Looking at
David, I’m fragmented again, divided between the need to speak out and a
desire to remain silent about such painful Salvadoran things in an attempt to
move on. Once again, I’m unsure of my life’s direction.
“We saw the helicopters flying when we were crossing the border,” Elena
says.

David’s crayon helicopter scene has a familiarity accumulated over
decades of seeing such drawings from Salvadoran kids like him: scriggly
drawings of bombed adobe houses drawn by children in the orphan camps
that housed thousands of displaced people in Chalatenango and other war
zones of the late eighties; drawings by unaccompanied minors arriving in
Los Angeles in the early nineties. Some of those refugee kids in LA drew
helicopters with similar black crayon streaks shooting out of them onto
houses and people in what looked like a crayon rural El Salvador, the
country where, during the war, the business and military elites used Boy
Scout troops as prep schools for death squads. Others drew pictures of
being chased by the black-and-white cars—LAPD’s infamous Rampart
division. A few of these refugee kids have gone on to become members of
MS-13 and other maras.
Elena’s distracted, gazing at her boy as he draws without ceasing. “David
got anxious and depressed, after being here for seven months,” she says.
“He constantly asks me, ‘Mommy, when are we going to leave?’” She
pauses to catch her breath, before turning back to Úrsula.
Soon Elena and Úrsula are speaking in the misa code about the upcoming
hunger strike again. Elena shifts in her seat. With limited time, she’s caught
between plotting actions and her baby boy’s well-being. She returns to him.
“I tell the guards about his anxiety,” she continues, “and they just say
‘Stop lying’ or ‘Have him drink water and he’ll feel better.’” Beneath
Elena’s cool is the same sense of confinement caused by gangs back home,
in neighborhoods with colorful, crumbling walls bearing three fateful words
that can mark the border between life and death in El Salvador: VER, OÍR Y
CALLAR—a daily reminder of the mara grip obliging residents “to see, hear,
and shut up”—or die. This sense of confinement migrated with her and her
family on the Bestia, the deadly freight train that she and David climbed
aboard, risking dismemberment and death as they sat atop the freight cars
that cross a Mexican landscape dotted with gangs and drug cartels, to
Karnes. Here, the sense of confinement worsens. The catastrophic
combination of internment and accumulated fear has driven some moms to
slit their wrists2 and boys to hang themselves.3 Psychologists have told me
that the brains of younger kids like David are shrinking from being
confined like this for more than six weeks.
Elena’s wearing a flowered blue top, the kind my mom, sister, and every
Salvadoran woman has worn happily for all recorded time. She seems about

forty with a distinguished look, and her greenish brown eyes are
overflowing with desperation. The fold beneath them speaks of many
sleepless nights. Still, their warmth is undiminished, as is her inner strength.
“Where are you from?” Elena asks, seemingly somewhat mistrustful of
the stranger at the table, me.
“I was born in San Francisco, but my mother is from San Vicente, and
my father is from Ahuachapán.”
“I’m from Ahuachapán!” she exclaims. Some of the hesitant muscles in
her face loosen in the sweet relief of recognition.
“Ahuachapán is gorgeous,” I say, while also imagining the walls in Pop’s
hometown tagged everywhere with VER, OÍR Y CALLAR. This phrase also kind
of described my father’s official policy toward his birthplace: silencio. Pop
didn’t like to talk about Don Miguel Rodríguez, his father—my grandfather
—and the rest of his family in Ahuachapán, the storied and violent coffee
heartland of El Salvador. Puro silencio. That silence meant my siblings and
I were not to ask about Pop’s father or his family in Ahuachapán. Nunca.
“They’re torturing us, trying to keep us quiet in here,” Elena says,
shifting the conversation to high gear, her eyes bubbling. “We really, really
need to go to misa.”
Elena’s plight concerns me; David’s terrifies me.
“Will you help us, Roberto?” Elena asks.
A smiling David returns to the table. He can no longer wait to tell his
story and hurries over to share his latest masterpiece, featuring turquoise
clouds, a big white moon, blue houses with purple roofs, and a group of
brown, stick-figure men, women, and children, many with their feet
pointing sideways,* walking under a bright yellow crayon streak. He’s
painted something on a piece of paper. He’s also drawn something else on
his caramel-colored palm.
“Here,” he says with a bright face beaming over the paper, “is how I hope
we can live here.” His audience smiles.
“And here on my hand is what it is like back home,” he says of the
drawing made with markers. He looks unsure as he reveals the picture of a
skull with sharp teeth on his left palm: it’s the logo of Los Revolucionarios,
the 18th Street mara that killed his uncle and threatened to kill his mother
and David before they fled north.
“They shot him through his teeth,” David says. “I could see his brains
through his teeth.”

We all look away from David, as his mother gently nudges him to return
to his play area. Elena cries. Úrsula cries. I cry, the old well of tears
breached. We try to regain our composure.
“I do the best I can to protect him,” Elena says in an exhausted tone.
“So, what do you think, Lovato?” Úrsula asks me, her urgency even more
palpable. “Can you do the story about the misa?”
The truth is, I’m not feeling the journalist-as-vehicle-of-hope thing at the
moment. There are other avenues of hope.
“I’m not sure I can tell the story that needs to be told.”
“What?” Úrsula asks. “You’re one of the best people to tell this story,
Lovato. Come on!”
“Thank you for las flores,” I respond in a Salvadoran acknowledgment of
her compliment, “but I may not be in Texas to tell the story.” I quickly add,
“But I promise to help find the people who will, though.”
As we prepare to return to the conference in Austin, I look at David
again. His little hands look a lot like Gio’s when he was about seven. My
chest bursts open. I want to hug, love, and care for the imprisoned boy in
the future he deserves.
“I’ll be looking for you en misa,” I tell them.
I’m not entirely sure I can do anything to help them in the short term
besides point other journalists to the story. But at a deeper level, I’m trying
to communicate that I understand that at the root of the faith to which their
code refers is the Salvadoreño concept of conspiración, one of my favorite
words. For the former guerrilleros of the FMLN, conspirar was used more
closely to the way early Christians used it when secretly communing in the
clammy catacombs of the Roman Empire: coming “together” (con in Lati)
in a sacred act—“to breathe” (spirare, the origin of the words spirit, inspire,
and aspire), to create community in the shared, godly breath that contains
the spirit.
Time and space fragment and distort. My neck, jaw, and shoulders
tighten. These colorful drawings have become the portal to underworlds I’m
starting to realize I must explore, some for the first time. I leave the prison
committed to looking into things I’ve avoided but always carry with me in
body and in heart. Touched by the terror and tenderness that alter destinies,
I’m prepared to (again) face the deadly jagged edges of El Salvador—and
myself.

* * *
I’m on an airplane heading to El Salvador. After returning to San Francisco
from Austin, I’d decided to return to my parents’ homeland, determined to
understand not just what makes El Salvador so violent, but also what turns
kids into violent, even murderous gang members. Before I left, Úrsula sent
me some of the links to stories about the hunger strike, which have
succeeded in getting attention. They also revealed that leaked memos from
officials at Karnes claimed the mothers and children were engaging in
“insurrection” because they’d held colorful posters that said, LIBERTAD!
To get my preliminary bearings before leaving, I called Alex Sánchez, an
early member of MS-13 who, around 2000, had helped me understand the
origins and ways of the gangs. I knew he could connect me to key people
who would help me do so further in El Salvador. Alex grew up without his
parents, who’d left the country to work in Los Angeles, the city with the
highest concentration of Salvadorans in the US. Alex fled the violence of
his country—the long-standing military dictatorship and the impending
civil war—in 1979.
Alex and other Salvadoran immigrant youth met at Millikan Junior High
in Sherman Oaks, where LA bused many Central American and Mexican
youth. Discrimination from Mexican and black gangs soon followed. Then
came the day he looked out the window of his family’s apartment and saw
the Salvadoran boys who were holding their own against the bullying.
“There were about twenty-five of these motherfuckers standing on the
corner, calling themselves ‘vos’—informal Salvadoran for ‘you’—standing
all cool with their long hair, boom boxes playing Iron Maiden, Ronnie
James Dio, Judas Priest,” Alex told me. “They were also calling themselves
‘mara,’ which I had never heard used like that.” Since the 1950s, young and
old Salvadorans of all stripes had used the word mara to refer to groups of
friends. Those early gang members of the seventies were on the verge of
altering its meaning, along with international perceptions of Salvadorans.
His meeting with a few members of MSS, the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners—
the first Salvadoran clika, founded at a 7-Eleven in Koreatown—impressed
him. Soon after, Alex joined. They jumped him into the gang in 1985,
beating him for thirteen seconds, thirteen being a “kind of evil number.”
I headed to El Salvador thinking about that word, mara. Wondering how
a word used by the Pentagon and other world powers to describe violent

gangs used to be a Salvadoran way to refer to friends, loved ones, and
family.

“Maras”: The Short, Tragic, and
Completely Made-Up Tale of the
Marabunta
“It’s just a matter of systematically wiping them out.”
—Dr. Jim Conrad in Legion of Fire: Killer Ants!

The word mara has a strange and mysterious past, a past that will forever
intertwine the Salvadoran legacy with army ants.1 The unlikely but true
story of how groups of pot-smoking Salvadoran teenage boys were named
for a terrorizing horde of army ants begins in the Golden Age of
Hollywood.
In 1954 Paramount Pictures distributed a film called The Naked Jungle, a
combination romantic epic, disaster movie, and science-fiction drama,
featuring a young Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker. In it, Parker plays a
mail-order bride who visits Heston on his cocoa plantation, farmed by
indigenous workers (most of whom were played by white actors). Heston
and Parker’s love story unfolds on the plantation in the wake of impending
doom—the marabuntas, billions of flesh-eating ants said to be “a relentless,
perfectly coordinated army,” that are preparing to descend upon the
plantation. The fictitious marabunta is a species of army ant that forages for
food in a large swarm. Similarly, the idea that these ants could strip an ox to

the bones in a few minutes and devour the crops, livestock, and hundreds of
workers of an entire plantation in a day was an exaggeration born in the
mind of Carl Stephenson, the German writer of the classic short story on
which the film was based, called “Leiningen Versus the Ants” when it was
published in translation in Esquire in 1938. Director Byron Haskin, who
made up the idea of ants called “marabunta,” made the assault dramatically
convincing despite a limited special-effects budget, but it takes a real ant
swarm about twelve hours to dispose of a frog.
To promote the movie in Latin America, producers changed its name to
Cuando ruge la marabunta (When the Marabunta Roars), with posters
featuring Heston and Parker facing each other as if they’re about to kiss.
Beneath the couple lurks a giant black army of ants alongside groups of
indigenous people, who look like they’re dancing in the invading horde.
The word mara began its long Salvadoran journey on March 3, 1955, at
6:30 p.m. at Cine Apolo, where the movie premiered, in the heart of the
Salvadoran capital. Salvadoran scholar Vogel Vladimir Castillo theorizes
that moviegoers in El Salvador and Guatemala heard the term marabunta,
adopted it to refer to a group of friends, and eventually shortened it to
mara.*
By the late seventies and early eighties, small cliques of heavy metal–
listening Salvadoran stoners in the Pico Union–Westlake district of Los
Angeles were calling themselves maras. When these maras started using
machetes to defend themselves against the better-armed Crips, Bloods,
Mexican Mafia, and other LA gangs, the US English- and Spanish-language
media started using the term as well.
In 2006, National Geographic called the maras the “World’s Most
Dangerous Gang.”2 Other media, law enforcement, Pentagon leaders, and
even US presidents jumped on the bandwagon and continue to describe
Salvadoran gangs specifically as the most violent and most dangerous
despite the absence of any statistical, journalistic, or scholarly evidence to
support these claims.

2

San Francisco
1973

At age ten, I didn’t share Mom and Pop’s pride about being from the place
with the blue-and-white flag adorning the machete on the mantel of the
living room. Salvadorans didn’t even make sense in English, a fact brought
home to me every time Mom and I walked past a Salvadoran restaurant near
Twentieth and Mission, the main street our neighborhood in San Francisco
is named for. The sign said it was a SALVADORIAN restaurant.
“Mom, why do they spell the name of the country like that?”
“I don’t know, mijo. Different people like to do things differently, I
guess.”
We were coming home from buying supplies for a spring party. We kept
walking until reaching Twenty-Fourth and Mission, the center of the
neighborhood. There, across the street from the gigantic hole they dug for
the new BART train station that was coming, another, bigger sign on a
nearby restaurant: EL SALVADORAN. As we approached Twenty-Fifth Street,
where we’d turn left to get home to our apartment, we ran into the most
irksome but funniest restaurant sign, the one that said SALVADORANEAN. I
resigned myself to the painful fact: Salvadorans were a people with no clear
identity on Mission Street, in the English language, or in the United States.
Stuff like this was why I sought refuge in simply calling myself American.
Being American helped me avoid these Salvadoran complications—or so I
thought.

My family lived at 2911A Folsom, between Twenty-Fifth and TwentySixth, down the street from the Army Street Projects, three ten-story dirty,
graffitied white towers full of friends and music, parties and pain. At any
one time, up to twelve of us—parents, brothers, sister, cousins, tenants, and
friends of the family—lived in our four-bedroom apartment, which included
a converted kitchen and closet as bedrooms.
Besides the smell of cigarettes and Jovan Musk Oil, Revlon Charlie, and
other cheap cologne and perfume, the dominant smell of the party in our
apartment was that of the salsa, Mom’s special mix of spices—pepitoria
(dried pumpkin seeds), ajonjolí (sesame seeds), chile pasilla, sticks of
canela (cinnamon), bay leaves, and others—passed down by her ancestors
over hundreds of years. Set on a hot fire, then ground and blended into a
sauce and mixed with grilled tomatoes, red onion, carrot, and bell peppers,
the salsa glazed the thirty-pound bird that Mom and my grandmother,
Mamá Tey, were using to make the turkey sandwich delight known as panes
con chumpe. Salsa was the smell and taste of family joy.
The Mexican and Salvadoran maids Mom worked with at the St. Francis
Hotel and the Cuban, Mexican, and Salvadoran janitors Pop worked with at
United Airlines all crowded alongside cousins and other family and friends
eating panes con chumpe and washing them down with alcohol. Pop’s
music helped the guests metamorphose into party animals, dancing to
mambos by Pérez Prado, salsa-ing to the Afro-Cuban sounds of Sonora
Matancera and Celia Cruz, or singing together the classic Mexican
rancheras by Vicente Fernández and, my favorite, Lucha Villa.
As the romantic acoustic-guitar bolero “Sabor a mí” played, Mom looked
at Pop with that dreamy, slightly buzzed expression she’d give him
sometimes. A former Salvadoran beauty queen, Mom had a commanding
presence not just because of her appearance: an always-ready smile,
smooth, rosy skin, and the caring but determined “I don’t give a shit who
you are” look in her dark brown eyes. People loved and respected Mom
because of her throaty voice, a voice that came from the gut. I could hear
that voice in the family story of how she forced Pop to stop a lifetime of
heavy drinking shortly after I was born in 1963. Mom, the story goes,
grabbed Pop during one of his drunken episodes. Pop’s mother, Mamá Tey,
watched as Mom pushed him to the floor, her intensity forcing him to listen
to her repeat, “We just had another kid and can’t afford your drinking, Mon.
We can’t.”

Pop’s short Salvadoran friend from United Airlines, Ramón Pineda, who
was sitting in the spring party drinking while listening to “Sabor a mí,” also
knew Mom’s voice. In fact, he feared it—and Mom—ever since she’d
coached his wife Ana to use a bat to defend herself from his abuses. Pop
never touched Mom, who could often be heard declaring, “No son of a bitch
will ever lay a hand on me without paying a heavy price.”
“Well,” Mom asked Pop, “what’re you waiting for, Mon?”
They danced. Mom wore a tight turquoise green dress and heels. I didn’t
like how her hair looked like a roller coaster, curled up at her shoulders for
the party, but everybody always talked about how gorgeous she looked. Pop
looked “pimp”—that’s how guys in the projects described men who dressed
in leather coats, polyester shirts, and the see-through silk socks with
pinstripes that we called “pimp stripe sox,” like Superfly or Shaft. Pop was
always styling at the parties, his wavy, curly black hair, big forehead, big
nose, and thin mustache that we thought made him look like Javier Solís,
the Mexican singer whose love songs and rancheras he and Mom loved. I
thought he looked more like the bubbly, debonair British actor David
Niven.
After they danced, Pop played “La Bala,” a traditional Salvadoran
cumbia in which the singer asks the dancers to do fun things like lift one leg
or rub their bellies or give the person you’re dancing with a kiss. Omar
(Om), my mom’s son, the oldest of us kids, started dancing. My sister from
my dad, Ana Irma (Mima), who was Om’s age, joined in, as did Ramón Jr.
(Mem), who, at seventeen, rolled way deep in the salsa and soul dance
world. Everybody danced, including me.
I looked back over at Pop spinning 33s on the hulky Panasonic cabinet
record console with the built-in speakers. I wanted him to give me his
special look, that smiling, devilishly handsome look of approval I craved
but never got enough of. Pop glanced at me, then away as he started talking
in his animated way to friends.
Pop’s talk always felt alive, especially at the parties. He made up his own
words and had nicknames for everyone. My brother Mem was Niwita
because he cried a lot; my cousin Elva was Choma, which Pop said was “an
indio* word.” At these parties, Pop used a lot of these vowel-rich “indio”
words, which sounded like little word songs: “You’re encachimbada
[angry],” or “You ready for another talaguashtazo [drink]?” or “Don’t be a
fufurufo [stuck-up person],” and many others. One of my favorites was

guishte, which I learned after he saw the green-glass mosaic I made in
school from shards of broken 7UP bottles. “Wow,” he said, “look at what
Chiriqua”—a name he coined for me from Chiricahua, the name of the
Native American tribe of the southern Great Plains, the US Southwest, and
Northern Mexico—“made with all that guishte from the street.” He
pronounced the word as if whistling. Guishte sounded like a cascade of
glass swishing. It felt like wholeness and togetherness to a nine-year-old
who sometimes felt like a broken 7UP bottle.
Pop’s words at United, where he was something called a shop steward,
were why the white union guys came to Mom and Pop’s party wearing their
blue windbreakers with the AFL-CIO logo. Whenever those guys came by,
they would eventually talk about “going on strike.” As an elected shop
steward and later a committee man, Pop represented the interests of 250
utility, ramp-service, and other workers to the group most accursed in
family dinner conversation: United management. His words carried music
and fury and lots of funny, qualities he learned from his mom, Mamá Tey.
Mamá Tey’s portrait was placed in the center of the big wall in our living
room alongside that of Mamá Clothi, my grandmother on mom’s side. We
had a picture of Mom’s dad, too, but none of Pop’s father, Don Miguel, or
Don Miguel’s family in El Salvador. I didn’t know anything about them and
wondered why I didn’t. I wondered what Don Miguel and his family looked
like, what they acted like, and if I looked and acted like them. I felt cheated.
This wanting to have a better sense of family history made me value and
love Mamá Tey all the more.
During the party, Mamá Tey played cards in the kitchen on a velvety
white table cover used expressly for that purpose. I went and sat on her lap
as she lorded over the game with her sweeter but sharper version of Pop’s
humor and charm. I started strumming the thick, gorgeous slabs of skin and
fat that hung from her arms like I was beating eggs, as I had since I could
remember. I often did this while she sewed on her electric Singer with the
pedal she let me push.
“So,” she said, “looks like you’re having fun there, ey, mijito? Got
yourself your own little guitar with my arms there, eh?”
“Yes, Abuelita,” I answered, happy to be at the table with her. “I love
playing your arms.”
“Well,” she said, “I tell you what we’re gonna do.”

Oh, boy! I thought to myself. Her tone usually meant I was about to get
some Salvadoran milk chocolates, money, or another killer grandmotherly
treat. She grabbed me from her lap and stood me up next to the table. I
stood smiling, wondering what she was going to say.
“OK, mi muchachito,” she said while raising her eyes and smiling. “So,
why don’t you put your hands through your zipper, grab your little balls,
and beat them like you’re making atole [a hot indigenous drink made with
corn and corn flour] or something with them—but leave my fucking arms
alone! I love you, but you’re not going to be playing my arms to pieces
anymore, got it?”
Everybody burst out laughing. Me, too. I sat back on Mamá Tey’s lap and
watched the card game while strumming her arms again. She smiled.
The week after that first spring party, I sat with Pop on the stoop of our
apartment while he waited for Bob, the man who drove from the Fillmore
District to pick him up for work every day at five for what they called the
“graveyard shift.” That four-to-five-p.m. hour on the stoop after school,
before Pop headed to work, where he’d be until late at night, was an
important time for us to bond and talk.
Pop had on his blue United Airlines hat and white coveralls with the
United logo next to his heart. The air around the apartment still had that
breezy spring after-party feel. I decided to ask him about his father, my
grandfather, Don Miguel.
“What happened between Mamá Tey and Don Miguel?”
I expected Pop to answer as the sunny, poetic person everybody saw at
the party.
“Were they a couple like you and Mom, Pop?” I asked him in Spanish,
our preferred language of intimacy.
Pop paused before his face muscles tightened and jaw crunched in that
way that signaled I’d angered him. “You know what?”
“What, Pop?”
“I need you to understand this, ’cause the sooner you do, the better we’re
going to get along,” he declared in a tone that sounded as commanding as it
did tense. He used this tone when he was pissed and most often used it with
me because, unlike my siblings, I had a fury inside me that often exploded.
“We’re not going to talk about that, you got it? Nunca. Never.”
That was it. Puro silencio. We were never ever to ask that question.
Nunca.

“Okay, Pop,” I answered and went back in the apartment.
I rushed back to my room dejected, unable to fathom how or why he’d
responded like that. His silence burned like betrayal, as though Pop’s love,
his special names, his funny ways, were all bullshit.
I also remembered that a couple of his other oft-repeated phrases
—“Hands of steel, silk gloves” and “Saints are made by being beaten”—
meant the opposite of togetherness.
Pop’s temper, his reaction, and his secretiveness combined to give me a
great pain, a mysterious pain that, at nine years old, I couldn’t locate and
lacked a name for, except all of me: “Robert,” the name I used because my
documents all removed the “o” my parents always used. Robert, the
American.
Pop’s secretiveness extended to his neighborhood business, which he
often conducted a block down from our apartment, across the street from
the Army Street Projects on Twenty-Sixth and Folsom, at Khalil’s. The
liquor store owned by and named after Pop’s Palestinian friend, Khalil, was
one of several places whose mere mention made my jaw and teeth tense. I’d
once overheard Pop tell Mom, “Khalil es un mafioso serio, un gran
mafioso. All the Palestinos follow him. He owns hotels, laundromats, and
gets truckloads of stolen stuff delivered to his corner store pretty regularly.”
Pop also told Mom his friend built his empire with stolen goods he’d
warehouse in the basement and back of his liquor store. Pop wanted to be
like Khalil. I had very different idea of who I wanted Pop to be: a
Salvadoran version of Mr. Brady from The Brady Bunch, the ideal
American family in 1973. Because my sister, Mima, had a different mother
and my brother Omar had a different father, the mixed marriage of the
Bradys felt like an ideal sewing together of the pieces of different families.
Reality had other ideas. Instead, I took the fragments of my pain and
became my own nine-year-old version of Columbo, the disheveled,
seemingly disorganized TV detective. I decided to become Columbo to find
out about Pop’s father, his secret business deals, and his conexiones. I
hoped desperately that by being Columbo I could put a moral border
between me and Pop’s criminal dealings.
It was Khalil who introduced Pop to his conexiones, Mo, El Chino, and
Kevin and Mary, a couple from New York who Pop said were “the classiest
thieves in San Francisco”—people who could steal the biggest jewels, the
fanciest Wilkes Bashford suits, the most expensive dresses. They stole to

feed their $350-a-week heroin habit. His conexiones were a reason I feared
for Pop’s life. I once heard him describe to Mom how some guys tried to
kidnap him in the parking lot of Mitchell’s Ice Cream and were about to kill
him when the cops drove into the lot.
Pop eventually established his headquarters for what became his center
of operations: Hunt’s Donuts, the coffee shop on the corner of Twentieth
and Mission. My longtime friend Charlie Hernández called Pop a fence, a
word I hated because it made it impossible to hide my familial connection
to criminality. Hunt’s became another hell for me. As were the big ugly
cardboard boxes he used to store and ship cameras, jewelry, clothes,
calculators, toys, and other contraband he bought and sold at Hunt’s. Those
boxes weighed my life down, probably because they also contained the
thing that most made me feel like I belonged to a criminal family, guns.
Pop sold the guns mainly to doctors, engineers, military guys, and others
in El Salvador who could afford them. Like everything else, except food
and firecrackers, guns were more expensive in the motherland. Pop bought
.357 Magnums, .38s, and $300 Uzis from either his conexiones or from Mr.
Valli, the guy in fancy suits who worked at Roos Atkins Department Store.
Mr. Valli sold Pop his favorite gun, the .44 Magnum, “the most powerful
handgun in the world,” made famous in the Clint Eastwood movies me and
Pop memorized lines from. Inside the gigantic boxes that Mom, Mamá Tey,
and he sent to El Salvador on United, he’d include a bunch of guns. Where
and how Pop learned how to do this kind of cross-border maneuver was an
unsolved mystery my inner Detective Columbo would have to investigate.
Loving Pop meant learning to love—or at least accept—his
secretiveness, his intersecting cross-border circuits, and the gravity they
brought into our lives. Loving myself meant diving in but then learning to
levitate into and out of the darkness, a levitation that no one helped me
master more than Mom.
* * *
“Guess where we’re going?” Mom asked one day, collapsing onto the beatup red and yellow sofa bed in our living room. The sofa was her refuge
from another long day of cleaning rich people’s rooms at the St. Francis
Hotel before starting to cook dinner for me, my siblings, and cousins.
“We’re going to Paris!” I’d wanted to go to the place where they’d filmed

The Red Balloon ever since I’d watched the magnificent French movie in
class. The story of a child who encounters a balloon with its own
personality, befriending it as they walk, skip, and run through the rough,
working-class neighborhood of Belleville-Ménilmontant, spoke to me. The
poetic power of the red balloon gave me hope.
Mom knew Pop’s cardboard boxes, his conexiones, and other stuff made
me long for my own escape balloon—so much so that I pestered my parents
to let me fly to Paris. I wanted desperately to go on a kid’s pilgrimage to see
the land of balloons and levitating children.
A perk of Mom and Pop’s jobs were discounted hotel prices and free
airline tickets to fly anywhere in the world. By the time I turned ten, I had
already traveled far beyond the Mission. I got to see the world at an early
age, with what Shakespeare called “rich eyes and poor hands.”
My bookish demeanor and the fact that I traveled a lot for a workingclass kid led some to call me Mr. Peabody, the smart, time-traveling cartoon
dog with glasses like mine from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. As the kid
who stole sci-fi books from the Mission Library with Freddie Weinstein, I
liked being called Mr. Peabody. I felt like it spoke to my own ability to
break up space and time—and the gravity of Mission life—with the help of
Mom and Pop’s travel discounts.
Not long before we left for Paris, still floating on the clouds of our
imminent departure, I crossed the street one day to buy a popsicle at
Henry’s liquor store, across the street from our apartment, when I saw a
lady in a yellow dress walking quickly down the street. A man came
running behind her. When he caught up to her, they started yelling.
They screamed back and forth at each other for a while, until the guy
said, “Fuck you, bitch!” and pulled something out of his waistband. The
woman screamed, “Noooooo!” just before he started hacking at her
stomach. To my nine-year-old ears, the knife jabs sounded like a potato
peeler slicing her skin: scht-scht-scht. The woman cried out, “Noooooo!
Help me!” as blood poured onto her hands and spilled onto the sidewalk
like running red water.
Her screams alarmed others nearby, and some rushed into their homes as
if to escape while others yelled for the police. The man ran off. The woman
staggered off to lean against a garage door, bleeding, before falling to the
ground, where she lay twitching, like our dog Timber had after being
poisoned by an angry neighbor. I rushed home to tell Mom.

Mom sat me on the sofa and hugged and kissed me, rubbing my stomach
as if I was the one who’d been stabbed. After that I would always walk
cautiously past Henry’s, long after the blood spilled on Twenty-Fifth Street
that day had dried. The potato-peeler sound of the knife, the image of the
woman twisting, her screams—all of them things played over and over in
my mind.
Weeks later Mom held me by the hand as we approached the catacombs
of Paris, the city of the dead created beneath the streets during the French
Revolution by the overcrowding of the bones and bodies above. The sunny
summer air and luminescence of Paris dissipated, giving way to the cool
shadows covering our skin as Mom and I descended into the dark. Her
quirky side—the mysterious part of Mom that loved to go against the grain
of the normal—had led us to the clammy Paris below: over two hundred
miles of tunnels, crevices, and chambers housing the skulls and bones of
more than six million souls. Bones and skulls formed elaborate patterns that
looked like the guishte mosaics I made in school. The only warmth was
from our clasped hands and our breath. Together, we conspired in the
catacombs, breathing in that cold, dead, beautifully intimate air between us,
and the skulls and bones of some of the many millions of those forgotten in
the Great Belows of history.

3

Ahuachapán, El Salvador
1931

My father, Ramón Alfredo Lovato—“Ramóncito”—lived in Ahuachapán
Province near rich relatives who had more than enough power to help the
barefoot nine-year-old reach his dream of getting an education, but they
refused to use it. Despite the fact the local hospital’s founder, Don Sixto
Padilla, had fathered his grandmother, Mamá Fina Lovato, Ramón Alfredo
Lovato never saw the inside of the fabulous hospital.1 Instead Ramóncito
was born far on the margins of Ahuachapán city, his status etched invisibly
onto him by the thick, handwritten, capitalized letters of the word
ILEGÍTIMO, which barely fit within the box meant for his father’s name on
his birth certificate. Below it Mamá Fina, who was tasked by her daughter
Tey with registering the boy, signed her name on his birth certificate with a
large and squiggly X.
“Ramóncito came into the world thanks to a comadrona we paid five
pesos. He was born at home,” Mamá Tey, whose birth name was Maria
Esther Lovato, often remarked.
Ramón Alfredo Lovato was born in 1922. Like Ramóncito, Mamá Tey
and Mamá Fina had both also been born out of wedlock—all ilegítimos,
bastard children bearing the surnames of their mothers in a country where
many, perhaps most, children lived in households headed by single
mothers.2 For Ramóncito and millions of other Salvadorans, “family” meant
being raised by strong, heroic single mothers. Similarly, ideas about who
exactly the “children” the nation lionized in the Salvadoran national anthem

were reduced indigenous people to second-class citizenship, while AfroSalvadorans were eventually expelled from El Salvador under race laws
influenced by the eugenic theories circulating worldwide.
Mamá Tey’s father, the highly educated politician3 and physician Dr.
Dionisio Aráuz, had his own dream, the dream of a modern patria, made
possible by the magic seeds that were transforming tiny El Salvador and
bringing it into the world economy: café. The former president of the
National Assembly, who had inherited his own coffee fortune, possessed the
godlike power to bring change into existence with his words. A single
decree by Don Dionisio dismantled the remaining ejidos—collectively
owned lands occupied for millennia by indigenous communities—to create
new Ladino towns complete with massive, privately owned haciendas,
massive plantations established on stolen indigenous land by the Spaniards
and their descendants. Always nearby, hacienda police guarded their rich
inhabitants against the indios. Don Dionisio signed into being roads,
railroad routes, and prisons to house the growing population of angry,
landless indios denounced regularly in the pages of El Diario de
Ahuachapán. His written and verbal agreements forged international
treaties committing numerous nations to extraditing other seditious
elements—revolucionarios, comunistas, and anarquistas conspiring against
the progress and prosperity of la patria.
Medium-to-large landowners and coffee exporters like Don Dionisio
made an average of $100,000 to $500,000 a year4 and educated their hijos
legítimos at the same elite schools in England, Switzerland, and France
where they had been educated. This inherited wealth, education, and access
made possible the large, white Italianate mansions, such as the one
occupied by the family of Don Miguel Rodríguez, Ramóncito’s father. The
Rodríguezes made their fortune from numerous haciendas where they grew
café in their hometown of Concepción de Ataco, just nine miles from the
shack that Ramóncito shared with Mamá Tey and Mamá Fina in
Ahuachapán city.
Though she was fathered by one wealthy man and bore the child of
another, Mamá Tey herself was very poor. Tey made clothes for a living,
mostly in their adobe-and-tin shack in Barrio Santa Cruz, a neighborhood
designated for the second-poorest rung of Ahuachapán’s many gradations of
poor—a rung above only the indigenous communities. Indigenous people

were expected to see, hear, and shut up about lives that became more
difficult with each cyclical drop in the price of café.
All Ramóncito knew about his biological father growing up was that Don
Miguel belonged to one of the rich coffee families, the ones who owned the
green mountains with their foggy white beards, and all the land around
Ataco. Mamá Tey hardly ever spoke about “that man.” When Don Miguel’s
name did come up, she stayed in silencio. Puro silencio.
Ramóncito once walked up to Tey while she was sewing and asked her,
“Aren’t you and Don Miguel married, Mamá?” All she did was give him
that stare that meant he should never ever ask that question again. Nunca.
Don Miguel was a tall man who was educated as an engineer but who
found his vocation in drinking. Ramóncito had learned the man was his
father when his mother pointed him out in town. The boy sometimes saw
his father in the city, where Don Miguel would shop, do business, drink,
and hang out with other men and, especially, women. Some of these women
he impregnated with children who would also be born out of wedlock.
During his father’s visits to Ahuachapán, Ramóncito noticed that Don
Miguel’s honey-brown eyes and skin matched his and those of some of the
indigenous people who worked in cafetales where Ramóncito and his
friends played and hunted squirrels and zopilotes, black vultures, with
slingshots made of tree branches. Ramóncito’s father always wore a
confident, angry look. That look, especially his crazed eyes, became
especially intense when Don Miguel decided to solve his problems the way
lots of rich people liked to solve their problems: with guns. Don Miguel had
lots of guns, and so did his Spaniard father and his father’s Spaniard father,
Mamá Tey would tell Ramóncito. Rich people in Ahuachapán learned to
kill from an early age. They were vaqueros, riding horses, shooting
whomever they felt wronged by, in just the way Ramóncito read about in
cheap, pocket-size cowboy novelas.
Don Miguel hardly ever spoke to his son. When Ramóncito stood or
walked near his father to get his attention, Don Miguel just shot Ramóncito
with that look that fired through him with a high-caliber “I don’t care.” The
look left a deadness inside his son.
Ramóncito was acknowledged by his paternal grandmother, Mamá
Juanita. Mamá Juanita, a former servant, had borne Don Miguel and eleven
other children to a rich, landowning Spaniard who, like many rich men of
the era, had sex with their servants, most often without their consent. Born

of a mixed-Ladino father and a Náhuat mother, who raised her alone,
Juanita eventually managed to escape the ravages—cursings, beatings,
rapes, poverty—of indigenous female life in El Salvador by forcing the
Spaniard into a deathbed recognition of her kids as legítimos. When the
Spaniard died, Juanita became the matriarch of her family, overseeing the
futures of her children.
Juanita also did what she could for her grandchildren, including the
unrecognized ones, like Ramóncito. Mamá Juanita and her daughters
facilitated Ramóncito’s frequent travel to their mansion in wealthy Ataco.
Ramóncito also traveled considerably to the capital, San Salvador. Mamá
Tey traveled there regularly to visit both her husband and Ramón’s
stepfather, Chico—when she wasn’t mad at him—and to ply her sewing
trade in Mesón San Luís, the lively, noisy shantytown in central San
Salvador that stimulated Ramóncito in ways the rural Ahuachapán didn’t.
The mesones—long rows and rows of colored tin rooms that shared wash
areas and communal bathrooms—became one of the primary sources of
housing for El Salvador’s burgeoning population of urban poor.
At age nine, Ramóncito had not yet adopted the silence that many poor
indigenous and Ladino kids of the era learned at an early age. His travels
exposed him to different environments, and as a result, he had learned how
to talk to all kinds of different people: rich and poor, country and city,
white, indigenous, and Ladino. Ramóncito picked up words quickly. He
liked to make adults laugh, repeating stuff he’d overheard, like “No le pido
pan al hambre, ni calor al frío” (I don’t ask hunger for bread, nor heat of the
cold), and “No le debo nada al sol por haberme calentado” (I don’t owe the
sun anything for heating me up). One city phrase Ramóncito loved was
hijuesesentamilputas, son of sixty thousand bitches, which rang out
regularly in the clammy air of Mamá Tey and Chico’s adobe-and-tin shack
in the mesón in San Salvador.
Ramóncito’s way with words got him his first job at nine years old. He
was visiting Papa Chico at his shack in the mesón with Mamá Tey. While in
San Salvador, Mamá Tey worked as a costurera for the prostitutes who lived
and worked throughout the mesón, many of whom spent lots of time with
the guys with the guns and the green uniforms from the military cuartel
nearby. Ramóncito knew the putas as friends of his family before he even
realized what putas were, or why he and generations of Salvadorans that
followed would be called hijuesesentamilputas as punishment or insult.

All the prostitutes, many of whom were his friends’ moms, had funnysounding names, like La Loca Elsa, Crazy Elsa, who would sing like a
madwoman; Dolores del Río, La Loca’s tall, handsome friend and
roommate; La Greta Garbo, who looked like some famous actress; La
Venerable Rana, the Venerable Frog, whose fame had something to do with
her throat; La Chivo Peche, the Skinny Goat, a dark pretty woman who had
hair on her chin; and Anita Villeda, an indigenous woman who never said
much, except when she spoke with Tey.
One hot summer day in 1931, Chela, a puta with big powerful arms and
gigantic breasts and a booming, raspy deep voice, came to knock on the tin
door of Mamá Tey and Chico’s shack. Mamá Tey answered.
“Hola,” said Chela to a somewhat surprised Mamá Tey. Tey maintained
friendly terms with and sewed dresses and other things for Chela and many
of the prostitutes, but they rarely came by in the evening, during their
working hours.
“Is Ramóncito here?” Chela asked.
“Uh, yes. He’s here, but what do you want with him?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” responded Chela with a smile. “We have a job for
him.”
“A job?”
Chela told her that she and her colleagues wanted to employ Ramóncito
to “tend to” their waiting clients while she and the other ladies were busy
with other men. The women wanted to task Ramóncito with bringing the
clients drinks and entertaining them.
“He’s such a smart and funny boy,” Chela said. “We thought it’d be great
to have him work for us.” Tey knew Chela and the other women would care
for her boy, who had already acculturated and had friendships with their
children.
When asked, Ramóncito, a precocious boy, jumped at the opportunity. He
understood that this might help pay for his education. So, he dove into the
work with a feverish energy, serving drinks, watching and entertaining the
men with the green uniforms and other clients between six o’clock and his
bedtime at nine.
Ramóncito’s job helped him learn about the laws of economics, as he
watched different women charge their clients different amounts. La Loca
Elsa charged clients two colones. Dark-skinned Lupita la India charged one
peso, while Dolores del Río charged up to five because people said her

white skin and rosy cheeks made her look like a doll. Ramóncito’s eyes
bulged at the sight of the one hundred colones La Greta Garbo got for
simply letting an important man look at her body.
That man was Rafael Meza Ayau, the owner of a company operating near
the mesón, La Constancia, that sold the famous Pilsener beer. The company
was also the first to distribute and sell Coca-Cola and other American soft
drinks in El Salvador. Many of the prostitutes in the Mesón San Luís were
higher class than the ones over on Calle Celis, the street named after
Santiago José Celis, a guy from Ahuachapán credited with founding El
Salvador. Prostitutes on Calle Celis charged their clients fifty cents.
Altogether, the women of El Mesón San Luís paid Ramóncito one or two
colones per week, his first earnings, from which he saved whatever he
didn’t give to his mom. He received money, local recognition, affection, and
the promise of an education—all thanks to his words. Yet as his enthusiasm
for words grew, so too would a great and unusual silence grow in the
otherwise talkative boy, whose hatred of the word ilegítimo also grew in
silencio. Ramóncito’s silencio would join that of millions of other
Salvadorans to create a culture of silence that would have devastating
effects on future generations of Salvadorans in and beyond El Salvador.

Part II

4

Ciudad Merliot, El Salvador
2015

I’m rocking in a wicker chair, astonished by news the forensic lab officials
I interviewed shared this morning: my parents’ beloved homeland will soon
become “the most violent country on earth.”1 This tiniest of countries in the
hemisphere—with a population of just over six million—has registered
3,332 homicides2 between January and May 2015, up from 2,191 between
January and July in 2014.
My visit to the mother and children refugee prison in Karnes caused my
adult experiences to combine with kid ones, which is why I’m back in El
Salvador. The last time I visited the country was 2013, the year we buried
half of my mother’s ashes in her hometown of San Vicente, where my
goddaughter and I barely escaped gun-wielding gang members who chased
us—in the cemetery. I’m here to fulfill promises made silently in the mother
and children prison, trying to unlock the mysteries of the double helix of
death that condemns El Salvador and innocent kids like David to become
refugees, child soldiers, and even the gang killers driving the violence here.
My decision to do something about Karnes by telling parts of our collective
story with my own individual one also bears the mark of Alex Sánchez.
“Find Raúl Mijango,” Alex told me when I called him in LA following
my Karnes visit. “Mijango is the man—an ex-guerrillero who helped
broker the truce.” The truce was a historic but controversial agreement
between MS-13 and its rival mara, 18th Street, that cut El Salvador’s
homicide rate in half between 2012 and 2013, when it ended.3 My quest to

understand violence in El Salvador will start with my journey to find Raúl
Mijango.
Accompanying me on this journey is my driver, Isaias, a smiley, bulky
block of a funny ex-military guy–turned–taxi driver. He’s dropped me off at
my cousin María Elena’s, my home base for my summer in El Salvador.
María Elena lives in a gated community in Ciudad Merliot, located just
across El Pedregal Street, one of San Salvador’s northern borders, which
marks the neighborhood as “safe.” Two 12 gauge escopeta–bearing serenos
guard the middle-class neighborhood.
Outside the gates sits the late morning humidity of another hellish June
day in El Salvador. Inside, things are cooler beneath the wooden fan of the
open-air living room. A chilled glass of deep purple agua de jamaica helps.
It’s almost time for the traditional lunch break, when everybody shuts
everything down. No siesta for me, though.
I spent the morning visiting a forensic lab to interview specialists, before
calling friends to make inquiries about Mijango and possible connections to
him. While waiting to hear back from my sources, I decide to use the
afternoon to visit Giovanni Miranda, a deportee whom my research
assistant, Flor, introduced me to several days before. Something about
Giovanni—perhaps his Chicano English or maybe his homie friendliness—
reminds me of guys I grew up with in the Mission District. I wanted to go
back and find out what other parts of my past Giovanni echoed.
“How did your meetings go?” María Elena asks in a curious, concerned
tone, while pouring herself some jamaica.
“OK. How are you?”
“I’m fine. By the way, your father called,” she tells me. Unsurprising.
Pop calls almost daily anytime I visit la patria. I’ve always thought Pop’s
constant calling habit was rooted in the many fears of someone who grew
up during a Great Depression that made Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath look
like a winefest. Lately, though, it seems like Pop’s calls carry more urgency,
like they have a touch of Mom’s ghost worrying about me. Regardless, the
worry is worlds better than the anger Pop had toward me—and I toward
him—for so long.
I bid María Elena farewell and start walking a block down, to Chiltiupán,
the main thoroughfare in the area. Further down the hilly part of Chiltiupán,
the sounds of car engines and mufflers start saturating the streets even more
than usual. As I approach Giovanni’s tiny shop with its black stucco

exterior, a banged-up pearl white Lexus cruiser swings into the old garage
and anchors without the flutter of its broken turn signals, and is suddenly at
rest. The fender panel and door on the right side of the relatively new
vehicle need replacement.
“Hey, what’s up, homie!” Giovanni says, visibly glad to see me again.
I’m glad to see him, too. His cutoff, faded, and painted black Metallica Tshirt make the tattoos on his arms stand out. Gangs and police in El
Salvador stop, harass, and kill people for sporting tattoos here—whether or
not the bearer of the tattoos is involved with gangs. As a result, “Jesucristo”
and “La Virgen” have become symbols of death in El Salvador.
The horrific violence here exists thanks in no small part to mano dura
(firm hand)—the brutal policing-on-steroids that came to El Salvador in
1993 when the Bush administration’s Justice Department provided aid and
police training4 to the Salvadoran government. Based on the “broken
windows” policing methods used by former New York mayor Rudy
Giuliani, mano dura emphasizes going harder on petty crimes, as well as
profiling and harassment based on appearance, thus increasing incarceration
and distrust of the police.5
The “iron fist” measures—defining broad categories of youth and activity
as criminal, expanding police powers, deploying the military to handle citylevel matters, and diminishing the rights of alleged criminals—are popular
with voters because they make them feel like the government is taking
serious action. These methods include targeting people like Giovanni for
simply having tattoos. Rather than treating the problems—poverty and
marginalization—at their roots, time and again, the Salvadoran government
instead expands the number of violent actors by empowering violence by its
own agents, regardless of which political party is in power. This ends up
increasing, rather than diminishing, violence and gang influence.6 In
unleashing the repressive powers of the state anew, mano dura has also
enabled an old and catastrophic government practice: use of military and
police death squads to do extrajudicial killings under cover of uniforms.
Reductions in crime bought at the expense of a continued official disrespect
for human life.
Up close, Giovanni’s thick mustache, twinkling eyes, long eyelashes, and
smile make him look like the great Mexican singer-actor Pedro Infante.
Standing there in the tiny garage, the smell of car paint transports me to my
teen years, when my homies, Los Originales, and I first discovered, drove,

and sometimes even destroyed cars, a few of which were stolen and a
couple of which we crashed, as we said, “for the fuck of it.” It’s obvious
why I’m here: being in the garage takes me back to some of the best times
of my life, a happy respite from the toxicity of the formaldehyde and other
chemicals of death I inhaled earlier at the forensic lab. The chemicals of car
paint smell more of life, California car life.
“Forgot to ask you, Bro. Where you from?” I ask him in English.
“I was born here, but I grew up in Dallas.” His nervous smile is also
familiar—the twitchy smile of self-doubt of so many of us who grow up
bicultural.
He serves up some coffee, breaks a piece of semita bread, and delivers it
with a delicate touch that’s at odds with the crunched-up car fenders,
banged-up bodies, and bulky equipment surrounding us. Out of the room to
the left side of the garage steps a woman holding a newborn.
“This is my wife, Sofia,” Giovanni says. Sofia, a striking raven-haired
twenty-something, nods and smiles shyly.
“And this is Simón.” Giovanni’s pride at his son radiates throughout the
tiny shaded room.
Sofia takes Simón back to the ten-by-twelve room that is their living
room, bedroom, baby room, kitchen, and dining room. Giovanni follows
with me behind him. Inside, their bed and a crib take up most of the space,
along with a small dresser, where a mini camping oven sits. Above the bed,
paintings of a blue-eyed Christ and of the Virgin dominate the only clear
wall space. Clothes are stacked neatly alongside foodstuffs, cleaning
materials, detergents, and other household items on the floor. Some small
talk over coffee and semita leads the conversation back to his and my
shared love.
“I saw this chop-top ’59 Merc when I was twelve and it was over for
me,” he says, the Tejano in him now beyond obvious in the ers and wuzes
that he twirls with a Southern touch. “I knew that I wanted to paint cars
when I grew up.”
“My friend Max used to have a ’59 Merc, but he didn’t chop it,” I tell
him. “I used to cruise in a cherry-ass ’63 Mercury Meteor I bought from an
elderly lady.” Tito, the crazy young vato in me who, after a violent run-in
with Pop, worked in a body shop for a minute, has entered the conversation.
My body adopts a gangster lean, sitting as though my left hand’s on top of
the steering wheel, while looking out the driver’s window and leaning on

my right elbow with the coolest possible look: jaw clenched, eyes dreamy,
head slightly bobbing to whatever music (preferably oldies) is blaring on
the speakers.
“Fuckin’-A,” Giovanni says in a smooth voice.
I’m about twenty years older than Giovanni, but we still have much in
common. Our shared language includes a mix of English, Spanish, and
Caló. Our Salvadoran version of Caló includes words like valeverguista,
which refers to that same crazy, Jedi resistance spirit that has driven
Salvadorans—guerrillas, refugees, and our parents—to take on impossible
odds for centuries. Even though Pop and Mom could tap into that rebellious
spirit themselves, they hated my Tito crazy bat-shit side—shit that almost
got me killed, even before the war.
Giovanni’s mix of California words like vato, another word for homeboy,
and Salvadoran words like cerote (shit) and hijueputa (sonofabitch) has a
homie-ness to it. One difference, however, is that he has no recollection of
when, before the nineties, the word mara was used to refer exclusively to
“friends,” not “gangs,” as it is now. I do. The gangs started using the word
primarily to refer to each other as friends, before cutting their long rockero
hair and adopting the more violent LA-style gang culture. Like the Force in
Star Wars, the word loco has two sides, one light and one dark.
Looking at a pile of car batteries stacked up in a corner, I tell him about
Los Originales and the way we gradually scaled up our stealing repertoire.
We started with car stereos and speakers, moving up to batteries and then
hydros (the hydraulic jack systems that lift the entire car) from trucks,
finally graduating to stealing entire cars. I share with Giovanni how, for a
minute, I harbored dreams of building my own empire of stolen cars and car
parts, like Pop and Mamá Tey’s cross-border network of stolen contraband.
Giovanni shares his own stories of stealing car parts.
I notice that next to the entrance of their home is another door with a big
steel lock on it.
“What’s in there?”
“That’s a smaller room that I rent. Right now, it’s empty.”
“Why?”
“Vato stopped payin’ his rent. He seemed pretty decent and mostly kept
to himself, but eventually he didn’t come up with the feria [money] for the
rent. After two months, I put a lock on the door and told him I wouldn’t
open it until he paid up.”

“What did he do?”
“He came back and got all bitchy on me, sayin’, ‘What’s this?’ and
threatening me like, ‘You better lemme in or you’ll pay me for this.’ He
said that shit in front of my wife and kid and then ran off before I was
gonna beat his ass.
“You want another brew?” he asks me.
Sofia is sitting on their bed with Simón.
“How’s my pride and joy?” he coos.
He plays with Simón for a minute, grabs the beers from the tiny
refrigerator, and we step back out to the garage. We drink as he describes
how Simón is the culmination of his own story, which began in 1973, just a
few years before the beginning of El Salvador’s civil war. He tells me how,
before becoming a Tejano, his earliest memories were of moving, both
because of migration and for his love of cars.
“I remember the loud vans and the helicopters flying over us,” he says,
describing the migration odyssey to the United States, undertaken by so
many Salvadorans.
“I fell in love with cars at Pershing High,” he says.
He describes how he pursued his passion through high school, working
for several body shops. As he speaks, the soothing syncopated vocals and
mellow bass line of Long Beach, California–based War’s lowrider classic,
“All Day Music,” plays on his speakers.
“Things were pretty suave,” he says, “until March 2009.” That’s when,
he recalls, “things just started getting worse and worse.
“My mom called me that day to fix her car. I was on my way over to her
place in my Toyota truck and had an accident. I didn’t have papers and my
driver’s license was suspended when la migra got me. I was in jail for a
while, before the judge decided to deport me in 2012.
“I arrived in shackles to Comalapa Airport,” he tells me as he stares out
the garage entrance toward the San Salvador volcano and greenery around
it. Shit, I’m screwed, I thought.
“I got here and said, ‘What the fuck?’ I hardly spoke the language, I
didn’t know anybody and didn’t have a dime on me. All [the Salvadoran
immigration authorities] did was take my shackles off, had me check in at
the airport, and that was it. I didn’t know where to go. Thank God one of
the guys who got deported with me invited me to stay with him in La
Unión, way on the other side of the country. So I went.

“Then I got back to [San Salvador] and found an uncle,” he says. It was
while living in his uncle’s tin-roofed shack that Giovanni first “realized how
much of a problem the maras are” in El Salvador. “And people stared at me
like I was in the maras because of my tattoos! I’ve never been in any
fuckin’ gang.
“There were people being killed left and right, and the cops would stop
me all the time because of my tattoos. I realized there were a bunch of
places I can’t go, either because of the gangs or because of the cops. I’ve
been pulled over by the cops at least two hundred thirty times since I’ve
been here, telling me stuff like, ‘We see your tattoos, we know you’re in a
gang, and don’t think that smiling little face of yours is going to save you.’ I
was screwed.”
Faced with these enormous challenges, Giovanni found solace and work
in his life’s passion, cars. “I started to get some side gigs with a guy here on
Chiltiupán,” he says. “He paid me the minimum wage, two hundred fiftysix dollars per month. After a few months, I realized I could make way
more money on my own and started saving up and opened this shop down
the block.”
As of January of this year, he tells me, his body shop on Chiltiupán, with
two tiny makeshift rooms attached to it, houses his dreams of work, family,
and a better life, as he makes more than enough to pay his rent of five
hundred dollars a month. The sweet, gasoline-like smell of the paint
tattooing the cars combines with his Salvadoran story of resilience and our
second beer to start me on a good buzz.
We start talking about our love for lowrider oldies again, and Giovanni
rushes over to change the CD player to play the song we both agree is one
of the greatest lowrider oldies of all time, William DeVaughn’s “Be
Thankful for What You Got.”
“Man,” I tell him, my beer buzz in full bloom, “I used to gangster lean in
whatever I could drive, my father’s LTD, my brother’s beat-up Toyota, or
the Monte Carlo or Merc I had. Didn’t matter. I just wanted to feel gangster
as fuck.” The part of me that grew up admiring The Godfather, Pop’s
favorite movie, and the part of Giovanni that grew up watching Scarface are
communing.
Before I know it, it’s ten p.m. My phone shows that María Elena has
called a couple of times. She’s probably worried about me. It’s time to go.

I leave Giovanni cruising on memories, on hopes. Giovanni’s love of
family and cars, his indefatigable spirit, symbolize the heart Salvadorans
need to persist in the darkness.
I walk up Chiltiupán, dizzy with relaxation, humming “Be Thankful for
What You Got” in my head. I play the song on YouTube when I get back.
“Have you been drinking?” María Elena asks. Mom’s spirit is
manifesting in her namesake. “Where did you go?”
“Walking around the neighborhood,” I say.
“Are you nuts? You need to be careful. You can’t just walk around here
like that, especially when you’ve been drinking.”
The part of me that wants to give María Elena a sharp response is
tempered by the fact that I’m still floating on the thought that Giovanni and
other Salvadorans are nothing if not a people in the constant motion of
overcoming.
A few days later, I return briefly to see Giovanni, largely to just be
around his cool energy in the paint-perfumed body shop. “Man, with my
baby, this new place, I’m reborn,” he tells me, beaming again in the
shadowed confines of his body shop. “I’m motivated even more to do
whatever I need to do to move ahead.”
The next day, I return to trying to find Mijango, who is proving more
elusive than I’d imagined. After several days spent futilely rushing around
the city, looking for Mijango with Isaias, I decide to visit Giovanni again. I
need some of his breezy, adventurous, old-school homie spirits to help buoy
my own. Just walking down the street anticipating the smell of imaginary
car paint increases my energy. Lowrider oldies start playing in my head.
Images of home fill my mind. But when I arrive, the black gate of his
garage door is closed. There’s none of the colorful car-centric life I’ve been
imagining, only a neighbor in an air-conditioning shop down the street,
sitting somberly at his door. I walk up to the man to ask if he’s seen
Giovanni.
The man doesn’t look me in the eyes. Instead he looks down the street
toward Giovanni’s garage and says. “Está muerto.”
Fuck. My breath shortens. A little more prodding reveals that, a couple of
days after I last saw him, two mareros snuck into the shop in the afternoon.
Giovanni and Sofia were in their bedroom playing with Simón at the time.
The tattooed gangsters rushed into the crowded blue room, where Giovanni

was holding Simón. They pumped six shots into him at close range.
Miraculously, none of the bullets hit Simón, but Giovanni was killed.
The police have no leads and have given no indication that they will
pursue a deeper investigation, a typical response in a country where more
than 95 percent of all crimes remain uninvestigated and unsolved.7
Giovanni’s wife and family believe the renter they threw out did what so
many Salvadorans do to resolve conflicts: hired mareros, sicarios, to kill
him.
The image of Simón being baptized into Salvadoran society, covered in
his father’s blood, abides. Tattooed gangsters killed a cool tattooed guy with
whom I shared a gangster lean, continuing the legacy of gang violence that
began a decade after I sported my own gangster lean. My resolve to
understand the violence burns hotter with anger. Brighter, too. But given
what I know based on my own intimate history with El Salvador and its
many forms of gangs, my anger is fiercest at the most destructive gangsters
in the country’s history—the ones in suits, big businessmen with a long
history of being protected by even more violent gangsters in military
uniforms.

5

San Salvador
1975

“Check,” I told Alonso, a university friend of my favorite cousin, Adilio.
Between Alonso and me was a plastic chess set. We were in the sparsely
decorated living room of Adilio’s friend Tito’s house. For some unknown
reason, they called him Tito Caca—Tito Shit. I always giggled at his name,
even though friends back in San Francisco also called me Tito—short for
Robertito—in addition to Robert and Robs, names rooted in the fact that
hospital administrators had hacked off the o of the name my parents gave
me on my birth certificate. My Tito would go on to become the part of me
that got angry and did crazy things.
While Alonso studied his predicament on the chess board, Mercedes, a
fellow universitaria wearing a mini-falda with a green top and heels, read
what looked like a homemade magazine or pamphlet. Two other young
teenagers with shoulder-length hair and porkchop sideburns were there, too.
One was listening to Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and
other rock pesado on a plastic box that played 45s; another sat on Tito’s
family’s musty living room couch reading some newspapers and pamphlets.
Adilio, his friends, and all the neighborhood kids referred to themselves as
la mara, the local word for “group of friends.” I felt both inside and outside
of their mara because I was American. My American identity felt like the
only good thing I could hold on to at that time. Lacking context, my
Salvadoran background and my family felt full of confusion, chaos, crime,
and shame, but being American gave me a sense of solidity that many of us

absorbed from TV shows like The Brady Bunch and Captain America.
When I was in El Salvador, being American made me feel as though I
floated above the molten political chaos brewing beneath the childhood fun.
Tito Caca lived less than a block from the barranco, the ravine, where
some of the neighborhood women who lived in the tin shacks nearby
washed clothes and dried them on the rocks. We could smell the dirty gully
as the women’s kids, some of them naked, played nearby.
I was eleven years old and in San Salvador at the tail end of my summer
vacation, staying with Pop, who had come to see his cousin, Tía Esperanza,
and her family. He was also in El Salvador to conduct the contraband
business I hated. Mom was in El Salvador too, but she spent most of her
time in San Vicente, the more picturesque, semirural town where she grew
up in poverty beneath the grandeur of the Chichontepec volcano.
“Puta, you got me, cipote,” Alonso lamented from behind the big round
glasses that, along with his aquiline nose, Keith Partridge feathered haircut,
and intense stare, made him look like a darker, Salvadoran John Lennon.
Alonso moved a pawn in precisely the way I wanted him to.
“Checkmate!” I exclaimed, loud enough to distract the other guys and
Mercedes from the music and papers. Adilio beamed with pride. Alonso
commented on what a good game it was, got up abruptly, and almost ran
over to the sofa. Conversation resumed.
“That son of a bitch Molina says the military fired at the students only
after the students attacked them,” one guy told the other. “Molina found his
excuse to militarizar the university and fill it with his goons.”
I didn’t know what this university stuff was all about, but their angry talk
about the military made no sense. I grew up loving GI Joe, watching war
movies, and crying at the sight of Marines holding the red, white, and blue
during the national anthem at SF Giants baseball games featuring Willie
Mays.
“What’s wrong with the military?” I asked.
“You know what, Robertito,” Alonso says, using the diminutive version
of my name. “You should stick with your chess and other little boy’s games,
niño yanqui.”
Taken aback by Alonso’s sudden shift of tone, I fired back, “Niño
yanqui? Why the fuck are you calling me niño yanqui?” My chest
tightened, like he was trying to deny me the one thing that gave me a good
feeling about being me in El Salvador: America.

“Adilio,” Alonso said, looking toward my cousin, “take your primito
gringo home, teach him why his country is the biggest piece of shit in the
world.”
“What do you know about my country, asshole!” I yelled, as Adilio
started gently pushing me out the door. “You’re just sore because I beat you
in chess!”
“What’s wrong with that guy, Adilio?” I asked him as we walked down B
street, to Tía Esperanza’s house.
“Don’t mind them,” he said. “There’s a lot of bad shit going on here now
and they’re really upset about it.”
“Yeah, well those guys have never been to the United States. They don’t
know anything about my country, and should mind their own fucking
business. Don’t take me there anymore.”
For the first time in El Salvador, my American side had become a
liability. Prior to the chess clash, my American identity had been a sort of
superpower around kids my age. Adults, too. I knew American Top 40
songs long before radio deejays in El Salvador said they were spinning the
“latest songs” from America. Everybody wanted my Levi’s and Converse
tennis shoes, my ability to speak English. They admired my thick, curly
head of hair that had them calling me “Mikol Yackson.” And my American
dólares helped, too.
It was 1975 and my spoiled-kid attitude toward El Salvador—my distaste
for the culture, my pride at being the center of poorer kids’ attention and the
feeling of American superiority it instilled—was just beginning to soften. I
was starting to get over things like how sick in the stomach I sometimes
got, the bugs, bats, and buzzards all over the place, and how much I hated
the food: less-crunchy, weird-tasting Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, thick milk,
and those pupusas, which tasted good but whose very name sounded like
shit. I also started getting really interested in Lorena, the tall girl I’d happen
to see walking home from school every day as I sat on the concrete bench
under the almond tree in front of Tía Esperanza’s house at precisely the
hour she arrived.
On top of that, Tía Esperanza, Mom, and her relatives had started
conspiring to show me cool Salvadoran things they knew I’d like: hiking up
the Chichontepec volcano, going to the beach and, especially, popping
firecrackers, lots of firecrackers, including big bombs we didn’t have in the
US. The previous vacation I’d come to Tía Esperanza’s and found that my

Christmas gift was a one-by-two-foot bomb, a giant firecracker wrapped in
festive paper waiting for me.
Mom and Tía Esperanza embodied the fact that love was the given of the
place. So did all the kids—cousins who were ever ready to play with me
and take me places and teach me things, shoeless street kids like Rolando,
whose warmth, smarts, and loyalty would eventually make him a friend for
life.
On our visits, Mom and Pop always brought people in the Colonia El
Bosque and San Vicente neighborhoods some love from California: all the
stuff in the giant cardboard boxes—sometimes as many as nineteen—full of
contraband sold to people who came from all over the country to buy it. In
California Pop would cut deals with Khalil and the raspy-voiced guys at
Hunt’s Donuts. Then, he, Mom, and Mamá Tey would ship the boxes on the
passenger planes that we flew on into Ilopango Airport. When we arrived,
the boxes were put in hangars, where they had to be retrieved and taken
through customs.
Pop got stuff through customs using his magical words—well, words and
money—and magic boxes of cigarettes. We took many trips thanks to Pop’s
airline discount. We’d get off the plane and a Wilkes Bashford–suited Pop
would smile and shake hands with all the military guys he’d call mi
distinguido, mi estimado, and other words that made Pop sound like he was
some dignitary. Waiting for us at the airport every time was Sargento
Melara, the low-level military guy whose little mustache and predictable
smile made him look like a dark Charlie Chaplin—or a Salvadoran Hitler.
Melara was the first of the many men at the Ilopango airport—and later at
the customs warehouse—to receive the magic Marlboro boxes. Sargento
Melara’s box usually had a $100 bill inserted in it, while the other guys—
the immigration officials, the customs guys, and the military guys who
looked like bosses—got magic boxes with $50.
Mom’s boxes went to her mother’s house in San Vicente. Her boxes
always felt better, more moral, because they were mostly filled with
harmless stuff she gave away to family and friends—old clothes, cheap
toys, diapers, baby lotion, Avon products, toothpaste, soap, detergents, and
all kinds of other household items. Pop’s cardboard boxes filled with
contraband and guns were another story. Whenever I complained about
their dealings or got angry at Pop over the boxes, Mom would remind me,
“That ‘stolen stuff’ is paying for your education and upbringing.”

I didn’t know it as a kid, but it was Tía Esperanza who first suggested to
Mamá Tey that my family bring black market goods to El Salvador. Both
women grew up in the profound, Depression-era poverty of the mesones
and sought creative ways for their families to escape it. This was the most
effective. Before Pop started working for United Airlines and used his new
position to expand and modernize the operation, Mamá Tey would take the
goods by boat, the cheapest way to transport stuff from San Francisco to El
Salvador. The same gentle, fleshy hands that lovingly sewed me and my
siblings’ clothes and cooked us pupusas de chicharron also held the .38 that
Pop taught her to use at her house on Twentieth, near Valencia, in the same
yard we played in. After being robbed twice on two separate journeys,
Mamá Tey had grown tired of it and asked Pop to teach her how to use one
of his guns. She eventually ended up firing it at crooks on two occasions
during her long boat journeys.
When my cousin Adilio and I arrived from a day trip that summer of
1975, Rolando, my best friend in all of El Salvador at the time, was sitting
on the concrete bench beneath the almond tree in front of Tía Esperanza’s
house. Tía Esperanza, my dad’s cousin, was in her living room. She’d
grown up with Pop when he lived in the mesón and was about a year older
than him. They used to go to the Sociedad de Obreros, El Casino Juvenil,
and other halls where they danced to the music of Luis Alcaraz, Sonora
Matancera, Benny Goodman, and others.
“Mr. Robert,” she said in her funny accent. Her head and body tilted
sideward in a strange way, like she was about to start dancing. “How gwar
yu? And yu, Mr. Rolan? How gwar yu?”
Tía Esperanza had been putting my family up on our visits as far back as
I could remember. She’d grown up barefoot in a mesón like Pop. Also like
Pop, she was funny and fun to be around. She’d married Pop’s cousin, a guy
who then left her to raise their three sons alone. As a single mom, she
hustled, selling goods from the US, loaning money, and doing other things
that allowed her to save enough to buy a small piece of land on Colonia El
Bosque and build a home there. Tía Esperanza had known Pop since the
years of dancing and drinking before Pop left for Mexico in 1949. The fruit
of so many years of friendship, poverty, and fun was Tía Esperanza and
Pop’s loyalty to each other. She seemed to have a silent pact with him to
keep me distracted while Pop did his business—and from his puteando with
women.

Tía Esperanza was watching the news, which was full of military guys
and blue-and-white flags. One of the generals with a thick mustache and a
booty chin kept talking about terroristas.
“Look, boys,” she said. “There’s Presidente Molina!” Tía Esperanza
leapt out of her chair, grabbed us, and started tooting military music as she
marched us around the living room, as if she were Captain Kangaroo
leading a bunch of kids.
“Here’s El Señor Presidente!” she proclaimed, popping out her eyes and
pursing her lips in an imitation of the gorilla-esque General Armando
Molina. Molina was another in the long line of military men who followed
the guy called El General that Tía Esperanza, Pop, and Mamá Tey would
sometimes talk about.
“That serote assassin is pretty evil,” she sighed. “He massacred all those
students last month.” This was the violent stuff that had upset Alonso and
his friends. “Molina’s not very smart, though.”
We laughed.
“You know who’s smart?” she asked en voz bajita—in a low, quiet voice
—as she looked out to the house of the motorcycle military guy next door.
“Who?”
“Los muchachos.”
“Who?”
“The rebeldes, the young men and women opposing Molina and the other
fascistas. They move in the shadows without that hijueputa and his military
finding out. That takes huevos and smarts.”
Her curse words tickled Rolando and me, as she continued to sing the
praises of los muchachos. This muchachos term—which literally referred to
all young men like me throughout the Spanish-speaking world—provoked
my curiosity.
“You know who’s one of the muchachos?” she asked in a much lower
voice.
“Who?”
“Adilio’s friend Alonso, that’s who.”
“You mean that creep I beat in chess?” I fired back rhetorically. “I hate
that guy!” My temper flared. “You know what he told me, Tía?”
“What?”
“Something really evil, something I’ll never forget.”
“And what’s that, son?”

“He said to me, ‘Your country, the United States of America, is the
biggest piece of shit on earth!’ I told him ‘You don’t know anything about
America! Shut up!’ And I left.”
Tía Esperanza paused, as if searching for the right words.
“You know, Robertillo,” she said, her voice abruptly shifting to a more
serious tone. “Los Uniden is your home. Yes. But you know it’s not perfect,
right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. ’Cuz I’d hate for you to grow up with illusions. You’re born in
America, but remember, Robertillo: you’re also Salvadoreño—and we’re all
Americanos here, too, Latinoamericanos.”
I listened to her halfheartedly, unable to get my mind off that asshole
Alonso.
The next day Tía Esperanza, Pop, Adilio, and some of Tía Esperanza’s
smaller grandkids packed up into a van, and we went to Panchimalco, one
of the last Salvadoran towns with indigenous communities. After driving
for about forty-five minutes, we finally arrived at our first stop, La Puerta
del Diablo, the Devil’s Door. As we climbed in elevation, clear blue skies
had given way to clouds that gave a misty, mystical air to the lush green
mountains.
“Roberto, come and see the view,” Pop said to me from near the edge,
near the protective rail, in the reassuring, fatherly tone I craved so much.
“It’s spectacular!” Even ten feet from the edge, vertigo spun my stomach
and head, giving me pause. But I decided to go anyway, just to be close to
Pop.
“Look down there,” Pop said, gazing into the gigantic crevasse below.
“That’s el abismo.”
“Why do they call it La Puerta del Diablo?” I asked, after recovering my
composure.
“The legend is that La Puerta del Diablo was created when a big
mountain split in two after the devil fled with the daughter of a nearby
landowner, some rich guy named Renderos,” Adilio declared in the
collegiate tone he’d adopted since starting at the university.
This Puerta del Diablo myth mingled with the stories already swirling in
my mind about Los Planes and Panchimalco, which Rolando and some of
the other mara gathered on Calle B had told me when I told them where we
were headed.

“La Puerta del Diablo is a place where military escuadrones de la muerte
take people to shoot them or hack them to pieces,” Rolando had said. “They
then shove them over the edge or bury them in mass graves outside of
Panchimalco.” He’d sounded as though he was sharing a ghost story. That
phrase—escuadrones de la muerte—hung an ominous dark cloud over the
Devil’s Door.1 The border separating a child’s fascination with ghouls,
myths, and demons from the dark truth of life disappeared here.
From La Puerta del Diablo we drove down the mountains toward
Panchimalco, which you could see from the planes. Its white church and all
the redbrick rooftops made it look a little like some idyllic Italian mountain
town.
Pop loved coming to Panchimalco. The Sunday we visited, the
townspeople were getting ready to go to church in the afternoon. Older
indigenous women—with wrinkles, tan skin, flowered shirts, and cotton
dresses like my maternal grandmother, Mamá Clothi—marched in
processions. Alongside them were girls whose intense looks and playful
smiles reminded me of Lorena, the pretty girl who lived across the street
from Tía Esperanza. They wore hooped earrings with their traditional
dresses. Everybody carried flowers, lots of flowers; pink and green and red
and white and orange. Visiting Panchimalco made me associate indigenous
people with beautiful colors.
Pop had mentioned that his grandmothers were indigenous and I’d once
heard Pop say that most of the indios had been masacrados, the same word
Adilio’s student friends used to refer to what the military did. Beyond that,
there was a giant silencio. Still, I hoped that being part indigenous could
help give me a better sense of who Pop’s family was—who I was.
Watching some indigenous kids playing, I decided to ask. “Hey, Pop,
didn’t you once say your abuelas were india?”
“Yes,” he answered.
My chest swelled with pride. I knew it. Behind all that silencio, we were
connected to this indigenous community.
“So, then, your father was part indio and we’re part indio too, right,
Pop?”
“My father is one hundred percent hijueputa,” Pop responded.
We saw indigenous people. They looked back at us. We looked like some
of them. Even so, throughout my childhood, my family had most often
referred to our ancestors as Españoles. And despite our heritage, the only

time we interacted with indigenous people was when we visited tourist
places like Chalchuapa or Panchimalco. Worse, Pop and others used slurs
like “cara de indio” (face of an Indian) for “ugly” and “indio patas rajadas”
(Indian cracked feet, i.e., barefoot) for “backward and dumb.” But the
reasons for the lack of interaction remained in silencio—Pop’s silencio, as
well as El Salvador’s.

6

Ahuachapán, El Salvador
1931

“Aaaayyyy!” screamed a voice. “Aaaayyyy! Aaaaayyyyyy!” The
harrowing noise coming from the coffee fields could be heard far beyond
the trees, grass, and greenery near the plantation where Ramóncito, his best
friend Ricardo, and other boys were playing escondelero (hide-and-seek)
and ladrón librado (cops and robbers), all the way to the hulking, medievallooking white cuartel, the city’s largest structure, which housed hundreds of
soldiers, strategically located on a hill overlooking the center of
Ahuachapán and surrounding neighborhoods, like Barrio Santa Cruz.
“Hear that?” said one of the boys, pulling out of his ladrón librado police
role momentarily. “Let’s go see what’s going on.”
The boys sped across the field to the coffee plantation. From a distance,
the group of indigenous men and other people gathered anxiously near the
honey-processing plant looked serious. Ramóncito and the boys moved
closer.
They reached the gathering and saw the source of the commotion: an
indigenous worker writhing in anguish on the ground. Eager to know what
had happened, Ramóncito and his band of barefoot compadres navigated
through the indigenous men, their bosses, and the men in baggy pants with
guns on their belts, the guardias who protected the plantation.
“What happened?” Ramóncito asked.
“Can’t you see? He fell into a vat of hot honey,” barked one of the
guardias.

Ramóncito stared at the red gashes of melting skin on the man—it looked
like someone had smashed rotten red coffee beans on him and then spread
them across his entire body. The pasty, reddish-yellow burns horrified
Ramóncito and the boys, especially when the injured man kept screaming
“Aaaaayyyyyy!” Some of the injured man’s coworkers and bosses ran
around trying to figure out what to do. Most of the other men watched in
silencio. Days later, their coworker died, overcome by a treatable ailment—
gangrene—for which indigenous people didn’t get treatment in the hospital
they couldn’t access.
Ramóncito rushed home to tell Mamá Tey and Mamá Fina what had
happened. Ricardo ran home to tell his older brother, Alfonso Luna. Later
that day, Ramóncito went to Ricardo and Alfonso’s home, an upper-middleclass two-story house down the street from the shack where he lived with
Mamá Tey and Mamá Fina.
“Damn those terratenientes!” fumed Alfonso Luna to his abuelita while
Ricardo and Ramóncito started playing chibolas (marbles). “The life of the
indio and the worker is worth nothing to these people.”
As Alfonso spoke, Ramóncito noticed that his big, intense brown eyes
held sadness and anger—very different from the funny, friendly look they
had when he played with them. This was a different young man from the
one who called the eight-year-old Ramóncito “Monchito,” another name he
loved. The young UES student was handsome in a rich person’s way; his
thick wavy slicked black hair, thick eyebrows, and pouty lips made him
look to Ramóncito like a heavier-set version of a movie star he saw in the
papers, Rudolph Valentino.
“You need to calmarte, Alfonso,” Ramóncito heard the elderly woman
admonish her beloved grandson. “You never know who’s listening,
especially now.” Doña Indalicia went on to talk about “bad signs” that
meant awful things in El Salvador like they did when indigenous lands were
first expropriated in the late nineteenth century.1 She also spoke about ejidos
(plots of communal land) being “taken away” from indigenous families
who lived on them in the 1880s. But the university student’s fierce look said
that anger had already closed his ears. He was only nineteen and
hardheaded, as his grandmother said.
While the adults talked, Ramóncito, whose greatest passion was reading,
flipped through the Red Star, the student paper that Alfonso worked on at
the UES in the capital. He didn’t understand most of what he read, but had a

sense that Alfonso and the Red Star were against the president, a man
named Araujo, the one his family in Ataco cursed about, too.
Ramóncito loved that Alfonso talked a lot about educación, the thing the
boy dreamed could make his life better. Talk of educación for the
indigenous people and a universidad popular for workers elated him. So did
his older university-student friend telling him to “make sure nothing stops
you from getting your educación, Monchito.”
After he finished looking through the paper, Ramóncito went back to
playing marbles with Ricardo. Alfonso bought Ramóncito and the other
poor kids the marbles as well as capiruchos (tops). He also provided
Ramóncito with the leather, clothes hangers, and rubber bands to make
slingshots, which the boy, who couldn’t even afford underwear, would
never have been able to afford otherwise. When they weren’t shooting their
slingshots at each other and at other boys and girls—and adults—in the
barrio, Ricardo and Ramóncito shot at squirrels, birds, lizards, and other
animals.
For Ramóncito, hunting zopilotes wasn’t just a game, but a way to help
out his grandmother, Mamá Fina. He and Ricardo fired rocks, either
knocking the ugly vulture from the tree or shooting it in a nearby ravine,
before dragging the bloodied black bird home to Mamá Fina with great
excitement. Fina rubbed the blood of the zopilote on her legs to cure her
eczema, one of many indigenous remedies used by people who couldn’t
afford to go to the hospital Mamá Fina’s father, Don Sixto, had helped
build. Ramóncito also brought Mamá Fina hulking, live sapos sabaneros,
whose croaking made him laugh as he watched her rub the belly of the
rubbery beasts on her legs, too.
Indigenous remedies were not things some people, especially rich people,
liked, including Ramóncito’s padre, Don Miguel Rodríguez. While Alfonso
talked about the indio remedies in an admiring and respectful way,
Ramóncito heard Don Miguel speak about them in opposite terms, the same
terms he used to refer to the indios themselves, like “indio patas rajadas,” or
“indios cerotes,” Indian shits.
Though the man hardly acknowledged Ramóncito, Don Miguel’s mother,
Mamá Juanita, brought Ramóncito to visit the family’s coffee-rich
plantation to ride horses and play among her aunts and uncles and the
indigenous workers whose names he barely knew. My family owns eighty
cows and has lots of servants, Ramóncito would tell himself proudly, as if

his grandfather Don Salvador’s stately mansion and massive estate were
his.
Ramóncito knew Mamá Juanita was a Náhuat Indian, a rich Náhuat
Indian. Like the other indigenous people on the plantation, she had big,
grape-shaped eyes and full lips. Ramóncito noticed the quiet ways his
grandmother exercised her authority—with looks, by pointing with her
mouth (a Náhuat means of communication used by many Salvadorans), or
in private conversations with her kids and workers.
But despite her power, she, too, lacked what Ramóncito most craved:
education.
“I can teach you how to read numbers, Mamá Juanita,” the boy told his
grandmother, proud of what he’d learned in the first grade and picked up on
his own.
Ramóncito admired his father in part because he had that education like
Alfonso. Don Miguel had studied agronomy at university in Guatemala.
The boy wondered how he could get the money for his own education.
With Mamá Juanita’s encouragement and promises of protection,
Ramóncito got the courage one August day to ask his father to help him
with his dream.
His father was in the mansion’s garden when Ramóncito walked up
nervously and said, “Don Miguel.”
“Yes? What do you want?” Don Miguel asked with that confident look
that Ramóncito noticed he and other rich people had.
“Don Miguel,” Ramóncito blurted out, “I want to get an education. I
want to learn.”
“I see,” Miguel said. “Why do you want to get an education,
Ramóncito?”
“I know it will be good for me to learn. I’ll be able to help my mother
and grandmother.”
Don Miguel thought about the boy’s request, stopping as if to weigh
options. Finally, he looked at Ramóncito and said, “OK. We’re going to
send you to a private school.”
Ramóncito let loose an unusually big smile and nearly danced into the
heavens at the news. He would’ve been satisfied getting his father’s help to
pay for the paper, pencils, uniform, and other things he needed for public
school, but getting the tuition to a private school—that was beyond what he
had dreamed!

When he returned home to Ahuachapán, Ramóncito burst with joy as he
shared the good news with Mamá Tey and Mamá Fina. They celebrated
with a dinner of arroz y frijoles and a special treat: chengas, the big tortillas
the boy loved to eat with manteca y sal. The future looked better, for a
moment at least.
In school, Ramóncito excelled, especially in language arts. No longer
traveling between Ahuachapán and San Salvador when Mamá Tey went to
be with Chico, Ramóncito stayed with Mamá Fina full-time and settled into
being like all the other boys and girls going to school. His dream had been
realized. Those were among the most memorable moments in the boy’s life,
until the school director approached him a few weeks into the term.
“Ramóncito,” said the director, “I have some news for you.”
“Yes, Maestro?”
“Your father didn’t pay the first installment for your schooling.”
The boy stood quietly in his uniform, which he cherished, deflated.
“Can you go and tell Tey to pay just a month’s tuition? I promise we will
find a way to pardon the rest of the payment through August.”
“I don’t know, sir. I’ll try.”
Ramóncito came home worried. His dream had started to smell like the
coffee around the hacienda that had started rotting when growing tensions
between workers and cafetaleros slowed production. But he didn’t lose
hope.
On hearing the news, Tey’s face lost its usual sunny look. With the
bubbly, nervous sadness of someone delivering news about the death of a
relative, Tey approached Ramóncito.
“Mijo, we simply don’t have the money to pay anything to the school.”
“Why not, Mamá?” the boy pleaded, his eyes starting to brim with tears
—and anger.
“I’m sorry, son. I’m truly sorry,” she told him, her eyes welling up, too.
Ramóncito looked at his mother and said nothing, pausing.
The moment of happiness was over. The boy knew he had not yet found a
way out of the abyss where most children in El Salvador lived.
“My father is a shit of a man,” said the boy in the intonations he’d
learned from his rich aunts and uncles, before running out to cry on the dirt
path outside Mamá Tey’s shack.
Several months passed and Ramóncito returned to his wanderings; his
young life continued to be fragmented between homes, between families,

and between the light life of the elite and the dark demimonde of
ilegitimidad.
And then things got worse for Ramóncito and everyone else in El
Salvador: two days before Ramóncito’s ninth birthday, on August 27, 1931,
the headlines throughout the country announced a precipitous collapse in
the world price of coffee.2 The price of the dark brown beans picked by the
workers dropped from seventy-five to fifteen centavos for each tarea of
coffee picked plus two tortillas and a handful of beans.
The plunging price of coffee also meant a lowered value on human life,
especially indigenous and ilegítimo life. Conflict was on the horizon. With
each passing month that the price of coffee dropped, exploiting, abusing,
and killing poor coffee workers became easier, as the desperation in the
Salvadoran countryside grew. The increasingly explosive situation also
made coffee cheaper for the primary consumers of the bloodiest beans in
history: the Americanos.

Part III

7

Ilopango, El Salvador
2015

“I trained with the Americanos when they first came in the eighties,”
Isaias tells me. My driver and I are descending a steep, grassy hill in
Ilopango, a small lakeside city east of San Salvador, to the gang-prevention
event taking place below. Isaias’s big accordion smile and animated eyes
signal pride. However, I’m too excited about finally meeting Raúl Mijango
to engage with Isaias.
During the drive from the city to Ilopango, Isaias and I talked about news
reports that the Pentagon had begun preparations to deploy 280
camouflaged US troops to help fight gangs in Central America,1 including
El Salvador, through “security cooperation training exercises.” We were on
our way to meet some of those gang members the Pentagon sent trainers to
help the Salvadoran military combat. President Salvador Sánchez Cerén
signed the agreement for El Salvador. During the civil war of the 1980s and
early ’90s, Cerén was firmly on the other side of things, serving as a
commander in the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
Named for Farabundo Martí, the great revolutionary leader of the early
1930s, the FMLN was a guerrilla army that sought to overthrow the USbacked Salvadoran government headed by the Christian Democrats in the
’80s and in the late ’80s and ’90s by ARENA (Alianza Republicana
Nacionalista), the conservative, right-wing party founded by Roberto
D’Aubuisson, a party whose slogan was “El Salvador will be the tomb of
the reds.” During the war, D’Aubuisson, a former major trained at the US

military’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, is widely
believed to have led the escuadrones de la muerte, armed paramilitary units
of off-duty soldiers, police, and other security forces that carried out
extrajudicial killings, torture, and forced disappearances. The escuadrones
were the Salvadoran military’s equivalent of the Einsatzgruppen, Nazi death
squads charged with ethnic cleansing and other mass killings. D’Aubuisson
once told three European journalists, “You Germans were very intelligent.
You realized that the Jews were responsible for the spread of communism,
and you began to kill them.”2
In the sixties and seventies, five separate politico-military organizations,
each with its own political orientation and program, started fighting poverty
and the massive repression by El Salvador’s military dictatorships before
eventually coming together to form the umbrella organization of FMLN in
1980. After the war, the FMLN sought change—and power—through
elections, and became a political party that won the presidency in 2009 and
then again in 2014, when Cerén was elected. Like Cerén, Mijango is a
former FMLN comandante, but from a different faction within the
organization.
The fact that Cerén, who himself had been pursued by the death squads,
had agreed to these exercises with the US military was as dangerous as it
was disgusting. The mighty Pentagon’s Southern Command was preparing
to escalate the fight against small kids, teens, and other gang members. War
was in the air, even at an event organized to promote peace among gang
members.
An old friend from the war era who does gang-prevention work with atrisk youth told me about the event—the inauguration of a nursery and
gardening project for current and former members of Mara Salvatrucha
(MS), the dominant gang in the area, an event organized by Mijango,
Catholic leaders, nongovernmental organizations, and other allies. Will and
Luis, two members of MS I met hanging out at the reception desk on the
top of the hill, look visibly tense, wary of all the blue-uniformed chota,
National Civil Police officers, who clutch their M16s as they patrol the
forest and hills around the barn where the meeting’s taking place. Will and
Luis’s reaction is understandable given that they live outside of Ilopango in
what was, until recently, an extremely violent area, hotly contested by rival
gangs.

“I have to watch out for them as much or more than I do 18th Street,”
Will, a baby-faced seventeen-year-old, tells me; 18th Street is another mara
and his clika’s main enemy. Both gangs join the military, the police, and
other security forces in escalating the violence and killing. “[The police]
picked me up, beat me, and left me in 18th Street territory to be killed,” he
says. While many talk about how LA gang culture has migrated to El
Salvador, few remember that LAPD-style policing has, too.
Will has dark skin, a thick nose, and a shy smile. His baggy pants and
baseball cap give him a very LA look. He’s also wearing cheap tennis
shoes, a loose white tee, and a long short-sleeved shirt—he’s
indistinguishable from the poor, young, newbie gang members I remember
from MacArthur Park and Pico Union, where the gangs were born.
Will’s twenty-seven-year-old friend and MS veterano, Luis, also carries
an attitude reminiscent of youth gangs in LA’s MacArthur Park in the
nineties. But there’s no smile on his face. Luis’s dour look is that of a
hardened gang member, one whose inability to smile often means he’s
beaten, hurt, and killed enough people to be way beyond the point of no
return.
Luis strikes a skeptical gangster lean and says he’s here in the barn to
“check out what this is about.” He and Will peek out the window of the
barn toward a nearby greenhouse that Interpeace, the organization that
sponsors Mijango’s work, uses as part of the jobs component of his gangalternative program.
“Working in the garden makes me feel good,” Will confides with the shy
smile. “I have a wife and a four-month-old son, and I’m trying to get
straight so I can support them.” Will’s wife and son are among over five
hundred thousand Salvadorans—an eighth of the country’s population3—
who depend on gang-affiliated family members for income and other
support. “It’s hard because of pressures inside and outside, from the other
gangs, and especially the cops.”
Will’s much more open than Luis to talking about what led him to a gang
(being poor, having a fucked-up stepfather, needing camaraderie). The older
marero’s face looks like he has VER, OÍR Y CALLAR graffitied across it. I look
at Luis to see if the possibility of working in the greenhouse or in the
nearby fields as part of the gang-prevention program organized by Raúl
Mijango and his allies has any appeal.

“It looks like something worth checking out, but I’m not going to join
yet. I have some issues to deal with,” Luis says, before admitting that he’s
killed 18th Street members and is likely to continue doing so. “And,” he
quickly adds with raised eyebrows and a sudden smile, “maybe some
police.”
He starts for the door of the barn. Will abruptly says adiós and rushes
after his friend. Left in the barn alone, I imagine that Luis will likely end up
dead. But I’m not sure about Will. He wants to stop crossing that thin line
between love and hate in a country that is once again about to be inundated
with increased US military presence, which has produced so much violence
historically. The larger question is whether El Salvador will ever support
young mareros like Will who are thinking about getting out of la vida loca.
That’s one of the things I want to speak with Mijango about.
Alex Sánchez told me Mijango could help me get a better sense about
what turns salvageable kids like Will into stone-cold killers like Luis. I get
ready to leave the barn, wishing Alex was here to share his perspective.
Alex doesn’t just know the origins of MS-13 in Pico Union and LA on a
personal level and have an inside view on the complexities of gang life
that’s largely missing from sensationalized news stories; he’s also seen the
violence in El Salvador firsthand. Growing up near Ilopango, Alex saw the
severed heads of government victims in the late seventies. After migrating
to Los Angeles, where he became an MS-13 gang member, he was deported
back to El Salvador. Once again he encountered severed heads, this time
those of gang members killed by Sombra Negra, new escuadrones de la
muerte linked to police here in the early nineties. Alex can connect the
severed heads that dot the timeline of wartime and postwar Salvadoran
history.
I walk from the barn back to the formal inauguration ceremony, which is
in progress in the field beyond. Nearby, plastic picnic tables are surrounded
by gang members filling out job applications. At the front is a makeshift
stage set up against a wall of a small municipal building with a banner that
says MUNICIPAL FARM and the name of the city’s mayor, Salvador Ruano,
which is painted and plastered everywhere. All around us are those cops
with the M16s that are most often aimed at MS-13 or 18th Street members.
On the stage, which faces a forest, there’s a large table surrounded by flags
(El Salvador’s, Ilopango’s, and others). Sitting at the table are several
speakers: leaders of NGOs, nuns, priests, and several tattooed young men,

gang members. Directly in front of the stage is a large white cloth tent
buzzing with the hopes and aspirations of more than two hundred
Ilopanguenses. At the center of the crowd is its leader, Raúl Mijango.
In 2012, Mijango and a motley crew of allies—Catholic church leaders,
gang members, and leaders of nongovernmental organizations—started
promoting peace following the tregua. Because the unpopularity of the
murderous gangs made them the third rail in Salvadoran politics, the
negotiations were conducted in secret with the covert support of the FMLNled government and the more public support of the Organization of
American States.4 The process initially yielded fruit: the gang truce cut
homicides in half. Then the truce’s demise in 2013 eventually led to the
record-breaking homicide levels in El Salvador. The leaders gathered
around the large table are here in Ilopango to preserve what they can of the
peace in the face of the force they perceive as the biggest threat to their
efforts.
“I say with love and with respect to the United States government, take
responsibility!” Ilopango mayor Salvador Ruano is standing, mic in hand,
speaking to an imaginary United States—no embassy officials accepted the
invitation to attend. “You brought the gangs from the United States when
you deported them,” he says. “So we now ask you to give your support
directly to local communities, despite our differences—because
Salvadorans need peace.”
The gathering is surreal. ARENA guys like Ruano, whose small eyes and
tight suit make him look like a puffy character from a Botero painting, were
el enemigo in the 1980s and ’90s—right-wing, ARENA-party fascists and
members of other US-backed governments who were responsible for the
lion’s share of mass murder by government forces during the war. Now
Ruano is calling the US out for opposing the gang truce. In the US
opposition to the truce, I hear echoes of the LAPD’s opposition to truces in
early-nineties LA. Opposing gang truces appears to be another US export,
along with perpetual military aid from the Pentagon.
These strange postwar alliances and the secrecy behind the truce are but a
couple of the things that make me skeptical about both Mijango, the FMLN
government’s motives, and the gang-truce process. During the war, it was
clear and obvious to many that the “death squad government of El
Salvador” was the bad guy opposed by the FMLN, whose struggle enjoyed
worldwide solidarity, including from hundreds of thousands in the US. Now

that the FMLN has become the institution it was once fighting against, it’s
harder to discern who’s in the wrong.
“There will be no concertación,” Mijango says, as he stands and picks up
where Ruano left off, “if one important actor continues to block peace
efforts. The United States is having an unhealthy influence on the current
government.”
Regardless of what one thinks of his secretive tactics and the in-your-face
politics considered controversial by some, Mijango deserves respect, if only
because of his unique ability to navigate the chaos and confusion of postwar
Salvadoran politics. During the FMLN’s more high-minded era, Mijango
trained special-forces units. He can read the tea leaves of security policies
like few others.
“We’ve seen this before, these repeating interventionist schemes of the
United States,” Mijango says, “militarizing public security to expand its
power.” After Mijango finishes his speech, I corner him; we speak briefly
about his program and agree to meet the next day.
Using his connection to El Salvador’s security minister, David Munguía
Payés, Mijango brokered the deal between MS-13 and 18th Street from
within the walls of the high-security prison in Zacatecoluca, better known
as Zacatraz. Joining him as mediator of the process was Monsignor Fabio
Colindres, a Catholic bishop. Mijango’s most questionable step in the
process was conducting the negotiations between gangs in secret, though
with the clandestine support of the government, outside of open institutional
channels. No major politician or political party wanted to risk the wrath of
Salvadoran voters tired of the country’s perpetual violence, which they
blamed largely on the gangs.
His extralegal approach to the truce left many thorny questions. Should
the negotiations have been undertaken in secret in a country where
institutionalized secrets have already caused so much bloodshed? What do
the gangs, government, and other parties have to hide? And regardless of
the secretive way the negotiations took place, the main question dogging
any such process remained: Should the FMLN government have negotiated
with murderers and other violent criminals? The truce died due to many
factors, including a lack of media scrutiny that inspired skepticism of its
validity, as well as smaller gangs’ refusal to participate. El Salvador’s
labyrinth of intersecting interests also did its part to kill the truce: ARENA
and other right-wing politicians joined the US embassy in attacking the

agreement, claiming its true goal was to buy the gangs time to grow their
power. Another important factor in the truce’s failure was that a large
segment of the Salvadoran populace was simply opposed to negotiating
with gangs. Eventually Cerén and the government rejected the truce and,
instead, escalated the US-backed mano dura anti-gang policies by
reintroducing El Salvador’s dreaded rapid-response military battalions into
the postwar scenario. Cerén’s rejection was hypocritical to critics who
remembered that he was a part of the FMLN’s negotiating team during the
1992 peace accords. Among other measures designed to put the country on
the path to sustainable peace, the accords of 1992 had abolished these same
rapid-response units containing the escuadrones de la muerte.
The next day, Isaias picks me up at my cousin’s at 7:30 a.m. with his
usual military precision to drive me to Mijango’s office. He drops me in
front of the black iron gate of the office of Interpeace, an international
violence-prevention organization sponsoring Mijango’s work, in central San
Salvador, then leaves. I go into the lobby to wait for Mijango. Fifteen
minutes later, he enters wearing a red guayabera and a big smile that
accompanies his apologies for starting late. He begins right where he left
off the conversation with me the previous day.
“You know what worsens the violence?” he asks rhetorically. “The lack
of justice in [the US and Salvadoran governments] that allows the gangs
and others to work in an environment where the rule of law doesn’t exist.”
“How so?”
“For seventeen years, as the gang problem started developing in El
Salvador, the state’s only response was repression,” he says, smirking in
disgust. “With the help of the US Department of Justice, all they came up
with was mano dura.”
Ten years later, the idea that former US attorney general William Barr
sent US Justice Department trainers and aid to El Salvador5 to institute
policing models based on Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policing is
still disturbing when we consider studies that show that such policies have
led to increased homicide rates and gang power.6 So is a more recent fact:
that Giuliani visited El Salvador earlier this year as a highly paid consultant
to the National Association of Private Enterprise, the main association of
Salvadoran big business, and encouraged the same failed mano dura
approach to violence reduction, saying, “The biggest problem in New York

was the mafia and then drug traffickers, but here it’s two major gangs, and
these two gangs need to be annihilated.”7
“They started with mano dura, then created super mano dura, ridiculo de
mano dura, mano requete dura, mano de hierro, and all that shit. Nothing
worked. All it did was escalate the violence.” Mijango’s mocking mano
dura echoes how I feel about two of Pop’s favorite sayings, “Hands of steel,
silk gloves” and “Saints are made by being beaten”—BS, stuff that only
pushed the adolescent me to escalate to greater rebellion.
“We will convert those generating the violence into part of the solution,”
he says, “but nobody here wants to talk peace. Not even my excompañeros.” In their efforts to secure votes for elections, both the FMLN
and ARENA parties negotiated secretly with the gangs to win the support of
their hundreds of thousands of followers. The political parties also wanted
the gangs to increase or minimize violence in areas that were beneficial to
their respective candidates.
“I’m fed up with political party politics. So many years struggling,
developing a sense of brotherhood and bonds of deep solidarity with your
compañeros. So much that you would have given your life for, for your
compañeros, as many did.
“Now my main political enemies are my same compañeros,” he says.
“I’m not good for this. It used to be clear who my enemy is. I prefer to
leave for another way of life, not keep fighting with the same compañeros.”
The vertigo returns—like I’m Alice in Wonderland or Neo in the first
Matrix movie, stretching my head and body as I tumble down the rabbit
hole into a world in which all the rules have changed.
“I’m ashamed,” says Mijango. “This situation with the FMLN and the
gangs is as much of an emotional problem as it is a political one.”
Whoa. The decades of this dude’s experience of war and postwar gang
violence led this heavy-duty Salvadoran political animal to include
“emotional” issues alongside big-ticket causes like history, economic
issues, and US policy as part of the gang-and-violence equation.
I sit pondering his statement, confused about the violence here, when a
young man in a clean white button-down shirt walks in. Mijango gets up
immediately and leaves the office saying, “I’ll be right back, but you two
should talk.”
“I’m Roberto.”
“I’m Santiago.”

“Do you work with Raúl?”
“In a way, you could say, yes.”
His response tells me he’s the brilliant young marero who Mijango told
me acts as a kind of gang diplomat, a guy who speaks publicly for both
gangs—to political parties, to the media, to the Church and other
institutional sectors. He’s one of the only people who speaks for tens of
thousands of gang members in El Salvador.8 Santiago is part of an
unprecedented political commission that MS-13 and 18th Street established
to negotiate and speak on behalf of their interests.
“Are you involved . . .” I say before he cuts me off.
“I have to go, but we can speak later, if you wish.”
“Yes. Definitely,” I respond, and we exchange phone numbers.
The search for Mijango has morphed into a journey to meet and speak
with Santiago, who, by virtue of his unique, high position in the mara
universe, probably has important things to say, things that will help me in
my quest to understand what led him and his peers to rebel and join gangs. I
also suspect that I’ll run into those things that turned a bookish Mr. Peabody
into a familiar rebel from my past: Tito.

8

San Salvador
1976

“Hola, joven,” the ever execrable Don EB said as he sashayed into Tía
Esperanza’s house, past the bench next to the almond tree I was sitting
under. It was 1976. I was thirteen years old and back in El Salvador for
winter vacation, which for Pop meant a month of his cardboard boxes,
business activities, and other bullshit, including what he engaged in with
Don EB. I didn’t say shit. Not even a nod for that cerote hijuesuputamadre
as he walked by.
As he did at least a couple of times a week, Enrique Barrientos drove up
in his slime green Citroën to Tía Esperanza’s to take Pop on one of their
getaways that evening. Pop’s secret dealings—selling contraband, and
especially going puteando with Don EB—weren’t things I could ever get
used to, or wanted to. Rich, arrogant, and secretive, Don EB represented all
the worst things about El Salvador, the opposite of the Brady Bunch
American values that I, in my bookish, Mr. Peabody innocence, still clung
to.
Pop’s nighttime getaways went on while Mom visited her family in San
Vicente, which meant most of the time we were in El Salvador. Things were
slower, more rural at Mamá Clothi’s, where we did more outdoor stuff, like
climb the Chichontepec volcano, listen to and sing old Beatles songs on the
little plastic record-player box, chase dragonflies, and play in my
grandmother’s garden, where she fed me nances, jocotes, coyolitos, and my
favorite, anonas, the fruit that I cracked open to find big brown seeds

wrapped in meaty pink paradise. Mamá Clothi also had me tie up chickens
and turkeys, hang them upside down against the trunk of a nance or other
tree in her lush backyard, and then cut off their heads.
Mom preferred life in her town to that of the big city. I also liked the
simplicity of Mom’s family, where I had clear roots. Mamá Clothi’s house
and the family plot in the cemetery beside a giant ceiba tree had pictures of
her father, mother, and other relatives, including her husband, even though
my grandfather was a womanizing drunk leather tanner called El Garitón
(sentinel tower). I couldn’t say the same for Pop’s family, except for Mamá
Tey.
As he walked up to knock on the door, the Pierre Cardin cologne Pop
gave Don EB overwhelmed the sweet smell of the almond trees. Inside Tía
Esperanza’s, Pop did his usual routine, putting on his Ralph Lauren cologne
and a nice Lacoste shirt, getting stuff from his handbag, before hopping into
Don EB’s slimemobile. The things he took out of the handbag looked like
women’s perfumes, bras, and other goods. Pop’s whoring, his doublecrossing Mom, and my powerlessness to do anything about it made me
want to smash Don EB in the face. My stomach and chest and jaw hurt
from the rage I had toward him. This scene with Don EB looped and looped
in my head, the memory of it wrenching my gut for years after. I had finally
reached the limits of my silence. What was different this time was my great
impatience with the shadiness of it all.
As Pop and Don EB left, I paced around the front of Tía Esperanza’s
house trying to figure out what to do. Finally I decided to do something
different: act like Detective Columbo and go around the house interrogating
my family about Pop’s outings.
“Don’t fret about it, son. Go out and see your friends,” Tía Esperanza
said.
I sought out my cousin Adilio, who was in his room listening to some
music on low.
“Come on,” he responded, “let’s go get some Pop’s Ice Cream, no?”
I stormed out.
“Why do you want to break your head with that shit?” Oscar, Adilio’s
eldest brother, asked when I went to his apartment. “That’s what men do.
Be a man.”
I left his house and cried next to the almond tree in the yard of Tía
Esperanza’s complex. These answers just weren’t satisfying to me. I had to

do something so that I didn’t feel like I’d made up the whole situation or
like I was living a lie. So I did the unimaginable: I went into Pop’s bags to
find evidence of his infidelities, if only to prove to myself that everybody
else was lying or covering up for him.
Pop had a little handbag he always kept squirreled away under lock and
key, only miraculously I found it outside the cabinet, on the floor. I rifled
through all the stuff and found the proof I needed: boxes of Trojan rubbers.
I knew it. Pop is out fucking around on Mom. Fuck this shit. My father, my
mother, my family, this country: it was all a big fat lie. The lie made my
belly and head burst with acid. I couldn’t stand it. I grabbed the rubbers and
started blowing them up with the hot breath of my anger. Blown up in the
middle of his bedroom, all the clear rubbers looked like they were balloons
in Panchimalco.
I sat in the living room and waited for Pop to come home, caught
between wanting to get on a plane, crying, and feeling like cursing at him
with fire. The door opened and I knew to be ready for Pop to blow up at me.
Everybody else had already cleared out of the room, as if they all knew
what was about to happen. Pop rushed into his room.
“Hijuesesentamilputas, what the fuck have you done?”
I said nothing. Motherfucker. Callin’ me the son of sixty thousand whores
when you’re the one out cheating on Mom with whores.
“Hijuesesentamilputas,” he repeated as he walked back into the living
room and started taking off his belt. As he whipped me, my mind swirled
with rage. The whip on my ass, legs, and back hurt in that way that would
radiate shame long after the redness on my skin disappeared. The lashes
brought a furious heat, which stirred up a nameless deadening numbness.
Minutes later, after the numbness subsided, an unusual sensation appeared:
I felt strangely alive. A new part of me, a new me, had broken a long-held
silence and stood up to Pop, despite the predictable lashing.
Pop stormed out into the street, leaving me curled up in the fetal position
and crying on the cot I slept on. Despite the new feelings, the old shame
was still in me, too. I wanted to fly home to San Francisco and be with
Mom, Mem, Om, and Mima, even though they wouldn’t want to talk about
Pop’s shit either.
As he tended to do when he saw me sad or angry, Adilio crept into the
room to see if he could cheer me up.

“Hey, Chiriqua, let’s go get some gaseosas and drink them on the corner
with la mara.”
I didn’t respond. Pop’s beating had me in no mood to see friends or
anyone else. I just wanted to lie on the bed, furious and ashamed at what
had happened.
“All right,” he said, his tone accompanied by a breath and tilt of his head
that signaled the time for something new had come. “I want to show you
something I’ve been waiting to show you when you were old enough.”
“Come on,” he said en voz bajita, before coaxing me out back to the
almond tree near the barbed-wire and glass wall they shared with Don
Medardo, the guy everybody gossiped was in an escuadrón de la muerte.
“You sit there,” Adilio whispered to me in an unusually curt and serious
tone. He went to a small shed in the back of the yard and came back with a
shovel. Scoping around to make sure nobody was nearby, Adilio quickly
dug a hole near the almond tree. I imagined we were searching for a pirate’s
booty. Adilio dug fast, nonstop, until he found the treasure: a plastic
shopping bag.
“Quick. Let’s go to my room,” he said quietly, as we rushed farther back
in the yard, where Tía Esperanza had built a couple of small, concrete-block
apartments, the units her sons and their families lived in. Adilio was
nineteen and didn’t have his own family like his two older brothers, Memo
and Oscar, but he did have a little room in the back. We sat on his bed. One
by one, he took each item out of the plastic bag with great care, like he was
some priest at St. Anthony’s taking the Eucharist from the communion cup
in one of those ceremonies I could only play spectator in, as the only
member of my Catholic family who never had a first holy communion.
First came papers, stuff with scribbling on it, then a pamphlet, and then
black Maxell cassette tapes that looked like the contraband ones Pop
brought to El Salvador to sell or give as presents. Adilio displayed all the
contents of the shopping bag on his bed, which was covered in one of those
colorful woven indigenous blankets my mom brought to cover our beds
with back home. His pride hovered over the things on the bed and filled the
entire room.
“Check this out,” he said, holding the white pamphlet. Its pages were
soiled from heavy use. The pamphlet had about sixteen or so pages. The
front side had a curious logo: two machine guns pointing in opposite
directions. In between the machine guns were the words Fuerzas Populares

de Liberación Farabundo Martí and even bigger letters spelling FPL and the
name of the pamphlet, El Rebelde.
“Farabundo Martí? Who’s that?” I asked him in a louder tone than his.
“Shhhhhh,” he said. “Somebody’s gonna hear us, idiota.”
“OK, OK!”
“Farabundo Martí was a great revolucionario who fought El General in
the thirties or something,” he said. He seemed to assume I knew about this
El General guy. “Farabundo inspired the compas of today.”
“Compas?” I asked.
“That means compañeros, one of the names los muchachos—the
revolucionarios—call themselves.”
“That’s what Rolando, César, and Lorena call their classmates.”
“Yes,” Adilio said, his impatience clear. Joking Adilio, the guy who made
fun of my Spanish, brillo por su ausencia, conspicuous by his absence.
“That word has many meanings, including classmate, friend, lover, and
revolucionario.”
“Cool!”
“OK. Now shut up and listen to this: ‘Read El Rebelde with your
compañeros of the greatest confidence, making sure to take all the security
measures. Remember: el enemigo is cruel, criminal, and merciless, and the
rules of secretive work are a valuable way to combat them, to hit him
without his knowing where the hits are coming from.’”
Hit el enemigo without him knowing. Hmm . . . That sounded like how I
should’ve dealt with Don EB—and maybe Pop.
“Wow!” I exclaimed, curious and slightly scared. “What’s this about?”
“My friends at the university gave them to me—but you can’t tell
anybody, understand?” Adilio said, sounding unusually manly and selfimportant.
I sat quietly, my thirteen-year-old eyes taking in this secretive, almost
religious air that filled his little box of a room.
“Understand?”
“OK. I won’t. Doesn’t the government have all those military guys and
guns and airplanes and everything?”
“Yes, they do have all that,” Adilio said. “But the guerrilleros have the
spirit to fight—and the heart of the people.”
“Are you one of the muchachos, a guerrillero?”
“No. But some of my friends are. I just help them pass information.”

Wow, I thought. This is serious stuff from my cousin, normally the
funniest guy on the block. But Adilio’s political secrets made sense coming
from the son of Tía Esperanza, the woman who used to make us laugh
while puckering up her lips and marching like President Molina, the
military guy she called fascista.
“What about all those military people who live around here? Won’t they
arrest or hurt you if they find out you have this?”
“Yes, they’d hang me by the balls and make me eat them before killing
me. And now you know. So, you better keep quiet or they’re going to get
your little huevitos and make you eat them!”
“I won’t say anything. I promise.”
The recently shattered illusion of having a normal family made making a
familial promise feel weird. But I made it knowing I would, in fact, keep it.
I desperately needed to build trust with someone while I was in this foreign
place I hated at that moment, El Salvador.
“What’s on the tape?”
“Música de protesta. Nueva canción. Revolutionary music. Music by
people you’ve never heard of—Mercedes Sosa, Silvio Rodríguez, Cutumay
Camones, and Yolocamba I Ta. Here, check it out.” Adilio took one of the
black Maxell tapes labeled MÚSICA DE PROTESTA and started playing it. The
first song was called “Poema de Amor,” a simple song featuring a guitar, an
indigenous drum, and a funny, valeverguista voice singing verses based on
a poem by some guy who used to live near Tía Esperanza’s named Roque
Dalton. This one line in the song really hit me:
guanacos hijos puta

The way the singers referred to Salvadorans (guanacos) as “hijos de puta”
had a pride that surprised and reverberated in me in unexpected ways.
“Listening to this song makes you a real Salvadoreño,” he told me,
looking straight at me, as if somehow knowing how desperately my
fragmented thirteen-year-old heart wanted to be part of something whole.
The poem-song about the different qualities (some quite tongue-in-cheek)
that made one Salvadoran—working hard, migrating, going to prison,
building the Panama Canal, drinking, whoring, and smoking pot—sounded
like Dalton’s love poem for his people.
“Well? What do you think?” he asked me.

Most of the words were outside the scope of my limited Spanish. The
fear of all the neighbors who were also military men didn’t help either, but
Adilio’s powerful, strange pride, his mix of rage and reverie in sharing it,
for a brief moment, transformed my own rage into a meditation on what it
might mean for me, a curly-haired Mr. Peabody gringo, to call himself
Salvadoreño.
Then he read me a poem, “Todos,” also by that Roque Dalton guy. It
sounded like a lullaby Mom used to sing me, only this was a revolutionary
lullaby that woke me up instead of putting me to sleep. I didn’t understand
most of that poem either, but one line really had an impact on me:
Todos nacimos medio muertos en 1932.
We were all born half dead in 1932.
I finally had found words for that nameless feeling that had been with me
as far back as I could remember: half dead.

In the years that followed that visit to El Salvador in 1976, I was
determined to reject Pop and all the family pressure to be as straight and
studious and good as they expected. I killed Mr. Peabody and asked people
to call me Tito. Tito was more unpredictable—and prone to recklessness. I
racked up report cards with sixty days absent, started drinking Olde English
800 malt liquor and other cheap alcohol and smoking cigarettes and pot,
stopped lugging books in a leather briefcase that had a picture of Atlacatl, a
legendary Indian warrior, on it. I also started hanging out with guys who
shared my newfound lack of interest in school.
My new friends and I started calling ourselves Los Originales, a name we
used tongue in cheek. We were young, high, and full of anger—with a
healthy disrespect for rules. We didn’t sport jackets with cholo gang
calligraphy, but we wore clothes that looked cholo: wino shoes, fake
Pendleton plaid flannel shirts, tees, Ben Davis jeans, Dickies, and baggy
pants that we sewed pleats onto if they didn’t have them. We bonded while
listening to soul music and oldies, fighting, occasionally robbing people,
stealing cars, dealing and smoking pot, and eventually driving lowriders—
or cars we wished were lowriders.
Los Originales replaced my family during the years I spent pissed at Pop
for all his lies, beatings, and mafia dealings. What I didn’t know then was
that Pop’s behaviors were rooted in the silences of his childhood in
Ahuachapán.

9

Ahuachapán, El Salvador
Late 1931

In the months after his father destroyed his dream of getting an education,
Ramóncito backslid. He returned to spending his time playing barefoot with
Ricardo and other friends on the dusty cobblestone streets of Barrio Santa
Cruz. His young life was once again fragmented by shuttling between San
Salvador and Ahuachapán, with the occasional trip to Ataco, the home of
his father—a constant reminder of the ilegitimidad that had destroyed his
dreams.
Nine-year-old Ramóncito and the boys of Barrio Santa Cruz didn’t have
a deep understanding of the rebellion and political tensions growing all
around them as they were trading identities as cops and robbers in their
game of ladrón librado.
“Look, Ramón,” Ricardo called out to him from behind the wall of the
house where he was hiding. “It’s your father.”
The side street of the growing city in western El Salvador was fairly
empty that humid afternoon when the boys were playing. Mostly only a few
women and their children were out. Ramóncito fixated on his father. Don
Miguel was blocking the punches of a drunk man in tattered clothes. The
boy said nothing, simultaneously terrorized and mesmerized by the sight of
his father, who was also visibly drunk struggling with the man. He hardly
knew his father, but still took his side. Don Miguel wobbled forward while
the man in the tattered clothes waddled backward, nearly falling on the dirt

street. Then his father pushed the man down all the way, reached into his
waistband, and pulled out his revolver.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Don Miguel stood over the body. The terrified boy looked at the bleeding
man. Blood poured out of his chest and stomach, like thicker, redder fresco
de jamaica. Drops of the man’s blood had splattered onto his father’s nice
shirt. Don Miguel turned his head and gazed at his son. His blank honeyeyed stare scared Ramóncito. The boy’s little belly tightened. But his mind
also started turning. This up close and personal view of his father’s godlike
power contained the seeds of fascination. Although his father had reneged
on his promise to pay for his schooling for unknown reasons, Ramóncito
also looked up to his father, in the strange way men with guns inspire boys
to want them.
Something shook him in ways he did not and could not understand. The
boy’s sense of what it meant to be a man was still fluid, moving between his
father, a man he both hated and wanted to love, and Alfonso Luna, the
nineteen-year-old brother of his friend Ricardo, whose warm attention,
small gifts, and other gestures of kindness Ramóncito loved. Ramóncito ran
home to tell Mamá Tey and Mamá Fina what he’d seen. The women
comforted him with love, food, and permission to play. They preferred
distracting him to trying to explain the incident. They knew all too well the
violence—beatings, rapes, and even murders—of Ahuachapáneco men.
Days after he saw his father shoot the man from the bar, Ramóncito went
to Ricardo Luna’s house to play. There he saw Alfonso. Sometimes Alfonso
played with them. Lately, though, Alfonso didn’t have as much time to play
when he visited from San Salvador. He had other things on his mind.
Although Ramóncito and his little cheros didn’t understand the larger forces
at play on the fields redolent with rotting coffee on the plantations, others
like Alfonso did.
Alfonso was with his brother and Ramóncito the day men carried home
the bullet-riddled body of his friend, Toño Seoanes, the son of Don Cheque
Seoanes, the owner of the lot Mamá Tey’s shack was built on. The men
brought Toño into the house next to Tey’s shack. Toño soon died. He’d been
shot for allegedly sleeping with the wife of a member of the Hill family in
Santa Ana. The Hills were one of the famed Fourteen Families (in reality,
more like a hundred), the oligarchy that ruled El Salvador after the
indigenous ejidos were dismantled in 1878.1 Don Miguel and the rest of the

Rodríguezes were on the second tier, made up of about a thousand of the
next-richest families. These few rich families held almost all of El
Salvador’s wealth, which was deposited predominantly in the banks of the
countries where they sent their children to school—in Europe and
increasingly the United States.2
“Damn those greedy, violent hijosdeputa!” Ramóncito heard Alfonso
screaming from the Seoaneses’ house next door. “They have to pay, or life
here will only continue to get worse for us all.”
Witnessing a second murder gave Ramóncito more tightness in his
stomach. The murder had also clearly affected the young universitario,
Alfonso, who sought to do something about it. He found what he was
looking for in the quietly charismatic and highly influential lawyer Agustín
Farabundo Martí. Martí led the radical human rights organization Socorro
Rojo Internacional (SRI).
Ramóncito heard but hardly understood Alfonso’s effusive talk about the
legendary Martí. Martí’s considerable political experience—being jailed six
times, fighting in the war against US intervention in Nicaragua waged by
Augusto César Sandino, exile to Mexico, imprisonment in an immigrant
detention facility in San Pedro, California3—was unparalleled among the
large and growing forces of El Salvador’s leftists. So, too, was his
engagement with the international political thought of the time as founder
of the Central American Communist Party and a member of the Liga AntiImperialista de Las Americas, a Latin American variant on the antiimperialist organization that included Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Diego
Rivera, and Albert Einstein.4 Less known, but as or more important than
Martí to the mass movement growing in western El Salvador, was Feliciano
Ama, indigenous cacique of thousands of Izalco peoples.
During the visits to Ataco facilitated by Mamá Juanita, Ramóncito also
heard his father and his rich family (though not Mamá Juanita) curse at and
complain about revolucionarios like Alfonso and Martí, and especially the
indigenous groups, organizing themselves on the plantations and mounting
increasingly militant protests in the cities. The tensions and the organizing
power of both the communists and the indigenous community filled the
streets of cities and towns with tens of thousands of protesters fighting for
higher wages, better working conditions, and an end to coercive and violent
strikebreaking practices. Hunger strikes, marches, labor strikes, attacks on
security forces, and other militant activity were heating up the country.

The coffee barons sought quick, hard responses to the crisis growing
before them. They believed the liberal Araujo government was soft on the
dreaded indios. Elites found their solution in Maximiliano Hernández
Martínez, El Salvador’s vice president. Martínez’s vision for El Salvador
aligned with the fascist way of thinking, which was growing in the country
and throughout the world alongside anti-communism and anti-imperialism.
An ambitious military man, Martínez staged a coup on December 2, 1931,
and was installed as president.
Initially, Alfonso Luna and his fellow University of El Salvador Marxist
student leader, Mario Zapata, believed that the Martínez coup presented an
opportunity to advance the cause of social justice, but increasingly violent
confrontations between workers and government proved them wrong. After
the municipal and state elections in the fall of 1931 were marred by fraud
and violence, the Salvadoran left decided to increase the pressure on the
oligarchs and on Martínez. Ramóncito saw the results in the streets that
December: even more massive and intensified strikes organized by
thousands of workers in Ahuachapán that mirrored those going on
throughout the country. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Don Miguel and El
Salvador’s cafetaleros were raising money to significantly increase the size
and weaponry of the Guardia Nacional.5 Peace did not appear to be an
option many saw in December 1931.
Hoping for a political opening and way forward, Alfonso Luna and other
leftist leaders organized a delegation to meet with Martínez on January 8,
1932. Martínez’s refusal to meet with them (he had a “toothache”6) became
one of several factors that led the leftists to exercise their last great hope:
the revolucionario option. So began what would become an important
political tradition in El Salvador and Latin America, conspirando, going
underground to design plans for insurrection. A date was set: January 20,
1932. Martí, Luna, Zapata, the indigenous majority organized
independently through cofradias (brotherhoods), and other conspirators
were preparing for a full-scale revolution, the first of many communistinfluenced insurrections in twentieth-century Latin America.7 Things were
about to get bloody for everyone, but the indigenous people, who had
carried the weight of El Salvador on their backs ever since colonization,
would bear the greatest burden in a country whose legacy had already long
been stained by their shed blood.

Part IV

10

Panchimalco, La Libertad, El Salvador
2015

My driver, Isaias, and I are standing in front of a police station, debating
whether or not we want to walk down the cobblestone street leading to the
center of the old indigenous town of Panchimalco, where the municipal
cemetery is located. M16s at the ready, five police officers stand alongside
us, garrisoned behind a four-foot wall of sandbags protecting their station,
an old house. Its crumbling blue-and-white stucco walls bear the marks of
local maras: holes and cracks from homemade bombs. Fortunately, the
explosives thus far have all landed on the already crumbling sidewalk,
where they were detonated by the ever busy bomb squad.
More officers and a phalanx of giant orange cones form another
defensive wall limiting car and foot traffic along the cracked cobblestone of
the Calle Principal, the town’s main street. The crooked street, running
through the center of town, ends at the cemetery. The edge of the
Panchimalco municipal cemetery drops into one of the many crevasses
dotting the gorgeous green landscape.
“Be careful,” one of the officers tells us, looking out toward the
cemetery. “The monstruos are angry.” Like the locals, my loyalties are torn
between murderous gang members and cops I’ve not learned to trust. My
only trusted companion at the moment is Isaias. His slightly hunched back
and muscular upper body give him ninja-turtle shoulders that are at odds
with his indestructible smile. He surveys the complicated situation, poised
to take action at any minute.

The situation isn’t just complicated, it’s complicadisimo. Tired, weary,
and underpaid, the men and women of the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC)
await the arrival of a convoy of white trucks and SUVs—and the start of
another dangerous mission. The convoy is carrying a dozen more M16wielding PNC officers in military gear accompanying a team from the
Instituto de Medicina Legal or IML, El Salvador’s forensic medicine unit,
the organization charged with identifying the dead and figuring out what
killed them. The police officers’ purpose is to escort the IML team on the
hour-plus hike through the local rivers, forest, and towns “filled with
heavily armed gang members.”1 Isaias and I will be accompanying them.
Our primary destination is the forested volcanic hills near Rosario de Mora,
one of several areas in El Salvador where gangs go to kill, dismember, and
bury their victims, and where the IML team will conduct an exhumation.
The media has listed Panchimalco as one of “the most violent
municipalities in El Salvador.”2
My mission is simple: to write a story for the Boston Globe about the
growing number of mass and individual graves the fighting between gangs
and government has produced in El Salvador. The total lack of context in
US reporting about the “new” crisis of refugee kids and their moms sickens
me. Many of us have been watching the deadly double helix of extreme
violence and migration spiral out of control for more than twenty-five
years.
About a city block from the police station, well within the effective range
of one of the AK-47s preferred by gang members, more than fifty members
of the 18th Street Revolucionarios gang and their families march in a
procession. They’re marching to the cemetery for a burial. Five of their
homies were killed nearby in a gun battle just two days before.
The gang’s anger is palpable. They and other locals say that the five men
were exterminados3—killed in extrajudicial murders by the escuadrones de
la muerte, paramilitary death squads left over from the twelve-year civil
war and enlisted by the government to kill gang members under cover of
uniform or pretense of confrontation. PNC officers on motorcycles ride
around the police station. Other PNC patrol the area around the graveyard
—but from a distance.
Both pro-and anti-gang websites post gory pictures of the five gangsters
lying dead, some with plates of food splattered around them, all with guns
positioned suspiciously neatly next to them. One commentator, Roberto

Valencia, a prominent journalist with the award-winning El Faro news site,
tweeted the gory pictures with the caption, “Now, [the police] don’t even try
to set up the scene so that it looks like a battle. They even post pictures,
since no one investigates.” Despite the obvious doctoring of the crime
scene, most of the comments about the photos posted on Facebook and
social media sites support the military, police, and even the death squads,
echoing the opinion of a man on one of the anti-gang websites who posted,
“Hopefully, those sons of bitches are burning in hell for their crimes.”
This year has already seen more than 150 such “enfrentamientos.”4 The
overwhelming majority of these engagements result in the death of one or
more gang members. Police and soldiers rarely die.
“Está jocote [It’s scary],” Isaias says in colloquial Salvadoran, signaling
that we’re weighing a risk.
“Yes, it is.”
The end of the gang truce negotiated by Mijango in 2014 and the new
rise of escuadrones have led the gangs to start targeting police and military
personnel in more systematic ways that they hadn’t employed previously—
adding tension not known since the war. Normal activities, such as traveling
to rural areas, stir fears that violence may be lurking nearby.
While we wait outside the police station for the convoy, Perla, the
bookish PNC officer manning the front desk, lets us know it won’t arrive
for another two hours, so I decide Isaias and I should go to the gang burial
at the cemetery. Never one to decline an invitation to danger, Isaias smiles
and says with a military rigidity, “Ready when you are, boss.” But then he
rethinks his stance. “Are you sure you want to go in there, mi coronel?” he
asks, using the army lingo that peppers his language. He knows that even
the cemeteries of Panchimalco are contested and not-so-hallowed ground.
Sometimes, police patrolling nearby have even had to cordon off cemetery
crime scenes5 where victims were killed while visiting the graves of their
loved ones, so that the sites could be studied by IML investigators. His
question stirs memories of gangs chasing my goddaughter and me out of the
San Vicente cemetery while we were saying goodbye to my mom.
In the Panchimalco cemetery, which sits on the side of a steep, grassy
hill, are a series of colorful tombs and monuments leading toward the edge
of the crevasse. There, in the distance, is the group of gang mourners. I look
at one young man of no more than fourteen crying as an older man holds
him. They’re simultaneously scared, angry, and heartbroken, and they’re

likely getting ready to retaliate against the police after the burial ritual. At
the moment, they seem more human than monstruos, but when they turn to
retaliation, their anger is the stuff Salvadoran nightmares are made of.
The remains of the five young men will find eternal unrest near the grave
of the man their mara allegedly killed: Pablo Cándido Vega Ramírez,6 a
presidential guard gunned down last April in front of his family. After the
murder, many police marched angrily in the streets, crying, mourning—and
ready to retaliate.
As Isaias and I walk back to the taxi, I’m struck by the gang members’
colossal contradiction—giving their own dead the dignity of burial while
simultaneously bearing responsibility for the thousands buried in the mass
graves that dot the Salvadoran landscape.7 More than a few of these grave
sites lie atop the still-unexcavated individual and mass graves where the
escuadrones de la muerte buried their victims. The Rosario de Mora region
shares this tradition of murder and mass burial committed by gangs and
governments alike.
Isaias and I drive back to the police station to wait for the convoy. There,
Isaias makes friends, deploying security-guy talk on the officers standing
guard behind the sandbags. “Violence around here is evolving. Things are
getting worse,” says one agent on his way to relieve his colleagues
patrolling the cemetery. “They used to kill one person among them. Now
there are massacres. And they’re using different weapons: M16s, AK-47s,
grenades, and other armaments for war.”
I take a seat in front of the reception, which is being manned by Perla,
who offers me some coffee. Agent Perla is a tall, well-built man of about
thirty-five. He wears glasses and cannot for the life of himself find a smile.
We chat about the weather and his previous work as a schoolteacher.
“I loved working with children,” he says, “but teachers earn even less
than police do. So, I joined the PNC.
“They’re inhuman,” Perla says, looking down the street in the direction
of the cemetery. The look of disdain never leaves his face. “I speak from
experience. I’ve been moved around to Sonsonate, to the town of Armenia
and other areas, and know what I’m saying about these cerotazos.” He
shifts in his chair, preparing to go deeper into his story. “In Azacualpa,
Sonsonate, I saw how a woman and her two kids got treated. The woman
was raped in front of her kids. After they raped her, one of the kids had his
head taken off in front of the mom. The other boy was also left dead.”

Perla paused, as if to swallow something stuck in his throat.
“Do you know what I had to do?”
“What?”
“I had to pick up the severed head of that child. Do you know what that
feels like?” He pauses. I have nothing to say.
“To be frank, that was not my first time picking up a head. The first time
feels really horrible, it causes a certain kind of experience. At that moment
you can no longer be indifferent. You learn to deal with those kinds of
situations and see beyond the horror of it.”
Shaken, I try to regain my composure and ask him how he thinks the
gangs should be dealt with.
“There’s a lot of protection for those people. Many never go to prison,”
he tells me, his harsh tone signaling rising anger. “Meanwhile, I’m in a
judicial process for what I did after they shot at us. Fifteen-, sixteen-, and
seventeen-year-olds with guns were free after five days because they were
minors. They put me in jail.”
I asked Perla what exactly he’d done. Perla’s silence spoke for him.
“They are inhuman. They rape and kill men and women. If they gave me
another chance I’d quebrar* these bastards again,” Perla tells me. “I would
do it again without hesitation.” Many of his colleagues, he tells me, have
also taken the law into their own hands. The killings of dozens of gang
members in escuadrón de la muerte–style executions have reached the point
where even the US State Department,8 which has supported Salvadoran
governments since the 1930s, has joined the United Nations and human
rights organizations in putting extrajudicial killings at the top of their
concerns in their human rights reports of recent years.
The IML trucks arrive at last. We’re about to enter an especially deadly
area of one of El Salvador’s most violent regions. This means any effort to
morally sort the “good guys” from the “bad guys” will be set aside for the
moment. The prospect of immediate violence in front of me distracts from
the violence buried below. This same collective inability to look down into
the abyss of our violent history makes it easy for governments and gangs to
manipulate the populace into becoming cops, death-squad operatives, and
violent gang youth—all of whom wreak havoc in El Salvador, and with
help from my violent birthplace, the United States.

11

San Francisco, California
1979

Lalo and I hung out all morning and afternoon that sunny Saturday. The
thick, stainless-steel chain Lalo used as a belt rattled as we walked to the
store up the street from his family’s apartment on Twenty-Third and
Guerrero.
“Fuck that shit, man,” Lalo said, lisping on the th in that.
I sported a tank top and a regular leather strip, not a chain, for a belt. My
sixteen-year-old body was buffed, as my brothers, especially Ramón, got
tired of confirming in response to my daily question, “Hey, Mem, do I look
more buffed?” after doing curls, bench presses, and other lifts.
“Do you mean more buffed than when you asked yesterday or only since
you asked a few hours ago?”
Whatever Mem said, I was pretty buffed.
As Lalo and I reached the sidewalk in front of the store, a big chololooking dude in a Pendleton shirt, baggies, and wino shoes bumped into me.
“Watch your ass, Ese!” the big cholo shouted.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Some part of me wanted to avoid fighting.
The buffed part of me weighed in on the side of punching. But before I
could act, the cholo dude pushed me. I fell on the sidewalk, breathing in to
ready myself to either get hit or start firing back on him. As he prepared to
start whaling on me, I got up and tackled him. Barely conscious of what
transpired, I gave him a right hook to the face with even more fury than I’d
ever given the punching bag in the gym at Mission High. I kept punching

until his mouth, his nose, and the back of his head were bloody. I got up and
continued into the store, proud of what my buffed power had done. Decking
a big cholo gang dude with such ease was cool. I felt like fuckin’ Rocky
beating Apollo Creed.
“Little bitch. Not so bad after all,” I grumbled to Lalo as I approached the
tall fridge with the drinks. As I decided on root beer, Lalo’s voice called out
from the front of the store: “Tito, watch out! He’s coming at you again!”
The big cholo dude approached me slowly, his head cocked to the side,
like he was sizing me up, and moved around me like a boxer in a ring
preparing to fire me up. I quickly gave him a side kick I learned at Carlos
Navarro’s kenpo karate studio on Mission Street. The kick landed on his
chest. I kept kicking him—in the chest, stomach, and head—back to the
door until he was outside again and fell to the ground, nearly unconscious.
My internal voice was bragging, Check out what I did to that fucker! but
outwardly I didn’t let on that it was a big deal. I went back into the store,
where Lalo and I finished our purchases, then went back to Lalo’s house.
Lalo’s parents had baptized him Edgar, a name he detested. He chose
Lalo as his placazo, his chosen clik name. Mine was Tito, the name my
brothers called me. The others had placazos like Scrapo and Casper. The
only one of us who didn’t have one was my best friend, Hiram. Nobody
knew why. We were all insecure, coming together in our not very hardcore,
not very serious as a clik, and not very originally named Los Originales. All
of us, except Hiram, had major issues with our fathers.
When I returned to our crowded Folsom Street apartment from Lalo’s,
Mom let me know my orders: “Your father wants you to go to Hunt’s with
him.”
“Fuck him, Mom,” I fired back. “He wants me to go to Hunt’s while he
buys and sells his bullshit.”
“You need to calm yourself. That temper of yours es el demonio and will
only get you into trouble.”
“Demonio? You call yourself Catholic? You help him with that bullshit,
don’t you, Mom? Come on!”
“That ‘bullshit’ helped pay for you and your brothers’ and sister’s
education,” she reminded me, as she often did. “And you know that it was
your abuelita who started buying stuff in San Francisco and then sending
boxes of goods on boats to El Salvador, right?”
“Yeah,” I responded reluctantly, “I know.”

Mom knew how much I loved her and Mamá Tey. All of us did. I’d heard
the stories of long trips from the port of San Francisco to the port of
Acajutla, not far from Ahuachapán. Mamá Tey had been the first in our
family to establish herself in the United States.
“You should go hang out with your Mamá Tey,” Mom told me, knowing
my abuelita’s good-natured picardía (mischief) would lighten me up. So I
went to Mamá Tey’s place on Twentieth and Valencia. She greeted me with
her big shiny smile, her silver front teeth reminding me of the Jaws
character in the James Bond movies.
“Hola, mi muchachito!” Because of who she was, I let her get away with
the diminutive of the word muchacho.
“Hola, abuelita.”
She kissed and hugged me before leading me up to her living room with
the olive green rug. Her parakeets were singing in their cages, and the light
on her electric Singer with the plastic treadle was on. The three people who
rent rooms from her were out.
“You know, abuelita, my fucking father pisses me off. He gets pissed off
at me because I don’t go to that stupid Hunt’s Donuts with him.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “Would you like me to make you some
pupusas?”
“Yes,” I said, having finally grown to love them.
“One day you’ll understand that your father’s been through a lot. That he
had to sacrifice, as we all did, to get here and raise you all here,” she said
while mixing the masa, loroco buds, and other ingredients she always had
ready at a moment’s notice.
“Yeah, I know, but why does he have to drag me into his shit, abuelita?”
“It’s his way of getting close to you, mijo. The time at Hunt’s is the only
time he gets to be himself.”
“What, a crook?”
“Who is or isn’t a crook?” she asked. “Depends on who’s saying it.
Someone could call me a crook, but you know what?”
“What?”
“Fuck them and their mierdas. We’re all pieces of broken glass, stained
with blood and struggling to put ourselves back together,” she said in that
sudden poetic way she’d bequeathed to Pop, along with an understanding of
how to conduct cross-border business in stolen goods and a silence around
their former life in El Salvador.

Around eight I left Mamá Tey’s to go find my homies to do our usual:
drinking, smoking, and snorting in St. Peter’s parking lot. We also stole cars
and committed other crimes, which put me in a bind when I railed against
Pop’s shady shit, making me something of a hypocrite.
After hanging out with Los Originales at St. Peter’s, I came home drunk
and high that night to find Pop waiting for me. He was standing outside my
room. I stumbled as I tried to sneak in quietly through the window, as was
my habit whenever I came home wasted.
“Está borracho,” Pop said in recognition of my inebriated state.
“Estoy borracho—y qué?” I said, using the familiar cholo phrase
meaning “and what of it?” A clear and unprecedented act of defiance in a
household where Pop lorded over my laid-back brothers and sister like an
old-school Salvadoran patriarch.
The shock in Pop’s eyes surprised me. So did the hint of fear. I’d never
seen him look scared. Alongside my own fear at my defiance, I felt
something unexpected: my own power, my inner rebelde.
Pop yanked me down the hallway, around the corner, and into his room.
My stomach tightened, preparing for him to slap me—or worse—and
administer the more lasting punishment: curses of “Hijuesesentamilputas!”
or “Güevón!” (Lazy), and other standards in Pop’s repertoire of humiliation.
In his room, he stood me next to his bed while he went behind the door of
his room and pulled out a stick he kept in his room for burglars. He stepped
closer to me in the slow, deliberate way he knew created dread, and drew
back to start hitting me with the stick. He was screaming something, but I
barely heard him because I was leaving my body. But before I completely
disassociated, something pulled me back, and suddenly I was charged with
electricity.
Before the stick landed on me, I grabbed it from him. In my crazed state,
I paused to gaze at the stick, stopping time to stare at its wood and contours.
And then I broke it in two.
Fuck, what are you doing? Pop’s punishing you for fucking up. Don’t do
this, a part of me thought.
But I continued to do the previously unimaginable: I grabbed Pop by his
thin shoulders and pushed him onto his bed in what was both an angry
display of power and a way to prevent him from beating me and me from
retaliating in kind. Despite all his limits, he loved me.

Through my tears, I saw Pop’s look of shame and confusion. For a
moment, his eyes looked like those of a child. I could suddenly see how
vulnerable he really was behind all the machismo, and my sadness started
overcoming my rage.
Unfortunately, Pop’s rage was starting its second run. He reached behind
the bed and his hand emerged clutching his .357 Magnum. He pointed it at
me.
“You’re never going to touch me again—or I will kill you,
hijuesesentamilputas!” he yelled.
I pulled down my shirt to show my heart and said with heavy drunken
irony, “Go ahead, shoot me, your dear beloved son.”
Before things could escalate further, Mom rushed in crying, “Noooo!
Noooo! Stop, both of you. Stop. Please! You’re killing me!”
Mom separating us added a new low to an already devastating moment.
Pop crumpled. Her look at him was as fierce as I’d ever seen. I started
crying as well. Pop simply looked away.
After, Pop and I stopped talking. We no longer hung out at Hunt’s or
anywhere else, and I sought out new ways to rebel against him and my
Salvadoran family, enlisting a new ally against his hypocrisy: Jesucristo.
San Francisco, California
1984

“Brothers and sisters,” Joel started, “let us kneel before God and pray that
His will be done.”
I too was kneeling in the back, watching the fifty faithful in front of me
crowded into the storefront church at the corner of Twenty-First and
Valencia get on their knees as Pastor Joel led them in prayer. For a moment
I was distracted by the proximity to Mamá Tey’s house on Twentieth. Her
death a few months earlier had left me deeply shaken.
Mamá Tey anchored Pop and all of us with her humor and love, and
especially by the example she set living as a mad valeverguista, one of
those crazy beautiful Salvadorans whose propensity to joke or take great
risks is rooted in truly not giving a fuck as long as the cause is just. I lost
someone who had always advised me to be better and to lighten up on her
son, my father. She’d always reminded me how rough he’d had it growing

up, though never specifying how, exactly, beyond alluding to the deep
poverty they lived in during the Salvadoran Great Depression in the
twenties and thirties.
I hadn’t just lost my most important ancestor. I’d lost my connection to
all my ancestors on Pop’s side. Mamá Tey might have been vague about our
family history at times, but Pop was utterly silent about it. Feeling half
dead, knowing only half my family history, and growing increasingly angry
at the world, the loss of my Mamá Tey anchor left me vulnerable to the
growing number of influences filling the streets of San Francisco’s Mission
District, including those of the evangelical storm hovering over the entire
country and hemisphere in the 1980s.
“Lord, we pray for Your intercession to help bring souls to understand the
urgent need to elect the one man you and we know is the only one who
prioritizes the things of God over the things of man!”
“¡Amen!”
“The only one who lives in the world but is not of this world, Lord.”
“¡Amen! ¡Gloria a Dios!”
“The one candidate that is right on abortion, Lord.”
“¡Hallelujah!”
“So, Lord, we bend our knees because we know the one and only God
will bring His people deliverance and elect the only candidate any true
Christian should vote for this election, Lord: Ronald Wilson Reagan!”
“¡Amen!” I yelled from the side of the plastic foldup chairs I’d moved
toward. As deacon, one of my responsibilities involved arranging the chairs
before and after misa at the Open Door Alliance Church.
It was 1984, and I was a born-again believer saved by the blood and
sacrifice of Lord Jesus Christ. I’d joined the church earlier that year, thanks
to the new wave of ministries targeting “at-risk youth” and my growing
conviction that I needed to escape the life I was leading. Mamá Tey’s death
had furthered this conviction. So had the suicide of my Mission High friend
Danny, who had hanged himself, and the death of another high school
friend, Luís Orea, a dealer who had been shot in the face during a coke deal
gone bad and had to be buried in a closed casket.
I’d been fighting a lot, doing more drugs, and drinking heavily. In the
early ’80s, guns increasingly replaced fists and knives as the way to settle
things. More and more, I was realizing that violence doesn’t just happen. It
turns you into the frog in boiling water who doesn’t realize it’s dying until

it’s too late. It creeps up on you in small ways until it overtakes your life.
After losing Luís and Danny, I feared the creeping violence. I feared being
taken out by some thug—or by the thug growing in me. So I followed the
path of my Puerto Rican friend Hiram, who’d left Los Originales for a
born-again Christian life a couple of years earlier. But I also sought
redemption—redemption for the shame of being poor, of feeling
directionless, of being an angry, violent person who hurt people, including
his own family.
My decision to go hard for God led me to quickly enter church
leadership, becoming a deacon. The song lyrics about “fire on the blood”
and “Onward Christian Soldiers” fueled my first experience of being a
militant. I greeted people at the door, collected tithes, and folded up the
chairs, in addition to rejecting premarital sex and giving the church my own
tithe, 15 percent of my income from working in an electronics warehouse. I
was also learning new ways to rebel against my family, using my
knowledge of God’s Word to preach at them, calling on them to abandon
the path of underworld iniquity for one laid out by God. In retaliation, Mom
would say, even years after I left the church, “I don’t even want to see you
preaching ni en pintura. You are such a pain in the ass.” Except for my
longtime friends Armando and Gloria, most of my unsaved friends
abandoned me as they expressed similar and less respectful versions of
Mom’s message.
“Forget the communist ideology of the Lost!” I screamed at the
Salvadorans protesting on Twenty-Fourth Street against the relentless
bombing of civilians in El Salvador.
The war that formally began in 1980 had begun filling my house with
cousins and friends who were undocumented refugees.* Their stories of the
war filled our apartment—stories of friends of the family killed by death
squads, stories of women in the family who became guerrilleras, and the
story of my cousin Ana, forced to leave her three-year-old son behind for
the life of a maid. Ana wouldn’t see her child again until he’d grown a
mustache. The war first hit me through those stories and people—and then
the Berkeley effect hit.
While in the church, I attended a community college and got grades that
allowed me to transfer to UC Berkeley. Once at Berkeley, my Marx,
Nietzsche, and Freud class did much to pummel my faith. So did learning
about the resistance: thousands of Americans who joined the Lincoln

Brigades to the fight fascism in Francoist Spain. I read Hemingway’s
description of the anti-fascist fighters in For Whom the Bell Tolls with awe,
struck deeply by his comparison of the anti-fascists’ political fervor to the
feeling they had hoped to have—but did not—while taking communion.
Hearing Berkeley poets like June Jordan sing the praises and lines of
Salvadoran poets like Claribel Alegria and Roque Dalton further solidified
the Salvadoran roots growing in me. My more conservative professors also
played an important role in my political development, either preaching the
right-wing values of philosopher John Searle or pissing me off by ridiculing
my report on Roque Dalton, as poet Leonard Nathan did in front of our
poetry class. I started envisioning a life for myself beyond that which had
been prescribed by my parents—marriage, a well-paying job, stability. I
wanted to be part of something larger than myself. I started wondering who
were the fascist bad guys of our time and how I could fight them.
My new path wasn’t an easy one. As I began to educate myself about
these present-day fascists, I found myself pulled down into the dark history
of El Salvador. I felt as though I’d fallen into not just one abyss, but several,
including the dark and silent history of what had happened in El Salvador in
the infamous year 1932.

12

San Francisco, California
1939

“It’s Fiesta Time in Coffee Land,” proclaimed the brochure promoting
Hills Bros. Coffee in 1939 at the World’s Fair. Across it were colorful
pictures of light-skinned indigenous women of western El Salvador wearing
rainbow-colored guipiles—embroidered cotton blouses—and refajos—
colorful skirts—and carrying straw baskets bearing coffee beans.
Hills Bros. Coffee asked its customers and potential partners reading the
brochure an important question:
But have you ever wondered, as you sip a cup of fine coffee in your home, how much
time and effort were spent to make that delicious beverage available for you?

A short film played as well. In it, a caption paid homage to the true king
of coffee:
The United States alone consumes nearly a billion and a half pounds or about 45 billion
cups annually and is the world’s largest user of coffee.

The caption was followed by footage of barefoot boys carrying coffee
seeds in their hats and sowing the seeds in rows. Eighteen months later, a
caption read, these seeds would become young coffee trees that would be
transplanted to the plantations.
The film closed at the Hills Bros. plant in San Francisco, declaring:
Bad coffee beans are discarded and destroyed for better beans.

Ahuachapán, El Salvador
1932

El Salvador stood at the precipice. The failure of negotiations between
Alfonso Luna’s group and El General Martínez’s emissary left the
indigenous groups and communists only one choice: revolución o muerte.
Following the decision to pursue the insurrection strategy, the rebels
planned an attack for January 22, 1932—ten days after the failure of the
talks with Martínez—and armed themselves with whatever they could:
machetes, rocks, Mausers (submachine guns), and pistols to attack the
Salvadoran military.
However, the comunistas and indigenous rebels were not a wellorganized force; they were poorly armed with no standard communication
system. Adding to the tension of the moment was the ominous eruption of
the Volcán de Izalco, a rarity that literally put a dark cloud over western El
Salvador. The first casualties of the disorganization were the key rebel
leaders, almost all of whom were captured and jailed by January 16, almost
a week before the planned attack. Three days later, Farabundo Martí and
Mario Zapata were captured and jailed. The military also captured Alfonso
Luna, who, like his peers, was caught with compromising documents
indicating a leadership role in the insurrection. Just over a week later,
Feliciano Ama, the most important leader of thousands of indigenous
people, was captured and publicly hanged by the military.
Still, the plans for the attack went forward. In Ahuachapán on January
22, the Náhuat Indians and other rebels in the Ejército Rojo—the Red Army
—converged on the center of the city. Their initial attacks targeted
government offices, haciendas, and other centers of power. Their most
strategic target in the region was also the single most reviled symbol of
oppressive government: the cuartel. The hulking fortress housed the
Destacamento Militar Número Seis, the Sixth Military Detachment, and its
machine guns.
Rebels in the first unit to attack were mowed down by machine-gun fire
from within the cuartel. After regrouping, the rebels mounted another
attack, only to be gunned down again. Desperate to secure the cuartel, they
tried and failed again before retreating in defeat.
Three days after the rebellion began, most of the insurrection had already
been put down. What’s more, El Brujo, as many called Martínez, and El

Salvador’s Ladino elite were preparing a curse for indigenous people and
future generations of poor Salvadorans, who would bear the cross of the
extreme violence to come. Martínez acted swiftly, using the rebellion as an
excuse to appease the coffee barons who supported him and settle accounts
with the indios and comunistas who had defied him.
The chaos had an especially virulent influence on the cafetaleros and
other elites living in the mansions and plantations of Ahuachapán, Ataco,
and other western towns. As early as December, El Salvador’s rich coffee
growers had begun preparing for the conflict, organizing shopkeepers and
local artisans into the Guardia Cívica. These units would seize control of a
region when the military pulled out after the initial bloodletting.
Newspapers owned by the elites called the rebels “a horde of infuriated
savages, with demonic instincts.”1 These same newspapers conflated
indigenous people with the communists completely, echoing government
slogans that called them indio-comunistas. One paper claimed, “There is
not one Indian who is not affiliated with the communist movement.”
Ladino sentiments reached a fever pitch and called for “cures,” declaring:
We want this plague exterminated by the roots, for if it is not, it will sprout forth with
new spirit, now expert and less foolish, because in new attempts they will pitch
themselves against the lives of all and slit our throats. We need the strong hand of
government [to act], without asking anyone’s consent.2

Immediately following the rebellion, the Guardia Nacional and Guardia
Cívica began their work: a town-by-town, hamlet-by-hamlet, and, in some
cases, house-by-house search for indigenous people and comunistas. Within
a few days of the start of these massacres, General José Tomás Calderón,
one of Martínez’s top military officials, said his troops had “liquidated”
4,800 indigenous people and comunistas.3 But Calderón’s tally (which he
later lowered, following international criticism of the violence) was
preliminary at best. As the Guardia Nacional took the offensive and hunted
down the rebels, they fled to the countryside. The Guardia followed,
detaining any campesinos and indigenous people they came across, lining
them up and shooting indiscriminately. Witnesses later described the
slaughter, saying, “They killed all males from twelve on up.”4
The semiautomatic rat-tat-tat of Mauser machine guns with large
ammunition belts could be heard cutting through flesh and bone, mingled
with the screams of the victims. In Izalco and other areas, witnesses

reported that Náhuat Indians were lined up fifty at a time to be gunned
down, the process being repeated ceaselessly for several days at a time.5
Troops also raped countless women and girls.
During the second phase of the killing, the Guardia Cívica, the armed
paramilitary civilian organization funded by the cafetaleros, ranchers, and
other elites, entered the fray. This Guardia escalated and focused the
bloodshed on its primary target: indigenous people. This second phase
turned the massacres into genocide. Near one ranch in Nahuizalco, for
example, the Guardia Cívica went door to door, dragging out indigenous
men, women, and children, tying them up and grouping them together. By
the end of the operation, the armed civilians had rounded up eight hundred
indigenous people and concentrated them in a field. Then, a witness heard,
“Pe pe pe . . . the sound of the machine gun. The officials ordered the
soldiers to break into a shed to look for tools for digging. It was around five
in the afternoon and already by six they had finished [burying the bodies].”6
Overall, some five hundred to one thousand unarmed people in Nahuizalco
were executed.7
Not just the scale of the killing expanded. As the Guardia Cívica phase
expanded, so too did the involvement of different sectors throughout
western El Salvador, including elements of the Church. Reports of Church
officials supporting the repression and aiding in the identification of
“communists” were not uncommon. In Santa Tecla, a witness described
how a priest there “would ask us if we were involved with communism. I
said no. But the others who admitted it, he put a little cross next to their
name. They were shot.”8
In the town of Izalco, military leaders ordered their troops to round up
men, women, and children and walk them into the local church. Officers
then ordered their troops to take aim and shoot the more than two hundred
people crammed inside.
The department of Ahuachapán was especially bloody. Legendary
communist leader Miguel Mármol later recounted testimony he heard from
a local who was forced by an army detachment to drive a truck that had a
machine gun mounted in the cab. “In the back was a squad of soldiers with
automatic arms,” Mármol said. “They went out on patrol . . . and any group
of peasants that they encountered on their way, whether they were just
talking or walking, without any prior warning, from a distance of thirty
meters or more, they’d unload their machine guns and smaller arms on

them. Afterward, the captain who was in command, with a .45 in his hand,
forced our peasant comrade to continue driving the truck, running over
them, including the dying who were writhing in pain on the ground,
screaming.”9
In cities and in nearby towns, the smell of rotting coffee mixed with the
smell of rotting flesh as bodies and body parts lay strewn across the streets.
Passersby saw dogs and pigs tearing at the flesh and bones of the dead. A
major genocide took place in a matter of weeks in the tiny country. Driving
scavengers into a frenzy as well were the shallow mass graves spreading
throughout the region. Some victims were even forced to dig their own
graves.
The strongest smells came from the depths of the mass graves where fifty
or more people lay dead. The smell and threat of potential health problems
moved the Martínez government to issue warnings to regional and local
officials. A February 15 letter from D. C. Escalante, Martínez’s director of
public health, told governors and mayors to “take necessary sanitary
measures in the face of reports of growing numbers of unburied bodies and
mass graves . . . It is necessary to make the dimensions [of the mass graves]
uniform for reasons of health. The accumulation of no more than fifty
corpses in a single grave allows for better decomposition and less
absorption into the soil. Even better would be isolated graves, in which no
more than eight to ten corpses would be placed. The information is
particularly important for the municipalities of Juayua, Nahuizalco, and
Izalco.”10
Those who survived the massacres carried the experience with them for
the rest of their lives, often in silence. Ramóncito Esquina was nine at the
time of La Matanza (the Slaughter). He was among the few who went on to
speak about what he witnessed: “Around here the dead were scattered all
over—well now they have all turned to earth. The corpses were everywhere
in San Juan, Tajcuilulah, Pushtan, Casamulco. In Nahuizalco, well, there
you can’t imagine how it was: they opened ditches in the cemeteries along
the sides of and at the entrance where you walk in. Everywhere they made
big holes. They dropped the bodies after they shot them, and heaved them
as if they were bales of sugar cane.”11
Because the records of La Matanza were burned, hidden, and otherwise
erased, it’s impossible to know the number of people massacred, but
estimates range from ten thousand12 to thirty thousand.13 Years after the

genocide, William Krehm, a journalist with Time magazine, interviewed
Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, and said that El General “insisted that
the army had killed only two thousand peasants.” Anders Sandberg, a
computational scientist at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute
who studies the history of violence in the modern era, has said, “The
intensity measure I used was: [people] killed per day, in which case El
Salvador stands out. . . . I calculated it by using the total death toll, dividing
by the length of the war. So while there might have been parts of, say,
World War II, that actually killed more people in a day, I think it is right to
say that [El Salvador’s 1932 Matanza] was the or one of the most violent
episodes of the modern era.”14

Part V

13

Panchimalco & Rosario de Mora, El Salvador
2015

The IML forensics convoy finally arrives. Isaias and I are happy to be
leaving Panchimalco and all of its tension between the gang in the cemetery
and the officers at the police station. However, without warning, the convoy
—two white IML utility vehicles followed by six policía trucks—speeds
down the hill leading out of central Panchimalco. Isaias is using the police
station bathroom when the IML folks who invited me here leave without us.
We hit the road leading to the campsite at Rosario de Mora. From there,
it’s an hour or more hike to reach the grave site identified by the witness.
Our late departure puts the possibility I’ll even get there at all at risk.
“Shit, boss,” says the ever smiling Isaias. “Why didn’t they wait for
you?”
“Who knows? But let’s speed the fuck outta here and catch up,” I
respond with a testiness that implies “your bathroom visit held us up.”
Just a few minutes outside the city limits, things start getting greener—
and scarier. Areas like this are the reason the IML personnel have six trucks
of masked, M16-bearing PNC with them. The end of the truce in 2014 has
turned every day into open season on people in El Salvador, especially
cops. Somewhere amid the greenery, there are Humvees and other armored
vehicles with machine guns, cannons, and heavy explosives patrolling the
area. The greenery also helps the gangs hide the training camps where their
child and adult soldiers perfect their killing techniques.

“They left at least seven minutes ahead of us, and their trucks can go a lot
faster than I can in my taxi,” Isaias says, as if I didn’t know. “Are you sure
you still want to try to catch them? This situation is the color of ants.” A
Salvadoran way of a saying we are in deep shit.
I don’t say anything. I’m nervous and kinda pissed we’ve been left
behind because Isaias took too much time to take a dump.
“This even scares me,” he says, as if to reassure me, but with that
nervous smile that appears whenever we’ve been in difficult situations, like
earlier at the Panchimalco cemetery. I can tell it means he actually wants to
take the risk. Dude’s also intense. I do a quick risk assessment. We don’t
have M16s, but Isaias is packing an Uzi under his seat and there’s a
revolver in the glove compartment. And he has the balls and enough fucking
crazy for both us. I think we can catch the convoy safely. I don’t tell him to
turn around. Isaias floors the gas.
We pass what looks like an abandoned hamlet. Empty homes with bulletriddled adobe walls. As we get on a rocky road to climb up another hill
leading to the grave site, accompanying these cops feels weird. They’re not
the murderous right-wing police I encountered before and during the war.
These are FMLN cops, but some of them are also murderous, as agent
Perla, the cop from the Panchimalco police station, made clear. We speed
through the abandoned hamlet, and as we pass through its southern edge,
our luck changes. The idea that the former guerrilleros who fought the
police and other security forces are now the police and security forces
themselves causes my head to spin. Some of these cops may be killers like
agent Perla or part of the paramilitary execution squads conducting
extrajudicial killings of gang members, even as the escuadrones de la
muerte once pursued their FMLN leaders.
“Look, boss. There they are!”
In front of us sit the white utility vehicles and trucks of the convoy. For
whatever reason, they’ve stopped. As we draw nearer, the vehicles in the
caravan start moving again.
Thirty-five minutes later, the caravan reaches Margarita, a town near the
site of the mass grave I’m here to see. No phone signal here—this place
isn’t even on the map. There are few houses, some of which are abandoned,
others covered with what appear to be bullet holes.
The IML team unpacks its equipment and prepares for the hike down a
steep hill and through a forest that served as a killing field during the civil

war. There, buried throughout miles of fertile earth is a horrific example of
what forensic scientists call a “commingled” site: a place where the dead
and decomposing bodies of hundreds of gangsters, police officers, soldiers,
and civilians lie together. Most of the mass graves dug during the war also
remain unexcavated, their victims’ deaths still uninvestigated thirty years
later.
Isaias looks to me for guidance. I let him know he can leave and return to
pick me up later, or wait for me here at the camp.
“I’ll be here waiting for you in the camp, mi coronel.”
In the forest, rows of redolent pine trees and green subtropical shrubbery
filled with squirrels, birds, and other animals give the walk a bucolic air. I
trudge through the mud sweaty from the summer heat. I’m out of shape and
getting tired quickly. My nerves about hiking in such a dangerous place
don’t help, either.
I try to divert some of the nervousness filling my body into conversing
with Quijano, the lead forensic analyst on the project.
“During the war, there were people left beheaded in the streets, people
executed, people taken out of their homes, shot, and then dumped in a
ravine,” Quijano says.
Fuck this. This conversation will offer my anxiety no relief. I exit it
pronto.
Salvador, one of the cops I’m walking beside, seems eager to share
something with me. “You’re from the United States?” he asks. “My father
lives in the US, in Los Angeles. Not sure what part.”
“I lived in Los Angeles for a long time,” I say, before slipping and falling
into the shallow stream we’re crossing.
“Fuck!”
Salvador gives me a hand and pulls me up.
My phone no longer works after falling into the water. In moments of
stress, Pop’s voice runs wild in me. I hear his voice in my head: “You’ve
wasted your life with all this politics shit. You should have made a lot of
money, had a family, and lived well, instead of doing stupid things they
don’t pay you for.”
Salvador picks up the conversation where he left off. “My father bought
some DVDs about the war at Metrocentro. They’re really good because
they trace the war from the beginning. You see important stuff.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve seen some of them. We need to understand what’s
happening here now, especially the story of the kids who came from LA,
the gangs. I’m interested in the conflicts and injuries that turn them to
violence, including those caused by the war.”
The relaxed look on Salvador’s face gives way to a snarl. “There’s no
reason to attribute trauma to them,” he says abruptly. “It’s about libertinaje.
Libertinaje, this disorder, is the reason for developing this gang violencía
pandilleril.”
I decide to back down. Dude’s here risking his life to protect the IML
personnel—and me—and I’m not about to start an argument with him.
“How dangerous is it out here?” I ask, trying to shift the conversation and
sincerely wanting to know how much I should be shitting in my pants.
“We’re in lo mero feo, the ugliest of the ugly places.”
“Really?” Fuck.
“Yes, they ambush people in broad daylight. They operate more easily
here in the rural areas. In this sector lots of people have been killed.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Azacualpa, Caserito, Amayito, the San Isidro zone, and the different
barrios and caserios. It’s dangerous there. So is Troncones. Here, too. The
whole rural area around here is dangerous. There are more homicides in
rural areas than in Panchimalco city because libertinaje allows the gangs to
mobilize.”
The hint of a smile and the squint of his eyes wake me up to the fact that
he’s taking the already tense situation and ratcheting shit up even more just
to mess with me. It’s clear he wants to get back at me for showing
sympathy for gang members earlier when I referred to them as kids.
“I bet there are up to fifteen to twenty armed subjects roaming around
right now,” he continues. “They’re surely pissed off over the deaths of those
five pandilleros that were killed. Those guys were killed precisely because
they were going to do a matanza.” A massacre. Matanza is the solution to
matanza.
We arrive at the Rosario de Mora site near a grove of oak trees. Some of
the trees bear the signs of the country’s atomization: the numbers XIII and
XVIII—symbolizing the rival MS-13 and 18th Street maras—carved into
them, along with the crossed-out versions of these Roman numerals, which
signifies that the territory we’re standing on is contested. The site is located
toward the top of a steep hill, an area where one of the officers tells me

there are “probably fifty or more people buried.”1 Half of the site has
already been excavated—a fully dressed skeleton wearing a red basketball
shirt and black pants is partially visible in one corner.
The preliminary work on the site was done before we arrived by Israel
Ticas, a self-taught criminalist retained by the office of Luís Martínez, the
slimy, slick-talking Salvadoran attorney general. I read a lot about Ticas
before coming here. His lack of formal training and unorthodox methods
make him a controversial figure in the forensics community in El Salvador.
Sources at Tutela Legal and other human rights organizations involved with
exhuming mass graves offered me biting criticisms of Ticas, saying he’s a
media hound who botches sites and refuses to be a team player.2 Their
description was reinforced by the fact that he and the IML team barely
exchanged greetings when we arrived.
I walk over to Ticas. It seems like he’s getting ready to leave and that my
time with him will be quite limited. The problem is, I am bubbling with
questions for this especially strange and striking Salvadoran.
We exchange pleasantries before I ask him what he thinks about the
concerns raised by his critics—including Miguel Fortin, IML’s outspoken
conservative and flamboyant director—who have expressed “serious
doubts” about the former computer engineer’s qualifications as a
criminalist. He smiles as if saying, “Whatever,” then looks confidently
toward the site where he did the preliminary work.
I ask Ticas about the division between IML and the attorney general’s
office. “There is no division,” he says. “It doesn’t affect our work. You saw.
I did my part.” He gestures to the grave site. “[IML] may see it like that, but
I don’t. We’re a multidisciplinary team.”
I size him up. Ticas is about five seven, with a medium build and dark
skin. His small eyes have a hint of nervousness. Yet, this is the guy who’s
been filmed eating inside grave sites while excavating, celebrating his
birthday next to bodies in grave pits, holding and speaking to the severed
heads of little girls as if they’re alive, and making crude sexist and
homophobic jokes with the dead. On the other hand, few people in El
Salvador have the ability to do the things he does: finding grave sites from
smell or by looking at plants and roots, and reconstructing bodies
dismembered beyond recognition.
In addition to exhuming individual bodies, Ticas also uses unorthodox
methods to map the relentless expansion of El Salvador’s labyrinth of mass

graves. His research has helped him and others understand that the gangs
have altered their modus operandi, especially in terms of finding more
sophisticated ways to hide bodies. In the past few years, he’s found thirty
bodies in a tunnel, fifteen bodies in a septic tank, an entire cemetery
beneath a mechanics shop, twenty bodies buried in a hundred-foot-deep
well, and dozens of bodies in caves and the backyards of houses.
Previously, mass graves were limited to dump sites—big holes in the
ground located in suburban and rural areas.
Ticas and others suspect that the purported decrease in homicides during
the truce was a farce, that while the gangs reduced their public killings,
instead they made people disappear. He believes this accounts for many of
the more recent victims his team has dug up. However, despite right-wing
media support for their claims, neither Ticas, Fortin, nor anyone else has
been able to offer anything more than anecdotal evidence to back this
theory.
“Freddy Krueger and Jason are nothing next to what we’re living with in
this country. This is terror.”
What motivates him, he says, are the victims—giving them and their
families some sense of the identity lost in the dismemberments,
disappearances, and “commingled” anonymity of these graves. “The ones
who need me are the dead, their families. What I do may be macabre for
others. Not me. For me, it’s natural. That’s what death is: a work of art.”
He’s kinda weird, but from what I’ve gathered, dude has looked into the
abyss like few here, except for the killers filling these graves.
The IML team finishes unpacking equipment. Quijano and Beatriz Ortiz
Mejía, a young forensic anthropologist, enter the hole created by Ticas’s
team to finish uncovering a skeleton.
“He was dismembered,” Quijano reports. “They cut him up. Let’s
measure.”
Quijano and Mejía lift what remains of the skeleton and place it in one of
the cardboard boxes with the IML logo. The moment of truth arrives: will
they be able to discover the body’s identity?
“Here’s a document,” he says triumphantly. “See. It’s a carnet [license].
Lend me a little spoon, Sarandita.” He reads what’s legible on the dirtcovered cedula [ID card]: “Sihuatenango, Panchimalco, departamento, El
Salvador . . . Assistant to mechanic.” He reads his name and birthdate and
shakes his head slightly. “Eighteen years old.”

Quijano and Mejía put on gloves and masks to prevent them from
contaminating the site and the bodies. They start the delicate work of
scraping the site to reveal all the bones buried in it. Quijano photographs
the site and starts removing the bones, beginning with the eighteen-year-old
victim’s skull. They record each bone, then put it in one of the cardboard
boxes, stamped on the sides with the scales of justice, the logo of El
Salvador’s Supreme Court. They will take the bones and other artifacts back
to the IML laboratory to further analyze them.
As I pack up my camera and other things, I look at the grave site and
recall the words of a Tutela Legal lawyer: “In these zones there are
thousands of graves.”3 The Margarita site is just one of the hundreds of dots
on the map of El Salvador.
We hike back to the parking area. Isaias walks up to me as I enter the lot
where the IML caravan is parked and says, “Hey, boss, let’s book it out of
here now.” He looks in the direction of his car parked on the hill.
“I don’t want to leave without saying good-bye,” I insist.
“Boss, believe me, we need to go now,” he says, looking over at the lot
again.
“I told you, I won’t leave without saying good-bye.” I’m committed to
thanking the brave men who protected us, as well as those who led the ritual
of forensic recovery that I’m starting to believe is a critical way to start the
process of individual, familial, and national healing.
“Boss, please.”
I ignore Isaias and walk farther into the lot, flustered by his attitude and
unusual pestering tone.
In the lot, the IML team quickly loads their equipment and rushes to their
car before speeding off without saying good-bye. But Ticas and the officers
are kicking back in the lot. A woman wearing a vest with the big FGR of
the attorney general’s office is standing nearby talking on the phone. One of
the officers speaking with Ticas in the lot walks up to the woman in the
FGR vest and says, “This is a big problem because we told him not to come
to the site.” I realize she’s referring to me. This is bullshit. No such
conversation took place. The IML chief approved my visit more than a
week ago, but he’s long gone.
“Who approved your visit here?” she asks as she approaches me.
“Miguel Fortin, the head of the IML,” I shoot back.

“Well, you don’t have our permission and we’re responsible for this site,
not them.” Both the AG’s office and the IML have pulled this silencing
technique with countless documentarians, journalists, and media
organizations, including those that have come to do splashy reports on
Ticas.
“What? I’m a journalist with a news organization.” My tone is getting
tenser. “I got the necessary permission and now you’re saying I went on this
adventure for nada and without permission?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I’m also saying that you’ll have to erase all
the pictures, all the recording, and any video you took at the site.”
The lawyer from the attorney general’s office signals to the commander
of the police who escorted us. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by guns held by
the same cops who were just protecting me. I look at Salvador, who looks
away from me and down at the ground. My blood is boiling, partly from the
audacity of the lie, partly because this bullshit is coming from the once
heroic FMLN.
“Hell no!” I tell her. “I won’t erase my material. And you can’t make
me.”
The woman looks at the cops, who walk up to me, hands on their
revolvers and rifles.
“You do this and I guarantee you that I will make you famous in ways
you will regret, lady.”
“We don’t care, sir. So please erase the pictures or we will proceed to do
so.”
“Fuck you. You do it.”
“OK, then. I’m going to have to ask that our technician review your
camera and erase your pictures. I know you were documenting with
pictures and in writing.” She orders the police officers to search through my
film and devices while I stand and watch.
At this point, a smirking Ticas adds one last stab, saying, “When you
want to have access you have to call the attorney general’s office.”
I’m shocked. I realize what his whispers with the cop meant: this quirky
fucking guy I was trying hard to like and understand sold me out to the
lawyer from the attorney general’s office in order to have them erase my
pictures. But why? Competition with the IML? Not wanting any more
pictures of bodies and skeletons in major US media like the Boston Globe?

Because he didn’t like my asking about his credentials and disputes with the
IML?
The betrayal of the FMLN and la patria stirs the old pit of anger at El
Salvador and my family caused by my padre. Like absent or abusive
fathers, the political parties, governments, and countries we grew up with,
and even loved, often end up hurting and forsaking us. The only path to
sanity is unforgetting.
Picture by picture, the FMLN cop proceeds to erase all the photographs
taken in the forest, destroying everything captured on my long, difficult
journey. I’m experiencing the Salvadoran state’s need to silence the
slaughter that has made it one of the most consistently violent patrias since
the nineteenth century. This is not the FMLN I once admired, the FMLN
with the militants whose clandestino ways taught me to love the humidity
of their secrets.

14

San Francisco, California
1989

“Compañeros,” said Edwin, the director of CARECEN, the Central
American Refugee Center, “today we have the honor of a visit from Ms. G.
As many of you know, Ms. G is a representative of the FMLN.”
Edwin radiated enthusiasm. Some of CARECEN’s leaders, like Edwin,
moved easily in the networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
that provide legal and social services and advocacy for refugees and in the
more radical, pro-FMLN organizations.1 As a nonprofit refugee-service
organization, CARECEN occupied a lower position2 in the political
hierarchy of the US–El Salvador sanctuary-and-solidarity movement than
the FMLN guerrilla organization.
After I’d left the church and graduated from Berkeley, I’d spent several
months hitchhiking and riding buses to and around El Salvador and
Nicaragua. When I returned to San Francisco, CARECEN’s services and
legal advocacy on behalf of refugees inspired me to work with them. I had
my doubts about the radical thing, but the refugees’ organizing capacity
impressed me deeply.
The galaxy of NGOs established throughout the US by left-leaning
Salvadoran refugees with the ability to turn poetry into politics was
unparalleled in its organizing power. Salvadoran exiles and refugees
deployed their incredible stories of war, tragedy, and overcoming to inspire
hundreds of thousands of North Americans to join their struggle against the
fascist military dictatorship of El Salvador and its main backer, the US

government. Together, the Salvadorans and norteamericano solidarios
provided political and material aid for the FMLN and the network of social
movements that comprised the Salvadoran revolution—creating one of the
most powerful social movements of the eighties3 in the US. Among the first
Salvadorans to launch the US sanctuary and solidarity movement, in the
seventies, were those in San Francisco, including the compañeros and
compañeras working out of a converted Lutheran elementary school on
South Van Ness, five blocks from my family’s apartment on Folsom.
Edwin’s gregarious good nature and his pride at introducing G made the
former classroom glow. The Central American solidarity movement’s
equivalent of a celebrity had just walked humbly into our office. As one of
the few people and even fewer women who represented the FMLN in
public, G was the voice of the Salvadoran revolution. The noticeable
furrowing of her thick, Frida Kahlo–esque eyebrows appeared to signal the
star’s discomfort with the small spectacle created by Edwin’s ebullience.
Edwin led G through the various raggedy donated cubicles housing the
many services—health, legal, dental, food—that CARECEN offered
refugees. As they passed the social services cubicles, Edwin introduced G
to Leonardo, one of our many volunteers. Leonardo said “hola” and not
much else. I thought perhaps he was frozen because he was a former
military guy, and had admitted to lawyers working on his political asylum
case that he’d participated in the escuadrones de la muerte. Grateful that
CARECEN helped him secure asylum, Leonardo had undergone a major
transformation, joining us in organizing and protesting against what we
called the “death-squad government of El Salvador.”
Edwin and G eventually reached the cubicle where I was standing. He
introduced her and said G had recently moved to work out of an office in
San Francisco, her home base for what she called the diplomatic work:
meetings with political, church, solidarity, and other organizations, going to
Congress, building support for the revolution with wealthy donors and
actors, musicians, and other entertainment figures, including Johnny Cash,
Joan Baez, Oliver Stone, Kris Kristofferson, Jane Fonda, Jackson Browne,
and Bonnie Raitt.
“This is Roberto, who works with EMPLEO, our worker cooperative.”
Looking around until he made sure some of the other male compas could
hear him, Edwin added, “He was born here in the Mission District of
Salvadoran parents—but he’s not a traditional gringo.”

Several people, including the white solidarios working in the office,
laughed. I didn’t. I was furious. It was frustrating that I was labeled as not
entirely Salvadoran to other Salvadorans, but it was extra infuriating to
have that line of distinction drawn in front of the white solidarios, who
joined the compas in laughing at my bicultural background. These
situations made me feel like I was “ni chichi, ni limonada,” neither one
thing nor the other.
At twenty-six, four years after leaving the right-wing Open Door
Alliance Church on Valencia, I’d come here looking to connect with the
Salvadoran side that had once made me feel a sense of shame. But working
in the minefield of male compa humor—which included being asked with
heavy sarcasm during the Salvadoran national anthem, “Hey, Lovato, which
flag will you salute?”—had turned the hyphen in Salvadoran-American into
my own personal San Andreas fault line of insecurity, one that shook me
regularly.
Nonetheless, I bit my tongue at Edwin’s comment.
“I see nothing funny in this,” G said with a tone and look of authority
that quickly shut down the Salvadoran smartasses and their white chorus.
Her perceptiveness had me scoping out this fierce twenty-nine-year-old
woman who openly represented the guerrillas named for Farabundo Martí,
the guy my cousin Adilio whispered to me about years before. At five four,
G had a solid build that suited her serious demeanor. She wore her hair
short, which went well with her pretty brown eyes and gave her a slightly
debonair look.
Unfazed, G quickly extended her hand to me and then lit me up with a
coquettish smile. It was easy to see why the compas baptized her with the
noms de guerre they gave her: Clara, clear, and Lucia, light. Translucence
turned out to be a turn-on.
G was slow to speak and had paused a lot when speaking, like she was
weighing each word to make sure I was present and understood what she
was saying. For someone with such an important position, G had a humble
Salvadoran air that was also reassuring. My own deep hidden shyness saw
its reflection.
My work with CARECEN had taught me that Salvadorans either loved
the FMLN or hated them because of the deep fear and anti-communism
instilled in them by the dictatorships, as it was in my parents from

childhood. My brothers, Omar and Mem, my sister, Mima, and Mom, all
supported me, regardless. Pop said nada.
The possibility that Pop hated my newfound work after I graduated from
Berkeley made me happy. He didn’t like stories I heard about our distant
cousins from Ataco. These cousins, most of whom were from the rich
cafetalero family on Pop’s Ahuachapán side, had joined the FMLN. They
were guerrilleras, a word that sounded badass.
As attractive as G seemed, though, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with her
radical politics. I was politically liberal, involved in the movement because
I wanted to do something to create change. The humanitarian sanctuary
aspect of CARECEN’s work, helping refugees in San Francisco, felt safe
and was what had drawn me in, as opposed to the more radical solidarity
part tasked with taking over consulates, closing the Golden Gate Bridge,
and other intrepid actions targeting the Salvadoran and US governments. I
was curious about the more radical pro-FMLN flank of the movement but
not ready to commit to it. G made me nervous because she seemed to exhort
action on these issues with a presence that was so natural, so light, and yet
so powerful that I wasn’t sure how to deal.
After touring the rest of the CARECEN complex with Edwin, G
suddenly stuck her head into the EMPLEO office. Her entourage was gone.
“Can I come in?” she asked with a polite smile.
“Sure!” I said, startled and nervous.
Up close and alone, she was less imposing and disarmingly nice. We
made some small talk for a while about what we did in the EMPLEO office,
when she subtly changed the subject.
“You grew up here?”
“Yes,” I said. “Born and raised.”
“What a lovely place to grow up,” she said. “Very different from the
countryside where I grew up.”
Parts of her speech had hints of the rural accent of my maternal
grandmother, Mamá Clothi, whose picture hung in our living room. G
struck an imposing figure. Her Chalateca qualities quickly put me at ease:
the deliberate, weighted speech; her word choices, like the unusual, vowelrich chirilin instead of pequeño to denote smallness; the way she looked
directly in my eyes; and her immediately apparent toughness that came
from the physical and political rockiness of rural El Salvador.

She seemed genuinely interested in my being a “grindio,” an Indian
gringo, the stupid term the compañeros around the CARECEN complex had
come up with for me. Not one for small talk, she flashed another dimension
of her personality that intrigued me: being muy directa.
“I’m new here and would love to see the Mission—through your eyes,”
she said, before glancing down the hall.
Uh oh.
“OK, yeah. Let’s do it,” I said. We exchanged cards and agreed to talk
again soon.

G and I met on the corner of Twenty-Fourth and Mission, the unofficial
center of the neighborhood, as symbolized by the BART station that had
started gentrification there in 1973, which had been continued with ferocity
with the growth of Silicon Valley. She showed up without the sport coat and
slacks she wore for work, wearing a bright summery dress instead. The
diplomat of the political-military organization had given way to the civilian.
A beautiful civilian.
Playing the role of tour guide on the moonlit summer night, I took G to
the most important sights of the Mission: my folks’ apartment on TwentyFifth and Folsom; Lucky Alley, where Hiram Vázquez and I first smoked
cigarettes and pot and found our first porn magazine back when we were
preteens; and Balmy Alley, the street with all the murals, where me and Los
Originales had once abandoned an ugly orange stolen Chevy Nova after I
crashed it into a wall in the Potrero Hill neighborhood.
She asked questions throughout, as if the Mission were some kind of
exotic land and I were one of its diplomats. But I could also see the
emissary in her giving way to the campesina girl who enjoyed moments
free of wartime pressures that she’d been dealing with for the last decade. It
felt like part of my appeal was that I was of Salvadoran descent, but
innocent to war, even though I hardly felt innocent.
Eventually, we found ourselves on the corner of Twenty-First and
Valencia. I felt an immediate, urgent need to bolt. Unresolved parts of me,
of my past, were threatening to enter our conversation before I was ready.
I’d wanted to show G my cool veneer before exposing my less attractive
parts. Suddenly our walk started to feel scary, like we were moving too fast.
But I resisted the urge to flee because I enjoyed G’s easy, safe manner, her

questions about me, and the way she talked about her life and even life
generally.
“This is the Open Door Alliance, my old church,” I said nervously.
Looking back at us were the big blue eyes of Jesus, whose classic portrait
sat next to a bunch of Bibles in the big windows of the storefront. The
image of me, the prostrating deacon, praying for the reelection of Reagan at
the front of the church filled me with fear as I waited for G’s reaction.
“Roberto!” she said with unusual enthusiasm. “It’s beautiful that you
found faith, with all you’d been through. I’m also a Christian.”
Huh?
I tried to keep whatever was left of my cool exterior even as my insides
were screaming What the fuck?
“Really? How’s that?”
“In Chalate,” she said, referring to Chalatenango, one of the most warravaged states in El Salvador, “I was a member of a Christian base
community.”
“Really?”
“Yes, we read and acted like the Bible was really written about and for
the poor that Jesus served, as if Jesus’s message was a message of
liberation.” She gazed at the baby Jesus in the window.
Holy shit. She’s not kidding. She looked up to Jesus as a hero, too.
“That’s fucking cool!” I exclaimed. My heart pounded harder. “So,
you’re from Chalate?”
“Yes, my entire family.”
“My abuelita, Mamá Clothi, was from there. She lived to be one hundred
and three. They live a long time out there.”
“Some do.”
I didn’t say anything. My insensitivity about the war dead brought things
from the heavenly heights back down to dirty Valencia Street.
“Where’s your father from?” she asked.
“Ahuachapán.”
“Ahuachapán?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. There’s a lot of deep history there.”
“Yeah,” I said, a fresh source of insecurity rising in me: the emptiness
and shame I felt because I didn’t know anything about Pop’s father and
Ahuachapán family.

“I’m going to Chalate to check out the refugee communities CARECEN
works with down there,” I said, desperate to shift the conversation.
“That’s great. I was going to become a nun when I lived there, but then
the escuadrones de la muerte started killing members of the base
community—and then they killed many members of my family,” she said in
that soft voice. If G was trying to connect with me, she was doing so in the
most unexpected way.
“I had a choice,” she continued. “I could either escape before they came
for me or go to the mountains and fight. I went to the mountains and joined
the compañeros.”
Her forthrightness, her example as a principled political actor, and even
her Christian background inspired trust in me, something I wasn’t used to.
Whatever her politics, she was obviously a sincere and committed person.
My street-tough Mission District homeboy’s pride bowed before this
beautiful, sensitive, smart, courageous woman. She wanted to know about
me, which felt like an honor. On top of that, G had insight into Salvadoran
things, which I so desperately craved.
“So, tell me about your family,” she said.
“Well, I was born to a mother who adores me and a father who’s never
been around for me emotionally.”
“Er, OK. So why is that so different?”
“I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“My father wasn’t there for me either. Most Salvadoran men aren’t.”
I hadn’t heard that before about Salvadoran men. It shook me—in a good
way—but I was also overwhelmed. It felt like we were speeding into this
conversation too quickly.
“Really?” I asked rhetorically, wanting to move the conversation along.
G smiled.
“Let’s call it an evening, shall we?” Her timing was exquisite, like she
could feel the flow of my insecurities and sensed what I needed at the
moment.
Over the next few weeks we spent many evenings strolling toward
anything in the Mission that seemed marvelously beautiful, which, in G’s
company, meant everything.

15

Las Aradas, Chalatenango, El Salvador
1990

My first mass grave wasn’t what I’d anticipated. Before meeting G, I’d
committed to going to Chalatenango for a few weeks on behalf of
CARECEN despite the ongoing civil war. My mission was to observe the
work of our sister organization, CRIPDES, led by a group of fierce women,
that had worked with displaced and repopulated communities since 1984.
On a more personal level, Chalatenango was my maternal grandmother’s
birthplace. There I hoped to connect the dots between the crisis of violence
all around me and my internal crisis fueled by the unknown past. Touching
ground at Chalatenango gave me a physical connection to pasts that had
been denied to me.
One day I decided to visit a part of the region’s past that people were still
talking about ten years later: a mass grave at the Sumpul. After driving
from the town of Guarjila, our descent from the grassy, rocky hills and the
valleys around them felt pretty mellow, other than the mud that made it feel
like you were walking en jabón, on soap, as Salvadorans say when
describing either actual slipperiness or being in a precarious position. The
nearby murmurs of a river soothed me, as did the shade of a ceiba, the “tree
of life,” venerated by the Náhuat and Mayan peoples of the region. The
ceiba acted as a cosmic transmitter—its branches were said to reach high
into the sky and its roots deep into the underworld.
The grave was in the river. “There it is,” my guide, Quique, told me. He
pointed at the bright, clear waters of the Sumpul beside us. “You’d never

know what happened here nine years ago.”
Quique, a Chalateco with a nervous laugh, made a rather odd Virgil,
leading me down to the river of death. He ended most of his sentences with
“beah,” local slang for “verdad,” “truth,” which gave his speech a homey
ring. I’d met Quique through friends at CRIPDES, which was providing aid
to the refugees still returning to their communities.
In El Salvador the war had an impact on everyone. Several leaders of
CRIPDES had been captured, raped, tortured, and killed by Salvadoran
security forces. Quique and thousands of other refugees were forced to flee
to Honduras in the late 1960s due to political conflict and extreme violence
in the region. They resided in Honduras for several years, until the
government there forced them to return to Chalatenango in the late
seventies and early eighties.1
“We came back from Honduras and other parts of Chalate and
established ourselves here in Las Aradas,” Quique said. “Before, during,
and after our return, the military was hungry for us. They were chasing,
capturing, and killing people. We lived in fear, always ready to flee. They
thought everybody in our communities were FMLN. The night before [the
massacre], they were positioned around the river, as if they were blocking it
and getting ready to attack.
“That morning many of us fled. Some tried to cross the river río abajo,
risking drowning because the water swelled. It was deep and dangerous.
“As we fled, the military and paramilitaries approached. Many women
and children tried to escape by going across the river to Honduras. Without
warning, the Hondurans [military] started shooting at them or chasing them
back across the river into the hands of the [Salvadoran] military and
paramilitaries. They were screaming, ‘Please don’t kill us, please don’t kill
us!’”
The soldiers kept the refugees in the river for a few minutes, doing
nothing. Then the soldiers and paramilitaries took the first group of fifty
onto land and marched them next to the Sumpul River.
“You could hear the screams. The military started shooting fifty to sixty
people at a time,” Quique continued. “And then another fifty and then
another. They executed over two hundred people at the edge of the river
like that.” Buzzing over the violent scene were several helicopters supplied
by the Reagan administration. “The helicopters fired down on the people

drowning in the river and those running away. They also killed men,
women and children who were injured.”
He paused. “It was horrible.”
Other witnesses later described how soldiers cut open the bellies of
pregnant women, tossed fetuses and infants into the air, and bayoneted
them.2 They also recalled the blood: in the water, on the ground, splattered
across trees. After the massacre, the Salvadoran military cordoned off the
area, leaving any survivors to die alongside the corpses already rotting
around the Sumpul.3
Vietnam-veteran trainers from the School of the Americas (SOA), Fort
Leavenworth in Kansas, and other military facilities had taught the
Salvadoran military in the US. Other trainers were deployed to El Salvador
by the Carter administration.4 Reagan significantly expanded this US
military presence. The Salvadoran military men who received the training
returned from the United States to Chalatenango and other parts of El
Salvador with expertise in “draining the water” and other counterinsurgency
techniques. Some of their methods were documented in their training
manuals, but the more horrific ones were not, instead left coded in deadly
euphemism.5 As former Guatemalan president and SOA graduate José
Efraín Ríos Montt put it, “The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea. If
you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea.”6 The Sumpul River
communities were the water. Ríos Montt was eventually convicted of
genocide but was not sentenced due to his poor health.
Despite the efforts of Salvadoran officials and the US envoy to El
Salvador, Elliott Abrams, to spin the news and deny the massacre, the truth
leaked through the blockade. The Sumpul massacre of May 1980 was the
worst in Salvadoran history since La Matanza in 1932. More than six
hundred men, women, and children were killed.7 The foundations for a new
regime of oblivion had been put in place.
Strafing and bombing from nearby helicopters and the sound of
semiautomatic gunshot fire reminded us that the war was ongoing. The idea
of towns where kids pray with their parents at night while semiautomatics
rage devastated me. I stepped aside to cry while Quique faced the river.
After I returned to his side, he noticed my silence. “It impacts you, leaves
you without breath, beah?”
“Yes,” I said.

“They still haven’t dug up all the other mass graves and they probably
won’t, beah?”
“No, they probably won’t.”
Almost a decade after it happened, the Sumpul massacre, the first major
massacre of civilians by the Salvadoran government during the war, had not
been officially investigated. Likewise forgotten was the El Mozote
massacre, where the Atlacatl Battalion had slaughtered a town of nearly one
thousand evangelical campesinos in December 1981. And the Sixth
Military Detachment’s December 1981 massacre at El Junquillo, a town
almost entirely made up of the elderly, women, and children. And El
Calabozo, where more than two hundred were also massacred by the
Atlacatl Battalion in August 1982. And the February 1983 massacre at Las
Hojas, the town in Sonsonate where the Jaguar Battalion and escuadrones
de la muerte butchered sixty families, mostly comprised of indigenous
children, the elderly, and women, including pregnant women. And dozens
more mass murders.8
“Beah, that when you see or hear about these things they are not
forgotten, beah?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll never forget this river.”
Many refer to “Chalatenango heroico” because of the Chalateco fighting
spirit—the rugged spirit of the campesinos, who’ve survived decades of
oppression and mass murder, and the spirit of the guerrilleros, whose will to
fight was legendary. My visit to the killing fields of Chalatenango gave me
a different sense of what it meant to be Salvadoreño. In philosophy classes
at Berkeley, I had learned the Greek word aletheia, unforgetting, which the
Greeks also equated with uncovering truth. Now I realized that learning
both Salvadoran history and the history of my family was essential to
understanding my story. Our future depends on remembering that we are a
fierce, resilient people forged in a crucible of poverty and staggering
violence, including Mom and, as I would learn, especially Pop.

I returned to my folks’ house in San Francisco from El Salvador seeing
them and their life choices in a completely new way. At this point in my
life, most of the time I simply avoided Pop. But my trip made me want to
brave the years of the silence between us, so I decided to approach him as
he was packing one of his boxes in preparation for another of the frequent
short trips he made to El Salvador to supplement the family income.

“Hola,” he said in a voice filled with hesitation, as if waiting for me to
either start preaching or get pissed off.
“What are you taking this time, Pop?” I asked. Pop looked older, frailer
than I remembered, as he packed and taped the cardboard boxes. He had
turned sixty-eight last August, a fact I noticed in his wrinkled face and
thinning arms.
“Stuff,” he said, still in that hesitant voice. “You know, joyas, clothes,
calculadoras, toys for the children. Stuff like that.”
“That’s cool, Pop,” I said, clearly not actually interested but wholly
sincere in my desire to connect with my padre.
Pop’s boxes seemed smaller than they once had. In addition to the
shadiness I’d always ascribed to them—and to my folks—previously, the
boxes had done good, as well, helping family, friends, and the poor in San
Salvador and San Vicente. For the first time I could see my desire to break
martial law by bringing boxes of aid to the refugee populations in
Chalatenango as rooted in the aid my parents had been sending throughout
my life. I was starting to understand my family in a more complicated way,
one that accommodated both its lightness and its darkness.
“OK, Pop. I’ll see you later.”
“Adiós.”
This brief interaction marked a big turning point for us, the start of our
reconciliation, though in a Salvadoran machismo way of bonding without
using too many words. My return to San Francisco not only marked a major
change in my relationship to Pop, but also in my personal aspirations: I was
no longer content doing aid work from the remove of San Francisco.
Hearing Salvadoran war stories from friends in San Francisco had been one
thing, but experiencing those stories firsthand had added more adult and
political dimensions to my sense of urgency about, and responsibility to, the
situation. But I also knew that if I went back to El Salvador, I would
probably have to forget the Salvadoreña whose story and example had also
inspired this change, G.

The day after I got back to San Francisco, I called G. We got together that
same day and went for a drive around the Mission in my junky silver
Honda. For the next several weeks, we enjoyed each other’s company. I
gave G chocolate, poetry, and courted her in a way that clearly showed I
wanted to be more than friends, but I stopped short from making more

serious moves. I had made up my mind to return to El Salvador and work
directly for CRIPDES. Also, G was a powerful person in the Salvadoran
circles we ran in, and I didn’t want to mess with her or her serious work
either (really just my twenty-something mind projecting my own fears for
myself onto her). We were both based in San Francisco in a very small but
tight-knit Salvadoran political community, and this made the distance
between the personal and the political very small as well. I wasn’t sure
things would work out between us, given my decision to leave the city.
Finally I didn’t want to get into any relationship until I had something clear
to commit with. I was scared of love because I felt unlovable. I wasn’t
ready.
All this came to a head one day when we were parked in the lot of the
Randall Junior Museum, home to one of the least-known but most beautiful
views of the sparkling lights of downtown San Francisco and the
shimmering bay. In the distance, we could see the beautiful spiraling marble
tower of the otherwise decrepit Mission High, where my brother Omar and
I had gone to school. I pointed it out to G.
“What a gorgeous building.”
“Santana went to school there, too. My father knows his dad from all his
shady dealings at Hunt’s Donuts,” I said.
“Wow. That’s a big deal.” I had the sense G was exercising patience with
some of my Mission pride stories and didn’t actually find them all that
impressive. She was about three years older than I was and far more
serious, even for her age. I chalked it up to the war, which also gave her a
vulnerability that came through when she put down her FMLN-diplomat
guard. Still, she could stay with a conversation and didn’t ever belittle me,
and would even say things that made the mundane or the sad parts of my
life sound OK.
“Yeah, he [Santana’s dad] got mariachi to play at my party when I
graduated from Berkeley.”
“¡Puuuta! ¡Qué vergón!” (“Fuuuck. How cool!”)
“Yeah,” I continued. “Santana managed to channel the different
movements coursing through the Mission in the sixties and seventies—
black power, brown power, sexual liberation, hippie and psychedelic
culture, Latin American liberation struggles.”
“The compas have loved Santana since the seventies. I do, too.”

“Really? I’ve always felt like I have this sort of fire-breathing,
psychedelic purple dragon of rage inside me against my father. Santana’s
song ‘Mother’s Daughter’ really captures what it feels like to me.”
I did it. I admitted it. For the first time—with anyone. The abuse I’d been
silent about since childhood had come out at last.
I waited for her response. Why the fuck am I diggin’ deeper into her if
I’m getting ready to leave? Don’t play games, pendejo.
“I can hear that in the music.” She smiled. “I know this rage you
describe.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I know it as abuse. Without realizing it, our own families help
create these monsters, putting them in our bodies,” she said in her powerful,
soft voice. “The state helps create this monster in our families and then calls
on it when it needs us to destroy ourselves. So in this sense, Santana is also
revolutionary music. Many of the compañeros en la guerrilla grew up
listening to rock, including Santana’s, for that reason.”
I stayed quiet, breathing in the power of her words for a moment before
asking, “OK, so how is Santana revolutionary?”
“Being a revolutionary isn’t just about guns and protest. Before anything,
you have to have un espíritu romántico, and Santana’s music has that
espíritu. Lots of it.”
Fuck Woodstock Santana, I thought, this Salvadoran Santana feels even
more mind-blowing.
“Makes me wanna hear some live music,” I said, sensing the perfect
moment to broach one of her interests that bothered me: her love of opera. I
didn’t understand how someone as cool and revolutionary as G could like
that bourgeois, rich people’s music. “Speaking of—I’ve been wondering
why you like opera so much.”
“I started listening to opera whenever I was sad as a child. It made me
feel better than going up into a tree or hiking into the mountains to cry.
And, ohhh, that line ‘Love is a rebellious bird / That none can tame.’
“Ahhhh!” she exclaimed with unusual abandon. “I love it.”
“So what’s your favorite opera song?” I asked, suddenly wanting to hear
more.
“‘O Fortuna’ from Carmina Burana,” she responded without hesitation.
I’d heard her tell a friend the song was her música de combate, the music
she went to in times of personal and political combat.

“I listened to it as a child,” she continued, “but it took on another
meaning after I stopped studying to be a nun and the war started. Whenever
we would march in protest against the government policies and death-squad
killings, they would often kill many protesters.” She paused, breathing
deeply to control her fury and prevent her tears from pushing over the edge.
“And then, to make things worse, they would play music, opera music.
They played . . .”
“Carmina Burana!” I interjected.
“Yes,” she said. “The government radio played it to mock us. So it
became the music we use to remember our martyrs, our música de combate.
Yes, you have to avoid romanticismo, base romanticism, which is
dangerous, but we must, by all means possible, have the espíritu romántico,
including through opera. How else can we do such intrepid things without
being románticos in this sense?”
At Berkeley, professor June Jordan not only wrote unapologetically
political poetry, but she’d also taught us the work of Claribel Alegría,
Roque Dalton, and other Salvadoran poet warriors, who provided
generations the spiritual sustenance needed to face the apocalyptic violence
there. June Jordan showed us that our love of people and our political
beliefs were inseparable. The personal was, in fact, the political—a truth G
so beautifully embodied. After a minute or two, my mind returned from its
lofty romantic musing.
There waiting for me back on the ground was G and the hard truth that I
was leaving for El Salvador soon and still hadn’t told her. As much as I
wanted to spend more time with G, I burned to go back to El Salvador. Yes,
experiences in Chalatenango had moved me, but also my involvement with
G and the Salvadoran revolutionaries called out to me in operatic ways to
take on the ongoing struggle against fascism, continuing the work of the
poet warriors and revolutionaries I’d read at Berkeley—anti-fascists like
Orwell, the Lincoln Brigades, Paul Robeson, Hemingway, and warrior poets
like Muriel Rukeyser and Gioconda Belli. The opportunity to be a part of
such a movement made me feel alive.
“Look, G,” I began, “I think the world of you. In the little time since we
met, you’ve become a pretty great . . . friend.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, you’re a great person, a person I have a lot of respect for and am
learning a lot from.”

“Yes.”
“But I made a decision: I’m going to El Salvador and not sure when I’m
coming back.”
“I see. So you don’t have any idea when you’ll be back?”
“No, I don’t.”
She paused, then she started crying. After a couple of minutes of tears,
the resolute G returned.
“I won’t forget you, Tito,” she said. “Please don’t forget me.”
Fuck. She’s not making this easy by making it so easy. Unsure what to do,
I remained silent and simply said to myself, Adiós, G, but when I got home,
I cried.

16

San Salvador
1939

Marcos Elizondo, Ramón’s boss at Muebles Alonso, one of the best
furniture makers in the country, told him to prepare the big order he’d been
working on. It was going to a special address: Casa Presidencial, also
known as La Casona, the Big House of the nation.
Seventeen-year-old Ramón was now living and working as a furniture
maker and delivery person in San Salvador. A few years earlier, Mamá Tey
had packed their things and moved Ramóncito and her mother, Mamá Fina,
from Ahuachapán to live full-time with her boyfriend Chico in Mesón San
Luís. Mesón San Luís was situated on land that had once been part of the
stately homes of Salvadoran elites. These abandoned elite mansions began
as temporary homes for squatters and eventually the land was parceled into
housing for the poor. This need for housing had come about due to the
industrialization of the country, one of the reasons for a mass migration
from rural to urban areas. La Matanza had also played a role, as families
fled to the city to escape the mass killings of indigenous people in western
El Salvador.
Mamá Tey knew that moving away from Barrio Santa Cruz in
Ahuachapán would come at a high price for Ramón—being uprooted and
cut off from a slower, more rural life. He also left behind many friends,
though so many boys and young men, Alfonso Luna included, had been
killed by the Guardia Cívica and the soldiers, themselves boys barely big
enough to carry the Mauser metralletas they used to commit adult atrocities.

Tey wanted to cast all this violence and tragedy into el olvido, and keep her
children far away from that deep hole. But Ramón made friends throughout
the mesón and used his wits to secure himself and several of his friends jobs
at Muebles Alonso.
However, leaving Ahuachapán for good didn’t solve all of Mamá Tey’s
worries for her eldest son. Ramóncito had started drinking at only twelve
years old. By the time he was seventeen, Ramón was constantly drowning
himself in guaro, El Salvador’s cane moonshine, its cheapest alcoholic
drink. Seeing Ramón come home borracho from a night of drinking,
dancing, and puteando didn’t fit the life Tey had imagined for her eldest.
To deliver the big order for the Casa Presidencial, scrawny Ramón
brought Chacaz, the most muscular—and meanest—of his friends, and
another young man from the mesón. Under Ramón’s supervision, the two
men carried the bulky load of furniture through the doors of the immaculate
white building. Inside the house were sparkling clean brown floors, big
French chandeliers, and cascading curtains, like nothing the three teens had
ever seen before. Straining under the weight of the heavy oak, the young
men were directed by a military officer up a winding marble staircase and
into a large, stately bedroom.
As soon as they entered the elegant room, the three young men received a
massive shock. There, next to a canopied mahogany bed, stood a
commanding presence, El General.
“Welcome, jóvenes,” El General said. This was the same man who had,
just seven years earlier, established himself as military dictator and began
by perpetrating the worst massacre in the history of the Americas, then
destroying the official records documenting it.1
“Thank you for delivering the furniture. I’ve been waiting for it.”
“You’re welcome,” said Ramón, whose sudden nervousness had made his
stomach as hard as the furniture they were delivering.
“Who made these designs?”
“Me.”
“How old are you, hijo?”
“Seventeen years old, señor.”
“Don’t call me ‘señor,’” said the man in a gentle but commanding
manner. “Call me general. I’m General Martínez, presidente de la
republica.”

“Yes, sir, General,” Ramón responded on cue, his body rising up to
attention like he was a puppet or a military subordinate. Even Chacaz, who
respected few people and never backed down to anyone or anything, looked
nervous and small before Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.
“Thank you, jóvenes. Now be on your way.”
Ramón and Chacaz rushed back to the mesón to tell all who had ears that
they’d just met el jefe maximo of the entire country.
The story echoed even louder after El General gave one of his radio
addresses to the country a few weeks later.
“Many say that the youth of our generation is lost,” said El General in his
solemn radio voice, “but I recently met some young men who are an
example of what young men should be. They represent nothing less than the
future of the country. These young men embody the virtues that will make
our patria great.”
“He was talking about us!” Ramón said. He was listening to the address
from the beat-up building on Avenida Independencia that housed Muebles
Alonso. Listening beside him were the guys Ramón had helped get jobs, his
crew: Cara de Luna—Moon Face—the sander; El Chino Manuel, the
varnisher; and Chacaz. They sat there proudly, not persuaded by Ramón
about El General’s speech.
“Yeah, he liked the furniture, Ramón,” said Cara de Luna, one of the
smarter of the bunch, who read newspapers, “but, no jodas [fooling]. We’re
not the ‘examples to the country’ he was talking about. He made that
speech over a week after you guys delivered his furniture. He was probably
talking about young military officers who are pissed off at him for changing
the Constitution so he could keep being presidente.”
Others agreed, but for less political reasons. They knew El General
wasn’t talking about them. Yeah, the furniture they made was something to
be proud of. Yeah, they worked hard for close to no colones by day. But at
night, Ramón’s furniture crew plus eleven other guys from the mesón
became something quite the opposite of the exemplary young men Martínez
waxed presidential about to the nation. After work, they were La Pandilla
de La Avenida, the Independencia Avenue Gang—fifteen boys, ages
thirteen to seventeen, who had been organized by Ramón to rob, extort, and
fight.

Part VI

17

San Salvador
2015

“Hey, keep your phone nearby,” I remind Isaias. “I’m expecting an
important call and may have to leave quickly. So don’t stray too far, OK?”
I’m waiting on a call from Santiago, the gang leader I met at Mijango’s.
Besides my reporting, Santiago is one of the main reasons I’ve stayed in El
Salvador. Mijango told me he was “brilliant” and a top gang leader, one of
the few people designated by gang leadership to speak on behalf of the two
largest gangs, MS-13 and 18th Street. Santiago will provide an insider’s
view of gang violence, a view that, with exceptions like the reporting of El
Faro, is often lacking in reports on El Salvador. In the meantime, I’d
decided to visit the forensic lab to gather material for my freelance stories.
A heavily guarded gate in front of a sloping concrete path leads to the
Instituto de Medicina Legal (IML), the giant—and sole—forensic lab in El
Salvador, the place where all the country’s documented and undocumented
dead come to be analyzed and counted before being returned to their loved
ones—or buried in anonymous graves. The line to get in is seventy people
deep. Many are here in search of family—sons, daughters, fathers, mothers,
wives, husbands—lost in the limbo described by the term desaparecido, the
disappeared.
Trace elements haunt me as I wait. The memory of M16-bearing FMLN
cops forcing me to erase my pictures the prior week. The jarring realization
that this Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front is not G’s FMLN. The
current FMLN’s cover-ups and enabling of the modern escuadrones de la

muerte run in direct opposition to the FMLN of the 1980s and ’90s, when
so many men, women, and youth died in the fight against both the
escuadrones and the fascist military dictatorship that deployed them, along
with big business leaders. I don’t recognize this FMLN—and don’t want to
recognize it.
FMLN government officials and gang leaders live in a garden of
impunity thanks to an amnesty law originally intended to protect right-wing
ARENA party members who had committed atrocities during the civil war.
ARENA president Alfredo Cristiani signed the law into effect in 1993,1 five
days after the United Nations Truth Commission produced a report
estimating that seventy-five to eighty thousand Salvadorans had been killed
during the war, attributing “almost eighty-five percent of cases to agents of
the State, paramilitary groups allied to them, and the death squads.”2 Fewer
than 5 percent of the war’s atrocities were attributed to the FMLN. This sort
of erasure of responsibility for countless crimes against humanity is not
unprecedented in Salvadoran history. In 1932 General Martínez had signed
his own amnesty law, granting “unconditional amnesty to those
functionaries, authorities, employees, agents of the state and any other
civilian or military person that appear responsible for infractions of the
law.”3 Forgetting begets forgetting begets ongoing mass murder.
I’ve interviewed mara leaders as they watch news reports featuring
legislators known to have perpetrated war crimes. The marareros tell me,
“Shit, they got away with it. So can we.”4
Besides the landscape covered with the individual and mass graves from
the war, there’s no greater physical monument to the extent of El Salvador’s
violence than the IML. One of the most important means of exploring these
seemingly disparate parts of the expansive Salvadoran underworld that is
killing so many kids—physically and spiritually—is to become a student of
death. The best and brightest forensic scientists work here at the IML
offices. It was here that Quijano and his team brought the boxes with the
remains of case #2465, the dead teenager found during our visit to the
Margarita grave site.
As we wait in line, a stout woman under a red, yellow, white, and blue
plastic umbrella is selling nuts, cans of pop, bottled water, and baconwrapped hot dogs, crackling on a mobile skillet. The smell of hot dogs
perfumes the air. I ask the vendor if she remembers the 2010 IML workers
strike protesting the firing of five hundred workers. Bodies literally piled up

waiting to be analyzed. The smell of rotting flesh, witnesses said, reached
far beyond the steel gates and walls of the IML.
“Oh yeah,” she says, her round face quickly crumpling into a momentary
grimace. “That disgusting smell. I’ll never forget that fucking smell of la
muerte. All the bodies rotting, without any attention. Many of us
complained about the possible health hazards before the government
eventually acted.”
The IML medical anthropology lab looks nothing like the glossy,
colorful, hi-tech labs of Bones or CSI. The drab white walls are covered
with drawings of technical specifications of skeletons. Hanging beside them
are three framed professional drawings in colored pencil featuring
muscular, scantily clad superheroes, all three standing or lying next to large
mounds of skulls. A gift from a grateful comic book artist.
An agile Saul Quijada swishes the towelette he brought out of the
bathroom into the garbage bin like he’s Steph Curry, the superstar of my
hometown basketball team, the Golden State Warriors. Quijada extends his
freshly washed hand.
Quijada is both a member of the forensic anthropology team and an
auxiliary trainer for the renowned Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team,
which did pioneering work uncovering mass graves from that country’s
dirty war. Dressed in a blue polo shirt, the stocky, mustachioed Quijada
looks more like a handsome wrestler than a scientist who’s licensed in
traumatology, the science of injuries and what causes them. The skill in the
anthropology lab lies in what forensic scientists call “making the bones
speak.” Men like Quijada have this unique ability to quickly recognize the
source of damage to tissue, skin, and bones, from various weapons—
knives, machetes, explosives, shrapnel, high-caliber weapons, mortars,
mines, and more. Quijada and his medical anthropology team work with the
Argentine forensic team to identify remains of migrants who die during
their northward odyssey to the United States.
“What killings do you focus on?” I ask.
“We see the whole process,” he says, “from urban and rural areas where
killings in El Salvador force migration, to the deaths that take place during
the migration through Mexico to the United States.” Quijada and other
forensicists at the IML study the bones and crime scenes of the gang and
other killings in El Salvador, which have left thousands dead and forced
thousands more to migrate, going back as far as the unresolved mass

murders during the war in the eighties. They’ve also created a team in the
Federal District of Mexico City to use DNA from the remains of migrants
to identify them. The IML works with forensic specialists in Arizona,
Texas, and other locations on the migrant trail, to investigate the horrific
desert dehydration deaths and the drownings of migrants in the Río Grande
and other rivers crossing the migration journey. There is an increasing
number of bodies of parents and small children being found on the US part
of the trail.
Together with their peers in Mexico and the US, Quijada and the IML are
reconstructing epic migration stories so they can be told to the larger world.
Throughout the twenty-five hundred miles of migrant trail, Quijada says,
“there are traces of people and of armaments. Many of these armaments are
still circulating—and so are most of the killers.” I’m reminded of my visits
to northern Mexico, where I encountered the sort of semiautomatic machine
gun–wielding cartel sicarios, who capture, enslave, and kill Central
American migrants.
We walk over to one of the tables, which bears the nearly complete
skeleton of #1975, an eighteen-year-old male killed in San Salvador last
July. Other skeletons in the room date back much further, to still-unresolved
mass murders and crimes of the war in the 1980s. The head of #1975
appears to have been severed from his shoulders. “You can see here,”
Quijada says, pointing at the vertebrae, “where the man was hit with a
machete.”
Quijada’s talk of making the bones “speak” echoes thought surrounding
the birth of forensics in China, which I encountered while researching the
history of forensics in preparation for my trip. In 1247, Sung Tz’u, a lawyer
charged by the rulers of the Southern Sung Dynasty with investigating
murders in the kingdom, produced the first book on forensic science, with a
magnificent title, The Washing Away of Wrongs.5 The title reminds me of the
Greek concept I learned and loved at Berkeley, aletheia. In granting
amnesty to its war criminals, El Salvador has sanctioned the forgetting of
the atrocities committed against its people by its own government.
Quijada’s reconstruction of memory from these bones is one of the greatest
correctives to this forgetting of wrongs.
Quijada glides over to another table to examine a skeleton. This one’s
much browner than the others, a sign it is older and in a more advanced
state of decomposition. The tag on the body says El Mozote, two words that

carry colossal weight in El Salvador. El Mozote, a town in Morazán
Province, is the site of the worst single massacre in modern Latin American
history (as opposed to the multiple massacre sites and duration of La
Matanza of 1932). The attack on El Mozote came at the order of Colonel
Domingo Monterrosa, leader of the elite US-trained Atlacatl military rapidresponse unit. His US advisers allegedly accompanied Monterrosa as he
ordered an attack against El Mozote.6 According to award-winning
journalist and UC Berkeley professor Mark Danner, “A number of highly
placed Salvadorans, including one prominent politician of the time who had
many friends among senior officers, claim that two American advisers were
actually observing the [El Mozote] operation from the base camp at
Osicala. On its face, the charge is not entirely implausible—American
advisers had been known to violate the prohibition against accompanying
their charges into the field—but it is impossible to confirm.”7
Monterrosa and his troops mistook nearly one thousand campesinos,
evangelical community members, for FMLN guerrilla–sympathizing
civilians and slaughtered them in December 1981,8 shortly after the
massacre of six hundred at El Sumpul River in Chalatenango. Decades after
the El Mozote massacre, investigations by forensic specialists have revealed
that many of the victims were women and elderly people. Of those killed,
553 were minors, 477 of whom were under twelve. The majority of the
children were six years old or younger.9 Of the twelve culpable officers
cited in the El Mozote massacre section of the UN Truth Commission
report, ten, including Monterrosa, were graduates of the School of the
Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.
“You can see how deteriorated the bones are in this one,” Quijada says,
pointing at the brown skeleton, which is missing ribs, an arm, a leg, and
other bones. He points at the skull, which is also missing pieces.
“How did the bones get like this?”
“We’re rebuilding the cranium piece by piece because it was in pieces,
chopped up with a machete. The pieces were like a jigsaw puzzle.”
El Mozote has become the biggest test of whether President Cristiani’s
1993 amnesty grant will continue to block prosecution of any crimes
against humanity in El Salvador. If and when the current calls for
accountability by human rights, legal, and nongovernmental organizations
around the world are heeded, any possibility for justice requires that the

science be exacting, able to tell the story of the incident with as much
precision as possible.
“All of it,” Quijada says, his face somber, “the ages of the victims, the
volume of the people massacred, the bones of babies, still impacts me
twenty-two years after we started working on it. Anyone who says they can
forget this is either inhuman or lying.”
We walk over to another skeleton. This one looks newer. Other skeletons
rest next to it, along with boxes of bones.
“Who’s that?”
“Individuals killed more recently. Some of them were twelve-year-olds.
We’re also seeing more violence against women,” he says. The gang
victims and their killers filling El Salvador’s mass graves are, in fact,
getting younger. “Around 2000, the average age of victims was thirty to
thirty-five, and then twenty to thirty,” says Quijada. “From 2010 to present,
we started seeing ages decrease, from seventeen-year-olds to fifteen-yearolds.”
I focus on my breath to try to regain composure and think back to my
readings about forensics and the Locard principle. Conceptualized by
Edmond Locard, the son of a French anarchist poet and founder of the Lyon
Police Technical Laboratory, one of the first Western forensic labs, in 1910,
the Locard principle is premised on the idea that all contact leaves a trace,
and not just the contact involved in the criminal act, on its location. It says
that every crime scene leaves material, and therefore, measurable evidence
—dirt, DNA, gunpowder, blood—on any who interact with it. By the same
token, the principle also posits that each of us leaves unique traces of
ourselves—hair, DNA, spit, shoe imprints—at the crime scene in return. I
meditate on how, under the Locard principle, the grave sites I’ve visited
both in wartime El Salvador and on this trip, the mass graves dug by cartels
in Mexico, and those dug by untrained justices of the peace in Texas have
all left a part of themselves in me and I in them.
Quijada draws his head closer to the reconstructed skull from El Mozote,
as if to speak to it. A clean line runs from the skull’s forehead to the back of
the head, marking the spot where the skull was cleaved. It’s hard not to
contrast Quijada’s living head with the skull in front of it.
Quijada points at other marks on the skull. “They were caused by armas
blancas,” he says, “machetes, hatchets, or piochas [pickaxes], instruments

used for agricultural work. This reflects a pattern we also see among gangs
today. It is, in part, because of our cultural origins.”
Quijada leads me through a door next to the framed forensic superhero
drawings. We’re entering the “bone room,” a large, temperature-controlled
room, its walls covered in rows of shelves. A couple of shelves are lined
with stacks of skulls: white skulls, browner skulls, skulls with bullet-size
holes, skulls with missing parts, skulls with machete and piocha marks.
Dozens of other shelves in the large room are stacked with boxes. Each of
the boxes is stamped with the logo of the Salvadoran Supreme Court. Inside
are the boiled, scraped, and cleaned remains of some of the many thousands
of victims found in graves and at crime scenes throughout the country—and
beyond.
The remains of El Mozote victims killed in 1981 lie in boxes across the
aisle from the boxes of bones with the remains of gang victims found in
July 2015. Next to them are the bones of migrant men, women, and children
who have died in the deserts of Mexico, Arizona, and increasingly Texas—
those left behind and then returned from the great journey to El Norte.
Hundreds of thousands of bones lie waiting to speak.
“One of the most destructive things a person can experience,” says
Quijada, standing amid the shelves of skulls, “is luto prolongado, prolonged
mourning, not knowing where your family is for years. People spend five to
seven years—in many cases thirty years—without knowing where their
family is.
“Mothers come here every day asking questions: ‘What are they doing to
my son? Where did they leave him? Is he eating?’
“Not knowing allows them to maintain a certain hope that their children
are still alive, but at the same time they are tortured, permanently
wondering where they are.”
I ask him if he’s read Roque Dalton’s poem about Salvadorans being
“half dead,” a rhetorical question, since the poem is considered a national
anthem. He responds with a story.
“There was a woman I first met in 2009,” he says. “At first, she would
come almost every week, asking ‘Do you have any news of my son?’ After
a couple of years, in 2011, she started coming monthly, always asking the
same question, ‘Do you have any news of my son?’ Then, for some reason,
she started coming again almost weekly and then back to monthly until
August 2012.

“In 2013, we were conducting an exhumation in a dangerous part of
Lourdes, and who do you think was there? The lady. She asked the police if
she could talk to me about whether that grave had her son in it. There are
thousands of mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters,
husbands and wives, carrying the cross that woman has.
“Our half-dead condition as Salvadorans,” he continues, “comes because
of our open wounds, wounds that keep us in luto prolongado. This situation
causes us to lose our identity, keeping us fragmented. We’re losing our
family nucleus and this contributes to the violence, keeps boys without
fathers or mothers, who are forced to leave to other countries, or kids stay
with their grandparents who can’t completely care for them.
“In addition to supporting justice,” Quijada says, “our job is to
reconstruct.”
I’m also wondering where the boxes with the bones from 1932 are.
I go to see Dr. Miguel Fortin, the head of the IML. Fortin oversees the
budget, personnel, and deployment of resources for the agency. As much as
anyone, he can enlighten me as to how much El Salvador is willing to
officially unforget—how many resources they’re willing to deploy to
reconstruct memory long denied. He’s busy and has little time to talk. I
make brief small talk before I ask him about the state of the bones from La
Matanza.
“There’s no study, no forensic research of what happened in ’32,” he
replies.
“Why not?”
“El Salvador is an amnesiac country, historically speaking,” he says.
“Neither ARENA nor the FMLN wants to really look at what happened in
1932. The political will is not there, and until it is, we will continue like
zombies without any history to guide us.”
A 2007 poll conducted by the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica
confirmed Fortin’s amnesiac theory of Salvadoran identity: over 75 percent
of Salvadorans polled said they had no knowledge of La Matanza.10 Both
the amnesty law and the erasure of almost all records of La Matanza have
institutionalized this oblivion.
“Nineteen thirty-two is totally related with what’s happening today,”
Fortin adds. “Pretending to explain what’s happening with violence in El
Salvador and the migrant children today es una torpeza muy grande [is a a
great blunder].”

I leave the IML clear about one thing: putting together the fragments of
Salvadoran death and its effects will require not just political will, but the
will of the people to sew them back together, politically and personally.

A Náhuat Story of the Underworld
Izalco, El Salvador

This is the story of a young Náhuat man who embarks on a journey to the
underworld.1

The story begins with the creation of the Izalco volcano, the center of the
Náhuat civilization in the region. A large, leafy tree catches fire, and from
that fire a volcanic mountain is born. Locals wonder whether the volcano
has a passageway into it.
The young man in the story feels called to journey into the underworld
after an elder, the Man of the Mountain, tells him, pointing at a nearby
forest, “Go through here to get on the path. There a man will meet you. You
will ask him, ‘Where are you coming from?’ And he will say, ‘From
Izalco.’ And he will ask you if you have a letter, and you will say, ‘I have it
here.’”
Beneath his human exterior, the Man of the Underworld is a serpent, a
creature able to navigate the hotter recesses of the underworld where human
and dead alike toil, as well as the aquatic wonderworld further below. The
Man of the Underworld tells his young visitor to close his eyes. Closing his
eyes grants the young man access to the complex realms of the Great
Below.
When the young man opens his eyes again, he sees an underworld, where
the dead and the living who have been brought by the dead to work with
and for them toil away under conditions of forced labor. This labor is in the

service of some of the dead, who are said to live in conditions the living
would envy.
The most difficult work of the underworld is not unlike that of the world
above: chopping the wood of the great Tree Within—the tree connecting the
lower and upper worlds—and hauling the wood to load on a mule who
takes this “blood” to feed the volcano whose fire energizes the cacao and
other foods the Náhuats depend on. Though insufferable, this work is
crucial to maintaining the equilibrium of the world, essential to living and
dead alike.
The young man sees the bones and body parts of dismembered people
who inhabit the underworld. The bones, he notices, exude their own lifegiving force. Fragments of humans also serve as a source of latent energy
that literally feeds the living and the dead, some of whom eat bone and
flesh. Even the grimmest, deadest parts of the underworld are not entirely
dead and provide sustenance to the world above.
After spending time in the higher reaches of the underworld, the young
man is transported by an underworld snake to another, lower, aquatic
underworld. This underworld is a Náhuat utopia, a place inhabited by many
elders, whose daily needs are all met.
The young man then enters the serpent and is spit back up to the upper
world. On his way home, he encounters the same old man who showed him
how to get to the underworld. This time the old man tells the young man
that he will receive great rewards if he shares the story of what he saw
below.
After his return, the young man’s words take on a more magical meaning,
a meaning that breaks with existing logic and norms, as the young man
proceeds to share his cosmic story. . . .*

18

Guarjila–Corral de Piedra, Chalatenango
1990

“What religion do you belong to, Roberto?” asked Berta, the youngest of
the four women I shared the CRIPDES fundraising office with. We were
driving along the three miles of rocky roads leading from Guarjila to Corral
de Piedra on our way to document an incident. After being forced by the
Salvadoran military and escuadrones de la muerte to flee to Honduras over
eight years earlier, the five hundred or so campesinos living in Corral de
Piedra settled in the region just months earlier, in October 1989.
“It’s complicated,” I responded, wanting to talk about something else.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“That’s complicated, too,” I responded, somewhat testily, “but no, I
don’t.” I missed G. I missed being recognized and accepted for me, the
confused, fragmented, fucked-up Salvadoran-Mission dude I felt like.
Visiting small Chalatenango towns like Guarjila and Corral de Piedra,
perched high in the mountains, came with risks and rewards. The rocky
mountains were a stunning sight; their isolation, a curse. Days before,
children and elderly residents in the towns of Guarjila, Las Vueltas, and Los
Ranchos had been wounded by strafing from US-made helicopters manned
by the Salvadoran military. Strafing from the copters and Cessna A-37
Dragonfly jets was a constant of life here, as was the bombing in the
mountains of this isolated place, whose perpetually traumatized people the
global media had largely forgotten.

“You say things are ‘complicated’ for you, Roberto,” Berta said. “Your
family is from El Salvador. So, what do you call yourself, since you were
born in the United States?”
“American. That I can tell you ’cause my passport says I am,” I said with
the assurance of the guy in a popular H&R Block commercial.
“Have you forgotten you’re Salvadoran too?”
“No. But I’m here trying to forget things,” I said, referencing G.
Since before the Sumpul massacre in 1980, the Salvadoran military and
death squads had run “counterinsurgency” programs that starved, shot up,
and bombed entire communities they perceived as supporting the FMLN.
Our mission at CRIPDES was to break blockades stopping food, medical,
and other supplies from getting through to these communities. We worked
alongside internacionalistas who’d been moved to physically aid these
communities after hearing the stories of refugees in the US. A special
weapon in breaking the blockades was caravans of buses driven from San
Salvador to Chalatenango, bringing supplies, communications, and political
support to internally displaced refugees from Usulután, Mom’s home state
of San Vicente, La Libertad, and especially Chalatenango as they
repatriated.
The fundraising office Berta and I worked in focused on raising support
from sister cities—hundreds of municipalities in the US, Latin America,
and Europe committed to providing material and political aid to Salvadoran
towns. Berta and I were on a fact-finding mission to Corral de Piedra,
where there had been a recent attack by the Salvadoran military. The fortyfive-minute drive on muddy, rocky roads quickly became a guided tour
through the ravages of war: the bombed-out adobe homes of long-dead
villages, walls pocked with bullet holes even in those that still housed the
living, entire towns abandoned, barefoot children stopping their ladrón
librado or escondelero games at the sound of a vehicle or, especially, the
helicopters and jets above. Our work on the second floor of CRIPDES’s
main office, near the US embassy in San Salvador, included helping these
communities by documenting stories of struggle and survival from these
sorts of places and weaving them into funding proposals requesting
international support.
As we approached Corral de Piedra, we saw the outlines of brick-andadobe houses and, behind them, the mountains where the war raged more
regularly.

“Look!” Berta said. “Some of the houses have huge holes in them.”
We drove toward one of the crumbling houses with a pyramid-shaped
hole in it the size of a small truck. Inside the house were the remains of a
small home where sixteen people—five adults and eleven children—had
sought cover from bombing during an attack a few weeks before. Now
straw and plastic red and blue bowls lay scattered on the floor, alongside
pieces of a tin roof; beside that, a table that had been smashed by falling
bricks. We got out of the car and walked toward the house. María, a woman
who lived in an adobe rancho just outside the town, was waiting outside for
us with her husband, an older man who said nada except, “Buenas.” Also
accompanying them was her newborn son and her twelve-year-old, who
was on crutches. His leg was missing from the thigh down.
María broke a slight and nervous smile as she greeted us, but her face
held a deep sorrow that she could not hide as she invited us into her former
home. Inside the brick house were the rooms where four families, including
lots of barefoot children, often slept on the floor. Others crowded into the
main room that served as a combination bedroom, dining room, and living
room. A large unvarnished wood table still sat in the center of the room. As
we walked in, the first thing I noticed was that parts of the roof were gone,
as was the wall in the back of the main room. The missing wall allowed us
to see into their makeshift yard. Four little crosses—green, red, blue, and
yellow—were stuck into the ground, facing the remaining piece of adobe
wall. Machine-gun fire kept up a steady rat-tat-tat in the not-so-distant
mountains.
“We were hiding in the house,” said María, “when we heard the boom! of
the rocket that hit the wall, where my other children were playing.” She
paused to inhale. Her eyelids trembled. “The rocket landed directly on my
smallest child,” she said. The child was about a year and a half. Neighbors
later said that all that remained of the smallest child was her skin, grafted
onto the adobe. All that remained of another child, an eleven-year-old, were
a leg attached to a small rib by remaining skin and pieces of flesh and hair
spread out on floor.
“One of my other children was playing nearby and was also killed.
Franciscito lost his leg,” she added. “I lost everything.”
News stories and reports by the Human Rights Watch confirmed that the
homes and residents of Corral de Piedra had been hit by rockets fired from
a Salvadoran Air Force helicopter.1 Five people were killed, eleven

wounded. Four of the five killed were children under the age of ten; eleven
of the wounded were children between four months and twelve years of
age.
Our interview with María, her husband, and a couple of other witnesses
complete, Berta signaled for us to leave. Before departing, I pretended to
need to gather more information from the area near the small crosses; I
actually went to bawl. Looking at the crosses placed near the bombed-out
adobe wall, thinking about the children—living as well as dead—and the
falling bombs dropped on them, my jaw trembled in fury and tears streamed
from my eyes. I’d visited similar sites, but none with so many child
casualties. At that moment, I made a commitment to fight more furiously,
and not just against the government of El Salvador. My new fight was also
against the government that, since just after El General and La Matanza, put
El Salvador on the path to becoming one of the longest-standing military
dictatorships in the Americas.2 The same government that had trained,
armed, and politically defended the Salvadoran dictatorship through more
than nine years of barbarity and oblivion: my own government, the one that
had issued my passport. Any semblance of the chess-playing child who had
ardently defended America from critics, like my cousin Adilio’s university
friends, died in that moment. I couldn’t fathom the fact that my tax dollars
as a US citizen were used to perpetrate such abominations against children.
I simply couldn’t.
Growing in me for some time had been the realization that being half
dead was not limited solely to being Salvadoran. Since childhood, I’d
assumed that my American identity protected me from the chaos and pain I
associated, in my ignorance, only with being Salvadoran. As a result, the
awkward, sometimes awful sense of what it meant to call myself American
intensified to the point of bursting the bubble of illusion to give me an
insight: that far from protecting me from being half dead, being American
actually also had a numbing, painful zombie-like quality about it, because
being American meant I belonged to the country that has overtly and
covertly supported the governments, militaries, and death squads most
responsible for our half death.
Lyrics from a nueva canción G had gathered the storm in me. The song,
“Días y flores,” by Silvio Rodríguez, rang loudly in my head. It talked
about the rage growing from what began as a bucolic love scene in the
forest. The idyllic acoustic guitar part ended as the singer began listing the

different kinds of anger he felt after an unnamed incident. The first line
spoke of the “imperio asesino de niños,” the “child-killing empire.” The
song’s denunciation of the United States of America, the empire that took
the name of the continent as its own, demanded a response, as did the
tragedy María and her family shared with me. The second line of the song
provided an answer: “La rabia es mi vocación.” Rage is my vocation.
Rage had been and continued to be my vocation, but at that moment, its
target underwent a major shift. It was no longer my family, El Salvador, my
padre—or myself. The bombs and the helicopter that dropped them were
made in America, the patria of my birth. America deserved my rage, and so
I arrived at a difficult but necessary conclusion: I would stop using the word
American to describe myself—or anyone else. I would use the word only in
quotations or with an accented e to refer to the continent of América.
Fuck the America without the accent.
Shortly after, we quickly said good-bye and left. I was returning to
Guarjila a new man. For a moment, the desire to speak with G about what
I’d been going through took hold of my chest and stomach. I’d started
learning that, for Salvadoreños, our great capacity for love was inextricably
intertwined with our experience of great tragedy.

Days after our return from Corral de Piedra, I couldn’t get the image of
María’s children out of my mind, especially Franciscito and the newborn. I
needed to be in the company of others, so I accepted an invitation from the
family I was staying with to join them for Sunday Mass.
I arrived at the church gathering in the center of the hamlet. At the front
of the open-air church’s makeshift altar stood Jon Cortina, a tall lanky
Spanish priest. His gaunt, Don Quixote look beneath his glasses and big
bushy eyebrows fit my sense of what a volunteer solidario in a war zone
should look like. Cortina also possessed a mix of intelligence, bravery, and
the burning conviction that Salvadorans call valeverguista. Cortina’s
“preferential option for the poor”—the liberation-theology call to join the
poorest in their struggles—had led him to minister to them here in one of
the major sites of conflict during the war. His interpretation of aletheia—
truth—in the Bible was the polar opposite of the interpretation foisted on
me by the right-wing evangelical church I’d left behind in San Francisco.
Cortina’s aletheia wedded the pursuit of the truth to unforgetting.

“Welcome, brothers and sisters! Welcome!” intoned Cortina, who quickly
found himself hugged by the CRIPDES leaders and a sea of campesinos.
“As painful as remembering can be, we cannot forget what we have seen
with our eyes, heard with our ears, and felt in our hearts!” Next to Cortina
were a collection of lay ministers and musicians in cowboy and baseball
hats, playing religious songs I was trying to ignore. The recovering rightwing evangelical in me didn’t stomach religious music easily.
People either stood or sat on the ground as the Mass began and Cortina
began preaching. His message: “They targeted our children!” The crowd’s
silence gave way to sniffles and light shrieks of anguish. I joined in this
ritual of crying, transported beyond the limits of my body.
After a brief sermon, Cortina walked back to the center to speak. The
entire congregation stood as one of the laity, a man in a sombrero, started
calling out the names of those killed in Corral de Piedra, following each
with the exclamation “Presente!”
Isabel Estela López. Presente!
Anabel Beatriz López. Presente!
Dolores Serrano. Presente!
Blanca Lidia Guardado. Presente!

The crowd was fired up as the musicians started playing “Sombrero
azul,” a song written after the Sumpul massacre for the Salvadoran people
by the renowned Venezuelan poet-warrior-musician Ali Primera. The song
engaged the audience by having them raise their left fists and yell, “Dále!”
(Hit it!)
The open-air ritual and the song with its references to the Sumpul, the
way it raised up Salvadoran dignity, its call and response, its combative
spirit—all left the tuning fork of my being vibrating for days and weeks
after. It reminded me what it was to have faith, to be part of a church and of
a community comprised of the poorest, longest-suffering, and yet most
courageous and combative people I’d ever met: my own Salvadoran people.
I joined the army of the half dead, proudly singing “Sombrero azul,”
screaming at the top of my lungs, “Dále Salvadoreño!” I was a born-again
congregant reborn.
The mix of grief and passion combined with another powerful current
flowing in me: the desire to hear G—to speak with her, kiss her, unite with

her. But it didn’t seem like it was to be, because I couldn’t see returning to
San Francisco or the United States as an option in my immediate future.
Instead, dead to my “American” self, I began the journey to find an
identity that would accommodate what had become my new highest ideal:
revolución en América.

19

San Salvador, El Salvador
1939

Ramón loved the sound of Mamá Tey’s sewing machine, with its treadle of
latticed wrought iron, each revolución of its wheel a rhythmic reminder of
life going on despite its challenges. He loved the way his mother used the
machine to resurrect scraps of cloth into outfits that gave new life to the
mesón residents. Since before they moved to San Salvador, the fabrics—
denim, silk, cotton, and more—had formed piles of rainbows coloring the
otherwise gray lamina shack Ramón had shared with Mamá Tey, Chico,
Mamá Fina, and his two younger siblings. Sewing was one of the few
avenues for employment and social mobility available to Salvadoran
women. In fact, in 1930, Prudencia Ayala, a single mother, writer, and
seamstress, had used her Singer to launch the candidacy that made her the
first female candidate for president in all of Latina America.1 (Because
women still lacked the right to vote, her candidacy was challenged in court
and nullified.)
After fleeing the conflict and extreme poverty of western El Salvador,
Tey and her family moved to the capital, where they shared Mesón San Luís
with twenty-three other families, all squeezed into shacks that each family
rented for fifteen colones per month. Tey’s shack consisted of two small
rooms with petates (mats) spread on the dirt floor for beds.
Tey worried that living in the big city might further fragment and distort
her kids’ sense of themselves, especially that of her seventeen-year-old,
Ramón. His using the earnings from his job to buy fifteen-centavo shots of

guaro from the mesón bar concerned her. So did other habits that already
showed he was forming an identity that was not healthy or safe. She
monitored his life carefully and struggled to contain the growing spiral.
Tey sustained her family by making clothes for residents, including Doña
Teresa. Doña Teresa and her husband, Joaquín Zapata, undertook a daily
ritual that never failed to entertain Ramón. Every morning Doña Teresa
would spread rose petals along the cracked concrete path to the mesón’s
communal showers. Zapata would then march out of his shack like the
Roman emperor Caracalla parading toward the baths. Upon arrival,
Emperor Zapata would declare to Ramón and any of the other “prole”
onlookers: “I need the perfume of the flowers to sanitize this area—from all
of you.” Ramón and some of the other subjects responded enthusiastically,
showering him with pebbles, empty cans, and laughter. With all his
eccentricities, Zapata embodied the drive of meson dwellers to distinguish
themselves as individuals within the anonymous mass of uprooted humanity
residing there.
The rise of the mesón saw a parallel growth of urban prostitution. Ramón
and many of the other young men from the Pandilla de la Avenida had their
first sexual experiences with a prostitute, and many were sons of prostitutes.
As a result of the increase in the number of prostitutes in the mesones, the
young pandilleros were part of the urban generation popularizing the word
puta as an integral part of the colloquial Salvadoran vocabulary, turning the
term into one of the primary labels hiding the humanity of thousands of
women, women like Anita Villeda.
“We know where you were the other night, Raúl!” Ramón cried out.
Raúl was one of the pandilleros. He’d come out of his shack with his
arms extended from his shoulder blades. His fellow pandilleros noticed the
odd way he was holding his arms. They also noticed he was avoiding them.
Sitting with Chacaz and others in the public area, Ramón started laughing.
The other pandilleros looked on as Ramón started singing a song about
swallows, a song made popular throughout the world by legendary
Argentine tango singer Carlos Gardel, “Golondrinas”:
Golondrinas de un solo Verano
(Swallows of only a single summer.)
Con ansias constantes de cielos lejanos.
(With a constant desire for distant skies.)

“Don’t lie. You were with Anita Villeda,” another pandillero exclaimed.
Suddenly, all the young pandilleros started laughing.
Anita, a friend of Mamá Tey’s, wasn’t a puta de lista, one of the more
than two thousand prostitutes who were registered with the government.
The putas de lista were subjected to regular checkups on the orders of El
General, who used his alleged concern about “hygiene” in conjunction with
more openly repressive measures—such as jailing prostitutes and giving
them especially harsh and violent penalties for stealing and other crimes—
all taken under cover of “law and order” and a concern for “cleaning up”
society.Anita was a puta de cinco pesos, a five-peso prostitute, and was
afflicted with lymphogranuloma venereum, a venereal disease with
symptoms that include enormously enlarged groin and underarm lymph
nodes, forcing the afflicted to walk around with their arms spread wide like
the swallow described in the Gardel hit.
Like Ramón, Anita Villeda also loved Tey’s ability to make scraps of
fabric come to life. As one of the poorer women working in one of the most
marginal lines of work in one of the poorest parts of El Salvador—a country
in the throes of the hemisphere’s worst of the Great Depression—Anita
appreciated the storied, toothless, and funny seamstress’s finas atenciones,
the delicate warmth with which Tey listened to, advised, and cared for her.
Anita and other prostitutes bore the brunt of daily hardship in El Salvador
in the 1930s: malaria, infectious parasites, and other, sometimes mortal,
afflictions. The bodies and faces of some of the putas also had bruises and
scars from injuries inflicted by the police, military, or the mesón men who
retained their services. Outside the mesón, like Eve with her apple, Anita
and the other prostitutes were blamed as the source of the “immoral vices of
the uncultured classes” and were denounced in the pulpits, newspapers, and
salons of San Salvador.2
On top of everything else, Anita Villeda bore an extra liability—dark
skin, and with it the burden of being indigenous at a time when it was
mortally dangerous. Anita had migrated from Nahuizalco to San Salvador,
where she had stopped speaking Náhuatl and exchanged her traditional
indigenous clothing for less dangerous clothes in post-Matanza El Salvador.
“Come, come here, girl,” Tey called to Anita one day, like a queen
calling her subjects to court. “Let me look at you. What do you want?”
“I’d like a beautiful dress, one that will make me look like a princess.”

“OK. Let’s have a look at what miracles you want me to perform,” Tey
joked.
Tey possessed a preternatural mathematical ability to determine the
measurements of her clients on sight, as she did with Anita now. Then Tey
went to her machine and, pushing the pedal slowly, began her work.
Tey had learned to sew as a girl. Throughout the boom and bust of the
early twentieth century, Tey slowed the time of the fast-paced city with her
most cherished possession: her Singer sewing machine. The pin attached to
the pedal pushed and pulled the treadle wheel, which squeaked every few
revolutions, the squeaks a reminder of her own revoluciones.
Tey had a way with people. Her manner and work gave her a deep
understanding of the lives of the prostitutes and others of the working poor
—the many abuses they suffered, the daily workings of their kids and
family relations, and their attitudes toward their bodies. Tey used this
information to tailor her creations to those who visited her shop.
“I got the golondrina from some asshole,” Anita told Tey, “and then I
passed it on to Raúl. Now Ramón and the other guys are making fun of us.”
Pushing the pedal as if in deep meditation, Tey responded, “You might
want to find another way to make money, Anitilla.”
“But what would I do? This is what I know.”
Tey again took her time before responding, “You can work for me.”
“What?”
“Yes. I will teach you how to sew, and you can help me.”
Anita stood in shock. She paused for a moment and then looked at Tey’s
smile with two missing front teeth and agreed.
“Are you sure?” she asked Tey.
“Yes! I’ve taught lots of ladies here. Let’s do it.”
Several other women would join Anita in working for Tey over the years.
In addition to teaching putas her trade and having the women work for her,
Tey also used her mathematical skills to save up some money, and was
eventually able to lend money at flexible interest rates. Like Anita, many of
her clients went home not just with a new dress, but with something more
valuable: a different story, a different mythology about themselves than
those contained in terms like india, puta, hijueputa, and pandillero. In her
time with Tey at her Singer, Anita once again became the young country
girl who’d played in the redolent almond groves, the little girl who dreamed

of being a Pipil princesa, who had been forgotten behind the puta label and
all that “civilized” society heaped upon her kind.
Unfortunately, Tey’s magical threads could not release her son Ramón
from the silence and anger welling up in him like a dormant volcán that
would soon explode.

Tey’s concerns for her eldest grew in proportion to Ramón’s own sumbas
(binges), which had the seventeen-year-old drinking two, three, four times a
week with the other pandilleros. The days Ramón came home disheveled
and drunk were the easier days, compared to those when he came home
bloodied or didn’t come home at all. She stopped confronting him with her
concerns because she wanted to avoid the arguments that Ramón’s growing
anger guaranteed.
Tey was especially concerned about her once talkative son’s silence at
home, and his drunken nighttime outings that seemed like an attempt to
ignore or forget whatever lay behind his silence. Tey knew it had to do with
the life they left behind in Ahuachapán, a life she herself wanted to forget.
And so it remained, buried in silence within her and in her eldest. The
silences were broken only by conflict.
One night, watching Ramón stumble into the house reeking of guaro, Tey
reached her limit, temporarily losing her legendary ability to slow time and
calculate.
“Where are you coming from?” Tey asked. “You’re drunk, probably out
with those young assholes, doing no good.”
“Leave me alone,” Ramón said.
“I’ve heard you’re out stealing, robbing, and puteando all the time after
work and I’ve had enough.”
“Mind your own business, Mamá.”
“Mind my own business?”
“Yes, mind your own business.”
“Shit, the balls of this little son of a bitch. My business has been and
remains making sure you, your brother, and sister grow up to be decent,
productive people. My business. Shit, that’s all I need.”
“To hell with that, Mamá. I don’t believe in decent people. You work
with putas, I worked with the putas, we live surrounded by putas. I see their
clients and I know what ‘decent people’ do in their offices and nice homes
—and with the putas. So keep it to yourself.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, malcriado [spoiled brat].”
“I’ll talk as I please. I’ll talk about things you won’t talk about, like how
I was fathered by a man you let make me ilegítimo.”
Ramón had done the least acceptable thing he could, short of hitting his
mother: breaking the silencio around this forbidden subject.
“Hijuesesentamilputas! I’ll show you to respect your mother!”
Tey stopped pedaling at the Singer, grabbed one of her clothes hangers,
rushed up to Ramón, and started beating him.
“I’m going to show you how to beat your kids,” she said while hitting
him.
“Ouch! Owwww! You broke my fucking finger. Look!”
Tey stopped and saw her firstborn’s finger twisted out of shape. She
hadn’t meant to take things so far, and already regretted it. Ramón ran out
of the house to find friends and keep drinking. Tey calmed herself by going
back to her Singer to think on what had happened and calculate how to keep
her family from fragmenting further, as so many others in the mesón had.
For his part, Ramón got drunk with his friends in the pandilla, recovering
the next day to think about whether he wanted to keep living with his
mother in the mesón.
The answer to both of their problems came in the form of another
prostitute, Carmen Regalado. Like Anita Villeda, Carmen had started
learning the sewing trade as a way out of the life of prostitution. Carmen
had a son, José, a fourteen-year-old, and shared Tey’s concerns about
raising a boy in the mesón.
“I hear you, Tey,” Carmen told her. “José’s already starting to smoke.
He’s getting rebellious. He’s at that age where he doesn’t want anything
except money from me. Makes me pull my hair out every day.”
“Ramón is involved with a group of kids I don’t like.”
“Yeah, one of those kids is José!”
Tey walked her through one of the more advanced techniques: creating a
decorative braid and sewing it onto blouses and dresses.
“You know, Tey,” Carmen continued, “I don’t know how much longer
I’m gonna live here. The situation—the shit poverty, the violence, and the
abuse here are too much. I think I might take José and leave the country.”
“Where would you go?”
“California.”
“California?”

“Yes. I have a cousin who went to San Francisco and she sends letters
telling us how great it is.”
Carmen Regalado’s inkling toward San Francisco followed a historical
path laid first during the Gold Rush in northern California. The first male
Salvadorans who started going to San Francisco during the first gold rush
sailed on ships from Valparaiso, Chile, that stopped in the port of Acajutla.
The men posed as Peruvian and Chilean miners already on board the ships.
Some of the Salvadoran women also decided to seek new lives in the north,
boarding (and sometimes stowing away) on the ships traveling to
California,3 where more than a few became prostitutes who worked the
docks along the Barbary Coast. Later, in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, ships started sailing from El Salvador to California
bearing El Salvador’s own gold rush: coffee, financed by Hills Bros.,
Folgers, and other American coffee companies headquartered in the City by
the Bay.
The wheel of Tey’s Singer sped up.
Ramón had his own plans. He’d heard about all the people finding a new
life in California, but he’d also heard stories of what in the late thirties was
called “the promised land” for Salvadoreños: Mexico.
Once he and Tey had made up, as they always did, Ramón let her know
about his plans to go to Mexico. He thought going to Mexico would also be
a good way to help the family. Tey understood his logic and felt relieved
that her son was going to make his way in the world and get away from all
the lacra (parasites) in the mesón, but also worried that she wouldn’t be
around to watch over him. She feared that the deadly mix of alcoholism,
anger, and violence that stemmed from the silence afflicting Ramón would
lead him back into the life of a pandillero.

Part VII

20

San Salvador
2015

A thin pandillero kid in a loose white T-shirt stops Isaias and me as we
walk up to the neighborhood to meet Santiago. The houses have cracked,
colorful pastel walls. They’re built alongside champas (shacks) with
browning walls of lámina (sheet metal). The streets are cracked, unpaved,
and dusty, and parts of the neighborhood are overrun with weeds. The
electricity and water only sometimes work. Elders here say this marginal
community northwest of central San Salvador has the feel of the mesones.
“Esperen,” the kid says. Wait. His pimples make me think he’s about
thirteen. “Para donde van?” (Where are you going?) he asks nervously.
“We’re here to see Santiago,” I tell the kid at the entry to the
neighborhood. Isaias scouts the place out.
There’s the outline of a revolver beneath the boy’s tee. There are no
police or military in sight. The boy is a poste, a lookout for the 18th Street
Sureños, one of the gangs brought by deportees back from LA that have
displaced the informal local pandilla structures that long dominated the
violence in these neighborhoods. Now, the maras have almost complete
control over large swaths of the city center and other parts of San Salvador.
After running into Santiago at Mijango’s, I spent weeks working through
intermediaries to arrange a proper interview, which has finally been
scheduled for today. Santiago is one of the only people who speaks to the
outside world on behalf of the estimated seventy thousand members of the
clikas and maras, including MS-13 and 18th Street. Ever since his role in

the historic gang truce, Santiago has acted as a kind of gang diplomat. He
was also part of the gang political commission that secretly recorded and
later released videos of negotiations with members of both the right-wing
ARENA and left-wing FMLN parties, after the truce. The videos show
government ministers and ARENA and FMLN party officials offering gang
leaders things like millions in microcredits, money to renew identification
cards, and other benefits in exchange for support from the gangs for the
electoral bids of both parties.
Santiago’s intermediaries have made me promise to not share his
location, his actual name, or any other compromising details of the
clandestine meeting. Unlike most of his peers in gang leadership, especially
the ones involved in negotiating the truce, Santiago has evaded capture,
prison, and death.
Homicide rates currently surpass those of the war in the eighties. Gangs,
the military, the police, other security forces, and death squads have killed a
total of 635 people in the last month alone. The death-squad killings in
Panchimalco and nearby areas are still charging the humid air this Monday.
“OK,” the skinny poste kid says, “you can come in.” He never cracks
even a hint of a smile. I remind myself that this twelve- or thirteen-year-old
deserves to find a way out of this life of violence.
In the small but oddly well-kept backyard of the house, an older man—or
at least a man older than your average teen gangster—sits at a table beside a
tree. He stands and extends his hand.
Santiago appears to be about thirty-five. He looks nothing like the
stereotypical tattoo-faced image of an old-school mara member. He’s
shaven and clean-cut, with no visible tattoos. It’s hot, but Santiago covers
his wiry build with a clean, white short-sleeved shirt. He looks me over
with the calculated gaze of a strategist, and I don’t need to remind myself
that he is cosa seria: this dude is serious shit.
“Welcome,” he says, with a gold-toothed smile and an unexpected
breeziness. “Sit down,” he says, pointing to the small table. On it sit three
cell phones, a pack of Marlboros, a lighter, and a book. There’s something
about Marlboros that Salvadorans love. Santiago doesn’t appear to have one
of the ever present guns one encounters with low-level gang members, but
one can, no doubt, appear with a single signal.
“Would you like some coffee or water?” he asks, as if he’s a manager at a
government office or bank. One of his underlings, whose T-shirt and baggy

shorts make him look more like a traditional marero, fetches some coffee.
It’s kind of funny to see this stalky marero in the role of secretary.
“What do you think of Monseñor Romero’s beatification?” I ask. My
question references recent celebrations of the Catholic Church’s
beatification of El Salvador’s patron saint of peace, Monsignor Óscar
Arnulfo Romero. Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was giving
Mass when he was shot through the heart by a death-squad assassin at the
beginning of the country’s twelve-year civil war. Caught off guard, Santiago
bows his head in respect for the slain archbishop.
“He died fighting for the rights of the poor, the unprotected.” His Spanish
is as proper as it is animated. Again, he bows his head. “He was a saint.
Roberto D’Aubuisson’s structures were never really ended.” D’Aubuisson
was the founder of both the death squads and the right-wing ARENA party
in the eighties. “People like D’Aubuisson made Romero out to be criminal,
a bad guy. Un monstruo. He was criminalized, he was persecuted, and he
was exterminated by the government.” He pauses before adding, “like we
are now.”
Noting what must be a skeptical look on my face, Santiago continues,
“We respect Romero and decided to call a truce during the [beatification]
celebrations.”
The idea that an extremely violent gang member actually identifies with
Romero—the moral center of the Salvadoran universe and a man of peace
—is baffling.
I shift the conversation and ask him about FMLN President Cerén’s
decisions the year before, first to end the gang truce, and then to deploy
seven thousand regular army soldiers and three battalions of the specialforces rapid-response units to fight gangs.
The tension in Santiago’s face is visible. “Those grupos de exterminio
killed friends from my barrio,” he says, his welcoming tone gone to make
way for the raspier voice one expects from a killer of his stature.
“What happened?”
“They just did a massacre in Usulután this past weekend. Paid killers,
people with a salary to kill. I can tell you about the killings of both MS and
18th Street members by extermination squads because we [the gang
leaders] constantly share information about violations of human rights, like
the massacres they blame us for when it’s actually the authorities. We know
of many cases in which the ‘shootouts’ that the police report are actually

extrajudicial killings.” He’s describing those “enfrentamientos” I’d heard so
much about.
The way he shows his gold tooth as his tongue hisses the x in exterminio
makes me nervous.
“What do you think about Rodrigo Ávila?” Ávila is a legislator who,
with the help of the US Justice Department, helped create the mano dura
policies launched by the fascist ARENA party more than a decade ago.1 I
had interviewed Ávila at the legislature days earlier.
Santiago smiles ironically, then snarls, “What do I think about this new
mano dura? I would ask the president to remember that he used to be
hunted by those same rapid-response battalions, when he was a comandante
guerrillero.”
I try to lighten the mood. “I remember talking to a guy involved in the
negotiation of the peace accords in ’92,” I say, referring to the negotiations
that ended the civil war. Santiago just looks and listens, but the tension
emanating from him is palpable. “You’ll never guess what music he said
helped bring about the historic peace.”
Santiago appears to be listening, but also looks perplexed. He says
nothing. I keep going, “Yeah, a guy who was there told me that when
negotiations were stuck, the military and guerrilla commanders were sitting
in a lobby, trying to break the ice and find common ground, when one of the
comandantes guerrilleros asks, ‘Hey, what music do you guys like?’
“After a couple of minutes, the only music they pretty much agreed was
great was—are you ready? . . . Kenny G! That broke the ice and they went
on to negotiate the end of the civil war.” I pause to see what, if any, effect
my story has. Nada.
“Now, that same government that was pursued by escuadrones is also
using them, calling them ‘batallones de limpieza,’” he fires back. “What
community are they ‘cleansing’? And what is the media saying? They’re
not saying, ‘shootouts between police and gangs.’ They’re ‘cleansing’ us.”
“I agree, Santiago. The way the media is reporting the situation is an
embarrassment to me as a journalist. That’s why I’m here. To give you a
chance to speak for yourself.”
He sits in silence for a moment, seemingly pondering what I’ve said. Our
small agreement about big media may help improve the dynamics of our
conversation.

“They’re talking about how police ‘eliminate’ gang members,” he says.
“Why are they using this language? Look up the etymology of ‘eliminar’ in
the dictionary of the Academia Real Española [the ultimate authority on the
Spanish language]. It means to ‘expel’ or ‘throw out.’ Why are the
government and media using that language? Because they’re preparing
something. Someone is injecting something into the mind of the population
so that they’re not alarmed when what they’re planning happens.”
“And what do you think they’re preparing?”
“More violence and killing.”
Santiago’s political sophistication isn’t surprising. Many gang members
share this sophistication. Their local and national operations—building
communications and other networks, arming themselves, defending
territory, managing finances, negotiating political space—demand
organizational and political acumen. What’s shocking to me is his
sophistication about language. Dude reads the fucking Academia Real
Española? Damn!
On the table, I notice the book again, a translation of one of the Hunger
Games novels. I feel on edge, and my mouth is suddenly dry. His reaction
to the ARENA and the FMLN questions caught me off guard. On top of
that, I need to establish some rapport to be able to get him to respond to my
harder questions, like why the gangs recruit and depend on kids. “I saw the
first movie,” I say, still trying to steer the conversation to calmer waters. “I
liked it.”
Santiago’s eyebrows rise. So do the corners of his mouth to reveal his
smile. Yes. The gold teeth are back! “I saw the movies, but prefer the
books,” he says. “You get a deeper sense of Katniss from the books.”
“You like reading, eh?” The need to navigate the conversation to the
delicate issue of the children he and the maras depend on for their work
without causing him to shut down completely is stressing me out. I know
the meeting will likely end soon.
“All during my childhood, I grew up without electricity,” he says in his
velvety vos voice that’s so Salvadoreño. “My kids won’t live like that.”
Santiago is a father of two who, like all gang members interviewed for
my news stories, lives a great contradiction: he does all he can to protect his
children from violence, while living a life in which violence—including
violence against children and performed by children—provides him with
camaraderie, extortion money, territorial control, and other forms of power.

“My main escape was books. I read them by candlelight,” he says.
“When I got older, a gang elder told me ‘Read, even if it’s a piece-of-shit
book, read.’ So I buy and read lots of books.”
The love of reading reminds me of another kid, one who, before
becoming a pandillero, dreamed of using reading and education to escape
the cycle of poverty in the mesones: Pop, the poor kid whose love of words
led him to read voraciously, despite never getting more than a second grade
education. It also reminds me of my childhood persona, Mr. Peabody, the
guy who loved books so much, he and Freddie Weinstein began their lives
of crime by stealing the entire set of the Danny Dunn adventure series from
the Mission Library.
“What do you like to read?” I ask.
“I really like science fiction and fantasy, like this book,” he says, looking
at The Hunger Games. “I also like the classics.”
“Classics? Which ones?” I’m fascinated that this top gang leader has
made the time to school himself. The situation reminds me of the sensation
I had on discovering that guerrillero leaders and soldiers fighting in the
mountains or conspiring in urban commando units loved words so much,
they made the time in between battles to read and write poetry and even
novels—in fact, one of the five groups of the FMLN was founded by poets.
How the love of words survives the hatred and noise of war and extreme
violence still astonishes me.
“The Iliad impacted me because it was romantic and novelesque. I like
the tragedies.”
“Shakespeare?”
“Absolutely. Hamlet. Romeo y Julieta. I love them.”
Knowing that Santiago, a major actor in El Salvador’s current tragedy,
loves the works of Homer and Shakespeare makes my head spin. He could
order a murder with a single word. How these wondrous, life-affirming
words occupy the same internal space as the intent to kill I’ll never know.
“I’ve also read Open Veins of Latin America, One Day of Life, and One
Hundred Years of Solitude,” he says. The pride in his soft, mellifluous voice
borders on bravado. “The elder told me, ‘You should educate yourself. Read
what interests you and what doesn’t interest you.’ So, I even read crap like
the Trojan Horse series, where US agents travel back to the time of Christ.”
Even before the meeting, the story of Christian Poveda, a journalist who
befriended a gang that eventually shot him to death, had me worried about

my safety. But now the lingering fear of having the back of my fucking
head blown off if I say the wrong thing momentarily disappears. This highlevel leader of one of the baddest, darkest mass-murder machines in the
world is showing me that in this way we’re the same, that he too sought and
found solace in books, in the written word—and by candlelight, no less!
Fuck. Poetic es poco.
It occurs to me just then that he placed the book on the table on purpose,
as a conversation starter, like an art book in one of those tanned, middleclass white lady’s homes. It almost feels comforting. Wake up, pendejo. Of
course he put the fuckin’ book there as a prop, as a conversation starter.
He’s trying to influence my story—and succeeding! Dude’s a hunted gang
leader. He doesn’t get out to the book club much these days. He’s smart and
craves conversation as you did—and still do.
I’m getting a sense we’re drawing to a close. Time to talk about the
“norms”—the blood rites—that experts say militaries, gangs, and other
violent organizations deploy to coerce their members to kill and die for
them.
“You say your friends were exterminados by escuadrones?” I ask.
“That’s right. Slaughtered like animals.”
“Some say there’s a war going on between the government and you.
What would you say?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice still calm. “They keep killing gang members. As
I said, we share information and know security forces blame us for many of
their killings.”
“Have you been persecuted?”
“Are you kidding? Many times.”
“How many people have you killed?”
Silence.
I quickly change tactics: “Besides the extermination squads, what do you
think causes all this violence?”
Santiago’s body relaxes some. His arms move back to the side of his
chair. He cocks his head back, raises his eyebrows as if in thought, and then
presses his body forward, confiding.
“Well, there’s trauma,” he says, his mechanical yet singsong falsetto
surprising me. He continues: “The trauma of the disintegration of the
family. The trauma of the father who gets drunk because he doesn’t have a
job. The trauma of that father beating the mother. The trauma of the child

who sees his mother being beaten. The trauma of the mother who gets with
another guy. The trauma of the mother who prefers the boyfriend over the
son. The trauma of the boyfriend who beats the son. The trauma of the son
who leaves home. The trauma of the son who joins a gang. The trauma of
the mother who keeps reproaching the son every day. And on and on.
“So, yes,” Santiago concludes, flashing his gold teeth. “There’s lots of
trauma.”
I’m looking at Santiago’s deep dark brown eyes and see our shared and
fragmented past. Both half dead. Like it or not, we Salvadorans are all, in
some sense, the children of El General and La Matanza.
Time to strike with my big question.
“I notice that many of the mareros I see patrolling your streets are young,
some as young as eleven and twelve.”
“Yes, some of our members are young, y?” He’s asked in a cadence that
implies the phrase “Y qué?”—and what of it?—in Caló. That he’s used
Caló for emphasis—and knew I’d understand it—tells me he understands
the workings of my Californian-Salvadoran influences as much as I
understand the history of his Salvadoran-US ones. My young vato self, Tito,
gets the message: Don’t go there, motherfucker.
Inside me, Tito’s voice is waiting to tell me I’ve failed again: Fuck. I
wasted all the time it took to get this interview. I’m no further to getting at
what’s underneath the child-destroying violence.
Santiago breaks the long silence. “Young mareros aren’t born. They’re
made by a fucked-up society.”
“So you’re the victims in all this?”
“Of course not,” he quickly responds, adopting a somewhat more
defensive body posture, hands crossed across his stomach.
“No?”
“We know we are the worst of the worst, the most evil there is. It’s no
secret to us. In a country like El Salvador, a country with a long history of
violence, a country in which the main parties in power have done—and
continue to do—many of the things we’re doing now, doing these terrible
things is not new,” he says. “We’re just making it worse.”
As I prepare to leave, I search Santiago’s eyes. A futile search for lost
innocence. I wonder about the effect on his innocence—and on the
innocence of all of us Salvadorans—from our ongoing legacy of
generations of killers who have died silently without acknowledging their

crimes. I think about those criminals not affiliated with the gang, including
the legitimized, uniformed criminals of the state, who commit their crimes
against the gangs, mass-murdering with impunity—the same cops and
soldiers whose violence drove me to do things I never imagined I’d do back
in the nineties, setting me on an irreversible course.

21

San Salvador
1991

“How do you want to be called?” Chamba asked me.
We needed to devise a pseudonimo for my fake cedula (ID card).
“How about Ernesto Alvarenga?” He came up with this suggestion when
I told him my mom’s family name, and I initially agreed but then changed
my mind.
“No. Call me Roberto Lovato.”
Even though my parents had named me Roberto at birth, my passport,
birth certificate, and other official paperwork said my name was Robert.
This fake Salvadoran cedula would, in one way, be more genuine than my
real US government documents, despite propagating a different lie: that I
was an economist born in Mom’s hometown of San Vicente. I was officially
Roberto—at last.
After he made the cedula, Chamba gave me basic training in how to
develop my identity, an integral part of how the comandos practiced el
conspire. “You need to come up with a leyenda [legend] and stay with it,”
he said.
“A leyenda? What’s that?”
“It’s the story you create about yourself and your activities. It has to be
simple and consistent, so that you remember it and don’t deviate. Like, ‘I’m
an economist from San Vicente. I work at X, am married, etc.’”
“Ah, OK. So it’s my story about this other identity?”
“Yes. That and the actions you take.”

“OK,” I said, excited and scared. The danger wasn’t so different from
many of the risks I had taken as a member of Los Originales, like stealing
cars, dealing drugs, and robbing people. Only now the stakes were higher.
Dodging San Francisco’s police was one thing; avoiding—and helping
mount attacks against—El Salvador’s mass-murdering military, police, and
death squads was something else altogether. But I also had an almost
religious, poet-warrior sensibility powering me in ways I’d never known:
the certitude that I was undertaking these new risks in the name of a higher
cause.
Known as El Ingeniero, Chamba coordinated logística for the Resistencia
Nacional, one of the five politico-military organizations within the FMLN.*
He explained that he would set up meetings with the leaders of different
FMLN comando urbano units at different locations throughout the city. At
these meetings, the comandos urbanos explained their needs verbally to
avoid leaving a paper trail. However, if entirely necessary, Chamba did use
written instructions—a description of the plan, maps, a list of items to
retrieve, budgets, and other details needed—for mounting attacks on
bridges, military installations, the air force base in Ilopango, and other
targets of war.
Things in the country were tense. Backed by the US government, the
Salvadoran government was ramping up attacks on international solidarity
groups and other foreigners who were supporting the unions, church
groups, and nongovernmental organizations like CRIPDES. The attacks
came in retaliation to the big ofensiva of November 1989, when the FMLN
waged a major military offensive on the capital. The ofensiva was designed
to show the government that it could not defeat them militarily and that
negotiation was the only way forward. The real audience for the ofensiva,
though, was the US government, for it was clear they were the ones pulling
the strings of El Salvador’s puppet government.
My decision to work with the comandos came gradually but accelerated
after frequent trips to Chalatenango with CRIPDES. Different parts of me
converged on the revolucionario option. And, of course, the romance of
having gotten to know a great revolucionaria like G.
The wholesale mass slaughter of toddlers and teens made fighting the
fascist military dictatorship a just and necessary cause.
A friend visiting from San Francisco gave me Chamba’s info so I could
connect with him directly.

Chamba sported a thick mustache and had animated eyes that gave him
the look of Gomez Addams, the darkly comic father of The Addams Family
television show. This look magnified his storytelling, as when he described
what was to be my first meeting. “He’s one of the most wanted men in San
Salvador, a real legendario,” he said, his eyes popping with enthusiasm.
I loved the idea of meeting a tall, dark, handsome, brown badass, an Errol
Flynn as Robin Hood ready to welcome me to some Sherwood Forest
outside San Salvador so I could join his merry band of bandits in blowing
up bridges, sabotaging telephone lines, and other acts of rebellion against
the fascist military dictatorship. Tito’s anger found company and a cause.
Finding out the meeting with this Errol Flynn character would take place
at a Mister Donut coffee shop in the Metrocentro Mall felt funny, in no
small part because the idea of the coffee shop as a portal into the
revolutionary underground mirrored Pop’s own illegal undertakings in the
basement of Hunt’s Donuts. But the Mister Donut meeting also marked the
rapid beginning of the end of my fantasy. No forest. No band of happy
cherubic bandits. No romance. Just the plastic white benches, white tables,
and white walls of a place where I had sometimes eaten jelly donuts with
friends years before. All my romanticismo gave way to a scary realism.
Once I sat down on one of the plastic benches in Mister Donut, “normal”
things became something else. The lack of a smell and the plastic
wonderland vibe of the place gave a surreal aura to a scary situation. Errol
Flynn was going to tell me a list of equipment—cameras, binoculars, video
equipment—they needed to launch attacks. I was to use my contacts in the
US and in El Salvador to secure and deliver the materials. Meeting in such
an open space made me feel very vulnerable. I did not yet understand that
counterintuitive steps like meeting in public were, in fact, safety measures
—though in truth a guerrillero was vulnerable anywhere anytime in El
Salvador.
Waiting to meet Errol Flynn, I started to recognize that shit was getting
real—I was actually on my first mission as part of the FMLN guerrillero
army. I looked around to see if I could identify which of the patrons were in
Errol Flynn’s detail: the men and women in suits and ties and dresses whose
briefcases, backpacks, and purses contained revolvers and other weapons to
provide us with cover, according to Chamba. These guardaespaldas
(bodyguards) were tasked with vigilantly scoping out the crowd for security

forces. If security forces did present themselves, it was a guaranteed
bloodbath.
Looking outside the windows at the crowds of people, I could see the
obvious reason for meeting in such public places: we looked like a few fish
in a vast urban sea of them. It was reassuring to be in such a banal place but
also terrifying to know that heavily armed military or guardias could
emerge from the crowd of shoppers at any moment.
The fantasy evaporated completely when I finally saw my Errol Flynn, a
thick-necked salchicha (sausage) of a fuckin’ Salvadoran guy who, with his
cowboy boots, stood around five four, at most.
“Hola,” he said. “Roberto, right?”
“Yes. Hi.”
“Good to see you again.” He smiled.
“Yes. It’s been some time.” I smiled back uncomfortably, looking over to
where the members of his security detail were sitting.
Up close, I could see how intense this dude was. His eyes had a
discerning power about them that contrasted with his soft voice.
“How’s your family?” Errol Flynn asked.
“Well. Thank you. Growing, you know.” I didn’t really know what to say.
I looked him over in an attempt to distract myself from my nerves. Errol’s
tight Lacoste shirt barely fit his muscular shoulders and arms. He looked
like those military guys who, in their desperation to own a name brand
before Pop’s stock ran out, bought size small knockoffs from him when
what they actually needed was a medium. Suddenly Pop’s voice crept into
my head, saying, “You’re stupid, risking your life for nothing.” I fought
against the voice of my fear by focusing my attention back on Errol.
“How’s your family?” I asked Errol.
“Well, anxious to start the party. Our Ingeniero friend tells me you and
your family will be lending us a hand.” Errol looked chill, “cucumber head”
cool, as the great Californian comedians Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong
(aka Cheech and Chong) would say. I, on the other hand, was practically
shitting my pants.
“Yes, María and I will be there. Definitely.”
“So, I brought you that list of party favors we talked about.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Errol handed me the coded list of things he and his comandos needed.
Prior to the meeting, Chamba had told me that he would manage delivery.

“Great,” Errol said. “We’ll deliver the goods on time. I hope you can, too.
The party will be fun, lots of fun. Say hello to El Ingeniero.” I never saw or
heard about Errol again.
Prior to my meeting, Chamba had reminded me to think things through
carefully, always making sure to “take the appropriate security measures.”
In the weeks that followed, as my guerrillero work continued, my mind
raced with questions, fears, and excitement, even as I tried to keep all the
rules and responsibilities of my role straight. First I had to be clear about
the security measures I needed to take. These included altering my routines,
coding my messages, not talking with anyone about my business, and doing
things in the least expected way, such as taking different routes to
destinations.
Sometimes, Chamba and I would meet at El Camino Real, one of the
swankiest hotels in the country, dressed as businessmen. I always wore a
Pierre Cardin suit, a black-market suit I’d commandeered from the ones
Pop had left at Tía Esperanza’s. We’d also meet other commando units at
restaurants, other five-star hotels, the downtown McDonald’s, and other
public locations, along with clandestine safe houses.
There was a constant and urgent need for equipment, and I was
consumed with thinking about how I could secure the needed materiel,
much of which was cheaper in the US. After deliberating for some time, I
finally landed on the last man el enemigo—or I—could imagine aiding and
abetting the FMLN’s comandos urbanos: Pop. My whole life, Pop had
eschewed involvement in Salvadoran politics and, for some mysterious
reason, discouraged me from getting involved, despite he and Mom being
very engaged union members in the US, with Mom even taking me to my
first protest at age ten.
A big, eye-closing belly laugh burst out of me at the absurdity of
recruiting Pop. The image of him organizing all these crooks—poor, drugaddled vatos from the Folsom Street projects, Hunt’s Donuts, and the rest of
the Mission—to strike out against imperialismo, forming bases estratégicas
del Frente, made me crack up. The laughter lasted for a few minutes before
I began to cry.
At first the tears seemed like tears at the hilarity of it all, but they
contained something else: a fantasy that perhaps the redemptive power of
revolutionary thought and action that had helped save me might also help
save Pop. I knew he would never buy into my fantasy, but the thought gave

me a path to feeling more whole—to feeling good about Pop, about my
family, about being Salvadoreño, and about my full self. My Salvadoreño
journey from being half dead to more fully alive had begun.
The next day, I called Pop.
“What?” he asked. “You need what?”
I explained what I needed in cryptic terms, but Pop quickly understood
that I was doing something perilous in a country whose danger he had lots
of experience navigating. Pop may or may not have had an idea of what I
was actually up to, but he actually seemed enthusiastic about helping his
boy with whatever he needed—or so he communicated indirectly. The
rapprochement that had begun when I returned from Chalatenango several
months ago had grown and was now bearing revolutionary fruit.
“OK, I think I know where to get those cositas,” he said, using the
diminutive form of the word for “things” to indicate that he understood.
Pop responded quickly and efficiently to the request for goods, bringing
the stuff to Tía Esperanza’s himself for me to pick up when I could. I had
just returned from a visit to Chalatenango and showed up at Tía’s
unannounced. I was sporting a beard, and my clothes were muddied from
being in the refugee camps, where I’d been dancing around campfires to
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, and more obviously revolutionary
music with the other CRIPDES members, guerrilleras, and guerrilleros.
Pop, Tía Esperanza, Adilio, and the rest of the family gave me a wide-eyedwhat-the-fuck look of shock. After a pause, Tía Esperanza and Adilio
smiled, as if looking at how the radical seed they’d planted in the gringo
soil had borne Salvadoreño fruit. Pop had a look that was at once nervous
and perplexed.
I got my own shock months later, as I was lying in my apartment in San
Salvador, sipping some cola champagne, one of the piss-gold soft drinks
every Latin American country has. I was reflecting on how much things had
changed for me since leaving San Francisco the year before, when the
phone rang, an unusual occurrence, given that I lived in a place few except
the compas at CRIPDES knew about.
“Bueno, may I help you?”
“Hola, Beto!” The silky sweet voice sounded familiar, but before my
heart leaped, I paused.
“G?” I asked.
“Yes!”

“Where are you?”
“San Salvador.”
“What?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“You’re here?” I said, my voice reaching higher octaves of disbelief.
“Yes.”
I remained silent for a moment, stunned at the fact that this woman who
publicly represented the FMLN had somehow managed to get into the
country. The Salvadoran government had her and other publicly identified
members of the FMLN on their lists of people to detain on sight at any
airport or border crossing. G could be killed if they caught her here.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m here on some important business and need to speak with you,” she
said in her trademark no-nonsense tone.
“Sure. When and where do you wanna meet?”
“Let’s meet where the light shines,” she said, which was code for the
Antorchas, an open-air restaurant frequented by the compas. The restaurant
had torches placed all around its edges. I wanted to know about this special
mission almost as much as I simply wanted to see her.
I showered, put on some nice clothes, and armed myself with my secret
weapon: Jovan Musk Oil, my preferred cologne. I showed up a little late to
find a smiling G already there. A white-haired guitarist was playing “Ella,”
a lovely bolero from Mom and Pop’s era, in front of a couple at a table
nearby. G was looking ever the summer beauty in a black flowered dress
that hung on her tight body wonderfully. The Salvadoran sun made her
round face look especially radiant.
Being G, she rocketed us through the niceties then started in with the
reason she’d come. The smell of flat iron beef grilling beneath the thatched
palm roof and the fancy blue tropical drinks with little wooden umbrellas in
them gave the restaurant on busy Boulevard de Los Heroes a suave,
intimate beach vibe made stronger by all the antorchas.
“So, T,” she started, “I’m here with some important news.”
“How did you get into the country?”
“The compañeros got me some glasses, a wig, and a fake passport, and I
came in through the Guatemala border,” she said en voz bajita.
“Wow, that’s pretty gutsy.” Noting her need to talk about the mission, I
asked, “So what brings you here?”

