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of an individualist and a dissenter. When I returned from abroad in
1935, the Communists thought that perhaps they could corral me. But
I did not bite the bait. So, they said it was a pity I had not died
abroad. Then they might have used me dead. What Russians ruled Soviet
Russia, I did not consider my business. And whether I was in England,
France or America, I detested Communist propagandists. God, in His
mercy, had something more important for me to worry about. I remem-
ber back in the nineteen thirties, when our government proclaimed
that anybody who was receiving money from foreign sources should
register the fact! Among those who honestly did appeared the name
of Congressman Hamilton Fish, who was receiving an annual grant of
about $25,000 from President Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. At
the same time it was published that the editor of the New Republic
was drawing the same amount from the naked rumps of the black natives
of the neighboring Haitian Republic. A Negro editor asked me for an
article on the Fish story. I said I should prefer to do one on the
editor of the New Republic. Since my article was to be of the more
ant type the Negro editor said, No..., the New Republic was "progress-
ive" and a "friend of Negroes", but Hamilton Fish was reactionary.
I said that even if Hamilton Fish was as reactionary as Dictator
Trujillo, he had much influence as Chairman of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee. But I couldn't see the editor of the New Repub-
lic having any influence among hard-boiled American politicians to
help a little Negro nation.

Not long afterwards Hamilton Fish arrived in Harlem.
He was scheduled to address a meeting, which was organized around
the idea of electing a New York Negro to Congress. It was the first
time I ever heard a white man talk so frankly to colored folk. Ham-
ilton Fish surely did not mince his words. He told his audience that

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Negroes, instead of organizing themselves like other American
groups to better their status, were expecting the whites to do
everything for them. Hamilton Fish said that during the first
World War, he was an officer of a Negro regiment. When he returned
home, he was elected a congressman and then Negro veterans were ex-
pecting him to help them as individuals. But, said he, he just could
not deal with particular Negro grievances and attend to his duties,
working for his constituents and the public in general. So he asked
the Negro veterans why they did not form an organization of their
own. But they all wanted to be in the organizations of white veterans.
He twitted the audience, asking what they knew about Negroes of other
countries. Did they know, for example, that not far away in the
Caribbean, many Haitian peasants were shot down by Dominican soldiers
when they were attempting to cross the border? He also said
that though Negroes now were basking in the sunshine of the New Deal,
their way of life would be different if the Northern Democrats should
lose control of the party to the South.

The audience comprised a mixed group of Negroes: Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Socialists, Communists and West Indians and it was agreed that all Negroes should unite to elect a Negro congressman. But already they were split about the Fish talk, some liking while others did not like it. I wish more of the "friends" of Negroes would have the courage to say the truth as they see it. No group of people can make any real progress without constructive criticism from within or from without.

I remember, when I returned from abroad in the middle
of the nineteen thirties, the "Niggerratti" (as they delighted in
calling themselves) and their white admirers thought that I was a

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loose and lewd person, because I had written "Home To Harlem". I don't know if Zola was considered personally lax and libidinous because he wrote "La Terre". Anyway when the "Niggerratti" discovered that I was not what they thought I was, they dropped me like a hot potato. As I am no great lover of parties and may be a little naïcissistic, I was not at all unhappy. When I was in Spain, I received a letter from ane of the leaders of the cult, stating that Heywood Broun in his column had suggested that Negro Americans should accept the use of the word "Nigger", because it was native to the American soil. And he wanted to know if I would support the idea; I replied that I had discovered in Spain that the Spanish language could not easily be turned into dialect and malevolent epithets like English. And if he could go to Spain and hear the Spanish people say Negro in their dignified way (no one ever indulging the vile English "nigger") he would immediately forget Heywood Broun's suggestion.

Off the record, quite a number of white friends of the Negro have said that they could not see any future for him in the New World. This may be true and it may not be. But there is an obsession among Negroes to become light and lighter. Educated Negroes, some light and some quite dark, have said that Negroes must breed out. And they point to many thousands of Negroes who, they say, have crossed the color line. Now, it seems to me that a Negro white enough to cross the color line is no longer a Negro, at least physically. No native of Europe or of Africa would dream of thinking such a person a Negro. To the Spanish to whom Negro is black and Blanco is white, even a mulatto is not a Negro. Thus American Negroes fail to understand the Latin-American point of view on the color problem. The Negro definition of a person of color is peculiarly American and

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delightfully unscientific, if there is any science in the defini-
tion of races. Anyway the fact must be faced that since the average
white American has a phobia against miscegenation and accepts the
Mendelian theory as fact, the only real breeding out the American
Negro can expect is that which goes on surreptiously in the South.
And as the offspring of such union is labelled Negro, the breeding
out will be a long, long process. The Negro American is not only
a physical fact, he is also the result of a state of mind. Even
Europeans, who are not anti-Negro at home catch the disease as soon
as they arrive in America. Yet Communists and some of their "liberal"
friends imagine that they can ride rough-shod over this beautifully
delicate dilemma.

One of the ugliest white women I ever set eyes upon (a
member of the New York intelligentsia) tried to trip me up on the
subject of intermarriage, which was her beloved theme, although she
was married to some kind of a white man. I told her that I cared
not what type of person she married, so long as she left me out of
her plans. And she was mightily offended. I believe that inter-
marriage, like marriage, is a sacrament and a very personal affair,
which no social group of meddling numskulls can promote. If marriage
between members of the same group is difficult, then intermarriage
must be doubly so and involves a supreme sacrifice on one side or
the other. Well, what others do is their affair, but no asinine
materialist can tell me just what to do or what I should believe
in.

Our white liberal and radical "friends" will not tell Negroes
the truth as they see it, for they are white and diplomatic. When the
liberal and late Senator Borah attempted to tell us the truth, he
brought the wrath of Negrodom down on his head. But being one of

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one of them I can say without worrying about the reaction, that we Negroes of the New World are not merely a lost remnant of a race people, we also are a lost people. We have no soul we can call our own, for we are running away from ourselves. And whither we are running, God only knows. Our eyes are turned not within to appraise and strengthen ourselves, but without to the white world, which despises us. Our leaders will sell the "egro people to any group of whites for a price and social intercourse. And of all whites we want to imitate most the Anglo-Saxons, who have degraded us. We insist that there is no such thing as Aframerican or Negro culture. Yet annually we promote Negro History Week. And we support Negro schools, colleges, universities and churches. Negro singers chant the "spirituals" of slavery and our dancers exhibit all the modern variations of the cake&walk to the delight of Southerners. We want Negroes as a bloc to vote for Negro legislators, locally and nationally, yet we gnash our teeth and dash our heads against the Wailing Wall of Segregation. So nothing radical can be done about cleaning up our Negro slums. We are the only group whose leaders are responsible to white leadership, instead of to their own people. So what are we? I maintain that since in the United States we are a most special type of minority, the real issue for us is Adjustment and not Segregation. For when we come down to brass tacks, the Negro minority must depend finally on the good-will of white America. We more than any other people in the New World need a Good Neighbor policy. Government and politics can do so much and no more. And now that the Northern whites have the Southern whites where they want them--underfoot, another Civil War will not be fought over Negro emancipation.

When in 1941 I wrote in my book, "Harlem: Negro Metro-