Blind Man With a Pistol by Chester Himes Page B

Moses," he went on. "First of all, Moses was white. I'm black. Second, Moses didn't lead his people out the wilderness until they revolted. First he led them into the wilderness to starve and eat roots. Moses was a square. Instead of leading his people out of Egypt he should have taken over Egypt, then their problems would have been solved."
          "But you're a race leader," a preacher shouted from the audience.
          "I ain't a race leader neither," he denied. "Does I look like I can race? That's the trouble with you so-called Negroes. You're always looking for a race leader. The only place to race whitey is on the cinder track. We beats him there all right, but that's all. And it ain't you and me who's racing, it's our children. And what are we doing to reward them for winning? Talking all this foolishness about Prophets and race leaders."
          "Well, if you ain't a Prophet and ain't a race leader, what is you?" the preacher said.
          "I'm a soldier," Prophet Ham said. "I'm a plain and simple soldier in this fight for right. Just call me General Ham. I'm your commander. We got to fight, not race."
          Now they had got that point settled, his audience could relax. He wasn't a prophet, and he wasn't a race leader, but they were just as satisfied with him being a general.
          "General Ham, baby," a young preacher cried enthusiastically, expressing the sentiment of all. "You command, we obey."
          "First we're gonna draft Jesus." He held up his hand to forestall comment. "I know what you're gonna say. You're gonna say other black men, more famous and with a bigger following than me, are employing the Jesus pitch. You're gonna say it's been the custom and habit of our folks for years past to call on Jesus for everything, food, health, justice, mercy, or what have you. But there're two differences. They been calling on the white Jesus. And mostly they been praying for mercy. You know that's the truth. You are all men of the cloth. All black preachers. All guilty of the same siP. Asking the white Jesus for mercy. For to solve your problem. For to take your part against the white man. And all he tell you is to turn the other cheek. You think he gonna tell you to slap back? He's white too. Whitey is his brother. In fact whitey made him. You think he gonna take your part against his own creator? What kind of thinking is that?"
          The preachers laughed with embarrassment. But they heard him.
          "We hear you, General Ham, baby.... You right, baby. . . . We been praying to the wrong Jesus.... Now we pray to the Black Jesus."
          "Just like you so-called Negroes," General Ham lisped scornfully. "Always praying. Believing in the philosophy of forgiveness and love. Trying to overcome by love. That's the white Jesus's philosophy. It won't work for you. It only work for whitey. It's whitey's con. Whitey invented it, just like he invented the white Jesus. We're gonna drop the praying altogether."
          A shocked silence followed this pronouncement. After all they were preachers. They'd been praying even before they started preaching. They didn't know what to say.
          But the young preacher spoke out again. He was young enough to try anything. The old-fashioned praying hadn't done much good. "You command us, General," he said again. He wasn't afraid of change. "We'll give up the praying. Then what'll we do?"
          "We ain't gonna ask the Black Jesus for no mercy," General Ham declared. "We ain't gonna ask him for nothing. We just gonna take him and feed him to whitey in the place of the other food we been putting on whitey's table since the first of us arrived as slaves. We been feeding whitey all these years. You know that's the truth. He grown fat and prosperous on the food we been feeding him. Now we're gonna feed him the flesh of the Black Jesus. I don't have to tell you the flesh of Jesus is indigestible. They ain't even digested the flesh of