“Well, to be honest, you left me in limbo, T.”
“Huh? In limbo? What do you mean?” What the fuck is she bringin’ this
up for?
“Before you left,” she said, “when we were getting to know each other in
San Francisco, you said we were ‘more than friends.’ You gave me
chocolates, you wrote poetry, and gave me other signs that led me to believe
that what you said was true.”
“Uh, well that’s kinda true, I guess, but . . .”
“Yet, on the other hand, you left things ambiguous,” she interjected, “like
you weren’t sure what we were after such beautiful moments we spent
together.”
“OK, yes,” I said, still waiting for the larger mission to reveal itself.
“You know me, Beto. You know that I like to be clear,” said G, sounding
like the focused diplomat and explosives expert she was.
“Yes. You do.”
“You know that I can’t stand ambiguity.”
“No, you can’t.”
“So, I will just tell you: Tito, I’m in love with you and need to know how
you feel about me. I’ve been living with this ambiguity since last year and
want you to be clear with me. I can’t keep living like this.”
Uh-oh. That’s what she fucking came here for? Me? Fuck.
Subversive in war turned out to also mean subversive in love. My
immediate thought: G came to undermine my game plan of macking on lots
of women in wartime El Salvador. But I also recognized our shared desire. I
kept looking at her in disbelief, and the rush of memories came back to me
—walking near my old church, talking about opera, feeling like she actually
liked me for me, despite feeling like a fucked-up kid in the Mission. Fuck.
So I did the obvious thing any red-blooded revolucionario Salvadoran
macho would do in such a potentially explosive situation.
“Excuse me for a second. I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right
back.”
“Eh, OK?” G said in a tone that said, “What the fuck?”
On my way to the bathroom, I walked up to the old guitarist dude playing
music in the restaurant and whispered in his ear. Then I went to the
bathroom, combed my curly hair, and washed my face before I came out
blasting like I was Michael Corleone entering gangster life at the Bronx
Italian restaurant. I stroll back to the table.

“So you want an answer?” I asked, standing before her with the guitarist
behind me. “Here’s your answer.”
The guitarist started playing “Sabor a mí.” I’d first learned the lyrics of
the classic bolero–turned–lowrider oldie about the lover’s taste when Pop
used to play it for Mom. Now I put his Orphic powers to use myself. I
started serenading G.
The song ended. I smiled and said, “There’s your answer.”
She smiled back and got up to put her face close to mine. We paused to
inhale each other’s breaths, and then our lips finally touched.
We decided to go to a cheap motel used by prostitutes working near Tía
Esperanza’s house on Cinco de Noviembre Street. Early the next morning,
before dawn, as we floated out of the motel high on new love, we were
greeted by the sight of soldiers who were about a block and a half away and
coming our way.
We turned and walked quickly in the opposite direction, hoping that a
taxi or some other vehicle might come in our direction, but there were no
cars in sight. An eternity passed before we saw the lights of a vehicle
approaching, surely our last opportunity to escape torture and likely death.
As the car approached, I prayed, Please let this be a taxi, please! Finally
the car came close enough that we could tell it was, in fact, a taxi. We
rushed to it, hopped inside, and sped away, back in the opposite direction
from the soldiers.
Determined not to let fascist military blues defeat our happiness, G and I
decided to go on another date. We picked a lunchtime stroll near the
CRIPDES office, along Boulevard de Los Heroes, San Salvador’s main
thoroughfare. In the seventies, Rolando and my other friends and I used to
come to Boulevard de Los Heroes to ride bumper cars at the arcade where
rich boys and their parents stared at us, trying to figure out why the boy in
rich kid’s clothes—football shirts, Levi’s, and Converse—was with the kids
in raggedy clothes and shoes. These were the same friends I tried to teach
the words of B. J. Thomas’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” the
beautiful, breezy song I loved from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Now, G and I walked down that same boulevard, holding hands, enjoying a
dreamy break from all the war shit.
A new van with polarized windows pulled over ahead of us. I didn’t
recognize it. Instinctively G put her hand on my arm in a gesture of caution.
We stopped walking.

“Hey, Roberto!” a man’s voice called out as the van door slid open.
“Hey,” I responded. I took a step toward the van, thinking maybe it
belonged to one of Adilio’s richer friends.
G quickly grabbed me by the shirt. “Do you know who that is?” she
asked.
“No, but they said my name.” I couldn’t imagine any sinister dudes doing
anything in broad daylight, on the busiest street in the country, no less.
But G could. “OK, T,” she said in a calculating voice, “at the count of
uno-dos-tres we’re gonna run.”
Uno-dos-tres, and with as much speed as we could muster, G and I ran
down side streets searching for some cover. We waited behind a parked car
on a side street for a while and then hopped the fence into the backyard of a
home, and then another, and another until we reached an abandoned yard
with heavy brush to hide in. We stayed kneeling there, holding hands for
what seemed like hours, until we felt safe enough to walk outside again.
So began our engagement: stitching together the fragments of our lives,
doing our best to feel safe in love and in war as we carried forth the
lawbreaking tradition passed on by the poetic outlaws who preceded us.

22

Mexico City
1941

Two years after leaving San Salvador for Mexico—the promised land for
Salvadorans in the 1930s and early ’40s—Ramón found himself sleeping in
a palace. Unfortunately, however, his metal cot with leather slats was as
uncomfortable as any of the floors, cots, or beds he grew up sleeping on in
the mesón. Ramón was in Lecumberri prison, called El Palacio Negro, in
the cell along the corridor he shared with other men who, like him, were
accused of murder.
Days earlier, the Mexican police had woken him in the middle of the
night, handcuffed him, and dragged him to the police station to interrogate
him about the murder of one of his clients, a Mr. Manning. Manning, the
owner of the dry-cleaning shop that subcontracted services from Ramón’s
employer, Tintorería Insurgentes cleaners, had been found dead, his head
bashed in by a big metal pipe.
“You have the wrong man!” Ramón maintained in the smoky
interrogation room where the cops tried to force a confession from him for
fourteen consecutive hours.
“You’re right,” one of the cops answered brusquely. “You’re not the guy.
Because your name isn’t even Ramón López. It’s Ramón Lovato, asshole—
and you killed Manning.”
They were right about the first part, and Ramón knew he was in deep
trouble as a result. He’d come to Mexico as an indocumentado, changing
his name to Ramón López with the help of his patron, Visitación Antonio

Pacheco, a former Salvadoran coronel exiled to Mexico by El General
Maximiliano Hernández Martínez. Pacheco, who had changed his own
name to Victor Antonio Pacheco, was a friend of Tey’s husband, Chico.
Ramón worried that Mexico was like El Salvador, a place where for any of
a number of reasons—mistaken identity, vengeance, personal whims,
jealous husbands—you could be jailed interminably, tortured, or even
killed.
Ramón spent a week in his cell, pondering how he’d ended up sleeping in
prison with rapists, crooks, and murderers like Jacques Mornard, the man
convicted and sentenced to twenty years for the murder of Leon Trotsky the
year before (Mornard’s true identity as the Soviet spy Ramón Mercader
would only be exposed decades later). Finally, the lawyer whom Pacheco
had secured for him came to the prison with an update: Salvador, a guy who
ironed clothes for Manning, had confessed to the murder after police found
his bloodied shoes. The lawyer then gave Ramón the bad news: “Since
you’re here illegally, you’re going to be deported.”
Thankfully, his patron, Pacheco, knew that Mexico really was the
promised land—for those who had money. Pacheco gave 150 pesos to
Mexico’s director general of population, who oversaw immigration, and
another 150 pesos to the director of the Minerva Polytechnic Institute.
Overnight, his nineteen-year-old Salvadoran employee had papers
certifying that he was a legal resident of Mexico and was one of the
institute’s top students.
Ramón went on to hold numerous jobs in Mexico, enjoying good money
and lots of women, fathering a son, and having many other adventures that
he dreamed of writing about in a book he intended to call Mexico de Mis
Memorias, if he ever wrote it. But even as he was living the good life in
Mexico, at the same time, another part of his story—his childhood in El
Salvador—had been disappeared, by his escapades and also by drinking the
tequila and rum that replaced the cheap guaro of his past.
El Salvador did not figure in either the memories he chose to dwell on or
his future plans. Nor did his father, Don Miguel Rodríguez, or his family in
Ahuachapán. However, after ten years in Mexico, Ramón did miss his other
family: his stepfather, Chico; his siblings, Jorge and Aida; and, most of all,
his mother, Mamá Tey. In order to see them, Ramón would have to migrate
farther north, to the United States.

Carmen Regalado and other prostitutes in Mesón San Luís had persuaded
Tey to move to the other great land of opportunity, California. Tey had
immigrated to San Francisco in 1949, thanks in no small part to her Singer.
The iron sewing machine helped her to save enough money to immigrate
and rent an apartment in the Mission District. She also saved enough to buy
a newer sewing machine, an electric one, which allowed Tey to bring in a
greater income still. With this money, Tey began to weave her family’s
transcontinental web between San Francisco and El Salvador, buying and
selling contraband.
Once established, Tey got word to Ramón in Mexico, inviting him to
rejoin his family. In 1951, at age twenty-nine, Ramón crossed the chain-link
border separating Matamoros and Brownsville. His first memorable
interaction with an Americano came upon boarding a Greyhound to
California, being told in English and then in Spanish that he should “sit in
the back—with the other coloreds.”
Ramón brought little more with him to San Francisco than a bad drinking
habit and his skills of persuasion. His tongue was the instrument he used to
not only secure work but also lyrically lure friends and family to work with
him. First he got work at the piers with his cousin, El Catocho, unloading
bombs and the bodies of soldiers from the ships returning from the Korean
War. Then he moved to the Southern Pacific railroad station on Townsend,
where the white guys in the union began their meetings by saying, “Ladies
and gentlemen—and you colored folks, too.” One of those white guys was a
brakeman like Ramón, but wasn’t as racist as the other guys and had his
own poetic tongue thing going. His name was Jack Kerouac.
Ramón’s jobs helped him sustain a drinking habit of a fifth or more of
tequila, Scotch, or Wild Turkey per day. He was a womanizer always
looking for a fiesta. It was a lifestyle that resembled Don Miguel’s,
ironically enough. Then he reconnected with the woman who would alter
the course of his life, María Elena Alvarenga.
The two had originally met in the late forties, at a department store
Ramón visited during a trip to San Salvador. He was attracted to her, but
she had never paid the mustachioed, roguishly handsome man any attention.
She was a beauty queen and had more than enough suitors. They lost touch
until 1955, when he was visiting the home of one of Tey’s friends, a friend
who also happened to be the aunt charged with María’s care.

For María something had changed. Ramón’s qualities—his roguish
humor (saying things like, “Don’t get too close to me or you’ll be the
mother of my kids”), his adventurous spirit, and the animated, poetic way
he spoke—had become attractive to her. He had never stopped being
attracted to the fierce, beautiful Nena. The two started dating. Three weeks
later, they were married. Within months, she was pregnant with Ramón Jr.,
their firstborn. Soon after, they made arrangements for María’s son, Omar,
to migrate to San Francisco from San Vicente. Ramón’s daughter in San
Salvador, Ana Irma, soon followed suit.
The Lovatos were known for helping their compatriots and other
immigrants. Over a hundred immigrants made their way from El Salvador
to San Francisco with the help of Ramón’s family. Many of them stayed in
the Lovatos’ crowded apartments on Army, where Ramón and his family
lived with Tey, as well as their historic home on Folsom, while getting their
feet on the ground in the United States.
The Lovatos were also known for their parties, where Ramón’s drinking
was always on display. That is, until 1963, when María took action, forcing
him to quit because they were on the verge of having another child, Roberto
Lovato.

Part VIII

23

San Salvador, El Salvador
2015

I wake on the cot that I’ve been sleeping on at María Elena’s ever since
Pop arrived and started occupying my former bed. The most audible sound
in the room we’re sharing is the wheezing and snorts of Pop’s asthmatic,
ninety-two-year-old lungs palpitating as he sleeps. Something in the snoring
—his childlike vulnerability, the memories of Mom tending to him during
his near-death asthma attacks, the nightmares of the previous century that
still shake his frame—makes me want to hug him.
My days here are numbered. But I’m not leaving El Salvador without
using my remaining time to investigate other parts of the past—my past,
this time. Especially the other colossal question mark in my family history:
Pop’s father, Don Miguel Rodríguez.
When I asked him a few days ago about coming with me to Ahuachapán,
Pop’s face shriveled up. “Ni que me paguen,” he said. “There’s nada there
for me.” Behind the nothingness of his nada I can hear the nihilism that
drove Pop to drink. I know I need to respect the feelings of the man branded
ilegítimo from birth by Don Miguel Rodríguez—and the nation—so I let it
lie. I’ll be going to Ahuachapán alone today.
The abominable chirp on my cousin María Elena’s cheap Nokia cell rings
at 7:30 a.m. sharp, as always.
“Buenas días, mi coronel!” says Isaias’s friendly, croaky voice on the
phone.

I brush my teeth, grab my backpack from the sofa, and burst out of the
steel front door to meet him.
Isaias is standing proudly next to his rusty taxi-yellow Toyota parked
beneath the shaded spot under the rubber tree in María Elena’s front yard.
He’s smiling and making small talk with el sereno, whose shotgun bumps
up against the bell curve of his beer belly, regardless of how he moves.
I greet him. “Buenos días, joven.” I’m only about three years older than
Isaias, but he looks a lot younger. Unlike his beer-bellied fellow former
soldier, el sereno, Isaias keeps his frame tight and fit. The muscles bristling
from his neck, arms, and chest in a fitted yellow sport shirt give his face a
golden aura. His large brown eyes that open wide when he’s animated,
which is often, also make him look younger. His own take on his looks that
he once told me: “Yeah, people tell me I have an Indian face. All I need are
the feathers.”
Sometimes Isaias’s humor strays into the racist territory that is still rife in
Salvadoran society, but otherwise adds a welcome dose of levity in the
violent landscapes we’ve traversed together. During this time, our
camaraderie has developed to a point where I generally trust him on a
personal level. But not with my FMLN past. I’ve told only a few close
friends and family about that.
After almost twenty-five years of clandestinity, secrets, and fear,
thousands of us in the United States and El Salvador continue to keep our
former militancy buried. In my postwar identity as a scholar, activist, and
journalist, I’ve feared that my far from liberal politics would affect my
livelihood. Remembering the role of the CIA in assassinating compañeros
and supporting the Salvadoran military and escuadrones gives me ongoing
concern for my physical safety. Having been arrested on false charges
during a protest in San Francisco with arrest reports signed by the FBI and
having been pursued and harassed by escuadrones de la muerte during my
early postwar years at CARECEN in LA, I still don’t feel safe. In fact,
senators Joe Biden, John Kerry, and others went on to document the ways
US government agencies and their right-wing Salvadoran henchmen
surveilled, threatened, and tried to infiltrate our sanctuary and solidarity
organizations during the war. All these concerns weigh heavily on me any
time I feel the desire to publicly unforget the revolutionary part of me.
Isaias’s bright eyes are a clean white around the iris, clearer than most.
Always. A sign that he’s not a boozer, unlike Jorge “El Chele” (the light-

skinned one), another driver María Elena set me up with years before I met
Isaias. El Chele’s eyes were always ablaze with the red streaks of
sleeplessness, stress, and heavy drinking with prostitutes.
“Off to Mister Donut and then more interviews?” Isaias asks.
“We’ll go to Mister Donut, but no interviews.”
“Why not?”
“I have other kinds of work I need to do.”
Several weeks after meeting with Santiago, I’d finished most of the
research for my news stories. In the process, I ingested enough violence,
trauma, and duplicity in present-day El Salvador to stir the wells of my own
terror to the point where they can no longer be ignored. I’m not going to
leave without investigating my family’s past.
So I tell Isaias we’ll be taking several road trips over the next few days.
Our first stop will be the University of El Salvador, where the country’s
preeminent historian of Ahuachapán has agreed to speak with me.
Tomorrow, we’ll drive to Nahuizalco, one of the last remaining indigenous
towns in the country. From there, we’ll head to Ahuachapán and Ataco,
Don Miguel’s hometown. But first, breakfast at the Mister Donut on
Chiltiupán, a couple of blocks down from María Elena’s and a few blocks
up from poor Giovanni’s garage, where someone else has already set up
another body shop.
We’re off in his rusty, creaky Toyota, my Rocinante. As the car rattles
over the rocks and rubble of María Elena’s street, Isaias listens to the daily
news, as is his ritual. “The suicide bombing killed at least ten people and
wounded more than sixty,” the radio announcer drones in the driest, most
un-Salvadoran Spanish imaginable—the polar opposite of the syncopated
singsong of Salvadoran sportscasters, lotería managers, or Isaias.
“Things are really violent there,” Isaias says, in his high-pitched voice,
referring to this latest news from Kabul.
“El Salvador is actually more violent than either Afghanistan or Iraq right
now,” I say. “Only Syria is more violent than El Salvador.”
“Shit,” he says, but not in response to anything I’ve just said. “Those
terroristas have huevos. Like the guerrilleros terroristas during the war.”
His references to the war halt the conversation. I’m not sure what to say.
Even though I left the FMLN over twenty-three years ago, and even though
I detest the current FMLN government’s murderous mano dura strategy to
combat gangs, Isaias’s comment about them being “terroristas” pushes at an

insecurity deep in my gut, one that wants—that needs—to preserve my
memory of the FMLN fighters of the 1980s and ’90s as heroes.
“So, you think it takes balls to blow yourself up like that?” I ask Isaias,
steering the conversation to safer shores.
“Definitely. The ejercito trained us hard in how to kill,” he says, “but
nobody could train me to kill myself like that.”
I make a mental note of concern about this military stuff I’ve never
delved into with him as we arrive at our destination. The escopeta-wielding
guard in the Mister Donut parking lot greets us with a smile. We park, order
our food, and sit down at one of the dozens of plastic booths. Just like when
we met with the comandos urbanos during the war over two decades before,
there’s no smell in Mister Donut. We’re in a time warp; the sterile,
Americano-style banality of the restaurant once again in stark contrast to
the fraught Salvadoran situation I’m bringing to it.
“You know, boss,” Isaias says, “your job is to tell stories about violence
here, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have my own stories,” he says.
Isaias is quite a funny storyteller. He’ll tell you tales of comedy and
tragedy with the same toothy, nervous smile, which stretches across his face
and beams outward. He wears it whether we’re braving clandestine gang
hideouts or dealing with crooked cops, giving the appearance he’s getting
off on the thrill and danger.
My visit to the IML and the bone room is still fresh in my mind, as are
the smells of the dead. So I ask Isaias if he has any stories about smells.
“Smells?” he asks. His nostrils widen, his brow furrows, and his lips
tighten to the side. He thinks about it for a few seconds, before a light bulb
pulls the muscles of his friendly face upward.
Before he begins, we start digging into the Salvadoran breakfast plato
típico—avocado, Salvadoran sour cream, tortilla, and casamiento, the
“wedding” of rice and black beans mixed together. As plastic and franchise
and gringo as Mister Donut is, their plato típico is pretty good.
“So, during the war,” Isaias begins, “mi general, René Emilio Ponce,
ordered mi coronel, Mendez Rodríguez, to put together a rescue mission.”
The name Ponce pushes a big gulp of casamiento down my throat. Ponce
was the general and former minister of defense mentioned in the UN Truth
Commission report for having issued orders to kill six Jesuit priests and

their housekeepers in 1989. A School of the Americas graduate, Ponce had
been implicated in other crimes against humanity as well.
“A rescue mission?” I ask.
“Yes, they assigned us to go rescue the remains of five soldiers killed
near Conacaste,” he says. “They were left there by those culeros [“queers”]
in the Bracamonte Battalion.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Yes. Mi coronel Mendez says to me, ‘Diablito, I want you to lead a
force of three men for the mission, while others fight it out with the
guerrillas.’”
“‘Diablito?’ They called you ‘Little Devil’?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because of how I look, how dark I am,” he explains, flashing an
unusually sly smile in response.
“So, getting to what you asked me about, the stuff about smell,” he says,
“it reminds me of the time we went to an area near Conacaste, an area that
saw heavy fighting with the guerrilleros.
“The dead guys there were only partially buried. The area around them
was minado. Mined. So other guys were fighting the guerrilleros while we
went to the area where the bodies were.”
“Why?”
“We never leave our boys behind. We made it through the mines and got
to our destination. The first thing that hit us was the smell. But we didn’t
have time to waste with all the fighting, and we got the ponchos to carry the
bodies in. The remains had been there over six days and smelled like hell
itself. When we started picking them up, we yanked the meat right off them,
like when you have a fried fish and the skin and meat fall right off.”
He pauses to take a couple of forkfuls of Mister Donut’s casamiento.
“Bitter es poco. Holy fuck, what a smell! Puta! The heat made them
decompose and stink.”
I stop eating, feeling bad for Isaias and the other soldiers, paid a piece of
shit, risking their lives daily to do such horrific work in war’s gutters. His
story also brings to mind the sickening smell of the stacks of bodies and
bones I had seen during a visit to the Pima County Medical Examiner’s
Office—body parts of women, children, and men who died in the Arizona

desert while immigrating to the US. Victims of the ongoing war on
immigrants.
“So, wait.” I pause. “What part of the units were you, that they sent you
to lead missions like that one? Those aren’t just any units.”
“Yes, I was in the special forces.”
Prior to this moment, my superficial assessment of Isaias’s friendliness
and general demeanor had led me to believe he was just a regular
infantryman: a grunt, who went in, saw a little too much war, and got out as
quickly as possible. But special forces? Fuck. They were the hardest of the
hard. I couldn’t believe I’d never asked him about this experience before.
This is starting to feel worse than when I discovered that Atlacatl, the
indigenous warrior I loved to see on my childhood briefcase, not only never
existed, but that Salvadorans baptized banks and mass-murdering military
battalions with the name of the made-up indigenous leader.
“So, wait. You were in the special forces during the war?”
“Yes,” he responds, his ever present smile still lighting up his round face.
“I was in the Belloso Battalion.”
“The Belloso Battalion?” I ask, my stomach swirling as if I were a child
expecting punishment. They used to call the Belloso Battalion the Gringo
Battalion because it trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Belloso
committed countless massacres, extrajudicial killings, torture, and other
crimes against humanity.
Isaias’s face clouds. His mouth twists into a suspect shape and his large
bright eyes look almost unhinged. The Diablito nickname becomes more
sinister. He’s the same person; it’s my stomach, my mind, that are altering
the reality before me, twisting it as if peyote is forcing me to see all the dark
realities of Isaias’s past on his face.
“What battalion did you belong to?” I ask, still in disbelief, hoping for
another answer.
“I was part of Sección Dos,” he says with a proud smile.
Oh my fucking God. This loyal, funny, kind man who’s been driving me
around, protecting me, who’s introduced me to his family, was a member of
Sección-fucking-Dos, the escuadrones of one of the most murderous
battalions of the war? How didn’t I pick this up? How? I better chill.
I, too, have secrets. I can’t let on how much this shit disturbs me. I collect
myself and decide to get on with the visits and deal with this information
later. The interviews and research will get my mind off this revelation. I met

this guy’s wife and kid. I saw that he loves them. And on top of all that, he’s
always been good to me, looked out for me, for my safety. I’ll figure out
what to do with him, but first I have to continue down this road to discover
my grandfather’s story and the secrets it holds for my family, and for me.

24

Los Angeles, California
1992

G and I were on our blue velvet sofa watching a Face the Nation segment
about the LA riots on the cheap television we’d bought for our still pretty
empty Echo Park apartment we’d moved into late the previous year. That
evening’s featured guest was President George H. W. Bush’s attorney
general, William Barr. Barr started talking about “the significant
involvement of gang members at the inception of the violence.”1 We
understood his statement for what it was: a cynical use of the riots to justify
a major shift in US law enforcement, a shift that would have profound
implications for Salvadorans in the Pico Union neighborhood where I
worked.
Yes, I ended up in LA, of all places. G had altered my life game plan with
her visit to El Salvador the year before. I’d moved back to San Francisco to
be with her, when she’d flipped the script again, telling me that she had to
move to LA for her work with the FMLN. The compas helped connect me
to CARECEN Los Angeles, a nonprofit organization whose services were
in high demand, with more than fifty thousand served in a single year. Our
mostly Salvadoran and Guatemalan clients lined up for several blocks to
receive legal help and other services.
My decision to return to the US was also informed by a sense that the
FMLN had enough revolucionarios in its ranks in El Salvador. Further, I’d
seen firsthand the life-and-death consequences that US solidarity had on the
campesinos of Chalatenango, and I felt I could be of best service to the

cause through doing international solidarity work in the US. I’d also
returned to California because I wanted to be closer to my family, including
Pop. Pop’s logistical support of my comando urbano work, along with my
greater understanding of El Salvador’s history of violence, had brought us
closer together. For personal and political reasons, my struggle was back
home in the belly of the beast.
As we watched Face the Nation, G and I knew Attorney General Barr
was using the complexity and chaos of post-riot LA as an opportunity to
push his new priority for federal law enforcement: fighting gangs. Weeks
after his appointment to the Bush administration, the new attorney general
had targeted the gangs with the largest reallocation of FBI resources in
history, moving three hundred agents from counterintelligence work against
potential foreign enemies to instead target the gangs, including the
Salvadoran maras.2 Before making his decision to prioritize gangs, Barr
consulted with California governor Pete Wilson, who was preparing to
launch Proposition 187, which denied government aid and services to
undocumented immigrants, the de facto start of the contemporary antiimmigration movement in the United States.
We knew he was lying because, unlike Barr, we were actually on the
streets and in the communities during the riots, driving all around South LA
and Pico Union, two of the major riot centers. Dressed as evangelicals, a
tactic that G had learned during the war, which had allowed her to move
around undetected, G and I put a Bible on the dashboard of our Chevy
Bronco and managed to get through National Guard and police checkpoints
in the militarized City of Angels. With the flames close enough for us to
feel their heat, we heard and saw thousands of people stealing and
surviving, doing things both noble and ignoble. The arson and other violent
activities spread through many communities and were committed by many
different actors, some of whom were members of gangs, but most of whom
were not.
Barr laying responsibility for a billion dollars of destruction on the gangs
was a glimpse of the future of law enforcement, gangs, and immigration—
and the lies of the powerful who continue to justify crime in the name of
fighting it.
Following Barr’s Face the Nation appearance, the staff of CARECEN
voiced its concerns about the new focus on gangs to the local and federal
officials sent to our offices to gather information on the causes and effects

of the riots.3 As one of the larger community-based organizations in the riotaffected areas, CARECEN saw many journalists, nonprofit leaders, and
corporate leaders come through our office, as well.
During each of these visits, CARECEN lawyers gave a brief presentation
laying out our many concerns about government abuses—questionable
arrests, beatings, shootings, deportations, and the illegal detention in LAPD
jails of thousands of immigrants and other Latinos.4 The lawyers’
presentations were often followed by testimonies of clients and community
members.
Federal and local officials listened intently to the endless lists of
complaints and concerns about abuses committed by numerous agencies,
including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Border Patrol,
and other security forces. But the majority of our complaints focused on the
LAPD, specifically on its Rampart Division, responsible for policing the
Pico Union–Westlake area surrounding MacArthur Park.
Our meetings with these officials usually ended with more than a few of
us CARECEN workers grimacing and looking askance at them. More often
than not, the officials gave stock answers in response to our questions about
US government agents beating, abusing, and jailing migrants following the
riots, and about targeting Central American organizations with surveillance,
infiltration, and other covert actions throughout the 1980s. A US Senate
committee concluded that fifty-two of the FBI’s fifty-nine offices had been
targeting CARECEN’s sister organization, the Committee in Solidarity with
the People of El Salvador (CISPES), and other solidarity organizations5
with the help of right-wing Salvadoran operatives. There had also been
break-ins into our CARECEN office in LA, which were never resolved or
fully investigated. The senators deemed the spying, break-ins, and other
activities “a serious failure in FBI management, resulting in the
investigation of domestic political activities that should not have come
under governmental scrutiny.”6 At CARECEN we all believed that the FBI
had known that the Maximiliano Hernández Martínez death-squad
organization was targeting CARECEN in LA and had done nothing about
it.7
Los Angeles, California
1993

By 1993, the CARECEN staff was clear about one thing: in the eyes of the
LAPD and William Barr, most Salvadorans were either gang members or
gang supporters. An obsession with gangs had taken hold in the chambers
of the national and local governments. For example a 1992 report by the LA
district attorney’s office claimed that “there are 125,000–130,000 gang
members on file in the combined databases for Los Angeles County”8—a
statistic questioned by CARECEN and other organizations. Lots of people
without gang affiliations were being identified by law enforcement as gang
members. One anonymous senior Immigration and Naturalization Service
officer told the LA Times, “They [the LAPD Rampart CRASH units] were
targeting a whole race of people. . . . That’s not a gang anymore, that’s a
culture.”9
CARECEN staff and community witnessed firsthand how the confluence
of these interests created a perfect storm of new repressive violence in the
US: counterinsurgency policing. This new style of policing began on the
advisement of military personnel, such as Colonel Max G. Manwaring, a
professor of military strategy at the US Army War College and a former
Pentagon strategist, who was sent to El Salvador during the civil war to
document the effectiveness of US counterinsurgency training and military
aid there.10 Twenty-seven years later, as MS-13 and other gangs in Los
Angeles and many US cities became a focus of government policy,
Manwaring started making recommendations to increase the effectiveness
of local police forces in their “war on gangs.”11 Counterinsurgency trainers
and strategists like Manwaring helped militarize US police forces in the
offensive against gangs. This proliferation was first seen on the streets of
Los Angeles, in the LAPD’s deployments of SWAT units, anti-gang units
like CRASH, and the saturating of poor neighborhoods with cops wearing
the puffed-up, Robocop gear now worn by police everywhere.12
Following former attorney general William Barr’s federal response to the
LA riots, Manwaring was one of several US military officials who started
seeing gangs as an inner city insurgency in need of a more militarized
response. In 2007 he wrote an article for the U.S. Army War College
Strategic Studies Institute that stated:
A new kind of war is being waged in Central America—and elsewhere around the
world—today. The main protagonists are what have come to be called first, second, and
third generation street gangs. . . . What makes all this into a new kind of war is that . . .

commercial motives [drugs and other gang-related enterprises] are known to have been
developed into political agendas by more sophisticated gangs.13

Today, while the media popularizes the terrors of gang war, it ignores the
fact that counterinsurgency policing is a multi-billion-dollar industry for the
arms dealers and military contractors that provide the tanks, semiautomatic
weapons, and other equipment now supplied to local police forces
throughout the United States.14 Just as law enforcement blurred the lines
between youth and gangs, and Salvadorans and maras, so, too, had the
counterinsurgency movement blurred the lines between police and military.

The stunning green fields of Elysian Park gave G and me the space we
needed to take a break from the hallucinatory August heat blurring the
streets of post-riot LA. The park’s rows and rows of gigantic Canary Island
date palms and the coolness of the grass against our skin helped us
temporarily forget we were in this arid place.
Sitting there, for the first time in my life, I had a desire for another, more
personal peace.
“Let’s have a kid,” I said to G.
“Why not adopt, when there are so many orphans and other kids in need
of a home?” she responded instantly.
G had a point. During the war, G and I had visited many orphanages in
Chalatenango. The camps were overcrowded with hundreds of children
whose parents had been killed or disappeared by the Salvadoran military
and the escuadrones. Increasing numbers of these kids had migrated north
in the early nineties, assuming another anonymous Salvadoran label:
“unaccompanied minors.”
One late October afternoon in 1993, I decided to take a run in Elysian. I
jogged down from the top of Douglas Street and into the park. I started my
descent down the hill toward a spot where lowriders and Chicano and
Central American families often congregated. As I neared the bottom of the
hill, I stopped in my tracks at the sight below: hundreds, maybe even a
thousand, of Latino gang members were gathered—a tattooed carpet of
hardened vatos covering one of my favorite refuges from the city.
Many of them looked like hardcore veteranos, but I saw lots of young
bucks, too. Not knowing anyone and dressed in athletic gear, I decided it
probably wasn’t a good idea for me to get closer than the running path. I sat

down on the grass to take in the startling image of all of these gang vatos
gathered on that big grassy field of palms.
A few days later, I checked in with friends in the know about current
gang happenings to see if they had heard anything about the meeting.
According to them it had been called by a gentleman named Blinky
Rodríguez, a former gang member–turned–businessman, joined by church
leaders. But any evangelical ethos of the meeting was merely superficial. At
another, deeper level, there was a historic truce among tens of thousands of
members of Latino gangs in LA, being called for by the imprisoned leaders
of La Eme (Spanish for M), the Mexican Mafia. In its early days, as Mara
Salvatrucha started interfacing with the larger, more influential Mexican
gangs, it eventually came under the protection and influence of La Eme,
which added a 13 to the name, to signify M, the thirteenth letter of the
alphabet.
Despite police efforts to break it, the truce would hold for almost a year,15
and, however reluctantly, the LAPD eventually had to recognize that it did
significantly reduce homicides and violence among Latino gangs
throughout East LA, the San Fernando Valley, and Pico Union. The even
larger truce between the Crips and Bloods would hold for much longer,
despite law enforcement’s overt and covert efforts to break it.
My friends told me that members of a Hoover Street set were skeptical
about going to the gathering unarmed that day. Persuading and leading the
group of fifteen, mostly Salvadoran MS-13 members, was Alex Sánchez,
the man who was to become my friend and whose trials and tribulations
would come to exemplify the interconnectedness among Rampart, the
LAPD, and El Salvador.

By the time of the LA truce meeting in 1993, Alex was already heavily
involved in standard gang activity: robbery, street fighting, and car theft.
Months later, two events occurred that would fundamentally change his life
forever: the birth of his son, Alexito, and the deportation orders that would
prevent Alex from raising him. Alex became one of more than four
thousand young Salvadorans who were deported following a wave of
arrests throughout the US between 1993 and 1997.16 The wave of
government anti-immigrant policies that began with California’s
Proposition 187 had gone national with these mass deportations of Central
American and Mexican immigrants. Ironically, these deportations are what

brought these gangs to Central America in the first place. I’ll never forget
the feeling of walking from a four-hundred-year-old church in San Vicente,
down the cobblestone street leading to my grandmother Mamá Clothi’s
house, where she’d lived for seventy years, and seeing the graffito on the
cracked pink wall of her neighbor’s house HOOVER TINY LOCOS, the name of
an 18th Street clik that originated blocks from CARECEN in Los Angeles.
In the fateful year of 1993, suddenly back in the homeland he’d left as a
child in 1979, Alex found himself surrounded by “people nobody gave a
fuck about,” isolated young males and some female deportees who joined
together to reconstitute the maras they thought they’d left back in Los
Angeles. They were joined by some impoverished Salvadoran youth, for
whom the maras’ LA gang culture—their tattoos, hand signs, clothes,
rituals, speech habits, etc.—held a postwar rebel-without-a-cause appeal.
Shortly after his arrival, Alex, too, decided that gang affiliation once again
was the best way to protect himself and so started hanging out with MS-13
members.
In El Salvador, Alex observed that the government was not prepared to
deal with the gang culture starting to take root. He saw how the US Justice
Department’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance
Program (ICITAP) brought New York’s Giuliani-era “broken windows”
program to the training of Salvadoran police, which eventually became the
foundation for the Salvadoran government’s mano dura. Alex also
witnessed how this “hard hand” counterinsurgency policing strategy was
being supported by other, noninstitutional anti-gang practices. “I remember
seeing the bodies hanging from the poles in my neighborhood,” Alex would
later tell me, “and I just said, ‘What the fuck?’” Alex’s clothes, style,
speech, and tattoos would catch the attention of the authorities, who would
stop and frisk or detain him whenever they saw him on the street. More than
once he avoided capture by the escuadrones de la muerte.
Between the push of the attacks and the pull of his newborn son, Alex
decided to try to get back into the US illegally in 1996. That year, he had a
Monseñor Romero–like transformation: “I need to change my life. I need to
get out of this gang life,” he told himself.
Alex’s migration was successful, and once back in LA, the memory of
the gang truce meeting in Elysian Park stirred his imagination about how to
deal with the difficult survival questions he would face as an ex–gang
member, such as how his former homies would react, and how society at

large would treat him as an ex-con. It was at this point that Alex met
Magdaleno Rose-Ávila, the founder of Homies Unidos, a gang alternative
program for at-risk youth in El Salvador. Alex was so impressed with the
program that he decided to found Homies Unidos Los Angeles alongside
Silvia Beltrán, my former assistant at CARECEN. Much of the work
focused on providing alternate life choices to gang members by offering
things like career development opportunities, arts training, and tattoo
removal.
The program caught the attention of the gang leaders, many of whom
resented anti-gang work as a threat to their authority. Alex and Homies
Unidos also found themselves in the sights of another organization that
would have a profound impact on both El Salvador and the United States:
Rampart’s anti-gang CRASH units. This directly affected Alex, as he had
run afoul of a CRASH officer.
Launched originally in the 1970s, the LAPD’s specialized anti-gang units
focused on investigating gang activities and membership. They came to be
known as Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH, a
name that earned its share of criticism, though even more disconcerting was
the kind of paramilitary, counterinsurgency policing that the LAPD
innovated and helped export to other police departments.
Salvadorans recognized what the LAPD was doing: turning its police into
soldiers, who could act with wartime impunity. The emphasis was no longer
on learning to investigate crimes and protect citizens. Instead, one police
officer described his training thus: “We’ve had special-forces folks who
have come right out of the jungles of Central and South America. These
guys get into the real shit. All branches of military service are involved in
providing training to law enforcement . . . we’ve had teams of Navy Seals
and Army Rangers come here and teach us everything. We just have to use
our judgment and exclude the information like, ‘at this point we bring in the
mortars and blow the place up.’”17
Inside the LAPD, Pico Union’s Rampart CRASH officers developed an
esprit de corps known as the Rampart way—breaking the rules and playing
dirty if they thought the situation demanded it, without fear of
consequences. Outside the secretive confines of the Rampart station located
at 2710 West Temple Street, Pico Union’s Central Americans became
Rampart’s primary targets, whether or not they were affiliated with the
gangs.

One such encounter with Rampart became the community’s own Rodney
King incident. In 1996, 18th Street gang member Javier Ovando was shot in
the back by Rampart officers.18 Many in the community questioned the
circumstances surrounding the shooting; there were allegations of planted
evidence and a doctored crime scene. The Ovando case went nowhere,
however, until the astonishing testimony of Rampart officer Rafael Pérez in
1999.19 Caught in possession of six pounds of cocaine stolen from
Rampart’s evidence room, Officer Pérez sought a deal with prosecutors and
ended up making astounding revelations: he and dozens of other Rampart
CRASH officers and their supervisors engaged in the very criminal activity
they were sworn to fight. In more than four thousand pages of sworn
testimony, Pérez detailed the activities—robbing banks, planting evidence,
joining gangs, organizing hit squads, torturing people, arresting people on
false charges, dropping off naked gang members in the territory of rival
gangs, exposing gang members–turned–informants to their fellow gang
members, and awarding plaques to those who wounded or killed gang
members and others. Rampart officers had been criminals for years.
Ovando’s was just the first of many documented cases of Rampart CRASH
officers abusing their power, killing or wounding unarmed gang members,
or planting guns and drugs on them.
CRASH officers were also caught trying to silence those who could
implicate them in their crimes, including Alex Sánchez. In late 1999,
fourteen-year-old José Rodríguez was accused of murder and attempted
murder. Alex was a key witness in José’s defense, as he could corroborate
José’s alibi: José had been in a Homies Unidos art and poetry workshop
when the murder took place. In order to prevent Alex from testifying, in
January 2000, Rampart CRASH officer Jesús Amezcua arrested Alex and
handed him over to Immigration to be deported for a second time.
Alex, Homies Unidos, and the young people they mentored had
experienced intense harassment from Amezcua and other members of the
CRASH unit long before José’s arrest. Amezcua, a former Marine, would
sneak up on participants in the Homies Unidos programs and bully them.
He and other CRASH officers would corner the youths, saying things like,
“What do you think, just because you’re in that program, things are gonna
be different?”
CRASH harassed many Homies members, but their main target was
Alex, who by 1999 had become a highly visible peacemaker. On January

21, 2000, Officer Amezcua picked Alex up for an old immigration
violation. Because the LAPD’s own regulations prohibited LAPD officers
from handling immigration issues, Alex’s arrest and delivery to the
Immigration and Naturalization Service by Amezcua was in direct violation
of the law. As a result, Free Alex Sanchez! became a national rallying cry to
end the “blue wall of silence” that was protecting government agents in
their illegal counterinsurgency war.
The silences allowing these violations of the law were coming to an end
in Los Angeles in 2000. So, too, were the silences in my own life coming to
an end.

25

San Salvador
2015

Still reeling from Isaias’s divulgement, I excuse myself from the table and
walk to the bathroom, then outside to take a breather. Standing nearby is
Mister Donut’s security guy. Taking a breather from Isaias’s revelations of
his military past while standing next to a guy bearing a 12-gauge escopeta
isn’t ideal, but it’s what I have.
How in the holy hell did I not see who Isaias was? How?
Once I feel like I can keep a cool face again, I head back inside.
“Bueno, mi coronel!” he says. “Ready for the operativo?” The whole
military lingo shtick feels like a razor pressing into my stomach in ways it
didn’t just minutes ago.
“Yeah. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Let’s go.”
We drive on Boulevard de Los Proceres, past the big stone statue heads
of El Salvador’s founding fathers placed along it leading to the University
of El Salvador. There I’m meeting Professor José Raymundo Calderón
Morán, a historian whose six-hundred-plus-page book on Ahuachapán
makes him El Salvador’s leading authority on Pop’s hometown and the
surrounding region. Isaias pulls his car into the lot, and I tell him I’ll call
him after my meeting. The weight of the Mister Donut casamiento still sits
in my throat.
I arrive at the crumbling walls of the building that houses the history
department. Behind me, a giant banner stretched across the rubber tree–
lined walkway proclaims student SOLIDARIDAD, an expression of the spirit—

and political praxis—that has been passed down through generations of
radical University of El Salvador students, whose ranks include Farabundo
Martí, Lil Milagro Ramírez, and Roque Dalton. Students are currently
boycotting classes in protest of budget cuts that have eliminated the jobs of
several adjunct faculty members.
“You’ll excuse me if I seem pressed for time,” Morán says as he enters
his office, “but I’m sure you saw that things are, as always, buzzing with
action.”
“Yes, I heard about the student protests. The eternal return of la lucha”—
the struggle.
“Ah, so you know something of our political culture?”
“Of course.”
“Your parents are from Ahuachapán?”
“Just my father. My mother is from San Vicente.”
“So, what brings you here?”
“I’m trying to learn more about my father’s family. Your book has
pictures of his relatives and other people he knew. I want to know more.”
“Like who?”
“Like Don Sixto Padilla,” I said, referring to the tuxedoed, monocled
eminencia of a doctor who founded Ahuachapán’s hospital in 1883. It’s
strange to look at a picture of Padilla, whose large forehead and round face
make him look like Pop and my brother Mem. To think that, prior to the
hospital’s opening, the ilustre doctor I’d read about had fathered and then
abandoned Mamá Fina, Pop’s maternal grandmother, leaving her ilegítima
in crushing poverty.
Morán’s tired, cool demeanor gives way to that of a bright-eyed history
geek animated by history walking off the page to greet him.
“So, Don Sixto was your father’s father?”
“He was my father’s great-grandfather, the father of my greatgrandmother, Mamá Fina. But he didn’t recognize Mamá Fina. He left her
ilegítima.”
“Ilegítima?” he asks. “Oh yes, that is all too common throughout
Salvadoran history. They called indigenous ilegítimos ‘evil’ and many other
names to take away their humanity—before killing them. It’s incredible that
Don Sixto was your great-great-grandfather. He was a very important figure
in the history of Ahuachapán.”

“Yeah, he’s interesting,” I said, “but the person who really interests me is
my father’s father, my grandfather.”
“What was his name?”
“Don Miguel Rodríguez.”
“Don Miguel Rodríguez?”
“Yes.”
Morán looked constipated, like he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to
share what he knew.
“Whatever you have to share, please do so,” I say. “I didn’t travel
thousands of miles to stop because it might get ugly.”
“OK, well, here we go,” he says. He looks away and pauses, as if trying
to gather the right words. “I knew your father’s family. Without a doubt,
Miguel Rodríguez and members of the Rodríguez family participated in La
Matanza.”
Morán pauses again, to gauge my reaction. Tears well up, but I hold them
back because I don’t know Morán. But I’ve also inherited Pop’s hatred of
his father, and while I’m a bit taken aback, I’m not actually surprised.
Anyway, I have little room in me left for more shock following Isaias’s
revelations.
I do, however, feel a deep sadness, especially in my stomach and in my
head, for Pop. I understand how utterly abandoned Ramóncito, that little
boy who would become my father, must’ve felt. I can more clearly see the
invisible codes hidden behind our macho bullshit. I could see why Pop’s
emotional absence made me a stranger to myself. Pop’s perpetual play, his
musical Orpheus-like ability to make anybody smile or laugh, echoed the
loss of his dream, a dream I had thought was just about education but was
really about living a happy, safe, and stable life. Though my own loneliness
has tugged at me my entire life as well, I still can’t imagine the depths of
Pop’s.
“Are you OK?” Morán asks. My sorrow must show in my face. I nod
though, and Morán goes on: “He was part of and probably helped organize
the Guardia Civil, the organized civilian groups who went door to door
searching for Indians, dragging them out of their homes and exterminating
them by the hundreds. Mostly men and boys were hacked to death with
machetes or shot, many in front of their families. Many were executed by
firing squads, too. Most of them were buried in mass graves.”

The truth is that, although I’m sad, part of me is glad as well. This
revelation is bringing greater clarity to Pop’s story. Here is some
explanation for our half deadness.

Part IX

26

Northridge, California
2000

“OK, who’s ready to discuss the news stories for today’s assignment?”
The faces of several of the college students in my Salvadoran Experience
class dropped. Weekly assignments for the class—which spanned the
founding of the nation state of El Salvador in the nineteenth century to La
Matanza and the 1930s and present-day Salvadoran life in both Los Angeles
and El Salvador—included scanning the local, national, and international
media for stories about El Salvador and Salvadorans in the US.
After leaving CARECEN and eventually separating from G after several
years, I was now teaching at the California State University, Northridge
(CSUN) campus, in the Central American Studies (CAS) program, where I
also served as the program’s coordinator. In fall of 1997, Siris Barrios and
several other, mostly female, student leaders of the Central American
United Students Association (CAUSA) staged protests and hunger strikes,
along with other advocacy, which played a definitive role in the
establishment of our academic minor at Northridge. Support from the
students and faculty of the Chicano Studies department also played a
critical role. Eventually, the minor became a department—the first
academic minor of its kind in the United States,1 which gave the program a
sort of electricity and excitement. Many had no clue about why or how their
families had migrated north.
“I did the assignment, Profe,” began Marisa, an emphatic junior from
South Central, a major hub of Salvadoran life. “But all I found were articles

about the maras—maras killing each other, maras arrested for a drive-by,
mareros arrested, maras targeted by LAPD. Maras, maras, and more maras.
That’s all I found.
“Look!” she exclaimed as she pulled out copies of the stories, most of
which included images of gang members with heavily tattooed faces. The
rest of the students in our class stared at Marisa’s printouts with rapt
attention. “They’re all about mareros. Here and in El Salvador, it’s like
they’re saying we’re all mareros.” Marisa was right: LAPD CRASH and
Rampart’s view of Salvadorans had become the world’s view of us.
Several other students brought up similar examples and complaints. It
looked like the beginning of a heated discussion, a trademark of most of the
courses making up the minor.
“OK, we don’t like what’s reported,” I said. “So what’s left out?”
“Our whole lives,” said Elizabeth, one of my top students. “Anything that
makes us look human. That’s all.”
“You don’t even hear the voices of actual mareros,” said Flor, a
Guatemalan student with tattooed arms who’d grown up in Pico Union.
“Not all gang members are killers, and many of them have families and
come from families they care about. The stories don’t talk about them as
human beings.”
Like Marisa, the majority of the students were Salvadorans from poor
and working-class immigrant families. Many were the first in their families
to go to college. Some had been born in El Salvador or Guatemala or other
Central American countries, others in LA. In one way or another, all were
the children of the Central American wars of the eighties. None had ever
been in a classroom where their reality as Salvadorans in the United States
was a subject of serious intellectual pursuit.
It was the year 2000, twenty years after Salvadorans had arrived en
masse in the US, fleeing the war by the hundreds of thousands, and our
voice was still missing in the telling of our own story. With the exception of
a few Salvadoran writers publishing with independent presses, Joan Didion
and other white US writers were the only tellers of Salvadoran stories in the
English language. In fact the best-known English-language book about El
Salvador is Salvador, written by Didion after spending a total of two weeks
there—most of it in the air-conditioned company of US embassy officials.
Her statement, “Terror is the given of the place,” is arguably the best-known
description of El Salvador in the English language.

“‘Terror?’” said Elizabeth. “I was born there. I remember the war and,
yeah, I remember seeing dead bodies and things that cause terror, Lovato,
but I also remember eating jocotes, always having lots of family around,
and playing escondelero in the cool shade at the foot of the volcán ’til late. I
remember a lot more than ‘terror.’ And who paid for that terror? This
country. That’s who.”
Marisa and my other students were not the first to feel the burning need
for a more complex identity than the “war victim,” “refugee,” and “violent
gang member” stereotypes they had been assigned by English-language
media and literature. But they were the first generation of Salvadorans to
take action around criminal justice and gang issues that previous
generations of Salvadorans in the US either knew little about or eschewed
for fear of the familial and political repercussions.

In 2000 CSUN faculty and I took Mónica Novoa, Siris Barrios, and other
student leaders to community events where Salvadoran peace activists
talked about the ongoing case involving Alex Sánchez and Rampart.
Mónica, already a force of nature and a natural leader who seemed to have
inherited the Salvadoran organizing gene, brought Alex’s story back to
campus and fired up the imaginations of students and faculty alike. Mónica
and other students and faculty in the CAS program joined the national Free
Alex Sánchez! campaign, which helped free Alex in September 2000.
Later that year, Mónica and the other CAUSA students brought Alex to
campus to speak to students.
During his visit, the former MS-13 member helped explain some of the
repercussions of counterinsurgency policing. “Gang and suspected gang
members targeted by CRASH were often pressured into copping plea
deals,” Alex told them, “in many cases admitting to crimes they didn’t
commit. Who the fuck’s a judge or jury gonna believe,” Alex asked, “a cop
or a gang member?”
Most of my students and most Salvadorans I knew—myself included—
sided with Alex, not the cops. In defending Alex Sánchez, we were
defending ourselves.

27

San Francisco, California
2000

“Damn it,” Pop said. “I wish someone would exterminate those sons of
bitches. They’re ruining the country.” He repeated this sentiment often,
especially when he was watching Spanish-language broadcasts featuring
reports from El Salvador about gang violence—the near-constant dominant
news story about his homeland.
Pop was watching TV while sitting on the black leather sofa beneath the
portraits of Mamá Tey and Mamá Clothi hanging on the beige walls of the
living room. I was visiting San Francisco from LA. Pop’s logistical support
for my work with the commandos during the war had brought us closer.
Ever since, G and Mom had worked like ants to build on the truce, helping
to keep the delicate peace that had now held for over eight years.
I had my own thoughts about Pop’s final solution to the gang problem,
but tempering my desire to fire back was my growing interest in learning
what he knew about La Matanza, a topic I had started taking a greater
interest in, thanks to the Central American Studies program where I taught.
Most of the books I’d read on the topic mentioned Ahuachapán, Pop’s
hometown. By my math, Pop would’ve been nine in January 1932, when
the massacres began, old enough to remember something. In the course of
my research, I’d started to wonder what impact the colossal event had on
the continued violence in El Salvador. Helping the students in my
Salvadoran Experience class take the difficult but necessary dive into the

history of war, violence, and overcoming that had shaped their families was
inspiring me to look into the ways these forces had shaped mine.
Both of my parents’ stories interested me more than Univision news, but
because his history was the most forbidden fruit in our home, Pop’s story
interested my inner Detective Columbo the most, especially the stuff he
remained silent about: his father, Don Miguel, what he remembered about
1930s El Salvador, and why he didn’t like to talk about these things. Like
an archeologist searching for ancient buried treasure, I had brought a map
of El Salvador. I’d also brought some of my books on Salvadoran history.
With the resolve of a former revolucionario, I was determined to do el todo
por el todo (go all out) to try and smash the cuartel protecting the
unspeakable things in my father’s past, which I suspected haunted me on
some level as well.
Mom brought out Pop’s dinner, a ham and cheese sandwich with hot
atole, to the living room table toward the end of Jeopardy! Alex Trebek told
the contestants they were about to enter Final Jeopardy. Taking advantage
of the commercial break that followed Trebek’s announcement, I
approached the table where Pop sat regally despite being eighty-eight years
old.
“Hey, Pop,” I said, sitting down beside him. “I’m really enjoying
teaching the students at Northridge.”
“That’s great,” he said in a tone that signaled he could give a flying shit.
Then, the inevitable and, for Pop, most important question: “Are they
paying you for this or are you still working for el cura?” He asked, referring
to my previous jobs at nonprofits, which for him meant working for free,
like a priest.
“No, Pop,” I responded, holding back a rush of anger. “I’m working at a
university and get a check every two weeks. It doesn’t pay much, but I
really love teaching and researching.”
“Is that right?” he asked—a half-assed response.
“Yes. The program at the university is the first of its kind in the United
States,” I said. “Univision reported on it.”
Mentioning Univision was strategic. My appearances on the national
broadcasts of the Spanish-language network during my CARECEN days
had given Pop major bragging rights with his friends as they gathered
around at Hunt’s Donuts, solving the world’s problems in between buying
and selling stolen goods.

The white and black hairs of his brows stood up at attention. “This
university stuff was on Univision?” he asked.
“Yeah, Pop. We finally got formal approval to start our Central American
Studies program a few weeks ago,” I said. “Now we’re doing the research
to create a strong curriculum.”
“That’s great,” Pop said. “Is there a chance you’ll get a permanent job?”
“Nothing’s permanent, Pop. Anyone who knows history knows that,
right?” I was appealing to Pop’s insatiable will to learn that had led him to
read newspapers daily, devour World War II books, and make sweeping
comments about history.
“That’s right, son. Nothing’s permanent. Everything changes. I can tell
you from all my friends who’ve died over the years.” Pop rarely mentioned
death; I felt emboldened.
“So, check this out, Pop,” I began, laying the map on the table.
“Look there,” he said. “There’s Ahuachapán.”
“Yeah. I’ve been reading a lot about the history of Ahuachapán in books
like this one. It’s got some cool pictures and maps and stuff.”
“Oh, yes. There’s San Vicente, your mother’s hometown,” he said, before
calling out, “Nena, your son is researching that homely hometown of
yours.”
“Call it what you want, but I love my pueblo.” Mom was an eternal
optimist, lightness coming out of every fiber of her being.
“Yeah, Pop. Here’s Ahuachapán.”
“Yes, that town.”
“Says here in this book that La Matanza took place there, Pop,” I said,
my stomach and bones tensing up for either another disappointment or a
breakthrough.
“La Matanza? What’s that?” he asked, with a real look of puzzlement on
his face, the sounds of Pat Sajak and Vanna White filling the room.
The commercial break advertising laxatives summed up my situation.
Then, before I could answer, his eyebrows rose, his mouth opened wide,
and he started to nod. “You’re talking about 1932,” he said, with the
confident, intelligent, David Nivenesque air I always loved about him,
“when they killed the comunistas and the indios.”
“Yes!” I said loudly, my mix of excitement and fear competing with the
blaring television. “Yes, Pop, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“You know, in 1932 I was nine years old on my way to turning ten,” he
said. “I remember everything.”
I couldn’t believe he was actually going to speak about such a significant
part of Salvadoran history that I’d never realized he’d experienced.
“We had some friends, Adrian Rodas, his brother Virgilio, and La Chica
López, a big beautiful india who was good with a gun and rode a big white
horse. She was friends with my mother and my abuela, Mamá Juanita, and
was involved with Adrian. Adrian and Virgilio were two men who had
balls, so much balls they didn’t fit in their pants. They could ride a horse
backward, shoot with two guns, and killed guardias before ’32. La Chica
was good with a gun, too. They were somehow involved with the indios,
but they weren’t comunistas. Adrian and La Chica told my mother and
Mamá Fina, ‘It’s probably a good idea for you to leave to Ataco or San
Salvador.’ There were rumores, and my mother and Fina were talking about
leaving, but we didn’t leave in time.”
“Wow, Pop. So, what happened?”
“In the early morning we heard tatatatat!” he said. “Mamá Fina told my
mother to send me to Mamá Juanita’s house, but it was too late. I was
scared hearing the shots. My mother looked out, saw what was happening,
and told me and Mamá Fina, ‘Don’t be scared. We’ll get through this. Just
go back to the bed. I’m going to see what’s going on.’
“I was worried about my mother going out. You could hear it sound like
this,” he rapped on the door with his hand to imitate gunshots. “We thought
they were knocking on our door. But it was the machine guns. Soldiers were
on the corner shooting at about two hundred men who were in the barranco,
about a block from our house. My friend Joaquin’s father, Coronel Chacón,
and some troops came out of the cuartel and started a massacre right there.
It was a matazón of people.
“One of the men escaping the matazón tried to come into our house. He
hid in the oven, a big adobe oven my mother and Mamá Fina made bread
in. Mamá Fina told him, ‘I’ll give you five pesos. Leave and God bless
you.’ He took the money and started running out the back. He was hopping
over a fence when the bullet hit him. He died. The military came and
searched our house. The first place they searched was the adobe oven. My
mother eventually came back and told us what was happening.”
Pop caught his breath. Until that moment, he’d shown no signs of
difficulty talking about stuff he’d been silent about for so long.

“Later that morning, a friend said, ‘Hey, let’s go see what happened at the
cuartel,’” he continued. “We walked toward it and got close enough to see
the cuartel. We climbed a tree. There were men with machine guns standing
above men with shovels digging holes. After they dug the hole, you could
hear the tatatatatat of the machine guns. We saw the military guys give the
prisoners shovels. They made the comunistas dig their own graves to bury
themselves in. They shot many.”
The weight of this silenced memory pressed my stomach.
“There was a band, a group of soldier musicians playing music. One of
them started reading a manifesto: ‘We invite the people to come out at two
in the afternoon to see the execution of a group of rebels.’ Many people
went. Some went out of curiosity; others went out of fear, like they were
forced. In the cuartel, there were a bunch of men and boys lined up to be
killed.
“We thought they were going to march them to the cemetery,” Pop said,
“but instead they went to the patio of the cuartel, a tremendous big place. It
was beautiful there. They took them there and shot them by the dozens.
Papapapapap. Puta, sííííí. They invited people to come and see what the
Socorro Rojo Internacional was. They made mass graves, not just in the
cemetery, but in the cuartel.”
Not noticing much emotion in the telling, I asked, “Pop, how did seeing
this make you feel?”
“I started feeling scared after seeing all these dead people,” he said. “At
night, I felt afraid of seeing the dead and the ones that were almost dead
before they came to give them the tiro de gracia. Later on, I spoke with
other kids about it. After that, I never spoke about this again, not since
childhood. I saw not just one but hundreds of dead in those days.”
“Why didn’t you say anything, Pop?”
“I had no occasion to speak about it. I never belonged to a political party
and wasn’t partisan. At night, me surraba [shit in my pants] in the darkness.
When I was alone, I went to Mamá Fina’s cot to sleep with her.”
Pop paused to breathe and started trembling like when he was angry.
Then he began shaking more violently. At that moment, my eighty-eightyear-old father became the nine-year-old boy who’d witnessed one of the
worst massacres in the history of the Americas. He looked so vulnerable.
Mucus started dripping from his nose. Tears followed.

After a few moments he tried to gather his composure. “This makes me
very sad, son. Can we stop now?”
“Of course, Pop.”
A moment of silence. Pop looked around the living room, as if he’d lost
his glasses or something, then came the sounds of his big nose honking
from crying. Unbeknownst to me, my heart had always been broken
because of the heartbreak I inherited from Pop. I started crying, too, and
hugged him as he remained silent, unable to look directly at me.
Mom came into the room; she had surely been listening. She looked
concerned for him but also happy to see us bonding.
“It’s OK, Nena,” he told her. “It’s OK.”
In that moment I was full of pride, giving myself credit for breaking
through Pop’s silence. Many children of Holocaust survivors have been
driven to bring their parents’ hidden stories to light. Psychologist Dina
Wardi calls them “memorial candles.”1 Lighting up this story hidden in the
shadows of our family history, I felt like the Salvadoran equivalent.
Minutes later, I gained a different perspective. Looking at Pop gather a
smile as he struggled to raise his frail physique from the sofa to walk to the
bathroom, the revolucionario in me realized that Pop had been doing the
same emotional heavy lifting I’d thought only Mom did. Entering the final
phase of his life, Pop felt ready to talk about his own silent darknesses. I
was simply the listener he found to help him do so.

Certain things Mamá Tey had told me about Pop’s hard life made sense
now. I understood why, for example, twelve-year-old Ramóncito had started
decades of heavy drinking.
I also became even more aware of the tender force of Mom’s lightness—
how Mom and Mamá Tey’s love had saved Pop from himself and helped
me save myself. They connected me to a lost part of my history and helped
me understand the importance of extended family—all my cousins and
aunts, whose pictures hung on the walls of our Folsom Street apartment.
My father’s tragic past—in many ways the unconscious root of my anger—
had helped form me into Tito, the crazy dude who, without knowing the
emotional atom bomb he’d inherited from his family, had joined Los
Originales and the comandos urbanos of the FMLN guerrillas. The bornagain Christian phase of my youth probably had something to do with
trying to redeem myself from my terrible inheritance, too.

My inner and outer peace with Pop fundamentally altered my sense of
my family, my country, and myself. I’d never before experienced this level
of compassion, nor the profound ways a compassionate perspective of the
past could alter one’s view of people and of nations. Suddenly I experienced
Pop, my family, and Salvadorans and El Salvador generally in a much more
tender way. But to find emotional equilibrium I also had to turn this
perspective inward and find compassion for the spoiled, misguided little
gringo boy who was so angry and confused about being Salvadoran. This
newfound love of myself helped me map the layers of emotions—fear,
anger, hopelessness—working below my conscious awareness to create my
inner conflicts. Through all of this I’d found my way. I’d come to realize
that if we do the necessary work of unforgetting, our buried love can
blossom.

28

Ahuachapán
2015

As always, Isaias shows up at 7:30 a.m. Today’s drive will take us west to
El Salvador’s coffee-growing regions—to Ahuachapán and Ataco.
I’m not chatting with him the way I usually do. I need to find the time to
process whatever the fuck my relationship with him means to me in the
wake of his revelation. I’m at a loss as to what, if anything, I should do,
except perhaps learn some more about how he’s become who he is.
Because today’s trip is of a more personal nature, I let him know our plan
for the day: looking for more clues about Don Miguel and my father’s side
of the family. In the process, I’ll be interviewing a couple of people who,
along with Pop, are among the few witnesses of La Matanza still alive
today. Along the way, we’ll be passing through Nahuizalco, one of the last
remaining indigenous communities in El Salvador and one of the towns that
saw the worst of La Matanza. In Nahuizalco we’ll be meeting my friend
Reynaldo Patriz, a leader of the indigenous community there. Reynaldo
helped me find Matanza survivors still living in Nahuizalco and will be
conducting interviews alongside me.
“My friend Reynaldo was involved in the social movements during and
after the war,” I tell Isaias as we begin our long drive west out of San
Salvador. “So please don’t bring up the military or the war, OK? He lost
family and friends, and it’s very touchy.”
What I don’t tell Isaias is that Reynaldo is also a former member of the
FPL, one of the FMLN’s five politico-military organizations during the war.

No need to rock our rusty Rocinante with more potential for drama than it
already carries. I’ve also forewarned Reynaldo that Isaias was in the
military and asked him not to talk about the military, either.
“Yes, mi coronel,” Isaias says. He smiles as we make our way to Ruta
Ocho, baptized by local boosters as the Ruta de las Flores because of the
spectacular flowers and trees that line the highway for more than fifty
miles. The route courses through the heart of land long made fertile by a
mix of volcanic ash and minerals. Now the decomposed bodies of
thousands of indigenous people also fertilize this land.
“You know, boss,” he says, tilting his head back as he takes a deep breath
signaling he wants to talk, “I was thinking about those questions you asked
me about the special forces.”
“Yes.”
“So, I brought you some pictures I wanted to show you. Check them out.
They’re in the glove compartment.”
I open the glove compartment, lift the car registration papers and the .38
he has on top, and pull out a plastic sandwich bag containing photographs.
Inside are five pictures. From the faded colors of the pictures I guess they
were taken sometime in the mid to late eighties.
“They’re from my training,” he says with a hint of pride in his smile. “It
took a lot for us to graduate.”
The picture on top is of a younger, thinner, shirtless Isaias standing
beside another guy. They’re standing on a grassy field, wearing bandanas
and fatigues, their faces painted green, and holding M16 rifles. In the
background is a smiling, unidentified child in a red shirt photobombing.
Behind them sits a big white building with windows framed by barbed wire.
“That was our graduation,” he says.
Another picture shows him fully suited in military fatigues as if gearing
for battle, seated in the back of an army truck. “That’s us going to combat.”
I look up to see where we are on Ruta Ocho and see we’re near Lourdes
Colón.
“See, there, boss,” he says, pointing toward the city on our right. “That’s
where we had dinner at my house. You remember?”
“Yes.”
The image of Isaias playing soccer in the dusty street in front of his
house with Saulito, his six-year-old, comes to mind. As we ate the
casamiento and chicharrones (cracklings) his wife, Haydee, had cooked,

Isaias talked about how soccer, family outings, and the occasional whipping
were the trifecta of parental discipline necessary to raise his boy in a gangcontrolled neighborhood like Lourdes Colón. The former kid soccer player
in me smiled, even as my own inner beaten child cringed.
“That one we took when we were with the trainers,” he says, pointing
down toward the next photograph in my hands. “Los Americanos.”
I look at the photograph. In it Isaias is crouching next to a tree. He’s
stripped down to his green army underwear. He’s wearing a bandanna and
his face is painted as he looks directly into the camera. In a semicircle
around Isaias are seven of his fellow soldiers, other special-forces trainees
—all with painted faces and bandannas and all stripped down to their
underwear. Isaias and another guy next to him are holding big gray tin cups.
Above them, a bleeding corpse is hanging from a tree. I realize it’s a dog
whose skin has been peeled off, leaving only a dark strip on the reddened
snout showing it once had black fur. Its throat has been slit and its blood is
dripping into one of the cups. Isaias is looking straight at the camera. For
once he’s not smiling. His arms and lips are covered in blood.
“The trainers watched as our commanders told us, ‘Number 3, you will
not graduate unless you drink the dog’s blood,’” Isaias says. He has on the
same nervous smile he wore when we were in dangerous gang country. “So,
we had no choice. The colonel told us, ‘I will tear up your diploma if you
don’t.’”
I’ve read the death-squad manuals prepared by US trainers and heard the
stories of escuadrón activities. I’d gotten to know death-squad operatives,
like a guy named Leonardo, who had turned away from the escuadrones and
started volunteering with CARECEN, back when I first met G in San
Francisco. This still feels horrifically surreal. I study the picture and listen
with the same morbid fascination that sells horror movies and newspapers.
But my interest is also anthropological, a study in the ritual of
dehumanization and murder that has been destroying Salvadoran life for
centuries.
“‘Number 3!’ the trainer would call at me,” Isaias continues, “‘it’s your
turn to hang the first dog.’ So I breathed in and went at it. I put the knife
here in the neck and cut the vein.” He points to the spot on his own neck.
“‘Diablito, I want you to make sure you don’t lose a drop of blood. No
waste. Not one drop!’ the trainer said. Son of a bitch, it was disgusting, but
after getting the blood, I put the cup up to my mouth and quickly

swallowed. It tasted salty, the blood of that animal, salty like you can’t
imagine. Ours is sweet by comparison. It was like drinking seawater. It’s
even worse as it coagulates.” Almost thirty years after his special-forces
training, his body still trembles in disgust.
“It becomes like gelatin. I was lucky, since it was still fresh,” he says.
“Some guys had to drink it dry en un pocillo (a cup). Afterward, they
ordered us to cut the dog up, cook the meat, and make soup from the
intestines and bones.”
I swallow and try to calm my nausea with deep breaths. Vomit bubbles up
my throat. I ask Isaias to pull over so we can get something to drink. We
stop at a fresco stand. The greenery all around us soothes me until I regain
enough calm to hear the voice inside me that says, You wanted to
understand what turns kids into killers? Here’s your chance.
The desire to avoid any more gory details collides with the need to
understand why he did it. Still, I can’t quite make myself ask this question
outright for fear of shaming him into silence. Instead I ask, “Why do you
think they made you do that?”
“It was part of our special-forces commando training that lasted three
months,” he says. “I think they put us through it for different reasons.”
“Like what?”
“To give us the will we needed to kill. Also for survival—to train us to
search and find food wherever we could, what to do if we were captured by
guerrillas. They pulverize you until you submit.”
“How many of you participated?”
“The course started with forty soldiers. We finished with twenty-five.
Others deserted.”
Those “pulverize” and “submit” parts he’s talking about are important
aspects of the reeducation provided to Salvadoran and other soldiers by
trainers at the School of the Americas (SOA) in Georgia, at Fort Bragg in
North Carolina, and at other Pentagon facilities.1 Isaias was trained in El
Salvador by Salvadoran officers who had been trained at the SOA and were
supervised by US officers sent to the country as part of the Pentagon’s aid
program. Like any other boot-camp or police academy, the rigorous
physical and mental training of the Salvadoran military is designed to turn a
person unaccustomed to killing into a person disposed to kill for a higher
purpose defined by his or her controllers. The forging of this new identity is
accomplished in two ways, one overt, the other covert.

The overt training described in the course catalogs of these facilities is
designed to transform grunts like Isaias into “professional soldiers”—
soldiers steeped in and guided by the doctrine of a “just war.”2 On the
surface, the “just war” curriculum Isaias and other soldiers studied looks
innocuous, with courses in human rights, special and civil military
operations, and resource management. Beneath the surface, however, the
curriculum has a darker purpose. In the words of Lesley Gill, a scholar who
studies the military training taught at the School of the Americas:
The just-war thesis is a tactical anodyne that obscures the horrors of war through its
emphasis on the responsible use of violence by military professionals. . . . Images of the
professional soldier engaged in the good fight enhanced the virility and heroism of men
who sacrifice their personal safety to fight a malicious enemy for the greater benefit of
the nation. They also permitted officers to distance themselves from their humble
origins and to dissociate from the real terror of actual violence, which was passed off to
front-line soldiers from ethnic and racial minorities of supposedly inferior intellect.3

The Salvadoran government has been notoriously secretive about its
actions during the civil war, even denying official records to the UN Truth
Commission created in 1992. Likewise, SOA records have largely been
kept from public eyes. However, US Army and CIA intelligence manuals
declassified in the last decade make clear that the overt training at the SOA
and similar facilities also served as the foundation for covert training.4 The
manuals are written in bureaucratic military lingo designed not only to
ensure plausible deniability, but also to dehumanize victims and make
violence sound unemotional and routine. After indoctrination, “a just war”
becomes “just war.” In many of these documents, “neutralization” is as
close to an outright reference to murder as the authors ever come, as in this
routine passage from one of seven training manuals (commonly called the
torture manuals) declassified in 1996 and used between 1987 and 1991 for
training courses in Latin America and at the SOA. It’s about
“recommending CI [counterintelligence] targets for neutralizing. The CI
targets can include personalities, installations, organizations, documents and
materials. A CI target is someone or something that could be included in the
above categories and could be hostile or not.”5
In 2004 the National Security Archive declassified a CIA interrogation
manual from the 1980s that was used in El Salvador and at the SOA during
the civil war.6 The document includes the teaching of torture techniques,
coded under the term coercive and listed under the “scope of instruction”

for the training. The manual states, “There are three major principles
involved in the successful application of coercive techniques [which
include] methods of inducing physical weaknesses: prolonged constraint;
prolonged exertion; extremes of heat, cold or moisture; and deprivation of
food or sleep.” It also includes descriptions of sensory-deprivation
techniques and states that “pain which [the subject] feels he is inflicting
upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance. For example, if he is
required to maintain rigid positions such as standing at attention or sitting
on a stool for long periods of time.”
Rituals like Isaias’s dog-killing “survival” exercise act as a kind of bridge
between the high moral standard implied by a just-war doctrine and the
dark recesses of inhumanity hidden behind this veil of heroism. When the
teachings are fully internalized, “heroes” can “neutralize” the “enemy,”
whether “hostile or not,” and torture a “target” with no qualms of normal
empathy or conscience.
Several minutes go by as I try to process what Isaias just revealed. I look
at him and note how at odds his caramel skin and other indigenous features
are with his military buzz cut. I recall the words of my friend José Raúl
Cortez Vázquez, an indigenous leader from Izalco who was also a
commander in the FPL during the war. When I asked José Raúl what he
thought about the gang crisis and how to solve it, he said, “The gang
problem is fundamentally a problem that begins with the breakup of the
family. From the moment the indigenous people’s land, identity, and way of
life were destroyed, the family in El Salvador was fragmented, and it
remains that way today.”

I’m nervous as we near Nahuizalco. Things could get ugly if Reynaldo
starts talking about the frente and bad-mouthing the military in front of
Isaias. As part of a team of researchers affiliated with the Museo de la
Palabra y la Imagen who documented, tracked down, and interviewed the
few remaining Matanza survivors in western El Salvador, Reynaldo is one
of the few Salvadorans who possesses critical knowledge about this dark
stain on the country’s modern history. He himself is indigenous; thus his
perspective has additional weight.
We arrive at our meeting place, Nahuizalco Park, an idyllic park whose
market is a center of economic development in the community, a place
where tourism is combined with agriculture. Reynaldo’s standing at the

outer edge of the busy park, smiling as he appears to joke with some other
men gathered around. We pull up beside him and greet him. Reynaldo gets
in the car. I introduce him to Isaias, and we’re off to our first stop, Ataco,
the home of Don Miguel and the rest of Pop’s paternal family. The contrast
between the two men in the car with me extends beyond their politics to
their looks. Isaias is shorter and far darker than Reynaldo and has no facial
hair, in the style of many military men, unlike Reynaldo who sports a
mustache. And, yet, by his own reckoning, Isaias has no sense of his family
history, much less that of the indigenous culture that gave him his looks.
As we start driving out of town and back to the Ruta de La Flores, I
notice that the colorful walls of the city bear MS-13 graffiti.
“Are there a lot of gangs here?” I ask.
“Oh, yes,” Reynaldo says. “Nahuizalco has lots of gangs.”
“Including indigenous youth?”
“Yes, some of our youth are in the gangs. I know some gang members
from back in my neighborhood in El Carrizal. The silencio helps the gangs
recruit new members, just as it helps them make money.”
“What silence?” I ask.
“During war in the eighties, there was a lot of silence in Nahuizalco.”
“Like what?” I press on, without considering the danger of bringing the
topic up in front of Isaias.
“Members of the Detachment No. 6 [the Sixth Military Detachment,
based in Sonsonate] came and found whoever was on their lists or whoever
they suspected of being comunista and killed them. Whoever was on the list
was dragged out, tortured, and taken to the place where they killed people.
Forty-two people killed. Then on the thirteenth of July [1980], a bomb
exploded in El Carrizal at four a.m.”
I look at Isaias. No smile. His big eyes aren’t sparkling. I wonder if they
sent him and his special-forces crew on missions like the massacre
Reynaldo just described.
“On the thirteenth of July, there was a total zozobra,” Reynaldo
continues, not noticing Isaias’s tension. “Panic took hold of everything. The
military imposed that silence because they didn’t want people to come out
to claim their dead, to give Christian sepultura to them. But many were
courageous and went out to get the bodies and buried them in the common
cemetery of Nahuizalco.” He adds, “It was different from what happened in
1932.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Before the war, my parents took me and my brothers to the places in El
Carrizal where the secret burial sites were: Bamburral, El Potrerito, and
Caserío Los Sánchez—all clandestine burial sites from 1932. My father
would point to the part of the field where there was only grass and say, ‘See
there. That’s where your uncles are buried.’
“Today, this silence is costing us greatly. There’s nothing that explains to
the young people our history and why they feel the pain that they carry. But
there is a breaking of the silence. We have celebrated ceremonies in January
honoring the dead of La Matanza. We’re teaching our kids their history,
which previous generations never learned, and we’re still consulting the
spirits of the abuelos.”
I recall my 2009 visit to a school in Izalco where Juliana Ama, the greatgreat-grandniece of Feliciano Ama, the storied indigenous rebel leader
killed in 1932, was teaching indigenous children Náhuat—a block from
what may be the largest mass grave in the country. Indigenous people there
are also organizing commemorations of La Matanza.
We drive to meet María Isabel Menéndez, the woman who, along with
Pop, is one of the last living witnesses to La Matanza. Menéndez lives on
the outskirts of Ahuachapán with her daughter in yet another neighborhood
where walls sport VER, OÍR Y CALLAR and other gang graffiti. Inside her small
house, a tired mongrel dog and some indifferent cats sleep on the cool,
painted concrete floor. Reynaldo introduces us and starts talking in an oddly
formal way about how crude and hard life is in El Salvador and how
important it is to move forward by knowing the past. Menéndez seems
bewildered and is reluctant to speak. Her daughter and granddaughter stand
in the background monitoring the situation.
“I’ve forgotten a lot,” she says. “I was small, about six or maybe eight. I
remember the noise of all the trucks, the soldiers going to get the men in all
the houses and take people away.”
It’s hard to tell whether she’s worried about the Matanza of the past or
the mara violence of the present. I’m worried about what we might trigger
in this woman. I try to signal by nodding my head toward the door that we
should get going.
“Do you remember anything else?” Reynaldo asks, oblivious to my
signal.

“I was too small to understand what happened,” she says. “Also, my
father was dying in the hospital in the middle of all that, and we were with
him. The only other thing I remember was that the soldiers came to the
hospital to search for my father because my mother and father were indios.
The only reason they didn’t take him was because he was already dying. He
died in the middle of all that from health problems that had nothing to do
with the conflict. They didn’t allow us to pray for him for nine days because
it was prohibited for anyone to gather.”
Menéndez stops talking, clearly gripped with too much fear, and we need
to respect that. We bid her farewell.
Our next stop is Don Juan Montano’s shack on the outskirts of
Ahuachapán. Don Juan’s semirural neighborhood is surrounded by maize,
izote flowers, and gigantic carpets of green that give the land a beatific
look, contrasting starkly with the tin shack he lives in with his
granddaughter. His granddaughter comes out to greet us and the elderly
man hobbles behind her, flashing his gums in a big smile. He immediately
starts talking to us, but I can’t understand anything he’s saying—he’s
mumbling and talks fast. He has dementia. I have to focus intensely to
capture even a few of the words out of what seems like a mix of
conversation, poetry, and the speaking in tongues I used to hear in
Pentecostal churches. His disjointed soliloquy continues for several
minutes, before his granddaughter signals he needs to rest.
I think about Pop, who is just a couple of years younger than Don Juan.
He, too, has dementia. I should remember this mix of gibberish and
fragmented memory as he starts his own journey into forgetting.
“He’s completely given to the religion. I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t worry about it,” I say. “It’s all true in some way, and that’s
helpful.”
Reynaldo and I return to the car to begin the drive back to Nahuizalco
along the Ruta de Las Flores.
“I’m sorry too, Roberto,” Reynaldo says. “That’s how it is with the
ancianos. Some will talk. Others remain silent. Some like Papa Juan have
dementia, and it mixes up their memories.”
In Nahuizalco I say my good-byes and thank-yous to Reynaldo, then
Isaias and I start back to San Salvador. As we drive, I gaze over at Isaias,
the embodiment of the ruthlessness of amnesia. I consider the impossibility
of trying to lead a normal life while living immersed in perpetual,

normalized violence. It seems inevitable that this situation gives way to
what philosopher Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil” and the state
of us Salvadorans living half dead.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to get home?” I ask.
“About forty-five minutes or so, depending on traffic.” A long silence
between us begins.
When we arrive at Tía Esperanza’s, I pay Isaias. As I get out of the car,
he says with his big smile, “Thank you, mi coronel. Call me when you
come back!”
But I will never call Isaias again.

29

Los Angeles, California
2019

“Who’d’ve thought that of all people, you, the kid who used to tell me, ‘I
hate God,’ would be organizing a fucking revival?” I ask Alex Sánchez.
“I know,” he says. “Maybe I oughta put my little Testigo suit on again
and start preaching.”
We’re both cracking up beneath the gigantic white tent that does, in fact,
have the animo of a religious revival. A boisterous crowd of about five
hundred kids and teenagers who’ve arrived from Central America in recent
years—most as unaccompanied minors—are crowded into the tent set up on
the USC campus just south of Pico Union. It’s the fourth annual Central
American Youth Leadership Conference organized by Alex and Homies
Unidos.
“Don’t remind me about that ‘ojo por ojo, diente por diente’ shit. Their
God was the one that pushed me into MS!”
We laugh. His past self as a Jehovah’s Witness before he joined MS-13 is
speaking to my former evangelico deacon wearing the green sharkskin suit
of my unsaved life.
“Believe it or not,” I say, “the fucking evangelicos had me on my knees
praying for Ronald Reagan.”
“What? You’re kidding,” he says. Like most, Alex doesn’t know about
the religious zealotry in my past.
“Yeah. They had me goin’ to church three to four times a week. I even
gave fifteen percent of my income. The tithe.”

“Fuck, loco, that’s crazy,” he says in the cadence of the SalvadoranCalifornian Caló we share. “But you know what?” he continues. “We
actually need something that powerful—spiritual and emotional stuff—to
help people leave the crazy life.”
I nod in agreement, remembering how the discipline and militancy of my
life as a born-again believer helped me leave a darker path behind. Those
who train purveyors of violence, from gang sicarios to the military and
escuadroneros of El Salvador, are well aware of the need to inspire an
almost religious zealotry in their recruits. We need the good fight to be
fought with an equal fervor—and if it’s religion that inspires that for some,
so be it.
“Who’d’ve thought our Salvadoran shit would become some big
national-security shit?” he asks.
“We’ve been dealing with national security and counterinsurgency since
most of us can remember,” I say. “We just didn’t know it when we were
kids.”
Alex has invited Haydee Sánchez, a respected leader of the Náhuat
community in El Salvador, to speak. She begins the event by saluting the
four directions and letting the young people know why this pre-Columbian
ritual is critical to the continued survival of her people.
“It’s important to be in touch with the warmth of the earth,” Sánchez
says. “It’s important for you to understand who you are, where you come
from. Don’t lose the opportunity to organize yourselves,” she continues,
“for you are the future of this country as well as of the places where your
parents, abuelos, and families still live. We still have the opportunity to live
in harmony with Mother Earth. Don’t waste it.”
I decide to circulate around the tent to speak with the kids in the crowd.
Their tales are not just stories, but epics. Honduran girls cross hellish desert
and rural and urban landscapes of war and violence. Salvadoran and
Guatemalan boys hike through Mexican states like Tamaulipas, where
cartels and government officials have killed and buried hundreds of
migrants in mass graves. Salvadoran boys barely escape the vise grip of
violence so extreme it should belong only to noir novels—murderous gangs
and death squads that creep in the night and snatch loved ones. Mayan girls
and boys ride the steel back of a fire-breathing dragon called La Bestia,
which hacks off arms, legs, and heads of uncareful migrants during the
train’s long trip to the North. Young women and girls undertake journeys

filled with monsters who rape, mangle, and enslave 90 percent of female
travelers, often along with their children. Some of the young people
survived their odysseys only to be greeted with imprisonment in facilities
like the one I visited in Karnes, Texas.
Left of the stage is Juan, a friend I met in a clandestine house during the
civil war in San Salvador, only to run into him again during my CARECEN
days in LA in the nineties. He’s the valeverguista, crazy-in-a-good-way
former FPL commando who would always casually say things like, “Hey
man, let’s go run some guns to the mountains in Chalatenango.” He smiles
from a distance. Juan’s son’s lawyer gave me pictures of Juan’s son, which I
have in my computer, because I’m an expert witness in Ricardo’s asylum
case. The pictures of Ricardo, a former MS-13 member, show him standing
as he displays his muscular physique riddled with scars from bullets, with
circles around the entry points. Juan’s smile at me suggests the case is going
well.
I walk toward the commotion surrounding some deejays and rappers. On
my way toward the music, I see Erick Moreno. I’ve known Erick since the
early nineties, when he lived near MacArthur Park. He was one of the first
to participate in CARECEN’s Nueva Generación youth program that Leland
Chen ultimately gave us a half million dollars to fund after he was almost
killed following the riots. At the time, Erick was living on the edge,
surrounded by armed tagger graffiti artists and hardened gangsters. Erick
never knew his dad, a former guerrillero who was disappeared during the
war and never seen again. He once told me he saw me as a father figure.
After he left the program, Erick started working with art-oriented nonprofits
in East LA and downtown. Forty-two-years old now, Erick’s surrounded by
kids he’s teaching how to create murals.
I reach the back of the tent to stand in the crowd of young people
listening to rappers sing in English, Spanish, and Maya Quiché. Nodding
his head next to me is Josué David Sabillon, an eighteen-year-old Honduran
who stays at Casa Libertad, a home for migrant youth in the Pico Union
neighborhood. Josué arrived in San Francisco only eight months ago. His
intense look matches his “he’s been through it” description I heard from a
member of the Homies Unidos staff. At first glance a low-hanging baseball
cap hides James Dean qualities—pouty lips, a soulful intensity—that
animate his face when you’re up close.

I ask him if we can talk. He agrees, though he doesn’t lose that skeptical
gangster lean I know well.
“What’s the earring about? You religious?” I ask, pointing to the cross
earring he’s wearing.
“I believe in God and go to church, but I wear the earring for style—
because I like it.”
I tell him a little bit about my own experience with religion and the
church. His stance loosens a bit.
“You still in the church?” he asks.
“Nah,” I say. “I love the word of God, but I’m not feelin’ what the
churches do with God anymore.”
“God has looked out for me, helped me get out of a lot of situations.”
“Like what?”
“I started doing drugs when I was twelve years old,” he says. “I started
smoking tobacco and then marijuana. Things got worse when we
discovered Resistol.”
He’s referring to Fuller’s Resistol, the shoe glue that, since the seventies,
has been a drug of the poor, resulting in the term resistoleros in Honduras
and other parts of Central America. Resistoleros carry on a tradition dating
back to the shoe-glue sniffers Pop knew in Mesón San Luís in the 1930s
during the Depression.
“God helped me get through that,” Josué continues, “and with the gangs
that wanted to kill me and threatened me three times before I left.” He
pauses, then unprompted begins to describe the long journey to the US he
began nine months ago.
“I had to take a taxi to Guatemala,” he says. “And when I got to Mexico,
I had to cross all these immigration and military checkpoints. They picked
up a lot of people. And then we got on La Bestia, a real aventura. Two guys,
a sixty-year-old and a younger guy who I think was twenty-three, fell off
the train. The younger guy laid on the ground screaming in pain, but the
image of the older guy I’ll never forget. He fell under the train. It cut him in
half.”
He pauses again before saying, “God helped me through that and through
so much more, including something that happened before I left.”
“What?” I ask.
“One time, on a dark night in a town in Tabasco,” he says, “I was there
waiting for the Bestia to leave and was hungry. So I went to look for food. I

saw a guy hanging from a tree. He was naked and he was bleeding all over.
I thought he was dead. But then the guy starts moving, wiggling on the tree
and screaming. He was alive. I wanted to help him, but I thought the guys
who killed him were nearby. Then the guys who hung him on it returned.
They had two boxes of Gillettes. They used the Gillettes to slice his skin
and cut him to pieces, piece by piece with the Gillettes. They used two
whole boxes. I felt helpless because I couldn’t do anything. I’ll never forget
that as long as I live.”
He remains quiet for a long moment, before swallowing and saying with
a breath of power and pride, “Through it all, God looked out for me. He
helped me get closer to my goal of helping my family and getting a house
one day.”
I ask Josué if he has family in LA.
“Yeah, I have some uncles,” he says. “Some of them helped me a lot,
orienting me, giving me money and guidance. But others aren’t helpful.”
“Why not?”
“Those uncles are in the vida loca I’m trying to stay out of, doing drugs,
hanging out in El Parque MacArthur with the gangs. They love their
craziness. We all have our craziness that we love, but I need to stay away
from that one, even though Casa Libertad is near the parque and some of
the guys living there invite me to join them in that stuff, but I don’t.”
“What helps you stay out?”
“I belong to another mara.”
“Another mara?”
“Yes, my only mara is running with God.”
Walking away from Josué I can’t help but think of a recent sound bite
from an official in the Trump administration who said, “I’ve been to
detention facilities where I’ve walked up to these individuals that are socalled minors, seventeen or under. I’ve looked at them and I’ve looked at
their eyes—and I’ve said, ‘That is a soon-to-be MS-13 gang member. It’s
unequivocal.’”1
I walk back toward the stage at the front of the tent and see Blanca
Noemi Mejía Alvarado, a high-school student. Blanca is from Cantón El
Pezote, a hamlet located about an hour south of Ahuachapán, on the more
verdant side of the Izalco volcano. Like Josué, she came to the US riding La
Bestia, with her brother, Juan.

“Besides my grandparents,” she tells me, “what I most miss back home is
the garden in the back of the house. My life was mostly just school and
going to the molino (gristmill) to crush corn and bring it back to make
tortillas. My grandparents were scared something would happen to me since
there were boys with guns near school. Around the house they were killing
people, whole families in the area.”
She pauses to wipe some tears from her eyes and catch her breath. Before
I can ask her if she wants to stop talking, she continues, her face
brightening as she remembers.
“I lived enclosed,” she says, “but I was surrounded by trees—orange
trees, jocote trees, mango trees, anona trees, nance trees, caimito trees.”
She pauses again, lost in her memories.
“Ahhh, eating juicy mangos in the garden . . . The smell of wet dirt. It is
a rare smell, but so delicious when the land absorbs the scent of the rain . . .
rico.” She shakes her head, beaming. “The garden gave me peace. I felt
relaxed climbing the mango and jocote trees, sweeping, or washing clothes
in the pila. It didn’t matter what I did, as long as I was in the garden. I was
in a prison that was paradise.”
I ask her for more of her favorite moments.
“I loved to sit and look at the volcán in the distance. I miss the view of
the maizales [cornfields] around the volcán. I miss my grandparents. I felt
freer than I do here, because there’s violence here, too. And there’s also
police and immigration that will chase you here.
“Nature protected me there,” she says. “Here, there aren’t so many places
like that. It sounds funny, but I did feel more protected there.”
I listen to Blanca and feel entranced, wanting to return to the moments
when my abuelita Mamá Clothi would take me into her garden. It edifies
me to see and hear all these young Central American hearts and minds as
we of the older generations—former gangsters, ex-guerrilleros, indigenous
leaders, journalists, nonprofit leaders—share our epic stories that were
denied to us. I can hear the unforgetting working its magic on the animated
youth who are getting ready to face their brave new future. If “terror is the
given of the place,” so, too, is love. I feel relief that things are moving
forward in the right direction as I leave Blanca and the tent to satisfy a
strange desire to go home and watch Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune with
Pop.

Epilogue
Pop watches the orange-red glow of the lava spewing out of the Hawaiian
volcano on the National Geographic special I’m streaming on his television.
His eyes light up.
“They say the volcanes of El Salvador exploded like that.”
“Yeah?” I say.
“Yes, they explode every century and cause lots of destruction.”
“Pop, did you know that in the sixth century the Ilopango volcán had an
eruption so powerful it blocked the sun for almost two years, causing a
major freeze across the northern part of the planet?”
“Really? Holy shit.”
“Yeah, really. They say the lava spread eighteen miles and killed
something like forty to eighty thousand people just in the area of El
Salvador alone. It wiped out all of the Mayan and other indigenous
populations nearby.”
“Incredible,” he says. “Apocalíptico.”
My inner etymologist considers his word choice and the way I use this
same word when thinking about my own story, though not in the way Pop
or most people use it. My story is apocalyptic in the original sense of the
term in Greek—apokaluptō (ἀποκαλύπτω): to uncover, lay open what has
been veiled or covered up.
In 2011, I read a book by theologian Anathea Portier-Young called
Apocalypse against Empire.1 The book posited that one purpose of early
Jewish apocalyptic literature—such as The Book of Daniel, The Apocalypse

of Weeks, and The Book of Dreams—was to counteract the effects of the
state terror of the Seleucid Empire, which murdered tens of thousands of
Jews in a very short period. In Portier-Young’s words and those of early
apocalyptic literature, I saw reflected the fragments of Salvadoran lives
scattered across time and space that I was trying to map. In the book,
Portier-Young brilliantly intertwines modern trauma research with the
cultural implications of mass violence enacted on entire populations of
people. She writes:
[Psychiatrist and trauma researcher, Judith] Herman has argued that trauma has the
effect of stopping time, trapping its victims in a scene of terror that intrudes again and
again into the present. Past and future recede, such that victims of trauma may become
disconnected from their history and unable to formulate hope. . . . For psychiatrist
Mardi Horowitz, because such trauma can challenge one’s sense of identity and order in
the world, the fragmented, iconic memory repeats—and continues to traumatize—until
it is placed within a new ordering schema that allows the survivor to “understand.”2
The historical apocalypses studied in this volume intervene into this traumatic rupture
in time, reconnecting past, present, and future so that their audiences can reclaim their
history and self and move forward again in hope.

Days after first reading Portier-Young’s powerful take on apocalyptic
trauma, her words were still resonating so profoundly that I felt driven to
reach out to her. She was kind enough to speak with me, but when I called
her, she wondered why I, a journalist, was interested in her theological
work.
“I am not entirely sure,” I said, “but it has something to do with being
Salvadoran.”
“Well, you might be interested to know that, in trying to understand
trauma and other effects of state terror, as well as the spirit of resistance to
that terror, I studied the experiences of state terror in two Latin American
countries—Argentina during the Dirty War and wartime El Salvador.”3
I thanked her and hung up, before starting to cry because of the fact I
would never forget: that, as Salvadorans, we know as much about
apocalypse as anyone.
* * *
I’m sitting at my favorite table at Café La Bohème on Twenty-Fourth near
Mission with my laptop in front of me, attempting to stitch together the
disparate pieces of my origins as I write this book. The varnished oak

tabletop sits on the base of an antique sewing machine, its 12″-by-10″ iron
treadle, and the iron gears it powers, still in place. Even though there’s no
longer a sewing machine above, the pedal moves the metal beast lying
below most customers’ awareness. Its black, latticed elegance and noisy
rotations remind me of bouncing on the lap of Mamá Tey, the Salvadoran
seamstress whose maquina de cocer fueled her family’s three-thousand-mile
journey to San Francisco.
Pushing the pedal slowly, I start typing. The pin attached to the pedal of
the sewing machinery below pushes and pulls the treadle wheel. To the
annoyance of the techie sitting next to me, it squeaks every few revolutions,
but still, the wheel turns. Up-and-down, up-and-down, up-and-down, the 1–
2–3–4, 1–2–3–4 motion of my foot working the treadle hypnotizes me.
Next to the wheel, in the center of the space below the table, sits the
machine’s wrought-iron logo—slightly rusty silver and faded black laurels
garnishing the Art Deco letters spelling THE SINGER MANUFACTURING CO.
Coming here is a ritual of mine. Something about coming to the
neighborhood of my birth to write atop an old Singer sewing machine in a
café named for the romantic opera La Bohème makes it easier to do the
personal forensic work of recovering the fragments of my childhood and
adolescent memories, especially the ones that are often more painful to
conjure. I look out the window and up the street, toward Horace Mann, my
old junior high school, and I remember the shame, confusion, and molten
anger I felt as a kid.
I always had a sense somewhere deep within me that Pop’s secrets—his
family history and upbringing—had something to do with his emotional
absence and his violent temperament, even as it inspired his magic and
charisma. Yet I’d lacked the history and therefore the context to understand
him. Like the many Salvadoran skeletons lying scattered and unstoried all
over the southwestern part of the North American continent, Pop’s
memories, which might’ve assuaged my own nihilistic rage by helping me
understand and address its source, were lost for decades.
Today the plight of the many mara kids I’ve met fits the “shit travels
downward” theory of violence that I developed when I started going to
Berkeley—a theory I came up with thanks, in no small part, to Pop. This
downward momentum is created by the silence of both victims and
perpetrators of violence, keeping us stuck in those moments, enabling the
same cycles to play out time and time again.

My search for my own unknown past is one reason I was so enthralled by
the IML, the forensic lab in El Salvador, a vault of so many untold violent
stories. Watching their rituals of forensic recovery led me to believe that
unforgetting is a critical way to start the process of individual, familial, and
national healing. The power to reconstruct the bones of a person and return
them to the family haunted by the disappearance of their loved one enables
a critical step toward healing. It’s the knowing—that their loved one is
dead, and how he or she died—that allows these families to conduct burial
rites and mourn. Without this unforgetting, they can have no closure and are
held in a terrible limbo. The same applies to reconstructing the bones of our
personal and national memories, including the memory of what it is to be
American, the identity that has caused so much devastation to those of us
who identify as Salvadoran. Being “American” has taught me that the
difficult future before us demands we set aside the myths and infantile
stories we tell ourselves in this country; being Salvadoreño has taught me
about the still-urgent need to create the epic, revolutionary sensibility we
will need to survive the epic history that awaits us in the best of
circumstances.
Learning that Pop, my fucking father, is one of the last remaining
witnesses of one of the most violent episodes in modern history softened
me, not only toward Pop, but toward myself and all Salvadorans. Pop, the
man I once considered a coward, I now respect immensely. It took him
almost seventy years, but Pop braved the thousand darknesses of his past to
share the most secret and excruciating part of his—and our—story with me.
Today I am moved by my newfound compassion toward Pop to protect
him from horrors that at ninety-eight he has earned a reprieve from. The
recent news I keep from him includes reports that the mass imprisonment of
Central American children fleeing violence has helped turn the United
States into the world’s leading jailer of children,4 children like David, whom
I met in the child-and-mom prison in Karnes. This news also includes
reports that WHINSEC—the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas—has started
training Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and the
Border Patrol to fight migrant kids and moms as though they actually are
the invading army seen in the hallucinations of the powerful. The
immigration agencies are training for “urban warfare.”

Such reports show how the cross-border circuits of counterinsurgency
policing conceived, practiced, and exported by local and federal
government agencies in the United States still keep the eternal cycles of
violence spinning. Reading similar reports decades ago is how I first came
to understand that the violence in the country of my birth, the United States,
is also a violence of apocalyptic proportions. Salvadoran violence is, in no
small part, an expression of forgotten American violence. I have tried to
sew together the fragments of my life to illustrate how oblivion itself is
violence. Forensic labs like the IML have “re-membered” the dismembered.
Mamá Tey sewed scraps into clothes for the forgotten prostitutes of the
mesón. People like them seek what I’ve sought by stitching together my
words here: unforgetting.

INTRODUCTION

O

n the night of the 2016 presidential election, I spent a long time
deciding what to wear. I’d be staying home to watch the returns with
my partner, but the Comey letter had come out in mid-October and I
was convinced Trump was going to win. I’d always admired the
women on the Titanic who reportedly drowned wearing their finest
clothing and furs and jewels and the violinists who kept playing even
as the ship sank. I wore a burgundy velvet dress with sheer lace back
paneling, a ribbon in my hair, red lipstick, and a leopard-print faux
fur coat over my shoulders. I poured myself a goblet of wine. I
understood that night would be my end, but I would not be ushered
to an internment camp in sweatpants. The returns hadn’t finished
coming in when my father, who is undocumented, called me to tell
me it was the end times. I threw myself into bed without washing off
my makeup, without brushing my teeth. I had a four a.m. wake-up
call.
A few hours later, I took a bunch of trains to New Jersey to meet
an oceanographer I was profiling for a New York magazine. We took
a boat into the Hudson and sped by the feet of the Statue of Liberty.
“Fuck,” I said. “This will appear sentimental.” Still, I asked him to
take my picture in front of it, and I smiled at the camera, the strong
winds blowing my hair in my face.
It seemed safe, somehow, to be there, at Lady Liberty’s feet. I got
off the boat and, on my phone, emailed an agent I’d been friendly

with since I was a kid and told him I was ready to write the book. The
book. And he said okay.
The book. When I was a senior at Harvard, I wrote an anonymous
essay for The Daily Beast about what they wanted to call “my dirty
little secret”—that I was undocumented. It got me some attention—it
was a different time—and agents wrote asking me if I wanted to write
a memoir. A news program asked to film me while I fucking packed
up my dorm, to show, I guess, that I was leaving Harvard without
any plans, without even the promise of a career, which was the crux
of my essay.
This was before DACA.
I was angry. A memoir? I was twenty-one. I wasn’t fucking Barbra
Streisand. I had been writing professionally since I was fifteen, but
only about music—I wanted to be the guy in High Fidelity—and I
didn’t want my first book to be a rueful tale about being a sickly
Victorian orphan with tuberculosis who didn’t have a Social Security
number, which is what the agents all wanted. The guy who eventually
ended up becoming my agent respected that, did not find an
interchangeable immigrant to publish a sad book, read everything I
would write over the next seven years, and we kept in touch. I was
the first person who wrote him on the morning of November 9, 2016.
That morning, I received a bunch of emails from people who were
really freaked out about Trump winning and the emails essentially
were offers to hide me in their second houses in Vermont or the
woods somewhere, or stay in their basements. “Shit,” I told my
partner. “They’re trying to Anne Frank me.” By this point, I had been
pursuing a PhD at Yale because I needed the health insurance and
had read lots of books about migrants and I hated a good number of
the texts. I couldn’t see my family in them, because I saw my parents
as more than laborers, as more than sufferers or dreamers. I thought
I could write something better, something that rang true. And I
thought that I was the best person to do it. I was just crazy enough.
Because if you’re going to write a book about undocumented
immigrants in America, the story, the full story, you have to be a

little bit crazy. And you certainly can’t be enamored by America, not
still. That disqualifies you.
This book is not a traditional nonfiction book. Names of persons
have all been changed. Names of places have all been changed.
Physical descriptions have all been changed. Or have they? I took
notes by hand during interviews; after the legal review, I destroyed
the notes. I chose not to use a recorder because I did not want to
intimidate my subjects. Children of immigrants whose parents do
not speak English learn how to interpret very young, and I honored
that rite of passage and skill by translating the interviews on the
spot. I approached translating the way a literary translator would
approach translating a poem, not the way someone would approach
translating a business letter. I hate the way journalists translate the
words of Spanish speakers in their stories. They transliterate, and
make us sound dumb, like we all have a first-grade vocabulary. I
found my subjects to be warm, funny, dry, evasive, philosophical,
weird, annoying, etc., and I tried to convey that tone in the
translations.
When you are an undocumented immigrant with undocumented
family, writing about undocumented immigrants—and I can only
speak for myself and my ghosts—it feels unethical to put on the drag
of a journalist. It is also painful to focus on the art, but impossible to
process the world as anything but art. The slightest gust of the wind
bruises—Trump’s voice, Stephen Miller’s face, the red hat, but also
before that, the deli counter, the construction corner, the hotel room,
the dishwashing station, the dollar store, the late-night English
classes at the local community college—and it’s a pain I am sure is
felt by the eleven million undocumented, so I write as if it were. I
attempt to write from a place of shared trauma, shared memories,
shared pain. This is a snapshot in time, a high-energy imaging of
trauma brain.
This book is a work of creative nonfiction, rooted in careful
reporting, translated as poetry, shared by chosen family, and
sometimes hard to read. Maybe you won’t like it. I didn’t write it for
you to like it. And I did not set out to write anything inspirational,

which is why there are no stories of DREAMers. They are
commendable young people, and I truly owe them my life, but they
occupy outsize attention in our politics. I wanted to tell the stories of
people who work as day laborers, housekeepers, construction
workers, dog walkers, deliverymen, people who don’t inspire
hashtags or T-shirts, but I wanted to learn about them as the weirdos
we all are outside of our jobs.
This book is for everybody who wants to step away from the
buzzwords in immigration, the talking heads, the kids in graduation
caps and gowns, and read about the people underground. Not
heroes. Randoms. People. Characters.
This book is for young immigrants and children of immigrants. I
want them to read this book and feel what I imagine young people
must have felt when they heard Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
for the first time in Seattle in 1991. I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness,
and I remember what I felt listening to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for
the first time.
I went into the bathroom and chopped off my hair with my mom’s
fabric scissors and then messaged a boy who was not a Jehovah’s
Witness (not allowed) and told him to meet me at the Virgin
Megastore in Times Square to give me my first kiss. This book will
give you permission to let go. This book will give you permission to
be free. This book will move you to be punk, when you need to be
punk; y hermanxs, it’s time to fuck some shit up.
Karla Cornejo Villavicenio

CHAPTER 1

Staten Island
AUGUST 1, 2019

I

f you ask my mother where she’s from, she’s 100 percent going to
say she’s from the Kingdom of God, because she does not like to say
that she’s from Ecuador, Ecuador being one of the few South
American countries that has not especially outdone itself on the
international stage—magical realism basically skipped over it, as did
the military dictatorship craze of the 1970s and 1980s, plus there are
no world-famous Ecuadorians to speak of other than the fool who
housed Julian Assange at the embassy in London (the president) and
Christina Aguilera’s father, who was a domestic abuser. If you ask my
father where he is from, he will definitely say Ecuador because he is
sentimental about the country for reasons he’s working out in
therapy. But if you push them, I mean really push them, they’re both
going to say they’re from New York. If you ask them if they feel
American because you’re a little narc who wants to prove your blood
runs red, white, and blue, they’re going to say No, we feel like New
Yorkers. We really do, too. My family has lived in Brooklyn and
Queens a combined ninety-seven years. My dad drove a cab back
when East New York was still gang country, and he had to fold his

body into a little origami swan and hide under his steering wheel
during cross fires in the middle of the day while he ate a jumbo slice
of pizza. Times have changed but my parents haven’t. My dad sees
struggling bodegas and he says they’re fronts. For what? Money
laundering. For whom? The mob. My mother wants my brother and
me to wear pastels all year round to avoid being seen as taking sides
in the little tiff between the Bloods and the Crips.
My parents are New Yorkers to the core. Despite how close we are,
we’ve talked very little about their first days in New York or about
their decision to choose New York, or even the United States, as a
destination. It’s not that I haven’t asked my parents why they came
to the United States. It’s that the answer isn’t as morally satisfying as
most people’s answers are—a decapitated family member, famine—
and I never press them for more details because I don’t want to apply
pressure on a bruise.
The story as far as I know it goes something like this: My parents
had just gotten married in Cotopaxi, Ecuador, and their small
autobody business was not doing well. Then my dad got into a car
crash where he broke his jaw, and they had to borrow money from
my father’s family, who are bad, greedy people. The idea of coming to
America to work for a year to make just enough money to pay off the
debt came up and it seemed like a good idea. My father’s family
asked to keep me, eighteen months old at the time, as collateral. And
that’s what my parents did. That’s about as much as I know.
You may be wondering why my parents agreed to leave me as an
economic assurance, but the truth is I have not had this conversation
with them. I’ve never thought about it enough to ask. The whole
truth is that if I was a young mother—if I was me as a young mother,
unparented, ambitious, at my sexual prime—I think I would be
thrilled to leave my child for “exactly a year,” as they said it would be,
which is what the plan was. I never had to forgive my mom.
My dad? My dadmydadmydad was my earliest memory. He was
dressed in a powder-blue sweater. He was walking into a big
airplane. I looked out from a window and my dad was walking away

and, in my hand, I carried a Ziploc bag full of coins. I don’t know. It’s
been almost thirty years. It doesn’t matter anymore.
My parents didn’t come back after a year. They didn’t stay in
America because they were making so much money that they became
greedy. They were barely making ends meet. Years passed. When I
was four years old, going to school in Ecuador, teachers began to
comment on how gifted I was. My parents knew Ecuador was not the
place for a gifted girl—the gender politics were too fucked up—and
they wanted me to have all the educational opportunities they hadn’t
had. So that’s when they brought me to New York to enroll me in
Catholic school, but no matter how hard they both worked to make
tuition, they fell short. Then one day—I think I was in the fourth
grade—the school bursar called me into his office and explained that
there was an elderly billionairess who lived in upstate New York who
had heard about me and was impressed. He told her my family was
poor and might have to pull me from the school. (Okay, so in this
scenario the tragedy would have been that I’d have to go to the local
public school, which was not a great school, but just so we’re on the
same page, I support public schools and I would have been fine.) So
she came up with a proposition. She’d pay for most of my tuition if I
kept up my grades and wrote her letters.
That was the first time in my life I’d have a benefactor, but it
would not be my last. When I was at Harvard, a very successful Wall
Street man who knew me from an educational NGO we both
belonged to—he as a supporter, me as a supported—learned I was
undocumented and could not legally hold a work-study job, so every
semester he wrote me a modest check. In the notes section he
cheekily wrote “beer money”—the joke being that I wouldn’t really
drink until I was twenty-one—but every semester I used it for books,
winter coats for those fucking Boston winters, money I couldn’t ask
my parents for because they didn’t have any to give. I wrote him
regular emails about my life at Harvard and my budding success as a
published writer. He was always appropriate and boundaried. I had
read obsessively about artists since I was a kid and considered myself
an artist since I was a kid so I didn’t feel weird about older, wealthy

white people giving me money in exchange for grades or writing. It
was patronage. They were Gertrude Stein and I was a young
Hemingway. I was Van Gogh, crazy and broken. I truly did not have
any racial anxieties about this, thank god. That kind of thing could
really fuck a kid up.
—
I’m a New York City kid, but although the first five years of my time
in America were spent in Brooklyn, if we’re going to be real, I’m from
Queens. Queens is the most diverse borough in the city. This might
sound like a romanticized ghetto painting, but when I walk through
my neighborhood, a Polish child with a toy gun will shoot at my head
and say the same undecipherable word over and over; a Puerto Rican
kid will rap along to a song on his phone and turn it up as loud as
necessary to make out the lyrics, even rapping along to some Nwords; some Egyptian teenagers will refuse to move out of my way as
I’m simply trying to cross the street; and some Mexican guys will
invite me to join a pyramid scheme. But none of us will try to take
any rights away from one another. We don’t have potlucks, but we
live in peace. We go to the same street fairs.
The other boroughs are less diverse, but I found that the same
thing is basically true. Except for one borough that I was always
curious about—Staten Island, New York’s richest, whitest, most
suburban borough. It is almost 80 percent white. By way of
comparison, Brooklyn and Queens are just less than half white, the
Bronx is 45 percent white, and even Manhattan is only 65 percent
white. Staten Island is geographically isolated—you can’t take the
subway there from the city—and, I don’t know, man, there isn’t a lot
of shared goodwill between islanders and city residents. It’s not like
we’re unaware. They’ve literally tried to secede from New York City
and form their own city or join New Jersey. In June 1989, the New
York State legislature gave Staten Island residents the right to decide
on secession, and in November 1993, 65 percent of voters voted yes.
Governor Mario Cuomo insisted that the referendum be approved by

the state legislature, where it was defeated, but the desire continued
to bubble just beneath the surface for years, so even after the world
was rocked by Brexit, you had local island politicians posting on
social media about how inspiring an event it was. Staten Island is the
city’s most conservative borough, pretty reliably Republican, the only
borough in New York City to go for Donald Trump in the 2016
presidential election. It’s also the borough where Eric Garner was
killed in a choke hold at the hands of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo.
A Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo for murder.
I learned about all of this later. But the first time Staten Island
really entered my consciousness was when there were news reports
about hate crimes against Latinx people when I was a kid. This was
the only context in which Staten Island was mentioned on Spanish
nightly news—Mexican immigrants as victims of hate crimes at the
hands of young black men, a cruel reminder of the rift between our
communities. There was fifty-two-year-old Alejandro Galindo, who
was walking his bicycle home from his dishwashing job and was
attacked by four men who didn’t take anything. There was eighteenyear-old Christian Vázquez, who was attacked by five men as he was
coming home from his job as a busboy. They beat him and took
jewelry and a measly ten dollars from him as they yelled antiMexican slurs. There was twenty-six-year-old Rodolfo Olmedo,
jumped by four men on his way back from a club. They beat him with
a baseball bat, a metal chain, and wooden planks. “We believe at this
time that they selected this victim either in whole or in substantial
part because he was a Mexican,” Richmond County district attorney
Daniel Donovan said.
I headed to Staten Island to report on the lives of undocumented
day laborers in early 2017—it was close to where I lived in New
Haven, and I was terrified about Trump having just assumed office. I
was scared for all immigrants and felt guilty about myself as a socalled DREAMer. I was on DACA and I was afraid there’d be a raid. I
was afraid that in any situation where there were large groups of
undocumented people congregated, there could be a raid. My first
trip there, I took a taxi from the Newark train station, about a thirty-

minute drive, to the neighborhood of Silver View, home to one of the
oldest day laborer corners in New York City. I got carsick, so I closed
my eyes and filled the time with a mental rosary chain of short
prayers to god, out of whose favor I had fallen years ago. I rested my
head on the window and asked him to protect my family first, and if
he had some goodwill left over, I prayed that there wouldn’t be a raid
on the warehouse where I was going that night.
Before visiting Staten Island, I’d never met a day laborer. To me, a
city girl who knew undocumented men mostly as restaurant workers,
day laborers seemed like an almost mythical archetype, groups of
brown men huddled at the crack of dawn on street corners next to
truck rental lots and hardware superstores and lumberyards.
Historically, legislators and immigration advocates have parted the
sea of the undocumented with a splintered staff—working brown
men and women on one side and academically achieving young
brown people on the other, one a parasitic blight, the other heroic
dreamers. Day laborers weren’t real to me, and what I had heard
about them wasn’t good. The New York Times described their work
as “idling on street corners.” They haven’t had the best PR.
So who are they? There are varied estimates of the number of day
laborers in New York City, from a little under six thousand to more
than ten thousand. A 2006 survey of day laborers, who are mostly
men, reports that 75 percent of respondents identified as
undocumented, two-thirds supported their families with this line of
work, 60 percent said day laboring was their first job in the United
States, and 85 percent were looking for more permanent jobs. They
represent a wide range of skills, from muscle to flooring to woodwork
to welding to painting to cement work to brickwork to carpentry to
insulation to stucco to electrical work to just about everything else in
the construction universe.
The typical place they find work is the street corner, where a
delicate choreography takes place. One guy told me the exchange
goes something like this: A man pulls up in a truck and says, I need
X done. If a person has that skill, he’ll ask for a quote—how many
hours, in what location, how much per hour. Sometimes while you

are negotiating, two other workers willing to do the job for less
jump into the truck and the employer shrugs and drives away.
Sometimes a group piles onto the sides of the truck, and the
employer gets spooked. They don’t know us. It’s the group that
scares them. If they’re scared, they might hastily pick one or two
guys, or they might drive away. An average of sixty workers gathers
on each of the known street corners in Silver View every day. On a
quiet day there might be three workers, on a busy day a hundred.
They mostly get paid in cash, and the employers are free to do with
and to them whatever they want.
The day laborers I meet are professionals, talking about the
importance of negotiating rates and building networks through good
work and recommendations. They call their employers patrones, a
Spanish word that means “bosses” but with a colonial aftertaste,
often do not get protective equipment, meal breaks, or even
bathroom breaks. They have all experienced racist abuse and wage
theft at the hand of their employers, are all owed thousands of
dollars by white men who made them work for days, promised
payment, then simply disappeared. Some days laborers are dropped
off at remote locations to do work, then left there without a ride
back, unpaid and helpless. The fact that The New York Times
described them as “idling” infuriates me. What an offensive way to
describe labor that requires standing in hellish heat or cold or rain
from dawn until nightfall, negotiating in a language not your own,
competing with your own friends for the same job, then performing
it to perfection without the certainty of pay. Workers absorb
exceptional emotional and physical stress every day and, because
they are undocumented, they’re on their own, with no workplace
protections, no regulations, and no collective bargaining.
This is where the worker centers come in. Worker centers were
established to formalize this very informal sector of day laboring.
There are now more than sixty-three worker centers across the
country. Colectiva Por Fin is a storefront nonprofit on Staten Island
that since 1997 has provided practical advocacy, representation, and
training for day laborers and the immigrant community on the island

at large. It sits on Silver View Road along with Nuestra Calle, another
worker center, right near the busy street corners where day laborers
generally congregate, and they make a world of difference for the
men. First, they are indoors, so the men don’t have to stand outside
for hours on end in extreme weather. The centers provide restrooms,
water, coffee, phone chargers, and dispatchers. Dispatchers serve as
bilingual intermediaries between workers and employers, cementing
transactions and preventing abuses or irregularities. It’s a stressful
job.
Santiago, a dispatcher at Colectiva Por Fin, is a U.S. citizen born
to Mexican parents. Workers collectively set the rates for particular
jobs annually or semiannually, and Santiago’s job is to make sure
those rates are honored and workers aren’t drawn into potentially
abusive arrangements. “Some employers think that exploiting them
might be easy because they are undocumented,” he tells me. Santiago
is just twenty-five years old.
I’m attending a monthly meeting at Colectiva Por Fin on my first
night on Staten Island. The room is small but as more men come in,
it seems to double and triple in size. On the wall, migrants are
celebrated through art that strikes me as deeply annoying, mostly the
word “migrant” reconfigured as butterflies. I fucking hate thinking of
migrants as butterflies. Butterflies can’t fuck a bitch up. Tonight,
about fifty men end up gathering in the room, plus a couple of
women, including a young, white female pastor who works for
Project Hospitality, the parent nonprofit. The executive director of
Colectiva Por Fin is here, an Argentine man named Simón Torres. He
is new and the men are still making up their minds about him. There
are two African American day laborers at the meeting and an older
white man with a shock of white hair and mustache. His name is
Charles and he is here as an organizer from AmeriCorps. Because of
these three people, the meeting is conducted bilingually by Santiago,
effectively cutting the meeting shorter while making it feel longer at
the same time. Out of the fifty Latinx workers, perhaps only a few are
able to ascertain the fidelity of Santiago’s translation.

The men here tonight are workers. For many years when I have
heard nice people try to be respectful about describing
undocumented people, I’ve heard them call us “undocumented
workers” as a euphemism, as if there was something uncouth about
being just an undocumented person standing with your hands
clasped together or at your sides. I almost wish they’d called us
something rude like “crazy fuckin’ Mexicans” because that’s
acknowledging something about us beyond our usefulness—we’re
crazy, we’re Mexican, we’re clearly unwanted!—but to describe all of
us, men, women, children, locally Instagram-famous teens, queer
puppeteers, all of us, as workers in order to make us palatable, my
god. We were brown bodies made to labor, faces pixelated.
And here they are now, the workers. Some are very young, just
past their teens, and some are quite old, around seventy. They are all
wearing dirty work boots, but carefully kept. You know how jeans
come pre-ripped? That’s how their boots look. Dirty from work,
pristine from care. The workers are very brown, brown from their
moms, browned from the sun. They are short. But they are built.
They look like they can walk on burning coal, build a house, and
open a bottle of beer with their wedding rings.
When I scan the room, I see men lighter and darker than my
father, some older, most younger—they speak harsher, softer,
mumbling, or sung, but I see my father’s face in their every one, and
I know that this astigmatism will always be with me; the light will
always fall this way. I think about the 2010 Arizona immigration law
known as the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe
Neighborhoods Act, a.k.a. Arizona SB 1070, a.k.a. the “papers please”
law. It gave law enforcement officials the power to approach anybody
they suspected of being in the country illegally and ask for proof of
legal documentation. That meant they could stop anyone they
thought looked undocumented. Immigrant rights advocates furiously
protested the law, challenging officials on how exactly they defined
an “undocumented look.” But Vincent, my best friend from college,
and I, two undocumented kids, whispered to each other that even if
the authorities “couldn’t,” we could pretty much almost always tell.

The backpack my father carried on his commute to and from work,
the one that held his earnings in cash, was a red flag. His black
rubber orthopedic-looking shoes and his dark-blue jeans,
immigrant-blue, an immigrant rinse. I offered to buy him new
clothes but he said, Para que? Vincent offered to buy his dad a
change of clothes for when he traveled home from his construction
job but his dad said, Para que? too.
Santiago is an accomplished and artful translator. He works
quickly and in real time and transmits tone impeccably. Charles from
AmeriCorps gives a long-winded speech inviting the men to an
upcoming church dinner. He keeps mentioning the president’s name.
In his translation, Santiago omits every mention of Trump. Charles
says the dinner will feature American fare—“You’re going to get to try
American food; I promise you’ll love it.” That sentence too
disappears in our young dispatcher’s hands. Charles ends his speech
by saying, “If things get worse, and I really, really don’t think they
will, Americans will come out and protect you.” Santiago doesn’t
translate any of that either. He’s pretty fucking good.
I ask Santiago where he learned to translate so well and he tells
me that like many children of immigrants, he grew up interpreting
for his parents at everything from PTA meetings to doctors’
appointments. “It made me feel important,” he says. “I was
representing my parents.” I tell Santiago I did the same thing, that
we all did. I ask him why he omitted all mentions of Trump in the
speech. “I didn’t want to mention that guy,” he says. “I wanted to
make them feel safe.”
I ask why he completely omitted Charles’s promise to protect
them if things got bad.
“The reality is…it’s not just Trump. Staten Island is a very
conservative island. Charles might think it’s not getting worse, but he
is not going to be affected, unless they stop federal funding of his
organization, and then he could lose his job. But the whole
immigrant community has everything to lose.”
But what about the guarantee that Americans would come to our
rescue? I ask.

“Unless these Americans are lawyers or federal judges, I don’t see
how that’s true,” Santiago says.
—
A year and a half later, I’ve been to Staten Island so many times, I’ve
lost count. I’ve grown attached to these men and look for any excuse
to go back to learn more about the world the day laborers have
created in the most anti-immigrant hood in the city. I’ve stood with
them on street corners and sat with them in the worker centers, I’ve
had coffee with them at Dunkin’ Donuts, ate lunches with them at
Ecuadorian restaurants they insist on paying for, delivered dinners
for them to share in the worker center office, I’ve accompanied them
to testify in City Hall, attended their Christmas party where none of
them asked me to dance, went to their soccer matches, and spoke to
them on the phone late at night. We texted Merry Christmas and
Happy New Year to one another one minute after midnight. I
blocked one of them on my phone because his intense loneliness was
dark and desperate and it scared me. Come a blizzard in Connecticut,
where I live now, and I think of how thin the lining is in their jackets;
when the season changes and the pavement gets so hot that I don’t
walk my dog for longer than a few minutes out of concern for his soft
padded feet, I think of how hot jet-black hair gets under the sun, like
my brother’s, like my father’s, like mine. When I see acrylic blankets
I think of them alone in their rented single rooms, and when my
father visits me in my big apartment with all the natural light and big
fiddle-leaf trees, I see them in his missing teeth and swollen hands.
When my father lost his restaurant job of fifteen years, I asked one of
my contacts from Colectiva if she knew of any jobs, and she said that
he could go to the worker center at 7:00 A.M. to begin working as a
day laborer. Imagine that. Day one as a day laborer, at age fifty-three.
—
Julián is fifty-two years old but looks much, much older. When I first
meet him, he is sitting alone in the corner of the worker center

wearing headphones as men wait for their assignments. His beanie is
pulled over his eyebrows, covering the tops of his ears, actually
almost half of his ears—he has small ears. Everyone else is talking
and laughing. I ask him what he’s listening to and he says, “Christian
music to uplift the spirits.” I persuade him to give me his number,
but it takes a few conversations for him to open up. It’s clear he has
spent a lot of time alone with his thoughts. Many of the day laborers
don’t have family living with them on Staten Island and are lonely, so
talking with me at the end of a long day from the tiny corners of their
rooms is something they seem to like. With Julián, once he is ready,
our conversations are like the opposite of bloodletting, the darker,
thicker stuff coming out first, and then we work our way toward a
light exchange about the weather before we hang up.
Julián didn’t know a word of English when he came to the United
States. His first meal in America was a bag of potato chips and a fiftycent bottle of water. Remember those? He had nothing. He started
work as a dishwasher at a restaurant two days later. His bosses were
despots. They screamed at him, they swore. They had a rule that no
outside food was allowed in the kitchen, but the only food the
workers were allowed from the kitchen were eggs and potatoes. The
cook was Latinx, like them, and he snuck them meat—cuts of chicken
and steak—when the bosses turned their backs. “Pinche pendejo,”
the cook said.
The hours were long and pay was terrible, so he decided to give
day laboring a try. On his first day, he was terrified. “I was scared to
work because I did not know English,” he says. “The employers
yelled at me because I didn’t. I would stand on the street corner with
my friends, but because I was so scared, I sent them to do jobs that I
was hired to do. I was scared that I could not speak English, and that
in turn made me scared I could not do the job. But then I went to
school.”
When immigrants who did not go to school in this country—or at
all—talk about their experiences at “school,” they usually mean the
local library or community college, where they take English classes.
Every immigrant I know has embarked on involved attempts to learn

English beyond just immersion. City University of New York officials
recall a nighttime security guard at Brooklyn College telling them he
saw immigrants line up before 4:00 A.M. for a 9:00 A.M. open
registration for ESL classes. The nativist claim that immigrants do
not want to learn English makes me hysterical. Years ago, on a bus in
Queens, an older woman bitterly spit out in my direction as I passed
by, “I wish these people would just learn English.” I had not been
speaking—at all, in any language. I was holding a book, in English. In
fact, I was home for the summer after my freshman year at Harvard,
where I would win a writing award named after an eighteenthcentury American transcendentalist—we both just happened to write
in English. But it was summertime, and I wore short, thin, slutty
things, so I was tan, a deeper brown than usual; my hair was so black
it was almost navy. I think every immigrant in this country knows
that you can eat English and digest it so well that you shit it out, and
to some people, you will still not speak English.
I ask Julián what he’d like readers to know about him, and he
immediately says, “Tell them I crossed the desert four times to see
my children.” The border was more porous at the time, and his
children were in Mexico, so he headed home during the New York
winter. He still needed a coyote for the crossing. At night in the
desert it got so cold, he thought his skin would shatter like hard
candy. During the day it was so hot, he thought demons had
possessed him. He carried with him four gallons of water and a
backpack with food. He wore construction boots, and his feet were
covered in blisters. Once, he stayed behind with some people who’d
gotten sick and the coyote just left them. “The coyotes are always
drugged and drunk because they’re afraid to do what they do sober,”
Julián explains. They survived by eating cans of peppers and
drinking puddles. Two of them died. They threw up something green,
then collapsed. He tried to help the living, but also didn’t want to join
the dead, so he did what he had to do.
Like most marriages divided by a border, his ended in separation.
He sent money to his kids in Mexico, but he was lonely in New York
and he dreamed of having a new bouncing little brown baby, ideally a

girl, and he wanted to raise her bilingual. That was the main thing he
fantasized about at night, as he lay in the dark waiting for his
exhausted body and his racing heart to catch up to each other so he
could sleep: He dreamed of having a baby who would have a first
word in Spanish—papi—and a first word in English—mommy. He’d
give the baby an American name and learn to pronounce it the right
way. Maybe “Lincoln,” which was hard because your tongue had to
be so sneaky in the middle of the word. He’d take Lincoln to all the
Disney movies and at first he’d be able to follow just enough of the
plot to not fall asleep, but eventually he’d get the jokes. He’d go to
parent-teacher conferences and not rely on his kid to translate. No,
he’d wear a suit and a tie and ask the tough questions himself, so the
little imp couldn’t hide her naughtiness. “I think it would be beautiful
to speak in English to your child,” he says.
As time went on, it became clear he wasn’t going to have this
baby, and he got lonelier and lonelier. “You come here thinking of
your kids, but the process changes you. You’re transformed, and
sometimes you can’t get out of that place. Some people never knew
their fathers. They have traumas from childhood, from the crossing,
and they don’t know how to handle those problems but they can buy
a Corona.” Soon, he started spending all of his time in bars, leaving
them at dawn and going straight to work after. He’d send money
home and spend the rest on alcohol. He was consumed by guilt.
Then one night in January, he drank too much while he had the
flu, and the combination of whiskey and a fever led to hallucinations,
including one of being hunted down by police dogs. Julián tried to
shake off the hallucinations but he couldn’t. So he started screaming.
Nobody came to his rescue because he was alone. He woke himself
with his own screams, and upon waking he told god that if he let him
have a peaceful sleep, he’d stop drinking.
“I don’t know if it was a miracle, but since then I haven’t wanted
to go to bars anymore. I just want to work. What distracts me is
work. What makes me happy is working. When I’m not working, I
freak out.”
If you left America, what would you miss? I ask him.

“I’d miss the money,” Julián says.
Me too, I say.
We both laugh.
—
Joaquín also crossed the desert four times. His first time crossing
began at nightfall. Five or six men covered in guns pick up the
crossers in an old yellow truck, then drive them to a line in the sand
where the narcos are waiting. You know they’re narcos because
they’re wearing chains and their eyes are dead. You need a password
to cross. The coyotes whisper the password, and the migrants get off
the truck. They are dumped onto another truck. Only one coyote can
go with them. Were you scared? I ask. “Are you kidding? I was
terrified,” Joaquín says. “They’re narcos.”
They drive to a mountain. They dump the truck. Time to climb the
mountain, putas. Joaquín isn’t a thin man, but he’ll be fine. He’ll be
fine! He exercises. I mean he wakes up every morning and does
stretches while he does his morning prayers. Reach to the sky, now
touch your toes, side to side. The mountain is steep, and it is hot, and
his backpack is heavy. He climbs for about an hour imagining he is a
guest on Sábado Gigante recounting his tale of rescuing a girl who
fell into a well. Then his backpack straps break. Right at the seams—
irreparable. His backpack, enormous, carries all his cans of food and
water gallons, plus an extra layer of clothing for the freezing desert
nights. Before he even thinks them, words rush into his mouth. They
flood in there and all he has to do is vomit them. “Friends, I’m
staying here.” He’s calling it. He’s done. He hadn’t even realized he’s
exhausted, but he allows himself to admit it. All he wanted was an
out. In his mind he is going to sit down on the mountain and take a
nap; finish the provisions in his backpack; have a feast of canned
beans, saltines, and water; and then, after he’s run out, sit there in
the sun—it won’t take very long to start dying. Eventually the animals
will notice and they’ll eat him and he’ll let them. He’ll put up some
struggle, it’s human nature. Hopefully he’ll be so dehydrated by then

that he won’t even notice the tears in his flesh—it’ll feel like paper
cuts on a really bad sunburn, and to the bobcats he’ll be jerky. “When
you choose to die, you really have to decide to die,” Joaquín tells me.
But then, these two young guys—to this day he doesn’t know their
names—these guys step forward and get all up in his face like they’re
going to punch him. He takes a few steps back. They get in his space
again. One of them thrusts forward, furious, and yanks Joaquín’s
backpack from him. “This is why you wanna die, ’mano?” Then the
other one walks behind Joaquín and begins to push him by his
shoulders. Up the mountain. Up the incline. Cursing under their
breath. Joaquín chastises himself the whole time. These kids don’t
want me dead so now I can’t die. What do you do when your out was
to die and now you can’t die because you’re living for total strangers?
There was another mountain after the first one. And on the second
mountain he grabbed back his backpack and walked right behind the
coyotes. “And by the time we climbed down, I had gathered so much
strength,” he says. “I think about those kids all the time. I think
about them every day. Every time there is a raid, I think about them.”
He knew they went to Las Vegas, but they could be anywhere now.
They could be deported. They could be dead.
Joaquín’s first steady job in New York was at a “boat company,”
which I took to mean a ferry service. He was on a boat on the Hudson
River on September 11, 2001, when he saw the planes crash into the
towers, and without even knowing what had happened, his boss
rounded up the workers and told everyone to get ready to head into
the city to help. By the time they arrived, the second tower had fallen
and there was debris and dust everywhere. He couldn’t even see
where he was walking. The boats transported workers in and out of
Ground Zero for two weeks, dressed in the yellow suits and masks
generally used for oil spills; the workers and the boats were hosed
down at night with a power wash. He feels proud of the work he did
there. “They gave people who entered that zone an ID, and I
remember the day we were supposed to hand that ID back. I couldn’t
return it. I just couldn’t. I kept it as a memory that I worked at
Ground Zero.”

Then one day, out of the blue, the boat company owner gathered
all of the Mexican workers. “I’m sorry but I can’t work with you
anymore. Immigration can find me, and they will fine me,” he said.
Then he made them sign some forms likely liberating the employers
from any responsibility from suddenly firing them. Joaquín didn’t
read them before signing the documents. Neither did the other guys.
“That’s what I regret. I didn’t take a photograph of those forms or
make a copy of them. We didn’t even read the letter.” That was
before Colectiva Por Fin, and their Know Your Rights training for day
laborers. He insists he would never let someone do that to him again.
“They have really opened my eyes to the rights of workers. I’m more
awake than I was before and I wouldn’t sign something again without
reading it,” he says.
After he was fired from the boat company, Joaquín arrived at the
corner. He was now a day laborer.
—
Hurricane Sandy hit the night of October 29, 2014, at the precise
moment the Atlantic Ocean and New York Harbor both reached full
tide. High tide on that night meant the water levels along the
southern coast were already elevated about five feet higher than
usual. Furthermore, it was not only a high tide but a spring tide,
meaning the moon was full and the tide, which operates along a
cycle, was at its highest monthly point, about half a foot higher than
the highest point of the high tide you would see during a normal
storm. Once it picked up its full force, Sandy came through the East
Coast a thousand miles wide, making it three times the size of
Hurricane Katrina. It was a spectacle of wind and the ocean’s fickle,
maniacal force, and New York’s man-made dunes and bulkheads
only dulled the hurricane’s mighty impact.
The Hurricane Katrina cleanup set the model for Hurricane
Sandy. After Katrina, about half of the reconstruction crews in New
Orleans were Latinx, and more than half of those were
undocumented. They worked the most dangerous jobs for the lowest

wages. They picked up dead bodies without gloves and masks. They
waded waist-deep in toxic waters. During this same period, New
Orleans mayor Ray Nagin asked a room of business leaders, “How do
I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexican workers?”
There would be no way.
The first and biggest contractor to come on the scene after Sandy
hit was AshBritt Environmental, now famous for having squandered
$500 million in government contracts after Katrina, while charging
44 percent more than local contractors and paying subcontractors
only $10 of every $23 it received per cubic yard, out of which the
workers received their paltry wages. The company left behind two
EPA-designated superfund sites.
But Sandy brought death before the contractors came. Most of the
initial deaths were due to drowning. There were forty drowning
deaths, and half happened in people’s homes. Much of Staten Island
ignored orders to evacuate because evacuation orders had also been
issued for Hurricane Irene the year prior and then the storm swerved
around Staten Island and landed upstate, leaving the boroughs
intact. When the orders came this time, half of Staten Island was
designated as Evacuation Zone A, meaning that half was especially
vulnerable to flooding, and city officials targeted that area with
phone calls, televised reminders, and door-to-door calls for
evacuation. The community says National Guard members also went
door-to-door in neighborhoods in the storm’s path, but activists tell
me that immigrants felt unsafe when they saw uniformed people
knocking on doors at all hours, especially if they lacked papers.
The storm caused $62 billion in damages in the United States,
killed 125 people, and left 7.5 million people without power. The city
had not prepared for that kind of devastation and was slow to
provide aid. Day laborers were among the first people on the ground
to help. “In times of crisis, day laborers are often the first
responders,” one labor organizer told me.
Pedro Ituralde is a forty-one-year-old Chilean man who was the
longtime executive director of Colectiva Por Fin and now leads
Nuestra Calle. He had just come back from a trip to Chile when the

storm hit. He sprang into action, organizing volunteer brigades of
day laborers so that four or five brigades were on the ground at all
times. They cleaned flooded basements, removed fallen branches and
trees, repaired fences, waded in dirty waters up to their knees to
remove furniture from houses, removed drywall, picked up debris,
whatever needed to get done.
Every single day laborer I meet loves, trusts, and speaks adoringly
of Pedro. He is an institution in immigrant Staten Island, something
of a godfather figure despite his youth and the fact that he is openly
gay, and this in the all-male Latinx day laborer community. I ask him
how he maneuvers that. “I ask them if they’ve ever been
discriminated against, and they all say yes,” Pedro says. “So I tell
them the LGBTQ community is discriminated against just like they
are, and it is their job as people who have been hurt by prejudice to
not hurt anyone else. And they all get it.” It is the only sliver of
personal information about himself that Pedro is willing to share in
our three years of constant communication, visits, phone calls,
emails, texts, and bribes in the form of midday cappuccinos and flans
delivered to his office. He does not want the focus on himself.
Pedro was inspired to organize the storm volunteer brigades after
hearing stories from Latinx New Yorkers who went to governmentrun restoration centers and were turned away by guards who told
them, “You don’t belong here,” or, “You’re not from here. I know
you’re lying.” Occupy Sandy, a group made up of former Occupy Wall
Street activists, donated supplies to the worker center—sleeping
bags, batteries, toilet paper, and flashlights, as did Mexican pop
superstar Thalía, who lives in New York and in a message of support
called the day laborers “my brothers.” The men stuffed the supplies
into bright yellow drawstring bags with Colectiva Por Fin’s logo on it.
This was a team-building move proposed by Pedro, who is also
known to make his team members do trust falls. The yellow bags
became famous across the beachfront communities on Staten Island.
Pedro tells me he heard a woman call into a local radio show to
complain about the government’s lack of response, saying the only
people who had their shit together were the day laborers. “We helped

two hundred and forty families,” he says. “And that was the
government’s job.”
Along the beach, Colectiva Por Fin set up a tent where they ran
daily Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
trainings and offered vests and masks for laborers who needed
replacements. The experience built goodwill in the community. The
local precinct’s police chief began coming to the Colectiva Por Fin
offices to meet the men, and Pedro brought some day laborers to
community council meetings. When community members said that
they ruined the neighborhood by urinating in public or hollering at
women, the men responded, “That may be one person. Look at me,
look at us. Day laborers as a whole do not behave that way.”
The first jobs after the storm hit were removal of garbage and
debris, knocking down damaged walls or other large structures, and
the removal of mold. Unlike most volunteers, day laborers had the
skill set to do extensive renovation projects, including specialized
work like painting, electrical wiring, and landscaping. Beyond
helping those in need, the workers were networking, giving their
neighbors a sampling of their skills in hopes of encouraging future
working relationships, but many people just took the free labor and
never contacted them again. Some home owners even failed to
provide essential tools for cleanup, such as masks, or even mops and
garbage bags, and volunteer workers had to bring their own.
Joaquín was one of the volunteers during Hurricane Sandy. At
first, recovery days were workdays like any other. He woke up,
bought a buttered roll and coffee with milk and sugar from the
bodega (he only drinks his coffee black on weekends, the morning
after he drinks beer), and went to work. He worked seven days a
week. He is a big man, so first he helped residents get everything
onto the street, anything that had been touched by salt water, mostly
furniture. He went into a lot of basements, a little scared each time
that he was going to walk into live electrical wiring since they were
often pitch-black. After long days on the street, he went back to the
single room he rents, where he took a long bath with Epsom salts, ate
a mug of oatmeal with milk and sugar, watched TV, then went to

sleep. He sometimes caught the end of a variety show, but mostly it
was just the Spanish news. Joaquín fell asleep to news of the
hurricane’s damage. He didn’t think of himself as a protagonist in
the story of Sandy—he still doesn’t—but he tells me his clearest
memory of the hurricane aftermath is meeting two elderly Asian
women so frail they could not carry anything and had nowhere to
sleep. He gave them inflatable beds. It is one of the most prized
memories of his life.
Julián volunteered, too. He fondly remembers traveling all across
Staten Island and sometimes to New Jersey to go knocking door-todoor to see who needed help. He admits he felt sad that after the
recovery efforts were well under way, the island forgot about the day
laborers. He sometimes feels used, but he doesn’t resent his
neighbors and doesn’t regret the time he spent helping them. “I was
scared, there was disaster as far as the eye could see, I had friends
who didn’t make it, people got sick, but we helped each other out. We
felt like we were part of the community. We finally felt like we
belonged,” he says.
—
One morning, outside a worker center, some day laborers came to
me to talk about why I was there. To write about them in a way
they’d never been written about before! I say. They had an ask.
Could I please tell the real story about them? Not the one we’re used
to seeing in the papers, about them pissing in bottles and catcalling
women. The real one. Yes, yes, I promise. I always promise things
before I know whether or not I can deliver.
—
Some many months later I stumbled upon the story of Ubaldo Cruz
Martinez. Ubaldo was an alcoholic and many of the day laborers I
talked to knew him or knew of him but didn’t really want to talk
about him. They were so careful about their reputations and he was a
homeless alcoholic who drowned in a basement during Hurricane

Sandy because he was probably drunk. Did they feel sorry for him?
Yes. Were they embarrassed by him? Probably.
Ubaldo was found floating in dirty water, and his body was
repatriated to his hometown of San Jerónimo Xayacatlán. The bell at
the church rang at one o’clock in the morning to mark the return of
one of their own. People in the town gossiped that it was a shame he
had died with no friends and with nobody to cry over his grave.
Before the hour of this death, on October 31, Ubaldo leaned
against a cement building for balance and he saw a small crescent of
fur on the gravel, the rain already beating down. He walked to it, and
discovered a small skinny squirrel, making a copper wiry sound, a
wound on its abdomen. A stray, a stray like him. It was beginning to
rain at a blunt slant, a lancing rain. He picked up the squirrel and
walked into the basement where he was squatting. He made himself
a Nescafé to sober up. The squirrel was cold to the touch so he put
her in a shoe box and padded the box with his socks that he warmed
in the oven. He had some condensed milk in the cupboard that he
warmed in the microwave. He didn’t have a dropper, so he fed it to
her through a straw, sucking up the milk with his mouth, then
putting his finger on the top of the straw, putting the straw into the
squirrel’s mouth, between her bunny teeth, to release the milk drop
by drop. He knew he was not leaving this basement tonight. He
couldn’t get himself anywhere. No one would want him. They’d given
up on him long ago. He had kids in Mexico. They’d be orphans. His
heart raced. His hands became moist. Stroking the squirrel kept him
calm as the basement filled with water. He put on his Ochoa jersey
and a thin gold chain, and he decided to wait for what would come.
He stroked the squirrel until the water got up to his shoulders and he
treaded water. He held onto the shoe box above his head. No
creature should have to die alone.
—
Did this happen?
Are we in gangs?

Do we steal Social Security numbers?
Do we traffic our own children across the border?
Is this book nonfiction?
Can we imagine that he was capable of kindness, even as he was
drinking? That he was capable of courage, even as he was wounded?
What if this is how, in the face of so much sacrilege and slander,
we reclaim our dead?

CHAPTER 2

Ground Zero

O

n the morning of September 11, 2001, after the North Tower of
the World Trade Center fell, killing some fourteen hundred people,
firefighters rushed to the site with blueprints and floor plans,
marking locations where they believed elevators and stairwells would
have collapsed with the people they carried. They were looking for
survivors. Global positioning technology plotted patterns formed by
the spots where bodies, or parts of bodies, were found. But days went
by and only eleven people were found in the rubble, and it soon
became clear that the mapping technology would be used to locate
the dead.
The fires at Ground Zero were mean and hard to extinguish; they
burned long and deep, flaring when exposed to oxygen and fueled by
tons of highly conductive papers and furniture soaked in jet fuel.
Thermal heat maps from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey
showed swaths of rubble burning at temperatures above 1,292°F,
hotter than the burning point of aluminum. By December 3, 2001,
New Scientist dubbed it “the longest-burning structural fire in
history.” Officials continued to call Ground Zero a “rescue
operation”—implying it was still possible to find survivors, but they
couldn’t keep hope alive and at the same time submerge all sixteen

acres with water and flame retardant—until the hundredth day of the
fire, when the last flame was extinguished.
Rescue workers called the sixteen acres of debris on Ground Zero
“the Pile.” The powdered debris in the Pile contained more than 150
compounds and elements including plaster, talc, synthetic foam,
glass, paint chips, charred wood, slag wool, two hundred thousand
pounds of lead from fifty thousand computers, gold and mercury
from five hundred thousand fluorescent lights, two thousand tons of
asbestos, and ninety-one thousand liters of jet fuel. The nearly three
thousand human beings who died made up such a minuscule part of
the debris that the odds of finding identifiable remains were less
than one in a quadrillion. It was a site of desolation set on fire.
The first responders were firemen and EMT workers.
The second responders were undocumented immigrants.
Lucero Gómez is a social worker who runs informal group therapy
sessions with mostly undocumented, all-Latinx former Ground Zero
cleanup workers. Lucero tells me that almost immediately after 9/11,
undocumented immigrants started getting phone calls “from a very
underground kind of network of people who are undocumented and
need work. They called at night. They said, ‘Tomorrow there is work,
come work.’ ” The city hired contractors—Americans, Anglo, white.
The contractors hired subcontractors, many of them bilingual Latinx
people with the golden ticket of American citizenship who could
present themselves as friendly faces to other immigrants—“We look
like you! We speak like you!”—and would make the eventual abuses
unexpected. Vans drove from Queens out to Long Island, through
Nassau and Suffolk Counties, up and down the immigrant enclaves,
looking for day laborers to bring to Ground Zero. The workers were
mostly Eastern European and Latin American. Many of the women
knew the area well, having cleaned offices and apartments in Lower
Manhattan for years. They knew they’d be called to dust. There was
so much dust.
In 2001, Milton Vallejo had been working nights as a security
guard at the World Trade Center. Milton is tall and gentle. On the
morning of September 11, the day shift guards, friends of his, came in

to take over and he joked around with them for a bit, then headed to
the subway. He was underground when the news hit. He couldn’t
breathe. He raced home. He watched the news. He prayed to god. He
had to help. It was his duty. Plus, work was work. The next day, he
made his way back to the World Trade Center, now called Ground
Zero. He found long lines of people waiting to enter the site. He
wondered if he’d be asked to present his papers—the terrorists had
been foreigners—and got out of line. An official of some kind—from
where, he doesn’t remember—overseeing the line walked over and
asked him why he left the line. Milton fumbled. The truth is, I’m not
here legally, he said. Get back in line, she said. When it was his turn,
she had him sign his name on a blank sheet of paper and compared
his signature to the signature on his Colombian passport. “They
made all of us sign on blank paper, then compared the signature to
any ID we had. Then they let us in,” he says. At first, observers
applauded them as they watched them work. They took pictures.
Then as the site began to crowd with cleanup workers, it was clear
that most of them were Latinx. Some of the people observing them
now started yelling, “Leave! Leave! Leave!”
“It looked like a Western, just like a desert,” Milton says.
“Everything was dust and water and there was no light anywhere.”
Milton was assigned to clean basements, where he waded waist-deep
through dirty water and chemicals. He tied plastic grocery bags
around his ankles. The dust was the hardest to clean because it
blinded him and stuck to his wet clothing. He wasn’t given goggles.
The subcontractors gave him air masks, but they were flimsy and
broke easily. After a few days of work, Milton started spitting out
mucus. Something scratched at the back of his throat, so he had to
keep clearing it—something wet and dry at the same time. After one
week, he got his first paycheck from the subcontractor: sixty dollars a
day for working a twelve-hour shift; some days were longer than
twelve hours. When he tried cashing the check, it bounced.
I first met Milton at one of Lucero’s group sessions in 2011. That
day, the meeting was dedicated to a discussion of the September 11th
Victim Compensation Fund and the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and

Compensation Act, a law that promised to provide medical treatment
to 9/11 cleanup workers.
The people at Lucero’s sessions had all become sick. They carry
hospital ID cards issued by Mount Sinai and Bellevue, where they are
treated. Many of them have developed cancer. They have rhinitis,
gastritis, arthritis, severe acid reflux, asthma, high blood pressure,
and back pain. They have PTSD, anxiety, depression, and paranoia.
Their psychological symptoms are triggered by the smell of barbecue,
by darkness, by any news coverage of natural disasters. The group
helps them in some ways, but Lucero is just one person and cannot
do it alone. Meetings are irregular.
When I return to visit the group again in early 2017, all anyone
can talk about is deportation. A woman named Lourdes with two
long braids reminds the group to be careful. She tells them to carry
around their prescription bottles with them as well as their hospital
ID cards to present to ICE officers should they be approached. She
says ICE once entered her home but they left her alone once she was
able to prove that she was receiving treatment at a local hospital’s
World Trade Center worker program. But that was one nice ICE
officer, she says. Any of them could be deported at any time.
Lucero doesn’t have much control over the group, which is rowdy.
Everyone talks over one another and they sometimes answer their
phones, screaming into them, while they’re still in their seats. One
man, Enrique, is quiet for most of the meeting. He tells me that
nothing happened to him that day, that he was spared. He is wearing
a light windbreaker that he leaves open, and he repeatedly brings one
side of the jacket close to his face to take a sip from a straw. A bottle,
in a brown paper bag, is in the inside pocket.
Enrique says he doesn’t feel the effects of the cleanup, but it isn’t
true. He has flashbacks to Ground Zero all the time. A few weeks ago,
he was working on top of a six-foot ladder in Brooklyn and had a
flashback to being surrounded by dank water, in the dark, next to
fallen lights, shattered glass, and ash, the strong smell of mildew and
chemicals soaking fabrics and furniture. He fell off the ladder and

broke his arm. “I become suddenly frightened by absolutely nothing,
like a cat,” he says.
Enrique was hired to work at Ground Zero by a company named
Good Shine Cleaning, owned by a married Colombian American
couple. American citizens. “The lines for cleaning jobs were
hundreds of people long and companies just picked everyone up and
put us in trucks,” he remembers. “The Americans who own the
contracting companies are all white. They hire Hispanic people to
work as subcontractors and they’re the ones who deal directly with
laborers. When the American contractors come to the work sites, the
subcontractors treat them like gods,” he says. “They make us stop
talking if we were talking, and we have to turn off the music if we
were listening to music. We even stop working out of respect for
them. They arrive in fancy cars and expensive clothes, and when they
come in, they don’t talk to us. They don’t even look at us. They only
talk to the Hispanic subcontractor.” Contractors have mastered a
plantation model in their line of work, exploiting whatever sense of
community that might exist among Latinx people. The workers think
there are people along the chain of command who are watching out
for them, but melanin and accents are ineffective binding substances.
I know the members of the therapy group struggle with mental
illness, and when I ask, gently, what meds they’re on or what their
panic attacks are like, they tell me but seem a little embarrassed. In
our community, there is an ingrained idea that if you are sick, it’s a
weakness, a symptom of our internalized bootstraps mythology. “You
don’t have to pretend with me,” I say. We end up confiding in each
other.
Milton attends the 9/11 group therapy meetings regularly, and
when he sees me again, after so many years, he bows slightly, kisses
my hand, and says, “Señorita Karla, you’ve returned.” He is on
medication now, and it has helped, but at the beginning of his
treatment, things were bad. “I tried to take my life,” he says. A
psychologist who worked with some of the 9/11 survivors talked him
down from overdosing on pills over the phone, reassuring him that

he was loved. Milton also sees a psychiatrist who once talked him
down from throwing himself onto the train tracks.
Milton speaks in an overly formal way with the affect of a dictator.
This makes me think of my father, another amateur Fidel—and I
think about meeting my father for what felt like the first time, all
those years ago, when I was five. One of the first things he did was
take me to the zoo. It was both random and perfect, a reminder that
we were still here, animals ourselves, on earth.
I ask Milton if he’d like to go to the Queens Zoo. He says yes.
The Queens Zoo does not have a lion, which is the mascot of
Milton’s favorite soccer team. Milton used to play professionally in
Colombia, and then he played in a league of immigrant men every
week in the park for years, before he was diagnosed with asthma
after 9/11 and had to stop. Although he has mixed feelings about
observing animals that are “trapped,” Milton takes lots of pictures at
the zoo. He has never been to one before, and I wish I had taken him
to the Bronx Zoo, which is bigger and better in every way. The only
animals here are coyotes, elk, owls, pumas, lynx, bald eagles, cranes,
alligators (seasonal), bison, antelope, peccaries, thick-billed parrots,
and Andean bears. It is cold and windy, not a great day to spend time
outdoors, and Milton is wearing a cream coat over a white puff vest,
white sneakers, and a checkered gray scarf. I’m wearing a puff coat
too, and sometimes when we pass our reflections on the glass panes
of animal exhibits, I wonder whether a stranger passing us would
think I am his daughter.
We go by the graveyard of extinct animals. It is what it sounds like
—tombstones on the ground with pictures of extinct species and their
year of extinction. There is a golden toad (1989), a dodo bird (1681),
a Tasmanian tiger (1936), and pig-footed bandicoot (1901). Do you
know what that is? When they were alive, they looked like tiny sandcolored mice with bunny ears, and stood with a kangaroo’s stance—
really cute. Milton feels genuinely sad that these animals are gone
and tells me he hates the American culture of hunting. “Hunting for
pleasure is putting an end to creation. God creates for a reason,” he
says.

Does god allow death for a reason? I ask him. Milton does not
know.
The chief tragedy in Milton’s life is the loss of his friend Rafael
Hernández, a Mexican volunteer firefighter who also served as a 9/11
first responder. Milton met Rafael at a resting station for relief
workers, where he saw him in a blue helmet. “It looked like he was
wearing a costume,” he says. He asked Rafael if he spoke Spanish.
“Uh, I’m Mexican,” Rafael replied. They became friends.
Rafael had been a firefighter in Mexico and showed his Mexican
firefighter badge to the first responders, and they geared him up.
They didn’t care that he was foreign. They needed all the help they
could get. As everyone else was running out of the buildings, Rafael
ran up the North Tower. He encountered a pregnant woman whose
water broke. She begged him not to leave her, and he didn’t. He
reportedly carried her down twenty-eight flights of stairs. Not long
after they made it out, the tower fell.
Rafael didn’t leave Ground Zero for months, working day after
day. Eventually his lungs got so fucked up he had to be hooked up to
a respirator to sleep. He died in 2011, the ten-year anniversary of
9/11. Milton shows me a shrink-wrapped CD a folksinger friend had
made in honor of the anniversary. The back of the CD shows a fading
image of the two towers with the faces of Milton and Rafael above
them. Rafael was declared to have died of “natural causes,” which
officials later explained actually meant “alcoholism and obesity,” but
Latinx leaders in New York have refused to accept that
pronouncement. His body was repatriated to Mexico and his organs
kept in New York for further investigation. In a Fox News Latino
television interview taped before his death, Rafael is incorrectly
introduced as “Juan Hernandez: Hero in His Adopted Homeland.”
The camera zooms in on his heavily inked upper arm, tattooed with a
huge bald eagle, an American flag, the downtown Manhattan skyline,
the Twin Towers, and his initials: “R. H. Mex.”
Their friendship was so famous that some gossips in Queens say
they were gay, Milton tells me. He misses Rafael. He was the only
person who could really understand what it was like to be there. As a

way of coping, Milton has written a memoir called Sueño, pesadilla,
paraíso (“Dream, Nightmare, Paradise”). He explains the title: “My
dream was never money. I had a great job in Colombia. My ex-wife
and I fled the war. Before Pablo Escobar was extradited, he ordered
bombs to be planted everywhere as an act of revenge, and I narrowly
escaped two bombs—a car bomb and a bomb at a local mall. So my
dream was to find a peaceful life. My nightmare was 9/11, and also
going from working in an office to being mistreated in a factory—to
being treated like an uneducated person. My paradise is having
found god, and paradise will be returning to Colombia when I am
old.” After he told Rafael he was writing a book, his friend used to say
he wanted to weld together their living room walls, his in Mexico and
Milton’s in Colombia, so they could share a wall and write their
books together as old men.
Milton believes that he has been chosen by god to be a messenger
for the Ground Zero undocumented workers, maybe for our people
in general. He looks so damn earnest when he says this—not in the
pathetic way that makes me want to kill myself, in the self-assured
way that makes me feel like I’m back in my mother’s uterus—that I
almost believe him. When I mention this to my friends, they think
it’s fanaticism, but I don’t. I believe him.
—
The first of our losses happened on September 11, 2001. Years later,
during my freshman year at college, a popular topic of conversation
in the dining hall was where you were on 9/11. I learned that no
matter how far away you were from New York that day, no matter
how distant your connection to that day was, no matter how much
lower than zero the count of the people you lost on that day was, if
you were white, 9/11 happened to you personally, with blunt and
scalding force. Because the antithesis of an American is an
immigrant and because we could not be victims in the public eye, we
became suspects. And so September 11 changed the immigration
landscape forever. Muslims and Sikhs became the target of hate

crimes. ICE was the creation of 9/11 paranoia. The Secure
Communities program would require local police to share
information with Homeland Security. Immigration detention centers
began to be managed by private prison groups. And New York State,
as well as most other states, axed driver’s licenses for undocumented
immigrants.
I think about this often; that was the night my dad started dying.
In this memory, my father comes home from work and I greet him in
the doorway to give him a kiss hello and ask for his blessing. Do you
know this custom? I’ve only seen Ecuadorians do it. You go up to
your elders and say “Bendición,” and they kiss you or do the sign of
the cross on your forehead and chest and say “Bendición.” It’s how
you say hello or goodbye, like your de facto state is a state of
cursedness and your elders can un-curse you, but only for a little
while, so you have to keep asking. So I stand in the doorway in my
bare feet and say “Hello, Father. Blessing please.” He walks slowly
and comes toward my body at a strange angle a child could only
interpret as a terrible fall. He collapses onto me to cry into my neck.
I’m little, but he does. Collapse, I mean. My father the dictator,
heaving full-throated sobs. He hands me a letter. The letter says, in
English, that Governor George Pataki had suspended driver’s
licenses for undocumented immigrants as part of a national security
measure. My father had just lost his job as a taxi driver. He had also
lost his state ID. Over the next two decades, he’d lose many more
things, but let’s put a little blue thumbtack on this memory map, the
first place in hell we visited.
It was hard to see my father fall because he was the most powerful
person I knew. He had kept me alive. He was a difficult man and he
had recognized me as a difficult child. I was polite and craved
approval from authority figures, but I was also dark and precocious.
Not precocious in the we-live-in-Tribeca-and-my-kid-is-a-born-artist
kind of way. More like my immigrant-third-grader-is-readingHemingway-but-is-secretly-drinking-Listerine-and-toothpaste-untilshe-throws-up-because-she-wants-it-to-kill-her kind of way. My
father read parenting books about how to raise troubled children, but

those children were never straight-A students who were soft-spoken
and loved teachers. It confused him, and the dissonance made him
angry at me. When I was off from school, for any kind of break, my
father would plan out my day in half-hour increments, scheduling
everything from bath time to TV shows to coloring time to math
drills to time to play with dolls, and even bathroom breaks. He called
it my schedule and he handwrote it on graph paper in different
colored inks and taped it to my desk. My mother stayed home at the
time, and she enforced the schedule. If I became too emotional, I was
sent to take a cold shower. If my mood became low, he made me go
running or roller-skating. He’d give me research projects about
animals or important politicians and entire passages from the Bible
to memorize. He’d set aside magazine or newspaper articles for me
to translate in perfect handwriting into blank notebooks. He could
not review the fidelity of the translation but he judged my
penmanship. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I had
not been kept away from my own thoughts for so many years. I
believe god sent my father. Maybe that’s why I believe god could
have sent Milton, too.
Paloma is an older member of Lucero’s support group. She talks
like a mumble rapper, low and guttural and with a deliberate lack of
enunciation. She can laugh and cry within seconds. Paloma is
recovering from cancer, lives alone, and is severely traumatized. She
says she is so afraid of ICE activity that she literally runs in and out
of doctors’ appointments so they don’t catch her. Like, runs. She has
installed surveillance cameras outside her apartment in case agents
come to her door. “They don’t want us in this country,” she says. “We
have to be careful.”
One Sunday I meet Paloma at the ten o’clock mass at Sacred
Heart of Jesus Church in Queens but she does not want me to sit
with her. “You can meet me outside after,” she says. The church is
filled with a couple hundred families. I take a seat in the back.
The Catholic Church is, above all things, reliable across centuries.
I can see this same mass taking place at the height of the Cold War,
maybe even during the Inquisition. The priest has white skin and

white hair, while the hundreds in the pews are brown-skinned people
with black, black hair. He hates one bishop. He loves another bishop.
They’re not even American bishops. He sometimes makes side
comments under his breath that I assume he assumes the
congregants won’t catch (“Margaret Thatcher, a British woman who
looked like a man”) during a short rant against communism. He
advises the congregants against practicing witchcraft or seeking
traditional healing when they return to their home countries “on
vacation,” and leads them in prayer, asking god “that the church be
enriched by mercy and charity” before passing the collection plate.
It’s been a while since I’ve been to church, and I’d forgotten the back
rows are reserved for people who go in and out, mothers with young
babies. (“This is the scandalous symphony we’ve been listening to all
morning,” the priest mutters harshly when he hears the cries of a
baby with Down syndrome being held by a young woman standing in
the aisle.) Today’s reading is from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
There is talk about abominations. I look up at the ceiling.
I meet Paloma outside, by a white marble statue of Jesus Christ
yanking open his flowing robes, revealing his sacred heart. The
sacred heart of Jesus is depicted as the literal coronary organ—
pierced, aflame, surrounded by thorns, and wounded. It signifies the
power of his love for us. I’ve seen it tattooed on gangsters and I love
it.
We walk several blocks to La Hacienda, a Colombian restaurant
that I remember loving as a child. On the way there, Paloma
repeatedly walks into traffic. She doesn’t look both ways, she doesn’t
even look one way, she just lunges in front of honking SUVs. I don’t
say anything but link my arm through hers to guide her, at times
pulling her back so she’s not hit by a car. Her vision is fine. I wonder
if it’s a death wish, Freud something something, but then I notice
that I can’t see more than a few feet ahead of me. Women roast corn
and kebabs on makeshift grills on every corner, and cumbia blasts
from record stores that still sell CDs. My senses feel rushed. It’s a
short walk to the restaurant, but Paloma gets short of breath and

struggles to talk on account of her ruined lungs. I get out of breath,
too.
At the restaurant, she orders raspberry juice in milk and I order a
Corona. Whenever I steer the conversation to 9/11, she begins to cry.
My parents scolded and taunted me whenever I cried as a child—they
found it weak and threatening—and so I don’t like to see people cry.
It embarrasses and angers me. I change the topic every time her eyes
water. Paloma had cleaned properties in Lower Manhattan that
included international banks and—the irony—the former
Immigration and Naturalization Service building. (INS became ICE
in 2003.) On the morning of 9/11, she was working on the fortieth
floor of a government building when a fire erupted in the elevator—
the buildings around the World Trade Center were also damaged by
the blasts—and the workers had to flee down the stairs. She left a
shoe behind. The building was still smoking when they returned to
clean. “We even ate on top of the dust,” she says. “Yes, we were
heroes, but the dangers of the job were hidden from us so that we
could work. If they had put up a sign at the site listing what we could
come to face, we wouldn’t have gone in.”
Paloma has a string of illnesses that are common to all of the
cleanup workers—sleep apnea, PTSD, depression, anxiety,
gastrointestinal issues. She also has breast cancer. She can’t work
because her bones hurt, and she often gets fevers, chills, and vertigo.
She is waiting for the Zadroga Act to send her a compensation check,
which some friends have already received, friends who don’t even
have cancer.
Paloma fled Colombia for the usual reasons—economic
depression, bankruptcy in the family, the need to support her ailing
mother. But she also had another reason. “The truth is I am an
escape artist,” she says. Paloma grew up with an abusive stepfather.
Once, after he beat her, she swore she would run away as soon as she
had the chance. This was the 1970s in small-town Colombia, and she
was a sixteen-year-old girl. Her only way to escape was to get
married, so that’s what she did—she married the first guy who asked.
She was seventeen. “I did it to escape,” she says. She immediately got

pregnant, and would come to have three daughters. She didn’t love
being a mom but she did her best. She got increasingly restless as the
years went by. It all began to change when her fifteen-year-old
daughter Lucy got pregnant and her boyfriend didn’t want to marry
her. (“Am I supposed to marry her just to make you happy?” the boy
yelled at Paloma. So she punched him in the face.) Lucy bounced
back quickly after childbirth and began leaving the baby with Paloma
all the time so she could go out with her boyfriend or go to parties.
Paloma didn’t love being a grandma, and she didn’t love being a fulltime babysitter. “I didn’t want to live that life. I got tired of it. I’m not
the type of woman who just puts up with shit,” she tells me. “I wasn’t
born to be just a mother, just a grandmother, just a wife. So I
escaped.” She left her grandchild, her three daughters (including one
who was just seven years old), and her husband, and she came to the
United States alone.
Paloma tells me that her brother drowned himself, one of her
cousins hanged himself, and another one threw himself off a tall
building in Bogotá. She wonders: If she had stayed in Colombia,
would she have followed suit? She acknowledges this thought with
contempt. “What they did was cowardly,” she says. “My entire family
is weak. I’m not weak like them. I’d rather be miserable here than
end up in a cemetery in Colombia. I’m here, and I may be crying, but
at least I’m not dead.” I ask Paloma if she would choose to have
children if she had a second shot at life, and she thinks for a long
time, wrapping her head around the fact that it could be a choice.
“No,” she says finally. She has spent years apologizing to her
daughters, but they resent her for the abandonment and it’s a wound
that doesn’t heal. It’s what would await her in Colombia if she went
back. More open wounds. After she finishes her juice, she leans close
to me and tells me about Cruz.
Cruz is a little older than she is. Cuban. When he was young, he
was bad, served his time, but he’s clean now. They met when he was
working delivering furniture and delivered a refrigerator to her
home. He told her he liked her—a straight shooter, which she
admired—and he gave her his phone number. Six months passed,

and she called him one evening. “I was bored,” she says, giggling.
They went out for cappuccinos and talked all night. He wasn’t scared
by her baggage, by the depression and panic attacks, and she
comforted him because he had been recently widowed. Cruz wants to
marry Paloma, but she won’t divorce her husband in Colombia, even
though soon after she left, he began dating the children’s teenage
nanny, because when he dies she is entitled to part of his pension.
She and the nanny will split it. I love this woman.
Paloma was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. Her doctors
believe the cancer is linked to her elevated exposure to toxins during
the post-9/11 cleanup work. The news made Paloma feel bitter,
hopeless, and punished by god. Surely he was punishing her for
abandoning her children. What kind of mother would do that? She
threw herself into church, into prayer. She spends a lot of time online
watching Christian movies and reading Christian blogs. “I’m more
than a believer,” she says. “I’m a fanatic. I see Jesus Christ right in
front of me, as real as I see you.”
At first, Cruz would accompany her to her doctors’ appointments.
After her surgery, he hid in the hospital room so he wouldn’t be
kicked out after visiting hours and could spend the night with her.
But she was getting ready to die. She took all her savings, including a
little compensation money she had received from the September 11th
Victim Compensation Fund, and traveled to Panama alone. The first
vacation of her life. Then she went back to Colombia, why else but to
die, to die in her homeland surrounded by family, which seemed
appropriate, even if she knew they wouldn’t give her a hero’s
welcome, and they didn’t. Then, at a routine doctor’s appointment in
Colombia, the doctor told her that she was cancer-free. “I said, I’m
out of here!” she says, and she peaced out just like that. She came
back to the United States by a means I am not going to disclose. She
arrived in Las Vegas, and Cruz rented a truck from New York, driving
for days to pick her up and bring her back to the city. On their road
trip, they’d drive for seven-hour stretches, then stop at the closest
town to explore. “It was a special trip,” she says. “One of the most
special moments of my life. Can you believe he did that?” At a

routine appointment in New York, the doctor told her he had bad
news. The cancer was back, and it was aggressive. After several
rounds of chemotherapy, Paloma is too weak to work and her savings
are depleted.
I ask for the check, and Paloma asks that both our leftovers—roast
chicken, rice and beans, sweet plantain—be packed to go. I ask her if
we can pass by a Colombian bakery so I can buy her some baked
goods. “Sweetie, I would say yes, but I’m on a diet,” she says. Her
doctor told her she’s a little on the heavy side for her height. She
plans to lose twenty-five pounds. Tonight she will eat our leftovers.
Tomorrow she will eat only apples. She walks me to my train stop,
again veering into traffic unless I hold tightly on to her arm, the fog
thick and close to the ground so we can’t see ahead of us and we can’t
see our feet. When I hug her, I slip a twenty-dollar bill into her hand.
“For a special treat,” I tell her. “I’m on a diet, Karlita, but god bless
you,” she says.
Like Paloma, some of the members of Lucero’s group have already
received a few thousand dollars here and there through the
September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, a program set aside by
the federal government for proven victims of the attacks and their
living relatives. The man in charge of evaluating applications for the
fund was Kenneth R. Feinberg, a lawyer who had successfully settled
the Agent Orange lawsuits on behalf of the U.S. government. He had
unlimited funds but a clear end date. In 2003, the fund stopped
accepting applications, a time when many individuals were only
beginning to exhibit symptoms. Workers who did not make the
deadline fell back on unsubsidized treatment in city hospitals or
workers’ compensation payments. Treatment options were slim for
undocumented immigrants.
Over the phone, Feinberg tells me he thought that the 9/11 Fund
was “an extraordinary example of inclusiveness.”
“At the urging of Attorney General John Ashcroft, we
promulgated that no immigrant in the country illegally would be
harmed, we translated the application and rules into four languages
including Spanish, Korean, maybe French. We made sure that all

immigrants were given the opportunity for free legal counsel. We
held town hall meetings in the Bronx where we explained to
surviving immigrants that the death of their husbands would in no
way prevent them from filing.” He laughs. “I can’t think of a federal
program more inclusive and respectful of diversity.”
But in order for victims to be recognized by the Victim
Compensation Fund, they had to show paperwork proving they
worked at Ground Zero or lost someone that day. The undocumented
often work in clever ways to leave no paper trail. There is no telling
how many were killed because restaurant owners and managers have
refused to come forward with the names of missing people for fear
that they will be fined for employing undocumented laborers.
Deliverymen lost their brothers that day. Some men worked the
“graveyard shift”—between midnight and 8:00 A.M.—and were
finishing up their last deliveries and going home when the planes
struck. Advocacy organizations like Asociación Tepeyac worked
tirelessly to field calls from families who had not heard from a loved
one, and later to help the men and women who cleaned up Ground
Zero. Dr. Charles Hirsch, New York City’s chief medical examiner,
became “the gatekeeper to the official list” of WTC victims. The final
list contained 2,749 names of deaths that had been ruled homicides.
These 2,749 names would be inscribed on the memorial. The chief
medical examiner’s office said that there were no more missing
people. Said Julie Bolcer, director of public affairs, “The list accounts
for everyone known or reported to have been there. There are no
unknowns.” A few weeks after the towers fell, the city gave families
who reported disappearances an urn containing Ground Zero ashes.
The Mexican consulate held its own memorial service, reading the
names we know and praying for the names we don’t.
After my father lost his job as a taxi driver, he found a job as a
deliveryman at a restaurant down in the Financial District.
Deliverymen in that area call themselves “delivery boys.” Throughout
my teens, I always corrected my father when he said this because I
assumed the guys had heard it from some white supremacist boss
who was trying to emasculate them and they accepted it as a neutral

term. It made me furious. “There’s a history to white people calling
men of color boys,” I would tell him.
In the mornings, my father would deliver breakfast to offices in
the Financial District. A raisin bagel with cream cheese and coffee
with hazelnut creamer. A blueberry muffin and black coffee; two
cranberry scones and three coffees, two cream, one sugar. A single
croissant, and a single coffee, sent back because it was brought with
white sugar and not Splenda. Bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches.
Oatmeal with brown sugar. Yogurt parfaits. Orange juice and a
banana. A chamomile tea. A granola bar and a chocolate milk. There
was no delivery minimum, so my father delivered it all. Because the
deliveries were so small, sometimes he didn’t get a tip. Sometimes he
was told to keep the change—a quarter. Sometimes he was tipped in
pennies. He had to say, “Thank you, sir. Thank you, ma’am.”
Sometimes he was given a twenty-dollar tip for a five-dollar
breakfast. He always told us about those tips. They were usually from
Puerto Rican executive assistants who talked to him in Spanish and
asked to see photos of me, so good and studious, bangs cut right
above my eyebrows. My father complimented their nails and asked to
see photos of their babies.
Sometimes the deliverymen carried catering orders. Those would
sometimes involve two deliverymen, but that wasn’t ideal because
they had to split the tip. You never wanted to split the tip. The
delivery orders were large, but you can carry a lot with two hands if
you really try. The breakfast catering orders were usually an
assortment of scones, croissants, muffins, and bagels. You couldn’t
eat one yourself, though. The boss always knew if you ate one. If you
needed a water, you had to go up to the cash register and buy the
water. There was no discount. Sometimes the older men needed a
Red Bull, but the boss put up security cameras in the kitchen area so
he could tell if you had a Red Bull. He wouldn’t even charge you for it
if you had one. He’d just fire you. Do you think I need you? I don’t
even need to put an ad in the newspaper for this job. There are
twenty Mexicans who’d line up for your job—you think I’m going to
spot you a Red Bull?

My father is an aesthete. Everyone wanted him for the catering
orders because he’d do beautiful designs with the scones and the
muffins. Like topiary shit. He sometimes had to write labels on heavy
stock printer paper and he’d use his fanciest script; he taught himself
calligraphy, like he taught himself everything, and everyone would
go, Wow, you’re so talented! They always made him write the words
on cakes. Beautiful fucking handwriting. He’d come home glowing if
they complimented his handwriting. (My cursive was beautiful for a
long time until I started taking lithium and then my hand shook bad.
My dad was so sad.)
My father didn’t use a bike; he made all his deliveries on foot. He
speed-walked while carrying many heavy bags of food to offices on
Wall Street. The plastic handles of the bags would twist and cut into
his fingers, and he eventually developed large calluses on both his
hands. His polyester pants rubbed up against his calves so much that
he eventually lost all the hair on his legs. They’re smooth as a baby’s
bottom, even now. He went through many pairs of inexpensive black
rubber shoes. My mother massaged his feet at night. My dad’s feet
are small and fat, like mine, so you can’t tell when they’re swollen.
After a few years, my dad’s feet would hurt so much that he walked
like he was on hot coals, sometimes leaning on me to move from the
couch to the bed. “Ay ay ay ay,” he’d say as he limped, like a
mariachi. Most of my dad’s co-workers were Mexican, and he learned
how to cook Mexican food from them and he learned Mexican swear
words, which my mom hated. Some of them were young, teenagers,
and my dad would scold them and tell them to go back to school. He
made his first gay friend at that restaurant. They called him Che,
because he was Argentine.
When I was in high school, my dad began to share stories he’d
heard about undocumented restaurant workers who’d died on 9/11. I
decided to interview my dad’s co-workers for the first piece I had
ever pitched, for The Tribeca Trib. They were the only other
undocumented people I knew. I had just watched All the President’s
Men and wanted to break a story.

My father picked whom I could talk to, and he chaperoned the
interviews. He bought me a yellow flip notebook because I was
pretending to be a journalist and he knew that would make me feel
important. He also bought me a tape recorder from Kmart. I never
actually managed to talk to anyone who directly knew an
undocumented restaurant worker who died on 9/11, but everyone
had heard the stories.
The undocumented immigrants who died on 9/11 worked in
restaurants, in housekeeping, in security. They were also
deliverymen. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum now stands where the
Twin Towers once stood. They have an exhibit that gutted me when I
saw it. It’s a bicycle, presumed to have belonged to a deliveryman, a
bike that was left tied to a pole near the Twin Towers. Visitors to the
site had left acrylic flowers—red, white, and blue roses and
carnations. They also left a rosary on the bicycle. It became a
makeshift memorial. There was a note on the street next to the bike.
EN MEMORIA DE LOS DELIVERY BOYS QUE MURIERON. SEPT 11 2001. “In
memory of the delivery boys who died.” Delivery boys. That’s how I
know it was the delivery boys who put up that sign, who left those
acrylic flowers, men like my dad.
I wonder what the bike owner brought to the Twin Towers that
day. It was September, a mild day, so maybe an iced coffee. Black.
Probably a scone. Maybe a $4.50 breakfast. A 15 percent tip would be
sixty-seven cents. A 20 percent tip would be ninety cents. A generous
person might tip a dollar. My father would travel anywhere for a
dollar. My father would chase a dollar down the road, a dollar
blowing in the winds of a hurricane, even when there was an equal
likelihood of getting swept up by the wind. My dad would always take
the chance. A dollar is a dollar.
There was Antonio Meléndez, and Antonio Javier Álvarez, and
Leobardo López Pascual, and Juan Ortega-Campos, and Martín
Morales Zempoaltécatl, and Arturo Alba Moreno, and José Manuel
Contreras Fernández, and Germán Castillo García, and José Guevara
González, and Alicia Acevedo Carranza, and Víctor Antonio Martínez

Pastrana, and Juan Romero Orozco, and Enrique Octavio and Santos
Anaya, and Margarito Casillas, and Norberto Hernández.
There was also Fernando Jimenez Molinar, who worked at a pizza
shop nearby, delivering pies and washing dishes. He was nineteen
years old. (My brother is nineteen years old. Jesus Christ, the hair
above my brother’s lip, he’s so proud of it that he doesn’t shave. He
writes spoken-word poetry and keeps a dream journal. I bought it for
him; it has Batman on the cover. He collects comic books.) Fernando
had two roommates, undocumented like him, and they called his
mom when he didn’t come home on the night of 9/11. A local
Mexican organization looked everywhere for him. He was gone. The
Twin Towers fell shortly before 10:00 A.M. Who wanted a pizza
delivered that early? Probably a finance bro coked up after a long
night lying with numbers. Maybe he was high on Adderall. Hadn’t
eaten in twenty-four hours and was finally hungry, but only for pizza.
Probably a little older than Fernando, maybe twenty-two or twentythree. Harvard grad. Bro, is that my pizza?
Fernando’s mom didn’t want him to come to America. He went
anyway. He grew out his hair into a ponytail and grew a beard. That’s
what the newspapers say. But he was nineteen, and I know nineteen.
Nice beard. His sneakers were clean, white, like a fool’s. My father
always told his teenage co-workers not to get white sneakers, and
they always did anyway. Slaves to fashion. Earbuds in his ears.
Metallica. Mexicans and their Metallica. It’s not racist when I say it.
It was bright and sunny that day. His life ahead of him. The day
ahead of him. His mom still young. He could still change her life. He
could still tell his father off. The pizza delivery would net him five
dollars. That’s a calling card. He could call his mom, but the entire
card would be spent on her sending him blessings. He wanted to buy
her a house. A garden where she could grow her own flowers; she
loved marigolds, not bodega flowers like rainbow-colored carnations
—marigolds. The house would have one room for her, and an office
where she could read her Bible. The edges of the pages were colored
gold. He would get his mom a dog so she wouldn’t be lonely. She
liked frilly things, so maybe she’d like a poodle, but he wanted to get

her a German shepherd, something to protect her, bark if anyone but
him approached the house. So many people had hurt his mother, but
not again. Not under his watch. His mother, his saint. Sometimes
he’d swing by hair salons and steal the lady magazines and send
them to her. Sometimes when he called she’d describe the dresses
she loved from the magazines over the phone, and he resolved to buy
them. She loved silk. His mother never knew silk. He’d make her
know silk. He’d make her know death. He’d make her know silence.
He’d make her know the death mask of a man disappeared,
incinerated, and gone. Fernando Jimenez Molinar? Was he ever
alive?
Did you know that before dialing Mexico you have to dial 011?
There are so many numbers to dial to get to your mother. 1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 0. You learn those numbers young. The jet-fuel smell thick in
the air, the flame and smoke surrounding you, you can only get to
011 and that’s enough to make you foreign, to make you other, to
make you Mexican. You take out your wallet and put an ID between
your teeth so they can find you when it all collapses. Your flesh may
burn but your teeth will remain and the ID will be there. It’s a fake
ID. Nobody will ever know you died. Nobody will ever know you
lived.

CHAPTER 3

Miami

T

he city of Hialeah in Miami-Dade County is the last bit of U.S.
soil on which Amelia Earhart stood before embarking on her doomed
solo flight in 1937, disappearing in the Pacific Ocean somewhere near
Howland Island. I’m about to go to Hialeah on a reporting trip, so I
text this factoid to my mother. At fifty-three, she is in the middle of a
feminist awakening and is usually eager to talk about feminist heroes
to compare herself to—unlike my father, who compares me to those
women instead. A few days later, she texts me a picture of a tiny pilot
costume for a dog, saying she is at a white people’s pet boutique and
she is about to buy my dog, Frankie, a leather jacket and matching
pilot cap. Oh my god, I say.
I never write about my mother. Why do you never write about
me? my mother asks, a copy of The New York Times on her lap open
to a two-page spread about my father. Of course I write about you, I
say. You don’t, she says. I don’t, it’s true I don’t. The obvious answer
to that is that I have daddy issues. (“Stop saying that,” my partner
says. “It doesn’t mean what you think it means.”) My father was the
one who worked outside the house for twenty-five years, so he was
the one facing grueling labor conditions and racist abuse on the front
lines in America. I thought my mother was protected somehow
because she was in the home.

And when she stepped out into the wild to work outside the home
three years ago, she went to work for these white people who didn’t
abuse her so I was like, okay, we’re okay. Working outside the home
changed her, she became this whole new woman, emancipated and
bold, and it caused problems at home. You always take your father’s
side, she said, adiós. She was always hanging up on me. I am not
taking my father’s side! I’m being objective! I scream into the phone,
but she’s gone. She drinks organic kombucha, once mailed me a
leather leash because she thought Frankie looked “homeless,” and
has zero tolerance for my father’s temper, the third member of their
marriage.
I sometimes fantasize about my parents divorcing. It’d devastate
my brother but that’s why I pay for his therapy. I’d be relieved. I’ve
looked for houses in Havana where my dad wants to “retire” and I
can maybe afford that, if I sell a book and TV show every few years,
and keep my kidneys healthy and available. I imagine my mom
would live with my brother, who will remain a Jehovah’s Witness,
like our parents, and marry someone young and nice and equally
interested in having two biological children. My brother sure does
love my mother, in a whole, pure, white-woman-at-a-farmer’smarket kind of way, but that’s because my mom didn’t leave him in
Ecuador before he could speak, so there aren’t many things unsaid
between them.
I’ve always been super casual when people ask me about my
parents having left me in Ecuador. That’s a bravado I’d like to keep
on the official record but something else intrudes. I love my mom.
She’s a hard worker. She’s a feminist. She’s kind to you if you’re 1)
my partner or 2) a formerly abused dog. But we haven’t talked about
her leaving me in Ecuador when I was a year and a half old.
Sometimes I do adorable things like take pictures of myself chugging
vodka bottles or pretending to down the contents of a pill bottle and
send them to her with the caption “because you abandoned me” but,
lately, in response to those jokes, she’s begun to suggest it was my
dad’s fault. When I meet a toddler, I’m like, damn, I was a baby
baby. When I am away from my partner and dog for a few days for

work, and it’s hard, I wonder how they were able to do it for five
years.
I don’t blame either of them for it. I never have. What I’m
describing to you is dirt extracted from a very tight pore. I don’t feel
anything about being left on the day-to-day but I am told by mental
health experts that it has affected me. And I fought that conclusion. I
denied it. I wanted to be a genius. I wanted my mental illnesses to be
purely biological. I wanted to have been born wild and crazy and
weird and brilliant, writing math equations in chalk on a window.
Instead, therapist after therapist told me I had attachment issues and
that my mental illnesses were related to my childhood. I left those
therapists. Ghosted them.
But it’s not just those early years without my parents that branded
me. It’s the life I’ve led in America as a migrant, watching my parents
pursue their dream in this country and then having to deal with its
carcass, witnessing the crimes against migrants carried out by the
U.S. government with my hands bound. As an undocumented
person, I felt like a hologram. Nothing felt secure. I never felt safe. I
didn’t allow myself to feel joy because I was scared to attach myself
to anything I’d have to let go of. Being deportable means you have to
be ready to go at any moment, ready to go with nothing but the
clothes on your body. I’ve learned to develop no relationship to
anything, not to photos, not to people, not to jewelry or clothing or
ticket stubs or stuffed animals from childhood. Sometimes to prove
my ability to let go, I’ll write something long and delete it, or go on
my phone and delete all the photos I have of happy memories. I’ve
never loved a material object. When my parents took me home after
my Harvard graduation, we took the Chinatown bus, and we each
took one suitcase. If it didn’t fit, we threw it out. We threw out
everything that wasn’t clothes.
The U.S. government’s crimes against immigrants are beyond the
pale and the whole world knows. At protests I’ve been to outside of
courthouses and ICE offices, I’ve seen white people carry signs
plastered with images of the drowned bodies of Oscar Alberto
Martinez Ramirez and his toddler, Angie Valeria, on the banks of the

Rio Grande. But when I was growing up, and throughout the Obama
administration, these same crimes were happening, if on a different
scale, and I’m not sure the same people cared. I felt crazy for
thinking we were under attack, watching my neighbors disappear
and then going to school and watching the nightly news and
watching award shows and seeing no mention. I felt crazy watching
the white supremacist state slowly kill my father and break my family
apart. I would frantically tell everyone that there was no such thing
as the American Dream but then some all-star immigrants around
me who had done things “the right way” preached a different story
and Americans ate that up. It all made me feel crazy. I also am crazy.
Pero why? My diagnoses are borderline personality disorder, major
depression, anxiety, and OCD. (I love diagnoses. Gives you the ability
to read about yourself.) Researchers have shown that the flooding of
stress hormones resulting from a traumatic separation from your
parents at a young age kills off so many dendrites and neurons in the
brain that it results in permanent psychological and physical
changes. One psychiatrist I went to told me that my brain looked like
a tree without branches.
So I just think about all the children who have been separated
from their parents, and there’s a lot of us, past and present, and
some under more traumatic circumstances than others—like those
who are in internment camps right now—and I just imagine us as an
army of mutants. We’ve all been touched by this monster, and our
brains are forever changed, and we all have trees without branches in
there, and what will happen to us? Who will we become? Who will
take care of us?
—
I went to Miami in 2017, shortly after the House of Representatives
voted 217 to 213 to replace the Affordable Care Act with a new piece
of legislation that listed cesarean sections, rape, and depression as
preexisting conditions. Experts estimated it would strip healthcare
from twenty-three million Americans over the next decade. Miami

could hardly afford the blow. Miami-Dade has the state’s largest
number of employed yet uninsured adults, as well as record-setting
rates of heart disease, diabetes, and HIV infection.
Undocumented immigrants in Florida who do not have insurance
have experiences that are not dissimilar from those of other
uninsured people, but the key difference is that it is impossible for
undocumented immigrants to purchase insurance, even if they can
afford it. One of the bogeymen of the right, in this country or any
Western country, is the image of the sick immigrant—the supposed
strain on the healthcare system, the burden on emergency rooms and
taxpayers. I cannot overstate how little interest I have in changing
the minds of people who might believe this—I’d honestly rather
swallow a razor blade than be expected to change the mind of a
xenophobe. But I’m curious about the bogeyman so I thought to
explore it.
What I discovered was a story about illness and healing in migrant
communities through the lens of women—caretakers and rebels.
These women were also coincidentally like my mother, immigrant
women married to immigrant men, mothers to immigrant and
citizen children, looking back on decades of the American Dream and
taking stock.
During my first trip, they were kind, nurturing, supportive, and so
proud of me. We kept in touch all year. I’m ashamed to say it, but I
sometimes fantasized about one of them being my mom. You’re so
beautiful and so smart! they’d text me with a flurry of heart emojis,
and I’d compare that to my mother sending me pictures of herself in
mink hats and vintage dresses, saying I needed to lose thirty pounds
before her death so I could inherit her clothing. But when I visited
the ladies in Miami a second time, a year later, they sounded more
like my mom. They confided in me the same things she has confided
in me. They were restless. They wanted more for their lives, and I
couldn’t help them.
—

Julieta and I meet at the corner of a construction site. The air is thick
with dust, and against the grim heat and among the empty storefront
windows stands a small coral building with a roof painted gold. A
placard outside advertises Macondo, the local pharmacy.
Julieta is thirty-nine years old and Nicaraguan, a big woman with
the cheerful, paranoid manner of a debutante with a secret. The
morning we see each other, she has her hair in a messy knot and is
on her way to the beauty salon to get ready for her goddaughter’s
quinceañera. She doesn’t talk about her children unless you
specifically ask, and even then she offers the most succinct of
answers. Her eldest daughter is twenty-two years old and a recipient
of DACA. Her eleven-year-old daughter is an American citizen.
Within the first few minutes of the first time we talked, a couple of
weeks before my trip, she told me about having procured a cheap
prescription for a yeast infection. On the phone, she was boisterous.
In person, she is more subdued but warm. On her neck hangs a chain
with a solid gold and ruby pendant of a salamander in honor of Luna,
her pet salamander of seventeen years whom she saved from a pet
store within days of arriving in the United States. Luna died a few
months ago, and Julieta rests her hand on the pendant when she
talks.
Julieta gives me instructions before we go in. We need to be
careful because Macondo is one of a handful of pharmacies in Miami
where uninsured immigrants can purchase prescription medication
at inexpensive prices and without a prescription, and the people who
run it wouldn’t take kindly to questions from a stranger. These
pharmacies run the clandestine operation from the back. “They know
my face, I know their faces. They sell to me because of my accent.
Whenever I need a medication that requires a prescription, I can get
it there, though not very serious ones. They are very strict about
some,” Julieta explains. She tells me of a Dominican pharmacy
elsewhere in Miami that sells a drug that helps addicts cope with
withdrawal without a prescription. “They know they’re doing
something they shouldn’t be doing, but they understand the human
necessity,” she says. “I have gone to them with my face swollen

because of molar pain and they gave me something for the pain. I can
go to Walgreens and they won’t give me something even if I’m dying
in front of them.”
The pharmacy is run by a woman around sixty years old, who
wears her hair down and blow-dried straight and puts on thick eye
makeup behind her wire-rimmed glasses—impractical choices. “They
call her a doctor but she doesn’t do consultations,” says Julieta. I am
not allowed to ask her questions.
The pharmacy sells homeopathic ointments and creams. They also
sell cleaning supplies, Central American folk dresses, pants sets in
tiny sizes for children, and off-brand makeup. There are glassenclosed shelves under lock and key, prudishly guarding condoms,
yeast-infection treatments, and pregnancy tests. Julieta approaches a
young woman who assists the doctor and who has “trained” at the
pharmacy for many years. Julieta asks me for a symptom to relay to
the young woman, and I describe a toothache, which I had in earnest
the day before. I describe swollen gums where my wisdom teeth had
been extracted, which the Internet tells me is a phantom pain. I ask
Julieta if one might be able to purchase pain medication, and she
asks for hospital-grade Tylenol. The young woman gives Julieta five
pills in a small white envelope. We walk outside and stand on the
street corner where we met, squinting in the sun and shielding our
faces from the dust. She tells me that if I had walked into the
pharmacy on my own, they would not have given me anything
because of my accent. “Do you mean an Ecuadorian accent?” I ask
leadingly. (My Spanish is telenovela Spanish: fluent, formal,
regionally vague.) “Well, just your accent, they would have known
not to trust you because of your accent,” she says.
I ask Julieta if she ever resorts to alternative medicine in the
absence of access to doctors, and she dismisses folk medicine as
something that Cubans and Haitians do. “They have ridiculous
beliefs with respect to medicine, and you’re not going to leave them
without them doing a prayer on you,” she says. Instead, she describes
another form of alternative medicine. “I have migraines and I have a
Cuban neighbor who loves me. She was born here, and she’s insured.

She goes to her doctor and pretends she has migraines, she says that
the light bothers her, that she throws up, and he gives her
medication. She shares. A lot of people count on other people. My
sister is a citizen and she gives her blood pressure medicine to a
woman who is undocumented.”
Julieta swears by hospital-grade Tylenol because she, too,
sometimes gets intense pain in her molar. She goes to a Honduran
man who was a dentist in his home country but cannot legally
practice in the United States; instead he goes to private homes to fill
cavities. “He does a very good job,” she says. I have only a couple of
dozen memories of my early childhood, and one is of my father
writhing on the floor with tooth pain. My mother and I just stood
back and watched, sometimes bending over to pat his arm, until the
pain stopped—it took about a day. Either he would die from the pain
or the pain would stop, and that time it stopped.
All my life, I have accompanied my parents to the doctor. I am
their interpreter and advocate. They have gone to the emergency
room only once, being pretty good about preventive healthcare and
making regular appointments at the local community health center
that sees low-income people on a sliding scale. For years, the chief
doctor there was an Indian man who didn’t speak great English and
didn’t speak great Spanish but who spoke with patients of all
nationalities and languages without an interpreter anyway. He didn’t
like me and I didn’t like him. When my mom was in her forties she
found a lump in her breast, and he explained to me why ordering
mammograms for women in their forties was a waste of resources,
especially when the patient was uninsured and insurance couldn’t
pay for it, if you looked at the number of lives that early detection of
breast cancer saved. I don’t think doctors are supposed to worry
about the bottom line, I tell him. Didn’t you take an oath? I am
maybe eighteen. Aren’t you smart, he says. That’s her! She goes to
Harvard, my mom says. That’s right, motherfucker. I go to school in
Boston. Well, not Boston. Cambridge. Just a little school in
Cambridge. One day I’ll make so much money that I’ll pay for my
mom’s mammograms in cash, in crisp one-dollar bills, like a

muhfucking kingpin. I’ll buy this clinic and turn it into a museum
for myself, in honor of me. I can hang up your children’s diplomas
for a special exhibition on children of doctors who go to state school,
you cheap-ass motherfucker. I will ruin you.
“She has history of breast cancer in her family” is what I actually
said.
A lie.
“I’d appreciate it if you ordered one.”
—
I have had the good fortune, mere dumb luck, to always have had
access to decent healthcare—New York City provides low-cost
insurance to minors in low-income families, and then I went on to
universities that provide insurance to their students—and I view it
with the awe and gratitude that only someone who has seen
healthcare rationed could appreciate. When I was a child and I was
sick, I went to the doctor. When my parents got sick, I saw them
breathe in the vapor from a boiling pot of chamomile to moisten
their inflamed bronchi, not the most effective way of treating
bronchitis. But you just said your parents had access to the local
community clinic, you say? Sure, for preventive healthcare. Blood
pressure, weight management, the common cold. My mother has low
hemoglobin levels. You can’t get care for that on a sliding scale. In a
New York Times article from 2015 titled “Wary of Mainstream
Medicine, Immigrants Seek Remedies from Home,” the author
writes wide-eyed about the use of medicinal herbs among
immigrants in New York who buy them at folk shops called
botanicas.
But I don’t find this reliance on folk medicine charmingly
idiosyncratic. Celebrating the treatment of illness with herbs
purchased at the same place where love potions are sold is curious to
me, especially through the gaze of an outsider. Many people I know,
educated, well-off people, love alternative medicine. Whether the
effect is real or placebo is not the pressing issue here, so much as the

matter of choice and access. Those with resources might drink
alternative tea treatments but will ultimately have the choice to have
their cancer treated with chemotherapy and not herbs, an option
undocumented immigrants do not have.
But if you’re going to try to treat an illness with herbs or prayer,
you’re probably going to have to frequent a botanica. Botanicas are
named for the herbs sold inside shops that also stock oils, soaps,
sprays, washes, statues, rosaries, amulets, books, and animal skulls.
They’re everywhere in immigrant neighborhoods. I wasn’t allowed to
go inside them as a kid because they were associated with dark
magic. That’s because for most of my childhood we were Catholic,
and then Jehovah’s Witness, while the belief systems that support
the botanicas are vodou and Santería, two misunderstood religions
that date back centuries. Santería and vodou were born when the
Spaniards and French forced conquered peoples to convert to
Catholicism but the people found a way to continue practicing their
religions by combining them with Catholic iconography and rituals.
It is difficult to know how many botanicas there are in the United
States because they are commonly registered as religious or herbal
stores (or pet shops, because they sell small animals) and are thus
not subject to the regulations that would apply to therapeutic
establishments—including the need to register with the government,
but that doesn’t stop some Latinx people from using them for
medical treatment.
In Miami, a woman named Esme—whom I met through Julieta—
tells me she sometimes uses botanica herbs to treat illnesses, and I
ask her to show me around some local botanicas. Esme is forty-nine
years old and has lived in the United States for fourteen years. She
has a dusting of freckles on her nose, with skin and hair the color of
dull copper. Esme finds everything funny and her laughter is
contagious. We meet at an overly air-conditioned Starbucks, where
she orders a hot chocolate. “I’m a defender of alternative medicines,”
she says. But she erupts into laughter every time she mentions the
herbs she used to treat a recent bout of pneumonia because she
couldn’t see a doctor. “I don’t know what cured me, but I got better.”

Her husband, Johnny, picks us up in his car. Unless you live in
cities where immigrants can legally drive or in cities with excellent
systems of public transportation, to be undocumented means you
drive without a license in order to simply go about your day, which
means always running the risk of being pulled over, charged, and
deported. I am a little afraid when I get in the car because we could
be stopped for literally anything, but I relax when I learn her
husband is a permanent resident. We drive to the Great One
Corporation, a large storefront with a garish seascape mural covering
two walls. A mermaid that looks like Cher advertises that they are
also florists. They do sell a lot of ceramics, but the only pets I can see
are the small canaries in cages for sale along the entire length of a
wall. “Oh, here’s some linden blossom,” Esme says as she points to a
splintery yellow flower. “It’s for nerves but it never works for me.”
There are baskets containing uva ursi, which looks a bit like holly,
and yerba Buena. A tall porcelain figure of a black orisha named
Obatala, the chief orisha and creator of human bodies, stands on a
glass shelf. He is black, with a long, flowing gray beard, and wears a
white turban and cloak. Underneath Obatala is a stash of brazilwood,
said to cure diabetes, anemia, high blood pressure, and UTIs, and to
be generally helpful in purifying blood. Nearby are piles of
screwdrivers and hammers. Botanica Olocum is also a hardware
store.
I approach two women behind the counter and ask them what
they’d recommend for depression. They are both middle-aged. One
of them has bleached hair. They look at each other and have an
exchange under their breaths, then point to a stand containing books
and pamphlets. I buy a small illustrated book printed on pulpy
newsprint called Cure Yourself of Alcoholism Through Natural
Medicine. It is part of a series inspired by the works of Dr. Edward
Bach, the British doctor and homeopath whose eponymous flower
remedies are foundational to homeopathic practice. (I remember a
small glass vial of brand-name Bach white chestnut that I was gifted
a couple of years ago by my in-laws. “Take two drops when thoughts
and worries go round and round in your head,” the bottle said. It was

27 percent alcohol, and after seeing a fat opossum cross the street
one summer night when I was sitting on the porch I drank half the
bottle. It was like taking a shot of tequila. I felt better.)
After Esme is done pointing out the useful herbs, we head back to
the car. She and her husband hand me a gift: a small waxed-paper
envelope containing a dream catcher and five energy stones. “These
stones are not Santería,” her husband explains to me. “This is what
yogis do. The earth is vibrating and the stones have a different kind
of vibration so they absorb different energies. The pharmaceutical
company Bayer sent people to the Amazon to find indigenous cures
for things and that’s where they got their formulas. Of course, the
problem with medicine now is that it doesn’t cure illness. The doctor
prescribes pills that won’t cure you, just keep you a slave to other
pills. They want patients to keep being patients. Medicine wants you
to be a client.” Her husband goes on and on and on as we drive to our
next destination, and Esme doesn’t say anything, just laughs softly,
which she does as easily as she breathes. A little bit like Marilyn
Monroe: a dark, girlish, worldly laugh. We arrive at a small
pharmacy next to a fried-chicken joint. Another clandestine
operation. Esme’s husband approaches a man behind the counter
and says that I am a friend. I ask for medications that I am either on
or have at some point been on so the feds can’t accuse me of looking
for drugs later. First, I ask for Latuda, an antipsychotic. “Nope,” he
says. “That’s an expensive one.” Okay. Risperdal. “What dosage?” It’s
been a while, so it’s all muscle memory here. Three milligrams? He
brings out a bottle of brand-name Risperdal, which has $3 written on
it in marker. Maybe I can go back on Seroquel, I tell him.
“What dosage?”
Six hundred milligrams. He goes to the back for a few minutes
and comes back with a white bottle of brand-name Seroquel with
$5.50 written on it in marker. I thank him for showing me my
options and promise to come back later.
Seroquel and Risperdal are powerful antipsychotics. They’re
tough drugs. Mean. The side effects can include akathisia (a feeling
of bodily restlessness), sedation, and increased levels of the

luteotropic hormone prolactin, a pregnancy hormone that causes
mammals to produce milk, even if they’re not pregnant, even if
they’re not female. In the long term, this can cause osteoporosis.
There can be periods of nausea so bad you’ll be prescribed
antinausea meds used for patients on chemotherapy. They can be
lifesaving drugs, but require careful monitoring and any changes
should be incremental. I’m scared at the thought of people taking
these meds without supervision. Both carry black-box warnings, the
strictest possible FDA warning that can appear on a drug’s
packaging. There’s a potential increase in suicidal thinking in youth,
and elderly patients with dementia have exhibited higher rates of
mortality, usually due to cardiac arrest or infection. The people who
would resort to purchasing antipsychotics without a prescription at a
pharmacy like this are not necessarily people who do not trust
doctors due to cultural reasons. It’s a different kind of people who
would find themselves at a place like this—people who feel lucky to
have found a shot at a miracle, even if the miracle risks deeper
trouble than they can imagine.
Later that night, I take a cab to a lush, remote neighborhood
outside Miami to attend a ceremony to initiate new priests and
priestesses into vodou. I was invited by a local Haitian priestess
named Roseline, a friend of a friend of someone I cold-called. I am
generally unfriendly toward institutionalized religion, but vodou is a
religion that was born out of anticolonial resistance—slaves in Haiti
developed a spirit religion based on African, Native American, and
Catholic beliefs, a true syncretism. Though French colonizers openly
opposed it, slaves kept nurturing the belief system, creating a space
where they could be free and where they could communicate with
god through spirit intermediaries—so I have an open mind. At least,
until I remember the caged canaries in the botanicas from earlier
that day and become anxious about the possibility of witnessing an
animal sacrifice. I suggest to Roseline that I am cowardly about
“animal things.” I say this delicately because I don’t want to seem
dismissive of their ritual, but I am also having a hard time shaking

my Western sensibilities. She obliges me by not responding. I regret
asking about the animals.
During my first visit to Miami, there were rumors that the current
administration will be rescinding TPS (temporary protected status)
for Haitians, the program that allowed victims of the 2010
earthquake in Haiti to stay in the United States temporarily with a
protected status, meaning they could live and work legally. The wait
period before TPS expires is a crazy-making purgatory. I came to
Miami just as many Haitians were contemplating what it might feel
like to become undocumented and deportable overnight. People were
scared. And scared people are vulnerable.
I arrive at the ceremony, which is held in a private home. I am so
embarrassed about the animal question that I immediately try to
compensate. I hug everybody. There are folding chairs fitted with
white sheets and guests are wearing all-white everything. I’m
wearing a black dress like a fool. I stand to the side and admire the
artwork on the walls. There is a painting showing a group of topless
women dancing near a large pig as a man approaches it with a sword.
Someone dressed in all white hands me a Corona and asks me to put
my notebook away. I approach a young man who seems about my
age. He’s leaning, and I like boys who lean. Jacob is tall and really
cute and very warm and is actually so, so young. I learn that he is a
priest already, that the spirit chose him when he was young, and in
fact everybody at the ceremony either is, or is about to become, a
houngan (priest) or mambo (priestess). “When people hear about
vodou, they hear about negative stuff,” he says, “but there are
different branches. There is healing, there are treatments, there is
protection. There is also bad stuff, but I focus on the good.” He tells
me about a friend who couldn’t walk but after a vodou treatment is
up and working. That sounds good to me, so I ask about cancer. “I
was told there is a cure” is all he says. He knows a lot about herbs, so
I ask where they’re grown. “We grow them ourselves,” he says.
“Down here, in Florida, you can find plants on the side of the road. I
also go to an old lady in Little Haiti to get herbs. She’s a friend.” He
gives me specifics, which other people I speak to are reluctant to do—

papaya leaf to keep your insides young, cerasee to clean out your
system (“for example if you’re on probation and can’t be on drugs,
this keeps the drugs out of the system”), sapo tea for diabetes, and
vervain for low iron levels.
He walks me over to a dapper older man named Henri, who raves
about vodou’s medical efficacy. “They’re the best antibiotics I know,”
Henri says. “There are herbs that can cure AIDS, high blood
pressure, diabetes, swelling, blood clots, skin cancer—they just clean
out your system,” he says. He tells me I can find them at a botanica
in Hialeah and he has friends who can grow them for free. “There is a
leaf in the Amazon that cures cancer,” he says. “Only Africans and
Haitians know the cures.” I ask how a cure for cancer could possibly
be kept only among a small group of people. He doesn’t know.
During the ceremony, a man dressed as a warrior holding a
machete comes up to me and spits a liquid at me, which he says will
bring success to everything I do. I overhear two people saying they
don’t trust me because I’m showing them too many pictures of my
dog. There is a lot of alcohol at the ceremony—they bring out a
strong blue drink, and I am told to drink it, and I do. I bond with
some young mambos and houngans at the ceremony. I take down
phone numbers. I’m fully aware of my surroundings, and I interview
people about their experiences with vodou, but when my parents call
me, they tell me my speech is slurred. I don’t remember calling a taxi
back to the hotel, but that’s how I got home. In my room, I put on
pajamas, take off my makeup, and go through my elaborate skin-care
routine. It’s weird. If I was drunk, I wouldn’t even have brushed my
teeth. When I wake up the next day, I am not hungover. But I do feel
odd, kind of floating.
—
A year passes: I gain seventy pounds, eluding medical explanation.
Miami is ravaged by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. ICE stops
Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains to ask travelers for proof of
citizenship. The #MeToo movement erupts. We buy special glasses

for the first solar eclipse since 1918. (I stare directly into the sun
because I’m drawn to self-harm.) White nationalists and neo-Nazis
terrorize Charlottesville, Virginia, with motherfucking tiki torches
and run a car into a young counterprotester named Heather Heyer,
killing her. Trump says there were “some very fine people on both
sides.” My father starts disappearing on weekends, supposedly to go
watch volleyball games at a local park, and my mom is too tired to
deal, until he doesn’t come home one weekend, and she and my
brother call asking me to intervene.
My mother my mother my mother. My mother is a result of her
mother’s rape. Her mother abandoned her with her mother, who
beat my mother with a vengeance and gave her permanent eye
damage. When she was twelve she moved in with her very wealthy
aunt and uncle and their three kids in the capital, away from the poor
rural town where she was living with her grandmother. She adapted
very well to the life of a rich adoptee. She was class president four
years in a row and first in her class. She hung out with the popular
girls. She loved her friend Fernanda, who wore blue jeans ripped at
the knee, which revealed just a sliver of the perfect tan year-round.
When my mother’s biological father approached her at her high
school graduation in Ecuador to say he was proud of her and ask that
she take his last name, she told him to fuck off and kept her mother’s
maiden name. She idolized Hillary Clinton from the moment she laid
eyes on her, which was shortly after a young Bill Clinton shook hands
with my mother at a campaign stop in Brooklyn. When Hillary wore
headbands, my mother wore headbands. When Hillary forgave her
husband, my mother forgave my dad, too. When I was in the second
grade, I got an 85 on a math test, and I hid the test from my parents.
When my father found it, he took me on a car ride and explained that
as a cabdriver he made a hundred dollars on good days and
sometimes regardless of how hard he worked he would make fifteen
dollars on a bad day, and it didn’t make him any less of a person. My
mother took me aside and asked me who the first man on the moon
was. Neil Armstrong, I told her. Now name the second man on the

moon. I don’t know, I said. Nobody does, she said. If you’re not
number one, you’re nothing.
My parents’ apartment is railroad style, which means there are no
doors. We have always had to shed our “outside clothes” because
“outside clothes” are contaminated. My mother made us shower after
being outside. When I was a child, and other children entered our
home, she had them put on long socks and covered the couch with a
cut-open trash bag before they could sit on it. She has taste outside
her means. She’ll starve for a week if it means she can buy herself a
Chanel eye shadow. She likes to be photographed in front of tall
buildings so she can emphasize her slim figure. She drinks her coffee
with oat milk, no sugar. My father accuses her of secretly hating her
coffee that dark but sticking to it because it makes her seem white.
Never let a man tell you what you like or what you don’t like, she told
me on the phone the other day when I asked her for life advice.
I interviewed her for this book. She listed all of her life’s regrets. I
itemize them because she itemized them for me:
Marrying young.
Having a kid young.
Leaving me in Ecuador.
Not finishing college.
Not working out of the house when she was raising me.
Not having a career.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’ve been such a good mom. I wouldn’t be
where I am without you. You made me.”
“I understand I’ve been a good mother, but I want to know what
it’d be like to be a successful woman on a personal level, not on the
level of a mother,” she responds.
—

Since we met, Esme has become a surrogate for motherly warmth.
We text regularly. I am genuinely happy to see her again when I visit
Miami a year later. I ask Esme to meet me at her favorite restaurant,
an Italian place in a fashionable shopping district in downtown
Miami. Everyone there is Cuban. Esme orders squash ravioli and a
glass of orange juice. We talk about the new activist group she
cofounded and presides over as vice president, a local group of
mostly housekeepers called Mujeres en Solidaridad. They hold knowyour-rights workshops and teach domestic workers about genderbased violence.
She talks to me about the disappeared. All Latin Americans know
about the disappeared. The period of the late 1970s and 1980s was a
dark time in South America. It was a time of military dictatorships in
Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The governments kidnapped civilians
and took them to undisclosed locations and tortured and killed them.
Their bodies were never found. Their bones were never found. In
Argentina, in just seven years’ time, the government disappeared
about thirty thousand people. They woke up one morning and went
about their days and then they vanished without a trace. So in
Argentina, their mothers formed a group called the Mothers of the
Plaza de Mayo. They wore white scarves around their heads and
marched two by two in front of the presidential palace every
Thursday afternoon at 3:30 P.M. holding pictures of their disappeared
children. They still do it every Thursday afternoon. These mothers
are legendary. They have been marching for forty years.
Esme is undocumented and Uruguayan. She grew up during the
dictatorship of Gregorio Álvarez. Some women in Mujeres en
Solidaridad are Argentine, and they feel that in their adopted country
of America, undocumented immigrants are being disappeared into
the silence when they go into their routine check-ins at the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services offices in nearby Miramar. The
immigrants are treated like livestock, they don’t allow them to use
the bathroom or sit on the floor during days-long waits, and they
often just ship them to detention centers, never to be seen again. So
Esme and some other ladies formed a subgroup called You Are Not

Alone, and they stand across the street from the Miramar USCIS
offices and invite immigrants in line to approach them for coffee,
water, doughnuts, ponchos, and phone chargers. Esme saw a woman
give birth waiting in line in hundred-degree weather. We see you,
and you won’t get away with this! the women yell at officers.
Esme’s father was a revolutionary under the Álvarez dictatorship.
At eight o’clock in the evening, when the country went dark for
curfew, people came over to her house to plot by candlelight against
the dictatorship. She still feels panic when she hears helicopters
overhead, remembering being shoved under tables or pushed into
shallow canals when they heard choppers. “Of course, the only thing
that matched my father’s revolutionary spirit was his violent temper,
which was worse when he drank,” she says. “His beatings were
barbaric. I’ve been a survivor ever since I was a baby. I was born
premature and I was born a girl. He wanted a boy.”
His beatings would leave her nearly bedridden. The last time he
laid a finger on her was when she was nineteen years old. She
grabbed a knife and confronted him with it. “That’s when I realized I
was capable of anything,” she says. She had boyfriends who abused
her psychologically and sexually, but she didn’t recognize it as
domestic violence until she began volunteering at shelters for
women. “When I began leading workshops about abusive
relationships, I was like oh my god.” She’s never told her husband
about her experiences with sexual assault because she’s afraid of
what he’ll say. “You know men,” she tells me. “He’ll ask me what I
was wearing or something. I don’t trust him not to say that. So
there’s no catharsis in the home.”
I tell her my parents are having a moment.
“You know what?” she says. “I don’t have the spirit of a
homemaker. I wasn’t born for the kitchen. I hate household chores.
When I was little, I used to tell my mother, I wasn’t born for this, I
was born to be a musician. And she’d tell me, Even violinists have to
cut potatoes, and she’d send me to the kitchen. I loved to study. I
loved to travel. I’m ambitious. I’m fascinated by the world. But I had
an accident at the factory where I worked and after that I stayed at

home while my husband worked, and when that’s your dynamic, you
have to earn your keep. Food has to be on the table. Laundry has to
be done. Your mouth has to be shut. I always rebel, but then there’s
the guilt. Rebelling has its price.”
We order dessert. She orders a tiramisu and shows me pictures of
her recent trip to New York in support of a boycott and protest by
female agricultural workers in Florida. Esme participated in a hunger
strike—okay, it was more of a fast—and she’s still on a high from the
adrenaline. She couldn’t fly there, because she doesn’t have a state
ID, so she took a chartered bus, with other undocumented women
like her. She was scared every minute of the twenty hours she was on
the bus that ICE was going to stop them. When she finally got out of
the bus and was able to breathe in the freezing New York air, she felt
alive again. She seems almost hysterical as she tells me this.
She leans into me. “The truth is that to me the immigration
advocacy is almost secondary,” she confides. “We’ve helped shy
women who clean other people’s homes and pick up after their
husbands to leave their homes and deliver press conferences, do TV
interviews, have meetings with congresspeople. We had a gala, and I
said, ‘Ladies, you don’t have to go smelling like Clorox. Be
glamorous!’ And they did. You should have seen us, with our hair
done and our gowns, rubbing elbows with lawyers and doctors and
politicians. We get women out of the home and give them a reason to
exist.”
I wonder what it would take for my mom to feel alive again, to
have a reason to exist. She only gets dressed up to go to the Kingdom
Hall and I usually tease her like, “Mom, Jesus thinks you look great,
that’s enough highlighter,” but I know she’s actually dressing up for
church because she has nowhere else to go other than work and it
makes me feel guilty.
—
That night, I travel to Miramar to see a mambo named Naomie
whom Jacob recommended. She is his spiritual sister, and she says

she can give me a cleansing treatment to protect me against ICE—for
a price. This sounds to me like a notario, someone who claims they
can fix people’s immigration papers for a steep price but is not
licensed to practice law. They are vultures in the immigrant
community.
Miramar is about a half hour away from the hotel where I am
staying. The hotel is inside Dolphin Mall, one of Miami-Dade’s
largest malls, which is packed with outlet stores and Cuban men
manning As Seen on TV kiosks who try to guess your country of
origin (“Mami, you look Peruvian, are you Peruvian?”) and offer to
straighten your hair with a mini ceramic flat iron. I take a stroll
through the mall every day, and every day I see people taking
paraplegic family members out for a window-shopping excursion
and paletas, and against the backdrop of loud club beats it makes me
sad. I’m just this sad bitch.
In the cab, I get a text from Jacob telling me to bring a bottle of
Tito’s and a pack of Newport cigarettes. He says he’s coming too. Oh,
cool, what are you getting done? I ask. “Who’s going to translate for
you and how are you going to understand what the spirit is going to
say to you?” he says. Naomie’s apartment complex is checkered with
lush grass; ducks happily peek their heads out of bushes and newts
and geckos scurry up and down walls. She doesn’t live far from the
USCIS check-in facility that Esme told me about, the site of the
abuses against immigrants. The cleanse costs $277.77.
I meet Jacob outside Naomie’s apartment. He makes me feel safe.
He has a strong, grounding presence and he smells like cigarettes.
Naomie interviews me before the rite. She asks me what afflicts me.
Oh man. I tell her that I write about immigration and worry I can’t
protect the people I write about. I would like to protect them, or at
least not have nightmares about ICE. That’s true and feels like a safe
thing to share, although I don’t go into detail. As a rule, I try to not
tell strangers my nightmares unless I’m being paid by the word.
I’m not sure what to think. I’m curious about vodou because of its
anticolonial roots but I also believe an immigration cleanse is
bullshit because nobody can protect anybody from ICE, and this

cleanse is expensive and the Haitians who would ask for an
immigration cleanse in Miami right now are probably scared shitless
about losing TPS. Is Naomie a notario? Maybe. But maybe one with
powers.
Naomie writes down some notes on a square of white paper. This
will be my plea to the spirit she will invoke. She is barefoot and her
toenails are painted bright yellow. The apartment is very hot, and my
mascara melts and gathers on my bottom eyelashes. There are two
chairs facing each other. Naomie sits in one; I sit in the other. A large
piece of red silk is laid out on the floor, along with white candles, a
set of tcha-tcha rattles (kind of like maracas wrapped in colorful
beads), the notepaper with my plea to the spirit, and various huge
bottles of alcohol. A gallon jug of Tito’s Vodka stuffed with hot
peppers. A bottle of perfume. The requested pack of Newports.
Naomie powders her face with a chalk-white powder. Jacob is seated
beside Naomie and begins chanting in Creole and French, and
Naomie closes her eyes. The air gets still and then she collapses and
begins to shake. Her eyes roll to the back of her head. Then she sits
upright again, and she opens her eyes and it’s like she’s this new
person. That’s because, Jacob says, she has been inhabited by a male
spirit. She slouches on her chair, leaning back with swagger and her
legs apart, and lights a cigarette. (That’s another thing about vodou.
Men are often inhabited by female spirits and women by male spirits.
Vodou spirits are said to protect and nurture queer people, unlike
Christian denominations that persecute members of the LGBTQ
community in Haiti.) Her eyes are black black black, and her
powdered white face has taken on the form of a mask. She speaks to
me through Jacob, who translates between English and Creole.
The spirit’s name is Emmanuel. He is one of Naomie’s ancestors.
He takes a swig of his favorite drink and offers some to Jacob. Jacob
takes a swig, then coughs a lot. I drink a tiny little bit. It tastes like
gasoline smells. Naomie makes me wash my hands in perfume, then
moves the chair aside, and I kneel on the red silk sheet as she blows
smoke all over me—when the smoke is blown in my face, I exhale
instead of inhaling, I’m not getting dizzy—and rubs perfume on my

neck and back. They light the piece of paper with my plea on fire and
combine the ashes with the spirit’s favorite drink. They ask me to
take one swig from the bottle in every cardinal direction, and I tell
Jacob to tell Emmanuel that I didn’t have lunch and too much
alcohol would make me throw up. They put the drink in a water
bottle and say to drink it when I get home after I put some food in
my stomach. The spirit asks me if I am worried about anybody in
particular. I tell him yes, many people in particular. After a few backand-forths, Jacob says Emmanuel has offered to turn me into a
protective shield, and that he will offer me guidance via dreams, déjà
vu, the way the wind blows, the flutter of my heart, and hunches.
The vodou spirit wants to know if I’m satisfied. He wants to know
how I’m willing to show that I’m satisfied, how much his offered
protection against ICE means to me. I take this to mean the mambo
wants me to put a price on how much this cleansing meant to me by
paying more than the $277.77. I tell them I only brought $280 in
cash, but that I was a writer and thus, my words being currency—the
worst pickup line in the world—I offer to recite for the spirit,
Emmanuel, a poem. I know some Emily Dickinson poems by heart, I
tell him. They’re love poems but they’re not about a boy, they’re
about Death, I tell him. Jacob takes a long time to explain this to the
spirit, and Emmanuel, chalk-white and boozy, makes a face, aghast,
then another face—disgusted. He does not want me to recite a poem.
I know they were just asking me for more money. Notario shit. A few
months later, Jacob texts me out of the blue. He needs me to loan
him some money. He doesn’t explain why, and when I tell him I
don’t even lend money to family, he stops responding.
—
Salome Allende is a friend of Esme’s, a fellow member of the
domestic worker advocacy group Mujeres en Solidaridad. She is
forty-eight years old and Argentine. Her husband died of brain
cancer in 2012 after being turned away by every local hospital they

approached because he was uninsured. Overnight, she became the
family’s sole breadwinner.
When we speak on the phone a few weeks before my first visit,
Salome cries, puts her hand on the mouthpiece to try to block the
sound of it, and tells me she wants to show me the notebook her dead
husband kept during his last weeks alive to keep track of his
treatments. After we hang up, I text her U.S. Census data showing
that children of immigrants have higher rates of college and
postgraduate education graduation than other groups, and she says
my texts make her feel good. She has four children, one of whom has
DACA. I am a one-trick pony, unable to comfort with anything other
than grades.
Salome is tall, with straight dark-brown hair and the intense
feminine air I associate with perfumed talcum powder. She has been
in the United States for seventeen years, working mostly as a
housekeeper for hotels and apartments. She has four pugs: fourteenyear-old Tobin and her three puppies, Megan, Alex, and Ashlyn,
named for members of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. “I
like to lie down on the couch and let them climb all over me,” she
says. She sleeps curled on her side with Tobin at her chest, Megan on
the backs of her knees, and Alex on her back. Ashlyn has been
staying with her daughter.
Salome was fifteen and sheltered when she met Harrison, a lone
Argentine. He was a year older. His parents were not around, which
led him to a fierce and early independence. Salome describes her
own parents as authoritarians who had two expectations of her: go to
school and return home to take care of her younger siblings, which
meant no boyfriends or even friends. But Harrison drew her in.
“Meeting him was like a soap opera,” she says. After the two dated
secretly for a year, Harrison tried to talk to her parents but they
wouldn’t listen. So she ran away with him and they got married. “In
retrospect, they just wanted me to study, like any parents would. I
thought it was love at the time, but it was an escape,” she says. “My
own kids don’t know that story,” she adds, sounding surprised by her
own words. “They always ask me how we met and I tell them their

dad was taking a stroll when he passed me standing in a doorway. I
just don’t want them to do the same thing.”
They had four kids who became their whole lives. On weekends,
they’d go to the beach or to the park to play soccer. They threw
parties at home and danced with one another. “Everything that we
didn’t have ourselves growing up, we gave to our children,” she says.
In Miami, Harrison worked in construction near a chemical plant.
After two years at the job, he got sick. “At first, we thought it was a
cough, and we didn’t want to waste money, so we didn’t go to the
doctor. He’d just take aspirin.” When he finally went, doctors said he
would need chemotherapy immediately. The hospital asked about
legal status. When the family said he didn’t have papers, the hospital
turned him away. So did cancer treatment centers. “I said, ‘Am I
supposed to take my husband home and wait for him to die?’ ” she
says. Did they seem sorry? “They were cold. Totally cold.”
Salome’s friend recommended a woman from Miami Beach who
described herself as a naturalist. They had nothing to lose. Joanne
was tall and blond and said she had cured stage-four cancer patients
with her treatments. She began making changes to Harrison’s diet,
instructing them to eat organic and buy exotic fruits they had to
drive all over Miami to find. “When you want to hold on to someone,
when it’s time for them to go but you don’t want to believe it, you go
and find the exotic fruits,” explains Salome. One morning, we drive
to a Latin American diner in Little Havana and order Colombian
breakfast platters of fried eggs, black beans, cream, and arepas. The
coffee is light and sweet. Bodega coffee. Un café regular is the same
anywhere. Salome takes a marble-speckled notebook out of her purse
and pushes it to me. It is a record of the naturalist’s treatment, some
in Harrison’s large shaky handwriting, in Spanish, and some in their
daughter Olivia’s handwriting, girlish and in English. She was sixteen
at the time.
All the tea you can drink. Miracle oatmeal. Stopped vomiting
and soothed stomachache. Girlish, bubbly handwriting.
Chew the juices as if they were solid food for 15 minutes before
bed. I imagine Harrison pretending to chew liquid for fifteen

minutes, his jaw muscles tightening, the fluids dribbling through his
lips, feeling like an idiot, showing his family he was putting up a
fight, maybe believing it himself.
I am doing everything I can to stay alive.
Harrison’s brain tumors affected his memory so he often forgot he
had cancer. Salome had to break the news to him over and over, until
she stopped. When the pain overwhelmed him, they took him to the
hospital, because the ER can’t reject anyone. The doctors gave him
morphine and then sent him home. By this point they were paying
out of pocket. Shortly before he died, his heart filled up with water
and the hospital recommended open-heart surgery. Post-operation,
his children took turns taking care of him because Salome was now
working long days as a housekeeper.
“Why operate on his heart if he had at most six months to live?”
she asks. “Medicine is a total mafia.”
Harrison died in 2012. The cancer had spread to his throat and
lungs. His blood was infected. He was forty-six years old.
Salome knows the naturalist’s treatment didn’t cure him, but she
thinks it gave him a better quality of life during his final three
months. “We put faith in the natural,” Salome says. “We had to.
Some people choose between the medical and the natural, but we
didn’t have the funds for the medical. We could not even go to the
hospital for his convulsions. So we chose the natural.” She lives alone
now and does her best to keep busy. “When my husband died, I was
low. I was in this country alone with four kids and little work. I
thought about going back to Argentina. But I said, you know what,
I’m not the first this has happened to and I’m not the last.” Every
conversation with Salome ends the same way—with the metaphor of
the sacrificial lamb. “Quite literally, my husband gave his life for his
children so they could have a future,” she says. “My son promised
him over his grave that he was going to study and get his degree, and
now he’s working a part-time job and studying.”
By the time I go to Miami the second time, she has obtained a
green card through her citizen son. I notice her confidence
immediately. I ask her if she feels differently. “Since getting my green

card, I’m honestly more defiant. If a cop were to stop me, I’d ask,
Why are you stopping me? If there is a car accident, I have
insurance now, so I say, Call the cops if you want. Once, I got into a
car accident back when I was undocumented, and my son had to
rush over with four hundred dollars in cash so the other driver
wouldn’t involve the police. I just have more confidence and better
self-esteem now.”
One night, we drive to a small Cuban bar in Little Havana that
bills itself as home of the world’s most famous mojito. They serve it
smoking and with a cane sugar straw. A band of Caribbean men in
fedoras sing salsa by Rubén Blades and Héctor Lavoe. Salome orders
a lime-green margarita with a tiny pink umbrella. I ask her how she’s
doing, aside from the newfound security of her green card. “Well, I’m
doing things I should have done at age twenty or twenty-five. I
moved out of my dad’s house at age sixteen and then moved into my
husband’s. But I have my own place now. What I didn’t live then, I
live now,” she says. She tells me about her children, and cries a little
because they miss their father. “Anyway, let’s go party,” she says. I
think she’s joking, that she’s taking me back to my hotel, but she’s
actually taking me to drive around Wynwood, a former warehouse
district that’s become Miami’s hottest nightlife spot. We drive
around the whole neighborhood multiple times, in circles, and she
gasps and murmurs under her breath about how much she loves
graffiti art, which covers the façades of all the nightclubs. She’s in
ecstasy. At some point, I start stifling yawns because it’s almost
midnight, and she scolds me for having surrendered to the life of an
old woman when I am so young. She points out girls in high heels
and tiny dresses in long lines by the bouncers. “Oh my god, they look
amazing,” she says. She says she wants us to come back the
following night, this time with Esme and a woman named Isadora,
the current president of Mujeres en Solidaridad.
Salome picks me up early the next evening. First stop, her dance
studio. She wants me to meet Uriel, the instructor. He’s Cuban and
there is an enormous portrait of him, bulging out of a tuxedo,
showing off a gaudy gold watch and a hand tattoo, on the door of the

studio. At the top of the stairs is a cluster of middle-aged women in
leggings, flip-flops, and tank tops with the same logo, the image of
pinups in bikinis, and they all greet Salome with a kiss on each
cheek. “Half of us are older women,” Salome says. “We’re all women
who have never done this before. I certainly didn’t do this when my
husband was alive. Uriel tells us to leave our demons at the door, and
that’s right where you’ll find mine. Dance class has become my
church, my therapy.” I don’t meet Uriel, who is busy teaching simple
salsa moves to a line of women, but I do meet his wife, who walks
slowly on account of her recent liposuction. (On Mondays, everyone
in the class wears tank tops with the logo of her cosmetic surgeon’s
practice.) Uriel crossed the U.S.–Mexico border a couple of years ago
and he was granted political asylum because he’s Cuban.
Do you know about the “wet foot, dry foot policy”? Miami’s
politics and demographics were forever changed by it. In 1995, Bill
Clinton introduced a revision of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966,
the pillar of this new version being the wet foot, dry foot policy,
which ordered that the American Coast Guard not intercept Cubans
in the water midway between Cuba and the United States, but should
anyone successfully arrive on solid land, they could remain in the
United States and have expedited routes to permanent resident
status and citizenship. This policy applied to entries on soil too.
Sometimes Cuban émigrés took flights to Central America, then
made their way to the U.S.–Mexican border. If they were detained in
the crossing, they could show their Cuban passports and would then
be separated from the Mexicans and Central Americans to be
processed for asylum, which didn’t add to the general goodwill
among other Latin American immigrants. Barack Obama ended the
policy on January 12, 2017. “We were lucky,” Uriel’s wife tells me.
“But we’re immigrants too. We’re all immigrants,” she adds.
We’re on our way to pick up Esme in Hialeah when Salome tells
me she and her husband were married twice. They were divorced for
two years. “Marriages that come here split up unless the women
don’t work,” she tells me. “And I worked, so it caused some
problems. We split up, we divorced, we had separate apartments; I

was really getting used to my life as a single woman. Then he calmed
down, and said he missed me, and would serenade me with his
guitar. We started living together again, and I was okay with that
arrangement, but he wanted to get married again so we could be
together forever.”
We pick up Esme, who can’t contain her excitement when she gets
in the car. We’re now on our way to pick up Isadora. It’s 9:00 P.M.
Esme gets a call from her husband and son. “I’m with the girls. I left
food on the stove for you,” she whispers.
Isadora lives an hour away. Now it’s ten o’clock. Isadora gets in
and excitedly tells us she wants to drive by some mansions that
“belong to these sheikhs.” She is wearing a fuchsia top, silver hoop
earrings so big they touch her shoulders, and hair teased up like
Dolly’s. They marvel at the mansions, and Isadora says she takes
long strolls in expensive neighborhoods whenever she feels
depressed. “Oh god, not me,” says Esme. “I look at mansions and get
stressed just seeing them because I think I’ll have to clean them.”
Salome doesn’t like using the GPS and only Isadora knows this area,
so I have no idea where they’re taking me. At some point, amid the
chisme, it becomes clear we’re taking a long trip out of town to a
casino. I tell them I have a five o’clock flight the following morning,
and so they downgrade their ambitions for the night; Isadora gives
us turn-by-turn directions to a nearby Fort Lauderdale tiki bar across
from the beach.
Isadora is interested in the punch bowl. I say it’s literally a
fishbowl of rum and she gets a devilish look in her eye. While
browsing the menu, as small talk, she tells me she was an
international affairs lawyer in Bolivia, specializing in Russian
relations. She lived in Russia for six years and is fluent in Russian.
Now she has been here sixteen years and is a housekeeper. “It’s fine!”
she says. “I knew what I was getting into.” Isadora and Salome want
to try gator. “COCODRILO?” they ask. They cover their mouths and
stifle screams. We decide to get mojitos that come in commemorative
glasses. “That’s nice of them, but I was going to take the glass home
anyway,” Esme says.

Let’s talk shop. People think cleaning houses is easy, but it’s a
dangerous job. None of them have been personally assaulted, but
they all know women who have been groped or raped on the job, who
have had their wages stolen, who have been psychologically abused
and then forced into silence by employers who threatened to call ICE
on them. One housekeeper put the wrong PIN in the security system
to get into a house, the cops came, they alerted immigration, and she
was deported. Housekeepers are exposed to so many temperature
fluctuations between rooms, between jobs, between industrial
freezers and industrial ovens, that some of them have facial
paralysis. To clean an oven, you need to turn it on, and the chemicals
smoke up. You try not to breathe in those fumes, but they sometimes
get inside the paper masks anyway. Housekeepers suffer from
migraines, from rashes. Salome tells the story of working for an
elderly couple for fifteen years. After the wife dies, the husband
remarries a woman with the early stages of dementia. She loses a
ring her mother gave her, not even gold, costume jewelry, and she
accuses Salome of having taken it. Salome comes to the house to help
her look for it, and finds it undisturbed on the piano. “You planted it
there!” the woman screams. “You stole it, and you put it back!” Her
husband looks down on the floor, not doubting Salome but not
wanting to upset his wife. Salome quits on the spot. “I’ve never been
so humiliated in my life,” she says. “Like I’d throw away my
livelihood for a piece of costume jewelry.”
I ask the women how often they have nightmares. This has
become one of my favorite questions to ask.
How many years have you spent in this country?
How often do you have nightmares?
Every night, they say. Esme dreams about concentration camps
nightly, about having to hide people in her home, people who can’t
make a sound. There was a time when she was so anxious that she
could not fall asleep, so she would have a glass of wine, then another,
then another, and before she knew it a whole bottle would be gone.

“My dad was an alcoholic, so I shut that down,” she says. I tell them
about my nightmares, about my mental issues, and say how grateful
I am for my medication. “Couldn’t you just decide to not be a victim
to those things?” Esme asks me. “Couldn’t you promise yourself you
won’t succumb to your demons? I did that,” she says. “I’ve trained
myself not to give in. The only thing that I can’t get rid of is that I
take four showers a day, and I won’t touch food that belongs to
certain categories I’ve created, but that’s all.”
“That…sounds like OCD,” I say.
“If they give us papers, psychiatrists will get rich because we’re all
crazy,” Isadora says. We all laugh.
“Sweet Home Alabama” comes on the bar radio.
“I love this song,” Esme says. “I call it ‘Sweet Home Hialeah.’ ” She
starts to sing at the top of her lungs. She may be tipsy. Some of the
other patrons at the bar, white people, look at us, and it makes me
nervous, and it makes me sad that it makes me nervous. I imagine
one of them taking out an AK-47 and shooting us down, then walking
over to our bodies, then shooting us in our heads, execution style, as
we continue to sing the pretty redneck song, marveling at the
mansions surrounding us, trying not to think of cleaning them, and
then, as I feel those white stares on us, I pour a drink on my head.
The girls cheer and I let out a bloodcurdling scream. My first ever.

CHAPTER 4

Flint

I

first visited Flint in 2017, a year after it made national headlines
for having lead in its water and two months after a court charged five
high-profile officials, including the director of the Michigan
Department of Health and Human Services, Nick Lyon, and the chief
medical executive for the department, Eden V. Wells, with
involuntary manslaughter for their role in misleading the public
about water safety. I wanted to see what it looks like when the state
poisons its own people.
Long before the water crisis, Flint had found itself in dire straits.
Throughout the 1990s, General Motors, which once employed half of
Flint, closed almost all of its factories in the city. By 2014, half of the
population had left—autoworkers, their families, and the people who
survived on feeding, clothing, and entertaining the autoworkers and
their families. The people in Flint now are the people who did not
leave, because they could not or did not want to. Fewer than one
hundred thousand people live in the city today, down from its height
of two hundred thousand in the 1960s. In 2016, 45 percent of Flint
residents lived below the poverty line, the highest rate in the country
for cities with more than sixty-five thousand residents.
As the city got smaller and blacker and browner and poorer,
public services crumbled. Firefighters and police have been cut, and

arson is rampant. Garbage collection has been privatized. One out of
nine houses in Flint is vacant. City residents have to pay astronomic
water-bill prices to pay for services the city is providing, even though
the water is still bad. For many families, backed-up bills run into the
hundreds of dollars. Some churches try to help by writing checks.
The undocumented community in Flint has been affected by the
water crisis in disturbingly specific ways. Flyers announcing toxic
levels of lead in the Flint waterways were published entirely in
English, and when canvassers went door-to-door to tell residents to
stop drinking tap water, undocumented people did not open their
doors out of fear that the people knocking were immigration
authorities. (There had reportedly been a raid at a grocery store the
week before the news broke.) When President Obama declared a
state of emergency, the National Guard was deployed to Flint,
making undocumented people even less likely to open the door, since
this time the canvassers were in uniform. Some undocumented Flint
residents learned of the lead in their water only when family
members from Mexico called them on the phone to ask about it. They
had seen reports of the poisoned water on Univision.
Laura Mugavero, leader of a local community organization that
serves immigrants, picks me up from my hotel and we drive
downtown to a homey hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. Laura
has ’80s-era curly hair dyed a coppery brown. Lady mags generally
say that women must pick eyes or lips to emphasize but she has
picked both—very dark eye shadow, very red lipstick. We order
drinks. She sends back the salsa because it is too mild. The owner of
the restaurant, whose husband knows Laura from her work in the
community, comes over personally to say the restaurant is popular
among white people and they are the reason the salsa is too mild. She
then apologizes and brings over two hotter, spicier options.
Laura was born in Mexico to a migrant worker father and a
mother who eventually achieved legal status through the 1986
amnesty. She was nine years old when she crossed the border with
her parents and her baby sister. She holds back tears as she
remembers watching her mother fall into the Rio Grande before

finding sturdier ground and making it across. They eventually made
their way to Flint, where her father was hired by a GM auto plant on
the spot. It was 1994, just a few years before GM closed its final car
plants.
The city is different now. After dinner, we drive around East Flint,
the Latinx part of town, and she points out where her childhood
home would be if it hadn’t been demolished, and where her schools
had been, all of them now shut down. There used to be four high
schools in the area, but two closed down. Even with the population
flight, the remaining two schools are overcrowded. Here was the
carcass of a grandfather clock factory. Here was where Buick City
once stood, 235 acres of factory grounds now surrounded by a chainlink fence and barbed wire, and overrun by pink weeds. Here was the
old General Motors Institute of Technology, where they sent
engineers, its name hardly visible on the stone. They had tried to
turn the Chevy plant into a park, but instead it just sits there, weeds
and vodka bottles. Empty plastic water bottles have become so
abundant that people shove them into the spaces in their wire
fencing, so yards and lots look like modern art exhibits. Houses,
apartments, and trailers are boarded up with graffiti and children’s
rocking horses sit dirty and spooky on the lawn.
—
I make plans to attend Sunday mass with Margarita Davila at a
church that proudly bills itself as the only one in the area that offers
Spanish services. Margarita is a sixty-eight-year-old Mexican
American immigration activist with small rimless glasses and short,
curly blond hair. She picks me up from my hotel in her red pickup
truck, a jewel-encrusted rosary hanging from the mirror. St. Aloysius
is located right outside Flint proper and the faithful have to make the
drive. Today they will be celebrating First Communion for the kids.
On our way we pick up Cesar, a Venezuelan man in the middle of
a political asylum petition who has no car. The week before, he had
attempted to take the city bus, but public transportation is not

reliable here, and he showed up at 11:00 A.M. for an eight o’clock
mass. He tells me he was an optometrist back home. Once he is alone
with me, he touches my arm and whispers, “We are not all Mexican
immigrants.” He writes down his name and number and slips it to
me.
Today’s worshippers form a line at the entrance of St. Aloysius
Church, and each of us dips two fingers into the holy water as we
walk in, then we make the sign of the cross on our foreheads, lips,
and chests. Parents are taking pictures of their kids dressed like little
brides and groomsmen, all in white for First Communion.
When you walk through Flint the most striking aspect of the
streetscape, second only to boarded-up houses, is the sheer number
of bars and churches. I ask Margarita if Flint residents are especially
religious, and she says they just need the services the churches
provide because the state is so absent. Despite the horror of it all, she
says the water crisis has made more services available to them. “They
finally realized we were here,” she says.
A few undocumented church members gather to meet me in the
church auditorium after services, and we sit down at a table for
doughnuts and black coffee in Styrofoam cups. They sit with their
hands folded in front of them, their posture boot-camp perfect.
Margarita had made a post on the church’s Facebook page
announcing my visit, and it’s not exactly how I’d have described
myself (self-made cult escapee) but how other people like to describe
me (Yale PhD student) and that shit is distancing. They know what
I’m here to ask them and they are ready to talk.
They spread their arms wide to show me how the auditorium was
filled with donated cases of water when the story first hit the news.
“As far as the eye can see,” a woman tells me. “I always said the
reason we were getting help was that we were in the news, but they’d
see as time passed. I knew it was all going to disappear.” The
auditorium is now empty.
“I’m grateful to have water at all because many people in this
world don’t have water,” says a woman named Lilliana. Before we
talk about the poisoned water, they begin by discussing blessings.

Lilliana begins with her blessings—I later learn Lilliana is fighting
cancer—and only after I’ve revealed my own blessings am I allowed
to carry on with questions. “Well, first there were the rumors,” she
says. “We suspected something was very wrong.” The water was the
color of rust and tasted like actual shit but when residents called city
officials, they were told they were crazy. Then General Motors
stopped using Flint-sourced water at one of their remaining truck
plants because they feared the water would corrode the parts. Junior,
Lilliana’s son, says GM employees told their own families about the
water but word did not get out. Junior has papers. One of his jobs is
to go door-to-door installing filtration systems and teaching people
how to use them. He knows that some people in the Latinx
community are undocumented, so he tends to ask his co-workers to
stay in the car while he goes alone and deals with the paperwork. He
motions on an imaginary iPad the scrolling and skipping he has to do
for people without Social Security numbers. They tell him they don’t
trust him because he’s with the water company—with the city. “But I
tell them, what? Soy raza. I’m just like you. I’ve got you.”
“There is a huge problem with trust in the community,” says
Margarita. “The state can say the water is made out of gold, and
people still wouldn’t drink it.”
Lilliana’s daughter, Karen, says that all of her children’s blood
tests for lead came back with the same level. Then her test came back
with the exact same level, as did her mother’s, her father’s, then
everybody else’s. Everyone’s was identical. Karen asked around in
the community, and her neighbors reported the same level as well.
The tests were run by the Environmental Protection Agency and the
Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. “When I saw that
the tests were being run from the state, I said, how could I possibly
trust you?”
“Even if the level was true, it’s inaccurate because what they don’t
tell you is that when lead enters your body, it doesn’t just stay in your
blood, it goes into your bones, it digs really deep, and tests don’t
detect that,” says Lilliana. Research has found that exposure to lead
in childhood can have devastating long-term effects like high blood

pressure, kidney damage, and intellectual disabilities including
challenges with speech, language comprehension, memory, finemotor skills, and behavioral self-control. Because children of color
are much more likely to be exposed to lead at a young age, it is
devastating to think about what will happen to an entire generation
of Flint children. What promises can you make to a child about the
world of possibility ahead of them when the state has poisoned their
bloodstreams and bones such that their behavioral self-control and
language comprehension are impaired? How many graves has the
government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water
crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years’ time? We all know
how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or
mental illness.
Having to use bottled water makes everything about running a
household more difficult. Lilliana goes through four or five cases of
water a day. The youngest grandchildren cry and tell her she is mean
because she gives them quick lukewarm showers and has prohibited
baths. “If you use hot water, the hot water opens your pores and the
lead gets absorbed through your skin,” she says. “Many people say
that your skin doesn’t absorb lead, that you only absorb it through
your stomach, but that’s just not true. Hot water opens your pores
and it gets way down deep in there. So lukewarm and cold-water
showers it is.”
Lilliana left Mexico for the United States twenty years ago and is
my mother’s age. She used to work in housekeeping until she got
sick, and now she stays at home taking care of her five
grandchildren. She does not know whether her breast cancer, newly
diagnosed as of two months ago, after years of clean self-exams and
annual mammograms, has any correlation to the leaden water, but
she is an optimist and a master of avoidance, so she does not want to
talk about the possibility.
“After moving to Michigan, like many immigrants, I kept saying,
Next year I’ll leave, next year I’ll leave, next year I’ll leave, and I
never left. It’s all a lie. I don’t love Flint, but I do love Michigan. I
love the greenery. I love nature. And there are so many birds in

Michigan. My husband gets upset with me because I get up out of
bed at dawn every morning to go watch the birds wake up. I like
rising with the birds. I like to hear them sing.” I ask Lilliana if she
owns pet birds. There is a long pause. “I don’t own birds. I set them
free.
“You see, my husband got me some small birds as a present but I
don’t like them in cages so I went outside one day and I released
them. I had two blue birds and one green bird. I wanted my birds to
be wild so I never even named them. They kept returning to my yard.
I used to talk to them about how their day was going. I asked them
when they were hungry. They were very attentive.”
It was her son who told her she had cancer. There’s nothing
strange about children of immigrants serving as interpreters for their
parents at doctors’ appointments, but on this day the doctor spoke to
her son for a long time and she knew from the look on their faces
that something was wrong. Then the doctor hugged her and said, Lo
siento. The Spanish word for “cancer” is “cancer,” but he left it to her
son to tell her the news. She went home to be alone, she wanted to be
alone, but who could be alone in a house teeming with family. “I
didn’t want to tell anyone. I said to myself, I’ll treat it and it’ll be fine.
I’ll get out of this. I have always moved forward and removed every
obstacle in my path.” She learned everything about the disease and
asked all the right questions. But then the doctors told her to go back
to Mexico because the radiation would be too expensive here and she
wouldn’t be able to pay out of pocket. Junior asked her if she wanted
to go back. She said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Lilliana starts chemotherapy shortly after our first meeting.
Margarita found her a doctor who will treat her at a reduced fee, and
even after I leave Flint, Margarita still sends me periodic updates
about Lilliana. She takes Lilliana to the hospital one day and then
texts me to say her nausea is so bad, she is thinking of stopping
treatment. I text Lilliana photographs of beautiful birds to cheer her
up: the hyacinth macaw, a black-billed bluebird with yellow-black
eyes, a wood duck and a cute yellow duckling, an Atlantic puffin with
its stupid face, the golden pheasant and its hillbilly yellow ’do, the

red macaw, classic Amazonian prince. I keep texting birds but don’t
hear back.
Later I dream that the hawks started coming after she loses her
hair from the chemo. Outside her house, the usual yard birds gather,
drawn by the feeders filled with seed Lilliana placed out there and
the big mature trees surrounding her home. The first time it happens
she sees a raptor snatch a mourning dove and fly off with it. It makes
her sick and she goes back inside. Then she sees it happen again.
This time it is a cardinal and the raptor goes up to her roof to take
plunder in its organs. Lilliana keeps going outside every day for
stretches of time because it helps with her nausea and that’s when
she starts seeing hawks flying overhead. They are different sizes.
They don’t look like they could carry dogs and cats like her neighbors
were saying, but they do look like they could kill. Soon they begin
circling above where she stands to watch them from her yard, and
when she stands beneath them, with some fear, to observe their
majesty, she becomes certain that her limbs are tied to their wings
with string, like a puppeteer’s, and that she can control their
movement. They are migratory birds. Perhaps they had gotten lost,
and she needed to guide them to warmth, she thought. They’d die if
she did not precipitate their movement with her movement, with the
movement of flight. She needed to leave this house, this sickness. She
feels ill in her heart because she could not leave the house, so the
raptors form nests in the large mature trees surrounding the house
and they’ve been there all this while, flying above her in whatever
way she moves that day, to hunt or to take shits on her husband
when he comes home at night.
—
You have already met Theodoro, but he was quiet before, so you did
not notice him. He was one of the immigrants I met with in the
church auditorium after mass. I had tried to make a lot of eye contact
with him when he spoke because as soon as someone interrupted
him, he shut down and looked pained. Theodoro is a lonely, ancient

man, but he says he is fifty-six. He is a tree. His mouth is curved
downward, wrinkles set deep like bark grooves, and he looks even
older when he smiles. We talk on the phone late at night, after he’s
home from work, and our conversations feel like dark, hardened sap.
Theodoro came to the United States on August 20, 1998. He
remembers the exact date. That was two years after his fifteen-yearold son first came north to go work at a top Chinese restaurant in
Michigan that he heard, through friends, was hiring. First Theodoro
worked at a cucumber plant, then in restaurants as a dishwasher and
a cook, then in various factories: making Volkswagens, weapons,
dishwashers, plastics, and soap.
But his favorite place to work was at a chocolate and sweets
factory in Detroit, where he spent ten years. He started out cleaning
bathrooms, but the couple who owned the factory saw that he was a
good worker and said, Theodoro, leave that alone. You can go work
in the granola station now, so he put on a blue lab coat and became
a sweets man.
“My years at the chocolate factory were the most beautiful time of
my life,” Theodoro tells me. He learned how to make caramelcovered popcorn, pecan pies, cherry-center bonbons, little chocolate
turtles with nuts inside. The aromas, of course, were incredible, but
what he loved most were the machines. “At the start of the assembly
line, I mixed in honey with the peanuts, then saw them go into the
chocolate machine where chocolate cascaded down like a curtain but
also up like a geyser; it showered chocolate from both directions, if
you can imagine that. Now, at this point the chocolate was very hot,
and it went into a cooling tunnel. There were times when I worked
the night shift to make chocolate overnight, and the factory was quiet
and cold, a few people making sweets for the world. I was very good
at my job and I helped everyone around me, even though my
supervisor said, That’s not your job. But I wanted us to work as a
team, so if I had a second, and my co-workers were slowing down, I
ignored him. The last year I was there, they got these really old ovens
that toasted the granola for a really long time and out it came,
toasted and brown, smelling like heaven, and you had ten people

working on eighty trays at a time. There were metal detectors in the
cooling station, to make sure the batch was clean. It smelled like
paradise. When I talk about it, it sounds impossible, but I saw it
happen.”
Then the company was sold to an owner from Ohio who was going
to hire only American citizens. Theodoro’s bosses broke the news to
him on New Year’s Day 2012. “I had been working for just about two
hours and they sent for me. Theodoro, they said, we can’t keep you
here. This company isn’t ours anymore.” They gave him a certificate
saying he was one of the best employees they’d ever had, and they
hoped that when he showed it to future employers he wouldn’t have
to wash bathrooms anymore.
“Did they say that to you?” I ask.
“They really did,” he says.
He lives alone in a house he purchased in 2009—cash. I ask him
how it feels to be alone. “Sometimes I think of sad things, but I need
to be in a good mood, so I put myself in a good mood,” he says.
“Why do you have to be in a good mood?” I ask him.
“So I don’t feel lonely.”
He lives with his two pit bulls, Gracie and Bella. Gracie is a twoyear-old blond pup and Bella is her six-year-old mom. He calls them
both “the puppies.” After rescuing them, he swung by a local
mechanic to buy a large wooden doghouse to put in his yard. The
dogs play outside for hours every day, get muddy, then need to be
bathed. Gracie prefers to be bathed in very hot water, and when he is
soaping her up, she is so comfortable that she’ll fall asleep in the tub
and has to be carried out in a towel, her limbs heavy, a truly spoiled
creature.
I picture Theodoro hanging a tire from a tree in his backyard,
where he sits with Gracie and Bella on his lap and he swings with
them, at first his feet barely off the ground, then higher and faster
until he feels that if he falls, they will fall with him, and if one of them
falls, he will fall with them, one body in motion just as they move
alone in their house, alone in their yard, alone in all of Michigan,

with not a soul in the world who loves them more than they love one
another.
I ask Theodoro whether he gives Gracie and Bella tap water.
“No. I always give them water from the little water bottles they
donate to us here in Flint,” he says. He gives from his rations.
Theodoro did not hear about the lead in the water until it made
the international news. “When you’re undocumented, you’re the last
to know,” he says. He went to distribution centers but they asked
Theodoro for a state ID. He does not have a state ID, which
undocumented immigrants are currently barred from having in
Michigan, so he kept going to other sites until he could get water
without an ID—he needed the water for his dogs. Men in uniform
helped him put cases of bottled water in his car trunk, and he tells
me this with a tone of admiration; he fears the National Guard but is
also in awe of them.
I am lonely, too. I only feel peace with my puppy mill dog. When I
got him, it was the week of Trump’s inauguration and I was watching
videos of black labs and German shepherds helping veterans with
PTSD, jumping up at their faces when they were crying, shielding
their bodies with their own, and I just cried into a pillow, wanting to
be protected. I was super suicidal, and one night my partner was just
like, you’ve never even been around a puppy. So we went into a pet
shop just to play with a dog—look, we tried rescues, they denied us
because we didn’t have a yard—to distract me for long enough to stop
me from slitting my wrists, and they brought out Frank. He’s a
Boston Terrier. A brown one. A really fucked-up-looking one. His eye
was busted. He couldn’t walk. My partner held him and deposited
him into my lap and he fell asleep immediately, and when I got up
because my leg fell asleep he bit at my pant leg and demanded I go
back down on the floor, and I looked up at her and said, well, we
can’t leave him here. I hadn’t gotten my book advance yet, so we took
him out on layaway. Fucking shady shit. We took him home, and put
him in his crate, and in the middle of the night I had a panic attack
and we brought him out and put him on my chest and for the first
time in my life I felt safe. He smelled like an unsullied childhood. He

smelled like a baby without a childhood. He smelled like god had
made an exception for me. So long as I kept myself alive to keep him
alive, we’d be all right.
So when Theodoro tells me he gives his own rations of filtered
water to the dogs, I feel like dying, but the kind of death that rebirths
you into something less painful, like a tree, a tree like him. I ask him
to text me pictures of his pit bulls and he sends them to me. They’re
plump. Their coats are shiny. Why do you give them your own water,
I ask him. Well, they can’t really speak, but if they could speak, they’d
have a lot to say, he tells me.
—
I come back to Flint almost a year later, after Governor Rick Snyder
announces that the state of Michigan will stop providing free water
to Flint residents because lead levels have not exceeded federal limits
in two years, even though they’ve replaced only sixty-two hundred
pipes affected by lead and have about twelve thousand to go. In
addition to the high water bills they have to pay to the city that
poisoned them, they will now have to buy their own clean water.
Margarita is thrilled that I have returned and hosts me at her
home, where she has invited several immigrant women from Flint
over for lunch to talk to me. For the special occasion, she has made
tortillas from scratch, rice, and ground beef with potatoes. But the
women never show for various reasons, some of them
unconvincingly disguising their discomfort with the idea of talking to
a stranger from New York, so instead, I meet Margarita’s husband,
Kenny, a tough guy with a tough-guy demeanor, who keeps telling
her to slow down and take it easy. She’s full of ideas for the
community and she helps everyone, he says. Kenny did some time in
prison, ten years, made some bad decisions. He hates cops. Calls
them pigs. Kenny tells me the plot of Serpico, an Al Pacino movie
about corruption among police; so, at some point Pacino’s character
gets shot in the face during a drug sting, and Kenny says it’s based on
a true story.

“Baby, it’s not based on a true story,” Margarita says.
“Hell yeah, it’s based on a true story,” Kenny says.
“You think everything is based on a true story,” Margarita says.
“A lot of movies are based on true stories,” Kenny says.
In Kenny’s own story, the one about his life, it was a Latinx cop
who infiltrated his friend group, got close to him, and pushed him to
do certain things that resulted in his arrest—by the same Latinx cop.
At the court hearing, Kenny’s mother scolded the cop. “You’re a
traitor to your own people,” she said. “It’s my job,” he told her. “I was
just following orders.”
—
The next day, Margarita introduces me to her friend Salma Pinzón.
We meet at the Sloan Museum in the Flint Cultural Center, which is
a museum dedicated to the history of Flint, with a particular focus on
the rise and fall of the automobile industry. She’s been there many
times. It’s my first. The water fountains in the museum have signs
above them that say PLEASE DO NOT USE WATER FOUNTAIN. HELP YOURSELF
TO THE COMPLIMENTARY WATER COOLER. The exhibits include miniatures
of town buildings, collections of guns and pistols, union jackets, a
mural dedicated to a United Auto Workers Labor Day Picnic, and an
expansive re-creation, with life-size mannequins, of the Flint SitDown Strike, where the mothers and wives of the striking
autoworkers broke windows in the factories to allow their men to
breathe after they were teargassed by police. There are assembly-line
station games where you are timed to perform assembly-line tasks; a
loud bell sounds if you fail. Salma is good at that game.
Salma Pinzón has a date in immigration court. I ask her if she has
her outfit planned. She doesn’t. But I’ve had her outfit planned since
she told me she has a court date.
Her hero is the late Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera (1969–
2012), a charismatic, voluptuous terror of a woman whose song “Sin
Capitán” is Salma’s favorite. Some lyrics: My boat doesn’t need a
captain / because I’ve conquered the storm alone.

“I think I’m just like her,” Salma says.
The dress I have in mind for her to wear to immigration court is
something Jenni had worn for the Latin Grammys in 2010. A gown.
Royal purple with bell sleeves, with a deep V-cut, tight at the chest,
bodice, and hips, then ruffled out accordion-style, with the smallest
layers at the front. Yellow marigolds embroidered on the dress, and a
marigold yellow shawl to wear around her shoulders. Salma’s hair is
long, waist-length, black everywhere but the crown, where it is white,
but she has two months to begin bleaching it. She will be blond for
the court date. Not a flattering, buttery warm blond, no—cold, ice
blond. It won’t look great but it’ll be striking, and I’d rather she look
striking than pretty.
Salma has a son with autism, Felipe, who is twenty-three years old
now. He was eligible for DACA but she didn’t sign him up out of fear
that his information was going to be used against him. He doesn’t
speak Spanish, and she lives in fear that he’ll be deported. What
would he do in Mexico? “People over there would be cruel with kids
like him,” she says.
Salma has a date at immigration court because an ICE officer
followed her around looking for a reason to arrest her. She said she
protested and it was fruitless.
He took her to a detention center. She was detained for a month,
alongside women with theft and drug charges, all of whom
complained that they thought she had been unfairly detained. She
didn’t have a lawyer then and she doesn’t have a lawyer now. No one
has wanted to take on her case. She’s making phone calls. She begins
to cry and admits she doesn’t have much hope but doesn’t know what
will happen to her son.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen at my court date. I don’t
know what god wants.” But I know what god wants. God wants to see
her in the motherfucking gown, unrepentant, with no captain.
—

Ivy was born in Mexico to a father who is an American citizen and a
mother who is Mexican. After their divorce, her father won the
custody battle so she came to Texas to live with him when she was
eleven, and moved to Flint after he bought a house there on eBay in
2009. She is a single mom. She had a baby, Lidia, when she was
twenty-one. During her pregnancy, which was during the water
crisis, doctors responded to any health concerns she had by telling
her to drink more water. “I would tell them I had fever and vomiting
and they kept saying I needed to drink more water, everything was
me needing to lay off the Coke and drink more water; it was a
constant dismissal. But I didn’t have money for anything other than
tap water so that’s what I drank.”
I meet Ivy and her baby at a break during a Latino Leaders
meeting one morning. It’s a group of mostly Mexican American
members of the Flint community with personal business cards and
fantastic border accents who want to make the city more hospitable
for Latinx and especially immigrant members. The meeting is
conducted in English. Ivy takes notes during the meeting, and raises
her hand to say something brilliant. The others nod and take notes.
Her father shushes the baby in the other room. At eleven o’clock,
they call a break for assemble-your-own taco bowls. Ivy comes over
to me and writes down her number, angrily, in my notebook. She is
pissed. She wants to talk. She is also young, really young, and has a
full-moon face and long, straight black hair that she wears with a
center part. I try to engage with the baby. I tell the one-year-old baby
that it is good she is bilingual.
Ivy remembers, in vivid detail, the day she realized the water was
dirty. “I remember taking a shower one day, and when I ran my hand
over my skin there was a sticky layer all over my body that hadn’t
washed off. It was like jelly. I felt dirty. My neighbor brought a water
jug to our house wanting to know if our water was like hers. It was
yellow with some brown film in it. Yet we got letters from the city
saying it was fine, that they were taking care of it. So what can you
do?”

Ivy developed hives and rashes, for which she was prescribed
steroids while she was pregnant. The doctors never performed any
tests to determine the origin of the skin irritations. Then her baby
girl was born. Over time, Ivy noticed the baby did not react to her or
to motion, crying constantly and piercingly as if she was in
tremendous fear, and when she took her to the doctor, he told her
they’d just have to wait and see. “They did the exam and said we were
going to have to give it a couple of months. A waiting game.”
The doctor waited four months before determining the baby was
blind from the lead poisoning.
“Her first seizure was when she was three months old. I always
put her in her own bed at night, but for some reason, on this one
particular night I brought her over to sleep with me, and all of a
sudden I saw her shaking violently in a terrifying way. I picked her
up, screaming, and ran her to my father. I have never felt such regret
or guilt. They say breastfeeding is the safest, best thing you can do
for your child, but it was after the fact that they said that if you have
lead in your body and you breastfeed, you pass it on. When I heard
that, my heart just dropped. I don’t know if it happened when she
was in my womb or after. If she has any delays or any problems
down the line, I couldn’t begin to apologize to her enough. I feel so
much guilt.”
Ivy’s baby has regained her vision, but nobody knows what the
long-term effects of the water poisoning will be in her little body. The
wait is torturous for Ivy. It is torturous for her mom. It is torturous
for the community. It is not torturous for the government. They want
us all dead, Latinxs, black people, they want us dead, and sometimes
they’ll slip something into our bloodstreams to kill us slowly and
sometimes they’ll shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot
shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot shoot and shoot and
shoot and shoot and shoot shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and
shoot shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot shoot and
shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot shoot and shoot and shoot and
shoot and shoot shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot
shoot and shoot until their bloodlust is satisfied and it’s all the same,

our pastors will say god has a plan for us and our parents will plead
with the Lord until the end to give them an answer.
I am not a journalist. Journalists are not allowed to get involved
the way I have gotten involved. Journalists, to the best of my
knowledge, do not try to change the outcome of their stories as
crudely as I do. I send water. I fight with immigration lawyers. I raise
money. I make arrangements with supernatural spirits to stop
deportations. I try to solve shit the way an immigrant’s kids try to
solve shit for their parent because these people are all my parents, I
am their child, if I wasn’t their child—and I was their child—I should
be patented and mass-produced and distributed to undocumented
immigrants at Walmarts. I am a professional immigrant’s daughter.
My job was simple, to tell this story: The government wanted the
people of Flint dead, or did not care if they died, which is the same
thing, and set in motion a plan for them to be killed slowly through
negligence at the highest levels. What I saw in Flint was a microcosm
of the way the government treats the undocumented everywhere,
making the conditions in this country as deadly and toxic and
inhumane as possible so that we will self-deport. What I saw in Flint
was what I had seen everywhere else, what I had felt in my own
poisoned blood and bones. Being killed softly, silently, and with
impunity.
—
The whitest thing I have ever done in my life was not repeatedly
trying to get bangs after seeing pictures of Zooey Deschanel. The
whitest thing I’ve done in my life was trying to save Flint youth while
I was visiting there. At various points when I was in Flint, I did a
cowardly thing, which was to try to suggest a trip in which some of
the kids would come to New York with me, because I wanted to open
a Pandora’s box for them, the view of the city at night. The skyline!
The fucking skyline! I asked the teens if they’d seen New York (they
hadn’t), and then asked them if they’d like to see New York (they
didn’t know), and holy fuck I hadn’t anticipated that. In my mind,

the kids would want to get out. They’d have big Broadway dreams.
They’d have questions, they’d want answers, we’d talk gypsy cabs
and SAT scores and Plan B both in life and in birth control. But what
happened instead is that the teens conscientiously ignored me the
entire time I was there—they had no intention of talking to me—so
I’d eavesdrop on their conversations, and I’d overhear them talking
about how they wanted to be waitresses at some local bar because
they heard you could earn mad tips that way, and I fucking DIED,
because I grew up on my dad’s tips and knew what kind of life that
gave you, and I wanted to save them from that. I’d drunk the social
mobility Kool-Aid from college prep programs run by white people
when I was in high school and didn’t know how to reconcile all that
with what I was seeing in Flint. I had created for myself a world in
which I could only feel reprieve from panic if my parents were either
dead or at peace, preferably both, and if they were to be just at peace,
that would be expensive, and I had to work toward that, and I knew
to the gram just how much blood they had shed for me over the past
thirty years and I had to repay it in gold. And I didn’t understand
these kids who didn’t think the same way. I felt like it was our one
fucking job—they were alien to me. I didn’t know how to talk to
them. So I didn’t.
When Margarita and I drove around the city, I asked her if she
had any kids in mind whom I could help write college entrance
essays and she said no and I insisted and she said no, she couldn’t
think of any, and I said, Oh, okay, cool cool cool.
On the third day of my first visit in Flint, I texted my friend Max
who has a pill problem and I told him I was thinking of drinking the
water and he definitively told me not to and I said, I know I know
but I feel so guilty, and maybe I’d feel less guilty if I just drank the
fucking water. Then I felt like I sounded like a white girl trying to
slum it, so that made me feel disgusted with myself, so now I felt like
cutting my arm with the room service knife but that seemed even
whiter, so I didn’t do anything at all, I just went to my hotel, where
they gave us free water bottles for everything, even for brushing our
teeth, and where there was a machine on the first floor for guests to

refill their reusable water bottles and the TV on the first floor was
always on Fox News even though the manager was black and he
always smiled at me in the mornings when I went to get coffee, not
knowing I was a bad girl in a good city, in a country that wanted both
of us dead.

CHAPTER 5

Cleveland

S

trictly as a matter of taste, I do not like children. Small animals
are adorable in the way my biology programs me to find large-eyed,
small-skulled mammals adorable, and they can grow up into
formidable or admirable creatures—cubs become bears, calves
become elephants, fledglings become eagles. Babies lack language,
which makes me bored and impatient, then turn into children, whose
saccharine vocal emissions grate my nerves, and then turn into adult
humans, the most monstrous of all animals. But kids do not do the
kinds of things adults are capable of that earn them some goodwill
with me—like breed the French bulldog, perform open-heart surgery,
tell good jokes. In general, kids don’t mind me, because I leave them
alone. I respect them. How do you do, I say. Terrible, they say. We’re
good.
But then, when I see a video online of three small boys, all
American citizens, saying goodbye to their father at Cleveland
Hopkins International Airport as he is being deported, my heart
stops. They remind me of my brother. Meaning: They are boys, they
are skinny and brown, they have heads of thick, jet-black hair for
which there does not exist a single good haircut. I am ten years older
than my brother, a mentor but not quite a mother figure, more like
Gandalf to the hobbits, and this video awakens in me a lion’s heart of

desire to protect. I contact their lawyer. I want to help these children,
I say. I want to become their role model. Do they like dogs? I write
the boys a letter through their lawyer. “The first generation of
immigrants comes to this country to work hard, and they often suffer
and are treated badly. Do you know why they do it? For their
children. That’s us. It’s up to us to honor our parents’ sacrifices by
doing better than they did, by having better lives than what we saw
growing up. I’m here to tell you that the best way to do that is
through an education,” I write. I’m brainwashed.
A couple of months later, I travel to Willard, Ohio, to meet them.
Willard is the most rural place I have ever been to, and on the long
drive there I pass through vast stretches of farmland where my cheap
cell phone loses service completely. Willard is known for its rich,
fertile soil—people call it “the muck”—and its agricultural industry is
booming, which means that temporary workers from Mexico come in
seasonally to help plant, weed, and harvest. Before I visited Willard,
there was a huge battle over a welcome-home party that the chamber
of commerce was throwing the migrant workers. A Vietnam War vet
threw a tantrum in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper,
writing, “Myself and a lot of other Vietnam veterans and also Korean
veterans are still waiting on our welcome-home party. Where does
the Willard City Chamber of Commerce think that it is right to give
the migrant workers a welcome back party?” At a city meeting
dedicated to planning the party, a woman stormed out of the room
with her husband, saying, “I’m a compassionate person. I believe
people who come here have to come here the right way. It makes me
angry when I hear people talking about harboring illegals.” The city
has a population of approximately six thousand people, 94 percent of
whom are white. This is where the boys live.
I come armed with the cutest pictures of my dog back when he
was a puppy because I assume all children like puppies. When I
arrive, I find out three of the four children are scared of dogs. (There
are three boys and an even smaller child, a girl.) And clowns. I could
not have arrived at a better time. They want to discuss their fear of
clowns.

They have been having nightmares of clowns. They have been
watching horror movies because they are spending a lot of
unsupervised time at home because their mother is working long
hours to support them now that their household has only a single
income. They tell me about a YouTube video they watched where a
drone flying over a field shows a clown with a machete ready to kill
children. Andres is fourteen, Omar is eleven, Elias is ten, and Greta
is six. “You don’t understand, they kill you with machetes,” says
Omar. In English, MACH-eh-teh is pronounced mah-SHEH-tee, I
say. “They kill you with ma-SHEH-tees,” they say.
The video is called Hunting Killer Clowns with Drone! We Found
One! (Not Clickbait!) and it is made by two preteen boys who fly a
drone over a field, out of which jumps a tall person in white face
paint and a toy machete. The boys are not good actors, the machete
does not look real, and it is not believable in the slightest. Jesus
Christ, I think. These are children.
Javier Quintanilla, their dad, had lived in the United States for
sixteen years. He was stopped for driving without a license in 2008,
and local police alerted ICE. After a deportation order was issued in
2011, he was granted a stay to remain in the country, and he dutifully
checked in with immigration authorities every six months until
March of 2017, when an immigration agent met him at his
appointment and told him to get ready to be deported.
In the weeks leading up to his deportation, Javier and the kids
went door-to-door around Willard asking their neighbors to sign a
petition asking for his stay. (Courts sometimes consider community
support in deciding whether someone gets a stay, and it helps
mobilize support for the case.) Not everyone was nice to them. It was
fruitless. When the day came, Javier did not even pack a bag, just a
folder of his immigration documents. He thought something or
someone was going to intervene at the last moment. “We went to the
airport but we had hope until the very end,” his wife, Patricia, says.
When they said goodbye, Javier told her he loved her and made her
promise she’d take good care of the children. He, in turn, promised
he would come back. When Patricia and the kids returned home, the

house still smelled like him. His sneakers were lying on the floor, his
dirty clothes were in the hamper, his toothbrush was in the
bathroom, not yet dry from that morning. His razor sat in the
shower. It would soon begin to rust. He was everywhere and he was
gone.
Both sides have adhered to the promise to talk on the phone every
day, but Javier is different now. The trauma of being separated from
his family and being forcefully removed like a criminal has worn at
his mental health. It started even before he left. As the date of his
deportation approached, he became short-tempered and silent. His
ankle monitor had only an eight-hour charge, so he had to charge it
while he was at work, which was humiliating. Patricia often tripped
over the ankle monitor charger. “He’s a changed man,” she says. “He
wants to express himself and tell us that he misses us, but for some
reason he can’t. He says, I can’t see you, I don’t know what you’re
doing, and it frustrates him. He’s impatient, he’s mad all the time,
he’s moody all the time.”
Peter Maximillian, the family’s immigration lawyer, has made an
impression on the children, who are hungry for male protection. He
dresses well and has his own office, which the children think is
incredible. He is the most powerful person they know. Andres is
especially besotted. Peter comes down from Cleveland on a Saturday
to take the children to lunch with me. They want to go to Applebee’s,
which is forty-five minutes away, and Patricia asks me to please
make sure they don’t smother Peter, which I quickly see they are
keen on doing. We end up going to Wendy’s instead, because it’s only
about five minutes away. Andres says he wants them to make an
exception of their minimum age requirement—sixteen—so he can
work there. He is fourteen. “I’m the man of the house now,” he says
in the back seat of the car, and Greta punches him. When Javier left,
so did the only member of the family who drove. Now they are stuck
in rural Ohio without a car. Andres walks three miles to the grocery
store and returns carrying heavy bags. He was going to join the
wrestling team but now has to come home right after school to take
care of his younger siblings. He watches them while their mother is

at work. Patricia sometimes takes an English class after work, and
comes home in the evening. She is always tired, and when she gets
home, she cleans, cooks, and sits on the couch, running her fingers
through Greta’s hair while she draws, her eyes fixed on a point in the
middle of the room, barely blinking.
About a week after returning to Connecticut, I am in the shower
and get a call from the boys. Omar is doing his science homework
and wants to get an A on it. He says he has a question: Do trees die
during the winter?
I begin to improvise, summoning forth everything I know about
winter, about plants, about death, about Holden Caulfield asking the
exact same question about ducks in Central Park, about how old the
kids will have to be before I can explain to them what allusions are,
about how I still think knowing what allusions are can save them. My
partner whispers: Look. It. Up.
How do trees survive in winter? Omar asks me. It seems like they
should die. How can they live without the sun? I wrap a towel around
myself and run to my computer. “Trees go through a process similar
to hibernation called dormancy, and that is what keeps them alive
during the winter,” I read from the screen. Do you know what
dormancy means? It comes from the Spanish word dormir, “to
sleep,” I lie. Isn’t that cool? I ask. They sleep right through the
winter, and when they wake up, it is spring again.
Javier used to work at a factory packing cookies. He would often
bring home small cheddar crackers in the shape of goldfish. Those
were their favorite. Andres is not his biological child. Patricia had
him young, when she was eighteen. Andres was a year old when she
got together with Javier, who cared for him like they shared blood.
She always thought there was something special about the way Javier
took care of Andres. “He’s just given him more than the others.
Everything Andres has wanted he has always received.” Because they
were always family, and because they thought the adoption process
would be overly complicated and expensive, they kept putting off a
formal adoption. But as the boys got older and began asking why
they did not all share the same last name, it became clear that Javier

would adopt Andres. So a couple of years ago, they went in front of a
judge, who told Patricia she liked to ask the same question to
everyone who went in front of her with an adoption request. “Tell me
one thing that’s going to make me sign this order.”
“He doesn’t know another father,” Patricia responded. “Javier
used to work the night shift so he was always with the boys during
the day and he took care of Andres from the time he was a baby. He
bathed him, he always changed his diaper.” “I’ve heard enough,”
Patricia remembers the judge saying. The family celebrated that
night. Every evening, before Javier began his shift, they would all sit
together after dinner to drink coffee, talk, and watch the evening
news. They were news junkies and kept each other close. “Even if it
was to put gas in the car, all six of us went.”
Patricia is small, with heart-shaped purple lips and black hair
pulled back into an elegant knot. When I met her, she was wearing
purple acrylic nails on one hand and short nails filed in a round
shape on the other. She wears glasses with clear rectangular lenses
and modest, nondescript clothing in dark colors. She speaks to me
warmly in a conspiratorial whisper, especially in the presence of
Peter, the lawyer, who does not speak Spanish. She giggles as she
observes the boys crowding over where he is sitting, showing him
funny videos on their phone. Look at them. He’s going to walk out!
He’s going to explode! He can’t put up with them! I wonder how she
was with Javier, with her sidekick laugh and expressive almondshaped eyes. I wonder what secrets they kept together, what inside
jokes made them laugh, before they were separated and it all turned
sour.
Omar is skinny, with a top lip that looks carved in amethyst. His
mom tells me he is a solitary soul, and while the entire family crowds
the living room during my visit, he is not there. He’s up in his room a
lot. When we go out to Wendy’s, he picks a two-person table across
from us and sits alone. I call him over to sit next to me. He asks how
old I am and I tell him to guess. He guesses nineteen—a hopeful
guess because he has a crush on me. I tell him I am old enough to be
his mother, and he blushes.

