American Hunger by Richard Wright

smothered laughter. Some of the more intelligent ones were striving to keep deadpan faces. What kind of people were these? I had made a serious report and now I heard giggles.
    “I did the best I could,” I said uneasily. “I realize that writing is not basic or important. But, given time, I think I can make a contribution.”
    “We know you can, comrade,” the black organizer said.
    His tone was more patronizing than that of a southern white man. I grew angry. I thought I knew these people, but evidently I did not. I wanted to take issue with their attitude, but caution urged me to talk it over with others first. I left the meeting baffled.
    During the following days I learned through discreet questioning that I had seemed a fantastic element to the black Communists. I was shocked to hear that I, who had been only to grammar school, had been classified as an
intellectual.
What was an intellectual? I had never heard the word used in the sense in which it was applied to me. I had thought that they might refuse me on the grounds that I was not politically advanced; I had thought they might place me on probation; I had thought they might say I would have to be investigated. But they had simply laughed. And I began to realize why so few sensitive Negroes had had the gall to come as close to them as I had.
    I learned, to my dismay, that the black Communists in my unit had commented upon my shined shoes, my clean shirt, and the tie I had worn. Above all, my manner of speech had seemed an alien thing to them.
    “He talks like a book,” one of the Negro comrades had said.
    And that was enough to condemn me forever as bourgeois.
    The more I learned of the Negro Communists the more I found that they were not vicious, that they had no intention to hurt. They just did not know anything and did not want to learn anything. They felt that all questions had been answered, and anyone who asked new ones or tried to answer old ones was dangerous. The word “writer” was enough to make a black Chicago Communist feel that the man to whom the word applied had gone wrong.
    I discovered that it was not wise to be seen reading books that were not endorsed by the Communist party. On one occasion I was asked to show a book that I carried under my arm. The comrade looked at it and shook his head.
    “What’re you reading this for?” he asked.
    “It’s interesting,” I said.
    “Reading bourgeois books can only confuse you, comrade,” he said, returning the book.
    “You seem convinced that I’m easily confused,” I said.
    “You know,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, confidential tone, “many comrades go wrong by reading the books of the bourgeoisie. The party in the Soviet Union had trouble with people like that.”
    “Didn’t Lenin read bourgeois books?” I asked.
    “But you’re not Lenin,” he shot at me.
    “Are there some books reserved for some people to read, while others cannot read them?” I asked.
    “Comrade, you do not understand,” he said.
    An invisible wall was building slowly between me and the people with whom I had cast my lot. Well, I would show them that all men who wrote books were not their enemies. I would communicate the meaning of their lives to people whom they could not reach; then, surely, my intentions would merit their confidence. I dismissed the warning about the Soviet Union’s trouble with intellectuals. I felt that it simply did not apply to me. The problem I faced seemed a much simpler one. I had to win the confidence of people who had been misled so often that they were afraid of anybody who differed from themselves. Yet deep down I feared their militant ignorance.
    In my party work I met a Negro Communist, Ross, who was under indictment for “inciting to riot.” I decided to use him in my series of biographical sketches. His trial was pending and he was organizing support in his behalf. Ross was typical of the effective, street agitator. Southern-born, he had migrated north and his