Read Online Tales of the Out & the Gone by Imamu Amiri Baraka - Free Book Online

let go of her job, even back then in the early ’50s. They’d split. He’d started to become a noticeable drinker and an even more noticeable drunk. Sometimes (most times), he’d inhabit a kind of twilight zone between the living and the dead, his eyes rolling open every so often, his dry cracked lips poking open momentarily to suck up some trifling air, and then he’d roll over and go deep off into a primordial ancient pygmy sleep. This would be while sitting in his First Negro Councilman Chair, under a portrait of him as the First Negro Councilman, in front of everybody—white folks too.
    Plus, blacks or Negroes or colored were a majority (all of the aforementioned, together) in Noah. The gray industrial countercharm of Noah, which I’d grown up in, had by the ’60s lost most of its hold on anybody who had options, mainly the socially mobile, mostly white middle class, and they’d gotten in the wind. Any other colors of middle class had got in the wind too, mostly, though it must be clear that there were some of us still around pouting that now that we were here almost by ourselves, we still didn’t have any power or control over anything. (I remember shouting at Mr. French, the curator of the museum, that while I like the internationally famous Tibetan collection—I’d grown up on it, snaking around those masks and vases, still in elementary school, trying to sniff out my own essence—that, damn! couldn’t there be something that more resembled myself? The Hudson River School paintings were great—I’d grown up on them too—but damn, what about a picture of Headlight, Bubbles, Roggie, Kenny, and me coming down Belmont Avenue, sharp as African mythology, heading to the Graham Auditorium for the Sunday night “Canteen”? Like where was that, my man?)
    The tremors of those years? The rush of trying to be resolved frustrations. The hungers and thirsts. One stretch, I actually thought I was carrying the slave ship around in my head. I kept hearing the drums and screams, the savage slash of the whips. And the ship was nearing the shore, and it was the middle of winter. I kept peering out of a hole in the ship, just about the waterline, I guess, and saw this icy, snowy land draw near. Johnnie Walker Black seemed to be slumped against Plymouth Rock with a red cap on his head, grinning but drunk as a mojo.
    But this is not a tale of frustration, per se. This is perception and rationale. We did what we set out to do, our political action committee. Yessiree! We pulled a convention together and selected candidates and actually elected most of them. No shit! We organized and educated and worked our asses off. Our committee got larger and larger as people began to understand clearly what we were about, without being put off by the media.
    And the committee was right in the middle of it too. We had a hand in screening candidates, setting up the entire convention, putting out the publicity, mobilizing people to show up, and then the follow-through for the election.
    We brought in all kinds of celebrities and leaders from all over the country—Bill Cosby, Dustin Hoffman, James Brown. Raised money for the candidates that came out of the convention, and goddamnit, got them elected too. Not all of them, but out of the seven we ran, four got elected, even a goddamn mayor! Yeh, it was fantastic. You don’t remember that? It was in all the papers, across the country. It was like the first black mayor of a major northeastern city! Yeh, that’s right. Right!
    A great night that was too. People came out in the streets and danced up and down, holding hands and laughing. There was a band on top of a bus, sitting in the middle of Broad Street, and black folks and Puerto Ricans and our allies flowed downtown from all parts of the city to have the great moment in Robert Treat Hall (named after the gentleman who’d actually pulled off the Indian deal). That was the height of something. The pinnacle, the goal, whatever. A thousand