“Omar does not cry,” Patricia tells me. “He has not cried once. He
is stoic and strong, but he is the one who asks after his father the
most.” Classmates have been taunting him at school. “I hope your
mom gets sent back to Mexico too,” they tell him. I ask him how he is
sleeping, and he says that he tells himself his dad will be gone for
only a few weeks. “Last night, I did not sleep at all because I missed
my dad.” So he tucked himself into his mother’s bed. I have brought
him a copy of the first book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, on
my brother’s recommendation. A lucky guess. Turns out Omar loves
the series and has taken the books out of his local library. He’s never
owned a copy of his own. Omar asks me to sign the book because
although I am not its author, I am an author, and he thinks that’s
pretty cool. I autograph it.
In the pictures of the scene at the airport, moments before Javier
was deported, the only one photographed crying is Elias. He is ten
years old. Elias says he misses going to the mall with his dad, where
he would spoil him and buy him treats, and he misses how his dad
would make funny voices to make him laugh, like the impression he
made of the old-timey children’s character El Chavo, a grown actor
assuming the voice of a child. “Sometimes I dream the world is going
to crack open and I am going to fall inside,” he says. While I am
talking to his mother, Elias goes upstairs to bring down his report
card to show me. Some Bs and Cs in the humanities but a perfect 100
in math. He says his favorite way of passing the time is by doing
multiplication exercises with decimals in his head. After I return to
Connecticut, Elias texts me formal greetings and terrible pictures of
himself with the camera lens pointing up. One early morning he
sends me a picture of Greta all dressed up, wearing a long white tulle
skirt and a denim vest with a doily collar. She is wearing a tight
ponytail and doing ballerina poses. He sends them at 7:24 in the
morning. I wonder if he just thought his sister looked pretty but had
no one to share it with. Good morning Karla. How are you today?
Greta is a terror. She laughs hysterically—she cackles—at her own
jokes, and she ranks her brothers in order of how much she hates
them, which is actually the order of how much she loves them, and

punches the winner, usually Andres. She spends the entire time
drawing and hangs up the drawings on the wall herself, then puts her
hand under her chin like an art critic and makes exclamations about
the drawing. She steals her brothers’ cell phone to send text
messages to Patricia about how much she loves her, even when she is
sitting on the same couch or in the adjacent room. Sometimes she
sends me a long, multiline string of emojis that she signs Greta. I
brought her a tiny pink plush purse carrying a plush puppy. If god is
fair, he will allow her to grow up into a woman with the resources to
spoil a stupid toy breed like a Cavapoo that she’ll carry around in a
purse. Patricia tells me Greta stopped eating after her father left, and
lost a lot of weight. When I visit, she barely touches her food.
Stories in the news often end at the deportation, at the airport
scene. But each deportation means a shattered family, a marriage
ending, a custody battle, children who overnight go from being
raised by two parents to one parent with a single income, children
who become orphans in foster care. One study found that family
income dropped around 70 percent after a deportation. Another
study found that American-citizen children born to immigrant
parents who were detained or deported suffered greater rates of
PTSD than their peers. I know Javier wants the children to move to
Mexico to be with him, and it is a source of fights with Patricia. “I
think it’s selfish to take the children to Mexico,” she says. “This is
their country. The whole point was to allow them to receive an
education here.” A coffee plantation awaits them in Mexico. But even
if they stay in Ohio, things look bleak.
The boys are worried about winter coming for the first time
without their father in the house. They have no car. They are in the
middle of rural Ohio. Everything is so far away. Andres, who will
start high school next fall, walks a few miles down to the local public
library to do his homework when he needs a computer, but with
winter coming, it gets dark early. I have a fundraiser among my
friends and collect enough money to buy the family a used MacBook
and a year’s worth of Internet. That’s a thing I do sometimes—hold
fundraisers among people I know for migrants I love who are in

need. It’s the same people who donate every time, older white
hippies and children of immigrants, not my former Harvard
classmates who post pictures of themselves at rooftop happy hours
every day, the kids who work at Silicon Valley start-ups, the ones
who have precious weddings with hashtags and babies they want to
make sure you know the sex of. At night, at around 8:00 P.M., when I
decide that I want the day to be over and close all the blinds because
it’s time to usher in unconsciousness, in the delicious few seconds
before sleep befalls me, I imagine them being fatally impaled by a
stop sign on a trip abroad.
Anyway, I write down a list of rules for the boys. I write them a
card. I set up the password to their computer. It is studyhard. I tell
them that school got me out, that it can get them out. Out. Out of
what? The ghetto? I grew up poorer than I remember. But I grew up
with two parents. I grew up with nightmares but they are living
through nightmares.
I am almost six hundred miles away. I’d never seen a tractor
before I visited them, and they’ve never seen New York. There are no
clowns in fields with machetes in America. There are white moms
who threw stones at the little girls in Little Rock and there are white
moms who wish Andres and Omar and Elias and Greta’s mom will be
deported too. There are no clowns in fields with machetes, but there
are ICE officers who pose as nice people trying to buy a piñata off the
Internet, meet you in a parking lot, and detain you. If we get good
grades, will you take us to New York City? Is Connecticut near
Cleveland? What’s the best college in the whole country? I’m going
to go to Harvard. I’ll become an immigration lawyer, like Peter, so
nobody’s dad will ever be taken away again.
—
I start my days sitting on the floor of my shower, naked, the water as
hot as I can bear it blasting onto my head. I find relief only in the
water. For the past ten days, I’ve had a migraine that follows me like
a shadow. One hundred and forty-two hours of incessant pain, an

eight on the ten-point scale. My doctor has suggested codeine, which
I refused, because once I took too much Percocet after a tooth
extraction and threw up for twenty-four hours straight. I have a CT
scan, an MRI, I go to the neurologist—the readings are all
inconclusive. I’m told it’s a migraine with an unknown cause. Have
you tried yoga? they say.
“Stress headache,” says Leonel Chávez when I visit him one
morning. Leonel is a forty-five-year-old Ecuadorian man holed up in
a Methodist church off the Yale campus in defiance of ICE, which
considers him a fugitive. He is in sanctuary. In 2007, a wrong turn
during a family trip landed him in Canada and ICE took notice of
him. A judge ordered his removal in 2009, but he managed to keep
his head down and stay under the radar. In 2016, he was given a stay
on the removal order as long as he checked in every six months. But
under the current administration, the authorities have all but
stopped granting stays, so in July 2017 he was ordered to leave
within the month. Just like Javier. The day of his scheduled
deportation, he claimed sanctuary in the church, a space that
Immigration and Customs officers do not enter. He has been living in
the church for over three months.
“Probably,” I say. “But what can I do?”
He shoots me a look. “There’s always something to be done,” he
says defiantly. “For example, me. I control my thoughts. I just move
them away from what’s causing me stress and onto something else.
I’ve been doing that this entire time.”
The migraine thing is new. I’ll visit Leonel on a Monday, then
wake up with a headache on a Tuesday and have to lie in the dark for
the next two days, sometimes going to Urgent Care for a migraine
cocktail through an IV. My arm starts looking like I use. Then I visit
him again. The migraines will not stop. I will just have to start taking
daily medication to prevent them and emergency medication at their
onset. They will become a part of me, and Leonel will become a part
of me, and the sanctuary movement will speak to me and my
traumas in the way nothing ever has before.

—
Leonel arrived in Connecticut twenty years ago on a Sunday
afternoon at two o’clock. A family friend’s rotisserie-chicken
restaurant was hiring a dishwasher. Dishwashing is a popular job for
the newly arrived. It doesn’t pay great, the hours are long, and it’s
boring and grueling, but Leonel was thrilled to see a job opportunity
materialize so quickly after arriving. He took a shower and began his
first work shift in America three hours after setting foot in the state.
That’s Leonel. Leonel is also handsome, like a cowboy. No, not like a
cowboy. Like a bad boy with a toothpick in his mouth. Actually, no,
forgive me, he is precisely the Ecuadorian version of Brad Pitt in
Inglourious Basterds. A fine Nazi-killing small man.
Leonel has lived in the United States ever since and has firmly laid
down roots. He left the restaurant industry and became an indemand construction worker, which netted him a healthy income.
His wife is named Sofía, and they have a daughter and a son in their
twenties, both on DACA, who live with him in the house, as well as a
twelve-year-old daughter, Diana, who was born in Connecticut and is
an American citizen. She speaks to her parents in English. The older
kids are busy with their jobs, but Diana visits her father in the church
nearly every day after soccer practice. Diana is always hanging her
body off her father lovingly, like a sloth on a tree. She loves dogs and
has this really brilliant plan to travel to Ecuador to rescue street dogs
and bring them to the United States to sell for profit, marked up for
the Third World je ne sais quoi. I’m waiting until she turns eighteen
to introduce her to venture capitalists. Sofía is consistently one of the
most powerful speakers at rallies, vigils, and press conferences. She
speaks off the cuff and brings everyone to tears. I am a little afraid of
her because when she hugs me and looks at me, I feel like telling her
I hurt too much.
As his time in sanctuary stretched from days to weeks to months,
Leonel began to grow dark. “I am in a fight with myself all the time,”
he says. “I’m getting depressed more and more, I feel a desire to run
out and leave this all behind. I ask the Lord that He not abandon me.

On days I know I’m going to be alone, I don’t want to wake up or
even eat.”
He has lost weight, and his hair, which he cut about two months
into sanctuary, has grown back, curly and thick. He wears soft fabrics
that fall loosely around his ankle monitor. Big sweatpants or shorts.
He does not cry. “When I feel I am about to explode like a volcano,
I’ll watch sad movies or listen to sad songs, so then I cry to let it all
out. But I’m crying about the movie or the song. I don’t cry about
this. They’ll never have the pleasure of seeing me cry,” he tells me. To
occupy his mind, he built the church a modest but exquisite lectern
with wood so thin it looks like paper, and a burgeoning cross in its
center.
Welcoming an undocumented immigrant with a deportation order
into a church has to be done carefully so it cannot be misconstrued
as harboring a fugitive. As a first step, the church makes clear to ICE
that they are acting within their capacity as a sanctuary space in
accordance with their beliefs as followers of Jesus Christ. They send
a fax to ICE headquarters announcing that the immigrant is there
once he or she arrives so nobody can claim they are “hiding” them.
All parties are aware of the immigrant’s whereabouts. They’re
wearing ankle monitors given to them by the Florida private
company GEO Group. Sanctuary works because ICE has a policy
against forcing their way into places of worship. Violating that policy
requires special permission from ICE headquarters, but so far that
hasn’t happened, and one immigration lawyer told me he thinks that
if it did happen, “all hell would break loose.” It would certainly be
bad PR. The image of armed men in uniform forcing their way inside
a church door being physically blocked by priests, rabbis, or imams is
dramatic to think about, and although it hasn’t happened, it feels
imminent. The activists and religious leaders involved in the
sanctuary movement think it’s enough of a possibility that they have
a plan for it. If ICE tries to force their way in, members of the
congregation would rush to the church and try to block the door with
their bodies.

In the United States, the tradition of immigrants claiming
sanctuary in churches dates back to the 1980s, when a network of
churches took in nearly five hundred thousand refugees fleeing the
death squads in Central America. An underground railroad of sorts
moved people through Mexico to more than five hundred places of
worship across the country. After sending in undercover informants
to infiltrate the movement, the federal government charged two
Roman Catholic priests, a nun, and a Protestant minister with
conspiracy to smuggle aliens, and they faced jail time of up to
twenty-five years. They got probation instead.
But the tradition of sanctuary is even more ancient than that. In
the Old Testament, Mosaic law determines that some cities should be
set aside as “cities of refuge,” where an individual who accidentally
killed someone could be protected from prosecution. Saint Paul
taught that any stranger who asked for help could be an angel
undercover, and medieval churches would establish a range outside
their walls within which refugees could not be arrested. There was an
ancient Greek belief that someone turning away a supplicant ran the
risk of turning away Zeus himself.
Leonel decided to go into sanctuary at the last minute. The first
church the family approached denied them sanctuary because they
wanted an assurance that the stay would be short, and Leonel and
Sofía couldn’t make that guarantee. “It was like your house is
burning down and someone asks you for a month’s rent first before
lending you a hand,” Leonel says. So they contacted Latinos Fighting
for Justice, the local Latinx rights organization, which in turn
reached out to Pastor Lisa at the Vineyard Church who welcomed
Leonel, convinced that Jesus Christ would have done the same.
Leonel’s room is upstairs; it used to be the pastor’s office. His bed
is in the corner, a twin bed low to the ground with thin, flat pillows
and a crocheted brown blanket. The clock on the wall has been stuck
at 12:22 for the past three months. It’s like Vegas in this room: no
windows anywhere and only a single broken clock. Small acrylic
paintings of naturescapes line the walls, and I see Leonel has
arranged an assortment of greeting cards on top of his air

conditioner. There are shelves filled with cookies, chips, teas, and
instant coffee. A small table and chairs in the middle of the room.
One night family and local activists crowd into the room, sitting on
the floor and on chairs and on his bed, and I ask Leonel what time he
goes to sleep. “When the people leave,” he says.
During one of my visits, I pull up a chair while Leonel is in the
middle of telling his family about the South African photographer
Kevin Carter and the picture he took of a large vulture approaching
an emaciated toddler during the Sudanese famine. He scared the
bird away but did not touch the child. It won the Pulitzer Prize in
1994. A few months later, Carter committed suicide. “That photo cost
him his life,” says Leonel. This anecdote comes up naturally during a
discussion of starving children, which is part of a larger discussion of
how fortunate we are in relation to the people all over the world who
really do suffer. It’s not hard to see why Leonel is intrigued by Kevin
Carter. He doesn’t understand how someone could visit a tragedy but
not actively work to alleviate the suffering they witnessed. He doesn’t
understand how people could choose to watch a good man waste
away in god’s own house while the seasons continue their course and
the church empties out of family each night, leaving him alone, with
his thoughts, in the darkness. I don’t say anything.
A lot happens while Leonel is in sanctuary—school shootings,
daily bombshells in the special-counsel investigation of the president
and his campaign—but I generally do not bring up the news with
Leonel. I do not bring up the weather, even though that’s the
simplest way to start a conversation with another human being,
remarking how cold or hot it is, how much it’s raining. I shed my
outer clothing as soon as I’m in the church to try to hide the
changing seasons from him. I try to wear basically the same thing. I
do not want to cause him pain by reminding him of the outside
world. I always contact him ahead of time to plan my visits, and text
him if I am running even five minutes late. I notice that other visitors
—old ladies from the church, Yale kids—drop by unannounced, as if
he were a man with nothing but time to spare. We make hours go by
with small talk. I feel grief at the knowledge he’s in there. I feel as if

someone is being killed and I am being forced to watch it, blinders
on, and the bullet travels in slow motion, but I cannot stop it.
Before I tell you what happens next, I should share with you a
little story about something I did when I was around fifteen years
old. My father was working as a deliveryman, and the owner of the
restaurant hired a new manager to oversee the deliverymen—all
immigrants, nearly all Mexican. The guy was Puerto Rican—an
American citizen—and became immediately abusive, calling the
delivery guys wetbacks and spics, threatening to call ICE on them,
yelling at them, getting up in their faces. My father fell into a bit of a
depression. I had just watched All the President’s Men for the tenth
time, and what I did was I made myself a pot of tea, put on my best
posh accent, dialed *69 to block my number, and called the
restaurant. I asked to speak to the owner. I said I was a beat reporter
for a big city newspaper, and I had just received a tip from a
customer about overhearing racist abuse in the kitchen and did he
have a comment. The owner said he’d handle it and asked me not to
write the story. I don’t know, man, I said, it’s a pretty good story. In
the end, the manager was fired, and the cloud over my father lifted.
My father was furious when I told him what I did, but not for a
minute in the fourteen years since have I felt that what I did was
unethical, nor have I felt guilty for having a man fired. I’d do it again
but my accent would be better.
So I got into a fight with Leonel’s lawyer. I was working on a
newspaper story on Leonel and he had been telling me for a long
time that his lawyer had been treating him—communicating with
him or not, mostly not—in ways I understood to be negligent and so
I called him up and asked him a list of Bob Woodwardy questions
that any discerning person would have understood meant I was
asking around the issue of negligence, and he asked me to meet him
at the church the following night at eight o’clock on the dot, like a
playground bully, and yelled at me in front of Leonel and Sofía, told
them they could not trust me, because he did not trust me, and they
looked down at the floor because what could they say?—their lives
were in his hands. So I was quiet for their sake, and also I am not a

confrontational person—I am shy and I cry easily—and I went home
and I cried and cried. But a few weeks later I sent him an expensive
bottle of scotch to appease him because I needed to still have access
to him, because access to him meant I could help Leonel. Our
meeting forced him to go to the church for the first time in god
knows how long, which is what Latinos Fighting for Justice had been
trying to get him to do, and while he was there, they talked to him
about a new strategy, which he agreed to pursue. One of the
organizers called me that night to ask if I was okay and to say that
never mind all that, the strategy had worked (oh yes, the strategy!).
On Thanksgiving Day, out of nowhere, Leonel was released. He was
out! He called me and I tried not to cry, because it wasn’t about me, a
known pussy, and our conversation was awkward. Are you stretching
your legs, Leonel? Soon after, on Facebook, I saw a picture of him
stepping outside the church for the first time while Sofía cried by his
side and I am lucky I was already married and will not have kids so I
do not have to lie about what the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen
is.
A few weeks later, my partner and I drive to Leonel and Sofía’s
home. He opens the door with his hair still wet from the shower. I
tell him he looks great. “All that has changed is the location. I’m still
a prisoner,” he says, and points to his ankle bracelet. It’s still on. A
decision from the immigration courts can take hours or it can take
months, maybe years. We admire his house, our first time seeing it.
Then they get to the point—there is a new man who has just taken up
sanctuary in a nearby church. His name is Francisco Valderrama. He
is Ecuadorian too.
—
Most people with deportation orders do not go into sanctuary. Right
now, there are only forty-two individuals in the United States living
in churches in defiance of their deportation orders. It takes a
particular kind of person to go into sanctuary. They’re extraordinary.

From the undocumented people I have loved, I have learned that
all of us share something a bit peculiar, fantastical, and
controversial, which is this: We operate in this world like we are a
little bit above the law. This does not mean we are not law-abiding.
We have to be extremely careful not to have any run-ins with the law
—because even a traffic ticket can lead to deportation. We pay taxes
too. In 1996, the IRS even made a special provision for us to be able
to pay taxes without Social Security numbers—that’s the ITIN
number, which you’ll see advertised everywhere in immigrant
neighborhoods.
But as an undocumented immigrant, everything we do is
technically against the law. We’re illegal. Many of us are indigenous
in part or whole and do not believe borders should exist at all. I
personally subscribe to Dr. King’s definition of an “unjust law” as
being “out of harmony with the moral law.” And the higher moral law
here is that people have a human right to move, to change location, if
they experience hunger, poverty, violence, or lack of opportunity,
especially if that climate in their home countries is created by the
United States, as is the case with most third world countries from
which people migrate. Ain’t that ’bout a bitch?
Francisco Valderrama and Leonel Chávez have very specific
profiles. They have young children and lives they love and do not
want to give up. Still in their prime, they haven’t been defeated by
decades of racist abuse and manual labor yet; they walked into the
church with their heads high. They’re individuals of strong faith who
do not lose hope easily. But they’re also roguish. They’re wild.
They’re stubborn. They’re frontiersmen. They know how to make just
about anything appear out of thin air, they have lovely homes they
created from nothing but sheer will and obstinance, and when they
were in trouble, they managed to find communities to rally around
them. Francisco is a completely fluent English speaker whose leather
couch and flat-screen TV are the result of him outsmarting big-box
stores in perfectly legal but kind of eyebrow-raising ways. Now
Francisco’s home is an abandoned menagerie, a wildlife sanctuary
cobwebbed by an apocalypse. His senior dog is alone most of the day,

confused by why his dad disappeared one day. The two parakeets,
Blue and Birdy, sing all day with nobody to hear their racket. A
goldfish named Fishy swims in the dark.
Francisco’s wife, Flor, is soft-spoken and shy and laughs easily,
which hints to a private life their daughters have told us about in
which she is “extra” and “crazy.” Their three American-born
children, Brianna, age sixteen, Franny, age thirteen, and Johnny, age
five, are also pretty extra. The girls are just like Francisco: stubborn
and overflowing with a restless energy. Franny wants to become a
famous actress “to prove white people wrong” and Brianna is a
STEM whiz who wants to become a nurse. Johnny, controversially,
wants to be a cop. The children visit their father at the church every
day after school, and every night when Johnny has to leave the
church, to return to his fatherless home, he cries and that makes
Francisco cry too.
I don’t know how it happened. All I know is that at first, I was
resistant to meeting a new person in sanctuary because my
relationship with Leonel had made me sick, and the next thing I
knew, my partner and I were going over to the church for dinner with
the family every week. Then more than once a week. Francisco and
Flor would cook some delicious folk Ecuadorian dish to cure my
newfound homesickness and it would feel like going to bed with a hot
water bottle. I would sometimes even get warm and sleepy eating
sopa de bola, a soup with green plantains stuffed with meat, or
encebollado, a warm tuna and yucca soup that my partner ate a sixth
of politely. We’d play a game with the family, like Pictionary or
charades, while all wearing face masks, the skin-care kind, and it was
easy. It was never tense, there were no memories I had to work to
suppress, meaning it was like suddenly having the most loving and
least complicated family in the world, except that this family was in
hell. When I had my wisdom tooth removed, my partner had to go to
work, so she dropped me off at the church to recover and I lay on the
couch in the church basement, tucked in with blankets by Francisco,
him sitting respectfully at the corner of the couch holding up an iPad
for me to watch a documentary about the Inca Empire. Flor made me

her special hen soup with a hen she had killed specially for me. My
real family became extremely jealous. “They’re taking advantage of
you,” my mother would text me, livid that I had spent yet another
quiet evening with them, laughing and embracing, instead of talking
to her. I told her to not talk to me about them again.
—
One night, we’re having dinner with the Valderramas at the church
and a religious group that Leonel and Sofía belong to stops by
unannounced. Since leaving sanctuary, Leonel and Sofía have
developed an unshakable concern for Francisco and his family. You
can see it pains Leonel to visit, but the guilt of turning his back hurts
more. They’re about twenty people deep, and they bring guitars.
They form a circle. Someone grabs my arm and brings me into the
prayer circle. I sit between Leonel and Francisco. The first hour of
the prayer session consists of the group of faithful men and women
on their knees beating their chests and crying out to god for
forgiveness. I look at them intently. Some of them seem for real but
overall it’s super performative. I do not pray to god for forgiveness,
because I believe I have nothing to apologize for and he might have
to explain a couple of things to me, so I just sit there, moping, angry,
but still trying to radiate positive vibes because I’m not going to be
the person who is ruining faithful migrants’ experience of
community. I respect the role of god in the lives of people who suffer
but basically only in the lives of people who suffer.
One of the loudest chest beaters brings the two sanctuary couples
to the center of the group. “We will pray for the families,” she says,
and then takes me by the hand too. “Oh, I’m not family,” I say, but
she shakes her head and says, “It doesn’t matter. Jesus loves you.” So
we stand in the center of a prayer circle twenty people deep, and they
say, Close your eyes and hold hands. I’m still in between Leonel and
Francisco, so I hold on to their hands, tight. The two couples close
their eyes and bow their heads. Prayer begins. As soon as the song
starts, Francisco and Flor collapse into each other’s arms. Tears fall

onto Flor’s baby-blue shirt. Leonel and I are not crying. We are still
holding hands, fingers tightly interlaced, and we lock eyes. He guides
my body so we wrap Francisco, Flor, and Sofía in our arms and
squeeze.
When the prayer circle is done, I go back to my seat. I take
advantage of a pause in the next round of prayers and walk out
quietly. I go sit with Franny and Brianna in Francisco’s room. When
he sees me again, Leonel teases me. “Was the exorcism really hard on
you, little atheist?”
—
Francisco’s case moves slowly through the backlogged immigration
courts. The months began to pass, quickly, slowly, marked only by
legal dead ends and more prayer circles. My partner and I begin to
play a larger and larger role in Franny and Brianna’s lives. They
begin to call us “moms.” When we say we are going to pick them up
for dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings, their favorite restaurant, basically
all Connecticut teenagers’ favorite restaurant, at six o’clock and it is
6:01, we receive a text message from Brianna: “It is 6:01.” The girls
decide that our friendship anniversary is on Brianna’s birthday,
which is February 23. That night, we took them to see Black Panther
because I thought it would be inspiring for them as young women of
color. I’m a didact. Franny texted throughout the whole thing and I
was very upset! Within a few months, they were sleeping over. When
February 23 rolled around for a second time, with their father still
praying for a miracle, we decorated T-shirts with our friendship
anniversary and hearts in glitter glue. There were times that Franny
asked to come over to our apartment to do homework, so we picked
her up from school, at enough of a distance from the entrance that
we didn’t embarrass her in front of the other tweens wearing spotless
Air Force Ones, sat her at my desk, and pulled up a chair next to her
to unsuccessfully remind her to bring down the X as she went
through each step in an equation. We made sure she used the
website that listed all answers for her textbook just to check her

answers, not to cheat, and she relished the discipline. She enjoyed
dangling provocations in front of us. I’ll cheat! I won’t hand this in!
I’ll talk back to my teacher! She was going to either do or not do
those things anyway, but she liked it when we pleaded with her, gave
her lectures on the importance of grades, and insisted on talking to
her principal when she was treated unfairly by a teacher. Once,
Franny said she didn’t want to go to college and I said, “Oh hell yes
you are,” and told her I was going to take a needle and thread and
sew her ear to mine so she would have to go wherever I went and I
would go to college. She thought that was “crazy” and made me “a
weirdo” but she enthusiastically repeated my words to her father,
pleased I cared enough about her to put my ear through so much.
We were making dinner in the church basement one evening
when Johnny suddenly asked his sister Brianna why their dad wasn’t
allowed to go home. He had long outgrown the original explanation,
which was that his dad worked at the church, a special job with no
time off. Brianna said there was an evil man who wasn’t letting him
leave. Johnny then turned to me and asked why the dinosaurs died.
Johnny is obsessed with dinosaurs. He is as much an expert as a fiveyear-old can be. He knew why. But he wanted to hear me say it. So I
told him that a meteor hit Earth and the dust blocked the sun and
there was no food for the dinosaurs so the dinosaurs starved. “Yes,”
Johnny said empathically. The extinction of the dinosaurs is the only
tragedy Johnny knows. He doesn’t know about Hiroshima. He
doesn’t know about the Holocaust. He doesn’t know about the Trail
of Tears. He just knows his father can’t come home and he knows the
dinosaurs died.
—
When Francisco received news—not for the first time nor for the last
—that his request for a stay was denied by local immigration
authorities, faith leaders from around Connecticut set up an all-night
prayer vigil outside the ICE offices in Hartford to plead with ICE to
use its discretion to give Francisco a stay. They set up a table with

pictures of Francisco with his children and tiny votive candles
surrounding the frames. The pictures were from their life before—of
the family at the park, fruit-picking, dressed for parties. Brianna
stared at the pictures for a long time. “They made it look like Dad
died,” she whispered. Then she threw herself into the arms of my
partner and sobbed. “When will this end?” she asked as she heaved.
She could barely get out the words. When we all piled into the car
and headed back to New Haven, the girls asked us to play sad music.
An enormous yellow full moon followed our car through Hartford
and the girls stood up in the back seat to film it through the sunroof,
the wind almost toppling their skinny frames, hoping it was a good
omen, but it disappeared once we arrived in New Haven.
“Keep Francisco home!” Johnny would chant at every protest we
held in honor of Francisco. This whole thing has confused Johnny.
“Francisco” has come to mean the man in the church, and that man
is scared and in danger. As adults, we can all remember the moments
when we realized our parents were not infallible, that they were
mortal, that they were vulnerable people. But for Johnny, it is
happening within a narrative that escapes his comprehension. So he
disassociates. He has begun talking about a man named “Francisco”
who is his father and about a man named “Daddy” who is also his
father. When we go out for pizza, he wants us to bring back a slice of
pizza for “Francisco.” Francisco is someone who can go hungry if
food is not brought to him. (Johnny saves snacks from his school
lunch to bring to his father.) On our way to the aquarium one
morning, we stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and Johnny asked for a
doughnut with pink frosting and sprinkles. When I passed it to him,
he packed up the doughnut in a paper bag real tight, rolled it up, and
said, “I am saving this for Francisco.” My partner and I insisted he
eat it, but he refused. His sisters turned very serious and sad, as if
they had seen this behavior before.
I lied and said Francisco gets stomachaches from eating sugar.
Only then did he eat it and he ate the doughnut happily, hungrily.
Franny slips into some dissociative moments too. Sometimes
she’ll speak in the present tense about past events that haven’t been

true for a year and a half. One evening, Francisco was discussing how
he used to wake up very early to go to work at the factory where he
worked for fifteen years and Franny said, “What do you mean,
Daddy? You still wake up at five A.M. every morning to make it to
work.” Francisco gently reminded her he didn’t. She’s having sleep
problems. She feels exhausted but cannot reconcile sleep, often until
four in the morning, her mind running with thoughts of her father.
—
The girls were over for a sleepover one night when one of them asked
if we planned on buying a house of our own someday, because they’d
need their own rooms. We were like, sure someday I mean yeah
that’s not realistic right now but like sure. We became their
emergency contacts at school. I did their makeup for formals and
class pictures. They asked my partner to pick them up from places
sometimes, no questions asked, and she did. We had our own little
Christmas, the four of us, with their first-ever stockings filled with
practical presents they were sweet to be excited about, because it
wasn’t the new Jordans they wanted. When we went to the movies,
the four of us would cram into the photo booth, the girls’ bony butts
sitting on us, and Franny cut out a frame and put it in the back of her
phone case. In the winter, we ice-skated in Boston Commons at
nightfall as it snowed and in the dead heat of summer we took them
to Red Lobster, where I threw up in the parking lot after dinner as
they comforted me. Once, the girls asked me why I don’t have a New
York accent. “Do you know what internalized racism is?” I asked
them. They didn’t. I told them. I felt loved. I loved them back. We
weren’t parents but we were something.
I don’t want kids of my own. I do not want to be a mother. I have
always known this. I have never played with baby dolls. I have never
wanted to hold a newborn. I don’t want to have to sacrifice anything
for a child, I already have too many people to take care of, and I don’t
want my child to have hazy memories of me in a silk robe with a
whiskey ginger ale at 11:00 A.M. acting queerly around bath time,

around water—was I…trying to drown them? Oh, honey. But my
relationship to these kids was different. When we showed up for
school functions, I was either assumed to be their young mother or
introduced as their mom, by them, with Brianna and Franny
grinning wickedly, and I felt like a double agent. But there I was,
counting dollar bills to buy Franny’s school’s bumper sticker to put
on our car next to a sticker of soccer-gay-sex-icon Tobin Heath,
wasn’t I? Where’s the lie?!
When I meet kids who suffer, I want to teach them everything I
know about the world, which isn’t a lot, and basically amounts to: Go
to Harvard. Make hella money. Read contracts before you sign them.
Bring two tiny bottles of Kahlúa and a tiny bottle of mouthwash
when you have to go with your parents to their biopsy results. I
follow my own advice while trying to hold off on the suicidal ideation
while trying to be as socially fucking mobile as socially fucking
possible and then these kids fucking find me, and what do I do, but
invite them into my heart and tell them, babes, go to school, climb
the ranks, kill the salutatorian, make it look like an accident, and in
your valedictory address, remind your school that cops are pigs, and
ICE are Nazis, and you are John at the foot of the cross, Jesus’s most
loved apostle, maybe his lover, and you’re in the holy word, escape to
my home for some chamomile tea and RuPaul, there will always be
room for you, I love you and forever will.

CHAPTER 6

New Haven

I

t was about an hour before midnight in New York in August and
the heat had calmed down just enough to try sleeping. We didn’t
have working air-conditioning units and our third-floor apartment,
built on top of a former garment factory, had a roof with short walls
adjacent to our windows, so—this was before the gentrifier snitches
got us in trouble with the landlord—we would drag out our twin-size
mattresses through the windows and lay them down on the floor of
our roof. The night was still hot but there was a breeze. My mom and
dad squeezed onto one mattress and my little brother and I onto the
other and I wish I could say we looked up at the stars but there were
no stars, per New York’s famous light pollution, but there was the
moon, and there were the pop pop pops in the background that were
either the sound of kids playing with fireworks or the sound of a cop
shooting one of us in the back, the odd ice-cream truck playing
“Turkey in the Straw” or “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” which none of
us immigrant kids had ever heard before, a car blasting salsa, a
woman screaming in drunken ecstasy or else in alarm. The night
seemed eternal. My parents were still in their thirties and they were
still in love, and I had just watched Beyoncé perform “Crazy in Love”
for the first time on TV and I felt electrified. I made my parents
promise me they’d never get old. They did, they promised.

My father is in the middle of a prostate cancer scare right now.
There is not much to say about it other than he does not want to get a
biopsy, against the doctors’ advice. The reason he does not want to
get the biopsy is because he wants to die. It’s two more weeks until
we go in to get the results of his next prostate exam and the doctors
will probably once again recommend a biopsy and my father will
definitely refuse and that will be the moment I have been preparing
for my entire life. Everything that I have done or that has happened
to me since I took that New York–bound flight twenty-four years ago
has been preparing me for this moment—learning English, getting
bangs, placing second in the Emancipation Proclamation oratory
contest, gaining weight, losing weight, getting the sick puppy from
the pet shop, all of that happened to prepare me to this point—my
parents are sick, uninsured, and aging out of work in a fucking racist
country.
The twisted inversion that many children of immigrants know is
that, at some point, your parents become your children, and your
own personal American dream becomes making sure they age and
die with dignity in a country that has never wanted them. That’s what
makes caring for our elderly different from Americans caring for
their elderly. For one thing, most available jobs for undocumented
immigrants are jobs Americans will not do, which takes healthy
young migrants and makes them age terribly. At a certain point,
manual labor is no longer possible. Aging undocumented people
have no safety net. Even though half of undocumented people pay
into Social Security, none are eligible for the benefits. They are
unable to purchase health insurance. They probably don’t own their
own homes. They don’t have 401(k)s or retirement plans of any kind.
Meager savings, if any. Elderly people in general are susceptible to
unscrupulous individuals taking advantage of them, and the
undocumented community draws even more vultures. According to
the Migration Policy Institute, around 10 percent of undocumented
people are over fifty-five years old. This country takes their youth,
their dreams, their labor, and spits them out with nothing to show
for it.

My father is a salad maker now, feeding Manhattan’s executive
class. I’ve never watched him make a salad but I’m sure he’s
exquisite at it. (He did teach me about how to chop a salad in the
most efficient way possible, which is to stand as if on a surfboard and
take turns balancing your weight on either foot. The rhythm leads to
faster chopping.) He has always been the best at his job, no matter
the job. He worked as a taxi driver for his first twelve years in
America, a time before MapQuest, let alone Uber, and he has the
entire city memorized, every axis on the grid, all five boroughs and
parts of Jersey. Since then, he has worked in restaurants. Now he is
usually the oldest person in the kitchen. Out of respect, the younger
guys all call him Don.
Recently, he started a new job, recommended to him by an
acquaintance who lured him with the assurance of better hours,
better treatment, a better environment. My dad is very gullible. He
spent three days at this new restaurant where, for spare change, they
had him work all day, and then in the final hour of the day, he was
given just that hour to clean an industrial kitchen, an industrial fryer,
a refrigerator, a stove, an oven, and a sink, wash the dishes and the
dishwasher, take out the trash, sweep and mop the floors, and clean
the garbage chute. His body was wrecked at the end of each day. “I’m
too old for this,” he said. So he quit. His old job wouldn’t take him
back. Desperate, he began each morning by showing up at a Latinx
job agency, which would send him out to “audition” at a different
restaurant day after day, week after week, to no avail.
My dad told me all of this over dinner one night at a hotel
restaurant in Midtown Manhattan where I’d invited him to meet me
after what I thought was the end of his shift, and it was, but it was
the end of a trial shift at a different restaurant than the one I had in
mind. This whole thing, all of it, the entire fucking thing, had been
kept from me for over a month, per my father’s orders, because in my
family it is believed I am sometimes fragile, stemming back from an
incident when I was twenty-one and my father had to come to New
Haven in the middle of the night to pick me up from the cold tile of
my apartment’s bathroom floor, beer bottles and a razor around me,

and take me back home to New York. My father had initially refused
to enter the restaurant because he believed he wasn’t dressed nicely
enough for it, but I convinced him my money was good there, and I
introduced him to the server as my father in a bit of a flamboyant
way, not enough to embarrass my dad, just to make a point that this
was a motherfucking thing for me and I expected this to be a
respected thing among the three of us, and I urged my dad to get the
steak and ordered wine for us both and translated a conversation
between the server and my father about a wine recommendation to
go with his meal, which I usually think is so bourgeois, and I also
joined him when he swirled the wine in his glass and smelled it,
which I also usually think is the worst, and I quietly slipped myself a
Klonopin while he was cutting his steak, confessing to all of this job
trouble, in a pained, casual way, and then as he kept on talking, boy
was there so much I didn’t know, I slipped myself a second Klonopin
with our second glass of wine, and when he left, I went up to my
room and put on the terry-cloth hotel robe and shut off the lights and
passed out feeling nothing, certainly not feeling fragile. I felt like
Indio Juan Diego seeing the Virgin of Guadalupe in her glory, the
miracle he wanted and needed at once. I felt god had gifted me
blackness and death and I said, Thank you Jehovah God. Thank you.
Is this a blackout? I’m free of their tears. Is this freedom?
Once his secret was in the open, my dad started texting me blurry
cell phone pictures from the job agency. I told myself I needed a
reminder of why I needed to be successful, so successful, statistical
anomaly successful, so I have them saved on my phone to
emotionally blackmail myself with. He took the photos when he was
sitting in the waiting room of the job agency waiting for his name to
be called. The first picture is of a man maybe in his late seventies,
wearing a green button-down, khaki pants, and aviator sunglasses.
His lips are downcast. My dad said he was applying to be a
dishwasher. The second picture is of a man maybe in his late forties
who is wearing a black baseball cap, a gray sweater, and maroon
pants. My dad said he’d had a stroke—his right arm was paralyzed
and he had a limp in his right leg. He was also applying to be a

dishwasher. Apparently, he was a fucking fantastic dishwasher, how,
I don’t know. When he sent the pictures, my dad also texted me:
Further proof that we’re not a burden.
Who says you’re a burden?
It’s hard to see men like that not get jobs. We’re invisible
because of the circumstances that force us to be here at the
agency…old age…illness…the fucking papers. Do you
understand. A million thoughts rush to my head. It’s too much
to think about.
“I hope they have children who can take care of them,” I respond.
What I mean to say is: I hope they have a child like me. I hope
everyone has a child like me. If I reach every child of immigrants at
an early age, I can make sure every child becomes me. And if they
don’t, I can be everyone’s child.
—
Octavio Márquez is a sixty-six-year-old Guatemalan day laborer with
a faint white stubble. I saw him in a video online describing being
robbed of his wages by an employer. At some point in the video he
says Americans treat their pets better than they treat immigrants,
which I cannot dispute. I email a message of concern to the
immigrant worker center advocating for Octavio, and receive a reply
inviting me to meet him at the blue boxcar in Brooklyn where the
worker center is located. I visit one morning as the workers are
making coffee and eggs. Before I go in, I stop by a Walgreens and
pick out a nice card for Octavio. I stuff it with four hundred dollars. I
don’t know how much money he was robbed of, but it’s what my dad
earns in a week so I do it.

Let’s talk about money for a second. I’ve established I grew up
poor. Let me guide you through the present day. For my family,
poverty is like walking in a hurricane. I buy my parents umbrella
after umbrella; each provides some relief, then breaks—cheap fixes,
all of them. The rain has paused for now. In Spanish we call that
pause escampó. The rain has escampado. It will resume. Right now, I
have some discretionary income. But it will not last forever. The guilt
I feel having made it out—for now, until my own umbrella breaks—is
like having been poisoned. I feel constantly disgusting, dirty,
hungover, toxic unless I’m hemorrhaging money in this very specific
way that I find cleansing.
So what happens is, let’s say I go out to dinner. If I’m having an
anxious day, I will send my parents take-out dinner. If I see a brown
person in the kitchen at the restaurant, I will think that every kitchen
in America probably has a Mexican in it and it will make me feel
proud but sad—RIP Anthony Bourdain, a homie who got it—and
then if my server is brown, if they are either in my opinion too young
or too old or seem too tired for the job, I will leave a crazy tip—for
what I am, which is a freelancer. Now. I do not have the kind of
money to be leaving people crazy tips. But I remember every person
who ever left my dad a really good tip when we lived off his tips, I
remember every one, you don’t understand, I have been thinking of
those nice Puerto Rican executive assistants for the past fifteen
years, it was always the Latina executive assistants, very rarely the
white people in power, and I remember how he felt for the rest of the
evening when he came home. It was like having my dad back from
the dead. He would dance to no music and he’d make jokes, and he’d
come out of his shower looking like a teenager. I know what a good
tip feels like for a poor family. Every good tip feels like Simon
helping Jesus carry the cross.
When I am introduced to Octavio I hand him the heavy envelope
but it’s awkward. I don’t know him. I don’t tell him there’s money in
there, but why am I, a total fucking stranger, giving him a greeting
card? He keeps forgetting it everywhere so I’m finally like, Octavio,
there’s money in there! He does not open the envelope but puts it

away and we’re both like, Fuck what now? Are we friends or
something?
We go to lunch. He’s small and appears to be made out of paper.
We walk a long time to get to the restaurant and we have the same
stride. When we arrive, he’s disappointed to hear they’ve changed
management and he doesn’t know the owner anymore. He was trying
to impress me. He orders stewed ribs and chamomile tea. Octavio
tells me that much of the discrimination older immigrants
experience is at the hand of younger immigrants. That they will stand
within earshot of the older guys and loudly wonder what they’re still
doing here, or outright say they’re too old for the work. But Octavio
knows his worth. When an employer picks him to do a job, they
always call him back. He says he is friends with a seventy-two-yearold man who makes decorative wooden floors better than anyone
else in the game and younger guys can’t match his skill.
I ask how he feels on a daily basis as an older man without family
here and Octavio says that he feels depressed and anxious. “What
kills us is loneliness. I feel lonely even in a room full of people. I feel
destabilizing anxiety and pain. Doctors say I don’t have anything, but
I know I’m sick.” I ask Octavio whether his friends have similar
problems, and he says they do but their symptoms manifest in
different ways. “I think some men who grow old in this country get
lost here. They are unfaithful to their wives or turn to alcohol or
drugs as a way to blow off steam, to forget their pain. I’d say that out
of every hundred older immigrants, ten succumb to depression,
anxiety, or worse.”
I think about the work of Roberto Gonzales, a Harvard scholar
who has conducted longitudinal studies on the effects of
undocumented life on young people. As a result of all the stressors of
migrant life, he found his subjects suffered chronic headaches,
toothaches, ulcers, sleep problems, and eating issues. Which is funny
to find in research because I’m twenty-nine and I have this ulcer my
doctors can’t seem to soothe or diagnose the cause of. It feels like I
have an open wound right beneath my breasts in the center of my
abdomen and I can feel it spasm and bleed and it never goes away.

Sometimes I have to go to Urgent Care, and I drink concoctions and
take pills and drink teas and I just keep bleeding, and it hurts the
most when, after a long day of reading about people forming human
chains to block ICE officers from arresting a man and his child, I sit
down to write about my parents.
Now, imagine that thirty, forty, fifty years in. Of course Octavio is
sick. We’re all fucking sick. It is a public health crisis and it’s hard to
know how to talk about it without feeding into the right-wing
propaganda machine that already paints immigrants as charges to
the healthcare system and carriers of disease. The trick to doing it is
asking Americans to pity us while reassuring them with a myth as old
as the country’s justifications for slavery—that is, reassuring
Americans with the myth that people of color are long-suffering
marvels, built to do harder work, built to last longer and handle
more, reminding them what America already believes in its soul,
which is that we are “impervious to pain,” as scholar Robin Bernstein
has put it. We can only tell them we’re sick if we remind them that
sick or not, we are able to still be high-functioning machines.
“I don’t feel at home in this country,” Octavio says. “Even
immigrants in extreme poverty find a way to send their deceased
loved ones back home to be buried. They won’t be alive to feel
happiness again, but they will feel at peace, finally a place to rest. All
the dead want is a place to rest.” He says this may be his last year
before going back to Guatemala. He came here to make enough
money to send his kids to school back home, and he did it. One is a
mechanic, another is studying law, and the third is an aesthetician—
Octavio financed her salon. “Everyone who kills themselves through
their work is doing this for their children,” he says. “If you don’t have
kids, why would you kill yourself like this?” For my family the
question is, once your kids are grown and doing okay, what happens
when you keep killing yourself like this?
—

I meet Mercedes Soto through Pedro Ituralde, the head of Nuestra
Calle, the Staten Island day laborer center, who describes her to me
as the best housekeeper he has ever known, which is pretty high
fucking praise. She is fifty-six years old but looks a lot older. She has
long black hair shot with gray and a round, kind face. I tell her I’m
writing about older immigrants and she gasps dramatically,
envisioning a world in which she grows old in the United States and
takes to living under a bridge. She walks me through the scenario she
has envisioned while cracking herself up. “People are going to see me
and gossip,” she says. “I can’t let them do that. They will whisper
among themselves, Have you seen Mercedes? She lives under the
bridge now, in a box. She’s fallen so far from her days of glory! A
ghost of who she used to be! And then they will avoid saying hi to me
because I live under the bridge now. No, ma’am, I’m not going to give
them that satisfaction.”
She tells me that I remind her of her granddaughter, small and
fragile. So when she invites me to her home on Staten Island one
afternoon to teach me how to cook small corn cakes called arepas, I
immediately say yes. I’ve never had a grandmother and she seems
fun.
Mercedes and her husband rent a small room in a house that she
shares with four young Ecuadorian men on the second floor and a
young Salvadoran man across the hall from them on the first floor.
Mercedes and her husband are, by decades, the oldest people in the
house. She is the only woman. The house is spotless, and her room is
neatly packed to the brim with belongings. Today, Mercedes is
wearing dark-blue Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and a mock-turtleneck
sweater, and her hair is in a long braid down her back. She invited
her best friend, Monica, to cook with us. She is also fifty-six. (“And
she has papers,” Mercedes says immediately.) They met at an English
class and have been close ever since. Monica has henna-dyed black
hair and black eyeliner tattooed on her lids. She suggests I am
wearing too much makeup.
The women do not let me cook. Latina women never let me cook. I
used to have this self-mythology about my upbringing, which is that

my parents never taught me to cook because they didn’t want to
teach me skills that would make me a good housewife—my mother’s
biggest fear—since whenever I asked to help them in the kitchen,
they sent me to go read a book. So I was like, I had feminist parents!
But now I realize that the literal truths about myself that are
immediately manifest to others—I am clumsy, distracted, have no
attention to detail, am messy, fall often, hurt myself easily—made me
clearly useless in the kitchen and they just didn’t want me around to
interfere. When I have tried cooking for various older Latinas, they
always take over immediately, not because they’re feminist
vigilantes, but because they’re perfectionists and they are good at
what they do and why would they let me make a mess of things? To
indulge me?
Monica assembles a growing pile of arepas next to her. To make
them, you mix white corn flour, warm water, butter, salt, and cheese
in a bowl. You set it aside to cool, then take out the sticky dough and
knead it. Monica uses a drinking glass to press perfect circles into the
dough. Mercedes has made Mexican champorrado, a thick hot
chocolate with oatmeal and molasses. It is already simmering when I
arrive.
Mercedes and her husband, Jacinto, plan on “retiring” in a couple
of years. That means they’ll stop working in the United States and
move back to Mexico, probably to work in some much more relaxed
capacity there. He is a gardener and, at sixty-two years old, finds
himself going head-to-head with younger men. His lower back kills
him and he gets overheated easily. He refused to go to the doctor for
a long time—I’m fine, leave me alone!—but Mercedes put her foot
down, issued an ultimatum, and he went to the community health
clinic, which charges twenty dollars for a visit. “I can’t love you more
than you love yourself,” she told him. “Grown children will not take
care of you when you’re older—especially boys, and we have boys.”
Monica agrees that being a mother to adult sons with their own
families to take care of makes her feel vulnerable. Jacinto comes to
the kitchen to eat and drink with us. He is shy and laughs quietly at
his wife’s jokes but speaks up when we begin to talk about adult

children. “I don’t want to have to extend my hand to them to ask for
food,” he says firmly. Plus, the children can be demanding, expecting
too much of their parents. One day, Mercedes’s son raised his voice
at her on the phone because he needed her and didn’t know where
she was. “The day I live in your house and you spoon-feed me, I’ll
listen to you, but until then, I’ll do as my heart desires,” she told him.
The following night, I take a taxi to a church on Staten Island
where Nuestra Calle is having a Christmas party. Mercedes is being
honored for helping out in the community. The tables are covered in
red plastic cloths and sprinkled with snowflake glitter confetti. I sit
with Monica and Jacinto. Their phones ping with automated Biblescripture text messages in a huge font that they have to hold far from
their faces in order to read. We eat plates of baked ziti as we watch
teenagers in plush antlers dance with each other. There is a live
band, a group of men in pink blazers with accordions. There’s a
toddler in a tiny matching blazer and tiny matching accordion
pretending to play along. Mercedes and Jacinto show me a picture of
their religious marriage ceremony, which took place recently, fortytwo years after their civil one. She looks like a teen bride, wearing a
white princess dress and a tiara. I walk from table to table,
complimenting all the women’s makeup and asking if anyone wants
to talk about aging, which you know, I’m no Ronan Farrow. One
woman stops me to say she wants her story told. Altagracia is nearly
fifty years old and is recovering from surgery to remove a cyst in her
uterus that she had unsuccessfully tried to self-treat with herbs from
a naturalist. She wants to tell me that she was conned by a woman in
Mexico who said she could expedite her green-card petition and soon
began extorting her for ever-increasing fees with the threat of being
turned in to ICE if she did not comply. Altagracia paid her a total of
twelve thousand dollars.
Because of her poor health, Altagracia has death on her mind and
is thinking about going back to Mexico. “There was a raid on a 7Eleven near my house just last week. And the other day on the bus, a
white woman went on a racist rant against me while I was just
standing there. All of the racism here makes me want to go back to

my country when I die. I’m not wanted here, and I do not want to live
in eternity in a place where I’m not wanted.” In the meantime, she
says, her plan for aging involves her two children. She tells me a
story about a woman she sometimes sees when she goes out to
collect recycling for cash. The woman is seventy years old and
collects recycling for a living. She was widowed when she was very
young and never remarried, never had children. Now, Altagracia
says, the woman is all alone and left to die in a foreign country
without anyone to take care of her. She says the lesson is that it is
important to have children who can take care of us when we grow
old.
“You can’t guarantee how your kids are going to turn out. There
are good children and there are bad children, so in my opinion,
people should have two kids. One of them ought to turn out well. I
have two kids, and after my surgery, there was always one of them
around to take care of me when the other one was busy.” An heir and
a spare. I ask her if the pressure of that might be hard on the
children.
“Perhaps,” she says. “But that’s the tradition.”
—
Early the next morning, I visit Nuestra Calle. There are just five older
men sitting inside, out of the cold. One of the men recognizes me
from the party and says with a large grin, “I remember you. You tried
to interview me, but I didn’t want to talk to you.” I concede that that
was me, and try again. He leans back in his chair and sucks his teeth,
thinking awhile. “No,” he concludes. I sit down to drink my coffee
and we make small talk, until we’re kicked out by a woman who
wants to sweep the space.
Outside, I lean against the façade. The men gather around me in a
semicircle. The man to my right, in his sixties, wearing a red New
York Yankees baseball cap and a brown hoodie, too light for the cold,
starts talking bitterly about the life of a migrant. He says he has
completely given up, and that’s what he says, but here he is, isn’t he,

at 7:00 A.M. on a freezing morning, clocking in like the rest of us. The
other men quickly interrupt him, tenderly, in hushed tones. They
urge him to get help. I shut up and listen. A picture begins to form.
He is homeless and addicted to alcohol. The men try to tell him that
he has to stare down a childhood trauma in order to get better, rather
than escaping from his pain with drink. They tell him he is the
smartest man they know, the most eloquent, and they don’t want to
see this end badly. It’s an intervention.
It seems spur of the moment, brought on by the opportunity to
speak about the suffering of migration in the third person, almost
pedagogically. He gets mad at them, but they’re very loving toward
him. When he walks away, they tell me they are the lucky ones, that
old day laborers often end up sick, sad, and alone, too embarrassed
and lonely to go to the worker centers, instead picking up work in
remote corners. “But I wouldn’t advise you to go to those places
alone,” the man who turned down the interview says. “If you want to
go there, we’ll go with you.”
—
I am ten years older than my brother. I have always imagined us as
being part of an “heir and spare” sort of situation, which I know
about because my mother is obsessed with the European royal
families—she thinks I look like Charlotte Casiraghi of Monaco the
way my father thinks I have the spirit of Greta Thunberg. I…don’t.
My brother has always been so levelheaded, so sweet, and patient,
and—I say this with absolute awe and relief—has never shown signs
of mental illness, so my parents were grateful for him, grateful that
he was healthy and fine, grateful that he was spared. He’s not crazy,
sure. But he was also born in Brooklyn. Which means he’s an
American citizen.
Whereas it was my responsibility to be the face of the family, the
hunter, the gatherer, my brother just had to find it in him to do his
homework. He was Prince Harry. He just had to…not be
photographed in a Nazi costume. But he also had a bigger

responsibility than I had, that I could not have because I was my
parents’ undocumented child. He just had to turn twenty-one.
Every mixed-status family in the United States knows the drill. An
undocumented parent can be sponsored by their American-citizen
child when the child turns twenty-one. (This does not work for
siblings or other family members.) My parents never talked about it
around my brother, though surely it made them hopeful, but I
thought about it all the time. I took to lovingly calling him my little
anchor baby, after the disparaging term Republicans used for the
American-born children of undocumented immigrants who
supposedly “anchored” them to the United States. I reclaimed the
term. On his birthday, I always took him out to dinner, and as he ate
his sushi happily and cluelessly, I’d think, You beautiful aging casket
of wine. Better by the day.
This all changed recently, when reports began circulating that ICE
was arresting undocumented parents and spouses of American
citizens when they petitioned for green cards. Immigration lawyers
began advising children, husbands, and wives against petitioning for
them at all.
Ricardo Reyes, a twenty-one-year-old recent Yale graduate, is one
of those kids. He is an American citizen. He has the face and
demeanor of an adorable bludgeoned baby seal. His parents worked
in the garment industry in Los Angeles for decades before moving to
the Pacific Northwest to make a living picking apples. “Since I was in
elementary school, I would hear my mom talk about naturalization,”
he told me. He was their oldest child, so he’d reach the finish line
first. He and several of his friends at Yale, also the children of
immigrants, were turning twenty-one within a few months of each
other and they were counting down the days, talking excitedly after
class about who would turn twenty-one first. Then on the morning of
his birthday, his lawyer told him it would be too risky to file an
application. One of his classmates had seen her dad detained during
their green card interview, and he was deported despite a national
outcry.

After digesting the news, Ricardo’s mother announced that when
her body can no longer withstand picking apples she’d like to go back
to Mexico. His father has been here since he was nineteen years old,
so it’s hard for him to imagine returning to Mexico, but Ricardo
thinks he’ll probably end up going back too. Ricardo is devastated
that he wasn’t able to adjust their legal status but finds comfort in
the fact that he can provide for their retirement if they go back to
Mexico. He is a middle school teacher now, back in L.A. “Any money
I make will not be for me. I just need an apartment. The rest will be
for my parents.” I take him out to drinks and am like, how about
chemical engineering, baby? But he wants to be a teacher and I
admire that purity even if I have no high hopes for its financial
output.
But Ricardo is young, and for now his parents can still work. He
does not yet know what this life will do to him. I’m looking to
interview children of immigrants partly to get a blueprint for myself
because I’m lost and I am scared, so I set off to find somebody a little
older, someone who has been doing this for a while, and in my
research I stumble upon thirty-six-year-old Mira Fernández. Mira is
a Latina journalist who writes for the local Spanish paper who counts
my dad as one of her readers. She grew up in New York, the daughter
of undocumented immigrants. Her dad was a day laborer, and she
lived with her parents—and paycheck to paycheck—until she was an
adult. She remembers that, one month, after paying her bills and
rent, she had no money left over to buy sanitary napkins, so she
bought a roll of toilet paper that she made last her whole period. It
was humiliating. “I decided that would never happen again. I wanted
to save up so I could retire one day, and I was going to provide for
my parents’ emotional health and quality of life,” she tells me. She
did not want to be able to provide only for their basic needs. She
wanted them to live with dignity. So she began to work toward that.
Then, after decades as a day laborer, her father started to show
signs of depression. His years had consisted of going to work, coming
home to sleep, going to work, coming home to sleep, and back again,
with nothing in his life to give it meaning or pleasure. He got older.

He became overcome by stress and anxiety. He stopped talking. This
is when Mira started noticing the miniature cars. They were the size
of Hot Wheels cars, but they were built with intricate detail, like
built-to-scale models. Her dad soon began amassing dozens, tens of
dozens of tiny cars. He was skilled in woodwork, so after work or on
weekends, during any free time he had, he would work on an
elaborate wooden display for the cars. He’d clean them lovingly with
small cotton rounds. He painted any scratches they had, and he
rearranged them constantly. It’s the only way he passed the time
when he was home. I ask Mira if this made her sad. She is quiet for a
long time, then says, “You know, he filled up this space in his heart
with those little cars, so I’m just glad he found a way to feel better.”
After many years of trying, Mira’s parents, now much older, could
not do manual labor in the United States anymore and went back to
Mexico. Mira fully supports them, sending money twice a month. I
ask her what percentage of her paycheck goes to her parents, and she
says it is something she does so naturally and so much, she’s never
even thought to calculate that.
“Look, they’re better off there,” she says. “They were tired of their
lives here. Their emotional health is more stable there, they have
their own home, they have activities, they have friends. Here, they
worked constantly just to make ends meet, just to pay rent on time.
They could not retire here, but with some financial help on my part,
their lives over there are more peaceful.” She admits it is financially
complicated for her, but her parents always express their gratitude
and they never ask for money outright. “I’d feel guilty not doing it,
but I’m very happy to be able to do it, and I’m very happy to help
them,” she says.
—
Her brother doesn’t contribute. He says he has his own family to take
care of. Mira theorizes that Latin American culture is so imbued with
patriarchal values that paint women as natural caregivers and
nurturers that women feel a greater responsibility toward aging

parents, and women who are not able to balance or reject those
values feel an inescapable burden.
I used to say that I would slip antifreeze into my brother’s coffee
(it has a sweet taste, and he likes how I prepare his coffee, dulce and
light enough that it should match my skin tone) if he did not help me
take care of our parents as they aged. Once, he was maybe twelve
years old and his report card was pretty bad. His report cards were
pretty bad from his first ever one in kindergarten until he was in
community college, so this was not a surprise—we all have our
strengths and academics was not his. But it was a fucking nightmare
for a family so focused on social mobility—and I was pissed. I called
him on the phone and screamed at the top of my lungs that as an
American citizen, he was wasting his opportunities, and that if he
ended up working at a Best Buy and not going to college, I would
never speak to him again in my life. “You hear that? I have no
problem cutting you off. Don’t you try me. You won’t be a burden to
me. I will never fucking talk to you again.” I recently apologized to
him for being so cruel and he just laughed and said he didn’t take me
seriously because I was just like Dad.
—
When my father could drive—before he started dying—he would take
me to the Land of Make Believe or Splish Splash or some other
tristate-area water park every summer. He did it because
commercials for water parks were featured prominently on local
television and they depicted children acting carefree and wild and I
was not carefree or wild and it weighed on him, so he insisted I try. I
did not know how to swim. He tried to teach me but I was terrified of
the water. My father is prone to anger and so he is not a good
teacher. When he made me practice long division at home and I got
answers wrong, he’d rip up the pages I worked on about an inch from
my face while telling me I was stupid. He took that approach to
swimming lessons, and after a few minutes, he’d usually just storm
off and my mother would tell me to ignore him. Through adulthood,

my friends treated my not knowing how to swim like my not knowing
how to ride a bicycle or not being able to leave the country—just, like,
a quirky thing about me.
My fear of water and inability to swim did not stop my father from
taking me to water parks. It made him more dogged in pursuit of the
activity. It’s all he wanted to do in the summers. My mother packed
sandwiches and snacks because concession food was too expensive,
and off we went. The only ride I could tolerate was the Lazy River
because all I had to do was float on an inner tube, but my father liked
for us to go on the rides with long, dark tubes that twisted into crazy
loops at high speed and then spat you out into a pool. Those rides
had long lines, and the entire way up I would have a pit in my
stomach and I pleaded with him not to make me go. He insisted it
would be fun, the whole point was my having fun. He’d go first, then
wait at the bottom. At the top of the ride, when I was standing
barefoot on a warm wooden landing and there was a dark tunnel in
front of me filled with a fast current of water rushing into the pitch
black, the people who worked at the ride would repeatedly ask me if
I was okay going down. But I didn’t want to face my father if I gave
up, so I lay down in the tube, crossed my arms, counted to three, and
pushed myself down. Years later, my psychiatrist would tell me that
my anxiety and adrenaline run on the same “train tracks,” so I often
get them confused. If I experienced an adrenaline rush in the dark
tubes, or if I experienced a panic attack while I was in them, I cannot
say. I remember it as a sharp intake of breath, down to the cold of my
soul. And I remember the next moment of awareness, which is being
spit into a pool, and sinking.
I sank. I always sank. I knew I could stand, but my body was
leaden and I fell at the wrong angle. And my father always reached
down and brought me to air, my long black hair stuck to my face. I
was never underwater long enough to come up gasping for air, but I
can still feel the taste of chlorine in my lungs. I miss the taste of
chlorinated pool water. And I miss this dynamic, of my father putting
me in a manufactured scene of crisis in which I would feel helpless
but at the same time be perfectly safe. I felt like I was going to die,

but I would not die. A person who cannot swim and who panics in
water is in danger in a pool, and my father knew that, and he made it
so that he could save me every time. It was never a big production
when he did it, he’d just pick me up by the armpits and say, “Wasn’t
that fun?” I think the lesson was: He was my father, and he was god.
As long as I would panic and sink, and he could save me, he would
always have that place.
I never learned to swim. The farthest I had ever ventured into the
ocean was to my knees, screaming the whole while. But by last
summer, right before I turned twenty-nine and he turned fifty-four,
our roles had so profoundly reversed and his self-esteem was so
devastatingly low that I wondered if I could give that back to him,
this ability to save me. Like the water-park drownings, this invitation
was also perfectly manufactured: I invited him to come spend an
afternoon at the beach in the middle of July precisely with the
purpose of teaching me how to swim. It would take, max, three hours
and I would take, just, one Klonopin.
The beach we went to is called Lighthouse Point. It’s on the Long
Island Sound, not far from New Haven. The Long Island Sound is
technically an estuary, which is where salt water from the ocean and
fresh water from rivers mix. Sixteen different very New Englandy
rivers empty out into the Atlantic Ocean at this spot. Emma Lazarus
wrote a forgettable poem about it with not a huddling mass in sight.
It is described in The Great Gatsby as “the most domesticated body
of salt water in the Western hemisphere.” When I was in college, I
got the coordinates of East Egg and West Egg, fictional places on
Long Island, tattooed by my left breast because they symbolized my
desire for what I cannot have. But now, I just like this beach because
there are always black and brown families fishing or building sand
castles there, proudly being alive, and there is just something about
the ocean air perfuming dark bodies refusing to die that makes me
want to live another day too.
To begin, my father poured cold water over my body with his
hands like a priest baptizing an infant. It was freezing. His arms were
very white. My father had not been to the beach in seven years. He

told me the first step was being able to stand in deep water, which he
likened to standing on a packed subway when you don’t have a pole
to hold and cannot lean against a door. Your legs have to be apart
just so, and you use your arms to stabilize yourself. He asked me to
shift my weight from foot to foot as if I was on a bumpy subway ride,
I guess kind of like he stands when he chops lettuce. He grabbed my
hand and we went deeper into the ocean until the water was up to my
chest, the deepest I had ever gone. “Next, you float,” he told me. He
grabbed my hands and asked me to go on my stomach, extend my
legs as far as they would go, and kick. He assured me he would not
let go. I told him I weighed 140 pounds, which is not true, laadeedaa,
but he said it didn’t matter, and to prove that to me, he asked me to
grab him by the hands and he told me I would be able to support his
entire weight in the water. “The water will help you carry my weight,”
he said.
I did. I mean the water did. When it was my turn, I asked him to
swear to not let me go. I’d usually ask him to swear on his mother,
because I know that’s what he holds most holy, but I think she’s
demonic so I don’t like bringing her up. Instead, I asked why I should
believe him. As an adult, he has told me that because he is a good
father, he has lied to me my whole life, and he is proud of lying to
me, and he will lie to me until he dies, so his word means nothing
from him. I held on to his hands so tightly I am sure I bruised them.
He did not let go.
But I did not float. My body is not buoyant. “Your body is
determined to sink,” my father announced as he tried to hold me up
by the stomach. My legs do not extend in the water, so I cannot kick;
they gravitate toward my father’s body like a magnet and I sink. I
sink, but not down. My legs sink laterally, toward his body, so I end
up vertical. He relaxed his body and showed me how easy it was to
float on his back—Mire!—totally flat, but in my resting state, my
body in water wants to be upright, on my feet. Both of us realized at
the same time that this was a true thing about me, and we tried to
change it until finally our limbs gave out and we returned to shore. I
was not able to restore the natural order of things.

Back on sand, I asked him if, before, on the roof that summer, he
had lied when he promised to stay young forever.
Yes, he said.
If you break little promises you’ll break big ones. That’s what you
said.
I know. But I won’t.
My mom was on a beach blanket, her back to the sun, trying to
darken the skin around a scar. She didn’t turn around to look at my
dad and he didn’t look at her. Now that I think of it, they didn’t speak
to each other at all that day except for when they awkwardly waded
into the water together and stood some space apart, looking like two
dead fish in the ocean together, stagnant but afloat. And that’s how
they planned to stay, dead, stagnant, and afloat, even after we
discovered that my dad wasn’t going to watch volleyball on weekends
after all, even after I confronted him and he admitted it but blamed
my mom. I separated them. He left home one night while my mom
and brother were at church and I reminded him to write my brother
a loving text because that night would be hard for him.
There is research about migrant families, but children do not see
it as prophecies foretold. I should have known better. I had spoken to
a lot of people telling me the same things. And now here it was
happening to my family, my soccer team, the world’s best. Shortly
before I asked him to leave, my father had told my brother: “I am
tired of living just for you and your sister. It is my turn to be happy
now.” And he handled it the wrong way, totaled some people’s lives
in his wake, but he was right. It was his turn to be happy. And now
my mom is free to figure out what makes her happy, after thirty-one
years. Thirty of those years have been spent here in America, being
undocumented together. She goes to yoga now. The other day, she
had a hot dog.
I asked almost everyone I interviewed for this book about regrets,
but they didn’t tell me many. That’s not what they remember of their
time here. That’s not what we’ll remember when we have to leave, by
choice, force, or casket. The look in a mother’s eyes at her baby’s first
word in English, my father’s heaving sobs when I handed him my

diploma in Latin from the best fucking school in the world, Leonel’s
first steps of freedom outside the church in the autumn cold after
four months in hiding, the Mexican chefs behind every great
restaurant in New York, the Upper East Side babies who love their
Haitian nannies so much it makes their moms jealous, a day
laborer’s first cold shower in America after wearing off the soles of
his feet in the desert, the two young men who pushed Joaquín up the
mountain when he wanted to die, Jesus Christ himself on the cross—
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these
brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

Peril

Authoritarian regimes, dictators, despots are often, but not always,
fools. But none is foolish enough to give perceptive, dissident writers
free range to publish their judgments or follow their creative
instincts. They know they do so at their own peril. They are not
stupid enough to abandon control (overt or insidious) over media.
Their methods include surveillance, censorship, arrest, even
slaughter of those writers informing and disturbing the public.
Writers who are unsettling, calling into question, taking another,
deeper look. Writers—journalists, essayists, bloggers, poets,
playwrights—can disturb the social oppression that functions like a
coma on the population, a coma despots call peace, and they stanch
the blood flow of war that hawks and profiteers thrill to.
That is their peril.
Ours is of another sort.
How bleak, unlivable, insufferable existence becomes when we are
deprived of artwork. That the life and work of writers facing peril
must be protected is urgent, but along with that urgency we should
remind ourselves that their absence, the choking off of a writer’s
work, its cruel amputation, is of equal peril to us. The rescue we
extend to them is a generosity to ourselves.
We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers
from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored
writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the
warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the
corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted,
unjailed, unharassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the
sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The

alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and
vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the
historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the
steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow.
The history of persecuted writers is as long as the history of literature
itself. And the efforts to censor, starve, regulate, and annihilate us
are clear signs that something important has taken place. Cultural
and political forces can sweep clean all but the “safe,” all but stateapproved art.
I have been told that there are two human responses to the
perception of chaos: naming and violence. When the chaos is simply
the unknown, the naming can be accomplished effortlessly—a new
species, star, formula, equation, prognosis. There is also mapping,
charting, or devising proper nouns for unnamed or stripped-ofnames geography, landscape, or population. When chaos resists,
either by reforming itself or by rebelling against imposed order,
violence is understood to be the most frequent response and the
most rational when confronting the unknown, the catastrophic, the
wild, wanton, or incorrigible. Rational responses may be censure;
incarceration in holding camps, prisons; or death, singly or in war.
There is, however, a third response to chaos, which I have not heard
about, which is stillness. Such stillness can be passivity and
dumbfoundedness; it can be paralytic fear. But it can also be art.
Those writers plying their craft near to or far from the throne of raw
power, of military power, of empire building and countinghouses,
writers who construct meaning in the face of chaos must be
nurtured, protected. And it is right that such protection be initiated
by other writers. And it is imperative not only to save the besieged
writers but to save ourselves. The thought that leads me to
contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten
novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by
the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground,
essayists’ questions challenging authority never being posed,
unstaged plays, canceled films—that thought is a nightmare. As
though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink.

Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel,
that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights,
or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and
turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.
A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its
necessity.

The Dead of September 11
Some have God’s words; others have songs of comfort for the
bereaved. If I can pluck up courage here, I would like to speak
directly to the dead—the September dead. Those children of
ancestors born in every continent on the planet: Asia, Europe, Africa,
the Americas; born of ancestors who wore kilts, obis, saris, geles,
wide straw hats, yarmulkes, goatskin, wooden shoes, feathers, and
cloths to cover their hair. But I would not say a word until I could set
aside all I know or believe about nations, war, leaders, the governed
and ungovernable; all I suspect about armor and entrails. First I
would freshen my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil—
wanton or studied; explosive or quietly sinister; whether born of a
sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple compulsion to
stand up before falling down. I would purge my language of
hyperbole, of its eagerness to analyze the levels of wickedness;
ranking them, calculating their higher or lower status among others
of its kind.
Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for a mouth
full of blood. Too holy an act for impure thoughts. Because the dead
are free, absolute; they cannot be seduced by blitz.
To speak to you, the dead of September, I must not claim false
intimacy or summon an overheated heart glazed just in time for a
camera. I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time
that I have nothing to say—no words stronger than the steel that
pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the
ancient atoms you have become.
And I have nothing to give either—except this gesture, this thread
thrown between your humanity and mine: I want to hold you in my

arms and as your soul got shot of its box of flesh to understand, as
you have done, the wit of eternity: its gift of unhinged release tearing
through the darkness of its knell.

The Foreigner’s Home

E

XCLUDING THE HEIGHT of the slave trade in the
nineteenth century, the mass movement of peoples in the latter half
of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first is
greater now than it has ever been. It is a movement of workers,
intellectuals, refugees, armies crossing oceans, continents,
immigrants through custom offices and hidden routes, speaking
multiple languages of trade, of political intervention, of persecution,
exile, violence, and poverty. There is little doubt that the
redistribution (voluntary or involuntary) of people all over the globe
tops the agenda of the state, the boardrooms, the neighborhoods, the
street. Political maneuvers to control this movement are not limited
to monitoring the dispossessed. While much of this exodus can be
described as the journey of the colonized to the seat of the colonizers
(slaves, as it were, abandoning the plantation for the planters’
home), and while more of it is the flight of war refugees, the
relocation and transplantation of the management and diplomatic
class to globalization’s outposts, as well as the deployment of fresh
military units and bases, feature prominently in legislative attempts
to control the constant flow of people.
The spectacle of mass movement draws attention inevitably to the
borders, the porous places, the vulnerable points where one’s
concept of home is seen as being menaced by foreigners. Much of the
alarm hovering at the borders, the gates, is stoked, it seems to me, by
(1) both the threat and the promise of globalism and (2) an uneasy
relationship with our own foreignness, our own rapidly
disintegrating sense of belonging.

Let me begin with globalization. In our current understanding,
globalization is not a version of the nineteenth-century “Britannia
rules” format—although postcolonial upheavals reflect and are
reminiscent of the domination one nation had over most others. The
term does not have the “workers of the world unite” agenda of the
old internationalism, although that was the very word
—“internationalism”—that the president of the AFL-CIO used at the
executive council of union presidents. Nor is the globalism the
postwar appetite for “one world,” the rhetoric that stirred and
bedeviled the fifties and launched the United Nations. Nor is it the
“universalism” of the sixties and seventies—either as a plea for world
peace or an insistence on cultural hegemony. “Empire,”
“internationalism,” “one world,” “universal”—all seem less like
categories of historical trends than yearnings. Yearnings to corral the
earth into some semblance of unity and some measure of control, to
conceive of the planet’s human destiny as flowing from one
constellation of nations’ ideology. Globalism has the same desires
and yearnings as its predecessors. It too understands itself as
historically progressive, enhancing, destined, unifying, utopian.
Narrowly defined, it is meant to mean instant movement of capital
and the rapid distribution of data and products operating within a
politically neutral environment shaped by multinational corporate
demands. Its larger connotations, however, are less innocent,
encompassing as they do not only the demonization of embargoed
states or the trivialization cum negotiation with warlords, but also
the collapse of nation-states under the weight of transnational
economies, capital, and labor; the preeminence of Western culture
and economy; the Americanization of the developed and developing
world through the penetration of U.S. culture into others as well as
the marketing of third-world cultures to the West as fashion, film
settings, and cuisine.
Globalization, hailed with the same vigor as was manifest destiny,
internationalism, etc., has reached a level of majesty in our
imagination. For all its claims of fostering freedom, globalism’s
dispensations are royal, for it can bestow much. In matters of reach

(across frontiers); in terms of mass (of populations affected and
engaged); and in terms of riches (limitless fields to mine for
resources and services to offer). Yet as much as globalism is adored
as near messianic, it is also reviled as an evil courting a dangerous
dystopia. Its disregard of borders, national infrastructures, local
bureaucracies, internet censors, tariffs, laws, and languages; its
disregard of margins and the marginal people who live there; its
formidable, engulfing properties accelerating erasure, a flattening
out of difference, of specificity for marketing purposes. An
abhorrence of diversity. We imagine indistinguishability, the
elimination of minority languages, minority cultures in its wake. We
speculate with horror on what could be the irrevocable, enfeebling
alteration of major languages, major cultures in its sweep. Even if
those dreaded consequences are not made completely manifest, they
nevertheless cancel out globalism’s assurances of better life by
issuing dire warnings of premature cultural death.
Other dangers globalism poses are the distortion of the public and
the destruction of the private. We glean what is public primarily, but
not exclusively, from media. We are asked to abandon much of what
was once private to the data-collecting requirements of
governmental, political, market, and now security needs. Part of the
anxiety about the porous divide between public and private domains
certainly stems from reckless applications of the terms. There is the
privatization of prisons, which is the private corporate control of a
public facility. There is the privatization of public schools. There is
also private life—claims to which can be given up freely on talk
shows, or negotiated in the courts by celebrities, “public” figures, and
privacy rights cases. There is private space (atriums, gardens, etc.)
open to the public. And public space (parks, playgrounds, and
beaches in certain neighborhoods) limited to private use. There is the
looking-glass phenomenon of the “play” of the public in our private,
interior lives. Interiors of our houses look like store displays (along
with shelf after shelf of “collections”) and store displays are arranged
as house interiors; young people’s behavior is said to be an echo of
what the screen offers; the screen is said to echo, represent, youthful

interests and behavior—not create them. Since the space in which
both civic and private life is lived has become so indistinguishable
from inner and outer, from inside/outside, these two realms have
been compressed into a ubiquitous blur, a rattling of our concept of
home.
It is this rattling I believe that affects the second point: our
uneasiness with our own feelings of foreignness, our own rapidly
fraying sense of belonging. To what do we pay greatest allegiance?
Family, language group, culture, country, gender? Religion, race?
And if none of these matter, are we urbane, cosmopolitan, or simply
lonely? In other words, how do we decide where we belong? What
convinces us that we do? Or put another way, what is the matter with
foreignness?
I have chosen to comment on a novel written in the fifties by a
Ghanaian author as a means of addressing this dilemma—the
inside/outside blur that can enshrine frontiers, and borders real,
metaphorical, and psychological, as we wrestle with definitions of
nationalism, citizenship, race, ideology, and the so-called clash of
cultures in our search to belong.
African and African American writers are not alone in coming to
terms with these problems, but they do have a long and singular
history of confronting them. Of not being at home in one’s
homeland; of being exiled in the place one belongs.
Before I discuss this novel, I want to describe what preceded my
reading of African literature and compelled my excursion into what
troubles contemporary definitions of the foreign.
Velvet-lined offering plates were passed down the pews on Sunday.
The last one was the smallest and the one most likely to be empty. Its
position and size signaled the dutiful but limited expectations that
characterized most everything in the thirties. The coins, never bills,
sprinkled there were mostly from children encouraged to give up
their pennies and nickels for the charitable work so necessary for the
redemption of Africa. Although the sound of the name, “Africa,” was
beautiful it was riven by the complicated emotions with which it was
associated. Unlike starving China, Africa was both ours and theirs;

intimately connected to us and profoundly foreign. A huge needy
homeland to which we were said to belong but that none of us had
seen or cared to see, inhabited by people with whom we maintained a
delicate relationship of mutual ignorance and disdain, and with
whom we shared a mythology of passive, traumatized otherness
cultivated by textbooks, film, cartoons, and the hostile name-calling
children learn to love.
Later, when I began to read fiction set in Africa, I found that, with
no exceptions that I knew of, each narrative elaborated on and
enhanced the very mythology that accompanied those velvet plates
floating between the pews. For Joyce Cary, Elspeth Huxley, H. Rider
Haggard, Africa was precisely what the missionary collection
implied: a dark continent in desperate need of light. The light of
Christianity, of civilization, of development. The light of charity
switched on by simple goodheartedness. It was an idea of Africa
fraught with the assumptions of a complex intimacy coupled with an
acknowledgment of unmediated estrangement. This conundrum of
foreign ownership alienating the local population, of the
dispossession of native speakers from their home, the exile of
indigenous peoples within their home contributed a surreal glow to
these narratives, enticing the writers to project a metaphysically void
Africa ripe for invention. With one or two exceptions, literary Africa
was an inexhaustible playground for tourists and foreigners. In the
work of Joseph Conrad, Isak Dinesen, Saul Bellow, Ernest
Hemingway, whether imbued with or struggling against conventional
Western views of benighted Africa, their protagonists found the
continent to be as empty as that collection plate—a vessel waiting for
whatever copper and silver imagination was pleased to place there.
As grist for Western mills, accommodatingly mute, conveniently
blank, Africa could be made to support a wide variety of literary
and/or ideological requirements. It could stand back as scenery for
any exploit or leap forward and obsess itself with the woes of any
foreigner; it could contort itself into frightening malignant shapes
upon which Westerners could contemplate evil; or it could kneel and
accept elementary lessons from its betters. For those who made that

literal or imaginative voyage, contact with Africa offered thrilling
opportunities to experience life in its primitive, formative, inchoate
state, the consequence of which experience was self-enlightenment—
a wisdom that confirmed the benefits of European proprietorship
free of the responsibility of gathering overly much actual intelligence
about the African culture that stimulated the enlightenment. So
bighearted was this literary Africa, only a little geography, lots of
climate, a few customs and anecdotes sufficed as the canvas upon
which a portrait of a wiser or sadder or fully reconciled self could be
painted. In Western novels published up to and throughout the
fifties, Africa was itself Camus’s l’étranger, offering the occasion for
knowledge but keeping its own unknowableness intact. Like
Marlow’s “white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over, mapped
since his boyhood with “rivers and lakes and names, [it] had ceased
to be a blank space of delightful mystery….It had become a place of
darkness.” What little could be known was enigmatic, repugnant, or
hopelessly contradictory. Imaginary Africa was a cornucopia of
imponderables that like the monstrous Grendel in Beowulf resisted
explanation. Thus, a plethora of incompatible metaphors can be
gleaned from the literature. As the original locus of the human race,
Africa is ancient, yet, being under colonial control, it is also infantile.
A kind of old fetus always waiting to be born but confounding all
midwives. In novel after novel, short story after short story, Africa is
simultaneously innocent and corrupting, savage and pure, irrational
and wise.
In that racially charged literary context, coming upon Camara
Laye’s Le Regard du Roi, known in English as The Radiance of the
King, was shocking. Suddenly the clichéd journey into storybook
African darkness either to bring light or find it is reimagined. The
novel not only summons a sophisticated, wholly African imagistic
vocabulary from which to launch a discursive negotiation with the
West, it exploits the images of homelessness that the conqueror
imposes on the native population: the disorder of Joyce Cary’s
Mister Johnson; the obsession with smells in Elspeth Huxley’s The
Flame Trees of Thika; the European fixation on the meaning of

nakedness as in H. Rider Haggard, or Joseph Conrad, or virtually all
travel writing.
Camara Laye’s narrative is, briefly, this: Clarence, a European, has
come to Africa for reasons he cannot articulate. There, he has
gambled, lost, and heavily in debt to his white compatriots, is hiding
among the indigenous population in a dirty inn. Already evicted from
the colonists’ hotel, about to be evicted by the African innkeeper,
Clarence decides the solution to his pennilessness is to be taken into
the service of the king. He is prevented by a solid crowd of villagers
from approaching the king, and his mission is greeted with scorn. He
meets a pair of mischief-loving teenagers and a cunning beggar who
agree to help him. Under their guidance he travels south, where the
king is expected to appear next. By way of his journey, not wholly
unlike a pilgrim’s progress, the author is able to trace and parody the
parallel sensibilities of Europe and Africa.
The literary tropes of Africa are exact replicas of perceptions of
foreignness: (1) threatening, (2) depraved, (3) incomprehensible.
And it is fascinating to observe Camara Laye’s adroit handling of
those perceptions.
1. Threatening. Clarence, his protagonist, is stupefied with fear. In
spite of noting that the “forests [are] devoted to the wine industry”;
that the landscape is “cultivated”; that the people living there give
him a “cordial welcome,” he sees only inaccessibility, “common
hostility.” The order and clarity of the landscape are at odds with the
menacing jungle in his head.
2. Depraved. It is Clarence who descends into depravity, enacting
the full horror of what Westerners imagine as “going native”: the
“unclean and cloying weakness” that imperils masculinity. Clarence’s
blatant enjoyment of and feminine submission to continuous
cohabitation reflect his own appetites and his own willful ignorance.
As mulatto children crowd the village, Clarence, the only white in the
region, continues to wonder where they came from. He refuses to
believe the obvious—that he has been sold as stud for the harem.
3. Incomprehensible. Camara Laye’s Africa is not dark; it is
suffused with light: the watery green light of the forest; the ruby-red

tints of the houses and soil; the sky’s “unbearable…azure brilliance”;
even the scales of the fish women “glimmered like robes of dying
moonlight.” Understanding the motives, the sensibilities of the
Africans—both wicked and benign—require only a suspension of
belief in an unbreachable difference between humans.
Unpacking the hobbled idioms of the foreigner usurping one’s
home, of delegitimizing the native, of reversing claims of belonging,
the novel allows us to experience a white man emigrating to Africa,
alone, without a job, without authority, without resources or even a
family name. But he has one asset that always works, can only work,
in third-world countries. He is white, he says, and therefore suited in
some ineffable way to be advisor to the king whom he has never seen,
in a country he does not know, among people he neither understands
nor wishes to. What begins as a quest for a position of authority, for
escape from the contempt of his own countrymen becomes a searing
process of reeducation. What counts as intelligence among these
Africans is not prejudice, but nuance and the ability and willingness
to see, to surmise. The European’s refusal to meditate cogently on
any event except the ones that concern his comfort or survival dooms
him. When insight finally seeps through, he feels annihilated by it.
This fictional investigation allows us to see the deracing of a
Westerner experiencing Africa without European support,
protection, or command. Allows us to rediscover or imagine anew
what it feels like to be marginal, ignored, superfluous; to have one’s
name never uttered; to be stripped of history or representation; to be
sold or exploited labor for the benefit of a presiding family, a shrewd
entrepreneur, a local regime.
It is a disturbing encounter that may help us deal with the
destabilizing pressures of the transglobal tread of peoples. Pressure
that can make us cling or discredit other cultures, other languages;
make us rank evil according to the fashion of the day; make us
legislate, expel, conform, purge, and pledge allegiance to ghosts and
fantasy. Most of all this pressure can make us deny the foreigner in
ourselves and make us resist to the death the commonness of
humanity.

After many trials, enlightenment slowly surfaces in Camara Laye’s
Westerner: Clarence gets his wish to meet the king. But by then he
and his purpose have altered. Against the advice of the local people,
Clarence crawls naked to the throne. When he finally sees the king,
who is a mere boy laden with gold, the “terrifying void that is within
[him],” the void that he has been protecting from disclosure, opens
to receive the royal gaze. It is this openness, this crumbling of
cultural armor maintained out of fear, this act of unprecedented
courage that is the beginning of Clarence’s salvation, his bliss and his
freedom. Wrapped in the boy king’s embrace, feeling the beat of his
young heart, Clarence hears him murmur these exquisite words of
authentic belonging, words welcoming him to the human race: “Did
you not know that I was waiting for you?”

Racism and Fascism

L

ET US BE REMINDED that before there is a final solution,
there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move
toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another,
then another. Something, perhaps, like this:
1. Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.
2. Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting
the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse.
Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that
enemy.
3. Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are
willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is
profitable, because it grants power, and because it works.
4. Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit, or expel those that
challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and
deification.
5. Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with
this constructed enemy.
6. Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and
can sanitize the dispossession process.
7. Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums;
recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial
superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.
8. Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for, and rationalize
the building of holding arenas for the enemy—especially its
males and absolutely its children.

9. Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized
entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions: a few
minutes on television, a few lines in the press; a little pseudosuccess; the illusion of power and influence; a little fun, a little
style, a little consequence.
10. Maintain, at all costs, silence.
In 1995 racism may wear a new dress, buy a new pair of boots, but
neither it nor its succubus twin fascism is new or can make anything
new. It can only reproduce the environment that supports its own
health: fear, denial, and an atmosphere in which its victims have lost
the will to fight.
The forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems are
not to be found in one political party or another, or in one or another
wing of any single political party. Democrats have no unsullied
history of egalitarianism. Nor are liberals free of domination
agendas. Republicans have housed abolitionists and white
supremacists. Conservative, moderate, liberal; right, left, hard left,
far right; religious, secular, socialist—we must not be blindsided by
these Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola labels because the genius of fascism is
that any political structure can host the virus and virtually any
developed country can become a suitable home. Fascism talks
ideology, but it is really just marketing—marketing for power.
It is recognizable by its need to purge, by the strategies it uses to
purge, and by its terror of truly democratic agendas. It is
recognizable by its determination to convert all public services to
private entrepreneurship, all nonprofit organizations to profitmaking ones—so that the narrow but protective chasm between
governance and business disappears. It changes citizens into
taxpayers—so individuals become angry at even the notion of the
public good. It changes neighbors into consumers—so the measure of
our value as humans is not our humanity or our compassion or our
generosity but what we own. It changes parenting into panicking—so
that we vote against the interests of our own children; against their
health care, their education, their safety from weapons. And in

effecting these changes it produces the perfect capitalist, one who is
willing to kill a human being for a product (a pair of sneakers, a
jacket, a car) or kill generations for control of products (oil, drugs,
fruit, gold).
When our fears have all been serialized, our creativity censured,
our ideas “marketplaced,” our rights sold, our intelligence
sloganized, our strength downsized, our privacy auctioned; when the
theatricality, the entertainment value, the marketing of life is
complete, we will find ourselves living not in a nation but in a
consortium of industries, and wholly unintelligible to ourselves
except for what we see as through a screen darkly.

Home

L

AST YEAR a colleague of mine asked me where I had gone to
school when a child. I told her, Lorain, Ohio. Then she questioned
me: Were your schools desegregated then? I said, What? They were
never segregated in the thirties and forties—so why would they be
desegregated. Besides, we had one high school and four junior high
schools. Then I recalled that she herself was around forty years old
when that term “desegregated” was alive everywhere. Obviously I
was in a time warp and obviously the early diverse population of the
town I grew up in was not the way of the country. Before I left Lorain
for Washington, D.C., then Texas, then Ithaca, then New York City, I
thought every place was more or less like it, except in size. Nothing
could be further from the truth. In any case her questions made me
think anew about this area of Ohio and my recollections of home.
This region (Lorain, Elyria, Oberlin) is not like it was when I lived
here, but in a way it doesn’t matter because home is memory and
companions and/or friends who share the memory. But equally
important as the memory and place and people of one’s personal
home is the very idea of home. What do we mean when we say
“home”?
It is a virtual question because the destiny of the twenty-first
century will be shaped by the possibility or the collapse of a
shareable world. The question of cultural apartheid and/or cultural
integration is at the heart of all governments and informs our
perception of the ways in which governance and culture compel the
exoduses of peoples (voluntarily or driven) and raises complex
questions of dispossession, recovery, and the reinforcement of siege
mentalities. How do individuals resist or become complicit in the

process of alienizing others’ demonization—a process that can infect
the foreigner’s geographical sanctuary with the country’s
xenophobia? By welcoming immigrants, or importing slaves into
their midst for economic reasons and relegating their children to a
modern version of the “undead.” Or by reducing an entire native
population, some with a history hundreds, even thousands of years
long, into despised foreigners in their own country. Or by the
privileged indifference of a government watching an almost biblical
flood destroy a city because its citizens were surplus black or poor
people without transportation, water, food, help and left to their own
devices to swim, slog, or die in fetid water, attics, hospitals, jails,
boulevards, and holding pens. Such are the consequences of
persistent demonization; such is the harvest of shame.
Clearly, the movement of peoples under duress at, beyond, and
across borders is not new. Forced or eager exodus into strange
territory (psychological or geographical) is indelible in the history of
every quadrant of the known world, from the trek of Africans into
China and Australia; to military interventions by Romans, Ottomans,
Europeans; to merchant forays fulfilling the desires of a plethora of
regimes, monarchies, and republics. From Venice to Virginia, from
Liverpool to Hong Kong. All these and more have transferred the
riches and art they found into other realms. And all these left that
foreign soil stained with their blood and/or transplanted into the
veins of the conquered. While in their wake the languages of
conquered and conqueror swell with condemnation of the other.
The reconfiguration of political and economic alliances and the
almost instant reparsing of nation-states encourage and repel the
relocation of large numbers of peoples. Excluding the height of the
slave trade, this mass movement of peoples is greater now than it has
ever been. It involves the distribution of workers, intellectuals,
refugees, traders, immigrants, and armies all crossing oceans and
continents, through custom offices and via hidden routes, with
multiple narratives spoken in multiple languages of commerce, of
military intervention, political persecution, exile, violence, poverty,
death, and shame. There is little doubt that the voluntary or

involuntary displacement of people all over the globe tops the agenda
of the state, the boardrooms, the neighborhoods, the streets. Political
maneuvers to control this movement are not limited to monitoring
the dispossessed. The transplantation of management and
diplomatic classes to globalization’s outposts, as well as the
deployment of military units and bases, feature prominently in
legislative attempts to exert authority over the constant flow of
people. This slide of people has freighted the concept of citizenship
and altered our perceptions of space—public and private. The strain
has been marked by a plethora of hyphenated designations of
national identity. In press descriptions, place of origin has become
more telling than citizenship, and persons are identified as “a
German citizen of such and such origin” or “a British citizen of such
and such origin.” All this while a new cosmopolitanism, a kind of
multilayered cultural citizenship, is simultaneously being hailed. The
relocation of peoples has ignited and disrupted the idea of home and
expanded the focus of identity beyond definitions of citizenship to
clarifications of foreignness. Who is the foreigner? is a question that
leads us to the perception of an implicit and heightened threat within
“difference.” We see it in the defense of the local against the outsider;
personal discomfort with one’s own sense of belonging (Am I the
foreigner in my own home?); of unwanted intimacy instead of safe
distance. It may be that the most defining characteristic of our times
is that, again, walls and weapons feature as prominently now as they
once did in medieval times. Porous borders are understood in some
quarters to be areas of threat and certain chaos, and whether real or
imagined, enforced separation is posited as the solution. Walls,
ammunition—they do work. For a while. But they are major failures
over time, as the occupants of casual, unmarked, and mass grave
sites haunt the entire history of civilization.
Consider another consequence of the blatant, violent uses to which
foreignness is put—ethnic cleansing. We would be not merely remiss
but irrelevant if we did not address the doom currently faced by
millions of people reduced to animal, insect, or polluted status by
nations with unmitigated, unrepentant power to decide who is a

stranger and whether they live or die at, or far from, home. I
mentioned earlier that the expulsion and slaughter of “enemies” are
as old as history. But there is something new and soul destroying
about this last and current century. At no other period have we
witnessed such a myriad of aggression against people designated as
“not us.” Now, as you have seen over the last two years, the central
political question was, Who or what is an American?
From what I gather from those who have studied the history of
genocide—its definition and application—there seems to be a
pattern. Nation-states, governments seeking legitimacy and identity,
seem able and determined to shape themselves by the destruction of
a collective “other.” When European nations were in thrall to royal
consolidation, they were able to act out this slaughter in other
countries—African, South American, Asian. Australia and the United
States, self-declared republics, required the annihilation of all
indigenous peoples if not the usurpation of their land to create their
new, democratic state. The fall of communism created a bouquet of
new or reinvented nations who measured their statehood by
“cleansing” communities. Whether the targets were of different
religions, races, cultures—whatever—reasons were found first to
demonize then to expel or murder them. For an assumed safety,
hegemony, or pure land grabs, foreigners were constructed as the
sum total of the putative nation’s ills. If these scholars are right, we
will see more and more illogical waves of war—designed for the grasp
of control by the leaders of such states. Laws cannot stop them, nor
can any god. Interventions merely provoke.

Wartalk

I

N TRYING to come to terms with the benefits and challenges of
globalism, it has become necessary to recognize that the term suffers
from its own history. It is not imperialism, internationalism, or even
universalism. Certainly a major distinction between globalism and its
predecessors is how much it is marked by speed: the rapid
reconfiguration of political and economic alliances, and the almost
instant reparsing of nation-states. Both of these remappings
encourage and repel the relocation of large numbers of peoples.
Excluding the height of the slave trade, this mass movement of
peoples is greater now than it has ever been. It involves the
distribution of workers, intellectuals, refugees, traders, immigrants,
and armies crossing oceans, continents, through custom offices and
via hidden routes, speaking multiple languages of commerce, or
political intervention, of persecution, exile, violence, and defiling
poverty. There is little doubt that the voluntary or involuntary
displacement of people all over the globe tops the agenda of the state,
the boardrooms, the neighborhoods, the streets. Political maneuvers
to control this movement are not limited to monitoring the
dispossessed. The transplantation of management and diplomatic
classes to globalization’s outposts, as well as the deployment of fresh
military units and bases, feature prominently in legislative attempts
to exert authority over the constant flow of people.
This slide of people across the globe has altered and freighted the
concept of citizenship. The strain has been marked by a plethora of
hyphenated designations of national identity in the United States, by
press descriptions where origin is of more significance than
citizenship. People are described as “German citizen of ‘fill-in-the-

blank’ origin” or “British citizen of ‘blank’ origin,” all this while a new
cosmopolitanism, a kind of cultural citizenship, is simultaneously
being hailed. The relocation of peoples that globalism ignites has
disrupted and sullied the idea of home and has expanded the focus of
identity beyond definitions of citizenship to clarifications of
foreignness. Who is the foreigner? is a question that leads us to the
perception of an implicit threat within “difference.” The interests of
global markets, however, can absorb all these questions, thrive in
fact on a multiplicity of differences, the finer, the more exceptional
the better, since each “difference” is a more specific, identifiable
consumer cluster. This market can reconstitute itself endlessly to any
broadened definition of citizenship, to ever-narrowing, proliferating
identities, as well as to the disruptions of planetary war. But unease
creeps into the conversation about this beneficial morphing ability
when the flip side of citizenship is addressed. The chameleon-like
characteristic of global economy provokes the defense of the local
and raises newer questions of foreignness—a foreignness that
suggests intimacy rather than distance (Is he my neighbor?) and a
deep personal discomfort with our own sense of belonging (Is he us?
Am I the foreigner?). These questions complicate the concept of
belonging, of home, and are telling in the alarm apparent in many
quarters regarding official, prohibited, unpoliced, protected, and
subversive languages.
There is some gasping at what North Africans may have done or
are capable of doing to French; of what Turkish people have made of
German; of the refusal of some Catalan speakers to read or even
speak Spanish. The insistence on Celtic in schools; the academic
study of Ojibwe; the poetic evolution of Newyorican. Even some
feeble (and I think misguided) efforts to organize something called
Ebonics.
The more globalism trumps language differences—by ignoring,
soliciting, or engulfing them—the more passionate these protections
and usurpations become. For one’s language—the one we dream in—
is home.

I believe it is in the humanities, and specifically the branch of
literature, where such antagonisms become rich fields of creativity
and thus ameliorate the climate between cultures and itinerant
people. Writers are key to this process for any number of reasons,
principal among which is the writer’s gift for teasing language,
eliciting from its vernacular, its porous lexicon, and the hieroglyphics
of the electronic screen greater meaning, more intimacy, and, not
incidentally, more beauty. This work is not new for writers but the
challenges are, as all languages, major and dominant, minor and
protected, are reeling from the impositions of globalism.
Yet globalism’s impact on language is not always deleterious. It
can also create odd and accidental circumstances in which profound
creativity erupts out of necessity. Let me suggest one case in point,
where severe changes in public discourse have already taken place as
communication floods virtually every terrain. The language of war
has historically been noble, summoning the elevating quality of
warrior discourse: the eloquence of grief for the dead; courage and
the honor of vengeance. That heroic language, rendered by Homer,
Shakespeare, in sagas and by statesmen, is rivaled for beauty and
force only by religious language, with which it frequently merges. In
this parade of inspiring wartalk, from BC to the twentieth century,
there have been disruptions. One moment of distrust and disdain for
such language occurred immediately after World War I when writers
like Ernest Hemingway and Wilfred Owen, among others,
questioned the paucity of terms such as “honor,” “glory,” “bravery,”
“courage” to describe the reality of war, the obscenity of those terms
being associated with the carnage of 1914–1918.
As Hemingway wrote: “I was always embarrassed by the words
sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had
heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot….
[A]nd I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious
had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if
nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many
words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of
places had dignity.”

But the events of 1938 quieted those interventions and once more
the language of war rose to the occasion of World War II. The
glamour-coated images we carry of Roosevelt, Churchill, and other
statesmen are due in part to their rousing speeches and are
testimony to the strength of militant oratory. Yet something
interesting happened after World War II. In the late fifties and
sixties, wars continued, of course—hot and cold, north and south, big
and small—more and more cataclysmic, more and more
heartbreaking because so unnecessary; so wildly punitive on
innocent civilians one could only drop to one’s knees in sorrow. Yet
the language that accompanied these recent wars became oddly
diminished. The dwindling persuasiveness of combat discourse may
have been due to the low requirements of commercial media: their
abhorrence of complex sentences and less-known metaphors, the
dominance of the visual over linguistic communication. Or perhaps it
was due to the fact that all of these wars were the seething mute
children of preceding ones. Whatever the cause, warrior discourse
has become childlike. Puny. Vaguely prepubescent. Underneath the
speeches, bulletins, punditry, essays lies the clear whine of the
playground: “He hit me. I did not. Did too.” “That’s mine. Is not. Is
too.” “I hate you. I hate you.”
This decline, it seems to me, this echo of passionate juvenilia
affects the highest level of contemporary warrior discourse and
sounds like that of the comic book or action film. “I strike for
freedom!” “We must save the world!” “Houston, we have a problem.”
An inane, enfeebled screed has emerged to address brain-cracking
political and economic problems. What is fascinating is that such
language sank to its most plodding at precisely the time another
language was evolving: the language of nonviolence, of peaceful
resistance, of negotiation. The language of Gandhi, of Martin Luther
King Jr., of Nelson Mandela, of Václav Havel. Compelling language,
robust, rousing, subtle, elevating, intelligent, complex. As war’s
consequences became more and more dire, wartalk has become less
and less credible, more infantile in its panic. A change that became
obvious just at the moment when the language of resolution, of

diplomacy was developing its own idiom—a moral idiom worthy of
human intelligence, shedding the cloud of weakness, of
appeasement, that historically has hovered above it.
I do not believe the shift is coincidental. I believe it represents a
fundamental change in the concept of war—a not-so-secret
conviction among various and sundry populations, both oppressed
and privileged, that war is, finally, out of date; that it is truly the
most inefficient method of achieving one’s (long-term) aims. No
matter the paid parades, the forced applause, the instigated riots, the
organized protests (pro or con), self- or state censoring, the
propaganda; no matter the huge opportunities for profit and gain; no
matter the history of the injustice—at bottom it is impossible to
escape the suspicion that the more sophisticated the weapons of war,
the more antiquated the idea of war. The more transparent the power
grab, the holier the justification, the more arrogant the claims, the
more barbaric, the more discredited the language of war has become.
Leaders who find war the sole and inevitable solution to
disagreement, displacement, aggression, injustice, abasing poverty
seem not only helplessly retrograde, but intellectually deficient,
precisely like the empurpled comic-book language in which they
express themselves.
I understand that my comments may appear disjunctive on this
date in 2002 when legislatures, revolutionaries, and the inflamed do
not “declare” war, but simply wage it. But I am convinced that the
language that has the most force, requires the most acumen, talent,
grace, genius, and, yes, beauty, can never be, will never again be
found in paeans to the glory of war, or erotic rallying cries to battle.
The power of this alternate language does not arise from the
tiresome, wasteful art of war, but rather from the demanding,
brilliant art of peace.

The War on Error

I

ACCEPTED this invitation to speak at Amnesty International
with instant glee. I didn’t have a second thought about the
opportunity to address an extraordinary community of active
humanitarians whose work I so profoundly respect. The honor
pleased and challenged me and I believed it would be relatively
effortless to find something of consequence to say to you. Months
later, however, I began to have grave reservations about my early and
unthinking enthusiasm. Benumbed with news of ignited chaos, death
tolls, manufactured starvation, wars of choice against disarmed
countries, I became virtually speechless; startled into mute disbelief;
disabled by what I understood to be the equanimity of congresses
and inert parliaments going about their business of business. The
irrelevance cum sensationalism of mainstream media, its strange
quietude on vital issues, its publicity posing as journalism did their
job and mangled my own hapless, helpless unspeakable thoughts.
Although an obvious theme for this occasion occurred to me: a
rehearsal of salutations and compliments to AI, I realized at last that
the time for compliments has passed—although I am amazed by the
breadth and depth of AI’s resiliency. I came to believe that this is no
time for self-congratulation—although there is room for it; room to
recall and marvel at the record AI has garnered, its impact on the
lives of the forgotten, and its success in tarnishing the glitz of the
mighty.
Unaligned, nobly interventionist, unbrooked by nations and
political parties, private interests or public exhaustion, Amnesty
International declares states, walls, borders irrelevant to its
humanitarian goals, detrimental to its tasks, by summoning

responsibility and refusing to accept a myopic government’s own
narrative of its behavior.
I can share the seethe of millions, but it won’t do. Rage has limited
uses and serious flaws. It cuts off reason and displaces constructive
action with mindless theater. Besides, absorbing the lies, untruths,
both transparent and nuanced, of governments, their hypocrisy so
polished it does not even care if it is revealed, can lead to a wearied
and raveled mind.
We live in a world where justice equals vengeance. Where private
profit drives public policy. Where the body of civil liberties, won cell
by cell, bone by bone, by the brave and the dead withers in the
searing heat of “all war, all the time,” and, where facing eternal war,
respect for, even interest in, humanitarian solutions can dwindle.
Even as the conviction that “the security of every other nation in the
world be subordinate to the comfort of the United States” is, finally,
being challenged, civil rights and humanitarian solutions are being
steadily crushed by the imperatives of that conviction.
Let me describe a little of what is happening in my country.
Death-penalty advocates are more and more entrenched even as
thousands of planned executions in Texas are forced into being
reviewed because of blatant errors committed in DNA laboratories.
A so-called Clear Skies Act, designed to replace the Clean Air Act,
has exactly the opposite effect. Corporations, mining companies,
factories can now ignore or delay every environmental safeguard put
in place by the previous administration and turn “death by
breathing” into gold.
Constitutional rights are facing impoverishment and annihilation
as the biggest, most undertold story in the United States is the
looming disenfranchisement of the electorate. Under the “Help
America Vote” Act of 2002, the new electronic voting machines are
said to be unable to do what ATMs and grocery clerks do: provide a
paper receipt documenting the voter’s choice; this while any astute
hacker can gain access, the largest manufacturer of these new
machines is able to calculate (perhaps control) the results in its home
office.

Withdrawal from treaties, preemption, dismantlement, mass
arrests minus charges or legal representation; judges instructed by
the Justice Department to impose maximum terms; whistle-blowers
fired; Draconian censorship—these actions are taking place in an
atmosphere of aggression, panic, greed, and malice reminiscent of
the oppressive political architecture we believed we had demolished.
But all this you already know. The history of your activities is the
documentation of and intervention into such travesties.
It seems to me that among the several wars being waged around
the planet, one is paramount and surpasses in urgency all the others.
That is the War Against Error.
“War Against Error” is a phrase originated to describe the
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century efforts on the part of institutional
religions to correct those whose beliefs were different. In a time
when and place where state religion is the norm, apostasy is literally
treason. Our modern world has “inherited a fully fledged apparatus
of persecution and an intellectual tradition that justified killing in the
name of God.” Saint Thomas Aquinas himself wrote that apostates
were “to be severed from the world by death.” The point, in that
medieval war, was not the inherent evil of the dis- or unbelieving, but
his or her refusal to acknowledge his or her mistake. The lesson to be
learned was: acceptance or death. A hard education in a difficult
school, the doors to which are still ajar. Freely, reverently it is pried
open by unbelievers as well as the faithful, by politicians as well as
Enron, Halliburton, and WorldCom.
Now that this medieval school has reopened, the old curricula are
revised. Rushing to teach the lessons, administrations spin out of
control, skipping between the cheating scholar’s expedience and the
dullard’s violence; between courses on empire’s fundamentalism and
seminars on theocratic domination. And nations and pseudo-states
assert powers that would make Caligula smile as they educate their
pupils in purging, cleansing, slaughtering. Graduation parties are
held where exploitation, assuming the seductive costume of
globalism, dances with any willing partner. In its pursuit
corporations plop themselves down in every corner of the globe

selling “democracy” as though it were a brand of toothpaste, the
patent to which they alone control.
I think it is time for a modern War Against Error. A deliberately
heightened battle against cultivated ignorance, enforced silence, and
metastasizing lies. A wider war that is fought daily by human rights
organizations in journals, reports, indexes, dangerous visits, and
encounters with malign oppressive forces. A hugely funded and
intensified battle of rescue from the violence that is swallowing the
dispossessed.
If we have progressed psychologically, scientifically, intellectually,
emotionally no further than 1492, when Spain cleansed itself of Jews,
to 2004, when Sudan blocks food and remains content to watch the
slow starvation of its people; no further than 1572, when France saw
ten thousand slaughtered on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, to 2001,
when thousands were blown into filament in New York City; no
further than 1692, when Salem burned its own daughters and wives
and mothers, to 2004, when whole cities are choked with sex tourists
feeding off the bodies of young girls and boys. Then, in spite of our
shiny new communication toys, our gorgeous photos of Saturn, our
sophisticated organ transplants, we are studying the same old
curricula that waste the lives they cannot destroy. We turn to
sorcery: summoning up a brew of aliens, enemies, demons, “causes”
that deflect and soothe anxieties about gates through which
barbarians stroll; anxieties about language falling into the mouths of
others, about authority shifting into the hands of strangers. The
desire, the mantra, the motto of this ancient educational system is,
Civilization in neutral, then grinding to a halt. And anyone who
thinks otherwise is naïve because there is real danger in the world. Of
course there is. That is precisely why a correction is in order—new
curricula, containing some powerful visionary thinking about how
the life of the moral mind and a free and flourishing spirit can
operate in a context increasingly dangerous to their health.
No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no
heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more

humanity. Otherwise we stand meekly behind Eris, hold Nemesis’s
cloak, and genuflect at the feet of Thanatos.
Enjoining the work of AI is more critical today than ever before
because the world is more desperate; because governing bodies more
hampered, more indifferent, more distracted, more inept, more
depleted of creative strategies and resources; because media are
increasingly cheerful pawns on the exchange market, courtiers for
corporations who have no national interests or loyalties and are
committed to no public service.
What strings these social perversions together, for me, is profound
error—not only the errors in questionable but unquestioned data, in
distorted “official” releases, in censorship and the manipulation of
the press, but also and especially faults deeply embedded in the
imagination. A prime example is the inability or unwillingness to
imagine future’s future. The inability or unwillingness to
contemplate a future that is neither afterlife nor the tenure of
grandchildren. Time itself seems not to have a future that equals the
length or breadth or sweep or even the fascination of its past. Infinity
is now, apparently, the domain of the past. And the future becomes
discoverable space, outer space, which is in fact the discovery of past
time. Billions of years of it. Random outbreaks of armageddonism
and persistent apocalyptic yearnings suggest that the future is
already over.
Oddly enough it is in the West—where advance, progress, and
change have been signatory features—where confidence in an
enduring future is at its slightest. Since 1945, “world without end”
has been subject to serious debate. Even our definitions of the
present
have
prefixes
pointing
backward:
postmodern,
poststructuralist, postcolonial, post–Cold War. Our contemporary
prophets look back behind themselves after what has gone on before.
There are good reasons for this rush into the past for all our
answers to contemporary problems. First there is the happiness that
its exploration, its revision, its deconstruction afford. One reason has
to do with the secularization of culture, another to do with the
theocratization of culture. In the former there will be no Messiah and

afterlife is understood to be medically absurd. In the latter, the only
existence that matters is the one following death. In both, sustaining
human existence on this planet for another half a billion years is
beyond our powers of imagination. We are cautioned against the
luxury of such meditation, partly because it is the unknown, mostly
because it may defer and displace contemporary issues—like
missionaries who were accused of diverting their convert’s attention
from poverty during life to rewards following death.
I don’t want to give the impression that all current discourse is
unrelievedly oriented to the past and indifferent to the future. The
social and natural sciences are full of promises and warnings that
will affect us over very long stretches of time. Scientific applications
are poised to erase hunger, annihilate pain, extend individual life
spans by producing illness-resistant people and disease-resistant
plants. Communication technology is making sure that virtually
everyone on earth can “interact” with one another and be
entertained, maybe even educated, while doing so. We are warned
about global change in terrain and weather that radically alters
human environment; we are warned of the consequences of
maldistributed resources on human survival and warned of the
impact of overdistributed humans on natural resources. We invest in
the promises and sometimes act intelligently on the warnings. But
the promises trouble us with ethical dilemmas and a horror of
playing God blindly, while the warnings have left us less and less
sure of how and which and why. The prophecies that win our
attention are those with bank accounts large enough or photo ops
sensational enough to force debate and outline corrective action, so
we can decide which war or political debacle or environmental crisis
is intolerable enough; which disease, which natural disaster, which
institution, which plant, which animal, bird, or fish needs our
attention most. These are obviously serious concerns. What is
noteworthy among the promises and warnings is that, other than
products and a little bit more personal time owing to improved
health, and more resources in the form of leisure and money to
consume these products and services, the future has nothing to

recommend itself. We are being seduced into accepting truncated,
short-term, CEO versions of the world’s wholly human race.
The loudest voices are urging those already living in day-to-day
dread to think of the future in military terms—as a cause for and
expression of war. We are being bullied into understanding the
human project as a manliness contest where women and children are
the most dispensable collateral.
If scientific language is about longer individual life in exchange for
an ethical one; if political agenda is the xenophobic protection of a
few of our families against the catastrophic others; if religious
language is discredited as contempt for the nonreligious; if secular
language bridles in fear of the sacred; if market language is merely
an excuse for inciting greed; if the future of knowledge is not wisdom
but “upgrade,” where might we look for humanity’s own future? Isn’t
it reasonable to assume that, projecting earthly human life into the
far-distant future may not be the disaster movie we have come to
love, but a reconfiguration of what we are here for? To lessen
suffering, to tell the truth, raise the bar? To stand one remove from
timeliness, like an artist encouraging reflection, stoking imagination,
mindful of the long haul and putting his or her own life on the line, to
imagine work in a world worthy of life?
For a future that perhaps only the young will be able fully, purely
to imagine, this new War Against Error has no guarantee of victory.
Sentient life is original and very hard. A student of mine (probably
twenty years old) recently gave me a piece of art. Printed, cut, and
pasted within it were these lines:
No one told me it was like this.
It’s only matter shot through with pure imagination.
[So] rise up little souls—join the doomed army toward
the meaning of change.
Fight…fight…wage the unwinnable.
He seems ready. And so are we. Yes?

Thank you.

A Race in Mind
The Press in Deed

T

HE VASTNESS and omnipresence of the press can easily
overshadow our mutual dependence: that which exists between the
professionals in the press and its outsiders. There are not, to my
knowledge, any other entities quite like a “free” press, and while I
have surrounded the word “free” in quotation marks here, the
presence or absence of that sign of ambivalence is also something
that has been the subject of years of deliberation in the press itself. It
could not even be a topic in a system in which such deliberations
were closed.
But I have not come here to waste your time by flattering you, to
paint in even brighter colors your portrait as both the pomp and the
circumstance of democratic freedom, but to comment on what I
know you understand to be serious problems in the way the press
functions as mediator between the experience of life in the world and
its narrative and visual representation.
The harshest critics call the press-media a “closed circuit world of
spectacle that has no goal other than its spectacular self.” Relying
like a politician only on vested interests to critique and defend its
activities, the press encourages its own journalists to explain and
deplore press culpability; these critics are appalled by the sight of
journalists behaving like independent experts within the spectacle
they have created and have an interest in sustaining, pretending to
speak for a public so remote from their lives only polls can allude to
its nature, defending itself from criticism with incoherent but

effective lines of defense such as “We are better than we used to be,”
“This story just won’t go away,” “We do both sides of an issue.”
I can’t accept so sweeping a condemnation, yet the claustrophobia
one feels in the sheltering arms of the press often seems permanent
and conspiratorial. Notwithstanding the promise of more choices
and more channels—targeted and consumer-designed magazines,
barely limited numbers of cable channels—the fear of being
suffocated by eternal and eternally replenished ephemera is real; so
is the fear of the complete inability of a public to engage in public
discourse. This latter fear—the closing off of public debate—is
palpable because there is no way to answer the systemic distortions
of the press in a timely, effective fashion and because the definition
of “public” is already so radically changed. Homelessness and crime
have been recharacterized and redeployed so that “public space” is
increasingly seen as a protected preserve open only to the lawabiding and the employed, or rather to those who appear to be.
Homelessness has been recharacterized as streetlessness. Not the
poor deprived of homes, but the homed being deprived of their
streets. And crime is construed as principally black. Neither one of
these constructions is new. But as each affects public space, each
affects public discourse.
It is clear to anyone interested that when the term “public” has
been appropriated as space regulated for one portion of society only,
when the “poor” have no political party to represent their interests,
then the concept of public service—which is your business, the
business of a “free” press—gets altered as well. And has been. The
public interest of minorities, farmers, labor, women, and so on have,
in frequently routine political language, become “special interests.”
“We, the people” have become “They, the people.”
I am introducing the terms “public,” “crime,” “homelessness,”
“unemployment” (meaning poverty) early in these remarks because
they segue into my observations on race. Although there are other
matters of equal concern to editors, the handling of race seems to me
symptomatic of the general wariness, ire, and intellectual fatigue the
press continues to cause among so wide a spectrum of the country.

I’d like to begin by posing two questions. First, why is race identity
important in print and broadcast news at all? And second, if it is
necessary, why is it so often obscured and distorted at the very
moment it is enunciated?
Originally race identification was urged, even insisted upon, by
African Americans to make sure our presence and our point of view
were represented. That urging assumed that we had a point of view
unlike the mainstream one and, certainly, had experience of life in
the States different from the legendary one presented in the press.
That regardless of its difference or its concurrence, the African
American point of view should not be buried underneath
mainstream views and taken for granted. That seemed all well and
good in theory, but in practice something quite other took place, an
“othering” that took two forms: (1) the encoding of race in order to
perpetuate some very old stereotypes even while the stereotypes
were being disassembled in the popular mind, and (2) the insistence
upon underscoring racial difference at precisely those moments
when it really made no difference. For example, last June a New
York Times reporter struggled heroically with the twin demand to be
accurate and to theatricalize race in an article on immigration in
Florida. The piece was headlined “As Hispanic Presence Grows, So
Does Black Anger.” What could “black” possibly mean in that
formulation other than the commonly accepted code word for poor
or working poor or economically marginal? We could assume that
the Hispanics are also poor, without jobs, homes, and so on, but that
would be a mistake because the Hispanics in question are Cubans
fleeing Castro for a city heavily populated with middle-class Cubans
and so, unlike Haitians, have a welcome mat of social services spread
out before them. But whoever they are, they are certainly competing
for jobs and housing with any and all. The question becomes, Why
are blacks singled out? Why are they not called Miamians or “local.”
(“As Hispanic Presence Grows, So Does Local Anger”?) Except when
they are soldiers, blacks are never American citizens. Why? Because
in media-talk we are not local, or general citizens—we are those
whose financial security is fragile; those whose reactions are volatile

(“anger”—not concern). If the reader knows the code, this headline’s
use of the term “local” (economically fragile American citizens) could
very well be Miami’s white working poor. But that is dismissed at
once by the knowing, because the already encoded black-versusanything-else connotation is what we have been led and taught to
believe is the real, the vital, the incendiary story. There is no
printable word for “poor” that does not connote “race.” Thus, under
the guise of representing the interests of black citizenry, the
conventional stereotypical oppositions are maintained and useful
information is sacrificed in the process.
It turns out to be a very difficult piece of work for this reporter.
Consider the necessary contortions language is put through to
describe the impact of recent immigration of Miami’s Spanishspeaking population on its English-speaking one—which is or ought
to be the real point of the story. These are the labels that appear:
“Cubans of both colors”: “non-Hispanic whites”; “non-Hispanic
blacks”; “native-born English speaking blacks”; “Hispanic whites”;
“Haitian and other Caribbean blacks.” What are “non-Hispanic
blacks”? Africans? No. Who are “Haitian and other Caribbean
blacks”? Cubans? No. Think how clear the article would have been if
nationality and language had been the mark of difference. It would
tell us that American citizens were nervous about the wave of
immigrants who spoke little English and were after their jobs. But
clarity took second place to skin color and race took pride of place
over language. The result: the obfuscation of everything but racial
identity. “Patterns of Immigration Followed by White Flight.”
Middle-class blacks out of the loop here.
Even when within the race, where differences of national origin
are information, as in the Crown Heights melee, where the
population is predominately Caribbeans who have no history of
American black and American Jewish relations, that distinction was
subsumed into generalized blackness.
So confusing are the consequences of race stress that it led a CNN
reporter to wonder with deep concern if someone who spoke Haitian

could be found to help a Haitian pilot who had skyjacked a plane to
Miami. French never occurred to him.
Now I would like to follow those questions with one other. Since it
seems important in some way to represent blacks, we need to ask
ourselves what we are represented as, and why. How can the press be
challenged to represent any point of view—white, black, neither,
both—that does not evoke a pseudo-world of commodified happiness
and unified agreement on what or who is the enemy? The “enemy”
seems to be either a diffuse, discursive vaguely black criminal or the
angry helpless poor (who are also black).
In discussing the way blacks are represented—notwithstanding the
successful examples of the elimination of race bias and some
extraordinarily fine reporting of race matters (Hunter-Gault, on the
Zulu Nation)—and the highly volatile effects that racially biased
representation has on the public, it may be of some interest to locate
its sources, because although historical, race bias is not absolute,
inevitable, or immutable. It has a beginning, a life, a history in
scholarship, and it can have an end. It is often enough pointed out
that the popularization of racism, its nationalization, as it were, was
accomplished not by the press (complicit though nineteenth-century
newspapers may have been) but in theater, in entertainment.
Minstrelsy. These traveling shows reached all classes and regions, all
cities, towns, and farms. Its obvious function was entertainment, but
its less obvious one was masking and unmasking social problems.
The point to remember is that minstrelsy had virtually nothing to do
with the way black people really were; it was a purely white
construction. Black performers who wanted to work in minstrelsy
were run off the stage or forced to blacken their black faces. The form
worked literally as, and only as, a black façade for whites: whites in
blackface. The black mask permitted whites to say illegal,
unorthodox, seditious, and sexually illicit things in public. In short, it
was a kind of public pornography, the main theme of which was
sexual rebellion, sexual license, poverty, and criminality. In short, all
of the fears and ambivalences whites had that were otherwise hidden
from public discourse could be articulated through the mouth of a

black who was understood to be already outside the law and
therefore serviceable. In this fashion, the black mask permitted
freedom of speech and created a place for public, national dialogue.
For whites that is. On the other hand, the mask hid more than it
revealed. It hid the truth about black humanity, views, intelligence,
and most importantly, it hid the true causes of social conflict by
transferring that conflict to a black population. Without going into
the growth, transformation, and demise of minstrelsy (a demise that
was simply an enhancement in and a transfer to another site—film,
for example), suffice it to say that its strategy is still useful and its
residue everywhere. The spectacle of a black and signifying
difference, taught to an illiterate white public (via minstrelsy)
became entrenched in a literate public via the press. It was a way of
transforming organic ignorance into manufactured error, so the
political representation of the interests of the white poor is and
remains unnecessary. Those interests need not be given serious
consideration—just rhetorical alliance. My point is that African
Americans are still being employed in that way: to disappear the
white poor and unify all classes and regions, erasing the real lines of
conflict.
The justifications for enslavement became accepted wisdom and a
whole race of people became criminalized. This criminalization is as
old as the republic and stems from, among other things, the outsidethe-law status imposed on slaves—and the dishonor that
accompanies enslavement. Its modern formation is the residue, the
assumption of criminality flash-signaled by skin color. People who
say this is not so, that there is a disproportionate percentage of crime
committed by blacks, miss something: the unconscionable, immoral,
and dangerous treatment of blacks by the justice system and the
press. It is unconscionable because it is racist disinformation.
Unless, for example, you can intelligently use the phrase “white on
white crime,” you cannot use the phrase “black on black crime.” It
has no meaning and no use other than exoticizing blacks, separating
the violence blacks do to one another into some nineteenth-century
anthropological racism where the “dark continent” was understood

to be violent, blank, unpeopled (the people were likened to nature),
an easily available site of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness where whites
went for self-realization, self-discovery, and loot. Is that white on
white crime in Northern Ireland? Bosnia? World War II? (Dan
Rather in Somalia.) In this mythic construct it should not be a shock,
as it was to me, that the only allegedly raped victim whose face was
ever shown in the newspaper and on television to my knowledge was
an underage black girl. I have never seen another one. Why? Because
there is no honor or privacy due black women when they claim or
protest sexual misbehavior, as recent Senate deliberations regarding
Clarence Thomas will support.
This treatment is immoral because it proceeds from corruption—
the corruption of accuracy, information, and even truth in the
interests of sensation and sales. And it is dangerous because it has
nothing to do with the real world of whites or blacks. It has
everything to do with mystifying the world—rendering it
incomprehensible and assuring the insolubility of its real problems,
such as reducing the attraction to and the means of executing crime;
such as employing and educating “they, the people”; such as
domestic disarmament; such as the health of our communities.
When the mystification of everyday life is complete, there is
nothing new or contemporary in the news. It will be, in spite of its
up-to-the-minuteness, as archaic, moribund, and unreal as a quill
pen, lagging behind the future in order to enshrine deprivation—
making the absence of commodities (poverty) the only despair worth
discussing. If poverty and criminality can be off-loaded to blacks,
then the illusion of satisfaction and the thrill of the hunt might keep
the public still and obedient. But for how long? How long can news
function as a palliative for despair and counter space for products? It
is so frustrating and sad to open a newspaper and find the news
literally at the edges, like the embroidered hem of the real subject—
advertisement.
The media spectacle must not continue to direct its attention to the
manufacture of consent, rather than debate with more than two
sides, to the reinforcement of untruths, and a review of what else

there is to buy. Otherwise it will be not out of commerce, but already
out of business. When the spectacle becomes “public” in the
narrowest sense of the word—meaning available to purchase—the
world can buy you, but it can’t afford you.
Now I have been talking to you as though you were a single
organism that took shape and grew by some immutable natural law
outside human decision-making. When in fact, you are people,
human individuals with a stake in being so. You have publicspiritedness and dreams of a secure democracy, as well as prejudices
that seep through and shape the tools at your disposal. Boards of
directors, owners, and editorial managers are made up of people
trying to get profitable, stay profitable, and increase profitability.
That must be tough. But if your industry becomes socially irrelevant,
it will be impossible.
I suspect that a nonracist, nonsexist, educating press is as
profitable as one that is not. I suspect that clarification of difficult
issues is just as entertaining as obscuring and reducing them is. But
it will take more than an effort of the will to make such a press
profitable; it will take imagination, invention, and a strong sense of
responsibility and accountability. Without you, by ourselves we can
just pull raw data off of our computers; shape it ourselves, talk to one
another, question one another, argue, get it wrong, get it right.
Reinvent public space, in other words, and the public dialogue that
can take place within it. The generations of students that I teach (and
my own sons, for that matter) do it all the time.
But, irrespective of the internet’s CompuServes, nodes, bulletin
boards, Lexus—whatever makes the information highway work—
there is something the press can do in language that a society cannot
do. You’ve done it before. Move us closer to participatory democracy;
help us distinguish between a pseudo-experience and a living one,
between an encounter and an engagement, between theme and life.
Help us all try to figure out what it means to be human in the twentyfirst century.

Moral Inhabitants

I

N The Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times
to 1957 right after “rice” and just before “tar” and “turpentine” are
the humans. The rice is measured by pounds; the pitch, tar, and
turpentine by the barrel weight. There was no way to measure by
pound, tonnage, or barrel weight the humans. Head count served the
purpose of measuring. This reference book is full of fascinating
information, not the least of which is Series Z 281–303, which
documents, in chronological order and by point of destination, the
import and export of humans in the United States from 1619 to 1773.
Every effort seems to have been made to assure the accuracy of the
tables. Below the neat columns of figures, footnotes seem to
apologize for the occasional lapses from complete information. “We
are sorry,” the Bureau of the Census seems to be saying, “that better
records were not kept or available to us. The country was just getting
itself together, you understand, and things were less than efficient.”
One senses reasonableness and gentlemanly assertion everywhere
in these pages. But it is reasonableness without the least hope of
success, for the language itself cracks under the weight of its own
implications. Footnote 3, for example, under “Slaves” clarifies the
ambiguity of its reference with the following words: “Source also
shows 72 Indian slaves imported; 231 slaves died and 103 drawn
back for exportation.” “Died”…“drawn back”—strange, violent words
that could never be used to describe rice, or tar, or turpentine.
Footnote 5, by far the coolest in its civilized accuracy, is as follows:
“Number of Negroes shipped, not those actually arrived.” There was
a difference, apparently, between the number shipped and the
number that arrived. The mind gallops to the first unanswered

question: How many? How many were shipped? How many did not
arrive? Then the mind slides toward the next question—the vital one
that withers all others: Who? Who was absent at the final head
count? Was there a seventeen-year-old girl there with a tree-shaped
scar on her knee? And what was her name?
I do not know why it is so difficult to imagine and therefore to
realize a genuinely humane society—whether the solutions lie in
natural sciences, the social sciences, theology or philosophy or even
belles lettres. But the fact is that the Historical Statistics of the
United States is pretty much like what the contours of academic
scholarship are now and have always been: the equating of human
beings with commodity, lumping them together in alphabetical order
—when even the language used to describe these acts bends and
breaks under that heavy and alien responsibility. The gentle souls,
those dedicated civil servants of the Census Bureau do not create
facts, they simply record them. But their work, I believe, reflects the
flaw that obstructs the imaginative and humane scholarship and the
realization of a humane society. Such scholarship would be one in
which the thrust is toward the creation of members of a society who
can make humane decisions. And who do. It is a scholarship that
refuses to continue to produce generation after generation of
students who are trained to make distinctions between the deserving
poor and the undeserving poor but not between rice and human
beings. To make distinctions between an expendable life and an
indispensable one, but not between slaves and turpentine. Trained to
determine who shall flourish and who shall wither, but not between
the weight of a barrel and the sanctity of a human head.
That is what indices are like, of course. Not the fan-shaped spread
of rice bursting from a gunnysack. Not the thunder roll of barrels of
turpentine cascading down a plank. And not a seventeen-year-old
girl with a tree-shaped scar on her knee—and a name. History is
percentiles, the thoughts of great men, and the description of eras.
Does the girl know that the reason that she died in the sea or in a
twenty-foot slop pit on a ship named Jesus is because that was her
era? Or that some great men thought up her destiny for her as part of

a percentage of national growth, or expansion, or manifest destiny,
or colonialization of a new world? It is awkward to differ from a great
man, but Tolstoy was wrong. Kings are not the slaves of history.
History is the slave of kings.
The matrix out of which these powerful decisions are born is
sometimes called racism, sometimes classicism, sometimes sexism.
Each is an accurate term surely, but each is also misleading. The
source is a deplorable inability to project, to become the “other,” to
imagine her or him. It is an intellectual flaw, a shortening of the
imagination, and reveals an ignorance of gothic proportions as well
as a truly laughable lack of curiosity. Of course historians cannot deal
with rice grain by grain; they have to deal with it in bulk. But
dependence on that discipline should not be so heavy that it leads us
to do likewise in human relationships. One of the major signs of
intelligence, after all, is the ability to make distinctions, small
distinctions. We judge an intellect by the ease with which it can tell
the difference between one molecule and another, one cell and
another, between a 1957 Bordeaux and a 1968, between mauve and
orchid, between the words “wrest” and “pry,” between clabber and
buttermilk, between Chanel No. 5 and Chanel No. 19. It would seem,
then, that to continue to see any race of people as one single
personality is an ignorance so vast, a perception so blunted, an
imagination so bleak that no nuance, no subtlety, no difference
among them can penetrate. Except the large differences: who shall
flourish and who shall wither, who deserves state assistance and who
does not. Which may explain why we are left with pretty much the
same mental equipment in 1977 that we had in 1776. An intelligence
so crippled that it could, as a white professor did in 1905, ask W. E.
B. Du Bois “whether colored people shed tears” is also crippled
enough to study the “genetic” influences on intelligence of a race so
mixed that any experimental data similarly performed on mice
would fall apart at the outset.
If education is about anything other than being able to earn more
money (and it may not be about any other thing), that other thing is
intelligent problem-solving and humans relating to one another in

mutually constructive ways. But educational institutions and some of
our most distinguished scholars have considered the cooperation
among human beings and mutually constructive goals to be fourthand fifth-rate concerns where they were concerns at all. The history
of the country is all the proof one needs that it is so.
Now no one can fault the conqueror for writing history the way he
sees it, and certainly not for digesting human events and discovering
their patterns according to his point of view. But we can fault him for
not owning up to what his point of view is. It might prove a useful
exercise, in this regard, to look at some of the things our conquerors
(our forefathers), our men of vision and power in America have
actually said.
Andrew Jackson, December 3, 1833:
“Indians have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral
habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any
favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of
another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes
of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must
necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long
disappear.”
Theodore Roosevelt (to Owen Wister) 1901:
“I entirely agree with you that as a race and in the mass the
[blacks] are altogether inferior to the whites.
“I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western
view of the Indian. I don’t go so far as to think that the only good
Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten
are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the
tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the
average Indian.”
General Ulysses S. Grant:
(to) General Webster

La Grange, Tenn.
November 10, 1862
“Give orders to all the conductors on the road that no Jews are to
be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point.
They may go north and be encouraged in it; but they are such an
intolerable nuisance that the department must be purged of them.”
Holly Springs, Miss.
December 8, 1862
General Order
“On account of the scarcity of provisions all cotton speculators,
Jews, and other vagrants having no honest means of support,
except trading upon the misery of the country…”
Sam Houston, U.S. Senate, 1848:
“The Anglo-Saxon [must] pervade the whole southern extremity of
this vast continent….(The) Mexicans are no better than the Indians
and I see no reason why we should not take their land.”
Freeman’s Journal, March 4, 1848:
“Our object is to show, once more, that Protestantism is effete,
powerless, dying out though disturbed only by its proper
gangrenes, and conscious that its last moment is come when it is
fairly set, face to face, with Catholic truth.”
Richard Pike, Boston, 1854:
“Catholicism is, and it ever has been, a bigoted, a persecuting, and
a superstitious religion. There is no crime in the calendar of
infamy of which it has not been guilty. There is no sin against
humanity which it has not committed. There is no blasphemy
against God which it has not sanctioned. It is a power which has
never scrupled to break its faith solemnly plighted, wherever its
interests seem to require it; which has no conscience; which
spurns the control of public opinion; and which obtrudes its head

among the nations of Christendom, dripping with the cruelties of
millions of murders, and haggard with the debaucheries of a
thousand years, always ambitious, always sanguinary, and always
false.”
New York Tribune, 1854
“The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean and filthy beyond all
conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations;
lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a
prostitute of the barest order.”
General William Sherman:
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even
to their extermination, men, women and children. Nothing else
will reach the root of this case. The more we can kill this year, the
less will have to be killed the next war, for the more I see of these
Indians, the more convinced I am that they will all have to be
killed or be maintained as a species of pauper.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1751:
“Why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America,
where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and
Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red?”
William Byrd, Diary, Virginia, 1710–1712:
2/8/09: Jenny and Eugene were whipped.
4/17/09: Anaka was whipped.
5/13/09: Mrs. Byrd was whipped.
3/23/09: Moll was whipped.
6/10/09: Eugene [a child] was whipped for running away and had
the bit put on him.
9/3/09: I beat Jenny.
9/16/09: Jenny was whipped.

9/19/09: I beat Anama.
11/30/09: Eugene and Jenny were whipped.
12/16/09: Eugene was whipped for doing nothing yesterday.
(In April I was occupied in my official capacity in assisting the
investigation of slaves “arraigned for high treason”—two were
hanged.)
7/1/10: The Negro woman ran away again with the bit on her
mouth.
7/8/10: The Negro woman was found, and tied, but ran away again
in the night.
7/15/10: My wife, against my will, caused little Jenny to be burned
with a hot iron.
8/22/10: I had a severe quarrel with little Jenny and beat her too
much, for which I was sorry.
8/31/10: Eugene and Jenny were beaten.
10/8/10: I whipped three slave women.
11/6/10: The Negro woman ran away again.
Its editors describe him as “Virginia’s most polished and
ornamental gentleman…a kindly master [who] inveighed in some of
his letters against brutes who mistreat their slaves.”
Such is language, the vision, the memory bequeathed to us in this
society. They said other things, and they did other things—some of
which were good. But they also said, and more importantly felt, that.
Our past is bleak. Our future dim. But I am not reasonable. A
reasonable man adjusts to his environment. And unreasonable man
does not. All progress, therefore, depends on the unreasonable man.
I prefer not to adjust to my environment. I refuse the prison of “I”
and choose the open spaces of “we.”
With such a past we cannot be optimistic about the possibility of a
humane society, in which humane decision-making is the prime goal
of educators, ever becoming imagined and therefore realized. We
cannot be optimistic, but we can be clear. We can identify the enemy.
We can begin by asking ourselves what is right rather than what is

expedient. Know the difference between fever and the disease.
Between racism and greed. We can be clear and we can be careful.
Careful to avoid the imprisonment of the mind, the spirit, and the
will of ourselves and those among whom we live. We can be careful
of tolerating second-rate goals and secondhand ideas.
We are humans. Humans who must have discovered by now what
every three-year-old can see: “how unsatisfactory and clumsy is this
whole business of reproducing and dying by the billions.” We are
humans, not rice, and therefore “we have not yet encountered any
god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.
There is not a people in the world that behaves as badly as praying
mantises.” We are the moral inhabitants of the globe. To deny this,
regardless of our feeble attempts to live up to it, is to lie in prison. Of
course there is cruelty. Cruelty is a mystery. But if we see the world
as one long brutal game, then we bump into another mystery, the
mystery of beauty, of light, the canary that sings on the
skull….Unless all ages and all races of man have been deluded…there
seems to be such a thing as grace, such a thing as beauty, such a
thing as harmony…all wholly free and available to us.

The Price of Wealth, the Cost of Care

I

WANT to talk about a subject that influences and, in many
cases, distresses us all. A subject that is a companion to each
graduate just as it is on all campuses as well as communities all over
the country, indeed the world. A subject that is an appropriate theme
of a speech delivered to students during these provocative times of
uncertainty.
That subject is money.
Whether we have the obligation to protect and stabilize what we
already have and, perhaps, to increase it, or whether we have the task
of reducing our debt in order to simply live a productive, fairly
comfortable life, or whether our goal is to earn as much as possible—
whatever our situation, money is the not-so-secret mistress of all our
lives. And like all mistresses, you certainly know, if she has not
already seduced you, she is nevertheless on your mind. None of us
can read a newspaper, watch a television show, or follow political
debates without being inundated with the subject of wealth.
Immigration discourse, health care implementation, Social Security,
employment opportunities—virtually all personal problems and
government policies twist and coil around money. Nations, regimes,
media, legislation all are soaked in and overwhelmed by the wealth
narrative concerning its availability, its movement, its
disappearance. How its absence and mismanagement topples
nations at worst, distorts and manipulates them, or how wealth
keeps nations safe. Austerity or stimulus? War or peace? An idle life
or a productive one?
The subjects studied here—art, science, history, economics,
medicine, law—are by and large constricted by or liberated by money

in spite of the fact that the purpose of each of these areas of
scholarship is not money at all but knowledge and its benefit to the
good life. Artists want to reveal and display truth while pretending to
rise above money; scientists want to discover how the world works
but are limited or supported by financial resources, as are historians
and economists, who need funds for their projects and research;
medicine seeks to save life or at least make it livable but cannot do so
without somebody else’s wealth.
All that is obvious, but in case we forget, I believe it is helpful to
rehearse something of the price of wealth, its history. The origins of
its accumulation are bloody and profoundly cruel, involving as it
always and invariably does war. Virtually no empire became one
without mind-warping violence. The Spanish empire saved itself
from collapse and irrelevance by the theft of gold from South
America necessitating massacres and enslavement. The Roman
empire became one and remained one for centuries by the conquest
of land, its treasure, and the labor of slaves. More war and aggression
were used to rape Africa of its resources, which, in turn, sustained
and empowered a plethora of nations. Rubber, for example, was
extracted by a country literally privately owned by Leopold, king of
Belgium (thus its once-agreed-upon name—the Belgian Congo).
Sugar, tea, spices, water, oil, opium, territory, food, ore all sustained
the power of nations like the United Kingdom, like the Dutch, like
ours. Here in America the slaughter of millions of bison in order to
replace them with cattle required the massacre of Native Americans.
Here a new agricultural nation moved quickly into the industrial
period via the importation of slaves. Chinese empires destroyed
legions of monks to acquire the gold and silver they used to decorate
temples and representations of gods. All of this robbery was
accomplished by war, which, by the way, is itself a wealth-making
industry regardless of victory or defeat.
The price of wealth, historically, has been blood, annihilation,
death, and despair.
But alongside that price, something interesting and definitive
began to happen in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth

centuries. “Noblesse oblige,” which soothed the nobility by
suggesting that generosity was not only honorable but in their
interests and allied perhaps with their religious beliefs, morphed into
a conviction that wealth could not be its own excuse for being. There
was some moral impediment to the Midas effect, to the Gatsby gene,
some shame attached to the idea of being more by having more, of
vanity projects posing as genuine commitments to the elevation of
public life.
These alterations were made more felicitous in the United States
by the tax code and, in some cases, worker strikes and organizations.
Instead of building transcontinental railroads with Chinese labor
slaves, instead of producing sugar for rum with the constant
importation of more slaves (a turnover made necessary by the quick
deaths of so many of them), instead we figured out how to have
electricity, roads, public hospitals, universities, et al., without searing
brutality.
Citizens began to realize the costs of caring was money well spent.
Foundations, government support, individual largesse, service
organizations grew exponentially to improve the lives of citizens. As
you well know from the creation of this university, gifts to build
institutions, care for the indigent, house art and books for the public
are only a few of the projects in which the costs of caring are happily
assumed. The consequences of these costs are varied, of course—
some were weak, some were nefarious—but it became unthinkable
that no elementary services existed. Inviting compassion into the
bloodstream of an institution’s agenda or a scholar’s purpose is more
than productive, more than civilizing, more than ethical, more than
humane; it’s humanizing.
This powerful commitment to caring, whatever the cost, is now
threatened by a force almost as cruel as the origins of wealth: that
force is the movement of peoples under duress at, beyond, and
across borders. This current movement is greater now than it has
ever been and it costs a lot—to defend against it, to accommodate it,
to contain it, protect it, control and service it. It involves the trek of
workers, intellectuals, agencies, refugees, traders, immigrants,

diplomats, and armies all crossing oceans and continents, through
custom offices and via hidden routes, with multiple narratives
spoken in multiple languages of commerce, of military intervention,
political persecution, rescue, exile, violence, poverty, death, and
shame. There is no doubt that the voluntary or involuntary
displacement of people all over the globe tops the agenda of the state,
the boardrooms, the communities, and the streets. Political
maneuvers to control this movement are not limited to monitoring
the dispossessed. The transplantation of management and
diplomatic classes to globalization’s outposts, as well as the
deployment of military units and bases, feature prominently in
legislative attempts to exert authority over the constant flow of
peoples. This slide has freighted the concept of citizenship and
altered our perceptions of space: public and private, walls and
frontiers. It may be that the defining characteristic of our times is
that, again, walls and weapons feature as prominently now as they
once did in medieval times. Porous borders are understood in some
quarters to be areas of threat and have actually become places of
chaos.
All of this is going on at the same time that technology has
narrowed the distances among peoples and countries. Technology
has made it possible to see others, talk to, support, or agitate others
anywhere in the world. Yet the fear of dispossession, the loss of
citizenship remains. We see it in the plethora of hyphenated
designations of national identity. In press descriptions and
documents birthplace has become more telling than citizenship and
persons are identified as “a German of Turkish origin” or a “British
citizen of African origin” and being identified as Muslim (at least in
the West) takes precedent over country of origin. At the same time a
revered cosmopolitanism, a multilayered cultural citizenship, is
simultaneously hailed as sophisticated, superior. There is clearly a
heightened threat of “difference.” We see it in the defense of the local
against the outsider, of unwanted intimacy instead of safe distance.
When the unhoused remain suspect aliens, when the frightened
and destitute huddle in beleaguered, garbage-strewn tent cities on

land not their own, when “identity” becomes the very essence of the
self, then recurring strategies of political construction are demanded.
When incompetence and irrationality run roughshod over decency
and continue to endanger “lesser” lives, we can anticipate a steep rise
in the cost of caring. A cost to be borne if we value civilization.
The ethics of affluence insist upon civic obligations and when we
assume that obligation we reveal not our solitary goodwill but our
dependence on others. You, all of us, struggle to turn data into
information into knowledge and, we hope, into wisdom. In that
process we owe everything to others. We owe others our language,
our history, our art, our survival, our neighborhood, our
relationships with family and colleagues, our ability to defy social
conventions as well as support those conventions. All of this we
learned from others. None of us is alone; each of us is dependent on
others—some of us depend on others for life itself. And it is because
of the latter that I choose to share this generous lecture honorarium
with Doctors Without Borders—winners of a Nobel Prize for the
risks, the direct medical aid, and the determination to serve in the
most dangerous places on earth and among the most shattered
people.
Your opportunity here and beyond this campus is huge,
demanding, and vital. You are singularly able more than previous
generations; not because you are smarter (although you may be) or
because you have tools your predecessors lacked, but because you
have time. Time is on your side, as is a chance to fashion an amazing
future. Relish it. Use it. Revel in it.
I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense but not
irrational or naïve. Art invites us to take the journey beyond price,
beyond costs into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it
should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it from even
the most tragic of circumstances. Art reminds us that we belong here.
And if we serve, we last. My faith in art rivals my admiration for any
other discourse. Its conversation with the public and among its
various genres is critical to the understanding of what it means to
care deeply and to be human completely. I believe.

The Habit of Art

A

RTTABLE HAS complimented itself by choosing this year’s
winner. As prestigious as the award itself is, its gleam is located in its
choices. Your selection of Toby Lewis is another of its compliments
to itself as well as to her commitment to so many avenues of creative
art and her special devotion to the visual arts.
It is in this latter, visual arts, that I am most impressed. Her
collection at the headquarters of Progressive Insurance: there I saw
for myself the fruits of her passionate hard work. How, by placing
diverse, powerful, beautiful, provocative, thoughtful visual art in the
workplace, where the employees encountered it at every turn, all day
and responded to it with deep criticism or desperate affection, she
encouraged them to begin to create for themselves their own art in
their own work spaces. The intimacy she and Peter Lewis insisted
upon made me understand what they understood: that art is not
mere entertainment or decoration, that it has meaning, and that we
both want and need to fathom that meaning—not fear, dismiss, or
construct superficial responses told to us by authorities. It was a
manifestation of what I believe is true and verifiable: the impulse to
do and revere art is an ancient need—whether on cave walls, one’s
own body, a cathedral or a religious rite, we hunger for a way to
articulate who we are and what we mean.
Art and access is a much-written-about, much-sermonized-upon
subject. Artists and supporters alike see an abyss between elitist and
popular understandings of “high” and “found” art and try to span or
fathom it. The tools for making art matter to ever larger, ever more
diverse populations are many: more and more creative uses of
funding, free performances, individual grants, and so on. The

perception that the chasm remains may be the fruit of an imaginary
landscape made real by the restrictions of available resources or by
fiat. It is an unconscionable, almost immoral perception.
I want to describe to you an event a young gifted writer reported:
During the years of dictatorship in Haiti, the government gangs,
known as the Tonton Macoutes, roamed about the island killing
dissenters, and ordinary and innocent people, at their leisure. Not
content with the slaughter of one person for whatever reason, they
instituted an especially cruel follow-through: no one was allowed to
retrieve the dead lying in the streets or parks or in doorways. If a
brother or parent or child, even a neighbor ventured out to do so, to
bury the dead, honor him or her, they were themselves shot and
killed. The bodies lay where they fell until a government garbage
truck arrived to dispose of the corpses—emphasizing that
relationship between a disposed-of human and trash. You can
imagine the horror, the devastation, the trauma this practice had on
the citizens. Then, one day, a local teacher gathered some people in a
neighborhood to join him in a garage and put on a play. Each night
they repeated the same performance. When they were observed by a
gang member, the killer only saw some harmless people engaged in
some harmless theatrics. But the play they were performing was
Antigone, that ancient Greek tragedy about the moral and fatal
consequences of dishonoring the unburied dead.
Make no mistake, this young writer said: art is fierce.
There is one other anecdote I want to share with you. At a
conference in Strasbourg, I spoke to a woman writer from a North
African country. She knew my work; I did not know hers. We chatted
amiably, when suddenly she leaned in closer and whispered, “You
have to help us. You have to.” I was taken aback. “Help who? Help
what?” I asked her. “They are shooting us down in the street,” she
said. “Women who write. They are murdering us.” Why? Women
practicing modern art was a threat to the regime.
What these anecdotes represent is the healing and the danger art
provides whether classical or contemporary.

Furthermore, these awful stories are meant to impress upon you
that what Toby Lewis has spent a lifetime doing, what you are
celebrating today, is no small thing.
I want to say a few words about the necessity of organizations such
as this one. We live in a world where justice equals vengeance. Where
private profit drives public policy, where the body of civil liberties,
won cell by cell, bone by bone, by the brave and the dead, withers in
the searing heat of all war all the time, and where respect for and
even passionate interest in great art can dwindle, can shrink to a
price list. It is possible to wonder if we have progressed
psychologically, intellectually, emotionally no further than 1492,
when Spain cleaned itself of Jews, to 2004, when Sudan blocks food
and medicine and remains content to watch the slow starvation of its
people. No further than 1572, when France saw ten thousand
slaughtered on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, to 2001, when thousands
were blown into filament in New York City. No further than 1692,
when Salem burned its own daughters and wives and mothers, to
2007, when whole cities are chock-full of sex tourists feeding off the
bodies of young boys and girls. It is possible to wonder whether, in
spite of technical and scientific progress, we have turned to sorcery:
summoning up a brew of aliens, enemies, demons, “causes” that
deflects and soothes anxieties about gates through which barbarians
stroll; about language falling into the mouths of others; about
authority shifting into the hands of strangers. Civilization in
paralyzing violence, then grinding to a halt. Don’t misunderstand
me. There is real danger in the world. And that is precisely why a
correction is in order—new curricula containing some meaningful
visionary thinking about the life of the moral mind and a free and
flourishing spirit can operate in a context increasingly dangerous to
its health. But if scientific language is about longer individual life in
exchange for an ethical one; if political agenda is the xenophobic
protection of a few of our families against the catastrophic others; if
secular language bridles in fear of the sacred; if the future of
knowledge is not wisdom but “upgrade,” where might we look for
humanity’s own future? Isn’t it reasonable to assume that projecting

earthly human life into the future may not be the disaster movie we
are constantly invited to enjoy, but a reconfiguration of what we are
here for? To lessen suffering, to know the truth and tell it, to raise the
bar of humane expectation. Perhaps we should stand one remove
from timeliness and join the artist who encourages reflection, stokes
the imagination, mindful of the long haul and putting her/his own
life on the line (in Haiti or North Africa) to do the work of a world
worthy of life.
This in short has been the mission of ArtTable.
One of my students gave me a painting—a collage, sort of, printed,
cut, and pasted. Within it were these lines:
No one told me it was like this.
It’s only matter shot through with pure imagination.
[So] rise up little souls—join the doomed army toward
the meaning of change.
Fight…fight…wage the unwinnable.

The Individual Artist

I

T OUGHT to be relatively easy to describe the plight of the
individual artist, the importance of such a resource to the country,
and to describe the nature of the commitment made to that
component in the goals of the National Endowment for the Arts. But
it really isn’t all that easy because the phrase itself—“individual
artist”—provokes all sorts of romantic images, pictures and notions
of a beleaguered, solitary individual struggling against Philistines,
willy-nilly, who somehow breaks through the walls of ignorance and
prejudice to acclaim acceptance perhaps, by a critical few in his or
her lifetime—and/or posthumous fame, if not eminence, at a time
when it does the artist no good. And that picture is one we love to
fondle, but it is a kind of Procrustean bed, an intellectual trap,
because it’s such an attractive portrait that it encourages what ought
to be eliminated. We seem somehow to cut off the limbs of the
individual artist to fit our short bed, and we ascribe to him or her
penury and sacrifice and the notion of posthumous award. We love
so much the idea of the struggling artist that we enfranchise not the
artist, but the struggle. In fact, we insist on it. Our notions of quality
sometimes require it. It is true, and I think we all agree, that quality
equals/means/suggests that which is rare and difficult to achieve.
But sometimes, the word “rare” translates into “appreciated only by
the very few,” and sometimes the phrase “difficult to achieve” means
“had to suffer in order to do it.”
I think there is some ambivalence in our perception about
individual quality and individual artists. On the one hand, we can
identify it because it is rare and limited in its appeal to a few. We
know how difficult it is to execute excellence in art (although I am

convinced that for the true genius the things that look difficult to us
are easy and effortless for him). But while we recognize quality by its
rareness, on the other hand we consistently moan about the absence
of quality from the hearts and minds of the masses. We talk about a
crisis in literacy; we are upset and disquieted about pop art; we talk
about airport sculpture; we are unnerved, and legitimately so, about
the sensational play as opposed to the sensitive one. Each of us has a
group of phrases that identify for us the mediocre in an art form.
I sometimes wonder if we really and truly mean it. Do we really
mean that the world is the poorer because too few appreciate the
finer things? Suppose we did live in a world in which people chatted
about Descartes and Kant and Lichtenstein in McDonald’s. Suppose
Twelfth Night was on the best-seller list. Would we be happy? Or
would we decide that since everybody appreciated it, maybe it wasn’t
any good? Or maybe if the artist himself had not begged for his life—
begged and struggled through poverty, perhaps on into death—
perhaps his art wasn’t any good. There seems to have been an
enormous amount of comfort taken in some quarters (in print and in
conversation) that when thousands and thousands of people stood in
line to see the Picasso show, only 4 or 5 percent of the people who
saw it really knew what they were seeing.
First novels shouldn’t be successes—they are supposed to be read
by a few. They are not supposed to be profitable—they must be
limited. If a first novel “makes it,” then there is some suspicion about
its quality. A minority artist in this game and in this climate of
ambivalence is required either to abandon his minorityhood and join
the prevailing criteria, or he has to defend and defend and defend ad
nauseam his right to hear and love a different drummer. That’s part
of the romanticism that clings to the idea of the individual artist—the
artist as beggar. It keeps him begging, and when he is successful, he
should feel guilty—even apologetic.
There is danger inherent in being an artist, always—the danger of
failure, the danger of being misunderstood. But there are some
dangers now that are not inherent; some new dangers are being
imposed. Be patient with me for a moment while I describe one that

is of particular interest to me in the field of literature. There is a most
exciting feud and public battle going on at Cambridge University at
the moment—a fight between the traditional critics and the
postmodernists, or the structuralists. It is a pyrotechnic delight in
issues of The Times Literary Supplement, and scholarly debates are
continuing in full force. I will not go into the details of the nature of
the fight, but in oversimplified terms, there is a core group of
traditional critics who believe that “literature and life” practical
criticism is the way in which to teach people how to read the great
works of literature, and then there is a newer, younger group,
sometimes called “pluralists” by the British, that attacks and ignores
traditional British criticism. This newer group is accused of being
obscure and difficult and limiting in their perception of criticism.
What’s interesting about the feud to me is that in it the writer has
no place at all. Structuralists and proponents of semiotics and
proponents of deconstruction perceive the written work as a
phenomenon—but not central to the act of criticism or “reading.” It’s
interesting that this fight goes on in literature studies, as opposed to
theology and philosophy and other areas in which it belongs, but I
think there is a reason for that. In the contemporary world of art and
scholarship, literature is, I think, the only discipline in which the
scholars do not produce what they criticize. The chemists, the social
scientists, the historians, the philosophers—all of those people
produce what they teach, they produce what they question, they
produce what they change. In literary criticism, the critic now
produces the criticism that he teaches; he produces the discipline,
and the subject of the discipline—which is the text—is peripheral to
the discussion. Perhaps it is true, as someone suggested, that English
teachers have always envied the mathematicians—all those little
formulas they put on the wall—and that they now would like to have
a group of formulae they could also put on the blackboard. But where
the criticism is itself the art form—that doesn’t mean it isn’t an art
form—but when it denigrates the sources, there is a genuine threat to
the preeminence of the creative artists. And that is significant, and it
is filtering down to the artists themselves, some of whom are totally

isolated from the critics in a way they never were before. There was a
time in fourteenth-century Germany, in eleventh-century Italy, when
the great translators were the poets, when the great critics were the
writers; they did both. Now it is separate; the creative artist goes one
route and the critic goes another.
Because the individual artist does not manage or control, at least
in literature, what is taught—not even what is produced and what is
decided to be taught—the endowment plays an incomparable role in
his life. With an agency like the endowment there is a place and a
means for creative artists to come together and make decisions about
what ought to be nurtured, and what ought to be of value, and what
ought to be supported. He may not have that right in universities; he
certainly has not that right in publishing institutions; he probably
does not have it in the media that exist and surround him. But he
does have it in a confederacy and a brotherhood and a sisterhood—in
the structure as provided by the panels and the programs of the
National Endowment for the Arts. The endowment assuages the guilt
of a gifted person who has the “misfortune” to do something
extraordinarily well the first time. The endowment says out loud and
in cash, “Your needs can be met. Your early work may be worth
attention, even though it is early, even though you have not hit your
stride, even though this may not be the ‘breakthrough’ work.” The
endowment says, “We will give you some help now. Your problems of
audience, your problems of distribution, your problems of rent and
time and space and data are not fixed stars; they are not immutable.
They can be solved—and if not totally solved, they can be
ameliorated.”
The endowment, through its panels and its programs, says, out
loud and in cash, that your ethnic aesthetics are not to be questioned
by people who don’t know anything about them. It says your cultural
differences are not to be denigrated, especially by people outside the
culture. It says your working-class background will not keep you
from the full expression of your art. For, among other reasons, this is
a country founded by laborers and farmers and small businessmen

and convicts and clerks and pirates—so we know about your
working-class background because we are your background.
Half of all of the funding categories have a place for the express aid
and guidance for support of this beleaguered, guilt-ridden, frustrated
species—the individual artist whom we have perhaps inadvertently
relegated to the necessity of pain and struggle.
The individual artist is by nature a questioner and a critic; that’s
what she does. Her questions and criticisms are her work, and she is
frequently in conflict with the status quo. But the artist can’t help
that; if she is to have any integrity at all in her art, she can’t help it.
The endowment does not penalize her for the controversy her art
may engender because it is, or ought to be, axiomatic with the
endowment that the last things we wish to encourage are safe art and
safe artists. So the endowment takes risks—takes them itself and
thereby underlies and legitimatizes the necessity for risk, the
necessity for innovation and criticism. And it is in that climate that
individual artists develop.
I remember a time, years ago, when I sat on a literature panel; the
big problem was trying to get the writers to apply. They didn’t want
it; they thought they were going to be censored; they thought the
government was meddling in their books; they thought they couldn’t
say certain things. There was a taint attached to the acceptance of the
fellowship grants and the direct grants, and only with persistence
were the panels able to overcome it. With persistence, the panels of
the endowment have become Brother Theo to little Vinnie van Gogh.
They have become a friend to little Jimmy Joyce. They are a platform
for that outrageous, shocking, controversial George Bernard Shaw.
But, in addition, we are food, we are rent and we are medical care for
that arrogant and feisty Zora Neale Hurston—who didn’t have any of
that at the end. We have a chance to be the audience in the
performance hall for Scott Joplin—who didn’t have it at the end.
What we do is no small thing; it is the first of the four or, I guess, five
legs upon which the endowment stands. And any kick to that leg, any
break in it, is insupportable because the endowment cannot stand
without it.

Now for a very personal note. I do not want to go into my old age
without Social Security, but I can; I do not want to go into my old age
without Medicare, but I can, I’ll face it; I do not like the notion of not
having a grand army to defend me, but I can face that. What I cannot
face is living without my art. Like many of you here, with your own
particular backgrounds, I come from a group of people who have
always refused to live that way. In the fields we would not live
without it. In chains we would not live without it—and we lived
historically in the country without everything, but not without our
music, not without our art. And we produced giants. We, the
National Council on the Arts, the endowment, are the bastions; we
will make it possible to keep individuals and artists alive and
flourishing in this country.

Arts Advocacy

W

HENEVER ANYONE begins to think about arts advocacy,
a complex obstacle presents itself at once: artists have a very bad
habit of being resilient, and it is that resilience that deceives us into
believing that the best of it sort of gets done anyhow—and the “great”
of that “best” sort of lasts anyhow. The public and even academic
perception is that nothing, neither social nor personal devastation,
stops the march and production of powerful and beautiful artworks.
Chaucer wrote in the middle of the plague.
James Joyce and Edvard Munch carried on with a blind eye and a
weak one respectively.
French writers excelled in and defined an age writing in the forties
under Nazi occupation.
The greatest of composers was able to continue while deaf.
Artists have fought madness, ill-health, penury, and humiliating
exile—political, cultural, religious—in order to do their work.
Accustomed to their grief, their single-minded capacity for it and
their astonishing perseverance in spite of it, we sometimes forget
that what they do is in spite of distress—not because of it.
Last year I spoke to an extremely gifted and well-established artist
who told me he vetoed a living for a fellow artist because he thought
having so much money would undermine the recipient—hurt his
work—and that the applicant was “too good to receive such a
financial windfall.” To me the shock of that revelation is that, in
some quarters, it is not shocking at all. For even when there is
attention turned to an artist’s plight in the form of a modest living,
there is at the same time a problem of perception: What constitutes a

hospitable environment and what principles inform whether we
provide or deny it?
It brings us, as always, to the question of how haphazard should
art support be. Should it take its text from the hazard of being an
artist and become itself erratic, risky? Should it examine artists’ lives,
note the pain in so much of them, and imitate that pain by
enfranchising it—even producing it, as in the anecdote above, for the
good of the artist? Should grief and penury be built into art
patronage, so the marketable wares created under those limiting
circumstances are folded into the equation of the work’s value in the
marketplace in years and eras to come?*
When all attention is withdrawn from artists, they have always
been mad enough to do it anyway, so what’s the fuss? Can’t they
depend on enlightened philanthropy when available—and look
elsewhere when it isn’t? Or can’t they depend on the marketplace—
which is to say design the art itself for the marketplace—and hope
the target will not move before their work is completed? Or can’t they
rely on government support and trust to chance or the law of
averages that their work will prove at least equal to the dollar value
of the support?
Such are a few of the questions art advocacy raises. But they are
critical questions, made more critical by economic decay if not
catastrophe and political cunning. And they are questions begging
for answers, strategies in state art organizations, educational
institutions, museums, foundations, community and neighborhood
groups, and so on. What all of us know, you and I, is that the
situation is more than dire—it is dangerous.
All of the art of all of the past can be destroyed in a few minutes by
oafish politics and/or war games. It is also true that a good deal of
the art of the future can be aborted by carelessness, whimsy, and
disdain among art providers and consumers. National prerequisites
can sweep clean or waver; crystallize or flow. There have been times
when support for new and emerging art was at floodtide, matching
the support for traditional institutions; other times such support, as
now, is in drought. The uncertainty can devastate whole generations

of artists and deprive a nation irrevocably. There already are such
nations. It will take real intelligence and foresight not to become one
of them. One of the nations that rests on the passion of the artists
long dead—appropriating that passion, that engagement as their
own, and meanwhile daring contemporary artists to work their own
way. Or one of the nations that can be defined by the number of its
artists who have fled the country. If one judges a civilization, as I
believe it should be judged, not by the high-mindedness with which
it regards art but by the seriousness with which art regards the
civilization, then it is high time we begin to address anew and with
vigor certain problems that continue to signify alarm.
The public perception of the artist is frequently so at variance with
the art world’s perception, they can hardly speak to each other. But
the effort to do so, to have unpatronizing exchanges between arts
professionals and the public, between artists and audiences cannot
be overemphasized. It is also possible and necessary to encourage
dialogues in which the artist is not a supplicant and the art supporter
is not an enforcer. It is possible to have a forum in which the citizen,
the student feels he or she is welcome for more than the ticket
purchased or the applause. It is important to include, even to work
the student-citizen into these projects; to insist upon discussion of
the problems that seem to be gripping the art world in general and
that are plaguing all of us—providers, grantors, artists, teachers,
organizers.
* Or should as much attention be given to why as to how much and how long?

Sarah Lawrence Commencement
Address

I

AM extremely pleased to have this opportunity to speak to so
very special a gathering. To pay compliments to a community of
teacher-scholars, teacher-administrators, parents, board members,
and students in an extraordinary institution. I commend you. These
last few years could not have been easy. To the parents and relatives
of the graduates I extend my congratulations. That your son or
daughter or relative has been graduated is cause for a splendid
celebration. Quietly or with fireworks, relish it today, for in just a
little while you will again feel the anxiety of her or his next step—
some further penetration into the adult world you are yourselves
familiar with, and, being familiar with that world, you certainly feel
some apprehension. I cannot reassure you but I can remind you that
youth is indelicate—managing generation after generation not only
to survive and replace us, but to triumph over us.
But to you, the graduates, I would like to do more than commend
and congratulate. I would like to provoke. By the reputation of your
faculty and the alumni of this college, I would guess that your
education here has not been idle or irrelevant; it has been serious. I
would like what I say to approach the seriousness of your tenure
here.
So what shall I say to the Sarah Lawrence Class of ’88? The last
time I did this, I believe, was 1984—a year fraught with symbolism
and the tension Mr. Owell had projected onto it. I honestly don’t
know what might be of value to any graduating class four years after
1984.

Obviously I must make some reference to the future—how
sparkling it can be…provided it exists; if only the possibility of
actually “killing” time was not a real one, real because, if we want it
that way, we can arrange things so that there will be no one left to
imagine or remember that human invention: time. Its absence (the
absence of time) has been thinkable during the whole of your lives. I
would talk about the future if only it were a rolled carpet you had
only to kick to see it unfurl limitlessly before your feet.
Surely there must be some talk of responsibility. I am addressing,
after all, bright, industrious, accomplished people who are about to
shoulder the very considerable weight of educated adulthood. So
there should be some mention of responsibility: the need for and the
risk of assuming the burden of one’s own life and, in the course of
that, assuming the care of the life of another (a child, a friend, a
mate, a parent, an acquaintance, even, perhaps, a stranger).
And shouldn’t I also touch upon goodness? Ethical choices? I
ought to, since goodness is not only better and good for you, but it is
also more interesting, more complicated, more demanding, less
predictable, more adventuresome than its opposite. Evil really is
boring. Sensational, perhaps, but not interesting. A low-level activity
that needs masses or singularity or screams or screeching headlines
to even get attention for itself, while goodness needs nothing.
And how can I leave out happiness? How could I omit the secret
ingredients, the combination of which will invite, if not guarantee it?
A little clarity, a bit of daring, some luck, and a great deal of selfregard. Then life is bountiful and one becomes both loved and
lovable.
The future, responsibility, goodness—I’d love talking about all
that, but not the last one: happiness. It makes me uncomfortable.
Uneasy. I am not interested in your happiness. I am not sure it’s all
it’s cracked up to be. I know, of course, that its pursuit (if not its
achievement) is a legal one amended into the Constitution. I know
that whole industries are designed to help you identify, attain, and
feel it. One more article of clothing, the ultimate telephone, the bestappointed boat, an instantly timeless camera taking hundreds of

shots of nothing to outlast the ages, the fastest diet, the perfect ice
cream with all the pleasure of sugar and cream and none of their
dangers. I know, also, happiness has been the real, if covert, target of
your labors here, your choices of companions, of the profession,
perhaps, that you will enter. And I do want you to have it; you clearly
deserve it. Everyone does. And I hope it continues, or comes,
effortlessly, quickly, always. Still, I am not interested in it. Not yours,
nor mine nor anybody’s. I don’t think we can afford it anymore. I
don’t think it delivers the goods. Most important, it gets in the way of
everything worth doing. There was a time, for most of the history of
the human race, in fact, when to contemplate and strive for
happiness was critical, necessarily compelling. But I am convinced
that focusing on it now has gotten quite out of hand. It has become a
bankrupt idea, the vocabulary of which is frightening: money, things,
protection, control, speed, and more.
I’d like to substitute something else for its search. Something
urgent, something neither the world nor you can continue without. I
assume you have been trained to think—to have an intelligent
encounter with problem-solving. It’s certainly what you will be
expected to do. But I want to talk about the step before that. The
preamble to problem-solving. I want to talk about the activity you
were always warned against as being wasteful, impractical, hopeless.
I want to talk about dreaming. Not the activity of the sleeping brain,
but rather the activity of a wakened, alert one. Not idle wishful
speculation, but engaged, directed daytime vision. Entrance into
another’s space, someone else’s situation, sphere. Projection, if you
like. By dreaming the self permits intimacy with the Other without
the risk of being the Other. And this intimacy that comes from
pointed imagining should precede our decision-making, our causemongering, our action. We are in a mess, you know; we have to get
out, and only the archaic definition of the word “dreaming” will save
us: “to envision; a series of images of unusual vividness, clarity,
order, and significance.” Unusual, clarity, order, significance,
vividness. Undertaking that kind of dreaming we avoid complicating
what is simple or simplifying what is complicated, soiling instead of

solving, ruining what should be revered. We avoid substituting
slogans like “national will” for national intelligence and perception.
National will? What kind? Informed? Uninformed? Obstinate South
African national will? Nineteen forty Germany’s national will?
Hanging on to destructive theses simply because one developed them
half a century ago? These are comic book solutions to biblical
problems in nuclear times. We must do all we can to imagine the
Other before we presume to solve the problems work and life
demand of us.
Dream the world as it ought to be, imagine what it would feel like
not to be living in a world loaded with zero-life weapons manned by
people willing to loose them, develop them, or store them for money,
or power, or data, but never for your life and never for mine. What
would it be like to live in a world where the solution of serious,
learned people to practically every big problem was not to kill
somebody? Narcotics trade? Whom shall we kill—or lock up?
Disease? Whom shall we let die—or lock up? Self-rule by a
neighboring (or even distant) country? Whom shall we slaughter?
Famine? What is an acceptable death rate? Unemployment?
Homelessness? What is the tolerable starvation rate? Too many
babies by all the wrong mothers? Too many people living too long?
Even our goodwill is couched in killing. We are asked to give millions
of dollars to “Feed the Children”—until they are fourteen, that is, at
which point we are forced to pay billions to blow their brains out if
they make demands in their own interests but not ours. Are their
deaths not timely enough for us? They will all die anyway—as we will.
All the babies, all the elderly, all the fettered and unenfranchised, the
ill, the idle—just like us. Maybe after, before, or even because of us,
but we will all be together by and by.
If that is the consequence of our sophisticated thinking, our expert
problem-solving, then we need to step back and refine the process
that precedes it: experimental, intimate, ranging daylight vision that
is not ashamed to dream, to visualize the Other.
Imagine, envision what it would be like to know that your comfort,
your fun, your safety are not based on the deprivation of another. It’s

possible. But not if we are committed to outmoded paradigms, to
moribund thinking that has not been preceded or dappled by
dreaming. It is possible, and now it is necessary. Necessary because if
you do not feed the hungry, they will eat you, and the manner of their
eating is as varied as it is fierce. They will eat your houses, your
neighborhoods, your cities; sleep in your lobbies, your lanes, your
gardens, your intersections. They will eat your revenue because there
will never be enough prisons, and wards, and hospitals, and welfare
hotels to accommodate them. And in their search for your kind of
happiness, they will eat your children, render them stunned and
terrified, desperate for the sleeping life narcotics can offer. We may
already have lost the creative intelligence of two-thirds of a new
generation to this poisoned, violent sleep—a torpor so brutal they
cannot wake from it for fear they will remember it; a sleep of such
numbed recklessness it turns our own wakefulness to dread.
It is possible to live without defending property or surrendering it,
but we will never live that way unless our thinking is shot through
with dreams. And it is necessary now because if you don’t educate
the unschooled with the very best you have, don’t give them the help,
the courtesy, the respect you had in becoming educated, then they
will educate themselves, and the things they will teach and the things
they will learn will destabilize all that you know. And by education I
do not mean hobbling the mind, but liberating it; by education I do
not mean passing on monologues, but engaging in dialogues.
Listening, assuming sometimes that I have a history, a language, a
view, an idea, a specificity. Assuming that what I know may be
useful, may enhance what you know, may extend or complete it. My
memory is as necessary to yours as your memory is to mine. Before
we look for a “usable past” we ought to know all of the past. Before
we start “reclaiming a legacy” we ought to know exactly what that
legacy is—all of it and where it came from. In the business of
education there are no minorities, only minor thinking. For if
education requires tuition but no meaning, if it is to be about nothing
other than careers, if it is to be about nothing other than defining
and husbanding beauty or isolating goods and making sure

enrichment is the privilege of the few, then it can be stopped in the
sixth grade, or the sixth century, when it had been mastered. The rest
is reinforcement. The function of twentieth-century education must
be to produce humane human beings. To refuse to continue to
produce generation after generation of people trained to make
expedient decisions rather than humane ones.
Oh, what would it be like without putrefying hatred we have been
told and taught was inevitable among humans? Inevitable? Natural?
After five million years? After four thousand years we haven’t
imagined anything better than that? Which one of us was born that
way? Which one of us prefers it that way? Hating, grabbing,
despising? Racism is a scholarly pursuit and it always has been. It is
not gravity or ocean tides. It is the invention of our minor thinkers,
our minor leaders, minor scholars, and our major entrepreneurs. It
can be uninvented, deconstructed, and its annihilation begins with
visualizing its absence, losing it, and if it can’t be lost at once or by
saying so, then by behaving as if, in fact, our free life depended on it,
because it does. If I spend my life despising you because of your race,
or class, or religion, I become your slave. If you spend yours hating
me for similar reasons, it is because you are my slave. I own your
energy, your fear, your intellect. I determine where you live, how you
live, what your work is, your definition of excellence, and I set limits
to your ability to love. I will have shaped your life. That is the gift of
your hatred; you are mine.
Well, now, you may be asking yourself: What is all this? I can’t
save the world. What about my life? I didn’t ask to come here. I
didn’t ask to be born. Didn’t you? I put it to you that you did. You not
only asked to be born, you insisted on your life. That is why you are
here. No other reason. It was too easy not to be. Now that you are
here, you have to do something you respect, don’t you? Your parents
did not dream you up—you did. I am simply urging you to continue
the dream you started. For dreaming is not irresponsible; it is firstorder human business. It is not entertainment; it is work. When
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream,” he was not playing; he
was serious. When he imagined it, envisioned it, created it in his own

mind it began to be, and we must dream it too to give it the heft and
stretch and longevity it deserves. Don’t let anybody, anybody
convince you this is the way the world is and therefore must be. It
must be the way it ought to be. Full employment is possible. Positing
a workforce of 20 to 30 percent of the population of the future is
yearning greed, not inevitable economics.
All public schools can be hospitable, welcoming, safe learning
environments. No one, teachers or students, prefers mindlessness,
and in some places such environments have already been built.
Appetites for self-murder can be eradicated. No addict or suicide
wants to be one.
Enemies, races, and nations can live together. Even I in the last
forty years have seen deadly national enemies become warm,
mutually supporting friends, and four national friends become
enemies. And it doesn’t take forty years to witness it. Anybody over
eight years old has witnessed the expedient, commercial, almost
whimsical nature of national friendships. I have seen resources
committed to the disenfranchised, the discredited, the unlucky, and
before we could reap the harvest of those resources, before
legislation put in place could work (twenty years?) it was
disassembled. Like stopping the union in 1796 because there were
problems. Building a bridge halfway and saying we can’t get there
from here.
That determined commitment must be redreamed, rethought,
reactivated—by me and by you. Otherwise, as nationalism and
racisms solidify, as coasts and villages become and remain the
sources of turmoil and dispute, as eagles and doves alike hover over
the remaining sources of raw wealth on this earth, as guns and gold
and cocaine topple grain, technology, and medicine to win first place
in world trade, we will end up with a world not worth sharing or
dreaming about.
We are already life-chosen by ourselves. Humans, and as far as we
know there are no others. We are the moral inhabitants of the galaxy.
Why trash that magnificent obligation after working so hard in the
womb to assume it? You will be in positions that matter. Positions in

which you can decide the nature and quality of other people’s lives.
Your errors may be irrevocable. So when you enter those places of
trust, or power, dream a little before you think, so your thoughts,
your solutions, your directions, your choices about who lives and
who doesn’t, about who flourishes and who doesn’t will be worth the
very sacred life you have chosen to live. You are not helpless. You are
not heartless. And you have time.

The Slavebody and the Blackbody

I

N 1988, the same year James Cameron opened America’s Black
Holocaust Museum here in Milwaukee, I responded to an
interviewer’s question. Having published a novel investigating the
lives of a family born into bondage, I was being asked about the need
for, the purpose in articulating that unspeakable part of American
history. The need for remembering the men, the women, the children
who survived or did not survive the three-hundred-odd years of
international commerce in which their bodies, their minds, their
talents, their children, their labor were exchanged for money—
money they could lay no claim to. Since the argument for shunning
bad memories or sublimating them was so strong and, in some
quarters, understood not only to be progressive but healthy, why
would I want to disturb the scars, the keloids, that civil war, civic
battle, and time itself had covered? The slavebody was dead, wasn’t
it? The blackbody was alive, wasn’t it? Not just walking, and talking,
and working, and reproducing itself, but flourishing, enjoying the
benefits of full citizenship and the fruits of its own labor. The
question seemed to suggest that, whatever the level of
accomplishment, little good could come from writing a book that
peeled away the layers of scar tissue that the blackbody had grown in
order to obscure, if not annihilate, the slavebody underneath.
My answer was personal. It came from a kind of exhaustion that
followed the completion of my novel. An irritability. A sorrow.
“There is no place,” I said, “where you or I can go, to think about or
not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the
absences of slaves; nothing that reminds us of the ones who made
the journey and of those who did not make it. There is no suitable

memorial or plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby.
There is no three-hundred-foot tower. There’s no small bench by the
road. There is not even a tree scored with an initial that I can visit or
you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence
or, better still, on the banks of the Mississippi.”
“Somebody told me,” I continued, “that there is a gentleman in
Washington who makes his living by taking busloads of people
around to see the monuments of the city. He has complained because
there is never anything there about black people that he can show. I
can’t explain to you why I think it’s important, but I really do. I think
it would refresh. Not only that, not only for black people. It could
suggest the moral clarity among white people when they were at their
best, when they risked something, when they didn’t have to risk and
could have chosen to be silent; there’s no monument for that either.”
Except in the names of institutions that pay homage to a white
person’s care, or generosity: Spingarn, General Howard, Spelman,
etc. “I don’t have any model in mind,” I said, “or any person, or even
any art form. I just have the hunger for a permanent place. It doesn’t
have to be a huge, monumental face cut into a mountain. It can be
small, some place where you can put your feet up. It can be a tree. It
doesn’t have to be a statue of liberty.”
As you can tell I was feeling quite bereft when I made those
comments.
When I use the term “slavebody” to distinguish it from
“blackbody,” I mean to underscore the fact that slavery and racism
are two separate phenomena. The origins of slavery are not
necessarily (or even ordinarily) racist. Selling, owning people is an
old commerce. There are probably no people in this auditorium
among whose ancestors or within whose tribe there were no slaves. If
you are Christian, among your people were slaves; if you are Jewish,
among your people were slaves; if you are Muslim, among your
people were the enslaved. If your ancestors are European they lived
under the serfdom of eastern Europe, the tenancy of feudalism in
England, in Viking Europe, Visigothic Spain, or fifteenth- or
sixteenth-century Venice, Genoa, and Florence. The majority

population of ancient Rome and ancient Greece—all were
deliberately constructed slave societies. Medieval Ghana; Songhai
Mali; the Dahomey and Ashanti kingdoms. Slavery was critical to the
world of Islam and systematic in the Orient, including a thousand
years in Korea alone. We are all implicated in the institution. The
colonists of the New World, patterning their economies on those
earlier and contemporary societies that were dependent on free or
forced labor, tried to enslave indigenous populations and would have
imported any foreign group available, capable, and survivable.
Available because highly organized African kingdoms could provide
laborers to Europeans; capable because they were clever, strong, and
adaptable; survivable because they were creative, spiritual, and
intensely interested in their children—foreigners from Africa fit the
bill.
Not only the origins but the consequences of slavery are not always
racist. What is “peculiar” about New World slavery is not its
existence but its conversion into the tenacity of racism. The dishonor
associated with having been enslaved does not inevitably doom one’s
heirs to vilification, demonization, or crucifixion. What sustains
these latter is racism. Much of what made New World slavery
exceptional was the highly identifiable racial signs of its population
in which skin color, primarily but not exclusively, interfered with the
ability of subsequent generations to merge into the nonslave
population. For them there was virtually no chance to hide, disguise,
or elude former slave status, for a marked visibility enforced the
division between former slave and nonslave (although history defies
the distinction) and supported racial hierarchy. The ease, therefore,
of moving from the dishonor associated with the slavebody to the
contempt in which the freed blackbody was held became almost
seamless because the intervening years of the Enlightenment saw a
marriage of aesthetics and science and a move toward transcendent
whiteness. In this racism the slavebody disappears but the blackbody
remains and is morphed into a synonym for poor people, a synonym
for criminalism and a flash point for public policy. For there is no
discourse in economics, in education, in housing, in religion, in

health care, in entertainment, in the criminal justice system, in
welfare, in labor policy—in almost any of the national debates that
continue to baffle us—in which the blackbody is not the elephant in
the room; the ghost in the machine; the subject, if not the topic, of
the negotiations.
This museum’s projects have enormous powers. First is the power
of memorializing. The impulse to memorialize certain events, people,
and populations comes at certain times. When what has happened is
finally understood or is a forthright assertion of civic or personal
pride, tombs and palaces are built, flowers heaped, statues rise,
archives, hospitals, parks, and museums are constructed. Time being
such an important factor in this process, most of the participants in
the events being remembered never see them. But the growth of this
country in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries,
resting heavily on the availability of free labor, is complicated and
exceptional. Exceptional because of its length and its chattel nature;
complex because of its intricate relationship to the cultural,
economic, and intellectual development of the nation. That is what
must be remembered. There is another power this project has: of
making us aware of the ever flexible, always adaptable, persistently
slippery forms of modern racism in which the slavebody is
reconstructed and reenters the blackbody as an American form of
ethnic cleansing in which a monstrously large number of black men
and women are carefully swept into prisons, where they become once
again free labor; once again corralled for profit. Make no mistake,
the privatization of prisons is less about unburdening taxpayers than
it is about providing bankrupt communities with sources of income
and especially about providing corporations with a captured
population available for unpaid labor.
The third power of the museum’s project, perhaps its most
important, certainly its most gratifying, is the gaze it has cast on the
ameliorating, triumphant aspects of the history of the republic—in
black and white. This is what I sense: in spite of all the commercial
and political strategies to separate, divide, and distort us, young
people seem to be truly tired of racism’s control over their lives. The

art community is exhausted by and rebellious toward its limitations.
Low-income people who discover how entangled and held down they
are in its divisive economic grasp loathe it. Scholars unintimidated
by its cling are disassembling it. We are becoming more industrious
in substituting accuracy, other perspectives, other narratives in place
of phantom histories, polluted politics, and media manipulation.
I am pleased that my appearance coincides with the exhibition of
African American artists whose eyes encountered at every level the
stereotyping and visual debasement prevalent elsewhere. Through
their art, their taste, their genius we see African American subjects as
individuals, as cherished, as understood. Viewing this display of their
force, their life-giving properties, their humanity, their joy, their will
ought to be enough to forestall the reach of racism’s tentacles. Ought
to be enough to protect us from its uninformed, uneducated,
relentlessly toxic touch. Just as the commitment of this community
ought to be enough. Don’t you think? Thank you.

Harlem on My Mind
Contesting Memory—Meditation on Museums, Culture, and
Integration

T

ODAY’S DEBATE on the place, power, and purpose of
museums as reservoirs of cultural memory and/or a source of
community integration is vital. Such debates are endemic to
museums. The history of the Louvre itself bears witness to radical
attacks and passionate rescue, yet it survives as a revered model and
indispensable example of the universal survey museum. As Neil
Harris writes, “The size, wealth, internal arrangements, and
architecture of museums, as well as the inherent decontextualization
of museum exhibits, had attracted hostility in the nineteenth century
and certainly in the early twentieth century. The gargantuan temples
of the early twentieth century were labeled by some critics ‘dignified
disasters’; their organization of exhibits…a ‘Minotaur’s labyrinth,’…
museum policies were condemned as socially aloof and indifferent.
Some educators fumed about museum failures to acknowledge
contemporary needs and interests, while others condemned largescale collecting as the poisoned fruit of capitalism.” Furthermore, he
notes, “museums have been labeled racist, revisionist, hegemonic,
elitist, politically correct, mercenary, greedy, and self-serving.” Why,
then, one wonders, are museums experiencing what can only be
called a “boom,” as larger constituencies are solicited, as revenues
increase along with the sale of goods and services that “blockbuster”
shows produce, as patrons and funding sources compete with one
another for standing and generosity to museums? Transitions are
taking place, not least of which is recognition that the “foreigner is

already home.” And the mission of today’s museums takes into
account their claims.
Curators, artists, directors, art critics, and historians recognize the
urgency of these deliberations anew. Their articles fill journals;
boards of traditional museums reconsider structure and content;
recent arrivals in the landscape of museums shape their acquisitions
to accommodate the demands of new or underrepresented
audiences.
The provenance of one such demand for representation in the
United States provides a map that dramatizes both the
vulnerabilities and opportunities under discussion.
As the New York scene in the sixties roiled with fresh visions
within the art world (abstract expressionism, pop art), the
Metropolitan Museum in New York welcomed its new director,
Thomas P. F. Hoving. A medieval scholar become city parks
commissioner, he was excited about introducing new projects into an
institution some believed had become moribund. One of his projects
was an exhibit designed to reflect the culture of Harlem—an African
American neighborhood in New York City famous for its writers,
poets, painters, musicians, and nightclub life. The exhibition,
announced in 1968 and called Harlem on My Mind, opened at the
Metropolitan Museum in January 1969 as a fifteen-gallery portrayal
of Harlem history, identity, and cultural tradition consisting of
photographs, murals, slides, films, documentary recordings, music,
and memorabilia. Encouraged and directed by Allon Schoener, the
visual arts director of the New York State Council on the Arts,
Hoving mounted what they both described as a “total ethnic
environmental show” covering Harlem from 1900 to 1968. Using the
then-radical exhibition techniques including photographs on the
ceiling and as murals, soundscapes and television, the show
paralleled an earlier one in which Schoener was involved: The Lower
East Side: Portal to American Life at the Jewish Museum—a paean
to immigration in America. Great as the enthusiasm for the Harlem
show was in many quarters and funding sources, there were
rumblings of discontent before the show opened: there were

accusations of marginalizing the counsel and the advice of
Harlemites; of blacks being used as “window dressing.” But the
denouement was louder with more virulent outrage not only from
the black community, but from a wide range of groups including
some of the directors of and donors to the Metropolitan.
Conservative art critics such as Hilton Kramer held that such shows
had no place in an art museum. “In mounting the Harlem on My
Mind exhibition,” he wrote, “Mr. Hoving has for the first time
politicized the Metropolitan, and has thereby cast doubt on its future
integrity as an institution consecrated above all to the task of
preserving our artistic heritage from the fickle encroachments of
history.” Jewish, Irish, and Hispanic groups found Candice Van
Ellison’s introduction to the catalog patently racist vilification, since
in it she wrote, as follows, “Psychologically, blacks may find that
anti-Jewish sentiments place them, for once, within a majority. Thus,
our contempt for the Jew makes us feel more completely American
in sharing a national prejudice.” Patently racist vilification. Hoving
himself was reviled for his apparent condescension to his black
servants (his “sunny maid,” his black “dour” chauffeur) and his
remark that peer relationships between the races were “ludicrous.”
Schoener, too, for his assertions that “Harlem is [black culture’s]
capital. White mores and values are not universal.” From Hoving’s
populist intentions there arose strong class conflicts. Certainly the
controversy was heightened by the turbulence of the sixties, yet the
implications of what went wrong with Hoving’s multimedia show are
resonant today. From insult to cultural injury, artists, politicians,
scholars, journalists identified quite serious objections to the
intellectual and aesthetic premises of the exhibit. Among these
complaints were: no African American representation on the
selection committee; near total reliance on photography, principally
the work of James VanDerZee, and deliberate exclusion of painters
and sculptors; the museum’s promise of a “separate” show never
materialized; the theme was more entertainment than art—another
example of white voyeurism with a camera set up in Harlem at 125th
Street for a closed-circuit viewing, rather like a zoo, for patrons at the
museum. The dismissal of such artists as Norman Lewis, Jacob

Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Cliff Joseph, Elizabeth Catlett,
Raymond Saunders, and many others, both established and
emerging, prompted a protest group, forced Roy DeCarava to
withdraw his work and Romare Bearden to leave the committee.
Without the full participation of these artists, the focus misled
viewers toward sentimentalized and caricatured representations of
black life as criminal, impoverished, exclusively sensual. Further
insult was perceived in the choice of an African American high school
student, rather than a knowledgeable scholar or artist, to handle the
catalog’s introduction. Even the show’s title, selected by Schoener,
inflamed already raw sensibilities. Borrowed from Irving Berlin’s
song, it followed the same pattern Schoener followed: a white man
writing knowingly, authoritatively about Harlem culture, the lyrics
describing a black showgirl (and perhaps mistress) in Paris missing
the “low-down”—that is, licentious—life among urban blacks. “I’ve a
longing to be low-down / And my parlez-vous will not ring true /
With Harlem on my mind.” Minus local working artists, without
board representation, without even an art scholar to introduce the
catalog, with no reference to Harlem’s prosperous civic life, what the
community believed was the real importance, meaning, and variety
of its cultural life was completely, arrogantly dismissed. It appeared
to many that Harlem on My Mind was fundamentally an
ethnographic exhibition presented in an art museum—one of the
leading universal survey museums. Thus it angered those who
thought ethnographic displays did not belong there and frustrated
those who wanted work by African Americans to be there. The crux
of these charges and frustrations seemed to be that the Metropolitan
Museum had treated black culture as “foreign,” as the work product
of strangers whose home it first appropriated then selectively
celebrated. A kind of petri dish for the curious.
The consequences, however, of the Harlem on My Mind show did
create opportunity. Among disgruntled “minorities,” the citizens of
Harlem and African American artists were not alone. Their
experience of being silenced by an exhibition ostensibly about them
is duplicated in many places, and the hierarchy of cultures is being

intently questioned and refuted. Communities are no longer content
to remain passive recipients of museum activities. The Studio
Museum in Harlem, with its concentration on African American art,
is one of the success stories directly related to the fallout of the
controversy. The proliferation of ethnic museums in New York and
elsewhere is another. Furthermore, less than a year after the show
closed, the black artists who formed the Black Emergency Cultural
Coalition and protested against Harlem (Norman Lewis, Romare
Bearden, Raymond Saunders, Vivian Browne, and Cliff Joseph,
among others) met with officials at the Whitney Museum of
American Art to begin negotiations over its policies of discrimination
against black artists. In 1971 the coalition called for a boycott of the
Whitney’s exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America
because black participation in its organization was limited. Fifteen of
the seventy-five artists chosen by curator Robert M. Doty scheduled
to participate withdrew, and, true to form, critical response to those
who remained in the exhibition centered on black political reaction,
with little discussion of the art itself.
New York’s Guggenheim Museum’s 1996 survey Abstraction in the
20th Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline included no artists of
color. Nearly twenty-eight years after Harlem on My Mind, a major
American art museum excluded African American painters and
sculptors from a major exhibition, and in doing so once again raised
questions of race, politics, and aesthetics. But the thrust of the
criticism had shifted. The art museum was still being asked, What is
the domain of black visual art—figuration, abstraction?, while the
artists themselves and some critics were asking whether racially
defined art was limiting and whether the question was a problem
itself, especially when critical response to the exhibition of black
visual artists centered on politics with little discussion of the art
itself. What was the art museum’s aesthetic evaluation of visual art
created by blacks? Cliff Joseph hazarded an approach in an
interview: “I would not say that there is black art per se….There is,
however, a black experience in art; I think every culture has its own
experience which the artists of the culture brings to his work.”

Many of today’s young black artists agree with Mr. Joseph and see
racially defined art as stifling if not condescending; as a problem
itself. An increasing number of them insist their work be evaluated
on the basis of aesthetics only, wondering if their art was not
classified under the rubric of black culture would it read as African
American? If the artists were not presented according to their race,
would their work be mined for racial or political content? These
questions and others have given rise to the term “postblack” among
the newer artists—a term that both signals racial identity and refutes
its established borders.
The narrative and consequences of the Harlem on My Mind show
are at the heart of this current debate on the mission of museums as
it relates to the foreigner’s home. And much of the news is good. If
the Guggenheim failed to recognize American abstract painters and
sculptors of color, other opportunities have not been wasted. Kellie
Jones’s recent show at the Studio Museum in Harlem,
Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964–
1980, is a strong response to the Guggenheim’s omission from its
abstract survey show. Since Harlem closed in 1969, new generations
of curators, scholars, art historians are deepening and broadening
the idea of the visual art museum and the material and cultural
museum. In 1968 the ethnographic replaced the artistic at the
Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition; ethnography and art were largely
separate. But in the 1990s the development of these areas of study—
art and ethnology—began to converge, and fields such as world art
history seem to have gained increasing attention, as well as
controversy. Fred Wilson’s 1992 show, Mining the Museum, at the
Contemporary museum in Baltimore included works from the
Maryland Historical Society. Wilson plumbed these works for new
information about black American life from the figuration and
portraiture in the work of white artists in early American history and
reframed the works to tell that story. It became increasingly apparent
that museological decisions and curatorial ones are as much
ideologically determined as they are aesthetically determined, and
that such decisions are made in the context of power. Yves Le Fur

argues intelligently, in my view, that the twenty-first-century art
museum cannot remain a cultural site “where nonWestern art is
judged according to the standards of modern art.”
European “high art” and the foreigner’s “material or craft work” is
bridged by archaeology (the unearthing of both craft and art from
dead cultures and ferried to museums in Europe) and is being
reassembled, recontextualized among scholars who accept the
position that exhibitions claiming to be authentic representations of
peoples and their cultures—that attempt to define what is essentially
African or European—are hegemonic practices that reproduce the
values and privileges of the center.
Happily, the dialogue is ongoing: in the history of art production;
on issues of culturally specific aesthetics; about the invisibility of the
foreigner in established institutions and the curricula of art
departments; the expansion of “homes” for the art of non-Western
people; discrete collections of modern art in rural, less metropolitan
sites.
Museums and galleries are an artist’s home; his and her place in
art history, in cultural history, where national identities are shaped
and reimagined. Increasingly, the focus of these art places is on the
relationship among what is outside the museum as well as what is
inside. Increasingly the erstwhile “stranger” enriches all of our
homes.

Women, Race, and Memory

I

N 1868 a forty-five-year-old woman asked the United States
Senate for three years’ back pay. She had been hired during the Civil
War to do three kinds of work: as nurse, cook, and “commander of
several men.” It took thirty years for the men in the nation’s Capitol
to make up their minds on a matter in which money, sex, race, and
class were so hopelessly entangled. One hundred and fifteen years
have passed since this woman’s original request, and the
combination of explicit issues in her claim is still a witches’ brew of
confusion, anger, fear, ignorance, and malice. At the heart of her
nineteenth-century battle for veteran’s pay is the burning question of
twentieth-century feminism: How can a woman be viewed and
respected as a human being without becoming a male-like or maledominated citizen?
For a variety of complex reasons, the final answer is not in yet, but
it is impossible not to come to the dreary conclusion that chief
among these reasons is our (women’s) own conscious and
unconscious complicity with the forces that have kept sexism the
oldest class oppression in the world. This casual or deliberate treason
is like a bone lodged in the throat of every woman who tries to
articulate the present condition of women, and, until expelled, it is a
bone that will continue to choke, and may soon silence, what could
have been the first successful, bloodless revolution in America.
The self-sabotage rife among women is no secret, but what may be
unclear is why we insist on chains. Because sexism is not confined to
men, psychology, schooling, and theology are frequently scoured to
explain this subversion—to locate its origin in the oppressor. But the
most effective and reliable saboteur is she who needs no orders.

American women fall into one of three general categories:
feminists, anti-feminists, and nonaligned humanists. Each of these
admittedly ill-defined groups generates some hostility for at least one
other, and each contains subgroups intent on evangelical work
among the others.
Avowed feminists, their consciousnesses sufficiently raised to be
active workers for women’s rights, have been around for a long time.
Feminism is as old as sexual repression. In this country, women’s
liberation flowered best in the soil prepared by black liberation. The
mid-nineteenth-century abolitionist movement yielded suffragettes;
the mid-twentieth-century Civil Rights movement yielded Woman’s
Liberation. Both movements were loudly championed by black men
(no white men so distinguished themselves), but both abandoned
black civil rights and regarded the shift away from the race problem
as an inevitable and necessary development—an opportunity to
concentrate on exclusively sexist issues. Each time that shift took
place it marked the first stage of divisiveness and heralded a future of
splinter groups and self-sabotage.
Among modern feminists this first split quickly gave way to a
second from which two main groups emerged: socialist feminists,
who blame capitalism for the virulence of sexual oppression, and
radical feminists, who blame men. The outrage of both socialist and
radical feminism is directed toward the cause of sexism, yet in
pursuit of the enemy, much of the emotional violence spills over to
the victims. Regardless of how they define the enemy (men or the
“system”) both camps recognize the need to neutralize the hostility of
women toward one another—sisters, mothers, and daughters,
women friends and employees. They see betrayal among women as a
residue of minority self-contempt and the competitiveness of the
marriage market. Nevertheless, the result of a raised consciousness
in the company of a repressed one is frequently an explosive
internecine conflict. There is stark terror in Andrea Dworkin’s
account of her attempts to talk to right-to-life women in Houston.
There is real arsenic in Simone de Beauvoir’s recollection of her
rivalry with her mother. Even among advanced feminists sabotage is

a serious threat. A nice little feminist collective bookstore in
California (called Woman’s Place) ended up in court when the
separatists locked the integrationists out.
The anti-feminists, who have the greatest support of men, are
presumed by feminists to be endlessly gestating and lactating; happy
for any system, political, economic, or cultural, that manages men
and keeps them if not responsible, then certainly at bay. Blaming
feminists’ communism, and atheism, anti-feminists are convinced
that the male role as providers and fathers is the apex of civilized
society. It does not trouble them that finding a role for men, other
than fathers or husbands, is still a serious problem for anthropology.
That while “nature” easily defines a woman’s role, “society” must
provide a definition of male roles. Trying to figure out what—other
than fathering and providing for children—men are for leads the
researcher into an investigation of “civilization” and male-dominated
positions within it. Since fatherhood is not fulfilling enough for men,
they see themselves as doers, leaders, and inventors, and it does not
take a major intellect to see that women, free of home and child care,
may be expected to do, lead, and invent as well. Contemplating such
a radical change in expectations can range from uneasiness to terror.
Anti-feminists are not categorically opposed to male-like activities
for women, but they regard them as either secondary freedoms or
not freedoms at all, but rather as heavy requirements that will
deprive them of a hard-won protectionism. Thus their disgust with
ERA, abortion on demand, and a host of other feminist goals.
The agnostics, or nonaligned humanists, are probably the largest
of all three groups and, although courted by feminists and antifeminists alike to swell their numbers, they have earned the
contempt and mistrust of both. Feminists regard them as scabs and
opportunists, benefiting from feminist work while contributing
nothing to it—even scorning it. They are the women in academia who
accept their tenured positions as part of the fruit of feminist labor,
who identify themselves as representing womanpower, but who are
quick to disassociate themselves from “merely” feminist scholarship
(“I teach Milton”). Anti-feminists see them as cowards and profiteers

benefiting from protectionism when it suits them but flagrantly
chucking it when it does not. They are the dissatisfied wives making
feminist claims about house and child care and sexual freedom
without parallel claims of responsibility. All of their energy is
channeled into the competitive ethos of physical beauty. They
decorate and market themselves in precisely the manner of a 1950
pinup; mutter about the hopelessness of men, but regard themselves
and other women as incomplete without a male liaison. Nonaligned
women are embarrassed by the extravagant or aggressive behavior of
radical feminists and dismiss them as unattractive, male-minded
Amazons. Equally contemptible to them are the anti-feminists,
whose oratory amuses them and whom they see as ignorant,
religious fanatics, or simply slavish. The “reasonable” neutrality of
the nonaligned humanist is viewed as quisling by the converts of the
right or left.
Among these three groups, the field for battle is wide and loaded
with weaponry. Sad as these divisions are, they exist because of
genuine concerns—serious unresolved questions about biology and
bigotry.
The biological bind, whether blessing or curse, is real. Whatever
the disposition of women today (radical, anti-, or nonaligned) they
are forced relentlessly into selling or trading on their vaginas or their
wombs. As “involuntary” mothers, trading on the womb means
demanding protection as a class for the product that organ can
manufacture—children. For “voluntary” mothers, the womb becomes
the nexus for demanding the right to terminate its activity. As
mistresses, prostitutes, housebound wives, and pornographic
“actresses,” women are involved in the dollar value of their vaginas
and must come to terms with accepting that value as the way the
world is and ought to be, or the way it is but ought not to be. Because
a woman’s livelihood has always been connected to her sexuality,
whether maiden, mistress, wife, or prostitute, fidelity is women’s
work—not men’s. “Relating to men in bed and in marriage is the
conventional passport to normal femininity.” And it is incumbent
upon the woman to advertise her faithfulness and maintain his. It is

this burden of fidelity, coupled with the economics of sexuality, that
puts heterosexual women in direct conflict with lesbians.
Homosexual, or women-identified women, struggling to eliminate
males and their domination from their personal and sexual lives, are
convinced that lesbianism is the only way to achieve the full potential
of women. Many look forward to a world that they envision as
completely genderless, although it is not immediately clear where
future lesbians will come from without some contact with men or, at
the least, their bottled sperm. For the moment their position requires
sharing with male scientists the lively optimism that fuck-free
childbirth methods have encouraged. Yet female homosexuals are
not alone in these dreams of a peaceable genderless kingdom, as the
growing number of women writing science fiction is proof of. So
problematic is the gender barricade, many feminist writers have
turned to science fiction in order to invent a transcendent universe—
free of the limitations of biology.
The second concern that generates divisiveness among women is
the tenacity of male bigotry and its grave effect on the lives of all
women regardless of what camp they belong to. Men still determine
the scientific, political, and labor goals of this society. Scientific
manipulation in areas of reproduction has turned out to be a very
mixed blessing. It was a woman, Margaret Sanger, who had the idea
and raised the money for a man, Dr. Pincus, to develop a “simple,
cheap, safe contraceptive to be used in poverty-stricken slums,
jungles, and among the most ignorant people.” The specificity of the
assignment was important and decisive, proving that the suspicions
of minority women about all birth control campaigns are wellfounded. Notwithstanding the original intention, “the pill” has been
identified as the principal liberating factor for women of all colors
since 1960. Yet the dramatic decline in infant births and mortality
from pregnancy is outweighed by the staggering increase in
reproductive death due to birth-control devices. The contraceptive
that stops birth also kills women, but because the class and race
implications in birth-control campaigns are systemic, there is no
guarantee that the danger will decrease even if women do finally

control fertility among themselves and their sisters in the jungle. The
picture of wave upon wave of nonwhite babies growing into vocal
hungry adulthood is routinely evoked by feminists trying to persuade
others to their point of view.
In spite of some progressive legislation and increasing numbers of
women in politics, and in spite of the percentage of registered
women voters, no one questions the fact that politics is by men and
for men. No one even bothers to wonder why so many women in
politics are conservative. The eagerness for political heroines is so
keen that apologies for reactionary women leaders can be safely left
to the left. But these apologies do not hide the fury between left-wing
women and their right-wing sisters. Witness any issue-oriented
platform, such as those involving school desegregation, abortion
rights, prayer in schools, and so on.
The control men exert on the labor market is exacting—more so
now because house-free women are clearly superfluous to laissezfaire or corporate capitalism. There is too little work and too much
skill. Too little work and too many workers. Teens, minorities,
women, recently retired people, farmers, factory workers, and the
work-trained disabled are the reserve workforce available for
constantly changing labor needs. And built into this supply-demand
system is a violent job-career struggle that seethes in offices and
factories everywhere. Because of their dependency, women are the
most disposable of laborers.
Biology and bigotry are the historical enemies—the ones women
have long understood as the target if sexism is to be uprooted. What
is newer and perhaps more sinister is the growth of the female
saboteur, who seems to be crippling the movement as a whole: the
internecine conflicts, cul-de-sacs, and mini-causes that have
shredded the movement, steered it away from the serious political
revolution of its origins, and trivialized it almost beyond recognition.
Why have right-to-life and abortion-on-demand issues made women
their own antagonists? Why do prostitutes regard women fighting
pornography as uselessly obstructionist? Why are black and other
minority women so quick to freeze out white feminist leadership?

Why are women, for all our public talk of solidarity, firing our
assistants because and when they are pregnant, voting against the
appointment of women deans and chairpersons, relating to maids as
though they were property, turning over buses on other mothers’
black children? While these skirmishes continue, the movement
comes dangerously close to an implosion of women-hating-women at
worst, or a defeated disarray of cul-de-sac and mini-causes at best—
all demonstrating the basest of male expectations: that any
organization of women would end in a hair-pulling contest, as
entertaining and irrelevant as those lady mud wrestlers.
How can a dignified, responsible women’s liberation revive itself
and proceed without shaming itself into women’s lamentation?
Perhaps if we listen closely to the ferocity, the eloquence, the pleas
devoted to the cause of women, we will hear another message—one
that informs the lament: that masculinity or male likeness is, after
all, a superior idea. That all the way from radical feminists who
believe men are less suited for masculinity than anybody, to “total”
women, who believe men are simply better, the concept of
masculinity still connotes adventure, integrity, intellect, freedom,
and, most of all, power. “Man is the measure of man” is an easily
dismissed observation in a modern context, but masculinity is very
much the measure of adulthood (personhood). Proof is everywhere.
It shapes the wishes of women who believe they are born to please
men as well as those who want to have what males claim for
themselves. It ignites the drive of women who wish to be thought of
as competent, brilliant, tough, thorough, just, and reasonable.
Rigorous intellect, commonly thought of as a male preserve, has
never been confined to men—but it has always been regarded as a
masculine trait. Relinquishing reproductive control to God is, in fact,
relinquishing it to men. Demanding reproductive control is to usurp
male sovereignty and acquire what masculinity takes for granted—
dominion.
Rather than limit the definition of feminine to one chromosome,
rather than change the definition to elevate the other chromosome,
why not expand the definition to absorb both? We have both. Not

wanting or needing children should not mean we must abandon a
predilection for nurturing. Why not employ it to give feminism a new
meaning—one that distinguishes it from woman-worship and from
man-awe? The truth is that males are not a superior gender; nor are
females a superior gender. Masculinity, however, as a concept, is
envied by both sexes. The problem, therefore, is this: the tacit
agreement that masculinity is preferable is also a tacit acceptance of
male supremacy, whether the “males” are men, male-minded
women, or male-dominated women, and male supremacy cannot
exist without its genitalia. Each sexist culture has its own sociogenital formation, and in the United States the formation is racism
and the hierarchy of class. When both are severed, male supremacy
collapses and the sea of contention among women will dry up.
Pretending that racist elements in male supremacy are secondary
to sexism is to avoid, once again, the opportunity to eradicate sexism
completely. Just as it was avoided by nineteenth-century
abolitionists, so it has been ignored in twentieth-century feminism.
The persistent refusal to confront it not only supports male
supremacy, it creates battle lines with forty million women on one
side and sixty million on the other.
Accepting male-defined, male-blessed class hierarchy is also to
strangle the movement and keep us locked in a fruitless war in which
each of us is a female saboteur.
Complicity in the subjugation of race and class accounts for much
of the self-sabotage women are prey to, for it is straight out of that
subjugation that certain female-destroying myths have come. One is
the myth of the malevolent matriarch, a myth so prevalent that
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s conclusions about matriarchy as a cause
of pathology among blacks is echoed in the literature of black men
and women as well as white. This, in spite of the fact that only 16
percent of all households report males as the sole providers
(governments insist a household have a “head” and are alarmed
when it is not a man). Nothing in black life supports the thesis of
black men as “feminized” by their women and everything points to
white male suppression as the emasculating force. Yet this distortion

is thriving like health. Italians, Jews, Hispanics, WASPs—all have
had their social problems explained in part by their success or failure
in taming a threatening matriarch.
Another female-destroying myth is the classlessness of laissezfaire capitalism and socialism. In advanced capitalism women have
no economic autonomy and are dependent on the “uncertain maledetermined fortunes as wives, mothers, and housekeepers.” In
Marxist societies, where classes are identified according to their
relation to production, the family unit with its internal stratification
(man equals head) defies any attempt to describe adequately the
production of the “unwaged”—that is, the housewife.
Class stratification sharpens and politicizes the fight for goods and
status. Along with all the other conflicts it generates, class inequality
exacerbates the differences between black and white women, poor
and rich women, old and young women, single welfare mothers and
single employed mothers. It pits women against one another in maleinvented differences of opinion—differences that determine who
shall work, who shall be well educated, who controls the womb
and/or the vagina; who goes to jail; who lives where.
The willingness of innocent, ignorant, or self-regarding women to
dismiss the implications of class prejudice, and to play roles that act
in concert with the male-defined interests of the state, produces and
perpetuates reactionary politics—a slow and subtle form of
sororicide.
There is no one to save us from that—no one except ourselves. So
in the debris of what once looked like a vital liberation movement,
one searches for signs of life. Three beacons wink in the wasteland.
The dogged and often thankless work being done by fewer and fewer
feminists to change oppressive laws; the starving self-help centers
and mutual-aid networks; and, healthiest of all, the dazzling
accomplishment of women’s art and scholarship. Nothing, it seems
to me, is more exhilarating, and more dramatically to the point, than
what is happening among the artists and scholars. The pejorative,
limiting intention of the labels is still around (women playwrights,
women photographers, etc., are obligatory annual roundups in

various media) but not for long. It may be the first hint of a possible
victory in being viewed and respected as human beings without being
male-like or male dominated. Where self-sabotage is harder to
maintain; where the worship of masculinity as a concept dies; where
intelligent compassion for women unlike ourselves can surface;
where racism and class inequity do not help the vision or the
research; where, in fact, the work itself, the very process of doing it,
makes sororicide as well as fratricide repulsive.
Thirty years after Miss Harriet Tubman—black, female, mother,
daughter, nurse, cook, wife, and “commander of several men”—asked
a roomful of sexist, bigoted, class-conscious white men for her back
pay they granted it. I have not chosen to begin and end this piece
with her plea because it makes a poignant anecdote, but because the
key to feminine oppression is most clearly seen in the response to her
stand—a response that gathered together the full force of the special
brand of American racism and sexism.
And don’t think she didn’t know it. They gave her twenty dollars a
month for life. She was seventy-five years old then, and they
probably did not expect the pension to have to last very long.
Stubborn as a woman, she lived thirteen more years.

Literature and Public Life

T

O RETURN to the site of one’s graduate school life, one is
always in danger of repeating one’s original status in the place where
inquiry occurs, problems surface, and help is needed to sort out all
the difficulties so a clear and persuasive argument can be advanced. I
feel like that now, lo, these many years later: perhaps a committee is
sitting somewhere ready to interrogate me following their listening
to this paper. It is a useful bit of recollection because I want to use
this occasion and this provocative site to examine (or float) a few
thoughts I have had no chance to articulate, except in my fiction. And
to identify how those thoughts are made manifest in my work.
The problem I want to address this evening is, as I see it, the loss
of public life, which is exacerbated by the degradation of private life.
And I am proposing literature as an amelioration to this crisis in
ways even literature could not have imagined.
During the eighties and nineties, technology and the regime of the
electronically visual world have altered perception of the public and
our experience of one another. (The current Age of the Spectacle
promised intimacy and universalization in a global village setting.
But it has delivered frightful confusion about private and public
existence.) Following the demise of the much maligned sixties and
seventies, during which there was an actual, contested, fought over,
fought for, and fought against public (and publicly expressed) life, it
seems unlikely that there will ever be a decade like that: where issues
of conscience, morality, law, and ethics were liberationist rather than
oppressive. And it is interesting to note that it is a decade that, unlike
any previous one, is embarrassed by itself. That kind of public life
(the Civil Rights movement, etc.) is not experienced as media

phenomena made possible by “the enormous weight of advertising
and media fantasy [which suppresses] the realities of division and
exploitation; [disguises] the disconnexion of private and public
existence.” The consequence may be apathy, disgust, resignation, or
a kind of inner vacuum (numbness), “a dream world of artificial
stimuli and televised experience,” where, as F. Jameson observed,
“never in any previous civilization have the great metaphysical
preoccupations, the fundamental questions of being and the meaning
of life, seemed so utterly remote and pointless.” That was 1971 when
those comments were made and they are inapplicable to some degree
now, when product ethics and media ethics have greater force than
social ethics or justice.
We live in the Age of Spectacle. Spectacle promises to engage us, to
mediate between us and objective reality in nonjudgmental ways.
Very like the promise of nuclear energy: to be safe, clean, and cheap,
but turned out to be dangerous, dirty (contaminated), and expensive.
The promise made by the spectacle has been forfeited. Not only are
we not engaged, we are profoundly distanced—unable to
discriminate, edit, or measure shock or empathy. The “regime of
visual authority [is a] coercive organization of images according to a
stopwatch” and passes its organization off to us as a simulacrum of
the real.
The news promises to inform us. Yet “the promiscuity of the
nightly news—the jostling together of tornadoes in Pennsylvania,
gunmen in Bosnia, striking teachers in Manchester…infant heart
surgery in California—is dictated by the time constraints of the
medium.” But the jumble of events is presented to the viewer as if it
were a representation of the promiscuity of the external world, which
we find, as a result, incoherent.
“Millions of people look to the screen for signs of their collective
identity as a national society and as citizens of the world. The media
now play the decisive role in constituting the ‘imagined community’
of nation and globe.” In this fashion “the news is validated as a
system of authority, as a national institution with a privileged role as
purveyor of the nation’s identity and taker of its pulse.”

Recent events, however, suggest something has gone wrong. The
formula, the authority, the paradigm, the goals of the spectacle may
not be working. The erstwhile “church of modern authority,”
television once routinely presented news as sacred spectacle: the
funeral of John F. Kennedy, the wedding of Prince Charles,
presidential inaugurations, the death of Diana—all implying that
what was on view was of grave national and international
significance. But in the merging of news (which is not news unless
pictorial) with spectacle at the service of profit-making
entertainment, certain electronic narratives originally constructed as
official or national stories revealed not the promised national
identity but the fault lines within. War becomes a timed and shaped
“story” where the electronic question becomes the political one:
When will we get out? When will the troops come home? When will
the despot be dead? In other national narratives—the Clarence
Thomas hearing, the O.J. trial, the Whitewater investigation, the
impeachment hearings—time and narrative shape as well as plot are
all subject to televised programming needs. It is fascinating to recall
that virtually all of these recent stories are highly inflected by race
and/or sex and the power wielded or withheld by either one.
These national spectacles did not hide divisions as they wished,
but exacerbated them. We cannot count on the spectacle to heal and
distract completely. It is more likely to damage, alter, or distort time,
language, the moral imagination, concepts of liberty, access to
knowledge, as our consciousnesses are being reduced to selfcommodification. We become “ads” for ourselves under the pressure
of the spectacle that flattens our experience of the public/private
dichotomy. The question becomes how and where can we experience
the public in time, in language, as affect, and in context in order to
participate fully in our own personal, singular, even invented life in
relation to the life of the various communities to which we claim or
wish to belong.
What is the source of this flattened perception of private and
public? Part of the confusion may simply be the reckless use of the
terms: there is private life and there is the privatization of prisons,

health care, and so-called public schools. The first use emanates
from constitutional guarantees as well as a personal claim. The
second is a corporate investment publicly traded.
The first (personal claim to privacy) can be abandoned (on a talk
show, for instance) or lost in the courts (by celebrities and “public”
figures), but in any case such connotations of privacy are under
surveillance at all times. The second (the privatization of formally
public institutions) can be thwarted in the courts also, but are
presented to us and represented to us as for the “public” good
(encouraging competition and so forth, which ought to lower prices
and increase quality for consumers). Public interest is often
redefined as “special” interests.
The slippage in these definitions so erases the boundaries between
an individual and his imagined community, we are not surprised or
agitated by the fact that public life is now rendered as visual
phenomena of a chosen narrative that exploits and sensationalizes
sex, race, and family threats for the national resonance and
marketability they provide. This chaotic collapse of private and
public—the constantly surveyed private life—and the public sphere
over which we have no control encourages retreat into the narcissism
of difference, a surrender to the shallow delights of entertainment.
Or participation in a wholly illusory community shaped by fear and
unquenchable desire.
It seems to me that given these already realized subversions and
the possibility of more, literature offers a special kind of
amelioration. The history of claims for the study of literature circles
around three major benefits: (1) literature’s character-building,
moral-strengthening capacities, (2) its suitability for high-minded,
politics-free leisure activity, (3) its role in “cultivating powers of
imagination that are essential to citizenship.” While being educated
to citizenship is superior to being educated to consumership,
citizenship as a goal has troublesome nationalistic associations. “The
problem with nationalism is not the desire for self-determination…
but the particular epistemological illusion that you can be at home,
you can be understood, only among people like yourself. What is

wrong with nationalism is not the desire to be master in your own
house, but the conviction that only people like yourself deserve to be
in the house.” Whether the character-building properties of
literature, its rigorous politics-free intellectualism, or its utility in
producing good and caring citizens—whether any of those claims still
resonate among readers (and I am not sure that the case for
literature has changed much since Emerson’s “American Scholar” or
F. R. Leavis’s pronouncements), there is nevertheless a level of
urgency in the study and production of literature hitherto
unimaginable that has manifested itself: fictional literature may be
(and I believe it is) the last and only route to remembrance, the only
staunch in the wasteful draining away of conscience and memory.
Fictional literature can be an alternative language that can contradict
and elude or analyze the regime, the authority of the electronically
visual, the seduction of “virtual.” The study of fiction may also be the
mechanism of repair in the disconnect between public and private.
Literature has features that make it possible to experience the
public without coercion and without submission. Literature refuses
and disrupts passive or controlled consumption of the spectacle
designed to nationalize identity in order to sell us products.
Literature allows us—no, demands of us—the experience of ourselves
as multidimensional persons. And in so doing is far more necessary
than it has ever been. As art it deals with the human consequences of
the other disciplines: history, law, science, economics, labor studies,
medicine. As narrative its form is the principal method by which
knowledge is appropriated and translated. As a simultaneous
apprehension of human character in time, in context, in space, in
metaphorical and expressive language, it organizes the disorienting
influence of an excess of realities: heightened, virtual, mega, hyper,
cyber, contingent, porous, and nostalgic. Finally, it can project an
alleviated future.
These theoretical moves (about the novel’s peculiar affinity for
experiencing a receding public life) become explicit moves in the last
three books I have written. Beloved, Jazz, Paradise—each has a
structural anomaly in common. A postnarrative, extratext, outside-

the-book coda that comments not on the plot or story, but on the
experience of the plot; not on the meaning of the story, but on the
experience of gathering meaning from the story. These coda play an
advocacy role, insisting on the consequences of having read the book,
intervening in the established intimacy between reader and page,
and forcing, if successful, a meditation, debate, argument that needs
others for its fullest exploration. In short, social acts complete the
reading experience.
Beloved ends narratively with Sethe’s question about her
individuality. The extranarrative activity is the reestablishment of the
haunting—larger now than what it was assumed to be and what it
was limited to in the beginning: a frustrated child, a justifiably
malevolent creature of will. Much larger than its own problem of
annihilation, it, the figure of Beloved summoned in the book’s
“afterlife,” is now the responsibility of those who have shared,
participated in, witnessed the story. A private responsibility
disguising public or community obligations: “This is not a story to
pass on.” “They can touch it if they like.” “They forgot her.”
“Loneliness that can be rocked [individual]” “Loneliness that roams
[public].”
In Jazz the beyond-the-book gestures are stronger: the characters
themselves escape the prognosis of the book, are different from and
more complicated than the book ever imagined. Thus the final
paragraphs constitute not merely a plea for the compassionate
understanding of a misleading, self-involved narrative, but for an
exquisite, shared, highly eroticized private relationship between
reader and page. These paragraphs also activate the complicity by
calling attention strenuously, aggressively to the act of reading as
having public consequences and even public responsibility. From
“Look, look. Look where your hands are. Now,” one can infer
something is to be done, something is to be reimagined, altered, and
that something is literally in the reader’s hands.
In Paradise, again the novel ends (or closes) with activity almost
irrelevant to the narrative. “Almost” because it does allow some
speculation as to what in fact happened to the women in the

Convent. But mostly to complete the play on gospel with the
“visitations” and “sightings” of the New Testament and finally to
refigure paradise’s imaginary. And paradise is everything but a
solitary existence—is, in every projection, a community with a shared
public life.
The novel, I believe, allows, encourages ways to experience the
public—in time, with affect, in a communal space, with other people
(characters), and in language that insists on individual participation.
It also tries to illuminate and recover the relationship between
literature and public life.

The Nobel Lecture in Literature

“O

NCE UPON A TIME there was an old woman. Blind but
wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing
restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the
lore of several cultures.
“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise.”
In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black,
American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her
reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among
her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is
paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her
neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of
rural prophets is the source of much amusement.
One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to
be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the
fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house
and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her
difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound
disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them
says, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is
living or dead.”
She does not answer, and the question is repeated. “Is the bird I
am holding living or dead?”
Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors,
let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color,
gender, or homeland. She only knows their motive.
The old woman’s silence is so long, the young people have trouble
holding their laughter.

Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know,”
she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or
alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your
hands.”
Her answer can be taken to mean: If it is dead, you have either
found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it.
Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is
your responsibility.
For parading their power and her helplessness, the young visitors
are reprimanded, told they are responsible not only for the act of
mockery but also for the small bundle of life sacrificed to achieve its
aims. The blind woman shifts attention away from assertions of
power to the instrument through which that power is exercised.
Speculation on what (other than its own frail body) that bird in the
hand might signify has always been attractive to me, but especially so
now, thinking as I have been, about the work I do that has brought
me to this company. So I choose to read the bird as language and the
woman as a practiced writer. She is worried about how the language
she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even
withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. Being a writer she
thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over
which one has control, but mostly as agency—as an act with
consequences. So the question the children put to her, “Is it living or
dead?” is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to
death, erasure, certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort
of the will. She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is
dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse. For her a dead
language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding
language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language,
censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no
desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own
narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However,
moribund, it is not without effect, for it actively thwarts the intellect,
stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to
interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other

thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences. Official language
smitheried to sanction ignorance and preserve privilege is a suit of
armor, polished to shocking glitter, a husk from which the knight
departed long ago. Yet there it is: dumb, predatory, sentimental.
Exciting reverence in schoolchildren, providing shelter for despots,
summoning false memories of stability, harmony among the public.
She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness,
disuse, and absence of esteem, indifference or killed by fiat, not only
she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise.
In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets
instead to iterate the void of speechlessness, of disabled and
disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as
a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or
expressing love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice
of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and
power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no
access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to
those who obey, or in order to force obedience.
The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the
tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, midwifery
properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does
more than represent violence, it is violence; does more than
represent the limits of knowledge, it limits knowledge. Whether it is
obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media;
whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the
commodity-driven language of science; whether it is the malign
language of law without ethics, or language designed for the
estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary
cheek—it must be rejected, altered, and exposed. It is the language
that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under
crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly
toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language,
racist language, theistic language—all are typical of the policing
languages of mastery and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or
encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

The old woman is keenly aware that no intellectual mercenary or
insatiable dictator, no paid-for politician or demagogue, no
counterfeit journalist would be persuaded by her thoughts. There is
and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming;
slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices,
playgrounds, bedrooms, and boulevards; stirring, memorializing
language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be
more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture,
assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language
designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like pâté-producing
geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be
more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics
and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute;
language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into
assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language
crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and
hopelessness.
Underneath the eloquence, the glamour, the scholarly
associations, however stirring or seductive, the heart of such
language is languishing, or perhaps not beating at all—if the bird is
already dead.
She has thought about what could have been the intellectual
history of any discipline if it had not insisted upon, or been forced
into, the waste of time and life that rationalizations for and
representations of dominance required—lethal discourses of
exclusion blocking access to cognition for both the excluder and the
excluded.
The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the
collapse was a misfortune. That it was the distraction, or the weight
of many languages that precipitated the tower’s failed architecture.
That one monolithic language would have expedited the building and
heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And
what kind? Perhaps the achievement of paradise was premature, a
little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other
languages, other views, other narratives. Had they, the heaven they

imagined might have been found at their feet. Complicated,
demanding, yes, but a view of heaven as life; not heaven as postlife.
She would not want to leave her young visitors with the impression
that language should be forced to stay alive merely to be. The vitality
of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined, and
possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is
sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs
toward the place where meaning may lie. When a president of the
United States thought about the graveyard his country had become
and said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here.” His simple words
are exhilarating in their life-sustaining properties because they
refused to encapsulate the reality of six hundred thousand dead men
in a cataclysmic race war. Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the
“final word,” the precise “summing up,” acknowledging their “poor
power to add or detract,” his words signal deference to the
uncapturability of the life it mourns. It is the deference that moves
her, that recognition that language can never live up to life once and
for all. Nor should it. Language can never “pin down” slavery,
genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do
so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.
Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify;
whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice
word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward
knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature
banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical;
erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the
thought of a self-ravaged tongue?
Word work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it
makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference—
the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That
may be the measure of our lives.
“Once upon a time…,” visitors ask an old woman a question. Who
are they, these children? What did they make of that encounter?

What did they hear in those final words: “It is in your hands”? A
sentence that gestures toward possibility or one that drops a latch?
Perhaps what the children heard was “It’s not my problem. I am
old, female, black, blind. What wisdom I have now is in knowing I
cannot help you. The future of language is yours.”
They stand there. Suppose nothing was in their hands? Suppose
the visit was only a ruse, a trick to get to be spoken to, taken
seriously as they have not been before? A chance to interrupt, to
violate the adult world, its miasma of discourse about them, for
them, but never to them? Urgent questions are at stake, including
the one they have asked: “Is the bird I am holding living or dead?”
Perhaps the question meant: “Could someone tell us what is life?
What is death?” No trick at all; no silliness. A straightforward
question worthy of the attention of a wise one. An old one. And if the
old and wise who have lived life and faced death cannot describe
either, who can? But she does not; she keeps her secret; her good
opinion of herself; her gnomic pronouncements; her art without
commitment. She keeps her distance, enforces it and retreats into
the singularity of isolation, in sophisticated, privileged space.
Nothing, no word follows her declaration of transfer. That silence
is deep, deeper than the meaning available in the words she has
spoken. It shivers, this silence, and the children, annoyed, fill it with
language invented on the spot.
“Is there no speech,” they ask her, “no words you can give us that
help us break through your dossier of failures? Through the
education you have just given us that is no education at all because
we are paying close attention to what you have done as well as to
what you have said? To the barrier you have erected between
generosity and wisdom?
“We have no bird in our hands, living or dead. We have only you
and our important question. Is the nothing in our hands something
you could not bear to contemplate, to even guess? Don’t you
remember being young, when language was magic without meaning?
When what you could say could not mean? When the invisible was

what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for
answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing?
“Do we have to begin consciousness with a battle heroines and
heroes like you have already fought and lost leaving us with nothing
in our hands except what you have imagined is there? Your answer is
artful, but its artiness embarrasses us and ought to embarrass you.
Your answer is indecent in its self-congratulation. A made-fortelevision script that makes no sense if there is nothing in our hands.
“Why didn’t you reach out, touch us with your soft fingers, delay
the sound bite, the lesson, until you knew who we were? Did you so
despise our trick, our modus operandi you could not see that we were
baffled about how to get your attention? We are young. Unripe. We
have heard all our short lives that we have to be responsible. What
could that possibly mean in the catastrophe this world has become,
where, as a poet said, ‘nothing needs to be exposed since it is already
barefaced.’ Our inheritance is an affront. You want us to have your
old, blank eyes and see only cruelty and mediocrity. Do you think we
are stupid enough to perjure ourselves again and again with the
fiction of nationhood? How dare you talk to us of duty when we
stand waist deep in the toxin of your past?
“You trivialize us and trivialize the bird that is not in our hands. Is
there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of
vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along
to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one.
Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us
your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical,
creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame
you if your reach exceeds your grasp, if love so ignites your words
they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with
the reticence of a surgeon’s hands, your words suture only the places
where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly—once
and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our
sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world
has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what
to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that

unravels fear’s caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can
speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see
without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of
things with no names. Language alone is meditation.
“Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to
be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in
this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at
the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.
“Tell us about ships turned away from shorelines at Easter,
placenta in a field. Tell us about a wagonload of slaves, how they
sang so softly their breath was indistinguishable from the falling
snow. How they knew from the hunch of the nearest shoulder that
the next stop would be their last. How, with hands prayered in their
sex, they thought of heat, then suns. Lifting their faces, as though it
was there for the taking. Turning as though there for the taking. They
stop at an inn. The driver and his mate go in with the lamp leaving
them humming in the dark. The horse’s void steams into the snow
beneath its hooves and its hiss and melt is the envy of the freezing
slaves.
“The inn door opens: a girl and a boy step away from its light. They
climb into the wagon bed. The boy will have a gun in three years, but
now he carries a lamp and a jug of warm cider. They pass it from
mouth to mouth. The girl offers bread, pieces of meat, and
something more: a glance into the eyes of the one she serves. One
helping for each man, two for each woman. And a look. They look
back. The next stop will be their last. But not this one. This one is
warmed.”
It’s quiet again when the children finish speaking, until the woman
breaks into the silence.
“Finally,” she says. “I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that
is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How
lovely it is, this thing we have done—together.”

Cinderella’s Stepsisters

L

ET ME BEGIN by taking you back a little. Back before the
days at college. To nursery school, probably, to a once-upon-a-time
when you first heard, or read, or, I suspect, even saw “Cinderella.”
Because it is Cinderella that I want to talk about; because it is
Cinderella who causes me a feeling of urgency. What is unsettling
about that fairy tale is that it is essentially the story of a household—a
world, if you please—of women gathered together and held together
in order to abuse another woman. There is, of course, a rather vague
absent father and a nick-of time prince with a foot fetish. But neither
has much personality. And there are the surrogate “mothers,” of
course (god- and step-), who contribute both to Cinderella’s grief and
to her release and happiness. But it is the stepsisters who interest
me. How crippling it must have been for those young girls to grow up
with a mother, to watch and imitate that mother, enslaving another
girl.
I am curious about their fortunes after the story ends. For contrary
to recent adaptations, the stepsisters were not ugly, clumsy, stupid
girls with outsize feet. The Grimm collection describes them as
“beautiful and fair in appearance.” When we are introduced to them
they are beautiful, elegant women of status, and clearly women of
power. Having watched and participated in the violent domination of
another woman, will they be any less cruel when it comes their turn
to enslave other children, or even when they are required to take care
of their own mother?
It is not a wholly medieval problem. It is quite a contemporary
one: feminine power when directed at other women has historically
been wielded in what has been described as a “masculine” manner.

Soon you will be in a position to do the very same thing. Whatever
your background (rich or poor) whatever the history of education in
your family (five generations or one) you have taken advantage of
what has been available to you at Barnard and you will therefore
have both the economic and social status of the stepsisters and you
will have their power.
I want not to ask you but to tell you not to participate in the
oppression of your sisters. Mothers who abuse their children are
women, and another woman, not an agency, has to be willing to stay
their hands. Mothers who set fire to school buses are women, and
another woman, not an agency, has to tell them to stay their hands.
Women who stop the promotion of other women in careers are
women, and another woman must come to the victims’ aid. Social
and welfare workers who humiliate their clients may be women, and
other women colleagues have to deflect their anger.
I am alarmed by the violence that women do to one another:
professional violence, competitive violence, emotional violence. I am
alarmed by the willingness of women to enslave other women. I am
alarmed by a growing absence of decency on the killing floor of
professional women’s worlds. You are the women who will take your
place in the world where you can decide who shall flourish and who
shall wither; you will make distinctions between the deserving poor
and the undeserving poor; where you can yourself determine which
life is expendable and which is indispensable. Since you will have the
power to do it, you may also be persuaded that you have the right to
do it. As educated women the distinction between the two is firstorder business.
I am suggesting that we pay as much attention to our nurturing
sensibilities as to our ambition. You are moving in the direction of
freedom, and the function of freedom is to free somebody else. You
are moving toward self-fulfillment, and the consequences of that
fulfillment should be to discover that there is something just as
important as you are and that just-as-important thing may be
Cinderella—or your stepsister.

In your rainbow journey toward the realization of personal goals,
don’t make choices based only on your security and your safety.
Nothing is safe. That is not to say that anything ever was, or that
anything worth achieving ever should be. Things of value seldom are.
It is not safe to have a child. It is not safe to challenge the status quo.
It is not safe to choose work that has not been done before. Or to do
old work in a new way. There will always be someone there to stop
you.
But in pursuing your highest ambitions, don’t let your personal
safety diminish the safety of your stepsister. In wielding the power
that is deservedly yours, don’t permit it to enslave your stepsisters.
Let your might and your power emanate from that place in you that
is nurturing and caring.
Women’s rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a
personal affair. It is not only about “us”; it is also about me and you.
Just the two of us.

The Future of Time
Literature and Diminished Expectations

T

IME, IT SEEMS, has no future. That is, time no longer seems
to be an endless stream through which the human species moves
with confidence in its own increasing consequence and value. It
certainly seems not to have a future that equals the length or breadth
or sweep or even the fascination of its past. Apparently, infinity is
now, the domain of the past. In spite of frenzied anticipation of
imminent entry into the next millennium, the quality of human
habitation within its full span occupies very little space in public
exchange. Twenty or forty years into the twenty-first century appears
to be all there is of the “real time” available to our imagination. Time
is, of course, a human concept, yet in the late twentieth century
(unlike in earlier ones) it seems to have no future that can
accommodate the species that organizes, employs, and meditates on
it. The course of time seems to be narrowing to a vanishing point
beyond which humanity neither exists nor wants to. It is singular,
this diminished, already withered desire for a future. Although
random outbreaks of armageddonism and a persistent trace of
apocalyptic yearnings have disrupted a history that was believed to
be a trajectory, it is the past that has been getting longer and longer.
From an earth thought in the seventeenth century to have begun
around 4000 BC; to an eighteenth-century notion of an earth
168,000 years old; to a “limitless” earthly past by the nineteenth
century; to Charles Darwin’s speculation that one area of land was
300 million years old, we see no reason not to accept Henri
Bergson’s image of a “past which gnaws into the future and which
swells as it advances.”

Oddly enough it is in the modern West—where advance, progress,
and change have been signatory features—where confidence in an
enduring future is at its slightest.
Pharaohs packed their tombs for time without end. The faithful
were once content to spend a century perfecting a cathedral. But
now, at least since 1945, the comfortable assurance of a “world
without end” is subject to debate and, as we approach the year 2000,
there is clearly no year 4000 or 5000 or 20,000 that hovers in or
near our consciousness.
What is infinite, it appears, what is always imaginable, always
subject to analysis, adventure, and creation is past time. Even our
definitions of the period we are living in have prefixes pointing
backward: postmodern, poststructuralist, postcolonial, post–Cold
War. Our contemporary prophecies look back, behind themselves,
post, after, what has gone on before. It is true, of course, that all
knowledge requires a grasp of its precedents. Still it is remarkable
how often imaginative forays into the far and distant future have
been solely and simply opportunities to reimagine or alter the
present as past. And this looking back, though enabled by
technology’s future, offers no solace whatsoever for humanity’s
future. Surrounding the platform from which the backward glance is
cast is a dire, repulsive landscape.
Perhaps it is the disruptive intervention of telecommunication
technology, which so alters our sense of time, that encourages a
longing for days gone by when the tempo was less discontinuous,
closer to our own heartbeat. When time was anything but money.
Perhaps centuries of imperialist appropriations of the future of other
countries and continents have exhausted faith in our own. Perhaps
the visions of the future that H. G. Wells saw—a stagnant body of
never rippled water—have overwhelmed us and precipitated a flight
into an eternity that has already taken place.
There are good reasons for this rush into the past and the
happiness its exploration, its revision, its deconstruction affords.
One reason has to do with the secularization of culture. Where there
will be no Messiah, where afterlife is understood to be medically

absurd, where the concept of an “indestructible soul” is not only
unbelievable but increasingly unintelligible in intellectual and
literate realms, where passionate, deeply held religious belief is
associated with ignorance at best, violent intolerance at its worst, in
times as suspicious of eternal life as these are, when “life in history
supplants life in eternity,” the eye, in the absence of resurrected or
reincarnated life, becomes trained on the biological span of a single
human being. Without “eternal life,” which casts humans in all time
to come—forever—the future becomes discoverable space, outer
space, which is, in fact, the discovery of more past time. The
discovery of billions of years gone by. Billions of years—ago. And it is
ago that unravels before us like a skein, the origins of which remain
unfathomable.
Another reason for this preference for an unlimited past is
certainly fifty years of life in the nuclear age in which the end of time
(that is human habitation within it) was and may still be a very real
prospect. There seemed no point in imagining the future of a species
there was little reason to believe would survive. Thus an obsession
for time already spent became more than attractive; it became
psychologically necessary. And the terrible futurelessness that
accompanied the Cold War has not altered so much (in the wake of
various disarmaments and freezes and nonproliferation treaties) as
gone underground. We are tentative about articulating a long earthly
future; we are cautioned against the luxury of its meditation as a
harmful deferral and displacement of contemporary issues. Fearful,
perhaps, of being likened to missionaries who were accused of
diverting their converts’ attention from poverty during life to
rewards following death, we accept a severely diminished future.
I don’t want to give the impression that all current discourse is
unrelievedly oriented to the past and indifferent to the future. The
social and natural sciences are full of promises and warnings that
will affect us over very long stretches of future time. Scientific
applications are poised to erase hunger, annihilate pain, extend
individual life spans by producing illness-resistant people and
disease-resistant plants. Communication technology is already

making sure that virtually everyone on earth can “interact” with one
another and be entertained, maybe even educated, while doing so.
We are warned about global changes in terrain and weather that can
alter radically human environments; we are warned of the
consequences of maldistributed resources on human survival and
warned of the impact of overdistributed humans on natural
resources. We invest heavily in these promises and sometimes act
intelligently and compassionately on the warnings. But the promises
trouble us with ethical dilemmas and a horror of playing God blindly,
while the warnings have left us less and less sure of how and which
and why. The prophecies that win our attention are those with bank
accounts large enough or photo ops sensational enough to force the
debates and outline corrective action, so we can decide which war or
political debacle or environmental crisis is intolerable enough; which
disease, which natural disaster, which institution, which plant, which
mammal, bird, or fish needs our attention most. These are obviously
serious concerns. What is noteworthy among the promises and
warnings is that other than products and a little bit more personal
time in the form of improved health, and more resources in the form
of leisure and money to consume these products and services, the
future has nothing to recommend itself.
What will we think during these longer, healthier lives? How
efficient were we in deciding whose genes were chosen to benefit
from these “advances” and whose were deemed unworthy? No
wonder the next twenty or forty years is all anyone wants to
contemplate. To weigh the future of future thoughts requires some
powerfully visionary thinking about how the life of the mind can
operate in a moral context increasingly dangerous to its health. It
will require thinking about the generations to come as life forms at
least as important as cathedral-like forests and glistening seals. It
will require thinking about generations to come as more than a
century or so of one’s own family line, group stability, gender, sex,
race, religion. Thinking about how we might respond if certain that
our own line would last two thousand, twelve thousand more earthly
years. It will require thinking about the quality of human life, not

just its length. The quality of intelligent life, not just its strategizing
abilities. The obligations of moral life, not just its ad hoc capacity for
pity.
It is abundantly clear that in the political realm the future is
already catastrophe. Political discourse enunciates the future it
references as something we can leave to or assure “our” children or—
in a giant leap of faith—“our” grandchildren. It is the pronoun, I
suggest, that ought to trouble us. We are not being asked to rally for
the children, but for ours. “Our children” stretches our concern for
two or five generations. “The children” gestures toward time to come
of greater, broader, brighter possibilities—precisely what politics
veils from view. Instead, political language is dominated by
glorifications of some past decade, summoning strength from the
pasted-on glamour of the twenties—a decade rife with war and the
mutilation of third-world countries; from attaching simplicity and
rural calm to the thirties—a decade of economic depression,
worldwide strikes, and want so universal it hardly bears coherent
thought; from the righteous forties when the “good war” was won
and millions upon millions of innocents died wondering, perhaps
what that word, “good,” could possibly mean. The fifties, a favorite,
has acquired a gloss of voluntary orderliness, of ethnic harmony,
although it was a decade of outrageous political and ethnic
persecution. And here one realizes that the dexterity of political
language is stunning, stunning and shameless. It enshrines the fifties
as a model decade peopled by model patriots while at the same time
abandoning the patriots who lived through them to reduced, inferior,
or expensive health care; to gutted pensions; to choosing suicide or
homelessness.
What will we think during these longer, healthier lives? How
successful we were in convincing our children that it doesn’t matter
that their comfort was wrested and withheld from other children?
How adept we were in getting the elderly to agree to indignity and
poverty as their reward for good citizenship?
In the realm of cultural analyses, not only is there no notion of an
extended future, history itself is over. Modern versions of Oswald

Spengler’s Decline of the West are erupting all over the land. Minus,
however, his conviction that the modern world contained an
unsurpassable “will to the Future.” The “landslide” began in 1973
according to Eric Hobsbawm. And that postsixties date is more or
less the agreed-upon marker for the beginning of the end. Killing the
sixties, turning that decade into an aberration, an exotic malady ripe
with excess, drugs, and disobedience, is designed to bury its central
features—emancipation, generosity, acute political awareness, and a
sense of a shared and mutually responsible society. We are being
persuaded that all current problems are the fault of the sixties. Thus
contemporary American culture is marketed as being in such
disrepair it needs all our energy to maintain its feeble life-support
system.
Seen through the selectively sifted grains of past time, the future
thins out, is dumbed down, limited to the duration of a thirty-year
Treasury bond. So we turn inward, clutching at a primer-book dream
of family—strong, ideal, protective. Small but blessed by law, and
shored up by nineteenth-century “great expectations.” We turn to
sorcery: summoning up a brew of aliens, pseudo-enemies, demons,
false “causes” that deflect and soothe anxieties about gates through
which barbarians saunter; anxieties about language falling into the
mouths of others. About authority shifting into the hands of
strangers. Civilization in neutral, then grinding to a pitiful, impotent
halt. The loudest voices are urging those already living in dread of
the future to speak of culture in military terms—as a cause for and
expression of war. We are being asked to reduce the creativity and
complexity of our ordinary lives to cultural slaughter; we are being
bullied into understanding the vital exchange of passionately held
views as a collapse of intelligence and civility; we are being asked to
regard public education with hysteria and dismantle rather than
protect it; we are being seduced into accepting truncated, short-term,
CEO versions of our wholly human future. Our everyday lives may be
laced with tragedy, glazed with frustration and want, but they are
also capable of fierce resistance to the dehumanization and

trivialization that politico-cultural punditry and profit-driven media
depend upon.
We are worried, for example, into catalepsy or mania by violence—
our own and our neighbors’ disposition toward it. Whether that
worry is exacerbated by violent images designed to entertain, or by
scapegoating analyses of its presence, or by the fatal smile of a
telegenic preacher, or by weapons manufacturers disguised as
occupants of innocent duck blinds or bucolic hunting lodges, we are
nevertheless becoming as imprisoned as the felons who feed the
booming prison industry by the proliferation of a perfect product:
guns. I say perfect because from the point of view of the weapons
industry the marketing is for protection, virility, but the product’s
real value, whether it is a single bullet, a thousand tons of dynamite,
or a fleet of missiles, is that it annihilates itself immediately and
creates, thereby, the instant need for more. That it also annihilates
life is actually a by-product.
What will we think during these longer, more comfortable lives?
How we allowed resignation and testosteronic rationales to purloin
the future and sentence us to the dead end that endorsed,
glamorized, legitimated, commodified violence leads to? How we
took our cue to solving social inequities from computer games,
winning points or votes for how many of the vulnerable and unlucky
we eliminated? Winning seats in government riding on the blood lust
of capital punishment? Winning funding and attention by revamping
1910 sociology to credit “innate” violence and so make imprisonment
possible at birth? No wonder our imagination stumbles beyond 2030
—when we may be regarded as monsters to the generations that
follow us.
If scientific language is about a longer individual life in exchange
for an ethical one; if political agenda is the xenophobic protection of
a few families against the catastrophic others; if religious language is
discredited as contempt for the nonreligious; if secular language
bridles in fear of the sacred; if market language is merely an excuse
for inciting greed; if the future of knowledge is simply “upgrade,”
where else might we look for hope in time’s own future?

I am not interested here in signs of progress, an idea whose time
has come and gone—gone with the blasted future of the monolithic
communist state; gone also with the fallen mask of capitalism as free,
unlimited, and progressive; gone with the deliberate pauperization of
peoples that capitalism requires; gone also with the credibility of
phallocentric “nationalisms.” But gone already by the time Germany
fired its first death chamber. Already gone by the time South Africa
legalized apartheid and gunned down its children in dust too thin to
absorb their blood. Gone, gone in the histories of so many nations
mapping their geography with lines drawn through their neighbors’
mass graves; fertilizing their lawns and meadows with the nutrients
of their citizens’ skeletons; supporting their architecture on the
spines of women and children. No, it isn’t progress that interests me.
I am interested in the future of time.
Because art is temporal and because of my own interests, my
glance turns easily to literature in general and narrative fiction in
particular. I know that literature no longer holds a key place among
valued systems of knowledge; that it has been shoved to the edge of
social debate; is of minimal or purely cosmetic use in scientific,
economic discourse. But it is precisely there, at the heart of that
form, where the serious ethical debates and probings are being
conducted. What does narrative tell us about this crisis in diminished
expectations?
I could look for an Edith Wharton shouting “Take your life”—that
is, Take on your life! For a Henry James appalled (in The Sense of the
Past) by an ancient castle that encloses and devours its owner. For a
William Faulkner envisioning a postnuclear human voice, however
puny. For a Ralph Ellison posing a question in the present tense
signaling a sly and smiling promise of a newly sighted (visible)
future. For a James Baldwin’s intense honesty coupled with an
abiding faith that the price of the ticket had been paid in full and the
ride begun. Those voices have been followed, perhaps supplanted, by
another kind of response to our human condition. Modern searches
into the past have produced extraordinary conceptual and structural
innovations.

The excitement of anticipating a future, once a fairly consistent
preoccupation of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century literature,
has recently been reproduced in an amazing book by Umberto Eco—
The Island of the Day Before. And its title makes my point. The
genius of the novel’s narrative structure is having the protagonist
located in the seventeenth century in order to mesmerize us with
future possibilities. We are made to take desperate pleasure in
learning what we already know to have taken place long ago. And
this extraordinary novel is, as the author tells us, “a palimpsest of a
rediscovered manuscript.” Through its construction and its reading
we move forward into an already documented history. When the
power and brilliance of many late-twentieth-century writers focus on
our condition, they often find a rehearsal of the past to yield the most
insightful examination of the present, and the images they leave with
us are instructive.
Peter Høeg, whose first novel nailed us relentlessly in the present,
turns, in The History of Danish Dreams, to a kind of time travel
(associated with though not similar to Eco’s) in which regression
becomes progression.
“If I persist,” Høeg writes at the end of this novel, “in writing the
history of my family, then it is out of necessity. Those laws and
regulations and systems and patterns that my family and every other
family in Denmark have violated and conformed to and nudged and
writhed under for two hundred years are now in fact in a state of
foaming dissolution….Ahead lies the future, which I refuse to view as
Carl Laurids did: down a gun barrel; or as Anna did: through a
magnifying glass. I want to meet it face-to-face, and yet I am certain
that if nothing is done, then there will be no future to face up to,
since although most things in life are uncertain, the impending
disaster and decline look like a safe bet. Which is why I feel like
calling for help…and so I have called out to the past….
“Now and again the thought strikes me that perhaps I have never
really seen other people’s expectations, that I have only ever seen my
own, and the loneliest thought in the world is the thought that what
we have glimpsed is nothing other than ourselves. But now it is too

late to think like that and something must be done, and before we
can do anything we will have to form a picture of the twentieth
century.”
Forming a picture of the twentieth century then—not the twentyfirst—is, in this novel, the future’s project.
William Gass, in a masterful work, The Tunnel, sustains a brilliant
meditation on the recent past forever marked by Nazi Germany. In it
his narrator/protagonist, having completed a “safe” morally
ambivalent history of German fascism, a work titled Guilt and
Innocence in Hitler’s Germany, finds himself unable to write the
book’s preface. The paralysis is so long and so inflexible, he turns to
the exploration of his own past life and its complicitous relationship
to the historical subject of his scholarship—“a fascism of the heart.”
Gass ends the novel in heartbreaking images of loss. “Suppose,” he
writes,
that instead of bringing forth flowers the bulb retreated to some
former time just before it burgeoned, that pollen blew back into
the breeze which bore it toward its pistil; suppose the tables
were turned on death, it was bullied to begin things, and bear its
children backward, so that the first breath didn’t swell the lung
but stepped on it instead, as with a heavy foot upon a pedal; that
there was…a rebellion in the ranks, and life picked the past to be
in rather than another round of empty clicks called present
time….I made…a try. I abandoned Poetry for History in my
Youth.
What a journey, though, to crawl in earth first, then in filth
swim; to pass through your own plumbing, meet the worms
within. And realize it. That you were. Under all the world. When
I was a kid I lied like a sewer system. I told my sometime chums
I went there. To the realm of shades. And said I saw vast halls,
the many chambers of endless caves, magic pools guarded by
Merlins dressed in mole fur and cobweb, chests overflowing with
doubtless dime-store-jewelry, rooms of doubloons, and,
suddenly, through an opening jagged as a rip in rotten cloth, a

new sun shining, meadows filled with healthy flowers, crayoncolored streams, oh, the acres of Edens inside ourselves….
Meanwhile carry on without complaining. No arm with
armband raised on high. No more booming bands, no searchlit
skies. Or shall I, like the rivers, rise? Ah. Well. Is rising wise?
Revolver like the Führer near an ear. Or lay my mind down by
sorrow’s side.
This is no predictable apocalyptic reflex, surfacing out of the
century’s mist like a Loch Ness hallucination. This is a mourning, a
requiem, a folding away of time’s own future.
What becomes most compelling, therefore, are the places and
voices where the journey into the cellar of time is a rescue of sorts, an
excavation for the purposes of building, discovering, envisioning a
future. I am not, of course, encouraging and anointing happy endings
—forced or truly felt—or anointing bleak ones intended as correctives
or warnings. I mean to call attention to whether the hand that holds
the book’s metaphors is an open palm or a fist.
In The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara opens this brilliant novel
with a startling question: “Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to
be well?” Are you sure you want to be well? What flows from that
very serious inquiry is a healing that requires a frightened modernday Demeter to fathom and sound every minute of her and her
community’s depths, to rethink and relive the past—simply to answer
that question. The success of her excavation is described in these
terms:
“What had driven Velma into the oven…was nothing compared to
what awaited her, was to come….Of course she would fight it, Velma
was a fighter. Of course she would reject what could not be explained
in terms of words, notes, numbers or those other systems whose
roots had been driven far underground….Velma’s next trial might
lead to an act far more devastating than striking out at the body or
swallowing gas….
“The patient turning smoothly on the stool, head thrown back
about to shout, to laugh, to sing. No need of Minnie’s hands now.

That is clear. Velma’s glow aglow and two yards wide of clear and
unstreaked white and yellow. Her eyes scanning the air surrounding
Minnie, then examining her own hands, fingers stretched and
radiant. No need of Minnie’s hands now so the healer withdraws
them, drops them in her lap just as Velma, rising on steady legs,
throws off the shawl that drops down on the stool a burst cocoon.”
The title of Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, The Moor’s Last Sigh,
suggests the narrative will end on a deathbed or in a graveyard. In
fact it does. The storyteller/protagonist, Moraes Zogoiby, leads us on
an exhilarating journey in order to nail his papers on the wall. Papers
that are the result of his “daily, silent singing for [his daily] life.”
Telling, writing, recording four generations of family and national
history. A history of devastating loves, transcendent hatreds; of
ambition without limit and sloth without redemption; loyalties
beyond understanding and deceptions beyond imagination. When
every step, every pause of this imaginary is finally surrendered to our
view, this is the close:
The rough grass in the graveyard has grown high and spiky and
as I sit upon this tombstone I seem to be resting upon the grass’s
yellow points, weightless, floating free of burdens, borne aloft by
a thick brush of miraculously unbending blades. I do not have
long. My breaths are numbered, like the years of the ancient
world, in reverse, and the countdown to zero is well advanced. I
have used the last of my strength to make this pilgrimage….
At the head of this tombstone are three eroded letters; my
fingertip reads them for me. R I P. Very well: I will rest, and
hope for peace. The world is full of sleepers waiting for their
moment of return….Somewhere, in a tangle of thorns, a beauty
in a glass coffin awaits a prince’s kiss. See: here is my flask. I’ll
drink some wine; and then, like a latter-day Van Winkle, I’ll lay
me down upon this graven stone, lay my head beneath these
letters R I P, and close my eyes, according to our family’s old
practice of falling asleep in times of trouble, and hope to
awaken, renewed and joyful, into a better time.

The rest, the peace is twice enunciated, but so is the hope. For
renewal, joy, and, most importantly, “a better time.”
In 1991 Ben Okri ended his novel The Famished Road with a
dream so deeply felt it is prioritized over the entire narrative:
The air in the room was calm. There were no turbulences. His
[father’s] presence protected our nightspace. There were no
forms invading our air, pressing down on our roof, walking
through the objects. The air was clear and wide. In my sleep I
found open spaces where I floated without fear….The sweetness
dissolved my fears. I was not afraid of Time.
And then it was another morning….
A dream can be the highest point of a life.
In 1993, continuing the story of this sighted child, Okri concludes
Songs of Enchantment with a more pronounced gesture toward the
future: “Maybe one day we will see the mountains ahead of
us….Maybe one day we will see the seven mountains of our
mysterious destiny. Maybe one day we will see that beyond our chaos
there could always be a new sunlight, and serenity.”
The symbolisms of the mountains he is referring to make up the
opening of the book:
We didn’t see the seven mountains ahead of us. We didn’t see
how they are always ahead. Always calling us, always reminding
us that there are more things to be done, dreams to be realized,
joys to be rediscovered, promises made before birth to be
fulfilled, beauty to be incarnated, and love embodied.
We didn’t notice how they hinted that nothing is ever finished,
that struggles are never truly concluded, that sometimes we have
to redream our lives, and that life can always be used to create
more light.

The expectation in these lines is palpable, insistent on the
possibility of “one great action lived out all the way to the sea,
chang[ing] the history of the world.”
Leslie Marmon Silko in Almanac of the Dead flails and slashes
through thousands of years of New World history, from centuries
before the conquistadors made their appearances on these shores to
the current day. The novel rests on a timelessness that is not only
past, but a future timelessness as well—time truly without end. The
final image of this narrative is the snake spirit “pointing toward the
South in the direction from which the people will come.” The future
tense of the verb is attached to a direction that is, unlike the
directions of most of the comings we approve of, the south. And it is
impossible to ignore the fact that it is precisely “the south” where
walls, fences, armed guards, and foaming hysteria are, at this very
moment, gathering.
Cocoons from which healed women burst, dreams that take the
terror from time, tombstone hopes for a better time, a time beyond
chaos where the seven mountains of destiny lie, snake gods
anticipating the people who will come from the south—these closing
images following treks into the past lead one to hazard the
conclusion that some writers disagree with prevailing notions of
futurelessness. That they very much indeed not only have but insist
on a future. That for them, for us, history is beginning again.
I am not ferreting out signs of tentative hope, obstinate optimism
in contemporary fiction; I believe I am detecting an informed vision
based on harrowing experience that nevertheless gestures toward a
redemptive future. And I notice the milieu from which this vision
rises. It is race inflected, gendered, colonialized, displaced, hunted.
There is an interesting trace here of divergent imaginaries,
between the sadness of no more time, of the poignancy of inverted
time—time that has only a past—of time itself living on “borrowed
time,” between that imaginary and the other one that has growing
expectations of time with a relentless future. One looks to history for
the feel of time or its purgative effects; one looks through art for its
signs of renewal.

Literature, sensitive as a tuning fork, is an unblinking witness to
the light and shade of the world we live in.
Beyond the world of literature, however, is another world; the
world of commentary that has a quite other view of things. A Janus
head that has masked its forward face and is at pains to assure us
that the future is hardly worth the time. Perhaps it is the reality of a
future as durable and far-reaching as the past, a future that will be
shaped by those who have been pressed to the margins, by those who
have been dismissed as irrelevant surplus, by those who have been
cloaked with the demon’s cape; perhaps it is the contemplation of
that future that has occasioned the tremble of latter-day prophets
afraid that the current disequilibria is a stirring, not an erasure. That
not only is history not dead, but that it is about to take its first
unfettered breath. Not soon, perhaps not in thirty years or fifty,
because such a breath, such a massive intake, will take time. But it
will be there. If that is so, then we should heed the meditations of
literature. William Gass is correct. There are “acres of Edens inside
ourselves.” Time does have a future. Longer than its past and
infinitely more hospitable—to the human race.

INTERLUDE

Black Matter(s)

Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.
Pursuing the recollections of several people for projects he is
engaged in, Martin Luther King III recently asked me for my
thoughts on his father. And one of his questions was predictable,
designed to elicit some subjective response. He said, “If you were
having a conversation with my father, what would you like to ask
him?” And for some wholly unaccountable reason, my heart skipped
and I fairly keened into the telephone. “Oh, I hope he is not
disappointed. Do you think he’s disappointed? There must be
something here to please him.” Well, I calmed my voice to disguise
what was becoming obvious to me, that what I really meant was, “I
hope he is not disappointed in me.”
I went on to frame a question that I would like to put to him, and I
set aside my thoughts about the current state of affairs for the
dispossessed: some wins, but some big-time losses; some vaulting
leaps, but much slow sinking into muddy despair.
But all the while, I was wondering, Would he be disappointed in
me? And it was odd, because I never met Reverend King. My
memory of him is print-bound, electronic, through the narratives of
other people. Yet I felt this personal responsibility to him. He did
that to people. I realized later that I was responding to something
other, and more durable, than the complex personhood of King. Not
to the preacher he was or the scholar he was or the vulnerable
human being, not to the political strategist, the orator, the brilliant,
risk-taking activist. But I was responding to his mission. His, as he
coined it, audacious faith. His expectation of transforming,
appending, cosmic elegy into a psalm of brotherhood.

His confidence that we were finer than we thought, that there were
moral grounds we would not abandon, lines of civil behavior we
simply would not cross. That there were things we would gladly give
up for the public good, that a comfortable life, resting on the
shoulders of other people’s misery, was an abomination this country,
especially, among all nations, found offensive.
I know the world is better, finer, because he lived in it. My anxiety
was personal. Was I any better? Finer? Because I have lived in a
world that is imaginary. Would he be disappointed in me? The
answer isn’t important. But the question really is, and that is the
legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. He made the act of assuming
personal responsibility for alleviating social harm ordinary, habitual,
and irresistible. My tribute to him is the profound gratitude I feel for
the gift that his life truly was.

Race Matters

E

ARLY ON in my life as a writer, I looked for but never
actually found a sovereignty, an authority like that available to me in
fiction writing, but at no other site. In that activity alone did I feel
completely coherent and totally unfettered. There, in the process of
writing, was the illusion, the deception of control, of nestling up ever
closer to meaning. There was (and still is) the delight of redemption,
the seduction of origineity. But I have known for a good portion of
the past twenty-nine years that those delights, those seductions are
rather more than less deliberate inventions necessary both to do the
work and to legislate its mystery. But it became increasingly clear
how language was both liberating and imprisoning. Whatever the
forays of my imagination, the keeper, whose keys tinkled always in
earshot, was race.
I have never lived, nor have any of you, in a world in which race
did not matter. Such a world, a world free of racial hierarchy, is
frequently imagined or described as dreamscape, Edenesque,
utopian so remote are the possibilities of its achievement. From
Martin Luther King Jr.’s hopeful language, to Doris Lessing’s fourgated city, from Saint Augustine to Jean Toomer’s “American,” the
race-free world has been posited as ideal, millennial, a condition
possible only if accompanied by the Messiah or situated in a
protected preserve, rather like a wilderness park.
But, for the purposes of this talk and because of certain projects I
am engaged in, I prefer to think of a world in which race does not
matter—not as a theme park, or a failed and always failing dream,
nor as the father’s house of many rooms. I am thinking of it as home.
For three reasons.

First, making a radical distinction between the metaphor of house
and the metaphor of home helps me clarify my thinking on racial
construction. Second, it moves the concept of unmattering race away
from yearning and desire; away from an impossible future or an
irretrievable and probably nonexistent past to a manageable, doable
human activity. Third because eliminating the potency of racial
constructs in language is the work I can do. I can’t wait for the
ultimate liberation theory to imagine its practice and do its work.
Also matters of race and matters of home are priorities in my work
and both have in one way or another initiated my search for
sovereignty as well as my abandonment of that search once I
recognized its disguise.
As an already and always raced writer, I knew at once, from the
very beginning, that I could not, would not reproduce the master’s
voice and its assumptions of the all-knowing law of the white father.
Nor would I substitute his voice with that of his fawning mistress or
his worthy opponent, for both of those positions (mistress or
opponent) seemed to confine me to his terrain, in his arena,
accepting the house rules in the dominance game. If I have to live in
a racial house, it was important at the least to rebuild it so that it was
not a windowless prison into which I was forced, a thick-walled,
impenetrable container from which no sound could be heard, but
rather an open house, grounded, yet generous in its supply of
windows and doors. Or at the most, it became imperative for me to
transform this house completely. I was tempted to convert it into a
palace where racism didn’t hurt so much; to crouch in one of its
many rooms where coexistence offered the delusion of agency. At
some point I tried to use the race house as a scaffolding from which
to launch a movable feast that could operate, be celebrated on any
number of chosen sites. That was the authority, the glossy comfort,
the redemptive quality, the freedom writing at first seemed to
promise. Yet in that freedom, as in all freedoms (especially stolen
ones), lay danger. Could I redecorate, redesign, even reconceive the
racial house without forfeiting a home of my own? Would this forged,
willed freedom demand an equally forged homelessness? Would it

condemn me to eternal bouts of nostalgia for the home I have never
had and would never know? Or would it require intolerable
circumspection, a self-censoring bond to the original locus of racial
architecture? In short, wasn’t I (wouldn’t I always be) tethered to a
death-dealing ideology even (and especially) when I honed all my
intelligence toward subverting it?
These questions, which have engaged so many, have troubled all of
my work. How to be both free and situated; how to convert a racist
house into a race-specific yet nonracist home? How to enunciate race
while depriving it of its lethal cling? They are questions of concept, of
language, of trajectory, of habitation, of occupation, and, although
my engagement with them has been fierce, fitful, and constantly (I
think) evolving, they remain in my thoughts as aesthetically and
politically unresolved. Frankly, I look to readers for literary and
extraliterary analyses for much of what can be better understood. I
believe, however, that my literary excursions, and my use of a
house/home antagonism, are related to the matters under discussion
during the course of the next two days, because so much of what
seems to lie about in discourses about race concerns legitimacy,
authenticity, community, belonging—is, in fact, about home. An
intellectual home; a spiritual home; family and community as home;
forced and displaced labor in the destruction of home; the
dislocation of and alienation within the ancestral home; the creative
responses to exile, the devastations, pleasures, and imperatives of
homelessness as it is manifested in discussions on globalism,
diaspora, migrations, hybridity, contingency, interventions,
assimilations, exclusions. The estranged body, the legislated body,
the body as home. In virtually all of these formations, whatever the
terrain, race magnifies the matter that matters.
There was a moment of some significance to me that followed the
publication of Beloved and was a part of my reflection on the process
of doing it. It is a moment that telescopes part of the territory to be
mapped during this conference. This moment concerns the
complexity inherent in creating narrative language both racially
referential and figuratively logical.

Someone saw the last sentence of Beloved as it was originally
written. In fact it was the penultimate sentence if one thinks of the
last word—the resurrection of the title, the character, and the
epigraph—as the very last sentence. In any case the phrase “Certainly
no clamor for a kiss,” which appears in the printed book, is not the
one with which I had originally closed the book, and this friend was
startled by the change. I told him that my editor had suggested an
alteration at that point, although he in no way offered a description
of what the change might be. The friend railed at my editor for the
audacity of suggesting a change, and at me, too, for considering, let
alone admitting one. I then went to some pains to explain to him why
I made the change but became entangled in what the original phrase
had meant, or, rather, what the original last word of the phrase had
meant to me. How long it took to arrive at it, how I thought it was the
perfect final word; that it connected everything together from the
epigraph and the difficult plot to the struggles of the characters
through the process of re-membering the body and its parts, remembering the family, the neighborhood…and our national history.
And that this last word reflected this re-membering, revealed its
necessity, and provided the bridge I wanted from the beginning of
the book to its end, as well as to the beginning of the book that was to
follow. As I went on with the importance of this original last word,
my friend became angrier and angrier. Nevertheless, I said, I thought
there was something to be considered in the editor’s objection—
which was simply that, not a command. He wondered if a better
word could be found to end the book because the one I had chosen
was too dramatic, too theatrical. At first I disagreed with the editor
about that. It was a very simple common word, but in the context of
the previous sentences he believed it stood out like a sore thumb.
That may even have been his phrase.
So I resisted it for a long time. A long time considering that we
were in galley. Or rather late stages of manuscript, I guess. At any
rate, I went away and thought about it. Thought about it every day in
terms of whether to leave it the way I had originally written it or
whether to change it. I decided, finally, to let the decision rest on

whether I could indeed find a better word. One that produced the
same meaning.
I didn’t find any satisfactory replacement for weeks. And I was
eager to find something because the point that gripped me was that
even if the word I had chosen originally was the absolute right one,
something was wrong if it stood out that way and did not complete
the meaning of the text, but dislodged it. So it wasn’t a question of
simply substituting one word for another that meant the same thing
—a synonym—or of trying to decide whether my original word was
apt. I might have to rewrite a good deal in order to assure myself that
my original last word worked.
I decided that it didn’t. I decided that there was another word that
could do the same thing with less mystification. That word was
“kiss.”
Well, the discussion with my friend made me realize that I’m still
unhappy about it, because “kiss” works at a level a bit too shallow.
“Kiss” works at a level that searches for and locates a quality or
element of the novel that was not, and is not, its primary feature. The
primary feature is not love, or the fulfillment of physical desire. The
feature was necessity, something that precedes love, follows love,
informs love, shapes love, and to which love is subservient. In this
case the necessity was for a kind of connection, an acknowledgment,
a paying out of homage still due.
I was inclined to believe that there were poorly lit passages leading
up to that original word if indeed it was so very misunderstood and
so strongly and wrongly unsettling. I have been reading some
analyses of revisions of texts out of copyright and thinking about the
ways in which books get not only reread but also rewritten not only
in one’s own language with the ambivalence of the writer and the
back-and-forth between editor and writer, but also what happens in
translation. The liberties taken that enhance; the liberties taken that
diminish. And for me the alarm. There is always the threat of not
being taken seriously, of having the work reduced to a primer, of
having the politics of language, the politics of another language
imposed on the writer’s own politics.

