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Chester Himes

Cotton comes to Harlem

1

The voice from the sound truck said:

"Each family, no matter how big it is, will be asked to put up one thousand dollars. You will get your transportation free, five acres of fertile land in Africa, a mule and a plow and all the seed you need, free. Cows, pigs and chickens cost extra, but at the minimum. No profit on this deal. "

A sea of dark faces wavered before the speaker's long table, rapturous and intent.

"Ain't it wonderful, honey?" said a big black woman with eyes like stars. "We're going back to Africa. "

Her tall lean husband shook his head in awe. "After all these four hundred years. "

"Here I is been cooking in white folk's kitchens for more than thirty years. Lord, can it be true?" A stooped old woman voiced a lingering doubt.

The smooth brown speaker with the honest eyes and earnest face heard her. "It's true all right," he said. "Just step right up and give us the particulars and deposit your thousand dollars and you'll have a place on the first boat going over. "

A grumpy old man with a head of white hair shuffled forward to fill out a form and deposit his thousand dollars, muttering to himself, "It sure took long enough.

The two pretty black girls taking applications looked up with dazzling smiles.

"Look how long it took the Jews to get out of Egypt," one said.

"The hand of God is slow but sure," said the other.

It was a big night in the lives of all these assembled colored people. Now at last, after months of flaming denouncements of the injustice and hypocrisy of white people, hurled from the pulpit of his church; after months of eulogy heaped upon the holy land of Africa, young Reverend Deke O'Malley was at last putting words into action. Tonight he was signing up the people to go on his three ships back to Africa. Huge hand-drawings of the ships stood in prominent view behind the speaker's table, appearing to have the size and design of the SS Queen Elizabeth. Before them stood Reverend O'Malley, his tall lithe body clad in dark summer worsted, his fresh handsome face exuding benign authority and inspiring total confidence, flanked by his secretaries and the two young men most active in recruiting applicants.

A vacant lot in the "Valley" of Harlem near the railroad tracks, where slum tenements had been razed for a new housing development, had been taken over for the occasion. More than a thousand people milled about the patches of old, uneven concrete amid the baked, cindery earth littered with stones, piles of rubbish, dog droppings, broken glass, scattered rags and clusters of stinkweed.

The hot summer night was lit by flashes of sheet lighming, threatening rain, and the air was oppressive with dust, density and motor fumes. Stink drifted from the surrounding slums, now more overcrowded than ever due to the relocation of families from the site of the new buildings to be erected to relieve the overcrowding. But nothing troubled the jubilance of these dark people filled with faith and hope.