My effort to manipulate American English was not to take
standard English and use vernacular to decorate or to paint over it,
but to carve away its accretions of deceit, blindness, ignorance,
paralysis, and sheer malevolence so that certain kinds of perceptions
were not only available but were inevitable. That is what I thought
my original last word accomplished, then I became convinced that it
did not, and now am sorry I made the change. The trouble it takes to
find just one word and know that it is that note and no other that
would do is an extraordinary battle. To have found it and lost it is in
retrospect infuriating. On the one hand, what could it matter? Can a
book really fall apart because of one word, even if it’s in a critical
position? Probably not. On the other hand, maybe so, if the writing
of it tries for racial specificity and figurative coherence. In this
instance, I settled for the latter. I gave up a word that was racially
resonant and figuratively logical for one that was only the latter,
because my original last word was so clearly disjunctive, a sore
thumb, a jarring note combining as it did two functions linguistically
incompatible except when signaling racial exoticism.
Actually I think my editor was right. The original word was the
“wrong” word. But I also know that my friend was right: the “wrong”
word, in this case, was the only word. As you can see, my assertion of
agency outside the raced house turned into a genuflection in its
familiar (more comfortable) yard.
That experience of regret highlights for me the need to rethink the
subtle yet pervasive attachments we may all have to the architecture
of race. The need to think about what it means and what it takes to
live in a redesigned racial house and to defiantly, if erroneously, call
it diversity or multiculturalism—to call it home. To think about how
invested some of the best theoretical work may be in clinging to its
simulacra. To think about what new dangers present themselves
when escape or chosen exile from that house is achieved.
I risk charges here of escapism and of encouraging futile efforts to
transcend race or pernicious ones to trivialize it, and it would worry
me a great deal if my remarks and the project I am working on were
to be so completely misunderstood. What I am determined to do is to

take what is articulated as the elusive future and domesticate it; to
concretize what is, outside of science fiction, rendered in political
language and thought as permanently unrealizable dream. My
confrontation is piecemeal and very slow, of course, because unlike
the successful advancement of an argument, narration requires the
complicity of a reader in discovery. And there are no pictures to ease
the difficulty.
In various novels the adventure for me has been explorations of
seemingly impenetrable, race-inflected, race-clotted topics. From the
first book, where I was interested in racism as a cause, consequence,
and manifestation of individual and social psychosis; to the next one,
in which I was preoccupied with the culture of gender, the invention
of identity, both of which acquired astonishing meaning when placed
in a racial context. On to Song of Solomon and Tar Baby, where I
was interested in the impact of race on the romance of community
and individuality; in Beloved the revelatory possibilities of historical
narration when the body-mind, subject-object, past-present
oppositions, viewed through the lens of race, collapse and become
seamless. In Jazz I tried to locate modernity as a response to the race
house, in an effort to blow up its all-encompassing shelter, its allknowingness, and its assumptions of control. And currently to first
enunciate and then destabilize the racial gaze altogether in Paradise.
In Jazz the dynamite fuse was lit under narrative voice. The voice
that could begin with claims of knowledge, inside knowledge, and
indisputable authority—“I know that woman…”—and end with the
blissful epiphany of its humanity and its own needs.
In my current project I want to see whether or not race-specific,
race-free language is both possible and meaningful in narration. And
I want to inhabit, walk around, a site clear of racist detritus; a place
where race both matters and is rendered impotent; a place “already
made for me, both snug and wide open. With a doorway never
needing to be closed, a view slanted for light and bright autumn
leaves but not rain. Where moonlight can be counted on if the sky is
clear and stars no matter what. And below, just yonder, a river called
Treason to rely on.” I want to imagine not the threat of freedom, or

its tentative, gasping fragility, but the concrete thrill of
borderlessness—a kind of out-of-doors safety where “a sleepless
woman could always rise from her bed, wrap a shawl around her
shoulders and sit on the steps in the moonlight. And if she felt like it
she could walk out the yard and on down the road. No lamp and no
fear. A hiss-crackle from the side of the road would never scare her
because whatever it was that made the sound, it wasn’t something
creeping up on her. Nothing for ninety miles around thought she was
prey. She could stroll as slowly as she liked, think of food
preparations, war, of family things, or lift her eyes to stars and think
of nothing at all. Lampless and without fear she could make her way.
And if a light shone from a house up a ways and the cry of a colicky
baby caught her attention, she might step over to the house and call
out softly to the woman inside trying to soothe the baby. The two of
them might take turns massaging the infant stomach, rocking, or
trying to get a little soda water down. When the baby quieted they
could sit together for a spell, gossiping, chuckling low so as not to
wake anybody else.
“The woman could decide to go back to her own house then,
refreshed and ready to sleep, or she might keep her direction and
walk further down the road….On out, beyond the limits of town,
because nothing at the edge thought she was prey.”
The overweening event of the modern world is not its technology;
it is the mass movement of populations. Beginning with the largest
forcible transfer of people in the history of the world: slavery. The
consequences of which transfer have determined all the wars
following it as well as the current ones being waged on every
continent. The contemporary world’s work has become policing,
forming policy regarding, and trying to administrate the perpetual
movement of people. Nationhood—the very definition of citizenship
—is marked by exile, refugees, guest arbiter, immigrants, migrations,
the displaced, the fleeing, and the under siege. Hunger for home is
entombed among the central metaphors in the discourse on
globalism, transnationalism, nationalism, the breakup of nations,
and the fictions of sovereignty. Yet these dreams of home are

frequently as raced themselves as the originating racial house that
has defined them. When they are not raced, they are, as I suggested
earlier, landscape, never inscape; utopia, never home.
I applaud and am indebted to scholars here and elsewhere who are
clearing (theoretical) space where racial constructs are being forced
to reveal their struts and bolts; their technology and their carapace,
so that political action, intellectual thought, and cultural production
can be generated.
The defenders of Western hegemony sense the encroachment and
have already described, defined, and named the possibility of
imagining race without dominance, without hierarchy as
“barbarism”; as destroying the four-gated city; as the end of history—
all of which can be read as garbage, rubbish, an already damaged
experience, a valueless future. If, once again, the political
consequence of theoretical work is already named catastrophe, it is
more urgent than ever to develop nonmessianic language to refigure
the raced community, to decipher the deracing of the world. More
urgent than ever to develop an epistemology that is neither
intellectual slumming nor self-serving reification. You are marking
out space for critical work that neither bleeds the race house for the
gains it provides in authenticity and insiderism nor abandons it to its
signifying gestureism. If the world-as-home that we are working for
is already described in the race house as waste, the work this
scholarship draws our attention to is not just interesting—it may save
our lives.
These campuses where we mostly work and frequently assemble
will not remain alien terrain within whose fixed borders we travel
from one kind of race-inflected community to another as
interpreters, native guides; or campuses resigned to the status of
segregated castles from whose balustrades we view—even invite—the
homeless; or markets where we permit ourselves to be auctioned,
bought, silenced, and vastly compromised depending on the whim of
the master and the going rate.
The distrust that race studies receive from the authenticating offcampus community is legitimate only when the scholars themselves

have not imaged their own homes; have not unapologetically realized
and recognized that the valuable work they do can be done in no
other place; have not envisioned academic life as neither straddling
opposing worlds nor as a flight from any. W. E. B. Du Bois’s
observation is a strategy, not a prophecy or a cure. Beyond the
outside/inside double consciousness, this new space postulates the
inwardness of the outside; imagines safety without walls where we
can conceive of a third, if you will pardon the expression, world,
“already made for me, both snug and wide open, with a doorway
never needing to be closed.”
Home.

Black Matter(s)

I

HAVE BEEN thinking for some time now about the validity or
vulnerability of a certain set of assumptions conventionally accepted
among literary historians and critics and circulated as “knowledge.”
This “knowledge” holds that traditional, canonical American
literature is free of, unformed by, and unshaped by the fourhundred-year-old presence of first Africans and then African
Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence—which
shaped the body politic, the Constitution, and the entire history of
the culture—has had no significant place or consequence in the
origin and development of that culture’s literature. Moreover, it
assumes that the characteristics of our national literature emanate
from a particular “Americanness” that is separate from and
unaccountable to this presence. There seems to be a more or less
tacit agreement among literary scholars that because American
literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius,
and power, those views, genius, and power are removed from and
without relationship to the presence of black people in the United
States—a population that antedated every American writer of renown
and was perhaps the most furtively radical, impinging force on the
country’s literature.
The contemplation of this black presence is central to any
understanding of our national literature and should not be relegated
to the margins of the literary imagination. It may be that American
literature distinguishes itself as a coherent entity because of and in
reference to this unsettled and unsettling population. I have begun to
wonder whether the major, much celebrated themes of American
literature—individualism, masculinity, the conflict between social

engagement and historical isolation—are not acute and ambiguous
moral problematics, but in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing
Africanistic presence. The coded language and purposeful restriction
by which the newly formed nation dealt with the racial
disingenuousness and moral frailty at its heart are maintained in its
literature, even through the twentieth century. A real or fabricated
Africanistic presence has been crucial to writers’ sense of their
Americanness. And it shows: through significant and underscored
omissions, startling contradictions, heavily nuanced conflicts, and
the way their work is peopled with the signs and bodies of this
presence.
My curiosity has developed into a still-informal study of what I am
calling American Africanism. It is an investigation into the ways in
which a nonwhite, Africanistic presence was constructed in the
United States, and the imaginative uses this fabricated presence
served. I am using “Africanism” as a term for the denotative and
connotative blackness African peoples have come to signify, as well
as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreadings
that characterize these peoples in Eurocentric eyes. It is important to
recognize the lack of restraint attached to the uses of this trope. As a
disabling virus within literary discourse, Africanism has become, in
the Eurocentric tradition favored by American education, both a way
of talking about and a way of policing matters of class, sexual license,
and repression, the formation and the exercise of power, and ethics
and accountability. Through the simple expedient of demonizing and
reifying the range of color on a palette, American Africanism makes
it possible to say and not say, to inscribe and erase, to escape and
engage, to act out and act on, to historicize and render timeless. It
provides a way of contemplating chaos and civilization, desire and
fear, and a mechanism for testing the problems and blessings of
freedom.
What Africanism became and how it functioned in the literary
imagination are of paramount interest because it may be possible to
discover, through a close look at literary “blackness,” the nature and
even the source of literary “whiteness.” What is it for? What parts do

the invention and development of “whiteness” play in the
construction of what is described as an “American”? If this inquiry of
mine ever comes to maturity, it may provide me access to a coherent
reading of American literature, a reading that is not completely
available to me now—not least, I suspect, because of the studied
indifference of literary criticism to these matters.
One likely reason for the paucity of critical material on this large
and compelling subject is that in matters of race, silence and evasion
have historically ruled literary discourse. Evasion has fostered
another, substitute language in which the issues are encoded and
made unavailable for open debate. The situation is aggravated by the
anxiety that breaks into discourse on race. It is further complicated
by the fact that ignoring race is understood to be a graceful, liberal,
even generous habit. To notice is to recognize an already discredited
difference; to maintain its invisibility through silence is to allow the
black body a shadowless participation in the dominant cultural body.
Following this logic, every well-bred instinct argues against noticing
and forecloses adult discourse. It is just this concept of literary and
scholarly moeurs (which functions smoothly in literary criticism, but
neither makes nor receives credible claims in other disciplines) that
has terminated the shelf life of some once extremely well-regarded
American authors and blocked access to the remarkable insights
some of their works contain.
Another reason for this ornamental vacuum in literary discourse is
the pattern of thinking about racialism asymmetrically, in terms of
its consequences on its victims alone. A good deal of time and
intelligence have been invested in exposing racialism and its horrific
effects on its objects. The result has been constant, if erratic, efforts
to legislate preventive regulations. There have also been powerful
and persuasive attempts to analyze the origin of racialism itself,
contesting the assumption that it is an inevitable and permanent part
of all social landscapes. I do not wish to disparage these inquiries in
any way. It is precisely because of them that any progress has been
accomplished in matters of racial discourse. But I do want to see that
well-established study joined by another, equally important: the

effect of racialism on those who perpetuate it. It seems to me both
poignant and striking how the effect of racialism on the subject has
been avoided and unanalyzed. The scholarship that looks into the
mind, the imagination, and the behavior of slaves is valuable; equally
so is a serious intellectual examination of what racial ideology did
and does to the mind, the imagination, and the behavior of the
master.
National literatures, like writers, get along as best they can and
with what they can. Yet they do seem to end up describing and
inscribing what is really on the national mind. For the most part,
literature of the United States has taken as its concern the
architecture of a new white man. If I am disenchanted with the
indifference of literary criticism toward examining the nature of that
concern, I do have a last resort: the writers themselves.
Writers are among the most sensitive, most intellectually anarchic,
most representative, most probing of artists. The writer’s ability to
imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange, and to mystify
the familiar—all this is the test of her or his power. The languages
she or he uses (imagistic, structural, narrative) and the social and
historical context in which these languages signify are indirect and
direct revelations of that power and its limitations. So it is to them,
the creators of American literature, that I look for some clarification
about the invention and effect of Africanism in the United States.
How does literary utterance arrange itself when it tries to imagine
an Africanistic Other? What are the signs, the codes, the literary
strategies designed to accommodate this encounter? In short, what
happens? What does the inclusion of Africans and African Americans
do to and for the text? As a reader, I had always assumed that
nothing “happens.” That Africans and their descendants are there in
no sense that matters; that when they are there, they are decorative,
displays of the facile writer’s technical expertise. I assumed that since
the author was not Africanistic, the appearance of Africanistic
characters, narrative, or idiom in his or her work could never be
about anything other than the “normal,” unracialized, illusory white
world that provides the backdrop for the work. Certainly no

American text of the sort I am discussing was ever written for black
people, any more than Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written for Uncle Tom
to read or be persuaded by. As a writer reading, I realized the
obvious: that the subject of the dream is the dreamer. The fabrication
of an Africanistic persona was reflexive; it was an extraordinary
meditation on the self, a powerful exploration of the fears and
desires that reside in the writerly consciousness (as well as in
others), an astonishing revelation of longing, of terror, of perplexity,
of shame, of magnanimity.
Reading these texts as a writer allowed me deeper access to them.
It was as though I had been looking at a fishbowl, seeing the glide
and flick of the golden scales, the green tip, the bolt of white
careening back from the gills, the castles at the bottom, surrounded
by pebbles and tiny, intricate fronds of green, the barely disturbed
water, the flecks of waste and food, the tranquil bubbles traveling to
the surface—and suddenly I saw the bowl itself, the structure
transparently, invisibly, permitting the ordered life it contained to
exist in the larger world. In other words, I began to rely on my
knowledge of how books get written, how language arrives, on my
sense of how and why writers abandon or take on certain aspects of
their project. I began to rely on my understanding of what the
linguistic struggle requires of writers and what they make of the
surprise that is the inevitable, necessary concomitant of the act of
creation. What became transparent were the self-evident ways
Americans chose to talk about themselves through and within a
sometimes allegorical, sometimes metaphorical, but always choked
representation of an Africanistic presence.
—
Young America distinguished itself by pressing with full awareness
toward a future, a freedom, a kind of human dignity believed to be
unprecedented in the world. A whole tradition of “universal”
yearnings collapsed into that well-fondled phrase “the American
Dream.” While the immigrants’ dream deserves the exhaustive

scrutiny it has received in the scholarly disciplines and the arts, it is
just as important to know what these people were rushing from as it
is to know what they were hastening to. If the New World fed
dreams, what was the Old World reality that whetted the appetite for
them? And how might that reality caress and grip the shaping of a
new one?
The flight from the Old World to the New is generally understood
to be a flight from oppression and limitation to freedom and
possibility. In fact, for some the escape was a flight from license—
from a society perceived to be unacceptably permissive, ungodly, and
undisciplined. For those fleeing for reasons other than religious ones,
however, constraint and limitation impelled the journey. The Old
World offered these emigrants only poverty, prison, social ostracism,
and not infrequently death. There was, of course, another group of
immigrants who came for the adventures possible in founding a
colony for rather than against one or another mother country or
fatherland. And of course there were the merchants, who came for
the cash.
To all these people, the attraction was of the “clean slate” variety, a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only to be born again, but to be
born again in new clothes, as it were: the new setting would provide
new raiments of self. The New World offered the vision of a limitless
future that gleamed more brightly against the constraint,
dissatisfaction, and turmoil being left behind. A promise genuinely
promising. With luck and endurance one could discover freedom,
find a way to make God’s law manifest in Man, or end up rich as a
prince. The desire for freedom is preceded by oppression; a yearning
for God’s law is born of the detestation of man’s license and
corruption; the glamour of riches is in thrall to poverty, hunger, and
debt.
There was much more to make the trip worth the risk. The habit of
genuflection would be replaced by the thrill of command. Power—
control of one’s own destiny—would replace the powerlessness felt
before the gates of class, caste, and cunning persecution. One could
move from discipline and punishment to disciplining and punishing;

from being socially ostracized to becoming an arbiter of social rank.
One could be released from a useless, binding, repulsive past into a
kind of historylessness—a blank page waiting to be inscribed. Much
was to be written there: noble impulses were made into law and
appropriated for a national tradition, but so were base ones, learned
and elaborated in the rejected and rejecting homeland.
The body of literature produced by the young nation is one place it
inscribed these fears, forces, and hopes. It is difficult to read the
literature of young America without being struck by how antithetical
it is to our modern conception of “the American Dream,” how
pronounced is the absence of that term’s elusive mixture of hope,
realism, materialism, and promise. Coming from a people who made
much of their “newness”—their potential, their freedom, their
innocence—it is striking how dour, how troubled, how frightened,
and how haunted the early, founding literature truly is.
We have words and labels for this haunting—“gothic,” “romantic,”
“sermonic,” “Puritan”—whose sources are, of course, to be found in
the literature of the world from which they fled. But the strong
affinity between the nineteenth-century American psyche and gothic
romance has, rightly, been much remarked upon. It is not surprising
that a young country, repelled by Europe’s moral and social disorder
and swooning in a fit of desire and rejection, would devote its talents
to reproducing in its own literature the typology of diabolism from
which its citizens and their fathers had fled. After all, one way to
benefit from the lessons of earlier mistakes and past misfortunes was
to record them—an inoculation against their repetition, as it were.
Romance was the form in which this uniquely American
prophylaxis was played out. Long after it had faded in Europe,
romance remained the cherished expression of young America. What
was there in American romanticism that made it so attractive to
Americans as a battle plain upon which to fight, to engage, to
imagine their demons?
It has been suggested that romance is an evasion of history, and
thus perhaps attractive to a people trying to evade the recent past.
But I am more persuaded by arguments that find in it the head-on

encounter with very real, very pressing historical forces and the
contradictions inherent in them, as these come to be experienced by
writers. Romance, an exploration of anxiety imported from the
shadows of European culture, made possible the embrace—
sometimes safe, other times risky—of some quite specific,
understandably human, American fears: the fear of being outcast, of
failing, of powerlessness; of boundarylessness, of Nature unbridled
and crouched for attack; of the absence of so-called civilization; of
loneliness, of aggression both external and internal. In short, the
terror of human freedom—the thing they coveted most of all.
Romance offered writers not less but more; not a narrow historical
canvas but a wide one; not escape but enlargement. It offered
platforms for moralizing and fabulation, and for the imaginative
entertainment of violence, sublime incredibility, and terror—whose
most significant, overweening ingredient was darkness, with all the
connotative value it contained.
—
There is no romance free of what Melville called “the power of
blackness,” especially not in a country in which there was a resident
population, already black, upon which the imagination could
articulate the fears, the dilemmas, the divisions that obsessed it
historically, morally, metaphysically, and socially. This slave
population seemed to volunteer as objects for meditation on the lure
and elusiveness of human freedom, on the outcast’s terror and his
dread of failure, of powerlessness, Nature without limits, inborn
loneliness, internal aggression, evil, sin, greed…; in other words, on
human freedom in all terms except those of human potential and the
rights of man.
And yet the rights of man, an organizing principle upon which the
nation was founded, was inevitably, and especially, yoked to
Africanism. Its history and origin are permanently allied with
another seductive concept—the hierarchy of race. As Orlando
Patterson has noted, we should not be surprised that the

Enlightenment could accommodate slavery; we should be surprised
if it could not. The concept of freedom did not emerge in a vacuum.
Nothing highlighted freedom—if it did not in fact create it—like
slavery.
In that construction of blackness and enslavement could be found
not only the not-free but also the projection of the not-me. The result
was a playground for the imagination. And what rose up out of
collective needs to allay internal fears and rationalize external
exploitation was an Africanism—a fabricated brew of darkness,
otherness, alarm, and desire—that is uniquely American. (There also
exists a European Africanism with its counterpart in its own colonial
literature.)
What I wish to examine is how the image of reigned-in, bound,
suppressed, and repressed darkness became objectified in American
literature as an Africanistic persona. I want to show how the duties of
that persona—duties of mirroring and embodying and exorcism—are
demanded and displayed throughout much of the national literature
and help provide its distinguishing characteristics.
Earlier I said that cultural identities are formed and informed by a
nation’s literature, and that what seemed to be on the “mind” of the
literature of the United States was the self conscious but highly
problematic construction of the American as a new white man.
Emerson’s call for that new man, “The American Scholar,” indicates
the deliberateness of the construction, the conscious necessity for
establishing difference. But the writers who responded to this call,
accepting or rejecting it, did not look solely to Europe to establish a
reference for difference. There was a very theatrical difference
underfoot. Writers were able to celebrate or deplore an identity—
already existing or rapidly taking form—that was elaborated through
racial difference. That difference provided a huge trove of signs,
symbols, and agencies for organizing, separating, and consolidating
identity along valuable lines of interest.
Bernard Bailyn has provided us with an extraordinary
investigation of European settlers in the act of becoming Americans.
Particularly relevant is a description in his Voyagers to the West. I

want to quote a rather long passage from that book because it helps
to clarify and underscore the salient aspects of this American
character that I have been describing:
William Dunbar, seen through his letters and diary, appears to
be more fictional than real….He…was a man in his early twenties
who appeared suddenly in the Mississippi wilderness to stake
out a claim to a large parcel of land, then disappeared to the
Caribbean, to return leading a battalion of “wild” slaves with
whose labor alone he built an estate where before there had been
nothing but trees and uncultivated soil….He was…complex…
and…part of a violent biracial world whose tensions could lead
in strange directions. For this wilderness planter was a scientist,
who would later correspond with Jefferson on science and
exploration, a Mississippi planter whose contributions to the
American
Philosophical
Society…included
linguistics,
archaeology, hydrostatics, astronomy, and climatology, and
whose geographical explorations were reported in widely known
publications….An exotic figure in the plantation world of early
Mississippi…he…imported into that raw, half-savage world the
niceties of European culture: not chandeliers and costly rugs,
but books, surveyor’s equipment of the finest kind, and the latest
instruments of science.
Dunbar…was educated first by tutors at home, then at the
university in Aberdeen, where his interest in mathematics,
astronomy, and belles-lettres took mature shape. What
happened to him after his return home and later in London,
where he circulated with young intellectuals, what propelled, or
led, him out of the metropolis on the first leg of his long voyage
west is not known. But whatever his motivation may have been,
in April 1771, aged only twenty-two, Dunbar appeared in
Philadelphia….
Ever eager for gentility, this well-educated product of the
Scottish enlightenment and of London’s sophistication—this
bookish young littérateur and scientist who, only five years

earlier, had been corresponding about scientific problems—
about “Dean Swifts beatitudes,” about the “virtuous and happy
life,” and about the Lord’s commandment that mankind should
“love one another”—was strangely insensitive to the suffering of
those who served him. In July 1776 he recorded not the
independence of the American colonies from Britain, but the
suppression of an alleged conspiracy for freedom by slaves on
his own plantation….
Dunbar, the young erudit, the Scottish scientist and man of
letters, was no sadist. His plantation regime was, by the
standards of the time, mild; he clothed and fed his slaves
decently, and frequently relented in his more severe
punishments. But 4,000 miles from the sources of culture, alone
on the far periphery of British civilization where physical
survival was a daily struggle, where ruthless exploitation was a
way of life, and where disorder, violence, and human
degradation were commonplace, he had triumphed by successful
adaptation. Endlessly enterprising and resourceful, his finer
sensibilities dulled by the abrasions of frontier life, and feeling
within himself a sense of authority and autonomy he had not
known before, a force that flowed from his absolute control over
the lives of others, he emerged a distinctive new man, a
borderland gentleman, a man of property in a raw, half-savage
world.
May I call your attention to some elements of this portrait, some
pairings and interdependencies that are marked in this narrative of
William Dunbar? First, the historical connection between the
Enlightenment and the institution of slavery—the rights of man and
his enslavement. Second, the relationship of Dunbar’s education and
his New World enterprise. His education was exceptionally
cultivated and included the latest thoughts on theology and science—
in an effort perhaps to make them mutually accountable, to make
each support the other. He is a product not only of “the Scottish
enlightenment” but also of “London’s sophistication.” He read Swift,

discussed the Christian commandment to “love one another,” and is
described as “strangely” insensitive to the suffering of his slaves. On
July 12, 1776, he records with astonishment and hurt the slave
rebellion on his plantation: “Judge my surprise. Of what avail is
kindness & good usage when rewarded by such ingratitude.”
“Constantly bewildered,” Bailyn goes on, “by his slaves’ behavior…
[Dunbar] recovered two runaways and ‘condemned them to receive
500 lashes each at five dif[feren]t times, and to carry a chain & log
fixt to the ancle.’ ” I take this to be a succinct portrait of the process
by which the American as new, white, and male was constituted. It is
a formation that has at least four desirable consequences, all of
which are referred to in Bailyn’s summation of Dunbar’s character
and located in how Dunbar feels “within himself.” Let me repeat:
“feeling…a sense of authority and autonomy he had not known
before, a force that flowed from his absolute control over the lives of
others, he emerged a distinctive new man, a borderland gentleman, a
man of property in a raw, half-savage world.” A power, a sense of
freedom he had not known before. But what had he “known before”?
Fine education, London sophistication, theological and scientific
thought. None of these, one gathers, could provide him with the
authority and autonomy Mississippi planter life did. His “sense” is a
“force” that “flows”: not a willed domination, a thought-out,
calculated choice, but rather a kind of natural resource, already
present, a Niagara Falls waiting to spill over as soon as he is in a
position to possess “absolute control over the lives of others.” And
once he has moved into that position, he is resurrected as a new man,
a distinctive man, a different man. Whatever his social status in
London, in the New World he is a gentleman. More gentle; more
man. Because the site of his transformation is within rawness. He is
backgrounded by savagery.
Autonomy, newness, difference, authority, absolute power: these
are the major themes and concerns of American literature, and each
one is made possible, shaped, and activated by a complex awareness
and use of a constituted Africanism that, deployed as rawness and

savagery, provided the staging ground and arena for the elaboration
of that quintessential American identity.
Autonomy—freedom—translates into the much championed and
revered “individualism”; newness translates into “innocence”;
distinctiveness becomes difference and strategies for maintaining it;
authority becomes a romantic, conquering “heroism” and “virility”
and raises the problematics of wielding absolute power over the lives
of others. These four are made possible, finally, by the fifth: absolute
power called forth and acted out against, upon, and within a natural
and mental landscape conceived of as a “raw, half-savage world.”
Why “raw and half-savage”? Because it is peopled by a nonwhite
indigenous population? Perhaps. But certainly because there is
readily at hand a bound and unfree, rebellious but serviceable black
population by which Dunbar and all white men are enabled to
measure these privileging and privileged differences.
Eventually individualism will lead to a prototype of Americans as
solitary, alienated malcontents. What, one wants to ask, are
Americans alienated from? What are Americans always so insistently
innocent of? Different from? And over whom is absolute power held,
from whom withheld, to whom distributed?
Answers to these questions lie in the potent and ego-reinforcing
presence of an Africanistic population. The new white male can now
persuade himself that savagery is “out there”: that the lashes ordered
(five hundred, applied five times: twenty-five hundred in total) are
not one’s own savagery; that repeated and dangerous breaks for
freedom are “puzzling” confirmations of black irrationality; that the
combination of Dean Swift’s beatitudes and a life of regularized
violence is civilized; that, if sensibilities are dulled enough, the
rawness remains external.
These contradictions cut and slash their way through the pages of
American literature. How could they not have? As Dominick LaCapra
reminds us, “ ‘Classic’ novels, are not only worked over…by common
contextual forces (such as ideologies) but also rework and at least
partially work through those forces in critical and at times potentially
transformative fashion.”

The imaginative and historical terrain upon which early American
writers journey is in very large measure shaped and determined by
the presence of the racial Other. Statements to the contrary insisting
upon the meaninglessness of race to American identity are
themselves full of meaning. The world does not become raceless or
will not become unracialized by assertion. The act of enforcing
racelessness in literary discourse is itself a racial act. Pouring
rhetorical acid on the fingers of a black hand may indeed destroy the
prints, but not the hand. Besides, what happens, in that violent, selfserving act of erasure, to the hands, the fingers, the fingerprints of
the one who does the pouring? Do they remain acid-free? The
literature itself suggests otherwise.
Explicit or implicit, the Africanistic presence informs in
significant, compelling, and inescapable ways the texture and shape
of American literature. It is a dark and abiding presence that serves
the literary imagination as both a visible and an invisible meditating
force. So that even, and especially, when American texts are not
“about” Africanistic presences, or characters, or narrative, or idiom,
their shadows hover there, implied, signified, as boundaries. It is no
accident and no mistake that immigrant populations (and much
immigrant literature) understood their “Americanness” as an
opposition to the resident population. Race, in fact, now functions as
a metaphor so necessary to the construction of “Americanness” that
it rivals the old pseudoscientific and class-informed racialisms whose
dynamics we are more used to deciphering.
As a means of transacting the whole process of Americanization
while burying its particular racial ingredients, this Africanistic
presence may be something the United States cannot do without. For
in this part of the twentieth century, the word “American” contains
its association with race deep within. This is not true of “Canadian”
or “English.” To identify someone as South African is to say very
little; we need the adjective “white” or “black” or “colored” to make
our meaning clear. In the United States it is quite the reverse.
“American” means “white,” and Africanistic people struggle to make
the terms applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphens.

Americans did not have an immanent nobility from which to wrest
and against which to define an identity of national virtue while
continuing to covet aristocratic license and luxury. The American
nation negotiated both its disdain and its envy in the same way
Dunbar did: through a self-reflexive contemplation of fabricated,
mythological Africanism. For Dunbar, and for American writers
generally, this Africanistic Other became the means of thinking
about the body, mind, chaos, kindness, and love; became the
occasion for exercises in the absence of restraint, the presence of
restraint, the contemplation of freedom, of aggression; for the
exploration of ethics and morality, for meeting the obligations of the
social contract, for bearing the cross of religion and following out the
ramifications of power.
Reading and charting the emergence of an Africanistic persona in
the development of a national literature is both a fascinating project
and an urgent one, if the history and criticism of our literature are to
become coherent. Emerson’s plea for intellectual independence was
like the offer of an empty plate that writers could fill with
nourishment from an indigenous kitchen. The language was, of
course, to be English, but the content of the language, its subject, was
to be deliberately, insistently un-English and anti-European, insofar
as it rhetorically repudiated an adoration of the Old World and
defined the past as corrupt and indefensible.
In the scholarship on the formation of an American character and
the production of a national literature, a number of items have been
cataloged. A major item to be added to the list must be an
Africanistic presence—decidedly not-American, decidedly Other.
The necessity for establishing difference stemmed not only from
the Old World but from a difference within the New. What was
distinctive in the New was, first of all, its claim to freedom and,
second, the presence of the unfree at the heart of the democratic
experiment—the critical absence of democracy, its echo, its shadow,
its silence, and its silent force in the political and intellectual activity
of some not-Americans. The distinguishing features of the notAmericans were their slave status, their social status—and their

color. It is conceivable that the first would have self-destructed in a
variety of ways had it not been for the last. These slaves, unlike many
others in the world’s history, were visible to a fault. And they had
inherited, among other things, a long history of the “meaning” of
color. It was not simply that this slave population had a distinctive
color; it was that this color “meant” something. This “meaning” had
been named and deployed by scholars from at least the moment, in
the eighteenth century, when other and sometimes the same scholars
investigated both the natural history and the inalienable rights of
man—that is to say, human freedom.
One supposes that if Africans all had three eyes, or one ear, the
significance of that difference from the small but conquering
European invaders would also have been found to have “meaning.”
In any case, the subjective nature of ascribing value and meaning to
color cannot be questioned this late in the twentieth century. The
point for this discussion is the alliance of “visually rendered ideas
with linguistic utterances.” And this leads into the social and political
nature of received knowledge as it is revealed in American literature.
Knowledge, however mundane and utilitarian, creates linguistic
images and cultural practices. Responding to culture—clarifying,
explicating, valorizing, translating, transforming, critiquing—is what
artists everywhere do, and this is especially true of writers involved
in the development of a literature at the founding of a new nation.
Whatever their personal and formally “political” responses to the
“problem” inherent in the contradiction of a free republic deeply
committed to a slave population, nineteenth-century writers were
mindful of the presence of these blacks. More importantly, they
addressed, in more or less passionate ways, their views on that
difficult presence.
Awareness of this slave population did not confine itself to the
personal encounters writers may have had. The publication of slave
narratives was a nineteenth-century publication boom. The
discussion of slavery and freedom filled the press, as well as the
campaigns and policies of political parties and elected government.
One would have to have been isolated indeed to be unaware of the

most explosive issue in the nation. How could one speak of profit,
economy, labor, progress, suffragism, Christianity, the frontier, the
formation of new states, the acquisition of new lands, education,
transportation (freight and passengers), neighborhoods, quarters,
the military—practically anything a country concerns itself with—
without having as a referent, at the heart of the discourse, at the
heart of definition, the presence of Africans and their descendants?
It was not possible. And it did not happen. What did happen,
frequently, was an effort to talk about these things with a vocabulary
designed to disguise the subject. This did not always succeed, and in
the work of many writers disguise was never intended. But the
consequence was a master narrative that spoke for the African and
his descendants, or of him. The legislator’s narrative could not
coexist with a response from the Africanistic persona.
Whatever popularity the slave narratives had—and they inspired
abolitionists and converted anti-abolitionists—the slaves’ own
narrative, while freeing the narrator in many ways, did not destroy
the master narrative. That latter narrative could accommodate many
shifts, could make any number of adjustments to keep itself intact.
Silence from and about the subject was the order of the day. Some of
the silences were broken and some maintained by authors who lived
with and within the policing narrative. I am interested in the
strategies for maintaining the silence and for breaking it. How did
the founding writers of young America engage, imagine, employ, and
create an Africanistic presence and persona? In what ways do these
strategies explicate American literature? How does excavating these
pathways lead to fresher and more profound analyses of what they
contain and how they contain it?
—
Let me take one example: a major American novel that is both an
example and a critique of romance as a genre. If we supplement our
reading of Huckleberry Finn, expand it, move beyond its clutch of
sentimental nostrums about lighting out to the territory, river gods,

and the fundamental innocence of Americanness; if we incorporate
into our reading the novel’s combative critique of antebellum
America, thus shedding much light on the problems created by
traditional readings too shy to linger over the implications of the
Africanistic presence at its center, it seems to be another, somehow
fuller novel. We understand that at a certain level, the critique of
class and race is there, although disguised or enhanced through a
combination of humor, adventure, and the naïve.
Twain’s readers are free to dismiss the novel’s combative,
contestatory qualities and focus on its celebration of savvy
innocence, while voicing polite embarrassment at the symptomatic
racial attitude it espouses. Early criticism, those reappraisals in the
fifties that led to the canonization of Huckleberry Finn as a great
novel, missed or dismissed the social quarrel because the work
appears to have fully assimilated the ideological assumptions of its
society and culture; because it is narrated in the voice and controlled
by the gaze of a child without status (an outsider, marginal, and
already “othered” by the middle-class society he loathes and seems
never to envy); and because the novel masks itself in the comic, the
parody, and exaggeration of the tall tale.
In this young but street-smart innocent, Huck, who is virginally
uncorrupted by bourgeois yearnings, fury, and helplessness, Mark
Twain inscribes the critique of slavery and the pretensions of the
would-be middle class, the resistance to the loss of Eden, and the
difficulty of becoming that oxymoron, “a social individual.” The
agency for Huck’s struggle, however, is the nigger Jim, and it is
absolutely necessary that the term “nigger” be inextricable from
Huck’s deliberations about who and what he himself is. Or, more
precisely, is not. The major controversies about the greatness or
near-greatness of Huckleberry Finn as an American (or even
“world”) novel exist as controversies because they forgo a close
examination of the interdependence of slavery and freedom, of
Huck’s growth and Jim’s serviceability within it, and even of Twain’s
inability to continue, to explore the journey into free territory.

The critical controversy focuses on the collapse of the so-called
fatal ending of the novel. It has been suggested that the ending is a
brilliant finesse that returns Tom Sawyer to center stage where he
should be. That it is a brilliant play on the dangers and limitations of
romance. That the ending is a valuable learning experience for Jim
and for Huck for which we and they should be grateful. That it is a
sad and confused ending to a book that the author, after a long
blocked period, did not know what to do with and so changed back to
a child’s story out of disgust. What is not stressed is that there is no
way, given the confines of the novel, for Huck to mature into a moral
human being in America without Jim, and therefore that to let Jim
go free, to let him not miss the mouth of the Ohio River and passage
into free territory, would be to abandon the whole premise of the
book.
Neither Huck nor Twain can tolerate in imaginative terms Jim
freed. To do so would blast the predilection from its mooring. Thus
the “fatal” ending becomes an elaborate deferment of a necessary
and necessarily unfree Africanistic character’s escape, because
freedom has no meaning to Huck or the text without the specter of
enslavement, the anodyne to individualism, the yardstick of absolute
power over the life of another: the signed, marked, informing, and
mutating presence of a black slave. The novel addresses at every
point in its structural edifice, and lingers over it in every fissure, the
slave’s body and personality: the way it spoke, what passion, legal or
illicit, it was prey to, what pain it could endure, what limits, if any,
there were to its suffering, what possibilities there were for
forgiveness, for compassion, for love.
Two things strike us in this novel: the apparently limitless store of
love and compassion the black man has for his white masters, and
his assumptions that the whites are indeed what they say they are—
superior and adult. This representation of Jim as the visible Other
can be read as white yearning for forgiveness and love, but the
yearning is made possible only when it is understood that the black
man has recognized his inferiority (not as a slave but as a black) and
despised it; that, as Jim is made to, he has permitted his persecutors

to torment and humiliate him, and responds to the torment and
humiliation with boundless love. The humiliation Huck and Tom
subject Jim to is baroque, endless, foolish, mind-softening—and it
comes after we have experienced Jim as an adult, a caring father,
and a sensitive man. If Jim had been a white ex-convict befriended
by Huck, the ending could not have been imagined or written
because it would not have been possible for two children to play so
painfully with the life of a white man (regardless of his class,
education, or fugitiveness) once he had been revealed to us as a
moral adult. Jim’s slave status makes the “play and deferment”
possible, and also actualizes, in its style and mode of narration, the
significance of slavery to the achievement (in actual terms) of
freedom. Jim seems unassertive, loving, irrational, passionate,
dependent, inarticulate (except for the “talks” he and Huck have,
long sweet talks we are not privy to. What did you talk about,
Huck?). What should solicit our attention is not what Jim seems, but
what Twain, Huck, and especially Tom need from him. Huckleberry
Finn may indeed be “great,” because in its structure, in what hell it
puts its readers through at the end, the frontal debate it forces, it
simulates and describes the parasitical nature of white freedom.
—
My suggestion that Africanism has come to have a metaphysical
necessity should in no way be understood to imply that it has lost its
ideological one. There is still much ill-gotten gain to reap from
rationalizing power grabs and clutches with inferences of inferiority
and the ranking of differences. There is still much national solace in
continuing dreams of democratic egalitarianism to be gained by
hiding class conflict, rage, and impotence in figurations of race. And
there is quite a lot of juice to be extracted from plummy
reminiscences of “individualism” and “freedom” if the tree upon
which such fruit hangs is a black population forced to serve as
freedom’s polar opposite. “Individualism” is foregrounded and
believed in when its background is stereotyped, enforced
dependency. “Freedom” (to move, to earn, to learn, to be allied with

a powerful center, to narrate the world) can be relished more deeply
cheek by jowl with the bound and the unfree, the economically
oppressed, the marginalized, the silenced. The ideological
dependence on racialism is intact.
Surely, it will be said, white Americans have considered questions
of morality and ethics, the supremacy of mind and the vulnerability
of body, the blessings and liabilities of progress and modernity,
without reference to the situation of its black population. Where, it
will be asked, does one find the record that such a referent was part
of these deliberations?
My answer to this question is another one: In what public
discourse can the reference to black people be said not to exist? It is
there in every moment of the nation’s mightiest struggles. The
presence of black people not only lies behind the framing of the
Constitution, it is also in the battle over enfranchising unpropertied
citizens, women, and the illiterate. In the construction of a free and
public school system, in the balancing of representation in legislative
bodies, in jurisprudence and the legal definitions of justice. In
theological discourse, in the memoranda of banking houses, in the
concept of manifest destiny and the narrative that accompanies the
initiation of every immigrant into the community of American
citizenship.
The literature of the United States, like its history, illustrates and
represents the transformations of biological, ideological, and
metaphysical concepts of racial differences. But literature has an
additional concern and subject matter: the private imagination
interacting with the external world it inhabits. Literature
redistributes and mutates in figurative language the social
conventions of Africanism. In minstrelsy, a layer of blackness applied
to a white face released it from law. Just as entertainers, through
blackface, could render permissible topics that would otherwise have
been taboo, so American writers have been able to employ an
imagined Africanistic persona to articulate and imaginatively act out
the forbidden in American culture.

Encoded or implicit, indirect or overt, the linguistic responses to
an Africanistic presence complicate the texts, sometimes
contradicting them entirely. They can serve as allegorical fodder for
the contemplation of Eden, expulsion, and the availability of grace.
They provide paradox, ambiguity; they reveal omissions, repetitions,
disruptions, polarities, reifications, violence. In other words, they
give the texts a deeper, richer, more complex life than the sanitized
one commonly presented to us. It would be a pity if criticism of this
literature continued to shellac these texts, immobilizing their
complexities and power beneath its tight, reflecting surface. It would
be a pity if the criticism remained too polite or too fearful to notice a
disrupting darkness before its eyes.

Unspeakable Things Unspoken
The Afro-American Presence in American Literature

I
I planned to call this paper “Canon Fodder,” because the terms put
me in mind of a kind of trained muscular response that appears to be
on display in some areas of the recent canon debate. Also I liked the
clash and swirl of those two words. At first they reminded me of that
host of young men—black or “ethnics” or poor or working class—who
left high school for the war in Vietnam and were perceived by war
resisters as “fodder.” Indeed many of those who went, as well as
those who returned, were treated as one of that word’s definitions:
“coarse food for livestock,” or, in the context of my thoughts about
the subject of this paper, a more applicable definition: “people
considered as readily available and of little value.” Rude feed to feed
the war machine. There was also the play of cannon and canon. The
etymology of the first includes tube, cane, or cane-like, reed. Of the
second, sources include rod becoming body of law, body of rules,
measuring rod. When the two words faced each other, the image
became the shape of the cannon wielded on (or by) the body of law.
The boom of power announcing an “officially recognized set of texts.”
Cannon defending canon, you might say. And without any
etymological connection I heard father in fodder, and sensed father
in both cannon and canon, ending up with “father food.” And what
does this father eat? Readily available people/texts of little value. But
I changed my mind (so many have used the phrase) and hope to
make clear the appropriateness of the title I settled on.
My purpose here is to observe the panoply of this most recent and
most anxious series of questions concerning what should or does

constitute a literary canon in order to suggest ways of addressing the
Afro-American presence in American literature that require neither
slaughter nor reification—views that may spring the whole literature
of an entire nation from the solitude into which it has been locked.
There is something called American literature that, according to
conventional wisdom, is certainly not Chicano literature, or AfroAmerican literature, or Asian American, or Native American, or…It is
somehow separate from them and they from it, and in spite of the
efforts of recent literary histories, restructured curricula and
anthologies, this separate confinement, be it breached or endorsed,
is the subject of a large part of these debates. Although the terms
used, like the vocabulary of earlier canon debates, refer to literary
and/or humanistic value, aesthetic criteria, value-free or socially
anchored readings, the contemporary battle plain is most often
understood to be the claims of others against the white male origins
and definitions of those values; whether those definitions reflect an
eternal, universal, and transcending paradigm or whether they
constitute a disguise for a temporal, political, and culturally specific
program.
Part of the history of this particular debate is located in the
successful assault that the feminist scholarship of men and women
(black and white) made and continues to make on traditional literary
discourse. The male part of the white male equation is already deeply
engaged, and no one believes the body of literature and its criticism
will ever again be what it was in 1965: the protected preserve of the
thoughts and works and analytical strategies of white men.
It is, however, the “white” part of the question that this paper
focuses on, and it is to my great relief that such terms as “white” and
“race” can enter serious discussion of literature. Although still a swift
and swiftly obeyed call to arms, their use is no longer forbidden.1 It
may appear churlish to doubt the sincerity, or question the
proclaimed well-intentioned selflessness of a nine-hundred-year-old
academy struggling through decades of chaos to “maintain
standards.” Yet of what use is it to go on about “quality” being the
only criterion for greatness knowing that the definition of quality is

itself the subject of much rage and is seldom universally agreed upon
by everyone at all times? Is it to appropriate the term for reasons of
state; to be in the position to distribute greatness or withhold it? Or
to actively pursue the ways and places in which quality surfaces and
stuns us into silence or into language worthy enough to describe it?
What is possible is to try to recognize, identify, and applaud the fight
for and triumph of quality when it is revealed to us and to let go the
notion that only the dominant culture or gender can make those
judgments, identify that quality, or produce it.
Those who claim the superiority of Western culture are entitled to
that claim only when Western civilization is measured thoroughly
against other civilizations and not found wanting, and when Western
civilization owns up to its own sources in the cultures that preceded
it.
A large part of the satisfaction I have always received from reading
Greek tragedy, for example, is in its similarity to Afro-American
communal structures (the function of song and chorus, the heroic
struggle between the claims of community and individual hubris)
and African religion and philosophy. In other words, that is part of
the reason it has quality for me—I feel intellectually at home there.
But that could hardly be so for those unfamiliar with my “home,” and
hardly a requisite for the pleasure they take. The point is, the form
(Greek tragedy) makes available these varieties of provocative love
because it is masterly—not because the civilization that is its referent
was flawless or superior to all others.
One has the feeling that nights are becoming sleepless in some
quarters, and it seems to me obvious that the recoil of traditional
“humanists” and some postmodern theorists to this particular aspect
of the debate, the “race” aspect, is as severe as it is because the claims
for attention come from that segment of scholarly and artistic labor
in which the mention of “race” is either inevitable or elaborately,
painstakingly masked, and if all of the ramifications that the term
demands are taken seriously, the bases of Western civilization will
require rethinking. Thus, in spite of its implicit and explicit
acknowledgment, “race” is still a virtually unspeakable thing, as can

be seen in the apologies, notes of “special use,” and circumscribed
definitions that accompany it2—not least of which is my own
deference in surrounding it with quotation marks. Suddenly (for our
purposes, suddenly) “race” does not exist. For three hundred years
black Americans insisted that “race” was no usefully distinguishing
factor in human relationships. During those same three centuries
every academic discipline, including theology, history, and natural
science, insisted “race” was the determining factor in human
development. When blacks discovered they had shaped or become a
culturally formed race, and that it had specific and revered
difference, suddenly they were told there is no such thing as “race,”
biological or cultural, that matters and that genuinely intellectual
exchange cannot accommodate it.3 In trying to understand the
relationship between “race” and culture, I am tempted to throw my
hands up. It always seemed to me that the people who invented the
hierarchy of “race” when it was convenient for them ought not to be
the ones to explain it away, now that it does not suit their purposes
for it to exist. But there is culture, and both gender and “race” inform
and are informed by it. Afro-American culture exists, and though it is
clear (and becoming clearer) how it has responded to Western
culture, the instances where and means by which it has shaped
Western culture are poorly recognized or understood.
I want to address ways in which the presence of Afro-American
literature and the awareness of its culture both resuscitate the study
of literature in the United States and raise that study’s standards. In
pursuit of that goal, it will suit my purposes to contextualize the
route canon debates have taken in Western literary criticism.
I do not believe this current anxiety can be attributed solely to the
routine, even cyclical arguments within literary communities
reflecting unpredictable yet inevitable shifts in taste, relevance, or
perception. Shifts in which an enthusiasm for and official
endorsement of William Dean Howells, for example, withered; or in
which the legalization of Mark Twain in critical court rose and fell
like the fathoming of a sounding line (for which he may or may not
have named himself); or even the slow, delayed, but steady swell of

attention and devotion on which Emily Dickinson soared to what is
now, surely, a permanent crest of respect. No. Those were
discoveries, reappraisals of individual artists. Serious but not
destabilizing. Such accommodations were simple because the
questions they posed were simple: Are there one hundred sterling
examples of high literary art in American literature and no more?
One hundred and six? If one or two fall into disrepute, is there space,
then, for one or two others in the vestibule, waiting like girls for bells
chimed by future husbands who alone can promise them security,
legitimacy—and in whose hands alone rests the gift of critical
longevity? Interesting questions, but, as I say, not endangering.
Nor is this detectable academic sleeplessness the consequence of a
much more radical shift, such as the mid-nineteenth-century one
heralding the authenticity of American literature itself. Or an even
earlier upheaval—receding now into the distant past—in which
theology and thereby Latin was displaced for the equally rigorous
study of the classics and Greek to be followed by what was
considered a strangely arrogant and upstart proposal: that English
literature was a suitable course of study for an aristocratic education
and not simply morally instructive fodder designed for the working
classes. (The Chaucer Society was founded in 1848, four hundred
years after Chaucer died.) No. This exchange seems unusual
somehow, keener. It has a more strenuously argued (and felt)
defense and a more vigorously insistent attack. And both defenses
and attacks have spilled out of the academy into the popular press.
Why? Resistance to displacement within or expansion of a canon is
not, after all, surprising or unwarranted. That’s what canonization is
for. (And the question of whether there should be a canon or not
seems disingenuous to me—there always is one whether there should
be or not—for it is in the interests of the professional critical
community to have one.) Certainly a sharp alertness as to why a
work is or is not worthy of study is the legitimate occupation of the
critic, the pedagogue, and the artist. What is astonishing in the
contemporary debate is not the resistance to displacement of works
or to the expansion of genre within it, but the virulent passion that

accompanies this resistance and, more importantly, the quality of its
defense weaponry. The guns are very big; the trigger fingers quick.
But I am convinced the mechanism of the defenders of the flame is
faulty. Not only may the hands of the gunslinging cowboy-scholars
be blown off, not only may the target be missed, but the subject of
the conflagration (the sacred texts) is sacrificed, disfigured in the
battle. This canon fodder may kill the canon. And I, at least, do not
intend to live without Aeschylus or William Shakespeare, or James
or Twain or Hawthorne, or Melville, etc., etc., etc. There must be
some way to enhance canon readings without enshrining them.
When Milan Kundera, in The Art of the Novel, identified the
historical territory of the novel by saying, “The novel is Europe’s
creation” and that “the only context for grasping a novel’s worth is
the history of the European novel,” the New Yorker reviewer
stiffened. Kundera’s “personal ‘idea of the novel,’ ” he wrote, “is so
profoundly Eurocentric that it’s likely to seem exotic, even perverse,
to American readers….‘The Art of the Novel’ gives off the occasional
(but pungent) whiff of cultural arrogance, and we may feel that
Kundera’s discourse…reveals an aspect of his character that we’d
rather not have known about….In order to become the artist he now
is, the Czech novelist had to discover himself a second time, as a
European. But what if that second, grander possibility hadn’t been
there to be discovered? What if Broch, Kafka, Musil—all that reading
—had never been a part of his education, or had entered it only as
exotic, alien presences? Kundera’s polemical fervor in ‘The Art of the
Novel’ annoys us, as American readers, because we feel defensive,
excluded from the transcendent ‘idea of the novel’ that for him seems
simply to have been there for the taking. (If only he had cited, in his
redeeming version of the novel’s history, a few more heroes from the
New World’s culture.) Our novelists don’t discover cultural values
within themselves; they invent them.”4
Kundera’s views, obliterating American writers (with the exception
of William Faulkner) from his own canon, are relegated to a
“smugness” that Terrence Rafferty disassociates from Kundera’s
imaginative work and applies to the “sublime confidence” of his

critical prose. The confidence of an exile who has the sentimental
education of, and the choice to become, a European.
I was refreshed by Rafferty’s comments. With the substitution of
certain phrases, his observations and the justifiable umbrage he
takes can be appropriated entirely by Afro-American writers
regarding their own exclusion from the “transcendent ‘idea of the
novel.’ ” For the present turbulence seems not to be about the
flexibility of a canon, its range among and between Western
countries, but about its miscegenation. The word is informative here
and I do mean its use. A powerful ingredient in this debate concerns
the incursion of third-world or so-called minority literature into a
Eurocentric stronghold. When the topic of third-world culture is
raised, unlike the topic of Scandinavian culture, for example, a
possible threat to and implicit criticism of the reigning equilibrium is
seen to be raised as well. From the seventeenth century to the
twentieth, the arguments resisting that incursion have marched in
predictable sequence: (1) there is no Afro-American (or third-world)
art, (2) it exists but is inferior, (3) it exists and is superior when it
measures up to the “universal” criteria of Western art, (4) it is not so
much “art” as ore—rich ore—that requires a Western or Eurocentric
smith to refine it from its “natural” state into an aesthetically
complex form.
A few comments on a larger, older, but no less telling academic
struggle—an extremely successful one—may be helpful here. It is
telling because it sheds light on certain aspects of this current debate
and may locate its sources. I made reference above to the radical
upheaval in canon building that took place at the inauguration of
classical studies and Greek. This canonical rerouting from
scholasticism to humanism was not merely radical, it must have been
(may I say it?) savage. And it took some seventy years to accomplish.
Seventy years to eliminate Egypt as the cradle of civilization and its
model and replace it with Greece. The triumph of that process was
that Greece lost its own origins and became itself original. A number
of scholars in various disciplines (history, anthropology,
ethnobotany, etc.) have put forward their research into cross-cultural

and intercultural transmissions with varying degrees of success in
the reception of their work. I am reminded of the curious publishing
history of Ivan Van Sertima’s work They Came Before Columbus,
which researches the African presence in ancient America. I am
reminded of Edward Said’s Orientalism, and especially the work of
Martin Bernal, a linguist trained in Chinese history, who has defined
himself as an interloper in the field of classical civilization but who
has offered, in Black Athena, a stunning investigation of the field.
According to Bernal, there are two “models” of Greek history: one
views Greece as Aryan or European (the Aryan Model); the other
sees it as Levantine—absorbed by Egyptian and Semitic culture (the
Ancient Model). “If I am right,” writes Professor Bernal, “in urging
the overthrow of the Aryan Model and its replacement by the Revised
Ancient one, it will be necessary not only to rethink the fundamental
bases of ‘Western Civilization’ but also to recognize the penetration
of racism and ‘continental chauvinism’ into all our historiography, or
philosophy of writing history. The Ancient Model had no major
‘internal’ deficiencies or weaknesses in explanatory power. It was
overthrown for external reasons. For eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Romantics and racists it was simply intolerable for Greece,
which was seen not merely as the epitome of Europe but also as its
pure childhood, to have been the result of the mixture of native
Europeans and colonizing Africans and Semites. Therefore the
Ancient Model had to be overthrown and replaced by something
more acceptable.”5
It is difficult not to be persuaded by the weight of documentation
Martin Bernal brings to his task and his rather dazzling analytical
insights. What struck me in his analysis were the process of the
fabrication of Ancient Greece and the motives for the fabrication.
The latter (motive) involved the concept of purity, of progress. The
former (process) required misreading, predetermined selectivity of
authentic sources, and—silence. From the Christian theological
appropriation of Israel (the Levant), to the early nineteenth-century
work of the prodigious Karl Müller, work that effectively dismissed
the Greeks’ own record of their influences and origins as their

“Egyptomania,” their tendency to be “wonderstruck” by Egyptian
culture, a tendency “manifested in the ‘delusion’ that Egyptians and
other non-European ‘barbarians’ had possessed superior cultures,
from which the Greeks had borrowed massively,”6 on through the
Romantic response to the Enlightenment, and the decline into
disfavor of the Phoenicians, “the essential force behind the rejection
of the tradition of massive Phoenician influence on early Greece was
the rise of racial—as opposed to religious—anti-Semitism. This was
because the Phoenicians were correctly perceived to have been
culturally very close to the Jews.”7
I have quoted at perhaps too great a length from Bernal’s text
because motive, so seldom an element brought to bear on the history
of history, is located, delineated, and confronted in Bernal’s research
and has helped my own thinking about the process and motives of
scholarly attention to and an appraisal of Afro-American presence in
the literature of the United States.
Canon building is empire building. Canon defense is national
defense. Canon debate, whatever the terrain, nature, and range (of
criticism, of history, of the history of knowledge, of the definition of
language, the universality of aesthetic principles, the sociology of art,
the humanistic imagination), is the clash of cultures. And all of the
interests are vested.
In such a melee as this one—a provocative, healthy, explosive
melee—extraordinarily profound work is being done. Some of the
controversy, however, has degenerated into ad hominem and
unwarranted speculation on the personal habits of artists, specious
and silly arguments about politics (the destabilizing forces are
dismissed as merely political; the status quo sees itself as not—as
though the term “apolitical” were only its prefix and not the most
obviously political stance imaginable since one of the functions of
political ideology is to pass itself off as immutable, natural, and
“innocent”), and covert expressions of critical inquiry designed to
neutralize and disguise the political interests of the discourse. Yet
much of the research and analysis has rendered speakable what was
formerly unspoken and has made humanistic studies, once again, the

place where one has to go to find out what’s going on. Cultures,
whether silenced or monologistic, whether repressed or repressing,
seek meaning in the language and images available to them.
Silences are being broken, lost things have been found, and at least
two generations of scholars are disentangling received knowledge
from the apparatus of control, most notably those who are engaged
in investigations of French and British colonialist literature,
American slave narratives, and the delineation of the Afro-American
literary tradition.
Now that Afro-American artistic presence has been “discovered”
actually to exist, now that serious scholarship has moved from
silencing the witnesses and erasing their meaningful place in and
contribution to American culture, it is no longer acceptable merely to
imagine us and imagine for us. We have always been imagining
ourselves. We are not Isak Dinesen’s “aspects of nature,” nor
Conrad’s unspeaking. We are the subjects of our own narrative,
witnesses to and participants in our own experience, and, in no way
coincidentally, in the experience of those with whom we have come
in contact. We are not, in fact, “Other.” We are choices. And to read
imaginative literature by and about us is to choose to examine
centers of the self and to have the opportunity to compare these
centers with the “raceless” one with which we are, all of us, most
familiar.

II
Recent approaches to the reading of Afro-American literature have
come some distance; have addressed those arguments, mentioned
earlier (which are not arguments, but attitudes), that have, since the
seventeenth century, effectively silenced the autonomy of that
literature. As for the charge that “there is no Afro-American art,”
contemporary critical analysis of the literature and the recent surge
of reprints and rediscoveries have buried it, and are pressing on to
expand the traditional canon to include classic Afro-American works

where generically and chronologically appropriate, and to devise
strategies for reading and thinking about these texts.
As to the second silencing charge, “Afro-American art exists, but is
inferior,” again, close readings and careful research into the culture
out of which the art is born have addressed and still address the
labels that once passed for stringent analysis but can no more: that it
is imitative, excessive, sensational, mimetic (merely), and
unintellectual, though very often “moving,” “passionate,”
“naturalistic,” “realistic,” or sociologically “revealing.” These labels
may be construed as compliments or pejoratives and if valid, and
shown as such, so much the better. More often than not, however,
they are the lazy, easy, brand-name applications when the hard work
of analysis is deemed too hard, or when the critic does not have
access to the scope the work demands. Strategies designed to counter
this lazy labeling include the application of recent literary theories to
Afro-American literature so that noncanonical texts can be
incorporated into existing and forming critical discourse.
The third charge, that “Afro-American art exists, but is superior
only when it measures up to the ‘universal’ criteria of Western art,”
produces the most seductive form of analysis, for both writer and
critic, because comparisons are a major form of knowledge and
flattery. The risks, nevertheless, are twofold: (1) the gathering of a
culture’s difference into the skirts of the queen is a neutralization
designed and constituted to elevate and maintain hegemony, (2)
circumscribing and limiting the literature to a mere reaction to or
denial of the queen, judging the work solely in terms of its referents
to Eurocentric criteria, or its sociological accuracy, political
correctness, or its pretense of having no politics at all, cripple the
literature and infantilize the serious work of imaginative writing.
This response-oriented concept of Afro-American literature contains
the seeds of the next (fourth) charge: that when Afro-American art is
worthy, it is because it is “raw” and “rich,” like ore, and like ore needs
refining by Western intelligences. Finding or imposing Western
influences in/on Afro-American literature has value, but when its

sole purpose is to place value only where that influence is located it is
pernicious.
My unease stems from the possible, probable consequences these
approaches may have upon the work itself. They can lead to an
incipient orphanization of the work in order to issue its adoption
papers. They can confine the discourse to the advocacy of
diversification within the canon and/or a kind of benign coexistence
near or within reach of the already sacred texts. Either of these two
positions can quickly become another kind of silencing if permitted
to ignore the indigenous created qualities of the writing. So many
questions surface and irritate. What have these critiques made of the
work’s own canvas? Its paint, its frame, its framelessness, its spaces?
Another list of approved subjects? Of approved treatments? More
self-censoring, more exclusion of the specificity of the culture, the
gender, the language? Is there perhaps an alternative utility in these
studies? To advance power or locate its fissures? To oppose elitist
interests in order to enthrone egalitarian effacement? Or is it merely
to rank and grade the readable product as distinct from the writeable
production? Can this criticism reveal ways in which the author
combats and confronts received prejudices and even creates other
terms in which to rethink one’s attachment to or intolerance of the
material of these works? What is important in all of this is that the
critic not be engaged in laying claim on behalf of the text to his or her
own dominance and power. Nor to exchange his or her professional
anxieties for the imagined turbulence of the text. As has been said
before, “the text should become a problem of passion, not a pretext
for it.”
There are at least three focuses that seem to me to be neither
reactionary nor simple pluralism, nor the even simpler methods by
which the study of Afro-American literature remains the helpful
doorman into the halls of sociology. Each of them, however, requires
wakefulness.
One is the development of a theory of literature that truly
accommodates Afro-American literature: one that is based on its

culture, its history, and the artistic strategies the works employ to
negotiate the world it inhabits.
Another is the examination and reinterpretation of the American
canon, the founding nineteenth-century works, for the “unspeakable
things unspoken”; for the ways in which the presence of AfroAmericans has shaped the choices, the language, the structure—the
meaning of so much American literature. A search, in other words,
for the ghost in the machine.
A third is the examination of contemporary and/or noncanonical
literature for this presence, regardless of its category as mainstream,
minority, or what you will. I am always amazed by the resonances,
the structural gear-shifts, and the uses to which Afro-American
narratives, persona, and idiom are put in contemporary “white”
literature. And in Afro-American literature itself the question of
difference, of essence, is critical. What makes a work “black”? The
most valuable point of entry into the question of cultural (or racial)
distinction, the one most fraught, is its language—its unpoliced,
seditious, confrontational, manipulative, inventive, disruptive,
masked, and unmasking language. Such a penetration will entail the
most careful study, one in which the impact of Afro-American
presence on modernity becomes clear and is no longer a well-kept
secret.
I would like to touch, for just a moment, on focuses two and three.
We can agree, I think, that invisible things are not necessarily “notthere”; that a void may be empty, but is not a vacuum. In addition,
certain absences are so stressed, so ornate, so planned, they call
attention to themselves, arrest us with intentionality and purpose,
like neighborhoods that are defined by the population held away
from them. Looking at the scope of American literature, I can’t help
thinking that the question should never have been “Why am I, an
Afro-American, absent from it?” It is not a particularly interesting
query anyway. The spectacularly interesting question is “What
intellectual feats had to be performed by the author or his critic to
erase me from a society seething with my presence, and what effect
has that performance had on the work?” What are the strategies of

escape from knowledge? Of willful oblivion? I am not recommending
an inquiry into the obvious impulse that overtakes a soldier sitting in
a World War I trench to think of salmon fishing. That kind of pointed
“turning from,” deliberate escapism, or transcendence may be
lifesaving in a circumstance of immediate duress. The exploration I
am suggesting is, how does one sit in the audience observing,
watching the performance of Young America, in 1915 say, and
reconstruct the play, its director, its plot, and its cast in such a
manner that its very point never surfaces? Not why. How? Ten years
after Tocqueville’s prediction in 1840 that “ ‘finding no stuff for the
ideal in what is real and true, poets’ would flee to imaginary
regions,”8 in 1850 at the height of slavery and burgeoning
abolitionism, American writers chose romance. Where, I wonder, in
these romances is the shadow of the presence from which the text
has fled? Where does it heighten, where does it dislocate, where does
it necessitate novelistic invention; what does it release; what does it
hobble?
The device (or arsenal) that serves the purpose of flight can be
Romanticism versus verisimilitude; New Criticism versus shabbily
disguised and questionably sanctioned “moral uplift”; the “complex
series of evasions” that is sometimes believed to be the essence of
modernism; the perception of the “evolution of art”; the cultivation
of irony, parody; the nostalgia for “literary language”; the rhetorically
unconstrained textuality versus socially anchored textuality, and the
undoing of textuality altogether. These critical strategies can (but
need not) be put into service to reconstruct the historical world to
suit specific cultural and political purposes. Many of these strategies
have produced powerfully creative work. Whatever uses to which
romanticism is put, however suspicious its origins, it has produced
an incontestably wonderful body of work. In other instances these
strategies have succeeded in paralyzing both the work and its
criticism. In still others they have led to a virtual infantilization of
the writer’s intellect, his sensibility, his craft. They have reduced the
meditations on theory into a “power struggle among sects” reading

unauthored and unauthorable material, rather than reading with the
author the text that both construct.
In other words, the critical process has made wonderful work of
some wonderful work, and recently the means of access to the old
debates have altered. The problem now is putting the question. Is the
nineteenth-century flight from blackness, for example, successful in
mainstream
American
literature?
Beautiful?
Artistically
problematic? Is the text sabotaged by its own proclamations of
“universality”? Are there ghosts in the machine? Active but
unsummoned presences that can distort the workings of the machine
and can also make it work? These kinds of questions have been
consistently put by critics of colonial literature vis-à-vis Africa and
India and other third-world countries. American literature would
benefit from similar critiques. I am made melancholy when I
consider that the act of defending the Eurocentric Western posture
in literature as not only “universal” but also “race-free” may have
resulted in lobotomizing that literature, and in diminishing both the
art and the artist. Like the surgical removal of legs so that the body
can remain enthroned, immobile, static—under house arrest, so to
speak. It may be, of course, that contemporary writers deliberately
exclude from their conscious writerly world the subjective appraisal
of groups perceived as “Other,” and white male writers frequently
abjure and deny the excitement of framing or locating their literature
in the political world. Nineteenth-century writers, however, would
never have given it a thought. Mainstream writers in young America
understood their competition to be national, cultural, but only in
relationship to the Old World, certainly not vis-à-vis an ancient race
(whether Native American or African) that was stripped of
articulateness and intellectual thought, rendered, in D. H.
Lawrence’s term, “uncreate.” For these early American writers, how
could there be competition with nations or peoples who were
presumed unable to handle or uninterested in handling the written
word? One could write about them, but there was never the danger of
their “writing back.” Just as one could speak to them without fear of
their “talking back.” One could even observe them, hold them in

prolonged gaze, without encountering the risk of being observed,
viewed, or judged in return. And if, on occasion, they were
themselves viewed and judged, it was out of a political necessity and,
for the purposes of art, could not matter. Or so thought young
America. It could never have occurred to Edgar Allan Poe in 1848
that I, for example, might read “The Gold-Bug” and watch his efforts
to render my grandfather’s speech to something as close to braying
as possible, an effort so intense you can see the perspiration—and the
stupidity—when Jupiter says, “I knows,” and Mr. Poe spells the verb
“nose.”*
Yet in spite or because of this monologism there is a great,
ornamental, prescribed absence in early American literature and, I
submit, it is instructive. It only seems that the canon of American
literature is “naturally” or “inevitably” “white.” In fact it is studiously
so. In fact these absences of vital presences in young American
literature may be the insistent fruit of the scholarship rather than the
text. Perhaps some of these writers, although under current house
arrest, have much more to say than has been realized. Perhaps some
were not so much transcending politics, or escaping blackness, as
they were transforming it into intelligible, accessible, yet artistic
modes of discourse. To ignore this possibility by never questioning
the strategies of transformation is to disenfranchise the writer,
diminish the text, and render the bulk of the literature aesthetically
and historically incoherent—an exorbitant price for cultural (white
male) purity, and, I believe, a spendthrift one. The reexamination of
founding literature of the United States for the unspeakable
unspoken may reveal those texts to have deeper and other meanings,
deeper and other power, deeper and other significances.
One such writer, in particular, it has been almost impossible to
keep under lock and key is Herman Melville.
Among several astute scholars, Michael Rogin has done one of the
most exhaustive studies of how deeply Melville’s social thought is
woven into his writing. He calls our attention to the connection
Melville made between American slavery and American freedom,
how heightened the one rendered the other. And he has provided

evidence of the impact on the work of Melville’s family, milieu, and,
most importantly, the raging, all-encompassing conflict of the time:
slavery. He has reminded us that it was Melville’s father-in-law,
Judge Shaw, who had, as judge, decided the case that made the
Fugitive Slave Law law, and that “other evidence in Moby-Dick also
suggests the impact of Shaw’s ruling on the climax of Melville’s tale.
Melville conceived the final confrontation between Ahab and the
white whale sometime in the first half of 1851. He may well have
written his last chapters only after returning from a trip to New York
in June. (Judge Shaw’s decision was handed down in April 1851.)
When New York antislavery leaders William Seward and John van
Buren wrote public letters protesting the Sims ruling, the New York
Herald responded. Its attack on ‘The Anti-Slavery Agitators’ began,
‘Did you ever see a whale? Did you ever see a mighty whale
struggling?’ ”9
Rogin also traces the chronology of the whale from its “birth in a
state of nature” to its final end as commodity.10 Central to his
argument is that Melville in Moby-Dick was being allegorically and
insistently political in his choice of the whale. But within his
chronology, one singular whale transcends all others, goes beyond
nature, adventure, politics, and commodity to an abstraction. What
is this abstraction? This “wicked idea”? Interpretation has been
varied. It has been viewed as an allegory of the state in which Ahab is
Calhoun, or Daniel Webster; an allegory of capitalism and
corruption, God and man, the individual and fate, and most
commonly, the single allegorical meaning of the white whale is
understood to be brute, indifferent Nature, and Ahab the madman
who challenges that Nature.
But let us consider, again, the principal actor, Ahab, created by an
author who calls himself Typee, signed himself Tawney, identified
himself as Ishmael, and who had written several books before MobyDick criticizing missionary forays into various paradises.
Ahab loses sight of the commercial value of his ship’s voyage, its
point, and pursues an idea in order to destroy it. His intention,
revenge, “an audacious, immitigable and supernatural revenge,”

develops stature—maturity—when we realize that he is not a man
mourning his lost leg or a scar on his face. However intense and
dislocating his fever and recovery had been after his encounter with
the white whale, however satisfactorily “male” this vengeance is read,
the vanity of it is almost adolescent. But if the whale is more than
blind, indifferent Nature unsubduable by masculine aggression, if it
is as much its adjective as it is its noun, we can consider the
possibility that Melville’s “truth” was his recognition of the moment
in America when whiteness became ideology. And if the white whale
is the ideology of race, what Ahab has lost to it is personal
dismemberment and family and society and his own place as a
human in the world. The trauma of racism is, for the racist and the
victim, the severe fragmentation of the self, and has always seemed
to me a cause (not a symptom) of psychosis—strangely of no interest
to psychiatry. Ahab, then, is navigating between an idea of
civilization that he renounces and an idea of savagery he must
annihilate, because the two cannot coexist. The former is based on
the latter. What is terrible in its complexity is that the idea of
savagery is not the missionary one: it is white racial ideology that is
savage and if, indeed, a white, nineteenth-century American male
took on not abolition, not the amelioration of racist institutions or
their laws, but the very concept of whiteness as an inhuman idea, he
would be very alone, very desperate, and very doomed. Madness
would be the only appropriate description of such audacity, and “he
heaves me,” the most succinct and appropriate description of that
obsession.
I would not like to be understood to argue that Melville was
engaged in some simple and simpleminded black/white didacticism,
or that he was satanizing white people. Nothing like that. What I am
suggesting is that he was overwhelmed by the philosophical and
metaphysical inconsistencies of an extraordinary and unprecedented
idea that had its fullest manifestation in his own time in his own
country, and that that idea was the successful assertion of whiteness
as ideology.

On the Pequod the multiracial, mainly foreign, proletariat is at
work to produce a commodity, but it is diverted and converted from
that labor to Ahab’s more significant intellectual quest. We leave
whale as commerce and confront whale as metaphor. With that
interpretation in place, two of the most famous chapters of the book
become luminous in a completely new way. One is chapter 9, “The
Sermon.” In Father Mapple’s thrilling rendition of Jonah’s trials,
emphasis is given to the purpose of Jonah’s salvation. He is saved
from the fish’s belly for one single purpose, “To preach the Truth to
the face of Falsehood! That was it!” Only then the reward
—“Delight”—which strongly calls to mind Ahab’s lonely necessity.
Delight is to him…who against the proud gods and commodores
of this earth, ever stand forth his own inexorable self….Delight is
to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this
base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is
to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and
destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of
Senators and Judges. Delight—top-gallant delight is to him, who
acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a
patriot to heaven (italics mine).
No one, I think, has denied that the sermon is designed to be
prophetic, but it seems unremarked what the nature of the sin is—the
sin that must be destroyed, regardless. Nature? A sin? The terms do
not apply. Capitalism? Perhaps. Capitalism fed greed lent itself
inexorably to corruption, but probably was not in and of itself sinful
to Melville. Sin suggests a moral outrage within the bounds of New
World man to repair. The concept of racial superiority would fit
seamlessly. It is difficult to read those words (“destroys all sin,”
“patriot to heaven”) and not hear in them the description of a
different Ahab. Not an adolescent male in adult clothing, a maniacal
egocentric, or the “exotic plant” that V. L. Parrington thought
Melville was. Not even a morally fine liberal voice adjusting,
balancing, compromising with racial institutions. But another Ahab:

the only white male American heroic enough to try to slay the
monster that was devouring the world as he knew it.
Another chapter that seems freshly lit by this reading is chapter
42, “The Whiteness of the Whale.” Melville points to the do-or-die
significance of his effort to say something unsayable in this chapter.
“I almost despair,” he writes, “of putting it in a comprehensive form.
It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.
But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim,
random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be
naught” (italics mine). The language of this chapter ranges between
benevolent, beautiful images of whiteness and whiteness as sinister
and shocking. After dissecting the ineffable, he concludes:
“Therefore…symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing he will by
whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest idealized
significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.” I stress
“idealized significance” to emphasize and make clear (if such clarity
needs stating) that Melville is not exploring white people, but
whiteness idealized. Then, after informing the reader of his “hope to
light upon some chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we
seek,” he tries to nail it. To provide the key to the “hidden cause.” His
struggle to do so is gigantic. He cannot. Nor can we. But in
nonfigurative language, he identifies the imaginative tools needed to
solve the problem: “Subtlety appeals to subtlety, and without
imagination no man can follow another into these halls.” And his
final observation reverberates with personal trauma. “This visible
[colored] world seems formed in love, the invisible [white] spheres
were formed in fright.” The necessity for whiteness as privileged
“natural” state, the invention of it, was indeed formed in fright.
“Slavery,” writes Rogin, “confirmed Melville’s isolation, decisively
established in Moby-Dick, from the dominant consciousness of his
time.” I differ on this point and submit that Melville’s hostility to and
repugnance for slavery would have found company. There were
many white Americans of his acquaintance who felt repelled by
slavery, wrote journalism about it, spoke about it, legislated on it,
and were active in abolishing it. His attitude to slavery alone would

not have condemned him to the almost autistic separation visited
upon him. And if he felt convinced that blacks were worthy of being
treated like whites, or that capitalism was dangerous—he had
company or could have found it. But to question the very notion of
white progress, the very idea of racial superiority, of whiteness as
privileged place in the evolutionary ladder of humankind, and to
meditate on the fraudulent, self-destroying philosophy of that
superiority, to “pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and
Judges,” to drag the “judge himself to the bar”—that was dangerous,
solitary, radical work. Especially then. Especially now. To be “only a
patriot to heaven” is no mean aspiration in young America for a
writer—or the captain of a whaling ship.
A complex, heaving, disorderly, profound text is Moby-Dick, and
among its several meanings it seems to me this “unspeakable” one
has remained the “hidden cause,” the “Truth to the face of
Falsehood.” To this day no novelist has so wrestled with his subject.
To this day literary analyses of canonical texts have shied away from
that perspective: the informing and determining Afro-American
presence in traditional American literature. The chapters I have
made reference to are only a fraction of the instances where the text
surrenders such insights, and points a helpful finger toward the ways
in which the ghost drives the machine.
Melville is not the only author whose works double their
fascination and their power when scoured for this presence and the
writerly strategies taken to address or deny it. Edgar Allan Poe will
sustain such a reading. So will Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark
Twain, and in the twentieth century, Willa Cather, Ernest
Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, and
William Faulkner, to name a few. Canonical American literature is
begging for such attention.
It seems to me a more than fruitful project to produce some cogent
analysis showing instances where early American literature identifies
itself, risks itself, to assert its antithesis to blackness. How its
linguistic gestures prove the intimate relationship to what is being
nulled by implying a full descriptive apparatus (identity) to a

presence-that-is-assumed-not-to-exist.
Afro-American
critical
inquiry can do this work.
I mentioned earlier that finding or imposing Western influences
in/on Afro-American literature had value provided the valued
process does not become self-anointing. There is an adjacent project
to be undertaken—the third focus in my list: the examination of
contemporary literature (both the sacred and the profane) for the
impact Afro-American presence has had on the structure of the work,
the linguistic practice, and fictional enterprise in which it is engaged.
Like focus two, this critical process must also eschew the pernicious
goal of equating the fact of that presence with the achievement of the
work. A work does not get better because it is responsive to another
culture, nor does it become automatically flawed because of that
responsiveness. The point is to clarify, not to enlist. And it does not
“go without saying” that a work written by an Afro-American is
automatically subsumed by an enforcing Afro-American presence.
There is a clear flight from blackness in a great deal of AfroAmerican literature. In others there is the duel with blackness, and in
some cases, as they say, “You’d never know.”

III
It is on this area, the impact of Afro-American culture on
contemporary American literature, that I now wish to comment. I
have already said that works by Afro-Americans can respond to this
presence (just as nonblack works do) in a number of ways. The
question of what constitutes the art of a black writer, for whom that
modifier is more search than fact, has some urgency. In other words,
other than melanin and subject matter, what, in fact, may make me a
black writer? Other than my own ethnicity—what is going on in my
work that makes me believe it is demonstrably inseparable from a
cultural specificity that is Afro-American?
Please forgive the use of my own work in these observations. I use
it not because it provides the best example, but because I know it
best, know what I did and why, and know how central these queries

are to me. Writing is, after all, an act of language, its practice. But
first of all it is an effort of the will to discover.
Let me suggest some of the ways in which I activate language and
ways in which that language activates me. I will limit this perusal by
calling attention only to the first sentences of the books I’ve written,
and hope that in exploring the choices I made, prior points are
illuminated.
The Bluest Eye begins, “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds
in the fall of 1941.” That sentence, like the ones that open each
succeeding book, is simple, uncomplicated. Of all the sentences that
begin all the books, only two of them have dependent clauses; the
other three are simple sentences and two are stripped down to
virtually subject, verb, modifier. Nothing fancy here. No words need
looking up; they are ordinary, everyday words. Yet I hoped the
simplicity was not simpleminded, but devious, even loaded. And that
the process of selecting each word, for itself and its relationship to
the others in the sentence, along with the rejection of others for their
echoes, for what is determined and what is not determined, what is
almost there and what must be gleaned, would not theatricalize
itself, would not erect a proscenium—at least not a noticeable one. So
important to me was this unstaging, that in this first novel I
summarized the whole of the book on the first page. (In the first
edition, it was printed in its entirety on the jacket.)
The opening phrase of this sentence, “Quiet as it’s kept,” had
several attractions for me. First, it was a familiar phrase, familiar to
me as a child listening to adults; to black women conversing with one
another; telling a story, an anecdote, gossip about someone or some
event within the circle, the family, the neighborhood. The words are
conspiratorial. “Shh, don’t tell anyone else” and “No one is allowed to
know this.” It is a secret between us and a secret that is being kept
from us. The conspiracy is both held and withheld, exposed and
sustained. In some sense it was precisely what the act of writing the
book was: the public exposure of a private confidence. In order fully
to comprehend the duality of that position, one needs to think of the
immediate political climate in which the writing took place, 1965–

1969, during great social upheaval in the life of black people. The
publication (as opposed to the writing) involved the exposure; the
writing was the disclosure of secrets, secrets “we” shared and those
withheld from us by ourselves and by the world outside the
community.
“Quiet as it’s kept” is also a figure of speech that is written, in this
instance, but clearly chosen for how speakerly it is, how it speaks and
bespeaks a particular world and its ambience. Further, in addition to
its “back fence” connotation, its suggestion of illicit gossip, of
thrilling revelation, there is also, in the “whisper,” the assumption
(on the part of the reader) that the teller is on the inside, knows
something others do not, and is going to be generous with this
privileged information. The intimacy I was aiming for, the intimacy
between the reader and the page, could start up immediately because
the secret is being shared, at best, and eavesdropped upon, at the
least. Sudden familiarity or instant intimacy seemed crucial to me
then, writing my first novel. I did not want the reader to have time to
wonder, “What do I have to do, to give up, in order to read this?
What defense do I need, what distance maintain?” Because I know
(and the reader does not—he or she has to wait for the second
sentence) that this is a terrible story about things one would rather
not know anything about.
What, then, is the Big Secret about to be shared? The thing we
(reader and I) are “in” on? A botanical aberration. Pollution,
perhaps. A skip, perhaps, in the natural order of things: a September,
an autumn, a fall without marigolds. Bright common, strong and
sturdy marigolds. When? In 1941, and since that is a momentous
year (the beginning of World War II for the United States), the “fall”
of 1941, just before the declaration of war, has a “closet” innuendo. In
the temperate zone where there is a season known as “fall” during
which one expects marigolds to be at their peak, in the months
before the beginning of U.S. participation in World War II,
something grim is about to be divulged. The next sentence will make
it clear that the sayer, the one who knows, is a child speaking,
mimicking the adult black women on the porch or in the backyard.

The opening phrase is an effort to be grown-up about this shocking
information. The point of view of a child alters the priority an adult
would assign the information. “We thought…it was because Pecola
was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow”
foregrounds the flowers, backgrounds illicit, traumatic,
incomprehensible sex coming to its dreaded fruition. This
foregrounding of “trivial” information and backgrounding of
shocking knowledge secures the point of view but gives the reader
pause about whether the voice of children can be trusted at all or is
more trustworthy than an adult’s. The reader is thereby protected
from a confrontation too soon with the painful details, while
simultaneously provoked into a desire to know them. The novelty, I
thought, would be in having this story of female violation revealed
from the vantage point of the victims or could-be victims of rape—
the persons no one inquired of (certainly not in 1965): the girls
themselves. And since the victim does not have the vocabulary to
understand the violence or its context, gullible, vulnerable
girlfriends, looking back as the knowing adults they pretended to be
in the beginning, would have to do that for her, and would have to fill
those silences with their own reflective lives. Thus, the opening
provides the stroke that announces something more than a secret
shared, but a silence broken, a void filled, an unspeakable thing
spoken at last. And they draw the connection between a minor
destabilization in seasonal flora with the insignificant destruction of
a black girl. Of course “minor” and “insignificant” represent the
outside world’s view—for the girls both phenomena are earthshaking
depositories of information they spend that whole year of childhood
(and afterwards) trying to fathom, and cannot. If they have any
success, it will be in transferring the problem of fathoming to the
presumably adult reader, to the inner circle of listeners. At the least
they have distributed the weight of these problematical questions to
a larger constituency, and justified the public exposure of a privacy.
If the conspiracy that the opening words announce is entered into by
the reader, then the book can be seen to open with its close: a
speculation on the disruption of “nature,” as being a social disruption

with tragic individual consequences in which the reader, as part of
the population of the text, is implicated.
However, a problem, unsolved, lies in the central chamber of the
novel. The shattered world I built (to complement what is happening
to Pecola), its pieces held together by seasons in childtime and
commenting at every turn on the incompatible and barren whitefamily primer, does not in its present form handle effectively the
silence at its center. The void that is Pecola’s “unbeing.” It should
have had a shape—like the emptiness left by a boom or a cry. It
required a sophistication unavailable to me, and some deft
manipulation of the voices around her. She is not seen by herself
until she hallucinates a self. And the fact of her hallucination
becomes a point of outside-the-book conversation, but does not work
in the reading process.
Also, although I was pressing for a female expressiveness (a
challenge that resurfaced in Sula), it eluded me for the most part,
and I had to content myself with female personae because I was not
able to secure throughout the work the feminine subtext that is
present in the opening sentence (the women gossiping, eager and
aghast in “Quiet as it’s kept”). The shambles this struggle became is
most evident in the section on Pauline Breedlove where I resorted to
two voices, hers and the urging narrator’s, both of which are
extremely unsatisfactory to me. It is interesting to me now that
where I thought I would have the most difficulty subverting the
language to a feminine mode, I had the least: connecting Cholly’s
“rape” by the white men to his own of his daughter. This most
masculine act of aggression becomes feminized in my language,
“passive,” and, I think, more accurately repellent when deprived of
the male “glamor of shame” rape is (or once was) routinely given.
The points I have tried to illustrate are that my choices of language
(speakerly, aural, colloquial), my reliance for full comprehension on
codes embedded in black culture, my effort to effect immediate
coconspiracy and intimacy (without any distancing, explanatory
fabric), as well as my (failed) attempt to shape a silence while
breaking it are attempts (many unsatisfactory) to transfigure the

complexity and wealth of Afro-American culture into a language
worthy of the culture.
In Sula, it’s necessary to concentrate on two first sentences
because what survives in print is not the one I had intended to be the
first. Originally the book opened with “Except for World War II
nothing ever interfered with National Suicide Day.” With some
encouragement, I recognized that it was a false beginning. “In
medias res” with a vengeance, because there was no res to be in the
middle of—no implied world in which to locate the specificity and the
resonances in the sentence. More to the point, I knew I was writing a
second novel, and that it too would be about people in a black
community not just foregrounded but totally dominant, and that it
was about black women—also foregrounded and dominant. In 1988,
certainly, I would not need (or feel the need for) the sentence—the
short section—that now opens Sula. The threshold between the
reader and the black-topic text need not be the safe, welcoming lobby
I persuaded myself it needed at that time. My preference was the
demolition of the lobby altogether. As can be seen from The Bluest
Eye, and in every other book I have written, only Sula has this
“entrance.” The others refuse the “presentation”; refuse the seductive
safe harbor, the line of demarcation between the sacred and the
obscene, public and private, them and us. Refuse, in effect, to cater to
the diminished expectations of the reader, or his or her alarm
heightened by the emotional luggage one carries into the black-topic
text. (I should remind you that Sula was begun in 1969, while my
first book was in proof, in a period of extraordinary political activity.)
Since I had become convinced that the effectiveness of the original
beginning was only in my head, the job at hand became how to
construct an alternate beginning that would not force the work to
genuflect and would complement the outlaw quality in it. The
problem presented itself this way: to fashion a door. Instead of
having the text open wide the moment the cover is opened (or, as in
The Bluest Eye, to have the book stand exposed before the cover is
even touched, much less opened, by placing the complete “plot” on
the first page—and finally on the jacket of the first edition), here I

was to posit a door, turn its knob, and beckon for some four or five
pages. I had determined not to mention any characters in those
pages, there would be no people in the lobby—but I did, rather
heavy-handedly in my view, end the welcome aboard with the
mention of Shadrack and Sula. It was a craven (to me, still)
surrender to a worn-out technique of novel writing: the overt
announcement to the reader whom to pay attention to. Yet the bulk
of the opening I finally wrote is about the community, a view of it,
and the view is not from within (this is a door, after all) but from the
point of view of a stranger—the “valley man” who might happen to be
there on some errand, but who obviously does not live there and to
and for whom all this is mightily strange, even exotic. You can see
why I despise much of this beginning. Yet I tried to place in the
opening sentence the signature terms of loss: “There used to be a
neighborhood here; not anymore.” That may not be the world’s worst
sentence, but it doesn’t “play,” as they say in the theater.
My new first sentence became “In that place, where they tore the
nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for
the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.”
Instead of my original plan, here I am introducing an outside-thecircle reader into the circle. I am translating the anonymous into the
specific, a “place” into a “neighborhood,” and letting a stranger in
through whose eyes it can be viewed. In between “place” and
“neighborhood” I now have to squeeze the specificity and the
difference; the nostalgia, the history, and the nostalgia for the
history; the violence done to it and the consequences of that violence.
(It took three months, those four pages, a whole summer of nights.)
The nostalgia is sounded by “once”; the history and a longing for it is
implied in the connotation of “neighborhood.” The violence lurks in
having something torn out by its roots—it will not, cannot grow
again. Its consequences are that what has been destroyed is
considered weeds, refuse necessarily removed in urban
“development” by the unspecified but no less known “they” who do
not, cannot, afford to differentiate what is displaced, and would not
care that this is “refuse” of a certain kind. Both plants have darkness

in them: “black” and “night.” One is unusual (nightshade) and has
two darkness words: “night” and “shade.” The other (blackberry) is
common. A familiar plant and an exotic one. A harmless one and a
dangerous one. One produces a nourishing berry; one delivers toxic
ones. But they both thrived there together, in that place when it was
a neighborhood. Both are gone now, and the description that follows
is of the other specific things, in this black community, destroyed in
the wake of the golf course. “Golf course” conveys what it is not, in
this context: not houses, or factories, or even a public park, and
certainly not residents. It is a manicured place where the likelihood
of the former residents showing up is almost nil.
I want to get back to those berries for a moment (to explain,
perhaps, the length of time it took for the language of that section to
arrive). I always thought of Sula as quintessentially black,
metaphysically black, if you will, which is not melanin and certainly
not unquestioning fidelity to the tribe. She is New World black and
New World woman extracting choice from choicelessness,
responding inventively to found things. Improvisational. Daring,
disruptive, imaginative, modern, out-of-the-house, outlawed,
unpolicing, uncontained, and uncontainable. And dangerously
female. In her final conversation with Nel she refers to herself as a
special kind of black person woman, one with choices. Like a
redwood, she says. (With all due respect to the dream landscape of
Freud, trees have always seemed feminine to me.) In any case, my
perception of Sula’s double-dose of chosen blackness and biological
blackness is in the presence of those two words of darkness in
“nightshade” as well as in the uncommon quality of the vine itself.
One variety is called “enchanter,” and the other “bittersweet” because
the berries taste bitter at first and then sweet. Also nightshade was
thought to counteract witchcraft. All of this seemed a wonderful
constellation of signs for Sula. And “blackberry patches” seemed
equally appropriate for Nel: nourishing, never needing to be tended
or cultivated, once rooted and bearing. Reliably sweet but thornbound. Her process of becoming, heralded by the explosive
dissolving of her fragilely-held-together ball of string and fur (when

the thorns of her self-protection are removed by Eva), puts her back
in touch with the complex, contradictory, evasive, independent,
liquid modernity Sula insisted upon. A modernity that overturns
prewar definitions, ushers in the Jazz Age (an age defined by AfroAmerican art and culture), and requires new kinds of intelligences to
define oneself.
The stage-setting of the first four pages is embarrassing to me now,
but the pains I have taken to explain it may be helpful in identifying
the strategies one can be forced to resort to in trying to accommodate
the mere fact of writing about, for, and out of black culture while
accommodating and responding to mainstream “white” culture. The
“valley man’s” guidance into the territory was my compromise.
Perhaps it “worked,” but it was not the work I wanted to do.
Had I begun with Shadrack, I would have ignored the smiling
welcome and put the reader into immediate confrontation with his
wound and his scar. The difference my preferred (original) beginning
would have made would be calling greater attention to the traumatic
displacement this most wasteful capitalist war had on black people in
particular, and throwing into relief the creative, if outlawed,
determination to survive it whole. Sula as (feminine) solubility and
Shadrack’s (male) fixative are two extreme ways of dealing with
displacement—a prevalent theme in the narrative of black people. In
the final opening I replicated the demiurge of discriminatory,
prosecutorial racial oppression in the loss to commercial “progress”
of the village, but the references to the community’s stability and
creativeness (music, dancing, craft, religion, irony, wit all referred to
in the “valley man’s” presence) refract and subsume their pain while
they are in the thick of it. It is a softer embrace than Shadrack’s
organized, public madness—his disruptive remembering presence,
which helps (for a while) to cement the community, until Sula
challenges them.
“The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly
from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock.”
This declarative sentence is designed to mock a journalistic style;
with a minor alteration it could be the opening of an item in a small-

town newspaper. It has the tone of an everyday event of minimal
local interest, yet I wanted it to contain (as does the scene that takes
place when the agent fulfills his promise) the information that Song
of Solomon both centers on and radiates from.
The name of the insurance company is real, a well-known blackowned company dependent on black clients, and in its corporate
name are “life” and “mutual,” “agent” being the necessary ingredient
of what enables the relationship between them. The sentence also
moves from North Carolina to Lake Superior—geographical
locations, but with a sly implication that the move from North
Carolina (the South) to Lake Superior (the North) might not actually
involve progress to some “superior state”—which, of course, it does
not. The two other significant words are “fly,” upon which the novel
centers, and “Mercy,” the name of the place from which he is to fly.
Both constitute the heartbeat of the narrative. Where is the
insurance man flying to? The other side of Lake Superior is Canada,
of course, the historic terminus of the escape route for black people
looking for asylum. “Mercy,” the other significant term, is the grace
note; the earnest though, with one exception, unspoken wish of the
narrative’s population. Some grant it; some never find it; one, at
least, makes it the text and cry of her extemporaneous sermon upon
the death of her granddaughter. It touches, turns, and returns to
Guitar at the end of the book—he who is least deserving of it—and
moves him to make it his own final gift. It is what one wishes for
Hagar; what is unavailable to and unsought by Macon Dead, senior;
what his wife learns to demand from him, and what can never come
from the white world as is signified by the inversion of the name of
the hospital from Mercy to “No Mercy.” It is only available from
within. The center of the narrative is flight; the springboard is mercy.
But the sentence turns, as all sentences do, on the verb: promised.
The insurance agent does not declare, announce, or threaten his act.
He promises, as though a contract is being executed—faithfully—
between himself and others. Promises broken, or kept; the difficulty
of ferreting out loyalties and ties that bind or bruise wend their way
throughout the action and the shifting relationships. So the agent’s

flight, like that of the Solomon in the title, although toward asylum
(Canada, or freedom, or home, or the company of the welcoming
dead), and although it carries the possibility of failure and the
certainty of danger, is toward change, an alternative way, a cessation
of things-as-they-are. It should not be understood as a simple
desperate act, the end of a fruitless life, a life without gesture,
without examination, but as obedience to a deeper contract with his
people. It is his commitment to them, regardless of whether, in all its
details, they understand it. There is, however, in their response to his
action, a tenderness, some contrition, and mounting respect (“They
didn’t know he had it in him”) and an awareness that the gesture
enclosed rather than repudiated themselves. The note he leaves asks
for forgiveness. It is tacked on his door as a mild invitation to
whomever might pass by, but it is not an advertisement. It is an
almost Christian declaration of love as well as humility of one who
was not able to do more.
There are several other flights in the work and they are
motivationally different. Solomon’s the most magical, the most
theatrical, and, for Milkman, the most satisfying. It is also the most
problematic—to those he left behind. Milkman’s flight binds these
two elements of loyalty (Mr. Smith’s) and abandon and self-interest
(Solomon’s) into a third thing: a merging of fealty and risk that
suggests the “agency” for “mutual” “life,” which he offers at the end
and which is echoed in the hills behind him, and is the marriage of
surrender and domination, acceptance and rule, commitment to a
group through ultimate isolation. Guitar recognizes this marriage
and recalls enough of how lost he himself is to put his weapon down.
The journalistic style at the beginning, its rhythm of a familiar,
hand-me-down dignity is pulled along by an accretion of detail
displayed in a meandering unremarkableness. Simple words,
uncomplex sentence structures, persistent understatement, highly
aural syntax—but the ordinariness of the language, its colloquial,
vernacular, humorous, and, upon occasion, parabolic quality
sabotage expectations and masks judgments when it can no longer
defer them. The composition of red, white, and blue in the opening

scene provides the national canvas/flag upon which the narrative
works and against which the lives of these black people must be seen,
but which must not overwhelm the enterprise the novel is engaged
in. It is a composition of color that heralds Milkman’s birth, protects
his youth, hides its purpose and through which he must burst
(through blue Buicks, red tulips in his waking dream, and his sisters’
white stockings, ribbons, and gloves) before discovering that the gold
of his search is really Pilate’s yellow orange and the glittering metal
of the box in her ear.
These spaces, which I am filling in, and can fill in because they
were planned, can conceivably be filled in with other significances.
That is planned as well. The point is that into these spaces should fall
the ruminations of the reader and his or her invented or recollected
or misunderstood knowingness. The reader as narrator asks the
questions the community asks, and both reader and “voice” stand
among the crowd, within it, with privileged intimacy and contact, but
without any more privileged information than the crowd has. That
egalitarianism that places us all (reader, the novel’s population, the
narrator’s voice) on the same footing reflected for me the force of
flight and mercy, and the precious, imaginative, yet realistic gaze of
black people who (at one time, anyway) did not anoint what or whom
it mythologized. The “song” itself contains this unblinking evaluation
of the miraculous and heroic flight of the legendary Solomon, an
unblinking gaze that is lurking in the tender but amused choralcommunity response to the agent’s flight. Sotto (but not completely)
is my own giggle (in Afro-American terms) of the proto-myth of the
journey to manhood. Whenever characters are cloaked in Western
fable, they are in deep trouble, but the African myth is also
contaminated. Unprogressive, unreconstructed, self-born Pilate is
unimpressed by Solomon’s flight and knocks Milkman down when,
made new by his appropriation of his own family’s fable, he returns
to educate her with it. Upon hearing all he has to say, her only
interest is filial. “Papa?…I’ve been carryin’ Papa?” And her longing to
hear the song, finally, is a longing for balm to die by, not a
submissive obedience to history—anybody’s.

The opening sentence of Tar Baby, “He believed he was safe,” is
the second version of itself. The first, “He thought he was safe,” was
discarded because “thought” did not contain the doubt I wanted to
plant in the reader’s mind about whether or not he really was—safe.
“Thought” came to me at once because it was the verb my parents
and grandparents used when describing what they had dreamed the
night before. Not “I dreamt” or “It seemed” or even “I saw or did”
this or that—but “I thought.” It gave the dream narrative distance (a
dream is not “real”) and power (the control implied in “thinking”
rather than “dreaming”). But to use “thought” seemed to undercut
the faith of the character and the distrust I wanted to suggest to the
reader. “Believe” was chosen to do the work properly. And the person
who does the believing is, in a way, about to enter a dream world,
and convinces himself, eventually, that he is in control of it. He
believed; was convinced. And although the word suggests his
conviction, it does not reassure the reader. If I had wanted the reader
to trust this person’s point of view I would have written “He was
safe.” Or, “Finally, he was safe.” The unease about this view of safety
is important because safety itself is the desire of each person in the
novel. Locating it, creating it, losing it.
You may recall that I was interested in working out the mystery of
a piece of lore, a folktale, which is also about safety and danger and
the skills needed to secure the one and recognize and avoid the other.
I was not, of course, interested in retelling the tale; I suppose that is
an idea to pursue, but it is certainly not interesting enough to engage
me for four years. I have said, elsewhere, that the exploration of the
Tar Baby tale was like stroking a pet to see what the anatomy was
like but not to disturb or distort its mystery. Folklore may have
begun as allegory for natural or social phenomena; it may have been
employed as a retreat from contemporary issues in art; but folklore
can also contain myths that reactivate themselves endlessly through
providers—the people who repeat, reshape, reconstitute, and
reinterpret them. The Tar Baby tale seemed to me to be about masks.
Not masks as covering what is to be hidden, but how masks come to
life, take life over, exercise the tensions between themselves and

what they cover. For Son, the most effective mask is none. For the
others the construction is careful and delicately borne, but the masks
they make have a life of their own and collide with those they come
in contact with. The texture of the novel seemed to want leanness,
architecture that was worn and ancient like a piece of mask
sculpture: exaggerated, breathing, just athwart the representational
life it displaced. Thus, the first and last sentences had to match, as
the exterior planes match the interior, concave ones inside the mask.
Therefore “He believed he was safe” would be the twin of “Licketysplit. Lickety-split. Lickety-lickety-lickety-split.” This close is (1) the
last sentence of the folktale, (2) the action of the character, (3) the
indeterminate ending that follows from the untrustworthy
beginning, (4) the complimentary meter of its twin sister (u u / u u /
with u u u / u u u /), and (5) the wide and marvelous space between
the contradiction of those two images: from a dream of safety to the
sound of running feet. The whole mediated world in between. This
masked and unmasked; enchanted, disenchanted; wounded and
wounding world is played out on and by the varieties of
interpretation (Western and Afro-American) the Tar Baby myth has
been (and continues to be) subjected to. Winging one’s way through
the vise and expulsion of history becomes possible in creative
encounters with that history. Nothing, in those encounters, is safe, or
should be. Safety is the fetus of power as well as protection from it, as
the uses to which masks and myths are put in Afro-American culture
remind us.
“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.”
In beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out
numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate
from the street or even the city; to name it the way “Sweet Home”
was named; the way plantations were named, but not with nouns or
“proper” names—with numbers instead because numbers have no
adjectives, no posture of coziness or grandeur or the haughty
yearning of arrivistes and estate builders for the parallel
beautifications of the nation they left behind, laying claim to instant
history and legend. Numbers here constitute an address, a thrilling

enough prospect for slaves who had owned nothing, least of all an
address. And although the numbers, unlike words, can have no
modifiers, I give these an adjective—“spiteful” (there are two other
modifiers of 124). The address is therefore personalized, but
personalized by its own activity, not the pasted on desire for
personality.
Also there is something about numerals that makes them spoken,
heard, in this context, because one expects words to read in a book,
not numbers to say, or hear. And the sound of the novel, sometimes
cacophonous, sometimes harmonious, must be an inner-ear sound or
a sound just beyond hearing, infusing the text with a musical
emphasis that words can do sometimes even better than music can.
Thus the second sentence is not one: it is a phrase that properly,
grammatically, belongs as a dependent clause with the first. Had I
done that, however (“124 was spiteful, full of a baby’s venom,” or
“124 was full of a baby’s venom”), I could not have had the accent on
“full” (/ u u / u / u pause u u u u / u).
Whatever the risks of confronting the reader with what must be
immediately incomprehensible in that simple, declarative
authoritative sentence, the risk of unsettling him or her, I
determined to take. Because the in medias res opening that I am so
committed to is here excessively demanding. It is abrupt, and should
appear so. No native informant here. The reader is snatched, yanked,
thrown into an environment completely foreign, and I want it as the
first stroke of the shared experience that might be possible between
the reader and the novel’s population. Snatched just as the slaves
were from one place to another, from any place to another, without
preparation and without defense. No lobby, no door, no entrance—a
gangplank, perhaps (but a very short one). And the house into which
this snatching—this kidnapping—propels one changes from spiteful
to loud to quiet, as the sounds in the body of the ship itself may have
changed. A few words have to be read before it is clear that “124”
refers to a house (in most of the early drafts, “The women in the
house knew it” was simply “The women knew it”; “house” was not
mentioned for seventeen lines), and a few more have to be read to

discover why it is spiteful, or rather the source of the spite. By then it
is clear, if not at once, that something is beyond control, but is not
beyond understanding since it is not beyond accommodation by both
the “women” and the “children.” The fully realized presence of the
haunting is both a major incumbent of the narrative and sleight of
hand. One of its purposes is to keep the reader preoccupied with the
nature of the incredible spirit world while being supplied a controlled
diet of the incredible political world.
The subliminal, the underground life of a novel is the area most
likely to link arms with the reader and facilitate making it one’s own.
Because one must, to get from the first sentence to the next, and the
next and the next. The friendly observation post I was content to
build and man in Sula (with the stranger in the midst), or the downhome journalism of Song of Solomon, or the calculated mistrust of
the point of view in Tar Baby would not serve here. Here I wanted
the compelling confusion of being there as they (the characters) are;
suddenly, without comfort or succor from the “author,” with only
imagination, intelligence, and necessity available for the journey. The
painterly language of Song of Solomon was not useful to me in
Beloved. There is practically no color whatsoever in its pages, and
when there is, it is so stark and remarked upon, it is virtually raw.
Color seen for the first time, without its history. No built architecture
as in Tar Baby; no play with Western chronology as in Sula; no
exchange between book life and “real” life discourse with printed text
units rubbing up against seasonal black childtime units as in The
Bluest Eye. No compound of houses, no neighborhood, no sculpture,
no paint, no time, especially no time because memory, prehistoric
memory, has no time. There is just a little music, each other, and the
urgency of what is at stake. Which is all they had. For that work, the
work of language is to get out of the way.
I hope you understand that in this explication of how I practice
language is a search for and deliberate posture of vulnerability to
those aspects of Afro-American culture that can inform and position
my work. I sometimes know when the work works, when nommo has
effectively summoned, by reading and listening to those who have

entered the text. I learn nothing from those who resist it, except, of
course, the sometimes fascinating display of their struggle. My
expectations of and my gratitude to the critics who enter, are great.
To those who talk about how as well as what; who identify the
workings as well as the work; for whom the study of Afro-American
literature is neither a crash course in neighborliness and tolerance,
nor an infant to be carried, instructed, or chastised or even whipped
like a child, but the serious study of art forms that have much work
to do, and which are already legitimatized by their own cultural
sources and predecessors—in or out of the canon—I owe much.
For an author, regarding canons, it is very simple: in fifty, a
hundred, or more years his or her work may be relished for its beauty
or its insight or its power, or it may be condemned for its
vacuousness and pretension—and junked. Or in fifty or a hundred
years the critic (as canon builder) may be applauded for his or her
intelligent scholarship and powers of critical inquiry. Or laughed at
for ignorance and shabbily disguised assertions of power—and
junked. It’s possible that the reputations of both will thrive, or that
both will decay. In any case, as far as the future is concerned, when
one writes, as critic or as author, all necks are on the line.

NOTES
1. See “Race,” Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1986).
2. Among many examples, They Came Before Columbus, The African Presence in
Ancient America by Ivan Van Sertima (New York: Random House, 1976), xvi–xvii.
3. Tzvetan Todorov, “ ‘Race,’ Writing, and Culture,” translated by Loulou Mack, in Gates,
“Race,” Writing, and Difference, 370–80.
4. Terrence Rafferty, “Articles of Faith,” New Yorker, May 16, 1988, 110–18.
5. Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1,
The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1987), 2.
6. Ibid., 310.
7. Ibid., 337.

8. See Michael Paul Rogin, Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman
Melville (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 15.
9. Ibid., 107 and 142.
10. Ibid., 112.
* Author’s note: Older America is not always distinguishable from its infancy. We may
pardon Edgar Allan Poe in 1843 but it should have occurred to Kenneth Lynn in 1986 that
some young Native American might read his Hemingway biography and see herself
described as a “squaw” by this respected scholar, and that some young men might shudder
reading the words “buck” and “half-breed” so casually included in his scholarly
speculations.

Academic Whispers

A

T SOME TIME in the late eighties, I began to feel an
uneasiness about what seemed to me a whispered conversation
taking place within the study of African American literature, between
students and masters of its scholarship; it appeared to be a private
agreement about the true purpose of the discourse. My unease about
this sotto dialogue was exacerbated by another blatant one that
attacked and suborned the legitimacy of African American literature
as a field of study. Both dialogues—the covert one and the blatant
one—drove the debates on canon formation.
Back in the eighties I was not eager to think through my anxiety
about the shape the debate was taking—the politics of identity versus
the politics of identitylessness, sometimes known as “universality”—
because I was not willing to be distracted into that old and sad
routine that African American artists and scholars so often believe
themselves forced to undertake: the routine of defending, forever
defending, their right to exist. It was such a tedious battle, so
unoriginal, so enervating it left no time and no strength for the real
work of artists and scholars, which is to refine its own creation and
go about their own business. I did not want to watch the billow of
another toreador’s red cape designed to provoke and thereby trick a
force from knowing its own power. I chose rather to focus on how to
create nonracist, yet race-specific literature within an already raceinflected language for readers who have been forced to deal with the
assumptions of racial hierarchy. I chose to write as though there was
nothing to prove or disprove, as though an unraced world already
existed. Not to transcend race, or to aspire to some fraudulent
“universalism”—a code word that had come to mean “nonblack”—but

to claim the liberty of my own imagination. For I have never lived,
nor has anyone, in a world in which race did not matter. Such a
world, a world free of racial hierarchy, is usually imagined or
described as dreamscape, Edenesque, utopian—so remote are the
possibilities of its achievement. In hopeful language it has been
posited as ideal, a condition possible only if accompanied by the
Messiah or located in a protected preserve, rather like a wilderness
park, or in the forests of Faulkner’s imagination, where hunting
prowess trumps race and class. As an already and always raced
writer I knew that I would not, could not, reproduce the master’s
voice along with its assumptions of the all-knowing law of the white
father. I wanted to figure out how to manipulate, mutate, and control
imagistic, metaphoric language (and its syntax) in order to produce
something that could be called literature that is free of the
imaginative restraints that the racially inflected language at my
disposal imposes on me. I don’t mean, of course, simply the
avoidance of racial slurs, name-calling, or stereotyping. I mean first
to recognize these linguistic strategies, then either to employ or
deploy them to achieve a counter effect; to deactivate their lazy,
unearned power, to summon other oppositional powers, and liberate
what I am able to invent, record, describe, and transform from the
straitjacket a racialized society can and does buckle us into. I insisted
on writing outside the white gaze, not against it but in a space where
I could postulate the humanity writers were always being asked to
enunciate. Writing of, about, and within a world committed to racial
dominances without employing the linguistic strategies that
supported it seemed to me the most urgent, fruitful, challenging
work a writer could take on. As I mentioned earlier, imagining a
world minus racial dominance or hierarchy appears in literature as
an impossible Eden or unreachable utopia, but it has also been
described as “barbarism,” as “the end of history,” “futureless,” or
doomed to a future of rubbish and declared an already damaged,
valueless experience. In other words catastrophe. A naïve, corrupt
Jonestown culminating in ignorance, murder, insanity.

Perhaps I was nursing an incipient paranoia, the origin of which I
traced to the unusually large number of inquiries to speak to
university populations on the issue of racism, and even to address
campuses on which some specific and especially craven racial
incidents had taken place. I was not simply annoyed by the
assumptions of these requests, I was angered to be asked to clarify an
area (one of many) about which I know nothing. Of course, I have
been a victim of such treatment, but why, I wondered, would
anybody ask the victim to explain his torturer? Isn’t such insight best
sought from those familiar with its rationale? (Does a rape victim
know best how to calm a rapist?) It seemed to me the problem of
racism ought to be addressed first by those who know its ins and outs
from the privileged seat of its origin. Being asked to spend my time
that way (to heal and to be sick) may have disturbed me unduly, but
it connected somehow to my perception that the study of African
American literature had become, in several quarters (if high school
and certain college curricula, syllabi, anthologies, prefaces,
headnotes, afterwords, and forewords were an indication) an
exercise in the achievement of neighborliness or tolerance through
the study of its special kind of pathology, in which the survivor is
assumed to be both patient and physician. And this was where the
whispered discourse took place.
With the best intentions in the world, the encounter between
African American art and students of literature had developed these
subtexts (The Bluest Eye, read in elementary schools, was a case in
point, as was its banning). And it was easy to see how two messages
—African American art as explications of pathology; African
American art as restorative balms to rashes of racism—had been
formulated and why. First, the history of black people in the United
States has been a brutal one, and its consequences still shake and
inform contemporary life. Examining and acknowledging that
brutality can and does lend itself to the interpretation of black
presence in that history as our pathology and only ours; it can and
did lead to the notion that, as a people, we are a problem (the “negro
problem” that every black writer from Richard Wright to Ralph

Ellison to James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston had to comment on
—not to mention the verification of literacy that Phillis Wheatley and
the authors of slave narratives were required to provide) and it was
our job to solve ourselves.
Countering that interpretation of African American studies as
vaccination against incipient white racism is another one: African
American studies as a field naturally immune from racism. That
black life was a cornucopia of treasures, contributions, and
constructive indigenous mechanisms beneficial to its community and
that these social mechanisms operated as an innocent alternative to
the race-bound society surrounding it. It is an interpretation that
captures the sense that most African Americans have, that their real
life, their nurturing life, their interior life is someplace else—outside
its deforming history. And that obstacle-ridden as that life may be, it
was clearly one they would choose, if the choice were presented to
them. That while many (perhaps even most) African Americans
valued the perceived privilege and license of white Americans, very
few wanted to trade places if it meant becoming them.
Yet articulating this valued and revered difference seldom failed to
come across as anything but self-serving, defensive patterns of
denial: the “prideful” rhetoric typical of the weakened. Taking the
position that history is not the determining factor, that stability,
beauty, creativity, brilliance are the real characteristics of black life,
seemed to weight (and in some circumstances, sully) the study of
black culture with an ennobling program, an agenda, that broke its
back in its attempt to enforce it.
These postures: (1) African American culture as examination and
diagnoses of the patient, (2) African American culture as inoculation
against intolerance, and (3) African American culture as an insistent
celebration and recognition of cultural health and beauty (which
could, by association or osmosis, heal others) clashed, and in the
debris that resulted the literature itself was often buried. It appeared
to me, as a writer participating in and inhabiting the world of that
literature, that the work itself had become another kind of houseboy,

opening doors for guests to enter a party to which it had not been
invited.
Well, that was what was on my mind in the late eighties. Yet I
determined not to be distracted from creative work into defense
work and remained silent on the employment of my work as social
healer. But there was still another problem. I understood and indeed
preferred the role of writer committed to the work and not its
explication. I believed anything and everything I had to say on the
subject of African American literature was in the books I had written.
Participating in their critique was antithetical to what I wanted my
work to do, which was to arrive without tags, labels, or final
meanings identified by me and pinned to its lapel. I wanted it owned
by whomever wanted to take possession of it. Requests by diligent,
earnest scholars for a conversation or interview to accompany their
research seemed inappropriate, somehow, a kind of journalistic glue
to hold together conclusions already drawn from primary and
secondary sources. In addition, nobody was really interested in my
thoughts about my books. They were, naturally and correctly, more
interested in their own thoughts about them. I was just there in the
conversation to provide confirmation or, in some cases, to be wrong,
to be unable to understand what I had actually written. It was a long
time, I confess, before I took these interviews seriously, because I
associated them, unfairly, with journalism, not scholarship.
Finally I found myself forced to step up to the problem. My intense
interest in the development of African American literary criticism
and pedagogy and my refusal to participate in that criticism except as
amicus curiae were incompatible once I understood that at the heart
of my problem was a question at the heart of my work: that
informing all of these kinds of approaches to the study of African
American culture (pathology, tolerance, celebrated difference, erased
difference; the writer as his or her best explicator, worse explicator,
or friend of the court—or in my case an idle mixture) was the
question, What constitutes African American literature? Is it the
writing of Americans who “happen” to be Afro? Has it rather some
cultural characteristics that surface, inform, and would surface and

inform even if the literature had been shaped in Mexico City,
London, Istanbul? Is there a difference? And if so, is the difference
different from all other differences?
It does not “go without saying” that a work written by an African
American is automatically subsumed by an enforcing black presence.
There is a clear flight from blackness in a great deal of African
American literature. In some there is an antagonistic duel with
blackness. And in other cases, as they say, you’d never know. If I
were to participate in the critical discourse, I would need to clarify
the question of what, other than melanin and subject matter, made
me an African American writer. I didn’t expect to arrive at some
quintessential moment when the search was ended, even if that were
possible. But I did want to be counted among those for whom the
quest was seriously taken and seriously pursued. Thus I entered the
debate not as an artist only nor as an academic only, but as both. I
believed that dual position could help expand and deepen the
arguments about the validity, necessity, and direction of African
American scholarship. Already there was significant work
recontextualizing such studies, repositioning their impact in
humanistic disciplines. But my interest turned from examining what
black intellectuals and artists were up to, to something else. I was
unhappy with the possibility of resegregation in African American
studies—of driving the scholarship into protected turf where its
uniqueness, its exceptionalism, its radical or even traditional
characteristics could be interrogated, but where its powerful
singularity could render it sui generis: a thing apart, in a class by
itself. My thoughts were that African American studies could, but
need not, confine itself to itself because the project was like the socalled race problem itself. It was not a neighborhood thriving or
struggling at the edge of town, at the edge of campuses, at the outer
rim of intellectual thought, nor was it an exotic, anthropologically
interesting minority pulsing at the extremities of the body politic. It
was and is at the heart of the heart of the nation. No policy decision
could be understood without the black topic at its center, even or
especially when unmentioned. Not housing, not education, the

military, economy, voting, citizenship, prisons, loan practices, health
care—name it, the real subject was what to do with black people,
which became a substitute term for poor people. Very few disciplines
escape the impact of racial constructs. Law, science, theology,
medicine, medical ethics, psychiatry, anthropology, history were all
implicated. Furthermore, was there any public discourse in which a
reference to black people did not exist? As I wrote in Playing in the
Dark, “It exists in every one of this nation’s mightiest struggles.”
From the framing of the Constitution, to the Electoral College, “the
battle over enfranchising unpropertied citizens, women, the
illiterate…is there in the construction of a free and public school
system; the balancing of representation in legislative bodies;
jurisprudence and legal definitions of justice; it is there in…the
memoranda of banking houses; the concept of manifest destiny and
the driving narrative of the Americanization of every immigrant who
came ashore.” I was convinced there was no race card—there was
simply a deck, each one operating on a terrain much wider than
previously thought, echoing its influence in the national culture. The
consequences of this inquiry was a series of twelve lectures, three of
which became the book Playing in the Dark. In it I tried to articulate
the breadth of the project and its complexity. African American
studies could interrogate a large area of the cultural production,
West and East, and in the process enliven and expand a wide variety
of disciplines. That is, after all, the goal of education: access to more
knowledge. There may come a time when we—students, faculty,
administrators, artists, and parents—will have to fight hard for
education, fight hard for uncorrupted science (not the ideological or
racist science); for sound social history, apolitical anthropology (not
strategies of control); for the integrity of art (not its celebrity).
There may indeed come a time when universities may have to fight
for the privilege of intellectual freedom.

Gertrude Stein and the Difference
She Makes

I

HAVE READ somewhere that there are two responses to chaos:
naming and violence. The naming is accomplished effortlessly when
there is a so-called unnamed, or stripped-of-names population or
geography available for the process. Otherwise one has to be content
with forcible renaming. Violence is understood as an inevitable
response to chaos—the untamed, the wild, the savage—as well as a
beneficial one. When one conquers a land the execution of the
conquest, indeed its point, is to control it by reshaping, moving,
cutting it down or through. And that is understood to be the
obligation of industrial and/or cultural progress. This latter
encounter with chaos, unfortunately, is not limited to land, borders,
natural resources. In order to effect the industrial progress it is also
necessary to do violence to the people who inhabit the land—for they
will resist and render themselves anarchic, part of the chaos, and in
certain cases the control has included introducing new and
destructive forms of hierarchy, when successful, and attempts at
genocide when not.
There is a third response to chaos, which I have not read about,
which is stillness. Stillness is what lies in awe, in meditation; stillness
also lies in passivity and dumbfoundedness. It may be that the early
Americans contemplated all three: naming, violence, and stillness.
Certainly this latter surfaces (or seems to) in Emerson, Thoreau, and
the observer quality of Hawthorne. It is traceable in the Puritan
ethos as well. But unlike the indigenous population of America, and
unlike the bulk of the populations brought to America from Africa,
the American stillness was braced with, even mitigated by,

pragmatism. There was always an aspect of preparing for heirs, a
distant future unresponsive to the past, and the virtue of wealth as
God’s bounty—which it was a sin not to accumulate. This highly
materialistic “stillness” as practiced by the clerical/religious
immigrants was in marked contrast to the “take only what you need
and leave the land as you found it” philosophy of preindustrial
societies. One of the more interesting matters in the Christian
formation of public and private responsibility is the negotiation
between thrift and awe; religious solace and natural exploitation;
physical repression and spiritual bounty; the sacred and the profane.
That negotiation persists in the tension among these three responses
to chaos: naming, violence, and stillness. Although the majority of
settlers in America were by no means the panicked religionists or the
kind but gloomy Plymouth Rock crowd of national reverence,
convenient commodification, and nostalgic delusion. I believe some
16 percent were, but that leaves 84 percent “other,” as they say on
censorship forms. Yet even among that 16 percent it did not take long
for that already ambivalent idea and complicitous stillness to
dissipate in the wake of industrialization. With the abundant supply
of free labor in the form of slaves, indentured servants, convicts, and
term debtors, and of cheap labor in the form of poor immigrants
fleeing from indebtedness, starvation, and death. Even as Twain
privileged rural and village life, language, and humor, even as he
endowed the Mississippi and the lanes and roads of nineteenthcentury America with pastoral yearning, he invested in profit-making
schemes himself, disastrously as it turned out, and clearly urged and
enjoyed the search for gold and the cleverness of money-making
schemes in his characters. And it was our retiring, transcendentalist
scholar Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote of the California gold rush
that “it did not matter what immoral means were used: the function
of the gold rush was to hasten the settlement and civilizing of the
West.” The underscoring of civilizing is mine.
Melville, of course, was preoccupied with the counterclaims of a
blossoming capitalism as it mirrored or impaled itself upon the force
of nature. And along with much else, Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, White-

Jacket, and “Benito Cereno” address the impact of economic
pressure on the “innocent,” the naïf laborer, and his “captain.” All
within the context of that two-thirds of the globe that represents
chaos: the sea, and which seems to illustrate most clearly all three
responses: naming (charting, mapping, describing), violence
(conquest, whaling, slave ship, the naval fleet, etc.), and stillness
(soul searching, idle watches aboard ships that produce the most
self-reflective passages). Poe responded to chaos with violence and
naming. Violence in his attraction to the damned, the dying, the
murderer’s mind. Naming in his insistent “scientific” footnotes,
editorializing, indexing of historical and geographical data. But there
was an additional element available to these writers, indeed to all
Americans, for the contemplation of chaos. Nature, the “virgin”
West, space, the proximity of death—all these mattered. Yet it was
the availability of a domestic chaos, an invented disorder, a
presumed uncivilized, savage, eternal and timeless “Other” that gives
American history its peculiar and special formulation. This “Other,”
as we have suggested, was the Africanistic presence. American
colonialists and their heirs could and did respond to this serviceable,
controllable “chaos” by naming, violence, and, very late in the day,
tentatively, carefully, hesitantly, a measure of pragmatic stillness.
Again it is to the literature, the writers that we turn for evidence and
figurations of this meditation on dominance. There one sees stillness
(in Melville, for example) in the refusal to name in order to
contemplate the mystery, the message of chaos’s own inscription. In
the refusal to do violence to, the refusal to conquer, to exploit. But to
confront, to enter, to discover, as it were, of what this presence was
or could be made.
It is in this context that I wish to read Gertrude Stein: her
dedicated investigation of the interior life of this Other, and the
problems of nonintervention that it presented and fell victim to. The
“modernism” of which Stein is generally understood to be precursor
has many forms: if we consider modernism to have as its single most
consistent characteristic the merging of forms, the raveling away of
borders, of frontierlessness, the mixing of media, the blending of

genres, the redefinition of gender, of traditional roles, the
appropriation of various and formerly separate disciplines in the
service of new or conventional ones, the combination of historical
periods and styles in art—then we can trace the particular ways in
which American literature made that journey. In America, the first
mark and fearful sign of merging, of mixing and the dissolution of
what was held to be “natural” borders, was racial merging. It was the
best represented, most alarming, most legislated against, and most
desired foray into forbidden, unknown, dangerous territory, for it
represented the slide into darkness, the outlawed and illicit; the
provocative, shocking break with the familiar.
In terms of literary embraces of modernism, as is also true of the
visual-arts move toward modernism, the imaginative terrain upon
which this journey took place was and is in a very large measure the
presence of the racial “Other.” Explicit or implicit, this presence
informs in significant, compelling, and inescapable ways the shape of
American literature. Ready to hand for the literary imagination it
constituted both a visible and invisible mediating force. So that even,
and especially, when American texts are not “about” Africanistic
presences, the shadow hovers there, in implication, in sign, in line of
demarcation. It is no accident and no mistake that immigrant
populations understood their “Americanness” as an opposition to the
resident black population—and still do. In fact race has become so
metaphorical, and as a metaphor so much more necessary to
Americanness, it rivals the old pseudoscientific and class-informed
racialism we are familiar with. As a metaphor, this Africanistic
presence may be something the United States can do without. For in
this part of the twentieth century, if Americans are to be different, if
they are to be Americans in some way that Canadians are not, that
Latin Americans are not, that Britons are not, then they must be
white Americans, and that distinction depends on a constantly
reliable darkness. Deep within the word “American” is its association
with race. (One notes that to identify someone as a South African is
to say very little; we need the adjective “white” South African or
“black” South African. In the States it is quite the opposite:

“American” means white, and Africanistic peoples struggle to make
the term applicable to themselves with hyphens and ethnicity.) The
Americans did not have a profligate, predatory nobility from which
to wrest its identity while coveting its license. They seemed to have
merged both the wrench and the envy in their self-conscious and
self-reflexive contemplation of mythological Africanism.
For the intellectual and imaginative adventure of writers who have
come to signify “modern” in literature, this convenient Africanist
Other was body, mind, chaos, kindness and love, the absence of
restraint, the presence of restraint, the contemplation of freedom,
the problem of aggression, the exploration of ethics and morality, the
obligations of the social contract, the cross of religion, and the
ramifications of power. The authors, American, who escape this
influence are the ones who left the country—but not all of them.
Some astute critical observers believe that individualism American
style precluded the possibility of, any room for, an “Other” and that,
in the case of sexism, it was an erasure of the other as significant, as
a nonperson. I wonder whether it is quite the contrary; that
individualism emanates from the positioning of a safely bound self,
out there. That there could be no inside, no stable, durable,
individual self without the careful plotting and fabrication of an
extrinsic gender, and likewise, an extrinsic, external shadow. Both
are connected, but only at the outer limits of the self, the body. That
this was true of white males should be clear. And since the definition
of an American is a white male who is different, and a good or
successful American is a white male who is different and powerful,
what makes the whole contraption work is blackness, femaleness,
disfamiliarizing strategies, and oppression. Bernard Bailyn provides
the most succinct and fascinating portrait of this classic selfperpetuating and self-defining process. Among the immigrants and
settlers he traces in his extraordinary book Voyagers to the West is a
well-documented personage named William Dunbar.
The striking conclusion of this cameo is that there are four
desirable consequences to the successful formation of this particular
American: autonomy, authority, newness and difference, and

absolute power. These benefits translate, in the nineteenth and
twentieth century, into individualism, difference, and the wielding of
power. Unsurprisingly, they are also the major characteristics of
American literature. Newness and difference; individualist;
heroically powerful. These terms translate, at least until World War
II, as follows. Nineteenth-century “newness” becomes twentiethcentury “innocence.” “Difference” becomes the hallmark of the
modern. “Individualism,” the cult of the Lone Ranger, is fused with a
solitary, alienated malcontent (who is nevertheless still innocent)—
and of course there is the interesting digression, which we won’t
enter into here, of Tonto. My puzzlement used to be why is the Lone
Ranger called “lone” if he is always with Tonto? Now, I see that given
the racial and metaphorical nature of the relationship, he is able to
be understood as “alone” precisely because of Tonto. Without him he
would be, I suppose, simply “Ranger.” The heroically powerful gives
way, after the war, to the problems of using and abusing power. Each
of these characteristics, I think, is informed by a complex awareness
and employment of a constituted Africanism as the trained ground
and stadia for its identity. What, one wonders, are Americans always
being insistently of? What is the relationship of the modern to the
actively creative presence of African Americans? (It has been pointed
out to me, that whenever the film industry wishes to and does
manifest some brand-new technology or scope it employs
Africanistic characters, narrative, or idiom. The first full-scale
speaking film was The Jazz Singer; the first box-office hit was Birth
of a Nation; the first situation comedy on television was Amos ’n’
Andy; and, although this does not quite fit, but it almost does, the
first documentary was Nanook of the North. And there is probably
no contest from any quarter that the informing scores of “modern”
filmmakers have been what we call in the States “black music.”) Back
to the matter at hand, the final question is what is the individual
alienated from, if not his “white” self in an abiding but somehow
fraudulently maintained articulated pluralism? The final question
focuses on the holding, withholding, and distributing of power.

I mentioned Gertrude Stein as a paradigm or precursor of
modernism. Now I would like to look at one of her most admired
works to illustrate what I take to be a fascinating display of literary
Americanism, to try to establish its connection to her innovations,
her newness, her representations of individuality, her perceptions of
sexual power, and the privileges emanating from class and race.
The three lives Gertrude Stein renders in her novel of that name
are decidedly unequal. Not only in treatment, as I hope to
demonstrate, but also in various other ways. Of the three women that
constitute this work (a work of three stories put together to make a
novel or novella), one covers seventy-one pages, another requires
forty pages, and another, the central and middle narrative, takes up
twice the length of one and almost four times the space of the other.
This unequal distribution of space, each of which focuses on one
woman, is marked by a further differing inequality. The first part is
called “The Good Anna,” the last part is called “The Gentle Lena.”
Only the central, centered, and longest part has no adjective; it is
called “Melanctha.” Simply. As you will remember, Melanctha is a
black woman (or as Miss Stein identifies her, a Negro). Sandwiched
in between the two others, she appears framed, bounded by the
others as though to foreground and underscore her difference while
keeping it firmly under control. Before I get into the remarkable
differences between Melanctha and the two women who stand to her
right and to her left, I should perhaps identify the similarities—for
there are some, although they seem to throw further into relief
Melanctha’s difference, and the difference Stein makes of her. All
three women constituting this text are servants; all die in the end; all
are mistreated in some fashion by men or the consequences of maledominated society. All are at the line between abject poverty and
deserving poverty. And although all were born in some country, the
similarities end precisely at this point. The two white women have a
nationality: German, first, and then, as immigrants, they can assume
the category German American if they choose. Only Melanctha was
born in the United States, and only Melanctha is given no national
identification. She is a Negro, and therefore even in 1909, forty years

after the proclamation freed all slaves, without a land, without a
citizenship designation. She is never described as an American and
certainly never labeled one by the narrator.
For Miss Stein, Melanctha is a special kind of Negro. An acceptable
one, for she has light skin, and the point has power when we note
that her section opens with the comparison between Melanctha and
her very close friend, Rose, who is described repeatedly (insistently)
as very black: “sullen, childish, cowardly, black Rosie grumbled and
fussed and howled and made herself to be an abomination and like a
simple beast.” Within this collection of adjectives are all of the
fetishes, forms of metonymic reduction, collapse of persons into
animals to foreclose dialogue and identification and economical
stereotyping that is pervasive in the implications, if not the explicit
language, of most pre-1980 fictional descriptions of Africanistic
characters. “Rose Johnson was a real black, tall, well built, sullen,
stupid, childlike, good looking negress.” “Rose Johnson was a real
black negress but she had been brought up quite like their own child
by white folks” (italics mine). We note at once that it is not necessary
for Stein to describe or identify these white folks, to say whether they
were good, or well educated, or poor, or stupid, or mean. It is enough
apparently that they were white, the assumption being that whatever
kind of white people they were, they were that, and therefore the
instruction given to Rose would place her in a privileged position, a
fact that Rose herself not only acknowledges but is grateful for.
Melanctha, on the other hand, being light skinned, is described as
“patient, submissive, soothing, and untiring.” She is also a “graceful,
pale yellow, intelligent negress” who has “not been raised like Rose
by white folks but then she had been half made with real white
blood” (italics mine). The point is redundantly clear. While Rose can
claim the good fortune of being reared by white people, Melanctha
has the higher claim, the blood claim. There is some carelessness
here, for we are later made to understand that Melanctha’s father
was “very black” and “brutal” and her mother was a “sweet appearing
and dignified and pleasant, pale yellow, colored woman.” This does
not suggest the “half-white” label. Although Stein calls Melanctha a

“subtle, intelligent, attractive, half white girl,” according to the racial
genetics of the day, a half-white person would have to have one white
parent. I think this latter possibility would offer too much complexity
for the author; she would have had to explain how the white parent
(in this case the mother, since the father is pointedly black)
happened to get together with the black parent, and it is perhaps
sufficient that Melanctha’s white lover is later on examined as pivotal
to her destruction without having to go into the ramifications of
another mixed-blood relationship.
I am not repeating these routine racial lapses and linguistic
shortcuts aimlessly, but to stress the fact that the recourse Stein has
to them, in order to draw certain conclusions, is so necessary either
she is willing to make glaring errors in the finer points of racialism
and to risk losing the reader’s trust or she loses control of her
wayward and insubordinate text. For example: Rose Johnson is
repeatedly called childlike and immoral. But she is the only one of
Melanctha’s friends who sustains adult responsibility—a marriage, a
house, some generosity. Stein asserts Rose’s stupidity, but fails to
dramatize it. We find no evidence whatsoever of her being stupid.
And in spite of Melanctha’s revered white blood, she spends most of
her time in the streets, along the docks, and railroad yards. One has
to question the logic of this blood fetish: perhaps it is her “white”
blood rather than her black that encourages this immorality that
Stein does not remark upon.
Equally interesting is the role of African American men in
Melanctha’s story. That is, the place of fathers, husbands, friends of
fathers, as well as the beau in Melanctha’s life. To Stein’s credit,
there is equal distribution of virtue and malice among the white and
black men; to her discredit, she relies heavily on national
stereotyping for them all: Irish prejudices, German ones, and, as is
clear from the obsessive blood fetish mentioned earlier, conventional
ones. Such pseudoscience ought to be surprising from one who
attended medical school for a couple of years. In any case, she
abandons all responsibility for particularizing her Africanistic
characters by “explaining” and “justifying” their behavior with the

easy tools of metonymic reduction that skin color provides, and the
economy of stereotype that is companion to it. Again, however, this
strategy forces Stein into contradictions so profound, the trust of the
reader dissipates altogether. For example, Melanctha’s father is
repeatedly described as “brutal and rough” to his daughter, and we
are told that he is first a visitor to the household on an irregular
basis, and then absents himself from them and the novel altogether.
The evidence presented to us for his brutality and roughness is that
he is “black” and “virile.” When we look to see what this black, virile,
brutal, and rough man is capable of we see that he protects his
daughter from what he believed were advances made to her from a
male friend and gets into a fight because of this protection. It is
perhaps this contradiction that conveniently expels him from the
text. Had he stayed, Melanctha would have had a fierce
protector/savior and not gotten into such deep trouble with men.
Most notably, however, are not the routine techniques of making
the Africanist characters different as blacks, but what I believe is the
reason for their inclusion in the first place, for the Melanctha section
services Stein in a very specific way. The Africanism of that section
becomes a means by which Stein can step safely into forbidden
territory, articulate the illegal, the anarchic, ruminate upon the
relations among women with and without men. Of all three of the
women in the novel, only with Melanctha are sexual education and
sexual relations central to the narrative and the fate of the
characters. It may not have been thinkable, even for Gertrude Stein,
to discuss, in 1909, explicit knowledge of carnal activities with white
women—even if they were of a lower class. If we compare the
sensuality/sexuality of Anna and Lena, we see that their lives are
different from Melanctha’s; they are chaste; their marriages
arranged; their submission to the demands of patriarchy complete. It
seems clear that, like other American writers, especially those we
associate with modernism, Stein felt free to experiment with
sexuality in narrative, felt the subject palatable if the object upon
which these experiments are carried out is Africanistic. Like the
French doctor who was able to develop the paradigm for his

gynecological instruments after sustained experiments with his black
servant woman, Gertrude Stein is comfortable advancing her
“newness,” safe in her choice of forbidden territory because she is
operating on a body that appears to be offered up to her without
protest, without restraint. Wholly available for the articulation of the
illegal, the illicit, the dangerous, the new. Like the white entertainers
who were able to garner huge audiences when, in blackface, they
spoke through the Africanistic persona (as), they could say the
unspeakable, the forthrightly sexual, the subversively political.
What are some of these new and illicit topics?
There are at least three: (1) the intricate bonding of women not for
protection but for the resources of knowledge they provide; (2) the
triangular formation of sexuality, freedom, and knowledge as
principle to a modern woman; and (3) the dependency of the
construction of an American on an Africanistic presence. There is a
genuine, even desperate love between Melanctha and Jane and
Melanctha and Rose (in spite of the difference in their skin color).
The sufferance and wisdom Melanctha receives from these friends is
far superior to the things she learns from her men friends, the black
doctors, or black gamblers. All of the women in Three Lives come to
a sad end, but it appears that only one, Melanctha, learns anything
useful, and perhaps modern, about the world before her demise. It
may be that in this respect, Stein’s signal contribution to literature in
her encounter with an Africanistic presence is to give this encounter
the complexity and the modernity it had otherwise been denied by
mainstream writers of that time. Although Stein’s assumptions about
white and black blood are traditionally racist, she provides an
interesting variation on the theme by having Melanctha treasure the
quality (if it can be called such) of blackness from her “unendurable”
father; having the “very black” Rose advise Melanctha and persuade
her not to commit suicide and be drawn as a “regularly” married
woman with apparently very high standards of morality—denied by
Stein’s insistence that Rose “had the simple, promiscuous unmorality
of the black people.”

Key to Stein’s exploration, however, is the question of the
relationship of freedom for women to sexuality and knowledge. In
this quest, we see again the difference she makes. Three Lives moves
from the contemplation of an asexual spinster’s life—the Good Anna
—in its struggle for control and meaning, to and through the
exploration of a quest for sexual knowledge (which Stein calls
“wisdom”) in the person and body of Melanctha, an Africanistic
woman; to the presumably culminating female experience of
marriage and birth—the Gentle Lena. That Stein chose a black
woman for the examination of the erotic suggests and theatricalizes
the uses of Africanism to represent and serve as license to address
illicit sexuality.
Although Stein has her tongue in her own cheek for much of the
text, has firm opinions that she puts in the mouths of others, and is
forthrightly comic, even parodic in some passages, we are eager to
follow her fairly radical look into the true lives of these women, but
in only one of them (Melanctha) does the sexual repression of the
other two not only disappear, but its repudiation becomes the central
theme of Melanctha’s and Stein’s enterprise. The black woman alone
provides access to a meditation on sexual knowledge, and it is of
utmost importance that the author calls Melanctha’s flirtations, her
wanderings alone down to the docks and railroad depots to look at
men, her promiscuity—all this she calls an eagerness for wisdom.
The “very black” Rose is labeled promiscuous, but the half-white
Melanctha is searching for knowledge. This difference in labels for
presumably identical behavior is distancing and functions as a covert
manner of giving dignity to one kind of inquisitiveness and
discrediting another simply by marking a difference in the color of
the inquirer’s skin. Further differences are notable when the
comparison is between the white servants and the black women.
Neither Anna nor Lena is curious about sex. Good Anna never
entertains the possibility of marriage or a love. Her “romance” is
with her first close friend, Mrs. Lehntman. Gentle Lena is so
terrified, dull, and uninquisitive, Stein does not have to speculate on
the legal sexual intercourse that takes place between Lena and her

husband, Herman. She simply delivers four children, dying with the
last and leaving her husband quiet, content, and himself a nurturer.
Only Melanctha has courage, feels the attractive power of her black
father, and the weakness of her pale yellow mother, senses that her
identification with her passive mother will give her no respect; she is
free to roam the streets, stand on corners, visit the scene of black
men at work on the railroad, at the docks; to compete with them in
fearlessness, trade barbs with them, tease and escape from them—
and to talk back to them. It is Melanctha’s authoritative voice that
examines, articulates, and questions erotic heterosexual love, which
combats the middle class’s ideal of domestic/romantic union, and
which boldly enters the field of male-female encounters as a warrior
—a militant. It is interesting to me that in her probe of the value of
carnal knowledge, Stein looks not toward the very black Rose, the
one she ascribes unmorality and promiscuity to, but to the halfwhite, college-educated Melanctha. It is as though, fearless as she
was, Stein could not bear to investigate these very intimate matters
on the body of a very black woman—the risk of such an imaginative
association seems to have been too much for her. One feels her
disdain of Rose, but her admiration of Jane’s loose behavior, like
Melanctha’s, is ambivalent and rendered in clearly elevated and
cynical language. Jane Harden is identified as a “roughened woman.
She had power and she liked to use it, she had much white blood and
that made her see clear….Her white blood was strong in her and she
had grit and endurance and a vital courage.” There is no mistaking
Stein’s codified values and opinions regarding race. She is identifying
her own self with the white blood that makes for clarity and strength
and vital courage, but is working its sexual expression out on the notwhite blood that courses through these bodies in apparently two
separate veins. The ludicrousness of these claims of what white blood
is capable of in its generic transfer of power, intelligence, and so on
is, of course, emphasized by the fact that in the same breath, if not
paragraph, we witness the behavior of completely white people,
people with all-white blood who are passive, stupid, and so on. If we
were going to succumb to the idiocy of scientific racialism, the logic
of the opposite would be unspeakable: that in Three Lives it is the

black blood that provides the “vital courage” and “endurance.” There
is tension and some readerly distrust of these hierarchies and claims,
because of the contradictions that accompany them. Africanistic
women, for example, are suffused with loose immorality, but Mrs. L.,
the friend and major force in Lena’s tiny world, spends her
professional life midwifing and likes especially to deliver girls in
trouble; she even seems to be involved in abortions with her wicked
doctor lover at one point. Why these white girls in trouble are not
also guilty of amorality and looseness as are their dark sisters is part
of the question these matters pose. That series of episodes is glazed
over by pointing to the generosity of Mrs. L. and her skill. There is no
lingering over the unmorality of her patients; they are not assumed
to have a “promiscuous” nature because of their skin color, or even, it
seems, to have been seeking the wisdom of the world down at the
docks.
The last point to which I wish to direct attention is the one with
which I began: that much of this business of imagining Africanistic
people has to do with the careful, consistent construction of an
American who gets his or her distinction in asserting and developing
whiteness as a precondition to Americanness.
Three Lives centers on two immigrant women and one black
woman who is never given a nationality, although she is the only
natural-born citizen among the three. When a minor character in the
Good Anna section visits Germany, her mother’s birthplace, and
becomes embarrassed by Anna’s peasant manners, her remark is
that her cousin is “no better than a nigger.” Miss Stein, fascinated
with her project The Making of Americans has indeed delivered up
to us a model case in literature: (1) build barriers in language and
body, (2) establish difference in blood, skin, and human emotions,
(3) place them in opposition to immigrants, and (4) voilà! The true
American arises!
Sandwiched between a pair of immigrants—her aggression and
power contained by the palms of chaste but restraining white women
—Melanctha is bold but discredited; free to explore but bound by her
color and confined by the white women on her left and her right, her

foreground and her background, her beginning and her end, who
precede her and follow her. The format and its interior workings say
what is meant. All of the ingredients that have an impact on
Americanness are on display in these women: labor, class, relations
with the Old World, forging an un-European new culture, defining
freedom, avoiding bondage, seeking opportunity and power,
situating the uses of oppression. These considerations are
inextricable from any deliberation on how Americans selected, chose,
constructed a national identity. In the process of choosing, the
unselected, the unchosen, the detritus is as significant as the
cumulative, built American. Among the explorations vital to the
definition, one of the strongest is the rumination of Africanistic
character as a laboratory experiment for confronting emotional,
historical, and moral problems as well as intellectual entanglements
with the serious questions of power, privilege, freedom, and equity.
Is it not just possible that the union, the coalescence of what America
is and was made of, is incomplete without the place of Africanism in
the formulation of this so-called new people, and what implications
such a formulation had for the claims of democracy and
egalitarianism as far as women and blacks were concerned? Is not
the contradiction inherent in these two warring propositions—white
democracy and black repression—also reflected in the literature so
deeply that it marks and distinguishes its very heart?
Just as these two immigrants are literally joined like Siamese twins
to Melanctha, so are Americans joined to and defined by this
Africanistic presence at its spine.

Hard, True, and Lasting

“M

ANY STRANGERS TRAVERSE our land these days.
They look on our lives with horror and quickly make means to pass
on to the paradises of the north. Those who are pressed by
circumstances and forced to tarry a while, grumble and complain
endlessly. It is just good for them that we are inbred with habits of
courtesy, hospitality, and kindness. It is good that they do not know
the passion we feel for this parched earth. We tolerate strangers
because the things we love cannot be touched by them.” That’s a
paragraph from a short story called “The Green Tree” by Bessie
Head, and I print all of it for you just to get to that one sentence: We
tolerate strangers because the things we love cannot be touched by
them. It suggests to me an attitude and a position that might be
necessary for any artist and writer who finds himself not only in an
alien culture, but vulnerable to it, and in some ways threatened by it.
There is nothing new or special about this condition of
separateness—it is generally the first impression that an artist or a
writer feels when he is compelled to write. And it may be even out of
that feeling of separateness that he writes at all. The questions that
all writers put are questions of value: identifying the values they feel
worthy of preservation; or identifying the values they believe
detrimental to some freer, or finer, or, at the least, steadier life.
Early national literatures all over the world concentrated on
describing and, by implication, supporting the cultures that the
writer found himself in. (The sagas, the lieder, the myths when they
were recorded were precisely that.) Just as the early literature of
expatriates, immigrants, or people in some form of diaspora
concentrated on, and, frequently, condemned the new or alien

culture the writers found themselves in. And the most assimilationist
of them all brought something from his own culture to that
assimilation. It is still rare to find massive flowerings of Joseph
Conrads and Pushkins in national literature anthologies.
More recent literatures by both natives to and aliens in a culture
are equally preoccupied with the problem. Indeed “alienation”
became the password, the general catchall word for practically all
post–World War II literature in the Western world. The writers view
their own culture as alien: middle-class writers betrayed their own
class and aspired toward the leisure-class values or the values of
classes beneath them; working-class writers deplored the limitations
of their own class; upper-class writers found inspiration among the
poor, the “noble,” the innocent, the untutored peasant; postwar
writers separated themselves from everybody except veterans and
war victims. Of course there were and are writers who felt something
quite the opposite: that things were pretty much all right the way
they were and their suspicion of feeling alien came not from too little
change, but too much, and too soon, which is to say before they were
ready for it.
That the world is an exquisitely unpleasant place is a familiar ode
to writers. And it is usually just at the point of reconciliation to the
world, just at the moment when it becomes probably a comfortable
enough place, after all that the writer is confronted with the Last
Great Isolation—the one that minces every other alienation he has
known: and that is the premonition of his own death. Under the
shadow of that wing, even the most hostile of alien cultures is
preferable.
But both of those conditions (my own awareness of being a native
of this country and as an alien in it) are of interest to me as a writer,
and I’d like to talk about that expected and perhaps inevitable sense
of separateness from the culture that pervades the country I live in.
The remarks I have to make are applicable to probably every group
that has ever existed. And I paraphrase Miss Head to say that I can
tolerate the overweening culture that is not mine because the things I
love cannot be touched by it. It sounds hostile, I know, and

unsharing, I know; and ungenerous and defensive. I know that. But I
am nevertheless convinced that clarity about who one is and what
one’s work is, is inextricably bound up with one’s place in a tribe—or
a family, or a nation, or a race, or a sex, or what have you. And the
clarity is necessary for the evaluation of the self and it is necessary
for any productive intercourse with any other tribe or culture. I am
not suggesting a collection of warring cultures, just clear ones, for it
is out of the clarity of one’s own culture that life within another, near
another, in juxtaposition to another is healthily possible. Without it,
a writer lives on whatever pinnacle he achieves in loneliness and
whatever road he walks on is finally a cul-de-sac. It is vital, therefore,
to know what “the things we love” are, in order to care for and to
husband them.
I have always myself felt most alive, most alert, and most sterling
among my own people. All of my creative energy comes from there.
My stimulation for any artistic effort at all originates there. The
compulsion to write, even to be, begins with my consciousness of,
experience with, and even my awe of black people and the quality of
our lives as lived (not as perceived). And all of my instincts tell me
that both as a writer and as a person any total surrender to another
culture would destroy me. And the danger is not always from
indifference; it is also from acceptance. It is sometimes called the
fear of absorption, the horror of cultural embrace. But at the heart of
the horror for me is what I know about what the history of the
culture that pervades this country has been.
My instincts combine therefore with my intelligence to inform me
that there are many aspects of that culture that are not trustworthy
and are not supportive.
Every and each attempt I have made to write has centered on that
assumption and this question: What is there of value in black culture
to lose and how can it be preserved and made useful? I am not very
good at the writing of tracts, so I frequently identify the things I love
and find of value by showing them in danger; things in my novels are
threatened and sometimes destroyed. It is my way of directing
attention at sensitized readers in such a way that they will yearn for,

miss, and, I hope, learn to care for certain aspects of that life that are
worth the preservation.
Now in order for me to try even to identify those things, I need to
know a lot or try to find out a lot about the civilization within the
civilization in which I grew up. I mean the black civilization that
functioned within the white one. And the questions I must put to it
are: What was the hierarchy in my civilization? Who were the
arbiters of custom? What were the laws? Who were the outlaws—not
the legal outlaws, but the community outlaws? Where did we go for
solace and for advice? Who were the betrayers of that culture? Who
did we respect and why? What was our morality? What was success?
Who survived? And why? And under what circumstances? What is
deviant behavior? Not deviant behavior as defined by white people,
but what is deviant behavior as defined by black people?
I have been for years, and it will probably be a fascination that
lasts all my life, continually fascinated by the fact that no bestial
treatment of human beings ever produces beasts. White marauders
can force Native American Indians to walk from one part of the
country to another and watch them drop like flies and cattle, but they
did not end up as cattle; Jewish people could be thrown into ovens
like living carcasses but Jews were not bestialized by it; black people
could be enslaved for generation after generation and recorded in
statistics along with lists of rice, tar, and turpentine cargo, but they
did not turn out to be cargo. Each one of those groups civilized the
very horror that oppressed it. It doesn’t work, and I don’t think it
can. It never works; what preoccupies me is why. Why was the
quality of my great-grandmother’s life so much better than the
circumstances of her life? How was it possible without the feminist
movement, without a black arts movement, without any movement,
how was it possible that the sheer integrity and quality of her life
were so superior to its circumstances? I know that she was not
atypical among the women of her day. She was as average a black
woman as there ever was. And no amount of quisling scholarship, no
amount of psychological tyranny, no number of black colonizers,
who in their quest for jobs and national prominence join hands with

those who would rape us culturally, none of them will ever convince
me otherwise. Because I knew her—and I knew the people she knew.
In my own writing, in order to reveal what seems to me the hard
and the true and the lasting things, I am drawn to describing people
under duress, not in easy circumstances, but backed up into a corner,
people called upon to fish or cut bait. You say you are my friend?
Let’s see. You say you are a revolutionary? Let me see how it looks
when I push you all the way out. You say you love me? Let’s see.
What happens if you follow your course all the way through? What
are the things you will give up? And, under duress, I know who they
are, of what they are made, and which of their qualities is the last to
go, and which of their qualities never go. It gives a melancholy cast to
my work. I know. And it leads me to exceptional rather than routine
characters. I know. And it leaves me wide open for criticism about
bizarre characters and nonpositive images. I know. But I am afraid I
will have to leave the “positive” images to the comic-strip artists and
the “normal” black characters to some future Doris Day, because I
believe it is silly, not to say irresponsible, to concern myself with
lipstick and Band-Aid when there is a plague in the land. The socalled everyday life of black people is certainly lovely to live, but
whoever is living it must know that each day of his “everyday” black
life is a triumph of matter over mind and sentiment over common
sense. And if he doesn’t know that, then he doesn’t know anything at
all. As the young African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile put it, “The
present is a dangerous place to live.” Superficial literary cosmetics
will not save us from that danger. As a matter of fact, literature will
not save us at all. All it can do is point out the need perhaps for
defense, but it is not itself that defense. What it can do is participate
in the process of identifying what is of value, and once that surfaces,
once black tradition can be extricated from black fashion, once black
writing stops posturing and catering to the voyeurs of black life, once
it stops doing an American version of airport art, then an even
harder job presents itself.
Because it is relatively easy to recognize values in isolation. The
problem gets complicated when those values are in conflict with

other values. For then you have to figure out how to protect the very
best of the group sensibilities; how to protect the noblest impulses.
What are the nurturing structures worth keeping in the community?
What are the culturgens that provide emotional safety, the customs
that allow freedom without excessive risk or certain destruction, that
allow courage minus recklessness, generosity without waste, support
without domination, and in times of deep, deep trouble (as in some
of the black countries abroad) a resource for survival that may very
well include sustained and calculated ferocity.
Black writers who are committed to the renewal and refreshment
of values can be identified by their taste, by their judgments, by their
intellect, and by their work. They do not use black life as exotic
ornament for pedestrian nonblack stories. The essence of black life is
the substance, not the decoration, of their work. Their work turns on
a moral axis that has been forged among black people. They do not
impose alien moralities about broken homes, and house-bound
fathers, and petite power, and what is or is not gainful employment
on their characters.
They do not regard black language as dropping g’s or as an
exercise in questionable phonetics and inconsistent orthography.
They know that it is much more complicated than that.
And they waste no time explaining, explaining, explaining away
everything they feel and think and do—to the other culture. They are
challenged by and concerned with the enlightenment of their own,
even when the enlightenment includes painful information.
They do not view the habits and customs of their people with the
eye of a charged-up ethnologist examining curios.
The writers who are also scholars in so-called black studies are
unimpressed with standard cries of “lowering standards” when any
change in curricula is recommended. They know their job doesn’t
have anything to do with maintaining standards. It has to do with
reshaping the content of those standards in order to improve them
and raise them.
Those black writers who are critics are not busy painting Bertolt
Brecht black and relabeling his thoughts (which were perfectly

suitable to his own cultural needs) as some sort of “new” black
criticism. Any critical apparatus or critical system that is
inappropriate to and foolish when applied to black music or nonWestern black art is fraudulent when applied to black literature.
Once, when I first began to write, I didn’t know a lot about how to
dramatize and I was forced sometimes to use exposition as a way of
saying something I could not properly show. And in the first book,
The Bluest Eye, I wrote a passage at the end that is as close as I have
ever gotten to sustained didacticism. It is a wholly unsatisfactory
passage to me, and I had certainly hoped to read it to you in context,
but I haven’t got a copy of the book with me. But in the last two pages
of The Bluest Eye, is, in essence, what I believe to be the dangers
when one assumes that you can substitute license for freedom, when
one assumes that you can use another’s deficiency for one’s own
generosity, when one assumes that you can use another person’s
misery and nightmares in order to clarify your own dreams. When all
of those things are done and completed, then the surrender and the
betrayal of one’s culture is also complete.

PART II

God’s Language

James Baldwin Eulogy
Jimmy, there is too much to think about you, and much too much to
feel. The difficulty is your life refuses summation—it always did—and
invites contemplation instead. Like many of us left here, I thought I
knew you. Now I discover that, in your company, it is myself I know.
That is the astonishing gift of your art and your friendship: you gave
us ourselves to think about, to cherish. We are like Hall Montana
watching “with a new wonder” his brother sing, knowing the song he
sang is us, “he is—us.”
I never heard a single command from you, yet the demands you
made on me, the challenges you issued to me were nevertheless
unmistakable if unenforced: that I work and think at the top of my
form; that I stand on moral ground but know that ground must be
shored up by mercy; that “the world is before [me] and [I] need not
take it or leave it as it was when [I] came in.”
Well, the season was always Christmas with you there, and like one
aspect of that scenario, you did not neglect to bring at least three
gifts. You gave me a language to dwell in—a gift so perfect, it seems
my own invention. I have been thinking your spoken and written
thoughts so long, I believed they were mine. I have been seeing the
world through your eyes so long, I believed that clear, clear view was
my own. Even now, even here, I need you to tell me what I am feeling
and how to articulate it. So I have pored (again) through the 6,895
pages of your published work to acknowledge the debt and thank you
for the credit.
No one possessed or inhabited language for me the way you did.
You made American English honest—genuinely international. You
exposed its secrets and reshaped it until it was truly modern,

dialogic, representative, humane. You stripped it of ease and false
comfort and fake innocence and evasion and hypocrisy. And in place
of deviousness was clarity; in place of soft, plump lies was a lean,
targeted power. In place of intellectual disingenuousness and what
you called “exasperating egocentricity,” you gave us undecorated
truth. You replaced lumbering platitudes with an upright elegance.
You went into that forbidden territory and decolonized it, “robbed it
of the jewel of its naïveté,” and ungated it for black people, so that in
your wake we could enter it, occupy it, restructure it in order to
accommodate our complicated passion. Not our vanities, but our
intricate, difficult, demanding beauty; our tragic, insistent
knowledge; our lived reality; our sleek classical imagination. All the
while refusing “to be defined by a language that has never been able
to recognize [us].” In your hands language was handsome again. In
your hands we saw how it was meant to be—neither bloodless nor
bloody, and yet alive.
It infuriated some people. Those who saw the paucity of their own
imagination in the two-way mirror you held up to them attacked the
mirror, tried to reduce it to fragments that they could then rank and
grade; tried to dismiss the shards where your image and theirs
remained—locked but ready to soar. You are an artist, after all, and
an artist is forbidden a career in this place; an artist is permitted only
the commercial “hit.” But for thousands and thousands of those who
embrace your text, and who gave themselves permission to hear your
language, by that very gesture they ennobled themselves, became
unshrouded—civilized.
The second gift was your courage, which you let us share. The
courage of one who could go as a stranger in the village and
transform the distances between people into intimacy with the whole
world; courage to understand that experience in ways that made it a
personal revelation for each of us. It was you who gave us the
courage to appropriate an alien, hostile, all-white geography because
you had discovered that “this world [meaning history] is white no
longer, and it will never be white again.” Yours was the courage to
live life in and from its belly as well as beyond its edges. To see and

say what it was; to recognize and identify evil but never fear or stand
in awe of it. It is a courage that came from a ruthless intelligence
married to a pity so profound it could convince anyone who cared to
know that those who despised us “need the moral authority of their
former slaves, who are the only people in the world who know
anything about them and who may be, indeed, the only people in the
world who really care anything about them.” When that unassailable
combination of mind and heart, of intellect and passion was on
display, it guided us through treacherous landscape, as it did when
you wrote these words—words every rebel, every dissident,
revolutionary, every practicing artist from Cape Town to Poland,
from Waycross to Dublin, memorized: “A person does not lightly
elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home
among one’s compatriots than be mocked and detested by them. And
there is a level on which the mockery of the people, even their hatred,
is moving because it is so blind: it is terrible to watch people cling to
their captivity and insist on their own destruction.”
The third gift was hard to fathom and even harder to accept. It was
your tenderness. A tenderness so delicate I thought it could not last,
but last it did and envelop me it did. In the midst of anger it tapped
me, lightly, like the child in Tish’s womb: “Something almost as hard
to catch as a whisper in a crowded place, as light and as definite as a
spider’s web, strikes below my ribs, stunning and astonishing my
heart….The baby, turning for the first time in its incredible veil of
water, announces its presence and claims me; tells me, in that
instant, that what can get worse can get better….In the meantime—
forever—it is entirely up to me.” Yours was a tenderness, a
vulnerability, that asked everything, expected everything, and, like
the world’s own Merlin, provided us with the ways and means to
deliver. I suppose that is why I was always a bit better behaved
around you, smarter, more capable, wanting to be worth the love you
lavished, and wanting to be steady enough to witness the pain you
had witnessed and were tough enough to bear while it broke your
heart; wanting to be generous enough to join your smile with one of
my own, and reckless enough to jump on in that laugh you laughed.

Because our joy and our laughter were not only all right; they were
necessary.
You knew, didn’t you? How I needed your language and the mind
that formed it? How I relied on your fierce courage to tame
wildernesses for me? How strengthened I was by the certainty that
came from knowing you would never hurt me? You knew, didn’t you,
how I loved your love? You knew. This then is no calamity. No. This
is a jubilee. “Our crown,” you said, “has already been bought and
paid for. All we have to do,” you said, “is wear it.”
And we do, Jimmy. You crowned us.

The Site of Memory

M

Y INCLUSION in a series of talks on autobiography and
memoir is not entirely a misalliance. Although it’s probably true that
a fiction writer thinks of his or her work as alien in that company,
what I have to say may suggest why I’m not completely out of place
here. For one thing, I might throw into relief the differences between
self-recollection (memoir) and fiction, and also some of the
similarities—the places where those two crafts embrace and where
that embrace is symbiotic.
But the authenticity of my presence here lies in the fact that a very
large part of my own literary heritage is the autobiography. In this
country the print origins of black literature (as distinguished from
the oral origins) were slave narratives. These book-length narratives
(autobiographies, recollections, memoirs), of which well over a
hundred were published, are familiar texts to historians and students
of black history. They range from the adventure-packed life of
Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1769)
to the quiet desperation of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl:
Written by Herself (1861), in which Harriet Jacobs (“Linda Brent”)
records hiding for seven years in a room too small to stand up in;
from the political savvy of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life
of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
(1845) to the subtlety and modesty of Henry Bibb, whose voice, in
Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American
Slave, Written by Himself (1849), is surrounded by (“loaded with” is
a better phrase) documents attesting to its authenticity. Bibb is
careful to note that his formal schooling (three weeks) was short, but

that he was “educated in the school of adversity, whips, and chains.”
Born in Kentucky, he put aside his plans to escape in order to marry.
But when he learned that he was the father of a slave and watched
the degradation of his wife and child, he reactivated those plans.
Whatever the style and circumstances of these narratives, they
were written to say principally two things. (1) “This is my historical
life—my singular, special example that is personal, but that also
represents the race.” (2) “I write this text to persuade other people—
you, the reader, who is probably not black—that we are human
beings worthy of God’s grace and the immediate abandonment of
slavery.” With these two missions in mind, the narratives were
clearly pointed.
In Equiano’s account, the purpose is quite up-front. Born in 1745
near the Niger River and captured at the age of ten, he survived the
Middle Passage, American plantation slavery, wars in Canada and
the Mediterranean; learned navigation and clerking from a Quaker
named Robert King; and bought his freedom at twenty-one. He lived
as a free servant, traveling widely and living most of his later life in
England. Here he is speaking to the British without equivocation: “I
hope to have the satisfaction of seeing the renovation of liberty and
justice, resting on the British government….I hope and expect the
attention of gentlemen in power….May the time come—at least the
speculation to me is pleasing—when the sable people shall gratefully
commemorate the auspicious aera of extensive freedom.” With
typically eighteenth-century reticence he records his singular and
representative life for one purpose: to change things. In fact, he and
his coauthors did change things. Their works gave fuel to the fires
that abolitionists were setting everywhere.
More difficult was getting the fair appraisal of literary critics. The
writings of church martyrs and confessors are and were read for the
eloquence of their message as well as their experience of redemption,
but the American slaves’ autobiographical narratives were frequently
scorned as “biased,” “inflammatory,” and “improbable.” These
attacks are particularly difficult to understand in view of the fact that
it was extremely important, as you can imagine, for the writers of

these narratives to appear as objective as possible—not to offend the
reader by being too angry, or by showing too much outrage, or by
calling the reader names. As recently as 1966, Paul Edwards, who
edited and abridged Equiano’s story, praises the narrative for its
refusal to be “inflammatory.”
“As a rule,” Edwards writes, “he [Equiano] puts no emotional
pressure on the reader other than that which the situation itself
contains—his language does not strain after our sympathy, but
expects it to be given naturally and at the proper time. This quiet
avoidance of emotional display produces many of the best passages
in the book.” Similarly, an 1836 review of Charles Bell’s “Life and
Adventures of a Fugitive Slave,” which appeared in the Quarterly
Anti-Slavery Magazine, praised Bell’s account for its objectivity.
“We rejoice in the book the more, because it is not a partizan
work….It broaches no theory in regard to [slavery], nor proposes any
mode of time of emancipation.”
As determined as these black writers were to persuade the reader
of the evil of slavery, they also complimented him by assuming his
nobility of heart and his high-mindedness. They tried to summon up
his finer nature in order to encourage him to employ it. They knew
that their readers were the people who could make a difference in
terminating slavery. Their stories—of brutality, adversity, and
deliverance—had great popularity in spite of critical hostility in many
quarters and patronizing sympathy in others. There was a time when
the hunger for “slave stories” was difficult to quiet, as sales figures
show. Douglass’s Narrative sold five thousand copies in four
months; by 1847 it had sold eleven thousand copies. Equiano’s book
had thirty-six editions between 1789 and 1850. Moses Roper’s book
had ten editions from 1837 to 1856; William Wells Brown’s was
reprinted four times in its first year. Solomon Northup’s book sold
twenty-seven thousand copies before two years had passed. A book
by Josiah Henson (argued by some to be the model for the Tom of
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin) had a prepublication
sale of five thousand.

In addition to using their own lives to expose the horrors of
slavery, they had a companion motive for their efforts. The
prohibition against teaching a slave to read and write (which in many
southern states carried severe punishment) and against a slave’s
learning to read and write had to be scuttled at all costs. These
writers knew that literacy was power. Voting, after all, was
inextricably connected to the ability to read; literacy was a way of
assuming and proving the “humanity” that the Constitution denied
them. That is why the narratives carry the subtitle “written by
himself,” or “herself,” and include introductions and prefaces by
white sympathizers to authenticate them. Other narratives, “edited
by” such well-known antislavery figures as Lydia Maria Child and
John Greenleaf Whittier, contain prefaces to assure the reader how
little editing was needed. A literate slave was supposed to be a
contradiction in terms.
One has to remember that the climate in which they wrote
reflected not only the Age of Enlightenment but its twin, born at the
same time, the Age of Scientific Racism. David Hume, Immanuel
Kant, and Thomas Jefferson, to mention only a few, had documented
their conclusions that blacks were incapable of intelligence.
Frederick Douglass knew otherwise, and he wrote refutations of what
Jefferson said in Notes on the State of Virginia: “Never yet could I
find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain
narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or
sculpture.” A sentence that I have always thought ought to be
engraved at the door to the Michael C. Rockefeller wing of the Met.
Hegel, in 1813, had said that Africans had no “history” and couldn’t
write in modern languages. Kant disregarded a perceptive
observation by a black man by saying, “This fellow was quite black
from head to foot, a clear proof that what he said was stupid.”
Yet no slave society in the history of the world wrote more—or
more thoughtfully—about its own enslavement. The milieu, however,
dictated the purpose and the style. The narratives are instructive,
moral, and obviously representative. Some of them are patterned
after the sentimental novel that was in vogue at the time. But

whatever the level of eloquence or the form, popular taste
discouraged the writers from dwelling too long or too carefully on the
more sordid details of their experience. Whenever there was an
unusually violent incident, or a scatological one, or something
“excessive,” one finds the writer taking refuge in the literary
conventions of the day. “I was left in a state of distraction not to be
described” (Equiano). “But let us now leave the rough usage of the
field…and turn our attention to the less repulsive slave life as it
existed in the home of my childhood” (Douglass). “I am not about to
harrow the feelings of my readers by a terrific representation of the
untold horrors of that fearful system of oppression….It is not my
purpose to descend deeply into the dark and noisome caverns of the
hell of slavery” (Henry Box Brown).
Over and over, the writers pull the narrative up short with a phrase
such as, “But let us drop a veil over these proceedings too terrible to
relate.” In shaping the experience to make it palatable to those who
were in a position to alleviate it, they were silent about many things,
and they “forgot” many other things. There was a careful selection of
the instances that they would record and a careful rendering of those
that they chose to describe. Lydia Maria Child identified the problem
in her introduction to “Linda Brent’s” tale of sexual abuse: “I am well
aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these
pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and muchinjured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects,
and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally
been kept veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its
monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of
presenting them with the veil withdrawn.”
But most importantly—at least for me—there was no mention of
their interior life.
For me—a writer in the last quarter of the twentieth century, not
much more than a hundred years after Emancipation, a writer who is
black and a woman—the exercise is very different. My job becomes
how to rip that veil drawn over “proceedings too terrible to relate.”
The exercise is also critical for any person who is black, or who

belongs to any marginalized category, for, historically, we were
seldom invited to participate in the discourse even when we were its
topic.
Moving that veil aside requires, therefore, certain things. First of
all, I must trust my own recollections. I must also depend on the
recollections of others. Thus memory weighs heavily in what I write,
in how I begin, and in what I find to be significant. Zora Neale
Hurston said, “Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories
within that came out of the material that went to make me.” These
“memories within” are the subsoil of my work. But memories and
recollections won’t give me total access to the unwritten interior life
of these people. Only the act of the imagination can help me.
If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and
meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic. I
suppose I could dispense with the last four if I were not so deadly
serious about fidelity to the milieu out of which I write and in which
my ancestors actually lived. Infidelity to that milieu—the absence of
the interior life, the deliberate excising of it from the records that the
slaves themselves told—is precisely the problem in the discourse that
proceeded without us. How I gain access to that interior life is what
drives me and is the part of this talk that both distinguishes my
fiction from autobiographical strategies and that also embraces
certain autobiographical strategies. It’s a kind of literary
archaeology: on the basis of some information and a little bit of
guesswork you journey to a site to see what remains were left behind
and to reconstruct the world that these remains imply. What makes
it fiction is the nature of the imaginative act: my reliance on the
image—on the remains—in addition to recollection, to yield up a kind
of a truth. By “image,” of course, I don’t mean “symbol”; I simply
mean “picture” and the feelings that accompany the picture.
Fiction, by definition, is distinct from fact. Presumably it’s the
product of imagination—invention—and it claims the freedom to
dispense with “what really happened,” or where it really happened,
or when it really happened, and nothing in it needs to be publicly
verifiable, although much in it can be verified. By contrast, the

scholarship of the biographer and the literary critic seems to us only
trustworthy when the events of fiction can be traced to some publicly
verifiable fact. It’s the research of the “Oh, yes, this is where he or she
got it from” school, which gets its own credibility from excavating the
credibility of the sources of the imagination, not the nature of the
imagination.
The work that I do frequently falls, in the minds of most people,
into that realm of fiction called fantastic, or mythic, or magical, or
unbelievable. I’m not comfortable with these labels. I consider that
my single gravest responsibility (in spite of that magic) is not to lie.
When I hear someone say, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” I think
that old chestnut is truer than we know, because it doesn’t say that
truth is truer than fiction; just that it’s stranger, meaning that it’s
odd. It may be excessive, it may be more interesting, but the
important thing is that it’s random—and fiction is not random.
Therefore the crucial distinction for me is not the difference
between fact and fiction, but the distinction between fact and truth.
Because facts can exist without human intelligence, but truth cannot.
So if I’m looking to find and expose a truth about the interior life of
people who didn’t write it (which doesn’t mean that they didn’t have
it); if I’m trying to fill in the blanks that the slave narratives left—to
part the veil that was so frequently drawn, to implement the stories
that I heard—then the approach that’s most productive and most
trustworthy for me is the recollection that moves from the image to
the text. Not from the text to the image.
Simone de Beauvoir, in A Very Easy Death, says, “I don’t know
why I was so shocked by my mother’s death.” When she heard her
mother’s name being called at the funeral by the priest, she says,
“Emotion seized [me] by the throat….‘Françoise de Beauvoir’; the
words brought her to life; they summed up her history, from birth to
marriage, to widowhood, to the grave; Françoise de Beauvoir—that
retiring woman, so rarely named—became an important person.”
The book becomes an exploration both into her own grief and into
the images in which the grief lay buried.

Unlike Mme. de Beauvoir, Frederick Douglass asks the reader’s
patience for spending about half a page on the death of his
grandmother—easily the most profound loss he had suffered—and he
apologizes by saying, in effect, “It really was very important to me. I
hope you aren’t bored by my indulgence.” He makes no attempt to
explore that death, its images or its meaning. His narrative is as close
to factual as he can make it, which leaves no room for subjective
speculation. James Baldwin, on the other hand, in Notes of a Native
Son, says, in recording his father’s life and his own relationship to his
father, “All of my father’s texts and songs, which I had decided were
meaningless, were arranged before me at his death like empty
bottles, waiting to hold the meaning which life would give them for
me.” And then his text fills those bottles. Like Simone de Beauvoir,
he moves from the event to the image that it left. My route is the
reverse: the image comes first and tells me what the “memory” is
about.
I can’t tell you how I felt when my father died. But I was able to
write Song of Solomon and imagine, not him, not his specific interior
life, but the world that he inhabited and the private or interior life of
the people in it. And I can’t tell you how I felt reading to my
grandmother while she was turning over and over in her bed
(because she was dying, and she was not comfortable), but I could try
to reconstruct the world that she lived in. And I have suspected,
more often than not, that I know more than she did, that I know
more than my grandfather and my great-grandmother did, but I also
know that I’m no wiser than they were. And whenever I have tried
earnestly to diminish their vision and prove to myself that I know
more, and when I have tried to speculate on their interior life and
match it up with my own, I have been overwhelmed every time by the
richness of theirs compared to my own. Like Frederick Douglass
talking about his grandmother, and James Baldwin talking about his
father, and Simone de Beauvoir talking about her mother, these
people are my access to me; they are my entrance into my own
interior life. Which is why the images that float around them—the
remains, so to speak, at the archaeological site—surface first, and

they surface so vividly and so compellingly that I acknowledge them
as my route to a reconstruction of a world, to an exploration of an
interior life that was not written, and to the revelation of a kind of
truth.
So the nature of my research begins with something as ineffable
and as flexible as a dimly recalled figure, the corner of a room, a
voice. I began to write my second book, which was called Sula,
because of my preoccupation with a picture of a woman and the way
in which I heard her name pronounced. Her name was Hannah, and
I think she was a friend of my mother’s. I don’t remember seeing her
very much, but what I do remember is the color around her—a kind
of violet, a suffusion of something violet—and her eyes, which
appeared to be half closed. But what I remember most is how the
women said her name: how they said “Hannah Peace” and smiled to
themselves, and there was some secret about her that they knew,
which they didn’t talk about, at least not in my hearing, but it seemed
loaded in the way in which they said her name. And I suspected that
she was a little bit of an outlaw but that they approved in some way.
And then, thinking about their relationship to her and the way in
which they talked about her, the way in which they articulated her
name, made me think about friendship between women. What is it
that they forgive each other for? And what is it that is unforgivable in
the world of women? I don’t want to know any more about Miss
Hannah Peace, and I’m not going to ask my mother who she really
was and what did she do and what were you laughing about and why
were you smiling? Because my experience when I do this with my
mother is so crushing: she will give you the most pedestrian
information you ever heard, and I would like to keep all of my
remains and my images intact in their mystery when I begin. Later I
will get to the facts. That way I can explore two worlds—the actual
and the possible.
What I want to do this evening is to track an image from picture to
meaning to text—a journey that appears in the novel that I’m writing
now, which is called Beloved.

I’m trying to write a particular kind of scene, and I see corn on the
cob. To “see” corn on the cob doesn’t mean that it suddenly hovers; it
only means that it keeps coming back. And in trying to figure out
“What is all this corn doing?” I discover what it is doing.
I see the house where I grew up in Lorain, Ohio. My parents had a
garden some distance away from our house, and they didn’t welcome
me and my sister there, when we were young, because we were not
able to distinguish between the things that they wanted to grow and
the things that they didn’t, so we were not able to hoe, or weed, until
much later.
I see them walking, together, away from me. I’m looking at their
backs and what they’re carrying in their arms: their tools, and maybe
a peck basket. Sometimes when they walk away from me they hold
hands, and they go to this other place in the garden. They have to
cross some railroad tracks to get there.
I also am aware that my mother and father sleep at odd hours
because my father works many jobs and works at night. And these
naps are times of pleasure for me and my sister because nobody’s
giving us chores, or telling us what to do, or nagging us in any way.
In addition to which, there is some feeling of pleasure in them that
I’m only vaguely aware of. They’re very rested when they take these
naps.
And later on in the summer we have an opportunity to eat corn,
which is the one plant that I can distinguish from the others, and
which is the harvest that I like the best; the others are the food that
no child likes—the collards, the okra, the strong, violent vegetables
that I would give a great deal for now. But I do like the corn because
it’s sweet, and because we all sit down to eat it, and it’s finger food,
and it’s hot, and it’s even good cold, and there are neighbors in, and
there are uncles in, and it’s easy, and it’s nice.
The picture of the corn and the nimbus of emotion surrounding it
became a powerful one in the manuscript I’m now completing.
Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning
each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how
to render the texture that accompanies, reveals, or displays it to its

best advantage. The process by which this is accomplished is
endlessly fascinating to me. I have always thought that as an editor
for twenty years I understood writers better than their most careful
critics, because in examining the manuscript in each of its
subsequent stages I knew the author’s process, how his or her mind
worked, what was effortless, what took time, where the “solution” to
a problem came from. The end result—the book—was all that the
critic had to go on.
Still, for me, that was the least important aspect of the work.
Because, no matter how “fictional” the account of these writers, or
how much it was a product of invention, the act of imagination is
bound up with memory. You know, they straightened out the
Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable
acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the
word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering.
Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory
and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that:
remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the
banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our
original place. It is emotional memory—what the nerves and the skin
remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is
our “flooding.”
Along with personal recollection, the matrix of the work I do is the
wish to extend, fill in, and complement slave autobiographical
narratives. But only the matrix. What comes of all that is dictated by
other concerns, not least among them the novel’s own integrity. Still,
like water, I remember where I was before I was “straightened out.”
Q. I would like to ask about your point of view as a novelist. Is it a
vision, or are you taking the part of the particular characters?
A. I try sometimes to have genuinely minor characters just walk
through, like a walk-on actor. But I get easily distracted by them,
because a novelist’s imagination goes like that: every little road
looks to me like an adventure, and once you begin to claim it and
describe it, it looks like more, and you invent more and more and

more. I don’t mind doing that in my first draft, but afterward I
have to cut back. I have seen myself get distracted, and people
have loomed much larger than I had planned, and minor
characters have seemed a little bit more interesting than they need
to be for the purposes of the book. In that case I try to endow
them: if there are little pieces of information that I want to reveal,
I let them do some of the work. But I try not to get carried away; I
try to restrain it, so that, finally, the texture is consistent and
nothing is wasted; there are no words in the final text that are
unnecessary, and no people who are not absolutely necessary.
As for the point of view, there should be the illusion that it’s the
characters’ point of view, when in fact it isn’t; it’s really the
narrator who is there but who doesn’t make herself (in my case)
known in that role. I like the feeling of a told story, where you hear
a voice but you can’t identify it, and you think it’s your own voice.
It’s a comfortable voice, and it’s a guiding voice, and it’s alarmed
by the same things that the reader is alarmed by, and it doesn’t
know what’s going to happen next either. So you have this sort of
guide. But that guide can’t have a personality; it can only have a
sound, and you have to feel comfortable with this voice, and then
this voice can easily abandon itself and reveal the interior dialogue
of a character. So it’s a combination of using the point of view of
various characters but still retaining the power to slide in and out,
provided that when I’m “out” the reader doesn’t see little fingers
pointing to what’s in the text.
What I really want is that intimacy in which the reader is under
the impression that he isn’t really reading this; that he is
participating in it as he goes along. It’s unfolding, and he’s always
two beats ahead of the characters and right on target.
Q. You have said that writing is a solitary activity. Do you go into
steady seclusion when you’re writing, so that your feelings are sort
of contained, or do you have to get away, and go out shopping
and…?

A. I do all of it. I’ve been at this book for three years. I go out
shopping, and I stare, and I do whatever. It goes away. Sometimes
it’s very intense and I walk—I mean, I write a sentence and I jump
up and run outside or something; it sort of beats you up. And
sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I write long hours every day. I get
up at five thirty and just go do it, and if I don’t like it the next day,
I throw it away. But I sit down and do it. By now I know how to get
to that place where something is working. I didn’t always know; I
thought every thought I had was interesting—because it was mine.
Now I know better how to throw away things that are not useful. I
can stand around and do other things and think about it at the
same time. I don’t mind not writing every minute; I’m not so
terrified.
When you first start writing—and I think it’s true for a lot of
beginning writers—you’re scared to death that if you don’t get that
sentence right that minute it’s never going to show up again. And it
isn’t. But it doesn’t matter—another one will, and it’ll probably be
better. And I don’t mind writing badly for a couple of days because
I know I can fix it—and fix it again and again and again, and it will
be better. I don’t have the hysteria that used to accompany some of
those dazzling passages that I thought the world was just dying for
me to remember. I’m a little more sanguine about it now. Because
the best part of it all, the absolutely most delicious part, is
finishing it and then doing it over. That’s the thrill of a lifetime for
me: if I can just get done with that first phase and then have
infinite time to fix it and change it. I rewrite a lot, over and over
again, so that it looks like I never did. I try to make it look like I
never touched it, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of sweat.
Q. In Song of Solomon, what was the relationship between your
memories and what you made up? Was it very tenuous?
A. Yes, it was tenuous. For the first time I was writing a book in
which the central stage was occupied by men, and that had
something to do with my loss, or my perception of loss, of a man
(my father) and the world that disappeared with him. (It didn’t,

but I felt that it did.) So I was re-creating a time period that was
his—not biographically his life or anything in it; I use whatever’s
around. But it seemed to me that there was this big void after he
died, and I filled it with a book that was about men because my
two previous books had had women as the central characters. So in
that sense it was about my memories and the need to invent. I had
to do something. I was in such a rage because my father was dead.
The connections between us were threads that I either mined for a
lot of strength or they were purely invention. But I created a male
world and inhabited it and it had this quest—a journey from
stupidity to epiphany, of a man, a complete man. It was my way of
exploring all that, of trying to figure out what he may have known.

God’s Language

P

ART OF THIS ESSAY is a substitute for an entry or series of
entries in a journal or notebook that I have never kept. The kind of
writer’s journal, many of which I have read, which contains ideas for
future work, sketches of scenes, observations and meditations. But
especially the thoughts that undergird problems and solutions the
writer encounters during a work in progress.
I don’t keep such notebooks for a number of reasons, one of which
is the leisure time unavailable to me, the other is the form my
meditations take. Generally it is a response to some tangled,
seemingly impenetrable dis-ease; an unquietness connected to a
troubling image. (The images may be something seen in the material
world or they might not be.) Other times I circle around an incident,
a remark, or an impression that is peculiar enough to first provoke
curiosity, then mysterious enough to keep recurring. With The Bluest
Eye it was an exchange I had as a child with a friend that worried me
on and off for years. In Sula it was a, to me, contradictory response
my mother and her friends had to a woman in town. Another was a
powerfully imagistic piece of male mythology inapplicable to women
and dismissive of the consequences of the truth of that myth on
women. In burrowing into those images or remarks or impressions
questions surface: Suppose my childhood friend got what she prayed
for? What were my mother’s friends appreciating while they were
disapproving? What was the real trick of the Tar Baby? Why was
Margaret Garner so completely without remorse and what effect
would her remorselessness have on the neighborhood and her
family? These questions, obvious, even idle, when gentled along or
nudged led to more nuanced ones. All the time I am ruminating on

these things I am not searching for a theme or a novelistic subject; I
am just wondering. Most of this wondering is wandering, and
disappears sooner or later. But occasionally, within or among these
wanderings, a larger question poses itself. I don’t write it or my
musings down because to do so would give them a gravity they may
not deserve. I need to be or feel pursued by the question in order to
be convinced that the further exploration is bookworthy. When that
happens, at some point a scene or a bit of language arrives. It seems
to me a waste of valuable time to sketch or record that when, if it is
interesting enough to embellish, I could be tracking it by actually
turning it directly into a fictional formulation. If I learn that I am
wrong about its staying power or its fertility, I can always throw it
away. So I get out the yellow legal pad and see what happens.
With the fiction project I followed the same procedure: waiting to
see if certain images I had would wax or wane, yield or implode. One
of those images was of a group of ladies standing on the steps of an
African Methodist Episcopal church, three rows of them, in earlytwentieth-century finery, posing as for a class or club photograph.
They are exceptionally beautiful and they are earning a great deal of
admiration, you can tell, from the eyes that watch them. Another
image is also of women. Girls, rather. They are novices in habits
running from the police who have come to arrest them. Both groups
of women are associated with churches. The first group is an image—
almost like a painting—that surfaced unsummoned; the second is a
wholly unreliable piece of village gossip.
Two hundred and some pages later I feel certain this is a wane. Not
a wax, although I am also certain that the project is impossible.
While each novel I have written, other than the first two, seemed
equally undoable, it still astonishes me how, the more work one does,
the more difficult it becomes, the more impossible the task. In this
instance I am trying to re-create, in the setting of the black towns of
the West, a narrative about paradise—the earthly achievement of—its
possibility, its dimensions, its stability, even its desirability. The
novel’s time frame, 1908 to 1976, and the history of its population,
former and children of former slaves, require me to rely heavily on

the characters’ reserves of faith, their concept of freedom, their
perception of the divine, and their imaginative as well as
organizational/administrative prowess. For like many, but not all,
deliberately, carefully constructed nineteenth-century communities,
a deeply held and wholly shared belief system was much more vital
to the enterprise than was physical endurance, leadership, and
opportunity. In fact, faith in a system of belief—religious belief—
enabled endurance, forged leadership, and revealed opportunity to
be seized. Although for freed men and women prosperity, ownership,
safety, and self-determination were thinkable, hungered-for goals,
desire alone could not, did not animate the treacherous journey they
took into unknown territory to build cities. The history of African
Americans that narrows or dismisses religion in both their collective
and individual life, in their political and aesthetic activity, is more
than incomplete—it may be fraudulent. Therefore, among the
difficulties before me is the daunting one of showing not just how
their civic and economic impulses respond to their religious
principles, but how their everyday lives were inextricably bound with
these principles. If the polls taken in 1994, which indicate that 96
percent of African Americans believe in God, are correct I suspect the
4 percent who do not so believe are a recent phenomenon—unheardof among slave and ex-slave populations. Assuming the religiosity of
nineteenth-century African Americans is a given, then, and few texts,
fiction or memorialist, have neglected this aspect. But this is 1996
and the solution for fictional representation that takes this in
account is not to layer religiosity onto an existing canvas of migration
and the quest for citizenship, or to tip one’s hat to characters whose
belief is unshakable. It is rather to construct a work in which
religious belief is central to the narrative itself.
Thus the first problem with paradise: how to render expressive
religious language credibly and effectively in postmodern fiction
without having to submit to a vague egalitarianism, or to a kind of
late-twentieth-century environmental spiritualism, or to the
modernist/feminist school of the goddess-body adored, or to a loose,
undiscriminating conviction of the innate divinity of all living things,

or to the biblical/political scholasticism of the more entrenched and
dictatorial wings of contemporary religious institutions—none of
which, it seems to me, represents the everyday practice of
nineteenth-century African Americans and their children, nor lends
itself to postmodernist narrative strategies. The second problem then
is part of the first: how to narrate persuasively profound and
motivating faith in and to a highly secularized, contemporary,
“scientific” world. In short, how to reimagine paradise. (The question
that surfaces immediately—Why reimagine it at all, since the ablest
geniuses have already and long ago provided unsurpassed and
unsurpassable language to describe it?—is a question I will address
in a moment.) Right now I want to outline what my problem is and
then tell you why I have it.
Paradise is no longer imaginable or, rather, it is overimagined—
which amounts to the same thing—and has thus become familiar,
common, even trivial. Historically, the images of paradise, in poetry
and prose, were intended to be grand but accessible, beyond the
routine but imaginatively graspable, seductive precisely because of
our ability to recognize them—as though we “remembered” the
scenes somehow. Milton speaks of “goodliest trees, loaden with
fairest fruit, / Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue, /…with gay
enameled colours mixed”; of “Native perfumes”; of “that sapphire
fount the crispèd brooks, / Rolling on orient pearl and sands of
gold”; of “nectar, visiting each plant, and fed / Flowers worthy of
Paradise…”; “nature boon / poured forth profuse on hill and dale and
plain”; “Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm; /
Others, whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, / Hung amiable—
Hesperian fables true, /…of delicious taste; / Betwixt them lawns, or
level downs, and flocks / Grazing the tender herb”; “Flowers of all
hue, and without thorn the rose”; “caves / of cool recess, o’er which
the mantling vine / Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps /
Luxuriant.”
Such a beatific expanse, in this the last decade of the twentieth
century, we recognize as bounded real estate, owned by the wealthy,
viewed and visited by guests and tourists, or it is regularly on display

for the rest of us in the products and promises sold by various media.
Overimagined. Quite available if not in fact, then certainly as
ordinary unexceptional desire. Let’s examine the characteristics of
physical paradise—beauty, plenty, rest, exclusivity, and eternity—to
see how they are understood in 1996.
Beauty of course is a duplicate of what we already know,
intensified, refined. Or what we have never known articulated.
Beatific, benevolent nature combined with precious metals and
jewelry. What it cannot be is beauty beyond imagination.
Plenty, in a world of excess and attending greed that tilts resources
to the haves and forces the have-nots to locate bounty within what
has already been acquired by the haves, is an almost obscene feature
of paradise. In this world of tilted resources, of outrageous,
shameless wealth squatting, hulking, preening itself before the
dispossessed, the very idea of plenty, of sufficiency, as utopian ought
to make us tremble. Plenty should not be regulated to a paradisiacal
state, but to normal, everyday, humane life.
Rest, that is the superfluity of working or fighting for rewards of
food or luxury, has dwindling currency these days. It is a
desirelessness that suggests a special kind of death without dying.
Exclusivity, however, is still an attractive, even compelling, feature
of paradise because certain people, the unworthy, are not there.
Boundaries are secure; watchdogs, gates, keepers are there to verify
the legitimacy of the inhabitants. Such enclaves are cropping up
again, like medieval fortresses and moats, and it does not seem
possible or desirable for a city to be envisioned in which poor people
can be accommodated. Exclusivity is not just an accessible dream for
the well-endowed, but an increasingly popular solution for the
middle class. “Streets” are understood to be populated by the
unworthy and the dangerous; young people are forced off the streets
for their own good. Yet public space is fought over as if it were
private. Who gets to enjoy a park, a beach, a mall, a corner? The term
“public” is itself a site of contention. Paradise as exclusive terrain
therefore has a very real attraction to modern society.

Eternity, since it avoids the pain of dying again, and, in its
rejection of secular, scientific arguments, has probably the greatest
appeal. And medical, scientific resources directed toward more life,
and fitter life, remind us that the desire is for earthbound eternity,
rather than eternal afterlife. The suggestion being this is all there is.
Thus, paradise, as an earthly project, as opposed to a heavenly one,
has serious intellectual and visual limitations. Aside from “Only me
or us forever” it hardly bears describing anymore.
But that might be unfair. It is hard not to notice how much more
attention has always been given to hell rather than heaven. Dante’s
Inferno beats out Paradiso every time. Milton’s brilliantly rendered
pre-paradise world, known as Chaos, is far more fully realized than
his Paradise. The visionary language of antithesis reaches heights of
linguistic ardor with which the thesis language seldom competes.
There are many reasons why the images of the horrors of hell were
meant to be virulently repulsive in the twelfth, fifteenth, and
seventeenth centuries. The argument for avoiding it needed to be
visceral, needed to reveal how much worse such an eternity was than
the hell of everyday life. But the need has persisted, in our times,
with a significant addition. There is an influx of books devoted to a
consternation about the absence of a sense of evil—if not hell—of a
loss of shame in contemporary life.
One wonders how to account for the melancholy that accompanies
these exhortations about our inattention to, the mutedness, the
numbness toward the decidedly anti-paradisiacal experience. Evil is
understood, justifiably, to be pervasive, but it has somehow lost its
awe-fullness. It does not frighten us. It is merely entertainment. Why
are we not so frightened by its possibilities that we turn in panic
toward good? Is afterlife of any sort too simple for our complex,
sophisticated modern intelligence? Or is it that, more than paradise,
evil needs costumes, constantly refurbished and replenished?
Literary? Hell has always lent itself to glamour, headlines, a tuxedo,
cunning, a gruesome mask or a seductive one. Maybe it needs blood,
slime, roaring simply to get our attention, to tickle us, draw from us
our wit, our imagination, our energy, our heights of performance.

After which paradise is simply its absence, an edgeless and therefore
unavailing lack full of an already perceived, already recognizable
landscape: great trees for shade and fruit, lawns, palaces, precious
metals, jewelry, animal husbandry. Outside fighting evil, waging war
against the unworthy, there seems nothing for its inhabitants to do.
A nonexclusionary, unbordered, come-one-come-all paradise,
without dread, minus a nemesis, is no paradise at all.
Under these circumstances, then, the literary problem is
harnessing contemporary language to reveal not only the intellectual
complexity of paradise, but language that seizes the imagination not
as an amicus brief to a naïve or psychotic life, but as sane, intelligent
life itself. If I am to do justice to, bear witness to the deeply religious
population of this project and render their profoundly held moral
system affective in these alienated, uninspiring, and uninspired
times—where religion is understood to run the gamut from scorned,
unintelligible fundamentalism to literate, well-meaning liberalism, to
televangelistic marketing to militaristic racism and phobophilia—I
have serious problems.
Historically the language of religion (and I am speaking here of
Christianity, but I am relatively certain this is true of all text-based
religions) is dependent upon and gains its strength, beauty, and
unassailability from biblical or holy texts. Contemporary religious
language, that is the speech and the script that seeks to translate
divine translations into “popular” or “everyday common” parlance,
seems to work best in song, in anecdote, and in the apt rhetorical
flourish. I understand that the reason for modernizing traditional
language of the Bible is an effort to connect with and proselytize a
population indifferent or unresponsive to the language that moved
our ancestors. To compete for the attention of a constituency whose
discourse has been shaped by the language of media and commerce
and whose expectation of correlating images to accompany and
clarify text is a difficult enterprise. And it appears reasonable to
accommodate altering circumstances with alternate modes of
discourse. While I can’t testify to the success of such efforts, I suspect

the “modernization” of God’s language has been rewarding—
otherwise these attempts would not be so plentiful.
Marketing religion requires new strategies, new appeals, and a
relevance that is immediate, not contemplative. Thus modern
language, while successful in the acquisition of converts and the
spiritual maintenance of the confirmed, is forced to kneel before the
denominator that is most accessible, to bankrupt its subtlety, its
mystery in order to bankroll its effect. Nevertheless it seems a poor
substitute for the language it seeks to replace, not only because it
sacrifices ambiguity, depth, and moral authority, but also because its
techniques are reinforcement rather than liberation.
I do not mean to suggest that there are no brilliant sermons,
powerfully intelligent essays, revelatory poems, moving encomiums,
or elegant arguments. Of course there are. Nor do I mean to suggest
that there is no personal language, no prayer that is not stunning in
its creativity, its healing properties, its sheer intellectual power. But
these rhetorical forms are not suitable for sustained prose fiction.
Modern narrative is devoid of religious language that does not glean
most of its nourishment from allusions to or quotations from the
King James Version of the Holy Bible. Two examples of fiction that
deliberately and successfully merge modern and biblical language
are Leon Forrest’s novels and Reynolds Price’s short narratives.
The questions I put to myself are: Is it possible to write religioninflected prose narrative that does not rest its case entirely or mainly
on biblical language? Is it possible to make the experience and
journey of faith fresh, as new and as linguistically unencumbered as
it was to early believers, who themselves had no collection of books
to rely on?
I have chosen this task, this obligation partly because I am
alarmed at the debasement of religious language in literature; its
cliché-ridden expression, its apathy, its refusal to refuel itself with
nonmarket vocabulary (or its insistence on refueling itself with
marketing vocabulary), its substitution of the terminology of popular
psychology for philosophical clarity; its patriarchal triumphalism, its
morally opinionated dictatorial praxis, the unearned pleasure it takes

in performability for its miracle rather than content; its low opinion
of itself.
How can a novelist represent bliss in nonsexual, nonorgiastic
terms? How can a novelist, in a land of plenty, render undeserved,
limitless love, the one “that passeth all understanding,” without
summoning the consumer pleasure of a lotto win? How to invoke
paradise in an age of theme parks?
The answer, unfortunately, is that, so far, I cannot.
I have chosen in the meantime something else, some other strategy
to concretize these informing, old-fashioned passions and conflicts.
Not to use paeanistic, rapturous, large words, etc., but to reveal their
consequences.
Here I would like to do what I have always done when the
questions becomes answerable only in the act of storytelling. Begin
the story.
“They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their
time.”

Grendel and His Mother

I

AM HOPING that you will agree that the piece of literature I
want to draw from is, as one of its translators says, “equal to our
knowledge of reality in the present time.” And discover in the lines of
association I am making with a medieval sensibility and a modern
one a fertile ground on which we can appraise our contemporary
world.
I am going to tell you a story. First because narrative is probably
the most effective way knowledge is structured and second because I
am a storyteller. The practice of writing makes demands on me that
nothing else does. The search for language, whether among other
writers or in originating it, constitutes a mission. Delving into
literature is neither escape nor a surefire route to comfort. It has
been a constant, sometimes violent, always provocative engagement
with the contemporary world, the issues of the society we live in. So
you won’t be surprised that I take my text from ancient but by no
means remote sources. The story is this. As I tell it you may be
reminded of the events and rhetoric and actions of many current
militarized struggles and violent upheavals.
Once upon a time there lived a man-eating monster of
unprecedented cruelty and unparalleled appetite, who ravaged
generally at night and focused primarily on the people of one
particular kingdom, but it was only because he chose to. Clearly he
could slaughter whomever and wherever he decided to. His name
was Grendel and he spent a dozen years dismembering, chewing, and
swallowing the livestock, the thanes, the citizens of Scandinavia.
The leader of the besieged country lived in a great mead hall with
his queen, his family, friends, guards, counsels, and a grand army of

heroes. Each night when the leader retired, guards and warriors were
stationed to protect the hall and its inhabitants from destruction and
to try, if at all possible, to slay their nighttime enemy. And each night
Grendel picked them off as though they were ripe cherries on an
eternally fruited tree. The kingdom was sunk in mourning and
helplessness; riven with sorrow for the dead, with regret for the past,
and in fear of the future. They were in the same situation as the
Finns of one of their sagas: “hooped within the great wheel of
necessity, in thrall to a code of loyalty and bravery, bound to seek
glory in the eye of the warrior world. The little nations are grouped
around their lord, the greater nations spoil for war and menace the
little ones, a lord dies, defenselessness ensues, the enemy strikes,
vengeance for the dead becomes an ethic for the living, bloodshed
begets further bloodshed, the wheel turns, the generations tread and
tread and tread.”
But what seemed never to trouble or worry them was who was
Grendel and why had he placed them on his menu? Nowhere in the
story is that question put. The question does not surface for a simple
reason: evil has no father. It is preternatural and exists without
explanation. Grendel’s actions are dictated by his nature; the nature
of an alien mind—an inhuman drift. He is the essence of the one who
loathes you, wants you not just dead, but nourishingly so, so that
your death provides gain to the slayer: food, land, wealth, water—
whatever. Like genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, or
individual assault for profit. But Grendel escapes these reasons: no
one had attacked or offended him; no one had tried to invade his
home or displace him from his territory; no one had stolen from him
or visited any wrath upon him. Obviously he was neither defending
himself nor seeking vengeance. In fact no one knew who he was. He
was not angry with the Danes; he didn’t want to rule their land or
plunder their resources or rape their women, so there could be no
reasoning with him. No bribery, no negotiations, no begging, no
trading could stop him. Humans, even at their most corrupt, selfish,
and ignorant can be made available to reason, are educable,
retrainable, and, most important, fathomable. Humans have words

for madness, explanations for evil, and a system of payback for those
who trespass or are judged outlaws. But Grendel was beyond
comprehension, unfathomable. The ultimate monster: mindless
without intelligible speech. In the illustrations that imagine him and
the language that described him, Grendel is ugly: hairy, his body is
folded in on itself, reeking, easy and most comfortable on all fours.
But even without claws or rows of sharklike teeth, even if he had
been beautiful, it would not have lessened the horror; his mere
presence in the world was an affront to it.
Eventually, of course, a brave and fit hero named Beowulf
volunteers to rid the kingdom of this pestilence. He and his task
force of warriors enter the land, announce their purpose, and are
welcomed with enthusiasm. On the first night, following a
celebration to rally the forces and draw their courage, the war is won
—or so it seemed. When the monster appears, they suffer only one
casualty before Beowulf rips off Grendel’s arm, sending him fatally
bleeding, limping and moaning, slouching back home to his mother,
where he dies.
Yes, mother. I suggested earlier that evil has no father, but it
should not come as a surprise that Grendel has a mother. In true
folkloric, epic fashion, the bearer of evil, of destruction is female.
Monsters, it seems, are born after all, and like her sisters—Eve,
Pandora, Lot’s wife, Helen of Troy, and the female that sits at the
gate of Milton’s hell, birthing vicious dogs who eat one another and
are replaced by more and more litters from their mother’s womb—it
turns out that Grendel’s mother is more repulsive, more
“responsible” for evil than her son is. Interestingly enough, she has
no name and cannot speak (I would like to follow these images, but
at some other time). In any case, this silent, repulsive female is a
mother, and unlike her child, does have a motive for murder—
therefore she sets out immediately to avenge her son. She advances
to the mead hall, interrupts the warriors reveling at their victory, and
fills the pouch she carries with their mangled bodies. Her vengeance
instigates a second, even more determined foray by Beowulf, this
time on the monster’s territory and in his home. Beowulf swims

through demon-laden waters, is captured, and, entering the mother’s
lair, weaponless, is forced to use his bare hands. He fights mightily
but unsuccessfully. Suddenly and fortunately, he grabs a sword that
belongs to the mother. With her own weapon he cuts off her head,
and then the head of Grendel’s corpse. A curious thing happens then:
the victim’s blood melts the sword. The conventional reading is that
the fiends’ blood is so foul it melts steel, but the image of Beowulf
standing there with a mother’s head in one hand and a useless hilt in
the other encourages more layered interpretations. One being that
perhaps violence against violence—regardless of good and evil, right
and wrong—is itself so foul the sword of vengeance collapses in
exhaustion or shame.
Beowulf is a classic epic of good vanquishing evil; of unimaginable
brutality being overcome by physical force. Bravery, sacrifice, honor,
pride, rewards both in reputations and wealth—all come full circle in
this rousing medieval tale. In such heroic narratives, glory is not in
the details; the forces of good and evil are obvious, blatant, the
triumph of the former over the latter is earned, justified, and
delicious. As Beowulf says, “It is always better / to avenge dear ones
than to indulge in mourning. /…So arise, my lord, and let us
immediately / set forth on the trail of this troll-dam. / I guarantee
you she will not get away, / not to dens under ground nor upland
groves / nor the ocean floor. She’ll have nowhere to flee to.”
Contemporary society, however, is made uneasy by the concept of
pure, unmotivated evil, by pious, unsullied virtue, and contemporary
writers and scholars search for more.
One challenge to the necessary but narrow expectations of this
heroic narrative comes from a contemporary writer, the late John
Gardner, in his novel, titled Grendel. Told from the monster’s point
of view, it is a tour de force and an intellectual and aesthetic
enterprise that comes very close to being the sotto-voiced subject of
much of today’s efforts to come to grips with the kind of permanent
global war we now find ourselves engaged in. The novel poses the
question that the epic does not: Who is Grendel? The author asks us
to enter his mind and test the assumption that evil is flagrantly

unintelligible, wanton, and undecipherable. By assuming Grendel’s
voice, his point of view, Gardner establishes at once that unlike the
character in the poem, Grendel is not without thought, and is not a
beast. In fact he is reflecting precisely on real true beasts the moment
the reader is introduced to him. When the novel opens he is watching
a ram, musing, “Do not think my brains are squeezed shut, like the
ram’s, by the roots of horns.” And “Why can’t these creatures
discover a little dignity?”
Gardner’s version has the same plot, characters, etc., as the
original, and relies on similar descriptions and conventions:
referring to women, for example, only queens have names. If
Grendel’s mother has a name it is as unspeakable as she is
unspeaking. Seamus Heaney’s introduction to his translation of
Beowulf emphasizes the movement of evil from out there to in here,
from the margins of the world to inside the castle, and focuses on the
artistic brilliance of the poem, the “beautiful contrivances of its
language”; Gardner, however, tries to penetrate the interior life—
emotional, cognizant—of incarnate evil and prioritizes the poet as
one who organizes the world’s disorder, who pulls together disparate
histories into meaning. We learn in Gardner’s novel that Grendel
distinguishes himself from the ram that does not know or remember
his past. We learn that Grendel, in the beginning, is consumed by
hatred and is neither proud nor ashamed of it. That he is full of
contempt for the survivors of his rampages. Watching the thanes
bury their dead, he describes the scene as follows: “On the side of the
hill the dirge-slow shoveling begins. They throw up a mound for the
funeral pyre, for whatever arms or legs or heads my haste has left
behind. Meanwhile, up in the shattered hall, the builders are
hammering, replacing the door…industrious and witless as worker
ants—except that they make small, foolish changes, adding a few
more iron pegs, more iron bands, with tireless dogmatism.” This
contempt extends to the world in general. “I understood that the
world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on
which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that,
finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what

pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is
not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.”
But the fundamental theme of the novel lies in Grendel’s
possibilities—first, his encounter with shaped, studied, artistic
language (as opposed to noise, groans, shouts, boasts) and, second,
his dialogue with the dragon who sits atop the mountain of gold he
has been guarding for centuries. Regarding the first, his encounter
with the poet, who is called the Shaper, offers him the only
possibility of transformation. Grendel knows the Shaper’s song is full
of lies, illusion. He has watched carefully the battles of men and
knows they are not the glory the Shaper turns them into. But he
succumbs to the Shaper’s language nevertheless because of its power
to transform, its power to elevate, to discourage base action. He
defines the poet’s potency this way: “He reshapes the world….So his
name implies. He stares strange-eyed at the mindless world and
turns dry sticks to gold.” It is because of this shaped, elevated,
patterned language that Grendel is able to contemplate beauty,
recognize love, feel pity, crave mercy, and experience shame. It is
because of the Shaper’s imagination that he considers the equation of
quality with meaning. In short he develops a desperate hunger for
the life of a completely human being. “My heart,” he says, “was light
with Hrothgar’s goodness, and leaden with grief at my own
bloodthirsty ways.” Overwhelmed with these reflections on goodness
and light, he goes to the mead hall weeping for mercy, aching for
community to assuage his utter loneliness. “I staggered out into the
open and up toward the hall with my burden, groaning out, ‘Mercy!
Peace!’ The harper broke off, the people screamed….Drunken men
rushed me with battle-axes. I sank to my knees, crying, ‘Friend!
Friend!’ They hacked at me, yipping like dogs.” So he reverts to the
deep wilderness of his hatred. Yet he is still in turmoil, torn between
“tears and a bellow of scorn.” He travels to the dragon for answers to
his own cosmic questions: Why am I here? What is God? What is the
world?
At the end of a long and fascinating argument, loaded with the
dragon’s cynicism, bitterness, and indifference, Grendel receives one

word of advice from the dragon: “Get a pile of gold, and sit on it.”
Between Grendel’s suspicion that noble language produces noble
behavior (just as puny, empty language produces puny, empty
behavior) and the dragon’s view of man’s stupidity, banality, and
irrelevance, his own denial of “free will and intercession,” right there,
exactly there, lies the plane on which civic and intellectual life rests,
rocks, and rolls. Grendel’s dilemma is also ours. It is the nexus
between the Shaper and the dragon; between Saint Augustine and
Nietzsche, between art and science; between the Old Testament and
the New, between swords and ploughshares. It is the space for as well
as the act of thought; it is a magnetic space, pulling us away from
reaction to thinking. Denying easy answers, and violence committed
because, in crisis, it is the only thing one knows how to do.
Absolute answers, like those Grendel wanted, cynically poised
questions, like those the dragon offered, can dilute and misdirect the
educational project. In this country, where competition is
worshipped and crisis is the driving force of media-salted
information, and where homogeneity and difference, diversity and
conformity are understood to be the national ideal, we are being
asked to both recoil from violence and to embrace it; to waver
between winning at all costs and caring for our neighbor; between
the fear of the strange and the comfort of the familiar; between the
blood feud of the Scandinavians and the monster’s yearning for
nurture and community. It was the pull of those opposites that
trounced Grendel and that trouble and disable national, educational,
and personal discourse.
Crisis is a heightened, sometimes bloody, obviously dangerous,
always tense confluence of events and views about those events.
Volatility, theatricality, and threat swirl about in crisis. Crisis, like
war, demands “final answers,” quick and definitive action—to douse
flames, draw blood, soothe consciences.
Sometimes the demand for quick and definitive action is so keen
all energy is gathered to avoid the crisis of impending crisis. The
effect of militarizing virtually every fluid situation and social problem
has been encroaching inertia, if not established paralysis. It has also

produced an increased appetite for ever more thrilling, intense
presentations of crisis. (Note the plethora of televised entertainment
devoted to ersatz, fake crises—survival in third-world countries
among people for whom survival is an unremarkable condition of
life.) This hunger is not different from numb insensitivity, is, in fact,
a vivid expression of it. Once the taste for the blood images of
conquest is introduced, it may not be easily slaked.
I have elaborated upon this media version of crisis in order to
distinguish it from conflict. Conflict is the clash of incompatible
forces, the Shaper versus the dragon; a disharmony calling for
adjustment, change, or compromise. Conflict recognizes legitimate
oppositions, honest but different interpretations of data, contesting
theories. These oppositions may be militarized, may have to be, but
in the academy they should, must not be. In fact, they must be
embraced if education is to occur. Conflict in the halls of the
academy is unlike conflict in the malls, arcades, or on a battlefield. In
academic halls versus arcade malls, conflict is not a screen game to
play for its own sake, nor a social gaffe to avoid at all costs. It has a
bad reputation only because we have been taught to associate it with
winning and losing, with the desperate need to be right, to be alpha.
With violence. Conflict is not another word for crisis or for war or for
competition. Conflict is a condition of intellectual life, and, I believe,
its pleasure. Firing up the mind to engage itself is precisely what the
mind is for—it has no other purpose. Just as the body is always
struggling to repair itself from its own abuse, to stay alive, so is the
mind craving knowledge. When it is not busy trying to know, it is in
disrepair.
The mind really is a palace. Not only for its perception of
symmetry and the outrageously beautiful, but also because it can
invent, imagine, and, most important, it can delve.
I like to think that John Gardner’s view will hold: that language—
informed, shaped, reasoned—will become the hand that stays crisis
and gives creative, constructive conflict air to breathe, startling our
lives and rippling our intellect. I know that democracy is worth
fighting for. I know that fascism is not. To win the former intelligent

struggle is needed. To win the latter nothing is required. You only
have to cooperate, be silent, agree, and obey until the blood of
Grendel’s mother annihilates her own weapon and the victor’s as
well.

The Writer Before the Page

I

ONCE KNEW a woman named Hannah Peace. I say “knew,” but
nothing could be less accurate. I was perhaps four years old when she
was in the town where I lived. I don’t know where (or even if) she is
now or to whom she was related then. She was not even a visiting
friend. And I couldn’t to this day describe her in a way that would
make her known in a photograph, nor would I recognize her if she
walked into this room. But I have a memory of her and it’s like this:
the color of her skin—the matte quality of it. Something purple
around her. Also eyes not completely open. There emanated from her
an aloofness that seemed to me kindly disposed. But most of all I
remember her name—or the way people pronounced it. Never
Hannah or Miss Peace. Always Hannah Peace—and more. Something
hidden—some awe perhaps, but certainly some forgiveness. When
they pronounced her name, they (the women and the men) forgave
her something.
That’s not much, I know: half-closed eyes, an absence of hostility,
skin powdered in lilac dust. But it was more than enough to evoke a
character—in fact any more detail would have prevented (for me) the
emergence of a fictional character at all. What is useful—definitive—
is the galaxy of emotion that accompanied the woman as I pursued
my memory of her, not the woman herself.
In the example I have given of Hannah Peace it was the havingbeen-easily-forgiven that caught my attention, and that quality, that
“easily forgivenness” that I believe I remembered in connection with
a shadow of a woman my mother knew, is the theme of Sula. The
women forgive each other—or learn to. Once that piece of the
constellation became apparent, it dominated the other pieces. The

next step was to discover what there is to be forgiven among women.
Such things must now be raised and invented because I am going to
tell about feminine forgiveness in story form. The things to be
forgiven are grave errors and violent misdemeanors, but the point
was less the thing to be forgiven than the nature and quality of
forgiveness among women—which is to say friendship among
women. What one puts up with in a friendship is determined by the
emotional value of the relationship. But Sula is not (simply) about
friendship between women but between black women, a qualifying
term the artistic responsibilities of which are what goes on before I
ever approach the page. Before the act of writing, before the clean
yellow legal pad or the white bond are the principles that inform the
idea of writing. I will touch upon them in a moment.
What I want my fiction to do is to urge the reader into active
participation in the nonnarrative, nonliterary experience of the text.
And to refuse him makes it difficult for him (the reader) to confine
himself to a cool and distant acceptance of data. When one looks at a
very good painting, the experience of looking is deeper than the data
accumulated in viewing it. The same, I think, is true in listening to
good music. Just as the literary value of a painting or a musical
composition is limited, so too is the literary value of literature
limited. I sometimes think how glorious it must have been to have
written drama in sixteenth-century England, or poetry in Greece
before Christ, or religious narrative in 1000 AD, when literature was
need and did not have a critical history to constrain or diminish the
writer’s imagination. How magnificent not to have to depend on the
reader’s literary associations—his literary experience—which can be
as much an impoverishment of the reader’s imagination as it is of a
writer’s. It is important that what I write not be merely literary. I am
most self-conscious about in my work being overcareful in making
sure that I don’t strike literary postures. I avoid, too studiously
perhaps, name-dropping, lists, literary references, unless oblique
and based on written folklore. The choice of a tale or of folklore in
my work is tailored to the character’s thoughts or actions in a way
that flags him or her and provides irony, sometimes humor.

Milkman, about to meet the oldest black woman in the world, the
mother of mothers who has spent her life caring for helpless others,
enters her house thinking of a European tale, “Hansel and Gretel,” a
story about parents who abandoned their own children to a forest
and a witch who made a diet of them. His confusion at that point, his
racial and cultural ignorance and confusion, is flagged. Equally
marked is Hagar’s bed being described as Goldilocks’s choice. Partly
because of Hagar’s preoccupation with hair, and partly because, like
Goldilocks, a housebreaker if ever there was one, she is greedy for
things, unmindful of property rights or other people’s space, and
Hagar is emotionally selfish as well as confused.
This deliberate avoidance of literary references has become a firm
if boring habit with me, not only because it leads to poses, not only
because I refuse the credentials it bestows, but also because it is
inappropriate to the kind of literature I wish to write, the aims of that
literature, and the discipline of the specific culture that interests me.
(Emphasis on me.) Literary references in the hands of writers I love
can be extremely revealing, but they can also supply a comfort I don’t
want the reader to have because I want him to respond on the same
plane an illiterate or preliterature reader would have to. I want to
subvert his traditional comfort so that he may experience an
unorthodox one: that of being in the company of his own solitary
imagination.
My beginnings as a novelist were very much focused on creating
this discomfort and unease in order to insist that the reader rely on
another body of knowledge. However weak those beginnings were in
1965, they nevertheless pointed me toward the process that engages
me in 1982: trusting memory and culling from it theme and
structure. In The Bluest Eye the recollection of what I felt and saw
upon hearing a child my own age say she prayed for blue eyes
provided the first piece. I then tried to distinguish between a piece
and a part (in the way that a piece of a human body is different from
a part of a human body).
As I began developing parts out of pieces, I found that I preferred
them unconnected—to be related but not to touch—to circle, not line

up, because the story of this prayer was the story of a shattered,
fractured perception resulting from a shattered, splintered life. The
novel turned out to be a composition of parts circling one another,
like the galaxy accompanying memory. I fret the pieces and fragment
aspect of memory because too often we want the whole thing. When
we wake from a dream we want to remember all of it, although the
fragment we are remembering may be—very probably is—the most
important piece in the dream. Chapter and part designations, as
conventionally used in novels, were never very much help to me in
writing. Nor are outlines. (I permit their use for the sake of the
designer and for ease in talking about the book. They are usually
identified at the last minute.)
There may be play and arbitrariness in the way memory surfaces
but none in the way the composition is organized, especially when I
hope to re-create play and arbitrariness in the way narrative events
unfold. The form becomes the exact interpretation of the idea the
story is meant to express. Nothing more traditional than that—but
the sources of the images are not the traditional novelistic or
readerly ones. The visual image of a splintered mirror, or the
corridor of split mirrors in blue eyes, is the form as well as the
context in The Bluest Eye.
Narrative is one of the ways in which knowledge is organized. I
have always thought it was the most important way to transmit and
receive knowledge. I am less certain of that now—but if the fact that
the craving for narrative has never lessened it is any indication, the
hunger for it is as keen as it was on Mount Sinai or Calvary or in the
middle of the fens. (Even when novelists abandon or grow tired of it
as an outmoded memetic form, historians, journalists, and
performing artists take up the slack.) Still, narrative is not and never
has been enough, just as the object drawn on a canvas or a cave wall
is never simply mimetic.
My compact with the reader is not to reveal an already established
reality (literary or historical) that he or she and I agree upon
beforehand. I don’t want to assume or exercise that kind of authority.
I regard that as patronizing, although many people regard it as safe

and reassuring. And because my métier is black, the artistic demands
of black culture are such that I cannot patronize, control, or
pontificate. In the third-world cosmology as I perceive it, reality is
not already constituted by my literary predecessors in Western
culture. If my work is to confront a reality unlike that received reality
of the West, it must centralize and animate information discredited
by the West—discredited not because it is not true or useful or even
of some racial value, but because it is information held by discredited
people, information dismissed as “lore” or “gossip” or “magic” or
“sentiment.”
If my work is faithfully to reflect the aesthetic tradition of AfroAmerican culture, it must make conscious use of the characteristics
of its art forms and translate them into print: antiphony, the group
nature of art, its functionality, its improvisational nature, its
relationship to audience performance, the critical voice that upholds
tradition and communal values and that also provides occasion for
an individual to transcend and/or defy group restrictions.
Working with those rules, the text, if it is to take improvisation and
audience participation into account, cannot be the authority—it
should be the map. It should make a way for the reader (audience) to
participate in the tale. The language, if it is to permit criticism of
both rebellion and tradition, must be both indicator and mask, and
the tension between the two kinds of language is its release and its
power. If my work is to be functional to the group (to the village, as it
were) then it must bear witness and identify danger as well as
possible havens from danger; it must identify that which is useful
from the past and that which ought to be discarded; it must make it
possible to prepare for the present and live it out; and it must do that
not by avoiding problems and contradictions but by examining them;
it should not even attempt to solve social problems but it should
certainly try to clarify them.
Before I try to illustrate some of these points by using Tar Baby as
an example, let me hasten to say that there are eminent and
powerful, intelligent, and gifted black writers who not only recognize
Western literature as part of their own heritage but who have

employed it to such an advantage that it illuminates both cultures. I
neither object to nor am indifferent to their work or their views. I
relish it, in precisely the way I relish a world of literature from other
cultures. The question is not legitimacy or the “correctness” of a
point of view, but the difference between my point of view and theirs.
Nothing would be more hateful to me than a monolithic prescription
for what black literature is or ought to be. I simply wanted to write
literature that was irrevocably, indisputably black not because its
characters were, or because I was, but because it took as its creative
task and sought as its credentials those recognized and verifiable
principles of black art.
TAR BABY
Recollecting the told story.
Refusing to read a modern or Westernized version of it.
Selecting out the pieces that were disturbing or simply memorable:
fear, tar, the rabbit’s outrage at a failing in traditional manners (the
Tar Baby does not speak). Why the Tar Baby was formed, to what
purpose, what was the farmer trying to protect, and why did he think
the doll would be attractive to the rabbit (what did he know and what
was his big mistake)? Why does the Tar Baby cooperate with the
farmer, do the things the farmer wishes to protect, wish to be
protected? What makes his job more important than the rabbit’s,
why does the farmer believe that a briar patch is sufficient
punishment, what does the briar patch represent to the rabbit, to the
Tar Baby, and to the farmer?
CREATION
Putting the above pieces together in parts.
Concentrating on tar as a part. What is it and where does it come
from; its holy uses and its profane uses, consideration of which leads

to a guiding motif: ahistorical earth and historical earth. How that
theme is translated into the structure.
1. Coming out of the sea (that which was there before earth) is both
the beginning and the end of the book—in both of which Son
emerges from the sea in a section that is not numbered as a
chapter.
2. The earth that came out of the sea and its conquest by modern
man; that conquest as viewed by fishermen and clouds. The pain
it caused to the conquered life forms.
3. Movement from the earth into the household: its rooms, its
quality of shelter. The activity for which the rooms were
designed: eating, sleeping, bathing, leisure, etc.
4. The houses disrupted precisely as the earth was disrupted. The
chaos of the earth duplicated in the house designed for order.
The disruption is caused by the man born out of the womb of the
sea accompanied by ammonia odors of birth.
5. The conflict that follows is between the ahistorical (the pristine)
and the historical (or social) forces inherent in the uses of tar.
6. The conflict is, further, between two kinds of chaos: civilized
chaos and natural chaos.
7. The revelation, then, is the revelation of secrets. Everybody with
one or two exceptions has a secret: secrets of acts committed (as
with Margaret and Son), and secrets of thoughts unspoken but
driving nonetheless (as with Valerian and Jadine). And then the
deepest and earliest secret of all: that just as we watch other life,
other life watches us.
I apologize for using my own work as an illustration to those of you
who may not be familiar with it. But had I chosen material from
other writers, the possibility of its being unfamiliar would be equally
as great.
My inability to consider the world in terms other than verbal
means that I am not able to not think about writing. It is the “world

coherent” for me. So I am perplexed by the dread and apprehension
with which some writers regard the process. I am also bored by the
type and space devoted to the death of fiction when the funeral is
lasting longer than the life of the art itself; we can be safe in our
assumption that the corpse is immortal. The “goodbye” is at least 110
years old.
What the fiction-obituary critics are responding to is the peril
literature is in. Peril that can be categorized in three parts:
1. First is the suspicion (or fact—I am not sure which) that the best
young minds are not being attracted to writing, that technology,
postmodernist architecture, “new” music, film, etc., are much
more demanding and exciting.
2. Second is the conviction (in the academy at any rate) that fiction
as narrative is obsolete because it is dictatorial, bourgeois, and
self-congratulatory in its attempt to maintain the status quo.
3. Third of the categories of peril is the growth requirement of
publishers—the marketplace demands narrow the possibilities
for new writers to find a publishing home.
There are, of course, some other perhaps more immediate perils
(global stability, poverty, hunger, love, death), so it really is not a
good time to write. To which observation one can only say: So what?
When has it ever been a good time? Plague-ridden Britain for
Chaucer? World War II for Eudora Welty? World War I for Virginia
Woolf? South African brutality for Nadine Gordimer? The 94 percent
slave population for Plato?
As writers, what we do is remember. And to remember this world
is to create it. The writer’s responsibility (whatever her or his time) is
to change the world—improve his/her own time. Or, less ambitious,
to help make sense of it. Simply in order to discover that it does
make sense. Not one sense. What is the point of 2 billion people
making one sense.
I am old enough to have seen the northern lights (1938?) and I
remember that most shocking, most profound event in the sky over

Lorain, Ohio. After that how could I be content with one simple
color? Or a simple Hannah Peace?

The Trouble with Paradise

I

WANT to begin my meditation on the trouble with paradise with
some remarks on the environment in which I work and in which
many writers also work. The construction of race and its hierarchy
have a powerful impact on expressive language, just as figurative,
interpretative language impacts powerfully on the construction of a
racial society. The intimate exchange between the atmosphere of
racism and the language that asserts, erases, manipulates, or
transforms it is unavoidable among fiction writers, who must
manage to hold an unblinking gaze into the realm of difference. We
are always being compelled by and being pulled into an imaginary of
lives we have never led, emotions we have never felt to which we
have no experiential access, and toward persons never invited into
our dreams. We imagine old people when we are young, write about
the wealthy when we have nothing, genders that are not our own,
people who exist nowhere except in our minds holding views we not
only do not share but may even loathe. We write about nationalities
with whom we have merely a superficial acquaintance. The
willingness, the necessity, the excitement of moving about in
unknown terrain constitute both the risk and the satisfaction of the
work.
Of the several realms of difference, the most stubborn to imagine
convincingly is the racial difference. It is a stubbornness born of ages
of political insistence and social apparatus. And while it has an
almost unmitigated force in political and domestic life, the realm of
racial difference has been allowed an intellectual weight to which it
has no claim. It is truly a realm that is no realm at all. An allconsuming vacancy, the enunciatory difficulty of which does not

diminish with the discovery that one is narrating that which is both
constitutive and fraudulent, both common and strange. Strong
critical language is available clarifying that discovery of the chasm
that is none, as well as the apprehension which that discovery raises.
But it is quite one thing to identify the apprehension and quite
another to implement it, to narrate it, to dramatize its play. Fictional
excursions into these realms are as endlessly intriguing to me as they
are instructive in the manner in which the power of racial difference
is rendered. These imaginative forays can be sophisticated, cunning,
thrillingly successful, or fragile and uninformed. But none is
accidental. For many writers it is not enough to indicate or represent
difference, its fault line and its solidity. It is rather more to the point
of their project to use it for metaphoric and structural purposes.
Often enhancing or decorating racial difference becomes a strategy
for genuflecting before one’s own race about which one feels unease.
I am deeply and personally involved in figuring out how to
manipulate, mutate, and control imagistic, metaphoric language in
order to produce something that could be called race-specific racefree prose: literature that is free of the imaginative restraints that the
racially inflected language at my disposal imposes on me. The
Paradise project required me first to recognize and identify racially
inflected language and strategies, then deploy them to achieve a
counter effect, to deactivate their power, summon other opposing
powers, and liberate what I am able to invent, record, describe, and
transform from the straitjacket a racialized society can, and
frequently does, buckle us into.
It is important to remind ourselves that in addition to poetry and
fictional prose, racial discourse permeates all of the scholarly
disciplines: theology, history, the social sciences, literary criticism,
the language of law, psychiatry, and the natural sciences. By this I
mean more than the traces of racism that survive in the language as
normal and inevitable, such as name-calling; skin privileges (the
equation of black with evil and white with purity); the orthographic
disrespect given the speech of African Americans; the pseudoscience
developed to discredit them, etc., and I mean more than the

unabashedly racist agendas that are promoted in some of the
scholarship of these disciplines. I mean the untrammeled agency and
license racial discourse provides intellectuals, while at the same time
fructifying, closing off knowledge about the race upon which such
discourse is dependent. One of the most malevolent characteristics of
racist thought is that it seems never to produce new knowledge. It
seems able merely to reformulate and refigure itself in multiple but
static assertions. It has no referent in the material world. Like the
concept of black blood, or white blood, or blue blood it is designed to
create and employ a self-contained field, to construct artificial
borders and to maintain them against all reason and against all
evidence.
The problem of writing in a language in which the codes of racial
hierarchy and disdain are deeply embedded was exacerbated when I
began Paradise. In that novel I was determined to focus the assault
on the metaphorical, metonymic infrastructure upon which such
language rests and luxuriates. I am aware of how whiteness matures
and ascends the throne of universalism by maintaining its powers to
describe and to enforce its descriptions. To challenge that view of
universalism, to exorcize, alter, and defang the white/black
confrontation and concentrate on the residue of that hostility seemed
to me a daunting project and an artistically liberating one. The
material had been for some time of keen interest to me: the all-black
towns founded by African Americans in the nineteenth century
provided a rich field for an exploration into race-specific/race-free
language. I assumed the reader would be habituated to very few
approaches to African American literature: (1) reading it as sociology
—not art, (2) a reading that anticipated the pleasure or the crisis—the
frisson of an encounter with the exotic or the sentimentally familiar
with romantic, (3) a reading that was alert to, familiar with, and
dependent upon racial codes. I wanted to transgress and render
useless those assumptions.
Paradise places an all-black community, one chosen by its
inhabitants, next to a raceless one, also chosen by its inhabitants.
The grounds for traditional black/white hostilities shift to the nature

of exclusion, the origins of chauvinism, the sources of oppression,
assault, and slaughter. The exclusively black community is all about
its race: preserving it, developing powerful myths of origin, and
maintaining its purity. In the Convent of women, other than the
nuns, race is indeterminate. All racial codes are eliminated,
deliberately withheld. I tried to give so full a description of the
women that knowing their racial identity would become irrelevant.
Uninterested in the black/white tension that one expects to be
central in any fiction written by an African American author, the
book provides itself with an expanded canvas. Unconstrained by the
weary and wearying vocabulary of racial domination, outside the
boundaries of an already defined debate, the novel seeks to
unencumber itself from the limits that figurations of a racialized
language impose on the imagination while simultaneously
normalizing a particular race’s culture. For many American readers
this was disturbing: some admitted to being preoccupied with
finding out which was the white girl; others wondered initially and
then abandoned the question; some never concerned themselves
with the discovery either by reading them as all black or, the lucky
ones, by reading them as all fully realized people. In American
English eliminating racial markers is challenging. There are matters
of physical description, of dialogue, of assumptions about
background and social status, of cultural differences. The technical
problems were lessened because the action took place in the
seventies, when women wandered about on their own and when
African American culture reached a kind of apogee of influence on
American culture in general. Conflicts in the text are gender related;
they are also generational. They are struggles over history: Who will
tell and thereby control the story of the past? Who will shape the
future? They are conflicts of value, of ethics. Of personal identity.
What is manhood? Womanhood? And finally, most importantly,
what is personhood?
Raising these questions seemed to me most compelling when
augmented by yearnings for freedom and safety; for plenitude, for
rest, for beauty; by contemplations on the temporal and the eternal;

by the search for one’s own space, for respect, for love, for bliss—in
short, paradise. And that throws into relief the second trouble with
Paradise: how to render expressive religious language credibly and
effectively in postmodernist fiction without having to submit to a
vague egalitarianism, or to a kind of late-twentieth-century
environmental spiritualism, or to the modernist/feminist school of
the goddess-body adored, or to the biblical/political scholasticism of
the more entrenched and dictatorial wings of contemporary religious
institutions—none of which, it seems to me, represents the everyday
practice of nineteenth-century African Americans and their children,
nor lends itself to postmodernist narrative strategies. How to express
profound and motivating faith in and to a secularized, scientific
world? How, in other words, to reimagine paradise?
Paradise is no longer imaginable or, rather, it is overimagined—
which amounts to the same thing—and has thus become familiar,
common, even trivial. Historically, the images of paradise, in poetry
and prose, were intended to be grand but accessible, beyond the
routine but imaginatively graspable, seductive precisely because of
our ability to recognize them—as though we “remembered” the
scenes somehow. Milton speaks of “goodliest trees, loaden with
fairest fruit, / Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue, /…with gay
enameled colours mixed”; of “Native perfumes”; of “that sapphire
fount the crispèd brooks, / Rolling on orient pearl and sands of
gold”; of “nectar, visiting each plant, and fed / Flowers worthy of
Paradise”; “nature boon / poured forth profuse on hill and dale and
plain”; “Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm; /
Others, whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, / Hung amiable—
Hesperian fables true, /…of delicious taste; / Betwixt them lawns, or
level downs, and flocks / Grazing the tender herb”; “Flowers of all
hue, and without thorn the rose”; “caves / Of cool recess, o’er which
the mantling vine / Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps /
Luxuriant.”
That scenario, in this the last decade of the twentieth century, we
recognize as bounded real estate, owned by the wealthy, viewed and
visited by guests and tourists, regularly on display for the rest of us

in the products and promises sold by various media. Overimagined.
Quite available if not in fact, then certainly as ordinary unexceptional
desire. Let’s examine the characteristics of physical paradise—
beauty, plenty, rest, exclusivity, and eternity—to see how they stack
up in 1995.
Beauty of course is a duplicate of what we already know,
intensified by what we have never known articulated. Beatific,
benevolent nature combined with precious metals and jewelry. What
it cannot be is beauty beyond imagination.
Plenty, in a world of excess and attending greed that tilts resources
to the haves and forces the have-nots to locate bounty within what
has already been acquired by the haves, is an almost obscene feature
of paradise. In this world of tilted resources, of outrageous,
shameless wealth squatting, hulking, preening itself before the
dispossessed, the very idea of plenty, of sufficiency, as utopian ought
to make us tremble. Plenty should not be regulated to a paradisiacal
state, but to normal, everyday, humane life.
Rest, that is the superfluity of working or fighting for rewards of
food or luxury, has dwindling currency these days. It is a
desirelessness that suggests a special kind of death without dying.
Exclusivity, however, is still an attractive, even compelling feature
of paradise because some, the unworthy, are not there. Boundaries
are secure; watchdogs, gates, keepers are there to verify the
legitimacy of the inhabitants. Such enclaves are cropping up again,
like medieval fortresses and moats, and it does not seem possible or
desirable for a city to be envisioned in which poor people can be
accommodated. Exclusivity is not just an accessible dream for the
well-endowed, but an increasingly popular solution for the middle
class. “Streets” are understood to be populated by the unworthy and
the dangerous; young people are forced off the streets for their own
good. Yet public space is fought over as if it were private. Who gets to
enjoy a park, a beach, a mall, a corner? The term “public” is itself a
site of contention. Paradise therefore has a very real attraction to
modern society.

Eternity, since it holds the pain of dying again, and, in its rejection
of secular, scientific arguments, has probably the greatest appeal.
And medical, scientific resources directed toward more life, and fitter
life, remind us of the desire for earthbound eternity, rather than
eternal afterlife. The suggestion being this is all there is. Thus,
paradise, as an earthly project, as opposed to heaven, has serious
intellectual and visual limitations. Aside from “Only me or us
forever” it hardly bears describing anymore.
But that might be unfair. It is hard not to notice how much more
attention has always been given to hell rather than heaven. Dante’s
Inferno beats out Paradiso every time. Milton’s brilliantly rendered
pre-paradise world, known as Chaos, is far more fully realized than
his Paradise. The visionary language of antithesis reaches heights of
linguistic ardor with which the thesis language seldom competes.
There are many reasons why the images of the horrors of hell were
meant to be virulently repulsive in the twelfth, fifteenth, and
seventeenth centuries. The argument for avoiding it needed to be
visceral, needed to reveal how much worse such an eternity was than
the hell of everyday life. But the need has persisted, in our times,
with a significant addition. There is an influx of books devoted to a
consternation about the absence of a sense of evil—if not hell—of a
loss of shame in contemporary life.
One wonders how to account for the melancholy that accompanies
these exhortations about our inattention to, the mutedness, the
numbness toward anti-paradisiacal experience. Evil is understood,
justifiably, to be pervasive, but it has somehow lost its awe-fullness.
It does not frighten us. It is merely entertainment. Why are we not so
frightened by its possibilities that we turn toward good? Is afterlife of
any sort too simple for our complex, sophisticated modern
intelligence? Or is it that, more than paradise, evil needs costumes,
constantly refurbished and replenished? Hell has always lent itself to
glamour, headlines, a tuxedo, cunning, a gruesome mask or a
seductive one. Maybe it needs blood, slime, roaring simply to get our
attention, to tickle us, draw from us our wit, our imagination, our
energy, our heights of performance. After which paradise is simply

its absence, an edgeless and therefore unavailing lack full of an
already perceived, already recognizable landscape: great trees for
shade and fruit, lawns, palaces, precious metals, jewelry, animal
husbandry. Outside fighting hell, waging war against the unworthy,
there seems nothing for its inhabitants to do. A nonexclusionary,
unbordered, come-one-come-all paradise, without dread, minus a
nemesis, is no paradise at all.
The literary problem is harnessing contemporary language to
reveal not only the intellectual complexity of paradise, but language
that seizes the imagination not as an amicus brief to a naïve or
psychotic life, but as sane, intelligent life itself. If I am to do justice
to, bear witness to the deeply religious population of this project and
render their profoundly held moral system affective in these
alienated, uninspiring, and uninspired times—where religion is
understood to run the gamut from scorned, unintelligible
fundamentalism to literate, well-meaning liberalism, to
televangelistic marketing to militaristic racism and phobophilia—I
have serious problems.
Historically the language of religion (and I am speaking here of
Christianity, but I am relatively certain this is true of all text-based
religions) is dependent upon and gains its strength, beauty, and
unassailability from biblical or holy texts. Contemporary religious
language, that is the speech and the script that seeks to translate
divine translations into “popular” or “everyday common” parlance,
seems to work best in song, in anecdote, and in the occasional
rhetorical flourish. I understand that the reason for modernizing the
traditional language of the Bible is an effort to connect with and
proselytize a population indifferent or unresponsive to the language
that moved our ancestors. To compete for the attention of a
constituency whose discourse has been shaped by the language of
media and commerce and whose expectation of correlating images to
accompany and clarify text is a difficult enterprise. And it appears
reasonable to accommodate altering circumstances with alternate
modes of discourse. While I can’t testify to the success of such

efforts, I suspect the “modernization” of God’s language has been
rewarding—otherwise these attempts would not be so plentiful.
Marketing religion requires new strategies, new appeals, and a
relevance that is immediate, not contemplative. Thus modern
language, while successful in the acquisition of converts and the
spiritual maintenance of the confirmed, is forced to kneel before the
denominator that is most accessible, to bankrupt its subtlety, its
mystery in order to bankroll its effect. Nevertheless it seems a poor
substitute for the language it seeks to replace, not only because it
sacrifices ambiguity, depth, and moral authority, but also because its
techniques are reinforcement rather than liberation.
I do not mean to suggest that there are no brilliant sermons,
powerfully intelligent essays, revelatory poems, moving encomiums,
or elegant arguments. Of course there are. Nor do I mean to suggest
that there is no personal language, no prayer that is not stunning in
its creativity, its healing properties, its sheer intellectual power. But
these rhetorical forms are not suitable for sustained prose fiction.
Modern narrative is devoid of religious language that does not glean
most of its nourishment from allusions to or quotations from holy
texts.
Is it possible to write religion-inflected prose narrative that does
not rest its case entirely or mainly on biblical language? Is it possible
to make the experience and journey of faith fresh, as new and as
linguistically unencumbered as it was to early believers, who
themselves had no collection of books to rely on?
I have chosen this task, this obligation partly because I am
alarmed at the debasement of religious language in literature; its
cliché-ridden expression, its apathy, its refusal to refuel itself with
nonmarket vocabulary (or “its insistence on refueling itself with
marketing vocabulary”), its substitution of the terminology of
popular psychology for philosophical clarity; its patriarchal
triumphalism, its morally bankrupt dictatorial praxis, the unearned
congratulations it awards itself for performability rather than
content; its low opinion of its mission.

How can a novelist represent bliss in nonsexual, nonorgiastic
terms? How can a novelist, in a land of plenty, render undeserved,
limitless love, the one “that passeth all understanding,” without
summoning the consumer pleasure of a lotto win? How to invoke
paradise in an age of theme parks?
The answer, unfortunately, is that, so far, I cannot. I chose
something else, some other means of freshening the inquiry. I chose
not only to explore the idea of paradise, but to interrogate the narrow
imagination that has conceived it.
But that, I think, is another essay entirely.

On Beloved

I

BEGAN thinking about Beloved in 1983. As it had been since the
beginning of my writing years, I was drawn to it by my complicated
relationship with history. A relationship that was wary, alert, but
ready to be persuaded away from doubt. It was a caution based on
my early years as a student, during which time I was keenly aware of
erasures and absences and silences in the written history available to
me—silences that I took for censure. History, it seemed, was about
them. And if I or someone representative of myself ever were
mentioned in fiction, it was usually something I wished I had
skipped. Not just in the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark
Twain’s unconscionable humiliation of a grown man at the hands of
children; there was no respite in those years even in the encyclopedia
or in history texts. While I maintain a cool eye while reading
historical texts, it is an eye no cooler than the one historians
maintain, and ought to maintain when reading fiction. Yet in spite of
my wariness, my skepticism, there is a dependence, solid and
continuous, that I have on history, partly for the data available to me
there, but mostly for precisely those gaps, those erasures, that
censure. It is in the interstices of recorded history that I frequently
find the “nothing” or the “not enough” or the “indistinct” or
“incomplete” or “discredited” or “buried” information important to
me. For example, in 1963, my first novel, The Bluest Eye, was a
consequence of being overcome by the wholesale dismissal of a
certain part of the population (to which I belonged) in history texts
and literature. Of all the characters chosen for artistic examination,
with empathy or contempt, vulnerable young black girls were
profoundly absent. When they did appear, they were jokes or
instances of pity—pity without understanding. No one it seemed

missed their presence center stage and no one it seemed took them
seriously except me. Now, I didn’t blame literature for that. Writers
write what they like and what interests them. And even African
American writers (mostly men, but not all) made clear that, except as
background, prepubescent black girls were unable to hold their
interest or stimulate their curiosity. Nevertheless, writers’ lack of
curiosity was not the point. To me the enforced or chosen silence, the
way history was written, controlled and shaped the national
discourse.
However much historical analysis has changed (and it has changed
enormously) and broadened in the last forty years, the silences
regarding certain populations (minorities) when finally articulated
are still understood to be supplementary accounts of a marginal
experience, a supplemental record, unassociated with the
mainstream of history; an expanded footnote, as it were, that is
interesting but hardly central to the nation’s past. Racial history, for
example, remains very much parallel to main historical texts, but is
seldom seen as either its warp or woof, and seldom threaded into the
whole cloth. These ancillary and parallel texts are gaining wide
readership while remaining the site of considerable controversy.
(Debates about reading material swirled in many high schools.)
Although the silences provoked virtually all of my work, inhabiting
them with one’s own imagination is easy to note, not so easy to do. I
have to find the hook, the image, the newspaper article that produces
sustained musing, a “what if?” or “what must it have been like?”
Beloved originated as a general question, and was launched by a
newspaper clipping. The general question (remember, this was the
early eighties) centered on how—other than equal rights, access, pay,
etc.—does the women’s movement define the freedom being sought?
One principal area of fierce debate was control of one’s own body—
an argument that is as rife now as it was then. Many women were
convinced that such rights extended to choosing to be a mother,
suggesting that not being a mother was not a deficit and choosing
motherlessness (for however long) could be added to a list of

freedoms; that is, one could choose to live a life free of and from
childbearing and no negative or value judgment need apply.
Another aspect of the women’s movement involved strong
encouragement of women to support other women. Not to have one’s
relationship to another woman be subordinate to a relationship with
a man. That is, the time spent with a female friend was not
downtime. It was real time.
The completion of the debate was more complicated than that
(there was much class conflict roiling in it) but those were the issues
surfacing with gusto. I addressed the second one (women being
important friends) in Sula. But the first one—freedom as ownership
of the body, childlessness chosen as a mark of freedom, engaged me
deeply.
And here again the silences of historical accounts and the
marginalizing of minority peoples in the debate claimed my attention
and proved a rich being to explore. From the point of view of slave
women, for example. Suppose having children, being called a
mother, was the supreme act of freedom—not its opposite? Suppose
instead of being required to have children (because of gender, slave
status, and profit) one chose to be responsible for them; to claim
them as one’s own; to be, in other words, not a breeder, but a parent.
Under U.S. slavery such a claim was not only socially unacceptable, it
was illegal, anarchic. It was also an expression of intolerable female
independence. It was freedom. And if the claim extended to
infanticide (for whatever reason—noble or crazed) it could and did
become politically explosive.
These lines of thought came together when I recalled a newspaper
article I had read around 1970, a description of an abolitionist cause
célèbre focused on a slave woman named Margaret Garner who had
indeed made such claims. The details of her life were riveting. But I
selected and manipulated its parts to suit my own purposes. Still my
reluctance to enter the period of slavery was disabling. The need to
reexamine and imagine it was repellent. Plus, I believed nobody else
would want to dig deeply into the interior lives of slaves, except to
summon their nobility or victimhood, to be outraged or self-

righteously gripped by pity. I was interested in neither. The act of
writing is a kind of act of faith.
Sometimes what is there—what is already written—is perfect and
imitation is absurd and intolerable. But a perfect thing is not
everything. Another thing, another different thing is required.
Sometimes what is already there is simply not enough; other times it
is indistinct, incomplete, even in error or buried. Sometimes, of
course, there is nothing. And for a novelist that is the real
excitement. Not what there is, but what there is not.
A tall door rises up into this nothing; its hardware is heavy, secure.
No bell invites your hand. So you stand there, perhaps, or move away
and, later, sticking your hand in your pocket, you find a key that you
know (or hope) fits the lock. Even before the tumblers fall back you
know you will find what you hoped to find: a word or two that turns
the “not enough” into more; the line or sentence that inserts itself
into the nothing. With the right phrase, this sense becomes murky,
becomes lit, differently lit. Through that door is a kind of freedom
that can frighten governments, sustain others, and rid whole nations
of confusion. More important, however, is that the writer who steps
through that door with the language of his or her own intellect and
imagination enters uncolonized territory, which she can claim as
rightfully her own—for a while at least.
The shared effort to avoid imagining slave life as lived from their
own point of view became the subtheme, the structure of the work.
Forgetting the past was the engine, and the characters (except for
one) are intent on forgetting. The one exception being the one
hungry for a past, desperate for being not just remembered, but dealt
with, confronted. That character would be the only one in a position
to accurately render judgment of her own murder: the dead child.
Beloved. Thus, after following a number of trails trying to determine
the structure, I decided that the single most uncontroversial thing
one can say about the institution of slavery vis-à-vis contemporary
time, is that it haunts us all. That in so many ways all our lives are
entangled with the past—its manipulations and, fearful of its grasp,
ignoring or dismissing or distorting it to suit ourselves, but always

unable to erase it. When finally I understood the nature of a
haunting—how it is both what we yearn for and what we fear, I was
able to see the traces of a ghostly presence, the residue of a repressed
past in certain concrete but also allusive detail. Footprints
particularly. That disappear and return only to disappear again. The
endings of my novels have to be clear in my mind before I begin. So I
was able to describe this haunting even before I knew everything that
would lead up to it.

Chinua Achebe

I

TAKE great pleasure in having this opportunity to say some
things in public that I have never said to the person who is the
subject of these comments—Chinua Achebe. My debt to Mr. Achebe
is the best kind. Large, minus repayment schedule, and interest-free.
Let me describe it to you.
In 1965 I began reading African literature, devouring it actually. It
was a literature previously unavailable to me, but by then I had
discovered a New York bookstore called Africa House, which offered
among other things back issues of Transition, Black Orpheus, and
works by a host of African writers from all over the continent. Amos
Tutuola, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ezekiel Mphahlele, James Ngugi, Bessie
Head, Christina Ama Ata Aidoo, Mongo Beti, Léopold Senghor,
Camara Laye, Ousmane Sembène, Wole Soyinka, John Pepper Clark:
the jolt these writers gave me was explosive. The confirmation that
African literature was not limited to Doris Lessing and Joseph
Conrad was so stunning it led me to secure the aid of two academics
who could help me anthologize this literature. At that time African
literature was not a subject to be taught in American schools. Even in
so-called world literature courses it had no reputation and no
presence. But I was determined to funnel the delight, the
significance, and the power of that literature into my work as an
editor. The publication of Contemporary African Literature in 1972
was the beginning of my love affair.
But the more profound and more personal consequence was the
impact Chinua Achebe’s novels had on my own beginnings as a
writer. I had read his essay in Transition, on the struggle with
definitions of African literature, and knew its ramifications for

African American writers. In that essay, Achebe quoted James
Baldwin’s comments on the subject of language choice and
manipulation in defining national and cultural literatures and its
resonance with marginalized writers. “My quarrel,” said Baldwin,
“with the English language has been that the language reflected none
of my experience….Perhaps…I had never attempted to use it, had
only learned to imitate it. If this were so, then it might be made to
bear the burden of my experience if I could find the stamina to
challenge it, and me, to such a test.” But theorizing a definition is one
thing. Executing a theory is another. Achebe’s “answer,” so to speak,
was in his work. He (along with Camara Laye, Bessie Head, and
others) constituted a complete education for me. Learning how to
disassemble the gaze that I was wrestling with (the habitual but selfconscious writing toward a nonblack reader that threatened and
coated much African American literature); discovering how to
eliminate, to manipulate the Eurocentric eye in order to stretch and
plumb my own imagination; I attribute these learned lessons to
Chinua Achebe. In the pages of Things Fall Apart lay not the
argument but the example; in the pages of No Longer at Ease,
Anthills of the Savannah the assumption of the authenticity, the
force, the valleys of beauty were abundant. Achebe’s work liberated
my artistic intelligence as nothing else had ever done. I became fit to
reenter and reinhabit my own milieu without the services of a native
guide.
So in fact that was not a debt in 1965. It was a gift.

Introduction of Peter Sellars

P

ETER SELLARS WARNED me against any ideas I might be
forming about this introduction. He strongly suggested two and only
two sentences: “Thank you for coming.” And “Here’s Peter Sellars.”
I defy him at my peril, but I appeal to what Peter might be stunned
to learn is “a higher authority.”
I happen to know Peter Sellars’s mother. Have met her several
times in several countries. She is, in a word, lovely. And suspecting
the difficult joy of rearing sons—whether in Pennsylvania, where
Peter was born, or Denver, Colorado, where he directed Beethoven
from the podium his father built for him, or Phillips Andover, or
Harvard directing Coriolanus, collecting a Phi Beta Kappa key and
an invitation to direct at the American Repertory Theater at the
Loeb; or studying in Japan, China, and India; or being director of the
Boston Shakespeare Company, the American National Theater, the
Kennedy Center; or receiving a MacArthur award. I say—suspecting
a mother’s difficult joy, I am certain she would take the same
pleasure I do in hearing an introduction of one’s son a bit more
expansive. So, out of affection for Mrs. Sellars, an English professor,
I am going to bow to her authority and I hope her desire and add a
few sentences to the two her son seriously recommended to me.
We go to art sometimes for safety, for a haven of order, serenity;
for recognizable, even traditional beauty; for anticipation with
certainty that the art form will take us past our mundane selves into
a deepness where we also reside.
We go, sometimes, to art for danger; to be riveted by experiencing
the strange, by understanding suddenly how uncanny the familiar
really is. We go to be urged, shaken into reassessing thoughts we

have taken for granted; to learn other ways of seeing, hearing. To be
excited. Stirred. Disturbed.
Fortunately for us, among contemporary artists, Peter Sellars is
rare: he never asks us to make those choices; he does not require us
to select the red/green, food/no food buttons of mice in a laboratory,
the one of two oppositional kinds of pleasure or power or genius we
want. His work has always displayed both safety and danger; both
the haven of the recognizable and the unchartered terrain of the
disfamiliarized.
His almost pious devotion to the original score, the complete
script, the uncommercial length (which pays a public the compliment
of assuming its attention span—its memory bank—is longer than that
of a housefly). In his fidelity, his respect for the work itself, we find
safety, reassurance.
His deeply held conviction that profound art—whatever its date of
origin—is always contemporary permits us fresh access to that
nostrum when he chips away the encrustations of time and use to
expose its truth. Whether it is Mozart’s Le Nozze de Figaro, Don
Giovanni, Così fan Tutti; Handel’s Julius Caesar in Egypt; Kurt
Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins; Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice;
Wagner’s Ring; Gogol’s Inspector General—whatever. By collapsing
these otherwise mutually exclusive approaches to art’s work—fidelity
and resuscitation; safety and danger; thorough scholarship with
outrageously innovative stagecraft; astonishingly incisive personal
interpretation with an almost impertinent trust in actors’ instincts.
Because of his ability to embrace both approaches, we are made
aware of how irresistible art is. We are made aware of his reverence
for its possibilities—to keep us sane or make us so. His absolute love
of it. His total faith in it. And in us.
Thank you for coming. Here’s Peter Sellars.

Tribute to Romare Bearden

I

N ORDER to get to the crux of my views on the art of Romare
Bearden, on the discourse of African American art in general, I have
to go back a bit, for my own sake, if not yours, to put my remarks in
context.
Extraordinary things were happening in the sixties among African
Americans. The realm of political change during that period has
received, as it should, minute, even exhaustive attention. Yet in spite
of some singular critiques of African American art at the moment of
origin and some more expansive ones later on, the exploration of
visual art as it relates to other genres in African American culture
seems tentative. (I was not able to attend Saturday’s panel on
Bearden and other arts and disciplines, so the comments that follow
may very well be inoperative.) Where analysis of this cross-genre
aspect does exist, it relies on terms like “inspiration,” “similarities,”
“spirit,” “vibrancy,” “intensity,” “drama,” “liveliness,” shared cultural
values. There are a number of reasons for this rather vague
emotional vocabulary: artists are notoriously evasive about their
creative process; it takes a certain amount of nerve, if not faith, for a
scholar to assert connections, echoes across disciplines if she or he
does not feel expert within them; aesthetic ramifications are very
difficult to iterate.
More importantly, the early attention of scholars on African
American literary and other art was engaged in canon formation—
taking its cue from the mainstream’s established format for the
ranking of art production. The alternative canon that the new black
critics urged had several goals (nationalism, revolutionary success,
cultural hegemony), among which was an aesthetic put to the service

of a strong political agenda and/or a cohesive cultural flowering.
Aesthetics were understood to be a “corrective” to “polluted
American mainstream”; a “sister” to the black power movement.
Artists were encouraged and judged by the nation-building “uses” to
which their work could be put. The groundswell of those who
understood this to be the work of their work is legend—as any review
of sixties poetry will reveal. And there is no question that matters of
“authenticity”—of representing the lived life and concerns of black
people—are still the sine qua non of virtually all African American art
from rap music to film to novels to visual arts. How successfully,
distorted or even triumphantly, this authenticity expresses itself is
still much of the drive of criticism.
Although the explosion of creative energy was overwhelming in the
sixties, its criticism did not, perhaps could not, refuse to wrestle with
the eternal and eternally irrelevant argument about how and whether
the art of a black artist could be, should be considered “universal,”
meaning “mainstream,” “race transcendent,” “agenda-free,” and so
on. The heart of the argument implied that if what was produced was
merely political it was not art; if it was merely beautiful it was not
relevant. Thus the critiques focused on the accuracy of the sociology
and/or the inspirational, “self-help” value of the work. Some work
was championed as representative, authentic; other was deemed
unacceptable if it was less than uplifting; other work was dismissed
as crude protest or propaganda. Virtually every African American
writer in the near and distant past—James Baldwin, Zora Neale
Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Phillis
Wheatley—has been called upon or felt called upon to explain what it
meant to be a Negro or black artist. The sheer idiocy of that call has
been enough to force artists (angrily, or with annoyance, I suspect) to
respond to it. Romare Bearden was working long before the sixties
and had traveled widely, studied carefully the ancient and the new.
His homes included the South, the North, Europe, the Caribbean,
country landscapes, porches, urban streets, clubs, churches. So it was
with some delight that I read a comment by him on the subject of
race or social factors in his work.

“I am afraid,” he said, “despite my intentions, that in some
instances commentators have tended to overemphasize what they
believed to be the social elements in my work. But while my response
to certain human elements is as obvious as it is inevitable, I am also
pleased to note that upon reflection many persons have found that
they were as much concerned with the aesthetic implications of my
paintings as with, what may possibly be, my human compassion.”
The operative words, for me, are “my response to certain human
elements is as obvious as it is inevitable.” How, he is asking, can a
human artist not be responsive to human things, which are by their
nature social things? He takes for granted the humanity of his
subject matter, and as has been said, this in itself is a radical act in a
country with a history of purposefully and consistently
dehumanizing the black population. Bearden is also pleased to refer
to “aesthetic implications.” That is to say, there is information, truth,
power, and beauty in his choice of color, form, in the structural and
structured placement of images, in fragments built up from flat
surfaces, rhythm implicit in repetition and in the medium itself—
each move determining subsequent ones, enabling the look and fact
of spontaneity, improvisation. This is the appropriate language
employed to delineate his work, and to suggest its relationship to
another genre—music. Which is very interesting since whatever the
view of aesthetics in criticism, it has traditionally confined itself to
explorations with an art form, not among them. It is odd, considering
how affected artists are by other disciplines, that this approach,
which so closely resembles traditional critique, maintains in spite of
the insistence of the art itself on its wider sources and its far more
interdisciplinary dialogue. The cross-fertilization among artists
within a genre is a subject well examined. Less so are instances
where the lines between genres are implicit.
The influence and representation of African American music is a
mainstay in commentary on Romare Bearden’s work as is the
relationship between the plays and sensibility of August Wilson. The
influence of and alignment with music is also a common observation
in criticism of my own work—as well as my own acknowledgments

on the subject. What I want to describe this evening are other ways
in which artists of disparate disciplines fold into, energize, and
transfer the aesthetics of one another.
Let me linger for a moment on some aspects of my own process
that are, indeed, responsive to the work of Romare Bearden. I must
say I have been generous to myself in getting ideas from painters
other than Bearden, although they are usually scenes or figurative
arrangements on canvas. With Bearden I am struck by the tactile
sensuality of his work, the purity of gesture, and especially the
subtext of the aggressive, large-as-life humanity of his subject
matter. This latter is no small thing when the urgency of
destereotyping is so strong it can push one easily into sentimentality.
The edge of the razor embedded in Bearden’s work prevents or ought
to prevent easy, self-satisfying evaluations of his subject matter.
Among the aspects of his work that appeal to me, that one is
primary: lack of condescension.
Another aspect of my own process involves the composition of the
text. A layered exercise that I consistently undergo that has more
elements in common with painting than literature.
I need three kinds of information to complete, sometimes even
start, a narrative. Once I’ve settled on an idea and the story through
which to examine it, I need the structure, the sound, the palette. Not
necessarily in that order. The sound of a text clearly involves the
musical quality of the dialogue and the language chosen to
contextualize it. Elsewhere I have written about my choices for the
opening of Beloved, and I repeat those comments here: in reference
to that opening—“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.”—I was
careful to illustrate the rhythm I thought necessary, and the quality
of a spoken text: “There is something about numerals that makes
them spoken, heard, in this context, because one expects words to
read in a book, not numbers to say, or hear. And the sound of the
novel, sometimes cacophonous, sometimes harmonious, must be an
inner-ear sound or a sound just beyond hearing, infusing the text
with a musical emphasis that words can do sometimes even better
than music can.” I go on to explain why the second sentence is not

one—is instead a dependent clause given the status of a sentence just
to mandate a stress on the world “full.” In an effort to understate the
strangeness of an infant ghost so the reader will understand its
presence as normal as the household does. The remarkable thing
being its power (“full”) rather than its existence. In describing at
such length the crucial nature of sound to my work, I hoped to focus
attention not on a kind of forced poetry or lyricism, but rather on
what meaning can be gleaned and communicated from sound, from
the aural quality of the text. I only want to suggest that this is more
than being influenced by blues or jazz. It is plumbing the music for
the meaning that it contains. In other words, the “aesthetic
implications” of which Romare Bearden spoke ought to include what
is usually absent from aesthetic analysis. Most often the analysis is
about how successful the technique is in summoning pleasure, a
shocking or moving or satisfying emotional response.
Seldom does it center on the information, the meaning the artist is
communicating by his style, via his aesthetics. It can be said, has
been said, that the collage techniques, employed by several
modernist artists (Matisse, for example) were taken to new levels by
Bearden and reflect the “fractured” life he depicts—an intervention
into the flat surface that repudiates as it builds on the cubism of
earlier periods. And that collage was representative of the modernist
thrust of African American life as well as its insurgency. Both
structure and improvisation inform this choice—the essence of
African American music. The attraction to me in this technique is
how abrupt stops and unexpected liquidity enhance the narrative in
ways that a linear “beginning, middle, and end” cannot. Thus I
recognize that my own abandonment of traditional time sequence
(and then, and then) is an effort to capitalize on these modernist
trends. And to say something about the layered life—not the
fractured or fragmented life of black society, but the layered life of
the mind, the imagination, and the way reality is actually perceived
and experienced.
The third, palette, or color, is one of the last and most crucial of my
decisions in developing a text. I don’t use color to “prettify” or please,

or provide atmospherics, but to imply and delineate the themes
within the narrative. Color says something directly or
metaphorically. The red, white, and blue strokes at the beginning of
Song of Solomon should lie quietly in the mind of the reader as the
American flag background the action is commenting on. The
withholding of color in Beloved, its repudiation of any color at all
until it has profound meaning to the character: Baby Suggs
hankering for some; Sethe’s startle when she is able to let it come
into view; the drama of one patch of orange in a quilt of bleak greys.
These studied distributions of color or its absence, the careful
placement of white for its various connotations (the white, rather
bridal dress of the figure praying next to Sethe; the dresses of the
church ladies at the pie table in Tar Baby), the repetition of a
collection of colors chosen to direct the reader to specific and related
scenes in Paradise, do not mimic the choices of a Romare Bearden,
but are clearly aligned with the process.
I am convinced that among the reasons Bearden must be widely
viewed in galleries, should occupy the burgeoning attention of
scholars to African American art, is only partly canon formation; is
only minimally the quenching of nationalistic desire; is
supplementally a tribute to his genius. The more significant reason in
the exploration of the resonances, alignments, the connections, the
intergenre sources of African American art is the resounding
aesthetic dialogue among artists. Separating art forms,
compartmentalizing them, is convenient for study, instruction, and
institutions. But it is hardly representative of how artists actually
work. The dialogue between Bearden and jazz music and musicians
is an obvious beginning. The influence writers acknowledge is a
further step. The borders established for the convenience of study
are, I believe, not just porous, they are liquid. Locating instances of
this liquidity is vital if African American art is to be understood for
the complex work that it is and for the deep meaning it contains.
Romare Bearden sat in an airplane seat once and told me he would
send me something. He did. An extraordinary, completely stunning
portrait of a character in one of my books. Not his Pilate of 1979, but

the Pilate in Song of Solomon—part of a series, I gather. Imagine my
surprise at what he saw. Things I had not seen or known when I
invented her. What he made of her earring, her hat, and her bag of
bones—far beyond my word-bound description, heavy with the life
that both energized and muted her; solitary, daring anyone to
deprive her of her symbols, her history, her purpose. I had seen her
determination, her wisdom, and her seductive eccentricity, but not
the ferocity he saw and rendered.
Later on I acquired a watercolor of his, a row of Preservation Hall–
type musicians standing before a riverboat, all in white with their
traditional sashes of color. For the first time in a representation of
black jazz musicians I saw stillness. Not the active, frenetic,
unencumbered physical movement normally seen in renderings of
musicians—but the quiet at the center. It was, in a word, sacred,
contemplative. A glance into an otherwise obscured aspect of their
art.
That kind of insight is rare indeed. Displaying it, underscoring it,
analyzing it is far more compelling than merely enjoying it. The
legacy enjoins us all to think deeply about what Romare Bearden has
given us, and what African American art is imploring us to discover.

Faulkner and Women

I

’M AMBIVALENT about what I’m about to do. On the one hand,
I want to do what every writer wants to do, which is to explain
everything to the reader first so that, when you read it, there will be
no problems. My other inclination is to run out here and read it, then
run off so that there would be no necessity to frame it. I have read
from this manuscript three or four times before, and each time I
learned something in the process of reading it, which was never true
with any other book that I wrote. And so when I was invited to come
to Oxford and speak to this conference about some aspect of
“Faulkner and Women,” I declined, saying that I really couldn’t
concentrate enough to collect remarks on “Faulkner and Women”
because I was deeply involved in writing a book myself and I didn’t
want any distractions whatsoever. And then very nicely the
conference directors invited me to read from this manuscript that
had me so obsessed, so that I could both attend the conference and
associate myself in some real way with the Center for the Study of
Southern Culture and also visit Mississippi and “spend the night,” as
they say. So, on the one hand, I apologize for reading something that
is not finished but is in process, but this was a way to satisfy my
eagerness to visit the campus of the University of Mississippi, and I
hope there will be some satisfaction rippling through the audience
once I have finished. My other hesitation is simply because some of
what I read may not appear in print, as a developing manuscript is
constantly changing. Before reading to a group gathered to discuss
“Faulkner and Women,” I would also like to add that in 1956 I spent
a great deal of time thinking about Mr. Faulkner because he was the
subject of a thesis that I wrote at Cornell. Such an exhaustive
treatment of an author makes it impossible for a writer to go back to

that author for some time afterward until the energy has dissipated
itself in some other form. But I have to say, even before I begin to
read, that there was for me not only an academic interest in
Faulkner, but in a very, very personal way, in a very personal way as
a reader, William Faulkner had an enormous effect on me, an
enormous effect.
The title of the book is Beloved, and this is the way it begins:
[The author read from her work-in-progress and then answered
questions from the audience.]
MORRISON: I am interested in answering questions from those of
you who may have them. And if you’ll stand up and let me identify
you before you ask a question, I’ll do the best I can.
QUESTION: Ms. Morrison, you mentioned that you wrote a thesis
on Faulkner. What effect did Faulkner have on your literary career?
MORRISON: Well, I’m not sure that he had any effect on my work.
I am typical, I think, of all writers who are convinced that they are
wholly original and that if they recognized an influence they would
abandon it as quickly as possible. But as a reader in the fifties and
later, of course (I said 1956 because that’s when I was working on a
thesis that had to do with him), I was concentrating on Faulkner. I
don’t think that my response was any different from any other
student at that time, inasmuch as there was in Faulkner this power
and courage—the courage of a writer, a special kind of courage. My
reasons, I think, for being interested and deeply moved by all his
subjects had something to do with my desire to find out something
about this country and that artistic articulation of its past that was
not available in history, which is what art and fiction can do but
sometimes history refuses to do. I suppose history can humanize
the past also, but it frequently refuses to do so for perfectly
logically good reasons. But there was an articulate investigation of
an era that one or two authors provided and Faulkner was
certainly at the apex of that investigation. And there was
something else about Faulkner that I can only call “gaze.” He had a

gaze that was different. It appeared, at that time, to be similar to a
look, even a sort of staring, a refusal-to-look-away approach in his
writing that I found admirable. At that time, in the fifties or the
sixties, it never crossed my mind to write books. But then I did it,
and I was very surprised myself that I was doing it, and I knew that
I was doing it for some reasons that are not writerly ones. I don’t
really find strong connections between my work and Faulkner’s. In
an extraordinary kind of memorable way there are literary
watersheds in one’s life. In mine, there are four or five, and I hope
they are all ones that meet everybody’s criteria of who should be
read, but some of them don’t. Some books are just awful in terms
of technique but nevertheless they are terrific: they are too good to
be correct. With Faulkner there was always something to surface.
Besides, he could infuriate you in such wonderful ways. It wasn’t
just complete delight—there was also that other quality that is just
as important as devotion: outrage. The point is that with Faulkner
one was never indifferent.
QUESTION: Ms. Morrison, would you talk a little bit about the
creation of your character Sula?
MORRISON: She came as many characters do—all of them don’t—
rather full-fleshed and complete almost immediately, including
her name. I felt this enormous intimacy. I mean, I knew exactly
who she was, but I had trouble trying to make her. I mean, I felt
troubled trying to make her into the kind of person that would
upset everybody, the kind of person that sets your teeth on edge,
and yet not to make her so repulsive that you could not find her
attractive at the same time—a nature that was seductive but offputting. And playing back and forth with that was difficult for me
because I wanted to describe the qualities of certain personalities
that can be exploited by conventional people. The outlaw and the
adventuress, not in the sense of somebody going out to find a
fortune, but in the way a woman is an adventuress, which has to do
with her imagination. And people such as those are always
memorable and generally attractive. But she’s troublesome. And,

by the time I finished the book, Sula, I missed her. I know the
feeling of missing characters who are in fact, by that time, much
more real than real people.
QUESTION: Ms. Morrison, you said earlier that reading a work in
progress is helpful to you as a writer. Could you explain how
reading helps you?
MORRISON: This whole business of reading my own manuscript
for information is quite new for me. As I write I don’t imagine a
reader or listener, ever. I am the reader and the listener myself,
and I think I am an excellent reader. I read very well. I mean I
really know what’s going on. The problem in the beginning was to
be as good a writer as I was a reader. But I have to assume that I
not only write books, I read them. And I don’t mean I look to see
what I have written; I mean I can maintain the distance between
myself the writer and what is on the page. Some people have it,
and some people have to learn it. And some people don’t have it;
you can tell because if they had read their work, they never would
have written it that way. The process is revision. It’s a long sort of
reading process, and I have to assume that I am also this very
critical, very fastidious, and not-easily-taken-in reader who is
smart enough to participate in the text a lot. I don’t like to read
books when all the work is done and there’s no place for me there.
So the effort is to write so that there is something that’s going on
between myself and myself—myself as writer and myself as reader.
Now, in some instances, I feel content in doing certain kinds of
books without reading them to an audience. But there are others
where I have felt—this one in particular because it’s different—that
what I, as a reader, am feeling is not enough, and I needed a wider
slice, so to speak, because the possibilities are infinite. I’m not
interested in anybody’s help in writing technique—not that. I’m
just talking about shades of meaning, not the score but the
emphasis here and there. It’s that kind of thing that I want to
discover, whether or not my ear on this book is as reliable as I have
always believed it to be with the others. Therefore, I agree quickly

to reading portions of this manuscript. Every other book I wrote I
didn’t even negotiate a contract until it was almost finished
because I didn’t want the feeling that it belonged to somebody else.
For this book I negotiated a contract at a very early stage. So, I
think, probably some of the business of reading is a sort of
repossession from the publisher. It has to be mine, and I have to
be willing to not do it or burn it, or do it, as the case might be. But
I do assume that I am the reader, and, in the past, when I was in
doubt, if I had some problems, the people I would call on to help
me to verify some phrase or some word or something would be the
people in the book. I mean I would just conjure them up and ask
them, you know, about one thing or another. And they are usually
very cooperative if they are fully realized and if you know their
name. And if you don’t know their names, they don’t talk much.
QUESTION: Ms. Morrison, could you discuss the use of myth and
folklore in your fiction?
MORRISON: This is not going to sound right, but I have to say it
anyway. There is infinitely more past than there is future. Maybe
not in chronological time, but in terms of data there certainly is. So
in each step back there is another world, and another world. The
past is infinite. I don’t know if the future is, but I know the past is.
The legends—so many of them—are not just about the past. They
also indicate how to function in contemporary times and they hint
about the future. So that for me they were not ever simple, never
simple. I try to incorporate those mythic characteristics that for me
are very strong characteristics of black art everywhere, whether it
was in music or stories or paintings or what have you. It just
seemed to me that those characteristics ought to be incorporated
into black literature if it was to remain that. It wasn’t enough just
to write about black people, because anybody can do that. But it
was important to me as a writer to try to make the work
irrevocably black. It required me to use the folklore as points of
departure—as, for example in this book, Beloved, which started
with a story about a slave, Margaret Garner, who had been caught

with her children shortly after she escaped from a farm. And rather
than subject them to what was an unlivable and unbearable life,
she killed them or tried to. She didn’t succeed, and abolitionists
made a great deal out of her case. That story, with some other
things, had been nagging me for a long, long time. Can you
imagine a slave woman who does not own her children? Who cares
enough to kill them? Can you imagine the daring and also the
recriminations and the self-punishment and the sabotage, selfsabotage, in which one loves so much that you cannot bear to have
the thing you love sullied? It is better for it to die than to be
sullied. Because that is you. That’s the best part of you, and that
was the best part of her. So it was such a serious matter that she
would rather they not exist. And she was the one to make that
reclamation. That’s a very small part of what this is about, but
that’s what was in my brainpan—as they say—when I got started.
So that in this instance, I began with historical fact and
incorporated it into myth instead of the other way around.
QUESTION: Ms. Morrison, earlier you said you had no intention of
becoming a writer when you started to write. Could you explain
what you meant by this?
MORRISON: I was in a place where I didn’t belong, and I wasn’t
going to be there very long so I didn’t want to make it any nicer
than it was. And I didn’t want to meet anybody, and I didn’t like
anybody and they didn’t like me either; and that was fine with me;
and I was lonely. I was miserable. My children were small, and so I
wrote this story. I had written a little story before, in the time I
could spare to work it up in the evening. (You know children go to
bed, if you train them, at seven. Wake up at four but go to bed at
seven.) And so after I put them to bed, I would write, and I liked it.
I liked thinking about it. I liked making that kind of order out of
something that was disorderly in my mind. And also I sensed that
there was an enormous indifference to these people, to me, to you,
to black girls. It was as if these people had no life, no existence in
anybody’s mind at all except peripherally. And when I got into it, it

just seemed like writing was absolutely the most important thing
in the world. I took forever to write that first book: almost five
years for just a little book. Because I liked doing it so much, I
would just do a little bit, you know, and think about that. I was a
textbook editor at that time. I was not even trying to be a writer,
and I didn’t let anybody know that I was writing this book because
I thought they would fire me, which they would have. Maybe not
right away, but they didn’t want me to do that. They felt betrayed
anyway. If you’re an editor, what you’re supposed to do is acquire
books, not produce them. There is a light adversarial relationship
between publishers and authors that I think probably works
effectively. But that’s why I was very quiet about writing. I don’t
know what made me write it. I think I just wanted to finish the
story so that I could have a good time reading it. But the process
was what made me think that I should do it again, and I knew that
that was the way I wanted to live. I felt very coherent when I was
writing that book. But I still didn’t call myself a writer. And it was
only with my third book, Song of Solomon, that I finally said—not
at my own initiative I’m embarrassed to tell you but at somebody
else’s initiative—“This is what I do.” I had written three books. It
was only after I finished Song of Solomon that I thought, “Maybe
this is what I do only.” Because before that I always said that I was
an editor who also wrote books or a teacher who also wrote. I
never said I was a writer. Never. And it’s not only because of all the
things you might think. It’s also because most writers really and
truly have to give themselves permission to win. That’s very
difficult, particularly for women. You have to give yourself
permission, even when you’re doing it. Writing every day, sending
books off, you still have to give yourself permission. I know writers
whose mothers are writers, who still had to go through a long
process with somebody else—a man or editor or friend or
something—to finally reach a point where they could say, “It’s all
right. It’s okay.” The community says it’s okay. Your husband says
it’s okay. Your children say it’s okay. Your mother says it’s okay.
Eventually everybody says it’s okay, and then you have all the
okays. It happened to me: even I found a moment after I’d written

the third book when I could actually say it. So you go through
passport and customs and somebody asks, “What do you do?” And
you print it out: WRITE.

The Source of Self-Regard

I

WANT TO TALK about two books in a way in which I
understand a kind of progression to have taken place in my work, to
talk a little bit about Beloved and a little bit about a new novel, and
to suggest to you some of the obstacles that I created for myself in
developing these books, and perhaps to talk, and illustrate by very
short examples in the books, ways in which I approached the work.
I was told by somebody at a very, very large state university, “You
know that you,” meaning me, “are taught in twenty-three separate
classes on this campus.” Not twenty-three separate groups of
students, but twenty-three different subject-matter classes. And I
was very flattered by that, and very interested in that, but a little bit
overwhelmed, because I thought, well, outside of, say, African
American literature or women’s studies, or who knows, maybe even
English departments and places like that, how could there be twentythree? Well, some of them were legal studies, and some of them were
courses in history, and some of them courses in politics, some of
them were in psychiatry, in all sorts of things. And aside from some
obvious things that I could claim about Beloved, it did seem to me
that it had become a kind of an all-purpose, highly serviceable source
for some discourse in various disciplines and various genres and
various fields.
And I thought, well then, there is not only perhaps a hunger for the
information, maybe the book is a kind of substitute and a more
intimate version of history, and in that way becomes serviceable in a
way in which, perhaps, other novels that I have written have never
become. Song of Solomon is not read that way, Sula’s not read that
way, but Beloved is read that way and perhaps that’s why it was

distributed so widely on a campus that could accommodate many,
many disciplines and genres and approaches. So my feeling was that
it was kind of intimate but perhaps also kind of a shortcut to history.
So I want to talk about how history is handled, or I had to handle it,
in the writing of Beloved. And then segue from the impact of history
on this fictional form, for me, into the culture of a later period, the
twenties, and how that influenced my construction of the new book,
Jazz.
In trying to think through how one deals with something as
formidable and as well researched as history, and how one can
convert it, or ignore it, or break its bounds or what have you in order
to develop the novel, I was talking a couple of years ago to an
audience in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and that audience was made up of
librarians and people from the community and students and many
teachers, high school teachers and private school teachers, and
during the question-and-answer period following my reading and
talk, one of the teachers asked me a question. She wanted to know
whether as the author of Beloved, I could give her any information
on how to teach that novel when, as she said, there were no
CliffsNotes available. Well, I was a little astonished by her question. I
mean, I would not have been astonished if a student had asked me,
but I was a little astonished because she did, and so I said, “Well, I
don’t really know how to teach Beloved, and I certainly don’t know
how to tell you how to teach it, but since you say there are no
CliffsNotes, maybe one of the ways to teach it is to have your
students make some.” And she sort of smiled and looked as though I
had not treated her question seriously, but it was the best I could do
under the circumstances.
But what’s interesting is that later, six or seven months later, I got
a large package from her, and in that package were three issues or
editions, I guess you could call them, of CliffsNotes. And what she
had done is taken my answer to heart and given her honors students
the assignment of producing CliffsNotes for the novel. She divided
them into three teams, and each team produced a booklet with a
cover and preface and acknowledgments and table of contents and

then that long, so-called analysis that you see in CliffsNotes. And
each one had received a prize—one through three—and the students
sent me their pictures of their team, holding their names up. And
they wrote letters.
Clearly, in order to do that, they had to read the book very
carefully, they had to do secondary source readings, they had to
make literary references and cross-references and so on. So it turned
out, I’m sure, to be a very interesting project. I read their letters very
carefully, and most of them were complimentary, but you know the
nice thing about high school students is that they are not obliged to
be complimentary, and particularly after they have done all that
work they feel very authoritative and they don’t have to compliment
you at all. And so they asked me questions that they had not been
able to answer sufficiently to satisfy themselves. I am leading up to
what I found to be one of the principal complaints they had. The
consistent one, the one that if you took all the complaints and rolled
them into one, that they were really expressing, was that they were
either alarmed or offended by explicit sexuality in Beloved and the
candor with which some of those scenes were described, and they
didn’t understand the necessity for the use of that kind of candor. On
the one hand, it was reassuring to find students still shockable in
terms of sexuality being described, so I felt pretty good about that,
but on the other hand it was very disturbing to me because nobody
was offended or confused or unable to understand the context in
which the story is set, which is slavery. The sexuality troubled them.
But the violence and the criminality and the license in that
institution did not alarm or offend them.
I thought this pointed to one of the problems of writing novels that
have a historical basis: that is, you don’t question the history. Or
really analyze it or confront it in some manner that is at odds with
the historian or even the novelist’s version of it. One sort of takes it,
swallows it, agrees with it. Nothing is aslant. Although in fact, the
reason I had written the book was to enter into that historical period
from some point of view that was entirely different from standard
history, not in terms of data or information but in terms of what it

was able to elicit from the reader. It seemed that everything came
under review in the text by these very clever students, except the
major assumptions of the text. So either I did it very well, or I did it
very badly.
But in truth, the problem lay in the nature of the beast itself—in
the nature of trying to marry a certain kind of terribly familiar but at
the same time estranging history. The question being, how to elicit
critical thinking and draw out some honest art form from the silences
and the distortions and the evasions that are in the history as
received, as well as the articulation and engagement of a history that
is so fraught with emotion and so fraught and covered with a
profound distaste and repugnance. Because I would assume that
everybody would either understand it, rationalize it, defend it, or be
repelled by that history. So my job as a novelist was to try to make it
palatable and at the same time disenfranchise the history, in a sense.
The embrace of history and fiction is what I was concerned with, or
rather the effort to disentangle the grip of history while remaining in
its palm, so to speak. Especially this particular piece of history and
this particular novel.
For the purposes of the rest of this talk I want us to agree that in
all of our education, whether it’s in institutions or not, in homes or
streets or wherever, whether it’s scholarly or whether it’s
experiential, there is a kind of a progression. We move from data to
information to knowledge to wisdom. And separating one from the
other, being able to distinguish among and between them, that is,
knowing the limitations and the danger of exercising one without the
others, while respecting each category of intelligence, is generally
what serious education is about. And if we agree that purposeful
progression exists, then you will see at once how dispiriting this
project of drawing or building or constructing fiction out of history
can be, or that it’s easy, and it’s seductive, to assume that data is
really knowledge. Or that information is, indeed, wisdom. Or that
knowledge can exist without data. And how easy, and how
effortlessly, one can parade and disguise itself as another. And how

quickly we can forget that wisdom without knowledge, wisdom
without any data, is just a hunch.
In writing Beloved, all of that became extremely acute. Because I
resisted the data at my disposal and felt that I was quite fully
informed. I didn’t have to know small things, I could invent them
easily—I’d read all the same books you have about slavery, the
historical books, the Slavery to Freedom and Roll, Jordan, Roll and
Slavery and Social Death and the Aptheker collections of
documents, etc. I’d read Gutman’s Black Family in Slavery and
Freedom, but particularly I had read the autobiographies of the
slaves themselves and therefore had firsthand information from
people who were there. You add that to my own intuition, and you
can see the shape of my confidence and the trap that it would lead
me into, which would be confusing data with information and
knowledge with hunches and so on. I thought I knew a great deal
about it. And that arrogance was the first obstacle.
What I needed was imagination to shore up the facts, the data, and
not be overwhelmed by them. Imagination that personalized
information, made it intimate, but didn’t offer itself as a substitute. If
imagination could be depended on for that, then there was the
possibility of knowledge. Wisdom, of course, I would leave alone, and
rely on the readers to produce that.
So here I am appropriating a historical life—Margaret Garner’s life
—from a newspaper article, which is sort of reliable, halfway
unreliable, not doing any further research on her, but doing a lot of
research around her. What things were like from 1865 to 1877 within
Reconstruction and so on in that part of the country, so that all of the
details would be there. But also realizing that part of the imaginative
process in dealing with history was that in the article this preacher
who was interviewing her and telling her story with a great deal of
shock refused to make any judgments about her. He withheld
judgment. And this was sort of the way everybody was, although they
all wrote these powerful editorials that were anti–Fugitive Slave Law
and so on, there was this sort of refusal to judge. And that little scrap
of information seemed key to me—the inability to judge what this

woman had done. The withdrawal from judgment, the refusal, not to
know, but to conclude. And there seemed just a little kernel of
something in that.
Why not judge her? Everybody else had. It was clearly terrible.
That was a judgment. It was obviously unconscionable. It was
harrowing, what she had done. It was monstrous. But the interesting
thing was, harrowing as it was, monstrous as it was, outrageous and
inhuman as it was, it was not illegal. It was everything but that. The
law did not recognize the relationship, so there was no legal language
to hold it. Margaret Garner wasn’t tried for murder; she was tried for
what the law could accommodate, what the law could judge, what the
law deemed “outlaw,” which was the theft of property.
The question for me then became, well, if the law is unwilling to
judge, and her mother-in-law can’t judge, who can? Who is in a
position to condemn her, absolutely, for the thing the courts would
not even admit susceptible to litigation? The accusing finger would
have to have a lot of weight if it were to be a finger that Margaret
Garner pays some attention to. And that would only be, of course,
her daughter, the one she managed to kill—successfully, if that term
is applicable—before they stopped her. While I wasn’t anxious or
eager to get into those waters, I thought, well, if she could do it, then
I could sort of imagine it, or think about it, and see what would
happen when the dead daughter was introduced into the text. And of
course what it did do was it destabilized everything, reformulated its
own history, and then changed language entirely.
The other problem—that is, in addition to the history, the actual
outline or plot of Margaret Garner’s life, and my alteration of it to
suit my own purposes—in trying to do this, is the problem of slavery.
It would have been wonderful for me if she had done this some other
time, like ten years ago, and then I could deal with it, but it happened
in slavery. So the question is how does one handle it? How do you
inhabit it without surrendering to it? Without making it the major
focus of the novel, rather than the slaves themselves. The problem is
how to take the imaginative power, the artistic control away from the
institution of slavery and place it where it belongs—in the hands of

the individuals who knew it, certainly as well as anybody, and that
would be the slaves. And at the same time, not to dismiss it or
denigrate its horror. Because the problem is always pornography. It’s
very easy to write about something like that and find yourself in the
position of a voyeur, where actually the violence, the grotesqueries
and the pain and the suffering, becomes its own excuse for reading.
And there’s a kind of relish in the observation of the suffering of
another. I didn’t want to go into that area, and it was difficult to find
out—difficult and important to find out where those lines were,
where you stop and how you can effect a kind of visceral and
intellectual response without playing into the hands of the institution
and making it its own excuse for being. I didn’t want to chew on that
evil and give it an authority that it didn’t deserve, give it a glamour
that it didn’t really have; I wanted to return the agency into the
hands of the slaves, who had always been fairly anonymous, or flat, it
seemed to me, in much, although not all, of the literature.
Now of course here’s three to four hundred years to peruse, and it
is indeed a humbling experience. You find that the sheer
documentation—the history—is too long. It’s too big, it’s too awful,
too researched, too ancient, too recent, too defended, it’s too
rationalized, it’s too apologized for, it’s too resisted, it’s too known,
and it’s too unknown, and it’s too passionate, and it’s too elusive.
And, in order to explain other kinds of oppression, such as women’s
oppression, it was also very much appropriated.
So I’m dealing in an area that I know is already overdone and
underdone—attractive in an unhealthy sense, and repulsive and
hidden and repressed in another. What I needed then, to deal with
what I thought was unmanageable, was some little piece, some
concrete thing, some image that came from the world of that which
was concrete. Something that was domestic, something that you
could sort of hook the book on to, that would say everything you
wanted to say in very human and personal terms. And for me that
image, that concrete thing became the bit.
I had read references to this thing people put in their mouths.
Slave narratives were very much like nineteenth-century novels,

there were certain things they didn’t talk about too much, and also
because they were writing for white people whom they wanted to
persuade to be abolitionists or to do abolitionist-type work, did not
dwell on, didn’t spend a lot of time telling those people how terrible
all this was. They didn’t want to call anybody any names, they needed
their money, so they sort of created an upbeat story: I was born, it
was terrible, I got out, and other people are still there and you should
help them get out. They didn’t stay and talk a great deal; there was a
lot of hinting and a lot of reference but nothing explicit that you
could see. So sometimes you might read that Equiano goes into a
kitchen in New England and he sees a woman cooking, and she has
this thing in her mouth and he says, “What is that?” And somebody
says, “Oh, that’s a brake,” b-r-a-k-e, and he said, “I have never seen
anything so awful in my life,” and he leaves and doesn’t talk about it
anymore. And then I had seen many references, such as some
entries, very selective entries, from William Byrd, in Virginia, in the
early part of the eighteenth century, 1709, 1712—and his editors
describe him, quote, as “Virginia’s most polished and ornamental
gentleman, a kindly master, who inveighed in some of his letters
against brutes who mistreated their slaves.”
February the eighth: Jenny and Eugene were whipped. April:
Anna was whipped. May: Mrs. Byrd whips the nurse. May: Ma
was whipped. June: Eugene [who was a little child] was
whipped for running away and had the bit put on him.
September: I beat Jenny. September: Jenny was whipped.
September: I beat Anna. November: Eugene and Jenny were
whipped. December: Eugene was whipped for doing nothing.
Then the next year in July: The Negro woman ran away again
with the bit on her mouth. July again: The Negro woman was
found, and tied, but ran away again in the night. Five days
later: My wife, against my will, caused little Jenny to be burned
with a hot iron. Next month: I had a severe quarrel with little
Jenny and beat her too much, for which I was sorry. Same

month: Eugene and Jenny were beaten. October: I whipped
three slave women. November: The Negro woman ran away.
And there are three or four more pages of that. And it is true that
taken into consideration with other kinds of behavior, this was not
all that bad. But the two references to the bit, none of which he
explains or describes, were similar to many others I had read. I had a
lot of trouble trying to find descriptions of this contraption, pictures,
what did it look like, what did it do, and so on. And it was very, very
difficult, though I did end up being very lucky, in a way—I found
some pictures.
But I felt, ultimately, that it wasn’t something that really needed to
be described. If I had described it exactly the way it was, and found
language to say exactly what those things looked like, it would have
defeated my purpose. It was enough to know that you couldn’t order
them from a large warehouse, that you had to make them yourself. It
was enough to know that they—these handmade things—were not
restrictive in the sense that they were not like docks, which made it
so you couldn’t work. You were supposed to go on and continue to
work. It was important that it was not only used for slaves, it was
also used a lot for white women, who sometimes, I suppose, needed,
or someone felt that they needed, the same sort of thing, because the
bit is just something that goes in your mouth and it hurts, I suppose,
it’s inconvenient, but you know what it does? It makes you shut up.
You can’t move your tongue. And for women, we know, that would be
a torture instrument that would be primary.
Not describing it technically, physically, became more important
because I wanted it to remain indescribable but not unknown. So the
point became to render not what it looked like, but what it felt like
and what it meant, personally. Now that was the parallel of my
attitude toward the history, toward the institution of slavery, that is,
I didn’t want to describe what it looked like, but what it felt like and
what it meant. So I eliminated all the data from the inquisition
records that I read—São Paulo and Harper’s Weekly and Equiano
and slave owners’ diaries—and tried to form language that would

help me and, I hope, the reader, to know it. Just know it. Nowhere in
Beloved is this contraption described. But this is what I ended up
with when I tried to make it completely known or convey a sense of
how it felt and what it meant.
At this point, in this short little passage, Sethe has found out that
probably her husband never left that farm, Sweet Home, and that he
probably saw what happened to her, because Paul D thinks so. And
she’s angry when she hears it, because she wants to know of Paul D,
why didn’t he, if he saw her husband collapsed in this way, why
didn’t he help him, and why didn’t he say something to him, why did
he just walk away without saying anything, and he said he couldn’t
because he had this thing in his mouth. And eventually she asks him
to tell her not about what she’s feeling about her husband, her exhusband, but what that must have been like for him.
He wants to tell me, she thought. He wants me to ask him about
what it was like for him—about how offended the tongue is, held
down by iron, how the need to spit is so deep you cry for it. She
already knew about it, had seen it time after time in the place
before Sweet Home. Men, boys, little girls, women. The wildness
that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back.
Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners
of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the
wildness out of the eye.
Sethe looked up into Paul D’s eyes to see if there was any trace
left in them.
“People I saw as a child,” she said, “who’d had the bit always
looked wild after that. Whatever they used it on them for, it
couldn’t have worked, because it put a wildness where before
there wasn’t any. When I look at you, I don’t see it. There ain’t
no wildness in your eye nowhere.”
“There’s a way to put it there and there’s a way to take it out. I
know em both and I haven’t figured out yet which is worse.” He
sat down beside her. Sethe looked at him. In that unlit daylight

his face, bronzed and reduced to its bones, smoothed her heart
down.
“You want to tell me about it?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. I never have talked about it. Not to a soul. Sang
it sometimes, but I never told a soul.”
“Go ahead. I can hear it.”
“Maybe. Maybe you can hear it. I just ain’t sure I can say it.
Say it right, I mean, because it wasn’t the bit—that wasn’t it.”
“What then?” Sethe asked.
“The roosters,” he said. “Walking past the roosters looking at
them look at me.”
Sethe smiled. “In that pine?”
“Yeah.” Paul D smiled with her. “Must have been five of them
perched up there, and at least fifty hens.”
“Mister, too?”
“Not right off. But I hadn’t took twenty steps before I seen
him. He come down off the fence post there and sat on the tub.”
“He loved that tub,” said Sethe, thinking, No, there is no
stopping now.
“Didn’t he? Like a throne. Was me took him out the shell, you
know. He’d a died if it hadn’t been for me. The hen had walked
on off with all the hatched peeps trailing behind her. There was
this one egg left. Looked like a blank, but then I saw it move so I
tapped it open and here come Mister, bad feet and all. I watched
that son a bitch grow up and whup everything in the yard.”
“He always was hateful,” Sethe said.
“Yeah, he was hateful all right. Bloody too, and evil. Crooked
feet flapping. Comb as big as my hand and some kind of red. He
sat right there on the tub looking at me. I swear he smiled. My
head was full of what I’d seen of Halle a while back. I wasn’t
even thinking about the bit. Just Halle and before him Sixo, but
when I saw Mister I knew it was me too. Not just them, me too.
One crazy, one sold, one missing, one burnt and me licking iron

with my hands crossed behind me. The last of the Sweet Home
men.
“Mister, he looked so…free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher.
Son a bitch couldn’t even get out the shell by hisself but he was
still king and I was…” Paul D stopped and squeezed his left hand
with his right. He held it that way long enough for it and the
world to quiet down and let him go on.
“Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn’t
allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you’d
be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn’t no way I’d ever
be Paul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was
something else and that something was less than a chicken
sitting in the sun on a tub.”
Sethe put her hand on his knee and rubbed.
Paul D had only begun, what he was telling her was only the
beginning when her fingers on his knee, soft and reassuring,
stopped him. Just as well. Just as well. Saying more might push
them both to a place they couldn’t get back from. He would keep
the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest
where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut. He would not
pry it loose now in front of this sweet sturdy woman, for if she
got a whiff of its contents it would shame him. And it would hurt
her to know that there was no red heart bright as Mister’s comb
beating in him.
When I moved away from that project, which I thought was sort of
incomplete, I began to think about another important point in
American life that was also an extremely important point in African
American life that I wanted to write about, but this time my problem
was not how to deal with the history, but rather how to deal with the
culture. There wasn’t a great deal of history that had been written
about the twenties, the period I call jazz, or we call jazz. There’d been
lots and lots of books, lots and lots of movies, lots and lots of images,
lots and lots of everything, but there was still this huge, powerful,
amorphous kind of understanding of what that culture was.

If I say the word “jazz,” I’m sure something comes to mind,
something very concrete or maybe something that’s unspecific,
maybe just the music, a certain kind of music. And if I pursue that
image of jazz music, you know, a sample might surface or a musician
or arrangement or a song or something, or maybe just clubs, radio,
whatever comes to mind. And places where that particular kind of
music we call jazz is played. Or maybe just your own like of it or your
dislike of it or your indifference to that particular music. But
whatever you’re thinking about that music, in the background of the
word “jazz” is the recollection, if not the main feature of your
memory, or your association, that jazz is music black people play, or
originated, or shaped. But that it’s not exclusively played or even
enjoyed by them, now, or for even a long, long time. And also the fact
that the appreciation of jazz is one of the few places where a certain
kind of race transcendence or race-transcendent embrace is possible.
Which doesn’t mean there was no exploitation, but even the
exploitation was possible only because of the interest in it, and the
passion for it, and the embrace that did take place interracially, so to
speak.
The dictionary definitions of “jazz” list usually three or four entries
relating to the music—where it originated in New Orleans around the
beginning of the twentieth century, and then they usually go on to
characterize the music in very interesting words. “Compulsive,” for
example, is used a lot. “Intricate.” “Freely improvised.” And then
they sometimes chart the course of jazz from diatonism to
grammaticism to atonality, and then they go on to list some other
entries in which jazz is not music, it’s a kind of dance done to such
music and having some of the characteristics of the music. But it’s
distinguished by violent bodily gestures and motions. And then
following those definitions are slang definitions, including
“vigorous,” “liveliness,” “spirited,” and “insincerity,” “exaggeration,”
or “pretentiousness.” All that jazz. Don’t give me all that jazz. You
know, something you don’t have to pay any attention to because it’s
overstatement. But something that is jazzy is highly energetic and
wildly active.

I don’t think anybody really needs those dictionary definitions to
clarify because one of the attractions of the term is its loose
association of energy and sensuality. And freedom. And release. And
intricacy. All that. All of it backgrounded by a recognizable music
black people originated and shaped. I don’t myself usually think of
music first. But of the many images that might surface, one would be
a sort of recent history period, the twenties, the period known as the
Jazz Age. And attached to that term may be the sound of the music as
it affected or backgrounded an era or generation of people whom we
associate with that period. “Jazz Age” elicits more detailed imagery—
Prohibition, a change in fashion that was alarming and sort of
exciting in some places, short hair and skirts in which women could
actually walk and work and move. And dance. But it also suggested a
kind of recklessness and license and sexuality.
But if you bend the Jazz Age the way I’ve just described it to suit
more literary interests, then we make the association with writers
who reached their maturity or started out and did something
wonderful or had some influence or fame during the twenties and
early thirties, and we begin to think of that wonderful poetry and
drama and the novels of a whole group of post–World War I
American artists: Dos Passos and Fitzgerald and Hemingway and
Stein and Pound, and well, you know that list and it’s a familiar one,
but familiar too is the whole constellation of things and people, the
tone, the music, and the history that the word “jazz” evokes, and all
of it is understood to be uniquely American. It’s a uniquely American
posture. And it suggests an American modernism that lingered on
and on and on until there was something after modernism, and then
of course something after that, and then something after that.
It is an American cultural phenomenon, and as such, it’s more
than any of the definitions or connotations that I have mentioned.
It’s really a concept. And it’s interesting to me as a writer because it’s
so full of contradictions. It’s American, indisputably American, and
ethnically marginal. It’s black and free. It’s intricate and wild. It’s
spontaneous and practiced. It’s exaggerated and simple. It’s
constantly invented, always brand-new, but somehow familiar and

known. Wherever you go in the world, if you say, “Jazz,” people say,
“Oh yes, yes. I remember.” Or “I understand.” Or “I know.” And I
don’t know if they’re thinking about Josephine Baker or what, but it’s
“Oh yes, yes. Jazz. I know.” It’s immediately understood and all
explanations become redundant.
Now these contradictions have been very much on my mind
because I was trying to think through some other concepts that had
to do with this very, very important transition, I think, and
transformation in the history of African Americans and very much a
transformation in the history of this country. So my attempt then
was to take not the history but the culture of jazz, which is much
more ineffable and vaporous, and I wanted to demystify and
revalorize the jazz idea. And to do that from a viewpoint that
precedes its appropriation—you know, when it becomes anybody’s
and everybody’s—and that reculturizes and deculturizes this idea.
It is a part, this view, looking at that period in black life, of a rather
sustained investigation I began with Beloved, which was that I’m
really looking at self-regard in both racial and gendered terms, and
how that self-regard evolves or is distorted or flourishes or collapses,
and under what circumstances. In Beloved, I was interested in what
contributed most significantly to a slave woman’s self-regard. What
was her self-esteem? What value did she place on herself? And I
became convinced, and research supported my hunch, my intuition,
that it was her identity as a mother, her ability to be and to remain
exactly what the institution said she was not, that was important to
her. Moving into Reconstruction and beyond it, as difficult as it was
to function as a mother with control over the destiny of one’s
children, it still became then, certainly, a legal responsibility after
slavery. So this is where the sources of self-regard came for Margaret
Garner or Sethe. And it is exaggerated because it’s that important
and that alien and that strange and that vital. But when Sethe asks,
“Me? Me?” at the end of Beloved, it’s a real movement toward a
recognition of self-regard.
But the answer to her question seemed to me to come or be
available a generation or two later, when the possibility of personal

freedom, and interior, imaginative freedom—not political or
economic freedom, those were still distant, although there had been
some changes—could be engaged. So it seemed to me that while the
history, the data of traditional historians, both documented and
denied this change in black life and in the culture, the information
available to me in the cultural signs suggested there were alterations
in the formulations and the sources of self-regard. Music, its lyrics,
its performers held the first signs, for me, of this change in the
culture. Movement, migration from rural areas to urban ones, held
other kinds of information. The literature, the language, the custom,
the posture, all of this was what I would look at.
It seemed to me that the twenties, with its sort of nascent and
overwhelming jazz idiom, was as distinct as it was because, precisely,
of this change. That period, the Jazz Age, was a period when black
people placed an indelible hand of agency on the cultural scene. And
this agency—unremarked in economic and political terms—informs
my project. And all the terms I cited earlier—“defiance,” “violence,”
“sensuality,”
“freedom,”
“intricacy,”
“invention,”
and
“improvisation”—were intimated in the major figuration of that
term. Subjective, demanding, deeply personal love relationships. The
one place African Americans could command and surrender by
choice. Where they did not marry who was chosen for them, or who
lived down the road, or who was next door. Where they could effect
the widest possible choice—by deciding to fall in love. Claiming
another as the beloved. Not because of filial blood relationships or
proximity, but precisely because it was ad hoc and accidental and
fated but not predictable.
And this assertiveness, this creative agency, seemed to be most
clear in the music, the style, the language of this—that postReconstruction era that represented both transition and
transformation. You know, like life lived in flour sacking or plain,
dull cotton gives you a hunger, a desperation for color and patterns
and powerful, primary colors, in the same way that hundreds of years
of being mated off or ordered whom to marry, of needing permission
to join with another, of having to take these extraordinary, drastic

measures to keep a family together and to behave like a family, and
all of this under the greatest stress, with so little evidence that
anything would ever change. You could get slaves to do anything at
all, bear anything, if you gave them any hope that they could keep
their children. They’d do anything. Every impulse, every gesture,
everything they did was to maintain their families.
Well, under those historical pressures, the desire for choice in
partners, the desire for romantic love, operate as a place, a space,
away, for individual reclamation of the self. That is a part, maybe the
largest part, certainly an important part, of the reconstruction of
identity. Part of the “me” so tentatively articulated in Beloved. That’s
what she needs to discover. It will account for the satisfaction in the
blues lyric and the blues phrase whether or not, and mostly not, the
relationship flourishes. They’re usually, you know, somebody’s gone
and not coming back or some terrible thing has happened and you’ll
never see this person again. Whether or not the affection is returned,
whether or not the loved one reciprocated the ardor, the lover, the
singer, has achieved something, accomplished something in the act
of being in love. It’s impossible to hear that sort of blues cry without
acknowledging in it the defiance, the grandeur, the agency that
frequently belies the wail of disappointed love.
It may be through that agency, and the even more powerful
assertiveness of what we call “jazz,” which uses those gestures, that
compromise becomes reconciliation. It’s also the way in which
imagination fosters real possibilities: you can’t imagine it, you can’t
have it. And a third thing grows, where despair may have been, or
even where the past lay whole and wouldn’t let go. And it is this third
thing that jazz creates and that creates itself in these spaces and
intersections of race and gender that interest me and that informed
and propel the writing of this book called Jazz. I want to read just a
page or two, which is kind of an illustration of that gesture of choice
and love:
It’s nice when grown people whisper to each other under the
covers. Their ecstasy is more leaf-sigh than bray and the body is

the vehicle, not the point. They reach, grown people, for
something beyond, way beyond and way, way down underneath
tissue. They are remembering while they whisper the carnival
dolls they won and the Baltimore boats they never sailed on. The
pears they let hang on the limb because if they plucked them,
they would be gone from there and who else would see that
ripeness if they took it away for themselves? How could anybody
passing by see them and imagine for themselves what the flavor
would be like? Breathing and murmuring under covers both of
them have washed and hung out on the line, in a bed they chose
together and kept together, nevermind one leg was propped on a
1916 dictionary, and the mattress, curved like a preacher’s palm
asking for witnesses in His name’s sake, enclosed them each and
every night and muffled their whispering, old-time love. They
are under the covers because they don’t have to look at
themselves anymore; there is no stud’s eye, no chippie glance to
undo them. They are inward toward the other, bound and joined
by carnival dolls and the steamers that sailed from ports they
never saw. That is what is beneath their undercover whispers.
But there’s another part, not so secret. The part that touches
fingers when one passes the cup and saucer to the other. The
part that closes her neckline snap while waiting for the trolley;
and brushes lint from his blue serge suit when they come out of
the movie house into the sunlight.
I envy them their public love. I myself have only known it in
secret, shared it in secret and longed, aw longed to show it—to
be able to say out loud what they have no need to say at all: That
I have loved only you, surrendered my whole self reckless to
you and nobody else. That I want you to love me back and
show it to me. That I love the way you hold me, how close you
let me be to you. I like your fingers on and on, lifting, turning. I
have watched your face for a long time now, and missed your
eyes when you went away from me. Talking to you and
hearing you answer—that’s the kick.

But I can’t say that aloud; I can’t tell anyone that I have been
waiting for this all my life and that being chosen to wait is the
reason I can. If I were able I’d say it. Say make me, remake me.
You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look.
Look where your hands are. Now.

Rememory

I

SUSPECT my dependency on memory as trustworthy ignition is
more anxious than it is for most fiction writers—not because I write
(or want to) autobiographically, but because I am keenly aware of the
fact that I write in a wholly racialized society that can and does
hobble the imagination. Labels about centrality, marginality,
minority, gestures of appropriated and appropriating cultures and
literary heritages, pressures to take a position—all these surface
when I am read or critiqued and when I compose. It is both an
intolerable and inevitable condition. I am asked bizarre questions
inconceivable if put to other writers: Do you think you will ever write
about white people? Isn’t it awful to be called a black writer?
I wanted my imagination as unencumbered as possible and as
responsible as possible. I wanted to carve out a world both culture
specific and “race-free.” All of which presented itself to me as a
project full of paradox and contradiction. Western or European
writers believe or can choose to believe their work is naturally “racefree” or “race transcendent.” Whether it is or not is another question
—the fact is the problem has not worried them. They can take it for
granted that it is because Others are “raced”—whites are not. Or so
the conventional wisdom goes. The truth, of course, is that we are all
“raced.” Wanting that same sovereignty, I had to originate my own
fictional projects in a manner I hoped would liberate me, the work,
and my ability to do it. I had three choices: to ignore race or try to
altogether and write about World War II or domestic strife without
referencing race. But that would erase one, although not the only,
most impinging fact of my existence and my intelligence. Two, I
could become a cool “objective” observer writing about race conflict

and/or harmony. There, however, I would be forced to surrender the
center of the stage to received ideas of centrality and the subject
would always and forever be race. Or, three, I could strike out for
new territory: to find a way to free my imagination of the impositions
and limitations of race and explore the consequences of its centrality
in the world and in the lives of the people I was hungry to write
about.
First was my effort to substitute and rely on memory rather than
history because I knew I could not, should not, trust recorded history
to give me the insight into the cultural specificity I wanted. Second, I
determined to diminish, exclude, even freeze any (overt) debt to
Western literary history. Neither effort has been entirely successful,
nor should I be congratulated if it had been. Yet it seemed to me
extremely important to try. You will understand how reckless it
would have been for me to rely on Conrad or Twain or Melville or
Stowe or Whitman or Henry James or James Fenimore Cooper, or
Saul Bellow for that matter, or Flannery O’Connor or Ernest
Hemingway for insights into my own culture. It would have been
equally dim-witted, as well as devastating, for me to rely on Kenneth
Stampp or Lewis Mumford, or Herbert Gutman, or Eugene Genovese
or Moynihan, or Emerson, or Jefferson or any of those sages in the
history of the United States for research that would enlighten me on
these matters. There was and is another source that I have at my
disposal, however: my own literary heritage of slave narratives.
For imaginative entrance into that territory I urged memory to
metamorphose itself into the kind of metaphorical and imagistic
associations I described at the beginning of this talk with Hannah
Peace.
But writing is not simply recollecting or reminiscing or even
epiphany. It is doing; creating a narrative infused (in my case) with
legitimate and authentic characteristics of the culture.
Mindful of and rebellious toward the cultural and racial
expectations and impositions my fiction would encourage, it was
important for me not to reveal, that is, reinforce, already established
reality (literary or historical) that the reader and I agree upon

beforehand. I could not, without engaging in another kind of cultural
totalizing process, assume or exercise that kind of authority.
It was in Beloved, however, that all of these matters coalesced for
me in new and major ways. History versus memory, and memory
versus memorylessness. Rememory as in recollecting and
remembering as in reassembling the members of the body, the
family, the population of the past. And it was the struggle, the
pitched battle between remembering and forgetting, that became the
device of the narrative. The effort to both remember and not know
became the structure of the text. Nobody in the book can bear too
long to dwell on the past; nobody can avoid it. There is no reliable
literary or journalistic or scholarly history available to them, to help
them, because they are living in a society and a system in which the
conquerors write the narrative of their lives. They are spoken of and
written about—objects of history, not subjects within it. Therefore
not only is the major preoccupation of the central characters that of
reconstituting and recollecting a usable past (Sethe to know what
happened to her and to not know in order to justify her violent
action; Paul D to stand still and remember what has helped to
construct his self; Denver to demystify her own birth and enter the
contemporary world that she is reluctant to engage) but also the
narrative strategy the plot formation turns on the stress of
remembering, its inevitability, the chances for liberation that lie
within the process.
[Read]
The final pages in which memory is insistent yet becomes the
mutation of fact into fiction then folklore and then into nothing.
The novel I worked on following the completion of Beloved
presented a different set of circumstances in this regard. Some of the
circumstances surrounding the writing of Song of Solomon included
access I believed the contemplation of my father made available to
me. This project is dependent on the grabbing hold of another parent
—my mother. It takes place in 1926, which is the time of my mother’s
girlhood. That is, her memory of that time as told to me is both a veil
secreting certain parts and a rend her narrative tore into it. I believe

this short section is to me the essence of memory turned to nostalgia
and regret and moving forward finally toward a very thin, but not so
frail, possibility of hope for the present.

Memory, Creation, and Fiction
It is not enough for a work of art to have ordered planes and lines. If a stone
is tossed at a group of children, they hasten to scatter. A regrouping, an
action, has been accomplished. This is composition. This regrouping,
presented by means of color, lines, and planes is an artistic and painterly
motif.
—EDVARD MUNCH

I

LIKE that quotation, as I do many of the remarks painters make
about their work, because it clarifies for me an aspect of creation that
engages me as a writer. It suggests how that interior part of the
growth of a writer (the part that is both separate and
indistinguishable from craft) is connected not only to some purely
local and localized sets of stimuli but also to memory: the painter can
copy or reinterpret the stone—its lines, planes, or curves—but the
stone that causes something to happen among children he must
remember, because it is done and gone. As he sits before his
sketchbook he remembers how the scene looked, but most
importantly he remembers the specific milieu that accompanies the
scene.
Along with the stone and the scattered children is an entire galaxy
of feeling and impression—the motion and content of which may
seem arbitrary, even incoherent, at first.
Because so much in public and scholarly life forbids us to take
seriously the milieu of buried stimuli, it is often extremely hard to
seek out both the stimulus and its galaxy and to recognize their value
when they arrive. Memory is for me always fresh, in spite of the fact
that the object being remembered is done and past.

Memory (the deliberate act of remembering) is a form of willed
creation. It is not an effort to find out the way it really was—that is
research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it
appeared in that particular way.
I once knew a woman named Hannah Peace. I say “knew,” but
nothing could be less accurate. I was perhaps four years old when she
was in the town where I lived. I don’t know where (or even if) she is
now, or to whom she was related then. She was not even a visiting
friend. I couldn’t describe her in a way that would make her known
in a photograph, nor would I recognize her if she walked into this
room. But I have a memory of her and it’s like this: the color of her
skin—the matte quality of it. Something purple around her. Also eyes
not completely open. There emanated from her an aloofness that
seemed to me kindly disposed. But most of all I remember her name
—or the way people pronounced it. Never Hannah or Miss Peace.
Always Hannah Peace—and more. Something hidden—some awe
perhaps, but certainly some forgiveness. When they pronounced her
name, they (the women and the men) forgave her something.
That’s not much, I know: half-closed eyes, an absence of hostility,
skin powdered in lilac dust. But it was more than enough to evoke a
character—in fact any more detail would have prevented (for me) the
emergence of a fictional character at all. What is useful—definitive—
is the galaxy of emotion that accompanied the woman as I pursued
my memory of her; not the woman herself. (I am still startled by the
ability—even the desire—to “use” acquaintances or friends or
enemies as fictional characters. There is no yeast for me in a real-life
person, or else there is so much it is not useful—it is done bread,
already baked.)
The pieces (and only the pieces) are what begin the creative
process for me. And the process by which the recollections of these
pieces coalesce into a part (and knowing the difference between a
piece and a part) is creation. Memory, then, no matter how small the
piece remembered, demands my respect, my attention, and my trust.
I depend heavily on the ruse of memory (and in a way it does
function as a creative writer’s ruse) for two reasons. One, because it

ignites some process of invention, and two, because I cannot trust
the literature and the sociology of other people to help me know the
truth of my own cultural sources. It also prevents my preoccupations
from descending into sociology. Since the discussion of black
literature in critical terms is unfailingly sociology and almost never
art criticism, it is important for me to shed those considerations from
my work at the outset.
In the example I have given of Hannah Peace it was the havingbeen-easily-forgiven that caught my attention, not growing up black,
and that quality, that “easily forgivenness” that I believe I remember
in connection with a shadow of a woman my mother knew, is the
theme of Sula. The women forgive each other—or learn to. Once that
piece of the galaxy became apparent, it dominated the other pieces.
The next step was to discover what there is to be forgiven among
women. Such things must now be raised and invented because I am
going to tell about feminine forgiveness in story form. The things to
be forgiven are grave errors and violent misdemeanors, but the point
is less the thing to be forgiven than the nature and quality of
forgiveness among women—which is to say friendship among
women. What one puts up with in a friendship is determined by the
emotional value of the relationship. But Sula is not simply about
friendship among women, but among black women, a qualifying
term the artistic responsibilities of which I will touch upon in a
moment.
I want my fiction to urge the reader into active participation in the
nonnarrative, nonliterary experience of the text, which makes it
difficult for the reader to confine himself to a cool and distant
acceptance of data. When one looks at a very good painting, the
experience of looking is deeper than the data accumulated in viewing
it. The same, I think, is true in listening to good music. Just as the
literary value of a painting or a musical composition is limited, so too
is the literary value of literature limited. I sometimes think how
glorious it must have been to have written drama in sixteenthcentury England, or poetry in ancient Greece, or religious narrative
in the Middle Ages, when literature was need and did not have a

critical history to constrain or diminish the writer’s imagination.
How magnificent not to have to depend on the reader’s literary
associations—his literary experience—which can be as much an
impoverishment of the reader’s imagination as it is of a writer’s. It is
important that what I write not be merely literary. I am most selfconscious about making sure that I don’t strike literary postures. I
avoid, too studiously perhaps, name-dropping, lists, literary
references, unless oblique and based on written folklore. The choice
of a tale or of folklore in my work is tailored to the character’s
thoughts or actions in a way that flags him or her and provides irony,
sometimes humor.
Milkman, about to meet the oldest black woman in the world, the
mother of mothers who has spent her life caring for helpless others,
enters her house thinking of a European tale, “Hansel and Gretel,” a
story about parents who abandon their children to a forest and a
witch who makes a diet of them. His confusion at that point, his
racial and cultural ignorance, is flagged. Equally marked is Hagar’s
bed, described as Goldilocks’s choice, partly because of Hagar’s
preoccupations with hair, and partly because, like Goldilocks, a
housebreaker if ever there was one, she is greedy for things,
unmindful of property rights or other people’s space, and Hagar is
emotionally selfish as well as confused.
This deliberate avoidance of literary references has become a firm
if boring habit with me, not only because they lead to poses, not only
because I refuse the credentials they bestow, but also because they
are inappropriate to the kind of literature I wish to write, the aims of
that literature, and the discipline of the specific culture that interests
me. Literary references in the hands of writers I love can be
extremely revealing, but they can also supply a comfort I don’t want
the reader to have because I want him to respond on the same plane
an illiterate or preliterate reader would. I want to subvert his
traditional comfort so that he may experience an unorthodox one:
that of being in the company of his own solitary imagination.
My beginnings as a novelist were very much focused on creating
this discomfort and unease in order to insist that the reader rely on

another body of knowledge. However weak those beginnings were in
1965, they nevertheless pointed me toward the process that engages
me in 1984: trusting memory and culling from it theme and
structure. In The Bluest Eye the recollection of what I felt and saw
upon hearing a child my own age say she prayed for blue eyes
provided the first piece. I then tried to distinguish between a piece
and a part—in the sense that a piece of a human body is different
from a part of a human body.
As I began developing parts out of pieces, I found that I preferred
them unconnected—to be related but not to touch, to circle, not line
up—because the story of this prayer was the story of a shattered,
fractured perception resulting from a shattered, splintered life. The
novel turned out to be a composition of parts circling one another,
like the galaxy accompanying memory. I fret the pieces and
fragments of memory because too often we want the whole thing.
When we wake from a dream we want to remember all of it, although
the fragment we are remembering may be, and very probably is, the
most important piece in the dream. Chapter and part designations,
as conventionally used in novels, were never very much help to me in
writing. Nor are outlines. (I permit their use for the sake of the
designer and for ease in talking about the book. They are usually
identified at the last minute.)
There may be play and arbitrariness in the way memory surfaces
but none in the way the composition is organized, especially when I
hope to re-create play and arbitrariness in the way narrative events
unfold. The form becomes the exact interpretation of the idea the
story is meant to express. There is nothing more traditional than that
—but the sources of the images are not the traditional novelistic or
readerly ones. The visual image of a splintered mirror, or the
corridor of split mirrors in blue eyes, is the form as well as the
context of The Bluest Eye.
Narrative is one of the ways in which knowledge is organized. I
have always thought it was the most important way to transmit and
receive knowledge. I am less certain of that now—but the craving for
narrative has never lessened, and the hunger for it is as keen as it

was on Mount Sinai or Calvary or in the middle of the fens. Even
when novelists abandon or grow tired of it as an outmoded mimetic
form, historians, journalists, and performing artists take up the
slack. Still, narrative is not and never has been enough, just as the
object drawn on a canvas or a cave wall is never simply mimetic.
My compact with the reader is not to reveal an already established
reality (literary or historical) that he or she and I agree upon
beforehand. I don’t want to assume or exercise that kind of authority.
I regard that as patronizing, although many people regard it as safe
and reassuring. And because my métier is black, the artistic demands
of black culture are such that I cannot patronize, control, or
pontificate. In the third-world cosmology as I perceive it, reality is
not already constituted by my literary predecessors in Western
culture.
If my work is to confront a reality unlike that received reality of the
West, it must centralize and animate information discredited by the
West—discredited not because it is not true or useful or even of some
racial value, but because it is information held by discredited people,
information dismissed as “lore” or “gossip” or “magic” or
“sentiment.”
If my work is faithfully to reflect the aesthetic tradition of AfroAmerican culture, it must make conscious use of the characteristics
of its art forms and translate them into print: antiphony, the group
nature of art, its functionality, its improvisational nature, its
relationship to audience performance, the critical voice that upholds
tradition and communal values and that also provides occasion for
an individual to transcend and/or defy group restrictions.
Working with those rules, the text, if it is to take improvisation and
audience participation into account, cannot be the authority—it
should be the map. It should make a way for the reader (audience) to
participate in the tale. The language, if it is to permit criticism of
both rebellion and tradition, must be both indicator and mask, and
the tension between the two kinds of language is its release and its
power. If my work is to be functional to the group (to the village, as it
were) then it must bear witness and identify that which is useful

from the past and that which ought to be discarded; it must make it
possible to prepare for the present and live it out; and it must do that
not by avoiding problems and contradictions but by examining them;
it should not even attempt to solve social problems but it should
certainly try to clarify them.
Before I try to illustrate some of these points by using Tar Baby as
an example, let me hasten to say that there are eminent and
powerful, intelligent, and gifted black writers who not only recognize
Western literature as part of their own heritage but who have
employed it to such an advantage that it illuminates both cultures. I
neither object to nor am indifferent to their work or their views. I
relish it, in precisely the way I relish a world of literature from other
cultures. The question is not legitimacy or the “correctness” of a
point of view, but the difference between my point of view and theirs.
Nothing would be more hateful to me than a monolithic prescription
for what black literature is or ought to be. I simply wanted to write
literature that was irrevocably, indisputably black not because its
characters were, or because I was, but because it took as its creative
task and sought as its credentials those recognized and verifiable
principles of black art.
In the writing of Tar Baby, memory meant recollecting the told
story. I refused to read a modern or Westernized version of the told
story, selecting out instead the pieces that were disturbing or simply
memorable: fear, tar, the rabbit’s outrage at a failing in traditional
manners (the tar baby does not speak). Why was the tar baby
formed, to what purpose, what was the farmer trying to protect, and
why did he think the doll would be attractive to the rabbit—what did
he know and what was his big mistake? Why does the tar baby
cooperate with the farmer, and do the things the farmer wishes to
protect? What makes his job more important than the rabbit’s, why
does he believe that a briar patch is sufficient punishment, what does
the briar patch represent to the rabbit, to the tar baby, and to the
farmer?
“Creation” meant putting the above pieces together in parts, first
of all concentrating on tar as a part. What is it and where does it

come from? What are its holy uses and its profane uses—
consideration of which led to a guiding motif: ahistorical earth and
historical earth. That theme was translated into the structure in these
steps:
1. Coming out of the sea (that which was there before earth) is both
the beginning and the end of the book—in both of which Son
emerges from the sea in a section that is not numbered as a
chapter.
2. The earth that came out of the sea, its conquest by modern man,
and the pain caused to the conquered life forms, as they are
viewed by fishermen and clouds.
3. Movement from the earth into the household: its rooms, its
quality of shelter. The activity for which the rooms were
designed: eating, sleeping, bathing, leisure, etc.
4. The house disrupted precisely as the earth was disrupted. The
chaos of the earth duplicated in the house designed for order.
The disruption caused by the man born out of the womb of the
sea accompanied by ammonia odors of birth.
5. The conflict that follows between the ahistorical (the pristine)
and the historical (or social) forces inherent in the uses of tar.
6. The conflict, further, between two kinds of chaos: civilized chaos
and natural chaos.
7. The revelation, then, is the revelation of secrets. Everybody with
one or two exceptions has a secret: secrets of acts committed (as
with Margaret and Son), and secrets of thoughts unspoken but
driving nonetheless (as with Valerian and Jadine). And then the
deepest and earliest secret of all: that just as we watch other life,
other life watches us.

Goodbye to All That
Race, Surrogacy, and Farewell

S

OME YEARS AGO, when I was invited to be interviewed on a
television show, I asked whether it was possible for our conversation
to avoid any questions or topics about race. I suspected that if such
voluntary exclusion were in place, then other equally interesting
subjects might surface and produce a rare media encounter—one free
of the cant one is inevitably forced to resort to in such a venue, on
such a subject. I thought the experiment would be a first for me and
elicit my views on what constitutes my writing life; or the
relationship between teaching and writing, between editing and
teaching, how the pleasure and despair of being a mother influenced
my work—loosened or limited it; my views on the problems of
transcription and oral data in slave narratives, the compelling blend
of vernacular, standard, street, and lyric language for an American
writer, the importance of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Jean Toomer
to me; how poverty, once a romanticized, sentimentalized figuration
in American literature, has returned to its nineteenth-century
predecessor as a metaphor for illness, crime, and sin; of my work on
the letters of abolitionists James McCune Smith and Gerrit Smith.
All of these are topics, or shreds of topics, that have had something
to do with my thinking, writing life. The interviewer agreed, but
when we met, a few minutes before the show, he changed his mind,
saying that the race aspect was far too interesting to abandon. I am
not at all sure that the sort of chat I wanted would have had any
appeal whatsoever to anybody else. Probably not. The interviewer’s
judgment was accurate if predictable: racial difference is a very big
seller. The point I am making, however, is that neither he nor his

audience was interested in any aspects of me other than my raced
ones. Disappointed and irked, I dragged out my kit of the media’s
version of racial dialogue: great-great-granddaughter of Africans,
great-great-granddaughter of slaves; great-granddaughter of
sharecroppers; granddaughter of migrants; beneficiary of the
American Dream—I ended up sleepwalking through a wan, rambling,
profoundly uninteresting dialogue.
I had such a yearning for an environment in which I could speak
and write without every sentence being understood as mere protest
or understood as mere advocacy. Now, in no way should this desire
be misinterpreted as an endorsement of deracination, or the
fashionable term, “race transcendence,” nor as an example of the
dwindling impact of racial politics. Even a glance at the U.S. 2000
census data, where more refined racial identifications are also more
pronounced; even a light curiosity about recommendations for
death-penalty moratoriums; a vague awareness of the bruising
disenfranchisement of African Americans in the last presidential
election; the record numbers of discrimination and racial profiling
cases—none of these vectors of racial policy would lead one to the
conclusion that racial politics is benign. I don’t foresee, or want, a
color-blind, race-neutral environment. The nineteenth century was
the time for that. It’s too late, now. Our race-inflected culture not
only exists, it thrives. The question is whether it thrives as a virus or
a bountiful harvest of possibilities.
From the beginning, I claimed a territory by insisting on being
identified as a black woman writer exclusively interested in facets of
African American culture. I made these unambiguous assertions to
impose on all readers the visibility in and the necessity of African
American culture to my work precisely in order to encourage a wider
critical vocabulary than the one in which I was educated. I wanted
this vocabulary to stretch to the margins for the wealth that lay there
and thus, not abandon, but reconfigure what occupied the center. It
seemed to me a way of enriching the dialogue between and among
cultures. I wanted to make impossible the role of temporary or
honorary white writer; to frustrate the label of the inconsequentially

black writer. The “just happen to be black” writer. My project was to
discover what the black topic did and could do to language practices.
I sought language that could exist on at least two levels: the clearly
raced identity right alongside the unraced one that had to function
within an already coded racial discourse. But I was never very good
at manifestos, so my attempts proved to be a tightrope, a balancing
that confused some readers, delighted others, disappointed some,
but provoked enough of them to let me know the work was not
always in vain. It led me to try strategies, employ structures and
techniques emanating from African American culture cheek by jowl
with, and responsive to, other ones.
This effort to balance the demands of cultural specificity with
those of artistic range is a condition, rather than a problem, for me. A
challenge rather than a worry. A refuge rather than a refugee camp.
Home territory, not foreign land. Inhabiting and manipulating that
sphere has excited me like no other. Of course African American
writers have contemplated, written about, struggled with, and have
taken positions on this politics or art, race and/or aesthetics debate
since Phillis Wheatley suggested that slavery did her a favor. Jean
Toomer tried to escape its shackle altogether by inventing an
American race. Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James
Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, African American scholars,
and a host of post–civil rights writers have weighed in on the subject.
And it is or has been, since the nineteenth century, a keenly argued
concern of every immigrant group of writers in the United States.
From Henry James to Chang-rae Lee; from William Faulkner to
Maxine Hong Kingston; from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Frank
McCourt; from Herman Melville to Paula Marshall. Still it is hard for
me to believe that the necessity of responding to a perceived
“outsider” status has been demanded so loudly and so insistently of
any group more than African American artists. To me the implied,
even voiced question, “Are you a black writer or an American
writer?” not only means “Are you subverting art to politics?” It also
means “Are you a black writer or a universal writer?” suggesting that
the two are clearly incompatible. Race awareness apparently can

never be sundered from politics. It is the result of a shotgun wedding
originally enforced by whites, while African American artists (in the
public and academic domains) are faulted and flailed for dealing
with the consequences of this marriage. Forced to shout endlessly to
white criticism, “These are not my racial politics—they are yours.”
These battles against such a mind-set are exhausting and are
especially debilitating since those who launched the fray have only to
observe it, not participate in it. Have only to misunderstand the
demands of cultural specificity as identity politics or assaults on the
canon, or special pleading, or some other threatening gesture. And
the people most invested in the argument are usually those who have
already reaped its benefits.
I suppose I approached the politics versus art, race versus
aesthetics debate initially the way an alchemist would: looking for
that combination of ingredients that turns dross into gold. But there
is no such formula. So my project became to make the historically
raced world inextricable from the artistic view that beholds it, and in
so doing encourage readings that dissect both. Which is to say I
claimed the right and the range of authorship. To interrupt
journalistic history with a metaphorical one; to impose on a
rhetorical history an imagistic one; to read the world, misread it;
write and unwrite it. To enact silence and free speech. In short to do
what all writers aspire to do. I wanted my work to be the work of
disabling the art versus politics argument; to perform the union of
aesthetics and ethics.
I am impressed by the fruitfulness and importance of scholarly
and literary challenges that search for more ways in which to both
sign and defang race, acknowledge its import and limit its corrosive
effect on language. That is, work that avoids the unnatural schism
between the political realm in which race matters and the artistic one
in which it is presumed not to.
Scholarship that abandons the enforcing properties of the false
debate and welcomes the challenges in the liberating ones hidden at
its center is becoming sensitive to the fact that things have changed.
Language that requires the mutual exclusion of x and y, or the

dominance of x over y, is slowly losing its magic, its force. But it is
literature that rehearses and enacts this change in ways far in
advance of and more probingly than the critical language that follows
it. Perhaps it is because of my own farewell to all that art versus
politics, culture against aesthetics quarrel that I find literary partings
(moments of racial goodbyes) so promising a site in which to
examine the sea change expressive language of racial encounter has
undergone, a sea change yielding opportunities for richer and more
nuanced explorations. Over time the rites of farewell between the
races as represented in some selected examples in American
literature have moved dramatically from blatant assumptions of
racial hierarchy to less overt ones to coded representation to
nuanced decodings of those assumptions; from control to dismissal
to anxiety to a kind of informed ease. Now, I insist on not being
misunderstood here—implying that neutralizing race is the work of
literature, its job, so to speak. It is not. Nevertheless the shape of
racial discourse can be located there. A shape that plays about and
moves through literature and therefore in our imaginations when we
read it. Although even this brief inquiry could and ought to be
widened, I will limit my observations to women writers because
intimacy and alienation and severance between women is more often
free of the sexual competition implicit among male writers
addressing the same subject, and anxieties about sexual dominance
can blur as well as exacerbate the racial equation (as Shakespeare
and Hollywood both knew). Saying goodbye is a moment readymade for literary histrionics, for deep emotional revelations seething
with meaning. I am interested in the farewell between black and
white strangers who have, or might have, shared something
significant; or who represent the end of something larger than
themselves, where the separation symbolizes loss or renewal, for
example. There are the partings between black and white women
whose histories are permanently entangled. Many, if not most, of
these are surrogate relationships: surrogate mothers in the nannychild domain; surrogate mothers, aunts, and other relatives in the
servant-mistress category; surrogate sisters in which the friendships
become surrogate, illegal, precisely because the dynamics of power

between employer and employee are inescapably raced; and
sometimes, though rarely, there is the farewell between black and
white adult women in which the equity is not race based. Alice
Walker’s Meridian is an early example.
Let me begin with a farewell scene in a fine and prolific writer who
is not American, but who was herself a foreigner far from home and
who was in a position to form opinions on racial relationships from
close quarters, Isak Dinesen. There is a haunting scene in Out of
Africa that exhibits standard racial discourse as well as the
presumptions of the foreigner’s home. The scene in which the author
is leaving a place, Kenya, that has been her home for much of her
adult life. The necessity of moving out of Africa and its melancholy
surface in each moment of leave-taking.
A passage toward the end reads as follows:
Now the old women were sorry that I was leaving them. From
this last time, I keep the picture of a Kikuyu woman, nameless to
me, for I did not know her well, she belonged, I think, to
Kathegu’s village, and was the wife or widow of one of his many
sons. She came towards me on a path on the plain, carrying on
her back a load of the long thin poles which the Kikuyu use for
constructing the roofs of their huts,—with them this is women’s
work. These poles may be fifteen feet long; when the women
carry them they tie them together at the ends, and the tall
conical burdens give to the people underneath them, as you see
them traveling over the land, the silhouette of a prehistoric
animal, or a Giraffe. The sticks which this woman was carrying
were all black and charred, sooted by the smoke of the hut
during many years; that meant that she had been pulling down
her house and was trailing her building materials, such as they
were, to new grounds. When we met she stood dead still, barring
the path to me, staring at me in the exact manner of a Giraffe in
a herd, that you will meet on the open plain, and which lives and
feels and thinks in a manner unknowable to us. After a moment
she broke out weeping, tears streaming over her face, like a cow

that makes water on the plain before you. Not a word did she or
I myself speak, and, after a few minutes, she ceded the way to
me, and we parted, and walked on in opposite directions. I
thought that after all she had some materials with which to
begin her new house, and I imagined how she would set to work,
and tie her sticks together, and make herself a roof.
Lots of other Kenyans wept and deplored Dinesen’s exit: because
of their affection for her, or perhaps the loss of paid employment and
protection, the despair of having to find other shelter. But the above
recollection bedevils me for other reasons. What does the phrase
“barring the path to me” mean? Not barring the path, or barring me
in the path, but barring the path to me. Is the path only to and for
Dinesen? Is the woman out of place? The syntax is curious.
Additionally there is the sustained speculation about the woman’s
errand—carrying wood to build, rebuild, or repair her roof. To make
a home for herself in a land that is her home, but in which she (the
Kikuyu woman) is made to feel the outsider. While the true
foreigner, the author, is leaving a false home about which she has
some misgivings. The description of Dinesen’s African woman is
instructive. The sticks on her head make Dinesen think of a
“prehistoric animal.” Furthermore, the quiet woman is staring at her
with what emotions we cannot yet know because she is relegated to
the animal kingdom, where emotions and thoughts and life itself
cannot be known by us. The woman is like a giraffe in a herd,
speechless, unknowable, and when she evinces some powerful
emotion such as sorrow, or rage, or disgust, or loneliness, or even joy
we cannot know it because her tears are like a cow voiding its urine
in public. It is a picture, says Dinesen, that she keeps with her, this
nameless unknown woman. Surely a surrogate, a symbol, of Kenya
and what she thinks of the world she is leaving behind. In these
passages, beautiful “aesthetic” language serves to undermine the
terms: the native, the foreigner, home, homelessness in a wash of
preemptive images that legitimate and obscure their racist

assumptions while providing protective cover from a possibly more
damaging insight.
If we leave 1930s Africa and move to 1940s America to another
writer with claim to some intimate relations to blacks, there is
further instruction.
In a classic tale of American womanhood, Gone with the Wind, the
black woman/white woman connection is the one we have learned
from Harriet Beecher Stowe and others: a ubiquitous mammy whose
devotion and nursing skills are as fierce as they are loyal. These
surrogate mothers are more serviceable than real mothers not only
because of their constancy, but also because, unlike biological
mothers, you can command them and dismiss them without serious
penalty. Notwithstanding their presence in the text, there will always
come a time when these surrogates leave—they either exit the
narrative itself because they are no longer relevant to it, or they leave
the life of their mistress because their value as teachers is reduced
when the cared-for matures, or when circumstances have changed:
moving away, insubordination, or death. Of interest to me is how this
severance is played out. Is protective language summoned to make
the black woman’s disappearance palatable? Is there a dependence
on a metaphoric equation with the unfeeling, unthinking animal
world? Are there deep or awkward silences to accompany her
dismissal? Are there tears or a stubborn insistence upon permanent
attachment?
In spite of the very real difference in the level of literary
accomplishment, Mitchell’s mammy is like Dinesen’s Kikuyu in
important ways. Similes chosen to bring each into view are from the
animal kingdom; both black women are speechless with grief when
departure is imminent; the severance in both instances is seen as
trauma, a devastating deprivation to the black woman and in
Mitchell, to the white woman as well. The “not one word spoken” by
the Kenyan woman becomes the garbled babble of a black woman
(who in sixty years of dialogue with her mistress had never learned to
pronounce the word “white”) and a quiet begrudging while her young
mistress weeps.

These early and classic relationships between women of different
races, frequently maternal, friendly, loving, are echoed in Willa
Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl in a mesmerizing deathbed
scene with another surrogate, a woman named Jezebel with whom
the mistress had a close and mutually satisfying friendship. The
dialogue is revelatory.
“You must eat to keep up your strength.”
“Don’t want nothin’, Missy.”
“Can’t you think of anything that would taste good to you?
Now think a minute, and tell me. Isn’t there something?”
The old woman gave a sly chuckle; one paper eyelid winked,
and her eyes gave out a flash of grim humour. “No’m, I cain’t
think of nothin’ I could relish, lessen maybe it was a li’l
pickaninny’s hand.”
She turned back again to the bed, took up Jezebel’s cold grey
claw, and patted it. “Good-bye til another time, Auntie. Now you
must turn over and have a nap.”
Evocative as this scene is, rampant with pleasant memories and a
shared view of the world, its serenity explodes with flashes of the
serviceable but sinister language of racial antagonism. The hint of
cannibalism (understood to be “natural” to Africans) and not the
patting of a hand, the patting of “a cold grey claw.”
But something else begins to take place in fiction: changes that are
usually attributed to social climate; the signs of the times. In any
case, speech permissible in the nineteenth and early twentieth
century is crude in the late twentieth. But that may not be the whole
story. Surely the entrance of post–Harlem Renaissance minority
voices into the political and literary landscape has had a share in this
alteration. Perhaps a readership and a critical community that is
intolerant of the easy dismissal of others. In any case there are fewer
instances of unreflective dismissals; deeper probes into these
relationships; more exacting observations of these exits and

disruptions in the relationships. In 1946 Carson McCullers published
The Member of the Wedding.” Before that The Heart Is a Lonely
Hunter.
In both novels black women exit the life of the protagonist. The
scene between Berenice and Frankie in The Member of the Wedding
is one of struggle for control in which we witness the jealousy of the
surrogate mother at the flight of the child. Then there is Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird, where it is clear Lee is working away from
certain assumptions of unknowableness. Although Calpurnia has
self-revealing conversations only with other blacks and children—
never white adults—the grapple for language to deal with these
complicated matters is apparent. There are no leave-taking moments
in the novel, nor in Lillian Hellman’s autobiographical work that has
several recollections of her servant, Caroline Ducky. Yet the point is
sustained by the reach of these authors for a seriousness not shown
in earlier writers. There seems to be a blossoming suspicion among
these white women writers that complex thought, ambiguity, nuance
are actually possible in their black characters, and that their speech
does not require the strange, creative spellings that no other
character’s speech needs.
Lucille Clifton opens her own lovely memoir, Generations, in 1976,
with a conversation between strangers of each race—a conversation
that rings with the sayable and the unsaid.
But two years before that Diane Johnson fills in those gaps that lie
about in Clifton’s memoir and in other works. Her 1974 The Shadow
Knows digs deeply into these relationships. The narrator has two
domestics critical to her life: one disruptive, vengeful, grotesque;
another benevolent, supportive, cheerful. The reflective quality of the
prose is worth quoting.
“But I’m trying to confess that I don’t think I experience Osella as a
human, not really.” “And she had seemed dead on arrival, delivered
lonely and bereaved and far from home to our zoo, like some
insignificant common animal barely noticeable to the keeper, me,
who was more preoccupied with the misery of the delicate gazelle—
me.” Here the animal characteristics are equally distributed and the

more lyric “gazelle” is delivered with irony. Later she muses, “I notice
that whenever I describe Osella or think of her, it is in metaphors of
things not people, or of fat animals. It is as if I did not consider her
human, this fellow woman with whom I shared my children and my
home and many hours….There was nothing in her that wouldn’t sit
down sisterly and share a recipe but there was something in me.”
This is no casual, lazy (Margaret Mitchell) language: Osella is
impossibly if understandably lunatic. While the death of Ev, who
follows Osella, is a subject of the narrator’s deep personal mourning.
Language ricochets in these race-inflected farewell scenes. In
Beloved also there is a leave-taking between a white girl and a black
one. The scene moves toward the parting that must take place
between them, yes, but the scene is also meant to enact a goodbye to
the impediments of race right in the middle of highly racialized
dialogue. Each one begins by speaking in the language of the period.
The power relationships are manifest in the casually racist remarks
of Amy and the deceitful acquiescence of Sethe. Following their joint
venture in the birth of Denver, they speak, finally, not of farewell, but
of memory; how to fix the memory of one in the mind of the other—
or, as with Sethe, how to immortalize the encounter beyond her own
temporal life. While the action is separation, the parting of ways, the
language is meant to displace it, is meant to invite meditation on its
necessity. Washing up on the bank of the Ohio River is our knowing
that if both women had been of the same race (both white or both
black) they could have, might have, would have stayed together and
shared their fortune. Neither one felt she belonged anywhere. Both
are traveling through unknown, strange territory looking for a home.
So the language is designed to imply the solitude of their farewell is
somehow shaming.
In the later decades of the twentieth century the dissolution of the
restrictions imposed by race consciousness on expressive language
begins to erode, as in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.
Instead of suppressing, ignoring the possibilities in these
relationships, instead of the comfort of stereotype and the safety of
an indolent imagination, one begins to hear not Dinesen’s silence or

Mitchell’s gabble, but verbal fencing; not the unmitigated devotion or
disobedience of servants, but the wrestle over the meaning of home;
the probing of subtle jealousies, complicated forms of resistance,
hatred, love, anger; the learned and earned exchange of mutual
perception.
I think I know why African American women writers ignored the
temptation to widen the racial divide rather than understand it. I am
not sure why white women writers felt compelled to do likewise. It
could not have been a simple choice between aestheticizing politics
or politicizing aesthetics. Nor could it have been a juvenile yearning
to deserve the terms “humanitarian” and “universal.” Those terms,
so tainted with the erasure of race, are no longer adequate. I leave it
to others to name the equipoise that now resides in literature,
especially of/by women, if not in the public discourse that seeks to
comprehend it.
There already exists the material from which a new paradigm for
reading and writing about literature can arise. Writers have already
said farewell to the old one. To the racial anchor that weighed down
the language and its imaginative possibilities. How novel it would be
if, in this case, life imitated art. If I could have had that television
interview reflecting my life’s real work. If, in fact, I was not a (raced)
foreigner but a home girl, who already belonged to the human race.

Invisible Ink
Reading the Writing and Writing the Reading

I

ONCE WROTE an article for a popular magazine that had a
small irregular “arts” section. They wanted something laudatory
about the value or perhaps just the pleasure of reading. This last
noun, “pleasure,” annoyed me because it is routinely associated with
emotion: delight accompanied by suspense. Reading is fundamental
—emphasis on the “fun.” At the least, of course, it is understood, in
popular discourse, to be uplifting, instructive; at its best encouraging
deep thought.
Thoughts about the practice of reading engaged me early on as a
writer/imaginer as well as an absorbent reader.
I began reading when I was three years old, but it was always
difficult for me. Not difficult as in hard to do, but difficult in the
sense of having a hard time looking for meaning in and beyond the
words. The first grade primer sentence “Run, Jip, run” led me to the
question, Why is he running? Is that a command? If so, where to? Is
the dog being chased? Or is it chasing someone? Later on when I
tackled “Hansel and Gretel” more serious questions flooded. As they
did with nursery rhymes and games: “ring around the rosie, pocket
full of posies.” It was some time before I understood that the rhyme,
the game was about death during the bubonic plague.
So I chose for this magazine an attempt to distinguish reading as a
skill and reading as an art.
This is some of what I wrote:
“Mr. Head awakened to discover that the room was full of
moonlight. He sat up and stared at the floor boards—the color of

silver—and then at the ticking on his pillow, which might have been
brocade, and after a second, he saw half of the moon five feet away in
his shaving mirror, paused as if it were waiting for his permission to
enter. It rolled forward and cast a dignifying light on everything. The
straight chair against the wall looked stiff and attentive as if it were
awaiting an order and Mr. Head’s trousers, hanging to the back of it,
had an almost noble air, like the garment some great man had just
flung to his servant.”
In those opening sentences by Flannery O’Connor, she chose to
direct her readers to Mr. Head’s fantasy, his hopes. The ticking on a
pillow, minus a pillow slip, is like brocade, rich, elaborate. Moonlight
turns a wooden floor to silver and “casts a dignifying light”
everywhere. His chair is “stiff and attentive” and seems to await an
order from him. Even his trousers hanging on the chair’s back had “a
noble air,” like the garment some great man has flung to his servant.
So, Mr. Head has strong, perhaps unmanageable dreams of majesty,
of controlling servants to do his bidding, of rightful authority. Even
the moon in his shaving mirror pauses “as if it were waiting for his
permission to enter.” We don’t really have to wait (a few sentences
on) to see his alarm clock sitting on an overturned bucket or to
wonder why his shaving mirror is five feet away from his bed, to
know a great deal about him—his pretension, his insecurity, his
pathetic yearnings—and to anticipate his behavior as the story
unfolds.
In my essay, I was trying to identify characteristics of flawless
writing that made it possible to read fiction again and again, to step
into its world confident that attentiveness will always yield wonder.
How to make the work work while it makes me do the same.
I thought my illustration was fine as far as it went, but what I could
not clearly articulate was the way in which a reader participates in
the text—not how she interprets it, but how she helps to write it.
(Very like singing: there are the lyrics, the score, and then the
performance—which is the individual’s contribution to the piece.)
Invisible ink is what lies under, between, outside the lines, hidden
until the right reader discovers it. By “right” reader, I am suggesting

that certain books are obviously not for every reader. It’s possible to
admire but not become emotionally or intellectually involved in
Proust. Even a reader who loves the book may not be the best or
right lover. The reader who is “made for” the book is the one attuned
to the invisible ink.
The usual dyad in literary criticism is the stable text versus the
actualized reader. The reader and his readings can change, but the
text does not. It is stable. As the text cannot change, it follows that a
successful relationship between text and reader can only come about
through changes in the reader’s projections. It seems to me that the
question becomes whether those dormant projections are products
of the reader or the writer. What I want to suggest is that may not
always be so. While the responsibility of interpretation is understood
to be transferred to the reader, the text is not always a quiet patient
the reader brings to life. I want to introduce a third party into the
equation—the author.
Some writers of fiction design their texts to disturb—not merely
with suspenseful plots, provocative themes, interesting characters, or
even mayhem. They design their fiction to disturb, rattle, and engage
the entire environment of the reading experience.
Withdrawing metaphor and simile is just as important as choosing
them. Leading sentences can be written to contain buried
information that completes, invades, or manipulates the reading.
The unwritten is as significant as the written. And the gaps that are
deliberate, and deliberately seductive, when filled by the “right”
reader, produce the text in its entirety and attest to its living life.
Think of “Benito Cereno” in this regard, where the author chooses
the narrator’s point of view to deliberately manipulate the reading
experience.
There are certain assumptions about categories that are regularly
employed to arouse this disturbance. I would like to see a book
written where the gender of the narrator is unspecified,
unmentioned. Gender, like race, carries with it a panoply of
certainties—all deployed by the writer to elicit certain responses and,
perhaps, to defy others.

Race, as the O’Connor, Coetzee, and Melville examples show,
contains and produces more certainties. I have written elsewhere
about the metaphorical uses to which racial codes are put—
sometimes to clarify, sometimes to solidify assumptions readers may
hold. Virginia Woolf with her gaps, Faulkner with his delays both
control the reader and lead her to operate within the text. But is it
true that the text does not formulate expectations or their
modification. Or that such formulation is the province of the reader,
enabling the text to be translated and transferred to his own mind?
I admit to this deliberate deployment in almost all of my own
books. Overt demands that the reader not just participate in the
narrative, but specifically to help write it. Sometimes with a question.
Who dies at the end of Song of Solomon and does it matter?
Sometimes with a calculated withholding of gender. Who is the
opening speaker in Love? Is it a woman or a man who says “Women
spread their legs wide open and I hum”? Or in Jazz is it a man or
woman who declares “I love this city”? For the not right reader such
strategies are annoying, like a withholding of butter from toast. For
others it is a gate partially open and begging for entrance.
I am not alone in focusing on race as a non-signifier. John Coetzee
has done this rather expertly in Life & Times of Michael K. In that
book we make instant assumptions based on the facts that the place
is South Africa, the character is a poor laborer and sometimes
itinerant; that people tend to shy away from him. But he has a severe
harelip that may be the reason for his bad luck. Nowhere in the book
is Michael’s race mentioned. As readers we make the assumption or
we don’t. What if we read the invisible ink in the book and found it to
be otherwise—as the trials of a poor white South African (of which
there are legion)?
Clearly, the opening sentence of Paradise is a blatant example of
invisible ink. “They shot the white girl first, and took their time with
the rest.”
How much will the reader’s imagination be occupied with sorting
out who is the white girl? When will the reader believe she has
spotted her? When will it be clear that while having that information

is vital to the town vigilantes, does it really matter to the reader? If
so, whatever the choice made it is the reader I force into helping to
write the book; it is the reader whom I summon in invisible ink,
destabilizing the text and reorienting the reader.
From “Are you afraid?” the opening sentence of A Mercy, calming
the reader, swearing to do no harm, to the penultimate chapter’s
“Are you afraid? You should be.”
Writing the reading involves seduction—luring the reader into
environments outside the pages. Disqualifying the notion of a stable
text for one that is dependent on an active and activated reader who
is writing the reading—in invisible ink.
Let me close with some words from a book that I believe is a
further example.
“They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood.”

Foreword
Walter Rodney Completes Marx
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Colonization with all its interlinked economic, political, cultural and even
psychic dimensions, has been central to the making of capitalist modernity.
It was the new colonies in the West that fuelled Atlantic slave trade with the
African body as commodity, and slavery, with the African body providing
unpaid labor for the colonial plantations, and racism, with all its
dehumanization of the African body and mind. Negation of the African
humanity.
All these fueled the development of Europe and the West. The major
cities of Europe were built by riches from slave trade, slavery and
colonialism. Three of the major nuclear powers today – the USA, Britain
and France – were also major players in enslavement and colonization.
Western Modernity is rooted in the looting of a continent.
But one of the most frequently propagated colonial mythologies is that
of Europe and the West having developed Africa. All the major thinkers of
the European enlightenment from Hume to Kant and Hegel advanced the
same thesis also embodied in Missionary and Explorer narratives about the
continent. The myth continues today with the West seen as donor to Africa.
It was Walter Rodney who best articulated a refutation of that
mythology in his now universally acclaimed classic: How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa. This and Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth are
really the basic material for helping make sense of the contradictions which
still haunt Africa and all the formerly colonized of Asia and South America.
The African post-colonial elite is very protective of their phony identities;

Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone. But they are never protective of
the resources of the conntinent. Ninety per cent of these resources,
including diamonds, gold, oil, copper, cobalt, uranium are still owned by
Western corporations. Africa, the biggest continent in the world, continues
to be the main donor to Europe and the West.
See the contradiction. Europe gave Africa the resources of their accents,
the basis of those phony identities. Africa gave Europe access to the
resources of the continent. Accents for Access: that is really the story of
Africa’s underdevelopment by Europe, well captured and analyzed by
Walter Rodney.
Rodney was able to do this because of his Marxian approaches to
history which enabled him to see clearly the intertwinment of economics,
politics, culture and values, which, under capitalism rests on the primary
contradiction between labor and capital. But he was able to add the racial
and colonial dimension to this. Race, gender and colonialism were integral
to development of capitalism to its current stage of global imperialism.
Colonization is colonizer and colonized. So decolonization at the
economic, political, cultural and psychic levels has to involve both the
colonizer and the colonized. Even our methodologies need to be
decolonized from their Eurocentric basis. Marxist class analysis needs the
dimensions of race and colony and gender to complete it.
These essays, Decolonial Marxism, will be an important companion to
our continued learning from the same Pan-African mind that showed us
clearly how Europe under-developed the continent. With the dimesnions of
race and colony added to class analysis, Rodney completes Marx.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

I
Marxist Theory
and Mass Action
This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

1
A Brief Tribute to Amilcar Cabral
In Amilcar Cabral, Africa had a giant who bridged the gap between theory
and practice, and hence represented the embodiment of revolutionary
praxis. Cabral was a theoretician of the highest calibre – but only because
he was involved in changing the ugly realities of colonized African society.
He supervised a People’s War of Liberation with great distinction – but only
because of the soundness of his scientific worldview and his capacity to
apply it penetratingly to the social relations of Guinea-Bissau.
The few pages which Cabral devoted to an analysis of the African
societies of Guinea-Bissau are of extraordinary perceptiveness and
authenticity. This is understandable, since the accuracy of the interpretation
was literally a matter of life and death. The massive task of political
mobilization that the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and
Cape Verde (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde –
PAIGC) so strikingly achieved was based on a correct appreciation of such
niceties as the relations between youth and elders among the Balanta
people; or ties between a quasi-feudal Fula lord and his aliens, or the role of
the itinerant Manding trader within the colonial economy. Based on this
political mobilization, the military conflict has in turn been decidedly
resolved in favour of the PAIGC in most parts of Guinea-Bissau.
It is the element of commitment which sets Cabral apart from the
common run of intellectuals who boast of being ‘neutral’ and ‘un-biased’,
thereby passively accepting the perpetuation of the colonial status quo. At
the same time, Cabral’s work as a revolutionary African intellectual also
contrasts sharply with the purpose of the early European anthropologists
who openly oriented their study towards the maintenance of colonial rule,
by writing ‘intelligence reports’ for the occupying power. Cabral was
serving as an intelligence officer of the army of liberation, when he

unravelled the intricacies of segmentary lineage groups and the stratified
social formations which exist in Guinea-Bissau. The fact that the
Portuguese colonial regime has virtually fallen apart in contrast to the
surging growth in the area of liberated Guinea is the ultimate proof of the
reactionary nature of the colonial relationship and the progressive character
of the intellectual work carried out by Cabral and his colleagues.
Paradoxical as it may seem, Cabral (leader of a nationalist movement)
was constantly playing down the importance of mere nationalism. He did so
through perceiving the difference between a political outlook limited to
nationalism and one which encompassed a revolutionary transformation of
the people’s lives along Socialist lines. It is this revolutionary
transformation that was the supreme objective in Cabral’s eyes. This he
stressed on the innumerable occasions when he stood before the villagers of
Guinea-Bissau. He put it to them that:
Independence is not just a simple matter of expelling the Portuguese, of having a flag and a
national anthem. The people must be secure in the knowledge that no one is going to steal
their labour, that the wealth of the country is not going into somebody else’s pocket. Even
today the Guinean people stand naked and are still afraid of the river, the rain and the forest.
We tell the Guinean people that by their work the river will be tamed, and the rain will be put
to good use.

Here was the straightforward language meant to fortify against further
manifestations of neo-colonialism, the growth of a national bourgeoisie, and
the perpetuation of ignorance and fear among the masses.
Cabral saw that the nationalist struggle chronologically preceded the
Socialist revolution, but that it was imperative to prepare for the subsequent
Socialist revolution from the onset of the national phase. Armed struggle
was the unavoidable path to the liberation of Guinea. Yet, politics has
remained in command throughout. The PAIGC has constantly involved
itself in the cadre formation, mass mobilization and the creation of
democratic Socialist structures and attitudes. All of these programmes
benefited from the long-term vision of Amilcar Cabral, leader of the PAIGC
since its inception in September 1956.
For those of us who aspire towards a deeper appreciation of historical
dialectics, Cabral’s analyses are models for study; one doubts whether even
the sceptic can remain unimpressed by the strength and flexibility of his
arguments concerning the role of respective strata and classes within the
Guinean revolution. Cabral broke away from a rigid categorization of this

or that class as ‘reactionary’ or ‘revolutionary’. Instead, he was concerned
with the dual revolutionary/reactionary potential of most of the elements
involved in the nationalist struggle. He examined the specifics of Guinean
society and pinpointed the methods by which revolutionary potential could
be realized under the guidance of the PAIGC.
Franz Fanon, perhaps more than anyone else, is responsible for
popularizing the notion of the revolutionary nature of the African peasantry.
Speaking at the Franz Fanon Centre in Milan, Cabral found it necessary to
caution that while the peasantry had the greatest objective interest in the
struggle, the peasantry was not a revolutionary force – rather it constituted
the principal physical force available to the armed struggle.
The contradiction between himself and Fanon is more apparent than
real. What Cabral is warning against is the facile conclusion drawn by some
that the peasants will be spontaneously revolutionary. Bitter experience has
shown that this is not true even for the industrial working class, in spite of
the highly socialized nature of industrial production. Cabral was in effect
renewing the battle against the concept of revolutionary spontaneity and
restating the case for painstaking mobilization by the most conscious
elements. Then, and only then, would the peasantry become a revolutionary
force.
Great political leaders derive their stature from their relationship to a
given social class, usually when that class is on the ascendant. In this
instance, Cabral’s greatness is tied into the forward movement of the
labouring population of the Guinea-Bissau, Africa and the Third World. Not
only is he a product and spokesman for that movement, but he has been an
active agent in moulding the force of change in an anti-imperialist direction.
Indeed, one can say that Amilcar Cabral still remains an active agent
working against imperialism, both through the legacy of his thought and in
the structures he left behind. It would be idle and dangerous to deny that the
enemy still has the capacity to sow divisions and cause confusion within the
Guinean liberation movement. Cabral’s own assassination is testimony to
this effect. But at a certain point, a movement becomes irreversible, and all
the efforts of the enemy smack of desperation and insanity, as we have seen
in the last days before the Vietnamese people achieved their historic victory
over US imperialism. Victory in Guinea Bissau, for the popular forces, in
Angola and in Mozambique, is the only justification that Cabral would
require, and on all fronts that victory is in the making.

2
Masses in Action
Over the past decade, Guyana has been stirred into a state of constant selfexamination. The results, however, have been meagre and disappointing,
largely because the discussion has been confined to the period after 1953,
and to the personalities, failures and recriminations of that era.1 There is a
tacit assumption that only in 1953 did mass involvement in Guyanese
political affairs begin, national political leaders arise, and racial suspicion
and strife find expression. Guyanese history began a long time ago. Even
the beginning of the twentieth century is an arbitrary and not entirely
satisfactory point at which to take up the story of the Guyanese masses; but
it does allow some scope for at least an interim examination of the
Guyanese past in terms which are relevant to the working class.
By the end of the nineteenth century the net result of nearly three
centuries of varied activity by external forces on the Guyana mainland was
the creation of a small society limited to the coastlands, to the production of
sugar and to all that went with sugar in terms of class stratification and
foreign exploitation. Today, the fundamentals of the situation remain
unaltered, with sugar accounting for more than 40 per cent of national
revenues. Yet the old colonial system had its critics; the most serious of all
possible critics – the working masses. It is the contention here that both the
marginal modification of an entirely sugar-bound society and the hostility
evoked by that society are to be traced to the years after 1900, and in
particular to the period of the First World War.

Bauxite

In the economic sphere the principal supplement to sugar in Guyana today
is bauxite. At the outbreak of the First World War a number of mining
concessions were issued when geological evidence indicated that extensive
deposits of bauxite were likely to be encountered in Guyana. The largest
concession was held by the Demerara Bauxite Company, which was
registered locally in 1916, backed by American and Canadian financial
interests. The Demerara Bauxite Company built the town of Mackenzie
before the end of the war; and early in November 1919 there was a
Chronicle report that the company had just exported 1,500 tons of bauxite –
its fourth shipment.2
All Guyanese welcomed the discovery of bauxite, but there was a
revealing debate about the role of American capital, when it was
ascertained that the Northern Alumina Company of Toronto, of which the
Demerara Bauxite Company was a subsidiary, was merely a facade for US
capitalists. Primarily, the question was posed in terms of British imperial
interests versus those of the United States; and in fact the British
government suspended the granting of mineral concessions in Guyana
during the latter stages of the war, with the hope that British capital would
give a better account of itself after the struggle in Europe had ended. But
there was also the underlying assumption in the Guyanese press that local
interests could well have been jeopardized by US capital, and local
entrepreneurs demanded the opportunity to be allowed to raise capital and
take the initiative in the bauxite industry. As it turned out, the North
American financiers and industrialists had the field to themselves. The
Demerara Bauxite Company quickly joined forces with and took partial
control of Sprostons, the most important engineering and shipping firm in
Guyana at that time; and together they came to dominate the Demerara river
and with it a significant section of the economy.

Growth of US Imperialism in Latin America
Stimulated by wartime conditions, trade between Guyana and the United
States was on the increase, and imports from the US were rapidly
outstripping imports from Britain. Guyana was but a small part of a process
of development taking place in the whole Latin American and Caribbean

area. In Jamaica, the US had gone further towards capturing the local
market than in any other British West Indian territory; while in Surinam it
was also US capital which had started the bauxite industry. This new US
offensive was a further stage in the decline of European influence in the
southern Americas, a process which started with the Haitian revolution.
The nineteenth century had already shown that European decline meant
replacement by US domination. This situation was being seriously
discussed in the Caribbean and Latin America at the end of the First World
War. The Argosy gave prominence to a discourse by an Argentine
intellectual on the dangers that were imminent because of US imperialism.
All the British West Indian islands were particularly concerned that the
British were planning to relinquish their Caribbean possessions to the
United States. The answer to this new threat, they felt, was a federation;
though curiously enough, this too was envisaged in broad hemispheric
terms to include Canada. Subsequently, the hopes of federation were
dashed, while the fears that the British would relinquish their possessions to
the US were fully justified in every respect except that of international law.
Simultaneously with bauxite, the more glamorous attraction of
diamonds was presented. By 1922 the diamond industry was flourishing,
accounted in value for one quarter of the exports of Guyana. Since gold had
been discovered in 1882, with rubber and balata providing further
incentives, and with bauxite and diamonds in the offing too, it is not
surprising that the ‘bush’ acquired a new meaning for Guyanese and the
habit of looking inland was probably enhanced by the partial breakdown of
the traditional relations with Europe, which the war effected. During the
war, people keenly debated the feasibility of such schemes as a road to link
up with the main Pan-American highway, and a railway deep into the
hinterland, while an economic survey of the Rupununi region was
proposed.
The parallel with Guyana of 1966 is striking. The interior can be seen to
represent in the consciousness of the Guyanese an escape from the insular
and colonial relations of the narrow coastal strip and, incidentally, it is clear
that the masses are taking the initiative in the matter. This consciousness,
for obvious geographical reasons, is absent from the islands of the
Caribbean, but it is not unique so far as the mainland territories are
concerned. A modern historian sees the most characteristic element of Latin
American history as being its ‘El Dorado Spirit’;3 and that spirit was

perfectly exemplified by the Guyanese ‘Pork-Knocker’, as well as being
shared by those who remained behind.
Precious little emerged out of the hope that the interior offered Guyana
a brighter future. All that came of the scheme of communication with the
hinterland was the Rupununi cattle tract, which was opened in 1917. The
gold rush of the 1880s had declined considerably in the early years of the
twentieth century. Mushroom companies had collapsed as yields proved
unremunerative, and the diamond industry was to follow a similar pattern.
Both minerals continued to produce regular revenue, but the scale of
operations was small. At a glance, it seems that the Guyanese had
overestimated their resources; but it was those who believed that the
country had only minor alluvial deposits of gold and diamonds – but no
supplies at great depth – who were living in a world of fancy. The woeful
ignorance and apathy of the colonial regime militated against the rational
utilization of Guyana’s resources.

Indentured Immigration
The conception of change which the Guyanese workers entertained during
the war was by no means restricted to the exploration of the interior. On a
number of vital fronts, they were prepared to wage a struggle against the
forces of oppression. One of their most crucial battles was for an end to
indentured immigration, and subsequently for the prevention of exploitation
of the same ilk.
There were veiled indications in the Guyanese press that when McNeil
and Chiman Lal, the two commissioners from India, visited Guyana in 1916
to investigate the indenture system, they were carefully guided to their
sources of information; and there were strong assertions on the part of the
Indian and Negro workers that they had struggled uncompromisingly
against the system of indenture. The commissioners’ report was not
decisively condemnatory, but in any event 18 April 1917 saw the arrival of
the last ship bringing indentured immigrants from India. By the time that
the last indentured contracts were served, all sectors of the society became
nominally free.

Indenture, unlike slavery, was constantly producing free citizens in large
numbers, some of whom were repatriated at the expiry of their contract.
Indeed, the rate of repatriation was quite high. In the twenty years between
1891 and 1911 a total of 36,016 Indian immigrants returned home,
compared with the 65,764 who arrived during the same period. Many of the
Indians who remained in Guyana, like the freed Negroes, moved away from
the sugar estates and attempted to set themselves up as an independent
peasantry. In 1890, 30 per cent of the East Indians earned their living
outside of the sugar estates; while by 1911 less than half of those labourers
brought to Guyana in the interest of the sugar industry were still to be found
on the sugar estates. The population of Guyana in December 1917 was
314,000, out of whom 137,000 were Indians, and only 62,000 of them were
labouring on the sugar estates.

Rice
Rice provided the basis for the East Indian withdrawal from the sugar
plantations. Some African slaves and their descendants had planted rice in
Guyana and elsewhere, but it was not a crop that was widespread in West
Africa, in contrast to India, from where the indentured immigrants brought
techniques of irrigated rice farming. As early as 1905, Guyanese rice
imports began to drop, and shortly afterwards the local rice industry was not
only taking care of the domestic consumption but was also exporting.
Under wartime conditions, the rice industry was able to set its sights clearly
on exports, because it was easy to capture the West Indian market which
was starved of food imports. In Guyana itself there were food shortages,
making it necessary for an embargo to be placed on the export of rice in
1917. However, in March 1919, permits were once more issued for the
export of rice to the West Indian islands, so that the rice industry emerged
from the crucible of the war as Guyana’s second agricultural activity.
Naturally enough the East Indian peasants wanted land. The planter and
government attitude towards the settlement of indentured immigrants on
small holdings was not initially favourable, but both in Trinidad and
Guyana they were prepared to grant small amounts of land if this would
keep labour from returning to India. Besides, the land had to be properly

drained and irrigated for rice farming, and the crop needed to be financed
and marketed. All these problems have only been successfully tackled in
the last few years, so that for decades the rice farmers waged a constant
struggle against drought and flood, and against the voraciousness of the
Georgetown merchants who advanced credits and then bought the paddy or
rice at ridiculously low prices. Yet, for all this, the East Indian peasant, like
the ex-slaves who had managed to set up free villages in Guyana, had to
some extent escaped the toils of the plantation system, and it is probably
significant that, according to Chandra Jayawardena, ‘the Indians of the ricegrowing villages consider the Indian plantation labourers to be disorderly
and immoral’.4 Throughout the Caribbean, the heritage of sugar is one of
degradation.

Indian ‘Middle Class’
While the mass of the East Indian population was either labouring on the
sugar estates or in the rice fields, there were also small numbers of
merchants and professional men of the race already prominent by 1917,
precisely because indenture had long been producing free citizens. Clearly
such individuals had already acquired interests quite different from the East
Indian workers and peasants. It was an East Indian landowner and rice
miller, Gayadeen, who was a principal opponent to the scheme of setting up
a cooperative rice mill, when this was proposed late in 1918. His intention
was that the peasants should be entirely dependent on him, and he issued a
thinly veiled threat to increase the rent of the ground and the houses of the
East Indian peasants over whom he held the whip hand. Veeraswamy, a
Georgetown lawyer, was accused of hypocritical posturing when he called
upon the East Indian workers of Guyana to fight for king and country, while
allowing himself to be persuaded that he was too valuable an asset to
Guyana to risk enlistment. However, it was the small East Indian section of
the ‘middle class’ to whom the indentured and ex-indentured immigrants
looked for guidance and leadership, and in turn the lawyers and merchants
sought to articulate the interests of the East Indian community as a whole.5
For instance, when there was a serious disagreement on a sugar estate, the

labourers would trek to Georgetown and seek the assistance of prominent
individuals like Luckhoo and Veeraswamy.

Racial Consciousness
It appears that by the 1890s the East Indians had begun to consolidate some
sort of community life. By 1917 there were forty-six mosques and fortythree temples, while only two temples had been seen by a royal commission
in 1870.6 The end of indenture, though not as decisive as the end of slavery,
produced a new wave of communal feeling among the East Indians of
Guyana, one of the products of which was the British Guiana East Indian
Association. The idea was put into practice on the initiative of Mr Mudhoo
Lall Bhose, and the other signatories of the first circular calling for the
formation of the association were J. Viapree, Rampersaud Sawh, E. Kawall,
J.D. Rohee, M. Ishmael, A.S. Ruhoman and Peter Ruhoman. On 13
February 1919 the association came into being with Mr J. Luckhoo as the
first president.7 The aims and objects of the British Guiana East Indian
Association were the social, intellectual and moral improvement of its
members by means of debates, lectures, writing of essays, and the provision
of library and recreational facilities. After some disagreement, it was
decided that the Association should also indulge in political activities. The
Association also published Indian Opinion as its official organ,
championing the cause of the East Indians in Guyana. In addition, there was
a keen interest in the affairs of the Indian subcontinent. The editorial of an
early issue of Indian Opinion published in May 1919 dealt with the recent
disturbances in India and the affairs of the Indian National Congress.
There was a simultaneous resurgence of Negro racial consciousness. It
was also linked to the end of indenture, since discussions of the role and
status of the East Indians in Guyana inevitably involved comparisons with
the Negroes. But even more decisive was the impact of the American Negro
struggle.
The government twice attempted to pass legislation (in 1918 and 1919)
against the importation of American Negro literature, which was widely
read among the Guyanese Negro masses. The end of the war saw the
attempts of the Pan-African movement to lobby the Peace Conference in

France. Meetings were held in various places, notably in the town halls of
Georgetown and New Amsterdam, to discuss the question of sending a
delegate to Versailles. Letters to the press, lectures and sermons on the
problems of the Negro were all common, drawing frequently on examples
from the US.
By 1923, the Negro masses had formed organizations such as the
Georgetown branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association
(Marcus Garvey’s), the African Communities League and the Negro
Progress Convention. The relatively small Portuguese community also
sought to organize itself around the Portuguese Benevolent Society. There
was much talk among them of their ‘Portuguese patrimony’, of the need to
preserve the Portuguese language in Guyana, and of the desirability of a
Portuguese political party.

The Class Struggle
Co-existing with the emphasis on racial identity was a powerful upsurge of
class consciousness. The Rev. M.A. Cossou, speaking at McKenzie in
February 1919, remarked that ‘if, as President Wilson has said, the world
must be safe for democracy, the relations between capital and labour must
be of the best’. Three months later, the preamble to a resolution of workers
in Georgetown proceeded as follows: ‘That this meeting of the working
classes in the City of Georgetown and delegates from various associations
of the working classes in the electorate of the counties of Demerara,
Essequibo, Berbice and the Town of New Amsterdam, expresses … etc.’
These were typical expressions of the awareness of the fundamental class
contradictions in the society.

Rising Prices
During the war, prices had rocketed. A commission appointed to prepare a
report on the salaries of civil servants found that on average the cost of
living had increased 150 per cent by 1918. What improvement would the
end of the war bring? This was the principal question posed by Guyanese as

the conflict in Europe neared an end. In December 1918, shortly after the
Armistice of the previous November, Rev. R.T. Frank, a great champion of
the workers, warned them not to expect too much. In particular, he was
gloomy but realistic in his assessment that the cost of living would not fall.
He urged the formation of labour unions, and it was precisely the high
prices of goods during and after the war that forced the workers to organize
themselves.

Dockers’ Agitation
As early as 1905, H.N. Critchlow, then eighteen years old and a dock
labourer, conceived with some other waterfront workers the idea of going
on strike for higher wages. It was put into practice that very year,
precipitating widespread rioting which was answered by the guns of the
police. When another attempt at strike action was made the following year,
Critchlow, as the spokesman of the dock workers, was brought before the
city magistrate on a charge of ‘preventing a labourer named Abraham
Richie from earning an honest living’. The charge was dropped but so was
the scheme for striking. It was not until 1916 that a new move was made.
The hours of work for waterfront labourers at that time were 6.30 a.m. to
6.00 p.m., with an interval of one hour for breakfast. The dockers
determined that the hours should be reduced and that the wages of 64 cents
per day should be increased to 84 cents. With the help of J. Sydney
McArthur, a Georgetown barrister, and Nelson Cannon, a member of the
Court of Policy, they prepared a petition to the government. When this
failed, militant strike action gained the workers their demands.
The first success of the waterfront workers in 1916 was an empty one,
since prices continued to spiral, and in September 1918, they returned to the
attack. Led once more by Critchlow, they demanded increases for both
casual and full-time workers, a different system of payment and a reduction
of hours. The dockers bargained astutely, drawing up a detailed cost of
living index showing the increases in the prices of foodstuffs and other
essentials. Working a full six-day week of sixty-nine hours, regular
employees could earn a maximum of only four dollars and eighty cents per
week, which was manifestly inadequate when placed against the cost of

living index. The Chamber of Commerce, which handled the negotiations
for Bookers and other Water Street firms, claimed that they were not
responsible for the rise in the prices of basic foodstuffs, and they were at
first prepared to grant an increase of no more than one shilling per week.
The dockers were adamant and won their point. In a final letter conceding
victory to the workers, the Chamber of Commerce added ominously that
‘the Council hopes that this will place a period on recurring demands’.
The length of the dockers’ working day then stood at nine hours. The
‘Eight-Hour Day’ became the next rallying cry of these workers, and claims
for this were pressed on the Chamber of Commerce early in December
1918. The Chamber had already hinted that they intended to call a halt to
any further improvements in the lot of the dockers; and they now expressed
‘extreme regret and surprise that the labourers, within six weeks of a
generous and liberal concession of all the terms demanded in their petition
dated 16th September, 1918, should again approach the Chamber for further
concessions’. The merchants claimed that since the beginning of the war,
the scale of payment had risen by nearly 100 per cent, and, to knock off one
hour from the nine-hour day would mean in effect another increase of 10
per cent. The Chamber’s continued rejection of the dockers’ claim for the
eight-hour day was categorical, leaving no room for bargaining. Thus, in
January 1919, militant strike action was decided upon, leading directly to
the formation of the British Guiana Labour Union.

The British Guiana Labour Union (BGLU)
The BGLU celebrates its anniversary on 11 January, but the organization
which was in existence on 11 January 1919 seems to have been no more
than a ‘Porters Union’, an unofficial entity called into being by the
waterfront strike. It was on 6 April that a meeting was held at the Unique
Friendly Society in Regent Street at which Critchlow proposed a resolution
for the establishment of a labour union, and this was carried. Two
representatives of Bookers were also invited, and from them came the
suggestion for the formation of an Industrial Council for settling disputes
between the dockers and the Water Street employers. The three-man council

met shortly afterwards and recommended the eight-hour day and certain
wage increases.
Out of the agitation of the dockers arose an organization which
transcended their own struggle. As one correspondent to the Argosy pointed
out, the tense post-war labour situation in the world at large which was
regularly treated in the Guyanese press could not help but influence the
Guyanese proletariat. It was a testimony to the revolutionary mood of
labour throughout the land that requests started pouring in for membership
of the BGLU from various parts of the country.
In April a meeting at Victoria (East Coast Demerara) decided in favour
of a labour union branch for the area. The following month the workers of
Bagotville (West Coast Demerara) followed suit; these were typical
examples of the movement that led to the rapid establishment of a
countrywide workers organization. All sectors of labour were involved,
including tradesmen. The first president, M. Hosanah, was a tailor; and
there were even jibes that residents of the Alms House or Old People’s
Home were allowed to join the union. This came about because the union
was also a Friendly and Burial Society, thus grafting itself on to one of the
oldest forms of social organization that the masses of Guyana had
experienced.
The BGLU had a wide base of direct industrial action. The latter portion
of 1919 and most of 1920 witnessed a succession of disputes and strikes
involving, among others, the railways, the electric company, the sawmills,
sugar estates, the Argosy and the docks. The pressure of this agitation,
carried on by manual workers, was sufficient to gain advantages even for
the Water Street clerks, though it was not surprising that these white-collar
workers never showed real loyalty to the workers’ movement.
The first annual general meeting in 1920 was something of a fiasco, and
the union nearly disintegrated. Membership fell from a peak of 13,000 to a
few hundred, but the union continued to function as a pressure group. By
1923, the delegates to the general conference could look back on a few
years of solid achievement. One union campaign had led to the passage
early in 1922 of a Rent Restriction Bill. There was a rumour in January
1923 that the Rent Act was about to be repealed, and the workers prepared
to resume the fight if necessary. This was one of several ways in which the
workers indicated that they would use the union to undertake tasks other
than wage negotiations.

One resolution of the 1923 conference aimed at the establishment of a
voluntary organization to provide advice which would prevent the masses
from indulging in petty litigation in cases which could be settled out of
court. Another principal concern was with unemployment, against which a
petition was organized. Perhaps the most ambitious of the moves taken by
the BGLU was its attempt to convene the first ever West Indian Conference
in 1920. Unfortunately, only the Trinidad Working Men’s Association was
able to send delegates – the remaining territories expressing willingness but
inability to attend. The chance to develop a common West Indian
perspective for the labour movement was therefore lost, though workers’
struggles in Trinidad were closely watched in Guyana.

Rural Revolution
It is necessary to stress that the awakening among the Guyanese masses was
countrywide, and not simply confined to the activities of the urban workers
in Georgetown. The BGLU took an interest in plantation labourers also,
though its activities on the plantations were severely limited by the
managers’ opposition to their labourers joining the union. East Indian
labourers for the most part continued to use Crosby8 and the Immigration
Department to voice their problems, asking prominent Indian lawyers to
intercede on their behalf. This was by no means a passive arrangement.
Both the Crosby and the Indian lawyers had to meet huge deputations who
arrived in Georgetown from the particular plantation or area where the
grievances were felt.
Often the whole plantation staff left en masse as happened in 1917 and
again in 1924 with labour from Ruimveldt. On the latter occasion there was
an encouraging unity between rural and urban effort. Four thousand Indians
and Negroes started to march on Georgetown with flags, sticks and their
tools – some to meet Critchlow at the BGLU office and others to the
Immigration Department to complain about irregular wages.
Apart from the formation of the labour union, the initiative on the issues
concerning the wellbeing of the masses came from the rural peasantry. The
chairman of the Victoria Institute remarked in April 1919 that ‘Georgetown
looks to the East Coast to decide its political matters’, and the facts did bear

out this situation. The weapons which the rural proletariat and peasantry
fashioned for their struggle included credit banks and agricultural societies,
while the village councils and the village chairmen’s conferences provided
forums for the expression of the will of the rural masses and their
determination to confront the planter class. In February 1919, the attorney
general accused A.A. Thorne, a workers’ representative in the Combined
Court, of wanting to see a set of Bolsheviks in some village led by the
village chairman. In reply the chairman of the West Bank Agricultural
Society noted that ‘the Attorney General has brought in the ominous
Russian term … The question was one of capital and labour. Labour was
represented by the Farmers’ Conference and the Village Chairman’s
Conference.’

Cane Farming
One of the most significant trends during the war era was the development
of a system of cane growing on a peasant farming basis. In 1897 a royal
commission had recommended grants-in-aid to cane farmers. Very little was
done by the government to implement the report, but farmers and sugar
planters worked out private arrangements on some estates. The farmers
faced considerable difficulties, such as the transportation of their cane to the
factories and its unloading, but they organized themselves to overcome
these problems and to win higher rewards from the sugar estates that
purchased their product. In March 1919 the Cane Farming Movement
proposed legislation to regularize the relationship between the small cane
farmer and the estate that bought and milled his cane. They pointed to
Trinidad where there was a small amount of legislation passed on the
subject in 1902, though what the Guyanese farmers would have preferred
was an extensive code such as that which was in existence in Queensland,
Australia.

Co-operative Credit Banks

Alongside the cane farming system there sprung up the Co-operative Credit
Bank movement, since loans over the period from sowing to crop time were
essential. In fact, credit facilities played an ever-greater role in the young
rice industry. A number of Co-operative Credit Banks were established
early in the century, but they became really important as the cane farming
movement intensified, as the rice industry grew, and when the popularly
influenced Local Government Board took over the scheme in 1916. At the
end of 1915, only three banks were registered; by the end of 1916 they had
increased to 18; and by 1918 there were 26 Co-operative Credit Banks in
existence. The numbers of shareholders increased from 220 in 1915 to
5,815 in 1918; and in the same period the working capital had risen from
611 dollars to 28,020 dollars.
The operations of the Ann’s Grove-Clonbrook Co-operative Credit
Bank can be taken as a typical example. During the year 1918 it issued
loans to 156 shareholders amounting to 2,508 dollars. These extended over
periods of from one to twelve months and involved sums of from five to
twenty dollars. Clients were chiefly paddy growers, along with provision
and cane farmers, hucksters, coconut-oil makers and small businesses.
Their efforts were obviously small, since there were narrow limits to what
could be wrung from the colonial regime.

The Reaction of the Plantocracy
Every one of the tendencies so far pinpointed represented a direct or
potential threat to the old colonial system. The opening up of the interior,
the end of Indian indenture, the rise of cane farming and the organization of
the proletariat were all seen by the plantocracy as undermining the structure
of the sugar society.
In the 1890s, when the gold fields were opened, the sugar planters
found great difficulty in maintaining a steady supply of labour at the wages
they offered and this was the situation which gave rise to the royal
commission in 1896. But the recommendation of the commission that
Crown Lands should be opened up to peasants was anathema to the
planters. According to J. Eleasar, a Georgetown solicitor, ‘the Crown Lands
were locked up and kept from the people’s reach for many, many years

because it was thought by the planters that anything done to settle the
people on the land would tend to take away labour from the sugar estates.’
That was common knowledge among the masses. By the end of the war the
planters were more anxious than ever, because bauxite, balata, rice, gold,
diamonds, cane farming and irrigation schemes offered alternative
employment to Guyanese workers formerly bound to the sugar estates. The
planters therefore embarked on a counter-revolutionary offensive.
After the 1896 commission, the proprietors of Vryheid’s Lust (Berbice
river) encouraged the cultivation of canes on their estates by farmers, the
lands being given free of rent. This practice was adopted by a number of
other estates. In December 1918 the cane farmers were suddenly told that
they would have to pay nine and twelve dollars per acre. No notice was
given, neither was there any increase offered to the farmers for their canes.
La Bonne Mere was the only estate which did not pursue this reactionary
policy. In vain did the farmers propose alternative schemes for the
continuation of the cultivation of estate lands. What the planters wanted
was an excuse to introduce legislation for further immigration, the only
method which they knew to maintain the hierarchal plantation system. They
took land out of production which the cane farmers were eager to work; and
within a short period, in Berbice alone, the estates of Adelphi, Canefield,
Bath, La Retraite, Highbury, Goldstone Hall and Everton were closed –
ostensibly because of a shortage of labour, when in fact there were many
people willing to work if only the starvation wages were increased.

The Colonization Scheme
Early in 1919, the chairman of the Planters’ Association approached the
attorney general claiming that there had been a reduction of 6,000 acres in
the cane industry, and that there was a prospect of greater reduction if
planters did not get new supplies of labour. Out of this request was born the
Colonization Bill, which aimed at introducing into Guyana another influx of
cheap labour, preferably from India.
The planters introduced the measure at a time when wartime Defence of
the Colony Regulations were still in force. Thorne complained that ‘it was
manifestly unfair that when the labourers who were interested in the matter

were told they were not to deal with the matter as a result of the times in
which they lived, that on the other hand the capitalists could meet together
and formulate a scheme’. However, the workers refused to be gagged. They
recognized the Colonization Scheme for what it was – an attempt to
undercut local labour and keep them in a position of subjection. They
campaigned vigorously against the proposal when it came before the
Combined Court, and warned the elected representatives that they should
express popular opposition to the bill. A Chronicle editorial countered by
saying that ‘the elective members would be very foolish to be terrorised by
agitators, who warn them not to vote for these proposals at the peril of their
seats.’ It hinted darkly that such action would supply the strongest
arguments for the creation of Crown Colony Government. Such threats did
not stop the workers all over the country from making their position plain.
Every one of the anti-colonization meetings held all over the country was a
success, while the pro-colonization faction found that their meetings were
invariably fiascos.
Although the Combined Court did send a mission to England and India,
nothing came of the Colonization Scheme. Nevertheless, it was the most
important issue of public debate in Guyana at the end of the First World
War, and it showed decisively how keenly the masses were assessing their
colonial situation and how determined they were to put an end to it. In the
mood they were in, nothing escaped the vigilance of the masses. When the
government introduced legislation to ban the import of Negro American
literature, the workers fought this on two occasions; when a reactionary
Jury Bill was brought forward, the workers again fought bitterly, though
without success; and on yet another occasion, popular opposition nipped in
the bud a proposal of the governor’s that a vagrancy law should be passed
to coerce labourers to work on public works at ridiculous wages.

The Constitution
A reminder of the type of political system existing in Guyana is necessary
at this juncture. In 1891, the Court of Policy, which was until then a purely
nominated body, was reformed to allow the election of fourteen members
along with the eight members nominated by the governor, who together sat

in the Combined Court. There were also two elected financial
representatives, though the power over finance was constantly in dispute,
because it introduced a clash with the executive authority of the governor.
In any event, it took some time before the governing body reflected the
change in the Constitution, the nature of that change being to give some
representation to the coloured and Portuguese ‘middle class’.
Given the very narrow and restricted franchise, it is obvious that the
new representatives in the Combined Court after 1891 were not elected by
the workers, and did not represent the workers. But some benefits were
derived by having in the centre of local political power a group of
individuals who were opposed to the planter class and to many aspects of
the old colonial system. For instance, as Raymond Smith noted, it is
probably significant that the rice industry started at a time when the sugar
industry was depressed, and when the new ‘middle class’ were coming into
power after the constitutional reforms of 1891. Besides, the ‘middle class’
themselves were not satisfied. They clamoured for more control over the
affairs of the country, especially in the financial sphere; and as so often
happens, they encouraged the workers to shout along with them to make as
great a noise as possible.
The year 1916 appears to have been decisive. A Recall Movement was
launched against the then governor, Egerton, who had become unpopular
with the Georgetown merchants because he interfered with their
unwholesome speculation in rice exports. However, the ‘middle class’
played to a public gallery which had its own reason for abhorring the
colonial system and its representative, the governor. The workers, too,
began to take up the cry for a more democratic Constitution and for a
political programme for their own betterment. As one correspondent of the
Chronicle wrote in October 1918, ‘It is a common thought among the
poorer peoples of this colony that places under British rule do not make
rapid progress … Until the policy of the country gets into the hands of the
people through their representatives, it is bound to make slow progress.’
By the end of the war, the electorate was faced with a ‘Progressive
Party’, which was not an organizational unit, but an alliance of politicians,
that had emerged out of the Recall Movement with the intention of
capturing all fourteen of the seats which were to be filled by election.
Again, they identified themselves with the masses, and this itself was to
provide grounds for disillusionment when they were successfully elected.

Political Influence of the Masses
The influence which the workers wielded under the limited franchise of the
pre-adult suffrage era is usually underestimated. The physical unrest of the
masses was a factor which had always to be taken into account. During the
first three decades of this century, disturbances and riots erupted with great
frequency. Known as ‘bread riots’, one could not ask for more blatant
examples of people asking for bread and being given bullets. The breathless
haste with which the colonial regime read the Riot Act was a testimony to
their deep-rooted fear of mass action that they had inherited from the sugar
planters and slave owners.
Quite apart from the threat of violence, the workers made an impact
through public meetings. Georgetown workers met under the auspices of
the BGLU to discuss the relative merits of Percy Wight and P.N. Cannon,
concluding that the latter was an enemy of the working class; workers in
New Amsterdam met and demanded that Eustace Woolford should return to
the constituency and give an account of his stewardship in the Combined
Court, and especially to explain his ambivalence on the Colonization Bill
which the workers had denounced; while peasant farmers of the East Coast
Demerara met at Victoria Village, condemned the government in power,
and agreed to form a ‘Political Association’, embracing members from
Anne’s Grove and Bachelor’s Adventure. All this was in the period after the
Recall Movement and the formation of the ‘Progressive Party’, and it may
appear futile because the workers had no vote.
Yet the popular clamour had its effect on those who held the vote and
those who appeared as representatives of the people. By 1923, for example,
Cannon had lost the Georgetown mayoralty, and while he himself retained a
seat in the Combined Court the candidates whom he supported were all
unsuccessful. Proof of the impact of popular agitation against the
Colonization Bill came when the government itself decided to hold a
number of public meetings to win support for the measure. The workers
simply invaded those meetings, held in 1919, and passed resolutions of their
own calling for improvements in sanitation, drainage and irrigation and
wages before they would consent to a further influx of immigrant.

The Suspension of the Constitution in 1928
Everyone felt that the Constitution of 1891 had outlived its usefulness. The
‘middle class’ wanted more power, especially over the finances and the
executive; while the planter class, having already ceded some of their
authority to the ‘middle class’, and seeing the spectre of mass power if
more liberal reforms were granted, were willing to let the British crown
take direct responsibility for the colony of British Guiana. Dissatisfaction
with constitutional forms was in fact general in the British West Indies after
the war, and resulted in the appointment of a royal commission, which
visited the area and reported in 1922. The Wood Commission, as it was
called, rejected the demands of the Guyanese planter class to take a step
backward, but neither did it allow the presence of elected members on the
executive as the ‘Progressive Party’ requested. No important changes were
made, so the elections of 1926 were held under the Constitution of 1891.
A.R. Webber, one of Guyana’s few historians, and an individual who
was himself personally involved in the politics of the period, wrote that the
elections of October 1926 were ‘fought with unexampled ferocity’, and that
‘the declaration at the polls showed a sweeping victory for the Popular
Party; and a complete and devastating rout of their opponents, who were
well possessed of this world’s goods’.9 But practically every seat was
judicially challenged, and eventually five members of the Court of Policy
were unseated on legal technicalities. No doubt the Colonial Office was
being informed of these developments, as well as receiving advice from the
planter group to put an end to the Constitution which gave power to the
upstart ‘middle class’ and encouraged the workers to dabble in politics.
As mentioned before, as early as 1919, there were dark hints that if the
elected members allowed themselves to be influenced by popular agitators
this would ‘supply the strongest arguments for the creation of a Crown
Colony government’. Again in 1925, this idea was publicly voiced by the
governor of British Guiana when he returned to England; and in 1927 it was
decided to put it into practice.
No one quite knew what was the purpose of the commissioners who
visited Guyana in 1927 – at least not until the following year when it
became clear that they had been seeking excuses to suspend the
Constitution. At any rate, the Constitution of 1891 was so radically changed

that the effect was to remove all power from the elected representatives. It
is clear that even the small measure of representation under the Constitution
of 1891 was seen by the colonial regime as a threat. Thus in 1928, not for
the first time nor for the last, a constitutional coup d’état was effected to
break local resistance to the British imperial system.

Race and Class
In so far as reflection on the period under discussion is understandably
influenced by the present conjuncture of circumstances in Guyana, it is
obvious that the question of the inter-relation between race and class
consciousness is of the utmost importance. In the decade after 1955, these
two factors proved antagonistic, and consequently the anti-colonialist
struggle of the Guyanese masses received a serious setback. However,
between 1900 and 1928 the situation was entirely different. Then, it was the
awareness among both Indians and Negroes of the peculiar disadvantages
under which their own race laboured that precipitated an attack on the
colonial society.
Racial consciousness was mobilized when a group felt it laboured under
special disadvantages. Indian Opinion launched an attack on the
government for keeping the East Indian masses in a state of illiteracy. It
pointed out that of 20,000 children of East Indian parentage of school-going
age, only 6,000 were attending school. This was branded as ‘a neglect not
only inexcusable, but culpable’. On an issue such as this communal anger
was jointly directed against the colonial regime, because the Negro masses
were at that very moment waging a struggle to lay the foundations of a
more democratic educational system, rejecting the ‘Payment by Results’
and other limitations which were in vogue since the Elementary Education
Ordinance of 1876. Incidentally, the struggle of the teachers not only on
their own behalf, but for a system of education which would benefit their
pupils and the country, is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent in the
annals of the history of the Guyanese working class.
Apart from the demands for more education, there was also some
consideration given to the curricula, and one of the suggestions of the East
Indian community was that Indian languages should be taught. One striking

feature of the debate on the issue by the Teachers’ Association was the
position taken by R. French, who argued that unless they took steps to teach
the Indian languages, the latter would disappear, as the African languages of
the slaves had disappeared, and the community would be the poorer. This,
and many other views on related topics, indicated that the racial groups in
Guyana were seriously addressing themselves to an examination of where
they stood, of what they possessed of value, and of what changes were
desirable. At every juncture, they were unmasking the colonial society as
the enemy.
When in 1917 the East Indians succeeded in having marriage
ceremonies by Moulvis and Pandits recognized, they had gained a victory
over the white-Christian-capitalist conception of the society,10 and it was
against this that the Negro masses too were directing their fire. They joined
in the refrain of the Negroes of the United States that blacks had fought side
by side with whites during the war, and now they should be given new
opportunities. It is extremely significant that the colonial administration
saw the associations such as the Negro Progress Convention not as racist
groups but as class formations. The literature from the United States was
anathema because it was being widely read by ‘the poorer classes of
society’; and it was suggested that the local branch of Garvey’s movement
should be banned because it was ‘Bolshevik’.
The Rev. Frank wrote in January 1919 of the Negro masses of Guyana:
‘the possibilities wrapped up in them and the powers within them are
immense.’ This applied equally to the East Indian masses; but for the
release of the energies of all concerned, there was necessarily a process of
self-realization, which was taking place in a framework of racial groupings
rather than in the context of ‘nation’. That process of communal selfrealization did not inevitably bring the races into conflict, nor retard the
formation of organizations along class lines, nor weaken the struggle
against colonialism.
What occurred in the period after 1955 was that communal awareness
was for various reasons turned inwards to exacerbate racial contradictions
among the Guyanese workers and peasants. I say ‘exacerbate’ because
racial conflict in Guyana was an inevitable concomitant of the fact that
indentured labour (East Indian, Chinese and Portuguese) was conceived
specifically to break the back of Negro opposition to the planter class.
Throughout the decades after Indian immigration began in 1838, there were

differences over wages between racial groups on the sugar estates, brought
about by the deliberate policy of the planters of playing one group off
against another. No doubt, racial conflict fed racialism, and vice versa; and
indeed, there are a host of other such interconnections that one could make.
What is certain is that simple and definitive explanations must give way to a
more sober analysis of the complexities of the development of the
Guyanese mass movement – of the relationship between racial
consciousness and racial prejudice, between economic competition and
racial conflict, between communal identification and class objectives.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

3
Marxism and African Liberation
First of all, we must understand the background for this kind of debate.
When one is asked to speak on the relevance of Marxism to Africa at this
particular time, one is being asked to involve oneself in an historical debate
– an ongoing debate in this country, particularly among the black
population. It is a debate which has heightened over the last year, and from
my own observations, it is being waged in a large number of places across
this country.
Sometimes it appears in the guise of the so-called Nationalist versus the
Marxist; sometimes it appears in the guise of those who claim to espouse a
class position as opposed to those who claim to espouse a race position.
Thus, it would not be possible for us in a single session to enter into all the
ramifications of that debate, but it does form the background for our
discussion.
It is an important debate. It is an important fact that such issues are
being debated in this country today, just as they’re being debated in Africa,
in Asia, in Latin America and in many parts of the metropolitan world in
Western Europe and in Japan. Because the widespread nature of the debate
and its intensity at this time is a reflection of the crisis in the capitalistimperialist mode of production. Ideas and discussion do not just drop from
the sky. There is not simply a plot on the part of certain individuals to
engage others in a meaningless debate.
Whatever the outcome of the debate, whatever the posture the different
participants adopt, the very fact of the debate is representative of the crisis
in capitalism and imperialism today; and as the crisis deepens, people find it
more and more difficult to accept the old modes of thought that rationalize
the system which is collapsing. Hence the need to search for new directions,

and quite clearly, Marxism, Scientific Socialism poses itself as one of the
most obvious of the available options.
The question is not new to Africa or to the black people as a whole –
that is perhaps essential to understand. Many of us have raised before the
question of the relevance of Marxism to this or that. Its relevance to
Europe; many European intellectuals debated its relevance to their own
society. Its relevance to Asia was debated by Asians. Its relevance to Latin
America was debated by Latin Americans. Individuals have long debated
the relevance of Marxism to their own time. Was it relevant to the
nineteenth century? If so, was it still relevant to the twentieth century? One
can debate its relevance to a given facet of the culture of society or to the
society’s law or culture as a whole.
These are all issues that have been debated before and we should have
some sense of history when we approach this question today, because with
that sense of history we can ask: why is it that the question of the relevance
of Marxism to society always crops up? And, in a very brief answer, I
would suggest that what is common to the application of the question is,
first of all, a condition of struggle, a condition in which people are
dissatisfied with the dominant mode of perceiving reality.
At that point they ask about the relevance of Marxism.
More than that, the second condition is that people ask the question
because of their own bourgeois framework. One starts out located within
the dominant mode of reasoning, which is the mode of reasoning that
supports capitalism and which we will call a bourgeois framework of
perception. And because one starts out that way, it becomes necessary to
raise the question about the relevance of Marxism.
After one is advanced, it is probably more accurate to raise the question
of the relevance of bourgeois thought, because the shoe would be on the
other foot!
But initially, it is true that however much the bourgeoisie disagree, there
is one common uniting strand to all bourgeois thought: they make common
cause in questioning the relevance, the logic, and so on, of Marxist thought.
And therefore, in a sense, when we ask that question, we are unfortunately
also fitting into that framework and pattern. We are also, in some way, still
embedded to a greater or lesser extent in the framework of bourgeois
thought, and from that framework we ask with a great degree of hesitancy
and uncertainty – what is the relevance of Marxism?

It is particularly true in our part of the world – that is, the Englishspeaking part of the world – because the Anglo-American tradition is one of
intense hostility, philosophically speaking, towards Marxism; a hostility
that manifests itself in a peculiar way. It manifests itself by trying to
dissociate itself even from the study of Marxism. If you were to check on
the continental tradition in Europe, you would find it is not the same.
French, German and Belgian intellectuals, whatever their perspective,
understand the importance of Marxism. They study it, they relate to it, they
understand the body of thought that is called Marxism and they take a
position vis-à-vis that body of thought.
In the English tradition, which was also handed down to this part of the
world, to the Caribbean, to many parts of Africa, it is fashionable to
disavow any knowledge of Marxism. It is fashionable to glory in one’s
ignorance, to say that we are against Marxism. When pressed about it one
responds – but why bother to read it? It is obviously absurd.
So, one knows it is absurd without reading it and one doesn’t read it
because one knows it is absurd, and therefore one glories in one’s ignorance
of the position.
It is rather difficult to seriously address the question of the relevance of
Marxism unless one does the basic minimum of accepting that one should
attempt to enter into this full body of thought, because it is a tremendous
body of literature and analysis, and from the outside as it were, it is
extremely difficult.
Indeed, I would say it is pointless, strictly from the outside, without ever
having moved towards trying to grapple with what it is, to ask what is its
relevance? It is almost an unanswerable question; and I think in all modesty,
that for those of us who came from a certain background (and we all come
from that background), one of the first things we have to do is establish a
basis of familiarity with the different intellectual traditions, and as we
become familiar with them we can then be in a better position to evaluate
Marxism’s relevance or irrelevance, as the case might be.
I will proceed on the assumption that what we are trying to discern in
this discussion is whether the variants of time and place are relevant; or, let
me put it another way, whether the variants of time and place make a
difference to whether Marxism is relevant or not. In a sense we would
almost have to assume its validity for the place in which it originated,
Western Europe. We don’t have the time to deal with that in detail. But we

can then ask, assuming that Marxism has a relevance, has a meaning, has an
applicability to Western Europe, or had in the nineteenth century, to what
extent does its validity extend geographically? To what extent does its
validity extend across time?
These are the two variables of time and place. They can be translated to
mean historical circumstances: time; and culture: place – and what social
and cultural conditions exist in each particular place. For us, to make it
more precise, black people – no doubt well-meaning black people – ask the
question whether an ideology which was historically generated within the
culture of Western Europe in the nineteenth century is, today, in the third
quarter of the twentieth century, still valid for another part of the world –
namely Africa, or the Caribbean, or black people in this country; whether it
is valid to other societies at other times. And this is the kind of formulation
which I wish to present for discussion.

The Methodology of Marxism
I would suggest two basic reasons why I believe that Marxist thought,
Scientific Socialist thought, would exist at different levels, at different
times, in different places, and retain its potential as a tool, as a set of
conceptions that people should grasp.
The first is to look at Marxism, as a methodology, because a
methodology would, virtually by definition, be independent of time and
place. You will use the methodology at any given time, at any given place.
You may get different results, of course, but the methodology itself would
be independent of time and place.
And essentially, to engage in a rather truncated presentation of
Marxism, inevitably oversimplifying, but nevertheless necessary in the
context of limited time I would suggest that, one of the real bases of
Marxist thought is that it starts from a perspective of man’s relationship to
the material world; and that Marxism, when it arose historically,
consciously dissociated itself from and pitted itself against all other modes
of perception which started with ideas, with concepts and with words; and
rooted itself in the material conditions and in the social relations in society.

This is the difference with which I will start. A methodology that begins
its analysis of any society, of any situation, by seeking the relations that
arise in production between men. There are a whole variety of things which
flow from that: man’s consciousness is formed in the intervention in nature;
nature itself is humanized through its interaction with man’s labour; and
man’s labour produces a constant stream of technology that in turn creates
other social changes.
So, this is the crux of the Scientific Socialist perception. A methodology
that addresses itself to man’s relationship in the process of production on
the assumption, which I think is a valid assumption, that production is not
merely the basis of man’s existence, but the basis for defining man as a
special kind of being with a certain consciousness.
It is only through production that the human race differentiates itself
from the rest of the primates and the rest of life.
What does Marxism pose itself against? It poses itself against a number
of hypotheses, a number of views of the world which start with words and
concepts. For those who are familiar with Marx’s own evolution, it is well
known that he started by looking first at Hegel – a very plausible and
perceptive analyst of the nineteenth century who was guilty, in Marx’s own
estimation, of putting forward an entirely idealist position, one that placed
ideas in the centre of the universe and saw the ‘material’ world as virtually
deriving from those ideas.
In thinking about this, I felt that I wouldn’t go into Hegel. I would go
further than Hegel for a classic exposition of the idealist worldview. I take it
from the New Testament, the Book of John, where he stated: ‘In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was
God.’ That is the classic exposition of the idealist position. You take every
other thing from there: the Word was God!
But we are suggesting that the word is itself an emanation from people’s
activity as they attempt to communicate with each other, as they develop
social relations out of production, and that we shouldn’t be mystified with
words. Oh, naturally enough we will have to deal with concepts and with
the force of consciousness, which is a very powerful force and one that
even some Marxists have been tempted to underestimate.
Now, Marx, taking that broad framework of methodology, tried to apply
it to Western Europe. He applied it to a range of societies in different places
and at different times; but he concentrated his attention on Western Europe.

If you examine the body of literature produced by Marx and Engels, you
will find that they speak about slavery, about communal society, about
feudalism; but, by and large, they concentrated on capitalism. They hardly
even talk about socialism.
Marx’s great contribution was his fantastic critique of an existing
society, capitalist society. How did it come into being in a particular part of
the world? The vast majority of their literature concerns this question.
But, as I said when I referred to pre-capitalist society, especially
feudalism, they talked about some other parts of the world. Occasionally
Marx mentions the Asiatic mode of production. Occasionally he came
across to look at the data concerning the United States. So, he had
something of a geographical span and a long time span.
It was so minimal, however, in comparison with the bulk of his work
that it is true that a lot of people have taken Marx’s method and his
conclusions and have seen them as one and the same thing – that Marxism
is not merely a certain methodology applied to Western Europe but is itself
an ideology about Western Europe, about capitalism in the nineteenth
century, and cannot transcend those boundaries, when clearly Marx was
doing the job he had to do. He was looking at his own society, he was doing
it under some of the most adverse conditions, he was doing it by mastering
bourgeois knowledge and putting it to the service of change and revolution.
I would suggest, then, that the method was independent of time and
place. It is implicit in Marx, and it becomes explicit in post-Marxian
development – using Marxian in the literal sense of the life of Marx
himself. After Marx’s death you will get the evolution or the development
of scientific socialist thought with other individuals recognizing that the
methodology can be applied, must be applied to different times to different
places.
Again, presenting our history in a very abbreviated form, we can look at
Lenin, at his application of Marxist theory to Russian society. That is one of
his principal contributions. The first major thesis of the young Lenin was
The Development of Capitalism in Russia. He had to deal with his own
society. He had to take those formulations out of the specific cultural and
historical context of Western Europe and look at Eastern Europe, at Russia,
which was evolving differently, and apply them to his own society. This he
did.

He had at the same time to consider the time dimension that in the
nineteenth century Marx was writing about what has now come to be called
the classic period of capitalism, the entrepreneurial version of capitalism,
and by the later nineteenth century this had given way to monopoly
capitalism. It has given way to imperialism. So, Lenin had to deal with that
method by applying it to a new dimension in time; so he wrote about
capitalism in its imperialist stage.
So those are the two variants operating: first, the ideology; and second,
the methodology of it being applied to different societies at different times
(we’ll stick to the methodology for the time being). Having made the point
for Lenin, I hope it becomes clear for a number of people: Mao Zedong, for
instance, applying it to Chinese society, which was a different society from
Russian society; understanding the inner dynamics of Chinese society,
relating to the question of the peasantry in a different and more profound
way than any previous writer because that was the nature of Chinese
society, and Mao had addressed himself to that.
And finally for our purposes, the most important example: the example
of Amilcar Cabral, because he was dealing with Africa. Cabral, in one of
his most important essays – the one titled ‘The Weapon of Theory’, if I
recall correctly – began by making clear that the best he could do was to
return to the basic methodology of Marx and Engels. But it was not possible
for Cabral to begin the analysis of the history of Guinea-Bissau by saying,
‘I am going to look for classes’, for example. He said, ‘if I say this I will be
denying that my people have any history because I do not perceive classes
for a long period in the genesis of my own people.’
Then he referred back to Marx and Engels’s classic statement that ‘the
history of all existing societies is the history of class struggle’, to which
Engels had appended a note saying that by ‘all history’, we mean ‘all
previously recorded history’. It so happens that the history of the people of
Guinea-Bissau hasn’t been recorded, and Cabral says, ‘I want to record that
history. We will use the Marxian method. We will not be tied by the concept
which arose historically in Western Europe when Marx was studying that
society.’
Marx uses the method, and he discerned the evolution of classes and of
the phenomenon of classes itself as being a major determinant, the major
determinant in Western European history at a particular point in time.
Cabral says we will begin at the beginning. We will not even concern

ourselves initially with classes. We will simply look at men in the process
of production. We will look at modes of production in the history of
Guinea, and we will see how our society evolved. So, without much of a
fanfare he was showing the relevance of that methodology to African
society.
If, and when, in the history of Guinea-Bissau, the aspect of class
appears to have historical importance, then Cabral dealt with it. Until such
time, he simply stuck to the basis of Marxian methodology which was to
look at Guinean people in the process of production, at the various modes
of production, social formations, cultural formations which arose
historically and the direction in which the society was tending.
In many respects, when we ask the question today about the relevance
of Marxism to black people, we have already reached a minority position,
as it were. Many of those engaged in the debate present the debate as
though Marxism is a European phenomenon and black people responding to
it must of necessity be alienated because the alienation of race must enter
into the discussion.
They seem not to take into account that already that methodology and
that ideology have been utilized, internalized, domesticated in large parts of
the world that are not European.
That it is already the ideology of eight hundred million Chinese people;
that it is already the ideology which guided the Vietnamese people to
successful struggle and to the defeat of imperialism. That it is already the
ideology which allows North Korea to transform itself from a backward,
quasi-feudal, quasi-colonial terrain into an independent, industrial power.
That it is already the ideology which has been adopted on the Latin
American continent and that serves as the basis for development in the
Republic of Cuba. That it is already the ideology that was used by Cabral,
that was used by Samora Machel, which is in use on the African continent
itself to underline and underscore struggle and the construction of a new
society.
It cannot therefore be termed a European phenomenon; and the onus
will certainly be on those who argue that this phenomenon, which was
already universalized itself, is somehow inapplicable to some black people.
The onus will be on those individuals, I suggest, to show some reason,
perhaps genetic, why the genes of black people reject this ideological
position.

When we investigate and try to centralize or keep central the concept of
relevance, we must ask ourselves questions about the present. What kind of
society, do we live in today? What kind of societies do black people live in
today in different parts of the world? And while, of course, we as black
people in this country, in the Caribbean and in different parts of Africa have
our own independent historical experience, one of the central facts is that
we are all in one way or another, located within the capitalist system of
production.
The society about which Marx wrote, through a process of outgrowth,
dominated Africa and the Americas in the era of mercantilism, which was
the period that capitalism was growing to maturity. It dominated these parts
of the world. It created slave society in the Americas.
Subsequent to the slave era, capitalism, even more powerful, was able
to incorporate the whole world into a global network of production that
derived from Western Europe and North America, a system which had a
metropolitan centre or set of metropolitan centres, and a separate set of
peripheries, colonies and semi-colonies.
So that we have all, historically, been incorporated within the capitalist
system of production, and that is another dimension of the relevance of
Marxism.
Even without the translation in terms of time and place, it seems to me
that if we have become part of the capitalist-imperialist world, then we owe
it to ourselves to relate to, to follow, to understand, and to hopefully adopt
and adapt a critique of that capitalist system because that is essentially what
Marx’s writing is about. He was critiquing that capitalist system. He did so
more effectively than any bourgeois writer, and if we want to understand
the world in which we live, which is the world dominated by capitalism,
then we must understand the centre of that system, the motor within that
system, the types of exploitation which are to be found within the capitalist
mode of production. So that is yet another factor.

Marxism as Revolutionary Ideology
My second consideration after methodology is to look at Marxism as a
revolutionary ideology and as a class ideology.

In class societies, all ideologies are class ideologies. All ideologies
derive from and support some particular class. So, for all practical purposes
we have grown up in capitalist society, and bourgeois ideology is dominant
in our society. These institutions in which we function were created to serve
the creation of ideas as commodities, ideas which will buttress the capitalist
system.
Now, I would suggest, historically, as Marx suggested himself, that the
set of ideas we call Scientific Socialism arose within capitalist society to
speak to the interest of the producers in that society, to speak to the interest
of those who are exploited and expropriated, to speak to the interest of the
oppressed, of the culturally alienated; and we must understand that of the
two major sets of ideas before us, idealism and materialism, bourgeois
philosophy and Marxist philosophy, that each of the two is representative of
a particular class.
I don’t have the time to go into all the historical roots of the formation
of socialism, but briefly, in the nineteenth century it was in the rise of
capitalist society that conditions were created for the development of
socialist ideas. Out of the diverse and unsystematized socialist ideas, Marx
was able to formulate a clear and systematic theory – Scientific Socialism.
It had a particular class base and because it had this particular class base, it
was revolutionary. It sought to transform and upend the relations in society.
Bourgeois ideology is of necessity status quo preserving. It seeks to
conserve, it seeks to buttress the given system of production, the relations
which flow, the relations which flow from a certain system of production.
A Scientific Socialist position is and remains revolutionary, because it
aims, consciously aims, at undermining that system of production and the
political relations which flow from it. This is what I mean by revolutionary.
From time to time there are Marxists who have arisen, who have
attempted to deny or denude Marxism of its revolutionary content. That is
true. There are Marxists who have become legal or armchair Marxists, who
would like to see Marxism as merely another variant of philosophy and who
treat it in a very eclectic fashion, as though one is free to draw from
Marxism as one draws from Greek thought and its equivalent, without
looking at the class base and without looking at whether an ideology is
supportive of the status quo or not.
Nevertheless, by and large, we can see Marxism and Scientific
Socialism as subversive of and antithetical to the maintenance of the system

of production in which we live. Because ideas, let me repeat, do not float in
the sky, they do not float in the atmosphere, they are related to concrete
relations of production. Bourgeois ideas derive from bourgeois relations of
production. They are intended to conserve and maintain those relations of
production. Socialist ideas derive from the same production, but they derive
from a different class interest and their aim is to overthrow that system of
production.

Africa and Scientific Socialism
There again I will suggest that African people, like other Third World
people, have virtually a vested interest in Scientific Socialism, because it
offers itself to them as a weapon of theory. It offers itself to them as that
tool, at the level of ideas, which will be utilized for dismantling the
capitalist imperialist structure. This is its concern.
What I will attempt to deal with as best I can, are certain questions
arising from individuals who might say yes to most of what I’ve said and
then will ask the question, ‘Is there no other alternative? Is there no other
ideological system which is neither capitalist nor socialist, but is anticapitalist, but addresses itself more humanely, if you like, to the interest of
African people wherever they are?’
These questions are worth looking into because there are black people
asking these questions, and we have to try and resolve them. My own
formulation will be to suggest that we look at concrete examples of African
or black people who have attempted to devise systems which they consider
to be non-capitalist and non-socialist, systems they consider valid
alternatives to Scientific Socialism for the emancipation of African people.
In this regard, we have a number of pan-Africanists, a number of
African nationalists in Africa, in the Caribbean and in this country, who
have taken that road. George Padmore did this at the end of his life and
made a distinction between Scientific Socialism and pan-Africanism. He
said this is the road we will follow: pan-Africanism. We do not want to
follow that road which is capitalist, we do not want to go down the socialist
road; we will derive for ourselves something that is pan-African.

In a sense, Nkrumah followed up on this; and although at one time he
called himself a Marxist, he always was careful to qualify this by saying
that he was also a Protestant. He believed in Protestantism, at the same
time. So, he was trying to straddle two worlds simultaneously – the world
which says in the beginning was matter, and the world which says in the
beginning there was the word.
And inevitably he fell between these two. It’s impossible to straddle
these two. But there he was, and we must grant his honesty and we must
grant the honesty of many people who have attempted to do this impossible
task and follow them to find out why they failed.
They failed because their conception of what was a variant different
from bourgeois thought and different from socialist thought inevitably
turned out to be merely another branch of bourgeois thought.
And this was the problem, that bourgeois thought, and indeed socialist
thought, when we get down to it, can have a variety of developments or
roads and aspects or paths. With bourgeois thought, because of its
whimsical nature, and because of the way in which it prompts eccentrics,
you can have any road, because, after all, when you are not going any place,
you can choose any road!
So, it was possible for these individuals to make what I consider to be a
genuine attempt to break with the dominance of bourgeois thought and yet
find, in the final analysis, that they had merely embraced another
manifestation of that which they themselves had suggested they were
confronting at the outset.
There are a number of examples, some more apt than others. Some of
the examples are Africans who I think were blatantly dishonest from the
beginning. I do think that most of the ideologues of African socialism
claiming to find a third path are actually just cheap tricksters; tricksters who
are attempting to hoodwink the majority of the population. I don’t think
they’re out to develop socialism. I don’t think they’re out to develop
anything that addresses itself to the interest of the African people. But,
nevertheless, it is part of the necessity of our times that our people no
longer are willing to accept anything that is not put to them in the guise of
socialism.
And, therefore, I shan’t in fact go on to African socialism. What I’ll do
is take examples of those who were, in my opinion, being serious, being
honest. And certainly Kwame Nkrumah was one of these. Nkrumah spent a

number of years during the fifties and, right up to when he was overthrown
– that would cover at least ten years – in which he was searching for an
ideology. He started out with this mixture of Marxism and Protestantism, he
talked about pan-Africanism; he went to Consciencism and then
Nkrumahism, and there was everything other than a straight understanding
of socialism.1
What were the actual consequences of this perception? That is what
matters to us. Let us assume that he was searching for something African
and that he was trying to avoid the trap of adopting something alien. What
were the practical consequences of this attempt to dissociate himself from
an international socialist tradition? We saw in Ghana that Nkrumah
steadfastly refused to accept that there were classes, that there were class
contradictions in Ghana, that these class contradictions were fundamental.
For years Nkrumah went along with this mish-mash of philosophy
which took some socialist premises but which he refused to pursue to their
logical conclusion – that one either had a capitalist system based upon the
private ownership of the means of production and the alienation of the
product of people’s labour, or one had an alternative system which was
completely different; and that there was no way of juxtaposing and mixing
these two to create anything that was new and viable.
A most-significant test of this position was when Nkrumah himself was
overthrown! After he was overthrown, he lived in Guinea-Konakry and
before he died, he wrote a small text titled Class Struggle in Africa. It is not
the greatest philosophical treatise but it is historically important, because it
is there that Nkrumah himself in effect admits the consequences, the
misleading consequences, of an ideology which espoused an African cause,
but which felt, for reasons which he did not understand, an historical
necessity to separate itself from Scientific Socialism. It indicated quite
clearly the disastrous consequences of that position.
Because Nkrumah denied the existence of classes in Ghana until the
petty bourgeoisie as a class overthrew him. And then, in Guinea, he said it
was a terrible mistake. Yes, there are classes in Africa. Yes, the petty
bourgeoisie is a class with interests fundamentally opposed to workers and
peasants in Africa. Yes, the class interest of the petty bourgeoisie is the
same or at least is tied in with the class interest of international monopoly
capital; and therefore we have in Africa a class struggle within the African
continent and a struggle against imperialism.

And if we are to aim at transcending these contradictions, at bringing
victory and emancipation to the working peoples, the producers of Africa,
we will have to grapple with that ideology, which first of all recognizes and
challenges the existence of exploiting and oppressing classes.
It is a very important historical document. It is the closest that Nkrumah
comes to a self-critique. It is the record of a genuine nationalist, an African
nationalist who wandered for years with this assumption and feeling that
somehow he must dissociate himself in one way or another from Scientific
Socialism because it originated outside of the boundaries of his own
society, and he was afraid of its cultural implications.
This is putting it in the most charitable way. But the fear is due, in fact,
to aspects of bourgeois ideology. Due to the fact that he made a distinction
between social theory and scientific theory, which is not a necessary
distinction. That is the distinction which comes out of the history of
bourgeois thought.
People seem to have no difficulty in deciding that they are going to use
facets of the material culture that originated in the West, whether it
originated in capitalist or socialist society. People have no difficulty relating
to electricity, but they say, ‘Marx and Engels, that’s European!’ Was Edison
a racist? But they ask the question, ‘Was Marx a racist?’ They genuinely
believe that they are making a fundamental distinction, whereas, in fact,
they are obscuring the totality of social development. And the natural
sciences are not to be separated from the social sciences. Our interpretation
of the social reality can similarly derive a certain, historical law and hence
scientific law of society that can be applied irrespective of its origin or its
originators.
Of course, it is true, and this is the most appropriate note on which to
end – that any ideology, when applied, must be applied with sensitivity. It
must be applied with a thorough grasp of the internal realities of a given
society.
Marxism comes to the world as an historical fact, and it comes in a
cultural nexus. If, for instance, Africans, or let us go back to Asians – when
the Chinese first picked up the Marxist texts, they were European texts.
They came loaded with conceptions of the historical development of
Europe itself. So that method and factual data were obviously interwoven,
and the conclusions were in fact in a specific historical and cultural setting.

It was the task of the Chinese to deal with that and to adapt it and to
scrutinize it and see how it was applicable to their society. First and
foremost, to be scientific, it meant having due regard for the specifics of
Chinese historical and social development.
I have already cited Cabral in another context, and he reappears in this
context. The way in which he is at all times looking at the particularities of
class development in contemporary Guinea-Bissau; looking at the potential
of classes in Guinea-Bissau at this point in time. And therefore he is, of
course, making sure that Marxism does not simply appear as the summation
of other people’s history, but appears as a living force within one’s history.
And this is a difficult transformation. This is the task of anybody who
considers himself or herself a Marxist. However, because it is fraught with
so many difficulties and obstacles, many people take the easy route, which
is to take it as a finished product rather than an ongoing social product
which has to be adapted to their own society.
One finds that in looking at Marxist theory, at its relevance to race,
looking at the relevance of Marxist theory to national emancipation, we
come up with a very important paradox: that the nationalist, in the strict
sense of the word, that is the petty bourgeois nationalist, who aims merely
at the recovery of national independence in our epoch, is incapable of
giving the people of Africa or the peoples of the Caribbean any
participation in liberal democracy.
The petty bourgeois cannot fulfil these historical tasks for national
liberation requires a socialist ideology. We cannot separate the two.
Even for national liberation in Africa, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique
very clearly demonstrated the necessity for an ideological development, for
conscientization, as they say in Latin America; and the nationalist struggle
was won because it came under the rubric of Scientific Socialist
perspective.
As Cabral said: ‘There may be revolutions which have had a
revolutionary theory and which have failed. But there has certainly been no
revolution which has succeeded without a revolutionary theory.’

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

4
Marxism as a Third World Ideology
This is an appropriate time at which to participate in a further discussion on
the question of Marxism, because the amount of interest and the amount of
practical attention which has been given to that ideology has increased
enormously.
In the process of this increase there has also been, inevitably, a tendency
towards factionalism – a tendency towards wanting to adopt, logically
enough, a position which the adherents of Marxism or Scientific Socialism
consider to be the most theoretical and ultimately practical interpretation of
what Marxism is. For my own part, I will at the outset, for the sake of
convenience, avoid entering into any discussion which will adjudicate
between rival claimants to the title of Marxism. It is not for me at this
moment – I do not think it will advance our analysis in the time allocated if
we were to launch into trying to determine who is actually Marxist–Leninist
between so-called Stalinists and so-called Trotskyites, between one side or
the other in the Sino-Soviet dispute, between the old Left and the new Left.
That is to say, as a matter of convenience, I will avoid the complications
inherent in those very often polemical distinctions. However, more than
that, I believe that on principle one can argue that there is a common
understanding – or a body of common theoretical understanding – among
all of those who are avowedly Marxist, and that there is an area which is
smaller, but nevertheless significant, of common practice – common anticapitalist and anti-imperialist practice – among these rival groups. And this
is part of my justification for avoiding that contention. Besides, at a later
point in the analysis, I will go on to suggest that, on principle, the
introduction of Marxist factionalism into Third World political discussions
in an a priori fashion is usually destructive, and at best is pointless.

So let us attempt – however difficult that may appear to some people
who are engaged in Marxist discussion – to take Marxism as though it were
homogeneous or as though we do not have a multitude of contenders for the
title of Marxism as it were, and focus our attention on the Third World. The
Third World, that part of the globe which has been engaged in capitalist
relations for centuries, but which has been engaged in capitalist relations in
its own peculiar way, qualitatively different from the way in which the
metropolitan countries of North America and Europe have been engaged in
the capitalist system of relationships. And because of the qualitatively
different manner in which the Third World has participated in the
international capitalist economy, there are peculiar factors that are described
as backwardness or underdevelopment, or what have you. This is a portion
of the world without capitalists – without significant indigenous capitalists,
without a significant indigenous proletariat, very often having pre-capitalist
social formations still existing in various stages of disintegration.
Our enquiry really amounts to trying to determine the relevance of
Marxism to that part of the world; and more particularly, understanding the
relevance of a Marxist interpretation to strategies designed to transform or
speed up the transformation of these parts of the world which are lightly,
very often lightly, termed the Third World. So, in trying to answer the
question ‘How is Marxism relevant to the Third World?’ my insistence is
that we understand that Africa, Asia and Latin America, when referred to as
the Third World, do not constitute a socio-economic system which is
distinct from the capitalist centres of the world. If we make that distinction,
I believe we will fall into all kinds of traps when we attempt to apply the
analysis of Marxism or any other kind of ideology to the Third World. We
must see the countries of Africa, most of Asia outside of China, Korea and
Vietnam, and virtually all of Latin America outside of Cuba, as still
functioning as integral parts of the capitalist world. It is merely that they
complement the capitalist centres. And this, after all, is not the thesis that
need necessarily be exemplified at great length today in 1975; because, a
large number of non-Marxian scholars have also come to accept this
complementarity – this dialectical relationship between what is often called
the centre and the periphery or the metropolitan heartlands and the colonial
or semi-colonial or neo-colonial areas of the world. Looking at this question
over several decades, we find that different answers have predominated at
different times.

The earliest answers – answers suggested by the colonial powers
themselves – were quite simple. They said to Third World peoples:
Marxism–Leninism or Scientific Socialism or Communism has absolutely
no relevance to your needs and interests. Indeed, this ideology would be
completely inimical to your needs and interests. The colonial powers, their
spokesmen and ideologies simply said, in effect, that Marxism was not
good for the natives; that this was not a vision of the world which should be
incorporated into the way in which colonial peoples saw themselves, saw
their societies, and saw the world outside. And this was consistent with
their position of power. Colonialism sought to ensure that colonized peoples
should not wage effective nationalist struggles. They were opposed in the
early years, even to the expression of nationalism. So, it follows that they
were all the more bitter, all the more concerned to oppose that brand of
nationalism which was enlivened by Marxist thought which went beyond
saying that we are determined to have independence, but that we are also
determined to build a new society which is completely different from the
capitalist society we have inherited.
And it is generally true that while colonialists were hostile towards
Marxists inside of their own countries, they were doubly hostile to Marxism
and to Marxists who might appear in India, in parts of Asia, Africa, Latin
America and the Caribbean. Quite obviously, it has not been an easy history
for Marxist thought inside of the Western countries – in Britain, France, in
North America. Up until today, Western Marxists are discriminated against
in institutions such as these. But the bourgeois metropolitan system has
certain capacity to accommodate. It sometimes, in fact, goes out of its way
to incorporate some individuals who are outside of the so-called
mainstream, and it will therefore give and take within the limits of its own
maintenance and it will allow some Marxist thought to exist. But the Third
World practice for many years, and I think it still remains true, is to
resolutely oppose, on the part of the same powers, the development of
Marxist thought. It seems to me, then, that the bourgeoisie themselves
recognize their vulnerability in the Third World; they recognize that Marxist
thought has a double potency, if you like, in the Third World countries.
This attempt on the part of imperialism and the colonial powers to keep
Marxism out of the Third World understanding, was not entirely successful.
There have always been instances of African, Asian, Latin American and
Caribbean Marxists operating in their own societies, operating at an

international level – sometimes quite successfully. But, by and large, we
must accept that throughout the colonial period – extending right through
the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s – Marxism was an insignificant ideology, lacking
both the individuals to articulate Marxist ideas in journals, and the political
parties to represent the Marxist–Leninist position.
The colonialists were relatively successful in maintaining the exclusion
of Marxist thought. More importantly, they created a generation of Third
World scholars who were immersed in bourgeois theory and who peddled
all of the understandings which they gained from bourgeois theory. And this
usually meant, for instance, that they were automatically anti-Marxist;
without even thinking about it, they were anti-Marxist. They had an idealist
vision of the world and they assumed that what they had was a
universalistic vision. They saw the capitalist system and they thought that
the capitalist system always was, is and always will be. They saw the
human being functioning within the constraints of capitalist society, and
they said ‘there is man’; and they began to talk about human nature and the
like, and they did not and cannot perceive that they are speaking about
human nature only in a particular social system.
All of these understandings were encrusted in the Third World vision of
itself. And that applies irrespective of whether we were trained in these
institutions abroad, or whether we were trained in the surrogate institutions
such as the University of the West Indies or the University of Ghana or
Makerere. Because, one can be brought into line with the bourgeois
worldview either by being brought to the metropole itself, or alternatively
the bourgeois institutions can be transferred to the metropole to do the job
locally, as a sort of forerunner of the international branch plant economy of
the multinational corporations.
However, that was an era that I think is disappearing; it is not past. One
has to see the trends; one has to see that, today, it is not a simple argument
between bourgeois ideology and Marxist ideology. That simple dichotomy
between good and bad – the forces of evil and the forces of Christianity, and
so on; that kind of argument is no longer very acceptable. A number of
factors have intervened. For one thing, when it used to be told to a Ghanian
or to a Jamaican that Communism is evil and Marxism–Leninism has no
value, it was part of a package in which the bourgeoisie asserted that
Marxism–Leninism cannot work. You see, quite apart from the moral,
philosophical or ideological arguments, there was this appeal to the so-

called practical. It said: Even if we grant the theoretical validity of this
system we can prove to you that it is not efficient, that it does not work; that
capitalism is efficient and that socialism does not give people food; that
there is starvation in Russia and no clothes; and that the Chinese are eating
grass. You see, those were years ago in the early period of the development
of the revolutionary systems in the world.
But as the Russian Revolution passed those initial years of extreme
economic difficulty – the difficulties which they had inherited from Czarist
regime, and as the Chinese Revolution grew from strength to strength –
again transcending the period of absolute impoverishment of the masses
that was characteristic of feudalism and imperialism in China, it was and is
no longer possible to seriously propose to any Third World country that
socialism does not work – that it is not a practical system, as it were. So the
argument must shift; it must in some way come to terms with the
ideological dimensions. I believe the argument has shifted and I would like
to focus on that shift because it is the contemporary dimension of the
discussion of Marxism in the Third World.
This new discussion – the new shift – means that in the first place,
Marxism is not posed directly against bourgeois ideology. There is an
attempt to avoid this direct confrontation. Marxism in the Third World –
I’ve seen this in Africa, it’s happening in the Caribbean, it happens in Asia
– is counterposed against some other version or vision of the world.
Africans or West Indians will be told: ‘We understand that Marxism has
some validity, but we do not think that Marxism is relevant for us. We have
to look for our own solutions’ – which is one of the more important ways of
countering the Marxist world-view. And as you can see, it obviously has a
greater initial plausibility than the old distinction between Marxism and
bourgeois ideology – between socialism and capitalism.
A second variant on the same theme that is often interconnected, is that
one can be told that there is some strength in Marxism and in socialism on
the one hand, and there is some strength in capitalism and capitalist theory
on the other hand; and that one of our tasks is to borrow intelligently from
the two systems. So, here again, you find that Marxism is not posited as
something that one runs away from absolutely as an ogre that is painted in
certain colours that are very frightening. It is approached rather obliquely,
and one is told to choose some elements from either of the two systems.

I believe that these are both sleights of hand and are ideological devices
intended to weaken the development of a scientific understanding of the
world; and I shall try to indicate where I feel the logical weakness lies in
both approaches.

A Peculiar View of the Third World
Let us first examine the approach which suggests that what we need in the
Third World is something peculiar. If one is in Ghana, one will think about
Ghanaian culture. In Africa, as a whole, there is a need for African
socialism, it would be said. In India, in Sri Lanka: let us look for something
that relates to our own culture. These are powerful arguments because they
address real emotions; they address the colonial in his conception of
himself. The colonial, after all, had been challenged as a being; his very
identity had been challenged. He had been exposed to cultural imperialism,
in addition to the political and economic exploitation. And, therefore, it
rings a certain bell and elicits sympathy when one says we must avoid all
foreign domination of thought, and we must ensure that that which we
create is ours, that we cannot reject capitalism or bourgeois theory and take
in its place socialism or Marxist theory, because that is a new form of
imposition. And I think that there are a few Africans, a few Asians, who
would put forward this kind of argument very ably, and I myself have tried
to put it forward without any caricature whatsoever. I think that this is the
argument as it would be put forward at its best; and I still feel that, at its
best, it is false. For several reasons.
First of all, when these individuals are speaking, they are automatically
making the assumption that Scientific Socialist ideology or Marxism–
Leninism is limited in time and space – culturally limited. That is the
assumption to the argument; because on that assumption one can say
Marxism was generated within Western Europe in the nineteenth century.
Therefore, if it has any relevance – putting aside that question – its
relevance is circumscribed by those factors. It may be relevant to the
Europeans, it may have been relevant in the nineteenth century, or perhaps
it is still relevant to Europeans in this century; but it is not relevant to us.
That is to say an African, a Third World person, is speaking: it is not

relevant to us because it is theirs; it is an alien, cultural thing. Later on, we
might have to discuss the extent to which Marxism, like any ideology, must
of necessity incorporate elements of the culture which produces and fosters
and propagates it. But, in this position, the fundamental ideological
assumption is a bourgeois assumption.
It’s a metaphysical assumption which makes a separation between the
application of scientific principles to the society as distinct from the
application of scientific principles to the real world – to the natural world.
Because the very individuals who would so cogently, and convincingly
perhaps, make this kind of argument are individuals who have no qualms
about standing before you and using this microphone. They have no qualms
of standing before you and using the electricity, the harnessing of the
electric energy; and, of course, they may be speaking in an African or Asian
or Caribbean country. But they do not make a fanciful argument which
suggests that things which originate in the natural world – the harnessing of
principles of understanding the motion of the natural world – should be
rejected a priori in the Third World because they were initially discovered
in the First World or Second or whatever kind of ranking you are applying.
And, without recognizing it, they are subscribing to a certain dichotomy
which is their bourgeois philosophical worldview – that dichotomy which is
perfectly prepared to discover (to seek out at any rate and then discover) the
principles of motion in the natural world. The capitalists do that because it
aids in production; it is an integral part of the capitalist system that they
should maximize production; that they should maximize the efficiency of
technology. So they will not mystify (certainly they will not consciously
and deliberately mystify) the pursuit of scientific knowledge with regard to
the real world.
But then by the same token, the bourgeois class – the capitalist class –
has an interest in specifically mystifying the application of scientific
principles to society; because the same application of scientific principles to
society would suggest that we must understand the changes – the transitions
by which capitalism itself came into being, and by which the particular
class in power will be removed from power. It would be a study in their
own liquidation, if you like, and one perhaps could not reasonably expect
the bourgeoisie to promote the study of their own liquidation.
And so, we find that there is always that contradiction in bourgeois
thought between the application of scientific principles to society and to the

natural world – which is a very artificial distinction. And those who, as I
said earlier, are making the argument about cultural validity and cultural
uniqueness and peculiarity, are clearly falling victim to this distinction. The
moment that we can break beyond that understanding, we can see even
further the limitations of a position that tries to see Marxism as culturally
distinct and as having no relevance to the Third World.
One of these limitations is that it is necessary first to misunderstand
deliberately, to misread Marx in order to conduct their own polemics. They
will say, for instance: Marx does not deal with the kinds of society which
we have, Marx and Engels were writing about European society which had
classes and we don’t have the same classes; we don’t have any proletarian
workers. And they may be right. In some countries of Africa there is hardly
any proletariat to speak of. Countries of Latin America and Asia perhaps
have larger numbers; but, in any event, they are right in saying that the
particular class configuration or even the absence of classes in a Third
World country does not conform to the model of analysis that Marx might
have organized for Western Europe, and which, of course, is relevant to
North America.
In so doing, however, they overlook that which Marx himself had said,
because Marx hadn’t claimed that he was organizing a philosophical
worldview and that he had created categories for Western Europe which
were applicable in and of themselves to the Third World – applicable
without any new intellectual or analytical effort. Indeed, Marx had to
chastise those individuals (some of them calling themselves Marxists) who
would like to have applied his understanding of Western Europe in a very
uncritical way to the development of Eastern Europe; and he had to warn
them that Marxism was not a general historical philosophical understanding
of the whole world at all times, in every place. He made it very clear that
that which he and Engels had been dealing with was a systematic and
detailed formulation of the development of capitalism within Western
Europe; and that they had attempted to describe and understand the specific
features of capitalism specific to Western Europe. So that the universality
which both he and Engels claimed, was not the universality that applied to
Western Europe. The ‘universality’ is the universality of contradiction; the
universality which can be determined by utilizing the historical materialist
method with relationship to any given society. So that when those
individuals say that Marxism claims that all societies must pass through the

same processes, and that the important thing is the presence of the given
working class in a particular way, and that therefore we must of necessity
bypass this because our society is unlike that which Marx describes – I
think those individuals have fundamentally failed to come to grips with
what he was saying. And I don’t think it is merely accidental; I think that
there is an element of distortion which is deliberate. And that in itself is a
serious reflection on their arguments, because, if you have to engage in
deliberate distortion of the opposition’s arguments before you can come to
terms with the argument, it suggests that you yourself are coming from a
very weak position.
Besides, yet another limitation of the attempt to force Marxism into
these narrow boundaries of time and place arises out of the fact that these
individuals fail to recognize and accept Marxism as a growing ideology.
That is to say, just like with any body of science, it is not static; it takes in
new ideas, it has new discoveries, it responds to the variations as scientific
enquiry continues. That is why one can speak about Marxism–Leninism.
The very fact that we couple Lenin’s name to Marx’s name in a very
fundamental way, is a reflection of Lenin’s contribution at a different time –
his ability to say: Yes, we are looking at capitalism, but we are not looking
at the same capitalism which Marx had looked at in the earlier part of the
nineteenth century; instead, we are looking at capitalism in its imperialist
epoch, and this is a qualitatively different thing. So, in that process, Lenin
contributed to the growth of Marxist ideology.
Moreover, the same applies to the contributions by Mao; and the same
would apply to the contributions by Che Guevara, or to the contributions by
Amilcar Cabral. Contributions which recognize that Marxism is itself a
growing body of scientific knowledge, that one has an ontology, one has an
epistemology, and that from there one must move towards dealing with the
particularities that occur in any given place at any given time. And this
would certainly move Marxism far beyond these mundane, restricted limits
which have been forced upon it by some theoreticians.
In the practical day-to-day struggles of the Third World, irrespective of
whether people accept some of these arguments – and you may think that
they are esoteric and that the day-to-day struggle does necessarily take
account of these arguments – Marxism continues to grow as a Third World
ideology in spite of the attempts to present it as something alien to the Third
World. And it continues to grow as an independent ideology seeking clear

alternatives to capitalism, in spite of the attempts to divert this process by
focusing on a compromise between capitalism and socialism.
That compromise is something I shan’t discuss at any length because,
again, the moment that one takes the care to understand Marxist ideology, it
becomes immediately obvious that one cannot have a foot in both camps; it
is not possible to talk about the coexistence indefinitely of a socialist and
capitalist system. There may be, at a certain point of transition, the
incorporation of elements which are capitalist in a socialist system or vice
versa. But if that is so, then we will have to examine the tendency; we will
have to examine which of the contradictory features is manifesting itself
ultimately to become the dominant system. But it isn’t possible for someone
such as Leopold Senghor1 to say: In Senegal we will have a little bit of
capitalism, and a little bit of socialism, and then a little bit of Senegalism;
but this is in effect what he says. He says: We’re going to have three sectors
of our economy. We will have the foreigners owning something, then we
will have a section that is publicly owned, and then we will have some joint
ownership; and this is put forward as a socialist alternative or an alternative
to Marxism; and very consciously Senegal puts this forward as an
alternative to Marxism.
Yet one of the many fallacies in this position is that Senegal began as a
capitalist country. It is located within the international imperialist order. The
Senegalese people were not making any choice about whether they wanted
to be either capitalist or socialist; they were in fact capitalist. The only
choice they can make is whether they want to continue to be located within
the capitalist system or whether they want to escape from it. So it is a false
duality to imagine that they are outside of either system, and that they are
choosing from both to create a third alternative. And any steps which fail to
remove it from the capitalist system are steps which, in effect, support the
capitalist system.

The Rise of Marxism in the Third World
Quite apart from examining it at the level of the theoretical implications,
one is struck by the sizeable increase in Marxism – or, to put it more
effectively, the increase in the adherence to Marxism, the increase in the

discussion of Marxism, the increase in the awareness of Marxism, in the
Third World. All of these strategies pursued by Africans and Latin
Americans and Asians – to stem the tide of Marxism – haven’t really been
effective. Because, while it may be difficult for anyone to say, for instance,
that in Asia, in 1965, there were ten thousand Marxists and now there are
twenty thousand (that sort of exact quantitative description we know may
not be possible), I am certain that there would be no observers or analysts of
the scene who would deny the increase in Marxism, and in adherence to
Marxism. And this increase can be measured in a number of indirect ways.
It can be measured, for instance, by seeing the number of scholars who
are using the formal tools of Marxist analysis – anthropologists and
economists, political scientists, historians from Africa, Asia and Latin
America – who, five or ten years ago would never have been found on the
scene are today not in a majority, but they are conspicuous in each field.
Very often conspicuous by their excellence, because they are engaging in
hard original work which challenges bourgeois assumptions and manages to
assert itself on the basis of its own internal logic and consistency. So that a
glance at the journals – from the point of view of those of us in the
academic community – will indicate to you the growing number of Marxists
who are practising in every discipline in Third World countries. And this is
not because they were encouraged; one can be very sure of that. This is
itself a dialectical development, a development over and against the trend of
their formulation, because they were formed mentally in bourgeois
philosophy, as I said earlier.
A second measure is to look outside of the universities or beyond the
level of university academics, at the number of student groups, the number
of worker groups or independent intellectual groups that are avowedly
Marxist. Not just that – one may say that they are using some Marxist
terminology or that they are disguising their Marxist content. Nowadays, in
the Third World, there are a large number of groups which come forward
and say: We are Marxists. Now again I’m trying to avoid, for the moment,
the discussion as to whether they come forward and say they are Maoists or
they come forward and say they are something else, but they come forward
and say that they are Marxist; that much is certain. And that is a very
important change that is part of our contemporary scene; because, in most
parts of the Third World, it is still hazardous to identify oneself as a
Marxist. And therefore, the fact that it is happening more and more is an

indication of a tremendous growth, and a willingness and a capacity to
challenge the domination of bourgeois thought.
Alongside these groups – very often as part of the activity of the groups
– we have the proliferation of journals which carry Marxist slogans, which
carry Marxist analysis. These are things that can be discovered through a
random sample, just looking through the Third World, especially if one has
the opportunity to see the literature that comes out at what we call the
grassroots level. Literature that is not necessarily put in the same glossy
format as Time or Fortune magazines, but literature that comes through the
hard sweat and labour of people turning a Gestetner, very often by hand, not
even electrically, and producing things that may not be the most attractive
to look at, but which carry out the task of Marxist reconsideration of
society.
Marxism is growing in the Third World, and I don’t think that this is
merely because of some theoretical subtlety on the part of the Marxists
themselves – if indeed this has any part to play. Rather, it appears to me to
derive from the practical experience of the Third World over the last decade
and a half – the practical experience gained since countries in Africa and
Asia in particular achieved their so-called independence, their nominal
constitutional independence. Ever since independence, these countries have
had certain experiences; they have set out for instance to develop
themselves, whatever that means to anybody else. But they very often had a
conscious vision of developing, of advancing, and in so doing, or in
attempting to do so, they utilize the well-known bourgeois theoretical
assumptions about how one develops, they utilize bourgeois advisors to set
up their four- and five-year development plans; they utilize bourgeois
international experts to tell them how to take off. And the result is there for
everyone to see. It is a failure of bourgeois thought to deliver the goods, if
you like.
That is one of the most important considerations in explaining why the
alternative philosophical view is gaining ground; because when the
bourgeois theorists had before them the new field of independent African
countries, then it could be said that they must be given a chance to prove
whether they are right or wrong about capitalism being a road of
development for everyone. But after ten or fifteen years, in some cases – in
Asian countries much longer than that – it is no longer possible to say that
bourgeois theory has any possibilities of growth for the Third World

countries. Even the liberals, even neo-classical economists themselves, are
turning towards Marxist-inspired visions and understandings of what is
dependency and what is underdevelopment, and what are the ways out of
these states of dependency and underdevelopment, so it is the practice
which accounts, in no small measure, for the advance of Marxism in the
Third World.

Class Struggle in the Third World
There is also the recognition that the Third World cannot stand outside of
the rest of international society. It certainly cannot be considered in
isolation from the rest of the capitalist world, nor for that matter, can it
isolate itself from those parts of the world which have made socialist
revolutions. This recognition came very clearly, or most clearly, and it came
at the earlier period in South East Asia – a tremendous development of the
Vietnamese struggle.
It came also in Latin America, because the Latin Americans had been
independent for a long time and, after this political independence, they have
had a long experience of neo-colonialism. An experience which forced
them to recognize that there was no way in which they could understand the
movement of Latin American society without understanding the
interpenetration of foreign – mainly American – capital, monopoly capital
into the Latin American environment. So that they began to build into their
understanding of their society an understanding of the larger society. And if
they had to understand the larger society, they automatically had to go back
to understanding capitalism and to seeing why it was or why it is that
capitalism enslaves not only its working class but indeed more so, the
working class and the dispossessed peoples of the Third World.
One of the interesting choices which has been made by most Third
World political spokesmen – choices at the ideological level – is a choice
based on their unwillingness to recognize that class can be relevant in their
own context. There was some factual basis for that unwillingness. Many
Third World countries began their period of political independence with the
internal class struggle at a very low level, because the internal classes had
been subordinated to external capital, and the operation of internal class

struggle had been subordinated to the operation of the nationalist struggle of
all classes against the external monopoly capitalists. But, as the years
advanced since independence, in each Third World country, the evidence
began to grow of the decisive role of internal class struggles – of the growth
of indigenous classes playing decisive roles in the motion of the internal
societies. And this has also been a potent factor in forcing Third World
peoples to come to grips with an analysis which has room for understanding
the world in terms of class struggle.
An example which is always very clear and very illustrative, is the
example of Ghana and the development of the thought of Kwame Nkrumah.
Nkhruma had always had some Marxist overtones before he got into power
and when he got into power. There was a time when he used to describe
himself as a Marxist and a Christian; there was a time when he used to
describe himself as a Consciencist; he spoke of himself as a pan-Africanist.
He attempted to incorporate some Marxist insights, but not as a total
methodology, not as something that underlay his whole political philosophy
and his political practice, largely because he insisted that there were no
classes in Ghana. And then he was overthrown and he went to Guinea and
he was given aid by his friend Sekou Toure; and in his last days he
produced a considerable body of writing. And in this writing he proclaimed:
I used to say that there were no classes; but when I was overthrown by the
Ghanaian petty bourgeois class, I discovered that there were classes. If you
read Nkrumah’s Class Struggles in Africa, that is basically what he is
saying. He very clearly, in his own way, delimits the classes in Africa and
accepts that the petty bourgeoisie functions as a class in its own right, with
interests hostile to the African working class and peasantry; and he is
therefore able to reformulate his vision of Ghana and of Africa, or he did so
before he died.
Nkhruma, of course, was one of the foremost nationalists; he stood on
the vanguard of nationalist struggle. But that block to his full understanding
came because he could not or would not – I think it is a combination of the
two – perceive the development of classes inside of Ghana.
Today, the obvious growth of indigenous classes throughout Asia, the
Caribbean, Latin America and the rest of the Third World is a clear pointer
to the need to grasp a strategy which recognizes, or which is based upon a
recognition of the existence of class struggle as a motive force in history;
and here again Marxism comes in for additional attention on the part of

Third World scholars. Of course, to say that Marxism is relevant does not
necessarily say that the body of Marxist thought which exists is adequate to
an understanding of the Third World predicament.
These are two different questions, in different order of logic; and I think
they have been confused by a number of people. Marxism as an operative
methodology in political philosophy, as the ideology which sprang from the
working class in Europe, has developed its own. We can measure physically
the body of literature which has been produced by Marxists; and that
literature has been preoccupied with Western Europe, with North America
and with the developed countries, because most of the Marxists came from
those countries. And even Third World Marxists in the early days, were
concerned with metropolitan society.
So, there is a body of Marxist literature which is inadequate to the needs
of the Third World because it just does not deal, for the most part, with the
problems of the Third World. So that when one says that Marxism is
relevant to the Third World, it means that the Marxist scholar – whether he
be Third World, of Third World origin or not – who attempts to deal with
Marxism in the Third World must be operating at the most advanced and
creative level. He is not merely transferring known truths from another part
of the world to the African or Asian situations; he has to engage in the very
difficult task of building from the bottom, an actual body of Marxist
enquiry and Marxist analysis of the societies in question. And this is where
one has to emphasize – and to emphasize and to emphasize once again –
that Marxism can only be of value if whatever it takes to be the universal is
applied to the particular; and it is in the very particularity of the exercise
that one will demonstrate that the universal is actually universal and that it
is applicable.
In the United States for instance, there has been – and no doubt there
has been a spillover of the same discussion in Canada – very lengthy,
sometimes very violent discussion among black brothers and sisters about
the relevance of Marxism. It basically comes from the understanding of
whether this Marxism has any validity to black people in their special
predicament as an ethnic group. And the arguments against its applicability
are rather similar to the arguments which an African or a West Indian might
use – the sort of arguments I have outlined above. In other words, those
who are opposed would say that: Marxism is about class, and our problem
is a racial or ethnic problem. Marxism originated with the same Western

society which dominates us and we must reject all forms of white cultural
domination, Marxism included.
However, there continues to be the growth of a serious interest in
Marxism on the part of Afro-Americans – the black population in the
United States. And their task, quite clearly, consists in bringing the tools of
Marxism to bear upon the specific history of the United States. In that
specific history, a number of contradictions arose; and if the contradiction
between races happens to be a fundamental contradiction, then that is the
contradiction which will attract their attention. They will have to come up
with the formulations which deal with the specifics of their own social
situation. Failure to do so does in fact strengthen the arguments of those
who try to suggest that Marxism is irrelevant. Because, if you proceed into
a situation, whether it be an analysis of Afro-America or an analysis of
Pakistan, and you do not attempt to develop with respect to those specific
situations, but rather merely to transfer a body of knowledge in a fixed
static form from another part of the world, then you will be accused of
being irrelevant. You will be accused of cultural hegemony; you will be
accused of trying to force the indigenous interpretation into your own
external imperialist-oriented model.

The Burden of Third World Marxists
That is why I think that the responsibility which Third World Marxists carry
is an extremely heavy responsibility. In Western Europe, in North America,
it is possible to plug into an existing body of thought. Any discussion about
Marxism in these parts can immediately find some source of established
Marxist orthodoxy, they can find the unorthodoxies; they can in fact
adjudicate between all kinds of rival versions to Marxism, in its application
to their own society. It doesn’t mean that the Western Marxist does not
function to revitalize and to review the Marxist vision of his own society,
but he has something to review. The Third World scholar is more often than
not starting from the very beginning, having nothing to review, having
nothing else but sometimes inadequate empirical data – empirical data
which has to be collated and picked up from bourgeois sources. And
because they have to be lifted out of a bourgeois context, you often find

yourself in a very difficult position; because it is not entirely impossible to
separate the data from the conceptualizations which might have lain behind
the enquiries, and which therefore influenced the particular type of data
which was collected. So, the Third World Marxists will find themselves
starting from scratch. But it is a task that has to be carried out because, to
do otherwise, is precisely to fall into the hands of those who want a sort of
cultural exceptionalism, who will say that Marxism is not for us because it
is inimical or antithetical to our own culture and our own history.
The record so far is very clear that capitalism has been on the retreat;
that Marxism–Leninism started out undoubtedly as something within
Europe and is today of course embraced by 800 million Chinese – which
itself always makes me wonder why it is that people still say that Marxism
is a white ideology. One would have thought if the ideology is to be
coloured by the colour of the majority of its adherents, then Marxism is to
be called a yellow ideology. And if it is a yellow ideology or is capable of
being yellow, and if it is capable of being brown in the case of some Asian
countries, of being black in the case of Cabral’s Guinea or of Mozambique
under Frelimo, then immediately one sees that there are very many breaches
that are made in this wall which was being built, or which certain people
attempt to build around Marxism to keep it from the world’s least
developed peoples.
My own contribution is merely to bring this to the attention of Third
World scholars – for the most part, Third World students; because in an
institution such as this, one will of course come into contact with Marxist
ideology. But inevitably, Marxist ideology will be the submerged ideology;
the dominant ideology is going to be the ideology of the ruling class. As I
had cause to tell my students many years ago at the University of Dar es
Salaam, when someone asked how they should know which is a bourgeois
ideology, which textbook they should take up, which one will have a
bourgeois view and which will have the capitalist view, I told them that they
could go into the library and close their eyes and stick out their hand and
the chances are they would have got a bourgeois book. So that they could
proceed on that assumption; they don’t have to select, just close your eyes,
feel around, grab any number of books, and you’re dealing with a bourgeois
worldview.
Now, at the same time, there are possibilities; there are possibilities
which perhaps, when we live in the metropoles, we do not appreciate them

until we go back to the Third World countries from which we came. The
possibilities lie in the contradictions of this society and the fact that Marxist
thought, irrespective of all these things, is in fact present; and that literature
is available, and that facilities for enquiry are available. And one could urge
therefore that, even within the realms of institutions that are designed to
carry out a particular ideological function, it is possible to conduct a sort of
guerrilla intellectual war by which one will have access not to that which
was designed specifically for one, but access which hinges upon the
dialectical transition beyond that which was intended for one.
There are many things which I believe the Third World scholar can
grasp, in spite of the quite conscious attempt on the part of all of our
institutions – including those in the Third World – to reformulate us and to
continue to programme us as bourgeois thinkers.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

5
Labour as a Conceptual Framework
for Pan-African Studies
At the most fundamental level, the pan-African historian has to be engaged
in the study of either the African continent or the African peoples abroad. It
is not at all necessary that he has to be concerned with the links between the
two. Nevertheless, there are a number of ways in which the connection can
be and has been approached. The two most outstanding would seem to be
(a) the choice of a subject that in itself spans Africa and Africans in the
New World, such as the slave trade and the pan-African movement; and (b)
the search for the African roots of particular New World cultural
phenomena, notably religion and music. The proposed use of ‘Labour’ as a
conceptual framework for pan-African studies is in addition to and not a
replacement of the already established modes of approach.
The ways in which people organize their labour and the tools with
which they work provide an entree to the study of all history from the time
that early man was capable of fashioning a crude pebble tool in Eastern
Africa. Furthermore, labour is the basis for other global approaches to
human history which present their analysis in terms of class and other social
formations. This universality has certain advantages, since African history
must be evaluated not as a discrete and isolated entity, but as a part of
human development. Useful conceptual approaches should therefore
facilitate comparisons with other areas of the world. The contention here is
that there have been certain peculiarities in the way that Africans have
worked or have been forced to work, and those labour patterns over the past
few centuries have largely determined the relations between Africans and
non-Africans. It is within the present stage of world development that one
finds the initial justification for supposing that the labour concept can be of

major utility in pan-African history, because no overview of the world
today can fail to deal with the contrasts between the rich and the poor
nations – between what are essentially the white and non-white peoples of
our planet – and underpinning those contrasts are differences in the type of
labour performed and the technology of work. What appears in popular
jargon as ‘the difference between the “haves” and the “have-nots”’ is
virtually identical with what economists term ‘the international division of
labour’.
Just as bourgeois intellectuals take the relationship between capital and
labour as a ‘given’ and almost as a ‘natural’ factor, so they tend to treat the
international division of labour in a static fashion, depriving it of its broad
historical dimensions. As a result, it is argued that the international trade
network (which is so disadvantageous to the underdeveloped countries) is
based on different comparative cost advantages in production. It is said that
the differences are attributable to different resource endowments, and that
world trade enhances the specialization of production in all participating
countries. This argument incorporates certain obvious absurdities. Which
continent is richer than Africa in natural resources? And yet Africa is the
least specialized, except in lines of production that require the least skill,
are least remunerative and most vulnerable within the international
capitalist system. African peoples everywhere, both within the continent
and abroad fall within the category of the poor, the underdeveloped and the
under-specialized. The explanation for this must be seen in historical
perspective, and it involves a close look at the way Africans have worked
prior and subsequent to involvement within Europe and the Americas.
There have indeed been a great deal of scattered studies on African
labour, which are illuminating even though they are not necessarily
informed by an awareness that similar tendencies were operating wherever
Africans worked, and that they were slowly building into an international
pattern. What follows below is a mere sketch of the possibilities that might
be opened up by looking at the vista of the pan-African past with the labour
concept consciously and consistently being utilized as the framework for
enquiry. Five broad divisions suggest themselves by way of periodization:
1) Africa before the white man
2) Africans under white slave owners abroad

3) Africa in the epoch of the internationalization of trade (fifteenth to midnineteenth century)
4) Africans in post-slavery America
5) The foreign exploitation of African labour within the continent (late
nineteenth century to the present).

1. Africa before the White Man
The number of issues to be considered in this category are numerous. Many
are brought together within the debate about ‘feudalism’ in Africa which
was once keenly conducted among historians of Africa, and has now
virtually petered out as far as English-speaking scholars are concerned.
However, within Francophone circles, there is still a stimulating discussion
about whether there was a distinctive African mode of production. These
issues involve comparisons not only with Europe but also with Asia. Since
it was Europe which subsequently came into contact with Africa, it is well
to understand the features in African and European society that determined
their respective roles of subordination and domination. Naturally, the nature
of African work reflected the environment and social interests, and African
skills were developed in directions different from those of Europe. For
example, West Africa in the fifteenth century boasted skills in brass casting
and plastic arts, advanced techniques in canoe-building and river travel, and
notions of agriculture relevant to tropical forests, savannahs and swamps.
Europe, on the other hand, had superiority to some extent in arms
technology and to an overwhelming extent in shipbuilding, navigation,
administration and accounting.
Crudely speaking, it could be said that by the fifteenth century,
European labour and technology was more advanced than its African
counterpart and hence the European capacity to exploit Africa through
trade. But there is scope for a more comprehensive analysis which would
pinpoint the precise areas of social dissimilarities vis-à-vis Africa and
Europe. It was over a period of time that the dissimilarities transformed
themselves into advantages and disadvantages. For instance, Africa lacked a
technological dynamic leading towards mass production. When mass
production became the norm in Europe and a decisive factor in world trade,

then African handicraft skill turned out to be a disadvantage. This did not
come into effect until the nineteenth century, when Europe came to define
what was developed and what was not, with their own technology and way
of life held up as the standard of excellence, for ‘those who can define are
the masters’ and vice versa. In order to start the reconstruction of panAfricanism with a clean slate, it would be helpful to understand in what
direction African labour had been developing at the time that we were our
own masters.

2. Africans under White Slave-owners Abroad
An interesting sidelight of the slave trade which has never been brought
into view is the extent to which many agricultural, mining and craft skills
were transported to the New World. The early slave trade to the Spanish in
the New World sought labour to engage in mining and cattle raising in the
Greater Antilles and on the Spanish Main. Several of the peoples of the
Senegambia who were victims of this phase of the slave trade were
experienced as pastoralists and familiar with open-pit mining of gold and
iron ore. Crops such as cotton, indigo and rice were produced in the
American colonies and the Caribbean by Africans who were already
growing those same crops in their own societies. It could hardly be a mere
coincidence that rice production was successfully launched in the Brazilian
state of Maranhão in the mid-eighteenth century just at the moment when
African labour was being brought in from the traditional rice-farming sector
of Upper Guinea.
Nevertheless, as has been argued by several scholars, the slave regime
was hostile to the formation of new or sophisticated skills within the
Western tradition. Slave labour was meant to be the cheapest possible, and
it consequently had to be unskilled – carrying out the simplest tasks with
the crudest of tools. Otherwise, there would have been specialization and
division of labour far beyond the managerial capacity of the overseers and
whips. Slavery never evolved beyond backward agriculture, so
industrialization was out of the question. Meanwhile, in Europe the
bourgeoisie were forced constantly to renovate their means of production,
which meant enhancing the skills of their own white workers. The slave

sojourn in the Americas, in the Indian Ocean and in Europe by Africans
gave the first clear indication of the development of a broad gap in labour
performance and technology between the white and the black races.

3. Africa in the Epoch of the
Internationalization of Trade
Beginning with the Congo, Europeans showed themselves unwilling to
accede to African requests for the importation of new techniques from
Europe, although the Congolese requested masons, doctors, apothecaries
and teachers. This refusal was repeated when Dahomey and Asante made
similar requests in the eighteenth century. Europe was consciously blocking
the spread of technology which is a central feature in the emergence of a
more scientific mode of production, both in Europe and later in Japan.
Africans received cheap consumer goods, while Europe secured gold for
expanding its monetary economy and labour to create value and open up a
whole brave new world in the Americas.
The impact of the slave trade on the African labouring population is
obviously a topic that would of necessity be examined if one is interested in
how African labour has fared historically. The only comment offered here is
by way of rejection of a recent trend in studies assessing the slave trade.
The approach begins by suggestion (with justification) that figures of slaves
exported have been greatly exaggerated in the past. There follows the
conclusion that the slave trade was therefore far less significant within
African history than it was previously made out to have been. The
conclusion is a non sequitur, since the impact must be measured for specific
places at particular times. At the end of the seventeenth century, the ports of
what is now Dahomey1 were loading 30,000 victims per year, and this was
sustained for decades. The hinterland of the Bight of Biafra had its turn at
the end of the eighteenth century; while a heavy flow came from Lake
Nyasa in the decades before 1850. These are three of many instances, and to
find a point of comparison in European history it would be necessary to
look at what transpired during the Thirty Years War in Germany, and during
the two World Wars in Europe. Besides, in Europe such wars contributed to
the development of a particular type of society; so that after all the

casualties and all the disruption, opportunities were provided for building
bigger things by combining capital, science and skilled labour in ever more
daring ways. What did the slave trade build in Africa? Nothing but a bridge
leading to the next phase of exploitation where the present international
division of labour came into its own.

4. Africans in Post-slavery America
Africans in the New World fared little better after slavery in terms of
making their labour more scientific and appropriating more benefits to
themselves. In the West Indies and the United States, many ex-slaves were
frustrated in their attempts to set up an independent peasantry, and instead
they became rural proletariat or quasi-serfs under the name of
sharecroppers. There was diversification of black labour into trades and
petty commerce, but nothing which could upset the basic pattern of
American society where capital came either from whites at home or abroad
and where the dominant technology was in the hands of the whites. For the
vast majority of New World blacks, phrases such as ‘the reserve army of
labour’, ‘labour reservoir’ and ‘last hired first fired’ adequately sum up the
position. The reference to the black community in the US as an internal
colony has many justifications, not least of which is the remarkable fact that
black labour within industrial America has virtually the same relation to
whites in terms of skills as does continental African labour with regards to
Europe and white America.
Since emancipation, the necessity of obtaining modern scientific labour
skills was always appreciated, at different levels of perception, by sectors of
the black population in the Americas. There was an awareness that real
equality with whites would follow only after the acquisition of a technique
that was equal to that of the oppressors, and this explains the tremendous
drive towards education within the first generation of legally free black
people. Of course, since whites retained political power, there were a
thousand ways in which they could thwart the achievement of that
objective, and those who broke through the education cordon simply made
a contribution to established white technology. The few exceptions to this
rule were individuals who sought to aid black political liberation and to

build up a tradition of independent black activity on both sides of the
Atlantic.

5. The Foreign Exploitation of African
Labour within the Continent
Having tired of exploiting African labour abroad in the chattel form, the
international capitalist system with Western Europe at its epicentre
transferred its interest to African labour on the continent, setting up the
political apparatus of colonialism at the same time that European scholars
(including non-Marxists) attest to the tremendous role played by capital in
imperialist expansion. In industrial society, the concept of capital
automatically calls to mind that of labour; but it is worth noting that on the
African continent in the colonialist era, labour was held back by the
colonialists using several means in addition to the provision of fixed capital
and wages. The colonial period is the best documented in African history
both from the viewpoint of written records and the accessibility of orally
preserved records. Studies to date on forced labour, labour migrations,
peasant cash-crop production, the proletarianization of labour in South
Africa, and so forth, have tremendous scope to be expanded to cover the
whole continent. Those areas of history are so close to the present that their
significance in influencing conditions in Africa as they are today is virtually
self-evident. Within the field of contemporary history, it becomes even
more vital to forge a mature social science approach which attempts to
grapple with political economy in its historical perspective. Analytically,
the labour factory has the advantage of being valid for several academic
disciplines, and it can therefore be pivotal in arriving at an overview of the
‘state of the nation’ in Africa and in particular parts of the continent.

Conclusion
By re-emphasizing that the above is a mere outline of possibilities, certain
criticisms concerning omissions can be avoided. However, there is one
particular limitation that is perhaps inherent in the approach: namely that it

tends to treat African history using external and largely European frames of
reference. For instance, ‘Africa before the white man’ might suggest that
the coming of the whites at a particular point in time marked an entirely
new phase in the continent’s history. Needless to say, areas of Africa have
continued with their own dynamic virtually up to the present and one has to
be careful in distinguishing where the European presence was merely one
factor among many and where it was the sole or dominant factor. Besides
that, there is the danger attendant upon any interpretation based on isolating
one variable – the conclusions could be lopsided if a great deal of attention
is not paid to the interrelations between that variable and the numerous
others which are always involved in any historical reconstruction.
Occasionally, some historians deny that the writing of history is an
exercise in contemporary politics. Yet many among those would subscribe
to the now-hackneyed adage that ‘every generation rewrites its own history
according to its own lights’, which is another way of saying that the base of
operation is always the contemporary socio-political scene. In any event,
pan-African historians have largely taken it upon themselves to make it
explicitly clear that history and the writing of history must be used as a
means of liberation of our people. This does not necessarily mean that the
historian qua historian is in the front line of the struggle, or that he has
ready solutions, but at least he should be called upon to investigate areas
relevant to an understanding of the present predicament of black peoples
around the world. Looking at our labour history should provide some
further insights into the differentiation in labour skills and technology
which is now so characteristic of black/white relations, and it has the added
advantage of underscoring the sameness of historical experience of a people
scattered in different parts of the world.

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6
The Angolan Question
I would like to come to the situation in the United States and to look at the
types of responses, and to look at what I consider to be some fairly
horrendous mistakes which were made by certain forces in this country, the
United States, in their approach to the Angolan question.
Again, I will dismiss at least one element. We can dismiss those who are
attempting to hire black mercenaries for the FNLA (National Liberation
Front of Angola) and UNITA (the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola). When this individual (Roy Innis, who took over
the Congress of Racial Equality in 1968) purports to be organizing black
mercenaries to go and fight in Africa, and then we know that mercenaries
cost, whether they are black or white – and we know that this particular
black functionary cannot afford to pay anybody – we know that these black
mercenaries would have been paid by imperialism, to go and fight in
Angola.
However, I think we can dismiss that as an aberrant phenomenon – as
the expression of a particularly reactionary and unresponsive force within
the black American political environment. So, we should really concentrate
attention on those elements that are serious. With serious people, one
engages in serious debate. And I think there were a large number of serious
people throughout the Afro-American community who supported UNITA
when they should have been lending uncompromising support to the MPLA
(People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) at that particular
historical juncture.
It was immediately obvious that there was a startling coincidence – a
startling convergence – between the positions of certain individuals who
call themselves progressive, revolutionaries, and who in fact regarded
themselves as the essence of revolution – yet their positions converged with

that of US imperialism. And this amazing historical convergence needs to
be understood.
I assume that there are elements within the audience who took that
position, and I’m not going to engage in any abuse of those elements. I am
simply going to say I believe the position was historically completely
incorrect. I will indicate how I believe that error took place.
The first thing is UNITA gained a certain popularity in this country in
the very late sixties and the early seventies, particularly in the period of the
rise of the African liberation movement, and the like. I was following the
process, so I know that they were becoming more exposed and more
popular in this country. And that they used certain, very opportunist
political tactics and techniques. They simply appealed to the growing black
consciousness by saying, ‘Inside of Angola we stand for the elevation of the
black man to a position of dignity and rule, and the MPLA stands for the
elevation of whites and mulattoes over the indigenous African people.’ That
was the standard line in the late sixties and early seventies.
And they would then say, ‘Look at the MPLA. It has so-and-so, who is
in its executive, who is a white, who is a Portuguese. It has so many
mulattoes who are on the Central Committee, it has so-and-so who is
married to a white woman, President Neto, and so on and so forth.’
And in the context of the US, I think that those are very telling points.
In the context of the black struggle in this country, when brothers and
sisters were going through that terrible period of self-identification, trying
to extract themselves out of the dominant white culture, I think that those
points made a great deal of impact. Particularly because the MPLA was not
really seeking to influence the Afro-American population. Or much of the
American population.
So that is one reason why the UNITA gained in popularity. And when
we examine that very carefully, we must of course admit that to declare
blackness is a very easy thing to do. I mean the same character who was
mobilizing black mercenaries was also in the forefront of declaring his
blackness – and he would call himself Garveyite, and so on and so forth.
To declare for blackness is one of the easier things to do. Once one
recognizes the opportunities inherent in that situation.
But surely we need to go further than that. We need to examine, first,
whether the reality in Angola was the reality as portrayed by UNITA. We

need to go further and ask whether the historical experience of Angola
could be so easily assimilated into the historical experience of black people
in the US that Afro-Americans should run to make a judgement on Angola
on the basis of some knowledge they had that so-and-so was married to a
white. Or that so-and-so was a mulatto.
Because the central understanding that we must reach is that any
situation must be examined on its own historical merits. What is called
‘race’ in the US is not the same thing as what might be called race in
Angola. In fact, in this country, those who are all called black, or used to be
called Negro – if they went to Angola, they would be distinguished, many,
as mulattoes. If we want to understand Angola and the complex of the
relationships between social strata and race, and so forth, we must then
understand Angola. We cannot sit in Washington or in Detroit and imagine
that what we are seeing around the block is Angolan society.
And this seems to me to be one of the mistakes which the brothers made
when they tried to transform a very simplistic understanding of black–white
relationships in the judgement of whether they would support the MPLA or
support UNITA.
One is reminded here of some of the things which Fanon wrote in
regard to Africa, when he was talking about the pitfalls of national
consciousness. He was talking about the pitfalls of African national
consciousness. Now we can apply that to the pitfalls of black national
consciousness. Which is to say that national consciousness is clearly a
liberating force, but at a certain point it can provide blinkers. It can turn into
blinkers and constitute a barrier for further understanding of the real world.
The second and more widespread factor, and one that ultimately proved
to be most decisive for many black progressives, was the notion that
UNITA was a Maoist movement. And these left forces who opposed the
MPLA were moving from the starting point of supporting Marxism–
Leninism, Mao Zedong thought.
In their own words, they have a vision and an analysis of contemporary
society wherein they identify as the principal contradiction between the two
superpowers. They argue further that the more dangerous force is Soviet
socialist imperialism, because it’s more covert, it’s more subtle, and because
it ultimately can be more powerful, since capitalist imperialism is on the
wane. And therefore, in a situation in which the Soviets are involved, one
has to take a stand on the opposite side.

Now, what is my disagreement with that position? I shall not go into all
my disagreements, because I do not want any sort of global confrontation. I
am not in favour of trying to resolve all the problems of the world at the
same time, in a single stroke. So that I’m not going to attempt to deal with
that postulation about the principal contradiction and its implication.
What we are going to ask is how does that relate to Angola with its
specific characteristics. If someone holds that belief as a sincere
revolutionary tenet, when that person approaches Angola, how is it that
such a belief ends by placing such forces on the side of those who have for
500 years oppressed the African people?
What explanation does such a person give to the Angolans who have
been engaged since 1960 in armed struggle against the Portuguese, against
NATO, who at the end of that struggle found they were faced with the
South Africans and with an escalation of US support to the so-called
liberation movement which had been harassing the genuine freedom
fighters for many years?
So that from a dialectical perspective and a scientific perspective we
struggle and work to discover the correct line. It is only from a theological
perspective that one knows the correct line because of revealed truth. And it
seems to me that the limitations of that position were very clearly revealed
in the Angolan situation. I have not seen a single analysis from forces
claiming that they had the ‘correct’ line, which meant opposing the Soviets
– not a single analysis of what was going on inside of Angola. It was purely
external. And I do not believe we can proceed on that basis.

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II
Development and
Underdevelopment
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7
The Historical Roots of African
Underdevelopment
Tomas Szentes, in his survey of Interpretations of Economic Development,
observed that, in contrast to bourgeois theories, Marxist writing ‘explains
the phenomenon of economic underdevelopment, the perspectives of
eliminating it and the concrete questions on further development, always in
relation to history, within the framework of historical interrelations, by
concentrating on the main driving forces of social and economic
development, and by analyzing phenomena and their causes as dialectical
interdependencies’. He then goes on to draw attention to the fact that ‘it is
particularly and naturally the national theoreticians of the underdeveloped
countries themselves, who stress the international aspects of economic
underdevelopment, and the latter’s relations with colonialism, even if
without any sign of Marxist mentality.’ It is no accident that the Tanzanian,
Justinian Rweyemamu, puts forward the view that the poverty of
‘developing’ countries is to be largely traced to the historical relationships
of the metropolitan countries and the former colonial countries. The West
Indian, Norman Givan, in a study of ‘Multinational Corporations and
Dependent Underdevelopment in Mineral Export Economies’, also urges
that the origins of institutional dependence must be sought in the historical
evolution of the economies for centuries before. Both are products of and
spokesmen for colonized portions of the globe, reacting against the
metropolitan bias of standard bourgeois approaches to the problem of
development.
Unfortunately, historical dimensions to the analysis of the African
economy are lacking, because enquiry into the African past, as conducted
by historians, has seldom concerned itself with seeking explanations for the

present international division of labour and all that goes with it. My
examination here does not pretend to be exhaustive, but hopefully it will
shed some light on the coming into being of the structural features
associated with development and underdevelopment, as instanced in the
economies of Western Europe and Africa. Because the economic history of
Europe is better known, more emphasis will be placed on African
underdevelopment; and for similar reasons, the colonial period will be
neglected relative to the centuries commonly referred to as ‘pre-colonial’.
The first significant thing about the internationalization of trade in the late
fifteenth century was that Europeans took the initiative and went to other
parts of the world. No Chinese junks reached Europe, and if any African
canoes reached the Americas (as is sometimes maintained) they did not
establish two-way links. This meant that what was called international trade
was nothing but the extension overseas of European interests. Insofar as
there was a strategy to international trade and the production that supported
it, that strategy was firmly in European hands, and specifically in the hands
of the maritime nations from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. They
owned and directed the great majority of the world’s ocean-going vessels,
and they controlled the financing of trade between four continents. Africans
had little clue as to the tri-continental linkages between Africa, Europe and
the Americas; nor did the inhabitants of the Moluccas have any notion of
the European markets into which their species were directed by European
ships. Europe had a monopoly of economic intelligence of the international
exchange system seen as a whole, for Western Europe was the only sector
capable of viewing the system as a whole.
Europeans used the superiority of their ships and cannon to gain control
of all the world’s waterways. For instance, force was necessary in the case
of the Sino-Japanese trade and with regards to the Arabs in East Africa.
Once European hegemony was achieved, it gave them the power to allocate
roles to every other part of the world, so that the various inputs
intermingled with the benefits of Western Europe. Even the whites in the
Americas were for three centuries on the periphery of a system whose
centre of power was in Western Europe. Initially, the Portuguese, Spanish
and Dutch had the most far-flung interests. When the Iberians were still in
command of a major sector of world trade in the first half of the
seventeenth century, they engaged in buying cotton clothes in India to

exchange for slaves in Africa to mine gold in America. Part of the gold in
the Americas would then be used to purchase spices and silks from the Far
East. The concept of metropole and colony did not require European
settlement. In Africa (and Asia) it was sufficient that local economies were
in some way drawn into the web of international commerce.
It is interesting to note that what is called ‘international law’ also
reflected the early division of the trading world into metropoles and
dependencies. The law recognized by different states as governing the high
seas was understandably European and not Indonesian or African. On the
Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean, the African more likely than not was an
object rather than subject or master of the law. Slavers in a Dutch slave ship
were legally protected against piracy, because they were Dutch property.
The law of the metropoles became the law of international relations. This is
yet another reflection of the commercial hegemony established by Europe
at the onset of the epoch of international trade.
Africa had little say in the determination of the import and export
content of its commerce with Europeans. Europe’s exports were an
extension of domestic production of and demand for a wide range of
articles, such as Dutch linen, Spanish iron, English pewter, Portuguese
wines, French brandy, Venetian glass beads, German muskets, and so forth.
Europeans were also able to unload on the African continent goods which
had become unsalable in Europe. Thus, items like old sheets, cast-off
uniforms, technologically outdated firearms, and a whole range of pacotille
found guaranteed markets in Africa. Africans slowly became aware of the
possibility of demanding and obtaining better imported goods, and pressure
was exerted on the captains of ships, but the interplay between African
buyer and European supplier was extremely circumscribed. Europeans were
most concerned about regional variants like the demand for copper in
Eastern Nigeria and iron on the Upper Guinea Coast. They also took into
account shifting tastes within any given region; but the overall range of
trade goods which left Hamburg, Copenhagen and Liverpool was
determined almost exclusively by the pattern of production and
consumption within Europe itself.
The effectiveness of Europe’s power to make decisions within the
international trading system was best seen in the way that it selected what
Africa would export. A complete list of African export commodities since
the fifteenth century would include things such as civet perfume, ambergris,

indigo, monkeys and feathers: but, of course, those were mere curiosities.
The economically significant commodities were very few and were chosen
by Europeans in accordance with European needs.
The ships of the Portuguese discoverers gave the search for gold the
highest priority; partly on the basis of well-known information that West
African gold reached Europe across the Sahara, and partly on the basis of
speculation. The Portuguese were successful in abstaining gold in parts of
West Africa and in eastern Central Africa; and it was the ‘Gold Coast’
which attracted the greatest attention from Europeans in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The number of forts built there was testimony to this,
and the nations involved included the Scandinavians and the German
principality of Brandenburg, as well as other colonial stalwarts such as the
British, Dutch and Portuguese. However, since gold was limited to very
small areas of Africa as far as Europeans were aware, the principal export
was human beings.
Only in a very few places at given times was there the export of another
commodity of equal or greater importance. For instance, in Senegal there
was gum, in Sierra Leone camwood, and in Mozambique ivory.
Why Europeans were anxious to acquire gold would appear to require
no explanation, but, apart from the universal fascination with the yellow
metal, one must take into account that it was a direct response to a pressing
need in Europe: namely, the need for gold coins within the growing
capitalist money economy. Camwood was also called into existence as a
West African export because of the expanding capitalism in Europe. It was
mainly utilized for its yield of red dye, and it ceased to be of value in the
nineteenth century when European technological advance created
substitutes. Ivory from Africa passed into European industry (as distinct
from artwork) during and after the sixteenth century, once the lathe had
made precision-cutting possible. Its export to Europe continued well into
the colonial period, until plastic substitutes undermined important sectors
such as billiard and bowling ball manufacture. It is in the light of its own
needs and technology that Europe has always made the decisions
concerning what Africa should export and concerning the beginning and
decline of each export commodity. The most crucial of these decisions for
‘pre-colonial’ African trade was Europe’s allocation to Africa of the role of
supplier of human captives to be used as slaves in various parts of the
world.

It is a valid question to ask why Africans accepted the terms of what they
should export, and particularly with regard to the sale of human beings. One
suggestion which was at one time widely accepted and unchallenged was
that African society already had slaves which were simply handed over to
European buyers. The institution of slavery has co-existed with and formed
part of communal, feudal and capitalist societies; but its widest incidence
occurred when communalism was extensively broken down, which was not
the case in Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The most likely
explanation is that captives were made in war, and it is reasonable to
assume that such fresh captives (as distinct from those who had earned a
place in their captors’ society and family structure) would have been
considered readily expendable to European buyers.
One has also to take into account the offer of European commodities as
a pole of attraction. Paradoxically enough, the influence of European goods
can scarcely be attributed to their quality. On the contrary, things such as
cheap European fabrics were inferior to African products and this was
recognized by buyers. However, they were brought to Africa in large
quantities, so availability was the crucial factor. No doubt, the novelty of
European commodities also led to their being accepted in exchange for gold
or human beings. Estaban Montejo, an African who ran away from a Cuban
slave plantation in the nineteenth century, recalled that his people were
wooed into slavery by the colour red. Diverting as his recollection may
appear, it should not be dismissed lightly. He wrote as follows:
It was the scarlet which did for the Africans; both the kings and the rest surrendered without
a struggle. When the kings saw that whites – I think the Portuguese were the first – were
taking out these scarlet handkerchiefs, and the blacks were so excited by the scarlet they ran
down to the ships like sheep and there they were captured. The Negro has always liked
scarlet. It was the fault of this colour that they put them in chains and sent them to America.

In the Congo, the slave trade did not get under way without grave
doubts and opposition from Africans who had established contact with the
Europeans. The king of the state of Kongo clearly defied the nature of his
expectations from Europe. He asked for masons, priests, clerks, physicians,
and the like; but instead he was overwhelmed by slave ships sent by his
Catholic brothers in Portugal, and a vicious trade was opened up by
exploiting contradictions within the loosely structured Kongo kingdom. It
might be objected that the Kongo king who took this stand against slavery
had been converted to Christianity and was speaking as a Catholic. But

there was little in Catholicism either in Portugal or among the missionaries
in Kongo which would have raised any sanguine hopes that the Christian
religion was in any way a barrier to the enslavement of Africans. With the
date of the Kongo episode being at the beginning of the sixteenth century it
can legitimately be interpreted as rare surviving evidence of an important
aspect of the initial confrontation between Europeans and Africans at the
onset of the internationalization of trade and the onset of the Atlantic slave
trade in particular. An African ruler had conceived of possibilities of
mutually beneficial interchange between his people and a European state,
but the latter imposed an export specialization in human cargo.
Once Africa and Europe became interlocked on the latter’s terms, it was
beyond the capacity of any given African state or society to change the
status quo, because Europeans reacted by force and other means to maintain
their position. This was exemplified in Angola, where the Portuguese
employed an unusual number of their own troops and tried to wrest political
power from Africans – with a resolution that was not customary in the
epoch before colonial rule. The Angolan state of Matamba on the river
Kwango was founded around 1630 as a direct reaction against the
Portuguese. With Queen Nzinga at its head, Matamba tried to coordinate
resistance against the Portuguese in Angola, especially in the 1640s when
the Dutch offensive against the Portuguese provided a European ally.
Portugal gained the upper hand in 1648, but Matamba remained hostile, and
participation in the slave trade was largely in abeyance as far as that state
was concerned for a quarter of a century. But, slaving having become a
major activity of the region, Matamba could not forever stand aside. So
long as it opposed trade with the Portuguese, it was an object of hostility
from neighbouring African states which had a modus vivendi with
Europeans and slave trading. When Queen Nzinga resumed business with
the Portuguese in 1656, it was undoubtedly a major victory for the latter.
Her change of name to Dona Ana de Sousa was a very nominal concession
to Christianity, but it symbolized a major decision-making role of the
Portuguese within the Angolan economy.
A smaller but more specific example of African resistance to continued
European imposition of trade in slaves comes from the Baga people in what
is now the Republic of Guinea. The Baga lived in mini-states, and in circa
1720 one of their leaders attempted to secure an alliance to stop the slave
traffic. He was apparently defeated by local European resident traders,

mulattoes and other slave-trading Africans. It is not difficult to understand
why Europeans would have taken immediate steps to see that Tomba and
his Baga followers did not opt out of the role allocated to them by Europe.
A parallel which presents itself is the manner in which Europeans got
together to wage the ‘Opium War’ against China in order to ensure that the
Chinese would continue to import the addictive drug that was so profitable
for Western capital.
Of course, it is only as a last resort that the capitalist metropoles need to use
armed force to ensure the pursuit of favourable policies in the periphery.
Normally, economic weapons are sufficient. Within the same context of
opposition to the slave trade, Dahomey1 found itself being brought to terms
by being deprived of European imports – some of which had become
necessities by the time that Dahomey had its altercation with European
slave traders in the 1970s. The episode is worth careful scrutiny because the
conventional interpretations portray Dahomey as nothing but a bloody
slave-trading state, and make absolutely no mention of the determined
opposition to the trade that was carried out by Dahomey’s greatest king,
Agadja Trudo.
The fundamental pillar of the Dahomean conception of the state was
that all Dahomeans were inalienable. The king required of his subjects
complete obedience, and they asked in turn for unqualified protection.
Adadja Trudo appreciated that European demand for slaves and the pursuit
of slaving in and around Dahomey was incompatible with Dahomey’s
development. Between 1724 and 1726, he looted and burnt European forts
and slave barracoons; and he reduced the trade from the ‘Slave Coast’ to a
mere trickle, by blocking the paths leading to sources of supply in the
interior. European slave dealers were very bitter, and they tried to sponsor
some African collaborators against Agadja Trudo. They failed to unseat him
or crush the Dahomean state, but in turn Agadja failed to persuade them to
develop new lines of economic activity, such as local plantation agriculture;
and, being anxious to acquire firearms and cowries through the Europeans,
he had to acquiesce in the resumption of slave trading in 1730.
In 1730, Dahomean slaving was placed under royal control and was far
more restricted than previously. Yet, the failure of this determined effort
illustrated that a single African state at the time could not emancipate itself
from European hegemony. The small size of the polities and the numerous

political divisions made it so much easier for Europe to make the decisions
about Africa’s role in world production and trade.
Because the nature of African exports was determined from outside the
continent, questions such as the level of output and prices were also decided
outside Africa. Time and time again, trade in slaves responded to various
external stimuli. At first, the labour was needed in Iberia and in the Atlantic
islands such as Sāo Tomé, Cape Verde and the Canaries; then came this
period when the Greater Antilles and the Spanish American mainland
needed replacements for the Indians who were victims of genocide; and
then the demands of Caribbean and mainland plantation societies had to be
met. The records show direct correlations between levels of exports from
Africa and European demand for slave labour in this or that part of the
American plantation economy. When the Dutch took Pernambuco in 1634,
the directors of the Dutch West India Company immediately informed their
agents on the ‘Gold Coast’ that they were to take the necessary steps to
pursue the trade in slaves on the adjacent coast east of the Volta – thereby
creating the infamous ‘Slave Coast’. When the British islands of the
Caribbean took to growing sugarcane, the Gambia was one of the first
places to respond. Examples of this kind of external control can be
instanced right up to the end of the trade, and this embraces Eastern Africa
also, since European markets in the Indian Ocean islands became important
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and since American demand
caused Mozambicans to be shipped around the Cape of Good Hope.
Even medium and short-run fluctuations in the volume of African trade
were usually reflections of European conditions. The incessant European
wars of the mercantilist epoch were particularly decisive in this respect.
There was a drastic fall in French shipping to Africa during the Seven Years
War (1748– 55); while both British and French shipping was absent from
regular trade during the American War of Independence and the years of
Anglo-French struggle that followed. The African ‘producer’ of a
commodity such as captives was quite helpless in the face of these
European practices. During the American War of Independence, Futa
Djallon and the neighbouring countries in Sierra Leone became full of
captives, who had of necessity to be incorporated into a local system of
production because they were kept hanging around for a long time with no
ships in sight.

It might seem to be labouring the obvious to emphasize that a
fundamental characteristic of centuries of Afro-European trade was that its
dimensions were determined outside of Africa. But, it is equally obvious
that local conditions were bound in some ways to affect output, price and
the European choice of particular parts of the continent at particular times.
Thus, the local conditions around (say) the Bight of Biafra or Lake Nyasar
would certainly have influenced the rate of extraction of captives at any
given time. The emphasis on the overall global determinants is necessary in
order to situate the mechanics of trade within Africa and their proper
international perspective, and in so doing one can immediately perceive the
striking similarity between the early commerce and the subsequent colonial
and neo-colonial trades.
The kind of benefits which Europe derived from its control of world
commerce are well known, although it is curious that the recognition of
Africa’s major contribution to European development is usually made in
works devoted specifically to that subject; while European scholars of
Europe often treat the European economy as if it were entirely autonomous.
European economists of the nineteenth century certainly had no illusions
about the interconnections between their national economies and the world
at large. J.S. Mill went so far as to assert that as far as England was
concerned, ‘the trade of the West Indies is hardly to be considered as
external trade, but more resembles the traffic between town and country.’
Marx can be cited in the same context, not as heretic or as the ultimate
authority, but merely because of the frankness of his comments. It was
Marx who wrote that ‘the discovery of gold and silver in America, the
extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal
populations … the turning of Africa into a commercial warren for the
hunting of black skins signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist
production.’
Central and South American gold and silver played a crucial role in
meeting the need for coin in the expanding capitalist money economy,
while African gold was also significant in this respect. African gold helped
the Portuguese to finance further navigations around the Cape of Good
Hope and into Asia; it was the main source for the Dutch mint in the
seventeenth century (which helped to secure Amsterdam as the financial
capital of Europe in that period); and it is no coincidence that when the
English struck a new gold coin in 1663 they called it the ‘guinea’.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and for the most
part of the nineteenth, the exploitation of Africa and African labour
continued to be a source for the accumulation of capital to be reinvested in
Western Europe. The African contribution to European capitalist growth
extended over such vital sectors as shopping, insurance, the association of
capital, capitalist agriculture and the capital goods industry. Sometimes, the
efforts were modest and localized. Thus, the St Malo fishing industry was
stimulated by the opening up of markets in the French slave plantations;
while the Portuguese fishing industry also gained new buoyancy. Then there
were more spectacular developments like the growth of seaport towns
connected with Atlantic trade – notably Bristol, Liverpool, Nantes,
Bordeaux and Seville. Behind those ports there often emerged the
manufacturing centres that gave rise to the notion of the ‘industrial
revolution’. As Mantoux put it, ‘the growth of Lancashire, of all English
countries the one most deserving to be called the cradle of the factory
system, depended first of all on the development of Liverpool and her
trade.’
The connections between capitalism and slavery as far as England is
concerned are adequately documented by Eric Williams. A similar picture
would emerge from any detailed study of French capitalism and slavery,
given the fact that during the eighteenth century the West Indies accounted
for 20 per cent of France’s external trade – much more than the whole of
Africa in the present century. Of course, benefits were not always directly
proportional to the amount of involvement of a given European state in the
Atlantic trade – for instance, the enormous profits of the Portuguese
economy went into the hands of the more developed Western European
capitalist nations who supplied Portugal with capital, ships and trade goods.
Germany was included in this category, along with England, the Dutch
Provinces and France.
Commerce deriving from Africa helped a great deal to strengthen
transnational links within the Western European economy, bearing in mind
that American produce was the consequence of African labour. Brazilian
dyewoods, for example, were re-exported from Portugal into the
Mediterranean, the North Sea and the Baltic, and passed into the continental
cloth industry of the seventeenth century. Sugar from the Caribbean was reexported from England and France to other parts of Europe to such an

extent that Hamburg was the biggest sugar-refining centre in Europe in the
first half of the eighteenth century. Germany supplied manufacturers to
Scandinavia, Holland, England, France and Portugal, for resale in Africa.
England, France and Holland (in spite of competing mercantilist systems)
found it necessary to exchange various classes of goods to better deal with
Africans for gold, slaves and ivory. The financiers and merchants of Genoa
were the powers behind the markets of Lisbon and Seville; while Dutch
bankers played a similar role with respect to Scandinavia and England.
Western Europe, after all, was more than just an arbitrary geographical
connotation. It was that part of Europe in which by the fifteenth century
embryo capitalist relations already posed a challenge to feudalism, marking
a further departure from the natural, self-sufficient autarchic economies of
previous modes of production. When the Western European nations moved
overseas, it was the product of an internal dynamic, which was not
navigated or even deflected by new trades with Africa, Asia and the
Americas. Enclosures continued in the English countryside, and agriculture
in Western Europe generally continued its slow rate of evolution, serving to
support a larger population and to provide a more effective basis for the
wool and linen industries in particular. The rate of transformation in
technology and in the socio-economic organization of industry was more
rapid. African trade hindered none of these things. On the contrary, it
speeded up several aspects, including the integration of Western Europe –
as noted above. That is why the African connection contributed not merely
to economic growth (which relates only to quantitative dimensions) but also
to real development in a structural sense. Conversely, it can be
demonstrated that the contacts with Europe had no organic relationship to
what Africa was doing previously nor did they permit the reemergence of
any rational continental or regional ties within Africa itself. Trade within
Europe meant historical disruption and disintegration, and those things
proved crucial to Africa’s underdevelopment.
Africa’s external trade was very limited up to the fifteenth century.
Apart from northern Africa (the Horn included), it was only East Africa that
had foreign trade relations. The Portuguese sought with some success to
replace the Arabs as the merchants who tied East Africa to India and to the
rest of Asia. It was the Portuguese who came to carry most of the ivory
which was marketed in India; while Indian clothes and beads were sold in
East and West Africa by the Portuguese and the Dutch. The same applied to

cowry shells from the East Indies. A new trade route between Africa and
the Americas was an extension neither of the indigenous American
economy nor of the African economy. Its total rationale lay in Europe. In
effect, therefore, Europe took the first steps towards transforming Africa,
Asia and America into economic satellites. It was at the very outset of
international trade that there was established that radical pattern with
Europe at the centre and very few independent connections between the
non-European territories.
Inside Africa itself, the period of trade which preceded the
establishment of colonial rule was also determined by the state of affairs
where there were ties between colony and metropole but none between
colony and colony. It will shortly be illustrated that trade with Europe
arrested the development of numerous small African economies. Lack of
economic integration in Africa is mainly a result of that fact, because social
formations in given geographical areas were not permitted to extend their
production and economic boundaries so as to generate trade with each other
comparable in importance to that between each area and Europe. There is
no doubt that the potential for independent economic development was
present in a large number of localities, based on local resources and skills.
As those local economies multiplied and grew closer together, they were
bound to create regional and continental markets as in Europe and parts of
Asia that had gone further along the same evolutionary path. In addition to
blocking the possibilities of continued evolution, European trade also set in
motion a process of active disintegration. Certain inter-territorial links
established on the continent were broken down because of European trade.
Several examples arose on the West African coast down to Angola, because
in those parts European trade was most voluminous, and the surviving
written record is also more extensive.
When the Portuguese arrived in the region of modern Ghana in the
1470s, they had few commodities to offer local inhabitants in exchange for
the coveted gold. However, they were able to trans-ship from Dahomey
supplies of cotton cloths, beads and female slaves which were saleable on
the ‘Gold Coast’. The indications are that the Portuguese were responding
to a given demand in the ‘Gold Coast’, so that a previous trade must have
been in existence between the two regions. The Akan were gold producers,
and the people of Benin were specialist craftsmen who had a surplus of
cloth and beads which they manufactured themselves. As an expansionist

state, Dahomey also had access to prisoners of war; while the Akan seemed
concerned with building their own population and labour force, so they
acquired female captives from Dahomey and rapidly integrated them as
wives. When the Portuguese intervened in this exchange, it was
subordinated to the overall interests of European trade. As soon as Portugal
and other European nations had sufficient goods so as not to be dependent
on the re-export of certain commodities from Dahomey, then all that
remained were the links between the ‘Gold Coast’ and Europe on the one
hand, and between Dahomey and Europe on the other. That represented the
destruction of whatever potential existed for creating a regional market with
its own internal logic.
Probably, Dahomey products reached the ‘Gold Coast’ by percolating
through what is now Benin and Togo, using as far as possible the creeks
behind the coast. Therefore, it would have been more convenient when
Europeans established a direct link across the open sea. The superiority of
Europeans at sea was of the greatest strategic value, along with their
organizational ability. This was illustrated in several places, beginning with
the Upper Guinea Coast and the Cape Verde islands, where Portuguese
settlers broke into the pattern of local trade ever since the 1460s. They
intervened in the transfers of raw cotton and indigo dye from one African
community to another, and the Cape Verdean settlers went a step further in
establishing a flourishing cotton-growing and cotton-manufacturing
industry. They used labour and techniques from the mainland and exported
the finished product along the length of the coast down to El Mina.
The Portuguese also took over the trade in local cowries in Kongo, the
trade in salt along the Angolan coast, and the trade in high-quality palm
cloth between Loango and southern Angola. In some instances, they
achieved dominance not just because of their ships and commercial skills
but also by the use of force – providing they were operating on the littoral
and could bring their cannon into play. The disruption of transactions
between the ‘Gold Coast’ and the ‘Ivory Coast’ followed that pattern. A
strong coastal canoe trade existed between these two regions, with people
of Cape Lahou sailing past Cape Three Points to sell their cloth as far east
as Accra. The Portuguese set up a fort at Axim near Cape Three Points, to
service gold trade with the hinterland; and one of its incidental functions
was to restrict the east–west coastal African trade. They prohibited Axim
residents from going to Cape Lahou, and they stopped canoes from the

‘Ivory Coast’ from travelling east beyond Axim. The purpose was
obviously to make both areas discrete economic entities exclusively tied to
Europe.
The Portuguese were not successful in destroying this African
commerce, and the Dutch inherited the problem when they took over Axim
in 1673. The servants of the Dutch West India company which was
operating on the Gold Coast hovered between two alternatives. If possible,
they wanted a complete cessation of the African trade; and when that was
not achieved, they tried to force the people of the ‘Ivory Coast’ to buy a
certain amount of Dutch goods in addition to the local products they
received on the ‘Gold Coast’. The Dutch stipulated that each Axim
canoeman going to Cape Lahou should carry Dutch goods worth at least
four ounces of gold. In effect, that converted a purely inter-African
exchange into a European/African trade.
What was doubly detrimental to African attempts to integrate their own
economies was the fact that when Europeans became middlemen in local
trade networks, they did so mainly to facilitate the extraction of captives,
and thereby subordinated the whole economy to the slave trade. In Upper
Guinea, the Portuguese and their mulatto descendants in the Cape Verde
islands and on the coast engaged in a large variety of trade permutations –
involving cotton, dyes, kola nuts and European products. The purpose of it
all was to fill the holds of slave-ships calling at Gambia, Cacheu, Bissau,
the Bay of Sierra Leone, and so on. In Congo/Angola, the same picture
emerges. The salt, nzimbu shells and palm cloth that came into Portuguese
hands made up for their shortage of trade goods and served to purchase
captives on different parts of the coast and deep in the interior. This element
of subordination and dependence is crucial to an understanding of African
under-development today, and its roots lie far back in the era of
international trade. It is also worth noting that there is a type of pseudointegration which is compatible with dependence. In contemporary times, it
takes the form of Free Trade areas in the ‘Third World’, which are made to
order for the penetration of multinational corporations; while from the
fifteenth century onwards this pseudo-integration took the form of the
interlocking of African economics over long distances from the coast, so as
to allow the passage of human captives and ivory from a given point inland
to a given port on the Atlantic or Indian ocean.

The West African gold trade was not destroyed but it became directly
dependent on European buyers, by being diverted from the northward
routes across the Sahara. Within the savannah belt of the ‘Western Sudan’,
the trans-Saharan gold trade had nourished one of the most highly
developed political zones in all Africa from the fifth century onwards. But it
was more convenient for Europe to obtain its gold on the West Coast than
through North African intermediaries, and one is left to speculate on what
might have occurred in the ‘Western Sudan’ if there had been a steady
increase in the gold trade over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Nevertheless, there is something to be said in favour of African trade with
Europe in this particular commodity: gold production involves mining and
an ordered system of distribution within Africa. Akan country and parts of
Zimbabwe and Mozambique sustained flourishing socio-political systems
up to the nineteenth century, largely because of gold production. It was the
trade in slaves that completely undermined the situation in West, East and
Central Africa, for the procurement of captives was based on warfare,
banditry and social distortions.
A considerable body of writing is now coming into existence on the
topic of the consequence of the Atlantic slave trade on Africa; and much of
it purports to show that earlier views of the completely negative impact of
the trade are ill-founded. Indeed, some individuals are preoccupying
themselves with highlighting the many beneficial effects of the slave trade
on Africa. The white-washing trend is another facet of the distortions
produced when capitalism tries to provide itself with moral justification.
Apologists rely on such flimsy arguments as ‘Africans benefited by getting
European goods’ and ‘new food crops were introduced’ – as though Europe
had to be enslaved before it got to enjoy the potato from the Native
American Indian. This genre of scholarship stresses the fact that certain
African kingdoms grew stronger during the centuries of slaving, and it
assumes that the connection was a positive one. The truth is that some areas
continued to develop and they did so in spite of slave trading; although all
who participated were warped to a greater or lesser extent, and all were
reduced to a state of dependence.
Many things remain uncertain about the slave trade and its
consequences for Africa, but the overall picture of destructiveness is clear,
and that destructiveness can be shown to be the logical consequence of the

recruitment of captives in Africa (as distinct from their sale at coastal
ports).
One of the uncertainties concerns the basic question of how many
Africans were exported. This has long been an object of speculation, with
estimates ranging from a few millions to 100 million. A study by Philip
Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, has suggested the figure of
about ten million Africans landed alive in the Americas, the Atlantic islands
and Europe. That figure may well be low, in spite of the author’s assertions
to the contrary, because so many of the import figures in the Americas were
given out by individuals who were deliberately minimizing numbers in
order to defraud revenue collection, and the volume of ‘contraband’ arrivals
is difficult to measure. However, if this low figure was accepted as a basis
for evaluating the impact of slaving on Africa as a whole, the conclusions
that could legitimately be drawn would confound those attempting to make
light of the experience. As Curtin was aware, ‘the cost of the slave trade in
human life was many times the number of slaves landed in the Americas.
For every slave landed alive, other people died in warfare, along the bush
pats leading to the coast, awaiting shipment, or in the crowded and
insanitary conditions of the middle passage.’
On any base figure of Africans who landed alive in the Americas, one
would have to make an increment to cover mortality in trans-shipment,
which averaged in the vicinity of 15 to 20 per cent. There were also other
deaths between time of capture and time of embarkation. Most important of
all, given that warfare was the principal means of obtaining captives, it is
necessary to estimate the number of people killed or maimed in order to
appreciate the extent of the millions who were taken alive. The resultant
figure (a considerable multiple of 10 million) would represent the number
from the population and labour force of Africa because of the establishment
of slave production by Europeans in the Americas. It is a loss that would
have to be evaluated in the light of age and sex selection and other features.
Slave traders preferred their victims between fifteen and thirty-five years of
age, with a ratio of two men to one woman. They often accepted younger
children but rarely any older person. They shipped the most healthy
wherever possible, and even took pains to choose those who had had
smallpox and were thereby immunized.
Absence of data about the size of Africa’s population in the fifteenth
century makes it impossible to carry out any scientific assessment of the

results of the population outflow. But, nothing suggests that there was any
increase in the continent’s population over the centuries of slaving, although
that was the trend in other parts of the world. Lack of increase or even
slight increases would have represented a ‘deficit’ in terms of a population
projection, since fewer babies were born that would otherwise have been
the case if millions of childbearing age had not been eliminated. Finally, on
this particular topic, it is essential to recognize that the Atlantic slave trade
on the Indian Ocean has been called ‘The East African slave trade’ and ‘the
Arab slave trade’ for so long that it obscures the extent to which it was the
European slave trade. When the slave trade from East Africa was at its
height in the late eighteenth century and in the early nineteenth century, the
destination of captives was the plantation societies of Mauritius, Reunion
and Seychelles as well as the New World, via the Cape of Good Hope.
Besides, Africans labouring as slaves from Zanzibar to Persia in the
sixteenth and nineteenth centuries were all ultimately serving the European
capitalist system which had become all pervasive. The Sultan of Zanzibar
did not eat from cloves himself.
An emphasis on population loss as such is highly relevant to the
question of socio-economic development. In recent times, since imperial
agencies have decided on a Malthusian line for the ‘Third World’, it is
being forgotten that population growth played a major role in European
development in providing labour, markets and the pressures which led to
further advance. The Japanese population growth had similar positive
effects; while in other parts of Asia which remained pre-capitalist, the size
of the population led to a much more intensive exploration of the land than
has ever been the case in what is still a sparsely peopled African continent.
Even in the absence of statistics, it seems that West Africa was always a
more densely populated section of the continent than either Central or East
Africa; and it was there that the brunt of the slaving fell, warping the
development of some of the most advanced areas in all Africa, such as
Yorubaland, Igboland and Akan country.
African economic activities were affected both directly by population
loss and indirectly by other features of slave trading – notably the violence
and insecurity that it engendered. Before the eighteenth century, the
Portuguese and Dutch actually discouraged slaving on the ‘Gold Coast’, for
they recognized that it would be incompatible with the gold trade. However,
by the end of the seventeenth century, gold had been discovered in Brazil,

and the importance of gold supplies from Africa was lessened. Within the
total Atlantic pattern, African slaves became more important than gold, and
Brazilian gold was offered for African captives at Whydah and Accra. At
that point, slaving began undermining the ‘Gold Coast’ economy, and made
large inroads into the gold trade. Slave-raiding and kidnapping made it
unsafe to mine and to travel; and in any event the resort to warfare for
captives proved more profitable than gold mining. One contemporary
European observer noted that ‘as one fortunate marauding makes a native
rich in a day, they therefore exert themselves rather in war, robbery and
plunder than in their old business of digging and collecting gold.’
What was so clearly evidenced in the above example must have been
true for all other branches of economic activity, and especially for
agriculture. Occasionally in certain localities, food production was
stimulated to provide supplies for slave ships, but the overall consequence
of slaving on agricultural activities in Western and Central Africa were
negative. Europeans on the scene did not commit to that effort, and where
such comments are not available the inference is nonetheless inescapable.
Labour was drawn off from agriculture and for those remaining, conditions
were unsettled. Dahomey, which in the sixteenth century was renowned for
exporting food to parts of what is now Togo, was suffering through famines
in the nineteenth century. An enlightening parallel is the way migrant
labour and cash crops affected the food economy of colonial Africa and
made famine endemic in some districts.
Just as the slave trade and overseas trade in general had multiplier
effects on European development, so it had multiplier effects on African
underdevelopment. Where there was integration across national boundaries
in Europe, there was disintegration in Africa. The creation of growing
points in the European economy and the establishment of backward and
forward linkages were all out of the question in Africa, because foreign
trade was not a logical extension of internal production and exchange. On
the contrary, a great deal of time and energy went into activities like slaving
and elephant hunting, which were not designed to permit an expansion of
Africa’s ability to produce foodstuffs and other essentials of human
consumption.
Special attention needs to be paid to ivory exports, because they are more
important than the sport of captives as far as most East African societies

were concerned and because it is necessary to determine the extent to which
the ivory trade had consequences comparable to the slave trade. There was
definitely a qualitative difference between the two. The ivory trade led to
professionalization just like the slave trade, but bands of elephant hunters
(found for example among the Cokwo, Baganda, Nyamwezi and Bambara)
were positive additions to the social structure while bands of professional
raiders and man-stealers were threats to established society. Andrew
Roberts’s study of the evidence relating to Nyamwezi ivory trade has shown
that this long-distance trade sparked off other beneficial developments, such
as increased trading goods, food and salt. There were other African exports
such as gum, rubber, camwood and wax which also had certain beneficial
effects on socio-economic patterns when they were traded, showing clearly
that slaving was in a category by itself. Many of the other commodities
were accommodated within the colonial trade of the late nineteenth century,
indicating that their export was comparable with the exploitation of African
labour within Africa – an objective with which slave trading obviously
came into sharp conflict.
On the other hand, ivory was an asset that was rapidly exhausted in any
given region, and the struggle to secure new supplies sometimes brought
violence almost indistinguishable from that produced by slaving. Besides,
the most decisive limitation of the ivory trade was the fact that it was not an
outgrowth of local product, and it caused restructuring dependent upon an
overseas market. The Nyamwezi were trading articles of African
manufacture among Africans long before the export of trade opened up. In a
sense, regional trade provided the ‘capital’ for the long-distance ivory trade,
but from then on any expansion of local manufacturing was incidental to,
rather than the goal of, local economies caught up in the international
trading network, and the expansion was very limited. This kind of
conceptualization is completely lacking in reconstructions of African
history. In a sizable volume of essays devoted to ‘trade in Central and
Eastern Africa before 1900’, there is nowhere expressed any awareness that
the professionalization of trade per se is no great thing, and that it meant not
development but the subordination of local economies in the case of
Africa’s relations with Europe. Andrew Roberts ends his study of
Nyamwezi trade as follows:
It would seem, then, that we are obliged yet again to conclude that only rule by
representatives of superior technology could provide the conditions for sustained advance

from the subsistence economy. This was, indeed, partly due to the very manner in which the
region had become already linked to, and in a sense dependent on, the economies of the
industrialized world.

The writer of those lines should be given credit for at least a hesitant
acknowledgement of the notion of ‘dependence’, which is so central to an
understanding of underdevelopment. For the rest, the statement is timid and
confusing.
Why is it that representatives of superior technology were required to
carry Africans out of the subsistence economy, and they were not necessary
to perform similar functions for Europeans and most Asians? It was
precisely the external links which precluded the possibility of independent
self-sustaining advice, and that was true of the Nyamwezi ivory trade as it
was of the Kazembe trade in captives. Besides, at all times one must keep in
mind the dialectical opposite of the trade in Africa: namely, production in
Europe or in the Americas under European control. The few socially
desirable by-products of elephant hunting within Africa were chickenfeed
in comparison with the profits, technology and skills associated with the
product in Europe. The ivory marts of Minping Lane were the centres
where real profits on ivory trade were made. The tusks then augmented in
value when they were turned into billiard balls and piano keys in London,
and when they went to Sheffield to be transformed into knife handles and to
Dieppe and Geislingen to be made into hundreds of different artifacts by
marine processes. Europe was strengthened by these and numerous other
foreign-fed industries to carry Africa out of their own developing capitalist
economy in the most disadvantaged situation possible.
European technology was not as superior to that in other parts of the world
in the fifteenth century as is often assumed. Their supremacy in that aspect
at the present time is itself more a consequence than the cause of their
hegemony over the rest of the world. In the fifteenth century, Europe merely
had the edge over humanity elsewhere in the scientific understanding of the
universe, the making of tools and the rational organization of work. One of
the major shortcomings of Europeans in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries was a shortage of commodities for exchange, as has already been
illustrated. They were forced to make use of Asian and (to a lesser extent)
African consumer goods, which were often of superior quality. Yet, as is
also implicit in earlier sections of this analysis, European superiority in

certain sectors proved decisive. African and Polynesian canoes were of high
standard, but the relevant sphere of operations was the ocean, where
European ships could take command. West Africans had developed metalcasting to a fine artistic perfection in many parts of Nigeria, but when it
came to the meeting with Europe, beautiful bronzes were far less relevant
than the crudest of cannon. African wooden utensils were sometimes works
of great sensitivity, but Europe produced pots and pans that had many
functional advantages. Literacy, numeracy, organizational experience and
the capacity to produce on an ever-expanding scale (even under the
domestic system) were also very meaningful advantages on the European
side of the scale.
Once Africa was drawn into the orbit of Western Europe, the latter’s
technological development was speeded up, as already noted in the case of
several other aspects of their economy. For example, the evolution of
European shipbuilding from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries was a
logical consequence of their monopoly of sea commerce after the fifteenth
century. During the same period, the North Africans were bottled up in the
Mediterranean, and although it was from there that Europe borrowed a great
deal of nautical instrumentation, the North Africans made no further
worthwhile advances. Where the initial European advantage was not
sufficient to assume supremacy, they deliberately undermined other
people’s efforts. The Indian navy, for instance, suffered from the rigid
enforcement of the English Navigation Laws. Yet, the expenses involved in
building new and better European ships were met by the profits of overseas
trade such as with India and Africa. The Dutch were pioneers in improving
upon the caravels which took the Spanish and Portuguese out across the
Atlantic, and the succession of Dutch trading companies operating in Asia,
Africa and America were the ones responsible for experimentation. By the
eighteenth century, the British were using Dutch know-how as a basis for
surpassing the Dutch themselves, and the Atlantic was their laboratory. It
used to be said that the slave trade was a training ground for British seamen.
It is probably more significant to note that the Atlantic trade was the
stimulator of consistent advances in naval technology.
We know a fair amount about the evolution of science in Europe prior to
overseas expansion, and it is possible to evaluate the catalytic contribution
of the non-European world in the epoch of mercantilism. The technological
revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe sprung from

the interplay of numerous variables rooted entirely in the European
experience, but they all have to be placed in the context of capitalist
development; and it is no mere coincidence that the crucial engineering
inventions of the late eighteenth century followed after the profits from
external trade had been internalized by Western European capitalism. We
know far less about the evolution of African technology, but commerce
with Europe could have had no positive effect in this sphere.
In the first place, craft skills would have suffered from the plague of
slaving in the areas directly affected. Much has been made of the
destructive aspect of the Ngoni incursion northwards into East Africa. In
the Lake Nyasa/Lake Tanganyika corridor, warfare and raiding virtually
obliterated cloth and hoe-making. Slave recruitment was warfare and
pillage on a grand scale, and must have had analogous effects for the vast
areas concerned. Of greater importance, however, were the indirect
consequences of trade as such, including the impact of imports and the
European subversion of local trade.
The relationship of African technology to cloth manufacture is worthy
of note, given the strategic role that textiles have played in economic
development in Western Europe, Japan and the US. From the fifteenth to
the nineteenth century, the demand for cloth in Africa was constantly
expanding. All areas experienced a shift from car nudity through animal
skins and bark cloth to cotton. Indian and European textiles helped meet
this expanding demand, while areas like Senegambia, Ivory Coast, Benin,
Yorubaland and Loango were exporters to other parts of Africa (through
European intermediaries for the most part). But the volume of European
production was so constantly increasing, along with the skill, so that Dutch
and English manufacturers in the eighteenth century copied fashionable
Indian and African patterns. Since they had established a stranglehold on
local distribution, the products they brought had to be accepted even though
they were inferior to the originals. By the late nineteenth century, European
textiles were being imported in sufficient quantities to swamp local
production and to make regions such as Senegambia into exporters of raw
cotton and importers of finished cotton cloths. Wherever remnants of the
industry survived, production was in the same technological mould of
earlier centuries, because the narrow looms were never permitted to respond
to the kind of demand which would have forced a breakthrough.

With regard to textiles as well as iron, European imports were
presumably viewed by Africans as supplementary to their own production
of those items so long as there was a sufficient market. One would expect
that if the foreign commodity became a threat to local manufacture, the
affected African would make a stand. An example to this effect was the salt
industry of Sierra Leone, which was protected by local African edict
excluding salt as an import in the eighteenth century. The reasoning was
sound, because in the early nineteenth century, British ships sailing to
Nigeria carried cheap salt – to the detriment of local production.
Yet the industry and skills which actually existed and were destroyed
were probably of less consequence than the loss of the development
opportunity. This cannot be calculated, but it must not be ignored.
The editors of the aforementioned volume on East and Central African
trade illustrate the disruption of industry and skills in Congo/Angola
through the intervention of the Portuguese and their mulatto and black
servants (pombeiros) in African commerce. They recognize that the
demands of the Atlantic trade ‘ended by subverting the whole commercial
structure with its attendant local industries’ but in the same breath they
contend that ‘the opening of the overseas market does not seem to have
altered in any radical way the role which commerce played in the economy
of the area’. Here again, the basic weakness is a failure to distinguish
between an independent economy in evolution and one that is being
transformed into a satellite. In the former, commercial activity is entirely
the consequence of the level of the development of the productive forces,
whereas in the latter it is mainly a reflection of external needs. For slaving
regions like Congo/Angola in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it
means that the role of commercial activity was no longer simply the
distribution of local products, nor was it the export of those products, nor
was it the export compatible with the old. That is what cut off the possibility
of evolution along previous lines, even though the worst effects were
deferred for a considerable period until Europe itself was powerful enough
to take complete control through such means as the sending of commodities
to replace those that had formerly been locally made.
Any trade in Africa which was an extension of European production
was largely irrelevant to the technological advance within Africa. When
Britain was the world’s leading economic power, it used to be referred to as
a nation of shopkeepers. Most of the goods in their ships were produced by

themselves. Africans from Senegal to the Cunene and from the Limpopo to
the Tana busied themselves selling godos that they had not produced. They
were agents for distributing European imports and for organizing the export
of a few staples which were not in demand within the continent. The AfroPortuguese middlemen of Upper Guinea, the Akan market women, the Aro
traders of the Bight of Biafra, the pombeiros of Angola, the Yao traders of
Mozambique, the Swahili and Nyamwezi of East Africa were not
performing a function which is essentially the same as that being carried out
today by members of the disproportionality large service sector. Their
contribution to technological development was nil because they were on the
fringes of production.
Commerce with Europe was not propitious to independent technological
invention on the African side, nor did it create any consistent demand for
the import of European technology, except for firearms. Europeans
responded to that with the cheapest of muskets. What they deliberately
ignored were the exceptional African requests that Europe should place
certain skills and techniques at the disposal of Africa. This was an element
in the Kongo situation, already alluded to. When Agadja Trudo sought to
stop the slave trade, he also made an appeal to European craftsmen, and he
sent an ambassador to London for that purpose. One European who stayed
at the court of Dahomey in the late 1720s told his countrymen that ‘if any
tailor, carpenter, smith or any other sort of white man that is free be willing
to come here, he will find very good encouragement.’
At about the same time that Agadja Trudo was seeking new skills from
Europe, the Asantehene, Opuku Ware (1720–50), was also thinking along
those lines. He asked Europeans to set up factories and distilleries in Ashtai
country and got no response. Those requests were coming from the areas of
Africa that were sufficiently developed to have been able to incorporate
new production techniques without any great dysfunctions. This was also
true of Ethiopia. A Portuguese embassy reached the Ethiopian court in
1520. Having examined Portuguese swords, muskets, clothes, books and
other objects, the Emperor Lebna Dengel felt the need to introduce
European technical knowledge into Ethiopia. Correspondence exists
between Emperor and European dignitaries such as Diego de Albuquerque
(Portuguese Viceroy in India), Kings Manuel I and John III of Portugal, and
Pope Leo X, in which requests were made for European assistance to

Ethiopian industry. Until late in the nineteenth century, Ethiopian petitions
to that effect were being repeated with scant success.
One of the most profound facets of the cultural arrogance of European
colonialists in Africa was their boastfulness about technological
accomplishments and their contemptuous attitude towards what they
considered as African non-achievements in that sphere. ‘They (Africans)
had no plough, no wheel, and no means of transportation except human
head porterage and dugout canoes on rivers and lakes. These people had
built nothing, nothing of any kind in material more durable than mud, poles,
and hatch!’ The above words of a British colonial governor are relatively
mild specimens of the technological superiority syndrome. Such statements
sprung from and strengthened the racist assumption that African people
were incapable of the discovery and application of scientific laws. Yet, the
evidence suggests that it was the connection between Europe and Africa
which aided the technological maturation of the former, while inducing a
period of technological marking time and even regression in Africa.
Furthermore, the issue of inventiveness is subordinate to the diffusion of
techniques. Europeans did not invent the wheel – it spread from China.
Both because of the structure of international trade and because of the
conscious decisions of European states, Africa was robbed of the
opportunity to benefit from the scientific heritage of man.
In the centuries before colonial rule, Europe’s scientific and technical
capacity increased by progressions, while Africa appeared to have been
almost static. What was a slight edge when the Portuguese rounded Cape
Bojador in 1444 was a huge gap by the time that European robber statesmen
sat down at Berlin 440 years later.
The growing technological gap between Western Europe and Africa was
consistent with the trend of capitalism to polarize wealth and power on the
one hand, and poverty and dependence on the other. In a present imperialist
epoch, super-profits from the dependencies have to some extent improved
the standards of living of the metropolitan workers but in the earlier period
internal exploitation strengthened external exploitation, and vice versa. At
the national level within Western Europe, the unevenness of development
had already been noted. This was sharply in evidence by the nineteenth
century, with areas such as Portugal, Spain and Ireland playing colonial
roles with respect to Britain, France and Germany. Inside of national
economies, the polarization also expressed itself in the elimination of small

producers and the rise of monopolies. The monopolies, therefore, were at
the pinnacle of a system that knew nothing but profit-making and
domination as its guiding principles. The monopolies set the tone for
international political economy in the late nineteenth century. They
intervened directly in Central and Eastern Europe through massive
investments; and on a slightly smaller scale Western European monopolies
sought financial and economic opportunities in Asia and Latin America.
They were joined in this imperialist partition of the world by North
American capital – the US having been transformed from an outpost of
Europe into one of the command centres of capitalism.
Africa by then was somewhat in the doldrums as far as Europe was
concerned. Its great period accumulating primary capital for European
development was over. Nevertheless, Europe still had a place for Africa
within the new imperialist scheme of things. A few areas of the continent
became crucial for European investment: namely, Algeria, Egypt, South
Africa and Congo. Elsewhere, smaller European entrepreneurs were
permitted to operate, although ultimately they too were tied to the big
banking and industrial concerns which controlled the Western European
economy, and they were under the umbrella of nation states that bargained
consciously and unconsciously as agents of monopoly capital. Thus, the
clash of Anglo-French financial interests in Egypt and the potential for
investment in Congo were keys which opened the doors to the ‘Scramble
for Africa’ – that is, to the transformation of the continent into political
colonies to protect economic spheres.
Apart from the Suez Canal and the South African and Congolese mines,
the investment in the African continent in the late nineteenth century and
subsequently was primarily to facilitate the production of agricultural
staples to be utilized by the new industries of Europe. The expansion of
soap-making, the rise of a wider market for cooking fats, and the need for
lubricants in railway and engineering works led to the exploitation of the
palm oil resources of West Africa; while the German machine industry
could produce plants for crushing palm-kernels to provide stock-feed for
capitalist agriculture. The extension of demand for cooking oils and fats
also affected groundnuts – the opportunity being exploited by the financiers
and industrialists of Marseilles. The Lancashire cotton industry, after its
long partnership with the American slave South, was in the late nineteenth

century anxious to promote the growing of cotton in Egypt and the Sudan
and in East and West Africa. The invention of the pneumatic tube, the
arrival of the motorcar, and the increase in the rubber-wheeled transport of
all sorts taxed the rubber-producing capacities of the Dutch East Indies,
Malaya, Brazil and Africa. Such examples could be multiplied. They all
demonstrate that Europe’s needs by the late nineteenth century were
themselves a product of the immense quickening of economic life over the
previous four centuries, and one of the factors in that quickening was the
unequal association with Africa.
Equally significant is the fact that Europe derived the power to exploit
Africa in new ways. Trade in slaves, ivory and gold was conducted from the
coasts. There, European ships could dominate the scene, and, when
necessary, forts could be built. Before the nineteenth century, Europe was
incapable of penetrating the African continent, because the balance of force
at their disposal was inadequate. But the same technological changes which
created the need to penetrate Africa, also created the power to conquer
Africa. The firearms of the imperialist epoch marked a qualitative leap
forward. Breech-loading rifles and machine guns were a far cry from the
smooth-bore muzzle loaders and flintlocks of the previous era. It is no
wonder that Europeans had no hesitation in selling Africans antediluvian
models of firearms. Hillaire Belloc spoke on behalf of his fellow Europeans
when he said that ‘what matters is that we have the Maxim [machine gun]
and they have not.’
Curiously, Europeans often derived the moral justification for
imperialism and colonialism from features of the international trade as
conducted up to the eve of colonial rule in Africa. The British were the
major exponents of the view that the desire to colonize was largely based on
their good intentions in wanting to put up a stop to the slave trade. True
enough, they were by then as opposed to the slave trade as they were once
in favour of it. Technological changes had dialectically transformed the
seventeenth century necessity for slaves into the nineteenth century
necessity to clear the remnants of slaving from Africa so as to organize the
local exploitation of land and labour. Leopold in the Congo also used the
anti-slavery pretext to introduce into Congo itself forced labour and
‘slavery-like practices’; while at a deeper level all Europeans had derived
notions of racial and cultural superiority between the fifteenth and

nineteenth centuries so that even the Portuguese presumed that they were
historically destined to ‘civilize the natives’.
Africans fought alien political rule and had to be subdued by superior
force. But a sizable minority did not insist that their trade connections with
Europe should remain unbroken, for that was a measure of the extent to
which they were already dependent on Europe. The most dramatic
illustration of that dependence was the tenacity with which some Africans
fought the termination of slave trading. For most European capitalist states,
the enslavement of Africans had served its purpose by the middle of the
nineteenth century, but for those Africans who dealt in captives the abrupt
termination of the trade at any given point was a crisis of the greatest
magnitude. In many areas, major social changes had taken place to gear the
region to the service of the slave-trade – one of the most significant being
the rise of ‘domestic slavery’ and various forms of class and caste
subjugation. African rulers and traders who found their social existence
threatened by the earliest legal edicts such as Britain’s Abolition of the
Slave Trade Act in 1807 found ways of making contact with Europeans
who still wanted salves. Where other commodities were suggested,
tremendous effort went into organizing those alternatives: ivory, rubber,
palm oil, groundnuts, cotton, and so on.
The transition to forms of production that used African labour inside
Africa resulted in the rise of economic and social institutions that ensured
the partition of a large number of Africans in the money economy, and also
ensured that the value created would be siphoned off to capitalist Europe.
That gave rise to the particular forms of structural dependence which we
know today – visibly seen in the bank branches, the import/export agencies,
the manufacturing subsidiaries, the mining companies, the pattern of road
and railway networks, and so on. Needless to say, it is the intensive study of
the colonial period which will answer most of the questions about
underdevelopment as we know it today, but the extent to which the situation
was being set up for centuries before is often underestimated.
Anthropologists were the worst offenders in this regard, with their
ahistorical prediction for describing everything that they found in colonial
Africa as ‘traditional’. But historians are also guilty of making a distinction
between colonial and ‘pre-colonial’ Africa, in such a way as to cloud the
fact that there was continuity from one phase to the other.

The notion that the first four centuries of Afro-European trade represent
the roots of African underdevelopment is doubly attractive because there
was an actual carry-over of some of the mechanisms that connect the two
spheres of metropole and dependency. At the metropolitan end, there were
the insurance companies and the shipping companies; while in Africa itself
there had arisen certain social formations that were immediately available
to operate within the colonial enclave economies from the 1880s onwards.
Those are the African traders already mentioned as the forerunners of the
modern service sector. Some were highly placed within African society;
many were new men of previously low status; while many others were
literally products of foreign trades, being the children of Europeans and
Arabs. The mulatto element was very pronounced in Western Africa, and it
continued to be prominent in the early colonial period and for much later. In
what was called the French Sudan, to take one specific example, all
economic activity spread inland from the four communes on the Senegalese
coast, inhabited by blacks and mulattoes having long connections with
Atlantic trade. So long as it is not based on settlement, a colonial system
requires compradors. Throughout most of Africa, those compradors at the
start of the colonial period were already performing that function in the
dependent trade economy.
Besides, the Africans conducting trade on behalf of Europeans were
inevitably influenced by European thought and values. The quest for
European education did not begin in colonial Africa. It started when coastal
rulers and traders recognized the need to penetrate more deeply into the
way of life of the white men who came from across the sea. The mulatto
sons of white traders and the sons of African rulers were the ones who went
furthest along this line. At one level, it was strictly functional. The Sierra
Leone chief in the eightenth century explained that he wished ‘to learn book
to be rogue as good as white man’. At another level, it meant imbibing
those values which led to further African subjugation. The Rev. Thomas
Thompson was the first European educator on the ‘Gold Coast’, and he
wrote in 1772 a pamphlet entitled The African Trade for Negro Slaves
Shown to be Consistent with the Principles of Humanity and the Laws of
Revealed Religion. The returned Africans who played such a crucial role in
Sierra Leone and throughout West Africa in the period of the establishment
of colonial rule were also in varying degrees products of Western culture
and education – strikingly embodying potentialities of both enlightenment

and mental confusion springing from deculturalization. Unfortunately, the
latter trend was no more operative, and with the coming of colonial rule
they became conscious and naive agents of foreign domination. The cultural
nexus, therefore, provides further reason for seeking the roots of African
underdevelopment and dependence in the early centuries of Afro-European
trade.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

8
Problems of Third World Development
On reflecting on the problem of Third World development, I recall an
incident many months ago when the Republic of Guinea was invaded by the
Portuguese. As soon as the Chinese heard about the invasion, the Xinhua
News Agency put out a report denouncing American imperialism.
America’s name had not as yet been called by Guineans, but the Chinese
from objective analysis decided that if the Portuguese were invading
Guinea, it had something to do with American imperialism. And in like
vein, I would suggest that if we are talking about the problems of
development in the Third World, the major problem is the United States of
America, because it crowns the whole structure of world imperialism. I will
leave this as an assertion, because to go into a justification would consume
time. However, I would like to illustrate in some ways the connections
between imperialism and underdevelopment.
In the United Nations, a certain euphemism is in use. They speak about
the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ market economies. These two
collectively constitute the imperialist world: the developed market economy
being the United States, the Western European countries and Japan; and the
curious category of the developing market economy includes the rest of
what we commonly refer to as the Third World, the economies of which are
hooked into the metropolitan structures of North America, Western Europe
and Japan. Some of the mechanisms for exploiting the so-called developing
countries have been known for a long time. For instance, unequal trade has
been a common subject of discussion, and in recent times it has received
more careful analysis, so that we know rather more than we used to about
exactly how the captains of trade contributed to the exploitation of the
underdeveloped world. This is not a position that is merely adopted by
Marxists or radical nationalists; it is a position which is commonly asserted

even by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD).
A second well-known mechanism of exploitation within the structure of
imperialism is the transfer of profits from under-developed areas towards
the metropoles. My only comment on this is to note that what is called
‘profits’ is in fact ‘capital’. For too long most of us, including people who
would call themselves leftists, have created an idiom of ‘capital export’
from the colonies and semi-colonies; and the very idiom obscures part of
the reality, indeed, perhaps the whole reality. I am of the opinion that we
cannot refer to the export of capital from the metropoles to the
underdeveloped sector of the world except in a limited sense. Historically,
the movement of capital has always been on balance from the external or
peripheral sectors of the imperialist economy to its epicentres. This began
with the trade in slaves, while later it took the form of grossly unequal trade
between Europe and the rest of the world. The most that can be said about
European capital export is that Europe has been the centre for the
redistribution and reallocation of capital that is produced throughout the
world. Capital produced in, say, the Caribbean or in North America in the
epoch of slavery, was shifted to Europe, and – at a later date – was
redistributed from Western Europe to Eastern Europe; or capital that was
obtained by forcing the Chinese to smoke opium was redistributed into the
Indian sector of the British imperialist economy; and so on and so forth.
But, strictly speaking, there never has been any export of capital from the
developed areas in the sense of capital being engendered and originating in
the metropolitan sectors for export overseas. So, my point about profit is
that when we look at its mechanism closely, we find that it is always a
means of transferring to the metropolitan economy capital produced out of
the material and human resources of the Third World.
Unequal trade and capital flows away from the underdeveloped
countries are two of the principal mechanisms of imperialism. There are
others that are proving to be significant in their own ways, which tend to be
left out of the literature, and which are very operative when we come to
think in terms of changing the status quo. One of these, for instance, is the
blockage of technology. This takes a number of forms: it could mean actual
technological retardation or arrest in the underdeveloped countries; or it
could mean simply the blockage of the movement of technology from the
metropolitan to the colonial economy. The best examples of the actual

destruction and retardation of technology would come from Asia – notably
China and India – and to a lesser extent from Africa. Examples of the
failure to allow the transfer of whatever technology has developed in
Europe itself to the Third World can be taken at random. Particularly in the
more recent epoch, we have had in Africa striking instances of the refusal
of the metropolitan capitalist/imperialist countries to allow the transfer of
technology in certain critical areas which would pose a threat to their own
exploitation and domination. In Africa today, one of the biggest and bestknown projects is that of the Tanzania–Zambian railway. The whole history
of this railway is one in which metropolitan countries set out to interfere
with the movement of this particular aspect of technology to a part of the
Third World, and they failed because in this instance the People’s Republic
of China was available as an alternative source. The corollary to the
blockage of skills and technology is that of the international division of
labor under imperialism has always ensured the development of world
technology within certain specific sectors, namely the metropolis, and more
recently in particular parts of the metropoles, allowing the United States to
assume hegemony in most fields. This is an important phenomenon when
we come to examine the contemporary evolution of imperialism, because
the changes in technology which were possible in the last decade have
made it possible for the imperialist countries to begin to adopt radically new
strategies in terms of international division of labour and in terms of the
kinds of political controls which they exercise over the Third World.
Yet another general feature to which attention should be drawn is the
way in which imperialism has restructured the world economy so that
within the Third World there is no cohesion with respect to production and
exchange. As one moves from colony or semi-colony to another colony or
semi-colony, one finds the breaking of the ties which formerly integrated
one with the other – that is to say, the breaking of the trade ties which
integrated the productive resources. One finds within each colony also the
same disjunction, the same disaggregation of the consistent parts of a
colonized economy. Instead, the linkages are with the metropolitan
economy, and are determined exclusively by the latter in its own interest –
an interest which proves incompatible with the independence and any real
development of the Third World.

Moving on from the essentially economic concerns, I wish to highlight the
political facet of imperialism. A number of writers on Latin America and to
a lesser extent on Africa have paid considerable attention to the creation in
the Third World of certain strata, or certain classes, which reflect the
interest of the metropoles and which allow the requisite kinds of penetration
and exploitation. This political control takes a number of forms: there is the
classical colonial form, there is the utilization of white settlers, and most
important in the recent period, there has emerged in Africa and Asia an
indigenous strata who conduct locally the activity required to support the
international economy. These are people who – in Fanon’s words – perform
the function of transmission lines for international monopoly capital.
The foregoing represents a very brief portrayal of the mechanisms of
imperialism. I am not attempting to go into any serious theoretical
justification of why imperialism is the big problem of Third World
development, because – hopefully – we understand that. So perhaps we
could proceed to look rather more closely at the movement of contemporary
Third World history, in order to better appreciate the problems and possible
antidote to underdevelopment. In the last decade, we have been in a sense in
a counter-revolutionary epoch, in spite of many of the festivities that have
taken place celebrating the so-called independence in various parts of
Africa and Asia, and in spite of certain foci of liberation. We can say that a
general movement of history in the Third World has been counter to any
direction that one may term independence. This I will illustrate using a
number of criteria. First of all, one can apply the Western bourgeois
measurements of growth rates, although these are very limited and skewed.
One finds that the growth of the Third World economy has failed to keep up
with those norms which have been established by groups such as the
Pearson Commission. Most Third World countries do not get that ratio of
growth in bourgeois economic terms which is supposed to represent their
march forward. Very, very few have achieved the percentages – 6 or 8 per
cent growth rate – which are set by the bourgeois economists as
prerequisites for development. Second, and more important, is the fact that
those criteria, where they are satisfied, do not lead to anything that the
people of the country would call development. Hence the rise of the term
‘growth without development’, which has already become current in the
writings on West Africa.

It has been seen that by using the criteria of GNP (gross national
product) and per capita income, one finds a certain amount of growth
undoubtedly taking place, but when this is examined in any serious detail, it
is proved to be entirely misleading. As long as the local economy is part of
the imperialist world economy, there is still the export of surplus – that is,
the actual export of capital – and the redistribution of wealth within these
so-called developing Third World countries is such that the vast majority of
the people can and do experience an actual lowering of their living
standards while the GNP and per capita income are supposedly rising. A
few economists looking at the problems of economic development are
beginning to apply the simplest of yardsticks by returning to factors such as
housing, food and clothing – the principal elements of man’s existence and
the things that human beings have been striving for from the very onset of
their attempts to deal with the material environment. In Jamaica, for
example, it has been found that the units of housing for the vast majority of
the people have been decreasing; more people are suffering from protein
deficiency than was true of an earlier period; and more people are going
about without shoes or without proper clothing than has been true earlier.
All this in spite of significant increases in GDP (gross domestic product). In
Africa one can readily cite Ivory Coast and Kenya in this respect, for such
growth as shown by the statistical indices in these parts of Africa is not
matched by any increases in the wellbeing of the mass of the population.
The most animus factor undermining attempts to achieve independence
and development in the Third World has been the rise of new forms of
exploitation and domination within the global capitalist economy. One of
them is tourism. It has a nasty history in the Caribbean, particularly in
Cuba, but in more recent times it is becoming very extensive. By 1969,
tourism was one of the biggest economic factors in Tanzania of all places.
Someone observed that, just as in Latin America there used to be ‘Banana
Republics’, so international imperialism was threatening to transform
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania into the ‘Wildlife Republics’. Every effort
was made to attract tourists to look at the animals, and the animals assumed
priorities higher than human beings. Incidentally, it is not at all true that it is
the indigenous people who are responsible for such diminution in the
wildlife population as has occurred in recent years, because groups like the
Maasai have always coexisted with the lions and wild game. And in recent
times, the problem of game conservation is of far lesser magnitude than that

of human development and that of the survival and creativity of peoples of
the region. Certainly, tourism in all its aspects is proving to be one of the
new areas of expansion of the imperialism economy. It is a new way of
confirming the dependence and subjugation of Third World economies,
being seen in its most arrant and vicious forms in the Caribbean territories.
Several islands in the Caribbean have been transformed into backwaters of
the world economy; they are no longer central to the development of the
world economy, because they have lost the priority that they had a long
time ago when Sugar was king. It is a relatively simple task to transform
them into cesspools, which is what the tourism economy is all about.
A more significant aspect of the new trend of domination is that which
economists are calling the ‘branch-plant economy’. It made its impact felt
first in Latin America and then in Asia, and it is slowly beginning to touch
on the African continent. This is a very subtle development, the negative
effects of which remain unperceived for some time, because many people
have been preoccupied with looking at the old forms of the international
division of labor, whereby the underdeveloped countries were allocated
roles connected either with agriculture or with the production of raw
materials in the extractive mineral industry. It was felt by leaders like
Nkrumah when he came to power in Ghana that the answer was to create
industry in Africa. The dichotomy was simply industry versus agriculture or
processing versus the export of unprocessed goods. Now imperialism has
been able to circumvent the criticism that it reduces the Third World merely
to primary production. The international bourgeoisie and their agents have
been able to start ‘industrialization’ of a sort within Third World countries.
Looking at the development plans of every African nation, one finds that a
beer factory will usually figure number one or number two on the list.
Building a beer factory is considered as the first step towards
industrialization. Quite apart from the fact that I don’t know of beer as
having developed any nation, one has to realize the fallacy on which the
claims are based. The underlying notion is that industrialization per se is the
answer to underdevelopment. Therefore, the logic of that argument is that if
the country ceases to import beer and instead develops an import substitute
by making the beer locally, then a step has been made in the direction of
development. This resort to import substitution has characterized a lot of
the development plans of the Third World outside of the really progressive
areas, and what in fact it means is that the capitalist structures in the

metropoles have reached the stage where the export of consumer goods is
no longer really critical, but the export of certain capital in goods is much
more crucial. The capital goods sector has experienced tremendous growth
in the period of colonial exploitation and the period of semi-colonial
exploitation, and there is now an objective necessity for the metropoles to
export these capital goods; namely the plants that manufacture the beer,
cigarettes or even textiles. Of course, the metropole seeks to incorporate
their productive enterprises within the total structure of monopoly capital,
which takes the form of the multinational corporation. The multinational
corporation perceives the advantage of extending its operations into various
other parts of the globe. Today it is not considered opportune merely to
produce in the United States and Germany and to sell abroad. More markets
can be explored by actually setting up the ‘branch plants’ in Brazil, in
Singapore, in Ivory Coast, and so forth.
The movement of contemporary Third World political development
throughout Africa and throughout Asia also shows tremendous
deterioration. Latin America is exceptional only because it had its formal
independence ever since the early nineteenth century, and Latin America
has gone through the kinds of trauma which Africa and parts of Asia are
only now beginning to experience. The dictators and the coups in Latin
America were the butt of jokes even in the colonial world. In the West
Indies, we used to say that if there was no coup in Latin America on a
particular day, it would be announced on the radio as an item of significance
– ‘no coup anywhere in Latin America today’. In Latin America, countries
have perhaps settled down to a pattern of more stable dictatorships, but they
certainly have not in most places begun to tackle the problem of political
stability in terms of the development of their own people. In any event,
what I have to say relates more to Asia and Africa, and I will pick my
examples mainly from Africa and from the Caribbean. In these instances,
constitutional independence took place during the last decade.
Subsequently, we have witnessed the realization of political dependency
and economic dependency in much sharper forms, and of course the two
cannot be separated. It is an allusion to put forward the notion of political
independence without economic independence because politics is about
making choices, and it seems to be incredible that someone should say, ‘We
have no control over our economy but we can make political choices.’

What happened after constitutional independence was of course the rise
of new forms of political manipulation on the part of imperialism.
Deterioration of this independence has been taking place because of a
number of factors. First, under the control of imperialism, Third World
countries have a sort of political vacuum nationally that arises from the fact
that power does not reside locally. The national government of the petty
bourgeoisie has little control over production and is endowed with a very
feeble political base. They of course have police and military forces which
are intended to serve as means of coercion of the population, but nothing
else. An appreciation of these facts is fundamental to an understanding of
the trends towards militarism, because if a political regime is so bankrupt
that it is entirely dependent upon the military, if it has to resort to
authoritarianism, then who is more authoritarian than the army? So, the
army frequently decides to take over the role of governing, rather than
merely being the police force of the civilians in power. We also find that the
petty bourgeoisie in the Third World countries are not as capable as the
bourgeoisie in the metropoles when it comes to playing a certain kind of
political game. They are not capable of granting to their own population
participation in bourgeois democracy, because the colonial situation is
antithetical to any form of democracy – even to bourgeois democracy. The
American bourgeoisie – to use this example – is powerful enough to realize
that it can afford certain forms of bourgeois democracy, unless the stage is
reached where the system is so eroded that they must take to fascist
alternatives. But, normally, the bourgeoisie will of necessity engage the
large middle-class sector and a large segment of the working population in
parliamentarianism, free speech, and the like. In the Third World, this is
seldom possible. The petty bourgeoisie who reside in Accra and in Kingston
and in Singapore cannot afford to have any formal exercise of democracy.
They do not have the power. They do not have the economic base. They are
entirely dependent on two things: first, their external support; and second,
whatever local police forces they can muster. Increasingly, the political
situation in these Third World countries becomes more openly authoritarian.
A striking example has been the regime of Forbes Burham in Guyana. He
began some years ago by trying to convince some folk that he was about
nationalism and even about socialism. To a large extent, he succeeded in the
mystification, but after just a few years, the mask has been removed, and it
is now apparent that Guyana has the makings of a kind of Haitian situation,

given the trend towards the creation of a Ton-Ton Macoute, aiming at
political intimidation and assassinations. This and other indications in most
of Africa and Asia suggest that neo-colonialism is not merely a state but –
like all historical forms – it has its own motion, and both politically and
economically the motion is in a negative direction.
I would like to try and explore some of the difficulties facing politically
progressive groups within Third World territories – groups who analyse the
situation and problems of development and who ask themselves the classic
question, ‘What is to be done?’ How do they function, or how have they
been functioning, and what kinds of projections can be made for the near
and distant future? Using the crude distinction between the political and
economic facets of the problem, I will suggest that the real issue at the
moment – and for the foreseeable future – is not an economic issue but a
political one.
It has already been affirmed that the fundamental nature of the
development problem in the Third World is the relationship with the
metropolitan economies and the nature of dependency, lack of internal
integration, absence of technology, and so on, which are all essentially or
primarily economic phenomena. Nevertheless, we should distinguish
between what may be fundamental – which I think is economic – and what
has a priority. The latter refers to the question of timing and that is where
politics takes precedence. It will be necessary to look briefly at some of the
economic problems, but the emphasis here will be on the political ones.
Progressives residing within Third World countries virtually without
exception now pose the problem of economic development in terms of
‘disengagement’. How do you break with the dominant imperialist system?
This question marks a change from a lot of the preoccupations of a decade
or five years ago, because it has become clear to a minority at any rate that
some kinds of proposed solutions are not solutions at all, but rather an
intensification of the problem. That is to say, solutions by way of aid, by
way of further foreign entanglements, by way of so-called local capitalist
development are not really solutions. An awareness of their insidious nature
springs from a correct historical appraisal of the form of involvement
between, on the one hand, Africa, Asia and Latin America, and, on the
other hand, the European and North American economies plus Japan.
Historically, this involvement has been the determinant of the Third World

countries; and therefore, it becomes odd to suggest that further
involvement, that an intensification of the involvement, would provide a
solution. The solution lies in disengaging and disentangling from the
historical bonds. In other words, if the answer is not in further engagement,
if it is not in aid, if it is not in increasing one’s traditional exports, if it is not
merely in import substitution, then it must lie in terms of rebuilding one’s
economy so that it becomes a logical integrated whole. It must lie in terms
of creating linkages between Third World economies, starting from a
continental base within Latin America and within Africa. It must lie in
rebuilding or regenerating, or starting afresh if necessary, the technological
development of the Third World which has been arrested or which has been
side-stepped in one way or another. These are undoubtedly tremendous
tasks. Certain kinds of solutions are already being indicated but the main
thing is to identify the direction in which one has to investigate. As long as
so many poor economists have been looking at aid theories and at forms of
playing around with devaluing or revaluing currencies or other techniques
which all have as their basis a preoccupation with sustaining links with the
imperialist economy, then for so long we have not been looking at the real
problems and we have not been turning up any valid solutions.
However, before any progressive within the Third World can get down
to working out the economic minutiae, they have to deal with the political
problems. Indeed, the tendency on the part of progressive groups within
these Third World countries to evade the issue of getting at the political
preconditions to economic development is itself a problem of
underdevelopment. In my own days as an undergraduate at the University
of the West Indies, several of us did sit down and try to work out a schema
concerning what the new political economy would look like. There was no
dearth of talk about what society should look like. Many socialists in
Africa, Asia and Latin America have been dealing with that issue for a long
time, but it is only a very tiny minority who have been concerned with
trying to analyse the movement of history as it is subsequently to determine
what action was needed to obtain political leverage. In other words, the
question of power was being avoided, and without that one is only talking
about blueprints which is essentially an occupation for idle bourgeois
philosophers.
With respect to tackling the problem of power, there is required more
detailed social analysis than merely saying that we have, on the one hand,

the enemy who are the metropolitan capitalist, and, on the other hand, the
exploited Third World. We have to make a closer analysis of the types of
society which have been created within the Third World, to enquire as to
what are the potential openings for a struggle to change the situation.
Nationalist movements almost by definition tended to obscure and paper
over the kinds of internal contradictions that existed in their societies, and
when they achieved constitutional independence it very often came as a
shock to realize that the internal contradictions were playing a much more
crucial and determining role than had previously been allocated to them.
Only a small number of progressives in the Third World are exempted from
this stricture. The majority failed to make a clear analysis of the society
which would allow them to locate within their own society the forces of
change and the forces of reaction. The probable reason is that the social
strata existing in Third World countries manifest a variety of forms that
were not necessarily encountered in the metropoles. So the Third World
intellectuals who may have taken a progressive orientation forming from a
Marxist framework still found themselves unable to understand their own
society, to the extent that they failed to distinguish between the tools that
they acquired from abroad and the conclusions that they were introducing
from abroad. This is a very common misconception. Having adopted
Marxism or Scientific Socialism as a framework of analysis, one may or
may not apply it creatively to one’s own environment. Besides, Third World
intellectuals are very fascinated by models, models that were historically
applicable to societies outside of their own. The principal model was Russia
at one time, while later it became China. There are very few who have had
the courage – because it does take a lot of courage and a lot of energy – to
deal with their own situations and to come up with the relevant answers.
One of the Third World social groups readily identified as having its
own peculiarities is the petty bourgeoisie. There is a national bourgeoisie in
India and Brazil, and in parts of Latin America; but it is not a general
phenomenon within the Third World. By and large, the personnel who
control the reins of power undoubtedly adhere to the norms and values of
the bourgeoisie in the metropoles. But they do not control any capital
formations. At best, they own two or three houses, and they own one
Mercedes-Benz plus a Volkswagen, and so forth. But these are not
capitalists. We must formulate a position that allows us to see the
dependency of this class, its roots in the international bourgeoisie and the

peculiarities which develop from that. I myself prefer to portray them as a
stratum within the international capitalist class, a stratum serving that
international capitalist class; and in each situation one has to examine their
particular characteristics, including their behaviour patterns. In Africa and
the West Indies, the petty bourgeoisie display characteristics such as selfhate, because they are usually black men who have a certain white
orientation. They have what is correctly identified as imitativeness and lack
of creativity, which were not characteristic of the European bourgeoisie in
its heyday. The European bourgeoisie was an entrepreneurial bourgeoisie.
In the Caribbean or in Africa the only entrepreneurship that the petty
bourgeoisie are capable of is buying a truck or investing in real estate. They
have neither the capital nor the kind of aggressiveness which is required to
engage in capital enterprise. The point at issue is that progressives within
Third World countries have to confront the problems of development almost
exclusively in relationship to local particularisms. What are the forces
existing in the society and how does one begin to organize to confront the
recognized enemy? How does one begin to reach the masses, who are
essentially peasant masses, with a very small minority of workers in the
traditional (industrial) sense of the word? I would like to reflect briefly on
these questions with regard to one part of East Africa, one where I am
fortunate to possess first-hand or very reliable second-hand information:
Uganda.
Uganda is an intriguing case. In Uganda, under Milton Obote,
progressive groups were in existence and had to make a decision on how to
participate in actualizing Uganda’s development. Looking at their national
society, they saw a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly evident in
the Third World: namely, a government that could not easily be classified as
being either fish or fowl – a government that was making certain rhetorical
statements about socialism, about ‘moving to the left’ – a government that
within the context of African liberation was anti-apartheid, anti-Smith
regime, anti-imperialist in its rhetoric – and therefore a government that one
could not place in the same anti-communist and pro-Western bracket as that
of Malawi’s Hastings Banda or that led by Felix Houphouët-Boigny in the
Ivory Coast. And yet at the same time when these Ugandan progressives
looked at Ugandan society they knew that it was no different from the
society in Ivory Coast or very little different from the society of Malawi.
There was the same continuation of the exploitation of the peasantry in the

Ugandan countryside and the same rapid increase in wealth – in terms of
consumer goods and land – of a small elite. It was an elite that to some
extent had a base in the ‘traditional’, quasi-feudal structures, along with a
new elite of intellectuals, the government officials, the new party officials,
and so on. In effect, Ugandan militants recognized that neo-colonialism was
running rampant within Ugandan society. Any ambivalence on their part
derided from the ambiguity caused by Obote’s preempting of certain
socialist terminology, thus making it difficult for socialists to come out and
completely denounce him. So, the socialists in Uganda began to work out a
strategy for their particular situation.
It was a strategy for immediate political action and it was tantamount to
a strategy of development. They recognized that first they needed to
establish an organization of their own. This is a real problem in Third World
countries, especially where the government is playing games. How does
one establish an organization of one’s own? It appears that there were
groups in Uganda who were concentrating on resolving that problem. At the
same time, they had to decide that they must participate to a certain extent
within the politics of Uganda and within the politics of the ruling party,
Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress (UPC). Some of these individuals were
in fact prepared to run in the elections scheduled by Obote – he had
scheduled a very fancy election where a single candidate was to appear in
about four constituencies simultaneously. The election never materialized
because of the coup. But some of these individuals were prepared to
participate in those elections. Eventually of course, the coup interrupted
this, and Ugandan progressives were then faced with the situation where a
government that was more clearly rightist, a government that was more
clearly neo-colonialist, had come to power.
Some Ugandan militants had predicted the military coup – a testimony
to their insights into their own society – and yet their response to the new
clique was far from uncompromising. Several among them produced
rationalizations which permitted them to associate with a regime that was
more blatantly opposed to the interests of the ‘common man’ in Uganda
than was the case under Obote. Kobode, who was appointed foreign
minister, was previously one of the shining lights of the Uganda Left, and
apparently still retains pretensions to socialism. Only a tiny fragment
denounced the coup and began to take steps which qualify to be called
revolutionary, and which kept in sight the objective of people’s power. Why

did this ineptness, disintegration and collaboration arise on the part of
groups who claimed to perceive the essential lines of solution to their own
development problems? It does suggest a lack of serious analytical
framework, although many of those involved claim to be Marxist. Besides
that, however, lack of self-confidence and a degree of opportunism also
enter the picture. The new situation posed by the Idi Amin takeover1 would
have required the boldness to break completely with the state machinery
and to operate entirely outside of the boundaries of petty bourgeois politics.
Instead, several of the progressives came up with the lame alternative of
‘working within the system’, and fobbed off many revolutionary Ugandan
youth by saying that Amin was amenable to the advice from the ‘Leftists’.
The paradox of progressives seeking to give advice to reactionary
governments is not new. There is a long history of this in Latin America,
because Latin America has had many progressive economists and other
social scientists who spent a lot of time advising the curious governments
that arise in that part of the world. The paradox reveals that from the
viewpoint of groups grappling with the problem of development in the
Third World, the roots of the problem are political, being inextricably
linked with the question of political power.
The Ugandans would seem to have accepted this under Obote and then
to have reneged on their responsibility in this regard subsequent to the coup.
Nevertheless, one does not have to be pessimistic about the outcome. What
is happening in Uganda and other arenas is that contradictions keep
multiplying day by day. The creation of a militaristic or police state itself
polarizes the forces and causes people to react against the regime, if only
for the sake of survival. If, on the other hand, the regime is flirting with
anti-imperialist and socialist ideas without any commitment, then it requires
only a few years before the rhetoric is exhausted and the period of
reckoning begins. Inevitably, behind the facade of pseudo-progressive
assertions, corruption increases and police brutality also. I am not at all
pessimistic about the long-term prospects for liberation and development in
the Third World. The propping up of regimes by imperialism is a short-term
solution. Objective conditions in the Third World are worsening, as I
suggested earlier. The living conditions of the vast majority of people are
deteriorating. That is what will maintain the initiative towards change and
propel the Third World out of the counter-revolutionary phase which arose
after formal independence. Besides there is the factor of racism which is all

pervasive throughout the Third World, which is particularly strong where
black people live in Africa and the Caribbean. It is a unifying factor.
Imperialism has used racism in its own interest, but it turns out to be a
double-edged blade, and the very unity that is engendered among black
people – the unity of common conditions and common exploitation and
oppression – is being turned around as a weapon to be used against
imperialism.
To conclude, perhaps the most important reason for confidence and for
revolutionary optimism – with respect to both the political problem which is
immediate and the long-term economic problem – is that the peoples of the
Third World have not been dehumanized, in spite of everything: in spite of
slavery, in spite of colonialism. The historical record will show that it is the
peoples of the metropoles who have gone through the most dehumanization.
That’s the way it is. Slavery has dehumanized slave masters more than it
has dehumanized slaves. Colonialism has dehumanized the colonialist more
than it has dehumanized the colonial people. The working class in the
metropoles is more confused, more alienated and less in control of their
own destiny than the peasants in the African countryside and the workers
on plantations in the Third World countries. The latter do not have any
crumbs or fruits that have been thrown at them to increase their confusion.
Nor have they been living within a society which assails them on all sides
with a variety of myths that cloud exploitation under the banner of God and
country, and so on. Ultimately, it seems to me that freedom will come from
those who are the most oppressed. Slaves rather than slave masters are the
repositories of freedom; liberation will come from those who are not yet
liberated, and human dignity will be reasserted by those who are not yet
dehumanized.

Q&A
Question: Would you consider the more important problems of imperialism
to be the ones created by neo-colonialism or those belonging to the old
capitalist experience of imperialism?

Answer: The old imperialism is falling apart, one has to be more sensitive
about the new changes. There are very powerful existing areas of old
imperialism as in South Africa, but there the issues are clearly defined.
Whatever the strength of the white minority regimes and of Portuguese
colonialism backed by NATO and by foreign monopoly capital, the stage is
set and armed struggles are already unleashed in those areas. I think it is
easier to mobilize politically where colonialism is open and blatant in the
old-fashioned form.
The new colonialism is sometimes so difficult to decipher that one
might think that one is doing something progressive when in fact one is
really being co-opted by the system. Take nationalization as an example.
There was a time, back in the early fifties, when people who nationalized
were automatically regarded as progressive nationalists and socialists, and
imperialism moved against them to squash them immediately. But now
nationalization has become a technique that can just as well be used by the
enemy, as by progressive Africans, Asians or Latin Americans.
Nationalizing a plant within the context of the international division of
labour and the international allocation of resources could well mean that
production is no more independent than if it had remained in the hands of
foreign enterprises. A joint venture in which the government takes over 51
per cent of the shares may superficially suggest control, while in practice
the 51 per cent comprises the problems of labour management and their 49
per cent comprises the profits. There are all kinds of new techniques that
are being devised by international capital. After all, mosquitos today are
able to cope with the DDT insecticide. Similarly, imperialism has a certain
flexibility, and I think the new forms and adjustments are maybe more
difficult to combat because they are subtle, and there is a time lag before it
can be appreciated that imperialism can also turn retreat into success.
Question: Could you analyse the Tanzanian situation?
Answer: Tanzania is one of the few instances where I think that a nationalist
government, which inherited power at independence, does provide a
framework within which a struggle can be conducted. Both things have to
be recognized: first, that this nationalist government does provide a
legitimate framework for onward development; and second, that a struggle
is nevertheless necessary. One then has to determine what exactly is the

struggle? Who is struggling against whom? What is the alignment of
forces? There is a very useful analysis by a young Tanzanian which is
entitled Tanzania: The Silent Class Struggle. It is a silent class struggle
because it does not take the form of armed struggle. Instead, it takes the
form of a great deal of manoeuvring within the structure between on the one
hand the bureaucracy and the reactionary elements of the petty bourgeoisie,
and on the other hand a much smaller group committed to socialism, who
are attempting very slowly and with a great deal of difficulty to try and
establish some links with the vast majority of the people. Meanwhile, the
workers themselves have to find ways and means of confronting the petty
bourgeoisie. Within this structure, within the idiom of socialism, a struggle
is going on all the time. Many individuals who are justifiably happy about
what is going on in Tanzania sometimes romanticize the situation, because
they do not know how difficult the struggle is and they do not realize that it
is a struggle that has produced not only gains for the working people but
also many setbacks from day to day.
Question: What role is being played by the nationalized sector and by the
trade unions in Tanzania?
Answer: Nationalization is a step in a forward direction. The next issue
becomes the method of running these enterprises. Nationalized industry is a
fairly small sector, because Tanzania is not an industrialized country, but
what goes on within it is significant in ideological and political terms, apart
from the economic implications. A bureaucracy has been developing. This
is not unique; it happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in China, it
happened in Cuba. The bureaucracy has emerged as a social formation
crucial to socialist development – or lack thereof – even where the property
base of an exploiting class has been liquidated. So that is a very real
problem in the nationalized sector. How does one deal with it?
In Tanzania, there has been talk about workers’ control in the factories.
It has never reached the point of workers’ control in practice, but there has
been over the past year a very healthy self-assertion by the workers. This
has not taken place through the trade union, which is virtually defunct.
Workers in their own factories have been reasserting themselves in
Tanzania, particularly since the Tami Guidelines, which Tanzanians refer to
as the Mwongozo. There has been a spate of worker manifestations which

have taken these guidelines as their credo, because the guidelines say that
the country has to create new styles of work, new kinds of relationships
between the party, the government, the officials and the bureaucrats, and the
workers and peasants; and this is getting at the root of the problem of the
rise of a new bureaucracy and its relationship politically and socially to the
rest of the population. Workers in their factories, using Mwongozo as a sort
of article of faith, have been attacking the bureaucracy, have been attacking
the managers and the officials who have been placed over them. Strikes and
work stoppages therefore often mirror, in a small way, the ongoing struggle
between the people who are directly at the production line and those who
are supposedly making policy in the society. That is one facet of this silent
class struggle.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

9
Slavery and Underdevelopment
In evaluating the two connected concepts of slavery and underdevelopment,
the principal emphasis must necessarily be on underdevelopment. Slavery –
as institution, as epoch, as mode of production – acquires its significance in
this formulation from an awareness of the implications of inequality and
dependence in the modern world. Failure to grasp the multiple
manifestations of underdevelopment as a contemporary phenomenon
inevitably leads to an obscuring of the historical issues. Multinational
corporations, management contracts, blockages of technology transfers and
the rise of new dependent class structures in the so-called Third World
provide the logical starting point for historical enquiry. No doubt it is for
this reason that within the field of African studies the most effective
analyses of the development process have been authored by economists,
cultural anthropologists and political scientists, while historians remained
locked within time capsules. It is against the background of the
considerable advance in theoretical and scientific work on
underdevelopment that one might resume in a new way the already longestablished debate on the role of slavery.
The notion of underdevelopment has emerged out of a series of debates.
There have been varying empirical observations from territory to territory
and varying emphases on the constituents of underdevelopment.1 Yet, all
approaches to underdevelopment as a historical process have discerned the
presence of given tendencies towards inequality, backwardness and
dependence. These tendencies are operative at most times, although they
might ultimately be transcended. It is, for instance, observable that
inequality and dependence are self-reinforcing; but a decisive and obvious
exception is provided by the transition from a peripheral role in colonial
North America to the hegemonic position of the US within the

capitalist/imperialist world. Today, the discussion continues – focusing on
potentialities in Brazil, in India, and in other ‘semi-industrialized’ or
‘intermediary’ economies. In terms of modern monopoly capital, it is
preferable to identify the forms of surplus realization and accumulation
without prejudice to the possibility that ‘underdevelopment’ can give way
to ‘dependent development’ in certain sectors of the periphery. These
modifications in the approach to underdevelopment hardly apply to the
period of slavery, since it predates monopoly capitalism. As a premise of
this chapter, underdevelopment will be held to be an integral part of the
development of capitalism on a world scale.2 This is not necessarily selfevident, but the arguments to this effect have been made at such length
elsewhere that they have to be taken as a given in this context.
The expanded reproduction of capital and the creation of a worldsystem involved the realization of surplus and its extraction from all regions
within the ambit of capital. This meant not merely the extension of
economic activity from one continent to another but also the juxtaposition
of several different social formations and modes of production, articulated
in such a way as to secure the dominance of capitalist relations as well as
the transfer of value to the capitalist class in the core areas.3 The search for
greater precision in determining when capitalism became the dominant
mode in Europe is beyond the present exercise and so too is an estimation
of the impact of New World slavery on the emergence of capitalism in
Europe. However, these questions do have relevance to the distinction
between ‘commercial capital’ and ‘industrial capital’ and to that between
commodity production by wage labour and commodity production by
means other than wage labour. These latter issues are directly pertinent to
the role of slavery in the history of underdevelopment in Africa and the
Americas.
The slavery which existed in the Americas between the sixteenth and
the nineteenth centuries coexisted with other modes of production in
Europe, Africa and America. These were articulated to constitute a system
with a capacity for further physical expansion and one which achieved inter
alia the following:
1) the accumulation of capital;
2) new forms of combining and organizing capital;
3) qualitative leaps in the production of technology;

4) the development of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; and
5) a strengthening of the state and other basic social institutions.
Any exploration of the links between slavery and underdevelopment should
seek to assess the contribution of slavery to the lop-sidedness of the above
points. More than that, one needs to be more confident that the contribution
by slavery was essential and unique at decisive junctures.
No scholars have expressed doubt as to the enormous significance of
European overseas expansion and of Atlantic trade in particular. The
stumbling blocks are to be found beyond these innocuous phrases when
attempting to assign weight to slavery and the slave trade.
Africa still receives short shrift in conventional texts on the subject of
Atlantic trade.4 Yet, whenever the subject has been explored, it emerges that
Africa was historically indispensable to the leading class forces in Europe.
The feudal landed classes who participated in overseas expansion would
have been unable to renew themselves (in the form of quasi-feudal
plantations and land grants) and the nascent capitalist class needed the New
World to redress the social balance in the Old. They did so by integrating
the Americas into a network of financial and market relations dominated by
themselves in the metropolitan centres. Africa also helped to extend the
market for cheap European manufactures and to strengthen the techniques
of guaranteeing capital and credit; but, of course, Africa’s key role was as
supplier of labour for which there were no alternatives at the time.
Africa was structurally marginal to the emergent world system of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In strict terms, one could not in fact say
that African societies had become integrated into the world economy.
Wallerstein argues persuasively as follows:
But why Africans as the new slaves? Because Europe needed a source of labor from a
reasonably well-populated region that was accessible and relatively near the region of usage.
But it had to be from a region which was outside its world-economy so that Europe could
feel unconcerned about the economic consequences for the breeding region of wide-scale
removal of manpower as slaves.5

Only rarely did Africa supply values and labour directly to Europe; and
for the most part its linkages were via the American continent. In the apt
terms of Samir Amin, Africa functioned as a periphery of the American
periphery.6 As a periphery of a periphery, Africa was raided rather than

cultivated. The politico-commercial nexus was rather fragile. European
forts changed hands among the different nation states and sometimes fell
under the sway of the local African rulers. The more vulnerable slave
barracoons were in effect tolerated by African authorities; while both the
European and African trading factors on the coast had to be allocated
considerable amounts of commercial credit on mere trust. But the paradox
of structural marginality and immense historical significance also applied
with regard to the impact of the slave trade on Africa itself. Large parts of
the continent supplied labour at a cost to itself which must be measured in
terms of production and physical and social reproduction.
Unfortunately, there has been no appreciable accumulation of new data
to clarify the question of the slave trade within African societies. Available
statistical information was compiled and tabulated as a ‘Slave Trade
Census’ by Philip Curtin. This was hailed in some quarters as indicating
that prior estimates were grossly exaggerated and that consequently one
must scale down considerably conceptions of the destructive effect of
slaving on African society. The Curtin figures were of course oriented
towards the Americas; and he indicated that they could not be held to be
definitive for Africa.7 Give or take their own imperfections, figures for
Africans landed alive in the Americas or even embarked on slave ships
offered no more than a framework in which further extrapolations are
required to approximate numbers lost to African societies and to relate
quantity to quality. This would have called for further regional and general
studies to examine the mechanisms of slave procurement and the indirect
consequences in the demographic, social, economic and political spheres.
One is still left with the necessity to speculate, partly because of the
insufficiency of studies and partly because certain data may well be
irrecoverable.
Surmising or theorizing about the relationship of slaving to African
development may be done plausibly by inferring from general principles or
perversely by hiding behind the supposed lack of proof. Thus, Inikori
contends that a much higher population loss must be inferred from
projections having to do with the removal of Africans in their reproductive
prime. He contends further that the diseconomies in the utilization of a
basic factor of production (labour) meant that even a neo-classical
theoretical approach should logically deduce that the slave trade applied a
brake on African growth and development.8 John Fage, on the other hand,

emphasizes that there is no evidence to suggest that the operations of
slaving caused marked devastation and loss of life; while with respect to the
labour factor, he hypothesizes that
it is even conceivable that it may have been more profitable for some parts of this area [of
West Africa] to have exported the equivalent of its natural growth of population rather than
to have kept it at home.9

No indication is provided by Fage as to the relationship between labour and
development or that between population densities and the social and natural
environment.
I have argued elsewhere at some length with respect to the
underdeveloping tendencies of the slave trade in Upper Guinea and in
Africa as a whole.10 Slavery in the Americas was of course ultimately
responsible for whatever consequences flowed from the Atlantic slave trade
in Africa; but what needs to be recognized is that slave exportation from
Africa was not a system of production comparable to slavery in the New
World or anywhere else in prior epochs. For Africa, the critical activity
centred around the mechanisms for the reduction of human beings into
captives and chattel. These mechanisms reduced or destroyed production, as
has graphically been illustrated by the effects of slave procurement on the
gold mining industry of the Gold Coast in the eighteenth century.11 One
frequently encounters African sayings that people, subjects or hands make
for strength. With relatively low population densities and little laboursaving technology, it followed that labour rather than land was the scarce
factor of reduction – to use the neo-classical formulation. In Marxist terms,
the removal of human beings constituted the removal of the most important
of the productive forces.
Sections of the current scholarly literature continue to affirm that what
took place in Africa was ‘trade’ and that this trade ipso facto contained
developmental potential.12 John Fage argues that ‘in the first place, the
European slave traders were traders, who bought their slaves from coastal
African merchants’.13 More recently, A.G. Hopkins has elaborated on this
theme.14 By insisting that the exchange of human beings for commodities
on the coast comprised trade, the analysis directs attention away from the
mode of acquiring captives.15

It also saves the way for the assumption that trade always benefits both
parties – that is to say, the concept of comparative advantage is accepted
without question. Yet, all recent work on development on a world scale (of
varying ideological perspectives) confirms that ‘unequal trade’ is
entrenched as between developed and underdeveloped countries; and hence
the near-universal appeal for a New International Economic Order. With
regard to slavery, trade and market theories which have no power to explain
the present are invoked to explain the past.
The search for comparative advantage deriving to Africa from the trade
in slaves gives rise to arguments which are both trivial and contrived. For
instance, Hopkins places great store on the African production of food for
provisioning slave ships, as though the quantum would have been greater or
the process more dynamic than in the case of food production to feed the
same Africans for the duration of their lives in Africa. Under colonial rule,
the underdeveloping tendencies persisted for as long as African production
was designed primarily for an external market, while the withdrawal of
manpower as migrant labour has been abundantly illustrated as serving to
enhance backwardness and dependence in which labour is recruited.16 One
of the principal differences between slave trading and colonialism is that the
latter introduced the hegemony of capital within African societies. Slavery
began the destruction of the coherence of African social formations without
offering any alternatives. Colonialism actively pursued the destruction
while counterposing a new coherence of capitalist structures in which
eleven social formations and modes were reconstituted to confirm capitalist
market relations and ultimately wage relations. Slavery began the
incorporation of Africa into the periphery of the world-system without any
notable intrusion of capitalist forms inside Africa itself.
The terms ‘periphery’ and ‘core’ are only rough approximations as
descriptions of parts of the world economy at any given time. It is
acknowledged that there were always gradations of centrality and
importance, so that the American periphery of the slavery era falls into a
category different from that of the African periphery. In the Americas,
slavery undoubtedly constituted one of the modes of appropriation integral
to the capitalist system; and for this reason, the discussion of slavery and
underdevelopment should concentrate on the American sector. The exercise
can usefully be prefaced by an indication of the essential and recurring
features of (capitalist) underdevelopment expressed as laws of motion of

the societies concerned. Clive Thomas offers invaluable insights when he
identifies underdevelopment and dependence as basically involving:
1. the lack of an organic link between domestic resources and domestic
demand; and
2. the divergence between domestic demand and the needs of the broad
majority of the population.17
At this point I will focus on the example of Guyana with the intention of
providing some specificity within the context of the broader study of transAtlantic slavery. The available literature on West Indian slave plantations
has usually found little difficulty in fitting Guyana into the main
generalizations covering the region. In Guyana, as elsewhere, sugar seemed
inevitably to go hand in hand with slavery. For all practical purposes, the
strip of coastland which circumscribed the slave plantations of Guyana in
the eighteenth century was another small island where the master–slave
relationship was almost exclusive. Production in Guyana was subject to the
same colonial and market constraints as were characteristic of the West
Indian islands.
Yet, Guyana did have its peculiarities. It was not a small island in which
continuous sugar growing had exhausted the cultivable soils before or soon
after slavery ended; nor was it debt-ridden and burdened by multiple
mortgages by the turn of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, the soils
were not easily exhaustible and there was no question about the economic
viability of the slave-based sugar industry on the eve of emancipation. The
relatively large plantation units were well capitalized and, with the aid of
compensation payments, the industry survived the first major market crisis
of the equalization of UK sugar duties in 1846. Above all, Guyana had a
substantial hinterland which set it off from the West Indian islands. There is
every reason to investigate why a large continental area remained a colonial
enclave during and after slavery.
Guyana had large areas of living space which were not occupied by
slave plantations. In these thinly populated areas, the prior communal
modes of the Amerindians persisted – albeit deformed under the pressure of
European conquest and colonization. Slave plantations were established on
the littoral from which the indigenous Amerindian population had been
cleared. But the frontier was static and there was no expansion of capitalist

relations or transplanted peoples into the hinterland. Among the
characteristics of Guyanese underdevelopment one notes the incomplete
inventory and exploitation of hinterland resources and the limited nature of
new settlements. These features were marked during the heyday of slavery
and are to be attributed to the political economy of slavery.
Slavery required secure conditions for the reproduction of slave labour
after that labour had been introduced. The problem of runaways varied in
acuteness depending mainly on the environment. The forested areas of
Guyana offered conditions no less favourable to runaways than did
Suriname and Brazil. In the period of Dutch ascendancy, intermingling
between Amerindians and Africans produced the mixed ‘Boviander’
communities which were highly rebellious and constituted poles of
attraction for runaways. This was the experience of the seventeenth century
when small slave plantations were established on the middle and upper
reaches of the Guyanese rivers. After the Dutch resolved upon coastal
agriculture in the mid-eighteenth century, the Guyanese economy turned
away from the hinterland. Even the necessary activity of slaves ‘aback’,
such as cutting palm leaves for thatch, was considered dangerous since it
facilitated escape.18 The enslavement of distant Amerindian ethnicities and
the importation of Africans on a large scale were compatible with the
maintenance of friendly relations between European slave owners and the
neighbouring Amerindian communities. Indeed, the latter were then
prevailed upon to undertake certain police functions in apprehending and
returning escaped slaves. The choice of the coastlands for the development
of slave plantations was premised upon ecological factors; but, having been
made, this choice was reinforced by the demand of the slave system for
security – to the prejudice of interior development.
Slavery arrived full-blown on the Guyanese coast, attracting both Dutch
and English capital and settlers already in the Caribbean. There was no
question of replacing independent small producers by slaves and the rise of
such cultivators was inconceivable once the slave plantation held sway. The
plantation system continually sought to exercise monopoly over land and
labour, a feature which was perceptible only after slavery ended. Although
Guyanese history is badly under-researched, it has recently been served by
two scholarly texts which address themselves to the plantations after
slavery. Both confirm the perverse role of the plantation owners in seeking
to hold on to all cultivable land and in providing disincentives to any

alternative economic ventures which would reduce planter dominance over
the labour market.19 Even a casual examination of the slavery era shows
that these tendencies were most pronounced and that it was the slave-based
plantation which was the principal stumbling block to hinterland
development and to the balanced development of the economy.
The dependent slave economy failed to utilize resources which were
readily at hand within the domestic environment, while relying on the
import of goods which could have derived from these same resources. The
buildings of the coast were made from wood, but for the most part that
wood was not cut from the forests of Guyana. The same could be said for
the furniture within the houses. It was not until the 1850s that the export of
greenheart was established and several more decades passed before there
was a local timber industry seeking to fulfill local demands. As late as
1902, the administration was unable to answer a query from the Colonial
Office as to the existence of particular woods. On that occasion, the
governor observed: ‘It is clearly unsatisfactory that we should be without
complete and suitable specimens of all the woods of this Colony.’20
The spectacle of importing North American white pine into a forested
colony was startling enough; but the policy towards the gold industry is
more striking still. In spite of the El Dorado legend and the tremendous
stimulus provided by the search for gold in the Americas, the gold industry
in Guyana was pursued with a remarkable lack of vigour. African slaves
and Bovianders had mined gold under the direction of the Dutch in the mideighteenth century. After the move to the coastal plantations, Dutch planters
were apparently so fearful of any competition to their plantation labour
supplies that they closed gold mining operations completely. Nothing was
revived until exploration resumed in 1864; and in the 1880s Guyanese were
still rediscovering that the territory had alluvial gold. At that point, the
planter class was reluctant to release public funds to advance the gold
industry. Their command over public policy and the public treasury was
unchallenged during the epoch of slavery, and this ensured that slavery had
profound effects in vitiating the links between production and resource base
in the Guyanese situation.
Underdevelopment is a form of development – dependent and
asymmetrical, but development nonetheless within the socio-historical
context of the capitalist world system. The slave plantations of Guyana

transformed the coastlands from thinly inhabited marshland to productive
plantation zones. This was a development of resources hitherto underdeveloped by the sparse settlements of communally organized Amerindians
who were farming, fishing and hunting. While contributing to the
burgeoning growth of the capitalist cores, slave plantations imposed
constraints on extending capitalist relations within Guyana itself.
Discussion on the precise relationship of slavery to capitalism has advanced
beyond the polarization of slavery as either capitalist or non-capitalist. It is
self-evident that slavery stood in the way of the commoditization of labour
and yet the internal hierarchical structure of the slave plantation was
significantly influenced by capitalist forms in Europe. At all times, slavery
remained independent on the markets, financial infrastructure and
technology of the world capitalist centres.
Hindess and Hirst seek to abstract the essence of slavery in the
Americas as follows:
It is a mode of production subordinated to the capitalist mode of production within the
international division of labour and the world market created by capitalism. The conditions
of reproduction of the Slave Mode of Production under these circumstances depend upon the
capitalist system; upon world demand for the commodities it produces, competing regions
and methods of production, alternative sources of investment, etc.21

Paula Beiguelman simply and effectively defines modern (New World)
slavery as ‘capitalist slavery’;22 while Clive Thomas emphasizes another
crucial dimension when he designates it as a ‘colonial slave mode of
production’, given the fact that colonialism became ‘the mediatory structure
through which the influences of emerging capitalism in Europe were
transmitted’.23 There is a wide area of agreement that slavery was an
essential component of peripheral capitalism and that as such it could not
develop enough internal momentum to ensure that its surpluses were used
for the development of capitalism in a territory such as Guyana.
For sugar, there was only one market, which lay more often than not in
a single metropolitan centre. The nature of surplus realization imposed a
relentless dependency on the planter class vis-à-vis the metropoles.
Dependency is a colonial characteristic; but it must be noted that slavery in
the colonies was bound to be heavily dependent because the slave economy
stood no chance of creating an internal market. The tied market was also the
source of capital and credit. Commercial and financial institutions were

never autonomous within Guyana. Technology, too, was externally derived
and there was little room for innovation or even adaptation of the type
which could be termed developmental. Improvements to factory technology
were very slow in coming to Guyana, while field husbandry remained
wedded to the utilization of heavy inputs of cheap labour. In his unique
study of Cuban sugar technology, Manuel Moreno Fraginals makes it clear
that the major force in inducing growth in eighteenth-century Cuba was
more manpower and slavery – in contrast to metropolitan capitalism –
which lacked the dynamic to constantly revolutionize production
methods.24
These remarks are also applicable to Guyana. There was a proliferation
of artisan skills on the Guyanese slave plantations and there were slaves
who mastered the boiling of the sugar; but, of course, they were not
exposed to scientific principles or experimentation. Besides, sugar
technology was industry-specific and confirmed the mono-cultural
dimension of the economy. The slave planters pursued policies which made
it impossible for other branches of economic activity to be established and
they were able to create barriers to the free entry of capital into agriculture,
industry and distribution.
The legal essence of slavery – ownership and legal coercion – and its
political expression in a narrow planter-controlled state both contributed to
holding back development in Guyana. The local state institutions under
planter management were weak in their relation to the external world but
they were powerful instruments in the hands of the masters for use against
the slaves. The plantocracy was given free rein in its domestic policies.
Without a domestic market and forms of petty commodity production,
intermediary strata were extremely weak and closely tied to the planter
class. Obviously, slavery stood in the way of the emergence of a wageearning proletariat, but in addition it also inhibited the growth of other
classes and strata associated with the maturation of capitalism in the
metropoles.
Initially, reference was made to the necessity to premise the evaluation
of slavery on contemporary underdevelopment. It is, however, just as
important to pursue the historical enquiry into the post-slavery decades of
the nineteenth century, where continuity and change gave meaning to
previous trends.

For nearly 100 years, sugar planters bitterly resisted the creation of a
free labour market as implied by emancipation. They succeeded (with
metropolitan backing) in importing indentured labour from various sources
and in having that labour force heavily subsidized from state revenues.
Briefly in 1848 and then systematically from 1846, the planters organized
large-scale state-aided immigration from India. Until the last indentureship
terminated in 1921, planters maintained a strategic section of the labour
force on fixed wages and contracts outside the labour market. Their efforts
were directed against the emergence of a proletariat which could make
industrial and social demands on the owners of capital. Inevitably, the free
section of the labour force found its initiatives frustrated by the immense
control which planters wielded over indentured workers and hence the ease
with which those workers were deployed to break the unity of workingclass struggle. Interestingly enough, planter resistance against the
commoditization of labour was spearheaded in the late nineteenth century
by plantation companies which were an integral part of the new monopoly
forms of the imperialist era.
The post-slavery plantations also showed a determination to retain a
monopoly over land and to keep agricultural land in particular from coming
onto the market. The conditions of tenure of the ‘frontlands’ of the coastal
strip were such that each estate had an automatic option on the ‘backlands’
of potential polder husbandry. Until these options were taken up, the land
belonged to the Crown, as did the forests and savannahs of the interior.
Planters moved quickly to raise the price at which Crown land could be sold
to a prohibitive level and to restrict the terms under which it could be
leased. These measures blocked non-plantation capitalist development of
the land and they militated severely against the emergence of a peasantry.
Nevertheless, it is equally important to recognize that the planter
monopoly over land and labour was breached in the nineteenth century and
that growth and development registered in the post-slavery epoch were due
precisely to the small ways in which that monopoly had been successfully
challenged. Ex-slaves immediately assumed the role of a modern proletariat
in presenting their own terms for wages and conditions of work. They did
not make a great deal of headway in the face of state-aided indentured
immigration, but their wage level was usually slightly higher than that of
indentured bondsmen whose rate of one shilling per day remained
unchanged from 1838 to 1921. African exslaves moved into a variety of

occupations in the villages and towns and to some extent in the hinterland
also. Their first objective was not to escape from estate employment, but
they at least supplemented estate earnings by functioning part-time as
artisans and in petty commodity self-employment of one sort or another.
Ex-indentured Indians, Chinese and Madeirans took similar routes. One
infers from all this the extraordinary importance of legal coercion in the
slavery epoch. Recent research has firmly concluded that it was the
plantation structure that was the key element in underdevelopment in
Guyana.25 This should be modified, and the emphasis shifted to the slave
mode of production – colonial and capitalist – with which the plantation
was first associated. The plantation remained a factor inducing
backwardness mainly to the extent that legal extra-economic extraction of
surplus did continue after slavery; but the new situation lacked the
comprehensiveness of slavery and was slowly undermined by wage labour.
Former slaves and ex-indentured workers were able to express their
own demands for goods and services. Their demand created an internal
market for land and houses as well as for food, clothing and other consumer
items. The immediate post-slavery activities of Africans in Guyana have
long been a subject of scholarly attention, but misapprehensions still
prevail. In general, the first postemancipation decade is presented as the era
in which ex-slaves fled the plantations and set themselves up as peasants in
the villages.26 This simplifies and virtually inverts a reality in which
Africans were still primarily sugar workers but had withdrawn their
residence from estate housing and were making strident demands to support
their conception of a tolerable standard of living – demands which included
higher wages, education and access to cultivable land for those who wished
to become full-time or part-time agricultural producers for local
consumption. Distribution and other service sectors expanded because of
these post-slavery trends, and intermediary classes began to make their
presence felt.
However slow hinterland development may have been in the nineteenth
century, it was only possible because of the energy released by
emancipation. As wage earners and as petty entrepreneurs, former
plantation workers were responsible for the growth of the timber and
mining industries. When the middle strata acquired a small economic base
outside the direct control of the plantation, they also started to challenge the
political hegemony which restricted their further growth. A new

Constitution in 1891 was the consequence of protracted ‘populist’ agitation
on the part of all strata outside the planter class. Legislators were thereafter
elected on a slightly widened franchise, and they were persuaded to remove
some of the stumbling blocks towards the acquisition of Crown land,
towards the establishment of a peasant-based rice industry and towards the
development of a gold and diamond mining industry. Once more, the role of
the state serves to emphasize the historical significance of the political
exclusiveness which necessarily went along with slavery in Guyana and
wherever slavery was not merely one institution but the basis of peripheral
capitalism in any given territory.
Because New World slavery was a colonial phenomenon, it is
sometimes difficult to separate the specific consequences of slavery from
those which accrued from colonialism. The evidence on Guyana seems to
support the conclusion that underdeveloping tendencies can uniquely be
identified with slavery. First, when they relate to the central fact that labour
was not a commodity and to the absence of efforts to achieve this – in
contrast to primitive accumulation when indigenous pre-capitalist societies
were colonized in Africa and Asia. And second, when the tendencies stem
from the monopoly over land and labour in the hands of slave owners, who
placed restraints on the development of other forms of private property.
This again falls short of being a common feature of colonialism per se. The
colonial state – in the history of capitalism – guaranteed slavery or migrant
labour or peasant production, depending upon the mode of labour
appropriation which evolved. But the colonial slave state was more
monolithic than others because there were no competing class interests
which had to be reconciled at the level of the state and because
uncompromising authoritarianism was necessary to reproduce the
relationship between master and slave.

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III
Their Pedagogy and Ours
This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

10
The British Colonialist School of
African Historiography and the
Question of African Independence
Views on African independence can be divided into three major categories,
as follows:
1. The colonial rulers, out of goodwill, granted independence, for which
Africans had previously been given the necessary training.
2. The African people, through mass nationalist parties, wrested political
independence from the colonizers through struggle.
3. With malice and deep strategy, the colonial powers themselves
promoted the handover of the trappings of sovereignty, so that African
independence meant false decolonization.
In terms of intrinsic merit, the second and third categories above are of
much greater importance than the first, because they reveal more about the
historic processes which they set out to explain and they contribute more to
an understanding of ‘the present as history’. One embarks on a critique of
the colonial-goodwill training school mainly because the view is
widespread and still in the ascendant in certain quarters. Besides,
chronologically speaking, it was the earliest view; and the others cannot be
fully comprehended without contemplating their relationship to the
colonialist position.
Two principal protagonists have been selected here to represent British
colonial writing on this subject: namely, Sir Alan Burns and Lady Margery
Perham. In the opening sentence of his book, Colonial Civil Servant, Sir
Alan Burns announced, ‘I was practically born into the Colonial Civil

Service. My grandfather and my father were both members of that Service.’
As a former governor of Gold Coast and Nigeria, and as a high-ranking
official in the Colonial Office itself, Sir Alan Burns is an unimpeachable
spokesman for British colonialism.
Lady Margery Perham is well known as a friend of the Colonial Office.
She was for many years the most active ‘Africanist’ at Oxford, offering
courses to Colonial Office civil servants, as well as training the present
generation of colonist-minded fellows at Oxford who write on African
history.
Independence and nationalism came to Africa as European imports, so
they tell us. African peoples previously lacked all common elements of
nationalism, except common territory; and the requisite ingredients were
provided by the presence of the colonizing powers. According to Margery
Perham, African nations now owe to Europe the form of their existence as
nation states. In effect, the argument suggests that both formal and informal
education given by the British brought to Africa the ideas of freedom and
democracy and the conception of the nation state. Margery Perham notes
that schools in British colonies taught ‘the assertion of liberties from Magna
Carta to the Reform Act of 1832 and beyond’.1
Nationalism is a sense of common identity that arises as human groups
seek to resolve the basic contradiction between man and nature. It is a
definition of the in-group, as against all competitors in the struggle for
scarce resources. Nation states grew up in Europe, Asia and Africa. What
was Ethiopia other than a nation state? And what about Egypt long before
colonial rule? Several African states destroyed by colonialism were as large
as and often larger than the succeeding territories arbitrarily defined by
Europeans. Even if, for the sake of argument, one were to deny that states
like those of the Zulu, the Baganda, the Asante and the Mandinga under
Samori Touré were not nations, it would be impossible to deny that they
were ‘nationalities’ at an advanced stage of evolution towards nationhood
per se. They were at least comparable to Ireland and Ukraine in the
nineteenth century; and they had more people sharing a common culture
than many microstates in Europe, Africa and Latin America at the present
time.
What European colonialism provided was a new context for nationalism
in Africa, after having destroyed the old. The boundaries drawn at Berlin
became in most instances the borders of the new African nations of our

time, because reaction against colonial administrations dictated the form of
African nationalism. There is a vast difference between form and substance.
Another extravagant assertion of the colonial-goodwill-training school
is that Africans were taught ‘freedom’, or (more modestly) ‘the democratic
freedoms’. Sir Alan Burns states categorically that ‘the Sudan, under
Anglo-Egyptian condominium, owes everything – including independence
– to British tutelage.’2 Do the concepts of freedom and independence really
involve tuition and learning? It has aptly been pointed out that throughout
history, there is no evidence of any individuals or groups being against the
idea of freedom, though there are countless numbers who have been against
the freedom of others. Claiming freedom on behalf of the people of
Tanganyika at the United Nations in 1956, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere spoke
of freedom in terms of ‘a natural call, a call of the spirit, ringing in the
hearts of all men, and of all times, educated or uneducated, to rebel against
foreign domination’. He was then making a reference to the great Haji Maji
wars by the people of southern Tanganyika against the Germans; and the
thesis can be amply illustrated by the wide-ranging African resistance to the
imposition of colonial rule in the last two decades of the nineteenth century
and the first decade of the twentieth.
With respect to ‘democratic freedom’, one can say that the issue is much
narrower than that of relaxing to ‘freedom’. Liberal or bourgeois
democratic freedoms are a specific set of civil rights which emerged at a
particular period in the history of capitalist Europe. Leaving aside the
question of how far those rights were implemented in practice in Europe
itself, it is certainly true that African leaders articulated African demands
for freedom in the terminology of bourgeois democracy. Here again, what is
at issue is the form of the demands. And, even at that superficial level, one
must be careful to notice the sleight of hand by which the dialectical
opposite of a particular position is presented as conscious policy. The
British taught those who emerged as nationalist leaders with the purpose of
facilitating exploitation, not so that they would advance the cause of
African freedom. British colonialism in Africa produced Nkrumah, Kaunda
and even Banda (of anti-federation fame) in spite of and not because of
British colonialist intentions.
At one point in her analysis of African and Indian nationalism, Margery
Perham comments on the ideas of nationalist leaders as follows: ‘Like other
weapons turned against the West, they have been purloined from the West.

And the ideal of democratic freedom and an almost indefinable sense of
moral obligation towards the weak, have been learned very largely from
Britain herself.’
That statement is redolent with bourgeois and colonialist assumptions,
confusion and deceit. In the first place, the bourgeois notion of private
property is extended to political and moral standards and the ideal of
democracy. They have been taken out of patents for those aspects of the
universal striving of man, and the Africans have come by them only
through theft – that is, ‘purloined’. But, in the very next breath, the Lady
says that the ideas were ‘learned’, thereby reintroducing the duality of
teaching/learning and the implication that it was a conscious handing over
on Britain’s part.
Indirect rule is a topic much favoured by British colonialist historians.
Sir Alan Burns calls indirect rule ‘local government’ and claims that
‘indirect rule is an excellent school in which the difficult art of selfgovernment can be learned’. Whatever indirect rule was, it was not training
in self-government, because power and responsibility was always in the
hands of the colonizers. Indeed, it marked the termination of the exercise of
political power by the African people or by strata of the African population
on behalf of others. In its northern Nigerian form and other variations,
indirect rule was a tool of convenience for governing Africa cheaply and
with the minimum of effort. It is quite incredible that it should be
interpreted as one of Britain’s gifts of backward Africa, and as offering the
training that would lead to independence.
It might appear more plausible to suggest that the legislatures which
were set up in the colonies offered training for independence. Legislative
councils allowed for a few nominated Africans, and later on for a few
elected African representatives. Undoubtedly, the few learned about
Westminster procedure and about when bills went into committee, when
they had their second reading, and so on. But, that is hardly enough grounds
for concluding that the legislative councils were the ‘educational prototype
of centralized parliamentary government’, to use the words of Margery
Perham. Up until the time that internal self-government was constitutionally
made possible, all other legislative experiments wore variations on the
theme of metropolitan domination via the governor of the colony. The basic
question is whether Africans were participating in the exercise of power and
responsibility, to which the answer is ‘no’.

All colonial constitutions stressed the ‘reserve’, ‘paramount’ or
‘overriding’ powers of the governor, thus guaranteeing that African
members would be frustrated, in the few instances where honest and
courageous African nationalists were permitted to enter.
In its extreme form, the colonial-goodwill-training thesis amounts to the
assertion that colonialism from the outset was consciously liquidating itself.
Sir Alan Burns implies this by observing that in the very process of
colonizing Africa, Britain was ‘bringing under its protection backward
peoples and leading them towards civilisation’. With reference to Nigeria,
he wrote that ‘we are in Nigeria merely as trustees for the people, and it is
our business to train them as rapidly as possible for self-government.’
A writer who claims that British education in the colonies was
education for freedom and that indirect rule was practice in the art of selfgovernment, should also maintain that Britain was planning decolonization
virtually from the word ‘go’. In that regard, Burns maintains consistency, at
the price of holding the laughable view that the British conquered only so as
to plan decolonization. Margery Perham is more cautious and less
consistent. When it comes to timing the moment when imperial Britain
decided on the policy on self-government as a possibility, she moves much
closer to the end of the colonial period.
If admittance of Africans to the legislative councils was part of the
preparation for self-government and independence, then the timing of
Britain’s goodwill-training programme should at least date from the 1920s.
However, Perham concedes that colonial administration hardly got under
way properly until the 1930s, and it was not until after the Second World
War that Britain began to timetable independence. ‘The war had subtly
changed Britain’s attitude, though the authorities hardly knew it until faced
with the decision’, she writes. So now we know that there was a change
post-1944, that there could not therefore have been a previous policy to
contemplate independence, and that even after 1944 this change does not
become effective until the colonial authorities were faced by ‘the decision’:
namely, what to do with the great African and Asian humanity which said
‘enough’ to colonial overlordship.
In parts of her work, Perham unreservedly admits that ‘anti-colonialism
and anti-imperialism represents the latest phase in the reaction of the rest of
the world against the long domination of the West.’ She concedes the basic
desire for freedom on the part of all peoples, and actually uses the term

‘regaining of independence’ with reference to the movement for African
sovereignty in the late fifties. A reading of several texts from this British
colonial historiographical school shows the same ambivalence and
inconsistency. On the one hand, there are the vague and far-reaching claims
to British uniqueness in preparing Africans for independence or selfgovernment from a very early date. On the other hand, when more specific
statements are made, they never mention a date earlier than the post-war
epoch as the point when conscious policy came into being; and (on a lower
key) they admit that the initiative for change came from the colonized
peoples.
Sir Arthur Creech-Jones, as secretary of state for the colonies in 1948,
put forward the first public policy statement to the effect that the central
purpose of British colonial policy was to guide the colonial territories to
responsible self-government within the Commonwealth. That statement is
often cited by the British colonialist school of historiography under
discussion, and Perham places considerable emphasis on the role of the
Labour Party in that respect. With the experience of India, Ceylon and
Burma behind them, British policymakers had apparently anticipated the
goal of eventual African self-government within the Commonwealth and
the rapid and full constitutional independence which actually came to
Africa. It is the contention here that the nature and degree of independence
and the timing of that eventually as conceived by some British
policymakers in 1948 were all significantly different from what did occur in
the years to follow.
The most dramatic testimony that Africans rather than the British were
the ones who set the main patterns of constitutional change in the 1960s is
provided by the remarks of colonial officials right up to the eve of those
changes – remarks showing blissful unawareness that the end of
colonialism was in sight. Burns addressed a seminar of colonial officials at
Oxford in 1947, in the capacity of governor of the Gold Coast. He began as
follows:
I have been asked to speak to you this morning on the future of the Colonial Service as I
think it must develop if it is to meet the growing demands that will be made on it during the
next twenty or thirty years … There have even been suggestions that our Empire is coming
to an end, that our colonies are now anxious and ready to stand by themselves, and there will
shortly be no more need for a Colonial Civil Service. I don’t believe it.

Virtually all the statements that Britain was actively contemplating
granting African self-government from the latter part of the 1940s are made
with hindsight by the writer faced with the reality of independent Ghana
and other comparable changes. For instance, Sir Charles Jeffries explained
in 1960 that ‘the writing was on the wall’ in the Gold Coast in 1947, but he
confessed that he did not see it, and he justified his own lack of perception
as being part of a general phenomenon. He notes that Martin Wight, an
‘expert’ on colonial constitutions, had written in 1947 that the Gold Coast
Constitution of 1946 would last for decades! So, while Wight, Jeffries,
Burns and Creech-Jones were contemplating self-government perhaps at the
end of this century, the people of the Gold Coast came out on the streets in
1948 and upset those plans. The same picture can be obtained for other
colonial territories which later played very dynamic roles in the
independence struggle. Sir Hugh Foot said of Nigeria: ‘In 1945 many
people thought that the most Nigeria could hope for was a continuation of
paternal administration, a few decades of marking time, at most a slow and
steady development of the policy of indirect rule.’
With hardly any exceptions, the British colonial historians would join
Perham in acknowledging that the nationalist movements developed with
‘unexpected speed and power’. This is explained away by the colonialgoodwill training school as something that did not contradict the substance
of British plans but was ‘merely a matter of timing’. However, that is a very
frail rationalization, because the rate of change was so drastically affected
by the efforts of the colonized that in effect the guide was being led. It
would be naive and anti-historical to overlook the role of the colonizers in
the last years of colonialism.
Governors like Arden-Clarke, Renison, Turnbull and Hugh Foot
presided over the dissolution of the British Empire with unquestioned skill;
but it is certainly questionable whether they led or guided towards
independence, as distinct from compromising with a reality that had outrun
expectations.
A great deal usually hinges on the example of the rise of Ghana out of
this Gold Coast colony. It is there that one can pinpoint the earliest plans
and reactions of British colonialism faced with African nationalism. Events
in Ghana up to 1957 cannot be measured in exactly the same way as events
leading to the independence of Lesotho in 1966 or even to that of Uganda in
1962 or Sierra Leone in 1961, because the later stages of the process gave

the colonizers much more time to readjust and resume the initiative. The
detailed history of the Gold Coast from 1947 to 1957 is one of British backpeddling on the specific issue of constitutional independence. It was rioting
by working elements that led to the Coussey Commission; ‘SelfGovernment Now’ meant a great deal more than eventual self-government;
and the leap from self-government to independence was also, from the
British viewpoint, a major concession. The sequence of events is
incompatible with the notion that the process reflected the central purpose
of British colonial policy.
British colonialist historians consistently propose the most disinterested
of motives as lying behind British colonialism in Africa. In their
interpretations of British decolonization, they merely assert the factor of
goodwill, and never contemplate the possibility of self-interest. Thus,
Margery Perham writes:
Nowhere, except in the regions of white settlement, did Britain even attempt to refuse the
demand once her government was convinced of its strength. The problem was essentially
one of timing. With her stands of efficiency and her sense of obligation to minority groups,
British governments wanted to see the transfer of power carried out by gradual and orderly
stages.

A reconsideration of the supposedly philanthropic reasons for colonizing
Africa would automatically weaken the credibility of this line of argument,
and whatever little remains would disappear in the face of British
manoeuvers during that period when Africans were pushing for
independence. Why were so many African nationalism leaders jailed? What
about the attempts to interfere with the character of the regimes that would
rule the independent African states? Without going into the details, one can
cite Zanzibar as a blatant example of the way in which the British tried to
manipulate the granting of independence so as to frustrate the will of the
African majority and leave local power in the hands of a trusted Arab elite.
British colonialists withdrew only when faced with a challenge, they beat a
strategic retreat in the light of their own interests, seeking to preserve as
much as was possible. That was entirely natural, and is to be expected in
any such political situation. It needs to be argued only because certain high
priests have suggested otherwise.
British colonialist writers on the period of decolonization in Africa
invariably refer to the notions of ‘mandate’, ‘trusteeship’, ‘welfare’ and
‘development’ as being integral to the purpose of colonial rule. Some of the

actors in the colonizing drama had made such claims from the outset –
notably, Livingston, in his emphasis on Christianity and commerce, and
Lord Lugard, in his thesis on Dual Mandate. However, it was not until after
the last war that policy statements consistently included the welfare of
Africans as one of the motivations of colonial rule, coinciding with the
establishment of Colonial Development and Welfare (C.D. & W.). Sir Alan
Burns adds this concern of the British for African economic independence
to the list of other noble motives. In 1957, he asserted that:
The avowed British Policy is today, as it has been for many decades, to lead all dependent
territories up to self-government, and in the meantime to teach the peoples of the countries
concerned the difficult art of governing themselves, and to improve the economic condition
of each territory so that it may be able to face the future unaided.

The C.D. & W. fund is generally projected by writers of this school as
Britain’s contribution to the socio-economic welfare of the colonies and to
their economic self-sufficiency. But C.D. & W. loans were not intended to
make the colonies more independent, nor did they accidentally achieve that
end. The loans were meant to develop certain social services and
infrastructure in the colonies, so as to maximize their potential within the
imperial context. The French were doing the same with their fund, and so
both operations were following the line of thought advanced most cogently
by the colonial minister, Albert Sarrault, in 1914 – the policy of mise en
valeur or economic maximization of the potentiality of the colonies in the
interests of the metropoles. Britain and France made no bones about the fact
that the colonies were required to bail the metropoles out of the desperate
post-war economic situation. To a considerable extent, the colonies did
serve that purpose. Discerning Africans saw the whole C.D. & W. scheme
as a fraud, having nothing to do with African development and a great deal
to do with the welfare of Europe; but, in any event, none of its British
planners ever asserted more than the aim to develop both the colonies and
British in terms of their continued association. Economic development for
political independence was never raised as an issue.
Undoubtedly, no nationalist movements in Africa so far as advanced to
constitution and juridical independence entirely through armed struggle –
not even Algeria. Apart from Algeria and perhaps Kenya, it cannot be said
that violence was the dominant element within any one colony. Yet, in spite
of all that, it is misleading to characterize the independence movements as
non-violent. The emphasis on non-violence overlooks the fact that the

concept of violence in any operational sense includes also the threat of
violence and the example of violence; and, within the colonialist camp,
additional confusion is deliberately generated to obscure the fact that
colonialism was violence in a form hardly less distilled than slavery.
Colonialism was violently imposed on Africa, and it was violently
maintained. Land-grabbing was violence, forced labour was violence, tax
collection was violence. Certain juridical fictions emanating from the
colonizing power placed only the briefest of lion-clothes to cover the
nakedness of violent colonial oppression. If the colonized exposed the legal
fictions of ‘law and order’, then there was the Riot Act and the colonial
police. If the local forces were inadequate, then a troop-carrying gunboat
was forthcoming. In spite of all that, there was a pattern of violence in the
colonies, stemming from worker and peasant actions such as strikes and
boycotts. There were enough of those in the inter-war years and in the postwar epoch to make the colonialist extremely apprehensive.
Nationalists and anti-colonialists inside and outside the African
continent naturally draw attention to the evidence of that African resistance
against European exploitation which took the form of strikes and violent
demonstrations. However, colonialist historians, and especially those with
administrative backgrounds, were well aware of the same phenomena.
Burns dedicated a chapter in his Colonial Civil Servant to ‘Wars and Riots’.
He noted the seriousness of the Egba Rebellion in western Nigeria in 1918
and of the Aba women’s riots in eastern Nigeria in 1929. He admitted that
the ‘Gold Coast has a bad reputation for wars and civil disturbances, some
of which were against the alien government’. He was acting-governor of
Nigeria in 1942 when the trade unions mobilized against the government;
and he went on the air to broadcast a typical governor’s appeal for
‘reasonableness’ and ‘loyalty’ while promising that he must do his ‘duty’ if
anyone dared to go on strike. The increasing intensity of such strikes and
confrontations after the war must have necessarily entered into British
calculations as to how long unadulterated colonialism could last.
The winning of constitutional independence in any given African
territory has to be correlated with winning of independence everywhere else
on the continent and in Asia, so as to determine to what extent the so-called
peaceful handover of power was really peaceful and was due to the
goodness of the colonizers, and to what extent it was an option forced on
them by examples of violence in particular colonies and by the threat of

violence implicit in any nationalist movement which had shaped the people
into a single resolute force. It is, for example, palpably obvious that the
French learned from defeats in Vietnam that they should quit the whole of
Indochina ‘peacefully’, rather than perish at other Dien Bien-Phus. The
French repeated their high-handed actions in Africa and found that the
national war of liberation threatened to reduce the French 100-franc note to
a piece of worthless paper, and had already bequeathed the National
Assembly in Paris with a succession of jack-in-the-box premiers. There was
clearly a connection with the unsuccessful French wars of repression in
Algeria and the hate with which they tried to establish acceptable African
governments in West Africa.
As for the British, Malaya haunted them in Asia and the example of
Kenya gave them diarrhoea in Africa. True, they did suppress the Mau Mau
land and freedom army, but at what cost! Imperialism is not imperialism if
it costs more to suppress the exploited than the imperialists receive in
surplus. The British knew that it was wise to proceed with African
independence rather than court more Mau Mau. Even in far-off British
Guiana, the popular movement of the 1950s could exert some leverage on
the British by threatening them with Mau Mau.
India is often given as the classic example of non-violent transfer of
power from the imperial power to the indigenous nationalist forces. But it
should be remembered that India had a powerful current of mutinous
soldiers and other political traditions opposed to the non-violence of
Gandhi. The British retreated as much from the threat of millions of Indians
lying peacefully on the roads and railways as from the possibility that they
might get up and strike back, given the example of those nationalists who
were attacking British life and property before and during the Second World
War. Some insight into that situation and its relevance to Africa is provided
by W.R. Crocker in his book Self-Government for the Colonies, written in
1949.
Crocker was a colonial official in Africa, and shared many of the
general assumptions of his professional group. Yet, his emphasis is quite
different from Burns’s, under whom Crocker worked for some time. His
book was an attempt to explain to his countrymen the force of nationalism
as he saw it in the colonies. The question that he posed was ‘suppress or
appease?’, and he followed that up by asking whether suppression by the
British stood any chance of success. His own answer was that:

The lesson from India is that nationalist agitation can be carried to such a length as to result
in a breakdown of government, or what is so near to a breakdown that law and order and
essential social measures can no longer be properly executed.

Crocker also made reference to the cost and difficulty of putting down
the early armed African movements for independence in Algeria in the
1920s and in Madagascar in 1946, as well as the people’s war in Indochina.
Besides, the international situation had changed, and he warned that
Western Europe lacked the power and will to suppress. Therefore, it was
essential to ‘appease’, and he explained:
By appease I mean that the existence and the reality of the nationalist movement must be
taken very seriously and that efforts must be bent to controlling it, guiding it, and competing
with it, up until the moment when power can be transferred with a reasonable prospect of
inflicting no undue sufferings upon the docile majority, or up until the moment when the
retain of power is no longer practicable.

Apart from the gratuitous solicitude for the welfare of the ‘docile’
colonized, the above statement really gets down to the nitty-gritty. Crocker
goes into a few more details where he warns that to oppose the agitators is
to make them more popular, and that to hold back too long in granting
African demands for independence would be dangerous. In one sense,
Crocker was a liberal among reactionaries; while in another sense, he was
no more progressive – save that his line was a frank exposure of what the
colonialists were doing, while others were trying to say that the hyena was
only a goat. For what Margery Perham tries to hide under the rubric of
‘transfer of power’ is what he exposes in his definition of ‘appease’. He
showed an awareness that constitutional independence in India and Burma
had not weakened the ties between those territories and Britain. The
problem was how and when to step down, so as to secure the best of the
situation. As he explains it:
The conundrum of when to the transfer authority, and how to in any given territory, will
require the highest political qualities … But English history is in many ways a history of
political genius … If the British are true to their genius, the British colonial problem can be
solved.

The limitations of this British colonialist school of historians are
manifold. Most of them flow logically from the bourgeois worldview. There
is no piece of this writing which is free of references to the Soviet Union
and Communism. Explicitly and implicitly, there is the recognition that
their interpretation of what happened in Africa is part of the struggle to

determine whether capitalism or socialism shall triumph. Indeed, an
interesting side-alley into which many of these writers divert is a discussion
of the ‘colonial’ and ‘nationality’ question of the Soviet Union, with a view
to demonstrating that Russian exploitation of non-Russians existed inside
the Soviet Union, and with a view to warning Africans about the Soviet
wolf.
Needless to say, the British colonialist school has a metropolitan and
racial bias. It comes out most clearly in their references to pre-colonial
Africa, but it is also present in their analysis of decolonization in a
patronizing form. This is implicit in many statements already quoted in this
discussion and is generally well enough known that the issue need not be
flogged in this context.
In highlighting the dominant features of this type of scholarship,
attention should be drawn to the fact that it springs from the British political
ruling elite, who are bourgeois but more than just bourgeois. Throughout
British history, there has been a unique interpretation of classes and class
values at the level of the political elite. The English bourgeois partly pushed
aside but partly absorbed the feudal nobility, whose deportment and norms
were adopted. Writers who fall into the colonial-goodwill-training school
were nearly all colonial civil servants at one time or another and were very
much part of the political ruling class. One of the distinguishing marks of
this scholarship is the use of the royal ‘we’ – clearly referring not even to
the British people as a whole but to the policymakers. They scarcely bother
to mention the economic exploitation of the colonies, which metropolitan
rule was intended to protect; and one suspects that they were often ignorant
of or indifferent to the economic reality of colonialism. Be that as it may,
this school of interpretation is concerned above all to justify itself as a good
ruling class – both in a practical and moral sense.
In the final analysis, the value of the work under discussion is virtually
nil. Because of its narrow focus on constitutional decolonization, it
completely fails to mention other forms of integration between the colonies
and the metropole in the economic sphere. Because of its concentration on
British activity, it tells us nothing about African participation and the
African role. There are a few hints that they perceived the class fissures
within the nationalist movements; and, whatever their class perspective, it
would have been valuable to get the views of the British rulers on this
matter. However, such issues are simply defined out of the picture.

On the specific issue of constitutional decolonization projected as
British activity, the colonial-goodwill-training school tells us nothing about
the pull and shove of the critical years when the question of African
Independence was indeed a political game. British colonialist writers cannot
say anything meaningful about the process because they have conspired
beforehand to affirm that it was nothing but sweet reasonableness on the
part of Britain. With that sort of approach the result is a ‘scholarship’
devoid of even the saving grace of ‘facts’ unearthed by bourgeois
empiricism. It reveals nothing. At every turn, there is a bland expression
about trusteeship, mandate, guidance, partnership, transfer – like soothing
music for the milch-cows.
As indicated from the outset, the obligation to deal critically with the
school of British colonialist historians is imposed by the wide vogue which
it enjoys. It is probably still the majority position among European scholars
in the metropole, and there is a significant neo-colonialist school whose
work involves a revamping and refurbishing of the old interpretations, after
jettisoning a few of the more objectionable and unsaleable points. Besides,
a historical view is not the property of historians. It is the expression of
class, national, racial and other presuppositions, and it returns to strengthen
the said presuppositions. The vast majority of Englishmen will never give a
thought to African history, but, whenever they react to an issue involving
Africa or Africans, their judgement is shot through by the colonialist
historical interpretation.
Supposedly in the new spirit of independence, African research
historians have taken to compiling texts for schools, sometimes in
collaboration with whites who are very much tied to the old colonial
structures. Thus, Joseph Anane of Nigeria got together with Godfrey Brown
to edit West Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, and they
handed over a chapter on ‘Colonial Rule in West Africa’ to W.E.F. Ward, a
former educational officer on the staff of the British Colonial Office.
Understandably, Ward spoke on behalf of his own country and class, and
restarted the colonial-goodwill-training myth:
When I joined the British Colonial Service in 1924 the fashionable slogan was ‘trusteeship’:
I was told that West Africa was not yet ready for self-government, but that it would be one
day. Meanwhile Britain was in the position of a trustee, and I must look on my work as
directed to helping Africa to take the government into its own hands … We were expected to
work ourselves out of a job, though it cannot be claimed that all of us realised it, or that all
of those who did not realise it approved of the idea.

The last sentence is a characteristic piece of double talk; while the ‘we’
simply means that the oppressor continues to write history for the
oppressed.
In East Africa, the volume by Gideon Wese and Derek Wilson, East
Africa Through a Thousand Years, is in some ways a counterpart of the
Anane and Brown volume – Wese being a Kenyan and Wilson an English
history master at a white settler-oriented Nairobi school. This time,
however, it is just not inviting a particular British colonialist, but the
advancement of a coherent colonialist view of decolonization, made more
dangerous because it will infiltrate under the name of an African historian.
East Africa Through a Thousand Years completely accepts the frame of
reference of British colonialist historians, whereby constitutional matters
were the focus of the decolonization process. It presents to African school
certificate pupils the notion that ‘the path to independence’ in Tanganyika
began in 1945, when two African members were admitted to the legislative
council. Wese and Wilson credit Burns and Perham when they assert that:
The major concern of the British government was that each new state should be ready for
independence, i.e. that it should be a stable government, acceptable to its people, under wise
and capable leadership.

Must another generation of African youth be asked to write and believe in
such European fairy tales?

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

11
Education in Colonial Africa
The separation of knowledge has been entrenched within the structures of
bourgeois universities in such a way that scholars in the humanities and
social sciences can only pay lip-service to the concept of multidisciplinary
approaches. It would appear that education as a subject or department is
particularly alienated and cut off from other disciplines. Certainly, on the
development issue, the little that is written hardly ever integrates the aspect
of education. At the same time, educationists who write about ‘educational
development’ are unwilling or unable to relate this to the movement of the
society as a whole. The inclusion of the topic in this series of seminars
attests to its fundamental importance to the political, economic and cultural
changes taking place in Africa over the past eight or nine decades.
A ‘balance sheet’ approach to the colonial period in Africa invariably
fastens on to the building of schools as a decisive element in favour of
colonial benevolence. No attempt is made to explain how this benefited or
developed Africa and the Africans, but the argument carries great force
because of the universalized assumption that Western education per se is
good. Africans came to believe it and the vast majority still do believe it.
After all, someone with a school education on the continent is distinctly
better off than someone who has not gone to the kind of school set up by
Europeans. It is also obvious that the leadership of the political parties that
strove for independence was drawn mainly from the educated elite. In this
sense, European education of the colonized may appear to have been a
crucial factor in political development. Yet, there is perhaps no subject on
which conscious Africans can be so roused as that of colonial education.
The path to political awareness in Africa more often than not leads to a
denunciation of missionaries, colonial schools, Shakespeare and cultural
imperialism. When prodded, any African educated under the colonial

system can point to numerous incongruities from individual experience of
the curricula, teachers and procedures of the schools he or she attended.
Indeed, within the same individuals there is often the ambivalence of pride
in scholastic achievement on the one hand and self-flagellation on the other,
because they had acquiesced to the racist colonialist educational
programme.
Education in Africa was not approached systematically by the colonial
powers until the 1920s.1 By that time, colonial administrations had been set
up throughout the continent and a range of economic activities were placed
in motion with the aim of providing surplus for the metropoles.
A small fraction of that surplus was redeployed to ensure that Africans
would fill certain jobs in the lowest echelons of the economic and
administrative sectors. Primary schooling was all that was essential for
these positions as messengers, clerks, police constables, and so forth; but it
was also necessary to train African teachers and a handful of Africans who
were sufficiently initiated into the European way of life to pass the
experience on to their brothers and to act within church, state and private
firms as middlemen between the European hierarchy and the African
masses. Hence, the growth of a modicum of secondary schooling, teacher
training and eventually the rare experience of university education.
Functionally, colonial education was developing the ‘modern’ sector in
Africa – mining, cash-crop agriculture and trade with Europe. In effect, that
meant the development of Europe and the underdevelopment of the African
economy. It must not be forgotten that Africa had its own Indigenous
system of education to the European impact.2 This system did not simply
disappear, but it suffered the same contraction and diminution of vitality as
did the ‘traditional’ economy. The disappearance of craft skill is nothing
else but the disappearance of the education that had previously caused those
skills to flourish. Indigenous African education lost its leading role in the
society just as the traditional economy was displaced by the money
economy. Those who entered the money economy saw European education
as the element which might lead to upward mobility. Thus, the son of an
agriculturalist was no longer apprenticed to him on the land but was sent off
(wherever possible) to a school which would fit him for a part in the money
economy – preferably in the administrative services where prestige was
highest.

Education, even at the most revolutionary periods, highlights continuity
in those aspects of the society which are cherished by the masses or by the
dominant class. Education at its best seeks to bring out the potential of
individuals to serve their own society and master their own environment.
Colonial education interrupted the patterns of education which performed
these functions and substituted instead learning associated with the
advancement of an alien society and which usually had little to do with
increasing African mastery of their own environment. Curriculum
development in Africa over the past decade has everywhere had to face up
to the problem of irrelevance in the colonial school system. The examples
which cropped up throughout the school day were alien and irrelevant to the
African child. Rather than building upon what existed, colonial schooling
destroyed what existed, which made it easier in the long run to subscribe to
the great lie that no education was previously available. One is concerned
here with an African’s basic awareness of his environment. Before the
European or in a context of freedom from European education, a cattlekeeping people observed their animals with such attention that European
languages have no words to describe the seventy or eighty varieties of cattle
that, say, a Zulu or a Fulani felt it necessary to distinguish.3 In a similar
vein, it was noted that African children in the forests would normally know
the names of dozens of trees at an early age and would confound the
European visitor who could not tell one leaf from another.4 The point here
is that a European-educated African was just such a stranger and ignoramus
in his own land.5 It is this break in the continuity of the historical movement
in Africa that I am consistently referring to as ‘underdevelopment’ in an
active sense, and it embraces economic, political and cultural fields.
Presumably, if African education had been replaced by something of
greater value to the African people, it would still have been possible to
claim that Africa benefited and developed. Indeed, it could be argued that
they had jumped to a higher stage which would have been long in coming if
the process of uninterrupted evolution had gone on. However, the new
education was severely lacking in many ways. To begin with, it was
education for a tiny minority, replacing a system of education for all that
had previously existed. The quantitative limitations of colonial education
need to be stressed both as a corrective to the colonialist claim that they
brought education to Africa and as a means of understanding that the
present situation in Africa is profoundly influenced by the fact that the

school system inherited from colonialism cannot possibly cater to the
majority of the population.6 Masses of figures could be brought to show
how few were the Africans who were allowed schooling by the colonial
powers. A large proportion of the few were primary school dropouts while
an insignificant minority made it to secondary school. After all, it has to be
noted that Africa today still has appalling figures of illiteracy and
inadequate schooling in spite of the fact that the independent governments
have often done more in ten years than the colonists did in seventy-five.
That is what a truly African education policy will not merely have to extend
the colonial school system, but it will also have to break with the basic
rationale that has guided it so far: of training a minority to aid in the work
of administration.
Producing Africans to aid in the task of colonial administration was of
course not simply a matter of functional skills but also of ideology. Always
learning is presented within a given ideological framework. Europeans
could not do otherwise but instruct Africans within the bourgeois
framework which was brought from Europe. However, winning over
Africans was not left to chance. Policymakers for colonial education
deliberately and carefully worked out the kinds of programmes designed to
create the ‘loyal’ African servant. The French referred to them as ‘cadres’
and emphasized that they should not merely serve as clerks, translators and
the like but as active agents of French cultural imperialism among the
African masses.7 Occasionally, a far-seeing colonialist thought in terms of
training Africans who would continue to run the continent in the interests of
Europe after Europeans had relinquished direct political control. But for the
most part the educated elite was viewed as being permanently available for
aiding their white masters, since scarcely any colonialist contemplated the
end of European rule in Africa within this century.
One extremely interesting example of the way the colonial powers saw
education as buttressing colonial rule ideologically and practically lies in
the treatment of African rulers and their sons. African rulers had been
deprived of power in the process of imposing European rule, but they still
retained varying degrees of authority in the eyes of their own people; and
all colonial powers used what they called ‘chiefs’ as agents within their
administrative systems. To the French, this was so important that they made
it mandatory for chiefs to send their sons to school, in order that this
stratum within African society should develop the same perspectives as

educated Africans from different backgrounds. The French were being
perfectly logical in expecting that all who aided them in the work of
administering African territory on behalf of France should have an
ideological perspective determined by the French themselves. The English,
too, at some points felt the education of their ‘indirect rule’ chiefs to be a
priority; and schools for African rulers were opened at Bo in Sierra Leone
and Tabora in Tanganyika. Although the experiment of special schools was
not carried very far, it did translate that the sons of the ‘traditional’ rulers
allied to the British did rise to the top of the educational ladder. In the Gold
Coast colony and Nigeria, clashes between the educated elite and the
‘illiterate’ chiefs used to be common in the 1930s, but they disappeared in
the post-war epoch as education and other factors cemented the privileged
into a class whose interests were more readily reconcilable with those of the
colonialists than they were with the interests of the African masses.8
When the German and English ruling classes of the nineteenth century
decided to give more education to their workers, they did so out of the
realization that they were enhancing the value of labour. Similarly,
European policy-makers for African colonies perceived that education was
one aspect of the maximization of the continent’s resources – the policy of
the mise en valeur as French colonial minister, Albert Sarrault, put it.
Inevitably in such a case the oppressor tries to re-create the oppressed in the
image which is most suitable for persisting with the relationship of
domination and subordination. In the case of Africans, the education system
was doubly dangerous because it also fostered white racism and destroyed
the African sense of identity to the point of self-hate. The kind of studies
done on the impact of white education on the blacks of the US and the sort
of conclusions taught by Fanon of the ‘white masks’ of the black West
Indians are all highly relevant to the educational situation of colonial
Africa. The system produced individuals like the Senegalese Blaise Diange,
who vigorously proclaimed that he was the most ‘French’ and would
always be French. Those who were most qualified were understandably the
most alienated. The highly trained black lawyers of West Africa performed
the role of black Englishmen so fastidiously as to outdo the models they
were imitating. The picture they present is both droll and tragic. Colonial
education in this respect was a tragi-comedy.
Some colonists recognized how distorted and destructive were the
images produced by colonial education in Africa. One high-ranking French

official was distressed to hear that black Africans were made to recite that
‘the Gauls, our ancestors, had blue eyes’.9 Others expressed dissatisfaction
with educational standards in the more conventional sense, because the
colonial education given to Africans was hopelessly inferior by the criteria
of contemporary Europe, and it became relatively more backward as the
colonial period advanced. The widening gap between the African and
European sectors of the world imperialist economy was matched by a
widening gap between the standards and achievements of the Europeantype education available in both sectors.
While teaching methods were evolving in Europe, those in Africa
remained fixed in a Victorian mould. While some freedom was being
created in the atmosphere of a European classroom, the authoritarianism of
colonialism reinforced the authoritarianism of backward scholasticism.
Racism added to this mess, so that even the African head teacher ran the
risk of being publicly disciplined within his school by some twitter of a
white school inspector. Europeans were quite aware that they were giving
Africans an inferior education by European standards, quite apart from the
contradictions that sprung from offering a European-oriented schooling to
African children. Wherever there were white settlers, their children went to
schools whose curricula and standards were more or less equivalent to the
best metropolitan schools of the time, so as to allow such white children to
return and fit into their home society when they so decided. This
discrimination was most marked where settler societies had come into
existence, notably in Algeria, Kenya, South Africa and the Rhodesias.10 But
everywhere on the continent the education offered to Africans was
quantitatively and qualitatively as inferior as it could be and still remains
consistent with the European objective of training Africans who would be
effective auxiliaries in the work of colonization.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the backwardness of colonial
education in Africa was its adherence to a so-called literary model
producing ‘white collar’ types at its highest points. This model persisted in
spite of the reorientation towards science which was taking place in the
metropoles themselves. But of course, once one understands that Africa had
a fixed role to provide unskilled labour for the international capitalist
system, it is not surprising that scientific and technical education was never
a marked feature of colonial education. Such a development would have
contradicted the very purposes of colonial rule. Only in a place like the

Congo did industrial activity force education into a technological channel
so as to provide semi-skilled labour. The same potential existed throughout
Southern Africa, but it was denied by the avowedly racist policies designed
to keep Africans from rising into the skilled and semi-skilled employment
grades of the mining economy.
Africans as well as Europeans made requests for reform and
radicalization of the colonial educational system. There were demands for
more school places for girls, for more technical colleges and for curricula
that were generally more relevant to the ecology and to the African people.
None of these demands could get very far, because the parameters of the
educational system were set by the phenomenon of colonialism as such.
Capitalism in Europe had hardly done much to liberate the woman and in a
colonial context it actually undermined the position of the African woman.
To recommend more education for girls was to fail to take account of the
fact that the constricted money economy had no employment opportunities
for women. A demand for more technical colleges was usually met by the
answer that there was not enough finance in the coffers of the colonial
administration. Of course, there was a vast difference in the amount of
surplus expatriated to Europe and the amount of money raised by taxing
Africans to meet the daily expenses of subordinating the said Africans.
Colonialists were naturally loath to forgo any of the surplus unless it went
into the infrastructure for future profits and for maintaining the system as it
was. Technical education was ruled out because it actually ran counter to
the international division of labour that was part of colonialism. And the
same was true of high-level agricultural education. It must not be imagined
that Africa’s role was agricultural and Europe’s industrial, scientific
agriculture was also monopolized by Europe. Therefore, the superficially
attractive idea of agricultural education for Africans was put into effect by
colonialists in a degenerate racist form, which had as its rationale the
training of Africans to take their ‘national’ place as manual workers on the
land.
A complete catalogue of the evils of the colonial educational process in
Africa would be long indeed. It was no less decisive than the economic
factor in bringing about the under-development of Africa. Indeed, in
examining the concept of dependency as a crucial aspect of
underdevelopment, one cannot fail to realize the major contribution of the
educational system in producing the individuals with all the syndromes of

psychological dependence and with the Iifestyles that derive from serving
as European puppets in Africa. Yet, it is equally vital to understand the
contradictions that were set in train because of the colonial school system.
Those contradictions arose in spite of the intentions of the colonial masters,
and they have already served in undermining the foreign domination of
Africa.
Education elicited a very positive response from large numbers of
Africans. A great deal of force in one form or another was employed in
getting the money economy in motion; and education was one of the very
few positive inducements that motivated people both to join the money
economy and to increase their participation in ways such as extended
acreage of cash crops. Colonized Africans not only pressured the colonial
governments to build more schools, but they themselves made tremendous
efforts, including thirty-mile walks to the school, local financing of schools
and teachers, and community programmes for educating students in Africa
and even abroad.
To some extent, these efforts aided the colonial enterprise. More
Africans were thereby having access to European-type education without
the colonialist having to release as much of their profits as they might
otherwise have had to do. However, the African drive for more education
defeated the purposes of the colonialists in a number of ways. The principal
consequence is that particularly in British colonies there were more
Africans with primary education than the colonialists really required for
their own tasks. The colonial regimes were unable to provide such
individuals either with secondary schooling or with the jobs that fitted the
expectations created by the years of schooling. It is clear that in many
colonies the crisis of the primary school leavers was a serious factor lending
dynamism to the African independence movement.11
The African search for ‘modern’ education also had a marked
mobilizational and organizational effect. The act of getting together to
finance a school was a political act. The sponsorship of a scholarship
scheme tied to palm oiI or to cotton cultivation was also a political response
on the part of the oppressed. The form of welfare organizations which
catered to educational objectives during the 1930s and 1940s was later
subsumed by the mass political parties. As Africans broke beyond the
bounds of colonial educational opportunities, individuals as well as
collective opposition to colonial rule was engendered. At the individual

level, it has been noted how significant were the roles played in
independence struggles by West Africans educated in the United States.
Those individuals were part of the process of seeking out Western education
wherever it could be found. Coming from places like Nigeria, their normal
outlets for limited higher education was in Britain; but they sought new
frontiers in the United States when they found no openings in Britain.12
Africans who never received higher education or any education at all were
part of the movement to change certain vicious racist trends of the colonial
educational system in which they placed hope for their children. In French
West Africa, the major issue over which there was popular protest was the
French attempt to create ‘Bush Schools’ that were supposedly more
relevant to African needs but were fundamentally aimed at creating an
inferior educational environment for ‘the natives’. The struggle against
these schools was a victorious one, and it formed part of the national
independence struggles in French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa
in the post-war era. The same is true of the African movement against
agricultural education in British East and Central Africa.
The powerful African independent Church movement had a somewhat
less powerful counterpart in the independent schools that sprung up on
African initiative. In Kenya, they had a Christian background; in North
Africa, they had a Muslim background; while elsewhere, as in the Sudan,
no particular religious preference was expressed. In all these situations,
however, the independent spirit went far beyond the classrooms, and the
colonial powers were themselves quick to see the generally ‘subversive’
implications of Africans controlling their education in this way. In any
event, contradictions arose within what the colonists would have considered
as the most advanced institutions espousing European value systems. With
very few exceptions, the leaders of African independence movements were
products of an educational programme that was aimed at keeping them as
colonial subjects. The opposition to the colonial intellectual formation took
place at two levels. A few individuals actually rejected the entire value
system of capitalism, individualism, racism and exploitation. These were
the few who uncompromisingly continued to strike out against imperialism
after gaining the tokens of constitutional independence. The second level of
protest was generated by the contradiction between the value system and
the personal aspirations of educated Africans. They had been taught about
freedom, liberty and a career open to the talents, and instead found that

colonial rule offered the educated elite none of these things. Taken together
with all the other contractions of colonial society, the antagonism between
the colonizers and the African educated elite was a notable contribution to
the emergence of national political parties, and to the gaining of
constitutional independence as a step on Africa’s march towards
reconquering the political power lost through the imposition of Europe’s
colonial rule.
Everywhere on the African continent, education originating with the
colonialists was meant to ensure mental and physical enslavement. To a
large extent it did carry out this function. But every aspect of Africa’s
subjugation also contained the seeds of revolution since capitalism in its
colonial guise could not satisfy even the minimal aspirations of the African
people. The more cash crop farming there was the more likely it became
that there would be peasant revolts. The larger the wage-earning sector, the
more likely it was that there would be the revolt of organized labour.
Dissatisfaction with education and with the opportunities for education was
at the forefront of colonial grievances and it helped to weld together the
vast majority of the population to address themselves to the principal
contradiction between themselves as the colonized and the Europeans as
colonizers. No other facet of the African experience so clearly illustrates the
dialectic of oppression and resistance. Historical underdevelopment is a key
aspect of the story, while the rebirth of freedom is the other.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

12
Education in Africa and
Contemporary Tanzania
I. Education in Africa
In discussing education in Africa, we should first contrast the independent
educational system as it existed before the arrival of Europeans with the
colonial education system established after 1885, which is the conventional
date for the beginning of African colonization. The differences between the
two are critical to any real evaluation of contemporary education in Africa.
Communal and universal vs
particular and elitist societies
Education in independent pre-colonial Africa was universal. Everyone
received either a formal or informal education designed to give him or her a
role within the society. Mothers passed on values to their children and the
elders acted as models of behaviour for the youth. That was informal
education. It went on all the time and could not be stopped.
Formal education in independent Africa occurred throughout teaching
one’s skills to apprentices. For example, if a man were a hunter, a miner or
a cloth-maker, he would educate his children or other family members or
other persons in the society, in order to preserve his particular craft. In
addition to vocational skills, social values were specifically transmitted to
the young at puberty during the rites of initiation. Many societies also had
formal training schools for those preparing for the equivalent of the

priesthood. So this, very briefly, was the African educational system. It
provided education for everybody. It had a role for everybody.1
Colonial education, or European education in colonial Africa, stood in
contrast to the above. It was doled out to a minority. Colonial education was
elitist, because it was based upon elitist philosophical and ideological
assumptions derived from European class society, as distinct from African
society which was communal and relatively unstratified. In a stratified
sociological system, education serves the interest of the dominant class,
caste, race or geographical unit, irrespective of pretensions to the country.
Such an education is for the few, whether they be the actual children of the
ruling class, or children of the exploited and oppressed classes who are coopted into the services of that system.
When the European education system was transported to Africa, it
became even more limited and elitist, because the purpose of the colonizers
within Africa was to select only a very small number of Africans to aid in
the work of colonization. The point was made very clearly by the
colonizers: ‘Why do we want to educate the blacks? Because we are
running the country, but we cannot do it all on our own. We need some
African messengers and translators. We need African clerks in the railways,
the civil service and the trading companies. We need teachers to train those
messengers and clerks.’ That is why it became necessary for the colonialists
to establish some form of school education in Africa.
The African vs the European personality
Another set of distinctions exist between indigenous African education and
colonial education. African education was designed to develop what I call
the ‘African personality’, a term which has been used by Kwame Nkrumah,
Sekou Touré and a number of other prominent African spokesmen. It often
carries vague mystical overtones, but what I have in mind is simply that a
society, both consciously and unconsciously, develops individuals to sustain
its mores and values. In unfettered African society, Africans were part of
the extended family. They developed a consciousness of their relationship
to their kin, their land and their ancestors. All these factors made up the
‘African personality’.

Any educational system, so long as it is independent, develops people
for purposes which the society internally and independently chooses for
itself, notwithstanding the fact that a particular sector may be more
influential than another in exercising that choice.2 In the colonial system, it
was not the people themselves, not the colonized, who set the terms and
goals of their education. The colonizer did so. When he educated a few
Africans, he did so not to develop them within their African context, as
Africans, but rather to alienate them from their society from which they
came. His purpose was to create or recreate them in his own image, to
mutilate and transform the very sense of their African identity.
A dramatic illustration of this is found in French West Africa, where
African school children were told to recite, ‘The Gauls, our ancestors, had
blue eyes.’ When a French school child says this, it is a means of
identifying himself with his past, and this is normal in any educational
system. But when a colonized Senegalese or Dahomean is told that the
Gauls, his ancestors, had blue eyes, and he knows he has black eyes and a
black skin, he experiences a tremendous sense of alienation.3 His sense of
who he is, his sense of being an African, is in danger of collapsing. He
becomes instead a black European, which was, in fact, the purpose of
French as well as British, Belgian and Portuguese colonial education. It was
designed to alienate the few who received it from the mass of the people as
a whole, not to reinforce the connection between those educated in the
formal system and the rest of the population.
Interdependence vs individualism
A third set of contrasts is related to the communal nature of African
education which stressed the interdependence of individuals within the
society. Work and social effort had to be collective if they were to be
meaningful. This collective emphasis sprang from the structure of the
society, which was non-stratified or relatively undifferentiated. Suth class
contradictions that did exist were, by and large, non-antagonistic class
contradictions, except in a few areas where feudal or quasi-feudal social
forms had come into being.
An antagonistic contradiction penetrates to the basic means of
production. When the existence of members of one class depends upon

exploiting members of another class, race or nation, then their interests are
antagonistic. In African societies, there were non-antagonistic
contradictions based on the division of labour. Such, for instance, was the
opposition between pastoralists and cultivators, between whom there was at
the same time a considerable degree of interdependence. Also, there was a
division of labour in which some individuals became priests, while others
wielded political authority. When the division of the social product is
relatively egalitarian, a major contradiction does not arise between the
priest and ruler, on the one hand, and the rest of the subjects on the other.4
In the African situation, it was possible to teach that labour is a
collective activity, since this was in accordance with social reality. Colonial
education, deriving from bourgeois values, portrayed labour and even social
existence to be competitive. Not only was this idea extolled within the
classroom, but in the arena of real life such progress as was possible within
colonial society was granted to Africans because of their personal
achievements, thus further separating the individual from the mass of his
fellows.
The colonial educational system was competitive in the metropoles, but
it was more so in Africa, because only a tiny handful – far less than in
Europe or North America – became, as it were, the chosen few. A tiny
handful went to school, and it was made clear to them that: ‘Here it is! Here
is your avenue to progress. You have to compete with others to get there.
And once you make it within the system, you will establish yourself as a
superior individual, not as some small part of a collective.’ Ideological
values were buttressed by material changes which further differentiated
African society.
For example, where land used to be the property of the whole
community, it became commercialized. Under colonialism, land was bought
and sold in Africa, a concept almost unknown previously. Once it was
bought and sold, a few individuals got the land. And others had to do
without. They became sellers of labour to those who owned land. The
individualist approach struck at the roots of the land tenure tradition, and
the educational system reinforced that individualism as well derived its
rationale from it.
Orientation to, or away from, the ‘life environment’

A final set of contrasts suggests that the original African education was
carrying forward what may be called the principle of praxis – the unity of
theory and practice. One was learning about life. The individual was
instructed about the life of the community in order to fulfil his own role
within the community and simultaneously understand and complement the
roles of others. African education was specifically oriented towards the
practice of day-to-day life. It must be reiterated that educational systems are
both formal and informal. We should not hold to the idea that education
takes place only if there is a classroom – and only if people remain outside
of the process of production for months or years. That is the narrow
Western conception of education that evolved out of feudalistic and
capitalist times. But Africans were educated differently.
Consider, as an example, the African pastoralists. When Masai youth,
aged five or six, deal with cattle, they are at school. By the time they reach
the age of ten they can distinguish dozens of species of cattle – their shape,
the color of their skins, their particular markings, the shape of their horns,
and so on. The Masai can even identify the species of ticks that come and
rest on their cattle. They have gone to school with their cattle because it is
essential for their survival and the survival of their community that they
should know about cattle, for that is how the community makes its living.
Therefore, whether they get that education by formal or informal means, it
is at all points linked to the question of practice, of doing, as distinct from a
purely abstract appreciation.
Colonial education in Africa was hostile to the principle of praxis,
partly because of unconscious and ill-considered European premises about
education. Consider a subject as basic as geography. A European
schoolteacher in a tropical schoolroom in Africa or in the West Indies
would teach about spring, summer, autumn and winter, which relatively few
Africans or West Indians would ever have seen.
Brought from Europe, the educators too often taught the same things
they would have taught in Europe. But more than that, they insisted that
education in Africa be essentially ‘white-collar’ education. They promoted
what they considered to be the values of Christianity, and values connected
with doing certain types of low-level bureaucratic work. It was a nonspecific, non-technical education, unrelated to the actual physical
environment of Africa.

In Europe, a scientific and technological bias had been imparted to
education in the late nineteenth century and even more so in the twentieth
century, because such a bias was necessary to the development of capitalist
society in Europe. However, because Africa had been allocated the role of
primary producer within the imperialist international division of labour, it
was not only unnecessary, but undesirable and antithetical to the interests of
capitalism that African education should take a scientific and technological
direction. The colonizers did not want Africans to do anything more than
supply labour in its cheapest and crudest forms. When, for example, rural
Africans in South Africa did manage to get skilled or semi-skilled jobs, the
whole racist society galvanized itself to hold back African development,
because an African was considered even more of a threat if he had an
education and a skill. He was then either not given a job or given it at a
wage as much as ten times less than that which a European received.
The African schoolchild who did receive a colonial education very often
was removed physically to a primary or secondary boarding school. Many
Africans who experienced this kind of education found that they could no
longer relate to their own home communities, or that they had tremendous
difficulty in doing so.5
The church too was responsible for outdated forms of African
education. By the nineteenth century, churches in Europe had ceased to play
the hegemonistic role in education which they had played in previous
centuries. Europeans had come to an awareness that the church should be
separated from the state and from civil education, because the metaphysical
approach of Christianity was hostile to the full elaboration of European
knowledge, especially in science. For the most part, Europeans very calmly
separated the church from their school system.
But, at the same time that the Europeans were separating the church
from their educational system, they were bringing the church into Africa.
They found it useful, one presumes, to create irrelevant and mystifying
approaches to knowledge, because all they wanted the African to learn was
the fear of God. The missionaries said this very clearly: ‘We want to teach
them the fear of God.’

II. Education in Tanzania

Qualitative gains
Against the background of colonial and pre-colonial education in Africa, it
may be helpful to take the narrower example of Tanzania today to pinpoint
some of the things that Tanzania has achieved, and some of the things that it
has tried to achieve, in the educational sphere.
The legacy of colonial rule was an extremely high rate of illiteracy
throughout the continent. The number of children going to school very
seldom went above one out of ten, and in some cases it was less than that.6
In the United States one talks about high school dropouts and college
dropouts, but in Africa one talks about primary-school dropouts. Fifty per
cent of the children in Africa had to contend with an enormous quantitative
problem in the area of education. Heretofore, colonial education had only
been made available to a very small percentage of the African population.
But the government planners of the new African educational systems were
charged with providing a formal school education for everybody. They had
to start thinking in terms of universalizing education, pushed by the demand
of the working classes.
In my opinion most African countries which attained independence with
a few secondary schools and with almost non-existent facilities for
technical and university education, have done more in ten years of
independence than the colonialist did in seventy-five years of colonial rule,
as far as expanding the physical educational facilities are concerned. I have
many reservations about some independent African governments, but it is
simply an indication of how shabby the colonial regimes were, that in
seventy-five years they did not manage to give to Africans, quantitatively,
even the primary education which governments in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda,
Kenya, Tanzania and elsewhere are giving to their people today. Very
seldom does the new education arrive, however, at anything near universal
school education. Not even in Tanzania.
The Tanzanian government projected the year 1980 as the date when it
hoped to arrive at universal primary education. This wait is justified by
policymakers in terms of a lack of finances. Education is a huge financial
investment which does not bring immediate returns. It is a long-term
investment. Many governments spend 25 per cent, perhaps thirty per cent of
their budget on education, and of course this is not as productive an

investment as a farm or a factory, which will conceivably show returns in
one to five years.
In spite of this, many young Tanzanians have not been very happy about
the idea of accepting incomplete primary education for a number of years.
Their imagination has been caught by the kind of experiment which went
on in Cuba and which provided the Cuban people with universal literacy.
While coming nowhere close to the Cuban ‘Year of Education’ strategy,
Tanzania has stepped up its adult education programme. President Julius
Nyere argued that because so many of the present adult population had been
denied the opportunity of education during the colonial period, adult
literacy campaigns should become a matter of the highest priority, and
Tanzania has had one of the more successful adult education programmes in
Africa. Altogether, it cannot be denied that ten years of independence has
shown a tremendous development, in purely quantitative terms, in the
number of children going to school, and in the number of people in the
society who received a formal education of the same schoolroom type as
had been established under colonial rule. That is the first achievement.7
The elimination of racism
Another early achievement in post-colonial Tanzania was the elimination of
the racist structure of colonial education, which reflected the racism of the
colonial and capitalist world. There were white settlers in Tanzania,
although their Kenyan counterparts were more numerous and more
notorious. These white settlers received, by far, the largest proportion of the
educational budget. Arabs and Asians received the next largest slice, and
finally, the majority, the people of the land, the Africans themselves,
received the scrapings. This racist school structure was promptly attacked
and destroyed.
Teacher training
The idea of teacher training had to be seriously reconsidered, because part
of the process of African alienation resulted from the physical presence of
white teachers in African schools who, whether or not they consciously
subscribed to all the goals of colonial rule, reflected the biases and

individualism of the metropoles and the racism inherent throughout the
capitalist world.
Since Tanzania had been one of the more ‘backward’ colonies, few
Africans were trained to be teachers at the time of independence. Its leaders
wanted to expand their school system, but the teachers who were already
entrenched there were primarily white expatriates and Asians who did not
always opt for national status. The university opened its first college of arts,
social sciences and natural sciences in 1965, and it was used virtually as a
teacher-training institution. A programme was devised by which an
undergraduate could emerge at the end of his studies as a teacher in two
subjects. Normally within the British system, one earns a Bachelor’s degree
before proceeding to study for a year, or two years, to acquire teaching
certification considered appropriate for secondary school teachers. Tanzania
had to break with that practice and integrate teacher training within the
undergraduate programme. About 80 per cent of all the early graduates
went straight from the university into the secondary schools to meet the
priority of ‘Tanzanization’.
A small example of the consequences of ‘Tanzanization’ can be seen in
the return to traditional dance (ngoma) within the school system at both
primary and secondary levels. Music and dance have always been dominant
African art forms, and they were relevant to culture in ways that were far
more fundamental than mere recreation. Not only has ngomo been revived
in the schools but the traditional forms have been given a new content, a
new thrust. The words the students sing and the scenes they act out in
ngoma might today be related to Ujamaa, the collective, for example. Or
they may even be concerned with the question of defence against the
Portuguese. So there is a merger of new political content with old African
form.
The National Service programme
Beyond the quantitative changes and the more obvious transformations of
the school structure, one confronts much more complicated questions.
Tanzania has had to struggle to retrieve its education from a colonial to a
distinctly African path. At the same time, these African values had to be set
in the forward-looking context of socialist reconstruction. A key problem is

that colonialism (like any other social system) has means of selfperpetuation. ‘Africanization’ per se could not break the continuity of
colonial education, given that African teachers had been taught by
Europeans within a European value framework. In effect, the African
teacher was often a ‘programmed’ European: making Fanon’s phrase ‘Black
Skins, White Masks’ even more apt than it initially appears, since the mask
in indigenous African practice symbolized a complete change of identity on
the part of the wearer. Higher institutions of learning in Africa were
particularly prone to emphasize colonial continuity, often under the guise of
maintaining ‘international standards’. Any African teacher who had access
to higher education, either before or after independence, was likely to be as
elitist as the European who had preceded him; alienated from his African
roots, and as individualist as though he had been socialized in Britain or the
US.
The National Service was perceived as a device to induce change of a
practical and normative kind in Tanzania. It was instituted as a means of
bringing a number of youth into more active participation in the life of their
community. One of its principal aspects was the provision of the rudiments
of military training for self-defence. Colonialism disarmed the African
people, except for those who served the master in the colonial army. One of
the first things which the National Service did was to revive the normal
practice whereby the youth are entrusted with the physical defence of the
society. At the same time, the National Service revived the principle that
education should provide real skills, practical skills, as distinct from ‘whilecollar’ education. So, the National Service offered agricultural and craft
skills regarded as relevant to the question of economic development. Its
first recruits were youth with primary and lower secondary education.
The National Service also rested on the premise that young people
should be educated to serve rather than to command peasants and workers.
University graduates represented the pinnacle of the old elitism. They had
to learn to reintegrate themselves with the rest of the population. Therefore,
in 1966, the National Service Act was extended to cover secondary and
university students previously exempt from its provisions. Tanzanian
university students completing their training that year were required to enter
National Service. Like everybody else, they were to live in a National
Service camp for six months and were to be trained by instructors who
often had only primary school education. At the camp, servicemen received

an allowance. For a subsequent eighteen months they were to make a
contribution of 60 per cent of their salary to the national budget. University
students promptly demonstrated to signify their non-acceptance of these
terms. This was confrontation of the people versus the elite; and being an
elite without power, university students were disciplined to perform
National Service in order to complete their education. Now secondary
school graduates proceed immediately to National Service camps for some
months before joining the university.
The National Service programme succeeded to a limited extent. After
setting out on the difficult task of re-fashioning people’s values, it has, not
surprisingly, ended up with a degree of formalism. In other words, students
will go to the National Service and they will do what they are told. But they
will not necessarily accept the idea that they are there to serve the people
and merge with the community of producers. No one in Tanzania would be
so naive as to say that the National Service works perfectly, or to suggest
that months of work on nation-building projects will create a new sense of
identity for servicemen. One of the excruciating problems is that the
National Service is shot through with hierarchization and commandism,
which is antithetical to its own goal of maximum participation along
socialist and democratic lines. While given a highly political task to
perform, its direction at various levels is manifestly ‘apolitical’, which
means in effect petty bourgeois. A political education wing was
incorporated in the National Service at an early date, but it appears to have
been swamped rather than to have expanded in a manner that would allow
the institution to be considered a cadre-forming one. For the moment, the
most positive thing that can be said about the National Service is that
structures have been set up and that meaningful goals have been defined
which go far beyond the structures and goals of the colonial educational
system.8
A national language
Tanzania has been fortunate in being one of the few African countries with
an authentic national language. There are dozens of linguistic units in
Tanzania, but, with few exceptions, everybody can communicate in Swahili.
Most observers have commented on this phenomenon as evidence of

Tanzania’s national and territorial integrity. In addition, the existence of
Swahili as a lingua franca has implications with regard to transcending both
stratification and external orientation. English, which was the teaching
medium in the colonial secondary schools, was one of the mechanisms of
alienation. The continued use of English and French in post-colonial Africa
helps keep the African petty bourgeois attached to their masters. With the
introduction of Swahili as a language of national education, those who
entered the secondary schools were offered the opportunity of defining their
visions of the world in a language which grew out of their own
environment. There also emerged the possibility of using an idiom which
could bind together the peasantry and the upper classes, in contrast to the
European language, the use of which previously divided them.
English is still the language of instruction at the university and in the
higher reaches of the secondary schools because it takes time to make the
transition to Swahili. Textbooks have to be developed and new concepts
have to be incorporated into the language. Some foot-dragging in the
practical implementation of the national language policy is evident. It is
probably due, in part, to the lack of self-confidence of most of the petty
bourgeoisie and their wish to continue the English language identification
with the metropolis. However, debate in local circles has produced a
consensus that Swahili can – and must – take precedence at all levels of
communication – including the university.
Education for self-reliance
In the wake of the famous Arusha Declaration of 1967, Mwalimu9 Nyerere
made public a major policy document on education, entitled Education for
Self-Reliance.10 It should be borne in mind that the subtitle of the Arusha
Declaration was ‘TANU’s Policy of Socialism and Self-Reliance’.11 The
emphasis on self-reliance thereafter became the principal theoretical
premise for educational reconstruction. Education for Self-Reliance starts
with an awareness that the colonized were educated to be dependent upon
the colonizers: an education for dependence. In contrast, the goal for
Tanzanians in the conceptualized socialist, self-reliant Tanzania was that
they should be dependent on their own efforts, their own skills, their own
creativity. Education under colonialism was mainly supported by the state

or church. That is to say, Africans paid taxes and generated surplus out of
which the colonial administration or the church allocated funds for
education. Those who went through the formal educational systems were
removed from production and kept as specifically privileged persons for the
duration of their secondary education. Patterns such as these were
challenged in Education for Self-Reliance.
The colonial education system was a pyramid, starting off with a narrow
base of primary education, becoming extremely narrow at the secondary
level and tapering off sharply at the point of higher education. Education
for Self-Reliance insisted that a national educational system could not have
as its goal the well-being of a few at the top. A change of priorities was
required so that the edifice could be built around the well-being of the
majority. Under the colonial system, primary school was not an end in
itself, for it meant nothing to emerge after six years of primary school. The
primary school graduate was considered by the colonialist a potentially
better labourer or cultivator. But the African who was to help in
administration needed to proceed further. Given the ‘white-collar’
orientation of colonial society, Africans also accepted that the purpose of
education could only be achieved by climbing the pyramid.
The new approach in Tanzania was based on the contention that it is
absurd to spend millions of shillings on an educational system whose end
product is a handful of trained people – especially since the only thing they
can do is administer the country rather than spearhead production. If only a
handful still continued to reach the top of the educational pyramid in
independent Tanzania, that would constitute a secondary achievement. The
major focus was to be on primary education, because only in this sphere
could the policymakers conceive of giving everybody an education in the
near future. All primary school graduates had to be fitted for service in the
society, rather than as misfits with no meaningful jobs – as happened in
colonial Africa and as happens in neo-colonial Africa.
The goal of a self-reliant education led to a re-evaluation of the age at
which children should start school. Generally, the starting age is six years,
and at twelve the child is finished with primary schooling. The logic behind
the TANU decision to start school at a later age was that a primary school
graduate of twelve years or less is neither physically nor mentally equipped
to assume the role of producer in the society. Consequently, in 1963, the
starting age was pushed upwards to seven years and the school leaving age

to fourteen years. Interestingly enough, in pre-colonial African society, a
child became an adult at the time of puberty; the initiatory ‘rites of passage’
meant that a girl became a woman, and a boy, a man. The European
conception of a teenager – someone who is unproductive for four or five
years – was totally unheard of.
The policy of education for self-reliance placed a lot of emphasis on
agricultural work, because the vast majority of people in the country earn
their living from subsistence. The colonial educational approach was
designed to downgrade and degrade manual work, particularly as it related
to agriculture. That is why the educated African elite despised (and still
despises) the peasants. When the colonialist did introduce agricultural
education, as happened in several areas, it did not allow for improvisation
or innovation. It was agricultural instruction of the crudest form, based on
the premise that hoeing the land through the expenditure of sheer physical
energy was the natural lot of Africans. Education for self-reliance, on the
other hand, asserts the dignity of African labour, and aims at strengthening
the connections between theory and practice, so that schoolchildren can be
involved creatively with their environment. Labour in the field was not to
be a punishment, as it was in the colonial era, but an exercise in the
scientific utilization of natural resources.
In this framework, school farms have become very important to the
development of the Education for Self-Reliance movement in Tanzania. The
farm is useful in that it can provide revenue for the school. But that, I think,
is a secondary purpose. Much more relevant are the attitudes connected
with agricultural labour, the possibilities of innovation, and the experience
of study and work. Within a self-reliant educational environment, the whole
school community of teachers and students act as a democratic entity. The
student and their teacher are supposed to set priorities – determining what is
to be planted and what is not, how it is to be done, how it is to be marketed,
and to what use funds will be put. The school, like an Ujamaa community,
is to be an exercise in self-government, whereas colonialism was the
negation of that self-government.
Some observers have belittled the significance of self-reliant education
by pointing out that this idea and many others are not at all new, having
been mooted and experimented upon during the colonial period.12 What
they fail to recognize is the limiting and distinguishing factor of the colonial
political economy and the fact that the same policies can assume radically

different meanings within a new social order. It would have been unrealistic
to the point of infantilism to expect even the most honest of colonial
agricultural-educational programmes to convince Africans of the merits of
agriculture, when the colonial value structure, deriving from the mode of
production, pointed to the success of those who abandoned direct
participation in agriculture and engaged instead in more ‘civilized’ pursuits.
These observers fail to address themselves to fundamental issues, such as
who wields power and in whose interests. The policy of education for selfreliance opens up revolutionary possibilities because it is the decision of
people in their own interests. To suggest that the colonialists had the same
vision of African well-being is an exercise in apologetics – and not a subtle
one at that.
Other commentators have lined up for or against Education for SelfReliance in terms of their assessment of its class content and significance
for socialism. Thus, the pan-Africanist Marxist, Mzee C.L.R. James13
waves ecstatically about the document. He affirms that ‘the simplicity with
which Dr. Nyere states what his government proposes to do disguises the
fact that not in Plato or in Aristotle, Rousseau or Karl Marx will you find
such radical, such revolutionary departures from the established educational
order.’14 Mzee C.L.R. James is as much influenced by what is within the
document as by the creation of Ujamaa socialism, which he regards as a
revolutionary response to the objective conditions of Tanzania and Africa.
On the other hand, a negative assessment has been offered by an American
educationist, Philip Foster, which is filled with bourgeois assumptions. He
expresses a firm commitment to class society in Africa, on the grounds that
there are ‘conflict objectives of equality and efficiency’. He is convinced
that future progress in Tanzania and Africa must mean further class
stratification. His real quarrel with Education for Self-Reliance is that not
only does it hark back to traditional African communalism, but it also
points forward to a new socialism, starting with the countryside.15
Of course, five years after the promulgation of the policy, the more
rewarding activity is not to contemplate it as theory, but rather to focus on
its implementation to date. The Brazilian educationist, Paulo Freiere, when
asked to comment on education for self-reliance in Tanzania replied that it
looked liberating on paper, but that the answer would only be found in
praxis, because ‘the question is not is it but do it.’16 Studies on the practical

meaning of self-reliance programmes in Tanzanian schools are in their
infancy, but even a casual awareness of the Tanzanian contemporary scene
suggests that education for self-reliance has not been working according to
plan – far from it. Inevitably, with such a complex manner, people grasp the
formal and superficial aspects first. Many schoolteachers think that
education for self-reliance means having a farm. They decide to have a
farm, and ‘self-reliance’ is placed on a timetable just like physics,
mathematics or history. At a given time, the students go out, they work and
they come back in, but no serious attempts are made to integrate the
different aspects of the curriculum so that it points in a given direction.
Teachers may seldom make any attempts to involve students in determining
what constitutes self-reliant activity in their respective regions. They still
use the authoritarian, bureaucratic approach, although they might boast of
self-reliance in their schools. In this connection, their class allegiances and
ideological outlook are factors of great importance.
Education and liberation
Ultimately, the success of the schoolroom revolution is itself dependent on
the development of structures and patterns within the society as a whole.
Tanzanian education is trying to create new norms, but at the same time the
total society must be moving in a given direction. These two things are
mutually supportive. In Tanzania, serious attempts have been made to create
new structures and establish new norms in many aspects of the political
economy. They all have a bearing on the attempted revolution in education.
During the early 1960s, students scoffed when they were told to limit their
aspirations for the future and regard themselves as servants of the people.
They asked, ‘How can these politicians, driving in their Mercedes-Benzes,
accumulating real estate, joining capitalist companies, tell us to be
socialist?’ When university students demonstrated against the National
Service in 1966, one of the things they said was that if they were to have a
60 per cent cut in their salaries for the time spent in National Service, then
something should be done about the cabinet ministers, principal secretaries
and other top civil servants. Although President Nyerere disciplined them
and sent them home for a year, it is significant that this student revolt
sparked the Arusha Declaration. Nyerere agreed that the political leadership

should discipline itself. He cut his salary by 20 per cent, and other cabinet
ministers followed suit. For those who did not initiate this sacrifice
voluntarily, a law was passed reducing the salaries of top civil servants.
Much of the Arusha Declaration was in fact devoted to outlining a code of
behaviour for the top echelons of the society – outside of the private
business sector. That leadership code was something of a self-denying
ordinance, which has since been used as a yardstick to measure observance
or non-observance of socialist ethics in the lifestyles of the nation’s
politico-bureaucratic leadership.
The TANU leadership code achieved some correlation with values in
the educational system. One cannot have a constant contradiction between
practice in the political and educational arenas. Children will follow certain
models, and the most important models actualized within the society cannot
be flagrantly out of step with those idealized in the classroom. Similarly, as
far as agriculture is concerned, a lot of small-scale capitalist ventures were
encouraged in Tanzania in the early 1960s; but, in the most recent period,
collective Ujamaa agriculture has been given the greater sanction. It makes
sense to have notions of Ujamaa given structural form in an agricultural
community at the same time that they are being extolled in school.
Furthermore, when children leave the school where they have been taught
the value of communal and collective efforts, they have before them the
possibility of joining an Ujamaa village and thereby becoming a permanent
part of the movement for the construction of socialism, as shaped and
conditioned by their history and environment. How far this possibility is
realized and how effective the Ujamaa villages are themselves, are of
course questions which immediately arise and demand an answer.
The transformation of the colonial education system in Tanzania and
Africa as a whole is part of a much broader front of combat against
imperialism and neo-colonialism, internally and externally. Although it is a
critically important aspect, educational transformation alone will never lead
to the total liberation of society. Indeed, it is dialectically impossible for
profound change to take place in the old educational system within
antecedent and concomitant transformations of all aspects of the political
economy. The prognosis for change in Tanzania and African education
processes is therefore the same as the evaluation of the prospects of
socialist revolution and total liberation from colonialism and neocolonialism. In the long run, this evaluation must be based on the multifold

contradictions of imperialism, which are tearing it apart and which have
transformed it into a moribund part of the world order. In the short run, the
dynamic of change within Africa is determined mainly by the configuration
of emergent class society and by the rate at which the mass of direct
producers acquire the consciousness of and capacity to act in their own
interests – with the support of intellectuals drawn from all strata. For these
reasons, our discussion of education must rest suspended, since an
examination of the above short- and long-run trends is beyond the modest
scope of this analysis.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

IV
Building Socialism
This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

13
Tanzanian Ujamaa and
Scientific Socialism
This chapter attempts to identify Tanzanian Ujamaa with Scientific
Socialism in certain ideological essentials. It is an exercise in theory,
bearing in mind that historically the theory of socialism preceded the
establishment of socialism as a system in any part of the globe. Scientific
Socialism (or Marxism, if you like) is an explicit worldview which
contemplates every conceivable phenomenon from protein to literature, in
terms of a methodology applicable to nature and society. Therefore, the
comparison with Tanzanian Ujamaa is not completely analogous, since the
latter is neither explicit nor all-embracing. However, the same kind of
reservation could probably be expressed for any ideological variant other
than Scientific Socialism. One must, in most cases, seek ideology in human
actions, combined to greater or lesser extent with statements of principle or
policy. The Tanzanian political process has produced over the last decade
several noteworthy declarations of principle and sufficient actions which
give meaning to the said declarations. The word ‘Ujamaa’ has already been
popularized in two contexts: first, as referring to the extended family of
African communalism; and second, with reference to the creation of
agricultural collectives known as Ujamaa villages. The relation between the
two is that the Ujamaa villages seek to recapture the principles of joint
production, egalitarian distribution and the universal obligation to work
which were found within African communalism. In the present discussion
the world Ujamaa incorporates both of these meanings, and includes also
the implications of several policy documents and public plans.
A necessary piece of ground-clearing must be performed by advancing
the negative proposition that Tanzanian Ujamaa is not ‘African Socialism’.

Such a disclaimer may appear curious and even presumptuous in view of
the fact that in 1962 Mwalimu Nyerere referred to Ujamaa as ‘the basis of
African Socialism’. But, there are several reasons for keeping the two
concepts widely apart. When ‘African Socialism’ was in vogue early in the
1960s, it comprised a variety of interpretations ranging from a wish to see a
socialist society in Africa to a desire to maintain the status quo of neocolonialism. Since then, the term has come to be identified with its most
consistent and least revolutionary ideologue, Leopold Senghor, and with the
late Tom Mboya. As such, ‘African Socialism’ is generally taken to mean a
set of relations which leave capitalism and imperialism unchallenged. It is
therefore essential to disassociate the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist
stance in Tanzania from a caption that has been pre-empted by nonrevolutionary African leaders. Furthermore, when Ujamaa was presented as
an option shortly after the independence of Tanganyika, it was (knowingly)
defined as an abstract set of values without reference to the social forms
necessary for their realization.1 Much has now been done in the way of
policy decisions to indicate and build the relevant social structures, thereby
further differentiating Ujamaa from its erstwhile counterparts of ‘African
Socialism’ in so far as the latter never advanced from the ideal to the real.
Above all, one must take note of the progressive evolution of Tanzanian
theory and practice over the period of nearly a decade, as a positive
response to national, African and international developments.2
Conversely, to associate Ujamaa with the category of ‘Scientific
Socialism’ seems to be flying in the face of assertions to the contrary by
Tanzanian policymakers. Scientific Socialism is held to be synonymous
with Marxism, Communism and the like, which have been held at arm’s
length by Tanzanians who propound Ujamaa. The contradiction is more
apparent than real. In part, it disappears when one takes into account the
above-mentioned factor of significant politico-ideological advance from the
Arusha Declaration to Mwongozo. In addition, and more decisively, the
difference is largely based on a caricature of Scientific Socialism
(Marxism), which proposes that socialism must come through proletarian
revolution within an already developed capitalist state. Such a definition
would automatically exclude Tanzanian Ujamaa, which looks towards the
socialist organization of peasants and seeks to revive and perpetuate the
collective principle of production and the equalitarian nature of distribution
which characterized communalism. As carried out both by some self-

professed Marxists and by bourgeois analysts, the transformation of
Marxism into a barren, dogmatic, mechanistic and uni-dimensional theory
has understandably led many creative individuals to reject what purports to
be Scientific Socialism. To reopen the issue, one must go back to first
principles and rescue the essence of Scientific Socialism.
Socialism emerged as an ideology within capitalist society. All of its
exponents saw the viciousness of capitalism and agreed on the need for
replacing the prevailing production for private profit with a system which
met the needs of all. However, they did not agree on either the precise
content of socialist society or the means by which it was to be instituted. It
is in these areas that the necessity arose for distinguishing between
unrealistic socialist hopes and a more rigorous analysis that could claim to
meet the canons of scientific method and which by its correctness
guaranteed meaningful action for the realization of socialism. For Marx,
‘Scientific Socialism’ is quite simply socialism that is scientific.
Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier and other pioneer socialists of the early
nineteenth century were dubbed ‘utopian’ by Marx and Engels for a variety
of reasons, notably because they failed to appreciate that human social
development proceeded through certain stages and because their model
socialist societies did not take cognizance of the reality of class struggle.3
On the other hand, the rubric ‘Scientific Socialism’ still attaches to the
mode of perception which predicts the emergence of socialism as a product
of the dialectic movement of all previous history and as a consequence of
the triumph of the working class. Utopian socialism, or at least utopian
elements in socialist thought, have persisted and reappeared from time to
time. ‘African Socialism’ is utopian in its refusal to come to grips with the
class relations in which Africans are enmeshed and in its romanticized
ignorance of the stages of African historical development. It is the
contention of the author that, in contrast, Tanzanian Ujamaa is correct in its
perception of the principal motion of its own society.
The assertion that ‘there are no classes in Africa’ is often used to justify
capitalist investment in the continent, and in recent times it has come under
criticism from progressive African thinkers.4 First, it must be noted that the
international character of capitalist production in the era of imperialism has
placed the propertied class in the metropoles while the greater portion of
their working force resides in the colonial or semi-colonial areas. Second,
the colonial sectors show varying degrees of stratification and class

formation as a consequence of their integration in the international capitalist
economy. Both of these features are recognized in the Tanzanian policy
documents which elaborate on the theory of Ujamaa: TANU’s5 Arusha
Declaration and Mwalimu Nyerere’s Socialism and Rural Development
being the most relevant.
The Arusha Declaration had little to say about the development of
socialism in the countryside beyond expressing the opinion that concern for
the peasant farmer must be a priority. However, this document set the stage
for the policy of constructing Ujamaa villages by expropriating the foreign
capitalist class who until then were owners of the major means of
production within Tanzania. It stated unequivocally that the major means of
production are under the control and ownership of the peasants and the
workers themselves through their government and their cooperatives.
Nationalization and the acquisition of part ownership of several companies
were steps in the direction of severing the links between the local working
classes and the international bourgeoisie. The Arusha Declaration also
stated that socialism was incompatible with the presence of capitalist
elements, in contrast with ‘African Socialism’, which has as one of its
major tenets the advocacy of coexistence of private and public ownership.
Utopian socialists promoted models in which capitalists cooperated with
their workers in the new society. They sometimes assigned a major
initiatory role to the bankers. Senghor’s proposal was to socialize
agriculture, to establish public utilities as a mixed sector and to leave banks,
commerce and industry to capitalist enterprise.6 The sum total of these
arrangements would be ‘African Socialism’. In so far as contemporary
theory and practice of Ujamaa in Tanzania does allow for private enterprise,
this is well understood to be transitional, an entirely different concept from
that of the permanent coexistence of capitalist and supposedly socialist
relations within the same society, and one that has been implemented in
every socialist revolution from 1917 onwards.
Both feudalists and capitalists are cited by the Arusha Declaration as
enemies of socialism. The former had their place in the scheme of things in
Africa before the coming of the Europeans, while the latter came into being
as part of the process by which metropolitan capitalist society was
remodelling colonial society (wittingly and unwittingly) along lines of
stratification and exploitation. The Indian businessmen in East Africa were
the closest representation of a locally resident bourgeoisie, and it is no

accident that they were the most affected by the measures of expropriation
behind the nationalization of foreign-owned property – that is, by the
Acquisition of Buildings Act, 1971. Thus, both ideological statements and
government policy pinpointed that within Tanzania there were capitalists
and feudalists standing in opposition to the workers and peasants. The
Arusha Declaration does, in the same breath, make a rather unsatisfactory
distinction between urban and rural Tanzania as representing exploiters and
exploited, respectively.7 It is in Socialism and Rural Development that
stratification in the countryside is also acknowledged and a realistic
assessment is made of African communal society, as it was and as it is
becoming.
Having extolled the virtues of ‘traditional’ African living in Africa,
Socialism and Rural Development proceeds to identify both its inadequacies
and the fact that communalism as a way of life and a value system has been
constantly eroded under the pressure of African involvement in capitalism.
Because of cash-crop farming in particular ‘the old traditions of living
together, working together and sharing the proceeds, have often been
abandoned’. In place of the old Ujamaa patterns, there was a growing gap
between those who owned and hired labour and the landless who offered
their labour for hire in order to survive. In this context, Mwalimu Nyerere
predicted that, unchecked, such a development raised the spectre of most of
the peasantry becoming a ‘rural proletariat’ working for the minority landed
class.8 This observation attests to the fact that the theory underlying the
modern version of Tanzanian Ujamaa identifies contradictory forces within
the nation as well as the direction for change that must result from the
interplay of such forces. Marx and Engels attacked ‘Proudhonism’ because,
among other things, Proudhon saw socialism as being based on independent
petty producers of the artisan class.9 But changes in technology by the midnineteenth century had convincingly demonstrated that the artisans were
doomed to extinction by machine production and the universalization of
capitalist relations. Of course, the peasant is also a petty producer and has
actually been eliminated in large parts of Western Europe. The question as
to whether there is a possibility of using peasant production as the basis for
a socialist state has been raised in many debates, and its resolution depends
upon the local and international political economy of the time. Before
tackling this issue in the specific context of Tanzania, it is enlightening to

pursue briefly the debate on ‘Peasant Socialism’ as it was conducted in the
rather similar context of late nineteenth-century Russia.
Like contemporary Tanzania, nineteenth-century Russia was an
exploited semi-colonial sector of the international imperialist economy.
Unlike Tanzania, Russia had experienced fully matured feudal relations and
was becoming capitalist and industrialized from its own internal dynamic,
quite apart from the intrusion of Western European capitalism.
Nevertheless, there had persisted under feudalism and embryo capitalism
certain communal forms of organization among the peasantry – namely, the
obshchina or mir (village communes) and artel (artisans’ cooperatives).
Russians of a socialist or anti-capitalist bias contemplated a socialist society
that was qualitatively different from that envisaged by their counterparts in
industrialized Western Europe. They argued that Russia could avoid the
maturing of capitalist relations within its national boundaries and move
directly to a brand of socialism where the dominant social class was not the
industrial proletariat but rural peasants, living a life that was not far
removed from the communalism that preceded enserfment and capitalism.10
Obviously, there is a great deal in Tanzanian Ujamaa that is analogous to
the preoccupations of the Russians in question, who are known to posterity
as Populists.
In the 1870s and early 1880s, late in their veteran careers, Marx and
Engels were asked to comment on the possibility of Russia avoiding
capitalism. In a letter to K. Kablukova, a Populist, Engels viewed
favourably the opportunity presented in Russia ‘to be able to appeal to the
people’s thousand-year-old natural urge to associate, before this urge is
wholly extinguished’. Marx expressed the opinion that the rural community
was the mainspring of Russia’s social regeneration, but that in order that it
might function as such, one would first have to eliminate the deleterious
influences which then assailed it from every quarter.11 The vital condition
for the successful building of socialism in Russia on the old communal base
was speed to forestall further inroads on surviving collectiveness. In
addition, it was essential that revolution in Russia be preceded by or
immediately followed by the outbreak of a workers’ revolution in an
industrialized part of Europe. This point is made in the introduction to the
first Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto published in 1877 and
again at some length in Engels’ statement On Social Relations in Russia
(1882). Some years later, Engels reaffirmed the contention as follows:

I would say that no more in Russia than anywhere else would it have been possible to
develop a higher social form out of primitive agrarian communism unless – that higher form
was already in existence in another country, so as to serve as a model. That higher form
being, wherever it is historically possible, the necessary consequences of the capitalist form
of production and of the social dualistic antagonisms created by it, it could not be developed
directly out of the agrarian commune, unless in imitation of an example already in existence
somewhere else.12

As seen in the above extract, Marx and Engels dealt with the stages of
human social development in a much more flexible manner than they are
usually given credit for. They are, of course, insisting that the movement
from communalism to feudalism to capitalism to socialism is a movement
from lower to higher forms, with implications for the volume and efficiency
of production and the satisfying of human needs. But they are not implying
a single mechanical line of historical progression, and they actually deny
this in the course of the discussion. In a comradely letter to Vera Zasulich in
1881, Marx explained that his description of the historical inevitability of
the foundation of the capitalist system was expressly limited to the
countries of Western Europe.13 Four years earlier, he had made the same
point with rather greater asperity in reply to a detractor, Mikhailovsky, who
insisted on misreading Marx. Firstly, Marx reminded his readers that the
chapter on primitive accumulation in Das Kapital does not pretend to do
more than trace the path by which, in Western Europe, the capitalist order
of economy emerged from the womb of the feudal order of economy. He
then proceeded to show that the given historical sketch of Western Europe
might be applicable to Russia if Russia continued to move in the same
capitalist direction as Western European countries; for in that case Russia
could not succeed without first transforming a sizeable number of peasants
into proletarians. However, Marx vigorously disavowed any intention of
using his model of Western Europe to provide a historical-philosophical
theory of the general path every people is fated to tread, whatever the
historical circumstances in which it finds itself.14
Although Marx completely disowned the proposition that a people must
move to socialism via capitalism, it is understandable that bourgeois
academics ignore this and interpret Marx to mean exactly what he said he
did not mean.15 But even self-styled Marxists have also made it appear that
Scientific Socialism can be arrived at only on the basis of an advanced
proletariat within a given country and hence only after capitalism has held

in sway that country for a lengthy epoch, in precisely the same manner as
Western Europe.
As far as Russia was concerned, the discussion by Populists and
Marxists about avoiding capitalism turned out to be one about a nonrealizable hypothesis. Marx and Engels feared that the process of
stratification in the countryside would continue unchecked. Information
reaching them from the late 1870s suggested that Russian communal forms
were becoming shells which only hid the new exploitative relations of
capitalist society. Towards the end of his life, Engels regretfully concluded
that the obshchina should be treated as a dream of the past. A fine chance
had been missed, but reality had to be faced, for capitalism was being built
in Russia on the labour of landless peasantry turned proletariat.16 A few
years later, when Lenin made his in-depth analysis of The Development of
Capitalism in Russia, he convincingly demonstrated that the capitalist
process was far too advanced to think in terms of by-passing that stage. In
other words, the creation of a rural proletariat and of landlord farmers
which Socialism and Rural Development was interested in avoiding in
Tanzania had already occurred in Russia by the turn of the present century
among the peasants themselves – in addition to the continued existence of
feudal and bourgeois landowners.17
Even after it became clear that internal and external factors were
hastening the final decomposition of Russian communal forms, some
theorists still clung to the idea that Russia could build socialism on the
model of an old commune. Only at this point were they eschewed by
Scientific Socialists as propagating Populist Utopianism. For instance, in
1890 Engels declared that the Populist, Danielson, was beyond hope, in
spite of prolonged ideological exchange and correspondence to clarify the
conditions under which Russian communalism could be revived.18 For
purposes of an analogy with Tanzania and Africa, what is crucial is that the
founders of Scientific Socialism seriously and enthusiastically contemplated
a variant of socialism very much akin to Ujamaa, and they indicated the
conditions under which it might be realized. The most important
requirements were: first, that the ‘traditional’ forms should exist in real life
and have some social vitality; and second, that international conditions
should be favourable owing to a socialist breakthrough in some part of the
world. For Africa, the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of these conditions needs
to be examined.

An effort has already been made to underscore the idea that for Marx
different paths to socialism did exist, precisely because of varied experience
of movement from one social phase to another. It is of some value to the
history of philosophy to keep the record straight on this issue; although one
is primarily concerned not with establishing Marx’s correctness but rather
with confirming the truth of the observation that the movement of different
peoples through history has had significant variations. This could be
illustrated within Europe with regard to the contrast between Eastern and
Western Europe. As far as Asia is concerned the social stage parallel to that
of feudalism in Europe bore sufficient peculiarities to be categorized
separately as ‘the Asian Mode of Production’.19 Most relevant to the
African continent is the debate on a possible ‘African Mode of
Production’.20 With the exception of parts of the Middle East and Egypt,
neither Asia nor Africa had slavery as a distinct social system, and African
societies had very little servitude outside of the context of capture for
export. From African communalism, the evolution was in a feudal or quasifeudal direction, and communal forms persisted even in the most stratified
societies. Ruling elites in empires as large as those of the western Sahara
still maintained their authority through the heads of communities rather
than through contractual relations with individual peasants.
It is in the pre-European era that Senghor seeks his model of pristine
‘Socialism’ in Africa. But, to begin with, communalism was not socialism.
Collective production was narrowly restricted on an ethnic, clan and
geographical basis, and the egalitarian principle of distribution was limited
by the low level of production so that societies came nowhere close to
fulfilling the needs of all their citizens – hence Marx’s description of this
stage as ‘Primitive Communism’.21 Socialism is inconceivable prior to the
emancipation of man from such elementary forces as drought, flood and
disease. Besides, in determining whether African communalism has any
relevance in the present time, one must identify it as still persisting – that is,
the thousand-year-old urge to associate must not have been extinguished. In
many parts of Africa, communal forms lost their primacy centuries ago with
the emergence of feudal and quasi-feudal forms of exploiting labour,
including household servitude. Large parts of Africa were integrated within
the capitalist economy since the fifteenth century because of the European
quest for slave labour. Finally, there was the period of colonial rule which
introduced capitalist exploitation of labour in every part of the continent. It

certainly is not enough for Senghor to sound a warning of possible class
formation in the present period, when it is obvious that Senegal has already
passed through a lengthy and intense historical experience incompatible
with the maintenance of communal forms or the practice of egalitarianism.
Admittedly, in ‘Ujamaa – the Basis of African Socialism’ Mwalimu
Nyerere sounded a note rather similar to that of the standard version of
‘African Socialism’, when he asserted that ‘We, in Africa, have no more
need of being “converted” to socialism than we have to being “taught”
democracy.’ However, taking the continent as a whole, Tanzania is
exceptional in that even at the end of the colonial period the communal
forms were still recognizable. This is a consequence of its people having
been relatively little involved in the capitalist money economy of mining,
settler plantations and cash-crop production. The low degree of internal
stratification at the time of constitutional independence was reflected in
national cohesion and the solidarity of a single mass party. Between 1961
and 1967 there was increasing differentiation, so that Socialism and Rural
Development dealt with the core of the problem by determining that
socialism could only be built in Tanzania by halting stratification and the
creation of a rural proletariat. This was the first of the conditions that Marx
and Engels laid down when discussing how socialism might have been built
on the basis of the Russian commune.
The possibility of regenerating traditional communalism also depends
upon factors outside of the national political economy. This model for
Ujamaa is as much in the present as in the past. If certain socialist values
can be recovered from communalism, then equally there is the possibility of
importing (and modifying) values and concrete attributes of socialism in
any part of the globe. When Mwalimu Nyerere referred to the weakness of
traditional African communalism, he mentioned technological
inadequacy.22 This factor should be given greater emphasis because it was
technological inadequacy that meant scarcity and led to stratification and
the internal evolution of classes in parts of Africa before contact with
Europe. It was also technological weakness that led to loss of independence
when Africa was confronted by European societies. Movement to a higher
stage means massive strengthening of productive and defence capacity. But,
with true political independence, any African society can resume its
interrupted socio-economic and technological development at a higher level
by utilizing the fund of scientific knowledge now available to mankind.

Some of this knowledge is already in the hands of the first socialist states;
and even if it is still the property of capitalists, it can be expropriated.
In effect, the skipping of stages involved in the jump from
communalism to socialism is only possible in a given society because
elsewhere the intervening stages have existed or are still existing, and
because, as Engels postulated, modern industrial socialism has broken the
stranglehold which capitalism previously maintained on the world at large.
The first condition opens up the technological possibility of building
socialism, while the second provides a model and profoundly influences the
international political situation. Amilcar Cabral put his finger on these
points and explains lucidly that ‘the possibility of such a jump in the
historical process arises mainly, in the economic field, from the power of
the means available to man at the time for dominating nature, and, in the
political field, from the new event which has radically changed the face of
the world and the development of history, the creation of socialist states.’23
Potekhin, the well-known Soviet specialist on Africa, a few years ago
expressed his agreement with those versions of ‘African Socialism’ which
aimed essentially at building socialism in Africa and using African paths to
socialism. In his opinion, colonized Africa could move directly and
uniquely to socialism largely because of the Soviet Union. The latter was
available as a source of help and a power transforming the global political
balance in such a way as to restrain the large capitalist nations in their
exploitation and oppression of small would-be socialist states.24 The
unstinted aid supposedly available from the Soviet Union would be
regarded as illusory by most progressive Africans who are learning that
self-reliance is definitely a superior alternative to any ‘Big Brother’.
However, it is true that the socialist sector of the world (divisions
notwithstanding) offers a set of models, a set of alternative partners for
trade and a more accessible source of technical aid. Tanzanian external
political and economic relations have already gone a long way towards
maximizing the advantage created by the existence of socialism in various
parts of the world. It is one of the key ways of seizing what Marx
considered a golden opportunity for moving to socialism on the basis of
communalism and without having to experience the full development of
classes characteristic of capitalism. It can further be argued that a colony or
semi-colony within the imperialist framework can never develop to full
capitalist maturity. Africa has experienced almost as many years of

capitalist development as Europe, but in our case the unfolding of
capitalism has meant historical arrest and backwardness. The accompanying
stratification never approximated the dynamic of capitalism in the
metropoles. Thus, one could never expect capitalism to perform in Africa
the historically progressive role it played in Western Europe. This is yet
another fact of a more refined theory concerning the states of human social
advance. Such a theory must cease assuming that development is selfcontained for any given group or society, and this line of reasoning also
reinforces the conclusion that for Africa a different path to socialism is not
only possible but is unavoidable.25 An ideology such as Ujamaa is
scientific in so far as logically and scientifically it charts this new path.
The fact that the path of Ujamaa in broad outline is so reminiscent of
one perceived by Marx is a salutary coincidence in so far as this particular
discussion is concerned. Since so much of Marx’s time was spent applying
his scientific method to a critique of capitalism in Western Europe, any
debate outside that geographical area cannot be tied merely to what Marx
said, as though Scientific Socialism were entirely comprised within the
pages of Marx’s writings. ‘Marxism’ when considered as synonymous with
Scientific Socialism means the application of scientific method (of which
Marx was a founder) to the study of any given situation. This is a task of
such complexity that Marx and Engels often issued warnings that the
chances of incorrect conclusions were high.26 However, the argument that
Ujamaa is consistent with Scientific Socialism is made easier to
substantiate because of Marx’s conclusions with regard to an obviously
analogous situation. The Marxist who considers the stress on ‘traditional’
African communalism as theoretically incompatible with a Scientific
Socialist approach must bear the onus of proving that Marx’s brief
application of his own theory was unscientific in the Russian case. At the
same time, the non-Marxist seeking to isolate Ujamaa from what he
imagines to be Scientific Socialism must at least be brought up short in light
of evidence that Marx himself explicitly countenanced the possibility of a
development towards socialism that integrated peasant collectives from the
communal epoch.
After Marx’s time, new (Scientific) Socialist ideas have been elaborated
out of revolutionary experience. Their accuracy and relevance have been
tested by nothing less than the experience of building socialism in
economically backward countries in the teeth of imperialist opposition.

Ujamaa has not yet been fully tested in this sense and there are a wide
range of ‘social engineering’ problems which have still to be tackled in the
creation of new structures, new values and ultimately a new socialist man.
If agriculture in Africa were already somehow mystically socialist, then
there would not have arisen all the travail of physical transposition and
social readjustment that is actually going on in Tanzania. Resettlement and
collectivization proves how many aspects of the prevailing system were at
odds with modern socialism: notably, the isolated production units, lowlevel technology, stratification and narrow vertical divisions. ‘African
Socialists’ formulated ‘socialist agriculture’ as an existing reality rather
than a goal to be achieved by rescuing communal elements; so, it follows
that they had no socialist programme. Under Senghor, nothing has been
done to relieve the exploitation of peasants producing cash crops and to
remove rural exploitation; while in Kenya the only practical change in the
agricultural sector as envisaged by Tom Mboya was the introduction of
advanced agricultural machinery for the individual capitalist farmer.27 Even
the more progressive African political and ideological leadership long
neglected the countryside, and opted for a one-sided industrialization
strategy. Tanzanian Ujamaa is a unique contribution to the African socialist
revolution and to socialist theory as a whole because of its solid
connections with the observable data in the Tanzanian countryside. This is
the characteristic which causes ‘Leninism’ or ‘Maoism’ to be considered as
having enriched the Scientific Socialism of which Marx and Engels were
the founders.
Undoubtedly, a much greater gap emerges when one compares
implementation of Tanzanian Ujamaa with the implementation of Scientific
Socialism in the particular countries where this has been attempted. Here is
where the disavowal of Scientific Socialism makes a real difference because
it encourages an attitude of mind that masks contradictions and even throws
overboard theory as such behind the guise of being ‘practical’. It can be
argued that measures taken to implement socialism in Tanzania run the risk
of being defeated for lack of a rigorous theory that comprehends the
antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions of the world scene. The
issue of nationalization is a case in point.28 However, this does not mean
that Ujamaa and Scientific Socialism are on two divergent paths. One
should distinguish between an awareness of the fundamental movement of
society and history, on the one hand, and adjustments to that movement in

terms of struggle and construction, on the other hand. The latter is always
very problematic but the first is more fundamental, requiring an
understanding of which classes are on the ascendant and which social
systems are moribund. Tanzanian Ujamaa can claim to be correctly focused
in this regard. This being so, there is no insuperable barrier to the
development of scientific strategies and tactics.
The above argument may be considered further in relation to the rural
sector. It cannot be said that the construction of Ujamaa villages has
followed a scientific line of identifying points of weakness and strength as
advocated by Engels and Lenin and as practised by Mao Zedong and Kim Il
Sung. But the theory and policy of Ujamaa has logically determined that
the key role in Socialist construction has to be played by the Tanzanian
peasants. This is in accord with the present stage of the development of
productive forces within Tanzania and with the present international
conjuncture, and such an insight gives Ujamaa its chances of success and
ample scope for evolution, which it would have lacked if the theory had
backed the wrong class or the disintegrating capitalist social system. The
actual building of Ujamaa villages is a task requiring definite expertise.
From a sociological viewpoint, practical implementation must take into
account both the varying socio-economic formations found in Tanzania as
well as the phenomenon of stratification.29 Any sociologist might deal with
some of the problems of collectivization but ultimately it is only a Scientific
Socialist approach that can guarantee success. By way of illustration one
could turn to Vietnam, where bourgeois social scientists lent their skills to
the US government in the creation of ‘strategic hamlets’.30 Their technical
expertise ran counter to the movement of the society and the hamlets were
dashed aside by the conscious and organized peasants of Vietnam. At the
same time, collectivized agriculture in the liberated parts of the country has
been moving forward steadily.
One searching test of the scientific nature of any version of socialism is
its reflection of the interests of the most exploited and oppressed classes.
Marx regarded Utopians as having advanced towards a more defensible
position to the extent that individuals like Owen and Fourier grasped the
fact that socialism was the ideology of the working class and that it must
therefore uncompromisingly serve this class.31 Significantly too, the later
Social Democratic deviation from scientific and revolutionary socialism
reflected bourgeoisification of intellectuals and worker leaders in the epoch

of imperialism. By way of rounding out a working understanding of
Scientific Socialism, it should be made clear that socialist theory must voice
the interests of the most exploited of the producers – this being perfectly
possible alongside the phenomenon of class desertion by individuals from
propertied or privileged strata, and alongside the assumption of leadership
roles by these individuals. In Africa (as in Europe, Asia and the Americas)
it is from within the ranks of an educated elite that leadership is drawn for
movements claiming to be socialist. But there is a vast difference in the
fundamental class loyalties of those espousing ‘African Socialism’ as
compared to Tanzanian advocates of Ujamaa; a difference between a
parodied mischievous use of the term ‘socialism’ and the de facto
elaboration of the theory to which a Marxist could readily subscribe in
terms of its potential for realizing a socialist society along scientific lines.
Fanon called for the self-liquidation of the African petty bourgeoisie
and their regeneration as a revolutionary intelligentsia, but of course this is
far from being the case within the continent as a whole. ‘African Socialism’
is the inflection which the African petty bourgeoisie have given to
bourgeois ideology in an attempt to camouflage from the masses the
deepening capitalist exploitation of the neo-colonial era. In sharp contrast,
Tanzanian Ujamaa has begun to make the decisive break with capitalism.
The evidence lies in the Arusha Declaration, in the Mwongozo, in the TanZam railway, in the nationalization of certain buildings and in virtually
every act of Tanzanian foreign policy. Tanzania Ujamaa, limited as it is in
actual achievement, can substantiate the claim to be the ideology of the
majority of Tanzanian producers in the countryside and the towns.
In the final analysis, simple honesty is a vital ingredient in Scientific
Socialism – honesty in the cause of man, the workers and dedication to his
emancipation. Subjective as this may initially appear, it is very much part of
the scientifically determinable process of social change, because
consciousness is a principal factor in this process. This is precisely why
Marxist theory is not mechanistic. Wherever it makes a projection into the
future, the calculation includes human will and consciousness as a variable,
because knowledge, self-awareness and organized activity by the exploited
are all tied together. Tanzanian Ujamaa has broken with the crude
manipulative dishonesty of ‘African Socialism’. For instance, Tanzanian
political leadership does ask for the ‘traditional’ communal virtue of hard
work, but not in a context where local exploitation and class formation is

allowed to proceed unchecked and is indeed promoted by the very theorists
of ‘socialism’. Therefore, Ujamaa can appeal to and deepen the
consciousness of peasants and workers which imparts greater momentum to
the people’s struggle to build socialism.
From the viewpoint of social theory, it is not satisfactory that writings
propounding Ujamaa never indicate awareness of the universality of
communal forms. Examples broadly similar to African communal
organization can be drawn not only from Russia before enserfment, but
from every part of Europe and Australasia at one time or another. One of
the first tasks of the scientist is to place things in the same category.
Reluctance to do so in this case is probably due to the hankering after
uniqueness among progressive Africans – something which occasionally
leads into blind alleys, but which on the whole is essential for the liberation
of the colonized.
The insistence on an African identity is a worthwhile corrective not only
to bourgeois cultural imperialism but also to dogmatic expositions by selfstyled Marxists or Scientific Socialists. Identification with the particularity
of experience in Africa is as essential as appreciating the universality of
scientific method. When the doctrine of Ujamaa postulates an African path
to socialism it affirms the validity of Scientific Socialism, in spite of the
lack of any declaration to this effect by Tanzanian leadership and in spite of
deliberate efforts to distort both Ujamaa and Scientific Socialism so as to
present them as fundamentally contradictory.
Serious political considerations make it necessary to undertake this kind
of abstract enquiry from the viewpoint of one committed to the African
Revolution. When the task of evaluating African social thought and practice
is left to bourgeois theoreticians, they find it convenient to place all
ideological strands into one amorphous mystifying whole, which includes
utterances by Tubman as well as Nkrumah, by Mboya as well as Sekou
Touré, by Senghor as well as Nyerere. Indeed, some go so far as to assert
that ‘in substance Nyerere and the Senegalese are closer than he is to Sekou
Touré or Nkrumah’.32 At the same time, progressive European friends often
display a penchant for armchair Marxist perfection, so that for them
Nyerere and Senghor are indeed in the same bag, because the former has
not come forward to declare for Marxism.33 The superficial and confused
nature of such a conclusion is a consequence of the authors not being
involved in making revolution, for whoever is involved in the actuality of

revolutionary transformation will not fail to perceive the differences
between form and substance. The substance of Ujamaa is its stand against
capitalism, against imperialism, against racism and against exploitation of
all kinds; and (to put it affirmatively) its stand for the emancipation of the
working population of Africa and for the remodelling of the society along
lines of socialist equality and socialist democracy.
Curiously enough, progressive Europeans are the ones who display the
hegemonic tendencies characteristic of the imperialist metropoles, in so far
as they have no time for insights that seem in any way to depart from
models originating in Western Europe. The former imperialist masters,
knowing the force of African nationalism which ousted them from the
politico-constitutional sphere, do not ignore the search for an African
identity, but rather take care to foster its most negative aspects; namely, the
alienation from revolutionary features of European thought. To remedy both
defects, theory for the African Revolution must spring from those who have
had the historical experience of and socialization under slavery,
colonialism, de-culturalization, racism and super-exploitation which has
been the peculiar lot of Africans. Within that context, it will then rapidly
become clear who is supporting an anti-people line, such as ‘African
Socialism’, and who is advocating genuine liberation as envisaged by
Tanzanian Ujamaa.
A more rigorous assessment of current ideologies in Africa is also a
political necessity on account of the possible dialogue between Scientific
Socialists and nationalists. The former are a mere handful, and in most
African countries today can scarcely hope to cooperate with the existing
regimes. To do so would be to repudiate socialist principles, as well as to
risk senseless liquidation at the hands of the ‘African Socialists’, ‘Arab
Socialists’ and other denominations who are more concerned with fighting
religious wars against ‘Communism’ than with emancipating the African
people. But, the contention here is that Tanzanian Ujamaa offers a radically
different framework for political action on the part of the self-conscious
Marxist. Whatever verbal affinities Ujamaa has with anti-Marxist doctrines,
it has placed the common struggle against capitalism and imperialism on a
much higher plane. Scientific Socialism has been attacked time and time
again. Whenever the attack is based on overt or covert hostility to the
working masses, it has been accompanied by a policy of alliance with the
bourgeoisie against the most resolute worker elements. The history of

Fabianism, Social Democracy and the like illustrates this clearly, and helps
further to distinguish Tanzanian Ujamaa as being compatible with the
precepts of Scientific Socialism and with the construction of a genuine
socialist society.
Presumably, it could be documented that Tanzanian Ujamaa as it now
stands is the product of a series of ‘pragmatic’ adjustments to difficult
situations, comprising things such as the crisis of school leavers, the coup in
Uganda and the problem of foreign exchange.34 However, the inference of
most of the foregoing arguments is that the response has been suggestive of
a commitment to the masses. If this were not so, why then have other
African regimes reacted differently to the same stimuli and pressures as
have manifested in Tanzania? The progressive strengthening of a
revolutionary stand in Tanzania (to which attention was drawn at the outset)
is a factor of the greatest significance. It suggests movement on the road to
socialism, both in practical terms and as an aspect of ideological
development. Of course, there is a major difference between historical
tendency and accomplished fact, but consciousness and political behaviour
form part of the bridge between the two. This is not to be overlooked by
anyone attempting the rigorous task of applying scientific method to social
reality with the view of aiding the birth of African and International
Socialism. Theory that is non-Marxist must be evaluated in terms of
whether or not it is substantively anti-worker or anti-scientific. Invariably,
socialist revolutions have their roots not only in Scientific Socialism as a
body of thought but also in the formulas independently and correctly
arrived at by precursors who did not use Scientific Socialism as their point
of departure.35
African nationalists are certainly involved in the African revolution in
the two types of front represented in Mozambique and Tanzania
respectively: namely, the fighting front and that of ‘peaceful’
transformation. Leaders of these two related struggles will at some point
have to come to terms with a consistent theory for ‘appreciating’ their
situation and taking action. Russia, China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba – that is,
every successful socialist revolution has borne out the truth of Engels’s
observation that Scientific Socialism is the fundamental condition of all
reasoned and consistent revolutionary tactics. The mobilization of the
producers, the defence of revolutionary gains and the advance of the
struggle against modern monopoly capitalism are not tasks that can be

accomplished by good intentions alone. Masses of people have to enter into
an epistemology and a methodology different from those to which they
have been accustomed. In China, they call it ‘Mao Zedong thought’ – a
blend of specific insights and pre-existing theory. There is nothing
inherently improbable in Tanzanian Ujamaa continuing to advance to reach
that position. But, in the light of the claim that certain intellectuals have
become so enamoured of Tanzania as to relinquish their critical function, let
it be clear that this is no paean of praise. It is an assessment of a possibility
that can be realized only through an ideological and political struggle to
transcend the alienation from that part of the heritage of man which is
called ‘Scientific Socialism’.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

14
Class Contradictions in Tanzania
Samir Amin, who is today one of the leading Marxist theoreticians on the
African continent, wrote an article in 1964 entitled ‘Class Struggle in
Africa’, and it was anonymous. This was very significant, demonstrating
that at that time it was not even safe for someone to write an article on class
struggle in Africa. Those were the days when Leopold Senghor and others
were parading their theses which gathered or attracted worldwide attention
– theses to the effect that there were no classes in Africa. Today, eleven
years later, changes have taken place both on the level of popular perception
as well as in the academic sphere concerning the question of class and its
relevance to an understanding of the analysis of Africa at the present and in
the recent past – and indeed, using the broader scientific framework, in the
more distant past.
Even at the very outset when the debate was raised in the early sixties, it
was not true that there were no classes in African society. What was
probably true is that the main manifestations of class contradiction within
Africa then was still in the form of the extension of the class contradictions
of the dominant capitalist metropolitan society. So that for all practical
purposes, it was the capitalist class of Europe or Euro-America which was
the exploiting class of the African continent, and any intermediaries
between them were relatively unimportant and did not manifest real
political presence. Consequently, when Marxists attempted to look at the
interval evolution of class problems, they were seen to be or held to be not
just alien but irrelevant concepts into the discussions of African society.
Today, it has become sufficiently generalized that one does not need to be
defensive about adopting this particular posture. For Tanzania, it is striking
because here is probably one of the territories where class formation is least
developed on the African continent, and yet it would excite no controversy

at first sight to raise the questions of class contradictions in Tanzania. This
indicates how well entrenched the position has become on the African
continent today.

The Concept of Class
I will begin by trying to explain the concept of class formation before I look
at class contradictions, because I think that the classes in Africa are
embryonic; that is, they are still very much in process of formation. Perhaps
one could say that no class is ever completed. In any society classes are
continually undergoing change. But there are periods when it is more
difficult to utilize the tool of class because the individual’s social groups
that comprise the class are themselves moving towards an awareness of
themselves, and do not necessarily have the organizational apparatus to
express themselves as a class. By way of comparison, one may think of the
eighteenth century in France. In writing about that period, Marx had to
make the point that the bourgeoisie was not in existence at the time of the
French Revolution – however much it may be called the bourgeois
revolution. Elements which went into the making of the bourgeoisie were
certainly present in eighteenth-century France, and over the period of the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that class matured into the
form which it came to take in the middle of the nineteenth century. The
same applies to Africa. But here one must be careful; one must be able to
understand that strands and strata are coming together to produce what
could definitely be called classes.

The Process of Class Formation
While this process clearly began in the colonial period, for Tanzania my
argument will be that class formation post-1960 has been as important, if
not more important, than class formation before 1960 – or before 1961, if
you want to take the exact date of independence. It is a very recent
phenomenon, and it has been accelerated by the process of national
independence. The low profile of classes in Tanzania before independence

accounts, to my mind, for a number of the unique features of political and
social development in that country. One of these features is political unity.
Political unity can only be explained in part at any rate as a function of
the non-emergence of strong sectors of the petty bourgeoisie in preindependence colonial Tanzania. By looking at the historical experience of
a number of other places – for instance Ghana, the earliest and still in many
ways the best studied of the African states moving towards nationhood – we
find that there had been a considerable proliferation of embryonic petty
bourgeois elements of different types. Some had their matrix in the old
traditional society: they had been chiefs, or sons of chiefs, or they had been
incorporated into the structure of the British so called native-authority rule;
they had developed a base in the land and of course, in primary cash-crop
production of cocoa; they had professional classes that date back to the late
nineteenth century in West Africa; they had a certain number of indigenous
traders including the very important market women, and so on; they had
fractions of a petty bourgeoisie in Ghana. I think that the development of
these factions was such that the British were able to manipulate elements
and create intraclass contradictions long before the bourgeoisie, the petty
bourgeoisie, had really matured. Already at this very embryonic stage, it
was struggling within itself, and again that is not historically new. Sectors
of classes, mercantile as opposed to industrial sectors, or of the capitalist
class have always had their internal contradictions. And those
contradictions became politically important because of the deliberate
policies of colonial powers. Britain, in this case, tried to withdraw from
Ghana – as from Nigeria, as from the Sudan and Uganda – in such a way
that the state machinery was left in the hands of different elements of the
petty bourgeoisie.
In Tanzania, because the class – or perhaps we should say it was still a
stratum, or several strata at that time – was not well developed, the attempt
to play one section off against another was not very successful. Attempts to
get what we may call conservative African nationalists to organize a
political party to oppose TANU1 had far less success than similar attempts
in Ghana to oppose the CPP.2 The first consequence of this low profile was
the move towards national unity; and even after independence, again taking
as a point of reference what has occurred in a number of other territories –
notably Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda – we find that the petty bourgeoisie
politicizes ethnic differences in its search for state hegemony. Ethnic

differences exist and, of course, they exist on the African continent. They
are not necessarily political differences, however. They don’t necessarily
cause people to kill each other. They become so-called ‘tribalism’ when
they are politicized in a particular framework. And in post-independence
Africa they have been politicized largely by sections of the so-called
African elite. (I refer to them as the African petty bourgeoisie, in the search
for bases for their own maintenance in power.)
In Tanzania again we see that this is rather unique. Occasionally one
hears in internal discussions in Tanzania some reference to so-called ethnic
or tribal loyalties, but it has never reared its head within the state as a
determinant of the direction of political change. Clearly this is not a
function of the absence of ethnic groups, because Tanzania has as many or
more ethnic groups as other areas. Nor is it the function of dominant ethnic
groups, because if we broke Tanzania down, we could pick out two or three
very dominant ethnic groups. The pattern in Tanzania is not all that
dissimilar from, say, the pattern in what is now Zaire, where ethnic politics
have become important. So the lack of politicization is mainly not due to
ethnic differences but due to the rather weak development of the petty
bourgeoisie as a class. They didn’t have the chance to get involved in
jockeying among each other, utilizing their own ethnic bases for that
purpose.
A third point, and perhaps the most important point concerning the
process of class formation in Tanzania, is that the weakness of the petty
bourgeoisie allowed the specific development which we see in Tanzania,
which is the development towards what is called Ujamaa, or Tanzanian
socialism. It seems to me we must try to explain historically why it is that
this particular African country made that option. It’s not merely a choice, a
political choice, which any African state could have made. I think we
should look for the conditions which made it possible for Tanzania in 1967
to declare so-called socialism, to announce the Arusha Declaration. I would
suggest the weakness of the particular class who stood initially to lose from
such a declaration is the prominent reason.
In other parts of Africa where the petty bourgeoisie or some of its
elements were already sufficiently entrenched, it would have been difficult
to envisage an Arusha Declaration being made, and these elements simply
retreating to their shells and offering no opposition.

I was fortunate to have been in Tanzania at that particular time; in
seeing members of the leadership of TANU then, in 1967, one got a distinct
impression of the discomfort on their part. Many elements, people that you
could look up as individuals – ministers, members of the hierarchy and the
civil service – were applauding the Arusha Declaration very painfully. One
could see that it did not exactly fall in line with their conception of where
the country should have been going. And one must therefore say that in a
certain sense they were coerced, or at least constrained, to move in that
direction. And one could see the constraint: the constraint was a class
struggle, it was between themselves and the mass of the people. The mass
of the people, workers and peasantry, came out in such tremendous force
behind the document that I don’t think that the small, fragile petty
bourgeoisie could ever have had the confidence, or that anyone in that class
could get up and say, ‘We stand opposed to this option.’ It would almost
have been equivalent to committing suicide. They had no power base to
confront the mass of the population at that time. Consequently, we will see
of course that they retreated and devised a number of stratagems to avoid a
head-on confrontation, but a refusal of that position was just not possible,
given the balance of class forces in 1967.
The same thing occurred in 1971 when TANU produced another
important document, the TANU guidelines or Mwongozo, as it is called. In
many ways this is an even harder hitting document than the Arusha
Declaration. One could perceive that in a sense the wording of the
document, the elaboration of the document, was due to only a small number
of individuals within the hierarchy of the party who took a particular
position. But the others were not prepared to come out openly against it,
again for the same reasons. It was too obvious that the vast majority of
Tanzanian people stood in that framework, and that anyone who wanted to
oppose it had to do so surreptitiously. Opposition had to be done in devious
under-handed ways and not by coming forward and saying ‘we are against
the policy of socialism and self-reliance’, or ‘we are against the policy of
worker control’, or ‘we are against an anti-imperialist line’. Except for a
small handful, everyone felt constrained to at least mouth the slogans. There
was a tiny handful who, after the Arusha Declaration, said, ‘Well, it’s time
for us to cut and run; we prefer property to socialist jargon and we will
leave.’ But quite a number decided that the best strategy was to say what

they felt needed to be said, and then to try to vitiate it, try to trivialize and
denude the concepts of their real meaning.
Of course, I’m talking about a relative situation – Tanzania relative to
the rest of Africa, not relative to the rest of the world. To the rest of the
world, it is obvious that class formation in Africa has not produced the
same sharp differentiation it has historically in other parts of the world. But
relative even to the rest of Africa, in a significant number of African
territories there has arisen a small landed class, a landed petty bourgeoisie, a
kulak class to use the familiar Russian term. In Tanzania, analysts who have
been looking around the countryside have also discerned what they call an
emergent kulak class, but I think very often they are straining at the
evidence. One kulak doesn’t make a kulak class. What one could discern in
Tanzania is that when you take the size of the country and the development
of cash-crop farming in certain isolated pockets of the country, you could
go into a given community and you could find one or two kulaks, but it
cannot be said that they began to operate in a way comparable to Ghana, or
the Ivory Coast, or Western Nigeria or Senegal. This was because
quantitatively and qualitatively it was a different phenomenon. There was
no real kulak class in Tanzania, no landed class comparable to either
Uganda or Kenya in the East African countries. Of course, there were no
industrialists; very few African countries had industrialists. But there were
in a number of African countries a few African capitalists, timber traders or
people having timber concessions, merchants of course, other than
industrialists – the merchant class in West Africa or Central Africa, for
example. But in Tanzania, as in the rest of East Africa, the presence of the
Asians as the comprador class, as the merchant bourgeoisie, has meant that
very few Africans entered that pattern of trade, or acquired wealth through
trade. And there were even very few professionals, less than in West Africa,
and certainly less than in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Kenya had less for
different reasons, partly because of the white settler economy which had
allowed very few African professionals.
What we find, therefore, is that the petty bourgeoisie in Tanzania was
small. And not only was it small, but it also had a second important
characteristic: it was limited to certain sectors of production or sectors of
social activity, particularly the civil service, and as an extension of that, the
other coercive apparatus – the police and the army. This is where African
petty bourgeoisie found itself. I think this is as important to understanding

the subsequent evolution as is the fact that it was a small petty bourgeoisie.
It was small but its character was also circumscribed and limited to
particular sectors. It was not mercantile. It was not involved professionally
to any great degree. It did not have land. It was concentrated in effect in the
area of the state, either the civil service or the police–army apparatus. I
believe that this established a certain determination, a certain predilection,
for state or status solutions to their particular problems – a predilection that
was not present in either Uganda or in Kenya, to use the East African
neighbouring territories as a way of comparing and contrasting the
Tanzanian development. In Kenya there is still a definite commitment to the
landed bourgeoisie or the landed petty bourgeoisie, and the same applies to
Uganda. In Tanzania, the emergent elites never had any real commitment to
the land in the form of private ownership. Therefore, in a real sense, it
wasn’t too surprising that they began to pursue policies which immediately
returned the land or confirmed that the ownership of the land should be in
the hands of the population. Had there already been a substantial
development of anything approaching latifundia, then it would not have
been an option that could so simply have been put into effect, but because
of the lack of development of a private landed class, it seems to me there
was no barrier towards a development in this direction.

The Structure of the Working Class
Let us take a brief look at the working class before returning to the petty
bourgeoisie, who are really going to be the focus of the analysis. In
Tanzania (as in so many of the African countries) the working class was
small. It was a transient working class with a high proportion of migrant
labour, although there has been a fair degree of stabilization of migrant
labour in the post-war years. But the working class remained essentially
rural, the larger proportion being on the sites of plantations, largely
unskilled either in the same rural occupation or in other spheres such as the
docks where they remained unorganized. The Tanzanian working class
never achieved a significant measure of independent organization. And it is
independent organization which ultimately makes a class. The workers of
Tanzania engaged briefly in the struggle for their own organization in the
late 1950s and early 1960s in the period between colonialism and

independence. The trade unions that had evolved by 1961–62 were still
continuing the same trajectory as they had in the anti-colonial struggle; that
is, a trajectory designed to ensure that workers were represented and that
workers built an independent organ of expression. But by 1964 this was
completely halted by an attempted army mutiny in which some of the trade
union leaders were involved. The government acted to virtually put an end
to independent trade union organization – independent meaning
independent of the state, independent of the leading party. This was in
contrast to Kenya for instance, where there is a lesser degree of trade union
independence in any real organizational sense.
Consequently, the working class has also been competing for power
through the dominant party, TANU, and through the state. If the workers
had retained an independent trade union organization, it is conceivable that
we would have seen them as the instrument of their own struggle. But that
organization post 1964 was incorporated into the governmental party
machinery. Consequently, to whatever extent there is worker power in
Tanzania, it is expressed through the party, TANU, or through the state
which is, in some sense, the instrument of the ruling party. And, therefore,
we have both the petty bourgeoisie and the workers concentrating their
energies on the same social organization, on the same mechanism – the
political party and the state becomes the arena in which the contradictions
between the workers and the petty bourgeoisie still resolve themselves. That
is what I would like to look at. How does the state serve? In whose hands
does it rest? What derives from state policy?

The Workers, the Petty Bourgeoisie and the State
The Arusha Declaration is a starting point of modern Tanzania
development. This was a response to internal crisis, a response to the
stagnation of the neo-colonial economy in Tanzania, and it really marked
the failure of the hopes of the petty bourgeoisie that international capital
would have entered their situation to strengthen the class in a particular
kind of way. The petty bourgeoisie had assumed that after independence, if
they took the attitude of welcoming foreign capital and welcoming foreign
aid, international foreign capital would be forthcoming. This was really the

assumption: they imagined that there was some process of growth within
the neo-colonial picture, within the post-colonial imperialist framework,
which would allow them to develop as a class. But this was not in fact
forthcoming. Any study of the period for Tanzania and for a number of
other African countries shows very clearly the unfulfilled hopes of foreign
investment and aid. Unfulfilled in many senses, particularly because (in
many instances) it just did not come. Even when it came, it did not
necessarily come when and where the government expected it to come. And
when it was available, it was available with a number of other
complications, political and economic, which the government of Tanzania
found hard to accept. Therefore, by the mid-1960s, the Tanzanian economy
was definitely stagnant in the face of declining world prices for major
products (like sisal and cotton). The option it seems to me was taken by the
petty bourgeoisie under pressure from the working masses in the sense that
the stagnation and decline of real standards were bound to raise their own
current from the working people. That pressure had to be responded to, and
the response came in the form of the Arusha Declaration. This declaration
was positive in the sense that it went along with popular aspirations and
popular hopes that the producers would be able to control the product of
their own labour and to control the shaping of the society to cut down the
alienations which stem from the primary alienation of the product of a
man’s labour. It was positive, but at the same time the petty bourgeoisie
were able to work out the strategy in which they would use this new
intervention as a means of entrenching their control over the state.
Whatever the objective of the exercise of transformation, one thing was
certain: the petty bourgeoisie intended to maintain their hegemony over the
state apparatus. Indeed after 1967 they used the new policies as a means of
reproducing themselves as a class. In a way this was almost axiomatic;
since they were essentially a bureaucratic formation, the moment that they
nationalized and began to engage in some forms of control over economic
production, the bourgeoisie expanded itself, or extended itself into those
sectors of economic operations. They built huge complexes like the
National Development Corporation (NDC) and the State Trading
Corporation (STC), which became known in Tanzania as, in effect,
extensions of the state, extensions of the old civil service. The people who
benefited most from this were the young petty bourgeoisie.

In Kenya there was a different line because the Kenyans always had one
advantage from their class perspective: Kenya was and still is a subimperialist centre in East Africa. It is the point of entry for foreign capital
into the whole of the East African community, not just into Kenya alone.
Consequently, the opportunities for ‘pickings’, if you like, were always
higher in Kenya. The presence of the multinational corporations, partially
determined by the presence of settlers in the colonial period, meant that
Kenyans could actually think in terms of becoming directors of various
multinational corporations. For Tanzanians, it was not feasible on
ideological grounds. Besides, there were very practical reasons why the
petty bourgeoisie could not hope for very much in this direction. Tanzania
was not that type of economy. The rate of expansion of multinational capital
in Tanzania before 1967 was relatively small. Consequently, it was through
the state intervention that they could increase the possibilities of holding
jobs equivalent to directorship. They wouldn’t be directors of a foreign
company; they would be directors of branches of the NDC or STC, or they
would be managers of particular plants. In effect they were extending
themselves as a class.
At the same time the African petty bourgeoisie in Tanzania, as in the
rest of East Africa, had an old opponent: the Asian commercial comprador
element. This group had been foisted on the African people in many
respects; they had been deliberately promoted by the British government as
a layer between foreign capital and Africans. They were allowed access to
credit; most of them based their operations on the ninety-day credit system.
They were in effect sponsored by the banks and the large import-export
houses – the same banks which refused to give credit to Africans. The
British government and the colonial states had sanctioned this by issuing
credit restriction ordinances which made it impossible for Africans to
advance as middlemen. So, the experience of the so-called Asians, that is
those from the Indian subcontinent, was linked with British policies in East
Africa. As so often happens, the comprador or the middleman often attracts
the ire of different indigenous classes much more so than the metropolitan
ruling class. In Tanzania and in Uganda there were what were called Asian
riots or anti-Asian riots in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. For some people they
may be classified as racial riots; but they were not racial riots, they were
manifestations of class struggle, since you find the same kind of thing in
Jamaica where you would find anti-Chinese riots simply because the

Chinese happen to be the middlemen in that particular context. The
ordinary peasants in the countryside, the working people in the sisal estates
and in the towns found that their immediate enemy was the so-called duka
walla – the Indian who controlled the duka, or the shop – because that
Indian bought their product, he cheated them in weighing their product, he
cheated them in reselling to them what he imported from abroad. Although
this was petty in relation to the fundamental exploitation of the market
which was being established in Mining Lane in London, the peasant and the
worker had to react to his immediate enemy. And so there has been a
considerable anti-Indian sentiment which is class-based. The African petty
bourgeoisie too, as he began to move forward and to have certain
aspirations for advancement felt that the Indian was the first obstacle. He
couldn’t see Barclays Bank as the immediate enemy, because that was too
distant, too powerful, and in his own horizons he didn’t really aspire to
become a competitor to Barclays Bank, but he could aspire to become a
competitor to an Asian merchant or an Asian professional or an Asian civil
servant. So, for the petty bourgeoisie too, the Asians were very often the
immediate enemy. In the post–Arusha Declaration period in Tanzania, the
Asians as a comprador class have begun to disintegrate. This is true in East
Africa as a whole.
In Uganda the people are of course aware of the dramatic turn of events
after Amin came to power. People may be less aware of what’s going on in
Kenya, but in Kenya there’s also been a constant pressure and harassment
of the Asian petty bourgeoisie by a would-be African commercial petty
bourgeoisie. In Tanzania it did not take the same form. It did not take the
form of individual Africans seeking to take over Asian shops. What has
happened is that the state has encroached upon areas in which the Asian
petty bourgeoisie were dominant, and since the African petty bourgeoisie
controls that state it means the expansion of the bureaucratic class or the
bureaucratic sector of the petty bourgeoisie as against the commercial petty
bourgeoisie. The State Trading Corporation, for instance, took over a large
number of the functions initially carried out by a host of private importers
among whom Asians were predominant. Buying and selling abroad was
initially taken over. Then slowly the STC has also attempted to establish
itself with certain retail outlets. It has also meant that questions as to what is
to be purchased, in what quantities, at what prices, and how it is to be sold
are questions now being determined by the state, by the African

bureaucratic bourgeoisie, and not by the Indian merchant class – except in
so far as they can react defensively and try to break out by certain
stratagems which they do indeed adopt. But, by and large, initiative in these
regards has passed into the hands of the African petty bourgeoisie, the
bureaucratic African petty bourgeoisie.
The impact of the Arusha Declaration and the move towards social and
state controls over production and distribution has been to sharpen that
contradiction between the commercial petty bourgeoisie, which was a
particular ethnic grouping, and the bureaucratic petty bourgeoisie. It has
been resolved in their favour in the sense that the Asians, for the most part,
seem to have decided that there is no further stake in East Africa; their main
concern has been to try to liquidate their capital, to try to get it out of the
country, which they have done in an infinite variety of ways. In Tanzania it
is extremely difficult to get money out of the country. Usually what
happens, however, is that whenever there is a new edict concerning foreign
exchange control, it has come at least a year if not two years after the
Asians have been using that loophole. Therefore, the amounts of money
already sent to London and to Canada and the US are quite fantastic. At the
same time, the Asians do interact by attempting to form liaisons with
members of the African petty bourgeoisie, utilizing the straightforward cash
nexus just to bribe them into an acceptance of the Asian position. So they
are a declining class, but they can at the same time exercise influence based
on the fact that they do have some liquid funds, and this is used to increase
the amount of bribery and corruption that is present in the system.
Nevertheless, I would say that one could conclude at this point – even
before the Asians are completely finished as a class – that there is no longer
any future for them in the old roles which they had in East Africa and
Tanzania. In Tanzania this has been done through the instrumentality of the
state, in Uganda through the instrumentality of the army and other private
African entrepreneurs, and in Kenya through the instrumentality of private
entrepreneurs. Most important to the people of Tanzania have been those
contradictions manifested between the petty bourgeoisie and what I will call
the producer class – the peasantry of the countryside, excluding the very
few kulak owners. There is also a contradiction between the petty
bourgeoisie and the workers of the towns and the countryside. This
contradiction – which is a much sharper contradiction, a much more
antagonistic contradiction than the earlier one between the commercial

element and the bureau element – manifests itself at all levels in a variety of
ways.
Ideology and class contradictions
In the education sphere, for instance, and having taught in the country I
hope I am sensitive to what went on in that area, I would say that the class
struggle was reflected in ideological terms and conducted in very sharp
ideological terms in Tanzania, more so than in any other African countries
with which I am familiar, with the possible exception of Ethiopia. There it
was conducted in a rather different way, primarily by Ethiopian students as
a part of a whole underground. In Tanzania it was conducted out in the
open, inside the education institutions, particularly within the university – a
young university which had been established like so many of the Third
World universities as just another factory being put into the Third World by
the metropolitan countries. It was established in 1961 as a typical institution
of bourgeois learning and functioned in that way, in terms of its curricula,
its staffing, its programmes, its structure, and everything else in the mid1960s when it was formed. But because of the move towards socialism –
even at the level of rhetoric since much of it wasn’t put into practice – the
move towards socialism itself had behind it the power of producing classes
in Tanzania, and this could not be kept out of the development of the
University of Dar es Salaam. Therefore, one found there a tremendous
conflict taking place between bourgeois knowledge and scientific analysis,
which derived from looking at the actual practice of the producer classes in
Tanzania and in the world at large at this particular point in time. Some of
the questions were of theory; they had to address themselves to the whole
plethora of bourgeois knowledge and understand its methodology, its
perceptions, to understand the struggle between idealism and materialism. I
presume it would not be necessary for me to go into that kind of detail.
Those of us who took part in this in one way or another related to the
students and related to the population outside of the university, so that it
was a genuine reflection of changes taking place in the society as a whole.
There were, of course, broad debates about the organization of the
university, about how one organizes academic disciplines, and so on. But
there were also a number of debates that were very pertinent to the

immediate policy choices of the Tanzanian government. The question of
development, for example, was not evolved as an academic debate per se. It
evolved from a perception of real choices in the policy sphere: what was to
be done at the particular point in time in specific areas of economic,
political and social development. It arose out of the formation of the
solutions to the so-called problem of underdevelopment. People began to
question the kinds of theoretical framework and paradigms that bolstered
particular kinds of solutions. If the solutions proved to be false in practice,
their theoretical justifications were exposed to much more critical analysis,
and ultimately to an onslaught in that institution from which they have not
recovered. So the debate was linked to the ongoing struggle within
Tanzania.
From time to time, students themselves would take the initiative. This
was extremely useful because the students were not only students of the
university but they were at the same time members of the TANU Youth
League. Therefore, it was ensured that this was a struggle that was at all
times relevant to the immediate needs of Tanzanians.
That is one level. Within the university and within all other educational
institutions, such as the secondary schools, the same kind of struggle went
on to try to clarify theory and to recognize that the ideas which existed in
that society were not simply free-floating ideas. They had historical roots.
They had social class origins, and one had to pin down these social origins
if some progress were to be made in clarifying these ideas.
Economic policy and class contradictions
More immediate – and more critical, from a political viewpoint – were the
contradictions taking place at the level of economic policy that were also
partly tied up in some ways with the contradictions in the educational
system. But major debates were also taking place on specific aspects of
policy – for instance, tourism. There was a whole year at least in which the
question of whether Tanzania should promote tourism or not was an issue of
national importance that people were battling back and forth on this option.
In some ways you may look at it and imagine: ‘Tourism, are you for it or
are you against it?’ This is a free decision. We express a position, we
analyse the situation, we subject the data to some scrutiny and we come up

with a position for or against. But it is not as simple as that. When one
looks carefully at the way in which the debate was conducted – who stood
for the tourism option, who opposed it – one sees there were class roots in
taking up a position for tourism or against it. Fanon, in his usual manner,
remarked quite a long time ago in 1960–61, that tourism is a very important
vehicle: a way in which the petty bourgeoisie organizes relaxation for the
metropolitan bourgeoisie and uses that opportunity also to reinforce their
class ties. It was very clear in Tanzania that, in spite of the protestations for
socialism, this tremendous need to push tourism and to rationalize what
after all, in purely economic terms, is one of the most meaningless so-called
industries, was linked with the necessity – this perceived need on the part of
the Tanzanian bourgeoisie to keep in touch with their metropolitan masters.
In effect it wasn’t particularly different from what was going on in Kenya;
Kenya just did it openly and pursued their tourism in the name of
capitalism. Tanzania was trying to do their tourism in the name of
socialism. In fact, it is already in shambles, but the need was to rationalize
this position, which was a class position, and the petty bourgeoisie
conceptualized development along certain lines. They had a vision of what
needed to be consumed, of what needed to be built, of the kinds of societies
that derive from bourgeois metropolitan society. The hotels, the airports, the
transit facilities: these were things which fitted the class perspective of the
petty bourgeoisie in Tanzania.
On the other side were members of the same class, naturally enough,
engaged in a debate which required articulation in certain ways. Essentially
this involved young Tanzanians who were of the same social class origins,
but who were responding to different class loyalties and who were
expressing different class loyalties. They were saying that our workers and
our peasants are not concerned with those who want to come and watch the
lions and gazelles and to watch the Masai and so on, and call themselves
tourists: that this will not do anything for the mass of our population. On the
contrary, it will inhibit a development of serious economic options which
could lead to real integrated development. It will introduce and reinforce
cultural backwardness and cultural penetration and place our people
continually in the position of servitors of Euro-America. This was an
argument that was lost in the first instance by the anti-tourism elements. It
was won by those who wanted to promote international tourism; but in the
year that followed, tourism has been proved to be simply economically

unprofitable – quite apart from everything else. It was pointed out that
deploying such a large proportion of finances into this sector was bound to
be disastrous and it has already proved to be that way. A huge modern
automated airport was built between Kilimanjaro and Arusha where the
game reserves are located only ten minutes flight from Nairobi. This was
completely unjustifiable in any terms, but it was claimed that an airport
would enable more visitors to come to watch the animals. When the visitors
did not come to watch the animals and this huge airport lay empty, the same
petty bourgeoisie began to suggest that possibly they might do some market
gardening around this airport. They might therefore export fresh vegetables
and make some profit. The order of priority was not just due to lack of
vision but due to a particular straightjacketing in which this class found
itself. So they thought first of tourism, and only subsequently when the
tourism was in shambles did they begin to think about production; even
then, of course, the production will have to be tied to the existing
infrastructure, which is a meaningless infrastructure because it is pointless
to engage in production simply for export to Europe. But that is another
question.
The same clash of views came out, not always as clearly as the tourism
debate, with regards to questions concerning irrigation, choice of crops, and
the general conduct of agricultural policy. The tourism debate was very
sharply focused, and people took sides. It may not be clear with regard to
other aspects of economic policy such as cash crops, general crop selection,
and whether or not the country should engage in irrigation, and other
questions. But looking at it even at least with hindsight, one can perceive
that there was a tendency on the part of the petty bourgeoisie to treat
agriculture mainly as an intensification of that which had gone before.
There was no conception of a break. To take sisal or cotton as examples,
when the prices declined the tendency was to imagine that one could grow
more. Certainly for cotton and sisal specific areas had to be abandoned,
because they were not profitable. There was no new conceptualization of
breaking with the international division of labour in which they as a class
had emerged. Consequently, we find today significant sectors of Africa are
suffering from famine. In suffering from this famine, each one, depending
upon their religious affiliations, will appeal to Allah or God or the ancestors
of whoever it is – or the rain gods, who are supposedly responsible for there
being no rain. So it becomes a mixture of natural phenomena and the

solution is a metaphysical or religious intervention. Of course, famine is
neither natural nor metaphysical. It is a social phenomenon. Drought and
famine are not just ‘natural’. I don’t know in what sense one can just
describe them as ‘natural’, when the society has the capacity technically
and organizationally to plan, first, to eliminate or at least reduce the
incidence of drought and famine, and second, to reduce the consequences of
drought and famine. So we see that these societies had continued their
colonial policies of failing to deal with the critical question of food first,
and being preoccupied with what they call ‘foreign exchange’, they have
been growing coffee, cotton and sisal, and what have you.
That must be put as part of the historical explanation of why the famine
and drought are so widespread throughout Africa at the present time. It is a
reflection of the incapacity of neo-colonial societies to even feed
themselves or to protect their populations from the vicissitudes that lie
outside the immediate control of each individual, but do not lie outside the
control of the society as a whole, if that society is geared towards resolving
the problem. So these are aspects of bourgeois thought, of petty bourgeois
policy, and the fact that they were pursued when there were at least some
individuals in the society arguing to the contrary is an indication that they
were pursued in spite of the contradictions or by way of contradictions.
They were not simply steamrollered; it was not that the whole society was
blissfully unaware of other alternatives. Alternatives were discussed and the
petty bourgeoisie chose their own road, which in most cases have led to
disaster.
To conclude briefly on the point about the Tanzania economic policy,
there still is an ongoing debate about factors such as economic advisors,
about the questions of economic agreements, so called ‘managerial
agreements’ by which nationalized or partially nationalized companies are
placed in the hands of foreign management consultants. That debate about
consultants and experts and advisors still goes on. In part it was attacked
from a nationalist perspective. Some Tanzanians said, ‘well, we need to
nationalize or Africanize, so we can’t have all these sensitive positions.’
But nationalization has not been enough. In fact, the nationalists
themselves, the petty bourgeois nationalists, stopped short at a particular
point, because of a lack of confidence in themselves. To understand the
petty bourgeoisie again go back to Fanon and look at the pitfalls of the
national consciousness in The Wretched of the Earth. He captured that very

well: the lack of confidence in a class that is an outgrowth of another
historical experience that never controlled anything in its own right. It
didn’t control production. It didn’t control property. It is derived from the
colonial system. It hasn’t the confidence to challenge that system
fundamentally. It is culturally dependent as well as economically and
politically dependent. Consequently, they find it very difficult to break with
this conception of foreign advisors, foreign management, and so on; and
having no confidence to break with these concepts, they therefore
rationalize it by saying, ‘Well, McKinsey isn’t really advising us how to be
socialists. McKinsey is merely giving us the technological expertise. We
will account for the political inputs.’ The capitalist firm comes in and goes
through all our records and the Harvard advisory team and all those various
paraphernalia of bourgeois individuals still trample around in and out of
Dar es Salaam and the countryside. This is rationalized by saying, ‘We are
taking from them a technical expertise and this is all. We will account for
the political inputs.’ One of the most fundamental bourgeois fallacies is that
you can separate technology from ideology, that you can separate the
mechanics of a process from the fundamental direction in which you are
going, from the class content of the kinds of advice that you get about
organizational structures, and so on.
Production of class contradictions
For Tanzania, outside the economic sphere, the most decisive contradictions
– the ones on which the real earthy manifestations of the class struggle are
based – have come directly out of production, either in the countryside or in
the towns. In the countryside, there have been contradictions arising out of
the policy of Ujamaa and its implementation: in the towns these are seen in
the clash between bureaucratic management and the workers at the point of
production. The policy of Ujamaa itself has a great deal to commend it. It is
not merely a form of social organization and of economic production; it is
meant to be a social whole, a cultural whole. It is meant to be an
environment in which the rural producers resume control over their own
lives by participating in running their day-to-day lives, and by making
choices about fundamental things in their day-to-day lives. It intended to
put a halt, as Nyerere made clear, to the incipient penetration of the money

economy and the class formation in the countryside. It was intended to put a
halt to the rise of any kulak elements, and to the accompanying rise of a
landless proletariat. What has in effect occurred is that only a very few of
the functions of this operation have been successfully concluded. In large
measure there have been concluded a certain regrouping of forces,
particularly in areas of the country that had been sparsely settled or where
the pattern of spatial distribution of population and economic activity was
such as to warrant a grouping of forces. This regrouping took place, for
instance, in central Tanzania where there is a low density of population, and
in western Tanzania where the homesteads were also scattered. This is
useful because it allows people to come together where one can provide
them – or the government can provide them – with medical services,
schools and a number of other things. It means that a government
proclaiming itself to be socialist has had to carry out an historical task,
which in other societies had been carried out in a previous epoch.
Capitalism, and feudalism for that matter, had helped in the grouping of
populations; certainly capitalism very ruthlessly enclosed land and brought
farms together. It also concentrated populations in urban centres.
In Tanzania, this programme of grouping rural populations has had
some serious setbacks in recent years. Evidence of this came late in 1973
and 1974 when the programme for creating Ujamaa villages seemed to
have become bogged down. It had not reached the quantitative dimensions
that had previously been planned, because a number of areas apparently had
not moved into the villages as they were expected to. On some examination
it does not appear as though there were serious political inputs into getting
these individuals to move. To ask people to move, to ask them to make a
new life, to participate in a whole new form of production would obviously
require a considerable politicization. This was the premise upon which
regrouping was based in China – mutual-aid teams through the brigades
right up to the communes. It was a political process first and foremost, but
to the bureaucrats they could only reduce it to a bureaucratic process, not
one of entering in and with the mass of the population to effect
transformation, but one in which they see it as a question of logistics and
figures and maps with little pins stuck in to show where the Ujamaa
villages are and what is growing where. They can conceptualize a problem
which says, ‘we need to move X number of people from this point to
another and we need so many lorries, so you get the lorries, you go to the

area, you get the police to come with you, and you break up people’s
villages, and tell them it will be much better you for. Possibly it will work
out; possibly those people will decide it is better for them.’ But the world
has had a great deal of practice of certain individuals telling other
individuals what is good for them and telling them they will kill them for
their own good if necessary. We see the end product of that in South East
Asia today. Certainly from a socialist perspective, it is always dangerous
that bureaucratization should parade in the name of socialism. It happened
of course under Stalin, and it did put a certain blight upon socialism for
quite a long time. Therefore, one does look with some concern at this same
manifestation.
The high incidence of bureaucratic activity, of bureaucratic decisionmaking within the context of the Ujamaa villages, created a real
contradiction because those peasants are fully aware of what is going on.
Inside the villages, once they are formed, there is a struggle over controlling
the day-to-day policy. The peasants don’t give up. They are quite tenacious.
They have a way of bringing their perspectives to bear on the problems
also. So it is not one-sided, but because the petty bourgeoisie are more in
control of the state apparatus, it becomes rather difficult for the peasantry to
win significant victories at this time.
And then, finally, there are the workers themselves: a small class,
judged in comparison with Europe, an insignificant class. A very tiny
percentage of the total producing force can be regarded in any way as a
proletariat. But, as so often happens in this type of economy, the proletariat
is strategically situated. It is situated in the capital town and other urban
areas and in sensitive sectors of production and therefore what it says and
does simply cannot be ignored. It strikes me that the contradictions between
workers and the bureaucrats have really come out in a very sharp form as
the working class itself has advanced in its own clarity, partially as a result
of the same policies which have been pursued by the government. You see
the ambivalence of policies: the elements within the petty bourgeoisie have
allowed for the elaboration of a certain theory of certain ideas within the
Tanzanian environment, which have further strengthened the Tanzanian
working class. And the Tanzanian working class makes demands on the
system in very enlightened terms. Not merely demands concerning
increased wages (those have been made and they are necessary to defend
living standards of the population), but going beyond that, workers have in

the last several years in Tanzania been making a number of very advanced
demands concerning their role in the productive process and in the control
of the productive process.
Once the factories were nationalized, once an institution fell under the
National Development Corporation and was either government-owned or
partially government-owned, the petty bourgeoisie imagined that was the
end of the process. It was now a Tanzanian enterprise and, as a Tanzanian
enterprise run by Tanzanian managers, it was enough for the workers to fall
in line and behave more or less as they had behaved previously. But this did
not turn out to be the case. Workers began to raise demands that the
nationalization of those industries meant that they had to be run by
Tanzanians in a new kind of way consonant with the interests, the selfimages, and so on, of the Tanzanian working people. One of the
consequences of this was that the party agreed to issue the party guidelines
of Mwongozo, which in effect addressed itself to the whole problem of
bureaucratic management. The party was saying, ‘Well, bureaucrats cannot
behave in the same fashion as the colonialists or the imperialists used to’, or
they said that the nationalization implies a whole new way of organizing
production and change, a qualitative change in the relationship between the
workers and the management during the period immediately following the
proclamation of Mwongozo in 1971. But an interesting thing which
occurred after the acceptance of the guidelines was that the petty
bourgeoisie themselves recognized that this was too dangerous a weapon.
The workers used to move around with a very small version of the
guidelines, a document printed up into a very tiny booklet, which could be
stuffed into any pocket. Workers had a habit of moving around with the
Mwongozo and taking it out – as we understand the Chinese consult their
little red book3 – and opening it to the appropriate page, and confronting
bureaucrats and saying, ‘Well, look, according to paragraph 14 so and so;
this is what it says and now what you are saying there and doing is quite
different from what is going on here.’ And then they would move on to
paragraph 15 and so on, and this was becoming very dangerous. Workers
were presuming to educate the educated. In other words, it was threatening
to become a revolution.
Interestingly enough, when this class contradiction manifested itself, the
petty bourgeoisie began to withdraw from the issue of Mwongozo. They
began to say, ‘Well, each one in his own institution would come up with an

exception why Mwongozo didn’t apply there.’ The doctors started to say,
‘Well, look at this hospital. We are the doctors. After us come nurses and
cleaners and so on. I mean this hospital has to be run by doctors. We have
the expertise. You can’t have Mwongozo and self-management and things
like that in a hospital. People will die.’ What they need to do, of course, is
to go and look at the Chinese experience, to look at a book such as that by
Joshua Horn, Away with All Pests, and they will understand that in a truly
democratic society the hospitals are run by all, including the patients
themselves. But they felt they were making a valid case for exceptions. The
youngsters in schools began to flash Mwongozo and argue against the
missionary-type education – the pattern of hierarchy and the
authoritarianism that prevailed in a large number of boarding schools in
Tanzania – and of course the headmasters and the schoolteachers said,
‘Well, you are too young to know about Mwongozo. Mwongozo was written
for adults, not for children. As children you are under our care.’ And so
they seized all copies of Mwongozo which might be circulating among the
student population.
Then in the banking institutions the bankers and the chief bankers
would say, ‘This is a lot of money we have here. We can’t be joking with
this financial question. These workers don’t understand accounts. They
don’t understand questions like: “What is the current rate of the Tanzanian
shilling as compared with dollars?” So how can we have Mwongozo
operating in our institution?’ So, in a variety of ways, one saw the petty
bourgeoisie retracting from the position into which they had been forced
initially on the question of the Mwongozo, and one found the workers
advancing by raising the level of their demands, so that they constantly
talked about various issues on the basis of principles. They constantly
talked about incorrect behaviour in the factories. They talked about
favouritism, firing in accordance with the kinds of ethnic loyalties of the
manager. They exposed any ways of victimizing or exploiting the women in
the factories, sexually or otherwise. Things of this sort began to increase
considerably in 1971 and 1972, reaching a high point when in one factory, a
rubber factory, the workers decided to lock out the management and run the
factory themselves for a certain period of time (not a very long period of
time; actually until the police came). The workers ran the factory because of
the things that had been raised against the workers when they went on
strike: that because they were striking now that Tanzania has national

property, any strike was therefore against the national interest, and not the
interest of capital as used to be the case before the factories were
nationalized. So the workers in that factory were answering that argument.
They were saying, ‘We are not going on strike. We are not putting an end to
production in the country. We will increase production when we are running
the factory.’ So they were posing a more fundamental question: the question
of who controls production; who is the boss in so-called socialist society.
But for the time being, of course, the petty bourgeoisie is still essentially in
control of the state, and it could not allow the working class to exercise this
type of initiative, so those workers had to be rounded up and scattered.

Conclusion
Many times when I speak about Tanzania, I find that I fall into the difficulty
of trying to justify it against reactionaries and to clarify the realities against
those who are romanticizing such realities. Each one is a different kind of
operation. There are enemies of Tanzania who do not like the socialist
content, so for them whatever is going on wherever it fails, that is so much
the better. Against such an assault one has to be careful to be critical of the
reality, and the transition, but to be critical of it from the viewpoint of its
failure to live up to certain types of expectations, and the fact that the
contradictions have not yet resulted in the positive benefits for the working
masses. And then, on the other hand, when one is talking with the
romanticizers – those people who essentially have a sympathy with what is
going on in Tanzania, but have not been exposed to it in day-to-day reality –
then it is necessary to understand or to point out that social contradictions
do not cease because a government issued a document.
The Arusha Declaration is very nice. Another document is issued which
says that socialism is for self-realization or education for self-reliance and
Mwongozo. All these are very positive – certainly better than neighbouring
territories like Kenya and Uganda which either have no document or have
some policy statements that are really absurd. But that is not an answer to
reality or a substitute for reality. The position was a position in part won by
progressive elements and by the pressure of the workers and the peasants,
but it can only be worked out in practice depending upon the balance of

class forces. And at the present time, the petty bourgeoisie, although small
in number, is in control of the state. It is reproducing itself. It still retains
certain kinds of links with the international monopoly capitalist world.
It would be difficult at this time to make a prognosis about the
immediate resolution of the contradictions outlined above – whether
progressive tendencies or more reactionary tendencies will win out. I have a
certain confidence – perhaps a confidence tinged with hope – that the trend
will in fact lead, even in the short run, towards the resolution of these
contradictions in favour of the progressive elements among the working
peoples. Clearly, I can not be quite certain. But that is not as important as
the long-run trends. Over the long run, there is no doubt about it: I think
that the masses of the population are being brought into a politics of
participation and that they have in these first five years, starting in 1970,
entered into struggles in a way that is much more meaningful than for most
other neo-colonial African territories. Therefore, whatever happens in the
short run, one can see the towns, serving their best interests in terms of the
access to power, because these historical changes will not take place by
themselves.
History is, of course, made by people. Marx and his followers clearly
understood this. There is a tendency on the part of bourgeois detractors to
suggest that somehow a Marxist formulation is talking about things and
about abstractions, and reification, whereas in fact we are talking about
people in society, and certainly history is made by people depending upon
their particular level of consciousness. In this sense, the contradictions are
sharpening the consciousness of the most exploited and oppressed classes,
heightening their consciousness – and this must be in the long run a very
positive fact.

This eBook is licensed to Ryan Deason, iatemoreearth@gmail.com on 08/02/2022

15
Transition
The term ‘transition’ has already appeared in scholarly works dealing with
contemporary countries in the process of development. It has been
attributed precise – although sometimes conflicting – meanings within this
growing body of scholarship, concerning both the concept of collateral
ideas such as the transfer of technology, the economics of transition, the
dynamics of cultural change and the state’s own role in development. Each
one of these facets would obviously demand the keenest of attention and
their examination can take place effectively only through comparative study
of different objective situations. The present analysis sets itself a more
modest task: namely to explore the parameters of the concept of transition
as it might plausibly appear from a general perspective. Transition and
development are already part of a popular vocabulary. One needs to bridge
the gap between academic specializations and the wider informed
community, which is committed to seeking both the understanding and the
positive action inherent in the notion of transition in this era and in this part
of the world.
Neither the rate of change nor the duration of change are immediately
established with the use of the word transition. Mankind was in transition
over hundreds of millennia while using stone tools. The neolithic portion of
the Stone Age itself lasted for several thousands of years; but it is possible
to affirm that the beginning of agriculture in that period constitutes the most
important ‘revolution’ in the history of human society. To speak of
transition from one mode of production to another allows for somewhat
greater precision: yet one is still confronted with timescales of several
centuries which mark the passages from antiquity to feudalism and from
feudalism to capitalism. In the history of Guyana, the end of chattel slavery
in 1838 provides an opportunity to treat the first post-emancipation decade

as an experience with free labour; and yet it was not until 1921 that direct
legal coercion of labour gave way to more conventional relations between
wage labour and capital. One can therefore argue that the transition from
slave labour to free labour in Guyana lasted from 1838 to 1921. (The last
indentured labourers arrived from India in 1917; all indentures expired in
1921.)
In each of the contexts above, the term transition is legitimately
employed, and yet there is the disconcerting possibility that approached in
this way all history may be characterized as transition from one stage to
another. To avoid tautology and trivialization, it is clearly essential to assign
a narrow timespan to the concept as it relates to contemporary social
change. Further, limiting the duration of transformation implies an
accelerated rate of change.
Whatever the context, the state of transition can only be established by
inference. It is a link between two historical epochs, and it incorporates
elements of both the old and the new. By definition, the state of transition
lacks unique, classical or sharply outlined features. All of this is being
conceded in the present analysis, without prejudice to the premise that it is
meaningful to utilize the term with regard to modem developing societies
(each of which possesses its own specificity) only if transition is a brief
interlocking rather than an amorphous and protracted phase. Transition,
then, constitutes a transitory phase between two epochs.
The moment of transition is determined by contradictions in the
preceding era. The presumption is that the contradictions have reached a
point of maturity and their resolution necessarily implies a qualitatively
different situation. It is for this reason that transition is a brief period of
intensified activity when new social forms triumph over the old in a context
of sharp struggle. Transition is analogous to the older Marxist philosophical
term ‘leap,’ as the point at which evolution and quantitative change gives
face to revolution and qualitative change. Thereafter, the evolutionary rate
of change once again applies. Contemporary transition implies a leap or
(better still) a series of leaps, in material production, social relations and
consciousness all taking place within a circumscribed period of time and
acting in a self-reinforcing manner.
It is the contention here that Marxism provides the single consistent
worldview for a resolution of the problems of transition. Long-term and
relentless social forces have made transitional monopolies the characteristic

and dominant form of capitalism. Transnational capital (which is of course
imperialist) has socialized the means of production far beyond the point
identified by Lenin in the early part of the twentieth century.
Simultaneously, transitional capital has concentrated the control of surplus
into fewer and fewer (private) hands, and it has set up an international
division of labour that is inherently unstable and crisis-ridden. Meanwhile,
proletarian and peasant alliances have affected socialist revolutions in
several countries. However incomplete and distorted these socialist
revolutions may be, the countries concerned have made the leap from
theory to practice as far as socialism is concerned, and they are enmeshed in
a set of social contradictions different from those prevailing in the
capitalist/imperialist world. Within the underdeveloped sections of the
capitalist world, certain social forces operate in a manner that sustains
capitalist/ imperialist production relations, while others favour the
resumption of material production at a higher level under the aegis of the
working class guided by socialist ideology. The latter option provides the
setting for that moment of historical change that will usher in a new society.
In this connection, transition in the contemporary Third World should be
unambiguously identified as ‘the transition to socialism’.
In practice, the transition to socialism has always been attempted under
inherited conditions of material and social backwardness and powerful
external constraints. Socialist revolutions have been initiated with poor
technology, they have been conducted where the proletariat has barely
crystallized, they have carried the load of transforming pre-capitalist social
formations, and they have been faced with the alliance between local
propertied classes and the bourgeoisie of the epicentres of imperialism. This
was true of the Soviet Union and China; it holds true in greater measure for
Cuba, Vietnam, Kampuchea (Cambodia), Mozambique and any other excolony where internal contradictions place socialism on the agenda, both as
the ultimate goal and as the means of transformation.
The anti-colonial movement as a whole (most of which was nonsocialist) must be given credit for reopening the discussion on development
and transition – a discussion which first appeared in explicit fashion with
the emergence of the Soviet Union after the First World War. Interestingly
enough, the heightened consciousness of change in the post-colonial world
gave rise to an African journal with the name Transition, which was once
extremely popular among the intelligentsia on that continent. The

reoccurrence of the title in Guyana is more than just coincidence. It attests
to similarity of objective and subjective conditions, for the rapid dissolution
of aspects of the old order of colonialism forces consideration of the
possibilities of qualitatively changed societies. Throughout the 1960s and
1970s, the debate on social transformation has been extended to virtually
every part of the globe, but it has not necessarily been made more
penetrating. On the contrary, transition and development have been given
the vaguest of definitions, and the urgency of revolution has been muted
until indistinguishable from the timelessness of evolution. In part, these
tendencies have to do with lack of clarity in defining the stage of advanced
imperialism that has come to prevail; while above all they stem from
bourgeois and petty bourgeois class interpretations of the historical stages
which lie ahead.
All classes and strata within the anti-colonial nationalist movements
identified alien domination as a negative feature within the world society
which was in the process of dissolution. Nationalist class alliances have
virtually demolished the old political superstructure of global imperialism.
Beyond this point, there can be no unanimity at the national level. The
presence of conflicting classes in Third World countries means that there
can be no agreement on identifying capitalism and imperialism as the
sustaining elements of the Old World Order. Vested interests therefore
inevitably deny that transition and development necessitate the demise of
capitalism and imperialism. It is the contention here that exploitative classes
propose pseudo-solutions to the problems of development. There is no real
problematic of transition outside the framework of the transition to
socialism. A working-class solution offers a revolutionized society; all other
proposals modify or extend to greater or lesser degree the system of
production and reproduction based on the commoditization of labour power
and the alienation of surplus labour.
The post-colonial world is too differentiated to be reduced to any single
neo-colonial stereotype. Nevertheless, at one end of the spectrum, there is
the classic neo-colonialism of states which have barely altered their
politico-military dependence on the former colonizing powers and which
have strengthened their ties with international capitalism on the
conventional basis of private ownership of the means of production. In such
instances – for example Malaysia, Zaire, Trinidad and Tobago – the
departure of the colonial administrations has been followed by rapid

reconstitution of the local bourgeois and petty bourgeois into transnational
capitalist production. Technology transfers, moderate shifts in the
international division of labour and the increasing hegemony of the US and
Japan are some of the novel features of the classical neo-colonial tendency;
but of course the result is the intensification of something which is centuries
old: namely, capitalist accumulation on a global scale. For the rest of this
analysis, attention will be focused only on those conditions and strategies
which at least offer the appearance that they mark the beginning of a new
social era.
In several Third World countries, the idea of a ‘mixed economy’ has
been presented in a very attractive format. A private sector, a state-owned
sector and a sector of joint ventures would ensure the best of both worlds
and would itself constitute a new entity defined as socialism of a special
type – see the works of Leopold Senghor, for instance. The fact that these
ideas have been most ardently propounded by the ruling class in countries
such as Senegal and Singapore is far from reassuring, given that these two
states function integrally and comfortably within the imperialist framework.
Whether the political leadership of Senegal or Singapore had any intention
of building socialism is highly debatable; but, conscious intention apart, the
transition to socialism could not have been affected by a few piddling
measures of government participation in an economy that remained firmly
located within the international capitalist system. The ‘mixed economy’ is
at best a logical fallacy when it is not a deliberate smokescreen for
bourgeois and petty bourgeois class interests. Transition must necessarily
have mixed features of capitalist relics and embryonic socialism, but the
latter would exist in a position of dominance. Transformation would
therefore involve the inexorable displacement of the last legacies of
capitalism.
A number of Third World countries have declared themselves adherents
or discoverers of one species of socialism or another. Where there is a
verbal commitment to the transition to socialism, it requires greater
scrupulousness to see whether what is proposed is indeed transition.
Tanzania’s Ujamaa socialism is one of the more revealing experiences. The
socialist Arusha Declaration was announced some twelve years ago, in
1967; the implementation has been carried out by a government which
commands respect in the Third World, and a significant body of literature
has accumulated on Ujamaa socialism. One of the most recent and carefully

documented studies of the Ujamaa village collectives in Tanzania casts
serious doubt on whether the process of socialist transition has yet been
initiated within the countryside. The principal reasons for this adverse
judgement are as follows:
• the low level of production and productivity of the agricultural cooperatives (that is, Ujamaa farms);
• the stagnation and regression of the co-operative sector in attracting
labour;
• the failure of the co-ops to provide a basis for improved agricultural
technology; and
• the bureaucratization rather than democratization of decision-making
in the villages.
The researchers Mapolu and Philipson located the fundamental problem
not within the villages themselves but in the political framework, which is
not firmly based on those classes with the greatest objective interest in
transformation: that is, the peasantry and working class. The questions of
productive forces, social organization, ideology, state and class were all
touched upon in an attempt to explain why socialist development/transition
had failed to get under way in the Tanzanian instance. The premises of the
assessment were made explicit:
Since the development of the productive forces specifically includes the development of the
general abilities of the producers themselves, co-operation should enable progressive ideas
to take root more firmly in all aspects of peasant life; and through co-operative selfmanagement and decision-making, give the direct producers more control over the state
apparatus at the local level, thus enhancing their participation in running the economy at a
national level.
Co-operation … takes on its class characteristics from the general strategy of
development in which it is inserted, which is in turn an expression of the interests of the
ruling class (or alliance of classes) in each particular social formation.
The low level of production and the rate of progress in rural Tanzania cannot be
explained outside an analysis of the existing social structure and of the manner in which the
economy is linked to the international capitalist economy. Hence the fact that this particular
policy has not proved to be a substantial basis upon which improvement in rural production
could be generated arises from the failure of the policy to address itself to the fundamental
problems of social structure and economic integration. In essence, therefore, the issue is
really political: to be able to sufficiently mobilise and organise the masses in a manner which
would extricate the economy from its domination and exploitation by international
capitalism, requires a class base and an ideological perspective which hardly a single African
government can be credited with at present.

The cogent formulation above allows us to advance the understanding
of transition, with particular reference to its political facets. The necessity
for social change in the Third World arises out of a conjuncture of
contradictions in the system of capitalist/imperialist production. But the
appreciation of this necessity and its historical implementation requires the
political organization of those social classes with an objective interest in the
overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a society freed from the
exploitation of labour. The leap from evolution within capitalism to
evolution within socialism is no mere spontaneous process. It involves
changing levels of consciousness, building working-class organization and
self-discipline, and above all the revolutionizing of the state and hence the
character of all subsequent social and political intervention.
The struggle for national independence often nurtured euphoric hopes
that in the post-independence period national development would virtually
take care of itself. ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things else
will be added thereunto’ was a famous dictum of Kwame Nkrumah’s. It
presupposed that the contradictions which undermined colonialism, and
which therefore forced imperialism to alter its political form, would also
force an alteration of its social, cultural and economic substance. However,
imperialism has proved itself far more powerful and resilient in the
periphery than had been suggested in interpretations of ‘moribund
capitalism’. The local petty bourgeois, comprador classes became more and
more marginalized after independence. Such a context was hardly
propitious for initiating transition; and the Third World states aimed at
modifying the international division of labour so as to promote the
indigenous bourgeoisie. An examination of the development plans of the
great majority of independent African and Caribbean states discloses almost
identical provisions for nurturing domestic private capital; and the growth
of indigenous capital has been registered in all Third World countries,
alongside of the pauperization of workers, peasants and lumpenproletariat.
The emergence of the indigenous bourgeoisie may create tensions with
respect to the established multinational capitalists; yet the new class in the
periphery contributes to the reproduction of capital and of capitalist social
relations on a global scale. The coming into being of such a class has been
welcomed by institutions such as the World Bank, and one has grave
difficulties in identifying the strategy of indigenous capitalist growth with
any variant of socialism whatsoever.

Non-Marxian versions of socialism often deny the existence of classes
or at any rate deny the central dynamic imparted to society by antagonistic
class contradictions. Even seemingly anti-imperialist leadership – as in
Ghana and Tanzania – has espoused this position. Meanwhile, the reality
has been that the petty bourgeoisie has consolidated itself as a class. A
programme of development which denies the independent existence of the
working class and the peasantry is unable to mobilize these classes in their
own interests or to make them the leading classes within the state.
Conversely, the same denial of class formation enables the petty
bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie to take state control – first
surreptitiously and then brazenly – on the abscess of their greater sense of
organization during the nationalist phase of anti-colonial struggle.
The options which the petty bourgeoisie and allied strata may pursue in
relation to international capital vary from joint ventures to the
nationalization of foreign and domestic capital. Obviously, there is a
difference between the uninhibited private enterprise in Trinidad or
Morocco and the attempted state ownership in Guyana and Algeria.
However, it is quite remarkable how the instances of state intervention have
failed to produce any substantial improvements in living patterns as far as
the mass of direct producers are concerned. Even more remarkable is the
tendency towards instant reversal of such progressive objectives as might
have been secured by the nationalist mass base at an earlier period. A
progressive foreign policy, for instance, has been known to change into its
opposite virtually overnight. Transition is movement in a given direction –
it is not a shuttle service. Yet, ownership of the means of production has
been transferred from private hands to the state and then back again to
private hands – in Indonesia, in Egypt, in Ghana. One could say that,
objectively, the period of state ownership merely served to guarantee that
some section of the indigenous population would be better prepared to
undertake the role of small and medium-sized private capitalists in the era
of the multinational giants.
There is one particularly troubling question in evaluating those
‘progressive’ countries that differ in some respects from the classic neocolonial states. Have they begun to chart a new course which is antiimperialist and non-capitalist or is it that they represent socio-political
formations which capitalism can accommodate and welcome? Advanced
sectors of French capitalism are quite reconciled to the Algerian

‘experiment’; the World Bank finds it useful to associate with the Tanzanian
petty bourgeoisie; North American mining capital has given the stamp of
approval to the Guinean regime; and with respect to Guyana, the American
state ignores the application of its own recently designed ‘human rights’
criteria. The implication is that imperialism has not yet been stretched to the
limit of its potential. It will accommodate states that have taken steps
against foreign private property in response to internal and external forces,
provided the new juridical property relations affect neither the long-term
contribution of the country to global capitalist accumulation and provided
the state continues to guarantee class differentiation. The crucial variable is
the composition of the state. Any given Third World country is at least
arguably transitional when the classes and strata which were pre-eminent in
the colonial period begin to lose their control over the means of production
and the state. To put it another way, the movement towards socialism
demands a prior constitution of the working class into the state so that the
state would increasingly reflect the role of the working class in production.
States with different class bases may concur with respect to some
policies of national development. Changes in the international economy, for
instance, are being advocated by all Third World nations. The accumulating
petty bourgeoisie concurs with realists among the leading bourgeois
spokesmen, who admit that the old international order cannot survive with
the same form and content; hence the calls for a new international economic
order and for the initiating of a so-called North/South dialogue. In effect,
the strains of imperialism in its present stage demand partial change if there
is to be a new lease of life. Marxists and working-class intellectuals have
long called for revamping the international economic order. They can claim
to have been more resolute and consistent in working for such changes, and
have realistically pressed for the best of the short-term arrangements even
within the strictures set up by agreements such as the Lomé Convention.1
However, working-class objectives are more far reaching than those
adjustments that give breathing space to accumulating classes on the
periphery of capitalism. After all, it is from the perspective of alienated
labour in the Third World that the operations of the old international order
are most intolerable. It is only a working-class state that will revolutionize
social reproduction within its own boundaries and simultaneously
contribute to the final dismantling of global imperialism.

By implication, the leap towards socialism is inseparable from the
conscious intentions of working-class leadership made manifest through the
state. All historical leaps have not been consciously directed. On the
contrary, passages from one mode of production to another previous to
socialism have been the result of forces that were improperly understood
even by the main classes in the drama. The bourgeois class could hardly
have been said to have directed the early formation of capitalist society.
Socialism is unique because of the highly developed consciousness of the
two combatant classes – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Social relations
in Third World countries today cannot be changed independently of men’s
will. Conscious decisions have to be taken to change the forces of
production (including the size, skill and composition of the working class),
the relations of production and the mediation of those relations by the state.
Of course, ‘conscious intentions’ mean much more than mere statements or
ideological declamations. Verbal adherence to Marxism in CongoBrazzaville, Guinea, Somalia and Ethiopia has accompanied social
developments indistinguishable from those in states where there has been
an explicit rejection of the theory of class contradictions: that is to say,
Marxist intellectuals have been silenced, workers’ representatives have
been eliminated and the working class as a whole excluded from democratic
participation in social reconstruction. For transition to have validity, it must
include the widespread promotion of socialist education without caricature,
and it must rest firmly on workers’ democracy.
The contradictions within the imperialist system and between
imperialism and socialism provide the objective basis for the passage to
socialism in dependent capitalist countries. This has to be reiterated and
then qualified by the equally important variable of action by classconscious elements. Transition therefore equates with guided
transformation; it means social policy directed by the working class in its
own interest. Broad and challenging possibilities are opened up by the
notion of workers’ democracy, which has relevance both at the point of
production and within the several levels and branches of the state. It should
also be clear that such transition would allocate meaningful roles to strata
which are closely or potentially allied to the working class: above all, the
peasantry as well as independent craftsmen, shopkeepers, the lower salariat,
students, technocrats and other intellectuals. The scope of the present
discourse does not permit elaboration of the complex interrelated problems

that have to be resolved once the process of transition is under way. In the
final analysis, comprehensive answers will be forthcoming through social
practice and attempted transformation.

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16
Decolonization
When dealing with such a broad topic in a short time, one automatically
runs the risk of being extremely superficial. Consequently, I will
concentrate my attention on one particular hypothesis, attempting to draw
certain correlations between colonialism and neo-colonialism, and will
illustrate the hypothesis with reference primarily to Southern Africa.
If we look at the UN Committee on Decolonization, we find that the
committee is concerned at the present time with countries such as the
Republic of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, the French and the
Cameroon Islands and the French territories of the Afars and the Issas of
Africa.1 They are concerned, in other words, with the remnants of formal
colonialism. That is what decolonization means in that particular context, to
terminate the formal, colonial rule of Africa.
Many Africans and non-Africans would perhaps say that the subject is
passé, for certainly that subject is less important and less pressing than the
question of what one does with those states that are nominally independent
on the African continent. In other words, for many people living in the
African continent, the issue is not nearly or perhaps not principally freedom
from formal colonial rule, but the enlargement of freedom within the states
which are juridically independent. And that means, of course, confronting
the neo-colonial providence that has been established in the wake of
colonialism.
My proposition is that those African states which are yet to win their
independence – which are yet to be decolonized in the manner in which the
UN Committee on Decolonization approaches the subject – are carrying
through their struggle for independence at a time when other Africans and
other peoples elsewhere are carrying through a struggle against neo-

colonialism. And this overlap, this interpenetration of the existence of
colonialism with the existence of neo-colonialism clearly affects the
character of decolonization in a number of ways.
It affects the character of the decolonization of those states which are
still formally non-independent, which are still formally colonies, and it
affects the character of decolonization in those areas which are normally
colonies. It is this particular interrelationship of contemporary Africa that I
would like to examine briefly.
My starting point would be the so-called territories of Portuguese Africa
in the 1960s, now the independent countries of Mozambique, Angola and
Guinea-Bissau. But in the late 1960s and the early 1970s the independence
movements were developing in all three of these territories one of the
characteristics discernable in the writings of leaders such as Amilcar Cabral
in Guinea-Bissau before his assassination, Samora Machel in Mozambique
and Agostinho Neto in Angola. One of the characteristics was a concern
with looking at those states in Africa which were already nominally
independent. But the programme for decolonization or liberation of Angola,
Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, respectively, was, in part, dependent upon
a pattern already set by independent African countries. There was a
yardstick. Angola could look to Zaire, Mozambique could look to Zambia,
Guinea-Bissau could look to Guinea and it could look to Senegal and ask
itself what was happening in these supposedly independent African
countries and whether the pattern of change represented the type of goals,
the type of society that they in Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique
should be struggling for. There was a pattern; there was a blueprint. There
was an actual objective, historical situation with which they could compare,
which did not exist, of course, in the earlier period of decolonization.
Then, my argument is that what was programmed in Angola and in
Guinea-Bissau was, in fact, determined by the prior access to independence
by a number of other African countries, and the illustration of what
independence could mean in an African country. You may easily test this
for yourself in the writings of the aforementioned political leaders. They
would say time and again our struggle is not merely to replace the
Portuguese; our struggle is not merely to stain the structures of exploitation
and replace white maintainers or white supervisors of that structure with
black maintainers of the same structure. They would continually indicate
that it is more than the need to raise a glass and celebrate a national anthem

that the people of Angola and Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau were
struggling for, and it seems to me that it is a very important dimension of
the evolution of thought and action and organization within the liberated
territories of what used to be Portuguese Africa.
Of course, there are people engaged in armed struggle who are making,
very often, the maximum sacrifice of life, making the sacrifice of limbs,
making the sacrifice of being uprooted from their homes. Such people had
to be more careful in defining goals that would be considered the goals of
decolonization. In a previous era, it was permissible and understandable
that people merely said we are struggling for independence, which means
freedom from the white man’s rule. It was permissible, but at a later stage,
when this freedom was supposedly achieved in a number of African
countries, then the material conditions of life did not radically alter. And
then the cultural conditions were not radically transformed. And then the
social structure, the political structure was merely transformed only insofar
as it allowed a new possessing class to take control. Then, people in other
parts of Africa began to wonder whether this was the kind of state and
society for which they were making these tremendous sacrifices. And by
and large their answer was no. No one in Angola and Mozambique and
Guinea-Bissau could be mobilized to sustain that tremendous people’s war
on the basis of simply saying we want to be like the other African states
which have gained their independence.
And the deepening of the appreciation that undoubtedly took place in
Portuguese Africa was in part dictated by the logic of the armed struggle,
but it was also partially influenced by what decolonization supposedly
meant in these other parts of Africa. I believe in Zimbabwe the situation is
bound to be the same thing; that if for the sake of argument in 1964 when
Smith unilaterally declared independence on behalf of the white settlers of
Rhodesia, if, at that date, the British had had the power and will to organize
the transition and the handover to black rule, they would have given the
government over to Zanu and Zapu. They would have given the
government over to the masses in Matabeleland and Harare. And the pattern
which would have emerged in Zimbabwe from 1964 until now could not
have been radically different from the pattern that has evolved in Zambia
from independence until the present date because the leadership is from the
same social structure; the leadership did not indicate that it had any other
ideological presence other than that which others had in Zambia. And the

vast majority of the population – the peasantry, the workers, the transient
workers and permanent workers in the farms and mines – were not yet
involved as participants in that movement for national independence. And
therefore, to my mind, in 1964 a transition to independence which we may
call decolonization, would have meant something radically different from
what decolonization means today in the era of neo-colonialism? The
existence of neo-colonialism is there as a guide which transforms the
character of the demands and the expectations of those involved as far as
decolonization is concerned.
Today in Zimbabwe the masses of the population have already been
involved in part in carrying through a political struggle which had to be
sustained while it was illegal, and in carrying through a political struggle
that has a very significant armed component, having been raised to the level
of an armed people’s war; it means that there are so many dimensions
which have been enlarged, including primarily the political dimension and
the dimension of popular participation. So, for Zimbabwe to be decolonized
today, it requires, of course, the removal of Smith as it would have required
in 1964, but it requires more than that. It requires that the Zimbabwean
people should make certain kinds of choices about the options which are
being presented by the leadership – and if, as seems to be the case, most of
the leadership which survives the original, earlier era, has lost touch with
the sensibilities and the demands of the Zimbabwean people in this process
of learning, then that leadership automatically becomes outdated. And there
will have to be new leadership, new structures, new demands which reflect
the contemporary period. So this is the change that is being wrought, in
part, by the interpretation of the stages of colonialism and neo-colonialism.
More than that, to the peoples of Zimbabwe we can add Namibia and
the Republic of South Africa, who are all colonized in the old, traditional
sense, and are also in a position to witness certain changes taking place on
the African continent which indicate that, after all, the political rule
characteristic of colonialism was only one facet – and at that, a rather
superficial element within the pattern of imperialism – and that colonial rule
as a political phenomenon was, of course, reflective of much deeper forces
of penetration into the African continent – forces which actually intervened
in transforming the mode of production within Africa and in transforming
the social relations within Africa, forces which went beyond the mere
political boundaries as established by the British, the French, the Belgians,

Italians, and so on. And today I believe these forces can be seen more
clearly because the facade of political rule has been removed in many
territories, and the reality of economic exploitation exposed for all to see.
One can see, for example, that not only with the end of colonialism has
there been a clear rise of the forces such as the multinational corporations
acting now as the new links, as the new forms for guaranteeing the export
of surplus; but one can see that there has always been an underlying,
economic partition and a continuing economic repartition which has gone
on during the colonial period and is even more marked today. And this
again, I believe, gives some new dimensions to what decolonization must
mean because decolonization in the early epoch meant dealing with the
political power which had formal control over one’s political system. The
British at Westminster controlled the territory, then decolonization meant
going to the British and demanding that such political rule be withdrawn.
But decolonization today means going to these economic command
centres of the capitalist world-system and recognizing that one has to break
the particular character of the connections that exist with those command
centres, and therefore enter the United States of America. The US has never
been a colonial power on the African continent, but always lying somewhat
in the shadow, lying somewhat in the background behind French, British
and Belgian colonialism. American capital has emerged in various parts of
Africa but particularly in the southern section from Zaire southwards to the
Cape behind the cover provided by the Portuguese, the Belgians, the British
in Rhodesia and the South African government in Namibia and the
Republic of South Africa.
There was a continual process of economic repartition in so far as the
United States was constantly gaining at the expense of other colonial
powers, in their share of the African trade, in this share of the investment in
Africa and of the profits which were being repatriated from Africa. This
process was highlighted by the development of the Anglo-American
corporation in the inter-war years and in the full galaxy of multinational
corporations in the post-war years. The United States has clearly come in a
crooked position where it is now hegemonic within this economic partition
of Southern Africa. It has quite clearly taken over from the Portuguese;
quite a while ago it took over the leadership from the Belgians and the
French in the old Congo, the Republic of Zaire, and it has for long time
been bolstering and supporting the British in the Republic of South Africa,

and has clearly taken the lead from the British in South African
investments. So that economic repartition is a very significant element
because the peoples of Southern Africa today in speaking about
decolonization have not merely to look to their colonial power or the white
settler minority which is resident; it has to look beyond that and ask what
forces sustain the particular mode of production, what sources sustain the
mine labour and the farm labour, what forces sustain the particular ways in
which Southern Africa is integrated into the capitalist world-system. And
the principal forces which sustain this happen to reside within the most
developed capitalist sectors of this economy, the multinational or
transnational sector.
The entry of the United States into the diplomatic realm and the
political manoeuvrings around Zimbabwe and around Angola and the
Republic of South Africa is ample testimony to the fact that the United
States has been forced to assume this hegemony, taking over the political
role of policing Southern Africa from the British who are no longer capable
of so doing.
It seems to me then if we’re going to enlarge the meaning of
decolonization, one of the most useful ways of doing so is precisely to lay
side by side these two modalities of colonialism and neo-colonialism and
recognize that in the process of carrying through a struggle for
decolonization in the formal territories, one is automatically guided by the
transition taking place in the continent as a whole – which includes, of
course, those areas that are supposed to be independent. I would go further;
it works the other way. The reverse is also true, that in a territory which is
supposedly independent, looking at the total configuration inside of
Southern Africa where the Africans of Southern Africa are fighting against
apartheid, seemingly against apartheid alone, where the people of
Zimbabwe are fighting for independence. Those in the rest of Africa can
well ask themselves what are the principal contradictions manifested on our
continent today, and they will know those contradictions go far beyond the
old formulations of mere political rule. Someone looking at the
configuration in Southern Africa from territories such as Tanzania, Kenya,
Uganda and Nigeria and the like, such an individual must be able to
recognize that the confrontation and the contradictions are much broader,
much deeper than the confrontation which they themselves in the

independent African states might have considered to be the most important
during the 1960s.
One takes a look at the economic structures to recognize that there is no
way to speak about decolonization without talking about the recovery of the
national resources, for instance. Yet, the question of recovering the national
resources has really only been posed in the period subsequent to political
independence, and it still remains a legitimate concern for decolonization.
So, we have to be careful with the use of language here, or we will wrap
ourselves in some knots. We now, therefore, have to recognize the
continuum of change and recognize that political independence was merely
a moment, and perhaps not necessarily a very important moment in a
totality of transformation which we might call decolonization, and that the
territory which has achieved political independence, if not necessarily
perhaps to lose the terminology of the colony, at the very least we must
retain the title of neo-colonial until we can see more fundamental changes
taking place. And if those changes are going to take place at the level of the
economic structure, there are those of us who would argue that they must
automatically take place also within the class structures because economies
of formally colonial or neo-colonial territories must be sustained by some
social mechanisms. They don’t operate in a vacuum. There are specific
social classes which represent, first of all, the links between external capital
and the indigenous labour, and there are local classes that are emerging
which are consolidating their own strength vis-à-vis other sectors of the
African people, usually by consolidating around the state apparatus and
securing a large portion of the goods and services that are being produced
within the economy. And, therefore again because of the conjunction of
stages, one is forced to ask more profound questions than a nationalist or a
decolonizer might have asked a decade ago. One has to give a social
content, an ideological content to the programme for decolonization.
Whereas decolonization was, some years ago understood as Africanization,
one now has to talk about socialism as an integral part – not a later stage –
of the very process of decolonization itself. Without speaking about
reorganizing the class relations within Africa, one is not in fact addressing
oneself to cutting the reproduction of capitalism as it has reproduced itself
in Africa over the last five decades or more.
It seems then that when Cabral, who was writing within the period of
struggle when he had not yet got rid of formal colonial rule, said, ‘we

regard it as indispensable, as an indispensable prerequisite for national
independence that we should have recovery of our national resources’, he
had reached a level of analysis which is only now being reached by many
Africans within independent Africa who had postponed the question of the
recovery of economic resources as though it were not relevant to the phase
of decolonization. But to someone like Amilcar Cabral, and to Samora
Machel and to Agostinho Neto, and hopefully we would see to some of the
Zimbabwe nationalists such as Mugabe, the question of recovery of the
national resources is one of the items that has to be placed on the agenda in
the present phase of the achievement of political independence. They have
to organize political movements which are in themselves more
participatory, more representative of the mass of the common people in
their own territories, and therefore at the moment of the conquest of state
power these systems will incorporate an element of participation that will
allow the mass of these mobilized cadres to operate in a situation where at
least there will be layers of grassroots leadership prepared with both
political education as well as the arms which may be necessary to combat
the deformation that takes place under neo-colonial domination.
To be concrete, let’s look at the example of FRELIMO.2 This was a
system which did not initially conquer the state power of the Portuguese.
Rather it began to create and initiate systems of political participation and
political organization and civilian administration in the liberated areas
which at least represent a counter to the alienation which one would find
when you inherit the state structure that was left by the colonialists, so that I
can assure that when one inherits the state structure of colonialism, one
merely becomes a tool of that colonialism. It is not that such a structure can
become the tool of independent Africans, but rather the structure becomes
the determinant and the African rulers become mere participants in the
same type of capitalist and authoritarian structure. And it seems to me that
in those parts of Africa which are still struggling for independence, they
have the opportunity – given these lessons from so-called independent
Africa, from neo-colonial Africa – to deal with issues which have not at all
been posed in the earlier phase.
And I conclude with a look at the independent states which are aiding
the liberation movements of Southern Africa. One rough yardstick that
indicates the level or extent to which an African state has been decolonized
in any profound way is the extent to which that African state is capable of

entering into meaningful relations with the liberation movements. That is to
say, outside of Southern Africa it is not an accident that the most
conservative, the most reactionary states are the ones which have
consistently failed to give any meaningful support to the liberation
movements. They all start from the premise of national liberation. Yet, they
are incapable of and unwilling to give support to the liberation movements.
They are the ones who always drag their feet with regard to contributions to
the OAU Liberation Committee.3 They are the ones that always put
obstacles in the way of any of the more progressive sectors of the liberation
movements. They are the ones, who around Angola, prevaricated and
delayed and manipulated to try and avoid the recognition of the MPLA,4
and instead, to introduce the government which incorporated UNITA5 and
the FNLA6 as spokesman of the imperialism interest so that one can use this
almost as a touchtone, the formal independent African state. What attitude
does it take towards the independent states that are struggling for formal
colonialism? To them, if Southern Africa were to become independent in
exactly the same way as Zambia or Kenya is independent, then that is good
enough.
I spoke, for example, with a representative of the OAU Liberation
Committee who said at the time – when it was clear that the Portuguese
were about to be defeated – that as far as they were concerned in
Mozambique, the task of the Liberation Committee was at an end. They
couldn’t care less to whom the Portuguese gave independence because the
Portuguese were manoeuvring to try and give independence to some other
organizations in Mozambique, in Guinea-Bissau and in Angola too. And
this official was saying that it was okay with him. He said, ‘we are not
concerned with who is going to rule and how they are going to rule. We are
only concerned with freedom; that is decolonization.’ Such officials and
such elements of the African ruling class in independent African countries
would prefer to see an independence that is merely nominal, because the
Mozambique that FRELIMO is striving for is something more than merely
nominal independence and threatens not just the Republic of South Africa
but threatens the elites of independent Zambia too. And it threatens Malawi
by virtue of the fact that there are some sorts of social confirmations taking
place in this state but not in their own.

Let us sharpen our awareness of what is to be done in Southern Africa,
as well as what is to be done in independent Africa, by recognizing that the
definition of decolonization is itself undergoing transformation – that it is
becoming richer and deeper because of people’s struggles, because of the
life experience of Africans in various parts of the continent; and by
recognizing that, in effect, decolonization is going to be inseparable from a
total strategy for liberation that encompasses a control of the material
resources, which encompasses a restructuring of the society so that those
who produce have the principal say in how their wealth is going to be
distributed. These essentials would have to be taken into account when we
consider decolonization in any part of the African continent, and indeed
outside, although that is not our concern at the present time.

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INTRODUCTION

At the outset, before anything else is written, we need openly to
acknowledge how difficult it has been for us to come to terms with the
undeniable fact that Walter Rodney, our brother, friend and comrade, is
dead. On June 13, 1980, the author of this unparalleled work of historical
analysis became the best-known victim of a systematic campaign of
assasination and other forms of ruthless repression carried out by the
governing authorities of his native land, Guyana.
The end was predictable, for Walter had determined that the only path to
true human development and liberation for the majority of the people of his
country was through the transformation of their own lives in a struggle to
replace and reshape the neo-colonialist government that dominated their
society and prescribed their existence. However, Forbes Burnham, the
President of Guyana, had made it clear on many occasions that, in this
struggle for the minds and hearts of the people, he knew no limits in the
determination to “exterminate the forces of opposition.” In the opinion of
many, there is no doubt that the bomb that tore away the life of Walter
Rodney was the result of Burnham’s deadly pledge.
Hard as his death is to accept and absorb, we must begin here, not
primarily for purposes of sentiment or political invective, but because no
new introduction to How Europe Underveloped Africa is possible without a
serious and direct encounter with Walter Rodney, the revolutionary scholar,
the scholar-revolutionary, the man of great integrity and hope. For, more so
than most books of its genre, this work is clearly imbued with the spirit, the
intellect and the commitment of its author—both the man who produced the
audacious and wide-ranging study before he was thirty, and the man who
moved with an unswerving integrity to live out its implications in his
relatively brief years.

With Rodney the life and the work were one, and the life drives us back
to recall the essential themes of the work. In spite of its title, this is not
simply a work about European oppressors and African victims, serving
primarily as a weapon to flay the exploiters and beat them at their own
intellectual games. (Of course, it has done yeoman service in that limited
role.) Rather, there is much more to this masterly survey, and at its deepest
levels it offers no easy comfort to any of us.
At one point, early in the book, Rodney summarizes its basic message:
The question as to who, and what, is responsible for African underdevelopment can be
answered at two levels. Firstly, the answer is that the operation of the imperialist system bears
major responsibility for African economic retardation by draining African wealth and by
making it impossible to develop more rapidly the resources of the continent. Secondly, one has
to deal with those who manipulated the system and those who are either agents or unwitting
accomplices of the said system. The capitalists of Western Europe were the ones who actively
extended their exploitation from inside Europe to cover the whole of Africa. In recent times,
they were joined, and to some extent replaced, by the capitalists from the United States; and for
many years now even the workers of those metropolitan countries have benefited from the
exploitaiton and underdevelopment of Africa. (27–28)

All this Walter supported with a profuse and creative set of precise
examples from many sources, periods and places. Yet, he was not satisfied
to pour well-documented blows upon the oppressors—though he was a
master at this activity. Nor did it suffice to remind many of us who live in
the United States that our blackness provides no exemption from our
willing participation in the benefits of our country’s exploitation of Africa.
Rather, his summary of the book’s central themes concluded with words
that moved beyond accusation or guilt. He said,
None of these remarks are intended to remove the ultimate responsibility for development from
the shoulders of Africans. Not only are there African accomplices inside the imperialist system,
but every African has a responsibility to understand the system and work for its overthrow.
(28)

Unlike many of us who read and write such words, Walter took them
seriously. He knew that they were meant for him, for the children of Africa
in the Caribbean and the United States of America; for Indians, Asians and
many other sufferers at the hands of European-fueled underdevelopment.
Indeed, he knew they were meant, too, for all those Europeans and
Americans who claimed solidarity with the Third World struggle for
development and liberation.

Rodney envisioned and worked on the assumption that the new
development of Africans and other dependent peoples of the “periphery”
would require what he called “a radical break with the international
capitalist system,” a courageous challenge to the failing “center” of the
current world order. Of course, he also knew that any such break or serious
contestation would participate in and precipitate profound revolutionary
changes at the center itself. Thus, from his perspective, what was ultimately
at stake, what was absolutely necessary was a fundamental transformation
in the ordering of the political, cultural and economic forces that have
dominated the world for almost half a millenium.
This was an awesome vision, especially since Walter dared to say and
believe that such a stupendous transformation must be initiated by Africans
and other dwellers in the nether regions of exploitation and subordination.
Nevertheless, he did not flinch from the implications of his own analysis.
Instead, he continued—especially by his example—to encourage all of us to
move toward a radically transformed vision of ourselves and of our
capacities for changing our lives and our objective conditions. Quietly,
insistently, he urged us to claim our full responsibility for engaging in the
struggle for a new world order.
No one could ignore Walters work, nor question his call, for he set the
example by assuming his own part of the awesome responsibility. That is
why he was in Guyana in June 1980. That is why he had been there since
1974, developing the leadership of what was called the Working People’s
Alliance (WPA), struggling to support his family, somehow finding time to
carry on research and writing on the history of the working people of his
country and other parts of the Caribbean. That is why he was murdered.
In the midst of our sorrow and indignation none of us who knew Walter
could honestly say that we were surprised by the news of his death. For his
life carried a certain consistency and integrity that could not be ignored or
denied. Indeed, in his relatively brief time certain patterns were established
early. Born on March 13, 1942, Rodney grew up in Georgetown, the capital
of what was then British Guiana. From the outset, he was part of a family
that took transformational politics with great seriousness. His parents,
especially his father, were deeply involved in the development of the
Peoples Progressive Party (PPP). A multi-racial party, it was at the time the
only mass political organization in the Caribbean that was opening the

common people to the world of Marxist/Socialist thought, as well as raising
the possibilities of alternative futures that might go beyond the mere
establishment of independence within the British Commonwealth.
So, even before he entered his teens, Walter was already engaged in
leafletting, attending party meetings and absorbing the thousands of hours
of political discussions that went on in his home. Then, when he entered
Queens College, the highly regarded secondary school in Georgetown, the
young political activist also became one of the “scholarship boys” so
familiar to West Indian life at the time. Bright, energetic and articulate, he
excelled in academics and sports (he broke his school record for the high
jump), and when he won the coveted Guyana scholarship to the University
College of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, the traditional path to
academic prestige and distinction was open to him.
In 1963, Rodney graduated with first class honors in history from UCWI,
and was awarded a scholarship to the University of London where he
entered the School of Oriental and African Studies to work on his doctorate
in African History. Walter’s political instincts and early nurturing would not
allow him to settle into the safety of conventional academic life. Instead, the
years in London (1963–1966) were among the most important of his
continuing political and intellectual development. He immediately became
part of a study group of younger West Indians who met regularly under the
guidance of the man who was then the exemplar of the revolutionary
intellectual, C. L. R. James, the Trinidadian Marxist scholar, best known for
his history of the Haitian revolution, Black Jacobins.
The experience with James and the study group was a crucial supplement
to Rodney’s earlier exposure to the day-to-day life of radical Caribbean
politics, and it was also an important source of grounding in intellectual
reality as he moved through the sometimes surreal world of the academic
community. By the time he left London for Tanzania in 1966, Rodney was
prepared to write history from what he later described as “a revolutionary,
socialist and people-centered perspective.” (Within the boundaries of an
academic thesis, his excellent dissertation: “A History of the Upper Guinea
Coast, 1545–1800,” addressed itself to the subject from that perspective.)*
During the 1966–67 academic year, Walter taught history at the
University College in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In 1968, he returned to

Jamaica to take a post in History at his alma mater and to develop what he
planned to be a major program in African and Caribbean studies. More
importantly, he wanted to test his convictions about the need for
revolutionary intellectuals to remain grounded in the ongoing life of the
people. Walter met with initial success in both of these endeavors, but it was
precisely this success, especially in his work among the common people of
the Jamaican streets, hills and gullies, that led to a drastic foreshortening of
his stay in that country. In less than a year Rodney had come in touch with
and helped articulate the profound discontent and unrest that filled the lives
of the ordinary people of Jamaica, as well as many of the university
students. As they began seriously to talk and listen together—to ground
with one another—about the ways to organize for change, as they heard and
pondered the implications of the powerful calls for Black Power rising in
this country, it was obvious that a deep and unpredictable ferment was at
work, and the conservative Jamaican government readily identified Walter
as an undesirable foreign element. Thus, in October, 1968, while attending a
Black Writer’s Conference in Montreal, Walter Rodney was officially
expelled from Jamaica. The government action led to several days of protest
in Kingston, but Rodney was kept out.
It was this political activity, combined with his powerful participation in
the Montreal conference, that first brought the twenty-six-year old
Caribbean historian to the attention of many of us in the United States.
Then, following the Jamaican government’s action, Walter’s fellow
members of the C. L. R. James study group and other Caribbean activists
based in London, pressed Walter for the opportunity to publish some of the
lectures that he had delivered in Jamaica. With that purpose in mind they
formed the Bogle-L’Ouverture Publishing House, and in 1969 brought out
Walter’s first widely-read book, Groundings With My Brothers.* Walter
returned to Dar es Salaam, teaching again at the University (1969–1972),
while Groundings was making a profound impression on many people in
this country, especially among those of us who were involved in the
struggle for hegemony over the definitions of the black (and white)
experience in the United States, a struggle temporarily crystallized in the
Black Studies movement.

Not surprisingly, it was at one of the many conferences spawned by that
movement that Walter Rodney was first introduced to a major audience of
Afro-Americans. In May, 1970, he participated in the second annual
gathering of the African Heritage Studies Association at Howard
University. While one of the contributors to this introduction (Robert Hill)
had already met and worked with Walter at the University of the West
Indies, the Howard conference provided the first opportunity for the other
two of us.
Like many persons at the conference, my first impression of this slightly
built, soft-spoken, dark-skinned brother from Guyana was his capacity to
speak without notes—and largely without rhetorical flourish—for more
than an hour, and yet have his highly informative material so carefully and
cogently organized that it would have been possible to take it directly from
a transcript and publish it. Eventually, we discovered that this tremendous
intellectual discipline (and political instinct) was matched by a disciplined
force of spirit, a mastery of—but not slavery to—dialectical materialism,
and an unflinching commitment to collective work on behalf of the
wretched of the earth. All this was insulated from self-righteousness by a
dry and ready sense of humor. In other words, it was clear to us that Walter
Rodney was a moral, political and intellectual force to be reckoned with,
one of Africa’s most beautiful children.
From the point of our first encounter, we knew that we had met a brother,
teacher and comrade. At the time of the Howard conference, Robert Hill,
Bill Strickland and I were working with others in the development of the
Institute of the Black World (IBW), an Atlanta-based center for research,
publication and advocacy. Immediately, we began to explore with Walter
some of the ways in which he might share with us in this experiment in
collective intellectual work. As a result, in a series of visits he spent quiet,
unhurried time among us. In our homes we also shared the company of his
wife, Pat, and their lively children, Shaka, Knini and Asha.
As our ties were being developed and cemented, the first edition of How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa was jointly published by Bogle-L’Ouverture
and the Tanzanian Publishing House in 1972. For all of those who could
obtain copies of the work, it was like a mighty, uplifting gust of fresh air.
Without romanticising pre-colonial Africa, Walter had placed it in the
context of human development across the globe, traced its real historical

relationships to the colonizing forces of Europe and suggested the path for
Africa’s movement toward a new life for its people and a new role in the reshaping of the world.
The book immediately struck an exciting and responsive chord among
many in this country. Among politically-oriented black people it played
something of the same formative role as Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the
Earth almost a decade before. Indeed, both men were dealing with the
ravages of colonialism and neo-colonialism; both were calling for a break
with the exploiting, ravaging system in order to move forward and create a
new order. Both were living examples of the transformation they demanded.
Like Fanon’s seminal work, Rodney’s also began from an
African/Caribbean perspective, but we in the United States of America
immediately recognized the global connection. Although Walter ended his
primary historical analysis with the close of the 1950s, he nevertheless
offered a brief, cogent and powerful treatment of the contemporary role of
the United States in the exploitation of Africa, implicitly warning us against
our own active or passive participation in that damaging work. But there
were also connections perhaps even more directly related to the AfroAmerican struggles in the early 1970s, especially in his treatment of
colonial and neo-colonial education and its effects on the African mind and
spirit. For instance, Walter wrote, “In the final analysis, perhaps the most
important principle of colonial education was that of capitalist
individualism. . . . In Africa, both the formal school system and the informal
value system of colonialism destroyed social solidarity and promoted the
worst form of alienated individualism without social responsibility.” (254–
255)
We Afro-Americans immediately recognized that condition. Indeed, one
of the central themes of the movement for Black Studies and Black Power
had been the call for social solidarity among black people and resistance to
the destructive individualism of the mainstream American way of life. For
we were painfully aware of the rising alienation among our young people as
they moved ever more fully into the cultural flow of mass American society
with its powerful networks of formal and informal mis-education. Thus, it
was natural that those of us at the Institute of the Black World (IBW)
invited Walter Rodney to participate with us in two projects directly related
to those concerns. The first was as a contributor to a book-length

monograph, Education and Black Struggle, that we organized and edited for
Harvard Educational Review in 1974. His paper was on “Education in
Africa and Contemporary Tanzania.”
The second project was of a different nature. Early in 1974 Walter had
received an appointment as professor and chairman of History at the
University of Guyana. The appointment was considered a clear victory for
Walter and his supporters, a vindication of his vision. We invited him to
spend part of the summer in Atlanta with us before his return to Guyana. He
spent more than a month at IBW, primarily in the development and
leadership of a Summer Research Symposium. Colleagues from other parts
of the nation and from the Caribbean joined us in the venture as we
experimented with models for an educational program that would provide
broader scope and new alternatives for young black people in colleges and
universities across the country.* At the same time, in an act of vision and
courage, the Howard University Press was publishing the first American
edition of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
The extended time that Walter spent at IBW that summer was critical to
us all. It helped to crystallize much of our thinking about the role of black
intellectuals in our own society, and the role that IBW might play in that
development. Concurrently, it provided Walter with an opportunity to
explore more deeply the implications of the unique black-American
experience. Moreover, it brought us all into community with an exciting
group of students and co-workers, and we looked forward to the many ways
in which we could continue to work together with Walter in his new post at
the University of Guyana.
However, even before Walter left Atlanta, we had begun to receive
signals that all was not well with the university appointment. By the time he
arrived home the official word was given. At the last moment, in an
unprecedented move, the appointment had been cancelled, apparently the
result of pressure from the highest levels of government. From that point
on, Walter Rodney, revolutionary-scholar, began once more to dig deeply
into the soil of his native land. In spite of invitations and appeals from many
places, he steadfastly refused to leave Guyana on any permanent basis.
He had set himself two major tasks, both consistent with his definition of
his role as a black intellectual who was committed to the liberation and

development of his people. Both required his presence in Guyana. The first
was to develop a major, multi-volume work on the history of the working
people of his country. The second task (and this was all-encompassing) was
to immerse himself in the contemporary life of those same people and
search with them to find a way to resist the power of a government that had
clearly betrayed their hopes and their trust, a government that now stood in
the way of their development. In other words, Walter was still trying to deal
with the neo-colonial implications of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,
dauntlessly carrying the search for solutions to the center of his own life
and the life of his nation. All the while, especially since Pat, his wife, had
also been denied an opportunity to work at her profession of social welfare,
Walter had to find ways to feed, clothe and house his family.
Even though it was hard for some of us to imagine how he did it in spite
of a situation of constantly heightening tension and danger, Walter managed
to find time and energy to spend long hours in the Guyana National
Archives and in the Caribbean Research Library at the University in
Georgetown. In addition to a number of monographs, the ultimate fruit of
that disciplined and sacrificial work will appear when the Johns Hopkins
University Press publishes Walter’s History of the Guyanese Working
People, 1881–1905. He also published during this period of intensified
struggle an important text, Guyanese Sugar Plantations in the Late
Nineteenth Century.
Meanwhile, he continued to organize. Before 1974 was over Walter had
helped to centralize the Working Peoples Alliance. This became his political
base in the relentless struggle to build a force that would bring about the
revolutionary transformation of the Guyanese society.
With the help of many persons in the United States and other parts of the
world, Walter found opportunities to lecture and teach in an attempt to keep
in touch with his comrades outside of Guyana and to earn the funds his
family needed. (James Turner, Director of the Africana Studies and
Research Center at Cornell and Immanuel Wallerstein of the State
University of New York at Binghamton, were especially helpful to those of
us who were trying to organize these activities.)
Whenever Walter travelled abroad, especially as the government’s
repression increased, many friends urged him to leave Guyana and bring
himself and his family to some place of relative safety. Walter’s response to

us generally had two parts. First was his sense of the responsibility he had
to his comrades and the people of Guyana. He said that he was working
among them to encourage them in a fearless struggle for the transformation
of themselves and their society, and that he could not leave simply because
he happened to have ready access to the means of escape. Second, Rodney
said he felt he had been singularly privileged in the broad set of contacts he
had been able to establish in the course of his work and travels throughout
the Third World. For him, this privilege carried with it a responsibility to
continue to share with his people the content and spirit of that international
network of women and men involved in liberation struggles. Thus, without
any trace of a desire for martyrdom, but with a clear recognition of the
situation he faced, Walter’s response was always the same: “It is imperative
that I stay here.”
Toward the end, all these dangers, hopes and tensions were concentrated
in the events of one last, year-long outpouring of life and death. In June,
1979, the WPA formally announced that it had transformed itself into a
political party, one that would work untiringly for the overthrow of the
strong-hold that Burnham’s Peoples National Congress had established in
the country. In the following month, a government building in Georgetown
was set afire and Walter and four other WPA members were among the
eight persons arrested and charged with arson.* Because it was a
government bulding, the charge was very serious. But it was also clear to
many observers that the action was entirely set up as part of the measures
for breaking the force of Rodney’s small but influential organization. On the
day of the arraignment, Father Bernard Danke, a priest who was a reporter
for the Catholic Standard, was fatally stabbed in the back as he stood
observing a pro-WPA demonstration outside the court building. From that
point on, a repressive situation deteriorated into what might be called a long
night of official terrorism, including bombings, police beatings and
escalating threats of “extermination” by Burnham against Walter and other
leaders of the opposition WPA.
By the end of February 1980, two of Walter’s close associates in the
WPA, Ohene Koama and Edward Lublin, had been killed by the police,
others shot and beaten; still others jailed, their houses raided, ransacked and
bombed. By then, some of the leading members of the WPA were actually

being held as political prisoners in Guyana, for their government refused
them permission to leave the country. However, Rodney managed to get out
in May 1980, accepting an invitation from the Patriotic Front to attend the
independence ceremonies in Zimbabwe. Then Walter returned to Guyana,
continuing to work in the Archives, to organize among the people. He had
ominously told some of us in this country that we might not see him again.
On June 2, the trial for arson began, witnesssed by concerned observers
from the Caribbean, the United States and England. Within a few days it
was clear that the government had no case and could not prosecute Rodney
and his co-workers. As a result, on June 6, at the request of the government,
the trial was adjourned until August 20.
One week after the adjournment, on Friday evening, June 13, Walter was
sitting in his brother’s car, waiting for Donald Rodney at the driver’s seat.
They had stopped at the house of a man who we now know had infiltrated
the ranks of the WPA. Donald Rodney went in to pick up what the man said
was a walkie-talkie that Walter wanted. As they stood in the infiltrator’s
yard around 7:30 p.m., he told Rodney to drive off and wait for a test signal
at 8:00. Donald returned to the car and drove away. When the signal came,
it turned out to be the explosion that ended Walter Rodney’s life.
A few weeks before his death, Rodney had been persistently interviewed
about the dangers that he faced and his plans for defending himself against
them. He said,
As to my own safety and the safety of a number of other persons within the WPA, we will
try to guarantee our safety by the level of political mobilization and political action inside and
outside of the country. Ultimately, it is this rather than any kind of physical defense which will
guarantee our safety. None of us are unmindful of the threat that is constantly posed. We don’t
regard ourselves as adventurers, as martyrs or potential martyrs, but we think there is a job
which needs to be done and at a certain point in time we have to do what has to be done.

Again, Walter’s courageous sense of commitment and integrity evokes
sharp memories of Fanon. He too sacrified his life for the liberation of his
people and died before he was forty. He too called the children of Africa
and all those damned by Europe to seize the initiative and change our ways.
He too asked us to resist all temptations to live out our lives as permanent
victims, angry accusers or fawning imitators of Europe. It was he who said,
Come, then, comrades, the European game has finally ended. . . . Look at them today
swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration. . . . we must find something different. We

today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed
by the desire to catch up with Europe we have taken the liberty at this point of changing
“Europe” to Europe/America—we think Fanon would permit that.
The Third World faces Europe/America like a colossal mass whose aim should be to try to
resolve the problems to which Europe/America has not been able to find the answers.
So comrades, let us not pay tribute to Europe/America by creating states, institutions, and
societies which draw their inspiration from her.
. . . If we want humanity to advance a step further, if we want to bring it up to a different
level than that which Europe/America has shown it, then we must invent and we must make
discoveries.
If we wish to live up to our people’s expectations, we must seek the response elsewhere than
in Europe/America. For Europe/America, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must
turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and we must try to set afoot a new man.
(Wretched of the Earth. 252–255)

From Walter’s perspective, that was the “job that needs to be done,” the
challenge that he and his comrades had determined to take on;
experimenting, inventing, risking, trying to work out new forms of
organization, new modes of struggle, new visions and concepts to guide and
undergird them, starting on their own home ground. For Walter Rodney, the
WPA was one element of the job and his research and writing was another.
He saw no contradiction between them. All elements of the task were held
firmly together by the righteous integrity of his life, the disciplined power
of his visions and his undying love for the people and their possibilities.
Thus, he went about doing the job that needed to be done. But, as it was
said of Malcolm X, so it could be said of Walter: “He became much more
than there was time for him to be.”
Now we are starkly aware of the fact that the time he no longer has is
really ours, that the job he took on is in our hands, to continue, to redefine,
wherever we are, whoever we are. The call that he tried to answer is here
for us all: “if we want humanity to advance a step further . . . we must
invent and we must make discoveries . . . we must turn over a new leaf, we
must work out new concepts, and we must try to set afoot a new
[humanity].” (255, Wretched of the Earth)
Walter’s Legacy
It is our courageous, creative attempts to respond to such a magnificent
summons that we begin to break the chains of our underdevelopment and
shake the foundations of all human exploitation. And is it not clear by now

that the process of exploitation leads to an underdeveloped humanity both at
the “center” and at the “periphery”? Do we not see that the
underdevelopment of the center, in the homeland of the exploiters, is simply
covered over with material possessions and deadly weaponry, but that the
nakedness and human retardation are nevertheless there? So who among us
does not need to break the coils of the past, to transcend and recreate our
history?
Perhaps it is only as we take up the challenge of Walter and Fanon that
we will be prepared to give up all the deadly games of the last half-millenia,
seeking out new means of defense, new forms of struggle, new pathways
toward revolution, new visions of what truly humane society demands of
us. Only as we begin to entertain such thoughts, consider such inventions,
will we be prepared to carefully examine again and then move beyond the
marvelous limits of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, pressing on—in
the spirit of Rodney and Fanon—to ask a new question: how shall we redevelop the world?
Beginning with ourselves, beginning where we are, what must we tear
down, what must we build up, what foundations must we lay? Who shall we
work with, what visions can we create, what hopes shall possess us? How
shall we organize? How shall we be related to those who raise the same
questions in South Africa, in El Salvadore, in Guyana? How shall we
communicate with others the urgency of our time? How shall we envision
and work for the revolutionary transformation of our own country? What
are the inventions, the discoveries, the new concepts that will help us move
toward the revolution we need in this land?
Neither rhetoric nor coercion will serve us now. We must decide whether
we shall remain crippled and underdeveloped, or move to participate in our
own healing by taking on the challenge to re-develop ourselves, our people,
our endangered nation and the earth. No one can force us toward this. By
conventional measurements, there are no guarantees of success—as the
blood of our martyrs and heroes, known and less known, like Walter
Rodney and Frantz Fanon, Ruby Doris and Fanny Lou, Malcolm and
Martin, fully testify.
But there is a world waiting for us; indeed, many worlds await us. One is
the world of our children, not yet born, or just beginning, but wanting to
live, to grow, to become their best possible selves. This will not happen

unless, as Walter suggests, the center is transformed and fundamentally
changed. That will not happen unless we are transformed, re-developed and
renewed. The future of our children depends upon these rigorous
transformations.
The Afro-American Challenge
Then there is another more difficult world that awaits us: the world of
the sons and daughters of Europe/America who have begun to discover
their own underdevelopment, who recognize the warping and desensitizing
of their spirits. Without rehearsing all the old political arguments about
coalitions and alliances, neither forgetting the past nor being bound by it,
we must find some way to respond to them and to allow them to come in
touch with us. This is no passing luxury, in the old “race relations” style.
Rather, we now realize that the children of the oppressed and the children of
the oppressors are involved in a dialectical relationship that is deeper than
most of us choose to recognize, and that there is no fundamental
redevelopment for one without the other. This is a heavy burden, but it
represents a great possibility as well. In this country, with our peculiar
history, it is also an undeniable reality.
So, it is by the way of these difficult issues that we return to Walter and
his great work. Now, what seems demanded of us as we re-visit How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa, is that we read it this time in the light of
Walter Rodney’s life and death; this time in the consciousness of the
dangerous, explosive American center; this time in the company of our
children; this time in the presence of Fanon’s insistent call to us all.
Then we shall likely see more clearly than ever before that Europe’s
underdevelopment of Africa, and other worlds, required Europe’s ravaging
of itself and everyone—and everything—that came under its sway. So the
wounded are all around us and within us. Now, opening ourselves to all
those who recognize the brutal dialectics of underdevelopment, who
acknowledge the cohesive powers of our common needs, our common
dangers and our common possibilities, we can begin to stand in a newly
grounded solidarity and reach out toward each other, facing the harsh but
beautiful fact that we must either re-develop ourselves and our world or be
pushed together into some terrible, explosive closing of the light.

Of course, if we choose to go the way of our essential community, we
cannot go far by responding primarily to the urgency of fear (for that would
repeat history rather than transform it—and that would be unfaithful to a
courageous brother like Walter). Instead, we must be drawn by the fact that
there is much to attract us. For instance, one of the hopeful elements on the
other side of the patterns of domination/subordination of the past 500 years
has been the drawing of humankind into networks of communication and
interrelatedness that hold great possibilities for the establishment of new
communities beyond the traditional, national barriers. Reshaped and redirected, the mechanisms of exploitation may actually place some vital
means of re-development within our grasp.
Now it is in our hands—to overcome our history, to break the shackles of
the past, to re-develop ourselves, our people, our nation and our world—to
find humane, creative and fearless ways of dealing with those who presently
oppose such development. These are audacious visions, and truly awesome
responsibilities. But we must go forward. Indeed, it seems clear to us that
even without any guarantees of success, we must move in the flow of
humankind’s best, most creative imagination, in the direction of our most
profoundly renewing dreams.
Anything less is inadequate for the perilous times. Anything less would
be unworthy of the memory of our brother, the needs of our children, or the
magnificent, untapped capacities of our own best selves.
March 1981
VINCENT HARDING
ROBERT HILL
WILLIAM STRICKLAND

*

The dissertation was published by Clarendon Press in 1970, and recently reprinted in paperback
by Monthly Review Press.
*
The new press was named after Paul Bogle, the leader of the 1865 Morant Bay rebellion in
Jamaica and Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Haitian leader. Among those most actively involved in the
endeavor were Andrew Salkey, Jessica and Eric Huntley, Richard Small, John LaRose, Selma James,
Earl Greenwood and Chris Le Maitre. Not long after Rodney’s assassination, Bogle-L’Ouverture
Book Store was renamed the Walter Rodnev Book Store.

*

Among the colleagues who participated in the Summer Research Symposium (SRS) were C. L.
R. James, St. Clair Drake, Katherine Dunham, George Beckford, Edward Braithwaite, Lerone
Bennett, Mary Berry, Tran Van Dinh, Mack Jones and Frank Smith.
*
Known as the “Referendum Five,” they included Walter Rodney, Rupert Roopnarine, Maurice
Omawale, Kwame Apata and Karen De Souza. All five were denied trial by jury.

CHAPTER

I
Some Questions on Development
• What Is Development? • What Is Underdevelopment?

IN CONTRAST WITH THE SURGING GROWTH OF THE COUNTRIES IN THE socialist camp and the development
taking place, albeit much more slowly, in the majority of the capitalist countries, is the unquestionable
fact that a large proportion of the so-called underdeveloped countries are in total stagnation, and that in
some of them the rate of economic growth is lower than that of population increase.
These characteristics are not fortuitous; they correspond strictly to the nature of the capitalist system
in full expansion, which transfers to the dependent countries the most abusive and barefaced forms of
exploitation. It must be clearly understood that the only way to solve the questions now besetting
mankind is to eliminate completely the exploitation of dependent countries by developed capitalist
countries, with all the consequences that this implies.
—CHÉ GUEVARA, 1964

What Is Development?
Development in human society is a many-sided process. At the level of the
individual, it implies increased skill and capacity, greater freedom, creativity, selfdiscipline, responsibility, and material well-being. Some of these are virtually
moral categories and are difficult to evaluate—depending as they do on the age in
which one lives, one’s class origins, and one’s personal code of what is wrong.
However, what is indisputable is that the achievement of any of those aspects of
personal development is very much tied in with the state of the society as a whole.
From earliest times, man found it convenient and necessary to come together in
groups to hunt and for the sake of survival. The relations which develop within
any given social group are crucial to an understanding of the society as a whole.
Freedom, responsibility, skill, have real meaning only in terms of the relations of
men in society.
Of course, each social group comes into contact with others. The relations
between individuals in any two societies are regulated by the form of the two
societies. Their respective political structures are important because the ruling
elements within each group are the ones that begin to have dialogue, trade, or
fight, as the case may be. At the level of social groups, therefore, development
implies an increasing capacity to regulate both internal and external relationships.
Much of human history has been a fight for survival against natural hazards and
against real and imagined human enemies. Development in the past has always
meant the increase in the ability to guard the independence of the social group and
indeed to infringe upon the freedom of others—something that often came about
irrespective of the will of the persons within the societies involved.
Men are not the only beings that operate in groups, but the human species
embarked upon a unique line of development because man had the capacity to
make and use tools. The very act of making tools was a stimulus to increasing
rationality rather than the consequence of a fully matured intellect. In historical

terms, man the worker was every bit as important as man the thinker, because the
work with tools liberated men from sheer physical necessity, so that he could
impose himself upon other more powerful species and upon nature itself. The tools
with which men work and the manner in which they organize their labor are both
important indices of social development.
More often than not, the term “development” is used in an exclusive economic
sense—the justification being that the type of economy is itself an index of other
social features. What then is economic development? A society develops
economically as its members increase jointly their capacity for dealing with the
environment. This capacity for dealing with the environment is dependent on the
extent to which they understand the laws of nature (science), on the extent to
which they put that understanding into practice by devising tools (technology),
and on the manner in which work is organized. Taking a long-term view, it can be
said that there has been constant economic development within human society
since the origins of man, because man has multiplied enormously his capacity to
win a living from nature. The magnitude of man’s achievement is best understood
by reflecting on the early history of human society and noting the following:
firstly, the progress from crude stone tools to the use of metals; secondly, the
changeover from hunting and gathering wild fruit to the domestication of animals
and the growing of food crops; and thirdly, the improvement in organization of
work from being an individualistic activity towards being an activity which
assumes a social character through the participation of many.
Every people have shown a capacity for independently increasing their ability
to live a more satisfactory life through exploiting the resources of nature. Every
continent independently participated in the early epochs of the extension of man’s
control over his environment—which means in effect that every continent can
point to a period of economic development. Africa, being the original home of
man, was obviously a major participant in the processes in which human groups
displayed an ever increasing capacity to extract a living from the natural
environment. Indeed, in the early period, Africa was the focus of the physical
development of man as such, as distinct from other living beings.
Development was universal because the conditions leading to economic
expansion were universal. Everywhere, man was faced with the task of survival by
meeting fundamental material needs; and better tools were a consequence of the
interplay between human beings and nature as part of the struggle for survival. Of
course, human history is not a record of advances and nothing else. There were
periods in every part of the world when there were temporary setbacks and actual
reduction of the capacity to produce basic necessities and other services for the
population. But the overall tendency was towards increased production, and at

given points of time the increase in the quantity of goods was associated with a
change in the quality or character of society. This will be shown later with
reference to Africa, but to indicate the universal application of the principle of
quantitative/qualitative change an example will be drawn from China.
Early man in China lived at the mercy of nature, and slowly discovered such
basic things as the fact that fire can be man-made and that seeds of some grasses
could be planted in the soil to meet food requirements. Those discoveries helped
inhabitants of China to have simple farming communities using stone tools and
producing enough for bare subsistence. That was achieved several thousand years
before the birth of Christ or the flight of the Prophet Mohammed. The goods
produced at that stage were divided more or less equally among the members of
society, who lived and worked in families. By the time of the T’ang dynasty of the
seventh century A.D., China had expanded its economic capacity not only to grow
more food but also to manufacture a wide variety of items such as silks, porcelain,
ships, and scientific devices. This, of course, represented a quantitative increase in
the goods produced, and it was interrelated with qualitative changes in Chinese
society. By the later date, there was a political state, where before there were only
self-governing units. Instead of every family and every individual performing the
tasks of agriculturalists, house-builders, tailors, there had arisen specialization of
function. Most of the population still tilled the land, but there were skilled artisans
who made silk and porcelain, bureaucrats who administered the state, and
Buddhist and Confucian religious philosophers who specialized in trying to
explain those things that lay outside of immediate understanding.
Specialization and division of labor led to more production as well as inequality
in distribution. A small section of Chinese society came to take a disproportionate
share of the proceeds of human labor, and that was the section which did least to
actually generate wealth by working in agriculture or industry. They could afford
to do so because grave inequalities had emerged in the ownership of the basic
means of production, which was the land. Family land became smaller as far as
most peasants were concerned, and a minority took over the greater portion of the
land. Those changes in land tenure were part and parcel of development in its
broadest sense. That is why development cannot be seen purely as an economic
affair, but rather as an overall social process which is dependent upon the outcome
of man’s efforts to deal with his natural environment.
Through careful study, it is possible to comprehend some of the very
complicated links between the changes in the economic base and changes in the
rest of the superstructure of the society—including the sphere of ideology and
social beliefs. The changeover from communalism in Asia and Europe led for
instance to codes of behavior peculiar to feudalism. The conduct of the European

knights in armor had much in common with that of the Japanese Samurai, or
warriors. They developed notions of so-called chivalry—conduct becoming a
gentleman knight on horseback; while in contrast the peasant had to learn extreme
humility, deference, and obsequiousness—symbolized by doffing his cap and
standing bareheaded before his superiors. In Africa, too, it was to be found that the
rise of the state and superior classes led to the practice whereby common subjects
prostrated themselves in the presence of the monarchs and aristocrats. When that
point had been reached, it became clear that the rough equality of the family had
given way to a new state of society.
In the natural sciences, it is well known that in many instances quantitative
change becomes qualitative after a certain period. The common example is the
way that water can absorb heat (a quantitative process) until at 100° C. it changes
to steam (a qualitative change of form). Similarly, in human society it has always
been the case that the expansion of the economy leads eventually to a change in
the form of social relations. Karl Marx, writing in the nineteenth century, was the
first writer to appreciate this, and he distinguished within European history several
stages of development. The first major stage following after simple bands of
hunters was Communalism, where property was collectively owned, work was
done in common, and goods were shared equally. The second was Slavery, caused
by the extension of domineering elements within the family and by some groups
being physically overwhelmed by others. Slaves did a variety of tasks, but their
main job was to produce food. The next stage was Feudalism, where agriculture
remained the principal means of making a livelihood, but the land which was
necessary for that purpose was in the hands of the few, and they took the lion’s
share of the wealth. The workers on the land (now called serfs) were no longer the
personal property of the masters, but were tied to the land of a particular manor or
estate. When the manor changed hands, the serfs had to remain there and provide
goods for the landlord—just keeping enough to feed themselves. Just as the child
of a slave was a slave, so the children of serfs were also serfs. Then came
Capitalism, under which the greatest wealth in the society was produced not in
agriculture but by machines—in factories and in mines. Like the preceding phase
of feudalism, capitalism was characterized by the concentration in a few hands of
ownership of the means of producing wealth and by unequal distribution of the
products of human labor. The few who dominated were the bourgeoisie who had
originated in the merchants and craftsmen of the feudal epoch, and who rose to be
industrialists and financiers. Meanwhile, the serfs were declared legally free to
leave the land and go in search of employment in capitalist enterprises. Their labor
thereby became a commodity—something to be bought and sold.

It was predicted that there would be a further stage—that of Socialism—in
which the principle of economic equality would be restored, as in communalism.
In the present century, the phase of socialism has indeed emerged in some
countries. Economically, each succeeding stage represented development in the
strict sense that there was increased capacity to control the material environment
and thereby to create more goods and services for the community. The greater
quantity of goods and services were based on greater skills and human
inventiveness. Man was liberated in the sense of having more opportunities to
display and develop his talents. Whether man uplifted himself in a moral sense is
open to dispute. The advance in production increased the range of powers which
sections of society had over other sections, and it multiplied the violence which
was part of the competition for survival and growth among social groups. It is not
at all clear that a soldier serving capitalism in the last World War was less
“primitive” in the elemental sense of the word than a soldier serving in one of
Japan’s feudal armies in the sixteenth century, or for that matter than a hunter
living in the first phase of human organization in the forests of Brazil.
Nevertheless, we do know that in those three respective epochs—hunting band,
feudalism, capitalism—the quality of life improved. It became less hazardous and
less uncertain, and members of society potentially had greater choice over their
destinies. All of that is involved when the word “development” is used.
In the history of those societies which have passed through several modes of
production, the opportunity is presented of seeing how quantitative changes give
rise ultimately to an entirely different society. The key feature is that at given
junctures the social relations in the society were no longer effective in promoting
advance. Indeed, they began to act as brakes on the productive forces and
therefore had to be discarded. Take for instance the epoch of slavery in Europe.
However morally indefensible slavery may have been, it did serve for a while to
open up the mines and agricultural plantations in large parts of Europe and notably
within the Roman Empire. But then those peasants who remained free had their
labor depressed and underutilized because of the presence of slaves. The slaves
were not disposed to work at any tasks requiring skills, so the technological
evolution of society threatened to come to a halt. Furthermore, the slaves were
restless, and slave revolts were expensive to put down. The landowners, seeing
their estates going to ruin, decided that it would be best to grant the legal freedom
for which slaves were clamoring, and to keep exploiting the labor of these free
serfs by insuring that they had no lands to plow other than those of the landlords.
Thereby, a new set of social relations—that of landlord and serf—replaced the old
relations of slavemaster and slave.

In some instances, the changeover to a new mode was accompanied by
violence at a critical point. This occurred when the ruling classes involved were
being threatened with removal by the process of change. The feudal landlords
remained in power for centuries during which the merchant and manufacturing
interests grew wealthy and sought to achieve political power and social preeminence. When classes are so well defined, their consciousness is at a high level.
Both the landlord class and the capitalists recognized what was at stake. The
former fought to hold on to the social relations which no longer corresponded to
the new technology of machine production and the organization of work by means
of purchasing labor power. The capitalists flung themselves into revolutions in
Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to break the old relations of
production.
The notions of revolution and class consciousness must be borne in mind when
it comes to examining the situation of the modern worker and peasant classes in
Africa. However, for the greater part of Africa’s history, the existing classes have
been incompletely crystallized and the changes have been gradual rather than
revolutionary. What is probably of more relevance for early African development
is the principle that development over the world’s territories has always been
uneven.
While all societies have experienced development, it is equally true that the rate
of development differed from continent to continent, and within each continent
different parts increased their command over nature at different rates. Inside
Africa, Egyptians were capable of producing wealth in abundance twenty-five
centuries ago, because of mastery of many scientific natural laws and their
invention of technology to irrigate, grow food, and extract minerals from the
subsoil. At that time, hunting with bows and even wooden clubs was what people
depended on for survival in most parts of the African continent—and in various
other places such as the British Isles.
One of the most difficult questions to answer is exactly why different peoples
developed at different rates when left on their own. Part of the answer lies in the
environment in which human groups evolved and part of it lies in the
“superstructure” of human society. That is to say, as human beings battled with the
material environment, they created forms of social relations, forms of government,
patterns of behavior, and systems of belief which together constituted the
superstructure—which was never the same in any two societies. Each element in
the superstructure interacted with other elements in the superstructure as well as
with the material base. For instance, the political and religious patterns affected
each other and were often intertwined. The religious belief that a certain forest was
sacred was the kind of element in the superstructure that affected economic

activity, since that forest would not be cleared for cultivation. While in the final
analysis the breakthrough to a new stage of human development is dependent
upon man’s technical capacity to deal with the environment, it is also to be borne
in mind that peculiarities in the superstructure of any given society have a marked
impact on the rate of development.
Many observers have been puzzled by the fact that China never became
capitalist. It entered the feudal phase of development virtually 1,000 years before
the birth of Christ; it had developed many aspects of technology; and it had many
craftsmen and artisans. Yet the mode of production was never transformed to one
where machines were the main means of producing wealth and where the owners
of capital would be the dominant class. The explanation is very complex, but in
general terms the main differences between feudal Europe and feudal China lay in
the superstructure—i.e., in the body of beliefs, motivations, and socio-political
institutions which derived from the material base but in turn affected it. In China,
religious, educational, and bureaucratic qualifications were of utmost importance,
and government was in the hands of state officials rather than being run by the
landlords on their own feudal estates. Besides, there were greater egalitarian
tendencies in Chinese land distribution than in European land distribution, and the
Chinese state owned a great deal of land. The consequence was that the
landowners had greater powers as bureaucrats than as men of property, and they
used that to keep social relations in the same mold. It would have been impossible
for them to have done that indefinitely, but they slowed down the movement of
history. In Europe, the elements of change were not stifled by the weight of a state
bureaucracy.
As soon as the first capitalists appeared in European society, an incentive was
created for further development through the attitude of this class. Never before in
any human society had a group of people seen themselves consciously functioning
in order to make the maximum profit out of production. To fulfill their objective of
acquiring more and more capital, capitalists took a greater interest in the laws of
science which could be harnessed in the form of machinery to work and make
profit on their behalf. At the political level, capitalism was also responsible for
most of the features which today are referred to as Western Democracy. In
abolishing feudalism, the capitalists insisted on parliaments, constitutions,
freedom of the press. These too can be considered as development. However, the
peasants and workers of Europe (and eventually the inhabitants of the whole
world) paid a huge price so that the capitalists could make their profits from the
human labor that always lies behind the machines. That contradicts other facets of
development, especially viewed from the standpoint of those who suffered and
still suffer to make capitalist achievements possible. This latter group are the

majority of mankind. To advance, they must overthrow capitalism; and that is why
at the moment capitalism stands in the path of further human social development.
To put it another way, the social (class) relations of capitalism are now outmoded,
just as slave and feudal relations became outmoded in their time.
There was a period when the capitalist system increased the well-being of
significant numbers of people as a by-product of seeking out profits for a few, but
today the quest for profits comes into sharp conflict with people’s demands that
their material and social needs should be fulfilled. The capitalist or bourgeois class
is no longer capable of guiding the uninhibited development of science and
technology—again because these objectives now clash with the profit motive.
Capitalism has proved incapable of transcending fundamental weaknesses such as
underutilization of productive capacity, the persistence of a permanent sector of
unemployed, and periodic economic crises related to the concept of “market”—
which is concerned with people’s ability to pay rather than their need for
commodities. Capitalism has created its own irrationalities such as a vicious white
racism, the tremendous waste associated with advertising, and the irrationality of
incredible poverty in the midst of wealth and wastage even inside the biggest
capitalist economies, such as that of the United States of America. Above all,
capitalism has intensified its own political contradictions in trying to subjugate
nations and continents outside of Europe, so that workers and peasants in every
part of the globe have become self-conscious and are determined to take their
destiny into their own hands. Such a determination is also an integral part of the
process of development.
It can be offered as a generalization that all phases of development are
temporary or transient and are destined sooner or later to give way to something
else. It is particularly important to stress this with reference to capitalism because
the capitalist epoch is not quite over and those who live at a particular point in
time often fail to see that their way of life is in the process of transformation and
elimination. Indeed, it is one of the functions of those bourgeois writers who
justify capitalism to try and pretend that capitalism is here to stay. A glance at the
remarkable advance of socialism over the last fifty-odd years will show that the
apologists for capitalism are spokesmen of a social system that is rapidly expiring.
The fact that capitalism today is still around alongside socialism should warn us
that the modes of production cannot simply be viewed as a question of successive
stages. Uneven development has always insured that societies have come into
contact when they were at different levels—for example, one that was communal
and one that was capitalist.
When two societies of different sorts come into prolonged and effective
contact, the rate and character of change taking place in both is seriously affected

to the extent that entirely new patterns are created. Two general rules can be
observed to apply in such cases. First, the weaker of the two societies (i.e., the one
with less economic capacity) is bound to be adversely affected—and the bigger the
gap between the two societies concerned the more detrimental are the
consequences. For example, when European capitalism came into contact with the
indigenous hunting societies of America and the Caribbean, the latter were
virtually exterminated. Second, assuming that the weaker society does survive,
then ultimately it can resume its own independent development only if it proceeds
to a level higher than that of the economy which had previously dominated it. The
concrete instances of the operation of this second rule are found in the experience
of the Soviet Union, China, and Korea.
China and Korea were both at a stage approximating feudalism when they were
colonized by the capitalist powers of Europe and Japan. Russia was never legally
colonized, but while in the feudal stage and before its own indigenous capitalism
could get very far, the Russian economy was subjugated by the more mature
capitalism of Western Europe. In all three cases, it took a socialist revolution to
break the domination of capitalism, and only the rapid tempo of socialist
development could make amends for the period of subjugation when growth was
misdirected and retarded. Indeed, as far as the two biggest socialist states are
concerned (the Soviet Union and China), socialist development has already
catapulted them beyond states such as Britain and France, which have been
following the capitalist path for centuries.
Up to the end of the 1950s (the point at which this study terminates), Russia,
China, Korea, and certain nations in Eastern Europe were the only countries which
had decisively broken with capitalism and imperialism. Imperialism is itself a
phase of capitalist development in which Western European capitalist countries,
the U.S.A., and Japan established political, economic, military, and cultural
hegemony over other parts of the world which were initially at a lower level and
therefore could not resist domination. Imperialism was in effect the extended
capitalist system, which for many years embraced the whole world—one part
being the exploiters and the other the exploited, one part being dominated and the
other acting as overlords, one part making policy and the other being dependent.
Socialism has advanced on imperialism’s weakest flanks—in the sector that is
exploited, oppressed, and reduced to dependency. In Asia and Eastern Europe,
socialism released the nationalist energies of colonized peoples; it turned the goal
of production away from the money market and towards the satisfaction of human
needs; it has eradicated bottlenecks such as permanent unemployment and periodic
crises; and it has realized some of the promise implicit in Western or bourgeois

democracy by providing the equality of economic condition which is necessary
before one can make use of political equality and equality before the law.
Socialism has reinstated the economic equality of communalism, but
communalism fell apart because of low economic productivity and scarcity.
Socialism aims at and has significantly achieved the creation of plenty, so that the
principle of egalitarian distribution becomes consistent with the satisfaction of the
wants of all members of society.
One of the most crucial factors leading to more rapid and consistent expansion
of economic capacity under socialism has been the implementation of planned
development. Most of the historical processes so far described relate to
involuntary and unplanned development. No one planned that at a given stage
human beings should cease using stone axes and use iron implements instead; and
(to come to more recent times) while individual capitalist firms plan their own
expansion, their system is not geared to overall planning of the economy and the
society. The capitalist state intervened only fitfully and partially to supervise
capitalist development. The socialist state has as its prime function the control of
the economy on behalf of the working classes. The latter—i.e., workers and
peasants—have now become the most dynamic force in world history and human
development.
To conclude this brief introduction to the extremely complex problem of social
development, it is useful to recognize how inadequate are the explanations of that
phenomenon which are provided by bourgeois scholars. They very seldom try to
grapple with the issue in its totality, but rather concentrate attention narrowly on
“economic development.” As defined by the average bourgeois economist,
development becomes simply a matter of the combination of given “factors of
production”: namely, land, population, capital, technology, specialization, and
large-scale production. Those factors are indeed relevant, as is implied in the
analysis so far; but omissions from the list of what bourgeois scholars think
relevant are really overwhelming. No mention is made of the exploitation of the
majority which underlay all development prior to socialism. No mention is made
of the social relations of production or of classes. No mention is made of the way
that the factors and relations of production combine to form a distinctive system or
mode of production, varying from one historical epoch to another. No mention is
made of imperialism as a logical phase of capitalism.
In contrast, any approach which tries to base itself on socialist and
revolutionary principles must certainly introduce into the discussion at the earliest
possible point the concepts of class, imperialism, and socialism, as well as the role
of the workers and oppressed peoples. Each new concept bristles with its own
complications, and it is not to be imagined that the mere resort to certain

terminology is the answer to anything. However, one has at least to recognize the
full human, historical, and social dimensions of development, before it is feasible
to consider “underdevelopment” or the strategies for escaping from
underdevelopment.
What Is Underdevelopment?
Having discussed development, it is easier to comprehend the concept of
underdevelopment. Obviously, underdevelopment is not absence of development,
because every people have developed in one way or another and to a greater or
lesser extent. Underdevelopment makes sense only as a means of comparing levels
of development. It is very much tied to the fact that human social development has
been uneven and from a strictly economic viewpoint some human groups have
advanced further by producing more and becoming more wealthy.
The moment that one group appears to be wealthier than others, some inquiry is
bound to take place as to the reason for the difference. After Britain had begun to
move ahead of the rest of Europe in the eighteenth century, the famous British
economist Adam Smith felt it necessary to look into the causes behind the “Wealth
of Nations.” At the same time, many Russians were very concerned about the fact
that their country was “backward” in comparison with England, France, and
Germany in the eighteenth century and subsequently in the nineteenth century.
Today, our main preoccupation is with the differences in wealth between, on the
one hand Europe and North America, and on the other hand Africa, Asia, and
Latin America. In comparison with the first, the second group can be said to be
backward or underdeveloped. At all times, therefore, one of the ideas behind
underdevelopment is a comparative one. It is possible to compare the economic
conditions at two different periods for the same country and determine whether or
not it had developed; and (more importantly) it is possible to compare the
economics of any two countries at any given period in time.
A second and even more indispensable component of modern
underdevelopment is that it expresses a particular relationship of exploitation:
namely, the exploitation of one country by another. All of the countries named as
“underdeveloped” in the world are exploited by others; and the underdevelopment
with which the world is now preoccupied is a product of capitalist, imperialist, and
colonialist exploitation. African and Asian societies were developing
independently until they were taken over directly or indirectly by the capitalist
powers. When that happened, exploitation increased and the export of surplus
ensued, depriving the societies of the benefit of their natural resources and labor.
That is an integral part of underdevelopment in the contemporary sense.

In some quarters, it has often been thought wise to substitute the term
“developing” for “underdeveloped.” One of the reasons for so doing is to avoid
any unpleasantness which may be attached to the second term, which might be
interpreted as meaning underdeveloped mentally, physically, morally, or in any
other respect. Actually, if “underdevelopment” were related to anything other than
comparing economies, then the most underdeveloped country in the world would
be the U.S.A., which practices external oppression on a massive scale, while
internally there is a blend of exploitation, brutality, and psychiatric disorder.
However, on the economic level, it is best to remain with the word
“underdeveloped” rather than “developing,” because the latter creates the
impression that all the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are escaping
from a state of economic backwardness relative to the industrial nations of the
world, and that they are emancipating themselves from the relationship of
exploitation. That is certainly not true, and many underdeveloped countries in
Africa and elsewhere are becoming more underdeveloped in comparison with the
world’s great powers, because their exploitation by the metropoles is being
intensified in new ways.
Economic comparisons can be made by looking at statistical tables or indices of
what goods and services are produced and used in the societies under discussion.
Professional economists speak of the national income of countries and the national
income per capita. These phrases have already become part of the layman’s
language, by way of the newspapers, and no detailed explanation will be offered
here. It is enough to note that the national income is a measurement of the total
wealth of the country, while the per capita income is a figure obtained by dividing
the national income by the number of inhabitants in order to get an idea of the
“average” wealth of each inhabitant. This “average” can be misleading where
there are great extremes of wealth. A young Ugandan put it in a very personal
form when he said that the per capita income of his country camouflaged the
fantastic difference between what was earned by his poor peasant father and what
was earned by the biggest local capitalist, Madhvani. In considering the question
of development away from the state of underdevelopment, it is of supreme
importance to realize that such a process demands the removal of the gross
inequalities of land distribution, property holding, and income, which are
camouflaged behind national income figures. At one stage in history, advance was
made at the cost of entrenching privileged groups. In our times, development has
to mean advance which liquidates present privileged groups with their
corresponding unprivileged groups. Nevertheless, the per capita income is a useful
statistic for comparing one country with another; and the developed countries all

have per capita incomes several times higher than any one of the recently
independent African nations.
The following table gives a clear picture of the gap between Africa and certain
nations measured in per capita incomes. It is the gap that allows one group to be
called “developed” and another “underdeveloped.” (The information was obtained
from United Nations statistical publications, and applies to the year 1968 unless
otherwise stated.)
The gap that can be seen from the evidence is not only great, but it is also
increasing. Many people have come to realize that the developed countries are
growing richer quite rapidly, while underdeveloped countries for the most part
show stagnancy or slow rates of growth. In each country, a figure can be
calculated to represent the rate at which the economy grows. The growth rate is
highest in socialist countries, followed by the big capitalist countries, and with the
colonies and ex-colonies trailing far behind. The proportion of international trade
which is in the hands of the underdeveloped countries is declining. That
proportion was roughly 30 per cent in 1938 and went down to less than 20 per cent
in the 1960s. This is an important indicator because trade is both a reflection of the
quantity of goods produced and a way of obtaining goods not locally produced.
Countries
Canada
U.S.A.
France
United Kingdom
AFRICA as a whole
Congo
Ghana
Kenya
Malawi
Morocco
South Africa
Tanzania
U.A.R.
Zambia

Per Capita Income in U.S. Dollar
2,247
3,578
1,738 (1967)
1,560 (1967)
140 (1965)
52
198
107
52
185
543
62
156
225

Developed economies have certain characteristics which contrast with
underdeveloped ones. The developed countries are all industrialized. That is to
say, the greater part of their working population is engaged in industry rather than

agriculture, and most of their wealth comes out of mines, factories, and other
industries. They have a high output of labor per man in industry because of their
advanced technology and skills. This is well known, but it is also striking that the
developed countries have a much more advanced agriculture than the rest of the
world. Their agriculture has already become an industry, and the agricultural part
of the economy produces more even though it is small. The countries of Africa,
Asia, and Latin America are called agricultural countries because they rely on
agriculture and have little or no industry; but their agriculture is unscientific and
the yields are far less than those of the developed countries. In several of the
largest underdeveloped nations, there was stagnation and fall in agricultural output
in and after 1966. In Africa, the output of food per person has been falling in
recent years. Because the developed countries have a stronger industrial and
agricultural economy than the rest of the world, they produce far more goods than
the poor nations—in the category of necessities as well as luxuries. It is possible to
draw up statistical tables showing the production of grain, milk, steel, electric
power, paper, and a wide range of other goods; and showing at the same time how
much of each commodity is made available to each citizen (on the average). Once
again, the figures are highly favorable to a few privileged countries in the world.
The amount of steel used in a country is an excellent indicator of the level of
industrialization. At one extreme, one finds that the U.S.A. consumes 685
kilograms of steel per person, Sweden 623, and East Germany 437. At the other
extreme, one finds that Zambia consumes 10 kilograms, East Africa 8, and
Ethiopia 2. When the same kind of calculation is made for sugar, a sample of the
results shows Australia with 57 kilograms and North America and the Soviet
Union with 45 to 50 on the average. Africa, however, consumes only 10 kilograms
of sugar per person per year, and this is better than Asia with 7.
An even more gloomy set of statistics relates to basic food requirements. Each
individual needs a certain quantity of food per day, measured in calories. The
desirable amount is 3,000 calories per day; but no African country comes
anywhere near that figure. Algerians consume on average only 1,870 calories per
day, while Ivory Coast can consider itself very well off within an African context
with 2,290 calories as the national average. Furthermore, one also has to judge the
protein content of the food; and many parts of Africa suffer from “protein
famine”—which means that even when calories are available from starchy foods,
little protein is to be found. Persons in developed capitalist and socialist countries
consume twice as much protein food as those in underdeveloped countries. Such
differences help to make it clear which countries are developed and which are
underdeveloped.

The social services provided by a country are of importance equal to that of its
material production in bringing about human well-being and happiness. It is
universally accepted that the state has the responsibility to establish schools and
hospitals, but whether these are provided by the government or by private
agencies, their numbers can be established in relation to the size of the population.
The extent to which basic goods and social services are available in a country can
also be measured indirectly by looking at the life expectancy, the frequency of
deaths among children, the amount of malnutrition, the occurrence of diseases
which could be prevented by inoculation and public health services, and the
proportion of illiterates. In all these respects, the comparison between the
developed and underdeveloped countries shows huge and even frightening
differences. For every 1,000 children who are born alive in Cameroon, 100 never
live to see their first birthday, and out of every 1,000 African children born alive in
rural Sierra Leone, 160 die before reaching one year. Yet the comparable figures
for the United Kingdom and Holland are only 12 and 18 respectively. Besides,
many more African children die before they reach the age of five. Lack of doctors
is a major drawback. In Italy, there is one doctor for every 580 Italians, and in
Czechoslovakia, there is one doctor for every 510 citizens. In Niger, one doctor
must do for 56,140 persons; in Tunisia, one doctor for every 8,320 Tunisians; and
in Chad, one doctor for 73,460 persons.
It takes a large number of skilled people to make an industrial economy
function; while the countries of Africa have a woefully insufficient number of
highly qualified personnel. The figures on doctors just given confirm this, and the
same problem exists with engineers, technicians, agriculturalists, and even
administrators and lawyers in some places. Middle-level skills in fields such as
welding are also lacking. To make matters worse, there is at present a “brain
drain” from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Western Europe. This is to say,
professionals, technicians, high-level administrators, and skilled workers emigrate
from their homes, and the small number of skilled people available to the
underdeveloped world is further depleted by the lure of better pay and
opportunities in the developed world.
This lopsided nature of the present international economy is strikingly brought
home by the fact that the underdeveloped countries must in turn recruit foreign
experts at fantastic cost.
Most of the data presented so far can be described as “quantitative.” It gives us
measurements of the quantity of goods and services produced in various
economies. In addition, certain qualitative assessments have to be made
concerning the way that a given economy is put together. For economic
development it is not enough to produce more goods and services. The country has

to produce more of those goods and services which in turn will give rise
spontaneously to future growth in the economy. For example, the food-producing
sector must be flourishing so that workers would be healthy, and agriculture on the
whole must be efficient so that the profits (or savings) from agriculture would
stimulate industry. Heavy industry, such as the steel industry and the production of
electrical power, must be present so that one is capable of making machinery for
other types of industry and for agriculture. Lack of heavy industry, inadequate
production of food, unscientific agriculture—those are all characteristics of the
underdeveloped economies.
It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they do not (or are not allowed
to) concentrate on those sectors of the economy which in turn will generate growth
and raise production to a new level altogether, and there are very few ties between
one sector and another so that (say) agriculture and industry could react
beneficially on each other.
Furthermore, whatever savings are made within the economy are mainly sent
abroad or are frittered away in consumption rather than being redirected to
productive purposes. Much of the national income which remains within the
country goes to pay individuals who are not directly involved in producing wealth
but only in rendering auxiliary services—civil servants, merchants, soldiers,
entertainers. What aggravates the situation is that more people are employed in
those jobs than are really necessary to give efficient service; and to crown it all,
these people do not reinvest in agriculture or industry. They squander the wealth
created by the peasants and workers by purchasing cars, whisky, and perfume.
It has been noted with irony that the principal “industry” of many
underdeveloped countries is administration. Not long ago, 60 per cent of the
internal revenue of Dahomey went into paying salaries of civil servants and
government leaders. The salaries given to the elected politicians are higher than
those given to a British Member of Parliament, and the number of
parliamentarians in the underdeveloped African countries is also relatively high. In
Gabon, there is one parliamentary representative for every six thousand
inhabitants, compared to one French parliamentary representative for every
hundred thousand Frenchmen. Many more figures of that sort indicate that in
describing a typical underdeveloped economy it is essential to point out the high
disproportion of the locally distributed wealth that goes into the pockets of a
privileged few.
Members of the privileged groups inside Africa always defend themselves by
saying that they pay the taxes which keep the government going. At face value this
statement sounds reasonable, but on close examination it is really the most absurd
argument and shows total ignorance of how the economy functions. Taxes do not

produce national wealth and development. Wealth has to be produced out of nature
—from tilling the land or mining metals or felling trees or turning raw materials
into finished products for human consumption. These things are done by the vast
majority of the population who are peasants and workers.
There would be no incomes to tax if the laboring population did not work.
The incomes given to civil servants, professionals, merchants, come from the
store of wealth produced by the community. Quite apart from the injustices in the
distribution of wealth, one has to dismiss the argument that “the taxpayers’”
money is what develops a country. In pursuing the goal of development, one must
start with the producers and move on from there to see whether the products of
their labor are being rationally utilized to bring greater independence and wellbeing to the nation.
By paying attention to the wealth created by human labor out of nature, one can
immediately appreciate that very few underdeveloped countries are lacking in the
natural resources which could go into making a better life, and in those cases it is
usually possible for two or three territories to combine together for their mutual
benefit. In fact, it can be shown that the underdeveloped countries are the ones
with the greatest wealth of natural resources and yet the poorest in terms of goods
and services presently provided by and for their citizens.
The United Nations Survey of Economic Conditions in Africa up to 1964 had
this to say about the continent’s natural resources:
Africa is well endowed with mineral and primary energy resources. With an estimated 9 per cent of the
world’s population the region accounts for approximately 28 per cent of the total value of world mineral
production and 6 per cent of its crude petroleum output. In recent years, its share of the latter is
increasing. Of sixteen important metallic and non-metallic minerals the share of Africa in ten varies
from 22 to 95 per cent of the world production.

Actually, African potential is shown to be greater every day with new discoveries
of mineral wealth. On the agricultural side, African soil is not as rich as the picture
of tropical forests might lead one to believe; but there are other climatic
advantages so that with proper irrigation crops can be grown all the year round in
most parts of the continent.
The situation is that Africa has not yet come anywhere close to making the
most of its natural wealth, and most of the wealth now being produced is not being
retained within Africa for the benefit of Africans. Zambia and Congo produce vast
quantities of copper, but that is for the benefit of Europe, North America, and
Japan. Even the goods and services which are produced inside of Africa and which
remain in Africa nevertheless fall into the hands of non-Africans. Thus, South
Africa boasts of having the highest per capita income in Africa; but as an
indication of how this is shared out, one should note that while the apartheid

regime assures that only 24 white babies die out of every 1,000 live births, they
are quite happy to allow 128 African babies to die out of every 1,000 live births.
In order to understand present economic conditions in Africa, one needs to know
why it is that Africa has realized so little of its natural potential, and one also
needs to know why so much of its present wealth goes to non-Africans who reside
for the most part outside of the continent.
In a way, underdevelopment is a paradox. Many parts of the world that are
naturally rich are actually poor and parts that are not so well off in wealth of soil
and sub-soil are enjoying the highest standards of living. When the capitalists from
the developed parts of the world try to explain this paradox, they often make it
sound as though there is something “God given” about the situation. One
bourgeois economist, in a book on development, accepted that the comparative
statistics of the world today show a gap that is much larger than it was before. By
his own admission, the gap between the developed and the underdeveloped
countries has increased by at least 15 to 20 times over the last 150 years. However,
the bourgeois economist in question does not give a historical explanation, nor
does he consider that there is a relationship of exploitation which allowed
capitalist parasites to grow fat and impoverished the dependencies. Instead, he
puts forward a biblical explanation! He says:
It is all told in the Bible:
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not
shall be taken away even that which he hath. (St. Matthew, xxv, 29)
The story of the “hath nots” is the story of the modern underdeveloped countries.

Presumably, the only comment which one can make on that is “Amen.”
The interpretation that underdevelopment is somehow ordained by God is
emphasized because of the racist trend in European scholarship. It is in line with
racist prejudice to say openly or to imply that their countries are more developed
because their people are innately superior, and that the responsibility for the
economic backwardness of Africa lies in the generic backwardness of the race of
black Africans. An even bigger problem is that the people of Africa and other
parts of the colonized world have gone through a cultural and psychological crisis
and have accepted, at least partially, the European version of things. That means
that the African himself has doubts about his capacity to transform and develop his
natural environment. With such doubts, he even challenges those of his brothers
who say that Africa can and will develop through the efforts of its own people. If
we can determine when underdevelopment came about, it would dismiss the
lingering suspicion that it is racially or otherwise predetermined and that we can
do little about it.

When the “experts” from capitalist countries do not give a racist explanation,
they nevertheless confuse the issue by giving as causes of underdevelopment the
things which really are consequences. For example, they would argue that Africa
is in a state of backwardness as a result of lacking skilled personnel to develop. It
is true that because of lack of engineers Africa cannot on its own build more roads,
bridges, and hydroelectric stations. But that is not a cause of underdevelopment,
except in the sense that causes and effects come together and reinforce each other.
The fact of the matter is that the most profound reasons for the economic
backwardness of a given African nation are not to be found inside that nation. All
that we can find inside are the symptoms of underdevelopment and the secondary
factors that make for poverty.
Mistaken interpretations of the causes of underdevelopment usually stem either
from prejudiced thinking or from the error of believing that one can learn the
answers by looking inside the underdeveloped economy. The true explanation lies
in seeking out the relationship between Africa and certain developed countries and
in recognizing that it is a relationship of exploitation.
Man has always exploited his natural environment in order to make a living. At
a certain point in time, there also arose the exploitation of man by man, in that a
few people grew rich and lived well through the labor of others. Then a stage was
reached by which people in one community called a nation exploited the natural
resources and the labor of another nation and its people. Since underdevelopment
deals with the comparative economics of nations, it is the last kind of exploitation
that is of greatest interest here—i.e., the exploitation of nation by nation. One of
the common means by which one nation exploits another and one that is relevant
to Africa’s external relations is exploitation through trade. When the terms of trade
are set by one country in a manner entirely advantageous to itself, then the trade is
usually detrimental to the trading partner. To be specific, one can take the export
of agricultural produce from Africa and the import of manufactured goods into
Africa from Europe, North America, and Japan. The big nations establish the price
of the agricultural products and subject these prices to frequent reductions. At the
same time the price of manufactured goods is also set by them, along with the
freight rates necessary for trade in the ships of those nations. The minerals of
Africa also fall into the same category as agricultural produce as far as pricing is
concerned. The whole import-export relationship between Africa and its trading
partners is one of unequal exchange and of exploitation.
More far-reaching than just trade is the actual ownership of the means of
production in one country by the citizens of another. When citizens of Europe own
the land and the mines of Africa, this is the most direct way of sucking the African
continent. Under colonialism the ownership was complete and backed by military

domination. Today, in many African countries the foreign ownership is still
present, although the armies and flags of foreign powers have been removed. So
long as foreigners own land, mines, factories, banks, insurance companies, means
of transportation, newspapers, power stations, then for so long will the wealth of
Africa flow outwards into the hands of those elements. In other words, in the
absence of direct political control, foreign investment insures that the natural
resources and the labor of Africa produce economic value which is lost to the
continent.
Foreign investment often takes the form of loans to African governments.
Naturally, these loans have to be repaid; and in the 1960s the rate of repayment
(amortization) on official loans in underdeveloped countries rose from $400
million per year to about $700 million per year, and it is constantly on the
increase. Besides, there is interest to be paid on these loans as well as profits
which come from the direct investment in the economy. These two sources
accounted for the fact that over $500 million flowed outwards from the
underdeveloped countries in 1965. The information on these matters is seldom
complete, for the obvious reason that those making the profit are trying to keep
things quiet, so the figures given above are likely to be underestimates. They are
meant to give some idea of the extent to which the wealth of Africa is being
drained off by those who invest in, and thereby own, a large part of the means of
production of wealth in Africa. Furthermore, in more recent times the forms of
investment have become more subtle and more dangerous. They include so-called
aid and the management of local African companies by international capitalist
experts.
Africa trades mainly with the countries of Western Europe, North America, and
Japan. Africa is also diversifying its trade by dealing with socialist countries, and
if that trade proves disadvantageous to the African economy, then the developed
socialist countries will also have joined the ranks of the exploiters of Africa.
However, it is very essential at this stage to draw a clear distinction between the
capitalist countries and the socialist ones, because socialist countries have never at
any time owned any part of the African continent nor do they invest in African
economies in such a way as to expatriate profits from Africa. Therefore, socialist
countries are not involved in the robbery of Africa.
Most of the people who write about underdevelopment and who are read in the
continents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are spokesmen for the capitalist or
bourgeois world. They seek to justify capitalist exploitation both inside and
outside their own countries. One of the things which they do to confuse the issue
is to place all underdeveloped countries in one camp and all developed countries
in another camp irrespective of different social systems; so that the terms capitalist

and socialist never enter the discussion. Instead, one is faced with a simple
division between the industrialized nations and those that are not industrialized. It
is true that both the United States and the Soviet Union are industrialized and it is
true that when one looks at the statistics, countries such as France, Norway,
Czechoslovakia, and Rumania are much closer together than any one of them is to
an African country. But it is absolutely necessary to determine whether the
standard of living in a given industrialized country is a product of its own internal
resources or whether it stems from exploiting other countries. The United States
has a small proportion of the world’s population and exploitable natural wealth but
it enjoys a huge percentage of the wealth which comes from exploiting the labor
and natural resources of the whole world.
The erroneous views about underdevelopment and the oversimplified
distinction between rich and poor nations are opposed by socialist scholars both
inside and outside the socialist countries. Those erroneous views are also being
exposed by economists in underdeveloped countries who are discovering that the
explanations offered by bourgeois scholars are explanations which suit the
interests of those countries which exploit the rest of the world through trade and
investment. One French socialist writer, Pierre Jalée, proposes that to obtain a
proper perspective of relations between developed countries and underdeveloped
ones, two categories should be set up, namely, imperialist and socialist. The
socialist camp includes all countries big and small which have decided to break
away from international capitalism. The imperialist camp contains not only the
capitalist giants like the U.S.A., France, West Germany, and Japan but also the
weak nations in which those industrial nations have investments. Therefore, the
imperialist camp can be subdivided into exploiting and exploited countries. For
the most part, the nations of Africa fall into the group of exploited countries inside
the capitalist/imperialist system. Roughly one-third of the world’s peoples are
already living under some form of socialism. The other two-thirds constitute the
capitalist/imperialist camp, with the majority being in the exploited section.
It is interesting to notice that in spite of their efforts to confuse the situation, the
bourgeois writers often touch on the truth. For example, the United Nations (which
is dominated by Western capitalist powers) would never stress the exploitation by
capitalist nations, but their economic reviews refer on the one hand to “the
centrally planned economies,” which means the socialist countries, and on the
other hand they speak of “the market economies,” which means in effect the
imperialist sector of the world. The latter is subdivided into “the developed market
economies” and “the developing market economies,” disguising the fact that the
market means capitalist market. This study is concerned with analyzing the

relations between those countries which are together within the capitalist market
system.
The things which bring Africa into the capitalist market system are trade,
colonial domination, and capitalist investment. Trade has existed for several
centuries; colonial rule began in the late nineteenth century and has almost
disappeared; and the investment in the African economy has been increasing
steadily in the present century. Throughout the period that Africa has participated
in the capitalist economy, two factors have brought about underdevelopment. In
the first place, the wealth created by African labor and from African resources was
grabbed by the capitalist countries of Europe; and in the second place, restrictions
were placed upon African capacity to make the maximum use of its economic
potential—which is what development is all about. Those two processes represent
the answer to the two questions raised above as to why Africa has realized so little
of its potential and why so much of its present wealth goes outside of the
continent.
African economies are integrated into the very structure of the developed
capitalist economies; and they are integrated in a manner that is unfavorable to
Africa and insures that Africa is dependent on the big capitalist countries. Indeed,
structural dependence is one of the characteristics of underdevelopment. Most
progressive writers divide the capitalist/imperialist system into two parts. The first
is the dominant or metropolitan section, and the countries in the second group are
often called satellites because they are in the orbit of the metropolitan economies.
The same idea is conveyed by simply saying that the underdeveloped countries are
dependencies of the metropolitan capitalist economies.
When a child or the young of any animal species ceases to be dependent upon
its mother for food and protection, it can be said to have developed in the direction
of maturity. Dependent nations can never be considered developed. It is true that
modern conditions force all countries to be mutually interdependent in order to
satisfy the needs of their citizens; but that is not incompatible with economic
independence because economic independence does not mean isolation. It does,
however, require a capacity to exercise choice in external relations, and above all
it requires that a nation’s growth at some point must become self-reliant and selfsustaining. Such things are obviously in direct contradiction to the economic
dependence of numerous countries on the metropoles of Western Europe, North
America, and Japan.
It is also true that metropoles are dependent on the wealth of the exploited
portions of the world. This is a source of their strength and a potential weakness
within the capitalist/imperialist system, since the peasants and workers of the
dependencies are awakening to a realization that it is possible to cut the tentacles

which imperialism has extended into their countries. However, there is a
substantial difference between the dependence of the metropoles on the colonies
and the subjugation of the colonies under a foreign capitalist yoke. The capitalist
countries are technologically more advanced and are therefore the sector of the
imperialist system which determined the direction of change. A striking example
of this effect is the fact that synthetic fabrics manufactured in the capitalist
metropoles have begun to replace fabrics made from raw material grown in the
colonies. In other words, (within certain limits) it is the technologically advanced
metropoles who can decide when to end their dependence on the colonies in a
particular sphere. When that happens, it is the colony or neo-colony which goes
begging cap in hand for a reprieve and a new quota. It is for this reason that a
formerly colonized nation has no hope of developing until it breaks effectively
with the vicious circle of dependence and exploitation which characterizes
imperialism.
At the social and cultural level, there are many features which aid in keeping
underdeveloped countries integrated into the capitalist system and at the same time
hanging on to the apron strings of the metropoles. The Christian church has
always been a major instrument for cultural penetration and cultural dominance, in
spite of the fact that in many instances Africans sought to set up independent
churches. Equally important has been the role of education in producing Africans
to service the capitalist system and to subscribe to its values. Recently, the
imperialists have been using new universities in Africa to keep themselves
entrenched at the highest academic level.
Something as basic as language has come to serve as one of the mechanisms of
integration and dependence. The French and English that are so widely used in
Africa are more for the purpose of African communication with the exploiters than
for African with African. Actually, it would be difficult to find a sphere which did
not reflect the economic dependence and structural integration. At a glance,
nothing could be less harmful and more entertaining than music, and yet this too is
used as a weapon of cultural domination. The American imperialists go so far as to
take the folk music, jazz, and soul music of oppressed black people and transform
this into American propaganda over the Voice of America beamed at Africa.
During the colonial period, the forms of political subordination in Africa were
obvious. There were governors, colonial officials, and police. In politically
independent African states, the metropolitan capitalists have to insure favorable
political decisions by remote control. So they set up their political puppets in
many parts of Africa, who shamelessly agree to compromise with the vicious
apartheid regime of South Africa when their masters tell them to do so. The
revolutionary writer, Frantz Fanon, has dealt scorchingly and at length with the

question of the minority in Africa which serves as the transmission line between
the metropolitan capitalists and the dependencies in Africa. The importance of this
group cannot be underestimated. The presence of a group of African sell-outs is
part of the definition of underdevelopment. Any diagnosis of underdevelopment in
Africa will reveal not just low per capita income and protein deficiencies, but also
the gentlemen who dance in Abidjan, Accra, and Kinshasa when music is played
in Paris, London, and New York.
Political instability is manifesting itself in Africa as a chronic symptom of the
underdevelopment of political life within the imperialist context. Military coups
have followed one after the other, usually meaning nothing to the mass of the
people, and sometimes representing a reactionary reversal of the efforts at national
liberation. This trend was well exemplified in Latin American history, so that its
appearance in neo-colonial South Vietnam or in neo-colonial Africa is not at all
surprising. If economic power is centered outside national African boundaries,
then political and military power in any real sense is also centered outside until,
and unless, the masses of peasants and workers are mobilized to offer an
alternative to the system of sham political independence. All of those features are
ramifications of underdevelopment and of the exploitation of the imperialist
system. In most analyses of this question, they are either left out entirely or the
whole concept of imperialism and neo-colonialism is dismissed as mere rhetoric—
especially by “academics” who claim to be removed from “politics.” During the
remainder of this study, a great deal of detail will be presented to indicate the grim
reality behind the so-called slogans of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and the like. For the present moment, the position to be adopted can
be stated briefly in the following terms:
The question as to who, and what, is responsible for African underdevelopment
can be answered at two levels. First, the answer is that the operation of the
imperialist system bears major responsibility for African economic retardation by
draining African wealth and by making it impossible to develop more rapidly the
resources of the continent. Second, one has to deal with those who manipulate the
system and those who are either agents or unwitting accomplices of the said
system. The capitalists of Western Europe were the ones who actively extended
their exploitation from inside Europe to cover the whole of Africa.
In recent times, they were joined, and to some extent replaced, by capitalists
from the United States; and for many years now even the workers of those
metropolitan countries have benefited from the exploitation and underdevelopment
of Africa. None of these remarks are intended to remove the ultimate
responsibility for development from the shoulders of Africans. Not only are there

African accomplices inside the imperialist system, but every African has a
responsibility to understand the system and work for its overthrow.
Brief Guide to Reading
There is a great deal of literature on “development” and “underdevelopment,”
although less than one would expect in view of the importance of the subjects.
Most of that which is available seeks to justify capitalism. Hence, there is a
narrow concentration on “economic development,” and particularly on capitalist
economies, rather than any analysis of human social development. That approach
is challenged by Marxist writers in the metropoles and increasingly by scholars
from the underdeveloped world.
FREDERICK ENGELS, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. Chicago: C. H. Kerr and Co., 1902.
KARL MARX, Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy.
KARL MARX, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, edited by E. J. Hobsbawm. New York: International
Publishers, 1964.
These three works are samples of writing by the founders of what is now called Marxism. Most of the
publications of Marx and Engels have a relevance to the theme of development, with particular emphasis on
feudal and capitalist times.
RICHARD T. GILL, Economic Development: Past and Present. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967.
RAGNAR NURKSE, Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries. Oxford University Press,
1953.
These are typical examples of bourgeois metropolitan views on development and underdevelopment—the
first being a text for North American college students by a Canadian economist and the second being a
frequently reprinted work of one of the most prominent bourgeois advocates of the “vicious circle of poverty”
theory. Unfortunately, these are also examples of the kind of book which dominates the shelves of any
university or public library in Africa. The reader is invited to test this generalization.
J. D. BERNAL, Science in History. (4 vol.) Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972.
JOSEPH NEEDHAM, Science and Civilization in China. Cambridge University Press, 1954.
Both of these are lengthy, but they should be tackled. Science and technology derive from the effort to
understand and control the natural environment. Familiarity with the history of science is essential to an
awareness of the development of society. Needham’s book is cited here as a corrective to the fairly common
view that science is something peculiarly European.
CELSO FURTADO, Development and Underdevelopment. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1964.
A. GUNDER FRANK, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press,
1967.
TAMÁS SZENTES, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. Budapest: Center for Afro-Asian Research of
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1971.
The first writer is from Brazil, a country with a long history of dependence on and exploitation by the
metropoles of Europe and North America. Frank’s book reflects the thinking of many progressive Latin
American intellectuals and it has now become well entrenched as a view of Marxists inside the metropoles.
Szentes is a Hungarian economist systematically applying Marxist insights to the actual data and processes of
the underdeveloped world and imperialism as a whole.
SAMIR AMIN, The Class Struggle in Africa. Cambridge, Mass.: Africa Research Group, n.d.

Samir Amin is a North African. He stands out with regard both to the volume of his productions and the
quality of his insights. The text cited above is very general—covering in outline the period of the roots of
development in ancient Africa right up to the present and the projected socialist future. It is likely that more of
his work will be translated into English (French being his working language).

CHAPTER

II
How Africa Developed before the Coming of the
Europeans—Up to the Fifteenth Century
• A General Overview • Some Concrete Examples • Conclusion

BEFORE EVEN THE BRITISH CAME INTO RELATIONS WITH OUR PEOPLE, WE were a developed
people, having our own institutions, having our own ideas of government.
—J. E. CASELY-HAYFORD, 1922
African (Gold Coast) Nationalist

A General Overview
It has been shown that, using comparative standards, Africa today is
underdeveloped in relation to Western Europe and a few other parts of the
world; and that the present position has been arrived at, not by the separate
evolution of Africa on the one hand and Europe on the other, but through
exploitation. As is well known, Africa has had prolonged and extensive
contact with Europe, and one has to bear in mind that contact between
different societies changes their respective rates of development. To set the
record straight, four operations are required:
(1) Reconstruction of the nature of development in Africa before the
coming of Europeans.
(2) Reconstruction of the nature of development which took place in
Europe before expansion abroad.
(3) Analysis of Africa’s contribution to Europe’s present “developed”
state.
(4) Analysis of Europe’s contribution to Africa’s present
“underdeveloped” state.
The second task has already been extensively carried out in European
literature, and only passing references need be made; but the others are all
deserving of further attention.
The African continent reveals very fully the workings of the law of
uneven development of societies. There are marked contrasts between the
Ethiopian empire and the hunting groups of pygmies in the Congo forest or
between the empires of the Western Sudan and the Khoisan hunter-gatherers
of the Kalahari Desert. Indeed, there were striking contrasts within any
given geographical area. The Ethiopian empire embraced literate feudal
Amharic noblemen as well as simple Kaffa cultivators and Galla
pastoralists. The empires of the Western Sudan had sophisticated, educated
Mandinga townsmen, small communities of Bozo fishermen, and nomadic

Fulani herdsmen. Even among clans and lineages that appear roughly
similar, there were considerable differences. However, it is possible to
distinguish between what was uniquely “African” and what was universal in
the sense of being characteristic of all human societies at a given stage of
development. It is also essential to recognize the process of dialectical
evolution from lower to higher forms of social organization; and, in looking
at the most advanced social formations, one would appreciate the potential
of the continent as a whole and the direction of change.
The moment that the topic of the pre-European African past is raised,
many individuals are concerned for various reasons to know about the
existence of African “civilizations.” Mainly, this stems from a desire to
make comparisons with European “civilizations.” This is not the context in
which to evaluate the so-called civilizations of Europe. It is enough to note
the behavior of European capitalists from the epoch of slavery through
colonialism, fascism, and genocidal wars in Asia and Africa. Such
barbarism causes suspicion to attach to the use of the word “civilization” to
describe Western Europe and North America. As far as Africa is concerned
during the period of early development, it is preferable to speak in terms of
“cultures” rather than civilizations.
A culture is a total way of life. It embraces what people ate and what
they wore; the way they walked and the way they talked; the manner in
which they treated death and greeted the newborn. Obviously, unique
features came into existence in virtually every locality with regard to all
social details. In addition, the continent of Africa south of the great Sahara
desert formed a broad community where resemblances were clearly
discernible. For example, music and dance had key roles in
“uncontaminated” African society. They were ever present at birth,
initiation, marriage, death, as well as at times of recreation. Africa is the
continent of drums and percussion. African peoples reached the pinnacle of
achievement in that sphere.
Because of the impact of colonialism and cultural imperialism (which
will be discussed later), Europeans and Africans themselves in the colonial
period lacked due regard for the unique features of African culture. Those
features have a value of their own that cannot be eclipsed by European
culture either in the comparable period before 1500 or in the subsequent
centuries. They cannot be eclipsed because they are not really comparable

phenomena. Who in this world is competent to judge whether an Austrian
waltz is better than a Makonde Ngoma? Furthermore, even in those spheres
of culture that are more readily comparable, such as “the fine arts,” it is
known that African achievements of the pre-European period stand as
contributions to man’s heritage of beautiful creations. The art of Egypt, the
Sudan, and Ethiopia was known to the rest of the world at an early date.
That of the rest of Africa is still being “discovered” and rediscovered by
Europeans and present-day Africans. The verdict of art historians on the Ife
and Benin bronzes is well known. Since they date from the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, they are very relevant to any discussion of African
development in the epoch before the contacts with Europe. Nor should they
be regarded as unusual, except with regard to the material in which the
sculptures were executed. The same skill and feeling obviously went into
sculpture and art-work in non-durable materials, especially wood.
African dance and art were almost invariably linked with a religious
world-outlook in one way or another. As is well known, traditional African
religious practices exist in great variety, and it should also be remembered
that both Islam and Christianity found homes on the African continent
almost from their very inception. The features of the traditional African
religions help to set African cultures apart from those in other continents;
but in this present context it is more important to note how much African
religion had in common with religion elsewhere and how this can be used
as an index to the level of development in Africa before European impact in
the fifteenth century.
Religion is an aspect of the superstructure of a society, deriving
ultimately from the degree of control and understanding of the material
world. However, when man thinks in religious terms, he starts from the
ideal rather than with the material world (which is beyond his
comprehension). This creates a non-scientific and metaphysical way of
viewing the world, which often conflicts with the scientific materialist
outlook and with the development of society. African ancestral religions
were no better or worse than other religions as such. But by the end of
feudalism, Europeans began to narrow the area of human life in which
religion and the church played a part. Religion ceased to dominate politics,
geography, medicine. To free those things from religious restraints, it had to
be argued that religion had its own sphere and the things of this world had

their own secular sphere. This secularization of life speeded up the
development of capitalism and later socialism. In contrast, in the period
before the coming of the whites, religion pervaded African life just as it
pervaded life in other pre-feudal societies, such as those of the Maoris of
Australia or the Afghans of Afghanistan or the Vikings of Scandinavia.
Religion can play both a positive and a negative role as an aspect of the
superstructure. In most instances in early Africa, religious beliefs were
associated with the mobilization and discipline of large numbers of people
to form states. In a few instances, religion also provided concepts in the
struggle for social justice. The negative aspects usually arose out of the
tendency of religion to persist unchanged for extremely long periods,
especially when the technology of earning a living changes very slowly.
This was the case in African societies, as in all other pre-capitalist societies.
At the same time, the religious beliefs themselves react upon the mode of
production, further slowing up progress in that respect. For instance, belief
in prayer and in the intervention of ancestors and various gods could easily
be a substitute for innovations designed to control the impact of weather
and environment.
The same kind of two-sided relationship also exists between the means
of earning a living and the social patterns that arise in the process of work.
In Africa, before the fifteenth century, the predominant principle of social
relations was that of family and kinship associated with communalism.
Every member of an African society had his position defined in terms of
relatives on his mother’s side and on his father’s side. Some societies placed
greater importance on matrilineal ties and others on patrilineal ties. Those
things were crucial to the daily existence of a member of an African society,
because land (the major means of production) was owned by groups such as
the family or clan—the head of which were parents and those yet unborn. In
theory, this pattern was explained by saying that the residents in any
community were all direct descendants of the first person who settled the
land. When a new group arrived, they often made a pretense that they too
had ancestry dating back to the settling of the land or else they insured that
members of the earliest kin groups continued to perform the ceremonies
related to the land and water of the region.
Similarly, the labor that worked the land was generally recruited on a
family basis. A single family or household would till its own plots and it

would also be available to share certain joint farming activities with other
members of the extended family or clan. Annual hunts and river fishing
were also organized by a whole extended family or village community. In a
matrilineal society such as that of the Bemba (Zambia), the bridegroom
spent a number of years working for the father of his bride; and many
young men who had married daughters of the same household often formed
work teams to help each other. In Dahomey, a young man did not go to live
with his wife’s family, but the dokpwe, or work team, allowed a son to
participate in carrying out a task of some magnitude for the father of his
wife. In both of those examples, the right of the father-in-law to acquire
labor and the obligations of the son-in-law to give labor were based on
kinship. This can be contrasted with capitalism where money buys labor,
and with feudalism where the serf provides labor in order to have access to
a portion of land which belongs to the landlord.
Having been produced on land that was family property and through
family labor, the resultant crops and other goods were distributed on the
basis of kinship ties. If a man’s crops were destroyed by some sudden
calamity, relatives in his own village helped him. If the whole community
was in distress, people moved to live with their kinsmen in another area
where food was not scarce. In Akan country (Ghana), the clan system was
highly organized, so that a man from Brong could visit Fante many
hundreds of miles away and receive food and hospitality from a complete
stranger who happened to be of his own clan.
Numerous examples could be brought forward to show the dominance of
the family principle in the communal phase of African development. It
affected the two principal factors of production—land and labor—as well as
the system of distributing goods. European anthropologists who have
studied African societies have done so mainly from a very prejudiced and
racist position, but their researchers can nevertheless provide abundant facts
relating to family homesteads and compounds, to the extended family
(including affinal members who join by association rather than by birth),
and to lineages and clans which carried the principles of kinship alliances
over large areas. However, while the exact details might have differed,
similar social institutions were to be found among the Gauls of eleventhcentury France, among the Viet of Indochina at the same date, and virtually

everywhere else in the world at one time or another—because
communalism is one phase through which all human society passed.
In all African societies during the early epoch, the individual at every
stage of life had a series of duties and obligations to others in the society as
well as a set of rights: namely, things that he or she could expect or demand
from other individuals. Age was a most important factor determining the
extent of rights and obligations. The oldest members of the society were
highly respected and usually in authority; and the idea of seniority through
age was reflected in the presence of age-grades and age-sets in a great many
African societies. Circumcision meant initiation into the society and into
adulthood. From that moment, a man was placed with others in his own
age-group and a woman likewise. Usually, there were at least three agegrades, corresponding roughly to the young, the middle-aged, and the old.
In large parts of Europe, when communalism broke down it gave way to
widespread slavery as the new form in which labor was mobilized. This
slavery continued throughout the European Middle Ages, with the Crusades
between Christians and Moslems giving an added excuse for enslaving
people. Slavery in turn gave way to serfdom, whereby the laborer was tied
to the land and could no longer be sold and transported. Because it took
many years for the transition from slavery to feudalism to take place in
Europe, it was common to find that feudal society still retained numbers of
slaves. Parts of China, Burma, and India also had considerable numbers of
slaves as the society moved away from elementary communalism, but there
was never any time-span when slavery was the dominant mode of
production in Asia. In Africa, there were few slaves and certainly no epoch
of slavery. Most of the slaves were in North African and other Moslem
societies, and in those instances a man and his family could have the same
slave status for generations, within the overall feudal structure of the
society. Elsewhere in Africa, communal societies were introduced to the
concept of owning alien human beings when they took captives in war. At
first, those captives were in a very disadvantaged position, comparable to
that of slaves, but very rapidly captives or their offspring became ordinary
members of the society, because there was no scope for the perpetual
exploitation of man by man in a context that was neither feudal nor
capitalist.

Both Marxists and non-Marxists alike (with different motivations) have
pointed out that the sequence of modes of production noted in Europe were
not reproduced in Africa. In Africa, after the communal stage there was no
epoch of slavery arising out of internal evolution. Nor was there a mode of
production which was the replica of European feudalism. Marx himself
recognized that the stages of development in Asia had produced a form of
society which could not easily be fitted into a European slot. That he called
“the Asian mode of production.” Following along those lines, a number of
Marxists have recently been discussing whether Africa was in the same
category as Asia or whether Africa had its own “African mode of
production.” The implications of the arguments are very progressive,
because they are concerned with the concrete conditions of Africa rather
than with preconceptions brought from Europe. But the scholars concerned
seem to be bent on finding a single term to cover a variety of social
formations which were existing in Africa from about the fifth century A.D.
to the coming of colonialism. The assumption that will underlie this study is
that most African societies before 1500 were in a transitional stage between
the practice of agriculture (plus fishing and herding) in family communities
and the practice of the same activities within states and societies
comparable to feudalism.
In a sense, all history is transition from one stage to another, but some
historical situations along the line have more clearly distinguishable
characteristics than others. Thus under communalism there were no classes,
and there was equal access to land, and equality in distribution—at a low
level of technology and production. Feudalism involved great inequality in
distribution of land and social products. The landlord class and its
bureaucracy controlled the state and used it as an instrument for oppressing
peasants, serfs, slaves, and even craftsmen and merchants. The movement
from communalism to feudalism in every continent took several centuries,
and in some instances the interruption of internal evolution never allowed
the process to mature. In Africa, there is no doubt that the societies which
eventually reached feudalism were extremely few. So long as the feudal
state was still in the making, elements that were communal coexisted with
elements that were feudal and with some peculiarities due to African
conditions. The transition was also characterized by a variety of social
formations: There were pastoralists and cultivators, fishing societies and

trading societies, raiders and nomads. They were all being progressively
drawn into a relationship with the land, with each other, and with the state,
through the expansion of productive forces and the network of distribution.
In feudal societies, there were clashes between the landlord and peasant
classes and later on between the landlord and merchant classes. Under
capitalism, the principal class contradiction inside Europe was between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Those hostile class relations provided the
motive force within the respective societies. African communal societies
had differences such as age-grades and differences between ordinary
members and religious leaders such as rainmakers. However, those were not
exploitative or antagonistic relations. The concept of class as a motive force
in social development had not yet come about; and in the communal phase
one must look at the fundamental forces of production to understand the
process of change.
Using a number of methods and concepts, it is possible to reconstruct the
most likely manner in which isolated family living was broken down and
production increased. For instance, the rise of age-grades can be seen as
responding to the need for greater solidarity, because age-grades included
and cut across many families. Similarly, communal labor was entered into
by cross sections of the community to make work more efficient. The
dokpwe work group of Dahomey mentioned above had a wider application
in serving the whole community to perform such heavy tasks as clearing
land and housebuilding. With the offer of some food and beer or palm wine,
a work team or “work bee” could be mobilized in a short time in most
African communities, including those of the light-skinned Berbers of North
Africa.
Of course, while the organization of labor might have helped to produce
more, the principal change in the productive forces was that which
comprised new techniques—using the word in its broadest sense to include
both tools and skills in dealing with the environment and new plant and
animal species. The first prerequisite for mastery of the environment is
knowledge of that environment. By the fifteenth century, Africans
everywhere had arrived at a considerable understanding of the total ecology
—of the soils, climate, animals, plants, and their multiple interrelationships.
The practical application of this lay in the need to trap animals, to build

houses, to make utensils, to find medicines, and above all to devise systems
of agriculture.
In the centuries before the contact with Europeans, the overwhelmingly
dominant activity in Africa was agriculture. In all the settled agricultural
communities, people observed the peculiarities of their own environment
and tried to find techniques for dealing with it in a rational manner.
Advanced methods were used in some areas, such as terracing, crop
rotation, green manuring, mixed farming, and regulated swamp farming.
The single most important technological change underlying African
agricultural development was the introduction of iron tools, notably the ax
and the hoe, replacing wooden and stone tools. It was on the basis of the
iron tools that new skills were elaborated in agriculture as well as in other
spheres of economic activity.
The coming of iron, the rise of cereal growing, and the making of pottery
were all closely related phenomena. In most parts of Africa, it was in the
period after the birth of Christ that those things came about. The rate of
change over a few centuries was quite impressive. Millet and rice had been
domesticated from wild grasses just as yams were made to evolve from
selected wild roots. Most African societies raised the cultivation of their
own particular staple to a fine art. Even the widespread resort to shifting
cultivation with burning and light hoeing was not as childish as the first
European colonialists supposed. That simple form of agriculture was based
on a correct evaluation of the soil potential, which was not as great as
initially appears from the heavy vegetation; and when the colonialists
started upsetting the thin topsoil the result was disastrous.
The above remarks show that when an outsider comes into a new
ecological system, even if he is more skilled he does not necessarily
function as effectively as those who have familiarized themselves with the
environment over centuries; and the newcomer is likely to look more
ridiculous if he is too arrogant to realize that he has something to learn from
the “natives.” However, it is not being suggested that African agriculture in
the early period was superior to that of other continents. On the contrary,
African standards of husbandry on the land and with livestock were not as
high as those independently evolved in most parts of Asia and Europe. The
weakness in Africa seemed to have been the lack of a professional interest
in acquiring more scientific knowledge and in devising tools to lighten the

load of labor as well as to transform hostile environments into areas suitable
for human activity. As far as agriculture in Europe was concerned, this
professionalism was undertaken by the class with a vested interest in the
land—namely, the feudalist landowners and later the capitalist farmers.
It has previously been stated that development is very much determined
by the social relations of production (i.e., those which have to do with
people’s functions in producing wealth). Where a few people owned the
land and the majority were tenants, this injustice at a particular stage of
history allowed the few to concentrate on improving their land. In contrast,
under communalism every African was assured of sufficient land to meet
his own needs by virtue of being a member of a family or community. For
that reason, and because land was relatively abundant, there were few social
pressures or incentives for technical changes to increase productivity.
In Asia, where much of the land was communally owned, there were
tremendous advances in some types of farming, especially irrigated
farming. This was because the state in India, China, Ceylon, and other
places intervened and engaged in irrigation and other hydraulic works on a
large scale. This was also true of North Africa, which in most respects
followed a pattern of evolution similar to that of Asia. The African land
tenure pattern was closer to that of Asia than to that of Europe, but even the
most politically developed African states did not play the role of initiators
and supervisors of agricultural development. One reason may have been the
lack of population pressure and hence the scattered nature of settlements.
Another may have been state concentration on trading non-agricultural
products to the exclusion of other things. Certainly, when African societies
became linked up with other social systems outside the continent on the
basis of trade, little attention was paid to agriculture.
When it comes to the question of manufacturing in Africa before the
time of the white man, it is also essential to recognize where achievements
have been underestimated. African manufacturers have been
contemptuously treated or overlooked by European writers, because the
modern conception of the word brings to mind factories and machines.
However, “manufactures” means literally “things made by hand,” and
African manufacture in this sense had advanced appreciably. Most African
societies fulfilled their own needs for a wide range of articles of domestic
use, as well as for farming tools and weapons.

One way of judging the level of economic development in Africa five
centuries ago is through the quality of the products. Here a few examples
will be given of articles which came to the notice of the outside world.
Through North Africa, Europeans became familiar with a superior brand of
red leather from Africa which was termed “Moroccan leather.” In fact, it
was tanned and dyed by Hausa and Mandinga specialists in northern
Nigeria and Mali. When direct contact was established between Europeans
and Africans on the East and West coasts, many more impressive items
were displayed. As soon as the Portuguese reached the old kingdom of
Kongo, they sent back word on the superb local cloths made from bark and
palm fiber—and having a finish comparable to velvet. The Baganda were
also expert barkcloth makers. Yet, Africa had even better to offer in the
form of cotton cloth, which was widely manufactured before the coming of
the Europeans. Well into the present century, local cottons from the Guinea
coast were stronger than Manchester cottons. Once European products
reached Africa, Africans too were in a position to make comparisons
between their commodities and those from outside. In Katanga and Zambia,
the local copper continued to be preferred to the imported items, while the
same held true for iron in a place like Sierra Leone.
It was at the level of scale that African manufactures had not made a
breakthrough. That is to say, the cotton looms were small, the iron smelters
were small, the pottery was turned slowly by hand and not on a wheel. Yet
some changes were taking place in this context. Under communalism, each
household met its own needs by making its own clothes, pots, mats, and
such. That was true of every continent. However, economic expansion from
there on was associated with specialization and localization of industry—
people’s needs being met by exchange. This trend was displayed in the
principal African manufactures, and notably in the cloth industry. Cotton
fiber had to be ginned (separated from the seed), then carded and spun into
yarn, before being woven. Either the yarn or the woven cloth had to be
dyed, and the making of the dye itself was a complex process. There was a
time when all these stages would be performed by a single family or rather
by the women in a single family, as in Yoruba-land. But economic
development was reflected in the separation of dyeing from cloth-making,
and the separation of spinning from weaving. Each separation marked
greater specialization and quantitative and qualitative changes in output.

European industry has been intensively studied, and it is generally
recognized that in addition to new machinery a most decisive factor in the
growth of industry was the changeover from domestic production to the
factory system, with the guild marking an intermediary stage. The guild was
an association of specialists, passing on their skills by training apprentices
and working in buildings set aside for that purpose. Africa, too, had
elements of the guild system. At Timbuktu, there were tailoring guilds,
while in Benin guilds of a very restricted caste type controlled the famous
brass and bronze industry. In Nupe (now northern Nigeria) the glass and
bead industry operated on a guild basis. Each Nupe guild had a common
workshop and a master. The master obtained contracts, financed the guild,
and disposed of the product. Both his own relatives as well as strangers
were free to enter the guild and learn the various specialized tasks within
the glass industry. What this amounted to was simply that there was
increasing specialization and division of labor.
Traditional African economies are usually called “subsistence”
economies. Often, small villages farmed, hunted, fished, and looked after
themselves independently with little reference to the rest of the continent.
Yet, at the same time, the vast majority of African communities fulfilled at
least a few of their needs by trade. Africa was a continent of innumerable
trade routes. Some extended for long distances, like the routes across the
Sahara or the routes connected with Katanga copper. But in the main, it was
trade between neighboring or not too far distant societies. Such trade was
always a function of production. Various communities were producing
surpluses of given commodities which could be exchanged for items which
they lacked. In that way, the salt industry of one locality would be
stimulated while the iron industry would be encouraged in another. In a
coastal, lake, or river area, dried fish could become profitable, while yams
and millet would be grown in abundance elsewhere to provide a basis for
exchange. The trade so readily distinguishable in every part of the continent
between the tenth and fifteenth centuries was an excellent indicator of
economic expansion and other forms of development which accompanied
increasing mastery over the environment.
As part of the extension of trade, it was noticeable that barter was giving
way to some forms of money exchange. Barter was generally practiced
when the volume of trade was small and when only a few commodities

were involved. However, as trade became more complicated, some items
began to be used as the standards for measuring other goods. Those items
could be kept as a form of wealth easily transformed into other commodities
when the need arose. For example, salt, cloth, iron hoes, and cowry shells
were popular forms of money in Africa—apart from gold and copper, which
were much rarer and therefore restricted to measuring things of great value.
In a few places, such as North Africa, Ethiopia, and the Kongo, the
monetary systems were quite sophisticated, indicating that the economy was
far removed from simple barter and subsistence.
There were many other changes of a socio-political nature accompanying
the expansion of the productive forces. Indeed, things such as agricultural
practices, industry, trade, money, and political structures were inseparable—
each interacting with the others. The most developed areas of Africa were
those where all the elements converged, and the two sociopolitical features
which were the outstanding indices to development were the increase of
stratification and the consolidation of states.
The principles of family and deferment to age were slowly breaking
down throughout the centuries preceding the arrival of Europeans in their
sailing ships. Changes in technology and in the division of labor made that
inevitable. The introduction of iron, for example, gave economic and
military strength to those who could make and acquire it. Better tools meant
more food and a greater population, but the latter tended to outrun the
supplies of material goods, and the possibilities of wealth opened up by the
possession of iron were seized upon by a few to their own advantage.
Skilled workers in iron, cloth, pottery, leather, or salt-making tended to pass
on their skills in closed groups known as castes. That insured that the
division of labor operated in their favor, because their position was
privileged and strategic. Ironworkers were particularly favored in some
African societies in which they either became the ruling groups or were
very close to the top of the social hierarchy. The division of labor also
carried over into non-material spheres, producing professional minstrels and
historians. They too had certain special rights and privileges, notably the
ability to criticize freely without fear of reprisal. In some circumstances,
skilled castes were reduced to very low status. But that was rare, and in any
case it does not contradict the general assertion that the tendency was for
communalism to give rise to more and more stratification.

Social stratification was the basis for the rise of classes and for social
antagonisms. To some extent, this was a logical follow-up of the previous
non-antagonistic differences in communal society. For instance, old men
could use their control over land allocation, over bride-price, and over other
traditional exchanges to try to establish themselves as a privileged
economic stratum. Secret societies arose in the area that is now Liberia,
Sierra Leone, and Guinea, and they permitted knowledge, power, and
wealth to pass into the hands of the elders and ultimately to the elders of
particular lineages.
The contradiction between young men and their elders was not the type
that caused violent revolution. But young men clearly had reasons for
resenting their dependence on elders, especially when it came to such vital
personal matters as the acquisition of wives. When disgruntled, they could
either leave their communities and set up for themselves or they could
challenge the principles within the society. In either case, the trend was that
some individuals and families were more successful than others, and those
families established themselves as permanent rulers. Then age ceased to
matter as much because even a junior could succeed to his father, once the
notion of royal blood or royal lineage was established.
In the period of transition, while African society retained many features
that were undisputably communal, it also accepted the principle that some
families or clans or lineages were destined to rule and others were not. This
was true not only of cultivators but of pastoralists as well. In fact, livestock
became unevenly distributed much more readily than land; and those
families with the largest herds became socially and politically dominant.
An even more important aspect of the process of social stratification was
that brought about by contact between different social formations.
Fishermen had to relate to cultivators and the latter to pastoralists. There
were even social formations such as bands of hunters and food-gatherers
who had not yet entered the phase of communal cooperation. Often the
relationship was peaceful. In many parts of the African continent, there
arose what is known as “symbiosis” between groups earning their living in
different ways—which really means that they agreed to exchange goods and
coexist to their mutual advantage. However, there was also room for
considerable conflict; and when one group imposed itself by force on

another, the result was invariably the rise of social classes with the
conquerors on top and the conquered at the bottom.
The most common clashes between different social formations were
those between pastoralists and cultivators. In some instances, the cultivators
had the upper hand, as for instance in West Africa where cultivators like the
Mandinga and Hausa were the overlords of the Rulani cattlemen right up to
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The reverse situation was found in
the Horn of Africa and most of East Africa. Another type of clash was that
in which raiding peoples took power over agriculturalists, as happened in
Angola and in and around the Sahara, where the Moors and Tuareg exacted
tribute from and even enslaved more peaceful and sedentary peoples. The
result in each case was that a relatively small faction held control of the
land and (where relevant) cattle, mines, and long-distance trade. It meant
also that the minority group could make demands on the labor of their
subjects—not on the basis of kinship but because a relationship of
domination and subordination existed.
In truly communal societies, the leadership was based on religion and
family ties. The senior members of the society shared the work with others
and received more or less the same share of the total product. Certainly, no
one starved while others stuffed themselves and threw away the excess.
However, once African societies began to expand by internal evolution,
conquest, or trade, the style of life of the ruling group became noticeably
different. They consumed the most and the best that the society offered. Yet,
they were least directly involved in the production of wealth by farming,
cattle herding, or fishing. The ruling class and the kings in particular had
the right to call upon the labor of the common man for certain projects and
for a given number of days per year. This is known as corvée labor, from a
similar procedure followed in feudal France. Such a system meant greater
exploitation and at the same time greater development of productive
resources.
Social stratification as outlined above went hand in hand with the rise of
the state. The notion of royal lineages and commoner clans could not have
any meaning except in a political state with a concrete geographical
existence. It is significant that the great dynasties of the world ruled over
feudal states. To the European or European-trained ear, the names of the
Tudors, Bourbons, Hohenzollerns, and Romanovs would already be

familiar. Japan had its Kamakuras and its Tokugawas; China had its T’ang
and its Ming; India had its Guptas and its Marathas; and so on. All of those
were feudal dynasties existing in a period some centuries after the birth of
Christ, but in addition there were dynasties which ruled in each of those
countries before feudal land tenure and class relations had fully crystalized.
It means that the transition to feudalism in Europe* and Asia saw the rise of
ruling groups and the state as interdependent parts of the same process. In
that respect, Africa was no different.
From a political perspective, the period of transition from communalism
to feudalism in Africa was one of state formation. At the beginning (and for
many centuries), the state remained weak and immature. It acquired definite
territorial boundaries, but inside those boundaries subjects lived in their
own communities with scarcely any contact with the ruling class until the
time came to pay an annual tax or tribute. Only when a group within the
state refused to pay the tribute did the early African states mobilize their
repressive machinery in the form of an army to demand what it considered
as its rights from subjects. Slowly, various states acquired greater power
over their many communities of citizens. They exacted corvée labor, they
enlisted soldiers, and they appointed regular tax collectors and local
administrators. The areas of Africa in which labor relations were breaking
out of communal restrictions corresponded to areas in which sophisticated
political states were emerging. The rise of states was itself a form of
development, which increased the scale of African politics and merged
small ethnic groups into wider identities suggestive of nations.
In some ways, too much importance is attached to the growth of political
states. It was in Europe that the nation-state reached an advanced stage, and
Europeans tended to use the presence or absence of well-organized polities
as a measure of “civilization.” That is not entirely justified, because in
Africa there were small political units which had relatively advanced
material and non-material cultures. For instance, neither the Ibo people of
Nigeria nor the Kikuyu of Kenya ever produced large centralized
governments in their traditional setting. But both had sophisticated systems
of political rule based on clans and (in the case of the Ibo) on religious
oracles and “Secret Societies.” Both of them were efficient agriculturalists

and ironworkers, and the Ibo had been manufacturing brass and bronze
items ever since the ninth century A.D., if not earlier.
However, after making the above qualification, it can be conceded that
on the whole the larger states in Africa had the most effective political
structures and greater capacity for producing food, clothing, minerals, and
other material artifacts. It can readily be understood that those societies
which had ruling classes were concerned with acquiring luxury and prestige
items. The privileged groups in control of the state were keen to stimulate
manufactures as well as to acquire them through trade. They were the ones
that mobilized labor to produce a greater surplus above subsistence needs,
and in the process they encouraged specialization and the division of labor.
Scholars often distinguish between groups in Africa which had states and
those which were “stateless.” Sometimes, the word “stateless” is carelessly
or even abusively used; but it does describe those peoples who had no
machinery of government coercion and no concept of a political unit wider
than the family or the village. After all, if there is no class stratification in a
society, it follows that there is no state, because the state arose as an
instrument to be used by a particular class to control the rest of society in its
own interests. Generally speaking, one can consider the stateless societies
as among the older forms of socio-political organization in Africa, while the
large states represented an evolution away from communalism—sometimes
to the point of feudalism.
Again, it must be emphasized that a survey of the scene in Africa before
the coming of Europeans would reveal considerable unevenness of
development. There were social formations representing hunting bands,
communalism, feudalism, and many positions intermediate between the last
two. The remainder of this section will be devoted to a review of the
principal features of several of the most developed societies and states of
Africa in the last thousand years or so before Africa came into permanent
contact with Europe. The areas to be considered are Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia,
Morocco, the Western Sudan, the interlacustrine zone of East Africa, and
Zimbabwe. Each serves as an example of what development meant in early
Africa and what the direction of social movement was. To a greater or lesser
extent, each was also a leading force on the continent in the sense of
carrying neighbors along the same path, either by absorbing them or
influencing them more indirectly.

Some Concrete Examples
Egypt
It is logical to start with Egypt as the oldest culture in Africa which rose to
eminence. The glories of Egypt under the Pharaohs are well known and do
not need recounting. At one time, it used to be said or assumed that ancient
Egypt was not “African”—a curious view which is no longer seriously
propounded. However, for the present purposes, it is more relevant to refer
to Egypt under Arab and Turkish rule from the seventh century onwards.
During that latter period, the ruling class was foreign, and that meant that
Egypt’s internal development was tied up with other countries, notably
Arabia and Turkey. Colonized Egypt sent abroad great amounts of wealth in
the form of food and revenue, and that was a very negative factor. But the
tendency was for the ruling foreigners to break with their own imperial
masters and to act simply as a ruling elite within Egypt, which became an
independent feudal state.
One of the first features of feudalism to arrive in Egypt was the military
aspect. The Arab, Turk, and Circassian invaders were all militarily inclined.
This was particularly true of the Mameluks who held power from the
thirteenth century onwards. Political power in Egypt from the seventh
century lay in the hands of a military oligarchy which delegated the actual
government to bureaucrats, thereby creating a situation similar to that in
places like China and Indochina. Even more fundamental was the fact that
land tenure relations were undergoing change in such a way that a true
feudal class came on the scene. All the conquerors made land grants to their
followers and military captains. Initially, the land in Egypt was the property
of the state to be rented out to cultivators. The state then had the right to
reappropriate the land and allocate it once more, somewhat like the head of
a village community acting as the guardian of the lands of related families.
However, the ruling military elements also became a new class of
landowners. By the fifteenth century, most of the land in Egypt was the
property of the sultan and his military lords.
If there was a small class which monopolized most of the land, it
followed that there was a large class of landless. Peasant cultivators were
soon converted into mere agricultural laborers, tied to the soil as tenants or

vassals of the feudal landlords. These peasants with little or no land were
known as the fellahin. In Europe, there are legends about the exploitation
and suffering of the Russian serfs, or muzhik, under feudalism. In Egypt, the
exploitation of the fellahin was carried out even more thoroughly. The
feudalists had no interest in the fellahin beyond seeing that they produced
revenue. Most of what the peasants produced was taken from them in the
form of tax, and the tax collectors were asked to perform the miracle of
taking from the peasants even that which they did not have! When their
demands were not met, the peasants were brutalized.
The antagonistic nature of the contradiction between the feudal warrior
landlords and the fellahin was revealed by a number of peasant revolts,
notably in the early part of the eighth century. In no continent was
feudalism an epoch of romance for the laboring classes, but the elements of
development were seen in the technology and the increase in productive
capacity. Under the patronage of the Fatimid dynasty (969 A.D. to 1170 A.D.),
science flourished and industry reached a new level in Egypt. Windmills
and waterwheels were introduced from Persia in the tenth century. New
industries were introduced—papermaking, sugar refining, porcelain, and the
distillation of gasoline. The older industries of textiles, leather, and metal
were improved upon. The succeeding dynasties of the Ayyubids and the
Mameluks also achieved a great deal, especially in the building of canals,
dams, bridges, and aqueducts, and in stimulating commerce with Europe.
Egypt at that time was still able to teach Europe many things and was
flexible enough to receive new techniques in return.
Although feudalism was based on the land, it usually developed towns at
the expense of the countryside. The high points of Egyptian feudal culture
were associated with the towns. The Fatimids founded the city of Cairo,
which became one of the most famous and most cultured in the world. At
the same time, they established the Azhar University which exists today as
one of the oldest in the world. The feudalists and the rich merchants were
the ones who benefited most, but the craftsmen and other city dwellers of
Cairo and Alexandria were able to participate to some extent in the leisured
lives of the towns.
Ethiopia

Ethiopia, too, at the start of its history as a great power was ruled over by
foreigners. The kingdom of Axum was one of the most important of the
nuclei around which feudal Ethiopia eventually emerged, and Axum was
founded near the Red Sea coast by a dynasty of Sabean origin from the
other side of the Red Sea. But the kings of Axum were never agents of
foreign powers, and they became completely Africanized. The founding of
Axum goes back to the first century A.D. and its ruling class was
Christianized within a few centuries. After that they moved inland and
participated in the development of the Christian feudal Ethiopian state.
The Ethiopian, Tigrean, and Amharic ruling class was a proud one,
tracing its descent to Solomon. As a state which incorporated several other
smaller states and kingdoms, it was an empire in the same sense as feudal
Austria or Prussia. The emperor of Ethiopia was addressed as “Conquering
Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Emperor of Ethiopia, King of
Kings.” In practice, however, the “Solomonic” line was not unbroken. Most
of the consolidation of the inland Ethiopian plateau was carried out in the
twelfth century by an intruding dynasty, the Zagwe, who made claims to
descent from Moses. The Zagwe kings distinguished themselves by
building several churches cut out of solid rock. The architectural
achievements attest to the level of skill reached by Ethiopians as well as the
capacity of the state to mobilize labor on a huge scale. Such tasks could not
have been achieved by voluntary family labor but only through the labor of
an exploited class.
A great deal is known of the superstructure of the Ethiopian empire,
especially its Christianity and its literate culture. History was written to
glorify the king and the nobility, especially under the restored “Solomonic”
dynasty which replaced the Zagwe in 1270 A.D. Fine illuminated books and
manuscripts became a prominent element of Amharic culture. Equally fine
garments and jewelry were produced for the ruling class and for the church.
The top ecclesiastics were part of the nobility, and the institution of the
monastery grew to great proportions in Ethiopia. The association of
organized religion with the state was implicit in communal societies, where
the distinction between politics, economics, religion, medicine, was
scarcely drawn. Under feudalism everywhere, church and state were in
close alliance. The Buddhists were pre-eminent in feudal Vietnam, Burma,
Japan, and to a lesser extent in China. In India, a limited Buddhist influence

was overwhelmed by that of the Hindus and Moslems; and of course in
feudal Europe it was the Catholic church which played the role paralleled
by the Orthodox church in Ethiopia.
The wealth of Ethiopia rested on an agricultural base. The fertile uplands
supported cereal growing and there was considerable livestock raising,
including the rearing of horses. Craft skills were developed in a number of
spheres, and foreign craftsmen were encouraged. For instance, early in the
fifteenth century, Turkish artisans settled in the country and made coats of
mail and weapons for the Ethiopian army. Coptics from Egypt were also
introduced to help run the financial administration. No one denies that the
word “feudal” can be applied to Ethiopia in those centuries, because there
existed a clear-cut class contradiction between the landlords and the
peasants. Those relations grew out of the communalism that had
characterized Ethiopia, like other parts of Africa, much earlier.
Feudal Ethiopia included lands that were communally owned by village
and ethnic communities as well as lands belonging directly to the crown;
but in addition large territories were conferred by the conquering Amharic
dynasties on members of the royal family and on soldiers and priests. Those
who received huge areas of land became Ras, or provincial princes, and
they had judges appointed by the emperor attached to them. The peasants in
their domain were reduced to tenants who could earn their living only by
offering produce to the landlord and taxes to the state (also in produce). The
landlords exempted themselves from tax—a typical situation in feudal
societies, and one which fed the fires of revolution in Europe when the
bourgeois class grew powerful enough to challenge the fact that the
feudalists were using political power to tax everyone but themselves.
Ethiopia, of course, never reached that stage of transition to capitalism.
What is clear is that the transition to feudalism had been made.
Nubia
Nubia was another Christian region in Africa, but one which is not so
famous as Ethiopia. In the sixth century A.D., Christianity was introduced
into the middle Nile in the districts once ruled by the famous state of Kush,
or Meroë. In the period before the birth of Christ, Kush was a rival to Egypt
in splendor, and it ruled Egypt for a number of years. Its decline in the

fourth century A.D. was completed by attacks from the then expanding
Axum. The three small Nubian states which arose some time afterwards
were to some extent the heirs of Kush, although after their conversion to
Christianity it was this religion which dominated Nubian culture.
The Nubian states (which had consolidated to two by about the eighth
century) achieved most from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, in spite of
great pressures from Arab and Islamic enemies; and they did not finally
succumb until the fourteenth century. Scholarly interest in Nubia has
focused on the ruins of large red-brick churches and monasteries which had
murals and frescoes of fine quality. Several conclusions can be drawn from
the material evidence. In the first place, a great deal of labor was required to
build those churches along with the stone fortifications which often
surrounded them. As with the pyramids of Egypt or the feudal castles of
Europe, the common builders were intensely exploited and probably
coerced. Secondly, skilled labor was involved in the making of the bricks
and in the architecture. The paintings indicate that the skills surpassed mere
manual dexterity, and the same artistic merit is noticeable in fragments of
painted pottery recovered from Nubia.
It has already been indicated that the churches and monasteries played a
major role in Ethiopia, and this is worth elaborating on with respect to
Nubia. The monastery was a major unit of production. Numerous peasant
huts were clustered around each monastery, which functioned very much as
did the manor of a feudal lord. The wealth that accumulated inside the
churches was alienated from the peasants, while the finest aspects of the
non-material culture, such as books, were accessible only to a small
minority. Not only were the peasants illiterate, but in many cases they were
non-Christians or only nominally Christian—judging from the better known
Ethiopian example of the same date. When the Christian ruling class of
Nubia was eliminated by the Moslems, very little of the achievements of the
old state remained in the fabric of the people’s daily lives. Such reversals in
the historical process are not uncommon throughout human experience.
Ultimately, the dialectic of development asserts itself, but some ebbing and
flowing is inevitable. The Nubian states were not in existence in the
fifteenth century, but they constitute a legitimate example of the
potentialities of African development.

One can go further and discern that Kush was still contributing to
African development long after the kingdom had declined and given way to
Christian Nubia. It is clear that Kush was a center from which many
positive cultural elements diffused to the rest of Africa. Brasswork of
striking similarity to that of Meroe was reproduced in West Africa, and the
technique by which West Africans cast their brass is generally held to have
originated in Egypt and to have been passed on by way of Kush. Above all,
Kush was one of the earliest and most vigorous centers of iron mining and
smelting in Africa, and it was certainly one of the sources from which this
crucial aspect of technology passed to the rest of the continent. That is why
the middle Nile was a leading force in the social, economic, and political
development of Africa as a whole.
The Maghreb
Islam was the great “revealed” religion which played the major role in the
period of the feudal development of the Maghreb—the lands at the western
extremity of the Islamic empires that stretched across Africa, Asia, and
Europe within years of the Prophet Mohammed’s death in the seventh
century of the Christian era. The Arab empire-building under the banner of
Islam is a classic example of the role of religion in that respect. Ibn
Khaldun, a great fourteenth-century North African historian, was of the
opinion that Islam was the most important force allowing the Arabs to
transcend the narrow boundaries of small family communities which were
constantly struggling among each other. He wrote:
Arab pride, touchiness and intense jealousy of power render it impossible for them to agree.
Only when their nature has been permeated by a religious impulse are they transformed, so that
the tendency to anarchy is replaced by a spirit of mutual defense. Consider the moment when
religion dominated their policy and led them to observe a religious law designed to promote the
moral and material interests of civilization. Under a series of successors to the Prophet
[Mohammed], how vast their empire became and how strongly was it established.

The above remarks by Ibn Khaldun cover only one aspect of Arab
imperial expansion, but it was certainly a crucial one, and attested to the
essential role of ideology in the developmental process. That has to be
considered in relation to and in addition to the material circumstances.
Furthermore, in judging the material conditions at any given time which
might form the basis for further expansion of production and further growth

of the society’s power, it is also necessary to consider the historical legacy.
Like Islamic Egypt and Christian Nubia, the Maghreb of the Islamic
dynasties inherited a rich historical and cultural tradition. It was the seat of
the famous society of Carthage which flourished between 1200 B.C. and 200
B.C., and which was a blend of foreign influences from the eastern
Mediterranean with the Berber peoples of the Maghreb. The region had
subsequently been an important section of the Roman and Byzantine
empires; and before becoming Moslem the Maghreb had actually
distinguished itself as a center of non-conformist Christianity which went
under the name of Donatism.
The striking achievements of Moslem Maghreb were spread over the
naval, military, commercial, and cultural spheres. Its navies controlled the
western Mediterranean and its armies took over most of Portugal and Spain.
When the Moslem advance into Europe was turned back in the year 732
A.D., North African armies were already deep into France. In the eleventh
century, the armies of the Almoravid dynasty gathered strength from deep
within Senegal and Mauritania and launched themselves across the Strait of
Gibraltar to reinforce Islam in Spain, which was being threatened by
Christian kings. For over a century, the Almoravid rule in North Africa and
Iberia was characterized by commercial wealth and a resplendent literary
and architectural record. After being ejected from Spain in the 1230s the
Maghreb Moslems, or Moors as they were called, continued to maintain a
dynamic society on African soil. As one index to the standard of social life,
it has been pointed out that public baths were common in the cities of
Maghreb at a time when in Oxford the doctrine was still being propounded
that the washing of the body was a dangerous act.
One of the most instructive aspects of the history of the Maghreb is the
interaction of social formations to produce the state. A major problem that
had to be resolved was that of integrating the isolated Berber groups into
larger political communities. There were also contradictions between
sedentary groups and nomadic pastoral sectors of the populations.
The Berbers were mainly pastoralists organized in patriarchal clans, and
in groups of clans, and in groups of clans connected by a democratic
council of all adult males. Grazing land was under communal ownership,
and maintaining irrigation was also a collective responsibility for the
agriculturalists. Yet, cooperation within kin-groups contrasted with hostility

between those who had no immediate blood ties, and it was only in the face
of the Arab invaders that the Berbers united—using a non-conformist
Kharijite Islam as their ideology. The Kharijite revolt of 739 A.D. is
considered in one sense as being nationalistic and in another sense a revolt
of the exploited classes against the Arab military, bureaucratic, and
theocratic elite, who professed the orthodox Sunni Islam. That revolt of the
Berber masses laid the basis for Moroccan nationalism, and three centuries
later the Almohad dynasty (1147–1270) brought political unity to the whole
of Maghreb as a product of the synthesis of Berber and Arab achievements
in the sphere of state-building.
Unfortunately, the Maghreb nation did not last; and instead the region
was bequeathed the nuclei of three nation states—Morocco, Algeria, and
Tunisia. Within each of the three areas, divisive tendencies were very strong
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For instance, in Tunisia the ruling
Hafsid dynasty was constantly involved in crushing local rebellions and
defending the integrity of the state. It has been noted already that the
political state in Africa and elsewhere was a consequence of development
of the productive forces, but the state in turn also conditioned the rate at
which the economy advanced, because the two were dialectically
interrelated. Therefore, the failure of the Maghreb to build a nation-state
and the difficulties of consolidating state power even within the three
divisions of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia were factors holding back the
further development of the region. Moreover, political division weakened
the Maghreb vis-à-vis foreign enemies, and Europe was soon to take
advantage of those internal weaknesses, by launching attacks from the year
1415 onwards.
The experience of the Maghreb can be drawn upon to illustrate the
lengthy nature of transition from the one mode of production to another and
the fact that two different ways of organizing society could coexist side by
side over centuries. Throughout the period under discussion, a great deal of
land in that part of Africa retained its communal ownership and family
labor. Meanwhile, considerable socio-economic stratification had taken
place and antagonistic classes had emerged. At the very bottom of the
ladder were the slaves, or harratine, who were most often black Africans
from south of the Sahara. Then came the akhamme, or landless peasants,
who worked the proprietors’ land and gave the latter four-fifths of whatever

was produced. Special mention should be made of the position of women,
who were not a class by themselves but who suffered from deprivations at
the hands of their own menfolk and of the male-controlled ruling class.
Therefore, the women in the akhamme class were in a very depressed
condition. At the top of the society were the big landowners, who wielded
political power along with other devotees of the Moslem religion.
None of the African societies discussed so far can be said to have thrown
up capitalist forms to the point where the accumulation of capital became
the principal motive force. However, they all had flourishing commercial
sectors, moneylenders, and strong handicraft industries which were the
features which ultimately gave birth to modern capitalism through evolution
and revolution. The Maghreb merchants were quite wealthy. They gained
from the energies of the cultivators, cattlemen, and shepherds; they
indirectly or directly mobilized the labor in the mines of copper, lead,
antimony, and iron; and they appropriated surplus from the skills of the
craftsmen making textiles, carpets, leather, pottery, and articles of brass and
iron. The merchants were a class of accumulators, and their dynamism
made itself felt not only in the Maghreb but also in the Sahara and across
the Sahara in West Africa. In that way, the development of the Maghreb
acted as a factor in the development of what was called the Western Sudan.
The Western Sudan
To the Arabs, the whole of Africa south of the Sahara was the Bilad as
Sudan—the Land of the Blacks. The name survives today only in the
Republic of Sudan on the Nile, but references to the Western Sudan in early
times concern the zone presently occupied by Senegal, Mali, Upper Volta,
and Niger, plus parts of Mauritania, Guinea, and Nigeria. The Western
Sudanic empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai have become by-words in the
struggle to illustrate the achievements of the African past. That is the area to
which African nationalists and progressive whites point when they want to
prove that Africans too were capable of political, administrative, and
military greatness in the epoch before the white men. However, a people’s
demands at any given time change the kinds of questions to which
historians are expected to provide answers. Today the masses of Africa seek
“development” and total emancipation. The issues that need resolution with

regard to Western Sudanic history are those which illumine the principles
underlying the impressive development of certain states in the heart of
Africa.
The origins of the empire of Ghana go back to the fifth century A.D., but
it reached its peak between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Mali had its
prime in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and Songhai in the two
subsequent centuries. The three were not in exactly the same location; and
the ethnic origin of the three ruling classes was different; but they should be
regarded as “successor states,” following essentially the same line of
evolution and growth. They have been called trading states so often that it is
almost forgotten that the principal activity of the population was agriculture.
It was a zone in which several species of millet were domesticated, along
with a species of rice, several other food plants, and at least one type of
cotton. It was a zone which saw the relatively early introduction of iron in
the millennium before the birth of Christ, and iron tools exercised their
attendant benefits on agriculture. The open savannah country of the Western
Sudan also favored livestock. Some groups such as the Fulani were
exclusively pastoralist, but livestock was to be found in varying degrees
throughout the huge region. Cattle were the most significant domesticated
animals, followed by goats. The rearing of horses, mules, and donkeys was
also carried on, which was made possible by wide tsetse-free areas. To add
further variety, the great Niger River allowed for the rise of specialist
fishermen.
Population, the indispensable factor of production, could only have
reached the density which it did because of increasing food supplies; while
handicraft industry and trade sprang primarily from the products of
agriculture. Cotton cultivation led to the making of cotton cloth with such a
variety of specialization that there was internal trade in particular cotton
cloths, such as the unbleached fabric of Futa Djalon and the blue cloth of
Jenne. Pastoralism provided a variety of products for manufacture, notably
cattle hides and goatskins which went into the making of sandals, leather
jackets for military use, leather pouches for amulets, and so on. Horses
served as a means of transport to the ruling class and made a major
contribution to warfare and the size of the state. For the purpose of
interbreeding, some horses were imported from North Africa where the
Arab bloodstock was of the finest quality. For pack transport, the donkey

was of course better fitted; and the Mossi kingdom of Upper Volta for a
long time specialized in breeding those pack animals which were associated
with long distance trade within the vast region. On the edge of the Sahara,
the camel took over—another “technological” asset introduced from the
north.
Mining was a sphere in which production was important. Some of the
royal clans in the Western Sudan, such as that of the Kante, were specialist
blacksmiths. In a period of expansion by warfare, the control over iron
supplies and over iron-working skills was obviously decisive. Besides, the
two most important articles of long distance trade were salt and gold, both
obtained principally by mining. Neither the salt supplies nor the gold
supplies were originally within the domains of Ghana, but it took steps to
integrate them either by trade or by territorial expansion. Ghana struck
north into the Sahara, and towards the very end of the tenth century it
captured the town of Awdaghast from the Berbers—a town useful for the
control of the incoming salt mined in the middle of the desert. Similarly
Mali and Songhai sought to secure control of Taghaza, which was the
largest single center of salt mining. Songhai took the prize of Taghaza from
the desert Berbers and held it for many years in the face of opposition from
Morocco. Another crucial but seldom stressed element in the pattern of
production was the ownership of copper mines in the Sahara by both Mali
and Songhai.
To the south of Ghana lay the important sources of gold on the Upper
Senegal and its tributary the Falémé. It is said that Ghana obtained its gold
by “silent” or “dumb” barter which was described as follows:
The merchants beat great drums to summon the local natives, who were naked and lived in
holes in the ground. From these holes, which were doubtless the pits from which they dug the
gold, they refused to emerge in the presence of the foreign merchants. The latter, therefore,
used to arrange their trade goods in piles on the river bank and retire out of sight. The local
natives then came and placed a heap of gold beside each pile and withdrew. If the merchants
were satisfied they took the gold and retreated, beating their drums to signify that the market
was over.

The writer of the above lines (E. W. Bovill), a supposed European
authority on the Western Sudan, then goes on to say that silent trade or
dumb barter was a feature of the Western Sudan’s gold trade throughout all
the centuries until modern times. Actually, the only thing dumb about the

trade is what he writes about it. The story of dumb barter for gold in West
Africa is repeated in several accounts, starting with ancient Greek scripts. It
is clearly a rough approximation of the first attempts at exchange of a
people coming into contact with strangers, and it was not a permanent
procedure. During the rule of Ghana, the people of the two principal goldfields of Bambuk and Boure were drawn into regular trade relations with
the Western Sudan. Ghana probably, and Mali certainly, exercised political
rule over the two regions, where the mining and distribution of gold became
a very complicated process. During the centuries of Mali’s greatness,
extensive mining of gold began in the forest of modern Ghana to supply the
trans-Saharan gold trade. The existing social systems expanded and strong
states emerged to deal with the sale of gold. The merchants who came from
the great cities of the Western Sudan had to buy the gold by weight, using a
small accurate measurement known as the benda.
When the Portuguese arrived at the river Gambia and got a glimpse at
how gold was traded on the upper reaches of the river, they marveled at the
dexterity shown by the Mandinga merchants. The latter carried very finely
balanced scales, inlaid with silver and suspended from cords of twisted silk.
The gold dust and nuggets were weighted with brass weights. The expertise
of the Mandinga in measuring gold and in other forms of commerce was
largely due to the fact that within that ethnic group there was a core of
professional traders, commonly referred to as the Dioulas. They were not
very wealthy, but were distinguished by their willingness to travel
thousands of miles from one end of the Western Sudan to another. They also
reached the coast or very near to the coast of Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia,
Ivory Coast, and Ghana. The Dioulas handled a long list of African
products—salt from the Atlantic coast and the Sahara; kola nuts from the
forests of Liberia and Ivory Coast; gold from Akan country in modern
Ghana; leather from Hausaland; dried fish from the coast; cotton cloth from
many districts and especially from the central area of the Western Sudan;
iron from Futa Djalon in modern Guinea; shea butter from the upper
Gambia; and a host of other local articles. In addition, the trade of the
Western Sudan involved the circulation of goods originating in North
Africa, notably fabrics from Egypt and the Maghreb and coral beads from
Ceuta on the Mediterranean coast. Therefore, the pattern of Western

Sudanic and trans-Saharan commerce was integrating the resources of a
wide area stretching from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean.
Long-distance trade across the Sahara had special characteristics. Some
scholars have spoken of the camel as the ship of the Sahara, and the towns
which the camel caravans entered on either side of the desert were called
“ports.” In practice, the trans-Saharan trade was as great an achievement as
crossing an ocean. Much more than local trade, it stimulated the famous
cities of the region such as Walata, Timbuktu, Gao, and Jenne; and it
brought in the literate Islamic culture. Long-distance trade strengthened
state power, which meant in effect the power of the lineages who
transformed themselves into a permanent aristocracy. However, it is a gross
oversimplification of cause and effect to say that it was the trans-Saharan
trade which built the Western Sudanic empires. Ghana, Mali, and Songhai
grew out of their environment, and out of the efforts of their own
populations; and it was only after they had a certain status that their ruling
classes could express an interest in long-distance trade and could provide
the security to permit that trade to flourish.
It is significant that the Western Sudan never provided any significant
capital for the trans-Saharan trade. The capital came from the merchants of
Fez, Tlemcen, and other cities of the Maghreb; and they sent their agents to
reside in the Western Sudan. To some extent, it was a colonial relationship
because the exchange was unequal in North Africa’s favor. However, the
gold trade was at least capable of stimulating the development of the
productive forces within West Africa, while the accompanying trade in
slaves had no such benefits. Ghana, Mali, and Songhai all exported small
numbers of slaves, and the empire of Kanem-Bornu gave slave exports a
much higher priority because it controlled no gold supplies. Kanem-Bornu
used its power to raid for captives to the south as far as Adamawa in
modern Cameroon. The negative implications of such policies were to be
fully brought out in later centuries, when the steady trickle of slaves from a
few parts of West Africa across the Sahara was joined by the massive flow
of the continent’s peoples towards destinations named by Europeans.
Though falling considerably short of the feudal stage, state formation
was more advanced in the Western Sudan than in most other parts of Africa
in the period 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D. Apart from Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and
Kanem-Bornu, there were outstanding kingdoms in Hausaland, in Mossi, in

Senegal, in the Futa Djalon mountains of Guinea, and in the basin of the
Benue tributary of the river Niger. The Western Sudanic techniques of
political organization and administration spread out to many neighboring
regions, and influenced the rise of innumerable small states scattered
throughout the coastal region from the river Senegal to the Cameroon
mountains. Some specific Sudanic features were discernible in many
kingdoms, notably the position of the “Queen Mother” in the political
structure.
The strengths and weaknesses of the Western Sudanic states attest to the
point which they had reached on the long road away from communalism—
with respect to social relations and to the level of production. The state held
together several clashing social formations and ethnic groups. In the case of
Kanem-Bornu, pastoralists and cultivators were even able to integrate the
camel nomads of the desert. Elsewhere, the Tuareg nomads were kept at
bay, so that cultivators and other sedentary peoples could live their lives in
peace. Men, domestic beasts, and goods were free to move for thousands of
miles in security. However, the state had not yet broken down the barriers
between different social formations. The state existed as an institution
which collected tribute from the various communities and restrained them
from clashing. In periods of weakness, the superstructure of the state almost
disappeared and left free scope for divisive political and social tendencies.
Each successive great state was a further experiment to deal with the
problem of unity, sometimes on a conscious level and more often as an
unconscious by-product of the struggle for survival.
Under feudalism, the ruling class in the state for the first time tore away
the social institutions which prevented the first embryo states from
exercising direct action on each subject. That is to say, feudalism brought
about a series of direct obligatory ties between the landed rulers and the
landless subjects. In the Western Sudan, that clear-cut class division had not
come into existence. By the time of Mali’s pre-eminence in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, a small amount of local slavery had come into
existence, and by the end of the fifteenth century there were both chattel
slaves and “domestic slaves” comparable to feudal serfs. For instance, in
Senegal, the Portuguese traders found that there were elements in the
population who worked most days for their masters and a few days per
month for themselves—a budding feudalist tendency. Nevertheless, most of

the population still had ample access to land through their kin, and in
political terms that meant that the authority of the ruling class was exercised
over heads of families and clans rather than over each subject.
Although communal egalitarianism was on its way out, communal
relations still persisted and had by the fifteenth century become a brake on
the development of the Western Sudan. Such surplus as was being produced
by the society over and above subsistence needs came out of tribute from
the collective communities rather than directly from the producer to the
exploiting class. That gave an incentive for maintaining the old social
structures, although they were incapable of increasing labor mobilization
and specialization to a much greater degree. It was unlikely that there would
be a violent social revolution. Under those circumstances, major advances
of technology were required to spark off further changes. The degree of
economic integration had to be enhanced by greater productivity in various
areas—allowing for more trade, more specialization in the division of labor,
and the possibility of surplus accumulation. But wheeled vehicles and the
plow stopped in North Africa, and so too did large-scale irrigation. Indeed,
through the critical absence of large-scale irrigation, the productive base in
the Western Sudan actually decreased, for the Sahara was advancing. Ghana
had stood on fertile agricultural land, but both Mali and Songhai had their
centers farther south, because the former northern terrain of Ghana was
claimed by the Sahara through desiccation. Techniques necessary for the
control of this hostile environment and for the increase of agricultural and
manufacturing capacity had either to evolve locally or to be brought in from
outside. In the next phase of African history after the coming of the white
men, both of those alternatives were virtually ruled out in West Africa.
The Interlacustrine Zone
The high level of social evolution in the Western Sudan has been the cause
of lengthy debates as to whether the region had achieved feudalism of the
European variety, or whether it should be classed together with the great
Asian empires, or whether it created a new and unique category of its own.
On the eastern side of the continent, development in the same period was
definitely slower. For one thing, the people of East Africa acquired iron
tools at a much later date than their brothers in the north and west; and,

secondly, the range of their technology and skills was narrower. However,
by the fourteenth century, state formation was well under way, and the
principles of development revealed in the process are worth considering. An
area of special interest is that of the great lakes of Africa and particularly
the zone around the group of lakes which the British thought fit to rename
in honor of various members of the British ruling family—Victoria, Albert,
Edward, George. In that interlacustrine zone, several famous states
eventually emerged, one of the earliest and largest being that of BunyoroKitara.
Bunyoro-Kitara comprised in whole or in part the regions which today
are called Bunyoro, Ankole, Toro, Karagwe, and Buganda—all of which
fall in Uganda, except Karagwe which is in Tanzania. Historical traditions
have been orally preserved by these various peoples who at one time fell
within the boundaries of Bunyoro-Kitara; and the traditions concentrate on
the ruling dynasty, which is known as the Bachwezi. The Bachwezi were
supposedly an immigrant pastoralist group. They introduced long-horned
humped cattle, which later became the major species in the interlacustrine
zone. Possession of these cattle undoubtedly aided them to become a ruling
aristocracy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They became a social
stratum above the clans which previously existed, and which had narrow
territorial bases. The period of Bachwezi pre-eminence is also associated
with ironworking, the manufacture of barkcloth, the technique of sinking
well shafts through rocks, and (most striking of all) the construction of
extensive earthwork systems, used apparently both for defense and for
enclosing large herds of cattle. The largest of the earthworks was at Bigo,
with ditches extending over six and a half miles.
The division of labor between pastoralists and cultivators and the nature
of their contacts intensified the process of caste formation and class
stratification in the interlacustrine area. The pastoralist Bahima had imposed
their rule over the cultivators, or Bairu. Social classes grew out of a
situation of changing labor relations. The earthworks of Bigo and elsewhere
were not built by voluntary family labor, and some form of coercion must
also have been used to get the cultivators to produce a surplus for their new
lords. For instance, the Bachwezi are said to have established a system by
which young men were conscripted into the king’s service and were
maintained by Bairu who occupied and cultivated land assigned for the

support of the army. They also introduced slave artisans and administrators.
When administrative officials were appointed at a local level to rule on
behalf of the aristocrats, that was a first step toward setting up feudal fiefs
as in Ethiopia; for while the question of land grants had not yet entered the
picture, it must be borne in mind that inequality in the distribution of cattle
meant in fact unequal access to the means of production.
Much uncertainty surrounds the precise identification of the Bachwezi. It
is possible that they were not immigrants. Nevertheless, it is generally held
that they were light-complexioned pastoralists coming from the north.
Assuming that this was so, it is essential to stress that whatever was
achieved in the interlacustrine region in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries was a product of the evolution of African society as a whole and
not a transplant from outside. In order to place those East African events
within the context of universal human achievement, a parallel can be drawn
with India. Centuries before the birth of Christ, Northern India was also the
recipient of light-complexioned pastoral immigrants known as Aryans.
There was a time when everything in Indian culture was attributed to the
Aryans; but then careful scrutiny revealed that the basis of Indian society
and culture had been laid by the earlier population known as the Dravidians.
Therefore, it is now considered far more sensible to see the achievements of
North India as a product of synthesis or combination of Aryan and
Dravidian. Similarly in East Africa, one needs to seek the elements of
synthesis between the new and the old and that in effect was the path of
development in the interlacustrine zone in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.
As has just been noted, the Bachwezi are associated with techniques
such as ironworking and barkcloth manufacture. It is not at all clearly
established that they introduced such techniques for the first time, and it is
much more probable that they presided over the elaboration of such skills.
Certainly, iron-using societies were known in East Africa several centuries
before the Bachwezi period. At Engaruka, just south of the present KenyaTanzania border, there are to be found the ruins of a small but impressive
iron-age society, which flourished sometime before the end of the first
millennium A.D. (i.e., before 1000 A.D.). Engaruka was a concentrated
agricultural settlement engaging in terracing, irrigation, and the construction
of walls by the technique known as dry stone building, whereby no lime

was required to hold the stones together. In the interlacustrine area itself,
there had emerged a banana-based agriculture, which was capable of
supporting a large sedentary population. That was the sort of precondition
for moving from communal isolation to statehood.
It is significant that orally preserved traditions imply the existence of
kingdoms in Bunyoro and Karagwe before the Bachwezi. State formation
was already in an embryo stage when the outsiders arrived, and the
likelihood is that they did not remain outsiders for long. Unlike the Aryans
in India, the Bachwezi did not even impose their own language, but adopted
the Bantu speech of the local inhabitants. That reflects the dominance of
local rather than foreign elements in the synthesis. In any event, the cultural
product was African, and was part of the pattern of development through
localized evolution combined with the interplay of social formations on a
continent-wide scale.
Among the contributions supposedly made by the Bachwezi to the
interlacustrine kingdoms was the introduction of religion based on the
phases of the moon. In all of the situations examined so far, religion played
a significant role in promoting the building of the state, leading away from
the simple organization of the family community. Christianity and Islam
have been most frequently associated with large-scale building both inside
and outside of Africa. That is to be explained not so much by the actual
religious beliefs, but because membership in a powerful universal church
gave the ruling class of a young state many advantages. A Christian or
Moslem prince had access to a literate culture and a wider world. He dealt
with traders and craftsmen professing that religion; he used administrators
and churchmen who were literate; and he could travel to parts of the world
such as Mecca. Above all, the universal religions replaced “traditional”
African ancestral religions in Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, the Maghreb, and
progressively in the Western Sudan because Christianity and Islam were not
rooted in any given family community and therefore could be used to
mobilize the many communities that were merging into the state. However,
religious beliefs which had been accepted by a single clan or ethnic group
could be elevated in the same form or in a slightly altered form to become
the religion of the whole state. This was the situation in the interlacustrine
zone, and indeed in most other parts of Africa outside the regions already
described.

Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe, one of the great constructions in brick (dated around the
fourteenth century) is commonly referred to as a “temple” and is felt to
have served religious purposes. Even from the scanty evidence, it is clear
that the religious aspect of social development was of the greatest
importance in serving to cement ties between individuals in that emergent
African society. For instance, the ruling class in the fifteenth century empire
of Mutapa in Zimbabwe were pastoralists and their religious ritual included
objects that were symbolic of cattle, as was found in the interlacustrine
kingdoms such as Bunyoro and Karagwe. One can guess that the rituals also
symbolized the dominance of the cattle owners, just as they also paid
respect to pre-existing ideas of the cultivators in order to effect a stable
synthesis. The details of the picture are not available in the present stage of
knowledge, but what is required is that any discussion of African religion
must seek to present it in a mobile evolutionary manner and to relate it to
changing socio-economic forms and institutions. That task being beyond the
confines of the present study, it is proposed to examine Zimbabwe as yet
another region where the productive base and the political superstructure
can be ascertained to have developed appreciably in the last few centuries
before Africa was drawn into contact with Europe.
Within the southernmost section of the continent, the area in which
striking achievements were registered by the fifteenth century was that
between the rivers Zambezi and Limpopo, covering the territories that were
later to be called Mozambique and Rhodesia. Iron-using and state-building
peoples were active there from early in the first millennium A.D., and
eventually there emerged in the fifteenth century the empire which
Europeans called Monomotapa. The term “Zimbabwe” is being used here to
designate the Zambesi-Limpopo cultures in the few centuries preceding the
European arrival, because it was from the eleventh to the fourteenth century
that there flourished the societies, whose most characteristic feature was the
building of large stone palaces, known collectively as Zimbabwe.
Much has been written about the buildings which distinguish the
Zimbabwe culture. They are a direct response to the environment of granite
rocks, being built upon granite hills and of flaked granite. The most famous
site of surviving stone ruins is that of Great Zimbabwe, north of the river

Sabi. One of the principal structures at Great Zimbabwe was some 300 feet
long and 220 feet broad, with the walls being 30 feet high and 20 feet thick.
The technique of laying the bricks one on the other without lime to act as a
cement was the same style noted in the description of Engaruka in northern
Tanzania. It was in fact a peculiar aspect of material culture in Africa, being
widely found in Ethiopia and the Sudan. The style of the encircling brick
walls at Great Zimbabwe and other sites was also characteristically African
in that it was an elaboration of the mud enclosures, or kraals, of many
Bantu-speaking people.
One European archaeologist is reported to have said that there was as
much labor expended in Zimbabwe as on the pyramids in Egypt. That is
surely an overstatement, for the pyramids were raised through an incredible
amount of slave labor, which could not possibly have been at the disposal of
the rulers in Zimbabwe. However, it is definitely necessary to reflect on the
amount of labor which would have been required to construct the buildings
within the Zimbabwe region up until the fifteenth century. The workers may
well have been from particular ethnic groups who were subjugated by other
ethnic groups, but in the process of subjugation they were acquiring the
character of a social class whose labor was being exploited. Nor was it
sheer manual labor. Skill, creativity, and artistry went into the construction
of the walls, especially with regard to the decorations, the inner recesses,
and the doors.
When Cecil Rhodes sent in his agents to rob and steal in Zimbabwe, they
and other Europeans marveled at the surviving ruins of the Zimbabwe
culture, and automatically assumed that it had been built by white people.
Even today there is still a tendency to consider the achievements with a
sense of wonder rather than with the calm acceptance that it was a perfectly
logical outgrowth of human social development within Africa, as part of the
universal process by which man’s labor opened up new horizons. The sense
of reality can only be restored by making it clear that the architecture rested
on a foundation of advanced agriculture and mining, which had come into
existence over centuries of evolution.
Zimbabwe was a zone of mixed farming, with cattle being very
important, since the area is free from tsetse flies. Irrigation and terracing
reached considerable proportions. There was no single dam or aqueduct
comparable to those in Asia or ancient Rome, but countless small streams

were diverted and made to flow around hills, in a manner that indicated an
awareness of the scientific principles governing the motion of water. In
effect, the people of Zimbabwe had produced “hydrologists” through their
understanding of the material environment. On the mining side, it is equally
striking that the African peoples in the zone in question had produced
prospectors and “geologists” who had a clear idea of where to look for gold
and copper in the subsoil. When the European colonialists arrived in the
nineteenth century, they found that virtually all the gold-bearing and
copper-bearing strata had been mined previously by Africans—though of
course not on the same scale as Europeans were to achieve with drilling
equipment. Among the Zimbabwe people, there also arose craftsmen who
worked the gold into ornaments with tremendous skill and lightness of
touch.
The presence of gold in particular was a stimulus to external trade, and
in turn it was external demand which did most to accelerate mining. In the
first millennium A.D., there was a gold-using aristocracy at Ingombe Ilede
just north of the Zambezi. Presumably, they got their supplies from gold
mines farther south. However, gold is required in large quantities only in a
society which produces a very large economic surplus and can afford to
transform part of that surplus into gold for prestige purposes (as in India) or
into coinage and money to promote capitalism (as in Western Europe). The
pre-feudal African societies did not have such a surplus, nor the social
relations which made it necessary for gold to circulate a great deal
internally. Hence, it was the presence of Arab traders as far south as Sofala
in the Mozambique channel which spurred Zimbabwe to mine more gold
for export just about the same time in the eleventh century when stonebuilding was beginning. The implication is that a number of factors
coincided: namely, the intensification of class stratification, of state
consolidation, of production and building techniques, and of trade.
Several different ethnic groups contributed to Zimbabwe society. The
earliest populations of the region were the “Bushmen” and Khoisan type of
hunters who today are found only in small numbers in Southern Africa.
They were incorporated into the physical stock of newcomers from farther
north speaking Bantu languages, and in fact they made their contribution to
the Bantu languages of the area. Among the Bantu speakers, there were also
several different groups coming into their own at different times. The

material evidence which has been revealed by archaeologists shows various
pottery styles, contrasting burial positions, and different bone structures
among skeletons. Other material artifacts show that over the centuries many
societies occupied the region of Zimbabwe. Much of the interpenetration of
one group by another was done peacefully, although at the same time, the
very existence of the fortified hilltops and stone defenses shows that the
largest states were engaged in military struggles for survival and preeminence. Furthermore, some ethnic groups must have been permanently
relegated to inferior status, so as to provide the labor for agriculture,
building, and mining. Other clans specialized in pastoralism, warfare, and
the control of religious apparatus such as divination and rainmaking.
It is believed that the inhabitants of Zimbabwe in the eleventh to the
fourteenth centuries were Sotho-speaking; but by the time the Portuguese
arrived a Shona-speaking dynasty had taken control of most of the region.
That was the Rozwi clan, which set up the state of Mutapa, between the
Zambezi and the Limpopo. The ruler was known as the Mwene Mutapa,
which apparently meant “the great Lord of Mutapa” to his own followers,
but was held to mean “the great pillager” by peoples whom he conquered
and wielded together into a single empire. The first individual to hold the
title Mwene Mutapa ruled from about 1415 to 1450, but the dynasty had
already been growing prominent before that date. The capital was at first
sited at Great Zimbabwe, and later moved north. What was important was
that the Mwene Mutapa appointed governors to rule over various localities
outside the capital, in a manner comparable to that of the Western Sudanic
empires or the interlacustrine Bachwezi states.
The Rozwi lords of Mutapa did most to encourage production for export
trade, notably in gold, ivory, and copper. Arab merchants came to reside in
the kingdom and the Zimbabwe region became involved in the network of
Indian Ocean commerce, which linked them with India, Indonesia, and
China. One of the principal achievements of the Rozwi lords of Mutapa was
to organize a single system of production and trade. They exacted tribute
from the various communities in their kingdoms, which was both a sign of
sovereignty and a form of trade, because the movement of goods was
stimulated. There is no doubt that the foreign trade strengthened the Mutapa
state; but above all it strengthened the ruling strata which had a monopoly
over that aspect of economic activity. In comparison with other African

elites at that time, the Rozwi of Zimbabwe still had a long way to go. They
were not in the same category as the Amharic nobility of Ethiopia or the
Arab-Berber feudal lords of the Maghreb. They did imbibe a few influences
from outside, but they did not travel, as did the rulers of Mali and Songhai,
who made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Their dress was still mainly animal
skins, and such cloths as they utilized were recent imports from the Arab
traders rather than the product of the evolution of their own skills in that
field. In that respect, Zimbabwe also trailed behind other early African
states such as Oyo in Yorubaland, Benin in the same area, and the
fourteenth-century empire of Kongo (which Europeans referred to as the
greatest state in West Africa at the time of their arrival).
It has been considered necessary for the purposes of illustration to
consider some (though by no means all) of the outstanding areas of
development in Africa before the coming of the Europeans. Nor should it be
forgotten that there were innumerable village communities emerging to
become states that were small in size, but were sometimes sharply stratified
internally and displayed an impressive level of material advance. Those
described above should be sufficient to establish that Africa in the fifteenth
century was not just a jumble of different “tribes.” There was a pattern and
there was historical movement. Societies such as feudal Ethiopia and Egypt
were at the furthest point of the process of evolutionary development.
Zimbabwe and the Bachwezi states were also clearly on the ascendant away
from communalism, but at a lower level than the feudal states and a few
others that were not yet feudal such as those in the Western Sudan.
Conclusion
In introducing the concept of development, attention was drawn to the fact
that the slow, imperceptible expansion in social productive capacity
ultimately amounted to a qualitative difference, with the arrival at the new
stage sometimes being announced by social violence. It can be said that
most African societies had not reached a new stage that was markedly
different from communalism, and hence the use in this study of the cautious
term “transitional.” It can also be noted that nowhere had there been any
internal social revolutions. The latter have taken place in European and
world history only where class consciousness led to the massive

intervention of people’s wills within the otherwise involuntary socioeconomic process. Such observations help to situate African development
up to the fifteenth century at a level that was below mature, class-ridden
feudalism.
It should also be reiterated that slavery as a mode of production was not
present in any African society, although some slaves were to be found
where the decomposition of communal equality had gone furthest. This is
an outstanding feature illustrating the autonomy of the African path within
the broader framework of universal advance. One of the paradoxes in
studying this early period of African history is that it cannot be fully
comprehended without first deepening our knowledge of the world at large,
and yet the true picture of the complexities of the development of man and
society can only be drawn after intensive study of the long-neglected
African continent. There is no escaping the use of comparisons as an aid to
clarity; and indeed the parallels have been narrowly restricted to Europe
even though they could also be provided by examples from Asian history.
Therein lies the cultural imperialism which makes it easier for the
European-educated African to recall names like the (French) Capetians and
the (Prussian) Hohenzollerns rather than the Vietnamese dynasties of Id and
Tran, for the latter are either unknown to him, or would be considered
unimportant if known, or might even be judged too difficult to pronounce!
Several historians of Africa have pointed out that after surveying the
developed areas of the continent in the fifteenth century and those within
Europe at the same date, the difference between the two was in no way to
Africa’s discredit. Indeed, the first Europeans to reach West and East Africa
by sea were the ones who indicated that in most respects African
development was comparable to that which they knew. To take but one
example, when the Dutch visited the city of Benin they described it thus:
The town seems to be very great. When you enter into it, you go into a great broad street, not
paved, which seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes street in Amsterdam.
...
The king’s palace is a collection of buildings which occupy as much space as the town of
Harlem, and which is enclosed with walls. There are numerous apartments for the Prince’s
ministers and fine galleries, most of which are as big as those on the Exchange at Amsterdam.
They are supported by wooden pillars encased with copper, where their victories are depicted,
and which are carefully kept very clean.

The town is composed of thirty main streets, very straight and 120 feet wide, apart from an
infinity of small intersecting streets. The houses are close to one another, arranged in good
order. These people are in no way inferior to the Dutch as regards cleanliness; they wash and
scrub their houses so well that they are polished and shining like a looking-glass.

Yet, it would be self-delusion to imagine that all things were exactly
equal in Benin and in Holland. European society was already more
aggressive, more expansionist, and more dynamic in producing new forms.
The dynamism within Europe was contained within the merchant and
manufacturing class. In the galleries of the exchange at Amsterdam sat
Dutch burghers—the ancestors of the modern bourgeoisie of industry and
finance. This class in fifteenth-century Europe was able to push the feudal
landowners forward or aside. They began to discard conservatism and to
create the intellectual climate in which change was seen as desirable. A
spirit of innovation arose in technology, and transformation of the mode of
production was quickened. When Europe and Africa established close
relations through trade, there was therefore already a slight edge in Europe’s
favor—an edge representing the difference between a fledgling capitalist
society and one that was still emerging from communalism.
Brief Guide to Reading
Studies on early African history are lacking for many reasons, the most
obvious being that African history was for a long time considered by the
colonialists as having so little value that it was not worth reconstructing.
Another decisive factor is that studies of Africa were mainly carried out by
European bourgeois anthropologists, whose philosophical outlook on
“primitive societies” caused them to separate African society from its
historical context. There was a concentration on micro-units and no
reference to overall patterns. The new African scholarship has been under
way for too short a time to have provided any significant breakthrough. The
few books cited below are part of the new approach.
BASIL DAVIDSON, Africa in History. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
HENRI LABOURET, Africa before the White Man. New York: Walker and Co., 1962.
MARGARET SHINNIE, Ancient African Kingdoms. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965.
K. M. PANIKKAR, The Serpent and the Crescent. New York: Asia Publishing House, 1963.
The above group of books are assessments by non-Africans from a sympathetic perspective and
with sufficient value for them to be respected and widely used inside Africa. K. M. Panikkar is an
unusual example of an Asian scholar with a professional interest in the African continent.

J. AJAYI and I. ESPIE (editors), A Thousand Years of West African History. New York: Humanities
Press, 1969.
B. A. OGOT and J. A. KIERAN (editors), Zamani, a Survey of East African History. New York:
Humanities Press, 1968.
African historians have begun to provide syntheses of the continent’s history by putting together
relevant collections—usually on some section of the continent, as in the two examples above.
Unfortunately, the quality varies from one selection to another, and African writers have not as yet
provided any coherent overview of the regions with which they are supposedly dealing.
G. J. AFOLABI OJO, Yoruba Culture, a Geographical Analysis. London: University of London Press,
1967.
B. M. FAGAN, Southern Africa during the Iron Age. New York: Praeger, 1965.
What these two dissimilar books have in common is an awareness of the material environment.
Afolabi Ojo is a Nigerian geographer and B. M. Fagan is an English archaeologist.

*

In Europe, communalism gave way to slavery, and therefore dynasties and strong states were
present on the eve of the slavery epoch.

CHAPTER

III
Africa’s Contribution to European Capitalist
Development—The Pre-Colonial Period
• How Europe Became the Dominant Section of a World-Wide Trade
System • Africa’s Contribution to the Economy and Beliefs of Early
Capitalist Europe

BRITISH TRADE IS A MAGNIFICENT SUPERSTRUCTURE OF AMERICAN COMmerce and naval power
on an African foundation.
—MALACHI POSTLETHWAYT, The African Trade, the Great Pillar and Support of the British
Plantation Trade in North America, 1745.
If you were to lose each year more than 200 million livres that you now get from your
colonies: if you had not the exclusive trade with your colonies to feed your manufactures, to
maintain your navy, to keep your agriculture going, to repay for your imports, to provide for
your luxury needs, to advantageously balance your trade with Europe and Asia, then I say it
clearly, the kingdom would be irretrievably lost.
—BISHOP MAURY (of France): Argument against France’s ending the slave trade and giving
freedom to its slave colonies. Presented in the French National Assembly, 1791.

How Europe Became the Dominant Section of a World-Wide Trade
System
Because of the superficiality of many of the approaches to
“underdevelopment,” and because of resulting misconceptions, it is
necessary to re-emphasize that development and underdevelopment are not
only comparative terms, but that they also have a dialectical relationship
one to the other: that is to say, the two help produce each other by
interaction. Western Europe and Africa had a relationship which insured the
transfer of wealth from Africa to Europe. The transfer was possible only
after trade became truly international; and that takes one back to the late
fifteenth century when Africa and Europe were drawn into common
relations for the first time—along with Asia and the Americas. The
developed and underdeveloped parts of the present capitalist section of the
world have been in continuous contact for four and a half centuries. The
contention here is that over that period Africa helped to develop Western
Europe in the same proportion as Western Europe helped to underdevelop
Africa.
The first significant thing about the internationalization of trade in the
fifteenth century was that Europeans took the initiative and went to other
parts of the world. No Chinese boats reached Europe, and if any African
canoes reached the Americas (as is sometimes maintained) they did not
establish two-way links. What was called international trade was nothing
but the extension overseas of European interests. The strategy behind

international trade and the production that supported it was firmly in
European hands, and specifically in the hands of the sea-going nations from
the North Sea to the Mediterranean. They owned and directed the great
majority of the world’s sea-going vessels, and they controlled the financing
of the trade between four continents. Africans had little clue as to the tricontinental links between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Europe had a
monopoly of knowledge about the international exchange system seen as a
whole, for Western Europe was the only sector capable of viewing the
system as a whole.
Europeans used the superiority of their ships and cannon to gain control
of all the world’s waterways, starting with the western Mediterranean and
the Atlantic coast of North Africa. From 1415, when the Portuguese
captured Ceuta, near Gibraltar, they maintained the offensive against the
Maghreb. Within the next sixty years, they seized ports such as Arzila, ElKsar-es-Seghir, and Tangier, and fortified them. By the second half of the
fifteenth century, the Portuguese controlled the Atlantic coast of Morocco
and used its economic and strategic advantages to prepare for further
navigations which eventually carried their ships round the Cape of Good
Hope in 1495. After reaching the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese sought with
some success to replace Arabs as the merchants who tied East Africa to
India and the rest of Asia. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
Portuguese carried most of the East African ivory which was marketed in
India; while Indian cloth and beads were sold in East and West Africa by
the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French. The same applied to cowry
shells from the East Indies. Therefore, by control of the seas, Europe took
the first steps towards transforming the several parts of Africa and Asia into
economic satellites.
When the Portuguese and the Spanish were still in command of a major
sector of world trade in the first half of the seventeenth century, they
engaged in buying cotton cloth in India to exchange for slaves in Africa to
mine gold in Central and South America. Part of the gold in the Americas
would then be used to purchase spices and silks from the Far East. The
concept of metropole and dependency automatically came into existence
when parts of Africa were caught up in the web of international commerce.
On the one hand, there were the European countries who decided on the
role to be played by the African economy; and on the other hand, Africa

formed an extension to the European capitalist market. As far as foreign
trade was concerned, Africa was dependent on what Europeans were
prepared to buy and sell.
Europe exported to Africa goods which were already being produced and
used in Europe itself—Dutch linen, Spanish iron, English pewter,
Portuguese wines, French brandy, Venetian glass beads, German muskets.
Europeans were also able to unload on the African continent goods which
had become unsalable in Europe. Thus, items like old sheets, cast-off
uniforms, technologically outdated firearms, and lots of odds and ends
found guaranteed markets in Africa. Africans slowly became aware of the
possibility of demanding and obtaining better imported goods, and pressure
was exerted on the captains of European ships; but the overall range of
trade goods which left the European ports of Hamburg, Copenhagen, and
Liverpool was determined almost exclusively by the pattern of production
and consumption within Europe.
From the beginning, Europe assumed the power to make decisions
within the international trading system. An excellent illustration of that is
the fact that the so-called international law which governed the conduct of
nations on the high seas was nothing else but European law. Africans did
not participate in its making, and in many instances, African people were
simply the victims, for the law recognized them only as transportable
merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at sea, the only
legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could claim
compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making
power was exercised in selecting what Africa should export—in accordance
with European needs.
The ships of the Portuguese gave the search for gold the highest priority,
partly on the basis of well-known information that West African gold
reached Europe across the Sahara and partly on the basis of guesswork. The
Portuguese were successful in obtaining gold in parts of West Africa and in
eastern Central Africa; and it was the Gold Coast which attracted the
greatest attention from Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The number of forts built there was proof to that effect, and the
nations involved included the Scandinavians and the Prussians (Germans)
apart from other colonial stalwarts like the British, Dutch, and Portuguese.

Europeans were anxious to acquire gold in Africa because there was a
pressing need for gold coin within the growing capitalist money economy.
Since gold was limited to very small areas of Africa, as far as Europeans
were then aware, the principal export was human beings. Only in a very few
places at given times was the export of another commodity of equal or
greater importance. For instance, in the Senegal there was gum, in Sierra
Leone camwood, and in Mozambique ivory. However, even after taking
those things into account, one can say that Europe allocated to Africa the
role of supplier of human captives to be used as slaves in various parts of
the world.
When Europeans reached the Americas, they recognized its enormous
potential in gold and silver and tropical produce. But that potential could
not be made a reality without adequate labor supplies. The indigenous
Indian population could not withstand new European diseases such as
smallpox, nor could they bear the organized toil of slave plantations and
slave mines, having barely emerged from the hunting stage. That is why in
islands like Cuba and Hispaniola, the local Indian population was virtually
wiped out by the white invaders. At the same time, Europe itself had a very
small population and could not afford to release the labor required to tap the
wealth of the Americas. Therefore, they turned to the nearest continent,
Africa, which incidentally had a population accustomed to settled
agriculture and disciplined labor in many spheres. Those were the objective
conditions lying behind the start of the European slave trade, and those are
the reasons why the capitalist class in Europe used their control of
international trade to insure that Africa specialized in exporting captives.
Obviously, if Europe could tell Africans what to export, that was an
expression of European power. However, it would be a mistake to believe
that it was an overwhelming military power. Europeans found it impossible
to conquer Africans during the early centuries of trade, except in isolated
spots on the coast. European power resided in their system of production
which was at a somewhat higher level than Africa’s at that time. European
society was leaving feudalism and was moving towards capitalism; African
society was then entering a phase comparable to feudalism.
The fact that Europe was the first part of the world to move from
feudalism towards capitalism gave Europeans a headstart over humanity
elsewhere in the scientific understanding of the universe, the making of

tools, and the efficient organization of labor. European technical superiority
did not apply to all aspects of production, but the advantage which they
possessed in a few key areas proved decisive. For example, African canoes
on the river Nile and the Senegal coast were of a high standard, but the
relevant sphere of operations was the ocean, where European ships could
take command. West Africans had developed metal casting to a fine artistic
perfection in many parts of Nigeria, but when it came to the meeting with
Europe, beautiful bronzes were far less relevant than the crudest cannon.
African wooden utensils were sometimes works of great beauty, but Europe
produced pots and pans that had many practical advantages. Literacy,
organizational experience, and the capacity to produce on an ever
expanding scale also counted in the European favor.
European manufactures in the early years of trade with Africa were often
of poor quality, but they were of new varieties and were found attractive.
Estaban Montejo, an African who ran away from a Cuban slave plantation
in the nineteenth century, recalled that his people were enticed into slavery
by the color red. He said:
It was the scarlet which did for the Africans; both the kings and the rest surrendered without a
struggle. When the kings saw that the whites were taking out these scarlet handkerchiefs as if
they were waving, they told the blacks, “Go on then, go and get a scarlet handkerchief” and the
blacks were so excited by the scarlet they ran down to the ships like sheep and there they were
captured.

That version by one of the victims of slavery is very poetic. What it means
is that some African rulers found European goods sufficiently desirable to
hand over captives which they had taken in warfare. Soon, war began to be
fought between one community and another for the sole purpose of getting
prisoners for sale to Europeans, and even inside a given community a ruler
might be tempted to exploit his own subjects and capture them for sale. A
chain reaction was started by European demand for slaves (and only slaves)
and by their offer of consumer goods—this process being connected with
divisions within African society.
It is often said for the colonial period that vertical political divisions in
Africa made conquest easy. This is even truer of the way that Africa
succumbed to the slave trade. National unification was a product of mature
feudalism and of capitalism. Inside Europe, there were far fewer political
divisions than in Africa where communalism meant political fragmentation

with the family as the nucleus, and there were only a few states that had real
territorial solidity. Furthermore, when one European nation challenged
another to obtain captives from an African ruler, Europe benefited from
whichever of the two nations won the conflict. Any European trader could
arrive on the coast of West Africa and exploit the political differences which
he found there. For example, in the small territory that the Portuguese later
claimed as Guinea-Bissau, there were more than a dozen ethnic groups. It
was so easy to set one off against another that Europeans called it a “slave
trader’s paradise.”
Although class divisions were not pronounced in African society, they
too contributed to the ease with which Europe imposed itself commercially
on large parts of the African continent. The rulers had a certain status and
authority, and when bamboozled by European goods they began to use that
position to raid outside their societies as well as to exploit internally by
victimizing some of their own subjects. In the simplest of societies where
there were no kings, it proved impossible for Europeans to strike up the
alliance which was necessary to carry on a trade in captives on the coast. In
those societies with ruling groups, the association with Europeans was
easily established; and afterwards Europe hardened the existing internal
class divisions and created new ones.
In effect, particular aspects of African society became weaknesses when
Europeans arrived as representatives of a different phase of development.
And yet the subjugation of the African economy through slave trade was a
slow process at the outset, and in some instances African opposition or
disinterest had to be overcome. In the Congo, the slave trade did not get
under way without grave doubts and opposition from the king of the state of
Kongo at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He asked for masons,
priests, clerks, physicians; but instead he was overwhelmed by slave ships
sent from Portugal, and a vicious trade was opened up by playing off one
part of the Kongo kingdom against another. The king of the Kongo had
conceived of possibilities of mutually beneficial interchange between his
people and the European state, but the latter forced him to specialize in the
export of human cargo. It is also interesting to note that while the Oba
(king) of Benin was willing to sell a few female captives, it took a great
deal of persuasion and pressure from Europeans to get him to sell male

African prisoners of war, who would otherwise have been brought into the
ranks of Benin society.
Once trade in slaves had been started in any given part of Africa, it soon
became clear that it was beyond the capacity of any single African state to
change the situation. In Angola, the Portuguese employed an unusual
number of their own troops and tried to seize political power from Africans.
The Angolan state of Matamba on the river Kwango was founded around
1630 as a direct reaction against the Portuguese. With Queen Nzinga at its
head, Matamba tried to coordinate resistance against the Portuguese in
Angola. However, Portugal gained the upper hand in 1648, and this left
Matamba isolated. Matamba could not forever stand aside. So long as it
opposed trade with the Portuguese, it was an object of hostility from
neighboring African states which had compromised with Europeans and
slave trading. So in 1656, Queen Nzinga resumed business with the
Portuguese—a major concession to the decision-making role of Europeans
within the Angolan economy.
Another example of African resistance during the course of the slave
trade comes from the Baga people in what is now the Republic of Guinea.
The Baga lived in small states, and in about 1720 one of their leaders
(Tomba by name) aimed at securing an alliance to stop the slave traffic. He
was defeated by local European resident-traders, mulattos, and other slave
trading Africans. It is not difficult to understand why Europeans should
have taken immediate steps to see that Tomba and his Baga followers did
not opt out of the role allocated to them by Europe. A parallel which
presents itself is the manner in which Europeans got together to wage the
“Opium War” against China in the nineteenth century to insure that Western
capitalists would make profit while the Chinese were turned into dope
addicts.
Of course, it is only as a last resort that the capitalist metropoles need to
use armed force to insure the pursuit of favorable policies in the dependent
areas. Normally, economic weapons are sufficient. In the 1720s, Dahomey
opposed European slave traders, and was deprived of European imports—
some of which had become necessary by that time. Agaja Trudo,
Dahomey’s greatest king, appreciated that European demand for slaves and
the pursuit of slaving in and around Dahomey was in conflict with
Dahomey’s development. Between 1724 and 1726, he looted and burned

European forts and slave camps; and he reduced the trade from the “Slave
Coast” to a mere trickle, by blocking the paths leading to sources of supply
in the interior. European slave dealers were very bitter, and they tried to
sponsor some African collaborators against Agaja Trudo. They failed to
unseat him or to crush the Dahomean state, but in turn Agaja failed to
persuade them to develop new lines of economic activity, such as local
plantation agriculture; and, being anxious to acquire firearms and cowries
through the Europeans, he had to agree to the resumption of slave trading in
1730.
After 1730, Dahomean slaving was placed under royal control and was
much more restricted than previously. Yet, the failure of this determined
effort demonstrated that a single African state at that time could not
emancipate itself from European control. The small size of African states
and the numerous political divisions made it so much easier for Europe to
make the decisions as to Africa’s role in world production and trade.
Many guilty consciences have been created by the slave trade. Europeans
know that they carried on the slave trade, and Africans are aware that the
trade would have been impossible if certain Africans did not cooperate with
the slave ships. To ease their guilty consciences, Europeans try to throw the
major responsibility for the slave trade on to the Africans. One European
author of a book on the slave trade (appropriately entitled Sins of Our
Fathers) explained how many other white people urged him to state that the
trade was the responsibility of African chiefs, and that Europeans merely
turned up to buy the captives—as though without European demand there
would have been captives sitting on the beach by the millions! Issues such
as those are not the principal concern of this study, but they can be correctly
approached only after understanding that Europe became the center of a
world-wide system and that it was European capitalism which set slavery
and the Atlantic slave trade it motion.
The trade in human beings from Africa was a response to externa
factors. At first, the labor was needed in Portugal, Spain, and in Atlantic
islands such as São Tomé, Cape Verde, and the Canaries; then came the
period when the Greater Antilles and the Spanish-American mainland
needed replacements for the Indians who were victims of genocide; and
then the demands of Caribbean and mainland plantation societies had to be
met. The records show direct connections between levels of exports from

Africa and European demand for slave labor in some part of the American
plantation economy. When the Dutch took Pernambuco in Brazil in 1634,
the director of the Dutch West Indian Company immediately informed their
agents on the Gold Coast that they were to take the necessary steps to
pursue the trade in slaves on the adjacent coast east of the Volta—thus
creating for that area the infamous name of the “Slave Coast.” When the
British West Indian islands took to growing sugar cane, Gambia was one of
the first places to respond. Examples of this kind of external control can be
cited right up to the end of the trade, and this embraces Eastern Africa also,
since European markets in the Indian Ocean islands became important in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and since demand in places like
Brazil caused Mozambicans to be shipped around the Cape of Good Hope.
Africa’s Contribution to the Economy and Beliefs of Early Capitalist
Europe
The kinds of benefits which Europe derived from its control of world
commerce are fairly well known, although it is curious that the recognition
of Africa’s major contribution to European development is usually made in
works devoted specifically to that subject; while European scholars of
Europe often treat the European economy as if it were entirely independent.
European economists of the nineteenth century certainly had no illusions
about the interconnections between their national economies and the world
at large. J. S. Mill, as spokesman for British capitalism, said that as far as
England was concerned, “the trade of the West Indies is hardly to be
considered as external trade, but more resembles the traffic between town
and country.” By the phrase “trade of the West Indies” Mill meant the
commerce between Africa, England, and the West Indies, because without
African labor the West Indies were valueless. Karl Marx also commented
on the way that European capitalists tied Africa, the West Indies, and Latin
America into the capitalist system; and (being the most bitter critic of
capitalism) Marx went on to point out that what was good for Europeans
was obtained at the expense of untold suffering by Africans and American
Indians. Marx noted that “the discovery of gold and silver in America, the
extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal

population, the turning of Africa into a commercial warren for the hunting
of black skins signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”
Some attempts have been made to quantify the actual monetary profits
made by Europeans from engaging in the slave trade. The actual dimensions
are not easy to fix, but the profits were fabulous. John Hawkins made three
trips to West Africa in the 1560s, and stole Africans whom he sold to the
Spanish in America. On returning to England after the first trip, his profit
was so handsome that Queen Elizabeth I became interested in directly
participating in his next venture; and she provided for that purpose a ship
named the Jesus. Hawkins left with the Jesus to steal some more Africans,
and he returned to England with such dividends that Queen Elizabeth made
him a knight. Hawkins chose as his coat of arms the representation of an
African in chains.
Of course, there were inevitably voyages that failed, slave ships that
were lost at sea. Sometimes trade in Africa did well, while at other times it
was the profit in the Americas that was really substantial. When all the ups
and downs are ironed out, the level of profit had to be enough to justify
continued participation in that particular form of trade for centuries. A few
bourgeois scholars have tried to suggest that the trade in slaves did not have
worthwhile monetary returns. They would have us believe that the same
entrepreneurs whom they praise in other contexts as the heroes of capitalist
development were so dumb with regard to slavery and slave trade that for
centuries they absorbed themselves in a non-profit venture! This kind of
argument is worth noting more as an example of the distortions of which
white bourgeois scholarship is capable than as something requiring serious
consideration. Besides, quite apart from capital accumulation, Europe’s
trade with Africa gave numerous stimuli to Europe’s growth.
Central and South American gold and silver—mined by Africans—
played a crucial role in meeting the need for coin in the expanding capitalist
money economy of Western Europe, while African gold helped the
Portuguese to finance further navigations around the Cape of Good Hope
and into Asia from the fifteenth century on. African gold was also the main
source for the mintage of Dutch gold coin in the seventeenth century,
helping Amsterdam to become the financial capital of Europe in that period;
and further it was no coincidence that when the English struck a new gold
coin in 1663, they called it the “guinea.” The Encyclopaedia Britannica

explains that the guinea was “a gold coin at one time current in the United
Kingdom. It was first coined in 1663, in the reign of Charles II, from gold
imported from the Guinea Coast of West Africa by a company of merchants
trading under charter from the British crown—hence the name.”
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and for most of the
nineteenth century, the exploitation of Africa and African labor continued to
be a source for the accumulation of capital to be reinvested in Western
Europe. The African contribution to European capitalist growth extended
over such vital sectors as shipping, insurance, the formation of companies,
capitalist agriculture, technology, and the manufacture of machinery. The
effects were so wide-ranging that many are seldom brought to the notice of
the reading public. For instance, the French Saint-Malo fishing industry was
revived by the opening up of markets in the French slave plantations; while
the Portuguese in Europe depended heavily on dyes like indigo, camwood,
Brazil wood, and cochineal brought from Africa and the Americas. Gum
from Africa also played a part in the textile industry, which is
acknowledged as having been one of the most powerful engines of growth
within the European economy. Then there was the export of ivory from
Africa, enriching many merchants in London’s Mincing Lane, and
providing the raw material for industries in England, France, Germany,
Switzerland, and North America—producing items ranging from knife
handles to piano keys.
Africa’s being drawn into the orbit of Western Europe speeded up the
latter’s technological development. For example, the evolution of European
shipbuilding from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century was a
logical consequence of their monopoly of sea commerce in that period.
During that time, the North Africans were bottled up in the Mediterranean,
and although it was from them that Europeans initially borrowed a great
deal of nautical instrumentation, the North Africans made no further
worthwhile advances. Where the original European advantage was not
sufficient to assure supremacy, they deliberately undermined other people’s
efforts. The Indian navy, for instance, suffered from the rigid enforcement
of the English Navigation Laws. Yet, the expenses involved in building new
and better European ships were met from the profits of overseas trade with
India and Africa. The Dutch were pioneers in improving upon the caravels
which took the Spanish and Portuguese out across the Atlantic, and the

successive Dutch trading companies operating in Asia, Africa, and America
were the ones responsible for experimentation. By the eighteenth century,
the British were using Dutch know-how as a basis for surpassing the Dutch
themselves, and the Atlantic was their laboratory. It used to be said that the
slave trade was a training ground for British seamen. It is probably more
significant to note that the Atlantic trade was the stimulator of consistent
advances in naval technology.
The most spectacular feature in Europe which was connected with
African trade was the rise of seaport towns—notably, Bristol, Liverpool,
Nantes, Bordeaux, and Seville. Directly or indirectly connected to those
ports, there often emerged the manufacturing centers which gave rise to the
Industrial Revolution. In England, it was the county of Lancashire which
was the first center of the Industrial Revolution, and the economic advance
in Lancashire depended first of all on the growth of the port of Liverpool
through slave trading.
The connections between slavery and capitalism in the growth of
England is adequately documented by Eric Williams in his well-known
book Capitalism and Slavery. Williams gives a clear picture of the
numerous benefits which England derived from trading and exploiting
slaves, and he identified by name several of the personalities and capitalist
firms who were the beneficiaries. Outstanding examples are provided in the
persons of David and Alexander Barclay, who were engaging in slave trade
in 1756 and who later used the loot to set up Barclays Bank. There was a
similar progression in the case of Lloyds—from being a small London
coffee house to being one of the world’s largest banking and insurance
houses, after dipping into profits from slave trade and slavery. Then there
was James Watt, expressing eternal gratitude to the West Indian slave
owners who directly financed his famous steam engine, and took it from the
drawing board to the factory.
A similar picture would emerge from any detailed study of French
capitalism and slavery, given the fact that during the eighteenth century the
West Indies accounted for 20 per cent of France’s external trade—much
more than the whole of Africa in the present century. Of course, benefits
were not always directly proportionate to the amount of involvement of a
given European state in the Atlantic trade. The enormous profits of
Portuguese overseas enterprise passed rapidly out of the Portuguese

economy into the hands of the more developed Western European capitalist
nations who supplied Portugal with capital, ships, and trade goods.
Germany was included in this category, along with England, Holland, and
France.
Commerce deriving from Africa helped a great deal to strengthen
transnational links within the Western European economy, bearing in mind
that American produce was the consequence of African labor. Brazilian
dye-woods, for example, were re-exported from Portugal into the
Mediterranean, the North Sea, and the Baltic, and passed into the
continental cloth industry of the seventeenth century. Sugar from the
Caribbean was re-exported from England and France to other parts of
Europe to such an extent that Hamburg in Germany was the biggest sugarrefining center in Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Germany supplied manufactures to Scandinavia, Holland, England, France,
and Portugal for resale in Africa. England, France, and Holland found it
necessary to exchange various classes of goods the better to deal with
Africans for gold, slaves, and ivory. The financiers and merchants of Genoa
were the powers behind the markets of Lisbon and Seville; while Dutch
bankers played a similar role with respect to Scandinavia and England.
Western Europe was that part of Europe in which by the fifteenth century
the trend was most visible that feudalism was giving way to capitalism. (In
Eastern Europe, feudalism was still strong in the nineteenth century.) The
peasants were being driven off the land in England, and agriculture was
becoming technologically more advanced—producing food and fibers to
support a larger population and to provide a more effective basis for the
woolen and linen industries in particular. The technological base of
industry, as well as its social and economic organization, was being
transformed. African trade speeded up several aspects, including the
integration of Western Europe, as noted above. That is why the African
connection contributed not merely to economic growth (which relates to
quantitative dimensions) but also to real development in the sense of
increased capacity for further growth and independence.
In speaking of the European slave trade, mention must be made of the
U.S.A., not only because its dominant population was European but also
because Europe transferred its capitalist institutions more completely to
North America than to any other part of the globe, and established a

powerful form of capitalism—after eliminating the indigenous inhabitants
and exploiting the labor of millions of Africans. Like other parts of the New
World, the American colonies of the British crown were used as means of
accumulating primary capital for re-export to Europe. But the Northern
colonies also had direct access to benefits from slavery in the American
South and in the British and French West Indies. As in Europe, the profits
made from slavery and slave trade went firstly to commercial ports and
industrial areas, which meant mainly the northeastern seaboard district
known as New England and the state of New York. The Pan-Africanist, W.
E. B. Du Bois, in a study of the American slave trade, quoted a report of
1862 as follows:
The number of persons engaged in the slave trade and the amount of capital embarked in it
exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New York has been until of late (1862) the
principal port of the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Portland and
Boston are only second to her in that distribution.

American economic development up to mid-nineteenth century rested
squarely on foreign commerce, of which slavery was a pivot. In the 1830s,
slave-grown cotton accounted for about half the value of all exports from
the United States of America. Furthermore, in the case of the American
colonies of the eighteenth century, it can again be observed that Africa
contributed in a variety of ways—one thing leading to another. For instance,
in New England, trade with Africa, Europe, and the West Indies in slaves
and slave-grown products supplied cargo for their merchant marine,
stimulated the growth of their shipbuilding industry, built up their towns
and their cities, and enabled them to utilize their forests, fisheries, and soil
more effectively. Finally, it was the carrying trade between the West Indian
slave colonies and Europe which lay behind the emancipation of the
American colonies from British rule, and it was no accident that the
struggle for American independence started in the leading New England
town of Boston. In the nineteenth century, the connection with Africa
continued to play an indirect role in American political growth. In the first
place, profits from the slave activities went into the coffers of political
parties, and even more important the African stimulation and black labor
played a vital role in extending European control over the present territory
of the United States—notably in the South, but including also the “Wild
West,” where black cowboys were active.

Slavery is useful for early accumulation of capital, but it is too rigid for
industrial development. Slaves had to be given crude non-breakable tools
which held back the capitalist development of agriculture and industry. That
explains the fact that the northern portions of the U.S.A. gained far more
industrial benefits from slavery than the South, which actually had slave
institutions on its soil; and ultimately the stage was reached during the
American Civil War when the Northern capitalists fought to end slavery
within the boundaries of the U.S.A. so that the country as a whole could
advance to a higher level of capitalism.
In effect, one can say that within the U.S.A. the slave relations in the
South had by the second half of the nineteenth century come into conflict
with the further expansion of the productive base inside the U.S.A. as a
whole, and a violent clash ensued before the capitalist relations of legally
free labor became generalized. Europe maintained slavery in places that
were physically remote from European society; and therefore inside Europe
itself, capitalist relations were elaborated without being adversely affected
by slavery in the Americas. However, even in Europe there came a moment
when the leading capitalist states found that the trade in slaves and the use
of slave labor in the Americas was no longer in the interest of their further
development. Britain made this decision early in the nineteenth century, to
be followed later by France.
Since capitalism, like any other mode of production, is a total system
which involves an ideological aspect, it is also necessary to focus on the
effects of the ties with Africa on the development of ideas within the
superstructure of European capitalist society. In that sphere, the most
striking feature is undoubtedly the rise of racism as a widespread and
deeply rooted element in European thought. The role of slavery in
promoting racist prejudice and ideology has been carefully studied in
certain situations, especially in the U.S.A. The simple fact is that no people
can enslave another for centuries without coming out with a notion of
superiority, and when the color and other physical traits of those peoples
were quite different it was inevitable that the prejudice should take a racist
form. Within Africa itself, the same can be said for the situation in the Cape
Province of South Africa where white men have been establishing military
and social superiority over non-whites since 1650.

It would be much too sweeping a statement to say that all racial and
color prejudice in Europe derived from the enslavement of Africans and the
exploitation of non-white peoples in the early centuries of international
trade. There was also anti-Semitism at an even earlier date inside Europe
and there is always an element of suspicion and incomprehension when
peoples of different cultures come together. However, it can be affirmed
without reservations that the white racism which came to pervade the world
was an integral part of the capitalist mode of production. Nor was it merely
a question of how the individual white person treated a black person. The
racism of Europe was a set of generalizations and assumptions, which had
no scientific basis, but were rationalized in every sphere from theology to
biology.
Occasionally, it is mistakenly held that Europeans enslaved Africans for
racist reasons. European planters and miners enslaved Africans for
economic reasons, so that their labor power could be exploited. Indeed, it
would have been impossible to open up the New World and to use it as a
constant generator of wealth, had it not been for African labor. There were
no other alternatives: the American (Indian) population was virtually wiped
out and Europe’s population was too small for settlement overseas at that
time. Then, having become utterly dependent on African labor, Europeans
at home and abroad found it necessary to rationalize that exploitation in
racist terms as well. Oppression follows logically from exploitation, so as to
guarantee the latter. Oppression of African people on purely racial grounds
accompanied, strengthened, and became indistinguishable from oppression
for economic reasons.
C. L. R. James, noted Pan-Africanist and Marxist, once remarked that:
The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in
terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only
less grave than to make it fundamental.

It can further be argued that by the nineteenth century white racism had
become so institutionalized in the capitalist world (and notably in the
U.S.A.) that it sometimes ranked above the maximization of profit as a
motive for oppressing black people.
In the short run, European racism seemed to have done Europeans no
harm, and they used those erroneous ideas to justify their further

domination of non-European peoples in the colonial epoch. But the
international proliferation of bigoted and unscientific racist ideas was bound
to have its negative consequences in the long run. When Europeans put
millions of their brothers (Jews) into ovens under the Nazis, the chickens
were coming home to roost. Such behavior inside of “democratic” Europe
was not as strange as it is sometimes made out to be. There was always a
contradiction between the elaboration of democratic ideas inside Europe
and the elaboration of authoritarian and thuggish practices by Europeans
with respect to Africans. When the French Revolution was made in the
name of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” it did not extend to black Africans
who were enslaved by France in the West Indies and the Indian Ocean.
Indeed, France fought against the efforts of those people to emancipate
themselves, and the leaders of their bourgeois revolution said plainly that
they did not make it on behalf of black humanity.
It is not even true to say that capitalism developed democracy at home in
Europe and not abroad. At home, it was responsible for a talk or certain
rhetoric of freedom, but it was never extended from the bourgeoisie to the
oppressed workers; and the treatment of Africans must surely have made
such hypocrisy a habit of European life, especially within the ruling class.
How else can one explain the fact that the Christian church participated
fully in the maintenance of slavery and still talked about saving souls! The
hypocrisy reached its highest levels inside the U.S.A. The first martyr in the
American national war of liberation against the British colonialists in the
eighteenth century was an African descendant, Crispus Attucks; and both
slave and free Africans played a key role in Washington’s armies. And yet,
the American Constitution sanctioned the continued enslavement of
Africans. In recent times, it has become an object of concern to some
liberals that the U.S.A. is capable of war crimes of the order of My Lai in
Vietnam. But the fact of the matter is that the My Lais began with the
enslavement of Africans and American Indians. Racism, violence, and
brutality were the concomitants of the capitalist system when it extended
itself abroad in the early centuries of international trade.
Brief Guide to Reading

The subject of Africa’s contribution to European development reveals
several of the factors which limit a writer’s representation of reality.
Language and nationality, for instance, are effective barriers to
communication. Works in English seldom take account of the effect brought
about in France, Holland, or Portugal by participation in slaving and other
forms of commerce which exploited Africa in the pre-colonial period. The
ideological gulf is responsible for the fact that most bourgeois scholars
write about phenomena such as the Industrial Revolution in England
without once mentioning the European slave trade as a factor in primary
accumulation of capital. Marx himself had laid great emphasis on sources of
overseas capital accumulation. But even Marxists (as prominent as Maurice
Dobb and E. J. Hobsbawm) for many years concentrated on examining the
evolution of capitalism out of feudalism inside Europe, with only marginal
reference to the massive exploitation of Africans, Asians, and American
Indians.
ERIC WILLIAMS, Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944.
OLIVER COX, Capitalism as a System. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964.
Cox, an African American, makes the basic point that capitalism has from very early times been
an international system. Eric Williams, a West Indian, is very precise and very detailed in illustrating
the connection between British capitalism and the enslavement of Africans.
W. E. B. DU BOIS, The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave-Trade to the United States of America—
1638–1870. New York: Social Science Press, 1954.
RICHARD PARES, Yankees and Creoles: the Trade between North America and the West Indies before
the American Revolution. London: Longmans Green, 1956.
Both of these provide data on the contribution of African labor to the development of capitalism in
the U.S.A. in the epoch of slavery.
LEO HUBERMAN, Man’s Worldly Goods: The Story of the Wealth of Nations. New York and London:
Harper Bros., 1936.
F. CLAIREMONTE, Economic Liberalism and Underdevelopment.
Huberman’s book is an excellent overall treatment of the development of capitalism out of
feudalism in Europe. It includes a section in which the role of slavery is highlighted. Clairemonte’s
study accords recognition to the role played by the subcontinent of India in building Europe.
PHILIP D. CURTIN, The Image of Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.
WINTHROP JORDAN, White Over Black: American Attitudes towards the Negro. Chapel Hill:
Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, 1968.
These two texts are relevant to the question of the rise of white racism, although neither of the two
makes sufficiently explicit the connection between racism and capitalism.

CHAPTER

IV
Europe and the Roots of African Underdevelopment
—To 1885
• The European Slave Trade as a Basic Factor in African Underdevelopment
• Technical Stagnation and Distortion of the African Economy in the PreColonial Epoch • Continuing Politico-Military Developments in Africa—
1500 to 1885 • The Coming of Imperialism and Colonialism

THE RELATION BETWEEN THE DEGREE OF DESTITUTION OF PEOPLES OF Africa and the length and
nature of the exploitation they had to endure is evident. Africa remains marked by the crimes
of the slave-traders: up to now, her potentialities are restricted by under-population.
—AHMED SEKOU TOURE,
Republic of Guinea, 1962

The European Slave
Underdevelopment

Trade

as

a

Basic

Factor

in

African

To discuss trade between Africans and Europeans in the four centuries
before colonial rule is virtually to discuss slave trade. Strictly speaking, the
African only became a slave when he reached a society where he worked as
a slave. Before that, he was first a free man and then a captive.
Nevertheless, it is acceptable to speak of the trade in slaves when referring
to the shipment of captives from Africa to various other parts of the world
where they were to live and work as the property of Europeans. The title of
this section is deliberately chosen to call attention to the fact that the
shipments were all by Europeans to markets controlled by Europeans, and
this was in the interest of European capitalism and nothing else. In East
Africa and the Sudan, many Africans were taken by Arabs and were sold to
Arab buyers. This is known (in European books) as the “Arab Slave Trade.”
Therefore, let it be clear that when Europeans shipped Africans to European
buyers it was the “European Slave Trade” from Africa.
Undoubtedly, with few exceptions such as Hawkins, European buyers
purchased African captives on the coasts of Africa and the transaction
between themselves and Africans was a form of trade. It is also true that
very often a captive was sold and resold as he made his way from the
interior to the port of embarkation—and that too was a form of trade.
However, on the whole, the process by which captives were obtained on
African soil was not trade at all. It was through warfare, trickery, banditry,
and kidnaping. When one tries to measure the effect of European slave
trading on the African continent, it is essential to realize that one is
measuring the effect of social violence rather than trade in any normal sense
of the word.
Many things remain uncertain about the slave trade and its consequences
for Africa, but the general picture of destructiveness is clear, and that

destructiveness can be shown to be the logical consequence of the manner
of recruitment of captives in Africa. One of the uncertainties concerns the
basic question of how many Africans were imported. This has long been an
object of speculation, with estimates ranging from a few millions to over
one hundred million. A recent study has suggested a figure of about ten
million Africans landed alive in the Americas, the Atlantic islands, and
Europe. Because it is a low figure, it is already being used by European
scholars who are apologists for the capitalist system and its long record of
brutality in Europe and abroad. In order to whitewash the European slave
trade, they find it convenient to start by minimizing the numbers concerned.
The truth is that any figure of Africans imported into the Americas which is
narrowly based on the surviving records is bound to be low, because there
were so many people at the time who had a vested interest in smuggling
slaves (and withholding data). Nevertheless, if the low figure of ten million
was accepted as a basis for evaluating the impact of slaving on Africa as a
whole, the conclusions that could legitimately be drawn would confound
those who attempt to make light of the experience of the rape of Africans
from 1445 to 1870.
On any basic figure of Africans landed alive in the Americas, one would
have to make several extensions—starting with a calculation to cover
mortality in transshipment. The Atlantic crossing, or “Middle Passage,” as
it was called by European slavers, was notorious for the number of deaths
incurred, averaging in the vicinity of 15 to 20 per cent. There were also
numerous deaths in Africa between time of capture and time of
embarkation, especially in cases where captives had to travel hundreds of
miles to the coast. Most important of all (given that warfare was the
principal means of obtaining captives) it is necessary to make some
estimate as to the number of people killed and injured so as to extract the
millions who were taken alive and sound. The resultant figure would be
many times the millions landed alive outside of Africa, and it is that figure
which represents the number of Africans directly removed from the
population and labor force of Africa because of the establishment of slave
production by Europeans.
The massive loss to the African labor force was made more critical
because it was composed of able-bodied young men and young women.
Slave buyers preferred their victims between the ages of fifteen and thirty-

five, and preferably in the early twenties; the sex ratio being about two men
to one woman. Europeans often accepted younger African children, but
rarely any older person. They shipped the most healthy wherever possible,
taking the trouble to get those who had already survived an attack of
smallpox, and who were therefore immune from further attacks of that
disease, which was then one of the world’s great killer diseases.
Absence of data about the size of Africa’s population in the fifteenth
century makes it difficult to carry out any scientific assessment of the
results of the population outflow. But, nothing suggests that there was any
increase in the continent’s population over the centuries of slaving, although
that was the trend in other parts of the world. Obviously, fewer babies were
born than would otherwise have been the case if millions of child-bearing
ages were not eliminated. Besides, it is essential to recognize that the slave
trade across the Atlantic Ocean was not the only connection which
Europeans had with slaving in Africa. The slave trade on the Indian Ocean
has been called the “East African Slave Trade” and the “Arab Slave Trade”
for so long that it hides the extent to which it was also a European slave
trade. When the slave trade from East Africa was at its height in the
eighteenth century and in the early nineteenth century, the destination of
most captives was the European-owned plantation economies of Mauritius,
Réunion, and Seychelles—as well as the Americas, via the Cape of Good
Hope. Besides, Africans laboring as slaves in certain Arab countries in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were all ultimately serving the
European capitalist system which set up a demand for slave-grown
products, such as the cloves grown in Zanzibar under the supervision of
Arab masters.
No one has been able to come up with a figure representing total losses
to the African population sustained through the extraction of slave labor
from all areas to all destinations over the many centuries that slave trade
existed. However, on every other continent from the fifteenth century
onwards, the population showed constant and sometimes spectacular natural
increase; while it is striking that the same did not apply to Africa. One
European scholar gave the following estimates of world population (in
millions) according to continents:

None of the above figures is really precise, but they do indicate a consensus
among researchers on population that the huge African continent has an
abnormal record of stagnation in this respect, and there is no causative
factor other than the trade in slaves to which attention can be drawn.
An emphasis on population loss as such is highly relevant to the question
of socio-economic development. Population growth played a major role in
European development in providing labor, markets, and the pressures which
led to further advance. Japanese population growth had similar positive
effects; and in other parts of Asia which remained pre-capitalist, the size of
the population led to a much more intensive exploitation of the land than
has ever been the case in what is still a sparsely peopled African continent.
So long as the population density was low, then human beings viewed as
units of labor were far more important than other factors of production such
as land. From one end of the continent to the other, it is easy to find
examples showing that African people were conscious that population was
in their circumstances the most important factor of production. Among the
Bemba, for instance, numbers of subjects were held to be more important
than land. Among the Shambala of Tanzania, the same feeling was
expressed in the saying “A king is people.” Among the Balanta of GuineaBissau, the family’s strength is represented by the number of hands there
are to cultivate the land. Certainly, many African rulers acquiesced in the
European slave trade for what they considered to be reasons of self-interest,
but on no scale of rationality could the outflow of population be measured
as being anything but disastrous for African societies.
African economic activity was affected both directly and indirectly by
population loss. For instance, when the inhabitants of a given area were
reduced below a certain number in an environment where the tsetse fly was
present, the remaining few had to abandon the area. In effect, enslavement
was causing these people to lose their battle to tame and harness nature—a
battle which is at the basis of development. Violence almost meant
insecurity. The opportunity presented by European slave dealers became the

major (though not the only) stimulus for a great deal of social violence
between different African communities and within any given community. It
took the form more of raiding and kidnaping than of regular warfare, and
that fact increased the element of fear and uncertainty.
Both openly and by implication, all the European powers in the
nineteenth century indicated their awareness of the fact that the activities
connected with producing captives were inconsistent with other economic
pursuits. That was the time when Britain in particular wanted Africans to
collect palm produce and rubber and to grow agricultural crops for export in
place of slaves; and it was clear that slave raiding was violently conflicting
with that objective in Western, Eastern, and Central Africa. Long before
that date, Europeans accepted that fact when their self-interest was
involved. For example, in the seventeenth century, the Portuguese and
Dutch actually discouraged slave trade on the Gold Coast, for they
recognized that it would be incompatible with gold trade. However, by the
end of that century, gold had been discovered in Brazil, and the importance
of gold supplies from Africa was lessened. Within the total Atlantic pattern,
African slaves became more important than gold, and Brazilian gold was
offered for African captives at Whydah (Dahomey) and Accra. At that
point, slaving began undermining the Gold Coast economy and destroying
the gold trade. Slave raiding and kidnaping made it unsafe to mine and to
travel with gold; and raiding for captives proved more profitable than gold
mining. One European on the scene noted that “as one fortunate marauding
makes a native rich in a day, they therefore exert themselves rather in war,
robbery and plunder than in their old business of digging and collecting
gold.”
The above changeover from gold mining to slave raiding took place
within a period of a few years between 1700 and 1710, when the Gold
Coast came to supply about five thousand to six thousand captives per year.
By the end of the eighteenth century, a much smaller number of captives
were exported from the Gold Coast, but the damage had already been done.
It is worth noting that Europeans sought out different parts of West and
Central Africa at different times to play the role of major suppliers of slaves
to the Americas. This meant that virtually every section of the long western
coastline between the Senegal and Cunene rivers had at least a few years’
experience of intensive trade in slaves—with all its consequences. Besides,

in the history of eastern Nigeria, the Congo, northern Angola, and
Dahomey, there were periods extending over decades when exports
remained at an average of many thousands per year. Most of those areas
were also relatively highly developed within the African context. They were
leading forces inside Africa, whose energies would otherwise have gone
towards their own self-improvement and the betterment of the continent as
a whole.
The changeover to warlike activities and kidnaping must have affected
all branches of economic activity, and agriculture in particular.
Occasionally, in certain localities food production was increased to provide
supplies for slave ships, but the overall consequences of slaving on
agricultural activities in Western, Eastern, and Central Africa were negative.
Labor was drawn off from agriculture and conditions became unsettled.
Dahomey, which in the sixteenth century was known for exporting food to
parts of what is now Togo, was suffering from famines in the nineteenth
century. The present generation of Africans will readily recall that in the
colonial period when able-bodied men left their homes as migrant laborers,
that upset the farming routine in the home districts and often caused
famines. Slave trading after all meant migration of labor in a manner one
hundred times more brutal and disruptive.
To achieve economic development, one essential condition is to make
the maximum use of the country’s labor and natural resources. Usually, that
demands peaceful conditions, but there have been times in history when
social groups have grown stronger by raiding their neighbors for women,
cattle, and goods, because they then used the “booty” from the raids for the
benefit of their own community. Slaving in Africa did not even have that
redeeming value. Captives were shipped outside instead of being utilized
within any given African community for creating wealth from nature. It was
only as an accidental by-product that in some areas Africans who recruited
captives for Europeans realized that they were better off keeping some
captives for themselves. In any case, slaving prevented the remaining
population from effectively engaging in agriculture and industry, and it
employed professional slave-hunters and warriors to destroy rather than
build. Quite apart from the moral aspect and the immense suffering that it
caused, the European slave trade was economically totally irrational from
the viewpoint of African development.

For certain purposes, it is necessary to be more specific and to speak of
the trade in slaves not in general continent-wide terms but rather with
reference to the varying impact on several regions. The relative intensity of
slave-raiding in different areas is fairly well known. Some South African
peoples were enslaved by the Boers and some North African Moslems by
Christian Europeans, but those were minor episodes. The zones most
notorious for human exports were, firstly, West Africa from Senegal to
Angola along a belt extending about two hundred miles inland and,
secondly, that part of East-Central Africa which today covers Tanzania,
Mozambique, Malawi, northern Zambia, and eastern Congo. Furthermore,
within each of those broad areas, finer distinctions can be drawn.
It might therefore appear that slave trade did not adversely affect the
development of some parts of Africa, simply because exports were nonexistent or at a low level. However, the contention that European slave trade
was an underdeveloping factor for the continent as a whole must be upheld,
because it does not follow that an African district which did not trade with
Europe was entirely free from whatever influences were exerted by Europe.
European trade goods percolated into the deepest interior, and (more
significantly) the orientation of large areas of the continent towards human
exports meant that other positive interactions were thereby ruled out.
The above proposition may be more fully grasped by making some
comparisons. In any given economy, the various components reflect the
well-being of others. Therefore, when there is depression in one sector, that
depression invariably transfers itself to others to some extent. Similarly,
when there is buoyancy in one sector, then others benefit. Turning to
biological sciences, it will be found that students of ecology recognize that
a single change, such as the disappearance of a snail species, could trigger
off negative or positive reactions in spheres that superficially appear
unconnected. Parts of Africa left “free” by export trends in captives must
have been affected by the tremendous dislocation—in ways that are not
easy to comprehend, because it is so much a question of what might have
happended.
Hypothetical questions such as “What might have happened if . . . ?”
sometimes lead to absurd speculations. But it is entirely legitimate and very
necessary to ask “What might have happened in Barotseland (southern
Zambia) if there were not generalized slave trading across the whole belt of

central Africa which lay immediately north of Barotseland?” “What would
have happened in Buganda if the Katangese were concentrating on selling
copper to the Baganda instead of captives to Europeans?”
During the colonial epoch, the British forced Africans to sing,
Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves
Britons never never never shall be slaves.

The British themselves started singing the tune in the early eighteenth
century, at the height of using Africans as slaves. “What would have been
Britain’s level of development had millions of them been put to work as
slaves outside of their homelands over a period of four centuries?”
Furthermore, assuming that those wonderful fellows could never never
never have been slaves, one could speculate further on the probable effects
on their development had continental Europe been enslaved. Had that been
the case, its nearest neighbors would have been removed from the ambit of
fruitful trade with Britain. After all, trade between the British Isles and
places like the Baltic and the Mediterranean is unanimously considered by
scholars to have been the earliest stimulus to the English economy in the
late feudal and early capitalist period, even before the era of overseas
expansion.
One tactic that is now being employed by certain European (including
American) scholars is to say that, the European slave trade was undoubtedly
a moral evil, but it was economically good for Africa. Here attention will be
drawn only very briefly to a few of those arguments to indicate how
ridiculous they can be. One that receives much emphasis is that African
rulers and other persons obtained European commodities in exchange for
their captives, and this was how Africans gained “wealth.” This suggestion
fails to take into account the fact that several European imports were
competing with and strangling African products; it fails to take into account
the fact that none of the long list of European articles were of the type
which entered into the productive process, but were rather items to be
rapidly consumed or stowed away uselessly; and it incredibly overlooks the
fact that the majority of the imports were of the worst quality even as
consumer goods—cheap gin, cheap gunpowder, pots and kettles full of
holes, beads, and other assorted rubbish.

Following from the above, it is suggested that certain African kingdoms
grew strong economically and politically as a consequence of the trade with
Europeans. The greatest of the West African kingdoms, such as Oyo, Benin,
Dahomey, and Asante are cited as examples. Oyo and Benin were great
long before making contact with Europeans, and while both Dahomey and
Asante grew stronger during the period of the European slave trade, the
roots of their achievements went back to much earlier years. Furthermore—
and this is a major fallacy in the argument of the slave-trade apologists—the
fact that a given African state grew politically more powerful at the same
time as it engaged in selling captives to Europeans is not automatically to
be attributed to the credit of the trade in slaves. A cholera epidemic may kill
thousands in a country and yet the population increases. The increase
obviously came about in spite of and not because of the cholera. This simple
logic escapes those who speak about the European slave trade benefiting
Africa. The destructive tendency of slave trading can be clearly established;
and, wherever a state seemingly progressed in the epoch of slave trading,
the conclusion is simply that it did so in spite of the adverse effects of a
process that was more damaging than cholera. This is the picture that
emerges from a detailed study of Dahomey, for instance, and in the final
analysis although Dahomey did its best to expand politically and militarily
while still tied to slave trade, that form of economic activity seriously
undermined its economic base and left it much worse off.
A few of the arguments about the economic benefits of the European
slave trade for Africa amount to nothing more than saying that exporting
millions of captives was a way of avoiding starvation in Africa! To attempt
to reply to that would be painful and time-wasting. But, perhaps a slightly
more subtle version of the same argument requires a reply: namely, the
argument that Africa gained because in the process of slave trading new
food crops were acquired from the American continent and these became
staples in Africa. The crops in question are maize and cassava, which
became staples in Africa late in the nineteenth century and in the present
century. But the spread of food crops is one of the most common
phenomena in human history. Most crops originated in only one of the
continents, and then social contact caused their transfer to other parts of the
world. Trading in slaves has no special bearing on whether crops spread—
the simplest forms of trade would have achieved the same result. Today, the

Italians have (hard) wheat foods like spaghetti and macaroni as their staple,
while most Europeans use the potato. The Italians took the idea of the
spaghetti-type foods from the Chinese noodle after Marco Polo returned
from travels there, while Europe adopted the potato from American Indians.
In neither case were Europeans enslaved before they could receive a benefit
that was the logical heritage of all mankind, but Africans are to be told that
the European slave trade developed us by bringing us maize and cassava.
All of the above points are taken from books and articles published
recently, as the fruit of research in major British and American universities.
They are probably not the commonest views even among European
bourgeois scholars, but they are representative of a growing trend that
seems likely to become the new accepted orthodoxy in metropolitan
capitalist countries; and this significantly coincides with Europe’s struggle
against the further decolonization of Africa economically and mentally. In
one sense, it is preferable to ignore such rubbish and isolate our youth from
its insults; but unfortunately one of the aspects of current African
underdevelopment is that the capitalist publishers and bourgeois scholars
dominate the scene and help mold opinions the world over. It is for that
reason that writing of the type which justifies the trade in slaves has to be
exposed as racist bourgeois propaganda, having no connection with reality
or logic. It is a question not merely of history but of present-day liberation
struggle in Africa.
Technical Stagnation and Distortion of the African Economy in the PreColonial Epoch
It has already been indicated that in the fifteenth century European
technology was not totally superior to that of other parts of the world. There
were certain specific features which were highly advantageous to Europe—
such as shipping and (to a lesser extent) guns. Europeans trading to Africa
had to make use of Asian and African consumer goods, showing that their
system of production was not absolutely superior. It is particularly striking
that in the early centuries of trade, Europeans relied heavily on Indian
cloths for resale in Africa, and they also purchased cloths on several parts of
the West African coast for resale elsewhere. Morocco, Mauritania,
Senegambia, Ivory Coast, Benin, Yorubaland, and Loango were all

exporters to other parts of Africa—through European middlemen. Yet, by
the time that Africa entered the colonial era, it was concentrating almost
entirely on the export of raw cotton and the import of manufactured cotton
cloth. This remarkable reversal is tied to technological advance in Europe
and to stagnation of technology in Africa owing to the very trade with
Europe.
Cloth manufacture in the world went through a stage of handlooms and
small-scale craft production. Up to the sixteenth century, that was the
general pattern in Africa, Asia, and Europe: with Asian cloth-makers being
the most skilled in the world. India is the classic example where the British
used every means at their disposal to kill the cloth industry, so that British
cloth could be marketed everywhere, including inside India itself. In Africa,
the situation was not so clear-cut, nor did it require so much conscious
effort by Europeans to destroy African cloth manufacture, but the trend was
the same. Europe benefited technologically from its external trade contacts,
while Africa either failed to benefit or actually lost. Vital inventions and
innovations appeared in England in the late eighteenth century, after profits
from external trade had been reinvested. Indeed, the new machinery
represented the investment of primary capital accumulated from trading and
from slavery. African and Indian trade strengthened British industry, which
in turn crushed whatever industry existed in what is now called the
“underdeveloped” countries.
African demand for cloth was increasing rapidly in the fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, so that there was a market for all cloth
produced locally as well as room for imports from Europe and Asia. But,
directed by an acquisitive capitalist class, European industry increased its
capacity to produce on a large scale by harnessing the energy of wind,
water, and coal. European cloth industry was able to copy fashionable
Indian and African patterns, and eventually to replace them. Partly by
establishing a stranglehold on the distribution of cloth around the shores of
Africa, and partly by swamping African products by importing cloth in
bulk, European traders eventually succeeded in putting an end to the
expansion of African cloth manufacture.
There are many varied social factors which combine to determine when a
society makes a breakthrough from small-scale craft technology to
equipment designed to harness nature so that labor becomes more effective.

One of the major factors is the existence of a demand for more products
than can be made by hand, so that technology is asked to respond to a
definite social need—such as that for clothes. When European cloth became
dominant on the African market, it meant that African producers were cut
off from the increasing demand. The craft producers either abandoned their
tasks in the face of cheap available European cloth, or they continued on the
same small hand-worked instruments to create styles and pieces for
localized markets. Therefore, there was what can be called “technological
arrest” or stagnation, and in some instances actual regression, since people
forgot even the simple techniques of their forefathers. The abandonment of
traditional iron smelting in most parts of Africa is probably the most
important instance of technological regression.
Development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth. It means that
an economy must register advances which in turn will promote further
progress. The loss of industry and skill in Africa was extremely small, if we
measure it from the viewpoint of modern scientific achievements or even by
standards of England in the late eighteenth century. However, it must be
borne in mind that to be held back at one stage means that it is impossible to
go on to a further stage. When a person was forced to leave school after
only two years of primary school education, it is no reflection on him that
he is academically and intellectually less developed than someone who had
the opportunity to be schooled right through to university level. What
Africa experienced in the early centuries of trade was precisely a loss of
development opportunity, and this is of the greatest importance.
One of the features associated with technological advance is a spirit of
scientific inquiry closely related to the process of production. This leads to
inventiveness and innovation. During the period of capitalist development
in Europe, this was very much the case, and historians lay great emphasis
on the spirit of inventiveness of the English in the eighteenth century.
Socialist societies do not leave inventions merely to chance or good luck—
they actively cultivate tendencies for innovation. For instance, in the
German Democratic Republic, the youth established a “Young Innovators’
Fair” in 1958, calling upon the intellectual creativity of socialist youth, so
that within ten years over two thousand new inventions were presented at
that fair. The connection between Africa and Europe from the fifteenth

century onwards served to block this spirit of technological innovation both
directly and indirectly.
The European slave trade was a direct block, in removing millions of
youth and young adults who are the human agents from whom
inventiveness springs. Those who remained in areas badly hit by slave
capturing were preoccupied about their freedom rather than with
improvements in production. Besides, even the busiest African in West,
Central, or East Africa was concerned more with trade than with
production, because of the nature of the contacts with Europe; and that
situation was not conducive to the introduction of technological advances.
The most dynamic groups over a great area of Africa became associated
with foreign trade—notably, the Afro-Portuguese middlemen of Upper
Guinea, the Akan market women, the Aro traders of Mozambique, and the
Swahili and Wanyamwezi of East Africa. The trade which they carried on
was in export items like captives and ivory which did not require the
invention of machinery. Apart from that, they were agents for distributing
European imports.
When Britain was the world’s leading economic power, it used to be
referred to as a nation of shopkeepers: but most of the goods in their shops
were produced by themselves, and it was while grappling with the problems
posed by production that their engineers came up with so many inventions.
In Africa, the trading groups could make no contribution to technological
improvement because their role and preoccupation took their minds and
energies away from production.
Apart from inventiveness, we must also consider the borrowing of
technology. When a society for whatever reason finds itself technologically
trailing behind others, it catches up not so much by independent inventions
but by borrowing. Indeed, very few of man’s major scientific discoveries
have been separately discovered in different places by different people.
Once a principle or a tool is known, it spreads or diffuses to other peoples.
Why then did European technology fail to make its way into Africa during
the many centuries of contact between the two continents? The basic reason
is that the very nature of Afro-European trade was highly unfavorable to the
movement of positive ideas and techniques from the European capitalist
system to the African pre-capitalist (communal, feudal, and pre-feudal)
system of production.

The only non-European society that borrowed effectively from Europe
and became capitalist is that of Japan. Japan was already a highly developed
feudal society progressing towards its own capitalist forms in the nineteenth
century. Its people were neither enslaved nor colonized by Europe, and its
foreign trade relations were quite advantageous. For instance, Japanese
textile manufacturers had the stimulus of their own growing internal market
and some abroad in Asia and Europe. Under those circumstances, the young
Japanese capitalist class (including many former feudalist landowners)
borrowed technology from Europe and successfully domesticated it before
the end of the nineteenth century. The use of this example from outside
Africa is meant to emphasize that for Africa to have received European
technology the demand would have had to come from inside Africa—and
most probably from a class or group who saw profit in the new technology.
There had to be both willingness on the part of Europeans to transfer
technology and African socio-economic structures capable of making use of
that technology and internalizing it.
Hunting for elephants or captives did not usually induce in Africa a
demand for any technology other than firearms. The lines of economic
activity attached to foreign trade were either destructive, as slavery was, or
at best purely extractive, like ivory hunting and cutting camwood trees.
Therefore, there was no reason for wanting to call upon European skills.
The African economies would have had little room for such skills unless
negative types of exports were completely stopped. A remarkable fact that
is seldom brought to light is that several African rulers in different parts of
the continent saw the situation clearly, and sought European technology for
internal development, which was meant to replace the trade in slaves.
Europeans deliberately ignored those African requests that Europe
should place certain skills and techniques at their disposal. This was an
element in the Kongo situation of the early sixteenth century, which has
already been mentioned. It happened in Ethiopia also, though in Ethiopia no
trade in captives was established with Europeans. A Portuguese embassy
reached the Ethiopian court in 1520. Having examined Portuguese swords,
muskets, clothes, books, and other objects, the emperor Lebna Dengel felt
the need to introduce European technical knowledge into Ethiopia.
Correspondence exists between the emperor and European rulers, such as
kings Manuel I and John III of Portugal, and Pope Leo X, in which requests

were made for European assistance to Ethiopian industry. Until late in the
nineteenth century, Ethiopian petitions to that effect were being repeated
with little or no success.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, there were two further
examples of African rulers appreciating European technology, and stating
their preference for skills and not slave ships. When Agaja Trudo of
Dahomey sought to stop the trade in captives, he made an appeal to
European craftsmen, and he sent an ambassador to London for that purpose.
One European who stayed at the court of Dahomey in the late 1720s told his
countrymen that “if any tailor, carpenter, smith or any other sort of white
man that is free be willing to come here, he will find very good
encouragement.” The Asantehene Opoku Ware (1720–50) also asked
Europeans to set up factories and distilleries in Asante, but he got no
response.
Bearing in mind the history of Japan, it should be noted that the first
requests for technical assistance came from the Ethiopian and Kongo
empires, which in the sixteenth century were at a level undoubtedly
comparable to that of most European feudal states, with the important
exception that they had not produced the seeds of capitalism. During the
eighteenth century the great African states of Dahomey and Asante became
prominent. They had passed out of the communal stage and had a somewhat feudal class stratification along with specialization in many activities
such as the working of gold, iron, and cloth. Asante society under Opoku
Ware had already shown a capacity for seeking out innovations, by going to
the trouble of taking imported silk and unraveling it so as to combine the
silk threads with cotton to make the famous kente cloth. In other words,
there would have been no difficulty in such African societies mastering
European technical skills and bridging the rather narrow gap which existed
between them and Europe at that time.
Well into the nineteenth century, Europe displayed the same indifference
to requests for practical assistance from Africa, although by that period both
African rulers and European capitalists were talking about replacing slave
trade. In the early nineteenth century, one king of Calabar (in eastern
Nigeria) wrote the British asking for a sugar refinery; while around 1804
King Adandozan of Dahomey was bold enough to ask for a firearms
factory! By that date, many parts of West Africa were going to war with

European firearms and gunpowder. There grew up a saying in Dahomey
that “He who makes the powder wins the war,” which was a far-sighted
recognition that Africans were bound to fall before the superiority of
Europeans in the field of arms technology. Of course, Europeans were also
fully aware that their arms technology was decisive, and there was not the
slightest chance that they would have agreed to teach Africans to make
firearms and ammunition.
The circumstances of African trade with Europe were unfavorable to
creating a consistent African demand for technology relevant to
development; and when that demand was raised it was ignored or rejected
by the capitalists. After all, it would not have been in the interests of
capitalism to develop Africa. In more recent times, Western capitalists had
refused to build the Volta River Dam for Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah,
until they realized that the Czechoslovakians would do the job; they refused
to build the Aswan Dam for Egypt, and the Soviet Union had to come to the
rescue; and in a similar situation they placed obstacles in the way of the
building of a railway from Tanzania to Zambia, and it was the socialist state
of China that stepped in to express solidarity with African peasants and
workers in a practical way. Placing the whole question in historical
perspective allows us to see that capitalism has always discouraged
technological evolution in Africa, and blocks Africa’s access to its own
technology. As will be seen in a subsequent section, capitalism introduced
into Africa only such limited aspects of its material culture as were essential
to more efficient exploitation, but the general tendency has been for
capitalism to underdevelop Africa in technology.
The European slave trade and overseas trade in general had what are
known as “multiplier effects” on Europe’s development in a very positive
sense. This means that the benefits of foreign contacts extended to many
areas of European life not directly connected with foreign trade, and the
whole society was better equipped for its own internal development. The
opposite was true of Africa not only in the crucial sphere of technology but
also with regard to the size and purpose of each economy in Africa. Under
the normal processes of evolution, an economy grows steadily larger so that
after a while two neighboring economies merge into one. That was
precisely how national economies were created in the states of Western
Europe through the gradual combination of what were once separate

provincial economies. Trade with Africa actually helped Europe to weld
together more closely the different national economies, but in Africa there
was disruption and disintegration at the local level. At the same time, each
local economy ceased to be directed exclusively or even primarily towards
the satisfaction of the wants of its inhabitants; and (whether or not the
particular Africans recognized it) their economic effort served external
interests and made them dependent on those external forces based in
Western Europe. In this way, the African economy taken as a whole was
diverted away from its previous line of development and became distorted.
It has now become common knowledge that one of the principal reasons
why genuine industrialization cannot easily be realized in Africa today is
that the market for manufactured goods in any single African country is too
small, and there is no integration of the markets across large areas of Africa.
The kind of relationship which Africa has had with Europe from the very
beginning has worked in a direction opposite to integration of local
economies. Certain interterritorial links established on the continent were
broken down after the fifteenth century because of European trade. Several
examples arose on the West African coast down to Angola, because in those
parts European trade was most voluminous, and the surviving written
record is also more extensive.
When the Portuguese arrived in the region of modern Ghana in the
1470s, they had few commodities to offer the inhabitants in exchange for
the gold coveted by Europe. However, they were able to transship from
Benin in Nigeria supplies of cotton cloths, beads, and female slaves, which
were salable on the Gold Coast. The Portuguese were responding to a given
demand on the Gold Coast so that a previous trade must have been in
existence between the people of Benin and those of the Gold Coast,
particularly the Akan. The Akan were gold producers, and the people of
Benin were specialist craftsmen who had a surplus of cloth and beads which
they manufactured themselves. As an expansionist state with a large army,
Benin also had access to prisoners of war; while the Akan seemed
concerned with building their own population and labor force, so the latter
acquired female captives from Benin and rapidly integrated them as wives.
When the Portuguese intervened in this exchange, it was subordinated to the
interests of European trade. As soon as Portugal and other European nations
had sufficient goods so as not to be dependent on the re-export of certain

commodities from Benin, then all that remained were the links between the
Gold Coast and Europe on the one hand and between Benin and Europe on
the other.
Probably, Benin products had reached the Gold Coast by way of the
creeks behind the coast of what is now Dahomey and Togo. Therefore, it
would have been more convenient when Europeans established a direct link
across the open sea. As pointed out earlier, the superiority of Europeans at
sea was of the greatest strategic value, along with their organizational
ability. This was illustrated in several places, beginning with the Maghreb
and Mauritania. After the Portuguese took control of the Atlantic coast of
Northwest Africa, they were able to secure horses, woolen goods, and
beads, which they shipped farther south to West Africa for gold and slaves;
up to the early sixteenth century, the most important article brought by the
Portuguese for trade in Senegambia was the horse. In exchange for one
horse they received as many as fifteen captives. North African woolens and
beads were also utilized by the Portuguese in buying gold on the river
Gambia and as far south as Sierra Leone.
It needs to be recalled that the Western Sudan had links with the West
African coast and with North Africa. Long before the European arrival,
horses were moving from North Africa to be interbred with local West
African stock. Long before the European arrival, the Arabs and
Mauritanians traveled to the river Senegal and farther south to meet the
Mandinga Djola traders and hand over to them products such as beads made
in Ceuta and cloth spun from the wool of North African sheep. With the
advantage of rapidity of transport by sea as opposed to overland across the
desert, the Portuguese were in effect breaking up the economic integration
of the region. As with the Benin-Akan example, the point to note is that
after the Portuguese became middlemen they had the opportunity of
developing a new trade pattern by which both Northwest Africa and West
Africa looked to Europe and forgot about each other.
A similar situation came into existence on the Upper Guinea coast, and
this time the European exploitation was aided by the presence of white
settlers in the Cape Verde Islands. The Portuguese and the Cape Verde
settlers broke into the pattern of local Upper Guinea trade as early as the
1470s. They intervened in transfers of raw cotton and indigo dye from one
African community to another, and the Cape Verdean settlers established a

flourishing cotton-growing and cotton-manufacturing industry. They used
labor and techniques from the mainland, and exported the finished products
along the length of the coast down to Accra.
The Portuguese also took over the trade in cowries in the Kongo and its
offshore islands, the trade in salt along the Angolan coast, and the trade in
high-quality palm cloth between northern and southern Angola. In some
instances, they achieved dominance not just because of their ships and
commercial skills but also by the use of force—provided they were
operating on the coast and could bring their cannon into use. In East Africa,
for instance, the Portuguese used violence to capture trade from the Arabs
and Swahili. The disruption of African commerce between the Ivory Coast
and the Gold Coast followed that pattern. A strong coastal canoe trade
existed between these two regions, with the people of Cape Lahou (modern
Ivory Coast) sailing past Cape Three Points to sell their cloth as far east as
Accra. The Portuguese set up a fort at Axim near Cape Three Points to
service gold trade with the hinterland; and one of its functions was to chop
the east-west coastal African trade. They banned Axim residents from going
to Cape Lahou, and they stopped canoes from Ivory Coast from traveling
east beyond Axim. The purpose was obviously to make both areas separate
economic entities exclusively tied to Europe.
The above-mentioned African commerce proved to have deep roots. The
Dutch found it still going on when they took over Axim in 1637. The
servants of the Dutch West India Company which was operating on the
Gold Coast wanted to put a complete stop to the African trade; and when
that was not achieved they tried to force the people of the Ivory Coast to
buy a certain amount of Dutch goods. The Dutch ruled that each Axim
canoe-man going to Cape Lahou should carry Dutch goods worth at least
four ounces of gold. The purpose was to convert a purely inter-African
exchange into a European-African trade.
What was doubly detrimental to African attempts to integrate their own
economies was the fact that when Europeans became middlemen in local
trade networks, they did so mainly to facilitate the extraction of captives,
and thereby subordinated the whole economy to the European slave trade.
In Upper Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands, the Portuguese and their
mulatto descendants engaged in a large variety of exchanges involving
cotton, dyes, kola nuts, and European products. The purpose of it all was to

fill the holds of slave ships. In Congo and Angola, the same picture
emerges. The salt, cowry shells, and palm cloth that came in Portuguese
hands made up for their shortage of trade goods and served to purchase
captives on different parts of the coast and deep in the interior.
The element of subordination and dependence is crucial to an
understanding of African underdevelopment today, and its roots lie far back
in the era of international trade. It is also worth noting that there is a type of
false or pseudo integration which is a camouflage for dependence. In
contemporary times, it takes the form of free-trade areas in the formerly
colonized sections of the world. Those free-trade areas are made to order
for the penetration of multinational corporations. From the fifteenth century
onwards, pseudo integration appeared in the form of the interlocking of
African economies over long distances from the coast, so as to allow the
passage of human captives and ivory from a given point inland to a given
port on the Atlantic or Indian Ocean. For example, captives were moved
from Congo through what is now Zambia and Malawi to Mozambique,
where Portuguese, Arab, or French buyers took them over. That was not
genuine integration of the economies of the African territories concerned.
Such trade merely represented the extent of foreign penetration, thereby
stifling local trades.
The West African gold trade was not destroyed, but it became directly
dependent on European buyers by being diverted from the northward routes
across the Sahara. Within the savannah belt of the Western Sudan, the transSaharan gold trade had nourished one of the most highly developed political
zones in all Africa from the fifth century onwards. But it was more
convenient for Europe to obtain its gold on the West Coast than through
North African intermediaries, and one is left to speculate on what might
have occurred in the Western Sudan if there had been a steady increase in
the gold trade over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nevertheless,
there is something to be said in favor of African trade with Europe in this
particular commodity. Gold production involved mining and an orderly
system of distribution within Africa. Akan country and parts of Zimbabwe
and Mozambique sustained flourishing socio-political systems up to the
nineteenth century, largely because of gold production.
Certain benefits also derived from the export of ivory. The search for
ivory became the most important activity in several East African societies at

one time or another, sometimes in combination with the trade in captives.
The Wanyamwezi of Tanzania were East Africa’s best known traders—
acquiring their reputation through carrying goods for hundreds of miles
between Lake Tanganyika and the Indian Ocean. When the Wanyamwezi
gave their attention to the export of ivory, this sparked off other beneficial
developments, such as increased trading in hoes, food, and salt between
themselves and their neighbors.
Yet, ivory was an asset that was rapidly exhausted in any given region,
and the struggle to secure new supplies could lead to violence comparable
to that which accompanied the search for human captives. Besides, the most
decisive limitation of ivory trade was the fact that it did not grow logically
from local needs and local production. Large quantities of ivory were not
required by any society inside Africa, and no African society turned to
elephant hunting and ivory collection on a big scale until the demand came
from Europe or Asia. Any African society which took ivory exports
seriously then had to restructure its economy so as to make ivory trade
successful. That in turn led to excessive and undesirable dependence on the
overseas market and an external economy. There could be growth in the
volume of commerce and the rise of some positive side effects, but there
was decrease in the capacity to achieve economic independence and selfsustaining social progress. Besides, at all times one must keep in mind the
dialectical opposite of the trade in Africa: namely, production in Europe or
in America under European control. The few socially desirable by-products
of elephant hunting within Africa were chicken feed in comparison with the
profits, technology, and skills associated with the product in Europe. In that
way, the gap between Africa and Europe was constantly widening; and it is
on the basis of that gap that we arrive at development and
underdevelopment.
Continuing Politico-Military Developments in Africa—1500 to 1885
Modern African nationalist historians correctly stress that Africa had a
meaningful past long before the coming of Europeans. They also stress that
Africans made their own history long after coming into contact with
Europe, and indeed right up to the period of colonization. That Africancentered approach to the continent’s past is quite compatible with one

which equally emphasizes the transformatory role of external forces, such
as overseas trade in slaves, gold, ivory. The reconciliation of the two
approaches is facilitated by bearing in mind the following three factors:
(1) The external (and mainly European) impact up to 1885 was very
uneven in geographical terms, with the coasts being obviously more
exposed.
(2) Commerce with Europeans affected different aspects of African life
in varying degrees, with the political, military, and ideological
apparatus being virtually untouched.
(3) Dynamic features of independent African evolution and
development (as illustrated in Chapter 2) continued to operate after
1500.
It has already been argued that it would be misleading to try to
compartmentalize Africa into areas that were affected by slave trading and
those which were not, for the continent as a whole had to bear the costs.
However, for present purposes, it is enough to make the crude distinction
between those parts of Africa which were directly caught up in Europeangenerated activities and those parts which to all appearances continued in
the traditional manner.
Developments continued in certain areas such as south Central Africa,
because the population there was free to pursue a path dictated by the
interplay between African people and the African environment in the
particular localities. Besides, there were achievements even in those
societies under the heaviest bombardment of slaving. Slave trading led to
the commercial domination of Africa by Europe, within the context of
international trade. In very few instances did Europeans manage to displace
African political authorities in the various social systems. So African states
in close contact with Europe in the pre-colonial era nevertheless had scope
for political maneuver, and their evolution could and did continue.
Military conquest of Africa awaited the years of the imperialist
Scramble. In pre-colonial centuries of contact with Europe, African armies
were in existence, with all the socio-political implications which attach to
an armed sector in society. Equally important was the fact that direct
imports from Europe in the cultural and ideological spheres were virtually
nil. Christianity tried sporadically and ambivalently to make an impact on
some parts of the continent. But most of the few missionaries in places like

the Congo, Angola, and Upper Guinea concentrated on blessing Africans as
they were about to be launched across the Atlantic into slavery. As it was,
Christianity continued only in Ethiopia, where it had indigenous roots.
Elsewhere, there flourished Islam and other religions which had nothing to
do with European trade. As before, religion continued to act as an element
of the superstructure, which was crucial in the development of the state.
So long as there is political power, so long as a people can be mobilized
to use weapons, and so long as a society has the opportunity to define its
own ideology and culture, then the people of that society have some control
over their own destinies, in spite of constraints such as those imposed as the
African continent slipped into orbit as a satellite of capitalist Europe. After
all, although historical development is inseparable from material conditions
and the state of technology, it is also partially controlled by a people’s
consciousness at various stages. That is part of the interdependence of base
and superstructure alluded to at the outset.
Revolution is the most dramatic appearance of a conscious people or
class on the stage of history; but, to greater or lesser extent, the ruling class
in any society is always engaged in the developmental process as conscious
instruments of change or conservatism. Attention in this section will be
focused on the political sphere and its power companion, the military. In
those areas, Africans were able to excel even in the face of slave trading.
Politico-military development in Africa from 1500 to 1885 meant that
African social collectives had become more capable of defending the
interests of their members, as opposed to the interests of people outside the
given community. It also meant that the individual in a politically mature
and militarily strong state would be free from external threat of physical
removal. He would have more opportunities to apply his own skill in fields
as diversified as minstrelsy and bronze-working, under the protection of the
state. He could also use his creativity and inventiveness to refine the
religion of his people, or to work out a more manageable constitution, or to
contribute to new techniques of war, or to advance agriculture and trade. Of
course, it is also true that the benefits of all such contributions went mainly
to a small section of African society, both within and without the zone of
slaving; for, as communalism receded, the principle of egalitarian
distribution was disregarded. These various points can be illustrated by

concrete historical examples drawn from all over the continent during the
pre-colonial period in question.
The Yoruba
In a previous discussion, the Yoruba state of Oyo was merely listed as one
of the outstanding representatives of African development up to the eve of
European arrival in the fifteenth century. The remarkable fourteenth- and
fifteenth-century artistic achievements of Oyo, of its parent state of Ife, and
of the related state of Benin have been well studied, because of the
preservation of ivory, terracotta, and bronze sculptures. It is clear that the
earliest bronzes were the best and that there was a deterioration in execution
and sensitivity from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century.
However, politically, states such as Oyo and Benin did continue to prosper
for a very long time after the arrival of Europeans on the West African
coast. Since Oyo and the Yoruba people were within an intensive area of
slave trading, their fate between 1500 and 1885 is of considerable
significance.
The kingdom of Oyo kept fairly clear of any involvement with slave
trading until the late eighteenth century. Instead, its people concentrated on
local production and trade, and on the consolidation and expansion of the
trade. Indeed, although the nucleus of the Oyo kingdom had already been
established in the fifteenth century, it was during the next three centuries
that it expanded to take control of most of what was later termed Western
Nigeria, large zones north of the river Niger and the whole of what is now
Dahomey. In effect, it was an empire, ruled over by an Alafin in
conjunction with an aristocracy. It was in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries that the subtle constitutional mechanisms which
regulated relations between the Alafin and his principal subjects and
between the capital and the provinces were crystalized.
In so far as Oyo had an interest in the coast, it was as an outlet more for
cloth than for slaves. Being some distance inland, the Yoruba of Oyo
concentrated on relations with the hinterland, thereby connecting with the
Western Sudanic trading zone. It was from the north that Oyo got the horses
which made its armies feared and respected. Oyo is a prime example of that
African development which had its roots deep in the past, in the

contradictions between man and environment. Its people continued to
develop on the basis of forces which they did not consciously manipulate,
as well as through the deliberate utilization of political techniques.
Early in the nineteenth century, Oyo and Yorubaland in general began to
export captives in considerable numbers. They were obtained partly by
military campaigns outside Yorubaland, but also through local slave
procuring. Local slave procuring involved kidnaping, armed raids,
uncertainty, and disunity. Those features, together with internal
constitutional tensions and an external threat from the Islamic north,
brought about the downfall of the Oyo empire by about 1830. The famous
Yoruba ancestral home of Ife was also despoiled and its citizens turned into
refugees, because of quarrels among the Yoruba over kidnaping for sale into
slavery.
But it was testimony to the level of development in that part of Africa
that within a few years the inhabitants were able to reconstruct new political
states: notably those of New Oyo, Ibadan, Ajaye, Abeokuta, and Ijebu—
each centered on a town, and with enough land for successful agriculture.
Until the British arrived to kindly impose “order” in Nigeria, the Yoruba
people kept experimenting with various political forms, with heavy
emphasis on the military, and keeping to the religion of their fore-fathers.
Being conscious of territorial boundaries, the inhabitants and rulers of
any given state invariably become involved in clashes with neighboring
states. The state in the feudal epoch in Europe and Asia was particularly
concerned with its military capacity. The ruling class comprised in whole or
in part the professional fighting forces of the state. One rationalization by
which they justified their enjoyment of the major portion of the surplus of
society was that they offered armed protection to the ordinary peasant or
serf. This generalization was as true of nineteenth-century Yorubaland as it
was of Prussia and Japan. Without a doubt, Africans in that region were
proceeding along the line of development leading to social organization
comparable to feudalism in Europe, Asia, and such parts of Africa as
Ethiopia and the Maghreb, which had been at that stage some centuries
earlier.
In the Oyo empire, the civil power was dominant, and the military
generals were servants of the king. Subsequently, however, the military took
over effective political power. For instance, the Ajaye state was founded by

Kurunmi, said to have been the greatest Yoruba general of those troubled
times following the fall of Oyo. Kurunmi established a personal military
ascendancy in Ajaye. Ibadan was slightly different, in that there it was a
group of military officers who collectively formed the political elite. Efforts
to put civilians back in power were half-hearted and unsuccessful. After all,
the town itself grew out of a military encampment.
The city-state of Abeokuta perhaps made the most consistent effort to
make the military an arm of the civil state. But, what mattered most was the
defense of the townships within the fortified walls of Abeokuta. Abeokuta’s
fortified walls became famous as the place where many a rival army met
disaster; and, under those circumstances, the Ologun, or war-chiefs, were
the social and political powers.
While the militarization of politics was going on in Yorubaland, changes
were taking place in the structure of the society, which brought about
sharper class stratification. Numerous captives were taken in war, most of
whom were sold to Europeans, so that Yorubaland became notorious as a
slave-supplying region right up to the 1860s. But many war prisoners were
retained locally, in conditions approximating either to slavery or to serfdom,
depending on whether or not they were first-generation captives.
Sometimes, refugees fleeing from destroyed towns also had no option other
than to become clients or serfs of other free Yoruba. Such refugees were
made to give service to their new overlords by farming the land, in return
for armed protection. However, serfs were also used as soldiers, which
means that they had access to the means of production (the land) only
through meeting an obligation in military labor. That is a measure of the
extent to which the principle of kinship had been weakened, and it indicates
that, in contrast to the typical communal village, states such as those in
nineteenth-century Yorubaland allocated roles and rewards to their citizens
on the basis of reciprocal obligations characteristic of feudalism.
During the period under discussion, the division of labor among the
Yoruba was extended with the rise of professional soldiers, or “war-boys,”
as they were called. The professional soldiers, who were sons of aristocrats,
left farming disdainfully to prisoners and serfs—the large number of whom
insured agricultural plenty. Other branches of economic activity also
flourished, notably the making of cloth and palm oil and the trade in various
products. These things were true, in spite of the fact that by that time some

labor was being lost both in the form of slaves exported and in the form of
labor power devoted to capturing people for export. European visitors to
Yorubaland in the middle of the nineteenth century could still admire the
level of its material culture, along with the highly colorful and impressive
aspects of its non-material culture such as the annual “Yam Festivals” and
the ritual of the religious cults of Shango, Ogboni, and others.
One item of European technology that was anxiously sought by Africans
and that was fairly easily obtainable from Europeans was the firearm. From
the 1820s onwards, the Yoruba acquired European firearms in large
numbers, and integrated them into the pattern of trade, politics, and military
strategy. On the eve of colonial rule, Yoruba generals were reaching out for
breech-loading rifles and even rockets; but Europe stepped in too quickly
for that move to get very far. Through a series of actions which started as
early as 1860 in Lagos (and which included missionary infiltration as well
as armed invasion) the British managed to bring that part of Africa under
colonial rule.
Economic development is a matter of an increasing capacity to produce,
and it is tied up with patterns of land tenure and class relations. These basic
facts were well brought out both positively and negatively in Yoruba
history, in the decades before independence was lost. So long as agricultural
production was not disrupted, then for so long any given Yoruba state
remained in a strong position. Ibadan was once the greatest military power
in Yorubaland, selling captives as well as retaining many for use as laborers
for its own benefit. But Ibadan’s farming areas were hit by war, and
Ibadan’s rulers also started removing prisoners farming the land and selling
them instead to Europeans. That became necessary because Ibadan needed
firearms, and those could be obtained only by selling slaves. It was at that
point that the undermining effect of the presence of European slave buyers
on the coast became really paramount.
By selling its own captives and serfs, Ibadan was undermining its own
socio-economic base. If the prisoners were to develop into a true serf class,
then those prisoners would have had to be guaranteed the right to remain
fixed on the soil and protected from sale. This was one of the reasons why
slavery as a mode of production in Europe had to give way to serfdom and
feudalism; and, under normal circumstances, Yoruba society did rapidly
guarantee the irremovability of those captives who were integrated into the

local production pattern. But, forces unleashed by the European presence as
slave buyers were too great to be withstood, and any hope of solving the
problem disappeared with the loss of political power under colonialism.
Too often, historians lay undue emphasis on the failure of nineteenthcentury Yoruba states to unite and produce an entity as large as the former
empire of Oyo. But, firstly, the size of a political unit is not the most
important criterion for evaluating the achievement of its peoples. And,
secondly, a given people can disintegrate politically and later integrate even
more effectively. The Yoruba states of Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ajaye, had
populations of up to 100,000 citizens—as large as most of the city-states,
principalities, and palatinates of feudal Germany. That is a comparison
which is worth bringing to light, and it is one that struck European
observers who happened to visit Yorubaland in the middle years of the
nineteenth century.
Germany has long had a common culture and language, and there was a
form of political unity under the Holy Roman Empire from the twelfth to
the fifteenth century. However, after the Reformation and the breakup of the
Holy Roman Empire, the German people were divided into as many
separate political entities as there are days in the year, some of them being
hardly bigger than a public park. Yet, the internal class relations and
productive forces continued to develop throughout Germany, and ultimately
by 1870 unity was again achieved, with feudalism giving way to a powerful
capitalist nation-state. Similarly, the Yoruba were a widely spread cultural
entity with a single language. After the fall of the Oyo empire, the
developmental processes were slowed down by both internal and external
factors, but they were not stopped. It took the arrival of European
colonialism to do that.
Within the sphere of West and Central African slaving, state-building
continued with varying degrees of success. For instance, the Akan state
system grew up in a manner as impressive as that of the Oyo empire.
Fortunately for the Akan, slave exports reached alarming proportions only
during the first half of the eighteenth century. By that time, a state such as
As ante had sunk roots deep enough to withstand the adverse effects of
slaving. It continued to be incorporated with the heartlands of the Western
Sudan, and by the 1870s when the British tried to dictate to Asante, these
famous African people did not give up without heroic armed struggle.

Asante’s connection with the export of slaves in the eighteenth century
led its rulers to concentrate on expansionism of the type which would bring
in captives through wars, raids, tribute, and as articles of trade from regions
where they had been made prisoner. Besides, since the fifteenth century,
Akan country was building up rather than exporting its human resources.
Captives were incorporated locally into the society; and on the eve of
colonialism a substantial proportion of Asante society was made up of
Odonko-ba—the descendants of one-time captives, who were the laboring
population on the land. Development had come not through exporting and
losing labor but by increasing and maximizing it.
Dahomey
Asante’s eastern neighbor beyond the Volta River was Dahomey. Since
Dahomey was more deeply involved in the European slave trade and for a
much longer period, its experiences shall be cited at a greater length.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Dahomey had a
stagnant if not declining population, and an economy that had virtually no
props other than slave exports. What Dahomey succeeded in doing in spite
of all that is a tribute to the achievements of man inside the African
continent. It should be made clear that the groundwork for the sociopolitical
development of the Aja or Fon people of Dahomey was laid down in the
period preceding the influence of Europe on West Africa. By the fifteenth
century, the Aja states of Allada and Whydah were already in existence,
having a loose connection with the Yoruba of Ife. Dahomey was an offshoot
from Allada in the sixteenth century, and by the early eighteenth century it
expanded to incorporate both Allada and Whydah.
The kings of Allada and Whydah had made the mistake of either failing
to protect their own citizens from enslavement or of actually conniving at
their enslavement. Dahomey never followed such a policy, which was
directly antagonistic to the very maintenance of the state. Instead, Dahomey
eventually became the classic raiding state of West Africa, after failing to
get Europeans to accept any products other than human beings. To achieve
that, Dahomey had first to build up a tightly organized military state, whose
monarch came much closer to an authoritarian or despot than did the Alafin
of Oyo or the Asantehene of Asante. Secondly, Dahomey invested a great

deal of time and ingenuity on its army, so as to protect its own citizens and
wage war abroad.
Within European history, the state of Sparta stood out as one that was
completely dedicated to the art of war. Europeans in Africa in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries invariably referred to Dahomey as a
black Sparta. Throughout the eighteenth century, the cavalry of Oyo was
more than a match for Dahomey’s foot soldiers, and Dahomey remained a
tribute-paying portion of the Oyo empire. But with the fall of Oyo,
Dahomey became the supreme military state in that region, and indeed
wreaked vengeance on its former Yoruba overlords. Warfare was necessary
for securing slaves outside of Dahomey and for obtaining firearms. It was in
fact essential for survival.
Dahomey’s profound preoccupation with militaristic activities can be
illustrated in many ways. Their value system rewarded the brave and the
victorious, while ruthlessly despising and even liquidating the cowardly and
the unsuccessful on the battlefield. The two chief ministers of the king were
the commanders of the “Left” and “Right” armies, and other military
officers held political appointments. Then, too, the artistic media constantly
harped upon the theme of war. Beautiful mosaics and paintings appeared on
the walls of the palaces of Abomey—all dealing with military victories.
Historical accounts, as rendered by professional reciters, reflected the same
bias; and the cloth workers busied themselves making emblems, “colors,”
and umbrellas for the generals and the regiments.
Two unique innovations set Dahomey off from its African neighbors and
even gives it a special claim within the context of feudal or semi-feudal
military organization. Firstly, Dahomey encouraged young boys to become
apprentices of war. By the age of eleven or twelve, a boy would be attached
to a veteran soldier—helping to carry his supplies and observing battle. The
second innovation (and the one that was more widely commented upon)
was Dahomey’s utilization of its female population within the army.
Apparently, the wives in the royal palace started off as a ceremonial guard
in the eighteenth century, and then progressed to become an integral part of
Dahomey’s fighting machine, on terms of complete equality of hardship and
reward. Dahomey’s population in the nineteenth century was probably no
more than two hundred thousand; and the state consistently managed to
send twelve to fifteen thousand actives on its annual campaigns. Of those, it

was estimated in 1845 that some five thousand were women—the so-called
Amazons of Dahomey, who were feared for their ferocity in battle.
In the long run, the trade in slaves cast a blight on Dahomey. Slaving
campaigns were costly and not always rewarding in terms of captives.
European buyers failed to turn up during certain years, depending on
European conditions (e.g., during the American War of Independence, the
French Revolution, and the subsequent revolutionary wars, there was a lull
in Dahomean slave exports, because far fewer European ships could be
spared for the trade in slaves). Without selling captives to get firearms to
carry on more warfare for slaves, Dahomey felt its glory and military honor
was slipping. Resort to human sacrifice was one attempt to compensate for
the diminishing reputation of the state and its monarch, as was the case with
the Oba of Benin in the nineteenth century.
Even so, the story of the reputed savagery of Dahomey was exaggerated
incredibly. The Dahomean state created such refinements as a population
census; it conducted diplomacy far and wide, with all the niceties and the
protocol that one usually hears of only in connection with “civilized”
European states; and it built up a system of espionage and intelligence as an
essential ingredient in its own security. Above all, attention should be
focused at least briefly on the role of the artist in Dahomean society. Much
of African art springs from elaboration of things functional, such as pottery
and cloth. However, both religion and the state power also stimulated art.
For instance, the brasses and bronzes of Ife were executed on behalf of the
religious cults and were associated with the Oni of Ife and the royal family.
Indeed, it is a most widespread phenomenon that the feudal ruling class
gave its protection to artists, along with sustenance and recognition. This
was true in Mandarin China with pottery-makers and theatre artists; it was
true of sixteenth-century Italy of the Renaissance; and it was true of
Dahomey from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
No one now knows which Dahomean is to be credited with any given
artistic achievement of the independent pre-colonial period. However, in
that time, particular individuals were being given the opportunity for selfdiscovery and self-development and of serving the society as a whole. Their
task was to give pleasure and to capture the hopes and ambitions of the
people in palace wall-paintings, in wrought-iron sculptures, in the stamped
patterns of handwoven cloths designed for royalty, in the intricately carved

heads of the safe-conduct staffs of the king’s ambassadors, and in the lively
tales of how the founder of the Dahomean kingdom came out of the belly of
a leopard. It was art that centered around royalty and noble families, but it
was also a national product and a point of identification for the people as a
whole. Subsequently, such artistic skills either disappeared or became
debased to serve the curiosity of philistine colonialists.
It is still held in some quarters that Dahomey’s development in certain
spheres must be credited to slave trading. To demonstrate conclusively that
African political and military development through to the nineteenth
century was an extension of groundwork already laid in an earlier epoch, it
is best to turn to zones where foreign influence was non-existent. The interlacustrine zone of East Africa is one such.
The Eastern Interlacustrine States
In an earlier discussion, attention was directed to Bunyoro-Kitara as the
most advanced socio-political formation in East Africa up to the fifteenth
century. Its ruling dynasty, the Bachwezi, declined for reasons that are not
clear, and they were overwhelmed by new immigrants from the north.
While there is some doubt as to whether the Bachwezi had an Ethiopian
origin, it is clearly established that the sixteenth-century immigrants were
Luo peoples from a section of the Nile that flows through the Sudan.
Following upon Luo migrations, a new line known as the Babito dynasty
was placed in power over Bunyoro proper. Other branches of the same
dynasty were enthroned in several places, sometimes breaking off from the
main line. As late as the nineteenth century, a separate Babito kingdom was
carved out in Toro. Meanwhile, the Bachwezi or Bahima had staged a
comeback in regions to the south, in the form of a clan known as the
Bahinda. The Bahinda were one of the pastoralist clans of the old BunyoroKitara state, and in the period from the sixteenth century onwards their
stronghold was in Ankole and Karagwe.
Obviously, the new Babito ruling class immediately sought to take
control of the land, but in accordance with settled African customs, they
later tried to project themselves as the original owners of the land, rather
than usurpers. In Busoga, where there were several small Babito kings, a

researcher reported the following dialogue about land between a member of
a royal clan and a commoner:
Royal clan member—We found this place empty and made something of it. You fellows
later came round begging for land, so we were generous and gave you some. Naturally you’re
now our slaves.
Commoner—Oho! What a lie! We were here long before you. You took your power by
trickery. You princes have always been scoundrels!

At no stage in the independent history of these interlacustrine states did
land become purely a personal possession, to be monopolized by a given
class, as in the classic European feudal model. Scholars frequently demand
this feature before they concede that feudalism has arrived; but they fail to
take into account the reality of the fact that distribution and usufruct (or
produce) of the land may be in the hands of a few, and they fail to realize
that where cattle were a dominant form of wealth, then private ownership of
herds was also part of a process by which producers were separated from
the means of production. To be specific, those who owned the herds were
usually the Bahinda or other Bahima or the new Babito families, while
those who tended them were clients and virtually serfs of the owners. As far
as land was concerned, the peasant who farmed it paid a heavy tax in crops
to the clan heads and ruling authorities to allow the latter to live without
resort to agricultural work.
It is necessary to recall that in the process of independent evolution on
all continents, the increase in productive capacity was accompanied by
increasing inequality at all stages except socialism. To say that the
interlacustrine zone continued developing uninterruptedly up to the eve of
colonialism is to highlight the expanded productive capacity of the states
and at the same time to recognize frankly that it was the result of increased
exploitation not only of natural resources but also of the labor of the
majority. The latter were disenfranchised and oppressed to get them to toil
in the interests of a few who lived in palaces.
The interlacustrine kingdoms fell mainly in what is now Uganda,
Rwanda, and Burundi. Only in the northeast of Tanzania are there
representatives of the interlacustrine complex of states. Northeast Tanzania
was the most developed portion of the country in the pre-colonial epoch,
because the rest of mainland Tanzania comprised numerous small kingdoms
that had not decisively left behind the communal stage. But northeast

Tanzania was also the corner of the country in which problems arose when a
new ideology of egalitarianism was being preached after the end of the
colonial era, because there was already a regime of inequality in the
distribution of land and produce and in the rights granted to individuals. In
fact, in any meaningful political sense, the area was feudal.
There is some disagreement as to the origins of the important
interlacustrine state of Buganda. Some traditions give it the same Luo origin
as Bunyoro, while others tend to hold that it was a Bachwezi survival. Its
social structure certainly paralleled that of Babito Bunyoro closely.
Contrary to the situation in Ankole, in Buganda the Bahima did not have the
reins of political power. They were only associated with the cattle-owning
ruling class, very often in the junior capacity of herdsmen. In any event,
Buganda’s history was one of gradual expansion and consolidation at the
expense of Bunyoro and other neighbors. By the eighteenth century, it had
become the dominant power in the whole region.
The Baganda state had a sound agricultural base, with bananas as a
staple and with cattle products being available. Their craftsmen
manufactured barkcloth for export, and local production of iron and pots
was supplemented by imports from neighboring African communities.
Their lack of salt was a big stimulus to the extending of their trade network
to obtain necessary supplies; and, as was true of the Western Sudan, such an
extension of the network of commerce was in effect integrating the
productive resources of a large area. Carl Peters, the advance agent of
German colonialism in East Africa, remarked that “in estimating the
political and commercial affairs of East Africa too little stress is laid on this
internal trade among the tribes. The barter trade of Buganda defies all direct
calculation.” In Buganda’s case, the absence of slave trading must have
been important in expanding internal production and trade, and therefore
providing a sound base for the political superstructure.
The kings of Buganda set up a small permanent armed force, which
served as a bodyguard; and the rest of the national army was raised when
necessary. The political administration was centralized under the Kabaka,
and district rulers were appointed by the Kabaka and his council, rather than
left to be provided by the clans on a hereditary family basis. Great ingenuity
went into devising plans for administering this large kingdom through a
network of local officials. Perhaps the best tributes to the political

sophistication of Buganda came from the British, when they found Buganda
and other East African feudalities in the nineteenth century. They were the
best tributes because they were reluctantly extracted from white racists and
culturally arrogant colonialists, who did not want to admit that Africans
were capable of anything.
Actually, Europeans were so impressed with what they saw in the interlacustrine zone that they invented the thesis that those political states could
not possibly have been the work of Africans and must have been built at an
earlier date by white “Hamites” from Ethiopia. This myth seemed to get
some support from the fact that the Bachwezi were said to have been lightskinned. However, in the first place, had the Bachwezi come from Ethiopia
they would have been black or brown Africans. And secondly, as noted
earlier, the cultures of East Africa were syntheses of local developments,
plus African contributions from outside the specific localities. They were
certainly not foreign imports.
Assuming that the Bachwezi or Bahima were from Ethiopia, then they
lost their language and became Bantu-speaking like their subjects. The
same thing happened to the Babito dynasty of Luo extraction, indicating
that they had been absorbed by the local culture. Furthermore, the Babito
and the Bahima/Bahinda also forged close connections from the sixteenth to
the nineteenth centuries. In effect, out of different ethnic groups, castes, and
classes, a number of “nationalities” were emerging. The “nationality” group
is held to be that social formation which immediately precedes the nationstate, and the definition applies to the peoples of Buganda, Bunyoro,
Ankole, Karagwe, and Toro, as well as to those in Rwanda and Burundi.
Rwanda
The westernmost portion of the interlacustrine zone comprised the
kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi. The two countries which today bear
those names are centered around the old kingdoms. The experiences of
Rwanda will be cited here.
Like the old Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom and like its northeastern neighbor
state in Ankole, Rwanda was split into two major social groups. Though the
great majority of the population were cultivators known as the Bahutu,
political power was in the hands of Batutsi pastoralists, comprising about 10

per cent of the population. An even smaller minority were the Batwa (about
1 per cent), who were at a very low level of pre-agricultural social
organization.
The relative physiques of the three social segments in Rwanda offer an
interesting commentary on the development of human beings as a species.
The Batutsi are one of the tallest human groups in the world; the Bahutu are
short and stocky; and the Batwa are pygmies. The differences can be
explained largely in terms of social occupation and diet. The Batwa were
not living in settled agricultural communities; instead, they wandered
around in small bands, hunting and digging roots, thereby failing to assure
themselves of plentiful or rich food. At the other extreme, the Batutsi
pastoralists were subsisting on a constantly accessible and rich diet of milk
and meat. The Bahutu were more socially advanced than the Batwa; they
ate more, and more regularly, than the latter because Bahutu agriculture
meant that they did not live entirely on the whims of nature, following
scarce game like the Batwa. However, the quality of their food fell short of
the protein-rich Batutsi diet. Thus, the development of man as physical
being is also linked in a broad sense to the expansion of productive capacity
and the distribution of food.
In any event, it was their political and military achievements rather than
their height which distinguished the Batutsi from a historical viewpoint.
Their contribution to the kingdom of Rwanda goes back to the fourteenth
century, to a period contemporaneous with the Bachwezi. There were
indeed striking parallels and actual links between Rwanda and Ankole and
between Karagwe and Burundi. But unlike Bunyoro-Kitara, Rwanda in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was far from being a single political
entity. There were several small chiefdoms, and it was the expansion of a
central Rwanda Tutsi clan which gradually created a small compact state in
the seventeenth century. Later still, that central Rwanda state extended its
frontiers; and it was still doing so when the colonialists arrived. For
instance, rulers in Mpororo (Ankole) were already paying tribute to
Rwanda, which was growing at Ankole’s expense.
At the head of the Rwanda kingdom was the Mwami. As with so many
other African rulers, his powers were sanctioned by religious beliefs and his
person surrounded by religious ritual. Feudal kings in Europe often tried to
get their subjects to believe that royal authority emanated from God and that

the king therefore ruled by “divine right.” Subjects of African kings like
those of the Mwami of Rwanda often accepted something quite close to that
proposition. Of course, in addition, the authority of the king had to be based
on real power, and the Mwami of Rwanda did not overlook that fact.
Rujugira was a famous Mwami of the eighteenth century, and the last of
the independent line was Rwaabugiri (known also as Kigeri IV), who died
in 1895. Gahindiro is another whose praises were sung by the court
musicians and historians. Each of them was associated with one or more
contributions to refining and elaborating the power structure of the state,
which meant that they each embodied certain historical, class, and national
forces.
The Mwami Rujugira in the eighteenth century took the step of placing
his frontier zones under the exclusive authority of a military commander,
and stationing strong contingents of soldiers there. The move was
significant because in any young and growing state the most uncertain areas
are those on the frontiers, known as the “marches provinces” in European
feudal terminology. Rujugira was in effect placing the marches provinces
under military law, and he also put permanent military camps at strategic
places.
Early in the nineteenth century, Mwami Gahindiro overhauled the civil
administration. In each province, there was created both a land chief and a
cattle chief—one being responsible for farm rents and the other for cattle
dues. Besides, there were smaller district authorities or “hill chiefs” within
all the provinces, all members of the Batutsi aristocracy. Whether by
accident or design, it turned out that administrators responsible for different
areas and different matters were jealous of each other, and that kept them
from uniting to conspire against the Mwami. The “hill chiefs” were for a
long time hereditary within given Batutsi clans or lineages; but under
Rwaabugiri they became appointive—another move which strengthened
central government. Meanwhile, the civil servants and councilors
(collectively known as Biru) were given grants of land which were free
from the intervention of the land and cattle chiefs, thereby cementing the
loyalty of the Biru to the throne.
The system of social relations which emerged in Rwanda was more
completely hierarchical and feudal than in most other parts of Africa.
Hierarchy and socio-legal interdependence of classes and individuals were

features found in the army, in the civil administration, and in the social
fabric itself. The key to everything else was the control over cattle, through
an institution known as ubuhake. This meant that the poor (in cattle) and
those of low status (by birth) could approach anyone with more cattle and
more respected status, and offer his physical labor services in return for
cattle and protection. The cattle were never given as outright property, but
only the usufruct was handed over to a client. Therefore, the client could
have the use of the cattle for so long as he reciprocated by handing over
milk and meat to his overlord, and for so long as he remained loyal. Of
course, the peasant on the land also had to perform labor services and
provide tribute in the form of food.
The Batutsi aristocracy fulfilled their function of offering “protection”
partly by making representations at the Mwami’s court or by defending
their dependents in legal cases. Above all, however, the protection came
through specialization in the military art. Ever since the fifteenth century,
there had been compulsory military service for certain Batutsi lineages.
Sons of the Batutsi aristocracy became royal pages, receiving all their
educational training within a military context. Each new Mwami made a
fresh recruitment to add to existing forces. Some Bahutu were associated
with particular regiments to provide supplies, and the Batwa were also
incorporated as specialist archers (with poisoned arrows).
Of course, the protection which the Batutsi gave the Bahutu was a myth,
in the sense that what they were guarding was their exploitation of the
Bahutu. They defended them from external enemies, so that the population
became dense and plentiful. They conserved the Bahutu, so that the latter
could exercise their highly developed agronomical knowledge to produce
surplus. Furthermore, the top stratum of Batutsi were the cattle owners, and
they left their cattle to the lesser Batutsi to tend, thereby exploiting the labor
and profound empirical knowledge which the common cattle herders
possessed. As in Europe and Asia, such was the socio-economic base which
supported a life of leisure and intrigue among the Batutsi aristocracy.
There was little intermarriage between Batutsi and Bahutu, and hence
they are regarded as castes. The Batwa, too, can be similarly categorized;
but since the castes were hierarchically placed one over the other, it was
also a situation of class, and there was upward and downward mobility from
one class to another to a certain extent. At the same time, Batutsi, Bahutu,

and Batwa together evolved as the Rwanda nation, having common
interests to defend against even the Batutsi, Bahutu, and Batwa who
comprised the kingdom of Burundi. The people of Rwanda were not unique
in developing a state and a sense of national consciousness, while at the
same time experiencing the rise of more sharply differentiated classes and
castes in society. The important thing is that they were free to develop
relatively unaffected by alien influence, and certainly free from direct
ravages of slave trading.
Ama-Zulu
The same freedom from slave trading was operational in South Africa, for
West African exports of captives began in Angola and East African exports
came from Mozambique and zones farther north. The area south of the
Limpopo was one that had some of the simpler social formations in Africa
up to the fifteenth century. The eastern side was sparsely peopled up to a
late date by the Khoi Khoi herdsmen, who were slowly edged out by Bantu
speakers. When European ships touched on the Natal coast in the sixteenth
century, it was still a region of widely scattered homesteads; but in the years
to come the population became denser and important politico-military
development took place.
Anyone with a nodding acquaintance with the African past would have
heard the name of Shaka, the Zulu leader who most embodied the social and
political changes which took place in the eastern portion of South Africa.
One biographer (a European) had this to say of Shaka:
Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Charlemagne . . . such men as these have arisen
periodically throughout the history of the world to blaze a trail of glory that has raised them
high above the common level. Such a man was Shaka, perhaps the greatest of them all.

The above praise-song appeared on the back cover of the biography in
question; and, since capitalist publishers treat books just like boxes of soap
powder, one has admittedly to be suspicious of any advertisement designed
to sell the book. Nevertheless, all commentators on Shaka (both African and
European) frequently compare him favorably with the “Great Men” of
European history. It is therefore appropriate to examine Ama-Zulu society
up to the nineteenth century with a view to understanding the role of the
leader in relationship to the development of society as a whole.

Shaka was born about the year 1787, and the impressive achievements
attributed to him in his forty-year life span can only be briefly enumerated
here. By 1816, he was head of a small Ama-Ngoni clan, the Ama-Zulu.
Within a few years, he had reorganized it militarily—both in terms of
weapons and the tactics and strategy of war—so that the Ama-Zulu clan
became a feared fighting force. Through warfare and political maneuvering,
he united and commanded the Ama-Ngoni who had previously been divided
into dozens of independent or semi-independent clans. At one point, it
seemed as though Shaka was about to unite under one rule the whole of the
region that is now Natal, Lesotho, and Swaziland. That task was not
accomplished when he met his death in 1828, nor were his successors able
to maintain Shaka’s sway. But the territory belonging to the Ama-Zulu
nation in the late nineteenth century was a hundred times greater than the
100 square miles of the original patrimony of the Ama-Zulu clan as
inherited by Shaka in 1816. It was a diminished and less powerful AmaZulu that was still capable in 1876 of inflicting upon the British one of the
most crushing defeats in their history of overseas adventuring—at the battle
of Isandhlwana.
Shaka grew up at a time when the questions of unity and of effective
armies were being posed seriously for the first time among the Ama-Ngoni.
Previously, the clans (which generally coincided with chiefdoms) displayed
a tendency to segment or break into smaller and smaller units. As the eldest
son of a clan head grew to adulthood, he went off to settle his own kraal;
and a new junior clan was born, for his father’s clan remained senior and its
headship passed to the eldest son of the “great wife.” That pattern of
segmentation was possible so long as population density was low and land
was plentiful for farming and grazing. Under those circumstances, there was
little competition for resources or political power; and wars were hardly any
more dangerous than a game of football in Latin America. Usually a clan
had traditional rivalry with another given clan. They knew each other well,
and their champions fought in a spirit of festivity. One or two might have
been killed, but then everyone went home until the rematch.
Early in the nineteenth century, the casual tempo of Ama-Zulu life and
politics had changed considerably. A greater population meant less and less
room for junior members to “hive off” on their own. It meant less grazing
land for cattle, and disputes over cattle and land. As the Ama-Zulu began to

fight more frequently, so they began to feel the necessity to fight more
effectively. At the same time, senior clan heads began to recognize the need
for a political structure to insure unity, the maximization of resources and
the minimization of internecine conflict.
Shaka addressed himself to both the military and the political problems
of Zululand, which he saw as two sides of the same coin. He thought that
the centralizing political nucleus should achieve military superiority and
demonstrate it to other sectors. That would generally lead to peaceful
acceptance of the greater political state, or else the dissidents would be
thoroughly crushed.
The era of conflict and warfare in Zululand in the early nineteenth
century brought troops face to face much more often, but the pattern of
military encounter still remained that of the long-distance hurling of light
umkhonto, or spears. For close fighting, a weapon grasped in the hands is
much more damaging—as feudal armies discovered in Europe and Asia and
therefore resorted to sword and pike. Shaka, while serving as a young
soldier, came up with the solution of devising a heavy short assegai, which
was used purely for stabbing rather than throwing. In addition, he discarded
the loose sandals so as to achieve more speed in closing with the enemy and
more dexterity at close quarters. Through experience, Shaka and his fellow
youths then discovered the specific techniques of using their shields and
assegais to best effect.
Of course, warfare comprises not just the encounter of individual
soldiers, but (more importantly) a pattern of tactics and strategy in
relationship to the opposing forces taken as a whole. This aspect of war also
attracted Shaka’s attention, and his outstanding innovation came in the form
of izimpi (regiments) deployed so as to allow for a reserve behind the
fighting vanguard and for two wings or “horns” capable of encircling the
enemy’s flanks. Finally (and most importantly), an army has to be trained,
disciplined, and organized so that it is a meaningful unit in peace and in
war. Shaka created new regiments to include men up to forty years of age.
He kept his izimpi on constant exercises and “fatigues,” so that the
individual soldier was fit and proficient, while the army as a whole
synchronized in accordance with the wishes of its commanders.
The Zulu army was more than a fighting force. It was an educational
institution for the young, and an instrument for building loyalties that cut

across clans and could be considered as national. Promotion came through
merit, and not through clan or regional origin. The enforced use of the Zulu
branch of the family of Ngoni languages also worked in the direction of
national consciousness. Over an area of twelve thousand square miles,
citizens came to call themselves Ama-Zulu, and to relegate their clan names
to second place. Over a much larger area still, Zulu influence was
profoundly felt. Policies such as curbing the excesses of witchcraft diviners
(izanusi) and the fact that Zululand became free of internal struggles led to
an influx of population from outside its boundaries—a positive contribution
to the resources of the Zulu state.
European travelers who have left written accounts of Zululand in
Shaka’s time were impressed by the cleanliness (as they were in Benin in
the fifteenth century) and they were equally struck by the social order,
absence of theft, sense of security (just as were the Arabs who traveled in
the Western Sudan during its period of imperial greatness). In actual fact,
both the cleanliness and the security of life and property were part of Zulu
life from long before, and under Shaka what was impressive was the scale
on which these things extended, owing to the protective umbrella of the
state. The people being impressed were Europeans; and European evidence
is the best evidence in that it can scarcely be said to have been pro-African
propaganda. One white visitor who saw a march-past of fifteen of Shaka’s
regiments wrote that “it was a most exciting scene, surprising to us, who
could not have imagined that a nation termed ‘savages’ could be so
disciplined and kept in order.”
A great deal more could be added concerning Ama-Zulu political
institutions and its army. But what is relevant here is to understand why a
Shaka was possible in Africa in the nineteenth century, before the coming
of colonial rule.
Had Shaka been a slave to some cotton planter in Mississippi or some
sugar planter in Jamaica, he might have had an ear or a hand chopped off
for being a “recalcitrant nigger,” or at best he might have distinguished
himself in leading a slave revolt. For the only great men among the unfree
and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor. On a
slave plantation, Shaka would not have built a Zulu army and a Zulu state—
that much is certain. Nor could any African build anything during the
colonial period, however much a genius he may have been. As it was,

Shaka was a herdsman and a warrior. As a youth, he tended cattle on the
open plains—free to develop his own potential and apply it to his
environment.
Shaka was able to invest his talents and creative energies in a worthwhile
endeavor of construction. He was not concerned with fighting for or against
slave traders; he was not concerned with the problem of how to resell goods
made in Sweden and France. He was concerned with how to develop the
Zulu area within the limits imposed by his people’s resources.
It must be recognized that things such as military techniques were
responses to real needs, that the work of the individual originates in and is
backed by the action of society as a whole, and that whatever was achieved
by any one leader must have been bounded by historical circumstances and
the level of development, which determine the extent to which an individual
can first discover, then augment, and then display his potential.
To substantiate the above points, it can be noted that Shaka was
challenged to create the heavy stabbing assegai when he realized that the
throwing spear broke when used as a stabbing weapon. More important
still, what Shaka came up with depended upon the collective effort of the
Ama-Zulu. Shaka could ask that a better assegai be forged, because the
Ama-Ngoni had been working iron for a long time, and specialist blacksmiths had arisen within certain clans. It was a tribute to the organizational
and agricultural capacity of the society as a whole that it could feed and
maintain a standing army of thirty thousand men, re-equip them with iron
weapons, and issue each soldier with the full-length Zulu shield made from
cattle hide.
Because the scientific basis and experimental preconditions were lacking
in Zulu society, Shaka could not have devised a firearm—no matter how
much genius he possessed. But, he could get his people to forge better
weapons, as explained above; and he found them receptive to better
selective breeding practices when he set up special royal herds, because the
people already had a vast fund of empirical knowledge about cattle and a
love of the cattle-herding profession.
In the politico-military sphere, Shaka was following in the footsteps of
his original protector, Dingizwayo, and to some extent in the footsteps of
Zwide, who was a rival to both Dingizwayo and Shaka. Dingizwayo opened
up trade with the Portuguese at Delagoa Bay in 1797 (mainly in ivory), and

he stimulated arts and crafts. His most distinguished innovation was in the
army, when he instituted a system of recruiting regiments according to agegrades. Previously, each locality tended to dominate within a given
regiment; and, in any event, people were accustomed to fighting side by
side with members of their own kraal, locality, and clan. However, when all
men in a given age-grade were brought into the same regiment, this
emphasized a greater national feeling and also increased Dingizwayo’s
power vis-à-vis the smaller clan heads.
Dingizwayo was head of the important Ama-Mthethwa clan, and he
succeeded in establishing his paramountcy in what later became the
southern portion of Zululand. In the north, Zwide of the Ama-Ndwandwe
was also engaging in political consolidation. Shaka served in one of the
junior age-grade regiments of Dingizwayo, and remained faithful to the
latter’s centralizing power, until Dingizwayo met his death at the hands of
Zwide in 1818. Thereafter, Shaka took up many of the military and political
techniques of Dingizwayo and greatly improved them. That is development.
It is a matter of building upon what is inherited and advancing slowly,
provided that no one comes to “civilize” you.
The regions of Yorubaland, Dahomey, the interlacustrine kingdoms, and
Zululand, which have so far been discussed, are examples of leading forces
in the political development which was taking place in Africa right up to the
eve of colonization. They were not the only leading forces, and even where
the states were territorially much smaller, there were observable advances in
political organization.
Areas of Africa that were most advanced by the fifteenth century
generally maintained their standards, with few exceptions such as Kongo. In
North Africa and Ethiopia, for example, feudal structures remained intact,
though there was a noticeable lack of continued growth. In the Western
Sudan, the Hausa states were heirs to the political and commercial tradition
of the great empires after the fall of Songhai in the seventeenth century; and
early in the nineteenth century there arose the Islamic Caliphate of Sokoto
with its center in Hausaland. The Sokoto empire was one of the largest
political units ever established on the African continent, and it suffered
from many internal schisms through lack of adequate mechanisms for
integrating so vast a territory. Experiments to deal with the problem of unity

were continued in the Western Sudan, with Islam as the hoped-for unifying
factor. An Islamic theocratic state was established across the Niger bend by
Ahmadu Ahmadu in the middle of the nineteenth century, while another
was created by Al Haj Omar on the upper Niger. Most outstanding of all
was the Mandinga state carved out under the leadership of Samori Toure by
the 1880s. Samori Toure was not scholarly like the renowned Uthman dan
Fodio and Al Haj Omar, who before him had been creators of Islamic
states; but Samori Toure was a military genius and a political innovator,
who went further than the others in setting up a political administration
where a sense of loyalty could prevail over the above clans, localities, and
ethnic groups.
Zimbabwe, too, progressed, with only slight interference from
Europeans. Locally, the center of power shifted from Mutapa to
Changamire; and eventually in the nineteenth century Nguni groups (fleeing
from the power of the Zulu) overran Zimbabwe. So long as the Nguni were
warrior bands on the march, they obviously proved destructive; but by the
middle of the nineteenth century the Nguni had already spread their own
state-building techniques to Mozambique and to what is now Southern
Rhodesia, and had joined with the local population to establish new and
larger kingdoms—infused with a sense of nationality, as was the case in
Zululand.
Meanwhile, across vast areas of Central Africa, striking political change
was also taking place. Up to the fifteenth century, the level of social
organization was low in the area between Kongo and Zimbabwe. Precisely
in that area, there arose the group of states known as the Luba-Lunda
complex. Their political structures rather than their territorial size made
them significant; and their achievements were registered in the face of
constantly encroaching slaving activities.
On the large island of Madagascar, the several small states of an earlier
epoch had by the late eighteenth century given way to the powerful feudal
Merina kingdom. More often than not, Madagascar is ignored in general
assessments of the African continent, although (both in the physical and the
cultural sense) Africa is writ large on the Malagasy people. They, too,
suffered from loss of population through slave exports; but the Merina
kingdom did better than most slaving states, because more intensive
cultivation of high-yielding swamp rice and the breeding of cattle offset the

loss of labor. This situation should serve as a reminder that development
accompanied by slave trading must not be superficially and illogically
attributed to the export of the population and the dislocation attendant upon
slave raiding. The bases of the political development of the Merina
kingdom and of all others (whether or not engaged in slaving) lay in their
own environment—in the material resources, human resources, technology,
and social relations. So long as any African society could at least maintain
its inherited advantages springing from many centuries of evolutionary
change, then for so long could the superstructure continue to expand and
give further opportunities to whole groups of people, to classes, and to
individuals.
At the beginning of this section, attention was drawn to the necessity for
reconciling a recognition of African development up to 1885 with an
awareness of the losses simultaneously incurred by the continent in that
epoch, due to the nature of the contact with capitalist Europe. That issue
must also be explicitly alluded to at this point. It is clearly ridiculous to
assert that contacts with Europe built or benefited Africa in the pre-colonial
period. Nor does it represent reality to suggest (as President Leopold
Senghor once did) that the slave trade swept Africa like a bush fire, leaving
nothing standing. The truth is that a developing Africa went into slave
trading and European commercial relations as into a gale-force wind, which
shipwrecked a few societies, set many others off course, and generally
slowed down the rate of advance. However, (pursuing the metaphor further)
it must be noted that African captains were still making decisions before
1885, though already forces were at work which caused European
capitalists to insist on, and succeed in taking over, command.
The Coming of Imperialism and Colonialism
In the centuries before colonial rule, Europe increased its economic
capacity by leaps and bounds, while Africa appeared to have been almost
static. Africa in the late nineteenth century could still be described as part
communal and part feudal, although Western Europe had moved completely
from feudalism to capitalism. To elucidate the main thesis of this study, it is
necessary to follow not only the development of Europe and the

underdevelopment of Africa, but also to understand how those two
combined in a single system—that of capitalist imperialism.
The European economy was producing far more goods by making use of
their own resources and labor, as well as the resources and labor of the rest
of the world. There were many qualitative changes in the European
economy, which accompanied and made possible the increase in the
quantity of goods. For example, machines and factories rather than land
provided the main source of wealth; and labor had long since ceased to be
organized on a restricted family basis. The peasantry had been brutally
destroyed and the labor of men, women, and children was ruthlessly
exploited. Those were the great social evils of the capitalist system, which
must not be forgotten; but, on the issue of comparative economics, the
relevant fact is that what was a slight difference when the Portuguese sailed
to West Africa in 1444 was a huge gap by the time that European robber
statesmen sat down in Berlin 440 years later to decide who should steal
which parts of Africa. It was that gap which provided both the necessity and
the opportunity for Europe to move into the imperialist epoch, and to
colonize and further underdevelop Africa.
The growing technological and economic gap between Western Europe
and Africa was part of the trend within capitalism to concentrate or polarize
wealth and poverty at two opposite extremes.
Inside Western Europe itself, some nations grew rich at the expense of
others. Britain, France, and Germany were the most prosperous nations.
Poverty prevailed in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and southern Italy. Inside the
British, French, and German economies, the polarization of wealth was
between the capitalists on the one hand and the workers and a few peasants
on the other. The big capitalists got bigger and the little ones were
eliminated. In many important fields, such as iron and steel manufacture,
textiles, and particularly banking, it was noticeable that two or three firms
monopolized most of the business. The banks were also in a commanding
position within the economy as a whole, providing capital to the big
monopoly industrial firms.
European monopoly firms operated by constantly fighting to gain control
over raw materials, markets, and means of communications. They also
fought to be the first to invest in new profitable undertakings related to their
line of business—whether it be inside or outside their countries. Indeed,

after the scope for expansion became limited inside their national
economies, their main attention was turned to those countries whose
economies were less developed and who would therefore offer little or no
opposition to the penetration of foreign capitalism. That penetration of
foreign capitalism on a world-wide scale from the late nineteenth century
onwards is what we call “imperialism.”
Imperialism meant capitalist expansion. It meant that European (and
North American and Japanese) capitalists were forced by the internal logic
of their competitive system to seek abroad in less developed countries
opportunities to control raw material supplies, to find markets, and to find
profitable fields of investment. The centuries of trade with Africa
contributed greatly to that state of affairs where European capitalists were
faced with the necessity to expand in a big way outside their national
economies.
There were certain areas of Africa in which European investment was
meant to get immediate superprofits. The mines of South Africa, the loans
to North African governments, and the building of the Suez Canal also
insured the greater profitability of European investment in and trade with
India. However, Africa’s greatest value to Europe at the beginning of the
imperialist era was as a source of raw materials such as palm products,
groundnuts, cotton, and rubber. The need for those materials arose out of
Europe’s expanded economic capacity, its new and larger machines, and its
increasing wage-earning population in towns. All of those things had
developed over the previous four centuries; and again it needs to be
repeated that one of the important factors in that process was the unequal
trade with Africa.
Imperialism is essentially an economic phenomenon, and it does not
necessarily lead to direct political control or colonization. However, Africa
was the victim of colonization. In the period of the notorious “Scramble for
Africa,” Europeans made a grab for whatever they thought spelled profits in
Africa, and they even consciously acquired many areas not for immediate
exploitation but with an eye to the future. Each European nation that had
these short-term and long-term economic interests ran up its own flag in
different parts of Africa and established colonial rule. The gap that had
arisen during the period of pre-colonial trade gave Europe the power to
impose political domination on Africa.

Pre-colonial trade in slaves, ivory, gold, and other things was conducted
from the coasts of Africa. On the coasts, European ships could dominate the
scene, and if necessary forts could be built. Before the nineteenth century,
Europe was incapable of penetrating the African continent, because the
balance of force at their disposal was inadequate. But the same
technological changes which created the need to penetrate Africa also
created the power to conquer Africa. The firearms of the imperialist epoch
marked a qualitative leap forward. Breech-loading rifles and machine guns
were a far cry from the smooth-bored muzzle loaders and flintlocks of the
previous era. European imperialists in Africa boasted that what counted was
the fact that they had the Maxim machine gun and Africans did not.
Curiously, Europeans often derived the moral justification for
imperialism and colonialism from features of the international trade as
conducted up to the eve of colonial rule in Africa. The British were the
chief spokesmen for the view that the desire to colonize was largely based
on their good intentions in wanting to put a stop to the slave trade. True
enough, the British in the nineteenth century were as opposed to slave
trading as they were once in favor of it. Many changes inside Britain had
transformed the seventeenth-century necessity for slaves into the
nineteenth-century necessity to clear the remnants of slaving from Africa so
as to organize the local exploitation of land and labor. Therefore, slaving
was rejected in so far as it had become a fetter on further capitalist
development; and it was particularly true of East Africa, where Arab
slaving persisted until late in the nineteenth century. The British took
special self-righteous delight in putting an end to Arab slave trading, and in
deposing rulers on the grounds that they were slave traders. However, in
those very years, the British were crushing political leaders in Nigeria, like
Jaja and Nana, who had by then ceased the export of slaves, and were
concentrating instead on products like palm oil and rubber. Similarly, the
Germans in East Africa made a pretense of being most opposed to rulers
like Bushiri who were engaged in slave trading, but the Germans were
equally hostile to African rulers with little interest in slaving. The common
factor underlying the overthrow of African rulers in East, West, Central,
North, and South Africa was that they stood in the way of Europe’s imperial
needs. It was the only factor that mattered, with anti-slaving sentiments
being at best superfluous and at worst calculated hypocrisy.

King Leopold II of Belgium also used the anti-slavery excuse to
introduce into Congo forced labor and modern slavery. Besides, all
Europeans had derived ideas of racial and cultural superiority between the
fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, while engaged in genocide and the
enslavement of non-white peoples. Even Portugal, an impoverished and
backward European nation in the imperialist era, could still presume that it
had a destiny to civilize the natives in Africa!
There is a curious interpretation of the Scramble and African partition
which virtually amounts to saying that colonialism came about because of
Africa’s needs rather than those of Europe. Africa, they say, required
European colonization if it were to advance beyond the stage it had reached
in the late nineteenth century. Clearly, they do not appreciate that such a line
of reasoning was suggesting that Africa would develop if it were given
bigger doses of the European concoction that had already started its
underdevelopment—that it would develop if it lost the last remnants of its
freedom of choice, which had clearly been seriously undermined by the precolonial trade—that it would develop if its economy became more
integrated with Europe’s on terms that were entirely dictated by Europe.
Those implications and their fallacies would be plain to anyone who tries to
understand the development process before making pronouncements on any
particular epoch of human development in Africa.
Throughout the fourteenth century, African rulers were displaying great
initiative in pursuit of the broadest forms of cultural contact with Europe. In
the case of West Africa, that meant seeking substitutes for trade in slaves.
Dahomey, one of the most embroiled in slave trading, was among those
states that used many of the last years of its independence to find a healthy
basis for cultural exchange with Europeans.
In 1850, the reigning Dahomean king, Gezo, proclaimed an edict
whereby all young oil palms were to be freed from parasites surrounding
them, and severe penalties were to be imposed for cutting palm trees. Gezo,
who ruled from 1818 to 1857, was a reformer, and he made sincere efforts
to meet criticisms of his policies by groups such as missionaries and antislavery campaigners; but it soon became clear that Europeans were not bent
on seeing Dahomey re-emerge as a strong state, but were rather creating
excuses and the subjective conditions to justify their proposed colonization
of the people of Dahomey. Under those circumstances, the last Dahomean

monarch, Glele, fell back on his capital at Abomey, and pursued the policies
which he considered most consistent with the dignity and independence of
Dahomey. Glele raided Abeokuta, which contained converts who were
already “British protected persons”; he told the French to get the hell out of
Porto-Novo; and he generally resisted until defeated militarily by the
French in 1889.
African groups who had little or nothing to do with slave exports also
intensified their efforts to integrate into a wider world in the nineteenth
century. Gungunhana, the Nguni ruler of Gaza in Mozambique, asked for a
Swiss missionary doctor and maintained him at his court for several years
until the Portuguese conquered his kingdom in 1895. After the Portuguese
imposed colonial rule, it was a long time before Africans saw another
doctor!
It is particularly instructive to turn to the example of Egypt under
Mohammed Ali, who ruled from 1805 to 1849. Capitalist Europe had left
feudal North Africa behind over the course of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Mohammed Ali was aware of that, and consciously
aimed at catching up with Europe. He instituted a series of reforms, the
most important of which were of an economic nature. Egypt grew and
manufactured its own cotton, and it made glass, paper, and other industrial
goods. Egypt was not to be used as a dumping ground for European goods
which would undermine local industry, so that protective tariff walls were
set up around Egypt’s “infant industries.” That did not mean that Egypt
became isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary, Mohammed Ali
borrowed experts from Europe, and he increased Egypt’s foreign trade.
The ideals of Mohammed Ali could be related in the idiom of modern
social science as being the creation of a viable, self-propelling economy to
provide the basis for national independence. Such ideals were diametrically
opposed to the needs of European capitalism. British and French
industrialists wanted to see Egypt not as a textile manufacturer but as a
producer of raw cotton for export, and an importer of European
manufactures. European financiers wanted Egypt to be a source of
investment, and in the second half of the eighteenth century they turned the
sultan of Egypt into an international beggar, who mortgaged the whole of
Egypt to international monopoly financiers. Finally, European statesmen
wanted Egyptian soil to serve as a base for exploiting India and Arabia.

Therefore, the Suez Canal was dug out of Egyptian soil by Egyptians, but it
was owned by Britain and France, who then extended political domination
over Egypt and Sudan.
Education is undeniably one of the facets of European life which had
grown most appreciably during the capitalist epoch. Through education and
extensive use of the written word, Europeans were in a position to pass on
to the others the scientific principles of the material world which they had
discovered, as well as a body of varied philosophical reflections on man and
society. Africans were quick to appreciate advantages deriving from a
literate education. In Madagascar, the Merina kingdom did a great deal to
sponsor reading and writing. They used their own language and an Arabic
script, and they welcomed the aid of European missionaries. That conscious
borrowing from all relevant sources was only possible when they had the
freedom to choose. Colonization, far from springing from Malagasy needs,
actually erected a barrier to the attainment of the “modernization” initiated
by the Merina kings in the 1860s and 1870s. A similar example can be
found in the history of Tunisia before the ax of partition fell.
In many parts of the world, capitalism in its imperialist form accepted
that some measure of political sovereignty should be left in the hands of the
local population. This was so in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, and to a
more limited extent in China. However, European capitalists came to the
decision that Africa should be directly colonized. There is evidence to
suggest that such a course of action was not entirely planned. Britain and
France up to the 1850s and 1860s would have preferred to divide Africa
into informal “spheres of influence.” That means that there would have
been a gentlemen’s agreement that (say) Nigeria would be exploited by the
British merchants while Senegal would be exploited by Frenchmen. At the
same time both Englishmen and Frenchmen would trade in a minor way in
each other’s informal empire. But, firstly, there was disagreement over who
should suck which pieces of Africa (especially since Germany wanted to
join the grabbing); and, secondly, the moment that one European power
declared an area of Africa as a protectorate or a colony, it put up tariffs
against European traders of other nationalities, and in turn forced their
rivals to have colonies and discriminatory tariffs. One thing led to another,
and soon six European capitalist nations were falling over each other to
establish direct political rule over particular sections of Africa. Make no

mistake about it, gentlemen like Carl Peters, Livingstone, Stanley, Harry
Johnston, De Brazza, General Gordon, and their masters in Europe were
literally scrambling for Africa. They barely avoided a major military
conflagration.
In addition to the factors that caused the chain reaction of the Scramble
as described above, Europeans were also racially motivated to seek political
domination over Africa. The nineteenth century was one in which white
racism was most violently and openly expressed in capitalist societies, with
the U.S.A. as a focal point, and with Britain taking the lead among the
Western European capitalist nations. Britain accepted granting dominion
status to its old colonies of white settlers in Canada, Australia, and New
Zealand; but it withdrew self-government from the West Indies when the
white planters were ousted from the legislative assemblies by black (or
brown) people. As far as Africa is concerned, Englishmen violently
opposed black self-government such as the Fante Confederation on the
Gold Coast in the 1860s. They also tried to erode the authority of black
Creoles in Sierra Leone. In 1874, when Fourah Bay College sought and
obtained affiliation with Durham University, the Times newspaper declared
that Durham should next affiliate with the London Zoo! Pervasive and
vicious racism was present in imperialism as a variant independent of the
economic rationality that initially gave birth to racism. It was economics
that determined that Europe should invest in Africa and control the
continent’s raw materials and labor. It was racism which confirmed the
decision that the form of control should be direct colonial rule.
Africans everywhere fought against alien political rule, and had to be
subdued by superior force. But a sizable minority did insist that their trade
connections with Europe should remain unbroken, for that was a measure of
the extent to which they were already dependent on Europe. The most
dramatic illustration of that dependence was the determination with which
some Africans fought the end of the European slave trade.
For most European capitalist states, the enslavement of Africans had
served its purpose by the middle of the nineteenth century; but for those
Africans who dealt in captives the abrupt termination of the trade at any
given point was a crisis of the greatest magnitude. In many areas, major
social changes had taken place to bring the particular regions effectively
into the service of the European slave trade—one of the most significant

being the rise of “domestic slavery” and various forms of class and caste
subjugation. African rulers and traders who found their social existence
threatened by the earliest legal edicts such as the 1807 British act against
the trade in slaves found ways of making contact with Europeans who still
wanted slaves.
In sub-Saharan Africa and especially in West Africa, the export of slaves
declined most rapidly where Europeans were prepared to buy other
commodities. As soon as inhabitants of any region found that they had a
product which Europeans were accepting in place of the former slave trade,
those inhabitants put tremendous effort into organizing the alternatives:
namely, ivory, rubber, palm products, groundnuts. Once more, those efforts
demonstrated the determination of a small but decisive proportion of
Africans. It was a determination based on the desire to obtain European
trade goods, many of which had ceased to be mere curiosities or luxuries,
and were regarded instead as necessities.
The first four centuries of Afro-European trade in a very real sense
represent the roots of African underdevelopment. Colonialism flourished
rapidly from a European viewpoint, because several of its features were
already rooted in Africa in the preceding period. One of the most decisive
features of the colonial system was the presence of Africans serving as
economic, political, and cultural agents of the European colonialists. Those
agents, or “compradors,” were already serving European interests in the
pre-colonial period. The impact of trade with Europe had reduced many
African rulers to the status of middlemen for European trade; it had raised
ordinary Africans to that same middleman commercial role; and it had
created a new trading group of mixed blood—the children of European or
Arab fathers. Those types can all be referred to as “compradors,” and they
played a key role in extending European activity from the coast into the
hinterland, as soon as Europeans thought of taking over political power.
One outstanding example of the above is the way that the French
colonialists used Africans and mulattos on the Senegalese coast as agents
for the spread of French control for thousands of miles into areas now
covered by Senegal, Mali, Chad, Upper Volta, and Niger. Those particular
blacks and mulattos were living in the trading ports of Gorée, Dakar, St.
Louis, and Rufisque; and they had had long-standing links with Atlantic
trade.

Africans conducting trade on behalf of Europeans were not merely
commercial agents, but also cultural agents, since inevitably they were
heavily influenced by European thought and values. The search for
European education began in Africa before the colonial period. Coastal
rulers and traders recognized the necessity to penetrate more deeply into the
way of life of the white man who came across the sea. The mulatto sons of
white traders and the sons of African rulers were the ones who made the
greatest effort to learn the white man’s ways. This helped them to conduct
business more efficiently. One Sierra Leone ruler in the eighteenth century
explained that he wished “to learn book to be rogue as good as white man”;
and there were many others who saw the practical advantages of literacy.
However, the educational process also meant imbibing values which led to
further African subjugation. One West African educated in this early period
wrote a Ph.D. thesis in Latin justifying slavery. That was not surprising. The
Reverend Thomas Thompson was the first European educator on the Gold
Coast, and he wrote in 1778 a pamphlet entitled, The African Trade for
Negro Slaves Shown to be Consistent with the Principles of Humanity and
the Laws of Revealed Religion.
One of the most striking features of nineteenth-century West African
history is the manner in which Africans returned from slavery under
European masters and helped in the establishment of colonial rule. This was
especially true of Africans who returned from the West Indies and North
America to Sierra Leone or who were released from slave ships and landed
in Sierra Leone. To a lesser extent, it also applied to Africans who were
once in Brazil. Such individuals had assimilated capitalist values, and like
most European missionaries, promoted the kinds of activity that went along
with colonial rule. In a rather different context, it can be argued that the
Arabs of Zanzibar and the East African coast were also transformed into
agents of European colonialism. At first, they resisted because European
colonialism affected their own expansionist ambitions on the East African
mainland, but they soon came to an arrangement which gave Europeans the
ultimate powers. The Europeans reduced the small Arab clique into political
and economic instruments of imperialism.
European superiority over the Arabs in East and North Africa and in the
Middle East demonstrates conclusively that modern imperialism is
inseparable from capitalism, and underlines the role of slavery in the

context of capitalism. The Arabs had acquired Africans as slaves for
centuries, but they were exploited in a feudal context. African slaves in
Arab hands became domestics, soldiers, and agricultural serfs. Whatever
surplus they produced was not for reinvestment and multiplication of
capital, as in the West Indian or North American slave systems but for
consumption by the feudal elite. Indeed, slaves were often maintained more
for social prestige than for economic benefit.
The major exceptions to that rule were nineteenth-century Zanzibar and
Egypt under Mohammed Ali. In both those instances, African labor was
being exploited to produce profit on a plantation basis; and this may also
have applied to date-palm production in Arabia. But, Europe had already
been exploiting African labor to maximize surplus for three centuries
previously, and the contribution which the plantation system made to the
European capitalist development was so great that Western Europe in the
nineteenth century had engulfed the lesser exploitation of Zanzibar and
Arabia, and it secured a firm grasp on Egypt’s economy after the death of
Mohammed Ali in 1849. In other words, the cloves, cotton, and dates
produced in Zanzibar, Egypt, and Arabia, respectively, previous to
colonization were already going to strengthen European trade and
production. Eventually, it was no problem for the capitalist slave traders of
Europe to extend political domination over the feudalist Arab slave traders
and to use the latter as agents of colonialism in East Africa.
Returning to the question of indigenous African agents of European
colonial rule in Africa, it should be recognized that Europeans recruited
Africans to serve in the armies that actually conquered Africa in the bloody
period from the 1880s through the First World War started by Europeans in
1914. It is a widespread characteristic of colonialism to find agents of
repression from among the colonial victims themselves. Yet, without the
previous centuries of trade between Africa and Europe, it would have been
impossible for Europeans to have so easily recruited the askaris, porters,
and others, who made their colonial conquest possible.
African residents of the Senegalese ports already referred to were the
ones who were put in French army uniform and fought to establish French
rule in the interior and other parts of the coast such as Dahomey. When the
British defeated Asante in 1874, they had in their forces African troops
from the coastal towns around the Gold Coast forts. Those Africans had

been in contact with Europeans for so long that from the seventeenth
century they identified themselves as “Dutch,” “Danish,” or “English,”
depending upon whose fort gave them employment. They had fought battles
for one European nation against another, and by the late nineteenth century
it was an easy matter to get them to fight against fellow Africans on behalf
of the conquering colonial power of Britain.
In the Portuguese territories, the origins of the black colonial police and
army also went back into the “pre-colonial” trade period. Around the forts
of Luanda and Benguela in Angola and Lourenco Marques and Beira in
Mozambique, there grew up communities of Africans, mulattos, and even
Indians who helped “pacify” large areas for the Portuguese after the Berlin
Conference. Traders in Mozambique and in the rest of East, West, and
Central Africa who had experience with Europeans previous to colonialism
were the ones to provide porters to carry the heavy machine guns, cannons,
and the support equipment; they were the ones who provided the would-be
European colonialist with the information and military intelligence that
facilitated conquest; and they were the interpreters who were the voice of
the Europeans on African soil.
Of course, it is true that many Africans who had little or nothing to do
with pre-colonial trade also allied themselves with European newcomers. In
that respect, the gap in levels of political organization between Europe and
Africa was very crucial. The development of political unity in the form of
large states was proceeding steadily in Africa. But even so, at the time of
the Berlin Conference, Africa was still a continent of a large number of
socio-political groupings who had not arrived at a common purpose.
Therefore, it was easy for the European intruder to play the classic game of
divide and conquer. In that way, certain Africans became unwitting allies of
Europe.
Many African rulers sought a European “alliance” to deal with their own
African neighbor, with whom they were in conflict. Few of those rulers
appreciated the implications of their actions. They could not know that
Europeans had come to stay permanently; they could not know that
Europeans were out to conquer not some but all Africans. This partial and
inadequate view of the world was itself a testimony of African
underdevelopment relative to Europe, which in the nineteenth century was
self-confidently seeking dominion in every part of the globe.

Political divisions in Africa were no evidence of innate inferiority or
backwardness. That was the state in which the continent then found itself—
a point along a long road that others had traversed and along which Africa
was moving. Commercial impact of Europe slowed down the process of
political amalgamation and expansion, in contrast to the way trade with
Africa strengthened Europe’s nation-states. When European capitalism took
the form of imperialism and started to subjugate Africa politically, the
normal political conflicts of the pre-capitalist African situation were
transformed into weakness which allowed the Europeans to set up their
colonial domination.
Altogether, it is very clear that to understand the coming of colonialism
into Africa, one has to consider the previous historical evolution of both
Africa and Europe and in particular one has to consider ways in which their
trade contacts influenced the two continents mutually, so that what was
called “pre-colonial” trade proved to be a preparatory stage for the era of
colonial rule.
It is widely accepted that Africa was colonized because of its weakness.
The concept of weakness should be understood to embrace military
weakness and inadequate economic capacity, as well as certain political
weaknesses: namely, the incompleteness of the establishment of nationstates, which left the continent divided, and the low level of consciousness
concerning the world at large, which had already been transformed into a
single system by the expansion of capitalist relations.
Brief Guide to Reading
The section of this chapter dealing with African society is a continuation of
Chapter 2; and general books cited there are also relevant to this context.
More African writers are involved in this recent pre-colonial period, which
is of course one aspect of a national struggle. There are also more and better
monographs on given areas and subjects. But, the coming of imperialism
has not yet been seriously pursued from an African viewpoint, and there is a
marked absence of theory linking together the numerous facts that are now
well established about events taking place in Africa between 1500 and
1885.

J. B. WEBSTER and A. A. BOAHEN, History of West Africa; the Revolutionary Years—1815 to
Independence. New York: Praeger, 1967.
BASIL DAVIDSON with J. E. MHINA, History of East and Central Africa to the Late Nineteenth
Century. New York: Doubleday Anchor Book A 677.
These two should be added to the list of general texts which provide regional surveys over a long
period of time. They have the advantage of being coherent interpretations and not just collected
essays.
WALTER RODNEY, West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Nairobi: Published for the Historical
Association of Tanzania by the East African Publishing House, 1969.
E. ALPERS, The East African Slave Trade.
I. A. AKINJOGBIN, Dahomey and Its Neighbours. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
The first two are short accounts of the impact of slave exports on the African regions concerned.
The third is a detailed account by a Nigerian scholar of Dahomey’s involvement with Europeans.
JACOB U. EGHAREVBA, A Short History of Benin. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1968.
B. A. OGOT, History of the Southern Luo. Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House, 1967.
ISARIA KIMAMBO, A Political History of the Pare of Tanzania. New York: International Publications,
1971.
JAN VANSINA, Kingdoms of the Savanna. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.
The first three are good examples of scholarship by Africans concerning historical developments
starting before contact with Europe. They are characterized by the use of African oral traditions as a
basis for interpretation. The fourth (by a European) was a pioneering work which drew heavily on
oral traditions in reconstructing Central African history.
J. ADE AJAYI, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 1845–1891. New York: International Publications,
1971.
E. A. AYANDELE, The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria. New York: Humanities Press, 1967.
One aspect of the imperialist epoch that has been probed by African historians (and many nonAfricans) is that of the Christian missionaries, as evidenced by the above works.

CHAPTER

V
Africa’s Contribution to the Capitalist Development
of Europe—The Colonial Period
• Expatriation of African Surplus under Colonialism • The Strengthening of
the Technological and Military Aspects of Capitalism

THE COLONIES HAVE BEEN CREATED FOR THE METROPOLE BY THE METROpole.
—FRENCH SAYING
Sales operations in the United States and management of the fourteen (Unilever) plants are
directed from Lever House on New York’s fashionable Park Avenue. You look at this tall,
striking, glass-and-steel structure and you wonder how many hours of underpaid black labour
and how many thousands of tons of underpriced palm oil and peanuts and cocoa it cost to build
it.
—W. ALEHEUS HUNTON

Expatriation of African Surplus under Colonialism
Capital and African Wage Labor
Colonial Africa fell within that part of the international capitalist economy
from which surplus was drawn to feed the metropolitan sector. As seen
earlier, exploitation of land and labor is essential for human social advance,
but only on the assumption that the product is made available within the
area where the exploitation takes place. Colonialism was not merely a
system of exploitation, but one whose essential purpose was to repatriate
the profits to the so-called mother country. From an African viewpoint, that
amounted to consistent expatriation of surplus produced by African labor
out of African resources. It meant the development of Europe as part of the
same dialectical process in which Africa was underdeveloped.
By any standards, labor was cheap in Africa, and the amount of surplus
extracted from the African laborer was great. The employer under
colonialism paid an extremely small wage—a wage usually insufficient to
keep the worker physically alive—and, therefore, he had to grow food to
survive. This applied in particular to farm labor of the plantation type, to
work in mines, and to certain forms of urban employment. At the time of
the imposition of European colonial rule, Africans were able to gain a
livelihood from the land. Many retained some contact with the land in the
years ahead, and they worked away from their shambas in order to pay
taxes or because they were forced to do so. After feudalism in Europe had
ended, the worker had absolutely no means of sustenance other than
through the sale of his labor to capitalists. Therefore, to some extent the
employer was responsible for insuring the physical survival of the worker

by giving him a “living wage.” In Africa, this was not the case. Europeans
offered the lowest possible wages and relied on legislation backed by force
to do the rest.
There were several reasons why the African worker was more crudely
exploited than his European counterpart in the present century. Firstly, the
alien colonial state had a monopoly of political power, after crushing all
opposition by superior armed force. Secondly, the African working class
was small, very dispersed, and very unstable owing to migratory practices.
Thirdly, while capitalism was willing to exploit all workers everywhere,
European capitalists in Africa had additional racial justifications for dealing
unjustly with the African worker. The racist theory that the black man was
inferior led to the conclusion that he deserved lower wages; and
interestingly enough, the light-skinned Arab and Berber populations of
North Africa were treated as “blacks” by the white racist French. The
combination of the above factors in turn made it extremely difficult for
African workers to organize themselves. It is only the organization and
resoluteness of the working class which protects it from the natural
tendency of the capitalist to exploit to the utmost. That is why in all colonial
territories, when African workers realized the necessity for trade union
solidarity, numerous obstacles were placed in their paths by the colonial
regimes.
Wages paid to workers in Europe and North America were much higher
than wages paid to African workers in comparable categories. The Nigerian
coal miner at Enugu earned one shilling per day for working underground
and nine pence per day for jobs on the surface. Such a miserable wage
would be beyond the comprehension of a Scottish or German coal miner,
who could virtually earn in an hour what the Enugu miner was paid for a
six-day week. The same disparity existed with port workers. The records of
the large American shipping company, Farrell Lines, show that in 1955, of
the total amount spent on loading and discharging cargo moving between
Africa and America, five-sixths went to American workers and one-sixth to
Africans. Yet, it was the same amount of cargo loaded and unloaded at both
ends. The wages paid to the American stevedore and the European coal
miners were still such as to insure that the capitalists made a profit. The
point here is merely to illustrate how much greater was the rate of
exploitation of African workers.

When discrepancies such as the above were pointed out during the
colonial period and subsequently, those who justified colonialism were
quick to reply that the standard and cost of living was higher in capitalist
countries. The fact is that the higher standard was made possible by the
exploitation of colonies, and there was no justification for keeping African
living standards so depressed in an age where better was possible and in a
situation where a higher standard was possible because of the work output
of Africans themselves. The kind of living standard supportable by African
labor within the continent is readily illustrated by the salaries and the lifestyle of the whites inside Africa.
Colonial governments discriminated against the employment of Africans
in senior categories; and, whenever it happened that a white and a black
filled the same post, the white man was sure to be paid considerably more.
This was true at all levels, ranging from civil service posts to mine workers.
African salaried workers in the British colonies of Gold Coast and Nigeria
were better off than their brothers in many other parts of the continent, but
they were restricted to the “junior staff” level in the civil service. In the
period before the last world war, European civil servants in the Gold Coast
received an average of 40 pounds per month, with quarters and other
privileges. Africans got an average salary of 4 pounds. There were instances
where one European in an establishment earned as much as his twenty-five
African assistants put together. Outside the civil service, Africans obtained
work in building projects, in mines, and as domestics—all low-paying jobs.
It was exploitation without responsibility and without redress. In 1934,
forty-one Africans were killed in a gold mine disaster in the Gold Coast,
and the capitalist company offered only 3 pounds to the dependents of each
of these men as compensation.
Where European settlers were found in considerable numbers, the wage
differential was readily perceived. In North Africa, the wages of Moroccans
and Algerians were from 16 percent to 25 percent those of Europeans. In
East Africa, the position was much worse, notably in Kenya and
Tanganyika. A comparison with white settler earnings and standards brings
out by sharp contrast how incredibly low African wages were. While Lord
Delamere controlled 100,000 acres of Kenya’s land, the Kenyan had to
carry a kipande pass in his own country to beg for a wage of 15 or 20
shillings per month. The absolute limit of brutal exploitation was found in

the southern parts of the continent; and in Southern Rhodesia, for example,
agricultural laborers rarely received more than 15 shillings per month.
Workers in mines got a little more if they were semi-skilled, but they also
had more intolerable working conditions. Unskilled laborers in the mines of
Northern Rhodesia often got as little as 7 shillings per month. A truck driver
on the famous copper belt was in a semi-skilled grade. In one mine,
Europeans performed that job for 30 pounds per month, while in another,
Africans did it for 3 pounds per month.
In all colonial territories, wages were reduced during the period of crisis
which shook the capitalist world during the 1930s, and they were not
restored or increased until after the last capitalist world war. In Southern
Rhodesia in 1949, Africans employed in municipal areas were awarded
minimum wages from 35 to 75 shillings per month. That was a considerable
improvement over previous years, but white workers (on the job for 8 hours
per day compared to the Africans’ 10 or 14 hours) received a minimum
wage of 20 shillings per day plus free quarters and other benefits.
The Rhodesians offered a miniature version of South Africa’s apartheid
system, which oppressed the largest industrial working class on the
continent. In the Union of South Africa, African laborers worked deep
underground, under inhuman conditions which would not have been
tolerated by miners in Europe. Consequently, black South African workers
recovered gold from deposits which elsewhere would be regarded as noncommercial. And yet it is the white section of the working class which
received whatever benefits were available in terms of wages and salaries.
Officials have admitted that the mining companies could pay whites higher
than miners in any other part of the world because of the superprofits made
by paying black workers a mere pittance.*
In the final analysis, the shareholders of the mining companies were the
ones who benefited most of all. They remained in Europe and North
America and collected fabulous dividends every year from the gold,
diamonds, manganese, uranium, etc., which were brought out of the South
African subsoil by African labor. For years, the capitalist press itself praised
Southern Africa as an investment outlet returning superprofits on capital
invested. From the very beginning of the Scramble for Africa, huge fortunes
were made from gold and diamonds in Southern Africa by people like Cecil

Rhodes. In the present century, both the investment and the outflow of
surplus have increased. Investment was mainly concentrated in mining and
finance where the profits were greatest. In the mid-1950s, British
investments in South Africa were estimated at 860 million pounds and
yielded a stable profit of 15 percent, or 129 million pounds every year. Most
mining companies had returns well above that average. De Beers
Consolidated Mines made a profit that was both phenomenal and
consistently high—between $26 million and $29 million throughout the
1950s.
The complex of Southern African mining concerns operated not just in
South Africa itself, but also in South-West Africa, Angola, Mozambique,
Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and the Congo. Congo was
consistently a source of immense wealth for Europe, because from the time
of colonization until 1906, King Leopold II of Belgium made at least $20
million from rubber and ivory. The period of mineral exploitation started
quite early, and then gained momentum after political control passed from
King Leopold to the Belgium state in 1908. Total foreign capital inflow into
the Congo between 1887 and 1953 was estimated by the Belgians to have
been 5,700 million pounds. The value of the outflow in the same period was
said to have been 4,300 million pounds, exclusive of profits retained within
the Congo. As was true everywhere else on the continent, the expatriation
of surplus from Congo increased as the colonial period wore on. In the five
years preceding independence the net outflow of capital from Congo to
Belgium reached massive proportions. Most of the expatriation of surplus
was handled by a major European finance monopoly, the Société Générale.
The Société Générale had as its most important subsidiary the Union
Minière de Haiite-Katanga, which has monopolized Congolese copper
production since 1889 (when it was known as the Compagnie de Katanga):
Union Minière has been known to make a profit of 27 million pounds in a
single year.
It is no wonder that of the total wealth produced in Congo in any given
year during the colonial period, more than one-third went out in the form of
profits for big business and salaries for their expatriate staffs. But the
comparable figure for Northern Rhodesia under the British was one-half. In
Katanga, Union Minière at least had a reputation for leaving some of the
profits behind in the form of things like housing and maternity services for

African workers. The Rhodesian Copper Belt Companies expatriated profits
without compunction.
It should not be forgotten that outside Southern Africa there were also
significant mining operations during the colonial period. In North Africa,
foreign capital exploited natural resources of phosphates, oil, lead, zinc,
manganese, and iron ore. In Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, there were
important workings of gold, diamonds, iron ore, and bauxite. To all that
should be added the tin of Nigeria, the gold and manganese of Ghana, the
gold and diamonds of Tanganyika, and the copper of Uganda and Congo
Brazzaville. In each case, an understanding of the situation must begin with
an inquiry into the degree of exploitation of African resources and labor,
and then must proceed to follow the surplus to its destination outside Africa
—into the bank accounts of the capitalists who control the majority shares
in the huge multinational mining combines.
The African working class produced a less spectacular surplus for export
with regard to companies engaged in agriculture. Agricultural plantations
were widespread in North, East, and South Africa; and they also appeared
in West Africa to a lesser extent. Their profits depended on the incredibly
low wages and harsh working conditions imposed on African agricultural
laborers and on the fact that they invested very little capital in obtaining the
land, which was robbed wholesale from Africans by colonial powers and
then sold to whites at nominal prices. For instance, after the Kenya
highlands had been declared “Crown Land,” the British handed over to
Lord Delamere 100,000 acres of the best land at a cost of a penny per acre.
Lord Francis Scott purchased 350,000 acres, the East African Estates Ltd.
got another 350,000 acres, and the East African Syndicate took 100,000
acres adjoining Lord Delamere’s estate—all at giveaway prices. Needless to
say, such plantations made huge profits, even if the rate was lower than in a
South African gold mine or an Angolan diamond mine.
During the colonial era, Liberia was supposedly independent; but to all
intents and purposes, it was a colony of the U.S.A. In 1926, the Firestone
Rubber Company of the U.S.A. was able to acquire one million acres of
forest land in Liberia at a cost of 6 cents per acre and 1 percent of the value
of the exported rubber. Because of the demand for and the strategic
importance of rubber, Firestone’s profits from Liberia’s land and labor
carried them to 25th position among the giant companies of the U.S.A.

European Trading Companies versus the African Peasant
So far, this section has been dealing with that part of the surplus produced
by African wage earners in mines and plantations. But the African working
class under colonialism was extremely small and the vast majority of
Africans engaged in the colonial money economy were independent
peasants. How then can it be said that these self-employed peasants were
contributing to the expatriation of African surplus? Apologists for
colonialism argue that it was a positive benefit for such farmers to have
been given the opportunity to create surplus by growing or collecting
produce such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil. It is essential that this
misrepresentation be clarified.
A peasant growing a cash crop or collecting produce had his labor
exploited by a long chain of individuals, starting with local businessmen.
Sometimes, those local businessmen were Europeans. Very rarely were they
Africans, and more usually they were a minority group brought in from
outside and serving as intermediaries between the white colonialists and the
exploited African peasant. In West Africa, the Lebanese and Syrians played
this role; while in East Africa the Indians rose to this position. Arabs were
also in the middleman category in Zanzibar and a few other places on the
East African coast.
Cash-crop peasants never had any capital of their own. They existed
from one crop to another, depending on good harvests and good prices. Any
bad harvest or fall of prices caused the peasants to borrow in order to find
money to pay taxes and buy certain necessities. As security, they mortgaged
their future crops to moneylenders in the middleman category. Nonpayment of debts could and did lead to their farms’ being taken away by the
moneylenders. The rate of interest on the loans was always fantastically
high, amounting to what is known as “usury.” In East Africa, things were so
bad that even the British colonial government had to step in and enact a
“Native Credit Ordinance” to protect Africans from Asian businessmen.
However, in spite of some minor clashes between the colonialists and the
middlemen, the two were part and parcel of the same apparatus of
exploitation. On the whole, the Lebanese and Indians did the smaller jobs
which Europeans could not be bothered with. They owned things such as
cotton gins which separated the seed from the lint; while of course

Europeans concentrated on the cotton mills in Europe. The middlemen also
went out to the villages, while Europeans liked to stay in towns. In the
villages, the Indians and Lebanese took over virtually all buying and
selling, channeling most of the profits back to Europeans in the towns and
those overseas.
The share of profits which went to middlemen was insignificant in
comparison to those profits reaped by big European business interests and
by the European governments themselves. The capitalist institution which
came into most direct contact with African peasants was the colonial
trading company: that is to say, a company specializing in moving goods to
and from the colonies. The most notorious were the French concerns,
Compagnie Française d’Afrique Occidentale (CFAO) and Société
Commerciale Ouest Africaine (SCOA), and the British-controlled United
Africa Company (UAC). These were responsible for expatriating a great
proportion of Africa’s wealth produced by peasant toil.
Several of the colonial trading companies already had African blood on
their hands from participation in the slave trade. Thus, after French
merchants in Bordeaux made fortunes from the European slave trade, they
transferred that capital to the trade in groundnuts from Senegal and Gambia
in the middle of the nineteenth century. The firms concerned continued to
operate in the colonial period, although they changed hands and there were
a lot of mergers. In Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali, the names of Maurel &
Prom, Maurel Brothers, Buhan & Teyssere, Delmas & Clastre, were all well
known. Several of them were eventually incorporated into SCOA, which
was dominated by a consortium of French and Swiss financiers. A parallel
process in the French port of Marseilles led to the transfer of slave-trade
capital into direct trade between Africa and France. After the end of the
First World War, most of the small Marseilles firms were absorbed into the
massive CFAO, which imported into French West Africa whatever
European goods the market would take, and exported in turn the agricultural
produce that was largely the consequence of peasant labor. CFAO also had
British and Dutch capital, and its activities extended into Liberia and into
British and Belgian colonies. It is said that SCOA and CFAO made a profit
of up to 90 percent in good years and 25 percent in bad years.
In Britain, the notorious slave trading port of Liverpool was the first to
switch to palm oil early in the nineteenth century when the trade in slaves

became difficult or impossible. This meant that Liverpool firms were no
longer exploiting Africa by removing its labor physically to another part of
the world. Instead, they were exploiting the labor and raw materials of
Africa inside Africa. Throughout the nineteenth century and right into the
colonial era, Liverpool concentrated largely on importing African peasant
produce. Backed by the industrial districts of Manchester and Cheshire, this
British port was in control of a great proportion of Britain’s and Europe’s
trade with Africa in the colonial period—just as it had done in the slave
trade period. Glasgow also had a keen interest in the colonial trade, and so
did the merchants and big business interests of London. By 1929, London
replaced Liverpool as the chief port dealing with African import and export.
As indicated, the UAC was the British company which was best known
among the commercial concerns. It was a subsidiary of the giant AngloDutch monopoly, Unilever; and its agencies were found in all the British
colonies of West Africa and on a smaller scale in East Africa. Unilever also
controlled the Compagnie du Niger Français, the Compagnie Française de
la Côte d’Ivoire, SCKN in Chad, NOSOCO in Senegal, NSCA in
Portuguese Guinea, and John Walken & Co. Ltd. in Dahomey. Certain other
British and French firms were not found in every colony, but they did well
in the particular area in which they were entrenched. For example, there
was John Holt in Nigeria.
In East Africa, the import-export business tended to have smaller firms
than in West Africa, but even so there were five or six which were much
larger than the rest and appropriated the largest amounts. One of the oldest
was Smith Mackenzie, which was an offshoot of the Scottish company of
Mackinnon and Mackenzie which had spearheaded British colonization in
East Africa and which also had interests in India. Other notable commercial
firms were those of A. Baumann, Wiggles worth and Company, Dalgetty,
Leslie & Anderson, Ralli Bros., Michael Cotts, Jos. Hansen, the African
Mercantile and Twentsche Overseas Trading Co. Some of them
amalgamated before colonial rule was over, and they all had several other
subsidiaries, as well as themselves being related to bigger companies in the
métropoles. The UAC also had a slice of the East African import trade,
having brought up the firm of Gailey and Roberts which was started by
white settlers in 1904.

The pattern of appropriation of surplus in East Africa was easy to follow,
in that there was centralization of the extractive mechanisms in Nairobi and
the port of Mombasa. All the big firms operated from Nairobi, with
important offices in Mombasa to deal with warehousing, shipping, insuring.
Uganda and Tanganyika were then brought into the picture via their capital
cities of Kampala and Dar es Salaam, where the big firms had branches. Up
to the start of the last war, the volume of trade from East Africa was fairly
small, but it jumped rapidly after that. For instance, the value of Kenya
imports rose from 4 million pounds in 1938 to 34 million in 1950 and to 70
million in 1960. The value of exports was of course rising at the same time,
and the commercial firms were among the principal beneficiaries of the
growth in foreign trade.
Trading companies made huge fortunes on relatively small investments
in those parts of Africa where peasant cash-crop farming was widespread.
The companies did not have to spend a penny to grow the agricultural raw
materials. The African peasant went in for cash-crop farming for many
reasons. A minority eagerly took up the opportunity to continue to acquire
European goods, which they had become accustomed to during the precolonial period. Many others in every section of the continent took to
earning cash because they had to pay various taxes in money or because
they were forced to work. Good examples of Africans literally being forced
to grow cash crops by gun and whip were to be found in Tanganyika under
German rule, in Portuguese colonies, and in French Equatorial Africa and
the French Sudan in the 1930s.* In any event, there were very few cases
where the peasant was wholly dependent on the cash for his actual
sustenance. The trading companies took full advantage of that fact.
Knowing that an African peasant and his family would keep alive by their
own food shambas, the companies had no obligation to pay prices sufficient
for the maintenance of a peasant and his family. In a way, the companies
were simply receiving tribute from a conquered people, without even the
necessity to trouble themselves as to how the tributary goods were
produced.
Trading companies also had their own means of transport inside Africa,
such as motor vessels and trucks. But, usually they transferred the burden of
transport costs on to the peasant via the Lebanese or Indian middlemen.

Those capitalist companies held the African farmer in a double squeeze, by
controlling the price paid for the crop and by controlling the price of
imported goods such as tools, clothing, and bicycles to which peasants
aspired. For example, prices of palm products were severely reduced by the
UAC and other trading companies in Nigeria in 1929, while the cost of
living was rising owing to increased charges for imported goods. In 1924,
the price for palm oil had been 14 shillings per gallon. This fell to 7 in 1928
and to slightly over one shilling in the following year. Although the trading
companies received less for every ton of palm oil during the depression
years, their profit margin increased—showing how brazenly surplus was
being pounded out of the peasant. In the midst of the depression the UAC
was showing a handsome profit. The profits in 1934 were 6,302,875 pounds
and a dividend of 15 per cent was paid on ordinary shares.
In every part of colonial Africa, the depression years followed the same
pattern. In Sukumaland (Tanganyika) the price of cotton dropped in 1930
from 50 cents to 10 cents per pound. The French colonies were hit a little
later, because the depression did not make its impact on the French
monetary zone until after 1931. Then, prices of Senegalese groundnuts were
cut by more than half. Coffee and cocoa dropped even further, since they
were relative luxuries to the European buyer. Again, it can be noted that
French firms such as CFAO and SCOA faced lower prices when they sold
the raw materials in Europe, but they never absorbed any losses. Instead,
African peasants and workers bore the pressure, even if it meant forced
labor. African peasants in French territories were forced to join so-called
cooperative societies which made them grow certain crops like cotton and
made them accept whatever price was offered.
Hardly had the depression ended when Europe was at war. The Western
powers dragged in the African people to fight for freedom! The trading
firms stepped up the rate of plunder in the name of God and country. On the
Gold Coast, they paid 10 pounds per ton for cocoa beans as compared to 50
pounds before the war. At the same time, the price of imported goods
doubled or trebled. Many necessities passed beyond the reach of the
ordinary man. On the Gold Coast, a piece of cotton print which had sold
before the war for 12½ shillings was 90 shillings in 1945. In Nigeria, a yard
of khaki which was 3 shillings in prewar days went up to 16; a bundle of
iron sheets formerly costing 30 went up to 100.

Urban workers were hardest hit by rising prices, since they had to
purchase everyday necessities with money, and part of their food was
imported. Worker dissatisfaction highlighted this exploitative postwar
situation. There were several strikes, and in the Gold Coast, the boycott of
imported goods in 1948 is famous as the prelude to self-government under
Nkrumah. However, peasants were also restless under low prices and
expensive imports. In Uganda, the cotton-growing peasants could stand
things no longer by 1947. They could not get their hands on the big British
import-export firms, but they could at least deal with the Indian and African
middlemen. So they marched against the Indian-owned cotton gins and
demonstrated outside the palace of the Kabaka—the hereditary ruler who
often functioned as a British agent in Uganda.
To insure that at all times the profit margin was kept as high as possible,
the trading firms found it convenient to form “pools.” The pools fixed the
price to be paid to the African cultivator, and kept the price down to the
minimum. In addition, the trading companies spread into several other
aspects of the economic life of the colonies, in such a way as to introduce
several straws for the sucking out of surplus. In Morocco, to give one
example, the Compagnie Générale du Maroc owned large estates, livestock
farms, timber workings, mines, fisheries, railways, ports, and power
stations. The giants like CFAO and UAC also had their fingers in
everything. CFAO’s interests ranged from groundnut plantations to shares
in the Fabre & Frassinet shipping line. The people of Ghana and Nigeria
met the UAC everywhere they turned. It controlled wholesale and retail
trade, owned butter factories, sawmills, soap factories, singlet factories,
cold storage plants, engineering and motor repair shops, tugs, coastal boats.
Some of those businesses directly exploited African wage labor, while in
one way or another all operations skimmed the cream produced by peasant
efforts in the cash-crop sector.
Sometimes, the firms which purchased agricultural products in Africa
were the same concerns which manufactured goods based on those
agricultural raw materials. For instance, Cadbury and Fry, the two foremost
English manufacturers of cocoa and chocolate, were buyers on the West
African coast, while in East Africa the tea manufacturing concern of Brooke
Bond both grew and exported tea. Many of the Marseilles, Bordeaux, and
Liverpool trading companies were also engaged in manufacturing items

such as soap and margarine in their home territories. This applied fully to
the UAC, while the powerful Lesieur group processing oils and fats in
France had commercial buyers in Africa. However, it is possible to separate
the trading operations from the industrial ones. The latter represented the
final stage in the long process of exploiting the labor of African peasants—
in some ways the most damaging stage.
Peasants worked for large numbers of hours to produce a given cash
crop, and the price of the product was the price of those long hours of labor.
Since primary produce from Africa has always received low prices, it
follows that the buyer and user of the raw material was engaging in massive
exploitation of the peasants.
The above generalization can be illustrated with reference to cotton,
which is one of the most widely encountered cash crops in Africa. The
Ugandan farmer grew cotton which ultimately made its way into an English
factory in Lancashire or a British-owned factory in India. The Lancashire
factory owner paid his workers as little as possible, but his exploitation of
their labor was limited by several factors. His exploitation of the labor of
the Ugandan peasant was unlimited because of his power in the colonial
state, which insured that Ugandans worked long hours for very little.
Besides, the price of the finished cotton shirt was so high that when reimported into Uganda, cotton in the form of a shirt was beyond the
purchasing power of the peasant who grew the cotton.
The differences between the prices of African exports of raw materials
and their importation of manufactured goods constituted a form of unequal
exchange. Throughout the colonial period, this inequality in exchange got
worse. Economists refer to the process as one of deteriorating terms of
trade. In 1939, with the same quality of primary goods colonies could buy
only 60 percent of manufactured goods which they bought in the decade
1870–80 before colonial rule. By 1960, the amount of European
manufactured goods purchasable by the same quantity of African raw
materials had fallen still further. There was no objective economic law
which determined that primary produce should be worth so little. Indeed,
the developed countries sold certain raw materials like timber and wheat at
much higher prices than a colony could command. The explanation is that
the unequal exchange was forced upon Africa by the political and military
supremacy of the colonizers, just as in the sphere of international relations

unequal treaties were forced upon small states in the dependencies, like
those in Latin America.
The unequal nature of the trade between the metropole and the colonies
was emphasised by the concept of the “protected market,” which meant
even an inefficient metropolitan producer could find a guaranteed market in
the colony where his class had political control. Furthermore, as in the
preceding era of pre-colonial trade, European manufacturers built up useful
sidelines of goods which would have been substandard in their own
markets, especially in textiles. The European farmer also gained in the same
way by selling cheap butter, while the Scandinavian fisherman came into
his own through the export of salted cod. Africa was not a large market for
European products, compared to other continents, but both buying-prices
and selling-prices were set by European capitalists. That certainly allowed
their manufacturers and traders more easy access to the surplus of wealth
produced in Africa than they would have had if Africans were in a position
to raise the price of their own exports.
Shipping and Banking Services
Channels for the exploitation of surplus were not exhausted by the trading
companies and the industrial concerns. The shipping companies constituted
an exploitative channel that cannot be overlooked. The largest shipping
companies were those under the flags of the colonizing nations, especially
the British. The shippers were virtually a law unto themselves, being very
favorably regarded by their home governments as earners of superprofits, as
stimulators of industry and trade, as carriers of mail, and as contributors to
the navy when war came. African peasants had absolutely no control over
the freight rates which were charged, and actually paid more than citizens in
other lands. The rate for flour from Liverpool to West Africa was 35
shillings per ton as compared with only 7½ shillings from Liverpool to New
York (a roughly equivalent distance). Freight rates normally varied with the
volume of cargo carried, but the rate for cocoa was established at 50
shillings per ton when amounts exported were small at the beginning of this
century, and the same high figure remained when exports increased. Coffee
carried from Kenya to New York in the 1950s earned the shippers 280
shillings per ton ($40 at the rate of exchange then). Theoretically, it was the

merchant who paid the shipper the freight charges, but in practical terms it
meant that peasant production was bearing all the costs, since the merchants
paid out of profits made by buying cheaply from the peasants. Alternatively,
white settler planters paid the costs as in Kenya, and then regained their
profits through exploitation of rural wage labor.
Shipping companies retained a high profit margin by a practice similar to
the “pools” of the commercial firms. They established what were known as
“Conference Lines” which allowed two or more shippers to share the
freight loads between themselves on the most favorable basis possible.
Their returns on investment were so high and their greed so uncontrollable
that even the merchants of the colonizing powers protested. From 1929 to
1931, the UAC (backed by Unilever) engaged in an economic war with the
West African Lines Conference—comprising the British shipping firm of
Elder Dempster, the Holland West Africa Line, and the German West Africa
Line. In that instance, the trading monopoly won a victory over the shipping
monopoly; but it was a fight between two elephants, and the grass was
trampled all the more. At the end of it all, the African peasant was the
greatest loser, because both traders and shippers adjusted their differences
by lowering prices of primary products as paid to Africans.
In the background of the colonial scene hovered the banks, insurance
companies, maritime underwriters, and other financial houses. One can say
“in the background” because the peasant never dealt directly with such
institutions, and was generally ignorant of their exploiting functions. The
peasant or worker had no access to bank loans because he had no
“securities” or “collateral.” Banks and finance houses dealt only with other
capitalists who could prove to the bankers that whatever happened the bank
would recover its money and make a profit. In the epoch of imperialism, the
bankers became the aristocrats of the capitalist world, so in another sense
they were very much in the foreground. The amount of surplus produced by
African workers and peasants and passing into the hands of metropolitan
bankers is quite phenomenal. They registered a return on capital higher
even than the mining companies, and each new direct investment that they
made spelled further alienation of the fruits of African labor. Furthermore,
all investment in the colonies meant in effect the involvement of the big
finance monopolies, since the smallest trading company was ultimately
linked to a big banker. The returns on colonial investment were consistently

higher than those in investments in the metro-poles, so the financiers stood
to benefit from sponsoring colonial enterprise.
In the earliest years of colonialism, the banks of Africa were small and
relatively independent. This applied to the Banque de Senegal, started as
early as 1853, and to the Bank of British West Africa which began as an
offshoot of the shipping firm of Elder Dempster. However, the great
banking houses of Europe, which had carried on remote control of
developments ever since the 1880s, soon moved in directly on the colonial
banking scene when the volume of capitalist transactions made this
worthwhile. The Banque de Senegal merged into the Banque de L’Afrique
Occidentale (BAO) in 1901, acquiring links with the powerful Bank of
Indochina, which in turn was a special creation of several powerful
metropolitan French bankers. In 1924, the Banque Commerciale de
I’Afrique (BCA) emerged in the French territories, linked with the Credit
Lyonnais and the BNCI in France. By that time the Bank of British West
Africa had its finance backed by Lloyds Bank, Westminster Bank, the
Standard Bank, and the National Provincial Bank—all in England. The
other great English banking firm, Barclays, moved directly into Africa. It
purchased the Colonial Bank and set it up as Barclays DCO (i.e., Dominion
and Colonial).
The Bank of British West Africa (which became the Bank of West Africa
in 1957) and Barclays held between them the lion’s share of the banking
business of British West Africa, just as French West and Equatorial Africa
were shared out between the BAO and the BCA. There was also a union of
French and British banking capital in West Africa in 1949 with the
formation of the British and French West Africa Bank. French and Belgian
exploitation also overlapped in the financial sphere, since the Société
Générale had both Belgian and French capital. It supported banks in French
Africa and the Congo. Other weaker colonial powers were served by the
international banks such as Barclays, and also used their colonial territories
as grazing ground for their own national banks. In Libya, the Banco di
Roma and the Banco di Napoli operated; while in Portuguese territories the
most familiar name was that of the Banco Ultramarino.
In Southern Africa, the outstanding banking firm was the Standard Bank
of South Africa Ltd., started in 1862 in the Cape Colony by the heads of
business houses having close connections with London. Its headquarters

were placed in London, and it made a fortune out of financing gold and
diamond strikes, and through handling the loot of Cecil Rhodes and De
Beers. By 1895, the Standard Bank spread into Bechuanaland, Rhodesia,
and Mozambique; and it was the second British bank to be established in
British East Africa. The actual scale of profits was quite formidable. In a
book officially sponsored by the Standard Bank, the writer modestly
concluded as follows:
Little attention has been paid in the text of this book to the financial outcome of the Standard
Bank’s activities, yet their profitability was an inevitable outcome of survival and was
therefore bound to be a primary objective from first to last.

In 1960, the Standard Bank produced a net profit of 1,181,000 pounds
and paid a 14 per cent dividend to its shareholders. Most of the latter were
in Europe or else were whites in South Africa, while the profit was
produced mainly by the black people of South and East Africa.
Furthermore, these European banks transferred the reserves of their African
branches to the London head office to be invested in the London money
market. This was the way in which they most rapidly expatriated African
surplus to the metropoles.
The first bank to be set up in East Africa in the 1890s was an offshoot of
a British bank operating in India. It later came to be called the National &
Grindlays. In neighboring Tanganyika the Germans established the German
East African Bank in 1905, but after the First World War the British had a
near monopoly of East African banking. Altogether nine foreign banks were
in existence in East Africa during the colonial period, out of which the big
three were National & Grindlays, the Standard Bank, and Barclays.
East Africa provides an interesting example of how effectively foreign
banks served to dispossess Africa of its wealth. Most of the banking and
other financial services were rendered to white settlers whose conception of
“home” was always Britain. Consequently, when the white settlers felt
threatened towards the end of the colonial period, they rushed to send their
money home to Britain. For example, when the decision to concede selfgovernment to Kenya was taken by the British in 1960, a sum amounting to
over 5½ million dollars was immediately transferred to “safety” in London
by whites in Tanganyika. That sum, like all other remittances by colonial
banks, represented the exploitation of African land resources and labor.

The Colonial Administration as Economic Exploiter
In addition to private companies, the colonial state also engaged directly in
the economic exploitation and impoverishment of Africa. The equivalent of
the colonial office in each colonizing country worked hand in hand with
their governors in Africa to carry out a number of functions, the principal
ones being as follows:
(1) To protect national interests against competition from other
capitalists.
(2) To arbitrate the conflicts between their own capitalists.
(3) To guarantee optimum conditions under which private companies
could exploit Africans.
The last-mentioned objective was the most crucial. That is why colonial
governments were repeatedly speaking about “the maintenance of law and
order,” by which they meant the maintenance of conditions most favorable
to the expansion of capitalism and the plunder of Africa. This led the
colonial governments to impose taxes.
One of the main purposes of the colonial taxation system was to provide
requisite funds for administering the colony as a field of exploitation.
European colonizers insured that Africans paid for the upkeep of the
governors and police who oppressed them and served as watchdogs for
private capitalists. Indeed, taxes and customs duties were levied in the
nineteenth century with the aim of allowing the colonial powers to recover
the costs of the armed forces which they dispatched to conquer Africa. In
effect, therefore, the colonial governments never put a penny into the
colonies. All expenses were met by exploiting the labor and natural
resources of the continent; and for all practical purposes the expense of
maintaining the colonial government machinery was a form of alienation of
the products of African labor. The French colonies were especially
victimized in this respect. Particularly since 1921, the local revenue raised
from taxation had to meet all expenses as well as build up a reserve.
Having set up the police, army, civil service, and judiciary on African
soil, the colonizing powers were then in a position to intervene much more
directly in the economic life of the people than had been the case
previously. One major problem in Africa from a capitalist viewpoint was
how to induce Africans to become laborers or cash-crop farmers. In some

areas, such as West Africa, Africans had become so attached to European
manufactures during the early period of trade that, on their own initiative,
they were prepared to go to great lengths to participate in the colonial
money economy. But that was not the universal response. In many
instances, Africans did not consider the monetary incentives great enough
to justify changing their way of life so as to become laborer^ or cash-crop
farmers. In such cases, the colonial state intervened to use law, taxation, and
outright force to make Africans pursue a line favorable to capitalist profits.
When colonial governments seized African lands, they achieved two
things simultaneously. They satisfied their own citizens (who wanted
mining concessions or farming land) and they created the conditions
whereby landless Africans had to work not just to pay taxes but also to
survive. In settler areas such as Kenya and Rhodesia the colonial
government also prevented Africans from growing cash crops so that their
labor would be available directly for the whites. One of the Kenya white
settlers, Colonel Grogan, put it bluntly when he said of the Kikuyu: “We
have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs. Compulsory labor is the
corollary of our occupation of the country.”
In those parts of the continent where land was still in African hands,
colonial governments forced Africans to produce cash crops no matter how
low the prices were. The favorite technique was taxation. Money taxes were
introduced on numerous items—cattle, land, houses, and the people
themselves. Money to pay taxes was got by growing cash crops or working
on European farms or in their mines. An interesting example of what
colonialism was all about was provided in French Equatorial Africa, where
French officials banned the Mandja people (now in Congo Brazzaville)
from hunting, so that they would engage solely in cotton cultivation. The
French enforced the ban although there was little livestock in the area and
hunting was the main source of meat in the people’s diet.
Finally, when all else failed, colonial powers resorted widely to the
physical coercion of labor—backed up of course by legal sanctions, since
anything which the colonial government chose to do was “legal.” The laws
and by-laws by which peasants in British East Africa were required to
maintain minimum acreages of cash crops like cotton and groundnuts were
in effect forms of coercion by the colonial state, although they are not
normally considered under the heading of “forced labor.”

The simplest form of forced labor was that which colonial governments
exacted to carry out “public works.” Labor for a given number of days per
year had to be given free for these “public works”—building castles for
governors, prisons for Africans, barracks for troops, and bungalows for
colonial officials. A great deal of this forced labor went into the
construction of roads, railways, and ports to provide the infrastructure for
private capitalist investment and to facilitate the export of cash crops.
Taking only one example from the British colony of Sierra Leone, one finds
that the railway which started at the end of the nineteenth century required
forced labor from thousands of peasants driven from the villages. The hard
work and appalling conditions led to the death of a large number of those
engaged in work on the railway. In the British territories, this kind of forced
labor (including juvenile labor) was widespread enough to call forth in 1923
a “Native Authority Ordinance” restricting the use of compulsory labor for
porterage, railway and road building. More often than not, means were
found of circumventing this legislation. An international Forced Labor
Convention was signed by all colonial powers in 1930, but again it was
flouted in practice.
The French government had a cunning way of getting free labor by first
demanding that African males should enlist as French soldiers and then
using them as unpaid laborers. This and other forced labor legislation
known as “prestation” was extensively applied in vast areas of French
Sudan and French Equatorial Africa. Because cash crops were not well
established in those areas, the main method of extracting surplus was by
taking the population and making it work in plantation or cash-crop regions
nearer the coast. Present-day Upper Volta, Chad, and Congo Brazzaville
were huge suppliers of forced labor under colonialism. The French got
Africans to start building the Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire railway in 1921,
and it was not completed until 1933. Every year of its construction, some
ten thousand people were driven to the site—sometimes from more than a
thousand kilometers away. At least 25 per cent of the labor force died
annually from starvation and disease, the worst period being from 1922 to
1929.
Quite apart from the fact that the “public works” were of direct value to
the capitalists, the colonial government also aided private capitalists by
providing them with labor recruited by force. This was particularly true in

the early years of colonialism, but continued in varying degrees up to the
Second World War, and even to the end of colonialism in some places. In
British territories, the practice was revived during the economic depression
of 1929–33 and during the subsequent war. In Kenya and Tanganyika,
forced labor was reintroduced to keep settler plantations functioning during
the war. In Nigeria, it was the tin companies which benefited from the
forced-labor legislation, allowing them to get away with paying workers 5
pence per day plus rations. For most of the colonial period, the French
government performed the same kind of service for the big timber
companies who had great concessions of territory in Gabon and Ivory
Coast.
The Portuguese and Belgian colonial regimes were the most brazen in
directly rounding up Africans to go and work for private capitalists under
conditions equivalent to slavery. In Congo, brutal and extensive forced
labor started under King Leopold II in the last century. So many Congolese
were killed and maimed by Leopold’s officials and police that this earned
European disapproval even in the midst of the general pattern of colonial
outrages. When Leopold handed over the “Congo Free State” to the Belgian
government in 1908, he had already made a huge fortune; and the Belgian
government hardly relaxed the intensity of exploitation in Congo.
The Portuguese have the worst record of engaging in slavery-like
practices, and they too have been repeatedly condemned by international
public opinion. One peculiar characteristic of Portuguese colonialism was
the provision of forced labor not only for its own citizens but also for
capitalists outside the boundaries of Portuguese colonies. Angolans and
Mozam-bicans were exported to the South African mines to work for
subsistence, while the capitalists in South Africa paid the Portuguese
government a certain sum for each laborer supplied. (The export of Africans
to South Africa is still continuing.)
In the above example, the Portuguese colonialists were cooperating with
capitalists of other nationalities to maximize the exploitation of African
labor. Throughout the colonial period, there were instances of such
cooperation, as well as competition between metropolitan powers.
Generally speaking, a European power was expected to intervene when the
profits of its national bourgeoisie were threatened by the activities of other
nations. After all, the whole purpose of establishing colonial governments

in Africa was to provide protection to national monopoly economic
interests. Thus, the Belgian government legislated to insure that freight to
and from the Congo would be mainly carried by Belgian shipping lines; and
the French government placed high taxes on groundnuts brought into
France by foreign ships, which was another way of insuring that groundnuts
from French Africa would be exported in French ships. In a sense, this
meant that Africans were losing their surplus through one straw rather than
another. But it also meant that the sum total of exploitation was also greater,
because if competition among Europeans were allowed, it would have
brought down the cost of services and raised the price paid for agricultural
products.
Africans suffered most from exclusive trade with the “mother country”
in cases where the “mother country” was backward. African peasants in
Portuguese colonies got lower prices for their crops and paid more for
imported items. Yet, Britain, the biggest of the colonialists in Africa, was
also faced with competition from the more vigorous capitalists of Germany,
the U.S.A., and Japan. British merchants and industrialists lobbied their
government to erect barriers against competition. For example, Japanese
cloth exports to British East Africa rose from 25 million yards in 1927 to 63
million yards in 1933; and this led Walter Runciman, president of the
British Board of Trade, to get Parliament to impose heavy tariffs on
Japanese goods entering British colonies in Africa. This meant that Africans
had to pay higher prices for a staple import, since British cloth was more
expensive. From the viewpoint of the African peasant, that amounted to
further alienation of the fruits of his labor.
A perfect illustration of the identity of interests between the colonial
governments and their bourgeois citizens was provided by the conduct of
Produce Marketing Boards in Africa. The origins of the Boards go back to
the Gold Coast “cocoa hold-up” of 1937. For several months, cocoa farmers
refused to sell their crop unless the price was raised. One apparently
favorable result of the “hold-up” was that the British government agreed to
set up a Marketing Board to purchase cocoa from the peasants in place of
the big business interests like the UAC and Cadbury which had up until
then been the buyers. A West African Cocoa Control Board was set up in
1938, but the British government used this as a bush to hide the private
capitalists and to allow them to continue making their exorbitant profits.

In theory, a Marketing Board was suppose to pay the peasant a
reasonable price for his crop. The Board sold the crop overseas and kept a
surplus for the improvement of agriculture and for paying the peasants a
stable price if world market prices declined. In practice, the Boards paid
peasants a low fixed rate during many years when world prices were rising.
None of the benefits went to Africans, but rather to the British government
itself and to the private companies, which were used as intermediaries in the
buying and selling of the produce. Big companies like the UAC and John
Holt were given quotas to fulfill on behalf of the Boards. As agents of the
government, they were no longer exposed to direct attack, and their profits
were secure.
The idea of the Marketing Boards gained support from top British policy
makers because the war came just at that time, and the British government
was anxious to take steps to secure certain colonial products in the
necessary quantities and at the right times, given the limited number of
ships available for commercial purposes during war. They were also
anxious to save private capitalists who were adversely affected by events
connected with the war. For example, East African sisal became of vital
importance to Britain and her war allies after the Japanese cut off supplies
of similar hard fibers from the Philippines and Dutch East Indies. Actually,
even before fighting broke out, sisal was bought in bulk by the British
government to help the non-African plantation owners in East Africa who
had lost markets in Germany and other parts of Europe. Similarly, oil seeds
(such as palm produce and groundnuts) were bought by a Board from
September 1939, in preparation for shortages of butter and marine oils.
With regard to all peasant cash crops, the Produce Marketing Boards
made purchases at figures that were way below world market prices. For
instance, the West African Produce Board paid Nigerians a bit under 17
pounds for a ton of palm oil in 1946 and sold that through the Ministry of
Food for 95 pounds, which was nearer the world market price. Groundnuts
which received 15 pounds per ton when bought by the Boards were later
sold in Britain at 110 pounds per ton. Furthermore, export duties were
levied on the Boards’ sales by the colonial administrators, and that was an
indirect tax on the peasants. The situation reached a point where many
peasants tried to escape from under the Boards. In Sierra Leone in 1952, the
price for coffee was so low that growers smuggled their crop into nearby

French territories. At about the same time, Nigerian peasants were running
away from palm oil into rubber collection or timber felling which did not
come under the jurisdiction of the Produce Boards.
If one accepts that the government is always the servant of a particular
class, it is perfectly understandable that the colonial governments should
have been in collusion with capitalists to siphon off surplus from Africa to
Europe. But even if one does not start from that (Marxist) premise, it would
be impossible to ignore the evidence of how the colonial administrators
worked as committees on behalf of the big capitalists. The governors in the
colonies had to listen to the local representatives of the companies and to
their principals. Indeed, there were company representatives who wielded
influence in several colonies at the same time. Before the First World War,
the single most important individual in the whole of British West Africa
was Sir Alfred Jones—chairman of Elder Dempster Lines, chairman of the
Bank of West Africa, president of the British Cotton-Growing Association.
In French West Africa in the late 1940s, the French governor showed
himself very anxious to please one Marc Rucart, a man with major interests
in several of the French trading companies. Such examples could be cited
for each colony throughout its history although in some of them the
influence of the white settlers was greater than that of individual
metropolitan businessmen.
Company shareholders in Europe not only lobbied Parliament but
actually controlled the administration itself. The chairman of the Cocoa
Board within the Ministry of Food was none other than John Cadbury, a
director of Cadbury Brothers, who were participants in the buying “pool”
which exploited West African cocoa farmers. Former employees of
Unilever held key positions in the Oils and Fats Division of the Ministry of
Food, and continued to receive checks from Unilever! The Oils and Fats
Division handed over the allocation of buying quotas for the Produce
Boards to the Association of West African Merchants, which was
dominated by Unilever’s subsidiary, the UAC.
It is no wonder that the Ministry of Food sent a prominent Lebanese
businessman a directive that he had to sign an agreement drawn up by the
UAC. It is no wonder that the companies had government aid in keeping
prices down in Africa and in securing forced labor where necessary. It is no

wonder that Unilever then sold soap, margarine, and such commodities at
profitable prices within a market assured by the British government.
Of course, the metropolitan governments also insured that a certain
proportion of the colonial surplus went directly into the coffers of the state.
They all had some forms of direct investment in capitalist enterprises. The
Belgian government was an investor in mining, and so too was the
Portuguese government through its part-ownership of the Angolan Diamond
Company. The French government was always willing to associate itself
with the financial sector. When colonial banks were in trouble, they could
count on rescue from the French government, and, indeed, a proportion of
their shares passed into the hands of the French government. The British
colonial government was perhaps the least anxious to become directly
involved in everyday business enterprises, but it did run the Eastern
Nigerian coal mines—apart from railways.
Marketing Boards helped the colonizing power to get its hands on some
immediate cash. One finds that the Cocoa Board sold to the British Ministry
of Food at very low prices; and the Ministry in turn sold to British
manufacturers, making a profit that was as high as 11 million pounds in
some years. More important still, the Board sold to the U.S.A., which was
the largest market and one where prices were very high. None of the profits
went back to the African farmer, but instead represented British foreign
exchange in American dollars.
From 1943, Britain and the U.S.A. engaged in what was known as
“reverse lend-lease.” This meant that wartime United States loans to Britain
were repaid partly by raw materials shipped from British colonies to the
U.S.A. Tin and rubber from Malaya were very important in that context,
while Africa supplied a wide range of products, both mineral and
agricultural. Cocoa was third as a dollar earner after tin and rubber. In 1947,
West African cocoa brought over 100 million dollars to the British dollar
balance. Besides, having a virtual monopoly of the production of diamonds,
(South) Africa was also able to sell to the U.S.A. and earn dollars for
Britain. In 1946, Harry F. Oppenheimer told his fellow directors of the De
Beers Consolidated Mines that “sales of gem diamonds during the war
secured about 300 million American dollars for Great Britain.”
It was on this very issue of currency that the colonial government did the
most manipulations to insure that Africa’s wealth was stashed away in the

coffers of the metropolitan state. In the British colonial sphere, coins and
notes were first issued through private banks. Then this function was taken
over by the West African Currency Board and the East African Currency
Board, established in 1912 and 1919 respectively. The currency issued by
those Boards in the colonies had to be backed by “sterling reserves,” which
was money earned by Africa. The manner in which the system worked was
as follows. When a colony earned foreign exchange (mainly) through
exports, these earnings were held in Britain in pounds sterling. An
equivalent amount of local East or West African currency was issued for
circulation in the respective colonies, while the sterling was invested in
British government stock, thereby earning even more profit for Britain. The
commercial banks worked hand in hand with the metropolitan government
and the Currency Boards to make the system work. Together they
established an intricate financial network which served the common end of
enriching Europe at Africa’s expense.
The contribution to sterling reserves by any colony was a gift to the
British treasury, for which the colony received little interest. By the end of
the 1950s, the sterling reserves of a small colony like Sierra Leone had
reached 60 million pounds; while in 1955 the British government was
holding 210 million derived from the sale of cocoa and minerals from Gold
Coast. Egypt and the Sudan were also heavy contributors to Britain.
Africa’s total contribution to Britain’s sterling balances in 1945 was 446
million pounds, which went up to 1,446 million by 1955—more than half
the total gold and dollar reserves of Britain and the Commonwealth, which
then stood at 2,120 million. Men like Arthur Creech-Jones and Oliver
Lyttleton, major figures in British colonial policy-making, admitted that in
the early 1950s Britain was living on the dollar earnings of the colonies.
The British government was surpassed by its Belgian counterpart in
exacting tribute from its colonies, especially during and after the last war.
After Belgium was overrun by the Germans, a government-in-exile was set
up in Lxmdon. The Colonial Secretary of that exiled regime, Mr. Godding,
admitted:
During the war, the Congo was able to finance all the expenditure of the Belgian government in
London, including the diplomatic service as well as the cost of our armed forces in Europe and
Africa, a total of some 40 million pounds. In fact, thanks to the resources of the Congo, the

Belgian government in London had not to borrow a shilling or a dollar, and the Belgian gold
reserve could be left intact.

Since the war, surplus of earnings by the Congo in currencies other than the
Belgian franc have all accrued to the National Bank of Belgium. Therefore,
quite apart from all that the private capitalists looted from Congo, the
Belgian government was also a direct beneficiary to the tune of millions of
francs per annum.
To discuss French colonialism in this context would be largely to repeat
remarks made with reference to the British and Belgians. Guinea was
supposedly a “poor” colony, but in 1952 it earned France one billion (old)
francs, or about 5.6 million dollars in foreign exchange, based on the sale of
bauxite, coffee, and bananas. French financial techniques were slightly
different from those of other colonial powers. France tended to use the
commercial banks more, rather than set up separate currency boards. France
also squeezed more out of Africans by imposing levies for military
purposes. The French government dressed Africans in French army
uniforms and used them to fight other Africans, to fight other colonized
peoples like the Vietnamese, and to fight in European wars. The colonial
budgets had to bear the cost of sending these African “French” soldiers to
die, but if they returned alive they had to be paid pensions out of African
funds.
To sum up briefly, colonialism meant a great intensification of
exploitation within Africa—to a level much higher than that previously in
existence under communalism or feudal-type African societies.
Simultaneously, it meant the export of that surplus in massive proportions,
for that was the central purpose of colonialism.
The Strengthening of the Technological and Military Aspects of
Capitalism
A Preliminary Examination of the Non-monetary Benefits of Colonialism to
Europe
There are still some bourgeois propagandists who assert that colonialism
was not a paying concern for Europeans, just as there are those who say that
the slave trade was not profitable to Europeans. It is not worthwhile to

engage in a direct refutation of such a viewpoint, since it consumes time
which could otherwise be more usefully employed. The foregoing section
was a statement on the level of actual monetary profits made by colonialist
powers out of Africa. But, Africa’s contribution to European capitalism was
far greater than mere monetary returns. The colonial system permitted the
rapid development of technology and skills within the metropolitan sectors
of imperialism. It also allowed for the elaboration of the modern
organizational techniques of the capitalist firm and of imperialism as a
whole. Indeed, colonialism gave capitalism an added lease of life and
prolonged its existence in Western Europe, which had been the cradle of
capitalism.
At the beginning of the colonial period, science and technology as
applied to production already had a firm base inside Europe—a situation
which was itself connected to overseas trade, as previously explained.
Europe then was entering the age of electricity, of advanced ferrous and
non-ferrous metallurgy, and of the proliferation of manufactured chemicals.
All of these were carried to great heights during the colonial period.
Electrical devices were raised to the qualitatively new level of electronics,
incorporating miniaturization of equipment, fantastic progress in
telecommunications, and the creation of computers. Chemical industries
were producing a wide range of synthetic substitutes for raw materials, and
a whole new branch of petrochemicals had come into existence. The
combination of metals by metallurgical innovations meant that products
could be offered to meet far-reaching demands of heat resistance, lightness,
tensile strength. At the end of colonialism (say 1960), Europe was on the
verge of another epoch—that of nuclear power.
It is common knowledge that the gap between the output of the
metropoles and that of the colonies increased by at least fifteen to twenty
times during the epoch of colonialism. More than anything else, it was the
advance of scientific technique in the metropoles which was the cause of
the great gulf between African and Western European levels of productivity
by the end of the colonial period. Therefore, it is essential to understand the
role of colonialism itself in bringing about the scientific progress in the
metropoles, and its application to industry.
It would be extremely simple-minded to say that colonialism in Africa or
anywhere else caused Europe to develop its science and technology. The

tendency towards technological innovation and renovation was inherent in
capitalism itself, because of the drive for profits. However, it would be
entirely accurate to say that the colonization of Africa and other parts of the
world formed an indispensable link in a chain of events which made
possible the technological transformation of the base of European
capitalism. Without that link, European capitalism would not have been
producing goods and services at the level attained in 1960. In other words,
our very yardsticks for measuring developed and underdeveloped nations
would have been different.
Profits from African colonialism mingled with profits from every other
source to finance scientific research. This was true in the general sense that
the affluence of capitalist society in the present century allowed more
money and leisure for research. It is also true because the development of
capitalism in the imperialist epoch continued the division of labor inside the
capitalist metropoles to the point where scientific research was a branch of
the division of labor, and indeed one of its most important branches.
European society moved away from scientific research as an ad hoc,
personal, and even whimsical affair to a situation where research was given
priority by governments, armies, and private capitalists. It was funded and
guided. Careful scrutiny reveals that the source of funding and the direction
in which research was guided were heavily influenced by the colonial
situation. Firstly, it should be recalled that profits made by Europe from
Africa represented investible surpluses. The profit was not merely an end in
itself. Thus, the East and West African Currency Boards invested in the
British government stock, while the commercial banks and insurance
companies invested in government bonds, mortgages, and industrial shares.
These investment funds acquired from the colonies spread to many sectors
in the metropoles and benefited industries that had nothing to do with
processing of colonial products.
However, it is easier to trace the impact of colonial exploitation on
industries directly connected with colonial imports. Such industries had to
improvise that kind of machinery which most effectively utilized colonial
raw materials. That led for example to machinery for crushing palm kernels
and to a process for utilizing the less delicately flavored coffee by turning it
into a soluble powder, namely “instant coffee.” Merchants and industrialists
also considered ways in which colonial raw materials could be modified to

meet specifications of European factories in quality and quantity. An
example of this type would be the care taken by the Dutch in Java and by
the Americans in Liberia to breed and graft new varieties of rubber plants
yielding more and being more resistant to disease. Ultimately, the search for
better-quality raw materials merged with the search for sources of raw
material which would make European capitalism less dependent on colonial
areas—and that led to synthetics.
In the sphere of shipping, it can readily be appreciated that certain
technological modifications and innovations would be connected with the
fact that such a high proportion of shipping was used to tie together
colonies and metropoles. Ships had to be refrigerated to carry perishable
goods; they had to make special holds for bulky or liquid cargoes such as
palm oil; and the transport of petroleum from the Middle East, North
Africa, and other parts of the world led to oil tankers as a special class of
ships. The design of ships and the nature of their cargoes in turn affected the
kind of port installations in the metropoles.
Where connections were remote or even apparently non-existent, it can
still be claimed that colonialism was a factor in the European technological
revolution. As science blossomed in the present century, its
interconnections became numerous and complex. It is impossible to trace
the origin of every idea and every invention, but it is well understood by
serious historians of science that the growth of the body of scientific
knowledge and its application to everyday life is dependent upon a large
number of forces operating within the society as a whole, and not just upon
the ideas within given branches of science. With the rise of imperialism,
one of the most potent forces within metropolitan capitalist societies was
precisely that emanating from colonial or semi-colonial areas.
The above considerations apply fully to any discussion of the military
aspects of imperialism, the protection of empire being one of the crucial
stimulants added to the science of armaments in a society that was already
militaristically inclined ever since the feudal era. The new colonial
dimension to European military preoccupation was particularly noticeable
in the sharp naval rivalry among Britain, Germany, France, and Japan
before and during the First World War. That rivalry over colonies and for
spheres of capitalist investment produced new types of armed naval vessels,
such as destroyers and submarines. By the end of the Second World War,

military research had become the most highly organized branch of scientific
research, and one that was subsidized by the capitalist states from the
profits of international exploitation.
During the inter-war years, Africa’s foremost contribution to the
evolution of organizational techniques in Europe was to the strengthening
of monopoly capital. Before the war of 1914, the Pan-Africanists Duse
Mohammed Ali and W. E. B. Du Bois recognized that monopoly capital
was the leading element in imperialist expansion. The most thorough and
the best-known analysis of this phenomenon was made by the Russian
revolutionary leader, Lenin. Lenin was virtually prophetic, because as the
colonial age advanced it became more and more obvious that those who
stood to benefit most were the monopoly concerns, and especially those
involved in finance.
Africa (plus Asia and Latin America) contributed to the elaboration of
the strategies by which competition among small companies gave way to
domination by a small handful of firms in various economic activities. It
was on the India trade routes that shipping companies first started the
“Conference Lines” in 1875. This monopoly practice spread rapidly to the
South African trade and reached a high pitch in West Africa in the early
years of this century. On the commercial side, it was in West Africa that
both the French and the English derived considerable experience in pooling
and market-sharing; apart from the fact that little companies were steadily
being gobbled up by bigger ones from the beginning to the end of
colonialism.
It was in Southern Africa that there emerged the most carefully planned
structures of interlocking directorates, holding companies, and giant
corporations which were multinational both in their capital subscriptions
and through the fact that their economic activities were dispersed in many
lands. Individual entrepreneurs like Oppenheimer made huge fortunes from
the Southern African soil, but Southern Africa was never really in the era of
individual and family businesses, characteristic of Europe and America up
to the early part of this century. The big mining companies were impersonal
professional things. They were organized in terms of personnel, production,
marketing, advertising, and they could undertake long-term commitments.
At all times, inner productive forces gave capitalism its drive towards
expansion and domination. It was the system which expanded. But in

addition, one can see in Africa and in Southern Africa in particular the rise
of a capitalist superstructure manned by individuals capable of consciously
planning the exploitation of resources right into the next century, and
aiming at racist domination of the black people of Africa until the end of
time.
Ever since the fifteenth century, Europe was in strategic command of
world trade and of the legal and organizational aspects of the movement of
goods between continents. Europe’s power increased with imperialism,
because imperialism meant investments, and investments (with or without
colonial rule) gave European capitalists control over production within each
continent. The amount of benefits to capitalism increased accordingly, since
Europe could determine the quantity and quality of different raw material
inputs which would need to be brought together in the interests of
capitalism as a whole, and of the bourgeois class in particular. For instance,
sugar production in the West Indies was joined in the colonial period by
cocoa production within Africa, so that both merged into the chocolate
industry of Europe and North America. In the metallurgical field, iron ore
from Sweden, Brazil, or Sierra Leone could be turned into different types of
steel with the addition of manganese from the Gold Coast or chrome from
Southern Rhodesia. Such examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely
to cover the whole range of capitalist production in the colonial period.
As John Stuart Mill said, the trade between England and the West Indies
in the eighteenth century was like the trade between town and country. In
the present century, the links are even closer and it is more marked that the
town (Europe) is living off the countryside (Africa, Asia, and Latin
America). When it said that colonies should exist for the metropoles by
producing raw materials and buying manufactured goods, the underlying
theory was to introduce an international division of labor covering working
people everywhere. That is to say, up to that point each society had
allocated to its own members particular functions in production—some
hunted, some made clothes, some built houses. But with colonialism, the
capitalists determined what types of labor the workers should carry on in
the world at large. Africans were to dig minerals out of the subsoil, grow
agricultural crops, collect natural products, and perform a number of other
odds and ends such as bicycle repairing. Inside Europe, North America, and

Japan, workers would refine the minerals and the raw materials and make
the bicycles.
The international division of labor brought about by imperialism and
colonialism insured that there would be the maximum increase in the level
of skills in the capitalist nations. It took mainly physical strength to dig the
minerals from and to farm the African soil, but the extraction of the metals
from the ores and the subsequent manufacture of finished goods in Europe
promoted more and more technology and skills there as time went on. Take
the iron and steel industry as an example. Modern steel manufacture derives
from the Siemens open-hearth system and the Bessemer process, which
were both already in existence in the second half of the last century. They
both underwent major modifications, transforming steel manufacture from
intermittent operations to something requiring huge continuous electrical
furnaces. In more recent years, skilled workmen have been replaced by
automation and computerization, but altogether the gains in technology and
skills were immense, as compared with the years before imperialism got
under way.
Iron ore was not one of Africa’s major exports in the colonial days and it
may therefore appear to be an irrelevant example. However, iron was very
significant in the economy of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and North Africa. It
can be used to illustrate the trend by which the international division of
labor allowed technology and skills to grow in the metropoles. Furthermore,
it must be recalled that Africa was an important source of the minerals that
went into making steel alloys, notably manganese and chrome. Manganese
was essential in the Bessemer process. It was mined in several places in
Africa, with the Nouta mine on the Gold Coast having the largest single
manganese deposit in the world. American companies owned the Gold
Coast and North African mines and used the product in the steel industry of
the U.S.A. Chrome from South Africa and Southern Rhodesia also played a
similar role in steel metallurgy, being essential for the manufacture of
stainless steel.
Columbite was another of the African minerals valuable for the creation
of steel alloys. Being highly heat-resistant, one of its principal uses was in
making steel for jet engines. First of all, it was the rapid development of
European industry and technology which caused columbite to assume value.
It had been a discarded by-product of tin mining in Nigeria up to 1952.

Then, once it was utilized, it gave further stimulus to European technology
in the very sophisticated sphere of airplane engines.
Obviously, according to the international division of labor prevailing
under colonialism, it was the American, Canadian, British, and French
workers who had access to the skills involved in working with columbite,
rather than the Nigerian worker who dug the ore out of the ground. For
certain reasons, columbite fell off sharply in demand after a few years, but
during that time it had contributed towards making the European
metallurgist even more proficient and experienced. In that way, it was
helping to promote self-sustained growth and to produce the gap which is
evident in any comparison of the developed and underdeveloped countries.
Copper, too, fell neatly into the category under discussion. Unskilled
production by Africans was required to get the ore for export, followed by
refinement in a European capitalist plant. Copper was Africa’s chief mineral
export. Being an excellent conductor of electricity, it became an
indispensable part of the capitalist electrical industry. It is an essential
component of generators, motors, electric locomotives, telephones,
telegraphs, light and power lines, motor cars, buildings, ammunition, radios,
refrigerators, and a host of other things. A technological era tends to be
defined by the principal source of power. Today, we speak of a Nuclear
Age, since the potential of nuclear power is shown to be immense. The
Industrial Revolution in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteeth
centuries was the Age of Steam. In a parallel manner, the colonial epoch
was the Age of Electricity. Therefore, the vital copper exports from Congo,
Northern Rhodesia, and other parts of Africa were contributing to the
leading sector of European technology. From that strategic position, its
multiplier effects were innumerable and were of incalculable benefit to
capitalist development.
In the context of a discussion of raw materials, special reference must
again be made to the military. African minerals played a decisive role both
with regard to conventional weapons and with regard to the breakthrough to
atomic and nuclear weapons. It was from the Belgian Congo during the
Second World War that the U.S.A. began getting the uranium that was a
prerequisite to the making of the first atomic bomb. In any case, by the end
of the colonial period, industry and the war machine in the colonizing
nations had become so interwined and inseparable that any contribution to

one was a contribution to the other. Therefore, Africa’s massive
contribution to what initially appears as peaceful pursuits such as the
making of copper wire and steel alloys ultimately took the shape of
explosive devices, aircraft carriers, and so on.
It was only after European firearms reached a certain stage of
effectiveness in the nineteenth century that it became possible for whites to
colonize and dominate the whole world. Similarly, the invention of a
massive array of new instruments of destruction in the metropoles was both
a psychological and a practical disincentive to colonized peoples seeking to
regain power and independence. It will readily be recalled that a basic prop
to colonialism in Africa and elsewhere was the “gunboat policy,” which was
resorted to every time that the local police and armed forces seemed
incapable of maintaining the metropolitan law and the colonial order of
affairs. From the viewpoint of the colonized, the strengthening of the
military apparatus of the European powers through colonial exploitation
was doubly detrimental. Not only did it increase the overall technological
gap between metropole and colony, but it immeasurably widened the gap in
the most sensitive area, which had to do with concepts such as power and
independence.
The international division of labor of the colonial period also insured that
there would be growth of employment opportunities in Europe, apart from
the millions of white settlers and expatriates who earned a livelihood in and
from Africa. Agricultural raw materials were processed in such a way as to
form by-products, constituting industries in their own right. The number of
jobs created in Europe and North America by the import of mineral ores
from Africa, Asia, and Latin America can be seen from the massive
employment roll of institutions such as steel works, automobile factories,
alumina and aluminum plants, copper wire firms. Furthermore, those in turn
stimulated the building industry, the transport industry, the munitions
industry, and so on. The mining that went on in Africa left holes in the
ground, and the pattern of agricultural production left African soils
impoverished; but, in Europe, agricultural and mineral imports built a
massive industrial complex.
In the earliest phases of human organization, production was scattered
and atomized. That is to say, families preserved a separate identity while
working for their upkeep. Over time, production became more social and

interrelated in character. The making of a pair of shoes in a mature feudal
trading economy involved the cattle rearer, a tanner of the leather, and a
shoemaker—instead of one peasant killing an animal and making himself a
pair of shoes, as under self-sufficient communalism. The extent to which a
society achieves this social interdependence in making commodities is an
index of its development, through specialization and coordination.
Undoubtedly, European capitalism achieved more and more a social
character in its production. It integrated the whole world; and with colonial
experience as an important stimulus, it integrated very closely every aspect
of its own economy—from agriculture to banking. But distribution was not
social in character. The fruits of human labor went to a given minority class,
which was of the white race and resident in Europe and North America.
This is the crux of the dialectical process of development and
underdevelopment, as it evolved over the colonial period.
The Example of Unilever as a Major Beneficiary of African Exploitation
Just as it was necessary to follow African surplus through the channels of
exploitation such as banks and mining companies, so the non-monetary
contribution which Africa made to European capitalism can also be
accurately traced by following the careers of the said companies. We offer
below a brief outline of the relevant features of the development of a single
firm—that of Unilever—in relationship to its exploitation of African
resources and people.
In 1885, while Africa was being carved up at the conference table, one
William H. Lever started making soap on the Merseyside near Liverpool in
England. He called his soap “Sunlight” and in the swamps where his factory
stood, the township of Port Sunlight grew up. Within ten years, the firm of
Lever was selling 40,000 tons of soap per year in England alone and was
building an export business and factories in other parts of Europe, America,
and the British colonies. Then came Lifebuoy, Lux, Vim, and within
another ten years, Lever was selling 60,000 tons of soap in Britain, and in
addition had factories producing and selling in Canada, the U.S.A., South
Africa, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium. However, soap did not grow in
any of those countries. The basic item in its manufacture was stearin,
obtained from oils and fats. Apart from animal tallow and whale oil, the

desirable raw materials all came from the tropics: namely, palm oil, palmkernel oil, groundnut oil, and copra. West Africa happened to be the world’s
great palm produce zone and was also a major grower of groundnuts.
In 1887, the Austrian firm of Schicht, which was later to be incorporated
in the Unilever combine, built the first palm-kernel crushing mill in Austria,
supplied with raw materials by a Liverpool firm of oil merchants. That was
not simply coincidence, but part of the logic of imperialism and the opening
up of Africa as the raw material reservoir for Europe. As early as 1902,
Lever sent out his own “explorers” to Africa, and they came to the decision
that the Congo would be the most likely place to get palm produce, because
the Belgian government was willing to offer huge concessions of land with
innumerable palm trees. Lever obtained the necessary concessions in Congo
and brought in machinery to extract oil from palm kernels.
But the main palm-oil experts came from areas on the coast to the north
of the Congo. Therefore, in 1910, Lever purchased W. B. Mclver, a small
Liverpool firm in Nigeria. That was followed by acquisitions of two small
companies in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Indeed, Lever (at that time called
Lever Bros.) got a foothold in every colony in West Africa. The first major
breakthrough occurred when Lever bought the Niger Company in 1920 for
8 million pounds. Then, in 1929, the African and Eastern, the last big rival
trading concern, was brought into partnership; and the result of the merger
was called the United Africa Company (UAC).
During the 1914–18 war, Lever had begun making margarine, which
required the same raw materials as soap; namely, oils and fats. The
subsequent years were ones in which such enterprises in Europe were
constantly getting bigger through takeovers and mergers. The big names in
soap and margarine manufacture on the European continent were two Dutch
firms, Jurgens and Van der Bergh, and the Austrian firms of Schicht and
Centra. The Dutch companies first achieved a dominant position; and then
in 1929 there was a grand merger between their combine and Lever’s, who
in the meantime had been busy buying off virtually all other competitors.
The 1929 merger created Unilever as a single monopoly, divided for the
sake of convenience into Unilever Ltd. (registered in Britain) and Unilever
N.V. (registered in Holland).
For its massive input of oils and fats, Unilever depended largely on its
UAC subsidiary which was formed that very year. The UAC itself never

stopped growing. In 1933, it took over the important trading firm of G. B.
Ollivant, and in 1936, it bought the Swiss Trading Company on the Gold
Coast. By that time, it was not relying simply on wild palms in the Congo,
but had organized plantations. The Lever factories in the U.S.A. drew their
oil supplies mainly from the Congo, and in 1925 (even before Unilever and
the UAC emerged as such) the Lever works in Boston showed a profit of
250,000 pounds.
Unilever flourished in war and in peace. Only in Eastern Europe did the
advent of socialism lead to the loss of factories through nationalization. By
the end of the colonial period, Unilever was a world force, selling
traditional soaps, detergents, margarine, lard, ghee, cooking oil, canned
foods, candles, glycerin, oil cake, and toilet preparations such as toothpaste.
From where did this giant octopus suck most of its sustenance? Let the
answer be provided by the Information Division of Unilever House,
London.
Most striking of all in the post-war development of Unilever, had been the progress of the
United Africa Company. In the worst of the depression, the management of Unilever had never
ceased to put money into UAC, justifying their action more by general faith in the future of
Africa than by particular consideration of UAC’s immediate prospects. Their reward has come
with the post-war prosperity of the primary producer, which has made Africa a market for all
kinds of goods, from frozen peas to motor cars. Unilever’s centre of gravity lies in Europe, but
far and away its largest member (the UAC) is almost wholly dependent for its livelihood
(represented by a turnover of 300 million pounds) on the well-being of West Africa.

In some instances, Lever’s African enterprises made losses in the strict
cost-accounting sense. It took years before the Congo plantations paid for
themselves and made a profit. It also took some time before the purchase of
the Niger Company in 1920 was financially justified; while the SCKN in
Chad never showed worthwhile monetary profits. But, even in the worst
financial years, the subsidiaries comprising the UAC were invaluable
assets, in that they allowed the manufacturing side of Unilever to have
control over a guaranteed source of essential raw materials. Of course, the
UAC itself also provided handsome monetary dividends, but it is the
purpose here to draw attention not to the financial gains of UAC and
Unilever but to the way that the exploitation of Africa led to multiple
technical and organizational developments in Europe.
Both the soap industry and the margarine industry had their own
scientific and technical problems which had to be solved. Scientific advance

is most generally a response to real need. Oils for margarine and for
cooking purposes had to be deodorized; substitutes had to be sought for
natural lard; and, when margarine was faced with competition from cheap
butter, the necessity arose to find means of producing new high-grade
margarine with added vitamins. In 1916, two Lever experts published in a
British scientific journal the results of tests showing the growth of animals
fed with vitamin concentrates inside margarine. They kept in touch with
Cambridge University scientists who pursued the problem, and by 1927 the
vitamin-rich margarine was ready for human consumption.
With regard to soap (and to a lesser extent margarine), it was essential to
devise a process for hardening oils into fats—notably whale oil, but also
vegetable oils. This process, referred to as “hydrogenation,” attracted the
attention of scientists in the early years of this century. They were paid and
urged on by rival soap companies, including Lever and the other European
firms which later merged to form Unilever.
One of the most striking illustrations of the technological ramifications
of the processing of colonial raw materials is in the field of detergents. Soap
itself is a detergent or “washing agent,” but ordinary soaps suffer from
several limitations, such as the tendency to decompose in hard water and in
acids. Those limitations could only be overcome by “soapless detergents,”
without the kind of fatty base of previous soaps. When Germany was cut off
from colonial supplies of oils and fats in the first imperialist war, German
scientists were spurred on to the first experiments in producing detergents
out of coal tar. Later on in the 1930s, chemical companies began making
similar detergents on a larger scale, especially in the U.S.A. Two of the
firms which immediately stepped into detergent research were Unilever and
Procter & Gamble, a soap combine with its headquarters in Cincinnati.
It may at first appear strange that though detergents were competitors to
ordinary soap, they were nevertheless promoted by soap firms. However, it
is the practice of monopoly concerns to move into new fields which
supplement or even replace their old business. That is necessary to avoid
their entire capital from being tied up in products that go out of fashion. The
soap firms could not leave detergents to chemical firms, or else their own
hard soap, soap flakes, and soap powders would have suffered, and they
would not have been the ones with the new brands on the markets. So great
effort was put into the chemistry of detergents by Unilever, retaining to a

considerable extent the vegetable oils, but modifying them chemically. That
kind of research was not left to chance or to private individuals. By 1960,
Unilever had four main laboratories—two in England, one in Holland, and
one in the U.S.A. These four, together with other smaller research units,
employed over three thousand people, of whom about one-third were
qualified scientists and technologists.
The multiplier effects radiating from Unilever and its colonial
exploitation can be traced with some accuracy. When palm kernels were
crushed, the residue formed a cake which was excellent for livestock. One
byproduct of the soap industry was glycerin, which was utilized in the
making of explosives. Europeans killed themselves with some of the
explosives, but some went into peaceful purposes, such as mining,
quarrying, and construction. Several other products were linked to soap
through the common base in oils and fats—notably cosmetics, shampoos,
perfumes, shaving creams, toothpaste, and dyes. As one writer put it, those
by-products “served to broaden the commercial base on which Unilever
rested, while making further use of the fund of knowledge already
possessed by the oils and fats technologist.” Besides, these operations were
creating hundreds of thousands of additional jobs for European workers.
The manufacturing of soap and margarine required raw material inputs
other than oils and fats. Soap-making consumed large quantities of caustic
soda, so that in 1911 Lever bought land in Cheshire suitable for the
manufacture of that alkali. Capitalist giants nourished by colonialism and
imperialism could afford to do things in a big way. When Lever needed
abrasives, the company bought a limestone mine in Bohemia; and when
Unilever wanted to assure themselves of supplies of wrapping paper, they
bought a paper mill.
Transport was another key problem which stimulated growth at the
European end. Within a month of buying the Niger Company in 1920,
Lever was engaged in a project for constructing facilities on the Mersey to
receive ocean-going ships bringing cargoes from West Africa. The UAC
was a pioneer in getting ships constructed to carry palm oil in bulk tanks,
and Van der Bergh considered buying a shipyard to build ships for his
company some years before the merger. This did not materialize, but
Unilever did acquire several ships of their own, including vessels fresh from
the shipyards and made to their specifications.

Another linkage of the Unilever industries was that with retail
distribution. Their products had to be sold to the housewife, and the Dutch
firms that went into Unilever decided that they should own grocery stores to
guarantee sales. By 1922, Jurgens had control of a chain of grocery stores in
England, appropriately named the “Home and Colonial.” Van der Bergh (at
the time a rival) was not to be left behind, so he secured majority shares in
the chain store owned by Lipton of Lipton’s Tea fame. All of these shops
passed to Unilever. The grocery store business soon ceased being
considered merely as an outlet for soap and margarine, and became an end
in itself.
Sometimes, the multiplier effects do not seem connected. On the surface,
there was no apparent reason why Lever should set up a huge retail chain
called Mac Fisheries to sell fish! There is little in common between soap,
sausages, and ice cream—but Lever bought Walls as a sausage firm and
later Walls opened an ice cream manufacturing plant. The underlying
connection is that capital seeks domination. It grows and spreads and seeks
to get hold of everything in sight. The exploitation of Africa gave European
monopoly capital full opportunities to indulge in its tendencies for
expansion and domination.
Before leaving Unilever, it should be noted in conclusion how a
company such as that pointed the way towards change in the capitalist
system. The device of the dual structure of Unilever Ltd. and Unilever N.V.
was an innovation first utilized when Schicht and Centra of Central Europe
merged with the Dutch margarine firms of Jurgens and Van der Bergh, and
it was designed to cut down taxation. Unilever comprised two holding
companies with the same governing boards and with arrangements to
transfer and equalize profits. It was a professional company from its
inception. All of the firms involved in the merger had years of experience in
organizing staff, production plants, and marketing procedures. Schicht was
one of the earliest to work out a system of cost accounting and financial
control. Lever had himself been a pioneer of mass advertising in Europe
and in the competitive field of the U.S.A. The firm of Unilever inherited
and perfected the techniques of mass production and advertising so as to
achieve mass consumption.
The significance of the organizational changes are best seen on a longterm basis, by comparing Unilever’s sophisticated international

organization with the chartered companies of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries which had difficulties managing accounts. The efficient
accounting and business methods which are supposed to characterize
capitalist firms did not drop from the sky. They are the result of historical
evolution, and in that evolution the exploitation of Africa played a key role
—from the era of the chartered companies right through the colonial period.
Contributions of Colonialism to Individual Colonizing Powers
Analysis of the non-monetary benefits of colonialism to the colonizers can
of course be carried out most readily within the framework of relations
between each colony and its “mother country,” apart from the framework of
the individual firm, which has just been discussed in some detail. Using the
conventional approach of European metropole in relationship to its own
colonies, one finds a wide range of positive effects, although the benefits
varied in extent from colony to colony. Portugal was the lowliest of the
colonizing powers in Africa, and its was nothing in Europe without its
colonies: so much so that it came to insist that Angola, Mozambique, and
Guinea were integral parts of Portugal, just like any province of the
European country named Portugal. France sometimes propounded the same
doctrine by which Algeria, Martinique, and Vietnam were all supposedly
“overseas France.”
Neither Britain nor Belgium put forward any theories of a greater Britain
or overseas Belgium; but in practice they were as determined as other
colonial powers to insure that sustenance should flow from colony to
metropole without hindrance. Few areas of the national life of those
Western European countries failed to benefit from the decades of parasitic
exploitation of the colonies. One Nigerian, after visiting Brussels in 1960,
wrote: “I saw for myself the massive palaces, museums and other public
buildings paid for by Congo ivory and rubber.”
In recent times, African writers and researchers have also been amazed
to find the amount of looted African treasure stacked away in the British
Museum; and there are comparable if somewhat smaller collections of
African art in Paris, Berlin, and New York. Those are some of the things
which, in addition to monetary wealth, help to define the metropoles as
developed and “civilized.”

Sustenance given by colonies to the colonizers was most obvious and
very decisive in the case of contributions by soldiers from among the
colonized. Without colonial troops, there would have been no “British
forces” fighting on the Asian front in the 1939–45 war, because the ranks of
the British forces were filled with Indians and other colonials, including
Africans and West Indians. It is a general characteristic of colonialism that
the metropole utilized the manpower of the colonies. The Romans had used
soldiers of one conquered nationality to conquer other nationalities, as well
as to defend Rome against enemies. Britain applied this to Africa from the
early nineteenth century, when the West Indian Regiment was sent across
the Atlantic to protect British interests in the West African coast. The West
Indian Regiment had black men in the ranks, Irish (colonials) as NCOs, and
Englishmen as officers. By the end of the nineteenth century, the West
Indian Regiment also included lots of Sierra Leoneans.
The most important force in the conquest of West African colonies by
the British was the West African Frontier Force—the soldiers being
Africans and the officers English. In 1894, it was joined by the West
African Regiment, formed to help suppress the so-called Hut Tax War in
Sierra Leone, which was the expression of widespread resistance against the
imposition of colonial rule. In East and Central Africa, the King’s African
Rifles was the unit which tapped African fighting power on behalf of
Britain. The African regiments supplemented the metropolitan military
apparatus in several ways. Firstly, they were used as emergency forces to
put down nationalist uprisings in the various colonies. Secondly, they were
used to fight other Europeans inside Africa, notably during the First and
Second World Wars. And thirdly, they were carried to European battlefields or to theatres of war outside Africa.
African roles in European military operations were vividly displayed by
the East African campaign during the First World War, when Britain and
Germany fought for possession of East Africa. At the beginning of the war,
the Germans had in Tanganyika a regular force of 216 Europeans and 2,540
African askari. During the war, 3,000 Europeans and 11,000 askari were
enrolled. On the British side, the main force was the K.A.R., comprising
mainly East Africans and soldiers from Nyasaland. The battalions of the
K.A.R. had by November 1918 over 35,000 men, of whom nine out of ten
were Africans.

Quite early in the East African campaign, the British brought in an
expeditionary force of Punjabis and Sikhs, as well as regiments of West
Africans. Some Sudanese and West Indians were also there. At first, a few
white settlers joined the war, because they thought it was a picnic; but
within a year the white residents of British East Africa were showing
extreme reluctance to join local fighting forces. In effect, therefore,
Africans were fighting Africans to see which European power should rule
over them. The Germans and the British had only to provide the officers.
According to the history books, the “British” won the campaign in East
Africa.
France was the colonial power that secured the greatest number of
soldiers from Africa. In 1912, conscription of African soldiers into the
French army was pursued on a large scale. During the 1914–18 war,
200,000 soldiers were recruited in French West Africa, through the use of
methods reminiscent of slave hunting. These “French” soldiers served
against the Germans in Togo and Cameroon, as well as in Europe itself. On
the European battlefields, an estimated 25,000 “French” Africans lost their
lives, and many more returned mutilated, for they were used as cannon
fodder in the European capitalist war.
France was so impressed by the military advantages to be gained from
colonial rule that when a part of Cameroon was mandated to France by the
League of Nations, France insisted on the privilege of using Cameroon
African troops for purposes unconnected with the defense of Cameroon.
Naturally, France also made the maximum use of African troops in the last
world war. Indeed, Africans saved France after the initial losses when
France and most of French Africa fell under the Germans and the fascist
(Vichy) French. In French Equatorial Africa, it was a black man, Felix
Eboue, who proved loyal to the forces led by General de Gaulle, and who
mobilized manpower against the French and German fascists. Africa
provided the base and much of the manpower for launching the
counterattack which helped General de Gaulle and the Free French to return
to power in France.
French use of African troops did not end with the last war. West Africans
were sent to Madagascar in 1948, and put down nationalist forces in a most
bloody manner. African troops were also employed to fight the people of

Indochina up to 1954; and, later still, black African troops and Senegalese
in particular were used against the Algerian liberation movement.
No comprehensive studies have as yet been devoted to the role of
Africans in the armies of the colonial powers in a variety of contexts.
However, the indications are that such studies would reveal a pattern very
similar to that discovered by historians who have looked at the role of black
soldiers in the white-controlled armies of the U.S.A.; namely, that there was
tremendous discrimination against black fighting men, even though black
soldiers made great and unacknowledged contributions to important
victories won by the white-officered armies of the U.S.A. and the colonial
powers. Hints regarding discrimination are to be seen from regulations such
as that barring African soldiers in the West African Regiment from wearing
shoes and from the fact that there were actually race riots in the European
campaigns, just as black troops fighting for the U.S.A. continued to riot
right up to the Vietnam campaign.
A number of Africans served as colonial soldiers with pride, because
they mistakenly hoped that the army would be an avenue for displaying the
courage and dignity of Africans, and, perhaps, in the process, even earning
the freedom of the continent, by making Europeans pleased and grateful.
That hope was without foundation from the outset, because the colonialists
were viciously using African soldiers as pawns to preserve colonialism and
capitalism in general. A very striking instance of the above fact was
provided when John Chilembwe led an African nationalist uprising in
Nyasaland (now Malawi) in 1915. Nyasaland was then a British colony, and
although the British were fighting the Germans in East Africa at that time,
they immediately dispatched a column of the K.A.R. to contend against
Chilembwe. Furthermore, before the K.A.R. arrived, it was a German
lieutenant who organized the resistance of Nyasa white settlers against
Chilembwe’s bid for freedom. In the light of that evidence, one writer
commented:
While their countrymen in Europe fought the bloodiest war ever known, in Africa Europeans
were instinctively white men first—and German and British second, [for] John Chilembwe was
part of something that in the end would swamp all their colonial dreams.

The African continent and the African people were used by the
colonialists in some curious ways to advance their military strengths and

techniques. By chance, North Africa and the Sahara became available as a
laboratory for the evolution of techniques of armored warfare in the period
when Rommel and Montgomery battled for superiority. And, by design,
Ethiopians were used as guinea pigs, upon whom the Italian fascists
experimented with poison gas. This followed their brazen invasion in 1935
of that small portion of Africa which still clung to some form of political
independence. At that time, the Italians argued that it was absolutely
essential that the fruits of colonialism be opened to Italy if it were to take
“its place in the sun.” Significantly enough, both Britain and France had
already seen so much of the sun and products of Africa that they found it
difficult to refute Italy’s claims.
Britain and France ruled over the greater part of colonial Africa and they
also had the largest empires in other parts of the world. The whole existence
and development of capitalism in Britain and France between 1885 and
1960 was bound up with colonization, and Africa played a major role.
African colonies meant surplus appropriated on a grand scale; they led to
innovations and forward leaps in technology and the organization of
capitalist enterprise; and they buttressed the capitalist system at home and
abroad with fighting men. Sometimes, it appeared that these two principal
colonial powers reaped so many colonial benefits that they suffered from
“too much of a good thing.”
Certainly, in Britain’s case, it can be argued that colonialism allowed
British industry to lead a soft life, and that, in some decisive spheres of
production and marketing, Britain grew lazy. Industrial plants installed in
the nineteenth century were not renovated or replaced, and little dynamism
was put into selling new lines of goods. In contrast, when deprived of
colonies after 1918, Germany was forced to live off its own resources and
ingenuity. Nevertheless, while that is an interesting detail of the whole
colonial picture, it must be borne in mind that colonialism was one aspect of
imperialism. Colonialism was based on alien political rule and was
restricted to some parts of the world. Imperialism, however, underlay all
colonies, extended all over the world (except where replaced by socialist
revolutions), and it allowed the participation of all capitalist nations.
Therefore, lack of colonies on the part of any capitalist nation was not a
barrier to enjoying the fruits of exploiting the colonial and semi-colonial
world, which was the backyard of metropolitan capitalism.

Colonialism as a Prop to Metropolitan Economies and Capitalism as a
System
The composition of Unilever should serve as a warning that colonialism
was not simply a matter of ties between a given colony and its mother
country, but between colonies on the one hand and metropoles on the other.
The German capital in Unilever joined the British in exploiting Africa and
the Dutch in exploiting the East Indies. The rewards spread through the
capitalist system in such a way that even those capitalist nations who were
not colonial powers were also beneficiaries of the spoils. Unilever factories
established in Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S.A. were
participants in the expropriation of Africa’s surplus and in using that surplus
for their own development.
Germany always had a stake in colonial Africa, even after 1918 when the
other capitalist powers deprived Germany of its colonies. German shipping
revived in the 1920s and played an active role in East, West, and South
Africa. German financial houses also had contacts with Africa, the most
direct being the Twentsche Bank in East Africa. Dutch shipping companies
were involved with the German and British in the West African Conference
Line, while the Scandinavian shippers were noted for the hiring out of
“tramp” ships which freighted cargo between Africa and Europe outside of
the scheduled lines. The old East African Trading Company was supported
by Danish capital. The Swiss had no colonies in Africa, but they had
substantial capital in SCOA, they played a key role in imperialist banking,
and they kept out of the wars fought by other capitalists so that they could
still continue to trade with both sides and thereby acquire colonial produce.
Then there was Japan—a capitalist/imperialist power with colonies in Asia
and with a keen interest in trade with Africa. Japanese capitalists tried to
undersell their European counterparts, but the trade they conducted with
Africa was still unequal and disadvantageous to the Africans.
To fully understand the colonial period, it is necessary to think in terms
of the economic partition of Africa. Unlike the political partition of the
nineteenth century, the economic partition had no fixed or visible
boundaries. It consisted of the proportions in which capitalist powers
divided up among themselves the monetary and non-monetary gains from
colonial Africa. For instance, Portugal had two large political colonies in

Southern Africa, but economically Mozambique and Angola were divided
among several capitalist powers, which were invited by the Portuguese
government, because Portuguese capitalists were too weak to handle those
vast territories.
Congo and South Africa had their own special arrangements of
economic partition, both of them being valuable territories. At first, Congo
was designated the “Congo Free State” under King Leopold II of Belgium.
That meant that it was to have been a free trade zone and an area open to
investment by capitalists of all nationalities. In practice, Leopold used
administrative devices to monopolize the wealth of the Congo, and that was
one of the principal reasons the international capitalist community moved
against Leopold in 1908. When Belgium took over the administration of the
Congo, it also insured that most of the surplus and other benefits should
accrue to Belgium. However, non-Belgian capitalist interests were able to
penetrate through investment in mining; and, as the colonial period
advanced, the British, French, and Americans cut bigger pieces of the
Congo cake.
For a long while, South Africa was the most important raw material
reservoir for the whole of imperialism. Britain was the European power
which had already been entrenched in South Africa for many years when
gold and diamonds were discovered in the nineteenth century, on the eve of
the Scramble. Britain had to come to terms with the Boer settlers, whose
livelihood then came primarily from the land, and whose main interest was
to see to the exploitation and domination of the African population and
other groups of non-white immigrants. Therefore, the economic and
political partition of Africa gave Britain the lion’s share of the mineral
wealth, while the Boers retained the political power necessary to
institutionalize white racism. As capitalists of other nationalities entered
into relations with South Africa through investment and trade, those
capitalists agreed to strengthen, and did, the racist/fascist social relations of
South Africa.
Economic partition and repartition of Africa was going on all the time,
because the proportions of the spoils that went to different capitalist
countries kept changing. Special mention must be made of the U.S.A.,
because its share of the benefits from Africa was constantly increasing
throughout the colonial period.

As time went on, the U.S.A. got an ever bigger slice of the unequal trade
between the metropoles and colonial Africa. The share of the U.S.A. in
Africa’s trade rose from just over 28 million dollars in 1913 to 150 million
dollars in 1932 and to 1,200 million dollars in 1948, at which figure it
represented nearly 15 per cent of Africa’s foreign trade. The share of the
U.S.A. in West Africa’s trade rose from 38 million dollars in 1938 to 163
million dollars in 1946 and to 517 million dollars by 1954.
However, it was South Africa which was America’s best trading partner
in Africa, supplying her with gold, diamonds, manganese, and other
minerals and buying heavy machinery in turn. Apart from direct U.S.A.South African trade, most of South Africa’s gold was resold in London to
American buyers, just as most Gold Coast and Nigerian cocoa was resold to
the U.S.A.
Intercontinental trade brought out the need for shipping services and
America did not leave those in the hands of capitalists of other nations.
James Farrell, President of the United States Steel Export Company,
acquired a shipping line to Africa because of his “belief in the future of the
Dark Continent.” Officials of the UAC had said exactly the same thing, and
it is obvious that, like them, Farrell meant the bright future of metropolitan
capitalism in exploiting Africa. It is always best when these individuals
speak for themselves. Vice-Admiral Cochrane of the United States Navy
was a great admirer of Farrell shipping lines. In 1959, he wrote an
introduction to a study of Farrell’s operations in Africa, in which he said:
We read of stiff international competition to assure the supply of strategic materials for our
current industrial-military economy. Farrell Lines is making American maritime history. It is
demonstrating clearly and emphatically that ships wearing the flag of a nation do in fact
stimulate the commerce of that nation . . . demonstrating the value of American-flag ocean
commerce to the health and wealth of the United States.

United States capitalists did not confine themselves to mere trade with
Africa, but they also acquired considerable assets within the colonies. It is
common knowledge that Liberia was an American colony in everything but
name. The U.S.A. supposedly aided the Liberian government with loans,
but used the opportunity to take over Liberian customs revenue, to plunder
thousands of square miles of Liberian land, and generally to dictate to the
weak government of Liberia. The main investment in Liberia was
undertaken by Firestone Rubber Company. Firestone made such huge

profits from Liberian rubber that it was the subject of a book sponsored by
American capitalists to show how well American business flourished
overseas. Between 1940 and 1965, Firestone took 160 million dollars’
worth of rubber out of Liberia; while in return the Liberian government
received 8 million dollars. In earlier years, the percentage of the value that
went to the Liberian government was much smaller, but, at the best of
times, the average net profit made by Firestone was three times the Liberian
revenue.
And yet the non-monetary benefits to the United States capitalist
economy were worth far more than the money returns. Vice-Admiral
Cochrane, in the quotation above, went to the heart of the matter when he
mentioned strategic raw materials for the functioning of the industrial and
military machine of the American imperialists. Firestone acquired its
Liberian plantations precisely because Britain and Holland had been raising
the price of the rubber which came from their Asian colonies of Malaya and
the Dutch East Indies, respectively. In Liberia, the United States rubber
industry obtained a source that was reliable in peace and war—one that was
cheap and entirely under American control. One of rubber’s most
immediate connections was with the automobile industry, and so it is not
surprising that Harvey Firestone was a great friend and business colleague
of Henry Ford. Liberian rubber turned the town of Akron, Ohio, into a
powerful rubber tire manufacturing center, and the tires then went over to
the even bigger automobile works of Ford in Detroit.
American investment in Africa during the last fifteen years of
colonialism was in some ways at the expense of the actual colonizing
powers and yet ultimately it was in the interest of Western European
capitalism. This paradox is explained by noting that the U.S.A. had become
the world’s leading capitalist/imperialist power by the outbreak of the
Second World War. It possessed the colonies of Puerto Rico and the
Philippines, but much more important were its imperialistic investments
throughout Latin America and to a lesser extent in Asia and Africa.
America’s foreign investments in the 1930s drew slightly ahead of those of
Britain, which were a long way ahead of the imperialist outlay of France,
Germany, and Japan. The 1939–45 war tremendously accelerated the
changeover in America’s favor.

Europe suffered staggering losses, but no battles were fought on
American soil, and so its productive capacity expanded. Therefore, after
1945, American capital moved into Africa, Asia, and Europe itself with new
aggressiveness and confidence, due to the fact that other capitalist
competitors were still lying on the ground. In 1949, both British and French
bankers had no choice but to invite American financiers into the African
continent, for the French and British had insufficient capital of their own.
The United States-controlled International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development became an important vehicle for American influence in
Africa and one of the tools for the economic repartition of the continent.
Research by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah revealed that direct private
investment by Americans in Africa increased between 1945 and 1958 from
110 million dollars to 789 million dollars, most of its drawn from profits.
Official estimates of profits made by United States companies from 1946 to
1959 in Africa are put at 1,234 million dollars. In considering the question
of economic partition, what is relevant is the rate of growth of United States
investments and profits compared to those of Britain, France, Belgium. For
instance, the American investment in 1951 was 313 million dollars, which
was nearly three times what it was five years earlier, and in the subsequent
five years the investment went up two and a half times. Meanwhile, British
and French investment increased much more slowly.
However, while the U.S.A. was edging out the other colonialists, they all
stood to gain from the advances made within the North American capitalist
economy in terms of science, technology, organization, and military power.
As pointed out earlier, when an African colony contributed to the European
metallurgical industries or to its electrical industry, that contribution passed
into other aspects of the society, because the sectors concerned were playing
leading roles within the capitalist economy. Similarly, the U.S.A. was a
geographical area that was in the forefront of capitalist development. For
instance, its technological know-how passed into Western European hands
by way of a series of legal devices such as patents.
Furthermore, because the U.S.A. was by then the world’s leading
capitalist state, it also had to assume active responsibility for maintaining
the capitalist imperialist structure in all its economic, political, and military
aspects. After the war, the U.S.A. moved into Western Europe and Japan
both to establish its own stranglehold and at the same time to give a blood

transfusion to capitalism in those areas. A lot of the blood was definitely
African. It is not just that America made (relatively) small profits out of
Africa in the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, but
above all it must be recalled that North America was that part of the
European capitalist system which had been the most direct beneficiary of
the massacre of the American Indians and the enslavement of Africans. The
continued exploitation of African peoples within its own boundaries and in
the Caribbean and Latin America must also be cited as evidence against
American monster imperialism. The U.S.A. was a worthy successor to
Britain as the leading force and policeman of the imperialist/colonialist
world from 1945 onwards.
Under the Marshall Plan, by which United States capitalism aided
Western European capitalism after the last war, it was announced that
American experts were exploring Africa from end to end for agricultural
and mineral wealth—especially the latter. Marshall Plan money (through
the Economic Commission for Africa) went to firms like the Mines de
Zellidja, which mined lead and zinc in North Africa; and, at the same time,
the money allowed Americans to buy controlling shares in the company.
Thus in 1954, Morgan of the U.S.A. shared with Rothschilds of Europe
most of the net profit of 1,250 million old francs (8.16 million dollars)
made by the Mines de Zellidja in that year. Similarly, the Belgian
government received substantial aid from the U.S.A. to implement a tenyear economic program in Congo from 1950 to 1959; and, as the price of
the aid, United States monopolies established control over some companies
in Congo. The U.S.A. took second place after Belgium in Congo’s foreign
trade, and United States capitalists had to be granted a range of privileges.
So the paradox continued, whereby United States capitalists intruded and
elbowed out French, British, and Belgian capitalists in colonial Africa,
while providing the funds without which the Western European nations
could not have revived and could not have increased their exploitation of
Africa—which is what they did in the period of 1945–60.
Over the last few decades of colonialism, colonial possessions served
capitalism as a safety valve in times of crisis. The first major occasion when
this was displayed was during the great economic depression of 1929–34.
During that period, forced labor was increased in Africa and the prices paid
to Africans for their crops were reduced. Workers were paid less and

imported goods cost a great deal more. That was a time when workers in the
metropolitan countries also suffered terribly; but the colonialists did the best
they could to transfer the burdens of the depression away from Europe and
on to the colonies.
The great economic depression did not affect the Soviet Union, where
socialism caused great development; but the slump spread from one end of
the capitalist system to the other. It was a product of the irrationality of the
capitalist mode of production. The search for profits caused production to
run ahead of people’s capacity to purchase, and ultimately both production
and employment had to be drastically reduced. Africans had nothing to do
with the inherent shortcomings of capitalism; but, when Europeans were in
a mess, they had no scruples about intensifying the exploitation of Africa.
The economic depression was not a situation from which Britain could
benefit at the expense of Sweden or where Belgium could gain at the
expense of the U.S.A. They were all drowning, and that was why the
benefits of the colonies saved not only the colonizing powers but all
capitalist nations.
The second major occasion on which the colonies had to bail out the
metropoles was during the last world war. As noted earlier, the African
people were required to make huge sacrifices and to supply vital raw
materials at little cost to the metropoles. Africa’s military importance was
also decisive. Not only did Africans fight and die on various battlefields of
the war, but the continent held a key strategic position. In November 1942,
a third front was opened in Africa (following the European and Asian
fronts), and that front was the means to final victory.
Accidents of geography meant that Africa controlled communications in
the Mediterranean and in the South Atlantic, and it commanded the two
western entrances into the Indian Ocean. As one military analyst put it,
“The side that held Africa was on the way to final victory.” With the aid of
African fighting men and resources, the major colonial powers maintained
control of the continent in the face of attacks by the Italians, who had only
Libya, Somaliland, and (briefly) Ethiopia. The Germans of course by then
had no colonies in Africa, and they had to use what was offered by the
Italians and fascist Vichy Frenchmen.
Unlike the First World War, the Second World War was not simply one
between capitalist powers. The aggressor states of Italy, Germany, and

Japan were fascist. The governments of Portugal, Spain, and South Africa
also subscribed to that ideology, although for opportunist reasons both the
Portuguese and the South African Boers found it more convenient to be
allied with Britain, France, the U.S.A., and the other bourgeois
democracies.
Fascism is a deformity of capitalism. It heightens the imperialist
tendency towards domination which is inherent in capitalism, and it
safeguards the principle of private property. At the same time, fascism
immeasurably strengthens the institutional racism already bred by
capitalism, whether it be against Jews (as in Hitler’s case) or against
African peoples (as in the ideology of Portugal’s Salazar and the leaders of
South Africa). Fascism reverses the political gains of the bourgeois
democratic system such as free elections, equality before the law,
parliaments; and it also extolls authoritarianism and the reactionary union of
the church with the state. In Portugal and Spain, it was the Catholic church
—in South Africa, it was the Dutch Reformed church.
Like its progenitor, capitalism, fascism is totally opposed to socialism.
Fascist Germany and Italy attacked both the other capitalist states and the
Soviet Union, which was still the only socialist state in the world by 1939.
The defeat of fascism was therefore a victory for socialism, and at the same
time it preserved the other capitalist nations from having to take the
historically retrograde step of fascism.
When the last world war ended, Africa’s further role was to help Europe
reconstruct. In that crisis, the U.S.A. played a major part, as has just been
mentioned; but the colonizing nations also had direct recourse to their
colonies, in spite of shortage of capital. It is noteworthy that European
capitalism from the late 1940s onwards recognized Africa’s potential as a
savior of their own war-torn economies, and they openly made statements
to that effect.
It was in 1946 that the Ministry of Colonies in the French cabinet was
renamed the Ministry of Overseas France and that colonized Africans were
euphemistically called “overseas Frenchmen.” About that time, a statement
from the French Ministry of Education frankly admitted that:
France would be only a little state of Europe without the seventy-five million overseas
Frenchmen whose young force has revealed itself to the world in such a remarkable manner
[referring to Africa’s role in the war].

Shortly afterwards, when France prepared its Four Year Plan for 1949–52,
statements such as the following were to be encountered:
Morocco will take an active part in the recovery of France by supplying manganese, cobalt and
lead ore, canned goods and agricultural produce.

At the end of the last war, both Britain and France set up agencies for the
“development” of their colonies. In the British sphere, this was known as
the Colonial Development and Welfare (CD&W), while the French fund
was known as FIDES. Their principal function was to provide loans, the
purpose of which was to help the colonies to help the metropoles. In other
words, the crisis of postwar reconstruction required that even greater effort
should be made to maximize the resources of colonies.
It was no ordinary postwar crisis which Western Europe faced in the
1940s and 1950s. The bourgeoisie had to rebuild capitalist states at a time
when socialism had already proved itself in the Soviet Union, and in a
period when the Red Army of the Soviets had aided groups of socialists to
come to power in Eastern Europe. This was the greatest challenge ever to be
faced by the bourgeoisie because (unlike fascism) socialism threatened the
basic capitalist principle of private ownership of the means of production.
Furthermore, socialist principles were making their presence felt even in
remote corners of the colonies, and the capitalists realized the necessity for
cutting the colonies off from socialist thought, as well as using colonial
resources to stave off what they termed “the threat of communism.”
In the capitalist struggle to keep off the challenge of socialism as a
competing mode of production and way of life, Africa played at least two
key roles—one being to provide bases for the capitalist militarists, and the
other being to provide a wide range of raw materials essential for modern
armament industries. The most vital of these raw materials were uranium
and other radioactive substances for atomic and later nuclear weapons,
including the hydrogen bomb. Almost rivaling uranium in importance were
certain rare minerals (like lithium from Rhodesia) needed for the special
steels that went into new aircraft rockets, tanks, guns, and bombs.
Colonial powers already had small military establishments in each
colony, and right up to the end of the colonial era, it was considered
necessary to strengthen those. For instance, in the 1955 French budget there
was a special vote of six billion francs (16.8 million dollars) for the

improvement of military installations in the colonies, and notably for
strategic bases in Dakar and Djibouti. Some time previously, the Belgians
had completed a huge air base near Kamina in the Congo.
Adding to the regular bases in long-established colonies, the imperialist
powers were able to set up military installations in African territories which
fell into their hands during the war. In this context, the U.S.A. was
particularly important, because it was already the principal buttress of the
capitalist defense system in the form of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). Thus, after helping to recapture North Africa from
the fascists, the United States was able to build major air-force bases in
Morocco and Libya. In Italian Eritrea, the Americans stepped in with
modern radar stations; and Ethiopia conceded military bases.
Though nominally independent, Liberia had little option but to accept a
massive military presence of Americans, as a logical consequence of
America’s economic exploitation and domination of Liberia. When the
U.S.A. agreed to build a port at Monrovia in 1943, they also obtained the
concession that the U.S.A. was to have “the right to establish, use, maintain
and control such naval, air and military facilities and installations at the site
of the port, and in the general vicinity thereof, as may be desired for the
protection of the strategic interests of the U.S.A. in the South Atlantic.”
Throughout the war, Liberia’s Robertsfield airfield had been of considerable
value to the U.S.A. and later on it continued to have a military utility. To tie
matters up further, the U.S.A. entered into what it called a military
assistance pact with Liberia in 1951.
Needless to say, in the 1950s when most Africans were still colonial
subjects, they had absolutely no control over the utilization of their soil for
militaristic ends. Virtually the whole of North Africa was turned into a
sphere of operations for NATO, with bases aimed at the Soviet Union.
There could easily have developed a nuclear war without African peoples
having any knowledge of the matter. The colonial powers actually held
military conferences in African cities like Dakar and Nairobi in the early
1950s, inviting the whites of South Africa and Rhodesia and the
government of the U.S.A. Time and time again, the evidence points to this
cynical use of Africa to buttress capitalism economically and militarily, and
therefore in effect forcing Africa to contribute to its own exploitation.

Apart from saving capitalism in times of crisis, the dependencies had
always been prolonging the life of capitalism by taking the edge off the
internal contradictions and conflicts which were a part of the capitalist
system. The principal contradiction within capitalism from the outset was
that between the capitalists and the workers. To keep their system going, the
capitalists had constantly to step up the rate of exploitation of their workers.
At the same time, European workers were gaining increasing mastery over
the means of production in the factories and mines, and they were learning
to work collectively in big enterprises and within their own trade union
structures. If the bourgeoisie continued to deprive them of the major part of
the fruits of their own labor and to oppress them socially and politically,
then those two classes were set on a collision path. Ever since the midnineteenth century, Marx had predicted class collision would come in the
form of revolution in which workers would emerge victorious. The
capitalists were terribly afraid of that possibility, knowing full well that they
themselves had seized power from the feudal landlord class by means of
revolution. However, imperialism introduced a new factor into this situation
—one that deferred the confrontation between workers and capitalists in the
metropoles.
Only in Russia was there a workers’ revolution, and Russia was on the
fringe of Europe rather than being one of its metropolitan capitalist centers.
That very fact highlighted how much capitalism in places like Britain,
France, and Germany had been stabilized by exploiting the colonies and
other semi-colonies such as Latin America, where states were independent
in name only.
Surplus from Africa was partly used to offer a few more benefits to
European workers and served as a bribe to make the latter less
revolutionary. The bribe came in the form of increased wages, better
working conditions, and expanded social services. The benefits of
colonialism were diffused throughout European society in many ways. Most
capitalist enterprises offered consumer goods which were mass produced at
low prices, and therefore the European housewife got some relief. For
instance, instant coffee brought that beverage within the reach of the
ordinary worker. Meanwhile, the capitalist still made his fortune by insuring
that the Ivory Coast or Colombian grower got no price increase. In that way,

colonialism was serving all classes and sectors of Western Europe and other
capitalist metropoles.
European workers have paid a great price for the few material benefits
which accrued to them as crumbs from the colonial table. The class in
power controls the dissemination of information. The capitalists
misinformed and miseducated workers in the metropoles to the point where
they became allies in colonial exploitation. In accepting to be led like sheep,
European workers were perpetuating their own enslavement to the
capitalists. They ceased to seek political power and contented themselves
with bargaining for small wage increases, which were usually counterbalanced by increased costs of living. They ceased to be creative and
allowed bourgeois cultural decadence to overtake them all. They failed to
exercise any independent judgment on the great issues of war and peace,
and therefore ended up by slaughtering not only colonial peoples but also
themselves.
Fascism was a monster born of capitalist parents. Fascism came as the
end-product of centuries of capitalist bestiality, exploitation, domination,
and racism—mainly exercised outside Europe. It is highly significant that
many settlers and colonial officials displayed a leaning towards fascism.
Apartheid in South Africa is nothing but fascism. It was gaining roots from
the early period of white colonization in the seventeenth century, and
particularly after the mining industry brought South Africa fully into the
capitalist orbit in the nineteenth century. Another example of the fascist
potential of colonialism was seen when France was overrun by Nazi
Germany in 1940. The French fascists collaborated with Hitler to establish
what was called the Vichy regime in France, and the French white settlers in
Africa supported the Vichy regime. A more striking instance to the same
effect was the fascist ideology developed by the white settlers in Algeria,
who not only opposed independence for Algeria under Algerian rule, but
they also strove to bring down the more progressive or liberal governments
of metropolitan France.
Inside Europe itself, some specific and highly revealing connections can
be found between colonialist behavior and the destruction of the few
contributions made by capitalism to human development. For instance,
when Colonel Von Lettow returned from leading the German forces in East
Africa in World War I, he was promoted to a general in the German army,

and Von Lettow was in command of the massacre of German communists in
Hamburg in 1918. That was a decisive turning point in German history, for
once the most progressive workers had been crushed, the path was clear for
the fascist deformation of the future. In brutally suppressing the Maji Maji
War in Tanganyika and in attempting genocide against the Herero people of
Namibia (South-West Africa), the German ruling class were getting the
experience which they later applied against the Jews and against German
workers and progressives.
When the fascist dictatorship was inaugurated in Portugal in 1926, it
drew inspiration from Portugal’s colonial past. After Salazar became the
dictator in 1932, he stated that his “New State” in Portugal would be based
on the labor of the “inferior peoples,” meaning of course Africans. In
addition, Portuguese peasants and workers had to submit to police terror,
poverty, and dehumanization, so they paid (and are still paying) a high price
for fascism at home and colonialism abroad.
Colonialism strengthened the Western European ruling class and
capitalism as a whole. Particularly in its later phases, it was evidently giving
a new lease of life to a mode of production that was otherwise dying. From
every viewpoint other than that of the minority class of capitalists,
colonialism was a monstrous institution holding back the liberation of man.
Brief Guide to Reading
Here again, few scholars have treated capitalism and imperialism as an
integral system involving the transfer of surplus and other benefits from
colonies to metropoles. And, where there is an awareness of the unity of the
system, no detailed analysis necessarily follows. In effect, one is faced with
the limitations of a metropolitan viewpoint. Thus, European or white
American Marxists who expose the rapacious nature of modern capitalism
within their own countries have not generally integrated this with the
exploitation of Africa, Asia, and Latin America—except for the very recent
neo-colonial period.
GEORGE PADMORE, Africa: How Britain Rules Africa. London: Wishart Books Ltd., 1936.
KWAME NKRUMAH, Africa Must Unite. New York: International Publishers, 1970.
_______ Neo-colonialism, the Highest Stage of Imperialism.
W. A. HUNTON, Decision in Africa. New York: International Publishers, 1957.

The most vociferous remarks about Africa’s contribution to Europe have been made by politically
involved Pan-African intellectuals, such as these three.
GROVER CLARK, The Balance Sheets of Colonialism. New York: Russell and Russell, 1967.
D. K. FIELDHOUSE, The Colonial Empires. New York: Delacorte Press, 1966.
These two texts proclaim that colonialism was not essentially economic, and that the colonizers
did not gain. The second book is recent, and the view is still very much alive.
U.S.S.R. Institute of History, A History of Africa 1918–1967.
PIERRE JALÉE, The Pillage of the Third World. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970.
These (Marxist) texts specifically about Africa and the exploited sector of the capitalist world do
make the point that the metropoles were extracting huge colonial surpluses.

*

As is well known, those conditions still operate. However, this chapter presents matters in the
past tense to picture the colonial epoch.
*
These facts came most dramatically to the attention of the outside world when Africans resorted
to violence. For example, forced cultivation of cotton was a major grievance behind the outbreak of
Maji Maji wars in Tanganyika and behind the nationalist revolt in Angola as late as 1960.

CHAPTER

VI
Colonialism as a System For Underdeveloping Africa
• The Supposed Benefits of Colonialism to Africa • Negative Character of
the Social, Political, and Economic Consequences • Education for
Underdevelopment • Development by Contradiction

THE BLACK MAN CERTAINLY HAS TO PAY DEAR FOR CARRYING THE WHITE man’s burden.
—GEORGE PADMORE
(West Indian) Pan-Africanist, 1936
In the colonial society, education is such that it serves the colonialist. . . . In a regime of
slavery, education was but one institution for forming slaves.
—Statement of FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front)
Department of Education and Culture, 1968

The Supposed Benefits of Colonialism to Africa
Socio-Economic Services
Faced with the evidence of European exploitation of Africa, many
bourgeois writers would concede at least partially that colonialism was a
system which functioned well in the interests of the metropoles. However,
they would then urge that another issue to be resolved is how much
Europeans did for Africans, and that it is necessary to draw up a balance
sheet of colonialism. On that balance sheet, they place both the credits and
the debits, and quite often conclude that the good outweighed the bad. That
particular conclusion can quite easily be challenged, but attention should
also be drawn to the fact that the process of reasoning is itself misleading.
The reasoning has some sentimental persuasiveness. It appeals to the
common sentiment that “after all there must be two sides to a thing.” The
argument suggests that, on the one hand, there was exploitation and
oppression, but, on the other hand, colonial governments did much for the
benefit of Africans and they developed Africa. It is our contention that this
is completely false. Colonialism had only one hand—it was a one-armed
bandit.
What did colonial governments do in the interest of Africans?
Supposedly, they built railroads, schools, hospitals, and the like. The sum
total of these services was amazingly small.
For the first three decades of colonialism, hardly anything was done that
could remotely be termed a service to the African people. It was in fact only
after the last war that social services were built as a matter of policy. How
little they amounted to does not really need illustrating. After all, the

statistics which show that Africa today is underdeveloped are the statistics
representing the state of affairs at the end of colonialism. For that matter,
the figures at the end of the first decade of African independence in spheres
such as health, housing, and education are often several times higher than
the figures inherited by the newly independent governments. It would be an
act of the most brazen fraud to weigh the paltry social amenities provided
during the colonial epoch against the exploitation, and to arrive at the
conclusion that the good outweighed the bad.
Capitalism did bring social services to European workers—firstly, as a
by-product of providing such services for the bourgeoisie and the middle
class, and later as a deliberate act of policy. Nothing remotely comparable
occurred in Africa. In 1934, long before the coming of the welfare state to
Britain, expenditure for social services in the British Isles amounted to 6
pounds 15 shillings per person. In Ghana, the figure was 7 shillings 4 pence
per person, and that was high by colonial standards. In Nigeria and Nyasaland, it was less than 1 shilling 9 pence per head. None of the other
colonizing powers were doing any better, and some much worse.
The Portuguese stand out because they boasted the most and did the
least. Portugal boasted that Angola, Guinea, and Mozambique have been
their possessions for five hundred years, during which time a “civilizing
mission” has been going on. At the end of five hundred years of shouldering
the white man’s burden of civilizing “African natives,” the Portuguese had
not managed to train a single African doctor in Mozambique, and the life
expectancy in eastern Angola was less than thirty years. As for GuineaBissau, some insight into the situation there is provided by the admission of
the Portuguese themselves that Guinea-Bissau was more neglected than
Angola and Mozambique!
Furthermore, the limited social services within Africa during colonial
times were distributed in a manner that reflected the pattern of domination
and exploitation. First of all, white settlers and expatriates wanted the
standards of the bourgeoisie or professional classes of the metropoles. They
were all the more determined to have luxuries in Africa, because so many of
them came from poverty in Europe and could not expect good services in
their own homelands. In colonies like Algeria, Kenya, and South Africa, it
is well known that whites created an infrastructure to afford themselves
leisured and enjoyable lives. It means, therefore, that the total amenities

provided in any of those colonies is no guide to what Africans got out of
colonialism.
In Algeria, the figure for infant mortality was 39 per 1,000 live births
among white settlers; but it jumped to 170 per 1,000 live births in the case
of Algerians living in the towns. In practical terms, that meant that the
medical, maternity, and sanitation services were all geared towards the wellbeing of the settlers. Similarly, in South Africa, all social statistics have to
be broken down into at least two groups—white and black—if they are to
be interpreted correctly. In British East Africa there were three groups:
firstly, the Europeans, who got the most; then, the Indians, who took most
of what was left; and thirdly, the Africans, who came last in their own
country.
In predominantly black countries, it was also true that the bulk of the
social services went to whites. The southern part of Nigeria was one of the
colonial areas that was supposed to have received the most from a
benevolent mother country. Ibadan, one of the most heavily populated cities
in Africa, had only about 50 Europeans before the last war. For those
chosen few, the British colonial government maintained a segregated
hospital service of 11 beds in well-furnished surroundings. There were 34
beds for the half-million blacks. The situation was repeated in other areas,
so that altogether the 4,000 Europeans in the country in the 1930s had 12
modern hospitals, while the African population of at least 40 million had 52
hospitals.
The viciousness of the colonial system with respect to the provision of
social services was most dramatically brought out in the case of economic
activities which made huge profits, and notably in the mining industry.
Mining takes serious toll of the health of workers, and it was only recently
in the metropoles that miners have had access to the kind of medical and
insurance services which could safeguard their lives and health. In colonial
Africa, the exploitation of miners was entirely without responsibility. In
1930, scurvy and other epidemics broke out in the Lupa gold-fields of
Tanganyika. Hundreds of workers died. One should not wonder that they
had no facilities which would have saved some lives, because in the first
place they were not being paid enough to eat properly.
South Africa’s large working class African population was in a sad state.
The Tuberculosis Commission of 1912 reported that in the shanty towns,

Scarcely a single family exists in which at least one member is not suffering or dying from
tuberculosis. Hospital services are so inadequate that incurable tuberculosis and other cases are
simply sent home to die—and spread the infection. In some areas, a single doctor has to attend
to the needs of 40,000 people. The natives must pay for medical treatment. There is no
provision for pauper patients. About 65% of the native children die before reaching two years.

That was as early as 1912, when the basis of the South African gold and
diamond empire was already laid. After this, the shanty towns increased, the
slum conditions grew worse, and the government committed itself to
pursuing the odious policy of apartheid, which meant separation of the races
so as better to exploit the African people.
Many Africans trekked to towns, because (bad as they were) they offered
a little more than the countryside. Modern sanitation, electricity, piped
water, paved roads, medical services, and schools were as foreign at the end
of the colonal period as they were in the beginning—as far as most of rural
Africa was concerned. Yet, it was the countryside that grew the cash crops
and provided the labor that kept the system going. The peasants there knew
very little of the supposed “credits” on the colonial balance sheet.
Because even the scanty social services were meant only to facilitate
exploitation, they were not given to any Africans whose labor was not
directly producing surplus for export to the metropoles. That is to say, none
of the wealth of exploited Africans could be deployed for the assistance of
their brothers outside the money economy.
Multiple examples exist to substantiate the above proposition. The most
“wealthy” colonies received greater social services under colonialism. Thus,
The Rand in South Africa and Katanga in Congo had to provide for their
relatively large working class. For many years, they approached the whole
matter indifferently, but in the final analysis, enlightened self-interest made
the colonialists realize that more could be gained out of the African worker
who maintained basic health and who had some degree of literacy in
industrial contexts. This was the same line of reasoning which had
previously led the capitalist class in Europe to be somewhat freer in
allowing part of the workers’ production to go back to keeping the worker
alive and well.
In the cash-crop producing countries of Africa, a similar situation existed
whereby the tendency was for socio-economic services to decrease in
colonies or areas which produced few goods to be shipped abroad. That

accounts for the fact that Africans in Gold Coast, Uganda, and Nigeria
could be considered as having been “better off” than those in Dahomey,
Tanganyika, and Chad.
Within individual countries, considerable regional variations existed,
depending on the degree to which different parts of a country were
integrated into the capitalist money economy. Thus, the northern part of
Kenya or the south of Sudan had little to offer the colonialists, and such a
zone was simply ignored by the colonizing power with regard to roads,
schools, hospitals, and so on. Often, at the level of the district of a given
colony, there would be discrimination in providing social amenities, on the
basis of contribution to exportable surplus. For instance, plantations and
companies might build hospitals for their workers, because some minimum
maintenance of the workers’ health was an economic investment. Usually,
such a hospital was exclusively for workers of that particular capitalist
concern, and those Africans living in the vicinity under subsistence
conditions outside the money economy were ignored altogether.
The Arusha Declaration powerfully and simply expressed one of the
deepest truths of the colonial experience in Africa when it stated: “We have
been oppressed a great deal, we have been exploited a great deal, and we
have been disregarded a great deal.”
The combination of being oppressed, being exploited, and being
disregarded is best illustrated by the pattern of the economic infrastructure
of African colonies: notably, their roads and railways. These had a clear
geographical distribution according to the extent to which particular regions
needed to be opened up to import-export activities. Where exports were not
available, roads and railways had no place. The only slight exception is that
certain roads and railways were built to move troops and make conquest
and oppression easier.
Means of communication were not constructed in the colonial period so
that Africans could visit their friends. More important still, they were not
laid down to facilitate internal trade in African commodities. There were no
roads connecting different colonies and different parts of the same colony in
a manner that made sense with regard to Africa’s needs and development.
All roads and railways led down to the sea. They were built to extract gold
or manganese or coffee or cotton. They were built to make business
possible for the timber companies, trading companies, and agricultural

concession firms, and for white settlers. Any catering to African interests
was purely coincidental. Yet in Africa, labor, rather than capital, took the
lion’s share in getting things done. With the minimum investment of capital,
the colonial powers could mobilize thousands upon thousands of workers.
Salaries were paid to the police officers and officials, and labor came into
existence because of the colonial laws, the threat of force, and the use of
force. Take, for instance, the building of railways. In Europe and America,
railway building required huge inputs of capital. Great wage bills were
incurred during construction, and added bonus payments were made to
workers to get the job done as quickly as possible. In most parts of Africa,
the Europeans who wanted to see a railroad built offered lashes as the
ordinary wage and more lashes for extra effort.
Reference was earlier made to the great cost in African life of the
(French) Congo railroad from Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire. Most of the
intolerable conditions are explained by the non-availability of capital in the
form of equipment. Therefore, sheer manpower had to take the place of
earth-moving machinery, cranes, and so on. A comparable situation was
provided by the construction of the Embakasi airport of Nairobi. Because it
was built during the colonial era (starting in 1953) and with United States
loans, it is customary to credit the imperialists for its existence. But it would
be much more accurate to say that the people of Kenya built it with their
own hands under European supervision.
Embakasi, which initially covered seven square miles and had four
runways, was described as “the world’s first handmade international
airport.” Mau Mau suspects numbering several thousand were to be found
there “laboring under armed guard at a million-ton excavation job, filling in
craters, laying a half million tons of stone with nothing but shovels, stone
hammers and their bare hands.”
The financial institutions of colonial Africa were even more
scandalously neglectful of indigenous African interests than was the case
with the European-oriented communications system. The banks did very
little lending locally. In British East Africa, credit to Africans was
specifically discouraged by the Credit to Natives (Restriction) Ordinance of
1931. Insurance companies catered almost exclusively to the interests of
white settlers and capitalist firms. The policy of colonial reserves in
metropolitan currencies can also be cited as a “service” inimical to

Africans. The Currency Boards and central banks which performed such
services denied Africa access to its own funds created by exports. Instead,
the colonial reserves in Britain, France, and Belgium represented African
loans to and capital investment in Europe.
It is necessary to re-evaluate the much glorified notion of “European
capital” as having been invested in colonial Africa and Asia. The money
available for investment in the capitalist system was itself the consequence
of the previous robbery of workers and peasants in Europe and the world at
large. In Africa’s case, the capital that was invested in nineteenth-century
commerce was part of the capital that had been derived from the trade in
slaves. The Portuguese government was the first in Europe to ship captives
from Africa and the last to let go of slave trading. Much of the profit slipped
out of Portuguese hands, and went instead to Britain and Germany; but the
Portuguese slave trade nevertheless helped the Portuguese themselves to
finance later colonial ventures, such as joint capitalist participation in
agricultural and mining companies in Angola and Mozambique.
As indicated earlier, many of the entrepreneurs from the big European
port towns who turned to importing African agricultural produce into
Europe were formerly carrying on the trade in slaves. The same can be said
of many New England firms in the United States. Some of the biggest
“names” in the colonial epoch were capitalist concerns whose original
capital came from the trade in slaves or from slavery itself. Lloyds, the
great insurance underwriting and banking house, falls into this category,
having been nourished by profits from the slave territories of the West
Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and the ubiquitous
Barclays Bank had its antecedents in slave trading. Worms et Compagnie is
a French example of the same phenomenon. Back in the eighteenth century,
Worms had strong links with the French slave trade, and it grew to become
one of the most powerful financial houses dealing with the French empire in
Africa and Asia, with particular concentration on Madagascar and the
Indian Ocean.
The example of Unilever and the UAC which was highlighted in the
previous chapter also reinforces the point that Africa was being exploited
by capital produced out of African labor. When Lever Brothers took over
the Niger Company in 1929, they became heirs to one of the most notorious
exploiters of nineteenth-century Africa. The Niger Company was a

chartered company with full governmental and police powers during the
years 1885 to 1897. In that period, the company exploited Nigerians
ruthlessly. Furthermore, the Niger Company was itself a monopoly that had
bought up smaller firms tracing their capital directly to slave trading.
Similarly, when the UAC was born out of the merger with the Eastern and
African Trading Company, it was associated with some more capital that
grew from a family tree rooted in the European slave trade. The capital at
the disposal of the big French trading firms CFAO and SCOA can also be
traced in the same way.
The process of capital accumulation and reproduction in East Africa
lacks the continuity of West Africa. Firstly, Arabs as well as Europeans
were participants in the slave trade from East Africa. Secondly, the
Germans intervened in 1885, although they had not been previously
involved; while the French (who had led the European slave trade in East
Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) concentrated on
colonizing the Indian Ocean islands rather than the East African mainland.
Thirdly, German colonialism did not last beyond the 1914–18 war. Even so,
on the British side, the capital and profits of the colonizing East Africa
Company reappeared in the trading firm of Smith Mackenzie.
The capital that was invested in colonial Africa in later years was a
continuation of the nineteenth century, along with new influxes from the
métropoles. If one inquired closely into the origins of the supposedly new
sources, quite a few would have been connected very closely to previous
exploitation of non-European peoples. However, it is not necessary to prove
that every firm trading in Africa had a firsthand or secondhand connection
with the European slave trade and with earlier exploitation of the continent.
It is enough to remember that Europe’s greatest source of primary capital
accumulation was overseas, and that the profits from African ventures
continually outran the capital invested in the colonies.
A conservative bourgeois writer on colonial Africa made the following
remarks about the South African gold and diamond industries:
Apart from the original capital subscribed [in the diamond industry], all capital expenditure
was provided for out of profits. The industry also yielded large profits to the international firms
which dealt in diamonds. These had a peculiar importance, because a considerable portion of
the wealth accumulated by diamond firms was later used in the development of the [gold
industry] of the Rand.

Similarly, in Angola the Diamang diamond company was an investment
that quickly paid for itself, and was then producing capital. The combined
profits of that company for the years 1954 and 1955 alone came to the total
of invested capital plus 40 per cent. The excess over investment and
maintenance costs was of course expatriated to Portugal, Belgium, and the
U.S.A., where the shareholders of Diamang were resident; and Angola was
thereby investing in those countries.
In this sense, the colonies were the generators of the capital rather than
the countries into which foreign capital was plowed.
Capital was constantly in motion from métropole to some part of the
dependencies, from colonies to other colonies (via the métropoles), from
one métropole to another, and from colony to métropole. But because of the
superprofits created by non-European peoples ever since slavery, the net
flow was from colony to métropole. What was called “profits” in one year
came back as “capital” the next. Even progressive writers have created a
wrong impression by speaking about capital “exports” from Europe to
Africa and about the role of “foreign” capital. What was foreign about the
capital in colonial Africa was its ownership and not its initial source.
Apologists for colonialism are quick to say that the money for schools,
hospitals, and such services in Africa was provided by the British, French,
or Belgian taxpayer, as the case may have been. It defies logic to admit that
profits from a given colony in a given year totaled several million dollars
and to affirm nevertheless that the few thousand dollars allocated to social
services in that colony was the money of European tax-payers! The true
situation can accurately be presented in the following terms: African
workers and peasants produced for European capitalism goods and services
of a certain value. A small proportion of the fruits of their efforts was
retained by them in the form of wages, cash payments, and extremely
limited social services, such as were essential to the maintenance of
colonialism. The rest went to the various beneficiaries of the colonial
system.
There can be little dispute over the credibility of the data which are
available to amply demonstrate that colonialism for the most part aimed at
developing the métropoles, and only allowed certain crumbs to the colonies
as incidental by-products of exploitation. British colonial records are full of
reports of Royal Commissions investigating this and that; the reports (upon

which action was seldom taken) provided the best evidence of the appalling
indifference of the colonial regimes to the needs of Africans. In the 1930s,
there were riots throughout the West Indies because of the insupportable
suffering of the African descendants who were left stranded in those parts
after slavery. The Royal Commission investigating the grievances found
them so shocking that the full findings were not published during the war,
lest they reveal that colonialism was hardly any better than the fascism
against which Britain was fighting. It was out of that investigation that the
idea of establishing Colonial Development and Welfare (CD&W) was
advanced. An act to that effect was passed in 1940, although it was not until
1944 that funds became available for CD&W loans to colonial
administrations.
The French also had their counterpart to CD&W in the form of FIDES,
set up in 1946. From the earliest days of colonial expansion, there were two
kinds of explanations of motives coming out of the métropoles. One was
very frank, and appealed to the various Chambers of Commerce in
European towns. It said simply that Europeans were in the colonial game
because it was damned profitable, and that was that. However, there were
other elements who thought it necessary to peddle a line about the welfare
of the “uncivilized natives.” This was a continuation of earlier justifications
of slavery on the ground that it carried the heathen Africans to Christian
lands. As colonialism came under heavy criticism during the last decades,
more deliberate efforts were made to whitewash it. Both CD&W and
FIDES were part of the public relations propaganda of colonialism, striving
to mask and deny its viciousness.
Above all, both FIDES and CD&W were born of postwar conditions in
Europe, at the time when Western European capitalist nations were
desperately falling back on colonies to save them vis-à-vis socialism and
even from the competition of the U.S.A. Mr. Bevin, a noted labor leader
turned traitor to his class and spokesman for British capitalism, made the
observation that “the other two world Powers, the United States and Soviet
Russia, have tremendous resources. If Western Europe is to achieve its
balance of payments and to get a world equilibrium, it is essential that
[African] resources should be developed, and made available.” Any close
study of the operations of CD&W and FIDES reveals clearly that they had

nothing to do with African development but a great deal to do with the
welfare of capitalist Europe.
The so-called development funds for Africa went almost exclusively into
the building of economic infrastructures and into the provision of certain
social services. Of the CD&W grants between 1946 and 1956, less than 1
per cent was allocated to industries. In the case of FIDES from 1949 to
1953, the corresponding figure was less than 0.5 per cent. Agriculture fared
very little better, although that was of course the principal activity in which
Africans were engaged. The colonial administration of Nigeria set up a Ten
Year Plan, with hopes of borrowing heavily from CD&W funds. In that
plan, the sum of 1.824 million pounds was voted for agriculture out of a
total of 53 million pounds. Most of that agricultural grant was to be
consumed by constructing an agricultural school and for providing salaries
for British “experts.”
Other British colonies drew up Ten Year Plans, which had the same
deficiencies as the Nigerian one, and indeed they were all apologies for the
true economic plans, being nothing else but a series of disjointed projects
drawn up by different government departments as extensions to their then
existing activities. Thus, the plans could not be expected to break any new
ground; and they completely ignored developmental features such as
stimulating internal and intra-African trade.
The high proportion of the “development” funds went into the colonies
in the form of loans for ports, railways, electric power plants, water works,
engineering workshops, warehouses, which were necessary for more
efficient exploitation in the long run. In the short run, such construction
works provided outlets for European steel, concrete, electrical machinery,
and railroad rolling stock. One-fifth of FIDES funds were spent on
prestigious public works in Dakar, which suited French industry and
employed large numbers of expatriates. Even the schools built under FIDES
funds were of unnecessary high cost per unit, because they had to be of the
requisite standard to provide job outlets for white expatriates. Incidentally,
loans were “tied” in such a way that the money had to be spent on buying
materials manufactured in the relevant metropole.
The “development” funds were raised on the European money market by
the governments concerned, and in effect the national metropolitan
governments were providing their own bankers and financiers with

guaranteed profitable outlets for their capital. In 1956, the French
government started a scheme which was a blatant form of promoting their
own private capitalists while paying lip service to African development and
welfare. The scheme involved the creation of an institution called SDOM
(Financial Societies for the Development of Overseas Territories). SDOM
was nothing but an association of private capitalists interested primarily in
the oil of North Africa, and having large government subventions to achieve
their goals.
There were many telltale signs which unmasked the CD&W hoax in the
eyes of careful and concerned observers. The Colonial Secretary set up a
council to help him in allocation of grants, and it was dominated by really
powerful members of the British bourgeoisie, including directors of
Barclays Bank. Since the CD&W funds were inadequate even for the
hopeless Ten Year Plans of the colonies, the British government then
encouraged the colonial administrations to borrow the rest of their finances
on the open money market. That was another way of insuring that African
labor and resources dispatched surplus to greedy European moneychangers.
Barclays Bank was one of the first to seize the opportunity of lending to
colonial regimes to supplement the CD&W grants. That bank set up a
special Overseas Development Corporation to “assist” Africa, the chairman
of the bank assuring all that “the development of the colonial empire and
the well-being of its inhabitants is a matter that concerns every citizen of
[Britain].” That was the language of public relations, which fitted in very
well with the sordid hypocrisy practiced by white men ever since they
started killing and enslaving in the name of civilization and Christianity.
As part of the hypocrisy of colonialism, it became fashionable to speak
of how Europe brought Africa into the twentieth century. This assertion has
implications in the socio-economic and political spheres, and it can be
shown to be false not in some but in all respects.
So often it is said that colonialism modernized Africa by introducing the
dynamic features of capitalism, such as private property in land, private
ownership of the other means of production, and money relations. Here it is
essential to distinguish between capitalist elements and capitalism as a total
social system. Colonialism introduced some elements of capitalism into
Africa. In general terms, where communalism came into contact with the
money economy, the latter imposed itself. Cash-crop farming and wage

labor led away from the extended family as the basis of production and
distribution.
One South African saying put forward that “the white man has no kin,
his kin is money.” That is a profound revelation of the difference between
capitalist and pre-capitalist societies; and when capitalism came into contact
with the still largely communal African societies, it introduced money
relations at the expense of kinship ties. However, colonialism did not trans
form Africa into a capitalist society comparable to the metropoles. Had it
done that, one might have complained of the brutalities and inequalities of
capitalism, but it could not then have been said that colonialism failed to
advance Africa along the path of human historical development.
Capitalism as a system within the metropoles or epicenters had two
dominant classes: firstly, the capitalists or bourgeoisie who owned the
factories and banks (the major means for producing and distributing
wealth); and secondly, the workers or proletariat who worked in the
factories of the said bourgeoisie. Colonialism did not create a capitalowning and factory-owning class among Africans or even inside Africa; nor
did it create an urbanized proletariat of any significance (particularly
outside South Africa). In other words, capitalism in the form of colonialism
failed to perform in Africa the tasks which it had performed in Europe in
changing social relations and liberating the forces of production.
It is fairly obvious that capitalists do not set out to create other
capitalists, who would be rivals. On the contrary, the tendency of capitalism
in Europe from the very beginning was one of competition, elimination, and
monopoly. Therefore, when the imperialist stage was reached, the
metropolitan capitalists had no intention of allowing rivals to arise in the
dependencies. However, in spite of what the metropoles wanted, some local
capitalists did emerge in Asia and Latin America. Africa is a significant
exception in the sense that, compared with other colonized peoples, far
fewer Africans had access even to the middle rungs of the bourgeois ladder
in terms of capital for investment.
Part of the explanation for the lack of African capitalists in Africa lies in
the arrival of minority groups who had no local family ties which could
stand in the way of the ruthless primary accumulation which capitalism
requires. Lebanese, Syrian, Greek, and Indian businessmen rose from the
ranks of petty traders to become minor and sometimes substantial

capitalists. Names like Raccah and Leventis were well known in West
Africa, just as names like Madhvani and Visram became well known as
capitalists in East Africa.
There were clashes between the middlemen and the European
colonialists, but the latter much preferred to encourage the minorities rather
than see Africans build themselves up. For instance, in West Africa the
businessmen from Sierra Leone were discouraged both in their own colony
and in other British possessions where they chose to settle. In East Africa,
there was hope among Ugandans in particular that they might acquire
cotton gins and perform some capitalist functions connected with cotton
growing and other activities. However, when in 1920 a Development
Commission was appointed to promote commerce and industry, it favored
firstly Europeans and then Indians. Africans were prohibited by legislation
from owning gins.
Taking Africa as a whole, the few African businessmen who were
allowed to emerge were at the bottom of the ladder and cannot be
considered as “capitalists” in the true sense. They did not own sufficient
capital to invest in large-scale farming, trading, mining, or industry. They
were dependent both on European-owned capital and on the local capital of
minority groups.
That European capitalism should have failed to create African capitalists
is perhaps not so striking as its inability to create a working class and to
diffuse industrial skills throughout Africa. By its very nature, colonialism
was prejudiced against the establishment of industries in Africa, outside of
agriculture and the extractive spheres of mining and timber felling.
Whenever internal forces seemed to push in the direction of African
industrialization, they were deliberately blocked by the colonial
governments acting on behalf of the metropolitan industrialists. Groundnutoil mills were set up in Senegal in 1927 and began exports to France. They
were soon placed under restrictions because of protests of oil-millers in
France. Similarly in Nigeria, the oil mills set up by Lebanese were
discouraged. The oil was still sent to Europe as a raw material for industry,
but European industrialists did not then welcome even the simple stage of
processing groundnuts into oil on African soil.
Many irrational contradictions arose throughout colonial Africa as a
result of the non-industrialization policy: Sudanese and Ugandans grew

cotton but imported manufactured cotton goods, Ivory Coast grew cocoa
and imported tinned cocoa and chocolate.
The tiny working class of colonial Africa covered jobs such as
agricultural labor and domestic service. Most of it was unskilled, in contrast
to the accumulating skills of capitalism proper. When it came to projects
requiring technical expertise, Europeans did the supervision—standing
around in their helmets and white shorts. Of course, in 1885 Africans did
not have the technical know-how which had evolved in Europe during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That difference was itself partly due to
the kind of relations between Africa and Europe in the pre-colonial period.
What is more significant, however, is the incredibly small number of
Africans who were able to acquire “modern” skills during the colonial
period. In a few places, such as South Africa and the Rhodesias, this was
due to specific racial discrimination in employment, so as to keep the best
jobs for whites. Yet, even in the absence of whites, lack of skills among
Africans was an integral part of the capitalist impact on the continent.
It has already been illustrated how the presence of industry in Europe
fostered and multiplied scientific techniques. The reverse side of the coin
was presented in Africa: no industry meant no generation of skills. Even in
the mining industry, it was arranged that the most valuable labor should be
done outside Africa. It is sometimes forgotten that it is labor which adds
value to commodities through the transformation of natural products. For
instance, although gem diamonds have a value far above their practical
usefulness, the value is not simply a question of their being rare. Work had
to be done to locate the diamonds. That is the skilled task of a geologist,
and the geologists were of course Europeans. Work had to be done to dig
the diamonds out, which involves mainly physical labor. Only in that phase
were Africans from South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Tanganyika, and Sierra
Leone brought into the picture. Subsequently, work had to be done in
cutting and polishing the diamonds. A small portion of this was performed
by whites in South Africa, and most of it by whites in Brussels and London.
It was on the desk of the skilled cutter that the rough diamond became a
gem and soared in value. No Africans were allowed to come near that kind
of technique in the colonial period.
Much of the dynamism of capitalism lay in the way that growth created
more opportunities for further growth. Major industries had by-products,

they stimulated local raw-material usage, they expanded transport and the
building industry—as was seen in the case of Unilever. In the words of the
professional economists, those were the beneficial “backward and forward
linkages.” Given that the industries using African raw materials were
located outside Africa, then there could be no beneficial backward and
forward linkages inside Africa. After the Second World War, Guinea began
to export bauxite. In the hands of French and American capitalists, the
bauxite became aluminum. In the métropoles, it went into the making of
refactory material, electrical conductors, cigarette foil, kitchen utensils,
glass, jewel bearings, abrasives, light-weight structures, and aircraft.
Guinean bauxite stimulated European shipping and North American
hydroelectric power. In Guinea, the colonial bauxite mining left holes in the
ground.
With regard to gold, the financial implications in Europe were enormous,
and African gold played its part in the development of the monetary system
and of industry and agriculture in the métropoles. But, like bauxite and
other minerals, gold is an exhaustible resource. Once it is taken out of a
country’s soil, that is an absolute loss that cannot be replaced. That simple
fact is often obscured so long as production continues, as in South Africa;
but it is dramatically brought to attention when the minerals have actually
disappeared during the colonial epoch. For instance, in the south of
Tanganyika, the British mined gold as fast as they could from 1933 onwards
at a place called Chunya. By 1953, they had gobbled it all up and exported
it abroad. By the end of the colonial period, Chunya was one of the most
backward spots in the whole of Tanganyika, which was itself known as the
poor Cinderella of East Africa. If that was modernization, and given the
price paid in exploitation and oppression, then Africans would have been
better off in the bush.
Industrialization does not only mean factories. Agriculture itself has
been industrialized in capitalist and socialist countries by the intensive
application of scientific principles to irrigation, fertilizers, tools, crop
selection, stock breeding. The most decisive failure of colonialism in Africa
was its failure to change the technology of agricultural production. The
most convincing evidence as to the superficiality of the talk about
colonialism having “modernized” Africa is the fact that the vast majority of
Africans went into colonialism with a hoe and came out with a hoe. Some

capitalist plantations introduced agricultural machinery, and the odd tractor
found its way into the hands of African farmers; but the hoe remained the
over-whelmingly dominant agricultural implement. Capitalism could
revolutionize agriculture in Europe, but it could not do the same for Africa.
In some districts, capitalism brought about technological backwardness
in agriculture. On the reserves of Southern Africa, far too many Africans
were crowded onto inadequate land, and were forced to engage in intensive
farming, using techniques that were suitable only to shifting cultivation. In
practice, that was a form of technical retrogression, because the land
yielded less and less and became destroyed in the process. Wherever
Africans were hampered in their use of their ancestral lands on a wideranging shifting basis, the same negative effect was to be found. Besides,
some of the new cash crops like groundnuts and cotton were very
demanding on the soil. In countries like Senegal, Niger, and Chad, which
were already on the edge of the desert, the steady cultivation led to soil
impoverishment and encroachment of the desert.
White racist notions are so deep-rooted within capitalist society that the
failure of African agriculture to advance was put down to the inherent
inferiority of the African. It would be much truer to say that it was due to
the white intruders, although the basic explanation is to be found not in the
personal ill-will of the colonialists or in their racial origin, but rather in the
organized viciousness of the capitalist/colonialist system.
Failure to improve agricultural tools and methods on behalf of African
peasants was not a matter of a bad decision by colonial policy-makers. It
was an inescapable feature of colonialism as a whole, based on the
understanding that the international division of labor aimed at skills in the
metropoles and low-level manpower in the dependencies. It was also a
result of the considerable use of force (including taxation) in African labor
relations. People can be forced to perform simple manual labor, but very
little else. This was proven when Africans were used as slaves in the West
Indies and America. Slaves damaged tools and carried out sabotage, which
could only be controlled by extra supervision and by keeping tools and
productive processes very elementary. Slave labor was unsuitable for
carrying out industrial activity, so that in the U.S.A. the North went to war
in 1861 to end slavery in the South, so as to spread true capitalist relations
throughout the land. Following the same line of argument, it becomes clear

why the various forms of forced agricultural labor in Africa had to be kept
quite simple, and that in turn meant small earnings.
Capitalists under colonialism did not pay enough for an African to
maintain himself and family. This can readily be realized by reflecting on
the amounts of money earned by African peasants from cash crops. The sale
of produce by an African cash-crop farmer rarely brought in 10 pounds per
year and often it was less than half that amount. Out of that, a peasant had
to pay for tools, seeds, and transport and he had to repay the loan to the
middleman before he could call the remainder his own. Peasants producing
coffee and cocoa and collecting palm produce tended to earn more than
those dealing with cotton and groundnuts, but even the ordinary Akwapim
cocoa farmer or Chagga coffee farmer never handled money in quantities
sufficient to feed, clothe, and shelter his family. Instead, subsistence
farming of yams or bananas continued as a supplement. That was how the
peasant managed to eat, and the few shillings earned went to pay taxes and
to buy the increasing number of things which could not be obtained without
money in the middlemen’s shops—salt, cloth, paraffin. If he was extremely
lucky, he would have access to zinc sheets, bicycles, radios, and sewing
machines, and would be able to pay school fees. It must be made quite clear
that those in the last category were extremely few.
One reason why the African peasant got so little for his agricultural
crops was that his labor was unskilled. That was not the whole explanation,
but it is true that a product such as cotton jumped in value during the time it
went through the sophisticated processes of manufacture in Europe. Karl
Marx, in clarifying how capitalists appropriated part of the surplus of each
worker, used the example of cotton. He explained that the value of the
manufactured cotton included the value of the labor that went into growing
the raw cotton, plus part of the value of the labor that made the spindles,
plus the labor that went into the actual manufacture. From an African
viewpoint, the first conclusion to be drawn is that the peasant working on
African soil was being exploited by the industrialist who used African raw
material in Europe or America. Secondly, it is necessary to realize that the
African contribution of unskilled labor was valued far less than the
European contribution of skilled labor.
It has been observed that one hour of work of a cotton peasant in Chad
was equivalent to less than one centimeter of cotton cloth, and he needed to

work fifty days to earn what was needed to buy three meters of the cloth
made from his own cotton in France. Yet, the French textile worker (using
modern spindles) ran off three meters of cloth in a matter of minutes!
Assuming that the Frenchman was not closer to God (who made the whole
world in only six days and rested on the seventh), then there must be factors
in the capitalist colonialist system which permitted the great disparity in the
relative value of labor in Chad and France. In the first place, the Chad
peasant was defrauded through trade so that he sold cheap and bought dear,
and therefore received a minute proportion of the value that he created with
his labor. This was possible not because of mysterious “market forces” as
bourgeois economists would like us to believe, but because of political
power being vested entirely in the hands of the colonialists. It was a
consequence of monopolistic domination, both economically and
politically. Secondly, the quantity of time spent by the Chad peasant was
longer because colonialism did not permit him to acquire the tools to
shorten the hours required to produce a given quantity of raw cotton.
To a certain extent, it would have been in the interests of the colonial
powers to have had better agricultural techniques in Africa, leading to
increased volume and quality of production. All colonial regimes sponsored
some scientific research into tropical agriculture. However, the research was
almost entirely devoted to cash crops, it was limited in scope, and it was
more easily adaptable by plantations than by African peasants who had no
capital. The pitiable amount devoted to agricultural improvement in Africa
during the colonial period contrasts sharply with the increasingly huge sums
that were devoted to research in Europe over the same period—with
enormous benefits to both industry and agriculture in the metropoles.
Side by side with the ill-founded claims about socio-economic
modernization went the claims by colonial apologists that European rule
brought political uplift and emancipation. One of the long-standing
arguments in this connection is that Africa was in chaos in the nineteenth
century, and that “tribes” like the Ngoni and the Yao and Samori’s sofas
were killing left, right, and center. Consequently, Africa was saved by
Livingstone and Stanley. For the most part, such wild statements have no
place in the works of the present generation of European scholars of Africa,
since they are known to have no resemblance to reality. However, some
writers still preach that “the Bantu could be saved from the wasting

struggles and from their general economic and technical backwardness only
by the imposition of stable [European] government.”
Another supposed credit of the colonialists is that they developed
nationalism in Africa. That is a superficial and mischievous claim, which
entirely ignores the numerous states in Africa on the eve of colonization,
and the direction of their evolution. Nationalism is a certain form of unity
which grows out of historical experience. It is a sense of oneness that
emerges from social groups trying to control their environment and to
defend their gains against competing groups. The nation-state also imposes
order and maintains stability within its own boundaries, usually on behalf of
a given class. All of those characteristics were present in nineteenth-century
African states, some of which were much larger than the colonies arbitrarily
defined by Europeans.
It is true that the present African nationalism took the particular form of
adopting the boundaries carved by the imperialists. That was an inevitable
consequence of the fact that the struggle to regain African independence
was conditioned by the administrative framework of the given colonies. But
it would show crass ignorance of the African past to say that colonialism
modernized Africa politically through nation-states, especially when the
implication is that such a level of political organization and stability would
otherwise have been impossible.
One colonialist proposition that has at least an air of plausibility is that
capitalism and colonial rule meant greater individual freedom for many
Africans. Young men earning wages or individuals farming for cash became
independent of the corporate demands of their families. It is debatable to
what extent that was a worthwhile phenomenon, but it could be said to be
somewhat comparable to the way in which capitalism freed the individual
in Europe from the restrictions of feudal society and from such bonds as
those imposed by morally self-righteous people. Nevertheless, when any
given African did break from what were proving to be onerous extended
family obligations, what freedom did he acquire? His choice of alternatives
was narrowly dictated by the colonialists, and he was only “free” to
participate in the money economy and in the European-oriented cultural
sector at the very lowest and uncreative levels.
There is a more sympathetic school of historians of Africa who contend
that to see colonialism as completely negative is to underrate the initiative

of Africans. Africans, they say, moved boldly into the labor market, into
cash-crop farming, into commerce in some instances, into the educational
field, and into the churches. Yet, those were simply responses (albeit
vigorous ones) to the options laid open by the colonialists. True historical
initiative by a whole people or by individuals requires that they have the
power to decide on the direction in which they want to move. That latter
aspect had to await the decade of the 1960s.
Within any social system, the oppressed find some room to maneuver
through their own initiative. For instance, under the slave regime of
America and the West Indies, Africans found ways and means of gaining
small advantages. They would flatter and “con” the slavemasters, who were
so arrogant and bigoted that they were readily fooled. Similarly, under
colonialism many Africans played the game to secure what they could.
Africans in positions like interpreters, police, and court officials often had
their way over the ruling Europeans. However, that should not be mistaken
for power or political participation or the exercise of individual freedom.
Under slavery, power lay in the hands of the slavemasters: under
colonialism, power lay in the hands of the colonialists. The loss of power
for the various African states meant a reduction in the freedom of every
individual.
Colonialism was a negation of freedom from the viewpoint of the
colonized. Even in quantitative terms it could not possibly bring modern
political liberation to Africans comparable to the little that had been
achieved by capitalism as an improvement of feudalism. In its political
aspects, capitalism in the metropoles included constitutions, parliaments,
freedom of the press. All of those things were limited in their application to
the European working class, but they had existed in some form or fashion in
the metropoles ever since the American War of Independence and the
French Revolution. But Jules Ferry, a former French colonial minister,
explained that the French Revolution was not fought on behalf of the blacks
of Africa. Bourgeois liberty, equality, and fraternity was not for colonial
subjects. Africans had to make do with bayonets, riot acts, and gunboats.
Negative Character
Consequences

of

the

Social,

Political,

and

Economic

The argument so far has been aimed at showing that benefits from
colonialism were small and they were not gifts from the colonialists, but
rather fruits of African labor and resources for the most part. Indeed, what
was called “the development of Africa” by the colonialists was a cynical
shorthand expression for “the intensification of colonial exploitation in
Africa to develop capitalist Europe.” The analysis has gone beyond that to
demonstrate that numerous false claims are made purporting to show that
Europe developed Africa in the sense of bringing about social order,
nationalism, and economic modernization. However, all of that would still
not permit the conclusion that colonialism had a negative impact on
Africa’s development. In offering the view that colonialism was negative,
the aim is to draw attention to the way that previous African development
was blunted, halted, and turned back. In place of that interruption and
blockade, nothing of compensatory value was introduced.
The colonization of Africa lasted for just over seventy years in most
parts of the continent. That is an extremely short period within the context
of universal historical development. Yet, it was precisely in those years that
in other parts of the world the rate of change was greater than ever before.
As has been illustrated, capitalist countries revolutionized their technology
to enter the nuclear age. Meanwhile, socialism was inaugurated, lifting
semi-feudal semi-capitalist Russia to a level of sustained economic growth
higher than that ever experienced in a capitalist country. Socialism did the
same for China and North Korea—guaranteeing the well-being and
independence of the state as well as reorganizing the internal social
arrangements in a far more just manner than ever before. It is against those
decisive changes that events in Africa have to be measured. To mark time or
even to move slowly while others leap ahead is virtually equivalent to going
backward. Certainly, in relative terms, Africa’s position vis-à-vis its
colonizers became more disadvantageous in the political, economic, and
military spheres.
The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative
consequences for Africa spring mainly from the fact that Africa lost power.
Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the
relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability to
defend one’s interests and if necessary to impose one’s will by any means
available. In relations between peoples, the question of power determines

maneuverability in bargaining, the extent to which one people respect the
interests of another, and eventually the extent to which a people survive as a
physical and cultural entity. When one society finds itself forced to
relinquish power entirely to another society, that in itself is a form of
underdevelopment.
During the centuries of pre-colonial trade, some control over social,
political, and economic life was retained in Africa, in spite of the
disadvantageous commerce with Europeans. That little control over internal
matters disappeared under colonialism. Colonialism went much further than
trade. It meant a tendency towards direct appropriation by Europeans of the
social institutions within Africa. Africans ceased to set indigenous cultural
goals and standards, and lost full command of training young members of
the society. Those were undoubtedly major steps backward.
The Tunisian, Albert Memmi, puts forward the following proposition:
The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the
community. Colonization usurps any free role in either war or peace, every decision
contributing to his destiny and that of the world, and all cultural and social responsibility.

Sweeping as that statement may initially appear, it is entirely true. The
removal from history follows logically from the loss of power which
colonialism represented. The power to act independently is the guarantee to
participate actively and consciously in history. To be colonized is to be
removed from history, except in the most passive sense. A striking
illustration of the fact that colonial Africa was a passive object is seen in its
attraction for white anthropologists, who came to study “primitive society.”
Colonialism determined that Africans were no more makers of history than
were beetles—objects to be looked at under a microscope and examined for
unusual features.
The negative impact of colonialism in political terms was quite dramatic.
Overnight, African political states lost their power, independence, and
meaning—irrespective of whether they were big empires or small polities.
Certain traditional rulers were kept in office, and the formal structure of
some kingdoms was partially retained, but the substance of political life was
quite different. Political power had passed into the hands of foreign
overlords. Of course, numerous African states in previous centuries had

passed through the cycle of growth and decline. But colonial rule was
different. So long as it lasted, not a single African state could flourish.
To be specific, it must be noted that colonialism crushed by force the
surviving feudal states of North Africa; that the French wiped out the large
Moslem states of the Western Sudan, as well as Dahomey and kingdoms in
Madagascar; that the British eliminated Egypt, the Mahdist Sudan, Asante,
Benin, the Yoruba kingdoms, Swaziland, Matabeleland, the Lozi, and the
East African lake kingdoms as great states. It should further be noted that a
multiplicity of smaller and growing states were removed from the face of
Africa by the Belgians, Portuguese, British, French, Germans, Spaniards,
and Italians. Finally, those that appeared to survive were nothing but puppet
creations. For instance, the Sultan of Morocco retained nominal existence
under colonial rule which started in 1912; and the same applied to the Bey
of Tunis; but Morocco and Tunisia were just as much under the power of
French colonial administrators as neighboring Algeria, where the feudal
rulers were removed altogether.
Sometimes, the African rulers who were chosen to serve as agents of
foreign colonial rule were quite obviously nothing but puppets. The French
and the Portuguese were in the habit of choosing their own African
“chiefs”; the British went to Iboland and invented “warrant chiefs”; and all
the colonial powers found it convenient to create “superior” or “paramount”
rulers. Very often, the local population hated and despised such colonial
stooges. There were traditional rulers such as the Sultan of Sokoto, the
Kabaka of Buganda, and the Asantehene of Asante, who retained a great
deal of prestige in the eyes of Africans, but they had no power to act outside
the narrow boundaries laid down by colonialism, lest they find themselves
in the Seychelles Islands as “guests of His Majesty’s Government.”
One can go so far as to say that colonial rule meant the effective
eradication of African political power throughout the continent, since
Liberia and Ethiopia could no longer function as independent states within
the context of continent-wide colonialism. Liberia in particular had to bow
before foreign political, economic, and military pressures in a way that no
genuinely independent state could have accepted; and although Ethiopia
held firm until 1936, most European capitalist nations were not inclined to
treat Ethiopia as a sovereign state, primarily because it was African, and
Africans were supposed to be colonial subjects.

The pattern of arrest of African political development has some features
which can only be appreciated after careful scrutiny and the taking away of
the blinkers which the colonizers put on the eyes of their subjects. An
interesting case in point is that of women’s role in society. Until today,
capitalist society has failed to resolve the inequality between man and
woman, which was entrenched in all modes of production prior to
socialism. The colonialists in Africa occasionally paid lip service to
women’s education and emancipation, but objectively there was
deterioration in the status of women owing to colonial rule.
A realistic assessment of the role of women in independent pre-colonial
Africa shows two contrasting but combined tendencies. In the first place,
women were exploited by men through polygamous arrangements designed
to capture the labor power of women. As always, exploitation was
accompanied by oppression; and there is evidence to the effect that women
were sometimes treated like beasts of burden, as for instance in Moslem
African societies. Nevertheless, there was a countertendency to insure the
dignity of women to greater or lesser degree in all African societies.
Mother-right was a prevalent feature of African societies, and particular
women held a variety of privileges based on the fact that they were the keys
to inheritance.
More important still, some women had real power in the political sense,
exercised either through religion or directly within the politicoconstitutional apparatus. In Mozambique, the widow of an Nguni king
became the priestess in charge of the shrine set up in the burial place of her
deceased husband, and the reigning king had to consult her on all important
matters. In a few instances, women were actually heads of state. Among the
Lovedu of Transvaal, the key figure was the Rain-Queen, combining
political and religious functions. The most frequently encountered role of
importance played by women was that of “Queen Mother” or “Queen
Sister.” In practice, that post was filled by a female of royal blood, who
might be mother, sister, or aunt of the reigning king in places such as Mali,
Asante, and Buganda. Her influence was considerable, and there were
occasions when the “Queen Mother” was the real power and the male king
a mere puppet.
What happened to African women under colonialism is that the social,
religious, constitutional, and political privileges and rights disappeared,

while the economic exploitation continued and was often intensified. It was
intensified because the division of labor according to sex was frequently
disrupted. Traditionally, African men did the heavy labor of felling trees,
clearing land, building houses, apart from conducting warfare and hunting.
When they were required to leave their farms to seek employment, women
remained behind burdened with every task necessary for the survival of
themselves, the children, and even the men as far as foodstuffs were
concerned. Moreover, since men entered the money sector more easily and
in greater numbers than women, women’s work became greatly inferior to
that of men within the new value system of colonialism: men’s work was
“modern” and women’s was “traditional” and “backward.” Therefore, the
deterioration in the status of African women was bound up with the
consequent loss of the right to set indigenous standards of what work had
merit and what did not.
One of the most important manifestations of historical arrest and
stagnation in colonial Africa is that which commonly goes under the title of
“tribalism.” That term, in its common journalistic setting, is understood to
mean that Africans have a basic loyalty to tribe rather than nation and that
each tribe still retains a fundamental hostility towards its neighboring tribes.
The examples favored by the capitalist press and bourgeois scholarship are
those of Congo and Nigeria. Their accounts suggest that Europeans tried to
make a nation out of the Congolese and Nigerian peoples, but they failed,
because the various tribes had their age-long hatreds; and, as soon as the
colonial power went, the natives returned to killing each other. To this
phenomenon, Europeans often attach the word “atavism,” to carry the
notion that Africans were returning to their primitive savagery. Even a
cursory survey of the African past shows that such assertions are the exact
opposite of the truth.
It is necessary to discuss briefly what comprises a tribe—a term that has
been avoided in this analysis, partly because it usually carries derogatory
connotations and partly because of its vagueness and the loose ways in
which it is employed in the literature on Africa. Following the principle of
family living, Africans were organized in groups which had common
ancestors. Theoretically, the tribe was the largest group of people claiming
descent from a common ancestor at some time in the remote past.
Generally, such a group could therefore be said to be of the same ethnic

stock, and their language would have a great deal in common. Beyond that,
members of a tribe were seldom all members of the same political unit and
very seldom indeed did they all share a common social purpose in terms of
activities such as trade and warfare. Instead, African states were sometimes
based entirely on part of the members of a given ethnic group or (more
usually) on an amalgamation of members of different ethnic communities.
All of the large states of nineteenth-century Africa were multi-ethnic,
and their expansion was continually making anything like “tribal” loyalty a
thing of the past, by substituting in its place national and class ties.
However, in all parts of the world, that substitution of national and class ties
for purely ethnic ones is a lengthy historical process; and, invariably there
remains for long periods certain regional pockets of individuals who have
their own narrow, regional loyalties, springing from ties of kinship,
language, and culture. In Asia, the feudal states of Vietnam and Burma both
achieved a considerable degree of national homogeneity over the centuries
before colonial rule. But there were pockets of “tribes” or “minorities” who
remained outside the effective sphere of the nation-state and the national
economy and culture.
In the first place, colonialism blocked the further evolution of national
solidarity, because it destroyed the particular Asian or African states which
were the principal agents for achieving the liquidation of fragmented
loyalties. In the second place, because ethnic and regional loyalties which
go under the name of “tribalism” could not be effectively resolved by the
colonial state, they tended to fester and grow in unhealthy forms. Indeed,
the colonial powers sometimes saw the value of stimulating the internal
tribal jealousies so as to keep the colonized from dealing with their
principal contradiction with the European overlords—i.e., the classic
technique of divide and rule. Certainly, the Belgians consciously fostered
that; and the racist whites in South Africa had by the 1950s worked out a
careful plan to “develop” the oppressed African population as Zulu, as
Xhosa, and as Sotho so that the march towards broader African national and
class solidarities could be stopped and turned back.
The civil war in Nigeria is generally regarded as having been a tribal
affair. To accept such a contention would mean extending the definition of
tribe to cover Shell Oil and Gulf Oil! But, quite apart from that, it must be
pointed out that nowhere in the history of pre-colonial independent Nigeria

can anyone point to the massacre of Ibos by Hausas or any incident which
suggests that people up to the nineteenth century were fighting each other
because of ethnic origin. Of course there were wars, but they had a rational
basis in trade rivalry, religious contentions, and the clashes of political
expansion. What came to be called tribalism at the beginning of the new
epoch of political independence in Nigeria was itself a product of the way
that people were brought together under colonialism so as to be exploited. It
was a product of administrative devices, of entrenched regional separations,
of differential access by particular ethnic groups into the colonial economy
and culture.
Both Uganda and Kenya in East Africa are also situations in which a
supposedly tribal factor continued to be pre-eminent. There is no doubt that
the existence of the Buganda kingdom within independent Uganda posed
certain problems. But, even after misapplying the definition of a tribe to the
Baganda, it still remains true that the Buganda problem was a colonial
problem. It was created by the presence of the missionaries and the British,
by the British (Mailo) land settlement in Uganda in 1900, and by the use
which Britian made of the Baganda ruling class as “sub-imperialists” within
the colony of Uganda.
In Kenya, the pattern of colonialism was different from that in Uganda,
because of the presence of white settlers. No African group was allowed
any power in the capacity of NCOs for the Colonial Office, since the white
settlers themselves filled the role. The white settlers took the best land and
then tried to create a new world with African labor. However, the African
community which lay outside the immediate white settler sector was
regulated along tribal lines. One of the numerous Royal Commissions of
British colonialism published a report on Kenya in 1934. A contemporary
Kenyan historian commented on the report as follows:
The Commission’s recommendations, which were accepted by the British government, implied
that Kenya was to be partitioned into two racial blocks, African and European. And in the
African sector, all economic, social and political developments were to be conducted on tribal
lines. Racialism thus became institutionalised.

Human activity within small groups connected only by kinship relations
(such as the tribe) is a very transient phase through which all continents
passed in the phase of communalism. When it ceased to be transient and
became institutionalized in Africa, that was because colonialism interrupted

African development. That is what is implied in Memmi’s reference to
Africans being removed from history. Revolutionary African thinkers such
as Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral expressed the same sentiments
somewhat differently when they spoke of colonialism having made Africans
into objects of history. Colonized Africans, like pre-colonial African chattel
slaves, were pushed around into positions which suited European interests
and which were damaging to the African continent and its peoples. In
continuation, some further socio-economic implications of that situation
will be examined.
Pre-colonial trade had started the trend of the disintegration of African
economies and their technological impoverishment. Colonial rule speeded
up that trend. The story is often told that in order to make a telephone call
from Accra in the British colony of the Gold Coast to Abidjan in the
adjacent French colony of Ivory Coast it was necessary to be connected first
with an operator in London and then with an operator in Paris who could
offer a line to Abidjan. That was one reflection of the fact that the Gold
Coast economy was integrated into the British economy, and the Ivory
Coast economy was integrated into the French economy, while the
neighboring African colonies had little or no effective economic relations.
The following conclusion reached by the United Nations Economic
Commission for Africa in 1959 goes directly to the point.
The most outstanding characteristic of the transportation systems of Africa is the comparative
isolation in which they have developed within the confines of individual countries and
territories. This is reflected in the lack of links between countries and territories within the
same geographical sub-region.

Some African trade did persist across colonial boundaries. For instance,
the centuries’ old trade in kola nuts and gold from the forests of West Africa
to North Africa never completely ceased. Besides, new forms of African
trade developed, notably with regard to supplying foodstuffs to towns or
cash-crop areas where there was insufficiency of food. That kind of trade
could be entirely within a colony or it could cross colonial boundaries.
However, the sum total of energy that went into expansion of inter-African
trade was extremely small in comparison with trade that was exportoriented. Since this inter-African trade did not bring benefits to Europeans,
it was not encouraged by them, and up to the latter part of the colonial
period only 10 per cent of Africa’s trade was internal.

It is also worth noting that Africa was denied the opportunity of
developing healthy trade links with parts of the world other than Europe and
North America. Some trade persisted across the Indian Ocean, but on the
whole it is fair to say that the roads in Africa led to the seaports and the sea
lanes led to Western Europe and North America. That kind of lop-sidedness
is today part of the pattern of underdevelopment and dependence.
The damaging impact of capitalism on African technology is even more
clearly measurable in the colonial period than in the earlier centuries. In
spite of the slave trade and of the import of European goods, most African
handicraft industries still had vitality at the start of the colonial period. They
had undergone no technological advance and they had not expanded, but
they had survived. The mass production of the more recent phase of
capitalism virtually obliterated African industries such as cloth, salt, soap,
iron, and even pottery-making.
In North Africa, handicraft industries had made the greatest advances
before colonialism, in spheres ranging from brasswork to woolens. As in
the towns of feudal Europe, craft workshops flourished in Algerian towns
like Oran, Constantine, Algiers, and Tlemcen. But French colonialism
destroyed the handicraft industries and threw thousands out of work. The
same thing had happened in Europe itself when new machines had thrown
artisans out of employment in places like Lancashire and Lyons, but in that
instance the new machines became the basis of the prevailing mode of
production, and formerly independent artisans returned to factories as
proletarians to master different skills and expand the productive capacity of
their society. In Africa it was simply destruction without redress. By the
time political independence was achieved, surviving craftsmanship had
been turned towards attracting tourists rather than meeting the real needs of
African people.
Besides, as was true of the European slave trade, the destruction of
technology under colonialism must be related to the barriers raised in the
path of African initiative. The vast majority of Africans drawn into the
colonial money economy were simply providing manual labor, which
stimulated perspiration rather than scientific initiative. Africans connected
to the trading sector were sometimes successful in a limited way. The
resourcefulness of West African market women is well known, but it was
put to petty purposes. The problem posed to capitalists and workers in

Europe while making insecticide from African pyrethrum was one requiring
that resourcefulness be expressed in a technical direction. But the problem
posed to an African market woman by the necessity to make a penny more
profit on every tin of imported sardines was resolved sometimes by a little
more vigor, sometimes by a touch of dishonesty, and sometimes by resort to
“juju.”
Colonialism induced the African ironworker to abandon the process of
extracting iron from the soil and to concentrate instead on working scraps of
metal imported from Europe. The only compensation for that interruption
would have been the provision of modern techniques in the extraction and
processing of iron. However, those techniques were debarred from Africa,
on the basis of the international division of labor under imperialism. As was
seen earlier, the non-industrialization of Africa was not left to chance. It
was deliberately enforced by stopping the transference to Africa of
machinery and skills which would have given competition to European
industry in that epoch.
In the period of African development preceding colonialism, some areas
moved faster than others and provided the nuclei for growth on a wide
regional basis. Northern Nigeria was one of those; and it virtually went to
sleep during the colonial period. The British cut it off from the rest of the
Moslem world and fossilized the social relations, so that the serfs could not
achieve any change at the expense of the ruling aristocracy.
On every continent and within nation-states, some features of growth
were always more outstanding than others, and thereby offered a lead to the
rest of the society. The towns played that role in late feudal European
society, while the electrical industry was an example of a similar impetus
for development in metropolitan capitalist society in the first decades of this
century. Colonialism provided Africa with no real growth points. For
instance, a colonial town in Africa was essentially a center of administration
rather than industry. Towns did attract large numbers of Africans, but only
to offer them a very unstable life based on unskilled and irregular
employment. European towns had slums, but the squalor of towns in
underdeveloped countries is a special phenomenon. It was a consequence of
the inability of those towns to play the role of expanding the productive
base. Fortunately, Africa was never as badly off in this respect as Asia and
Latin America.

Instead of speeding up growth, colonial activities such as mining and
cash-crop farming speeded up the decay of “traditional” African life. In
many parts of the continent, vital aspects of culture were adversely affected,
nothing better was substituted, and only a lifeless shell was left. The
capitalist forces behind colonialism were interested in little more than the
exploitation of labor. Even areas that were not directly involved in the
money economy exploited labor. In extracting that labor, they tampered
with the factor that was the very buttress of the society, for African
“traditional” life when deprived of its customary labor force and patterns of
work was no longer “traditional.”
During the colonial era, many thinly populated villages appeared in
Central and Southern Africa, comprising women, children, and old men.
They practiced subsistence agriculture which was not productive enough,
and colonialists contrasted them with cash-crop areas, which in comparison
were flourishing. However, it was precisely the impact of colonialism
which left so many villages deserted and starving, because the able-bodied
males had gone off to labor elsewhere. Any district deprived of its effective
laboring population could not be expected to develop.
There were several spots within different colonies which were
sufficiently far removed from towns and colonial administration that they
neither grew cash crops nor supplied labor. In southern Sudan, for instance,
there were populations who continued to live a life not dissimilar to that
which they had followed in previous centuries. Yet, even for such
traditional African societies the scope for development no longer existed.
They were isolated by the hold which the colonialists had on the rest of the
continent. They could not interact with other parts of Africa. They were
subject to increasing encroachment by the money economy and were more
and more to be regarded as historical relics. The classic example of this type
of obstructed historical development is to be found in the U.S.A., where the
indigenous population of Indians who survived slaughter by the whites were
placed in reservations and condemned to stagnation. Indian reservations in
North America are living museums to be visited by white tourists who
purchase curios.
In South Africa and Rhodesia, the policy of establishing “native
reserves” was openly followed. Inside a reserve, the major means of
production was the land. But the quantity and fertility of the land allocated

was entirely inadequate to support the numbers of Africans who were
driven in. The reserves were reservoirs of cheap labor, and dumping
grounds for those who could not be accommodated within the money
economy of the racist southern section of Africa. Further north, there were
no areas named as “reserves” except in colonial Kenya and to a very limited
extent in Tanganyika. But the money economy was constantly transforming
the traditional sector into one which was just as deprived as any reserve.
The money economy of colonialism was a growing sector. That is not to
be denied. However, it has already been indicated how limited that growth
was, viewed over the continent as a whole. The growth in the so-called
modern sector exercised adverse effects on the non-monetary sector. What
remains is to emphasize that the character of growth in Africa under
colonialism was such that it did not constitute development—i.e., it did not
enlarge the capacity of the society to deal with the natural environment, to
adjudicate relations between members of the society, and to protect the
population from external forces. Such a statement is already implicitly
borne out in the inability of capitalism to stimulate skilled labor in colonial
Africa. A system which must stand in the way of the accumulation of skills
does not develop anything or anybody. It is implicit, too, in the manner in
which Africa was cut into economic compartments having no relation one
to another, so that, even though the volume of commercial activity within
each compartmentalized colony may have increased, there was no
development comparable to that which linked together the various states of
the U.S.A.
In recent times, economists have been recognizing in colonial and postcolonial Africa a pattern that has been termed “growth without
development.” That phrase has now appeared as the title of books on
Liberia and Ivory Coast. It means that goods and services of a certain type
are on the increase. There may be more rubber and coffee exported, there
may be more cars imported with the proceeds, and there may be more
gasoline stations built to service the cars. But the profit goes abroad, and the
economy becomes more and more a dependency of the metropoles. In no
African colony was there economic integration, or any provision for making
the economy self-sustained and geared to its own local goals. Therefore,
there was growth of the so-called enclave import-export sector, but the only
things which developed were dependency and underdevelopment.

A further revelation of growth without development under colonialism
was the overdependence on one or two exports. The term “monoculture” is
used to describe those colonial economies which were centered around a
single crop. Liberia (in the agricultural sector) was a monoculture
dependent on rubber, Gold Coast on cocoa, Dahomey and southeast Nigeria
on palm produce, Sudan on cotton, Tanganyika on sisal, and Uganda on
cotton. In Senegal and Gambia, groundnuts accounted for 85 to 90 per cent
of money earnings. In effect, two African colonies were told to grow
nothing but peanuts!
Every farming people have a staple food, plus a variety of other
supplements. Historians, agronomists, and botanists have all contributed to
showing the great variety of such foods within the pre-colonial African
economy. There were numerous crops which were domesticated within the
African continent, there were several wild food species (notably fruits), and
Africans had shown no conservatism in adopting useful food plants of
Asian or American origin. Diversified agriculture was within the African
tradition. Monoculture was a colonialist invention.
Those who justify the colonial division of labor suggest that it was
“natural” and respected the relative capacities for specialization of the
metropoles and colonies. Europe, North America, and Japan were capable
of specializing in industry and Africa in agriculture. Therefore, it was to the
“comparative advantage” of one part of the world to manufacture machines
while another part engaged in simple hoe-culture of the soil. That kind of
arrogant partition of the world was not new. In the fifteenth century, the
feudal monarchies of Portugal and Spain wanted the whole world for
themselves, and they got the Pope to draw a line around the globe, making
the allocations. But Britain, Holland, and France suggested that they were
not at all convinced that Adam had left a will which gave the earth to
Portugal and Spain. In like manner, it can be questioned whether there is
any testament which stated that the river Gambia should inherit groundnut
growing while the river Clyde (of Scotland) should become a home of
shipbuilding.
There was nothing “natural” about monoculture. It was a consequence of
imperialist requirements and machinations, extending into areas that were
politically independent in name. Monoculture was a characteristic of
regions falling under imperialist domination. Certain countries in Latin

America such as Costa Rica and Guatemala were forced by United States
capitalist firms to concentrate so heavily on growing bananas that they were
contemptuously known as “banana republics.” In Africa, this concentration
on one or two cash crops for sale abroad had many harmful effects.
Sometimes, cash crops were grown to the exclusion of staple foods—thus
causing famines. For instance, in Gambia rice farming was popular before
the colonial era, but so much of the best land was transferred to groundnuts
that rice had to be imported on a large scale to try to counter the fact that
famine was becoming endemic. In Asante, concentration on cocoa raised
fears of famine in a region previously famous for yams and other foodstuff.
Yet the threat of famine was a small disadvantage compared to the
extreme vulnerability and insecurity of monoculture. When the crop was
affected by internal factors such as disease, that amounted to an
overwhelming disaster, as in the case of Gold Coast cocoa when it was hit
by swollen-shoot disease in the 1940s. Besides, at all times, the price
fluctuations (which were externally controlled) left the African producer
helpless in the face of capitalist maneuvers.
From a capitalist viewpoint, monocultures commended themselves most
because they made colonial economies entirely dependent on the
metropolitan buyers of their produce. At the end of the European slave
trade, only a minority of Africans were sufficiently committed to capitalist
exchange and sufficiently dependent upon European imports to wish to
continue the relationship with Europe at all costs. Colonialism increased the
dependence of Africa on Europe in terms of the numbers of persons brought
into the money economy and in terms of the number of aspects of socioeconomic life in Africa which derived their existence from the connection
with the metropole. The ridiculous situation arose by which European
trading firms, mining companies, shipping lines, banks, insurance houses,
and plantations all exploited Africa and at the same time caused Africans to
feel that without those capitalist services no money or European goods
would be forthcoming, and therefore Africa was in debt to its exploiters!
The factor of dependency made its impact felt in every aspect of the life
of the colonies, and it can be regarded as the crowning vice among the
negative social, political, and economic consequences of colonialism in
Africa, being primarily responsible for the perpetuation of the colonial
relationship into the epoch that is called neo-colonialism.

Finally, attention must be drawn to one of the most important
consequences of colonialism on African development, and that is the
stunting effect on Africans as a physical species. Colonialism created
conditions which led not just to periodic famine but to chronic
undernourishment, malnutrition, and deterioration in the physique of the
African people. If such a statement sounds wildly extravagant, it is only
because bourgeois propaganda has conditioned even Africans to believe that
malnutrition and starvation were the natural lot of Africans from time
immemorial. A black child with a transparent rib cage, huge head, bloated
stomach, protruding eyes, and twigs as arms and legs was the favorite
poster of the large British charitable operation known as Oxfam. The poster
represented a case of kwashiorkor—extreme malignant malnutrition. Oxfam
called upon the people of Europe to save starving African and Asian
children from kwashiorkor and such ills. Oxfam never bothered their
consciences by telling them that capitalism and colonialism created the
starvation, suffering, and misery of the child in the first place.
There is an excellent study of the phenomenon of hunger on a world
scale by a Brazilian scientist, Josue de Castro. It incorporates considerable
data on the food and health conditions among Africans in their independent
pre-colonial state or in societies untouched by capitalist pressures; and it
then makes comparisons with colonial conditions. The study convincingly
indicates that African diet was previously more varied, being based on a
more diversified agriculture than was possible under colonialism. In terms
of specific nutritional deficiencies, those Africans who suffered most under
colonialism were those who were brought most fully into the colonial
economy: namely, the urban workers.
For the sake of the doubters, several of De Castro’s observations are
listed below (occasionally supplemented by other data).
(1) Investigators who have studied the nutritional conditions of
“primitive” Africans in tropical Africa are unanimous in stating that
they show no clinical signs of dietary deficiency. One of the most
striking indications of the superiority of indigenous African diet is
the magnificent condition of the teeth. One researcher among six
ethnic groups in Kenya could not find a single case of tooth decay,
not a single deformation of dental arch. But when those same people

were transplanted and put on the “civilized” diet available under
colonialism, their teeth began to decay at once.
(2) In Egypt, the peasants, or fellahin, had always suffered from
periodic famines, but under colonialism this deteriorated to become
chronic hunger. It was the intervention of the British which upset the
balance of the peasants’ diet; and comparison with early accounts
shows that there was once a much greater variety of legumes and
fruits.
(3) The kwashiorkor (of the Oxfam posters) is itself noticeable
wherever the African’s contact with the European was prolonged. A
Committee on Nutrition in the Colonial Empire found a noticeable
absence of animal fat and protein in the Gambia. The absence of
proteins of good quality is one of the principal contributors to
kwashiorkor; and once again comparison with what Europeans saw
in the Gambia ever since the fifteenth century would indicate that a
change had come about after the coming of the whites. The Gambia
not only grew a variety of food in the early period, but it was stockraising country where meat was consumed in considerable quantity.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, cattle hides
were sold by the thousands to European buyers every year, and the
local population ate the meat. How then could they have suffered
from an absence of animal fat!
(4) Studies in Equatorial Africa have revealed frequent signs of dietary
deficiencies caused by the absence of fresh foods among Africans
entering the service of the colonizers. These include beriberi,
rickets, and scurvy. Rickets is a typical temperate climate disease, to
which lack of sun contributes. But after colonialism had so
destroyed the pattern of judicious food consumption in tropical
Africa, even the sun was not enough to keep children’s bones
straight. As for scurvy, that is so closely identified with the English
sailor that he was nicknamed “Limey,” from eating limes to prevent
scurvy while lacking access to fresh food on long sea voyages.
However, a scurvy epidemic broke out in the middle of Tanganyika
in the colonial epoch—among workers in the goldfields, whose
wages and conditions of work did not permit them to get fresh citrus
and other nourishment.

(5) In South Africa, white settlement and capitalism transformed
African diet from meat and cereal to dependence on mealy-meal
(maize). Pellagra, or “rough skin,” was unknown in South Africa
until about 1914. Subsequently, it became a scourge among
Africans, because it derives from absence of milk and meat.
(6) An official report on Basutoland (now Lesotho) had this to say:
“According to residents of long standing, the physique and health of
the Basuto today is not what it used to be. Malnutrition is seen in
every village, dispensary, school and recruiting office. Mild scurvy
and subscorbic conditions are not infrequent; pellagra is becoming
more and more frequent and lower resistance to disease increasingly
apparent. It is becoming generally accepted, too, that the occurrence
of leprosy is associated with faulty diet.”
To clinch the argument that colonialism had a deleterious effect on the
African as a physical (and hence mental) entity, it is useful to point to those
African peoples who until today have managed to maintain their own
pattern of existence in so far as food is concerned. The pastoral Masai,
Galla, Ankoli, Batutsi, and Somali are all in that category. Their physique is
generally so superb, their resistance and endurance so great, that they have
become the objects of scientific research to discover why they do so much
better than the “well-fed” capitalists who are collapsing from heart disease.
In the light of the prevailing balance-sheet concept of what colonial rule
was about, it still remains to take note of European innovations in Africa
such as modern medicine, clinical surgery, and immunization. It would be
absurd to deny that these were objectively positive features, however
limited they were quantitatively. However, they have to be weighed against
the numerous setbacks received by Africa in all spheres due to colonialism
as well as against the contributions Africa made to Europe. European
science met the needs of its own society, and particularly those of the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie did not suffer from hunger and starvation.
Bourgeois science therefore did not consider those things as needs which
had to be met and overcome—not even among their own workers and least
of all on behalf of Africans. This is just a specific application of the general
principle that the exploitation of Africa was being used to create a greater
gap between Africa and capitalist Europe. The exploitation and the
comparative disadvantage are the ingredients of underdevelopment.

Education for Underdevelopment
Education is crucial in any type of society for the preservation of the lives
of its members and the maintenance of the social structure. Under certain
circumstances, education also promotes social change. The greater portion
of that education is informal, being acquired by the young from the example
and behavior of elders in the society. Under normal circumstances,
education grows out of the environment; the learning process being directly
related to the pattern of work in the society. Among the Bemba of what was
then Northern Rhodesia, children by the age of six could name fifty to sixty
species of tree plants without hesitation, but they knew very little about
ornamental flowers. The explanation is simply that knowledge of the trees
was a necessity in an environment of “cut and burn” agriculture and in a
situation where numerous household needs were met by tree products.
Flowers, however, were irrelevant to survival.
Indeed, the most crucial aspect of pre-colonial African education was its
relevance to Africans, in sharp contrast with what was later introduced. The
following features of indigenous African education can be considered
outstanding: its close links with social life, both in a material and spiritual
sense; its collective nature; its many-sidedness; and its progressive
development in conformity with the successive stages of physical,
emotional, and mental development of the child. There was no separation of
education and productive activity or any division between manual and
intellectual education. Altogether, through mainly informal means, precolonial African education matched the realities of pre-colonial African
society and produced well-rounded personalities to fit into that society.
Some aspects of African education were formal: that is to say. there was
a specific program and a conscious division between teachers and pupils.
Formal education in pre-colonial Africa was also directly connected with
the purposes of society, just like informal education. The programs of
teaching were restricted to certain periods in the life of every individual,
notably the period of initiation or “coming of age.” Many African societies
had circumcision ceremonies for males or for both sexes, and for some time
before the ceremonies a teaching program was arranged. The length of time
involved could vary from a few weeks to several years. A famous example
of the latter was the initiation school held by the Poro brotherhood in Sierra

Leone. Formal education was also available at later stages in life, such as on
the occasion of passing from one age-grade to another or of joining a new
brotherhood. Specialized functions such as hunting, organizing religious
ritual, and the practice of medicine definitely involved formal education
within the family or clan. Such educational practices all dated back to
communal times in Africa, but they persisted in the more developed African
feudal and pre-feudal societies, and they were to be found on the eve of
colonialism.
As the mode of production moved towards feudalism in Africa, new
features also emerged within the educational pattern. There was, for
instance, more formal specialization, because the proportion of formal to
informal education increases with technological advance. Apart from
hunting and religion, the division of labor made it necessary to create guilds
for passing down the techniques of ironworking, leather-making, cloth
manufacture, pottery molding, professional trading, and so on. The
emphasis on military force also led to formal education in that sphere, as in
the case of Dahomey, Rwanda, and Zulu cited earlier. A state structure with
a well-defined ruling class always encouraged the use of history as a means
of glorifying the class in power. So in the Yoruba state of Ketu in the
nineteenth century there existed a school of history, where a master drilled
into the memories of his pupils a long list of the kings of Ketu and their
achievements. Of course, reliance on memory alone placed severe limits on
education of that type, and that is why education was much more advanced
in those African countries where the use of writing had come into being.
Along the Nile, in North Africa, in Ethiopia, in the Western Sudan, and
along the East African coast, a minority of Africans became literate,
producing a situation comparable to that of Asia and Europe before the
latter part of the nineteenth century. As in other parts of the world, literacy
in Africa was connected with religion, so that in Islamic countries it was a
Koranic education and in Christian Ethiopia the education was designed to
train priests and monks. Moslem education was particularly extensive at the
primary level, and it was also available at the secondary and university
levels. In Egypt there was the Al-Azhar University, in Morocco the
University of Fez, and in Mali the University of Timbuktu—all testimony to
the standard of education achieved in Africa before the colonial intrusion.

The colonizers did not introduce education into Africa: they introduced a
new set of formal educational institutions which partly supplemented and
partly replaced those which were there before. The colonial system also
stimulated values and practices which amounted to new informal education.
The main purpose of the colonial school system was to train Africans to
help man the local administration at the lowest ranks and to staff the private
capitalist firms owned by Europeans. In effect, that meant selecting a few
Africans to participate in the domination and exploitation of the continent
as a whole. It was not an educational system that grew out of the African
environment or one that was designed to promote the most rational use of
material and social resources. It was not an educational system designed to
give young people confidence and pride as members of African societies,
but one which sought to instill a sense of deference towards all that was
European and capitalist. Education in Europe was dominated by the
capitalist class. The same class bias was automatically transferred to Africa;
and to make matters worse the racism and cultural boastfulness harbored by
capitalism were also included in the package of colonial education. Colonial
schooling was education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of
mental confusion, and the development of underdevelopment.
A European-type school system hardly operated during the first forty
years or so of colonialism. In that period, missionaries gave schooling for
their own Christianizing purposes, and it was in the 1920s that the
colonizing powers carried out a series of investigations into educational
possibilities in Africa. Thereafter, colonial education became systematic and
measurable, though it approached its maximum dimensions only in the
post-Second World War era.
Colonial education was a series of limitations inside other limitations.
The first practical limitation was politicio-financial, which means that
political policy, rather than the actual availability of money, guided
financial expenditure. The metropolitan governments and their African
administrations claimed that there was not enough money for education. As
late as 1958, the British Colonial Office said of Northern Rhodesia:
Until more money becomes available for the building of schools, no rapid progress can be
expected and the practical prospects of providing full primary education for all children
therefore remains fairly remote.

It is amazing that Northern Rhodesia with its immense copper wealth did
not have enough money to educate Africans! One cannot be certain whether
the colonialists were trying to deceive others or whether they had succeeded
in fooling themselves; but probably most of the confused white settlers in
the Rhodesias fell into the latter category, for they consistently argued that
Africans did not pay as much tax per head as Europeans and therefore
Africans could not expect to get education and other services out of taxes
paid by white settlers. This is the fundamental failure to perceive that a
country’s wealth comes not from taxes but from production. African soil
and African labor in Northern Rhodesia produced vast wealth, but African
children under colonialism had little access to that wealth for their
schooling.
As noted earlier, most of Africa’s surplus was exported; and, out of the
small portion which remained behind as government revenue, the
percentage channeled into education was tiny. In every colony, the budget
for education was incredibly small, compared to amounts being spent in
capitalist Europe itself. In 1935, of the total revenue collected from taxing
Africans in French West Africa, only 4.03 per cent was utilized on
education. In the British colony of Nigeria, it was only 3.4 per cent. In
Kenya, as late as 1946 only 2.26 per cent of the revenue was spent on
African education. By 1960, those percentages had gone up two, three, or
four times; but, being so small to begin with, they still remained
insignificant.
Since such small sums were spent, it followed that another basic
limitation was quantitative, in the sense that very few Africans made it into
schools. In the whole of French Equatorial Africa (Chad, Central African
Republic, Gabon, and Congo Brazzaville), there were only 22,000 pupils
enrolled in 1938—and that represented quite a jump over figures for the
preceding five years. In 1938, the French provided education for 77,000
pupils in French West Africa, with a population of at least 15 million. A
very illuminating fact that should be noted is that in 1945 there were more
than 80,000 students attending independent Islamic schools in French West
Africa—a number not far short of those attending French-built schools by
that date. In other words, it was only in the final stages of colonialism that
the ruling European power began to provide Africans in the former Islamic

states of West Africa with educational institutions having an enrollment
greater than that of the previous formal education.
Occasionally, in West and North Africa, the French government gave
some financial support to the Koranic primary schools and to the medresas,
or Islamic secondary schools. On the whole, however, the pre-colonial
African school system was simply ignored and it tended to decline. In
Algeria, the Arab Islamic institutions of learning suffered severely during
the French wars of conquest, while others were deliberately suppressed
when the French gained the upper hand. Throughout French North Africa,
the old established Islamic universities suffered because colonialism
deprived them of the economic base which previously gave them support.
As with so many other aspects of African life, what the colonialists put in
must be weighed against what they halted and what they destroyed in both
real and potential terms.
British colonies tended to do on average somewhat better than French
ones with regard to educational activities, largely because of missionary
initiatives rather than the British government itself. Ghana, Nigeria, and
Uganda were fairly well off as far as colonial education went. Of course,
that was in a purely relative sense, and the absolute numbers involved were
never large. Sierra Leone was better off educationally than French West
Africa because the seven out of every hundred children going to school in
Sierra Leone before the last war compared favorably with five out of every
hundred in French West Africa. As far as the British are concerned, their
slightly superior record in some colonies is also offset by the very poor
educational facilities offered to Africans in Kenya, Tanganyika, the Central
African territories, and South Africa itself, which was for a long time a
British responsibility.
One limitation of the educational system of colonial Africa which is
obscured by statistical averages is the great variation in opportunity
between different regions in the same colony. In many colonies, only
Africans living in or near the principal towns had educational opportunities.
For instance, in Madagascar the capital town of Tananarive had the most
substantial school facilities; in Gambia literacy was high for Bathurst town
but low outside; and in Uganda the urbanized region of Buganda practically
monopolized education. Generally speaking, the unevenness in educational
levels reflected the unevenness of economic exploitation and the different

rates at which different parts of a colony entered the money economy. Thus,
in Gold Coast, the Northern Territories were neglected educationally,
because they did not offer the colonialists any products for export. In Sudan
it was the huge southern region which was in a similar position. Inside
Tanganyika, a map showing the major cotton and coffee areas virtually
coincides with a map showing areas in which colonial education was
available. It means that those whom the colonialists could not readily
exploit were not offered even the crumbs of education.
The closer one scrutinizes the educational contribution of colonialism
even in purely quantitative terms the more it shrinks into insignificance. It
must be noted, for instance, that there was an extremely high rate of
“dropouts.” A large percentage of those enrolled never finished school. In
big capitalist countries like the U.S.A., there are many dropouts at the
college and university level; in colonial Africa, the dropouts were occurring
at the primary level, at a rate as high as 50 per cent. For every student who
completed primary school, one fell by the wayside. The dropouts were from
primary schools because there was hardly any other type of school—this
absence of secondary, technical, and university education being yet another
of the stumbling blocks.
Africans were being educated inside colonial schools to become junior
clerks and messengers. Too much learning would have been both
superfluous and dangerous for clerks and messengers. Therefore, secondary
education was rare and other forms of higher education were virtually
nonexistent throughout most of the colonial epoch. That which was
provided went mainly to non-Africans. As late as 1959, Uganda spent about
11 pounds per African pupil, 38 pounds per Indian, and 186 pounds on each
European child—the difference being due largely to the availability of
secondary education for the children of the capitalists and the middlemen.
In Kenya, the discrimination was worse and the number of European
children involved was high. In 1960, more than 11,000 European children
were attending school in Kenya, and 3,000 of those were receiving
secondary education. The settler colony of Algeria displayed similar
characteristics. Only 20 per cent of the secondary pupils in 1954 were
denoted as “Moslems,” which meant in effect “Algerian” as distinct from
European. Other minorities also did better than the indigenous population.
For instance, the Jews in North Africa and especially in Tunisia played the

middlemen roles, and their children were all educated right up to secondary
standards.
African countries without a big white settler population also had racist
educational structures with regard to opportunities at all levels and
especially opportunities for higher education. In Senegal in 1946, the high
school had 723 pupils, of whom 174 were Africans. Later on, a university
was set up in Dakar (to serve the whole of French West Africa); and yet in
the 1950s, on the eve of independence, more than half of the university
students were French.
The Portuguese have not been discussed so far, because there is scarcely
any education to be discussed in their colonial territories. For many years,
the statistical data were never made available, and when published towards
the end of the colonial period the figures were often inflated. What is
undeniable is that the African child growing up in Portuguese colonial
territories stood one chance out of a hundred of getting instruction beyond
grade 2 or grade 3. The secondary schools that came into existence were for
Europeans and Indians, the latter drawn mainly from Goa. The colonial
powers with small territories in Africa were Spain and Italy. Like Portugal,
they were also backward from a European capitalist viewpoint, and they
provided their colonial subjects with a tiny amount of primary education
and no secondary education.
Belgium was in a somewhat special category as far as colonial education
was concerned. Although small, Belgium was a relatively developed and
industrialized country, and it ruled one of the richest areas of Africa:
namely, the Congo. By colonial standards, the people of Congo and
Rwanda-Urundi had fair access to primary education, but schooling beyond
that was almost impossible to obtain. This was the consequence of a
deliberate policy pursued by the Belgian government and the Catholic
church. The African “native” was to be gradually civilized. To give him
secondary education was like asking a young child to chew meat when he
should be eating porridge. Furthermore, the Belgians were so interested in
the welfare of the African masses that they argued that no highly educated
African would be able to serve his own people! Consequently, it was only in
1948 that a Belgian commission recommended the establishment of
secondary schools for Africans in the colonies. It is not at all surprising that,

at the time of regaining political independence, the Congo had only 16
graduates out of a population of more than 13 million.
Educators often refer to “the educational pyramid,” comprising primary
education as the base and going upwards through secondary, teachertraining, higher technical, and university facilities—the last named being so
small that it could be represented as the point at the top of the pyramid.
Throughout Africa, the primary base was narrow and yet the pyramid
sloped shallowly because so few of the primary students could continue
beyond that level. Only in certain British colonies was the pyramid really
completed by significant higher and university education. West Africa had
Achimota and Yaba Colleges, apart from Fourah Bay which was at
university level. Ibadan and the University of Ghana also came into
existence some years before the end of the colonial regime. In the Sudan,
there was Gordon College, which evolved into the University of Khartoum,
and in East Africa there was Makerere University.
The following data for the year 1958 could be used to illustrate the
educational pyramid in Southern Rhodesia, where African education was
not well favored. Total kindergarten enrollment was 227,000. In the primary
schools 77,000 entered grade 1, and 10,000 made it to grade 6. Secondary
education began with 3,000 pupils, of whom only 13 made it to grade 12. In
that year, there were no African graduates from the recently established
University College in Salisbury, but by 1960 there were three.
The final word on the quantity of education provided by Europe to
Africa can be said in the form of the statistics at the beginning of the rule of
the new African states. Some scholars have worked out a statistical index
on education whereby educational facilities are evaluated in numbers from
0 to 100, moving from the poorest to the most advanced. On that index,
most African countries are below 10. The developed exploiter countries and
the socialist states are usually above 80. A UNESCO publication on
education in black independent Africa said:
Of this population (of around 170 million), a little more than 25 million are of school age and
of these nearly 13 million have no opportunity of going to school—and of the “privileged” 12
million less than half complete their primary education. Only three out of every 100 children
see the inside of a secondary school while not even two of every thousand have a chance of
receiving some sort of higher education in Africa itself. The overall estimated illiteracy rate of
80 to 85 per cent is nearly twice that of the average world figure.

The imperialist whites use the above evidence to snigger at Africans for
being “illiterate natives” and they would argue that illiteracy is part of “the
vicious circle of poverty.” Yet, the same people boast proudly that they have
educated Africa. It is difficult to see how they can have it both ways. If
independent Africa is still without the benefits of modern education (as it
is), then seventy-five years of colonial exploitation undoubtedly have
something to do with the state of affairs; and the absurdity is so much the
greater when one contemplates how much Africa produced in that period
and how much of that went to develop all aspects of European capitalist
society, including their educational institutions. Cecil Rhodes could afford
to leave a legacy of lavish scholarships to white students for study at
Oxford University, having made a fortune from exploiting Africa and
Africans.
Those Africans who had access to education were faced with certain
qualitative problems. The quality was poor by prevailing European
standards. The books, the methods of teaching, and the discipline were all
brought to Africa in the nineteenth century; and, on the whole, colonial
schools remained sublimely indifferent to the twentieth century. New ideas
that were incorporated in the capitalist metropoles never reached the
colonies. In particular, the fantastic changes in science did not reach African
classrooms, for there were few schools where science subjects were taught.
Similarly, the evolution of higher technical education did not have any
counterpart in colonial Africa.
There were numerous absurdities in the transplantation of a version of
European education into Africa. When the Bemba children mentioned
above went to school, they had no program of instruction relating to the
plant life with which they would otherwise have familiarized themselves.
Instead, they were taught about flowers—and about European roses at that.
Dr. Kofi Busia some years ago made the following admission:
At the end of my first year at secondary school (Mfantsipim, Cape Coast, Ghana), I went home
to Wenchi for the Christmas vacation. I had not been home for four years, and on that visit, I
became painfully aware of my isolation. I understood our community far less than the boys of
my own age who had never been to school. Over the years, as I went through college and
university, I felt increasingly that the education I received taught me more and more about
Europe and less and less about my own society.

Eventually, Busia knew so little about African society that he proposed that
independent Africans should “dialogue” with the fascist/racist white
minority that maintains apartheid in South Africa.
Some of the contradictions between the content of colonial education
and the reality of Africa were really incongruous. On a hot afternoon in
some tropical African school, a class of black shining faces would listen to
their geography lesson on the seasons of the year—spring, summer, autumn,
and winter. They would learn about the Alps and the river Rhine but
nothing about the Atlas Mountains of North Africa or the river Zambezi. If
those students were in a British colony, they would dutifully write that “we
defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588”—at a time when Hawkins was
stealing Africans and being knighted by Queen Elizabeth I for so doing. If
they were in a French colony, they would learn that “the Gauls, our
ancestors, had blue eyes,” and they would be convinced that “Napoleon was
our greatest general”—the same Napoleon who reinstituted slavery in the
Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, and was only prevented from doing the
same in Haiti because his forces were defeated by an even greater strategist
and tactician, the African Toussaint L’Ouverture.
To some extent Europeans thoughtlessly applied their own curricula
without reference to African conditions; but very often they deliberately did
so with intent to confuse and mystify. As late as 1949, a Principal Education
Officer in Tanganyika carefully outlined that the Africans of that colony
should be bombarded in primary school with propaganda about the British
royal family. “The theme of the [British] king as father should be stressed
throughout the syllabus and mentioned in every lesson,” he said. He further
urged that African children should be shown numerous pictures of the
English princesses and their ponies at Sandringham and Windsor Castle.
Whatever little was discussed about the African past in colonial schools
was about European activities in Africa. That trend is now sufficiently
reversed to allow the present generation of African pupils to smile at the
thought that Europeans “discovered” Mount Kenya or the river Niger. But
in the colonial period, the paradox was that whoever had an opportunity to
be educationally misguided could count himself lucky, because that
misguidance was a means of personal advance within the structure created
by European capitalists in and for Africa.

The French, Portuguese, and Belgians made it clear that education at any
level was designed “to civilize the African native,” and of course only a
civilized native could hope to gain worthwhile employment and recognition
from the colonialists. According to the French, an African, after receiving
French education, stood a chance of becoming an assimilée—one who
could be assimilated or incorporated into the superior French culture. The
Portuguese used the word assimilado, which means exactly the same; and
Portuguese colonial law distinguished sharply between a native and an
assimilado. The latter was sometimes called a civilisado because of being
able to read and write Portuguese. That sort of African was rewarded with
certain privileges. One great irony was that in Portugal up to 1960, nearly
half the population was illiterate, and therefore if they had been put to the
same test, they would have been judged uncivilized! Meanwhile, the
Belgians were parading around with the same system. They called their
“educated Bantu” in Congo the évolués (“those who have evolved” from
savagery to civilization, thanks to the Belgians).
Somehow, the British avoided hard and fast legal distinctions between
the educated and uneducated African, but they encouraged cultural
imitation all the same. Governor Cameron of Tanganyika in the 1920s was
known as a “progressive” governor. But when he was attacked for trying to
preserve the African personality in the educational system, he denied the
charge and declared that his intention was that the African should cease to
think as an African and instead should become “a fair-minded Englishman.”
Students who came out of Livingstonia or Blantyre Mission in Malawi were
known as black Scotsmen, because of the effort of Scottish missionaries. In
Sierra Leone, the white cultural influence went back to the eighteenth
century, and Sierra Leone Creoles stood out even from the rest of
miseducated black people. The Creoles were not satisfied with an English
Christian name or even with one European surname: they had to choose two
European surnames and connect them with a hyphen. Of course, in practical
terms, the education with all its warped values meant that the educated
handful went as far as colonialism would allow Africans to go in the civil
service or in the employ of private capitalist firms.
During the colonial epoch and afterwards, criticism was justly leveled at
the colonial educational system for failing to produce more secondary
school pupils and more university graduates. And yet, it can be said that

among those who had the most education were to be found the most
alienated Africans on the continent. Those were the ones who evolved and
were assimilated. At each further stage of education, they were battered by
and succumbed to the values of the white capitalist system; and, after being
given salaries, they could then afford to sustain a style of life imported from
outside. Access to knives and forks, three-piece suits, and pianos then
further transformed their mentality. There is a famous West Indian
calypsonian who in satirizing his colonial school days, remarked that had he
been a bright student he would have learned more and turned out to be a
fool. Unfortunately, the colonial school system educated far too many fools
and clowns, fascinated by the ideas and way of life of the European
capitalist class. Some reached a point of total estrangement from African
conditions and the African way of life, and like Blaise Diagne of Senegal
they chirped happily that they were and would always be “European.”
There is no getting away from the conclusion reached by the African
educationalist Abdou Moumini that “colonial education corrupted the
thinking and sensibilities of the African and filled him with abnormal
complexes.” It followed that those who were Europeanized were to that
extent de-Africanized, as a consequence of the colonial education and the
general atmosphere of colonial life. Many examples are cited in present-day
Africa of the insulting treatment of aspects of African culture in the colonial
period, based on cultural imperialism and white racism. What is seldom
commented upon is the fact that many Africans were the victims of fascism
at the hands of the Portuguese and Spanish, at the hands of the Italians and
the Vichy French regime for a brief period in the late 1930s and the early
1940s, and at the hands of the British and Boers in South Africa throughout
this century. The fascist colonial powers were retarded capitalist states,
where the government police machinery united with the Catholic church
and the capitalists to suppress Portuguese and Spanish workers and peasants
and to keep them ignorant. Understandably, the fascist colonialists wanted
to do the same to African working people, and in addition they vented their
racism on Africans, just as Hitler had done on the Jews.
Like most colonial administrations, that of the Italians in Libya
disregarded the culture of the Africans. However, after the fascist Mussolini
came to power, the disregard gave way to active hostility, especially in
relation to the Arabic language and the Moslem religion. The Portuguese

and Spanish had always shown contempt for African language and religion.
Schools of kindergarten and primary level for Africans in Portuguese
colonies were nothing but agencies for the spread of the Portuguese
language. Most schools were controlled by the Catholic church, as a
reflection of the unity of church and state in fascist Portugal. In the littleknown Spanish colony of Guinea (Rio Muni), the small amount of
education given to Africans was based on eliminating the use of local
languages by the pupils and on instilling in their hearts “the holy fear of
God.” Schools in colonial Africa were usually blessed with the names of
saints or bestowed with the names of rulers, explorers, and governors from
the colonizing power. In Spanish Guinea, that practice was followed,
resulting in the fact that Rio Muni children had to pass by the José Antonio
school—the equivalent of saying the Adolf Hitler school if the region were
German, for the school was named in honor of José Antonio, the founder of
the Spanish fascist party.
Another aspect of the colonial educational and cultural patterns which
needs investigation is the manner in which European racism and contempt
was expressed not only by hostility to African culture but by paternalism
and by praise of negative and static social features. There were many
colonialists who wished to preserve in perpetuity everything that was
African, if it appeared quaint or intriguing to them. Such persons merely
succeeded in cutting African life off from the potentially beneficial aspects
of the international world. An excellent example is the kind of work done in
Gabon by Albert Schweitzer, who was in charge of a dirty unhygienic
hospital with dogs, cats, goats, and chickens running around, under the
guise of fitting into the African culture and environment.
As late as 1959, a friend and colleague of Albert Schweitzer defended
his unsterile hospital in the following terms:
Now to the domestic animals at the Hospital. People have been shocked by the informality
with which animals and people mix, and although it is perhaps not always defensible on
hygienic grounds, the mixture adds considerably to the charm of the place.

The writer was a dental surgeon from New York, who would obviously
have had a fit if a goat or chicken had wandered into his New York surgery.
He knew full well that at Schweitzer’s hospital “the goats, dogs and cats
visit hospital wards teeming with microbial life of the most horrifying

varieties,” but he defended their habitation with Africans because that was
part of the culture and charm that had to be preserved!
In the educational sphere, the Belgians carried out a language policy
which might appeal to contemporary nationalists, for they insisted that
primary education should be in one of the five main African languages of
the territory. However, in practice, they used that apparently progressive
decision to seal off one Congolese ethnic group from another and to cut the
educated off from a wider world of knowledge, because the missionaries
translated into the local languages only that which they thought desirable.
The policy of mock respect for African culture reached its highest
expression in South Africa in the notorious Bantu Education Act of 1953,
which sought to promote the differences between Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa,
Venda, and so on—differences which were part of an early stage of
development and which would have been transcended if there were no
European intervention or if under white rule specific steps were not taken to
maintain the anachronistic “tribal” entities.
Not all colonial educators and administrators were consciously taking up
the position that the African should be educated the better to be enslaved.
On the contrary, most of them thought that they were doing Africans a great
favor; and there were a few who were enlightened enough to realize that
there was scope for devising a school program which was less divorced
from African reality. In 1928, even the French education minister was
shocked to learn that Africans were taught that the Gauls, their ancestors,
had blue eyes. From the 1920s, both Britain and France produced colonial
educators and education commissions which urged greater relevance of
teaching programs in Africa. They also put forward suggestions such as the
use of local languages in primary schools, more education for girls, and an
end to the white-collar orientation of schooling. However, the seemingly
progressive nature of those recommendations could not change the fact that
colonial education was an instrument to serve the European capitalist class
in its exploitation of Africa. Whatever colonial educators thought or did
could not change that basic fact.
To recommend that African girls should go to school is more than just an
educational policy. It has tremendous social implications, and it
presupposes that the society will usefully employ the educated woman.
Metropolitan capitalist society itself had failed to liberate women, to offer

them equal educational opportunities, or to provide them with responsible
jobs at equal rates of pay with men. That being the case, it was wishful
thinking to imagine that the colonial educational system would take any
serious interest in African women, especially since the colonialists would
have had to transform the consciousness on that matter which was
characteristic of feudal and pre-feudal societies. Nowhere did the cash-crop
economy or the export of basic ores make provision for educated women.
As in the capitalist metropoles it was assumed that the civil service was for
men. Therefore, the extremely limited employment sector in the colonies
had nothing to offer educated women, and modern education remained a
luxury with which few African women came into contact.
Another progressive suggestion made by some colonial educationists
was for more agricultural and technical schooling. But, genuine technical
education was ruled out, because the fundamental purpose of the colonial
economy did not permit the development of industry and skills within
Africa. Only in rare cases, such as in the Congo, was there an objective
necessity for technically trained Africans. In the later stages of colonial rule
in Congo, mineral exploitation had developed to such a point that there was
practical need for extensive rudimentary technical skills among African
workers. A few Katangese and other Congolese also received technical
training of a secondary equivalent. Significantly enough, in such cases, the
private companies took the initiative, since their profits were at stake, and
the technical schools were extensions of their production processes.
However, for the most part, whatever skilled jobs needed to be done within
the restricted field of mining and industry in Africa were met by the
importation of Europeans.
Agriculture was not carried on as a scientific industry, as in Scandinavia
or New Zealand, where whites were farming on an intensive capitalist basis.
As noted earlier, the production of cash crops in Africa was stimulated by
the minimum expenditure on the part of Europeans and with no infusion of
new technology. Therefore, when educational advisers suggested
agricultural education relevant to African needs, this meant no addition to
African knowledge. In many colonial schools, agriculture became an
apology for a subject. It was part of the drudgery of the institution. The
teachers received no agricultural education, and, therefore, they could not
teach anything scientific. Children acquired nothing but distaste for the

heavy labor of shamba work, and in fact it was used as a form of
punishment.
Early educational commissions also accorded high priority to religious
and moral flavoring of instruction—something that was disappearing in
Europe itself. The role of the Christian church in the educational process
obviously needs special attention. The Christian missionaries were as much
part of the colonizing forces as were the explorers, traders, and soldiers.
There may be room for arguing whether in a given colony the missionaries
brought the other colonialist forces or vice versa, but there is no doubting
the fact that missionaries were agents of colonialism in the practical sense,
whether or not they saw themselves in that light. The imperialist adventurer
Sir Henry Johnston disliked missionaries, but he conceded in praise of them
that “each mission station is an exercise in colonisation.”
In Europe, the church had long held a monopoly over schooling from
feudal times right into the capitalist era. By the late nineteenth century, that
situation was changing in Europe; but, as far as the European colonizers
were concerned, the church was free to handle the colonial educational
system in Africa. The strengths and weaknesses of that schooling were very
much to be attributed to the church.
Both inside and outside church and school, the personnel of the church
were instrumental in setting values during the colonial epoch. They taught
an ethic of human relations that in itself could appeal to the finer instincts of
Africans, just as it had previously stirred other Europeans. Of course, there
was a huge gap between European conduct and the Christian principles with
which they were associated; and, on the part of the Africans, it was also true
that motives for accepting Christianity often had nothing to do with the
content of the religion. Indeed, the church as a source of education was
probably more attractive to many converts than the church as a dispenser of
religion.
Whatever the church taught in any capacity may be considered as a
contribution to formal and informal education in colonial Africa, and its
teachings must be placed within a social context. The church’s role was
primarily to preserve the social relations of colonialism, as an extension of
the role it played in preserving the social relations of capitalism in Europe.
Therefore, the Christian church stressed humility, docility, and acceptance.
Ever since the days of slavery in the West Indies, the church had been

brought in on condition that it should not excite the African slaves with
doctrines of equality before God. In those days, they taught slaves to sing
that all things were bright and beautiful, and that the slavemaster in his
castle was to be accepted as God’s work just like the slave living in a
miserable hovel and working twenty hours per day under the whip.
Similarly, in colonial Africa, churches could be relied upon to preach
turning the other cheek in the face of exploitation, and they drove home the
message that everything would be right in the next world. Only the Dutch
Reformed church of South Africa was openly racist, but all others were
racist in so far as their European personnel were no different from other
whites who had imbibed racism and cultural imperialism as a consequence
of the previous centuries of contact between Europeans and the rest of the
world.
In serving colonialism, the church often took up the role of arbiter of
what was culturally correct. African ancestral beliefs were equated with the
devil (who was black anyway), and it took a very long time before some
European churchmen accepted prevailing African beliefs as constituting
religion rather than mere witchcraft and magic. However, in its hostility
towards African cultural and religious manifestations, the Christian church
did perform certain progressive tasks. Practices such as killing twins and
trial by ordeal were frowned upon by the European missionaries, and those
were reflections of superstitious ideas rooted in an early stage of African
development, when something like the birth of twins could not be
scientifically explained, and, therefore, gave rise to religious fear.
It is to be noted that in West Africa long before the colonial Scramble,
many outcasts in society and persons who suffered from religious and social
prejudices were the first converts of the Christian church. What was
supported by one section of the population was opposed by another, and in
the present century the cultural imperialism of the church excited great
opposition. Prevailing African customs such as polygamy were attacked
without reference to their socio-economic function. On the question of
monogamy the Christian missionaries were introducing not a religious
principle but rather a facet of European capitalist society. For their
propaganda to have been successful, European activity had to work a
transformation in the extended family patterns of African societies. That
was very slow in occurring, and, in the meanwhile, many Africans accepted

the religious aspects while rejecting the cultural appendages and the
European missionaries themselves.
Much has been written about the trend in colonial Africa known as the
Independent church movement. It was a trend in which thousands of
African Christians participated by breaking away from European churches
(especially Protestant churches), and setting up their own places of worship
under Christian African leadership. The motives were varied. Some
Independent churches were highly nationalistic, like that established by
John Chilembwe, who led an armed nationalist uprising in Nyasaland
(Malawi) in 1917. Others developed as a response of those Africans
aspiring to be priests or pastors to the discrimination practiced against them
by white missionaries. One constant factor was disgust with the way that
Europeans forced Africans to identify as Europeans. Revolting against that
concept, one Zulu Independent church put the question to the local
population: “Are you a Jew or a Zulu? Were you there when they crucified
their Lord?” Nevertheless, many Africans came to accept the dehumanizing
principle of alienation from self. African identification with Europeans (be
they Gentile or Jew) was a pillar of the informal education of the colonial
epoch.
In the final analysis, perhaps the most important principle of colonial
education was that of capitalist individualism. Like many aspects of the
superstructure of beliefs in a society, it had both its negative and positive
sides, viewed historically. The European bourgeoisie were progressive
when they defended the individual from the excessive control of the father
in the family and against the collective regulations of the church and feudal
society. However, the capitalist system then went on to champion and
protect the rights of the individual property owners against the rights of the
mass of exploited workers and peasants. When capitalism had its impact on
Africa in the colonial period, the idea of individualism was already in its
reactionary phase. It was no longer serving to liberate the majority but
rather to enslave the majority for the benefit of a few.
When individualism was applied to land, it meant that the notions of
private ownership and the transfer of land through sale became prevalent in
some parts of the continent. Much more widespread was the new
understanding that individual labor should benefit the person concerned and
not some wider collective, such as the clan or ethnic group. Thus, the

practice of collective labor and egalitarian social distribution gave way to
accumulative tendencies. Superficially, it appeared that individualism
brought progress. Some individuals owned large coffee, cocoa, or cotton
shambas, and others rose to some prominence in the colonial administration
through education. As individuals, they had improved their lot, and they
became models of achievement within the society. Any model of
achievement is an educational model, which directs the thoughts and
actions of young and old in the society. The model of personal achievement
under colonialism was really a model for the falling apart and the
underdevelopment of African society taken as a whole.
It is a common myth within capitalist thought that the individual through
drive and hard work can become a capitalist. In the U.S.A., it is usual to
refer to an individual like John D. Rockefeller, Sr., as someone who rose
“from rags to riches.” To complete the moral of the Rockefeller success
story, it would be necessary to fill in the details on all the millions of people
who had to be exploited in order for one man to become a multimillionaire.
The acquisition of wealth is not due to hard work alone, or the Africans
working as slaves in America and the West Indies would have been the
wealthiest group in the world. The individualism of the capitalist must be
seen against the hard and unrewarded work of the masses.
The idea of individualism was more destructive in colonial Africa than it
was in metropolitan capitalist society. In the latter, it could be said that the
rise of the bourgeois class indirectly benefited the working classes, through
promoting technology and raising the standard of living. But, in Africa,
colonialism did not bring those benefits—it merely intensified the rate of
exploitation of African labor and continued to export the surplus. In Europe,
individualism led to entrepreneurship and adventurism of the type which
spearheaded Europe’s conquest of the rest of the world. In Africa, both the
formal school system and the informal value system of colonialism
destroyed social solidarity and promoted the worst form of alienated
individualism without social responsibility. That delayed the political
process through which the society tried to regain its independence. Up to
this point, it has consistently been held that development is rooted in the
material environment, in the techniques of production, and in the social
relations deriving from people’s work. There are what are known as
“conspiracy theories of history” by which the happenings of whole epochs

are presented as being the secret scheming of one group or another. Such an
approach is not to be recommended in the study of Africa’s relations with
Europe. However, with regard to colonial educational policy, one comes
closest to finding the elements of conscious planning by a group of
Europeans to control the destiny of millions of Africans over a considerable
period of time extending into the future. The planning of colonial education
for the subjugation of Africa was most fully displayed by the French,
because French politicians and administrators had the habit of openly
expressing their thoughts on Africa. Therefore, the words of the French
colonialists themselves will be cited here to illustrate how the colonial
educational system did not leave vital political matters to chance, but was
consciously carrying out policies hostile to the regaining of freedom by
African peoples.
Ever since the period of the imperialist Scramble for Africa, French
leaders realized that it was imperative to start some schools in the parts of
Africa claimed by France, so that French language and culture might be
accepted by some Africans, who would then identify with France rather
than Britain or Portugal or some other European rival. This was particularly
true in disputed frontier zones. Eugène Etienne, a French minister at the
start of the colonial era, stated that the extension of the French language
was necessary as “a measure of national defense.” As early as 1884, there
was set up the Alliance Française as an instrument of educational and
cultural imperialism, recognized and supported by the French government.
The reports of the Alliance Française show clearly that they thought of
themselves as an arm of French imperialism, fighting so that France could
entrench itself. For example, the Alliance Française wrote of French
schools in Upper Guinea in the late nineteenth century:
They have to combat the redoubtable influence of the English schools of Sierra Leone in this
region. The struggle between the two languages becomes more intense as one moves to the
south, invaded by English natives and by their Methodist pastors.

As seen earlier in the case of Portugal and Spain, the spread of the
language of the European colonizing power was considered of major
importance. Belgium on the other hand encouraged local languages as a
means of division and retardation. Only in Tanganyika, under German rule,
was there a positive reaction to the potentialities of Swahili as a teaching

language, so that there was a further impetus to that language, which had
already spread by trade, political relations, and personal contacts.
Apart from language, the pillar of cultural imperialism in most colonies
was religion. The church never played as important a role in French
colonies as it did in other parts of Africa colonized by predominantly
Catholic countries, and the Protestant churches in British colonies also had
a much more vital role than the church in French Africa. The explanation is
that the French bourgeois revolution of the eighteenth century was more
thoroughly anti-clerical than any other bourgeois revolution, and the
Catholic church was completely separated from government in France by
1905, after many years of poor relations. Nevertheless, when the French
saw that mission schools were helping England to entrench itself in Africa,
the French government asked the aid of their own Catholic church to secure
national interests.
From the viewpoint of the colonizers, once the frontiers of a colony were
firmly decided, the major problem remained that of securing African
compliance in carrying out policies favorable to the métropoles. There was
always the possible use of force for that purpose, but naked force was best
kept in reserve, rather than utilized for everyday affairs. Only education
could lay the basis for a smooth-functioning colonial administration. In the
first place, there was the elementary language problem of Europeans
communicating with Africans. Most of the time, Europeans used translators
to pass on orders, but it was known that African translators seized the
opportunity to promote themselves and to modify or even sabotage orders.
There was a saying in French colonial Africa that “translation is equal to
treason,” and the only way to avoid that was to teach the mass of the people
French.
Then there was the practical aspect of educating Africans to be better
workers, just as in Europe the workers received education so that they
would be more efficient and produce extra surplus for the capitalists. In
colonial Africa, the European bourgeoisie realized that some education
would maximize the value of labor. Albert Sarraut, a French Colonial
Minister, stressed in 1914 what he termed “the economic utility of
educating the [African] masses.” Several years earlier the French had made
a specific statement to the same effect on Madagascar. An ordinance of
1899 indicated that the purpose of schooling was

... to make the young Malagasy faithful and obedient subjects of France and to offer an
education which would be industrial, agricultural and commercial, so as to ensure that the
settlers and various public services of the colony can meet their personnel requirements.

In practice, it was not necessary to educate the masses because only a
minority of the African population entered the colonial economy in such a
way that their performance could be enhanced by education. Indeed, the
French concentrated on selecting a small minority, who would be
thoroughly subjected to French cultural imperialism, and who would aid
France in administering its vast African colonial possessions. William
Ponty, an early Governor-General of French West Africa, spoke in terms of
forming “an elite of young people destined to aid our own efforts.” In 1919,
Henry Simon (then Colonial Minister) outlined a program for secondary
education in Africa with a view to “making the best indigenous elements
into complete Frenchmen.”
The best expressions of the political implications of French colonial
educational policy came in the 1930s; and, by that time, some action was
also matching the words. Brevié, the Governor-General of French West
Africa in 1930, urged the extension of the higher levels of primary
schooling for Africans “to help us in our work of colonization.” Brevie was
encouraged by the fact that by then there had appeared “a native elite, of
whose zeal for a thorough and exclusive French culture signs are already
visible.” So with the support of the Inspector-General of education, that
governor went on to outline plans for African students to attend secondary
school, so as to become colonial cadres. Any socio-political system needs
its cadres. That was the role played by the youngest age-grades in Shaka’s
armies and it was the role played by the Komsomol or Young Communists
in the Soviet Union. Being a cadre involved not just training for a practical
job but also political orientation to serve as a leading element in the system.
The French and other colonialists understood this very well. This is how
Brevié expressed it:
It is in no wise merely a matter of turning out batches of apprentices, clerks and officials
according to the fluctuating needs of the moment. The role of these native cadres is much
wider.

Only in North Africa, with its heavy white settler population, did the
French find it unnecessary to encourage a local elite to run affairs under the
direction of the metropolis and the governor; although even in Algeria there

emerged a number of subjects called the Beni Oui Oui—literally the “Yes,
Yes men,” who always assented to carrying out French instructions in
opposition to the interests of most of their brothers. Another far-sighted
aspect of French political policy in the education sphere is the manner in
which they forced the sons of chiefs to acquire education. It was a
deliberate attempt to capture the loyalty of those persons who had
previously held political power in independent Africa, and it was an attempt
at continuity with the pre-colonial phase. As the French themselves put it,
by educating the sons of traditional rulers, “a bond is thus established
between the native cadres formed by us and those that the native
community recognizes.”
In 1935, a team of British educationalists visited French Africa, and they
admitted with a mixture of jealousy and admiration that France had
succeeded in creating an elite of Africans in the image of Frenchmen—an
elite that was helping to perpetuate French colonial rule. To greater or lesser
extent, all colonial powers produced similar cadres to manage and buttress
their colonial empires in Africa and elsewhere.
After the Second World War, it became obvious that colonial rule could
not forever be maintained in the same form in Africa; Asia already having
broken loose and Africa being restless. When the awareness that the end
was in sight became generalized, the metropolitan powers turned to their
colonial cadres and handed to them the reins of policy in politically
independent Africa. It should be emphasized that the choice that Africa
should be free was not made by the colonial powers but by the people of
Africa. Nevertheless, the changeover from colonialism to what is known as
neo-colonialism did have the element of conspiracy in it. In 1960, the then
British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, made the oft-quoted statement
that “a wind of change was blowing across Africa.” That was the bourgeois
way of expressing what Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai was soon to assert:
namely, that “Africa was ripe for Revolution.” In order to delay or hijack
the African revolution, the colonizing powers turned to a group which they
had already created for a different purpose—the elite of colonially educated
Africans, from among whom were selected wherever possible those who
were most suitable for elevation to political leadership, and the
administration and military apparatus were left in the hands of similar
trustworthy cadres.

There were a few farsighted Europeans who all along saw that the
colonial educational system would serve them if and when political
independence was regained in Africa. For instance, Pierre Foncin, a founder
of the Alliance Française, stated at the beginning of this century that “it is
necessary to attach the colonies to the metropole by a very solid
psychological bond, against the day when their progressive emancipation
ends in a form of federation as is probable—that they be and they remain
French in language, thought and spirit.” Yet, it was the British who firsh
appreciated that they should bow to the inevitable and grant African
independence. While the French introduced a few African representatives
into their own Parliament in France so as to try and keep African territories
tied to France, the British began to prepare to hand over to certain selected
Africans.
In the metropolitan capitalist countries, there were (and still are) elite
schools which provided the bulk of the political and other leadership. The
English public schools of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Winchester are well
known as training grounds of the British ruling class, and by many
authorities they are considered more important that the universities to which
the students of such secondary schools invariably go. In France at the
secondary level, it was, and still is, usual to find that students emerging
from places like the Lycée Louis le Grand and the École Normal Superieure
Rue d’Ulm are the future cabinet ministers and top executives of that
country. In the U.S.A., in spite of the myth that everyone can reach the top,
a high proportion of the ruling class went to exclusive schools like the
private boys’ schools of Groton, St. Paul’s, St. Mark’s, and Philips Exeter.
Under African conditions, anyone who went to school in the colonial
period virtually entered the elite, because the numbers enjoying that
privilege even at the primary level were so small. In addition, within each
colony there tended to be at least one secondary school or higher institute
which played the role of furnishing the politico-administrative personnel of
Africa in the era of political independence. The names of cabinet ministers
and permanent secretaries of individual African countries can be found on
the school rolls of Gordon College (Sudan), Alliance High School (Kenya),
King’s College Budo (Uganda), Tabora Secondary School (Tanzania),
Livingstonia (Malawi), William Ponty (Senegal), Sierra Leone Grammar
School, Mfantsipim (Ghana), the Lycée Gallieni (Madagascar), and a few

others. Besides, there were Makerere, Fourah Bay, and Achimota, as long
standing university or near-university institutions.
In retrospect, it is now very clear that one of the most significant aspects
of the colonial educational system was that provided by the armed forces
and police. Colonial armies such as the King’s African Rifles, the French
Free Army, and the Congolese Force Publique produced sergeants who later
became the majors and generals of independent Africa, and in several
instances the heads of states. Policemen also achieved similar rapid
promotion, although their political position has been rather weaker than the
military proper. Like their civilian counterparts, the future police and
military elite were at one time trained to be simply low-level assistants to
the colonial overlords; but once independence was in sight they were
judged by the colonizers to have the requisite qualities of colonial cadres—
fit to be part of the ruling class of neo-colonial Africa. In a few instances,
the colonial powers towards the latter part of the colonial period rushed to
train a few Africans at the metropolitan higher institutions of scientific
violence, notably Sandhurst Military Academy and Hendon Police School
in Britain and St. Cyr Military Academy in France. Those few who were
selected for such training became the cream of the military elite,
corresponding to those African civilians who went to university either in
Africa or abroad.
Most of what emerged from the colonial educational system was not
unique. Educational systems are designed to function as props to a given
society, and the educated in the young age groups automatically carry over
their values when their turn comes to make decisions in the society. In
Africa, the colonialists were training low-level administrators, teachers,
NCOs, railroad booking clerks, for the preservation of colonial relations;
and it is not surprising that such individuals would carry over colonial
values into the period after independence was regained. The colonialists
meanwhile took action wherever possible to insure that persons most
favorable to their position continued to man African administrations and
assumed new political and state police powers. Such a presentation of
events would be termed one-sided by many Europeans and Africans, too. In
a sense, that is true, and the one-sidedness is deliberate. It is a presentation
of what the colonial educational system achieved in terms of what it set
itself to achieve. The other side of the matter is not the good with which

colonial educators can be credited, but rather the good that emerged in spite
of the efforts and intentions of the colonizers and because of the struggles of
African people.
Development by Contradiction
The only positive development in colonialism was when it ended. It is the
purpose of this section to sketch briefly how that development came about,
with particular reference to the role of the educated sector.
In contrast to a subjective interpretation of what was good about
colonialism on the one hand and what was bad on the other hand, there is
the approach which follows closely the aims and achievements of the
colonizers and the counter aims and achievements of the African people.
Sometimes, Africans were restricted merely to manipulating colonial
institutions as best they could; but, in addition, certain fundamental
contradictions arose within colonial society, and they could only be
resolved by Africans’ regaining their sovereignty as a people.
Analysis based on the perception of contradictions is characteristic of
Marxism. Thus, Soviet historians approach the disintegration of colonialism
within the following framework:
Colonialism fettered the development of the enslaved peoples. To facilitate colonial
exploitation, the imperialists deliberately hampered economic and cultural progress in the
colonies, preserved and restored obsolete forms of social relations, and fomented discord
between nationalities and tribes. However, the drive for super profits dictated development of
the extractive industry, plantations and capitalist farms, and the building of ports, railways and
roads in the colonies. In consequence, social changes took place in the colonies, irrespective of
the will of the colonialists. New social forces emerged—an industrial and agricultural
proletariat, a national bourgeoisie and intelligentsia.

Among the different segments of the African population within the socalled modern sector produced by capitalist activity, the cash-crop peasantry
was the largest. African cash-crop farmers had profound grievances against
the colonialist, centering on the low price for African products and
sometimes on land alienation. Agricultural wage earners and urban workers
had definitely lost their land, and were resisting wage slavery. They did so
by organizing as the European proletariat had been doing since its
formation; and, by virtue of compact organization, African workers made
their presence felt much more strongly than their limited numbers might

otherwise have warranted. In the end, the numerical preponderance of
peasants and of those who had one foot in the “subsistence” sector was
registered in the mass parties. But, while peasants depended upon sporadic
revolts and boycotts to express their grievances, wage earners were engaged
in a more continuous process of bargaining, petitioning, striking.
The smallest of the social groupings was that of the educated elite or
intelligentsia. As noted earlier, the number of Africans receiving education
in the colonial period was so small that anyone who went to school was
privileged and belonged to an elite. There were only a few lawyers and
doctors, concentrated mainly in North and West Africa. Generally speaking,
the intelligentsia were students, clerks, and teachers. The group of the
educated also overlapped with that of organized labor leadership, with the
traditional African ruling stratum, with ex-servicemen and police, and with
traders and independent craftsmen.
Altogether, the educated played a role in African independence struggles
far out of proportion to their numbers, because they took it upon themselves
and were called upon to articulate the interests of all Africans. They were
also required to provide the political organization that would combine all
the contradictions of colonialism and focus on the main contradiction,
which was that between the colony and the metropole.
The contradiction between the educated and the colonialists was not the
most profound. Ultimately, it was possible for the colonizers to withdraw
and to satisfy the aspirations of most of the African intelligentsia, without in
any way relieving the peasant and worker majority, who were the most
exploited and the most oppressed. However, while the differences lasted
between the colonizers and the African educated, they were decisive.
It has already been argued at some length that colonial education reached
a limited number of Africans, that it was restricted to elementary levels, and
that its pedagogical and ideological content was such as to serve the
interests of Europe rather than Africa. Even so, the numbers enrolled would
have been much smaller, were it not for efforts on the part of Africans
themselves. The secondary school opportunities would have been narrower,
and the ideological content would have been more negative, if the activities
of the African masses were not in constant contradiction to the aims of
European colonizers. Above all, education for continued enslavement never
quite fulfilled its purpose; and, instead, different levels of contradiction

arose—leading to independence, and in some cases heralding a new
socialist epoch by the end of colonialism.
If there is anything glorious about the history of African colonial
education, it lies not in the crumbs which were dropped by European
exploiters, but in the tremendous vigor displayed by Africans in mastering
the principles of the system that had mastered them. In most colonies, there
was an initial period of indifference towards school education, but once it
was understood that schooling represented one of the few avenues of
advance within colonial society, it became a question of Africans clamoring
and pushing the colonialists much further than they intended to go.
When Africans took great pains to enter the cash-crop economy, that
generally suited European capitalist ends. But, African initiatives in the
sphere of education were producing results antagonistic to at least some of
the purposes of colonial exploitation.
Education in French colonial Africa has been referred to several times
from the viewpoint of French policy. French administrators also commented
on African efforts to go beyond the limited number of cadres that the
French had in mind, and whom the French were prepared to subsidize out of
African taxes. In 1930, the Governor-General of French West Africa
reported:
Each new school that is opened is immediately filled to overflowing. Everywhere, natives in
their multitude are clamoring to be educated. Here, a Chief wants a school of his own, so he
builds it; or again, some village or other may offer to bear the cost of fitting out a school. At
certain places on the Ivory Coast, the villagers pay the teachers out of their own pockets. Our
pupils often come from distances of 20 to 50 kilometers.

African enthusiasm in seeking more and higher education was not
confined to any part of the continent; although in some parts it was
manifested at an earlier date and more intensely. For instance, the Gold
Coast and Sierra Leone had a tradition of European education going back to
the seventeenth century. Therefore, it was not at all surprising that in 1824
the Times Educational Supplement commented that there was a universal
demand for better and more education on the Gold Coast. It was the Gold
Coast which produced J. E. K. Aggrey, that distinguished African educator
and nationalist; and he fired the imagination of Africans well beyond the
Gold Coast, in so far as formal education was concerned.

There was a definite correlation between the degree of colonial
exploitation and the amount of social services provided. That applied to
education in particular, so that urban, mining, and cash-crop areas had a
virtual monopoly of schools. That was partly due to the capitalist policy of
enhancing the labor power of workers, but it was also the consequence of
efforts made by Africans inside the cash economy. They made demands on
the colonial administration, and they also went through a great deal of
sacrifice and self-denial to get more school places. Thus, one finds that Ibos
who were earning income from palm oil deployed a significant proportion
of their small earnings into building schools, usually in association with the
church. Incidentally, it should be noted here that what were called church or
mission schools were often entirely financed by Africans. They paid church
dues, they made donations for the church harvest, they sometimes
contributed to a special education fund, and they often paid school fees.
That pattern was widespread in Iboland, and it was not uncommon in other
parts of colonial Africa. The existence of schools should be traced through
the church back to palm oil and the people’s labor. Indeed, it must not be
forgotten that missionaries, administrators, white settlers—the whole lot—
were living off African labor and resources.
In the cash-crop areas of British Africa, it also became the practice to try
and use the agricultural produce boards and similar institutions to finance
education. After all, the agricultural boards were supposed to have been
established in the interest of peasant producers. They concentrated on
exporting surplus in the form of dollar reserves for Britain; but, towards the
end of colonial rule in the self-government epoch, it was too much of a
scandal to avoid giving Africans some small part of the benefits of their
labor, and so the produce boards were prevailed upon to make some funds
available for education. For example, in 1953 the Uganda Legislative
Council voted to spend about 11 million pounds from the Cotton Price
Stabilization Fund on welfare schemes, with agricultural education
receiving a big slice.
Among those Africans who did somewhat better than their brothers
financially, some philanthropy was expressed in terms of helping African
children go to school. The historical records of African education under
colonial rule reveal certain tidbits, such as the fact that the first secondary
school was established in Somalia in 1949 not by the colonial

administration or on the initiative of the church but by a Somali trader. Of
course, it is still expected in Africa that anyone who is already educated and
is earning a salary should in turn help to educate at least one more member
of his extended family. That is precisely because his extended family and
his village community often made sacrifices to allow him to be educated in
the first place. That was as true in Mauritania as it was in the reserves of
South Africa, and no African would have any difficulty in supplying his
own examples to that effect.
There are now available a number of biographies of Africans who gained
prominence in the colonial period, usually in the movement for the
regaining of African independence. It invariably emerges from reading such
biographies how much of a struggle it was to be educated in colonial times.
The same conclusion can be reached through reading the modern African
novel, because the novelist (while writing what is called fiction) is
concerned with capturing reality. Apologists for colonialism talk as though
education were a big meal handed down to Africans on a platter. It was not.
The educational crumbs dropped were so small that individuals scrambled
for them; they saved incredibly from small earnings and sent their children
to school; and African children walked miles to and from school, and
thought nothing of it.
But, apart from physical and financial sacrifices, Africans in some
colonies had to wage a political battle to have the principle of African
education accepted. The colonies in question were those with white settler
populations.
In Kenya, white settlers made it clear that as far as they were concerned,
an uneducated African was better than an educated one, and that one with
the rudiments of education was at least preferable to one with more than a
few years of schooling. The Beecher report on education in Kenya
(produced in 1949) was heavily influenced by white settlers, and it stated
frankly:
Illiterates with the right attitude to manual employment are preferable to products of the
schools who are not readily disposed to enter manual employment.

Because the white settlers were close to the center of political power in
the colonial system, they were able to apply their principles to education in
Kenya; and very little education went to Africans. In effect, that meant an

exception to the rule that more social facilities followed heightened
exploitation; but, the Kikuyu (who were the most exploited in Kenya) did
not accept the situation passively. One line of approach was to bombard the
colonial government with demands, even though Africans were in a far less
favorable position to do so than white settlers. The demands were partially
successful. The Beecher report grudgingly conceded a few schools to
Africans at the primary and secondary level, by suggesting places for 40 per
cent of African children at junior primary, 10 per cent at senior primary or
intermediate, and 1 per cent at secondary level. But, by 1960, the number of
primary schools was double what the whites considered should have been
achieved by that date, and the number of secondary institutions was three
times what the white settlers had succeeded in recommending.
Besides, where the government was reluctant to build schools or to
subsidize missionaries to do so with African taxes, there was an even
greater incentive to handle educational matters directly. In Kenya, there was
a spate of what came to be called Independent schools, comparable to the
Independent churches, and, in fact, springing from Independent churches
for the most part. The Independent schools in Kenya formed two major
associations: namely, the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association and the
Kikuyu Karinga Education Association, formed in 1929.
In practice, just as the European Christian missions used schools to
attract converts, so the Independent churches attached great importance to
schooling. John Chilembwe made striking efforts in that respect, aided by
brothers recruited from among African descendants in the U.S.A.
The Moslem religion was also a stimulator of educational advance
during the colonial period. In North Africa, Moslems often found it
necessary to channel their efforts into schools other than those built by the
colonialists. The Society of Reformist Ulema in Algeria started a large
primary school program in 1936. By 1955, its primary schools catered to
45,000 Algerian children; and, from 1947, the Society also ran a large
secondary school. Similarly, in Tunisia, popular initiative financed modern
Koranic primary schools, providing places for 35,000 children—equivalent
to one out of four going to primary school.
In Morocco, the Moslem schools that were established by popular effort
possessed the unusual feature of aiming at women’s emancipation by
having a high percentage of girls—far higher than government schools. The

French colonial administration deliberately kept mention of such schools
out of their official reports, and they tried to keep their existence hidden
from visitors.
Another striking example of African self-help with regard to education
was the project sponsored by the Graduates’ General Congress in Sudan.
Founded by students, merchants, and civil servants in 1937, the Graduates’
Congress embarked on a program of school building. Within four years, a
hundred schools were opened with the help of voluntary contributions. A
smaller but equally exciting experiment was that of the Bugabo United
Schoolboys Association, founded by two schoolboys in Mwanza,
Tanganyika, in 1947. It was aimed at adult education and in a short time
attracted over a thousand people of all ages. The organizers set up a camp
where they housed and fed those who turned up, while imparting to them
the rudiments of literacy.
When Kikuyu peasants or Ga market women or Kabyle shepherds saved
to build schools and educate their children, that was not entirely in
accordance with the objective of the colonialists, who wanted cash-crop
payments and other money in circulation to return as profits to the
metropoles through the purchase of consumer goods. In such small ways,
therefore, Africans were establishing an order of priorities different from
that of the colonialists. This intensified in the later years of colonialism,
when education came to be seen as having political significance in the era
of self-government.
Having received higher education in colonial Africa in the post-Second
World War era, a French African could reach as far as the French Assembly
in Paris, while an English colonial subject might reach the local Legislative
Assembly as an elected or nominated member. Those openings were
absolutely devoid of power, and they were opportunities that only the
merest handful could achieve; but they were stimulants, nonetheless, giving
Africans the notion that considerable vertical mobility would accompany
education. In French Equatorial Africa in the late 1940s, it was the African
Governor, Felix Eboue, who spearheaded the demands for more education
for Africans, and he was successful to some extent in forcing the hand of
his masters in the French Overseas Ministry. In that same period and
subsequently, it was also African effort in the Legislative Councils that kept
the question of education to the fore. The British had handpicked a few

educated Africans and some “chiefs” to advise the Governor in the
Legislative Assembly. Generally, they were decorative like the plumes of
the Governor’s helmet; but, on the issue of education, no African could
possibly avoid at least voicing some dissatisfaction with the poor state of
affairs.
Ultimately, from a purely quantitative viewpoint, Africans pushed the
colonialists and the British in particular to grant more education than was
allowed for within the colonial system, and that was an important and
explosive contradiction that helped Africans regain political independence.
It has been observed that British colonies tended to create an educated
sector that was larger than that which the colonial economy could absorb.
The explanation for that lies in the efforts of African people, although it is
true that the French were more rigorous in rejecting African demands, and
keeping to their schedule of training only a cadre elite to serve French
interests. As it was, in a colony such as Gold Coast, African efforts to
achieve education undoubtedly went beyond the numbers required to
service the economy. Gold Coast was one of the first colonies to experience
the “crisis of primary school leavers” or the “secondary school bottleneck.”
That is to say, among those leaving primary schools, many were frustrated
because they could not find places in secondary schools, nor could they find
jobs in keeping with the values they had obtained in school and in keeping
with the internal stratification of African society caused by capitalism.
It is sometimes said that Kwame Nkrumah organized the illiterates in the
Convention People’s Party. That was a charge contemptuously made by
other conservative educated Ghanaians, who thought that Nkrumah was
going too far too fast. In reality, the shock troops in Nkrumah’s youth
brigade were not illiterate. They had been to primary school, and could read
the manifestos and the literature of the African nationalist revolution. But,
they were extremely disaffected because (among other things) they were
relative latecomers on the educational scene in Gold Coast, and there was
no room in the restricted African establishment of the cocoa monoculture.
Colonial powers aimed at giving a certain amount of education to keep
colonialism functioning; Africans by various means required more
education at the lower level than their “allowance,” and this was one of the
factors which brought about deep crisis, and forced the British to consider
the idea of withdrawing their colonial apparatus from Gold Coast. The

timetable for independence was also speeded up against the will of the
British. As is well known, the regaining of independence in Ghana was not
just a local affair, but one that was highly significant for Africa as a whole;
and it therefore highlights the importance of at least one of the educational
contradictions in bringing about political independence in Africa.
The Gold Coast colony was not the only one in which there appeared the
problem of bottleneck, because of the shallowness of the educational
pyramid. In the area that was once the colonial Federation of the Rhodesias
and Nyasaland, educators in the 1950s were commenting on the primary
school leavers crisis. They claimed to have had a surplus of sixth-grade
leavers. A set of colonies that was educating an insignificant number of
African school children had a surplus of primary school leavers! All it
meant was that colonialism was so bankrupt and had so underdeveloped
Africa that it had no use for more than a handful of educated. Furthermore,
the colonialists had assured every struggling African that, if he endured
missionary education, he would be given a white-collar job and a passport
to civilization; but, on leaving school, African youth found the promises to
be false. One sixth-grade leaver in the Central African Federation wrote the
following letter to a magazine in 1960:
After I had passed Standard 6, I spent the whole year at home because I could not get a place
anywhere to further my education. At the beginning of this year I went to look for work but
failed to get it again, from January until now. If I had known that my education would have
been useless, I would have told my father not to waste his money in educating me from the
beginning to Standard 6.

It would be fairly reasonable to assume that the writer of that letter opposed
the white settler Central African Federation. Whether or not he consciously
rationalized the matter, he was bound to act as a product of the deep
contradictory forces within colonialism—forces which had produced the
discrepancy between promise and fulfillment, in terms of his own personal
life.
Occasionally, the frustrated school leavers might vent their sentiments in
a non-constructive manner. For instance, the problem of the bottleneck in
education and employment arose in Ivory Coast by 1958; and, in a context
of confused African leadership, the youth of Ivory Coast decided that their
enemy was the group of Dahomeans and Senegalese who were employed in
Ivory Coast. However, on the whole, the situation of frustration aided

Africans to perceive more clearly that the enemy was the colonial power,
and it therefore added another platform to the movement for regaining
African independence.
Africans clashed with the colonial structure not just over the quantity of
education, but also over the quality. One of the key topics for disagreement
was colonial agricultural education, to which reference has already been
made. The colonialists seemed surprised that a continent of agriculturalists
should reject education which was supposedly intended to raise the level of
their agriculture. Indeed, some Africans came out against agricultural
education and other reforms to “Africanize” curricula, for what appears to
have been selfish elitist reasons. For instance, one Guinean demanded that
there should not be a single change from the teaching program as used in
metropolitan France. “We want a metropolitan curriculum and the same
diplomas as in France, for we are as French as the French of the
metropoles,” he declared. In Tanganyika, during German days, there were
also protests against changing the formal and literary educational program,
as it had been introduced body and soul from Europe. A prominent
Tanganyikan African, Martin Kayamba, asserted that “those who think that
literary education is unsuitable for Africans ignore the fact of its importance
and indispensability to any sort of education, and therefore deny the
Africans the very means of progress.”
Statements such as the above have to be seen in their correct context to
understand that the African response was perfectly justified. The colonialist
value system assigned a low value to manual activity and a high value to
white-collar bureaucratic work. Even more important, the colonial economy
offered discriminating compensation to those who had literary or “bookish”
education, as opposed to those with manual skills. It was extremely difficult
to convince any sane African that education which would send him to dig
the soil to get 100 shillings at the end of the year was more appropriate than
education which qualified him to work in the civil service for 100 shillings
per month. When Europeans preached that brand of wisdom, Africans were
suspicious.
Africans were very suspicious about taxes in the colonial era. They never
wanted to be counted, nor did they want their chickens to be counted,
because bitter experience had shown them that that was how the colonialists
assessed taxes. Similarly, on educational issues, there was no confidence in

colonial plans to provide different versions of education, because such plans
almost invariably meant an even more inferior education, and one that was
more blatantly intended to be education for underdevelopment. The most
extreme example of a colonial education system designed to train Africans
to fill their “natural” role of manual laborers was that in South Africa, after
the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953. However, the earlier
attempts by the British and French to set up what they called “farm schools”
or “initiation schools” were along the same lines as have since been
ruthlessly pursued by the racists in South Africa. The non-literary education
had the superficial appearance of being more relevant to Africa, but it was
really inferior education for a people who were supposedly inferior in order
to make them accept their own exploitation and oppression. As Abdou
Moumini put it, “colonial education was ‘cut-rate’ education.” It offered by
European standards low-quality substitutes to suit what was described as the
limited intellectual capacity of Africans. In French colonial Africa, the
diplomas were seldom equal to those in the metropoles at comparable
levels, and in British East Africa one official asked educators to bear in
mind the gap between themselves and the “grubby savages” whom Britain
was attempting to civilize. It is in this context that agricultural education in
particular revealed itself as an exercise in deception.
Consequently, the struggle against agricultural or rural schools was one
of the most bitter struggles waged by African nationalists, and helped
heighten consciousness at all levels of African society, with regard to the
fundamentally exploitative and racist nature of colonialism. In French West
Africa, for example, the farm schools were determinedly opposed after the
last war, and the French colonial government had to abolish them. In
Tanganyika and Nyasa, the confrontation between the colonialists and the
African people was much bigger, because opposition to agricultural
education was associated with opposition to colonial agricultural
innovations (such as terracing) which were forced upon people without
consultation and without taking into account the varying conditions in
different localities.
In East Africa the British made a few determined efforts to introduce
what they considered as relevant agricultural education. One pilot scheme
was at Nyakato in Tanganyika, which involved transforming a secondary
school into an agricultural school in 1930. It lasted for nine years with

tutors recruited from Britain and South Africa, but in the end the attempt
failed because of protest by students and the population of the region.
Although the school claimed to be offering new agricultural skills, it was
readily recognized that it was part of a program defining the “correct
attitudes” and “natural place” which Europeans thought fit for the natives.
In the 1940s, as Africans sought to change features of the educational
system, they naturally had to demand a voice in councils that formulated
educational policy. That was in itself a revolutionary demand, because
colonial people are supposed to be ruled, not to participate in decisionmaking. Besides, on the issue of educational policy-making, Africans not
only alarmed the administrators, but they trod on the corns of the
missionaries, who generally felt that they inherited education at the partition
of Africa. All of those clashes were pointing in the direction of freedom for
colonial peoples, because in the background there was always the question
of political power.
It would be erroneous to suggest that educated Africans foresightedly
moved with the intention of regaining African independence. There would
have been very few indeed who, as early as 1939, would have joined Chief
Essien of Calabar in asserting:
Without education it will be impossible for us to get to our destination, which is Nigeria’s
economic independence and Nigeria’s political independence.

However, education (both formal and informal) was a powerful force which
transformed the situation in postwar Africa in such a way as to bring
political independence to most of colonized Africa within two decades.
There were also a few Europeans who foresaw what were called the
“dangers” of giving Africans a modern education: namely, the possibility of
its leading towards freedom. Certainly, Europeans were not at all happy
with any schools which were of the European type, but which were not
under direct colonialist control. For example, the Independent schools of
Kenya were disliked by white settlers in that colony and by other Europeans
outside Kenya. One Catholic mission report from nearby Tanganyika in
1933 warned against allowing Tanganyika Africans to set up schools
controlled by themselves. It noted that: “Independent schools are causing
difficulties in Kenya. Such schools may easily become hotbeds of sedition.”

When the Mau Mau war for land and liberation broke out in Kenya, one
of the first things the British government did was to close the 149 schools of
the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association, 21 schools of the Kikuyu
Karinga Education Association, and 14 other Independent schools. They
were considered “training grounds for rebellion”—a term which essentially
captures the fear expressed in the Catholic mission report just cited.
Europeans knew well enough that if they did not control the minds of
Africans, they would soon cease to control the people physically and
politically.
Similarly, in North Africa, the French colonial power and the white
colons, or settlers, did not take kindly to the self-help schools of the
colonized Algerians and Tunisians. The purpose of the schools set up by the
Society of Reformist Ulema in Algeria was that they should be modern and
scientific, but at the same time present learning in the context of Arab and
Algerian culture. Pupils at the Ulema schools began their lessons by singing
together: “Arabic is my language, Algeria is my country, Islam is my
religion.” It was no wonder, therefore, that the colonialists victimized pupils
and parents, and took repressive measures on the grounds that those schools
were also hotbeds of sedition.
The missionaries asked for control of schools, because that was one of
their drawing cards for the church itself and because they considered
themselves as experts on the side of cultural imperialism (which they called
“civilizing”). However, there were other Europeans both within and without
the colonies who were absolutely opposed to schools—be they Christian,
Independent, government, or Islamic. Starting from a racist position, they
asserted that offering education to Africans was like throwing pearls before
swine. Some of the most violent expressions of racism were directed against
educated Africans. Starting from the time of individuals like Lord Lugard
and through to the days of the last colonial administrators like Sir Alan
Burns, many colonialists demonstrated hostility to educated Africans.
Educated Africans made colonialists extremely uneasy, because they did not
conform to the image which Europeans liked to harbor of the “unspoiled
African savage.”
But, if one goes to the heart of the matter, it can be discerned that the
white racists did not seriously believe that Africans could not master
knowledge then in the possession of Europeans. On the contrary, the

evidence of educated Africans was before their eyes; and the white settlers
especially feared that, given an opportunity, far too many Africans would
master white bourgeois knowledge too thoroughly. Such Africans would,
therefore, refuse to work as agricultural laborers for 12 shillings per month;
they would compete with Europeans in semi-skilled categories; and above
all they would want to govern themselves.
In the records of colonialism, it is not uncommon to encounter the
following type of remark: “What need is there to educate the natives? You
will give them the weapons to destroy you!”
In one sense, those Europeans were simply dreamers, because giving
education to Africans was not an option which could have been avoided; it
was an objective necessity to keep colonialism functioning. P. E. Mitchell,
who later became Governor of Uganda, remarked in 1928 that “regret it as
he may, no Director of Education can resist the demand for clerks,
carpenters, shoemakers and so on—trained in European methods to meet
European needs. These men are not being trained to fit into any place in the
life of their own people, but to meet the economic needs of a foreign race.”
At the same time, the available education was also a consequence of the
irrepressible actions of the African people, who hoped to move forward
within the alien system. So, those Europeans who were absolutely opposed
to giving education to Africans did not understand the contradictions of
their own colonial society. But in another sense they were defending the
interests of colonialism. Firstly, however much the colonialists tried, they
could not succeed in shaping the minds of all Africans whom they educated
in schools. The exceptions were the ones who were going to prove most
dangerous to colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. And secondly, the
most timid and the most brainwashed of educated Africans harbored some
form of disagreement with the colonialists; and, in the pursuit of their own
group or individual interests, the educated elite helped to expose and
undermine the structure of colonial rule.
Keeping the above distinction in mind, one can consider both those
contradictions which arose between the colonizers and the African educated
as a whole, and those which arose between the colonizers and particular
individuals among the African educated.
As already noted, insufficient educational facilities and inadequate jobs
were the complaints raised by the lower echelons of those who were

educated in Africa during the colonial period. Those who went to secondary
school or institutions of higher learning found little access to remunerative
and responsible posts, because they were destined to fill the lower ranks of
the civil and business administration. After working for twenty years, an
African in the civil service would have been extremely lucky to have
become “head clerk,” or in the police to have become a sergeant. Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, any European doing the same job as an
African got higher pay; and whites who were less qualified and experienced
were placed above Africans, who did the jobs their superiors were paid to
do. In the colonial civil service to be a European was enough. It did not
matter whether the white person was ignorant and stupid, he would be
assured of drawing a fat salary and enjoying wide privileges. The GuineaBissau leader, Amilcar Cabral, gave an example of that type.
I was an agronomist working under a European who everybody knew was one of the biggest
idiots in Guinea; I could have taught him his job with my eyes shut but he was the boss; this is
something which counts a lot, this is the confrontation which really matters.

Questions such as salaries, promotions, leave, allowances, were ones
which were of paramount interest to most African civil servant associations
and Welfare or “Improvement” Associations. There should be no illusions
concerning the factor of self-interest. But, their complaints were justified in
terms of the discrepancy between their living standards and those of white
expatriates or settlers, as well as in terms of the ideology of the very
bourgeoisie who had colonized Africa. The educational process had
equipped a few Africans with a grasp of the international community and of
bourgeois democracy, and there was a most unsatisfactory credibility gap
between the ideals of bourgeois democracy and the existence of colonialism
as a system which negated freedom. Inevitably, the educated started
gravitating in the direction of claims for national independence, just as
educated Indians had done much earlier on the Indian subcontinent.
According to official Spanish sources, it is said that the school system in
Spanish Guinea achieved all that the colonizers expected of it. It produced
the required Africans who loved Spaniards more than the Spaniards loved
themselves, but it produced no opponents of the colonial regime. It is
difficult to believe the truth of such an assertion; and the Spanish took good
care that no one from outside got wind of what things were like in the small

Spanish colonies in Africa. However, if it were true that the colonial
educational system in Spanish Guinea created only whitewashed Africans
according to plan, then that would represent an outstanding exception to the
general rule. Wherever adequate evidence is available, it shows that the
cultural imperialism of colonial education was successful in large measure,
but was never entirely successful. It produced according to plan many
“loyal Kikuyu,” “Capicornists,” “Anglophiles,” “Francophiles”; but it also
produced in spite of itself those Africans whom the colonialists called
upstarts, malcontents, agitators, communists, terrorists.
From the viewpoint of the colonialists, trouble often started with African
students before they had completed studies. The Sudan, for example, has a
history of nationalist student protests; and Madagascar was outstanding in
that respect. From the early years of this century, a politicized student
movement was growing in Madagascar, in spite of specific steps taken by
two French governors. By 1816, Malagasy students had organized the Vy
Vato society, seeking to kick out the French. When the Vy Vato was
discovered, students were brutally suppressed. However, as so often
happens, students gained inspiration from the martyrdom of their fellows,
and they resurfaced at a later date on the nationalist scene.
Students who were taken to universities in the metropoles were the most
favored and the most pampered of the Africans selected by the white
colonial overlords to become Europeanized; and yet they were among the
first to argue vocally and logically that the liberty, equality, and fraternity
about which they were taught should apply to Africa. African students in
France in the postwar years were placed carefully within the ranks of the
then conservative French national student body, but they soon rebelled and
formed the Federation of Students of Black Africa (FEANF), which became
affiliated to the communist International Union of Students. In Britain,
African students formed a variety of ethnic and nationalist organizations,
and participated in the Pan-African movement. After all, most of them were
sent there to study the British Constitution and Constitutional Law, and (for
what it is worth) the word “freedom” appears in those contexts rather often!
The fascists who ruled Africans at some points during the colonial epoch
tried to avoid bourgeois democratic ideals altogether. For example, while
the Italian fascists were in charge of Somalia between 1922 and 1941, they
took away from history textbooks all reference to Mazzini and Garibaldi,

two key leaders of the democratic wing of the Italian nationalist movement
of the nineteenth century. Yet, the clerks and NCOs who received that
education nevertheless went into the Somali Youth League and fought for
independence at the head of popular forces.
The fact of the matter is that it was not really necessary to get the idea of
freedom from a European book. What the educated African extracted from
European schooling was a particular formulation of the concept of political
freedom. But, it did not take much to elicit a response from their own
instinctive tendency for freedom; and, as has just been noted in the Somali
instance, that universal tendency to seek freedom manifested itself among
Africans even when the most careful steps were taken to extinguish it.
There was no sector of colonial life in which educated Africans appeared
and remained wholly loyal to the colonialists. Teachers were supposed to
have been steeped in the culture of domination, so as to pass it on to other
Africans; but, in the end, many of them stood in the vanguard of the
national independence movements. African priests and pastors were
supposed to have been the loyal servants of God and his European
lieutenants, but the church gave birth in Nyasaland to John Chilembwe, as
early as the First World War. Shortly afterwards, in Congo, when Simon
Kimbangu started his Independent church, he actually threatened the
colonialists that he would introduce Bolshevism!
It is particularly interesting to notice that the colonialists could not be
sure of the loyalty of their African troops. It has already been argued that
the army and police were educational and socializing institutions to
perpetuate colonialist and capitalist power and values. How successfully
they served that function can be seen in the number of veterans of Burma
and Indochina who returned to the continent to carry out loyally the policies
of Britain and France, respectively. Colonel Bokassa of the Central African
Republic and Colonel Lamizana of Upper Volta provide two outstanding
examples, both of them having graduated from fighting the Vietnamese to a
point where they are prepared to dialogue with the fascist apartheid state of
South Africa. However, returned soldiers also played a very positive role in
the national independence struggles after both wars. And, occasionally,
towards the end of colonial rule, African troops and police mutinied, as in
Nyasaland in 1959.

African trade unionists also went to “school” under colonialism. To
begin with, the organization and activity of the small wage-earning sector in
Africa bothered the colonialists a great deal. Their initial desire was to
crush worker dissent, and (when that appeared unlikely to succeed) to coopt
it and guide it along “acceptable” channels.
The British Trade Union Council sponsored a number of African trade
unions, and tried to get them to accept a rigid separation between industrial
matters (such as wages and working hours) and political matters. But, the
TUC was in that context acting on behalf of the British bourgeoisie, and
they did not succeed in holding back the working class in Africa. African
workers were able to appreciate that there was no difference between the
private employers and the colonial administration. Indeed, the colonial
administration was itself one of the biggest employers, against whom
workers had many charges. Consequently, in the 1940s and 1950s, it was
common to have strikes that were specifically connected with the struggle
for independence, notably in Gold Coast, Nigeria, and Sudan.
The contradiction between French workers and African workers in
French colonies emerged in a very acute form. The French trade union
movement (and notably the Communist Union, the CGT) insisted that
Africans should not have separate unions, but should be members of French
labor unions—just like any other French workers. That arrangement gave
support to the juridical political fiction that places like Dahomey and
Comoro Islands were not colonies, but merely the overseas section of
France. Sekou Toure of Guinea was one of the first to break with the
patronage of French trade unions and to establish an independent African
trade union. In so doing, Sekou Toure made it clear that the principal
contradiction of the colonial situation was that between colonized peoples
on the one hand and the colonizing nation on the other. So long as African
workers remain colonized, they had to think of themselves firstly as African
workers, rather than members of an international proletariat. That
interpretation, which was entirely in accordance with reality, led to the trade
union movement taking on a highly politicized and nationalist role in
French West Africa. It was an achievement which defeated the chauvinism
of white French workers as well as the class interests of the French
bourgeoisie.

The attitude of the white metropolitan working class towards their
African counterparts was influenced by the prevailing racist values of
capitalist society. Indeed, the racist factor heightened the principal
contradiction between the colonizers and the colonized. Discriminatory
racist methods and measures were found in every colony—with varying
degrees of openness or hypocrisy. Sometimes, white racism was vicious and
at other times it was paternalist. Nor did it necessarily reflect Europe’s
desire to exploit Africans economically. In Southern Rhodesia, racial
discrimination was very much tied up with the white settlers’ maintaining
their jobs and the stolen land; but when some semi-literate white inspector
insulted an educated Sierra Leonean, that may be referred to as
“gratuitous.” Racism in such a context actually jeopardized economic
exploitation, and it was merely the manifestation of prejudices that had
grown over the centuries.
The racial contradiction extended far beyond the shores of Africa,
because of the historical antecedence of the slave trade. It is not in the least
surprising that Pan-African ideas should have been most forcefully
expressed by West Indians like Garvey and Padmore and North Americans
like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alpheus Hunton. Those individuals had all been
educated within the international capitalist structure of exploitation on the
basis of class and race. Having realized that their inferior status in the
societies of America was conditioned by the fact of being black and the
weakness of Africa, the Pan-Africanists were forced to deal with the central
problem of Europe’s exploitation and oppression of the African continent.
Needless to say, the metropolitan powers could never have foreseen that
their humiliation of millions of Africans in the New World would ultimately
rebound and help Africa to emancipate itself.
The process by which Africa produced thirty-odd sovereign states was
an extremely complex one, characterized by an interplay of forces and
calculations on the part of various groups of Africans, on the part of the
colonial powers, and on the part of interest groups inside the metropolis.
African independence was affected by international events such as the
Second World War, the rise of the Soviet Union, the independence of India
and China, the people’s liberation movement in Indochina, and the Bandung
Conference. On the African continent itself, the “domino theory” operated,
so that the re-emergence of Egypt under Nasser, the early independence of

Ghana, Sudan, and Guinea, and the nationalist wars in Kenya and Algeria
all helped to knock down the colonies which remained standing. However,
it must be stressed that the move for the regaining of independence was
initiated by the African people; and, to whatever extent that objective was
realized, the motor force of the people must be taken into account.
In a conference held by the French in Brazzaville in 1948 (and chaired
by General de Gaulle), it was explicitly stated that “the establishment, even
in the distant future, of self-government in the colonies is to be avoided.”
As is well known, the French eventually considered the idea of conceding
independence to African peoples after being taught a salutary lesson by the
Algerian people. Moreover, when Guinea chose independence in 1958
rather than accept being permanently a footstool for France, the French
administrators literally went crazy and behaved like wild pigs before sailing
from Guinea. They just could not cope with the idea of African
independence.
Apart from the Portuguese, the Belgians were the colonialists who were
the most reluctant in withdrawing in the face of African nationalism. In
1955, a Belgian professor suggested independence for the Congo in thirty
years, and he was regarded as a radical! Of course, Congo turned out to be
one of the places where imperialism was successful in hijacking the African
revolution. But, the order of events must still be considered. Firstly, it was
the intensity of the Congolese and African demands that made
independence thinkable, as far as the Belgians were concerned; and,
secondly, it was precisely the strength and potential of the nationalist
movement under Lumumba which forced the imperialists to resort to
murder and invasion.
The British make much of the fact that they conceded the idea of selfgovernment immediately after the last war; but self-government was a long
cry from independence, and the notion of training people for independence
was nothing but a political gimmick. Lady Margery Perham, a true voice of
patronizing colonialism, admitted that the Colonial Office’s timetable for
independence had to be scrapped in the face of the mobilized African
people. For that matter, even African leaders never hoped to achieve
national sovereignty as rapidly as they did, until the mass parties began to
roll like boulders down a hillside.

The fact that this analysis has been focused on the role of the educated
Africans in the independence movements is not intended to detract from the
vital activity of the broad African masses, including the sacrifice of life and
limb. In brief, it is enough to say that the African people as a collective had
upset the plans of the colonialist, and had surged forward to freedom. Such
a position may seem to be a mere revival of a certain rosy and romantic
view of African independence which was popular in the early 1960s, but, on
the contrary, it is fully cognizant of the shabby reality of neo-colonial
Africa. It needs to be affirmed (from a revolutionary, socialist, and peoplecentered perspective) that even “flag independence” represented a positive
development out of colonialism.
Securing the attributes of sovereignty is but one stage in the process of
regaining African independence. By 1885, when Africa was politically and
juridically partitioned, the peoples and polities had already lost a great deal
of freedom. In its relations with the external world, Africa had lost a
considerable amount of control over its own economy, ever since the
fifteenth century. However, the loss of political sovereignty at the time of
the Scramble was decisive. By the same reasoning, it is clear that the
regaining of political sovereignty by the 1960s constitutes an inescapable
first step in regaining maximum freedom to choose and to develop in all
spheres.
Furthermore, the period of nationalist revolution gave rise to certain
minority ideological trends, which represent the roots of future African
development. Most African leaders of the intelligentsia and even of the
labor movement were frankly capitalist, and shared fully the ideology of
their bourgeois masters. Houphouet-Boigny was at one time called a
“communist” by the French colonizers! He defended himself vigorously
against the false charge in 1948:
We have good relations with the [French] Communist Party, that is true. But it is obvious that
that does not mean that we ourselves are communists. Can it be said that I, Houphouet-Boigny
—a traditional chief, a doctor of medicine, a big property owner, a catholic—can it be said that
I am a communist?

Houphouet-Boigny’s reasoning applied to so many more African leaders of
the independence epoch. The exceptions were those who either completely
rejected the world-view of capitalism or at least stuck honestly to those
idealistic tenets of bourgeois ideology such as individual freedom—and,

through experience, they could come to realize that the ideals remained
myths in a society based on the exploitation of man by man. Clearly, all
leaders of the non-conformist type had developed in direct contradiction to
the aims of formal and informal colonial education; and their differences
with the colonizers were too profound to have been resolved merely by
“flag independence.”
African independence was greeted with pomp, ceremony, and a
resurgence of traditional African music and dance. “A new day has
dawned,” “we are on the threshold of a new era,” “we have now entered
into the political kingdom”—those were the phrases of the day, and they
were repeated until they became clichés. But, all the to-ing and fro-ing from
Contonou to Paris and from London to Lusaka and all the lowering and
raising of flags cannot be said to have been devoid of meaning. Withdrawal
of the directly controlled military and juridical apparatus of the colonizers
was essential before any new alternatives could be posed with regard to
political organization, social structure, economic development.
The above issues were raised most seriously by the minority of African
leaders who had individually embarked on a non-capitalist path of
development in their mode of thought; and the problems were considered
within the context of inequalities and contradictions not just between Africa
and Europe but also inside Africa, as a reflection of four centuries of
slavery and one century of colonialism. As far as the mass of peasants and
workers were concerned, the removal of overt foreign rule actually cleared
the way towards a more fundamental appreciation of exploitation and
imperialism. Even in territories such as Cameroon, where the imperialists
brutally crushed peasants and workers and installed their own tried and
tested puppet, advance had been made insofar as the masses had already
participated in trying to determine their own destiny. That is the element of
conscious activity that signifies the ability to make history, by grappling
with the heritage of objective material conditions and social relations.
Brief Guide to Reading
Colonial rule generated a great deal of written material which can serve as
one of the bases for historical reconstruction. Even the non-specialist in
African history would be well advised to look at some original sources,

such as the data compiled by Lord Hailey. Approached with care, several of
the anthropological texts also yield information and insights with regard to
detailed changes in African social structures.
Above all, however, the generations who suffered under colonialism are
still living repositories of the continent’s history. The collective knowledge
of the African people derived from experience is the most authentic basis of
the history of the colonial period. Unfortunately, much of the experience is
not yet written down, but glimpses can be got from biographies of
prominent Africans such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, Oginga
Odinga, and Kenneth Kaunda, as well as from the political writings of these
and other leaders—notably Mwalimu Nyerere and Sekou Toure. The books
by Padmore and Hunton mentioned in the literature for Chapter 5 are even
more relevant in this context.
JACK WODDIS, Africa, the Roots of Revolt. London: Lawrence and Wishant, 1960.
_______ Africa, the Lion Awakes.
GANN, L. H., and DUIGNAN, PETER, The Burden of Empire. New York: Praeger, 1967.
The first author and his works are well known for supporting the African anti-colonial stand. The
second example is a colonialist interpretation which offers a contrast.
SLOAN and KITCHEN, The Educated African.
ABDOU MOUMINI, Education in Africa. New York: Praeger, 1968.
For data, the first book is useful. From the viewpoint of analysis, Moumini’s book is superb.
FRANTZ FANON, Black Skins, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
_______ The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963.
_______ Towards the African Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967.
These studies are unique in revealing the psychological aspects of enslavement and colonization
as far as Africans are concerned, whether in the Americas or on the African continent. Fanon does
not have any equal in analyzing the last stages of African colonialism and the advent of neocolonialism.

POSTSCRIPT
by A. M. BABU

Are there short cuts to economic development for the underdevelopment
economies? This question has occupied the attention of many interested
parties during the last decade. These include university lecturers,
international economists, the United Nations and its agencies, the O.A.U.,
planning agencies, economic ministers. Many international conferences
under various sponsorship have been held during the decade and volumes of
resolutions, guidelines, learning documents, and theses have been
published. The end result has been negative. The developing countries
continue to remain underdeveloped, only getting worse in relation to the
developed countries.
By and large the question still remains unanswered. Are we going to
repeat the same exercise all over again during this decade? From the look of
it, it appears that we are. Already the UN has launched the Second
Economic Decade with the same zeal and fanfare as they did with the first.
The same appeal has gone out to the developed countries to be charitable
and contribute “one per cent of their national income” for helping the
developing countries, as if the population of the world can continue to
condone poverty so that the rich can be charitable! If past experience is
anything to go by, the seventies will experience the same disappointments
which climaxed the end of the sixties.
What, we may ask, has gone wrong? Is it something inherent in the very
nature of underdevelopment that makes development such an impossible
task? Among the many prescriptions that have been offered—e.g., cultural,
social, psychological, even economic—none has produced any encouraging
results. In fact nearly all of them have had negative results, and made bad

situations worse. Are we to continue with the same experiments at the
expense of the people, who, let’s face it, have borne the whole burden of
these experiments throughout the last decade? This is the question to which
all the developing countries, especially those in Africa, must address
themselves. And the sooner the better, because there is very little time left
before our economies become permanently distorted and probably too
damaged for any meaningful reconstruction in the future.
Dr. Walter Rodney, in this very instructive book, provides a very
refreshing opening for discussions which may well lead to finding the right
solution. He is raising the most basic and fundamental questions regarding
the nature of underdevelopment and economic backwardness. Unlike many
works of this nature, which to all intents and purposes have approached the
problem with a sort of metaphysical outlook (garbed, it is true, in scientific
terminology), Dr. Rodney follows the method of historical materialism,
which in effect says: “To know the present we must look into the past and to
know the future we must look into the past and the present.” This is a
scientific approach. We can at least be sure that the conclusions will not be
marred by subjective distortions.
It is clear, especially after reading Rodney’s exposition, that throughout
the last decade we have been posing the wrong questions regarding
economic backwardness. We did not “look into the past to know the
present.” We were told, and accepted, that our poverty was caused by our
poverty in the now famous theory of the “vicious circle of poverty” and we
went around in circles seeking ways and means of breaking that circle. Had
we asked the fundamental questions which Dr. Rodney raises in this work
we would not have exposed our economies to the ruthless plunder brought
about by “foreign investments” which the exponents of the vicious circle
theory urged us to do. For, it is clear, foreign investment is the cause, and
not a solution, to our economic backwardness.
Are we not underdeveloped now because we have been colonized in the
past? There is no other explanation to the fact that practically the whole of
the underdeveloped world has been colonized either directly or indirectly by
the Western powers. And what is colonialism if it is not a system of
“foreign investments” by the metropolitan powers? If it has contributed to
our underdevelopment in the past, is it not likely to contribute to our
underdevelopment now, even if the political reins are in our hands? Put in

this way the question of underdevelopment is immediately rendered more
intelligible, even to the uninitiated. And this is how Dr. Rodney is directing
us to pose our questions.
The inevitable conclusion is that foreign investment does not only help
to undermine our economies by extracting enormous profits, but it does
more serious damage to the economies by distorting them into lopsidedness,
and if the process is not arrested in time, the distortion could be permanent.
As long as we continue, as we have done for centuries, to produce for the
so-called world market which was founded on the hard rock of slavery and
colonialism, our economies will remain colonial. Any development will be
entirely incidental, leaving the vast majority of the population wholly
uninvolved in the economic activity. The more we invest in export branches
in order to capture the “world market” the more we divert away from
investing for people’s development and, consequently, the less effective our
development effort.
And since this type of investment does not contribute much towards the
development of a material and technical base internally, our economies are
rendered always responsive only to what the Western world is prepared to
buy and sell, and hardly responsive to our internal development needs. That
is why, although most of our development plans make elaborate resource
allocations for “rural projects,” invariably most of these resources find their
way back to the urban projects and consequently accentuate the urban-rural
disparities. Slums, unemployment, social maladjustment, and, finally,
political instability are our most outstanding characteristics.
Almost without exception, all the ex-colonial countries have ignored the
cardinal development demand; namely, that, to be really effective, the
development process must begin by transforming the economy from its
colonial, externally responsive structure, to one which is internally
responsive. Where we went wrong is when we followed blindly the
assumptions handed down to us by our exploiters. These assumptions can
be stated briefly as follows: Growth in underdeveloped countries is
hampered by inadequate growth in exports and inadequate financial
resources and is made worse by “population explosion” in these countries.
And the solution is prescribed as follows: Step up exports, increase aid and
loans from the developed countries, and arrest growth in population.

Throughout the last decade our efforts have been to follow religiously
the above prescription, and even if our own experience continues to
disprove it, we still adhere to it even more fanatically! The greatest need
appears to be a process of mental de-colonization, since neither common
sense nor sound economics, not even our own experience, is with us in this.
Experiences of other countries that have chosen a different path, a path
of economic reconstruction, is most instructive here. Take North Korea or
Albania. Both these countries were underdeveloped as late as the fifties.
The reason they have been able to register most outstanding economic
progress is that they have decided to opt out of production for the so-called
world market and have diverted their resources toward the development of a
material and technological base internally.
The Pearson Commission’s Report—Partners in Development—has
been hailed, even by the developing countries, as ushering in a new era, a
sort of turning point, in international cooperation for development. Even if
its recommendations were to be adopted and implemented in toto it is
doubtful if it would make any impact on the ever widening gap between the
developed and the developing countries. This is because it has avoided
tackling the most fundamental question, namely, “Can development take
place when our production strategy is influenced by the demands of the
world market which is determined almost exclusively by the pattern of
production and consumption within capitalist Europe and America?” In
other words, in distorting our economies to fit in with the demands of the
world market, the demands of which are not always compatible with the
demands of our own development, are we not, in the process, depriving our
economies of the capacity for a self-sustaining growth which is a
precondition to development?
By posing the question in this style, it is possible to see through the
smokescreen of international do-gooders and begin to understand the real
cause of our underdevelopment. It is, of course, too much to expect Pearson
or people of his liberal inclination to pose the question in this way, since
their training and outlook consider this way of putting the question to be
almost morally sinful and economically subversive.
However, as leaders of the developing countries, we are obliged to adopt
this style of posing the question since we have taken upon ourselves the
responsibility for steering a development course whose success or failure

will affect, one way or another, the well-being of hundreds of million of the
people who comprise more than two-thirds of the human race. For too long
we have left their fate to be determined by the kind of production which is
not based on the satisfaction of their wants but rather on serving external
interests as expressed by the accepted laws of supply and demand of the socalled world market. We have twisted their education in such a way that the
“skills” we direct them to develop are geared towards serving the same ends
of the world market rather than towards development of an internal material
base, with the result that technologically, and in relation to the developed
world, we move backward rather than forward. We have tamely accepted
the so-called international division of labor on behalf of our masses, and in
doing so we have condemned them to specialize in primary commodities
whose production is conducive neither to the development of technological
skills nor to the invention of advanced machinery, both of which are the
preconditions to real economic development.
The significance of Dr. Rodney’s book is that it is addressed, quite
appropriately, to the masses and not to the leaders and one hopes that it will
be instrumental in arousing some mass action by the people. In the absence
of committed leadership, many African countries have fallen prey to
military exploitation, to the extent that today the generals constitute the
majority at the African summit. This is as it should be, because when the
political leadership loses the sense of internal direction, when, in
bewilderment, it gives up its efforts to find solutions to people’s problems
and begins to accumulate wealth for its own individual use, political
leadership tends to get increasingly “commandist” in its state operations.
Logic and rationale become subversive. And when politicians become
commandists, they too become redundant, because who is better fitted to
giving command than the army?
With very few exceptions it is sad to have to admit that Africa is ill
served by the current conglomeration of what passes for leaders throughout
the continent. When Asia and Latin America produce giants, like Mao, Ho,
Ché, who inspire and excite the imagination not only of their compatriots
within their borders, but of the rest of the world, including the developed
world, Africa has produced only one Nyerere and maintained him in power,
while we have murdered Lumumba and have locked up or exiled leaders
like Ben Bella and Nkrumah in response to the wishes of the imperialists—

our donors, our moneylenders, our patrons, our masters, our trading
partners.
With all due respect, it is difficult to imagine, apart from one or two
honorable exceptions, any of the present leaders who is capable of standing
up for the genuine rights of his people, knowing that these rights are of
necessity directly opposed to the interests of imperialism. And yet such a
stand is necessary if we are to really fulfill our obligation as leaders;
otherwise, we have no right to impose our leadership on the people. While
most of the leaders on the continent have no sense of urgency in solving the
problems of people’s misery, since they don’t bear the brunt of their misery,
the masses, who do, cannot wait. That is why one hopes that Dr. Rodney’s
book will be read by as many people as possible because it has come at a
time when it is most needed, for action.
After reading the harrowing account of the brutalities of slavery, of
subjugation, of deprivation and humiliation, when whole civilizations were
crushed in order to serve the imperialist interests of the West; when settled
societies were disintegrated by force of imperialist arms so that the
plantation owners of the “new world” could get their uprooted, and
therefore permanent, labor force to build what is now the most advanced
capitalist economy, it becomes absolutely clear that the only way out of our
current impasse is through a revolutionary path—a complete break with the
system which is responsible for all our past and present misery.
Our future course must be guided dialectically. If by looking into the past
we have known the present, to know the future we must look into the past
and the present. Our action must be related to our concrete experience and
we must not give way to metaphysical hopes and wishes—hoping and
wishing that the monster who has been after us throughout our history will
some day change into a lamb; he won’t. As Engels puts it: “Freedom does
not consist in the dream of independence from natural laws, but in the
knowledge of these laws . . . freedom of the will, therefore, means nothing
but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject.” We
know the subject only too well, and he is a monster. Do we have the
capacity to make a decision—now that Dr. Rodney has provided us with the
knowledge of the subject? The people must answer.

How It Feels to Be Colored Me
by Zora Neale Hurston (1891 - 1960)
I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am
the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian
chief.
I remember the very day that I became colored. Up to my thirteenth year I lived in the little
Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. It is exclusively a colored town. The only white people I
knew passed through the town going to or coming from Orlando. The native whites rode dusty
horses, the Northern tourists chugged down the sandy village road in automobiles. The town
knew the Southerners and never stopped cane chewing when they passed. But the Northerners
were something else again. They were peered at cautiously from behind curtains by the timid.
The more venturesome would come out on the porch to watch them go past and got just as much
pleasure out of the tourists as the tourists got out of the village.
The front porch might seem a daring place for the rest of the town, but it was a gallery seat for
me. My favorite place was atop the gatepost. Proscenium box for a born first-nighter. Not only
did I enjoy the show, but I didn't mind the actors knowing that I liked it. I usually spoke to them
in passing. I'd wave at them and when they returned my salute, I would say something like this:
"Howdy-do-well-I-thank-you-where-you-goin'?" Usually automobile or the horse paused at this,
and after a queer exchange of compliments, I would probably "go a piece of the way" with them,
as we say in farthest Florida. If one of my family happened to come to the front in time to see
me, of course negotiations would be rudely broken off. But even so, it is clear that I was the first
"welcome-to-our-state" Floridian, and I hope the Miami Chamber of Commerce will please take
notice.
During this period, white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town
and never lived there. They liked to hear me "speak pieces" and sing and wanted to see me dance
the parse-me-la, and gave me generously of their small silver for doing these things, which
seemed strange to me for I wanted to do them so much that I needed bribing to stop, only they
didn't know it. The colored people gave no dimes. They deplored any joyful tendencies in me,
but I was their Zora nevertheless. I belonged to them, to the nearby hotels, to the county-everybody's Zora.
But changes came in the family when I was thirteen, and I was sent to school in Jacksonville. I
left Eatonville, the town of the oleanders, a Zora. When I disembarked from the river-boat at
Jacksonville, she was no more. It seemed that I had suffered a sea change. I was not Zora of
Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl. I found it out in certain ways. In my
heart as well as in the mirror, I became a fast brown--warranted not to rub nor run.
But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking
behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who
hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but
about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the

strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less. No, I do not weep at the world--I am too
busy sharpening my oyster knife.
Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to
register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and
the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a
potential slave said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Get set!" and the generation before
said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.
Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and the choice was not with me. It is a bully adventure
and worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it. No one on earth ever had a greater
chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to think--to know that
for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting
to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to
weep.
The position of my white neighbor is much more difficult. No brown specter pulls up a chair
beside me when I sit down to eat. No dark ghost thrusts its leg against mine in bed. The game of
keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting.
I do not always feel colored. Even now I often achieve the unconscious Zora of Eatonville before
the Hegira. I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.
For instance at Barnard. "Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand
white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself.
When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again.
Sometimes it is the other way around. A white person is set down in our midst, but the contrast is
just as sharp for me. For instance, when I sit in the drafty basement that is The New World
Cabaret with a white person, my color comes. We enter chatting about any little nothing that we
have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have,
this one plunges into a number. It loses no time in circumlocutions, but gets right down to
business. It constricts the thorax and splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies. This
orchestra grows rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive
fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond. I follow those heathen-follow them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai
above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle
way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like
a war drum. I want to slaughter something--give pain, give death to what, I do not know. But the
piece ends. The men of the orchestra wipe their lips and rest their fingers. I creep back slowly to
the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in
his seat, smoking calmly.
"Good music they have here," he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.

Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what
I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen
between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.
At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down
Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street
Library, for instance. So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule
Mich with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in a most aristocratic
manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the
eternal feminine with its string of beads.
I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment
of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me.
How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.
But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in
company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a
jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of
broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old
shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things
too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag.
On the ground before you is the jumble it held--so much like the jumble in the bags, could they
be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the
content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how
the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place--who knows?
(1928)